Oregon Route 210 (also known as Scholls Ferry Road, or, more formally, the Scholls Highway No. 143 (see Oregon highways and routes)) is a state highway which runs between the community of Scholls, Oregon and the Raleigh Hills neighborhood west of Portland, terminating at the Sylvan overpass on Highway 26.  It has become an important route for both commuters and agriculture through Washington County. Oregon Route 210 is signed from east-to-west; though in actuality it runs in a northeast-to-southwest direction.

The neighborhoods located along Route 210 are generally affluent, being higher in rent than 83.1% of the neighborhoods in Oregon.

Route description

Oregon Route 210's western terminus is at the junction with Oregon Route 219 in the town of Scholls. The highway leaves Scholls headed due north-northeast (on a 2-lane, unlimited-access alignment), crossing the Tualatin River over a bridge which replaced the historic Scholls Ferry (for which the road is still named). Soon after, there is a roundabout with River Road; with Oregon Route 210 heading east, and River Road heading towards Hillsboro to the west. Continuing east, the road winds through farmland (as well as a few wineries) in the fertile Tualatin Valley for several miles until the town of Kinton, and then toward its intersection with Roy Rogers Road.

Near the intersection with Roy Rogers Road (named for a Washington County official, not for the famous cowboy) which heads south towards Sherwood, Oregon Route 210 enters Portland's Urban Growth Boundary, and the farms and wineries are suddenly replaced with townhouses and subdivisions, and OR 210 transforms instantly into a suburban thoroughfare. A short distance further east, the highway passes on the edge of the Murrayhill neighborhood of Beaverton and becomes a four-lane divided expressway (one which is frequently clogged with rush-hour traffic). At this point, Oregon Route 210 becomes the boundary between Beaverton and the city of Tigard, with Beaverton to the north and Tigard to the south.

The highway continues east for several more miles in this fashion until its intersection with Oregon Route 217, a freeway serving Portland's southwestern suburbs. This intersection is frequently congested, as most traffic leaves OR 210 to get on OR 217 (generally heading north towards downtown Beaverton and Portland). Also nearby is the community of Progress and the Washington Square shopping mall, as well as Hall Boulevard, a major thoroughfare through Beaverton and Tigard.

North of Hall Boulevard, the road once again becomes a two-lane route as it ambles through several neighborhoods in unincorporated Washington County. It heads in a north-northeasterly direction until it reaches the Raleigh Hills neighborhood, where Oregon Route 210 ends at an intersection with Oregon Route 10, the Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway. Scholls Ferry Road continues in a northeasterly direction for several more miles until it intersects with Oregon Route 8 and U.S. Route 26 in the Sylvan neighborhood. This stretch used to be signed as Oregon Route 210 as well; but that designation was removed some years ago.

There are two other notable alignment changes over the years. In the segment between Raleigh Hills and Progress one can find a residential street called "Old Scholls Ferry Road"; this was an older alignment of the highway. South of the Murrayhill neighborhood is a street called Barrows Road; this also was an old alignment of OR 210 before the new alignment through Murrayhill was constructed in the late 80s or early 90s. (For a while after the new roadway was built, Barrows Road continued to be signed as 210; however it no longer carries this designation). The current alignment, which goes over a hill, was actually the original alignment of the highway; sometime before 1960 the highway was rerouted to a longer but more level route along what is now called Barrows Road. At that time the "new" level route became Scholls Ferry Road, signed as OR 210, and the original route was renamed Old Scholls Ferry Road. In the 1990s Old Scholls Ferry Road regained its designation as OR 210 and the Barrows Road name was applied to the former route.

Major intersections

References

External links

OR 210 at ORoads

210
Transportation in Beaverton, Oregon
Tigard, Oregon

Oregon Route 210


The Broch of Borwick is an Iron Age broch located on Mainland, Orkney, Scotland (). It is a scheduled monument.

Location
The Broch of Borwick is located 8 kilometres southwest of Dounby on Mainland, Orkney. The broch stands on top of a cliff-top promontory 20 metres above the sea. A small stream runs past the site immediately to the east.

Description
The broch has an external diameter of 17 metres and an internal diameter of 8 metres. The walls which are 3.5 to 5 metres thick currently stand to a maximum height of 2.6 metres. The eastern half of the broch and the entrance passage are well preserved, but the western half has been destroyed by erosion. The entrance passage, which is still lintelled over, is 5.6 metres long with door-checks each formed of a slab set on edge 3 metres from the outside. A guard cell opened off the right of the passage.

The broch was once cut off from the flat land beyond by an outer wall, and there were outbuildings between the wall and the broch.

Excavations
The site was excavated in 1881 by W. G. T. Watt, and the interior was cleared of debris. Ashes, bones and shells mixed with clay were found under the rubble. Beneath this was a layer of small flat stones and under this the broch floor. Finds included several combs, a small whale vertebra cup, a spindle whorl, a stone gaming piece, a whetstone, hammerstones, some stone knives and choppers, an iron rod, and some querns.

References

External links

Borwick
Scheduled Ancient Monuments in Orkney
Prehistoric Orkney
Mainland, Orkney

Broch of Borwick


The Haunted Monastery is a gong'an detective novel written by Robert van Gulik and set in Imperial China (roughly speaking the Tang dynasty). It is a fiction based on the real character of Judge Dee (Di Renjie), a magistrate and statesman of the Tang court, who lived roughly 630–700.

The book contains eight illustrations by the author as well as a diagram of the Monastery where the action takes place.

Plot introduction
Judge Dee and his three wives are on their way back from a visit to family in the capital accompanied by the Judge's aide Tao Gan when a terrible storm and a broken axle forces the party to take shelter for the night in an isolated Taoist monastery of sinister repute. The wives go directly to bed but the Judge is required to pay a courtesy visit to the Abbot. Judge Dee is a Confucist and has a poor opinion of Taoism which, like Buddhism, encourages adherents to become monks & nuns. He, however, diplomatically keeps his opinion to himself as he endures the feast & mystery play. Thus begins an endless night of murder, mayhem and madness as the Judge, suffering from the beginnings of a head cold, solves the mysterious deaths, punishes the guilty and brings two star-crossed young couples together. 'I ought to give up being a magistrate and set up for a matchmaker!' he says in disgust.

Of special interest is the gallery of horrors depicting the torments awaiting sinners in the Taoist hell as well as the vicious trained bear.

Literary significance and criticism
"Some interesting sidelights on Confucian and Taoist beliefs emerge from this tale of corruption and murder in a monastery, where Judge Dee runs into considerable danger but ends up administering justice in a primitive way. Perhaps because it is short and somewhat huddled, this work does not remain in the memory as one of his best".

Publication
Van Gulik found his London publisher Michael Joseph unwilling to publish more than one title a year so he decided to publish The Haunted Monastery privately by the Art Printing Works in Kuala Lumpur in 1961. The Red Pavilion was also similarly printed that year, The Lacquer Screen followed in 1962). All three were produced in paperback form with a print run of 2,000 copies. The Haunted Monastery was finally published in the UK by Heinemann in 1963.

On screen
In 1974 the novel The Haunted Monastery was produced as a TV movie for the ABC network by Gerald Isenberg with the title Judge Dee and the Monastery Murders. It was filmed with Khigh Dhiegh as Dee and an all-Asian cast (including Mako, Keye Luke, Soon-Tek Oh, Irene Tsu and James Hong). Writing was credited to Nicholas Meyer and Robert van Gulik. It was nominated for an Edgar Award, for Best Television Feature or Miniseries in 1975.

References

1961 novels
Gong'an novels
Judge Dee
Self-published books
Novels set in the 7th century
Novels set in the Tang dynasty
Dutch novels adapted into films
Dutch novels adapted into television shows

The Haunted Monastery


Zoom (stylized as zoom), also called Zoom Meetings, is a proprietary videotelephony software program developed by Zoom Video Communications. The free plan allows up to 100 concurrent participants, with a 40-minute time restriction. Users have the option to upgrade by subscribing to a paid plan, the highest of which supports up to 1,000 concurrent participants for meetings lasting up to 30 hours.

History

A beta version of Zoom that could host conferences with only up to 15 video participants was launched on August 21, 2012. On January 25, 2013, version 1.0 of the program was released with an increase in the number of participants per conference to 25. By the end of its first month, Zoom had 400,000 users and rose to over one million users by May 2013. After the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, by February 2020, Zoom had gained 2.22 million users in 2020 – more users than it amassed in the entirety of 2019. In March 2020, the Zoom app was downloaded 2.13 million times.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a major increase in the use of Zoom for remote work, distance education, and online social relations. Zoom was one of the most downloaded mobile apps worldwide in 2020 with over 500 million downloads.

In April 2020, Zoom had more than 300 million daily meeting participants, clarified to mean the number of times someone joined a meeting, which could happen several times per day.

Features
Zoom One has six tiers: Basic, Pro, Business, Business Plus, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus. Zoom is compatible with Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, ChromeOS, and Linux. It is noted for its simple interface and usability, regardless of technological expertise. Features include one-on-one meetings, group video conferences, screen sharing, plugins, browser extensions, and the ability to record meetings and have them automatically transcribed. On some computers and operating systems, users are able to select a virtual background, which can be downloaded from different sites, to use as a backdrop behind themselves.

Use of the platform is free for video conferences of up to 100 participants at once, with a 40-minute time limit. There is a 10-minute timeout period between free 40-minute meetings. For longer or larger conferences with more features, paid subscriptions are available. Features geared towards business conferences, such as Zoom Rooms, are also available. Up to 49 people can be seen on a desktop or laptop screen at once, up to 4 people per screen in iPhone and Android mobile phones and tablet computers, and up to 16 people per screen on iPad.

Zoom security features include password-protected meetings, user authentication, waiting rooms, locked meetings, disabling participant screen sharing, randomly generated IDs, and the ability for the host to remove disruptive attendees. As of June 2020, Zoom began offering end-to-end encryption to business and enterprise users, with AES 256 GCM encryption enabled for all users. In October 2020, Zoom added end-to-end encryption for free and paid users. It is available on all platforms, except for the official Zoom web client.

Zoom also offers a transcription service using Otter.ai software that allows businesses to store transcriptions of the Zoom meetings online and search them, including separating and labeling different speakers.

In July 2020, Zoom Rooms and Zoom Phone became available as hardware as a service products. As of July 2022, Zoom Phone is available for domestic telephone service in 47 countries, and the company has sold 3 million seats for the service. Zoom for Home, a category of products designed for home use, became available in August 2020. Zoom Phone Provider Exchange, which gives customers options for voice services, reaches more than 70 countries. In July 2022, an option was added on Zoom Phone to turn on end-to-end encryption during one-on-one calls between users on the same company account.

In September 2020, Zoom added new accessibility features to make the app easier to use for those who are deaf, hard of hearing, or visually impaired. New features include the ability to move around video windows in gallery view, pin video windows to be spotlighted; improved keyboard shortcuts; new tools to adjust the size of closed captioning text; and sign language interpreters' windows can now sit directly next to the speaker.

In October 2020 at Zoomtopia, Zoom's annual user conference, the company unveiled OnZoom, a virtual event marketplace with an integrated payment system where users can host and promote free or paid live events. With OnZoom, users will be able to schedule and host one-time events or event series for up to 1,000 attendees and sell tickets online. The company also announced Zoom Apps, a feature integrating third-party apps so they can be used within the Zoom interface during meetings. The first such apps were expected to be available around the end of 2020, from companies including Slack, Salesforce, Dropbox, and Qatalog. In October 2020, Zoom gave its users better security with an upgrade to end-to-end encryption for its online meetings network.

Also in October 2020, Zoom signed a carrier agreement with Global BT Business to offer a fully managed Zoom Meetings service featuring a choice of connectivity and integration with its global voice network

In February 2021, Zoom added a "virtual receptionist" feature in the Kiosk Mode for Zoom Rooms. Created for in-person visitors to a business to interact in the lobby without physical contact.

On March 22, 2021, Zoom announced that it would start selling its videoconferencing technology as a white-label product, so other companies can embed it in their own products, with the calls running over Zoom but not carrying the company's brand name.

In July 2021, Zoom released Zoom Apps which integrated a marketplace of third-party applications such as Dropbox Spaces, Asana, and SurveyMonkey.

In August 2021, Zoom launched Focus Mode, designed for use in educational settings. When active, the mode will hide participants' screens from each other (though they can see each other's names) while the host retains the ability to see everyone's camera stream or screen share. The feature is available across all Zoom accounts, including free ones.

In September 2021 at Zoomtopia, the company announced that end-to-end encryption would now be available as an upgrade for Zoom Phone users. The company also announced Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) (for users to manage their own encryption keys that Zoom cannot access or see), Verified Identity (a multi-factor authentication feature working through Okta that allows users to confirm the identity of meeting participants), and Video Engagement Center (for businesses to digitally interact with customers). Other updates include revamped virtual whiteboard features, including touchscreen whiteboards that can be digitized for remote participants, and improved collaboration between Zoom Meetings and Zoom Chat.

In October 2021, the option to automatically generate closed captions in English for Zoom meetings was expanded to all accounts, including free ones. The feature had previously only been available for Premium users.

In April 2022, Zoom added features including gesture recognition, a virtual whiteboard, and Zoom IQ for sales. In February 2022, the company launched Zoom Contact Center, a cloud contact center optimized for video calls and integrated directly into Zoom.

In June 2022, Zoom One, which brings together chat, phone, whiteboard, and video conferencing capabilities into a single offering, was launched. Also in June 2022, Zoom opened its Zoom Apps developer program to all developers, via Zoom Apps SDK. With the release of Zoom One, the company offers video conferencing translation and captioning for 11 languages: English, simplified Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, and Ukrainian. This feature is available with the Business Plus and Enterprise Plus plans.

Usage

Zoom is used by a variety of individuals and private and public organizations, including banks, schools, universities, healthcare providers, and government agencies, and for ceremonies such as birthday parties, funeral services, and bar and bat mitzvah services. In 2020, Zoom formed a partnership with Formula One to create a virtual club where fans can go behind the scenes and take part in virtual activities through Zoom, beginning with the Hungarian Grand Prix. An article published in July 2020 in the San Francisco Chronicle noted a new real estate trend in San Francisco and Oakland where some listings include "Zoom rooms" with backdrops for Zoom calls.

Richard Nelson's play What Do We Need to Talk About? takes place on Zoom, with its main characters congregating online during the COVID-19 pandemic using the platform. Written and directed by Nelson, it was commissioned by The Public Theater and premiered on YouTube on April 29, 2020, as a benefit performance. The New Yorker called it "the first great original play of quarantine". Oprah's Your Life in Focus: A Vision Forward was a live virtual experience hosted by Oprah Winfrey on Zoom from May 16 through June 6, 2020. In Source Material's 2020 play, In These Uncertain Times, directed by Samantha Shay, characters communicate on Zoom. The British found-footage horror film Host, directed by Rob Savage, features a group of young people attempting to contact spirits through a remote séance on Zoom, and premiered on Shudder in July 2020. A live reading of Kristoffer Diaz's 2009 play The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity over Zoom streamed on Play-PerView from August 15t to August 20, 2020. In the 2021 film Locked Down, directed by Doug Liman and starring Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor, characters communicate through Zoom conferences.

From July 3 to 4, 2020, the International Association of Constitutional Law and Alma Mater Europaea used Zoom Webinar to conduct the first "round-the-clock and round-the-globe" event, featuring 52 speakers from 28 countries and several time zones. Soon after, a format of conferences that "virtually travel the globe with the sun from East to West", became common, some of them running for several days.

On September 17, 2020, a live table read of the script for the 1982 film Fast Times at Ridgemont High was hosted by Dane Cook, with performers including Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, Julia Roberts, original cast member Sean Penn, Matthew McConaughey, Shia LaBeouf, Morgan Freeman (who served as the narrator), Jimmy Kimmel, Ray Liotta, and John Legend, to raise money for the charity CORE. The broadcast of the 72nd Primetime Emmy Awards on September 20, 2020, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, featured nominees participating through Zoom. On an alternate music video for the 2020 single "Ice Cream" by Blackpink featuring Selena Gomez, the artists appeared via Zoom from their homes. The series Zoom Where It Happens, airing on Zoom as a partnership between Zoom and Black female artists, launched in September 2020 with a virtual table read of an episode of The Golden Girls, reimagined with an all-Black cast. The second episode featured an all-Black cast in a table read of an episode of Friends, hosted by Gabrielle Union and featuring Sterling K. Brown and Uzo Aduba.
Familiarity with Zoom meetings in nation-state diplomatic and bureaucratic circles, partially due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, substantially contributed to the efficacy of the Western response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

Reception
Zoom has been criticized for "security lapses and poor design choices" that have resulted in heightened scrutiny of its software. Many of Zoom's issues "surround deliberate features designed to reduce friction in meetings", which Citizen Lab found to "also, by design, reduce privacy or security". In March 2020, New York State Attorney General Letitia James launched an inquiry into Zoom's privacy and security practices. The inquiry was closed on May 7, 2020, with Zoom not admitting wrongdoing, but agreeing to take added security measures. In April 2020, CEO Yuan apologized for the security issues, stating that some of the issues were a result of Zoom's having been designed for "large institutions with full IT support". He noted that in December 2019, Zoom had a maximum of 10 million daily meeting participants, and in March 2020 the software had more than 200 million daily meeting participants, bringing the company increased challenges. Zoom agreed to focus on data privacy and issue a transparency report. In April 2020, the company released Zoom version 5.0, which addressed a number of the security and privacy concerns. It includes passwords by default, improved encryption, and a new security icon for meetings. In September 2020, Zoom added support for two-factor authentication to its desktop and mobile apps; the security feature was previously Web-only.

As of April 2020, businesses, schools, and government entities who have restricted or prohibited the use of Zoom on their networks include Google, Siemens, the Australian Defence Force, the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs, SpaceX, and the New York City Department of Education. In May 2020, the New York City Department of Education lifted their ban on Zoom after the company addressed security and privacy concerns.

By September 2020, Zoom had 370,200 institutional customers with more than 10 employees, up about 458 percent from the same quarter to the year before. The company's revenue rose 355 percent to $663.5 million, topping analysts' average estimate of $500.5 million. They were able to raise their annual revenue forecast by more than 30 percent after many of their free users converted to paid subscriptions.

During the pandemic, Zoom's profit increased by 4,000%, and the company did not pay any income tax, according to a report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

Privacy
Zoom has been criticized for its privacy and corporate data sharing policies, as well as for enabling video hosts to potentially violate the privacy of those participating in their calls.

In March 2020, a Motherboard article found that the company's iOS app was sending device analytics data to Facebook on startup, regardless of whether a Facebook account was being used with the service, and without disclosing it to the user. Zoom responded that it had been made aware of the issue and patched the app to remove the SDK after learning that it was collecting unnecessary device data. The company stated that the SDK was only collecting information on the user's device specifications (such as model names and operating system versions) in order to optimize its service and that it was not collecting personal information. In the same month, Zoom was sued by a user in U.S. Federal Court for illegally and secretly disclosing personal data to third parties, including Facebook. Zoom responded that it "has never sold user data in the past and has no intention of selling users' data going forward".

In April 2020, a Zoom information gathering feature was found that automatically sent user names and email addresses to LinkedIn, allowing some participants to surreptitiously access LinkedIn profile data about other users without their express consent. Soon after, the companies disabled their integration. In May 2020, the Federal Trade Commission announced that it was looking into Zoom's privacy practices. The FTC alleged in a complaint that since at least 2016, "Zoom maintained the cryptographic keys that could allow Zoom to access the content of its customers' meetings, did not provide advertised end-to-end encryption, falsely claimed HIPAA compliance, installed the ZoomOpener webserver without adequate consent, did not uninstall the web server after uninstalling the Zoom App, and secured its Zoom Meetings with a lower level of encryption than promised." On November 9, 2020, a settlement was reached, requiring the company to stop misrepresenting security features, create an information security program, obtain biannual assessments by a third party, and implement additional security measures.

Security

Vulnerabilities
In November 2018, a security vulnerability was discovered that allowed a remote unauthenticated attacker to spoof UDP messages that allowed the attacker to remove attendees from meetings, spoof messages from users, or hijack shared screens. The company released fixes shortly after the vulnerability was discovered. In July 2019, security researcher Jonathan Leitschuh disclosed a zero-day vulnerability allowing any website to force a macOS user to join a Zoom call, with their video camera activated, without the user's permission. Attempts to uninstall the Zoom client on macOS would prompt the software to re-install automatically in the background using a hidden web server that was set up on the machine during the first installation so that it remains active even after attempting to remove the client. After receiving public criticism, Zoom removed the vulnerability and the hidden webserver to allow complete uninstallation. In April 2020, security researchers found vulnerabilities where Windows users' credentials could be exposed. Another vulnerability allowing unprompted access to cameras and microphones was made public. Zoom issued a fix in April 2020.

Motherboard reported that there were two Zoom zero-days for macOS and Windows respectively, selling for $500,000, on April 15, 2020. Security bug brokers were selling access to Zoom security flaws that could allow remote access into users' computers. Hackers also put up over 500,000 Zoom user names and passwords for sale on the dark web. In response to the multitude of security and privacy issues found, Zoom began a comprehensive security plan, which included consulting with Luta Security, Trail of Bits, former Facebook CSO Alex Stamos, former Google global lead of privacy technology Lea Kissner, BishopFox, the NCC Group, and Johns Hopkins University cryptographer Matthew D. Green.

On April 20, 2020, the New York Times reported that Dropbox engineers had traced Zoom's security vulnerabilities back over two years, pushing Zoom to address such issues more quickly, and paying top hackers to find problems with Zoom's software. In the same article, the New York Times noted that security researchers have praised Zoom for improving its response times, and for quickly patching recent bugs and removing features that could have privacy risks. In a blog post on April 1, 2020, CEO Yuan announced a 90-day freeze on releasing new features, to focus on fixing privacy and security issues within the platform.  On July 1, 2020, at the end of the freeze, the company stated it had released 100 new safety features over the 90-day period. Those efforts include end-to-end encryption for all users, turning on meeting passwords by default, giving users the ability to choose which data centers calls are routed from, consulting with security experts, forming a CISO council, an improved bug bounty program, and working with third parties to help test security. Yuan also stated that Zoom would be sharing a transparency report later in 2020.

On November 16, 2020, Zoom announced a new security feature to combat disruptions during a session. The new feature was said to be a default for all free and paid users and made available on the Zoom clients for Mac, PC, and Linux, as well as Zoom mobile apps.

On August 12, 2022, Wired magazine reported on three separate security vulnerabilities discovered by security researcher Patrick Wardle affecting the Zoom Mac OS desktop app. The vulnerabilities allowed an attacker who already had access to the Mac device to perform a privilege escalation attack by installing malicious code using the app's auto-update feature, thereby giving them full control over the victim's device.

Zoombombing

"Zoombombing" is a phenomenon where uninvited participants join a meeting to cause disruption. In April 2020, Zoom increased its default security settings to mitigate Zoombombing. The company also created a new "report a user to Zoom" button, intended to catch those behind Zoombombing attacks.

Encryption practices
Zoom encrypts its public data streams, using TLS 1.2 with AES-256 (Advanced Encryption Standard) to protect signaling, and AES-128 to protect streaming media. Security researchers and reporters have criticized the company for its lack of transparency and poor encryption practices. Zoom initially claimed to use "end-to-end encryption" in its marketing materials, but later clarified it meant "from Zoom end point to Zoom end point" (meaning effectively between Zoom servers and Zoom clients), which The Intercept described as misleading and "dishonest". Alex Stamos, a Zoom advisor who was formerly security chief at Facebook, noted that a lack of end-to-end encryption is common in such products, as it is also true of Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, and Cisco Webex. On May 7, 2020, Zoom announced that it had acquired Keybase, a company specializing in end-to-end encryption, as part of an effort to strengthen its security practices moving forward. Later that month, Zoom published a document for peer review, detailing its plans to ultimately bring end-to-end encryption to the software.

In April 2020, Citizen Lab researchers discovered that a single, server-generated AES-128 key is being shared between all participants in ECB mode, which is deprecated due to its pattern-preserving characteristics of the ciphertext. During test calls between participants in Canada and United States, the key was provisioned from servers located in mainland China where they are subject to the China Internet Security Law.

On June 3, 2020, Zoom announced that users on their free tier will not have access to end-to-end encryption so that they could cooperate with the FBI and law enforcement. Later, they said that they do not "proactively monitor meeting content". On June 17, 2020, the company reversed course and announced that free users would have access to end-to-end encryption after all.

On September 7, 2020, cryptography researcher Nadim Kobeissi accused Zoom's security team of failing to credit his open-source protocol analysis research software, Verifpal, with being instrumental during the design phase of Zoom's new encryption protocol, as described in their whitepaper published in June 2020. Kobeissi published a week's worth of conversations with Zoom's security leadership in support of his claim, including Max Krohn, which included eight Verifpal models that Zoom's team asked for feedback on, promises of a citation to credit Kobeissi for his contributions and an admission that the Verifpal citation was pulled from the whitepaper at the last moment for unspecified reasons. Kobeissi also linked to a tweet by Zoom security consultant Lea Kissner which he described as a public character assassination attempt issued in response to his repeated requests to have his work cited in the research paper published by Zoom.

Data routing
Zoom admitted that some calls in early April 2020 and prior were mistakenly routed through servers in mainland China, prompting some governments and businesses to cease their usage of Zoom. The company later announced that data of free users outside of China would "never be routed through China" and that paid subscribers will be able to customize which data center regions they want to use. The company has data centers in Europe, Asia, North America, and Latin America.

Regulatory issues
In August 2021, the Data Protection regulatory body in Hamburg, Germany, ruled that Zoom was operating in the European Union in breach of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This is due to the fact that, as per the Schrems II ruling, data that is being transferred out of the EU must be given the same protections that provided by the GDPR. The data gathered by Zoom was being sent to the United States.

See also
 List of video telecommunication services and product brands
 Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on science and technology
 Zoom fatigue
 Zoom town

References

External links

2012 software
Videotelephony
Web conferencing
Internet properties established in 2012
Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on science and technology
Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States
Software associated with the COVID-19 pandemic
Zoom (software)

Zoom (software)


SAGE (Strategy Action Game Engine) is a game engine used primarily for real-time strategy games developed by Westwood Studios and Electronic Arts. Earlier implementations of the engine were known as W3D (Westwood 3D) while later versions were branded SAGE 2.0.

History
The first version of the engine, originally named W3D, was a major modification of the SurRender 3D engine developed by Hybrid Graphics Ltd. Westwood first used W3D for their first-person shooter Command & Conquer: Renegade and their massively multiplayer online role-playing game Earth & Beyond.

After Westwood was dissolved by their parent company, Electronic Arts, the engine was renamed SAGE (Strategy Action Game Engine) and updated for the release of Command & Conquer: Generals. The rendering portion remained nearly identical to the W3D engine, but most other elements had been redesigned from the ground up. The updated SAGE engine allowed for dynamic lighting that would cast realistic shadows and reflections on most objects, as well as higher quality visual effects and a stop-motion camera feature. The SAGE engine would continue to be used by EA Los Angeles on additional titles in the Command & Conquer series and on the real-time strategy series The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth.

Following the release of the Command & Conquer 3 expansion Kane's Wrath, the engine underwent a large overhaul of its major systems. This new version of the engine was called SAGE 2.0 and was first used on Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3. Major upgrades included support for the PlayStation 3, an upgrade of the renderer to RNA (RenderWare New Architecture), complete replacement of the math library with RenderWare Math, integration of RenderWare Physics, dynamic environmental music, and numerous minor internal improvements. A common misconception was that the new engine itself was called RNA when in fact RNA only referred to the renderer. The last title to use the SAGE 2.0 engine was Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight.

Games

W3D engine
Earth & Beyond
Emperor: Battle for Dune
Command & Conquer: Renegade
Command & Conquer: Tiberian Incursion (canceled)
Command & Conquer: Renegade 2 (canceled)
Command & Conquer: Continuum (canceled)

SAGE engine
Command & Conquer: Generals
Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour
The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth
The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II
The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II: The Rise of the Witch-king
Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath

SAGE 2.0 engine
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 – Uprising
Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight

References

2001 software
SAGE (game engine) games
Video game engines
Westwood Studios

SAGE (game engine)


The Hammam of Sultan Inal is a historic hammam (public bathhouse) in Cairo, Egypt. It is located in the Bayn al-Qasrayn area, on al-Mu'izz street, in the historic center of Cairo. The hammam was commissioned by Sultan Inal and built in 1456, during the Mamluk period. It is one of the few well-preserved hammams in Cairo out of the nearly 80 that existed by the end of the 19th century. It recently underwent a multi-year restoration and is now open to visitors as a historic monument.

References

Mamluk architecture in Egypt
Muizz Street
Public baths in the Arab world
Medieval Cairo
Buildings and structures in Cairo

Hammam of Sultan Inal


Kayode Egbetokun (born September 1964), is a Nigerian police officer who is the current and 22nd Inspector General of Police. He was appointed by the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to replace Usman Alkali Baba.

Early life and education
Egbetokun was born on 4 September 1964 in Erinja, Yewa South local government area of Ogun state. He graduated from the University of Lagos, Akoka, with a  bachelor's degree in Mathematics in June 1987 and lectured Mathematics briefly at Yaba College of Technology. He has a master's degree in Engineering Analysis from the University of Lagos in 1996, a postgraduate diploma in Petroleum Economics from Delta State University in 2000, and an MBA from Lagos State University, Ojo in 2004.
He also holds a PhD in Peace and Security Studies from Al-hikmah University, Ilorin, Kwara State.

Career
Egbetokun enlisted in the Nigeria Police Force on 3 March 1990 as a Cadet Assistant Superintendent of Police. As a deputy superintendent of Police in 1999, he was appointed the chief security officer to the then-elected governor of Lagos State, Bola Tinubu, who is now the President of Nigeria.

He has served as the Commander, Rapid Response Squad (RRS), Lagos, Squadron Commander, MOPOL, Anti-Fraud Unit, FCT Command, Abuja, Chief Superintendent of Police, Administration, Lagos State Command headquarters, Ikeja, Area Commander, Osogbo, Osun State Command and Area Commander, Gusau, Zamfara State Command.

On 19 June 2023,  President Tinubu appointed Egbetokun to replace Usman Alkali Baba. Until his appointment as the inspector general, he was a deputy inspector-general of police and supervising DIG for the South-West geo-political zone, to head the Force Criminal Investigations Department (FCID), Force Headquarters, Abuja since 6 April  2023.

References

Living people
1964 births
People from Ogun State
Nigerian police chiefs
Delta State University alumni
Lagos State University alumni

Kayode Egbetokun


Bulgarians (, ) are a nation and South Slavic ethnic group native to Bulgaria and its neighbouring region, who share a common Bulgarian ancestry, culture, history and language. They form the majority of the population in Bulgaria, while in North Macedonia, Ukraine, Moldova, Serbia, Romania, Hungary, Albania and Greece they exist as historical communities.

Etymology

Bulgarians derive their ethnonym from the Bulgars. Their name is not completely understood and difficult to trace back earlier than the 4th century AD, but it is possibly derived from the Proto-Turkic word *bulģha ("to mix", "shake", "stir") and its derivative *bulgak ("revolt", "disorder"). Alternative etymologies include derivation from a compound of Proto-Turkic (Oghuric) *bel ("five") and *gur ("arrow" in the sense of "tribe"), a proposed division within the Utigurs or Onogurs ("ten tribes").

Citizenship
According to art. 25(1) of Constitution of Bulgaria, a Bulgarian citizen shall be anyone born to at least one parent holding a Bulgarian citizenship, or born on the territory of the Republic of Bulgaria, should they not be entitled to any other citizenship by virtue of origin. Bulgarian citizenship shall further be acquirable through naturalization. About 85% of Bulgaria's population identified themselves as ethnic Bulgarians in 2021 Bulgarian census.

Ethnogenesis
Bulgarians are descended from peoples of vastly different origins and numbers, and are thus the result of a "melting pot" effect.
The main ethnic elements which blended in to produce the modern Bulgarian ethnicity are:
 Thracians – a native ancient Balkan Indo-European people that left a cultural and genetic legacy. Approx. 55% of Bulgarian autosomal genetic legacy is of Paleo-Balkan and Mediterranean origin and can be attributed to Thracian and other indigenous Balkan population predating Slavs and Bulgars;
 Early Slavs – an Indo-European group of tribes that migrated from Eastern Europe into the Balkans in the 6th–7th century CE and imposed their language and culture on the local Thracian, Roman and Greek communities. Approx. 40% of Bulgarian autosomal make-up comes from a northeastern European population that admixed with the native population in  400–1000 CE;
 Bulgars – a semi-nomadic tribal federation from Central Asia that settled in the northeast of the Balkans in 7th century CE, federated with the local Slavic and Slavicized population, organised the early medieval Bulgarian statehood and bequeathed their ethnonym to the modern Bulgarian ethnicity, while eventually assimilating into the Slavic population. Approximately 2.3% of Bulgarian genes originate in Central Asia, corresponding to Asian tribes such as the Bulgars, with admixture peaking in the 9th century CE;<ref>Science, 14 February 2014, Vol. 343 no. 6172, p. 751, A Genetic Atlas of Human Admixture History, Garrett Hellenthal at al.: " CIs. for the admixture time(s) overlap but predate the Mongol empire, with estimates from 440 to 1080 CE (Fig.3. )</ref>

The indigenous Thracians left a cultural and genetic legacy. Other pre-Slavic Indo-European peoples, including Dacians (if distinct from Thracians), Celts, Goths, Romans, ancient Greeks, Sarmatians, Paeonians and Illyrians also settled into the later Bulgarian land. The Thracian language was still spoken in the 6th century, probably becoming extinct afterwards,The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, 7th edition, pp. 57 but that in a later period the Bulgarians replaced long-established Greek/Latin toponyms with Thracian, might suggest that it had not been completely obliterated then. Some pre-Slavic linguistic and cultural traces might have been preserved in modern Bulgarians (and Macedonians).Ancient Languages of the Balkans, Radoslav Katicic,  Walter de Gruyter, 1976, , pp. 9–10; 71.  Scythia Minor and Moesia Inferior appear to have been Romanized, although the region became a focus of barbarian re-settlements (various Goths and Huns) during the 4th and early 5th centuries AD, before a further "Romanization" episode during the early 6th century. According to archeological evidence from the late periods of Roman rule, the Romans did not decrease the number of Thracians significantly in major cities. By the 4th century the major city of Serdica had predominantly Thracian populace based on epigraphic evidence, which shows prevailing Latino-Thracian given names, but thereafter the names were completely replaced by Christian ones.

The early Slavs emerged from their original homeland in the early 6th century, and spread to most of the eastern Central Europe, Eastern Europe and the Balkans, thus forming three main branches: the West Slavs in eastern Central Europe, the East Slavs in Eastern Europe, and the South Slavs in Southeastern Europe (Balkans). The latter gradually inflicted total linguistic replacement of Thracian, if the Thracians had not already been Romanized or Hellenized. Most scholars accept that they began large-scale settling of the Balkans in the 580s based on the statement of the 6th century historian Menander speaking of 100,000 Slavs in Thrace and consecutive attacks of Greece in 582. They continued coming to the Balkans in many waves, but also leaving, most notably Justinian II (685–695) settled as many as 30,000 Slavs from Thrace in Asia Minor.  The Byzantines grouped the numerous Slavic tribes into two groups: the Sclaveni and Antes. Some Bulgarian scholars suggest that the Antes became one of the ancestors of the modern Bulgarians.

The Bulgars are first mentioned in the 4th century in the vicinity of the North Caucasian steppe. Scholars often suggest that the ultimate origins of the Bulgar is Turkic and can be traced to the Central Asian nomadic confederations, specifically as part of loosely related Oghuric tribes which spanned from the Pontic steppe to central Asia. However, any direct connection between the Bulgars and postulated Asian counterparts rest on little more than speculative and "contorted etymologies". Some Bulgarian historians question the identification of the Bulgars as a Turkic tribe and suggest an Iranian origin.Bakalov, Georgi. Малко известни факти от историята на древните българи. Part 1  & Part 2 .  Other Bulgarian scholars actively oppose the "Iranian hypothesis".Надпис № 21 от българското златно съкровище "Наги Сент-Миклош", студия от проф. д-р Иван Калчев Добрев от Сборник с материали от Научна конференция на ВА "Г. С. Раковски". София, 2005 г. According to Raymond Detrez, the Iranian theory is rooted in the periods of anti-Turkish sentiment in Bulgaria and is ideologically motivated. Since 1989, anti-Turkish rhetoric is now reflected in the theories that challenge the thesis of the Bulgars' Turkic origin. Alongside the Iranian or Aryan theory, there appeared arguments favoring an autochthonous origin.

In the 670s, some Bulgar tribes, the Danube Bulgars led by Asparuh and the Bulgars, led by Kuber, crossed the Danube river and settled in the Balkans with a single migration wave, the former of which Michael the Syrian described as numbering 10,000. The Bulgars are often not thought to have been numerous, becoming a ruling elite in the areas they controlled. However, according to Steven Runciman a tribe that was able to defeat an Emperor-lead Byzantine army, must have been of considerable dimensions. Asparuh's Bulgars made a tribal union with the Severians and the "Seven clans", who were re-settled to protect the flanks of the Bulgar settlements in Scythia Minor, as the capital Pliska was built on the site of a former Slavic settlement.

During the Early Byzantine Era, the Roman provincials in Scythia Minor and Moesia Secunda were already engaged in economic and social exchange with the 'barbarians' north of the Danube. This might have facilitated their eventual Slavonization, although the majority of the population appears to have been withdrawn to the hinterland of Constantinople or Asia Minor prior to any permanent Slavic and Bulgar settlement south of the Danube. The major port towns in Pontic Bulgaria remained Byzantine Greek in their outlook. The large scale population transfers and territorial expansions during the 8th and 9th century, additionally increased the number of the Slavs and Byzantine Christians within the state, making the Bulgars quite obviously a minority. The establishment of a new state molded the various Slav, Bulgar and earlier or later populations into the "Bulgarian people" of the First Bulgarian Empire speaking a South Slavic language. In different periods to the ethnogenesis of the local population contributed also different Indo-European and Turkic people, who settled or lived on the Balkans.

 Bulgarian ethnogenetic conception
The Bulgarians are usually regarded as part of the Slavic ethnolinguistic group.Expansions: Competition and Conquest in Europe Since the Bronze Age, Reykjavíkur Akademían, 2010, , p. 194.  However the controversial issue of their ethnogenesis is a popular subject in the works of the nationalist scientists. The fierce debates started in the 19th century and the questionable proportions of the presumed Thracian, Bulgar, and Slavic ancestry, have depended on the geopolitical situation of the country and on ideological and political predilections."Differentiation in Entanglement: Debates on Antiquity, Ethnogenesis and Identity in Nineteenth-Century Bulgaria", in Klaniczay, Gábor and Werner, Michael (eds.), Multiple Antiquities – Multiple Modernities. Ancient Histories in Nineteenth Century European Cultures. Frankfurt – Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011, 213–246. These supposed proportions have been changed several times during the 20th century, emphasizing usually the Slavic part of Bulgarian ancestry, related to the traditionally strong Russophilia in the country.T. Kamusella, Peter Burke, The Politics of Language and Nationalism in Modern Central Europe, Springer, 2008, , p. 285. However, during the 1970s the Thracology was especially supported by the communist authority, as an attempt to underline the indigenous influence into the Bulgarian ethnogenesis. After the fall of Communism, the spiritualized image of the Thracians began to fade. Following the cooling of the relations with Russia, and the country's EU accession, the opinion on significant Bulgar genetic impact, was launched among nationalist circles, that lately have downplayed the country's Slavic ancestry.Tchavdar Marinov, Ancient Thrace in the Modern Imagination: Ideological Aspects of the Construction of Thracian Studies in Southeast Europe (Romania, Greece, Bulgaria) in Entangled Histories of the Balkans – Volume Three, 2015, , pp 10–117. From a limited group of Turkic equestrian nomads, the Danubian Bulgars were reinterpreted by them as a numerous Aryan people, with a unique culture.Александър Николов, "Параисторията като феномен на прехода: преоткриването на древните българи" в "Историческият хабитус: опредметената история", 2013, съст. Ю. Тодоров и А. Лунин, стр. 24–63.

Genetic origins

According to a triple analysis – autosomal, mitochondrial and paternal — of available data from large-scale studies on Balto-Slavs and their proximal populations, the whole genome SNP data situates Bulgarians in a cluster with Romanians, Macedonians and Gagauzes, and they are at similar proximity to Serbs and Montenegrins.

Bulgarians, like most Europeans, largely descend from three distinct lineages: Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, descended from populations associated with the Paleolithic Epigravettian culture; Neolithic Early European Farmers who migrated from Anatolia during the Neolithic Revolution 9,000 years ago; and Yamnaya Steppe herders who expanded into Europe from the Pontic steppe in the context of Indo-European migrations 5,000 years ago.

History

The First Bulgarian Empire was founded in 681. After the adoption of Orthodox Christianity in 864 it became one of the cultural centres of Slavic Europe. Its leading cultural position was consolidated with the invention of the Cyrillic script in its capital Preslav at the eve of the 10th century. The development of Old Church Slavonic literacy in the country had the effect of preventing the assimilation of the South Slavs into neighbouring cultures and it also stimulated the development of a distinct ethnic identity. A symbiosis was carried out between the numerically weak Bulgars and the numerous Slavic tribes in that broad area from the Danube to the north, to the Aegean Sea to the south, and from the Adriatic Sea to the west, to the Black Sea to the east, who accepted the common ethnonym "Bulgarians". During the 10th century, the Bulgarians established a form of national identity that was far from modern nationalism but helped them to survive as a distinct entity through the centuries.

In 1018, Bulgaria lost its independence and remained a Byzantine subject until 1185, when the Second Bulgarian Empire was created. Nevertheless, at the end of the 14th century, the Ottomans conquered the whole of Bulgaria. Under the Ottoman system, Christians were considered an inferior class of people. Thus, Bulgarians, like other Christians, were subjected to heavy taxes and a small portion of the Bulgarian populace experienced partial or complete Islamisation. Orthodox Christians were included in a specific ethno-religious community called Rum Millet. To the common people, belonging to this Orthodox commonwealth became more important than their ethnic origins. This community became both, basic form of social organization and source of identity for all the ethnic groups inside it. In this way, ethnonyms were rarely used and between the 15th and 19th centuries, most of the local people gradually began to identify themselves simply as Christians. However, the public-spirited clergy in some isolated monasteries still kept the distinct Bulgarian identity alive, and this helped it to survive predominantly in rural, remote areas. Despite the process of ethno-religious fusion among the Orthodox Christians, strong nationalist sentiments persisted into the Catholic community in the northwestern part of the country. At that time, a process of partial Hellenization occurred among the intelligentsia and the urban population, as a result of the higher status of the Greek culture and the Greek Orthodox Church among the Balkan Christians. During the second half of the 18th century, the Enlightenment in Western Europe provided influence for the initiation of the National awakening of Bulgaria in 1762.

Some Bulgarians supported the Russian Army when they crossed the Danube in the middle of the 18th century. Russia worked to convince them to settle in areas recently conquered by it, especially in Bessarabia. As a consequence, many Bulgarian refugees settled there, and later they formed two military regiments, as part of the Russian military colonization of the area in 1759–1763.

Bulgarian national movement

During the Russo-Turkish Wars of 1806–1812 and 1828–1829 Bulgarian emigrants formed the Bulgarian Countrymen's Army and joined the Russian Army, hoping Russia would bring Bulgarian liberation, but its imperial interests were focused then on Greece and Valachia. The rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire led to a struggle for cultural and religious autonomy of the Bulgarian people. The Bulgarians wanted to have their own schools and liturgy in Bulgarian, and they needed an independent ecclesiastical organisation. Discontent with the supremacy of the Greek Orthodox clergy, the struggle started to flare up in several Bulgarian dioceses in the 1820s.

It was not until the 1850s when the Bulgarians initiated a purposeful struggle against the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The struggle between the Bulgarians and the Greek Phanariotes intensified throughout the 1860s. In 1861 the Vatican and the Ottoman government recognized a separate Bulgarian Uniat Church. As the Greek clerics were ousted from most Bulgarian bishoprics at the end of the decade, significant areas had been seceded from the Patriarchate's control. This movement restored the distinct Bulgarian national consciousness among the common people and led to the recognition of the Bulgarian millet in 1870 by the Ottomans. As result, two armed struggle movements started to develop as late as the beginning of the 1870s: the Internal Revolutionary Organisation and the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee. Their armed struggle reached its peak with the April Uprising which broke out in 1876. It resulted in the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), and led to the foundation of the third Bulgarian state after the Treaty of San Stefano. The issue of Bulgarian nationalism gained greater significance, following the Congress of Berlin which took back the Macedonia and Adrianople regions, returning them under the control of the Ottoman Empire. Also an autonomous Ottoman province, called Eastern Rumelia was created in Northern Thrace. As a consequence, the Bulgarian national movement proclaimed as its aim the inclusion of most of Macedonia, Thrace and Moesia under Greater Bulgaria.

Eastern Rumelia was annexed to Bulgaria in 1885 through bloodless revolution. During the early 1890s, two pro-Bulgarian revolutionary organizations were founded: the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization and the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee. In 1903 they participated in the unsuccessful Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising against the Ottomans in Macedonia and the Adrianople Vilayet. Macedonian Slavs were identified then predominantly as Bulgarians, and significant Bulgarophile sentiments endured up among them until the end of the Second World War.Up until the early 20th century and beyond, the international community viewed Macedonians as regional variety of Bulgarians, i.e. Western Bulgarians.Nationalism and Territory: Constructing Group Identity in Southeastern Europe, Geographical perspectives on the human past : Europe: Current Events , George W. White, Rowman & Littlefield, 2000, , p. 236."At the end of the WWI there were very few historians or ethnographers, who claimed that a separate Macedonian nation existed... Of those Slavs who had developed some sense of national identity, the majority probably considered themselves to be Bulgarians, although they were aware of differences between themselves and the inhabitants of Bulgaria... The question as of whether a Macedonian nation actually existed in the 1940s when a Communist Yugoslavia decided to recognize one is difficult to answer. Some observers argue that even at this time it was doubtful whether the Slavs from Macedonia considered themselves to be a nationality separate from the Bulgarians."

In the early 20th century the control over Macedonia became a key point of contention between Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia, who fought the First Balkan War of (1912–1913) and the Second Balkan War of (1913). The area was further fought over during the World War I (1915–1918) and the World War II (1941–1944).

Demographics

Most Bulgarians live in Bulgaria, where they number around 6 million, constituting 85% of the population. Bulgarian minorities exist in Serbia, Romania (Banat Bulgarians), Hungary, Albania, as well as in Ukraine and Moldova (see Bessarabian Bulgarians). Many Bulgarians also live in the diaspora, which is formed by representatives and descendants of the old (before 1989) and new (after 1989) emigration. The old emigration was made up of some 2,470,000  economic and several tens of thousands of political emigrants, and was directed for the most part to the U.S., Canada, Argentina, Brazil and Germany. The new emigration is estimated at some 970,000 people and can be divided into two major subcategories: permanent emigration at the beginning of the 1990s, directed mostly to the U.S., Canada, Austria, and Germany and labour emigration at the end of the 1990s, directed for the most part to Greece, Italy, the UK and Spain. Migrations to the West have been quite steady even in the late 1990s and early 21st century, as people continue moving to countries like the US, Canada and Australia. Most Bulgarians living in Canada can be found in Toronto, Ontario, and the provinces with the most Bulgarians in Canada are Ontario and Quebec. According to the 2001 census there were 1,124,240 Bulgarian citizens in the city of Sofia, 302,858 in Plovdiv, 300,000 in Varna and about 200,000 in Burgas. The total number of Bulgarians stood at over 9 million.

Associated ethnic groups
Bulgarians are considered most closely related to the Macedonians. The Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia and the Torlak speakers in Serbia are also closely related to Bulgarians. The greater part of these people were considered Bulgarians by most ethnographers until the early 20th century and beyond.Who are the Macedonians?  Hugh Poulton. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 1995, , p. 109.Jérôme-Adolphe Blanqui, "Voyage en Bulgarie pendant l'année 1841" (Жером-Адолф Бланки. Пътуване из България през 1841 година. Прев. от френски Ел. Райчева, предг. Ив. Илчев. София: Колибри, 2005, 219 с. .) It describes a population in Nish sandjak as Bulgarian, see:

Culture

Language

Bulgarians speak a South Slavic language which is mutually intelligible with Macedonian and to a lesser degree with Serbo-Croatian, especially the eastern dialects. The lexical similarities between Bulgarian and Macedonian are 86%, between Bulgarian and other Slavic languages between 71% and 80%, but with the Baltic languages they are 40–46%, while with English are about 20%. Less than a dozen Bulgarian words are derived from Turkic Bulgar.

Bulgarian demonstrates some linguistic developments that set it apart from other Slavic languages shared with Romanian, Albanian and Greek (see Balkan language area). Bulgarian was influenced lexically by medieval and modern Greek, and Turkish. Medieval Bulgarian influenced the other South Slavic languages and Romanian. With Bulgarian and Russian there was a mutual influence in both directions. Both languages were official or a lingua franca of each other during the Middle Ages and the Cold War. Recently, Bulgarian has borrowed many words from German, French and English.

The Bulgarian language is spoken by the majority of the Bulgarian diaspora, but less so by the descendants of earlier emigrants to the U.S., Canada, Argentina and Brazil.

Bulgarian linguists consider the officialized Macedonian language (since 1944) to be a local codified variation of Bulgarian, just as most ethnographers and linguists until the early 20th century considered the local Slavic speech in the Macedonian region as Bulgarian dialects. The president of Bulgaria, Zhelyu Zhelev, declined to recognize Macedonian as a separate language when North Macedonia became a new independent state. The Bulgarian language is written in the Cyrillic script.

Cyrillic alphabet

In the first half of the 10th century, the Cyrillic script was devised in the Preslav Literary School, Bulgaria, based on the Glagolitic, the Greek and Latin alphabets. Modern versions of the alphabet are now used to write five more Slavic languages such as Belarusian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian and Ukrainian as well as Mongolian and some other 60 languages spoken in the former Soviet Union. Medieval Bulgaria was the most important cultural centre of the Slavic peoples at the end of the 9th and throughout the 10th century. The two literary schools of Preslav and Ohrid developed a rich literary and cultural activity with authors of the rank of Constantine of Preslav, John Exarch, Chernorizets Hrabar, Clement and Naum of Ohrid. Bulgaria exerted similar influence on its neighbouring countries in the mid- to late 14th century, at the time of the Tarnovo Literary School, with the work of Patriarch Evtimiy, Gregory Tsamblak, Constantine of Kostenets (Konstantin Kostenechki). Bulgarian cultural influence was especially strong in Wallachia and Moldova where the Cyrillic script was used until 1860, while Church Slavonic was the official language of the princely chancellery and of the church until the end of the 17th century.

Name system

There are several different layers of Bulgarian names. The vast majority of them have either Christian (names like Lazar, Ivan, Anna, Maria, Ekaterina) or Slavic origin (Vladimir, Svetoslav, Velislava). After the Liberation in 1878, the names of historical Bulgar rulers like Asparuh, Krum, Kubrat and Tervel were resurrected. The Bulgar name Boris has spread from Bulgaria to a number of countries in the world.

Most Bulgarian male surnames have an -ov surname suffix (Cyrillic: ), a tradition used mostly by Eastern Slavic nations such as Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. This is sometimes transcribed as -off or -of (John Atanasov—John Atanasoff), but more often as -ov (e.g. Boyko Borisov). The -ov suffix is the Slavic gender-agreeing suffix, thus Ivanov () literally means "Ivan's". Bulgarian middle names are patronymic and use the gender-agreeing suffix as well, thus the middle name of Nikola's son becomes Nikolov, and the middle name of Ivan's son becomes Ivanov. Since names in Bulgarian are gender-based, Bulgarian women have the -ova surname suffix (Cyrillic: ), for example, Maria Ivanova. The plural form of Bulgarian names ends in -ovi (Cyrillic: ), for example the Ivanovi family ().

Other common Bulgarian male surnames have the -ev surname suffix (Cyrillic: ), for example Stoev, Ganchev, Peev, and so on. The female surname in this case would have the -eva surname suffix (Cyrillic: ), for example: Galina Stoeva. The last name of the entire family then would have the plural form of -evi (Cyrillic: ), for example: the Stoevi family ().

Another typical Bulgarian surname suffix, though less common, is -ski. This surname ending also gets an –a when the bearer of the name is female (Smirnenski becomes Smirnenska). The plural form of the surname suffix -ski is still -ski, e.g. the Smirnenski family ().

The ending –in (female -ina) also appears rarely. It used to be given to the child of an unmarried woman (for example the son of Kuna will get the surname Kunin and the son of Gana – Ganin). The surname suffix -ich can be found only occasionally, primarily among the Roman Catholic Bulgarians. The surname ending –ich does not get an additional –a if the bearer of the name is female.

Religion

Most Bulgarians are at least nominally members of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church founded in 870 AD (autocephalous since 927 AD). The Bulgarian Orthodox Church is the independent national church of Bulgaria like the other national branches of the Eastern Orthodox communion and is considered a dominating element of Bulgarian national consciousness. The church was abolished once, during the period of Ottoman rule (1396—1878), in 1873 it was revived as Bulgarian Exarchate and soon after raised again to Bulgarian Patriarchate. In 2011, the Orthodox Church at least nominally had a total of 4,374,000 members in Bulgaria (59% of the population), down from 6,552,000 (83%) at the 2001 census. 4,240,000 of these pointed out the Bulgarian ethnic group. The Orthodox Bulgarian minorities in Romania, Serbia, Greece, Albania, Ukraine and Moldova nowadays hold allegiance to the respective national Orthodox churches.

Despite the position of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church as a unifying symbol for all Bulgarians, small groups of Bulgarians have converted to other faiths through the course of time. During Ottoman rule, a substantial number of Bulgarians converted to Islam, forming the community of the Pomaks or Muslim Bulgarians. In the 16th and the 17th centuries Roman Catholic missionaries converted a small number of Bulgarian Paulicians in the districts of Plovdiv and Svishtov to Roman Catholicism. Nowadays there are some 40,000 Roman Catholic Bulgarians in Bulgaria, additional 10,000 in the Banat in Romania and up to 100,000 people of Bulgarian ancestry in South America. The Roman Catholic Bulgarians of the Banat are also descendants of Paulicians who fled there at the end of the 17th century after an unsuccessful uprising against the Ottomans. Protestantism was introduced in Bulgaria by missionaries from the United States in 1857. Missionary work continued throughout the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. Nowadays there are some 25,000 Protestant Bulgarians in Bulgaria.

Art and science

Boris Christoff, Nicolai Ghiaurov, Raina Kabaivanska and Ghena Dimitrova made a precious contribution to opera singing with Ghiaurov and Christoff being two of the greatest bassos in the post-war period. Similarly, Anna-Maria Ravnopolska-Dean is one of the best-known harpists today.
Bulgarians have made valuable contributions to world culture in modern times as well. Julia Kristeva and Tzvetan Todorov were among the most influential European philosophers in the second half of the 20th century. The artist Christo is among the most famous representatives of environmental art, with projects such as the Wrapped Reichstag.

Bulgarians in the diaspora have also been active. American scientists and inventors of Bulgarian descent include John Atanasoff, Peter Petroff, and Assen Jordanoff. Bulgarian-American Stephane Groueff wrote the celebrated book Manhattan Project, about the making of the first atomic bomb and also penned Crown of Thorns, a biography of Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria.

Cuisine

Famous for its rich salads required at every meal, Bulgarian cuisine is also noted for the diversity and quality of dairy products and the variety of local wines and alcoholic beverages such as rakia, mastika and menta. Bulgarian cuisine features also a variety of hot and cold soups, an example of a cold soup being tarator. There are many different Bulgarian pastries as well such as banitsa.

Most Bulgarian dishes are oven baked, steamed, or in the form of stew. Deep-frying is not very typical, but grilling—especially different kinds of meats—is very common. Pork meat is the most common meat in the Bulgarian cuisine. Oriental dishes do exist in Bulgarian cuisine with most common being moussaka, gyuvetch, and baklava. A very popular ingredient in Bulgarian cuisine is the Bulgarian white brine cheese called "sirene" (сирене). It is the main ingredient in many salads, as well as in a variety of pastries. Fish and chicken are widely eaten and while beef is less common as most cattle are bred for milk production rather than meat, veal is a natural byproduct of this process and it is found in many popular recipes. Bulgaria is a net exporter of lamb and its own consumption of the meat is prevalent during its production time in spring. The bread and salt tradition, which is widespread among Balto-Slavs, is the usual welcome given tostrangers and politicians.

Folk beliefs and customs

Bulgarians may celebrate Saint Theodore's Day with horse racings. At Christmas Eve a Pogača with fortunes is cooked, which are afterwards put under the pillow. At Easter the first egg is painted red and is kept for a whole year. On the Baptism of Jesus a competition to catch the cross in the river is held and is believed the sky is "opened" and any wish will be fulfilled.

Bulgarians as well as Albanians nod the head up and down to indicates "no" and shake to indicate "yes". They may wear the martenitsa (мартеница)—an adornment made of white and red yarn and worn on the wrist or pinned on the clothes—from 1 March until the end of the month. Alternatively, one can take off the martenitsa earlier if one sees a stork (considered a harbinger of spring). One can then tie the martenitsa to the blossoming branch of a tree. Family-members and friends in Bulgaria customarily exchange martenitsas, which they regard as symbols of health and longevity. When a stork is seen, the martenitsa should be left on a tree. The white thread represents peace and tranquility, while the red one stands for the cycles of life. Bulgarians may also refer to the holiday of 1 March as Baba Marta (Баба Марта), meaning Grandmother March. It preserves an ancient pagan tradition, possibly celebrating the old Roman new Year, beginning on 1 March, identical with Romanian Mărțișor. Pagan customs found their way to the Christian holidays. The ancient ritual of kukeri (кукери), similar to Slovenian Kurentovanje, Busójárás and Halloween, is performed by costumed men in different times of the year and after Easter. This seeks to scare away evil spirits and bring good harvest and health to the community. Goat is symbolized, that was left from the Thracian cult of Dionysian Mysteries. The ritual consists of dancing, jumping, shouting and collect gifts from the houses in an attempt to banish all evil from the village. The adornments on the costumes vary from one region to another. The Thracian Heros remains in the image of Saint George, at whose feast the agriculture is celebrated, a lamb is traditionally eaten, accomplished with ritual bathing. Saint Tryphon's fertility and wine is attributed a Thracian origin, considered to preserve the cult to Sabazius as the Kukeri. This is followed in February by Pokladi, a tradition of setting massively large fire and jump over as at the Kupala Night and a competition between couples to eat an egg on a thread is held. Another characteristic custom called nestinarstvo (нестинарство), or firedancing, distinguishes the Strandzha region, as well as Dog spinning. The authentic nestinarstvo with states of trance is only preserved in the village Balgari. This ancient custom involves dancing into fire or over live embers. Women dance into the fire with their bare feet without suffering any injury or pain.

Slavic pagan customs are preserved in Bulgarian Christian holidays. The Miladinov brothers and foreign authors noticed that even pagan prayers are preserved quoting plenty of Slavic pagan rite songs and tales remained in Bulgarians, including Macedonians and Pomaks, mainly dedicated to the divine nymphs samovili and peperuna for the feasts surva, Saint George's Day, Koleda, etc. with evidence of toponymy throughout the regional groups linking directly to the deities Svarog, Perun, Hors and Veles, while the regional group Hartsoi derive their name from god Hors. Songs dedicated to the Thracian divinity Orpheus were found in Pomaks, who is said to marry the samovili. The old Bulgarian name of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple was Gromnitsa and Perunov den dedicated to the supreme Slavic thunder god Perun. In the mix of Christian and pagan patrons of thunder, at Saint Elijah's feast day Ognyena Maria is worshiped, the Slavic goddesses assisting Perun that took a substitutional dual position of the Christian Mother of God. The custom for rain begging Peperuna is derived from the wife of Perun and the god of the rain Dodola, this was described by a 1792 Bulgarian book as a continued worship of Perun at times of absence of rain with a ritual performed by a boy or a girl dressed like Perun. Similar rain begging is called German. In case of continuous lack of rain, a custom of driving out the zmey from the area is performed. In the dualistic Slavic belief the zmey may be both good tutelary spirit and evil, in which case is considered not local and good, but evil and trying to inflict harm and drought. Saint Jeremiah's feast is of the snakes and the reptiles, there is a tradition of jumping over fire. At the Rusalka week the girls don't go outside to prevent themselves from diseases and harm that the dead forces Rusalii can cause. This remained the holiday of the samovili. The men performing the custom are also called Rusalii, they don't let anybody pass through between them, don't talk with each other except for the evening, avoid water, if someone lacks behind a member swoops the sword over the lacker's head to prevent him from evil spirits. If the group encounter on their way a well, dry tree, old cemeteries, crossroads, they go round them three times. Before leaving rusalii say goodbye to their relatives as if they went to war, which is not surprising because some of them are killed. When two rusalii groups met there was a fight to the death in which the dead were buried in special "rusaliyski cemetery." Each year there are holidays in honour of wolves and mouses. A relief for the scared believers is celebrated at the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, when according to Bulgarian belief all the mythical figures go back to their caves in a mythical village in the middle of nowhere Zmeykovo of the zmey king, along with the rusalki, samodivi, and return at Annunciation. According to other beliefs the danger peaks at the so-called few days around the New Year Eve "Dirty Days", this time starts at Koleda, which merged with Christmas, when groups of kids koledari visit houses, singing carols and receiving a gift at parting. It is believed that no man can go in Zmeyovo and only the magpie knows the location of this place. At many of the holidays a sexual taboo is said to be practiced to prevent conceiving a vampire or werewolf and not to work, not to go to Sedenki or go out. Live-fire is set in case of epidemics. Babinden for example is rooted in the mother-goddess. On the day of St. Vlas, the tradition of a "wooly" god Veles established itself, a god who is considered to be a protector of shepherds, and bread is given to the livestock on that day. The ancient Slavic custom to marry died people occurred in Bulgarian society. Survakane is performed each new year with a decorated stick by children, who hit adults on the back for health at the New Year Eve, usually in exchange of money. In the Chech region there is a custom forbidding "touching the land", i.e. construction and agriculture, at the equinox on 25 March and the same custom is found in Belarusian Volhynia and Polesia.

Bulgarian mythology and fairy tales are mainly about forest figures, such as the dragon zmey, the nymphs samovili (samodivi), the witch veshtitsa. They are usually harmful and devastating, but can also help the people. The samovili are said to live in beeches and sycamores the, which are therefore considered holy and not permitted burning. Samovili, although believed to be masters of everything between the sky and the earth, "run away" from fraxinus, garlic, dew and walnut. Walnut remained in Christianity to be used in prayers to "see" the dead in Spirits Day. Dictamnus is believed to be their favourite herb, which is intoxicating. The samovili are spirits in Bulgarian beliefs are the diseases themselves and punish people, kidnap shepherds, make blind the people or drown them and are in white colored dress, they are in odd numbers, which suggest they are ones of the "dead". Epic heroes as Prince Marko are believed to be descended from the samodivi. The elm is believed to scare the evil forces. Sacral trees in Bulgarian beliefs are beeches and oaks. Hawthorn is believed to expel all evil forces and is applied to cure suspected vampires. The tradition forbids killing of sacred animals – deer, while it is hold a belief the samodivi runaway from horse. The alleged as "unclean" animals resembling the devil such as the goat are, however, exempted from being eaten as the holy ones. The zmey is transhuman and can turn "into" animals, plants and items, he is also "responsible" for diseases, madness and missing women. The female version of the Slavic zmey is Lamia and Ala is another version. The girls who practiced Lazaruvane and other rituals "could not" be kidnapped by the zmey. The main enemy of the Sun is the zmey, which tries to eat the Sun, which scene is preserved in church art. The sun is painted one eyed as recorded by beliefs Perun stabbed one of the sun's eyes to save the world from overheating. The born on Saturday are thought as having supernatural powers, those born at the wolves' holidays and a number of people are alleged as varkolaks and vampires. The most spread Bulgarian view of the vampire was that of a rolling bulbous balloon of blood derived from the Slavic term pir "drink". Rusalka is believed to be a variety of the samodivi and Nav, but the latter are considered little fairies. The Thursdays remained feasts of Perun in Bulgarian beliefs. The wind and the hot steam of the bread is believed to be the souls of the dead. From Easter to Feast of the Ascension it is believed that the death are in the flowers and the animals. Mora in Bulgarian beliefs is a black hairy evil spirit with four firing eyes associated with nightmares when causing someone to scream, similarly to Kikimora. Polunoshtnitsa and Poludnica are believed to be evil spirits causing death, while to Lesnik, Domovnik and Vodnik a dualistic nature is attributed. Thanks to the Vlshebnik, a man of the community, a magician and a priest, communication with the "other" world was held. Torbalan is the Sack Man used to scare children, along with Baba Yaga, who is a witch in her Bulgarian version.

Kuma Lisa and Hitar Petar are the tricky fox and villager from the fairy tales, the tricked antagonist is often Nasreddin Hoca, whereas Bay Ganyo is a ridiculed Bulgarian villager. Ivancho and Mariika are the protagonists of the jokes.

Despite eastern Ottoman influence is obvious in areas such as cuisine and music, Bulgarian folk beliefs and mythology seem to lack analogies with Turkic mythology, paganism and any non-European folk beliefs, sо in pre-Christian times the ancient Bulgars were much inferior to the Slavs in the ethnogenesis and culture that resulted in modern Bulgarians. The Slavic language was officialized at the same time with Christianity, so Slavic paganism has never been a state religion of Bulgaria or more influential than Tengriism.  Most of Bulgarian land lack any pagan archeology left from the Bulgars, despite early Christianization and that during most of the pagan period medieval Bulgarian borders spread significantly only in today's northern Bulgaria. Although legacy indicating ancient Bulgar culture is at most virtually absent in modern Bulgarian culture, some authors claim there is a similarity between the dress and customs of the Chuvashes, who descend from the Volga Bulgars, and the Bulgarian ethnographic group Kapantsi from Targovishte Province and Razgrad Province, among whom the claim that they are direct descendants of Asparuh's Bulgars is popular, but Slavic elements are found among them.

Folk dress and music

Bulgarian folk costumes feature long white robes, usually with red embrdoiery and ornaments derived from the Slavic Rachenik.
The costume is considered to be mainly derived from the dress of the ancient Slavs, the female dress with the overgarments joined at the shoulders that evolved from Sarafan and all the types of sukman, saya and aprons fasten at the waist are said to be directly descended from the ancient Slavs only with negligible mutation. The women's head-dress, which turned to be a must for the Bulgarian costume is a decoration with flowers optionally on a headband, that distinguishes all the Balto-Slavic peoples and is not found in western cultures. The male dress is of likewise origin, usually Riza "robe",  poyas "belt", poturi "full-bottomed breeches" typical for the Slavs and often a tsarvul and kalpak for shoes and jacket. Among the most similar relatives of the latter for example is Ukrainian hutsul, but the kalpak is attributed to Ottoman influence. The male skirt fustanella appears on the dress only of the Macedonian Bulgarians and is of indigenous Balkan origin or influence. In some dress of Thrace the symbol of the snake as in medieval tombs is found and is considered a Thracian cultural legacy and belief.

Folk songs are most often about the nymphs from Bulgarian and West Slavic mythology (samovili) and the epic heroes (yunaks). Instruments Gadulka, Gusla, Duduk, gaida Dvoyanka are analogous to other Slavic gudok, dudka and Dvodentsivka. Kaval is common in the Balkans and Turkey and is akin to Arab Kawala, as well as Tapan, Goblet Drum, Zurna. The most spread dance is a circle dance called horo and khorovod. Songs are generally loud. Recent eastern influences from the genre music chalga and turbo-folk even brought a prestige for the masculine voices of females.

Valya Balkanska is a folk singer thanks to whom the Bulgarian speech in her song "Izlel ye Delyo Haydutin" will be played in the Outer space for at least 60,000 years more as part of the Voyager Golden Record selection of music included in the two Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977.

Sport

As for most European peoples, football became by far the most popular sport for the Bulgarians. Hristo Stoichkov was one of the best football (soccer) players in the second half of the 20th century, having played with the national team and FC Barcelona. He received a number of awards and was the joint top scorer at the 1994 World Cup. Dimitar Berbatov, formerly in Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur, Bayer Leverkusen and others, the national team and two domestic clubs, is still the most popular Bulgarian football player of the 21st century.

In the beginning of the 20th century Bulgaria was famous for two of the best wrestlers in the world – Dan Kolov and Nikola Petroff. Stefka Kostadinova is the best female high jumper, still holding the world record from 1987, one of the oldest unbroken world records for all kind of athletics. Ivet Lalova along with Irina Privalova is currently the fastest white woman at 100 metres. Kaloyan Mahlyanov has been the first European sumo wrestler to win the Emperor's Cup in Japan. Veselin Topalov won the 2005 World Chess Championship. He was ranked No. 1 in the world from April 2006 to January 2007, and had the second highest Elo rating of all time (2813). He regained the world No. 1 ranking again in October 2008.

Symbols
The national symbols of the Bulgarians are the Flag, the Coat of Arms, the National anthem and the National Guard, as well other unofficial symbols such as the Samara flag.

The national flag of Bulgaria is a rectangle with three colours: white, green, and red, positioned horizontally top to bottom. The colour fields are of same form and equal size. It is generally known that the white represents – the sky, the green – the forest and nature and the red – the blood of the people, referencing the strong bond of the nation through all the wars and revolutions that have shaken the country in the past.
The Coat of arms of Bulgaria is a state symbol of the sovereignty and independence of the Bulgarian people and state. It represents a crowned rampant golden lion on a dark red background with the shape of a shield. Above the shield there is a crown modeled after the crowns of the emperors of the Second Bulgarian Empire, with five crosses and an additional cross on top. Two crowned rampant golden lions hold the shield from both sides, facing it. They stand upon two crossed oak branches with acorns, which symbolize the power and the longevity of the Bulgarian state. Under the shield, there is a white band lined with the three national colours. The band is placed across the ends of the branches and the phrase "Unity Makes Strength" is inscribed on it.

Both the Bulgarian flag and the Coat of Arms are also used as symbols of various Bulgarian organisations, political parties and institutions.

The horse of the Madara Rider is preserved on the back of the Bulgarian stotinka.

Maps

Historiography

With the formation of the Bulgarian ethnicity in the mid-10th century,Fine, John Van Antwerp (1991). The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century. University of Michigan Press. p. 68, . the Byzantines usually called the Bulgarians Moesi, and their lands, Moesia''.

See also

Balkan–Danubian culture
Macedonian Bulgarians
Macedonians (ethnic group)
Thracian Bulgarians

References

Sources

External links

Ethnic groups in Albania
Ethnic groups in Bulgaria
Ethnic groups in Greece
Ethnic groups in Macedonia (region)
Ethnic groups in Moldova
Ethnic groups in Serbia
Ethnic groups in North Macedonia
Ethnic groups in Turkey
Ethnic groups in Ukraine
Slavic ethnic groups
South Slavs

Bulgarians


"Regina Saba a Salomone recepta", Anglice "The Queen of Sheba's Visit to King Solomon", est tabula anno 1890 ab Eduardo Iohanne Poynter picta, quae episodium Biblicum figurat (in libris Regum primo Chronicorumque altero narratum) itineris Reginae Saba ad regem Salomonem admirandum.

Poynter investigationibus archaeologicis usus est Iacobi Fergusson qui, architectura Assyrorum et Persarum descripta, palatium regis Salomonis reconstruere temptaverat. Ita, secundum recensionem huius picturae in diario The Times, "modern archaeology has at least given scope for a great deal of plausible guessing as to what 'Solomon in all his glory' was really like". Sed Rudyard Kipling (pictoris nepos) aliter iudicavit de vestimentis a Poynter pictis: "It's Old Brer Solomon coming down the steps of his throne to welcome Sis Sheby as she comes along with apes and peacocks and all that truck. I never saw such a blaze of colour or jumble of notions ... Sol in stamped blue and red Peshawurlac cloth, Sheba in Delhi brocade ... 'I thought it was oriental' said Poynter 'and no one knows any better here.' It's mighty curious to see behind an R.A.'s piccy and note the bits of things it is made up of."

Notae

Bibliographia
 W. Armstrong, A Note by W. Armstrong on the Meeting of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba by Edward J. Poynter. Londinii: Charles Potter, 1890
 A. Inglis, "Edward Poynter: The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon, 1890" in R. Benjamin, ed., Orientalism: Delacroix to Klee (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1997) pp. 90-93
 Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, "The Queen of Sheba in Western Popular Culture 1850-2000" in St John Simpson, ed., Queen of Sheba: treasures from ancient Yemen (Londinii: British Museum Press, 2002. ISBN 0-7141-1151-1) pp. 12-22

Tabulae pictae
Confecta 1890
Salomon
Res Biblicae figuratae
Regina Saba
Eduardus Poynter

Regina Saba a Salomone recepta (Poynter)


Robert Ross (June 8, 1968 – April 17, 2021), known professionally as Black Rob, was an American rapper who was signed to Sean "Puffy" Combs' Bad Boy Entertainment. He was best known for his 2000 single "Whoa!", which peaked at number 43 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Career
Ross grew up in East Harlem and began rapping between the ages of 11 and 12. He was inspired by the artists he listened to regularly, including Spoonie Gee, Doug E. Fresh, and Slick Rick. When he was 22, he joined his first rap group, the Schizophrenics, though they did not release any albums. He initially rapped under the alias "Bacardi Rob".

He began associating with the Bad Boy label as early as 1996, appearing on the Bad Boy remix to 112's "Come See Me". He was then featured on several Bad Boy releases, including remixes to Total's "What About Us" (1997) and Faith Evans's "Love Like This" (1998), the song "24 Hrs. to Live" (1997) from Mase, and albums by Puff Daddy & the Bad Boy Family (1997) and The Notorious B.I.G. (1999). He also made two appearances on Cru's 1997 album Da Dirty 30, as well as albums by Channel Live, Benzino, Tony Touch, and others. These guest appearances earned him media buzz.

In his earlier years, Black Rob headed the street rap team which he named "Alumni". His debut album Life Story was released in 1999 and rose above platinum sales. In early 2000, he released the hit single "Whoa!". Produced by Diggin' in the Crates Crew member Buckwild, "Whoa!" became his biggest hit. The song peaked at number 43 on the Billboard Hot 100 and reached the top 10 on both the R&B/Hip-Hop and Rap charts. It was Rob's only solo single to reach the Hot 100. Black Rob's verse in the song "By A Stranger", was featured in the in-game radio station "Game Radio" from Grand Theft Auto III.

Despite subsequently appearing on releases by P. Diddy and G. Dep, he did not make another hit single. His second album, The Black Rob Report (2005) failed to perform as strongly as his debut and quickly fell off the Billboard 100 charts. In 2005, Jemal Mosley from Off The Block Entertainment started managing Black Rob's career. In 2010, he parted from Bad Boy and signed to independent label Duck Down Records. In 2011, he released Game Tested, Streets Approved, which peaked at number 44 on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. Black Rob also started his own independent label, Box in One, with Jemal Mosley.

In 2013, he joined the reality series Come Back Kings with Ed Lover, Calvin Richardson, David "Davinch" Chance (of Ruff Endz), Jeff Sanders, Jameio, Mr. Cheeks and Horace Brown. In 2014, he appeared on the song "Take 'Em Off Da Map" on Diamond D's album, The Diam Piece. In 2015, Black Rob released his fourth studio album, Genuine Article on Slimstyle Records, which he produced with Jemal Mosley. Guest emcees include Sean Price, Tek, battle legend Murda Mook, and Quas Amill. Ron Browz, former Bad Boy label-mate Q. Parker (112), Kali Ranks, and Quan all sing choruses on the album. Producers include Easy Mo Bee, Coptic, Big French, and others.

Legal issues
Black Rob was sentenced to over seven years in prison in 2006 after failing to appear in court for his sentencing (which was set to be two-to-six years initially) on a charge of grand larceny from 2004, in which he pleaded guilty to criminal possession of more than US$6,000 worth of jewelry stolen in a hotel. He was released from prison in May 2010, and was interviewed by BET two hours later.

Later life and death
Towards the end of his life, Black Rob struggled with homelessness and health issues. A GoFundMe page was created to help him "find a home" and "pay for medical help". Over his last five years of life, he suffered four strokes. On April 17, 2021, Black Rob died of cardiac arrest at age 52.

Discography

Studio albums
 Life Story (2000)
 The Black Rob Report (2005)
 Game Tested, Streets Approved (2011)
 Genuine Article (2015)

References

External links

1968 births
2021 deaths
21st-century American rappers
21st-century American male musicians
African-American male rappers
American male rappers
American people convicted of burglary
American prisoners and detainees
American robbers
Bad Boy Records artists
East Coast hip hop musicians
Deaths from kidney failure
Hardcore hip hop artists
Musicians from Yonkers, New York
Rappers from New York (state)
21st-century African-American musicians
20th-century African-American people

Black Rob


The white-footed rabbit rat (Conilurus albipes) is an extinct species of rodent, which was originally found in woodlands from Adelaide to Sydney, but became restricted to south-eastern Australia. It was kitten-sized and was one of Australia's largest native rodents. It was nocturnal and lived among trees. It made nests filled with leaves and possibly grass in the limbs of hollow eucalyptus trees. The mother carried her young attached to her teats. In a letter to John Gould, then Governor of South Australia Sir George Grey said that he removed a baby from a teat of its dead mother. The baby clung tightly to Gould's glove.

Sydney natives called it 'gnar-ruck' which translates as 'rabbit-biscuit'. It was a problem in the settlers' stores at about 1788. The last specimen was recorded at about 1845, but some were reported in 1856–57 and perhaps in the 1930s. Rats may have spread diseases or competed for food with the white-footed rabbit rat. Cats may have been predators, while the demise of Aboriginal firestick farming, which maintained woodland, may have made the rabbit rat extinct.

Joyce and McCann, in Burke & Wills - The Scientific Legacy of the Victorian Exploring Expedition (CSIRO Publishing, 2012) state (p138 et seq) that the animal was seen by Beckler at camp 53 in April 1861, in the vicinity of the Bulloo River system. Additionally, the authors state that the relief party of 1862, which included Howitt, collected a specimen south of Coopers Creek.

References

Conilurus
Extinct mammals of Australia
Rodent extinctions since 1500
Extinct mammals of South Australia
Mammals of New South Wales
Mammals of Victoria (state)
Rodents of Australia
Mammals described in 1829

White-footed rabbit rat