, also transliterated as Nissin, was a  armored cruiser of the Imperial Japanese Navy, built in the first decade of the 20th century by Gio. Ansaldo & C., Sestri Ponente, Italy, where the type was known as the . The ship was originally ordered by the Royal Italian Navy in 1901 as San Rocco and sold the next year to the Argentine Navy who renamed her Mariano Moreno during the Argentine–Chilean naval arms race, but the lessening of tensions with Chile and financial pressures caused the Argentinians to sell her before delivery. At that time tensions between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire were rising, and the ship was offered to both sides before she was purchased by the Japanese.

During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, Nisshin participated in the Battle of the Yellow Sea and was damaged in the subsequent Battle of Tsushima. In addition, she frequently bombarded the defenses of Port Arthur. The ship played a limited role in World War I and was used to escort Allied convoys and search for German commerce raiders in the Indian Ocean and Australasia. In 1918, Nisshin was deployed to the Mediterranean and then escorted the surrendered German submarines allocated to Japan from Britain after the war. She became a training ship in 1927 and was sunk as a target ship in 1936. Her wreck was later refloated and used as a target again in 1942.

Background
Nisshin was the last of the 10 Giuseppe Garibaldi-class armored cruisers to be built. The first ship had been completed in 1895 and the class had enjoyed considerable export success, with the base design being gradually improved over the years. The last two ships of the class were ordered on 23 December 1901 by the Royal Italian Navy, and sold in 1902 to the Argentine Navy in response to the order placed to a British shipbuilder by Chile for two second-class battleships. The possibility of war between Argentina and Chile, however, abated before the vessel was completed, and a combination of financial problems and British pressure forced Argentina to dispose of Mariano Moreno and her sister ship Bernardino Rivadavia. The Argentine government attempted to sell the ships to Russia, but negotiations failed over the price demanded by the Argentinians. The Japanese government quickly stepped in and purchased them due to increasing tensions with Russia despite the high price of ¥14,937,390 (£1,530,000) for the two sisters. Already planning to attack Russia, the government delayed their surprise attack on Port Arthur that began the Russo-Japanese War until the ships had left Singapore and could not be delayed or interned by any foreign power.

Design and description

Nisshin had an overall length of , a beam of , a molded depth of  and a deep draft (ship) of . She displaced  at normal load. The ship was powered by two vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one shaft, using steam from 8 coal-fired Scotch marine boilers. Designed for a maximum output of  and a speed of , Nisshin barely exceeded this, reaching a speed of  during her sea trials on 6 November 1903 despite  produced by her engines. She had a cruising range of  at . Her complement consisted of 560 officers and enlisted men.

Her main armament consisted of four  Type 41 guns, in twin-gun turrets fore and aft of the superstructure. Ten of the quick-firing (QF)  Type 41 guns that comprised her secondary armament were arranged in casemates amidships on the main deck; the remaining four guns were mounted on the upper deck. Nisshin also had ten QF  Type 41 guns and six QF 3-pounder ) Hotchkiss guns to defend herself against torpedo boats. She was fitted with four submerged  torpedo tubes, two on each side.

The ship's waterline armor belt had a maximum thickness of  amidships and tapered to  towards the ends of the ship. Between the main gun barbettes it covered the entire side of the ship up to the level of the upper deck. The ends of the central armored citadel were enclosed by transverse bulkheads  thick. The forward barbette, the conning tower, and gun turrets were also protected by 150-millimeter armor while the aft barbette only had  of armor. Her deck armor ranged from  thick and the six-inch guns on the upper deck were protected by gun shields.

Construction and career
The ship's keel was laid down on 29 March 1902 with the temporary name of San Roca and she was launched on 9 February 1903 and renamed Mariano Moreno by the Argentinians. The vessel was sold to Japan on 30 December 1903 and renamed Nisshin on 1 January 1904. Nisshin and her newly renamed sister Kasuga were formally turned over to Japan and commissioned on 7 January. The sisters departed Genoa on 9 January under the command of British captains and manned by British seamen and Italian stokers. When they arrived at Port Said, Egypt, five days later, they encountered the Russian protected cruiser  and reached Suez on the 16th, accompanied by the British armored cruiser . The Japanese ships reached Singapore on 2 February where they were slightly delayed by a coolie strike.

Russo-Japanese War

Nisshin and Kasuga reached Yokosuka on 16 February just as Japan initiated hostilities with its surprise attack on Port Arthur, and began working up with Japanese crews. The sisters were assigned to reinforce the battleships of the 1st Division of the 1st Fleet under the overall command of Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō on 11 April. In an effort to block the Russian ships in Port Arthur, Togo ordered a minefield laid at the mouth of the harbor on 12 April and Kasuga and Nisshin were tasked to show themselves "as a demonstration of our power". Tōgō successfully lured out a portion of the Russian Pacific Squadron, including Vice Admiral Stepan Makarov's flagship, the battleship . When Makarov spotted the five Japanese battleships and Kasuga and Nisshin, he turned back for Port Arthur and his flagship ran into the minefield just laid by the Japanese. The ship sank in less than two minutes after one of her magazines exploded, and Makarov was one of the 677 killed. In addition to this loss, the battleship  was damaged by a mine. Emboldened by his success, Tōgō resumed long-range bombardment missions, making use of the long-range capabilities of Nisshin and Kasugas guns to blindly bombard Port Arthur on 15 April from Pigeon Bay, on the southwest side of the Liaodong Peninsula, at a range of . The engagements were not entirely one-sided as the battleship  scored a hit on Nisshin that same day. In early May, the sisters fired at ranges up to  although this proved to be ineffective.

On 15 May, the battleships  and  were sunk by Russian mines. With a third of Japan's battleships lost, Tōgō decided to use Nisshin and Kasuga in the line of battle together with his four remaining battleships. The first test of this decision would have occurred on 23 June when the Pacific Squadron sortied in an abortive attempt to reach Vladivostok, but the new squadron commander, Rear Admiral Wilgelm Vitgeft, ordered the squadron to return to Port Arthur when it encountered the Japanese battleline (including Nisshin and Kasuga) shortly before sunset, as he did not wish to engage his numerically superior opponents in a night battle. On 27 July, the sisters forced a Russian force of one battleship and several cruisers and gunboats to return to port because of long-range gun fire after they sortied to provide fire support to the Russian Army.

They participated in the Battle of the Yellow Sea on 10 August, but only played a minor role as they were generally in the rear of the Japanese battleline. For the brief amount of time when Tōgō reversed course, Nisshin was at the head of the battleline and was hit three times during the battle, losing 14 crewmen killed and 25 wounded. After the battle the sisters returned to Pigeon Bay where they engaged the Russian fortifications.

At the subsequent Battle of Tsushima on 26 May 1905, Nisshin was flagship of Vice-Admiral Misu Sotarō, and was sixth and last in the line of battle, following Kasuga. At about 14:10, Nisshin opened fire on the , the lead ship in the second column of the Russian fleet at a range of . At 14:40 Nisshin received her first hit as a Russian  shell cut her forward right 8-inch gun in half. Between 14:57 and 15:05, the Japanese fleet reversed course to block the Russian northward movement, which put Nisshin as the first ship in the battle line. At 15:00, a 12-inch shell punched through the armor belt of Nisshin one foot below the waterline and flooded a coal bunker. Another 12-inch shell hit the belt about three feet above the waterline but did not penetrate. At 15:06, the Russian protected cruiser  attempted to close for a torpedo attack but was driven off by fire from Nisshin, Kasuga and the armored cruiser  at . At 15:30, the Japanese line again reversed course, placing Nisshin at the rear again. Another 12-inch hit struck the ship but without any significant damage. At 16:05, a  hit on the forward turret sent splinters into the conning tower, wounding Misu. Nisshin was hit again at 17:20 by another 12-inch shell, which cut the left 8-inch gun of her aft turret in half. As daylight was dying, Nisshin was hit yet again at 19:00 by another 12-inch shell that severed the barrel of her forward left 8-inch gun, leaving only a single gun operable. The surviving Russian ships were located near the Liancourt Rocks by the Japanese the following morning and Tōgō reached them about 10:00. Heavily outnumbering the Russians, he opted for a long-range engagement to minimize any losses and Kasuga opened fire at the obsolete  at a range of  and the Russians surrendered shortly afterwards.

Nisshin fired 181 eight-inch shells during the battle. In return she received the second largest number of hits after Tōgō's flagship, the battleship , which was struck over 40 times. Nisshin was hit by 13 shells, including 6 twelve-inch, 1 nine-inch, 2 six-inch and 4 unidentified. During the battle, the newly commissioned Ensign Isoroku Takano, later Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet in World War II, was badly wounded and lost two fingers on his left hand.

Shortly after the battle, Nisshin was assigned to the 3rd Fleet for the invasion and occupation of Sakhalin in July–August. On 2 September 1911, the ship escorted the ex-Russian hospital ship Anegawa to Vladivostok to be returned to the Russians. In November 1912, a boiler exploded aboard the ship, killing 20 crewmen. At the start of 1914, she was overhauled with her boilers replaced by 12 Kampon Type 1 water-tube boilers.

World War I and subsequent history
As part of the search for the German East Asia Squadron and other commerce raiders the British Admiralty requested in mid-September 1914 that the Japanese forces in the South Pacific be reinforced to deal with the threats posed by the Germans and the cruiser was ordered south. Nisshin struck an uncharted rock off Sandakan on 12 October and was forced to put into Singapore for repairs. After their completion the ship was assigned to the Second South Seas Squadron based at Truk. In February 1915, the ship visited the occupied colonies of German Samoa and German New Guinea. Niishin served as the flagship of Destroyer Squadron (Suiraisentai) 1 from 13 December 1915 to 13 May 1916, 12 September to 1 December 1916 and then of Suiraisentai 2 from 28 March to 13 April 1917. After the incursion of the German commerce raider  into the Indian Ocean in March 1917, the Admiralty requested that the Japanese government reinforce its ships already present, there and in Australian waters. Nisshin was sent south in response and escorted Allied shipping between Colombo, Ceylon and Fremantle, Australia in April–May.

In 1918, the ship was sent to the Mediterranean to reinforce the Second Special Mission Squadron as it escorted Allied troop convoys across the Mediterranean. In November, she became the flagship of Rear Admiral Kōzō Satō, the squadron commander, as the bulk of the squadron sailed to Constantinople, arriving on 6 December. The ship then sailed to Portland to escort the surrendered German submarines allocated to Japan back home. She arrived on 5 January 1919 and the squadron departed for Malta at the end of March. After refitting some of the submarines there, the squadron arrived at Yokosuka on 18 June.

In 1924 two of her 3 in/40 guns were removed, as were all of her QF 3-pounder Hotchkiss guns, and a single 8 cm/40 3rd Year Type anti-aircraft gun was added. Nisshin became a training vessel and depot ship in 1927 at Yokosuka Naval District until stricken from the naval register on 1 April 1935. Renamed Hai-Kan No. 6, she was sunk as a target ship during live-fire exercises at the Kamegakubi Naval Proving Ground off Kure in the Inland Sea in 1936. Her wreck was later raised, and, on 18 January 1942, it was towed by the battleship  as a target for the battleship  with her new 18.1 inch guns off Kurahashi, Hiroshima. The hulk was sunk for a second, and final, time during this exercise.

Notes

References

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Kasuga-class cruisers
Ships built in Genoa
1903 ships
Naval ships of Japan
Russo-Japanese War cruisers of Japan
World War I cruisers of Japan
Ships sunk as targets
Shipwrecks in the Inland Sea
Ships built by Gio. Ansaldo & C.
Maritime incidents in 1936
Maritime incidents in January 1942

Japanese cruiser Nisshin


Lon R. Greenberg has been CEO of UGI Corp. for 14 years, and Chairman of UGI for 13 years.

Career
Greenberg has been employed with UGI for 20 years, serving previously in the roles of Senior Vice President — Legal and Corporate Development and as Corporate and Development Counsel.
Prior to his employment with UGI, Greenberg served in the roles of President, CEO, Chairman, and Director of AmeriGas Propane, Inc. Greenberg also serves on the board of directors and the compensation committee of Aqua America, Inc.

Compensation

While CEO of UGI in 2008, Lon R. Greenberg earned a total compensation of $5,720,227, which included a base salary of $1,026,300; a cash bonus of $964,722; stock granted of $2,123,800; options granted of $1,524,000; and other compensation of $81,405.
 Greenberg ranks 18th within the Utilities sector of Forbes' special report on CEO compensation.

References

See also
 List of chief executive officers
 Executive Officer

American chief executives of energy companies
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)

Lon R. Greenberg


Clifford Isaac Morgan,  (7 April 1930 – 29 August 2013) was a Welsh rugby union player who played for Cardiff RFC and earned 29 caps for Wales between 1951 and 1958. After his playing career ended, Morgan made a successful career in broadcasting, both as a commentator and presenter and also as a programme-maker and BBC executive.

Rugby career
Morgan, born in Trebanog in the Rhondda valley, was from a mining family and joined Cardiff Rugby Club straight from Tonyrefail Grammar School in 1949, playing at fly-half. Blessed with natural balance and strength, together with an astute line-kicking ability and searing acceleration, he quickly made an impact. He also played club rugby in Ireland for Bective Rangers in the 1955–56 season, with the club being dubbed the "Morgan Rangers" as a result.

He won his first cap for Wales against Ireland in 1951, playing opposite his own hero Jack Kyle. He was part of the Grand Slam-winning Welsh side of 1952. The following year he inspired both Cardiff and Wales to historic victories over the touring All Blacks. In 1956, following his success on the 1955 British Lions tour to South Africa, he was made captain of Wales. During that tour, in which the Test series was drawn 2–2, Morgan distinguished himself for his marshalling of a talented Lions backline that included Jeff Butterfield and Arthur Smith in the centre, with Cecil Pedlow and Tony O'Reilly on the wings. Morgan's try in the first Test at Ellis Park, in front of a then world-record crowd of 100,000, helped secure a sensational 23–22 victory at the end of a match that some still consider the most exciting ever played.

The Springboks levelled the series in the second Test. Then, with Lions skipper Robin Thompson injured ahead of the third Test in Pretoria, Morgan was made captain and duly inspired his team and controlled the game to ensure a 9–6 win that meant the series could not be lost. The South African newspapers dubbed him "Morgan the Magnificent" and the level to which his influence was thought key was reflected in the frenzy of coverage his injured ankle received as the fourth Test came around. Although he played, he was not fully fit and the Lions could not prevent the Springboks squaring the series. But his reputation was already made and the memory of that tour – still known in South Africa as "the Cliff Morgan tour" – proved long-lived. His last game of first-class rugby was for the Barbarians on 28 May 1958 at the RFUEA Ground, Nairobi, versus East Africa.

Broadcasting and television career
Following his retirement from the game in 1958 he found a new career in broadcasting. Although he will forever be remembered for his celebrated commentary on the 1973 Barbarians rugby match against the touring All Blacks at Cardiff (particularly the commentary of "that try, that golden try") his broadcasting career was far more wide-ranging and influential than that single event would suggest. During his playing days he had already been spotted by the BBC in Wales as a natural talker and communicator, and in 1960, at the invitation of the BBC's Head of Welsh Programmes, Hywel Davies, he joined BBC Wales as Sports Organiser in Cardiff. His exceptional ability as a programme-maker and story-teller briefly took him outside the familiar world of BBC Sport in the mid-1960s, when he spent two years as editor of ITV's current affairs programme This Week. Returning to the BBC he then produced and edited established TV sports programmes such as Grandstand and Sportsnight With Coleman, and, from 1970, was himself one of the original team captains (opposite Henry Cooper) on the long-running TV quiz A Question of Sport. In radio he found a natural outlet for his love of music, presenting for a time the BBC Radio 2 series These You Have Loved. He also presented 'Singing Together' a radio for schools programme.

Off-air, his enduring influence in the world of sport and beyond helped him rise to join the ranks of leading BBC executives. In 1974 he became Head of BBC Radio Sport and Outside Broadcasts, and from 1976 to 1987 he was Head of BBC Television Sport and Outside Broadcasts, supervising coverage of major events including football World Cups, Commonwealth and Olympic Games, Royal weddings and other national ceremonial occasions, notably the funeral of Mountbatten in 1979 and the wedding of Charles and Diana in 1981.

After his retirement from his executive post in BBC Television in 1987 he returned to radio, where his warm, mellifluous voice, together with his natural conversational style and his wide range of contacts in sport and entertainment, greatly benefited BBC Radio 4 series such as Sport on Four (1987–1998), My Heroes (1987–90) and Down The River. In 1988 he was a subject of ITV's This Is Your Life. He contributed to numerous publications about rugby and lent his voice to many popular rugby videos. Among his books, he edited Rugby The Great Ones (1970), wrote perceptive short profiles to accompany John Ireland's illustrations for the anthology Rugby Characters (1990), and in 1996 produced his autobiography, Cliff Morgan: Beyond the Fields of Play (with Geoffrey Nicholson).

Morgan survived a life-threatening stroke in 1972 at the age of 42. He had been commentating on a Rugby match for BFBS in Germany. He spent three weeks in RAF Hospital Wegberg and spoke very highly of his treatment there. He made a full recovery. In retirement, he was afflicted with cancer of the vocal chords and the removal of his larynx, resulting in limited ability to speak. Morgan died at his home in Bembridge, Isle of Wight, on 29 August 2013 at the age of 83.

Awards
When the International Rugby Hall of Fame was created in 1997, Morgan was among the inaugural inductees, alongside his Lions contemporary Tony O'Reilly and Welsh rugby legends Gareth Edwards, Barry John and JPR Williams. In 2009, he was inducted along with O'Reilly into the IRB Hall of Fame, an honour Edwards had received two years earlier.

For his contributions to broadcasting, he was honoured with an OBE and a CVO.

References

External links

1930 births
2013 deaths
20th-century Welsh businesspeople
Barbarian F.C. players
BBC executives
BBC sports presenters and reporters
Bective Rangers players
British & Irish Lions rugby union players from Wales
Cardiff RFC players
Commanders of the Royal Victorian Order
Officers of the Order of the British Empire
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Cliff Morgan


The Plastic Ono Band was a rock and roll band formed by Yoko Ono with husband (and former Beatle) John Lennon. They were active from 1969 until 1974.

Lennon and Ono recorded their first single together, titled "Give Peace A Chance", in a Montreal hotel with a roomful of guests, including Tommy Smothers, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, Timothy Leary, and the local Hare Krishna chapter. The pair were in an auto accident before the single was to debut (be played in public for the first time), and they had to stay in the hospital. Not wanting to cancel the debut, they sent the first version of their "new band" – a set of plastic cases that held the sound equipment – which played in their place. It was a strange kind of debut for a new band, but the song (a protest against the Vietnam War) became a minor hit that year, in England and in the United States.

The second version of the Plastic Ono Band included Ono and Lennon in person, along with musicians Eric Clapton, Klaus Voormann and Alan White. They performed together at a rock concert in Toronto in September 1969, and it was the first time Lennon had played in public with a band other than the Beatles. The show went well, and helped Lennon decide to leave the Beatles, which he had thought about doing for some time. A second single, "Cold Turkey", was recorded with this lineup.

After the Beatles ended, Lennon decided he did not want to have another permanent band, and he and Ono used the Plastic Ono Band name to refer to any musicians who appeared on the records they made together. Even listeners were called a part of the band, especially when the band gave a concert. An advertisement for one of their records included a page from a telephone book, and the words "YOU are the Plastic Ono Band".

Ono and Lennon separated for a time during 1973 and 1974. Lennon still used forms of the band name on the two albums he released during their separation, while Ono's records of the time appeared under her name alone. When they got back together in 1975, Ono became pregnant, and both decided to retire from music to be parents. Their son Sean Lennon was born on October 9, 1975, which was Lennon's 35th birthday.

In 1980, Lennon and Ono decided to restart their music careers, but this time their records appeared under their own names, and the Plastic Ono Band name was retired.

English rock bands

Plastic Ono Band


Virtues of Harmony was a sitcom that ran in Hong Kong from 2001 until February 2005. Virtues of Harmony One was set in ancient China during the Ming Dynasty. It follows the lives of the Kam family. The allure of the series was the humorous storylines and how the good always wins. The star of the show was Nancy Sit, a kind hearted matriarch with the best intentions.

Following the success of Virtues of Harmony One, Virtues of Harmony Two was set in modern Hong Kong with a similar cast.

Sitcoms
2001 television series debuts
2000s establishments in Asia
2005 television series endings
21st-century disestablishments in Asia

Virtues of Harmony


A stalactite is a form that can be found on the ceiling of a cave. When a drop of water flows down the stalactite, the water evaporates and leaves a mineral deposit of calcite. This slowly increases the length and thickness of the stalactite.

The corresponding formation on the floor underneath a stalactite is known as a stalagmite. Given enough time, these formations can meet. The results are known as columns.
Caves
Minerals

Stalactite


James Nowell Wood (March 20, 1941 – June 11, 2010) was an American museum director who spent 25 years as head of the Art Institute of Chicago and later served as head of the J. Paul Getty Trust, starting in 2006.

Biography
Wood was born in Boston, Massachusetts. on March 20, 1941. He earned a bachelor's degree from Williams College with a major in art history and earned a master's degree from the New York University Institute of Fine Arts. Early in his career, Wood worked at positions at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and served for six years as the director of the Saint Louis Art Museum.

At the Art Institute of Chicago starting in the early 1980s, Wood conducted a major expansion of its collection and oversaw a major renovation and expansion project for its facilities. As "one of the most respected museum leaders in the country", as described by The New York Times, Wood created major exhibitions of works by Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh that set records for attendance at the museum. He retired from the museum in 2004.

In 2006, Wood was named to head the J. Paul Getty Trust, succeeding Barry Munitz. Wood was the first person with strong experience in the management of museums to head the trust, which oversees the operation of the J. Paul Getty Museum. The New York Times credited Wood with having restored the museum's reputation by reorganizing the trust and restructuring its staff. In 2009, after a substantial drop in the trust's assets, Wood cut nearly 100 employees at the trust's various operations, most at the Getty Museum. Fees for parking at the museum and the Getty Villa were raised by 50% to $15.

Wood died of natural causes at age 69 on June 11, 2010, at his home in Brentwood, Los Angeles. He was survived by his wife, Emese Forizs, as well as by two daughters and four grandchildren.

References

Directors of museums in the United States
1941 births
2010 deaths
Businesspeople from Boston
Art Institute of Chicago
J. Paul Getty Trust
People associated with the J. Paul Getty Museum
New York University Institute of Fine Arts alumni
Directors of the Art Institute of Chicago
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James N. Wood


John Ruggles (October 8, 1789June 20, 1874) was an American politician from the U.S. state of Maine. He served in several important state legislative and judicial positions before serving in the U.S. Senate.

Early life and career

Ruggles was born in Westborough, Massachusetts. He attended public school there and in 1813 graduated from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Ruggles studied law, and after being admitted to the bar in 1815 he began practicing in Skowhegan, Maine. Two years later, Ruggles moved to Thomaston. In 1823, Ruggles was elected to the Maine House of Representatives. He served in the House until 1831, and was speaker (1825–1829 and again in 1831). He resigned from the state house to replace Samuel E. Smith (who had been elected governor) as a justice of the supreme judicial court of Maine, serving until 1834.

He also made the first US patent. The patent was for new traction wheels for trains for going uphill with heavy loads.

U.S. Senate career

The state legislature elected Ruggles as a Democratic-Republican (Jacksonian) to the U.S. Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Peleg Sprague. He was later elected for the full term beginning March 4, 1835, and in total served from January 20, 1835, to March 3, 1841. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1840.

During his tenure in Congress, Ruggles had served as chairman of the Committee on Patents and Patent Office (25th Congress), and in 1836 framed the bill for the reorganization of the United States Patent Office. He was known for his interest in inventions and patents, and because of his legislative accomplishments in this area he has become known as the "Father of the U.S. Patent Office". Ruggles also was an inventor and the patent-holder of , issued July 13, 1836. His invention was a type of train wheel designed to reduce the adverse effects of the weather on the track. This was not the first patent ever from the USPTO; the previous patents were destroyed by fire and afterwards called the X-Patents, and new patents afterwards were numbered from 1 again. Ruggles received the first patent granted under the new system; Samuel Hopkins received the first X-Patent.

Retirement and death

In retirement, Ruggles resumed the practice of law in Thomaston. There he made several more inventions and was well known as a political writer and orator. Ruggles was wealthy; he and his wife Margaret George Ruggles had children and lived in the largest house on the town's Main Street. He died in 1874 a few months before reaching age 85. He is interred in the Elm Grove Cemetery.

See also
 Patent Office 1836 fire
 Patent Office 1877 fire

References

Sources

"Ruggles, John." The Political Graveyard. http://politicalgraveyard.com/bio/ruggles.html#R9M0JBIAQ

Reggles, John. Letter to the U.S. Patent Office. https://web.archive.org/web/20050212172531/http://www.mindfully.org/Industry/Patent-1-13jul1836.htm
"Senator John Ruggles." Thomaston Historical Society. https://web.archive.org/web/20041205124819/http://www.thomastonhistoricalsociety.com/JRuggles.htm

American people in rail transportation
19th-century American inventors
1789 births
1874 deaths
People from Thomaston, Maine
People from Westborough, Massachusetts
Brown University alumni
Maine Democratic-Republicans
Democratic-Republican Party United States senators
Democratic Party United States senators from Maine
Speakers of the Maine House of Representatives
People from Skowhegan, Maine
19th-century American politicians

John Ruggles


The UK general election, 1997 was an election held on 1 May 1997 to elect 659 members to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. The three main candidates to become Prime Minister are shown to the right:

The Labour Party and its leader Tony Blair gained the majority of seats and created the first Labour government since 1979. The Labour Party won 418 seats which was the highest majority of seats for any party since the Conservatives in the 1931 General Election. The Conservative Party suffered it's lowest number of seats since 1906 and lost all of its seats in Scotland and Wales. Several prominent Conservative politicians lost their seats such as Defence Secretary Michael Portillo, Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind, Scottish Secretary Michael Forsyth as well as Edwina Currie, David Mellor and Ian Lang.

The Liberal Democrats won 46 seats, which was the highest number of seats for a third party since 1929. The Referendum Party ran on the single issue of taking Britain out of the European Union and won 2.6% of the vote but no seats.

The final results of the election were:

 Labour Party (418 MP's, 43.2% of vote)
 Conservative Party (165 MP's, 30.7% of vote)
 Liberal Democrats (46 MP's, 16.8% of vote)
 Referendum Party (0 MP's, 2.6% of vote)
 Scottish National Party (6 MP's, 2.0% of vote) - Scotland only
 Ulster Unionist Party (10 MP's, 0.8% of vote) - Northern Ireland only
 Social Democratic and Labour Party (3 MP's, 0.6% of vote) - Northern Ireland only
 Plaid Cymru (4 MP's, 0.5% of vote) - Wales only
 Sinn Fein (2 MP's, 0.4% of vote) - Northern Ireland only
 Democratic Unionist Party (2 MP's, 0.3% of vote) - Northern Ireland only
 UK Independence Party (0 MP's, 0.3% of vote)
 Green Party (0 MP's, 0.3% of vote)
 Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (0 MP's, 0.2% of vote) - Northern Ireland only
 Socialist Labour Party (0 MP's, 0.2% of vote)
 Liberal Party (0 MP's, 0.1% of vote)
 British National Party (0 MP's, 0.1% of vote)

Notes

References

1997 in the United Kingdom
1997 elections
United Kingdom general elections
May events

1997 United Kingdom general election


Radio Golf is a play by American playwright, August Wilson, the final installment in his ten-part series, The Century Cycle. It was first performed in 2005 by the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut and had its Broadway premiere in 2007 at the Cort Theatre. It is Wilson's final work.

Plot
Harmond Wilks, an Ivy League-educated man who has inherited a real estate agency from his father, his ambitious wife Mame, and his friend Roosevelt Hicks want to redevelop the Hill District in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The project, called the Bedford Hills Redevelopment Project, includes two high-rise apartment buildings and high-end chain stores like Starbucks, Whole Foods, and Barnes & Noble. Harmond is also about to declare his candidacy to be Pittsburgh's first black mayor. Roosevelt has just been named a vice-president of Mellon Bank and has been tapped by a Bernie Smith to help him acquire a local radio station at less than market value, which is possible through a minority tax incentive.

A complication arises when Harmond discovers that the house at 1839 Wylie, slated for demolition, was acquired illegally. Harmond offers the owner of the property market value for the house, but the owner refuses to sell. Harmond decides the only way to proceed is to build around the house, which will require minor modifications to the planned development, and calls the demolition company to cancel the demolition. Roosevelt sees no reason to delay since no one but Harmond, Roosevelt, Mame, and the house's owner know the truth, a view Mame supports. When, on the day of the demolition, which Roosevelt has put back into motion, Harmond refuses to be swayed from his stand, Roosevelt announces he will be buying Harmond out and Bernie Smith will be helping him. Harmond accuses Roosevelt of being Smith's "black face" and the two argue over the consequences of Harmond demanding changes in the development plans and if Roosevelt is allowing himself to be used by Bernie Smith.  Harmond tells Roosevelt to leave the Bedford Hills Redevelopment office, which is owned by Wilks Realty. The scene ends with Harmond leaving the office to join the group of Hill residents at 1839 Wylie protesting the demolition.

Productions
The world premiere of Radio Golf was at the Yale Repertory Theatre from April 22 to May 14, 2005; it was then presented on the West Coast by the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, California, in August 2005. The Yale production was directed by Timothy Douglas. Kenny Leon directed the production at the Mark Taper Forum. It next played at the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston, Massachusetts, in October 2006, and the McCarter Theatre in 2007. The play was performed at the Tricycle Theatre in London, UK between 2 October and 1 November 2008.

The play opened on Broadway at the Cort Theatre on May 8, 2007, and closed on July 1, 2007, after 64 performances and 17 previews. Directed by Kenny Leon, the cast featured Anthony Chisholm (Elder Joseph Barlow), John Earl Jelks (Sterling Johnson), Harry Lennix (Harmond Wilks), Tonya Pinkins (Mame Wilks), and James A. Williams (Roosevelt Hicks).

The Cort Theatre was also the venue where Wilson's first Broadway play, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, opened in 1984. Chicago's Goodman Theatre is the first to mount a production of the complete ten play The Pittsburgh Cycle with the closing of Radio Golf in early 2007. The St. Louis Black Repertory Theatre's production of Radio Golf opened in Feb., 2008. The Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C., produced the play, opening May 20, 2009. The Denver Center Theatre Company also produced the play in April 2009, and was the first theatre company to stage all ten plays of "The Pittsburgh Cycle" under one director, Israel Hicks. Geva Theatre Center in Rochester, New York produced the play in March 2011 and is the first theatre to produce all ten plays in decade order as "August Wilson's American Century."

The Broadway producers were Jujamcyn Theaters, Margo Lion, Jeffrey Richards/Jerry Frankel, Tamara Tunie/Wendell Pierce, Fran Kirmser, Bunting Management Group, George Frontiere and Open Pictures, Lauren Doll/Steven Greil & The August Wilson Group, Wondercity Inc., Townsend Teague, Jack Viertel, Gordon Davidson.

Awards and nominations
Awards
 2007 New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play

Nominations
2007 Tony Award for Best Play
2007 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play -- Anthony Chisholm
2007 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play -- John Earl Jelks
2007 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play
2007 Drama League Award for Distinguished Production of a Play
2007 Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Broadway Play

References

Further reading

External links

2005 plays
All-Black cast Broadway shows
Broadway plays
New York Drama Critics' Circle Award winners
West End plays
The Pittsburgh Cycle
Plays set in Pittsburgh
Plays set in the 1990s
African-American plays

Radio Golf


Edgar Cayce (March 18, 1877 – January 3, 1945), known as "The Sleeping Prophet" and "America's Greatest Mystic", is one of America's famous psychics. He wanted people to think of him as a healer and not a psychic.

Methods
Cayce worked in a trance. This means he could talk while sleeping and answered questions about a person's health, past and future. This information is called "readings". At first, these readings were about the physical health of the person ("physical readings"). Later, there were readings on "past lives", "business advice", "dream interpretation", and also "mental or spiritual health". The Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE) currently takes care of all of his readings and follow-ups to the readings. The readings have had a large effect on New Age thinking.

Life history
Edgar Cayce was born on March 18,1877 near Hopkinsville, Kentucky. He read the Bible many times starting when he was 10 years old. He wanted to tell people about God and heal them. His family worked on a farm.

First jobs
His family moved to Hopkinsville in December, 1893. Edgar's first jobs (1894 – 1898) were at Richard's Dry Goods Store. He next worked in Hopper's Bookstore. Both stores were located on Main Street. He married Gertrude Evans in 1903.

Business
In 1900, Cayce went into business with his father. They sold insurance. Cayce became very sick with laryngitis in March. In April 18, he could not talk at all. He had to live at home with his parents for almost a year. He became a photographer because it did not require talking. He worked in the photography studio of W. R. Bowles in Hopkinsville.

First hypnotist job
A hypnotist and entertainer called Hart was entertaining at the Hopkinsville Opera House in 1901. He heard that Cayce was sick and asked if he could try to cure him. Cayce said yes and the entertainer tried to cure Cayce in front of an audience. Cayce was able to talk while in a hypnotic trance but when he woke up he could not talk. Hart hypnotized Cayce so that his voice would be normal after the trance but Cayce's voice did not become normal.

Hypnotism in depth
Hart had to leave. Another hypnotist, Al Layne, continued to help Cayce have a normal voice. Layne asked Cayce to tell him the cause of his illness and it's cure while in a trance. Cayce described his illness from a first person plural point of view – 'we' – instead of the singular "I." In later readings, he would usually start off with "We have the body." In the reading, Cayce said his voice loss was because of psychological paralysis and that could be fixed by increasing the blood flow to the voice box. Layne suggested that the blood flow be increased and Cayce's face turned red with blood and his chest area turned bright red. After 20 minutes, Cayce, still in a trance, said the treatment was over. When he woke up his voice stayed normal. He would get sick again, but was cured by Layne in the same way and later he was cured perfectly.

Fame
Cayce's work grew as his fame grew. He asked for people to give him money to support himself and his family so that he could work full-time. He continued to work in a trance state with a hypnotist all his life. His wife and oldest son later replaced Layne in this role. A secretary, Gladys Davis, took notes. Many believe that Cayce had an affair with Ms. Davis later in life - but a medical examination conducted after Cayce's death to treat Davis's uterine cancer allegedly showed that she was still a virgin at that time.

In 1929 the Cayce hospital was created in Virginia Beach. The cost of the hospital was paid for by Morton Blumenthal, a New York stockbroker, Cayce hospital benefactor.

Cayce became famous in the United States in 1943 because of an article in Coronet magazine. He increased his readings to 8 times a day to try to keep up. This caused problems with his health.

Problems
The trance reading caused problems with Cayce's health which were easily seen. On the times when he could not give a clear reading, he said it was because he was working under too great a pressure. In these cases, he always gave the money back to the person he was giving a reading to.

Edgar Cayce died on January 3, 1945. He had predicted his own death four days earlier.

Readings
Edgar Cayce is famous for the thousands of "readings" that he gave while he was hypnotized. He gave more than 14,000 readings in 43 years. Gladys Davis, his assistant, recorded the readings and his wife, Gertrude Evans Cayce, guided him during hypnosis.

Physical readings
Physical Readings: 9,603 readings given
In the beginning, his readings were known as "physical readings" (health readings). Cayce often called the body "the organism". Cayce would put himself under self-hypnosis. While he seemed to sleep, he would say where the person was. He would sometimes name the streets along the way. He would then say "Yes, we see the body", and describe the client's organ, circulatory, and nervous systems. He would give reasons for illness or problems. A message would then be given to the person telling them how to get better. The readings were so specialized that treatments were often changed, or not even given, if the person would not follow his advice. People often came to Cayce for health readings when the medical community could find nothing wrong or had given up on them.

Life readings
Life Readings: 1,920 readings given
In a life reading, Cayce described the "past lives" of the client. These readings described the client's present physical, emotional and mental condition in terms of past life experience. Cayce was not above flattering his clients by describing past lives as royalty, famous people, or people at their "spiritual highest".

Business readings
Business Readings: 747 readings given
For those people whose intentions Cayce believed to be "pure", Cayce would give business readings. These included advice on business partners, the stock market, and business models. Cayce also founded and guided the A.R.E..

Dream readings
Dream Readings: 630 readings given
Edgar Cayce encouraged everyone to interpret and use his or her own dreams in day-to-day life. A dream reading involved Cayce interpreting the dreams of clients. As he did with readings on many subjects, Cayce would often interrupt the person reading the dream and give an interpretation before the dream had been completely read. He would sometimes fill in parts of dreams that the dreamer had supposedly forgotten. Unlike Jungian or Freudian dream interpretation, Cayce did not emphasize highly the importance of symbols. He said that every individual has his or her own unique symbols. Cayce claimed that in dreams people could receive valuable insight into their own lives and that the insight was always of use to the dreamer. Besides regular daily insight into one's life, he claimed people could communicate with loved ones dead or alive, remember past life experiences, see a possible future and experience many other psychic phenomena. He stated that these paranormal abilities were something anyone could learn.

Mental and Spiritual readings
Mental and Spiritual Readings: 450 readings given
These readings were often short and were Cayce's favorite type of reading when not in his supposed trance state. They focused on what an individual could do to achieve a better mental/spiritual life.

Other readings
Other Readings: 954 readings given
Other Readings are miscellaneous subject matter that does not fit into an above category. The subject matter differs from missing persons, buried treasure, readings given to a spiritual development group, psychic abilities, auras, prophecy, structure of reality, geology and many other topics.

Impact
For many people, the readings had a powerful impact on attitudes, beliefs, health practices, outlook on life, matters of faith and many other areas.

Claimed abilities
Abilities that have been claimed for Cayce include:
 diagnosing and healing people at a distance
 making diagnoses through astral projection
 prophesying
 communicating with the dead
 providing advice on healing diets
 accessing the Akashic Records or Book of Life
 seeing auras
Cayce himself did not claim to be able to do all these things.

Former lives and conflict with Christian doctrine
Cayce had difficulty in believing some of the things he said when he was hypnotized. For example, having been raised a devout Christian, for a long time he could not believe that reincarnation was real. Books such as Frederick Oliver's A Dweller On Two Planets and Marie Corelli's novels were probably easily accessible to Cayce at his bookstore. Corelli's writings in particular seek to reconcile mystical beliefs such as reincarnation with Christianity, and Cayce may have been subconsciously trying to accept this idea.

Reincarnation
Cayce also claimed while in a supposed trance that the Essenes had believed in reincarnation but that view was expunged from the Bible following a papal council decision in around 500 AD. Essene belief in reincarnation is debatable , as with ancient Egyptian religion.

Claimed reincarnation
During a hypnosis session, Cayce mentioned a former life as Ra Ta, an Egyptian healer-priest. He told a long story about working with the legendary doctor-magician Hermes-Thoth, who he said was reincarnated as Jesus. Cayce also specified that Jesus had lived a number of incarnations throughout human history.
 Amilius in Atlantis
 Adam
 Enoch
 Melchizedek, priest of Salem who blessed Abraham.
 Joseph, who was sold by his brothers as a slave.
 Joshua Son of Nun, right-hand man of Moses.
 Job, the man who was tested. (According to Cayce, the story of Job was a midrash, a Jewish metaphorical fable, created by Melchizedek)
 Asaph
 Jeshua
 Zen, the father of Zoroaster, the founder of Zoroastrianism

A Reading About the Readings in Terms of Religion
One of Cayce's trance statements implies that knowledge gained through his readings is not necessary if a person is well grounded in one's faith: "Does it make one a better husband, a better businessman, a better neighbor, a better artist, a better churchman, if so cleave to it, if not reject it."

The readings also warn against the misuse of religion for personal gain. 'God is not mocked' is an often quoted verse in the readings.

Disbelief and criticism

Skepticism
Many skeptics say that Cayce did not have paranormal abilities. Cayce himself said that not all the information given during "readings" was correct and should be analyzed. He criticized his own organization, the A.R.E , on a number of occasions for not doing enough research on the validity of the readings.

Problems
In addition, although Cayce's secretary Miss Davis allegedly took down what Cayce said, the records of the readings are jumbled and chaotic. There is nothing to distinguish what Cayce himself independently said, what was the information provided in the letters, and what his handlers – physicians, osteopaths and hypnotists – told him. Thus, researchers cannot say that Cayce ever made an accurate diagnosis without knowing anything about the person at the other end. What is known is that by the time he got some of the letters, the client had already died. Yet Cayce went on with his reading for the individual as though still alive.

Vagueness
Critics also cite the vagueness of his language while in his supposed trance state. Martin Gardner gives several examples of this, including a reading Cayce did for his own wife, who had tuberculosis:

[F]rom the head, pains along through the body from the second, fifth and sixth dorsals, and from the first and second lumbar ... tie-ups here, floating lesions, or lateral lesions, in the muscular and nerve fibers which supply the lower end of the lung and the diaphragm ... in conjunction with the sympathetic nerve of the solar plexus, coming in conjunction with the solar plexus at the end of the stomach....

Health readings
Many of his health readings prescribed cures with ingredients that did not exist. Others were folk remedies, some well known to today's herbalists and naturopaths, but Cayce would sometimes describe them using terms that had fallen out of general use. Still other ingredients were completely unknown to either physicians or herbalists. Some were completely worthless; for example, Cayce once recommended breathing the fumes of apple brandy from a charred keg to cure tuberculosis.

Final words
The many Cayce readings would later become commonly known practices of the New Age movement.

In 1931 Edgar Cayce founded the Association for Research and Enlightenment, Inc. (A.R.E.) headquartered in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Today there are Edgar Cayce Centers in 18 other countries throughout the world.

References
 Cayce, Edgar Evans. Edgar Cayce on Atlantis. New York: Hawthorn, 1968,
 Cerminara, Gina. Many Mansions: The Edgar Cayce Story on Reincarnation. orig. 1950; Signet Book, Reissue edition 1990,
 Kirkpatrick, Sidney D. An American Prophet. Riverhead Books, 2000,
 Sugrue, Thomas. There Is a River. A.R.E. Press, 1997,
 Kittler, Glenn D. Edgar Cayce on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Warner Books, 1970,

Other websites

 Association for Research and Enlightenment
 Detailed Chronology of Life and Work of Edgar Cayce
 Cayce's list of incarnations of Jesus Christ
 Why Edgar Cayce Was Not a Psychic: Typological Issues and Their Social and Religious Consequences
 The Straight Dope: What's the scoop on Edgar Cayce?
 James Randi: Cayce Flimflam
 An American Prophet: Yeah, Right - ABCNews column on Cayce
 Ishareknowledge.com/2008
 Ishareknowledge.com/2009

1877 births
1945 deaths
American esotericists
Mystics
People from Kentucky
People from Virginia Beach, Virginia

Edgar Cayce


The University Heights District is a neighborhood in Buffalo, New York.

Geography
The University Heights neighborhood is in the northern corner of Buffalo. Main Street (NY 5) bisects University Heights.  Main Street in University Heights has an assortment of restaurants, bars, retail stores, and places of worship, many catering to the students of the University at Buffalo.

The University Heights neighborhood is bounded on the west and south by the former Erie-Lackawanna Railroad right-of-way, across which is the North Buffalo, Buffalo, New York neighborhood.  Kenmore Avenue, which forms the boundary between the City of Buffalo and the towns of Amherst and Tonawanda, forms the northern edge of the neighborhood.  The Kenilworth neighborhood in Tonawanda and the Eggertsville neighborhood in Amherst lie across Kenmore Avenue. The Eastern Boundary is Main Street and the University at Buffalo.

Gallery

See also
Neighborhoods of Buffalo, New York

External links

University Heights is covered in the .

References

Neighborhoods in Buffalo, New York

University Heights, Buffalo


The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, is a book written by J. R. R. Tolkien. It was first published on September 21, 1937. Tolkien wrote it in the 1930s for his children as a bedtime story. The story takes place before The Lord of the Rings.

The plot is about the hobbit (a small race of people invented by Tolkien) Bilbo Baggins who goes on an adventurous quest with a group of dwarves and the wizard Gandalf, in order to fight the dragon Smaug, which has stolen the treasures and home of the dwarves.

Although Tolkien borrowed (for example names and background) from his own Middle-earth storyline, The Hobbit was at first not intended to be part of it. Only later, when Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings, did he integrate the story of both Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings into his Middle-earth world.

Characters

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit, who lives a quiet life in the Shire, who goes on an unexpected adventure during the book. He is visited by the wizard Gandalf the Grey, who enlists him to travel with a group of 13 dwarves, as a burglar.

Thorin Oakenshield is the leader of the group of dwarves, and true King under the Mountain of the old Dwarven kingdom of the Lonely Mountain. The dwarves are on an adventure to get their old kingdom back from the dragon Smaug, who conquered the Lonely Mountain and made the dwarves flee years before. The other dwarves are Thorin's young nephews Fíli and Kíli, Thorin's cousins Balin and Dwalin, Óin and Glóin, Dori, Nori, Ori, and the dwarves Bifur, Bofur and Bombur.

Along their travels they met many people and creatures: Elrond, a wise elf in Rivendell; goblins; Gollum, a creature with a magic ring; speaking Great Eagles; Beorn the bear shapeshifter; the Elvenking of Mirkwood; Bard the Bowman, and many more.

Plot
The hobbit Bilbo Baggins lives a quiet and peaceful life. One day the wizard Gandalf comes to him, and with him thirteen dwarves: Thorin Oakenshield, Fíli and Kíli, Balin, Dwalin, Óin, Glóin, Dori, Nori, Ori, Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur.
The dwarves tell their story: A long time ago they lived in the Lonely Mountain. Thorin's father was their king, the King under the Mountain. But one day the dragon Smaug came to the Lonely Mountain and killed all of the dwarves he found. The dragon took their treasure and now lives in the Lonely Mountain. But some of the dwarves could flee.
Now the dwarves want to go back the Lonely Mountain, and get back their home and treasures from the dragon. Gandalf wants Bilbo to come with them, and work as a master thief. At first Bilbo does not want to, but later he goes with them.

Gandalf, the dwarves, and Bilbo start to go east on their journey to the Lonely Mountain. After Gandalf saves the group from three trolls, they find the trolls' cave. Among the trolls' things there is some gold and swords. Gandalf, Thorin, and Bilbo each get a sword. The group continues on to the elven city Rivendell. Its master, Elrond, gives them helpful information.

As the group travels east over the Misty Mountains, they are attacked by Goblins (Orcs). The Goblins take the dwarves and Bilbo into their caves. Gandalf saves them and the group flees. During their flight Bilbo gets lost, and tries to find a way out by himself. In the tunnels Bilbo finds a ring, which he puts in his pocket. By an underground lake, Bilbo meets the creature Gollum. Gollum and Bilbo play a game of riddles. If Bilbo wins the game, Gollum will show him the way out; if Gollum wins, he will eat Bilbo. When Bilbo does not know another riddle to ask Gollum, he finds the ring in his pocket and asks himself: "What have I got in my pocket?" Gollum thinks this is a riddle, but cannot answer it, and so Bilbo wins the game. Gollum is angry and does not want to help Bilbo. Gollum then goes away to get something he owns: a magical ring, which turns the wearer invisible. Gollum cannot find his ring, and realizes that Bilbo has it. Gollum goes back, but Bilbo is afraid and runs away. While running, the ring slips on Bilbo's finger and he becomes invisible. Gollum runs past Bilbo, towards the way out of the caves. Bilbo realizes that the ring makes him invisible. With the help of the ring he can follow Gollum and get out of the caves. Outside, Bilbo again meets Gandalf and the dwarves.

The group is attacked by Goblins and Wargs, but saved by the Great Eagles. The group comes to the home of Beorn, a big man that can become a bear. After staying at Beorn's house, they continue to the forest Mirkwood. At the border of Mirkwood, Gandalf leaves the group. Bilbo and the dwarves have go through Mirkwood without him. The dwarves are attacked and captured by giant spiders. With the help of his ring and his sword, Bilbo saves them. Bilbo names his sword Sting. The Wood-Elves capture the dwarves. Bilbo again uses the ring and saves the dwarves. He frees them and puts them into barrels, which he lets swim down a river out of Mirkwood. The group comes to Lake-town, a human city near the Lonely Mountain.

The dwarves and Bilbo travel to the Lonely Mountain. They can find the secret door into the mountain, and open it. Bilbo goes in two times and meets the dragon Smaug. Bilbo steals a golden cup, and finds out that Smaug has a weak place on his left chest. Bilbo tells this to the dwarves, but a thrush (a bird) also hears it. Smaug is angry and goes out to destroy Lake-town. But in Laketown the thrush tells the archer Bard of the dragon's weak point, and Bard shoots the dragon. A big part of Laketown is destroyed, but Smaug is killed.

The dwarves are happy to be back in their old home, and to have their old treasures back. Thorin sends a message to the dwarves of his people, and tells them to come. But soon the people from Laketown and the Mirkwood-Elves arrive. Both peoples want a part of the treasure, but the dwarves do not want to give them anything. The humans and elves start a siege of the Lonely Mountain. After a while the other dwarves of Thorin's people come: Dáin II Ironfoot and an army of dwarves.

The three armies almost start to fight each other, but then the wizard Gandalf appears. Gandalf tells them that an army of Goblins is coming to the Lonely Mountain, and because of that the humans, elves, and dwarves have to fight the Goblins together. The Battle of Five Armies is long and hard, but is finally won with the help of the Great Eagles and Beorn. Thorin's nephews Fíli and Kíli are killed in the battle. Thorin is wounded and dies afterwards. Dáin becomes King under the Mountain. Everyone gets a part of the dwarves' treasure. In the end Bilbo returns home, and lives happily everafter.

Adaptations
The Hobbit has been adapted many times.
 The Hobbit (movie series), a live action film in three parts, called The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014).

Related pages

 The Lord of the Rings
 Middle-earth

1937 books
English children's books
Middle-earth
Books by J. R. R. Tolkien

The Hobbit


John William Cheever (May 27, 1912 – June 18, 1982) was an American short story writer and novelist. He is sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs". His fiction is mostly set in the Upper East Side of Manhattan; the Westchester suburbs; old New England villages based on various South Shore towns around Quincy, Massachusetts, where he was born; and Italy, especially Rome. His short stories included "The Enormous Radio", "Goodbye, My Brother", "The Five-Forty-Eight", "The Country Husband", and "The Swimmer", and he also wrote five novels: The Wapshot Chronicle (National Book Award, 1958),
The Wapshot Scandal (William Dean Howells Medal, 1965), Bullet Park (1969), Falconer (1977) and a novella Oh What a Paradise It Seems (1982).

His main themes include the duality of human nature: sometimes dramatized as the disparity between a character's decorous social persona and inner corruption, and sometimes as a conflict between two characters (often brothers) who embody the salient aspects of both – light and dark, flesh and spirit. Many of his works also express a nostalgia for a vanishing way of life (as evoked by the mythical St. Botolphs in the Wapshot novels), characterized by abiding cultural traditions and a profound sense of community, as opposed to the alienating nomadism of modern suburbia.

A compilation of his short stories, The Stories of John Cheever, won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and a National Book Critics Circle Award, and its first paperback edition won a 1981 National Book Award.

On April 27, 1982, six weeks before his death, Cheever was awarded the National Medal for Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has been included in the Library of America.

Early life and education

John William Cheever was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, the second child of Frederick Lincoln Cheever and Mary Liley Cheever. His father was a prosperous shoe salesman, and Cheever spent much of his childhood in a large Victorian house, at 123 Winthrop Avenue, in the then-genteel suburb of Wollaston, Massachusetts. In the mid-1920s, however, as the New England shoe and textile industries began their long decline, Frederick Cheever lost most of his money and began to drink heavily. To pay the bills, Mary Cheever opened a gift shop in downtown Quincy—an "abysmal humiliation" for the family, as John saw it. In 1926, Cheever began attending Thayer Academy, a private day school, but he found the atmosphere stifling and performed poorly, and finally transferred to Quincy High in 1928. A year later, he won a short story contest sponsored by the Boston Herald and was invited back to Thayer as a "special student" on academic probation. His grades continued to be poor, however, and, in March 1930, he was either expelled for smoking or (more likely) departed of his own accord when the headmaster delivered an ultimatum to the effect that he must either apply himself or leave. The 18-year-old Cheever wrote a sardonic account of this experience, titled "Expelled", which was subsequently published in The New Republic. (1930).

Around this time, Cheever's older brother, Fred, forced to withdraw from Dartmouth in 1926 because of the family's financial crisis, re-entered Cheever's life "when the situation was most painful and critical", as Cheever later wrote. After the 1932 crash of Kreuger & Toll, in which Frederick Cheever had invested what was left of his money, the Cheever house on Winthrop Avenue was lost to foreclosure.  The parents separated, while John and Fred took an apartment together on Beacon Hill, in Boston. In 1933, John wrote to Elizabeth Ames, the director of the Yaddo artist's colony in Saratoga Springs, New York: "The idea of leaving the city", he said, "has never been so distant or desirable." Ames denied his first application but offered him a place the following year, whereupon Cheever decided to sever his "ungainly attachment" to his brother. Cheever spent the summer of 1934 at Yaddo, which would serve as a second home for much of his life.

Career

Early writings

For the next few years, Cheever divided his time between Manhattan, Saratoga, Lake George (where he was caretaker of the Yaddo-owned Triuna Island), and Quincy, where he continued to visit his parents, who had reconciled and moved to an apartment at 60 Spear Street.  Cheever drove from one place to another in a dilapidated Model A roadster, but had no permanent address. In 1935, Katharine White of The New Yorker bought Cheever's story "Buffalo" for $45—the first of many that Cheever would publish in the magazine.  Maxim Lieber became his literary agent, 1935–1941.  In 1938, he began work for the Federal Writers' Project in Washington, D. C., which he considered an embarrassing boondoggle.  As an editor for the WPA Guide to New York City, Cheever was charged with (as he put it) "twisting into order the sentences written by some incredibly lazy bastards." He quit after less than a year and a few months later he met his future wife, Mary Winternitz, seven years his junior. She was a daughter of Milton Winternitz, dean of Yale Medical School, and granddaughter of Thomas A. Watson, an assistant to Alexander Graham Bell during the invention of the telephone. They married in 1941.

Cheever enlisted in the Army on May 7, 1942. His first collection of short stories, The Way Some People Live, was published in 1943 to mixed reviews. Cheever himself came to despise the book as "embarrassingly immature", and for the rest of his life destroyed every copy he could lay his hands on. However, the book may have saved his life after falling into the hands of Major Leonard Spigelgass, an MGM executive and officer in the Army Signal Corps, who was struck by Cheever's "childlike sense of wonder." Early that summer, Cheever was transferred to the former Paramount studio in Astoria, Queens, New York City, where he commuted via subway from his apartment in Chelsea, Manhattan, New York City. Meanwhile, most of his old infantry company was killed on a Normandy beach during the D-Day invasion. Cheever's daughter Susan was born on July 31, 1943.

After the war, Cheever and his family moved to an apartment building at 400 East 59th Street, near Sutton Place, Manhattan; almost every morning for the next five years, he would dress in his only suit and take the elevator to a maid's room in the basement, where he stripped to his boxer shorts and wrote until lunchtime.  In 1946, he accepted a $4,800 advance from Random House to resume work on his novel, The Holly Tree, which he had discontinued during the war. "The Enormous Radio" appeared in the May 17, 1947 issue of The New Yorker — a Kafkaesque tale about a sinister radio that broadcasts the private conversations of tenants in a New York apartment building.  A startling advance on Cheever's early, more naturalistic work, the story elicited a fan letter from the magazine's irascible editor, Harold Ross: "It will turn out to be a memorable one, or I am a fish." Cheever's son Benjamin was born on May 4, 1948.

Mid-career

Cheever's work became longer and more complex, apparently a protest against the "slice of life" fiction typical of The New Yorker in those years.  An early draft of "The Day the Pig Fell into the Well"—a long story with elaborate Chekhovian nuances, meant to "operate something like a rondo", as Cheever wrote to his friend and New Yorker editor William Maxwell—was completed in 1949, though the magazine did not make space for it until five years later. In 1951, Cheever wrote "Goodbye, My Brother", after a gloomy summer in Martha's Vineyard. Largely on the strength of these two stories (still in manuscript at the time), Cheever was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. On May 28, 1951, Cheever moved to Beechwood, the suburban estate of Frank A. Vanderlip, a banker, in the Westchester hamlet of Scarborough-on-Hudson, where he rented a small cottage on the edge of the estate. The house, coincidentally, had been occupied before the Cheevers by another suburban chronicler, Richard Yates. In Scarborough, he was a casual volunteer for the Briarcliff Manor Fire Department.

Cheever's second collection, The Enormous Radio, was published in 1953. Reviews were mostly positive, though Cheever's reputation continued to suffer because of his close association with The New Yorker (considered middlebrow by such influential critics as Dwight Macdonald), and he was particularly pained by the general preference for J. D. Salinger's Nine Stories, published around the same time. Meanwhile, Random House demanded that Cheever either produce a publishable novel or pay back his advance, whereupon Cheever wrote Mike Bessie at Harper & Brothers ("These old bones are up for sale"), who bought him out of his Random House contract. In the summer of 1956, Cheever finished The Wapshot Chronicle while vacationing in Friendship, Maine, and received a congratulatory telegram from William Maxwell: "WELL ROARED LION". With the proceeds from the sale of film rights to "The Housebreaker of Shady Hill", Cheever and his family spent the following year in Italy, where his son Federico was born on March 9, 1957 ("We wanted to call him Frederick", Cheever wrote, "but there is of course no K in the alphabet here and I gave up after an hour or two").

The Wapshot Scandal was published in 1964, and received perhaps the best reviews of Cheever's career up to that point (amid quibbles about the novel's episodic structure). Cheever appeared on the cover of Time magazine's March 27 issue, this for an appreciative profile, "Ovid in Ossining". (In 1961, Cheever had moved to a stately, stone-ended Dutch Colonial farmhouse in Ossining, on the east bank of the Hudson.) "The Swimmer" appeared in the July 18, 1964, issue of The New Yorker. Cheever noted with chagrin that the story (one of his best) appeared toward the back of the issue—behind a John Updike story—since, as it happened, Maxwell and other editors at the magazine were a little bewildered by its non-New Yorkerish surrealism. In the summer of 1966, a screen adaptation of "The Swimmer", starring Burt Lancaster, was filmed in Westport, Connecticut.  Cheever was a frequent visitor on the set, and made a cameo appearance in the movie.

By then Cheever's alcoholism had become severe, exacerbated by torment concerning his bisexuality. Still, he blamed most of his marital woes on his wife, and in 1966 he consulted a psychiatrist, David C. Hays, about her hostility and "needless darkness". After a session with Mary Cheever, the psychiatrist asked to see the couple jointly; Cheever, heartened, believed his wife's difficult behavior would finally be addressed. At the joint session, however, Hays said (as Cheever noted in his journal) that Cheever himself was the problem: "a neurotic man, narcissistic, egocentric, friendless, and so deeply involved in [his] own defensive illusions that [he has] invented a manic-depressive wife." Cheever soon terminated therapy.

Later life and career

Bullet Park was published in 1969, and received a devastating review from Benjamin DeMott on the front page of The New York Times Book Review: "John Cheever's short stories are and will remain lovely birds...  But in the gluey atmosphere of Bullet Park no birds sing." Cheever's alcoholic depression deepened, and in May he resumed psychiatric treatment (which again proved fruitless). He began an affair with actress Hope Lange in the late 1960s.

On May 12, 1973, Cheever awoke coughing uncontrollably and learned at the hospital that he had almost died from pulmonary edema caused by alcoholism. After a month in the hospital, he returned home vowing never to drink again; however, he resumed drinking in August. Despite his precarious health, he spent the fall semester teaching (and drinking, both with fellow writer-teacher, Raymond Carver) at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where his students included T. C. Boyle, Allan Gurganus, and Ron Hansen. As his marriage continued to deteriorate, Cheever accepted a professorship at Boston University the following year and moved into a fourth-floor walkup apartment at 71 Bay State Road. Cheever's drinking soon became suicidal and, in March 1975, his brother Fred, now virtually indigent, but sober after his own lifelong bout with alcoholism, drove John back to Ossining. On April 9, Cheever was admitted to the Smithers Alcoholic Rehabilitation Unit in New York, where he shared a bedroom and bath with four other men. Driven home by his wife on May 7, Cheever never drank alcohol again.

In March 1977, Cheever appeared on the cover of Newsweek with the caption, "A Great American Novel: John Cheever's Falconer." The novel was No. 1 on the New York Times Best Seller list for three weeks. The Stories of John Cheever appeared in October 1978, and became one of the most successful collections ever, selling 125,000 copies in hardback and winning universal acclaim.

Cheever was awarded the Edward MacDowell Medal for outstanding contribution to the arts by the MacDowell Colony in 1979.

Personal life
Cheever's marriage was damaged by his unfaithfulness. His sexuality has been described as gay, homosexual, or bisexual. Cheever had relationships with both men and women, including a short relationship with composer Ned Rorem and an affair with actress Hope Lange. Cheever's longest affair was with a student of his, Max Zimmer, who lived in the Cheever family home. Cheever's daughter, Susan, described her parents' marriage as "European", saying: "they were people who felt their feelings weren't necessarily a reason to shatter a family. They certainly hurt each other plenty but they didn't necessarily see that as a reason for divorce."

Illness and death

In the summer of 1981, a tumor was discovered in Cheever's right lung, and, in late November, he returned to the hospital and learned that the cancer had spread to his femur, pelvis, and bladder. His last novel, Oh What a Paradise It Seems, was published in March 1982; it received respectful reviews in part because it was widely known the author was dying of cancer. On April 27, he received the National Medal for Literature at Carnegie Hall, where colleagues were shocked by his ravaged appearance after months of cancer therapy. "A page of good prose", he declared in his remarks, "remains invincible." John Updike wrote that "All the literary acolytes assembled there fell quite silent, astonished by such faith."

When Cheever died on June 18, 1982, flags in Ossining were lowered to half staff for ten days. He is buried at First Parish Cemetery, Norwell, Massachusetts.

Posthumous
In 1987, Cheever's widow, Mary, signed a contract with a small publisher, Academy Chicago, for the right to publish Cheever's uncollected short stories. The contract led to a long legal battle, eventually resulting in Thirteen Uncollected Stories by John Cheever, published in 1994 by Academy Chicago Publishers.

Two of Cheever's children, Susan and Benjamin, became writers. Susan's memoir, Home Before Dark (1984), revealed Cheever's bisexuality, which was confirmed by his posthumously published letters and journals.  This was parodied to comedic effect in a 1992 episode of the TV sitcom Seinfeld, when the character Susan discovers explicit love letters from Cheever to her father.

After Blake Bailey published his biography of Richard Yates, A Tragic Honesty (2003), Cheever's son Ben suggested Bailey write an authoritative biography of Cheever. It was published by Knopf on March 10, 2009, and won that year's National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography and the Francis Parkman Prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer and James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

Also in 2009, Cheever was featured in Soul of a People: Writing America's Story, a 90-minute documentary about the WPA Writers' Project. His life during the 1930s is also highlighted in the companion book, Soul of a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America.

Works

Novels
 The Wapshot Chronicle (1957)
 The Wapshot Scandal (1964)
 Bullet Park (1969)
 Falconer (1977)
 Oh What a Paradise It Seems (1982)

Short story collections
 The Way Some People Live (1943)
 The Enormous Radio and Other Stories (1953)
 The Housebreaker of Shady Hill and Other Stories (1958)
 Some People, Places, and Things That Will Not Appear in My Next Novel (1961)
 The Brigadier and the Golf Widow (1964)
 The World of Apples (1973)
 The Stories of John Cheever (1978)
Thirteen Uncollected Stories by John Cheever (1994)

Collections
 The Letters of John Cheever, edited by Benjamin Cheever (1988)
 The Journals of John Cheever (1991)
 Collected Stories & Other Writings (Library of America) (stories, 2009)
 Complete Novels (Library of America) (novels, 2009)

Notes

References

External links

 New York Times, Times Topics: John Cheever

 John Cheever: Parody and The Suburban Aesthetic by John Dyer
 "The First Suburbanite", Charles McGrath, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, March 1, 2009
 Cheever and Updike on The Dick Cavett Show (1981)
 "Commuter Literate", Matthew Price, Bookforum, Apr/May 2009
 "Upstate", by Christen Enos, Open Letters 2008
 John Cheever literary manuscripts at Brandeis University
 Stephen Banker audio interview of John Cheever, circa 1977

1912 births
1982 deaths
20th-century American novelists
Bisexual male writers
University of Iowa faculty
Boston University faculty
University of Utah faculty
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winners
National Book Award winners
Writers from Quincy, Massachusetts
Deaths from kidney cancer
American diarists
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)
Iowa Writers' Workshop faculty
People from Norwell, Massachusetts
People from Ossining, New York
Military personnel from Massachusetts
Federal Writers' Project people
American LGBT novelists
LGBT people from Massachusetts
O. Henry Award winners
People from Briarcliff Manor, New York
American male novelists
American male short story writers
20th-century American short story writers
20th-century American male writers
Novelists from Massachusetts
Novelists from Iowa
Novelists from Utah
20th-century American non-fiction writers
American male non-fiction writers
Thayer Academy alumni
People from Chelsea, Manhattan
Bisexual academics
20th-century diarists
20th-century American LGBT people
Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
American bisexual writers
Quincy High School (Massachusetts) alumni

John Cheever


A substitute teacher is a person who is paid to teach a school class when the normal teacher cannot be there. This may be if the normal teacher is sick or out of town. The term substitute teacher is often used in the United States, but in the United Kingdom, the term supply teacher is often used. In Victoria, Casual relief teacher (CRT) is the term used.

Substitute teacher


Q is a 3D engine / tech development platform / interoperability standard developed by the London-based developer Qube Software.

Overview

Qube has made considerable claims for Q.  Its lead designers, Servan Keondjian and Doug Rabson, have pointed to Q's architecture as being its key innovation.

Q is configured as a framework into which all the supplied components plug in modular form.  The framework's common APIs are designed to make adding and removing components a trivial task and one that can be done neatly.  The key idea is that this makes it simple for studios licensing the platform to develop and add whatever elements their project requires and to license original components amongst one another.

The claim has had customer endorsements: "If we develop a plug-in during the course of one project its easy to use it or build on it for another; so our development work is cumulative.  We can build a library of plug-ins.  Nothing is wasted."

Qube also claims to have developed Q as an interoperability standard for 3D, providing the same degree of coherence for the 3D products across both gaming and non gaming environments that Flash or HTML provide for web applications.

The claim is predicated on Q's supposed ability to accommodate any platform (albeit floating point technology is required and it thus fails to cater for handheld consoles such as the Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance), scripting language, or genre of game, or 3D application.

Licensees have already reported titles in production or shipped for the PC, PS2, Wii and PS3.  Keondjian said early in 2008 that an Xbox 360 port would follow: "we know it's the easiest."  The company has also indicated that Mac and Linux versions of Q are available and that the platform would be compatible with the PSP, iPhone and next generation mobiles.

Features

According to Qube, Q ships with a range of features including: arbitrary scene rendering algorithm support, arbitrary shader program support (HLSL 2 – 4, GLSL, Cg, shader states), keyframe animation, simultaneous n-dimensional animation blending, animation state machines, multi-gigabyte texture manager, background data streaming, hierarchical LOD and scene management schemes, collision detection, network-enabled media pipeline, live editing of game content, scripting across all core and custom components, cross-platform data formats and APIs, platform-specific extended data formats and APIs, 2D and 3D audio with effects, background texture compression / decompression, user input, hardware accelerated math, Max and Maya exporters, application framework, command line tool framework, and cross-platform build.

Virtual Worlds and MMOGs

Early in 2009, Qube and Brighton-based server solution company RedBedlam announced that they would bring their technologies together to produce a 'one stop shop' for online environments.  The project was given the codename '"Messiah".  Messiah has been adopted by NearGlobal for the NearLondon virtual world.

Customers

Take up of Q 2.0 has been steady if unspectacular to date.  Clients announced include Candella Software, Asylum Entertainment, EC-I Interactive, NearGlobal, Airo Wireless, and Beyond the Void.  The developer has hinted that other studios are using Q on projects that have not yet been made public.

History

Work on Q started in 1998 after Qube founder Servan Keondjian left Microsoft. There, he had led the team that turned his own Reality Lab API into Direct3D.  According to Qube's website, Keondjian and his Reality Lab coding partner Doug Rabson believed:  "Microsoft was a great place to ship products but not a place for innovation and new ideas."

"Basically," Keondjian told the website Gamasutra in 2008, "when we left Microsoft after we'd done Direct3D, we wanted to build a middleware solution. I didn't just want to make another middleware solution, I felt there was a problem with middleware in the game industry, and I wanted to really understand that problem and see if we could crack it. That was the mission."

Q 1.0 was released in 2001.  In effect, a prototype for the version that was to follow it was first used on the BBC's Dinosaur World (June 2001), LEGO Creator Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Sept 2002) and projects for Microsoft and Virgin Interactive.

Q 2.0 was released in February 2008.

Q 2.1 was announced in July 2008 and included script debugging and new shader and scene rendering plugins.

References

External links

Video game engines

Q (game engine)


Silva Barunaki "Sirvard" Kaputikyan (, 20 January 1919 in Yerevan, Republic of Armenia - 25 August 2006, Yerevan) was a 20th century prominent Armenian poet, writer, academic, and public activist.

In February 1988, during a reception in Kremlin, Mikhail Gorbachev said that he and his wife, Raisa, greatly admired Kaputikyan's poetry. She appeared as herself in the 1992 documentary Parajanov: The Last Spring, about Sergei Paradjanov, a legendary film-maker of Armenian descent who was persecuted by Soviet authorities (Sayat Nova).

Awards
Awards won by Kaputikyan during her career included:
 Named "Renowned Master of Arts" by the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic (1971)
 Named "Renowned Worker of Arts" by the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (1980)
 Received state prizes of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) (1952) and the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic (1988)
 Received the Nosside Italian prize
 Awarded Ordens of St. Mesrob Mashtots (in Yerevan, Armenia) and Knyaginia Olga

Kaputikyan was also a member of International PEN.

1919 births
2006 deaths
Armenian writers
Armenian activists

Silva Kaputikyan


STS-93 in 1999 marked the 95th launch of the Space Shuttle, the 26th launch of Columbia, and the 21st night launch of a Space Shuttle. Eileen Collins became the first female shuttle Commander on this flight. Its primary payload was the Chandra X-ray Observatory. It would also be the last mission of Columbia until March 2002. During the interim, Columbia would be out of service for upgrading, and would not fly again until STS-109. The launch was originally scheduled for 20 July but the launch was aborted at T−7 seconds. The successful launch of the flight occurred 3 days later. The payload was also the heaviest payload ever carried by the Space Shuttle system, at over 22.7 tonnes (25 tons).

Crew

Problems during ascent

During the main engine ignition sequence, a gold pin used to plug an oxidizer post in the Space Shuttle's number three (right) engine came loose and was violently ejected, striking the engine nozzle's inner surface and tearing open three cooling tubes containing hydrogen. These ruptures resulted in a leak upstream of the main combustion chamber. This anomalous event and the automatic response to the leak by the right engine's controller did not violate any launch commit criteria and liftoff proceeded normally. However, approximately 5 seconds after liftoff, an electrical short disabled the center engine's primary digital control unit, DCU-A, and the right engine's backup unit, DCU-B. The center and right engines continued to operate on their remaining DCUs for the rest of powered flight to orbit. The redundant set of DCUs in each engine controller saved Columbia and her crew from potential catastrophe, as shutdown of two engines at that point in the flight would have resulted in a very risky contingency abort with no guarantee of success. The electrical short was later discovered to have been caused by poorly routed wiring, which had rubbed on an exposed screw head. This wiring issue led to a program-wide inspection of the wiring in all orbiters.

Because of the leak in the right engine, its controller sensed a decrease in power or thrust—measured indirectly as main combustion chamber pressure—since the leaking hydrogen was not being burned in the SSME's two pre-burners or the main combustion chamber. To bring the engine back up to the commanded thrust level, the controller opened the oxidizer valves a bit more than normal. The hydrogen leak and increased oxidizer consumption resulted in the right engine deviating from the desired oxygen/hydrogen mixing ratio of 6.03 and running hotter than normal. The increased oxidizer consumption during ascent resulted in a premature shutdown of all three engines near the end of the projected burn due to low liquid-oxygen level sensed in the External Tank. Though the premature shutdown resulted in a velocity  lower than targeted, the vehicle safely achieved its intended orbit and completed the mission as planned. This incident brought on a maintenance practice change that required damaged oxidizer posts to be removed and replaced as opposed to being intentionally plugged, as was the practice beforehand.

Three days previously, in the first launch attempt, the launch was stopped at T−7 seconds, just prior to the SSMEs' ignition sequence, due to a senior console operator manually triggering a cutoff in the countdown.  It was later determined that the console operator, monitoring the hydrogen gas concentration in the Space Shuttle's aft compartment, where the three SSMEs are located, saw a hydrogen increase spike above the Launch Commit Criteria redline, for a single sample just prior to main engine start.  Subsequent troubleshooting and analysis indicated the most likely cause was the mass spectrometer instrument experienced a data anomaly in the high vacuum region of the instrument for a single sample.  The system performance was nominal prior to the cut-off and during subsequent launch attempts.

Mission objectives

The primary objective of the STS-93 mission was to deploy the Chandra X-ray Observatory (formerly the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility) with its Inertial Upper Stage booster. At its launch, Chandra was the most sophisticated X-ray observatory ever built. It is designed to observe X-rays from high energy regions of the universe, such as hot gas in the remnants of exploded stars.

Other payloads on STS-93 included the Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX), the Shuttle Ionospheric Modification with Pulsed Local Exhaust (SIMPLEX), the Southwest Ultraviolet Imaging System (SWUIS), the Gelation of Sols: Applied Microgravity Research (GOSAMR) experiment, the Space Tissue Loss – B (STL-B) experiment, a Light mass Flexible Solar Array Hinge (LFSAH), the Cell Culture Module (CCM), the Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment – II (SAREX – II), EarthKAM, Plant Growth Investigations in Microgravity (PGIM), the Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus (CGBA), the Micro-Electrical Mechanical System (MEMS), and the Biological Research in Canisters (BRIC).

The Shuttle Ionospheric Modification with Pulsed Local Exhaust (SIMPLEX) payload activity researched the source of Very High Frequency (VHF) radar echoes caused by the orbiter and its OMS engine firings. The Principal Investigator (PI) used the collected data to examine the effects of orbital kinetic energy on ionospheric irregularities and to understand the processes that take place with the venting of exhaust materials.

[[File:Chandra X-ray Observatory inside the Space Shuttle payload bay.jpg|thumb|right|Chandra X-ray Observatory sits inside the payload bay for Columbia'''s mission STS-93.]]

The Southwest Ultraviolet Imaging system (SWUIS) was based around a Maksutov-design ultraviolet (UV) telescope and a UV-sensitive, image-intensified charge-coupled device (CCD) camera that frames at video frame rates. Scientists can obtain sensitive photometric measurements of astronomical targets.

The objective Gelation of Sols: Applied Microgravity Research (GOSAMR) experiment was to investigate the influence of microgravity on the processing of gelled sols. In particular, the purpose was to demonstrate that composite ceramic precursors composed of large particulates and small colloidal sols can be produced in space with more structural uniformity.

The focus of the Space Tissue Loss – B (STL-B) experiment was direct video observation of cells in culture through the use of a video microscope imaging system with the objective of demonstrating near real-time interactive operations to detect and induce cellular responses.

The Light mass Flexible Solar Array Hinge (LFSAH) payload consisted of several hinges fabricated from shape memory alloys. Shape memory deployment hinges offered controlled shockless deployment of solar arrays and other spacecraft appendages. LFSAH demonstrated this deployment capability for a number of hinge configurations.

The objectives of the Cell Culture Module (CCM) were to validate models for muscle, bone, and endothelial cell biochemical and functional loss induced by microgravity stress; to evaluate cytoskeleton, metabolism, membrane integrity and protease activity in target cells; and to test tissue loss medications.

The Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment (SAREX-II) demonstrated the feasibility of amateur short-wave radio contacts between the shuttle and ground-based amateur radio operators. SAREX also served as an educational opportunity for schools around the world to learn about space by speaking directly to astronauts aboard the shuttle via amateur radio.

The EarthKAM payload conducted Earth observations using the Electronic Still Camera (ESC) installed in the overhead starboard window of the Aft Flight Deck.

The Plant Growth Investigations in Microgravity (PGIM) payload experiment used plants to monitor the space flight environment for stressful conditions that affect plant growth. Because plants cannot move away from stressful conditions, they have developed mechanisms that monitor their environment and direct effective physiological responses to harmful conditions.

The Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus (CGBA) payload hardware allowed for sample processing and stowage functions. The Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus – Isothermal Containment Module (GBA-ICM) was temperature controlled to maintain a preset temperature environment, controlled the activation and termination of the experiment samples, and provided an interface for crew interaction, control and data transfer.

The Micro-Electrical Mechanical System (MEMS) payload examined the performance, under launch, microgravity, and reentry conditions of a suite of MEMS devices. These devices included accelerometers, gyroscopes, and environmental and chemical sensors. The MEMS payload was self-contained and required activation and deactivation only.

The Biological Research in Canisters (BRIC) payload was designed to investigate the effects of space flight on small arthropod animals and plant specimens. The flight crew was available at regular intervals to monitor and control payload/experiment operations.Columbia landing at Kennedy Space Center marked the twelfth night landing in the Shuttle program's history. Five had been at Edwards Air Force Base in California and the rest KSC. To date, there had been 19 consecutive landings at KSC and 25 of the last 26 had been there.

Special cargo
In 2001, Coin World reported the revelation (via a FOIA document request) that the United States Mint had struck 39 examples of the 2000 Sacagawea dollar in gold in June 1999 at the West Point Mint. The planchets came from specially prepared ½ troy-oz $25 American Gold Eagle Bullion Planchets. Why they were struck is not known; speculation is that this was an attempt by the mint to offer "Premium" collectibles in conjunction with the newly released Sacagawea dollar in 2000.

Twenty-seven were soon melted and the remaining 12 were on board Space Shuttle Columbia'' for the July 1999 STS-93 mission. Two examples then popped up at two separate events; one during a Private Congressional Dinner in August 1999, and another example at the Official First-Strike ceremonies in November. The coins remained at Mint Headquarters under lock and key until they were transferred in 2001 to Fort Knox. The strikes are considered to be illegal due to the Coinage regulations in place.

In 2007, the Mint announced it would for the first time publicly display the 12 space-flown gold dollars at the American Numismatic Association's World's Fair of Money in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Wake-up calls
Sleeping shuttle astronauts were often awakened with a short piece of music, a tradition that apparently began during Apollo 15. Each track was specially chosen, sometimes by their families, and usually had a special meaning to an individual member of the crew or was applicable to their daily activities.

References

External links

 NASA PAO page about STS-93
 STS-93 Mission Operations Director's story on ascent
 STS-93 JSC Ascent Audio
 STS-93 Archives
 STS-93 Video Highlights
 "US Mint to show unseen gold space coins", collectSPACE

Spacecraft launched in 1999
Space Shuttle missions
Chandra X-ray Observatory
July 1999 events
1999 in Florida
Spacecraft which reentered in 1999

STS-93


A sacred site is a place that is thought of as sacred (or holy) to a particular religion. Every one of the world's major religions has sacred sites. Some religions, such as Islam & Hinduism, think of the sacred sites as being very important to their faith. In other religions such as Protestant Christianity, sacred sites are not so important.

The idea that a place is sacred often comes from something that has happened at the place, or a religious story about that place. Mount Sinai is a sacred site for Jews and Christians because it was on Mount Sinai that Moses received the Ten Commandments of God.

The sacred site might be a natural site, or it might be a building of some sort. One of the most famous natural sites that is also a sacred site is Uluru (also called Ayre's Rock) in Central Australia. It is believed to have been sacred to the aboriginal people for about 40,000 years. Other famous natural sites are the sacred trees of India, Japan and South East Asia.

Very often, buildings have been made on natural sites that were already thought of as sacred. For example, a spring of water coming from the ground might be said to have healing powers. A special well-house might be built around the spring to protect it, and as a place where people might leave offerings (gifts to a god).

Other sites are thought of as sacred because a holy person or saint lived there, or died there, or their body is kept there. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is one of the most sacred sites to Christianity because it is believed that Jesus' body was placed in a tomb there. The city of Mecca is sacred to all Muslim people as the birthplace of the prophet Muhammad.

Pilgrimage
Many people make a special visit to a sacred site. This is called a pilgrimage. A person who travels on pilgrimage is called a "pilgrim". Pilgrimage is very important in Islam, because every Muslim person is expected to make a pilgrimage to the city of Mecca once in their lifetime, if they can possibly do so.

Many Christians also make pilgrimages to sacred sites. Pilgrimage became very important in the Middle Ages when thousands of people travelled to many sacred sites, particularly to Jerusalem, to the famous Christian basilicas of Rome, to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain and Canterbury Cathedral in England. In modern times, sacred sites of Christian pilgrimage include Assisi in Italy, Lourdes in France, Fatima in Portugal and the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

In Buddhism, the sacred sites are four places in India where Buddha lived and preached. These are Kapilavastu, Bodh Gaya, Benares and Kusinagara.

Gallery

Related pages
 Religion
 Pilgrimage
 Basilica
 Church
 Cathedral
 Mosque
 Shrine
 Synagogue

Religious places

Sacred site