Accounting scandals are business scandals which arise from intentional manipulation of financial statements with the disclosure of financial misdeeds by trusted executives of corporations or governments. Such misdeeds typically involve complex methods for misusing or misdirecting funds, overstating revenues, understating expenses, overstating the value of corporate assets, or underreporting the existence of liabilities; these can be detected either manually, or by the means of deep learning. It involves an employee, account, or corporation itself and is misleading to investors and shareholders.

This type of "creative accounting" can amount to fraud, and investigations are typically launched by government oversight agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the United States. Employees who commit accounting fraud at the request of their employers are subject to personal criminal prosecution.

Two types of fraud

Misappropriation of assets

Misappropriation of assets – often called defalcation or employee fraud – occurs when an employee steals a company's asset, whether those assets are of monetary or physical nature. Typically, assets stolen are cash, or cash equivalents, and company data or intellectual property. However, misappropriation of assets also includes taking inventory out of a facility or using company assets for personal purpose without authorization. Company assets include everything from office supplies and inventory to intellectual property.

Fraudulent financial reporting

Fraudulent financial reporting is also known as earnings management fraud. In this context, management intentionally manipulates accounting policies or accounting estimates to improve financial statements. Public and private corporations commit fraudulent financial reporting to secure investor interest or obtain bank approvals for financing, as justifications for bonuses or increased salaries or to meet the expectations of shareholders. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has brought enforcement actions against corporations for many types of fraudulent financial reporting, including improper revenue recognition, period-end stuffing, fraudulent post-closing entries, improper asset valuations, and misleading non-GAAP financial measures.

The fraud triangle
The fraud triangle is a model for explaining the factors that cause someone to commit fraudulent behaviors in accounting. It consists of three components, which together, lead to fraudulent behavior:
 Incentives/ Pressure: Management or other employees have incentives or pressures to commit fraud.
 Opportunities: Circumstances provide opportunities for management or employees to commit fraud.
 Attitudes/rationalization: An attitude, character, or set of ethical values exists that allows management or employees to commit a dishonest act, or they are in an environment that imposes sufficient pressure that causes them to rationalize committing a dishonest act.
Incentives/pressures: A common incentive for companies to manipulate financial statement is a decline in the company's financial prospects. Companies may also manipulate earnings to meet analysts' forecasts or benchmarks such as prior-year earnings, to meet debt covenant restrictions, achieve a bonus target based on earnings, or artificially inflate stock prices. As for misappropriation of assets, financial pressures are a common incentive for employees. Employees with excessive financial obligations, or those with substance abuse or gambling problems may steal to meet their personal needs.

Opportunities: Although the financial statements of all companies are potentially subject to manipulation, the risk is greater for companies in industries where significant judgments and accounting estimates are involved. Turnover in accounting personnel or other deficiencies in accounting and information processes can create an opportunity for misstatement. As for misappropriation of assets, opportunities are greater in companies with accessible cash or with inventory or other valuable assets, especially if the assets are small or easily removed. A lack of controls over payments to vendors or payroll systems can allow employees to create fictitious vendors or employees and bill the company for services or time.

Attitudes/rationalization: The attitude of top management toward financial reporting is a critical risk factor in assessing the likelihood of fraudulent financial statements. If the CEO or other top managers display a significant disregard for the financial reporting process, such as consistently issuing overly optimistic forecasts, or they are overly concerned about the meeting analysts' earnings forecast, fraudulent financial reporting is more likely. Similarly, for misappropriation of assets, if management cheats customers through overcharging for goods or engaging in high-pressure sales tactics, employees may feel that it is acceptable for them to behave in the same fashion.

Causes

Fraud is done by people. There are three ways to unlawfully take another person's money: force, trickery, and stealth.Frauds such as embezzlement are easy to hide when company records are opaque to begin with. Poor accounting, such as the absence of monthly reconciliations or an independent audit function, also indicate vulnerability to fraud.

Executive and managerial motivations for fraud
An executive can easily reduce the price of his company's stock due to information asymmetry. He can: accelerate accounting of expenses, delay accounting of revenue, engage in off balance sheet transactions to make the company seem less profitable, or simply report very low estimates of future earnings. Executives may do this to make a company a more attractive takeover target. When the company is bought for less, the acquirer profits from the executive's actions to surreptitiously reduce share price. This can represent tens of billions of dollars (questionably) transferred from former shareholders to the acquirer. The executive is then rewarded with a golden handshake for presiding over the firesale that can sometimes be in the hundreds of millions of dollars for one or two years of work. Managerial opportunism plays a large role in these scandals.

Similar issues occur when a publicly held asset or non-profit organization undergoes privatization. Executives often profit greatly. Again, they can help by making the organization appear to be in financial crisis. This lowers the sale price, and makes non-profits and governments more likely to sell. It can also contribute to a public perception that private entities are more efficiently run, thereby reinforcing the political will to sell off public assets. Again, due to asymmetric information, policy makers and the general public see a government-owned firm that was a financial 'disaster' miraculously turned around by the private sector (and typically resold) within a few years. Under the Special Plea in Fraud statute, "the government must 'establish by clear and convincing evidence that the contractor knew that its submitted claims were false, and that it intended to defraud the government by submitting those claims.'" Mere negligence, inconsistency, or discrepancies are not actionable under the Special Plea in Fraud statute.

Employee motivations for fraud
Not all accounting scandals are caused by those at the top. In fact, in 2015, 33% of all business bankruptcies were caused by employee theft. Often middle managers and employees are pressured to or willingly alter financial statements due to their debts or the possibility of personal benefit over that of the company, respectively.  For example, officers who would be compensated more in the short-term (for example, cash in pocket) might be more likely to report inaccurate information on a tab or invoice (enriching the company and maybe eventually getting a raise).

List of biggest accounting scandals

Notable outcomes
The Enron scandal turned into the indictment and criminal conviction of Big Five auditor Arthur Andersen on June 15, 2002. Although the conviction was overturned on May 31, 2005, by the Supreme Court of the United States, the firm ceased performing audits and split into multiple entities. The Enron scandal was defined as being one of the biggest audit failures of all time. The scandal included utilizing loopholes that were found within the GAAP (General Accepted Accounting Principles). For auditing a large-sized company such as Enron, the auditors were criticized for having brief meetings a few times a year that covered large amounts of material. By January 17, 2002, Enron decided to discontinue its business with Arthur Andersen, claiming they had failed in accounting advice and related documents.  Arthur Andersen was judged guilty of obstruction of justice for disposing of many emails and documents that were related to auditing Enron. Since the SEC is not allowed to accept audits from convicted felons, the firm was forced to give up its CPA licenses later in 2002, costing over 113,000 employees their jobs. Although the ruling was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, the once-proud firm's image was tarnished beyond repair, and it has not returned as a viable business even on a limited scale.

On July 9, 2002, George W. Bush gave a speech about recent accounting scandals that had been uncovered. In spite of its stern tone, the speech did not focus on establishing new policy, but instead focused on actually enforcing current laws, which include holding CEOs and directors personally responsible for accountancy fraud.

In July 2002, WorldCom filed for bankruptcy protection in what was considered at the time as the largest corporate insolvency ever. A month earlier, the company's internal auditors discovered over $3.8 billion in illicit accounting entries intended to mask WorldCom's dwindling earnings, which was by itself more than the accounting fraud uncovered at Enron less than a year earlier. Ultimately, WorldCom admitted to inflating its assets by $11 billion.

These scandals reignited the debate over the relative merits of US GAAP, which takes a "rules-based" approach to accounting, versus International Accounting Standards and UK GAAP, which takes a "principles-based" approach. The Financial Accounting Standards Board announced that it intends to introduce more principles-based standards. More radical means of accounting reform have been proposed, but so far have very little support. The debate itself overlooks the difficulties of classifying any system of knowledge, including accounting, as rules-based or principles-based. This also led to the establishment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. On a lighter note, the 2002 Ig Nobel Prize in Economics went to the CEOs of those companies involved in the corporate accounting scandals of that year for "adapting the mathematical concept of imaginary numbers for use in the business world."

In 2003, Nortel made a big contribution to this list of scandals by incorrectly reporting a one cent per share earnings directly after their massive layoff period. They used this money to pay the top 43 managers of the company. The SEC and the Ontario securities commission eventually settled civil action with Nortel. A separate civil action was taken up against top Nortel executives including former CEO Frank A. Dunn, Douglas C. Beatty, Michael J. Gollogly, and MaryAnne E. Pahapill and Hamilton. These proceedings were postponed pending criminal proceedings in Canada, which opened in Toronto on January 12, 2012. Crown lawyers at this fraud trial of three former Nortel Networks executives say the men defrauded the shareholders of Nortel of more than $5 million. According to the prosecutor this was accomplished by engineering a financial loss in 2002, and a profit in 2003 thereby triggering Return to Profit bonuses of $70 million for top executives. In 2007, Dunn, Beatty, Gollogly, Pahapill, Hamilton, Craig A. Johnson, James B. Kinney, and Kenneth R.W. Taylor were charged with engaging in accounting fraud by "manipulating reserves to manage Nortel's earnings."

In 2005, after a scandal on insurance and mutual funds the year before, AIG was investigated for accounting fraud. The company already lost over $45 billion worth of market capitalization because of the scandal. Investigations also discovered over a $1 billion worth of errors in accounting transactions. The New York Attorney General's investigation led to a $1.6 billion fine for AIG and criminal charges for some of its executives. CEO Maurice R. "Hank" Greenberg was forced to step down and fought fraud charges until 2017, when the 91-year-old reached a $9.9 million settlement. Howard Smith, AIG's chief financial officer, also reached a settlement.

Well before Bernard Madoff's massive Ponzi scheme came to light, observers doubted whether his listed accounting firm – an unknown two-person firm in a rural area north of New York City – was competent to service a multibillion-dollar operation, especially since it had only one active accountant, David G. Friehling. Friehling's practice was so small that for years he operated out of his house; he only moved into an office when Madoff customers wanted to know more about who was auditing his accounts. Ultimately, Friehling admitted to simply rubber-stamping at least 18 years' worth of Madoff's filings with the SEC. He also revealed that he continued to audit Madoff even though he had invested a substantial amount of money with him; accountants are not allowed to audit broker-dealers with whom they are investing. He agreed to forfeit $3.18 million in accounting fees and withdrawals from his account with Madoff. His involvement makes the Madoff scheme not only the largest Ponzi scheme ever uncovered, but the largest accounting fraud in world history. The $64.8 billion claimed to be in Madoff accounts dwarfed the $11 billion fraud at WorldCom.

See also
 Accounting ethics
 Corporate crime
 Creative accounting
 Dot-com bubble
 Financial crisis of 2007–2008
 Forensic accounting
 Hollywood accounting
 List of corporate collapses and scandals
 Microcap stock fraud
 Philosophy of accounting
 Repo 105
 Sarbanes–Oxley Act
 Savings and loan crisis
 Securities fraud
 Tobashi scheme
 Vivien v. WorldCom
 White-collar crime

References

Further reading
 John R. Emshwiller and Rebecca Smith, 24 Days: How Two Wall Street Journal Reporters Uncovered the Lies that Destroyed Faith in Corporate America or Infectious Greed, HarperInformation, 2003,
 Lawrence A. Cunningham, The Sarbanes-Oxley Yawn: Heavy Rhetoric, Light Reform (And It Might Just Work)
 Zabihollah Rezaee, Financial Statement Fraud: Prevention and Detection, Wiley 2002.

External links
 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission website
 U.S. President Bush's speech, 2002-07-09 NPR report (audio recording)
 "GMI Warns of Accounting Risks at 40 Companies", Accounting Today, November 27, 2012
 "The Impact of Fraud on Shareholder Value", Business Insider, June 18, 2013

Commercial crimes
Corporate crime
Cover-ups
Corporate scandals
Political corruption
Fraud
Financial crimes

Accounting scandals


Coots are medium-sized water birds that are members of the rail family, Rallidae. They constitute the genus Fulica, the name being the Latin term for "coot". Coots have predominantly black plumage, and—unlike many rails—they are usually easy to see, often swimming in open water.

Taxonomy and systematics
The genus Fulica was introduced in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. The genus name is the Latin word for a Eurasian coot. The name was used by the Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner in 1555. The type species is the Eurasian coot.

A group of coots are referred to as a covert or cover.

Species
The genus contains 10 extant species and one which  is now extinct.

Extinct species

Recently extinct species
 Fulica newtonii Milne-Edwards, 1867 – Mascarene coot (extinct, c. 1700)

Late Quaternary species

 Fulica chathamensis Forbes, 1892 – Chatham Island coot (early Holocene of the Chatham Islands)
 Fulica montanei Alarcón-Muñoz, Labarca & Soto-Acuña, 2020 (late Pleistocene to early Holocene of Chile)
 Fulica prisca Hamilton, 1893 – New Zealand coot (early Holocene of New Zealand)
Fulica shufeldti – (late Pleistocene of Florida) possibly a paleosubspecies of Fulica americana; formerly F. minor

Fossil species

 Fulica infelix Brodkorb, 1961 – (early Pliocene of Juntura, Malheur County, Oregon, USA)

Description
Coots have prominent frontal shields or other decoration on the forehead, with red to dark red eyes and coloured bills. Many have white on the under tail. The featherless shield gave rise to the expression "as bald as a coot", which the Oxford English Dictionary cites in use as early as 1430. Like other rails, they have long, lobed toes that are well adapted to soft, uneven surfaces. Coots have strong legs and can walk and run vigorously. They tend to have short, rounded wings and are weak fliers, though northern species nevertheless can cover long distances.  They typically congregate in large rafts in open water.  They are socially gregarious and messy aquatic feeders.

Distribution and habitat
The greatest species variety occurs in South America, and the genus likely originated there. They are common in Europe and North America. Coot species that migrate do so at night. The American coot has been observed rarely in Britain and Ireland, while the Eurasian coot is found across Asia, Australia and parts of Africa. In southern Louisiana, the coot is referred to by the French name "poule d'eau", which translates into English as "water hen".

Behaviour and ecology
Coots are omnivorous, eating mainly plant material, but also small animals, fish and eggs. They are aggressively territorial during the breeding season, but are otherwise often found in sizeable flocks on the shallow vegetated lakes they prefer.

Chick mortality occurs mainly due to starvation rather than predation as coots have difficulty feeding a large family of hatchlings on the tiny shrimp and insects that they collect. Many chicks die in the first 10 days after hatching, when they are most dependent on adults for food. Coots can be very brutal to their own young under pressure such as the lack of food, and after about three days they start attacking their own chicks when they beg for food. After a short while, these attacks concentrate on the weaker chicks, who eventually give up begging and die. The coot may eventually raise only two or three out of nine hatchlings. In this attacking behaviour, the parents are said to "tousle" their young. This can result in the death of the chick.

References

External links

 Coot videos on the Internet Bird Collection

Rallidae
Bird genera
Extant Pliocene first appearances
Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus

Coot


A user guide, also called a user manual or (less frequently) instruction manual, is a book about how to use something.

A computer usually has a user guide to tell people how to use it. A computer program also often has a user guide.

The user guide is often written by the person who made the software.

People who want to write a user guide must keep the words very simple so other people can understand what you are saying. It also helps to put many pictures into the user guide.

If there are pictures, people who read or speak a different language can still understand what to do with the equipment or software.

Genres
Technology

User guide


Jay Orpin (born April 29, 1976, in Stockholm, Sweden) is a Swedish and Finnish songwriter and producer. He also writes songs and produced for Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, Robyn, Ace of Base, Bon Jovi, 2gether and Britney Spears, and later he produced songs for Good Charlotte, Sum 41, Simple Plan, Hawthorne Heights, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, My Chemical Romance, Tokio Hotel, Lindsay Lohan, Dashboard Confessional, All American Rejects, Fall Out Boy, AFI, Evanescence, Hollywood Undead, t.A.T.u., Yellowcard, Hannah Montana, Linkin Park, Bullet for My Valentine and Taking Back Sunday.  Most of his music is under the influence of today's modern pop punk, dance-punk, and emo music, but he does write some pop and hip-hop music as well.  He also teamed up with Travis Barker in 2007, remixing popular hip-hop singles such as Throw Some D's, Party Like a Rockstar, and Crank That Soulja Boy.    Even though he has written some of the works of some of the aforementioned artists, he is not one of the main producers of many of these artists and he chooses not to put his credit for his work.  An original song written by such composer to be cited is yet to be found, however some has claimed an abbreviation of his name in one of the albums.  In late 2008, he has decided to move in a small town near Oulu, Finland to raise his family and is a high school teacher and does accounting for bill paying in the summer to support the family, along with music production projects part-time, but he still continues to produce music today, but not as much as he used to.  He did come back to help write a few new songs, such as In My Head by Jason Derulo.  He has quit his part-time job in accounting to allow more time back in the music production business, to make a revival.

Hawthorne Heights
One of his most prominent projects is producing the band and influencing the style of the American band Hawthorne Heights. He did some marketing and helped the band members make a more marketable sound, by making the sound of the earlier albums he helped produce Bon Jovi with Max Martin and adding the rock flavor to it. That rock sound made the two premier Hawthorne Heights albums become massively popular. One of his biggest masterpieces, Ohio Is for Lovers made a massive sensation throughout adolescence as an anthem of teen angst.  Hawthorne Heights has cited the producer with the slogan "Pop is Dead" in advertisement, to generally prove that the manufactured boy band pop era is dead along with a protest of his production of many corporate pop punk bands that made the charts around 2004.  While most of the music he produces is generally American, he produces bands from Germany, Russia, France, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Australia, and the United Kingdom.  His work for t.A.T.u. and Tokio Hotel made the popularity of t.A.T.u. rise in Finland and Sweden.

References

Swedish record producers
Swedish songwriters
1976 births
Living people

Jay Orpin


Spring Gap is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Allegany County, Maryland, United States. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 55.

 Spring Gap is located in the valley of the North Branch Potomac River along the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Canal at mile marker 173. Just west of the community is the National Park Service Spring Gap Recreation Area, which offers camping sites and a place to relax for hikers and bikers of the C&O towpath. The park is easy to access by car and provides canoe access to the river. The Spring Gap Recreation Area is a popular location to pick up, drop off, or park when hiking or biking the C&O canal towpath to or from Cumberland,  upriver.

Some of the best fishing in the Potomac River is in the section from Spring Gap to Hancock.

Maryland Route 51 runs through Spring Gap, leading northwest to Cumberland and east to Oldtown, and Paw Paw, West Virginia. The mainline CSX railroad runs up the Potomac valley across the river from Spring Gap in West Virginia.

Demographics

Geography
 Elevation:
 Latitude:   39.5652
 Longitude: -78.71658

References

Census-designated places in Allegany County, Maryland
Census-designated places in Maryland
Populated places in the Cumberland, MD-WV MSA
Cumberland, MD-WV MSA

Spring Gap, Maryland


Terrestrial reconnaissance, or ground recon, is a type of reconnaissance that is employed along the elements of ground warfare.  It is the collection of intelligence that strictly involves routes, areas, zones (terrain-oriented); and the enemy (force-oriented).  Ground reconnaissance is considered to be the most effective type of reconnaissance but also the slowest method in obtaining information about the terrain and enemy.

Those units in contact with the enemy, especially patrols, are among the most reliable sources of information.  Combat engineers are also good sources of information.  These engineer units conduct engineer reconnaissance of an area and can provide detailed reporting on lines of communications; i.e., roads, rivers, railroad lines, bridges, and obstacles to maneuver.

See also
 Armoured reconnaissance

Maneuver tactics
Military engineering
Military intelligence collection
Reconnaissance

Terrestrial reconnaissance


Point-blank range is any distance where a certain firearm can hit a target without the need to adjust for bullet drop. When a bullet leaves a firearm, it is pulled downwards by gravity. When shooting at a distant target, the shooter must point the firearm above the target to adjust for this. If the target is close enough to the shooter, the distance the bullet drops will be very small. In this case, the shooter can aim the gun straight at the target.

The sights of a gun are set so that the barrel has a small upward tilt. When the bullet leaves the gun, it starts by rising and later drops. This means that weapon hits too low for very close targets, too high for mid-range targets, too low for very far targets. It hits point blank at the two distances when it crosses between too low and too high.  For a .270 Winchester, as an example, the bullet first crosses the line of sight at about 23m (25 yds) as it is rising and again at about 250m (275 yds). With this gun, point blank range for a deer size target is about 275m (300-310 yards).

Point-blank range is different for each weapon. The flatter the bullet's trajectory or the larger the target, the longer the point-blank range will be.

In popular usage, point-blank range has come to mean very close range but not close enough to be a contact shot.

References

Ballistics
Firearms

Point-blank range


Pemphigus is an extremly rare skin disease. It happens because the antibodies attack the skin cells.  It is an autoimmune disease.  It causes blisters and sores on the skin.

There are three types of pemphigus.  Pemphigus vulgaris is the most common type. It is more common in Ashkenazi Jews.

Autoimmune diseases

Pemphigus


The modern era is the period of human history that succeeds the Middle Ages (which ended around 1500 AD) up to the present. This terminology is a historical periodization that is applied primarily to European and Western history.

The modern era can be further divided as follows:
 The early modern period lasted from c. AD 1500 to 1800 and resulted in wide-ranging intellectual, political and economic change. It brought with it the Age of Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and an Age of Revolutions, beginning with those in America and France and later spreading in other countries, partly as a result of upheavals of the Napoleonic Wars.
 The late modern period began around 1800 with the end of the political revolutions in the late 18th century and involved the transition from a world dominated by imperial and colonial powers into one of nations and nationhood following the two great world wars, World War I and World War II.
 Contemporary history refers to the period following the end of World War II in 1945 and continuing to the present. It is alternatively considered either a sub-period of the late modern period or a separate period beginning after the late modern period. It includes the currently-ongoing 21st century.

The modern period has been a period of significant development in the fields of science, politics, warfare, and technology. It has also been an age of discovery and globalization. During this time, the European powers and later their colonies, began a political, economic, and cultural colonization of the rest of the world.

By the late 19th and early 20th century, modernist art, politics, science, and culture has come to dominate not only Western Europe and North America, but almost every civilized area on the globe, including movements thought of as opposed to the western world and globalization. The modern era is closely associated with the development of individualism, capitalism, urbanization, and a belief in the positive possibilities of technological and political progress.

The brutal wars and other problems of this era, many of which come from the effects of rapid change, and the connected loss of strength of traditional religious and ethical norms, have led to many reactions against modern development. Optimism and the belief in constant progress have been most recently criticized by postmodernism, while the dominance of Western Europe and North America over the rest of the world has been criticized by postcolonial theory.

Terminology

Eras can not easily be defined more exactly than by centuries. 1500 is an approximate starting period for the modern era because many major events caused the Western world to change around that time: from the Fall of Constantinople (1453), Gutenberg's moveable type printing press (1450s), completion of the Reconquista (1492) and Christopher Columbus's voyage to the Americas (also 1492), to the Protestant Reformation begun with Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses (1517).

The term "modern" was coined shortly before 1585 to describe the beginning of a new era.

The term "Early Modern" was introduced in the English language in the 1930s to distinguish the time between what we call Middle Ages and time of the late Enlightenment (1800) (when the meaning of the term Modern Ages was developing its contemporary form).

Sometimes distinct from the modern periods themselves, the terms "modernity" and "modernism" refer to a new way of thinking, distinct from medieval thinking.

The European Renaissance (about 1420–1630) is an important transition period beginning between the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, which started in Italy.

"Postmodernism", coined 1949, on the other hand, would describe rather a movement in art than a period of history, and is usually applied to arts, but not to any events of the very recent history. This changed, when postmodernity was coined to describe the major changes in the 1950s and 1960s in economy, society, culture, and philosophy.

These terms stem from European History; in worldwide usage, such as in China, India, and Islam, the terms are applied in a very different way, but often in the context with their contact with European culture in the Age of Discoveries.

Characteristics
The concept of the modern world as distinct from an ancient or medieval world rests on a sense that the modern world is not just another era in history, but rather the result of a new type of change. This is usually conceived of as progress driven by deliberate human efforts to better their situation.

Advances in all areas of human activity—politics, industry, society, economics, commerce, transport, communication, mechanization, automation, science, medicine, technology, and culture—appear to have transformed an Old World into the Modern or New World. In each case, the identification of the old Revolutionary change can be used to demarcate the old and old-fashioned from the modern.

Much of the Modern world replaced the Biblical-oriented value system, revalued the monarchical government system, and abolished the feudal economic system, with new democratic and liberal ideas in the areas of politics, science, psychology, sociology, and economics.

Some events of modern history, though born out of context not entirely new, show a new way of perceiving the world. The concept of modernity interprets the general meaning of these events and seeks explanations for major developments. Historians analyse the events taking place in Modern Times, since the so-called "Middle Ages" (between Modern and Ancient Times).

Early modern period

Late 15th to 17th century

Renaissance and early Reformation (–1600)
Gutenberg's moveable type printing press (1450s): information age and newspapers.
Discovery of America (1492): Voyages of Christopher Columbus.
Machiavelli's Il Principe (The Prince) started to circulate.
Copernicus and the beginning of the Scientific Revolution
Martin Luther challenges the Church on 31 October 1517 with the 95 Theses: Reformation.
Age of Discovery
Mercantilist economic theory and policy
Fall of the Spanish Armada 8 August 1588 enabled the Rise of the British Empire

Late Reformation and early Baroque (–1700)
The "Baroque" is a term usually applied to the history of art, architecture and music during this period.
Thirty Years' War 1618–1648 in Central Europe decimated the population by up to 20%.
The treaties of the Peace of Westphalia are signed in 1648, which ended several wars in Europe and established the beginning of sovereign states.
The Glorious Revolution of 1688 establishes modern parliamentary democracy in England.
Continuation of the Scientific Revolution
The beginning of the reign of Louis XIV r. 1643–1715, an example of the Age of Absolutism.

18th century

Age of Enlightenment and early Age of Revolution (ca. 1700–1800)
War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714)
The 1713 Peace of Utrecht marked the change from Spanish to British naval supremacy.
War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748)
Seven Years' War (1754–1763)
American Revolution (1765–1783)
French Revolution (1789–1799)
The beginning of the Industrial Revolution around 1760.

Late modern period

Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was the major technological, socioeconomic, and cultural change in late 18th and early 19th century that began in Britain and spread throughout the world. During that time, an economy based on manual labour was replaced by one dominated by industry and the manufacture of machinery. It began with the mechanisation of the textile industries and the development of iron-making techniques, and trade expansion was enabled by the introduction of canals, improved roads, and then railways. The introduction of steam power (fuelled primarily by coal) and powered machinery (mainly in textile manufacturing) underpinned the dramatic increases in production capacity. The development of all-metal machine tools in the first two decades of the 19th century facilitated the manufacture of more production machines for manufacturing in other industries.

The date of the Industrial Revolution is not exact. Eric Hobsbawm held that it "broke out" in the 1780s and was not fully felt until the 1830s or 1840s, while T. S. Ashton held that it occurred roughly between 1760 and 1830 (in effect the reigns of George III, The Regency, and George IV).

The effects spread throughout Western Europe and North America during the 19th century, eventually affecting the majority of the world. The impact of this change on society was enormous and is often compared to the Neolithic Revolution, when mankind developed agriculture and gave up its nomadic lifestyle.

The First Industrial Revolution gave way to the Second Industrial Revolution around 1850, when technological and economic progress gained momentum with the development of steam-powered ships and railways, and later in the nineteenth century with the internal combustion engine and electric power generation.

It has been argued that GDP per capita was much more stable and progressed at a much slower rate until the industrial revolution and the emergence of the modern capitalist economy, and that it has since increased rapidly in capitalist countries.

Napoleonic era

The Napoleonic era is a period in the History of France and Europe. It is generally classified as the fourth stage of the French Revolution, the first being the National Assembly, the second being the Legislative Assembly, and the third being the Directory. The Napoleonic era begins roughly with Napoleon's coup d'état, overthrowing the Directory and ends at the Hundred Days and his defeat at Waterloo (November 9 1799 – June 28 1815). The Congress of Vienna soon set out to restore Europe to pre-French Revolution days.

19th century

Historians sometimes define a nineteenth century historical era stretching from 1815 (the Congress of Vienna) to 1914 (the outbreak of the First World War); alternatively, Eric Hobsbawm defined the "long nineteenth century" as spanning the years 1789 to 1914.

During this century, the Spanish, Portuguese, and Ottoman Empires began to crumble and the Holy Roman and Mughal Empires ceased.

Following the Napoleonic Wars, the British Empire became the world's leading power, controlling one quarter of the World's population and one third of the land area. It enforced a Pax Britannica, encouraged trade, and battled rampant piracy.

Slavery was greatly reduced around the world. Following a successful slave revolt in Haiti, Britain forced the Barbary pirates to halt their practice of kidnapping and enslaving Europeans, banned slavery throughout its domain, and charged its navy with ending the global slave trade. Slavery was then abolished in Russia, America, and Brazil (see Abolitionism).

Following the abolition of the slave trade, and propelled by economic exploitation, the Scramble for Africa was initiated formally at the Berlin West Africa Conference in 1884–1885. All the major European powers laid claim to the areas of Africa where they could exhibit a sphere of influence over the area. These claims did not have to have any substantial land holdings or treaties to be legitimate. The French gained major ground in West Africa, the British in East Africa, and the Portuguese and Spanish at various points throughout the continent, while Leopold II of Belgium was able to retain his personal fiefdom, Congo.

Electricity, steel, and petroleum fuelled a Second Industrial Revolution which enabled Germany, Japan, and the United States to become great powers that raced to create empires of their own. However, Russia and China failed to keep pace with the other world powers which led to massive social unrest in both empires.

20th century

Above all, the 20th century is distinguished from most of human history in that its most significant changes were directly or indirectly economic and technological in nature.

Economic development was the force behind vast changes in everyday life, to a degree which was unprecedented in human history. The great changes of centuries before the 19th were more connected with ideas, religion or military conquest, and technological advance had only made small changes in the material wealth of ordinary people. Over the course of the 20th century, the world's per-capita gross domestic product grew by a factor of five , much more than all earlier centuries combined (including the 19th with its Industrial Revolution). Many economists make the case that this understates the magnitude of growth, as many of the goods and services consumed at the end of the century, such as improved medicine (causing world life expectancy to increase by more than two decades) and communications technologies, were not available at any price at its beginning. However, the gulf between the world's rich and poor grew much wider than it had ever been in the past, and the majority of the global population remained in the poor side of the divide.

Still, advancing technology and medicine has had a great impact even in the Global South. Large-scale industry and more centralized media made brutal dictatorships possible on an unprecedented scale in the middle of the century, leading to wars that were also unprecedented. However, the increased communications contributed to democratization.

Technological developments included the development of airplanes and space exploration, nuclear technology, advancement in genetics, and the dawning of the Information Age.

Major political developments included the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, two world wars, and the Cold War. It also saw the former British Empire lose most of its remaining political power over commonwealth countries, most notably by ways of the dividing of the British crown into several sovereignties by the Statute of Westminster, the patriation of constitutions by the Canada Act 1982 and the Australia Act 1986, and by the independence of countries like India, Pakistan, South Africa, and Ireland.

World War I

The First World War was a world conflict, raging from July 1914 to the final Armistice on 11 November 1918. The Allied Powers, led by the British Empire, France, Russia until March 1918, Japan and the United States after 1917, defeated the Central Powers, led by the German Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire. The war caused the disintegration of four empires — the Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman, and Russian ones — as well as radical change in the European and Middle Eastern maps. The Allied powers before 1917 are sometimes referred to as the Triple Entente, and the Central Powers are sometimes referred to as the Triple Alliance.

Much of the fighting in World War I took place along the Western Front, within a system of opposing manned trenches and fortifications (separated by a "no man's land") running from the North Sea to the border of Switzerland. On the Eastern Front, the vast eastern plains and limited rail network prevented a trench warfare stalemate from developing, although the scale of the conflict was just as large.  Hostilities also occurred on and under the sea and — for the first time — from the air. More than 9 million soldiers died on the various battlefields, and nearly that many more in the participating countries' home fronts on account of food shortages and genocide committed under the cover of various civil wars and internal conflicts. Notably, more  people died of the worldwide influenza outbreak at the end of the war and shortly after than died in the hostilities. The unsanitary conditions engendered by the war, severe overcrowding in barracks, wartime propaganda interfering with public health warnings, and migration of so many soldiers around the world helped the outbreak become a pandemic.

Ultimately, World War I created a decisive break with the old world order that had emerged after the Napoleonic Wars, which was modified by the mid-19th century's nationalistic revolutions. The results of World War I would be important factors in the development of World War II approximately 20 years later.

Interwar period

The Interwar period was the period between the end of World War I in 1918 and the beginning of World War II in 1939. It included the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, and the rise of communism in Russia and fascism in Italy and Germany.

World War II

World War II  was a global military conflict that took place in 1939–1945. It was the largest and deadliest war in history, culminating in the Holocaust and ending with the dropping of the atom bomb.

Even though Japan had been fighting in China since 1937, the conventional view is that the war began on September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Within two days the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany, even though the fighting was confined to Poland. Pursuant to a then-secret provision of its non-aggression Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union joined with Germany on September 17, 1939, to conquer Poland and to divide Eastern Europe.

The Allies were initially made up of Poland, the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, as well as British Commonwealth countries which were controlled directly by the UK, such as the Indian Empire. All of these countries declared war on Germany in September 1939.

Following the lull in fighting, known as the "Phoney War", Germany invaded western Europe in May 1940. Six weeks later, France, in the mean time attacked by Italy as well, surrendered to Germany, which then tried unsuccessfully to conquer Britain. On September 27, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed a mutual defense agreement, the Tripartite Pact, and were known as the Axis Powers.

Nine months later, on June 22, 1941, Germany launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union, which promptly joined the Allies. Germany was now engaged in fighting a war on two fronts. This proved to be a mistake by Germany; many historians believe that if Germany had successfully carried out the invasion of Britain and put forth their best effort, the war may have turned in favor of the Axis.

On  December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor, bringing it too into the war on the Allied side. China also joined the Allies, as eventually did most of the rest of the world. China was in turmoil at the time, and attacked Japanese armies through guerilla-type warfare. By the beginning of 1942, the major combatants were aligned as follows: the British Commonwealth, the United States, and the Soviet Union were fighting Germany and Italy; and the British Commonwealth, China, and the United States were fighting Japan. From then through August 1945, battles raged across all of Europe, in the North Atlantic Ocean, across North Africa, throughout Southeast Asia, throughout China, across the Pacific Ocean and in the air over Japan.

Italy surrendered in September 1943 and split in a northern Germany-occupied puppet state and in an Allies-friendly state in the South; Germany surrendered in May 1945. Following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered, marking the end of the war on September 2, 1945.

It is possible that around 62 million people died in the war; estimates vary greatly. About 60% of all casualties were civilians, who died as a result of disease, starvation, genocide (in particular, the Holocaust), and aerial bombing. The former Soviet Union and China suffered the most casualties. Estimates place deaths in the Soviet Union at around 23 million, while China suffered about 10 million. No country lost a greater portion of its population than Poland: approximately 5.6 million, or 16%, of its pre-war population of 34.8 million died.

The Holocaust (which roughly means "burnt whole") was the deliberate and systematic murder of millions of Jews and other "unwanted" during World War II by the Nazi regime in Germany. Several differing views exist regarding whether it was intended to occur from the war's beginning, or if the plans for it came about later. Regardless, persecution of Jews extended well before the war even started, such as in the Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). The Nazis used propaganda to great effect to stir up anti-Semitic feelings within ordinary Germans.

After World War II, Europe was informally split into Western and Soviet spheres of influence. Western Europe later aligned as North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Eastern Europe as the Warsaw Pact. There was a shift in power from Western Europe and the British Empire to the two new superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. These two rivals would later face off in the Cold War. In Asia, the defeat of Japan led to its democratization. China's civil war continued through and after the war, resulting eventually in the establishment of the People's Republic of China. The former colonies of the European powers began their road to independence.

Cold War and 1990s

The Cold War between the "West" (the United States, Western Europe, and Japan) and the "East" (the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China) dominated politics from the end of World War II in 1945 until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, at which point the Cold War ended and the post–Cold War era began (which includes most of the 1990s, the last decade of the 20th century).

The Korean War, Vietnam War, and later the Soviet–Afghan War, dominated the political life, while the counterculture of the 1960s and the rise of computers changed society in very different, complex ways, including higher social and local mobility.

At the end of the twentieth century, the world was at a major crossroads. Throughout the century, more technological advances had been made than in all of preceding history.  Computers, the Internet, and other technology radically altered daily lives. However, several problems faced the world during the Cold War period and the 1990s that followed.

First of all, the gap between rich and poor nations continued to widen. Some said that this problem could not be fixed, that there were a set amount of wealth and it could only be shared by so many. Others said that the powerful nations with large economies were not doing enough to help improve the rapidly evolving economies of the Third World. However, developing countries faced many challenges, including the scale of the task to be surmounted, rapidly growing populations, and the need to protect the environment, and the cost that goes along with it.

Secondly, disease threatened to destabilize many regions of the world. Viruses such as West Nile and Avian influenza continued to spread quickly and easily. In poor nations, malaria and other diseases affected the majority of the population. Millions were infected with HIV, the virus which causes AIDS, which was becoming an epidemic in southern Africa and around the world.

Increased globalization, specifically Americanization, was also occurring. While not necessarily a threat, it was causing anti-Western and anti-American feelings in parts of the world, especially the Middle East. English was quickly becoming the global language, with people who did not speak it becoming increasingly disadvantaged.

Terrorism, dictatorship, and the spread of nuclear weapons were also issues requiring immediate attention. Dictators such as Kim Jong-il in North Korea continued to lead their nations toward the development of nuclear weapons. The fear existed that not only are terrorists already attempting to get nuclear weapons, but that they have already obtained them.

21st century

The 2000s decade refers to the years from 2000 to 2009 inclusively. The 2000s were marked generally with an escalation of the social issues of the 1990s, which included the rise of terrorism, stress, the rapid, exponential expansion of economic globalization on an unprecedented scale, the rapid expansion of communications and telecommunications with mobile phones and the Internet and international pop culture.

In North America and the Middle East, most major political developments in the 2000s revolved around the War on Terrorism and the Iraq War. Elsewhere, the major theme was the rapid development of Asia's economic and political potential, with China, experiencing immense economic growth, moving toward the status of a regional power and billion-consumer market. India, along with many other developing countries, were also growing rapidly, and began integrating themselves into the world economy.

A trend connecting economic and political events in North America, Asia, and the Middle East was the rapidly increasing demand for fossil fuels, which, along with fewer new petroleum finds, greater extraction costs (see peak oil), and political turmoil, saw the price of gas and oil soar ~500% between 2000 and 2005. In some places, especially in Europe, gas could be $5 a gallon, depending on the currency.

The entire written works of humanity, from the beginning of recorded history to 2003, in all known languages, are estimated to be at five exabytes of data. Since 2003, with the beginning of social media and "user-generated content", the same amount of data is created every two days. The growth of human knowledge and information continues at an exponential rate.

Telecommunications in the early 21st century are much more advanced and universal than they were in the late 20th century. Only a few percent of the world's population were Internet users and cellular phone owners in the late 1990s; as of 2023, 64.4% of the world's population is online, and as of 2019, an estimated 67% own a cell phone. In the 2010s, artificial intelligence, mainly in the form of deep learning and machine learning, became more prevalent and is prominently used in Gmail and Google's search engine, in banking, with the military and other areas. In 2020, 9% of the world's population still lacked access to electricity.

In 2001, Dennis Tito became the first space tourist, beginning the era of commercial spaceflight. Entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Richard Branson are working towards commercial space exploration, colonization and tourism, while China and India have made substantial strides in their space programs. On 3 January 2019, China landed a robotic spacecraft on the far side of the Moon, the first to do so.

Major events relating to the War on Terrorism included the September 11, 2001 Attacks, the Moscow theater hostage crisis, the 2003 Istanbul bombings, the 2004 Madrid train bombings, the Beslan school siege, the 2005 London bombings, the 2005 Delhi bombings, and the 2008 Mumbai Hotel Siege.

The violence in Iraq, even after democratic elections on January 30, 2005, caused much political stir in all countries occupying the country (United States, Britain, Australia, etc), and political debates of these countries in 2006 and 2007 were highly influenced by the unstable situation in the Near East, especially Iraq and the discussion over Iran's nuclear weapons program.

Less influential, but omnipresent, was the debate on Turkey's participation in the European Union.

New virus strains, such as SARS and swine flu, emerged and spread during the 2000s.

The 2010s featured several major events in the Middle East which had effects elsewhere in the world. These events included the Arab Spring, the Syrian civil war, and the expansion of the extremist terrorist group ISIL. Beginning in 2015, Europe was affected by a migrant crisis. Several terrorist attacks occurred in Europe during the 2010s, including the November 2015 Paris attacks.

In 2016, nationalist political movements led to the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom and the election of Donald Trump as the President of the United States.

The 2020s have so far been dominated by a global pandemic and the first major war in Europe since World War II.

In 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, a major escalation of a conflict that has lasted since 2014.

Fourth Industrial Revolution

COVID-19 pandemic

In 2020, an outbreak of the COVID-19 disease, first documented in late 2019 in Wuhan, China, spread to other countries becoming a global pandemic, which caused a major socio-economic disruption all over the world. Many countries ordered mandatory lockdowns on movement and closures of non-essential businesses.  The threat of the disease caused the COVID-19 recession, although the distribution of vaccines has since eased the economic impact in many countries.

More generally, COVID-19 has been held up as an example of a global catastrophic risk unique to the modern era's ease of travel. New diseases can spread far faster and further in the contemporary era than any previous era of human history; pandemic prevention is one resulting field to ensure that if this happens with a sufficiently deadly virus, humanity can take measures to stop its spread.

The 2020s began with the COVID-19 pandemic—the first reports of the virus were published on December 31, 2019, though the first cases are said to have appeared nearly a month earlier—which caused a global economic recession as well as continuing financial inflation concerns and a global supply chain crisis.

Population growth
On 15 November 2022, the world population grew to over 8 billion people, and in 2023, India overtook China as the most populous country in the world.

See also
 Post-classical history
 Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns
 Timelines of modern history

Notes

References

External links
China and Europe

Historical eras
Modern history
Western culture

Modern era


Chennai International Queer Film Festival (also known as Reel Desires: Chennai International Queer Film Festival) is a three-day LGBT- event that usually takes places on the last weekend of July as a part of the city's pride events. The main organizers are SAATHII and Orinam in partnership with Goethe-Institut, Chennai. The other volunteers include various community groups and NGOs, including Nirangal, East-West Center for Counselling, and RIOV. The last day is usually performances along with a panel discussion, usually to discuss and bring out the challenges faced by community members.

Background
This LGBT-film festival is being held from 2005 in the city. The shorts, documentary and feature film submissted usually explore the intersections among sexuality/gender identity and other forms of marginalization, also including those based on gender, disability, immigrant/refugee status, caste, socio-economic class, religion, age, and race/ethnicity.

2017
The 12th queer film festival in 2017 saw 27 films, which were chosen from nearly 70 submissions from 12 countries. The event also saw a panel discussion about the activism in the south of India, around LGBTQIA, titled `South of the Norm: LGBTIQA+ activism in southern India'.

Movies Screened
Some of the movies screened include:

2016
It is the fourth time the Goethe-Institut is collaborating with the Reel Desires. Of the 80 films received, the organizers chose 26 films from eight countries. Some notable movies were Sridhar Rangayan's National Award-winning Breaking Free, Chennai-based Sairam Biswas's It Adhu But Aanaal and also the acclaimed Aligarh. The panel discussion this year was about "Ending Gender and Sexuality-based Violence".

2015
Reel Desires: Chennai International Queer Film Festival 2015, will be held from 24 to 26 July at the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan in Chennai. The festival will screen 23 films from eight countries, out of which some of the significant ones are Pride, the 2014 Cannes Film Festival award winner, Walking the Walk by Moses Tulasi, Aakkamum Thaakkamum (portrayals of transgender women in Tamil Cinema) and more.

2014
In 2014, the festival also hosted a photography exhibition by Shilpa Raj, a Bengaluru-based photographer, and social activist. Her exhibits were transgender people posing in diverse avatars, charting the transition from male to female in 14 stills. There were also photos that establish references to Ramayana and Mahabharata.
Some of the noteworthy movies screened were Kyunki, an Indian Submission, Eyes that do not see, from USA, Kumu Hina, a Hawaiian movie and Not funny from Germany.

2013
2013 the organizers received around ninety one films from 22 countries, out of which 35 films including shorts, documentaries, and feature films were screened. These were from India and over 10 countries.
The three-day event was from 11 to 13 July 2013 and some movies screened were Gay_Lonely, about a 30-plus gay man, Kuch Palon Mein, Veena Kulkarni's 'Reminiscene of Ether', Debalina Majumder's 'Ebang Bewarish (And the Unclaimed)' among others.

See also
List of LGBT film festivals
Tamil Sexual Minorities

External links
 Official Website
 Orinam

References

LGBT film festivals in India
LGBT culture in Chennai
Events in Chennai


William Blount (April 6, 1749March 21, 1800) was an American politician, landowner and Founding Father who was one of the signers of the Constitution of the United States. He was a member of the North Carolina delegation at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and led the efforts for North Carolina to ratify the Constitution in 1789 at the Fayetteville Convention. He then served as the only governor of the Southwest Territory and played a leading role in helping the territory gain admission to the union as the state of Tennessee. He was selected as one of Tennessee's initial United States Senators in 1796, serving until he was expelled for treason in 1797.

Born to a prominent North Carolina family, Blount served as a paymaster during the American Revolutionary War. He was elected to the North Carolina legislature in 1781, where he remained in one role or another for most of the decade, except for two terms in the Continental Congress in 1782 and 1786. Blount pushed efforts in the legislature to open the lands west of the Appalachians to settlement. As governor of the Southwest Territory, he negotiated the Treaty of Holston in 1791, bringing thousands of acres of Indian lands under U.S. control.

An aggressive land speculator, Blount gradually acquired millions of acres in Tennessee and the Trans-Appalachian West. He owned slaves as well. His risky land investments left him in debt, and in the 1790s, he conspired of his own accord to have Great Britain take over Spanish-controlled Louisiana and Florida in the hope of boosting local land prices. When the conspiracy was uncovered in 1797, he was expelled from the Senate and became the first federal official to face impeachment. However, Blount remained popular in Tennessee and served in the state senate during the last years of his life.

Early life
Blount was born on Easter Sunday at Rosefield, the home of his maternal grandfather, John Gray, near Windsor in Bertie County, North Carolina.  He was the eldest child of Jacob Blount (1726–1789) and Barbara Gray Blount. The Blounts had gradually risen to prominence in the first half of the 18th century as William's grandfather and father had steadily built the family fortune.  In the years following William's birth, Jacob Blount built a plantation, Blount Hall, in Pitt County, North Carolina.

Outside of tutors, William and his brothers had little formal education but were involved in their father's business ventures at a young age. Jacob Blount raised livestock, cotton, and tobacco, produced turpentine, and operated a mill and horse racing track for the local community.  His land acquisitions, consisting of several thousand acres by the end of the 1760s, taught his sons the profit potential of aggressive land speculation.

During the Regulator Movement of the late 1760s and early 1770s, the Blounts remained loyal to the North Carolina government.  Jacob Blount, a justice of the peace, furnished Governor William Tryon's army with supplies as it marched to defeat the Regulators at the Battle of Alamance in 1771.  William Blount, along with his brothers Jacob and John Gray Blount, were among Tryon's soldiers, though they saw little action.

American Revolution

As tensions heightened between Great Britain and the Thirteen Colonies in the 1770's, the Blount family gradually aligned themselves with the Patriot cause.  In April 1776, Jacob Blount was appointed paymaster of the 2nd North Carolina Regiment, and William Blount was appointed paymaster for the New Bern District Brigade of the North Carolina militia the following month.  William's brothers, Reading and Thomas Blount, accepted commissions in the Continental Army.  The Blounts provided provisions for the Continental Army and militias, and they profited both financially and politically from the war.  They also began looking westward, with John Gray Blount acquiring a portion of Richard Henderson's Transylvania Purchase in mid-1776.

In December 1776, William Blount was appointed paymaster of the 3rd North Carolina Regiment and spent the first few months of 1777 with the unit as it marched north to join George Washington's forces in the defense of Philadelphia.  In November 1777, political rivals in the North Carolina legislature removed Blount as paymaster, though he was restored to the office in April 1778. He helped organize regiments for the defense of Charleston, South Carolina, which fell to the British in 1780 during the siege of Charleston.  William's brother, Thomas, was captured during the siege.

In early 1780, Blount was appointed official commissary to General Horatio Gates, who had arrived in North Carolina to command Patriot forces in the South.  Blount was present at Gates's defeat at the Battle of Camden in August 1780 and in the confusion of battle lost $300,000 intended to be used to pay Patriot soldiers.

North Carolina politics and the Continental Congress

In late 1779, Blount ran for the vacant New Bern state House of Commons seat against Richard Dobbs Spaight in a campaign described by Blount's biographer, William Masterson, as "violent in an age of fierce elections."  Spaight won by a narrow margin, but Blount successfully convinced election officials that voter fraud had occurred, and the election was voided.  In the weeks following the Battle of Camden, Blount again ran for the seat and this time was successful.  He took his seat in the House of Commons in January 1781.

In May 1782, Blount was elected one of North Carolina's four delegates to the Continental Congress.  At the Congress's 1782 session, Blount helped defeat a poll tax and a liquor tax and opposed a reduction of the army. He also agreed to consider a land cession act to satisfy North Carolina's massive tax debt owed to the Confederation.  Blount left Philadelphia in January 1783 and resigned from Congress three months later to accept an appointment to the North Carolina House of Commons steering committee.

During the House's 1783 and 1784 sessions, Blount introduced several bills that would prove critical in the early history of what is now Tennessee.  One bill, known as the "Land Grab Act," opened the state's lands west of the Appalachians (i.e., the parts of Tennessee not under Indian domain) to settlement.  One individual who took advantage of this act was militia captain James White, who acquired a tract of land that would later become Knoxville, Tennessee. Another bill rendered soldiers with at least two years of military service eligible for land grants.  Some soldiers used their grants to acquire land in the Tennessee Valley, while others sold their grants to the Blounts and other land speculators.  In 1784, Blount sponsored a bill establishing the city of Nashville in what was then the Cumberland settlements.

In June 1784, Blount sponsored another bill critical to early Tennessee history—a bill calling for North Carolina lands west of the Appalachians (i.e., modern Tennessee) to be ceded to the Continental Congress to satisfy the state's share of the nation's tax burden.  The bill was hotly contested but passed by a 52-43 margin.  Opponents of the cession gained control of the House and repealed the act in October, but not before a movement by the Tennessee Valley residents to establish a separate state, known as the State of Franklin, had gained momentum. A friend of both North Carolina Governor Richard Caswell and Franklinite leader John Sevier, Blount waffled on the Franklin issue for the next four years.

Despite the cession debacle, Blount was elected to the Continental Congress for the 1785 session.  As he prepared to depart, however, word came that the Congress had appointed a commission to negotiate a new treaty, eventually known as the Treaty of Hopewell, with the southern tribes.  Fearing the new treaty would be unfavorable to North Carolina, Blount, with Governor Caswell's blessing, headed south in hopes of negotiating a separate treaty for the state.  He arrived too late, however, and the Hopewell Treaty negotiated by the commissioners returned a sizeable portion of western lands claimed by North Carolina speculators to the Indians.  Fearing a backlash back home, Blount merely signed the treaty as a witness.

In March 1786, Blount hurried to New York to take his seat in the Continental Congress, hoping to prevent ratification of the Hopewell Treaty, but once again he arrived too late, and the treaty was ratified.  Disappointed, he went home, but with anger rising over his handling of the Hopewell Treaty, he returned to the Continental Congress in November 1786. In March 1787, Blount was chosen as one of five delegates to represent North Carolina at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.  Blount arrived at the convention on June 20, after debates had already begun.   He sent a copy of the Virginia Plan (in violation of Convention rules), and, expressing pessimism in the Convention's outcome, he stayed for just a few days before heading to New York to rejoin the Continental Congress in early July.  He was present for the Congress's debate and passage of the Northwest Ordinance and heard Henry Knox's report recommending a North Carolina land cession.  By August 7, however, he had returned to the Convention in Philadelphia for final debates.  Still reeling from the fallout from the Hopewell Treaty, he was wary of signing the final document but was finally convinced by Gouverneur Morris to do so.

Confident that North Carolina would gain more than it would lose with the new Constitution, Blount returned home to campaign for its ratification.  Elected to the North Carolina Senate from Pitt County in 1788 and 1789, Blount and his allies successfully countered attempts by anti-federalists Willie Jones and William Lenoir to thwart adoption of the new Constitution, and North Carolina voted for its ratification in November 1789.  On December 1, the state legislature voted to cede its trans-Appalachian lands to the new federal government.  Blount sought one of North Carolina's inaugural U.S. Senate seats in November 1789 but was defeated by Benjamin Hawkins.

Southwest Territory

Congress accepted North Carolina's western cession, which consisted of what is now Tennessee, on April 2, 1790.  In May, the Southwest Territory was created from the new cession and was to be governed under the Northwest Ordinance.  On June 8, President George Washington appointed Blount governor of the new territory.  Blount visited Washington at Mount Vernon on September 18 and was sworn in by Supreme Court Justice James Iredell two days later.  In October 1790, he set up a temporary capital at William Cobb's house, Rocky Mount, in what is now Piney Flats, Tennessee, and began organizing a government for the new territory.

The western frontiersmen were initially skeptical of Blount, who came across as an aristocratic Easterner.  Blount managed to gain their trust, however, by recommending John Sevier and James Robertson as brigadier generals of the territorial militia, and appointing Landon Carter, Stockley Donelson and Gilbert Christian as colonels.  Former Franklinites appointed to lower government offices included Joseph Hardin, William Cage, James White, Dr. James White and Francis Alexander Ramsey.  Others receiving appointments included future president Andrew Jackson, future governor Archibald Roane and naval officer George Farragut.  Blount hired his half-brother, Willie Blount, as a personal secretary and recruited Fayetteville, North Carolina, publisher George Roulstone to establish a newspaper for the new territory, known as the Gazette.

In December 1790, following his trip to the Cumberland territories, Blount's family joined him at Rocky Mount.  The following year, he chose James White's Fort, near the confluence of the Holston and French Broad rivers, as the territory's new capital.  He named the capital "Knoxville" after his superior, the United States Secretary of War Henry Knox.  Following the initial sale of lots in October 1791, he began construction of his mansion in the city.

Throughout his term as governor, Blount was torn between angry western frontiersmen, who demanded war against hostile Indians, and a War Department that consistently pushed for peaceful negotiations with the Indians.  In June 1791, he negotiated the Treaty of Holston with Cherokee leader John Watts and several other chiefs, resolving land claims south of the French Broad and obtaining permission for a permanent road between the territory's eastern settlements and the Cumberland settlements.  In spite of this treaty, Chickamauga attacks increased the following year.  Frustrated settlers demanded federal troops intervene, but the War Department refused, blaming settlers for intruding on Indian lands.

William Cocke, an ex-Franklinite, blamed Blount for the lack of action against the Chickamaugas and began publishing attacks against Blount in the Gazette.  Blount responded with a series of articles (published under pseudonyms) rejecting Cocke and calling for patience.  Following attacks by the Chickamaugas against Ziegler's Station in 1792 and against Cavet's Station in 1793, however, Blount was unable to contain the rage of frontiersmen and called up the militia.  Sevier led the militia south into Georgia and attacked and destroyed several Chickamauga villages.  Knox blasted Blount for the invasion and refused to issue pay for the militiamen.  Blount finally negotiated a truce with the Chickamauga at the Tellico Blockhouse in 1794.

Toward the middle of his term, Blount began implementing the steps stipulated in the Northwest Ordinance for a territory to gain statehood.  One of these steps was to call for the election of a legislature and submit nominees for appointments to a territorial council, which Blount did in 1794.  On September 15, 1795, he directed county sheriffs to conduct a census.  The census placed the territory's population at 77,000, substantially more than the 60,000 required for statehood.  Blount ordered a state constitutional convention to be held at Knoxville in January 1796, which he personally attended as part of the Knox County delegation. The government of the new state convened in late March 1796, before it had been officially admitted to the Union.

Blount realized he had little chance of defeating Sevier in a race for governor of the new state, so he instead sought one of the state's two United States Senate seats.  He received this appointment (along with William Cocke) on March 30, 1796, and headed to Philadelphia to campaign for Tennessee's statehood. Blount's brother, Thomas (a Congressman from North Carolina), along with James Madison, convinced the house to vote for Tennessee's admission to the Union on May 6.  The Senate voted to admit the new state on May 31.

Blount Conspiracy

Throughout the 1780s and 1790s, William Blount and his brothers gradually bought up large amounts of western lands, acquiring over 2.5 million acres by the mid-1790s.  Much of this land was bought on credit, pushing the family deeply into debt.  In 1795, the market for western lands collapsed, and land prices plummeted.  A number of land speculators, including Blount associate David Allison, went bankrupt.  Blount partnered with Philadelphia physician Nicholas Romayne in an attempt to sell land to British investors, but their efforts were unsuccessful. Compounding Blount's problems, Timothy Pickering, who despised Blount, replaced Henry Knox as secretary of war in 1795.

Following France's defeat of Spain in the War of the Pyrenees, land speculators, already on the financial brink, worried that the French would eventually gain control of Spanish-controlled Louisiana and shut off American access to the Mississippi River.  In hopes of preventing this, Blount and his friend, Indian agent John Chisholm, concocted a plan to allow the British to gain control of Spanish-controlled Louisiana and Florida, expecting them in turn to give free access to both New Orleans and the Mississippi River to American merchants. The plan called for American territorial militias, with the aid of the British Royal Navy, to attack New Madrid, New Orleans, and Pensacola.

To help carry out the plan, Blount recruited Romayne, who never showed more than lukewarm support for the idea, and Knoxville merchant James Carey.  Chisholm, meanwhile, sailed to England to recruit British supporters for the plan. In April 1797, Carey was at the Tellico Blockhouse near Knoxville when he gave a government agent a letter from Blount outlining the conspiracy.  The agent turned the letter over to his superior, Colonel David Henley in Knoxville, and Henley in turn sent it to Pickering.  Elated at the opportunity to crush Blount, Pickering turned the letter over to President John Adams.

Determining that the actions of Blount, a senator from Tennessee, constituted a crime, Adams sent Blount's letter to the Senate, where it was presented on July 3, 1797, while Blount was out for a walk.  When Blount returned, the clerk read the contents of the letter aloud as Blount stood in stunned silence.  Vice President Thomas Jefferson asked Blount if he had written the letter.  Blount gave an evasive answer and asked that the matter be postponed until the following day, which was granted. On July 4, Blount refused to return to the Senate and had Cocke read a letter which again requested more time.  The Senate rejected this request and formed an investigative committee.  Ordered to testify before the committee, Blount initially attempted to flee by ship to North Carolina, but federal deputies seized the ship and most of his belongings.  On July 7, Blount, after consulting with attorneys Alexander Dallas and Jared Ingersoll, testified before the committee and denied writing the letter.  The following day, the House of Representatives voted 41 to 30 to hold impeachment hearings, and the Senate voted 25 to 1 to "sequester" Blount's seat, effectively expelling him, with Henry Tazewell casting the lone dissenting vote.
Rather than await trial, Blount posted bail and fled to Tennessee.  Chisholm remained in England in a debtors' prison for several months and confessed the entire scheme upon his return.  Romayne was arrested and forced to testify before the committee, where he confessed to his part in the conspiracy.  The House continued to consider evidence for Blount's impeachment in early 1798.  At one session on January 30, a bizarre brawl erupted between two congressmen, Matthew Lyon and Roger Griswold, in connection with the hearings.  The Senate convened as a Court of Impeachment for the impeachment trial on December 17, 1798; though Blount refused to attend, in spite of a visit to Knoxville from the Senate sergeant-at-arms, the Senate heard arguments from his counsel, who argued lack of jurisdiction because Blount had not been an officer within the meaning of Article II, nor was he now an officer since he had been expelled and now held no federal office. On January 11, 1799, the Senate voted 14 to 11 to dismiss the impeachment for lack of jurisdiction. The ruling left unclear which (or both) of the two arguments were dispositive, though it became generally accepted that impeachment did not extend to senators.

The unraveling of the conspiracy destroyed Blount's reputation at the national level and touched off a series of accusations between Federalists and Anti-federalists.  George Washington called for swift justice against Blount and hoped he would be "held in detestation by all good men." Abigail Adams called the conspiracy a "diabolical plot" and bemoaned the fact that there was no guillotine in Philadelphia.  Pickering argued the conspiracy was part of a greater French plot and accused Thomas Jefferson of being involved. Oliver Wolcott suggested the conspiracy was an attempt to blackmail Spain.

Later life

While Blount's national reputation was ruined, he remained popular in Tennessee. Upon his return to Knoxville in September 1797, he was paraded triumphantly through the city by a military procession led by James White and James Stuart.  Most of his old Tennessee allies, among them Andrew Jackson, Joseph Anderson, James White, Charles McClung and William C. C. Claiborne, remained loyal, and helped repair his image among locals.  Blount, likewise, adopted a staunchly pro-Western attitude.

In 1798, Congress appointed commissioners to survey the boundary between U.S. and Cherokee lands set by the Treaty of Holston.  Concerned the commissioners would run the boundary in a way that favored the Cherokee over the settlers, Blount and Sevier sent agents to harass the commissioners.  To further push Western interests, they sent representatives to federal treaty negotiations at the Tellico Blockhouse in 1798, frustrating federal negotiators sent by Congress and confusing Cherokee representatives.

In his report on the Tellico treaty, one of the commissioners, Elisha Hall, accused Blount of trying to thwart the treaty, and Blount sued him for libel.  After the suit was thrown out by Judge David Campbell, Blount sought Campbell's impeachment, calling him a "meddling blockhead".  In October 1798, William Blount was elected to Knox County's state senate seat, following James White's resignation. On December 3, he was named Speaker of the Senate. He spent his first few days in office pushing for Judge Campbell's impeachment. The House voted to impeach Campbell on December 17, but he was acquitted by the Senate on December 26.

In March 1800, an epidemic swept through Knoxville, and several members of the Blount family fell ill.  Blount was tending to his sick family when he, too, fell ill on March 11.  After 10 days, he died on the night of March 21, 1800. He was buried at the First Presbyterian Church Cemetery a few blocks from his home in Knoxville. His half-brother, Willie, consolidated the family estate and took charge of the education of Blount's children.

Legacy

Blount County, Tennessee, is named after Blount, as is the town of Blountville in Sullivan County. Grainger County and Maryville are both named after his wife, Mary Grainger Blount.  William Blount High School and Mary Blount Elementary School, both in Blount County, are named after Blount and his wife, respectively. Blount County, Alabama, is named after William's younger half-brother Willie Blount. Blount Street in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Blount Street in Madison, Wisconsin, are both named in Blount's honor.  Other entities named for Blount include Fort Blount, which operated in Jackson County, Tennessee, in the 1790s, and Blount College, the forerunner of the University of Tennessee, which was founded in Knoxville in 1794.

Blount's home, Blount Mansion, still stands in Knoxville and is currently a museum operated by the non-profit Blount Mansion Association. The house has been designated a National Historic Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  Blount's childhood home in Pitt County, North Carolina, Blount Hall, burned down in the 1960s, though a historical marker stands near the site. A life-size bronze statue of Blount is part of the "Signers' Hall" exhibit at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.  A plaque in the first floor rotunda of the North Carolina State Capitol honors Blount and the two other North Carolina signers of the Constitution, Richard Dobbs Spaight and Hugh Williamson.

Family
Blount's father, Jacob (1726–1789), married Barbara Gray, the daughter of Scottish businessman John Gray, and they had eight children; William, Anne, John Gray, Louisa, Reading, Thomas, Jacob, and Barbara.  After Barbara Gray's death, Jacob married Hannah Salter, and they had five children, though only two lived to maturity, Willie and Sharpe. Thomas Blount represented North Carolina in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1790s and 1800s.  Willie Blount was governor of Tennessee from 1809 to 1815.

William Blount married Mary Grainger in 1778, and they had six children; Ann, Mary Louisa, William Grainger, Richard Blackledge, Barbara and Eliza.  William Grainger Blount represented Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1815 to 1819.  Mary Louisa Blount was married to Congressman Pleasant Miller, and Barbara Blount was married to General Edmund P. Gaines.

See also
 List of United States senators expelled or censured

References

External links

 Blount Mansion
 William Blount Papers  at the Newberry Library
  Some Account of the Life and Services of William Blount – book by General Marcus Wright published in 1884; includes extensive information on the Blount Conspiracy

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People of colonial North Carolina
American people of English descent
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Governors of Southwest Territory
Tennessee state senators
Members of the North Carolina House of Representatives
North Carolina state senators
Impeached United States federal officials
Paymasters
Politicians from Knoxville, Tennessee
Politicians from New Bern, North Carolina
18th-century American politicians
Blount County, Tennessee
American filibusters (military)
Continental Army officers from North Carolina
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William Blount


Brick Store is a historic building in Covington, Georgia. It was built in 1821 and served as a focus point for the community, also known as Sun Up, Georgia, Mt. Pleasent, Georgia or Brick Store, Georgia. It has been a general store, stage coach stop, post office, school house, courtroom, jail and residence for Martin Kolb. The first session of Newton County Superior Court was held at the Brick Store. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 9, 2009. The building is owned by the Trustees of the Newton County Historical Society. It is located on U.S. Route 278 at Old Social Circle Road.

The site includes a tablet from 1933 commemorating the Stage Coach Crossroads, a plaque commemorating the building's donation by Charles M. Jordan of the building to the Newton County Historical Society in 1971 and a plaque from the landmarks commission dated 1990.

See also
National Register of Historic Places listings in Newton County, Georgia

References

Commercial buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Georgia (U.S. state)
Commercial buildings completed in 1821
Buildings and structures in Newton County, Georgia
National Register of Historic Places in Newton County, Georgia

Brick Store (Covington, Georgia)


Induced polarization (IP) is a geophysical imaging technique used to identify the electrical chargeability of subsurface materials, such as ore.

The polarization effect was originally discovered by Conrad Schlumberger when measuring the resistivity of rock.

The survey method is similar to electrical resistivity tomography (ERT), in that an electric current is transmitted into the subsurface through two electrodes, and voltage is monitored through two other electrodes.

Induced polarization is a geophysical method used extensively in mineral exploration and mine operations. Resistivity and IP methods are often applied on the ground surface using multiple four-electrode sites. In an IP survey, in addition to resistivity measurement, capacitive properties of the subsurface materials are determined as well. As a result, IP surveys provide additional information about the spatial variation in lithology and grain-surface chemistry.

The IP survey can be made in time-domain and frequency-domain mode:

In the time-domain induced polarization method, the voltage response is observed as a function of time after the injected current is switched off or on.

In the frequency-domain induced polarization mode, an alternating current is injected into the ground with variable frequencies. Voltage phase-shifts are measured to evaluate the impedance spectrum at different injection frequencies, which is commonly referred to as spectral IP.

The IP method is one of the most widely used techniques in mineral exploration and mining industry and it has other applications in hydrogeophysical surveys, environmental investigations and geotechnical engineering projects.

Measurement methods

Time domain

Time-domain IP methods measure considers the resulting voltage following a change in the injected current. The time domain IP potential response can be evaluated by considering the mean value on the resulting voltage, known as integral chargeability or by evaluating the spectral information and considering the shape of the potential response, for example describing the response with a Cole-Cole model.

Frequency domain

Frequency-domain IP methods uses alternating currents (AC) to induce electric charges in the subsurface, and the apparent resistivity is measured at different AC frequencies.

See also
 DC impedance spectroscopy
 AC impedance spectroscopy
 Electrical resistivity measurement of concrete
 Geophysical imaging

References

Further reading

External links

  Example IP equipment and image results

Geophysical imaging

Induced polarization


James Otis Cochran (ca. 1767 – April 7, 1813) was a Congressional Representative from North Carolina; born near Mount Tirzah Township, Person County, North Carolina, about 1767; attended the public schools; engaged in agricultural pursuits near Helena, North Carolina; member of the State house of commons 1802–1806; served in the State senate in 1807; elected as a Republican to the Eleventh and Twelfth Congresses (March 4, 1809 – March 3, 1813); died in Roxboro, Person County, N.C., April 7, 1813; interment in the burial ground at Leas Chapel, five miles west of Roxboro, N.C.  He is the grandfather of James Cochran Dobbin.

Cochran parents, Charles and Isabelle (Whitelaw) Cochran, were natives of Perth, Scotland.

External links

Members of the North Carolina House of Representatives
North Carolina state senators
American people of Scottish descent
1813 deaths
1760s births
Democratic-Republican Party members of the United States House of Representatives from North Carolina
People from Person County, North Carolina

James Cochran (North Carolina politician)


The Java Sea is a large shallow sea on the Sunda Shelf. It is 320,000 km². It was formed as sea levels rose at the end of the last ice age. The Java Sea is between the Indonesian islands of Borneo to the north, Java to the south; Sumatra to the west, and Sulawesi to the east. Karimata Strait to its northwest links it to the South China Sea.

Fishing is an important economic activity in the Java Sea. There are over 3,000 species of marine life in the area. A number of national parks are in the area such as Karimunjawa. The Thousand Islands are north of the mainland Jakarta. The area around the Java Sea is a popular tourist destination. Scuba diving lets people explore and photograph underwater caverns, wrecks, coral, sponges, and other marine life.

The Battle of the Java Sea, during February and March 1942, was one of the costliest naval battles of World War II. The naval forces of the Netherlands, Britain, Australia, and the U.S. were nearly completely destroyed trying to defend Java from Japanese attack.

References

Other websites

Seas of the Indian Ocean
Geography of Indonesia

Java Sea


Loki is the god of mischief in Norse mythology.

Loki may also refer to:

Computing
 LOKI, a family of cryptographic block ciphers
 Loki (C++), a C++ software library
 Loki (computer), a proposed home computer
 Loki Software, a software firm
 Loki, an open source logging platform available through Grafana

Fictional characters
 Loki (Marvel Comics), a character in Marvel Comics
 Loki (Marvel Cinematic Universe), the character adapted for the media franchise, since 2011
 Loki (TV series), a 2021 Marvel series
 Loki (Dark Horse Comics), a character in The Mask comic book series and related media
 Loki (Dogma), a character in the film Dogma
 Loki (Stargate), a character in the TV series Stargate SG-1
 A character in the light novel series Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? and its derived works
 A character in the TV series Space Academy
 A character in the TV series Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race
 A character in the anime Saint Seiya: Soul of Gold
 A character in the video game Age of Mythology
 A character in the video game series God of War, more commonly known as Atreus
 A character in the video game Fire Emblem Heroes
 A character in the video game Bayonetta 2
 A character in the video game Ghosts 'n Goblins
 A character in the video game Vigilante 8

People
 Loki (rapper), stage name of Darren McGarvey
 A pseudonym of British mathematician and biostatistician Karl Pearson
 Loki Schmidt, the wife of German ex-Chancellor Helmut Schmidt

Other uses
 Loki, Indonesia. a village on Seram Island
 Loki? (album), a 1974 album by Arnaldo Baptista
 Loki (video game), a 2007 video game
 "Loki", a 2012 song by Icelandic Viking metal band Skálmöld from the album Börn Loka
 Loki (rocket), an American sounding rocket, later developed into the Super Loki rocket
 Loki, an isopod genus in the family Bopyridae
 Loki Patera, a volcano on Jupiter's moon Io
 Lokichogio (also called Loki), a town in northern Kenya
 Mount Loki, a mountain in British Columbia
 Debreceni VSC, an association football club nicknamed Loki
 LoKI, a SANS (small angle neutron scattering) beamline at the European Spallation Source

See also
 Loki7, the alias of Roger Charles Bell, a pipe-bomber and former educator from Prince Edward Island, Canada
 Loki's Castle, a field of hydrothermal vents
 Lokiarchaeota,  a proposed phylum of Archaea named after Loki's Castle
 Loci, the plural of locus
 Low Ki or Brandon Silvestry a professional wrestler
 The Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok
 Lokai, a half-white, half-black character in "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", an episode of Star Trek

Loki (disambiguation)


Ballylinney Presbyterian Church is a Presbyterian church in Ballylinney, County Antrim, Northern Ireland.

History
The foundation stone for Ballylinney Church was laid on 6 May 1835 with the completion of the building on 11 September 1836. By the year 1840 Ballylinney Church became part of the Presbytery of Carrickfergus and by 1842 the first elders of the church were ordained.

It was only in 1883 that the church paid for the first Presbyterian Manse to be built on the Hillhead Road where the Minister, Rev Williams, would reside with his family. The house was a double story and had a large garden encircling the house. Between the years of 1923 and 1956 saw the addition of various luxuries such as the first organ and electric heating and lighting being installed. By 1966 the stables which were still on the property were then converted for the church hall and to provide both a kitchen and toilet facilities for the congregation.

In 1977 the new hall was built and named after the current minister, Rev C. F. Young, and it was by this time that the congregations Children's Church and Girls Brigade were being run from the newly built facilities. Then in 1997 additional buildings were added to the existing hall and also named after Rev C.F. Young.

These days only some of the congregation members are farmers, but by far the majority are young families where the parents commute to other areas, such as Larne, Belfast or Ballymena. At this time there are 340 homes connected to this church.

Ministers of Ballylinney
 Rev. Isaac Adams 1837 - 1880
 Rev. James Foster Williams 1881 - 1899
 Rev. Hugh Craig Meeke 1899 - 1904
 Rev. John Kyle 1905 - 1911
 Rev. Wilson Moreland Kennedy 1912 - 1921
 Rev. Ernest McConnell 1921 - 1958
 Rev. Charles Frances Young 1959 - 1982
 Rev. Roy Vallely 1983 - 2009
 Rev. Emerson McDowell 2010–2023

See also
 Presbyterian Church in Ireland

References
 Ballylinney Church

Presbyterian churches in Northern Ireland
Churches in County Antrim

Ballylinney Presbyterian Church


Abar Khabo (English: Eat Again) is a sweet originating in West Bengal that consists of two concentric spheres containing pistachios, cashews, raisins and kheer.

History
Abar khabo was invented by Nobin Chandra Das when requested by the Maharani Swarnamoyee Devi of Cossimbazar to create a new kind of sweet. Upon eating the abar khabo the Maharani exclaimed "আবার খাবো" (Abar Khabo) which became its name.

Kolkata-based sweet shops of the Gupta Brothers and Bhim Chandra Nag are known for making abar khabo.

See also
 Rasgulla

References

Sweets of West Bengal

Abar Khabo