Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati (; ; ; 6 February 1874 – 1 January 1937), born Bimala Prasad Datt (, ), was a Gaudīya Vaisnava Hindu guru (spiritual master), ācārya (philosophy instructor), and revivalist in early 20th century India. To his followers, he was known as Srila Prabhupāda (an honorific also later extended to his disciple A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada).

Bimala Prasad was born in 1874 in Puri (then Bengal Presidency now Orissa) in a Bengali Hindu Kayastha family as a son of Kedarnath Datta Bhaktivinoda Thakur, a recognised Bengali Gaudiya Vaishnava philosopher and teacher. Bimala Prasad received both Western and traditional Indian education and gradually established himself as a leading intellectual among the bhadralok (Western-educated and often Hindu Bengali residents of colonial Calcutta), earning the title Siddhānta Sarasvatī ("the pinnacle of wisdom"). In 1900, Bimala Prasad took initiation into Gaudiya Vaishnavism from the Vaishnava ascetic Gaurkishor Dās Bābājī.

In 1918, following the 1914 death of his father and the 1915 death of his guru Gaurakisora Dasa Babaji, Bimala Prasad accepted the Hindu formal order of asceticism (sannyasa) from a photograph of his guru and took the name Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami. Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati inaugurated in Calcutta the first center of his institution, later known as the Gaudiya Math. It soon developed into a dynamic missionary and educational institution with sixty-four branches across India and three centres abroad (in Burma, Germany, and England). The Math propagated the teachings of Gaudiya Vaishnavism by means of daily, weekly, and monthly periodicals, books of the Vaishnava canon, and public programs as well as through such innovations as "theistic exhibitions" with dioramas. Bhaktisiddhanta is known for his intense and outspoken oratory and writing style as the "acharya-keshari" ("lion guru"). Bhaktisiddhanta opposed the monistic interpretation of Hinduism, or advaita, that had emerged as the prevalent strand of Hindu thought in India, seeking to establish traditional personalist krishna-bhakti as its fulfillment and higher synthesis. At the same time, through lecturing and writing, Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Prabhupāda targeted both the casteism of smarta brahmins, hereditary priests and sensualised practices of numerous Gaudiya Vaishnavism spin-offs, branding them as apasampradayas – deviations from the original Gaudiya Vaishnavism taught in the 16th century by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and his close successors.

The mission initiated by Bhaktivinoda Thakur and developed by Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami Prabhupāda emerged as "the most powerful reformist movement" of Vaishnavism in Bengal of the 19th and early 20th century. However, after the demise of Srila Prabhupāda in 1937, the Gaudiya Math became tangled by internal dissent, and the united mission in India was effectively fragmented. Over decades, the movement regained its momentum. In 1966 its offshoot, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), was founded by Prabhupāda's disciple Bhaktivedanta in New York City and spearheaded the spread of Gaudiya Vaisnava teachings and practice globally. Prabhupāda's branch of Gaudiya Vaishnavism presently counts over 500,000 adherents worldwide, with its public profile far exceeding the size of its constituency.

Early period (1874–1900): Student

Birth and childhood

Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami Prabhupāda was born Bimala Prasad at  on 6 February 1874 in Puri – a town in the Indian state of Orissa famous for its ancient temple of Jagannath. The place of his birth was a house his parents rented from a Calcutta businessman Ramacandra Arhya, situated a few hundred meters away from the Jagannath temple on Puri's Grand Road, the traditional venue for the renowned Hindu Ratha-yatra festival.

Bimala Prasad was the seventh of fourteen children of his father Kedarnath Datta and mother Bhagavati Devi, devout Vaishnavas of the Bengali kayastha community. At that time Kedarnath Datta worked as a deputy magistrate and deputy collector, and spent most of his off-hours studying Sanskrit and the theistic Bhagavata Purana text (also known as the Shrimad Bhagavatam) under the guidance of local pandits. He researched, translated, and published Gaudiya Vaishnava literature as well as wrote his own works on Vaishnava theology and practice in Bengali, Sanskrit, and English.

The birth of Bimala Prasad concurred with the rising influence of the bhadralok community, literally "gentle or respectable people", a privileged class of Bengalis, largely Hindus, who served the British administration in occupations requiring Western education, and proficiency in English and other languages. Exposed to and influenced by the Western values of the British, including their condescending attitude towards cultural and religious traditions of India, the bhadralok themselves started questioning and reassessing the tenets of their own religion and customs. Their attempts to rationalise and modernise Hinduism to reconcile it with the Western outlook eventually gave rise to a historical period called the Bengali Renaissance, championed by such prominent reformists as Rammohan Roy and Swami Vivekananda. This trend gradually led to a widespread perception, both in India and in the West, of modern Hinduism as being equivalent to Advaita Vedanta, a conception of the divine as devoid of form and individuality that was hailed by its proponents as the "perennial philosophy" and "the mother of religions". As a result, the other schools of Hinduism, including bhakti, were gradually relegated in the minds of the Bengali Hindu middle-class to obscurity, and were often seen as a "reactionary and fossilized jumble of empty rituals and idolatrous practices."

At the same time, nationalistic ferments in Calcutta, the then capital of the British Empire in South Asia, social instability in Bengal, coupled with British influence through Christian and Victorian sensibilities contributed to a portrayal of the hitherto popular worship of Radha-Krishna and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu as irrelevant and deeply immoral. The growing public disapproval of Gaudiya Vaishnavism was aggravated by the prevalently lower social status of local Gaudiya Vaishnavas, as well as by erotic practices of tantrics such as the sahajiyas, who claimed close affiliation with the mainstream Gaudiya school. These negative perceptions led to the slow decline of Vaishnava culture and pilgrimage sites in Bengal such as Nabadwip, the birthplace of Chaitanya.

To avert the decay of Vaishnavism in Bengal and the spread of nondualism among the bhadralok, Vaishnava intellectuals of the time formed a new religious current led by Sisir Kumar Ghosh (1840–1911) and his brothers. In 1868 the Ghosh brothers launched the pro-Vaishnava Amrita Bazar Patrika that pioneered as one of the most popular patriotic English-medium newspapers in India and "kept Vaishnavism alive among the middle class".

The father of Bimala Prasad, Kedarnath Datta, was also a prominent member of this circle among Gaudiya Vaishnava intelligentsia and played a significant role in their attempts to revive Vaishnavism. (His literary and spiritual achievements later earned him the honorific title Bhaktivinoda).

After being posted in 1869 to Puri as a deputy magistrate, Kedarnatha Datta felt he needed assistance in his attempts to promote the cause Gaudiya Vaisnavism in India and abroad. A hagiographic account has it that one night the Deity of Jagannath personally spoke to Kedarnath in a dream: "I didn't bring you to Puri to execute legal matters, but to establish Vaishnava siddhanta."  Kedarnath replied, "Your teachings have been significantly [sic] depreciated, and I lack the power to restore them. Much of my life has passed and I am otherwise engaged, so please send somebody from Your personal staff so that I can start this movement". Jagannath then requested Kedarnath to pray for an assistant to the image of the Goddess Bimala Devi worshiped in the Jagannath temple. When his wife gave birth to a new child, Kedarnath linked the event to the divinatory dream and named his son Bimala Prasad ('"the mercy of Bimala Devi"). The same account mentions that at his birth, the child's umbilical cord was looped around his body like a sacred brahmana thread (upavita) that left a permanent mark on the skin, as if foretelling his future role as religious leader.

Education
Young Bimala Prasad, often affectionately called Bimala, Bimu or Binu,  started his formal education at an English school at [Srirampur[Ranaghat]]. In 1881 he was transferred to the Oriental Seminary of Calcutta and in 1883, after Kedarnath was posted as senior deputy magistrate in Serampore of Hooghly, Bimala Prasad was enrolled in the local school there. At the age of nine he memorised the seven hundred verses of the Bhagavad Gita in Sanskrit. From his early childhood Bimala Prasad demonstrated a sense of strict moral behaviour, a sharp intelligence, and an eidetic memory. He gained a reputation for remembering passages from a book on a single reading, and soon learned enough to compose his own poetry in Sanskrit. His biographers stated that even up to his last days Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati could verbatim recall passages from books that he had read in his childhood, earning the epithet "living encyclopedia".

In the early 1880s, Kedarnath Datta, out of desire to foster the child's budding interest in spirituality, initiated him into harinama-japa, a traditional Gaudiya Vaishnava practice of meditation based on the soft recitation of the Hare Krishna mantra on tulasi beads.

In 1885 Kedarnath Datta established the Vishva Vaishnava Raj Sabha (Royal World Vaiṣṇava Association); the association composed of leading Bengali Vaishnavas stimulated Bimala's intellectual and spiritual growth and inspired him to undertake an in-depth study of Vaishnava texts, both classical and contemporary. Bimala's interest in the Vaishnava philosophy was further fuelled by the Vaishnava Depository, a library and a printing press established by Kedarnath Datta (by that time respectfully addressed as Bhaktivinoda Thakur) at his own house for systematically presenting Gaudiya Vaishnavism. In 1886 Bhaktivinoda began publishing a monthly magazine in Bengali, Sajjana-toshani ("The source of pleasure for devotees"), where he published his own writings of the history and philosophy of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, along with book reviews, poetry, and novels. Twelve-year-old Bimala Prasad assisted his father as a proofreader, thus closely acquainting himself with the art of printing and publishing as well as with the intellectual discourses of the bhadralok.

In 1887 Bimala Prasad joined the Calcutta Metropolitan Institution (from 1917 – Vidyasagar College), which provided substantial modern education to the bhadralok youth; there, while studying the compulsory subjects, he pursued extracurricular studies of Sanskrit, mathematics, and jyotisha (traditional Indian astronomy). His proficiency in the latter was soon recognised by his tutors with an honorary title "Siddhanta Sarasvati", which he adopted as his pen name from then on. Sarasvati then entered Sanskrit College, one of Calcutta's finest schools for classical Hindu learning, where he added Indian philosophy and ancient history to his study list.

Teaching
In 1895, Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Sarasvati Prabhupāda decided to discontinue his studies at Sanskrit College due to a dispute about the astronomical calculations of the principal, Mahesh Chandra Nyayratna.  A good friend of his father, the King of Tripura Bir Chandra Manikya, offered Sarasvati a position as secretary and historian at the royal court, which afforded him enough financial independence for pursuing his studies independently. Taking advantage of his access to the royal library, he pored over both Indian and Western works of history, philosophy, and religion, and started his own astronomy school in Calcutta. After the king died in 1896, his heir Radha Kishore Manikya requested Sarasvati to tutor the princes at the palace and offered him full pension, which  Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Prabhupada accepted till 1908.

Although equipped with an excellent modern and traditional education, and with an enviable social status among the intellectual and political elite of Calcutta and Tripura along with the resources that it had brought, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Prabhupada nonetheless began to question his choices at a stage that many would regard as the epitome of success. His soul-searching led him to quit the comforts of his bhadralok lifestyle and search for an ascetic spiritual teacher. On Bhaktivinoda's direction, he approached Gaurakishora Dasa Babaji, a Gaudiya Vaishnava who regularly visited Bhaktivinoda's house and was renowned for his asceticism and bhakti. In January 1901, according to his own testimony, Siddhanta Sarasvati accepted the Babaji as his guru. According to the Gaudiya mutt follower's, along with his initiation (diksha) he received a new name, Shri Varshabhanavi-devi-dayita Dasa (, "servant of Krishna, the beloved of Radha"), which he adopted until new titles were conferred upon him.

Middle period (1901–1918): Ascetic

Religious practice

The encounter with and controversial initiation from Gaurakishora Dasa Babaji, an illiterate yet highly respected personality, had a transformational effect on Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Prabhupada. Later, reflecting on his first meeting with the guru, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati recalled:

After receiving the bhagarati initiation, Siddhanta Sarasvati went on a pilgrimage of India's holy places. He first stayed for a year in Jagannath Puri, and in 1904 travelled to South India, where he explored various branches of Hinduism, in particular the ancient and vibrant Vaishnava Shri and Madhva sampradayas, collecting materials for a new Vaishnava encyclopaedia.  He finally settled in Mayapur 130 km north of Calcutta, where Bhaktivinoda had acquired a plot of land at the place at which, according to his research, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was born in 1486. At that time, Bhaktivinoda added the prefix "bhakti" (meaning "devotion") to Siddhanta Sarasvati, acknowledging his proficiency in Vaishnava studies.

Starting from 1905, Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Prabhupāda began to deliver public discourses on the philosophy and practice of Chaitanya Vaishnavism, gathering a following of educated young Bengalis, some of whom became his students. While assisting Bhaktivinoda in his developing project in Mayapur, Bhaktisiddhanta vowed to recite one billion names of Radha (Hara) and Krishna – which took nearly ten years to complete – thus committing himself to the lifelong practice of meditation on the Hare Krishna mantra taught to him first by his father and then by his guru. The aural meditation on Krishna's names done either individually (japa) or collectively (kirtana) became a pivotal theme in Bhaktisiddhanta's teachings and personal practice.

Brahmanas vs. Vaishnavas
While not feeling in any way "inferior" due to his birth in a comparatively lower kayastha family, Bhaktisiddhanta Prabhupāda soon faced opposition from the orthodox brahmanas of Nabadwip, who maintained that birth in a brahminical family was a necessary criterion for worshiping the images and deities of Vishnu. Refusing to submit to caste hierarchies and hereditary rights, instead Bhaktisiddhanta tried to align religious competence with personal character and religious merits.

A defining moment of this brewing confrontation came on 8 September 1911, when Bhaktisiddhanta Prabhupāda was invited to a conference in Balighai, Midnapore, that gathered Vaishnavas from Bengal and beyond to debate the eligibility of the brahmanas and that of the Vaishnavas. The debate was centred on two issues:  whether those born as non-brahmanas but initiated into Vaishnavism were eligible to worship a shalagram shila (a sacred stone representing Vishnu, Krishna or other deities), and whether they could give initiation in the sacred mantras of the Vaisnava tradition.

Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Prabhupāda accepted the invitation and presented a paper, Brāhmaṇa o Vaiṣṇava (Brahmana and Vaishnava), later published in an extended form. This was the first detailed exposition of Bhaktisiddhanta's thought in this matter that would lay the foundation of his forthcoming Gaudiya Math mission. After praising the important position that brahmanas hold as repositories of spiritual and ritual knowledge, Prabhupāda used textual references to assert that Vaishnavas should be respected even more due to their devotional practice, thus contradicting the claims of the hereditary brahmanas present at the conference. He described the varnashrama and its concomitant rituals of purity (samskara) as beneficial for the individual, but also as currently plagued by misguided practices.

Although the debate at Balighai apparently turned into Bhaktisiddhanta's triumph, it sowed the seed of a bitter rivalry between the brahmana community of Nabadwip and the Gaudiya Math that lasted throughout Bhaktisiddhanta's life and even threatened it on a few occasions.

Publishing

As per popular stories, Gaurakishora Dasa Babaji on several occasions dissuaded Bhaktisiddhanta from visiting Calcutta, referring to the large imperial city as "the universe of Kali" () – a standard understanding among Vaishnava ascetics. However, in 1913 Bhaktisiddhanta established a printing press in Calcutta, and called it bhagavat-yantra ("God's machine") and began to publish medieval Vaishnava texts in Bengali, such as the Chaitanya Charitamrita by Krishnadasa Kaviraja, supplemented with his own commentary. This marked Bhaktisiddhanta's commitment to leave no modern facilities unused in the propagation of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, and his new focus on printing and distributing religious literature. Bhaktisiddhanta's new determination stemmed from an instruction that he received in 1910 from Bhaktivinoda in a personal letter:

After the demise of his father Bhaktivinoda on 23 June 1914, Srimad Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami Prabhupad relocated his Calcutta press to Mayapur and then to nearby Krishnanagar in the Nadia district. From there he continued publishing Bhaktivinoda's Sajjana-toshani, and completed the publication of Chaitanya Charitamrita. Soon after, his guru Gaurakishora Dasa Babaji also died. Without these two key sources of inspiration, and with the majority of Bhaktivinoda's followers being married and thus unable to pursue a strong missionary commitment, Bhaktisiddhanta found himself nearly alone with a mission that seemed far beyond his means. When a disciple suggested that Bhaktisiddhanta relocate to Calcutta to establish a center there, he was inspired by the suggestion and began preparing for its implementation.

Later period (1918–1937): Missionary

The disappearance of Bhaktivinoda and Gaurakishora Dasa Babaji left Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati with the burden of responsibility for their mission of reviving and safeguarding the Chaitanya tradition as they envisioned it. An uncompromising and even belligerent advocate of his spiritual predecessors' teachings, Bhaktisiddhanta saw battles to be fought on many fronts: the smarta-brahmanas with their claims of exclusive hereditary eligibility as priests and gurus; the  dismissing the form and personhood of God as material and external to the essence of the divine; professional Bhagavatam reciters exploiting the text sacred to Gaudiya Vaishnavas as a family business; the pseudo-Vaishnava sahajiyas and other Gaudiya spin-offs with their sensualised, profaned imitations of bhakti.  Relentless and uncompromising oratory and written critique of what, in Bhaktisiddhanta's words, was a contemporary religious "society of cheaters and the cheated" became the underlying tone of his missionary efforts, not only earning him the title "acharya-keshari" ("lion guru"), but also awakening suspicion, fear, and at times hate among his opponents.

Sannyasa and Gaudiya Math

Deliberating on how to best conduct the mission in the future, he felt that the example of the South Indian orders of sannyasa (monasticism), the most prestigious spiritual order in Hinduism, would be needed in the Chaitanya tradition as well to increase its respectability and to openly institutionalise asceticism as compatible with bhakti. On 27 March 1918, before leaving for Calcutta, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati resolved to become the first sannyasi of Gaudiya Vaishnavism post Chaitanya Mahaprabhu period, starting a new Gaudiya Vaishnava monastic order. Since there was no other Gaudiya Vaishnava sannyasi to initiate him into the renounced order, he controversially sat down before a picture of Gaurakishora Dasa Babaji and conferred the sannyasa upon himself. From that day on, he adopted both the dress and the life of a Vaishnava renunciant, with the name Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Goswami.

In December 1918 Bhaktisiddhanta inaugurated his first center called "Calcutta Bhaktivinoda Asana" at 1, Ultadinghee Junction Road in North Calcutta, renamed in 1920 as "Shri Gaudiya Math". Amrita Bazar Patrika'''s coverage of the opening states that "[h]ere ardent seekers after truth are received and listened to and solutions to their questions are advanced from a most reasonable and liberal standpoint of view." Bhaktivinoda Asana provided its students with accommodation, training in self-discipling and intense spiritual practice, as well as systematic long-term education in various Vaishnava texts such as the Shrimad Bhagavatam and Vaishnava Vedanta. It would become a template for sixty-four Gaudiya Math centres in India and three abroad, in London (England), Berlin (Germany), and Rangoon (Burma), which Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati established during his lifetime.

Registered on 5 February 1919, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati's missionary movement was initially called Vishva Vaishnava Raj Sabha, in the name of the society founded by Bhaktivinoda. However, it soon became eponymously known as the Gaudiya Math after the Calcutta branch and his weekly Bengali magazine Gaudiya. The Gaudiya Math rapidly gained a reputation as an outspoken voice on religious, philosophical and social issues via its wide range of periodical publications, targeting educated audiences in English, Bengali, Assamese, Odia, and Hindi. These publications included a daily Bengali newspaper Nadiya Prakash, a weekly magazine Gaudiya, and a monthly magazine in English and Sanskrit The Harmonist (Shri Sajjana-toshani). The intellectual and philosophical appeal of the Gaudiya Math outreach programs garnered particularly eager response in urban areas, where wealthy supporters started contributing generously towards the construction of new temples and large "theistic exhibitions" – public expositions on the Gaudiya Vaishnava philosophy by means of displays and dioramas.

 Caste and untouchability

The Gaudiya Math core leadership consisted mainly of educated Bengalis and eighteen sannyasis who were sent off to pioneer the movement in new places in India, and later, in Europe. Its growing ashrama residents hub, however, represented a wide cross-section of the Indian society, with disciples from both educated urban and simple rural milieus. Householder disciples and sympathizers supported the temples with funds, food, and volunteer labour. The Gaudiya Math centres paid serious attention to the individual discipline of their residents, including mandatory ascetic vows and daily practice of devotion (bhakti) centred on individual recitation (japa) and public singing (kirtan) of Krishna's names, regular study of philosophical and devotional texts (svadhyaya), traditional worship of temple images of Krishna and Chaitanya (archana) as well as attendance at lectures and seminars (shravanam).

A deliberate disregard of social background as a criterion for religious eligibility marked a sharp departure in Bhaktisiddhanta's movement from customary Hindu caste restrictions. Bhaktisiddhanta spelled out his views, which appeared to be modern yet were firmly rooted in the early bhakti literature of the Chaitanya school, in an essay called "Gandhiji's Ten Questions" published in The Harmonist in January 1933.  In the essay he replied to questions posed by Mahatma Gandhi, who in December 1932 challenged India's leading orthodox Hindu organisations on the practice of untouchability.  In his reply, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati defined untouchables as those inimical to the concept of serving God, rather than those hailing from the lowest social or hereditary background.  He argued that Vishnu temples should be open to everyone, but particularly to those who possessed a favourable attitude toward the divine and were willing to undergo a process of spiritual training.  He further stated that untouchability had a cultural and historical underpinning rather than a religious one, and as such, Gandhi's questions referred to a secular issue, not a religious one. As an alternative to the secular concept of "Hindu" and its social implications, Bhaktisiddhanta suggested an ethic of "unconditional reverence for all entities by the realization and exclusive practice of the whole-time service of the Absolute".  By this he stressed that the practice of bhakti, or divine love, and service to God as the supreme person demanded moral responsibility towards all other beings who, according to Chaitanya school, are eternal metaphysical entities – minute in relation to God but qualitatively equal to one another.

 Radha-Krishna as Love vs. Radha-Krishna as philosophy

While emphasising the innate spirituality of all beings, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati strongly objected to representations of the sacred love between Radha and Krishna, described in the Bhagavatam and other Vaishnava texts, as erotic, which permeated the popular culture of Bengal in art, theatre, and folk songs. He stated that the sacred concept of love cherished by Gaudiya Vaishnavas was being profaned due to a lacking in philosophical understanding and proper guidance. He repeatedly critiqued such popular communities in Bengal as the sahajiyas, who presented their sexual practices as a path of Krishna bhakti, denouncing them as pseudo-Vaishnavas. Bhaktisiddhanta argued instead that the path to spiritual growth was not through what he described as sensual gratification, but through the practice of chastity, humility, and service.

At the same time, Bhaktisiddhanta's approach to the material world was far from being escapist. Rather than shunning all connections with it, he adopted the principle of yukta-vairagya – a term coined by Chaitanya's associate Rupa Gosvami meaning "renunciation by engagement". This implied using any required object in the service of the divine by renouncing the propensity to enjoy it.  On the basis of this principle, Bhaktisiddhanta used the latest advancements in technology, institutional building, communication, printing, and transportation, while striving to carefully keep intact the theological core of his personalist tradition. This hermeneutical dynamism and spirit of adaptation employed by Bhaktisiddhanta became an important element in the growth of the Gaudiya Math and facilitated its future global growth.

 The Gaudiya Math in Europe
Back in 1882, Bhaktivinoda stated in his Sajjana-toshani magazine a coveted vision of universalism and brotherhood across borders and races:

Bhaktivinoda did not stop short of making practical efforts to implement his vision. In 1896 he published and sent to several addressees in the West a book entitled Srimad-Gaurangalila- Smaranamangala, or Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, His life and Precepts that portrayed Chaitanya Mahaprabhu as a champion of "universal brotherhood and intellectual freedom":

Bhaktivinoda adapted his message to the Western mind by borrowing popular Christian expressions such as "universal fraternity", "cultivation of the spirit", "preach", and "church" and deliberately using them in a Hindu context. Copies of Shri Chaitanya, His Life and Precepts were sent to Western scholars across the British Empire, and landed, among others, in academic libraries at McGill University in Montreal, at the University of Sydney in Australia and at the Royal Asiatic Society of London. The book also made its way to prominent scholars such as Oxford Sanskritist Monier Monier-Williams and earned a favourable review in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.

Bhaktisiddhanta inherited the vision of spreading the message of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in the West from his father Bhaktivinoda. The same inspiration was also bequeathed to Bhaktisiddhanta as the last will of his mother Bhagavati Devi prior to her death in 1920. Thus, from the early 1920s Bhaktisiddhanta began to plan his mission to Europe.

In 1927 he launched a periodical in English and requested British officers to patronise his movement, which they gradually did, culminating in an official visit by the Governor of Bengal John Anderson to Bhaktisiddhanta's headquarters in Mayapur on 15 January 1935. Bhaktisiddhanta is reported to have kept a map of London, pondering on ways of expanding his mission to new frontiers in the West. After a long and careful preparation, on 20 July 1933 three of Bhaktisiddhanta's senior disciples including Swami Bhakti Hridaya Bon arrived in London. As a result of their mission abroad, on 24 April 1934, Lord Zetland, the British secretary of state for India, inaugurated the Gaudiya Mission Society in London and became its president. This was followed a few months later by a center established by Swami Bon in Berlin, Germany, from where he journeyed to lecture and meet the German academic and political elite. On 18 September 1935, the Gaudiya Math and Calcutta dignitaries offered a reception to two German converts, Ernst Georg Schulze and Baron H.E. von Queth, who arrived along with Swami Bon.

Bhaktisiddhanta maintained that, if explained properly, the philosophy and practice of Vaishnavism would speak for itself, gradually attracting intelligent and sensible people. However, despite considerable financial investments and efforts, the success of the Gaudiya Mission in the West remained limited to just a few people interested to seriously practice Vaishnavism.  The importance of the Western venture prompted Bhaktisiddhanta to make the Western mission the main theme of his final address at a gathering of thousands of his disciples and followers at Champahati, Bengal, in 1936. In his address Bhaktisiddhanta restated the urgency and importance of presenting Chaitanya's teachings in the Western countries, despite all social, cultural, and financial challenges, and told, "I have a prediction. However long in the future it may be, one of my disciples will cross the ocean and bring back the entire world".

The deep international tensions globally building up in the late 1930s made Bhaktisiddhanta more certain that solutions to the incumbent problems of humanity were to be found primarily in the realm of religion and spirituality, and not solely in the fields of science, economy, and politics. On 3 December 1936, Bhaktisiddhanta answered a letter from his disciple Bhaktivedanta, who had asked how he could best serve his guru's mission:

Shortly thereafter, on 1 January 1937, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati manifested his disappearance at the age of 63.

 Literary works
For a complete list of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati's literary works, see Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati bibliography

 Crises of succession
The Gaudiya Math mission, inspired by Bhaktivinoda and developed by Bhaktisiddhanta, emerged as one of  "the most powerful reformist movements" of colonial Bengal in the 19th and early 20th century. In mission and scope it parallelled the efforts of Swami Vivekananda and the Ramakrishna Mission, and challenged modern advaita Vedanta spirituality that had come to dominate the religious sensibilities of the Hindu middle class in India and the way Hinduism was understood in the West. Rather than appointing a successor, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati instead instructed his leading disciples to jointly run the mission in his absence, and expected that qualified leaders would emerge naturally "on the strength of their personal merit". However, weeks after his departure a crisis of succession broke out, resulting in factions and legal infighting. The united mission was first split into two separate institutions and later on was fragmented into several smaller groups that began functioning and furthering the movement independently.

The Gaudiya Math movement, however, slowly regained its strength. In 1966 Abhay Caranararavinda De, now A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, founded in New York City the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). Modeled after the original Gaudiya Math and emulating its emphasis on dynamic mission and spiritual practice, ISKCON soon popularised Chaitanya Vaishnavism on a global scale, becoming a world's leading proponent of Hindu bhakti'' personalism.

Today Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati's Gaudiya Math movement includes more than forty independent institutions, hundreds of centres and more than 500,000 practitioners globally, with scholars acknowledging its public profile as far exceeding the size of its constituency.

Disciples and their contribution

Among all the branches of Gaudiya Vaisnava Sampradaya, it is not an exaggeration to say that followers of Bhaktivinoda and Bhaktisiddhanta have made the most far-reaching contributions in terms of spreading the message of Lord Chaitanya, making bhakti accessible to Western audience and preserving the deep philosophical heritage of the sect.

Some of his noteworthy disciples were:

 Kunja-babu (1894-1976), who was later known Bhakti Vilasa Tirtha Maharaj, was the trusty and administrator of the Gaudiya Matha and later the acharya of Mayapur Sri Chaitanya Matha and its branches. He founded the Chaitanya Research Institute in Kolkata.
 Ananta Vasudeva Paravidyabhusana (1895-1958) who later became known as Puridas Mahashay, was the chief editor of the Bhagavata press.  He is known for having edited and published critical editions of sixty five of the important Sanskrit works of the sect which are the standard books used for present translations.
 Sundarananda Vidyavinod. He carefully preserved the works of Bhaktivinoda and Bhaktisiddhanta and had a huge library which is today present at the Bhaktivedanta Research Center, Kolkata. He was also appointed as the editor for the Gaudiya Vaishnava encyclopaedia that Bhaktisiddhanta conceived.
 Bhakti Rakshak Sridhar Maharaj who was instrumental in discovering the meeting site of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and his associate Sri Ramananda Raya on the banks of Godavari.
 A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896-1977) is the founder of ISKCON.
Srila Patitpavan Goswami Thakur, also known as Srila Prabhuji, was one of the youngest dear disciples of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Prabhupada. He founded Shree Guru Prapanna Ashram in 1953 as a shelter for the spiritual upliftment of the women devotees, in order to fulfill Srila Prabhupada's desire of establishing an ashram for women devotees.

When most of the country was decrying the British subjugation of India, it was Bhaktivinoda and later Bhaktisiddhanta who used it as an opportunity to expand Gaudiya Vaisnavism beyond the borders of India.

Notes

Footnotes

References

External links

 Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura- His life, vision and Mission- The Gaudiya Treasures of Bengal

 Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura – Biography
 Writings by Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura
 Quotes by Srila Bhaktisiddhata Sarasvati Thakur

1874 births
1937 deaths
20th-century Hindu religious leaders
Bengali Hindus
Bhakti movement
Bengali spiritual writers
Bengali Hindu saints
Devotees of Krishna
Devotees of Jagannath
Gaudiya religious leaders
Hindu revivalists
Hindu reformers
20th-century Hindu philosophers and theologians
Indian theologians
Indian Hindu monks
19th-century Indian philosophers
Indian Hindu spiritual teachers
Indian Hindu missionaries
Indian Hare Krishnas
Indian Vaishnavites
People from West Bengal
People from Puri district
Presidents of religious organizations
Vaishnava saints
Vedanta
Oriental Seminary alumni
Vidyasagar College alumni
University of Calcutta alumni

Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati


Ode to Duty (written in 1805; published in 1807) is a poem (an ode) written by William Wordsworth.

Description
"Ode to Duty" is an appeal to the principle of morality for guidance and support. It represents in a measure a recantation of Wordsworth's earlier faith in the spontaneous and unguided impulses of the heart, written at a time when he was coming to feel more and more the need of an invariable standard. While continuing to recognize the worth and beauty of the creed of joy and love, he feels that there must be also the mandate of the stern power which preserves the stars in their courses and lays the law of sacrifice and self-restraint upon the soul of the individual. Stern as is the voice of duty, it is yet also divinely beautiful,

The mood and temper of the "Ode to Duty" is characteristic of much of Wordsworth's later work. According to Wordsworth's own statement, the "Ode to Duty" was modeled on Thomas Gray's "Hymn to Adversity,"  which in turn was imitated from Horace's "Ode to Fortune." The stanza is identical with that used by Gray, and there are resemblances in ideas and phraseology.

The ode consists of 56 lines. There are 7 stanzas of 8 lines each. It follows the rhyming scheme of ABABCCDD.

References

External links
  (multiple versions)

Poetry by William Wordsworth
1807 poems

Ode to Duty


John Curtis Caldwell (April 17, 1833 – August 31, 1912) was a teacher, a Union general in the American Civil War, and an American diplomat.

Early life
Caldwell was born in Lowell, Vermont. He graduated from Amherst College in 1855 and moved to Maine, where he was the principal of the Washington Academy in East Machias.

Civil War

At the beginning of the Civil War, Caldwell was 28 years old and had no military experience. However, his bearing as an academic principal seems to have impressed others because he was elected colonel of the 11th Maine Infantry regiment on November 12, 1861. Early in the Peninsula Campaign (April 28, 1862), he was promoted to brigadier general and assumed command of the 1st Brigade of the 1st Division of II Corps of the Army of the Potomac after the brigade commander, Brigadier General Oliver O. Howard, was wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines. At the Battle of Glendale, he displayed "personal gallantry" in coming to the aid of the beleaguered Union division led by Philip Kearny.

At the Battle of Antietam, on September 17, 1862, he briefly led his division when its commander, Major General Israel B. Richardson, was wounded. Caldwell himself was wounded in the battle and he received criticism that he handled his brigade poorly in the assault on the sunken road in the center of the Confederate line (the sunken road, or "Bloody Lane"). There were also rumors spread that he had hidden in the rear to avoid direct contact with the enemy. He was wounded again, twice, at the Battle of Fredericksburg that December, while preparing his brigade to assault the stone wall on Marye's Heights; one of his regiments broke and ran during the assault, further tarnishing his reputation. At the Battle of Chancellorsville the following May, his brigade performed well under difficult circumstances, covering the retreat of the army from the crossroads at the Chancellor House.

Caldwell's bloodiest combat experience was at the Battle of Gettysburg on July 2, 1863. Since May 22, he had commanded the 1st Division of the II Corps, now under Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock. He and his division arrived at the battlefield on the morning of July 2 and took up a reserve position on Cemetery Ridge. That afternoon, as the powerful Confederate assault from the corps of Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, struck the Union III Corps, Hancock ordered Caldwell's division to reinforce the III Corps in the Wheatfield. Caldwell got his division moving quickly and conducted the largest Union assault of the three-day battle. However, due to a lack of adequate command on that portion of the battlefield, Caldwell's division was hit in its exposed right flank by the Confederate division of Maj. Gen. Lafayette McLaws, causing great confusion and a general retreat back across the Wheatfield.

Caldwell received criticism from Maj. Gen. George Sykes, the commander of the Union V Corps, who was operating nearby. General Hancock subsequently lost confidence in Caldwell and his staff conducted an investigation to determine whether Caldwell led his division properly. He was exonerated from any blame, but his reputation in the Army of the Potomac was damaged. A recent writer on Gettysburg has blamed Sykes for giving sketchy instructions to Caldwell.  In March 1864, the army was reorganized and reduced from five corps to three. Caldwell was relieved of command during this reduction and saw no further combat service.

Postbellum
After the war, Caldwell served in the honor guard for Abraham Lincoln's funeral train. He received a brevet promotion to major general on August 19, 1865, and he was mustered out of the volunteer service on January 15, 1866. He returned to civilian life as a lawyer and a member of the Maine Legislature, but he also served as the adjutant general of the Maine Militia from 1867 to 1869. He then entered the diplomatic service as the U.S. Consul in Valparaíso, Chile, from 1869 to 1874; U.S. Minister to Uruguay and Paraguay, 1874 to 1882; U.S. Consul to San José, Costa Rica, 1897 to 1909.

Caldwell died in Calais, Maine, and is buried at St. Stephen Rural Cemetery in St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada.

Gods and Generals
Caldwell appears briefly in the film Gods and Generals played by James Garrett. He is commanding his brigade at the assault on Marye's Heights during the Battle of Fredericksburg

See also

List of American Civil War generals (Union)

Notes

References
 Eicher, John H., and David J. Eicher. Civil War High Commands. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. .
 Hartwig, D. Scott. "'No Troops on the Field Had Done Better', John C. Caldwell's Division in the Wheatfield, July 2, 1863." In The Second Day at Gettysburg: Essays on Confederate and Union Leadership, edited by Gary W. Gallagher. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1993. .
 Tagg, Larry. The Generals of Gettysburg. Campbell, CA: Savas Publishing, 1998. .

External links

1833 births
1912 deaths
People from Orleans County, Vermont
Ambassadors of the United States to Uruguay
Union Army generals
People of Vermont in the American Civil War
People of Maine in the American Civil War
People from East Machias, Maine
Amherst College alumni
American consuls
19th-century American lawyers

John C. Caldwell


An airport terminal is a building at an airport. It is where passengers are able to get on and off aircraft. Inside the terminal, passengers can buy tickets, leave or pick up their luggage, and be checked by security staff. The buildings that provide access to the airplanes through gates are usually called concourses. However, the words "terminal" and "concourse" are sometimes used to mean the same thing.
Small airports have only one terminal, while large airports can have several terminals and/or concourses. At small airports, the single terminal building usually has all of the functions of a terminal and a concourse.

Some larger airports have one terminal that is joined to multiple concourses via walkways, sky-bridges, or underground tunnels (such as Denver International Airport). Some larger airports have more than one terminal, each with one or more concourses (such as New York's LaGuardia Airport). Still other larger airports have multiple terminals each of which includes the functions of a concourse (such as Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport).

Most airport terminals are built in a plain style. However, some, such as Baghdad International Airport, are grand monuments, while others are considered architectural masterpieces, such as Terminal 1 at Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris or Terminal 5 at New York's JFK Airport. A few are designed to reflect the culture of an area. The terminal at Albuquerque International Sunport in New Mexico, is designed in the Pueblo Revival style made popular by architect John Gaw Meem. The terminal at Bahías de Huatulco International Airport in Huatulco, Oaxaca, Mexico, which features some palapas that are interconnected to form the airport terminal.

Airport terminal designs

Many early terminals were built in the 1930s–1940s when air travel become popular. They are often in the art deco style architecture of the time. One such example from 1940 is the Houston Municipal Airport Terminal. Early airport terminals opened directly onto the tarmac: passengers would walk or take a bus to their aircraft. This design is still common among smaller airports. Many larger airports have "bus gates" to access aircraft which are parked beyond the main terminal.

Pier

A pier design uses a long, narrow building with aircraft parked on both sides. One end joins to a ticketing and baggage claim area. Piers can hold a lot of aircraft and are simple to design. They can often result in a long distance from the check-in counter to the gate. At Kansai International Airport this distance is half a mile. Most large international airports have piers, including Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, Larnaca International Airport, Frankfurt International Airport, London Heathrow Airport, Rome Fiumicino Airport, Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Bangkok International Airport, Beirut International Airport, Hong Kong International Airport, Allama Iqbal International Airport and Miami International Airport.

Satellite terminals
A satellite terminal is a building that is not joined to other airport buildings. The aircraft can park around the entire building. The first airport to use a satellite terminal was London Gatwick Airport. Passengers use an underground tunnel to walk to the satellite from the main terminal. This was also the first setup at Los Angeles International Airport, but it has since been changed to a pier layout. The first airport to use an automatic people mover to join the main terminal with a satellite was Tampa International Airport. Other examples include the following:
 Paris's Charles de Gaulle International Airport (Terminal 1)
 London Gatwick Airport (South Terminal)
 Orlando International Airport and Pittsburgh International Airport have multi-pier satellite terminals.
 Brussels Airport's Pier A is joined to the main building by underground tunnels and walkways.
 Zurich Airport's Gates E are joined with a subway.
 At Logan International Airport in Boston, Terminal A has two sections of gates, one of which is a satellite terminal joined by an underground walkway.
 Denver International Airport, General Mariano Escobedo International Airport, Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport have linear satellite terminals joined by central passages.
 Kuala Lumpur International Airport has a cross-shaped satellite terminal which is being used for international flights.
 Seattle-Tacoma International Airport has two rectangular satellite terminals connected by an automatic people mover system.
 Jinnah International Airport in Karachi has one main terminal, divided into two concourses: the Jinnah East Satellite Concourse, used for international flights, and the Jinnah West Satellite Concourse, used for domestic and some international flights.
 McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas has an X-shaped satellite terminal that is joined by two automatic people movers.

Semicircular terminals
Some airports use a semicircular terminal, with aircraft parked on one side and cars on the other. This design results in long walks for passengers changing aircraft, but greatly reduces travel times between check-in and the aircraft. Airports designed around this model include Charles de Gaulle International Airport (terminal 2), Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, Mumbai (terminal 2), Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, Seoul's Incheon International Airport, Toronto Pearson Airport, Kansas City Airport and Sapporo's New Chitose Airport.

Other
Another unusual terminal design is the mobile lounge. Passengers are taken from the gate to their aircraft in a large vehicle which docks directly to the terminal and the aircraft. Washington Dulles International Airport, Mexico City International Airport, and Mirabel International Airport have used this design.
A mix of layouts also exist. San Francisco International Airport and Melbourne Airport use both a pier-semicircular layout and a pier layout.

Common-use
Common-use terminal designs means airlines share check-in counters, gates and IT systems. Check-in counters and gates can be used by airlines as needed.

Records
Dubai International Airport, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Terminal 3, is the largest single Terminal building in the world. It had an area of over (1,500,000 m²) when it opened on October 14, 2008. It can handle an excess of 43 million passengers.

Beijing, Hong Kong, Bangkok and Mexico City have the world's second, third, fourth and fifth largest single terminals (986,000 m2, 570,000 m2, 563,000 m2 and 542,000 m2) in Beijing Capital International Airport, Hong Kong International Airport, Suvarnabhumi Airport and Mexico City International Airport.

Ground transportation
Many small and mid-size airports have a single two or three-lane one-way loop road which is used by local private vehicles and buses to drop off and pick-up passengers.

An international airport may have two one-way loop roads, one for departures and one for arrivals. It may have a direct rail connection by regional rail, light rail, or subway to the downtown or central business district of the closest major city. The largest airports may have direct connections to the closest freeway. There will be car rental agencies and taxi companies at the terminals. The Hong Kong International Airport has ferry piers on the airside to connect with ferry piers across the border.

Zones
Pre-Security
 Check-in counters
 retail stores and restaurants

Post Security
 Duty-free shops
 retail stores and restaurants
 Airport lounges
 Airport customs
 Baggage claim

References

Airports

pt:Aeródromo#Conceitos

Airport terminal


The Knights Templar, full name The United Religious, Military and Masonic Orders of the Temple and of St John of Jerusalem, Palestine, Rhodes and Malta, is a fraternal order affiliated with Freemasonry. Unlike the initial degrees conferred in a regular Masonic Lodge, which (in most Regular Masonic jurisdictions) only require a belief in a Supreme Being regardless of religious affiliation, the Knights Templar is one of several additional Masonic Orders in which membership is open only to Freemasons who profess a belief in Christianity. One of the obligations entrants to the order are required to declare is to protect and defend the Christian faith. The word "United" in its full title indicates that more than one historical tradition and more than one actual order are jointly controlled within this system. The individual orders 'united' within this system are principally the Knights of the Temple (Knights Templar), the Knights of Malta, the Knights of St Paul, and only within the York Rite, the Knights of the Red Cross.

Like the Masonic Red Cross of Constantine being inspired by the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George and the Order of Malta being inspired by the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, the Masonic order of Knights Templar derives its name from the medieval Catholic military order Knights Templar. However, it does not claim any direct lineal descent from the original Templar order.

History

Knightly symbolism in Freemasonry
The earliest documented link between Freemasonry and the Crusades is the 1737 oration of the Chevalier Ramsay. This claimed that European Freemasonry came about from an interaction between crusader masons and the Knights Hospitaller. This is repeated in the earliest known "Moderns" ritual, the Berne manuscript, written in French between 1740 and 1744. Ramsay was initiated as a Templar by his mentor François Fénelon into the non-Masonic French Ordre du Temple with his friend Philippe II, Duke of Orleans as Grandmaster around 1710. After the death of Fenelon and the Duke of Orleans, Ramsay was initiated into Freemasonry around 1730. Since Ramsay's Templarism predated his relationship with Freemasonry by some 20 years, this is the likely source for the introduction of Templarism into Freemasonry.

In 1751 Baron Karl Gotthelf von Hund und Altengrotkau began the Rite of Strict Observance, which ritual he claimed to have received from the reconstituted Templar Order in 1743 in Paris. He also claimed to have met two of the "unknown superiors" who directed all of masonry, one of whom was Prince Charles Edward Stuart. The order went into decline when he failed to produce any evidence to support his claims, and was wound up shortly after his death.

In 1779 the High Knights Templar of Ireland Lodge, Kilwinning, obtained a charter from Lodge Mother Kilwinning in Scotland. This lodge now began to grant dispensations to other lodges to confer the Knights Templar Degree. Some time around 1790 the Early Grand Encampment of Ireland was formed, which began to warrant Templar Lodges, and evolved into the Supreme Grand Encampment in 1836. The Early Grand Encampment chartered several Scottish "encampments" one of which, having been chartered in 1805 as the "Edinburgh Encampment No. 31", then became the"Grand Assembly of Knights Templar in Edinburgh". who then sought a charter from the Duke of Kent, Grand Master of the Order in England. It seems that the Templar degree had filtered into the lodges of the Antients from Ireland about 1780, and was recorded at York about the same time. In the five degree system developed by the York Masons, the Knights Templar degree sat between the Master Mason and the Sublime Degree of Royal Arch.

Grand Conclave of England
Templar masonry in England entered a new era in 1791, with the formation of its first Grand Conclave, with Thomas Dunckerley as Grand Master. At that time, there were eight known Templar encampments in England, the most senior being the Encampment of Redemption at York, and the Baldwyn encampment at Bristol, at whose request Dunckerley began his mission. Under his leadership, the number of encampments steadily grew until his death in 1795. Stasis then followed, until in 1805 their Royal Patron, Duke of Kent, became Grand Master himself, re-energising the society and launching it into an era of growth and development. Dunckerley laid the foundation for this not only by promoting the order, but by standardising the ritual and insisting on proper record keeping. The Grand Conclave went into a period of decline between 1872 and 1895, when it was re-founded as the present day Great Priory of England and Wales.

Administration

Depending upon the geographical jurisdiction, the Knights Templar exist either as part of the York Rite or as an independent organization. Though the York Rite and the independent versions share many similarities there are key differences which are described below.

Outside the York Rite, membership is by invitation only. Candidates are required to be Master Masons, and Royal Arch Masons, and to sign a declaration that they profess the Doctrine of the Holy and Undivided Trinity. In some Australian States, the requirement of being a Royal Arch Mason no longer applies.

Within the British Federation of Le Droit Humain, candidates must be a Holy Royal Arch Mason fir at least twelve months. Crucially, they do not have to profess the Doctrine of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, as this goes against the principles of the wider international Order.

Local bodies of Knights Templar are known as Preceptories; local bodies of Knights of St Paul are known as Chapters; local bodies of Knights of Malta are known as Priories; all operate under a Grand or Great Priory, often with an intermediate level of Provincial Priories. Although some jurisdictions maintain a separate Great Priory of the Temple and Great Priory of Malta (as, for example, in England), the Grand Master and other officers of both Great Priories hold simultaneous equal office in both bodies. Three degrees are administered in this system:

The Degree of Knight Templar (Order of the Temple)
The Degree of Knight of St. Paul (incorporating the Mediterranean Pass)
The Degree of Knight of Malta (Order of Malta)

In England and Wales, the "Great Priory of England and Wales" for the Masonic Knights Templar is administered from Mark Masons' Hall, London.

The Degrees or Orders

York Rite only: The Illustrious Order of the Red Cross

Teachings

The Order of the Red Cross continues or reverts to the period of the Royal Arch Degree when the Israelites were returning from Babylon to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple. Zerubbabel, their leader prevails upon King Darius to restore the Holy Vessels to the new Temple. They had been carried away by the Babylonian armies when the first Temple was destroyed. In presenting his plea before the King, the companion gives a powerful testimony to the almighty force of Truth.

The ritual places the candidate in the role of Zerubbabel and follows him through his journey to King Darius in Persia and his role in the Immemorial Discussion, as found in the apocryphal book, 1 Esdras. The purpose is to bridge the gap between Royal Arch Masonry and the Chivalric Orders as well as between the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Illustrious Order of the Red Cross teaches the lessons of the triumph of truth.

The Degree of Knight of St Paul (or Mediterranean Pass)

This degree is conferred as a prerequisite to becoming a Knight of Malta, in both the York Rite and independent 'stand-alone' versions of Knight Templar Freemasonry. The "Preliminary Declarations" of the Order of Malta ritual in England state of a candidate for the Order of Malta: "He must also have received the Degree of Knight of St Paul, including the Mediterranean Pass". The exact status of the 'Mediterranean Pass' has at times led to confusion as to whether this is the 'stub' of a separate degree. The English ritual book clarified this in its 1989 edition (and subsequent editions) by stating: "The Mediterranean Pass is one of the secrets of the Degree of Knight of St Paul".

This degree is close to being a true 'side degree', in that a small group (usually three) of members of the degree take the candidate "to one side" (i.e. apart on his own) and simply communicate the secrets of the degree to him, without actually working the ceremonial ritual of the degree. The only respect in which the degree fails to meet the definition of a true 'side degree' is that a Chapter of the Order would be formally opened and closed by the presiding officer, on either side of the secrets being communicated.

The Degree of Knight of Malta (Order of Malta)

This degree is universally associated with the Masonic Knights Templar. In the York Rite system it is conferred before the Templar Degree; in the 'stand-alone' tradition it is conferred subsequently to the Templar Degree. It is known by varying degrees of formality as the Order of Malta, or the Order of Knights of Malta, or the Ancient and Masonic Order of St John of Jerusalem, Palestine, Rhodes, and Malta. In practice this last and fullest version of the name tends to be reserved to letterheads, rituals, and formal documents.

The ceremony for conferring the degree (which is always worked in full) contains a mixture of masonic tradition, historical accounts of the Order of St John, moral teaching, and the communication of modes of recognition between members. A series of banners is employed in the ceremony, each representing one of the great battles of the historic medieval Order of St John, whose story is the basis of the moral teachings of the degree.

The Degree of Knight of the Temple (Order of the Temple)
The original medieval Order of Knights Templar was established after the First Crusade, and existed from approximately 1118 to 1312. There is no known historical evidence to link the medieval Knights Templar and Masonic Templarism, nor do the Masonic Knights Templar organizations claim any such direct link to the original medieval Templar organization. Though it has been said that its affiliation with Masonry is based on texts that indicate persecuted Templars found refuge within the safety of Freemasonry, the order itself states that "there is no proof of direct connection between the ancient order and the modern order known today as the Knights Templar." The official motto of the Knights Templar in the American York Rite is In Hoc Signo Vinces, the rendition in Latin of the Greek phrase "εν τούτῳ νίκα", en toutōi nika, meaning "in this [sign] you will conquer".

The Knight Templar degree is associated with elaborate regalia (costume) the precise detail of which varies between nations. The ritual draws upon the traditions of medieval Knights Templar, using them to impart moral instruction consistent with the biblical teachings of the Christian tradition.

Organization
In England and Wales, the teachings of the Order of the Red Cross feature in the Red Cross of Babylon which forms part of the Allied Masonic Degrees.

The Order of the Red Cross is often considered a compressed version of the Red Cross Degrees or Green Degrees which make up the Order of Knight Masons.

The Order of the Red Cross should not be confused with the Red Cross of Constantine.

Other Rites

Degrees of the York Rite in the United States

In the United States, a Knights Templar commandery is traditionally the final body that a member joins in the York Rite after the chapter of Royal Arch Masons and a council of Royal & Select Masters. Some jurisdictions, however, allow members to skip over membership in a council. A local Knights Templar commandery operates under a state-level Grand Commandery, however American commanderies also operate under The Grand Encampment of the United States. This is less common among American Masonic bodies, as many report to the state level alone.

While a chapter bestows the Royal Arch degrees, and a council bestows the Cryptic degrees, a Knights Templar commandery bestows three orders and one preparatory degree onto its members. This is opposed to the standard degree system found elsewhere in Freemasonry, and they are the only ones not to deal with the Hiramic Legend. The York Rite orders are:

The Illustrious Order of the Red Cross
The Degree of Saint Paul (or the Mediterranean Pass)
The Order of the Knights of Malta (or simply Order of Malta)
The Order of the Temple

Templar degrees in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite
History and legend concerning the historical Knights Templar also play an important role in the degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, notably in the Rite's 30th Degree, Knight Kadosh. Other Scottish Rite degrees sometimes styled "Templar Degrees" include the 28th Degree (Knight Commander of the Temple, formerly denominated the 27th Degree in the Southern Jurisdiction of United States), the 29th Degree (Scottish Knight of Saint Andrew), the 32nd Degree (Master of the Royal Secret), and the 33rd Degree (Inspector General).

Templar themes in wider Freemasonry
Despite Freemasonry's general disclaimer that no one Masonic organization claims a direct heritage to the medieval Knights Templar, certain degrees and orders are obviously patterned after the medieval Order. These are best described as "commemorative orders" or degrees. Nevertheless, in spite of the fraternity's official disclaimers, some Masons, non-Masons and even anti-Masons insist that certain Masonic rites or degrees originally had direct Templar influence.

 American Masonic youth organizations such as the Order of DeMolay for young men are named after the last Grand Master Templar Jacques de Molay who was executed in the final suppression of the Templar order in the early 14th century.
 The Knight of Rose-Croix Degree in the "Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite", and honorary Orders like the Royal Order of Scotland are interpreted as evidence of a historical Templar-Masonic connection, though there is no factual basis for this belief.
 Rosslyn Chapel near Edinburgh has been suggested to be strong link between the Knights Templar and Freemasons due to reliefs combining Templar and Freemason symbolism. Historian Dr. Louise Yeoman, along with other mediaeval scholars, says the Knights Templar connection is false, and points out that Rosslyn Chapel was built by William Sinclair so that Mass could be said for the souls of his family.  In addition, Rosslyn Chapel's connection to Freemasonry, as well as to the Templars, has been vigorously disputed by Robert L. D. Cooper, the Curator of the Grand Lodge of Scotland Museum and Library. It is postulated that any existing Masonic imagery was likely added at a later date, probably in the 1860s when James St Clair-Erskine, 3rd Earl of Rosslyn instructed Edinburgh architect David Bryce, a known Freemason, to undertake restoration work on areas of the church including many of the carvings.
 Legends in certain degrees recount that Knights under the command of Sir John De Bermingham, first and last Earl of Louth, aided Scottish King Robert the Bruce, who had been excommunicated, at the Battle of Bannockburn; but this account is based on an 18th-century romance and is not supported by any evidence. This story is the basis for the degrees in the Royal Order of Scotland, an invitational Masonic honorary organization.
 Templar connections have also been suggested through the Earls of Rosslyn (St. Clair, or Sinclair) a family with well documented connections with Scottish Freemasonry, one being a Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Scotland.
 Many other old and new organizations are called "Knights Templar". However, organizations like the Order of the Solar Temple, Militi Templi Scotia, Ordo Templi Orientis, or the Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem (OSMTJ), are in no way related to Masonic Knights Templar, and share little or no relationship with it in history, hierarchy, or ritual.

See also
 Red Cross of Constantine
York Rite
Freemasonry

Original chivalric orders
 Knights Templar
 Sovereign Military Order of Malta

References

Bibliography
 The History Channel, Decoding the Past: The Templar Code, 2005, video documentary
 The History Channel, Mysteries of the Freemasons, 2006 video documentary
 Stephen Dafoe, The Compasses and the Cross, 2008.

 Christopher L. Hodapp and Alice Von Kannon, The Templar Code For Dummies, 2007.
 Sean Martin, The Knights Templar: History & Myths, 2005.

External links

What are the Knights Templar up to now?

Masonic Knights Templar organizations
Grand Encampment of Knights Templar of the United States of America
Sovereign Great Priory of the Knights Templar of Canada
Order of the Temple - Great Priory of Scotland
Order of the Temple - Great Priory of Ireland
Knights Templar Eye Foundation
The Web of Hiram  Section on The Royal Exalted Religious and Military Order of Masonic Knights Templar of England and Wales at Bradford University

Masonic organizations

Knights Templar (Freemasonry)


"Hearts and Minds" is the thirteenth episode of the first season of the American television series Lost. The episode sees Boone Carlyle (Ian Somerhalder) experience a vision quest, believing his stepsister Shannon (Maggie Grace) to be dead. Through a series of flashbacks, it is revealed that Boone is in love with Shannon, and that they slept together prior to crashing on the island. The episode was directed by Rod Holcomb and written by Carlton Cuse and Javier Grillo-Marxuach.

The writers sought to reveal the backstory of Boone and Shannon by surprising viewers with the nature of their relationship. At the same time, they wanted to use the relationship to bring Boone and Locke closer together, and decided on a vision quest to make this happen. "Hearts and Minds" first aired on January 12, 2005, on ABC. The episode was watched by an estimated 20.81 million viewers and received mixed to negative critical reception. Critics tended to view Shannon and Boone's story as uninteresting, but expressed appreciation for John Locke's (Terry O'Quinn) "darkly mysterious" actions.

Plot

Flashbacks
Shannon calls Boone and, after he overhears sounds of violence, asks him to come to Sydney. When he gets there, he sees that her boyfriend, Bryan (Charles Mesure), has been beating her. Boone reports this to the police, and reveals that Shannon is his stepsister. While Boone is speaking to the officer, James "Sawyer" Ford (Josh Holloway) is brought to the station handcuffed and shouting in anger. The detective effectively ignores Boone.

Boone offers Bryan $25,000 to break up with Shannon but Bryan asks for $50,000 and Boone agrees. Boone also reveals that Bryan is not the first man he has paid off to leave Shannon alone. Shannon refuses to leave with Boone. He realizes that Shannon lied to him to get the money, and she has done this all the other times he had to pay off her boyfriends. Bryan says that Boone's mother stole money away from her, and she is getting what is rightfully hers. After a brief fight with Bryan in which he is beaten, Boone leaves. That night, a drunk Shannon comes to Boone's hotel room and tells him that Bryan stole the money. She tells Boone that she knows he loves her and, although he first tries to refuse her advances, they sleep together. Later, Shannon persuades Boone not to tell their parents.

On the Island
On Day 24, October 15, 2004, Boone sees that Shannon Rutherford's (Maggie Grace) relationship with Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews) is getting more personal. Boone tries to tell Sayid that he would be better off staying away from Shannon, but he is ignored.

Boone and Locke have been trying to open the mysterious hatch, but tell the other survivors they are hunting for boar. Hugo "Hurley" Reyes (Jorge Garcia) scolds Boone for not bringing back any boar, but John Locke (Terry O'Quinn) tells Boone that what he and Boone are doing with the hatch is far more important than hunting. At the hatch, Locke makes a paste and tells Boone it is for later. Locke suggests that staring at the hatch will tell them how to open it.

Boone informs Locke he is tired of lying, and wants to tell Shannon about the hatch. Locke knocks him unconscious with the handle of his knife, and Boone awakes to find himself tied up. Locke applies a strange paste on Boone's head wound and leaves a knife embedded in the ground in front of Boone so he'll be able to free himself. Locke explains that he will be able to reach it once he is properly motivated. After several unsuccessful attempts to do so, Boone hears Shannon's screams and the sounds of the 'monster' approaching. This is the impetus he needs, and after a short struggle, and in excruciating pain, he is finally able to reach the weapon. He then frees himself and searches for his sister.

Boone runs through the jungle, and locates Shannon tied to a tree. Boone frees her and they run away from the pursuing monster. The monster takes Shannon, and a distraught Boone later finds her mutilated body by a creek and watches her die. That night Boone returns to the camp and tries to kill Locke, screaming that he had killed his sister, but Locke reveals that Shannon is alive. The paste caused Boone to have a vision that, according to Locke, is crucial to his experience on the island. Boone admits seeing Shannon dead made him feel relieved. Locke says to come with him, and the two disappear into the jungle.

Meanwhile, Kate Austen (Evangeline Lilly) shows Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) to a garden that Sun-Hwa Kwon (Yunjin Kim) has started. Kate discovers that Sun speaks English when the two are working in the garden, and Sun asks her not to tell anyone. Locke finds Sayid trying to make sense of Danielle Rousseau's maps, and gives him a compass. Sayid tells Jack that according to Locke's compass, north is not where it should be, causing him to believe that the instrument is defective. Hurley and Jin-Soo Kwon (Daniel Dae Kim) spend the day fishing. When Hurley fails to catch anything and accidentally steps on a sea urchin after giving up, Jin treats the wound and later gives Hurley a cleaned fish that's ready to cook.

Production

Boone was the focus of "Hearts and Minds", a character who had not yet had his backstory told. Ian Somerhalder was the first actor cast in the series; while the role required him to find life living in the wild foreign and difficult, the actor was raised on a Louisianan ranch and was thus used to "learn[ing] how to survive." He said, "[Boone] was very fragile in [the Island's] environment, where I wouldn't have been." The episode's guest stars included Charles Mesure as Bryan, Adam Leadbeater as Malcolm, and Kelly Rice as Nicole.

Executive producer Carlton Cuse and supervising producer Javier Grillo-Marxuach, who wrote the episode, decided that its plot would be centered on cementing Boone and Locke's relationship, by making the former go through a test of character. The episode's plot evolved gradually, with the vision quest being one of the first ideas to include. This led to the depiction of the Shannon-Boone relationship – which had not yet been explored – and making it the "axis" on which to tie Locke and Boone together. Cuse said that the series had hit a point narratively where Boone had become Locke's "acolyte," and he needed to "sort of shed his obsession with Shannon in order to move forward in terms of his relationship with Locke."

The producers also thought it would be interesting for there to be more to Shannon and Boone's relationship than just Boone's possessive brotherly interest. According to Cuse, the plot twist had become a Lost characteristic so they wanted to surprise the audience by having the Shannon-Boone relationship be sexual in nature. The idea for the two came from an observation that their bickering resembled an older married couple; to support this, they made the characters step-siblings as it had not yet been established what their sibling bond exactly was.

This was Cuse's first writing credit for Lost, having joined the series during the seventh episode. He desired to cement Boone's relationship with Locke, but was unsure how to connect the two characters in a meaningful way. The writers chose a vision quest but decided to make this "closed to the audience" and not let them know it was even occurring. Initially, it was conceived that Boone would be convinced into eating Locke's drug, but director Rod Holcomb and the writers thought it would have made the hallucination easier to guess, and changed it into spreading the concoction into a head injury.

Locke knocking Boone out "marked a huge turning point" in the development of his character. According to the writers, there was huge debate over whether Locke was good or bad; his decision was meant to be a shocking moment for viewers, since they thought people would view it as a sign that Locke was turning bad. This was characteristic of the series – the writers liked to depict a character in a certain way so that one's opinion would be made up, then they would reveal something else that would change one's mind. Locke's scene with Sayid was introduced late into production, because the episode was running short and Locke did not have scenes without Boone; Sayid's scene with Jack was also added later. Many future plot points are introduced into the episode, such as Sayid observing a magnetical anomaly, main characters crossing paths (Sawyer is being arrested in the police station where Boone is filing a complaint) and Michael's box of drawings, which sets up the following episode, "Special".

Reception

"Hearts and Minds" first aired on January 12, 2005 in the United States. The episode's broadcast gained an estimated 20.81 million viewers, making it ABC's sixth most watched episode for the week. It earned a ratings share of 7.9/21 among adults aged 18 to 49 and a 4.1/13 share among teenagers, both measures attaining series highs. With this, Lost and Alias helped ABC win the night. It was down 780,000 viewers on the previous episode, "Whatever the Case May Be", but was up 5.12 million on the season average of 15.69 million viewers.

Critical reception of the episode was mixed to negative. Chris Carabott of IGN criticized the decision to focus the episode around Shannon and Boone, characters he felt "[brought] very little to the table", at the expense of other "more intriguing" storylines and characters. He called the episode "awkward and uninspired", though commented that it was saved by the character development of Locke. Carabott rated the episode 6.6 out of 10, signifying a "passable" episode. Entertainment Weekly writer Adam B. Vary graded the episode with a B+ and praised Somerhalder for bringing "some real pathos to his conflicted feelings for Shannon; he also found Locke to be "at his best when his motivations are darkly mysterious."

Writing for Zap2it, Ryan McGee characterized the episode as having a "weak backstory with a creeptastic ending," although he enjoyed Locke for being "incredibly sage and incredibly terrifying all at once." In her 2006 work Finding Lost: The Unofficial Guide, Nikki Stafford critiqued the writers for having some of the characters act inconsistently with the events of previous episodes, citing Jack and Kate's "jokey and sweet" interactions as an example. Robert Dougherty, author of the 2008 book Lost Episode Guide for Others: An Unofficial Anthology, compared Shannon and Boone's relationship to that of a soap opera. Other than the revelations surrounding their relationship and Locke's actions however, Dougherty did not think the episode would have much of an impact on the series' overall story.

Therese Odell of the Houston Chronicle reviewed the episode twice, once in September 2007, then again following a repeat viewing in July 2009. She called it "profoundly weird", and described it as a "transition episode", noting that on her original viewing she found it irritating, eager for the story to advance, but upon re-watching it enjoyed it more, praising the "lovely exploration of Boone's character". Following the series' conclusion, IGN ranked "Hearts and Minds" 109th out of all episodes, commenting that as few viewers were interested in Shannon and Boone, it was difficult to be interested in an episode centered on them, particularly as it had little long-term impact. A similar ranking of episodes by Emily VanDerWerff for the Los Angeles Times placed "Hearts and Minds" 104th.

References

Works cited

External links

 "Hearts and Minds" at ABC

Lost (season 1) episodes
2005 American television episodes

Hearts and Minds (Lost)


Professional wrestling, pro wrestling is wrestling done as performance art.  It is different from other sports because it is a fixed sport.  It is sometimes known as sports entertainment.

Like other athletes, most wrestlers train each day to maintain their physical condition. They practice for years to learn to execute moves safely while still making them look dangerous. They suffer many injuries, sometimes severe.

Professional wrestling is done as a show, like a play. Many wrestlers will wrestle in many fights, called matches. They wrestle inside a 'wrestling ring', which is a place with ropes around it. The best wrestlers can win belts, called 'championship titles', to show that they are the best.

Famous stars of the ring include "Gorgeous George" Wagner, Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan, André the Giant, Sting, "Macho Man" Randy Savage, Bret "The Hitman" Hart, Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker, Triple H, Brock Lesnar, Goldberg, Mick Foley, Stone Cold Steve Austin and John Cena.

The United States, Canada, Mexico, and Japan and the United Kingdom are countries that have a lot of professional wrestling events.  The biggest company of professional wrestling is WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment).  Once a year, they have a big wrestling event called WrestleMania.  Professional wrestling can be seen both in the audience of an arena or on television.

References

Other websites

 Wrestling Training Online Site
 ProWrestlingHistory.com

Professional wrestling


Dirk Werner Nowitzki (born June 19, 1978 in Würzburg, Germany; pronounced durk VER-ner nah-VIT-skee) is a former German basketball player. He played for the Dallas Mavericks in the United States' National Basketball Association's (NBA).

Nowitzki started playing in the NBA in 1998. He is only the second player who was born in Germany to play in the  Finals.

He is a 12-time NBA All Star. Nowitkzi won the 2006-07 NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award. The Mavericks, led by Nowitzki, defeated the Miami Heat 4-2 in the 2011 NBA Finals. In addition to performing very well in general in the Finals, his 101-degree fever in Game 4 didn't stop him from scoring the winning basket to tie the series 2-2. This amazing feat is a lot like when Michael Jordan played well despite the flu in the 1997 Finals against the Utah Jazz.
Dirk's jersey number is 41.

Other websites

The Dirk Nowitzki Foundation
Dirk Nowitzki at fiba.com

1978 births
Dallas Mavericks players
German basketball players
Living people
People from Würzburg
Sportspeople from Bavaria

Dirk Nowitzki


A microwave is a high-frequency radio wave. They are broadly defined as having a wavelength between 1 millimeter and 1 meter, or narrowly between 3 mm and 300 mm. Microwaves have many uses including radar, radio astronomy, and to heat food in a microwave oven. Unlike longer radio waves, they do not bend around land obstacles but go in line of sight. Still, they are much used for communication because they can have a high bandwidth. Almost all spacecraft communicate by microwave radio.

When something moves, it almost always has a wave pattern to its movement - this can be seen in water most easily, in ripples and ocean waves. A very common type of wave in the universe is electromagnetic waves. Light is an example of an electromagnetic wave, and so is a microwave, for example the cosmic microwave background radiation. We can only see electromagnetic radiation in the visible light spectrum (which is why it's called the visible light spectrum), so microwaves are invisible.

Microwaves were among the first radio waves discovered, in the late 19th century, by Heinrich Rudolf Hertz.

Microwave Ovens
Microwave ovens work because microwaves make polar molecules (molecules that act like tiny magnets) all face the same direction - to visualize it, imagine that the microwave oven is telling all of the molecules to face left, then right.  Heat is just the movement of molecules, so when the molecules do a great amount of moving, they are hot.

Like other heat sources, microwave radiation can cause burns. They can go through skin and muscles. If vital organs are burned, the burns can kill. This is why a microwave oven does not work with the door open.

References

wave physics
Electromagnetic radiation

Microwave


The East Caribbean dollar (sign: $; code: XCD) is the currency of eight of the nine members of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (the exception is the British Virgin Islands).

It has existed since 1965, when it replaced the British West Indies dollar, and it is normally abbreviated with the dollar sign $ or, alternatively, EC$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies.

The EC$ is subdivided into 100 cents. It has been pegged to the United States dollar since 1976 and the exchange rate is currently at US$1 = EC$2.70.

Members of the Currency Union
Six of the eight countries which use the EC$ are independent (Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines). The other two are British overseas territories: Anguilla and Montserrat.

All of the countries except Dominica are Commonwealth realms.

Currency of North America
1965 establishments in North America

East Caribbean dollar


Oslac was a King of Sussex. He reigned jointly with Ealdwulf and Ælfwald, and probably also Oswald and Osmund.

Oslac witnessed an undated charter of Ealdwulf, believed to be from about 765, with his name corruptly recorded in the surviving revision as Osiai rex.

After the conquest of Sussex by Offa, King of Mercia, Oslac witnessed a charter of Offa, dated 772, as Oslac dux, with his name placed after Oswald, Osmund, and Ælfwald, suggesting that he was the most junior of the former kings.

His latest surviving charter is dated 780, and the original still exists; in it he is styled Oslac dux Suthsaxorum.

External links

References

South Saxon monarchs
8th-century English monarchs

Oslac of Sussex


A stain is a spot that has another color than the material on which it is found. It can be occur without intention in the case of domestic stains on fabric, cloth, or other material, or it can be intentional. Stains are used intentionally in a variety of fields, including research (biochemical staining), technology (metal staining), and art (wood staining, stained glass.)

Different types of material can be stained by different substances, and stain resistance is an important characteristic in modern textile engineering.  Various laundry techniques exist to attempt to remove or minimize existing stains, and stain removers are an important type of chemical in laundry detergents. Some stand-alone stain removers also exist.

Substances that may create stains
 blood
 chocolate
 coffee
 fruits and their juices, particularly orange juice
 grass
 grease
 ink (notably permanent marker)
 oil
 sauces (particularly tomato based)
 soda (particularly orange soda)
 sweat
 wine
 table salt
 talc, cornstarch or chalk
 borax
 lemon juice or lemon

Fabrics
 carpet
 cotton
 leather
 silk
 various fabrics in shoes
 wool

Stain removers

 bleach  (do not mix with ammonia)
 ammonia (do not mix with bleach)
 vinegar
 baking soda
 rubbing alcohol
 hydrogen peroxide
 cream of tartar
 sun
 club soda

References

Everyday life

Stain


Nike (Greek: Νίκη) is the goddess of victory in Greek mythology.  She was the daughter of Styx and Pallas and the sister of Cratos, Bia, and Zelus. Nike and her brothers and sister were all friends of Zeus.

Nike could run very fast, had wings and brings good luck.  She is usually worshipped at the same time as Athena. Nike is often linked with sport, with companies named for her like Nike Inc. A picture of Nike also appears in all the medals for the Summer Olympics. Her Roman name is Victoria.

The most famous statue of Nike is the Winged Victory of Samothrace.  This is now in the Louvre, which is a museum in Paris, France. She is a symbol of victory displayed outside Olympic stadiums in Olympia and in other places where there are Olympics. She is believed to always be watching over sport stadiums ready to  choose the victor of the game.

References

Greek gods and goddesses

Nike (mythology)


Outlaw biker movie is a movie genre. Such movies are about motorcycle riding rebels. The characters are typically members of an outlaw motorcycle club. The first such movie was The Wild One (1954). Marlon Brando and Lee Marvin starred in this movie as rival biker gang leaders. Harvey Lembeck parodied Brando in the AIP "beach party" movies of the early 1960s starring Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon.

Biker movies were aimed at teenage audiences and the drive-in crowd. The genre took off in the 1960s when the real world Hells Angels received much media attention.  Hollywood cranked out dozens of low-budget exploitation outlaw biker movies during this decade. Novelty movies of the genre featured all-female gangs, horror and zombie crossovers, and one featured a gay gang. The biker outlaw genre played itself out in the 1970s.

Movie genres

Outlaw biker movie


Richard Paey is a man from the U.S. state of Florida who was falsely incarcerated in 2004 for drug trafficking. There was no evidence he ever distributed or intended to sell any pills, but drug laws in many states, including Florida, allow officials to prosecute for trafficking based solely on the quantity an individual possesses. Paey spent three and a half years in prison, until he was granted a full pardon by Florida Governor Charlie Crist in September 2007.

Arrest and trial
Prosecutors said that Paey "could not possibly have been taking 25 pills a day himself" and charged him with possession with intent to sell.

In 1985, Paey was involved in an automobile accident. A subsequent botched operation left him in nearly constant pain. Like many chronic pain patients, over the years he gradually developed a tolerance to the opioid painkillers he was using to alleviate his suffering. Detectives began their investigation of him in 1996. Due to the quantities of pills he was prescribed, it was believed he was trafficking the drugs. However, a three-month investigation turned up no evidence of intent to sell, and the quantities he was prescribed were not unusual for long-time users of opioids. Nonetheless, Florida law allows prosecution for trafficking based solely on the amount of drug the suspect possesses. Paey was arrested in March 1997.

According to prosecutors, investigators found a DEA number stamp and other equipment used to forge prescriptions in Paey's residence. However, according to Dr. Russell Portnoy, chairman of the Department of Pain Medicine at the Beth Israel Hospital in New York City, such behavior is typical of patients experiencing extreme chronic pain. When interviewed for 60 Minutes, he said these patients sometimes go to great lengths to ensure they never suffer a break in their pain treatment.

The lead prosecutor, Scott Andringa, offered Paey a plea deal in 1999 that would have resulted in a guilty plea of attempted trafficking and 3 years of house arrest, but he chose to fight the charges.  A similar plea was offered during his first trial in 2002, but it was quickly rescinded after Paey accepted it. Paey was eventually convicted in his third trial on 15 counts of drug trafficking, possession of a controlled substance, and obtaining a controlled substance by fraud. On April 16, 2004, he was sentenced to a 25-year mandatory minimum prison sentence and a $500,000 fine.

Later, Dwayne Hillis, one of the jurors in the trial, came forward publicly and said he was pressured into a guilty verdict with assurances that Richard Paey would serve no jail term.

Paey served three and a half years at the Tomoka Correctional facility in Daytona Beach, Florida. During this time, the state provided an intrathecal pump delivering morphine directly into his back to alleviate his pain.

Pardon
After succeeding Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Governor Charlie Crist granted Paey a waiver of the requirement that a minimum period of the sentence be served on his clemency petition, permitting his petition to be heard by the clemency board immediately. The board recommended denying clemency for Paey. Nevertheless, in a sudden and unexpected move, Governor Crist and the Cabinet unanimously granted Paey a full pardon on the morning of September 20, 2007. Paey was freed from prison at 2:51 pm.

Paey's case is the subject of the book Pain In America and the film documentary The War on Drugs, and was featured on the Showtime series Penn & Teller: Bullshit!

References

Living people
People from Florida
Prisoners and detainees of Florida
American drug traffickers
Year of birth missing (living people)

Richard Paey


Our Man in Havana (1958) is a novel set in Cuba by the British author Graham Greene. Greene uses the novel to mock intelligence services, especially the British MI6, and their willingness to believe reports from their local informants. The book predates the Cuban Missile Crisis, but certain aspects of the plot, notably the role of missile installations, appear to anticipate the events of 1962.

The novel was adapted into a film of the same name in 1959, directed by Carol Reed and starring Alec Guinness. In 1963, it was adapted into an opera by Malcolm Williamson to a libretto by Sidney Gilliat, who had worked on the film. In 2007, it was adapted into a play by Clive Francis, which has toured the UK several times and been performed in various parts of the world.

Background
Greene joined MI6 in August 1941. In London, Greene had been appointed to the subsection dealing with counter-espionage in the Iberian Peninsula, where he had learnt about German agents in Portugal sending the Germans fictitious reports, which garnered them expenses and bonuses to add to their basic salary.

One of the agents was "Garbo", a Spanish double agent in Lisbon, who gave his German handlers disinformation, by pretending to control a ring of agents all over England. In fact, he invented armed forces movements and operations from maps, guides and standard military references. Garbo was the main inspiration for Wormold, the protagonist of Our Man in Havana.

Remembering the German agents in Portugal, Greene wrote the first version of the story in 1946, as an outline for a film script, with the story set in Estonia in 1938. The film was never made, and Greene soon realised that Havana, which he had visited several times in the early 1950s, would be a much better setting, with the absurdities of the Cold War being more appropriate for a comedy.

Plot
The novel, a black comedy, is set in Havana during the Fulgencio Batista regime. James Wormold, a vacuum cleaner retailer, is approached by Hawthorne, who tries to recruit him for the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). Wormold's wife had left him and now, he lives with his beautiful 17-year-old daughter, Milly, who is devoutly Catholic, but also materialistic and manipulative. Since Wormold does not make enough money to pay for Milly's extravagances, he accepts the offer of a side job in espionage. Because he has no information to send to London, Wormold fabricates his reports using information found in newspapers and invents a fictitious network of agents. Some of the names in his network are those of real people (most of whom he has never met), but some are made up. Wormold tells only his friend and World War I veteran, Dr. Hasselbacher, about his spy work, hiding the truth from Milly.

At one point, he decides to make his reports "exciting" by sending to London sketches of what he describes as a secret military installation in the mountains, actually vacuum cleaner parts scaled to a large size. In London, nobody except Hawthorne, the only one to know that Wormold sells vacuum cleaners, doubts this report. However, Hawthorne keeps quiet for fear of losing his job. In the light of the new developments, London sends Wormold a secretary, Beatrice Severn, and a radio assistant codenamed "C" with much spy paraphernalia.

On arriving, Beatrice tells Wormold she has orders to take over his contacts. Her first request is to contact the pilot Raúl. Under pressure, Wormold develops an elaborate plan for his fictitious agent "Raúl". However, to his surprise, a real person with the same name is killed in an apparent car accident. From then on, Wormold's manufactured universe overlaps with reality, with threats made to his "contacts". Together, Beatrice, who still believes the contacts to be real, and Wormold try to save the real people who share names with his fictional agents.

Meanwhile, London passes on the information that an unspecified enemy, implied to be a Soviet contact, intends to poison Wormold at a trade association luncheon, where he is the speaker. It would seem that his information has worried local operatives who now seek to remove him. London is pleased by this, as that validates his work. Wormold goes to the function and sees Dr. Hasselbacher, who loudly warns him of the threat. Wormold continues to dinner where he manages to refuse the meal that is offered and eats another one. Across the table sits a fellow vacuum cleaner salesman he had met earlier, Carter, who offers him whisky. Suspicious, Wormold knocks over the glass, which is then drunk by the headwaiter's dachshund, which soon dies. In retaliation for the failure, Carter kills Dr. Hasselbacher at the club bar.

Captain Segura, a military strongman in love with Milly and intending to marry her, has a list of all of the spies in Havana, which Wormold would like to send to London to partially redeem his employment. He tells Segura that he is going to his house to discuss Segura's plans about Milly. Once there, Wormold proposes they play a game of draughts using miniature bottles of Scotch and bourbon as the game pieces, where each piece taken has to be drunk at once. Eventually, Segura, who is a much better player, ends up drunk and falls asleep. Wormold takes his gun and photographs the list using a microdot camera. To avenge the murder of Dr. Hasselbacher, Wormold convinces Carter to accompany him on a drive and, at a local brothel and after some hesitation, shoots him with Segura's pistol. He misses Carter and is about to leave. Carter shoots back, but Wormold shoots and kills him. Wormold sends the agent list as a microdot photograph on a postage stamp to London, but it proves blank when processed.

Wormold confesses everything to Beatrice, who surprisingly admires his doings. Captain Segura then gets Wormold deported from Cuba by reporting him to London. Wormold and Beatrice are summoned to headquarters, where Beatrice is posted to Jakarta and Wormold's situation is considered. To avoid embarrassment and silence him from speaking to the press, MI6 offers Wormold a teaching post at headquarters and recommends him for the Order of the British Empire. Afterwards, Beatrice comes to Wormold's hotel, and they decide to marry. Milly is surprisingly accepting of their decision, and she is to go to a Swiss finishing school, paid for by Wormold's scam earnings.

Cuba's attitude
The revolutionary government of Cuba allowed the film version of Our Man in Havana to be filmed in the Cuban capital, but Fidel Castro complained that the novel did not accurately portray the brutality of the Batista regime.

In his autobiography, Ways of Escape, Greene commented:
Alas, the book did me little good with the new rulers in Havana. In poking fun at the British Secret Service, I had minimized the terror of Batista's rule. I had not wanted too black a background for a light-hearted comedy, but those who suffered during the years of dictatorship could hardly be expected to appreciate that my real subject was the absurdity of the British agent and not the justice of a revolution.

Greene returned to Havana between 1963 and 1966.

References

External links
 Savidge Reads (24 October 2010): Our Man in Havana – Graham Greene – Review by Simon Savidge. Retrieved 2011-08-31
 The Stasi (29 July 2009): Book Review: Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene. Retrieved 2011-08-31
 A Modest Construct (13 February 2011): Our Man in Havana – a review. Retrieved 2011-08-31

1958 British novels
Novels by Graham Greene
Novels set in Havana
Heinemann (publisher) books
British novels adapted into films
British novels adapted into plays
Novels adapted into operas
British spy novels

Our Man in Havana