Sackets Harbor (earlier spelled Sacketts Harbor) is a village in Jefferson County, New York, United States, on Lake Ontario. The population was 1,450 at the 2010 census. The village was named after land developer and owner Augustus Sackett, who founded it in the early 1800s.

Sackets Harbor is in the western part of the town of Hounsfield and is west of Watertown. The heart of the village, with a Main Street and well-preserved 19th century buildings, has been recognized as the Sackets Harbor Village Historic District and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

To support the War of 1812, the US Navy built a major shipyard and its headquarters for the Great Lakes at the village. Within a short period, more than 3,000 men worked at the shipyard. The Army constructed earthworks, forts, barracks and supporting infrastructure to defend the village and navy shipyard, and its troops also camped in the village. The thousands of military personnel made it seem like a city. By the fall of 1814, this was the third-largest population center in the entire state, after Albany and New York City. With its strategic protected harbor on Lake Ontario and military installations, the village had national importance through the 19th century.

Soon after the war, the Army strengthened its defenses on the northern frontier by constructing Madison Barracks. The village also developed a commercial shipyard and many business connections to communities around the Great Lakes. Its businessmen were also connected to bases in the major markets of Louisville, Kentucky, and New Orleans. In 1817 a consortium of local businessmen supported construction of the 240-ton Ontario, the first US steamboat on the Great Lakes. In July 1834, the commercial schooner Illinois from Sackets Harbor was the first to enter the harbor of the new settlement of Chicago. Sackets Harbor Battlefield State Historic Site commemorates a battle during the War of 1812 and the contribution of the area to the United States defense.

History
Prior to the American Revolutionary War, this area had been inhabited for thousands of years by differing cultures of indigenous peoples. The historic tribe were the Iroquoian-speaking Onondaga, part of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois Confederacy. Long trading with the French and English, the Mohawk and most of the Six Nations allied with the British during the Revolution, hoping to dislodge the American colonists from their territory. Following the war, they were forced to make major cessions of most of their land in New York to the United States. Most of the Iroquois went to Canada and settled on land granted by Great Britain.

In the large-scale sales of  of public lands in the postwar period, Sackets Harbor was founded in 1801 by Augustus Sackett, a land speculator from New York City. He and others had high hopes for trade across Lake Ontario with Kingston and other parts of Canada. With one of the few natural harbors on Lake Ontario, Sackets Harbor was the most significant community in the area until the founding of the city of Watertown.

The area attracted migrants from New England, as well as immigrants from Great Britain and France. The latter were fleeing the turmoil of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. They cleared heavy forest and gradually constructed houses for a village center. Edmund Luff, a young English immigrant, constructed a non-denominational meetinghouse, where all Christians met until they built their own churches in later decades. Converted to a residence, the house still stands.

The American Revolution did not resolve all issues with Great Britain. Border issues and increasing tensions led the US to impose the Embargo Act of 1807 prohibiting trade with Great Britain, which effectively included Canada. People on both sides of the border, Canadian (many of them Native Americans, including Loyalists who had fled there after the Revolution) and American, quickly built up a vigorous smuggling trade across the waters and through the nearby Thousand Islands area along the St. Lawrence River. But the embargo reduced trade. The US government first stationed forces in the area to try to reduce smuggling.

By the 1810 census, there were 943 qualified voters in the village. Sackets Harbor incorporated as a village in 1814, during the War of 1812.

War of 1812

As tensions increased with Great Britain, the US began to build up its military forces at Sackets Harbor, including creating a major shipyard at what became Navy Point. The scale of buildup was such that the citizens were outnumbered on a scale of about 8:1 by thousands of sailors and soldiers, camp followers and traders. Some 3,000 workers built the warships, and most had been recruited from the New York City area.

Limited sanitary facilities and medical knowledge made the dense troop encampments breeding grounds for infectious diseases, such as typhus, which quickly spread to villagers, too. By February 1813, Sackets Harbor was the largest community in the state north of the Mohawk River.

The village was the site of two battles during the War of 1812. In the first battle in 1812, the brig USS Oneida and shore batteries repulsed an attacking force of five British ships. The village became a major base of operations for both the Navy (including US Marine Corps) and Army for the duration of the war. The Army built defensive earthworks around much of the village, and Fort Tompkins with barracks near Navy Point. Local militia built Fort Volunteer north of the village main streets. Thousands of troops gathered to defend the shipyard and village, and to attack Canada.

The numbers of troops so exceeded what could be built to shelter them that in 1813 troops were housed with residents, in stores, in barns and in tents. Village women counted themselves lucky if they were only cooking for officers. By the spring of 1813, the Army had gathered approximately 5,200 men in the village.

Most importantly, by 1813 the village became the US Naval Headquarters on the Great Lakes. Working at the Navy Point shipyard were 3,000 highly skilled men, including hundreds of shipbuilders and carpenters brought from New York City because of a lack of locally skilled craftsmen. The yard was constructed and supervised during the war by New York City naval architect and shipbuilder Henry Eckford. They rapidly built eleven warships to establish control over the Great Lakes.

Control of the Great Lakes ultimately ended up in the hands of both the peoples of Canada and the United States (with the exception of Lake Michigan, which is located entirely within the United States) and has been managed since 1909 by the International Joint Commission.

In the Second Battle of Sacket's Harbor in May 1813, British forces landed and attacked the village, but they were again driven off. Most of the American garrison and ships were at the western end of the lake at the time in another conflict. The American defense was marred by officers' mistaken orders at Navy Point to destroy stores and a partially constructed ship, to prevent capture by the British.

The buildup continued. In the fall of 1813, the Navy had moved its hospital off a ship and was temporarily renting the non-denominational meeting house from settler and preacher Edmund Luff. The next year a two-story hospital was constructed on land just north of the village and south of Mill Creek, on land that was bought from his father Samuel Luff. By the fall of 1814, Sackets Harbor was the third-largest population center in all of New York state, after Albany and New York City.

Until the federal government established the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, it had several schools for the training of midshipmen. Commodore Isaac Chauncey, writing to the Secretary of the Navy on November 30, 1814, described a school established at Sacket's Harbor on Lake Ontario in that year:

Sir. I have the pleasure to inform you that I have established a Mathematical School under the direction of my Chaplain the Revd. Mr. Felch who is fully competent to the duties of such a School. More than One hundred Officers attend this School, as they can be spared from duty and about Sixty Lieutenants and Midshipmen attend daily who make great progress in the various branches of Mathematics Navigation. etc.

The end of the war came in 1815 before the Navy completed construction of the last warship, the USS New Orleans. She was put into storage and never completed. She was finally scrapped in 1883.

19th through 20th centuries

The military recognized the continued importance of Sackets Harbor's strategic location. The Navy Shipyard operated until 1874, building ships such as USRC Active (1843), a revenue cutter. In 1848 a new Sackets Harbor Naval Station was constructed. After 1884, the base was used mostly for training.

The Army took over privately owned land of Samuel Luff just north of the village to build Madison Barracks (c. 1814–1819). Well into the late 19th century, this was a substantial military installation; the Army added new construction including housing, a school, a hospital, stables for horses, and supporting infrastructure. Ulysses S. Grant was among the officers who served here. During World War I, the base was used primarily as a hospital post, and in World War II as a training post.

Madison Barracks has been designated as an Historic District and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The New York State Museum of Military History calls it "a living museum of military architecture". Forts :: New York State Military Museum and Veterans Research Center Comprising the northeastern quarter of the village, the Madison Barracks is being slowly redeveloped as a planned commercial/residential area. The New York City consortium Fort Pike Associates holds title to unsold land in the complex.

In July 2017, the  Horse Island, located just west of the village, was acquired for preservation by the Civil War Trust, aided by a grant from the National Park Service. It was the site of a War of 1812 engagement. This was the first time in the US that a grant from the American Battlefield Land Grant program has been used to preserve a War of 1812 site.

Sackets Harbor developed as an important Great Lakes port through most of the 19th century. Commercial shipyards were built that adjoined Navy Point. In 1817 a local consortium of military officers and businessmen—General Jacob Brown, Commodore Melancthon Taylor Woolsey, Charles Smyth, Eric Lusher, Elisha Camp, Samuel F. Hooker, and Hunter Crane—financed the construction of the 240-ton Ontario. It was the first US steamboat to be built west of the Hudson River and operated on the Great Lakes. This was the beginning of extensive steamboat traffic on the Great Lakes, including passenger boats that stopped at towns around the lakes.

On July 12, 1834, Louis Hooker, a son of Samuel Hooker, was aboard the schooner Illinois from Sackets Harbor when it was the first commercial ship to enter Chicago harbor, a sign of what was soon to be greatly increased Great Lakes trade with that city and region. Samuel F. Hooker and his sons had shipping interests in Sackets Harbor with national networks; their firm had steamboats based in Louisville, Kentucky. These were part of the Mississippi River trade to and from New Orleans, a major port and one of the wealthiest cities in the nation before the American Civil War. Thus Hooker and similar upstate New York businessmen gained some of their wealth from the domestic slave trade, as Louisville was a major shipping point for slaves sold to New Orleans markets and the Deep South.

As cities industrialized and major economic development moved West, from 1870–1930 the village became a popular destination for families taking lengthy summer vacations. It attracted visitors from Chicago and other major cities around the Great Lakes, many of whom had family who had lived in Sackets Harbor before the mid-19th century westward migration. Some maintained second homes in historic properties of the village.

In the early 21st century, heritage tourism and summer recreation have been renewed sources of growth for the village. Navy Point is a marina providing moorings and facilities for private boats.

The Elisha Camp House, Galloo Island Light, Madison Barracks, Sackets Harbor Battlefield, Sackets Harbor Village Historic District, and Union Hotel are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Notable people
 Frances Bible, opera singer
 American military officer and explorer Zebulon Pike was buried in Sackets Harbor after his death in combat at the Battle of York in 1813. His remains were interred with honors at the military cemetery on Dodge Avenue. A namesake warship, USS General Pike, was built and launched at Sackets Harbor before the end of that year.
 Brigadier General and former U.S. Representative from Maryland Leonard Covington, who also perished in 1813, at the Battle of Crysler's Farm.
Colonel Elisha Camp founded and built historic Camp Manor in 1811. He also served the US Army in the War of 1812 as one of its Quartermasters under General Jacob Brown.
 President Ulysses S. Grant served two tours of duty at Madison Barracks in Sackets Harbor as a junior army officer.
 General Mark Wayne Clark was born at the Madison Barracks.
 Bartender Jerry Thomas, considered "the father of American mixology," was born in Sackets Harbor in 1830.
 Wisconsin State Assemblyman and Senator Hobart Sterling Sacket was born in Sackets Harbor in 1844.
 Wisconsin State Assemblyman Samuel Ryan, Jr., was born in Sackets Harbor in 1824.
 Martha Foote Crow, writer, literary scholar and pioneer in women's higher education in the United States, was born in Sackets Harbor in 1854.

Additional facts
Company B of the United States Regiment of Dragoons, which is today 2nd Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment, was organized at Sackets Harbor on July 29, 1833. It moved west to join the rest of the regiment at Jefferson Barracks, Lemay, Missouri, arriving September 6, 1833.
The World War II tanker, the SS Sackets Harbor, was named after the village.
Sackets Harbor is the hometown of "Funny Cide", the famous gelding owned by Sackatoga Stable. In 2003 he won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes, making him a contender for the Triple Crown, but lost the Belmont.
The village is the setting for American Girl's Caroline Abbott doll, introduced in 2013, and her stories, which are set during the War of 1812.

Geography
Sackets Harbor is located at  (43.946503, −76.117758).

According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of , of which , or 0.26%, are water. The village is on Black River Bay, southwest of the mouth of the Black River, on Lake Ontario. Its protected harbor was critical to the founding and early history of the village. Much of Lake Ontario was gouged out of rock by glaciers. There were few protected harbors on the south shore deep enough for major shipping in the early 19th century.

New York State Route 3 passes east of the village, which is at the convergence of County Roads 62 (Sulphur Springs Road) and 75 (Adams Road/Dodge Avenue). Watertown, the Jefferson county seat, is  to the east, and Henderson Harbor is  to the southwest.

Demographics

As of the census of 2000, there were 1,386 people, 653 households, and 370 families residing in the village. The population density was . There were 791 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the village was 97.26% White, 0.43% African American, 0.29% Native American, 0.29% Asian, 0.36% from other races, and 1.37% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.73% of the population.

There were 653 households, out of which 23.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 45.2% were married couples living together, 8.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 43.3% were non-families. 35.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 9.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.11 and the average family size was 2.72.

In the village, the population was spread out, with 18.8% under the age of 18, 11.0% from 18 to 24, 37.7% from 25 to 44, 21.7% from 45 to 64, and 10.9% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 34 years. For every 100 females, there were 113.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 113.3 males.

The median income for a household in the village was $42,629, and the median income for a family was $51,397. Males had a median income of $33,696 versus $26,917 for females. The per capita income for the village was $23,269. About 5.8% of families and 7.8% of the population were below the poverty line, including 10.9% of those under age 18 and 7.7% of those age 65 or over.

Education
Sackets Harbor Central School District provides public education in the area, and operates a high school and elementary school.

References

Further reading
 Sackets Harbor Forts, New York State Military Museum accessed 30 Sept 2007
Patrick A. Wilder, The Battle of Sackett's Harbour: 1813, Baltimore, MD, Nautical & Aviation Publishing Company of America, 1994, p. 49

External links

 "Sackets Harbor History & Genealogy",  American Local History Network,
 "Sackets Harbor Battlefield State Historic Site", N.Y. State Parks
 Village of Sackets Harbor, NY, official website
 Sackets Harbor Information, 1000 Islands website
 "Early History of Sackets Harbor, NY"

New York State Heritage Areas
Villages in New York (state)
Villages in Jefferson County, New York
New York (state) in the War of 1812
Populated places on Lake Ontario in the United States

Sackets Harbor, New York


Stonemasonry is the craft of making things out of stone. People who do this are called stonemasons. Their crafts have existed since the start of civilization. They have made important buildings and structures out of stone. This stone comes from the earth. Stone has been used to build many long-lasting things. These could be monuments, artifacts, cathedrals and cities. These can often be seen in many cultures. Some monuments made out of stone include, the Egyptian pyramids and the Greek Parthenon. Stonehenge is also a famous stone building.

Art

Stonemasonry


Traveller is a historical novel written by Richard Adams in 1988. It recounts the American Civil War through the viewpoint of Traveller, the favorite horse of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

Plot
In his stable, Traveller, the favorite horse of retired Civil War general Robert E. Lee, relates the story of his life and experiences to his feline friend Tom. His narrative, meant to begin in the early spring of 1866, follows the events of the war as seen through a horse's eyes, from the time he was bought by General Lee in 1862 until Lee's death in 1870.

At the end of the novel, Traveller, with undying faith in Lee, remains convinced that the Confederate Army beat the Union and that Lee is now "commander of the country" (versus his actual postbellum role as president of Washington University). Despite being led in Lee's funeral procession, Traveller does not understand that his master has died and will not return to ride again.

Narrative style
The main character, Traveller, relates his life story aloud to his friend Tom, a cat with whom he shares the barn. As such the entire narrative is written in a way meant to portray a Southern accent, reflecting Traveller's locality. The events of the war are told from the horse's point of view.

Characters

Horses

Major military horses
Traveller – A gray American Saddlebred gelding with a dark mane. The narrator of the novel. Originally named Jeff Davis.
Richmond – An aggressive bay stallion belonging to "Marse Robert" (Robert E. Lee). Died of colic.
Brown-Roan – Also known as The Roan. A good-natured gelding of Marse Robert's. Had to be retired after going blind.
Little Sorrel – "Cap-in-his-Eye's" horse, also known as Old Sorrel. One of Traveller's closest friends. Sorrel sometimes foresees the future, predicting Cap-in-his-Eye's death shortly before it happens.
Skylark – "Jine-the-Cavalry's" primary horse. Proud, but friendly.
Joker – Major Talcott's horse. Usually good-humored and sarcastic.

Minor military horses
Ajax – A large sorrel gelding given to Marse Roberts after he injures his hands. Rarely used due to his size. Died after Lee's retirement from injuries sustained from a sharp prong on a gate latch.
Brigand – A large black horse belonging to General Mahone
Buckthorn – An artillery general's horse
Champ – "Red Shirt's" horse; Traveller learns of Red Shirt's death from him. After Red Shirt's death, Champ is ridden by Sergeant Tucker.
Chieftain – "Little General's" horse; dies after his legs are shot out by a Union soldier at the Battle of Gettysburg.
Cincinnati – A black horse belonging to Union Army General Ulysses S. Grant. Traveller meets him at the surrender at Appomattox, under the assumption that it is the Union Army that has surrendered.
Crockett – An old horse shot and killed in front of Traveller at the Battle of Sayler's Creek
Dancer – Captain Wilbourn's horse
Frigate – A horse that informs Traveller of Old Pete's injuries at the Battle of the Wilderness
Ginger – Colonel Long's horse
Ivy – A mare
Leopard – Major Venable's mount
Lucy Long – A mare purchased as Marse Roberts's backup horse after his hands were injured in an accident.
Mercury – General Marshall's mount
Merlin – Sergeant Tucker's mount
Misty – A gray horse belonging to a gunnery officer
Rollo – A haughty, bragging stallion belonging to one of Jine-the-Cavalry's men
Romeo – A black gelding belonging to Ringlets
Sovereign – Eppa's horse
Star of the East – Jine-the-Cavalry's secondary mount
Trumpeter – A chestnut horse belonging to one of Red Shirt's commanders

Other horses
Bandit – One of Traveller's stablemates during his time with Joe
Bluebird – Captain White's filly
Daffodil – A mare
Emerald – A pretty mare belonging to Judge Cox' wife.
Flora – Traveller's mother
Frisky – An old nag
Monarch – A stallion at Blue Sulphur Springs
Moonlight – A filly at Blue Sulphur Springs
Ruby – A mare belonging to Andy
Ruffian – A gelding at Blue Sulphur Springs; towards the end of the war, Traveller meets Ruffian again, injured and exhausted, having been abandoned by the side of a road. He later learns that Ruffian recovered and was retired to a farm.
Thunder – Confederate President Jefferson Davis's horse

Other animals
Tom the Nipper – Miss Life's cat. Traveller relates his story to Tom through the novel.
Baxter – Another barn cat at the estate
Sandy – A goat sharing the barn with Traveller at Lee's estate
Dragon and Logan – Two mules belonging to a farmer the soldiers meet on a march

Humans

Although based on existing historic figures, most of the humans in the novel are given nicknames by Traveller. The following is a list of the human characters' real names and corresponding nicknames, as well as the horse or horses that usually accompany them.

Major military men
"Marse Robert" – General Robert E. Lee. Called "Marse Robert" after Traveller hears a stablehand refer to him as such. His horses are Traveller, Richmond, Brown-Roan, Lucy Long, and Ajax.
"Cap-in-his-Eyes" – General Stonewall Jackson. Traveller's name for Jackson comes from his true-to-life habit of wearing his hat pulled low over his face. His horse is Little Sorrel.
"Jine-the-Cavalry" – General J.E.B. Stuart. Traveller dubbed him "Jine-the-Cavalry" (a common pronunciation of the military song Join the Cavalry) after the general made the statement several times during their first encounter. His horses are Skylark and Star of the East.
"Red Shirt" – General A. P. Hill. His horse is Champ.
"The Little General"- General Daniel Harvey Hill
"Ringlets" – General George Pickett. His horse is Romeo.
"Old Pete" – General James Longstreet. His horse is Hero.
"Sweeny" – Joel Sweeney. One of Jine-the-Cavalry's men, known for playing his banjo.
"The Fat General" General Lafayette McLaws. One of Old Pete's commanders.
"The Bald General" – General Richard S. Ewell
"The Cussing General" – General Jubal Early
"Marse Taylor" – Major Walter H. Taylor, Lee's aide-de-camp
"Vot-you-voz" – Heros von Borcke. Traveller gives his name as "Bork or Pork or something".
Captain Joe Broun – Joseph M Broun. The quartermaster of the 3rd Virginia Infantry. Broun purchased Traveller from Captain Johnston and renamed him Greenbriar. He later sold him to General Lee. His horse is Traveller as Greenbriar.
Major Talcott – His horse is Joker

Minor military men
Captain Wilbourn – One of Cap-in-his-Eyes' officers. His horse is Dancer.
Colonel Long – His horse is Ginger.
Colonel Marshall – Charles Marshall, Lee's military secretary. Rides with Lee and the other generals at the surrender at Appomattox. His horse is Mercury.
Colonel Sorrel – Gilbert Moxley Sorrel, General Longstreet's chief of staff.
Eppa – Eppa Hunton. One of Ringlets' officers. His horse is Sovereign.
General Alexander – Edward Porter Alexander. Rides with Lee at the surrender at Appomattox.
General Fitz Lee – Fitzhugh Lee, nephew of Robert E. Lee. Rides with Lee at the surrender at Appomattox.
General Gordon – General John Brown Gordon.
General Hood – General John Bell Hood
General Johnston – General Joseph E. Johnston
General McGowan – Samuel McGowan
General Mahone – William Mahone. His horse is Brigand.
General Pendleton – William N. Pendleton, chief of artillery for the Army of Northern Virginia.
General Walker – James A. "Stonewall Jim" Walker
General Wilcox – Cadmus M. Wilcox
Major Venable – Charles S. Venable, one of Lee's aides. His horse is Leopard.
Sergeant Tucker – George W. Tucker. Rides with Lee and the other generals at the surrender at Appomattox. His horse is Merlin.

Other humans
"Miss Life" – Mildred "Precious Life" Childe Lee, youngest daughter of Robert E. Lee.
"Miss Agnes" – Eleanor Agnes Lee, daughter of Robert E. Lee.
"Mr. Custis" – George Washington Custis Lee, eldest son of Robert E. Lee.
"Marse Rooney" –  William Henry Fitzhugh Lee, second son of Robert E. Lee.
Jim – Captain James W. Johnston. Traveller's original owner and trainer.
Andy – Andrew Johnston. Jim's father.
Zeb – A horse groomer at Blue Sulphur Springs.
Mr. Senseney – The farrier at Lee's estate.
Miss Dab
Perry and Meredith – Two of General Lee's servants
Bryan –
The President – Confederate President Jefferson Davis
Dave –
Grace Darling –
Jennie and Fannie – Two young girls near Lee's estate
Isaiah –
Captain White –  Horse: Bluebird
Mr. Turnbull – A man who lets Lee use his property as headquarters
Judge Meredith – Solomon Meredith
Judge Cox – A man who allows Lee to rest at his house after the Battle of Sayler's Creek.

References

British historical novels
Novels set during the American Civil War
1988 British novels
Cultural depictions of Robert E. Lee
Novels by Richard Adams
Hutchinson (publisher) books
Novels about horses

Traveller (novel)


¡Ask a Mexican! was a syndicated satirical weekly newspaper column written by Gustavo Arellano in the Orange County, California alternative weekly OC Weekly. Publication of ¡Ask a Mexican! began in 2004 as a one-time spoof, but popularity has made it one of the weekly's most popular columns.

History
Every week, readers submit their questions about Mexican-American people and culture, including their customs, labor issues, and illegal immigration. Arellano usually responds to two queries a week in a politically incorrect manner often starting with the words "Dear Gabacho." The column appears in about a dozen newspapers across the country. Arellano has won numerous awards for the column, including the 2006 and 2008 Best Non-Political Column in a large-circulation weekly from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, the 2007 Presidents Award from the Los Angeles Press Club and an Impacto Award from the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and a 2008 Latino Spirit award from the California Latino Legislative Caucus.

The columns were collected in book form in 2008 as ¡Ask a Mexican! (Scribners, ).

On October 13, 2017, Arellano resigned his position with OC Weekly after refusing its owner's directive to fire half his staff.  He told Tom Leykis that the paper owns the "copyright" (actually trademark) on the name ¡Ask a Mexican!, but that he intended to continue writing for other venues.

References

External links
OC Weekly
Mireya Navarro. "The Mexican Will See You Now". The New York Times, 23 June 2007.
Interview with Arellano on Ask a Mexican, February 10, 2016, C-SPAN

Satirical columns
Mexican-American culture in California
Orange County, California
2004 introductions

Ask a Mexican


A hash calendar is a data structure that is used to measure the passage of time by adding hash values to an append-only database with one hash value per elapsed second. It can be thought of special kind of Merkle or hash tree, with the property that at any given moment, the tree contains a leaf node for each second since 1970‑01‑01 00:00:00 UTC.

The leaves are numbered left to right starting from zero and new leaves are always added to the right. By periodically publishing the root of the hash-tree is it possible to use a hash calendar as the basis of a hash-linking based digital timestamping scheme.

History

The hash calendar construct was invented by Estonian cryptographers Ahto Buldas and Mart Saarepera based on their research on the security properties of cryptographic hash functions and hash-linking based digital timestamping. Their design goal was to remove the need for a trusted third party i.e. that the time of the timestamp should be verifiable independently from the issuer of the timestamp.

Construction of a hash calendar

There are different algorithms that can be used to build a hash calendar and extract a relevant hash chain per second. The easiest is to imagine the calendar being built in two phases. In the first phase, the leaves are collected into complete binary trees, starting from left, and making each tree as large as possible.

In the second phase, the multiple unconnected trees are turned into a single tree by merging the roots of the initial trees, but this time starting from the right and adding new parent nodes as needed (red nodes).

The hash chains can then be extracted as from any hash tree. Since the hash calendar is built in a deterministic manner, the shape of the tree for any moment can be reconstructed knowing just the number of leaf nodes in the tree at that moment, which is one more than the number of seconds from 1970‑01‑01 00:00:00 UTC to that moment. Therefore, given the time when the calendar tree was created and a hash chain extracted from it, the time value corresponding to each leaf node can be computed.

Distributed hash calendar

The Distributed hash calendar is  a distributed network of hash calendar nodes. In order to ensure a high availability service it is possible to have multiple calendars in different physical locations all of which communicate with each other to ensure that each calendar contains identical hash values. Ensuring that the calendars remain in agreement is a form of Byzantine fault tolerance

To the right  a 5 node calendar cluster is shown where each node communicates with every other node in the cluster and there is no single point of failure. Although each node has a clock the clock is not used for setting the time directly but as a metronome to ensure that the nodes "beat" at the same time.

Applications
A five node hash calendar cluster is a component of Keyless Signature Infrastructure (KSI), each leaf in the hash calendar being the aggregate hash value of a globally distributed hash tree.

See also
 Cryptographic hash functions
 Linked Timestamping
 Hash list
 Hash table
 Merkle tree
 Provably secure cryptographic hash function

References

External links
  – Explains both the hash tree structure and the use of it to handle many one-time signatures.
 Efficient Use of Merkle Trees – RSA labs explanation of the original purpose of Merkle trees: To handle many Lamport one-time signatures.
 https://web.archive.org/web/20110625054822/http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/toolkit/secure_hashing.html

Error detection and correction
Cryptographic hash functions
Hashing
Trees (data structures)

Hash calendar


The Julian day or Julian day number (JDN) is the number of days that have passed since the initial epoch defined as noon Universal Time (UT) Monday, 1 January 4713 BC in the Julian calendar. That noon-to-noon day is defined as Julian day 0. Thus all JDNs that are evenly divisible by 7 are Mondays. Negative values may also be used; although, those predate recorded history.

For example, right now at  the JDN is  (). When this JDN is divided by 7, the remainder is , which is an integer expression for the day of the week with 0 representing Monday.

The Julian date (JD) is a continuous count of days and fractions elapsed since the same initial epoch. Currently the JD is . The integral part (its floor) gives the Julian day number. The fractional part gives the time of day since noon UT as a decimal fraction of one day or fractional day, with 0.5 representing midnight UT. Typically, a 64-bit floating point (double precision) variable can represent an epoch expressed as a Julian date to about 1 millisecond precision.

A Julian date of 2454115.05486 means that the date and Universal Time is Sunday 14 January 2007 at 13:18:59.9.

The decimal parts of a Julian date:
0.1 = 2.4 hours or 144 minutes or 8640 seconds
0.01 = 0.24 hours or 14.4 minutes or 864 seconds
0.001 = 0.024 hours or 1.44 minutes or 86.4 seconds
0.0001 = 0.0024 hours or 0.144 minutes or 8.64 seconds
0.00001 = 0.00024 hours or 0.0144 minutes or 0.864 seconds.

Almost 2.5 million Julian days have elapsed since the initial epoch. JDN 2,400,000 was November 16, 1858. JD 2,500,000.0 will occur on August 31, 2132 at noon UT.

The Julian day number can be considered a very simple calendar, where its calendar date is just an integer. This is useful for reference, computations, and conversions. It allows the time between any two dates in history to be computed by simple subtraction.

The Julian day system was introduced by astronomers to provide a single system of dates that could be used when working with different calendars and to unify different historical chronologies. Apart from the choice of the zero point and name, this Julian day and Julian date are not directly related to the Julian calendar, although it is possible to convert any date from one calendar to the other.

References

Days

Julian day


Harold Arlen (born Hyman Arluck; February 15, 1905 – April 23, 1986) was an American composer of popular music, who composed over 500 songs, a number of which have become known worldwide. In addition to composing the songs for the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz (lyrics by Yip Harburg), including "Over the Rainbow", Arlen is a highly regarded contributor to the Great American Songbook. "Over the Rainbow" was voted the 20th century's No. 1 song by the RIAA and the NEA.

Life and career
Arlen was born in Buffalo, New York, the child of a Jewish cantor. His twin brother died the next day. He learned to play the piano as a youth, and formed a band as a young man. He achieved some local success as a pianist and singer before moving to New York City in his early twenties, where he worked as an accompanist in vaudeville and changed his name to Harold Arlen. Between 1926 and about 1934, Arlen appeared occasionally as a band vocalist on records by The Buffalodians, Red Nichols, Joe Venuti, Leo Reisman, and Eddie Duchin, usually singing his own compositions.

In 1929, Arlen composed his first well-known song: "Get Happy" (with lyrics by Ted Koehler). Throughout the early and mid-1930s, Arlen and Koehler wrote shows for the Cotton Club, a popular Harlem night club, as well as for Broadway musicals and Hollywood films. Arlen and Koehler's partnership resulted in a number of hit songs, including the familiar standards "Let's Fall in Love" and "Stormy Weather".  Arlen continued to perform as a pianist and vocalist with some success, most notably on records with Leo Reisman's society dance orchestra.

In the mid-1930s, Arlen married, and spent increasing time in California, writing for movie musicals. It was at this time that he began working with lyricist E. Y. "Yip" Harburg. In 1938, the team was hired by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to compose songs for The Wizard of Oz, the most famous of which is "Over the Rainbow", for which they won the Academy Award for Best Music, Original Song. They also wrote "Down with Love" (featured in the 1937 Broadway show Hooray for What!), "Lydia the Tattooed Lady", for Groucho Marx in At the Circus in 1939, and "Happiness is a Thing Called Joe", for Ethel Waters in the 1943 movie Cabin in the Sky.

Arlen was a longtime friend and onetime roommate of actor Ray Bolger, who starred in The Wizard of Oz.

In the 1940s, he teamed up with lyricist Johnny Mercer, and continued to write hit songs like "Blues in the Night", "Out of this World", "That Old Black Magic", "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive", "Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home", "Come Rain or Come Shine" and "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)".

Arlen composed two of the defining songs of Judy Garland's career: "Over the Rainbow" and "The Man That Got Away", the last written for the 1954 version of the film A Star Is Born. At her famous 1961 Carnegie Hall concert, after finishing a set of his songs, Garland acknowledged Arlen in the audience and invited him to receive an ovation.

Arlen recorded his debut album as a vocalist, Harold Sings Arlen (With Friend), in 1966. Barbra Streisand accompanied him on two songs.

Marriage and death
Arlen and Anya Taranda married on January 6, 1937, over the objection of their parents, because she was Gentile and he was Jewish. In 1951, Anya was institutionalized for seven years. Coming home the same year that Celia Arnuk (Harold's mother) had passed away, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 1969, which became fatal by 1970.
Arlen never remarried. He died of cancer on April 23, 1986, at his Manhattan apartment at the age of eighty-one.  Arlen is buried next to his wife at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.  After Arlen's death, Irving Berlin summed up his life at a tribute, saying: "He wasn't as well known as some of us, but he was a better songwriter than most of us and he will be missed by all of us."

Shortly before his death, Arlen adopted his own nephew, Samuel, the 22 year old adult son of his brother Julius "Jerry" Arluck; his estate would have an heir in order to extend his copyright. Known as Samuel Arlen, he is a musician in his own right, as both a saxophonist as well as a music publisher; his control extends to the company that owns the rights to the Arlen catalog.

Timeline

1905 Arlen born in Buffalo, New York
1920 (age 15) He formed his first professional band, Hyman Arluck's Snappy Trio.
1921 (16) Against his parents' wishes he left home.
1923 (18) With his new band – The Southbound Shufflers, performed on the Crystal Beach lake boat "Canadiana" during the summer of 1923.
1924 (19) Performed at Lake Shore Manor during the summer of 1924.
1924 (19) Wrote his first song, collaborating with friend Hyman Cheiffetz to write "My Gal, My Pal". Copyrighting the song as "My Gal, Won't You Please Come Back to Me?" and listed lyrics by Cheiffetz and music by Harold Arluck.
1925 (20) Makes his way to New York City with the group, The Buffalodians, with Arlen playing piano.
1926 (21) Had first published song, collaborating with Dick George to compose "Minor Gaff (Blues Fantasy)" under the name Harold Arluck.
1928 (23) Hyman (or Chaim (Hebrew name meaning life)) Arluck renames himself Harold Arlen.
1929 (24) Landed a singing and acting role as Cokey Joe in the musical The Great Day.
1929 (24) Composed his first well known song – "Get Happy" – under the name Harold Arlen.
1929 (24) Signed a yearlong song writing contract with the George and Arthur Piantadosi firm.
1930–1934 (25–29) Wrote music for the Cotton Club.
1933 (28) At a party, along with partner Ted Koehler, wrote the major hit song "Stormy Weather"
1934 (29) Wrote "Ill Wind (You're Blowin' Me No Good)" with lyrics by Ted Koehler for their last show at the Cotton Club Parade, in 1934, which was sung by Adelaide Hall
1935 (30) Went back to California after being signed by Samuel Goldwyn to write songs for the film Strike Me Pink.
1937 (32) Composed the score for the Broadway musical Hooray for What!. Married 22-year-old Anya Taranda, a celebrated Powers Agency model and former Earl Carroll and Busby Berkeley showgirl, actress, and one of the Original "Breck Girls".
1938 (33) Hired by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to compose songs for The Wizard of Oz.
1938 (33) While driving along Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood and stopping in front of Schwab's Drug Store, he came up with the song "Over the Rainbow".
1939 (34) Wrote music for the Marx Brothers' film At the Circus.
1941 (36) Wrote "Blues in the Night"
1942 (37) Along with Johnny Mercer, he wrote one of his most famous songs, "That Old Black Magic".
1943 (38) Wrote "My Shining Hour"
1944 (39) While driving with songwriter partner Johnny Mercer came up with the song "Accentuate the Positive".
1945 (40) In a single evening's work in October with Johnny Mercer, came up with the song "Come Rain or Come Shine".
1949 (44) Collaborated with Ralph Blane to write the score for My Blue Heaven.
1950 (45) Worked with old pal Johnny Mercer on the film The Petty Girl, out of which came the song "Fancy Free".
1951 (46) His wife Anya was institutionalized in a sanitarium for 7 years.
1952 (47) Teamed up with Dorothy Fields on the film The Farmer Takes a Wife.
1953 (48) Harold's father, Cantor Samuel Arluck, died.
1954 (49) The musical A Star is Born starring Judy Garland singing the now classic, Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin collaboration, "The Man That Got Away".
1954 (49) Becomes dangerously ill with a bleeding ulcer and is hospitalized but recovers to work with Truman Capote on the musical House of Flowers.
1958 (53) His mother Celia Arluck dies and Harold does not touch music for over a year, mourning her loss.
1962 (56) Wrote the score for the animated musical Gay Purr-ee, lyrics by E.Y. Harburg.
1970 (65) Arlen's wife Anya Taranda dies from a brain tumor. Arlen begins to lose interest in life, withdrawing from friends and family and becoming more reclusive.
1974 (69) The theme song for the ABC sitcom Paper Moon is based on the song of that title, written by Arlen and E.Y. "Yip" Harburg in 1932. The series was based on a 1973 Peter Bogdanovich film of the same name, which used the same song.
1979 (74) Is inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
1985 (80) Adopts Samuel ("Sammy"), son of his younger brother Jerry and Rita Arluck as his son and primary heir.
1986 (81) Harold Arlen dies in New York City and is interred next to his wife at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

Works for Broadway
Earl Carroll's Vanities of 1930 (1930) – revue – contributing composer
You Said It (1931) – musical – composer
Earl Carroll's Vanities of 1932 (1932) – revue – co-composer and co-lyricist with Ted Koehler
Americana (1932) – revue – contributing composer
George White's Music Hall Varieties (1933) – revue – co-composer
Life Begins at 8:40 (1934) – revue – composer
The Show is On (1936) – revue – contributing composer
Hooray for What! (1937) – musical – composer
Bloomer Girl (1944) – musical – composer
St. Louis Woman (1946) – musical – composer
House of Flowers (1954) – musical – composer and co-lyricist
Mr. Imperium (1951) – movie musical – featured composer
Jamaica (1957) – musical – composer – Tony nomination for Best Musical
Saratoga (1959) – musical – composer

Major songs

 "A Sleepin' Bee" – lyrics by Harold Arlen and Truman Capote
 "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive" – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
 "Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home" – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
 "As Long as I Live" – lyrics by Ted Koehler
 "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" – lyrics by Ted Koehler
 "Blues in the Night" – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
 "Come Rain or Come Shine" – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
 "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead" – lyrics by E. Y. Harburg
 "Down with Love" – lyrics by E. Y. Harburg
 "For Every Man There's a Woman" – lyrics by Leo Robin
 "Get Happy" – lyrics by Ted Koehler
 "Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe" – lyrics by E. Y. Harburg
 "Hit the Road to Dreamland" – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
 "Hooray for Love" – lyrics by Leo Robin
 "I Could Go On Singing" – lyrics by E. Y. Harburg
 "If I Only Had a Brain" – lyrics by E. Y. Harburg
 "I Had Myself A True Love" – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
 "I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues" – lyrics by Ted Koehler
 "I Love a Parade" – lyrics by Ted Koehler
 "Ill Wind" – lyrics by Ted Koehler
 "I Never Has Seen Snow" – lyrics by Harold Arlen and Truman Capote
 "It Was Written in the Stars" – lyrics by Leo Robin
 "I've Got the World on a String" – lyrics by Ted Koehler
 "It's Only a Paper Moon" – lyrics by E. Y. Harburg, Billy Rose
 "I Wonder What Became of Me" – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
 "Last Night When We Were Young" – lyrics by E. Y. Harburg
 "Let's Fall in Love" – lyrics by Ted Koehler
 "Let's Take a Walk Around the Block" – lyrics by Ira Gershwin and E. Y. Harburg
 "Like a Straw in the Wind" – lyrics by Ted Koehler
 "Lydia the Tattooed Lady" – lyrics by E. Y. Harburg
 "My Shining Hour" – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
 "On the Swing Shift" – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
 "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)" – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
 "Out of This World" – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
 "Over the Rainbow" – lyrics by E. Y. Harburg
 "Right As The Rain" – lyrics by E. Y. Harburg
 "Sing My Heart" – lyrics by Ted Koehler
 "So Long, Big Time!" – lyrics by Dory Langdon
 "Stormy Weather" – lyrics by Ted Koehler
 "That Old Black Magic" – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
 "The Man That Got Away" – lyrics by Ira Gershwin
 "This Time the Dream's on Me" – lyrics by Johnny Mercer
 "What's Good About Goodbye?" – lyrics by Leo Robin
 "When the Sun Comes Out" – lyrics by Ted Koehler

Films
2003 – Stormy Weather: The Music of Harold Arlen (directed by Larry Weinstein)

Biographies

References

External links

 NPR profile of Harold Arlen on Weekend Edition Saturday

Harold Sings Arlen (with Friend), 1966 Columbia Records album , singing his own songs, dueting with Barbra Streisand on two
 Harold Arlen recordings at the Discography of American Historical Recordings.

1905 births
1986 deaths
20th-century American composers
20th-century American Jews
American musical theatre composers
Best Original Song Academy Award-winning songwriters
Broadway composers and lyricists
Brunswick Records artists
Burials at Ferncliff Cemetery
Columbia Records artists
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)
Jewish American composers
Jewish American songwriters
Male musical theatre composers
Musicians from Buffalo, New York
Songwriters from New York (state)
Vaudeville performers
Victor Records artists

Harold Arlen


Tau (τ) leptons (aka tauons, tau particle) are one of the very small elementary particles. This means that they are believed to be so small that they can not be divided any more. Tau leptons can be thought of as very heavy electrons, as they are both leptons. This is because they have about 3,500 times as much mass as electrons, and about 17 times as much mass as muons. Since they only live for 2.9x10–13 seconds, they do not have a significant role in the regular world. However, they are very important in the decay of subatomic matter.

Like the other two basic leptons, tauons have a neutrino named after them (the tau neutrino).

Tau have a charge of -1, and can be written as τ–. Since antimatter has the opposite of charge of regular matter, anti-tauons have a charge of +1, and can be written as τ+. Tauons themselves are unstable, and can decay. Also, τ+ and τ– can annihilate each other in a form of decay. When a single tauon decays, it is the only lepton that can decay into hadrons (things made of quarks). τ+ and τ– can be formed by an electron-positron (antielectron) pair combining. The two tauons then decay into an electron and a positron or a muon and an antimuon, and four of the various neutrinos. However, a single tauon decays differently than a tauon and an antitauon.

A τ– will quickly decay into a tau neutrino and a W boson. The W boson will exist for 3x10–25 seconds, before it decays into an electron and an electron antineutrino, a muon and a muon antineutrino, or a down quark and an up antiquark.

References

Elementary particles

Tau lepton


The Royal Ballet is an internationally renowned classical ballet company, based at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London. It is the largest of the three major ballet companies in Great Britain.

The Royal Ballet was founded from what was the Vic-Wells Ballet, a company founded in 1931 by Dame Ninette de Valois and Lilian Baylis. It became the resident ballet company of the Royal Opera House in 1946, and was granted a Royal Charter in 1956. It is recognised as Britain's flagship national ballet company.

The Royal Ballet employs about 100 dancers and has purpose built facilities in the Royal Opera House. The official school of the company is the Royal Ballet School, and The Royal Birmingham Ballet is an associate company. The prima ballerina assoluta of the Royal Ballet is the late Dame Margot Fonteyn.

The Royal Ballet's Principal Dancers come from all over the world. The leading male dancer at the moment is the Cuban Carlos Acosta. One of the leading ballerinas is Alina Cojocaru, a dancer of Romanian origin who was trained at the Mariinsky Ballet School.

References

Ballet companies

The Royal Ballet


Mahmud (also spelled Mahmood, Mahmoud, Mahmut, Mehmood, Mahmoed or Mehmud) is the main transliteration of the Arabic given name (, Maḥmūd) that comes from the Arabic triconsonantal root of Ḥ-M-D "Praise". The pronunciation of the name is [ mah-mood ].

Despite sharing the same triconsonantal root, this name is distinct from the name Muhammad. One of the Islamic prophet Muhammad's many names is Mahmud.

The name is common in most parts of the Islamic world; it is used as a given name for males, while the variant Mahmuda is given to females.This is a unique name (not in the top 1000 newborn names in the US in 2021).

Given name
Mahmud Kanafani Lebanese Singer
Mahmud I, Sultan of Ottoman Empire 1730-1754
Mahmud II, Sultan of Ottoman Empire 1808-1839
Mahmud II of Great Seljuk, Sultan of Baghdad 1118
Mahmud of Ghazni, ruler of Ghazni 997-1030
Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian National Authority
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran
Mahmoud Ahmed, Ethiopian musician
Mehmood Ali, Indian actor
Mehmood Bhatti, Pakistani fashion designer
Mahmut Celal Bayar, third President of Turkey
Mahmut Bezgin, Turkish footballer
Mahmut Boz, Turkish footballer
Mahmut Cuhruk, Turkish judge
Mahmoud Darwish, Palestinian poet
Mahmut Demir, Turkish sport wrestler
Mahmoud Guinia, Moroccan singer
Maulana Mehmud Hasan, Indian independence activist
Mahmut Hoşgiz, Turkish footballer
Mahmud Hotaki, Afghan ruler
Mahmud Khalid, Ghanaian politician
Mehmud Khurd, Pakistani ruler
Mahmud al-Kashgari, Turkish scholar
Mahmoud Jaballah, Egyptian-Canadian Jihad member
Mahmud Mahmud, Iranian politician
Mahmoud el-Meliguy, Egyptian Actor
Mahmud Al-Nashaf, Israeli Arab politician
Mahmud Nazari, Afghan academic
Mahmud Saedon Othman, Malay intellectual
Mahmut Özgener, Turkish Football Federation president
Mahmoud an-Nukrashi Pasha, Prime Minister of Egypt 1945-1946 & 1946-1948
Mehmood Quaraishy, Kenyan cricketer
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, American basketball player
Mahmud Shah (Sultan of Malacca), Sultan of Malacca 1488-1528
Mahmud Shah Durrani, ruler of Afghanistan 1801-1803 & 1809-1818
Mehmood Sham, Pakistani journalist
Mahmut Şenol, Turkish author
Mehmood ul Hassan Kaukab Al-Tabrezi, Pakistani poet
Mahmud Tarzi, Afghan journalist
Mahmut Tekdemir, Turkish footballer
Mahmut Yıldırım, Kurdish contract killer
Mahmut Yilmaz, German footballer
Mohamad Mahmoed, Netherlands footballer
Mahmoud Fawzi, Egyptian politician and diplomat; prime minister (1970-1972)

Surname
Abid Hamid Mahmud, Iraqi general
Ahmad Mahmoud, Iranian novelist
Alessandro Mahmoud, Italian singer
Arif Mehmood, Pakistani footballer
Arshad Mehmood (composer), Pakistani actor and music composer
Arshad Mehmood (singer), Pakistani singer
Faakhir Mehmood, Pakistani singer
Hasnat Mehmood, Pakistani artist
Karem Mahmoud, Egyptian singer
Kashif Mehmood, Pakistani actor
Khaled Mahmud, Bangladeshi cricketer
Sajid Mahmood, English cricketer
Salim Mehmud, Pakistani rocket scientist
Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, Pakistani nuclear engineer
Shahid Mahmood, Pakistani cricketer
Rashid Mahmood, Pakistani actor
Tahir Mahmood, Indian jurist
Younis Mahmoud, Iraqi footballer

Animals
Mahmoud (elephant), an elephant associated with the Year of the Elephant in Islamic history
Mahmoud (horse), Epsom Derby winner in 1936

References

Given names

Mahmood


The Pythagoras tree is a plane fractal constructed from squares. Invented by the Dutch mathematics teacher Albert E. Bosman in 1942, it is named after the ancient Greek mathematician Pythagoras because each triple of touching squares encloses a right triangle, in a configuration traditionally used to depict the Pythagorean theorem.
If the largest square has a size of L × L, the entire Pythagoras tree fits snugly inside a box of size 6L × 4L. The finer details of the tree resemble the Lévy C curve.

Construction
The construction of the Pythagoras tree begins with a square. Upon this square are constructed two squares, each scaled down by a linear factor of /2, such that the corners of the squares coincide pairwise. The same procedure is then applied recursively to the two smaller squares, ad infinitum. The illustration below shows the first few iterations in the construction process.

This is the simplest symmetric triangle. Alternatively, the sides of the triangle are recursively equal proportions, leading to the sides being proportional to the square root of the inverse golden ratio, and the areas of the squares being in golden ratio proportion.

Area
Iteration n in the construction adds 2n squares of area , for a total area of 1. Thus the area of the tree might seem to grow without bound in the limit as n → ∞. However, some of the squares overlap starting at the order 5 iteration, and the tree actually has a finite area because it fits inside a 6×4 box.

It can be shown easily that the area A of the Pythagoras tree must be in the range 5 < A < 18, which can be narrowed down further with extra effort. Little seems to be known about the actual value of A.

Varying the angle
An interesting set of variations can be constructed by maintaining an isosceles triangle but changing the base angle (90 degrees for the standard Pythagoras tree). In particular, when the base half-angle is set to (30°) = arcsin(0.5), it is easily seen that the size of the squares remains constant. The first overlap occurs at the fourth iteration. The general pattern produced is the rhombitrihexagonal tiling, an array of hexagons bordered by the constructing squares.

In the limit where the half-angle is 90 degrees, there is obviously no overlap, and the total area is twice the area of the base square.

History
The Pythagoras tree was first constructed by Albert E. Bosman (1891–1961), a Dutch mathematics teacher, in 1942.

See also
 Lévy C curve

References

External links

 Gallery of Pythagoras trees
 Filled Pythagoras Tree using VB6 by Edward Bole (Boleeman)
 Interactive generator with code

 Pythagoras Tree by Enrique Zeleny based on a program by Eric W. Weisstein, The Wolfram Demonstrations Project.

 Three-dimensional Pythagoras tree
 MatLab script to generate Pythagoras Tree
 Construction step by step in the virtual reality software Neotrie VR

Fractals

Pythagoras tree (fractal)


Bachelor of Science is an academic degree awarded by a university or other qualified institution. It is a first degree, and is given to students who graduate in a science course. Bachelor's degrees may take three to five years to complete.

The degree gives graduates the right to put BSc (or sometimes BS) after their name.

References

Academia
Academic degrees

Bachelor of Science


Elisabeth Meyer (1899 – 1968) was a Norwegian photographer and journalist who is best known for her photo-journalistic work from travels through Iran and India in the 1920s and 1930s, among them early photographs of Mahatma Gandhi. Meyer traveled through Iran on her own and may have been the first Western woman to travel through Iran in this way. There was a total ban on photographing in Iran at the time and she was arrested several times, but released with a warning. In Turkey she visited Kemal Atatürk in his private residence and his bedroom covered in pink silk. In Irak she interviewed king Faisal in his "palais just outside Baghdad". In India the young Indira Nehru helped Meyer visit the imprisoned Mahatma Gandhi, and she described the meeting like this: «Any other man would appear ridiculous in that outfit, but with regard to Gandhi all criticism is silenced. I was never particularly enthusiastic about Gandhi, but now I am completely converted. He is one of the most sympathetic humans I have ever met, he is truly a great man.» Meyer also visited Syria, Mexico and Alaska.

Meyer was born in Tønsberg to an affluent family. Her father gave her a Kodak folding camera for her travels, which seems to have led to her professional choice later. She joined the Oslo Camera Club in 1932, and then traveled to Berlin in 1937 to study photography at the Reimann School, where she studied with Walter Peterhans and Otto Croy. She worked as an apprentice for Joszef Pécsi in Budapest before returning to Norway, where she spent the war years. Meyer produced material for various publications including National Geographic Magazine and Aftenposten.

Gallery

References

Further reading
 Elisabeth Meyer Fonds, Preus Museum (Horten, Norway)
 Preus Museum Flickr
 Biography in Svart Hvitt, the journal of the Norwegian Photographers' Association

1899 births
1968 deaths
Norwegian photographers
People from Tønsberg
Photography in Iran
Photography in India
Reimann School (Berlin) alumni
Norwegian women photographers
20th-century Norwegian women artists
20th-century women photographers
Norwegian photojournalists

Elisabeth Meyer (photographer)


Hindus believe that Vishnu had many important Avatars, and the Varaha avatar was the third avatar of Vishnu. In this avatar, Vishnu took the form of a black varaha. Varaha is a Sanskrit language word

that means a boar. The Hindu scriptures tell a story about this avatar. There was a daitya (a demon) named Hiranyaksha. He threw the Earth (called Prithivi by the Hindus) into the waters of the ocean. The earth was about to sink in the ocean. At this point, Vishnu took the form of a black boar. He entered the water and carried the earth on its body and brought the earth safely to where it should be. Thus, Vishnu as a varaha saved the earth from being destroyed.

Hinduism
Hindu mythology

Varaha


Lower Manhattan (or downtown Manhattan) is the southernmost part of the island of Manhattan, the main island and center of business and government of the City of New York. Lower Manhattan or "downtown" is defined most commonly as the area delineated on the north by 14th Street, on the west by the Hudson River, on the east by the East River, and on the south by New York Harbor (also known as Upper New York Bay).

When referring specifically to the lower Manhattan business district such as Wall Street and its immediate environs, the northern border is commonly designated by thoroughfares approximately a mile-and-a-half (3 km) south of 14th Street and a mile (2 km) north of the island's southern tip: Chambers Street from near the Hudson east to the Brooklyn Bridge entrances and overpass. Two other major arteries are also sometimes identified as lower Manhattan's northern border: Canal Street, half a mile north of Chambers Street, and 23rd Street,  half a mile north of 14th Street.

Manhattan
Neighborhoods of New York City

Lower Manhattan


A cable modem is a modem that can be used to deliver (usually digital) data over Cable television infrastructure. Most of the time, cable modems are used to get access to the internet using the cable television network. To do this, cable modems use some channels of the Cable TV network. A cable modem usually translates the signals it receives from Ethernet or USB into Radio frequency channels. With Voice over IP (VoIP) technology, most cable modems can now also provide telephone lines.

In terms of network technology, a cable modem is a network bridge. It operates at layer 2 of the OSI model.

Computer hardware
Internet

Cable modem


Charlotte Emma Moore Sitterly (September 24, 1898 – March 3, 1990) was an American astronomer.

Charlotte Moore was born in Ercildoun, Pennsylvania. She graduated from Swarthmore College in 1920 and went on to Princeton to assist Henry Norris Russell. During this time, she worked at the Princeton University Observatory and the Mt. Wilson Observatory. She worked much on solar spectroscopy, studying the spectral lines of the Sun and identifying the chemical elements in the Sun. She earned a Ph.D. in astronomy in 1931 from the University of California, Berkeley on a Lick Fellowship. She then returned to Princeton.

During her second stay at Princeton, she met and married Bancroft W. Sitterly, who became a physics professor. She joined the then National Bureau of Standards (NBS) in 1945. Her tables of atomic spectra and energy levels, published by NBS, have remained essential references in spectroscopy for decades.

Later in her life, it became possible to launch instruments on rockets and she extended her work to the ultraviolet spectral lines.

1898 births
1990 deaths

American astronomers
Scientists from Pennsylvania

Charlotte Moore Sitterly


A mermaid is a mythological creature with a female human head and upper body and the tail of a fish. Mermaids are said to live mostly in the water, although sometimes they are known to come out of the water and sit on the large rocks above the sea. It was thought that they would make boats crash with their siren-like calls.

Overview and etymology
The word is a compound of mere, the Old English word for "sea", and maid, a woman. The male equivalent is a merman.
Much like sirens, mermaids sometimes sing to people and gods and enchant them, distracting them from their work and causing them to walk off the deck or run their ships aground. Other stories depict them squeezing the life out of drowning men while attempting to rescue them. They are also said to carry humans down to their underwater kingdoms or drown them.

The sirens of Greek mythology are sometimes portrayed in later folklore as mermaid-like.  But in the Odyssey they are described as birds with women's heads, not women with fish tails.  Some languages use the same word for both bird and fish creatures, such as the Maltese word 'sirena'. Other related types of mythical or legendary creatures are water fairies (e.g., various water nymphs) and selkies, animals that can transform themselves from seals to humans.

History

Ancient Near East
The first known mermaid stories appeared in Assyria, ca. 1000 BC. The goddess Atargatis loved a shepherd and accidentally killed him. She was so sad she jumped into a lake to become a fish, but the waters would not let her beauty be hidden. Because of this, she took the form of a mermaid.

A popular Greek legend turns Alexander the Great's sister into a mermaid after she died. She lived, it was said, in the Aegean that when she met a ship, she asked its sailors only one question: "Is King Alexander alive?" (;") The answer was "He lives and reigns and conquers the world" (Greek: "Ζει και βασιλεύει και τον κόσμο κυριεύει"). If they answered her question correctly, she calmed the waters for the ship, but any other answer would make her angry, and raise a storm.

Arabian Nights

The One Thousand and One Nights includes several tales have "Sea People", such as Djullanar the Sea-girl. Unlike other mythologies, these are almost the same as humans, except the fact that they can breathe and live underwater. They also breed with land humans, the children of them being able to live underwater.

In "The Adventures of Bulukiya", the protagonist Bulukiya's explore the seas, and meets some mermaids.

British Isles

Mermaids were noted in British folklore as unlucky omens. Several parts of the song Sir Patrick Spens is about a mermaid speaking to doomed ships, or telling them they will never see land again. Mermaids can also be a sign of bad weather.

Some mermaids were described as very big, up to .

Mermaids could also swim up rivers to freshwater lakes. One day, in a lake near his house, the Laird of Lorntie went to help a woman he thought drowning, and a servant of his pulled him back, warning that it was a mermaid, and the mermaid screamed after him that she would have killed him if it were not for his servant.

Sometimes, though, mermaids could appear as nicer characters, teaching humans how to cure diseases.

Mermen were thought of as more wild and ugly than mermaids, but they also were not interested in humans.

Warsaw Mermaid

The mermaid, or syrenka, is the symbol of Warsaw. Images of a mermaid symbolized Warsaw on its crest since the middle of the 14th century.

Mermaid Sighting
Some people claim to have seen dead or living mermaids from places such as Java and British Columbia. There are two Canadian reports from the area of Vancouver and Victoria, BC, one from sometime between 1870 and 1890, the other from 1967.

In August 2009, the town of Kiryat Yam in Israel offered a prize of 1 million dollars for anyone who could prove that mermaids existed off its coast, after dozens of people said they had seen a mermaid leaping out of the water like a dolphin and doing tricks in the air before returning back to where it had come from. The prize has not yet been awarded.

Art and literature

One famous image was created by John William Waterhouse, from 1895 to 1905, called A Mermaid (see the top of this article). It was an example of late British Academy style art, but disappeared and was not found until the 1970s. It is again in the collection of the Royal Academy.

The most famous in more recent centuries is Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Little Mermaid (1836), which has been translated into many languages.

The best known musical about mermaids are those by Felix Mendelssohn in his Fair Melusina and the three "Rhine daughters" in Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen.

Movies with mermaids in them are drama television series such as Charmed. Animated movies include Disney's popular musical version of Andersen's tale, and Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo.

Heraldry

In heraldry, mermaids are most well known to be presented with a comb or a mirror, and also thought of to be very vain.

A mermaid that had a shield and sword (Syrenka) is on the official Coat of arms of Warsaw. The city of Norfolk, Virginia also uses a mermaid as a symbol.

The personal coat of arms of Michaëlle Jean, Canada's Governor General, features two mermaids.

Hoaxes
In the 19th century, P. T. Barnum showed in his museum a taxidermal hoax called the Fiji mermaid. Others have made similar hoaxes, which are usually made by paper-mâché or parts of dead creatures, usually monkeys and fish, stitched together too look like a mermaid. In the wake of the 2004 tsunami, pictures of Fiji "mermaids" came up on the Internet as examples of items that had washed up onto the beach, though they were no more real than Barnum's exhibit.

Sirenia
Sirenia is a type of plant-eating mammal like the manatee the dugong that only live in rivers, swamps, and in other large areas of water. Mariners used to call these animals mermaids.

Sirenomelia
Sirenomelia, also called "mermaid syndrome", is a rare disorder. It happens when a child is born with his or her legs grown together and little or no genitalia. This, however, is as rare as conjoined twins, and only happens to one out of every 100,000 live births. It is usually very bad for the kidney and bladder, and only about four survivors were known to be alive as of July 2003.

Mermaids in Thai folklore
In Thai folklore "Phra Abhai Manee" there is a beautiful mermaid named "Praphanpheloung". She is a beautiful lady who has tail instead of legs. The story told us about a charming prince who was taken by the giantess "Pisua Samudr" and lived together with her until they have a son named "Sin -Samudr". One day Sin Samudr went out of a cave and took a merman to his father who was locked in the cave. The merman knew the story well about a young prince so he want to help him and his son escape from the giantess. The story also mention about what mermaid look like. They are very beautiful with long black hair and pale skin. They love to sing and swim under the moon. Their eyes can be able to see in the dark but blur vision in the sun. Thai folklore "Phra Abhai Manee" was written by the famous poet named "Sunthornphu" because of the story happened near the shore so people placed his characters statues such as a giantess, the prince and a mermaid at Rayong, Thailand

In popular culture
Mermaids are shown as characters in movies, including Splash and Aquamarine.

Related pages
 Cryptid
 Siren

References

Other websites

 Mermaid History
 "The Mermaid"  by Heinz Insu Fenkl, from the mermaid-themed Summer 2003 issue of the Journal of Mythic Arts
 The mermaid goddess Derketo from Lucian of Samosata's On the Syrian God (2c. AD)
 Coney Island Mermaid Parade  mermaids on parade
 17th century pamphlet telling the story of an alleged sighting of a mermaid near Pendine, Wales, in 1603
 Israeli city offers reward for proof of mermaid presence on its shore

Mermaid


Johan Anthoniszoon "Jan" van Riebeeck (April 21, 1619 – January 18, 1677) was a Dutch colonial administrator and founder of Cape Town, a city in South Africa.

Biography
Van Riebeeck was born in Culemborg in the Netherlands as the son of a surgeon. He grew up in Schiedam, where he married 19-year old Maria de la Quellerie on 28 March 1649. (She died in Malacca, now part of Malaysia, on 2 November 1664, at the age of 35). The couple had eight children, most of whom did not live through infancy.  Their son Abraham van Riebeeck, born at the Cape, later became Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies.

Joining the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in 1639, he served in many posts, like an assistant surgeon in the Batavia in the East Indies. He then went to Japan. His most important position was that of head of the VOC trading post in Tonkin, Vietnam. However, he was called back from this post as it was found that he was working trade for his own account.

In 1651 he was asked to undertake the command of the initial Dutch settlement in the future South Africa.  He landed three ships Drommedaris, Reijger and Goede Hoop at the future Cape Town on 6 April 1652 and strongly make the site as a way-station for the VOC trade route between the Netherlands and the East Indies.  The Walvisch and the Oliphant came later, having had 130 burials at sea.

References

1619 births
1677 deaths
Cape Town
Governors
Politicians from Gelderland

Jan van Riebeeck


Alexandre Guilmant (born Boulogne-sur-Mer, 12 March 1837; died Meudon 29 March 1911) was a French organist and composer.

Life

Early life and career
Alexandre Guilmant was born in Boulogne-sur-Mer. His father was an organist and organ builder, and gave young Alexandre lessons. Otherwise Alexandre was largely self-taught. He did study with Belgian teacher Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens, but by that time he was already a very good organist. From the 1860s he travelled widely in Europe, playing organs and becoming famous. Later he also visited the United States. In 1871 he became organist of the Trinité church in Paris. He kept this job until 1901.

His teaching
Guilmant became well known in France as a teacher. Together with two other musicians, Charles Bordes and Vincent d'Indy, he started the Schola Cantorum, a private college where students could study music. He taught the organ there. Earlier he had succeeded Charles-Marie Widor as organ teacher at the Paris Conservatoire. His Conservatoire pupils included Joseph Bonnet, Nadia Boulanger and Marcel Dupré.

Influence as organist
Guilmant did not just play the organ for church services. He became very famous for giving organ recitals. Often he played on organs which had been constructed by the brilliant organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. He helped to make these organs popular in France, and they were a very important influence on the way that organists composed music for their instrument.

Both Guilmant and Widor produced large works for the organ which they called "symphonies". These usually had at least four movements each, and gave the player opportunities to use many different sound effects.

His compositions

Guilmant wrote eight organ symphonies, as well as a symphony for organ and orchestra, and several shorter works for the same combination. He composed a great many miniatures, not just for organ but also for harmonium. This was useful for musicians in smaller churches which had a harmonium instead of a big organ. He wrote a book on how to play the organ, and for many years he edited collections of organ music which had been written by earlier composers.

References
The New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie; 1980;

1837 births
1911 deaths
20th-century French composers
French organists
People from Boulogne-sur-Mer

Alexandre Guilmant


Abdalmalik wis Sultan o Morocco in 1728, an member o the Alaouite Dynasty.

Reign
Son o the great Mawlay Ismail, Abdalmalik wis earmarked as his faither's successor till he fell frae favour an wis replaced as heir bi his half-brither Ahmed ed Dehebi in 1727.  Ahmed ed Dehebi proved quite ineffective as a ruler, an when it became public that he wis a drunkard, he wis owerthroun in a coup instigatit bi his awn wives.  Abdalmalik wis proclaimed Sultan, but failed tae prevent his brither's escape an made the mistake o criticisin the fiercely loyal bukhari (the imperial black bodyguards).  The bodyguard then threw their support behind the ousted Ahmed ed Dehebi, thus throwin Morocco intae yet anither civil war.

A compromise wis reached atween the brithers efter bloody fechtin, splittin Morocco intae twa kinricks.  Ahmed ed Dehebi wis tae hae Meknes for his caipital while Abdalmalik wis tae rule frae Fez.  No content wi this however, Abdalmalik arranged a face-tae-face meetin wi his brither wi the intention o assassinatin him.

The attempt failed an Abdalmalik wis sent off unner guard tae a remote prison, where several weeks later he wis assassinatit.

Sultans o Morocco
Alaouite dynasty
18t-century African fowk

Abdalmalik o Morocco


Webster is an American sitcom television series that aired on ABC from September 16, 1983 to May 8, 1987 and in first-run syndication from September 21, 1987 to March 10, 1989. The series was created by Stu Silver.

The show stars Emmanuel Lewis in the title role as a young boy who, after losing his parents, is adopted by his NFL-pro godfather, portrayed by Alex Karras, and his new socialite wife, played by Susan Clark. The focus was largely on how this impulsively married couple had to adjust to their new lives and sudden parenthood, but it was the congenial Webster himself who drove much of the plot. The series was produced by Georgian Bay Ltd., Emmanuel Lewis Entertainment Enterprises, Inc. (1986–1989) and Paramount Television (Network 1983–1987, Domestic 1987–1989).

Synopsis
The show, set in Chicago, revolves around Webster Long (Emmanuel Lewis), a 5-year-old African American orphan whose biological parents, Travis and Gert Long, were recently killed in a car accident. He is taken in by his godfather, retired football star George Papadopolis (Alex Karras), with whom Travis had played professional football in the 1970s, and his wife Katherine (Susan Clark), an upper crust socialite with zero housekeeping skills. George and Katherine's new married life was part of the premise, but it was Webster who was the main focus of the show. The Papadopolises lived in a luxurious high-rise apartment in Chicago, with burly George now working as a sportscaster at local station WBJX-TV, and Katherine working as a consumer advocate, later becoming a family psychologist.

Although the series is set in Chicago, the apartment complex shown in exterior shots of the first two seasons is actually The Mirabella condominium building, located at 10430 Wilshire Blvd, in the Westwood district of Los Angeles, California.

Sarcastic social climber Jerry Silver (Henry Polic II) was Katherine's secretary, as well as her professional and personal confidant. Webster also had an uncle, Phillip Long (Ben Vereen) who first appeared near the end of the first season. Phillip had issues with Webster living with a white couple (creating acrimony between him and George) and sought to adopt him and take him to live in Chicago's South Side. After his numerous attempts at this during the second season, Phillip moved to Hollywood to launch an acting career. In the later seasons, Phillip would return in a few guest appearances.

Shortly after being adopted, Webster starting calling George by his first name but calling Katherine "Ma'am." In one episode Katherine asked Webster why he used such a formal name, and he explained that he was calling her as close to "Mom" as he could without disrespecting his birth mother. George often called Webster "Web."

Shortly into the second season, Webster accidentally burned down the family's apartment with a science kit, and the Papadopolises had to leave the high-rise. In the next episode, the family moved to a large Victorian house located at 1432 North State Parkway in Chicago's Gold Coast (). Bill and Cassie Parker (Eugene Roche and Cathryn Damon) were the gregarious middle-aged couple who leased the house to the Papadopolises while they moved into a basement apartment below. Bill, a craftsman/shop teacher, and Cassie, an editor of high-profile romantic and crime novels, were taking in rent in order to complete the numerous additions they were making to the property. George and Bill, despite the competitiveness that occurred between them, became good buddies; Cassie and Katherine became each other's confidants; and Webster easily became the apple of the Parkers' eye, often retreating to the basement for special quality time with them.

Later in the second season, a thread of drama was added when the Parkers' estranged daughter Maggie Parker (guest star Jennifer Holmes) appeared for a tearful-reunion episode, complete with a son. Bill and Cassie also had a son named Regis, who was referred to but never seen.

Many more of Webster's friends and classmates passed through, including Rob Whitaker (Chad Allen). A recent "divorce kid" living with his mother, Rob was kidnapped by his father in one episode, and the Papadopolises and the community rallied to help Rob's mother find him. When he returned, it was Katherine who successfully intervened with his father. Later in the third season, Rob's last name inexplicably became Joiner.

Bill and Cassie disappeared after the third season; Cathryn Damon had left the series upon being diagnosed with ovarian cancer (which ultimately took her life in May 1987), and instead of recasting her role, Eugene Roche was dropped as well so that their characters would not have to be used. Damon and Roche were no longer credited on the show beginning with the season four premiere, nor were their characters evident in that episode; in the second episode of the season ("The Landlords", aired September 26, 1986), it was finally explained that the Parkers had moved to Florida, resulting in George and Katherine buying their house outright.

Jerry, who was a more prominent member of the show in the first season (receiving the "co-starring" heading in the opening credits after the show's three leads), had since become an occasional character, but would continue for the entire series.  George's jovial aging father, George Sr. (Jack Kruschen), known to all as "Papa" Papadopolis, first showed up in a couple of guest appearances in the second season, before joining as a recurring cast member in the fall of 1985. The following season, three more of Webster's friends/classmates had recurring roles—Roger (Carl Steven), Timmy (Danny McMurphy) and Tommy (Gabe Witcher). Benny (Nick DeMauro) was the proprietor of Benny's, a malt shop in downtown Chicago where many of the series regulars started frequenting midway through the fourth season. This setting was in many respects a revival of The Trocadero, an earlier malt shop featured in a few second-season episodes, whose owner, Maurice, was played in guest appearances by Richard Karron.

Production history
When Alex Karras and Susan Clark married in real life, they started their own production company, Georgian Bay Ltd. ABC approached the couple about a sitcom development deal which resulted in a proposed romantic-comedy series, Another Ballgame, to star Karras as an ex-NFL player who quickly found true love with a socialite consumer advocate (Clark) on a cruise. ABC picked it up for the fall 1983 schedule, with Paramount Television as packager, but major changes would occur before the premiere.

After seeing Emmanuel Lewis in a Burger King commercial, ABC's programming chief, Lew Erlicht, wanted to give the actor his own series. At this time, Another Ballgame creator Stu Silver desired to develop an original show based on the lead characters portrayed by Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in the film Woman of the Year and saw Alex Karras and Susan Clark's on-screen chemistry as being strikingly reminiscent of this.

The network felt the need to cast Lewis in a project quickly, before he grew another inch (like child actor Gary Coleman, who was also small for his age, Lewis would end up at ). With the number of comedy pilots ABC had greenlit for that fall's schedule, it was likely that Lewis would not be able to secure his own series and timeslot unless he was worked into already-existing comedy projects. So, among others shows, co-producers on Another Ballgame were approached about working Lewis into the show. Stars Karras and Clark liked the idea of the sudden marriage and instant adoption of a young black boy, and the Webster character was thus created.

The premise of Webster's parents' death, and his inclusion into the Papadopoulos household, originated with the second phase of the pilot, which had the show's title changed to Then Came You. Executives soon made it clear that the show's major focus would be on the Webster character, instead of it being a split romantic/family comedy. The character of George Papadopolis' buddy and broadcasting colleague, played by Art LaFleur, was summarily dropped from the regular cast; once getting to air, LaFleur only appeared in the pilot.

Karras and Clark did not approve this round of changes, as creative control was still in their hands with Georgian Bay. However, Clark originally prevented their co-producers and ABC from changing the series' title to Webster, since she wanted to maintain the ensemble aspect of the series. While early promotions for the sitcom carried the title Then Came You, network politics would end up violating Clark's request; ABC executives ultimately settled on Webster just before its fall premiere.

Webster premiered in September 1983 and was an instant hit. From the start, the final product was drawing close comparisons to NBC's popular Diff'rent Strokes, which featured the diminutive Gary Coleman as a young black boy adopted by a white family. The main differences, however, were that Lewis' character of Webster Long had an adoptive mother and father from the start who had no children, whereas Coleman's character Arnold Jackson and his older brother Willis (Todd Bridges) were adopted by a widower with a daughter Kimberly (Dana Plato). Also, Coleman's short stature was due to a congenital kidney condition, whereas Lewis was completely healthy and had no pre-existing condition to explain his height. Eventually, in the fall of 1985, Webster would be joined on ABC's Friday night lineup by Diff'rent Strokes, when the latter moved to ABC for what turned out to be its eighth and final season.

Despite the early success, the show that made it to the air as Webster was not what Karras and Clark foresaw as their ideal starring vehicle. The first season was fraught with tension, between the couple's disagreements and their protests with Paramount and ABC. After the initial episodes that set up the show's premise (George and Katherine's wedding, Webster's arrival, and the resulting adjustments) were shot, most of the plots became exclusively Webster-driven, even though it was the writers' intention to include story elements that focused on George and Katherine as much as possible. The show's married stars won many of the early script disputes, and several first-season episodes did focus on the new marriage and lives of the adult leads. The in-fighting on set continued, and especially had an effect on Lewis. Reportedly, Lewis was often whisked away from the set whenever Karras and Clark argued and demanded rewrites. It became so severe that Lewis blamed the trouble on himself.

After the first season ended, ABC stopped pushing hard for "all Webster, all the time". Paramount eventually came to an agreement with Karras and Clark that they would continue to receive prominent storylines for their characters. In the long run, the series did become part romantic and part family-oriented, as Clark and Karras wanted it to be; the series was also regarded for handling Webster's childhood stories in a more sophisticated, intelligent fashion than other comedies of the time that relied on preachy, heavy-handed morals to tell a story. The only condition that Paramount laid out for Clark and Karras was that Lewis, whom ABC saw as a money maker above all else, would get production credit alongside them. As a result, "Emmanuel Lewis Entertainment Enterprises, Inc." was launched in 1986, acting as another production company for Webster starting in its fourth season.

By season three at the latest, the stormy relations of the first season disappeared on set. The main cast bonded well from then on, with Karras becoming a surrogate father figure to Lewis. Webster director Joel Zwick, in his interview for the 2003 E! True Hollywood Story on Lewis, remarked that, "As far as TV sitcom families go, it took them longer than most to acclimate to each other."

Over the course of the fourth season, ratings dropped sharply. The show, which had been a Nielsen top 30 series, ranked 46th by the end of the season. Although ABC still saw Lewis especially as a bankable star, having recently featured him in his first self-headlined prime-time special (Emmanuel Lewis: My Very Own Show, which aired in February 1987 and featured Lewis performing alongside Sammy Davis, Jr., Bob Hope and other big-name celebrities), the network felt that Webster was past its peak in terms of ratings, and was unsure that it would ever regain the higher numbers it had during the early seasons. Having been the Friday night 8 p.m. anchor since March 1985, Webster moved back to the "protected" time slot of 8:30/7:30 on Fridays in March 1987. ABC announced the series' cancellation in May.

Cancellation and move to syndication
Even though Webster had seen its overall ratings decline leading into its cancellation, the series had always drawn a large audience of younger viewers; in fact, Websters largest audience was children.

At the time of the cancellation of Webster by ABC, there was a trend in syndication of seeing various television series that had been cancelled by the three major networks find new life as weekly syndicated series (examples of the time including Too Close for Comfort, Mama's Family, Charles in Charge, Fame, 9 to 5, It's a Living, and Punky Brewster). Even before Webster fell out of the Nielsen top 30 on ABC, Paramount had signed an exclusive deal with the show's producers to continue the show in first-run syndication if the network eventually had reason to cancel it before it reached its 100th episode. (This package deal also gave the same option to the Paramount-produced Cheers and Family Ties, if either of them were to see an early demise on NBC, but both series enjoyed long runs on that network.)

Although Webster managed to hit its hundredth episode at the end of its final season on ABC, Paramount decided to exercise their option to keep the show in production. By doing this Paramount was no longer bound by network standards and could easily target the young audience that made up the majority of its Webster viewer base. Paramount's syndication arm began a drive to sell the series to local stations, and enough bought the series to enable a fifth season to be produced.

Webster'''s fifth season premiered in syndication on September 21, 1987, with a three-episode story arc which saw Webster, George, and Katherine head to San Francisco. Beginning with the fourth episode of the season, the Papadopolis household gained a new member in George's nephew Nicky (Corin Nemec), who moved in when his parents went off to work in Nigeria on assignment for the United Nations. Nicky provided Webster with a sort of "brother figure", and the two got along famously. However, Nicky was gone from the show at the start of season six (Nemec would later reach greater fame as the star of Fox's Parker Lewis Can't Lose). Although no longer a regular when the series moved to first-run syndication, Papa Papadopolis continued to make a few guest appearances during the fifth and sixth seasons, as did Webster's friend Tommy and malt shop owner Benny.

While the lead character's plots continued to mature somewhat with Webster's onset of pre-teendom, the same "cutesy factor" remained, thanks in part to Lewis' timing and portrayal. However, this was something Lewis was slowly tiring of, despite the fact that he had more creative control over Webster at this point. Now 17 years old and about to complete his high school education (which was followed by his enrollment at Clark Atlanta University in 1989), Lewis did not have the desire to continue portraying a character roughly half his age. Ultimately, due to Lewis' height, the character of Webster Long was only depicted between the ages of 6 and 12 years old over the show's six seasons. Early in the 1988–89 season, with Lewis clearly outgrowing the title role, Karras and Clark also decided that the time was right to move on. Websters sixth season was announced to be its last, with the finale airing on March 10, 1989. Instead of a typical series finale, the last episode—titled "Webtrek"—saw Webster go on an adventure aboard the Starship Enterprise from the series' Paramount-produced sibling, Star Trek: The Next Generation. There, he interacts with Lt. Worf (Michael Dorn) from TNG, whom Webster attempts to humanize, while a series of Webster flashbacks are shown that depict the concept of feelings.

Cast

Main cast
Emmanuel Lewis as Webster Long
Alex Karras as George Papadopoulos
Susan Clark as Katherine Calder-Young Papadopoulos
Henry Polic II as Jerry Silver
Eugene Roche as Bill Parker (1984–1986)
Cathryn Damon as Cassie Parker (1984–1986)
Ben Vereen as Uncle Phillip Long (1984–1985)

Recurring cast
Jack Kruschen as George "Papa" Papadopoulos, Sr. (1985–1989)
Chad Allen as Rob Whitaker/Joiner (1985–1986)
Carl Steven as Petey/Roger (1983–1987)
Danny McMurphy as Timmy/Andy (1986–1987)
Gabe Witcher as Tommy (1987–1989)
Nick DeMauro as Umpire/Benny (1986–1988)
Corin Nemec as Nicky Papadopoulos (1987–1988) (credited as Corin "Corky" Nemec)

Notable guest stars
Heather O'Rourke as Melanie (season 1)
Harrison Page as Travis Long (flashback sequence, season 1)
Bumper Robinson as Curtis (season 1)
Richard Karron as Maurice (seasons 1–2)
Neva Patterson as Emily Calder-Young, Katherine's mother (seasons 2–3)
The Four Tops as themselves (seasons 4, 5 and 6)
Tiffany Brissette as Kathy (season 2)
Alison Sweeney as Beth ("The Uh-Oh Feeling", season 2)
Mayim Bialik as Frieda (seasons 5–6)
Frank Gifford as himself (season 2)
Diahann Carroll as herself (season 2)
Jack Elam as Dusty ("How the West Was Once", season 3)
Alan Autry as Jack ("How the West Was Once", season 3)
Norman Fell as Charlie ("Almost Home", season 3)
Mac Davis as "Uncle" Jake Tyler ("Almost Home", season 3)
Faith Ford as Terry Berman ("Almost Home", season 3)
Patrick Ewing as himself ("One More Shot", season 3)
John Thompson as himself ("One More Shot", season 3)
Harold Sylvester as Mr. Moorepark ("McGruff", season 4)
Julia Migenes as herself ("Leave it to Diva", season 4)
Michael Dorn as Lt. Worf ("Webtrek", season 6)

Episodes

Backdoor pilot
The season three episode "Almost Home" (February 21, 1986) served as a backdoor pilot for a proposed spinoff of Webster. In it, Webster flies out to visit "Uncle" Jake Tyler (country music star Mac Davis), a former college classmate of George Papadapolis and Travis Long and country music recording artist who was now caring for several foster children. Jake's background was promptly explained, in which the death of his young son and subsequent divorce from his wife prompted him to start working in a foster home. During Webster's stay with him, the young mother of one of Jake's foster sons (Faith Ford) arrives to regain custody of her child, and Jake endures a lot of pain as a result of his emotional attachment to the boy. The foster children, who ranged from preschool age to teenage, were played by Edan Gross, Billy Lombardo (also known for starring in the Punky Brewster backdoor pilot "Fenster Hall" in 1985), Shannon and Robin Lynch, Larry O. Williams, Jr. (who had previously guest starred as different characters on Webster, both in the first season and earlier in the third), and Ben Ryan Ganger. There were also appearances by Norman Fell and Allyn Ann McLerie, who could have been part of the spinoff cast as well if the concept had made it to series.

Nielsen ratings
1983–84: #26 (17.47 rating)
1984–85: #22 (17.46 rating)
1985–86: #41 (15.30 rating)
1986–87: #46 (13.80 rating)

U.S. syndication
ABC aired reruns of Webster on its daytime schedule from December 1986 to July 1987.  In addition to its continuation as a weekly series in syndication for 1987, and since Webster reached the so-called "magic number" of 100 episodes before ABC's cancellation decision, Paramount began distributing reruns of the four previous seasons to local stations alongside the new episodes produced for syndication. When the series ended in 1989, the syndicated Webster episodes were added to the rerun package.

USA Network aired reruns of the show from September 22, 1997, to March 13, 1998. It also aired on Superstation WGN from September 21, 1998, to September 2, 1999 (which was, until 2016, the last time that Webster appeared on national television).The Syracuse Herald Journal, March 13, 1998.Webster also aired on Chicago's local station MeTV and WMEU-CA (now known as MeTV's sister station MeToo since March 2008) from 2006 to 2009. It aired on Antenna TV on weekend afternoons from June 4, 2016, as the leadoff program of its "Saturday Summerthons" marathon programming stunt when it first began, to December 27, 2020.

Streaming

Hulu acquired rights to stream all seasons of Webster, from June 2014, to March 2018.

On September 10, 2021, Pluto TV announced that they would stream classic CBS shows (which involves Webster), including The Brady Bunch, The Odd Couple, etc. In October 2021, the show was added to Pluto TV.

Home media
Shout! Factory (under license from CBS Home Entertainment) has released the first four seasons on DVD in Region 1.

On October 9, 2012, Shout! Factory released a 20 episode best-of set entitled Webster- 20 Timeless Episodes''.

♦ - Shout! Factory Exclusives title, sold exclusively through Shout's online store.

See also

References

External links

1980s American sitcoms
1980s American black sitcoms
1983 American television series debuts
1989 American television series endings
American Broadcasting Company original programming
American television series revived after cancellation
English-language television shows
First-run syndicated television programs in the United States
Television series about families
Television series by CBS Studios
Television shows set in Chicago

Webster (TV series)