Pearlite is a two-phased, lamellar (or layered) structure composed of alternating layers of ferrite (87.5 wt%) and cementite (12.5 wt%) that occurs in some steels and cast irons. During slow cooling of an iron-carbon alloy, pearlite forms by a eutectoid reaction as austenite cools below  (the eutectoid temperature). Pearlite is a microstructure occurring in many common grades of steels.

The eutectoid composition of austenite is approximately 0.8% carbon; steel with less carbon content (hypoeutectoid steel) will contain a corresponding proportion of relatively pure ferrite crystallites that do not participate in the eutectoid reaction and cannot transform into pearlite. Likewise steels with higher carbon content (hypereutectoid steels) will form cementite before reaching the eutectoid point. The proportion of ferrite and cementite forming above the eutectoid point can be calculated from the iron/iron—carbide equilibrium phase diagram using the lever rule.

Steels with pearlitic (eutectoid composition) or near-pearlitic microstructure (near-eutectoid composition) can be drawn into thin wires. Such wires, often bundled into ropes, are commercially used as piano wires, ropes for suspension bridges, and as steel cord for tire reinforcement. High degrees of wire drawing (logarithmic strain above 3) leads to pearlitic wires with yield strengths of several gigapascals. It makes pearlite one of the strongest structural bulk materials on earth.
Some hypereutectoid pearlitic steel wires, when cold wire drawn to true (logarithmic) strains above 5, can even show a maximal tensile strength above . Although pearlite is used in many engineering applications, the origin of its extreme strength is not well understood. It has been recently shown that cold wire drawing not only strengthens pearlite by refining the lamellae structure, but also simultaneously causes partial chemical decomposition of cementite, associated with an increased carbon content of the ferrite phase, deformation induced lattice defects in ferrite lamellae, and even a structural transition from crystalline to amorphous cementite. The deformation-induced decomposition and microstructural change of cementite is closely related to several other phenomena such as a strong redistribution of carbon and other alloy elements like silicon and manganese in both the cementite and the ferrite phase; a variation of the deformation accommodation at the phase interfaces due to a change in the carbon concentration gradient at the interfaces; and mechanical alloying.

Pearlite was first identified by Henry Clifton Sorby and initially named sorbite, however the similarity of microstructure to nacre and especially the optical effect caused by the scale of the structure made the alternative name more popular.

Bainite is a similar structure with lamellae much smaller than the wavelength of visible light and thus lacks this pearlescent appearance.  It is prepared by more rapid cooling. Unlike pearlite, whose formation involves the diffusion of all atoms, bainite grows by a displacive transformation mechanism.

The transformation of pearlite to austenite takes place at lower critical temperature of . At this temperature pearlite changes to austenite because of nucleation process.

Eutectoid steel
Eutectoid steel can in principle be transformed completely into pearlite; hypoeutectoid steels can also be completely pearlitic if transformed at a temperature below the normal eutectoid. Pearlite can be hard and strong but is not particularly tough. It can be wear-resistant because of a strong lamellar network of ferrite and cementite. Examples of applications include cutting tools, high strength wires, knives, chisels, and nails.

References

Further reading
Comprehensive information on pearlite
Introduction to Physical metallurgy by Sidney H. Avner, second edition, McGraw hill publications.
Steels: Processing, Structure, and Performance, Chapter 15 High-Carbon Steels: Fully Pearlitic Microstructures and Applications  by George Krauss, 2005 Edition, ASM International.

External links

Metallurgy
Steel
Iron

Pearlite


Ancient woodland is the name used in the United Kingdom for woodland which has existed continuously since 1600 or before in England and Wales (or 1750 in Scotland). Before those dates, planting of new woodland was uncommon, so a wood present in 1600 was likely to have developed naturally. The American name for these forests is "old growth forest".

For many species of animal and plant, ancient woodland sites provide the only habitat. For many others, conditions on these sites are much more suitable than those on other sites. Ancient woodland in the UK, like rainforest in the tropics, is home to rare and threatened species, more than any other UK habitat. For these reasons ancient woodland is often described as an irreplaceable resource, or 'critical natural capital'.

Ancient woodland is formally defined on maps by Natural England and equivalent bodies. Many ancient woodlands have legal protection, but an ancient woodland is not automatically protected.

Examples

Cannock Chase, Staffs
Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire
Cherry Tree Wood, London
Edford Woods and Meadows, Somerset
Epping Forest, Essex
Forest of Dean West Gloucestershire
Foxley Wood, Norfolk
Hatfield Forest, Essex
Highgate Wood, London
Holt Heath, Dorset
New Forest, Hampshire
Parkhurst Forest, Isle of Wight
Queen's Wood, London
Savernake forest, Wiltshire
Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire
Wentwood, Monmouthshire
Windsor Great Park, Berkshire
Wyre Forest bordering Shropshire and Worcestershire
Yardley Chase, Northants

References

Other websites
Ancient Tree Guides by the Woodland Trust

Forests of the United Kingdom
History of England

Ancient woodland


The Napoleonic Code ‒ or Code Napoléon, officially the Code civil des Français ‒ is the French civil code established under Napoléon I in 1804. Four judges wrote the Code for Napoleon, to replace the many different kinds of law in different places. It did not allow privileges based on birth (such as nobility), established equality before the law and secured the right to property. It allowed freedom of religion. It also set up a system of Civil service where government jobs would go to the most qualified.

Due to the Napoleonic Wars the Napoleonic code became an influence on most of Europe. In particular, it influenced countries such as Italy, Spain, Portugal, Latin American countries, the province of Quebec and the state of Louisiana in the United States. It influenced all other former French colonies which base their civil law systems on the Napoleonic Code. The code of 1804:
Simplified administration division
Abolished feudal system
Allowed divorce and jury trial
Removed guild restrictions in towns
Gave privileges to businessmen, industrialists and professionals
The privileges were the right to equality,freedom and property
Transportation and communication were improved
Introduced a uniform system of measurement

References

Law of France

Napoleonic Code


David Keith Elstein (born 14 November 1944), is an executive producer and a former Chair of openDemocracy.net.

Early life and career
His parents were Polish orphans who were brought to Britain by the Rothschild Foundation, and ran a ladies' outfitters in Golders Green. On a scholarship, he was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, before gaining a place to read History at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, gaining a double first. After graduating at the age of 19, he became a trainee at the BBC in 1964. Most of his first year at the BBC though, was spent on attachment to the new Centre of Cultural Studies at Birmingham University.

At the BBC, he worked on Panorama and The Money Programme. His subsequent production credits, include for Thames Television, The World at War and This Week (of which he became editor) and elsewhere Weekend World, A Week in Politics, Yuri Nosenko, KGB and Concealed Enemies.

Director of Programmes at Thames
After a period as an independent producer working on programmes broadcast by Channel 4, he rejoined Thames Television as Director of Programmes in 1986. In this role in 1988 he signed off the controversial programme "Death on the Rock", an edition of the This Week series about Operation Flavius, the shooting in Gibraltar of three unarmed members of the IRA.

Blamed in part for Thames losing its franchise to broadcast at the end of 1992, Elstein delivered the previous year's MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival. In his speech he mocked what was now an auction as Mrs Thatcher's "National Lottery", criticised the Conservative government for behaving with "spite" towards ITV and said that the franchise round had been "a death on the rack to make up for 'Death on the Rock'." Elstein had hoped that a clause in the Broadcasting Act 1990 would save Thames thanks to its past reputation, since underbidding Carlton, the eventual winners, had been a deliberate choice. Elstein though, found that "the exceptionality clause wasn't worth the paper it was written on."

Later career
After his time at BSkyB as head of programming, he launched Channel 5 as its Chief Executive in 1997. Elstein has also been Managing Director of Primetime Productions and Managing Director of Brook Productions Ltd.

Other career highlights
He has been a visiting professor at the University of Westminster, University of Stirling and University of Oxford, having been the inaugural Visiting Professor in Broadcast Media at Oxford in 1999. His six lectures there were entitled "The Political Structure of UK Broadcasting 1949–99". The lecture series was published in 2015 as an open access eBook by meson press. Elstein was the lead author of the Broadcasting Policy Group's publication, "Beyond The Charter: The BBC After 2006" (2006). He advocates changing the funding model of the BBC and replacing the licence fee with voluntary subscription.

He is also a director of Kingsbridge Capital Advisors Limited, and was previously a supervisory board member of two German cable companies. He has also chaired Screen Digest Ltd, DCD Media plc, Luther Pendragon Holdings, Sparrowhawk Media, the British Screen Advisory Council, the Commercial Radio Companies Association, Really Useful Theatres, XSN plc, Sports Network Group plc, Silicon Media Group, Civilian Content plc and the National Film and Television School. He was also a director of Virgin Media Inc and Marine Track Holdings plc.

References

 Who's Who, 2006
 Debrett's People of Distinction, 2006

1944 births
Living people
English Jews
English people of Polish-Jewish descent
Place of birth missing (living people)
The World at War

David Elstein


Opus or the shortened form op.  after the title of a piece of music means "work".  It is followed by a number.  When a composer writes their first piece of music it is followed by the term "opus 1".  The next composition would then be called "opus 2", etc.

Giving pieces of music opus numbers helps us to identify which piece of music (from a certain composer) that composition is.  For example: Beethoven wrote lots of piano sonatas. His first Piano sonata in A flat major has the opus number of op.26. This shows that he wrote this sonata when he was young in his composing career.  Many years later, he wrote another piano sonata which is also in A flat major, and this piece one has the opus number of 110 (op. 110).

You cannot always tell from a composer's opus numbers the order in which the works were composed.  Until around the end of the 18th century, opus numbers were only given to pieces of music which were published.

Some musicologists (people who study and write about music) have studied all the works by a famous composer and have given them a catalogue number.  For example Mozart's music does not have opus numbers.  Some of them are long operas, others are tiny little pieces for the piano he might have written in a hurry one day.  A man called Köchel made a list of every single work by Mozart and gave them K numbers (K for Köchel). His numbering goes up to 622.  This is useful, for example, to tell the difference between his Symphony in G minor K183 and his Symphony in G minor K550.

The plural of "opus" is "opuses" in English.  This is because the Latin plural is opera which is rather confusing to English speakers as the word is already used in musical terminology.

The word "opus" can also refer to the "work" of an artist. (For example: "This opus was composed by Chopin," or "This opus is the last Piano sonata that Beethoven composed")

An artist's "magnum opus" means his or her "greatest" work.

Musical terminology

Opus number


Crewkerne is a town in Somerset, England where about 6,700 people live. It is in the South Somerset District.

The first time it is mentioned in history is 899, when king Alfred the Great left the manor to his son Ethelweard. The name Crewkerne comes from the Saxon words Cruce (cross) and earne (cottage), because of the early church there. There was also a mint where coins were made between 978 and 1035. In 1066, the manor belonged to Edith, mistress of Harold Godwinson. After the Norman Conquest, it belonged directly to William the Conqueror.

Other websites
 Archaeology of Crewkerne  (.pdf file)

Towns in Somerset
Civil parishes in Somerset

Crewkerne


George Frideric Handel (German: Georg Friedrich Händel) (23 February 1685 – 14 April 1759) was a German composer who went to live in England when he was a young man and later became a naturalised Briton. Johann Sebastian Bach and Handel were born in the same year. They were the greatest composers of their time, but they never met. Handel changed his name to George Frideric Handel when he became British; he removed the dots above the "a" and changed the spelling of Georg and Friedrich. The German spelling of his name (Georg Friedrich Händel) is still used by German writers.

Although they both lived in the late Baroque period, Bach and Handel's music developed differently. Handel wrote many operas and oratorios and by them became very famous. He took many trips, including to Italy where he learned a lot about composition. Bach never left central Germany, and most of the time he was a church musician who was not well known by the general public.

Handel wrote over 42 operas. Later he wrote oratorios. His most famous oratorio is the Messiah. He wrote anthems, chamber music and orchestral music including the Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks.

Life

Early years
Handel was born in Halle in the northeast of Germany, in today's Saxony-Anhalt. His father was a barber and a surgeon. He started playing the harpsichord and the organ when he was very young. He was given a clavichord when he was seven and he used to practice it in the attic where his father could not hear him. At the age of nine he was already composing. He had a teacher called Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow who was the organist of the big church, the Marienkirche, in Halle. He learned the organ, harpsichord and violin as well as composition, harmony.

Handel's father did not want him to study music; he wanted him to be a lawyer. Although Handel's father died in 1697, Handel enrolled at the University of Halle in 1703. He studied law for a year because his father wanted him to do so. After that year, Handel was unhappy studying law. He decided to stop studying law and become a musician. He became organist at the Protestant Cathedral in Halle. The next year he moved to Hamburg where he got a job as violinist and harpsichordist in the orchestra of the opera-house. Here his first two operas, Almira and Nero, were produced early in 1705. Two other early operas, Daphne and Florindo, were produced at Hamburg in 1708.

Handel was becoming a good opera composer, but he wanted to learn more, so he went to Italy in 1707. He spent four years there. His opera Rodrigo was produced in Florence in 1707, and his Agrippina at Venice in 1709. Agrippina was very popular and had 26 performances. It made Handel famous. He also had three oratorios produced in Rome. He wrote sacred music (church music) and other pieces in an operatic style, e.g. Dixit Dominus (1707).

Move to England

In 1710 Handel became Kapellmeister (music director) to George, Elector of Hanover, who would soon be King George I of Great Britain. The Elector agreed that Handel could have an immediate leave of 12 months so that he could go to London. He visited London for eight months. His opera Rinaldo was performed in 1711. It was the first time an Italian opera had been performed in England. It was an immediate success. Handel returned to Hanover in the summer of 1711 and spent a year writing chamber and orchestral music because there was no opera in Hanover. He was also trying to learn English. In 1712 the Elector allowed him to make another visit to England. In England he had patrons (rich people who gave him money). He had a yearly income of £200 from Queen Anne (while Bach earned as little as eighty pounds in a year). He was having a lot of success, and so stayed in England instead of returning to his job in the Hanover Court.

In 1714, Queen Anne died and the Elector of Hanover became King of Great Britain. Handel might have been in trouble for staying in Britain. According to one story the King forgave Handel because he wrote some lovely music called Water Music which was performed on a boat on the Thames at a royal water party. This story about the king forgiving Handel is probably not true. George would have known that Queen Anne was about to die and he would become King of Great Britain and therefore Handel's master again. In fact, the new king doubled Handel's salary. A few years later his salary increased again when he taught music to Queen Caroline's daughter.

In 1724 Handel moved into a newly built house in 25 Brook Street, London, which he rented until his death in 1759, 35 years later. The house is now called Handel House Museum and is open to the public. It was here that Handel composed some of his most famous music such as Messiah, Zadok the Priest, and Fireworks Music.

In 1729 Handel's opera Scipio (Scipio) was performed for the first time. The march from this work is now the regimental slow march of the British Grenadier Guards. In the next year he took on British nationality.

In 1731 Handel was commissioned to write four anthems for the coronation ceremony of King George II. One of these, Zadok the Priest, has been sung at every coronation ceremony since.

Handel spent most of his time working on operas. From 1722 to 1726 he was director of the Royal Academy of Music. This was an organisation that put on opera performances. It had nothing to do with the academy which is called the Royal Academy of Music today where young students study music. Handel also worked in the management of the King's Theatres and many of his operas were performed in the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. He sometimes travelled to Italy to find new Italian singers and persuade them to come to London. London became world famous for operas. In spite of everything Handel was doing for opera he had many enemies as well as friends. There was a lot of rivalry, especially with a composer called Bononcini whose music is forgotten today. Handel gave up operatic management in 1740, after he had lost a lot of money in the business.

Later years
In April 1739, age 54, he had a stroke. It was probably this which left his right arm paralysed for a while so that he could not perform, but he made an excellent recovery after six weeks at a health spa in Aix-la-Chapelle. At this time he started to write oratorios instead of operas. In 1742 his oratorio Messiah was first performed in Dublin. Surprisingly, it was not successful in London until 1750 when it was performed in aid of the Foundling Hospital Chapel. Handel performed it every year there, which brought the hospital about £600 for each performance. Handel spent most of his time in these later years composing and producing oratorios. Judas Maccabaeus was particularly popular. The singers for these oratorios were English and Italian. They were not world-famous virtuosos but singers whom Handel had trained himself.

In August, 1750, on a journey back from Germany to London, Handel was seriously injured when his carriage overturned. In 1751 he started to lose his eyesight. He died, in 1759, in London. The last concert he went to was his own Messiah. More than 3,000 mourners went to his funeral. He was buried with full state honours in Westminster Abbey. Handel never married, and kept his personal life very private. He left £20,000 which was a lot of money for those days (Approximately 2,800,000 pounds today) His niece inherited most of his money. He also left some of it to friends, servants, relations and charities. His autographs (the original copies of the music that he wrote) are now mostly in the British Museum.

His name
Handel adopted the spelling "George Frideric Handel" on his naturalization as a British subject, and this spelling is generally used in English speaking countries. The original form of his name (Georg Friedrich Händel) is usually used in Germany, but he is known as "Haendel" in France. There was another composer with a similar name, Handl, who was a Slovene and is more commonly known as Jacobus Gallus. This can be very hard for cataloguers (people trying to make a list of his music)

References

1685 births
1759 deaths
Baroque composers
18th-century British composers
German organists
Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom
People buried in Westminster Abbey
People from Halle, Saxony-Anhalt
18th-century German composers

George Frideric Handel


A round in music is a song which can be sung by two or more groups of people.   One group starts off and the next group start to sing the same song a bit later.  It should sound nice together.  When a group gets to the end of the song they start again.  They can go round and round, singing it several times.

Usually rounds are in 2, 3 or 4 parts (meaning that they are for 2, 3 or 4 groups of people).  When a group of people sing or  play a round they usually sing it an agreed number of times.  This means that the group which starts last also finishes last.

Frère Jacques is a famous French round.  London's Burning is an English round.  Both those rounds can be sung in 4 parts.

The oldest round that we know is Sumer is icumen in.  This is a very famous piece of music because it is the oldest piece of music we know that was written down.  It was written around 1250 by a monk.  It can be sung in 4 parts with 2 bass drones (held notes).

Writing music by making one part imitate another is called canonic writing.  Rounds are a kind of canon.

Related pages
Canon (music)

Musical forms

Round (music)


Robert Rutherford "Colonel" McCormick (July 30, 1880 – April 1, 1955) was an American lawyer, businessman and anti-war activist.

A member of the McCormick family of Chicago, McCormick became a lawyer, Republican Chicago alderman, distinguished U.S. Army officer in World War I, and eventually owner and publisher of the Chicago Tribune newspaper. A leading Republican and isolationist; McCormick opposed the increase in federal power brought about by the New Deal and later opposed American entry into World War II. His legacy includes what is now the McCormick Foundation philanthropic organization.

Early life and international education
McCormick was born July 30, 1880, in Chicago to Robert Sanderson McCormick (1849–1919) and his wife Katherine Van Etta Medill McCormick (1853–1932). Family members quickly nicknamed him "Bertie" because so many relatives shared the name, including his late paternal great-grandfather Robert McCormick. His maternal grandfather was Tribune editor and former Chicago mayor Joseph Medill, on whose estate McCormick would live for much of his adult life. On his father's side, his great-uncle was inventor and businessman Cyrus McCormick. His elder brother Joseph Medill McCormick (known as "Medill McCormick") was slated to take over the family newspaper business, but was more interested in running for political office, and became a member of the United States House of Representatives (1917–1919) and then the U.S. Senate before losing his bid for a second term and ending his life by suicide in Washington, D.C. in 1925. Meanwhile, from 1889 through 1893, Bertie lived a lonely childhood with his parents in London. His father Robert Sanderson McCormick was Second Secretary of the American Legation in London, serving from 1889 to 1892 under Robert Todd Lincoln. Later, his father served as his nation's ambassador to Austria-Hungary (1901–1902) and Imperial Russia (1902–1905), and replaced Horace Porter as ambassador to France in 1905.

While in London, Bertie attended Ludgrove School. Sent back to the United States, Bertie attended Groton School, as had his brother. In 1899, the year of his maternal grandfather Joseph Medill's death, McCormick matriculated at Yale College, where he was elected to the prestigious secret society Scroll and Key and graduated in 1903 (three years after his brother). Robert McCormick then attended the Northwestern University School of Law and after graduation became a clerk in a Chicago law firm.

Career
Robert McCormick was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1907. The following year, he co-founded the law firm that became Kirkland & Ellis, which represented the Tribune Company. However, his elder brother, Medill McCormick, had become depressed after taking over and expanding the family newspaper business, so, in 1908, on the advice of psychoanalyst Carl Jung, he gave up that job and became increasingly involved in the family publishing business. Despite that business involvement, a scandal that ultimately led to his marriage (see below), and his military service (which led to him becoming known as "the Colonel"), McCormick continued as a law firm partner until 1920.

In 1910, Robert McCormick took control of the Chicago Tribune and, in 1914, became editor and publisher with his cousin, Captain Joseph Medill Patterson, who was the son of a Tribune editor who had wed Joseph Medill's daughter. In 1919, Patterson, a former U.S. Representative from Illinois, moved to New York City and founded the tabloid New York Daily News. However he and McCormick, while often disagreeing, jointly held both positions at the Chicago Tribune until 1926, when McCormick assumed both roles at the Tribune, and Patterson concentrated on the New York Daily News.

In 1904, a Republican ward leader persuaded McCormick to run for alderman. Elected, he served two years on the Chicago City Council. In 1905, at the age of 25, he was elected to a five-year term as president of the board of trustees of the Chicago Sanitary District, which operated the city's vast drainage and sewage disposal system. In 1907 McCormick was appointed to the Chicago Permanent Charter Commission and the Chicago Plan Commission. However, his political career ended abruptly when he took control of the Tribune.

McCormick went to Europe as a war correspondent for the Tribune in February 1915, early in World War I. He interviewed Tsar Nicholas, Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, and First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill. McCormick also visited (and was under fire on) both the Eastern and Western Fronts. Using connections his father had made while ambassador to Russia, McCormick attended formal dinners with Grand Duke Nicholas and Grand Duke Peter. During this trip, McCormick collected fragments of the cathedral at Ypres and the city hall of Arras. Reputedly, these pieces were the first of the collection of stones that were later embedded in the facade of the Tribune Tower. However, they are not actually on display.

Military service
Returning to the United States in early 1915, McCormick joined the Illinois National Guard on June 21, 1916. His family background, education and expert horsemanship led to his being commissioned as a major in its 1st Cavalry Regiment. Two days earlier, President Woodrow Wilson had called the Illinois National Guard into federal service, along with those of several other states, to patrol the Mexican border during General John Joseph Pershing's Punitive Expedition. McCormick accompanied his regiment to the Mexican border.

Soon after the United States entered the war, the entire Illinois National Guard was mobilized for federal service in Europe. McCormick thus became part of the U.S. Army on June 13, 1917, and was sent to France as an intelligence officer on the staff of General Pershing.

Seeking more active service, he was assigned to an artillery school.

By June 17, 1918, McCormick became a lieutenant colonel, and by September 5, 1918, was promoted to a full colonel in the field artillery. He took part in the capture of Cantigny (hence his later naming his farm estate near Wheaton, Illinois), and in the battles of Soissons, Saint-Mihiel, and the second phase of the Argonne. McCormick served in the 1st Battalion, 5th Field Artillery Regiment, with the 1st Infantry Division. His service ended on December 31, 1918, though he remained a part of the Officers Reserve Corps from October 8, 1919, to September 30, 1929. Cited for prompt action in battle, he received the Distinguished Service Medal, and was later always referred to as "Colonel McCormick."

Crusading publisher
McCormick returned from the war and took control of the Tribune in the 1920s. Given the lack of schools of journalism in the midwestern United States at the time, McCormick and Patterson sponsored a school named for their grandfather, the Joseph Medill School of Journalism. It was announced by Walter Dill Scott in November 1920, and began classes in 1921.

As publisher of the Tribune, McCormick was involved in a number of legal disputes regarding freedom of the press that were handled by McCormick's longtime lawyer Weymouth Kirkland. The most famous of these cases is Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931), a case championed by McCormick in his role as chairman of the American Newspaper Publishers Association's Committee on Free Speech.

A conservative Republican, McCormick was an opponent of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and compared the New Deal to Communism. For a period in 1935, he protested Rhode Island's Democratic judiciary by displaying a 47-star flag outside the Tribune building, with the 13th star (representing Rhode Island) removed; he relented after he was advised that alteration of the American flag was unlawful.

He was also an America First non-interventionist who strongly opposed entering World War II "to rescue the British Empire". He famously published the "Victory Program," a military plan that FDR had ordered in the summer of 1941 to prepare the United States for possible entry into World War II. It had been leaked to him by US Senator Burton K. Wheeler. The publication was on December 4, 1941, only three days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The controversy it stirred died off quickly after the December 7 attack. In June 1942, the Tribune published an article that indicated that the Americans had broken Japanese codes, the 1942 Chicago Tribune incident.

As a publisher he was very innovative. McCormick was a 25 percent owner of the Tribune's 50,000 watt radio station, which was purchased in 1924; he named it WGN, the initials of the Tribune'''s motto, the "World's Greatest Newspaper". He also established the town of Baie-Comeau, Quebec in 1936 and constructed a paper mill and a hydroelectric power plant there named McCormick Dam to generate electricity for the mill.

McCormick carried on crusades against various local, state, and national politicians, gangsters and racketeers, labor unions, prohibition and prohibitionists, Wall Street, the East and Easterners, Democrats, the New Deal and the Fair Deal, liberal Republicans, the League of Nations, the World Court, the United Nations, British imperialism, socialism, and communism. Besides Roosevelt, his chief targets included Chicago Mayor William Hale Thompson and Illinois Governor Len Small. Some of McCormick's personal crusades were seen as quixotic (such as his attempts to reform spelling of the English language) and were parodied in political cartoons in rival Frank Knox's Chicago Daily News. Knox's political cartoonists, including Cecil Jensen, derided McCormick as "Colonel McCosmic", a "pompous, paunchy, didactic individual with a bristling mustache and superlative ego."

In 1943, he told an audience he helped plan a defence against an invasion from Canada at the end of World War I.
In June 1947, he gave a 100-year birthday party for the Tribune that included a fireworks show called "the most colossal show since the Chicago fire."
Other publications noted that everything about the celebration was called "the world's greatest". Time magazine editorialized that "the Tribune has been made into a worldwide symbol of reaction, isolation, and prejudice by a man capable of real hate."

McCormick had purchased the Washington Times-Herald newspaper following the 1948 death of Eleanor Medill "Cissy" Patterson, his first cousin. The paper was an "isolationist and archconservative" publication known for sensationalism. McCormick appointed his niece, then known as Ruth "Bazy" McCormick Miller as the publisher of the paper in 1949. He wanted Bazy to use the paper to create "an outpost of American principles". When the two came to a parting of the ways over her relationship with one of the paper's editors, Garvin Tankersley, as well as editorial control over the paper, he ordered her to choose between Tankersley and the Tribune Company. As a result, she resigned from the Times-Herald. Bazy later said, "I understood when I went to the Times-Herald I was to have full control. That control was not given me ... There is some difference in our political beliefs. I have broader Republican views than [McCormick] has. I am for the same people as the colonel, but I am for some more people.

McCormick tried to run the paper himself, but lost money on the venture, and sold the Times-Herald to The Washington Post in 1954. When he announced the sale, one of the paper's board members insisted that Bazy be given a chance to purchase it, so McCormick gave her 48 hours to match the $10 million asking price. She could not raise the money to do so. Upon the purchase of the Times-Herald, the Post consolidated its market position by discontinuing the rival paper.

Family life and scandal
McCormick married twice, but had no children from either marriage. His first wife was Amy Irwin, the former wife of his father's first cousin, Edward Shields Adams. Starting in the summer of 1904, McCormick had spent much time at the homes of Adams in downtown Chicago and Lake Forest, Illinois. Amanda McCormick (1822–1891), youngest daughter of family patriarch Robert McCormick, had married fellow Virginian Hugh Adams (1820–1880) before moving to Chicago to start the McCormick & Adams grain trading business. Their son, Edward Shields Adams, born in 1859, had married the much younger Amie de Houle "Amy" Irwin on April 15, 1895. She was born in 1872, the daughter of decorated soldier Bernard J. D. Irwin.

Starting in November 1913, a bitter family dispute developed. Amy Irwin Adams filed for divorce, claiming Adams was alcoholic, and the suit was granted on March 6, 1914, without her husband appearing in court. In September 1914, Adams filed another lawsuit. He sued McCormick for trespass and asked for the divorce case to be heard again. The opposition press made the most out of the scandals. Adams presented McCormick with a bill for eight years of lodging, and claimed McCormick had "wickedly and maliciously debauched and carnally knew the said Amy Irwin Adams" while his guest. Other allegations included that McCormick had a former chauffeur arrested and interrogated by a private detective. McCormick then counterclaimed that he had made loans to Adams which had to be repaid. The case was heard by Federal Court Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis in November. It was hinted that McCormick had promised to forgive the loans if Adams dropped his suit to reopen the divorce. Landis ruled in favor of McCormick in February 1915.

Following the settlement, on March 10, 1915, McCormick married Amy Irwin Adams, after waiting the year after the original divorce decree as was required by law at the time. The wedding occurred in London, in the registry office of St George's, Hanover Square, with only two witnesses present. The Tribune did not mention the wedding, nor any of the previous lawsuits.

After Amy died in 1939, McCormick became a near social recluse. On December 21, 1944, he married Mrs. Maryland Mathison Hooper in the apartment of his cousin Chauncey McCormick. She was 47 and he was 64 at the time. She lived until July 21, 1985. In his later years and until his death, McCormick lived at the estate named Cantigny, in Wheaton, Illinois.

The childless McCormick for a time mentored his niece, Ruth "Bazy" McCormick Miller (later Tankersley) to be the heir to his publishing empire. He was said to have "doted" on Bazy. When McCormick appointed her as the publisher of the Washington Times-Herald in 1949, she was 28 years old and was given the title of Vice-President. When Bazy divorced her husband in 1951, ultimately to elope with an editor at the paper, Garvin "Tank" Tankersley, the two came to a parting of the ways. McCormick considered Tankersley to be of unsuitable social status for Bazy because "Tank" was from a poor Lynchburg, Virginia, family. McCormick also disapproved of her divorce in general, which Bazy viewed as hypocritical, given McCormick's own complicated personal life. When McCormick delivered the ultimatum that she choose between Garvin Tankersley and the paper, she resigned from the Times-Herald. Though estranged for many years, Bazy and McCormick reconciled prior to his death.

Personality
McCormick was regarded as a "remote, coldly aloof, ruthless aristocrat, living in lonely magnificence, disdaining the common people ... an exceptional man, a lone wolf whose strength and courage could be looked up to, but at the same time had to be feared; an eccentric, misanthropic genius whose haughty bearing, cold eye and steely reserve made it impossible to like or trust him." McCormick was described by one opponent as "the greatest mind of the fourteenth century" and by the American labor historian Art Preis as a "fascist-minded multi-millionaire". In his memoirs, publisher Henry Regnery described his meeting with McCormick and William Henry Chamberlin:

The Colonel received us in his rather feudal office, high above Michigan Avenue at the top of his Gothic tower. He was a tall, erect, distinguished-looking man, who, with his white hair, blue eyes, ruddy complexion, white mustache, and in his manner and dress, conveyed the impression that he might have come from the English landed aristocracy. He was perfectly cordial, but gave us clearly to understand that our rather similar views on such matters as foreign policy and the administration in Washington were no basis for familiarity.The New York Times wrote:
He did consider himself an aristocrat, and his imposing stature— tall, with a muscular body weighing over , his erect soldierly bearing, his reserved manner and his distinguished appearance—made it easy for him to play that role. But if he was one, he was an aristocrat, according to his friends, in the best sense of the word, despising the idle rich and having no use for parasites, dilettantes or mere pleasure-seekers, whose company, clubs and amusements he avoided. With an extraordinary capacity for hard work, he often put in seven long days a week at his job even when elderly, keeping fit through polo and later horseback riding. In his seventies, he could still get into the war uniform of his thirties.

Death and legacy
In failing health since an attack of pneumonia, following a trip to Europe in April 1953; McCormick nonetheless remained active in his work until the month before he died, on April 1, 1955. He was buried on his farm, in his war uniform. His second wife survived him by three decades.

Upon his death, the childless McCormick left an estate estimated at $55 million, including stock in the Chicago Tribune Company. His will established a trust devoted to charitable purposes, including maintenance of his former home, which became Cantigny Park and includes a museum. The Northwestern University School of Law building that opened in 1962 was named McCormick Hall following a donation from the foundation.
After a donation to renovate the Technological Institute building at Northwestern University in 1989, the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science was also named for him.

Within days of McCormick's death, Richard J. Daley was elected mayor and a new family would dominate Chicago, this time aligned with the Democratic Party for over half a century.
Since McCormick had long advocated building a convention center, after it was built from 1957 to 1960 McCormick Place was named for him.

The trust eventually divested its ownership of the Tribune Company, so in 2008 changed its name from the McCormick Tribune Foundation to the Robert R. McCormick Foundation. It contributed more than a billion US dollars for journalism, early childhood education, civic health, social and economic services, arts and culture and citizenship. Additionally, McCormick endowed five scholarships at The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina and deeded his Aiken, South Carolina estate to friend and former commander Charles Pelot Summerall with the stipulation that the General live there the remainder of his life. After Summerall's death in 1954, the estate was sold and the proceeds used to purchase a beach house in Isle of Palms, South Carolina, now known as the Robert R. McCormick Citadel Beach Club. The structure was destroyed by Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and subsequently rebuilt and hosts many functions including weddings and corporate events.

McCormick's legacy also extended to Canada, his grandfather Joseph Medill's birthplace. Six towns were created for the purpose of forestry and journal paper production: Heron Bay (Ont.), Gore Bay (Ont), Thorold (Ont.), Baie-Comeau (Que), Franquelin (Que) and Shelter Bay (Que), known as Port-Cartier today. Many monuments have been made in honor of the Colonel, in Baie-Comeau lay the biggest of them all, a bronze statue of the Colonel canoeing as he did in 1915 when he discovered the land that would welcome the town in 1937. The monument was made by Wheeler Williams an American sculptor. In 1955 the Quebec & Ontario Transportation Company renamed the cargo vessel the Manicouagan the Col. Robert R. McCormick.

Family tree

Paternal side

Maternal side

See also

References

Further reading

 Olmsted, Kathryn S. The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler'' (Yale UP, 2022)online also online review

 "Citizen Soldier: Colonel McCormick and the Battle for Cantigny" Panel Discussion at the Pritzker Military Library on November 14, 2012

External links

Presentation by Richard Norton Smith on The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick, June 16, 1997, C-SPAN
Presentation by Smith on The Colonel, December 2, 1997, C-SPAN

1880 births
1955 deaths
United States Army Cavalry Branch personnel
United States Army Field Artillery Branch personnel
20th-century Presbyterians
American anti–World War II activists
American people of Scotch-Irish descent
American Presbyterians
Chicago City Council members
English spelling reform
Groton School alumni
Illinois Republicans
McCormick family
United States Army personnel of World War I
Medill-Patterson family
Military personnel from Illinois
Non-interventionism
Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law alumni
Old Right (United States)
Papermakers
People educated at Ludgrove School
People from Wheaton, Illinois
Recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (US Army)
United States Army officers
Yale College alumni
Yale University alumni
People associated with Kirkland & Ellis
Members of the Board of Commissioners for the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago
American anti-communists

Robert R. McCormick


Craig Eaton Campbell (born March 24, 1952) is an American politician and businessman who served as the president and CEO of the Alaska Aerospace Corporation (AAC). He joined the corporation as chief operating officer in February 2011, and was appointed president and CEO by the board of directors in October 2012.

Prior to his position at AAC, Campbell was the tenth lieutenant governor of Alaska, holding the office from August 10, 2009, through December 6, 2010. Pending his confirmation by the State Legislature, he was "temporary substitute" lieutenant governor for several weeks. Campbell left office in December 2010, after having withdrawn from the Republican primary race for lieutenant governor, which was eventually won by Mead Treadwell.

Before serving as lieutenant governor, Campbell was the commissioner of the Alaska Department of Military and Veterans Affairs. In that role, he was head of the state's National Guard, with the rank of lieutenant general. On July 3, 2009, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin announced that she would resign effective July 26. Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell would become governor, and Campbell would replace Parnell as lieutenant governor. In 2010, Campbell opted to not seek election as lieutenant governor, preferring to return to the business sector and joining AAC in February 2011.

Campbell was appointed the state chair for the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (ESGR) Alaska State Committee in October 2012.  He is married to wife Anne Marie and has two children: Amanda and Melanie (deceased), and four grandchildren: Faith, Ellie, Kimberly and Emma.

Early life and education
Campbell was born in 1952. He was raised in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, and attended the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma on a Reserve Officer's Training Corp. (ROTC) scholarship, and graduated in 1974 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science. In 1999, he earned a Master of Arts degree in national security and strategic studies from the Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island. During his stay at Vandenberg, he attended classes and earned a Master of Public Administration degree from Golden Gate University in nearby San Francisco, California.

Career
In 1974, Campbell was commissioned a second lieutenant that year and was assigned to the Air Traffic Control Officers Training Course at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi.

After being certified as an air traffic controller, he was assigned to Travis Air Force Base in California, then to K. I. Sawyer Air Force Base in Michigan. Each assignment brought a promotion, and he left Sawyer in 1979 as a captain. From Sawyer, he moved to Vandenberg Air Force Base, where he served as chief of air traffic control operations until 1981.

In 1981, he was assigned to Alaska for the first time when he was named the chief of air traffic control operations with the 1930th Communications Squadron at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage. He left active-duty U.S. Air Force, joined the California Air National Guard, and was assigned duties at Hayward Air National Guard Base in that state in 1984.

In addition, he worked extensively in the private sector, with over 15 years of aviation consulting experience including airport master planning, environmental planning, economic feasibility studies, and facilities location planning—both in the U.S. and internationally.

Campbell has been active in Alaskan politics since the 1980s. He ran for mayor of Anchorage in 1984. He was first elected to the Anchorage Assembly 1986, representing the Chugiak, Eagle River, Birchwood, Peters Creek, Eklutna, and Mountain View sections of Anchorage. The district also included Elmendorf and the other major military base in Anchorage, Fort Richardson (the two have since been combined as Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson). He subsequently was re-elected in 1989 and 1992, serving twice as Chairman of the Assembly.

In 1991, he joined the Alaska National Guard and became commander of the 168th Resource Management Squadron at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska. He later was made commander of the 168th Logistics Squadron at the base and was promoted to lieutenant colonel.

In 1994, Campbell again unsuccessfully ran for Mayor of Anchorage, coming in third out of a field of fourteen candidates in the non-partisan, municipality-wide election. He later served on the Matanuska Electric Association Board of Directors from 1996 to 2000, and as an adjunct professor for Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University from 1990 to 2000.

In 1997, he moved into a staff position with the Alaska Air National Guard in Anchorage. In 2000, he was promoted to colonel and named vice commander of the 168th Air Refueling Wing at Eielson. While there, he helped command the wing's operations in support of the American war effort in Afghanistan.

The same year that he was named vice-commander, he became executive director of Anchorage's Office of Planning, Development and Public Works. In 2003, he was selected by then-Alaska governor Frank Murkowski to serve as the state's adjutant general—the commander of the Alaska National Guard—and commissioner of the Alaska Department of Military and Veterans Affairs. Following Palin's election in 2006, he was reconfirmed in his office.

Campbell has 35 years of aerospace experience in the USAF and Alaska National Guard, during which he oversaw the Alaska Army National Guard development of missile defense operations and security missions at Ft. Greely, AK; the relocation of Kulis Air National Guard Base to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson; the formation of an associate flying unit between the USAF and Alaska Air National Guard for operations of the C-17 Globemaster III strategic airlift transport; and establishment of a state partnership between the Alaska National Guard and the country of Mongolia.

Lieutenant governor
On July 26, 2009, halfway through her term as governor, Palin resigned. Under the Alaska state constitution, a governor's selection of a new lieutenant governor is subject to confirmation by the State Legislature. The same Constitution, however, gives the governor the power to make "recess appointments", and the Legislature was not in session when Parnell succeeded as governor on July 26. Following Palin's announcement, conflicting statements issued from Alaska legal authorities as to whether Parnell had the authority to appoint a lieutenant governor without approval from the state legislature. The state attorney general stated that while Palin could name Campbell lieutenant governor, it would be preferable to have him sworn in as acting or temporary lieutenant governor, taking the permanent post only upon approval of the legislature. On July 26, after then-Lieutenant Governor Parnell was sworn in as governor, Campbell was given the oath as "temporary substitute" lieutenant governor. The oath was administered by Alaska Supreme Court Justice Daniel Winfree. After coming back into session on August 10, the Legislature confirmed Campbell as lieutenant governor by a vote of 55–4.

Campbell was promoted to lieutenant (three-star) general within the state National Guard by Palin on September 7, 2008. He retained his federal National Guard rank of major (two-star) general until he retired August 31, 2009. Campbell became the president and chief executive officer for Alaska Aerospace Corporation in 2012, retiring in 2020.

Campbell served as the state chair for the Alaska Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (ESGR) from 2012 until 2017. In 2019, Governor Mike Dunleavy appointed Campbell to the Alaska Railroad Board of Directors.

Campbell currently serves as the RNC National Committeeman for the Alaska Republican Party.  He previously served as the ARP Vice Chair.
==See also==
 Miller v. Campbell

References

External links

1952 births
Alaska Republicans
Anchorage Assembly members
Golden Gate University alumni
Lieutenant Governors of Alaska
Living people
National Guard (United States) generals
Naval War College alumni
Politicians from Springfield, Massachusetts
Recipients of the Legion of Merit
State cabinet secretaries of Alaska
United States Air Force generals
University of Tulsa alumni
American chief operating officers
American chief executives
Air traffic controllers
People from Longmeadow, Massachusetts
Military personnel from Massachusetts

Craig Campbell (politician)


Tony Akins is an artist, penciling and inking for DC/Vertigo who has contributed to the titles Jack of Fables, Fables, Hellblazer, House of Mystery and alternate issues of Wonder Woman for The New 52 relaunch.

Early life
Akins is a Chicago native of Afro-Caribbean/Irish ancestry. His father, Douglas Akins, was a sign painter, graphic designer and pioneering African American cartoonist at the Chicago Defender through the 1940s to 1960s before becoming the paper's Society Editor. Educational information on Akins is limited. Although in interviews he has stated that he is autodidactic. He has association with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago through its Co-Op program. He also taught at the School in the early 1990s.

Career
Akins was a founding member of the "statiCCreeps", a shadow-guild of artist/creators that pioneered a hybrid of Japanese manga in mainstream American comics during the late 1980s to early 1990s. The only published work by Akins that shows evidence of this is in Comico Comics Red Dragon which was written by Brian Azzarello (100 Bullets) in 1992. At Comico Akins also worked on Elementals, another Bill Willingham creation, as penciller and cover artist.

Akins drew the first comic book adaption of Terminator for NOW Comics after a critically acclaim stint on Rust with writer Fred Schiller. For First Comics (also in Chicago) he works on titles such as Mundan's Bar and one of a rarefied cadre of guest artists on the venerable Mike Baron/Steve Rude series Nexus.

At Dark Horse Akins worked across licensed sci-fi titles from Aliens (Colonial Marines) to Star Wars (Tales of the Jedi: The Freedon Nadd Uprising) and pencilled the adaptation of Andrew Vachss story "Warlord" (the only play written by Vachss) in the Hard Boilded series for Dark Horse.

He returned to comics with Fables #22 as a guest artist. Landed on Hellblazer: Papa Midnite, a limited series for Vertigo, then returned to Fables for "War Stories" (which can be found in the Mean Season trade paperback) before the start-up of Jack of Fables.  He has also signed on as the artist for issues #5 and 6 of Wonder Woman, in The New 52 series written by Brian Azzarello.

Comic book credits
DC Comics

ABSOLUTE Wonder Woman BY Brian Azzarello AND CLIFF CHIANG VOL. 1 & 2
AME-COMI GIRLS VOL. 1
AME-COMI GIRLS: FEATURING WONDER WOMAN
FABLES: THE DELUXE EDITION BOOK FIFTEEN
FABLES: THE DELUXE EDITION BOOK TEN
JACK OF FABLES: THE DELUXE EDITION BOOK ONE & TWO
VERTIGO QUARTERLY: CYAN #1Wonder Woman #10, #13, #14, #17, #18, #19Wonder Woman BY BRIAN AZZARELLO AND CLIFF CHIANG OMNIBUSWonder Woman VOL. 1: BLOODWonder Woman VOL. 2: GUTSWonder Woman VOL. 3: IRONWonder Woman VOL. 4: WAR

AwardsJack of Fables'' was nominated for several Eisner Awards its first year out including "Best New Series".

References

External links

1960 births
Living people
American comics artists
Artists from Chicago
American people of Irish descent
American people of Caribbean descent

Tony Akins


Thirunelli Temple  (also Tirunelli) is an ancient temple dedicated to Lord Maha Vishnu on the side of Brahmagiri hill in Kerala, India, near the border with Karnataka state. The temple is Classified one among the 108 Abhimana Kshethram of Vaishnavate tradition. The temple is at an altitude of about 900m in north Wayanad in a valley surrounded by mountains and beautiful forests. It is 32 km away from Manathavady.

History
No proper records of the exact dates of establishment of temple exist, though it is beyond dispute, that Thirunelli was once an important town and pilgrim center in the middle of an inaccessible jungle valley surrounded by mountains on four sides . There exists documentary proof that Thirunelli at the time of  Chera king Bhaskara Ravi Varma I (962–1019 CE) was an important town and pilgrim center in South India. In the dense jungles surrounding temple, the ruins of two ancient villages can be found. Noted historian V. R. Parameswaran Pillai in his book Thirunelli Documents states that this temple was once an integral part of the early recorded history of Kerala.

Mention in Puranas and folklore
The name Thirunelli derives from the nelli, the Tamil/Malayalam word for Indian gooseberry of the Amla tree. Veda vyasa wrote the 18 existing Puranas. The Matsya Purana, Skanda Purana, Narasimha Purana, Padma Purana, and many other Puranas and Hindu texts mention the beautiful Vishnu temple as being built by Lord Brahma, located in the picturesque Sahya valley, deep in the middle of forest of unmatchable beauty, and in these texts, it is referred to as "Sahyamalaka Kshetra." According to tradition, Lord Brahma was traveling round the Universe on his hamsa, when he became attracted by the beauty of the area now known as Brahmagiri Hill. Descending on that spot, Brahma noticed an idol, set in an Amla tree. Brahma recognized the idol as Lord Vishnu Himself and the place as Vaikuntha (Vishnuloka) itself. With the help of the Devas, Brahma installed the idol and called it Sahyamalak Kshetra. At Brahma's request Vishnu promised that the waters of the area would wash away all sins. (Thus, the spring and river near the temple is called Papanasini: "washes away all sins").

Even today the head priest of the temple leaves a portion of the worship materials in the belief that Lord Brahma Himself will come and perform pooja rites deep in the holy hours of morning.

The famous incarnation of Lord Vishnu Parasurama is reputed to have visited Thirunelli and performed last rites of his father sage Jamadagni. He also took immersion in the Papanasini to wipe away sins committed in killing Kshatriyas.

Relation with other temples and legends
Kottiyoor Temple and Trisillery temple are inextricably linked with legends and folklore to Thirunelli temple. There exists an old route which traverses Narinirangi Mala to connect with Trissilery Maha Deva Lord Siva temple. In earlier days, all devotees who visited Trissilery used to undertake the arduous crossing of Narinirangi mala to pay respect to Lord Vishnu and Brahma at Thirunelli. The journey was fraught with danger and might have been comparable to hardships of early Sabarimala pilgrimages.

Surroundings

Papanasini stream
Emanating from the heart of Brahmagiri forest flowing through roots, leaves and flowers of ancient trees and medicinal herbs, Papanasini is a holy mountain stream accessible around 1 km northwest of the temple premises. Pilgrims bathe here as they consider its waters to be sacred with powers to absolve one's sins. Further, the temple offers services to immerse cremation ashes in the sacred mountain stream to be thus carried to Kaveri River and from there to the ocean. This is a part of the last rites.

Panchatheertham

Panchatheertham is the holy temple pond. One notable feature of the temple is the lack of a temple well. Hence water is transported from a perennial mountain stream deep in the valley by impressive stone aqueducts right into the priests' room. Thirunelli is famous as the destination to perform last rites of the deceased at the rock close to Papa nasini stream.

Renovation
Parts of the temple including sanctum sanctorum is being renovated. Renovation activities can be seen on one side of the temple where sculpted stones and beautiful wood carvings are under preparation.

Access
The temple lies at an altitude of 3000 feet and can be reached by driving through three wild life sanctuaries. Thirunelli Temple can be accessed from Mananthavady or Kalpetta. The Periya ghat road connects Mananthavady to Kannur and Thalassery.  The Thamarassery mountain road connects Calicut with Kalpetta. The Kuttiady mountain road connects Vatakara with Kalpetta and Mananthavady. The Palchuram mountain road connects Kannur and Iritty with Mananthavady.  The road from Nilambur to Ooty is also connected to Wayanad through the village of Meppadi.  There are KSRTC Buses Connecting Thirunelli Temple one important service is
Vaikom Temple <<>> Thirunelli Temple Limited Stop Fast Passenger, Connecting Piravom - Kolenchery - Perumbavoor - Thrissur - Kozhikode - Mananthawady - kalpetta.

The nearest railway station & airport is at Mysore and the nearest airports are Kozhikode International Airport-120 km, Coimbatore International Airport-242 km, Bengaluru International Airport-290 km, and   Kannur International Airport, 58 km.

See also
 Appapara
 Thirunelly
 Palvelicham
 Valliyoorkkavu

References

Hindu temples in Wayanad district
Vishnu temples
Mananthavady Area
Vishnu temples in Kerala
Abhimana temples of Vishnu

Thirunelli Temple


The Kofa National Wildlife Refuge is located in Arizona in the southwestern United States, northeast of Yuma and southeast of Quartzsite. The refuge, established in 1939 to protect desert bighorn sheep, encompasses over  of the Yuma Desert region of the Sonoran Desert. Broad, gently sloping foothills as well as the sharp, needlepoint peaks of the Kofa Mountains are found in the rugged refuge. The small, widely scattered waterholes attract a surprising number of water birds for a desert area. A wide variety of plant life is also found throughout the refuge. Kofa Wilderness takes up 547,719 acres of the refuge, making it the second largest wilderness area in Arizona.

History
The name Kofa comes from a former area gold mine:  the King of Arizona mine (active from 1897 to 1910), with Kofa a contraction of the name.

In 1936, the Arizona Boy Scouts mounted a statewide campaign to save the bighorn sheep, leading to the creation of Kofa. The Scouts first became interested in the sheep through the efforts of Major Frederick Russell Burnham, the noted frontiersman turned conservationist who co-founded Scouting Burnham observed that fewer than 150 of these sheep lived in the Arizona mountains.  He called George F. Miller, then scout executive of the Boy Scout council headquartered in Phoenix, with a plan to save the sheep.  Burnham put it this way:

I want you to save this majestic animal, not only because it is in danger of extinction, but of more importance, some day it might provide domestic sheep with a strain to save them from disaster at the hands of a yet unknown virus.

Several other prominent Arizonans joined the movement and a "save the bighorns" poster contest was started in schools throughout the state.  Burnham provided prizes and appeared in store windows from one end of Arizona to the other.  The contest-winning bighorn emblem was made into neckerchief slides for the 10,000 Boy Scouts, and talks and dramatizations were given at school assemblies and on radio.  The National Wildlife Federation, the Izaak Walton League, and the Audubon Society joined the effort.

On January 18, 1939, over  were set aside at Kofa and at Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge combined, and a civilian conservation corps side camp was set up to develop high mountain waterholes for the sheep.  On April 2, 1939, Kofa National Wildlife Refuge was officially opened; Burnham gave the dedication speech.  The desert bighorn sheep is now the official mascot for the Arizona Boy Scouts, and the number of sheep in these parks have increased substantially.  The Kofa Game Range, as it was called, was originally administered jointly by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Land Management. On February 5, 1975, Kofa was transferred exclusively to the Bureau of Land Management.  But in 1976 complete authority was returned to the Department of Fish and Wildlife Services and the Kofa Game Range was renamed the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge.

Wildlife
The population of desert bighorn sheep was recently estimated to be 428. They live mainly in the two ranges that dominate the refuge landscape – the Kofa Mountains and Castle Dome Mountains of northern Yuma County and southern La Paz County. These mountains are not especially high, but they are extremely rugged and rise sharply from the surrounding desert plains, providing excellent bighorn sheep habitat. In recent years, this herd has provided animals for transplanting throughout Arizona and neighboring states.

Other notable wildlife species found in the area include the badger, desert tortoise and kit fox. Bird species that occur at Kofa include the white-winged dove, American kestrel, northern flicker, Say's phoebe, cactus wren, phainopepla, and orange-crowned warbler. In recent years, the cougar has established a full-time presence in the park.

Plants
The Kofa Mountain barberry, Berberis harrisoniana, a rare plant endemic to southwestern Arizona, occurs on the refuge. It is also home to the desert fan palm (Washingtonia filifera), the only native palm in Arizona.

Hiking

Palm Canyon
Palm Canyon is a unique natural feature predominantly known for the native palm trees that grow in the canyon. These are rare in Arizona and are likely relics of a geological period when the area was wetter and cooler.

Visiting
The turnoff for Palm Canyon is located at Milepost 85 on US Highway 95. A parking area is about eight miles east down a gravel road. Half a mile down the trail is a sign indicating the California fan palms. The hike to the canyon is short but strenuous.

The refuge provides opportunities for viewing desert plants and wildlife, rock climbing, exploring old mines, and remote wilderness camping. Temperatures often exceed 120 °F (49 °C) in the summer, and rain falls only a few times per year.

Regulated hunting on the refuge is permitted for quail, bighorn sheep, deer, cottontail rabbit, coyote, and fox.

Kofa was included in the desert military training exercises conducted by General George S. Patton during World War II. Unexploded ordnance may be encountered during cross-country hiking.

See also
 List of flora of the Sonoran Desert Region by common name
 Fauna of the Sonoran Desert
 Camp Hyder

References

External links

 US Fish & Wildlife Service Kofa Wildlife Refuge website
 Kofa National Wildlife Refuge and Palm Canyon, Arizona
 Bird Checklists for Kofa Wildlife Refuge

Wilderness areas within the Lower Colorado River Valley
Protected areas of the Sonoran Desert
National Wildlife Refuges in Arizona
Yuma Desert
Protected areas of Yuma County, Arizona
Protected areas of La Paz County, Arizona
Protected areas established in 1939
1939 establishments in Arizona

Kofa National Wildlife Refuge


A laser line level is a tool combining a spirit level and/or plumb bob with a laser to display an accurately horizontal or vertical illuminated line on a surface the laser line level is laid against.
Laser line levels are used wherever accurate verticals and horizontals are required, typically in the construction and cabinetry industries. Some models are inexpensive enough for do-it-yourself applications.

The laser beam is fanned to produce a thin plane beam accurately horizontal or vertical, rather than a pinpoint beam. The axis of the laser is offset from the wall, so that a pinpoint beam would be parallel to and offset from the wall, and would not illuminate it; the fanned beam will intersect the wall, creating an accurately horizontal (or vertical) illuminated line along it.

The machine is set up using the built-in spirit level or plumb bob, and the line along the surface is then guaranteed to be accurately horizontal or vertical to within a certain tolerance, specified either in millimetres per metre or fractions of an inch over a specified distance in feet. A more advanced device may be accurate to within 0.3 mm/m; while lower-end models may be closer to 1.5 mm/m.

The illuminated line is necessarily absolutely straight, so that the line level can be used as a straightedge; for example, to see if a shelf is warped, even if not horizontal.

See also
 Dumpy level
 Theodolite
 List of laser articles
 Laser Machine Control

References

Construction equipment
Construction surveying
Laser applications
Surveying instruments
Woodworking measuring instruments

Laser line level


Ginger Gold is a yellow apple variety which entered commerce in the 1980s, though the original seedling dates from the late 1960s. According to the US Apple Association website, , it was one of the fifteen most popular apple cultivars in the United States.

Characteristics
Ginger Gold is one of the earliest commercial apple varieties to ripen, bearing in August on the east coast (mid-July in North Carolina) and July in California. The fruit is large, conical and starts out a very pale green, though if left on the tree will ripen to a soft yellow with a slightly waxy appearance.

The primary use is for eating out of hand, though it can be used for most other purposes. The flesh, of a cream color, resists browning more than most varieties. The flavor is mild but with a tart finish.

In a 1995 evaluation, the Virginia Extension Service held that "This is the best apple that we have evaluated that ripens before 'Gala'."

The trees are very susceptible to mildew.

History
Ginger Gold is famous as the apple that Hurricane Camille brought forth. Camille brought devastating floods to Nelson County, Virginia in 1969, and the orchards of Clyde and Frances "Ginger" Harvey were badly washed out. In recovering the few surviving trees around the edge of one Winesap orchard, another tree was found which Clyde Harvey recognized as being different. It was planted with the rest, but was found to produce yellow rather than red fruit. An extension agent identified the parents as Golden Delicious, Albemarle Pippin, and some other unknown variety. The variety was eventually named after Clyde Harvey's wife.

During the 21st century, this has become an increasingly popular variety. It is the first yellow apple to ripen in the fall, and the quality and consistency of its bearing have suited it to commercial growing.

In January 2007, the Virginia General Assembly proposed a bill designating the Ginger Gold Apple as the official fruit of Virginia.  The bill was tabled in committee in late January.

References

Apple cultivars
Virginia culture
American apples

Ginger Gold


Hermann Pister (21 February 1885 – 28 September 1948) was an SS Oberführer (Senior Colonel) and commandant of Buchenwald concentration camp from 21 January 1942 until April 1945.

Early life
Pister was the son of a financial secretary in Lübeck. He joined the German Imperial Navy in 1916 and served until the end of the war. In 1918 he began an apprenticeship as an auto mechanic and went on to become an automobile salesman and manager.

He joined the Nazi party  (no. 918391) and the SS (No. 29892), being assigned to the SS Motor Echelon in 1932. In 1933 he was assigned to SS Motor Regiment Nineteen and in 1936 to SS Motor Regiment One. In 1937 he was assigned to Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler's motor pool.

Buchenwald
Pister was given the command of Hinzert concentration camp and served there from 9 October 1939 to 21 December 1941. On 1 January 1942 he replaced Karl Otto Koch as commandant of Buchenwald.

The prisoners were ordered evacuated from Buchenwald in early April 1945 to prevent their liberation by Allied troops.   Pister ordered the first group to leave on foot on 7 April 1945 to be sent to Dachau. This group was marched to the railroad station and placed in open boxcars. This train came to be known as the "Death Train". It took until 27 April for the train to arrive at Dachau with many aboard dying of starvation and illness. There was also evidence that the train had been strafed. SS-Obersturmführer Hans Merbach was placed in charge of the evacuation of Buchenwald and the train.

Pister was arrested by the Americans in 1945; put on trial for war crimes by the American Military Tribunal at Dachau with 30 other defendants where he was charged with participation in a "common plan" to violate the Laws and Usages of war of the Hague Convention of 1907 and the third Geneva Convention of 1929, in regard to the rights of Prisoners of War. The trial began on 11 April 1947. He was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. Pister died in Landsberg Prison of an acute heart attack on 28 September 1948.

References

1885 births
1948 deaths
Buchenwald concentration camp personnel
Hinzert concentration camp personnel
Holocaust perpetrators in Germany
German prisoners sentenced to death
People convicted in the Dachau trials
Military personnel from Lübeck
SS-Oberführer
Waffen-SS personnel
Nazi concentration camp commandants who died in prison custody
Imperial German Navy personnel of World War I
Prisoners sentenced to death by the United States military
Prisoners who died in United States military detention

Hermann Pister