Volterra is a town in the Tuscany region of Italy. It is in the province of Pisa. Volterra was once one of the 12 cities in Etruria. In the middle ages it was an independent city until it was conquered by the Florentines and then the Medicis. It has its own cathedral, and is built on top of an ancient volcanic hill.

History
The city was a Neolithic settlement and an important Etruscan center. It became a "municipium" (a type of Roman city) in the Roman Age. Volterra was attacked and controlled by Florence many times. When the Florentian Republic fell in 1530, Volterra came under the control of the Medici family. It later became part of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.

The original Etruscan city walls remain in parts, and the remains of the Roman baths, aqueduct and amphitheatre (arena). Visitors to Volterra have to leave their cars outside the town walls, in car parks.

Important monuments and places

 Roman theatre (1st century BC), discovered in the 1950s.
 Piazza dei Priori
 Palazzo dei Priori
 Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta.
 Medicean Fortress (Maschio)
 Guarnacci Etruscan Museum

The Medici Villa di Spedaletto is located outside the city in direction of Lajatico.  Also near the city, in the Valle Bona area, are excavations of Etruscan tombs.

Sister cities
  Mende, France
  Wunsiedel, Germany

Gallery

Other websites
 Town web site
 Volterra Photos

Towns in Pisa

Volterra


MQV (Menezes-Qu-Vanstone) is an authenticated protocol for key agreement based on the Diffie-Hellman scheme. MQV provides protection against an active attacker.

References
 Burton S. Kaliski Jr., An unknown key-share attack on the MQV key agreement protocol. ACM Trans. Inf. Syst. Secur. 4(3): pp275–288 (2001)
 Laurie Law, Alfred Menezes, Minghua Qu, Jerry Solinas, Scott A. Vanstone, An Efficient Protocol for Authenticated Key Agreement. Des. Codes Cryptography 28(2): pp119–134 (2003)
 Peter J. Leadbitter, Nigel P. Smart: Analysis of the Insecurity of ECMQV with Partially Known Nonces. ISC 2003: pp240–251
  A. Menezes, M. Qu, and S. Vanstone, Some new key agreement protocols providing implicit authentication, Preproceedings of Workshops on Selected Areas in Cryptography (1995).

Other websites
 Articles on MQV and ECMQV in Certicom's newsletter Code and Cipher.
 HMQV: A High-Performance Secure Diffie-Hellman Protocol by Hugo Krawczyk
 Another look at HMQV
 An Efficient Protocol for Authenticated Key Agreement

Cryptography

MQV


The kirpi is a small traditional hand weeding tool. It evolved in India as a multi-purpose gardening implement. The tool has a wooden handle and a curved blade. The cutting edge on the outside curve of the blade can be used for hand hoeing, while the serrated inside edge cuts through dead vegetation or tough roots. The pointed tip can be used for raking out deep roots.

References

Gardening tools

Kirpi


Finn Iunker (born 27 March 1969) is a Norwegian playwright born in Arendal. He lives in Oslo.
Finn Iunker made his debut as a dramatist in 1994 with The Answering Machine. He is amongst the Norwegian dramatists whose plays are most frequently staged, but mostly abroad. He was awarded the Ibsen-award in company with Liv Heløe in 2006, and was up for nomination in 2003's Nordisk Dramatikerpris. He has just published a collection of short prose; Fortellinger, to rave reviews. He has also written Ifigeneia and Dealing with Helen.

About Ifigeneia
Iunker's Ifigeneia has sprung from Euripede's tragedy Iphigeneia in Aulis based on the myth of Agamemnon, leader of the Greek forces in Troy who makes the agonising choice of sacrificing his daughter to win favourable winds for his ships sailing against Troy. Parallels are drawn between the cynicism of leaders then and now, lines made more visible by Iunker's highly modern language with an underlying streak of farce.

Play
His play Ifigeneia premiered in Antwerp where it was produced by the Flemish Theatre company Skagen. Three years later, on 26 October 2006 his play was staged for the first time in his own home country, Norway, where it was produced in Oslo at the Black Box Theatre by the Norwegian theatre company Verk Produksjoner.

Awards
2006 - Ibsen Prize

References

1969 births
Living people
Norwegian dramatists and playwrights
People from Arendal

Finn Iunker


Emigrant Springs State Heritage Area is a state park located in central Umatilla County, Oregon, United States, approximately 15 mi (24 km) southeast of Pendleton. Located in old growth forest near the summit of the Blue Mountains along Interstate 84, the park was the location of a well-used campsite by emigrants along the Oregon Trail in the middle 19th century.

The park is open year-round and provides a modern campground with hook-ups. The park also has cabins available for rent. During the summer months the park features historical recreations of trail life in the 1850s. The park also contains an Oregon Trail interpretative center. The center is next to a marker commemorating the visit by President Warren G. Harding in 1923, who had come to Eastern Oregon to commemorate the Oregon Trail.

References

External links

Old-growth forests
State parks of Oregon
Oregon Trail
Parks in Umatilla County, Oregon

Emigrant Springs State Heritage Area


The Danegeld ("Danish tax") was a tax that the English kingdoms paid to the Vikings between the 9th and 11th centuries. The Vikings called it "geld" or "gafol" in the 11th century, but the term Danegeld did not appear until the early 12th century.

Besides the taxes in England, the term also applies to Eastern Europe in the 9th century, where Sami, Finnish, and Slavic tribes paid taxes to the Swedes. In Francia (France), the Franks paid off the Vikings in Normandy (Normans), and in return, the Normans would convert to Christianity and cease to raid.

History of England
Taxation

Danegeld


Mule shoes are shoes that are backless and almost always closed-toed. They can be any heel height (flat to high). The shoes are almost always worn by females. High heeled mule shoes were a popular indoor shoe in the 18th century. By the early twentieth century, the shoes were very often associated with prostitutes. However, in the early 1950s, Marilyn Monroe popularized the shoes and helped to break their poor reputations. Similar shoes, called slides, were introduced in the early 1990s, except that slides are open-toed versions of mules.

Other websites

Footwear

Mule (footwear)


Brother Andrew Benjamin Gonzalez, F.S.C. (February 29, 1940 – January 29, 2006) was a Filipino linguist, writer, educator, and a De La Salle Brother. He served as president of De La Salle University from 1979 to 1991 and from 1994 to 1998. From 1998 to 2001 he served as Secretary of the Department of Education, Culture and Sports under the presidency of Joseph Estrada. After his term ended, he returned to De La Salle University as vice president for Academics and Research from 2001 to 2003 and as Presidential Adviser for Academics and Research from 2003 to 2005.

He earned his Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Early life
Gonzalez was born as Macario Diosdado Arnedo Gonzalez in Manila to Augusto Gonzalez, a prominent businessman, wealthy landowner, and the son of Dr. Joaquin Gonzalez; and Rosario Arnedo, daughter of Pampanga Governor Macario Arnedo.

Gonzalez attended and completed grade school at De La Salle College in Manila. He was a consistent honor student and graduated as salutatorian. He also finished his high school at De La Salle College in 1955 as Valedictorian.  His love for teaching made him decide to become a De La Salle Christian Brother. He finished his novitiate at the De La Salle Retreat House in Baguio on November 20, 1955, and made his initial vows the year after. He joined the Scholasticate of the De La Salle Christian Brothers in Winona, Minnesota, U.S.A. on December 10, 1956. He studied at Saint Mary's University of Minnesota, a Christian Brother-run college in Winona and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree at the top of his class at the age of 19. He obtained his Master of Arts in English Literature from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., the year after.

He returned to the Philippines in 1960 and began teaching English Language and Literature at the high school department of La Salle College in Bacolod, Negros Occidental. He served in several administrative positions at De La Salle College in Manila from 1964 to 1967 and made his final vows as a De La Salle Brother on May 30, 1965. He took up graduate courses in linguistics in the Philippine Normal College.  He was admitted to the doctoral program in linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley as a Regent's Fellow in Linguistics and as a Stanley Tasheira Scholar in 1967 and completed the PhD degree in 1970.

Return to the Philippines
Gonzalez returned to the Philippines in 1971 where he was chosen to become the chairman of the Humanities Department of De La Salle College and was promoted to Academic Vice President from 1971 to 1978.  Upon the sudden death of then De La Salle University President- Brother H. Gabriel Connon FSC, Gonzalez became the Acting President.  In recognition of his exceptional management ability, he was elected as the president of De La Salle University by the board of trustees in 1979 and served until 1991. After his term as university president, he was designated as president of Manila Bulletin Publishing Corporation, and in 1994 he was elected to his second term as president of De La Salle University-Manila where he served until 1998. He was appointed as the Secretary of the Department of Education, Culture and Sports during the term of President Joseph Ejercito Estrada in July 1998 and served until January 2001. During his term as DECS Secretary he got involved with the Ford Expedition Scandal. He rejoined De La Salle University-Manila as vice president for Academics and Research from 2001 to 2003 and as Presidential Adviser for Academics and Research from 2003 to 2005. Manila Bulletin gave him the title of President Emeritus on January 26, 2006.

As President of De La Salle University Manila
As president of De La Salle University Manila, he conceptualized the De La Salle University System and helped expand the range of Lasallian education in the Philippines.  Brother Andrew  established the College of Career Development of De La Salle University-Manila which became the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde and took over a college and a medical school in Dasmariñas, Cavite which respectively became De La Salle University-Dasmariñas and the De La Salle Medical and Health Sciences Institute. He prioritized graduate education by creating new masteral and doctoral degree programs. He also wrote many books in linguistics and education. Under his term, De La Salle University-Manila underwent significant developments as an institution of higher learning, particularly in the areas of research and faculty and program development. He also promoted Alumni activities, and boosted scholarly activities on campus.  For example, he made his private collection of books available to members of the public, especially ones interested in learning about applied linguistics.

As Education Secretary
He initiated the revision of the Basic Education Curriculum and placed a corruption-free procurement system which significantly reduced the costs of textbooks and supplies purchased by the Department of Education, Culture and Sports. He initiated the changing of language of instruction to the regional language for the first three grades.

Recognition
In recognition of Gonzalez's achievements, he received awards from the City of Manila, National Press Club, Adamson University and from San Beda College. He received honorary doctorate degrees from Waseda University and Soka University in Japan, St. Paul University in Canada and from St. Mary's College of California. De La Salle University Manila granted him the title of President Emeritus on September 28, 2005, and DLSU-Manila's new state-of-the-art 20-storey General Education Building was named the Brother Andrew Gonzalez Hall.

Apalit Technical Vocational High School in San Juan, Apalit, Pampanga was renamed Bro. Andrew Gonzales Technical High School in his honor.

Death
Gonzalez died due to complications of diabetes on January 29, 2006, at the De La Salle University Medical Center of De La Salle Medical and Health Sciences Institute in Dasmariñas, Cavite. His remains were brought to the De La Salle Brothers' Mausoleum at Lipa City, Batangas.

References

Further reading
Biographies of Famous Kapampangan - Macario Diosdado Arnedo Gonzalez

1940 births
2006 deaths
People from Manila
Filipino Roman Catholics
Roman Catholic religious brothers
De La Salle Brothers in the Philippines
De La Salle University alumni
Catholic University of America alumni
University of California, Berkeley alumni
Saint Mary's University of Minnesota alumni
Linguists from the Philippines
Filipino educators
Filipino writers
Presidents of De La Salle University
Secretaries of Education of the Philippines
Deaths from diabetes
Estrada administration cabinet members
Philippine Normal University alumni
Presidents of universities and colleges in the Philippines
20th-century linguists

Andrew Gonzalez


Opole is the biggest city in Opole Voivodeship in the southwest part of Poland. The German name of the city is Oppeln, and the Czech name is Opolí. The Oder River goes through the city. It has about 128,000 people living in it and is 149 km² in area. The mayor of the city is Arkadiusz Wiśniewski.

History
Opole is over 1000 years old.  It was originally a Slavic town. In 990 it became a Polish city. During the Middle Ages it became a German city. It was called Oppeln for a long time. After the Second World War the city once again became Polish, and the German citizens were forced to leave. It has been called by its Polish name Opole ever since.

Famous people from Opole
 Jerzy Buzek (born 1940), academic and politician, President of the European Parliament, former Prime Minister of Poland
 Bernhard Kempa
 Miroslav Klose

Twin towns
 Belgorod (Russia)
 Bruntál (Czech Republic)
 Carrara (Italy)
 Grasse (France)
 Ingolstadt (Germany)
 Ivano-Frankivsk (Ukraine
 Kuopio (Finland)
 Alytus (Lithuania)
 Mülheim (Germany)
 Potsdam (Germany)
 Roanoke County (United States)
 Székesfehérvár (Hungary)

Cities in Opole Voivodeship

Opole


Grace's warbler (Setophaga graciae) is a small New World warbler that specializes in pine woods.

Taxonomy
Grace's warbler was discovered by Elliott Coues in the Rocky Mountains in 1864. He requested that the new species be named after his 18-year-old sister, Grace Darling Coues, and his request was honored when Spencer Fullerton Baird described the species scientifically in 1865.

Description
Grace's warbler is a small bird, 11–13 cm long. It is mostly gray on top, with broken black streaks across the back and flanks and two white bars on the wings. The throat and breast are a vibrant yellow, and the rest of the underparts are white.  It has a yellow half-eye ring under the eye and a long yellow "eyebrow" stripe that starts at the base of the beak and runs above the eye, fading to white after it passes the eye.

Distribution and habitat
Grace's warblers breed from the south-western United States to Nicaragua and winter in their breeding range from north-eastern Sinaloa and north-western Durango south.  They are almost always found in pine forests, even in migration, though at the northern end of their range (in southern Nevada and Utah and southwestern Colorado) they occur in spruce-fir forest.  They prefer open, "parklike" woods, and in some areas such as northern Arizona they prefer an understory of Gambel's oak.  In the United States and northern Mexico they typically occur at altitudes of ); farther south they may occur as low as 250 m.  They are common in some localities, and in areas of the Mosquitia of Nicaragua where the only tree is the Caribbean pine, Grace's warblers may be the only bird seen.

Behaviour and ecology

Breeding
The nesting habits of Grace's warblers are largely unknown, as nests are very rarely found. The nest is a compact cup of plant fibers, the inside lined with hair and feathers, placed high above ground on a tree branch, usually pine. The female lays 3 to 5 white or cream-colored eggs, speckled with brown, and ringed at the larger end.

Feeding
Like the vast majority of warblers, Grace's warbler eats only insects and spiders, as far as is known from limited studies.  It forages mostly high in pine trees (86% of its foraging time in a study in Arizona was in pines, but it foraged in oaks more in Mexico where olive warblers also occur).  It catches its food from the bases of needle clusters and the upper bark of branches no thicker than its body. It will often hover to inspect pine cones for insect larvae. In Arizona it seldom flies to catch insects, but in Nicaragua it often does.

References

External links
Grace's warbler photo gallery VIREO Photo-High Res

Grace's warbler
Native birds of the Southwestern United States
Birds of Central America
Birds of Mexico
Fauna of the Chihuahuan Desert
Grace's warbler
Grace's warbler
Birds of the Sierra Madre Occidental

Grace's warbler


Benjamin Morrell, (July 5, 1795 – 1839) was an American sea captain, navigator and explorer.

Between 1821 and 1823, he made four important trips, especially in the Southern Ocean, the Pacific Islands and the eastern shores of the Americas.

He wrote a memoir about his travels titled "A Narrative of Four Voyages" and, following the information provided, earned a bad reputation as a liar, because it contained inaccuracies and also contained a somewhat fanciful way of exposing their experiences.

1795 births
1839 deaths
People from New York (state)
American explorers

Benjamin Morrell


Roots: The Saga of an American Family is a 1976 novel written by Alex Haley. It tells the story of Kunta Kinte, an 18th-century African, captured as an adolescent, sold into slavery in Africa, and transported to North America; it follows his life and the lives of his descendants in the United States down to Haley. The release of the novel, combined with its hugely popular television adaptation, Roots (1977), led to a cultural sensation in the United States.  The novel spent forty-six weeks on The New York Times Best Seller List, including twenty-two weeks at number one. The last seven chapters of the novel were later adapted in the form of a second miniseries, Roots: The Next Generations (1979). It stimulated interest in African American genealogy and an appreciation for African American history.

The book was originally described as "fiction", yet it sold in the non-fiction section of bookstores. Haley spent the last chapter of the book describing his research in archives and libraries to support his family's oral tradition with written records.

Plot
Roots tells the story of Kunta Kinte—a young man taken from The Gambia when he was seventeen and sold as a slave—and seven generations of his descendants in the United States. Kunta, a Mandinka living by the River Gambia, has a difficult but free childhood in his village, Jufureh. His village subsists on farming, and sometimes they lack enough food, as the climate is harsh. Kunta is surrounded by love and traditions. Ominously, the village had heard of the recent arrival of toubob, men with white skins who smell like wet chickens.

Kunta is excited to see the world. At one point, Kunta sees men in hoods taking away some of the children. This confuses Kunta, but he is eager when he learns his father, Omoro, will take him outside Juffure. Omoro and Kunta set off, learning much more about their surroundings. When they return, Kunta brags to all his friends about the journey, but does not pay attention to his family's goats, which fall prey to a panther.

Later on, Kunta is taken off for manhood training, with other children of his kafo (division or grade). Kunta learns even more about The Gambia, but he fears the slave trade, which he learns is closer to home than he thought. Kunta passes his training and learns more about Juffure's court system. One day, he witnesses the case of a young girl who was kidnapped by the toubob and came back pregnant. She gives birth to a mixed-raced child, and the case is unresolved.

One morning when Kunta is cutting wood to make a drum, he is ambushed by slatees (Black slave traders), is knocked unconscious and taken prisoner. He awakens to find himself gagged and blindfolded. The toubob humiliate Kunta and the other captives by stripping them naked, examining them in every orifice and burning them with hot irons. Kunta is then placed in the brig of a ship, naked and chained. After a nightmarish journey across the Atlantic on board the slave ship Lord Ligonier, he is landed in Annapolis, Maryland. John Waller of Spotsylvania County, Virginia, purchases Kunta at an auction and gives him the name Toby. However, Kunta is headstrong and tries to run away four times. When he is captured for the last time, slave hunters cut off part of his right foot to cripple him.

Kunta is then bought by his master's brother, Dr. William Waller. He becomes a gardener and eventually his master's buggy driver. Kunta also befriends a musician slave named Fiddler. In the aftermath of the American Revolutionary War, Kunta marries Bell, Waller's cook, and together they have a daughter, Kizzy. Kizzy's childhood as a slave is as happy as her parents can make it. She is close friends with John Waller's daughter "Missy" Anne, and she rarely experiences cruelty. Her life changes when she forges a traveling pass for her beau Noah, a field hand. When he is caught and confesses, she is sold away from her family at the age of sixteen.

Kizzy is bought by Tom Lea, a farmer and chicken fighter who rose from poor beginnings. He rapes and impregnates her, and she gives birth to George, who later becomes known as "Chicken George" when he becomes his father's cockfighting trainer. Chicken George is a philanderer known for expensive taste and alcohol, as much as for his iconic bowler hat and green scarf. He marries Matilda and they have six sons and two daughters, including Tom, who becomes a very good blacksmith. Tom marries Irene, a woman originally owned by the Holt family.

When Tom Lea loses all his money in a cockfight, he sends George to England for several years to pay off the debt, and he sells most of the rest of the family to a slave trader. The trader moves the family to Alamance County, where they become the property of Andrew Murray. The Murrays have no previous experience with farming and are generally kind masters who treat the family well. When the American Civil War ends, however, the Murray slaves decide that, rather than sharecrop for their former masters, they will move from North Carolina to Henning, Tennessee, which is looking for new settlers.

They eventually become a prosperous family. Tom's daughter Cynthia marries Will Palmer, a successful lumber businessman, and their daughter Bertha is the first in the family to go to college. There she meets Simon Haley, who becomes a professor of agriculture. Their son is Alex Haley, the author of the book.

Search for his roots

Alex Haley grows up hearing stories from his grandmother about the family's history. They tell him of an ancestor named Kunta Kinte, who was landed in "'Naplis" and given the slave name Toby. The old African called a guitar a ko, and a river the Kamby Bolongo. While on a reporting trip to London, Haley sees the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum and thinks of his own family's oral traditions. Could he trace his own family lineage back to its origins in Africa?

In the United States Census for Alamance County, North Carolina, he finds evidence of his ancestor Tom Murray, the blacksmith. He attempts to locate the likeliest origin of the African words passed down by Kunta Kinte. Dr. Jan Vansina explains that in the Mandinka tongue, kora is a type of stringed instrument, and bolongo is the word for river. Kamby Bolongo could then refer to the Gambia River.

Alex Haley travels to The Gambia and learns of the existence of griots, oral historians who are trained from childhood to memorize and recite the history of a particular village. A good griot could speak for three days without repeating himself. He asks to hear the history of the Kinte clan, which lives in Juffure, and is taken to a griot named Kebba Kanji Fofana. The Kinte clan had originated in Old Mali, moved to Mauritania, and then settled in The Gambia. After about two hours of "so-and-so took as a wife so-and-so, and begat...", Fofana reached Kunta Kinte:

After searching records of British troop movements in the 1760s, Haley finds "Colonel O'Hare's forces" were dispatched to Fort James on the Gambia River in 1767. In Lloyd's of London, he discovers a merchantman named the Lord Ligonier had sailed from The Gambia on July 5, 1767, bound for Annapolis. The Lord Ligonier had cleared customs in Annapolis on September 29, 1767, and the slaves were advertised for auction in the Maryland Gazette on October 1, 1767. He concludes his research by examining the deed books of Spotsylvania County after September 1767, locating a deed dated September 5, 1768, transferring 240 acres and a slave named Toby from John and Ann Waller to William Waller.

Characters in Roots
 Kunta Kinte – original protagonist: a young man of the Mandinka people, grows up in The Gambia in a small village called Juffure; he was raised as a Muslim before being captured and enslaved. Renamed Toby.
 John Waller – planter, who buys Kunta
 Dr. William Waller – doctor of medicine and John's brother: buys Kunta from him
 Bell Waller – cook to the doctor and wife of Kunta
 Kizzy Waller (later Kizzy Lea) – daughter of Kunta and Bell
 Missy Anne – Dr. Waller's niece, who lives off the plantation, but visits Dr Waller regularly. She befriends Kizzy and teaches her reading and writing by playing "school".
 Tom Lea – slave owner in North Carolina to whom Kizzy is sold
 George Lea – son to Kizzy and Tom Lea, he is called "Chicken George"
 Matilda – whom George later marries
 Tom Murray – son of Chicken George and Matilda
 Cynthia – the youngest of Tom's and Irene's eight children (granddaughter of Chicken George)
 Bertha – one of Cynthia's children; the mother of Alex Haley
 Simon Alexander Haley – professor and husband of Bertha; father of Alex Haley
 Alex Haley – author of the book and central character for last 30 pages; the great-great-great-great-grandson of Kunta Kinte.

Family tree

Reception

Published in October 1976 amid significant advance expectations, Roots was immediately successful, garnering a slew of positive reviews and debuting at number five of The New York Times Best Seller list (with The Times choosing to classify it as non-fiction). By mid-November, it rose to number one. The television adaptation of the book aired in January 1977, further fueling book sales. Within seven months of its release, Roots had sold over 15 million hard cover copies.

In total, Roots spent twenty-two weeks at the number one spot on The Times list, including each of the first eighteen weeks of 1977, before falling to number three on May 8. It did not fall off of the list entirely until August 7. By then, the list had featured it for forty-six weeks. Together, the success of the novel and its 1977 television adaptation sparked an explosion of interest in the fields of genealogy and researching family histories.(1977, February 19). "'Roots' Boosts Interest In LDS Genealogy Units", The Deseret News

Haley earned a Pulitzer Prize special award in 1977 for Roots. The television miniseries garnered many awards, including nine Emmys and a Peabody.

Plagiarism

In the spring of 1977, Haley was charged with plagiarism in separate lawsuits by Harold Courlander and Margaret Walker Alexander. Courlander, an anthropologist, charged Roots was copied from his novel The African (1967). Walker claimed Haley had plagiarized from her Civil War-era novel Jubilee (1966). Legal proceedings in each case were concluded late in 1978. Courlander's suit was settled out of court for $650,000 (equivalent to $ million in ) and an acknowledgment from Haley that certain passages within Roots were copied from The African. The court dismissed Walker's case, which, in comparing the content of Roots with that of Jubilee, found "no actionable similarities exist between the works".(1978, September 22). "Suit against Alex Haley is dismissed", United Press International.

Historical accuracy

Haley called his novel "faction" and acknowledged most of the dialogue and incidents were fictional. However, he claimed to have traced his family lineage back to Kunta Kinte, an African taken from the village of Juffure in what is now The Gambia. Haley also suggested his portrayal of life and figures among the slaves and masters in Virginia and North Carolina were based on facts which he had confirmed through historical documents. In the concluding chapter of Roots, Alex Haley wrote:

However, some historians and genealogists suggested Haley did not rely on factual evidence as closely as he represented, claiming there are serious errors with Haley's family history and historical descriptions in the period preceding the Civil War.

Africa

In April 1977, the (London) Sunday Times published an article titled "Tangled Roots" by Mark Ottaway. It challenged the book's account of Kunta Kinte and Haley's African ancestry. Ottaway found that the only African confirmation of Haley's family history came from Kebba Kanga Fofana, a griot in Juffure. However, Fofana was not a genuine griot, and the head of the Gambian National Archives even wrote a letter to Alex Haley expressing doubts about Fofana's reliability. On repeated retellings of the story, Fofana changed key details Haley had relied on for his identification.

In 1981, Donald R. Wright, a historian of the West African slave trade, reported that elders and griots in The Gambia could not provide detailed information on people living before the mid-19th century, but everyone had heard of Kunta Kinte. Haley had told his story to so many people that his version of his family history had been assimilated into the oral traditions of The Gambia. Haley had created a case of circular reporting, in which people repeated his words back to him.The Roots of Alex Haley. Documentary. Directed by James Kent. BBC Bookmark, 1996.

Roots depicted Juffure as a village where people had heard rumors about white men by 1767, but had never met any. In reality, Juffure was two miles from James Island, a major trading outpost established by the Royal Africa Company in 1661. The King of Barra allowed the Company to establish a fort on the island, on the condition none of his subjects could be purchased without his permission. Haley admitted that he had picked the year 1767 as "the time the King's soldiers came" to match his American research.

Virginia and North Carolina

Historian Gary B. Mills and genealogist Elizabeth Shown Mills, who specialize in black American and southern history, followed Haley's trail in Census records, deed books, and wills. They concluded:

Those same plantation records, wills, and censuses cited by Mr. Haley not only fail to document his story, but they contradict each and every pre-Civil War statement of Afro-American lineage in Roots!" (emphasis in the original)

The Waller family already owned the slave Toby in 1762, five years before the Lord Ligonier supposedly landed Kunta Kinte in Annapolis. Haley had only searched for references to Toby after 1767, succumbing to confirmation bias. Dr. Waller did not have a cook named Bell or his own plantation, as he was disabled and lived with his brother John. Toby also appears to have died before 1782, eight years before his daughter Kizzy was supposedly born. "Missy" Anne could not have been Kizzy's childhood playmate, as Ann Murray was a grown woman and already married in the relevant timeframe. In fact, there is no record of a Kizzy being owned by any of the Wallers.

After the deed reference to Toby Waller, the next piece of documentary evidence Haley uncovered was the 1870 Census listing for Tom Murray's household. Therefore, there is a gap of over ninety years relying on the Haley family's oral history. The Millses investigated the oral history and found no corroborating evidence in the historical record.

Tom Lea was not born into a poor family; he came from a well-to-do planter family. The record does not show a Kizzy or her son George among Tom Lea's slaves. There are also no records of a mulatto George Lea married to a Matilda. Haley described George Lea as a skilled chicken trainer who was sent to England when Tom Lea ran into financial difficulty in the 1850s. However, Tom Lea died during the winter of 1844–45.  Further, the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 abolished slavery within Britain and most of its overseas territories, so it is unlikely than an American slave taken to England in the 1850s would have agreed to return.  Also, in the case of Somerset v Stewart, (K.B. 1772), held that there was no positive law authorizing slavery in England, and that a slave brought to England from elsewhere was free upon his arrival.

Response

Haley initially conceded that he may have been led astray by his African research, and admitted that he had thought of calling Roots a "historical novel". However, he stated that Ottaway's article was "unwarranted, unfair and unjust", and added that he had no reason to think that Fofana was unreliable. Haley also criticized his detractors' reliance on written records in their evaluations of his work, contending that such records were "sporadic" and frequently inaccurate with regard to such data as slave births and ownership transactions. Haley asserted that for black genealogy, "well-kept oral history is without question the best source".

Ironically, the Millses discovered a better fit to the oral history in the written record than Haley himself had found. Dr. William Waller's father was Colonel William Waller, who owned a slave named Hopping George, a description consistent with a foot injury. Colonel Waller also owned a slave named Isbell, who may be the Bell in Haley family legend. Tom Lea's father lived in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, and he may have purchased some of Haley's ancestors from the Wallers. When the Lea family moved to North Carolina, they presumably took their slaves with them. The Leas lived in close proximity to the Murrays and Holts, and there are three Kizzies associated with the Lea and Murray families in the post-Civil War records.

Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. was a friend of Haley's, but, years after Haley's death, Gates acknowledged doubts about the author's claims:

Most of us feel it's highly unlikely that Alex found the village whence his ancestors sprang. Roots is a work of the imagination rather than strict historical scholarship. It was an important event because it captured everyone's imagination.

Gates later hosted the TV series African American Lives and Finding Your Roots, which used DNA testing to corroborate family histories and genealogies.

Haley wrote another novel, about his paternal grandmother Queen [Jackson] Haley, but died before he could finish it. It was published posthumously as Queen: The Story of an American Family.

Subsequent DNA testing of Alex Haley's nephew Chris Haley revealed that Alec Haley, Alex's paternal grandfather and Queen Haley's husband, was most likely descended from Scottish ancestors via William Harwell Baugh, an overseer of an Alabama slave plantation.Texas Research Ramblers Volume XXIX Number 1 Spring 2014 accessed September 13, 2018

Related scholarship
Gerber, David A. "Haley's Roots and Our Own: An Inquiry Into the Nature of a Popular Phenomenon", Journal of Ethnic Studies 5.3 (Fall 1977): 87–111.
 Hudson, Michelle. "The Effect of 'Roots' and the Bicentennial on Genealogical Interest among Patrons of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History," Journal of Mississippi History 1991 53(4): 321–336
Mills, Gary B. and Elizabeth Shown Mills. "Roots and the New 'Faction': A Legitimate Tool for CLIO?", Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 89 (January 1981): 3–26. PDF at Historic Pathways .
Ryan, Tim A. Calls and Responses: The American Novel of Slavery since Gone with the Wind. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2008.
Skaggs, Merrill Maguire. "Roots: A New Black Myth", Southern Quarterly 17. 1 (Fall 1978): 42–50.
Taylor, Helen. "'The Griot from Tennessee': The Saga of Alex Haley's Roots", Critical Quarterly 37.2 (Summer 1995): 46–62.
Wright, Donald R. "Uprooting Kunta Kinte: On the Perils of Relying on Encyclopedic Informants," History of Africa 8 (1981): 205–217.

Television and audio adaptationsRoots''' was a television miniseries airing over eight consecutive nights in January 1977. ABC network television executives chose to "dump" the series into a string of airings rather than space out the broadcasts because they were uncertain how the public would respond to the controversial, racially charged themes of the show. The series garnered enormous ratings and became an overnight sensation. Approximately 130 million Americans tuned in at some time during the eight broadcasts. The concluding episode on January 30, 1977, has been ranked as the third most watched telecast of all time by the Nielsen corporation.

The cast of the miniseries included LeVar Burton as Kunta Kinte, Leslie Uggams as Kizzy, and Ben Vereen as Chicken George. A fourteen-hour sequel, Roots: The Next Generations, aired in 1979, featuring the leading black actors of the day.

In December 1988, ABC aired a two-hour made-for-TV movie: Roots: The Gift. Based on characters from the book, it starred LeVar Burton as Kunta Kinte, Avery Brooks as Cletus Moyer, Kate Mulgrew as Hattie Carraway, and Tim Russ as house slave Marcellus (all four actors later became prominent as leading actors in the Star Trek franchise).

In May 2007, BBC America released Roots as an audiobook narrated by Avery Brooks. The release coincided with Vanguard Press's publication of a new paperback edition of the book, which had gone out of print in 2004, and with Warner Home Video's release of a 30th-anniversary DVD-boxed set of the mini-series.

A Blu-ray edition of the original mini-series debuted on May 30, 2016, to coordinate with the release of the remake of the television series.

In November 2013, the History channel announced it was developing an eight-hour Roots miniseries with Mark Wolper, son of the original show's original producer David L. Wolper. This version aired May 30, 2016, and combined elements from both Haley's book and its 1977 adaptation. Directors include Mario Van Peebles, Thomas Carter and Phillip Noyce, Executive Producers include Will Packer and LeVar Burton, while cast members include Malachi Kirby as Kunte, Forest Whitaker, Anna Paquin, Laurence Fishburne, Mekhi Phifer, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Derek Luke, Anika Noni Rose, and Chad L. Coleman.

Publication details
 1976, US, Doubleday Books (), Pub date 12 September 1976, hardback (First edition)
 1977, UK, Hutchinson (), Pub date ? April 1977, hardback
 1978, UK, Picador (), Pub date 14 April 1978, paperback
 1980, US, Bantam Books (), Pub date ? November 1980, paperback (Teacher's guide)
 1982, UK, GK Hall (), Pub date ? December 1982, hardback
 1985, US, Vintage (), Pub date ? May 1985, paperback
 1992, US, Bantam Doubleday Dell (), Pub date 31 December 1992, paperback
 1994, US, Vintage (), Pub date 21 January 1994, paperback
 1999, US, Rebound by Sagebrush (), Pub date ? October 1999, hardback (Library edition)
 2000, US, Wings (), Pub date ? September 2000, hardback
 2006, US, Buccaneer Books (), Pub date 30 August 2006, hardback
 2007, US, Vanguard Press (), Pub date 22 May 2007, paperback

Legacy and honors

Haley received a Pulitzer Prize for his book, and the TV series won several major awards.
Including weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, the book is considered a publishing and cultural sensation.
The state of Tennessee put a historical marker by Haley's childhood home in Henning, noting the influence he had as an author because of Roots.
He was buried in the front yard of his childhood home, where a memorial marks the gravesite.
Sinéad O'Connor's 1988 hit "Mandinka" was inspired by Alex Haley's book.

See also

 African American literatureQueen: The Story of an American Family'', 1993 novel
Slavery in the United States
Treatment of slaves in the United States

References

1976 American novels
African-American genealogy
African-American novels
American autobiographical novels
Family saga novels
Novels about American slavery
Roots (TV miniseries)
Southern United States in fiction
Novels set in the Gambia
Novels set in Africa
Novels set in Virginia
American historical novels
Novels set in the United States
Novels set in North Carolina
Novels involved in plagiarism controversies
Doubleday (publisher) books
Novels by Alex Haley
American novels adapted into television shows
Pulitzer Prize-winning works
Written fiction presented as fact

Roots: The Saga of an American Family


Metropolitan-Vickers, Metrovick, or Metrovicks, was a British heavy electrical engineering company of the early-to-mid 20th century formerly known as British Westinghouse. Highly diversified, it was particularly well known for its industrial electrical equipment such as generators, steam turbines, switchgear, transformers, electronics and railway traction equipment. Metrovick holds a place in history as the builders of the first commercial transistor computer, the Metrovick 950, and the first British axial-flow jet engine, the Metropolitan-Vickers F.2. Its factory in Trafford Park, Manchester, was for most of the 20th century one of the biggest and most important heavy engineering facilities in Britain and the world.

History

Metrovick started as a way to separate the existing British Westinghouse Electrical and Manufacturing Company factories from United States control, which had proven to be a hindrance to gaining government contracts during the First World War. In 1917 a holding company was formed to try to find financing to buy the company's properties.

In May 1917, control of the holding company was obtained jointly by the Metropolitan Carriage, Wagon and Finance Company, of Birmingham, chaired by Dudley Docker, and Vickers Limited, of Barrow-in-Furness.<ref name=gillham-2>Gillham (1988), Chapter 2: The Manufacturers.</ref> On 15 March 1919, Docker agreed terms with Vickers, for Vickers to purchase all the shares of the Metropolitan Carriage, Wagon and Finance Company for almost £13 million. On 8 September 1919, Vickers changed the name of the British Westinghouse Electrical and Manufacturing Company to Metropolitan Vickers Electrical Company.

The immediate post-war era was marked by low investment and continued labour unrest. Fortunes changed in 1926 with the formation of the Central Electricity Board which standardized electrical supply and led to a massive expansion of electrical distribution, installations, and appliance purchases. Sales shot up, and 1927 marked the company's best year to date.

On 15 November 1922 the BBC was registered and the BBC's Manchester station, 2ZY, was officially opened on 375 metres transmitting from the Metropolitan Vickers Electricity works in Old Trafford.

In 1921, they bought a  site at Attercliffe Common in Sheffield, which was used to manufacture traction motors. By 1923, it had its own engineering department, and was making complete locomotives and electric delivery vehicles.

BTH merger and transition to AEI

In 1928 Metrovick merged with the rival British Thomson-Houston (BTH), a company of similar size and product lineup. Combined, they would be one of the few companies able to compete with Marconi or English Electric on an equal footing. In fact the merger was marked by poor communication and intense rivalry, and the two companies generally worked at cross purposes.

The next year the combined company was purchased by the Associated Electrical Industries (AEI) holding group, who also owned Edison Swan (Ediswan); and Ferguson, Pailin & Co, manufacturers of electrical switchgear in Openshaw, Manchester. The rivalry between Metrovick and BTH continued, and AEI was never able to exert effective control over the two competing subsidiary companies.

Problems worsened in 1929 with the start of the great depression, but Metrovick's overseas sales were able to pick up some of the slack, notably a major railway electrification project in Brazil. By 1933 world trade was growing again, but growth was nearly upset when six Metrovick engineers were arrested and found guilty of espionage and "wrecking" in Moscow after a number of turbines built by the company in and for the Soviet Union proved to be faulty. The British government intervened; the engineers were released and trade with Russia was resumed after a brief embargo.

During the 1930s Metropolitan Vickers produced two dozen very large diameter (3m/10 ft) three-phase AC traction motors for the Hungarian railway's V40 and V60 electric locomotives. The 1640 kW rated power machinery, designed by Kálmán Kandó, was paid for by British government economic aid.

In 1935 the company built a 105 MW steam turbogenerator, the largest in Europe at that time, for the Battersea Power Station.

In 1936 Metrovick started work with the Air Ministry on automatic pilot systems, eventually branching out to gunlaying systems and building radars the next year. In 1938 they reached an agreement with the Ministry to build a turboprop design developed at the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) under the direction of Hayne Constant. It is somewhat ironic that BTH, its erstwhile partners, were at the same time working with Frank Whittle on his pioneering jet designs.

Wartime aircraft production

In mid-1938, MV was awarded a contract to build Avro Manchester twin-engined heavy bombers under licence from A.V. Roe. As this type of work was very different from its traditional heavy engineering activities, a new factory was built on the western side of Mosley Road and this was completed in stages through 1940. There were significant problems producing this aircraft, not least being the unreliability of the Rolls-Royce Vulture engine and that the first 13 Manchesters were destroyed in a Luftwaffe bombing raid on Trafford Park on 23 December. Despite this the firm went on to complete 43 examples. With the design of the much improved four-engined derivative, the Avro Lancaster, MV switched production to that famous type, supplied with Rolls-Royce Merlin engines from the Ford Trafford Park shadow factory. Three hangars were erected on the southside of Manchester's Ringway Airport for assembly and testing of its Lancasters, before a policy switch was made to assembling them in a hangar at Avro's Woodford airfield. By the end of the war, MV had built 1,080 Lancasters. These were followed by 79 Avro Lincoln derivatives before remaining orders were cancelled and MV's aircraft production ceased in December 1945.

In 1940 the turboprop effort was re-engineered as a pure jet engine after the successful run of Whittle's designs. The new design became the Metrovick F.2 and eventually flew in 1943 on a Gloster Meteor. Considered to be too complex to bother with, Metrovick then re-engineered the design once again to produce roughly double the power, while at the same time starting work on a much larger design, the Metrovick F.9 Sapphire. Although the F.9 proved to be a winner, the Ministry of Supply nevertheless forced the company to sell the jet division to Armstrong Siddeley in 1947 to reduce the number of companies in the business.

In addition to building aircraft, other wartime work included the manufacture of both Dowty and Messier undercarriages, automatic pilot units, searchlights and radar equipment. They also produced electric vans and lorries.

Metrovick postwar

The post-war era led to massive demand for electrical systems, leading to additional rivalries between Metrovick and BTH as each attempted to one-up the other in delivering ever-larger turbogenerator contracts. Metrovick also expanded its appliance division during this time, becoming a well known supplier of refrigerators and stoves.

The design and manufacture of sophisticated scientific instruments, such as electron microscopes, and mass spectrometers, became an important area of scientific research for the company.

In 1947, a Metrovick G.1 Gatric gas turbine was fitted to the Motor Gun Boat MGB 2009, making it the world's first gas turbine powered naval vessel. A subsequent marine gas turbine engine was the G.2 of 4,500 shp fitted to the Royal Navy Bold-class fast patrol boats Bold Pioneer and Bold Pathfinder'', which were built in 1953.

The Bluebird K7 jet-propelled 3-point hydroplane in which Donald Campbell broke the 200 mph water speed barrier was powered with a Metropolitan-Vickers Beryl jet engine producing  of thrust. The K7 was unveiled in late 1954. Campbell succeeded on Ullswater on 23 July 1955, where he set a record of , beating the previous record by some  held by Stanley Sayres.

Another major area of expansion was in the diesel locomotive market, where they combined their own generators and traction motors with third-party diesel engines to develop in 1950 the Western Australian Government Railways X class 2-Do-2 locomotive and in 1958 the type 2 Co-Bo, later re-classified under the TOPS system as the British Rail Class 28. This diesel-electric locomotive was unusual on two counts; its Co-Bo wheel arrangement and its Crossley 2-Stroke diesel engine (evolved from a World War II marine engine). Intended as part the British Railways Modernisation Plan, the twenty-strong fleet saw service between Scotland and England before being deemed unsuccessful and withdrawn in the late 1960s. Metrovick also produced the CIE 001 Class (originally 'A' Class) from 1955, the first production mainline diesels in Ireland.

Metropolitan Vickers also produced electrical equipment for the British Rail Class 76 (EM1), and British Rail Class 77 (EM2), 1.5 kV DC locomotives, built at Gorton Works for the electrification of the Woodhead Line in the early 1950s. Larger but broadly similar locomotives were also supplied to the New South Wales Government Railways as its 46 class. The company also designed the British Rail Class 82, 25 kV AC locomotives built by Beyer, Peacock & Company in Manchester using Metrovick electrical equipment. The company also supplied electrical equipment for the British Rail Class 303 electric multiple units.

In the 1950s, the company built a large power transformer works at Wythenshawe, Manchester. The factory opened in 1957, and was closed by GEC in 1971, after which it was sold to the American compressor manufacturer Ingersoll Rand.

In 1961, the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was invited to the company's factory at Trafford Park as part of his tour of Manchester.

The rivalry between Metrovick and BTH was eventually ended in an unconvincing fashion when the AEI management eventually decided to rid themselves of both brands and be known as AEI universally, a change they made on 1 January 1960. This move was almost universally resented within both companies. Worse, the new brand name was utterly unknown to its customers, leading to a noticeable fall-off in sales and AEI's stock price.

General Electric Company (GEC) takeover
When AEI attempted to remove the doubled-up management structures, they found this task to be even more difficult. By the mid-1960s the company was struggling under the weight of two complete management hierarchies, and they appeared to be unable to control the company any more. This allowed AEI to be purchased by General Electric Company in 1967.

See also
 :Category:Metropolitan-Vickers locomotives
 Bowesfield Works
 Metro-Vickers Affair
 Metrovick electric vehicles

References

Bibliography

External links

 "Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Co. Ltd. 1899-1949" by John Dummelow 250 pages of text and pictures. (This is a mirror of the original, which was accessed from https://web.archive.org/web/20050308065049/http://www.mvbook.org.uk/ )

Turbines
Locomotive manufacturers of the United Kingdom
Engineering companies of the United Kingdom
Electrical engineering companies of the United Kingdom
Defunct manufacturing companies of the United Kingdom
Associated Electrical Industries
Radar manufacturers
Defunct companies based in Manchester
Manufacturing companies based in Manchester
Manufacturing companies established in 1899
Manufacturing companies disestablished in 1960
Defunct aircraft engine manufacturers of the United Kingdom
Former defence companies of the United Kingdom
Science and technology in the United Kingdom
British companies established in 1899
British companies disestablished in 1960

Metropolitan-Vickers


Lippstadt is a planned city in Westphalia. About 67,000 people lived there in 2008. The city is about 70 km east of Dortmund, and about 30 km west of Paderborn.

History
The city was founded in 1185. It is the oldest founded city in Westphalia. Founded cities did not grow from earlier settlements; they were made as cities from the beginning. Lippstadt is known because there were many witch trials in the city, especially between 1565 and 1573. The priest Anton Praetorius wrote in 1613, that "Nail-smith Ebert Balve and his sister, a baker were released from prison, despite protests from the population. They had been tortured for a long time, and they had withdrawn their confessions." This witchcraft trial left a lasting impression on Praetorius and may have changed his thinking. In 1597, he risked his life so that the torture of a woman be stopped. Later, he continued to fight against witch-trials and torture through his writings. There were more witch trials in Lippstadt between 1630 and 1677.

Cities in North Rhine-Westphalia
Soest (district)

Lippstadt


Hillel Slovak (April 13, 1962 – June 25, 1988) was an Israeli musician. Slovak was the guitarist for the rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers. He was born in Haifa, Israel. His family moved to California in 1967. He was a close friend of singer Anthony Kiedis during high school, and in 1983, they decided to make a band. The band was called "Tony Flow and the Majestic Masters of Mayhem". They played a show, but never took the band seriously. In 1984 he left the Red Hot Chili Peppers to play in his other band "What Is This". He rejoined in 1985 to record "Freaky Styley" and "The Uplift Mofo Party Plan" in 1987. He died in 1988 from a fatal drug overdose.

1962 births
1988 deaths
Drug-related deaths
Jewish Israeli musicians
People from Haifa
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Rock musicians

Hillel Slovak


A meat chop is a cut of meat cut perpendicular to the spine, and usually containing a rib or riblet part of a vertebra and served as an individual portion. The most common kinds of meat chops are pork and lamb. A thin boneless chop, or one with only the rib bone, may be called a cutlet, though the difference is not always clear.  The term "chop" is not usually used for beef, but a T-bone steak is essentially a loin chop, a rib steak and a rib cutlet.

Butchery
Chops are generally cut from pork, lamb, veal, or mutton, but also from game such as venison.  They are cut perpendicular to the spine, and usually include a rib and a section of spine.  They are typically cut from 10–50 mm thick.

In United States markets, pork chops are classified as "center-cut" or "shoulder". Lamb chops are classified as shoulder, blade, rib, loin or kidney, and leg or sirloin chops.  The rib chops are narrower and fattier, while the loin chops are broader and leaner. Lamb chops are sometimes cut with an attached piece of kidney.

Chops may either be cut by separating the ribs using a knife and then cutting the spine with a hacksaw or cleaver, or by sawing perpendicularly to the spine using a band saw, which cuts across some ribs diagonally.  Chops are sometimes beaten with the side of a cleaver or with a meat mallet to make them thinner and more tender.

Cooking

Chops may be cooked in various ways, including grilling, pan-broiling, sautéeing, braising, breading and frying, and baking.  Lamb chops are often cooked with dry heat, grilled or pan-broiled.  Pork chops and veal chops are grilled, sautéed, or braised, or breaded and fried (milanese).
In South Africa and Namibia the traditional way of cooking chops is to grill them outdoor over open fire coals, called braaiing.

History
In Great Britain, the idea of a chop comes from the 17th century, when London chophouses started cooking individual portions of meat.

See also
Rib chop
List of steak dishes
Meat on the bone
Pork steak
Steak

References

 Oxford English Dictionary
 Larousse Gastronomique, s.v. pork, lamb, veal.

Cuts of meat

Meat chop


Artem (Artyom) Ivanovich Mikoyan (; ;  – 9 December 1970) was a Soviet Armenian aircraft designer, who cofounded the Mikoyan-Gurevich design bureau along with Mikhail Gurevich.

Early life and career
Mikoyan was born in the village of Sanahin, then part of the Tiflis Governorate of the Russian Empire (today part of Alaverdi in Armenia's Lori Province) on 5 August 1905. His older brother, Anastas Mikoyan, would become official head of state of the Soviet Union. He completed his basic education and took a job as a machine-tool operator in Rostov, then worked in the "Dynamo" factory in Moscow before being conscripted into the military. After military service he joined the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy, where he created his first plane, graduating in 1936. He worked with Polikarpov before being named head of a new aircraft design bureau in Moscow in December 1939. Together with Mikhail Gurevich, Mikoyan formed the Mikoyan-Gurevich design bureau, producing a series of fighter aircraft. In March 1942, the bureau was renamed OKB MiG (Osoboye Konstruktorskoye Byuro), ANPK MiG (Aviatsionnyy nauchno-proizvodstvennyy kompleks) and OKO MiG. The MiG-1 proved to be a poor start, the MiG-3 went into production but only occasionally could it fight in its intended high-level interceptor role. Further MiG-5, MiG-7 and MiG-8 Utka did not progress beyond research prototypes.

Jet aircraft designs

Early post-war designs were based on domestic works as well as captured German jet fighters and information provided by Britain or the US. By 1946, Soviet designers were still having trouble in perfecting the German-designed, axial-flow BMW 109-003 jet engine — blueprints for the 109-003 turbojet had been seized by Soviet forces from the Basdorf-Zühlsdorf plant near Berlin and from the Central Works near Nordhausen. Production of the 003 was set up at the "Red October" GAZ 466 (Gorkovsky Avtomobilny Zavod, or Gorky Automobile Plant) in Leningrad, where the 003 jet engine was mass-produced from 1947 under the designation RD-20 (reaktivnyy dvigatel, or "jet engine"). New Soviet airframe designs from their design bureaus, and near-sonic wing designs were threatening to outstrip development of the jet engines needed to power them. Soviet aviation minister Mikhail Khrunichev and aircraft designer Alexander Sergeyevich Yakovlev suggested to Joseph Stalin that the USSR buy advanced jet engines from the British. Stalin is said to have replied: "What fool will sell us his secrets?" However, he gave his assent to the proposal, and Artem Mikoyan, engine designer Klimov, and other officials traveled to the United Kingdom to request the engines. To Stalin's amazement, the British Labour government and its pro-Soviet minister of trade, Sir Stafford Cripps were willing to provide technical information and a licence to manufacture the Rolls-Royce Nene centrifugal-flow jet engine. This engine was reverse-engineered and produced in modified form as the Soviet Klimov VK-1 jet engine, later incorporated into the MiG-15 (Rolls-Royce later attempted to claim £207 million in licence fees, without success).

In the interim, on 15 April 1947, the Council of Ministers issued a decree #493-192, ordering the Mikoyan OKB to build two prototypes for a new jet fighter. As the decree called for first flights as soon as December of that same year, the designers at OKB-155 fell back on an earlier troublesome design, the MiG-9 of 1946. The MiG-9 used a pair of the RD-20 Soviet copies of the BMW 003 for its power, which proved to be unreliable, with the airframe's straight-winged design suffering from control problems.

The prototype-only Mikoyan-Gurevich I-270 of the immediate post-war era was a rocket-powered, "straight-winged" point-defense fighter design based on captured examples of, and documentation for the never-produced German Messerschmitt Me 263, which had some influence on future MiG jet fighter designs.  Thanks to the MiG OKB designing the very first airworthy swept-wing Soviet aircraft design of any type in 1945, the strictly experimental Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-8 Utka canard pusher monoplane, the swept-wing research from it and captured German research documents allowed the Soviets to eventually develop the prototype design for the single-jet MiG-15 fighter, the I-310. With the Klimov VK-1 version of the British Nene jet engine, this design became the mass-produced MiG-15, which first flew on 31 December 1948, some fifteen months after the first prototype of its American swept-winged counterpart, the XP-86 Sabre first flew. Despite its mixed origins, this aircraft had excellent performance and formed the basis for a number of future fighters. The MiG-15 was originally intended to intercept American bombers such as the B-29 Superfortress, and was even evaluated in mock air-to-air combat trials with interned ex-U.S. B-29 bombers as well as the later Soviet B-29 copy, the Tupolev Tu-4. A variety of MiG-15 variants were built, but the most common was the MiG-15UTI (NATO 'Midget') two-seat trainer. Over 18,000 MiG-15s were eventually manufactured, then came the MiG-17, and MiG-19.

The MiG-15s were the jets used during the Korean War by Communist forces, and "MiG Alley" was the name given by U.S. Air Force pilots to the northwestern portion of North Korea, where the Yalu River empties into the Yellow Sea. During the Korean War, it was the site of numerous dogfights between U.S. fighter jets and those of the Communist forces, particularly the Soviet Union. The F-86 Sabre and the Soviet-built Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 fighters were the aircraft used throughout most of the conflict, with the area's nickname derived from the latter. Because it was the site of the first large-scale jet-vs-jet air battles, MiG Alley is considered the birthplace of jet fighter combat.

Later work

From 1952 Mikoyan also designed missile systems to particularly suit his aircraft, such as the famous MiG-21. He continued to produce high performance fighters through the 1950s and 1960s.

He was twice awarded the highest civilian honour, the Hero of Socialist Labor and was a deputy in six Supreme Soviets.

After Gurevich's death, the name of the design bureau was changed from Mikoyan-Gurevich to simply Mikoyan. However, the designator remained MiG. Many more designs came from the design bureau such as the MiG-23, MiG-29 and MiG-35 and variations.

After suffering from a stroke that occurred in 1969, Mikoyan died the following year and was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

Honours and awards
Some of his awards and honours include:
Twice Hero of Socialist Labour
Six Orders of Lenin
Order of the Red Banner
Order of the Patriotic War 1st class
Two Orders of the Red Star
Lenin Prize (1962)
USSR State Prize (1941, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1952, 1953)

In 1996, Mikoyan was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame at the San Diego Air & Space Museum.

References

External links
 Mikoyan Brothers Museum , Sanahin, Alaverdi, Armenia

1905 births
1970 deaths
Armenian engineers
Armenian inventors
Armenian scientists
Burials at Novodevichy Cemetery
People from Lori Province
Heroes of Socialist Labour
Recipients of the Stalin Prize
Soviet aerospace engineers
Communist Party of the Soviet Union members
Soviet military personnel
Soviet inventors
Full Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences
Russian Aircraft Corporation MiG
Recipients of the Order of Lenin
Recipients of the Lenin Prize
Members of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union
Soviet Armenians
Mikoyan family
Russian scientists

Artem Mikoyan


Jason Mendonça (born 1971) is a British multi-instrumentalist an componer.

He is best known as the vocalist an guitarist o the British progressive blackened death metal band Akercocke, although he has also reached notoriety throughout the experimental electronic movement of the 1990s.

Early life
Mendonca wis born o an Englis mither an a Portuguese faither in the wast Lunnon suburb o Wast Drayton an educatit in Hillingdon. The youngest o fower childer, he wis raised in a hoose whaur muisic wis aye being played. Either bi his sister on the piano or his aulder siblins listenin tae baunds such as Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones an the Sex Pistols as well as a collection o classical muisic records that the family awned.

He haed piano lessons frae the age o 5 an at primary schuil began playing B flat Cornet. He later played cornet frae age 7 an then Baritone Euphonium wi the Yiewsley an West Drayton Silver Band.

At the age o 10, he acquired a three quarter size Spaninyie guitar frae his Uncle an attemptit a few basic chords.
Suin efter startin secondary school at age 11, awready keenly interestit in baunds such as Rush, Iron Maiden, Motorhead an Black Sabbath he wis introduced tae the muisic o Jimi Hendrix by a schuil friend. This wis the turnin point at which Mendonca realised he must obtain an electric guitar.

Allegedly savin up £4.50 a week frae a Seturday job, he accumulatit sufficient funds tae buy a guitar frae the aulder brither o a classmate.

Meetin wi David Gray

In 1987 some schuil friends wur tryin tae stairt a baund an advertised for a drummer in Guitarist magazine. Gray answered the advert an the ensemble began playin covers as a three piece. Gray thocht they needit a seicont guitarist an Mendonca wis introduced tae the fauld. The oreeginators o this schuil days project faded away as Mendonca and Gray began tae splore mair aggressive influences such as early Bathory, Venom, Celtic Frost, Possessed an Voivod.

These experimentations led tae the formulation o numerous proto-projects wi numerous collaborators till approximately 1989.

Salem Orchid

In 89, Mendonca an Gray teamed up wi guitarist Stephen Wood an bassist Dan Temple tae form wha wad be ane o mony varied line-up configurations o Salem Orchid.

Their efforts culminated in the 1991 recordin o the "Sempiternal Suffering" demo. This recordin wad later catch the attention o Nihil frae Cacophonous Records (who wad later sign Cradle of Filth) who expressed an interest in signin the baund. Wird o this reached a umwhile guitarist Jeff Godwin (who haed inventit the baund's moniker) who threatened legal action if Cacophonous signed the baund as Salem Orchid. Frightened bi the threat o litigation, the record label directit their interest elsewhaur.

By 1992, frustratit bi the sonic restrictions o bass, drums an guitar but athoot the skills tae employ a broader palette o instrumentation, Mendonca left Salem Orchid. In addition tae emergin airtistic differences, this split wis an aa motivatit bi a fallin oot atween Mendonca an drummer Gray when a female sangster wis introduced tae the line-up.

The electronic years

Disassociatin hissel frae the concept o "baund", Mendonca re-locatit tae North Lunnon an began promotin experimental techno pairties wi twa close friends. It wis durin this time that he wis befriendit bi Grant Wilson-Claridge o Rephlex Records.
Wilson-Claridge gave Mendonca access tae his impressive studio. This affordit Mendonca the opportunity tae experiment wi sampling an sequencin technologies. As his audio ingineerin skills developed he became fascinatit bi the science o psychoacoustics an began creatin soonds through experimentation. Shunnin pre-set sounds an settins frae senthesisers, his objective wis tae make soonds that haed niver been heard afore.

Akercocke is born

In 1996, Mendonca an Gray crossed paths again an promptly buried the hatchet that haed in pairt led them ceasin tae collaborate. They began discussin ideas for a muisical project that wad be o mutual interest. Agreein that the essence o seminal baunds such as Voivod an Killing Joke wis that they put their awn spin on rock muisic tae create an oreeginal soond, they wur inspired tae attempt the same. The project wis even gien a name, lang afore the pair returned tae their instruments: Akercocke wis born. Takin the name frae Robert Nye's beuk "Faust" the baund hae gone on tae hae a career that haes taken them maist o the way aroond the warld an includit 5 successful studio albums.

Present day
Mendonca lives an wirks in Berkshire, Soothren Ingland wi his family.

References

Inglis fowk o Portuguese strynd
Breetish hivy metal guitarists
Breetish hivy metal sangsters
Daith metal muisickers
Muisickers frae Lunnon
Sangsters frae Lunnon
1971 births
Livin fowk

Jason Mendonça


Bouvier's Law Dictionary is a set consisting of two or three books with a long tradition in the United States legal community. The first edition was written by John Bouvier.

John Bouvier (1787–1851) was born in Codognan, France, but came to the United States at an early age. He became a U.S. citizen in 1812, was admitted to the bar in 1818, and began practicing law in Philadelphia. During his years of practice and study, he noticed the lack of a solid American law dictionary. He decided to fill this need, and worked on a new law dictionary incessantly for 10 years. One of his main goals was to distinguish American law from its English antecedent. He finally presented it for publication in 1839. Like many of his generation, Bouvier used his preface to justify his work, stating the irrelevance of English legal dictionaries to the American legal system of the United States. He wanted to create a totally new law dictionary that would address the American legal system, so he derived his definitions almost wholly from customs, court decisions, and statutes of the United States.

From his preface:

"…most of the matter in the English law dictionaries will be found to have been written while the feudal law was in its full vigor, and not fitted to the present times, nor calculated for present use, even in England.  And there is a great portion which, though useful to an English lawyer, is almost useless to the American student.  What, for example, have we to do with those laws of Great Britain which relate to the person of their king, their nobility, their clergy, their navy, their army; with their game laws; their local statutes, such as regulate their banks, their canals, their exchequer, their marriages, their births, their burials, their beer and ale houses, and a variety of similar subjects?"

In addition, Bouvier included entries for all the states that had formed the union as of 1839. A large 2-volume work, Bouvier's dictionary has been especially useful for understanding obsolete terms given in older authorities, amplifying their meanings in the American context.

The dictionary quickly became popular and received excellent reviews. The book is well written and extensively researched; Bouvier made significant contribution to each new edition and rewrote several articles. Many well known legal scholars have contributed to its revisions. Bouvier published three editions in twelve years and was preparing a fourth at the time of his death in 1851. By the year 1886, when it was first revised, there had been fifteen editions. The work is still widely used. Volumes of the early edition are considered collector items and a pristine set can fetch hundreds of dollars.

See also
 Black's Law Dictionary

Bibliographic entries
 A LAW DICTIONARY. Philadelphia : T. and J. W. Johnson, 1839. 2 vols.
 A LAW DICTIONARY. 4th ed. Philadelphia : Printed for the estate of John Bouvier, 1852. 2 vols.
 A LAW DICTIONARY. 5th ed. Philadelphia : Printed for the estate of John Bouvier, 1855. 2 vols.
 A LAW DICTIONARY. 6th ed. Philadelphia : Childs & Peterson, 1856. 2 vols.
 A LAW DICTIONARY. 8th ed. Philadelphia : G.W. Childs, 1859. 2 vols.
 A LAW DICTIONARY, adapted to the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, and of the several states of the American union : with references to the civil and other systems of foreign law. 14th ed., rev. and greatly enl. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1878. 2 vols.
 BOUVIER'S LAW DICTIONARY AND CONCISE ENCYCLOPEDIA. 3rd revision (being the 8th ed.) / by Francis Rawle. Kansas City, Mo. : Vernon Law Book Co. ; St. Paul, Minn. : West Pub., 1914. 3 vols.
 The Wolters Kluwer Bouvier Law Dictionary, General Editor Steve Sheppard, Kluwer, 2011,

References

External links
 Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856), indexed at Dict.org
 Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 15th Ed (1892), Vol. I and II at Google Books

1839 non-fiction books
Law dictionaries
Reference works in the public domain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary


Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, USAF is a fictional character in the 2004 Canadian-American military science fiction television series Stargate Atlantis, which chronicles a civilian operation exploring the Pegasus Galaxy via a network of alien transportation devices. Portrayed by Joe Flanigan, Sheppard holds the military rank of lieutenant colonel in the series and is the second-in-command of the Atlantis Expedition following the death of Marshall Sumner (Robert Patrick) in "Rising".

Sheppard and Rodney McKay (David Hewlett) are the only characters to appear in all one hundred episodes of the series.

Role in Stargate Atlantis

Character arc
John Sheppard was an experienced and a talented US Air Force Officer in Afghanistan, though his reputation was somewhat tarnished when he disobeyed a direct order in an unsuccessful attempt to save the lives of several US servicemen. When called upon to transport Brigadier General Jack O'Neill to the research base that had been established at the nearby Ancient defense facility, he inadvertently discovered that he not only had the ATA gene (the genetic factor necessary to activate Ancient technology), but that he was naturally proficient at using it. After some doubts, he finally joined the expedition to Atlantis, although Colonel Marshall Sumner made it clear he was not pleased about Sheppard's involvement in the mission.

After they discovered that the shield protecting the underwater city of Atlantis was about to collapse, he joined the mission team searching for a new power source on Athos on Elizabeth Weir's orders. He made a better impression on the Athosian leader, Teyla Emmagan. Sheppard then killed the Wraith Keeper, thus awakening all the other hungry Wraith that were sleeping. After retreating with a Puddle Jumper along with other military personnel and rescued Athosians they returned safely to Atlantis.

Aside from being the ranking military officer, Sheppard led an exploration team that consisted of Dr. Rodney McKay, Emmagan and Lt. Aiden Ford. After Ford became addicted to the Wraith enzyme and left Atlantis, Ronon Dex joined the team. Sheppard's relaxed command style often put him at odds with his more, by-the-book chief of security, Sergeant Bates, until Bates was severely injured after an attack by a Wraith. During the Wraith attack on Atlantis, Sheppard lost command of the military after the arrival of Colonel Dillon Everett from Stargate Command (SGC).

After securing Atlantis, the Daedalus took Sheppard, Weir, McKay and Carson Beckett back to Earth to report on the status of the Atlantis expedition. General Hank Landry implied to Weir that the Pentagon wanted to make Colonel Steven Caldwell the military commander of the Atlantis expedition, but Weir informed them that Atlantis already had a military commander. When they stated that Sheppard was just a major with a questionable record, she told them that they could solve that problem with the President and the International Oversight Committee on her side; Sheppard was subsequently promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel and installed as official military commander of the Atlantis expedition. Colonel Caldwell, who had sought the leadership position, was displeased by this outcome.

While testing a new "Gate bridge" that McKay and Lt. Colonel Samantha Carter created to accelerate transportation between Pegasus and the Milky Way, an Ancient ship was located, filled with living Ancients who reclaimed Atlantis. With the expedition disbanded, Sheppard was assigned command of an SG team. When General O'Neill sent a message to Stargate Command telling them that the Asurans had taken control of Atlantis, Sheppard, Weir, McKay, and Beckett hijacked a puddle jumper and traveled back to the Pegasus via the Gate Bridge. They tracked down Emmagan and Dex; the newly reunited team succeeded in rescuing O'Neill and Richard Woolsey and retook Atlantis. In the episode Adrift, Sheppard was forced to take command of Atlantis, since Weir was in a coma due to injuries that she sustained after Atlantis was grazed by the Replicator's beam. Sheppard later lost Weir during a mission to the Replicator homeworld in a successful effort to save Atlantis and turn the Replicators against the Wraith.

After piloting Atlantis to a new home, Sheppard fell under the command of Colonel Samantha Carter, the new leader of Atlantis. He acted as her second-in-command during the war with the Replicators, a war which reunited him with the Wraith he later named "Todd." Thanks to a brilliant plan by McKay, the Replicators were destroyed by an alliance of Wraith and human forces, but a new threat emerged in the form of the former Wraith, Michael, who kidnapped Teyla. After rescuing Teyla and apparently killing Michael, Sheppard encountered a new change of command as Richard Woolsey took over Atlantis.

Under Woolsey, Sheppard continued to lead efforts to fight the Wraith and Michael, who returned a final time to takeover Atlantis. With the help of Todd, Sheppard and his team attempted to find a way to eliminate the Wraith's need to feed on humans, but this led to a betrayal by Todd when he believed that Sheppard activated the Attero Device to destroy the Wraith at the cost of any activated Stargate in the Pegasus Galaxy. Despite this, Sheppard continued working with Todd when the situation called for it. In the series finale, Enemy at the Gate, Sheppard learned about a new, more powerful hive ship from Todd and worked to stop it from reaching and destroying Earth. When all else failed, even Atlantis, Sheppard boarded the ship with a nuclear weapon in a suicide mission to save Earth. Sheppard succeeded in destroying the hive ship and saving Atlantis and Earth, but, due to a surprise appearance by the rest of his team, survived the experience. He later joined Atlantis' senior staff as they looked out over the Golden Gate Bridge from Atlantis, which had landed on Earth in the aftermath of the hive ship's attempted attack.

John Sheppard learns how to fly a Wraith dart in the season 2 episode "The Lost Boys". He later pilots one in "The Hive", "Vengeance" and "Search and Rescue" as a way to escape Wraith ships.

Characterization
John is one of the more laid-back, easy-going personalities on the Atlantis Expedition. He is capable under pressure, an excellent marksman, and outstanding pilot. He is very instinctual and frequently is able to come up with ingenious solutions to complicated problems. Some put this ability down to his being a closet mathematical genius, despite little scientific training. He also has displayed the ability to keep up with much of Rodney McKay's complicated plans. But despite this, he tends to be relatively humble—being able to accept that sometimes there isn't anything he can do to help to resolve the current problem, and leaving it up to more capable minds.  He has also occasionally shown a darker side; he did not hesitate to take action that killed over 50 Genii soldiers when Kolya was trying to take over the city in The Storm.  He also supported using torture on a former Atlantis colleague to gain information in Critical Mass Also in the episode, Millers Crossing, he talked Henry Wallace, the owner of Devlin Medical Technologies, into sacrificing himself to a Wraith. When McKay voiced his discomfort over this, he replied that he merely presented a situation. He told McKay that the report would only say that the wraith got the upper hand. Sheppard tends to be very honest at times: when he makes a deal, he keeps it, something which is acknowledged by the trust the Wraith, Todd, puts in him when they make deals together. Sheppard demonstrates this when he agrees to spare Todd in order to escape; then, despite having Todd at his mercy, with Todd never actually expecting Sheppard to honor their deal, Sheppard does and releases Todd. When Sheppard later offers Todd a deal in exchange for saving their lives, Todd is dubious until Sheppard gives to Todd his word, at which time Todd stops questioning Sheppard's honesty. Sheppard does keep the deal, convincing a reluctant Richard Woolsey to go along with it.

Despite being a lieutenant colonel, he has an easy rapport with most of the people in Atlantis - including the military personnel that are below him in terms of rank. He is good friends with both Teyla and Ronon, and grudgingly admits that he loves McKay "in the way a friend feels about another friend". And despite occasional clashes with Elizabeth Weir early on (due to their differing viewpoints), they have developed a strong and respectful friendship due, in no small part, to their parallel leadership roles on the Expedition. In the episode Doppelganger it was revealed that the thing he is most afraid of is himself, as well as failing to protect his friends. Though he is a somewhat incurable flirt, he has not yet been shown in an actual relationship. In the episode Sunday, Ronon tells him that Sheppard and Teyla would be good together. Sheppard never answered to Ronon. However, it was later revealed that Sheppard has an ex-wife named Nancy (Kari Wührer).

He is in possession of a rather wry sense of humor, and frequently alleviates tension by telling jokes to keep spirits up - much to the annoyance of McKay. He hates clowns, enjoys Ferris wheels, American football and 'anything that goes faster than 200 miles an hour', along with displaying a vague aptitude for Chess - beating McKay on at least one occasion, once again to McKay's chagrin. Sheppard qualified for  Mensa, (a "high IQ" society), but never joined. Sheppard is an avid golf player and a fan of Johnny Cash. He has also on several occasions referred to the movies Alien by Ridley Scott, Star Trek, Star Wars, and The Abyss. Sheppard also brought the book War and Peace to pass the time, and in episode 50, states he is "Only a quarter of the way through War and Peace."

Sheppard possesses a unique relationship with the Wraith "Todd." The two were initially held prisoner together by Acastus Koyla with Todd being forced to feed on Sheppard to torture him. Sheppard's unfailing belief that they could escape or be rescued convinced Todd to work with him to get out with the deal that if they ever met again "all bets are off." Both kept their ends of the deal: Todd restored the life he stole from Sheppard, something he stated was reserved only for their worshippers and "brothers" and Sheppard took him somewhere he could be found by the Wraith rather than killing him. Despite their deal, Sheppard later agreed to work with Todd on several occasions, even once saying that Todd may be their best chance at defeating the Wraith, but is very distrusting of him. However, Todd, even after betraying Sheppard once, kept coming back to him for help despite repeated death threats and the two seem to have a mutual understanding of each other. In one episode, Sheppard uses his understanding of Todd's personality to convince him to do what he wants. Todd realizes this and states to him "you know how to talk to me," but is amused rather than angry as Sheppard was right. Todd also seems to trust at least Sheppard's word as he has never seriously questioned him when they make a deal which Sheppard always upholds. When Sheppard did so once to the point that it saved Todd's life, the Wraith promised to remember his actions.

Conceptual history
Ben Browder was originally planned to play the part of Sheppard. However, because Browder was busy with Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars at the time, Joe Flanigan stepped in and took over the role. After Farscape ended, Browder joined Stargate SG-1 and was given the role of SG-1 regular, Cameron Mitchell instead.

References

External links
 John Sheppard at Stargate wikia
 John Sheppard  at scifi.com

Fictional majors
Fictional lieutenant colonels
Fictional space pilots
Fictional United States Air Force personnel
Fictional Gulf War veterans
Stargate characters
Television characters introduced in 2004
Crossover characters in television

John Sheppard (Stargate)


Logorrhea is a disorder of  speech. It is a psychological disorder where a person speaks continuously in gibberish or makes no real sense. It is a sign of an underlying mental disorder, and needs psychiatric attention.

Logorrhea happens in many different psychiatric and neurological conditions. Some of these are glossolalia, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and schizoaffective disorder.

The term is sometimes used of someone who is just very talkative. This is meant to be a humorous reference.

In popular culture
The dramatic monologue Not I by Samuel Beckett is an example of logorrhea. So is Lucky's speech in the play Waiting for Godot.

In the 1999 E.W. Scripps National Spelling Bee, the spelling bee champion Nupur Lala won with the word logorrhea. Then a documentary, Spellbound was made about the spelling bee.

Related pages
Word salad

Mental illnesses
Disorders
Human communication

Logorrhea


In the study of orbital dynamics the mean anomaly of an orbiting body is the angle the body would have traveled about the center of the orbit's auxiliary circle.  Unlike other measures of anomaly, the mean anomaly grows linearly with time.  Because of the linear growth with time, the mean anomaly makes calculating the time of flight between two points on the orbit very easy. The mean anomalies for the two points are calculated and their difference is found.  Knowing this, the ratio of this difference relative to the entire  encompassing one orbit is simply equal to ratio of the time of flight to the orbital period of one whole orbit (i.e. ).

Orbits

Mean anomaly


Boulogne-Billancourt (often called Boulogne or Boulbi) is a town in the western suburbs of Paris in France. Boulogne-Billancourt is a sub-prefecture of the Hauts-de-Seine département. It is in the Île-de-France region. Its population is around 106,000. Its land area is 6.17 km². Its population density is 17,877/km².

Boulogne-Billancourt is one of the most densely populated municipalities in Europe. Several major communication companies headquarters are in Boulbi. The hospital Ambroise-Paré Hospital is in the city and one campus of the École supérieure des sciences commerciales d'Angers.

Boulogne-Billancourt


A ballast tamper is a machine used to make railway tracks level. It is like the railway version of a road roller but instead of only squashing the high parts, it also lifts the track out of dips.  Before tamping machines were made, tamping was done by lots of people with shovels. The machines make tamping quicker and the track is more level than if tamping is done by hand. Also, some new tracks and sleepers are too heavy to be lifted by hand, so a tamper has to be used.

New tampers can also move the track from side to side to make it smoother.

References

Trains

Ballast tamper


Roman or Romans may refer to:
 A thing or person of or from the city of Rome, Italy

History
 Ancient Rome (8th century BC – 5th century AD)
Roman Kingdom (753 BC to 509 BC)
 Roman Republic (509 BC to 27 BC)
 Roman Empire (27 BC to 476/1453 AD)
 Roman Britain, part of the island of Great Britain controlled by the Roman Empire between AD 43 and about 410
 Roman alphabet, the standard alphabet of most of the languages of Western and Central Europe
 Romanization
 Roman army
 Roman calendar
 Roman law, the legal system of both the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire
 Roman numerals, numeral system where certain letters are given a numeral value
 Roman mythology
 Byzantine Empire (330/476/629 to 1453), the Eastern Roman Empire
 Romaioi (Ρωμαίοι), Greek-speaking,  Orthodox population of the Eastern Roman Empire dating to Late Antiquity
 Romaioi (Ρωμιοί), Greek-speaking, Orthodox population of the Rum-milet in the Ottoman Empire, or Greek-speaking Orthodox people today
 Romanae or the Greco-Romans from Aetolia Acarnania that speak Romanesci
 Holy Roman Empire (c. 900 to 1806), a medieval state in Central Europe
 Roman, Bulgaria, a town and a municipality in Vratsa Province
 Romans-sur-Isère, in the Drôme département of France
 Roman, Romania, a city in Neamţ county
 Romans, Ain, a town in France
 Roman, Eure, France
 Romans, Deux-Sèvres, France
 Romans d'Isonzo, a town in Italy
 Roman roads
 Roman Valley, Nova Scotia
 Saint Roman, Monaco

Christianity
 Epistle to the Romans, a letter in the New Testament of the Christian Bible
 The Roman Catholic Church

Literature
 The word for Novel in many European languages.
 Nouveau roman (lit. "new novel"), a type of French novel of the 1950s
 Bildungsroman (lit. "formation novel"), German for a coming-of-age story
 Künstlerroman (lit. "artist's novel"), German for a story of an artist's growth to maturity
 Romance (heroic literature), a genre of Medieval French literature
 Ar-Rum, the 30th book in the Qu'ran, is sometimes translated as The Romans
 Roman à clef, a novel about real life, overlaid with a façade of fiction

Roman


A leitmotif (pronounced , "LITE-mow-teef") (also spelled leitmotiv), is a German word meaning leading motif.  It is a little musical theme that is often repeated in a piece of music, very often in opera. The leitmotif is linked in the musical story with a person or a thing or an idea.  The leitmotif might be a short tune, but it can also be a rhythm or just a chord.

The word "leitmotif" is sometimes used in other things such as literature.  In a book it might be an idea that keeps coming during the story.  It can also be used in movies or video games.

The word "leitmotif" is particularly associated with the operas of Richard Wagner.  The leitmotif helps to make the story dramatic and bind it together, because it makes the music easier to understand.  Sometimes a leitmotif will change during an opera as the character changes.  Various dramatic effects can be made with leitmotifs. For example, a leitmotif might be played before a character comes onstage, so the audience will know who is coming before the actor can be seen.  Three examples of leitmotifs from Wagner's Ring Cycle  Der Ring des Nibelungen  are: the leitmotif for the chief god Wotan (a person), the leitmotif for the Tarnhelm, the invisibility helmet, (a thing), and the leitmotif for the Renunciation of Love (an idea).

The use of leitmotif was not completely new in the 19th century.  For example: the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony are used like a leitmotif during the whole symphony.  It was, however, Carl Maria von Weber who first used it a lot in his operas.  A music critic called F. W. Jähns used the word to describe Weber's work.  Hector Berlioz wrote a symphony called Symphonie Fantastique which has a tune which he called idée fixe ("fixed idea") to represent the love between the two characters.

Wagner did not actually use the word "leitmotif".  He preferred to call such themes "Grundthema" (basic idea) or simple "Motiv".  Some people, such as Eduard Hanslick, who did not like Wagner's music, thought that Wagner's use of leitmotifs made the music too simple.  Claude Debussy said the use of leitmotifs in operas was like having a world where crazy people would always use "visiting cards" to introduce themselves and then start singing their names to be sure everyone knew what was going on.

Many other composers used leitmotifs in a similar way to Wagner, e.g. Richard Strauss in his operas, Elgar in his oratorios The Kingdom and The Apostles or Alban Berg in his opera Lulu.

Leitmotifs or music themes are also used to dramatise movies. For example, the famous Jaws theme uses a leitmotif for the shark.

Musical forms
Opera terminology

Leitmotif


The Two-source hypothesis is a hypothesis that was made in the 19th century. It tries to explain what is called the synoptic problem in Christian theology. This problem is that certain parts of the gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke have texts that are very similar. The hypothesis claims that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were written based on the gospel of Mark, and lost source text, called Q. The Q is for German Quelle, and means source. The lost document was likely a collection of Jesus' sayings, very probably written in Ancient Greek. The hypothesis is widely accepted among Christian scholars.

Problems
There are two major problems with this hypothesis:
There is something that is called minor agreements. These are parts of the text, where both Matthew and Luke agree, but where Mark does not. To explain this,  many people believe that Matthew and Luke did not use the text of Mark as it was included in the New Testament, but rather an earlier version. Some people even say that they did not use the same version of this earlier text. This could also explain why the text in Mk 6,45-8,26 is missing from Luke.
The two source hypothesis requires a second source, called Q. The problem is that this source is not mentioned in the many fragments of early Christian texts that were found, or in the early Christian Church tradition.

Gospels

Two-source hypothesis


William Joseph Cardoso (September 24, 1937 - February 26, 2006) was an American journalist who was known for coining the term "gonzo journalism".

Cardoso was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and raised in Somerville, Massachusetts. He was the youngest of three brothers and had one daughter, Linda Cardoso.

He studied journalism at Boston University and in 1967 he joined The Boston Globe and shortly thereafter became editor of the Globe Sunday magazine. He eventually settled in California.
While not as well known as his literary friends, he wrote for many publications in the 1960s and 1970s such as Crawdaddy!, Harper's Weekly, New Times,
Ramparts, and Rolling Stone. He was also a good friend of Hunter S. Thompson and was present for the legendary Rumble in the Jungle.

His work was collected in a 1984 volume called The Maltese Sangweech and Other Heroes. He also fondly shared his memories of Hunter S. Thompson with E. Jean Carroll for her 1993 biography, Hunter.

Cardoso died of heart failure in the early morning of February 26, 2006, at his home in Kelseyville, California, aged 68.

References

External links
 Bill Cardoso -- journalist who coined the word 'Gonzo'
 Bill Cardoso

1937 births
2006 deaths
Boston University College of Communication alumni
Writers from Cambridge, Massachusetts
20th-century American journalists
American male journalists

Bill Cardoso


The First Epistle to the Corinthians, or the First Letter to the Corinthians, is a long letter written by the Apostle Paul to the church in Corinth.

Paul wrote to the Corinthian church for a number of reasons.  He realizes the church at Corinth is divided and explains that although himself and a few disciples had helped start the church, the church was really headed by Christ Jesus Himself.  "I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow." (TNIV)

Paul scolds the church members there for sexual immorality and asks for these immoral people to be thrown out of the church.

He gives instructions for marriage, against worshipping worthless idols (idolatry), for spiritual gifts like prophecy. Paul praises the superior way of love and urges the church to be united.

At the end, Paul states that the resurrection of Christ is true.  He supports it with testimonies from "more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters" and it is this very truth which makes certain the believers will have eternal life.

Finally Paul tells of his plans to visit the Corinthians, and that Timothy, his co-worker, is coming to their church very soon.

Pauline epistles
New Testament books

First Epistle to the Corinthians


Master of the King's Music (or Master of the Queen's Music when the United Kingdom has a queen) is a post in the Royal Household of the King or Queen of the United Kingdom. It is the title given to one chosen composer of classical music Only one person holds the title at any one time.  It is very similar to the post of Poet Laureate which is for a poet.

The Master of the King's Music is now Judith Weir.  Instead of being appointed for life, she was appointed for a ten-year term like her predecessor, starting March 2014.  The change was to give more composers the opportunity to serve.

The Master of the King's Music has the job of composing music for special royal occasions such as anniversaries, marriages and funerals, and for special ceremonies.

The title was created in 1626 by Charles I.  It was spelt Master of the King's Musick and was always spelt that way until the time of Sir Edward Elgar who was Master from 1924 to 1934.

Holders of the post have been:

Nicholas Lanier (1625-1649 and 1660-1666)
Louis Grabu (1666-1674)
Nicholas Staggins (1674-1700)
John Eccles (1700-1735)
Maurice Greene (1735-1755)
William Boyce (1755-1779)
John Stanley (1779-1786)
William Parsons (1786-1817)
William Shield (1817-1829)
Christian Kramer (1829-1834)
Franz Cramer (1834-1848)
George Frederick Anderson (1848-1870)
Sir William George Cusins (1870-1893)
Professor Sir Walter Parratt, KCVO (1893-1924)
Sir Edward Elgar, Bt OM GCVO (1924-1934)
Sir Henry Walford Davies, KCVO OBE (1934-1941)
Sir Arnold Bax, KCVO (1942-1952)
Sir Arthur Bliss, CH KCVO (1953-1975)
Malcolm Williamson, CBE AO (1975-2003)
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, CBE (2004-2014)
Judith Weir, CBE (2014-

References

British musicians
British monarchy

Master of the Queen's Music


Seán French (8 November 1931 – 25 December 2011) was a Fianna Fáil politician from Cork in Ireland. He was a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1967 to 1982.

French was elected to Dáil Éireann on his first attempt, at a by-election in 1967 for the Cork Borough constituency which was caused by the death of the Labour Party TD Seán Casey. He was re-elected at the next five general elections, but lost his seat at the November 1982 general election and did not stand again.

He also stood as a candidate for the European Parliament, at the first direct election in 1979 in the Munster constituency, but was not elected.

Seán French was Lord Mayor of Cork for the term from 1976 to 1977. His father, also called Seán French, also served as a TD and Lord Mayor of Cork.

See also
Families in the Oireachtas

References

1931 births
2011 deaths
Fianna Fáil TDs
Members of the 18th Dáil
Members of the 19th Dáil
Members of the 20th Dáil
Members of the 21st Dáil
Members of the 22nd Dáil
Members of the 23rd Dáil
Lord Mayors of Cork
Fianna Fáil local councillors

Seán French (1931–2011)