The Boss of the Plains  was a lightweight all-weather hat designed in 1865 by John B. Stetson for the demands of the American West.  It was intended to be durable, waterproof and elegant. The term "Stetson" eventually became all-but-interchangeable with what later became known as the cowboy hat due to later style-designs based on how the rounded-crown would deform from regular use.

Design

The Boss was designed with a high crown to provide insulation on the top of the head, and a wide stiff brim to provide shelter from both sun and precipitation for the face, neck and shoulders. The original fur-felt hat was waterproof and shed rain. Overall, the hat was durable and lightweight. On the underside, the hat included a sweatband, a lining to protect the hat, and, as a memorial to earlier designs, a bow on its sweatband, which had the practical purpose of helping distinguish the front from the back. The original designs were natural in color with four-inch crowns and brims; a plain strap was used for the band.

For years, Stetson worried about the waterproofing, and finally decided to make his hat of beaver felt. It took about 42 beaver belly pelts to produce a high quality hat.  One story tells of a cowboy crossing a long dry stretch of prairie. His canteen sprang a leak. He saved the drinking water by carrying it in his Stetson. Stetson featured advertising of a cowboy watering his horse with water carried in the crown. The wearer could also use the brim to direct water to a person's mouth. A high quality hat in good condition was also viewed in some places as a status symbol.

Customization and change

The straight-sided, round cornered, flat brimmed original Boss of the Plains design dominated for about twenty years. Most 19th-century photographs show that the hat doesn't have an intentional crease at all. Most hats were kept open crown. However, through use, abuse, and customization by individual wearers, hats were modified from their original appearance.  In particular, the crown would become dented, at first inadvertently, then by deliberate choice of individual owners.  The brim was often rolled or curved and ornamentation was sometimes added.  Often, these creases and brim shapes began to reflect where a particular hat owner lived or worked, and in some cases, even cowboys on individual ranches could be identified by the crease in their hat.

Thus, the manufactured styles also began to change.  The first popular modification was a long crease sloping from the high back down towards the front, called the "Carlsbad crease" after a style used by wearers in Carlsbad, New Mexico.  Another design, derived from the pointed top of the Mexican sombrero, worked its way north and became known as the "Montana peak,"  which had four dents, originally derived from being handled on top with four fingers.

Popularization

Entertainers who promoted cowboy and western culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries popularized Stetson designs. Buffalo Bill had custom hats with very wide brims made for his Wild West shows, with later designs created for Hollywood including the Tom Mix style "ten-gallon" hats used in Western films.

Over time, the working cowboy hat of the ranch cowboy, as modified by popular entertainers and rodeo competitors, became an essential part of the cowboy image.  At times, various politicians, celebrities and law enforcement units adopted descendants of the Boss of the Plains hat to strengthen their association with the culture and values of the Old West. The Boss of the Plains-inspired design that became the modern cowboy hat has retained its basic features in construction and design since the first one in 1865, demonstrating the degree to which form succeeded in following function.

Robert Baden-Powell learned of the practicality of the Boss of the Plains hat through his association with Frederick Russell Burnham during the Second Matabele War of 1896–97, and he popularized the campaign hat or "lemon squeezer" style (i.e. flat brim with four dents at 12, 3, 6 and 9 o'clock) during the Siege of Mafeking in the Second Anglo-Boer War.  When Baden-Powell established the South African Constabulary in 1900, he chose the Boss of the Plains as their uniform headgear.  Popular culture has it that, on receiving the first shipment of hats from the Stetson company, the handbill identified them as 'hats, B-P style', which was misconstrued as an allusion to Baden-Powell's initials.  Baden-Powell later adopted the campaign hat for use by the Boy Scouts.

In popular culture
American author, Laurie Winn Carlson, wrote Boss of the Plains: The Hat That Won the West, which tells the history behind this hat.

See also

Campaign hat
Charro
Chupalla
Cowboy hat
Slouch hat
Equestrian helmet
List of headgear
Western wear
Cap

Footnotes

References
Bender, Texan Bix. (1994) Hats & the cowboys who wear them.
Carlson, Laurie. (1998) Boss of the Plains, the hat that won the West.
Manns, William. (1997) Cowboys & the Trappings of the Old West.
Reynolds, William and Rich Rand (1995) The Cowboy Hat book.
Snyder, Jeffrey B. (1997) Stetson Hats and the John B. Stetson Company 1865–1970.

External links

 In Search of the Real Cowboy Hat, Cowboy Chronicle. April 2004 reprint, accessed online April 1, 2009.
 John B. Stetson Hat Co. to revive, the famed 'Boss of the Plains' hat, deathvalley49ers.org, accessed online April 28, 2009.

1860s fashion
1865 introductions
19th-century fashion
20th-century fashion
Hats
Headgear
Rider apparel
Western wear

Boss of the Plains


Please Believe Me is a 1950 American romantic comedy film directed by Norman Taurog, and starring Deborah Kerr, Robert Walker, Mark Stevens and Peter Lawford.

Plot
Alison Kirbe is a young London girl who has just found out she has inherited a Texas ranch from an old soldier she had befriended during World War II. Mistakenly assuming she is now the owner of a small empire, she crosses the Atlantic Ocean by ship. On her way, she meets Terence Keath, a fellow passenger heavily in debt to casino owner Lucky Reilly. To pay off his debts, he attempts to marry rich and starts to seduce Alison, as he thinks she is a wealthy heiress. Another person who is attracted to Alison is Jeremy Taylor, a millionaire bachelor who is accompanied by his attorney Matthew Kinston.

The following days she enjoys the attention she is receiving from Terence, Jeremy and Matthew, but rejects them all. She feels most attracted to Matthew, but he mistakenly confronts her for being part of a scheme. Trying to hurt Matthew, she borrows money from Terence and buys an expensive present for Jeremy, while posing as a wealthy heiress. After arriving in America, Alison decides to stay in New York for a week before traveling to Texas. Matthew, meanwhile, tries to find more information on the ranch she has inherited, which makes him suspect her of scheming Jeremy all the more.

Matthew confronts Alison at a casino, where she is gambling with Terence and Jeremy. He soon apologizes, however, and they kiss not much later. Terence and Jeremy, who are witnesses of the kiss, are shocked that she prefers a penniless attorney over them. The next day, Matthew finds out Alison's ranch is not worth anything and accuses her again of swindling Jeremy. Alison bursts out in tears, angry at Matthew for turning an honest and good-hearted inheritance into a supposed scheme. That night, Alison finds out about Terence's financial situation and tries to help him out by offering Reilly to pay off Terence's debts.

It proves unnecessary, though, as Jeremy is prepared to pay for the entire debt. Afterwards, the three men rush to the hotel, where they propose to Alison all at the same time. Alison enthusiastically accepts Matthew's proposal and the other men soon move on, hitting on other women only moments later.

Cast
 Deborah Kerr as Alison Kirbe
 Robert Walker as Terence Keath
 Mark Stevens as Matthew Kinston
 Peter Lawford as Jeremy Taylor
 James Whitmore as Vincent Maran
 J. Carrol Naish as 'Lucky' Reilly
 Spring Byington as Mrs. Milwright
 Drue Mallory as Beryl Robinson
 Carol Savage as Sylvia Rumley

Production
On May 29, 1949, it was announced Norman Taurog was set to direct the film. By that time, Deborah Kerr, Robert Walker and Peter Lawford were already cast. On June 14, 1949, Van Johnson was assigned in the remaining male lead, with shooting beginning a month later. Filming started with Johnson, but he was replaced by Mark Stevens in August 1949.

The film was Val Lewton's first and only film for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. MGM was so satisfied with the script, that they offered to raise the budget and replace Kerr with June Allyson, who was more famous by that time. Lewton insisted on keeping Kerr, however.

Reception
According to MGM records, the film only earned $577,000 in the US and Canada and $192,000 overseas, resulting in a loss of $609,000.

References

External links

1950 films
1950 romantic comedy films
American black-and-white films
American romantic comedy films
1950s English-language films
Films directed by Norman Taurog
Films produced by Val Lewton
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films
Films set in London
Films scored by Hans J. Salter
1950s American films
English-language romantic comedy films

Please Believe Me


The Atlanta murders of 1979–1981, sometimes called the Atlanta child murders, was a series of murders committed in Atlanta, Georgia, between July 1979 and May 1981. Over the two-year period, at least 28 children, adolescents, and adults were killed. Wayne Williams, an Atlanta native who was 23 years old at the time of the last murder, was arrested, tried, and convicted of two of the adult murders and sentenced to two consecutive life terms.

Police subsequently have attributed a number of the child murders to Williams, although he has not been charged in any of those cases, and Williams himself maintains his innocence, notwithstanding the fact that the killings ceased after his arrest. In March 2019, the Atlanta police, under the order of Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, reopened the cases in hopes that new technology will lead to a conviction for the murders that were never resolved. In July 2021, Bottoms announced that DNA had been identified and sampled in two cases that will be subjected to additional analysis by a private lab, Sorenson Forensics of Salt Lake City. Additionally, investigators combed through 40% of the original DNA evidence and sent that to the same private lab for testing on June 21, 2021.
As of December 2022, no results have been made public, despite requests from the victims' families.

Timeline of murders

1979
 In the middle of 1979, Edward Hope Smith (also known as "Teddy"), 14, and Alfred Evans (also known as "Q"), 13, disappeared four days apart. Their bodies were found on July 28 in a wooded area, Smith with a .22 caliber gunshot wound in his upper back. They were believed to be the first victims of the putative "Atlanta Child Killer."
 On September 4, the next victim, 14-year-old Milton Harvey, disappeared while on an errand to the bank for his mother. He was riding a bike which was found a week later in a remote area of Atlanta. His body was not recovered until November of that year.
 On October 21, 9-year-old Yusuf Bell went to a store to buy Bruton snuff for a neighbor, Eula Birdsong, at Reese Grocery on McDaniel Street. A witness said she saw Yusuf near the intersection of McDaniel and Fulton getting into a blue car before he disappeared. His body was found on November 8 in the abandoned E. P. Johnson Elementary School by a school janitor who was looking for a place to urinate. Bell's body was found clothed in the brown cut-off shorts he was last seen wearing, though they had a piece of masking tape stuck to them. He had been hit over the head twice, and the cause of death was strangulation. Police did not immediately link his disappearance to the previous killings.

1980
 On March 4, 1980, the first female victim, 12-year-old Angel Lenair, disappeared. She left her house around 4:00p.m. wearing a denim outfit, and was last seen at a friend's house watching the television program Sanford and Son. Lenair's body was found six days later, in a wooded vacant lot along Campbellton Road, wearing the same clothes in which she had left home. A pair of white panties that did not belong to Lenair were stuffed in her mouth, and her hands were bound with an electrical cord. The cause of death was strangulation.
 On March 11, one week after Lenair's disappearance, 11-year-old Jeffery Mathis disappeared while on an errand for his mother. He was wearing gray jogging pants, brown shoes, and a white and green shirt. Months later a girl said she saw him get into a blue car with a light-skinned man and a dark-skinned man. The body of Jeffrey Mathis was found in a "briar-covered patch of woodlands," 11 months after he disappeared, by which time it was not possible to identify a cause of death.
 On May 18, 15-year-old Eric Middlebrooks disappeared. He was last seen answering the telephone at home and then leaving in a hurry on his bicycle, taking with him a hammer to repair the bicycle. His body was found the following day next to his bicycle in the rear garage of an Atlanta bar. The bar was located next door to what was then the Georgia Department of Offender Rehabilitation. His pockets were turned inside out, his chest and arms had slight stab wounds, and the cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma to the head. A few weeks before he disappeared, Middlebrooks had testified against three juveniles in a robbery case.
 On June 9, 12-year-old Christopher Richardson went missing on his way to a local pool. He was last seen walking towards the DeKalb County's Midway Recreation Center in Midway Park. He was wearing blue shorts, a light blue shirt and blue tennis shoes. His body was not found until the following January, clothed in unfamiliar swim trunks, along with the body of a later victim, Earl Terrell. The cause of Richardson's death was not determined.
 On June 22, 7-year-old LaTonya Wilson disappeared from her parents' apartment. According to a witness, she appeared to have been abducted by two men, one of whom was seen climbing into the apartment window and then holding Wilson in his arms as he spoke to the other man in the parking lot. On October 18, Wilson's body was found in a fenced-in area at the end of Verbena Street in Atlanta. By then, the body had skeletonized, and no cause of death could be established.
 The next day, June 23, 10-year-old Aaron Wyche disappeared after having been seen near a local grocery store, getting into a blue Chevrolet with either one or two black men. A female witness says she saw Wyche being led from Tanner's Corner Grocery by a 6-foot-tall 180-pound black male, approximately 30 years old, with a mustache and goatee. The witness's description of the car matched a description of a similar car implicated in the earlier Jeffrey Mathis disappearance. At 6:00p.m. Wyche was seen at a shopping center. The following day, Wyche's body was found under a bridge; the official cause of death was asphyxiation from a broken neck suffered in a fall.
 In July 1980, two more children, 9-year-old Anthony Carter and 10-year-old Earl Terrell, were murdered.
 Clifford Jones, aged 13, disappeared on August 20. He was found dead from strangulation. His body was found on August 21 behind a dumpster in the rear of the former Hollywood Plaza shopping center.
 Darron Glass, aged 10, was reported missing on September 14. His body has not been recovered.
 Charles Stephens, aged 12, was reported missing on October 9. His body was found the next day on Norman Berry Drive near the entrance to a Trailer Park. Stephens' body was missing his T-Shirt, and one of his shoes, he remained wearing his dark blue pants. Police determined that his cause of death was asphyxiation, rub marks were identified on his nose and mouth. Dog hairs and two Caucasian head hairs were found on the body along with two pubic hairs, which did not belong to Stephens or Williams, which were found on his boxers 950 feet away. The state considered this a 'pattern case' in Williams' trial.
 Aaron Jackson, aged 9, went missing on November 1. His body was discovered the next day strangled, lying face-up on a river bank.
 Patrick Rogers, aged 16, knew several of the previous victims. He went missing on November 30. His body was found on December 7 in the Chattahoochee river. Police speculated that he was dropped from the bridge above.

1981
 The murders continued into 1981. The first known victim in the new year was 14-year-old Lubie Geter, who disappeared on January 3. Geter's body was found on February 5.
 Geter's friend, 15-year-old Terry Pue went missing in January. An anonymous caller told the police where to find Pue's body. Terry lived in the same apartment as Edward "Teddy" Smith, who was killed in 1979.
 In February and March 1981, six more bodies were discovered, believed to be linked to the previous homicides. Among the deceased was the body of 21-year-old Eddie Duncan, the first adult victim.
 In April, 20-year-old Larry Rogers, 28-year-old John Porter, and 21-year-old Jimmy Ray Payne were murdered. Porter and Payne were ex-convicts and had just recently been released from Arrendale State Prison after serving time for burglary.
 On May 12, 1981, FBI agents found the body of 17-year-old William "Billy Star" Barrett on a curb in a wooded area near his home. A witness, 32-year-old Harold Wood, a custodian from Southwest High School, had run out of gas about a mile from the scene. Wood described a black man standing over and observing the location where the body was found before driving away in a white-over-blue Cadillac.
 During the end of May 1981, the last reported victim was added to the list: 27-year-old Nathaniel Cater. He was last seen by gardener Robert I. Henry at the entrance of the Rialto Theatre in Atlanta, reportedly holding hands with Wayne Williams. His body was discovered two days later.
 Investigator Chet Dettlinger created a map of the victims' locations. Despite the difference in ages, the victims fell within the same geographic parameters. They were connected to Memorial Drive and 11 major streets in the area. Author Ginger Strand links the murders to freeway racism and Atlanta's massive urban renewal program that disrupted African American neighborhoods.

Capturing the suspect
During the murders, more than 100 agents were working on the investigation. The city of Atlanta imposed curfews, and parents in the city removed their children from school and forbade them from playing outside. Author Kim Reid has written a memoir about being a black child in Atlanta at this time.

As the media coverage of the killings intensified, the FBI predicted that the killer might dump the next victim into a body of water to conceal any evidence. Police staked out nearly a dozen area bridges, including crossings of the Chattahoochee River. During a stakeout on May 22, 1981, detectives got their first major break when an officer heard a splash beneath a bridge. Another officer saw a white 1970 Chevrolet station wagon turn around and drive back across the bridge.Two police cars later stopped the suspect station wagon about a half-mile from the bridge. The driver was 23-year-old Wayne Bertram Williams, a supposed music promoter and freelance photographer. The Chevrolet wagon belonged to his parents. During questioning, Williams said he was on his way to audition a woman, Cheryl Johnson, as a singer. Williams claimed she lived in the nearby town of Smyrna. Police did not find any record of her or the appointment.

Two days later, on May 24, the nude body of Nathaniel Cater, 27, was found floating downriver a few miles from the bridge where police had seen the suspicious station wagon. Based on this evidence, including the police officer's hearing of the splash, police believed that Williams had killed Cater and disposed of his body while the police were nearby.

Investigators who stopped Williams on the bridge noticed gloves and a 24-inch nylon cord sitting in the passenger seat. According to investigators, the cord looked similar to ligature marks found on Cater and other victims, but the cord was never taken into evidence for analysis. Adding to a growing list of suspicious circumstances, Williams had handed out flyers in predominantly black neighborhoods calling for young people ages 11–21 to audition for his new singing group that he called Gemini. Williams failed an FBI-administered polygraph examination, though polygraph results are not admissible as evidence in criminal courts.

Fibers from a carpet in the Williams residence were found to match those observed on two of the victims. Additional fibers from the Williams's home, vehicles, and pet dog were later matched to fibers discovered on other victims. Furthermore, witness Robert Henry claimed to have seen Williams holding hands and walking with Nathaniel Cater on the night Cater is believed to have died.

On June 21, 1981, Williams was arrested. A grand jury indicted him for first-degree murder in the deaths of Nathaniel Cater and Jimmy Ray Payne, aged 22. The trial date was set for early 1982.

When the news of Williams's arrest was officially released (his status as a suspect had previously been leaked to the media), FBI Agent John E. Douglas stated that, if it was Williams, then he was "looking pretty good for a good percentage of the killings." Douglas had previously conducted an interview with People magazine about profiling the killer as a young black man. This was widely reported as the FBI effectively declaring Williams guilty, and Douglas was officially censured by the Director of the FBI.

Trial
Jury selection began on December 28, 1981, and it lasted six days. Nine women and three men comprised the jury, among which were eight African Americans and four Caucasians.

The trial officially began on January 6, 1982, with Judge Clarence Cooper presiding. The most important evidence against Williams was the fiber analysis between the victims he was indicted for murdering, Jimmy Ray Payne and Nathaniel Cater, and the 12 pattern-murder cases in which circumstantial evidence culminated in numerous links between the crimes. This evidence included witnesses who testified that they had seen Williams with the victims, and some witnesses suggested that he had solicited sexual favors.

The prosecution's presentation of the case has been criticized, to the extent that in some jurisdictions it might have resulted in a mistrial. In particular, two separate FBI special agents testified that the chances of the victims not having come into contact with Williams was "virtually impossible," based solely on the comparative rarity of the fibers which were found on the victims which seemed to match the fibers which were found in the suspect's car and home. After reviewing the case, Georgia Supreme Court Justice George T. Smith deemed the evidence, or the lack thereof, inadmissible.

On February 27, 1982, after 11 hours of deliberation, the jury found Wayne Bertram Williams guilty of the two murders. He was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in Georgia's Hancock State Prison in Sparta.

Later developments
In a September 1986 issue of American music magazine Spin, journalists Robert Keating and Barry Michael Cooper (the latter of whom would later find fame as a screenwriter) reported that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation – who had been conducting a secret investigation into potential involvement of the Ku Klux Klan in the crimes, in tandem to that of the Special Task Force on Missing and Murdered Children – discovered members of the group may have been involved in the murder of victim Lubie Geter, and may have been linked to the murders of fourteen others. Allegedly, a family of Klansmembers living outside of Atlanta had hoped to ignite a race war in Atlanta, and attempted to recruit others for this purpose. Charles T. Sanders, a narcotics dealer and recruiter for the group, was said to have told a criminal informant he intended to kill Geter several weeks before his body was found. After Geter had backed a go-cart into his car, Sanders allegedly told the informant "I'm gonna kill that black bastard. I'm gonna strangle him with my dick." Shortly thereafter, Sanders' brother Don was recorded telling another Klan member he was going out to look for "another little boy." Additionally, Charles Sanders was said to have a scar matching a description given by an eyewitness who reported seeing Geter enter the car of a White man with a "jagged scar on his neck," and a dog with similar hair to that found on Geter's and other victims' bodies. The article reported that, in 1981, members of the GBI and officials in other law enforcement agencies opted to close their investigation and seal their findings. However, a handwritten transcript of a conversation between Klansmembers regarding Geter's murder was sent anonymously to Lynn Whatley in 1985, an attorney who was then representing Wayne Williams.

At a 1991 hearing on Williams' request for a new trial, wherein he was represented by attorneys Alan Dershowitz, William Kunstler, and Bobby Lee Cook, investigators from both Atlanta and Georgia law-enforcement agencies testified they had little or no knowledge of the GBI's investigation. At the same hearing, an informant for the GBI reported that in 1981, Charles Sanders had admitted to killing Geter while Whitaker was wearing a concealed microphone.

In May 2004, about six months after becoming the DeKalb County Police Chief in November 2003, Louis Graham reopened the investigations into the deaths of the five DeKalb County victims: 10-year-old Aaron Wyche, 13-year-old Curtis Walker, 9-year-old Yusuf Bell, 17-year-old William Barrett, and 11-year-old Patrick Baltazar. Graham, one of the original investigators in these cases, said he doubted that Wayne Williams, the man convicted of two of the killings and blamed for 22 others, was guilty of all of them. On June 21, 2006, the DeKalb County Police dropped its reinvestigation of the Atlanta child murders. After resigning, Graham was replaced by the acting chief, Nick Marinelli, who said, "We dredged up what we had, and nothing has panned out, so until something does or additional evidence comes our way, or there's forensic feedback from existing evidence, we will continue to pursue the [other] cold cases that are [with]in our reach."

Criminal profiler John E. Douglas said that, while he believes that Williams committed many of the murders, he does not think that he committed them all. Douglas added that he believes that law enforcement authorities have some idea of who the other killers are, cryptically adding, "It isn't a single offender, and the truth isn't pleasant."

On January 29, 2007, attorneys for the State of Georgia agreed to allow DNA testing of the dog hair that was used to help convict Williams. This decision was a response to a legal filing as a part of Williams' efforts to appeal his conviction and life sentences. Williams' lawyer, Jack Martin, asked a Fulton County Superior Court judge to allow DNA tests on canine and human hair and blood, stating the results might help Williams win a new trial.

On June 26, 2007, the DNA test results showed that the hairs on the bodies contained the same mitochondrial DNA sequence as Williams' dog — a sequence that occurs in only about 1 out of 100 dogs. Dr. Elizabeth Wictum, director of the UC Davis laboratory that carried out the testing, told The Associated Press that while the results were "fairly significant," they "don't conclusively point to Williams' dog as the source of the hair" because the lab was able to test only for mitochondrial DNA, which, unlike nuclear DNA, cannot be shown to be unique to one dog.

Later in 2007, the FBI performed DNA tests on two human hairs found on one of the victims. The mitochondrial DNA sequence in the hairs would eliminate 99.5% of persons by not matching their DNA. The mitochondrial DNA sequence in the hairs would eliminate 98% of African American persons by not matching their DNA. However, they matched Williams' DNA and so did not eliminate the possibility that the hairs were his.

On March 21, 2019, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields announced that officials would re-test evidence from the murders, which will be gathered by the Atlanta Police Department, Fulton County District Attorney's Office, and Georgia Bureau of Investigation. In a news conference, Mayor Bottoms said, "It may be there is nothing left to be tested. But I do think history will judge us by our actions and we will be able to say we tried."

As of 2019, Wayne Williams continues to maintain his innocence.

Known victims

Media coverage and adaptations
The first national media coverage of the case was in 1980, when a team from ABC News 20/20, Stanhope Gould and Bill Lichtenstein, producer Steve Tello, and correspondent Bob Sirkin from the ABC Atlanta bureau looked into the case. They were assigned to the story after ABC News president Roone Arledge read a tiny story in the newspaper that said police had ruled out any connection between a daycare explosion, which turned out to be a faulty furnace, and the cases of lost and missing children, which had been previously unreported in the national media. In a week, the team reported on the dead and missing children, and they broke the story that the Atlanta Police Task Force was not writing down or following up on every lead they received through the police hotline that had been set up.

In 1981, British novelist Martin Amis published "The Killings in Atlanta" for The Observer, later compiled into The Moronic Inferno: And Other Visits to America (1986).

In 1982, writer Martin Pasko dedicated an issue of the comic book Saga of the Swamp Thing to "the good people of Atlanta, that they may put the horror behind them...but not forget." The story revolved around a serial killer who targeted minority children in the fictional town of Pineboro, Arkansas, who is revealed to be a demon who had possessed TV host "Uncle Barney" (a thinly veiled parody of Fred Rogers). While the demon is ultimately vanquished, the story ends on an ominous note criticizing the social inequalities that made the non-white children such attractive targets, as well as children's television shows that encourage blind trust of strangers.

In 1985, the television miniseries The Atlanta Child Murders was released. The film was centered around the murders and the arrest of the suspect. The film revolved mainly around the aftermath of the killings and the trials. The film starred Calvin Levels, Morgan Freeman, James Earl Jones, Rip Torn, Jason Robards, Martin Sheen, and Bill Paxton. Atlanta officials criticized the film, claiming that it distorted the facts of the case. After a series of negotiations, CBS executives agreed to insert a disclaimer alerting viewers that the film is based on fact but contains fictional elements.

Also in 1985, James Baldwin published The Evidence of Things Not Seen, a non-fiction examination not only of the case and Williams' trial, but also of race relations in Atlanta and, by extension, America. The book grew out of an assignment to write about the murders for Playboy, commissioned by then-editor Walter Lowe.

In 2000, Showtime released a drama film titled Who Killed Atlanta's Children? starring James Belushi and Gregory Hines.

In 2002, Tayari Jones published the novel Leaving Atlanta. The book focuses on the lives and experiences of three fictional fifth graders at Oglethorpe Elementary School, Tasha Baxter, Rodney Green, and Octavia Fuller, during the murder spree. During the time of the murders, Jones attended Oglethorpe Elementary School and was classmates with two of the real-life victims, Yusuf Bell and Terry Pue.

On June 10, 2010, CNN broadcast a documentary, The Atlanta Child Murders, with interviews by Soledad O'Brien with some of the people involved, including Wayne Williams. The two-hour documentary invited viewers to weigh the evidence presented and then go to CNN.com to cast votes on whether Williams was guilty, whether he was innocent, or if the case was "not proven." 68.6% of respondents said Williams was guilty, 4.3% said he was innocent, and 27.1% chose "not proven."

In the 2016 song "the ends" by American rapper Travis Scott featuring American rapper André 3000, on the former's second studio album, Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight, Atlanta-native André 3000 raps about the killings.

In January 2018, documentary filmmaker Payne Lindsey began releasing a podcast called Atlanta Monster, covering the murders with interviews from family members of victims, law enforcement officials, individuals alive in the Atlanta area at the time of the murders, and Wayne Williams.

The second season of Mindhunter (released in August 2019) covers the murders. The series, which is focused on the history of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) builds that dramatic arc of the series over the FBI's two BSU agents who join the Atlanta investigation. In the series fictional treatment, Agent Ford has the role of insisting that the 13 murders (at the time of the series arc) they are investigating are the work of one single serial killer, and that to gain the victims' trust, he may be African-American himself. This line of deduction clashes with that of his colleague Agent Tench, the Atlanta Police Department, and the African-American community of Atlanta – many of whom believe, in light of Georgia's history of hate crimes and racial violence, that the killings are the work of the Ku Klux Klan.

The Atlanta Child Murders, a three-part documentary series produced by Will Packer Productions, aired on Investigation Discovery in March 2019.

In April 2020, HBO released a 5-part documentary titled Atlanta's Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children, directed by Sam Pollard and Maro Chermayeff.
HBO's documentary revealed information that focused heavily on the appellate process of the case against Wayne Williams. Williams' attorneys filed a habeas corpus document and it was denied. Similarly, his request for a retrial was denied in 2004.

See also
List of fugitives from justice who disappeared
Post–civil rights era in African-American history

References

Further reading
 James Baldwin, The Evidence of Things Not Seen 1985. Holt, Rinehart and Winston
 Bambara, Toni Cade. Those Bones Are Not My Child. New York, Pantheon Books, 1999. A novel about a mother who lost a child as part of the murders.
 Chet Dettlinger, Jeff Prugh, The List 1983. Philmay Enterprises, Inc. The most comprehensive account in print written by the private detective once considered a suspect because of his thorough knowledge of the case.
 John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker, Mind Hunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit, Scribner, 1995, See: Chapter 11, Atlanta, pages 199–224.* Keppel, Robert. The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer. New York, Pocket Books, 2004 (revised and updated). Contains a chapter on the Atlanta Child Murders and Keppel's participation as a consultant with the investigation.
Drolet, Joseph. "The Pursuit of the Atlanta Child Murderer: Facts, Fibers, and Forensics." Alpharetta, Ga.: BookLogix, 2022.
 Jones, Tayari. Leaving Atlanta. New York, Warner Books, 2002. A novel that focuses on children during the time of the murders.
 Mallard, Jack. "The Atlanta Child Murders: the Night Stalker" (Jack Mallard, 392pgs) released 2010-12-02. Jack Mallard was one of the Fulton County Assistant District Attorneys who prosecuted Wayne Williams for two murders. Includes footnotes and charts of testimony, physical evidence, trial strategy that led to the guilty verdicts.
 Reid, Kim. No Place Safe, New York: Kensington Publishing Corp., 2007. A memoir by the daughter of one of the police investigators.
 Strand, Ginger. Killer on the Road: Violence and the American Interstate, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012. History of highway-linked serial killers including a chapter on the Atlanta murders.

External links
 FBI file on the Atlanta Child Murders
 Crime Library: The Atlanta Child Murders
 Atlanta's Missing and Murdered
 - The Atlanta Child Murders subseries in the Maynard Jackson Mayoral Administrative Records chronicles the time period between 1979-1981 when multiple young black children and adults were murdered in the city of Atlanta.

1979 in Georgia (U.S. state)
1979 murders in the United States
Child murders
1980 in Georgia (U.S. state)
1980 murders in the United States
1981 in Georgia (U.S. state)
1981 murders in the United States
Child murders
Child murders
American murderers of children
Child abduction
Child murder in the United States
Child murders
Crimes in Georgia (U.S. state)
Fugitives wanted by the United States
Incidents of violence against boys
Murder in Georgia (U.S. state)
Murdered African-American people
People murdered in Georgia (U.S. state)
Post–civil rights era in African-American history
Serial killers from Georgia (U.S. state)
Serial murders in the United States
Unidentified American serial killers
Violence against children
Violence against men in North America

Atlanta murders of 1979–1981


Pérotin (lived around 1200), was a medieval composer. He was probably French. Nothing is known about his life except that he worked in or around Paris in the late 12th century to early 13th century. People have tried to find out who he was by studying the archives of Notre Dame Cathedral, but his name has not been found there. He probably had another name, and used the name Pérotin for his compositions.

Pérotin worked on a very important collection of polyphonic music called Magnus Liber (meaning: Big Book). The composer Léonin had written a lot of this music. He may have been Pérotin's teacher, but we do not know. He seems to have written music for four voices which are settings of words for the Feast of the Circumcision and St Stephen's Day. He wrote three and four voice music of a type called organum. It was a very important development in the history of Western music. He wrote music in a polyphonic style. Often he took a tune and arranged it so that one voice sang it incredibly slowly while another voice sang something much faster on top.

It is difficult to work out any dates for his works because of the way the music was written. Often it is not even clear what mode they are in.

Pérotin's music has been an influence on some 20th century composers who wrote minimalist music such as Steve Reich.

References

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan

Medieval composers
French composers

Pérotin


Ingrid Backstrom (born August 21, 1978) is an internationally ranked professional skier from Seattle, Washington, United States. Backstrom graduated from Highline High School in Burien, Washington as a straight-A student, three-sport varsity athlete, and co-valedictorian. In 2000, Backstrom graduated from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington with a Bachelor of Arts in Geology. Her brother, Arne Backstrom, died in a skiing accident in 2010 at the age of 29.

Backstrom established herself on the freeskiing scene through her performances in Matchstick Production's 2004 Yearbook and 2005 The Hit List. Since then she has been featured in several other ski films, including Warren Miller's Impact (2004), Mark Obenhaus's Steep (2007) Matchstick Production's Seven Sunny Days (2007), Claim (2008), In Deep (2009), The Way I See It (2010), G.N.A.R. (2011), Attack of La Nina (2011), and Superheroes of Stoke (2012).

Backstrom was the only female to be featured as one of Powder Magazine's Future Big Mountain Heroes in 2002. She has gone on to win several other awards for her performances in ski films, including "Best Female Performance" and "Breakthrough Performance" at the 2005 Powder Magazine Video Awards.

References

External links
 ingridbackstrom.com

Whitman College alumni
American female freestyle skiers
Skiers from Seattle
1978 births
Living people
American freeskiers
Highline High School alumni
21st-century American women

Ingrid Backstrom


The Bayreuth Festspielhaus (Bayreuth Festival Theatre) is an opera house in the town of Bayreuth, Germany. The German opera composer Richard Wagner got the opera house built so that his own music could be performed properly. He had lots of ideas about how opera should be performed, and he thought that there was no opera house in Germany that was good enough for performances of his operas. Today it is still the place where every year there is a festival, the Bayreuth Festival, which is dedicated only to the operas of Richard Wagner.

King Ludwig II of Bavaria was a great admirer of Richard Wagner and he gave a lot of money for the opera house to be built. Wagner watched the construction all the time and made sure that everything was built in the way he wanted. Work on the building started on 22 May 1872 (Wagner's birthday), and it was ready four years later when, for the first time, all four operas which make up the cycle called Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), were performed.

The opera house is big enough for an audience of 1,925. One unusual thing is the orchestra pit, which is right under the stage, covered by a hood, so that the orchestra cannot be seen at all by the audience. Wagner wanted the audience to be able to concentrate properly on the action on the stage instead of being distracted by watching the orchestra. It makes it very difficult for the orchestra and the singers to be together, and conductors have to get used to the problem.

The Festspielhaus also has a double proscenium, which makes it look as if the stage is farther away than it actually is.

Bayreuth
Buildings and structures in Bavaria
Opera houses in Germany

Bayreuth Festspielhaus


Fark is a comedy website and forums.

Fark was started by Drew Curtis in 1999 as a weblog where users post current news articles and other information. Then other users make comments on these articles. There are two classes of users; users with free subscriptions are able to post comments in the forums and submit new articles. There is also a subscription service called TotalFark that grants access to more news stories. Regular subscribers are known as Farkers and paying subscribers are often called TotalFarkers or TFers.

Fark is what's known as a news aggregator. The page is divided into several tabs, "Not News", "Sports", "Business", "Geek", "Showbiz", "Politics", "Music", and "Video" Users submit stories that are relevant to each tab, and staffers and subscribers decide which ones are posted. Once a story is posted, a corresponding forum thread is created where any subscriber can comment on the story.

Other websites
 Fark

Websites

Fark.com


Victoria Island is an island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and the border between Nunavut and the Northwest Territories runs through the island. It is the 9th biggest island of the world, and at  is Canada's second largest island and nearly double the size of Newfoundland (or only slightly bigger than the size of the island of Great Britain). The western third of the island belongs to the Inuvik Region in the Northwest Territories and the rest is part of Nunavut's Kitikmeot Region.

As of 2006, 1,875 live on Victoria Island. Most of the people (1,477) live in its biggest city, Cambridge Bay.

Islands of Canada
Arctic islands

Victoria Island


A sensation is something that produces excitement. A new song or a new play might be termed a "sensation" or producing "sensation". A thrilling ride on a roller coaster might be described as "sensational".

Psychology
In psychology, sensation is the first stage in the biochemical and neurologic events:

It begins with a stimulus upon the receptor cells of a sensory organ, which then leads to perception, the mental state that is reflected in statements like "I see a uniformly blue wall."

A sensation that might lead to that statement could include the excitation of cone cells in the retina.

In the West, the human body's senses are divided into eight: visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, cutaneous, kinesthetic, vestibular, organic. The ways in which these senses are divided from one another in concept, and combined in varying ratios in perceiving the world, differs based on individual physiology, social and cultural context, and physical surroundings. The whole sensory system, including both physical sensation and interpretation (or cognition) of information from the senses, is referred to as a sensorium.

Sensory  system
The sensory system provides many ways to be aware of the world.

 In the visual system Light enters the eyes through the cornea. It then passes through the pupil, and is refracted by the crystalline lens of the eyes. Light is then channeled through the vitreous humour and then on to the retina. In the retina, there are two kinds of cells, rods and cones. Rods see black-and-white colors, and are dominant in the night (because, as physics states, there are no colors in the night, because what we see is the colors reflected from the atmosphere). Cones then, see colored structures. Cones are exceptionally abundant in the fovea. Cones are reactive to the three colors of red, blue, and green. Other colours are sensed as combinations of these.
 in the Auditory system Sound is received by the ear via the pinna, the outer ear structure, which then leads the sound inside through the external auditory meatus. After the sound passes through the meatus, it goes to the eardrum, or tympanus, then vibrates its way through the tiny ossicles, the hammer (malleus), anvil (incus), and stirrup (stapes), then to the cochlea. The cochlea converts vibration into electrical impulses which are transmitted to the brain.

 Taste, or gustation, is the ability to detect sensory changes in the tongue, through the use of taste buds, situated deep into the papillae. Intriguingly, the sense called gustation is in fact comprised of varying ratios of multiple sensory systems, shifting in importance and attention as food is chewed, tasted and swallowed. These include the taste buds, the sense of touch in the structures of the mouth and digestive system, chemical sensation of irritation in the trigeminal nerve system, and unique receptors for sensing the properties of water located at the rear of the oral cavity.

 Smell, or olfaction, is received by the olfactory bulb and connected to the brain by the olfactory nerve, the first cranial nerve of the brain, just after the nasal turbinates of the nose warm, strain and filter the air.

 For touch Please see the skin article for more details.

 The kinesthetic sense is the sense of posture and movement. It is also referred to as proprioception.

 The vestibular sense is the sense of balance. It is mediated by the action of the fluid inside the Semicircular canals.

 The organic sense, per se, refers only to sensation from the internal organs, or viscera, but can, however, be expanded to include certain physiological processes, such as hunger, thirst, drowsiness and air hunger. It is also referred to as interoception.

Psychology
Physiology

Sensation


Meridian Community College is a public community college in Meridian, Mississippi. Founded in 1937, it was originally named Meridian Junior College but changed its name in 1987.

History

Founded in 1937 as the "13th" and "14th" grades at Meridian High School, Meridian Community College is the only one of Mississippi's 15 public community colleges to originate through the initiative of the local school system. MCC began as the vision of Dr. H.M. Ivy (1884–1977), superintendent of the Meridian Separate School District in the 1930s. The college, then known as Meridian Junior College, operated at Meridian High School until 1964 when the college moved to its present location.

In 1970, the college merged with the historically black T.J. Harris Junior College as a result of a federal court order to the Meridian Municipal Separate School System. More than 400 students joined the MJC campus from Harris that year.

Meridian Junior College made its final break with Meridian Public schools by establishing its own district and board of trustees in 1980.

As part of its 50th anniversary celebration, the college changed its name to Meridian Community College to more accurately reflect the diversity of opportunities it provides for a growing community area.

Campus
The college is located on a 72-acre (29 hectare) campus located a short distance from downtown Meridian and is next to the campus of Mississippi State University's Meridian Campus. Other facilities not located at the main campus include the college's Truck Driving School and Magnolia Hall which is widely used by the community.

Student life
Meridian Community College offers students a wide variety of activities in which to participate. There are more than 20 student organizations on campus representing a wide range of academic and vocational interest. Many of the student organizations have won acclaim from local to international levels. In fact, in 2006, the college's Nu Upsilon Chapter of Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society for the two-year college was recognized as one of the Society's top chapters in the world.

Sports
MCC's athletic teams are called the "Eagles."  "Victor the Eagle" is the official mascot and can be seen at various athletic events. MCC has won five NJCAA National Championships. MCC's athletic teams include men's sports: basketball, baseball, soccer, golf, tennis, swimming, cross-country, and track and field. Women's sports include basketball, softball, soccer, tennis, swimming, cross-country, and track and field.

Unlike other Mississippi community colleges, MCC does not play football. MCC is, however, a member of the Mississippi Association of Community Colleges Conference (MACCC), formerly known as the MACJC. Previously, MCC was not a conference member and competed in Division I in the sports it offered, while members of the MACJC competed, for the most part, in Division II. The Eagles' main Division I rivals were both in Louisiana, Baton Rouge Community College and Delgado Community College in New Orleans. MCC is now a member of the Southern Division of the MACCC.

The MCC Golf program is the only Division I NJCAA program in Region XXIII. Twenty MCC golfers have signed scholarships with various four-year schools in the past decade, including Ole Miss, Mississippi State University, Troy University, Middle Tennessee State University, Southern Miss, and the University of New Orleans. Former MCC golf coach, Lou Hart was inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame on July 27, 2007. Former MCC golf coach Sean Covich, who played under the direction of Coach Hart from 1998 to 2000, was named the NJCAA Region XXIII Golf Coach of the Year and Mississippi Association of Community/Junior Colleges Golf Coach of the Year in 2007 after leading the Eagles to a school record nine tournament titles, including the 2007 MACJC State/NJCAA Region XXIII championships. The 2007 squad finished third in the NJCAA division II men's golf championship. In 2009 Covich then became the only coach in NJCAA Region XXIII history to lead a team to both a top ten NJCAA national finish at Division I and at Division II as he led the Eagles to a sixth-place finish in the school's first-ever NJCAA Division I National Championship. Covich led MCC to a NJCAA Division I national championship runner-up finish in 2010, and also led freshman Brandt Garon to the school's first individual national championship. Garon won the Golf Coaches Association of America (GCAA) Arnold Palmer Award in 2010 and then the GCAA's Jack Nicklaus Award in 2011 as the national player of the year.

Notable people

Jamario Moon, former professional basketball player of Los Angeles Clippers in the NBA, played for Meridian "Eagles" for one season (1999/2000; his only season of college basketball), and averaged 20.8 points and 8.7 rebounds pre game.

Retired NBA player, Ronald "Flip" Murray (Chicago Bulls) attended MCC and played basketball for the Eagles in 1997/98-1998/99.

Two former MCC Track and Field athletes have gone on to compete in the Summer Olympics.  Coby Miller competed in the 2000 and 2004 Olympic Games and Miguel Pate who competed in the 2008 Olympic Games.

Several MLB players have started their careers with MCC, including Cliff Lee and Corey Dickerson.

Former Major League Soccer star Damani Ralph played soccer for MCC. He scored 59 goals in 45 games for the Eagles and was named MVP for the 2000 NJCAA tournament, which MCC also won. He then went on to play for University of Connecticut before being drafted by the Chicago Fire.

Corey Dickerson (born 1989) is a baseball player with the St. Louis Cardinals.

The artist and painter Lallah Miles Perry was on the faculty and taught art and painting at Meridian Community College for many years before retiring as head of the art department in the mid-1990s.

References

External links

Official website

Buildings and structures in Meridian, Mississippi
Education in Lauderdale County, Mississippi
Universities and colleges established in 1937
Community colleges in Mississippi
Universities and colleges accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools
NJCAA athletics
1937 establishments in Mississippi

Meridian Community College


Post-nominal letters are letters after a person's name. They are used most in the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms to show that the person has a certain:
 job (e.g. JP for a magistrate (Justice of the Peace), or
 title (Kt for a Knight Bachelor or Bt for a Baronet, QC for a Queen's Counselor
 is a member of an order of chivalry e.g. OBE.

Academic degrees (qualifications from a university) can also be shown as postnominal letters, as can military awards (medals and decorations)

Titles

Post-nominal letters


The University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (), located in Modena and Reggio Emilia, Emilia-Romagna, Italy, is one of the oldest universities in Italy, founded in 1175, with a population of 20,000 students.

The medieval university disappeared by 1338 and was replaced by "three public lectureships" which did not award degrees and were suspended in the 1590s "for lack of money". The university was not reestablished in Modena until the 1680s and did not receive an imperial charter until 1685.

Some famous students who attended the university include Ludovico Antonio Muratori, a noted Italian historian and scholar who graduated in 1694, the playwright Carlo Goldoni in the 17th century and, in the last century, Sandro Pertini, who became President of the Italian Republic.

Brief History

The University of Modena dates back to 1175, a few decades after the birth of the University of Bologna, making it one of the oldest universities in Italy and the world. It was established by the city of Modena, which financed professors' contracts through local taxation. The first to be invited to teach was Pillio da Medicina from Bologna. The School of Law (Studium iuris) was subsequently formed around him and made up the nucleus of the university.

In the two centuries that followed, the Studium expanded from legal studies to include the training of notaries and the study of medicine as well. The subsequent history of the university was profoundly marked by the changing fortunes of the ruling Este family. Between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the Court of Este settled in Ferrara, academic titles were no longer awarded, and the activities of the Studium were greatly reduced.

Only after the Court moved to Modena in 1772 did the university regain its original splendour and academic prestige, receiving an imperial charter from Duke Francis II. The university offered multiple disciplines, including law, medicine and surgery, pharmacy, and mathematical, physical, and natural sciences.

The Department of Economics was established in 1968, followed by the Department of Engineering in 1989. The year 1998 was of fundamental importance in the history of the university when the Reggio Emilia site was instituted and the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia was founded, with the support of local institutions.

In fact, Reggio Emilia already had an ancient and noble tradition of university studies which ended in 1772 following the reform of Duke Francis II of Este. A School of Law, proposed by the city, is mentioned as early as 1188. In 1532, the Hapsburg emperor Charles V granted the College of Judges the privilege of awarding diplomas and degrees in Law. Duke Alfonse II of Este established a Medical College in 1561 and ten years later, Emperor Maximilian II authorized the conferral of degrees in medicine. In the seventeenth century, a School of Letters was opened at the Seminary and, in the following century, a chair of Scholastic Theology was established along with schools of grammar and rhetoric. In 1752, the University of Reggio was inaugurated in Palazzo Busetti and consisted of four faculties: Law, Theology, Medicine and Philosophy. However, its activities continued only until 1772 when, after the reform of Francis II, its right to grant degrees was taken away and given solely to the University of Modena.

The creation of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia not only combined the ancient traditions of the two cities into one institution, but also gave a new and powerful boost to the development of the university, resulting in a substantial growth of scientific and academic activities, which still continues today.

The Department of Engineering and Agriculture was established in Reggio Emilia in 1998, followed in 1999, by the Department of Arts and Humanities in Modena. Subsequently, the university witnessed the birth of the Departments of Communication Sciences and of Education Sciences in Reggio Emilia, while growth continued in Modena with the institution of the Department of Biosciences and Biotechnologies.

Organization
The university is divided into fourteen departments:

Area: Technology
 "Enzo Ferrari" Department of Engineering
 Department of Engineering Sciences and Methods

Area: Life
 Department of Life Sciences

Area: Society
 Department of Communication and Economics
 "Marco Biagi" Department of Economics
 Department of Education and Humanities
 Department of Law
 Department of Studies on Language and Culture

Area: Health
 Surgical, Medical and Dental Department of Morphological Sciences related to Transplant, Oncology and Regenerative Medicine
 Department of Diagnostics, Clinical and Public Health Medicine
 Department of Biomedical, Metabolic and Neural Sciences
 Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences

Area: Science
 Department of Chemical and Geological Sciences
 Department of Physics, Informatics and Mathematics

Points of interest
 Orto Botanico dell'Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, the university's botanical garden

Notable faculty
Clodoveo Ferri — Professor and Chair, Rheumatology
Franco Zambonelli — Professor of Computer Science

Notable alumni
 Genoveffa Franchini — hematologist and virologist
 Mattia Binotto — Swiss-born Italian engineer and former team principal of Scuderia Ferrari in Formula One

See also
 List of early modern universities in Europe
 List of Italian universities

References

External links
 University of Modena and Reggio Emilia website
 UNIMORE's website for International Students

Buildings and structures in Modena
Buildings and structures in Reggio Emilia
1175 establishments in Europe
12th-century establishments in Italy
Educational institutions established in the 12th century
1590s disestablishments
1685 establishments in Italy
Educational institutions established in the 1680s
Universities and colleges in Emilia-Romagna

University of Modena and Reggio Emilia


Biryani, biriani, beryani or beriani is an Indian dish that comes in set of rice-based foods made with spices, rice (usually basmati) and meat, fish, eggs or vegetables. The name comes from the Persian word beryā(n) which means "fried" or "roasted".

The cooking method of biryani came from Iran. It was brought to the Indian subcontinent by Iranian travelers and merchants. In India, the recipe of biryani developed to its current form. Local variants of this dish are popular not only in South Asia but also in Bangladesh, Southeast Asia, Arabia, and within various South Asian communities in Western countries.

Ingredients
The spices and condiments used in biryani may include, but are not limited to, ghee, nutmeg, mace, cumin, pepper, cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, bay leaves, coriander, mint leaves, ginger, onions, and garlic. The premium varieties include saffron. For a non-vegetarian biryani, the main ingredient with the spices is the meat—beef, chicken, goat, lamb, fish or shrimp. The dish may be served with dahi chutney or raita, korma, curry, a sour dish of eggplant (brinjal), boiled egg and salad.

Biryani and pullao are different. In biryani the rice (plain or fried) is cooked separately from the thick sauce (curry of meat or vegetables). The curry and the rice are then brought together and layered.  This makes a dish with contrasting flavors of rice, sauce and meat or vegetables.

References

Other websites

Persian food
Indian food
Rice dishes

Biryani


The Klondike River is a river in the Yukon in Canada. It is a tributary of the Yukon River. The river starts in the Ogilvie Mountains. It flows into the Yukon River at Dawson City. Gold was discovered near the Klondike River in 1896. That started the Klondike Gold Rush.

Yukon
Rivers of Canada

Klondike River


Ralph Vaughan Williams (b. Down Ampney, Gloucestershire, 12 October 1872; d. London, 26 August 1958) was the most important English composer of his generation.

Vaughan Williams always pronounced his first name "Rafe" - ("Vaughan" rhymes with "born"). His father was a rector. Ralph was very young when his father died. The family moved to Dorking near London. He went to Charterhouse School and played the viola in the school orchestra. He studied at the University of Cambridge and at the Royal College of Music where Hubert Parry was his teacher.

Early career

Vaughan Williams wanted to be a good composer, so he went abroad to study with famous composers like Max Bruch in Berlin and Maurice Ravel in Paris. Yet he knew that he must not simply imitate these composers, so he also studied English folk song. He became good friends with the composer Gustav Holst. The two men always showed one another the music they were writing so that they could help one another by offering criticism.

In 1910 he wrote a work which became one of his best-known pieces of music: the Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis. The piece is for a string orchestra divided into two sections. It uses a theme by the famous 16th century composer Tallis. He also wrote hymn tunes for the English Hymnal. One of his most popular hymn tunes is the one called Sine Nomine sung to the words "For all the saints". Another lovely work is The Lark Ascending. This is a short work for solo violin and orchestra. The violin sounds like a skylark singing in the sky. In 1934 he wrote a short piece for flute, harp and string orchestra called Fantasia on Greensleeves which is based on the famous English Renaissance tune Greensleeves.

Later works

During his long life Vaughan Williams wrote nine symphonies, works for the stage, songs, choral music and chamber music. In 1938 he wrote a famous piece called Serenade to Music for 16 solo singers and orchestra. It was one of several works he wrote inspired by Shakespeare. The words were from the play The Merchant of Venice. It was written for the 50th anniversary of Sir Henry Wood's career as a conductor. In 1953 he wrote music for Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, including a very short and simple motet O taste and see which has remained very popular with church choirs.

In his old age he became quite deaf. This was because of the noise of gunfire he had been exposed to when he was serving as a stretcher bearer in World War I.

His importance in English music

Some of Vaughan Williams's best works are those where he makes his music sound like folk song. He loved the poetry of Housman and used some of the poems in a song cycle called On Wenlock Edge for tenor, piano and string quartet. His music always sounds English. He was born in the 19th century which was a time when people thought English musicians were not very good. Vaughan Williams and Edward Elgar (who was a little older) made people realise that it was possible for an Englishman to write beautiful, moving music.

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

1872 births
1958 deaths
20th-century English composers
Musicians from Gloucestershire
Order of Merit
People buried in Westminster Abbey

Ralph Vaughan Williams


Kuchichinudza (Remove many things; Cause many people or things to come out) zvinotaura kubvisa, kutamisa kana kusudurudza zvinhu zvizhinji kana vanhu vazhinji.

Akachichinudza nyama: he brought away a large quantity of meat.
Kuchichinuka (Move from, or to, a place all together. 2. Converge on one spot. 3. Sprout (many grains at same time). Masvosve anochichinuka kana ukaisa dovi padyo nomwena wawo: ants swarm out if you put some peanut butter near their nest.
Kuchichinura (Acquire, obtain large amount) kana kurokota  Vanhu vanoenda kusero ndivo vanochichinura zvizhinji: people who go to a sale are the ones who get many things.

dzidzo
hushangazhi

Kuchichinudza


Nassau was a duchy which was created after the Holy Roman Empire ended in 1806. It was absorbed by different other states before becoming part of Germany in 1866.

Location
Nassau (as a duchy) existed above the Rhine It was near the end where the river came near the French border.

Nassau was also south of the Prussian Empire, Not near the coast of the Rhine. It was named after it's centre Nassau, but it was not its capital. When it helped in Waterloo it ended up in Belgium near Planciontot before being absorbed into Prussia.

Engagements
They engaged the French on many occasions, clearly capable of standing up to the French however they were ultimately deafened after an engagement at the town of Smohain and the farm of Frichermont, they became part of the Confederation of the Rhine, Ending their independence, they were annexed by Prussia and became an independent state. Later, Nassau helped in the Battle of Waterloo before being absorbed into the Prussian Empire, and later, the empire of Germany.

References

Former countries in Europe

Duchy of Nassau


Paintball is a sport in which players try to eliminate opponents by shooting each other with balls of coloured dye. The players can compete either in teams or individually. The balls of dye (called "paintballs") are shot through a device called a paintball marker (or paintball gun). When the paintballs hit, they release the dye. When they hit a player, the dye marks that player as eliminated. The game is often played as an organised competitive sport, involving leagues, tournaments, and professional teams.

Paintball can be played indoors or outdoors, on fields specifically made for the game. The field is scattered with natural or artificial obstacles and terrain, which players use to hide behind. The objective can vary according to the type of game being played. Players may have to capture a flag held by the opposing team, defend or capture a particular point on the field, or simply eliminate all other players on the field until they are the only player or team remaining. Depending on the variant played, games can last from seconds to hours.

In many countries, paintball is regulated by specific laws. Players are usually required to wear protective gear (such as masks), and game rules are strictly enforced. Paintball is also used by military forces and law enforcement for training recruits.

Terrain
The playing field is scattered with several obstacles. These are used to block the view of opponents and prevent them from firing accurately. They may be a shelter, fallen tree, barrels, or a cylindrical tube. In most modern speedball tournaments, inflatable vinyl objects of different shapes and sizes are used.

Variations

 Scenario paintball - Scenario paintball games strive to be the most realistic paintball games you can play.  Scenario paintball games are usually based on a story line such as the Battles of Normandy or Iwo Jima, however they are not all limited to World War II. Some go into the realm of Sci-Fi and play out an alien invasion. In nearly every Scenario game there are props, character players, paintball grenades, smoke bombs and sometimes vehicles and bodies of water as well. Scenario Paintball is very similar to big Airsoft games. Scenario games also last much longer than the other types of paintball  games, usually lasting anywhere from 12 hours to several days.

 Capture the Flag - There are two variations of this type: Normal two flag, and center flag. In the normal two flag type game, each team has a flag on opposite sides of the field. The objective is to capture the opposing team's flag and return it to your base. Center flag is where there is a single flag in the center of the field. The objective is to get the flag and take it to the far side of the field.
 Defend the Castle - This is again a two-team based paintball game and is not very common one. One team being inferior in numbers has to defend a Castle/ building while other with superior numbers has to conquer it. The desired objective of the game is met when the attackers enter the castle or die trying. It involves the combination of Paintball skills as well as the strategic planning at the same time.

 Elimination - The objective is to simply eliminate everyone else on the other team. Games typically last from 15-20 minutes. Big games, however, can last hours. Most big games have rejuvenation every half hour or so, so if you get out in the first 10 minutes, you're not sitting on the sidelines for two hours.

References

Other websites

Team sports

Paintball


Interred With Their Bones is a novel by Jennifer Lee Carrell published in 2007. It was published in the United Kingdom as The Shakespeare Secret. The novel's plot and structure have been compared to The Da Vinci Code.

Its success led to a sequel, Haunt Me Still (UK: The Shakespeare Curse), about the further adventures of the heroine Kate Stanley.

Plot
On the eve of a production of Hamlet at Shakespeare's Globe, Shakespeare scholar and theater director Kate Stanley's eccentric mentor, Harvard Professor Roz Howard, gives her a mysterious box, claiming to have made a groundbreaking discovery. But before she can reveal it to Kate, the Globe burns to the ground and Roz is found dead, murdered precisely in the manner of Hamlet's father. Inside the box Kate finds the first piece in a Shakespearean puzzle, setting her on a deadly, high-stakes treasure hunt.

Historical background
The novel draws heavily on Shakespeare authorship theories, notably Oxfordian theory and Derbyite theory. The author's note appended to the book explains the historical information used and the ways in which the real-life story of Delia Bacon and of the lost play Cardenio has been incorporated into the narrative. She also draws on her own research on the influence of Shakespeare in the old west.

References

External links
 Jennifer Lee Carrell's Website
 Page on the novel

2007 American novels
Literature about literature
Shakespeare authorship fiction

Interred with Their Bones


Martin Gerbert (11 August 1720 – 3 May 1793), was a German theologian, historian and writer on music, belonged to the noble family of Gerbert von Hornau, and was born at Horb am Neckar, Württemberg, on 12 (or 11 or 13) August 1720.

Life
He was educated at Freiburg im Breisgau, at Klingnau in Switzerland and at the Benedictine St. Blaise's Abbey in the Black Forest, where in 1737 he took the vows. In 1744 he was ordained priest, and immediately afterwards appointed professor, first of philosophy and later of theology. Between 1754 and 1764 he published a series of theological treatises, their main tendency being to modify the rigid scholastic system by an appeal to the Fathers, notably Augustine; from 1759 to 1762 he travelled in Germany, Italy and France, mainly with a view to examining the collections of documents in the various monastic libraries. In 1764 he was elected prince-abbot of St Blaise's, and proved himself a model ruler both as abbot and prince.

His examination of archives during his travels had awakened in him a taste for historical research, and under his rule St. Blaise's became a notable centre of the methodical study of history; it was here that Marquard Herrgott wrote his Monumenta domus Austriacae, of which the first two volumes were edited, for the second edition, by Gerbert, who also published a Codex epistolaris Rudolphi I., Romani regis (1772) and De Rudolpho Suevico comite de Rhinfelden, duce et rege, deque ejus familia (1785) (cf. Rudolf of Rheinfelden).

It was, however, in sacramental theology, liturgiology, and notably ecclesiastical music that Gerbert was mainly interested. In 1774 he published two volumes De cantu et musica sacra; in 1777, Monumenta veteris liturgiae Alemannicae; and in 1784, in three volumes, Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra, a collection of the principal writers on church music from the 3rd century till the invention of printing. The materials for this work he had gathered during his travels, and although it contains many textual errors, its publication has been of great importance for the history of music, by preserving writings which might either have perished or remained unknown. His interest in music led to his acquaintance with the composer Gluck, who became his intimate friend.

As a prince of the Empire Gerbert was devoted to the interests of the house of Austria; as a Benedictine abbot he was opposed to Emperor Joseph II's church policy. In the Febronian controversy he had early taken a mediating attitude, and it was largely due to his influence that Bishop Hontheim had been induced to retract his extreme views. In 1768 St. Blaise's abbey, with the library and church, was burnt to the ground, and the splendid new church which rose on the ruins of the old (1783) remained until its destruction by fire in 1874, at once a monument of Gerbert's taste in architecture and of his Habsburg sympathies.

It was at his request that it was made the mausoleum of all the Austrian princes buried outside Austria, whose remains were solemnly transferred to its vaults. In connexion with its consecration he published his Historia Nigrae Silvae, ordinis S. Benedicti coloniae (3 vols, St Blasien, 1783). Gerbert, who was beloved and respected by Catholics and Protestants alike, died in St. Blasien on 3 May 1793.

References

Joseph Bader, Das ehemalige Kloster St Blasien and seine Gelehrtenakademie (Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1874), contains a chronological list of Gerbert's works.

1720 births
1793 deaths
People from Horb am Neckar
18th-century German Catholic theologians
18th-century German historians
German musicologists
German Benedictines
German male non-fiction writers
18th-century German male writers

Martin Gerbert


Sheffield Mills is a rural farming community in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, located in Kings County along Route 221 between Canning and Centreville. It was an important apple shipping location of the Cornwallis Valley Railway branchline of the Dominion Atlantic Railway. After the decline of Nova Scotia's apple industry in the 1950s, Sheffield Mills farmers diversified, with many setting up poultry farms. Discarded waste from poultry barns attracted large numbers of bald eagles to winter in the area in the 1980s which has led to an annual winter weekend of eagle spotting.

Communities in Kings County, Nova Scotia
General Service Areas in Nova Scotia

Sheffield Mills, Nova Scotia


Neil Voss (born October 7, 1974) is a video game composer.

Voss' first recognized work was on Tetrisphere for Nintendo 64 in 1997, an acclaimed effort that earned him a "Best Soundtrack" award from Nintendo Power for that year. Later he composed tracks for The New Tetris in 1999, also for Nintendo 64. Voss later moved to working on the Game Boy Advance, producing soundtracks for Racing Gears Advance in collaboration with Orbital Media Inc. Many of his compositions for the Commodore 64 are available in The High Voltage SID Collection.

Background
At the early age of 12, Neil Voss began playing with electronic music on his Commodore 64 and this hobby soon became a big part of his life. He later became an underground electronic music developer, but saw his fellow composers signing to game developers, and so he joined H2O, a third-party developer for Atari's Jaguar. His first project was Phear, but after Jaguar failed, it was moved to Nintendo and expanded into Tetrisphere. As audio director, Voss produced, composed, and engineered the whole soundtrack for Tetrisphere, which some say made the game a hit. Voss went on to create more hit techno music in the N64 puzzle game, The New Tetris. This soundtrack became an instant favorite.

Later, in 2005, Voss worked on Racing Gears Advance for Game Boy Advance. which won for "Best Use of Sound" by IGN.

References
Composing Tetrisphere – Interview with Neil Voss (Part I) at IGN on June 15, 1998
Interview With Neil Voss (Part II) at IGN on June 16, 1998
Neil Voss: The Melody Behind the Addiction – Interview with Voss at Nintendojo

External links
Performing at Blip Festival in 2006 (video), courtesy of 2PlayerProductions
List of Neil Voss' songs at Last.fm

1974 births
American male composers
21st-century American composers
Living people
Video game composers
Musicians from Tampa, Florida
21st-century American male musicians

Neil Voss


Pierre-Félix Guattari ( , "feh-LEEX GWA-tah-rhee"; March 30, 1930 – August 29, 1992) was a French psychiatrist, philosopher, semiologist, and activist. He founded two fields called schizoanalysis and ecosophy, and is best known for his academic partnership with Gilles Deleuze, especially their two-part book Capitalism and Schizophrenia. The first part of this is titled Anti-Oedipus and was published in 1972, and the second part is A Thousand Plateaus, published in 1980.

Life
Guattari was born in a suburb outside of Paris called Villeneuve-les-Sablons in 1930. He learned to practice a kind of psychology called psychoanalysis with his teacher Jacques Lacan in the early 1950s. He later worked at a psychiatric clinic called La Borde, which was his employer for the rest of his life.

Guattari contributed to a communist newspaper in Paris called La Voie Communiste (The Communist Way) from 1955 to 1965. He was politically active in France throughout the 1960s, and he met his academic partner Gilles Deleuze through his political work. Together, they published the two-part work Capitalism and Schizophrenia in 1972 and 1980. They also wrote many other works, including What is Philosophy? (1991).

Guattari died at La Borde of a heart attack on 29 August 1992, aged 62. His partner Gilles Deleuze died three years later.

References

1930 births
1992 deaths
French philosophers
French psychiatrists
French health activists

Félix Guattari


A pion or π meson is a meson, which is a subatomic particle made of one quark and one antiquark.

There are six types of quark (called flavours) but only two flavours go together to make a pion. These flavours are called up and down. Quarks have charge, so two quarks of the same flavour (both up or both down) make a neutral pion. But when the two quarks have different flavours (up and down), the pion will have a charge. This charge is positive when an up quark pairs with a down antiquark. The charge is negative when a down quark pairs with an up antiquark.

Pions do not exist for a long time. (On average, charged pions exist for around 26 nanoseconds; neutral pions last a tiny fraction of this). Pions are significant to our lives because they are one of the ways for strong force interactions to take place between nucleons like the protons and neutrons of ordinary matter. These interactions hold the nucleus together.

Pions are the lightest hadrons (particles made up of quarks) and pions with a positive or negative charge are the mesons with the longest mean lifetime (the average time that passes before they decay into leptons).

Three Types of Pions
The three types of pion have the Greek letter pi in their symbols:
π+ for the positively charged pion
π– for the negatively charged pion, and
π0 for the neutral pion.
The (superscript) +, –, or 0 simply refers to the (electromagnetic) charge of the pion.

Up quarks have a charge of + and down antiquarks have a charge of +, so π+ has charge of +1 (like a proton).

Antiparticles have charge opposite to their particles, so up antiquarks have a charge of − and down quarks have a charge of −. This means that π− has charge of −1 (like an electron).

Because π0 pairs quarks of the same flavour with their antiquarks, both up quark (+) paired with up antiquark (−) and down quark (+) paired with down antiquark (−) leave it with zero charge (like a neutron).

Quarks and antiquarks also have a different kind of charge called color, unrelated to electromagnetic charge. This comes from the strong interaction that holds the quarks together. As in all mesons, the color charges in a pion must be equal and opposite: blue with anti-blue, green with anti-green, or red with anti-red. The effect of these color–anticolor pairings is that the pion's color charge is colorless (like a neutron is neutral). At the smallest distances, typically within an atomic nucleus, a small effect of the color charge remains and acts as the nuclear force that holds the nucleus together. Within the nucleus, then, virtual pions (and other virtual mesons) are exchanged between nucleons (protons and neutrons), pulling them together.

Antiquarks are antimatter, so they will annihilate a quark of the same flavour that is near enough. This means that the quark and the antiquark will turn one another into energy.

Force Carriers
Force-carriers are particles that are responsible for the action of forces, such as electromagnetism. Just as photons are responsible for electromagnetic force, so mesons are responsible for some of the lower energy (residual) strong force interactions that occur between nucleons. (Strong force is also known as nuclear force or residual strong force when its action is between nucleons.) At an even smaller level, gluons are responsible for the strong force interactions between quarks.

Pion Decay
Decay of charged pions always produces leptons, like electrons.
π+ almost always decays into one muon, and one muon antineutrino.
π– almost always decays into one antimuon and one muon neutrino.

A neutral pion, π0, will usually decay into two highly energized photons.

Other Forms of Pion Decay
However, there is some probability (from <0.1% to 1.2%) involved with the decay of some pions, as they can also decay into different forms. For π+, the second most likely decay product is one positron (an anti-electron) and one electron neutrino. π– will sometimes decay into one electron and one electron antineutrino. π0 will sometimes decay into one highly energized photon, one electron, and one positron. (Keep in mind that positrons and electrons can annihilate each other, and this annihilation produces highly energized photons).

Decay Due to Weak Force
Since the decay of pions is due to weak force, yet another force carrier is introduced. During the decay, a W+ boson is created, which lasts for 3x10−25 seconds. After this incredibly short amount of time, the W+ boson will decay into the leptons that the pion would naturally decay to. However, it is important to draw this distinction, as it includes weak force.

References

Subatomic particles

Pion


Spencer Gifts LLC, doing business as Spencer's, is a North American mall retailer with over 600 stores in the United States and Canada. Its stores specialize in novelty and gag gifts, and also sell clothing, band merchandise, sex toys, room decor, collectible figures, fashion and body jewelry, fantasy and horror items. The company also owns and operates a pop-up seasonal retailer, Spirit Halloween.

History
Spencer Gifts was founded in 1947 in Easton, Pennsylvania by Max Spencer Adler as a mail-order catalog that sold an assortment of novelty merchandise. The company moved all mail order and fulfillment operations to Atlantic City, NJ. In 1960, Max's brother Harry Adler, who had been with the company since 1947, sold his shares and left.

In 1963, Spencer Gifts opened its first retail store in the Cherry Hill Mall in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, where it operates to this day.

After opening approximately 450 stores under the name Spencer Gifts, Adler sold Spencer Gifts to entertainment conglomerate MCA in 1967. In 2003, Spencer's Gifts was completely rebranded after being put under new management, and with the change become known as just Spencer's.

In 1990, Spencer Gifts closed its mail-order catalog division.

In 1993 and 1996, respectively, Spencer Gifts acquired the DAPY line of stores and opened its first GLOW! store. The DAPY and GLOW! trademarks were retired sometime before 2007. As of 2021, both GLOW! And DAPY have returned to business under a private entity.

In 1995, MCA was acquired by Seagram Company Ltd. and was renamed Universal Studios. Spencer Gifts began to operate Universal Studios stores as a subsidiary of its parent company.

In 1997, Spencer Gifts opened its first store in Canada.

In 1999, Spencer's acquired Spirit Halloween, a seasonal retailer that was founded by Joseph Marver in 1983. At that time, the business had 60 temporary locations. Spirit's stores are only open for the two months leading up to Halloween, though it maintains a website year-round. The stores are generally operated out of the spaces of recently vacated businesses. As of 2013, Spirit had over 1,000 locations, which comprised about half of Spencer's annual revenue of $250 million.

In 2000, Spencer's expanded into the United Kingdom. The chain opened up to 14 stores in the United Kingdom before closing them sometime in the mid-2000s.

In 2001, Vivendi acquired Universal Studios and rebranded the entire organization as Vivendi Universal Entertainment.  Less than two years later, in 2003, GB Palladin, a joint venture between Gordon Brothers Group and Palladin Capital Group, acquired Spencer Gifts from Vivendi, around the same time that Vivendi was preparing to sell majority of the shares of Universal Studios to General Electric's NBC division. As a result of the sale, Steven Silverstein became Spencer Gifts' CEO and also the CEO and president of Spirit Halloween.

In the fall of 2004, Spencer's began redesigning its stores.

In 2006, Spencer's began its "Spirit of Children" program, which raises donations through its Spirit Halloween stores for, and hosts Halloween parties in, children's hospitals in Canada and the United States. Since 2007, the program has raised over $16 million for over 130 children's hospitals.

ACON Investments acquired the company in 2007 and sold it to Spencer's management in 2015.

Legal issues
The company has been investigated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for its advertising practices.

In 1962, Spencer Gifts was found by the Federal Trade Commission to have violated the Federal Trade Commission Act by making misleading statements in advertising its "Reduce-Eze" girdles and ordered to cease making false claims. The girdles were advertised with statements such as "Slim 4 Inches Without Diet" and "Trims 4 Inches Off Your Figure".

In 1969, Spencer Gifts was found by the FTC to, through the use of words like "stone", "birthstone", and "gold", have misrepresented its jewelry products. As its jewelry did not contain any "genuine precious or semiprecious stones", nor was its metal 24 karat gold, Spencer Gifts was ordered to stop use of deceptive statements in the promotion of its jewelry.

In 1970, Spencer Gifts was found by the FTC to have misled its customers as to the efficacy of its "non-prescription magnifying spectacles" by failing to disclose that correction of vision defects is limited to older persons who do not have any eye diseases, like astigmatism, but only need "simple magnifying or reducing lenses". The FTC ordered the retailer to cease the use of advertisements that misrepresented the quality of its optical products.

Controversies
Spencer Gifts has come under fire for its merchandise, which has been considered to be sexually explicit and racist.

In 1989, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) mailed thousands of pamphlets to Arab-Americans across the United States to campaign against Spencer's 'sheik' and 'Arafat' Halloween masks, which were marketed as part of its "Fright Stuff" line of products. The pamphlet featured a picture of the 'sheik' mask and claimed that it "was the only ethnic one in the product line and being marketed alongside traditional monster masks reinforced the notion Arab people are scary." Spencer Gifts pulled the two masks from its stores in October following a "three-day protest and telephone campaign" by the ADC, but decided later that month to place the masks back on sale, prompting the ADC to boycott and picket Spencer's stores. In a letter to ADC spokesperson Faris Bouhafa, Spencer's general counsel Ronald Mangel said that "after re-reviewing the 'Sheik' and 'Arafat' masks and discussing the look of the masks with others", Spencer's president John Hacala decided to reverse the earlier decision and place the masks back in stores. "We will not reorder the masks for next year," the letter added.

Spencer Gifts has been criticized for allowing children access to adult toys and other explicit products. While adults-only products are ostensibly kept in areas off-limits to children, there have been several instances where that is not the case. In one instance, police seized adult materials from the Spencer Gifts in Rapid City, South Dakota as "possible evidence for the national retailer's failure to register as an adult-oriented business".

In February 2014, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the largest Irish organization in the United States, called on Spencer's to cease the sale of merchandise it felt propagated stereotypes about Irish Americans, such as a T-shirt with the slogan "F*** me I'm Irish" and a hat sporting the phrase "Irish Girl Wasted". AOH National Anti-Defamation Chairman Neil Cosgrove protested, "We note that Spencer's Gifts is a recidivist when it comes to denigrating the heritage and culture of Irish Americans. Spencer's St. Pat's merchandise seems to plumb new lows with each year."

References

External links

1947 establishments in New Jersey
1967 mergers and acquisitions
2003 mergers and acquisitions
2007 mergers and acquisitions
Companies based in Atlantic County, New Jersey
Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey
Novelty items
Retail companies established in 1947
Retail companies of the United States

Spencer Gifts


Castries is the capital city of Saint Lucia. Saint Lucia is an island in the Windward Islands, which is part of the Caribbean. Castries has a population of about 3,600 people, about 16,000 live near the city. Castries is known for its port. The main products shipped from there include bananas, sugarcane and rum.

National capitals in North America

Geography of Saint Lucia

Castries


Waste heat is the by-product heat of machines and technical processes for which no useful application is found.

A fraction of input energy is always converted to heat by friction between machine parts and other processes such as liquid friction (see: viscosity).

Mechanical drives can be designed to run smoothly, with little loss of energy to heat. Machines for conversion of energy contained in fuels to mechanical work or electric energy produce large amounts of waste heat (see: Second law of thermodynamics).

This waste heat can be re-used if a cogeneration system is used. It is hard to use waste heat because it is difficult to transport the heat to another place, and it is difficult to store the heat for use at another time.
In electrification of waste heat, organic matter can be used as a working medium to produce electricity on much lower temperatures compared to the water steam cycle.

Heat
Energy
Waste

Waste heat


Florence Foster Jenkins (born July 19, 1868 in Pennsylvania, U.S.; died November 26, 1944) was an American soprano who became famous because she was such a bad singer.  She sang out of tune, had a very poor sense of rhythm and she was very unmusical.

Life

She was born Florence Foster in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. She had music lessons when she was a child.  She wanted to go and study music abroad.  Her father was very rich, but he refused to pay for her to travel, so she ran away with a man called Frank Thornton Jenkins who was a doctor.  They married, although they divorced in 1902.  Her husband did not want her to be a singer either.

In 1909, her father died so she inherited some money which she used to have singing lessons.  Soon she started to give recitals.  Her mother died in 1928 and this gave her even more freedom and money to sing.

From her recordings we can hear that Jenkins sang very out of tune and out of time.  She even wobbled a lot on one note. Her piano accompanist can be heard trying to change the speed to fit in with her mistakes.  Her words were unclear, especially when singing in a foreign language.  However, she became tremendously popular in her unusual way. Her audiences seemed to love her in spite of her unmusicality.  She always thought she was a good singer and compared herself to the great sopranos.   She knew the critics wrote bad things about her, but she said: "People may say I can't sing, but no one can ever say I didn't sing."

Jenkins sang music from famous operas as well as classical songs (Lieder).  She wore fancy costumes which she designed herself.  She threw flowers into the audience and was always fanning herself.

In 1943, she was in a taxi that crashed.  After the crash she found she could sing "a higher F than ever before." Instead of a lawsuit against the taxicab company, she sent the driver a box of expensive cigars.

In 1944, when she was 76, Jenkins performed at Carnegie Hall.  Many people had wanted her to perform there.  Tickets  sold out weeks before the concert.  Jenkins died in Manhattan of a heart attack a month later.  She always seemed to have been quite certain that she was a great singer.

References

1868 births
1944 deaths
American opera singers
American socialites
Deaths from myocardial infarction
Singers from Pennsylvania
People from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania

Florence Foster Jenkins


Samuel Goldwyn (1879-1974) was a Polish-American movie producer who made a lot of movies in America.

Early life
He was born in Warsaw, Poland. His parents died when he was young. He first moved to London, then New York. In New York he worked in a glove factory, then as a glove salesman. After this, he helped his brother-in-law to make movies.

Companies

He started the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation in 1917. This became part of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1924.

Movies
Some of his famous movies are Wuthering Heights (1939), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and Porgy and Bess (1959).

Goldwynisms
He often said things that people remembered, such as:
 "I paid too much for it, but it's worth it."
 "I had a great idea this morning, but I didn't like it."
 "That's our strongest weak point."
His sayings are called Goldwynisms.

References
 "Goldwyn, Samuel", Encyclopædia Britannica Online School Edition

1879 births
1974 deaths
American Jews
American movie producers
Businesspeople from New York (state)
People from Warsaw

Samuel Goldwyn


Tim Curran (born August 14, 1977) is a musician and retired professional surfer.  During his successful surfing career, he was one of the best surfers on the World Championship Tour, and was consistently in contention for the world championship.  Despite his success and popularity, he remained one of the most affable and well-regarded surfers on the tour, a trait he attributed to his "Christian faith and belief in God".

Curran was raised and still resides near Oxnard, California. He was born in the San Fernando Valley, but spent some of his childhood in the southern Riverside County city of Temecula. Temecula is roughly an hour from the ocean, so at age 5 his father started driving him to the beach every weekend and taught him to surf. He obtained his first sponsorship at age eleven from McCrystal Surfboards and was competing as a professional surfer by age sixteen.

He is considered to be the pioneer of surfing's "Aerial Revolution" of the late 1990s, and is famous for completing a full rotation, upside-down flip in two-foot surf at Rocky Point in Hawaii during winter of 2005.  This popular aerial achievement has become known worldwide as simply "The Flip".

Curran is also featured on Eisley's Final Noise E.P., released in 2006.

Curran has published three albums and one EP so far: Citsusa E.P. (2004), and the full album Word of Mouth (2007). The album was re-released in 2008 when Curran signed with Adeline Records, his new recording label, and two music videos were shot for the songs "Save" and "Blue Eyes". The song "Daylights Comin'" was featured in the second episode of the 2011 TV series Charlie's Angels. His second album, Verses, was released on March 9, 2010, and his latest album "Options" released on May 31, 2011.

References

External links
 Tim Curran's website

1977 births
Living people
American surfers
Musicians from Oxnard, California
People from Temecula, California
Sportspeople from Oxnard, California
Sportspeople from Ventura County, California

Timmy Curran


St. Vincent de Paul (24 April 1581 – 27 September 1660) was a French Roman Catholic priest who dedicated himself to serving the poor. He is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion. He was canonized in 1737. He was renowned for his compassion, humility and generosity and is known as the "Great Apostle of Trumpets."

1581 births
1660 deaths

Vincent de Paul