John Joseph Gotti Jr. (, ; October 27, 1940 – June 10, 2002) was an American gangster and boss of the Gambino crime family in New York City. He ordered and helped to orchestrate the murder of Gambino boss Paul Castellano in December 1985 and took over the family shortly thereafter, becoming boss of what was described as America's most powerful crime syndicate.

Gotti and his brothers grew up in poverty and turned to a life of crime at an early age. Gotti quickly became one of the crime family's biggest earners and a protégé of Aniello Dellacroce, the Gambino family underboss, operating out of the neighborhood of Ozone Park in Queens. Following the FBI's indictment of members of Gotti's crew for selling narcotics, Gotti began to fear that he and his brother would be killed by Castellano for dealing drugs. As this fear continued to grow, and amidst growing dissent over the leadership of the crime family, Gotti organized the murder of Castellano.

At his peak, Gotti was one of the most powerful and dangerous crime bosses in the United States. During his era, he became widely known for his outspoken personality and flamboyant style, which gained him favor with some of the general public. While his peers generally avoided attracting attention, especially from the media, Gotti became known as "The Dapper Don", for his expensive clothes and personality in front of news cameras. He was later given the nickname "The Teflon Don" after three high-profile trials in the 1980s resulted in his acquittal, though it was later revealed that the trials had been tainted by jury tampering, juror misconduct and witness intimidation. Law enforcement authorities continued gathering evidence against Gotti, who reportedly earned $5-$20 million a year as Gambino boss.

Gotti's underboss, Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano, aided the FBI in convicting Gotti; in 1991, Gravano agreed to turn state's evidence and testify against Gotti after hearing the boss make disparaging remarks about him on a wiretap that implicated them both in several murders. In 1992, Gotti was convicted of five murders, conspiracy to commit murder, racketeering, obstruction of justice, tax evasion, illegal gambling, extortion, and loansharking. He received life in prison without parole and was transferred to United States Penitentiary, Marion. Gotti died of throat cancer on June 10, 2002, at the United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri. According to Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, the former underboss of the Lucchese crime family, "what John Gotti did was the beginning of the end of Cosa Nostra".

Early life
Gotti was born in the Bronx borough of New York City, on October 27, 1940. He was the fifth of the 13 children (two had died at birth) of John Joseph Gotti Sr. and Philomena "Fannie" DeCarlo. His parents were born in New York City, but it is presumed that his grandparents were from San Giuseppe Vesuviano, in the province of Naples, Italy, because his parents were married and lived there for some time. Gotti was one of five brothers who became made men in the Gambino crime family: Eugene "Gene" Gotti was initiated before John due to the latter's incarceration, Peter Gotti was initiated under John's leadership in 1988, and Richard V. Gotti was identified as a caporegime (made member who heads a "crew" of soldiers and has major social status) by 2002. The fifth, Vincent, was initiated in 2002.

By the time he reached the age of 12, the Gottis settled in East New York, Brooklyn, where he grew up in poverty alongside his brothers. His father worked irregularly as a day laborer. As an adult, Gotti came to resent his father for being unable to provide for his family. In school, he had a history of truancy and bullying other students, and ultimately dropped out of Franklin K. Lane High School at the age of 16.

Gotti was involved in street gangs associated with New York City mafiosi from the age of 12. When he was 14, he was attempting to steal a cement mixer from a construction site when it fell, crushing his toes; this injury left him with a permanent limp. After leaving school, he devoted himself to working with the Mafia-associated Fulton-Rockaway Boys gang, where he met and befriended fellow future Gambino mobsters Angelo Ruggiero and Wilfred "Willie Boy" Johnson.

Gotti met his future wife, Victoria DiGiorgio, who was of half-Italian and half-Russian descent, at a bar in 1958. The couple were married on March 6, 1962. According to FBI documents, DiGiorgio was married previously and had one child by the previous marriage. They had five children: Angela, Victoria, John Jr., Frank (d. 1980) and Peter. Gotti attempted to work legitimately in 1962 as a presser in a coat factory and as an assistant truck driver. However, he could not stay crime-free and, by 1966, had been jailed twice.

Gambino crime family

Associate
As early as his teens, Gotti was running errands for Carmine Fatico, a capo in the Gambino family, then known as the Anastasia family under the leadership of boss Albert Anastasia. Gotti carried out truck hijackings at Idlewild Airport (subsequently renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport) together with his brother Gene and friend Ruggiero. During this time, Gotti befriended fellow mob hijacker and future Bonanno family boss Joseph Massino, and he was given the nicknames "Black John" and "Crazy Horse". It was around this time that Gotti met his mentor and Gambino underboss Aniello "Neil" Dellacroce.

In February 1968, United Airlines employees identified Gotti as the man who had signed for stolen merchandise; the FBI arrested him for that hijacking soon after. Gotti was arrested a third time for hijacking while out on bail two months later, this time for stealing a load of cigarettes worth $50,000 on the New Jersey Turnpike. Later that year, Gotti pleaded guilty to the Northwest Airlines hijacking and was sentenced to three years at Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary.

Gotti and Ruggiero were paroled in 1972 and returned to their old crew at the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club, still working under Fatico. Gotti was transferred to management of the Bergin crew's illegal gambling, where he proved himself to be an effective enforcer. Fatico was indicted on loansharking charges in 1972. As a condition of his release, he could not associate with known felons. Gotti was not yet a made man in the Mafia due to the membership books' having been closed since 1957 due to the Apalachin meeting, but Fatico named him acting capo of the Bergin crew soon after he was paroled. In this new role, Gotti frequently traveled to Dellacroce's headquarters at the Ravenite Social Club to brief the underboss on the crew's activities. Dellacroce had already taken a liking to Gotti, and the two became even closer during this time. The two were very similar—both had strong violent streaks, cursed a lot, and were heavy gamblers.

After Emanuel Gambino, nephew to boss Carlo Gambino, was kidnapped and murdered in 1973, Gotti was assigned to the hit team alongside Ruggiero and Ralph Galione to search for the main suspect, gangster James McBratney. The team botched their attempt to abduct McBratney at a Staten Island bar when they attempted to arrest him while posing as detectives, and Galione shot McBratney dead when his accomplices managed to restrain him. Gotti was identified by eyewitnesses and by a police insider, and was arrested for the killing in June 1974. He was able to strike a plea bargain, however, with the help of attorney Roy Cohn, and was sentenced to four years in prison for attempted manslaughter for his part in the hit.

After Gotti's death, he was also identified by Massino as the killer of Vito Borelli, a Gambino associate killed in 1975 for insulting then-acting boss Paul Castellano.

Remo Franceschini, a member of the NYPD from 1957 to 1991 who specialized in organized crime; when asked in 1993 why he knew at an early stage that Gotti would become a major figure in the Mafia, said: "He was charismatic and a leader. He wasn't a womanizer. He spent all his time with his men. He also had a very sharp mind and total recall. And he exuded toughness. There were few men who would go against him".

Captain
On October 15, 1976, Carlo Gambino died at home of natural causes. Against expectations, he had appointed Castellano to succeed him over his underboss Dellacroce. Gambino appeared to believe that his crime family would benefit from Castellano's focus on white-collar businesses. Dellacroce, at the time, was imprisoned for tax evasion and was unable to contest Castellano's succession. Castellano's succession was confirmed at a meeting on November 24, with Dellacroce present. Castellano arranged for Dellacroce to remain as underboss while directly running traditional Cosa Nostra activities such as extortion, robbery, and loansharking. While Dellacroce accepted Castellano's succession, the deal effectively split the Gambino family into two rival factions.

In 1976, the membership books were reportedly reopened. Gotti was released in July 1977, after two years' imprisonment; he was subsequently initiated as a made man into the Gambino family, now under the command of Castellano, and immediately promoted to replace Fatico as capo of the Bergin crew. He and his crew reported directly to Dellacroce as part of the concessions given by Castellano to keep Dellacroce as underboss, and Gotti was regarded as Dellacroce's protégé. Under Gotti, the crew were Dellacroce's biggest earners. Besides his cut of his subordinates' earnings, Gotti ran his own loansharking operation and held a no-show job as a plumbing supply salesman. Unconfirmed allegations by FBI informants in the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club claimed that Gotti also financed drug deals.

Gotti tried to keep most of his personal family uninvolved with his life of crime, with the exception of his son John Angelo Gotti, who was a mob associate by 1982.

In December 1978, Gotti assisted in the largest unrecovered cash robbery in history, the infamous Lufthansa Heist at Kennedy Airport. Gotti had made arrangements for the getaway van to be crushed and baled at a scrapyard in Brooklyn. The driver of the van, Parnell "Stacks" Edwards, failed to follow orders; rather than driving the vehicle to the scrapyard, he parked it near a fire hydrant and went to sleep at his girlfriend's apartment.

On March 18, 1980, Gotti's youngest son, 12-year-old Frank Gotti, was run over and killed on a family friend's minibike by a neighbor named John Favara. Frank's death was ruled an accident, but Favara subsequently received death threats and was attacked by Victoria with a baseball bat when he visited the Gottis to apologize. On July 28, 1980, Favara was abducted and disappeared, presumed murdered. Gotti is widely assumed to have ordered the murder despite him and his family leaving on vacation for Florida three days before the murder.

Gotti was indicted on two occasions in his last two years as the Bergin capo, with both cases coming to trial after his ascension to boss of the Gambinos. In September 1984, Gotti had an altercation with refrigerator mechanic Romual Piecyk, and was subsequently charged with assault and robbery. In 1985, he was indicted alongside Dellacroce and several Bergin crew members in a racketeering case by Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane Giacalone. The indictment revealed that Gotti's friend and codefendant Wilfred "Willie Boy" Johnson had been an FBI informant.

Taking over the Gambino family
Gotti rapidly became dissatisfied with Castellano's leadership, regarding the new boss as being too isolated and greedy. Like other members of the family, Gotti also personally disliked Castellano. The boss lacked street credibility, and those who had paid their dues running street-level jobs did not respect him. Gotti also had an economic interest: he had a running dispute with Castellano on the split Gotti took from hijackings at Kennedy Airport. Gotti was also rumored to be expanding into drug dealing, a lucrative trade Castellano had banned.

In August 1983, Ruggiero and Gene Gotti were arrested for dealing heroin, based primarily on recordings from a bug in Ruggiero's house. Castellano, who had banned made men from his family from dealing drugs under threat of death, demanded transcripts of the tapes, and, when Ruggiero refused, he threatened to demote Gotti.

In 1984, Castellano was arrested and indicted in a RICO case for the crimes of Gambino hitman Roy DeMeo's crew. The following year, he received a second indictment for his role in the Mafia's Commission. Facing life imprisonment for either case, Castellano arranged for Gotti to serve as an acting boss alongside Thomas Bilotti, Castellano's favorite capo, and Thomas Gambino in his absence. Gotti, meanwhile, began conspiring with fellow disgruntled capos Frank DeCicco and Joseph "Joe Piney" Armone and soldiers Sammy Gravano and Robert "DiB" DiBernardo (collectively dubbed "The Fist") to overthrow Castellano, insisting, despite the boss' inaction, that Castellano would eventually try to kill him. Armone's support was critical; as a respected old-timer who dated back to the family's founder, Vincent Mangano, he would lend needed credibility to the conspirators' cause.

It has long been a rule in the Mafia that a boss could only be killed with the approval of a majority of the Commission. Indeed, Gotti's planned hit would have been the first unsanctioned hit on a boss since Frank Costello was nearly killed in 1957. Gotti knew that it would be too risky to solicit support from the other four bosses, since they had longstanding ties to Castellano. To get around this, he got the support of several important figures of his generation in the Lucchese, Colombo and Bonanno families. He did not consider approaching the Genovese family; Castellano's ties with Genovese boss Vincent "Chin" Gigante were so close that any overture to a Genovese soldier would have been a tipoff. However, Gotti could also count on the complicity of Gambino consigliere Joseph N. Gallo.

After Dellacroce died of cancer on December 2, 1985, Castellano revised his succession plan: appointing Bilotti as underboss to Thomas Gambino as the sole acting boss, while making plans to break up Gotti's crew. Infuriated by this, and Castellano's refusal to attend Dellacroce's wake, Gotti resolved to kill his boss. When DeCicco tipped Gotti off that he would be having a meeting with Castellano and several other Gambino mobsters at Sparks Steak House on December 16, 1985, Gotti chose to take the opportunity. Both the boss and underboss were ambushed and shot dead by assassins under Gotti's command when they arrived at the meeting in the evening. Gotti watched the hit from his car with Gravano.

Several days after the murder, Gotti was named to a three-man committee to temporarily run the family pending the election of a new boss, along with Gallo and DeCicco. It was also announced that an internal investigation into Castellano's murder was underway. However, it was an open secret that Gotti was acting boss in all but name, and nearly all of the family's capos knew he had been the one behind the hit. He was formally acclaimed as the new boss of the Gambino family at a meeting of 20 capos held on January 15, 1986. He appointed DeCicco as the new underboss while retaining Gallo as consigliere.

Crime boss
Identified as both Castellano's likely murderer and his successor, Gotti rose to fame throughout 1986. At the time of his takeover, the Gambino family was regarded as the most powerful American Mafia family, with an annual income of $500 million. In the book Underboss, Gravano estimated that Gotti himself had an annual income of no less than $5 million during his years as boss, and more likely between $10 million and $12 million. To protect himself legally, Gotti banned members of the Gambino family from accepting plea bargains that acknowledged the existence of the organization.

"The Teflon Don"
Gotti often smiled and waved at television cameras at his trials, which gained him favor with some of the general public. Gotti's newfound fame had at least one positive effect; upon the revelation of his attacker's occupation, and amid reports of intimidation by the Gambinos, Romual Piecyk decided not to testify against Gotti thanks to Boško "The Yugo" Radonjić, the head of the Westies in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan. When the trial began in March 1986, Piecyk testified he was unable to remember who attacked him. The case was promptly dismissed, with the New York Post summarizing the proceedings with the headline "I Forgotti!" It was later revealed that Gambino thugs had severed Piecyk's brake lines, made threatening phone calls and stalked him before the trial.

On April 13, 1986, DeCicco was killed when his car was bombed following a visit to Castellano loyalist James Failla. The bombing was carried out by Victor Amuso and Anthony Casso of the Lucchese family, under orders of Gigante and Lucchese boss Anthony Corallo, to avenge Castellano and Bilotti by killing their successors; Gotti also planned to visit Failla that day, but canceled, and the bomb was detonated after a soldier who rode with DeCicco was mistaken for the boss. Bombs had long been banned by the Mafia out of concern that it would put innocent people in harm's way, leading the Gambinos to initially suspect that "zips"—Sicilian mafiosi working in the U.S.—were behind it; zips were well known for using bombs.

Following the bombing, Judge Eugene Nickerson, presiding over Gotti's racketeering trial, rescheduled to avoid a jury tainted by the resulting publicity, while Giacalone had Gotti's bail revoked due to evidence of witness intimidation in the Piecyk case. From jail, Gotti ordered the murder of Robert DiBernardo by Gravano; both DiBernardo and Ruggiero had been vying to succeed DeCicco until Ruggiero accused DiBernardo of challenging Gotti's leadership. When Ruggiero, also under indictment, had his bail revoked for his abrasive behavior in preliminary hearings, a frustrated Gotti instead promoted Armone to underboss.

Jury selection for the racketeering case began again in August 1986, with Gotti standing trial alongside his ex-companion William "Willie Boy" Johnson (who, despite being exposed as an informant, refused to turn state's evidence), Leonard DiMaria, Tony Rampino, Nicholas Corozzo and John Carneglia. At this point, the Gambinos were able to compromise the case when George Pape hid his friendship with Radonjić and was empaneled as juror No. 11. Through Radonjić, Pape contacted Gravano and agreed to sell his vote on the jury for $60,000.

In the trial's opening statements on September 25, Gotti's defense attorney Bruce Cutler denied the existence of the Gambino family and framed the government's entire effort as a personal vendetta. His main defense strategy during the prosecution was to attack the credibility of prosecutor Diane Giacalone's witnesses by discussing their crimes committed before their turning state's evidence. During Gotti's defense, Cutler called bank robber Matthew Traynor, a would-be prosecution witness dropped for unreliability, who testified that Giacalone offered him drugs and her underwear as a masturbation aid in exchange for his testimony; Traynor's allegations would be dismissed by Judge Nickerson as "wholly unbelievable" after the trial, and he was subsequently convicted of perjury.

Despite Cutler's defense and critiques about the prosecution's performance, according to mob writers Jerry Capeci and Gene Mustain, when the jury's deliberations began, a majority were in favor of convicting Gotti. However, due to Pape's misconduct, Gotti knew from the beginning of the trial that he could do no worse than a hung jury. During deliberations, Pape held out for acquittal until the rest of the jury began to fear their own safety would be compromised. On March 13, 1987, they acquitted Gotti and his codefendants of all charges including loansharking, illegal gambling, murder and armed hijackings. Five years later, Pape was convicted of obstruction of justice for his part in the fix and sentenced to three years in prison.

In the face of previous Mafia convictions, particularly the success of the Mafia Commission Trial, Gotti's acquittal was a major upset that further added to his reputation. The American media dubbed Gotti "The Teflon Don" in reference to the failure of any charges to "stick".

Reorganization

While Gotti himself had escaped conviction, his associates were not as fortunate. The other two men in the Gambino administration, underboss Armone and consigliere Gallo, had been indicted on racketeering charges in 1986 and were both convicted in December 1987. The heroin trial of Gotti's former fellow Bergin crewmembers Ruggiero and Gene Gotti also commenced in June of that year.

Prior to their convictions, Gotti allowed Gallo to retire and promoted Gravano in his place while slating Frank Locascio to serve as acting underboss in the event of Armone's imprisonment. The Gambinos also worked to compromise the heroin trial's jury, resulting in two mistrials. When the terminally ill Ruggiero was severed and released in 1989, Gotti refused to contact him, blaming him for the Gambinos' misfortunes. According to Gravano, Gotti also considered murdering Ruggiero and when he finally died, "I literally had to drag him to the funeral."

Beginning in January 1988, Gotti, against Gravano's advice, required his capos to meet with him at the Ravenite Social Club once a week. Regarded by Gene as an unnecessary vanity-inspired risk, and by FBI Gambino squad leader Bruce Mouw as antithetical to the "secret society", this move allowed FBI surveillance to record and identify much of the Gambino hierarchy. It also provided strong circumstantial evidence that Gotti was a boss; long-standing protocol in the Mafia requires public demonstrations of loyalty to the boss. The FBI also bugged the Ravenite, but failed to produce any high-quality incriminating recordings.

Later in 1988, Gotti, Gigante and new Lucchese boss Victor Amuso attended the first Commission meeting at the LaBar Bat Club in Manhattan since the Commission trial. In 1986, future Lucchese underboss Anthony Casso had been injured in an unauthorized hit by Gambino capo Mickey Paradiso. The following year, the FBI warned Gotti they had recorded Genovese consigliere Louis Manna discussing another hit on Gotti and his brother. In order to avoid a war, the leaders of the three families met, denied knowledge of their violence against one another, and agreed to "communicate better". The bosses also agreed to allow Colombo acting boss Victor Orena to join the Commission, but Gigante, wary of giving Gotti a majority by admitting another ally, blocked the reentry of Massino and the Bonannos.

Gotti was also able to influence the New Jersey-based DeCavalcante crime family in 1988. According to the DeCavalcante capo-turned-informant Anthony Rotondo, Gotti attended his father's wake with numerous other Gambino mobsters in a "show of force" and forced boss John Riggi to agree to run his family on the Gambinos' behalf. The DeCavalcantes remained in the Gambinos' sphere of influence until Gotti's imprisonment.

Gotti's son, John Gotti Jr., was initiated into the Gambino family on Christmas Eve 1988. According to fellow mobster Michael DiLeonardo, initiated on the same night, Gravano held the ceremony to keep Gotti from being accused of nepotism. John Jr. was promptly promoted to capo.

Assault acquittal
On the evening of January 23, 1989, Gotti was arrested outside the Ravenite and charged with ordering the 1986 assault of labor union official John O'Connor. In the back of the police car, Gotti remarked, "Three to one I beat this charge". O'Connor, a leader in the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America Local 608 who was later convicted of racketeering himself, was believed to have ordered an attack on a Gambino-associated restaurant that had snubbed the union and was subsequently shot and wounded by the Westies. After one night in prison, Gotti was released on $100,000 bail. Gotti had his occupation listed as a salesman for a plumbing contracting company.

By this time, the FBI had cultivated new informants and learned part of the reason the Ravenite bug failed was that Gotti would hold sensitive conversations in a rear hallway in the building the club occupied or in an apartment in its upper floors where a friendly widow of a Gambino soldier lived, and by November 1989, both locations were bugged. The apartment bug was particularly fruitful due to Gotti's frankness as he discussed his position as family boss in meetings there. In a December 12 conversation with Frank Locascio, Gotti plainly acknowledged ordering the murders of DiBernardo and Liborio Milito — the latter being one of Gravano's partners killed for insubordination. He also announced his intention to kill soldier Louis DiBono, who had ignored a summons to meet with Gotti to discuss his mismanagement of a drywall business he held with Gotti and Gravano. The FBI, however, misheard the namedrop and failed to warn DiBono, who was killed on October 4, 1990. In another taped meeting on January 4, 1990, Gotti promoted Gravano to underboss, preferring Gravano to lead the family if he was convicted in the assault case.

State prosecutors linked Gotti to the case with a recording of him discussing O'Connor and announcing his intention to "bust him up," and the testimony of Westies gangster James McElroy, however Gotti was acquitted of all six assault and conspiracy charges at trial on February 9, 1990. After the trial, there were firework displays by locals. Jules J. Bonavolonta, director of the FBI's organized-crime division in New York stated, "With all this media coverage he's beginning to look like a folk hero... What the public should realize is that he is the boss of the largest Cosa Nostra family, that he surrounds himself with ruthless killers and that he is flat out a criminal." It later emerged, however, that FBI bugs had apparently caught Gotti discussing plans to fix the jury as he had in the 1986–87 racketeering case. However, to the outrage of Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau and state-organized crime taskforce chief Ronald Goldstock, the FBI and federal prosecutors chose not to reveal this information to them. Morgenthau later said that had he known about these bugged conversations, he would have asked for a mistrial.

1992 conviction

Gotti, Gravano, and Frank Locascio were often recorded by the bugs placed throughout the Ravenite (concealed in the main room, the first-floor hallway and the upstairs apartment of the building) discussing incriminating events. On December 11, 1990, FBI agents and NYPD detectives raided the Ravenite, arresting Gotti, Gravano, and Locascio. Federal prosecutors charged Gotti, in this new racketeering case, with five murders (Castellano, Bilotti, DiBernardo, Liborio Milito, and after review of the apartment tapes, Louis Dibono), conspiracy to murder Gaetano "Corky" Vastola, loansharking, illegal gambling, obstruction of justice, bribery, and tax evasion. Based on tapes from FBI bugs played at pretrial hearings, the Gambino administration was denied bail. At the same time, attorneys Cutler and Gerald Shargel were disqualified from defending Gotti and Gravano after prosecutors successfully contended they were "part of the evidence" and thus liable to be called as witnesses. Prosecutors argued that Cutler and Shargel not only knew about potential criminal activity, but had worked as "in-house counsel" for the Gambino family. Gotti subsequently hired Albert Krieger, a Miami attorney who had worked with Joseph Bonanno, to replace Cutler.

The tapes also created a rift between Gotti and Gravano, where the Gambino boss described his newly appointed underboss as too greedy and attempted to frame Gravano as the main force behind the murders of DiBernardo, Milito, and Dibono. Gotti's attempt at reconciliation failed, leaving Gravano disillusioned with the mob and doubtful on his chances of winning his case without Shargel, his former attorney. Gravano ultimately opted to turn state's evidence, formally agreeing to testify on November 13, 1991. He was the highest-ranking member of a New York crime family to turn informer, until Joseph Massino in 2003.

Gotti and Locascio were tried in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York before District Judge I. Leo Glasser. Jury selection began in January 1992 with an anonymous jury and, for the first time in a Brooklyn federal case, fully sequestered during the trial due to Gotti's reputation for jury tampering. The trial commenced with the prosecution's opening statements on February 12; prosecutors Andrew Maloney and John Gleeson began their case by playing tapes showing Gotti discussing Gambino family business, including murders he approved, and confirming the animosity between Gotti and Castellano to establish the former's motive to kill his boss. After calling an eyewitness of the Sparks hit who identified Carneglia as one of the men who shot Bilotti, they then brought Gravano to testify on March 2.

On the stand, Gravano confirmed Gotti's place in the structure of the Gambino family and described in detail the conspiracy to assassinate Castellano, giving a full description of the hit and its aftermath. Gravano confessed to 19 murders, implicating Gotti in four of them. Krieger, and Locascio's attorney, Anthony Cardinale, proved unable to shake Gravano during cross-examination. After additional testimony and tapes, the government rested its case on March 24.

Five of Krieger and Cardinale's intended six witnesses were ruled irrelevant or extraneous, leaving only Gotti's tax attorney Murray Appleman to testify on his behalf. The defense also attempted unsuccessfully to have a mistrial declared based on Maloney's closing remarks. Gotti himself became increasingly hostile during the trial, and at one point, Glasser threatened to remove him from the courtroom. Among other outbursts, Gotti called Gravano a junkie while his attorneys sought to discuss his past steroid use, and equated the dismissal of a juror to the fixing of the 1919 World Series.

On April 2, 1992, after only 14 hours of deliberation, the jury found Gotti guilty on all charges of the indictment (Locascio was found guilty on all but one). James Fox, Assistant Director in Charge or "ADIC" of the FBI's New York Field Office, announced at a press conference, "The Teflon is gone. The don is covered with Velcro, and all the charges stuck." On June 23, 1992, Glasser sentenced both defendants to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole and a $250,000 fine.

Post-conviction

Incarceration

Gotti was incarcerated at the United States Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois. He spent the majority of his sentence in effective solitary confinement, allowed out of his cell for only one hour a day. His final appeal was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1994.

On July 18, 1996, a fellow inmate named Walter Johnson punched Gotti in the prison recreation room, leaving him bruised and bleeding, because according to New York's Daily News, Gotti had disrespected him with a racial slur. Gotti, desiring revenge, offered Aryan Brotherhood chieftains David Sahakian and Michael McElhiney somewhere between US$40,000 and $400,000 to have Johnson killed. In August, McElhiney told two Brotherhood underlings to kill Johnson "if given the opportunity," according to a federal indictment charging him and 39 other gang members with murder, attempted murder and racketeering. Johnson, however, was transferred to the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.

Despite his imprisonment and pressure from the Commission to stand down, Gotti asserted his prerogative to retain his title as boss until his death or retirement, with his brother Peter and his son John Jr. relaying orders on his behalf. By 1998, when he was indicted on racketeering, John Jr. was believed to be the acting boss of the family. Against his father's wishes, John Jr. pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six years and five months' imprisonment in 1999. He maintains he has since left the Gambino family. Peter Gotti subsequently became acting boss and is believed to have formally succeeded his brother shortly before Gotti's death.

John Jr.'s indictment brought further stress to Gotti's marriage. Victoria DiGiorgio Gotti, up to that point unaware of her son's involvement in the Mafia, blamed her husband for ruining her son's life and threatened to leave him unless he allowed John Jr. to leave the mob.

Legacy and death

In 1998, Gotti was diagnosed with throat cancer and sent to the United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, for surgery. Though the tumor was removed, the cancer was discovered to have returned two years later and Gotti was transferred back to Springfield, where he spent the rest of his life.

Gotti's condition rapidly declined and he died on June 10, 2002, at the age of 61. The Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn announced that Gotti's family would not be permitted to have a Requiem Mass, but allowed a memorial Mass after the burial.

Gotti's funeral was held in a non-church facility. After the funeral, an estimated 300 onlookers followed the procession, which passed Gotti's Bergin Hunt and Fish Club, to the gravesite. Gotti's body was interred in a crypt next to his son, Frank. Gotti's brother, Peter, was unable to attend because of his incarceration.

In an apparent repudiation of Gotti's leadership and legacy, the other New York City families sent no representatives to the funeral. Numerous prosecutions triggered by Gotti's tactics left the Gambinos in shambles; by the turn of the century, half of the family's made men were in prison.

In popular culture
Since his conviction, Gotti has been portrayed in six TV movies, three documentary series, three theatrical films and been a subject of lyrics in music.

Film and TV
 Getting Gotti – 1994 CBS TV movie, portrayed by Anthony John Denison
 Gotti – 1996 HBO TV movie, portrayed by Armand Assante
 Witness to the Mob – 1998 NBC miniseries, portrayed by Tom Sizemore
 A 1999 episode of the documentary series The FBI Files narrated the story of the investigation and conviction of Gotti.
The Big Heist – 2001 Canadian-American TV movie which aired on A&E, portrayed by Steven Randazzo
 Boss of Bosses – 2001 TNT TV movie adapted from the book of the same name, portrayed by Sonny Marinelli
 Sinatra Club – 2010 theatrical film, portrayed by Danny Nucci
 The Wannabe – 2015 film, portrayed by Joseph Siravo
 The documentary series Mugshots aired an episode, "John Gotti: End of the Sicilians", in 2017. Filmed in Sicily and Brooklyn, the episode featured court wiretaps and undercover footage of Gotti's mob.
 Gotti – 2018 theatrical film, portrayed by John Travolta
 Victoria Gotti: My Father's Daughter is a 2019 television movie based on the book by Victoria Gotti. John Gotti is played by Maurice Benard.
 Get Gotti – 2023 Netflix documentary series.

Music
 Gotti is the key subject of the song "King of New York", by New York rap-rock group Fun Lovin' Criminals, released in 1996. The song reached number 28 in the UK singles chart and featured on the band's debut album Come Find Yourself, which achieved platinum status in the UK.
 In the 1996 song "D'Evils", Jay-Z states "I never prayed to God, I prayed to Gotti" to discuss his aspirations toward criminal success. Lupe Fiasco later referenced the lyric in his 2006 song "Hurt Me Soul".
 Gotti is mentioned in the song "Everybody Get Up", by British boy band Five, released in 1998.
 "Who Da Neighbors" is a 2011 song by Juicy J and Lex Luger, in which Juicy J compares his rise from the projects and his development of expensive tastes to that of John Gotti.
 The 2013 song "Versace (Remix)", by Migos and Drake, references John Gotti as a notorious drug dealer.
 "Road to the Riches", a 1988 single by Kool G Rap & DJ Polo, makes a direct reference to John Gotti.

Notes

References

Sources
 Blum, Howard. Gangland : How The FBI Broke the Mob. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993.
 Capeci, Jerry and Gene Mustain. Mob Star: The Story of John Gotti. New York: Penguin, 1988.
 Capeci, Jerry and Gene Mustain. Gotti: Rise and Fall. New York: Onyx, 1996.
 Davis, John H. Mafia Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the Gambino Crime Family. New York: HarperCollins, 1993.
 Maas, Peter. Underboss: Sammy the Bull Gravano's Story of Life in the Mafia. New York, N.Y.: HarperPaperbacks, 1997. .
 Raab, Selwyn. Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires. London: Robson Books, 2006.

External links

 John Gotti – Biography.com
 John Gotti: How We Made the Charges Stick – Federal Bureau of Investigation

1940 births
2002 deaths
20th-century American criminals
American gangsters of Italian descent
American male criminals
American people convicted of murder
American people convicted of tax crimes
American people who died in prison custody
Bosses of the Gambino crime family
Burials at St. John's Cemetery (Queens)
Capo dei capi
Catholics from New York (state)
Criminals from Brooklyn
Criminals from Queens, New York
Deaths from cancer in Missouri
Deaths from throat cancer
Gangsters from New York City
Gangsters sentenced to life imprisonment
Gotti family
Male murderers
People acquitted of assault
People acquitted of racketeering
People convicted of obstruction of justice
People convicted of racketeering
People from East New York, Brooklyn
People from Howard Beach, Queens
People from Ozone Park, Queens
People convicted of murder by the United States federal government
People of Campanian descent
Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by the United States federal government
Prisoners who died in United States federal government detention

John Gotti


Akshak (Sumerian: , akšak) was a city of ancient Sumer, situated on the northern boundary of Akkad, sometimes identified with Babylonian Upi (Greek Opis). It is known, based on an inscription "'Ur-kisala, the sangu-priest of Sin of Akshak, son of Na-ti, pasisu-priest of Sin to Salam presented [this statue]." that there was a temple of the god Sin in Akshak.

History
Akshak first appears in a Sumerian literary composition Dumuzid's dream, where Dumuzid king of Uruk is said to have been toppled from his opulence by a hungry mob composed of men from the major cities of Sumer, including Akshak. The partially literary Sumerian king list mentions Unzi, Undalulu, Urur, Puzur-Nirah, Ishu-Il and Shu-Sin as kings of Akshak. Puzur-Nirah is also mentioned in the millennia later literary composition Weidner Chronicle as reigning in Akshak when a female tavern-keeper, Kug-bau of Kish, was appointed overlordship over Sumer.

Moving into actual archaeological sources, a king of Uruk, Enshakushanna, is recorded on a stone vessel from Nippur as attacking Akshak saying "The leader of Kish and the leader of Akshak, (when) both their cities were destroyed ...". Following this, Akshak was at war with Lagash, and was captured by Eannatum, who claims in one inscription (on Boulder A v 4-5) to have smitten its king, Zuzu.

The town of Antasur featured in several conflicts between Lagash and nearby Girsu. Akshak was also mentioned in tablets found at Ebla. In ca. 2350 BC, Akshak fell into the hands of Lugalzagesi of Umma. The Akkadian king Shar-Kali-Sharri reports defeating the Elamites in a battle at Akshak in his year name "In the year in which Szarkaliszarri brought the battle against Elam and Zahara in front of Akszak and ... and was victorious". A year name of an undetermined ruler of the Akkadian Empire reads "Year in which the Akszak canal in Nippur was split". The city was also mentioned in an Old Babylonian period tablet found at Sippar-Amnanum. A fragmentary year name of a ruler of that period, Itur-Shamash, mentions Akshak, "Year Itur-Szamasz built the temple of ... in Akszak". Itur-Shamash, son of Idinilu, is thought to have been ruler of the city of Kisurra.

There are no records for Akshak after the Old Babylonian period.

Location
Its exact location is uncertain. Classical writers located it where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers are closest together and it was mentioned along with Kish and Girsu in early records. Archaeologists in the 1900s placed Akshak at the site of Tel Omar (or Tel Umar) where a pair of sites straddles the Tigris, but that turned out to be Seleucia (possibly earlier Upi/Opis) when it was excavated by LeRoy Waterman of the American Schools of Oriental Research,.  Initially it was thought that two inscriptions bearing the name of Akshak were found there but after examination that proved not the case. Michael C. Astour placed it on the Tigris, on what is now the southern outskirts of Baghdad. A survey of the Diyala area showed no early remains in the area of Seleucia or Cteshiphon, apparently precluding that location. Surveyed sites marked as possible locations of Akshak were Tell Mohammad, Tell Rishad, and Tell Abu Jawan. Tulul Mujaili' (also Tulül al-Mugeli' and el-Mjel'aat), which lies 15 kilometers northeast of Cteshiphon, has also been suggested as Akshak and also Opis. The site is 500 meters by 200 meters in area with a height of 6.5 meters. A surface survey showed occupation in Early Dynastic through Neo-Babylonian periods, mainly beginning in Kassite times. A kudurru of Marduk-nadin-ahhe (c. 1095–1078 BC), sixth king of the Second Dynasty of Isin and the 4th Dynasty of Babylon, was found there.

List of rulers of Akshak

See also
Cities of the ancient Near East

References

Further reading
L Waterman, Preliminary report upon the excavation at Tel Umar, Iraq: conducted by the University of Michigan and the Toledo museum of art, University of Michigan press, 1931

Sumerian cities
Former populated places in Iraq
Archaeological sites in Iraq
Former kingdoms

Akshak


Ahmed Mahmoud Moussa (1934–1998) was an Egyptian Egyptologist. Born in Damietta on 15 August 1934, Moussa received his B.A. in Egyptology in 1959 from Cairo University, and his PhD from the Eötvös Loránd University at Budapest in 1995.

He is famous for discovering the tomb of Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum at Saqqara in 1964, which became somewhat of a cause célèbre among the homosexual community.

The initiation of the 100 km Pharaonic Race in Cairo was due to his 1977 discovery of an inscription describing how ancient Egyptian soldiers ran a race of 100 kilometres under king Taharqa.

Dr. Ahmed Moussa died in Guiza on 26 Nov. 1998.

References

Egyptian Egyptologists
1934 births
1998 deaths
Cairo University alumni
Eötvös Loránd University alumni

Ahmed Moussa (Egyptologist)


Trinity Church is a historic episcopal church at 160 Main Street in Thomaston, Connecticut.  Built in two stages, 1871 and 1880, to a design by Richard M. Upjohn, it is a good example of Gothic and Stick Style architecture.  The church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.  It is now part of a merged parish with St. Peter's of Plymouth.

Description and history
Trinity Church is prominently located in the center of Thomaston, between the opera house and the public library on the north side of Main Street.  It is a wood frame Stick style structure, with a complex roof line and a board-and-batten exterior that is a modern aluminum covering for the original, which lies underneath.  Its main roof has a front-facing gable, from which cross gables at full height extend, giving a basically cruciform shape to the roof.  At the front there is a hip-roofed extension to the left, and a gabled extension to the right that ends in the square tower.  A larger hip-roofed cross section extends at the back of the main building.  The tower is square for two stories, then begins a steeply-pitched roof section that ends in an open belfry, with a small pyramidal roof at the top.  Stick decorations adorn its gables.  The interior is modestly decorated, with exposed curved roof trusses, and decorative woodwork in the chancel area.

The church was designed by Richard M. Upjohn, and is in some respects a continuation of his father's promotion of the Gothic Revival, albeit in a more modern sense.  The younger Upjohn's best-known work is the Connecticut State Capitol, and he had already designed four similar churches when he created the design for the Thomaston church, which is larger and more elaborate than those earlier designs.

See also
National Register of Historic Places listings in Litchfield County, Connecticut

References

External links

St. Peters-Trinity Church web site

Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Connecticut
Queen Anne architecture in Connecticut
Churches completed in 1871
19th-century churches in the United States
Thomaston, Connecticut
Churches in Litchfield County, Connecticut
Richard Michell Upjohn church buildings
National Register of Historic Places in Litchfield County, Connecticut

Trinity Church (Thomaston, Connecticut)


A sebsi or sibsi (Berber: ⵙⴱⵙⵉ) is a traditional Moroccan cannabis pipe with a narrow clay bowl called a skuff (or shkaff), with a fine metal screen. To this a hardwood stem is attached, which may be up to  long.

The sebsi has traditionally been used to smoke kief, which in Morocco refers to the best parts of the cannabis finely chopped and mixed with tobacco or other herbs. The sebsi provides a small, low-temperature serving of herb (usually about 25 mg), compared with larger traditional smoking devices like the chillum of India and Jamaica.

References

Pipe smoking
Cannabis smoking
Cannabis in Morocco

Sebsi


Benjamin Winchester (August 6, 1817 – January 25, 1901) was an early leader in the Latter Day Saint movement.  Winchester was the youngest adult member of Zion's Camp, an original member of the first Quorum of the Seventy, editor of the first independent Mormon periodical, the Gospel Reflector, president of a large branch of the church in Philadelphia, a zealous missionary who baptized thousands, a Rigdonite Apostle, and ultimately a dissenter who repudiated Mormonism altogether.

The Gospel Reflector was published in Philadelphia, twice a month, between January 1, 1841, and June 15, 1841. Winchester moved to Nauvoo, Illinois, in October 1841 where he worked at the Times and Seasons until January 1842.

Winchester also wrote pamphlets and two significant books on Latter Day Saint topics. His Synopsis of the Holy Scriptures, and Concordance, published in 1842, was the first categorization of Bible scriptures from a Mormon perspective and included a detailed analysis of the Christian apostasy. His A Brief History of the Priesthood from the Beginning of the World to the Present Time, published in 1843, was the first book to focus on the topic of the Mormon priesthood.

References

Benjamin Winchester (ed.), The Gospel Reflector, reprint of the original 1841 Philadelphia edition by Richard Drew for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite), 1993.
Elizabeth Proctor Kiddle et alia (ed.), The Family of Auer Winchester Proctor, Provo, Utah: 1978.
David J. Whittaker, Early Mormon Pamphleteering, BYU Studies, 2003.
The Gospel Reflector (PDF scans), L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.

1817 births
1901 deaths
19th-century Mormon missionaries
American Latter Day Saint leaders
American Latter Day Saints
American Mormon missionaries in the United States
Converts to Mormonism
Editors of Latter Day Saint publications
Former Latter Day Saints
Latter Day Saint leaders
Leaders in the Church of Christ (Latter Day Saints)
Members of the First Quorum of the Seventy (LDS Church)
Rigdonites

Benjamin Winchester


Boleslaw Stanislaus Barlog (28 March 1906 – 17 March 1999) was a German stage, film, and opera director primarily known for his work in reviving the theatrical life of Berlin after World War II. From 1951 until 1972 he served as the Intendant of the , the municipal theatre company of West Berlin that at its height employed over 80 actors and operated three theatrical venues—Schiller Theater, Schiller Theater Werkstatt, and Schlosspark Theater.

Life and career
Barlog was born in Breslau (then a city in the German Empire and now the Polish city of Wrocław). He was the son of a lawyer who later relocated the family to Berlin where Barlog received his secondary school education and initially worked as bookseller. He then began working as an assistant director to Karlheinz Martin and Heinz Hilpert at the Volksbühne theatre in Berlin. He lost his job there in 1933 after the Nazi Party took control of Germany, and worked in casual jobs for several years before obtaining a position as an assistant director for the German film company Universum Film AG. By the 1940s, he was directing his own films at Universum and at Terra Film.

After World War II ended, Barlog returned to stage direction and worked to re-build the once-vibrant theatrical life of Berlin, actively lobbying, along with many other artists, to minimize the impact of Cold War tensions on the theatres, opera houses, and concert halls in the now-divided city. Most of Berlin's main theatres had been badly damaged or destroyed during the war and many of the first post-war performances were given in old cinemas or in the small, relatively unscathed, Schlosspark Theater on the outskirts of West Berlin. Barlog became the manager of the Schlosspark Theatre in 1945 and re-opened it with his production of Curt Goetz's Hokuspokus. Other plays which he directed there in the immediate post-war period were Romain Rolland's Le Jeu de l'amour et de la mort (1945), Shakespeare's As You Like It (1946) and The Taming of the Shrew (1947), Holm and Abbott's Three Men on a Horse (1946), Gogol's Marriage (1947) and Zuckmayer's Des Teufels General (1948).

In 1950 Barlog received the Berliner Kunstpreis (Berlin Arts Prize), and the following year he became the  (general director) of the West Berlin municipal theatre company, , whose venues included the Schlosspark Theater and the newly re-built Schiller Theater. During Barlog's 21-year tenure as its Generalintendant, the company mounted over 100 productions, including the German premieres of Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Conor Cruise O'Brien's Murderous Angels and the world premieres of Günter Grass's Die Plebejer proben den Aufstand and Edward Albee's The Zoo Story. However, according to theatre scholar Michael Patterson, the final decade of his leadership was marked by an increasingly authoritarian and conservative stance and unadventurous repertoire which led to declining audiences. In a 1969 interview in Der Abend, Barlog attributed the audience decline at his theatres to the effect of television, hostile critics, and what he termed "spiritual smugness", remarking:
It will take care of itself in time. When people are worse off again, they will seek a spiritual experience, and their love for the church and the theatre will awake once more.

In 1972 Barlog retired as Generalintendant and was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit by the Federal Republic of Germany. The 's fortunes continued to decline, and it was eventually dissolved in 1993. After his retirement as a theatre manager, he continued working throughout the 1970s as a stage and opera director in Berlin and other German cities as well as in Vienna and Salzburg. His original 1969 production of Tosca for the Deutsche Oper Berlin was still in that company's repertoire in 2013, his 1972 production of Salome is still running at Vienna State Opera. Barlog's autobiography, Theater lebenslänglich, was published in 1981.

Barlog died in Berlin in 1999 shortly before his 93rd birthday survived by his wife Herta (née Schuster), whom he had married in 1939. Both are buried in Berlin's Waldfriedhof Zehlendorf in a Grave of Honour.

Filmography
Young Hearts (1944)
The Green Salon (1944)
Where the Trains Go (1949)

References

External links

German theatre directors
Film directors from Berlin
German opera directors
German theatre managers and producers
Film people from Wrocław
1906 births
1999 deaths
Knights Commander of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
Members of the Academy of Arts, Berlin
Burials at the Waldfriedhof Zehlendorf

Boleslaw Barlog


The E and B Experiment (EBEX) will measure the cosmic microwave background radiation of a part of the sky during two sub-orbital (high-altitude) balloon flights. It is an experiment to make large, high-fidelity images of the CMB polarization anisotropies. By using a telescope which flies at over 42,000 metres high, it is possible to reduce the atmospheric absorption of microwaves to a minimum. This allows massive cost reduction compared to a satellite probe, though only a small part of the sky can be scanned and for shorter duration than a typical satellite mission such as WMAP.

The first flight was an engineering flight over North America in 2009. For the science flight, EBEX was launched on 29 December 2012, near McMurdo Station in Antarctica. It circled around the South Pole using the polar vortex winds before landing on 24 January 2013 about 400 miles from McMurdo.

Instrumentation
EBEX consists of a 1.5 m Dragone-type telescope that provides a resolution of 8 arcminutes in frequency bands centered on 150, 250, and 410 GHz.  Polarimetry is achieved with a continuously-rotating achromatic half-wave plate supported by a superconducting magnetic bearing and a fixed wire grid polarizer.  The wire grid is mounted at 45 degrees to the incoming light beam and transmits one polarization state while reflecting the other.  Each polarization state is subsequently detected by its own focal plane with a 6 degree instantaneous field-of-view on the sky.  Each of the focal planes contains up to 960 transition-edge sensors read out with frequency-domain SQUID multiplexing.

Temporary disappearance
The EBEX telescope was reported missing in May, 2012, while in transit from the University of Minnesota to the NASA
Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas. The driver of the truck said that the trailer had been stolen while parked at a motel in Dallas. Scientists and employees of the trucking company searched the area and found the missing trailer parked at a truck wash near Hutchins, Texas. The trailer had been opened, but no scientific equipment had been stolen and the telescope was undamaged.

Flight

EBEX launched from Williams Field on the Antarctic coast on 29 December 2012.

See also
Cosmic microwave background experiments
Observational cosmology

References

External links
Main (UMN) Site
Miller CMB group

Physics experiments
Radio astronomy
Cosmic microwave background experiments
Balloon-borne telescopes
 Astronomical experiments in the Antarctic

The E and B Experiment


A bone crusher is a device regularly used for crushing animal bones.  Bones obtained during slaughter are cleaned, boiled in water and dried for several months.  After that, they are suitable for crushing with the special machine into a relatively dry gritty powder which is used as fertilizer.

The machine, shown in the picture, is powered by a water wheel.  It contains eight S-shaped pairs of cams that raise the crushers alternately and let them fall into material to be crushed.  The simple transmission increases the rotation speed of the crusher wheel to 21 rpm from the water wheel speed of about 7 rpm.

Bone meal has been used since about 1790 as a fertilizer supplement to ordinary farmyard manure. From about 1880 onwards it was supplanted by chemical fertilizers.

See also
Stamp mill, a similar machine used to crush ore in mining situations.

Grinding mills

Bone crusher


Peter Wood (8 October 1925 – 11 February 2016) was an English theatre and film director.

Biography
Wood was born on 8 October 1925 in Colyton, Devon. His father Frank Wood was a basketmaker and his mother, Lucy Eleanor (Nell), née Meeson was a seamstress. Wood developed his interest in acting while at Taunton School. After school, he spent his National Service with the RAF in Canada and on his return he studied English at Downing College, Cambridge. Wood joined an acting troupe after university, and by 1955 he was running the Oxford Playhouse. The following year, he became resident director at the London Arts Theatre, working alongside Peter Hall.

During the late 1950s, Wood directed plays at Edinburgh festival and the Old Vic before travelling to Broadway to direct Five Finger Exercise. He returned to England to direct plays at Old Vic, Globe Theatre and Theatre Royal Haymarket in the 1960s.

Amongst his early stage work was direction of Harold Pinter's debut work, The Birthday Party at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, and later Joe Orton's Loot. He was also responsible for regularly directing premiere productions of plays by Tom Stoppard, from Jumpers (1972) to Hapgood (1988).

His film work included an adaptation of Long Day's Journey into Night starring Laurence Olivier and a television special adaptation of the Stoppard play The Dog It Was That Died in 1988. Wood lived his final years in a restored barn house at a Batcombe, Somerset and died on 11 February 2016 as a result of dementia and old age.

References

External links

1925 births
2016 deaths
Laurence Olivier Award winners
English film directors
English theatre directors

Peter Wood (director)


Benton MacKaye ( ; March 6, 1879 – December 11, 1975) was an American forester, planner and conservationist. He was born in Stamford, Connecticut; his father was actor and dramatist Steele MacKaye.  After studying forestry at Harvard University (B.A., 1900; M.A. School of Forestry, 1905), Benton later taught there for several years.  He joined a number of Federal bureaus and agencies, including the U.S. Forest Service, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the U.S. Department of Labor; he was also a member of the Technical Alliance where he participated in the Energy Survey of North America.

MacKaye helped pioneer the idea of land preservation for recreation and conservation purposes, and was a strong advocate of balancing human needs and those of nature; he coined the term "Geotechnics" to describe this philosophy.  In addition to writing the first argument against urban sprawl, MacKaye also authored two books, The New Exploration: A Philosophy of Regional Planning and Expedition Nine: A Return to a Region.  Thirteen of his essays were published in the collection From Geography to Geotechnics.  A co-founder of The Wilderness Society, he is best known as the originator of the Appalachian Trail (AT), an idea he presented in his 1921 article titled An Appalachian Trail: A Project in Regional Planning.  The Benton MacKaye Trail, some portions of which coincide with the Appalachian Trail, is named after him.

Early life
Emile Benton MacKaye was born in Stamford, Connecticut on March 6, 1879 to actor and dramatist (James) Steele MacKaye and his wife Mary.  He was the sixth of seven children (and last son) born to the couple. His siblings were Arthur Loring MacKaye (1863–1939), Harold (Hal) Steele (1866–1928), William Payson (1868–1889), James (Jamie) Medbery (1872–1935), Percy (1875–1956), and Hazel (1880–1944).  Benton's name was derived from his paternal grandmother, Emily Benton Steele.  The family often suffered from financial troubles due to the patriarch's numerous failed business ventures; although the Stamford home where Benton was born and where the family had lived since 1875 was a comfortable one, in late 1879 the family began a restless series of moves due to lack of funds.  They lived in farms and houses in Brattleboro, Vermont; Norton, Massachusetts; Mount Vernon, New York; and Ridgefield, Connecticut, before moving to New York City in 1885.

In order to escape the bustle of city-life, the family took to visiting Shirley Center, Massachusetts, a quiet village 30 miles from Boston that Benton would continue to visit until his death.  In 1888, his brother William purchased an estate in Shirley that the family would come to call "The Cottage".  Eight-year-old Benton was immediately enamored with the beauty and freedom of the country, proclaiming he enjoyed it far more than urban existence.  Shortly after William died of a sudden respiratory disease in 1889, the family moved to Washington, D.C.  An indifferent student, MacKaye once described school as "a place that boys like to run away from".  Drawn to the study of the natural world, he often pursued knowledge on his own; he spent much time in the Smithsonian, making sketches of the abundant collections and volunteering to help scientists in their labs.  He befriended assistant curator James Benedict, and attended lectures given by Civil War hero John Wesley Powell and arctic explorer Robert Peary.

His early immersion in nature helped him cope with tragedy that eventually struck the MacKaye family; the frequently absent Steele died in early 1894, when Benton was fourteen.  While attending high school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he began charting the landscape around Shirley Center, documenting vegetation, landforms, rivers, and roads in numbered notebooks.  Lewis Mumford, a close friend of MacKaye and his future biographer, wrote that "This direct, first-hand education through the senses and feelings, with its deliberate observation of nature in every guise—including the human animal—has nourished MacKaye all his life."

Harvard and forestry
After dropping out of school in order to prepare for college entrance exams on his own, in 1896 MacKaye followed his brothers—James, an engineer and philosopher, and Percy, a dramatist and poet—to Harvard University, where he studied geology.  It took him two years to overcome deficiencies in subjects such as German, algebra and physics.

When he graduated in June 1905, MacKaye was still unsure what career he should embark upon.  During this time, he read Thomas Henry Huxley's 1877 work Physiography: An Introduction to the Study of Nature—a gift from his brother James, and a work that would prove influential in MacKaye's future regional planning.  In October 1903, he enrolled in Harvard's newly established forestry school; he was the school's first student to graduate, in 1905.  For the next five years, he alternated between teaching at Harvard's newly created forestry school near Petersham, Massachusetts, and working as a Forest Assistant with the Forest Service.

MacKaye made some important contributions during the early years of national forestry.  While working as a Forest Examiner in the early teens, he performed groundbreaking research on the impacts of forest cover on runoff in New Hampshire's White Mountains.  This was during a time in which an intense debate regarding the connection between deforestation and irregular stream flow was occurring, and MacKaye's scientific evidence that forest cover controlled stream flow helped in the creation of the White Mountain National Forest.

Progressive politics
In 1913, while still living in Washington, Mackaye helped form a social activist group called the Hell Raisers. Composed of government workers, congressional staffers, and journalists, the informal group aimed to raise public awareness about social and political issues.

He married the suffragist Jessie Belle Hardy Stubbs in 1915.

Appalachian Trail

MacKaye's article An Appalachian Trail: A Project in Regional Planning, which called for the construction of the Appalachian Trail, was published in the October 1921 issue of Journal of the American Institute of Architects. The article was partly inspired by the Green Mountain Club which had helped usher in Vermont's Long Trail. The article triggered sixteen years of effort, organized through hundreds of local trail associations and community groups, to blaze and build a 2,192-mile trail along the crests of the Appalachian Mountains.

Pinhoti Trail

"The Pinhoti Trail is considered the realization of forester Benton MacKaye's original 1921 vision of a trail extending the length of the Appalachian Mountain chain, connecting several existing trails, and sprinkled with permanent camps and constructed to "stimulate every line of outdoor non-industrial endeavor," including recreation, recuperation, agriculture and study. He hoped to spark a "back to the land" movement to relieve the ills of urban industrial life." https://www.bhamwiki.com/w/Pinhoti_Trail
From the Pinhoti Trail Alliance. The PTA Facebook account has the most history and current trail conditions online.

Legacy
In his 2002 book Long Trails of the Southeast, writer and avid hiker Johnny Molloy wrote that the Benton MacKaye Trail "is what I imagine the Appalachian Trail was like many decades ago—a lesser tamed path, steep in places, rough in spots, and still evolving".

On June 17, 2011 he was inducted into the Appalachian Trail Hall of Fame at the Appalachian Trail Museum as a charter member.

References

Bibliography
Anderson, Larry. 2002. Benton MacKaye: Conservationist, Planner, and Creator of the Appalachian Trail. Johns Hopkins University Press. .
Cevasco, G. A. and Richard P Harmond. 2009. Modern American Environmentalists: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Baltimore, MD : Johns Hopkins University Press. .
Dalbey, Matthew. 2002. Regional Visionaries and Metropolitan Boosters: Decentralization, Regional Planning, and Parkways During the Interwar Years. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. .
Krueckeberg, Donald A. 1983. The American Planner: Biographies and Recollections. New York: Methuen. .
Luxenberg, Larry. 1994. Walking the Appalachian Trail. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books. .
Nash, Roderick. 1987. Wilderness and the American Mind. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press. .
Molloy, Johnny. 2002. Long Trails of the Southeast. Birmingham, Ala.:Menasha Ridge Press. .
Ness, Erik. July/August 2003. "The Path Taken". Preservation Magazine.
Rubin, Robert A (ed). July 2000. "Trail Years: A History of the Appalachian Trail Conference". Appalachian Trailway News.
Sutter, Paul.  October 1999. "Retreat from Profit": Colonization, the Appalachian Trail, and the social roots of Benton MacKaye's wilderness advocacy". Environmental History.
Sutter, Paul. 2002. Driven Wild: How the Fight against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement. Seattle: University of Washington press. .

External links
A page of links on MacKaye and the AT
History of the AT, including a pdf of his original paper

Benton MacKaye at Findagrave.com

1879 births
1975 deaths
American environmentalists
American non-fiction environmental writers
Appalachian Trail
Harvard University alumni
Hikers
Technocracy movement
American foresters
People from Shirley, Massachusetts
Writers from Stamford, Connecticut

Benton MacKaye


The Re 620, Re 6/6 in the old numbering scheme, are six-axle, electric locomotives of the SBB-CFF-FFS, which were acquired as a replacement for the Ae 6/6 for heavy services on the Gotthardbahn. They are the most modern of the so-called "Gotthard locomotives".

Construction and Technology
To reach the necessary tractive effort, a construction comprising six driven axles was necessary. In order to still get good running characteristics in curves, they were built into three two-axle bogies instead of two three-axle bogies as on the Ae 6/6. The middle bogie can move sideways, and the three bogies are connected by elastic cross couplings. Two of the four prototypes were built with a split locomotive body, whereby the joint may only move on an horizontal transverse axis to allow for changes in gradient, similarly to the Rhaetian Railway Ge 6/6 II.

The other two prototypes got a softer secondary suspension instead of the joint, which proved to be so reliable in everyday use that all series locomotives were built this way. Nevertheless, the two prototypes with a split body are still in regular operation. The exterior design is similar to the Re 4/4II, as are the driver's controls and the conventional transformer technology with fixed running notches, which was applied for the last time for this locomotive. In contrast to the Re 4/4II, the Re 6/6 has two transformers (one power and one control transformer), which are mounted on the frame between the bogies. Due to the higher roof, the Re 6/6 looks more brawny than the Re 4/4II, especially when seen from the front side.

Operations
The Re 6/6 is equipped with multiple unit train control together with Re 4/4II, Re 4/4III, Re 4/4IV and RBe 540. In passenger traffic they pull heavy passenger trains over the Gotthard route (as an alternative to a double heading of Re 4/4). In freight traffic they are used all over Switzerland for heavy trains, on the Gotthard route very often together with an Re 4/4II or Re 4/4III. Such a couple, often referred to as "Re 10/10" (both locomotives are Re class, so the couple is Re class; 10/10 means that they overall have 10 driven axles out of 10), is capable of pulling the maximum train weight of  on 2.6% gradients of the Gotthard line. For heavier trains, up to 1600 tons are operationally feasible; an additional bank engine has to help push the train in order not to overload the couplers.

Locomotive 11638 was retired and scrapped in 1990 due to an accident. For the renumbering to the UIC-conforming new numbering scheme in 1992, only the still existing locomotives were considered, thus the 11638 got no new number any more. But the renumbering was never done consistently. During 2005, the UIC numbering scheme was reworked, and 620 001 (instead of 000) was defined to be the smallest number. To make things easy, the scrapped 11638 also got a new number, 620 038. About half a dozen locomotives bore the new numbers at the beginning of 2006.

After two locomotives were tentatively equipped with radio remote control for pushing trains on the Gotthard line (such that the locomotive pushing at the end of the train may be controlled by the engineer at the front), about 30 locomotives were equipped with it in 2000. To make them administratively distinguishable, they got the new designation Ref 6/6.

When SBB was divided into passenger services and freight, the first thirteen locomotives 11601–13 remained in the passenger division. On 1 January 2003 they were exchanged against Re 460. Now all remaining 88 locomotives are assigned to SBB Cargo. Due to the reassignment of the Re 460 to the passenger division, the Re 6/6 again dominate the freight traffic on the Gotthard line.

The locomotives are assigned to the workshops Erstfeld, Bellinzona and Lausanne (Lausanne: 2000, today unknown), revisions are done at the main workshop at Bellinzona.

Pictures

See also
 List of stock used by Swiss Federal Railways

References

 This article was mostly translated from the German language version of August 2006.

15 kV AC locomotives
Bo-Bo-Bo locomotives
Re 620
Electric locomotives of Switzerland
Standard gauge locomotives of Switzerland
Railway locomotives introduced in 1972

SBB-CFF-FFS Re 620


Memphis College of Art (MCA) was a private art college in Memphis, Tennessee.  It was in Overton Park, adjacent to the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. It offered Bachelor of Fine Arts, Master of Fine Arts, Master of Arts in Art Education and Master of Arts in Teaching degrees. However, it faced significant financial challenges and closed in the spring of 2020.

History
The college opened on October 5, 1936 and was once housed in the James Lee House in Victorian Village. When the college opened, it was originally named the Memphis Academy of Art. Before becoming an independent college, it was initially named the James Lee Memorial Academy of Art and was funded by the Memphis Art Association. Their independence was declared after a dispute with the Memphis Art Association's director, Florence M. McIntyre, who disapproved of their acceptance of modernism. The school then officially opened as the Mid-South School of Fine Arts, soon renamed as the Memphis Academy of Art.

From 1959 until its closing, the main building of the college was Rust Hall in Overton Park, an award-winning example of mid-century architecture designed by Roy Harrover with his company, Harrover & Mann. In its opening, the college hired a total of eleven African American teachers, despite the pervasiveness of racial discrimination nationally in 1961. Later, the position of the Memphis Academy of Art's first president was assigned to Dr. Jameson M. Jones, in 1976. Under new leadership, a milestone was reached when computer technology was merged with art by new Academy president John S. Slorp in 1982. Three years later, the Academy was renamed the Memphis College of Art.

The MCA continued to expand with graduate programs starting in 1987, new student housing in 1992, and a graduate center in 1998. Following these expansions came the addition of the Metz Hall, named after Charles B. Metz and paid for by his family's donation of $1,000,000 to the college. Then, the Nesin Graduate School was created in 2010, offering the Master of Arts Education, Master of Arts in Teaching, and Master in Fine Arts programs. Soon after, the Memphis College of Art reached its end on May 9, 2020, with its final Commencement Ceremony.

Closure
After 84 years of holding classes, the Memphis College of Art closed in May 2020. They were forced to close after facing debt and declined enrollment. The college stated that they had no future plans for fixing their troubling financial situation and the Board of Directors of the Memphis College of Art had to ultimately vote against keeping the college open. This decision was made in October 2017 as the college began preparing for their closure.

In May, 2022 the Metal Museum signed a lease for the site of the former art college.

Future of the building
Following the closure of MCA, the City of Memphis requested the public to provide ideas for the building's replacement. As of July 2019, there were seven considerations for what the building may become in the future:

 Memphis Metal Museum
 Overton Park Visitor's Center – a multi-use communal space.
Reimagining Rust Hall – a creative workspace for creators and businesses.
Arrow At Overton – an incubator for the creative arts.
Overton Arts Hotel – a hotel and arts center.
Repurposing Rust Hall & the Brooks Building – a learning animation studio.
Co.llab – a community hub and entrepreneurship incubator.

As noted above, the Metal Museum option was eventually selected.

MCA in the community
The Memphis College of Art was involved with many projects within its community. The college created its Fashion Design Certificate Program after collaborating with the Memphis Fashion Design Network. They also extended a hand to the Le Bonheur Children's Hospital in their MCA Le Monster exhibition, which showcased revisions of the children's drawings for the hospital's Le Bonheur television channel. The college also helped the Overton Park Conservatory produce safety videos promoting pedestrian safety.

MCA events
MCA would host many events which were specific to their college. One being the Annual Costume Ball, which was where the students would create original costumes which represented characteristics from pieces of art. These balls had various themes and would end with a crowned king and queen. However, this tradition ended in the late 1960s. The college also had a Community Education Program where they would offer art classes to adults and children through either their Saturday School, Summer Art Camp, Free Family Art Workshops, the Fashion Design Certificate Program, or community outreach events. Nevertheless, Memphis College of Art's most notable event was their Annual Holiday Bazaar and Fundraiser, which started in 1950 and was one of their longest held traditions. Students, faculty, staff, alumni, and local artists would gather at this annual event to sell their artwork to the public. The money received raised funds for the college.

Achievements
The Memphis College of Art was the only Southern independent college accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. (SACS)

Notable alumni

Blake Nelson Boyd, a film actor, comedian, and visual artist.
Cynthia Bringle, a potter and teacher.
Burton Callicott, an American artist and teacher.
Amy Lynn Carter, the daughter of U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
Carroll Cloar, a painter.
Diana Dew, an American fashion designer.
Emily Jacir, a Palestinian filmmaker and artist.
Valerie Jaudon, an American painter.
Gere Kavanaugh, an American textile, industrial, and interior designer.
James Little, painter
Matthew Melton, an American musician, songwriter and producer.
Lester Julian Merriweather (born 1978), collagist, painter, sculptor
Veda Louise Reed, an American artist.
Joseph Seigenthaler, an American sculptor and video artist.

References

External links
Official website

Art schools in Tennessee
Universities and colleges established in 1936
Defunct private universities and colleges in Tennessee
Universities and colleges accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools
Tourist attractions in Memphis, Tennessee
Universities and colleges in Memphis, Tennessee
1936 establishments in Tennessee

Educational institutions disestablished in 2020
Graphic design schools in the United States

Memphis College of Art


Absentia is a 2011 American independent supernatural horror film written, edited and directed by Mike Flanagan and produced by FallBack Plan Productions. The film's principal photography phase was funded by way of the film's project page on crowdfunding website Kickstarter.  Courtney Bell stars as a pregnant woman whose missing husband briefly reappears after an unexplained seven-year absence.

Plot
After seven years, Tricia, a pregnant woman who lives alone in a neighborhood of Glendale, California, is finally ready to accept that her missing husband, Daniel, will not return. As she prepares to declare him dead in absentia, her younger sister Callie, a former addict, comes to stay with her. She gives Tricia a children's book, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, a traditional fairy tale whose story provides a subtext to the film in its foreshadowing of a bridge controlled by an evil entity. Together, they work to obtain Daniel's death certificate and find a new apartment for Tricia. As the date approaches, Tricia has terrifying nightmares and hallucinations about Daniel that her psychiatrist interprets as stress and guilt. While jogging, Callie runs into a gaunt man in a tunnel who seems shocked that she can see him. He introduces himself as Walter Lambert and begs her to contact his son, but she runs off. Later, she returns with food and leaves it in the tunnel, which she finds empty.

When Callie discovers a pile of small metal objects on their doorstop, she assumes they were left there by Walter, so she places them at the tunnel entrance. A man walking by advises her not to do so and deposits a trash bag in the same spot. She later finds the pile of metal objects on her bed. Detective Mallory, who has been investigating Daniel's disappearance and is romantically involved with Tricia, responds to the call and chastises the women for leaving their door unlocked in a dangerous neighborhood. In her restlessness, Callie secretly relapses into drug use. Tricia decides to finally sign Daniel's death certificate and go out on a date with Mallory, only to meet a bloody and barefoot Daniel suddenly appearing in front of her house.

At the hospital, doctors diagnose Daniel as severely malnourished, dehydrated, and physically abused. Daniel seems surprised that others can see him and can only explain that he was "underneath." He does not respond to any question and seems to be in deep fear of the tunnel in front of his house. Mallory comes by to talk with Tricia, attempting to convince her to leave Daniel and be with him. Though she refuses, the two kiss. At the same time, Daniel explains to Callie that he made a trade with an insectoid creature that hides in the walls of the tunnel. Callie investigates strange movements by the bathroom and is knocked unconscious. When she wakes, she sees a creature pull Daniel into the tunnel and through the tunnel's solid walls. Callie lies about her relapse in front of the detectives, but Tricia finds her stash and accuses her of hallucinating the incident. In response, Callie shows Tricia information she found on the internet about cases of people who went missing in the neighborhood from the past 100 years, including Walter; Lambert's son claims that he was taken by monsters.

The next day, the police discover Walter's bloody body at the entrance to the tunnel, while the man Callie saw earlier is revealed to be his son, Jamie. The police accuse Jamie of kidnapping local pets, and he implies that he has been offering them as sacrifices to recover his father. Tricia and Callie are attacked by the creature, who kidnaps Tricia. Callie files a missing person report before returning to the tunnel to offer a "trade," wishing to sacrifice her life in return for Tricia's. To her shock, the creature brings back Tricia's unborn fetus instead. The creature then proceeds to claim her, leaving only her empty shoe behind.

Mallory finds an envelope Callie left for him that contains her research. His fellow detective, Lonergan, assures him that they will keep the cases open indefinitely. He speculates that Jamie, whom he suspects to be a serial killer, may have killed Tricia and Callie, but Mallory chooses to believe that Callie ran away and Tricia is happily living off the land somewhere. While Mallory puts up posters, he sees an apparition of Callie standing in the tunnel, but when he investigates more closely, she is gone. As he walks away, Callie watches him from the tunnel as the creature's limb rests on her shoulder.

Cast

Release

Film festival screenings
Absentia debuted on March 3, 2011 at the Fargo Film Festival and opened in other film festivals on the dates given below.

Home media
The film was later acquired by Phase 4 Films for North American DVD and Video on Demand distribution.

Reception
According to the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 87% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 15 reviews.

Andrew Mack of Twitch Film wrote that the film does not live up its hype, but "it is still an effective and creepy supernatural horror."  Devin Ashby of CraveOnline rated it 9/10 stars and called it "intense, haunting and refreshingly terrifying".  Martin Unsworth of Starburst rated it 9/10 stars and called it an instant cult favorite.  Dennis Harvey of Variety called it creepy and non-formulaic, though he criticized the lack of a strong payoff in the climax.  David Harley of Bloody Disgusting rated it 3/5 stars and called it a "genuinely creepy" film that suffers from a low budget.  Debi Moore of Dread Central rated it 4/5 stars and called it "both thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining."  Scott Weinberg of Fearnet wrote that "Absentia certainly won't blow your speakers (or your mind), but it's still a very strong piece of independent genre filmmaking: a melancholy tale of loss that's only peripherally a horror flick, but a good one all the same."

Awards
Absentia earned various awards in categories ranging from recognition of the film itself to its screenplay, direction and editing, to the performance of the lead actors.

References

External links

2011 films
2011 horror films
2011 independent films
2010s mystery horror films
American supernatural horror films
American mystery horror films
American independent films
2010s English-language films
Films set in Los Angeles
Films shot in California
Kickstarter-funded films
Films directed by Mike Flanagan
Films produced by Mike Flanagan
Films with screenplays by Mike Flanagan
American pregnancy films
2010s pregnancy films
2010s American films

Absentia (film)


Stylidium graminifolium, the grass triggerplant, is a dicotyledonous plant that belongs to the genus Stylidium (family Stylidiaceae). This species used to belong to the Stylidium graminifolium complex, but the name was conserved for this single species when two others were split from the complex and introduced as new species in 2001. S. graminifolium is endemic to Australia and is one of the Stylidium species with the widest distribution throughout Australia. It is a perennial plant with grass-like leaves and is easily cultivated. It has been considered to be a carnivorous or protocarnivorous plant because it possesses glandular trichomes underneath the flowers that can trap and digest prey.

Description
This species is an erect perennial herb with 5–40 cm (2–8 in) long narrow, grass-like leaves that appear from a basal rosette. A 15–90 cm (6–36 in) long scape bearing the racemous inflorescence appears in the spring and summer (October through February). The flowers are butterfly shaped and pale or bright pink with petals paired laterally. The calyx and corolla are both covered in glandular trichomes. The pollination mechanism involving a sensitive "trigger"—a floral column, in which the stamen and style are fused—is unique to the family Stylidiaceae. In S. graminifolium, the column is red and stamens are a greenish color. This species, like most Stylidium species, possesses glandular trichomes underneath the flower and on the scape, which are capable of digesting and absorbing nutrients from prey captured in the sticky mucilage. This information leads some researchers to believe that the plants are carnivorous or at the very least protocarnivorous.

Distribution and habitat
S. graminifolium has one of the widest ranges in the genus Stylidium, being native to Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia. Its most common habitat is dry sclerophyll forests with nutrient-poor soil conditions.

[[Image:Stylidium graminifolium.jpg|thumb|right|S. graminifolium from Curtis's Botanical Magazine, 1817, plate 1918.<ref name=curtis>{{cite journal|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/483223|title=Stylidium graminifolium|date=1817|volume=44|page=Plate 1918|journal=Curtis's Botanical Magazine|access-date=2022-09-13}}</ref>]]

TaxonomyStylidium graminifolium was one of only four Stylidium species collected in 1770 from Botany Bay when Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander joined James Cook's first voyage to the Pacific Ocean on board the Endeavour. It was first formally described by Carl Ludwig Willdenow in 1805. It was again described by Olof Swartz just two years later in 1807 under the same name. Around the same time, other botanists were considering placing these new species in the new genus Candollea, which would be in the family Dilleniaceae, but Stylidium was retained as the older nomenclature and placed in its own family, Stylidiaceae.

 Stylidium graminifolium complex
After S. graminifolium was discovered and formally described, new forms and varieties were added to what came to be known as the Stylidium graminifolium complex, a group of plants that has been treated as a single species but may have significant morphological differences that require the complex to be split into new species. The complex was formally split into three species in 2001, with S. graminifolium lectotypified from the collections of Banks and Solander in the 1770s. S. graminifolium sensu stricto is more narrow-leaved and is diploid (2n = 30). The other two species, S. dilatatum and S. armeria, that used to be included in this complex are tetraploid (2n = 60) and may represent polyploid speciation. The three species also represented different habitats and ranges, with S. graminifolium distributed widely in south-eastern continental Australia and Tasmania, S. dilatatum in the subalpine areas of south-eastern Australia and widely distributed in Tasmania, and S. armeria in the littoral habitats in Tasmania from Macquarie Harbour to the Tasman Peninsula.

CultivationStylidium graminifolium is one of the few Stylidium species commercially available for sale as seed. This species, along with six other triggerplants, was tested for horticultural value and cold hardiness by Douglas Darnowski in the United States from 2000 to 2002. Dr. Darnowski's study concluded that S. graminifolium was able to survive cold temperatures down to -10°C, making it suitable for growing outside in as low as USDA hardiness zone 8. Darnowski also postulated that S. graminifolium's attractive floral spikes could be of use in floriculture and could be used to replace purple loosestrife in winter and spring arrangements. It has a relatively long flowering period and has somewhat specific conditions for germination, including smoke treatments and higher temperatures to simulate a bushfire, though germination can occur without these conditions. These germination requirements reduce the risk that it will become an invasive species. It is also able to grow on nutrient-poor soils and withstand significant drought. These attributes increase its potential for floricultural use.

There are two cultivars of S. graminifolium'', Tiny Trina and Little Saphire, that are tentatively recognized cultivar names by the Royal Horticultural Society. The epithet Little Saphire is derived from the bright blue foliage that distinguishes this cultivar from the type species. Tiny Trina has a deeper flower color and leaves that are a darker shade of green with varying leaf blade widths. It also begins to flower later in the season.

See also
 List of Stylidium species

External links

 PlantNET profile on Stylidium graminifolium

References

Carnivorous plants of Australia
Flora of Queensland
Flora of New South Wales
Flora of South Australia
Flora of Tasmania
Flora of Victoria (state)
graminifolium
Asterales of Australia
Garden plants

Stylidium graminifolium


In number theory, a Poincaré series is a mathematical series generalizing the classical theta series that is associated to any discrete group of symmetries of a complex domain, possibly of several complex variables.  In particular, they generalize classical Eisenstein series.  They are named after Henri Poincaré.

If Γ is a finite group acting on a domain D and H(z) is any meromorphic function on D, then one obtains an automorphic function by averaging over Γ:

However, if Γ is a discrete group, then additional factors must be introduced in order to assure convergence of such a series.  To this end, a Poincaré series is a series of the form

where Jγ is the Jacobian determinant of the group element γ, and the asterisk denotes that the summation takes place only over coset representatives yielding distinct terms in the series.

The classical Poincaré series of weight 2k of a Fuchsian group Γ is defined by the series

the summation extending over congruence classes of fractional linear transformations

belonging to Γ.  Choosing H to be a character of the cyclic group of order n, one obtains the so-called Poincaré series of order n:

The latter Poincaré series converges absolutely and uniformly on compact sets (in the upper halfplane), and is a modular form of weight 2k for Γ.  Note that, when Γ is the full modular group and n = 0, one obtains the Eisenstein series of weight 2k.  In general, the Poincaré series is, for n ≥ 1, a cusp form.

Notes

References
.
.

Automorphic forms
Modular forms
Mathematical series

Poincaré series (modular form)


Ive Mažuran (1928–2016) was a Croatian historian.

Mažuran was a longtime editor at the Školska knjiga publishing house where he edited several hundred textbooks and research publications. He also published some 100 research papers and about 20 books of his own work. His scholarly interest was focused primarily on the history of the city of Osijek and the surrounding region of Slavonia in eastern Croatia, especially during the Ottoman rule period (between the 16th and 18th century). His magnum opus is considered to be his book Hrvati i Osmansko carstvo (English: Croats and the Ottoman Empire) published in 1998.

He died in 2016, aged 89.

Selected works

References

1928 births
2016 deaths
20th-century Croatian historians

Ive Mažuran


The Cryogenian (from , meaning "cold" and , romanized: , meaning "birth") is a geologic period that lasted from . It forms the second geologic period of the Neoproterozoic Era, preceded by the Tonian Period and followed by the Ediacaran.

The Cryogenian was a time of drastic biosphere changes. After the previous Boring Billion years of stability, at the beginning of Cryogenian the severe Sturtian glaciation began, freezing the entire Earth in a planetary state known as a Snowball Earth. After 70 million years it ended, but was quickly followed by the Marinoan glaciation, which was also a global event. These events are the subject of much scientific controversy specifically over whether these glaciations covered the entire planet or a band of open sea survived near the equator (termed "slushball Earth").

Ratification
The Cryogenian Period was ratified in 1990 by the International Commission on Stratigraphy. In contrast to most other time periods, the beginning of the Cryogenian is not linked to a globally observable and documented event. Instead, the base of the period is defined by a fixed rock age, that was originally set at 850 million years, but changed in 2015 to 720 million years.

This could cause ambiguity because estimates of rock ages are variable and are subject to laboratory error. For instance, the time scale of the Cambrian Period is not reckoned by rock younger than a given age ( million years), but by the appearance of the worldwide Treptichnus pedum diagnostic trace fossil assemblages. This means that rocks can be recognized as Cambrian in the field, without extensive lab testing.

Currently, there is no consensus on what global event is a suitable candidate to mark the start of the Cryogenian Period, but a global glaciation would be a likely candidate.

Climate

The name of the geologic period refers to the very cold global climate of the Cryogenian.

Characteristic glacial deposits indicate that Earth suffered the most severe ice ages in its history during this period (Sturtian and Marinoan).  According to Eyles and Young, "Late Proterozoic glaciogenic deposits are known from all the continents.  They provide evidence of the most widespread and long-ranging glaciation on Earth."   Several glacial periods are evident, interspersed with periods of relatively warm climate, with glaciers reaching sea level in low paleolatitudes.

Glaciers extended and contracted in a series of rhythmic pulses, possibly reaching as far as the equator.

The Cryogenian is generally considered to be divisible into at least two major worldwide glaciations. The Sturtian glaciation persisted from 720 to 660 million years ago, and the Marinoan glaciation which ended approximately 635 Ma, at the end of the Cryogenian. The deposits of glacial tillite also occur in places that were at low latitudes during the Cryogenian, a phenomenon which led to the hypothesis of deeply frozen planetary oceans called "Snowball Earth". Between the Sturtian and Marinoan glaciations was a so-called "Cryogenian interglacial period" marked by relatively warm climate and anoxic oceans, along with marine transgression.

Paleogeography

Before the start of the Cryogenian, around 750 Ma, the cratons that made up the supercontinent Rodinia started to rift apart. The superocean Mirovia began to close while the superocean Panthalassa began to form. The cratons (possibly) later assembled into another supercontinent called Pannotia, in the Ediacaran.

Eyles and Young state, "Most Neoproterozoic glacial deposits accumulated as glacially influenced marine strata along rifted continental margins or interiors."  Worldwide deposition of dolomite might have reduced atmospheric carbon dioxide.  The break up along the margins of Laurentia at about 750 Ma occurs at about the same time as the deposition of the Rapitan Group in North America, contemporaneously with the Sturtian in Australia.  A similar period of rifting at about 650 Ma occurred with the deposition of the Ice Brook Formation in North America, contemporaneously with the Marinoan in Australia. The Sturtian and Marinoan are local divisions within the Adelaide Rift Complex.

Cryogenian biota and fossils
Between the Sturtian and Marinoan glaciations, global biodiversity was very low.

Fossils of testate amoeba (or Arcellinida) first appear during the Cryogenian Period. Since 2009, some researchers have argued that during the Cryogenian Period, potentially the oldest known fossils of sponges, and therefore animals, were formed. However, it is unclear whether these fossils actually belong to sponges, though the authors do not rule out the possibility of such fossils to represent proto-sponges or complex microbial precursors to sponge-grade organisms.
The issue of whether or not biology was impacted by this event has not been settled, for example Porter (2000) suggests that new groups of life evolved during this period, including the red algae and green algae, stramenopiles, ciliates, dinoflagellates, and testate amoeba.

The end of the period also saw the origin of heterotrophic plankton, which would feed on unicellular algae and prokaryotes, ending the bacterial dominance of the oceans.

See also

References

Further reading

External links

  (2010s) BBC/CBC/NHK

02
Geological periods
Ice ages
Glaciology
Geology controversies
Proterozoic geochronology

Cryogenian