The Chola conquest and occupation of Anuradhapura Kingdom was a military invasion of the Kingdom of Anuradhapura by the Chola Empire. It can be seen as an ensuing conflict between Chola and Sinhalese kings after the initial conflict between Chola and the Pandya-Sinhalese alliance during conquest of the Pandya Kingdom by Chola king Paranthka I. After the defeat, Pandya king Rajasimha took his crown and the other regalia and sought refuge in Anuradhapura. The Paranthka made several futile attempts to regain regalia, including invasion of Sri Lanka on a date between 947 and 949 CE during the reign of Sinhalese king Udaya IV (946–954 CE). Therefore, one of the driving motives behind the invasions of Anuradhapura by the Cholas' was their desire to possess these royal treasures. The conquest started with the invasion of the Anuradhapura Kingdom in 993 CE by Rajaraja I when he sent a large Chola army to conquer the kingdom and absorb it into the Chola Empire. Most of the island was subsequently conquered by 1017 CE and incorporated as a province of the vast Chola empire during the reign of his son Rajendra Chola I. The Chola occupation would be overthrown in 1070 CE through a campaign of Sinhalese Resistance led by Prince Kitti, a Sinhalese royal. The Cholas fought many subsequent wars and attempted to reconquer the Sinhalese kingdom as the Sinhalese were allies of their arch-enemies, the Pandyas. The period of Chola entrenchment in northern Sri Lanka lasted in total about three-quarters of a century, from roughly 993 CE (the date of Rajaraja's first invasion) to 1070 CE, when Vijayabahu I recaptured the north and expelled the Chola forces restoring Sinhalese sovereignty.

History

Background

Military expeditions from South Indian forces into Anuradhapura had been brief ad hoc up until the mid-tenth century. These were designed to facilitate short-term gains with minimal involvement followed by a withdrawal to the mainland. However, with the ascension of more ambitious and aggressive imperial Chola kings, Rajaraja I (985–1014) and his son Rajendra I (1012–1044), a new strategy of ruthless plunder and destruction of major political and religious centers on the island occurred, followed by the establishment of semi-permanent and fortified encampments, from where wide-ranging raids could be carried out in other parts of the island.

Fall of Anuradhapura

The tirumagal inscription of Rajaraja I dated to 993 AD first mentions Anuradhapura among the king's conquests. Mahinda V (981–1017) distracted by a revolt of his own Indian mercenary troops fled to the south-eastern province of Rohana. Taking advantage of this internal strife Rajaraja I invaded Anuradhapura sometime in 993 AD and conquered the northern part of the country and incorporated it into his kingdom as a province named "Mummudi-sola-mandalam" after himself. The Culavamsa says that the capital at Anuradhapura was "utterly destroyed in every way by the Chola army. The capital of the conquered Rajarata was moved to Polonnaruwa which was then renamed "Jananathamangalam", a title of Rajaraja. The Chola official Tali Kumaran erected a Shiva temple called Rajarajeshvara ("Lord of Rajaraja") in the town of Mahatirtha (modern Mantota, Mannar), which was renamed Rajaraja-pura. Comparing Rajaraja's campaign to the invasion of Lanka by the legendary hero Rama, the Thiruvalangadu Plates states:

A partial consolidation of Chola power in Rajarata had followed the initial season of plunder. With the intention to transform Chola encampments into more permanent military enclaves, Saivite temples were constructed in Polonnaruwa and in the emporium of Mahatirtha. Taxation was also instituted, especially on merchants and artisans by the Cholas. In 1014 Rajaraja I died and was succeeded by his son Rajendra Chola I, perhaps the most aggressive king of his line. Chola raids were launched southward from Rajarata into Rohana. By his fifth year, Rajendra claimed to have completely conquered the Ceylon and incorporated it into the Chola Empire. As per the Sinhalese chronicle Mahavamsa, the conquest of Anuradhapura was completed in the 36th year of the reign of the Sinhalese monarch Mahinda V, i.e. about 1017–18. But the Cholas never really consolidated their control over southern Sri Lanka, which in the case lacked large and prosperous settlements to tempt long-term Chola occupation. According to the Culavamsa and Karandai plates, Rajendra Chola led a large army into Rohana and captured Mahinda's crown, queen, daughter, a vast amount of wealth, and the king himself whom he took as a prisoner to India, where he eventually died in exile in 1029.

Resistance

In 1029, Eleven years after the Chola conquest of Rohona, Prince Kassapa, son of Mahinda, hid in Rohana, where Chola forces vainly searched for him. Soon after the death of his father Kassapa assumed the monarchy as Kassapa VI (also known as Vikramabahu) and "ruled" in Rohana for several years (c. 1029–1040) while attempting to organize a campaign of liberation and unification. He became the king of Rohana after 11 years of Chola rule in Rohona. Taking advantage of uprisings in the Pandya kingdom and Chera kingdoms, Kassapa VI massacred the Chola garrisons in Rajarata and drove the 95,000-strong Chola army to Pulatthinagara. But he died before he could consolidate his power, and a series of ephemeral aspirants to the throne subsequently appeared and disappeared in Rohana without dislodging the Cholas from the north. Kassapa VI's mysterious death in 1040, however, brought an end to the war. His successor Mahalana-Kitti (1040–1042) tried to lead an unsuccessful revolt against the Cholas

Vijayabahu I (1039–1110), descended from or at least claimed to be descended from the Sinhalese royal house. He had defeated his most powerful rivals in Rohana and was anxious to take on the Cholas, by the age of seventeen. The crisis in the country left a scattering of turbulent chiefs and intractable rebels whose allegiance, if any, was at best opportunistic which proved a problem to both sides in the conflict, frustrating both the Sinhalese kings and the Cholas. Vijayabahu, from his base in Rohana, faced a similar difficulty; he had to contend with the hostility of local chiefs who regarded him as a greater threat to their independence than the Cholas were.

For that reason, the Cholas occasionally succeeded in recruiting nominal support from rebel chiefs in Rohana, as a result, Vijayabahu had difficulty consolidating a firm territorial base from which to launch a decisive campaign against the Cholas. On the other hand, the Cholas were unable to eliminate similar opposition to themselves in the north. Gradually the wider conflict developed into a prolonged, back-and-forth struggle of raids and counter-raids, with the forces of Vijayabahu advancing upon Polonnaruva and then falling back to fortresses in Dakkhinadesa and Rohana to withstand retaliatory Chola attacks and sieges.

With time on the side of the insurgent forces, The Chola's determination began to gradually falter. Vijayabahu possessed strategic advantages, even without a unified "national" force behind him. A prolonged war of attrition was of greater benefit to the Sinhalese than to the Cholas. After the accession of Virarajendra Chola (1063–69) to the Chola throne, the Cholas were increasingly on the defensive, not only in Sri Lanka but also in peninsular India, where they were hard-pressed by the attacks of the Chalukyas from the Deccan.

Vijayabahu eventually launched a successful two-pronged attack upon Anuradhapura and Polonnaruva, when he could finally establish a firm base in southern Sri Lanka. Anuradhapura quickly fell and Polonnaruva was captured after a prolonged siege of the isolated Chola forces. Virarajendra Chola was forced to dispatch an expedition from the mainland to recapture the settlements in the north and carry the attack back into Rohana, in order to stave off total defeat.

In the battles that ensued, two powerful Sinhalese chiefs, Ravideva and Cala, crossed over with their men from Vijayabahu's side to the Chola commander. One of Vijayabahu's Tamil commanders, Kurukulattaraiyan, a Tamil Karaiyar chieftain, fell in battle. What had begun as a profitable incursion and occupation was now deteriorating into desperate attempts to retain a foothold in the north. After a further series of indecisive clashes, the occupation finally ended in the withdrawal of the Cholas.

End of occupation
In 1070, when Kulottunga I (1070–1122) came to the Chola throne, after a period of political crisis at the Chola court, he initially concentrated on consolidating his authority in India. His most pressing task was to defend the Chola territories against the inroads of the Western Chalukya Empire. All this meant that the defence of Sri Lanka was given a low priority.

The conquest of the Sinhalese kingdom had been associated with his three immediate predecessors (Rajendra Chola I, Rajendra Chola II, and Virarajendra Chola, all sons of Rajaraja I), no longer seemed to be worthwhile. Kulottunga had less personal prestige involved in the conquest, so he simply terminated it with little attempt to recoup Chola losses.

Vijayabahu attacked and captured Pulatthinagara and drove the Cholas out of the city. Kulottunga sent a large army that engaged Vijayabahu in a pitched battle near Anuradhapura. The Cholas initially succeeded in driving Vijayabahu to seek refuge in Vatagiri but Vijayabahu took Mahanagakula on the Walaweganga and conducted his resistance from there. Pulatthinagara and Anuradhapura fell to Vijayabahu and Mahatittha were soon occupied. Having liberated the whole of Sri Lanka from Chola rule, Vijayabahu crowned himself king of Polonnaruwa in 1076–77.

Legacy

The Chola conquest had one permanent result, the kingdom of Anuradhapura, which lasted for over a millennium, was destroyed by the Cholas. Polonnaruwa, a military outpost of the Sinhalese kingdom, was renamed Jananathamangalam, after a title assumed by Rajaraja I, and become the new center of administration for the Cholas. This was because earlier Tamil invaders had only aimed at overlordship of Rajarata in the north, but the Cholas were bent on control of the whole island. When Sinhalese sovereignty was restored under Vijayabahu I, he crowned himself at Anuradhapura but continued to have his capital at Polonnaruwa for it being more central and made the task of controlling the turbulent province of Rohana much easier.

See also
 Sinhalese Revolt (1055 - 1070)
 1215 invasion of Polonnaruwa
 Kalinga Magha
 Pandyan Civil War (1169–1177)
 Anuradhapura invasion of Pandya

Notes

References

Citations

Bibliography

Polonnaruwa period
Military campaigns involving the Chola Empire
Sri Lankan Tamil history
Overseas empires
1017 establishments
11th-century establishments in Sri Lanka
1077 disestablishments in Asia
11th-century disestablishments in Sri Lanka
States and territories established in the 1010s
States and territories disestablished in the 1070s
Naval battles involving Cholas

Chola conquest of Anuradhapura


Orlando DiGirolamo (April 20, 1924 – January 26, 1998) was an American jazz accordionist, pianist, composer, and teacher. He is sometimes credited as "Lanny DiJay" on jazz recordings. DiGirolamo collaborated frequently with legendary jazz producer Teo Macero, and played on Macero's first commercial release, Explorations, also featuring Charles Mingus. He was described by Metronome magazine as an "extraordinary accordionist of the modern persuasion."

Biography

Early life and education
DiGirolamo's parents emigrated to the United States from the Abruzzo region of Italy, and settled in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, where DiGirolamo was born in 1924. Musically inclined from a young age, he was first introduced to the accordion by his grandfather, and began studying accordion and piano. He was writing original compositions by age 10, and joined the local orchestra at 14. After finishing high school in 1942, he traveled to New York City to begin pursuing music, and performed on the Major Bowes Amateur Hour.

In early 1943, at age 18, he was drafted into the army, and spent two years fighting in World War II. He participated in the invasion at Normandy, fought at the Battle of the Bulge, earned five Battle Stars, and was awarded the Bronze Star for helping to save a companion platoon from enemy capture. He was also a member of the Army jazz band, The Four Sharps.

When DiGirolamo returned from Europe, he moved to New York City to attend New York University (NYU). There, DiGirolamo joined the exclusive Alpha Phi Delta fraternity, whose membership also includes Frank Sinatra. In 1951, DiGirolamo transferred to the Juilliard School, and later to Columbia University, where he went on to receive a Master's degree, and a Doctorate in Musical Improvisation.

Music career
DiGirolamo's jazz career started in Europe after the end of the war. He remained in France until 1946, performing live, and recording for the recently liberated Radio Monte Carlo. In mid-1946, he returned to the United States, and spent the next three years touring during the Bebop jazz scene. It was also during this time that he was given the nickname, "Lanny DiJay," by which he was sometimes credited on his recordings.

After several years of touring, DiGirolamo decided in 1949 to begin his formal education in New York. Although he started at NYU, it was his fortuitous transfer to Juilliard which would lead to his encounter with Teo Macero. After meeting at Juilliard, DiGirolamo and Macero became friends and collaborators, and began to work together on Macero's experimental jazz recordings. Their first commercial recording was the 1954 Debut Records LP, Explorations (DLP-6). The album featured six tracks, including "Yesterdays," arranged by DiGirolamo. Charles Mingus also played on the recording, and one reviewer noted that despite its conceptual nature, "Mingus and DiGirolamo rescue the music when it gets too heady."

The Explorations recording was part of Mingus's Jazz Composers Workshop. At the time, the Workshop recordings were considered "too complex" and "abstract," but are now credited with opening up "all kind of musical doors." In 1993, Explorations was archived by the Library of Congress as part of the Charles Mingus Collection. It was reissued on CD in 2006, with additional tracks.

During a career spanning several decades of recordings and performances, DiGirolamo worked with numerous respected jazz figures including Macero, Mingus, Ed Shaughnessy, Maynard Ferguson, Art Farmer, Cecil McBee, Wendell Marshall, Mal Waldron, Pepper Adams, Carla Bley, Larry Coryell, and Kip Hanrahan, among others. He performed throughout New York City, including gigs at historic venues The Hickory House, The Town Hall, Birdland, and The Blue Note.

Through his playing, and pioneering collaborations with Macero, DiGirolamo helped take the accordion, largely considered an "uncool" instrument, and build its foundation as a respected part of the avant-garde jazz ensemble.

DiGirolamo was "fervently determined to show that the accordion needn't be a merely imitative instrument," and developed a unique style of playing. While the accordion is traditionally played with one hand on melody, and one hand on rhythm chords, DiGirolamo used the rhythm hand melodically as well, creating a different sound, and elevating the instrument's potential. Bill Coss, editor of Metronome magazine, described this technique as using "both the left and right hand in a linear style."

DiGirolamo was immortalized by American writer and jazz critic Harvey Pekar, in an illustrated piece on Teo Macero published in the Village Voice in 1994. In describing Macero's early albums with DiGirolamo, Pekar wrote that DiGirolamo's accordion playing was "among the most striking features of those sessions," and that "the cat played some exciting shit."

Family and personal life
In 1961, DiGirolamo married Diana Matano. They lived in northern New Jersey, and had three children, Olana, Christopher, and Arland.

DiGirolamo taught music at Columbia University. He was the Band Director at Elmwood Park Memorial High School in the 1960s through 1977, and wrote the music for the school's alma mater. In 1977, he became Director of Music and Arts for the schools in Ossining, New York. As an educator, he worked to bring an appreciation of music and jazz to children. While teaching at Elmwood Park Memorial High School, he completed his Doctorate in Musical Improvisation, and specifically developed methods to help young music students with improvisational skills.

DiGirolamo died in an auto accident in New Jersey in 1998. After DiGirolamo's death, Macero composed and recorded the track "Shifting Sands" in his memory, and dedicated the 2003 album Whispering Gods to "my dear friend Lanny Di Jay, a.k.a. Lanny Di Girolamo, who is no longer with us (miss you)."

The Orlando DiGirolamo Scholarship Fund for Children was established in his honor, and every year recognizes young students studying and pursuing music.

References

Further reading
Orlando DiGirolamo at the World War II Memorial website.
Charles Mingus Collection, including Explorations, at the LoC website. (PDF)
Review of The Best of Teo Macero, by Ted White, including commentary on Explorations tracks, DiGirolamo, and the impact of the accordion.
More commentary on Explorations and the accordion.
A history of the Debut Records label.

External links
Debut Records discography
Explorations reissue at Amazon.com
Shifting Sands at Yahoo! Music
Alpha Phi Delta Alumni

1924 births
1998 deaths
American jazz accordionists
American jazz composers
American male jazz composers
American jazz pianists
American male pianists
United States Army personnel of World War II
Columbia University School of the Arts alumni
Juilliard School alumni
New York University alumni
American people of Italian descent
People from New Kensington, Pennsylvania
20th-century American composers
20th-century American pianists
20th-century accordionists
Jazz musicians from Pennsylvania
20th-century American male musicians
20th-century jazz composers
Road incident deaths in New Jersey

Orlando DiGirolamo


Yale is a city in Payne County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 1,059 at the 2020 census, a decline of 13.6 percent from the figure of 1,227 in 2010.

History

Yale's founding in 1895 is attributed to a local farmer, Sterling F. Underwood, who established a post office by that name in his general store, about  east of the present town. When the Eastern Oklahoma Railway built its line across Payne County, a group led by George W. Canfield began a different townsite also within Eagle Township that would be closer to the railroad, at its planned junction with the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad. Underwood moved his store to the new site in 1902, making the new site the permanent location for the town of Yale. A 1907 map shows the town contained 230 acres surrounding the railroad junction, and to its east southeast the Underwood farm of 158 acres. By 1910, Yale had a population of 685, supported mostly by agricultural services and cotton processing.

On September 23, 1913, an oil well on the Randle farm produced a gusher. An even larger gusher began producing a month later. More discoveries followed. By the end of 1914, the combined Yale and Cushing fields were producing 220,000 barrels a day. The town boomed, attaining a population of 2,601 by the census of 1920.

The oil boom quickly deflated. Production began to decline sharply in 1915, and more dry holes were reported. Major producers began to shut down or reduce operations in the early 1920s. By 1930, the population had dropped to 1,734. In 1940, the census reported a population of 1,407. The decline continued until reaching a low of 1,239 in 1970. There was a spike by 1980, when the census recorded 1,652, but the downward trend resumed through 2010. Town officials have tried to stem the decline by promoting Yale as a retirement location.

Geography
Yale is  east of Stillwater on State Highway 51. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , all land.

The primary source of Yale's water supply is Lone Chimney Lake. The lake's level has been declining for several years because of prolonged drought conditions and high water consumption of water by Yale and other Oklahoma towns that rely on this lake as their primary source.

Demographics

As of the census of 2010, there were 1,227 people living in the city.  The population density was . There were 604 housing units at an average density of .  The racial makeup of the city was 87.63% White, 6.93% Native American, 0.30% Asian, 0.15% from other races, and 4.99% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.98% of the population.

There were 529 households, out of which 32.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 51.0% were married couples living together, 10.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.1% were non-families. 30.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 14.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.47 and the average family size was 3.04.

In the city, the population was spread out, with 26.7% under the age of 18, 10.3% from 18 to 24, 25.6% from 25 to 44, 20.0% from 45 to 64, and 17.5% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36 years. For every 100 females, there were 91.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 88.1 males.

The median income for a household in the city was $23,403, and the median income for a family was $30,714. Males had a median income of $26,630 versus $15,813 for females. The per capita income for the city was $11,346. About 15.7% of families and 19.5% of the population were below the poverty line, including 22.3% of those under age 18 and 13.5% of those age 65 or over.

Government
Yale had a city manager form of government.

Notable people
 Chet Baker jazz trumpeter and vocalist, born in Yale in 1929.
 Jim Thorpe Olympic gold medalist, lived in Yale from 1917 to 1923.

References

External links
 Yale Chamber of Commerce

Cities in Payne County, Oklahoma
Cities in Oklahoma
Populated places established in 1895
1895 establishments in Oklahoma Territory

Yale, Oklahoma


The Shetland News is a news website serving the islands of Shetland, Scotland.

Previously, The Shetland News was a weekly newspaper published between 1885 and 1963. The website, published by an unrelated company (Zetnews Limited), was launched in 1995, on the idea of IT entrepreneur Graeme Storey. The founding directors included Graeme Storey and Jonathan Wills.

In 1996, The Shetland Times and The Shetland News were involved in a landmark legal case over alleged copyright infringement and deep linking. The case was settled before going to court, by mutual agreement, regarding how web links would be made and specifically, how links would be accredited.

In March 2011, long-term Shetland News journalists Pete Bevington and Hans Marter (trading under 'Shetland News LLP') parted company with Graeme Storey (trading under 'Force 10') who owned the domain names, and had been providing IT management, web design and web hosting services for the website. Bevington and Marter moved the news service to a new domain, www.shetnews.co.uk. On 1 April 2011, Storey published a statement at the original domain (www.shetland-news.co.uk) describing the history and development of the website.

On 27 April 2011, Graeme Storey began to use the original domain (which had always been his property) as a news portal, re-branding it 'Shetland Daily', which pulls in content from other local, regional and national news websites offering Shetland related content.

References

External links
 Shetland Daily
 Shetland News

British news websites
Internet properties established in 1995
Scottish websites
Shetland culture
1995 establishments in Scotland
1885 establishments in Scotland
1963 disestablishments
Mass media in Shetland

Shetland News


Apache is the name for several culturally related groups of Native Americans in the southwestern United States. They hunted deer and they also ate berries and lots of fruit.They were nomadic which meant that they followed food and never stayed in one place for a long period of time. They are from the second migration of Native Americans which were the Na Dene which also includes the Chipewyan and the Cheyenne of Canada. Evidence proves that the Na Dene came from the Ket people of Siberia.

Native Americans

Apache


June Shagaloff Alexander (June 14, 1928 – March 29, 2022) was an American civil rights activist.

Early life
June Shagaloff Alexander was born in 1928 in New York City.  Her parents, Samuel Shagaloff and Gertrude Bellinson, emigrated to the United States from Russia in 1905. Their household was secular Jewish, and valued socialist ideals.  Her father was a pharmacist who owned and managed a drugstore, first in Merrick and then in Baldwin, Long Island.  As a child, she spent time at her father's store and, in the summer, at nearby Jones Beach.  Some people believed she was African-American and, at an early age, she experienced racial discrimination.  These experiences left a lasting impression, and contributed to her civil rights activism as an adult. In 1946, she enrolled at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music of the University of Cincinnati, and graduated from New York University in 1950 with a degree in Sociology with honors.

Civil Rights Work
In 1950, June Shagaloff joined the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, headed by Thurgood Marshall, who hired her at the end of an undergraduate internship.  Marshall, who would later become a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, believed that the success of litigation depended on its impact on families and their willingness to demand desegregation and send their children to desegregated schools. Consequently, he hired Shagaloff, one of two staff members of the department who was not a lawyer, to conduct social research and organize communities around issues of school desegregation.  As one of her first assignments, in 1952 Marshall sent her to Cairo, Illinois to help the NAACP branch end school segregation.  While she was in Cairo, she was arrested for conspiring to "endanger the health and life of certain children."  Marshall immediately flew to Cairo and, after many hours at the jailhouse, negotiated her release.

On another assignment, she helped develop the social research which was critical in the Legal Defense Fund's victory in the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which ended legal segregation in America.  She aided psychologist Kenneth Clark in examining experiences of children in segregated schools and in the process of desegregating various institutions. They found that children in segregated schools that offered similar material resources were nevertheless impacted negatively by the fact of segregation, including the development of lower esteem and motivation levels.  This research led the Supreme Court to overcome the "Separate but Equal" doctrine that had been established in the 19th century by Plessy v. Ferguson. Clark and Shagaloff Alexander also found no evidence that gradual desegregation offered advantages over quick action, which led to the NAACP's position that desegregation must be implemented quickly to be effective. Also in preparation for arguments in the Brown case, she researched congressional hearings on the Fourteenth Amendment to discern the extent to which drafters intended equality to include education, working with historian John Hope Franklin. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the NAACP, ending legal segregation, on May 17, 1954. After the Brown decision, she continued her work at the Legal Defense Fund on education issues and school desegregation.

In 1961, she became the first Education Director of the national NAACP, then headed by Roy Wilkins.  Her work organizing local communities together with local chapters of the NAACP, fighting for desegregation, and mobilizing parents brought her to many towns and cities across the United States.  Shagaloff led and directed the new national NAACP school desegregation program in the North and West, in scores of communities from Boston to San Francisco, which led to the desegregation and integration of public schools across the United States.  On occasions, she worked with various civil rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr., tried to influence political leaders, such as Robert F. Kennedy, together with James Baldwin (Baldwin–Kennedy meeting), gave speeches, and wrote articles. Shagaloff Alexander retired from the NAACP in 1972. In recent years, her work has been recognized in historical accounts of the civil rights movement, and she received awards honoring her work and its impact.

Later Activities
June Shagaloff married Michael Alexander in 1970, and they have a son named David.  In 1972, they moved to Israel, living in Ashkelon until 1983.  Alexander helped found the Ashkelon chapter of Peace Now and taught English to elementary school students.  In 1983, she moved with her family to Amityville, NY, where she was active with the local NAACP chapter and then, in 1984, to West Nyack, New York.  She has been active in the Clarkstown PTA and was a member of the Board of Directors of West Street Child Care Learning Center. She lived in Tel Aviv, Israel.

References

External links
 Photos in San Francisco

1928 births
2022 deaths
Activists from New York City
American civil rights activists
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
American expatriates in Israel
New York University College of Arts & Science alumni
People from Ashkelon
People from Tel Aviv
University of Cincinnati alumni

June Shagaloff Alexander


Darrell Wasyk (born 18 May 1958 in Edmonton, Alberta) is a Canadian film director.

Biography
Darrell Wasyk was born in Edmonton, Alberta. He worked extensively in both theatre and opera before making the transition to film.

Film
Making his feature film debut with H, it won the Toronto-City Award for Best Canadian Feature Film at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film was presented at several Festivals that year including the Berlin International Film Festival, the Hong Kong International Film Festival, the Vienna International Film Festival, the Palm Springs International Film Festival, the Birmingham International Film and Television Festival, and the Locarno International Film Festival, where it picked up two major awards, making it the first Canadian feature film to win an official prize in the festival's 47-year history. In Canada, H was presented at the Montreal World Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, the Festival International du Film de Québec, and the Vancouver International Film Festival, where it won the Best Canadian Screenplay Award.

At the 12th Genie Awards the film won a Best Actress Award for Pascale Montpetit, and also received two nominations one for Best Direction and the other for Best Original Screenplay.

Mustard Bath, Wasyk's second feature film, made its world premiere at the 1993 Berlin International Film Festival, and then made its North American premiere at the WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival, where it won a Gold Prize for the Best Dramatic Feature Film. Back in Canada, Mustard Bath screened at the Montreal World Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, the Festival International du Film de Québec, and at the Vancouver International Film Festival.

At the 15th Genie Awards the film won a Best Supporting Actress Award for Martha Henry.

The Girl in the White Coat is Wasyk's third feature inspired by Gogol's The Overcoat, starring Pascale Montpetit where she picked up another Genie nomination for Best Actress performance in a Leading role in yet another Wasyk feature film, at the 32nd Genie Awards, as well as a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Joey Klein at the 2013 Jutra Awards.

Television

In television, Wasyk directed five episodes of Ridley and Tony Scott's Scottfree/Telescene Film Group's Showtime original series The Hunger, starring David Bowie and Terence Stamp. Episodes include: Sloan Men, Anais, and The Lighthouse (1998), and The Suction Method and The Perfect Couple (1999).

Art
Wasyk's art installations include Intermission, List, Intermezzo, Middle, and Liszt, Franz at the Wynick/Tuck Gallery, as well as On Going at the YYZ Artists' Outlet both in Toronto, Ontario.

Theatre
A student of the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal, Quebec, Wasyk went on to apprentice with Sir Peter Hall at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera on Hall's productions of Mozart's Don Giovanni and Dame Janet Baker's farewell performance of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice. His apprenticeship with Sir Peter Hall continued on to the National Theatre of Great Britain, where he worked with Harold Pinter on Other Places, and on Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, both starring Judi Dench.

In New York, Wasyk worked with Tennessee Williams, directing the off-Broadway production of Out Cry. He continued studying at the Actors Studio, and later worked with Marshall W. Mason at the Circle Repertory Company.

Wasyk became the Associate Artistic Director of the Toronto Free Theatre from 1984 to 1986, as well as becoming the founding Artistic Director of his own theatre company 45.3, where he wrote and directed the Chalmers-nominated play In the Wee Hours. Other productions included Bertolt Brecht's Baal, Alfred Jarry's Ubu the King, Béla Bartók's, Bluebeard's Castle, and Sam Shepard's Killer's Head. During the Shaw Festival's 1984 season, Wasyk directed the first play reading series, New Works.

Filmography

Feature films

References

External links

1958 births
Film directors from Edmonton
20th-century Canadian screenwriters
20th-century Canadian male writers
21st-century Canadian screenwriters
21st-century Canadian male writers
Writers from Edmonton
Canadian television directors
Living people

Darrell Wasyk


Day of Wrath () is a 1943 Danish drama film directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer and starring Lisbeth Movin, Thorkild Roose and Preben Lerdorff Rye. It is an adaptation of the 1909 play Anne Pedersdotter by Hans Wiers-Jenssen, based on a 16th century Norwegian case. The film tells the story of a young woman who is forced into a marriage with an elderly pastor after her late mother was accused of witchcraft. She falls in love with the pastor's son and also comes under suspicion of witchcraft.

The film was produced during the Nazi Occupation of Denmark, and Dreyer left the country for Sweden after its release. It has received very positive reviews, despite initial criticisms for slow pacing.

Plot
In a Danish village in 1623, an old woman known as Herlof's Marte is accused of witchcraft. Anne, a young woman, is married to the aged local pastor, Absalon Pedersson, who is involved with the trials of witches, and they live in a house shared with his strict, domineering mother Meret. Meret does not approve of Anne, who is much younger than her husband, being about the same age as the son from his first marriage. Anne gives Herlof's Marte refuge, but Marte is soon discovered in the house, though she is presumed to have hidden herself there without assistance. Herlof's Marte knows that Anne's mother, already dead at the time of the events depicted, had been accused of witchcraft as well, and had been spared thanks to Absalon's intervention, who aimed at marrying young Anne.  Anne is thus informed by Herlof's Marte of her mother's power over people's life and death and becomes intrigued in the matter.

Absalon's son from his first marriage, Martin, returns home from abroad and he and Anne are immediately attracted to each other. She does not love her husband and thinks he does not love her. Under torture, Herlof's Marte confesses to witchcraft, defined among other evidence as wishing for the death of other people.  She threatens to expose Anne if Absalon does not rescue her from a guilty verdict, begging him to save her as he saved Anne's mother. Marte, after pleading with Absalon a second time, does not betray his secret and is executed by burning with the villagers looking on. Absalon feels his guilt over having saved Anne's mother, but leaving Marte to burn. Anne and Martin, clandestinely growing closer, are seen as having changed in recent days, fueling Meret's suspicion of Anne's character. Anne is heard laughing in Martin's company by her husband, something which has not occurred in their time together. Absalon regrets that he married Anne without regarding her feelings and true intentions, and tells her so, apologizing for stealing her youth and happiness.

A violent storm erupts while Absalon is away visiting a dying young parishioner, Laurentius.  He had been cursed by Herlof's Marte during her interrogation and she foretold an imminent death.  Meanwhile, Anne and Martin are discussing the future, and she is forced to admit wishing her husband dead, but only as an "if" rather than it actually happening. At that moment Absalon, on his way home, feels "like the touching of Death itself." On Absalon's return, Anne confesses her love for Martin to her husband and tells him she wishes him dead.  He collapses and dies, calling Martin's name. Anne screams. The following morning Martin is overcome by his own doubts.  Anne declares that she had nothing to do with his father's death, which she sees as providential help from above to release her from her present misery and unhappy marriage. At Absalon's funeral, Anne is denounced by Meret, her mother-in-law, as a witch. Anne initially denies the charge, but when Martin sides with his grandmother she is faced with the loss of his love and trust, and she confesses on her husband's open coffin that she murdered him and enchanted his son with the Devil's help. Her fate appears sealed.

Cast

Production

Day of Wrath was Dreyer's first film since Vampyr (1932). He had spent the previous eleven years working as a journalist and unsuccessfully attempting to launch such film projects as an adaptation of Madame Bovary, a documentary on Africa and a film about Mary Stuart.

Dreyer had first seen Wiers-Jenssen's play Anne Pedersdotter in 1925 and had wanted to adapt it to the screen for several years. It differs slightly from the original play, such as the scene where Anne and Martin first meet and kiss. In Wiers-Jenssen's play they are hesitant and shy, while in Dreyer's film they are bluntly sexual.

Dreyer's producers had wanted him to cast Eyvind Johan-Svendsen in the role of Absalon, but Dreyer thought the actor was too much of "a Renaissance man" and preferred to cast an actor that could project the austerity that he wanted. Lisbeth Movin was cast after being asked to meet with Dreyer. She was not allowed to wear any make-up, with Dreyer preferring the realistic look.

In one scene, Anna Svierkier's character is burnt at the stake. To depict it, Svierkier was tied to a wooden ladder, and Dreyer left her there while the rest of the cast and crew went for lunch, over the objections of Preben Lerdorff Rye and Thorkild Roose. When they returned, Svierkier was perspiring profusely, which is visible in the film.

Although both this film and most of Dreyer's other films have been criticized as being too slow, Dreyer explained that neither his pacing nor his editing were slow, but that the movements of the characters on the screen were slow in order to build tension.

Release
The film premiered at the World Cinema in Copenhagen on 13 November 1943. Dreyer always denied the film as being analogous to persecution of Jews. However, on the advice of many of his friends he left Denmark on the pretext of selling Day of Wrath in foreign markets and spent the rest of the war in Sweden shortly after the film's release.

The film premiered in the United States in April 1948. In Region 1, The Criterion Collection released the film on DVD in 2001, in a boxset with Dreyer's Ordet (1955) and Gertrud (1964).

Reception
On its Copenhagen release, it received poor reviews and was unsuccessful financially, with many Danes complaining about the film's slow pace. It later gained a better critical reputation after World War II. Many Danes saw a parallel between the witch burning and the persecution of Jews during the Nazi occupation, which had begun on 29 August. While Dreyer denied the film was about the Nazis, during the war it had resonated with the Danish resistance movement.

The film also received negative criticism in the United States in 1948. Variety wrote that "the picture is tedious to the extreme," and that its "chief trouble lies in the gratingly plodding pace. And the heavy story, unlightened by the slightest sign of comedy relief." Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called the film "slow and monotonous" despite having "intellectual force."

However, from some reviewers, the film received immediate praise. The New Yorker called the film "one of the best ever made." A. Bertrand Channon called the film a "masterpiece" that will be "discussed long after Greer Garson, Bette Davis, and Ida Lupino have joined the company of Ruth Chatterton, Norma Talmadge, and Norma Shearer." Life magazine called it "one of the most remarkable movies of recent years" and noted that a campaign by a group of critics led to the film being shown again four months later in August 1948.

Years after its release, film critic Robin Wood called it "Dreyer's richest work...because it expresses most fully the ambiguities inherent in his vision of the world." Jean Semolue said that "the interest in Dreyer's films resides not in the depiction of events, nor the predetermined characters, but in the depiction of the changes wrought on characters by events.

Critic Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote that "Day of Wrath may be the greatest film ever made about living under totalitarian rule" and believed it was an influence on the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller. It is often cited in Denmark as the greatest Danish film. Currently, the film has a 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 25 reviews, with a weighted average of 8.68/10. The site's consensus reads: "Beautifully filmed and rich with period detail, Day of Wrath peers into the past to pose timelessly thought-provoking questions about intolerance and societal mores".

References

Bibliography

External links

Figuring Out Day of Wrath an essay by Jonathan Rosenbaum at the Criterion Collection

1943 films
1940s historical drama films
Adultery in films
Danish black-and-white films
Danish Culture Canon
Danish films based on plays
Danish historical drama films
1940s Danish-language films
Films about capital punishment
Films about witchcraft
Films directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer
Films scored by Poul Schierbeck
Films set in Denmark
Films set in 1623
Incest in film
Films about witch hunting
1943 drama films

Day of Wrath


Francisco de Garay (1475 in Sopuerta, Biscay – 1523) was a Spanish Basque conquistador.  He was a companion to Christopher Columbus on his second voyage to the New World and arrived in Hispaniola in 1493. Here he attracted attention when he encountered a large gold nugget worth four thousand pesos. In 1496, Miguel Diaz and Francisco de Garay found gold nuggets along the Haina River.

Early life
Garay was born in the Garay tower in Sopuerta, in the county of Encartaciones located in the province of Biscay.

Jamaica
From 1514 to 1523, Garay served as Royal Governor of Santiago, now Jamaica (Governor of Jamaica). As a Governor of Santiago he was accused of committing genocide of the island's indigenous population whom he enslaved and sent to work in the gold mines of Cuba. Writing in 1516, Bartolomé de Las Casas accused him of being responsible for the great decline of the indigenous population. By 1519, the original population of Jamaica was almost eradicated. He also raised pigs during his governorship, at one point employing five thousand indigenous to herd his swine.

Expeditions
Garay sent several expeditions to explore, map and claim lands along the shores of what is now the Gulf of Mexico from present day Florida to Mexico. In 1519 Garay sent an expedition under Alonso Álvarez de Pineda to map the coast between Florida and the northern limit of the lands visited by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar.  The Mississippi River was shown on the maps as Rio del Espiritu Santo (River of the Holy Spirit).

In 1523, Garay led a 600-man expedition to found a colony on the Panuco River near present-day Tampico.  However, he landed by mistake 100 miles north at the mouth of the Soto La Marina River which he called the River of Palms (Rio de las Palmas).  He reconnoitered by sending a small boat upriver about 25 miles, probably reaching the site of the present day city of Soto la Marina.  The explorers found 40 Indian encampments along the river, indicating a large population, although the Indians apparently did not practice agriculture.  The Indians plied the river in canoes and, although initially friendly, became hostile.  Realizing that the river was not the Pánuco, Garay ordered an overland march southward to the Panuco.

Garay's efforts to found a colony led him into legal conflict with Hernán Cortés.

While in Mexico City negotiating with Cortés, he became ill and died on December 27, 1523.

References

Bibliography

 Eugenio Del Hoyo; Historia del El Nuevo Reino De Leon (1577-1723)

External links
Texas State Historical Association (TSHA): Francisco de Garay biography

Basque conquistadors
Spanish explorers
Spanish colonial governors and administrators
People of the Spanish colonial Americas
People from New Spain
Colony of Santiago
16th-century Spanish people
1475 births
1523 deaths
Spanish West Indies
People from Enkarterri

Francisco de Garay


Nuctenea umbratica, the walnut orb-weaver spider, is a species of spider in the family Araneidae.

Name
The species name umbratica means "living in the shadows" in Latin.

Description

The walnut orb-weaver spider is very wide and flattened, with a leathery skin. Its color ranges from red brown and grey brown to black with a dark, yellowish to yellow-greenish leaf-like fleckled marking on its opisthosoma, where small dents are visible. These are the onsets of muscles that flatten the abdomen.

Female N. umbratica can reach up to 15 mm in size, the males grow only up to 8 mm.

The spider hides during the day outside of buildings in wall crevices, or under loose bark. They are very common in Central Europe; females occur all year long, while males appear mostly during summer. This spider has a flattened body, helping it to secrete itself in cracks and crevices. Walnut orb-weaving spiders are capable of concealing themselves in very confined spaces. This tends to act as a defensive advantage and increases the number of locations an orb-web can be effectively constructed.

In the evening the spider constructs an orb-web that can be up to 70 cm in diameter. A signaling thread leads from the web to her hiding place. After dusk she sits in the web's center.

Distribution and subspecies
 Nuctenea umbratica (Clerck, 1757) – Europe to Azerbaijan
 Nuctenea umbratica nigricans (Franganillo, 1909) – Portugal
 Nuctenea umbratica obscura (Franganillo, 1909) – Portugal

References

 Levi, Herbert Walter: The orb-weaver genera Araniella und Nuctenea (Araneae: Araneidae). in: Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, vol. 146, no. 6, Cambridge 1974. ISSN 0027-4100

External links

 Platnick, Norman I. (2008): The world spider catalog, version 9.0. American Museum of Natural History.

Araneidae
Spiders of Europe
Spiders of Asia
Fauna of Azerbaijan
Spiders described in 1757
Taxa named by Carl Alexander Clerck

Nuctenea umbratica


William Catlyn (1628–1709) was a Hull architect who worked in the local Artisan Mannerist style,  also known as the Humber  Brick style.  His work, which was greatly influenced by Dutch architecture of the period, survives mainly in Hull and Lincolnshire.

Architectural work

Wilberforce House, Hull (attributed to Catlyn)
A merchants house, backing onto the river. Its nine-bay rusticated brick front has pilasters to the first floor, stone corinthian capitals and a three-storey porch, with indented pilasters decorated with lozenge-and diamond shaped stone ''jewels''.

Crowle House, Hull.
Dated 1664  and the remaining parts are similar to Wilberforce House.

The Charterhouse, Hull
Catlyn built the Master's House and Chapel in 1673.

Hull Guildhall
''Beautified'' by Catlyn in 1681-2. Destroyed during World War II

Hull Market Cross
Built 1682 and destroyed during World War II

Crowle Hospital, Sewer Lane, Hull

Brigg Grammar School, Wrawby Street,  Brigg, Lincolnshire 1674

Sir John Nelthorpe  commissioned this school from William Catlyn and the contract for building the school was drawn up on 4 July 1674 and it was completed in 1678. A tall, single storeyed front of seven bays and stone quoins. The centre emphasised by Ionic pilasters and stone capitals. The entrance door has a moulded stone round-headed architrave with a small keystone with a cherub's head. Brick pilasters with a plinth and Roman Ionic capitals in stone. Central achievement of arms in stone frame above an inscription commemorating foundation by Sir John Nelthorpe. Modern brick modillion pediment above.

Worlaby Hospital, Worlaby, Lincolnshire

Built for John, Lord Bellasis, the Governor of Hull. The front is of five bays and two storeys, divided by giant Doric pilasters.  Flat projecting surrounds and strange hoods to the doors and to the ground-floor windows. There is a large studded cornice. The building originally had Dutch gables. The Foundation was for four poor widows.

Harrington Hall, Lincolnshire (attributed to Catlyn)

It has been suggested that alterations to the Hall, which were re-built from 1673, were by William Catlyn. The old porch was dressed up with an Artisan Mannerist facade of exceedingly elongated brick pilasters with Ionic capitals

Walcot Old Hall, Alkborough, Lincolnshire. (attributed to Catlyn)

Built for a Hull merchant, Nicholas Denman.

References

Literature
Antram N (revised), Pevsner N & Harris J, (1989), The Buildings of England: Lincolnshire, Yale University Press.
Colvin H. (1995), A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600–1840 Yale University Press, 3rd edition London.
Louw H.J. (1981), ''Anglo-Netherlandish architectural interchange, c.1600-c.1660'', Architectural History, Vol. 24, pp. 1–23.
Neave D. (1996) Artisan Mannerism in North Lincolnshire and East Yorkshire: The work of William Catlyn (1628–1709) of Hull in Sturman C (ed) Lincolnshire Peoples and Places: Essays in Memory of Terence R. Leach (1937–1994), pp. 18–25.
 N Pevsner and D. Neave, The Buildings of England: Yorkshire: York and the East Riding, Yale.

External links

1628 births
1709 deaths
Architects from Kingston upon Hull
17th-century English architects

William Catlyn


James C. Donnell (April 20, 1854 – January 10, 1927) was an American industrialist. He was the president of The Ohio Oil Company from 1911 until his death in 1927.

Early life and career
James C. Donnell was born on April 20, 1854, in County Armagh, Ireland, to James Donnell and Elizabeth Doyle. At the age of two, Donnell and his family moved to the United States and settled in Waterford, Pennsylvania. At the age of eighteen, he began his career in the oil industry by hauling crude oil from a refinery in Titusville, Pennsylvania. When the Bradford Oil Field opened in 1874, Donnell went into business for himself, gaining leases at Red Rock and Dallas City, Pennsylvania. He went on to gain further leases in Allentown and Bolivar, New York.

He then headed to Ohio to begin work at the Lima Oil Field, and became associated with the Standard Oil Company. In 1889, when the Standard Oil Company gained control of The Ohio Oil Company, Donnell was named a director of the company and manager of its field operations. In 1900 he was elected vice-president and general manager, moving his offices to Findlay, Ohio the following year. In 1906, he accompanied then president of Standard Oil, John D. Archbold to Romania to assist in the reorganization of The Romano-American Oil Company. Two years later, they again set about reorganizing another facet of Standard Oil, with the reorganization of Standard Oil of California in 1908.

The Ohio Oil Company
In 1911, the United States Supreme Court dismantled Standard Oil on antitrust violations, and The Ohio Oil Company again became an independent company. Donnell succeeded Archbold as its president. He retained the position until his death in 1927. Under his direction, Ohio Oil expanded operations into sixteen states and Mexico. In 1915, he organized the Illinois Pipeline Company to operate pipeline transportation for Ohio Oil. In 1924, Donnell gained control of the Lincoln Oil Refining Company in Robinson, Illinois, giving Ohio Oil its own refining capacity.

When he died in 1927, the assets of The Ohio Oil Company totalled $108 million, with $17 million net income.  of oil or natural gas producing lands were owned or operated under lease by the company. According to Time Magazine, before he died in 1927, Donnell was known as the last living man to call John D. Rockefeller simply "John". Others called Rockefeller "Senior."

Legacy
The James C. Donnell Memorial, Donnell Stadium, in Findlay, Ohio was donated in 1928 by his son, Otto D. Donnell, and named in his father's honor.

In 1981, Donnell was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame at the San Diego Air & Space Museum.

Notes and references

1854 births
1927 deaths
Businesspeople from County Armagh
Standard Oil
Marathon Oil
American businesspeople in the oil industry
Founders of the petroleum industry
19th-century American businesspeople

James C. Donnell


Waterstones (formerly Waterstone's) is a British book retailer that operates 311 shops, mainly in the United Kingdom and also other nearby countries. As of February 2014, it employs around 3,500 staff in the UK and Europe. An average-sized Waterstones shop sells a range of approximately 30,000 individual books, as well as stationery and other related products.

Established in 1982 by Tim Waterstone, after whom the company was named, the bookseller expanded rapidly until being sold in 1993 to WHSmith. In 1998, Waterstones was bought by a consortium of Waterstone, EMI and Advent International. The company was taken under the umbrella of HMV Group, which later merged the Dillons and Ottakar's brands into the company. Following several poor sets of results for the group, HMV put the chain up for sale. In May 2011, it was announced that A&NN Capital Fund Management, owned by Russian billionaire Alexander Mamut, had bought the chain for £53.5m and appointed James Daunt as managing director. The company is incorporated in England and Wales as Waterstones Booksellers Ltd, with its registered office at 203–206 Piccadilly, London (which is also the location of its flagship shop). As well as the Waterstones brand, the company owns the London bookseller Hatchards, Irish shop Hodges Figgis, and reached an agreement to purchase Foyles in 2018. In April 2018, hedge fund Elliott Management Corporation bought a majority stake in the company.

The bookseller has concession agreements with Paperchase and previously with coffee chains Costa Coffee and Starbucks in some shops, but since 2012 has introduced its own Café W brand. For a time, Waterstones sold e-readers, including in 2012 partnering with Amazon to sell the Amazon Kindle, but has since pulled out of this market for commercial reasons.

Waterstones administers and supports various literary awards, including the Children's Laureate award and the Waterstones Children's Book Prize.

History and developments

Formation & WHSmith: 1982–1998

The chain was founded by Tim Waterstone after he took a £6,000 redundancy payout from WHSmith. He set up his first shop in Old Brompton Road, Kensington with the ambition of creating a 'different breed of bookshop', using techniques he had seen in the United States. He used literary authors in front of shop displays and employed highly literate staff.

The model proved successful and the chain set about expanding its shop portfolio. In 1990 WHSmith took a strong minority stake in the chain, and ten years after its birth, by 1992, Waterstone's had grown to be the largest bookseller group in Europe. WHSmith then acquired the company in 1993 at an enterprise value of £47m, paying £5.27 a share on 8.1m 10p shares, a 53x multiple for the early-stage investors. Under WHSmith, Waterstones pursued international expansion, opening its first US shop in Boston in 1991, as well as further domestic expansion—opening its 100th UK shop in a former chapel in Reading.

The chain was part of the eventual dismantling of the Net Book Agreement, when in 1991, following a promotion by then-rivals Dillons, the company decided to pursue its own discounting promotion on selected titles. By 1997, the agreement had collapsed and been declared illegal.

HMV Group: 1998–2011

Following an attempt by Tim Waterstone in 1997 to buy the entire WHSmith group, WHSmith sold the Waterstones chain for £300 million to HMV Media plc (now HMV Group)—a joint venture between EMI, Advent International and Tim Waterstone. This included high street brands HMV and rival Dillons, creating an international entertainment retailer. Waterstone was appointed chairman of the group but stood down in 2001, citing "concerns for the way the company was being run"  and was replaced by Alan Giles. A year later, all Dillons shops were rebranded as Waterstones, with some sold to rival Ottakar's making the brand defunct. The chain had also begun pulling out of its US overseas venture.

Waterstones launched the Waterstones Books Quarterly magazine in 2001, containing book reviews and author interviews. In the same year the booksellers' online operation, Waterstones.co.uk, was franchised to Amazon.com, with the company expressing a desire "to concentrate on its high street and campus shops". The move resulted in the loss of 50 jobs. In 2003, Waterstones announced it was supporting Dyslexia Action as its chosen charity, helping to raise awareness and understanding for dyslexia.

In 2006 Giles stepped down from his position and was replaced by Gerry Johnson as managing director of Waterstones and Simon Fox as group CEO. In April 2006 following two bids by Permira for the group, Tim Waterstone attempted to buy back the company from HMV for £256 million, but later withdrew his offer specifying the conditions set by HMV were "too punitive" to accept. A strategic review in September saw Waterstones pull out of its franchise agreement with Amazon to re-launch its online business, Waterstones.com, independently. The chain also began to pilot a loyalty programme in South West England and Wales. The scheme was successful, launching nationally as The Waterstones Card across its entire shop portfolio.

Waterstones piloted a brand refresh exercise in selected shops, beginning with Manchester's Arndale Centre in 2007. On 19 November 2007, the chain closed its first branch on Old Brompton Road. Following a consultation, the company's supply chain was overhauled in 2008 with the implementation of a  warehouse and distribution centre in Burton-upon-Trent. Existing direct-to-store deliveries from suppliers were replaced by a centralised warehouse capable of receiving merchandise and sorting an estimated 70 million books per year and 200 staff were made redundant by the process. In September 2008, Waterstones began selling the Sony Reader in an agreement which saw the booksellers' branches and Sony Centre shops stock the reader exclusively for two weeks after its release. Waterstones.com began to supply e-books in the .epub format. In November 2009, Waterstones moved into second-hand bookselling in a partnership with Alibris setting up an online reselling tool called Waterstones Marketplace, part of Waterstones.com.

In January 2010, HMV Group announced that Waterstones like-for-like sales over the Christmas period were down 8.5 per cent on the previous year. This culminated in the resignation of managing director Gerry Johnson with immediate effect. He was replaced by development director Dominic Myers, who was managing director of the British academic bookselling chain Blackwells until 2005. Myers joined HMV in 2006 to oversee the integration of Ottakar's into the chain. In response to the decline in sales, he implemented a three-year plan in which branches were tailored to their local market alongside a 'rejuvenation' of the company brand and an increase in range. As part of these changes, Waterstones implemented new branding in May 2010, developed by agency VentureThree. The company also moved to support the Rainbow Trust, which provides support to children with life-threatening and terminal illnesses and their families, in the same year.

After an announcement that profits would be at the lower end of analysts' forecasts due to falling sales and a share price fall of 20%, HMV Group indicated its intention to close a number of Waterstones branches in January 2011. These shop closures, including two in Dublin, Republic of Ireland and nine others across the United Kingdom occurred in February 2011. Further branch closures in Luton, Dorking, Lancaster University, Harrods, Gateshead and Norwich Arcade were completed by the end of 2011.

Alexander Mamut & James Daunt: 2011–present

In May 2011 HMV Group announced the sale of Waterstones to A&NN Capital Fund Management, a fund controlled by Russian businessman Alexander Mamut for £53 million. The takeover was welcomed by publishers as "a step forward to re-establishing a proper physical presence". On 29 June 2011, the sale of Waterstones was completed and approved by the vast majority of shareholders at an emergency general meeting. Mamut appointed James Daunt, founder of Daunt Books, as managing director and a board of directors was announced in October 2011 including Miranda Curtis as chairman. In September 2011, the bookseller announced that it intended to drop its 3-for-2 deal on books after a decade. The offer was replaced with a 'bespoke offer', based on branches choosing their own pricing structures from available discounts.

In January 2012, the company announced that it would be moving away from the branding developed in 2010 by agency VentureThree, and reverting to its original logo. This involved the removal of the apostrophe from its name because, James Daunt argued, "Waterstones without an apostrophe is, in a digital world of URLs and email addresses, a more versatile and practical spelling". This decision received media coverage, in which the company was subject to criticism. John Richards, of the Apostrophe Protection Society, said that the change was "just plain wrong" and "grammatically incorrect" while the move sparked outrage on Twitter, involving debate on whether the move was grammatically incorrect or not. Linguist David Crystal on his blog added: " ... if Waterstone's wants to become Waterstones, that's up to the firm. It's nothing to do with expressing possession or plurality or anything to do with meaning."

In the same month, Waterstones confirmed plans to open a Russian-language bookshop in its Piccadilly branch, intending to stock 5,000 titles with the shop being entirely staffed of Russian-speaking booksellers. The concession, named The Russian Bookshop, opened in March 2012.

Following a decision in late 2011 to scrap an e-reading offer in-branch, it was announced in May 2012 that Waterstones would be selling the Amazon Kindle across its estate. James Daunt launched the new agreement with Amazon stating that Waterstones would be offering "e-reading services and offer Kindle digital devices" throughout the company's branches and on its website, with an intention to "make the Kindle experience better". This announcement was received with surprise across the book industry as it had been suggested that Waterstones was developing a partnership with Barnes & Noble to launch the Nook in the UK, or that the company was developing its own device, but Daunt "ultimately rejected" other avenues as Waterstones "would have been out of the market" before their implementation.

It was also announced in May 2012 that the company would begin a refurbishment plan, with Mamut "investing tens of millions of pounds" to fund the refit of a planned 100 shops before the end of the year. The plan saw the introduction of wi-fi into shops, reorganisation of shop sections and space dedicated areas for Kindle devices, and a number of own-brand coffee shops called Café W. The Café W brand was trialled in the Sutton branch, with an expressed aim for around 130 shops over a 3-year period to be fitted with a café. The announcement also noted the introduction of a 'click-and-collect' service.

The Amazon Kindle officially launched in-branch in October 2012 with an "outdoor and press advertising campaign" promoting the launch, with the Kindle Fire and Kindle Paperwhite model going on sale for the first time in the UK along with older models. The Kindles were tailored with Waterstones screensavers, which led to some complaints and customers attempting to return their devices. The release of the Kindle coincided with a relaunch of the company's brand in the same month, pushing the message that the chain was the 'nation's leading bookshop' and producing an exclusive anthology, the Waterstones Red Anthology, to help promote the shops.

By the end of 2012, the Waterstones estate had shrunk to 288 shops, with "commercial reasons" given for the closure of branches in Bromsgrove, Stevenage, Watford, Fleet Street, High Holborn and Epsom among others, with staff being redeployed where possible. In 2012, Daunt stated that future expansion was being considered, based on the performance of the company. The accounts for the year to 2012 showed Waterstones, prior- and post-acquisition had made losses of £37.3 million, Started in 2012 was an overhaul of the company's business strategy, with centralised decision making giving way to shop-based decisions and a renewed emphasis on traditional bookselling techniques. Waterstones embarked on a major restructuring of staffing levels, with a company-wide consultation with 560 managerial staff to subsequently reduce roles within the company. This consultation led to Head Office staff departures and around 200 branch and regional managers leaving their posts. Waterstones launched a number of new partnerships through the year, including with the University of Derby to launch a professional qualification programme for its staff, with the Folio Society to extend customer reach and stock selection in London-based bookshops, and partnering with a new charity, BookTrust. By the end of 2013, Waterstones had cut its losses to £12.2 million, opened 12 further Café W outlets, and embarked on a capital investment in its shop portfolio of £29.5 million.
In 2014, they opened new shops in Ringwood, Blackburn and Southwold, its first branch to be without Waterstones branding, as well as closing shops in Eastleigh and St Neots. Continued business strategy change saw further departures from head office in brand communication and PR and a renewed agency contract for Waterstones' digital marketing with Epiphany. The retailer overhauled its business technology with new algorithms on its website to help personalise the online shopping experience, updated point-of-sale IT and by introducing contactless payment in its shops. The retailer partnered with Airbnb to hold a one-off 'sleepover' for customers in its Piccadilly branch in October 2014 after a customer was accidentally trapped in the Trafalgar Square branch after closing. Accounts for 2014 saw operating income losses narrow to £3.8 million, but sales slip by 5.9%.

The ongoing strategic changes made to the way the business operates included the decision in October 2015, after 3 years on sale in shops, to remove the Kindle from its offer following "pitiful" sales and handing the retail space over to books. This was followed, after a failed attempt to buy BlinkBox books from Tesco in January 2015, with Waterstones announcing it had sold its e-book business to Rakuten Kobo Inc. in May 2016, subsequently directing customers who had purchased e-books through the retailer to access their e-books via Kobo's eBook site. This sale represented an exit from the e-book and e-reader market for Waterstones after 8 years and multiple platforms.

The company partnered with Oxfam in 2015 to raise £1 million for those impacted by the Syrian civil war crisis through a nationwide campaign called 'Buy Books for Syria'. Further changes to shops were made in 2015, with the closure of Wimbledon and Birmingham New Street, the opening of The Rye Bookshop and a return to Welwyn Garden City. The company reported an operating income of £5.4 million and a further narrowing of losses to £4.5 million from £18.8 million the previous year.

In a 2016 interview with Daunt, he stated that Amazon "defines how Waterstones acts" and while Waterstones could not compete with the internet retailer digitally, it could offer a credible alternative, believing there was "a future in physical bookselling." Waterstones continued to look at "fixing the basics" during 2016, such as adjusting shop opening hours and harnessing data from the loyalty card as well as refurbishment of physical shops, including the Canterbury branch, and work on its e-commerce routes through improvements to product ranking. Shops in Oxford Street Plaza, Edinburgh George Street and Reading Oracle were closed, Harpenden Books, Glasgow Fort and Tottenham Court Road were opened and Wimbledon and Watford were reopened in new sites. The newly opened shops benefitted from a refreshed brand look, widely welcomed by the book trade. The retailer renewed its partnership with Oxfam to continue to raise money for the Syrian crisis, donating £5 for each 'Book of the Month' sold in-shop during November 2016. Daunt made public his concern that the UK EU referendum was likely to impact on company sales due to an expected retail downturn following a 'no' vote. He later noted that sales had remained 'buoyant' following the decision to leave the EU, but remained pessimistic for the future.

Accounts show that Waterstones made its first profit in 7 years of £11.7 million in the year ending April 2016. This included increased profits in Ireland, with sales rising 7% over the year, with the company expressing a desire to open more shops in Ireland. The management board was reduced from 7 members to 3 in August 2016, with the departure of Miranda Curtis and a statement that the future composition was under review. Waterstones announced it had raised £300,000 for BookTrust in 3 years since partnering, and would continue the partnership for a fourth year.

In April 2018, hedge fund Elliott Management Corporation bought a majority stake in the company, leaving Alexander Mamut's Lynwood Investments with a minority holding. The sale completed in early June 2018. Daunt remained as chief executive.

In 2021, an article in The Bookseller reported that Waterstones were planning a collaboration with Next to have Waterstones within some Next stores. In April 2022, a new Waterstones within Next in Martlesham, Ipswich was announced

In 2022, Waterstones purchased Blackwell's, the largest independent bookstore in the UK, for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition was done under US hedge fund Elliott Investment Management.

Acquisitions

Dillons (including Hatchards)
Acquired in 1995 by the Thorn EMI group, Dillons was the UK's second-largest bookseller behind Waterstones and was the bookselling arm of EMI's retail division, which included HMV. Dillons had acquired Hatchards. Following the demerger of Thorn and EMI in 1996, the retail arm was divested from the EMI portfolio within a year and spun off into the HMV Media Group, an investment venture between EMI Group and Advent International private equity group. This venture included HMV, Dillons and Waterstones (the latter bought from WHSmith for £300 million), combining to make an international entertainment retailer of over 500 shops. Following a rebuffed takeover attempt in 1997 of WHSmith, Tim Waterstone became part of the deal and by May 1998, following the £801 million deal completion became chairman of the group. All Dillons shops were incorporated within the Waterstones brand by 1998.

Ottakar's

In September 2005 HMV Group began attempts to buy rival book chain Ottakar's. This alarmed publishers and authors who hoped the Office of Fair Trading would refer the takeover bid to the Competition Commission. In March 2006, the Competition Commission cleared Waterstones for takeover of the Ottakar's, stating the takeover would "not result in a substantial lessening of competition", and is "not likely to affect book prices, range of titles offered or quality of service." Through extensive research they also found that "contrary to widespread perception, Waterstones, like Ottakar's, operates a book-buying system which mixes central and local input on stock selection."

On 31 May 2006, Waterstones announced that it had successfully negotiated the takeover of Ottakar's. HMV chief executive Alan Giles said: "A combined Waterstones and Ottakar's business will create an exciting, quality bookseller, able to respond better to the increasingly competitive pressures of the retail market." Ottakar's chairman Philip Dunne said: "Over the last year the book market has undergone a significant change with new levels of competition from the supermarkets and online retailers impacting all specialist booksellers and in particular those with insufficient scale to compete on equal terms."

Following the takeover, HMV announced that they would be rebranding every branch of Ottakar's as a Waterstones. In July 2006, a conversion programme was initiated and within four months, every Ottakar's shop had been relaunched as a Waterstones and had seen the loss of 100 jobs.

Books Etc

In August 2008, the now-defunct Borders chain agreed to sell eight Books Etc. shops to Waterstones for an undisclosed sum. The takeover, which represented  of retail space and incurred no staff losses, increased Waterstones' presence within London to almost 50 shops, "crucially [in] areas that are not represented by Waterstones bookshops". The shops, in Fleet Street, London Wall, Holborn, Wandsworth, Uxbridge, Finchley Road and Canary Wharf, were rebranded and merged into the Waterstones chain by September 2008.

Foyles
In September 2018, Waterstones confirmed it would buy 115-year-old Foyles, with seven stores whilst retaining the brand. James Daunt said the purchase would help "to protect and champion the pleasures of real bookshops in the face of Amazon's siren call".

Blackwell's
In February 2022, Waterstones acquired Blackwell's for an undisclosed sum.

Controversies

Tax
Tim Waterstone and James Daunt have been critical of tax avoidance by Amazon.com in the British press. Amazon has received sustained scrutiny for the amount of its overall sales that are reported by its UK subsidiary, in comparison to those 'processed offshore in Luxembourg to avoid UK tax'. In the 2012–13 financial year, Amazon paid £3.2 million in tax on sales of £4.2 billion and received £2.5 million in grants from the government. In the same period, it was revealed that Waterstones paid £11.9 million in tax, despite an operating loss of £25.4 million and sales of £410.4 million.

In a report on tax avoidance in the book industry, the magazine Ethical Consumer argued that A&NN Capital Fund Management, Waterstones' parent company in Bermuda, "likely to be for tax avoidance purposes". In response to this, Waterstones issued a clarification on their website reading "As a UK registered and domiciled business, Waterstones fulfils all its tax obligations. This will include both the payment and reporting of all necessary UK taxes, as set out under UK tax legislation." In the 2013–14 financial period, the first full year under A&NN, Waterstones reported sales to Companies House of £398.5 million and an operating loss of £12.2 million.

Non-branded shops

Waterstones opened its first non-branded shop in Southwold, Suffolk in July 2014 called Southwold Books. The company decided not to use its branding as it wished to 'fit in' with the town's high proportion of independent retailers, but this move drew anger from local residents at the time as they viewed the move as "dishonest" and said that local shop rents were being increased because of retail chains moving in and this subsequently was "changing the character of the high street".

Non-branded Waterstones became an issue again in 2016 at a national level, following newspaper reports about not only Southwold Books but two further shops, The Rye Bookshop in Sussex and Harpenden Books in Hertfordshire, being opened and local residents not realising the connection with the retailer. Commentators were split on the ethics of the decision to open unbranded shops, but it was noted that at no point had attempts been made to hide the connection to the retailer. In interviews, James Daunt denied any "subterfuge" and said he wanted for the shops to behave as independent retailers do and have their own identity. He further stated that more unbranded shops were likely to open in the future.

Environmental impact
Waterstones has worked with the British Safety Council to consider its environmental impact, including factors beyond its carbon footprint. After a 2008 audit, the Council awarded Waterstones three out of a possible five stars for environmental impact.

Real living wage
, Waterstones does not pay the "real living wage", as recommended by the Living Wage Foundation, and a rate significantly higher than the official National Living Wage. More than 1,300 writers backed a campaign to ask Waterstones to pay the "real living wage". In response Waterstone managing director James Daunt said the company was "simply not profitable enough" and that "there's a long gap between wanting to do something and it being remotely sensible". Waterstones said that only Ikea, Majestic and Lush of other similar large retailers pay the "real living wage".

Awards

Waterstones maintains and supports various literary awards, including the Waterstones Children's Laureate, the Waterstones Children's Book Prize, the Waterstones Book of the Year, Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize and the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize, as well as now-defunct awards including the Waterstones 11 and the Guardian First Book Award. The company has also received various industry and consumer awards.

Waterstones prizes

Book of the Year

The prize, which has been running since 2012, sees booksellers from across the company select a shortlist of books from any category, published at any time, before the winner is chosen by panel.

Children's Book Prize

Waterstones continued the Ottakar's Children's Book Prize under its own brand and since 2005, the Waterstone's Children's Book Prize has attempted "to uncover hidden talent in children's writing" by awarding authors with no more than two previously published books (adult or children's fiction).
Waterstones is also the main sponsor of The Waterstones Children's Laureate, previously sponsored by Ottakar's. The 2011–2013 role saw the position carry the Waterstones branding for the first time, with the company stating it was 'up weighting [its] activity' and 'supporting the role in shops and online in different ways throughout the year and beyond.' Holders of the role during sponsorship include Julia Donaldson, Malorie Blackman and the current holder, Chris Riddle.

Debut Fiction Prize
The Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, established in 2022, is an annual literary award presented to the best debut fiction published in the previous 12 months.

Waterstones 11
Set up in 2011, the Waterstones 11 was created to promote debut literary fiction from new authors being published in the year ahead. Books were chosen from a list of 100 submitted by publishers, and were announced in January 2011 with in-shop and online support, as well as a media campaign for the final 11. The inaugural 11 included the Orange Prize Winner The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht, Man Booker Prize nominee Pigeon English, by Stephen Kelman and the Edinburgh International Book Festival First Book Award winner When God Was a Rabbit, by Sarah Winman. The last list was announced in January 2013, following the discontinuation of the prize in January 2014.

Locations

Waterstones has academic and high street shops in Europe including the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland (with shops in Cork, Drogheda, and in Dublin under the name Hodges Figgis) and in the Netherlands and Belgium. Some branches in the company occupy buildings of architectural and historical interest.

Flagship superstores

Its flagship shop on Piccadilly, formerly the Simpsons of Piccadilly department store and notable for its 1930s-Modernist architecture, is the largest shop in the Waterstones estate and claimed to be the largest bookshop in Europe. The main academic branch, formerly the flagship shop of Dillons, is located on Gower Street, between University College London and the Student Central, and promoted as Europe's largest academic bookshop. Aside from these branches, Waterstones operates a number of large shops which are set over multiple floors. Waterstones refers to these shops as 'superstores':
Piccadilly, London (formerly Simpsons of Piccadilly) – flagship branch with six floors and an estimated  miles of shelving. In 2012, the head office of the company was moved to the shop.
Gower Street, London – academic branch with five floors and 5 miles of shelving
Sidney Street, Cambridge – set over four floors, and containing two cafes.
Albion Street, Leeds set over three floors
College Lane, Liverpool – two floors, including the largest open-plan floor of books in Europe.
Deansgate, Manchester – three floors, with over 100,000 books in stock.
Milsom Street, Bath – three floors, with over 55,000 books in stock.
La Scala Cinema, Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow – five floors, set in a former cinema
Bridlesmith Gate, Nottingham – five floors

Shops of architectural and historical interest

Kalverstraat, Amsterdam, designed by Dutch architect Hendrick Petrus Berlage
Wool Exchange, Bradford
High Street, Birmingham, formerly Times Furniture Company
Dolphin & Anchor, West Street, Chichester,
West End Princes Street, Edinburgh
Corn Exchange, Lincoln,
Emerson Chambers, Newcastle upon Tyne
William Baker House, Cornmarket St, Oxford
Fishergate, Preston, formerly Booths grocery and head office
Broad Street, Reading, formerly Broad Street Independent Chapel
The Tontines Building, Parliament Row, Stoke-on-Trent
The Carlton Cinema, Swansea

See also
Books in the United Kingdom
Hatchards
HMV Group

References

External links

Bookshops of the United Kingdom
Book selling websites
Ebook suppliers
Retail companies of the United Kingdom
Bookstores established in the 20th century
British companies established in 1982
Retail companies established in 1982
1982 establishments in England
British brands
2011 mergers and acquisitions
2018 mergers and acquisitions
Private equity portfolio companies
British booksellers

Waterstones


The first modern hearing aids were made in the 17th century. Even though that was when they first became popular, since the 13th century people had already been making similar devices by hollowing out the horns of animals. Hearing aids did not improve very much until electricity and the telephone were created in 1898. This is when the first electric hearing aid was also created, but it was not given out to the public to use until later in the 20th century. Over the past century however, the fast development of technology has changed and improved the hearing aid greatly, making new designs and adding new functions to be able to help even more hearing problems.

Ear trumpets

The first hearing aids were called ear trumpets and were large funnel-shaped devices that were mostly made out of metal, animal horns, wood and even snail shells. People would hold to the device to their ear when they needed to use it to hear. These hearing aids did not make sound louder but collected sound and directed it into the ear which made the sound energy stronger when it hits the ear drum, helping to make hearing easier for people with hearing loss.

Ear trumpets worked by capturing more sound for users, so the best way to make them work was for others to speak into the opening of the trumpet. When used in more public places such as concerts, the ear trumpet would not be as effective. Background noise could not be blocked and would enter the trumpet along with the sounds that the user is trying to focus on.

Electronic
Late in the 19th century, after the invention of telephones and microphones, the electric hearing aids was created. Even though they were made during the 1870s - 1890s, they did not become popular until the early 20th century.

The first electronic hearing aid was called an Akouphone, and was invented by Miller Reese Hutchinson. It used a carbon transmitter created by Thomas Edison which could increase sound by about 15 decibels by using an electric current to make the sound signal stronger. These first electronic hearing aids were portable but still a little large and were not easily carried around. Also, they sometimes had a scratchy noise and could not pick up all sounds so were not ideal.

Vacuum tube
In 1920, the vacuum-tube hearing aid was created by Earl Hanson who was a naval engineer. Similar to the electronic hearing aids, these devices used the transmitter found in telephones to make sounds louder. It would do this by turn sound into electronic current and making it louder and moving it to the ear. Vacuum tubes could increase sound by up to 70 decibels, and worked better because they could control electricity better than carbon could. These were first the size of a cabinet, but between the 1920s - 1930s, the hearing aids were made small enough to fit into a small box. The hearing aids were continued to be made even smaller and in the late 1940s, a device that could fit in the pockets was made. This device still connected to the ears through wires so many people still did not think it was appealing.

Transistor
Vacuum tubes were replaced by smaller and better transistors. The transistor was not only smaller but also needed less power and sounded better than the vacuum tubes. With the small transistors, hearing aids were finally able to be worn inside or behind the ear, making hearing aids much more popular.

Digital hearing aids
Later in the 20th century, transistors were beginning to be made out of silicon and hearing aids could be made even smaller. Microprocessors were created and also added into hearing aids and sound signals were made to be processed digitally. Eventually, this allowed for hearing aids to be programmed, and customised to the needs of users. The technology inside the hearing aids is similar to the technology in mobile phones, computers and televisions.

Other websites
History of Hearing Aid Solutions - Infographic
Hearing

History of hearing aids