Cady Danyl Groves (July 30, 1989 – May 2, 2020) was an American pop and country singer from Emporia, Kansas. Some of her notable songs include "One in the Same", "This Little Girl", "Oh Darling", "Forget You", and "Love Actually". She released four EPs during her lifetime: A Month of Sundays (2009), The Life of a Pirate (2010), This Little Girl (2012), and Dreams (2015). A fifth EP, Bless My Heart, was released shortly after her death.

Early life
Groves was born on July 30, 1989, to Carol Pettit and Larry Groves, and was the youngest of seven children. Her siblings were Kevan, Casey (died 2007), Cody, Kyle, Kelly (died 2014), and Kelsy, along with three half-siblings, Adam Groves, Courtney Farmwald and Carrie Groves. She lived in Emporia, Kansas until her parents divorced, and then the family moved to Marlow, Oklahoma. She later moved to Cache, Oklahoma, before relocating to Valley Center, Kansas. She moved to Laughlin, Nevada, in 2005, where she graduated high school at sixteen. Cady wanted to pursue a career in songwriting, but her family encouraged her to obtain higher education, so she attended and graduated from the Culinary Arts program at Mohave Community College in Bullhead City, Arizona. In 2007, she left Nevada for Weatherford, Oklahoma, where she attended Southwestern Oklahoma State University.

Career

Groves released her first EP, A Month of Sundays, in 2009. Her second, The Life of a Pirate, followed in 2010. That year, Groves signed with RCA Records and toured with Third Eye Blind, Good Charlotte, and All Time Low. Groves eventually left RCA and signed with New York–based independent label Vel Records. In 2015, Groves returned with a self-released single, "Crying Game", which was inspired by her tumultuous childhood and strained family relationships. She then embarked on her High School Nation Tour, where she performed for over 50,000 high school students.

Collaboration
RCA paired Groves with several producers and songwriters (including Savan Kotecha, Carl Falk, and Kristian Lundin) as she began work on her first major-label album. She collaborated with Stephen Jerzak on "Better Than Better Could Ever Be" and collaborated with Plug in Stereo on "Oh Darling", which spent five weeks on the Billboard Rock Digital Songs Chart and peaked at #36. In 2011, Groves was featured on the single "You and I" by Secondhand Serenade and "All That I Need Is You" by Andrew de Torres. In 2015, a collaboration with Christian Burghardt took place, which led to the track "Whiskey and Wine."

Death
Groves died on May 2, 2020, at the age of 30. Her brother Cody stated that her death was due to unspecified natural causes and that self-harm and foul play were ruled out. On August 8, 2020, Fox News reported that an autopsy report stated that she died of complications from alcohol abuse. According to Ryan Williams, who was a friend of Groves, she was deeply affected by the premature deaths of her brothers Casey and Kelly due to addiction to prescription meds , saying to Fox News: "Her dad wasn't really around anymore and music was really tough on her as well ... She had so many tragic things happen to her in her life. There was always someone's birthday that wasn't around anymore, like her brothers. There was always kind of like a dark shadow around her."

Her fifth EP, Bless My Heart, was released posthumously on May 29.

In February 2012, Groves uploaded a live cover of The Band Perry's "If I Die Young" to SoundCloud. The lyrics note that many writers and artists only become popular after death.

Discography

EPs
 A Month of Sundays (2009)
 The Life of a Pirate (2010)
 This Little Girl (2012)
 Dreams (2015)
 Bless My Heart (2020)

Singles
 "One In The Same" (2010)
 "This Little Girl" (2011)
 "Love Actually" (2012)
 "Forget You" (2013)
 "Whiskey & Wine" with Christian Burghardt (2015)
 "Crying Game" (2015)
 "Dreams" (2015)
 "Oil And Water" (2015)

Compilation appearances
 Rockin' Romance 2 – (God Must Have Spent) A Little More Time on You ('N Sync cover)

Tours
 Bamboozle Road Show 2010 (2010)
 Let's Be Animals Tour 2011 (2011)
 Beautiful Freaks Tour (2012)
 High School Nation Tour (2015)

References

External links

1989 births
2020 deaths
21st-century American women singers
American country singer-songwriters
American women country singers
American women pop singers
American women singer-songwriters
American pop rock singers
Country musicians from Oklahoma
People from Marlow, Oklahoma
People from Emporia, Kansas
Singer-songwriters from Oklahoma
21st-century American singer-songwriters
Singer-songwriters from Kansas

Cady Groves


Central Black Earth Oblast (, Tsentralno-Chernozyomnaya oblast) was an oblast (a first-level administrative and municipal unit) of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1928 to 1934. Its seat was in the city of Voronezh. The oblast was located in the center of European Russia, and its territory is currently divided between Voronezh, Oryol, Kursk, Belgorod, Lipetsk, and Tambov Oblasts, as well as a minor part of Penza Oblast. The geographical territory is former Oblast does not currently have any administrative significance, but is often referred to as Central Black Earth Region.

The most important authority in the oblast was the first secretary of the CPSU Oblast Committee. For the whole existence of the oblast, the first secretary was Juozas Vareikis (Iosif Mikhaylovich Vareykis).

History
The oblast was established on May 14, 1928 by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. The territory of the krai was formed from four governorates, Voronezh, Kursk, Oryol, and Tambov Governorates.

On July 16, 1928, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee issued a decree splitting Central Black Earth Oblast into eleven administrative districts (okrugs)
Belgorod Okrug (with the seat located in Belgorod);
Borisoglebsk Okrug (Borisoglebsk);
Kozlov Okrug (Kozlov);
Kursk Okrug (Kursk);
Lgov Okrug (Lgov);
Oryol Okrug (Oryol);
Ostrogozhsk Okrug (Ostrogozhsk);
Rossosh Okrug (Rossosh);
Tambov Okrug (Tambov);
Voronezh Okrug (Voronezh);
Yelets Okrug (Yelets).
Before the oblast was established, the constituent governorates used the old division inherited from the Russian Empire (uyezds). On July 30, 1928 the division of the oblast into districts was established.

The following districts have been established,
In Belgorod Okrug: Belgorodsky, Belovsky, Bolshetroitsky, Borisovsky, Grayvoronsky, Ivnyansky, Korochansky, Krasnoyaruzhsky, Prokhorovsky, Rakityansky, Skorodnyansky, Shebekinsky, Tomarovsky, and Veselo-Lopansky.
In Borisoglebsk Okrug: Aleshkovsky, Arkhangelsky, Borisoglebsko-Prigorodny, Dobrinsky, Mordovsky, Novokhopyorsky, Peskovsky, Rusanovsky, Shchuchensky, Talovsky, Tokaryovsky, Verkhne-Karachansky, Yelan-Kolenovsky, and Zherdevsky.
In Kozlov Okrug: Astapovsky, Beryozovsky, Dankovsky, Dobrovsky, Dryazginsky, Glazkovsky, Gryazinsky, Izberdeevsky, Khvorostyansky, Kozlovsky, Lamsky, Nikiforovsky, Ranenburgsky, Seslavinsky, Shekhmansky, Sosnovsky, Staroyuryevsky, Surensky, and Troyekurovsky.
In Kursk Okrug: Besedinsky, Cheremisinovsky, Fatezhsky, Kolpnyansky, Kshensky, Kursky, Leninsky, Medvensky, Oboyansky, Ponyrovsky, Shchigrovsky, Solntsevsky, Svobodinsky, and Timskoy.
In Lgov Okrug: Bolshesoldatsky, Dmitriyevsky, Glushkovsky, Ivaninsky, Khomutovsky, Konyshyovsky, Korenevsky, Lgovsky, Mikhaylovsky, Rylsky, and Sudzhansky.
In Oryol Okrug: Bolkhovsky, Dmitrovsky, Donskoy, Glodnevsky, Korsakovsky, Kromskoy, Maloarkhangelsky, Mokhovskoy, Mtsensky, Novosilsky, Orlovsky, Sverdlovsky, Soskovsky, Trosnyansky, Uzkinsky, Uritsky, and Verkhovskoy.
In Ostrogozhsk Okrug: Alexeyevsky, Budyonnovsky, Chernyansky, Davydovsky, Kamensky, Korotoyaksky, Liskinsky, Nikitovsky, Novooskolsky, Ostrogozhsky, Repyovsky, Urazovsky, Valuysky, Veliko-Mikhaylovsky, Veydelevsky, and Volokonovsky.
In Rossosh Okrug: Bogucharsky, Buturlinovsky, Kalacheyevsky, Kantemirovsky, Losevsky, Mikhaylovsky, Novokalitvyansky, Olkhovatsky, Pavlovsky, Petropavlovsky, Podgorensky, Rovensky, Rossoshansky, Verkhnemamonsky, Vorobyovsky, and Vorontsovsky.
In Tambov Okrug: Algasovsky, Bondarsky, Gromovsky, Inzhavinsky, Kirsanovsky, Morshansky, Muchkapsky, Peresypkinsky, Pichayevsky, Pokrovo-Marfinsky, Rakshinsky, Rasskazovsky, Rzhaksinsky, Sampursky, Uvarovsky, and Zemetchinsky.
In Voronezh Okrug: Anninsky, Berezovsky, Bobrovo-Dvorsky, Bobrovsky, Gorshechensky, Gremyachensky, Kastorensky, Khlevensky, Levorossoshansky, Nizhnedevitsky, Paninsky, Rozhdestvenskokhavsky, Starooskolsky, Shatalovsky, Usmansky, Verkhnekhavsky, Yastrebovsky, Yendovishchensky, and Zemlyansky.
In Yelets Okrug: Bolshe-Polyansky, Borinsko-Zavodskoy, Dolgorukovsky, Dolzhansky, Izmalkovsky, Krasninsky, Lebedyansky, Lipetsky, Livensky, Russko-Brodsky, Shilovsky, Stanovlyansky, Studenetsky, Terbunsky, Trubetchinsky, Volnovsky, Volovsky, Volynsky, Yeletsky, and Zadonsky.

In 1929, the city of Voronezh was made a special administrative unit subordinate to the oblast, and Voronezh Okrug was abolished and split into Stary Oskol Okrug and Usman Okrug. On July 23, 1930 the okrugs were abolished, and the districts were made directly subordinate to the oblast authorities. In particular, the oblast had two Beryozovsky Districts. The number of districts was considerably reduced on several occasions. On April 7, 1932 the city of Lipetsk was made a separate administrative unit.

On June 13, 1934, by the Decree of All-Russian Central Executive Committee the oblast was abolished. Its territory was divided between newly established Voronezh Oblast and Kursk Oblast.

References

Oblasts of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
Chernozemye
1928 establishments in Russia

Central Black Earth Oblast


The Stalingrad Madonna () is an image of the Virgin Mary drawn by a German soldier, Kurt Reuber, in 1942 during the Battle of Stalingrad. The original is displayed in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, Berlin, while copies now hang in the cathedrals of Berlin, Coventry, and Kazan Cathedral, Volgograd, as a sign of the reconciliation between Germany and its enemies the United Kingdom and Russia during the Second World War.

Design
The piece is a simple charcoal sketch, measuring three feet by four feet . Mary is depicted wrapped in a large shawl, holding the infant Jesus close to her cheek. On the right border are the words Licht, Leben, Liebe ("Light, Life, Love"), from the Gospel of John. On the left, Reuber wrote Weihnachten im Kessel 1942 ("Christmas in the Cauldron 1942") and at the bottom Festung Stalingrad ("Fortress Stalingrad"). Kessel ("Cauldron") is the German term for an encircled military area, and Fortress Stalingrad was the label for the encircled army promoted in the Nazi press.

History
The picture was drawn by Lieutenant Kurt Reuber, a German staff physician and Protestant pastor, in December 1942 during the Battle of Stalingrad. Reuber wrote: I wondered for a long while what I should paint, and in the end I decided on a Madonna, or mother and child. I have turned my hole in the frozen mud into a studio. The space is too small for me to be able to see the picture properly, so I climb on to a stool and look down at it from above, to get the perspective right. Everything is repeatedly knocked over, and my pencils vanish into the mud. There is nothing to lean my big picture of the Madonna against, except a sloping, home-made table past which I can just manage to squeeze. There are no proper materials and I have used a Russian map for paper. But I wish I could tell you how absorbed I have been painting my Madonna, and how much it means to me.The picture looks like this: the mother's head and the child's lean toward each other, and a large cloak enfolds them both. It is intended to symbolize "security" and "mother love". I remembered the words of St.John: light, life, and love. What more can I add? I wanted to suggest these three things in the homely and common vision of a mother with her child and the security that they represent. He added that he:went to all the bunkers, brought my drawing to the men, and chatted with them.  How they sat there!  Like being in their dear homes with mother for the holiday. Later, Reuber hung the drawing in his bunker for his unit celebration, which he described as a moment of Christian devotion shared by all the soldiers in his command. When according to ancient custom I opened the Christmas door, the slatted door of our bunker, and the comrades went in, they stood as if entranced, devout and too moved to speak in front of the picture on the clay wall. ...The entire celebration took place under the influence of the picture, and they thoughtfully read the words: light, life, love. ...Whether commander or simple soldier, the Madonna was always an object of outward and inward contemplation.

The Madonna was flown out of Stalingrad by Dr Wilhelm Grosse, his battalion commander of the 16th Panzer Division on the last transport plane to leave the encircled German 6th Army. Reuber was taken captive after the surrender of the 6th Army, and died in a Soviet prisoner of war camp in 1944. The Madonna and a number of letters from Reuber were delivered to his family. There they remained, until German Federal President Karl Carstens encouraged Reuber's surviving children to donate the work to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin. Springer, Reuber's three children, and Prince Louis Ferdinand (in his role as chair of the Memorial Church board of trustees) attended the dedication ceremony in August 1983.

Influence
The drawing and Reuber's letters were published shortly after the war, and Navy chaplain Arno Pötzsch wrote an apologetic book of poetry entitled The Madonna of Stalingrad in 1946. The work became a powerful symbol of peace in the Cold War era, as well as part of the mythologising of Stalingrad and the events of the Second World War in German society. Copies were presented, and are displayed, in the cathedrals of Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad), Berlin, and Coventry as a symbol of reconciliation. Similarly a Cross of Nails from Coventry is displayed with the Madonna in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.

The Prisoners' Madonna
Reuber painted a second similar picture in captivity around Christmas 1943. He was by this time in a prisoner of war camp in Yelabuga, some 1,000 kilometres north-east of Stalingrad, and the painting was made for the prisoners' newspaper. He titled it The Prisoners' Madonna. Reuber did not live to see another Christmas, dying of illness a few weeks later on 20 January 1944.

References

Notes

Bibliography

Joseph B. Perry, 'The Madonna of Stalingrad: Mastering the (Christmas) Past and West German National Identity after World War II', Radical History Review, Issue 83 (Spring, 2002), pp. 7–27.

External links
The Stalingrad Madonna with image

Battle of Stalingrad
1942 drawings
Virgin Mary in art
German art

Stalingrad Madonna


The Battle of Königsberg, also known as the Königsberg offensive, was one of the last operations of the East Prussian offensive during World War II.  In four days of urban warfare, Soviet forces of the 1st Baltic Front and the 3rd Belorussian Front captured the city of Königsberg, present day Kaliningrad, Russia.  The siege started in late January 1945 when the Soviets initially surrounded the city.  Heavy fighting took place for control of overland connection between Königsberg and the port of Pillau, however by March 1945 Königsberg was hundreds of kilometres behind the main front line in the eastern front. The battle ended when the German garrison surrendered to the Soviets on 9 April after a three-day assault made their position untenable.

Beginning

The East Prussian offensive was planned by the Soviet Stavka to prevent flank attacks on the armies rushing towards Berlin. Indeed, East Prussia held numerous troops that could be used for this. During initial Stavka planning, Joseph Stalin ordered Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky to annihilate the Wehrmacht forces trapped there.

On 13 January 1945, almost 1,500,000 troops supported by several thousand tanks and aircraft of the 3rd Belorussian Front (11th Guards, 39th, 43rd, 50th, 1st Air, 3rd Air, 4th Air, and 15th Air Armies) entered East Prussia, which had been transformed into a gigantic web of fortifications, defensive lines and minefields. Progress was initially very slow. Red Army troops only advanced 1.5 kilometers the first day, through only three defensive lines. In five days, taking heavy losses, Soviet troops advanced only 20 kilometers and were unable to break through German lines into open ground.

The initial setback did not last and on 24 January Soviet advance forces reached the shores of the Vistula Lagoon (part of the Baltic Sea), cutting off the German forces in East Prussia from a direct connection with Germany, forcing the Germans to supply the surrounded forces by sea. This operation was accomplished by the 1st Baltic Front under the command of General Hovhannes Bagramyan, also known as Ivan Bagramyan.

Prelude and initial attacks

On 25 January 1945, in a tacit acknowledgement that German forces in East Prussia and the Courland Pocket were far behind the new front line,  Hitler renamed three army groups. Army Group North became Army Group Courland; Army Group Centre (the army group surrounded in  the Königsberg pocket) became Army Group North and Army Group A became Army Group Centre.

Those forces, now redesignated as Army Group North, were compressed by further Soviet attacks into three pockets: one around Königsberg, one on the adjacent Sambia Peninsula, and one on the coast of the Vistula Lagoon to the south-west (the Heiligenbeil Pocket).

By late January 1945 the 3rd Belorussian Front had surrounded Königsberg on the landward side, severing the road down the Samland peninsula to the port of Pillau, and trapping the 3rd Panzer Army and approximately 200,000 civilians in the city. The civilian provisions were so meagre that civilians were faced with three bleak alternatives:

 Remain in the city and starve – rations were cut during the siege to 180 grams of bread a day
 Cross the front lines and leave themselves at the mercies of the Soviets
 Cross the ice of the Vistula Lagoon to Pillau in hope of finding a place on an evacuation ship

Hundreds chose to cross the front line, but about 2,000 women and children a day chose to cross the ice on foot to Pillau. On his return from a visit to Berlin, Erich Koch the Gauleiter of East Prussia chose to stay in the relative safety of Pillau to organize the evacuation rather than return to Königsberg. The first evacuation steamer from Pillau carrying 1,800 civilians and 1,200 casualties reached safety on the 28 January.
The only remaining way to escape Königsberg to Pillau was through Metgethen, a strategically important quarter. On the 29th, it was attacked by the Red Army and completely overrun.
Throughout February, there was desperate fighting as the Germans tried to maintain the narrow connection between Königsberg and Samland. For a time, Soviet troops were successful in severing that connection and cutting the city off completely.

On 19 February the 3rd Panzer Army and the 4th Army attacked from the direction of Pillau, managing to force open a corridor from Königsberg to Pillau. Led by a captured Soviet T-34 tank, this attack was spearheaded by the 1st Infantry Division from Königsberg, intended to link with General Hans Gollnick's XXVIII Corps, which held parts of the Samland peninsula, including the vital port of Pillau. Capturing the town of Metgethen, the unit opened the way for the 5th Panzer Division to join with Gollnick's forces near the town of Gross Heydekrug the next day. This action solidified the German defence of the area until April, re-opening the land route from Königsberg to Pillau, through which supplies could be delivered by ship and the wounded and refugees could be evacuated. This month-long battle is sometimes called the First Siege of Königsberg.

In March the situation had stabilized – by now, the main front line had moved hundreds of kilometres to the west, and capturing the city took a much lower priority for the Soviets. Even so, the garrison was intact and showed no signs of surrender. Eventually, the Soviet command decided to capture the city by assault rather than a siege.

Preparation

Assaulting Königsberg was not to be an easy task. Garrisoned inside the city were five divisions (69th, 367th, 548th, 561st), for a total of 130,000 troops, along with impressive defensive positions constructed in 1888 that included fifteen forts interconnected by tunnels with integrated accommodations for the troops, and designed to withstand the bombardment of super-guns being designed in that era following the siege of Paris (1870–1871). The Germans still held a narrow land connection to the adjacent German pocket on the Samland peninsula.  The capture of the city necessitated this frantically shielded connection be separated. The German troops on the peninsula, the so-called Samland Group, could be expected to stage counter-attacks to prevent this from happening.

Königsberg was, according to Winston Churchill, "a modernised heavily defended fortress". Three concentric rings of fortifications surrounded the city: the outer ring of defences reinforced by 12 forts outside the town, the middle ring in the outskirts and the inner city, a single fortress of anti-tank defences, barricades and landmines, along with several other forts.

In order to face such defensive power, the Soviet command planned to heavily rely on aviation and artillery support, with densities reaching 250 guns per kilometre in some areas. The German troops were also subjected to propaganda, explaining that their resistance was futile, and that the front line was far behind them — that they were trapped in a "pocket" and that it would be best to surrender. However, this propaganda had little to no effect.

After four days of preparatory artillery bombardment, the assault started on 6 April 1945. The assault was planned to be "star-like". Troops would attack from many points around the perimeter and meet in the center of the city, compartmentalising the remaining defenders into isolated groups incapable of mutual support. There were two main fronts: North (held by the 39th and 43rd Armies which included the 208th Rifle Division) and South (11th Guards Army). The 50th Army was stationed in the northeast part of the front. One corps was to hold the line while two corps with a total of six rifle divisions, plus artillery, armor and engineer reinforcements, took part in the attack.

Assault

6 April 1945
In the southern sector of the front, the assault began at sunrise with heavy shelling, enduring three hours, trailed by the primary assault wave. The Soviet rifle divisions quickly went through the first defense line, because its defenders had been largely eliminated and the remainder were demoralized by several days of intense bombing. By noon, the Soviet leading regiments reached the second defensive line, where their progression was halted by stronger opposition, forcing Soviet commanders to use their reserve forces. Three hours later, the second defense line was overrun in several places.

An especially bitter fight raged in the vicinity of Fort Eight. Built at the end of the 19th century and modernized since, the fort had thick walls, considerable firepower and was surrounded by a deep moat, making a frontal assault almost impossible. Despite heavy artillery fire, its defenders prevented any attempt to approach the walls. Only at dusk were Soviet forces able to reach the moat and start using explosives to try to breach the walls.

In the main attack axis in the north, the attack started at the same time. By noon, the first defense line had fallen and the second line was badly shaken and broken in several places. In the afternoon, however, progress became increasingly slow, especially on the right flank, where German forces stationed in the western outskirts of the city (the so-called Samland Group) attempted several flanking attacks.

Fort Five, claimed to be the best fortification of the entire Königsberg position, formed a strong resistance point. In front of such a situation, Soviet commanders decided to surround it and leave it behind, leaving the rear guard troops time to prepare a new assault.

At dusk the battle stalled, allowing both sides to consolidate their lines, regroup their forces and bring reserves to the front line. This first day had mixed results, since Soviet progress was not as good as expected. However, both city defenses and the defenders' morale were seriously shaken, and troops, including officers, began to surrender periodically.

During this first day of assault, bad weather prevented the Soviet troops from using precision bombing with as much effect as they would have liked. Additionally, even fortified, the terrain conquered by the Soviet troops during this day was not so densely populated as the central city would be, reducing problems associated with urban warfare.

7 April 1945

During the night, the German troops attempted several counterattacks, using their last reserves. Despite the bitter engagements and heavy losses on both sides, the counterattacks were driven off. The most active part of the front was still the one facing the Samland group, where a dozen such counterattacks were attempted.

Better weather conditions allowed the Red Army to make good use of daylight precision bombing. Several hundred bombers belonging to 1st, 3rd and 15th Air Armies, supported with Baltic Fleet aviation, bombarded the downtown and the Samland Group's bridgeheads.

Meanwhile, Fort Eight, blocked by Soviet troops, was still a strong pocket of resistance. After several unsuccessful attacks, a more cunning plan was developed. Using smoke screens to conceal their approach and flamethrowers to weaken the defense positions, several hundred men managed to cross the moat and enter the fortress, where bitter close combat began. Once the outer defenses were weakened, a massive frontal assault began. Finally, the assault succeeded and the remainder of the garrison surrendered.

During the day, the 11th Guards Army sought to reach the Pregel river, eliminating all resistance on the southern side. However, their advance was slowed in the central area of the city, where every building had to be literally taken apart along with its defenders. A particularly bitter skirmish took place in the main railway station and its platforms, where almost every railcar was transformed into a firing point, and Soviet troops had to use armor and gun support to advance, taking heavy losses. Only by dusk was the area completely neutralized, allowing the attackers to approach the third inner defence perimeter, protecting the entrance to the city centre itself.

In the north, Fort Five proved to be a strong pocket of resistance as well. Soviet sappers finally managed to place explosives at the base of the walls, breaching them and allowing for a direct assault. As with the assault on Fort Eight, bitter close combat began in the fort, lasting all night and ceasing only in the morning when the last troops surrendered.

At the end of the day, seeing that further resistance was pointless, General Otto Lasch radioed Adolf Hitler's headquarters and asked for permission to surrender. Hitler's answer was "fight to the last soldier".

8 April 1945
During the night, the Pregel was crossed by the 11th Guards Army and despite enemy fire by dawn a full bridgehead was established on the opposite bank. Continuing their advance northwards, they linked up with the northern troops, completing the encirclement and cutting off the Samland group from the city.

In the afternoon, Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky once again asked the defenders to surrender. This offer was refused and the German forces attempted to break out of the encirclement, attacking both from the city centre and the Samland bridgehead. The latter managed to advance several kilometres before being stopped. Although another attack was prepared, the Germans' lack of air defenses allowed Soviet Ilyushin Il-2 ground attack aircraft to destroy a large number of troops. During this campaign, Soviet aviation generally proved very effective.

By the end of the day, it was clear that any attempt by the Samland group to break out of the encirclement would be pointless. However, victory was nowhere near, as almost 40,000 men were garrisoned in the city centre, which was regularly subjected to heavy shelling.

9 April 1945

During the last day of the battle, the besieged German defenders were overwhelmed and the defence coordination fell apart. Having been comprehensively defeated, and in the realisation that further resistance was futile, Otto Lasch decided on his own initiative to send emissaries to negotiate the surrender. At 18:00, the emissaries arrived at the Soviet lines, and a delegation was sent to Lasch's bunker. Shortly before midnight, the surrender was acknowledged.

Aftermath

Almost 80% of the city was destroyed; first by the Royal Air Force in August 1944, and then by Soviet shelling in April 1945.

During the operation the main forces of German East Prussia group were destroyed. Only the Army Detachment Samland remained operational, but was annihilated by 25 April, in the Soviet Samland offensive.

The operation was a major success for the Soviet Army due to the comparatively low casualties suffered during the capture of the heavily fortified stronghold. The capture was celebrated in Moscow with an artillery salvo by 324 cannons firing 24 shells each. A Medal "For the Capture of Königsberg" was established and 98 military units were named after the Königsberg operation.

After the war, following the transfer of northern half of East Prussia to the Russian SFSR, Königsberg was renamed Kaliningrad, and was installed with predominantly Russian (and, to a lesser extent, Belarusian and Ukrainian) settlers from other areas of the Soviet Union. This area is now known as the Kaliningrad Oblast. it has remained part of Russia as an exclave after the collapse of the USSR, it now borders Poland and Lithuania.

See also
 German World War II strongholds
 East Prussian offensive
 Evacuation of East Prussia
Metgethen massacre

References
Notes

Bibliography
Beevor, Antony. Berlin: The Downfall 1945, Penguin Books, 2002,

Further reading

 Galitzky, K.N. (commander of 11th Guards Army), Fighting for Eastern Prussia, Moscow, 1970.
 Shefov, Nikolai. Russian fights, Lib. Military History, M. 2002 (Russian: Bitvy Rossii / Nikolai Shefov.  Moskva : AST, 2002. SSEES R.XIII.1 SHE (see: SSEES Library Recent Acquisitions: January 2007)

Conflicts in 1945
1945 in Germany
Battles of World War II involving Germany
Battles and operations of the Soviet–German War
Königsberg
Urban warfare
January 1945 events in Europe
February 1945 events in Europe
March 1945 events in Europe
April 1945 events in Europe

Battle of Königsberg


Jacques Carlu (7 April 1890 Bonnières-sur-Seine – 3 December 1976 Paris) was a French architect and designer, working mostly in Art Deco style, active in France, Canada, and in the United States.

Biography
Through the 1910s Carlu studied on site with British city planner Thomas Hayton Mawson, Pittsburgh architects Palmer and Hornbostel, and in the Paris studios of Victor Laloux. After winning the Prix de Rome in 1919, Carlu takes a number of academic positions in quick succession:  director of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts at Fontainebleau, professor of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1924 to 1934, and a position with the Beaux Arts Institute of Design in New York. With intensive transatlantic travel, Carlu becomes a sort of ambassador of Streamline Moderne style.

His most famous building is likely the Palais de Chaillot, Trocadéro, near the Eiffel Tower, which was designed for the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (1937). The building's long wings now serve as museum space, and it features sculptural groups on the attic by Raymond Delamarre, Carlo Sarrabezolles and Alfred Bottiau.

His other buildings include the 1957 NATO HQ (see of the Secretary General) in Paris (until 1967), now Université Paris-Dauphine. Among his important interiors are the 1930 Eaton Auditorium in Toronto (now known as "The Carlu"), the 1943 French Nationality Room at the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning, and other venues.

Carlu is buried at the Passy Cemetery with his spouse Anne. He was the brother of French graphic designer Jean Carlu.

Carlu was married to little-known artist Anne Carlu (née Peckard 1895-1972). A mural of Anne's resides in the hall of the United Nations, Palais des Nations, in Geneva Switzerland.

References

External links

1890 births
1976 deaths
People from Yvelines
20th-century French architects
Prix de Rome for architecture
École des Beaux-Arts alumni
Members of the Académie des beaux-arts

Jacques Carlu


Filimer was an early Gothic king, according to Jordanes.  He was the son of Gadaric and the fifth generation since Berig settled with his people in Gothiscandza. When the Gothic nation had multiplied Filimer decided to move his people to Scythia where they defeated the Sarmatians. They then named their new territory Oium, meaning "in the waterlands". This migration would have allegedly taken place about 2030 years before Jordanes wrote his "Origin of the Goths".

The archaeological record shows that the population of the Gothic Wielbark culture (Poland) had indeed moved and settled in Ukraine and mixed with the previous populations of the Zarubintsy culture, where they formed the Chernyakhiv culture. This cultural movement is identified as the migration of the Goths from Gothiscandza to Oium, but not all scholars find the evidence compelling.

Jordanes (XXIV:121) also relates that Filimer expelled the witches, who were called haliurunnas. These witches were condemned to seek refuge far away and were said to have given birth to the first Huns.

The Danish scholar Arne Søby Christensen has suggested that the name Filimer was made up by Cassiodorus, a suggestion that was favourably received among historians.

References

Legendary Gothic kings
3rd-century Gothic people

Filimer


The black wildebeest or white-tailed gnu (Connochaetes gnou) is one of the two closely related wildebeest species. It is a member of the genus Connochaetes  and family Bovidae. It was first described in 1780 by Eberhard August Wilhelm von Zimmermann. The black wildebeest is typically  in head-and-body length, and the typical weight is . Males stand about  at the shoulder, while the height of the females is . The black wildebeest is characterised by its white, long, horse-like tail. It also has a dark brown to black coat and long, dark-coloured hair between its forelegs and under its belly.

The black wildebeest is an herbivore, and almost the whole diet consists of grasses. Water is an essential requirement. The three distinct social groups are the female herds, the bachelor herds, and the territorial bulls. They are fast runners and communicate using a variety of visual and vocal communications. The primary breeding season for the black wildebeest is from February to April. A single calf is usually born after a gestational period of about 8 and 1/2 months. The calf remains with its mother until her next calf is born a year later. The black wildebeest inhabits open plains, grasslands, and karoo shrublands.

The natural populations of black wildebeest, endemic in the southern part of Africa, were almost completely exterminated in the 19th century, due to their reputation as pests and the value of their hides and meat, but the species has been reintroduced widely from captive specimens, both in private areas and nature reserves throughout most of Lesotho, Eswatini, and South Africa. The species has also been introduced outside its natural range in Namibia and Kenya.

Taxonomy and evolution
The scientific name of the black wildebeest is Connochaetes gnou. The animal is placed in the genus Connochaetes and family Bovidae and was first described by German zoologist Eberhard August Wilhelm von Zimmermann in 1780. He based his description on an article written by natural philosopher Jean-Nicolas-Sébastien Allamand in 1776. The generic name Connochaetes derives from the Greek words κόννος, kónnos, "beard", and χαίτη, khaítē, "flowing hair", "mane". The specific name gnou originates from the Khoikhoi name for these animals, gnou. The common name "gnu" is also said to have originated from the Hottentot name t'gnu, which refers to the repeated calls of "ge-nu" by the bull in the mating season. The black wildebeest was first discovered in the northern part of South Africa in the 1800s.

The black wildebeest is currently included in the same genus as the blue wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus). This has not always been the case, and at one time the latter was placed under a genus of its own, Gorgon.  The black wildebeest lineage seems to have diverged from the blue wildebeest in the mid- to late Pleistocene, and became a distinct species around a million years ago. This evolution is quite recent on a geologic time scale.

Features necessary for defending a territory, such as the horns and broad-based skull of the modern black wildebeest, have been found in their fossil ancestors. The earliest known fossil remains are in sedimentary rock in Cornelia in the Free State and date back about 800,000 years. Fossils have also been reported from the Vaal River deposits, though whether or not they are as ancient as those found in Cornelia is unclear. Horns of the black wildebeest have been found in sand dunes near Hermanus in South Africa. This is far beyond the recorded range of the species and these animals may have migrated to that region from the karoo.

Hybrids
The black wildebeest is known to hybridise with its taxonomically close relative, the blue wildebeest. Male black wildebeest have been reported to mate with female blue wildebeest and vice versa. The differences in social behaviour and habitats have historically prevented interspecific hybridisation, but it may occur when they are both confined within the same area. The resulting offspring is usually fertile. A study of these hybrid animals at Spioenkop Dam Nature Reserve in South Africa revealed that many had disadvantageous abnormalities relating to their teeth, horns, and the wormian bones in the skull. Another study reported an increase in the size of the hybrid as compared to either of its parents. In some animals, the auditory bullae are highly deformed, and in others, the radius and ulna are fused.

Description

Black wildebeest are sexually dimorphic, with females being shorter and more slender than males. The head-and-body length is typically between . Males reach about  at the shoulder, while females reach . Males typically weigh  and females . A distinguishing feature in both sexes is the tail, which is long and similar to that of a horse. Its bright-white colour gives this animal the vernacular name of "white-tailed gnu", and also distinguishes it from the blue wildebeest, which has a black tail. The length of the tail ranges from .

The black wildebeest has a dark brown or black coat, which is slightly paler in summer and coarser and shaggier in the winter. Calves are born with shaggy, fawn-coloured fur. Males are darker than females. They have bushy and dark-tipped manes that, as in the blue wildebeest, stick up from the back of the neck. The hairs that compose this are white or cream-coloured with dark tips. On its muzzle and under its, jaw it has black bristly hair. It also has long, dark-coloured hair between its forelegs and under its belly. Other physical features include a thick neck, a plain back, and rather small and beady eyes.

Both sexes have strong horns that curve forward, resembling hooks, which are up to  long. The horns have a broad base in mature males, and are flattened to form a protective shield. In females, the horns are both shorter and narrower. They become fully developed in females in the third year, while horns are fully grown in males aged four or five. The black wildebeest normally has 13 thoracic vertebrae, though specimens with 14 have been reported, and this species shows a tendency for the thoracic region to become elongated. Scent glands secrete a glutinous substance in front of the eyes, under the hair tufts, and on the forefeet. Females have two teats. Apart from the difference in the appearance of the tail, the two species of wildebeests also differ in size and colour, with the black being smaller and darker than the blue.

The black wildebeest can maintain its body temperature within a small range in spite of large fluctuations in external temperatures. It shows well-developed orientation behaviour towards solar radiation, which helps it thrive in hot, and often shadeless, habitats. The erythrocyte count is high at birth and increases till the age of 2–3 months, while in contrast, the leucocyte count is low at birth and falls throughout the animal's life. The neutrophil count is high at all ages. The haematocrit and haemoglobin content decreases till 20–30 days after birth. A peak in the content of all these haemological parameters occurs at the age of 2–3 months, after which the readings gradually decline, reaching their lowest values in the oldest individuals.  The presence of fast-twitch fibres and the ability of the muscles to use large amounts of oxygen help explain the rapid running speed of the black wildebeest and its high resistance to fatigue. Individuals may live for about 20 years.

Diseases and parasites
The black wildebeest is particularly susceptible to anthrax, and rare and widely scattered outbreaks have been recorded and have proved deadly. Ataxia related to myelopathy and low copper concentrations in the liver have also been seen in the black wildebeest. Heartwater (Ehrlichia ruminantium) is a tick-borne rickettsial disease that affects the black wildebeest, and as the blue wildebeest is fatally affected by rinderpest and foot-and-mouth disease, it is also likely to be susceptible to these. Malignant catarrhal fever is a fatal disease of domestic cattle caused by a gammaherpesvirus. Like the blue wildebeest, the black wildebeest seems to act as a reservoir for the virus and all animals are carriers, being persistently infected, but showing no symptoms. The virus is transmitted from mother to calf during the gestation period or soon after birth.

Black wildebeest act as hosts to a number of external and internal parasites. A study of the animal in Karroid Mountainveld (Eastern Cape Province, South Africa) revealed the presence of all the larval stages of the nasal bot flies Oestrus variolosus and Gedoelstia hässleri. The first-instar larvae of G. hässleri were found in large numbers on the dura mater of wildebeest calves, specially between June and August, and these later migrated to the nasal passages. Repeated outbreaks of mange (scab) have led to large-scale extinctions. The first study of the protozoa in blue and black wildebeest showed the presence of 23 protozoan species in the rumen, with Diplodinium bubalidis and Ostracodinium damaliscus common in all the animals.

Ecology and behavior

Black wildebeest are mainly active during the early morning and late afternoon, preferring to rest during the hottest part of the day. The animals can run at speeds of . When a person approaches a herd to within a few hundred metres, the wildebeest snort and run a short distance before stopping and looking back, repeating this behaviour if further approached. They communicate with each other using pheromones detected by flehmen and several forms of vocal communication. One of these is a metallic snort or an echoing "hick", that can be heard up to 1.5 km (1 mi) away. They are preyed on by the lion, spotted hyena, Cape hunting dog, leopard, cheetah, and crocodile. Of these, the calves are targeted mainly by the hyenas, while lions attack the adults.

The black wildebeest is a gregarious animal with a complex social structure comprising three distinct groups, the female herds consisting of adult females and their young, the bachelor herds consisting only of yearlings and older males, and territorial bulls. The number of females per herd is variable, generally ranging from 14 to 32, but is highest in the densest populations and also increases with forage density. A strong attachment exists among members of the female herd, many of which are related to each other. Large herds often get divided into smaller groups. While small calves stay with their mothers, the older ones form groups of their own within the herd. These herds have a social hierarchy, and the females are rather aggressive towards others trying to join the group. Young males are generally repelled by their mothers before the calving season starts. Separation of a young calf from its mother can be a major cause of calf mortality. While some male yearlings stay within the female herd, the others join a bachelor herd. These are usually loose associations, and unlike the female herds, the individuals are not much attached to each other. Another difference between the female and bachelor herds is the lesser aggression on the part of the males. These bachelor herds move widely in the available habitat and act as a refuge for males that have been unsuccessful as territorial bulls, and also as a reserve for future breeding males.

Mature bulls, generally more than 4 years old, set up their own territories through which female herds often pass. These territories are maintained throughout the year, with animals usually separated by a distance around , but this can vary according to the quality of the habitat. In favourable conditions, this distance is as little as , but can be as large as  in poor habitat. Each bull has a patch of ground in the centre of his territory in which he regularly drops dung, and in which he performs acts of display. These include urinating, scraping, pawing, and rolling on the ground and thumping it with his horns - all of which demonstrate his prowess to other bulls. An encounter between two bulls involves elaborate rituals. Estes coined the term "challenge ritual" to describe this behaviour for the blue wildebeest, but this is also applicable to the black wildebeest, owing to their close similarity in behavior. The bulls approach each other with their heads lowered, resembling a grazing position (sometimes actually grazing). This is usually followed by movements such as standing in a reverse-parallel position, in which one male urinates and the opponent smells and performs flehmen, after which they may reverse the procedure. During this ritual or afterwards, the two can toss their horns at each other, circle one another, or even look away. Then begins the fight, which may be of low intensity (consisting of interlocking the horns and pushing each other in a standing position) or high intensity (consisting of their dropping to their knees and straining against each other powerfully, trying to remain in contact while their foreheads are nearly touching the ground). Threat displays such as shaking the head may also take place.

Diet

Black wildebeest are predominantly grazers, preferring short grasses, but also feeding on other herbs and shrubs, especially when grass is scarce. Shrubs can comprise as much as 37% of the diet, but grasses normally form more than 90%.  Water is essential, though they can exist without drinking water every day. The herds graze either in line or in loose groups, usually walking in single file when moving about. They are often accompanied by cattle egrets, which pick out and consume the insects hidden in their coats or disturbed by their movements.

Before the arrival of Europeans in the area, wildebeest roamed widely, probably in relation to the arrival of the rains and the availability of good forage. They never made such extensive migrations as the blue wildebeest, but at one time, they crossed the Drakensberg Range, moving eastwards in autumn, searching for good pastures. Then they returned to the highvelds in the spring and moved towards the west, where sweet potato and karoo vegetation were abundant. They also moved from north to south as the sourgrass found north of the Vaal River matured and became unpalatable, the wildebeest only consuming young shoots of sourgrass. Now, almost all black wildebeest are in reserves or on farms, and the extent of their movements is limited.

In a study of the feeding activities of a number of female black wildebeest living in a shadeless habitat, they fed mostly at night. They were observed at regular intervals over a period of one year, and with an increase in temperature, the number of wildebeest feeding at night also increased. During cool weather, they lay down to rest, but in hotter conditions they rested while standing up.

Reproduction
Male black wildebeest reach sexual maturity at the age of 3 years, but may mature at a younger age in captivity. Females first come into estrus and breed as yearlings or as 2-year-olds. They breed only once in a year.

A dominant male black wildebeest has a harem of females and will not allow other males to mate with them. The breeding season occurs at the end of the rainy season and lasts a few weeks between February and April. When one of his females comes into estrus, the male concentrates on her and mates with her several times. Sexual behaviour by the male at this time includes stretching low, ears down, sniffing of the female's vulva, performing ritual urination, and touching his chin to the female's rump. At the same time, the female keeps her tail upwards (sometimes vertically) or swishes it across the face of the male. The pair usually separates after copulation, but the female occasionally follows her mate afterwards, touching his rump with her snout. During the breeding season, the male loses condition, as he spends little time grazing. Males are known to mount other males.

The gestation period lasts for about 8.5 months, after which a single calf is born. Females in labour do not move away from the female herd and repeatedly lie down and get up again. Births normally take place in areas with short grass when the cow is in the lying position. She stands up immediately afterwards, which causes the umbilical cord to break, and vigorously licks the calf and chews on the afterbirth. In spite of regional variations, around 80% of the females give birth to their calves within a period of 2–3 weeks after the onset of the rainy season - from mid-November to the end of December. Seasonal breeding has also been reported among wildebeest in captivity in European zoos. Twin births have not been reported.

The calf has a tawny, shaggy coat and weighs about . By the end of the fourth week, the four incisors have fully emerged and about the same time, two knob-like structures, the horn buds, appear on the head. These later develop into horns, which reach a length of  by the fifth month and are well developed by the eighth month. The calf is able to stand and run shortly after birth, a period of great danger for animals in the wild. It is fed by its lactating mother for 6–8 months, begins nibbling on grass blades at 4 weeks, and remains with the mother until her next calf is born a year later.

Distribution and habitat
The black wildebeest is native to southern Africa. Its historical range included South Africa, Eswatini, and Lesotho, but in the latter two countries, it was hunted to extinction in the 19th century. It has now been reintroduced there and also introduced to Namibia, where it has become well established.

The black wildebeest inhabits open plains, grasslands, and karoo shrublands in both steep, mountainous regions and lower, undulating hills. The altitudes in these areas vary from . The herds are often migratory or nomadic, otherwise they may have regular home ranges of . Female herds roam in home ranges around  in size. In the past, black wildebeest occurred on temperate grasslands in highveld during the dry winter season and the arid karoo region during the rains. However, as a result of massive hunting of the animal for its hide, they vanished from their historical range, and are now largely limited to game farms and protected reserves in southern Africa. In most reserves, the black wildebeest shares its habitat with the blesbok and the springbok.

Threats and conservation

Where it lives alongside the blue wildebeest, the two species can hybridise, and this is regarded as a potential threat to the maintenance of the species. The black wildebeest was once very numerous and was present in Southern Africa in vast herds, but by the end of the 19th century, it had nearly been hunted to extinction and fewer than 600 animals remained. A small number of individuals was still present in game reserves and at zoos, and from these, the population was rescued.

More than 18,000 individuals are now believed to remain, 7,000 of which are in Namibia, outside their natural range, and where they are farmed. Around 80% of the wildebeest occurs in private areas, while the other 20% is confined in protected areas. The population is now trending upward (particularly on private land) and for this reason the International Union for Conservation of Nature, in its Red List of Threatened Species, rates the black wildebeest as being of least concern Its introduction into Namibia has been a success and numbers have increased substantially there from 150 in 1982 to 7,000 in 1992.

Uses and interaction with humans

The black wildebeest is depicted on the coat of arms of the Province of Natal in South Africa. Over the years, the South African authorities have issued stamps displaying the animal and the South African Mint has struck a 5-rand coin with a prancing black wildebeest.

Though they are not present in their natural habitat in such large numbers today, black wildebeest were at one time the main herbivores in the ecosystem and the main prey item for large predators such as the lion. Now, they are economically important for human beings, as they are a major tourist attraction, and provide animal products such as leather and meat. The hide makes good-quality leather, and the flesh is coarse, dry, and rather tough. Wildebeest meat is dried to make biltong, an important part of South African cuisine. The meat of females is more tender than that of males, and is at its best during the autumn season. The wildebeest can provide 10 times as much meat as a Thomson's gazelle. The silky, flowing tail is used to make fly-whisks or chowries.

However, black wildebeest can also affect human beings negatively. Wild individuals can be competitors of commercial livestock and can transmit fatal diseases such as rinderpest, and cause epidemics among animals, particularly domestic cattle. They can also spread ticks, lungworms, tapeworms, flies, and paramphistome flukes.

References

External links
 Information at ITIS

black wildebeest
Mammals of Southern Africa
Mammals of South Africa
Mammals of Eswatini
Mammals of Lesotho
Articles containing video clips
black wildebeest
Bovids of Africa
Taxa named by Eberhard August Wilhelm von Zimmermann
Fauna of South Africa
Endemic fauna of South Africa

Black wildebeest


The First Power is a 1990 American neo-noir horror film written and directed by Robert Resnikoff, and starring Lou Diamond Phillips, Tracy Griffith, Jeff Kober and Mykelti Williamson.

The film received mostly negative reviews, but was a financial success.

Plot
A sadistic serial killer, Patrick Channing (Jeff Kober), known by most as the Pentagram Killer, is at large in Los Angeles, killing innocent people as a sacrifice to Satan. His specific MO is engraving a pentagram symbol into the flesh of his victims before killing them.

Detective Russell Logan (Lou Diamond Phillips) is determined to bring the Pentagram Killer to justice. He receives an anonymous phone call from a psychic called Tess Seaton (Tracy Griffith). After getting his promise that the man will not be executed, she tells him where the killer is going to strike next. With time running out for the next victim, Logan decides to take Tess on her word. Logan goes on a stakeout and successfully tracks down Channing's lair. During a struggle in which Logan apprehends Channing, Logan receives a severe stab wound to his torso.

Logan manages to recover from his stomach injury and breaks his word, and successfully seeks a death penalty sentence. Tess makes another phone call to Logan, pleading with him to keep his promise that Channing not be executed. Logan refuses, satisfied that Channing is now caught and cannot harm another person and, therefore, is not interested in sparing the serial killer from what he believes is a much-deserved fate. Channing is later convicted and sentenced to be executed in the gas chamber. However, since Channing was a worshipper of Satan, the latter seemingly grants Channing The First Power -- resurrection. This is the first of three special powers Channing is attempting to gain, and is directly stated in the film that Jesus Christ also possessed all three of these powers. Channing returns from the grave and is able to appear or disappear at will, as well as possess others. His main objective now becomes to get his revenge on Russell Logan as well as continue his work. Logan must then team up with Tess in order to find a way to defeat Channing once and for all.

Channing starts by killing Logan's colleagues, beginning with a woman he narrowly rescued from Channing before he was arrested. When Channing targets Logan next, Tess saves him from her visions, and Logan narrowly evades Channing's wrath while protecting Tess. When going back to his childhood home for answers, Channing's grandmother recognizes Logan and lambasts him for the execution. The climax of the film takes place at an unused part of a water treatment plant where Logan finds Tess after she was kidnapped from his apartment by Channing. Logan and Channing fight, while Channing is possessing a nun, resulting in Channing getting stabbed in the chest with a crucifix that has a knife hidden in it which is the only thing that will kill him. A police officer shoots and wounds Logan after he thought Logan was attacking a nun. Tess visits Logan in the hospital, where he wakes up and attacks her. She wakes up to realize that she was having another psychic vision of Channing possessing Logan, and she hears Channing's voice taunting her with the same line he used throughout the film to taunt Logan. This suggests that Channing's spirit is still free and roaming around.

Cast
 Lou Diamond Phillips as Detective Russell Logan
 Tracy Griffith as Tess Seaton
 Jeff Kober as Patrick Channing
 Mykelti Williamson as Detective Oliver Franklin
 Elizabeth Arlen as Sister Marguerite
 Dennis Lipscomb as Commander Perkns
 Carmen Argenziano as Lieutenant Al Grimes
 Clayton Landey as Detective Mazza
 Sue Giosa as Carmen
 Oz Tortora as Antonio
 Dan Tullis Jr. as Cop At Arrest
 Hansford Rowe as Father Brian
 Grand L. Bush as Reservoir Worker
 Bill Moseley as Bartender
 David Gale as Monsignor
 Philip Abbott as Cardinal
 J. Patrick McNamara as Priest
 Lynne Marta as Nun
 Brian Libby as Bum / Detective
 Nada Despotovich as Bag Lady
 Juliana McCarthy as Mrs. Channing, Patrick's Grandmother
 Charles Raymond as Gang Member #1
 Scott Lawrence as Gang Member #2

Production
The movie began production under the title Transit.

Reception

The film received negative reviews, including Desson Howe's in the Washington Post, which called it "shopworn and imitative". In The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote that Phillips "doesn't seem altogether comfortable here, but he certainly is not bad". He added that, despite the film's fast pace and impressive special effects, "the whole thing is seriously stupid".

As of November 2022, The First Power has a 25% "rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 12 reviews.

References

External links

1990 films
1990 crime thriller films
1990 horror films
1990s serial killer films
American neo-noir films
American serial killer films
Films about religion
American supernatural horror films
Orion Pictures films
Interscope Communications films
Films scored by Stewart Copeland
1990s English-language films
1990s American films
American police detective films
Films about drugs
Films about capital punishment

The First Power


The Japanese language has a complicated system of pronouns that is based on things like the speaker's gender, relationship to the listener(s), rank in the speaker's group, how polite the speaker is trying to be, and several other things. Since there are so many different pronouns for each person (first, second, and third), and so few that can be appropriately used in every situation, many people say that Japanese lacks true pronouns.

According to the Japanese language blog Tofugu, Japanese has more first-person pronouns than any other language. To give examples of the complexity of Japanese pronouns, watashi could be considered the normal polite way of calling yourself if you are unsure of what to call yourself, but if you are male, you could call yourself boku or ore if you are with friends or family, but you should call yourself watakushi if you are talking to your boss or in a formal situation. If you are female, it is normal to call yourself watashi even in casual situations, although you can also call yourself atashi or uchi. The most common plural first-person pronoun is watashi-tachi, but in formal situations you can call yourselves ware-ware (which is also sometimes used to describe "the people [of Japan]). This does not describe every first-person pronoun, but this explanation is written to give the reader an idea.

Since most Japanese see the second-person (e.g. "you") pronoun as very intimate, second-person is usually avoided and the second-person is talked to using a third-person (e.g. "he/she/it/they") pronoun instead.

References

Pronouns
Pronouns

Japanese pronouns


Minesweeper is a strategy game that comes with most Microsoft computer operating systems. It is available for many other operating systems and desktop environments as well. The object of the game is to clear a minefield of mines. By clicking on blocks, the player learns if the block contains a mine. If they do not see a mine, the game continues. If they clicked on a mine, the game is over. When the player clicks on a block, a number may appear. The number shows how many mines are next to this square. This helps the player find out where the mines are.

The most common variation of the game is won when every block that does not contain a mine has been clicked, although some variations are won by having every block that contains a mine flagged.

Variations
There are many versions out there:

Microsoft software
Windows games

Minesweeper (video game)


A brake shoe is the part of a braking system which carries the brake lining in the drum brakes used on automobiles, or the brake block in train brakes and bicycle brakes. A device that is put on a track to slow down railroad cars is also called brake shoe.

Automobile drum brake
The brake shoe carries the brake lining, which is riveted or glued to the shoe.  When the brake is applied, the shoe moves and presses the lining against the inside of the drum.  The friction between lining and drum provides the braking effort. Energy is dissipated as heat.

Modern cars have disc brakes all round, or discs at the front and drums at the rear.  An advantage of discs is that they can dissipate heat more quickly than drums so there is less risk of overheating.

The reasons for retaining drums at the rear, are that a drum is more effective than a disc as a parking brake, and drum brake components are cheaper to maintain.

Railway tread brake
The brake shoe carries the brake block. Wood was originally used for the brake block, then cast iron (particularly grey iron) was used. The material seems to have been replaced nowadays by high friction composite material, but some operators of heavy goods trains have begun to use brake shoes (and pads) using various kinds of plastic (like kevlar). One of those is DB Cargo, and cites less wear and especially less noise, which is important when driving in built-up areas.

When the brake is applied, the shoe moves and presses the block against the tread of the wheel. As well as providing braking effort, this also "scrubs" the wheel and keeps it clean, but also causes wear and tear on the wheel treads. Additionally, the application of the brake shoe and often causes brake squeal. Tread brakes on passenger trains have now largely been superseded by disc brakes.

Bicycle rim brake
This comprises a pair of rectangular open boxes which are mounted on the brake calipers of a bicycle and that hold the brake blocks which rub on the rim of a bicycle wheel to slow the bicycle down or stop it.

Cataloguing
There are different systems for the cataloguing of brake shoes. The most frequently used system in Europe is the WVA numbering system.

Brake shoe for railroad cars

A brake shoe can be put on the track to stop a moving car. The wheel rolls up to the tongue and then the brake shoe glides with the car on the track until it stops. They are also called rail skids or rail skates.

See also
 Brake pad
 List of auto parts

References

External links

Brakes
Vehicle braking technologies

it:Freno#Numero di ceppi del tamburo

Brake shoe


Clara Sánchez (born 1 March 1955) is a Spanish novelist. Among other literary awards, Sánchez won the 2013 Premio Planeta de Novela for her novel El cielo ha vuelto. She was elected to seat X of the Real Academia Española on 23 March 2023; she took up her seat on 8 October 2023.

Born in Guadalajara, Spain, she earned her degree in Spanish philology from Complutense University of Madrid. Since receiving her degree, she has taught at the National University of Distance Education.

Sánchez has provided prefaces for the works of foreign authors including Yukio Mishima and Andrzej Szczypiorski, has written for a variety of national periodicals, and has been an occasional contributor to the Televisión Española series ¡Qué grande es el cine! directed by José Luis Garci. Her debut novel, Piedras preciosas (1989), received critical acclaim. In common with her subsequent work, it employs intimistic, costumbrist prose and cynical humor to reveal the inadequacies of the modern world. After No es distinta la noche (1990) and El palacio varado (1993) came Desde el mirador (1996), an exploration of human vulnerability taking the form of a portrait of a forty-year-old woman; El misterio de todos los días (1999), the story of a professor who falls in love with one of her students; and Últimas noticias del paraíso (2000), an exploration of the confusion and alienation of contemporary youth, which won the prestigious Alfaguara Prize in 2000. Her work has been published both in Spain and Latin America.

In 2010 Sanchez received the Premio Nadal for her novel Lo que esconde tu nombre, a psychological thriller whose protagonists include a Spanish republican survivor of Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp and an alienated young woman who cross paths with an elderly Nazi couple in the Costa del Sol.

Novels
 Piedras Preciosas (1989)
 No es distinta la noche (1990)
 El palacio varado (1993)
 Desde el mirador (1996)
 El misterio de todos los días (1999)
 Últimas noticias del paraíso (Premio Alfaguara 2000), Ed. Alfaguara, Madrid.
 Un millón de luces (2003) Ed. Alfaguara, Madrid.
 Presentimientos (2008)
 Lo que esconde tu nombre (Premio Nadal 2010) Ed. Destino, Barcelona.
 Entra en mi vida (2012)
 El cielo ha vuelto (Premio Planeta de Novela, 2013)

Notes

References

1955 births
Spanish women novelists
People from Guadalajara, Spain
Living people
20th-century Spanish novelists
20th-century Spanish women writers
Complutense University of Madrid alumni

Clara Sánchez (writer)


Visions Before Midnight is a selection of the television criticism written by Clive James during his first four years (1972–1976) as The Observer'''s weekly television critic. The selection begins with a piece on the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, and ends with a piece on the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. It was first published in 1977. The title derives from Sir Thomas Browne: Dreams out of the ivory gate, and visions before midnight.Before being contracted by Observer editor David Astor, James had previously written one piece per month on television for The Listener and its editor, Karl Miller, had been an important influence on James. He had allowed him to, "write a column which eschewed solemnity so thoroughly that it courted the frivolous. Like Lichtenberg Karl Miller appreciated the kind of joke that unveils a problem: if your gags had a serious reason for being there, they stayed in." James explains in the preface: "Television was a natural part of my life. I loved watching it and I loved being on it. The second passion has since somewhat faded, but the first remains strong, and was very powerful at the time. I watched just about everything, including the junk. The screen teemed with unsummable activity. It was full of  visions, legends, myths, fables. T.V was scarcely something you could feel superior to. It was too various. What I had to offer was negative capability, a capability for submission to the medium. I was the first to submit myself to Alastair Burnet and find him fascinating. No critic before me had ever regarded David Vine as a reason for switching the set on''."

In the preface James says that the idea of publishing a selection of his television criticism had been in his mind since speaking with Kenneth Tynan at a reception at the Garrick Club. Tynan had said he hoped James would publish some of his criticism but averred that, "A television critic would have to know everything, and who knows everything?" James had been lost for an answer at the time but in the Preface replies, "It isn't necessary to know everything – just to remember that nobody else does either."

External links
 Visions Before Midnight on Clive James' official website

1977 non-fiction books
Books about television
1970s in British television
Works originally published in The Observer
Television criticism
Jonathan Cape books

Visions Before Midnight


"O Salutaris Hostia" (Latin, "O Saving Victim" or "O Saving Sacrifice") is a section of one of the Eucharistic hymns written by Thomas Aquinas for the Feast of Corpus Christi. He wrote it for the Hour of Lauds in the Divine Office. It is actually the last two stanzas of the hymn Verbum supernum prodiens, and is used for the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. The other two hymns written by Aquinas for the Feast contain the famous sections Panis angelicus and Tantum ergo.

Text

Local usage
As a liturgical text, the hymn is traditionally sung in Latin, but after the introduction of vernacular languages, it is also sung in the vernacular.

In Notre Dame, Paris, France a middle stanza is inserted:

A verse rendering of the song is used during the Wednesday Novena Service to Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Baclaran Church, Parañaque, Philippines. Rev. Teofilo Vinteres, C.Ss.R and Alfredo Buenavista are credited with the music and the arrangement, respectively, and both also produced a Filipino translation, Handóg na Tagapágligtás ("Sacrificial Saviour"):

Musical settings

Marc-Antoine Charpentier composed six settings for "O salutaris Hostia": H.236 (1670), H.262 (1690), H.261 (1690), H.36 (1690), H.248 (1679–80), and H.249 (1681). Spanish composer Arriaga wrote a motet on the hymn for two tenors, bass and strings in 1823. Gioachino Rossini composed two settings of the hymn: one as a standalone piece for chorus and the other as a movement for solo soprano in his Petite messe solennelle. Both stanzas are retained in Arthur Honegger's 1939 setting for mezzo-soprano and piano, whereas only the first stanza is included in Vytautas Miškinis' setting for mixed choir a cappella, O salutaris hostia, in 1991. The first stanza is also inserted as part of the Sanctus of Robert Schumann's Mass in C minor, Op. posth. 147 (1852–53). David Conte included the hymn as the first movement of his Two Hymns in Honor of the Blessed Sacrament (2005).

References

External links

 Sheet Music at Hymnary

Eucharistic devotions
Christian hymns in Latin

O salutaris hostia


In database systems, durability is the ACID property that guarantees that the effects of transactions that have been committed will survive permanently, even in case of failures, including incidents and catastrophic events. For example, if a flight booking reports that a seat has successfully been booked, then the seat will remain booked even if the system crashes.

Formally, a database system ensures the durability property if it tolerates three types of failures: transaction, system, and media failures. In particular, a transaction fails if its execution is interrupted before all its operations have been processed by the system. These kinds of interruptions can be originated at the transaction level by data-entry errors, operator cancellation, timeout, or application-specific errors, like withdrawing money from a bank account with insufficient funds. At the system level, a failure occurs if the contents of the volatile storage are lost, due, for instance, to system crashes, like out-of-memory events. At the media level, where media means a stable storage that withstands system failures, failures happen when the stable storage, or part of it, is lost. These cases are typically represented by disk failures.

Thus, to be durable, the database system should implement strategies and operations that guarantee that the effects of transactions that have been committed before the failure will survive the event (even by reconstruction), while the changes of incomplete transactions, which have not been committed yet at the time of failure, will be reverted and will not affect the state of the database system. These behaviours are proven to be correct when the execution of transactions has respectively the resilience and recoverability properties.

Mechanisms

In transaction-based systems, the mechanisms that assure durability are historically associated with the concept of reliability of systems, as proposed by Jim Gray in 1981. This concept includes durability, but it also relies on aspects of the atomicity and consistency properties. Specifically, a reliability mechanism requires primitives that explicitly state the beginning, the end, and the rollback of transactions, which are also implied for the other two aforementioned properties. In this article, only the mechanisms strictly related to durability have been considered. These mechanisms are divided into three levels: transaction, system, and media level.  This can be seen as well for scenarios where failures could happen and that have to be considered in the design of database systems to address durability.

Transaction level
Durability against failures that occur at transaction level, such as canceled calls and inconsistent actions that may be blocked before committing by constraints and triggers, is guaranteed by the serializability property of the execution of transactions. The state generated by the effects of precedently committed transactions is available in main memory and, thus, is resilient, while the changes carried by non-committed transactions can be undone. In fact, thanks to serializability, they can be discerned from other transactions and, therefore, their changes are discarded. In addition, it is relevant to consider that in-place changes, which overwrite old values without keeping any kind of history are discouraged. There exist multiple approaches that keep track of the history of changes, such as timestamp-based solutions or logging and locking.

System level
At system level, failures happen, by definition, when the contents of the volatile storage are lost. This can occur in events like system crashes or power outages. Existing database systems use volatile storage (i.e. the main memory of the system) for different purposes: some store their whole state and data in it, even without any durability guarantee; others keep the state and the data, or part of them, in memory, but also use the non-volatile storage for data; other systems only keep the state in main memory, while keeping all the data on disk. The reason behind the choice of having volatile storage, which is subject to this type of failure, and non-volatile storage, is found in the performance differences of the existing technologies that are used to implement these kinds of storage. However, the situation is likely to evolve as the popularity of non-volatile memories (NVM) technologies grows.

In systems that include non-volatile storage, durability can be achieved by keeping and flushing an immutable sequential log of the transactions to such non-volatile storage before acknowledging commitment. Thanks to their atomicity property, the transactions can be considered the unit of work in the recovery process that guarantees durability while exploiting the log. In particular, the logging mechanism is called write-ahead log (WAL) and allows durability by buffering changes to the disk before they are synchronized from the main memory. In this way, by reconstruction from the log file, all committed transactions are resilient to system-level failures, because they can be redone. Non-committed transactions, instead, are recoverable, since their operations are logged to non-volatile storage before they effectively modify the state of the database. In this way, the partially executed operations can be undone without affecting the state of the system. After that, those transactions that were incomplete can be redone. Therefore, the transaction log from non-volatile storage can be reprocessed to recreate the system state right before any later system-level failure. It is worth mentioning that logging is done as a combination of tracking data and operations (i.e. transactions) for performance reasons.

Media level
At media level, failure scenarios affect non-volatile storage, like hard disk drives, solid-state drives, and other types of storage hardware components. To guarantee durability at this level, the database system shall rely on stable memory, which is a memory that is completely and ideally failure-resistant. This kind of memory can be achieved with mechanisms of replication and robust writing protocols.

Many tools and technologies are available to provide a logical stable memory, such as the mirroring of disks, and their choice depends on the requirements of the specific applications. In general, replication and redundancy strategies and architectures that behave like stable memory are available at different levels of the technology stack. In this way, even in case of catastrophic events where the storage hardware is damaged, data loss can be prevented. At this level, there is a strong bond between durability and system and data recovery, in the sense that the main goal is to preserve the data, not necessarily in online replicas, but also as offline copies. These last techniques fall into the categories of backup, data loss prevention, and disaster recovery.

Therefore, in case of media failure, the durability of transactions is guaranteed by the ability to reconstruct the state of the database from the log files stored in the stable memory, in any way it was implemented in the database system. There exist several mechanisms to store and reconstruct the state of a database system that improves the performance, both in terms of space and time, compared to managing all the log files created from the beginning of the database system. These mechanisms often include incremental dumping, differential files, and checkpoints.

Distributed databases
In distributed transactions, ensuring durability requires additional mechanisms to preserve a consistent state sequence across all database nodes. This means, for example, that a single node may not be enough to decide to conclude a transaction by committing it. In fact, the resources used in that transaction may be on other nodes, where other transactions are occurring concurrently. Otherwise, in case of failure, if consistency could not be guaranteed, it would be impossible to acknowledge a safe state of the database for recovery.  For this reason, all participating nodes must coordinate before a commit can be acknowledged. This is usually done by a two-phase commit protocol.

In addition, in distributed databases, even the protocols for logging and recovery shall address the issues of distributed environments, such as deadlocks, that could prevent the resilience and recoverability of transactions and, thus, durability. A widely adopted family of algorithms that ensures these properties is Algorithms for Recovery and Isolation Exploiting Semantics (ARIES).

See also
 Atomicity
 Consistency
 Isolation
 Relational database management system
 Data breach

References

Further reading

External links

 Durability aspects in Oracle's databases
 MySQL InnoDB documentation on support of ACID properties
 PostgreSQL's documentation on reliability
 Microsoft SQL Server Control Transaction Durability
 Interactive latency visualization for different types of storages from Berkeley

Data management
Transaction processing

Durability (database systems)


Steve Shnider is a retired professor of mathematics at Bar Ilan University.
He received a PhD in Mathematics from Harvard University in 1972, under Shlomo Sternberg.
His main interests are in the differential geometry of fiber bundles; algebraic methods in the theory of deformation of geometric structures; symplectic geometry; supersymmetry; operads; and Hopf algebras.
He retired in 2014.

Book on operads
A 2002 book of Markl, Shnider and Stasheff Operads in algebra, topology, and physics was the first book to  provide a systematic treatment of operad theory, an area of mathematics that came to prominence in 1990s and  found many applications in algebraic topology, category theory, graph cohomology, representation theory, algebraic geometry, combinatorics, knot theory, moduli spaces, and other areas. The book was the subject of a Featured Review in Mathematical Reviews by Alexander A. Voronov which stated, in particular: "The first book whose main goal is the theory of operads per se ... a book such as this one has been long awaited by a wide scientific readership, including mathematicians and theoretical physicists ... a great piece of mathematical literature and will be helpful to anyone who needs to use operads, from graduate students to mature mathematicians and physicists."

Bibliography
According to Mathematical Reviews, Shnider's work has been cited over 300 times  by over 300 authors by 2010.

Books

Selected papers
.

References

21st-century Israeli mathematicians
Living people
Geometers
Harvard University alumni
Year of birth missing (living people)

Steve Shnider


Jacques Brunhes (7 October 1934 – 30 September 2020) was a French politician. He was a member of the French Communist Party. Brunhes was born in Paris.

He represented Hauts-de-Seine in the National Assembly from 1978 to 2007. Between 2001 to 2002, he was the Minister of Tourism. Before, between 1987 to 2001, he was Mayor of Gennevilliers.

Brunhes died on 30 September 2020 at the age of 85.

References

1934 births
2020 deaths
French mayors
Politicians from Paris
French communists

Jacques Brunhes


John Clarke (1780s – July 12, 1862) was a merchant, farmer and political figure in Upper Canada. He represented 1st Lincoln in the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada from 1820 to 1828 and from 1830 to 1834 as a Conservative. His name also appears as John Clark.

He was born in Kingston in 1783 or 1786, the son of James Clarke, sheriff for the Niagara District, and Jemima Mason. Clarke was educated by the Reverend John Strachan and at the garrison school and Richard Cockerell's school in Niagara. He married Sarah Adams. Clarke lived in Louth Township. He served in the county militia, reaching the rank of lieutenant-colonel. From 1835 to 1852, Clarke was customs collector at Port Dalhousie.

References

Year of birth uncertain
1780s births
1862 deaths
Members of the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada

John Clarke (Upper Canada)


Daniel Carleton Gajdusek ( ; September 9, 1923 – December 12, 2008) was an American physician and medical researcher who was the co-recipient (with Baruch S. Blumberg) of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1976 for work on the transmissibility of kuru, implying the existence of an infectious agent, which he named an 'unconventional virus'.

In 1996, Gajdusek was charged with child molestation and, after being convicted, spent 12 months in prison before entering a self-imposed exile in Europe, where he died a decade later. His papers are held at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland. and at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Early life and education
Gajdusek's father, Karol Gajdusek, was a Slovak butcher from Büdöskő, Hungary (now Smrdáky, Slovakia). His mother Ottilia Dobróczki, and maternal grandparents, ethnic Hungarians of the Calvinist faith, emigrated from Debrecen, Hungary. Gajdusek was born in Yonkers, New York, and graduated in 1943 from the University of Rochester, where he studied physics, biology, chemistry, and mathematics. He obtained an M.D. from Harvard University in 1946 and performed postdoctoral research at Columbia University, the California Institute of Technology, and Harvard. In 1951, Gajdusek was drafted into the U.S. Army and assigned as a research virologist at the Walter Reed Army Medical Service Graduate School. In 1954, after his military discharge, he went to work as a visiting investigator at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia. There, he began the work that culminated in the Nobel prize. From 1970 to 1996, Gajdusek was the chief of the Laboratory of Central Nervous System Studies at NINDS at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1978.

Kuru research
Gajdusek's best-known work focused on kuru. This disease was rampant among the South Fore people of New Guinea in the 1950s and 1960s. Gajdusek connected the spread of the disease to the practice of funerary cannibalism by the South Fore. With elimination of cannibalism, kuru disappeared among the South Fore within a generation.

Gajdusek was introduced to the problem of kuru by Vincent Zigas, a district medical officer in the Fore Tribe region of New Guinea. Gajdusek provided the first medical description of this unique neurological disorder, which was miscast in the popular press as the "laughing sickness" because some patients displayed risus sardonicus as a symptom. He lived among the Fore, studied their language and culture, and performed autopsies on kuru victims.

Gajdusek concluded that kuru was transmitted by the ritualistic consumption of the brains of deceased relatives, which was practiced by the Fore. He then proved this hypothesis by successfully transmitting the disease to primates and demonstrating that it had an unusually long incubation period of several years. He did this by drilling holes into chimps' heads and placing pureed brain matter into the cerebellum.  These animals then developed symptoms of kuru. This was the first demonstration of the infectious spread of a noninflammatory degenerative disease in humans.

Kuru was shown to have remarkable similarity to scrapie, a disease of sheep and goats caused by an unconventional infectious agent. Subsequently, additional human agents belonging to the same group were discovered. They include sporadic, familial, and variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. Gajdusek recognized that diseases like Kuru and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease were caused by a new infectious agent that had not yet been identified. Further research on the scrapie agent by Stanley Prusiner and others led to the identification of endogenous proteins called prions as the cause of these diseases.

"Unconventional viruses"
In his 1977 paper "Unconventional Viruses and the Origin and Disappearance of Kuru," Gajdusek postulated that the cause of kuru, scrapie and  Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease were caused by what he termed an unconventional virus. In comparison to normal viruses, unconventional viruses had a long incubation period and did not cause an immune response in the host. Although Gajdusek noted that there were no demonstrable nucleic acids in unconventional viruses, he did not rule out the possibility that unconventional viruses contained RNA at a low level, despite their radiation resistance.

These infectious agents were later discovered to be misfolded proteins, or prions.

Child molestation allegations and convictions
In the course of his research trips in the South Pacific, Gajdusek had brought 56 mostly male children back to live with him in the United States and provided them with the opportunity to receive high school and college education. One of these boys, now a grown man, later accused Gajdusek of molesting him as a child.

Gajdusek was charged with child molestation in April 1996, based on incriminating entries in published journals, his personal diary, and statements from a victim. In journals published and distributed by the NIH, Gajdusek wrote about sex between men and boys in New Guinea, Micronesia, and other Polynesian islands, and about his own sexual experiences with boys during his research trips.

Gajdusek pleaded guilty in 1997 and, under a plea bargain, was sentenced to 12 months in jail. After his release in 1998, he was permitted to serve his five-year unsupervised probation in Europe. He never returned to the United States and lived in Amsterdam, spending winters in Tromsø, Norway, where the polar night around the winter solstice helped him to do more work.

Gajdusek's treatment was denounced in October 1996 as anti-elitist and unduly harsh by controversial former Edinburgh University psychologist Chris Brand.

The documentary The Genius and the Boys by Bosse Lindquist, first shown on BBC Four on June 1, 2009, notes that "seven men testified in confidentiality about Gajdusek having had sex with them when they were boys", that four said "the sex was untroubling", while for three of them "the sex was a shaming, abusive, and a violation". One of these boys, the son of a friend and now an adult, appears in the film. Furthermore, Gajdusek openly admits to molesting boys and his approval of incest. The film tries to analyse Gajdusek's sexual behaviour, and also to understand his motivations for science, exploration, and life.

Death and legacy
Gajdusek died December 12, 2008, in Tromsø, Norway, at the age of 85. He was working and visiting colleagues in Tromsø at the time of his death.

Hanya Yanagihara's 2013 novel, The People in the Trees, is based on Gajdusek's life, research, and child molestation conviction. The novel centers on a character named A. Norton Perina, inspired by Gajdusek, who researches the life-extending properties of sacred turtle meat in Micronesia.

Works

Books
Acute Infectious Hemorrhagic Fevers and Mycotoxicosis in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1953), Washington, DC: Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Articles and monographs

Daniel C. Gajdusek was a prolific science author come diarist, and published over 1,000 original papers, reviews and commentaries in scientific and medical journals. This is an incomplete list of some of the more cited ones.

 Gajdusek, Daniel Carleton. Unconventional viruses and the origin and disappearance of kuru. National Institutes of Health, 1977.

Further reading

External links

  Current autobiography in Hungarian

D. Carleton Gajdusek Papers MSS 421. Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego Library.
David M. Asher with Michel B. A. Oldstone, "D. Carleton Gajdusek", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (2013)

References

American expatriates in Norway
American Nobel laureates
American people convicted of child sexual abuse
American people of Hungarian descent
Columbia University faculty
Harvard Medical School alumni
University of Rochester alumni
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine
People from Yonkers, New York
American people of Slovak descent
1923 births
2008 deaths
WEHI alumni
American expatriates in the Netherlands
American expatriates in France
Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science
United States Army Medical Corps officers
Members of the American Philosophical Society

Daniel Carleton Gajdusek