Safe-cracking is the process of opening a safe without either the combination or the key.

Physical methods
Safes have widely different designs, construction methods, and locking mechanisms. A safe cracker needs to know the specifics of whichever will come into play.

Lock manipulation
Lock manipulation is a damage-free, combination-based method.  A well known surreptitious bypass technique, it requires knowledge of the device and well developed touch, along with the senses of sight and possibly sound.

While manipulation of combination locks is usually performed on Group 2 locks, many Group 1 locks are also susceptible. The goal is to successfully obtain the combination one number at a time. Manipulation procedures vary, but all rely on exploiting mechanical imperfections in the lock to open it, and, if desired, recover its combination for future use. Similar damage-free bypass can also be achieved by using a computerized auto-dialer or manipulation robot in a so-called brute-force attack. These auto-dialer machines may take 24 hours or more to reach the correct combination, although modern devices with advanced software may do so faster.

Mechanical safe locks are manipulated primarily by feel and vision, with sound sometimes supplementing the process. To find the combination the operator uses the lock against itself by measuring internal movements with the dial numbers. More sophisticated locks use advanced mechanics to reduce any feedback available to a technician in identifying a combination. These group 1
 locks were developed in response to group 2 lock manipulation. Wheels made from lightweight materials will reduce valuable sensory feedback, but are mainly used for improved resistance against radiographic attacks. Manipulation is often the preferred choice in lost-combination lockouts, since it requires no repairs or damage, but can be time consuming for an operator, the specific difficulty depends on the unique wheel shapes and where the gates rest in relation to them. A novice's opening time will be governed by these random inconsistencies, while some leading champions of this art show consistency. There are also a number of tools on the market to assist safe engineers in manipulating a combination lock open in the field.

Nearly all combination locks allow some "slop" while entering a combination on the dial. On average 1% radial rotation in either direction from the center of the true combination number to allow the fence to fall despite slight deviation, so that for a given safe it may be necessary only to try a subset of the combinations. Such "slops" may allow for a margin of error of plus or minus two digits, which means that trying multiples of five would be sufficient in this case. This drastically reduces the time required to exhaust the number of meaningful combinations. A further reduction in solving time is obtained by trying all possible settings for the last wheel for a given setting of the first wheels before nudging the next-to-last wheel to its next meaningful setting, instead of zeroing the lock each time with a number of turns in one direction.

Guessing the combination

A safe may be compromised by using a manufacturer-set combination. Known as try-out combinations, these allow an owner initial access to their safe in order to set a new unique one. Sources of
try-out combinations exist by manufacturer.

Other easy-to-guess combinations include a birthdate, street address, or driver's license number.

Autodialer
Autodialing machines have been developed to open safes. Unlike fictional machines that can open any combination in a matter of seconds, such machines are usually specific to a particular type of lock and must cycle through thousands of combinations before success. Such a device was created by two students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which took 21,000 tries to open a Sargent and Greenleaf 8500 lock on a Diebold Safe. Lockmasters, Inc. markets the [QX3 Combi Autodialer (LKMCOMBI)] that works on a variety of 3 and 4 Wheel combination safe locks.

Another computer-aided method uses tools similar to autodialers, which instead make measurements of the internal components of the lock then deduce the combination in a way similar to that of a human safe cracker.  Mas Hamilton's SoftDrill was one such device, but is no longer in production.

Weak-point drilling

Some safes are susceptible to compromise by drilling. Manufacturers publish tightly-guarded drill-point diagrams for locksmiths for specific models. Drilling is an aid in  bypassing the locking mechanism, as well as gaining more information about it in order to defeat it. It is the most common method used by locksmiths on malfunctioning or damaged locks, and commonly used in burglary.

Drill-points are often located close to the axis of the dial on the combination lock, but  drilling for observation may sometimes require drilling through the top, sides or rear of the safe. While observing the lock, the locksmith manipulates the dial to align the lock gates so that the fence falls and the bolt is disengaged.

Bypass attacks involve physical manipulation of both the lock and its bolt mechanism.

All quality safes protect against drilling attacks through the strategic use of specially tempered or alloyed hardplate steel, or composite hardplate (casting tungsten carbide chips into alloys  such as cobalt-vanadium, designed to shatter the cutting tips of a drill bit). These include protecting the locking mechanism, the bolts, and areas were drilling could be used to advantage.

Special diamond or tungsten-carbide drill-bits can make some headway with some hardplates, but it is still a time-consuming and difficult process.

Some high-security safes use a tempered glass relocker. This has wires that lead from the glass to randomly located, spring-loaded bolts. If a penetrating drill or torch breaks the glass the bolts are released, blocking retraction of the main locking bolts. A gas abrasive drill can sometimes be used to safely drill through a glass relocker.

Many modern high-security safes also incorporate additional thermal safeties to foil blow torches and thermal lances.  These are usually in the form of fusible links integrated into the glass relocker cabling, which trigger it when a set temperature is exceeded.

Drilling is an attractive method of safecracking for locksmiths, as it is usually quicker than manipulation, and drilled safes can generally be repaired and returned to service.

Punching, peeling and using a torch are other methods of compromising a safe. The punch system is widely used by criminals for rapid entry. Punching was developed by Pavle Stanimirovic and used in New York City. Peeling is a method that involves removing the outer skin of the safe.

Plasma cutters and thermal lances can be as hot as , much hotter than traditional oxyacetylene torches, and can be used to burn through the metal on a safe.

Scoping
Scoping a safe is the process of drilling a hole and inserting a borescope into the safe to get an intimate look into a specific part of the security container. When manipulation proof mechanical locks and glass re-lockers are implemented as security measures, scoping is the most practical option. One common method is called "scoping the change key hole." The safecracker will drill a hole allowing him to get his scope into a position to observe the change key hole. While spinning the dial and looking through the change key hole for certain landmarks on the combination lock's wheel pack, it is possible to obtain the combination and then dial open the safe with the correct combination. This method is common for a professional safe specialist because it leaves the lock in good working order and only simple repairs are needed to bring the safe barrier back to its original condition. It is also a common way to bypass difficult hard plates and glass re-lockers since the change key hole can be scoped by drilling the top, side, or back of the container.

Brute force methods
Other methods of cracking a safe generally involve damaging the safe so that it is no longer functional. These methods may involve explosives or other devices to inflict severe force and damage the safe so it may be opened. Examples of penetration tools include acetylene torches, drills, and thermal lances. This method requires care as the contents of the safe may be damaged. Safe-crackers can use what are known as jam shots to blow off the safe's doors.

Most modern safes are fitted with 'relockers' (like the one described above) which are triggered by excessive force and will then lock the safe semi-permanently (a safe whose relocker has tripped must then be forced, as the combination or key alone will no longer suffice). This is why a professional safe-technician will use manipulation rather than brute force to open a safe so they do not risk releasing the relocker.

Radiological methods

Penetrating radiation such as X-ray radiation can be used to reveal the internal angular relationship of the wheels gates to the flys mechanism to deduce the combination. Some modern safe locks are made of lightweight materials such as nylon to inhibit this technique, since most safe exteriors are made of much denser metals. The Chubb Manifoil Mk4 combination lock contains a lead shield surrounding part of the lock to defeat such attempts to read its wheels.

Tunneling into bank vaults

Large bank vaults which are often located underground have been compromised by safe-crackers who have tunneled in using digging equipment. This method of safe-cracking has been countered by building patrol-passages around the underground vaults. These patrol-passages allow early detection of any attempts to tunnel into a vault.

Safe bouncing

A number of inexpensive safes sold to households for under $100 use mechanical locking mechanisms that are vulnerable to bouncing. Many cheap safes use a magnetic locking pin to prevent lateral movement of an internal locking bolt, and use a solenoid to move the pin when the correct code is entered. This pin can also be moved by the impact of the safe being dropped or struck while on its side, which allows the safe to be opened. One security researcher taught his three-year-old son how to open most consumer gun safes. More expensive safes use a gear mechanism that is less susceptible to mechanical attacks.

Magnet risk
Low-end home and hotel safes often utilize a solenoid as the locking device and can often be
opened using a powerful rare-earth magnet.

Electronic methods
Electronic locks are not vulnerable to traditional manipulation techniques (except for brute-force entry). These locks are often compromised through power analysis attacks. Several tools exist that can automatically retrieve or reset the combination of an electronic lock; notably, the Little Black Box and Phoenix. Tools like these are often connected to wires in the lock that can be accessed without causing damage to the lock or container. Nearly all high-end, consumer-grade electronic locks are vulnerable to some form of electronic attack.

TEMPEST
The combinations for some electronic locks can be retrieved by examining electromagnetic emissions coming from the lock. Because of this, many safe locks used to protect critical infrastructure are tested and certified to resist TEMPEST attacks. These include the Kaba Mas X-10 and S&G 2740B, which are FF-L-2740B compliant.

Spiking the lock
Low-end electronic fire-safes, such as those used in hotels or for home use, are locked with either a small motor
or a solenoid. If the wires running to the device (solenoid or motor) can be accessed, the device can be 'spiked'
with a voltage from an external source - typically a 9 volt battery - to open the container.

Keypad-based attacks
If an electronic lock accepts user input from a keypad, this process can be observed in order to reveal the combination. Common attacks include:

 Visually observing a user enter the combination (shoulder surfing)
 Hiding a camera in the room which records the user pressing keys
 Examining fingerprints left on the keys
 Placing certain gels, powders, or substances on the keys that can be smudged or transferred between keys when the combination is entered, and observed at a later time.
 Placing a "skimmer" (akin to those used for credit card fraud) behind the keypad to record the digital signals that are sent to the lock body when the combination is entered.
 Examining wear or deformity of buttons which are pressed more often than others

Many of these techniques require the attacker to tamper with the keypad, wait for the unsuspecting user to enter the combination, and return at a later time to retrieve the information. These techniques are sometimes used by members of intelligence or law enforcement agencies, as they are often effective and surreptitious.

High-security keypads
Some keypads are designed to inhibit the aforementioned attacks. This is usually accomplished by restricting the viewing angle of the keypad (either by using a mechanical shroud or special buttons), or randomizing the positions of the buttons each time a combination is entered.

Some keypads use small LED or LCD displays inside of the buttons to allow the number on each button to change. This allows for randomization of the button positions, which is normally performed each time the keypad is powered on. The buttons usually contain a lenticular screen in front of the display, which inhibits off-axis viewing of the numbers.

When properly implemented, these keypads make the "shoulder surfing" attack infeasible, as the combination bears no resemblance to the positions of the keys which are pressed.

While these keypads can be used on safes and vaults, this practice is uncommon.

Media depictions
Movies often depict a safe-cracker determining the combination of a safe lock using his fingers or a sensitive listening device to determine the combination of a rotary combination lock. Other films also depict an elaborate scheme of explosives and other devices to open safes.

Some of the more famous works include:

 A Retrieved Reformation (1909)
 The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
 Rififi (1955)
 The Cracksman (1963)
 You Only Live Twice (1967)
 Who's Minding the Mint? (1967)
 Olsen Gang
 Olsen-banden
 Olsen-banden Junior
 Olsenbanden
 Olsenbanden Jr.
 Jönssonligan
 Lilla Jönssonligan
 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
 On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)—Auto-dialer
 The Burglars (1971)
 Cool Breeze (1972)
 Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974)
 No Deposit, No Return (1976)
 Thief (1981)
 Vabank (1981)
 Blood Simple (1984)
 Short Circuit 2 (1988)
 Die Hard (1988)—Drilling, guessing electronic passwords
 Disorganized Crime (1989)
 Breaking In (1989)—Drilling, hammering (a cheap safe), nitroglycerin explosives, torch-cutting (with this method the contents were destroyed), social engineering
 Hudson Hawk (1991)
 Killing Zoe (1994)
 Heat (1995)—Drilling, physical sabotage of external security systems
 Safe Men (1998)
 The Newton Boys (1998)
 Blue Streak (1999)
 Sexy Beast (2000)—Tunneling into a bank vault, and physical destruction of security devices by flooding
 Small Time Crooks (2000)
 Ocean's Eleven (2001)—Social engineering, physical sabotage of security systems
 The Score (2001)—rilling, thermal lance, internal explosion. This method shown at the climax of the film was tested on an episode of MythBusters (see below).
 Panic Room (2002)—Drilling, brute force, physical destruction of electronic security systems
 The Italian Job (2003)
 Bad Santa (2003)
 Brainiac: Science Abuse (2003)—The safe was eventually cracked by a high-explosive round fired using a Challenger 2 Tank. The contents were destroyed.
 The Ladykillers (2004)
 Burn Notice (2007–2013)
 The Bank Job (2008)
 Payday: The Heist (2011)
 Dom Hemingway (2013)
 Payday 2 (2013-2016)
 Battlefield Hardline (2015; video game)—Safe-cracking robot
 Army of Thieves (2021)

Three safecracking methods seen in movies were also tested on the television show MythBusters, with some success. While the team was able to blow the door off of a safe by filling the safe with water and detonating an explosive inside it, the contents of the safe were destroyed and filling the safe with water required sealing it from the inside. The safe had also sprung many leaks.

See also
 Access control
 Lock picking
 Physical security
 Security engineering

References

External links
 Safe-cracking history and modern safe engineering
 How to Crack a Safe – Tough Method
 Safe opening Secrets (German)

Locksmithing
Security breaches

Safe-cracking


Jijeung of Silla (437–514) (r. 500–514) was the 22nd ruler of the Korean kingdom of Silla.  He is remembered for strengthening royal authority and building Silla into a centralized kingdom.

Like  many Silla kings, Jijeung was of royal blood on both sides.  His father was the Galmunwang Kim Seup-bo, who was a grandson of Naemul Isageum.  His mother was Lady Josaeng, the daughter of Nulji Isageum.

Jijeung began his program of legal reform in 502, when he outlawed the custom of burying servants with their masters.  In 503, he formally established the country's name as "Silla," it having previously been represented by a variety of Chinese characters.  At the same time, he took the title of wang, meaning "king"; he had previously borne the native Silla title of maripgan.

Jijeung continued this program in the following years, with a reform of ceremonial dress in 504 and of local administration in 505.  In that reform, he incorporated the old territory of Siljik-guk into the Silla administrative system.  He established a market in eastern Gyeongju in 509.  In 512, he sent Kim Isabu to conquer the island nation of Usan-guk.

After his death, Jijeung received a temple name, the name by which he is now known.  He was the first Silla king to receive a temple name.

Family
Father:  Galmunwang Seupbo
Mother: Lady Kim
Wife: Queen Yeonje of the Park Clan (연제부인박씨)
Son: Beopheung of Silla (r. 514–540 AD) - the 23rd monarch of Silla
Son: Galmunwang Ipjong
 Grandson: Jinheung of Silla - the 24th monarch of Silla
Son: Kim Ajinjong (김아진종)

See also
 Unified Silla
 List of Korean monarchs
 List of Silla people

References

Kings of Silla
514 deaths
6th-century monarchs in Asia
437 births
6th-century Korean people
5th-century Korean people

Jijeung of Silla


Failure rate is the frequency with which an engineered system or component fails. Usually it is expressed in a number of failures per time period, like failures per hour. It is often written as the Greek letter λ (lambda) and is important in reliability theory. In practice, the closely related Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) is more commonly expressed and used for high quality components or systems.

Failure rate usually increases with time. For example, a car failure rate in its fifth year of service may be many times greater than in the first year of service. Nobody expects to replace an exhaust pipe or worn brake pads in a new car.

Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) is closely related to failure rate.  In the special case when the likelihood of failure remains constant with respect to time (for example, in some product like a brick or protected steel beam), and ignoring the time to recover from failure, failure rate is simply the inverse of the Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF).  MTBF is an important specification parameter in all aspects of high importance engineering design–such as naval architecture, aerospace engineering, automotive design, etc.–in short, any task where failure in a key part or of the whole of a system needs be minimized and severely curtailed, particularly where lives might be lost if such factors are not taken into account. These factors account for many safety and maintenance practices in engineering and  industry practices and government regulations, such as how often certain inspections and overhauls are required on an aircraft.

A similar ratio used in the transport industries, especially in railways and trucking is 'Mean Distance Between Failure', a variation which attempts to correlate actual loaded distances to similar reliability needs and practices.

Failure rates are important factors in insurance, business, and regulation practices as well as fundamental to design of safe systems throughout a national or international economy.

Statistics
Engineering

Failure rate


The Alexis Boyer House is a historic house at 306 Hamilton Street in Southbridge, Massachusetts.  Built in 1888, it is a good local example of Queen Anne/Stick style architecture.  It was built for Alexis Boyer, a political leader in the city's sizable French Canadian community.  The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.

Description and history
The Alexis Boyer House is located in a residential area near its larger historic mill complexes, on the north side of Hamilton Street opposite its junction with Pine Street.  It is a -story wood-frame structure, with a gabled roof and mostly clapboarded exterior. A cross-gabled section projects from the middle of the right side, and there are two gabled wall dormers on the left side.  Most of these gables are decorated with elaborate stickwork.  A single-story porch extends across the front and around to the right-side projection, with a peaked gable above the front stairs.  It also has a feature otherwise unusual for Queen Anne houses, an exterior rear staircase, which is believed to have originated among the French Canadians.

The house was built in 1888 for Alexis Boyer, a builder and political leader of the sizable French Canadian community in Southbridge.  The immediate neighborhood had developed as a French Canadian enclave due to the presence of a Catholic church that catered to that group.  Boyer is known to have built a significant number of triple decker residences in the city.  His political activities included service in the state legislature and on the state Democratic Party organizing committee.  The house is architecturally distinguished for its relatively rare surviving gable trim.

See also
National Register of Historic Places listings in Southbridge, Massachusetts
National Register of Historic Places listings in Worcester County, Massachusetts

References

Houses in Southbridge, Massachusetts
Queen Anne architecture in Massachusetts
Houses completed in 1888
National Register of Historic Places in Southbridge, Massachusetts
Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Worcester County, Massachusetts

Alexis Boyer House


Tehtaankatu () is an east-to-west street in southern central Helsinki. It leads from the border of Kaivopuisto park near South Harbour to Hietalahti shipyard. Most of the street is in Ullanlinna district, but its westernmost part forms the border between Eira and Punavuori districts.

Since the end of the Second World War, the Soviet and later Russian embassy has been located on Tehtaankatu, and the name of the street has been commonly used as shorthand for Russian influence in Finland, especially during the Soviet era.

Both the Finnish name Tehtaankatu and the Swedish name Fabriksgatan mean "Factory Street". The names were given to the street in 1887, because at that time an industrial zone was planned at the area which is now Eira. That plan was soon abandoned, but the name has remained.

Major buildings
From east to west:
St. Henry's Cathedral, a Catholic Cathedral (homepage)
Russian Embassy (homepage).
Eira Hospital, a private hospital (homepage)
Agricola Church, a Lutheran church (homepage). Designed by Lars Sonck in 1925.

References

External links
Tehtaankatu in Google Maps

Streets in Helsinki
Ullanlinna
Finland–Russia relations
Finland–Soviet Union relations

Tehtaankatu


Timothy Ryan (7 May 1909 – 28 January 1995) was an Irish hurler who played as a midfielder at senior level for the Limerick county team.

Biographical overview
Born in Castleconnell, County Limerick, Ryan first arrived on the inter-county scene at the age of twenty, when he first linked up with the Limerick senior team. He made his senior debut in the 1930 championship. Ryan went on to play a key part for Limerick during a golden age for the team and won three All-Ireland medals, five Munster medals and five National Hurling League medals. An All-Ireland runner-up on two occasions, Ryan also captained the team to the All-Ireland title in 1934.

Ryan represented the Munster inter-provincial team at various times throughout his career, winning five Railway Cup medals. At club level, he won thirteen championship medals with Ahane.

Throughout his inter-county career, Ryan made a then record of 45 championship appearances for Limerick. His retirement came following the conclusion of the 1946 championship.

In retirement from playing, Ryan became involved in team management and coaching. He was a selector and adviser with Ahane during their championship victory in 1955.

Ryan is regarded as one of Limerick's all-time greatest hurlers.

Playing career

Club
Ryan was just sixteen years-old when the Ahane club was formed in 1926. His first success came in 1928 when a 5–1 to 2–2 defeat of Kilmeedy gave him a junior championship medal.

1929 also proved to be a successful year for Ryan. A 1–8 to 1–2 defeat of Cappamore gave him an intermediate championship medal.

In 1931, Ryan was a key part of the Ahane team that reached the final of the senior championship. A 5–5 to 1–4 trouncing of Croom gave Ahane their first senior title, while it also gave Ryan his first championship medal.

Ahane failed to retain their title, however, Ryan's team returned to the championship decider once again in 1933. A 1–7 to 1–1 defeat of Croom gave him his second championship medal. It was the beginning of a run of success, as Ahane went on to dominated club hurling in Limerick for the rest of the decade. Back-to-back defeats of Kildimo in 1934 and 1935, followed by four successive defeats of Croom brought Ryan's championship medal tally to eight.

Eight-in-a-row proved beyond Ahane, as Croom triumphed in 1940 and again in 1941.

Ahane hurlers bounced back in 1942 to reach a tenth successive county decider. A 7–8 to 1–0 defeat of Rathkeale gave Ryan a ninth winners' medal in the hurling championship. This victory set Ahane off on another great run of success. Further defeats of Croom, Rathkeale (twice) and Granagh-Ballingarry yielded further championships in succession. These victories brought Ryan's championship medal tally to a remarkable thirteen.

Inter-county

Beginnings
Ryan joined the Limerick senior team in 1930, however, it would be another three years before the team emerged as a major force after a decade in the doldrums. Ryan lined out in his first Munster decider that year, as Limerick faced Waterford. With eight minutes left in the game, some spectators invaded the pitch and the match was abandoned. Since Limerick were winning by 3–7 to 1–2, the Munster Council declared them the champions and Ryan collected his first Munster medal. The subsequent All-Ireland final on 3 September 1933, saw a record crowd of 45,176 travel to Croke Park to see Limerick face Kilkenny. After being level at the interval, the game remained close in the second half until a solo-run goal by Johnny Dunne sealed a 1–7 to 0–6 victory for Kilkenny.

Dominance
A successful league campaign throughout 1933–34 saw Limerick reach the decider against Dublin. In spite of home advantage, Limerick had to battle hard for a 3–6 to 3–3 victory. It was Ryan's first league medal. The subsequent provincial championship saw Limerick reach the decider, where they played Waterford for the second year in-a-row. The result was much the same, with Ryan collecting a second Munster medal following a 4–8 to 2–5 victory. The All-Ireland final on 2 September 1934, was a special occasion as it was the golden jubilee final of the Gaelic Athletic Association. Dublin were the opponents and a close game developed. After leading by a point at the interval, Limerick went five clear with time running out. Dublin fought their way back to secure a remarkable draw. The replay on 30 September turned out to be an even closer affair, with both sides level with two minutes to go. Points from Mick Mackey and Jackie O'Connell and a remarkable four goals from Dave Clohessy secured a 5–2 to 2–6 victory for Limerick. The win gave Ryan an All-Ireland medal, while he also had the honour of collecting the Liam MacCarthy Cup as captain.

Ryan added a second league medal to his collection as captain in 1935, as Limerick retained their title in a straightforward league format. Limerick dominated the provincial series of games once again, and lined out in the decider against Tipperary. He collected a third Munster medal following a 5–5 to 1–4 victory. Kilkenny were Limerick's opponents in the subsequent All-Ireland final on 1 September 1935, and, once again, the game was a close affair. Limerick were the red-hot favourites as a record crowd of over 46,000 turned up to watch a hurling classic. In spite of rain falling throughout the entire game both sides served up a great game. At the beginning of the second-half Lory Meagher sent over a huge point from midfield giving Kilkenny a lead which they would not surrender. The game ended in controversial circumstances for Mackey when Limerick were awarded a close-in free to level the game. Jack Keane issued an instruction from the sideline that Ryan was to take the free and put the sliotar over the bar for the equalising point. As he lined up to take it, Mick Mackey pushed him aside and took the free himself. The shot dropped short and into the waiting hands of the Kilkenny goalkeeper and was cleared. The game ended shortly after with Kilkenny triumphing by 2–5 to 2–4.

Limerick began 1936 by retaining their league title, having won seven of their games and drawing one. It was Ryan's third league medal. The team later embarked on a tour of the United States where they defeated a New York team made up of Irish expatriates. As a result of the tour Limerick were awarded a bye into the Munster final. Tipperary provided the opposition in the provincial final, however, a 5–3 haul from an injured Mick Mackey secured an 8–6 to 4–5 victory and a fourth successive Munster medal for Ryan. For the third time in four years the lure of a Kilkenny-Limerick clash brought a record crowd of over 50,000 to Croke Park for the All-Ireland decider on 6 September 1936. The first half produced a game that lived up to the previous clashes, and Limerick had a two-point advantage at half-time. Jackie Power scored two first-half goals, while a solo-run goal by Mackey in the second-half helped Limerick to a 5–6 to 1–5 victory. Ryan had won a second All-Ireland medal.

Final success and decline
In 1937, Ryan captured another league title, his fourth overall. Limerick's bid for a record-equalling fifth successive Munster crown came to an end in the provincial decider when Tipperary were victorious.

Limerick entered the record books in 1938 as the first team to win five consecutive National League titles. It is a record which has never been equalled. Ryan played a key role in all five of the victories.

A period of decline followed for Limerick, with many people believing that the team's best days were behind them. This certainly seemed the case in 1940, when it took two late goals from Jackie Power and a storming display by Mick Mackey to level the Munster semi-final with Waterford. Another late rally gave Limerick a victory in the subsequent replay. Ryan's side put in another excellent performance in the Munster final to draw the game with reigning provincial champions Cork. At half-time in the replay Limerick looked like a spent force. Held scoreless for the entire thirty minutes, Mackey got the recovery underway in the second-half with a point from a seventy. He later moved back to the defense, where Cork were running riot with goals. A pitch invasion scuppered the game for ten minutes, however, Limerick held on to win by 3–3 to 2–4 and Ryan collected a fifth Munster medal. The subsequent All-Ireland decider on 1 September 1940, brought Kilkenny and Limerick together for the last great game between the two outstanding teams of the decade. Early in the second-half Kilkenny took a four-point lead, however, a positional switch at midfield proved vital. Limerick hung on to win the game on a score line of 3–7 to 1–7. The win gave Ryan his third All-Ireland medal.

Limerick took a back seat to Cork and Tipperary in the Munster series of games for the next few years.

In 1944, Limerick squared up to Cork in the provincial final as the Leesiders were aiming for a fourth consecutive All-Ireland final victory. Ryan was a veteran hurler by now, however, he was still a key member of the Limerick team. An incredible game saw Cork come back to draw the game on a remarkable 4–13 to 6–7 score line. In the last fifteen minutes of the subsequent replay, Limerick were up by four points when a goal by Mick Mackey was disallowed as he was deemed to be fouled as he went through. The subsequent free hit the outside of the post and dropped wide. Only seconds remained when Cork's Christy Ring caught the sliotar and fired a fierce shot into the net to win the game.

Following a defeat by Cork in the Munster decider in 1946, Ryan effectively retired from inter-county hurling.

Inter-provincial
Ryan also lined out with Munster in the inter-provincial series of games, and enjoyed much success during an eight-year career.

He was first included on the team in 1933, however, Leinster defeated Munster by 4–6 to 3–6 in the decider. Both sides renewed their rivalry the following year, with Ryan, who was now captain of the team, winning his first Railway Cup medal following a 6–3 to 3–2 victory. Munster made it two-in-a-row in 1935, with Ryan winning a second Railway Cup medal as captain.

After defeat in 1936, Munster bounced back in 1937. A 1–9 to 3–1 defeat of Leinster in the decider gave Ryan a third Railway Cup medal. It was the first of four successive final defeats of Leinster, with Ryan collecting further winners' medals in 1938 and 1939.

Ryan made his last appearance for Munster in 1941, however, it ended in defeat.

Honours

Team
Ahane
Limerick Senior Hurling Championship (13): 1931, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945, 1946

Limerick
All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship (3): 1934 (c), 1936, 1940
Munster Senior Hurling Championship (5): 1933, 1934 (c), 1935 (c), 1936, 1940
National Hurling League (5): 1933–34, 1934–35 (c), 1935–36 (c), 1936–37, 1937–38

Munster
Railway Cup (5): 1934 (c), 1935 (c), 1937, 1938, 1939

References

1909 births
1995 deaths
Ahane hurlers
All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship winners
Hurling selectors
Limerick inter-county hurlers
Munster inter-provincial hurlers
People from Castleconnell

Timmy Ryan


The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is an Islamic absolute monarchy in which Sunni Islam is the official state religion based on firm Sharia law. Non-Muslims must practice their religion in private and are vulnerable to discrimination and arrest. While no law requires all citizens to be Muslim, non-Muslim foreigners attempting to acquire Saudi Arabian nationality must convert to Islam. Children born to Muslim fathers are by law deemed Muslim, and conversion from Islam to another religion is considered apostasy and punishable by death. Blasphemy against Sunni Islam is also punishable by death, but the more common penalty is a long prison sentence; there have been 'no confirmed reports of executions for either apostasy or blasphemy' in the 21st century.

Religious freedom is not provided for under the law. The government does not provide legal recognition or protection for freedom of religion, and it is severely restricted in practice. As a matter of policy, the government guarantees and protects the right to private worship for all, including non-Muslims who gather in homes for religious practice; however, this right is not respected in practice and is not defined in law.

The Saudi Mutaween (), also known as the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPVPV) or "religious police" was enforcing the prohibition on the public practice of non-Muslim religions, though its powers were significantly curtailed in April 2016. Sharia applies to all people inside Saudi Arabia, regardless of religion.

Religious demography

The country's total land area is about 2,150,000 sq kilometers and in 2022 the population was about 34 million, of whom approximately 19 million were citizens.  Comprehensive statistics for the religious denominations of foreigners are not available, but estimated figures show approximately 31.5 Muslims from the various branches and schools of Islam, 2.1 million Christians (including Eastern Orthodox, Protestants, and Roman Catholics), 708,000 Hindus, 114,000 Buddhists, approximately 67,000 Sikhs, and 242,000 atheists.

Accurate religious demographics of citizens are difficult to obtain. A majority of Saudi citizens are Salafi Muslims, and the strict interpretation of Islam taught by the Salafi or Wahhabi (historically known as Sufyani in early Islam but now named as Salafi) sect is the only officially recognized religion. A minority of citizens are Shia Muslims. In 2006, they formed around 15% of the native population.  They live mostly in the eastern districts on the Persian Gulf (Qatif, Al-Hasa, Dammam), where they constitute approximately three-quarters of the native population, and in the western highlands of Arabia (districts of Jazan, Najran, Asir, Medina, Ta'if, and Hijaz).

Status of religious freedom
Saudi Arabia is an Islamic theocracy and the government has declared the Qur'an and the Sunnah (tradition) of Muhammad to be the country's Constitution. Freedom of religion is not illegal, but spreading the religion is illegal. Islam is the official religion. Under the law, children born to Muslim fathers are also Muslim, regardless of the country or the religious tradition in which they have been raised. The government prohibits the public practice of other religions but generally allows private practice of non-Muslim religions.
The primary source of law in Saudi Arabia is based on Sharia (Islamic law), with Shari'a courts basing their judgments largely on a code derived from the Qur'an and the Sunnah. Additionally, traditional tribal law and custom remain significant.

The only national holidays observed in Saudi Arabia are the two Eids, Eid Al-Fitr at the end of Ramadan and Eid Al-Adha at the conclusion of the Hajj and the Saudi national day. Contrary practices, such as celebrating Maulid Al-Nabi (birthday of the Prophet Muhammad) and visits to the tombs of renowned Muslims, are forbidden, although enforcement was more relaxed in some communities than in others, and Shi'a were permitted to observe Ashura publicly in some communities.

Restrictions on religious freedom

Islamic practice generally is limited to that of a school of the Sunni branch of Islam as interpreted by Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab, an 18th-century Arab religious scholar. Outside Saudi Arabia, this branch of Islam is often referred to as "Wahhabi," a term the Saudis do not use.

Practices contrary to this interpretation, such as celebration of Muhammad's birthday and visits to the tombs of renowned Muslims, are discouraged. The spreading of Muslim teachings not in conformity with the officially accepted interpretation of Islam is prohibited. Writers and other individuals who publicly criticize this interpretation, including both those who advocate a stricter interpretation and those who favor a more moderate interpretation than the government's, have reportedly been imprisoned and faced other reprisals.

The Ministry of Islamic Affairs supervises and finances the construction and maintenance of almost all mosques in the country, although over 30% of all mosques in Saudi Arabia are built and endowed by private persons. The Ministry pays the salaries of imams (prayer leaders) and others who work in the mosques. A governmental committee defines the qualifications of imams. The CPVPV, "religious police", or Mutawwa'in is a government entity, and its chairman has ministerial status. The Committee sends out armed and unarmed people into the public to ensure that Saudi citizens and expatriates living in the kingdom follow the Islamic mores, at least in public.

Saudi law prohibits alcoholic beverages and pork products in the country as they are considered to be against Islam. Those violating the law are handed harsh punishments. Drug trafficking is always punished by death.

Under Saudi law conversion by a Muslim to another religion is considered apostasy, a crime punishable by death.
In March 2014, the Saudi interior ministry issued a royal decree branding all atheists as terrorists, which defines terrorism as "calling for atheist thought in any form, or calling into question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this country is based."

Non-Muslims are also strictly banned by Saudi Arabia from the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina. On highways, religious police officers may divert them or hand out a fine. In the cities themselves, road checks are randomly conducted.

Saudi Arabia prohibits public non-Muslim religious activities. Non-Muslim worshipers risk arrest, imprisonment, lashing, deportation, and sometimes torture for engaging in overt religious activity that attracts official attention. In July 2012 the Bodu Bala Sena, an extremist Buddhist organization based in Sri Lanka, reported that Premanath Pereralage Thungasiri, a Sri Lankan Buddhist employed in Saudi Arabia, had been arrested for worshiping the Buddha in his employer's home, and that plans were being made to behead him. The Sri Lankan Embassy has rejected these reports. In the past, Sri Lankan officials have also rejected reports regarding labor conditions issued by New York-based Human Rights Watch.

The government has stated publicly, including before the U.N. Committee on Human Rights in Geneva, that its policy is to protect the right of non-Muslims to worship privately. However, non-Muslim organizations have claimed that there are no explicit guidelines for distinguishing between public and private worship, such as the number of persons permitted to attend and the types of locations that are acceptable. Such lack of clarity, as well as instances of arbitrary enforcement by the authorities, obliges most non-Muslims to worship in such a manner as to avoid discovery. Those detained for non-Muslim worship almost always are deported by authorities after sometimes lengthy periods of arrest during investigation. In some cases, they also are sentenced to receive lashes prior to deportation.

In 2022, there were no religious-worker visas, but non-Muslim clergy were able to enter the country to work in their communities. They were also able to bring in religious items, including books.

Proselytizing by non-Muslims, including the distribution of non-Muslim religious materials such as Bibles, is illegal.  Muslims or non-Muslims wearing religious symbols of any kind in public risk confrontation with the Mutawwa'in. In 2001, the Ministry of Islamic Affairs ran approximately 50 "Call and Guidance" centers employing approximately 500 persons work to convert foreigners to Islam. Some non-Muslim foreigners convert to Islam during their stay in the country. The press often carries articles about such conversions, including testimonials. The press as well as government officials publicized the conversion of the Italian Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Torquato Cardilli, in late 2001.

The government requires noncitizen residents to carry a Saudi residence permit (Iqama) for identification in place of their passports.
Among other information, these contain a religious designation for "Muslim" or "non-Muslim."

Members of the Shi'a minority are the subjects of officially sanctioned political and economic discrimination. The authorities permit the celebration of the Shi'a holiday of Ashura in the eastern province city of Qatif. No other Ashura celebrations are permitted in the country, and many Shi'a travel to Qatif or to Bahrain to participate in Ashura celebrations.

Shi'a have declined government offers to build state-supported mosques because they fear the government would prohibit the incorporation and display of Shi'a motifs in any such mosques. The government seldom permits private construction of Shi'a mosques. During 2013, virtually all existing mosques in al-Ahsa were unable to obtain licenses and faced the threat of closure at any time and in other parts of the country were not allowed to build Shia-specific mosques.

In 2022, the government executed 81 men, including 41 Saudi Shia, in the largest known mass execution carried out in the kingdom's history.

Members of the Shi'a minority are discriminated against in government employment, especially with respect to positions that relate to national security, such as in the military or in the Ministry of the Interior. The government restricts employment of Shi'a in the oil and petrochemical industries. The government also discriminates against Shi'a in higher education through unofficial restrictions on the number of Shi'a admitted to universities. This discrimination has been noted for many years.

Under the provisions of Shari'a law as practiced in the country, judges may discount the testimony of people who are not practicing Muslims or who do not adhere to the official interpretation of Islam. Legal sources report that testimony by Shi'a is often ignored in courts of law or is deemed to have less weight than testimony by Sunnis. Sentencing under the legal system is not uniform. Laws and regulations state that defendants should be treated equally; however, under Shari'a as interpreted and applied in the country, crimes against Muslims may result in harsher penalties than those against non-Muslims. Information regarding government practices was generally incomplete because judicial proceedings usually were not publicized or were closed to the public, despite provisions in the criminal procedure law requiring court proceedings to be open.

In the past Customs officials have regularly opened postal material and cargo to search for non-Muslim materials, such as Bibles and religious videotapes; such materials have been subject to confiscation.

Sunni Islamic religious education is mandatory in public schools at all levels. Private schools must also teach the same curriculum, except for private international schools which must teach Islamic studies. In 2022 the government reduced the number of  hours required for religious education, in favor of more study time for Arabic and STEM.

In 2007, Saudi religious police detained Shiite pilgrims participating in the Hajj and Umrah pilgrimage, allegedly calling them "infidels in Mecca and Medina".

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in its 2019 report named Saudi Arabia as one of the world's worst violators of religious freedom.

Until 2016, the kingdom only used the lunar Islamic calendar, not the international Gregorian calendar, but in 2016 the kingdom announced its switch to the Gregorian calendar for civil purposes. Daily life is influenced by Islamic observance. Some businesses decide to close three or four times per day for 30 to 45 minutes during business hours while employees and customers are sent off to pray. The weekend is Friday-Saturday, not Saturday-Sunday because Friday is the holiest day for Muslims. For many years only two religious holidays were publicly recognized – ʿĪd al-Fiṭr and ʿĪd al-Aḍḥā. (ʿĪd al-Fiṭr is "the biggest" holiday, a three-day period of "feasting, gift-giving and general letting go").

In 2004, approximately half of the broadcast airtime of Saudi state television was devoted to religious issues. Ninety per cent of books published in the kingdom were on religious subjects, and most of the doctorates awarded by its universities were in Islamic studies. In the state school system, about half of the material taught is religious. In contrast, assigned readings over 12 years of primary and secondary schooling devoted to covering the history, literature, and cultures of the non-Muslim world come to a total of about 40 pages.

"Fierce religious resistance" had to be overcome to permit such innovations as paper money (in 1951), female education (1964), and television (1965) and the abolition of slavery (1962). Public support for the traditional political/religious structure of the kingdom is so strong that one researcher interviewing Saudis found virtually no support for reforms to secularize the state.

Celebration of other (non-Wahhabi) Islamic holidays, such as the Muhammad's birthday and the Day of Ashura, (an important holiday for the 10–25% of the population that is Shīʿa Muslim), are tolerated only when celebrated locally and on a small scale. Shias also face systematic discrimination in employment, education, the justice system according to Human Rights Watch. Non-Muslim festivals like Christmas, Easter, Halloween, and New Year were not tolerated until recently. No churches, temples or other non-Muslim houses of worship are permitted in the country. Proselytizing by non-Muslims and conversion by Muslims to another religion is illegal, and  the distribution of "publications that have prejudice to any other religious belief other than Islam" (such as Bibles), was reportedly punishable by death. In legal compensation court cases (Diyya) non-Muslim are awarded less than Muslims. Atheists are legally designated as terrorists. At least one religious minority, the Ahmadiyya Muslims, had its adherents deported, as they are legally banned from entering the country.

In a recent move to promote a modern image, Saudi Arabia banned the religious group known as 'Tablighi Jamaat'. The announcement was made on social media by the country's Minister of Islamic Affairs who warned people against association during the Friday sermon.

Ahmadiyya

Ahmadis are persecuted in Saudi Arabia on an ongoing basis. Although there have been many foreign workers and Saudi citizens belonging to the Ahmadiyya sect in Saudi Arabia, Ahmadis are officially banned from entering the country and from performing the Hajj and Umrah pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina.

By 2022, authorities indicated that they considered Ahmadiyya Muslims to be Muslims; however the group's legal status is unclear.

Blasphemy and apostasy

Saudi Arabia has criminal statutes making it illegal for a Muslim to change religion or to renounce Islam, which is defined as apostasy and punishable by death. For this reason, Saudi Arabia is known as 'the hell for apostates', with many ex-Muslims seeking to leave or flee the country before their non-belief is discovered, and living pseudonymous second lives on the Internet.

On 3 September 1992, Sadiq 'Abdul-Karim Malallah was publicly beheaded in Al-Qatif in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province after being convicted of apostasy and blasphemy. Sadiq Malallah, a Shi'a Muslim from Saudi Arabia, was arrested in April 1988 and charged with throwing stones at a police patrol. He was reportedly held in solitary confinement for long periods during his first months in detention and tortured prior to his first appearance before a judge in July 1988. The judge reportedly asked him to convert from Shi'a Islam to Sunni Wahhabi Islam, and allegedly promised him a lighter sentence if he complied. After he refused to do so, he was taken to al-Mabahith al-'Amma (General Intelligence) Prison in Dammam where he was held until April 1990. He was then transferred to al-Mabahith al-'Amma Prison in Riyadh, where he remained until the date of his execution. Sadiq Malallah is believed to have been involved in efforts to secure improved rights for Saudi Arabia's Shi'a Muslim minority.

In 1994, Hadi Al-Mutif a teenager who was a Shi'a Ismaili Muslim from Najran in southwestern Saudi Arabia, made a remark that a court deemed blasphemous and was sentenced to death for apostasy. , he was still in prison, had alleged physical abuse and mistreatment during his years of incarceration, and had reportedly made numerous suicide attempts.

In 2012, Saudi poet and journalist Hamza Kashgari became the subject of a major controversy after being accused of insulting Muslim prophet Mohammad in three short messages (tweets) published on the Twitter online social networking service.  King Abdullah ordered that Kashgari be arrested "for crossing red lines and denigrating religious beliefs in God and His Prophet."

Ahmad Al Shamri from the town of Hafar al-Batin, was arrested on charges of atheism and blasphemy after allegedly using social media to state that he renounced Islam and the Prophet Mohammed, he was sentenced to death in February 2015.

In January 2019, 18-year-old Rahaf Mohammed fled Saudi Arabia after having renounced Islam and being abused by her family. On her way to Australia, she was held by Thai authorities in Bangkok while her father tried to take her back, but Rahaf managed to use social media to attract significant attention to her case. After diplomatic intervention, she was eventually granted asylum in Canada, where she arrived and settled soon after.

Witchcraft and sorcery

In the past, the country has used the death penalty for crimes of sorcery and witchcraft and claims that it is doing so in "public interest".  In 2022, sorcery is still an arrestable offence.

Forced religious conversion

Forced conversion, as per the principles of Islam is not allowed

In July 2012, two men who had evangelized a young woman who subsequently converted to Christianity were arrested in the Saudi Gulf city Al-Khabar, on charges of "forcible conversion". The girl's father had laid charges against the two men after he failed to convince the young woman to return home from Lebanon and abandon her new faith.

Saudi practices as "religious apartheid"

Testifying before the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus on June 4, 2002, in a briefing entitled "Human Rights in Saudi Arabia: The Role of Women", Ali Al-Ahmed, Director of the Saudi Institute, stated:
Saudi Arabia is a glaring example of religious apartheid. The religious institutions from government clerics to judges, to religious curricula, and all religious instructions in media are restricted to the Wahhabi understanding of Islam, adhered to by less than 40% of the population. The Saudi government communized Islam, through its monopoly of both religious thoughts and practice. Wahhabi Islam is imposed and enforced on all Saudis regardless of their religious orientations. The Wahhabi sect does not tolerate other religious or ideological beliefs, Muslim or not. Religious symbols by Muslims, Christians, Jews and other believers are all banned. The Saudi embassy in Washington is a living example of religious apartheid. In its 50 years, there has not been a single non-Sunni Muslim diplomat in the embassy. The branch of Imam Mohamed Bin Saud University in Fairfax, Virginia instructs its students that Shia Islam is a Jewish conspiracy.

In 2003, Amir Taheri quoted a Shi'ite businessman from Dhahran as saying "It is not normal that there are no Shi'ite army officers, ministers, governors, mayors and ambassadors in this kingdom. This form of religious apartheid is as intolerable as was apartheid based on race."

In 2007, Saudi religious police detained Shiite pilgrims participating in the Hajj and Umrah pilgrimage, allegedly calling them "infidels in Mecca and Medina".

Until March 1, 2004, the official government website stated that Jews were forbidden from entering the country.  Prejudice against Jews is fairly high in the kingdom.  While the webpage has been modified, no one who admits to be Jewish, on the visa paperwork or has an Israeli government stamp on their passport is allowed in the kingdom.

Alan Dershowitz wrote in 2002, "in Saudi Arabia apartheid is practiced against non-Muslims, with signs indicating that Muslims must go to certain areas and non-Muslims to others."

On 14 December 2005, Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Democratic Representative Shelley Berkley introduced a bill in Congress urging American divestiture from Saudi Arabia, and giving as its rationale (among other things) "Saudi Arabia is a country that practices religious apartheid and continuously subjugates its citizenry, both Muslim and non-Muslim, to a specific interpretation of Islam." Freedom House showed on its website, on a page tiled "Religious apartheid in Saudi Arabia", a picture of a sign showing Muslim-only and non-Muslim roads.

In 2007, there were news reports that according to Saudi policy for tourists it was not permissible to bring non-Muslim religious symbols and books into the kingdom as they were subject to confiscation, and that the U.S. State Department disputed this, saying that the regulation restrictions were no longer in place. The 2007 U.S The U.S State Department International Religious Freedom (IRF) report detailed several cases in which bibles were confiscated in Saudi Arabia, but said that there were fewer reports in 2007 of government officials confiscating religious materials than in previous years and no reports that customs officials had confiscated religious materials from travelers. In the past the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (CPVPV) and security forces of the Ministry of Interior (MOI) conducted some raids on private non-Muslim religious gatherings and sometimes confiscated the personal religious materials of non-Muslims.  The 2022 IRF report noted that there were no reports of visitors having their personal, non-Islamic religious materials confiscated; however the media did report the confiscation of sorcery-related items.

2023 freedom reports
In 2023, the country was scored zero out of 4 for religious freedom.  In the same year, it was ranked as the 13th worst place in the world to be a Christian.

See also
 Human rights in Saudi Arabia
 Religion in Saudi Arabia
 Wahhabism

References

External links
 Religious Freedom and the Middle East at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy PolicyWatch
 Does Saudi Arabia Preach Intolerance in the West?
 Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia

Religion in Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia articles needing attention
Law of Saudi Arabia
Human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia

Freedom of religion in Saudi Arabia


Report to the Principal's Office is a 1991 children's novel by the American author, Jerry Spinelli. It depicts the first few days of school at the brand-new, state-of-the-art Plumstead Middle School. The book follows five main characters: Sunny Wyler, a girl who wants to go to her friend's middle school but cannot. Eddie Mott, who wants to fit in and make new friends. Salem Brownmiller, who sees herself as a future famous writer. Pickles Johnson, who enjoys inventing all sorts of things. T. Charles Brimlow, who sees all of these sixth graders as "the Principal's Posse", as he later names them. All of these sixth graders will report to the principal's (T. Charles Brimlow's) office, hence the title, Report to the Principal's Office.

Hillary Kain and Sunny Wyler are best friends. They live across the street from each other. But when Hillary and Sunny find out they are going to separate middle schools, they are thrown into depression. Sunny vows to not change her shirt, not wash her hair, and never even smile until she gets into the same school as Hillary.

School begins at brand-new Plumstead Middle School, and there are four sixth graders who, somehow, meet. Eddie Mott is a child who tries to fit in, yet still has a hard time. One time he got beaten up on the morning bus. Salem Brownmiller, a girl who loves to write stories, enjoys this because she is writing a story about a sixth-grade boy's first day at middle school – and Eddie is the perfect fit.
And on the first day, they are all sent to report to the principal, Eric F. T. Charles Brimlow.

External links

Author Jerry Spinelli's homepage

1991 American novels
1991 children's books
American children's novels
Novels set in high schools and secondary schools
Novels by Jerry Spinelli
Scholastic Corporation books

Report to the Principal's Office


Øyane is a neighborhood (delområde) in the city of Stavanger which lies in the southwestern part of the large municipality of Stavanger in Rogaland county, Norway. It includes many of the islands located to the east of the mainland portion of the city.  The northern part includes the eastern half of the island of Åmøy which is in the borough of Tasta and the islands of Bjørnøy, Roadsøy, Ormøy, and Steinsøy are located in the borough of Hundvåg.  The rest of Øyane, which includes the islands of Lindøy, Hellesøy, Kalvøy, Vassøy, and Langøy are all sparsely inhabited and not a part of any city borough. The neighborhood's area is  and the population in 2005 was 2,125.

References

Boroughs and neighbourhoods of Stavanger

Øyane


The Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick is the presiding officer of the provincial legislature. Since 1994 the position has been elected by MLAs using a secret ballot. Previously, the Speaker had been appointed by motion of the house, in practice moved by the Premier of New Brunswick usually after consultation with the Leader of the Opposition. Shirley Dysart was the first Speaker to be elected by his or her peers.

The Speaker is usually a member of the governing party. The only recent exceptions have been Robert McCready and Michael Malley. McCready was appointed by motion of Premier Richard Hatfield following the close election of 1978. Hatfield's Progressive Conservative Party had won only 30 seats compared to the 28 seats won by the opposition Liberal Party. McCready was a member of the Liberal caucus and was appointed over the objection of the Liberal Party. The Liberal opposition argued on a point of order before the clerk of the assembly that precedent required that the opposition support the motion appointing speaker, but the clerk allowed the motion to be put and carried by the government. Malley was elected in 2006 while sitting as an independent. Malley had left the government caucus following a cabinet shuffle that had seen the incumbent speaker, Bev Harrison, join the cabinet leaving the post vacant. Malley argued that he should have been included in the cabinet for regional reasons and left the government caucus in protest; to prevent losing control of the legislature in a tenuous minority government situation, the Progressive Conservative caucus supported Malley as speaker. Malley later changed his party affiliation, amid some controversy, back to that of the governing Progressive Conservatives while occupying the speakership.

List of speakers

References
 The Evolving Speakership, Canadian Parliamentary Review

Politics of New Brunswick
New Brunswick


GNU Unifont is a free Unicode bitmap font created by Roman Czyborra. The main Unifont covers all of the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP). The "upper" companion covers significant parts of the Supplementary Multilingual Plane (SMP). The "Unifont JP" companion contains Japanese kanji present in the JIS X 0213 character set.

It is present in most free operating systems and windowing systems such as Linux, XFree86 or the X.Org Server, some embedded firmware such as RockBox, as well as in Minecraft Java Edition. The source code is released under the GPL-2.0-or-later license. The font is released under the GPL-2.0-or-later license with Font-exception-2.0 (embedding the font in a document does not require the document to be placed under the same license); and from version 13.0.04, dual-licensed under SIL Open Font License 1.1. The manual is released under the GFDL-1.3-or-later license.

It became a GNU package in October 2013. The current maintainer is Paul Hardy.

Status
The Unicode Basic Multilingual Plane covers 216 (65,536) code points. Of this number, 2,048 are reserved for special use as UTF-16 surrogate pairs and 6,400 are reserved for private use. This leaves 57,088 code points to which glyphs can be assigned. Some of these code points are special values that do not have an assigned glyph, but most do have assigned glyphs.

, the GNU Unifont has complete coverage of the Basic Multilingual Plane as defined in Unicode 12.1.0. Its companion fonts, Unifont Upper and Unifont CSUR, have significant coverage of the Supplementary Multilingual Plane and the ConScript Unicode Registry, respectively.

For version 12.1.02, Unifont JP was released, which covers 10,000 Japanese kanji present in the JIS X 0213 character set, some of which are in the Supplementary Ideographic Plane. It is derived from Jiskan16, a public domain font.

Incomplete scripts can be added to by any contributor.

Most of the CJK ideographs on the font has been copied from WenQuanYi's Unibit font with permission.

Unifont stores only one glyph per printable Unicode code point. Because of this, it does not feature the OpenType features needed to render scripts with complex layouts correctly, and it does not correctly position the combining diacritics with base letters if these combinations are not encoded in Unicode in their pre-combined form; the contextual forms (including joining types, and subjoined clusters) are not handled as well. This increases the number of glyphs to include in the basic font and it is not currently possible (because of current OpenType limitations) to encode all the needed glyphs to represent all the required combinations that can exist in a single Unicode plane (this is also true for Chinese fonts that cannot cover completely all ideograms currently encoded in two planes, and also in a third plane). Unifont is then intended to only be used as a "last resort" default font, suitable for simple alphabetic scripts, or to render isolated characters, but will make actual texts difficult or sometimes impossible to read correctly. For correctly rendering Indic abugidas (and semitic abjads if they are written with their optional combining diacritics), other fonts should be specified before this one, and additional fonts will be needed to cover Han ideographs encoded in supplementary planes, or to render most historic (or minority modern) scripts not encoded in the BMP.

Distribution

Unifont, as of version 15.0.6, is available in TTF (and OTF), BDF, PCF, .hex, and PSF formats for the "standard build". Only the TrueType build is split into two fonts.

A few "specialized versions" have been built by request and made available by Paul Hardy. These include a bitmap TTF (SBIT) with empty glyphs filled with code-point values for FontForge users to read, a PSF bitmap with glyphs for APL programmers, and single-file versions in Roman's .hex format (see below). The actual organization of the source consists of smaller .hex files to be stitched together and converted to other formats in a build.

Vectorization
Luis Alejandro González Miranda wrote scripts to vectorize and convert the BDF font to TrueType format using FontForge. Paul Hardy adjusted these scripts to handle combining characters (accents, etc.) for the latest TrueType versions.

.hex format
The GNU Unifont .hex format defines its glyphs as either 8 or 16 pixels in width by 16 pixels in height. Most Western script glyphs can be defined as 8 pixels wide, while other glyphs (notably the Chinese–Japanese–Korean, or CJK set) are typically defined as 16 pixels wide.

The unifont.hex file contains one line for each glyph. Each line consists of a four-digit Unicode hexadecimal code point, a colon, and the bitmap string. The bit string is 32 hexadecimal digits for an 8-pixel-wide glyph, or 64 hexadecimal digits for a 16-pixel-wide glyph. The goal is to create an intermediate format that would facilitate adding new glyphs.

The bit string is converted from hexadecimal to binary. A 1 bit in the binary bit string corresponds to an 'on' pixel. The pixel's bits are stored line by line, from the top to the bottom, in big-endian order.

Example
This is an example font containing one glyph, for ASCII capital 'A'.
<nowiki>
0041:0000000018242442427E424242420000
</nowiki>
The first number is the hexadecimal Unicode code point, with range 0000 through FFFF. Hexadecimal 0041 is decimal 65, the code point for the letter 'A'. The colon separates the code point from the bitmap. In this example, the glyph is 8 pixels wide, so the bit string is 32 hexadecimal digits long.

The bit string begins with 8 zeros, so the top 4 rows will be empty (2 hexadecimal digits per 8 bit byte, with 8 bits per row for an 8 pixel-wide glyph). The bit string also ends with 4 zeros, so the bottom 2 rows will be empty. It is implicit from this that the default font descender is 2 rows below the baseline, and the capital height is 10 rows above the baseline. This is the case in the GNU Unifont with Latin glyphs.

Over time, a number of ways have been created to handle the format. The earliest way is the  Perl script, which converts the string into an ASCII art representation to be edited in a text editor. Another method involves generating a bitmap image grid for an entire range of code points and working with an image editor. In either case, the edited glyphs are later converted back into .hex files for storage.

|+Decoded hexdraw representation of the example
|-

 00 00000000 --------
 00 00000000 --------
 00 00000000 --------
 00 00000000 --------
 18 00011000 ---██---
 24 00100100 --█--█--
 24 00100100 --█--█--
 42 01000010 -█----█-
 42 01000010 -█----█-
 7E 01111110 -██████-
 42 01000010 -█----█-
 42 01000010 -█----█-
 42 01000010 -█----█-
 42 01000010 -█----█-
 00 00000000 --------
 00 00000000 --------

History
Roman Czyborra created the Unifont format in 1998 after earlier efforts dating to 1994.

In 2008, Luis Alejandro González Miranda wrote a program to convert Unifont into a TrueType font. Paul Hardy modified it later to support combining characters in the TrueType version.

Later, Richard Stallman published Unifont as a GNU package in October 2013, with Paul Hardy as its maintainer.

See also
Fallback font

References

 The Unicode Consortium: The Unicode 5.0 Standard. 5th, Addison Wesley 2007; .

External links

GNU Project Archives
Unifoundry.com GNU Unifont page

Free software Unicode typefaces
Unifont
Typefaces and fonts introduced in 1998
Raster typefaces

GNU Unifont


Francesco Galli, called Francesco da Bibiena, or da Bibbiena (1659-1739) was a member of the theatrical Galli da Bibiena family and younger brother of Ferdinando Galli.

Life and work
He was born at Bologna. He first studied under Lorenzo Pasinelli; but he was afterwards instructed in the school of Carlo Cignani. His knowledge of architecture and perspective was considerable; but he excelled in figures. Francesco worked at Piacenza, Parma, and Rome, and then became ducal architect at Mantua. After a stay in Genoa and Naples he was called to Vienna, where he built a large theatre. He worked successively for the Emperors Leopold I and Joseph I, and was invited to Madrid by Philip V, who appointed him his principal architect.

Francesco was known for his theatrical achievements in scenic design. He was the first member of the Bibiena family to build theatres as well as to design sets. In 1700 he completely renovated the theatre in Hofburg, Vienna, for Emperor Leopold I.  The large theatre was known as the Große Komödiensaal ("Grand Hall of Comedies"), which later became the Court Theater (Burgtheater). The opera house, however, burned down in 1747. The Hoftheater's architecture greatly influenced theatre design in Germany and Austria throughout the first half of the eighteenth century.

After a short stay in Italy and in Lorraine, he was invited by Emperor Joseph I, back to the Hofburg, to work as the "First Theatrical Engineer" and as a scene-painter/decorator from 1709 to 1712. He was also the architect of the great theatre at Nancy, France; of the Teatro Filarmonico at Verona, which some called the finest theatre in Italy; and of the Teatro Alibert in Rome. In 1726, Francesco returned to Bologna, where he directed the Clementine Academy.

Although his father, Giovanni Galli da Bibiena, had a distinguished career, it was Francesco and his older brother Ferdinando that established the family's artistic reputation and its fortune.

Notes

References

External links

1659 births
1739 deaths
17th-century Italian painters
Italian male painters
18th-century Italian painters
Painters from Bologna
Architects from Bologna
People of Tuscan descent
18th-century Italian male artists

Francesco Galli Bibiena


Interstellar Space is a studio album by American jazz saxophonist John Coltrane, featuring drummer Rashied Ali. It was recorded in 1967, the year of his death, and released by Impulse! Records in September 1974.

Composition

Interstellar Space consists of an extended duet suite in four parts with the drummer Rashied Ali, and was recorded at the Van Gelder Studio on February 22, 1967, one week after the session that produced Stellar Regions (which included the track "Offering", also featured on the album Expression), and roughly two weeks before the session that produced the tracks "Ogunde" and "Number One", both of which also appeared on Expression. There is some overlap between the material on Stellar Regions and Interstellar Space; for example, "Venus" has the same melody as the title track of Stellar Regions, while "Mars" quotes the melody of what became known as "Iris", and many note choices and runs are similar.

The original album featured four tracks: "Mars" (titled "C Major" in the ABC/Paramount session sheets), "Venus" (titled "Dream Chant" in the session sheets), "Jupiter", and "Saturn". Two further tracks from the session, "Leo" and "Jupiter Variation", later appeared on the compilation album Jupiter Variation in 1978. A 2000 CD reissue collected all of the tracks from the session, including false starts for "Jupiter Variation" in the CD's pregap.

According to Ben Ratliff, Interstellar Space was "minimally planned", and "happened on what seemed for Ali to be a routine visit to Rudy Van Gelder's studio. Ali arrived with his friend Jimmy Vass, expecting to find the other band members, and saw no one else there." Ratliff related the following exchange:

"Ain't nobody coming?" [Ali] said to Vass. Soon Coltrane arrived.
/
"Ain't nobody coming?" he said to Coltrane.
/
"No, it's just you and me."
/
"What are we playing? Is it fast? Is it slow?"
/
"Whatever you want it to be. Come on. I'm going to ring some bells. You can do an 8-bar intro."

Ratliff wrote that "They cut the record in one take. Ali says he wasn't completely at ease, that the whole thing brought him up short. He still feels he could have done better if he had been prepared." Later, Ali reflected: "You can just about tell what that music was headed for — he had a handle on it. It really told you the direction he was headed in. That record [Interstellar Space] was one of the last things that he did. It's really something that has to be listened to and something that has to be felt. Musicians are just starting to look into the playing of this kind of a thing now."

Release and reception

Interstellar Space was released in September 1974 by Impulse! Records. In a contemporary review for Rolling Stone, music journalist Stephen Davis called the album "plainly astounding" and found Ali to be the ideal complement for Coltrane's mystical ideas: "He outlandishly returns the unrelenting outpour of energy spewing from Trane, and the result is a two-man vulcanism in which Ali provides the subterranean rumblings through which the tenor explodes in showers of notes." Robert Christgau wrote in his column for The Village Voice that he was amazed by the duets, which "sound like an annoyance until you concentrate on them, at which point the interactions take on pace and shape, with metaphorical overtones that have little to do with the musical ideas being explored."

In a review of Interstellar Spaces expanded CD reissue, jazz critic Scott Yanow from AllMusic deemed it "rousing if somewhat inaccessible music" with transformative, emotional duets that showcase Coltrane's flair for improvising without a traditional jazz accompaniment. Tiny Mix Tapes wrote that the "fierce free-jazz rumination" is not as important as his other albums Giant Steps (1960) and A Love Supreme (1965), but it better encapsulates Coltrane's spiritual and stylistic growth, including his understanding and grasp of multiphonic techniques, overtone sounds, and altissimo notes. According to Down Beat magazine, Interstellar Space best exemplified the formal principles Coltrane applied to his more spiritual music, while Derek Taylor from All About Jazz called it one of his most important recordings, distinct from previous duets he recorded with the likes of Elvin Jones:

Ben Ratliff described the album as follows: "Coltrane directs the music, beginning and ending at a place of calm, even though the music reaches frenetic states in between. It isn't show business, even hippie show business. It's an almost monastic record. Each piece begins and ends with bells, shaken by Coltrane. The pieces encompass a range of expression, from hard, fragmentary phrases to flowing, downward twelve-note scales, played so fast and articulated so clearly they give you the physical sensation of the floor dropping out from under you. This takes him back to 1958, when he started to become interested in the harp, expressing himself with fast arpeggios; it is sheets-of-sound done even better."

Eric Nisenson wrote that the title Interstellar Space "is perfectly fitting, for here Coltrane is free to improvise without the gravity of the bass or piano. The names of the pieces, 'Mars,' 'Jupiter,' 'Venus,' and 'Saturn,' reflect Coltrane's interest in astrology, which he valued as a complex system for relating the flow of the cosmos to human actions. The music embodies an idea he had gleaned from his study of Einstein and modern physics: that the universe was constantly expanding. Melody and rhythm, free from the constraints of harmony and meter, create a light show for the mind; one can see stars exploding, comets shooting through the vastness of space, the ceaseless, neverending expansive motion of all the stars and planets... These saxophone-drums duets are in the tradition of such Coltrane works as 'Countdown' and 'Vigil.' The difference is the great freedom of Rashied Ali's rhythms, which allow Coltrane liberty to explore this rhythmic landscape without being compelled forward... Coltrane's dense, frenetic playing is at times reminiscent of the 'sheets of sound' period, with the same effect on the listener of being bathed in pure sound. But the differences with the former music are far more important. Coltrane had made deep inroads into the terrain of pure musical freedom, and while maintaining important elements of his established style, he seems freed from standard Western musical theory. Moreover, he discovered in this recording that he did not have to continue screaming in order to continue his quest."

Lewis Porter's book John Coltrane: His Life and Music includes a detailed discussion of Interstellar Space, and specifically "Venus." He wrote: "The barrage of sound presented by Coltrane's last works may, unfortunately, conceal from many listeners the magnificent power of Coltrane's playing. What seems to be chaotic is just the opposite. Coltrane managed to create long solos that flowed seamlessly from theme to improvisation - which is just what he said he wanted. And the improvisations were devoted relentlessly to the exploration of abstract motivic ideas." Porter suggested that Interstellar Space is "an ideal starting place for the listener who wants to understand Coltrane's last music - it's so easy to hear what he's doing... Each [piece] begins with a theme, moves away from it, and returns to it at the end... all of the pieces encompass some kind of working up to a climax followed by a calming down, which leads to a recapitulation." He goes on to list three techniques that Coltrane employs in this recording: 1) "very fast descending scales, repeated over and over" in an attempt "to create an orchestral effect... He wants to give the listener an impression that the top notes are the melody, and the scales are the accompaniment;" 2) "rapid and extreme changes in register," an "attempt to suggest two lines of activity at once;" 3) "'right-side up and upside-down' - creating variations of a motive by changing its shape, going up instead of down, using the same rhythm or the same number of notes in different ways." Porter notes that as "Coltrane moves into longer and faster streams of notes, more abstruse and less clearly articulated," "patterns emerge" and "we begin to realize that what, at first hearing, may have seemed to be an undisciplined proliferation of notes is actually an elaboration of various patterns." Porter concludes his discussion of "Venus" by noting: "For someone who was accused of playing loud, noisy music during his last years, what impresses most is his incredible control of dynamics, from a whisper to a holler... And Coltrane has succeeded precisely because he gave up chord changes and the restriction of a steady beat, in creating a seamless musical construction, not divisible into choruses"

Author Tony Whyton wrote that the tracks on Interstellar Space "clearly demonstrate the full glory of Coltrane's late style" and notes that "the removal of identifiable structures, a steady pulse, and clear sense of meter opens up the music and removes familiar aids of orientation for the listener. In this respect, although Coltrane's sound and approach can be understood as part of the same continuum, the context has changed dramatically to the point where the music is clearly experienced more as an immediate sensation. This leads to recordings such as Interstellar Space being received as musical processes rather than as products; they encourage us to listen in the here and now as opposed to assimilating what has happened before and predicting what will happen next." Whyton suggests that "Experiencing a recording as a type of music as process counters the canonical imperative of reifying music; Coltrane's music does not convey a singular meaning or set of values but works as an agent for questioning and opening up the discourse about what music could be. In Coltrane's world at this time, the studio becomes a site for investigation and discovery, and the duets with Ali convey a clear sense of experimentation and interplay between two creative artists." He also states: "there is a definite sense that notation alone cannot capture the intensity, energy, and sound encountered when listening to the recording firsthand.... As a sonic experience, Interstellar Space has a rich, sensual quality that clearly explains Coltrane's fascination with sound. More than any other late Coltrane recording, Interstellar Space draws the listener in with its sensuous sounds and demonstrates the way in which recordings can open our ears to different listening experiences."

Mika Vainio of the band Pan Sonic listed Interstellar Space as one of his favorite albums in an interview with The Quietus. Zach Graham, writing for GQ, called it "Coltrane's most tenacious and inaccessible album" and claimed it was Coltrane's most influential record citing Thundercat and Kendrick Lamar as musicians influenced by Interstellar Space.

Covers
In 1999, guitarist Nels Cline and drummer Gregg Bendian released their versions of "Mars", "Leo", "Venus", "Jupiter" and "Saturn" on the album Interstellar Space Revisited: The Music of John Coltrane. Rings of Saturn, an album by duets by Rashied Ali and saxophonist Louie Belogenis, also pays tribute to Interstellar Space, and includes the Coltrane composition "Saturn".

Track listing

 Sides one and two were combined as tracks 1–4 on CD reissues.

Personnel
John Coltrane – tenor saxophone, bells
Rashied Ali – drums

References

External links
 Interstellar Space at Acclaimed Music (list of accolades)

1974 albums
John Coltrane albums
Instrumental duet albums
Impulse! Records albums
Albums published posthumously
Albums recorded at Van Gelder Studio

Interstellar Space


Magic Seeds is a 2004 novel by Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul published by Knopf in the US and Picador in the UK. The novel is set in India and Europe (Berlin and London).

Plot summary
Magic Seeds is a sequel to Naipaul's 2001 novel Half a Life. Magic Seeds takes over where "Half a Life" left off – with Willie Somerset Chandran, a transplanted Indian, living with his sister Sarojini in Berlin. He was forced to come to Germany after a revolution in an unnamed African country (presumably Mozambique) forced him into exile. He had spent 18 years in Africa, and is ill at ease in the urban European setting. His sister arranges for him to return to India and become involved with communist guerrillas over there. He accepts this mission, but without any real sense of commitment to the rebels cause. He is quickly disillusioned with the guerrillas – their personal shortcomings and the ill-advised tactics of the movement – but remains involved with them partly out of inertia and partly out of fear that his former comrades might kill him. Eventually he gets captured and imprisoned, and finds life in prison preferable to a life on the run. He gets released from the prison when his English friend Roger arranges for an old collection of his short stories to be republished, which causes some embarrassment to the Indian government. Willie moves to London, and there he finds himself in an upper-middle class social set, and he slowly drifts into the life in the suburbs, with all its ironies and quiet sense of claustrophobia.

References

http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780375707278

Postcolonial novels
Novels by V. S. Naipaul
Picador (imprint) books
2004 British novels
Novels set in Berlin
Novels set in London
Novels set in India

Magic Seeds


The Semidi Islands are a group of islands of the state of Alaska, United States, lying offshore in the Gulf of Alaska. The islands are part of Kodiak Island Borough and are located southwest of Kodiak Island, about halfway between the Alaska Peninsula mainland and Chirikof Island. The largest islands of the group are Aghiyuk Island and Chowiet Island. The island group has a total land area of 30.178 km2 (11.652 sq mi) and is uninhabited. They are part of the Alaska Peninsula unit of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge.

Wilderness
Before being combined with other wilderness areas to form the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge in 1980, the Semidi Wilderness was known as the Semidi National Wildlife Refuge. The 250,000 acre wilderness area provides habitat for 2.4 million birds, almost half the breeding seabirds of the Alaska Peninsula Unit, including 370,000 horned puffins. The seabed area around the islands provides temporary habitat for populations of sea otters, sea lions, seals, porpoises, and whales.

References

Islands of the Kodiak Archipelago
Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge
Protected areas of Kodiak Island Borough, Alaska
Uninhabited islands of Alaska
Islands of Alaska

Semidi Islands


The Beloit water tower is a historic octagonal limestone water tower completed in 1889 in Beloit, Wisconsin.

In Beloit's younger days, the city's fire protection consisted of two volunteer companies with hoses and mobile pumps that drew water from the Rock River and from private wells and cisterns. Several businesses burned just beyond reach of the hoses and finally in 1884 St. Thomas Catholic and Baptist churches went up in flames. Beyond fire protection, a source of clean drinking water would reduce the risk of diseases like diphtheria and typhoid fever. The rough-edged community debated for years whether a better water supply should be city-owned or a private enterprise.

Finally in 1885 a consortium of local businessmen agreed to finance a private water works project. The financiers were: C.H. Morse, W.H. Wheeler, J.B. Peet, E.C. Allen, C.B. Salmon, and C.H. Parker. They hired Fairbanks, Morse Co. of Chicago to design the system, and J.B. Kinley designed the tower. It sits on one of the high points of town, with limestone walls 36 feet tall. The walls are octagonal, 36 feet in diameter at the base with walls eight feet thick.  As the walls rise, they taper in four stages with the top stage 30 feet in diameter. Lancet-arched windows let light into the tower. Originally, a tank 20 feet deep sat atop the tower, built of 3-inch cypress and holding 100,000 gallons of water. A pumping station was built just southwest of the tower, powered by steam-operated Smith and Vale pumps. The resulting system could shoot a two-inch stream of water 130 feet high. Seven miles of water mains were laid through the city feeding 72 hydrants. For the fire protection, the city paid a tax to the consortium. The water-works also tried to entice homeowners to give up their private wells and switch to city water, offering free pipe to the curb for the first 100 patrons.

In 1914 the cypress tank collapsed.  The water-works replaced it with a metal tank of the same size, built by the Eclipse Wind Mill Company, right in Beloit. On top of the tank was a cupola, and a flag pole on top of that.

By 1929 the water system served 25,000 customers, but the tower was outdated. A modern (for the time) steel tower was built nearby, with a 200,000 gallon tank. The metal tank was removed from the old tower, the stairs inside were removed, and demolition of the stone walls began, but the walls were well-built, and demolition was deemed too expensive. After demolition was given up, a Beloit Daily News article stated that the tower was "once regarded as the finest piece of masonry in the west". In 1983 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Now, the stone water tower is a visible community landmark offering excellent photo opportunities for camera buffs. The area surrounding the tower has been developed into Water Tower Park with an ADA accessible walkway. The Water Works Pump House has been completely restored and currently houses the City of Beloit Parks and Leisure Services offices and Friends of Riverfront offices. Also, visitors are welcome to stop in during business hours. The Shingle Style pump house at the base of the bluff now acts as the Beloit Visitor Center.

See also
 Paxton Water Tower and Pump House: NRHP-listed octagonal water tower in Illinois

References

External links
Stone Octagon Water Tower (with photograph)
Old stone water tower, 'built too well', allowed to stand - Wisconsin Historical Society
Beloit Visitor Center: A City Symbol Stands Proud Again

Buildings and structures in Beloit, Wisconsin
Infrastructure completed in 1889
Towers completed in 1889
Water towers on the National Register of Historic Places in Wisconsin
National Register of Historic Places in Rock County, Wisconsin
1889 establishments in Wisconsin
Octagonal buildings in the United States
Fairbanks-Morse

Beloit water tower