Templar Arizona is a webcomic written and drawn by Charlie Spike Trotman. It was hosted on Webcomics Nation. Trotman describes Templar, Arizona as "a story about a town, and the people who live there", specifically referring to the city of Templar as a character rather than a setting. The neologism "culture fiction" was coined to describe it.

The fictional city of Templar exists in a subtly different alternate universe. Trotman describes it as "a slightly irregular Arizona that fell off the back of a truck somewhere, and now all the power outlets are a weird shape and a couple of wars never happened". This city is most strongly marked by its fictional subcultures (many of which are veiled commentary on real ones), as well as its unusual architecture and fashion. However, it lacks any fantasy or science fiction elements, which suggests that the comic is closer to the alternate history genre.

The webcomic has received various awards since its start in 2005.

Development
Spike Trotman started created Templar, Arizona on June 5, 2005, and she ended the series on September 29, 2014.

Before Kickstarter came into popularity, Trotman implemented PayPal and similar online banking services to set up an independent pre-ordering system for Templar, Arizona.

Characters
 Templar is a large city in northeastern Arizona, on the banks of a dried-up river.
 Benjamin Kowalski is a recent transplant to Templar, previously hailing from Yakima. He is short, highly intelligent, and quiet. He recently started a new job writing for the city newspaper, the Templar Crusade. An adoptee from South Korea, Ben came to Arizona to escape yet-undefined conflicts in his home life.
 Reagan Mancuso lives in the same apartment building as Ben. She is large, highly intelligent, and pushy, and seemingly takes pride in her obnoxiousness. Ray works for a highly suspect retail store named Kingdom Come, and dresses like a drag queen.
 Eugene Carmichael lives in the apartment above Ben's. He is tattooed, possibly slightly mentally retarded due to near-suffocation during birth, and mercifully free from the pressures of grace. Gene is also the only member of his considerably large family with hair - the rest shave their heads as part of their Jakeskin (as in "Jake's kin") philosophy and speak in a cryptic philosophical manner, especially Gene's mother, who waxes poetic about Gene's youth and her choices in raising him. He was named for the French romantic painter Eugène Delacroix (in keeping with the Jake idea of "keeping names alive") and plays in the popular local band Borndown.
 Zoradysis Carmichael is Gene's daughter. She is six years old, smarter than her dad, and uncontrolled. She just went to school for the first time. Zora has recently shaved her head in keeping with her family's Jake traditions.
 Scipio Spencer (pronounced "Skippy-o") is a friend of Reagan. He is unusually tall, well-read, and easily frustrated. Scip is heavily influenced by eastern philosophy, especially Buddhism. He works as a "close-protection officer" (read: bodyguard), wears a kilt, and has a pet chicken named Flora.
 Thutmose Shen, who goes simply by "Moze", is a musician in the band Borndown with Gene. He's overweight, hirsute, perpetually smiling, and extremely libidinous. He owns an ugly pug dog named Goblin. He is a Nile Revivalist, but as with all things he seems not to take it too seriously.
 Ra Shen, who violently enforces his preferred moniker of "Sunny", is the drummer and manager of Borndown. A former Diesel (illegal underground hockey) player, he entered the music business after sustaining a severe injury. Profane, opinionated, and intense, he is an interesting counterpoint to Gene and Moze. Like his cousin Moze, he, too, is a Nile Revivalist, albeit nonpracticing.
 Epiphany de la Cruz, a.k.a. "Pippi", is a troubled, standoffish high-school student and Scip's roommate. She has an impressive rap sheet and closely follows Templar's TV personalities.
Doctor Eli Bash lives in a basement apartment in Ben's building. He is an extremely eccentric man with an unspecified doctorate. He is new to the building, and his room is full of unpacked boxes which contain antique medical sculptures which he has collected over the years. Doctor Bash is in the process of separating from his wife, an affluent woman from The Sorrows, a rich area of town. The pair have at least two children together, a son named Ransom and a daughter named Cascade, who Bash calls "Cassie." It was Cassie who sent the antiques to Doctor Bash, possibly in an attempt to keep her mother from selling them.
 Heather Anne Morgan, a.k.a. "Morgan", is a freckled, red-haired woman from Nebraska. Works for the magazine Pandorea, and has a fascination with space.
 The Elliots: Elliot "Biggs" Bigelow and Elliot James "EJ" Adair. An addict and his dependent, angry companion. Have recently run into trouble with Eugene's family, the Jakeskin.
 Tuesday Pryor: One of the television personalities in the city of Templar. Lives on King Street, an upper-crust section of Templar. Has a frienemy relationship with Curio, another girl on King Street. Her mother works at Pandorea.
 Curio Pepper: Real name: Prabhjot Kaur. Another girl who lives on King Street, and a "friend" of Tuesday's.
 Jakeskin: A survivalist religious group, and Eugene's family. Most are shaved bald, and tend to wield butcher knives.

Recognition

Templar has been praised for its natural and humorous dialogue, the strength of its character design (both visually and in personality), the depth of its setting, and for the quality of its art. The writing has distinct speech patterns for each of the cast members.

Templar, Arizona was named as one of the best webcomics of 2005 by The Webcomics Examiner. Nominated for the 2006 Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards in the categories "Outstanding New Character Design", "Outstanding Environment Design", "Outstanding Character Writing", "Outstanding Long Form Comic", and "Outstanding Story Concept", it won in the "Character Design" and "Character Writing" categories.

In the 2007 Glyph Comics Awards, Trotman won the Rising Star Award for Templar, Arizona.

References

External links

Chapter 1: The Great Outdoors at Webcomics Nation
Chapter 2: The Mob Goes Wild at Webcomics Nation
Templar, Arizona review, ComixTalk, March 2008

2000s webcomics
2005 webcomic debuts
2014 webcomic endings
Alternate history comics
American comedy webcomics
Drama webcomics
Long-form webcomics
Web Cartoonists' Choice Award winners
Webcomics in print

Templar, Arizona


Lawrence Dillon (born July 3, 1959) is an American composer, and Composer in Residence at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. His music has a wide range of expression, generally within a tonal idiom notable both for its rhythmic propulsiveness and a strong lyrical element.  Acclaimed particularly for his chamber music, he has also written extensively for voice and large ensembles.

Early life and education
Dillon was born in Summit, New Jersey, the youngest of eight children raised by a widowed mother.  He lost 50% of his hearing in an early childhood bout with chicken pox. Intrigued by his siblings' piano lessons, he began his own at age seven, and soon developed a habit of composing a new work for his lesson each week. In 1985, he became the youngest composer to earn a doctorate at The Juilliard School, winning the Gretchaninoff Prize upon graduation. He studied privately with Vincent Persichetti, and in classes with Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, David Diamond, Leon Fleischer and Roger Sessions. Other teachers included Edwin Finckel and James Sellars.  As a student, he won an ASCAP Young Composers Award and first prize in the annual CRS New Music Competition. Upon graduation, he was appointed to the Juilliard faculty.

Career highlights
In 1990, Dillon was offered the position of Assistant Dean at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts where he is now Composer in Residence. His works are recorded on the Bridge, Naxos and Albany labels and published by American Composers Editions, a subdivision of BMI. In recent years, he has received increasing recognition for music that Gramophone called "arresting and appealing."  In the last ten years, his compositions have been commissioned and performed by the Emerson String Quartet, Lauren Flanigan,  the Ravinia Festival, the Daedalus String Quartet, the Lincoln Trio, the Seattle Chamber Music Society, the Cassatt String Quartet, the Kavafian/Jolley/Vonsattel Trio, Danielle Belén, Le Train Bleu, the Mansfield Symphony, the Boise Philharmonic, Wintergreen Summer Arts Festival, the Salt Lake City Symphony, the Quartetto di Sassofoni d'Accademia, the Winston-Salem Symphony, Low and Lower, the University of Utah and the Idyllwild Symphony Orchestra. From 1999-2014 he worked on the Invisible Cities String Quartet Cycle, a set of six quartets zooming in on individual aspects of the quartet tradition.

Dillon has been a guest composer at numerous schools and festivals, including The Curtis Institute of Music, the St. Petersburg/Rimsky Korsakov Conservatory, SUNY Stony Brook, the Colburn School of Music, the Ravinia Festival, the Hartt School of Music, the Charles Ives Center, Seisen International School, Wintergreen Summer Arts Festival, Charlotte New Music Festival, Spoleto Festival and Indiana University.

Dillon was the Featured American Composer in the February 2006 issue of CHAMBER MUSIC magazine.  He is a two-time winner of the North Carolina Artist Fellowship, the highest honor accorded to artists in the state.

Critical reception
Reviewers of Dillon's music have repeatedly noted his arresting ideas, technical skill, lyricism and wit.  In a review of his fourth string quartet, the Washington Post cited the work's "jewel-like craftsmanship," saying, "Dillon's control of time was a conspicuously imaginative element throughout."  Gramophone called his recording Insects and Paper Airplanes "Sly and mysterious…just when you thought the string quartet may have reached the edge of sonic possibilities, along comes a composer who makes something novel, haunting and whimsical of the genre… Each score is an arresting and appealing creation, full of fanciful and lyrical flourishes…Highly recommended."  And Musicweb International commented on "music that is often profound without being pretentious, sometimes light-hearted but never 'lite', humorous without being arch, and immensely appealing but never frivolous."  Fanfare magazine called him "an original in the best sense of the word."

Recordings
 Six Scenes and a Fantasy (1983), produced by Contemporary Record Society, along with works by Peter Mennin, Henry Cowell and Martin Rokeach
 Chamber Music of Lawrence Dillon (2000), produced by Albany Records.  Contains Furies and Muses, Devotion and String Quartet No. 1: Jests and Tenderness performed by the Borromeo, Cassatt and Mendelssohn String Quartets with flutist Ransom Wilson and bassoonist Jeff Keesecker
 A New Century Christmas (2000), contains The Last Nowell and O Hellish Night performed by the New Century Saxophone Quartet
 Appendage and Other Stories (2009), produced by Albany Records.  Contains spoken-text chamber works Entrance and Exit, as well as the song cycle Appendage and a song Still Point
 Insects and Paper Airplanes (2010), produced by Bridge Records.  Contains String Quartet No. 2: Flight, String Quartet No. 3: Air, String Quartet No. 4: The Infinite Sphere and a piano quartet What Happened performed by the Daedalus String Quartet and Benjamin Hochman
 Lawrence Dillon Violin Music (2011), produced by Naxos Records.  Contains seven works for violin solo and violin with one other instrument performed by Danielle Belén
Yael Manor Elixir (2015), produced by ACA.  Includes the debut recording of Honey for solo piano.

Major works
 Appendage (1993), recorded by Lauren Flanigan, conducted by Ransom Wilson;
 Devotion (1996), recorded by flutist Ransom Wilson and the Borromeo String Quartet;
 Furies and Muses (1997), premiered and recorded by the Cassatt String Quartet and bassoonist Jeffrey Keesecker;
String Quartet No. 1: Jests and Tenderness (1999), premiered and recorded by the Mendelssohn String Quartet;
String Quartet No. 2: Flight (2002), premiered and recorded by the Daedalus Quartet;
 Amadeus ex machina (2001), given its Russian premiere by the St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic;
 Wright Flight (2003) for orchestra, projected images and three strands of narrative, commissioned by the 2003 Illuminations festival at Roanoke Island Festival Park;
 Revenant: Concerto for Horn and Orchestra (2005), premiered by hornist David Jolley with the composer conducting;
 What Happened (2005), for piano quartet, premiered by the Atlantic Ensemble;
 Entrance and Exit (2007), two concert-framing works for actor and chamber ensemble;
 String Quartet No. 4: The Infinite Sphere (2009), commissioned and recorded by the Daedalus String Quartet;
 String Quartet No. 5: Through the Night (2009), commissioned by the Emerson String Quartet;
 Figments and Fragments (2010), commissioned by the Idyllwild Symphony Orchestra, the Boise Philharmonic, the University of Utah Philharmonia and the Salt Lake Symphony;
 Seven Stories (2013), premiered by Le Train Bleu with soprano Mary Mackenzie;
 Sanctuary (2013) septet for piano, horn and strings, commissioned and premiered by the Seattle Chamber Music Society;
 String Quartet No. 6: Rapid Eye (2014), commissioned by the Carpe Diem String Quartet.

Dillon's blog Infinite Curves was featured on Sequenza21.com for ten years before moving to ArtsJournal.

References

External links

1959 births
Living people
20th-century classical composers
21st-century classical composers
American male classical composers
American classical composers
Musicians from Summit, New Jersey
Juilliard School alumni
University of North Carolina School of the Arts faculty
Juilliard School faculty
21st-century American composers
20th-century American composers
Classical musicians from New Jersey
20th-century American male musicians
21st-century American male musicians

Lawrence Dillon


El Socialista is a socialist newspaper published in Madrid, Spain. The paper is the organ of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE).

History and profile
El Socialista was established by Pablo Iglesias, founder of the PSOE, in Madrid, and the first issue appeared on 12 March 1886. The paper is owned and published by the PSOE and its union, Union General de Trabajadores (UGT). The headquarters of the paper is in Madrid.

It was started as a two-page publication. In 1913 the paper began to be published daily. In December 1935 the control of the paper was taken by the centrist group within the PSOE led by Indalecio Prieto as a result of the resignation of Francisco Largo Caballero from the presidency of the party.

El Socialista was published weekly in the early 1970s. The paper was closed during the rule of Francisco Franco. However, El Socialista continued its publication clandestinely in that period. In 1978 it resumed its regular publication.

The paper is currently published monthly, while its online edition is active every day.

Contributors and editors
Miguel Unamuno and Santiago Carrillo were among the early contributors. The paper was first directed by its founder Pablo Iglesias who held the post until 1913 when Mariano García Cortes began to edit it. In 1914 Eduardo Torralba Beci was appointed editor-in-chief of El Socialista, replacing Cortes in the post. Torralba served in the post for one year, and Pablo Iglesias retook the paper and edited it until his death in 1925.

Enrique Angulo, son-in-law of the socialist politician Ramón Lamoneda, also served as the director of the paper. Another director was Andrés Saborit. In the mid-1930s the editor was Julián Zugazagoitia.

Content and circulation
El Socialista did not show enthusiasm about the communist revolution in Russia in 1917. It even argued that the revolution was a departure from the significant obligation of Russia to defeat the German Empire. The first supportive article about the revolution appeared in March 1918. In the early 1930s El Socialista criticized the New Deal economic program of the USA. With the rise of conservatism in Spain from 1933 the paper became one of the opposition publications criticizing the government. Immediately after World War II El Socialista adopted an anti-Communist political stance and reported the political tenets of the PSOE. In the 1940s and 1950s it supported the Zionist causes and was an ardent critic of the Arabs who were portrayed in a negative manner. It also considered Egypt as "a miserable country."

In 1949 El Socialista sold only 8,000 copies.

References

External links

1886 establishments in Spain
Daily newspapers published in Spain
Monthly newspapers
Newspapers published in Madrid
Newspapers established in 1886
Socialist newspapers
Spanish-language newspapers
Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
Weekly newspapers published in Spain
Banned newspapers
Censorship in Spain

El Socialista (newspaper)


Zavikon Island refers to either the larger or the pair of islands in the Thousand Islands archipelago on the St. Lawrence River between New York and Ontario, two kilometres (1¼ miles) southeast of Rockport, Ontario and about  north of the international boundary. As confirmed by the Canadian Department of Natural Resources, Zavikon Island is located in Canadian territory and is part of the township of Leeds and the Thousand Islands in The United Counties of Leeds and Grenville.

Overview
The smaller and more southeasterly of the pair of islands is sometimes called Little Zavikon Island.  It has a US-Canada Boundary Commission reference monument, from which, along with other reference monuments on the shore and islands, surveying measurement are used to calculate the international boundary line turning points in the waterway (in this case, about  southeast of the southern tip of Little Zavikon Island as shown on the largest scale USGS map of the area).

A popular but incorrect tale among local guides is that the larger island is in Canada, while "Little Zavikon Island" is in the United States, and that the footbridge between them is the "shortest international bridge in the world".  In fact, however, both islands are in Canada.

References

External links

 "The World's Shortest International Bridge." Atlas Obscura

Islands of the Thousand Islands in Ontario
Landforms of Leeds and Grenville United Counties

Zavikon Island


Božo Kos (3 November 1931 – 19 April 2009) was a Slovene illustrator, caricaturist and comics artist. He illustrated over forty children's books and his illustrations appeared in numerous magazines for children and adults.

Kos was born in Maribor. He studied physics at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Ljubljana and in order to support himself financially during his studies he found a job as a cartoonist for the satirical journal Pavliha and the newspaper Večer. After completing his studies he became a free-lance artist. He was also editor of Pavliha and the children's magazine Ciciban. He also collaborated with the national broadcasting house and for his illustrations for the television programme Živalski karneval received the Prešeren Foundation Award in 1966. He also won the Levstik Award for his book illustrations twice. In 1968 it was bestowed for two books, Veliki in mali kapitan and Kavboj Pipec in Rdeča pesa (Captain Big and Captain Little and Pipec the Cowboy and Red Beat), the latter being one of his best known works with highly recognizable characters that even appeared on stamps issued by the Slovenian Post Office in 2001. In 1972 he won the award for his illustrations in Branka Jurca's book Rodiš se samo enkrat (You Are Only Born Once).

References

Slovenian illustrators
Slovenian caricaturists
1931 births
2009 deaths
Artists from Maribor
Prešeren Award laureates
Levstik Award laureates
University of Ljubljana alumni

Božo Kos


Temple Hauptfleisch is a South African playwright and academic, a professor emeritus of drama at Stellenbosch University.

Haupfleisch did his undergraduate studies at the University of the Orange Free State, graduating in 1966, and then went on to graduate studies at the University of South Africa, earning a master's degree in 1972 and a doctorate in 1978. At Stellenbosch, he chaired the drama department from 1995 to 2005. He is a co-founder (in 1987) and editor-in-chief of the South African Theatre Journal.

He is the author of the book Theatre and Society in South Africa: Reflections in a Fractured Mirror (Pretoria: J. L. van Schaik, 1997).

References

Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
University of the Free State alumni
University of South Africa alumni
Academic staff of Stellenbosch University
Theatrologists
South African dramatists and playwrights

Temple Hauptfleisch


Sir David Salomons, 1st Baronet (22 November 1797 – 18 July 1873), was a leading figure in the 19th century struggle for Jewish emancipation in the United Kingdom. He was the first Jewish Sheriff of the City of London and Lord Mayor of London.

Early life
Born in London, the son of Levy Salomons of St Mary Axe and Frant, Sussex, and Matilda de Metz of Leyden (married in 1795), he followed his father into business in the City of London, where he was a successful banker. Salomons was one of the founders of the London and Westminster Bank (now the NatWest), and a member of the London Stock Exchange.

In 1835 he was elected as sheriff of the City of London. However, he was unable to take up the post, because the mandatory oath of office included Christian statements of faith.  The Sheriffs' Declaration Act was passed later that year, and Salomons was able to take up the post. In 1839, he was High Sheriff of Kent, where his Broomhill estate  , now the Salomons Museum,  was located near Tunbridge Wells.

In December 1835, Salomons was elected as an Alderman of the City of London, but again faced an unacceptable oath, and on this occasion the law was not changed.  Salomons was disqualified, but was re-elected in 1847, after the Religious Opinions Relief Act had amended the oath. In 1855, the Aldermen elected him as Lord Mayor of London.

In the meantime, he trained as a lawyer and was called to the bar in 1849, though he did not practise as a barrister. However, he was the first Jewish magistrate in England. In 1847 he served on the committee of the British Relief Association.

Parliament
In 1851, he stood as a Liberal candidate at a by-election in the  Greenwich constituency, and on 28 June he was elected as one of the constituency's two Members of Parliament (MPs). He had previously been defeated in the 1847 general election.

He was not permitted to serve in the House of Commons, because he had not taken the oath of abjuration in the form established by Parliament. However, he did not withdraw quietly: instead he took the oath, but omitted the Christian phrases, and took his seat on the government benches.

He was asked to withdraw, and did so on the second request, but he returned three days later, on 21 July 1851. In the debate that followed, Salomons defended his presence on grounds of having been elected by a large majority, but was eventually removed by the Sergeant-at-Arms, and fined £500 for having voted illegally in three divisions of the House. He failed to win re-election in the 1852 general election.

When the law was eventually changed in 1858, Lionel de Rothschild became the first Jewish MP to legally take his seat, having been elected in 1857. In the 1859 general election, David Salomons was re-elected for Greenwich and served as the constituency's MP until his death in 1873.

His country house Broomhill north of Tunbridge Wells is now preserved as the Salomons Museum.

Family

Salomons married in 1825 Jeanette, daughter of Solomon Cohen of Canonbury House and Hannah Samuel. Her aunts Judith and Henriette were the wives of Sir Moses Montefiore and Nathan Mayer Rothschild respectively. After her death in 1867 Salomons married Cecilia, the daughter of Samuel Moses Samuel in 1872. He was made a baronet of Broom Hill in the parish of Tonbridge in the County of Kent and of Great Cumberland Place in the County of Middlesex on 26 October 1869.

He died on 18 July 1873, and is buried in the Jewish Cemetery at West Ham. He had no children by either of his marriages, so his estate and titles passed to his nephew David Lionel Salomons, whom he had brought up after the death of Sir David's brother Philip Salomons.

See also
Emancipation of the Jews in England
Lionel de Rothschild

References
 Hyamson, Albert Montefiore (1939) David Salomons  Methuen, London;
Burke's Peerage

External links

1797 births
1873 deaths
Businesspeople from London
19th-century lord mayors of London
19th-century English politicians
English Jews
English bankers
English barristers
David
Jewish mayors
Liberal Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies
UK MPs 1847–1852
UK MPs 1857–1859
UK MPs 1859–1865
UK MPs 1865–1868
UK MPs 1868–1874
High Sheriffs of Kent
Sheriffs of the City of London
Jewish British politicians
People from Frant
19th-century English businesspeople

David Salomons


Sweet Mama  is a 1930 American pre-Code talkie comedy drama film with songs, which was directed by Edward F. Cline and produced and distributed by First National Pictures. The film stars Alice White, David Manners, Kenneth Thomson and Rita Flynn. Planned as a full-scale musical, and released as such for a short time in the summer of 1930, most of the songs were cut from general release prints by the autumn of 1930 due to the public's aversion for musicals.

Plot
When the film begins we find Alice White stranded several hundred miles away from New York with a burlesque troupe. She receives a telegraph that her boyfriend, played by David Manners, is in jail. White boards a train headed for New York without a ticket because she has no money. When the conductor discovers she has no ticket she is almost thrown off the train. A detective, played by Robert Elliott, befriends White and offers to let White borrow the money she needs for a ticket. When she arrives in New York she finds that Manners has been bailed out by a friend and is working for Kenneth Thomson, playing as a gangster who runs a nightclub. White is disappointed to find that her boyfriend is working for criminals. She gets some money from Manners to pay back Elliott for the money he gave her for a train ticket. Elliott notices that she is paying with bills that have been reported stolen. White confesses everything she knows to the detective about her boyfriend and his new employer. Elliott asks White to get a job at the nightclub so that she can get evidence against the gangsters and in return he promises to clear her boyfriend of any wrongdoing. White easily gets a job singing and dancing at the club. Eventually she hears plans about a bank robbery and reports everything to Elliott. When the gangster attempt to rob the bank they realize that the police are watching and waiting and conclude that someone has informed the police ahead of time. Thompson suspects that White has informed the police. In order to save her, Manners implicates himself and the gangsters get ready to stage an accidental suicide for him. They plan to throw Manners out of the window of Thompson's penthouse apartment. White informs the police and arrives in the nick of time to save Manners. Thompson, realizing now that the police have ample evidence against him, attempts to escape and is shot by the police. Manners and White are happily reunited and the film ends.

Cast
Alice White as Goldie
David Manners as Jimmy
Kenneth Thomson as Joe Palmer
Rita Flynn as Lulu
Lee Moran as Al Hadrick
Richard Cramer as Elmer
Robert Elliott as Mack
Lew Harvey as Gangster
Lee Shumway as Gangster

Songs
"Giving It This and That" Sung by Alice White (written by Archie Gottler and George W. Meyer)

Release
Due to the public's backlash against musicals late in 1930, most of the musical numbers were cut from the film to make it more marketable, which accounts for the very short running time of the film, 54 minutes. The film was advertised as a gangster picture, a genre which had become very popular with the public. The complete film, with all the music intact, was released intact in countries outside the United States where a backlash against musicals never occurred.

Preservation status
The status of the full 77-minute version of the film is unknown, but a 54-minute version of the film, with most of the musical numbers edited out, does exist.

References

External links

1930 films
First National Pictures films
Films directed by Edward F. Cline
American black-and-white films
American comedy-drama films
1930 comedy-drama films
1930s English-language films
1930s American films

Sweet Mama (film)


Son Jong-nam (11 March 1958 – 7 December 2008) was a North Korean defector and Christian missionary, who died in a Pyongyang prison after being arrested in 2006.

Early life
Son was born in Chongjin, North Hamgyong. From 1973 to 1983, he served in the Korean People's Army as part of the presidential security service, rising to the rank of master sergeant; following his discharge, he began working at performing arts centre run by the military. Around 1992, he had one daughter. In 1997, his wife, pregnant with their second child, was arrested for allegedly insulting Kim Jong-il's mismanagement of the economy and blaming him for the North Korean famine. She was beaten while in custody, suffering a miscarriage as a result. That same year, Son's brother Son Jong-hun (손정훈) was charged with the illegal export of strategic items, and fled to China; he maintains that the charges were false.

Defection
In January 1998, Son took his wife and daughter and fled North Korea, joining his brother in Yanji, Yanbian Korean Autonomous Region in northeast China's Jilin province. A South Korean missionary, who lived in the region on the pretext of involvement in the lumber business, sheltered them for some time after their arrival. However, Son's wife died of leukaemia seven months later. Son, distraught, began to grow closer to the missionary, leading to his eventual conversion to Christianity; he then aided the missionaries in converting other North Korean defectors in China. He was arrested by Chinese police and deported back to North Korea in January 2001, where his brother says he suffered electrical shocks and beatings with clubs, causing a limp in his leg and the loss of  of body weight. After his release in 2004, he sneaked back into China to see his daughter.

Final return to North Korea
Son did not remain in China for long; he soon returned to North Korea with Bibles and cassette tapes in an effort to proselytise people in his home country. However, in January 2006, police found the Bibles at his home in Hoeryong and arrested him again. According to his brother, the charges were illegal border crossing, meeting with enemies of the state, and disseminating anti-state literature. Son was imprisoned in the basement of the State Security Department in Pyongyang.

In April, his brother submitted a petition to South Korea's National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to halt his public execution, and held a press conference criticising the NHRC for their inaction on issues of human rights in North Korea. However, NHRC officials stated that the petition was without effect because North Korea was not subject to their intervention. Christian Solidarity Worldwide also planned a protest in front of the North Korean embassy in London around the same time as Son's brother submitted his petition. In July, Son's brother went on to meet with the United States Department of State officials and members of Congress to discuss his brother's case, including senator Sam Brownback, Jim Inhofe of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, and Richard Lugar of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Todd Nettleton of American Christian organisation Voice of the Martyrs also attempted to organise people in the United States and South Korea to bring international pressure to bear on the North Korean government over the issue of Son's imprisonment.

Son's brother believes that the international pressure led North Korean authorities to cancel his public execution, only to switch to torturing him to death as a less public method of killing him. According to a November 2009 statement from a fellow State Security Department prison inmate, Son died there on December 7, 2008.

References

1958 births
2008 deaths
North Korean Protestants
North Korean defectors
North Korean expatriates in China
North Korean military personnel
North Korean prisoners sentenced to death
North Korean people who died in prison custody
People from Chongjin
Prisoners sentenced to death by North Korea
Prisoners who died in North Korean detention
Converts to Protestantism from atheism or agnosticism
21st-century Christian martyrs

Son Jong-nam


Our Lady of Ljeviš (; ) is a 14th-century Serbian Orthodox church in the town of Prizren, in southern Kosovo. Since 2006, the church is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site named Medieval Monuments in Kosovo.

In the beginning of the 14th century it was built during the reign of Stefan Milutin, King of Serbia, on the site of a former Byzantine church. The rebuilt church featured frescoes by Byzantine Greek painters, Michael and Eutychios Astrapas. After the Ottomans completed its annexation of the region in the 15th century, a minaret was erected and the complex was converted into a mosque. In 1912, when the Serbian army annexed Kosovo, the status of the church was restored. After World War II, under SFR Yugoslavia, it saw extensive restoration and reconstruction and functioned as a museum. The site was heavily damaged during the 2004 unrest in Kosovo and has been going through several phases of restoration since then.

Name
Bogorodica ljeviška was the official name in Milutin's era although the church was popularly known as the Church of St. Paraskeva. This is the name by which it is known by both Albanians as Shën Premte and Serbs as Sveta Petka. Consequently, when it became a mosque it was known Cuma Cami (, ), the Friday Mosque, although it was officially known as Fatih Cami, Mehmed Fatih's mosque.

"Ljeviška" (of Ljeviš) is a Serbianized version of the Greek word "Eleusa" (Ελεούσα), meaning "merciful", a type of depiction of the Virgin Mary in icons in which the infant Jesus Christ is nestled against her cheek.

History
The site has been used as a religious and burial site since antiquity. Remains of an altar of the Roman era have been found in the outer walls of the later church. A stone slab which depicts a laurel wreath has also been found within the walls of the church. It may have been part of a public building of the same era in the region of Prizren. These findings are common of medieval times, as parts of older buildings were frequently used as building materials (spolia). They highlight valuable information about the city of Prizren in the Roman period and indicate that it may have been a settlement bigger than a village at that time.

Stefan Milutin, King of Serbia commissioned its rebuilding and expansion in 1306/7 on the site of a Byzantine basilica of the 11th century. The church was built by Vitus of Kotor. The Byzantine church had three naves to which Milutin added two more. The architecture of the rebuilt church utilized Late Byzantine architecture through the use of five domes, monumental inscriptions in its exterior and the Byzantine belfry. Milutin chose to utilize these elements as a symbol in order to highlight his own partially Byzantine origin and relation to the imperial family. Another aspect of the frescoes of Bogorodica is their depiction of Orthodox councils as a symbol that referred to the challenges the Orthodox Church faced against the Catholic Church, a situation common in the borderlands between Catholicism and Orthodoxy in the Balkans.

In the 15th century, Prizren became part of the expanding Ottoman Empire. In 1455, Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror (Fatih Mehmet) visited Prizren, which at the time had eight Orthodox and two Catholic churches. Sultan Mehmed chose Bogorodica to become a mosque. An inscription in the church describes the event of the conversion. The conversion into a mosque saw the erection of a minaret, which was removed in 1923 after Serbia had annexed Kosovo. In this period, it was formally called Fatih camisi, while popularly it was known as Cuma Cami, which is how the site is known to the local inhabitants. The archival records of the mosque are a valuable source for the history of Ottoman Prizren. In the Great Turkish War, the Austrian army held Prizren briefly. As a plague erupted, imperial general Silvio Piccolomini visited Prizren to meet Catholic Archbishop Pjetër Bogdani. There, a few days later he died as he had contracted the plague and was buried in the graveyard of the church.

In 1948, it was recognized by the Yugoslav government as a protected cultural site and in 1950–52 a large-scale reconstruction and restoration project began. When it was completed, the site was turned into a museum. Further restoration work was done in the 1970s and 1980s.
In 1990, Serbia designated it a Monument of Culture of Exceptional Importance. After the Kosovo War, the complex was guarded by KFOR. It was heavily damaged during the 2004 unrest in Kosovo when it was burnt along with other Serbian Orthodox sites. On 13 July 2006, it was placed on UNESCO's World Heritage List as an extension of the Visoki Dečani site (named Medieval Monuments in Kosovo), which, as a whole, was placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger. In 2005–2008, it was restored by the Commission for Implementation of Reconstruction for Serbian Orthodox Church monuments in Kosovo of the European Union. The site is part of the protected cultural heritage of the Kosovo under its Ministry of Culture. In 2020, conservation and restoration of the exterior and churchyard was carried out, under finance Serbian Ministry of Culture and Information after authorization was secured from local institutions.

Gallery

Sources

References

Bibliography

External links

 Photograph collection of the Blago Fund

14th-century Serbian Orthodox church buildings
Churches completed in 1307
Cultural heritage of Kosovo
Destroyed churches in Kosovo
Medieval Serbian sites in Kosovo
Cultural Monuments of Exceptional Importance (Serbia)
Monuments and memorials in Kosovo
Churches destroyed by arson
Religious buildings and structures in Prizren
Serbian Orthodox cathedrals in Kosovo
World Heritage Sites in Serbia
Archbishopric of Ohrid

Our Lady of Ljeviš


Giovanni Battista Nauclerio (Naples, 1666 - Naples, 1739) was an Italian architect and engineer, active in Naples, Italy.

Biography
Nauclerio is described as one of the Naples architects who went against the grain, paving the way for columned neoclassicism of the 18th century. He took over the work for the completion of the cloister of San Domenico Maggiore from his collaborator Francesco Antonio Picchiati. In 1704, he designed the church and monasteries of San Francesco degli Scarioni. In 1704, he designed the church of Santi Demetrio e Bonifacio. In 1708, he completed the construction of the church of San Giovanni Battista delle Monache, which had been designed by Francesco Picchiatti. In 1720, he designed Villa Paternò on the hill of Capodimonte. After the death of Arcangelo Guglielmelli in 1723, he helped complete the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie a Mondragone. He also helped the main altar for the church of San Diego all'Ospedaletto, the baldacchino in San Pietro ad Aram,  and likely aided in the restructuring of Santi Bernardo e Margherita and the church of Santa Maria di Caravaggio.

Sources

Architects from Naples
1666 births
1739 deaths
17th-century Italian architects
18th-century Italian architects
Italian Baroque architects
Engineers from Naples
Italian ecclesiastical architects

Giovanni Battista Nauclerio


Peter Clive Sarnak  (born 18 December 1953) is a South African-born mathematician with dual South-African and American nationalities. Sarnak has been a member of the permanent faculty of the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study since 2007. He is also Eugene Higgins Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University since 2002, succeeding Sir Andrew Wiles, and is an editor of the Annals of Mathematics. He is known for his work in analytic number theory. He also sits on the Board of Adjudicators and the selection committee for the Mathematics award, given under the auspices of the Shaw Prize.

Education
Sarnak is the grandson of one of Johannesburg's leading rabbis and lived in Israel for three years as a child. He graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand (BSc 1975, BSc(Hons) 1976) and Stanford University (PhD 1980), under the direction of Paul Cohen. Sarnak's highly cited work (with A. Lubotzky and R. Phillips) applied deep results in number theory to Ramanujan graphs, with connections to combinatorics and computer science.

Career and research
Sarnak has made major contributions to analysis and number theory. He is widely recognised internationally as one of the leading analytic number theorists of his generation. His early work on the existence of cusp forms led to the disproof of a conjecture of Atle Selberg. He has obtained the strongest known bounds towards the Ramanujan–Petersson conjectures for sparse graphs, and he was one of the first to exploit connections between certain questions of theoretical physics and analytic number theory. There are fundamental contributions to arithmetical quantum chaos, a term which he introduced, and to the relationship between random matrix theory and the zeros of L-functions. His work on subconvexity for Rankin–Selberg L-functions led to the resolution of Hilbert's eleventh problem. During his career he has held numerous appointments including:
Assistant Professor, 1980–83; Associate Professor, 1983; Professor, 2001–2005, Courant Institute, New York University
Associate Professor, 1984–87; Professor, 1987–91, Stanford University
Professor, 1991–; H. Fine Professor, 1995–96; Chairman, Dept of Mathematics, 1996–99; Eugene Higgins Professor, 2002–, Princeton University
Member, 1999–2002 and 2005–2007; Faculty, 2007–, Institute for Advanced Study

Publications

Some Applications of Modular Forms, 1990
(joint editor) Extremal Riemann Surfaces, 1997
 (joint author) Random Matrices, Frobenius Eigenvalues and Monodromy, 1998

 (joint editor) Selected Works of Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro (Collected Works), 2000
(joint author) Elementary Number Theory, Group Theory and Ramanujan Graphs, 2003
 (joint editor) Selected Papers Volume I-Peter Lax, 2005
 (joint editor) Automorphic Forms and Applications, 2007

Awards and honours
Peter Sarnak was awarded the Pólya Prize of the Society for Industrial & Applied Mathematics in 1998, the Ostrowski Prize in 2001, the Levi L. Conant Prize in 2003, the Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Number Theory in 2005 and a Lester R. Ford Award in 2012. He is the recipient of the 2014 Wolf Prize in Mathematics.
The University of the Witwatersrand conferred an honorary doctorate on Professor Peter Sarnak on 2 July 2014 for his distinguished contribution to the field of mathematics.

He was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in 1990 in Kyoto and a plenary speaker at the ICM in 1998 in Berlin.

He was also elected as member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) and Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2002. He became a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2008. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2010. He was also awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Chicago in 2015 and by Stockholm University in 2023. He was elected to the 2018 class of fellows of the American Mathematical Society. In 2019 he became the 10th non-British citizen to ever be awarded the Sylvester Medal of the Royal Society.

References

1953 births
Living people
People from Johannesburg
University of the Witwatersrand alumni
South African mathematicians
South African emigrants to the United States
20th-century American mathematicians
21st-century American mathematicians
Institute for Advanced Study faculty
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences faculty
Princeton University faculty
Stanford University alumni
Stanford University Department of Mathematics faculty
Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
Fellows of the Royal Society
Members of Academia Europaea
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
Wolf Prize in Mathematics laureates
Mathematical physicists
Number theorists
Members of the American Philosophical Society

Peter Sarnak


Letter to the Duke of Norfolk is a book written in 1875 by  St John Henry Newman. Consisting of about 150 pages, it was meant as a response to Protestant-Catholic polemics that had emerged in the era of the First Vatican Council. In the book, Newman comments on the injustice of Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone's claim that Catholics have "no mental freedom". Newman states that  Catholics "do not deserve his injurious reproach that we are captives and slaves of the Pope".

The book is formally addressed to the Duke of Norfolk, whose family was among the most prominent recusants after the Protestant Reformation.

External links
Letter to the Duke of Norfolk

Books about Catholicism
1875 non-fiction books
1875 in Christianity
Works by John Henry Newman

Letter to the Duke of Norfolk


The secondary palate is an anatomical structure that separates the nasal cavity from the mouth. It allows you to breathe and chew at the same time.  It is bony. It can be called the roof of the mouth. The development begins during pregnancy, in the embryonic state.

Head (body part)

Secondary palate


The Silesian Institute in Katowice () was a regional scientific organization collecting local information about Polish region of Silesia, working in Katowice in years 1934–1939 and 1945–1949, and during the Nazi occupation of Poland, during World War II (1939–1945) as an underground movement in Warsaw, Kraków and Lviv.

In years 1945–1948 the Silesian Institute founded its branches in Wrocław and Kłodzko and also the J.Badtkie Library in Cieplice Śląskie (Biblioteka im. J. Badtkiego w Cieplicach Śląskich). During the reorganization in 1948 the Silesian Institute became part of the Western Institute (Instytut Zachodni) in Poznań.

The works and tradition of the Silesian institute is continued by the Silesian Institute in Opole (Instytut Śląski w Opolu) established in 1957 and the Silesian Scientific Institute in Katowice (Śląski Instutut Naukowy w Katowicach) established 1958.

Organisations based in Katowice
Silesian culture
Education in Katowice
Learned societies of Poland
Polish regional societies

Silesian Institute in Katowice


Diogo Pinto de Freitas do Amaral (; 21 July 1941 – 3 October 2019), known as Freitas do Amaral, was a Portuguese politician, writer and law professor. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs from 12 March 2005 to 3 July 2006. He also was the Prime Minister in an acting role from 4 December 1980 through 9 January 1981. He was born in Póvoa de Varzim, Portugal.

Frietas do Amaral was a candidate for president in 1986 and lost to Mário Soares by a small percentage. He was President of the United Nations General Assembly from 1995 through 1996.

In September 2019, Frietas do Amaral was hospitalized in critical condition for bone cancer at a Cascais hospital. He died at the hospital on 3 October 2019 at the age of 78.

References

1941 births
2019 deaths
Prime Ministers of Portugal
Presidents of the United Nations General Assembly
Autobiographers
Portuguese lawyers
Portuguese academics
Portuguese writers

Diogo Freitas do Amaral


Mortgage burning was a twentieth-century custom in the United States of America (U.S.A.) that was the ritual incineration of the promissory note (mortgage) upon satisfaction of the payment schedule by the purchaser (debtor, or mortgagor). This ritual was performed to celebrate the release of the debtor from further payment obligations, and was sometimes accompanied by a party in which extended family and friends were invited.

History

Home mortgage burnings, and particularly home mortgage burning parties, are nearly unheard of in the present-day United States for a few reasons. In the early twenty-first century, due to increased mobility and other factors, few U.S. mortgagees continue to make payments until the end of the mortgage term. Typically, mortgagees sell or refinance a property before the end of the mortgage term, using proceeds of the sale or new loan to extinguish the debt used to acquire the property.

Also, starting in the late twentieth century and until the housing bubble (circa 2007 or 2008) burst, it was fairly common for a borrower to acquire property using an excessively-leveraged mortgage, and possibly even an "interest-only" mortgage, wherein a borrower pays only interest but does not repay principal. These mortgages were acquired with the implicit, though not always explicit, understanding that the property was likely to be re-sold or re-financed well before the end of the mortgage term. Refinancing, or restructuring of mortgage terms, was often undertaken to obtain a lower interest rate, or to borrow more money by increasing the principal (amount borrowed) of the mortgage. Refinancing a mortgage loan entails "resetting the clock" on the loan period, typically extending the time that the borrower promises to make payments beyond the end of the original loan term.

Even when a mortgage is satisfied ("paid off") at the conclusion of payments, throwing a party to celebrate is considered to be in poor taste as it seen as bragging about one's secure financial condition as opposed to a standard rite of passage.  Modern advice columnists and etiquette experts generally advise against having mortgage burning parties attended by anyone other than immediate family.

Mortgage burning parties are still held by non-profit entities such as churches. In those cases, the attendees are generally those who helped to pay off the mortgage.

In popular culture

The concept of a mortgage burning party was at least briefly referenced in a 1975 episode of All In The Family, "Mike Makes His Move". Mortgage burnings were also the premise of a 1977 episode of Eight Is Enough, "Mortgage Burnin' Blues", and a 1982 episode of M*A*S*H, "Settling Debts".

See also
 Foreclosure

References

Traditions involving fire
Ceremonies

Mortgage burning


Over 27,000 Australians were killed and 23,000 wounded in action during World War II. In addition, hundreds more servicemen and women were killed and injured in accidents during the war.

Casualties by service

The following table is taken from The Final Campaigns by Gavin Long. It excludes deaths and illnesses from natural causes, including disease.

Non-battle casualties
The Australian Army suffered 1,165 killed and died of injuries in operational areas and a further 33,396 soldiers were wounded or injured. Casualties in non-operational areas were also significant, with 2,051 soldiers being killed or dying of injuries and 121,800 being wounded or injured. These figures also exclude deaths and illnesses from natural causes. The RAN suffered 177 non-battle casualties and the RAAF 6,271.

Notes

References

Military history of Australia during World War II
1940s in Australia
World War II casualties by nationality

Australian casualties of World War II


Romen was a Guanche mencey king of Menceyato de Daute in times of the conquest of Tenerife in the fifteenth century.

Reign
Upon arrival of Alonso Fernández de Lugo in 1494, Romen allied with Bencomo mencey against the Spanish invasion, and its menceyato one side of war. However, some historians based in Viana, refer to ally with Bencomo refused for not wanting to submit to the king of Taoro dirigiese the rest in the race. For its part, he indicates that Viera y Clavijo, Romen would not ally with Bencomo believing their domains of the danger of distant conquerors. Finally, after successive defeats and ordered major Guanche Kings (Bencomo, Tinguaro and Bentor), Romen gave his territory in the spring of 1496 in the act known as Paz de Los Realejos. After the surrender, Romen was brought to court to be presented to the Catholic Monarchs.

His end is unknown, although having belonged to a band of war the possibility he was reduced to slavery, it also being possible outside the mencey given to the Republic of Venice for the kings. Other authors believe that, although belonging to a faction of war, may well be released, under supervision and away from the island.

References

External links
 Los guanches

People from Tenerife
15th-century Berber people
Military personnel killed in action
Guanche
Guanche people

Romen (mencey)


Hal Anderson is a Canadian radio personality. He is best known for his time hosting morning shows on CJOB and CJOB's FM sister station, Power 97.

Radio career
While still studying Communication Arts at Lethbridge Community College, Anderson worked at CJOC in 1984, then took a job a year later as news director at CHAB in Moose Jaw, SK and then oldies station KY58 in Winnipeg.

In 1995, Anderson and B.J. Burke were given the morning show slot on Power 97, replacing Scruff Connors as co-hosts.  This new show was billed as "B.J. and Hal".  Burke departed the show in 2003.  On February 3, 2003 Anderson was joined by Dave Wheeler as his new co-host and the show was re-branded "Wheeler and Hal".

On July 31, 2009, it was announced that Anderson would be moving to Power 97's sister station, CJOB 680 AM, as the morning show host, replacing the outgoing Larry Updike. The last broadcast of the Wheeler and Hal show took place on September 4, 2009.

Anderson was released from his position as morning host with CJOB on May 13, 2014.

On September 27, 2015, Anderson debuted his new radio program on FAB 94.3 FM (CHIQ-FM) in Winnipeg called "Hal Anderson Sundays".

On January 11, 2017, CJOB announced that Anderson will return as host of a new weekend show called Hal Anderson Weekends from 7-10 am starting on February 4, 2017, later moving to afternoons.

On September 27, 2021, CJOB announced that Hal was moving from their afternoon slot back to their 10 a.m. morning talk-show.

"The Greatest Canadian" Prank
Anderson encouraged listeners to vote for him as "The Greatest Canadian" in 2004 as a joke, ultimately placing 34th in the top 50, ahead of William Lyon Mackenzie King, Wilfrid Laurier, Jean Chrétien, Tecumseh and Pamela Anderson.

References

1964 births
Canadian radio hosts
People from Lethbridge
People from Winnipeg
Living people

Hal Anderson


Lee Valley Tools Ltd. is a Canadian business specializing in tools and gifts for woodworking and gardening.

Corporate identity
The company is family-owned. The founder, Leonard Lee, was a recipient of the Order of Canada. He founded the company in 1978, in Ottawa, Ontario. Over the next ten years, the company opened several more stores in Toronto and Vancouver, and started manufacturing its own line of tools (starting with the Veritas Dovetail Marker in 1982). Since then, it has continued opening stores, manufacturing more diverse tools, and selling through mail order and the internet. In 1998, Canica Design was launched. Canica is a medical design company associated with Lee Valley Tools  which arose out of consultations between Leonard Lee and surgeon Michael Bell after Lee found that Bell was using Lee Valley tools in his plastic surgery practice.

Lee Valley Tools is notable for enforcing and codifying the concept of "pay slope" limiting the pay at the highest levels in the company based on what the lowest paid employees earn. They earned a slot in the Forbes Top 500 Employers list in 2018.

Consumer sales
The primary business is mail-order and retail, purveying mainly woodworking and gardening tools and equipment, as well as woodworking hardware and gifts. The consumer part of the business runs under the main company name, Lee Valley Tools.

Veritas Tools

Lee Valley also has a manufacturing arm, called Veritas Tools. Veritas makes many woodworking hand-tools, including hand planes, marking gauges and other measuring tools, router tables, sharpening systems, and numerous other gadgets. Veritas does research and development activities for the factory line, and has developed and patented many innovative designs.

References

External links

 Veritas Tools

Hardware stores of Canada
Canadian brands
Tool manufacturing companies of Canada
Woodworking
Manufacturing companies based in Ottawa
Retail companies established in 1978
1978 establishments in Ontario

Lee Valley Tools


Cabinets of curiosities ( and ), also known as wonder-rooms (), were encyclopedic collections of objects whose categorical boundaries were, in Renaissance Europe, yet to be defined.  Although more rudimentary collections had preceded them, the classic cabinets of curiosities emerged in the sixteenth century. The term cabinet originally described a room rather than a piece of furniture. Modern terminology would categorize the objects included as belonging to natural history (sometimes faked), geology, ethnography, archaeology, religious or historical relics, works of art (including cabinet paintings), and antiquities. In addition to the most famous and best documented cabinets of rulers and aristocrats, members of the merchant class and early practitioners of science in Europe formed collections that were precursors to museums.

Cabinets of curiosities served not only as collections to reflect the particular curiosities of their curators but also as social devices to establish and uphold rank in society. There are said to be two main types of cabinets. As R. J. W. Evans notes, there could be "the princely cabinet, serving a largely representational function, and dominated by aesthetic concerns and a marked predilection for the exotic," or the less grandiose, "the more modest collection of the humanist scholar or virtuoso, which served more practical and scientific purposes." Evans goes on to explain that "no clear distinction existed between the two categories: all collecting was marked by curiosity, shading into credulity, and by some sort of universal underlying design".

In addition to cabinets of curiosity serving as an establisher of socioeconomic status for its curator, these cabinets served as entertainment, as particularly illustrated by the proceedings of the Royal Society, whose early meetings were often a sort of open floor to any Fellow to exhibit the findings his curiosities led him to. However purely educational or investigative these exhibitions may sound, it is important to note that the Fellows in this period supported the idea of "learned entertainment," or the alignment of learning with entertainment. This was not unusual, as the Royal Society had an earlier history of a love of the marvellous. This love was often exploited by eighteenth-century natural philosophers to secure the attention of their audience during their exhibitions.

History

To c. 1600

The earliest pictorial record of a natural history cabinet is the engraving in Ferrante Imperato's Dell'Historia Naturale (Naples 1599) (illustration). It serves to authenticate its author's credibility as a source of natural history information, by showing his open bookcases at the right, in which many volumes are stored lying down and stacked, in the medieval fashion, or with their spines upward, to protect the pages from dust. Some of the volumes doubtless represent his herbarium. Every surface of the vaulted ceiling is occupied with preserved fishes, stuffed mammals and curious shells, with a stuffed crocodile suspended in the centre. Examples of corals stand on the bookcases. At the left, the room is fitted out like a studiolo with a range of built-in cabinets whose fronts can be unlocked and let down to reveal intricately fitted nests of pigeonholes forming architectural units, filled with small mineral specimens. Above them, stuffed birds stand against panels inlaid with square polished stone samples, doubtless marbles and jaspers or fitted with pigeonhole compartments for specimens. Below them, a range of cupboards contain specimen boxes and covered jars.

In 1587 Gabriel Kaltemarckt advised Christian I of Saxony that three types of items were indispensable in forming a "Kunstkammer" or art collection: firstly sculptures and paintings; secondly "curious items from home or abroad"; and thirdly "antlers, horns, claws, feathers and other things belonging to strange and curious animals". When Albrecht Dürer visited the Netherlands in 1521, apart from artworks he sent back to Nuremberg various animal horns, a piece of coral, some large fish fins and a wooden weapon from the East Indies.

The highly characteristic range of interests represented in Frans II Francken's painting of 1636 (illustration, above) shows paintings on the wall that range from landscapes, including a moonlit scene—a genre in itself—to a portrait and a religious picture (the Adoration of the Magi) intermixed with preserved tropical marine fish and a string of carved beads, most likely amber, which is both precious and a natural curiosity. Sculptures both classical and secular (the sacrificing Libera, a Roman fertility goddess) on the one hand and modern and religious (Christ at the Column) are represented, while on the table are ranged, among the exotic shells (including some tropical ones and a shark's tooth): portrait miniatures, gem-stones mounted with pearls in a curious quatrefoil box, a set of sepia chiaroscuro woodcuts or drawings, and a small still-life painting leaning against a flower-piece, coins and medals—presumably Greek and Roman—and Roman terracotta oil-lamps, a Chinese-style brass lock, curious flasks, and a blue-and-white Ming porcelain bowl.

The Kunstkammer of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor (ruled 1576–1612), housed in the Hradschin at Prague, was unrivalled north of the Alps; it provided solace and retreat for contemplation that also served to demonstrate his imperial magnificence and power in the symbolic arrangement of their display, ceremoniously presented to visiting diplomats and magnates.

Rudolf's uncle, Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria, also had a collection, organized by his treasurer, Leopold Heyperger, which put special emphasis on paintings of people with interesting deformities, which remains largely intact as the Chamber of Art and Curiosities at Ambras Castle in Austria. "The Kunstkammer was regarded as a microcosm or theater of the world, and a memory theater. The Kunstkammer conveyed symbolically the patron's control of the world through its indoor, microscopic reproduction." Of Charles I of England's collection, Peter Thomas states succinctly, "The Kunstkabinett itself was a form of propaganda."

17th century

Two of the most famously described seventeenth-century cabinets were those of Ole Worm, known as Olaus Wormius (1588–1654) (illustration, above right), and Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680). These seventeenth-century cabinets were filled with preserved animals, horns, tusks, skeletons, minerals, as well as other interesting man-made objects: sculptures wondrously old, wondrously fine or wondrously small; clockwork automata; ethnographic specimens from exotic locations. Often they would contain a mix of fact and fiction, including apparently mythical creatures. Worm's collection contained, for example, what he thought was a Scythian Lamb, a woolly fern thought to be a plant/sheep fabulous creature. However he was also responsible for identifying the narwhal's tusk as coming from a whale rather than a unicorn, as most owners of these believed. The specimens displayed were often collected during exploring expeditions and trading voyages.

Cabinets of curiosities would often serve scientific advancement when images of their contents were published. The catalog of Worm's collection, published as the Museum Wormianum (1655), used the collection of artifacts as a starting point for Worm's speculations on philosophy, science, natural history, and more.

Cabinets of curiosities were limited to those who could afford to create and maintain them. Many monarchs, in particular, developed large collections. A rather under-used example, stronger in art than other areas, was the Studiolo of Francesco I, the first Medici Grand-Duke of Tuscany. Frederick III of Denmark, who added Worm's collection to his own after Worm's death, was another such monarch. A third example is the Kunstkamera founded by Peter the Great in Saint Petersburg in 1714. Many items were bought in Amsterdam from Albertus Seba and Frederik Ruysch. The fabulous Habsburg Imperial collection included important Aztec artifacts, including the feather head-dress or crown of Montezuma now in the Museum of Ethnology, Vienna.

Similar collections on a smaller scale were the complex Kunstschränke produced in the early seventeenth century by the Augsburg merchant, diplomat and collector Philipp Hainhofer. These were cabinets in the sense of pieces of furniture, made from all imaginable exotic and expensive materials and filled with contents and ornamental details intended to reflect the entire cosmos on a miniature scale. The best preserved example is the one given by the city of Augsburg to King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden in 1632, which is kept in the Museum Gustavianum in Uppsala. The curio cabinet, as a modern single piece of furniture, is a version of the grander historical examples.

The juxtaposition of such disparate objects, according to Horst Bredekamp's analysis (Bredekamp 1995), encouraged comparisons, finding analogies and parallels and favoured the cultural change from a world viewed as static to a dynamic view of endlessly transforming natural history and a historical perspective that led in the seventeenth century to the germs of a scientific view of reality.

18th century and after

In seventeenth-century parlance, both French and English, a cabinet came to signify a collection of works of art, which might still also include an assembly of objects of virtù or curiosities, such as a virtuoso would find intellectually stimulating. In 1714, Michael Bernhard Valentini published an early museological work, Museum Museorum, an account of the cabinets known to him with catalogues of their contents.

In the second half of the eighteenth century, Belsazar Hacquet (c. 1735–1815) operated in Ljubljana, then the capital of Carniola, a natural history cabinet () that was appreciated throughout Europe and was visited by the highest nobility, including the Holy Roman Emperor, Joseph II, the Russian grand duke Paul and Pope Pius VI, as well as by famous naturalists, such as  and . It included a number of minerals, including specimens of mercury from the Idrija mine, a herbarium vivum with over 4,000 specimens of Carniolan and foreign plants, a smaller number of animal specimens, a natural history and medical library, and an anatomical theatre.

A late example of the juxtaposition of natural materials with richly worked artifice is provided by the "Green Vaults" formed by Augustus the Strong in Dresden to display his chamber of wonders. The "Enlightenment Gallery" in the British Museum, installed in the former "Kings Library" room in 2003 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the museum, aims to recreate the abundance and diversity that still characterized museums in the mid-eighteenth century, mixing shells, rock samples and botanical specimens with a great variety of artworks and other man-made objects from all over the world.

Some strands of the early universal collections, the bizarre or freakish biological specimens, whether genuine or fake, and the more exotic historical objects, could find a home in commercial freak shows and sideshows.

England

In 1671, when visiting Thomas Browne (1605–82), the courier John Evelyn remarked,

Late in his life Browne parodied the rising trend of collecting curiosities in his tract Musaeum Clausum an inventory of dubious, rumoured and non-existent books, pictures and objects.

Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753) an English physician, member of the Royal Society and the Royal College of Physicians, and the founder of the British Museum in London, began sporadically collecting plants in England and France while studying medicine. In 1687, the Duke of Albemarle offered Sloane a position as personal physician to the West Indies fleet at Jamaica. He accepted and spent fifteen months collecting and cataloguing the native plants, animals, and artificial curiosities (e.g. cultural artifacts of native and enslaved African populations) of Jamaica. This became the basis for his two volume work, Natural History of Jamaica, published in 1707 and 1725. Sloane returned to England in 1689 with over eight hundred specimens of plants, which were live or mounted on heavy paper in an eight-volume herbarium. He also attempted to bring back live animals (e.g., snakes, an alligator, and an iguana) but they all died before reaching England.

Sloane meticulously cataloged and created extensive records for most of the specimens and objects in his collection. He also began to acquire other collections by gift or purchase. Herman Boerhaave gave him four volumes of plants from Boerhaave's gardens at Leiden. William Charleton, in a bequest in 1702, gave Sloane numerous books of birds, fish, flowers, and shells and his miscellaneous museum consisting of curiosities, miniatures, insects, medals, animals, minerals, precious stones and curiosities in amber. Sloane purchased Leonard Plukenet's collection in 1710. It consisted of twenty-three volumes with over 8,000 plants from Africa, India, Japan and China. Mary Somerset, Duchess of Beaufort (1630–1715), left him a twelve-volume herbarium from her gardens at Chelsea and Badminton upon her death in 1714. Reverend Adam Buddle gave Sloane thirteen volumes of British plants. In 1716, Sloane purchased Englebert Kaempfer's volume of Japanese plants and James Petiver's virtual museum of approximately one hundred volumes of plants from Europe, North America, Africa, the Near East, India, and the Orient. Mark Catesby gave him plants from North America and the West Indies from an expedition funded by Sloane. Philip Miller gave him twelve volumes of plants grown from the Chelsea Physic Garden.

Sloane acquired approximately three hundred and fifty artificial curiosities from North American Indians, Eskimos, South America, the Lapland, Siberia, East Indies, and the West Indies, including nine items from Jamaica.
"These ethnological artifacts were important because they established a field of collection for the British Museum that was to increase greatly with the explorations of Captain James Cook in Oceania and Australia and the rapid expansion of the British Empire."
Upon his death in 1753, Sloane bequeathed his sizable collection of 337 volumes to England for £20,000. In 1759, George II's royal library was added to Sloane's collection to form the foundation of the British Museum.

John Tradescant the elder (circa 1570s–1638) was a gardener, naturalist, and botanist in the employ of the Duke of Buckingham. He collected plants, bulbs, flowers, vines, berries, and fruit trees from Russia, the Levant, Algiers, France, Bermuda, the Caribbean, and the East Indies. His son, John Tradescant the younger (1608–1662) traveled to Virginia in 1637 and collected flowers, plants, shells, an Indian deerskin mantle believed to have belonged to Powhatan, father of Pocahontas. Father and son, in addition to botanical specimens, collected zoological (e.g., the dodo from Mauritius, the upper jaw of a walrus, and armadillos), artificial curiosities (e.g., wampum belts, portraits, lathe turned ivory, weapons, costumes, Oriental footwear and carved alabaster panels) and rarities (e.g., a mermaid's hand, a dragon's egg, two feathers of a phoenix's tail, a piece of the True Cross, and a vial of blood that rained in the Isle of Wight). By the 1630s, the Tradescants displayed their eclectic collection at their residence in South Lambeth. Tradescant's Ark, as it came to be known, was the earliest major cabinet of curiosity in England and open to the public for a small entrance fee.

Elias Ashmole (1617–1692) was a lawyer, chemist, antiquarian, Freemason, and a member of the Royal Society with a keen interest in astrology, alchemy, and botany. Ashmole was also a neighbor of the Tradescants in Lambeth. He financed the publication of Musaeum Tradescantianum, a catalogue of the Ark collection in 1656. Ashmole, a collector in his own right, acquired the Tradescant Ark in 1659 and added it to his collection of astrological, medical, and historical manuscripts. In 1675, he donated his library and collection and the Tradescant collection to the University of Oxford, provided that a suitable building be provided to house the collection. Ashmole's donation formed the foundation of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford.

Places of exhibitions of and places of new societies that promoted natural knowledge also seemed to culture the idea of perfect civility. Some scholars propose that this was "a reaction against the dogmatism and enthusiasm of the English Civil War and Interregum [sic]." This move to politeness put bars on how one should behave and interact socially, which enabled the distinguishing of the polite from the supposed common or more vulgar members of society. Exhibitions of curiosities (as they were typically odd and foreign marvels) attracted a wide, more general audience, which "[rendered] them more suitable subjects of polite discourse at the Society."

A subject was considered less suitable for polite discourse if the curiosity being displayed was accompanied by too much other material evidence, as it allowed for less conjecture and exploration of ideas regarding the displayed curiosity. Because of this, many displays simply included a concise description of the phenomena and avoided any mention of explanation for the phenomena. Quentin Skinner describes the early Royal Society as "something much more like a gentleman's club," an idea supported by John Evelyn, who depicts the Royal Society as "an Assembly of many honorable Gentlemen, who meete inoffensively together under his Majesty's Royal Cognizance; and to entertaine themselves ingenously, whilst their other domestique avocations or publique business deprives them of being always in the company of learned men and that they cannot dwell forever in the Universities."

Cabinets of Curiosities can now be found at Snowshill Manor and Wallington Hall, and the Ashmolean Museum has a display of items from its disparate Ashmole and Tradescant founding collections.

United States
Thomas Dent Mutter (1811–1859) was an early American pioneer of reconstructive plastic surgery. His specialty was repairing congenital anomalies, cleft lip and palates, and club foot. He also collected medical oddities, tumors, anatomical and pathological specimens, wet and dry preparations, wax models, plaster casts, and illustrations of medical deformities. This collection began as a teaching tool for young physicians. Just prior to Mütter's death in 1859, he donated 1,344 items to the American College of Physicians in Philadelphia, along with a $30,000 endowment for the maintenance and expansion of his museum. Mütter's collection was added to ninety-two pathological specimens collected by Doctor Isaac Parrish between 1849 and 1852. The Mütter Museum began to collect antique medical equipment in 1871, including Benjamin Rush's medical chest and Florence Nightingale's sewing kit. In 1874 the museum acquired one hundred human skulls from Austrian anatomist and phrenologist, Joseph Hyrtl (1810–1894); a nineteenth-century corpse, dubbed the "soap lady"; the conjoined liver and death cast of Chang and Eng Bunker, the Siamese twins; and in 1893, Grover Cleveland's jaw tumor. The Mütter Museum is an excellent example of a nineteenth-century grotesque cabinet of medical curiosities.

P. T. Barnum established Barnum's American Museum on five floors in New York, "perpetuating into the 1860s the Wunderkammer tradition of curiosities for gullible, often slow-moving throngs—Barnum's famously sly but effective method of crowd control was to post a sign, 'THIS WAY TO THE EGRESS!' at the exit door".

In 1908, New York businessmen formed the Hobby Club, a dining club limited to 50 men, in order to showcase their "cabinets of wonder" and their selected collections. These included literary specimens and incunabula; antiquities such as ancient armour; precious stones and geological items of interest. Annual formal dinners would be used to open the various collections up to inspection for the other members of the club.

Declining influence
By the early decades of the eighteenth century, curiosities and wondrous specimens began to lose their influence among European natural philosophers. As Enlightenment thinkers placed growing emphasis on patterns and systems within nature, anomalies and rarities came to be regarded as potentially misleading objects of study. Curiosities, previously interpreted as divine messages and expressions of nature's variety, were increasingly seen as vulgar exceptions to nature's overall uniformity.

Notable collections started in this way
 Ashmolean Museum Oxford — Ashmole and Tradescant collections
 Boerhaave Museum in Leiden
 British Museum in London — Sir Hans Sloane's and other collections
 Chamber of Art and Curiosities, Ambras Castle in Austria remains largely intact
 Deyrolle in Paris
 Fondation Calvet, Avignon
 Grünes Gewölbe in Dresden
 Kunstkamera in Saint Petersburg, Russia
 Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford, England) — Ex-Ashmolean dodo
 Teylers Museum in Haarlem
 Museo Poldi Pezzoli in Milan
 World Museum in Liverpool - XIIIth Earl of Derby collection

In contemporary culture

The Houston Museum of Natural Science houses a hands-on Cabinet of Curiosities, complete with taxidermied crocodile embedded in the ceiling a la Ferrante Imperato's Dell'Historia Naturale. In Los Angeles, the modern-day Museum of Jurassic Technology anachronistically seeks to recreate the sense of wonder that the old cabinets of curiosity once aroused.

In Spring Green, Wisconsin, the house and museum of Alex Jordan, known as House on the Rock, can also be interpreted as a modern day curiosity cabinet, especially in the collection and display of automatons. In Bristol, Rhode Island, Musée Patamécanique is presented as a hybrid between an automaton theater and a cabinet of curiosities and contains works representing the field of Patamechanics, an artistic practice and area of study chiefly inspired by Pataphysics.

The idea of a cabinet of curiosities has also appeared in recent publications and performances. For example, Cabinet magazine is a quarterly magazine that juxtaposes apparently unrelated cultural artifacts and phenomena to show their interconnectedness in ways that encourage curiosity about the world. The Italian cultural association Wunderkamern uses the theme of historical cabinets of curiosities to explore how "amazement" is manifested within today's artistic discourse. in May 2008, the University of Leeds Fine Art BA programme hosted a show called "Wunder Kammer", the culmination of research and practice from students, which allowed viewers to encounter work from across all disciplines, ranging from intimate installation to thought-provoking video and highly skilled drawing, punctuated by live performances.

The concept has been reinterpreted at The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History. In July 2021 a new Cabinet of Curiosities room was opened at The Whitaker Museum & Art Gallery in Rawtenstall, Lancashire, curated by artist Bob Frith, founder of Horse and Bamboo Theatre.

Several internet bloggers describe their sites as "wunderkammern" either because they are primarily links to interesting things, or inspire wonder similarly to the original wunderkammern (see External Links, below). Researcher Robert Gehl describes such internet video sites as YouTube as modern-day wunderkammern, although in danger of being refined into capitalist institutions "just as professionalized curators refined Wunderkammers into the modern museum in the 18th century."

See also
 Antiquarian
 Holophusikon
 Found objects
 Medical oddities
 Museum
 Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities (TV Show)

References

Further reading
 Under the Sign: John Bargrave as Collector, Traveler, and Witness, Stephen Bann, Michigan, 1995
 Beßler, Gabriele, Chambers of Art and Wonders, EGO - European History Online, Mainz: Institute of European History, 2015, retrieved: March 8, 2021 (pdf).
 The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe, ed. Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor, 2001, paperback, 431 pages,
 Cabinets for the curious: looking back at early English museums, Ken Arnold, Ashgate, 2006, .
 Mr. Wilson's Cabinet Of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology, Lawrence Weschler, 1996, trade paperback, 192 pages,  (see website link above)
 The Cabinet of Curiosities (novel), Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Warner Books, 2003, paperback, .
 Helmar Schramm et al. (ed.). Collection, Laboratory, Theater. Scenes of Knowledge in the 17th Century, Berlin/New York 2005,
 The Lure of Antiquity and the Cult of the Machine: The Kunstkammer and the Evolution of Nature, Art and Technology Horst Bredekamp (Allison Brown, translator) (Princeton: Marcus Weiner) 1995.
Steven Lubar, "Cabinets of Curiosity: What they were, why they disappeared, and why they're so popular now"

External links

Historic cabinets
 J. Paul Getty Museum Augsburg Cabinet: 3-D model online interactive with high-resolution photography, description of subjects depicted, and mapping of exotic materials.
 Ashmolean Museum:  Powhatan's Mantle, pictures, full descriptions and history.
 The Augsburg Art Cabinet, about the Uppsala art cabinet.
 Dutch influence on 'wunderkammer' or 'rariteitenkabinet'.
 The King's Kunstkammer, a Danish Internet exhibition on the idea behind renaissance art and curiosity chambers (text in English).
 Mauritshuis, Royal Picture Gallery, The Hague: Room for Art exhibition.
 Metropolitan Museum, New York: Collecting for the Kunstkammer exhibition.
 Museum Exhibition:museum exhibition by museum display cases  Museum Showcases.
 Rijksmuseum Amsterdam: Presentation and very large and detailed image of the art cabinet made for Duke August of Brunswick-Lüneburg.
 Smithsonian Institution: Crocodiles on the Ceiling exhibition.
Website with photos of remaining Germanic cabinets
Wunderkammer Theorie High resolution images of two Wunderkammer
Kunstkammer Image rich German site of Kunstkammer and Wunderkammer
Idols of the Cave A history of science website devoted to Wunderkammern
Salvadoriana History and current items of the Wunderkammer that the Salvador family started in the 17th century in Barcelona.

Modern "cabinets"
 Cabinets of Curiosities. Museum in Waco, TX with a Cabinets of Curiosities Room named for John K. Strecker, who was curator for 30 years, the museum was established in 1893 and was the oldest museum in Texas when it closed in 2003 to be incorporated into the Mayborn Museum Complex.
 A Small Wunderkammer. Web magazine issue dedicated to building a small, contemporary Cabinet of Curiosities.
 MuseumZeitraum Leipzig. Work and collections of the pioneering German modernist Johann Dieter Wassmann (1841–1898).
 The Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution includes a contemporary Cabinet of Curiosity entitled "Bureau of Bureaucracy" by Kim Schmahmann
 Weblog modern equivalent of a Wunderkammer (Anthropology Essay)

History of biology
Western art
History of Earth science
History of museums
Historical scientific instruments
Forteana
 Cabinet of curiosities
Museum collections
Types of museums

Cabinet of curiosities


The Sheka Forest is a UNESCO designated Biosphere Reserve in south western Ethiopia. The area includes forest, bamboo thickets, wetlands, agricultural land, rural settlements and towns.  It covers a unique biogeographic unit extending from cold and very wet highlands to hot lowland areas. The diverse resident human population is committed to sustainable use of the forests through both the production of wooden items and non-timber forest products.  It was declared in 2012 and is administered by SNNP Region Bureau of Agriculture, Sheka Zone Administration, Sheka Zone Department of Agriculture, Masha Woreda Office of Agriculture, Anderacha Woreda Office of Agriculture, Yeski Woreda Office of Agriculture.  The reserve covers a core area of 238,750 hectares, with a buffer zone 76,395 hectares and transition areas of 107,100 hectares.

Ecological Characteristics
The forest in Sheka which is also part of the Southwest Highlands Forests of Ethiopia is important for the conservation of Afromontane forest vegetation types, especially the Afromontane Rainforest and Alpine Bamboo thickets.  Afromontane forest vegetation has long been considered one of the most threatened eco-regions  in the world.

The area is rich in plant and animal species. There are over 300 higher plants, 50 mammals, 200 birds, and 20 amphibian species occurring in all habitat types within the biosphere reserve. There are also many endemic species, at least 55 plants and 10 birds, and 38 threatened species of flora and fauna.

Flora
The characteristic species of the Afromontane rainforest are a mixture of broadleaved tree species and include: Aningeria adolfi-friederici, Syzygium guineense, Polyscias fulva, Olea welwitschii, Diospyros abyssinica, Manilkara butugi and Cordia africana. A discontinuous canopy of smaller trees (less than 10 m) include Allophylus abyssinicus, Chionanthus mildbraedii, Clausena anisata, Coffea arabica, and Deinbollia kilimandischarica. Native coffee is one of the characteristic species in the understory. The shrub layer includes Acanthus eminens, Dracaena fragrans, Lobelia giberroa, Senecio gigas, and others. Lianas and scrambling shrubs are numerous. Epiphytes are very common and include Canarina abyssinica, Scadox nutans, Peperomia tetraphylla, Asplenium sandersonii, Loxogramme lanceolata, different orchids, mosses, and others.

Fauna
In the Afromontane rainforest and transitional rainforest, animal species are varied and include a diverse range of invertebrates inhabiting all niches from the soil to high forest canopies and vertebrates including amphibians, reptiles, birds and small and large mammals. Common forest mammals and birds species in the area includes: porcupine, Chlorocebus (Cercopithecus aethiops), blue monkey (Cercopithecus mitis), De Brazza's monkey (Cercopithecus neglectus), baboon, African buffalo, lion, leopard, African civet (Civettictis civetta), Ethiopian hare (Lepus fagani), Abyssinian black-headed oriole (Oriolus monacha), Abyssinian ground hornbill (Bucorvus abyssinicus), Abyssinian woodpecker (Dendropicos abyssinicus), among others.

Socio-Economic Characteristics
The ethnic composition of Sheka Zone is quite diverse today. Of the total population, the major ethnic groups are: 34.7% Shekacho, 20.5% Kafficho, 20.5% Amhara, 9.6% Oromo, 5.0% Sheko, 4.8% Bench, and 2% Mezengir.

The Sheka  forests are sources of various direct uses for the local community. These include construction materials from climbers/liana, tree ferns (locally called Seseno), timber, fuel wood, logs for beehive construction, wood for utensils, bee forage and traditional hanging beehives, spice production and medicinal plants collection. The locally constructed wood products  valued highly by the community include timber doors, windows, dining tables, chairs, benches, beehives, coffins, and raw timber for sale.

Non-timber forest products (NTFP) collected from the forest include medicinal plants, spices like Korerima and leaves of phoenix. In kebeles at lower elevations (<2000 m), coffee is becoming an important NTFP, next to honey. Fuel wood collection from the dense forest is common only in kebeles at higher elevations, where the settlement is close to the forest areas. Moreover, wild fruits are vital for the local communities not only because they eat them but the wild fruit also serves as food for wildlife and in turn save crops from wildlife.

The local population is deeply committed to maintaining the integrity of the ecosystem through the practice of ecologically sustainable agriculture.

Sources

References

Biosphere reserves of Ethiopia
Afromontane forests
Ethiopian Highlands
Forests of Ethiopia

Sheka Forest


Tizuka Yamasaki (born May 12, 1949) is a Brazilian film director.

Early life and work
Born in Porto Alegre, at the age of 2, Tizuka moved back with her Japanese immigrants parents to the city of Atibaia, in the state of São Paulo. In her teenage years, Yamasaki moved to São Paulo city for an undergraduate course in architecture, though she changed her mind before her admission and moved to Brasília to study cinema instead. Yamasaki finished college in Rio de Janeiro, where she started her professional career.

Yamasaki was one of the first women filmmakers in Brazil who achieved a successful and longstanding career. She and her peers learned filmmaking by working on the sets of well-established Cinema Novo directors.  Yamasaki worked as director assistant with Nelson Pereira dos Santos and Glauber Rocha. Yamasaki challenged the norms of Cinema Novo by increasing both the representation of women and the awareness of issues affecting women in Brazilian society. Her film style focuses on historical subjects and she uses the genre of melodrama to reconstruct Brazilian politics, history and culture.

Yamasaki established herself as one of the most important film directors of the 1980s. Her films discussed sexuality and traditional gender roles more openly within Brazilian cultural identity. Yamasaki initiated a "cinema of emotion" to comment on Brazil's past and rework female figures' experiences in Brazil's history.

She's also a director of telenovelas and TV series. Yamasaki began her work with auteur-style films, then transitioned to work in television. Yamaski continued to reference auteur cinema within her TV series productions. Yamasaki's work challenged glamorous Brazilian television by focusing on natural and realistic images.

During her career, especially during the final years of the dictatorship, Yamasaki has suffered censorship and funding issues with her films. In response to these challenges, Yamasaki established her own production company in 1976, Centro de Produção e Comunicação (Production and Communication Center). This enabled her to bypass government regulations and become eligible for production funding from Embrafilme.

Tizuka gained some critical acclaim with her 1980 film Gaijin, Os Caminhos da Liberdade (aka Gaijin, a Brazilian Odyssey), a story about Japanese immigration to Brazil. She has, however, been criticized for directing overly commercial movies with the children TV show hostess Xuxa. In 2003, she completed Gaijin 2 as a sequel to her debut film.

Television productions

 Metamorphoses (2004) – telenovela
 A madona de cedro (1994) – miniseries
 Amazônia (1992) – telenovela
 Kananga do Japão (1989) – telenovela
 O pagador de promessas (1988) – miniseries

Filmography as director
Gaijin - Os Caminhos da Liberdade (1980)
 Parahyba, Mulher-Macho (1983)
 Patriamada (1984)
 Lua de Cristal (1990)
 Fica Comigo (1996)
 O Noviço Rebelde (1997)
 Xuxa Requebra (1999)
 Xuxa Popstar (2000)
 Gaijin - Ama-me Como Sou (2005)
 1817: A Revolução Esquecida (2007)
 Xuxa em O Mistério de Feiurinha (2009)
 Aparecida: O Milagre (2010)
 Encantados (2017)

References

1949 births
Living people
People from Porto Alegre
Brazilian people of Japanese descent
Brazilian film directors
Brazilian women film directors
People from Atibaia

Tizuka Yamasaki


The 1928 UK & Ireland Greyhound Racing Year was the third year of greyhound racing in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Roll of honour

+ unofficial National Derby

Summary
The oval track form of greyhound racing continued to rapidly grow with numerous tracks, either in the process of being constructed or opening. The Greyhound Racing Association (GRA) continued to lead the way, opening or having a financial interest in new tracks opening in Ramsgate, Cardiff, Nottingham, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Brighton and Stoke-on-Trent. The GRA also moved venues in Leeds from Fullerton Park to Elland Road Greyhound Stadium which was literally next door. Other major tracks to open included three London venues; West Ham Stadium with the capacity to accommodate 100,000 spectators, Clapton Stadium designed by the famous architect Sir Owen Williams and Wimbledon Stadium which would become one of the most prominent tracks in the industry. The latter was owned by Bill (W.J) Cearns. Three tracks also opened in Wales; White City Stadium, Cardiff, White City Swansea and Cardiff Arms Park.

The National Greyhound Racing Club (NGRC) was formed, the purpose of this organisation was to govern greyhound racing and the body would be responsible for regulation and the rules of racing that came into force on 23 April. The NGRC consisted of twelve stewards usually chosen from military or police backgrounds. The first stewards included E.A.V.Stanley, Lt General Sir Edward Bethune and Major B.D.Corbett. The rules of racing were introduced and updated annually and any track wishing to be associated with them were required to agree to the rules and apply for licences. Tracks that were not licensed were called independent or 'Flapping' tracks, the latter description was not welcomed by the independent tracks. Calendars were formulated containing information for all licensed personal and anyone falling foul of the rules was subject to investigation and punishment. A passport or official identity book for every greyhound was introduced and was a vital component to ensure the policing of greyhounds at every track.

The total annual attendance across the country for 1928 increased to 13 million 695,275 from 5,656,686 (in 1927).
With the rise in popularity there was also the growth of opposition to greyhound racing. In March a decision by Salford City Council to cease permitting advertisements of greyhound races on the back of tram tickets was passed by a vote of 26 to 14.

Competitions
Six new major events were inaugurated during the year. The Cesarewitch at West Ham and St Leger at Wembley for stayers and the Scurry Gold Cup at Clapton for sprinters were introduced in London. Three national Derby competitions were started - the Scottish Greyhound Derby at Carntyne, the Welsh Derby at Welsh White City (Cardiff) and the Irish Greyhound Derby at Harolds Cross. The Welsh Derby was not considered a classic event at this stage.

Mick the Miller
The first great champion of greyhound racing emerged when on 18 April, Mick the Miller won on debut at Shelbourne Park but was overshadowed by his brother Macoma five days later. Macoma also trained by Horan broke the world record time for 500 yards beating the existing record holder Kriesler in a time of 28.80 sec. Later in the same month the pair went to Celtic Park to contest the Abercorn Cup and during a gallop Macoma caught his leg in the mesh traps breaking his hock. Mick the Miller finished third in the final but made a name for himself when equaling the world record of 28.80 at Shelbourne, a race sandwiched in between the semi and final at Celtic Park. Then Mick the Miller was struck down with distemper. There were no vaccine available and his chances of survival were slim but Arthur 'Doc' Callanan, who was the manager of Shelbourne Park as well as being a qualified veterinary surgeon on site nursed him back to health. In the August, both Mick the Miller and Macoma were put up for sale by Father Brophy. Macoma was sold for 290 guineas but Mick the Millers reserve was not met, a fortunate moment for his owner Father Brophy.

Ireland
The Irish Derby was unofficial because Harolds Cross decided to run a 'National Derby' without consulting the Irish racing authorities. This was a practice they would continue to do until the formation of classic races in 1932. Also in Ireland it was clear that the 1926 Betting Act passed by the Oireachtas, Dáil Éireann was benefitting the Irish government with funds from the tax it received from gambling. The 5% off course tax and 2.5% on course tax also seemed to be a catalyst for new track builds in Ireland. However a proposed government amendment to tax the unregulated Irish flapping tracks was defeated 66 votes to 48.       In Ireland the Harolds Cross Parish Church held sermons called "The Moral Challenge of Greyhound Racing" and the "Religion and the Gambling Spirit".

1928 Unofficial Irish Derby
The winner of the 1928 Irish Greyhound Derby was Tipperary Hills. On Thursday 16 August, Tipperary Hills (Billy Quinn), Curristown (John Shannon) and Happy Man won the semi-finals. Tipperary Hills defeated PJ Graham's Battle Island by one length in 30.72 sec, Curristown defeated Gilly Gooly by two lengths in 30.95 sec and the third and final semi final was won by Happy Man (M Hammond) from False Favourite (C Forde) by four lengths in 31.10 sec.

Tracks opened

Major Competitions inaugurated
 Scottish Greyhound Derby at Carntyne Stadium
 Scurry Gold Cup at Clapton Stadium
 St Leger at Wembley Stadium
 Cesarewitch at West Ham Stadium
 Welsh Derby at White City Stadium (Cardiff)

Principal UK races

Principal Irish finals

Key
U = unplaced

References

Greyhound racing in the United Kingdom
Greyhound racing in the Republic of Ireland
1928 in British sport
1928 in Irish sport
1928 in Welsh sport
1928 in Scottish sport

1928 UK & Ireland Greyhound Racing Year


Thomas Clay McCreery (December 12, 1816July 10, 1890) was a Democratic U.S. Senator from Kentucky.

Born at Yelvington, Kentucky, McCreery graduated from Centre College, in Danville, Kentucky, in 1837. He studied law, passed the bar, and commenced practice in Frankfort, Kentucky. He then returned to Owensboro and engaged in literary pursuits.

He ran unsuccessfully for election in 1842 to the Twenty-eighth Congress, and again in 1844 to the Twenty-ninth Congress. He served as a presidential elector on the Democratic tickets in 1852, 1856, and 1860. He was finally elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of James Guthrie, and served from February 19, 1868, to March 3, 1871. However, McCreery faced many accusations by then-Governor John W. Stevenson, of helping hated former Union General Steven G. Burbridge obtain a position as revenue collector, and lost to Stevenson in the following election. McCreery was again elected to the United States Senate in 1872 and served from March 4, 1873, to March 3, 1879, when he declined to be a candidate for reelection. He retired from public life and lived on his farm in Daviess County, Kentucky, and moved back to Owensboro, where he died and was interred in Rosehill Elmwood Cemetery.

References

1816 births
1890 deaths
Politicians from Owensboro, Kentucky
Centre College alumni
Kentucky lawyers
Kentucky Democrats
Democratic Party United States senators from Kentucky
19th-century American politicians
19th-century American lawyers

Thomas C. McCreery