Agent 13: The Midnight Avenger was the name of a novel series based on Top Secret/S.I. setting published by TSR, Inc. from 1986 to 1988. There were three stories in the series, following the actions of the protagonist referred to in the novels only as Agent 13, or simply, The Agent. It was written by Flint Dille and David Marconi.

There is also a source book based on the characters and settings in the series.(Agent 13 Novels)

The background of the series was set in the late 1930s, reminiscent of the popular pulps of the era. Graphic novel editions of the series were also published subsequently.

The Series

Novels
 The Invisible Empire,
 The Serpentine Assassin,
 Acolytes of Darkness,  (published as part of Double Agent book series).

Graphic novels
 Agent 13: The Midnight Avenger, by Flint Dille, David Marconi, and Dan Spiegle,  (based on The Invisible Empire and The Serpentine Assassin).
 Agent 13: Acolytes of Darkness,

Other publications
 TSAC2: Agent 13 Sourcebook (1988) by Ray Winninger,
 Agent 13 Assassin: The Immortal Avenger/Role Playing Game Comic (Agent 13 Game Comic), by Mike Barr, Robb Phipps and Alfredo Alcala, published October 1990 by TSR.

Setting
The primary antagonists of the series was a group known as The Brotherhood. They were a highly secretive organization formed by remnants of the legendary lost civilization of Lemuria. Lemuria had been an advanced civilization in the prehistoric age of mankind.

Lemuria was destroyed by ravaging horde of primitive barbarians. The survivors who escaped established a hidden base whereby they dedicated themselves to preserving their advanced knowledge, keeping their existence a secret from the world, but maintaining a network of agents working surreptitiously amongst the rulers.

Through actions of these agents, the Brotherhood kept an eye on the development of the world, intervening through indirect and subtle means to guide the course of history, and when they judged the time was ready, gradually release bits of knowledge, such as specific scientific breakthroughs, to the world.

In the story, the secret agents of the Brotherhood were responsible for preventing the sacking of Rome by Attila the Hun in AD 452, as well as being responsible for the advancements during the Renaissance.

It was not revealed, at first, when corruption set in, or whether it had been there from the beginning. Eventually, Itsu, known as the Hand Sinister, one of the paramount leaders of the Brotherhood, seized full control of the Brotherhood, and began using it as a tool to dominate the world. Its agents acted to infiltrate the major governments of the world and set the world on a path towards globally destructive war, which would give them the opportunity to become its master.

Agent 13
Kidnapped as a young child in 1907, a gifted boy was brought to the secret headquarters of the Brotherhood known as The Shrine. His past memories were erased, he was assigned as Agent 13 and trained as an assassin and an agent in clandestine operations.

He became the best disciple and would have risen high in the ranks of the Brotherhood, until he discovered its true nature. Fleeing, he was hunted by agents sent by the Brotherhood and began a deadly cat-and-mouse contest against the organization.

Eventually, he survived their attacks long enough to fight back, having formed his own group of allies to provide him with support. At the beginning of the story, Agent 13 dedicated himself to fighting against the plans of the Brotherhood.

Film
April 21, 2012 it was reported that Universal Pictures has the rights for a film version that is to star Charlize Theron. Rupert Wyatt will be directing and T.S. Nowlin will write the screenplay.

List of allies
 Benny the Eye: Deployed for assignments to tail targets.
 China White: One of the Brotherhood's top members trained to seduce. Agent 13's lover.
 Maggie Darr: The beautiful operative closest to Agent 13.
 Ray Furnow: An Asian who seemed to have endless number of wives and children to deploy as human resources for Agent 13.

References

External links
 Agent 13
 Top Secret/SI Agent 13 Sourcebook

Young adult novel series
American spy novels
Fictional assassins
Fictional secret agents and spies
Characters in pulp fiction
Lemuria (continent) in fiction

Agent 13: The Midnight Avenger


Francesco Landi (9 July 1682 – 11 February 1757) was an eighteenth century archbishop and cardinal. He is also known as Francesco Landi Pietra after his father's adoption by Count Cesare Pietra di Roncarolo.

Biography
Landi was the fourth child of Count Odoardo Landi and Elisabetta Lampugnani, minor nobility from Piacenza. He studied in Rome at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy and the Sapienza University of Rome, where he graduated in utroque jure. After graduation, he became ajutante de studio to Cardinal Giuseppe Renato Imperiali in the Papal conclave, 1721. Francesco Farnese, Duke of Parma sent him as his ambassador in Paris at the court of the Duke of Orleans, Philippe II, regent of France on behalf of the then still underage Louis XV of France. He found favour with the Count and acted as his counselor. He decided to return to Rome and he became the legal secretary of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura on 26 March 1733. In 1736 he became secretary of the "Sacred Congregation for the Discipline of the Regulars" and consultor of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition.

He was ordained priest on 8 September 1741 and ten days later he was appointed Archbishop of Benevento and consecrated by Pope Benedict XIV on 12 November. He often attended his diocese and worked to restore and beautify the Cathedral of Benevento.

Within the consistory of 9 September 1743, Pope Benedict XIV appointed him cardinal, sending him the red biretta with an apostolic brief of 20 September 1743.  He received the title of Cardinal Priest of San Onofrio on 15 June 15, 1744 but left that office for that of San Giovanni a Porta Latina on 13 September 1745.

On 17 January 1752 he left the Bishop's chair of Benevento to return to Rome. Here, he was Camerlengo of the Sacred College of Cardinals from 14 January 1754 to 17 February 1755, when he became Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Index and for the Correction of the Books of the Oriental Church. He vigorously promoted the cause of beatification of the Venerable Father John Leonardi, founder of the Congregation of Clerks Regular of the Mother of God as Protector of the order.

He was buried in Santa Maria in Campitelli in Rome.

References

1682 births
1757 deaths
Sapienza University of Rome alumni
18th-century Italian cardinals
Archbishops of Benevento
18th-century Italian Roman Catholic archbishops

Francesco Landi


A miniskirt (sometimes hyphenated as mini-skirt, separated as mini skirt, or sometimes shortened to simply mini) is a skirt with its hemline well above the knees, generally at mid-thigh level, normally no longer than  below the buttocks; and a dress with such a hemline is called a minidress or a miniskirt dress. A micro-miniskirt or microskirt is a miniskirt with its hemline at the upper thigh, at or just below crotch or underwear level.

Short skirts have existed for a long time before they made it into mainstream fashion, though they were generally not called "mini" until they became a fashion trend in the 1960s. Instances of clothing resembling miniskirts have been identified by archaeologists and historians as far back as –1370 BC. In the early 20th century, the dancer Josephine Baker's banana skirt that she wore for her mid-1920s performances in the Folies Bergère was subsequently likened to a miniskirt. Extremely short skirts became a staple of 20th-century science fiction, particularly in 1940s pulp artwork, such as that by Earle K. Bergey, who depicted futuristic women in a "stereotyped combination" of metallic miniskirt, bra and boots.

Hemlines were just above the knee in 1961, and gradually climbed upward over the next few years. By 1966, some designs had the hem at the upper thigh. Stockings with suspenders (garters) were not considered practical with miniskirts and were replaced with coloured tights. The popular acceptance of miniskirts peaked in the "Swinging London" of the 1960s, and has continued to be commonplace, particularly among younger women and teenage girls. Before that time, short skirts were only seen in sport and dance clothing, such as skirts worn by female tennis players, figure skaters, cheerleaders, and dancers.

Several designers have been credited with the invention of the 1960s miniskirt, most significantly the London-based designer Mary Quant and the Parisian André Courrèges.

History

History in China
In the Warring States period of China, men could wear short skirts similar to a kilt. In the Qin dynasty, the first imperial dynasty of China, some short skirts worn by men were short enough to reach the mid-thighs as observed in the Terracotta army of Qin Shihuang. Han Chinese women also wore short outer skirts, such as the  () and the  (); however, they had to be worn over a long skirt. One of the earliest known cultures where women regularly wore clothing resembling miniskirts was a subgroup of the Miao people of China, the  (). In albums produced during the Qing dynasty (1644–1912) from the early eighteenth century onward to illustrate the various types of Miao, the  women were depicted wearing "mini skirts that barely cover the buttocks." At least one of the "One Hundred Miao Pictures" albums contains a poem that specifically describes how the women's short skirts and navel-baring styles were an identifier for this particular group.

History in Europe and America

Pre-1960s
Figurines produced by the Vinča culture (–4500 BC) have been interpreted by archaeologists as representing women in miniskirt-like garments. One of the oldest surviving garments resembling a miniskirt is the short woollen skirt with bronze ornaments worn by the Egtved Girl for her burial in the Nordic Bronze Age (–1370 BCE).

In 1922, skirts were shortened and could now reach the mid shin rather than the ankle. The dancer Josephine Baker's banana skirt that she wore for her mid-1920s performances in the Folies Bergère was subsequently likened to a miniskirt. Prior to being censored in 1934, cartoon character Betty Boop also wore a short skirt. Prior to the 1960s during the 20th century, any woman who was not a stage performer or showgirl like Josephine Baker or, after the 1920s, any woman who was not an athlete or competitive dancer could not wear skirts above her knees as part of her everyday clothing and be socially accepted. During the 1950s, even the skirts of cheerleaders and many ballerinas fell to the calf. Women were taught to keep their knees covered, to seat themselves in ways that kept the legs together, etc., to avoid being thought sexually promiscuous. Nevertheless, miniskirts were beginning to show by this time, with two notable examples being science fiction films Forbidden Planet and Flight to Mars.

Mid-20th century science fiction

Extremely short skirts became a staple of 20th-century science fiction, particularly in 1940s pulp artwork such as that by Earle K. Bergey who depicted futuristic women in a "stereotyped combination" of metallic miniskirt, bra and boots. The "sci-fi miniskirt" was seen in genre films and television programmes as well as on comic book covers. The very short skirts worn by regular female characters Carol and Tonga (played by Virginia Hewitt and Nina Bara) in the 1950–55 television series Space Patrol have been suggested as probably the first 'micro-minis' to have been seen on American television. It was later seen as remarkable that only one formal complaint relating to the skirts could be recalled, and that by an ad agency in relation to an upwards shot of Carol climbing a ladder. Hewitt pointed out that even though the complainant claimed they could see up her skirt, her matching tights rendered her effectively clothed from neck to ankle. Otherwise, Space Patrol was applauded for being wholesome and family-friendly, even though the women's short skirts would have been unacceptable in other contexts. Although the 30th-century women in Space Patrol were empowered, experts in their field, and largely treated as equals, "it was the skirts that fuelled indelible memories." The Space Patrol skirts were not the shortest to be broadcast at the time – the German-made American 1954 series Flash Gordon showed Dale Arden (played by Irene Champlin) in an even shorter skirt.

1960s
The manager of an unnamed shop in London's Oxford Street began experimenting in 1960 with skirt hemlines an inch above the knees of window mannequins, and noted how positively his customers responded. In August 1961, Life published a photograph of two Seattle students at the University of Hawaiʻi wearing above-the-knee garments called "kookie-muus" (an abbreviated version of the traditionally concealing muumuu), and noted a "current teen-age fad for short skirts" that was pushing hemlines well above the knee. The article also showed young fashionable girls in San Francisco wearing hemlines "just above the kneecap" and students at Vanderbilt University wearing "knee ticklers" ending three inches above their knee to play golf in, while the caption commented that such short skirts were selling well in the South, and that "some Atlanta girls" were cutting old skirts to "thigh high" lengths.

Extremely short skirts, some as much as eight inches above the knee, were observed in Britain in the summer of 1962. The young women who wore these short skirts were called "Ya-Ya girls", a term derived from "yeah, yeah" which was a popular catcall at the time. One retailer noted that the fashion for layered net crinoline petticoats raised the hems of short skirts even higher. The earliest known reference to the miniskirt is in a humorous 1962 article datelined Mexico City and describing the "mini-skirt" or "Ya-Ya" as a controversial item of clothing that was the latest thing on the production line there.  The article characterised the miniskirt as stopping eight inches above the knee.  It referred to a writing by a psychiatrist, whose name it did not provide, who had argued that the miniskirt was a youthful protest of international threats to peace.  Much of the article described the reactions of men, who were said to favour the fashion on young women to whom they were unrelated, but to oppose it on their own wives and fiancées.

Only a very few of the avant-garde, almost entirely in the UK, wore such lengths in the beginning years of the decade, however. The standard hemline for public and designer garments in the early sixties was mid-knee, just covering the knee. It would gradually climb upward over the next few years, fully baring the knees of mainstream models in 1964, when both André Courrèges and Mary Quant showed above-the-knee lengths. The following year, skirts continued to rise as British miniskirts were officially introduced to the US in a New York show whose models' thigh-high skirts stopped traffic. By 1966, many designs had the hem at the upper thigh.  Towards the end of the 1960s, an even shorter version of the miniskirt, called the microskirt or micro-mini, emerged.

The shape of miniskirts in the 1960s was distinctive. They were not the squeezingly tight skirts designed to show off every curve that 1950s sheath skirts had been, nor were they shortened versions of the tightly belted, petticoat-bolstered 1950s circle skirt. In the 1990s and later, exhibitions on the sixties would occasionally present vintage miniskirts pulled in tight against gallery mannequins, but sixties miniskirts were not worn tight in that way. Sixties miniskirts were simply-constructed, uninhibiting, slightly flared A-line shapes, with some straight and tapered forms seen in the early years of their existence. This shape was seen as deriving from two forms of the 1950s: (1) the shift dress, a waistless, tapered column introduced by Givenchy in 1955, presaged by Karl Lagerfeld in 1954, and refined by Givenchy and Balenciaga in 1957 under the names sack dress or chemise dress, and (2) the trapeze dresses popularized by Yves Saint Laurent in 1958 that were a variation of Dior's 1955 A-line, both of a geometric triangular shaping. In silhouette, the minidresses of the mid-1960s were basically abbreviated versions of the shift dress and trapeze dress, with Paco Rabanne's famous metal and plastic minidresses of 1966 and '67 following the trapeze line and most of Rudi Gernreich's following the shift line. Mary Quant and other British designers, as well as Betsey Johnson in the US, also showed minidresses that resembled elongated rugby jerseys, body-skimming but not tight. When skirts alone, they tended to sit on the hips rather than holding the waist, called hipster minis if they were really low on the hips. The fashionable forms of the microminis of the later 1960s were also not tight, often looking somewhat tunic-like and in fabrics like Qiana.

In addition, sixties miniskirts were not worn with high heels but with flats or low heels, for a natural stance, a natural stride, and to enhance the fashionable child-like look of the time, seen as a reaction to 1950s come-hither artifice like stiletto heels, constrained waists, padded busts, and movement-inhibiting skirts. The designer Mary Quant was quoted as saying that "short short skirts" indicated youthfulness, which was seen as desirable, fashion-wise.

In the UK, by shortening the skirts to less than  they were classed as children's garments rather than adult clothes. Children's clothing was not subject to purchase tax whereas adult clothing was. The avoidance of tax meant that the price was correspondingly less.

Stockings with suspenders (American English: "garters") were not considered practical with miniskirts and were replaced with coloured tights. Legs could also be covered with knee-high socks or various heights of boots, lower-calf height in 1964–65, knee-heights throughout the period, over-the-knee and thigh-high boots more 1967–69, and even boot-hose or body boots, tights incorporating a shoe sole and heel to form a waist-high boot, often in stretch vinyl. Sandal straps or laces might crisscross or otherwise rise up the leg, even as high as the thigh, and body paints were offered for a time to add colour to the leg in more individualised ways than wearing tights.

During the late 1960s, as most skirts got shorter and shorter, designers began presenting a few alternatives. Calf-length midi-skirts were introduced in 1966–67, and floor-length maxi-skirts appeared around the same time, after being seen on hippies first around 1965–66. Like with miniskirts, these were overwhelmingly casual in feel and simply constructed to a two-straight-side-seams A-line shape. Women in the late sixties welcomed these new styles as options but did not necessarily wear them, feeling societal pressure to shorten their skirts instead.

(Decades later, starting in the late nineties, the term midi-skirt would be expanded to refer to any calf-length skirt from any era, including skirts of that length from the 1930s, 1950s, and 1980s of any shape, and the term maxi-skirt would be expanded to apply to any floor-length skirt from any era, including ballgowns, but that was not the case during a period from the late 1960s to the 1980s, when the term midi-skirt only applied to casual, simply-cut A-line calf-length skirts of the late sixties and earliest seventies and the term maxi-skirt only applied to casual, simply-cut A-line floor-length skirts of the late sixties and earliest seventies. Even the full, calf-length skirts worn from the mid-seventies to the early eighties were not called midi-skirts at the time, as that was by 1974 considered a passė term restricted only to a specific shape of skirt from the late sixties and earliest seventies.)

As designers attempted to require women to switch to midi-skirts in 1969 and 1970, women, especially in the US, responded by ignoring them, continuing to wear minis and microminis and, even more, turning to trousers like those endorsed by Yves Saint Laurent in 1968, a trend that would dominate the 1970s.

Designer claims

Several designers have been credited with the invention of the 1960s miniskirt, most significantly the London-based designer Mary Quant and the Parisian André Courrèges. Although Quant reportedly named the skirt after her favourite make of car, the Mini, there is no consensus as to who designed it first. Valerie Steele has noted that the claim that Quant was first is more convincingly supported by evidence than the equivalent Courrèges claim. However, the contemporary fashion journalist Marit Allen, who edited the influential "Young Ideas" pages for UK Vogue, firmly stated that the British designer John Bates was the first to offer fashionable miniskirts. Other designers, including Pierre Cardin and Yves Saint Laurent, had also been raising hemlines at the same time.

Mary Quant
The miniskirt is one of the garments most widely associated with Mary Quant. Quant herself is ambivalent about the claim that she invented the miniskirt, stating that her customers should take credit, as she herself wore very short skirts, and they requested even shorter hemlines for themselves. Regardless of whether or not Quant invented the miniskirt, it is widely agreed that she was one of its highest-profile champions. Contrary to obvious and popular belief, Quant named the garment after the Mini Cooper, a favourite car of hers, stating that the car and the skirt were both "optimistic, exuberant, young, flirty", and complemented each other.

Quant had started experimenting with shorter skirts in the late 1950s, when she started making her own designs up to stock her boutique on the King's Road. Among her inspirations was the memory of seeing a young tap-dancer wearing a "tiny skirt over thick black tights", influencing her designs for young, active women who did not wish to resemble their mothers. In addition to the miniskirt, Quant is often credited with inventing the coloured and patterned tights that tended to accompany the garment, although their creation is also attributed to the Spanish couturier Cristóbal Balenciaga who offered harlequin-patterned tights in 1962 or to Bates.

In 2009, a Mary Quant minidress was among the 10 British "design classics" featured on a series of Royal Mail stamps, alongside the Tube map, the Spitfire, and the red telephone box.

André Courrèges
Courrèges explicitly claimed that he invented the mini, and accused Quant of only "commercialising" it. He presented short skirts measuring four inches above the knee in January 1965 for that year's Spring/Summer collection, although some sources claim that Courrèges had been designing miniskirts as early as 1961, the year he launched his couture house. The collection, which also included trouser suits and cut-out backs and midriffs, was designed for a new type of athletic, active young woman. Courrèges had presented "above-the-knee" skirts in his August 1964 haute couture presentation which was proclaimed the "best show seen so far" for that season by The New York Times. The Courrèges look, featuring a knit bodystocking with a gabardine miniskirt slung around the hips, was widely copied and plagiarised, much to the designer's chagrin, and it would be 1967 before he again held a press showing for his work. Steele has described Courrèges's work as a "brilliant couture version of youth fashion" whose sophistication far outshone Quant's work, although she champions the Quant claim. Others, such as Jess Cartner-Morley of The Guardian explicitly credit him, rather than Quant, as the miniskirt's creator.

John Bates and others

The idea that John Bates, rather than Quant or Courrèges, innovated the miniskirt had an influential champion in Marit Allen, who as editor of the influential "Young Ideas" pages for UK Vogue, kept track of up-and-coming young designers. In 1966 she chose Bates to design her mini-length wedding outfit in white gabardine and silver PVC. In January 1965 Bates's "skimp dress" with its "short-short skirt" was featured in Vogue, and would later be chosen as the Dress of the Year. Bates was also famous for having designed mini-coats and dresses and other outfits for Emma Peel (played by Diana Rigg) in the TV series The Avengers, although the manufacturers blocked his request for patterned tights to enable Emma Peel to fight in skirts if necessary.

An alternative origin story for the miniskirt came from Barbara Hulanicki of the London boutique Biba, who recalled that in 1966 she received a delivery of stretchy jersey skirts that had shrunk drastically in transit. Much to her surprise, the ten-inch long garments rapidly sold out.

In 1967 Rudi Gernreich was among the first American designers to offer miniskirts, in the face of strongly worded censure and criticism from American couturiers James Galanos and Norman Norell. Criticism of the miniskirt also came from the Paris couturier Coco Chanel, who declared the style "disgusting" despite being herself famed for supporting shorter skirts in the 1920s.

Reception

Owing to Quant's position in the heart of fashionable "Swinging London", the miniskirt was able to spread beyond a simple street fashion into a major international trend. The style came into prominence when Jean Shrimpton wore a short white shift dress, made by Colin Rolfe, on 30 October 1965 at Derby Day, first day of the annual Melbourne Cup Carnival in Australia, where it caused a sensation. According to Shrimpton, who claimed that the brevity of the skirt was due mainly to Rolfe's having insufficient material, the ensuing controversy was as much as anything to do with her having dispensed with a hat and gloves, seen as essential accessories in such a conservative society.

Upper garments, such as rugby shirts, were sometimes adapted as mini-dresses. With the rise in hemlines, the wearing of tights or pantyhose, in place of stockings, became more common. At the same time, there was some opposition in the US to miniskirts as bad influences on the young, but this waned as people became more accustomed to them. Some European countries  banned mini-skirts from being worn in public, claiming they were an invitation to rapists. In response, Quant retorted that there was clearly no understanding of the tights worn underneath.

The response to the miniskirt was particularly harsh in Africa, where many state governments saw them as an un-African garment and part of the corrupting influence of the West. Young city-dwelling African women who wore Western clothing such as the miniskirt were particularly at risk of attack based on their clothing, although Robert Ross notes that gender roles and politics were also a key factor. The urban woman earning her own living and independence was seen as a threat to masculine authority, particularly if she wore clothing seen as un-African. Short skirts were seen as indicating that their wearer was a prostitute, and by conflation, a witch who drained male-dominated society of its vitality and energy. In addition to prostitutes and witches, miniskirts also became associated with secretaries, schoolgirls and undergraduates, and young women with "sugar daddies" as lovers or boyfriends. Andrew M. Ivaska has noted that these various tropes boiled down to a basic fear of female power, fear that a woman would use her education or sexual power to control men and/or achieve her own independence, and that the miniskirt therefore became a tangible object of these fears.

In 1968 the Youth League of Tanzania's ruling TANU party launched Operation Vijana. Organised and run by young men, Vijana was a morality campaign targeting indecent clothing, which led to attacks on women with at least one stoning reportedly triggered by the victim's miniskirt. Gangs of youths patrolled bus stations and streets looking for women dressed "inappropriately", and dealing out physical attacks and beatings. In Ethiopia, an attack on women wearing miniskirts triggered a riot of leftist students in which a hundred cars were set on fire and fifty people injured.

Kamuzu Banda, president of Malawi, described miniskirts as a "diabolic fashion which must disappear from the country once and for all." It is also reported that Kenneth Kaunda, president of Zambia, cited apartheid and the miniskirt as his two primary hates. By the mid-1970s the Zanzibar revolutionary party had forbidden both women and men from wearing a long list of garments, hairstyles and cosmetics, including miniskirts.

Post-1960s

1970s
From 1969 onwards, the fashion industry largely returned to longer skirts such as the midi and the maxi, with even Mary Quant showing no above-the-knee skirts for 1970. Journalist Christopher Booker gave two reasons for this reaction: firstly, that "there was almost nowhere else to go ... the mini-skirts could go no higher"; and secondly, in his view, "dressed up in mini-skirts and shiny PVC macs, given such impersonal names as 'dolly birds', girls had been transformed into throwaway plastic objects". This lengthening of hemlines coincided with the growth of the feminist movement.  However, in the 1960s the mini had been regarded as a symbol of liberation, and it was worn by some, such as Germaine Greer and, in the following decade, Gloria Steinem. Greer herself wrote in 1969 that:

In the earliest seventies, particularly in the US, minis and microminis briefly rebounded in popularity after women's rejection of designers' attempt to impose midiskirts as the sole length in 1970, referred to as "the midi debacle." Women both continued to wear miniskirts and switched even more to trousers, and designers, having been made to understand that they would no longer be respected as arbiters, followed suit for a couple of years and included minis again, often underneath midis and maxis. Unlike in the 1960s, micromini dresses during this period might be worn with chunky platform shoes, often with high wedge heels. In 1971, almost all designers, even upper-echelon couture designers, showed hot pants, also presented in combination with midiskirts, maxiskirts, and minis. They continued to express a desire for women to wear longer skirts, though, and soon those women who had not switched entirely to jeans and trousers were often wearing their skirts at the knee. In 1973, Kenzo made calf-length skirts look new by cutting them fuller and in lighter fabrics for a style that was very different from the midi and women soon accepted this, making it one of the characteristic styles of the mid-seventies, one that would last into the early eighties, sometimes dropping to the ankle.

Although miniskirts had mostly disappeared from mainstream fashion by the mid-70s, prompting the leading designer of the time, Yves Saint Laurent, to say, "I don't think short skirts will ever come back," they never entirely went away, with women having to be pressured by the fashion industry to abandon above-the-knee skirts as late as 1974 and even some mainstream designers like Halston, Kenzo, and Karl Lagerfeld offering a few mini-tunics and mini-blousons among the standard calf-length dirndl skirts of the mid-seventies Big Look period. In these occasional high-fashion versions of the mid-seventies, mini was taken to mean any length above the knee. Enough above-the-knee skirts were shown in Paris in 1976 for fashion writers to suggest a possible mini revival, but these were never broadly taken up by the general public, which was still gravitating toward below-the-knee dirndls.

Around 1976, punks began including among their array of clothes intended to shock very short miniskirts in materials like black leather, rubber, PVC, tartan, and even trash bag plastic, the unfashionable length shocking almost as much as the aggressive materials. Punks of this period also introduced the wearing of miniskirts with then-very-out-of-style high-heeled, late-1950s pumps, which they got at thrift shops, a combination not worn in the 1960s and unthinkable during the 1950s. Though not at all mainstream, these punk looks would influence bands that came after them into wearing more sixties-looking miniskirts again, as evidenced by Deborah Harry of the group Blondie, Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson of the group The B-52's, Fay Fife of The Revillos, Rhoda Dakar of The Bodysnatchers, Siouxsie Sioux of the group Siouxsie And The Banshees, and the group The Slits, who often wore miniskirts during the "new wave" era of the late 70s. Some of these performers were part of a few sixties-revival subcultures that came in the wake of punk and included Mod revival and ska revival, both of whose female adherents sought out authentic-looking early miniskirts as part of their sixties-revival look. Blondie's Deborah Harry had her sixties-ish look provided by fashion designer Stephen Sprouse, who had been responsible for Halston's "skimp" minis of 1974 and would become internationally known for his own sixties-revival line during the eighties. The song "(I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea" (1978), by new wave artist Elvis Costello, contains the line in the chorus: "There's no place here for the mini-skirt waddle."

During the seventies, when males and females typically wore identical denim cutoff shorts instead of miniskirts if they wanted short lengths, the female cast members of the US TV show Hee Haw, known as the "Hee Haw Honeys", always wore country-style minidresses even during the miniskirt's fashion hiatus in the late 70s and early 80s; and as mentioned above, female tennis players, figure skaters, cheerleaders, and dancers also wore short skirts.

Toward the end of the seventies, in 1978 and '79, some of the above-the-knee skirt looks that would become associated with the eighties began to be introduced, including the flounced, hip-yoked style debuted by Norma Kamali and Perry Ellis in 1979 and called rah-rah skirts in the UK and above-the-knee versions of the tight sheath skirt, with even Yves Saint Laurent showing some above-the-knee lengths. The sixties-revival subcultures emanating from the UK seemed to reach the high fashion world somewhat in 1979, as a few Paris catwalks presented styles for spring 1980 seemingly pulled right out of the sixties, including miniskirts inspired by Courrèges, Rabanne, and Gernreich. Some fashion writers even proclaimed a miniskirt revival for 1979-80, particularly from Paris designers. At this point, these styles were still considered avant-garde, though, and a variety of mostly longer skirts were worn by the public, with the full, calf-length forms that had dominated the mid-seventies still prevalent but beginning to be made slimmer, slightly shorter, more brightly coloured, and often slit. The mainstream return of the miniskirt would not come until the 1980s.

1980s and 1990s
Miniskirts returned to mainstream acceptance in the 1980s, but with some differences from the 1960s:

Because women had worn skirts that covered the knee and often dropped to the calf for so many years during the 1970s, any skirt above the knee was often called a miniskirt in the late seventies and early eighties, even skirts that hit just above the knee.

They were not presented this time as the only length women should wear, nor was there societal pressure for women to shorten their hemlines, as there had been in the late 1960s when designers also presented a variety of lengths. They were now just one option among a variety of lengths and styles of skirts and pants available to women, and miniskirts tended to be in the minority among all the other kinds of skirts and pants seen on the streets, particularly in the early part of the decade. Throughout the decade, street lengths ranged from ankle to thigh, for both skirts and trousers, and most women wore their skirts just below the knee, as they also had in the seventies.

Miniskirts came in a greater variety of shapes than in the sixties, from full and flouncy to narrow to tight to abbreviated revivals of skirt shapes of the 1940s and '50s like sheath skirts, trumpet skirts, tulip skirts, and bubble/puffball skirts. Above-the-knee versions of strapless 1950s dresses were seen, as were formal minis with bustles and trains in the back. Even tutus were shown mid-decade. Many above-the-knee dresses had noticeable shoulder pads.

They were worn with a greater range of heel heights than in the sixties, depending on the shape of the miniskirt, with flats preferred for some styles and high-heeled pumps preferred for others. In the early part of the decade, opaque tights, sometimes brightly coloured, and flat, calf-high boots might be worn with the more casual styles, much like in the mid-sixties. Throughout the period, dressier styles with high heels tended to be worn with hose ranging from slightly tinted to opaque. A punk influence was sometimes seen when miniskirts were paired with combat boots or Doc Martens.

Another difference between 1960s miniskirts and 1980s miniskirts is that 1980s miniskirts might be worn over footless tights, long tight shorts, or tight, cropped pants, a trend that began with designers like Norma Kamali, Perry Ellis, and Willi Smith in 1979. In the early eighties, the footless tights might be referred to by the 1950s terms clamdiggers or pedal-pushers, depending on their length, but at the end of the eighties, footless tights began to be referred to as leggings. Also at the end of the eighties, visible bike shorts were often worn with miniskirts.

In the early eighties, miniskirts were still considered avant-garde and unusual among the public, though designers had begun showing them again in 1979 and had begun shortening some skirts to just above the knee in 1978. Some minis from 1979 and '80 were modeled after sweatshirts. Others were lifted straight out of the Space Age mid-sixties. Some were inspired by punk.

The most influential designer of miniskirts in the early eighties was probably Norma Kamali. In 1980, she introduced sweatshirt-fabric versions of the flounced, hip-yoked, above-the-knee skirts she had first presented in 1979, called rah-rah skirts in the UK. In 1981 and '82, miniskirts from this "Sweats" line would reach mainstream levels of popularity and make Kamali a household name.

In the spring of 1982 (as featured in the June issue of Time Magazine that year), short skirts began to re-emerge more strongly among the public, notably in the form of "rah-rahs", which were modeled on those worn by female cheerleaders at sporting and other events.

By 1983, miniskirts had become more widespread, but the Kamali-style full versions common in 1981-82 had waned in popularity in favor of slim, straight minis in jean-cut blue denim, as well as other trim styles.

Kenzo had been almost the only designer to champion miniskirts during their nadir in the mid-seventies, and he was vindicated in the eighties as several of the miniskirt styles he had shown back then were taken up by other designers.

Yves Saint Laurent had believed short skirts would never return in the mid-seventies, but he led the move to above-the-knee skirts starting in 1978 and during the first half of the eighties was known for his slim, black leather miniskirts.

Karl Lagerfeld had begun showing miniskirts at the end of the seventies and in 1983 would take over the house of Chanel, where he soon began adding minis and microminis to the offerings, a surprise because Chanel herself had hated 1960s miniskirts, considering the knees to be an ugly part of the body.

Throughout the 1980s, beginning at the end of the seventies, designers experimented with shortening heavily constructed historical dress styles, mostly from the 1950s, with fifties crinoline skirts, fifties sheath skirts, and fifties bubble/puffball skirts shown in above-the-knee lengths as early as 1979. Styles from the deeper past were also shortened. For 1981, Perry Ellis added stuffed-organdy padding to the hips of the flouncy, hip-yoked miniskirts he'd been showing for a couple years and referred to them as farthingales, a sixteenth-century term for a similarly padded floor-length skirt. A far more influential example of a truncated historical skirt style came from former punk designer Vivienne Westwood. In 1985, British designer Westwood offered her first "mini-crini," an abbreviated version of the Victorian crinoline. Its mini-length, bouffant silhouette inspired the puffball skirts widely presented by more established designers such as Christian Lacroix. In 1989, Westwood's mini-crini was described as having combined two conflicting ideals – the crinoline, representing a "mythology of restriction and encumbrance in woman's dress", and the "equally dubious mythology of liberation" associated with the miniskirt.

Sixties-revivalist Stephen Sprouse showed his first collection in 1983 and favored almost period-perfect shift minidresses and trapeze minidresses in graffiti prints, blacks, and searing sixties brights, including fluorescents, with geometric paillettes and sixties-style cutouts, sometimes of peace signs. Unlike in the sixties, though, he showed these clothes with eighties shoe shapes like high-heeled pumps and Doc Martens.

A style that would be seen off and on throughout the decade but would become common in the second half of the eighties was the tight, stretch minidress worn with high-heeled eighties pumps and often padded shoulders. In silhouette, this was sort of an abbreviated, less heavily constructed version of 1950s sheath skirts. These forms of tight, blatantly seductive 1980s minis were shown on bodies that were voluptuous and/or muscular instead of thin and child-like as in the sixties.

In the mid-1980s, Azzedine Alaïa began presenting mini and micromini versions of his extremely tight dress designs, his anatomical seaming and occasional sheer fabrics creating a prurient effect that would never have been seen in sixties miniskirts. His miniskirts, though, also included some that resembled flippy skating skirts and others that were grass-like raffia so short they barely covered the wearer. His earlier fitted, curve-accenting skirts, usually in a just-above-the-knee length that sometimes rose to the lower thigh, would be very influential in the second half of the decade, spawning imitations by companies like North Beach Leather and Body Glove.

During the mid- to late eighties, Patrick Kelly put his own whimsical signature on the familiar, high-heel-accompanied, tight, stretch minidresses of the decade, covering them with bright buttons, bright bowties, cartoon faces, etc.

For fall of 1987 and spring of '88, designers united in presenting a great proportion of miniskirts in almost all collections, with very few mainstream designers bucking the trend. Though a few designers showed these minis in somewhat sixties shapes with flat shoes or boots, most showed truncated versions of eighties suits and cocktail dresses with slightly narrower shoulders, worn with high-heeled over-the-knee boots or high-heeled eighties pumps that looked like pumps from the late fifties/early sixties. Dark hose were recommended for them. Many of the new minis were stretch-fit tight, and some were very short, with Ungaro's so brief they were likened to 1950s bathing suits. The fashion industry's miniskirt campaign was so intense that newspaper articles appeared on women considering plastic surgery on their knees to suit the new lengths.

However, though there was a rush on miniskirts for a time, the unanimity around mini lengths did not last long, as women continued to consider minis just one option among the many available during the decade and did not replace their entire wardrobes with them as they had in the sixties. This 1987-88 miniskirt push, though, would help cement the mini's status as a basic item in the average woman's wardrobe for many years to come.

From the 1980s, many women began to incorporate the miniskirt into their business attire, a trend which grew during the remainder of the century. The titular character of the 1990s television program Ally McBeal, a lawyer portrayed by Calista Flockhart, has been credited with popularising micro-skirts.

The very short skirt is an element of Japanese school uniform, which since the 1990s has been exploited by young women who are part of the kogal (or gyaru) subculture as part of their look.

2000s and 2010s
In the early 2000s, micro-minis were once again revived. In 2003, Tom Ford, at that time described as one of the few designers able to effortlessly dictate changes in fashion, stated that micro-skirts would be the height of fashion for Spring/Summer 2003. For fashionable wear, early 21st century microskirts were often worn with leggings or tights in order to avoid revealing too much. At this time, an even briefer version of the micro-mini emerged, creating a garment sometimes described as a "belt-skirt".

A BBC article in 2014 wrote that miniskirts remained as contemporary a garment as ever, retaining their associations with youth. In an early 2010s study the department store Debenhams found that women continued buying miniskirts up to the age of 40, whilst 1983 studies showed that 33 years old was when the average woman had stopped buying them. Debenham's report concluded that by the 2020s, miniskirts would be seen as a wardrobe staple for British women in their 40s and early 50s.

Despite this, in the early 21st century, miniskirts are still seen as controversial, and remain subject to bans and regulation. Valerie Steele told the BBC in 2014 that even though miniskirts no longer had the power to shock in most Western cultures, she would hesitate to wear one in most parts of the world. She described the garment as symbolic of looking forward to future freedom and backwards to a "much more restricted past" and noted that international rises in extreme conservatism and religious fundamentalism had led to an anti-women backlash, some of which was shown through censure and criticism of women wearing "immodest" clothing. In 2010, the mayor of Castellammare di Stabia in Italy ordered that police fine women for wearing "very short" miniskirts. In the 2000s, a ban on miniskirts at a teacher's college in Kemerovo was claimed by lawyers to be against the terms of equality and human rights as laid out by the Russian constitution, whilst in Chile, the women's minister, Carolina Schmidt, described a regional governor's ban on public employees wearing minis and strapless tops as "absolute nonsense" and challenged their right to regulate other people's clothing. In July 2010, Southampton city council also tried to regulate their female employees's wardrobes, telling them to avoid miniskirts and dress "appropriately."

Miniskirts regularly appear in Africa as part of controversies, something that has continued since the 1960s. In the early 21st century alone, instances have included a proposed ban on miniskirts in Uganda justified by claiming that they were a dangerous distraction to drivers and would cause road accidents, and in 2004, a leaflet campaign in Mombasa instructed women to dress modestly and "shun miniskirts", leading to the Kenyan government denying that they wanted a ban. Since the 1990s, women perceived to be "indecently dressed" might be stripped in public often by gangs of men, but sometimes by other women. These acts took place in Kenya, Zambia and elsewhere, including incidents in Johannesburg in 2008 and 2011 which led to similar attacks in various states including Sudan, Malawi, Zimbabwe and elsewhere. The President of Malawi, Bingu wa Mutharika, was forced to make a statement in 2012 after male gangs forcibly stripped women in Lilongwe and Mzuzu. By this point, "miniskirt protests" regularly followed these acts of violence, with the protesters defiantly wearing miniskirts. In late February 2010, a group of about 200 Ugandan women demonstrated against a so-called "miniskirt law", an anti-pornography legislation which specifically forbade women to dress  "in a manner designed to sexually excite", or from wearing clothing that revealed their thighs and/or other body parts. Uganda revisited their proposed ban in 2013, with Simon Lokodo, Minister of Ethics and Integrity, proposing another anti-pornography bill which would outlaw revealing "intimate parts", defined as "anything above the knee", and vowing that women who wore miniskirts would be arrested. While most of these proposed bans come from male politicians, in 2009 Joice Mujuru, Zimbabwe's vice president, had to deal with rumours that she intended to ban miniskirts and trousers for women. In Africa, one of the main issues with the miniskirt since the 1960s is that it is seen as representative of protest against predominantly male authority, an accusation also applied to trousers for women which are perceived as blurring the gender divide.

See also
Hotpants

References

 Sources

External links

1960s fads and trends
1960s fashion
1960s neologisms
1970s fashion
1980s fashion
1990s fashion
2000s fashion
2010s fashion
Articles containing video clips
Skirts
Women's clothing

Miniskirt


Petanque is a game played by many people, especially in France. It is played on a level surface which can be covered with gravel of varying sizes.Boules [metal balls] are thrown along this terrain. The game is played between two teams. Each team has three players [triples] with 2 boules each. At the start of the game, a small ball [coche or jack] is thrown. Each player stands in a circle and tries to throw a larger ball [boule] so that it lands close to the coche.The team having their boule or boules closest to the coche at the first end takes the points. Play continues until one team reaches 13.
In a doubles game each player has 3 boules.

Games
French culture

Petanque


Heinrich Kramer ( 1430 – 1505, aged 74-75), also known under the Latinized name Henricus Institor, was a German churchman and inquisitor. With his widely distributed book Malleus Maleficarum (1487), which describes witchcraft and endorses detailed processes for the extermination of witches, he was instrumental in establishing the period of witch trials in the early modern period.

Life
Born in Schlettstadt, now Sélestat, Alsace, he joined the Dominican Order at an early age and while still a young man was appointed Prior of the Dominican house of his native town.

At some date before 1474 he was appointed Inquisitor for the Tyrol, Salzburg, Bohemia and Moravia. His eloquence in the pulpit and tireless activity received recognition at Rome and he was the right-hand man of the Archbishop of Salzburg.

The papal bull Summis desiderantes which Pope Innocent VIII published in 1484 acknowledges the existence of witches and explicitly empowers the inquisition to prosecute witches and sorcerers. The bull aimed to reaffirm the jurisdiction of Kramer, who was denied authority as an inquisitor in Germany.

One year later, he went to Innsbruck as the head of an inquisitorial commission with the stated intention of "bringing witches to justice". Despite being granted episcopal jurisdiction to conduct trials by Georg Golser, bishop of Brixen, the latter eventually acquired a distaste for  Kramer's alleged scandals.

This most likely referred to the whole interrogation of Helena Scheuberin in Innsbruck and 6 other citizens accused of witchcraft. Helena herself, married to a prosperous burgher named Sebastian, was described as an "aggressive, independent woman who was not afraid to speak her mind". Right after Kramer had arrived in the city, she had passed him in the street, spat and cursed him publicly: "Fie on you, you bad monk, may the falling evil take you". Later, it was discovered she was not attending Kramer's sermons and encouraged others to do likewise, all of which were brought against her as charges for the crime of witchcraft. Helena even disrupted one of his sermons "by loudly proclaiming that she believed Institor to be an evil man in league with the devil".

During her trial, as Kramer focused heavily on the sexuality of Scheuberin, he was accused by the bishop of having "presumed much that had not been proved". Kramer remained in Innsbruck to continue the investigation, collect evidence, and interrogate suspected witches. Golser and Kramer exchanged letters encouraging Kramer to quit the investigation, ending with a final letter in 1486 in which Golser ordered Kramer to leave his diocese, the trials in Innsbruck finally being suspended. Kramer finally relented and returned to Cologne.

In response to the Bishop's criticism, Kramer began to write a treatise on witchcraft that later became the Malleus Maleficarum (commonly translated as "The Hammer of Witches"). The bull Summis desiderantes, which gave him the authority of prosecuting and investigating cases of sorcery, was included in the forefront of the book, first published in 1487.

Kramer failed in his attempt to obtain endorsement for this work from the top theologians of the Inquisition at the Faculty of Cologne, and they condemned the book as recommending unethical and illegal procedures, as well as being inconsistent to what they perceived as the orthodox Catholic doctrines of demonology.

In the overall evaluation, his works were praised and his prestige was growing. He was asked by the Nuremberg council to provide expert consultation on the procedure of witch trial in 1491. In 1495 he was summoned by the Master General of the Order, Joaquin de Torres, O.P. to Venice and gave very popular public lectures and disputations. They were worthy of presence and patronage of Patriarch of Venice. He also wrote treatises Several Discourses and Various Sermons upon the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist (Nuremberg, 1496); A Tract Confuting the Errors of Master Antonio degli Roselli (Venice, 1499); followed by The Shield of Defence of the Holy Roman Church Against the Picards and Waldenses which were quoted by many authors. He was appointed as papal nuncio and his assignment as inquisitor was changed to Bohemia and Moravia by Pope Alexander VI in 1500.

Summers observes that 17th-century "Dominican chroniclers, such as Quétif and Échard, number Kramer and Sprenger among the glories and heroes of their Order".

He passed his last days intensely writing and preaching until his death in Kroměříž in Moravia, in 1505.

Major works

Malleus Maleficarum, 1487
Several Discourses and Various Sermons upon the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, Nuremberg, 1496

The Shield of Defence of the Holy Roman Church Against the Picards and Waldenses, c. 1500

Notes

References

Citations

Works cited

External links

1430s births
1505 deaths
People from Sélestat
15th-century German Roman Catholic priests
German Dominicans
Inquisitors
Demonologists
Witch hunters
15th-century German writers
16th-century German Roman Catholic priests
German male writers
Witch trials in Germany

Heinrich Kramer


Kansas City Barbeque Society is a competitive cooking organization based in Kansas City, Missouri, famous for Kansas City BBQ. It is the largest competitive barbecue organization in the world, with more than 15,000 members. It was founded in 1985 by Carolyn and Gary Wells and Rick Welch.  Their desire was to put together a local group for competitive barbecue.  It has since grown exponentially and provides oversight to hundreds of competitions.

Competitions
The Kansas City Barbeque Society is the official sanctioning body of competitive barbeque cooking. Each year, KCBS sanctions more than 300 competitions across the country and has over 15,000 members that consist of Certified BBQ Judges (CBJ's), cook teams, contest reps, contest organizers and all around lovers of great food and community.

Competitions are usually coordinated in conjunction with a local festival or events and most often linked to fundraising effort for local, regional and national causes.  Teams typically begin to arrive on a Thursday or Friday morning and set up their equipment and share quality time with their "BBQ Family".  Competitors will begin to cook on Friday evening and then throughout the night with a turn in for the various smoked meats some time in the early afternoon on Saturday. The four standard turn in for KCBS cook teams are Chicken, Pork Ribs, Pork Shoulder or Boston Butt and Beef Brisket.

Events usually have a cash prize of varying amounts and trophies.  Quite often these events draw crowds of spectators numbering in the thousands, and depending on the prize amount, they will draw competitors from several states. KCBS has over the 30+ years of operation become the "biggest and best" in BBQ and sets the standard for competitive food events around the world.

KCBS along with sanctioning competitive food events in the BBQ segment have recently added an entire "Grilling" or cooked over open flame focus in a division of their organization. The National Grilling Society is a division of KCBS that focuses on grilled or cooked over flame competitive food events that do not focus on the traditional four KCBS meats. Some popular choices are Steak, Hamburger, Chicken Wings, Pork Chop, etc.  KCBS is the largest competitive food sanctioning body in the world with a presence all over the globe.

Many large retail brands support KCBS in their efforts and have been a contributing factor to the explosive growth and massive presence. These include Igloo Coolers, Reynolds Wrap, Royal Oak Charcoal, Blue Rhino Propane, Cabo Wabo Tequila, BBQ Guru, McCormicks Grillmates and spices, French's, Franks Hot Sauce, Lawry's Compart Duroc Pork, Bass Pro Shops, Cabela's and so many more household names.

Certified Barbeque Judges
As the sanctioning body of competitive barbeque, the Kansas City Barbeque Society employs a blind judging process at all official contests. In order to become a Certified Barbeque Judge, one must be at least 16 years of age and attend one of the hundreds of Certified Barbeque Judge classes held each year.

A Certified Barbeque Judge attains the status of Master Certified Barbeque Judge after participating in 30 contests, cooking with a competition team, and passing an online exam.

Judges at all sanctioned Kansas City Barbecue Society competitions take a judges' oath authored by renowned judge Ardie Davis.

Judge's Oath:

See also
 American Royal

References

External links

Organizations based in Kansas City, Missouri
Barbecue
Cuisine of the Midwestern United States
Culture of Kansas City, Missouri
Smoked meat
1985 establishments in Missouri

Kansas City Barbeque Society


DNA barcoding is a form of genetic analysis.  It is part of molecular biology.  Scientists use DNA barcoding to tell different species apart from each other.  Scientists use DNA barcoding to tell which species are related to each other or evolved from the same older species.

How it works

The first types of DNA sequencing started in the 1980s.

In DNA barcoding, the technician sequences part of a gene and compares it to that same gene in other species.  Sometimes scientists use the short fragment of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) gene as a DNA barcode gene. The fragment is usually 400 to 800 base pairs long.

Groups of scientists choose different genes to barcode depending on their project.   A good barcode gene has to be short in length and have the exact same sequence at its beginning and end, but its middle has to be different enough in different species.

Some scientists say DNA barcoding is the opposite of genomics.  DNA barcoding uses a few specific parts of the genome, and genomics is about looking at the entire genome.

Advantages

DNA barcoding costs less money than other kinds of DNA sequencing. This means that smaller laboratories can afford to use it, and all laboratories can do more of it.  It is also much easier to learn how to do than other forms of taxonomy.  That means more people can learn to use it.

One good thing about DNA barcoding is that it helps human beings get around ideas that seem right but are really wrong.  For example, some animals look similar even though they are not closely related.  Some animals look different even though they are closely related.  It is easy for a scientist to think two species are related because they look or act alike.  For example, cows are more closely related to whales and orcas than they are to horses, even though cows walk on hooves, live on land, and eat grass like horses do.  Looking at DNA barcoding makes it easier to see what really happened in evolution.

Another good thing about DNA barcoding is that scientists do not need to get close to the animal or plant they want to study.  This is good for studying animals that are easily damaged, very shy, or dangerous to humans.  The scientists do not even need to see the organism to use DNA barcoding.  In one study, scientists collected feces (poop) from an African savanna.  They used DNA barcoding to tell which species of animal had left it there and which plants it had eaten, all from the undigested DNA.

DNA barcoding makes it much much faster and easier to tell what a species eats.  Before DNA barcoding, scientists had to follow an insect or other animal around and watch it eat.  This could take many years.  With DNA barcoding, scientists can look at what is in the animal's digestive system.  This is fast enough that scientists can watch animals' eating habits change with climate change.

With DNA sequencing and DNA barcoding, scientists went into museums to look at specimens, or preserved example animals, that had been collected many years before.  Using DNA sequencing, the scientists were able to tell that one butterfly collected in the 1700s was really ten different species of butterfly and not just one.  Scientists made many discoveries of this kind in old museum collections.

Uses
Herpetologists (amphibian scientists) used DNA barcoding to analyze the parachuting frog in 2019.  They found it by climbing mountains in Papua New Guinea.

Related pages
Human genome
Complete Genomics
Bioinformatics

References

DNA
Evolutionary biology

DNA barcoding


Principles of sustainment or principles of logistics are a set of military principles from the United States Army doctrine. They are essential to maintaining combat power, enabling strategic and operational reach, and providing US Army forces with endurance. While these principles are independent, they are also interrelated.

U.S. Army Doctrine Publication 4-0, published 31 July 2012 addresses sustainment principles.

 Integration is combining all of the elements of sustainment (tasks, functions, systems, processes, organizations) to operations assuring unity of command and effort. Army forces integrate sustainment with joint forces and multinational operations to maximize the complementary and reinforcing effects from each Service and national resources.
 Anticipation is the ability to foresee operational requirements and initiate actions that satisfy a response without waiting for an operations order or fragmentary order. Sustainment commanders and staffs visualize future operations, identify required support and start the process of acquiring the sustainment that best supports the operation.
 Responsiveness is the ability to react to changing requirements and respond to meet the needs to maintain support. Through responsive sustainment, commanders maintain operational focus and pressure, set the tempo of friendly operations to prevent exhaustion, replace ineffective units, and extend operational reach.
 Simplicity relates to processes and procedures to minimize the complexity of sustainment. Clarity of tasks, standardized and interoperable procedures, and clearly defined command relationships contribute to simplicity.
 Economy is providing sustainment resources in an efficient manner to enable a commander to employ all assets to achieve the greatest effect possible. It is achieved through efficient management and discipline, prioritizing and allocating resources, and capitalizing on joint interdependencies. It can also be achieved by contracting for support or using host nation resources to reduce or eliminate the use of military resources.
 Survivability is all aspects of protecting personnel, weapons, and supplies while simultaneously deceiving the enemy (JP 3-34). Survivability consists of a quality or capability of military forces which permits then to avoid or withstand hostile actions or environmental conditions while retaining the ability to fulfill their primary mission. In mitigating risks and minimizing disruptions to sustainment, commanders often must rely on the use of redundant sustainment capabilities and alternative support plans.
 Continuity is the uninterrupted provision of sustainment across all levels of war. It is achieved through a system of integrated and focused networks linking sustainment across the levels of war, other Service support capabilities, and to operations. It assures confidence in sustainment allowing commanders' freedom of action, operational reach and prolonged endurance.
 Improvisation is the ability to adapt sustainment operations to unexpected situations or circumstances affecting a mission. It includes creating, inventing, arranging, or fabricating what is needed from what is available. The sustainment commander must apply operational art to visualize complex operations and understand what is possible at the tactical level. These skills enable commanders to improvise operational and tactical actions when enemy actions unexpected events disrupt sustainment operations.

See also
 Principles of War
 Combat service support (United States)

References

Military doctrines
United States Army doctrine

Principles of sustainment


Edward Atkyns Bray (1778–1857) was a British poet, vicar, and miscellaneous writer.

Bray was the only son of Edward Bray, solicitor, and manager of the Devonshire estates of the Duke of Bedford, was born at the Abbey House, Tavistock, 18 Dec 1778. His mother, Mary, a daughter of Dr. Brandreth of Houghton Regis, and the widow of Arthur Turner, would not allow her son to be sent to a public school, and he was educated by himself, a circumstance which engendered in him habits of isolation and restraint. At an early age he cultivated poetry, two small selections from his effusions circulating among his friends before he was twenty-three. Bray became a student at the Middle Temple in 1801 and was called to the bar in 1806. For some time he went to the western circuit, but the profession of the law had from the first ill accorded with his disposition, and after five years of trial he abandoned it for the Church. He was ordained by the Bishop of Norwich about 1811, and in the following year, by the favour of the Duke of Bedford, became the vicar of St Eustachius' Church, Tavistock and the perpetual curate of Brent Tor. Almost immediately after his ordination he entered himself at Trinity College, Cambridge, and took the degree of Bachelor of Divinity as a ten-year man in 1822. He lived in Tavistock for the rest of his life, and if he differed from his parishioners on politics or preached over their heads, he retained their respect. In 1822, he married Anna Eliza, the widow of Charles Alfred Stothard, and an amusing account of the habits of the worthy vicar and his wife is embodied in the latter's autobiography. Bray died at Tavistock 17 July 1857. During his lifetime, he published several selections of sermons:
Sermons from the Works of the most eminent Divines of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries, 1818
Discourses from Tracts and Treatises of Eminent Divines, 1821
Select Sermons by Thomas Wilson, Bishop of Sodor and Man, 1823
Discourses on Protestantism, 1829 (his own sermons)
His poetical productions were for the most part circulated privately. After Bray's death his widow collected and published his Poetical Remains (1859, 2 vols), and also A Selection from the Sermons, General and Occasional, of Rev. E. A. Bray (1860, 2 vols). At one time he projected a history of his native town of Tavistock, and made considerable collections for it, but the undertaking was never completed. Many extracts from his journals describing the curiosities of Dartmoor and many of his poems are inserted in his wife's A Description of the Part of Devonshire Bordering on the Tamar and the Tavy (1836). When she published her work on Switzerland she embodied with it many passages in the diary which her husband kept whilst on the tour.

References

External links

1778 births
1857 deaths
19th-century English Anglican priests
Writers from Tavistock
English male poets
Clergy from Devon

Edward Atkyns Bray


This indecisive battle took place on 4 October 1710, during the Great Northern War, in Køge Bay, just south of Copenhagen. Denmark had 26 ships of the line and 5 frigates with 1808 guns, and Sweden had 21 ships of the line and several frigates with 1512 guns. The Danish ship Dannebroge exploded and of the 550-man crew only 9 survived. The Swedish ships Tre Kronor and Prinsessan Ulrika Eleonora ran aground. Because of the weather the battle could not continue. However, the Swedish fleet managed to sink and capture a Danish convoy of transport ships that were supposed to embark a Russian invasion force in Danzig. The action in Køge Bugt checked those Russian invasion plans of Sweden.

Ships involved

Denmark (Gyldenløve)
Elephant 90 (flag)
Fredericus IV 110
Christianus V 100
Dannebroge 94 - Blew up
Justitia 90
Norske Løve 84
Mars 80
Tre Løver 78
Prinds Christian 76
Sophia Hedvig 76
Wenden 72
Dronning Louisa 70
Haffru 70
Beskjermer 64
Ebenetzer 64
Charlotte Amalia 60
Svan 60
Anna Sophia 60
Fredericus III 56
Oldenborg 52
Sværdfisk 52
Tomler 52
Nelleblad 52
Fyen 50
Delmenhorst 50
Island 50

Sweden (Wachtmeister)
Göta Lejon 90 (flag)
Enigheten 94
Tre Kronor 86 - Aground, scuttled next day
Wenden 82
Sverige 82
Prinsessan Hedvig 80
Prinsessan Ulrika 80 - Aground, scuttled next day
Gota 76
Nordstjernan 76
Prins Carl 76
Prins Carl Fredrik 72
Småland 70
Karlskrona 70
Skåne 68
Bremen 64
Fredrika Amalia 62
Westmanland 62
Pommern 56
Södermanland 56
Wachtmeister 56
Werden 54
Several fireships - Burnt? 2 days later

Sources
 Lars Ericson Wolke (2011), Sjöslag och Rysshärjningar s. 130-133
Tor Jørgen Melien (2010), Iver Huitfeldt og slaget i Køge bugt 1710, Bergen: John Grieg AS: C. Huitfeldt forlag
 Gunnar Unger (1923). Illustrerad Svensk Sjökrigshistoria omfattande tiden intill 1680–1814. Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag
 Lars Ericson Wolke, Martin Hårdstedt (2009), Svenska sjöslag
 R.C. Anderson (1910), Naval Wars in the Baltic during the Sailing Ship Epoch 1522–1850. London: C. Gilbert-Wood
For Kongen og Flåten. Matros Trosners dagbok 1710-1714 (1 ed.). Bergen: Fagbokforlaget. 2017. The diary is published by Hans Christian Bjerg and Tor Jørgen Melien.

Conflicts in 1710
Køge Bay
1710 in Denmark

Battle of Køge Bay (1710)


Gajarajan Kongad Kuttisankaran ( 1962 — 26 July 2020) was an elephant that lived in Kongad, Palakkad, Kerala. He is one among the few native elephants born in Kerala to have a height of more than 309 cm.

Kuttisankaran was born at the Nilambur Forest. After leaving the forest at a very young age, he was offered to the Kongad Thirumandhamkunnu temple in 1969. He has won the titles of Adyan Thampuran, Ibhakula Chakravarti and Gajarajan. Kuttisankaran was one of the most famous elephants in the folklore of Kerala. According to experts from Madangasastram, he was characterized by 18 claws, a protruding trunk, a long tail and beautiful eyes.

Kuttisankaran was a regular at festivals including Thrissur Pooram, Nemmara Vela, Puthussery Vedi and Mannarkkad Pooram. Kuttisankaran last participated in the Mannarkkad Pooram after which he went to treatment for age related problems and months later, he died on 26 July 2020.

See also
 List of individual elephants

References

1962 animal births
2020 animal deaths
Individual elephants
Elephants in Indian culture
Individual animals in India
Elephants in Hinduism
Elephants in Kerala

Kongad Kuttisankaran


François Bouffier (1844–1881) was a French non-commissioned officer of the 19th century, a sergeant of the 8th Battalion of infantrymen. He was a member of the first French Military Mission to Japan in 1867, in which he accompanied Jules Brunet. He worked as an instructor for infantry in the army of the shōgun.

With the advent of the Boshin War, and the declaration of neutrality of foreign powers, Bouffier chose to resign from the French Army and continue the fight on the side of the Bakufu.

He participated to the Battle of Hakodate, in which he was head of one of the four Japanese regiments.

Bouffier chose to remain in Japan, and was buried at the Yokohama International cemetery in 1881. In the same cemetery were buried his two sons, Léon Célestin (1876–1877), and Auguste Louis (1873–1923).

Notes

References
 Polak, Christian. (2001). Soie et lumières: L'âge d'or des échanges franco-japonais (des origines aux années 1950). Tokyo: Chambre de Commerce et d'Industrie Française du Japon, Hachette Fujin Gahōsha (アシェット婦人画報社).
 Polak, Christian. (2002). 絹と光: 知られざる日仏交流100年の歴史 (江戶時代-1950年代) Kinu to hikari: shirarezaru Nichi-Futsu kōryū 100-nen no rekishi (Edo jidai-1950-nendai). Tokyo: Ashetto Fujin Gahōsha, 2002. ;

External links
 Land of fire

French soldiers
Meiji Restoration
1881 deaths
1844 births
People of the Boshin War
French emigrants to Japan

François Bouffier


Franklin L. Sheppard (1852-1930) was a well-known Christian hymn composer who set the poem, This is My Father's World, to music.

Biography
Sheppard was born on August 7, 1852, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Sheppard attended William Fewsmith's Classical School and the University of Pennsylvania where he graduated as valedictorian in 1872. In 1875, Sheppard moved to Boston, Massachusetts, to run the foundry for his father's stove and heater manufacturing company. Shepard attended the Zion Protestant Episcopal Church in Boston, but later switched to Presbyterianism. He eventually joined the Second Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, Maryland, and became president of the Presbyterian Board of Publications and Sabbath-School Work. In 1915, he edited the Presbyterian song book 'Alleluia,' which included the song "This is My Father's World."

In 1915 Shepard set to music, "This is My Father's World," a poem written by Maltbie Davenport Babcock, a minister from New York, who had been a close friend of Sheppard's.  Sheppard, apparently did not want to call attention to himself and signed using his initials rearranged as  "S.F.L." Most sources state that Sheppard adapted the music from a traditional English melody. The poem originally had sixteen verses, but Sheppard chose only three verses.

Sheppard died on February 15, 1930, in Philadelphia.

References

1852 births
1930 deaths
University of Pennsylvania alumni
Musicians from Philadelphia
Songwriters from Pennsylvania
American Presbyterians

Franklin L. Sheppard


Matthias Richards (February 26, 1758 – August 4, 1830) was a member of the United States House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.

Early life and education
Matthias Richards was born near Pottstown, Pennsylvania. He had many siblings, including  an older brother John Richards. His schooling was with a private tutoring, as was typical of many families then.

Revolutionary War
He enlisted and served during the American Revolutionary War as a private in Col. Daniel Udree's second battalion, Berks County Militia, from August 5, 1777, until January 5, 1778.  He was commissioned a major of the Fourth Battalion, Philadelphia County Militia in 1780.

Career
In 1788 Richards was appointed a justice of the peace and held this office for forty years.  He was appointed a judge of Berks County Courts (1791–1797) by Governor Shulze, a nephew.

After being elected to Congress, Richards was appointed an inspector of customs (1801–1802). He was appointed collector of revenue for the ninth district of Pennsylvania in 1813, and clerk of the orphans' court for Berks County in 1823.  He also worked at mercantile pursuits in Reading, Pennsylvania, until his death there on August 4, 1830.

Marriage and family
Having become an artisan and saddler, Richards married Maria Salome Muhlenberg ("Sally"), then at age 15, on May 8, 1782.  She was the youngest child of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg. Among their children was John William Richards, who became a minister.  His son Matthias Henry Richards became a professor of English at Muhlenberg College in 1868. His grandson Henry Melchior Muhlenberg Richards was an American military officer who served in the Union Army during the American Civil War and then as a Captain in the United States Navy during the Spanish–American War. Henry Melchior Muhlenberg Richards also married a Van Leer whose family owned most of Reading, Pennsylvania at the time. This is where Richards was laid to rest and the city where he spent most of his life, and was interred at that city's Charles Evans Cemetery.

Congress
Richards was elected as a Democratic-Republican to the Tenth and Eleventh Congresses.  He did not stand for renomination in 1810.

References

1758 births
1830 deaths
Burials at Charles Evans Cemetery
Muhlenberg family
Pennsylvania state court judges
Pennsylvania militiamen in the American Revolution
Democratic-Republican Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Pennsylvania

Matthias Richards


Petrelë Castle () is a castle in Petrelë, central Albania. Its history dates back to Justinian I. Petrelë Castle is  above sea level.

The castle of Petrelë has a rich history, containing a tower which was built in the sixth century AD.

It is one of the tourist locations close to Tirana that attracts a great number of visitors. The Castle, the prominent wooden structure is a restaurant, is perched on a rocky hill, above the village with the same name. It has a triangular shape with two observation towers. Although it was first built in ancient times, the present building dates from the 15th century.

The Petrela Castle was part of the signaling and defense system of Krujë Castle. The castles signaled to each other by means of fires. During Skanderbeg's fight against the Ottomans, the Petrela Castle used to be under the command of Mamica Kastrioti, Skanderbeg's sister. Today there is a restaurant inside the castle. The castle site has views of the Erzen valley, the hills, olive groves, and surrounding mountains.

Gallery

See also
List of castles in Albania
Tourism in Albania
Architecture of Albania
History of Albania

References

Towers completed in the 6th century
Castles in Albania
Buildings and structures in Tirana County
Tourist attractions in Tirana County

Petrelë Castle


Hans Wilhelm Munch-Petersen (26 March 1869 - 8 September 1934) was a Danish scholar, jurist and author who pushed for legal reforms, more rights for women and other social justice issues in Denmark.  His most influential work was Den danske Retspleje.

Early life
Munch-Petersen was son of the medical historian, Professor Julius Petersen and the brother of    studied at the Metropolitan School in 1886, cand. jur. in 1891, and received the 1893 University Gold Medal for a forensic essay.  His dissertation was Løftet og dets Causa (1896)  He received his law degree in 1896.

His children were  and Erwin Munch-Petersen.

Career
In 1896 Munch-Petersen became an assistant in the Department of Justice for the Government of Denmark.  In 1899, he named a docent, in 1901 a university professor.  In 1921,  he was named university administrator and in 1923 university rector (Rector Magnificus).  He left his position as rector in 1924.

From 1918 until 1922, Munch-Petersen was also chairman of the board of rent cases for Copenhagen and Frederiksberg.  He also served on several government commissions including the universitets komimissionen from 1912 and the commission for the reform of the military justice.

Influenced by reforms in Austria, Munch-Petersen advocated in his publications for legal reform in Denmark.   Although not politically active, he wanted to transform the laws in a socialist spirit as described in his books. His social interests have also influenced his role as an arbitration judge in disputes between workers and employers.

Legal papers

 ,

 Tidsskrift for Retsvidenskab ("Den saakaldte negative Kontraktsinteresse", XI, 1898)
 Tilskueren ("Procesret og Menneskeret", 1899) .
 Den borgerlige Ret i Hovedtræk (The Civil Court of Main) (1901, 5th edition 1921 plus 1922),
 Retstilfælde til Brug ved det juridiske Studium (Legal Cases to Use at the Law Study) (1901, 3rd edition 1922)
 Den danske Retspleje (IV, 1917–19, with the addition and professional register in 1919, 2nd edition 1923 et seq.), Retsplejeloven af 11 April 1916 (Procedural Laws of 11 April 1916).
 Den danske Lovgivning og den sociale Retfærdighed (The Danish Law and Social Justice) (1906)
 April 1916 med senere Tillægsbestemmelser, Henvisninger og udførligt Fagregister (1919) with Appendix (1922), and jurors. En almenfattelig Oversigt (1919). I
 Retsreformen med Hensyn til vor Strafferetspleje (1902),
 Den nye Retspleje belyst i sine Grundtræk (1908)
 Retspleje og Kultur (University Programme 1913),
 En danske Civilproces i Hovedtræk (In 1906, II 1908 III 1915 IV 1911 2nd edition, 1915)
 Sociale Retfærdighedskrav i dansk Lovgivning (Social Justice Demands in Danish Law)

Munch-Petersen also published articles in Tilskueren, Det ny Aarhundrede and especially Ugeskrift for Retsvæsen, whose literary department he edited 1906-20, and in its edition of Lov om Rettens Pleje (1908, 1909).

Death and legacy
Munch-Petersen died on 8 September 1934. He is buried at the Western Cemetery. His grandson was the literary scholar and librarian Erland Munch-Petersen.

References

1869 births
20th-century Danish lawyers
1934 deaths
Lawyers from Copenhagen
Danish socialists
Arbitrators
Danish judges

Hans Munch-Petersen


On 31 July 1987, during the Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca, a clash between Shia pilgrim demonstrators and the Saudi Arabian security forces resulted in the death of more than 400 people. The event has been variously described as a "riot" or a "massacre". It developed from increasing tensions between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Since 1981, Iranian pilgrims have held a political demonstration against Israel and the United States every year at hajj, but in 1987, a cordon of Saudi police and the Saudi Arabian National Guard sealed part of the planned demonstration route, resulting in a confrontation between them and the pilgrims. This escalated into a violent clash, followed by a deadly stampede.

How many pilgrims died and how they died are both disputed. Both Iran and Saudi Arabia blame each other for the loss of life. Estimates of fatalities range from 400 with thousands more injured (Iranian government); 402, of which 275 were Iranian pilgrims, 85 Saudi police, and 42 pilgrims from other countries (Saudi government); and more than 400 dead (New York Times).  Saudis claim the pilgrims were armed and died in a stampede. Iranians claim many were killed by Saudi gunfire.

After the incident, Iranians attacked the Saudi, Kuwaiti and French Embassies, abducting four Saudis from the embassy.

Background

Iran and Saudi Arabia have been called "bitter regional rivals" on "opposing sides of bloody conflicts in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq". This is in part for theological reasons — namely the differences between the two Islamic schools of thought that their governments adhere to.  The Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam has both long supported the ruling House of Saud of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and long opposed Shi'i Islam as a sect deviant from true Islam.  Iranian Shia majority and Shi'i government were well aware of Wahhabi antagonism towards them  and the "history of mistrust" between Shi'ite pilgrims and Sunni hosts  "stretches back as far as the sixteenth century".

Adding to this was the revolutionary antagonism of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his anti-American, anti-monarchy Iranian Revolutionary followers against the pro-American royal rulers of Saudi Arabia.
In a 1987 public address Khomeini declared that "these vile and ungodly Wahhabis are like daggers which have always pierced the heart of the Muslims from the back". He announced that Mecca was in the hands of "a band of heretics", (i.e. the House of Saud).

The incident occurred during the last phase of the bloody Iran–Iraq War, at a moment of "escalating tensions" between Sunni Arab-ruled Iraq (which was receiving help from Sunni Arab-ruled Saudi Arabia) and Persian Shi'i-ruled Iran.  America had reflagged of Kuwaiti petroleum tankers and the introduced of foreign naval escorts in the Persian Gulf, a foreign intervention favored by Saudi Arabia and opposed by Iran. .

Serious loss of life at Hajj occurs periodically (in 1990, 1994, 1998, 2001, 2004, 2006, 2015); not surprising in a situation where two million or more pilgrims "all trying to do the  same thing in the same place on the same day" while speaking different languages, and are vulnerable to death from suffocation or being physically crushed in the press of the crowd. In 2015, an estimated 2,400 pilgrims, including more than 400 Iranians, were killed in a stampede, that led to a "war of words" between Iran and Saudi Arabia that reached a "fever pitch".

Post-Iranian revolutionary hajjs
For years, Iranian pilgrims had tried to stage demonstrations which are known as "Distancing Ourselves from Mushrikīn" (برائت از مشرکين) in the Muslim holy city of Mecca during the hajj. "Anti shah, anti-Israel and anti-American propaganda during the Hajj" by devotees of Khomeini had been happening since about 1971. These demonstrations had their origins in 1971, when Ruhollah Khomeini instructed his Shiite followers to distribute political messages when performing their pilgrimage. Even though a few Iranians were arrested for this act, the Saudi officials were generally apathetic, as they did not view these political messages to be a threat to the Saudi royalty. After the revolution, following the principles elaborated by Khomeini, they appealed directly to the Muslim pilgrims of other lands gradually heightening political activity in each the pilgrimage. Iran claimed that "the Hajj and the Holy places should be placed under international oversight as opposed to being managed by the Saudis alone". The Saudi government reacted to these disturbances with increasing concern  because "the Hajj is an important legitimizing factor for the Saudi ruling family".

The first large clash between Shia pilgrims and Saudi security forces occurred in 1981. In 1981, this was escalated to chanting political slogans in the Masjid al-Haram and the Prophet's Mosque, two of the holiest sites in Islam, resulting in violent clashes with Saudi security and one death. In the same year, King Khalid of Saudi Arabia wrote a letter to Saddam Hussein saying "crush these stupid Iranians" as Saddam continued with the invasion of Iranian territory.

In 1982, Khomeini appointed Hojatoleslam Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha as the supervisor and personal representative of Ayatollah Khomeini. Khoiniha was the "mentor" of the students who had seized the United States Embassy in the Iran hostage crisis. During the hajj that year, Saudi police clashed with demonstrators who Khoiniha addressed in both Medina and Mecca. In Mecca he was arrested, and after giving a speech in Medina following the pilgrimage he was declared an "instigator" and expelled from Saudi Arabia.

During the next few years, both sides tried to calm the situation: Khomeini urged his devotees to maintain peace and order, not to distribute printed political material, and not to criticize Muslim governments. In return, Saudi officials changed their earlier policy and allowed two separate demonstrations to occur: One in Mecca, and the other in Medina. By 1986, the situation was calm enough for Saudi officials to re-open the al-Baqi' cemetery for Shiite pilgrims, and in response, Khomeini's representative formally thanked the Saudi King for the gesture. However, in the same year, Iranian radical Mehdi Hashemi was accused of smuggling explosives on an airplane headed for Saudi Arabia, renewing Saudi fears.

Internationally, U.S. naval forces were being introduced into the Persian Gulf during this time in response to the Iran-Iraq War and heightening political tensions.

Planning for 1987 demonstration
According to the speech early in July 1987, Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha said that "a mere march or demonstration by Iranians will not suffice". He demanded that the Saudi regime allow Iranian pilgrims to enter the Great Mosque in Mecca at the end of their demonstration, without the presence of security guards. Then a representative of Khomeini would explain Iran's case regarding the Iran Iraq war and an Iranian pilgrimage representative would conduct a referendum among all the pilgrims over the decision of the emir of Kuwait to invite foreign escorts for Kuwaiti tankers. "All we ask is that the Saudi government not oppose this, nor send its guards to the Great Mosque. Let us see what happens. We will try it for one year."

Even though Mehdi Karrubi, who was Khomeini's official pilgrimage representative that year, tried to assure Saudi officials that the demonstrations would occur in the usual manner and in the agreed routes, it did little to quell the Saudi fears.

But  Saudis and Iranians worked together to go over "the route of the planned demonstration".  As a result of dialogue and strict regulations which were imposed after it, it was agreed that "the demonstration would end half a kilometer before the great Mosque", but the decision "put the Saudi security forces on a high state of alert", and
Saudi authorities "remained deeply suspicious". An unnamed Saudi authority  quoted by Israeli scholar Martin Kramer criticized the planned demonstration, stating that while Saudi Arabia provided occasions "for the expression of Muslim opinion on various matters", even during the hajj, political demonstrations in the Great Mosque would constitute a religious innovation in Islam (Bid'ah), and "anyone who attempts to innovate in Islam will go to hell."  Just before the Mecca demonstration, Saudis pressured the Iranian representative Karrubi to cancel the march, which he refused to do.

Two days before the planned demonstration, Khomeini's annual message to the pilgrims was published, which as in years past, "included the customary plea" to pilgrims that they 'avoid clashes, insults, and disputes,' and warned against those intent on disruption 'who might embark on spontaneous moves'.

1987 demonstrations

On Friday 31 July 1987, the demonstration started amid heightened security after Friday's midday prayers, while Iranian pilgrims chanted "Death to America! Death to the Soviet Union! Death to Israel!". The march was uneventful until the end of the planned route when the demonstrators found their way blocked by Saudi riot police and National Guardsmen. At this point, some of the Iranians began to call for the demonstrators to press ahead and continue to the Great Mosque, at the same time "unidentified persons in an adjacent parking garage" began to throw "bricks, pieces of concrete, and iron bars" at the Iranians. These events angered the Iranians, escalating the situation  into a violent clash between the Iranian pilgrims and the Saudi security forces.

Force used
The Saudis reportedly used truncheons and electric prods and the Iranians reportedly used knives and clubs.
Saudi security personnel deny firing at the demonstrators, Saudi officials insist that no shots were fired, and that all deaths were caused by the melee and stampede. In a Washington news conference, the Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan claimed that "not one bullet was fired", blaming the violence on the Iranian pilgrims who he accused of "brandishing knives, clubs and broken glass drawn from beneath their cloaks".

Iranian officials maintain that the Saudis had fired on the protesters without provocation and that the demonstrations had been peaceful.   Robin Wright also reports that "many of the Iranian bodies, shown to American and European reporters immediately upon their return to Tehran, had bullet punctures." Ami Ayalon, an Israeli politician, wrote that "most of the Iranian pilgrims apparently shot by Saudi security authorities during the demonstration". Martin Kramer also writes that "according to American intelligence sources, the tide was finally turned by reinforcements from the National Guard, who fired tear gas shells into the crowd and then opened fire with pistols and automatic weapons".

Casualties
The rioting and the resulting stampede reportedly caused the death of 402 people (275 Iranians, 85 Saudis, including policemen, and 42 pilgrims from other countries) and 649 people were reportedly wounded (303 Iranians, 145 Saudis and 201 other nationals). The Iranian news agency announced that "200 Iranians had been killed and more than 2,000 wounded". Martin Kramer states that the Iranian authorities claimed that 400 Iranian pilgrims died, and that several thousand were injured.

Reaction/aftermath

After the incident, Ali Khamenei, then president of Iran, declared that "they are now propagandizing and claiming that this incident was a war between Shia and Sunni. This is a lie! Of course, there is a war, but a war between the American perception of Islam and true revolutionary Islam."

Another high level Iranian leader, Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, urged Muslim religious leaders to "wrest control of Islam's holy sites in Saudi Arabia from the royal family". In Iraq, the Revolutionary Command Council, ostensibly an organ of the secular Baath Arab socialist party, demanded that visiting of Islam's holy sites by Iranians should be banned. The Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon asked Saudi Arabia to "pay for the deaths of the Shiite pilgrims".

On 3 August 1987,  one million Iranians converged on the Parliament building in Teheran, screaming "Revenge! Revenge!" in a rally "marking what was officially described as 'a day of hate,' according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency". On the same day, the Iranian leader Khomeini called on Saudis to overthrow the House of Saud to avenge the pilgrims' deaths.

For three years after the incident of 1987 -- from 1988 to 1990 -- the Iranian government banned Iranians from going on the Hajj  but "diplomatic ties were restored in 1991".
Following the incident, Saudi Arabia ended its diplomatic relations with Iran and it reduced the number of permitted Iranian pilgrims to 45,000, down from 150,000 in earlier years. In 1991, Iran and Saudi Arabia renewed diplomatic relations after agreeing to allow Iranian pilgrims to perform the Hajj once more. The total number of pilgrims was set at 115,000, and the demonstrations by Iranians were again allowed, but only in one specific location granted by the Saudis. By this agreement, Iranian pilgrims continued their annual demonstration during the 1990s and 2000s with few or no incidents. They limited their rally to within the confines of their compound in Mecca.

Approximately 20,000 Pakistani troops who were stationed in Saudi Arabia were sent back to Pakistan, because Saudi Arabia was uncomfortable with the presence of Shi'ite soldiers.

Martin Kramer writes that "as no independent investigation will ever be conducted, important details will remain in doubt. But no evidence has been produced by Saudi Arabia or Iran to establish that the other side acted deliberately or with premeditation in order to provoke violence."

See also
List of modern conflicts in the Middle East
Shi'a–Sunni relations
Incidents during the Hajj

Notes

References

Works cited

External links
 Carnage in Mecca
 Khomeini's Messengers in Mecca

Mecca
1987 in Iran
Massacre of Iranian pilgrims
20th century in Mecca
Riots and civil disorder in Saudi Arabia
Incidents during the Hajj
Protests in Saudi Arabia
Massacres in Saudi Arabia
Shia–Sunni sectarian violence
Iran–Saudi Arabia relations
Iran–Saudi Arabia proxy conflict
1987 disasters in Saudi Arabia

1987 Mecca incident


Belling the Cat () is a 2014 Vietnamese animated movie. It was directed by Lê Bình.

Plot
Long ago, the mice had a general council to consider what measures they could take to outwit their common enemy, the Cat.

Some said this, and some said that ; but at last a young mouse got up and said he had a proposal to make, which he thought would meet the case.

"You will all agree", said he, "that our chief danger consists in the sly and treacherous manner in which the enemy approaches us. Now, if we could receive some signal of her approach, we could easily escape from her". "I venture, therefore, to propose that a small bell be procured, and attached by a ribbon round the neck of the Cat. By this means we should always know when she was about, and could easily retire while she was in the neighbourhood".

This proposal met with general applause, until an old mouse got up and said : "That is all very well, but who is to bell the Cat ?". The mice looked at one another and nobody spoke. Then the old mouse said : "It is easy to propose impossible remedies".

Production

 Style : 2D computer animation
 Artist : Lê Bình
 Animator : Đào Xuân Thành, Lê Hồng Yến, Dương Văn Hùng, Quách Lê Tuyến, Đào Minh Châu, Nguyễn Hữu Lãm, Nguyễn Vân Anh, Vũ Mạnh Hùng, Nguyễn Phương Nhi, Cao Minh Dũng, Ngô Ngọc Long, Phạm Minh Nguyệt, Lê Thanh Huyền, Lê Bình
 Editor : Nguyễn Thị Vân, Nguyễn Quỳnh Hoa, Lê Thu Thủy, Hoàng Thu Hương, Trần Bình Minh, Hoàng Công Đức, Vũ Thị Hoa, Bùi Ái Liên, Nguyễn Thu Hiền, Nguyễn Tuấn Phúc, Đào Bích Hồng
 Camera : Trần Thị Dịu, Trịnh Hải Yến
 Photography director : Phan Trung, Nguyễn Việt Phương, Nguyễn Thị Thùy, Bùi Hồng Thái
 Color : Đào Việt Hà, Nguyễn Khánh Linh, Nguyễn Thị Hoa, Lương Minh Ngọc, Phó Vương Anh, Vũ Thị Dung, Lê Thị Bích
 Sound : Đặng Duy Chiến, Lê Bình
 Montage : Phạm Thị Trang
 Computer : Nguyễn Duy Long, Nguyễn Lê Giang
 Theme : Where to return (Nơi về) by Đặng Duy Chiến with Hoài Nam's singing

Award
 Silver Kite prize - Vietnam Film Festival XIX (2015)

Related pages
 Belling the Cat (fable)

References

2014 animated movies
Vietnamese animated movies
Movies about cats
Movies about mice

Belling the Cat (movie)


André Claveau (17 December 1911 – 4 July 2003) was a popular singer in France from the 1940s to the 1960s. He won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1958 singing "Dors, mon amour" (Sleep, My Love), with music composed by Pierre Delanoë and lyrics by Hubert Giraud. Winning at the age of 46 years and 76 days, Claveau was the oldest winner of the contest until 1990, being the first and only winner prior to 1990 to triumph in their forties.

References

1911 births
2003 deaths
French singers

André Claveau