The sand tiger shark (Carcharias taurus), gray nurse shark, spotted ragged-tooth shark or blue-nurse sand tiger, is a species of shark that inhabits subtropical and temperate waters worldwide. It inhabits the continental shelf, from sandy shorelines (hence the name sand tiger shark) and submerged reefs to a depth of around . They dwell in the waters of Japan, Australia, South Africa, and the east coasts of North and South America. The sand tiger shark also inhabited the Mediterranean, however it was last seen there in 2003 and is presumed extinct in the region. Despite its common names, it is not closely related to either the tiger shark (Galeocerdo cuvier) or the nurse shark (Ginglymostoma cirratum).

Despite its fearsome appearance and strong swimming ability, it is a relatively placid and slow-moving shark with no confirmed human fatalities. This species has a sharp, pointy head, and a bulky body. The sand tiger's length can reach  but is normally 2.2–2.5 m in length. They are grey with reddish-brown spots on their backs. Shivers (groups) have been observed to hunt large schools of fish. Their diet consists of bony fish, crustaceans, squid, skates and other sharks. Unlike other sharks, the sand tiger can gulp air from the surface, allowing it to be suspended in the water column with minimal effort. During pregnancy, the most developed embryo will feed on its siblings, a reproductive strategy known as intrauterine cannibalism i.e. "embryophagy" or, more colorfully, adelphophagy—literally "eating one's brother". The sand tiger is categorized as critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List. It is the most widely kept large shark in public aquariums owing to its tolerance for captivity.

Taxonomy
The sand tiger shark's description as Carcharias taurus by Constantine Rafinesque came from a specimen caught off the coast of Sicily. Carcharias taurus means "bull shark". This taxonomic classification has been long disputed. Twenty-seven years after Rafinesque's original description the German biologists Müller and Henle changed the genus name from C. taurus to Triglochis taurus. The following year, Swiss-American naturalist Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz reclassified the shark as Odontaspis cuspidata based on examples of fossilized teeth. Agassiz's name was used until 1961 when three palaeontologists and ichthyologists, W. Tucker, E. I. White, and N. B. Marshall, requested that the shark be returned to the genus Carcharias. This request was rejected and Odontaspis was approved by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN). When experts concluded that taurus belongs after Odontaspis, the name was changed to Odontaspis taurus. In 1977, Compagno and Follet challenged the Odontaspis taurus name and substituted Eugomphodus, a somewhat unknown classification, for Odontaspis. Many taxonomists questioned his change, arguing that there was no significant difference between Odontaspis and Carcharias. After changing the name to Eugomphodus taurus, Compagno successfully advocated in establishing the shark's current scientific name as Carcharias taurus. The ICZN approved this name, and today it is used among biologists.

Common names
Because the sand tiger shark is worldwide in distribution, it has many common names. The term "sand tiger shark" actually refers to four different sand tiger shark species in the family Odontaspididae. Furthermore, the name creates confusion with the unrelated tiger shark Galeocerdo cuvier. The grey nurse shark, the name used in Australia, is the second-most used name for the shark, and in India it is known as blue-nurse sand tiger. However, there are unrelated nurse sharks in the family Ginglymostomatidae. The most unambiguous and descriptive English name is probably the South African one, spotted ragged-tooth shark.

Identification

There are four species referred to as sand tiger sharks:
 The sand tiger shark Carcharias taurus
 The Indian sand tiger shark Carcharias tricuspidatus. Very little is known about this species which, described before 1900, is probably the same as (a synonym of) the sand tiger C. taurus
 The small-toothed sand tiger shark Odontaspis ferox. This species has a worldwide distribution, is seldom seen but normally inhabits deeper water than does C. taurus.
 The Big-eyed sand tiger shark Odontaspis noronhai, a deep water shark of the Americas, of which little is known.

The most likely problem when identifying the sand tiger shark is when in the presence of either of the two species of Odontaspis. Firstly, the sand tiger is usually spotted, especially on the hind half of the body. However, there are several other differences that are probably more reliable:
 The bottom part of the caudal fin (tail fin) of the sand tiger is smaller.
 The second (i.e., hind) dorsal fin of the sand tiger is almost as large as the first (i.e., front) dorsal fin.
 The first (i.e., front) dorsal fin of the sand tiger is relatively non-symmetric.
 The first (i.e., front) dorsal fin of the sand tiger is closer to the pelvic fin than to the pectoral fin (i.e., the first dorsal fin is positioned further backwards in the case of the sand tiger).

Description
Adult sand tigers range from  to  in length with most specimens reaching a length of around 2.2–2.5 m and  to  in weight. The head is pointy, as opposed to round, while the snout is flattened with a conical shape. Its body is stout and bulky and its mouth extends beyond the eyes. The eyes of the sand tiger shark are small, lacking eyelids. A sand tiger usually swims with its mouth open displaying three rows of protruding, smooth-edged, sharp-pointed teeth. The males have grey claspers with white tips located on the underside of their body. The caudal fin is elongated with a long upper lobe (i.e. strongly heterocercal). They have two large, broad-based grey dorsal fins set back beyond the pectoral fins. The sand tiger shark has a grey-brown back and pale underside. Adults tend to have reddish-brown spots scattered, mostly on the hind part of the body. In August 2007, an albino specimen was photographed off South West Rocks, Australia. The teeth of these sharks have no transverse serrations (as have many other sharks) but they have a large, smooth main cusp with a tiny cusplet on each side of the main cusp. The upper front teeth are separated from the teeth on the side of the mouth by small intermediate teeth.

Habitat and range

Geographical range

Sand tiger sharks roam the epipelagic and mesopelagic regions of the ocean, sandy coastal waters, estuaries, shallow bays, and rocky or tropical reefs, at depths of up to .

The sand tiger shark can be found in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, and in the Adriatic Seas. In the Western Atlantic Ocean, it is found in coastal waters around from the Gulf of Maine to Florida, in the northern Gulf of Mexico, around the Bahamas and Bermuda, and from southern Brazil to northern Argentina. It is also found in the eastern Atlantic Ocean from the Mediterranean Sea to the Canary Islands, at the Cape Verde islands, along the coasts of Senegal and Ghana, and from southern Nigeria to Cameroon. In the western Indian Ocean, the shark ranges from South Africa to southern Mozambique, but excluding Madagascar. The sand tiger shark has also been sighted in the Red Sea and may be found as far east as India. In the western Pacific, it has been sighted in the waters around the coasts of Japan and Australia, but not around New Zealand.

Annual migration
Sand tigers in South Africa and Australia undertake an annual migration that may cover more than . They pup during the summer in relatively cold water (temperature ca. ). After parturition, they swim northwards toward sites where there are suitable rocks or caves, often at a water depth ca. , where they mate during and just after the winter. Mating normally takes place at night. After mating, they swim further north to even warmer water where gestation takes place. In the Autumn they return southwards to give birth in cooler water. This round trip may encompass as much as . The young sharks do not take part in this migration, but they are absent from the normal birth grounds during winter: it is thought that they move deeper into the ocean. At Cape Cod (USA), juveniles move away from coastal areas when water temperatures decreases below 16 °C and day length decreases to less than 12 h. Juveniles, however, return to their usual summer haunts and as they become mature they start larger migratory movements.

Behavior

Hunting
The sand tiger shark is a nocturnal feeder. During the day, they take shelter near rocks, overhangs, caves and reefs often at relatively shallow depths (<20 m). This is the typical environment where divers encounter sand tigers, hovering just above the bottom in large sandy gutters and caves. However, at night they leave the shelter and hunt over the ocean bottom, often ranging far from their shelter. Sand tigers hunt by stealth. It is the only shark known to gulp air and store it in the stomach, allowing the shark to maintain near-neutral buoyancy which helps it to hunt motionlessly and quietly. Aquarium observations indicate that when it comes close enough to a prey item, it grabs with a quick sideways snap of the prey. The sand tiger shark has been observed to gather in hunting groups when preying upon large schools of fish.

Diet

The majority of prey items of sand tigers are demersal (i.e. from the sea bottom), suggesting that they hunt extensively on the sea bottom as far out as the continental shelf. Bony fish (teleosts) form about 60% of sand tigers' food, the remaining prey comprising sharks, skates, other rays, lobsters, crabs and squid. In Argentina, the prey includes mostly demersal fishes, e.g. the striped weakfish (Cynoscion guatucupa) and whitemouth croaker (Micropogonias furnieri). The most important elasmobranch prey is the bottom-living narrownose smooth-hound shark (Mustelus schmitti.). Benthic (i.e. free-swimming) rays and skates are also taken, including fanskates, eagle rays and the angular angel shark, with larger individuals feeding on a higher number of benthic elasmobranchs than smaller individuals. Stomach content analysis indicates that smaller sand tigers mainly focus on the sea bottom and as they grow larger they start to take more benthic prey. This perspective of the diet of sand tigers is consistent with similar observations in the north west Atlantic and in South Africa where large sand tigers capture a wider range of shark and skate species as prey, from the surf zone to the continental shelf, indicating the opportunistic nature of sand tiger feeding. Off South Africa, sand tigers less than  in length prey on fish about a quarter of their own length; however, large sand tigers capture prey up to about half of their own length. The prey items are usually swallowed as three or four chunks.

Courtship and mating
Mating occurs around the months of August and December
in the northern hemisphere and during August–October in the southern hemisphere. The courtship and mating of sand tigers has been best documented from observations in large aquaria. In Oceanworld, Sydney, the females tended to hover just above the sandy bottom ("shielding") when they were receptive. This prevented males from approaching from underneath towards their cloaca. Often there is more than one male close by with the dominant one remaining close to the female, intimidating others with an aggressive display in which the dominant shark closely follows the tail of the subordinate, forcing the subordinate to accelerate and swim away. The dominant male snaps at smaller fish of other species. The male approaches the female and the two sharks protect the sandy bottom over which they interact. Strong interest of the male is indicated by superficial bites in the anal and pectoral fin areas of the female. The female responds with superficial biting of the male. This behaviour continues for several days during which the male patrols the area around the female. The male regularly approaches the female in "nosing" behaviour to "smell" the cloaca of the female. If she is ready, she swims off with the male, while both partners contort their bodies so that the right clasper of the male enters the cloaca of the female. The male bites the base of her right pectoral fin, leaving scars that are easily visible afterwards. After one or two minutes, mating is complete and the two separate. Females often mate with more than one male. Females mate only every second or third year. After mating, the females remain behind, while the males move off to seek other areas to feed, resulting in many observations of sand tiger populations comprising almost exclusively females.

Reproduction and growth

Reproduction

The reproductive pattern is similar to that of many of the Lamnidae, the shark family to which sand tigers belong. Female sand tigers have two uterine horns that, during early embryonic development, may have as many as 50 embryos that obtain nutrients from their yolk sacs and possibly consume uterine fluids. When one of the embryos reaches some  in length, it eats all the smaller embryos so that only one large embryo remains in each uterine horn, a process called intrauterine cannibalism i.e. "embryophagy" or, more colorfully, adelphophagy—literally "eating one's brother." While multiple male sand tigers commonly fertilize a single female, adelphophagy sometimes excludes all but one of them from gaining offspring. These surviving embryos continue to feed on a steady supply of unfertilised eggs. After a lengthy labour, the female gives birth to  long, fully independent offspring. The gestation period is approximately eight to twelve months. These sharks give birth only every second or third year, resulting in an overall mean reproductive rate of less than one pup per year, one of the lowest reproductive rates for sharks.

Growth

In the north Atlantic, sand tiger sharks are born about 1 m in length. During the first year, they grow about 27 cm to reach 1.3 m. After that, the growth rate decreases by about 2.5 cm each year until it stabilises at about 7 cm/y. Males reach sexual maturity at an age of five to seven years and approximately  in length. Females reach maturity when approximately  long at about seven to ten years of age. They are normally not expected to reach lengths over 3 m and lengths around 2.2–2.5 is more common. In the informal media, such as YouTube, there have been several reports of sand tigers around 5 m long, but none of these have been verified scientifically.

Interaction with humans

Attacks on humans
As of 2023, the Florida Museum's International Shark Attack File lists 36 unprovoked, non-fatal attacks by sand tiger sharks.

Over the weekend of 4 July 2023, there were four attacks attributed to sand tiger sharks in New York, USA. This followed a recent spike in shark attacks in New York state, with 13 incidents reported over a two-year period.

Nets around swimming beaches

In Australia and South Africa, one of the common practices in beach holiday areas is to erect shark nets around the beaches frequently used by swimmers. These nets are erected some  from the shore and act as gill nets that trap incoming sharks: this was the norm until about 2005. In South Africa, the mortality of sand tiger sharks caused a significant decrease in the length of these animals and it was concluded that the shark nets pose a significant threat to this species with its very low reproductive rate Before 2000, these nets snagged about 200 sand tiger sharks per year in South Africa, of which only about 40% survived and were released alive. The efficiency of shark nets for the prevention of unprovoked shark attacks on bathers has been questioned, and since 2000 there has been a reduced use of these nets and alternative approaches are being developed.

Competition for food with humans

In Argentina, the prey items of sand tigers largely coincided with important commercial fisheries targets. Humans affect sand tiger food availability and the sharks, in turn, compete with humans for food that, in turn, has already been heavily exploited by the fisheries industry. The same applies to the bottom-living sea catfish (Galeichthys feliceps), a fisheries resource off the South African coast.

Effects of scuba divers

A study near Sydney in Australia found that the behaviour of the sharks is affected by the proximity of scuba divers. Diver activity affects the aggregation, swimming and respiratory behaviour of sharks, but only at short time scales. The group size of scuba divers was less important in affecting sand tiger behaviour than the distance within which they approached the sharks. Divers approaching to within 3 m of sharks affected their behaviour but after the divers had retreated, the sharks resumed normal behaviour. Other studies indicate sand tiger sharks can be indifferent to divers. Scuba divers are normally compliant with Australian shark-diving regulations.

In captivity

Its large and menacing appearance, combined with its relative placidity, has made the sand tiger shark among the most popular shark species to be displayed in public aquaria. However, as with all large sharks, keeping them in captivity is not without its difficulties. Sand tiger sharks have been found to be highly susceptible to developing spinal deformities, with as many as one in every three captive sharks being affected, giving them a hunched appearance. These deformities have been hypothesized to be correlated to both the size and shape of their tank. If the tank is too small, the sharks have to spend more time actively swimming than they would in the wild, where they have space to glide. Also, sharks in small, circular tanks often spend most of their time circling along the edges in only one direction, causing asymmetrical stress on their bodies.

Threats and conservation status

Threats
There are several factors contributing to the decline in the population of the sand tigers. Sand tigers reproduce at an unusually low rate, due to the fact that they do not have more than two pups at a time and because they breed only every second or third year. This shark is a highly prized food item in the western northern Pacific, off Ghana and off India and Pakistan where they are caught by fishing trawlers, although they are more commonly caught with a fishing line. Sand tigers' fins are a popular trade item in Japan. Off North America, it is fished for its hide and fins. Shark liver oil is a popular product in cosmetic products such as lipstick. It is sought by anglers in fishing competitions in South Africa and some other countries. In Australia it has been reduced in numbers by spear fishers using poison and where it is now protected. It is also prized as an aquarium exhibit in the United States, Europe, Australia and South Africa because of its docile and hardy nature. Thus, overfishing is a major contributor to the population decline. All indications show that the world population in sand tigers has been reduced significantly in size since 1980. Many sand tigers are caught in shark nets, and then either strangled or taken by fishermen. Estuaries along the United States of America's eastern Atlantic coast houses many of the young sand tiger sharks. These estuaries are susceptible to non-point source pollution that is harmful to the pups. In Eastern Australia, the breeding population was estimated to be fewer than 400 reproductively mature animals, a number believed to be too small to sustain a healthy population.

Conservation status

This species is therefore listed as Critically Endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List, and as endangered under Queensland's Nature Conservation Act 1992. It is a U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service [Species of Concern], which are those species that the U.S. Government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), has some concerns regarding status and threats, but for which insufficient information is available to indicate a need to list the species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. According to the National Marine Fisheries Service, any shark caught must be released immediately with minimal harm, and is considered a prohibited species, making it illegal to harvest any part of the sand tiger shark on the United States' Atlantic coast.

A recent report from the Pew Charitable Trusts suggests that a new management approach used for large mammals that have suffered population declines could hold promise for sharks. Because of the life-history characteristics of sharks, conventional fisheries management approaches, such as reaching maximum sustainable yield, may not be sufficient to rebuild depleted shark populations. Some of the more stringent approaches used to reverse declines in large mammals may be appropriate for sharks, including prohibitions on the retention of the most vulnerable species and regulation of international trade.

References

Bibliography

External links

 The tangled taxonomic history of the sand tiger shark – Additional taxonomy information
 Carcharias taurus, Sand tiger shark from FishBase
 Sand Tiger Shark School
 Species Description of Carcharias taurus at www.shark-references.com
 Sand Tiger Sharks
 Shark Info
 Scuba divers swim among the sharks Fayetteville Observer

Odontaspididae
Fish of Israel
Ovoviviparous fish
Fish described in 1810
Nature Conservation Act endangered biota
Fish of the Atlantic Ocean
Fish of Australia
Fish of Japan
Fish of South America
Fish of North America
Fish of South Africa
Taxa named by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque
Critically endangered fauna of the United States

Sand tiger shark


Capital City Distribution was a Madison, Wisconsin-based comic book distributor which operated from 1980 to 1996 when they were acquired by rival Diamond Comic Distributors. Under the name Capital Comics, they also published comics from 1981 to 1984.

During most of its years of operation, Capital City introduced many supply chain innovations and controlled much of the American Midwest's comics distribution market. More so than their rivals Diamond and Heroes World Distribution, Capital City supported independent publishers as much as big mainstream companies like DC Comics and Marvel Comics.

Capital City also published over 400 pages of printed material a month, including Internal Correspondence, which provided sales figures to their clients; and Advance Comics, their monthly catalog showcasing upcoming comic books, toys, and other pop-culture related items it distributed to comic book specialty shops.

Distributor

Origins
In the 1970s, Milton Griepp and John Davis were running a small Madison-based distributor called Wisconsin Independent News Distributors (WIND). Forced to sell their assets to Big Rapids Distribution, Griepp and Davis later turned the tables in 1980 when they took over much of Big Rapids' bankrupt business to form Capital City.

One of Capital City's first acts was to utilize the personnel of another former Big Rapids' acquisition, Well News Co. of Columbus, Ohio, to become the nucleus of an early distribution branch. In 1982, Capital City acquired the Berkeley, California-based Common Ground Distributors, which had been started by Robert Beerbohm in the late 1970s (and had been initially supplied by Big Rapids).

Capital City's Wisconsin location was relatively near World Color Press's main printing plant in Sparta, Illinois. (During that period World Color printed most American comic books, including those of the two industry giants Marvel and DC.) By 1982, Capital City operated out of a large warehouse in Madison that they shared with their largest account, mail-order retailer Westfield Comics.

1984 expansion and rise to prominence
Griepp became Capital City's CEO in 1984. That same year, with the demise of one of the larger independent publisher/distributors, Pacific Comics, Pacific's distribution centers and warehouses were purchased by Capital City and rival distributor Bud Plant Inc. Capital City also opened an expanded facility in Sparta, Illinois, in the old space of another defunct rival, Sea Gate Distributors, alongside the comic-book printing plant.

By 1988, Capital City and its main surviving rival Diamond Comics Distributors had control of at least 70% of the comics distribution market between them.

Capital was large enough to host its own name-branded trade shows in 1993–1994, which were held in early May of both years.

In 1994, Capital created controversy by announcing penalties for publishers who didn't deliver their products within promised deadlines; this move followed an industry-wide push for 30-day returnability, a practice formerly in use when comics were primarily distributed in newsstands.

By this point, Capital City's Canadian affiliate, STV, had warehouses in Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec City; and Capital City had another freight forwarder operating out of Seattle, Washington.

Acquisition by Diamond
1995 saw a major restructuring of the direct market distribution system, caused by Marvel Comics's late-1994 purchase of third-ranked distributor Heroes World Distribution and decision to distribute its titles in-house. Faced with the loss of one-third of its business (Marvel's market share) Diamond reacted by outbidding Capital City for exclusive deals with Marvel's main rival DC Comics; and despite intense efforts on the part of Davis and Griepp, Dark Horse Comics and Image Comics as well.

Capital City reacted by suing Marvel for the loss of their business, resulting in a settlement allowing them to continue distributing Marvel product until October 1995 (for everyone else, Marvel went exclusive with Heroes World starting in July). In addition, Capital City was able to sign exclusive deals with Kitchen Sink Press, TSR, and Viz Comics—as well as acquiring the Gary, Indiana-based distributor Friendly Frank's. Nonetheless, by 1996 Capital faced the choice between bankruptcy and selling out.

In July 1996 Capital City was acquired by Diamond. At the time of sale, Capital had over $150 million in annual sales. The purchase price was not disclosed, but the acquisition brought an estimated $50 million in sales revenue to Diamond, and effectively awarded Diamond complete control of the comics distribution system. Most of Capital City's 100 employees in Madison and another 100 in Sparta lost their jobs in the deal, though a few key staff members, including co-founder John Davis, joined Diamond's staff.

After selling Capital, Griepp became an industry consultant, and since early 2001, has operated ICv2 ("Internal Correspondence vol. 2"), an online trade magazine covering "geek culture."

Publisher
In 1981, Capital City decided to enter the comic book publishing field as well. Under the name Capital Comics, they launched a black-and-white comics title, Nexus, a futuristic superhero series by Mike Baron and Steve Rude, and distributed it through their own system.

Richard Bruning was a key part of Capital Comics' staff, acting as Editor-In-Chief and Art Director until the company ceased operation in 1984. Besides Nexus, the other titles published by Capital were Badger and Whisper. In 1984, after publishing only a handful of issues of their three titles, Capital shut down its publishing operation. Its titles were taken over by the new independent publisher First Comics.

Titles published
 Nexus: two series, 1981 and 1983, nine issues
 Badger: 1983, four issues
 Whisper: 1983, two issues

See also
 List of book distributors

Notes

References

Comic book publishing companies of the United States
Comics industry
Companies based in Madison, Wisconsin
Defunct companies based in Wisconsin
Publishing companies established in 1980
Publishing companies disestablished in 1996
Defunct comics and manga publishing companies
Book distributors
1980 establishments in Wisconsin
1996 disestablishments in Wisconsin
1996 mergers and acquisitions

Capital City Distribution


Richard Desborough Burnell (26 July 1917 – 29 January 1995) was an English rower who won a gold medal at the 1948 Olympics alongside Bert Bushnell in the double sculls. He and his father Charles are the only father and son in Olympic history to have both won gold medals in rowing.

Career
Burnell was born in Henley-on-Thames the son of Charles Burnell who won a gold medal in the eights at the 1908 Summer Olympics. He was educated at Eton College and Oxford University.

In May 1939, Burnell was commissioned into the London Rifle Brigade. He was on the losing Oxford team in The Boat Race in 1939. He was a rowing correspondent for The Times and wrote several books on rowing matters. He competed for Kingston Rowing Club and in 1946 won the Wingfield Sculls.

1948 Summer Olympics
At the 1948 Olympics Burnell won a gold medal with Bert Bushnell in the double sculls, Burnell and Bushnell having never previously trained together. Jack Beresford told Bushnell that he had no chance to win the single sculls, and so created the double sculls team instead. Their differing physiques – Burnell was 6 ft 4 inches and weighed  stone, while Bushnell was 5 ft 10 inches and  stone – presented some difficulties in the boat, which Bushnell had to re-rig so that they were able to reach together.

The pair only had a month to train for the Games, with animosity between the two due to the difference in their class backgrounds. Bushnell later said in an interview, "There was class tension there and it came from me being bloody awkward." Bushnell struck up a friendship with American rower John B. Kelly Jr. and Australian Mervyn Wood. The rowers' diets had been increased from the normal 2,500 calories allowed by rationing to a "miner's diet" of 3,600. However, the other teams were having food flown in specially to increase their calorie intake and allow them to train more. Bushnell would invite Kelly and Wood over for dinner, with his guests bringing the food. Bushnell and Burnell both attended the opening ceremony of the 1948 Games, something Bushnell described as "dreadful", as they gave the athletes poorly fitting uniforms and made them stand out in the sun en-masse for three hours.

On the Henley Royal Regatta course, they lost to France in the first round, but then won both the repêchage followed by the semi-final. On 9 August 1948, in front of a home crowd, Bushnell and Burnell competed in the Olympic final against the double scull teams of Uruguay and Denmark. Bushnell nearly missed the final, held at the Leander Club in Henley-on-Thames, as stewards would not allow him to enter; he later explained "You see I wasn't a member then – not posh enough". At around the three-minute mark, the British team decided to push for the win, eventually taking it in six minutes and 51.3 seconds, two lengths ahead of the favoured Danish duo of Ebbe Parsner and Aage Larsen (6:55.3) and five ahead of Uruguay (7:12.4). On the jetty they were awarded their medals while standing in their socks. There were no ribbons for the medals due to cost saving measures, and so they were given them in presentation boxes while God Save the King was played by a band.

After Olympics

Burnell won a bronze medal in the eights at the 1950 British Empire Games, and in 1951 he won the Double Sculls Challenge Cup at Henley Royal Regatta, together with Pat Bradley.
He continued to write on international rowing events for the Sunday Times until 1990.

Personal life
Burnell and his father Charles Burnell are the only father and son in Olympic history to have both won gold medals in rowing. In 1940 Burnell married Rosalind, a daughter of English Olympic gold medal-winning rower Stanley Garton. They had five children: Peter, John, Edward, Alexandra ("Zandra"), and Elizabeth ("Tizzy"). Burnell's son, Peter, rowed for Oxford in 1962.

Works
Burnell published several books on rowing, including
 Swing Together: Thoughts on Rowing (1952)
 The Oxford & Cambridge Boat Race, 1829–1953 (1954)
 Sculling: With Notes on Training and Rigging (1955)
 Henley Regatta: A History (1957)

Legacy
During the run up to the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, the BBC produced the film Bert and Dickie (also called Going For Gold: The '48 Games), depicting Burnell and Bushnell's achievement at the 1948 Games, with Sam Hoare in the role of Burnell and Matt Smith portraying Bushnell.

References

1917 births
1995 deaths
English male rowers
English Olympic medallists
Olympic rowers for Great Britain
Rowers at the 1948 Summer Olympics
Olympic gold medallists for Great Britain
Rowers at the 1950 British Empire Games
Commonwealth Games bronze medallists for England
Stewards of Henley Royal Regatta
People from Henley-on-Thames
People from Wallingford, Oxfordshire
Olympic medalists in rowing
Rifle Brigade officers
British Army personnel of World War II
British emigrants to Zimbabwe
English emigrants to Zimbabwe
Oxford University Boat Club rowers
Medalists at the 1948 Summer Olympics
People educated at Eton College
Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford
Commonwealth Games medallists in rowing
Military personnel from Oxfordshire
London Rifle Brigade officers
Medallists at the 1950 British Empire Games

Dickie Burnell


Creole cream cheese is a form of farmer cheese that is traditional in the New Orleans area of Louisiana in the United States. It is made from skim milk, buttermilk and rennet, has a mild, slightly tart, slightly sweet taste, and is frequently mixed with cream, sugar and fruit and served as a dessert. It is often used to make Creole cream cheese ice cream.

In homes it was traditionally eaten for breakfast and served with cream, fruit, or sugar; it can also be served on toast with butter, salt and pepper.

History

According to Mauthe of Mauthe's Progress Milk Barn , an artisan dairy credited with helping resurrect the dish, Creole cream cheese originated in the 1800s among people of French ancestry. Instead of forming the curds, they are said to have hung the clabber in a mesh bag in a tree and let the whey drain off.

Creole cream cheese was served in a bowl and cream was poured over it. Mauthe remembers it being eaten on French bread in some areas and on cornbread in other parts of the Southern United States.

Creole cream cheese is listed in the Ark of Taste, an international catalog of heritage foods in danger of extinction, maintained by the global Slow Food movement.

Creole cream cheese's popularity declined during the second half of the 20th century and it became difficult to find. Several dairies in South Louisiana have offered creole cream cheese in the past, including Borden's, Gold Seal and Barbe's. In 1998 it was still available at Dorignac's Food Center on Veterans Boulevard in Metairie. The Gold Seal Creamery that was the last Creole cream cheese factory in New Orleans operated from about 1920 to 1986 and its blond-brick building constructed in 1954 is being converted into loft apartments.

Resurgence
More recently, creole cream cheese has had a resurgence. New Orleans native chef David Guas offers creole cream cheese at his Bayou Bakery, Coffee Bar & Eatery in Arlington, Virginia, served with buttermilk biscuits and pepper jelly. The New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) included creole cream cheese as part of its 2012 "Art You Can Eat" demonstrations, with Leah Chase making it. Poppy Tooker has also been credited with helping resurrect the dish. The Encyclopedia of Cajun and Creole Cuisine includes instructions on making the dish at home.

The intensive process required to make creole cream cheese, a yogurt-like and slightly sweet concoction, has made a comeback including with a cheesecake recipe from the Mauthe (pronounced: ; ) family of McComb, Mississippi, who operate the Progress Milk Barn, nearly destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

Creole cream cheese ice cream
Creole cream cheese ice cream is also a Louisiana tradition. The USDA cracked down on dairies over concerns about spoilage and added regulations over milk and cheese production; production has become far more limited. The ice cream flavor was available at K&B drugstores. Other past producers include Brown's Dairy (formerly Brown's Velvet Dairy) in New Orleans.

John Besh offers a creole cream cheese red velvet ice cream at his Soda Shop in the National World War II Museum. Mam's House of Ice in Houston offers Creole Cream Cheese ice cream. Baskin Robbins offered the flavor in 2011/2012. In April 2013, Blue Bell Creameries re-released the flavor in Louisiana and the Mississippi Gulf Coast region, and in 2018 released the flavor again in the Pine Belt area of Mississippi, most notably in the Ramey's supermarket chain. Another version is made by New Orleans Ice Cream Company.

See also
 List of spreads

References

American cheeses
Louisiana cuisine
Cream cheeses

Creole cream cheese


May El Khalil is the Founder and President of the Beirut Marathon Association, which oversees the annual Beirut Marathon and has been held every autumn since 2003. It was accredited by the International Association of Athletic Federations (IAAF) in 2009. In 2014, the race attracted over 38,000 runners from 104 countries.

Biography
Born in Aley, Lebanon, May El Khalil spent much of her adult life in Nigeria following her marriage to business man Faysal El Khalil. In Nigeria, she established the Lebanese Ladies in Nigeria, a non-governmental organization dedicated to promoting educational development by way of grants and scholarships.

In 2001, after El Khalil had returned to Lebanon, she suffered a near-fatal accident that placed her in a coma. She spent two years undergoing dozens of surgeries that enabled her to walk again and inspired her to found the Beirut marathon.

In the aftermath of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri's assassination in February 2005, the Beirut Marathon Association organized the "United We Run" race that attracted 60,000 runners.

El Khalil has been recognized for her work nationally and internationally; she has received the AIPS Power of Sport Award in Lausanne, and the Laureus World Sports Academy Lifetime achievement award in Abu Dhabi.  She has been decorated by Lebanese President Michel Suleiman with the National Order of the Cedar, and has been granted appreciation awards from the Lebanese Ministry of Tourism, The Brazil-Lebanon Chamber of Commerce, and the Lebanese Ministry of Youth and Sport.  El Khalil was also a Paul Harris Fellow of the Rotary Foundation of Rotary International for 2010 and 2011.  In 2013 she was presented with an honorary Ph.D. from LAU (the Lebanese American University). In 2014 she was honoring by YWCA Lebanon on March 8 ( international Women's day ),

El Khalil spoke at the TED global conference in Edinburgh Scotland in 2013.  In 2014, she was invited as a speaker at the European Innovation Convention on March 10. She was also invited by SEAL foundation as guest of Honor for their annual gala Dinner in New York. The Lebanese Franchise Association has chosen El Khalil to be one of the four recipients of the " Appreciation Award". On July 22, 2014, she received the Fair Play and peace award by the Premio Fair Play Mecenate committee in Arezzo, Italy.

El Khalil has four children and four grandchildren. Faysal M. El-Khalil is presently the Chairman of the Seven-Up Bottling Company based in Nigeria, Tanzania, Ghana and Kenya. Her brother in law is H.E. Anwar M. El-Khalil, a member of the Lebanese Parliament since 1992.

References

External links
 May El-Khalil at laureus.com
 May El-Khalil on the Lebanese American University website

 Faysal M. El-Khalil
 May El-Khalil: Making peace is a marathon (TEDGlobal 2013)

1957 births
Living people
Athletics (track and field) administrators
Lebanese activists
Lebanese people in sports

May El-Khalil


Alexander Selkirk (167613 December 1721) was a Scottish privateer and Royal Navy officer who spent four years and four months as a castaway (1704–1709) after being marooned by his captain, initially at his request, on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific Ocean. He survived that ordeal but died from tropical illness years later while serving as a Lieutenant aboard  off West Africa.

Selkirk was an unruly youth and joined buccaneering voyages to the South Pacific during the War of the Spanish Succession. One such expedition was on Cinque Ports, captained by Thomas Stradling under the overall command of William Dampier. Stradling's ship stopped to resupply at the uninhabited Juan Fernández Islands, west of South America, and Selkirk judged correctly that the craft was unseaworthy and asked to be left there. Selkirk's suspicions were soon justified, as Cinque Ports foundered near Malpelo Island 400 km (250 mi) from the coast of what is now Colombia.

By the time he was eventually rescued by English privateer Woodes Rogers, who was accompanied by Dampier, Selkirk had become adept at hunting and making use of the resources that he found on the island. His story of survival was widely publicized after his return, becoming one of the sources of inspiration for the writer Daniel Defoe's fictional character Robinson Crusoe.

Early life and privateering
Alexander Selkirk was the son of a shoemaker and tanner in Lower Largo, Fife, Scotland, born in 1676. In his youth he displayed a quarrelsome and unruly disposition. He was summoned before the Kirk Session in August 1693 for his "indecent conduct in church", but he "did not appear, being gone to sea". He was back at Largo in 1701 when he again came to the attention of church authorities for assaulting his brothers.

Early on, he was engaged in buccaneering. In 1703, he joined an expedition of English privateer and explorer William Dampier to the South Pacific Ocean, setting sail from Kinsale in Ireland on 11 September. They carried letters of marque from the Lord High Admiral authorizing their armed merchant ships to attack foreign enemies as the War of the Spanish Succession was then going on between England and Spain. Dampier was captain of St George and Selkirk served on Cinque Ports, St Georges companion ship, as sailing master under Captain Thomas Stradling. By this time, Selkirk must have had considerable experience at sea.

In February 1704, following a stormy passage around Cape Horn, the privateers fought a long battle with a well-armed French vessel, St Joseph, only to have it escape to warn its Spanish allies of their arrival in the Pacific. A raid on the Panamanian gold mining town of Santa María failed when their landing party was ambushed. The easy capture of Asunción, a heavily laden merchantman, revived the men's hopes of plunder, and Selkirk was put in charge of the prize ship. Dampier took off some much-needed provisions of wine, brandy, sugar, and flour, then abruptly set the ship free, arguing that the gain was not worth the effort. In May 1704, Stradling decided to abandon Dampier and strike out on his own.

Castaway

In September 1704, after parting ways with Dampier, Captain Stradling brought Cinque Ports to an island known to the Spanish as Más a Tierra located in the uninhabited Juan Fernández archipelago  off the coast of Chile for a mid-expedition restocking of fresh water and supplies.

Selkirk had grave concerns about the seaworthiness of their vessel and wanted to make the necessary repairs before going any further. He declared that he would rather stay on Juan Fernández than continue in a dangerously leaky ship. Stradling took him up on the offer and landed Selkirk on the island with a musket, a hatchet, a knife, a cooking pot, a Bible, bedding and some clothes. Selkirk immediately regretted his rashness, but Stradling refused to let him back on board.

Cinque Ports did indeed later founder off the coast of what is now Colombia. Stradling and some of his crew survived the loss of their ship but were forced to surrender to the Spanish. The survivors were taken to Lima, Peru, where they endured a harsh imprisonment.

Life on the island
At first, Selkirk remained along the shoreline of Más a Tierra. During this time he ate spiny lobsters and scanned the ocean daily for rescue, suffering all the while from loneliness, misery, and remorse. Hordes of raucous sea lions, gathered on the beach for the mating season, eventually drove him to the island's interior. Once inland, his way of life took a turn for the better. More foods were available there: feral goats—introduced by earlier sailors—provided him with meat and milk, while wild turnips, the leaves of the indigenous cabbage tree and dried Schinus fruits (pink peppercorns) offered him variety and spice. Rats would attack him at night, but he was able to sleep soundly and in safety by domesticating and living near feral cats.

Selkirk proved resourceful in using materials that he found on the island: he forged a new knife out of barrel hoops left on the beach, he built two huts out of pepper trees, one of which he used for cooking and the other for sleeping, and he employed his musket to hunt goats and his knife to clean their carcasses. As his gunpowder dwindled, he had to chase prey on foot. During one such chase, he was badly injured when he tumbled from a cliff, lying helpless and unable to move for about a day. His prey had cushioned his fall, probably sparing him a broken back.

Childhood lessons learned from his father, a tanner, now served him well. For example, when his clothes wore out, he made new ones from hair-covered goatskins using a nail for sewing. As his shoes became unusable, he did not need to replace them, since his toughened, calloused feet made protection unnecessary. He sang psalms and read from the Bible, finding it a comfort in his situation and a prop for his English.

During his sojourn on the island, two vessels came to anchor. Unfortunately for Selkirk, both were Spanish. As a Scotsman and a privateer, he would have faced a grim fate if captured and therefore did his best to hide. Once, he was spotted and chased by a group of Spanish sailors from one of the ships. His pursuers urinated beneath the tree in which he was hiding but failed to notice him. The would-be captors then gave up and sailed away.

Rescue

Selkirk's long-awaited deliverance came on 2 February 1709 by way of Duke, a privateering ship piloted by William Dampier, and its sailing companion Duchess. Thomas Dover led the landing party that met Selkirk. After four years and four months without human company, Selkirk was almost incoherent with joy. The Duke captain and leader of the expedition was Woodes Rogers, who wryly referred to Selkirk as the governor of the island. The agile castaway caught two or three goats a day and helped restore the health of Rogers' men, who had developed scurvy.

Captain Rogers was impressed by Selkirk's physical vigor, but also by the peace of mind that he had attained while living on the island, observing: "One may see that solitude and retirement from the world is not such an insufferable state of life as most men imagine, especially when people are fairly called or thrown into it unavoidably, as this man was." He made Selkirk Dukes second mate, later giving him command of one of their prize ships, Increase, before it was ransomed by the Spanish.

Selkirk returned to privateering with a vengeance. At Guayaquil in present-day Ecuador, he led a boat crew up the Guayas River where several wealthy Spanish ladies had fled and looted the gold and jewels they had hidden inside their clothing. His part in the hunt for treasure galleons along the coast of Mexico resulted in the capture of Nuestra Señora de la Encarnación y Desengaño, renamed Bachelor, on which he served as sailing master under Captain Dover to the Dutch East Indies. Selkirk completed the around-the-world voyage by the Cape of Good Hope as the sailing master of Duke, arriving at the Downs off the English coast on 1 October 1711. He had been away for eight years.

Later life and influence

Selkirk's experience as a castaway aroused a great deal of attention in England. Fellow crewman Edward Cooke mentioned Selkirk's ordeal in a book chronicling their privateering expedition, A Voyage to the South Sea and Round the World (1712). A more detailed recounting was published by the expedition's leader, Rogers, within months. The following year, prominent essayist Richard Steele wrote an article about him for The Englishman newspaper. Selkirk appeared set to enjoy a life of ease and celebrity, claiming his share of Duke plundered wealth—about £800 (equivalent to £ today). However, legal disputes made the amount of any payment uncertain.

After a few months in London, he began to seem more like his former self again. But he still missed his secluded and solitary moments, "I am now worth eight hundred pounds, but shall never be as happy as when I was not worth a farthing." In September 1713, he was charged with assaulting a shipwright in Bristol and may have been kept in confinement for two years. He returned to Lower Largo, where he met Sophia Bruce, a young dairymaid. They eloped to London early and married on 4 March 1717. He was soon off to sea again, having enlisted in the Royal Navy. While on a visit to Plymouth in 1720, he married a widowed innkeeper named Frances Candis. He was serving as an officer on board , engaged in an anti-piracy patrol off the west coast of Africa. The ship lingered near the mouth of the River Gambia to resupply. However, the natives took several of their number hostages and ransomed them off for food. As the ship sailed down the coast of West Africa, men began to contract yellow fever from the swarms of mosquitoes that followed them. Selkirk became sick with the disease in early December. He died on 13 December 1721, along with shipmate William King. Both were buried at sea.

When Daniel Defoe published The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719), few readers could have missed the resemblance to Selkirk. An illustration on the first page of the novel shows "a rather melancholy-looking man standing on the shore of an island, gazing inland", in the words of modern explorer Tim Severin. He is dressed in the familiar hirsute goatskins, his feet and shins bare. Yet Crusoe's island is located not in the mid-latitudes of the South Pacific but  away in the Caribbean, where the furry attire would hardly be comfortable in the tropical heat. This incongruity supports the popular belief that Selkirk was a model for the fictional character, though most literary scholars now accept that he was "just one of many survival narratives that Defoe knew about".

In other literary works

In film
Selkirk, the Real Robinson Crusoe is a stop motion film by Walter Tournier based on Selkirk's life. It premièred simultaneously in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay on 2 February 2012, distributed by The Walt Disney Company. It was the first full-length animated feature to be produced in Uruguay.

Commemoration

Selkirk has been memorialized in his Scottish birthplace. Lord Aberdeen delivered a speech on 11 December 1885, after which his wife, Lady Aberdeen, unveiled a bronze statue and plaque in memory of Selkirk outside a house on the site of his original home on the Main Street of Lower Largo. David Gillies of Cardy House, Lower Largo, a descendant of the Selkirks, donated the statue created by Thomas Stuart Burnett.

The Scotsman is also remembered in his former island home. In 1869 the crew of  placed a bronze tablet at a spot called Selkirk's Lookout on a mountain of Más a Tierra, Juan Fernández Islands, to mark his stay. On 1 January 1966 Chilean president Eduardo Frei Montalva renamed Más a Tierra Robinson Crusoe Island after Defoe's fictional character to attract tourists. The largest of the Juan Fernández Islands, known as Más Afuera, became Alejandro Selkirk Island, although Selkirk probably never saw that island since it is located  to the west.

Archaeological findings
An archaeological expedition to the Juan Fernández Islands in February 2005 found part of a nautical instrument that likely belonged to Selkirk. It was "a fragment of copper alloy identified as being from a pair of navigational dividers" dating from the early 18th (or late 17th) century. Selkirk is the only person known to have been on the island at that time who is likely to have had dividers and was even said by Rogers to have had such instruments in his possession. The artifact was discovered while excavating a site not far from Selkirk's Lookout where the famous castaway is believed to have lived.
In 1825, during John Howell's research of Alexander Selkirk's biography, his "flip-can" was in the possession of his great-grand-nephew John Selkirk, and Alexander's musket was "in the possession of Major Lumsden of Lathallan."

See also
List of people who disappeared mysteriously at sea

Notes

References

Further reading

External links

 "Trapped on a Pacific Island: Scientists Research the Real Robinson Crusoe" by Marco Evers (6  February 2009) in Spiegel Online
 "Island Gives Up Secret of Real Robinson Crusoe" in The Scotsman (22  Septem ber 2005)
 "The Real Robinson Crusoe" by Bruce Selcraig (July 2005) in Smithsonian
 An account of a trip to Selkirk's Island by James S. Bruce and Mayme S. Bruce (Spring 1993) in The Explorers Journal
"On a Piece of Stone: Alexander Selkirk on Greater Land" by Edward E. Leslie (1988) in Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls: True Stories of Castaways and Other Survivors (pp. 61–85)
Satellite imagery of the Juan Fernández Islands from Google Maps

1676 births
1700s missing person cases
1721 deaths
18th century in Chile
18th-century Scottish people
British privateers
Burials at sea
Castaways
Circumnavigators of the globe
Date of birth unknown
Deaths from yellow fever
Formerly missing people
Juan Fernández Islands
Maritime folklore
People from Lower Largo
People who died at sea
Piracy in the Pacific Ocean
Robinson Crusoe
Scottish sailors

Alexander Selkirk


George Gardiner (March 17, 1877 – July 8, 1954) was a famous Irish boxer in America who was the first undisputed World Light Heavyweight Champion. He held claims to both the World Middleweight Title as well as the World Heavyweight Title. He was the second man in history to hold the World's Light Heavyweight title, defeating the first Light Heavyweight Champion, Jack Root, by KO after 12 rounds.

Legacy
George Gardner's name is often misspelled "George Gardiner", which was an alias although some believe it was the correct spelling. He signed his name "George Gardner", though several newspapers of his era spelled his name "George Gardiner". However, his brother, Jimmy Gardner, signed his name "Jimmy Gardiner" when handing out autographs. George Gardner is unfortunately most remembered as the 26-year-old champion who lost his title to the 41-year-old Bob Fitzsimmons after a questionable 20 round decision on points. The decision made Fitzsimmons a legend, as it made him the first triple title division champion in boxing history.

Background
Gardner was born on March 17, 1877, at County Clare, Ireland on St. Patrick's Day. He was believed to have been the son of an Irish prizefighter and came from poverty. George and his brothers, Billy and Jimmy Gardner, were each recognized as accomplished boxers in their era.

Professional career
Gardner began his career in 1897 when he was 20 years old. He was almost six feet tall and weighed between 150–175 pounds during his career. He won several fights in the New England area, being noted in newspapers as the "Middleweight Champion of New England".

Middleweight champion of the World
Gardner was the top middleweight contender in 1901 and claimed the World's Middleweight Title that year. He defeated Frank Craig, the Colored Middleweight Champion at London, England, and newspapers declared that Gardner "secured the World Middleweight Title". Afterwards, Gardner challenged Tommy Ryan for the title, but Ryan declined although Gardner was the number one contender for the title.

Gardner first claimed the world middleweight title on August 30, 1901, at the Mechanic's Pavilion in San Francisco after knocking out Kid Carter in a fight billed as the "Middleweight Championship of the World". He then defeated Barbados Joe Walcott, the Welterweight Champion of the World, in a 20 round rematch in 1902.  On August 18, 1902, Gardiner TKO'd the undefeated Jack Root in 17 rounds at Salt Lake City, Utah, in a close fight billed as both the light heavyweight and middleweight championship of the world. Both fighters weighed in at 165 pounds.

On October 31, 1902, Gardner fought 20 rounds with Jack Johnson, the first African American to hold the World's Heavyweight Title. Gardner weighed in at 155 while Johnson at held a 30 pound weight advantage at 185. Johnson won on points by knocking Gardner down twice in the 8th and 14th rounds.

Light heavyweight champion of the World
Gardner was a contender for the newly created World's Light Heavyweight Title in 1903, weighing about 170 pounds. On April 6, 1903, Gardner fought Peter Maher, the Irish Heavyweight Champion, considered to be the most dangerous hitter of his era. Gardner knocked out Maher in round one and then defeated Marvin Hart by TKO after 12 rounds.

On July 4, 1903, at Ontario, Canada, at the International Athletic Club, after 12 rounds of fighting, George Gardner knocked out Jack Root for the Light - Heavyweight Championship of the World. He was the first Irish-American to hold the title and the first undisputed champion to hold the title. Most records state that Root was the first champion of the division, but others, including George Gardner, had claimed the title before. The Root - Gardner fight was the first Light-Heavyweight Title fight caught on film. Newspapers reported that Gardner knocked Root down seven times.

George Gardner defended his title later that year on November 25, 1903, at San Francisco, California, against Bob Fitzsimmons, who had killed two men in the ring and was the former Middleweight and Heavyweight Champion. After a questionable 20 round decision on points, Fitzsimmons knocked the young champion down twice and gained a slight decision. After losing the title, George Gardner challenged Fitzsimmons to a rematch, but was denied a second chance at the title.

Gardner was still a highly regarded contender for the Light Heavyweight Title, and was rated above Fitzsimmons. Nonetheless, Gardner set his sights on the World's Heavyweight Title. It was held by Marvin Hart, whom Gardner had defeated and drawn with before.

Gardner challenged Marvin Hart for the Heavyweight Championship of the World, but again he was denied a title shot. Afterwards, his career faded with losses and draws against Jim Flynn, Al Kaufman, Terry Mustain, and Tony Ross. Gardner retired at age 32 in 1908 with a record of 44 wins, 32 by way of knockout, 12 losses, 7 draws, and 3 no contests.

Gardner continued to box, but considered himself a "washed-up prize fighter". He was reputed to have fought in over 300 battles. Onenewspaper source noted that Gardner "had drawn from their seats in applause more fight fans than any other light-heavyweight".

Later life
Gardner opened a saloon in Chicago, and married Margaret Smith of South Bend, Indiana. He fathered a son in 1905, who also became a professional boxer in the Light Heavyweight division under the name, "Morgan Gardiner".  Gardner's brother, Jimmy Gardner, claimed the World's Welterweight Title in 1908, making the Gardner brothers the first Irish American siblings in world history to hold world titles.

George Gardner was pictured in the summer of 1930 on the front of "Self Defense Quarterly".

Gardner was once ranked the #1 fighter in the world and he is considered one of the top fighters of all time, as well as one of the top light-heavyweights of all time.

Gardner died at age 77 on July 10, 1954, in Chicago. Four ex-champions were pallbearers at his funeral.

Professional boxing record

All newspaper decisions are officially regarded as "no decision" bouts and are not counted in the win/loss/draw column.

See also
List of light heavyweight boxing champions
List of bare-knuckle boxers
List of light heavyweight boxing champions

Notes

References

External links

1877 births
1954 deaths
Irish emigrants to the United States
Bare-knuckle boxers
Light-heavyweight boxers
Boxers from County Clare
World boxing champions
Irish male boxers
People from Lisdoonvarna

George Gardiner (boxer)


Peace Direct is a charity based in London, England which supports grassroots peacebuilders in areas of conflict. Peace Direct focuses on supporting grassroots peacebuilders who are local to the conflict and have a clear vision of what needs to be achieved. Peace Direct funds this work, promotes it and learns from it. The current CEO of Peace Direct is Dylan Mathews.

Origins

Peace Direct was founded by Scilla Elworthy and Carolyn Hayman OBE in 2003. Elworthy previously founded the Oxford Research Group and Hayman was Chief Executive at the Foyer Federation.

Projects

Peace Direct believes that local people have the power to find their own solutions to conflict. Peace Direct's mission is to help them to make this happen.

Local people are the key to preventing, resolving and healing conflicts. They are the best way to break recurrent cycles of violence and make peace last. Increasingly they want to move away from depending on outside help and towards building their own futures. Peace Direct helps this strategic shift, and adds value to their efforts on the ground. Firstly, by raising funds for their programmes and offering management support and advice. Secondly, by building recognition for their work and putting them in touch with those in the wider world who can assist with funds and influence. And thirdly, through promoting the concept of locally led peacebuilding to the international community so that others will adopt this approach too.

Peace Direct funds projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Sudan and South Sudan, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Philippines, Nigeria, Somalia, Israel/Palestine, and Syria. The projects Peace Direct funds in these countries must demonstrate a commitment to non-violence, have a track record, strategic ambition, a desire to communicate and carry out work that fits with Peace Direct's charitable aims.

Peace Direct is also responsible for the pioneering web-based project Insight on Conflict an online database of local peacebuilding organisations in areas of conflict.

Patrons
Emma Kirkby
Helena Kennedy
Mark Rylance
Prince Hassan bin Talal

External links
 Peace Direct
 Insight on Conflict

Charities based in London
Development charities based in the United Kingdom
International organisations based in London
Organisations based in the London Borough of Hackney

Peace Direct


Cape Vilda (Russian: Мыс Вильда) is a headland in the Kara Sea, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russian Federation. This cape is located on the western shore of the Taymyr Peninsula, at the western end of Middendorff Bay.

The Myachina Islands, a group of two small islets, lie 3 km north of Cape Vilda.

History
In 1921 Nikifor Begichev led a Soviet expedition in search for Roald Amundsen's 1919 Arctic expedition's crew members Peter Tessem and Paul Knutsen on request of the government of Norway. Checking the remains of campfires, Begichev was able to establish that Amundsen's men had passed Cape Vilda, more than halfway down their journey, and that at that point all was well. Captain Jakobsen, a Norwegian who went with Begichev, found later an abandoned sledge 90 km west of Mys Vil'da, indicating that something had gone wrong with his two ill-fated compatriots.

References

External links
 A Tsarist Attempt at Opening the Northern Sea Route

Vilda
Vilda
Vilda

Cape Vilda


Vera Hilger (born 1971) is a German painter.

Life and work
Vera Hilger was born in Schleiden, Germany,

 1991 - 1993 Vera Hilger studied Philosophy and German studies at the RWTH Aachen University
 1993 - 1997 graduation from the Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts

After completing her studies in the Netherlands she moved into her main studio in the Belgian town Verviers, and a second studio at Cologne was retained.
Her paintings mostly focused the characteristic east Belgian landscape. The works did not reflect a realistic image, but they were deeply involved with the atmosphere of the landscapes.
From 2009, her paintings changed more and more by combining rhythmic elements and patterns with the depth in the picture plane and opened the way towards the now exclusively abstract painting.

Vera Hilger lives and works in Hauset/Belgium and Cologne/Germany.

Selected exhibitions
2015  Into other Scapes,  Museum van Bommel van Dam, Venlo (NL) | fuzzy sets, artothek Köln (D)
2014 Die Grosse Kunstausstellung NRW, Museum Kunstpalast Düsseldorf (D)
2013 edition norm, Barbette - Berlin | OSTRALE´013, Dresden (D) | Intervalle, Kirche St. Marien in Würselen (D)
2012  Kunstroute, Wanda Reiff, Bemelen (NL) | Prix Louis Schmidt, Musee d'art contemporain - Freie Universität Brüssel (B) | Pulsar, Bild für die Kirche St. Nikolaus (Citykirche), Aachen (D)
 2011    exhibition celebrating the nomination to the IKOB Arts Award 2011 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Eupen (B) | Vera Hilger - Works 2010/11, Gallery Freitag 18.30, Aachen (D)
 2009   Gleam, Siegerlandmuseum-Haus Oranienstrasse, Siegen (D)
 2008   grant at Starke Foundation, Artist in residence, Berlin (D)
 2007   grant at Starke Foundation, Artist in residence, Berlin (D) | Gallery Geymüller, Essen (D) | Gallery Arcane, Liège (B)
 2006   Sfumato, Raum für Kunst, Aachen | Landscape, Gallery Wolfs, Maastricht (NL)
 2004   petit comité, Gallery Wolfs, Maastricht (NL)
 2003   Walk, Gallery Wolfs, Maastricht (NL)
 2002   Gallery Wolfs, Maastricht (NL)
 2001   Gallery Pin, Bielefeld (D)
 2000   Gallery Cave Canem, Aachen (D)
 1999   Gallery Cave Canem, Aachen (D)
 1997   Graduates' exhibition Akademie Of Arts Maastricht
 1995   Gallery van Laethem, Hasselt (group exhibition)

Awards and scholarships

2011   nomination for the IKOB Arts Award 2011, Eupen (B)
2008   Artist in residence, grant at Starke Foundation, Berlin (D)
2007   Artist in residence, grant at Starke Foundation, Berlin (D)

Catalogues and editions

 Gleam, publisher: Siegerlandmuseum, Siegen, 2009
 Sfumato, publisher: Raum für Kunst, Aachen 2006
 Walk, publisher: Gallery Wolfs, Maastricht 2003

References

External links
 official website (English)

1971 births
Living people
20th-century German painters
21st-century German painters
German women painters
People from Euskirchen (district)
People from Raeren
20th-century German women
21st-century German women
RWTH Aachen University alumni

Vera Hilger


Ottawa/Rockcliffe Water Aerodrome  is located adjacent to Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It is a small airport and few Ottawans know of its existence. The airport is the home of the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, which owns the field, and is used and maintained by the Rockcliffe Flying Club.

The airport land was originally a military rifle range. In 1918 the Royal Flying Corps began using the field behind the range for experimental mail flights, and the Ottawa/Rockcliffe Airport opened officially in 1920 as the Ottawa Air Station, one of the six original airfields opened across Canada by the new Air Board.

Since it is on the shore of the Ottawa River and the runways were connected to the riverfront by a road, it was one of very few airports capable of handling and transferring floatplanes on both land and water. It only services seaplanes and its runway, is the river. It is mainly used by the military, general aviation aircraft, and by hikers, tourists and people attempting to access remote locations that are only accessible by air.

See also
List of airports in the Ottawa area

References

Registered aerodromes in Ontario
Transport in Ottawa
Seaplane bases in Ontario

Ottawa/Rockcliffe Water Aerodrome


Edward Hardwicke (7 August 1932 – 16 May 2011), also spelled Edward Hardwick, was an English actor. He is best known for his role as Doctor Watson in The Return of Sherlock Holmes series.

Early life and career
Hardwicke was born in London, England, to actors Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Helena Pickard. He started his film career in Hollywood at 10. He was in Victor Fleming's film A Guy Named Joe with Spencer Tracy. He went back to England, attended Stowe School, and did his military service in the Royal Air Force. He then joined the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) to learn to be an actor.

The Old Vic and the National Theatre
Hardwicke acted at the Bristol Old Vic, The Oxford Playhouse, and the Nottingham Playhouse. In 1964, he joined the National Theatre. He performed there for seven years. He appeared in William Shakespeare's Othello, Ibsen's The Master Builder. Peter Shaffer's The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Charley's Aunt, Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Congreve's The Way of the World, Georges Feydeau's A Flea In Her Ear, The Crucible, Luigi Pirandello's The Rules Of The Game, Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Idiot, and George Bernard Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession. In 1977, Hardwick went back to the National Theatre to perform in Feydeau's The Lady from Maxim's

In 1973, he played at the Bristol Old Vic. He played Dr. Astrov in Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and Charles Calthrop in the movie The Day of the Jackal. In 1975, he went to the Haymarket Theatre, where he performed in Frederick Lonsdale's On Approval. In 1976 at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, he played Sir Robert Chiltern in Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband.

In 2001, he played Arthur Winslow in The Winslow Boy at the Chichester Festival Theatre. His father had played this role in 1948 in the movie.

TV and Sherlock Holmes
Hardwicke started his television career in the 1970. He played Pat Grant in Colditz. He then played Arthur in the sitcom My Old Man. In 1978, Hardwicke played Bellcourt in the last episode of The Sweeney. David Burke, who played Doctor Watson in The Return of Sherlock Holmes series, asked Hardwicke to take over the role. Hardwicke played this role for eight years, from 1986 to 1994. His portrayal of Watson was calmer than Holmes'. In 1989, Hardwicke played the role of Watson on the West End stage in The Secret of Sherlock Holmes.

Movies
He performed in many movies, including The Day of the Jackal (1973), The Black Windmill (1974), Richard Loncraine's 1995 version of Richard III, The Scarlet Letter (1995), Shadowlands (1993), Elizabeth (1998), Enigma (2001), The Gathering Storm (2002), Love Actually (2003), and Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist (2005).

He also narrated several movies.

Personal life
Hardwicke married Anne Iddon, and they had two daughters, Kate and Emma. Hardwicke and Iddon later divorced. He then married Prim Cotton in 1995.

Hardwicke lived in Chichester. On 16 May 2011, he died of cancer.

References

Other websites

1932 births
2011 deaths
Actors from London
Cancer deaths in England
English movie actors
English stage actors
English television actors
English voice actors
Royal Air Force

Edward Hardwicke


The Mendip Times is a monthly magazine, distributed free of charge in the Mendip Hills and surrounding areas of Somerset, England.

It was launched in 2005 and has three employees, who also produce Mendip TV.

The owner, Steve Egginton, is a former chair of the SW branch of the Society of Editors, head of news at HTV, and was formerly producer of BBC Points West and deputy news editor of the Western Daily Press.

References

Newspapers published in Somerset
Mendip Hills
Newspapers established in 2005

Mendip Times


Wallingford Rural District, an administrative area in what was then Berkshire, now Oxfordshire area, in southern England was established in 1894, from the then Berkshire area within Wallingford Rural Sanitary Authority (the Oxfordshire area becoming Crowmarsh Rural District). Wallingford Rural District Council provided many local government functions for the area around the town of Wallingford including Didcot, but not for the borough of Wallingford, which was covered by Wallingford Borough Council. These functions included dealing with contagious diseases, and wartime evacuations and air raid precautions. It also covered housing, water supply and sewage, and fire brigades.

In 1974 Wallingford RD became part of the district of South Oxfordshire, administered by South Oxfordshire District Council.

Civil parishes
The district contained the following civil parishes during its existence:

References

Districts of England abolished by the Local Government Act 1972
Districts of England created by the Local Government Act 1894
Rural districts of England
Former districts of Berkshire

Wallingford Rural District


Gedimu () or Qadim () is the earliest school of Islam in China. It is a Hanafi, non-Sufi school of the Sunni tradition. Its supporters are centered on local mosques, which function as relatively independent units.

It is numerically the largest Hui school of thought in China.

Since the introduction of Islam in China, during the Tang Dynasty, it continued to the Ming Dynasty with no schisms.  At the end of the Ming and early Qing Dynasty, Sufism was introduced to China. Muslims in what are now Xinjiang, Gansu and Qinghai, began to convert to the Sufi sects, and the new sects were referred to as old teaching / New Faith / New Religion (Chinese xinpai or Xinjiao). Those who clung to the old beliefs were called members of the Gedimu (from Arabic قديم "qadim", meaning 'ancient'), or in Chinese Laojiao (the old doctrine).

In the religious ideas of this school the basic Islamic principles of Tawheed are maintained.  In religious practice, this requires of the faithful a strict observance of the principle of Rukun, the five basic duties of Islam.

In the long period of development formed a conservative tradition.<ref>They celebrate as the Celebration of the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed (Chinese:Shengji).</</ref> It is against unorthodox innovations and sticks to the old rules, without interference in the affairs of other denominations.

Another important feature of the school is that it puts a focus on culture and education. Organised by the mosques, they send the children from their neighborhood to receive religious instruction. Usually Arabic and Persian writings are studied.

Qadim has spread the longest history in China. In its development, the school has been somewhat influenced by Chinese culture and has many Han Chinese customs and traditions included in its rites. [5] The mosque architecture is different from that of other Muslim areas. Qadim was the result of the Sunni faith in a particular environment in the China proper.

Jingtang Jiaoyu is a form of Islamic education, influenced by Chinese culture, which the Gedimu Muslims pride themselves in learning. Jingtang Jiaoyu does not closely approximate Arabic due to the limitations of the vernacular spoken Chinese, in particular, its vowels and final consonants, it produces a sinicized pronunciation of the Arabic language. Many Hui who used it said Salaam Aleikun instead of Salaam Alaikum.

The Hanafi Sunni Gedimu has been somewhat influenced by Chinese customs and the Jingtang Jiaoyu method of education, refusing to pronounce Arabic in the Arab manner even when learning of the standard pronunciation. Hanfi Sunni Sunnaiti's (Yihewani adherents) criticize the Gedimu for practicing Islamic customs influenced by Chinese culture, including Jingtang Jiaoyu, Sunnaiti's pride themselves on speaking correct Arabic, accusing the Gedimu Muslims of practicing Han and Buddhist customs and "Chinese Arabic". One Sunnaiti Imam said of the Gedimu, "blindly followed the traditions of their ancestors".

Gedimu adherents use Mosques which are built like Chinese style temples with Minarets resembling pagodas, in contrast to Yihewani members, who build their Mosques and Minarets to resemble Middle Eastern style architecture.

Still, Gedimu has been much less influenced by Chinese culture than some Islamic other sects, such as Qadiriyya and Xidaotang.

See also
 Jahriyya
 Khufiyya

References

Cihai ("Sea of Words"), Shanghai cishu chubanshe, Shanghai 2002,

Further reading
 Hu Fan: Islam in Shaanxi: Past and Present. Diss. Bonn 2008
 Thomas Heber: "Islam: A new conflict in China? Growing ethnicity-Islamization-separatism" Yearbook of the public law,the present. N.F.,45.1997, S.645 ff.
 Mikko Suutarinen: The Dongxiang People of Gansu - Ethnic, Religious and Local Identities (Religious Identity) (PDF-Datei; 320 kB)
 Jonathan Newman Lipman: Familiar Strangers, a history of Muslims in Northwest China, Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press 1997,

Islam in China
Islamic branches

Gedimu


In typography, all caps (short for "all capitals") refers to text or a font in which all letters are capital letters. "All caps" may be used for emphasis (for a word or phrase). They are commonly seen in the titles on book covers, in advertisements and in newspaper headlines. Short strings of words in capital letters appear bolder and "louder" than mixed case, and this is sometimes referred to as "shouting".
All caps can also be used to indicate that a given word is an acronym.

Studies have been conducted on the readability and legibility of all caps text. Scientific testing from the 20th century onwards has generally indicated that all caps text is less legible and readable than lower-case text. In addition, switching to all caps may make text appear hectoring and obnoxious for cultural reasons, since all-capitals is often used in transcribed speech to indicate that the speaker is shouting. All-caps text is common in comic books, as well as on older teleprinter and radio transmission systems which often do not indicate letter case at all.

In professional documents, a commonly preferred alternative to all caps text is the use of small caps to emphasise key names or acronyms, or the use of italics or (more rarely) bold. In addition, if all caps must be used it is customary to slightly widen the spacing between the letters, by around 10% of the point height. This practice is known as tracking or letterspacing. Some digital fonts contain alternative spacing metrics for this purpose.

Association with shouting
Messages typed completely in capital letters are often equated on social media to shouting and other impolite or argumentative behaviors. This became a mainstream interpretation with the advent of networked computers, from the 1980s onward. However a similar interpretation was already evidenced by written sources that predated the computing era, in some cases by at least a century, and the textual display of shouting or emphasis online was not a settled matter as at 1984. The following sources may be relevant to the history of all-caps (taken from a Stack Exchange discussion on all-caps in October 2017):

 The 6 September 1958 edition of Bookseller: The Organ of the Book Trade describes writing in lower-case "rather than shouting with all caps. The effect is pleasing to anybody in a contemplative mood."
 The 17 April 1856 Yorkville Enquirer (South Carolina) uses the expression "This time he shouted it out in capital letters".
 The 1880 The Standard speaker and elocutionist book has a section titled "SHOUTING STYLE", which states that "This will be seldom needed throughout an entire piece, but wherever the words imply calling, or commanding, it will be in keeping with the words to employ it. As examples note the following selections marked in CAPITAL letters as the appropriate place for shouting emphasis." A large number of literature examples are given where all caps has been used for shouting.
 A 2014 article on netiquette (online etiquette) in New Republic titled "How Capital Letters Became Internet Code for Yelling", which states that
 According to Professor Paul Luna (department of typography and graphic communication at the University of Reading), all caps have been used "to convey grandeur, pomposity, or aesthetic seriousness for thousands of years", and for many years to express anger or shouting in print. Examples are cited such as pianist Philippa Schuyler's biography titled "Composition in Black and White" in the 1940s which used all-caps to "yell", and Robert Moses in the 1970s who used all caps to "convey rage" at a draft of a book.
 Online newsgroups and bulletin board posts from around 1984 show that a user still needed to explain that "if it's in caps i'm trying to YELL", and another summed up that there seemed to be a developing consensus that emphasis was given to words by all caps or surrounding them with *...* symbols.
 Further online discussion in 1984 included comments such as "Capitalizing whole words gives the impression that you're shouting". (Thread discussing emphasis and all-caps in online text).

Usage

Graves, memorials, plaques, and building fronts

Print media

Before the development of lower-case letters in the 8th century, texts in the Latin alphabet were written in a single case, which is now considered to be capital letters. Text in all caps is not widely used in body copy. The major exception to this is the so-called fine print in legal documents.

Capital letters have been widely used in printed headlines from the early days of newspapers until the 1950s. In the 1990s, more than three-quarters of newspapers in the western world used lower-case letters in headline text. Discussion regarding the use of all caps for headlines centers on the greater emphasis offered by all caps versus the greater legibility offered by lower-case letters. Colin Wheildon conducted a scientific study with 224 readers who analyzed various headline styles and concluded that "Headlines set in capital letters are significantly less legible than those set in lower case."

Computing

All caps typography was common on teletype machines, such as those used by police departments, news, and the then-called Weather Bureau, as well as early computers, such as certain early Apple II models and the ZX81, which had a limited support for lower-case text. This changed as full support of ASCII became standard, allowing lower-case characters.

With the advent of the bulletin board system, or BBS, and later the Internet, typing messages in all caps commonly became closely identified with "shouting" or attention-seeking behavior, and may be considered rude. Its equivalence to shouting traces back to at least 1984 and before the internet, back to printed typography usage of all capitals to mean shouting.  (The convention may have predated the internet, and existed in print for many years before, however - see above).

For this reason, netiquette generally discourages the use of all caps when posting messages online. While all caps can be used as an alternative to rich-text "bolding" for a single word or phrase, to express emphasis, repeated use of all caps can be considered "shouting" or irritating.  Such poor netiquette has led to a number of employees being laid off for this particular reason.

Some aspects of Microsoft's Metro Design Language involves the use of all caps headings and titles. This has received particular attention when menu and ribbon titles appeared in all caps in Visual Studio 2012 and Office 2013, respectively. Critics have compared this to a computer program shouting at its user. IT journalist Lee Hutchinson described Microsoft's using the practice as "LITERALLY TERRIBLE...[it] doesn't so much violate OS X's design conventions as it does take them out behind the shed, pour gasoline on them, and set them on fire."

In programming, writing in all caps (possibly with underscores replacing spaces) is an identifier naming convention in many programming languages that symbolizes that the given identifier represents a constant.

Surnames
A practice exists (most commonly in Francophone countries) of distinguishing the surname from the rest of a personal name by stylizing the surname only in all caps. This practice is also common among Japanese, when names are spelled using roman letters.

Military communication
In April 2013 the U.S. Navy moved away from an all caps-based messaging system, which was begun with 1850s-era teleprinters that had only uppercase letters.  The switch to mixed-case communications was estimated to save the Navy $20 million a year and get it caught up with current Internet protocol.

Readability
Miles Tinker, renowned for his landmark work, Legibility of Print, performed scientific studies on the legibility and readability of all-capital print. His findings were as follows:

 All-capital print greatly retards speed of reading in comparison with lower-case type. Also, most readers judge all capitals to be less legible. Faster reading of the lower-case print is due to the characteristic word forms furnished by this type. This permits reading by word units, while all capitals tend to be read letter by letter. Furthermore, since all-capital printing takes at least one-third more space than lower case, more fixation pauses are required for reading the same amount of material. The use of all capitals should be dispensed with in every printing situation.

According to Tinker, "As early as 1914, Starch reported that material set in Roman lower case was read somewhat faster than similar material printed in all capitals." Another study in 1928 showed that "all-capital text was read 11.8 percent slower than lower case, or approximately 38 words per minute slower," and that "nine tenths of adult readers consider lower case more legible than all capitals."

A 1955 study by Miles Tinker showed that "all-capital text retarded speed of reading from 9.5 to 19.0 percent for the 5 and 10-minute time limits, and 13.9 percent for the whole 20-minute period." Tinker concluded that, "Obviously, all-capital printing slows reading to a marked degree in comparison with Roman lower case."

Tinker provides the following explanations for why all capital printing is more difficult to read: Text in all capitals covers about 35 percent more printing surface than the same material set in lower case. This would tend to increase the reading time. When this is combined with the difficulty in reading words in all-capital letters as units, the hindrance to rapid reading becomes marked. In the eye-movement study by Tinker and Patterson, the principal difference in oculomotor patterns between lower case and all capitals was the very large increase in number of fixation pauses for reading the all-capital print.

All caps text should be eliminated from most forms of composition, according to Tinker: "Considering the evidence that all-capital printing retards speed of reading to a striking degree in comparison with lower case and is not liked by readers, it would seem wise to eliminate such printing whenever rapid reading and consumer (reader) views are of importance. Examples of this would include any continuous reading material, posters, bus cards, billboards, magazine advertising copy, headings in books, business forms and records, titles of articles, books and book chapters, and newspaper headlines."

Colin Wheildon stated that there is an "apparent consensus" that lower-case text is more legible, but that some editors continue to use all caps in text regardless. In his studies of all caps in headlines, he states that, "Editors who favor capitals claim that they give greater emphasis. Those who prefer lower case claim their preferences gives greater legibility." Wheildon, who informs us that "When a person reads a line of type, the eye recognizes letters by the shapes of their upper halves," asserts that recognizing words in all caps "becomes a task instead of a natural process." His conclusions, based on scientific testing in 1982–1990, are: "Headlines set in capital letters are significantly less legible than those set in lower case."

John Ryder, in the Case for Legibility, stated that "Printing with capital letters can be done sufficiently well to arouse interest and, with short lines, reading at a slowed speed is possible – but in principle too many factors of low legibility are involved."

Other critics are of the opinion that all caps letters in text are often "too tightly packed against each other".

An antiquated practice that still remains in use, especially by older American lawyers who grew up before the arrival of computers, is to use all caps text for text that is legally required to be emphasised and clearly readable. The practice dates to the period of typewriters, which generally did not offer bold text, small capitals, or the opportunity to add marginal notes emphasising key points. Legal writing expert Bryan A. Garner has described the practice as 'ghastly'. In 2002, a US court spoke out against the practice, ruling that simply making text all-capitals has no bearing on whether it is clear and easily readable:
Lawyers who think their caps lock keys are instant "make conspicuous" buttons are deluded. In determining whether a term is conspicuous, we look at more than formatting. A term that appears in capitals can still be inconspicuous if it is hidden on the back of a contract in small type. Terms that are in capitals but also appear in hard-to-read type may flunk the conspicuousness test. A sentence in capitals, buried deep within a long paragraph in capitals will probably not be deemed conspicuous...it is entirely possible for text to be conspicuous without being in capitals.

Ambiguities

Besides the aforementioned speed of reading, all caps is constitutionally prone to character-based ambiguities.

Namely, the upper-case letters are globally simpler than their lower-case counterpart. For example, (i.e. not limitedly), they lack ascenders and descenders.
Since they are built from fewer positional and building elements (e.g. a smaller grid pertaining to minimalist digital fonts), they are more fragile to small changes.

These variations, generally involuntary, sometimes induced on purpose, are caused by a misinterpretation (the information is transferred) or by a deterioration (the data is lost, in the analysis wording). They can occur horizontally or/and vertically, while misreading (without this extra effort or time), or during a delicate scanning of characters (from a damaged image that needs further contextual text correction).

Depending on the typeface, these similarities accidentally create various duplicates (even quite brievely and without realizing it when reading).
E.g. H/A, F/E or I/T by adding a bar ; P/R, O/Q, even C/G from similar errors ; V/U, D/O, even B/S while rounding the shape ; and more deformations implying mixings.

Adding digits in all caps styled texts may multiply these confusions, which is one aim of Leet (intentional pseudo duplicates) and can provide simple means of concealing messages (often numbers).

See also

Caps lock
CamelCase
Letter case
Roman square capitals
Shift key
Small caps
Unicase
Uncial script

Notes

All caps


Somporn Saekhow (1940 – August 20, 2002, Thai สมพร แซ่โค้ว) was a farmer from Kanchanadit, Surat Thani Province, Thailand, who became famous as a monkey teacher.

As his parents were coconut farmers, Somporn experienced the traditional use of monkeys for the harvest of coconuts. The monkeys were often beaten by their owners when they didn't perform as expected (e.g. when they left ripe coconuts on the tree). This gave him the idea to teach monkeys in a better way. His Buddhist teacher, the famous monk Phra Buddhadasa from the nearby temple Wat Suan Mokkha in Chaiya, encouraged him to teach monkeys in a positive way, without the use of force. In 1957 he started to teach monkeys and developed his unique teaching style.

As it is illegal to catch wild monkeys in Thailand, the students of the monkey school – pig-tailed macaques (Macaca nemestrina) – were brought in by their owners for the education only. In the first step the monkey has to get used to humans, then it will be shown how to turn a coconut. Next the coconut is fixed on a pole, later even higher on a tree. After six months of training they are ready for picking the ripe coconuts from the trees.

In time his school became locally famous, and the largest monkey school of all southern Thailand. In 1993 Somporn together with his favourite monkey Khai Nui carried the provincial flag in the opening ceremony of the National Games held in Surat Thani. At the same time his school became a tourist attraction as well, showing the teaching methods as well as the special performance of his best student.

Somporn died in 2002 after a heart attack. His school is continued by relatives.

References
Rung Kaewdang, Learning from Monkeys,
 Obituary from the Sydney Morning Herald

External links
Somporn Saekhow's Monkey Training College

Somporn Saekhow
Somporn Saekhow
Somporn Saekhow
Animal trainers
Somporn Saekhow

Somporn Saekhow


Probabilistic Computation Tree Logic (PCTL) is an extension of computation tree logic (CTL) that allows for probabilistic quantification of described properties. It has been defined in the paper by Hansson and Jonsson.

PCTL is a useful logic for stating soft deadline properties, e.g. "after a request for a service, there is at least a 98% probability that the service will be carried out within 2 seconds". Akin CTL suitability for model-checking PCTL extension is widely used as a property specification language for probabilistic model checkers.

PCTL syntax
A possible syntax of PCTL can be defined as follows:

Therein,  is a comparison operator and  is a probability threshold.

Formulas of PCTL are interpreted over discrete Markov chains. An interpretation structure
is a quadruple , where
 is a finite set of states,
 is an initial state,
 is a transition probability function, , such that for all  we have , and
 is a labeling function, , assigning atomic propositions to states.

A path  from a state  is an infinite sequence of states
. The n-th state of the path is denoted as
and the prefix of  of length  is denoted as .

Probability measure
A probability measure  on the set of paths with a common prefix of length  is given by the product of transition probabilities along the prefix of the path:

For  the probability measure is equal to .

Satisfaction relation
The satisfaction relation  is inductively defined as follows:
  if and only if ,
  if and only if not ,
  if and only if  or ,
  if and only if  and ,
  if and only if , and
  if and only if .

See also
 Computation tree logic
 Temporal logic

References

Temporal logic

Probabilistic CTL


The Burra Record was a newspaper covering Burra and the mid-north eastern area of South Australia that was first printed in June 1876. In 1977, it merged with the Review-Times to form the Review-Times-Record, which in turn became The Flinders News in 1989.

Most issues published between July 1878 and January 1954 are freely available online, via Trove.

History
The Burra Record began life as the Northern Mail which was first published on 30 June 1876 for distribution in Kooringa. After 26 weekly issues, in 1877, it was renamed to Burra News and Northern Mail. After another 77 issues, the newspaper was then purchased by Frederick Holder, future Premier of South Australia, in June 1878. Schoolmaster Holder, newly married and about to become a father, had missed out on the position in charge of the new Burra Model School. He was forced to look for other work, and took over a local store, selling books, wallpapers, and homeopathic medicines. He also became Town Clerk and bought the Record from Henry Pether.

The newspaper was then called The Record, subtitled "a paper for the Burra and north-east" (5 July 1878 - 27 September 1878), continuing previous publication order. From Friday, 4 October 1878, it was renamed The Burra Record. Initially the main newspaper was run by a committee. Holder was managing editor, but three colleagues scrutinised the subject matter. Holder was successful in the new venture, and was one of many newspaper owners who followed their political views in print by standing for Parliament. Holder also organised another publication, the North Eastern Times and Terowie News (7 January 1881 - 29 December 1882) before selling it to a partner. In 1887 Holder was elected the member for Burra, continuing to run the main newspaper until 1891. In 1892 he became premier, having sold the Burra Record to William Jenkin Davey.

The Burra Record continued until March 1977 when, with the Review Times, the newspaper was merged to form the Review-Times-Record. At the time of its demise, the Burra Record was run by R.E. and A.J. Angel.

References

External links
 Digitised page from Burra Record at State Library of South Australia's SA Memory website

Defunct newspapers published in South Australia
Burra, South Australia

Burra Record