A virtual learning environment (VLE) is a kind of e-learning system placed on a website. It gives learners online access to tools and information to help them with learning something.

Common tools offered on a VLE are: online quizzes, email, discussion forums and student blogs. Common information shared with learners via a VLE is: worksheets, lesson plans, homework, grades, assignments and deadlines.

Combining the use of a VLE and normal classes is often called blended learning.

Some well-known VLEs are Moodle, WebCT and BlackBoard, but many others exist.

Learning
Technology

Virtual learning environment


Punk rock (or "punk") is a music genre and kind of rock music. It is often described as harder, louder, and cruder than other rock music. Many punk rock songs have lyrics (words) which tell angry stories or which use rude words.

About punk rock

Punk rock is a style of rock music. Many musicians and punk rock music listeners ("punk rockers") want to protest or rebel against the norms or rules of society. Punks say that people should "Do It Yourself", which means that people should try to accomplish their goals using the materials in their own communities. Many punk bands make their own music recordings and distribute them without using a major record company.

Many punks have strong political beliefs. Punk rock musicians are often mad at the government, the police, and laws. Many punk rock songs protest injustice, lies, and unfairness in countries. Almost all punks are leftists, who believe that a country should share the products and food that it produces with all the people in the country. Some punks are vegetarian or vegans, because they believe that animals should not be killed for food. Some punks are anarchists. Very few punks are conservative, libertarian, or Republican.

Many punk musicians put colored hair dye in their hair or put gel to make it stand up. They wear distinctive clothes as a form of protest or rebellion against the norms and rules of society.

History

1970s
Punk rock developed in New York City in the mid-1970s. Bands like The Ramones, Television, The Heartbreakers, Blondie, joy division and Patti Smith played loud, angry songs. Many bands played at a club called CBGB's. The music soon spread to Australia and Britain, were bands started playing punk rock in 1976–1977. British bands like Buzzcocks, The Clash, The Damned, Generation X, The Jam, and Sex Pistols played punk rock music that was inspired by the music being played in New York, as well as by garage rock, pub rock, and other protopunk music.

These early "punks" rejected the excesses of mainstream 1970s rock. They created fast, hard-edged music, with short songs, stripped-down instrumentation, and often political, anti-establishment lyrics. They often did controversial things, such as saying bad words in public. Many newspapers wrote articles about the "bad" behavior of punk rock musicians.

1980s
In the 1980s, a new type of punk rock called "hardcore punk" or "hardcore" developed. It was louder, harder, and faster than the original punk rock. By the mid-1980s, hardcore punk rock began being mixed with Heavy Metal rock music. Many hardcore bands began playing in the United States and in the UK.

1990s
In the 1990s, punk rock began being mixed with pop music to create a new lighter style of music called pop-punk. Pop-punk bands include Green Day and Good Charlotte. Some pop-punk bands mixed punk rock stars

ska music.

2000s
Pop-punk was still popular in the 2000s. Some people who like the 1970s-style punk rock criticize pop-punk because pop-punk is commercialized.

Some people say that punk rock is dead. But that is not true, because the spirit lives on and many punk rockers are around today.

Notable artists
Anti-Flag
Bad Brains
Bad Religion
Black Flag
Buzzcocks
The Clash
Crass
The Damned
Dead Kennedys
Generation X
Iggy Pop
The Jam
Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers
Ramones
Richard Hell & The Voidoids
The Sex Pistols
Siouxsie and the Banshees
The Slits
Patti Smith
The Stranglers
Talking Heads
Television
The Undertones
X-Ray Spex
Pornofilmy
Saberov Ruslan

Related pages
Alternative rock
Hardcore punk
Pop-punk
Ska
Anarcho-punk

References

Rock music
Punk rock

Punk rock


Foxcatcher is a 2014 American biographical-drama movie directed by Bennett Miller. It is about how American philanthropist John Eleuthère du Pont killed an Olympian's brother in 1996. It stars Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, Mark Ruffalo, Vanessa Redgrave, and Anthony Michael Hall. It was released on a limited time on November 14, 2014 and will have an extended released in 2015.

Release dates

2014 movies
American biographical movies
American drama movies

Foxcatcher


Rocco Francis Marchegiano, better known as Rocky Marciano (September 1, 1923 – August 31, 1969), was an American boxer (1946-1956). Marciano was the World Heavyweight Boxing Champion from 9/23/1952 until 11/30/1956. He had the shortest reach of any heavyweight champion at only 68 inches (173 cm). He was also short for a champion, standing 5'10 1/2" (179 cm). Marciano is the only heavyweight champion in professional boxing history who never lost or drew (tied) in a professional match. He won 43 fights by a way of knockout or technical knockout, an 87.76% knockout rate.

Early life
His parents were Italian immigrants.

Professional career
Before becoming a professional fighter, Marciano had an amateur record of 10-4 (8KOs). Marciano's first professional fight was in March 1947. He won the championship from Jersey Joe Walcott on September 23, 1952.

Marciano was named fighter of the year by Ring Magazine three times. His three championship fights between 1952 and 1954 were named fights of the year by that magazine. Marciano's last title fight was against Archie Moore on September 21, 1955. Marciano was knocked down in the fight, but he got up and knocked out Moore in the 9th round. Marciano announced his retirement in a press conference on April 27, 1956.

Retirement
Marciano considered a comeback in 1959 when Ingemar Johansson won the heavyweight championship from Floyd Patterson on June 26, 1959. However, Floyd Patterson's contract demanded a rematch with Ingemar within one year. After a period in training and thinking about a comeback, Marciano decided against it and never seriously considered a comeback again.

Death
In 1969, on the eve of his 46th birthday, Marciano was a passenger in a small private plane, a Cessna 172, headed to Des Moines, Iowa. It was at night and bad weather set in. The pilot tried to land the plane on a small airfield outside Newton, Iowa, but the plane hit a tree two miles short of the runway. The passengers died almost instantly. He is entombed in a crypt at Forest Lawn Memorial Cemetery in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. His widow, who died five years after him at the age of 46, is entombed next to him.

References

Other websites

 Rocky Marciano Biography
 Official Record
 Official Website

1923 births
1969 deaths
American boxers
Aviation deaths in the United States
Sportspeople from Massachusetts
International Boxing Hall of Fame inductees

Rocky Marciano


The impressionist movement in music was a movement in Europen classical music. It was mostly in France. It began in the late 19th century and ended in the middle of the 20th century. There were two very famous composers of this movement, Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. Debussy actually did not like the term 'Impressionist' in his works. English impressionist musicians include Cyril Scott (1879–1970) and  John Ireland (1879–1962). Other well-known composers labeled impressionist include Paul Dukas, Gabriel Fauré, Manuel de Falla, Isaac Albéniz, Giacomo Puccini, Leoš Janáček, Alexander Scriabin and Kurt Atterberg

The first pieces of impressionist music were probably composed by Franz Liszt, the first such piece for orchestra is probably Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, composed by Claude Debussy, between 1892 and 1894.

The impressionism of Debussy is achieved through a number of means the overall aim of which were to weaken the teleological (Purpose driven) harmonic structure of classical (functional) western harmony. In functional harmony a path is set that leads inexorably to a final cadence at which the tonic is clearly affirmed, dissonance whether through the use of suspensions or 7th chords etc. is correctly prepared and then resolved creating a flow of tension and release. By contrast, many of Debussy's dissonances simply flow onto another dissonance in chains of seventh chords etc. Another way that Debussy holds tonality in suspense is through the use of the pentatonic and whole-tone scales in both melody and harmony. The story of modernist music has been a response to the extreme chromaticism of radical romantic composers such as Wagner and Liszt. The ones who felt compelled to complete the task took music to the chromatic extreme of atonality, others found ways to continue to write music using recognisable harmonic sequences and tonal (therefore recallable) melody by emancipating the dissonance and freeing it from its functional straightjacket. Debussy played a massive part in developing the vocabulary for this kind of composition. All non-atonal composers of the modernist era owe a debt to Debussy, including Stravinsky, Bartok, Messiaen and possibly even Steve Reich.

Related pages
 Impressionism

References

Music genres

Impressionist music


The word dentalium, as commonly used by Native American artists and anthropologists, refers to tooth shells or tusk shells used in indigenous jewelry, adornment, and commerce in western Canada and the United States. These tusk shells are a kind of seashell, specifically the shells of scaphopod mollusks. The name "dentalium" is based on the scientific name for the genus Dentalium, but because the taxonomy has changed over time, not all of the species used are still placed in that genus; however, all of the species are certainly in the family Dentaliidae.

Dentalium shells were used by Inuit, First Nations, and Native Americans as an international trade item. This usage is found along the western coast of Canada and along the Pacific Ocean coast of the northwest United States extending southward to Southern California. Traditionally, the shells of Antalis pretiosa (previously known as Dentalium pretiosum, the precious dentalium (a species which occurs from Alaska to Baja California) were harvested from deep waters around the Pacific Northwest coast of North America, especially off the coast of Vancouver Island. Today most dentalium shells in the shell trade are smaller, more brittle, and are harvested from coasts off Asia — i.e. they are shells of Indo-Pacific species of scaphopods.

Uses

Pacific Northwest

Peoples of the Northwest Pacific Coast would trade dentalium into the Great Plains, Great Basin, Central Canada, Northern Plateau and Alaska for other items including many foods, decorative materials, dyes, hides, macaw feathers which came from Central America, turquoise from the American Southwest, as well as many other items.

Nuu-chah-nulth peoples were the primary harvesters of dentalium shells. Among the Northwest Coastal tribes, the shells were valued for both trade and adornment. Young Nuu-chah-nulth girls of high status wore elaborate dentalium jewelry. When the jewelry was removed, a potlatch was held to celebrate and the girl would be considered eligible for marriage.

Athabaskan peoples of Alaska and subarctic Canada incorporate dentalium into jewelry with glass beads. Along with iron, these items were regarded as prestigious trade goods in the 19th century.

Shells of the species Antalis pretiosa which had been gathered on the shores of Vancouver Island were first traded to the Canadian Plateau between 1000 and 1 BCE. During the 1st century CE, the shell was a common trade item in the Plateau. Some very elite women from Plateau tribes wore dentalium shells through pierced septa. Elaborate bridal headdresses from the 19th and early 20th centuries, features dentalium shells strung on hide with Chinese brass coins and glass beads. Nlaka'pamux peoples have included dentalium shells in their relatives' burials. The shells are sometimes given away at memorial services.

California
Dentalium shells are highly culturally significant to California tribes. Yurok oral history says that Pithváva, or "Big Dentalium," a deity, created that smaller dentalium and dictated their significance as sacred wealth. Among northern California tribes, dentalium was traditionally the most important unit of exchange – incorporated into regalia and used for gambling and commerce. The shell's length and quality determined value. Highest quality shells would be about 2.25" long, and a dozen would typically be strung together, and a 27.5" string of dentalium was the price of a redwood dugout canoe. Certain men, who became known as "Indian bankers," tattooed marks on their arms with which to measure the length of the shells. Among northern California tribes, such as the Yurok, Karuk, and Hupa, dentalium shells were stored in elk-antler purses or treasure baskets.

On the Central Coast of California, shells of Dentalium neohexagonum (a species that occurs from Monterey, California to Baja California) have been recovered from prehistoric habitation sites of the Chumash, who apparently used these shells as tubes, possibly in jewelry.

Great Plains

Among Plains Indians, dentalium shells have traditionally been associated with wealth and embellished women's capes, yokes of dresses, hair ornaments, necklaces, and long, dangling earrings.

Modern
Dentalium shells is still used today in Native American and Inuit regalia as decorations and jewelry.

Middle East
In the ancient Levant, dentalium shells were used in the ritual burials of the deceased, although uncertain of its significance to the dead.

See also
Shell money
Beadwork § Native American

References

General
Dubin, Lois Sherr. North American Indian Jewelry and Adornment: From Prehistory to the Present. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999. .

Currencies of ancient Americas
Cultural anthropology
Indigenous beadwork of the Americas
Northwest Coast art
Seashells in art

Dentalium shell


Aquilino Quilinging Pimentel Jr. (December 11, 1933 – October 20, 2019), also known as Nene, was a politician in the Philippines.

Career
He was first elected as a delegate to the 1971 Constitutional Convention. He then went into exile when President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law. He came back in 1980 and was elected as mayor of Cagayan de Oro City in Misamis Oriental. He was removed as mayor 1982. He returned as mayor again in 1984. He was elected as an Assemblyman in the Batasang Pambansa (National Assembly), serving from 1984 to 1986.

After the EDSA Revolution, President Corazon Aquino appointed him as Minister of Local Government and Presidential adviser/chief negotiator with the Muslim insurgents in Mindanao. He then was elected Senator (1987–1992). As senator, he wrote the Local Government Code. He tried to become Vice President in 1992. He ran under the Liberal Party with Jovito Salonga running for president. He finished fifth among the vice presidential candidates with 9.9% of the vote.

In 1995, He ran for another term as senator but lost. Cheating was suspected in that election. He took the case to the Supreme Court. He won the suit in 2004. In 1998, he ran again for another term in the Senate of the Philippines, from 1998 to 2004 and won. He was also elected as the 19th President of the Senate. He served as president from 2000 to 2001. He finally left the Senate on June 30, 2010.

As chair of the Blue Ribbon Committee, Pimentel recommended the prosecution of top government officials of previous administrations in relation to the Expo Pilipino centennial scam and the misuse of the funds of the Retirement and Separation Benefits Systems of the Armed Forces. He also recommended the prosecution of certain people working for the Land Registration Administration for involvement in making false land titles. His committee also conducted series of investigations into the jueteng scandal.

As Chair of the Committee on Local Government, he has supported far-reaching amendments to strengthen the role of local government units (LGUs) in national development. He also got senate approval to return the police to the supervision of LGUs and has wrote a law to fix the date for elections of ARMM officials.

He was the president and founder of the PDP-Laban party.

Death
Pimentel Jr. died on October 20, 2019 in Manila of pneumonia caused by lymphoma at the age of 85.

References

Other websites

Senate of the Philippines
Aquilino Pimentel's Official Personal Website
Aquilino Pimentel's Assets and Liabilities
Philippine Fathers: Aquilino Pimentel Jr.

1933 births
2019 deaths
Deaths from pneumonia
Deaths from lymphoma
Presidents of the Senate of the Philippines
Majority leaders of the Senate of the Philippines
Minority leaders of the Senate of the Philippines
Legislative speakers

Aquilino Pimentel Jr.


Sunset Boulevard is a long road in west Los Angeles. It stretches 24 miles (39 km) from Figueroa Street in downtown (central) Los Angeles to the Pacific Coast Highway in Pacific Palisades at the Pacific Ocean. Part of the Boulevard, called Sunset Strip, passes through Hollywood.

Traffic
The boulevard is at least four lanes wide for all of the route. Car accidents are not uncommon due to  the lack of a central divider on most sections. The road also has difficult curves and hills that a driver cannot see over.

Sunset often has more cars on it than were planned for. It is worn, and has cracks and potholes. Traffic on Sunset is often slow, especially during the rush hour. But when traffic is mild, Sunset is a fast thoroughfare because it has few (and short timed) traffic lights in the western part. Even at rush hours, cars move without waiting, as the lights are well spaced and timed.

Sunset Strip
This is the 1½ mile (2.4) km strip running through West Hollywood. The Strip is well-known; it has boutiques, restaurants, and nightclubs that are part of the entertainment industry. It is also known for its trademark array of huge, colorful billboards and is a 'hangout' for rock stars, movie stars and other entertainers.

Media
Sunset Strip was the location of a popular TV show 77 Sunset Strip (1958–1964), starring Ephrem Zimbalist Jnr. Many young stars made an appearance in the series.

Sunset Boulevard gave its name to a famous 1950 movie of the same name,  starring Gloria Swanson, William Holden and Eric von Stroheim.

Notes

Los Angeles
Roads in California

Sunset Boulevard


The Battle of Vizagapatam was a minor naval engagement fought in the approaches to Vizagapatam harbour in the Coastal Andhra region of British India on the Bay of Bengal on 15 September 1804 during the Napoleonic Wars. A French squadron under Contre-Admiral Charles-Alexandre Léon Durand Linois in the ship of the line Marengo attacked the British Royal Navy fourth rate ship HMS Centurion and two East Indiaman merchant ships anchored in the harbour roads. Linois was engaged in an extended raiding campaign, which had already involved operations in the South China Sea, in the Mozambique Channel, off Ceylon and along the Indian coast of the Bay of Bengal. The French squadron had fought one notable engagement, at the Battle of Pulo Aura on 15 February 1804, in which Linois had attacked the Honourable East India Company's (HEIC) China Fleet, a large convoy of well-armed merchant ships carrying cargo worth £8 million. Linois failed to press the attack and withdrew with the convoy at his mercy, invoking the anger of Napoleon when the news reached France.

Since his failure at Pulo Aura, Linois had been cruising the Indian Ocean, and during August and September 1804 had seized a number of valuable merchant ships as his squadron travelled north from Ceylon along the Indian coast of the Bay of Bengal. From a ship captured off Masulipatam, Linois learned of the presence of the East Indiamen at Vizagapatam and determined to attack, unaware that British Rear-Admiral Peter Rainier had replaced the small frigate HMS Wilhelmina with the larger Centurion as the convoy's escort. Arriving off the port at 06:00, Linois advanced on the convoy, causing one of the East Indiamen to drive ashore in panic. The other merchant vessel failed to support the outnumbered Centurion and was captured, but Centurion continued fighting alone. Initially supported by the fire of gun batteries on shore, Centurion later moved out of their range while engaging the French flagship Marengo, which remained well offshore to avoid the coastal shoals. After an engagement lasting four hours Marengo withdrew, the badly damaged Centurion attempting to pursue but without success. Linois's squadron was forced to return to Île de France in the aftermath of the engagement, where Marengo required six months of repairs.

Background

During the Napoleonic Wars, the British economy depended on the movement of trade from the British Empire, particularly the trading posts and colonies in British India, managed by the Honourable East India Company (HEIC). This company transported goods from India to Europe using a fleet of large and well-armed merchant ships named East Indiamen, which travelled in convoys for protection, and were escorted during wartime by ships provided by the Royal Navy. The main Royal Navy base in the Bay of Bengal was at the city of Madras, but East Indiamen sailed from ports all around the Bay. As a result, the force in Madras was often dispersed to provide escorts to smaller convoys travelling to Madras or Calcutta to merge with other ships to form the large oceanic convoys. At the outbreak of the Napoleonic War, the commander of British forces in the Indian Ocean was Rear-Admiral Peter Rainier. The principal threat to British control of the region was a squadron sent from France shortly before war broke out, led by Contre-Admiral Charles-Alexandre Léon Durand Linois in the ship of the line Marengo.

Rainier and Linois had clashed in June 1803, before news of the outbreak of war had reached India. Linois had anchored at Pondicherry, a French Indian port, and Rainier had led a powerful squadron to anchor off the harbour in anticipation of the declaration of war. Concerned that Rainier's numerically superior force would overwhelm his squadron before they could operate against the British merchant convoys in the region, Linois slipped away under cover of darkness and eventually reached Île de France, where he learned that the Napoleonic Wars had begun on 16 May. Sailing to Batavia in the Dutch East Indies, Linois resupplied and then departed for a cruise in the South China Sea on 28 December, seeking the large annual convoy of HEIC merchant ships from Canton, known as the China Fleet. This convoy was normally escorted from Canton by several Royal Navy ships of the line, but in 1804 the escort had been delayed. Linois discovered the convoy near the island of Pulo Aura at the eastern entrance to the Strait of Malacca at 08:00 on 14 February and advanced. The convoy commander Commodore Nathaniel Dance had disguised several of the East Indiamen as ships of the line in the hope of convincing Linois that the convoy was well protected. Linois hesitated for over a day, eventually attacking on the morning of 15 February. Dance resisted and Linois withdrew without contesting the engagement. Dance's merchant ships chased Linois's squadron away before resuming their course and meeting their escorts several days later. Linois's failure to engage and defeat the China Fleet infuriated a number of his officers and provoked an angry letter from Napoleon, who accused Linois of believing "that war can be made without running risks".

In the aftermath of the engagement, Linois returned to Batavia and then to Île de France, arriving on 2 April. There he was criticised by the governor, General Charles Decaen, who wrote a letter to Napoleon complaining of Linois's conduct at the Battle of Pulo Aura. In mid-June 1804, Linois departed Île de France with Marengo and the frigates Atalante under Captain Camille-Charles-Alexis Gaudin-Beauchène and Sémillante under Captain Léonard-Bernard Motard, cruising off Madagascar in stormy weather before sailing to the coast of Ceylon. He enjoyed some success against individual merchant vessels, and gradually moved northwards during the late summer. The squadron passed Madras  off the coast to avoid encountering Rainier's squadron and raided along the Coastal Andhra region, visiting Masulipatam and Coasanguay. On 14 September 1804 off Masulipatam, Linois captured a country ship and learned from the crew that a small convoy was anchored at Vizagapatam to the north. The convoy was reported to consist of two East Indiamen with the 36-gun frigate HMS Wilhelmina, a former Dutch vessel captured in 1798, as their escort. Linois immediately sailed for Vizagapatam, expecting an easy victory over the convoy.

Battle
At Madras Admiral Rainier had become increasingly concerned during September by Linois's depredations, and had decided to strengthen his convoy escorts. He replaced Wilhelmina with the 50-gun HMS Centurion. Centurion was under the nominal command of Captain John Spratt Rainier, who was seriously ill at Madras, so Captain James Lind assumed temporary command. Lind sailed from Madras to Vizagapatam earlier in the month with the Indiamen Barnaby and Princess Charlotte and anchored in the roads, while the Indiamen loaded cargo ready for the return journey to Madras. The ships were still anchored in the roads at 06:00 on 15 September when Linois's squadron appeared on the horizon to the south-west, approximately  away. The only flag visible on the strange ships was on board one of the frigates, which displayed the St George's Cross. Lieutenant James Robert Phillips, in command of Centurion while Lind was ashore, was not convinced by this ensign: he was aware that a French squadron was in the region, and positioned his ship so that his broadside faced the approaching vessels. At 09:45 the French came within range and Phillips opened fire, cautiously at first until he could be sure of the identity of the strangers.

The ship of the line exchanged signals with the frigates as Centurion began to fire, and as the signals were different from those used by the Royal Navy, Phillips was certain he was facing an overwhelming enemy squadron. Centurion made urgent signals to the Indiamen, warning them of the approaching threat. The crew of Barnaby panicked and cut her anchor cables, causing her to drift on shore where she was wrecked. Captain John Logan on Princess Charlotte was calmer and remained at anchor, although he ignored requests from Phillips for assistance from his ship's gun battery. Linois's ships spread out, Atalante closing to within  of Centurion, with Sémillante close behind. Marengo remained out of range, as Linois was unwilling to risk his flagship in shallow coastal waters for which he did not have accurate charts: the approaches to Vizagapatam were protected by a series of sandbars and if Marengo grounded during the engagement then his flagship could have been wrecked. When the French frigates came within , Phillips opened fire on Atalante as Sémillante attempted to reach the other side of the British ship to batter from the other side. The French frigates also came under long range fire from the three-gun battery at Vizagapatam, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Campbell, on detached service from the 74th Regiment of Foot. Campbell despatched 50 sepoys in small boats to assist the crew of Princess Charlotte, whose armament of 24 guns continued to remain silent.

By 10:00, all three French ships were within range of Centurion and a heavy exchange of fire began. Within 15 minutes, both Centurion and Marengo had their colours shot away and at 10:45 the ship of the line turned away for open water, followed by the frigates, her rigging in disarray. Damage had rendered Centurion unable to manoeuvre rapidly and she began slowly limping inshore to shelter from Marengo among the coastal shoals. Captain Lind rejoined his ship by boat, hailing the Princess Charlotte, which had still not participated in the battle, to cut her anchor cables and go ashore to avoid being captured. Logan refused and at 11:15 surrendered without a fight as the whole French squadron moved back towards the harbour. Marengo again remained beyond the sandbars that marked the entrance. The boatloads of sepoys, who were still en route to Princess Charlotte, turned about and rowed back to shore to avoid capture. Sémillante took possession of the merchant ship while Marengo and Atalante engaged Centurion, which had moved out of range of support from the shore batteries.

Despite her 50 guns, Centurions armament left her vulnerable as most were carronades, short-range heavy cannon that were useless in the face of the long-range gunnery from Marengo. Centurion consequently suffered severe damage and by 13:15 had been holed, with her rigging wrecked and her anchor cable shot through, which caused her to slowly drift away from the shore, out of control. Seeing that his opponent was disabled, Linois decided not to press the attack and issued orders for his squadron, accompanied by their prize, to sail away. Lind gradually regained control of his ship and even managed to raise some sail in pursuit, but the French were too far ahead. After some final parting shots, Centurion anchored as her crew set about repairing the damage. Linois remained within sight for the rest of the day, but showed no sign of renewing the action; he disappeared on the north-east horizon at dusk.

Aftermath
Despite the destruction of Barnaby and the capture of Princess Charlotte, British losses were mild, Centurion having one man killed and nine wounded. The ship was very badly damaged, however, with a number of holes shot in her hull and badly torn rigging and masts. There were no recorded casualties among the troops onshore. The French suffered slightly heavier losses, Marengo having two men killed and an officer wounded and Atalante with three killed and five wounded. Sémillante, which had not been closely engaged in the battle, suffered no casualties. Damage to the French ships was severe, and Linois was forced to abandon further operations and slowly make his way back to Île de France, arriving in November. There Marengo underwent a full refit, lasting six months.

Both nations claimed the encounter as a victory, the French for the capture of Princess Charlotte and the British for the survival of Centurion in the face of overwhelming French numerical superiority. Linois justified his withdrawal in a letter, explaining that risking irreparable damage his squadron in a close engagement with Centurion would have curtailed his raiding operations. Privately however, Napoleon was angered by the survival of Centurion and wrote in response that "France cared for honour, not for a few pieces of wood." British historians have echoed Napoleon's criticism, judging that Centurion was at Linois's mercy and that he had failed to destroy her, in words of William Laird Clowes, because of his "half-hearted and timid action . . . [that] cannot but provoke censure."

Notes

References

Naval battles of the Napoleonic Wars
Conflicts in 1804
Naval battles involving France
Naval battles involving the United Kingdom
September 1804 events
History of Andhra Pradesh
Battles involving the Indian kingdoms

Battle of Vizagapatam


The Boy is a musical comedy with a book by Fred Thompson and Percy Greenbank (based on Arthur Wing Pinero's 1885 play, The Magistrate), music by Lionel Monckton and Howard Talbot and lyrics by Greenbank and Adrian Ross. The original production opened at the Adelphi Theatre in London in 1917 and ran for 801 performances – one of the longest runs of any musical theatre piece up to that time. It had successful foreign productions and tours.

Background
During the gloomy days of World War I, audiences, including servicemen on leave, wanted light and uplifting entertainment, and they flocked to theatres to see lighthearted musical comedies, a number of which broke box-office records. These included The Bing Boys Are Here (1916), Chu Chin Chow (1916), and The Maid of the Mountains (1917). Almost as popular were The Boy, The Happy Day (1916) and Yes, Uncle! (1917). Greenbank had worked on a dozen shows with each of Monckton and Ross from 1900 to the time of The Boy, and Talbot and Thompson were also frequent collaborators of theirs in the first two decades of the 20th century.

The plot of The Boy closely follows that of The Magistrate, although character names have been changed, and some of the original dialogue is retained. In the Play Pictorial feature, B.W. Findon's review of the musical praised the singing of Nellie Taylor and Peter Gawthhorne, and the comedy of W. H. Berry, as well as the production in general.

Synopsis

Act I
Mrs. Millicent Meebles, a remarried widow, habitually understates the age of her son, Hughie Cavanaugh, to make herself appear several years younger. Consequently, the 19-year-old lad is taken for a 14-year-old boy and appears to be precocious. Hughie, that "Sporty Boy", flirts with astonishing skill with his beautiful music teacher.

Act II
Hughie also precociously introduces his step-father, Mr. Meebles, a magistrate, to the nightclub in the Cosmos Hotel. They are followed by Millicent, who wishes to warn a friend not to divulge the boy's true age. When the nightclub is raided by the police, Mr. Meebles escapes without capture, having a comically difficult time.

Mr. Meebles arrives at court just in time to hear the case that results from the raid and must, as magistrate, sentence his wife and sister-in-law, Diana Fairlie (whose lover is Albany Pope), to incarceration. Fortunately, a fellow magistrate, Mr. Burridge comes to the ladies' rescue by over-ruling the sentence on a technicality. At home, Millicent confesses that she has exaggerated Hughie's age. All is forgiven.

Productions
The Boy opened at the Adelphi Theatre in London on 14 September 1917, directed by Robert Courtneidge, under the management of Alfred Butt. The production ran for 801 performances – one of the longest runs of any musical theatre piece up to that time.

An Australian production opened at the Theatre Royal in Melbourne on 23 October 1920, starring Arthur Stigant, Lance Lister and Gladys Moncrieff, where it ran until 22 January 1921. The production later toured to Sydney, where it opened at Her Majesty's Theatre on 17 December 1921, and then Adelaide in November 1922.

It was adapted for Broadway as Good Morning, Judge in 1919, by the same creative team, at the Shubert Theatre, running for 140 performances and then touring successfully. Two songs by George Gershwin were added to the score, including "I am so Young", published as "I was so Young (You were so Young)." It starred George Hassell as Mr. Meebles, Charles King as Hughie, Mollie King as Joy Chatterton and Edward Martindel as Col. Bagot.

Although the piece was revived several times by amateur British groups in the 1930s, it has not been seen since then.

Roles and original cast
Horatio Meebles (Magistrate of Bromley Street Police Court) – W. H. Berry
Millicent Meebles (Late Cavanagh) – Maisie Gay
Hughie Cavanagh (Her Son) – Donald Calthrop
Diana Fairlie (Her Sister) – Nellie Taylor
Colonel Bagot (From Bengal, Retired) – C. M. Lowne
Albany Pope (of Lloyd's) – Peter Gawthorne
Joy Chatterton (a Flapper) – Billie Carleton (replaced in 1918 by Nellie Briercliffe)
Katie Muirhead (Hughie's Music Mistress) – Heather Thatcher
Mr. Burridge (Magistrate of Bromley Street Police Court) – W. H. Rawlins
Juniori Fratti (Proprietor of the Cosmos) – André Randall
Napoleon (a Waiter) – T. Del Lungo
Mr. Honeyball (Chief Clerk at Bromley Street) – George Elton
Inspector Eason, Sergeant Dix, and Constable Styles (of the Metropolitan Police) – F. Russell, W. Matthews and George Wilson
Cash (Servant at the Meebles') – Eddie Garr
Turner (Maid at the Meebles') – Dorothy Munroe
Cuthbert Sutton, Lyall Hewson-Galway, and an Elderly Lady (Guests at the Meebles') – R. G. Sydney, H. B. Lane and Marie Clavering
Tich Ridley (a Young Man) – P. Madgewick
Doris Cuddley and Winnie Sweet (Friends of Joy) – Gwen Hughes and Dora Fraser
Principal dancers – Betty Blake and Jean Castaner

Musical numbers

ACT I – Mr. Meebles' House at West Hampstead
No. 1 – Introduction & Chorus – "We will finish the rub and we've only to pay"
No. 2 – Joy & Chorus – "There are lots of games with childish names, and I know ev'ry one of them"
No. 3 – Katie, Joy & Hughie – "When you see a lady talking to a friend, why d'you want to interfere?"
No. 4 –  Diana & Pope – "I'm kept busy all day in a general way"
No. 5 – Millicent, Diana, Hughie, Burridge & Meebles – "This is the day of young folks"
No. 6 – Millicent & Chorus – "When I used to go to school some time ago, no one thought I was a fool"
No. 7 – Millicent & Meebles – "All my life through I have yearn'd for Romance"
No. 8 – Diana & Chorus – "I've some news to tell – you will never guess!"
No. 9 – Meebles – "When first I practised at the Bar, and earned my reputation"
No. 10 – Chorus – "Oh, we now must say goodbye, for we really must be going"
No. 11 – End of Act I

ACT II – Scene 1   – The Cosmos Hotel, Verrey Street, London W.C.
No. 12 – Introduction and Dance – "Cheer O!   Keep your toes a-wagging"
No. 13 – Joy & Chorus – "It's hard to make my mind up when I am at a ball"
No. 14 – Pope – "I'm absolutely fed up with all the female sex!"
No. 15 – Meebles & Hughie, with Chorus – "When two young fellows like us go out upon the spree"
No. 16 – Diana & Chorus – "There lived a little maid, and oh, her heart was light" ("Little Miss Melody")
No. 17 – Dance
No. 18 – Diana & Pope – "I fear I've been a bit of a fool, though as a rule I'm pretty cool" ("Have a Heart")
No. 19 – Joy, Hughie & Meebles, with Chorus – "The girls all listen and their bright eyes glisten"
No. 20 – Finale – Scene 1 – "We're stiff and stolid, large and solid representatives of the law"
ACT II – Scene 2   – The Magistrate's Room, Bromley Street
No. 21 – Meebles – "Ah, can it be?  A few short hours ago my heart was light" ("When the Heart Is Young")

ACT II – Scene 3 – The Garden of Meebles' House
No. 22 – Chorus – "Pansy Day!   Pansy Day!  Here are some flow'rs for you"
No. 23 – Meebles & Chorus – "I've not had so much as a wink all the night – it's distressing!"
No. 24 – Millicent & Diana – "I am feeling quite a wreck ... Well, you are a trifle torn!"
No. 25 – Finale Act II – "They'll be sporty boys!  Rollicking rorty-torty boys!"
Supplementary items:
No. 26 – Diana & Pope – "Why do you seem cold, uncaring, oh! you beautiful maid?"
No. 27 – Meebles – "The years roll back; once more I seem to be a rosy-cheek'd and pudding-faced young urchin"
No. 28 – Diana – "When a girl comes out and goes about to lots of dinners, and dances"
No. 29 – Millicent & Meebles – "Horatio, do you remember? ... My dearest, how could I forget?"
No. 30 – Joy & Hughie, with Chorus – "Little Dicky was a wonder at any sort of dance"

Notes

References
Gaye, Freda: Who's Who in the Theatre, fourteenth edition, 1967, Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons, London

External links
Song list and links to Midi files, lyrics and cast list
List of longest running plays in London and New York

1917 musicals
West End musicals
Musicals based on plays
Musicals by Howard Talbot
British musicals
Musicals by Fred Thompson (writer)
Musicals set in hotels

The Boy (musical)


Isadora Duncan (May 27, 1877 – September 14, 1927) was an American dancer. She was an inspiration for modern dance.

Duncan was born in San Francisco, California. She preferred natural movement, instead of what she called the artificial movements of ballet. Her 'free dance movement' was based on simple, flowing movements of the body. It was inspired by nature, and by ancient Greek sculptures. Costumes were flowing and transparent. Dances involved simple runs, skips and jumps, big gestures and mime.

Duncan was wildly unconventional. A bisexual who had two children but did not marry either of their fathers, she became a communist, and boasted about it. She went to the Soviet Union in 1922, but left in less than two years. At different times she lived in Paris, London and other European cities. She started dance schools in Moscow, Berlin and Paris. The schools did not last long, but Duncan had admirers who have continued her influence to the present day.

Private life
Duncan's private life was tragic. Both her children were killed in a strange accident on the River Seine in 1913. The children were in a car with their nanny when the car stalled as the driver tried to avoid a collision. He got out to hand-crank the engine, but forgot to put the brake on. The car rolled across the road, down the bank and into the river. The children and their nanny drowned. Duncan married poet Sergei Yesenin (1895–1925) in 1922. He left her in 1923, and hanged himself two years later.

Death
Duncan liked long, flowing scarves. One of these scarves caused her own death. As The New York Times noted in its obituary: "Isadora Duncan, the American dancer, tonight met a tragic death at Nice on the Riviera. According to dispatches from Nice, Miss Duncan was hurled in an extraordinary manner from an open automobile in which she was riding and instantly killed". At her death, Duncan was a Soviet citizen.

"Isadora Duncan's death was as dramatic as her life. On September 14, 1927, she encountered a young driver in Nice, France and suggested he take her for a spin in his open-air Bugatti sports car. As the car took off, she reportedly shouted to her friends, "Adieu, mes amis, je vais a la gloire!" — "Goodbye my friends, I go to glory!" Moments later, her trailing shawl became entangled in the rear wheel, breaking her neck instantly".

Born in the United States, she lived in Europe from the age of 22 until her death at age 50. In the United States she was popular only in New York, and then only later in her life.

Legacy
Her work was continued by some of her six adopted daughters. They were her pupils, the Isadorables, who continued to teach her methods after her death. There have been several revivals of interest in Duncan. There was a film, Isadora (1969) by Karl Reisz. There were two ballets. Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora by Frederick Ashton had its first show in 1976. Kenneth Macmillan created a two-act ballet Isadora for the Royal Ballet (1981).

In New York her tradition has passed to third generation Duncan dancer Lori Belilove. She founded The Isadora Duncan Dance Foundation in 1979 and The Isadora Duncan Dance Company  in 1989.

Her ideas on natural dance influenced a wide range of other dancers. Some of the ideas of the Denishawn School of Dancing are quite Duncanesque, and the growth of modern dance in general owes something to her.

References

Other websites

 Archive film of Anna Duncan dancing a piece by Isadora Duncan in 1942 at Jacob's Pillow.  Anna Duncan was one of her adopted daughters.

1877 births
1927 deaths
Accidental deaths in France
American dancers
Bisexual people
American communists
LGBT dancers
Artists from San Francisco
Road accident deaths

Isadora Duncan


Stalin and His Hangmen: An Authoritative Portrait of a Tyrant and Those Who Served Him by Donald Rayfield, and the imprinted with another subtitle: Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him, is a 2004 political biography by Donald Rayfield, of Joseph Stalin and his subordinates who ran the Soviet secret police: Felix Dzerzhinsky, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov and Lavrentiy Beria.

The books are based on recent publication by Russian authors of material from Soviet archives that started to open after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and from some private holdings, including the Nestor Lakoba archive (acquired by the Hoover Institute). It demonstrates how Cheka and its successors were indispensable in Stalin's consolidation and maintenance of power.

Notes

References

Biographies of Joseph Stalin
British books
2004 non-fiction books

Stalin and His Hangmen


Loys "Louis" Bourgeois (; c. 1510 – 1559) was a French composer and music theorist of the Renaissance.  He is most famous as one of the main compilers of Calvinist hymn tunes in the middle of the 16th century.  One of the most famous melodies in all of Christendom, the tune known as the Old 100th, to which the Protestant doxology is often sung, is commonly attributed to him.

Life

Knowledge of his early life is sparse.  His first publication, some secular chansons, dates from 1539 in Lyon. By 1545 he had gone to Geneva (according to civic records) and become a music teacher there. In 1547 he was granted citizenship in Geneva, and in that same year he also published his first four-voice psalms.

In 1549 and 1550 he worked on a collections of psalm-tunes, most of which were translated by Clément Marot and Théodore de Bèze. The extent to which he was composer, arranger or compiler was not certain, until a long-lost copy of the Genevan Psalter of 1551 came to the library of the Rutgers University. In an Avertissement (note) to the reader Bourgeois specifies exactly what his predecessors had done, what he had changed and which were his own contributions. He is one of the three main composers of the hymn tunes to the Genevan Psalter.

Unfortunately, he fell foul of local musical authorities and was sent to prison on 3 December 1551 for changing the tunes for some well-known psalms "without a license."  He was released on the personal intervention of John Calvin, but the controversy continued: those who had already learned the tunes had no desire to learn new versions, and the town council ordered the burning of Bourgeois's instructions to the singers, claiming they were confusing.  Shortly after this incident, Bourgeois left Geneva never to return: he settled in Lyon, his Geneva employment was terminated, and his wife tardily followed him to Lyon.

While in Lyon, Bourgeois wrote a fierce piece of invective against the publishers of Geneva. His daughter was baptized in Paris in May 1560 (as a Catholic), and also in 1560 a Parisian publisher posthumously printed a volume of his secular chansons – a form he had condemned as "dissolute" during his Geneva years.

Music and influence

Louis Bourgeois is the one most responsible for the tunes in the Genevan Psalter, the source for the metrical psalmody of both the Reformed Church in England and the Pilgrims in America.  In the original versions by Bourgeois, the music is monophonic, in accordance with the dictates of John Calvin, who disapproved not only of counterpoint but of any multiple parts; Bourgeois though did also provide four-part harmonizations, but they were reserved for singing and playing at home. Many of the four-part settings are syllabic and chordal, a style which has survived in many Protestant church services to the present day.

Of the tunes in the Genevan Psalter, some are reminiscent of secular chansons, others are directly borrowed from the Strasbourg Psalter; The remainder were composed by successively Guillaume Franc, Louis Bourgeois and Pierre Davantès.  By far the most famous of Bourgeois' compositions is the tune known as the Old 100th.

References and further reading
Frank Dobbins, "Loys Bourgeois", in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie.  20 vol.  London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980.
Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance.  New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954.
Frank Dobbins, "Loys Bourgeois", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed March 29, 2005), (subscription access)
Harold Gleason and Warren Becker, Music in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Music Literature Outlines Series I).  Bloomington, Indiana.  Frangipani Press, 1986.
Pseaumes Octantetrois de David, mis en rime Françoise par Clément Marot et Théodore de Bèze, imprimé par Jean Crespin à Genève 1551, Reproduced from the Rutgers University copy, 1973 X BS 1443.FSM332
Pierre Pidoux, Le Psautier Huguenot, VOL I/II

External links

French classical composers
French male classical composers
Renaissance composers
French Calvinist and Reformed Christians
French music theorists
16th-century French people
1510s births
16th-century deaths

Louis Bourgeois (composer)


World War I (WWI or WW1), also called the First World War, began on July 28, 1914 and lasted until November 11, 1918. It was a global war and lasted exactly 4 years, 3 months and 2 weeks. Most of the fighting was in continental Europe.

Soldiers from many countries took part, and it changed the colonial empires of the European powers. Before World War II began in 1939, World War I was called the Great War, or the World War. Other names are the  Imperialist War and the Four years War. There were 135 countries that took part in World War I, and nearly 10 million people died while fighting.

Before the war, European countries had formed alliances to protect themselves. However, that made them divide themselves into two groups. When Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated on June 28, 1914, Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia and declared war on it. Russia then declared war on Austria-Hungary, which set off a chain of events in which members from both groups of countries declared war on each other.

The two sides were the Allied Powers (mainly Russia, France, the British Empire and later the United States)  and the Central Powers (mainly Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire).

There was fighting in many different fronts (areas). The French and the British fought the Germans on the Western Front in France and Belgium. Germany had tried to defeat France quickly with the Schlieffen Plan but were stopped in the First Battle of the Marne. Most of the fighting on the western front was trench warfare. The Russians fought the Germans and Austro-Hungarians on the Eastern Front in Central and Eastern Europe. Fighting on the eastern front was not trench warfare as in the west, but mobile warfare. The other main areas of fighting were in the Middle East, in the Gallipoli region of the Ottoman Empire and between Italy and Austria-Hungary. Fighting also took place in Africa, China, at sea and in the air. World War I was the first major war in which tanks, airplanes and submarines (or U-boats) were important weapons.

End
In 1917, the Russian Revolution led to Russia leaving the war in March 1918. Also in 1917, the United States entered the war, but it took a year for most of its army to arrive. From the time of the Russian departure, before the American arrival, the Germans launched a huge attack in March 1918 to try to win the war, but it failed.

From August to November 1918, the Allied Powers won a large victory against the Germans during the Hundred Days Offensive. Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire then agreed to stop fighting. The German government collapsed, and a new government was forced to agree to stop the fighting on November 11, 1918. Basically, the Germans ran out of men.

Also, the influenza pandemic of 1918 had a big influence. It killed many people in Europe: it lasted for three years, from January 1918 to December 1920. About 500 million people were infected across the world which then had a population of 1.80 billion people.

The war was ended by the signing of many different treaties, the most important being the Treaty of Versailles. It also led to the creation of the League of Nations, which was meant to prevent wars. People were shocked by the size of the war, how many people it killed and how much damage it caused. They hoped it would be "the war to end all wars". Instead it led to another, larger, world war 21 years later.

Background

By 1914, trouble was on the rise in Europe, and many countries feared invasion from others. For example, Germany was becoming increasingly powerful, and the British Empire saw that as a threat. Countries formed alliances to protect themselves, but that divided them into two groups. Germany and Austria-Hungary had been allies since 1879 and formed the Triple Alliance with Italy in 1882. France and Russia became allies in 1894 and later formed the Triple Entente with Britain.

In 1908, Austria-Hungary had taken over Bosnia, a region next to Serbia. Some of those who lived in Bosnia were Serbs and wanted to be part of Serbia. The Black Hand was an organization that agreed with the idea and sent men to kill Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria while he was visiting Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. All of them failed to kill him with grenades while he passed through a large crowd. However, one of them, a Serbian student, Gavrilo Princip, shot him and his pregnant wife with a pistol.

Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia for the assassination. Germany supported Austria-Hungary and promised full support in case of war.  Austria-Hungary sent the very harsh July Ultimatum to Serbia and threatened war unless Serbia agreed to all of its terms. Many historians think that Austria-Hungary already wanted a war with Serbia. Serbia agreed to most of the conditions, but Austria-Hungary still declared war on Serbia, which quickly led to a full-scale war. The countries had allies that entered the war in a matter of days.

Russia joined the war to help Serbia because both Serbs and Russians are Slavs. Russia began to assemble its army (mobilize), which caused Germany to begin to mobilize its forces.  Germany declared war on Russia in support of Austria-Hungary and began to carry out its plan to fight a war in Europe.

Germany is in the middle of Europe and so it had to worry about enemies to its east and west. Germany's plan was the quick defeat of France in the west before Russia was ready to fight, then Germany would move its armies to the east to face Russia. However, Germany could not quickly invade France directly because France had put so many forts on the border. That made Germany invade the neighboring country of Belgium to invade France through the undefended French-Belgian border.

Britain then joined the war and said that it was to protect Belgium. However, some historians think that even if Germany had stayed out of Belgium, the British would have still joined the war to help France.

Soon, most of Europe became involved. The Ottoman Empire (now Turkey) joined the war on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary. It is not clear why the Ottomans entered the war, but they had become friendly to Germany. Italy had allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary but refused to help them since those countries had not been attacked first. Italy noted that Austria-Hungary had attacked Serbia first. Also, Italy had long disliked Austria-Hungary and wanted to take part of its land. It later joined the war for the Allies because they had promised land across the Adriatic Sea.

Germany against Russia
Germany was afraid that because Austria-Hungary had attacked Serbia, Russia would attack Austria-Hungary to help Serbia. That made Germany feel that it had to help Austria-Hungary by attacking Russia first.

The problem was that Russia was allied to France, and the Germans thought that the French might attack them to help Russia. That made Germany decide that it could win the war by quickly attacking France first. The Germans could mobilize first since they had a list of all men who had to join the army, where they had to go, and the times of every train that would carry them to where they had to go.

France was slower in doing the same thing. The Germans thought that if they attacked France first, they could knock it out of the war before Russia could attack them.

Russia had a large army, but Germany mistakenly thought that it would take six weeks to mobilize and a long time before they could attack the Central Powers. However, the Russian Army mobilized in ten days and drove deep into Austria-Hungary.

In the east, the Russians attacked the Germans. The Russians pushed back the Germans, but the Germans then defeated the Russians at the Battle of Tannenberg.

United Kingdom against Germany
The United Kingdom quickly joined the war and said that it was to protect Belgian neutrality. Germany passed through Belgium to reach Paris before Russia could mobilize and open up a second front. On August 4, 1914, the British declared war against Germany in support of Belgium. The British Empire was larger than any other empire and ruled over a quarter of the world. If Germany won in France, it might take British and French colonies and become the most powerful and largest empire in the world.

Britain was also worried about Germany's growing military power. Germany was developing its large army into one of the most powerful in the world. The British Army was quite small, but the Royal Navy was the largest and the best in the world, which in the 19th century was enough to keep other naval powers from attacking Britain.

Germany was a land power, and Britain was a sea power. However, Germany was building a large navy, which was seen as a threat to Britain. Germany's generals had decided that the best way to defeat France was to go through Belgium using a plan called the Schlieffen Plan by German Army Chief of Staff Alfred Von Schlieffen. The Germans could then attack the French army at the north side and the south side at the same time. The German Army went into Belgium on August 4. The same day,  the British declared war on Germany. The British had said in 1839 that they would not let Belgium be invaded, and they kept their promise.

When the Germans got to the Belgian city of Liège, the Belgians fought very hard to stop them from coming into the city. The Germans finally pushed the Belgians out of the city, but it had taken longer than the German generals had planned. The Germans then attacked the north side of the French army. The French and the British moved men up to fight the Germans because the Belgians had fought so long at Liège. However, the Germans pushed the French back at the frontiers, and the British held the Germans back at Mons, but they also fell back to join up with the retreating French Army until they were stopped at the river Marne. This was the First Battle of the Marne or "Miracle of the Marne".

The British government might have decided differently if anyone had foreseen how long the war would last and what a terrible price Britain would pay.

Most people thought that the war would be short. They thought the armies would move around quickly to attack each other and one would defeat the other without too many people getting killed. They thought the war would be about brave soldiers and did not understand how war had changed. Only a few people, such as Lord Kitchener said that the war would last long.

Ottoman Empire

The Ottomans joined the war because they were secretly allied to Germany, and two Ottoman warships, manned by German Navy personnel, bombarded Russian towns.

Britain fought against the Ottomans only for supporting Germany and had no other problem with them. However, by fighting them in the Mesopotamia region in what is now Iraq, in the Arabian Peninsula and in other places, Britain defeated them with the help from the British Indian Army. After the war ended, Britain got some Ottoman areas and added them to the British Empire.

Greece went into the war because its leader supported the Allied cause. Greece and Serbia had become independent, but many Greeks still lived in lands that had once been Greek but were now Ottoman. Having recently won the Balkan Wars, the Greeks wanted especially to control other land to the north that was under Bulgarian and Ottoman rule and so they declared war. The Ottomans killed most of the Greek Army as they tried to regain parts of the Ottoman Empire. Another war started when the Greeks bombed a train. The Ottomans swept the Greeks back into their own territory. From then on, the Greeks never again declared war, but the Ottomans had one of the largest armies in the world.

Bulgaria against Serbia and Greece
Bulgaria, like Greece and Serbia, had been part of the Ottoman Empire but later became independent. Bulgaria claimed a lot of Ottoman land. The Serbians and the Greeks felt cheated because they felt that the land belonged to them and took back the land. That angered Bulgaria and led to it becoming an Ottoman ally. Bulgaria declared war on Serbia and Greece but lost the war.

Trench warfare

Trench warfare killed many soldiers. New weapons, such as machine guns, and long-range artillery had an increased rate of fire that cut down huge numbers of soldiers during mass charges, a tactic left over from older warfare.  The men on both sides took spades and dug holes because they did not want to be killed. The holes joined up into trenches until the lines of trenches went all the way from Switzerland to the North Sea. In front of the trenches was barbed wire to cut anyone who tried to climb over it and land mines to blow up anyone who tried to cross. Late in the war, poison gas also was an important weapon.

The new machine guns, artillery, trenches, and mines made it very difficult to attack. The generals had fought many wars without them and so they ordered their armies to attack in the old style of marching in rows, which allowed the enemy to shoot them down easily. At the 1916 Battle of the Somme, 60,000 British men died in a single day, one of the bloodiest days in the history of the British army. Late in the war, the British and French invented tanks and used them to attack entrenched Germans, but they could not make enough of them to make a big difference.  The German Empire responded by making their own tanks but they had even fewer.  The Germans also invented special Sturmabteilung tactics to infiltrate enemy positions.  This was also too little, too late.

The British used whistles to communicate to other soldiers and so before they shelled the German trenches, they would sound the whistle. However, the Germans caught on to this tactic and so after the shelling, when the British soldiers came to finish off the German soldiers, the Germans were ready with their machine guns because they knew that the British were coming.

Airplanes
Airplanes were first used extensively in World War I. They were first used for reconnaissance, and pictures of enemy land were taken to help direct artillery. Generals, who are military leaders, were using airplanes as an important part of their attack plans at the end of the war. World War I showed that airplanes could be important war weapons.

Airplanes in World War I were made of wood and canvas, a type of rough cloth. They did not last long and could not fly very fast at the beginning of the war. They could only fly up to 116 kilometers per hour, or 72 miles per hour. At the end of the war, they could fly up to , much slower than modern planes. Guns were put on planes for the first time during the war. Pilots, people who fly the plane, used the guns to shoot enemy planes. One pilot used metal sheets to armor his airplane. Other pilots began using metal sheets too. Pilots also made their airplanes better with machine guns, guns that shoot bullets much faster. That made fighting harder and more dangerous between airplanes.

Pilots had to wear certain clothes when flying an airplane in World War I because they flew high, where the air is cold. The pilots' clothes kept them warm and protected them from the wind and cold. Pilots wore a leather coat to protect their bodies, a padded helmet and goggles, which are large glasses with special lenses, to protect their head and face. They wore a scarf around their neck to keep the wind from blowing against their neck when they turned their head.

United States against Germany
The German leaders decided to use submarines, called U-boats, from the German word Unterseeboot (meaning "underwater boat"). The U-boats attacked passenger ships such as RMS Lusitania carrying civilians to the United Kingdom. They did not follow the laws of war because the British could easily destroy them otherwise. America was selling weapons to Germany's enemies but not to Germany and so was not neutral since the US had taken sides during the conflict. Many American and British noncombatants were killed by the submarines although they were not fighting.

Germany also wrote a secret telegram note to Mexico in code that suggest that both countries work together to attack the United States. This note is called the Zimmerman Telegram because it was sent by Arthur Zimmerman. It offered Mexico land in the Southwestern United States that the United States had taken in the Mexican-American War. British spies found out about the note and told the United States. The Americans became angry, and many decided that their country should enter the war against Germany. The Zimmermann Telegram and the sinking of American ships by German U-boats made the United States on April 6, 1917 declare war against Germany and join the Allies.

Russian Revolutions
The defeat of Russia on the Eastern Front caused unrest there, which led to the Russian Revolutions.

They made Russia fight both Germany and the Bolsheviks at the same time. That meant Russia wanted to end the war against Germany.

That made Russia want to pay many German marks to make stop the fighting between it and Germany so that it could focus on fighting the Bolsheviks.

First Russian Revolution
In 1917, there was a revolution in Russia. Tsar Nicholas II had to give up power and a new government was established. At first, it was thought that Russia would fight harder now that he was gone. However, the Russians did not want to fight anymore because there was too little food, weapons or adequate roads to supply its army. The war had been putting burdens on the Russians, and many of them were poor and hungry. They began to hate their new government because it would not stop the war.

Second Russian Revolution
Another revolution happened in Russia in which the Mensheviks lost to the Bolsheviks (these were two rival groups of communists).  The leader of the Bolsheviks was Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924).  The new Bolshevik government asked the Germans for peace and signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers in March 1918 at the city of Brest-Litovsk.  Lenin later died in 1924 and was  replaced by  Joseph Stalin.

The Germans and Russians stopped fighting.  Russia gave Germany parts of the Russian Empire in Eastern Europe and along the Baltic Sea, including the Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine and Belarus.  Also, Finland gained its independence by the treaty.

Treaty of Versailles

After the war, the Germans had to agree to the Treaty of Versailles, which stated that Germany had to pay approximately $31.5 billion in reparations and had to take full responsibility for the war.

Also, the countries of the world were to come together to make an international organization to stop future wars: the League of Nations. The United States Senate did not agree with the League even though it was the idea of United States president Woodrow Wilson. Although Wilson tried to tell the American people to agree to join the League, the United States never joined it.

Problems with the treaty in Germany, where it was hated, later led to World War II in 1939.

Related pages
 League of Nations
 Remembrance Day
 World War II

Notes

References

Other websites

 World War 1 Letters  The Internet's Collection of World War One Mail.
 World War 1 Atlas  A day-by-day map of World War I
 A  history of World War I in pictures, audio, and video
 The Heritage of the Great War, Netherlands
 World War I -Citizendium

Wars involving Australia
Wars involving Belgium
Wars involving the British Empire
Wars involving France
Wars involving Germany
Wars involving Greece
Wars involving Italy
Wars involving Japan
Wars involving New Zealand
Wars involving Portugal
Wars involving Russia
Wars involving South Africa
Wars involving the United States
Wars involving the United Kingdom

World War I


Haji Akbar Turajanzade (; born Akbar Turaevich Qahhorov  in  1954) is a Senator in the National Assembly of Tajikistan. He served as the Qazi Qalon, the highest Muslim authority in Tajikistan, from 1988 to 1991. He served as the second-in-command of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan and the United Tajik Opposition from 1993 until his expulsion from the party in 1999. He served as the Deputy Prime Minister in the Tajik government after the civil war.

Biography
Turajonzoda was born in the Kofarnihon District near Dushanbe in the Tajik SSR. He served in the Department of International Relations in the Spiritual Administration of Muslims in Central Asia in Tashkent, Uzbek SSR from 1985 to 1987. He left Tajikistan in 1992 when the civil war began, visiting Iran, the Arab world, the United States, Europe, Russia, and Uzbekistan. UTO leader Said Abdullah Nuri and Turajonzoda led the UTO from Afghanistan and Iran during the civil war, returning to Tajikistan in February 1998.

Comments on Hizb ut-Tahrir
He has called Hizb ut-Tahrir, an international Islamist organization, a threat to Tajikistan's stability. He claimed HT is Western-sponsored and that it wants to "remak[e] Central Asia... A more detailed analysis of HT's programmatic and ideological views and concrete examples of its activities suggests that it was created by anti-Islamic forces. One proof of this is the comfortable existence this organization enjoys in a number of Western countries, where it has large centers and offices that develop its concept of an Islamic caliphate."

Turajonzoda praised Nuri following his death, saying, "Mentor Nuri had a very unique nature. He did a lot of good things during his short life. He was one of those personalities who, firstly, strived to prevent the civil war in 1992, and then tried to return [the country to] peace and stability. After the war was imposed on us, and we had not other choice, we tried together with him to reach a fair peace deal so that our refugees could return from Afghanistan to Tajikistan with honor."

Call for amnesty
On 12 March 2007 he called on the Rahmonov administration to grant a general amnesty for all involved in the civil war on the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. "Originally [the amnesty] was Nuri's idea... The talk was of an amnesty for those people who are still in jail. I proposed to him that there should be a full amnesty, and he accepted this wholeheartedly but added that we should also include the liquidation of those criminal cases still pending against all leaders of the opposition." He criticized war-time convictions, saying the evidence often did not prove the charges.

Shodi Shabdolov, the leader of the Communist Party, and Abduqayum Yusufov, the chairman of Tajikistan's Independent Lawyers' Association, support the amnesty proposal.

References

Living people
Members of the National Assembly of Tajikistan
Terrorism in Tajikistan
1954 births
Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan politicians
Government ministers of Tajikistan
Tajikistani religious leaders
People of the Tajikistani Civil War

Haji Akbar Turajanzade


The Gödel metric, also known as the Gödel solution or Gödel universe, is an exact solution, found in 1949 by Kurt Gödel, of the Einstein field equations in which the stress–energy tensor contains two terms: the first representing the matter density of a homogeneous distribution of swirling dust particles (dust solution), and the second associated with a negative cosmological constant (see Lambdavacuum solution).

This solution has many unusual properties—in particular, the existence of closed time-like curves that would allow time travel in a universe described by the solution. Its definition is somewhat artificial, since the value of the cosmological constant must be carefully chosen to correspond to the density of the dust grains, but this spacetime is an important pedagogical example.

Definition
Like any other Lorentzian spacetime, the Gödel solution represents the metric tensor in terms of a local coordinate chart. It may be easiest to understand the Gödel universe using the cylindrical coordinate system (see below), but this article uses the chart originally used by Gödel. In this chart, the metric (or, equivalently, the line element) is

where  is a non-zero real constant that gives the angular velocity of the surrounding dust grains about the y-axis, measured by a "non-spinning" observer riding on one of the dust grains. "Non-spinning" means that the observer does not feel centrifugal forces, but in this coordinate system, it would rotate about an axis parallel to the y-axis. In this rotating frame, the dust grains remain at constant values of x, y, and z. Their density in this coordinate diagram increases with x, but their density in their own frames of reference is the same everywhere.

Properties
To investigate the properties of the Gödel solution, the frame field can be assumed (dual to the co-frame read from the metric as given above),

This framework defines a family of inertial observers that are 'comoving with the dust grains'. The computation of the Fermi–Walker derivatives with respect to  shows that the spatial frames are spinning about  with the angular velocity . It follows that the 'non spinning inertial frame' comoving with the dust particles is

Einstein tensor
The components of the Einstein tensor (with respect to either frame above) are

Here, the first term is characteristic of a Lambdavacuum solution and the second term is characteristic of a pressureless perfect fluid or dust solution. The cosmological constant is carefully chosen to partially cancel the matter density of the dust.

Topology
The Gödel spacetime is a rare example of a regular (singularity-free) solution of the Einstein field equation. Gödel's original chart is geodesically complete and free of singularities. Therefore, it is a global chart, and the spacetime is homeomorphic to R4, and therefore, simply connected.

Curvature invariants
In any Lorentzian spacetime, the fourth rank Riemann tensor is a multilinear operator on the four-dimensional space of tangent vectors (at some event), but a linear operator on the six-dimensional space of bivectors at that event. Accordingly, it has a characteristic polynomial, whose roots are the eigenvalues. In Gödelian spacetime, these eigenvalues are very simple:
 triple eigenvalue zero,
 double eigenvalue ,
 single eigenvalue .

Killing vectors
This spacetime admits a five-dimensional Lie algebra of Killing vectors, which can be generated by 'time translation' , two 'spatial translations' , plus two further Killing vector fields:

and

The isometry group acts 'transitively' (since we can translate into , and with the fourth vector we can move along ), so spacetime is 'homogeneous'. However, it is not 'isotropic', as can be seen.

The given demonstrators show that the slices  admit a transitive abelian three-dimensional transformation group, so that a quotient of the solution can be reinterpreted as a stationary cylindrically symmetric solution. The slices  allow for an SL(2,R) action, and the slices  admit a Bianchi III (c.f. the fourth Killing vector field). This can be rewritten as the symmetry group containing three-dimensional subgroups with examples of Bianchi types I, III, and VIII. Four of the five Killing vectors, as well as the curvature tensor do not depend on the coordinate y. The Gödel solution is the Cartesian product of a factor R with a three-dimensional Lorentzian manifold (signature −++).

It can be shown that, except for the local isometry, the Gödel solution is the only perfect fluid solution of the Einstein field equation which admits a five-dimensional Lie algebra of the Killing vectors.

Petrov type and Bel decomposition
The Weyl tensor of the Gödel solution has Petrov type D. This means that for an appropriately chosen observer, the tidal forces are very close to those that would be felt from a point mass in Newtonian gravity.

To study the tidal forces in more detail, the Bel decomposition of the Riemann tensor can be computed into three pieces, the tidal or electrogravitic tensor (which represents tidal forces), the magnetogravitic tensor (which represents spin-spin forces on spinning test particles and other gravitational effects analogous to magnetism), and the topogravitic tensor (which represents the spatial sectional curvatures).

Observers comoving with the dust particles would observe that the tidal tensor (with respect to , which components evaluated in our frame) has the form

That is, they measure isotropic tidal tension orthogonal to the distinguished direction .

The gravitomagnetic tensor vanishes identically

This is an artifact of the unusual symmetries of this spacetime, and implies that the putative "rotation" of the dust does not have the gravitomagnetic effects usually associated with the gravitational field produced by rotating matter.

The principal Lorentz invariants of the Riemann tensor are

The vanishing of the second invariant means that some observers measure no gravitomagnetism, which is consistent with what was just said. The fact that the first invariant (the Kretschmann invariant) is constant reflects the homogeneity of the Gödel spacetime.

Rigid rotation
The frame fields given above are both inertial, , but the vorticity vector of the timelike geodesic congruence defined by the timelike unit vectors is

This means that the world lines of nearby dust particles are twisting about one another. Furthermore, the shear tensor of the congruence  vanishes, so the dust particles exhibit rigid rotation.

Optical effects
If the past light cone of a given observer is studied, it can be found that null geodesics moving orthogonally to  spiral inwards toward the observer, so that if one looks radially, one sees the other dust grains in progressively time-lagged positions. However, the solution is stationary, so it might seem that an observer riding on a dust grain will not see the other grains rotating about oneself. However, recall that while the first frame given above (the ) appears static in the chart, the Fermi–Walker derivatives show that it is spinning with respect to gyroscopes. The second frame (the ) appears to be spinning in the chart, but it is gyrostabilized, and a non-spinning inertial observer riding on a dust grain will indeed see the other dust grains rotating clockwise with angular velocity  about his axis of symmetry. It turns out that in addition, optical images are expanded and sheared in the direction of rotation.

If a non-spinning inertial observer looks along his axis of symmetry, one sees one's coaxial non-spinning inertial peers apparently non-spinning with respect to oneself, as would be expected.

Shape of absolute future
According to Hawking and Ellis, another remarkable feature of this spacetime is the fact that, if the inessential y coordinate is suppressed, light emitted from an event on the world line of a given dust particle spirals outwards, forms a circular cusp, then spirals inward and reconverges at a subsequent event on the world line of the original dust particle. This means that observers looking orthogonally to the  direction can see only finitely far out, and also see themselves at an earlier time.

The cusp is a non-geodesic closed null curve. (See the more detailed discussion below using an alternative coordinate chart.)

Closed timelike curves
Because of the homogeneity of the spacetime and the mutual twisting of our family of timelike geodesics, it is more or less inevitable that the Gödel spacetime should have closed timelike curves (CTCs). Indeed, there are CTCs through every event in the Gödel spacetime. This causal anomaly seems to have been regarded as the whole point of the model by Gödel himself, who was apparently striving to prove that Einstein's equations of spacetime are not consistent with what we intuitively understand time to be (i. e. that it passes and the past no longer exists, the position philosophers call presentism, whereas Gödel seems to have been arguing for something more like the philosophy of eternalism).

Einstein was aware of Gödel's solution and commented in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist that if there are a series of causally-connected events in which "the series is closed in itself" (in other words, a closed timelike curve), then this suggests that there is no good physical way to define whether a given event in the series happened "earlier" or "later" than another event in the series:
In that case the distinction "earlier-later" is abandoned for world-points which lie far apart in a cosmological sense, and those paradoxes, regarding the direction of the causal connection, arise, of which Mr. Gödel has spoken.

Such cosmological solutions of the gravitation-equations (with not vanishing A-constant) have been found by Mr. Gödel. It will be interesting to weigh whether these are not to be excluded on physical grounds.

Globally nonhyperbolic
If the Gödel spacetime admitted any boundary-less temporal hyperslices (e.g. a Cauchy surface), any such CTC would have to intersect it an odd number of times, contradicting the fact that the spacetime is simply connected. Therefore, this spacetime is not globally hyperbolic.

A cylindrical chart

In this section, we introduce another coordinate chart for the Gödel solution, in which some of the features mentioned above are easier to see.

Derivation

Gödel did not explain how he found his solution, but there are in fact many possible derivations. We will sketch one here, and at the same time verify some of the claims made above.

Start with a simple frame in a cylindrical type chart, featuring two undetermined functions of the radial coordinate:

Here, we think of the timelike unit vector field  as tangent to the world lines of the dust particles, and their world lines will in general exhibit nonzero vorticity but vanishing expansion and shear. Let us demand that the Einstein tensor match a dust term plus a vacuum energy term. This is equivalent to requiring that it match a perfect fluid; i.e., we require that the components of the Einstein tensor, computed with respect to our frame, take the form

This gives the conditions

Plugging these into the Einstein tensor, we see that in fact we now have . The simplest nontrivial spacetime we can construct in this way evidently would have this coefficient be some nonzero but constant function of the radial coordinate. Specifically, with a bit of foresight, let us choose . This gives

Finally, let us demand that this frame satisfy

This gives , and our frame becomes

Appearance of the light cones

From the metric tensor we find that the vector field  which is spacelike for small radii, becomes null at  where

This is because at that radius we find that  so  and is therefore null. The circle  at a given t is a closed null curve, but not a null geodesic.

Examining the frame above, we can see that the coordinate  is inessential; our spacetime is the direct product of a factor R with a signature −++ three-manifold. Suppressing  in order to focus our attention on this three-manifold, let us examine how the appearance of the light cones changes as we travel out from the axis of symmetry

When we get to the critical radius, the cones become tangent to the closed null curve.

A congruence of closed timelike curves

At the critical radius , the vector field  becomes null. For larger radii, it is timelike. Thus, corresponding to our symmetry axis we have a timelike congruence made up of circles and corresponding to certain observers. This congruence is however only defined outside the cylinder .

This is not a geodesic congruence; rather, each observer in this family must maintain a constant acceleration in order to hold his course. Observers with smaller radii must accelerate harder; as  the magnitude of acceleration diverges, which is just what is expected, given that  is a null curve.

Null geodesics

If we examine the past light cone of an event on the axis of symmetry, we find the following picture:

Recall that vertical coordinate lines in our chart represent the world lines of the dust particles, but despite their straight appearance in our chart, the congruence formed by these curves has nonzero vorticity, so the world lines are actually twisting about each other. The fact that the null geodesics spiral inwards in the manner shown above means that when our observer, when looking radially outwards, sees nearby dust particles not at their current locations, but at their earlier locations. This is what we would expect if the dust particles are in fact rotating about one another.

The null geodesics are geometrically straight; in the figure, they appear to be spirals only because the coordinates are "rotating" in order to permit the dust particles to appear stationary.

The absolute future

According to Hawking and Ellis (see monograph cited below), all light rays emitted from an event on the symmetry axis reconverge at a later event on the axis, with the null geodesics forming a circular cusp (which is a null curve, but not a null geodesic):

This implies that in the Gödel lambda dust solution, the absolute future of each event has a character very different from what we might naively expect.

Cosmological interpretation

Following Gödel, we can interpret the dust particles as galaxies, so that the Gödel solution becomes a cosmological model of a rotating universe. Besides rotating, this model exhibits no Hubble expansion, so it is not a realistic model of the universe in which we live, but can be taken as illustrating an alternative universe, which would in principle be allowed by general relativity (if one admits the legitimacy of a negative cosmological constant). Less well known solutions of Gödel's exhibit both rotation and Hubble expansion and have other qualities of his first model, but traveling into the past is not possible. According to Stephen Hawking, these models could well be a reasonable description of the universe that we observe, however observational data are compatible only with a very low rate of rotation. The quality of these observations improved continually up until Gödel's death, and he would always ask "Is the universe rotating yet?" and be told "No, it isn't".

We have seen that observers lying on the y axis (in the original chart) see the rest of the universe rotating clockwise about that axis. However, the homogeneity of the spacetime shows that the direction but not the position of this "axis" is distinguished.

Some have interpreted the Gödel universe as a counterexample to Einstein's hopes that general relativity should exhibit some kind of Mach's principle, citing the fact that the matter is rotating (world lines twisting about each other) in a manner sufficient to pick out a preferred direction, although with no distinguished axis of rotation.

Others take Mach principle to mean some physical law tying the definition of non-spinning inertial frames at each event to the global distribution and motion of matter everywhere in the universe, and say that because the non-spinning inertial frames are precisely tied to the rotation of the dust in just the way such a Mach principle would suggest, this model does accord with Mach's ideas.

Many other exact solutions that can be interpreted as cosmological models of rotating universes are known.

See also

 van Stockum dust, for another rotating dust solution with (true) cylindrical symmetry,
 Dust solution, an article about dust solutions in general relativity.

References

Notes

  See section 12.4 for the uniqueness theorem.
  See section 5.7 for a classic discussion of CTCs in the Gödel spacetime. Warning: in Fig. 31, the light cones do indeed tip over, but they also widen, so that vertical coordinate lines are always timelike; indeed, these represent the world lines of the dust particles, so they are timelike geodesics.

 Gödel universe on arxiv.org.
 Vukovic R. (2014): Tensor Model of the Rotating Universe, Exercise in Special Relativity.

Exact solutions in general relativity
Metric tensors
Metric

Gödel metric


Fidelio is an opera in two acts by Ludwig van Beethoven. It is Beethoven's only opera. The German libretto is by Joseph Sonnleithner based on a French story.  The opera tells how Leonore, disguised as a prison guard called "Fidelio", rescues her husband Florestan from death in a political prison.

Fidelio is an example of a "rescue opera", a type of opera which was popular at the time. The hero (or heroine) has to fight against cruel people in order to rescue a lover.  It was written at the time of the French Revolution.  At this time,  ideas about freedom and peace were being talked about by everyone, and this led to wars all over Europe.  The famous Prisoners' Chorus is a song for freedom, just like the last movement of his Ninth Symphony.

Beethoven spent some time working on the opera before he was completely happy with it. The first time it was performed (in 1805) it was a three-act opera called Leonore. There were a lot of French military officers in the audience and they thought they were being criticised.  In 1806 it was performed again with two acts and a new overture (now known as "Overture: Leonore No. 3").  But arguments between Beethoven and the theatre management meant there were no more performances.  Eight years later Beethoven revised his opera again.  This time it was called Fidelio, and it was a great success.  It has remained a famous opera ever since.

Plot
The setting is a Spanish state prison, a few miles from Seville, in the late 18th century.

Act I

Jaquino is a prison guard.  He wants to marry Marzelline, the daughter of Rocco who is the warden of the prison.  But Marzelline has just fallen in love with someone she thinks is a man called Fidelio.  Actually Fidelio is a woman who has dressed up as a man so that she can get into the prison where her husband Florestan is a prisoner (he has been arrested for political reasons).  She is pretending to return Marzelline's love so that she can find a way of rescuing Florestan.  Rocco says he is happy for Marzelline to marry Fidelio.  Fidelio (Leonore) says she will help Rocco with his job of looking after the prisoners.  Rocco says she can do this, but there is one prisoner she is not allowed to guard.  He has been locked up alone for two years.  Leonore thinks it may be her husband, but she is not sure.

Don Pizarro, the military governor of the prison, hears that the prison is going to be looked at by inspectors who make sure that the prison is being properly managed.  He knows that he should not have locked Florestan up, so decides to kill him before the inspection starts.  He asks Rocco to dig the grave so that he can get rid of the body quickly.  Rocco does not want to do this, but has to agree.

Leonore lets the prisoners have a walk in the garden.   Rocco tells Leonore that he must help him dig the grave.  Rocco is very cross that the prisoners are walking in the garden, but Rocco says they should be allowed because it is the King's name-day.  Rocco says they should be locked up again. So he locked them again.

Act II

Florestan sits alone in his cell.   In his mind he imagines an angel who looks like his wife who is telling him to come to Heaven.

Leonore goes with Rocco to the prisoner.  She is still not sure whether it is her husband.  She gives him some bread.  When Pizarro comes he gets ready to kill Florestan, but Leonore stands between them and tells Pizarro she will shoot him if he comes nearer.  A trumpet is heard playing a fanfare because the Minister is arriving.

Outside the prison the Minister says that all the prisoners are now free.  He is horrified to find Florestan among the prisoners, because he is his friend.  The crowd ask for Pizarro to be punished.  Leonore frees her husband from his chains and the crowd say that she is a great heroine.

The Overtures
Beethoven made several changes to the opera at different times.  This included writing four different overtures.  They are called "Leonore 1", "Leonore 2", "Leonore 3" and "Fidelio".  The overture "Fidelio" is the one that is normally heard now at the beginning of the opera.  "Leonore 2" was the overture performed at the first performance in 1805.  "Leonore 3", composed in 1806, is the most famous of the overtures.  "Leonore 1" may have been written in 1805, or it may have been intended for a performance in 1807 in Prague which never took place".  Sometimes the "Leonore 3" overture is played during Act II between the two scenes.  However, many people think it does not work dramatically there.  It is usually heard today as a separate concert piece.  The overture "Fidelio" was composed for performances of the opera in 1814.

References

Compositions by Ludwig van Beethoven
1800s operas
1805 works

Fidelio


Yorktown is a city in Virginia.  It is the county seat of York County, though it only has 220 people living there.   It is most known for the Battle of Yorktown, between American/French troops under George Washington and Jean Rochambeau, and British troops under Charles Cornwallis.

The British lost the battle, and had to surrender.  This led to the British giving up the American colonies.  A battle in the American Civil War was also fought there and was won by the Confederates.

Cities in Virginia
County seats in Virginia

Yorktown, Virginia