Constans II (; 7 November 630 – 15 July 668), nicknamed "the Bearded" (; ), was the Byzantine emperor from 641 to 668. Constans was the last attested emperor to serve as consul, in 642, although the office continued to exist until the reign of Leo VI the Wise (r. 886–912). His religious policy saw him steering a middle line in disputes between the Orthodoxy and Monothelitism by refusing to persecute either and prohibited discussion of the natures of Jesus Christ under the Type of Constans in 648. His reign coincided with Muslim invasions under Mu'awiya I in the late 640s to 650s. Constans was the first emperor to visit Rome since the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, and the last one to visit Rome while it was still held by the Empire.

Origins and early career

Constans was born on 7 November 630 in Constantinople, the East-Roman capital. His father Constantine III was son of Emperor Heraclius. After the death of Heraclius, Constantine III co-ruled with Heraclonas, his half-brother through Heraclius' second marriage to Martina, but died after three months. Constans was most likely elevated to caesar by his father in order to secure his succession to the throne against Martina and her sons. Constans' mother Gregoria was a daughter of Nicetas, a first cousin of Heraclius.

Following his father's death in May 641, the 10-year old Constans II was named co-emperor due to rumors that Heraclonas and Martina poisoned Constantine III. Later that same year, Heraclonas was deposed by Valentinus, one of Heraclius' most trusted generals, and Constans II was left as sole emperor. Constans owed his rise to the throne to a popular reaction against his uncle and to the protection of the soldiers led by Valentinus. Although the precocious emperor addressed the senate with a speech blaming Heraclonas and Martina for eliminating his father, he reigned under a regency of senators led by Patriarch Paul II of Constantinople. In 644, Valentinus attempted to seize power for himself, but failed.

Reign as emperor
Under Constans, the Byzantines completely withdrew from Egypt in 642, and the third Rashidun caliph Uthman () launched numerous attacks on the islands of the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas. A Byzantine fleet under the admiral Manuel occupied Alexandria again in 645, and the Alexandrians hailed him as a liberator, since the caliphate levied heavier taxes and showed less respect for their religion. However, Manuel squandered his time and popularity in plundering the countryside, and eventually the Arab army managed to force him to embark for home. The situation was complicated by the violent opposition to Monothelitism by the clergy in the west and the related rebellion of the Exarch of Carthage, Gregory the Patrician. The latter fell in battle against the army of caliph Uthman, and the region remained a vassal state under the Caliphate until civil war broke out and imperial rule was again restored.

Constans attempted to steer a middle line in the church dispute between Orthodoxy and Monothelitism by refusing to persecute either and prohibiting further discussion of the natures of Jesus Christ by decree in 648 (the Type of Constans). Naturally, this live-and-let-live compromise satisfied few passionate participants in the dispute.

Meanwhile, the advance of the Rashidun Caliphate continued unabated. In 647 they entered Armenia and Cappadocia and sacked Caesarea Mazaca. In the same year, they raided Africa and killed Gregory. In 648, the Arabs raided into Phrygia, and in 649 they launched their first maritime expedition against Crete. A major Arab offensive into Cilicia and Isauria in 650–651 forced the Emperor to enter into negotiations with Caliph Uthman's governor of Syria, Mu'awiya I (), who later reigned as the first Umayyad caliph. The truce that followed allowed a short respite and made it possible for Constans to hold on to the western portions of Armenia.

In 654, however, Mu'awiya renewed his raids by sea, plundering Rhodes. Constans led a fleet to attack the Muslims at Phoinike (off Lycia) in 655 at the Battle of the Masts, but he was defeated: 500 Byzantine ships were destroyed in the battle, and the Emperor himself was almost killed. The sea battle was so devastating that the emperor escaped only by trading clothes with one of his men. Before the battle, chronicler Theophanes the Confessor says, the Emperor dreamed of being at Thessalonika; this dream predicted his defeat against the Arabs because the word Thessalonika is similar to the sentence "thes allo niken", which means "gave victory to another (the enemy)".  Caliph Uthman was preparing to attack Constantinople, but he did not carry out the plan, as the first Fitna broke out in 656.

In 658, with the eastern frontier under less pressure, Constans defeated the Slavs in the Balkans, temporarily reasserting some notion of Byzantine rule over them and resettled some of them in Anatolia ( or 667). In 659 he campaigned far to the east, taking advantage of a rebellion against the Caliphate in Media. The same year he concluded peace with the Arabs.

Now Constans could turn to church matters once again. Pope Martin I had condemned both Monothelitism and Constans' attempt to halt debates over it in the Lateran Council of 649. The Emperor ordered the Exarch of Ravenna to arrest the Pope. Exarch Olympius excused himself from this task, but his successor, Theodore I Calliopas, carried it out in 653. Pope Martin was brought to Constantinople and condemned as a criminal, ultimately being exiled to Cherson, where he died in 655.

Constans grew increasingly fearful that his younger brother, Theodosius, could oust him from the throne; he therefore obliged Theodosius to take holy orders and later had him killed in 660. Constans' sons Constantine, Heraclius, and Tiberius had been associated on the throne since the 650s. However, having attracted the hatred of the citizens of Constantinople, Constans decided to leave the capital and to move to Syracuse in Sicily.

On his way, he stopped in Greece and fought the Slavs at Thessalonica with success. Then, in the winter of 662–663, he made his camp at Athens.

From there, in 663, he continued to Italy. He launched an assault against the Lombard Duchy of Benevento, which then encompassed most of Southern Italy. Taking advantage of the fact that Lombard king Grimoald I of Benevento was engaged against Frankish forces from Neustria, Constans disembarked at Taranto and besieged Lucera and Benevento. However, the latter resisted and Constans withdrew to Naples. During the journey from Benevento to Naples, Constans II was defeated by Mitolas, Count of Capua, near Pugna. Constans ordered Saburrus, the commander of his army, to attack the Lombards again, but he was defeated by the Beneventani at Forino, between Avellino and Salerno.

In 663 Constans visited Rome for twelve days—the first emperor since the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and, along with John V Palaiologos, one of only two Eastern Roman emperors since the division of the Roman empire in 395 to set foot in Rome—and was received with great honor by Pope Vitalian (657–672). Although on friendly terms with Vitalian, he stripped buildings (including the Pantheon) of their ornaments and bronze to be carried back to Constantinople, and in 666 declared the Pope to have no jurisdiction over the Archbishop of Ravenna, since that city was the seat of the Exarch, his immediate representative.  His subsequent moves in Calabria and Sardinia were marked by further strippings and request of tributes that enraged his Italian subjects.

According to Warren Treadgold, the first themes were created between 659 and 661, during the reign of Constans II.  However, John Haldon states that this idea is not supported by a "a shred of evidence", although redistribution of the armies across the Anatolian provinces did take place, and likely resulted in administrative changes.

Death and succession
On 15 July 668, he was assassinated in his bath by his chamberlain, either killed with a bucket or stabbed with a knife. His son Constantine succeeded him as Constantine IV. A brief usurpation in Sicily by Mezezius was quickly suppressed by the new emperor.

Assessments and legacy

The historian Robert Hoyland asserts that Mu'awiya was a significant Islamic challenge for Constans to "deny [the divinity of] Jesus and turn to the Great God who I worship, the God of our father Abraham" and speculates that Mu'awiya's tour of Christian sites in Jerusalem was done to demonstrate "the fact that he, and not the Byzantine emperor, was now God's representative on earth".

Record in Chinese sources

The Chinese dynastic histories of the Old Book of Tang and New Book of Tang mention several embassies made by Fu lin (拂菻), which they equated with Daqin (the Roman Empire). These are recorded as having begun in the year 643 with an embassy sent by the king Boduoli (波多力, Constans II Pogonatos) to Emperor Taizong of Tang, bearing gifts such as red glass and green gemstones. Other contacts are reported taking place in 667, 701, and perhaps 719, sometimes through Central Asian intermediaries. These histories also record that the Arabs (Da shi 大食) sent their commander "Mo-yi" (Chinese: 摩拽伐之, Pinyin: Mó zhuāi fá zhī), to besiege the Byzantine capital, Constantinople, and forced the Byzantines to pay them tribute.

This Arab commander "Mo-yi" was identified by historian Friedrich Hirth as Muawiyah I (r. 661–680), the governor of Syria before becoming the Umayyad caliph. The same books also described Constantinople in some detail as having massive granite walls and a water clock mounted with a golden statue of man. The Byzantine historian Theophylact Simocatta, writing during the reign of Heraclius (r. 610–641), relayed information about China's geography, its capital city Khubdan (Old Turkic: Khumdan, i.e. Chang'an), its current ruler Taisson whose name meant "Son of God" (Chinese: Tianzi), and correctly pointed to its reunification by the Sui dynasty (581–618) as occurring during the reign of Maurice, noting that China had previously been divided politically along the Yangzi River by two warring nations.

Family
By his wife Fausta, a daughter of the patrician Valentinus, Constans II had three sons:
 Constantine IV, who succeeded him as Emperor
 Heraclius, co-emperor from 659 to 681
 Tiberius, co-emperor from 659 to 681

Coinage gallery

Ancestry

See also

List of Byzantine emperors

Notes

References

Bibliography

Liber Pontificalis
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, Book V

|-

630 births
668 deaths
7th-century Byzantine emperors
7th-century murdered monarchs
Heraclian dynasty
Medieval child monarchs
Assassinated Byzantine emperors
Imperial Roman consuls
640s in the Byzantine Empire
650s in the Byzantine Empire
660s in the Byzantine Empire
Sons of Byzantine emperors

Constans II


Progressive rock is a type of rock music with complicated musical technique and composition. This means that the tempo, time signature, and style can change many times in a single song.

Most normal rock songs follow a very simple pattern in the way they are arranged. This pattern is a verse followed by a chorus, then a different verse, and then the same chorus. Progressive rock is more complicated than this, and can require more skill to play.

Origins
Progressive rock was first made in the late 1960s, but became most popular in the 1970s. It continues to be popular today, too. Progressive rock began in England and spread throughout Europe. It remains most popular in Europe, but there are several notable American and Canadian progressive rock bands. This genre was influenced by classical music and jazz fusion. Over the years, different sub-genres of progressive rock have been created, such as symphonic rock, art rock, math rock, and progressive metal.

Progressive rock artists wished to create music that was not limited to the structures of common popular rock and pop music. They wanted to make rock music that "progressed" to the complexity of jazz and classical music by creating a more serious, complex and sophisticated type of rock music. Progressive rock bands may have influences from psychedelic rock, folk music, traditional music, world music, and jazz or jazz fusion. It is also referred to as "prog rock" as an abbreviation, or as "Hobbit rock" because of frequent medieval or fantasy themes in the lyrics.

Progressive rock bands write and play songs that have many changes during each song. Regular rock songs have verses and a chorus, but progressive songs can have many different sections. For example, instead of having verses and choruses, progressive rock songs may have many different musical themes, solos, and musical moods. A typical progressive song might have a form such as: Introduction-Verse-Chorus-instrumental section-New verse-New chorus-Instrumental section-Ending.
Because of their depth and complexity, progressive rock songs are not played on pop music radio very often.

Bands
Some of the important progressive rock bands from the late 1960s and early 1970s include The Moody Blues, Jethro Tull; Yes, Genesis; Pink Floyd; Emerson; Lake & Palmer; Rush; Gentle Giant; Happy The Man; Van der Graaf Generator, and King Crimson.

Characteristics of progressive rock
Progressive rock is difficult to define, because progressive rock bands often play different types of progressive rock music which sound different. There are some common elements that are in most progressive rock band music, such as long, complex songs, unusual time signatures, unusual instruments or ways of using them, and use of improvisation, which means making up or inventing music while playing on stage.

Albums by progressive rock groups are often concept albums. In a concept album, the songs have a common theme, are arranged in a certain order and often tell a story or represent a larger concept.

References

Music genres

Progressive rock


A Moon landing is the arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. It is a follow up to Project Mercury. This includes both crewed and uncrewed (robotic) missions. The first man-made object to reach the surface of the Moon was the Soviet Union's Luna 2 mission, on 13 September 1959.

The United States' Apollo 11 was the first crewed mission to land on the Moon, on 20 July 1969. There have been six missions with people onboard that landed on the Moon between 1969 and 1972. There were also numerous landings without people onboard, with no soft landings happening from 22 August 1976 until 14 December 2013.

To date, the United States is the only country to have successfully landed humans on the Moon. The last mission was in December, 1972, and the last human to walk on the Moon was Gene Cernan.

References

Moon
Astronomy

Moon landing


Broughton Island is an island 14 km north-east of Port Stephens on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales, Australia.  It is part of the Myall Lakes National Park.(map)

History
Archaeology indicates that the certain ancestors of the Worimi people inhabited the island for an otherwise apparently indeterminate period of two-thousand years, and whatever name those people may have had for the island itself remains unknown. It lay within the territory of the Garrawerrigal branch (nurra) of the Woromi. "Garrawerrigal" meant "the people of the sea", from garoowa=sea. Niritba was "the home of the mutton bird" in their language.

Broughton Island was seen by James Cook commanding HM Bark Endeavour on 11 May 1770: he mistook it for a headland and called it Black Head. After its insularity was discovered, it was renamed Broughton Islands, and so appears on the 1852 Admiralty chart, Australia, East Coast. Broken Bay to Sugarloaf Point, from a running survey by Captn. J. Lort Stokes, H.M.S. Acheron, 1851. Providence Bay also appears for the first time on this chart.

Nearby Port Stephens was surveyed by Commander William Broughton in HMS Providence in August 1795. Stokes appears to have named the island and bay after Broughton and his ship, perhaps on the advice of his friend, Phillip Parker King, who was then residing at Tahlee in Port Stephens and had surveyed the coast in a private capacity.

The island was used between 1905 and 1907 in regards to testing of biological controls on feral rabbits, by French-based Polish biologist Jean Danysz (1860–1928).

National Park
Broughton Island has been part of the Myall Lakes National Park since it was declared in 1972. Wedge-tailed shearwaters, known locally as "muttonbirds", nest on the island, as well as  Australian little penguins, close to the northern limit of their range.  In November 2009, the National Parks and Wildlife Service declared the island free from rabbits and rats.

References

Islands of New South Wales
Mid-Coast Council
Island restoration
Seabird colonies
Underwater diving sites in Australia
Penguin colonies

Broughton Island (New South Wales)


Rolly is an egg-shaped digital robotic music player made by Sony, combining music functions with robotic dancing. It has two wheels that allow it to rotate and spin, as well as two bands of colored LED light running around its edge and cup-like "wings" (or "arms" according to the Sony sonystyle USA website) which can open and close on either end, all of which can be synchronized to the music being played.

Rolly has several operating modes, including Bluetooth functionality.  Rolly can play music streamed directly from any Bluetooth-enabled cell phone, computer, or mp3 player.  Rolly is able to dance along to streaming music, but the Rolly Choreographer software produces far better results when it analyzes tracks and creates motion files before loading them onto Rolly.  The Rolly player uses  files to store motion data along with a particular music track.  Pre-made motion files can be downloaded and uploaded from Rolly Go.

Rolly also has an accelerometer which detects if the player is laying horizontally or being held upright.  When held upright, the track next/previous can be controlled by the top wheel and volume up/down can be controlled by the bottom wheel.  Tracks can be shuffled by holding the unit upright, pressing the button once, then shaking the unit up and down (light color changes to purple).  You can return to continuous play (light color blue) by simply repeating this process.

Rolly has 2 gigabytes of flash memory to store music files. In some markets it came pre-loaded with the track Boogie Wonderland by Earth, Wind & Fire.

On August 20, 2007, Sony launched an initial teaser advertising campaign for the product. The product was unveiled on September 20, 2007, and went on sale in Japan on September 29, and was for sale at the Sony sonystyle USA website for $229.99 USD, down from $399.99 USD. It is available in black and white. Sony offers the "Engrave it." option for this item, and a number of accessories, including "arms" in different colors.

Around 2009, the Rolly appeared to be discontinued.

Sony BSP60
In 2015 Sony presented a Bluetooth speaker featuring a similar design and feature set as the Rolly boasted, with the addition of an OLED display and support for voice commands.

References

External links

 Fan Page and Support For Rolly Sep 10/50 (Japanese Version) and Sep-30BT
 Sony Rolly - Era -Viral Video by Claw Films London
 Head and Neck Sessions vs. Sony Rolly
 Sony Rolly takes disco to the streets
 Sony Rolly dances to Footloose

Entertainment robots
Robotics at Sony
Sony products
Discontinued products
2007 robots
Products and services discontinued in 2009
Rolling robots
Audio players

Sony Rolly


Camille Everardi (1824–1899) was a Belgian operatic baritone who had an active international career during the 1850s through the 1870s. He particularly excelled in the works of Vincenzo Bellini and Gioachino Rossini. Several music critics of his day likened his voice to that of Antonio Tamburini. He later had a highly successful second career as a voice teacher in the Russian Empire.

Biography
Born to parents of Italian descent, he studied at the Royal Conservatory of Liège in Liège and under Manuel García in Paris. He made his professional opera debut at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples in 1850 where he sang for two seasons. He sang at the Teatro Canobbiano in Milan in 1852 and in 1853 he made his first appearance at La Scala as Francesco in Verdi's I masnadieri. From 1853 to 1854 he was engaged at the Teatro Regio di Torino.

In 1855 Everardi returned to Paris to join the roster of principal singers at the Théâtre-Italien. He sang there for two seasons in such roles as Aliprando in Rossini's Matilde di Shabran  and the title role in Mozart's Don Giovanni. In 1860 he was engaged at the Royal Opera, London where he portrayed Comte de Nevers in Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots, Elmiro in Rossini's Otello, Alphonse in Donizetti's La favorite, and Count Robinson in Cimarosa's Il matrimonio segreto. He also made several appearances at opera houses in Germany.

Beginning in 1853, Everardi made several lauded opera appearances in Russian opera houses. He eventually moved to Saint Petersburg during the late 1850s where he appeared at the Mariinsky Imperial Theatre until 1873, when he retired from the stage. He remained in Saint Petersburg working as a voice teacher for a few years, his students including the composer Arkady Abaza, before taking a position at the Kiev Conservatory. He eventually left Kiev to teach at the Moscow Conservatory where he remained until his death in 1899. A large number of his pupils went on to have major careers, including Nikolay Figner, Maria Slavina, Nikolay Speransky, Fyodor Stravinsky, Joachim Tartakov, and Dmitri Usatov.

Sources
Everardi Biography at operissimo.com (in German)

1824 births
1899 deaths
Belgian music educators
19th-century Belgian male opera singers
Academic staff of Moscow Conservatory
Operatic baritones
Royal Conservatory of Liège alumni
Pupils of Manuel García (baritone)

Camille Everardi


The Gonzo Papers is a four volume series of books by American journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson published between 1979 and 1994. The word Gonzo is often used to describe the unique style of journalism that Thompson cultivated throughout his life.

The books largely serve as a collection of hard-to-find newspaper and magazine articles written by Thompson throughout his career, although all volumes do contain some new material by the author. Articles from Thompson's early days as a newspaper free-lancer, correspondent for the National Observer, and columnist for the San Francisco Examiner are included, as are excerpts from Thompson's better known works such as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

The fourth volume, Better Than Sex, is mostly composed of faxes and letters Thompson sent and received regarding the 1992 U.S. Presidential Election, along with a few articles Thompson wrote on the subject.

Volumes of The Gonzo Papers
Gonzo Papers, Vol. 1: The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time. (New York, Summit Books, 1979; Simon & Schuster, 2003, )
Gonzo Papers, Vol. 2: Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80s. (New York, Summit Books, 1988; Vintage, 1989, ; Simon & Schuster, 2003, )
Gonzo Papers, Vol. 3: Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream. (New York, Summit Books, 1990; Pocket, 1991, ; Simon & Schuster/Touchstone, 2002, )
Gonzo Papers, Vol. 4: Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie. (New York, Random House, 1994; Ballantine Books, 1995, )

Essays about the media
Essay collections by Hunter S. Thompson
Summit Books books

The Gonzo Papers


Bernard Edward Joseph Capes (30 August 1854 – 2 November 1918) was an English author.

Biography
Capes was born in London, one of eleven children: his elder sister, Harriet Capes, was a noted translator and author of more than a dozen children's books.  His uncle, John Moore Capes, was President of the Oxford Union while attending Balliol College, Oxford and published a semi-autobiographical novel. His grandfather, John Capes, had converted to Roman Catholicism, so Capes was brought up a Catholic, and educated at the Catholic college Beaumont College. However, he rapidly 'gave this up'.

Capes was a prolific Victorian author, publishing more than forty volumes – romances, mysteries, poetry, history – together with many articles for the magazines of the day. His early writing career was as a journalist, later becoming editor of the monthly magazine The Theatre, the most highly regarded British dramatic periodical of its time. Other magazines for which Capes wrote included Blackwood's, Butterfly, Cassell's, Cornhill Magazine, Hutton's Magazine, Illustrated London News, Lippincott's, Macmillan's Magazine, Literature, New Witness, Pall Mall Magazine, Pearson's Magazine, The Idler, The New Weekly, and The Queen.

Capes wrote numerous ghost stories, which were later rediscovered by anthologist Hugh Lamb in the 1970s. His 1899 story "The Black Reaper" features a supernatural personification of Death. Capes also wrote historical novels. Love Like A Gipsy (1901) is set during the American Revolution. Capes' Bembo: A Tale of Italy  is a novel which takes place during the reign of Galeazzo Sforza, the fifteenth-century Duke of Milan.

He finally committed to writing novels full-time, taking around four months for each novel. On several occasions he had two or three novels published in the same year – and even four in 1910. His first success came in 1897, when he entered a $30,000 competition for new authors sponsored by the Chicago Record. He was awarded second prize for The Mill of Silence, published by Rand, McNally that year. The following year the Chicago Record ran the competition again, and this time Capes won it with The Lake of Wine, published by Heinemann.

He died in the 1918 'flu epidemic.  A memorial plaque commemorating his life is in Winchester Cathedral (where he worked in the years leading up to his death), affixed to the wall by the door which leads to the crypt.

Capes' son Renalt Capes (1905-1983), and grandsons, also (Dr) Renalt Capes (1956-), Ian Bernard and Graham Burns, are also published authors.

Works
(Information supplied by Capes's grandson Ian Bernard Graham Burns)
The Haunted Tower (as 'Bevis Cane'), Spencer Blackett, London, 1888
The Missing Man (as 'Bevis Cane'), Eglington & Co, 1889
The Mill of Silence, Rand, McNally & Company, Chicago, 1897
The Lake of Wine, Heinemann, 1897, 8 editions published between 1898 and 1931 and held by 23 libraries worldwide
Adventures of the Comte de Muette, William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh, 1898, 9 editions published in 1898 and held by 35 libraries worldwide
The Mysterious Singer, J.W. Arrowsmith,
Our Lady of Darkness, Wm Blackwood, 1898
At a Winter's Fire, Arthur Pearson, 1899, Short Stories, 13 editions published between 1899 and 2006 and held by 173 libraries worldwide, (e-issued, 1978, by Ayer Co Publishing (USA)
From Door to Door, Wm Blackwood, 1900, Short Stories
Joan Brotherhood, C. A. Pearson, London, 1900
Love Like a Gypsy, Archibald Constable & Co, Westminster, 1901
Plots, Methuen & Co, London, 1902, Short Stories
A Castle in Spain, Smith, Elder & Co, London, 1903
The Secret in the Hill, Smith, Elder & Co, London, 1903
The Extraordinary Confessions of Diana Please, Methuen & Co, 1904
A Jay of Italy, Methuen, 1905, 7 editions published between 1905 and 1995 and held by 22 libraries worldwide
The Romance of Lohengrin, Dean and Son, 1906(?)
Bembo: A Tale of Italy, Dutton & Co., NY, 1906, 2 editions published in 1906 and held by 33 libraries worldwide
Loaves and Fishes (2nd edition 1906), 1906, Short Stories
A Rogue's Tragedy, Methuen & Co, London 1906
The Green Parrot, Smith, Elder & Co, 1908
Amaranthus: A Book of Little Songs, T. Fisher Unwin, 1908
The Love Story of St Bel, 1909
The Great Skene Mystery, Methuen & Co, 1909
Why Did He Do It?, 1910
Historical Vignettes, 1st Series, T. Fisher Unwin, 1910, 13 editions published between 1904 and 1965 in English and Czech and held by 57 libraries worldwide
Jemmy Abercraw, Methuen, 1910
The Will and the Way, John Murray, London, 1910
The Will and the Way, John Murray, London, 1910*Gilead Balm, T. Fisher Unwin, 1911, 4 editions published in 1911 and held by 28 libraries worldwide
The House of Many Voices, T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1911
Jessie Bazley, Constable and Company, London, 1912
Historical Vignettes, 2nd Series, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1912
Bag and Baggage, Constable, 1912
The Pot of Basil, Constable and Company, 1913
The Story of Fifine, Constable, 1914 (re-issued 1919)
The Fabulists, Mills & Boon, London, 1915, Short Stories
Moll Davis, George Allen & Unwin, 1916
If Age Could, Duckworth and Co, London, 1916
Where England Sets Her Feet, 1918
A Fool's Passion and Other Poems
The Skeleton Key, W. Collins Sons, London, 1919, 8 editions published between 1919 and 1929 in English and held by 30 libraries worldwide.  Re-issued as The Mystery of the Skeleton Key, HarperCollins, London, September 2015
The Black Reaper, ed Hugh Lamb, Equation, Wellingborough, 1989, held by 25 libraries worldwide
The Black Reaper, ed Hugh Lamb, Ash-Tree Press, Ashcroft, British Columbia, 1998
Dancing Shadows, Coachwhip Publications, Landisville, Pennsylvania, 2011
Twists and Turns: Tales of Mystery, Adventure, Crime, and Humor, Coachwhip Publications, 2011

Uncollected Stories
The following stories are not included in the six short story collections:-
Wanted—A Bicycle. The Strand Magazine Vol. 17, June 1899
Dunberry Bells. @ Papers Past New Zealand Newspapers, 26 July 1902
As a Fly in Amber. The Illustrated London News, 9 December 1905. Also @ Papers Past
The Diamond George. The Illustrated London News, 14–21 July 1906. Also @ Trove Australia Newspapers
Love and the Belt. The London Magazine Vol.17, 1906. Also @ Trove
The Vanishing Cheques. The London Magazine Vol.18, 1907. First published separately 1904 London: Daily Mail
Norah's Secret. Cardiff Times, 15 February 1908. Also @ Trove
Forfeits. @ Papers Past, 9 January 1909
The Tell-Tale Hall-Mark. @ Trove, 21 December 1912
St. Sigebert's Chimney. @ Trove, 6 September 1913
A Popular Success. @ Trove, 12 March 1914

Notes

References
The Black Reaper, ed. Hugh Lamb, Equation, Wellingborough, 1989
The Black Reaper, ed. Hugh Lamb, Ash-Tree Press, Ashcroft, British Columbia

External links

1854 births
1918 deaths
Deaths from the Spanish flu pandemic in the United Kingdom
English male journalists
19th-century English novelists
20th-century English novelists
English short story writers
English horror writers
Ghost story writers
English historical novelists
Writers of historical fiction set in the Middle Ages
Writers of historical fiction set in the early modern period
English male short story writers
English male novelists
19th-century British short story writers
19th-century English male writers
20th-century British short story writers
20th-century English male writers

Bernard Capes


The Heckler & Koch XM8 is a lightweight assault rifle system developed from the late 1990s to early 2000s. The rifle was designed by German small arms manufacturer Heckler & Koch (H&K), and shares design and engineering with their G36 rifle.

The XM8 design was originally part of the Objective Individual Combat Weapon program (OICW), which was developing a "smart" grenade launcher system with an underslung carbine rifle. The system was unable to meet performance and weight requirements and was eventually canceled. In the aftermath, the two portions of the OICW were separated, resulting in the XM8 and XM25 projects.

While the XM8 was being considered by the United States Army as a potential standard infantry rifle, to replace the M4 carbine, this project was put on hold in April 2005, and was formally canceled on October 31 of that year. The weapon was adopted by the Royal Malaysian Navy for its PASKAL special forces.

History

The U.S. Army's purpose in contracting for this prototype weapon was to provide replacement options for the M16 rifle after the XM29 program ran into problems. The goal was a weapon that was cheaper, lighter, and more effective than the M16 and M4 series of weapons. The XM8 was not just one weapon but a system which could be reconfigured with appropriate parts to be any one of several variants from a short-barreled personal defense weapon to a bipod-equipped support weapon. It also included an integrated optical sight and IR laser aiming module/illuminator.

The XM8 was based on the rifle module of Alliant Techsystems's XM29 OICW project, of which the weapon mechanisms were the responsibility of H&K.  Following the indefinite delay of the Objective Individual Combat Weapon program, the U.S. Army requested that the contractors design stand-alone weapons from the XM29's kinetic energy and high explosive modules.

The first 30 XM8 prototypes were delivered by November 2003 for preliminary testing. Later, at least 200 developmental prototypes were procured. Among the complaints during testing was that the battery life was too low for the weapon's powered sight system and some ergonomics issues. Two other key issues were reducing the weapon's weight and increasing the heat resistance of the handguard, which would start to melt after firing too many rounds. The main testing was largely completed, and the army pushed for funding for a large field test. However, in 2004 Congress denied $26 million funding for 7,000 rifles to do a wide scale test fielding of the XM8 in 2005. At that time, the rifle still had developmental goals that were incomplete, primarily associated with the weapon's weight; the battery life had been extended, and a more heat-resistant plastic handguard added. The earliest product brochure lists the target weight for the carbine variant at  with the then current prototype at . The weight of the carbine prototype had since grown to  according to a brochure released by HK and General Dynamics in January 2005.

During the same period, the Army came under pressure from other arms makers to open up the XM8 to competition. The main argument was that the weapon that was being adopted was a substantially different system than for the original competition that ATK and H&K had actually won (see XM29). Other issues were that the army has a legislated obligation to prefer U.S.-based manufacturers, and that a previous agreement with Colt Defense required the army to involve Colt in certain small-arms programs. The XM8 program was put on hold in 2004. The exact reason why this happened is a matter of debate; some combination of the aforementioned technical issues, funding restrictions, and outside pressure being involved.

In 2005, the Army issued a formal Request for Proposals (RFP) for the OICW Increment One family of weapons. This RFP gave manufacturers six months to develop and deliver prototype weapons with requirements very similar to the XM8 capabilities, but with the addition of a squad automatic weapon (SAW) configuration. No XM8 prototypes have been shown that actually match the capabilities of the M249 (e.g. fast barrel replacement, high sustained rate of fire, belt feed). The OICW Increment One requirement for the SAW includes fast barrel replacement and high sustained rate of fire, but leaves the ammunition feed choice up to the manufacturer.

Funding for the M320 grenade launcher, a single-shot under-barrel grenade launcher similar to the M203 that was originally intended for the XM8, was approved. The launcher is heavier than the M203, but does offer some advantages, such as no need for special mounting hardware and loading from the side instead of the bottom, which enables use of longer-than-standard grenades.
The XM320 was designed for use with the existing inventory of M16s and M4s and is also compatible with the XM8. It can also be used as a stand-alone weapon.

As of July 19, 2005, the OICW Increment One RFP was put on an eight-week hold, with an indication given that the program was being restructured as a joint procurement program. On October 31, 2005, the OICW Increment One RFP was cancelled.

In an article in Jane's Defence Weekly, April 26, 2006 (Vol 43, page 30) it is stated that "The US Army has again delayed the procurement of its future infantry weapons, this time for more than five years, and is working to field two interim guns in the meantime".

General Dynamics was involved in latter stages and H&K had plans to produce the rifle at a plant in Georgia. H&K was British-owned at the start of the project, but was later bought back by a group of German investors. Engineering work was done at facilities in the United States and Germany.

Near cancellation

The U.S. military's XM8 program was almost canceled in the autumn of 2005 after being suspended earlier that year, but was limited to the use of Marines. Had this program not been specified, the XM8 system may have faced competition from weapons such as from the FN SCAR, Bushmaster ACR and HK416. It was later altered and entered as a candidate for the SCAR competition but was unsuccessful.

Further testing
In autumn 2007 the XM8 was compared to other firearms in a 'dust test'. The competition was based on two previous tests that were conducted in summer 2006 and summer 2007 before the latest test in the autumn of 2007. In the summer 2007 test, M16 rifles and M4 carbines recorded a total of 307 stoppages. In the autumn 2007 test, the XM8 recorded only 127 stoppages in 60,000 total rounds while the M4 carbine had 882. The FN SCAR had 226 stoppages and the HK416 had 233. The difference between the XM8, HK416, and FN SCAR was not statistically significant when correcting for the less reliable STANAG magazine. However, the discrepancy of 575 stoppages between the summer and autumn 2007 tests of the M4 had officials looking into possible causes for the change such as different officials, seasons, and inadequate sample pool size but have stated that the conditions of the test were ostensibly the same.

Design

The XM8 is a selective-fire 5.56mm assault rifle, firing from a closed rotary bolt. Its design and functioning is similar to that of the Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifle, of which it is a derivative.

Materials and weight
The materials used to build the XM8 are almost entirely composites, with the notable exception of the cold-hammer-forged steel barrel. Preliminary tests in desert and arctic conditions have shown the XM8 to be a rugged weapon, though some complaints arose concerning an unspecified mechanical issue and melting handguards due to overheating when firing full-auto.

Much of the expected cost and weight savings are from the weapon's electronic sight. The baseline XM8 carbine (with its integrated sight), for example, can be compared to an M4 carbine with a host of previous-generation electronic add-ons like the AN/PEQ-2, Aimpoint CompM2, Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight, and/or BUIS. Without the advantage of the next-generation combined electronics sight, the XM8 would be both heavier and more expensive than the firearms it was intended to replace.

Accessories
The XM8 abandoned the standard Picatinny rail for attachment of weapon accessories, in favor of a new standard referred to as PCAP (Picatinny Combat Attachment Points), small oval holes on the forward grip. (A variant was designed with MIL-STD-1913 rails — XM8 R; and some early XM8 prototypes had rails.) PCAP is not backwards compatible with currently fielded attachments that use MIL-STD-1913 rails without using an adapter. The benefit of PCAP, however, is the precision of the accessory's connection with the body of the weapon; accessories utilizing Picatinny rails often need adjustment if they are removed and reattached. Additionally, most standard accessory functionality is built into the XM8.  Where functionality was missing, it was anticipated that accessories would be redesigned to utilize PCAP. In the new OICW Increment One competition, the army has left the choice of attachment technology up to the manufacturer, with requirements built into the RFP as to the ability of sights to maintain their zero.

The M4 carbine barrel is  and the XM8 barrel is  but the rifles have the same overall length. Although a shorter barrel generally results in lower muzzle velocity, Polygonal rifling partially compensates for the loss of velocity from a shorter barrel.  An electronic round counter was proposed for the XM8. The system would have tracked the number of rounds fired and the date and time of each shot. The data would then be accessed wirelessly by a device like a PDA. Another benefit would be to monitor unauthorized weapon use or corroborate field reports. Other features included completely ambidextrous controls and an integrated red dot/3x optical zoom scope (later changed to a red dot/1x sight). However the designated marksman configuration used a 3.5x magnification scope.

Variants

For much of its life, four different models were proposed: a compact PDW (personal defense weapon) with a  barrel, a carbine with a  barrel, a sniper and automatic rifle variant, both with  barrels.  In addition a Light machine gun with a 100-round dual drum Beta C-Mag is proposed. Accessories such as optical sights, a grenade launcher, and a bipod were integrated using a new system which allows for precision attachment (so that, for example, scopes do not have to be readjusted each time they are attached). Like the M4 and M16, the XM8 was chambered for the standard 5.56×45mm NATO round and was normally equipped with a 30-round plastic box magazine also used in the G36.  Although, this meant that the magazine housing was not compatible with M4 and M16's metal STANAG magazine without using an adaptor. A 100-round dual drum Beta C-Mag style magazine could also be used.

One of the XM8's unique features was its modularity.  In addition to attachments mentioned above, this modularity allowed for quick repairs, barrel length changes, and even caliber changes in the field. Along with its basic components, the XM8 would have complemented the XM29, with such features as identical accessory mounts.

The number and type of variants in the family varied over its lifetime, this overview with three main versions is based from a press release in the early 2000s.

XM8 compact carbine:  barrel, PDW configuration, collapsing stock or buttcap; muzzle velocity
XM8 carbine with XM320 grenade launcher:  barrel; muzzle velocity
Automatic rifle:  barrel, with muzzle velocity
Designated marksman rifle:  barrel, integrated folding bipod, 4X sight, 30/100-round magazine; with muzzle velocity
Light machine gun: heavy  barrel with integrated folding bipod, rate of fire from 600-750 rounds/min

Usage
While the XM8 fell out of favor with the U.S. Armed Forces, Heckler & Koch sought to market the rifle globally. In the meantime, the Malaysian Armed Forces expressed interest in using the rifle and by 2007 openly stated its intention to purchase the XM8 rifle. By 2010, the Royal Malaysian Navy special unit PASKAL began using the XM8 along with other Heckler & Koch assault rifles including the HK416 and G36.

See also
Adaptive Combat Rifle, modular rifle system.
AN-94
Barrett REC7
Beretta ARX160
FN SCAR
XM25 CDTE
XM7

References

External links

Picatinny article from 2004 about XM8 (.mil)
Defense-Update.com article on XM8
Global Security.org article about XM8
HKsystems.com overview

Weapons and ammunition introduced in 2003
5.56 mm assault rifles
Abandoned military projects of the United States
Assault rifles of Germany
Assault rifles of the United States
XM8
Post–Cold War weapons of Germany
Trial and research firearms of Germany
Trial and research firearms of the United States
Modular firearms

Heckler & Koch XM8


Indian Airlines was a state-owned airline in India that later became a division of Air India Limited before ultimately ceasing operations. It was based in Delhi and focused primarily on domestic routes, along with several international services to neighbouring countries in Asia and limited flights to the Middle East and South-East Asia. It was a division of Air India Limited after the merger of eight pre-Independence domestic airlines.

On 10 December 2005, the airline was rebranded as Indian for advertising purposes as a part of a program to revamp its image in preparation for an initial public offering (IPO). The airline operated closely with Air India, India's national overseas carrier. Alliance Air was a fully owned subsidiary of Indian.

In 2007, the Government of India announced that Indian Airlines would be merged into Air India Limited as its wholly owned subsidiary . As part of the merger process, a new company called the National Aviation Company of India Limited (now called Air India Limited) was established, into which both Air India (along with Air India Express) and Indian (along with Alliance Air) would be merged. Once the merger was completed on 26 February 2011, the airline – called Air India – would continue to be headquartered in Mumbai and would have a fleet of over 130 aircraft.

History

Merger of regional airlines

The airline was set up under the Air Corporations Act, 1953 with an initial capital of  32 million and started operations on 1 August 1953. It was established after legislation came into force to nationalise the entire airline industry in India. Two new national airlines were to be formed along the same lines as happened in the United Kingdom with British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) and British European Airways (BEA). Air India took over international routes and Indian Airlines Corporation (IAC) took over the domestic and regional routes.

Eight pre-Independence domestic airlines, Deccan Airways, Airways India, Bharat Airways, Himalayan Aviation, Kalinga Airlines, Indian National Airways and Air Services of India and the Domestic wing of Air India, were merged to form the new domestic national carrier Indian Airlines Corporation. International operations of Air India Ltd. was taken over by the newly formed Air India International. Indian Airlines Corporation inherited a fleet of 99 aircraft including 74 Douglas DC-3 Dakotas, 12 Vickers Vikings, 3 Douglas DC-4s and various smaller types from the seven airlines that made it up.

Early fleet

Vickers Viscounts were introduced in 1957 with Fokker F27 Friendships being delivered from 1961. The 1960s also saw Hawker Siddeley HS 748s, manufactured in India by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, join the fleet. The jet age began for IAC with the introduction of the pure-jet Sud Aviation Caravelle airliner in 1964, followed by Boeing 737-200s in the early 1970s. April 1976 saw the first three Airbus A300 wide-body jets being introduced. The regional airline, Vayudoot, which had been established in 1981, was later reintegrated. By 1988, Airbus A320-200s were introduced. The economic liberalisation process initiated by the Government of India in the early 1990s ended Indian Airlines' dominance of India's domestic air transport industry.

Post liberalisation
The Indian Government liberalised the private sector in mid 80s and with the emergence of new competitors, Indian Airlines faced tough competition from Jet Airways, Air Sahara, East-West Airlines, Skyline NEPC, and ModiLuft. Yet till 2005, Indian Airlines was the second-largest airline in India after Jet Airways while Air Sahara controlled 17% of the Indian aviation industry. During that time few other domestic carriers like East-West Airlines, Skyline NEPC and ModiLuft discontinued their flight operations.

Also during 1993 another government-established regional feeder airline called Vayudoot was merged with Indian Airlines but still operated as a standalone division until 1997 after which its entire flight operations were transferred to Indian Airlines and its employees absorbed into Indian Airlines and Air India.

Low-Cost Carrier era
Since 2003, the rise of low-cost domestic competitors Air Deccan, SpiceJet, IndiGo, GoAir and Kingfisher Airlines along with its low-cost arm Kingfisher Red led Indian to reduce air-fares. However, as of 2006, Indian Airlines was still a profit-making airline; in fact during 2004–2005 it made a record profit of . Indian Airlines Limited was partly owned by the Government of India (51% of share capital) through a holding company and had 19,300 employees as of March 2007. Its annual turn-over, together with that of its subsidiary Alliance Air, was well over  (around ). Together with its subsidiary, Alliance Air, Indian Airlines carried a total of over 7.5 million passengers annually.

Air India merger
In 2007, the Government of India announced the merger of Air India and Indian Airlines. However, while the "Indian" branding was replaced with the Air India brand in the public eye, the "IC" and "IAC" codes of IATA and ICAO respectively, and callsign "INDAIR" continued to be used on domestic flights and international flights that were operated by Airbus A320 family aircraft until 26 February 2011, when Indian Airlines ceased operating under its own brand and codes and completed its merger with Air India.

The last plane to bear the Indian Airlines livery, an Airbus A319 registered as VT-SCF was repainted in the Air India livery in 2018.

Destinations

Codeshare agreements
Indian had codeshare agreements with the following airlines:
 Alliance Air
 GMG Airlines
 Gulf Air
 Uzbekistan Airways

Fleet

As of 2007, Indian operated an all-Airbus fleet consisting of the Airbus A320 family.

Former fleet

Livery

The aircraft livery used while the company was called Indian Airlines was one of the longest in continuous use in the airline industry. The logo (IA) and the livery were designed by National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. Its aircraft were mainly white, with the belly painted in light metallic grey. Above the windows, "Indian Airlines" was written in English on the starboard side and in Hindi on port side. The tail was bright orange, with its logo in white. In most of the aircraft, the logo was also painted on the engines over its bare metal colour. Also, when the company was under the title of Indian Airlines, to celebrate its 50th year of service the airline put the slogan "50 years of flying" in gold on many of their aircraft.

After the name change to Indian, the company's aircraft sported a new look inspired by the Sun Temple at Konark in Odisha. The tail of their aircraft had a partial blue wheel since practically 3/4 of the remainder is cut off. The wheel is over an orange background with the carrier's name "Indian" written in English on one side of the fuselage, and in Hindi on the other. On 15 May 2007, the Government of India released the new merger livery, which was sent to Boeing in Seattle to repaint all the new fleet coming into the new Air India. Most of the old fleets of Air India and Indian Airlines have also been painted in the new livery.

Service

Indian operated short-haul Airbus A320 family aircraft. It offered 2 classes on most sectors: Economy Class and Executive class. Economy class had the typical 3-3 seating of a narrow-body Airbus aircraft. Passengers were offered complimentary meals. The Executive class seat configuration was 2–2 with a generous recline. Meals served were more lavish.

Incidents and accidents

1960s
On 15 November 1961, Vickers Viscount VT-DIH was damaged beyond economic repair when the co-pilot retracted the undercarriage during landing at Ratmalana Airport, Colombo, Ceylon.
On 11 September 1963, Vickers Viscount VT-DIO crashed  south of Agra, killing all 18 people on board.
On 18 February 1969, Douglas DC-3 VT-CJH crashed on take-off from Jaipur – Sanganer Airport on a scheduled passenger flight. The aircraft was overloaded and take-off was either downwind or with a crosswind. All 30 people on board survived.
On 21 April 1969, a Fokker F27 Friendship plane crashed in a thunderstorm while crossing East Pakistani (now Bangladeshi) airspace on its flight from Agartala to Calcutta, killing all 44 people on board.

1970s
On 29 August 1970, a Fokker F27 flew into high terrain near Silchar shortly after takeoff, killing the five crew members and 34 passengers.
On 30 January 1971, in the 1971 Indian Airlines hijacking, a Fokker F27 on a scheduled flight from Srinagar to Jammu was hijacked to Lahore by Ashraf and Hashim Qureshi, two Kashmiri terrorists. Passengers were returned to India on 2 February, but the hijackers destroyed the aircraft.  India and Pakistan, blaming each other's intelligence services, each ban the other country's overflights and India-Pakistan flights until 1976.
On 9 August 1971, Vickers Viscount VT-DIX was damaged beyond economic repair when it overran the runway at Jaipur Airport. The aircraft was landed with a tailwind on a wet runway.
On 9 December 1971, a Hawker Siddeley HS 748, near Chinnamanur was descending into Madurai when it flew into high terrain about  from the airport, killing the four crew members and all 17 passengers. The accident occurred in reduced visibility during daylight hours.
On 11 August 1972, a Fokker F27, at New Delhi lost altitude and crashed after aborting a landing. The four crew members and the 14 passengers were killed.
On 15 March 1973, a HAL 748-224 Series 2 (VT-EAU) crashed near Begumpet Airport during a training flight, killing all three crew on board and one person on the ground. The pilots were drunk.
On 31 May 1973, Flight 440, a Boeing 737 (registered VT-EAM), crashed and burned during landing at New Delhi, killing five of the seven crew and 43 of the 58 passengers.
On 12 October 1976, Flight 171, a Sud Aviation SE 210 Caravelle, had its right engine catch fire shortly after takeoff from Bombay. The crew attempted to return, but fuel flow to the engine was not stopped. When the fire spread through the fuselage and the hydraulic system failed, the aircraft controls failed before landing. All six crew members and their 89 passengers were killed.
On 17 December 1978, a Boeing 737-2A8 (VT-EAL) slid off the runway at Begumpet Airport following a wheels-up landing when the leading edge devices failed to deploy on takeoff, killing one of 132 on board and another three on the ground.
On 4 August 1979, a HAL 748-224 Series 2 (VT-DXJ) aircraft was approaching Bombay airport at night and in poor weather when it flew into high terrain approximately  from the airport, killing the four crew and their 41 passengers.

1980s
On 19 August 1981, Flight 557, a HAL 748 (VT-DXF) overshot the  runway at Mangalore Airport in wet weather. The aircraft came to a halt just beyond the runway edge. While there were no fatalities, the aircraft was damaged beyond repair and was written off. One of the passengers on board was Veerappa Moily, the then Finance Minister of Karnataka.
On 24 August 1984,  Seven young hijackers demanded an Indian Airlines jetliner IC 421, on a domestic flight from Delhi to Srinagar with 100 passengers on board, be flown to the United States. The plane was taken to Lahore, Karachi and finally to Dubai where the defense minister of UAE negotiated the release of the passengers. This hijack was related to the secessionist struggle in the Indian state of Punjab. The hijacker was subsequently extradited by UAE authorities to India, who handed over the pistol recovered from the hijacker.
On 29 September 1986, an Airbus A300B2-1C (registered VT-ELV) overrun the runway at Chennai International Airport during aborted takeoff caused by bird strike. None of 196 people on board were injured but the aircraft was damaged beyond repair.
On 19 October 1988, Flight 113, a Boeing 737 (registered VT-EAH) hit an electric mast  out on approach to Ahmedabad in poor visibility, killing the six crew members and all but two of the 129 passengers.

1990s
On 14 February 1990, Flight 605, an Airbus A320, crashed on final approach at HAL Airport, Bangalore. 92 people on board were killed and 54 survived.
On 16 August 1991, Flight 257, Boeing 737 (registered VT-EFL) crashed on its descent into Imphal, killing all 69 occupants. The flight operating on the Calcutta-Imphal sector crashed into Thangjing hills, about 20 nautical miles (40 km) south-west of the Imphal airport. The aircraft had taken off from Calcutta and began a descent into Imphal airport with the visibility at that time being seven kilometers. However, the aircraft lost contact with Imphal airport on the Instrument Landing System. The search and rescue efforts were hampered by bad weather conditions and a slushy terrain. The probable cause of the accident was attributed to an "error on the part of the Pilot-in-Command in not adhering to the operational flight.
On 26 April 1993, Flight 491, Boeing 737 (registered VT-ECQ) started its takeoff from Aurangabad's runway 09 in hot and humid temperatures. After lifting off almost at the end of the runway, it impacted heavily with a lorry on a highway at the end of the runway. The left main landing gear, left engine bottom cowling and thrust reverser impacted the left side of the truck at a height of nearly seven feet from the level of the road. Thereafter the aircraft hit the high tension electric wires nearly 3 km North-East of the runway and hit the ground, causing 63 Injuries and 55 fatalities.
On 15 November 1993, Indian Airlines Flight 440, an Airbus A300 (registered VT-EDV) executed a missed approach at Hyderabad's Begumpet Airport due to poor visibility, but the flaps failed to retract. After trying to solve the problem while flying in the vicinity of Hyderabad, the crew eventually diverted the aircraft to Chennai. The delay in diverting, and the need to fly slower due to the extended flaps, resulted in the aircraft running out of fuel on the way. The aircraft force-landed in a paddy field and was damaged beyond repair. All 262 people on board survived. Telugu actors Chiranjeevi and Venkatesh survived this crash attracting widespread attention.
On 24 December 1999, Flight 814, an Airbus A300B2-101 (registered VT-EDW) was hijacked just after taking off from Kathmandu, Nepal to Delhi. The plane flew around different points in the subcontinent and the Middle east. It finally landed in Kandahar, Afghanistan, as officials of the government of India and the Taliban negotiated. One passenger was killed and some were released. On 31 December 1999, the rest of the hostages were freed in exchange for the release of Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and Maulana Masood Azhar. Indian Airlines, India's sole domestic airline up to 1993, was hijacked 16 times, from 1971 to 1999.

Financials
Given below is a chart of trend of profitability of Indian Airlines as published in the 2004 annual report by Ministry of Civil Aviation with figures in millions of Indian Rupees.

References

External links

 Indian Airlines (Archive)
 Indian Airlines (Archive) – earlier material

Companies based in Delhi
Defunct airlines of India
Airlines established in 1953
Government-owned companies of India
Airlines disestablished in 2011
Companies nationalised by the Government of India
Indian companies established in 1953
Indian companies disestablished in 2011

Indian Airlines


Beaumaris (, Literal translation: beautiful marsh) is a small town on the island of Anglesey of the Menai Strait.

History
The town itself began  in 1295 when Edward I of England started to build Beaumaris Castle. This was one of several castle along  the North Wales coast  - others include Conwy, Caernarfon and Harlech . Many of the builders of the castle were from France.

The castle was built on a marsh by the village of Llanfaes. The French builders called the marsh beaux marais which means "beautiful marsh". This is how the town got its name.  The people who lived village in Llanfaes were removed  to a new village in the west of Anglesey to make way for the castle. This village was called Newborough and it still exists today.

Architecture
Notable buildings in the town include the castle, a courthouse built in 1614, St Mary's parish church, and the town gaol.

Beaumaris has a pier which was opened in 1846. The pier was  enlarged to 570 feet after storm damage in 1872.  Beaumaris Pier is still a busy base for yachts and other boats.

References

Other websites

 Beaumaris Photo Gallery
 Beaumaris Official Website
 Beaumaris Gaol
 photos of Beaumaris and surrounding area on geograph
 Beaumaris Lifeboat station

Anglesey

Beaumaris


This is a list of writers who have worked  in the Leonese language (Llingua Llïonesa in Leonese), a language developed from Vulgar Latin with contributions from the pre-Roman languages which were spoken in the territory of the Spanish provinces of León, Zamora, and Salamanca and in some villages in the District of Bragança, Portugal. The Leonese language belongs to Leonese or Astur-Leonese subgroup of Iberian languages.

 Abel Pardo (1974-)
 Adrianu Martín (1986-)
 Alejandro Díez (1985-)
 Amando Álvarez Cabeza
 Caitano Bardón (1881-1924)
 Daniel Fernández (writer) (1974-)
 Emilce Núñez
 Eva González (1918-2007)
 Félix Llópez (1988-)
 Germán Suárez Blanco
 Gumersindo Álvarez Cabeza
 José Aragón Escacena (1891-1945)
 Roberto González-Quevedo (1953-)
 Severiano Álvarez (1933-)
 Xuasús González (1981-)

Related pages
 Leonese language
 Cuentos del Sil

Other websites
 http://www.eltoralin.com/cuentosdelsil  Cuentos del Sil website (in Leonese language)
 http://www.eltoralin.com Leonese Language Association from El Bierzo (in Leonese language)
 http://www.elfueyu.net Leonese Language Association "El Fueyu" (in Leonese language and English)
 http://www.puntuLLI.org Top Level Domain for Leonese Language (Leonese language, English, Italian, Catalan, French Romanian, and other languages)

Writers

List of Leonese-language writers


Henri Alfred Duru (22 November 1829 – 28 December 1889) was a 19th-century French playwright and operetta librettist who collaborated on more than 40 librettos for the leading French composers of operetta: Hervé, Offenbach, Lecocq and Audran.

Biography
His father was Jacques Denis Duru (Charonne, 1784 – Paris, 18 September 1863) and his mother Avoye Eugénie Leterrier (Villiers-le-Bel, 10 May 1790 – Paris, 26 January 1871), married in Paris on 29 July 1824. As a boy he was a classmate of his principal future literary collaborator, Henri Chivot.

Duru was working as an engraver when in 1857, in collaboration with his friend from the same quartier, Henri Chivot, they wrote "L'Histoire d'un gilet", a three-act drame-vaudeville. The piece played at the Folies-Dramatiques of the Boulevard du Temple, and on 14 November 1857 inaugurated the new theatre on the Rue de Bondy. From this time onwards, Duru worked continuously in the theatre, usually in collaboration with Chivot.

He produced almost a hundred comédie en vaudevilles, comedies and operetta libretti, which played successfully on the stages of Paris. Chivot and Duru were known for the ingenuity of their subjects, fantasy of the episodes, pure comic situations and gaiety of the dialogues.

In December 1889 he caught the flu, during the 1889–90 flu pandemic and at first seemed to be recovering, but died after a relapse.

He died before he could see his final collaboration with Chivot Le Voyage de Suzette, which opened at the Théâtre de la Gaîté on 20 January 1890. At his interment at Père Lachaise Cemetery on 31 December 1889, a speech was given on his grave by Armand d'Artois on behalf of the Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques.

Works
1873: L'Homme du lapin blanc, three-act comédie en vaudeville
1870: La Boite à Bibi, folie-vaudeville

In collaboration with Chivot
1857: L'Histoire d'un gilet, drame-vaudeville in three acts, (premiere Folies-Dramatiques 14 November 1857)
1858: Mon nez, mes yeux, ma bouche, three acts, with Siraudin
1850: La Femme de Jephté, three-act vaudeville
1860: Les Splendeurs de Fil d'acier, three acts
1861: Le Songe d'une nuit d'avril, two acts
1863: Pifferaro, one act
1864: Les Mères terribles, one-act comedy, given at the Odéon, (first work by Duru and Chivot on a larger stage)
1865: La Tante Honorine, three-act comedy (second work by Duru and Chivot in a serious genre, for the same theatre)
1865: Les Orphéonistes en voyage, play in five acts and ten tableaux
1865: Le Rêve, opéra comique in one act by Edmond Savary, first performed 13 October 1865 Théâtre Lyrique
1865: Un homme de bronze, one-act vaudeville
1865: Les Médiums de Gonesse, one-act folie
1856: Les Chevaliers de ta Table ronde, three-act opéra bouffe, music by Hervé
1867: Un Pharmacien aux Thermopyles, one-act vaudeville
1868: Le Luxe de ma femme, one-act vaudeville
1868: L'île de Tulipatan, one-act opéra bouffe, music by Offenbach
1868: Fleur-de-Thé, three-act opéra bouffe, music by Charles Lecocq
1868: Le Soldat malgré lui, two-act operetta, music by Frédéric Barbier
1869: Le rajah de Mysore, opérette bouffe in one act (21 September 1869 Paris, Bouffes-Parisiens), music by Lecocq
1869: Le Carnaval d'un merle blanc, three-act comédie en vaudeville, Théâtre du Palais-Royal
1869: Le Docteur Purgandi, opérette bouffe in one act, music by Victor Robillard
1872: Les cent vierges, three-act operetta , with Clairville, music by Lecocq
1875: La Blanchisseuse de Berg-op-Zoom, three acts, music by Léon Vasseur
1870: Le Pompon, three-act opéra comique, music by Lecocq
1877: Le grand mogol, opéra bouffe in three acts, music by Audran (revised, in four acts for Paris in 1884)
1878: Madame Favart, three acts, music by Offenbach
1873: Les Braconniers, opéra bouffe in three acts, music by Offenbach
1879: Les noces d'Olivette, three-act opéra comique, music by Edmond Audran
1880: La Fille du tambour-major, three-act opéra comique, music by Offenbach
1880: Le Siège de Grenade, four-act vaudeville
1881: La Mère des compagnons, three-act opéra comique, music by Hervé
1881: La Mascotte, three-act opéra comique, music by Audran
1881: Les forfaits de Pipermans, one-act vaudeville
1882: Bocace, adaptation of German libretto into three-act opéra comique, music by Suppé (as Boccaccio)
1882: Gillette de Narbonne, opéra comique in three acts, music by Audran
1882: Le Truc d'Arthur, three-act comedy
1883: La Picarde, three-act opéra comique, music by Audran
1883: La Princesse de Canarie, three-act opéra comique, music by Lecocq
1883: L'Oiseau bleu, three-act opéra comique, music by Lecocq
1883: La Dormeuse éveillée, three-act opéra comique, music by Audran
1885: Pervenche, three-act opérette, music by Audran
1885: Les Noces d'un réserviste, four-act vaudeville
1886: La cigale et la fourmi, opéra comique in ten tableaux, music by Audran
1887: Surcouf, three-act opéra comique with a prologue, music by Robert Planquette
1890: Le Voyage de Suzette, opérette in three acts music by Vasseur (first performed 20 January 1890, Théâtre de la Gaîté)

In collaboration with Labiche
1875: Doit-on le dire?, three-act comedy
1874: Madame est trop belle, three-act comedy.
1875: Les Samedis de Madame, three-act comedy.

References

External links
List of Duru works at the Index to Opera and Ballet Sources Online
  Alfred Duru on Wikisource
 Alfred Duru on Artlyrique.fr
 Alfred Duru on
 Alfred Duru on Amis et passionnés du Père Lachaise

French opera librettists
19th-century French dramatists and playwrights
Writers from Paris
1829 births
1889 deaths
Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery

Alfred Duru


The Dominican Church (), also known as the Church of St. Maria Rotunda, is an early Baroque parish church and minor basilica in the historic center of Vienna, Austria. It is the third church built on the same site in the course of time.

History
The first church on this site was built in 1237 by the newly arrived Dominicans on a parcel of land allotted in 1225-1226 by the duke Leopold VI. The church was enlarged between 1240–1270 and a new choir was added in 1273. A series of fires caused the construction of a new Gothic church between 1283 and 1302. The nave was extended between 1458 and 1474.  This church consisted of a nave with five cross vaults, and two aisles.

This church was heavily damaged during the first siege of Vienna by the Turkish army in 1529. The choir was demolished and the nave was partly taken down. The building became more and more dilapidated during the next period.

The new-found self-awareness of the Counter-Reformation didn't allow any more such a sorry state for a church. In 1631 the Dominicans started to build a new oblong church with a dome, following the plan of Jacopo Tencala, architect of Prince Maximilian of Liechtenstein. The master builders were Jacopo Spacio, Cipriano Biasino and Antonio Canevale. They introduced to Vienna the Baroque style of Italy. The first stone was laid by emperor Ferdinand II on 29 May 1631. The structural work was finished in 1634. The church was consecrated on 1 October 1634.  The finishing touch was finally given in 1674. The church was elevated to the status of basilica minor in 1927 under the name "Rosary Basilica ad S. Mariam Rotundam".

Facade

The impressive facade was built in the Roman-Lombardic style with dominant columns, supporting the cornice. Its architecture goes back to early Baroque churches in Rome, that in turn, rely on the facade of the Dominican church Santa Maria Novella in Florence. Above the portal one can see the statues of St. Catherine of Siena and Agnes of Montepulciano, kneeling at the feet of Our Lady, patron saint of this church. On both sides of the portal there are niches with (on the left) the statue of Ludwig Bertrand and (on the right) Saint Rose of Lima. On top of the facade is a large rectangular gable with a dormer window, crowned by a pediment.

Interior
The church consists of a long central nave, flanked by three side chapels on each side, a transept, a choir and an apse. The nave is approximately 25 m long, 14 m wide, and 22.10 m high. The large dome reaches a height of 23.80 m. Above each side chapel is gallery with a shallow balcony.

Frescoes

The ornate interior is imposing by its architecture and the exquisite stucco in the decorations. Semi-circular windows allow a soft light on the frescoes of the barrel-vaulted ceiling. The ceiling frescoes are the work of Matthias Rauchmiller (1675), showing in their color and composition the influence of Peter Paul Rubens. They depict in 46 scenes the life of Our Lady.  The influential painter Carpoforo Tencalla decorated at the same time the apse around the main altar with two historic paintings of Christian victories, ascribed to power of the Rosary : the Battle of Muret (1213) and the Battle of Lepanto (1571). Tencala also added some paintings on the walls of the side chapels. The fresco in the dome replaced an earlier work by Nikolaus van Hoy (1674) when the new dome was built in 1820.  The fresco dates from 1836 and is by Franz Geyling. It shows Our Lady and Child under the golden light of the Trinity, surrounded by kneeling Angels. The medallions in the four supporting columns are by an unknown artist, depicting three popes from the Dominican Order (Innocent V, Benedict XI and Pius V) and St. Antony of Florence. The large statues in these columns show us the four original Doctors of the Church (Jerome, Gregory the Great, Augustine and Ambrose), all sculpted by a local artist.

Main altar

The apse is dominated by the imposing red-marbled wooden retable in Baroque style from 1839-1840 by Carl Roesner, replacing the dilapidated old altarpiece. It surrounds the large canvas (720 cm x 430 cm) by Leopold Kupelwieser (1840), flanked by red Corinthian columns. It depicts the establishment by Pope Pius V of the Feast of the Rosary. The tabernacle dates from 1885 and is made of gilded brass.

Pulpit

The gilded pulpit dates from 1700 and was made by Matthias Steinl. It was modeled on an engraving by Jean le Pautre (1618–1682), that now can be seen at the Martin von Wagner Museum in Würzburg, Germany. The antependium shows a blue globe surrounded by a rosary and below, in the medaillon, the motto "toto diffunditur orbe" (spread all over the world). On the canopy of the pulpit the Holy Spirit, represented in the form of a dove, is surrounded by a halo of light and angels in elegant poses.

Transept chapels
 Altar of Saint Dominic : painting by Tobias Pock (1655), depicting the saint adoring the Trinity. The statue on the predella is a copy of the True image of St. Dominic in the pilgrimage church of Soriano, Calabria, Southern Italy. The niches contain the statues of (below) St. Leopold and St. Florian, and (above) St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Barbara. Archduchess Claudia Felicitas, second wife of Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor, was buried at the age of 22 in the crypt of this chapel. She died on 2 September 1676.
 Altar of John of Nepomuk, situated against the pillar of the crossing. The painting is by an unknown master. The four statues (Antony of Padua, Vincent Ferrer, the apostle Peter, and Severin von Noricum) were sculpted by Lorenzo Mattielli in 1724. At the top of the volutes, resting on the capitals of double columns flanking the statues, he added female figures, allegories of Faith and Hope.

Side chapels

Each of the six chapels is dedicated to a saint, portrayed in the painting above the altar. The altars are the rather unpretentious work of workshops. The figures are of diverse quality.
Chapel of St. Catherine of Siena : situated next to the pulpit. The painting, ascribed to François Roettiers (1685–1742), depicts the Mythical wedding of the saint with Christ. The paintings on the side walls are by the same artist.
Chapel of Thomas Aquinas : The paintings of the altarpiece and the side walls are by the Flemish painter Frans Luycx (1638 and 1649–1650)
Chapel of Saint Rose of Lima : the original altarpiece of this Dominican saint by an anonymous master (1671) was replaced in the second half of the 18th century by a Coronation of Our Lady
 Chapel of Saint Anne (mother of Mary) : the altarpiece with St. Anna, St. John the Baptist and St. Barbara has a long time wrongly been ascribed to Tobias Pock
 Chapel of St. Vincent Ferrer : . The magnificent paintings are again by François Roettiers. The altarpiece (1726) shows the saint bringing back to life a dead person. The angels with trumpets above the painting refer to the mission of this preacher of penitence. The high-quality bronzed statues of St. Jerome and Mary Magdalen were produced by the workshop of Johann-Georg Bendl. The gilded wrought-iron fencing of the chapel is the work of the monks Martin Eker and Raymund Schrob.
Chapel of St. Catherine of Alexandria : The altarpiece is by Tobias Pock, depicting realistically the martyrdom of the saint. The side walls were painted by Frans Leuyx

The organ

The main body of the organ was made in two parts at about 1750 according to the traditions of the Vienna organ builders of that time. The gilded concave-convex balustrade of the rood loft is a typical example of the transition between Baroque and Rococo. The organ with 34 registers dates from 1895–1896 and was renovated in 1991.
The painting under the rood loft is by an anonymous master from 1642 and depicts the glorification of the rosary and the mediation via Saint Dominic.

Hans Haselböck was organist at the church from 1949 to 2014.

See also

List of Catholic churches in Austria
Roman Catholicism in Austria

Notes

References
 Kunstführer nr. 1516 - Verlag Schnell & Steiner Gmbh, Regensburg, 2003 (in German)

Roman Catholic churches completed in 1634
Vienna
Roman Catholic church buildings in the Vicariate of Vienna City
Basilica churches in Austria
1634 establishments in the Habsburg monarchy
17th-century establishments in Austria

Dominican Church, Vienna


Benjamin Grubb Humphreys (August 26, 1808December 20, 1882) was an American politician from Mississippi. He was a general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War and served as Governor of Mississippi from 1865 to 1868, during Reconstruction.

Early life
Humphreys was born in Claiborne County in the Territory of Mississippi, on the Bayou Pierre. He was educated in New Jersey and enrolled at United States Military Academy in the same class as Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston. However, he was expelled in 1826 when he participated in a "Christmas frolic" that ended up turning into the Eggnog Riot.

Upon his return to Mississippi, he was elected to the state senate representing his native county, serving from 1839 to 1844. In 1846, he moved to Sunflower County, Mississippi, and founded Itta Bena. He developed a cotton plantation there.

Civil War
During the American Civil War, Humphreys raised a company and was commissioned a captain in the Confederate States Army in 1861. Part of the 21st Mississippi Infantry Regiment, he was elected to the rank of colonel the same year and brigaded with other regiments under the command of Brig. Gen. William Barksdale in the Eastern Theater. At the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, Humphreys's regiment was part of the force that attacked U.S. Army positions at the Peach Orchard, driving the U.S. soldiers back toward Cemetery Ridge. Humphreys took command of the brigade after the death of Barksdale. He was subsequently promoted to brigadier general, and remained in command until he was wounded in the battle of Berryville, Virginia, on September 3, 1864. Humphreys returned home to Mississippi to heal but could not return to active duty before the war ended.

Political career
After the Confederate States Army surrendered and the Confederate government dissolved, secessionist politicians and military officers were not automatically pardoned. They were forbidden to hold public office in the United States. Benjamin Humphreys was unpardoned when he announced his candidacy for Mississippi governor, and President Andrew Johnson did not want him elected. Unwilling to withdraw his candidacy, on October 2, 1865, Humphreys was elected as a Democrat but was not immediately recognized as the Governor of Mississippi. Without presidential approval, on October 16, 1865, Humphreys had himself inaugurated and sworn in as the 26th Governor of Mississippi. By October 26, 1865, Mississippi provisional Governor, William L. Sharkey, received from President Andrew Johnson a pardon authorizing political office under the Reconstruction plan. Humphreys won re-election in 1868 and continued with a second term. Nevertheless, with the beginning of Congressional control of Reconstruction, he was physically removed by occupying U.S. Armed Forces on June 15, 1868.

As a Democratic Governor of the State of Mississippi, he sympathized with the ideology of White supremacy. In his own words:

After he retired from politics, Humphreys entered a career in insurance in Jackson, Mississippi. He continued there until his retirement in 1877, when he moved to his plantation in Leflore County, Mississippi, where he died in 1882. He is buried in Wintergreen Cemetery, Port Gibson, Mississippi.

Humphreys County, Mississippi, is named after him. His son, Benjamin G. Humphreys II, entered into his own political career. He became a member of Congress and was on the Harbors and Rivers Committee, where he was instrumental in the successful amendment that created and added levees to the commission's charter.

See also
List of American Civil War generals (Confederate)

Notes

References
 McKitrick, Eric L. "Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction". New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1988.
 Eicher, John H., and David J. Eicher, Civil War High Commands. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. .
 Pfanz, Harry W. Gettysburg – The Second Day. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987. .
 Warner, Ezra J. Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1959. .
Mississippi History
History Central

1808 births
1882 deaths
People from Claiborne County, Mississippi
People from Itta Bena, Mississippi
United States Military Academy alumni
Democratic Party governors of Mississippi
Confederate States Army generals
People of Mississippi in the American Civil War
19th-century American Episcopalians
American people of Welsh descent
Democratic Party Mississippi state senators
Recipients of American presidential pardons
19th-century American politicians
Southern Historical Society

Benjamin G. Humphreys


Edward Arthur Henry Pakenham, 6th Earl of Longford (29 December 1902 – 4 February 1961) was an Irish peer, politician, and littérateur. Also known as Eamon de Longphort, he was a member of the fifth Seanad Éireann, the upper house of the Irish Parliament, in the 1940s.

Family and education
Edward Pakenham was born at 14, Curzon-street in London on 29 December 1902, the elder son of Thomas Pakenham, 5th Earl of Longford, and his wife Mary, Countess of Longford, née Child-Villiers. He was known as Lord Silchester from birth until 1915, and was the only one of the Pakenham children on whom his mother doted, apparently because he would succeed to the earldom on his father's death and because he was always in delicate health.

As a pupil at Eton College (where he twice received the Wilder Divinity Prize) he succeeded to the earldom when his father was killed in action at the Battle of Gallipoli on 21 August 1915.

He became an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford, and met his future wife, Christine Patti Trew, an Oxford "undergraduette". They were married on 18 July 1925. He died without issue and was succeeded by his younger brother Frank.

Politics and religion
He was an Irish Nationalist since his days at Eton, taking inspiration from the Easter Rising in 1916 and the Russian Revolution of 1917. He learned Irish and adopted the name Eamon de Longphort. His political views made him unpopular at both Eton and Christ Church, where he was famously put in "Mercury", the pond containing a statue of Mercury in Tom Quad.

He was an Anglo-Catholic who never left the Church of Ireland.

On 13 November 1946, he was nominated by the Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera as a member of 5th Seanad Éireann, filling a vacancy caused by the death of Professor William Magennis. He was not re-appointed to the 6th Seanad.

Theatrical and literary activities
Lord Longford became Chairman of the Gate Theatre in Dublin in 1930 and continued to work for the theatre until 1936, when he founded the Longford Players.

His plays include Ascendancy, The Melians, The Vineyard, and Yahoo (about Jonathan Swift). An excellent linguist and Classical scholar, he translated Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Le Malade Imaginaire, L'école des femmes, Tartuffe, and Le Barbier de Séville (from French) and Agamemnon and Oedipus Rex (or Oedipus Tyrannus) (from Greek) and adapted the novella Carmilla for the stage.

He often collaborated with his wife, Christine, with whom he was also responsible for redecorating Pakenham Hall, now Tullynally Castle, in Chinese style.

Pakenham Hall was often the scene of gatherings of Oxford-educated intellectuals such as John Betjeman, Evelyn Waugh, and Maurice Bowra.

Lord Longford also had several volumes of poetry published, some at the expense of his mother when he was still at Eton, but he is not considered to have been a very good poet.

Lord Longford is buried at Mount Jerome Cemetery in Dublin.

Publications
Aeschylus, The Oresteia of Aischylos, trans. Edward Longford and Christine Longford (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis; Oxford: B. H. Blackwell, 1933)
Edward Longford, Yahoo; a Tragedy in Three Acts (Dublin: Hodges, Figgs, 1934)
Edward Longford, Ascendancy, a Drama of 19th-Century Ireland, in Three Acts (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, 1935)
Edward Longford, Armlet of Jade (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, 1935)
Edward Longford, The Vineyard, Being the Story of Elijah, Ahab, and Jezebel, a Drama in Three Acts (Dubli: Hodges, Figgis, 1943)
Edward Longford, Poems from the Irish (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, 1944)
Edward Longford, More Poems from the Irish (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, 1945)
Edward Longford, The Dove in the Castle: a Collection of Poems from the Irish (Dublin: Hodges Figgis; Oxford: B.H. Blackwell, 1946)
Molière, The School for Wives, trans. Edward Longford (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, 1948)

References

Sources and further information
Bevis Hillier, Young Betjeman (London: John Murray, 1988), ch. 15
thePeerage.com
Topical Budget: 'Shy Earl' as Blushing Bridegroom Topical Budget 726-1 (1925), BFI
Irish Playography
John Cowell, No Profit but the Name: The Longfords and the Gate Theatre (Dublin: O'Brien Press, 1997)
Christopher Fitz-Simon, The Boys (London: Nick Hern Books, 1994)

1902 births
1961 deaths
People educated at Eton College
Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford
Irish theatre directors
Irish theatre managers and producers
Irish male poets
Irish male dramatists and playwrights
Theatre in Ireland
Pakenham, Edward
Edward
20th-century Irish poets
20th-century Irish dramatists and playwrights
20th-century male writers
Irish Anglo-Catholics
Nominated members of Seanad Éireann
Independent members of Seanad Éireann
6
Burials at Mount Jerome Cemetery and Crematorium

Edward Pakenham, 6th Earl of Longford


Microsoft Agent is the technology created by Microsoft which uses animated characters Text to speech engines, and Speech recognition software to improve interaction with computer users. It comes pre-installed with Windows 2000 through to Windows Vista but not on Windows 7.

Technology
Microsoft Agent characters are stored in files of the .ACS file format, and can be stored in a number of compressed .ACF files for better World Wide Web distribution. Microsoft Office 97 and Microsoft Bob Actor characters are stored in files of the .ACT format.

The speech engine itself is driven by the Microsoft Speech API (SAPI), version 4 and above. Microsoft SAPI provides a control panel for easily installing and switching between various available Text to Speech and Speech to Text engines, as well as voice training and scoring systems to improve the quality and accuracy of both engines.

Microsoft provides four agent characters for free, which can be downloaded from the Microsoft Agent website. These are called Peedy, Merlin, Genie, and Robby. Some characters also shipped with Microsoft Office up to version 2003 as the Office Assistants and with Windows XP as search assistants. New Agent characters can also be created using Microsoft's development tools, including the Agent Character Editor. Agents can be embedded in software with Visual Basic for Applications and in web pages with VBScript, and automated tools for the purpose of simplifying this exist. However, web page agents are only compatible with Internet Explorer, since alternative browsers like Opera or Mozilla Firefox do not support ActiveX. Additionally, users of Windows Me,  Windows 2000, Windows XP, and above or owners of Microsoft Office 2000 and up are the only ones who have Agent software pre-loaded on their computers; others have to download the software and install it manually.

References

Microsoft

Microsoft Agent


The Polygar Wars or Palaiyakkarar Wars were wars fought between the Polygars (Palaiyakkarars) of the former Tirunelveli Kingdom in Tamil Nadu, India and the British East India Company forces between March 1799 to May 1802 or July 1805. The British finally won after carrying out gruelling protracted jungle campaigns against the Polygar armies. Many people died on both sides and the victory over the Polygars brought large parts of the territories of Tamil Nadu under British control, enabling them to get a strong hold in Southern India.

First Polygar War
The Polygar Wars were a series of wars fought by a coalition of Palaiyakkarar's against the British between 1750 and 1805. The war between the British PULITHEVAR is often classified as the First Polygar war (1752 to 1767). The war between the British and Kattabomman Nayak of Panchalankurichi Palayam in the then Tirunelveli region is the second Polygar war in history. In 1799, a brief meeting (over pending taxes) between Kattabomman and the British ended in a bloody encounter in which the British commander of the forces was slain by the former. A price was put on Kattabomman's head prompting many Polygars to an open rebellion.

After a series of battles in the Panchalankurichi fort with additional reinforcements from Tiruchirapalli, Kattabomman was defeated, but he escaped to the jungles in Pudukottai country. He was captured by the British with the help of Ettappan, Pudukottai Raja after his backroom agreement with the British. After a summary trial, Kattabomman was hanged in front of the public in order to intimidate them in Kayatharu.

Subramania Pillai, a close associate of Kattabomman, was also publicly hanged and his head was fixed on a pike at Panchalankurichi for public view. Soundra Pandian, another rebel leader, was brutally killed by having his head smashed against a village wall. Kattabomman's brother Oomaidurai was imprisoned in Palayamkottai Central Prison while the fort was razed to the ground and wealth looted by the troops.

Second Polygar War
Despite the suppression of the First Polygar War in 1799, a rebellion broke out again in 1800. The Second Polygar War was more stealthy and covert in nature. The rebellion broke out when a band of Palayakkarar armies bombed the British barracks in Coimbatore. In the war that followed, Oomaithurai allied himself with Maruthu Pandiyar and was part of a grand alliance against the company which included Kerala Varma Pazhassi Raja of Malabar.

The Palayakarrars had artillery and a weapon manufacturing unit in Salem and Dindigul jungles. They also received clandestine training from the French in the Karur region. Dheeran Chinnamalai Gounder headed the western Tamil Nadu popularly known as Kongu Nadu. The British columns were exposed throughout the operations to constant harassing attacks and had usually to cut their way through almost impenetrable jungles fired on from undercover on all sides. The Polygars resisted stubbornly and the storming of their hill-forts proved on several occasions sanguinary (involving or causing much bloodshed)  work.

The British finally won after a long expensive campaign that took more than a year. The Company forces led by Lt. Colonel Agnew laid siege to the Panchalankurichi fort and captured it in May 1801 after a prolonged siege and artillery bombardment. Oomaithurai escaped the fall of the fort and joined Maruthu brothers at their jungle fort at Kalayar Kovil. The Company forces pursued him there and eventually captured Kalayar Kovil in October 1801. Oomaithurai and the Maruthu brothers were hanged on 16 November 1801 at Tiruppathur (Sivagangai Dist.).

Results
The suppression of the Polygar rebellions of 1799 and 1800-1805 resulted in the liquidation of the influence of the chieftains. Under the terms of the Carnatic Treaty (31 July 1801), the British assumed direct control over Tamil Nadu. The Polygar system which had flourished for two and a half centuries came to a violent end and the company introduced a Zamindari settlement in its place.

Later day folklore
In subsequent years, legend and folklore developed around Alagu muthu kone, Dheeran Chinnamalai, Kattabomman and Maruthu Pandiyar.

See also
 Indian rebellion of 1857
 Veeran Sundaralingam
 Rani Velu Nachiar
 Tipu Sultan
 Hyder Ali
 Uyyalawada Narasimha Reddy

Notes

References

Further reading
https://www.livehistoryindia.com/story/people/the-polygar-heroes-of-tamil-nadu

 N. Rajendran, National Movement in Tamil Nadu, 1905-1914 - Agitational Politics and State Coercion, Madras Oxford University Press.
 M.P. Manivel, 2003 - Viduthalaipporil Virupachi Gopal Naickar (Tamil Language), New Century Book House, Chennai
 Prof. K.Rajayyan M.A., M.Litt, A.M. Ph.D., A History of Freedom Struggle in India
 Prof. K.Rajayyan M.A., M.Litt, A.M. Ph.D., South Indian Rebellion - The First War of Independence (1800–1801)

Tamil history
History of Kerala
Military history of the British East India Company
18th century in India
Conflicts in 1799
Conflicts in 1800
Conflicts in 1801
Conflicts in 1802
1799 in British India
1800 in British India
1801 in British India
1802 in British India

Polygar Wars


A fullerene is any molecule composed entirely of carbon, in the form of a hollow sphere, ellipsoid, or tube. Spherical fullerenes are also called buckyballs, and they resemble the balls used in association football. Cylindrical ones are called carbon nanotubes or buckytubes. They are usually made in the form of a hollow ball or tube. The fullerene was found in 1985 by Robert Curl, Harold Kroto and Richard Smalley at the University of Sussex and Rice University, and was named after Buckminster Fuller because his famous Geodesic domes are similar in shape.

Fullerenes are made by the heating of graphite in an electric arc in the presence of inert gases such as helium or argon.

Allotropes of carbon

Fullerene


A canal is a waterway made by humans. For many centuries, canals have been built as a way of transporting heavy goods in barges or boats. Canals often connect lakes, rivers, or oceans. The Panama Canal is a famous canal that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean. Many canals are reinforced with clay or concrete on the sides and have locks.

Other canals are used for irrigation or hydropower.

References

Canal


For computers, a character is a letter, number, or punctuation mark that can be shown on a screen, or printed.  There are also some unseen characters, called control characters.  An example of a control character is the carriage return or line feed that tells the software to start a new line.  A glyph is the shape of the character that is seen when put on screen or on paper.

Since computers only use numbers, they use number codes to represent characters. For example, in ASCII, the number 65 represents the letter 'A'. The computer knows, when working in ASCII, to put the glyph for 'A' on the screen when it sees the number 65.  The glyph can change shape slightly depending on the font that is used, if it is bold or in italics, etc.  But it is still stored as a 65 in the computer, that does not change.

ASCII and Unicode

One of the early standards for storing characters was ASCII.  It uses 7 bits to store each character.  This allows 128 characters - enough for the numbers 0-9, the upper case letters A-Z, lower case letters a-z, most punctuation marks including spaces, parentheses and braces, and some control characters.  But it is not enough for letters used in other languages, such as umlauts used in German and Scandinavian languages.  Some systems added an 8th bit to ASCII, for another 128 characters, but the extra characters can vary from one system to another.  And this doesn't address all languages.  There are thousands of Chinese characters alone.  To store all of these characters, Unicode was developed.  It uses 16 bits to store 65,536 characters.

ASCII is still widely used, especially in the English-speaking areas.  The Internet was started in English, and until 2010 URL addresses could only contain certain ASCII characters. Some ASCII characters that are not supported are replaced by a '%' and a number for its location in the ASCII table.  The space character, for instance is changed to "%20" when it shows up in a URL.  In 2010, Unicode was allowed so people who spoke Russian, Greek, Chinese or other languages could see a domain name in their own language.

Related pages
Alphabet

Computer science
Typography
Encodings

Character (computing)


Ronald David Bull (born February 2, 1940) is a former American football running back. He played running back at Bishop High School in Bishop, Texas.

Bull played halfback at Baylor University. While at Baylor he played at the Gator Bowl against the University of Florida. He also played in the East–West Shrine Game, the Senior Bowl, and the College All-Star Game.

Bull was drafted in the 1962 American Football League Draft by the Dallas Texans with the team's first pick, but elected to play for the National Football League instead. Bull was taken out of the Baylor University by the Chicago Bears as the seventh pick in the first round in the 1962 NFL Draft. During his career, Bull played in 123 games, carried the ball 881 times for 3,222 yards and 9 touchdowns. He was named the 1962 Senior Bowl most valuable player and 1962 UPI NFL-NFC Rookie of the Year. Bull was among the inaugural inductees in the Texas High School Hall of Fame in 1985. He was also inducted into the Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame in 2001.

He currently runs his specialty advertising business, Ronnie Bull Sales, Inc in the Chicago area.

External links
 Bull's stats

1940 births
Living people
People from Kingsville, Texas
Chicago Bears players
Philadelphia Eagles players
Players of American football from Texas
Baylor Bears football players

Ronnie Bull (American football)


A cell church is a Christian church structure centering on the regular gathering of cell groups. Small group ministries are often called cell groups, but may also be called home groups, home friendship groups, home care groups, house fellowships, or life groups.

A church with cell groups is not necessarily a cell church. A cell church must be composed of cell groups and centered on them. In cell churches, a cell leader (if any) is considered to be effectively a pastor or mentor within the church.

John Wesley used a form of cell group structure which he called Class Meetings as he formed his Methodist societies into a national movement, first in Great Britain and later in the United States in the 18th century.

Cell structure
There are a number of structures used to organize and coordinate multiple cells within a church.
The G12 Vision consists of a leadership cell consisting of 12 people who each facilitate and lead their own cell group.
 The Free Market Cell Model (affinity based small groups) allows the topic or vehicle of the cell to vary (e.g., a Basketball group, Bible study, or Prayer Group), yet retains an intentional discipleship strategy.  This approach is often employed to help cells take on the gifts and passions of congregation while retaining a typical cell hierarchy. (e.g., See Substance Church, Celebration Church, Seacoast Church).
A Tree Network consists of multiple cell group leaders that report directly to a cell coordinator. Each cell coordinator manages multiple cells in this way, and several cell coordinators may be present in a single cell church. Additional levels of hierarchy may be added as well depending on the size of the cell church. While similar to a G-12 Structure, it is unrelated.

References

 What is a cell church? – Joel Comiskey Group". Retrieved 2022-10-03.
 https://churchleaders.com/smallgroups/small-group-articles/137628-principles-from-the-largest-cell-churches.html
 https://thechurchwithoutwalls.com/cell/
 https://www.disciplewalk.com/files/Peter_Koh_The_Cell_Group_Church_Structure_an_Evaluation.pdf

See also
Cafe church
House church
Pub Church

Types of Christian organization
Types of church buildings
Christian terminology

Cell church