Samuel Watts Davies (ca. 1776 – December 22, 1843) was an American politician.

Samuel W. Davies was born in London, England, the son of John Davies and Mary Watts who immigrated to the United States in the late 18th century. In 1800 he lived in New York City where he operated a grocery store in Beekman Street.  While in New York, Davies married Mary Ann Stall Thomas, a widow of Robert Thomas, and a daughter of John Stall and Frances Hiley of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In ca. 1802 Davies followed his brother-in-law, General William Lytle to Williamsburg, Clermont Co., Ohio.  Gen. Lytle and his wife, Eliza Stall had first moved to Lexington, Kentucky.  In 1797 Gen. Lytle and his brother, John Lytle founded the town of Williamsburg and began residing there. Once in Williamsburg, Samuel Davies purchased 1,300 acres on the East Fork of the Little Miami River.  He also built a sizeable stone house on Front Street and began operating a general merchandise store in the town.  Historians indicate that this store was probably much smaller than the one he had operated in New York City, and probably specialized in farm implements and supplies for the local farmers in rural Clermont County. They also suggest that he took payments at his store in the form of grains, flours, hides, and other products that poorer, rural people used in the absence of state issued currency. By 1805, Davies was using the wealth he acquired from his business to make land investments. There were reports that he was quite "busy" at the land office in Cincinnati. In 1806, he became postmaster general of Williamsburg after his brother-in-law, Gen. Lytle retired from the post. He also ran for public office for state representative but was defeated in the election.

In ca. 1809, Gen. Lytle again moved, this time to neighboring Cincinnati, and once again, Samuel Davies followed him sometime thereafter. By June 1811, Davies was advertising his farm on the East Fork of the Little Miami River for sale, and requested potential buyers to inquire with either Nicholas Sinks in Williamsburg or with himself in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Not long after his relocation to Cincinnati, Davies made another foray into politics and this time was successful.  On September 9, 1811, he became secretary of a meeting of Republican delegates from the townships of Hamilton County. This meeting was significant because it was used to choose candidates who would run for public office in elections.  By April 1813 he was elected to be town recorder and by the following year, in April 1814, he was elected president of the town council. In 1814, he also became secretary of a meeting that was to create a new charter for the city which would give it the ability to regulate water supplies, drainage systems, and sewage.  This was a crucial development given that Cincinnati was a rapidly growing city that would soon rank in importance and size as a major American city after Philadelphia and New York. From this point on, Samuel Davies became a respected and influential person in city affairs.  He was a constant presence on city councils and in local organizations.  He was secretary of the Cincinnati Lancaster Seminary and when the school became the Cincinnati College in 1819, Davies served as one of its first trustees.

On March 2, 1814, Samuel Davies' wife, Mary Ann Stall died.  He was left a widower with seven children. The following spring, on March 6, 1815, he married again, to Clarissa H. Pierson, whose father, David Pierson was a veteran of the American Revolutionary War and who had just moved to Dayton, Montgomery County, Ohio.  Clarissa H. Pierson was born September 14, 1785, and died February 28, 1863.  She was buried at the Woodlands Cemetery in Montgomery County, Ohio with Samuel Davies' children and grandchildren.  Samuel Davies' known children included Edward Watts Davies, who was born January 16, 1802, in New York City, died December 11, 1873, in Montgomery County, Ohio, and who married Mary Ann Pierce; Samuel Hiley Davies, who was born 1806 in Williamsburg, Clermont County, Ohio, died September 14, 1848, in Dayton, Montgomery County, Ohio, and who married Mary Loury; Mary Ann Davies, who was born November 3, 1807, in Williamsburg, Clermont County, Ohio, died July 1, 1863, and who apparently remained single; and Agnes Davies, who was born January 15, 1811, in Williamsburg, Ohio or Cincinnati, Ohio, died May 5, 1897, and who married John Stull.

In 1824, Samuel Davies helped form the Cincinnati Water Works, along with his capitalist investors, David B. Lawler, William Greene, Samuel Foote, J. P. Foote, and W. A. Ware.  In 1826 he obtained a charter for the Cincinnati Water Company, but by 1827 he sold his interests in the water works completely. Davies had been a major force in trying to modernize the water system in the city of Cincinnati.

Samuel W. Davies was elected as Mayor of Cincinnati in 1833, and served in that post for 10 consecutive years.
During his term as Mayor he had to deal with the Cincinnati Riots of 1836, when an abolitionist press was destroyed, and the Cincinnati riots of 1841 when a large mob attacked black neighborhoods on two consecutive nights, firing a cannon into the defendants.

He was one of the prominent figures in the history of Cincinnati of that time. Early writers speak highly of his "intelligence and strict integrity, both in public and private life". He was a Whig, and an Episcopalian.

He was one of the first in a company to establish the city water-works, from which would grow the present extensive system of water supply.

He died on December 22, 1843, in Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Ohio.

References

Mayors of Cincinnati
19th-century American Episcopalians
1843 deaths
Ohio Whigs
19th-century American politicians
Year of birth uncertain

Samuel W. Davies


Arkzin (also written as @®kz!n) is a magazine.  It was started by a group of anti-war people in Zagreb, Croatia in September of 1991. It was an important new publishing house Croatia in the 1990s. Arkzin has been a paper magazine, a newspaper, website, and a publishing house for books and music on CDs. Arkzin told people to promote political change using the media. Arzkin was inspired by the concept of tactical media. The last issue of the magazine was published in 1999.  Arkzin changed media and culture in Croatia and other countries.

History

First phase: fanzine
The pilot issue was published on September  25, 1991 as fanzine of the Anti-war Campaign Croatia. The aim of the fanzine was to collect information about peace and anti-war initiatives in (post)Yugoslavia, advocate nonviolence and a peaceful solution for the emerging war, report on human rights abuses, support conscientious objectors and serve as an alternative political media platform. As Vesna Janković wrote in the editorial of the pilot issue:  The quality of the Anti-war campaign lies in the multitude and diversity of initiatives that make it up. Arkzin will nurture this diversity and thus be an active contribution to the emergence of civil society, a society of peace, pluralism, tolerance and diversity.  Contributors were mostly members of the anti-war groups. The first edition had six issues (double issues: 2-3 and 5-6), with the last issue appearing on May 7th 1992. Circulation grew from 500 to 2,000 copies in A4 format. Arkzin was distributed through post mail, from hand to hand etc. Publishing costs were covered by donations collected by European peace groups.

Second phase: newspaper
The second edition of Arkzin ran for 93 issues, the first of which appeared on April 1st 1992. Initially a monthly, starting from the issue 13, Arkzin became a bi-weekly. In the second phase, Arkzin changed its format to A3, broadened the editorial board and scope of topics, included professional journalists as contributors (many of them could not publish in mainstream newspapers any more because of tightening censorship efforts by the state at the time). It was printed in newspaper rotation and distributed through a national newspaper stands network. Circulation grew from 2.000 to 10.000 copies. During this period Arkzin gradually changed to a hybrid magazine in which politics, culture, theory and art met and inspired one another. Throughout its life as a newspaper, Arkzin changed its conceptual self-definition, changing from the "Magazine of the Anti-War Campaign Croatia" (no. 10, February 1994), "Megazine of the Anti-War Campaign Croatia" (no. 12, April 1994) , "Metazine for Civil Society Politics and Culture" (no. 66, 7 June 1996), "Memezine for Civil Society Politics and Culture" (no. 73, 13 September 1996). Starting with the issue no. 82 (January 17, 1997) the cover page masthead no longer said 'Arkzin' in the Roman alphabet, but rather in Japanese katakana. In words of Dejan Kršić, graphic designer and one of the editors of Arkzin: "This development reflects the role that Arkzin plays in the context of the movement for peace, non-violence, human rights, women's power and ecology on one side, and the efforts of a growing range of people to build a cultural environment, which resists not only the war and its consequences but also the strangling grip of the dominant nationalist forces in Croatia, on the other side. Arkzin has established itself as a major forum of independent, alternative, critical information and debate. Arkzin not only criticises the government policies (e. g. the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the evictions of the people from former Yugoslav army housing flats), but also examines the role of the media, of the intellectuals and of various marginalised youth subcultures." (note published on Bibliofil)

Third phase: magazine
The third, and final, phase of Arkzin lasted from 1997 until 1998. During this period seven issues in total were published. The format, number of pages and printing technique were changed, along with the content. The most professional journalist left the magazine at the time. Articles published were more theoretical, reflective, focused on broader analysis, avoiding everyday political issues. Some critics (see Veljak, Lino "Civil Society and Politics in Croatia")  believe that in this period, Arkzin lost its political edge and became a theoretical-artistic experiment.

Organizational structure
Although it had appointed editors-in-chief at various times, in practice Arkzin functioned as an editorial collective. Each issue was planned jointly at editorial meetings, which consisted of a core of permanent contributors. As Bojan Bilić writes in the text Islands of Print Media Resistance: ARKzin and Republika:Moreover, although Vesna Janković was the longest serving editor-in-chief, the publication did not have editorial staff in the classical sense of the term. Those who gathered around  ARKzin were more interested in devising inclusive and non-hierarchical editorial strategies. Different people wrote and oversaw editorials at different points in time.  In addition, collective authorship was experimented with in Arkzin: numerous texts, especially programmatic ones, were co-written by two or three authors. The most famous was a series of 30 editorials entitled "Was ist Arkzin" published in 1996-1997 and signed as the Bastard Intellectual Cooperative.

Graphic design
Arkzin was known not just for its radical political content, but also for its radical graphic design created by Dejan Kršić and Dejan Dragosavac Ruta. In his analysis of Dejan Dragosavac Ruta's graphic design of different magazines An Anatomy of Ruta's Magazines and Journals, Maroje Mrduljaš wrote: "Arkzin's radical deconstructivist aesthetics and the magazine's strongly emphasized "visuality" are based on typography research and the deposition of graphic and content layers, and the original approach the authors continually developed stemmed from experience, mainstream media and popular culture, and more "esoteric" sources: Neville Brody, via David Carson, to Emigre. /.../ Typographic interpretations and the creation of unexpected connections between different contents, working with information structures of timelines indicate a research approach to the structure of the magazine as a whole and the text, questioning the very act of reading."

Arkzin's distinctive design resonated well especially with younger audiences and activists, leading to a number of cultural and media initiatives turning to Arkzin's designers for help in visually shaping their promotional materials and political messages. The fact that designers often did not charge for their services certainly contributed to this. The above-mentioned interview with Dejan Dragosavac Rutta states the following:"He designed and graphically edited a number of magazines and journals:  Arkzin, Nomad, Godine nove, Libra libera, Gordogan, Up&underground, Civilno društvo.hr, Frakcija, etc. His clients are mostly present in the field of culture and civil-society scene: Multimedia Institute, Kontejner – bureau of contemporary art praxis, Platforma 9.81, Eurøkaz, SKD Prosvjeta, Oceanmore, British Council, the initiative Pravo na grad, for which he designs catalogues, books, promotional materials, campaigns, etc."In parallel with the increased engagement, Arkzin's graphic editors publicly thematized the social responsibility of art and design, reaffirming some of the repressed names of Croatian engaged design, such as Mirko Ilić and Matko Meštrović.

Arkzin's graphic design also received international acclaim when the Print magazine, American Bimonthly for Visual Culture and Design  named him one of the world's most important magazines from 1936-2001 in Perrin Drumm's article "Eight Years that Changed Magazine Design History" (Print magazine, January 2010, New York). Arkzin was included in a passage about the year 1993 and the beginnings of a new digital culture.

Bookpublishing
First book published by Arkzin was "Culture of Lies: Antipolitical Essays" written by Dubravka Ugrešić, in 1996. Since then Arkzin has published 38 books. Of these, 13 books were published in Arkzin's own Bibliotheque Bastard, and 15 books were co-published in cooperation with various small independent publishers from Croatia and from Serbia (B92)  and Bosnia and Hercegovina (Dani).

Editorial policy follows the theoretical and political orientation outlined in the newspaper: fierce critique of nationalism and capitalism, in step with promotion of Marxism and psychoanalisys (which was by then completely cast out of the mainstream Croatian intellectual circles). In that line Arkzin has published translations of famous titles written by contemporary leftist/marxist authors like Alain Badiou, Guy Debord, Louis Althusser, Fredric Jameson or Slavoj Žižek. In addition to translations, Arkzin publishes Croatian and regional authors known for their critical reflection on the (post) war reality of the former Yugoslav states. Among others, in 1997 the novel Maria Częstohowska still shedding tears or Dying in Toronto by Daša Drndić, who later became award-winning literary author.

Music label
In 1998 Arkzin launched its music label Carnival Tunes "Independent label for good music - since 1998". Over a period of three years six music CDs were released under this label. In cooperation with Kekere Akvarium, another Croatian undergound music label, Arkzin released one more music CD in 2000. It was double album by Milan Manojlović "Man from Katanga/ Blue Bar".

Influence/legacy
Inspired by the idea of tactical media Arkzin actively supported grassroots media and cultural initiatives by promoting them in the magazine or helping them with graphic design of their promotional materials. Often, members of Arkzin editorial board took active role in lounching some of these initiatives. Here are the most significant:

Multimedia Institut MI2 / Club Mama

Autonomous Culture Factory Attack

Curatorial collective What, How & for Whom/WHW  is a curatorial collective based out of Zagreb, Croatia. Its members are curators Ivet Curlin, Ana Dević, Nataša Ilić, Sabina Sabolović, and the designer and publicist Dejan Kršić. As they stated in an interview for X-TRA, contemporary art journal:Especially influential for WHW forming was Arkzin, which started in 1991 as the fanzine of the Antiwar Campaign of Croatia and later became a publishing house. Arkzin was a major forum (virtually the only one for a couple of years) for independent and alternative critical information and debate. In 1998, when they published a 150th anniversary edition of the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels, edited by Boris Buden with an introduction by Slavoj Žižek, they approached one of us to organize a contemporary art exhibition that they hoped would trigger a timely public debate on the issues the Manifesto might raise in Croatia. Organizing an exhibition on the Communist Manifesto immediately seemed to have the potential to intervene in the field of art on all levels, in terms of content, obviously, and in terms of organizational know-how, as well as in terms of assessing and building local and international contexts. The goal of these interventions was to oppose an individualistic understanding of cultural work. (interviewed by Michelle Dizon, X-TRA, Spring 2010, Volume 12 Number 3).

Prominent contributors included
 Slavoj Žižek
 Honor Harger
Boris Buden
Paul Stubbs
Wam Kat
Sanja Iveković
Vesna Kesić
Srđan Dvornik
Boris Rašeta
Borislav Mikulić
Tatjana Tagirov
Benjamin Perasović
Dejan Jović
Igor Mandić
Jo van der Spek
Miroslav Ambruš Kiš
Geert Lovink
Marcel Štefančič
Renata Salecl

Other websites

 http://arkzin.net/index.php Retrieved 25 November 2020.
https://mi2.hr/2014/02/digitalna-arhiva-arkzina-online/ Retrieved 25 November 2020.
https://monoskop.org/Arkzin Retrieved 25 November 2020.
https://monoskop.org/images/c/ce/Medak_Tomislav_Milat_Petar_eds_Prospects_of_Arkzin.pdf Retrieved 25 November 2020.
https://www.bibliofil.hr/hr/dejan-krsic-urednik-arkzin-magazine Retrieved 25 November 2020.
http://pogledaj.to/oblikovanje/arkzin-medu-slavnima/ Retrieved 27 November 2020.
https://net.hr/danas/medju-magazinima-koji-su-promijenili-povijest-dizajna/  Retrieved 27 November 2020.
https://www.kuda.org/en/idea-radical-media-conference-zagreb-within-project-aesthetic-education-expanded  Retrieved 27 November 2020.

Further reading
 Bilić, Bojan We Were Gasping for Air: [Post-]Yugoslav Anti-War Activism and Its Legacy, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2012. Retrieved 25 November 2020.
 Bilić, Bojan & Janković, Vesna (eds) Resisting the Evil: [Post-]Yugoslav Anti-War Contention, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2012. Retrieved 25 November 2020.
 Buden, Boris "Kako smo implementirali Europu i pritom postali siromašni?", Novosti (2001) Retrieved 25 November 2020.
 Cvek, S. Koroman, B. Remenar, S. & Burlović, S. (eds) Naša priča: 15 godina ATTACK!-a, Zagreb, 2013. Retrieved 25 November 2020.
 Janković, Vesna Ask questions, speak up, disobey!, Peace News, 2003. Retrieved 25 November 2020.
 Janković, Vesna & Mokrović, Nikola Neispričana povijest: Antiratna kampanja 1991-2011, Zagreb, 2011. Retrieved 25 November 2020.
 Kršić, Dejan Alter/native, Reč, časopis za književnost i kulturu i društvena pitanja, Beograd, 2001. Retrieved 25 November 2020.
 https://dejankrsic.wordpress.com/tag/arkzin/ Retrieved 27 November 2020.
 Mrduljaš, M. & Vidović, D. (eds) Dizajn i nezavisna kultura, Zagreb, 2010. Retrieved 25 November 2020.
 Mrduljaš, Maroje Anatomija Rutinih magazina i časopisa, Zagreb, 2016. Retrieved 25 November 2020.
 Štefančić, Klaudio New Media - New Network s, Netime.org, 2008. Retrieved 25 November 2020.
 Štefančić, Klaudio Transparentno polje društvene napetosti – novi mediji u hrvatskoj suvremenoj umjetnosti 90-ih, Monoskop, 2013. Retrieved 25 November 2020.
 Thompson, Mark Forging War - the Media in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, Article 19, London, 1994. Retrieved 25 November 2020.
 Veljak, Lino Civil Society and Politics in Croatia, in Dragica Vujadinović et al. Between Authoritharianism and Democracy: Serbia, Montenegro; Croatia, Vol. II: Civil Society and Political Culture, Cedet, Beograd, 2005. Retrieved 25 November 2020.

Zagreb
Activism
War
Peace
Media in Europe
Design
Publishing

Arkzin


Retenzija (Serbian Cyrillic: Ретензија) is an urban neighborhood of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. It is located in Belgrade's municipality of Zemun.

Location

Retenzija is located in the southeastern section of urban Zemun, on the border with the municipality of Novi Beograd. It borders the neighborhoods of Donji Grad on the north, Zemunski Kej on the east and Paviljoni on the west. It is bounded by the Boulevards of Mihajlo Pupin (west) and Nikola Tesla (east) and the streets of Prve pruge (north) and Džona Kenedija (south).

Characteristics

Retenzija corresponds to the area of Blok 9b, one of 72 residential blocks drafted during the construction of Novi Beograd, which began in 1948. Due to the changes of the administrative borders of the city municipalities, several blocks are today part of the municipality Zemun and not Novi Beograd (9, 9a, 9b, 11, 11c, all in this area, and 50, the northernmost section of Bežanija).

Retenzija is a residential area with a population of 9,344 (local community or mesna zajednica Prve pruge, administrative municipal subdivision). Non-residential facilities include a gas station, kindergarten and an ambulance. The neighborhood is just 100 meters away from the right bank of the Danube, separated from it by Zemunski Kej. The "retenzija" is the place where the steam railway engines are filled with water and coal. Retenzija was once part of the Zemun main railway station.

Neighborhoods of Belgrade

Retenzija


John Graham & Company, or John Graham & Associates was the name of an architectural firm, founded in 1900 in Seattle, Washington, by English-born architect John Graham (1873–1955), and maintained by his son John Graham Jr. (1908–1991).

The firm was responsible for many Seattle landmarks and a number of significant structures nationwide, including the Space Needle, the Chase Tower of Rochester, New York, and the Westin Seattle.

The firm was merged into the DLR Group on May 19, 1986, and the name saw full deletion in 1998.

John Graham
John Graham was born in Liverpool, England in 1873. He apprenticed as an architect in England as a young man. First visiting Seattle, Washington, in 1896, he immigrated to the United States in 1900, starting a one-man architectural practice in Seattle. He started off modestly, designing mainly industrial-related buildings and private residences. His first notable project was designing the reconstruction of the Trinity Parish Church at Eight Avenue and James Street in 1902 after it had been damaged by fire.

After a brief partnership with Alfred Bodley in 1904, Graham founded the firm of Graham & Myers with David J. Myers in 1906. He would work with Myers until 1910. As architect for the Ford Motor Company, he designed more than 30 of Ford's assembly plants between 1912 and 1940. Throughout the 1920s and 30s, he would design hundreds of commercial and public buildings in the Seattle area including the Frederick & Nelson store (now Nordstrom) in 1916.  He also helped found the Seattle Yacht Club and designed all of their original facilities.

He retired from architecture in 1945 and died on March 20, 1955, while on tour in Hong Kong.

John Graham Jr.

John Graham Jr. (1908–91) was born and raised in Seattle, Washington.  After graduating from Yale University, he established a short-lived satellite office of his father's firm in New York City in 1937, and took over the main office in 1946. Renaming the firm to John Graham & Company, the firm expanded a relatively modest regional practice to an office with national presence.  It was ultimately responsible for over a thousand commissions.

Their primary focus was commercial projects.  Many were straightforward mid-century modernist office towers, such as San Francisco's 1967 44 Montgomery tower.  But Graham was also responsible for early development of the enclosed shopping mall genre, notably Seattle's Northgate Shopping Center, which opened April 21, 1950, which anticipates the better-known Northland Center in Detroit by four years.  The firm would go on to design seventy malls nationwide.

The authorship of Graham's single most prominent work, the Space Needle, is disputed.  Both Graham's office and the Seattle architect Victor Steinbrueck, a consultant on the project, claimed design credit; the design was also influenced by the Century 21 Exposition design standards and aerospace theme established by supervising architect Paul Thiry.  Clearly the revolving restaurant, the "Eye of the Needle", was Graham's conception.  He'd already devised "La Ronde" for the Ala Moana Shopping Center in Honolulu in 1961, and was awarded a patent for the idea in 1964.

Graham died in Seattle on January 29, 1991.

Prewar work

The following structures are in Seattle unless otherwise noted:

 reconstruction of the Trinity Episcopal Parish Church, circa 1903
 Butterworth Building, 1903
 Pierre P. Ferry House, 1903–1906
 Joshua Green Building, 10 floors, 1910
 Bellingham National Bank Building, Bellingham, Washington, 1912–1913, with F. Stanley Piper
 Securities Building, 10 floors, 1918
 Frederick & Nelson, now the Nordstrom flagship store, 10 floors, 1918
 Dexter Horton Building, 14 floors, 1924
 Bank of California Building (Seattle), 3 floors, 1924
 Villa Academy, formerly Sacred Heart Orphanage, 1924
 Washington Building, 17 floors, 1925
 John Winthrop, 5 floors, 1925
 Montague & McHugh Building, Bellingham, Washington, 5 floors, 1927
 Hotel Georgia, 12 floors, 1927
 The Bon Marché flagship store, now Amazon.com, 7 floors, 1928
 UW Physics Building (now Mary Gates Hall), 1928
 The Roosevelt, 20 floors, 1929
 Joseph Vance Building, 14 floors, 1929
 Hartford Building, 1929
 U.S. Marine Hospital, now the Pacific Medical Center, with Bebb and Gould, 1930
 Exchange Building, 22 floors, 1930
 Tacoma Municipal Building (Medical Arts Building), 17 floors, 1931
 St. Edward Seminary, Kenmore, Washington, 80,000 square feet, 1931

Postwar work

 The Decatur, Seattle, residential building, 13 floors, 1950
 Northgate Mall, 1950
 Gulfgate Mall, Houston, 1956
 Northshore Mall, Peabody, Massachusetts, 1957
 AIA Building, 12 floors, 1958
 Ala Moana Office Building, Honolulu, 23 floors, including the first revolving restaurant in the United States, 1960
 College Grove Shopping Center, San Diego, regional outdoor shopping center with 3-story department store
 Space Needle, an element of the 1962 Century 21 Exposition, with Victor Steinbrueck (disputed), 1962
 Moorestown Mall, Moorestown, New Jersey, 1963
 The Ilikai Hotel, Waikiki, Honolulu, 1964
 Yorkdale Shopping Centre, Toronto, 1964
 44 Montgomery, Financial District, San Francisco, 43 floors, 1967
 Holiday Park Plaza, 16 floors, 1967
 Montgomery Mall, Bethesda, Maryland, 1968
 Westin Seattle, south tower 1969 (built as the Washington Plaza Hotel), north tower 1982
 Ala Moana Hotel, the tallest building in Hawaii from 1970 through 1990, 38 floors, 1970
 Chase Tower, Rochester, New York, 27 floors, 1973
 901 Fifth Avenue, originally Bank of California Building, 42 floors, 1973
 Henry M. Jackson Federal Building, (joint venture with Bassetti/Norton/Metler/Rekevics), 37 floors, 1974
 One Capital Center, 14 floors, 1975
 State Office Building, 11 floors, 1975
 ABC Building, 33 floors, 1976
 Qwest Plaza, 33 floors, 1976
 Southern Union Tower, 20 floors, 1980
 US Federal Building & Courthouse, 1981
 Lloyd Center Tower, Portland, Oregon, 20 floors, 1981
 Clackamas Town Center, suburban Portland, Oregon, 1981
 Sheraton Seattle Hotel, 34 floors, 1982

References

Architecture firms based in Washington (state)
Companies based in Seattle
Architects from Seattle

John Graham & Company


Sipho Mashele (born 22 January 1987) was a South African cricketer. He was a right-handed batsman and a right-arm medium-fast bowler who played for Limpopo. He was born in Namakgale.

Mashele made his first-class debut for Limpopo against Namibia in October 2006, having played a single match in the 2005-06 competition. On his debut, he took the wicket of Bjorn Kotze, and scored just eight runs in his first innings, partnering Jacques Pretorius in the tailend.

Where Pretorius was comparatively successful with the bat, however, Mashele struggled, scoring a first-class best of just 10 runs against Mpumalanga.

Mashele made his final appearance for the team against Gauteng in February 2007, as Limpopo finished second-bottom of the One-Day table, and second-bottom, and winless, in the three-day table.

External links
Sipho Mashele at CricketArchive

1987 births
Living people
South African cricketers
Limpopo cricketers

Sipho Mashele


The Station is an atmospheric science fiction mystery video game by American indie team The Station for Microsoft Windows, Linux, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. It was released on February 20, 2018.

Gameplay
The Station is set in outer space aboard a space station called The Espial. The player is sent aboard the Espial to investigate a malfunction. Throughout the game, the player solves various puzzles across the station while also finding the three astronauts still on board. Throughout the game, the player listens to audio messages from each of the crew members, building the story behind the events of the game.

Plot
A group of three astronauts, Aiden, Mila and Silas, are sent aboard The Espial across space to study a recently discovered alien civilization. A malfunction causes the station to go dark. To rescue the crew, a recon specialist, the player, is sent to the ship to investigate.

Development
The Station was developed and published by a small team of developers called The Station.

Reception
The Station received "mixed or average" reviews across all platforms, according to review aggregator Metacritic. PC Gamer praised its unique atmospheric experience and short story. Push Square rated the PlayStation 4 version a 6/10, praising its atmosphere but criticizing the theme and character development. VideoGamer praised the game's variety of puzzles. Cubed3 rated the game a 7/10, praising the story but criticizing the "walking simulator"-like gameplay. Hardcore Gamer rated the game a 2/5, calling the game "disheartening". Gameplanet Australia rated the game a 7/10, calling the game "a very good science fiction short story in a fairly messy video game package." Game Informer gave the game a 6.5, criticizing the game for its lack of replayability but enjoyed the narrative. PlayStation Lifestyle rated the game an 8/10, praising the mystery of the environment but criticizing the long loading times on the PlayStation 4.

References

2018 video games
Windows games
PlayStation 4 games
Xbox One games
Video games developed in the United States
Science fiction video games
Video games set in outer space

The Station (video game)


In Indian religions, Patala (Sanskrit: पाताल, IAST: pātāla, lit. that which is below the feet), denotes the subterranean realms of the universe – which are located under the earthly dimension. Patala is often translated as underworld or netherworld. Patala is described as more beautiful than Svarga (subtle dimensions, loosely translated as heaven). Patala is described as filled with splendid jewels, beautiful groves and lakes.

In Vajrayana Buddhism, caves inhabited by asuras are entrances to Patala; these asuras, particularly female asuras, are often "tamed" (converted to Buddhism) as dharmapala or dakinis by famous Buddhist figures such as Padmasambhava.

In Hindu cosmology, the universe is divided into the three worlds: Svarga, Bhumi or Martya (earth/mortal plane) and Patala (gross dimensions, the underworld). Patala is composed of seven realms/dimensions or lokas, the seventh and lowest of them is also called Patala or Naga-loka, the region of the Nagas. The Danavas (children of Danu), Daityas (children of Diti), Rakshas and the snake-people Nagas (serpent-human formed sons of Kadru), live in the realms of Patala.

Hinduism

The Vishnu Purana tells of a visit by the divine wandering sage Narada to Patala. Narada describes Patala as more beautiful than Svarga. Patala is described as filled with splendid jewels, beautiful groves and lakes and lovely asura maidens. Sweet fragrance is in the air and is fused with sweet music. The soil here is white, black, purple, sandy, yellow, stony and also of gold.

The Bhagavata Purana calls the seven lower regions bila-svargas ("subterranean heavens") and they are regarded as planets or planetary systems below the earth. These regions are described as being more opulent than the upper heavenly regions of the universe. The life here is of pleasure, wealth and luxury, with no distress. The asura architect Maya has constructed palaces, temples, houses, yards and hotels for foreigners, with jewels. The natural beauty of Patala is said to surpass that of Svarga. There is no sunlight in the lower realms, but the darkness is dissipated by the shining of the jewels that the residents of Patala wear. There is no old age, no sweat, no disease in Patala.

The Vishnu Purana, states the seven realms of Patala, which are located one above the other, are seventy thousand yojanas (a unit of measurement) below the Earth's surface. Each of them extends ten thousand Yojanas. In Vishnu Purana, they are named as from the highest to the lowest as: Atala, Vitala, Nitala, Garbhastimat, Mahatala, Sutala and Patala. In the Bhagavata Purana and the Padma Purana, they are called Atala, Vitala, Sutala, Talatala, Mahatala, Rasatala and Patala. The Shiva Purana, replaces Mahatala with Tala. The Vayu Purana calls them Rasatala, Sutala, Vitala, Gabhastala, Mahatala, Sritala and Patala. The seven Patalas as well as the earth above them is supported on the head of the tamasic (dark) form of Vishnu, the thousand-headed nāga Shesha. Sometimes, Shesha is described as residing in the lowest region of Patala instead of below it. Below the regions of Patala lies Naraka, the Hindu Hell – the realm of death where sinners are punished.

Different realms of Patala are ruled by different asura and Nagas; usually with the Nagas headed by Vasuki assigned to the lowest realm. Vayu Purana records each realm of Patala has cities in it. The first region has the cities of the daitya Namuchi and Naga Kaliya; in the second Hayagriva and Naga Takshaka; in the third, those of Prahlada and Hemaka; in the fourth of Kalanemi and Vainateya; in the fifth of Hiranyaksha and Kirmira and in the sixth, of Puloman and Vasuki. Bali rules as the sovereign king of Patala.

The Bhagavata Purana presents a detailed description of the seven lower realms. A similar description of the seven Patalas also appears in the Devi-Bhagavata Purana.

Atala

Atala is ruled by Bala – a son of Maya – who possesses mystical powers. By one yawn, Bala created three types of women – svairiṇīs ("self-willed"), who like to marry men from their own group; kāmiṇīs ("lustful"), who marry men from any group, and the punshchalīs ("those who wholly give themselves up"), who keep changing their partners. When a man enters Atala, these women enchant him and serve him an intoxicating cannabis drink that induces sexual energy in the man. Then, these women enjoy sexual play with the traveller, who feels to be stronger than ten thousand elephants and forgets impending death.

Vitala

Vitala is ruled by the god Hara-Bhava (possibly a form of Shiva), who dwells with attendant ganas including ghosts and goblins as the master of gold mines along  with his consort Bhavani, as the progenitor of living beings and their sexual fluids flow as river Hataki here. When fire – fanned by wind – drinks from this river, it spits the water out as a type of gold called Hataka. The residents of this realm are adorned with gold from this region.

Sutala

Sutala constructed by Vishvakarma, is the kingdom of the pious asura king Bali. The dwarf Avatar of Vishnu, Vamana, sent Bali – who had conquered the three worlds – by requesting three paces of land and acquired the three worlds in his three paces. Vamana sent Bali to Sutala, but when Bali surrendered to Vishnu and gave away all his belongings to him, Vishnu in return made Bali richer than Indra, the deva-king of heaven. Bali still prays to Vishnu in this realm. Highly impressed by the devotion of Bali, Vishnu gave him a boon that He Himself would perpetually stand as the watchman to Bali's palace.

Talātala

Talātala is the realm of the asura-architect Maya, who is well-versed in sorcery. Shiva, as Tripurantaka, destroyed the three cities of Maya, but was later pleased with Maya and gave him this realm and promised to protect him.

Mahātala

Mahātala is the abode of many-hooded Nagas (serpents) – the sons of Kadru, headed by the Krodhavasha (Irascible) band of Kuhaka, Takshaka, Kaliya and Sushena. They live here with their families in peace but always fear Garuda.

Rasātala

Rasātala at the sole of the feet of the universe form of Vishnu is the home of the Asuras – Danavas and Daityas, who are mighty but cruel. They are the eternal foes of Devas (the gods). They live in holes like serpents.

Patala

Patala or Nagaloka is the lowest realm and the region of the Nagas, ruled by Vasuki (the snake that hangs around Shiva's neck). Here live several Nagas with many hoods. Each of their hoods is decorated by a jewel, a source of light of which illuminates this realm.

Buddhism
In early Vajrayana, Patala (Tibetan: sa 'og ས་འོག་ "the Underground") is understood as a grouping of underground paradises inhabited by nāgas and asuras above the Naraka realm. While the story of the establishment of Patala as an asura realm is attributed to the defeat of the asuras on Mount Meru, in Buddhist scriptures this is due to their defeat by Śakra using a mantra of Mañjuśrī instead of by their defeat by Vishnu; this is the explanation given for the appearance of Śakra wielding the banner of Mañjuśrī in iconic imagery.

Patala is associated with the Kriyātantras, which are associated with the kīla, the phenomenon of the tertön and terma and water magic and with the attainment of vidyādhara () status. These practices have been largely ignored after the early period of Tibetan Buddhism and Tangmi but originally were popular.

The importance of Patala to esoteric Buddhism lay in its role as the source of alchemy and magical science or vidyā, immortality and enjoyment, particularly the opportunity for the (male) vidyādhara to have intercourse with female non-humans. It was also viewed as a source of flowing waters.

References

Bibliography

External links

Locations in Hindu mythology
Underworld
Nāgas

Patala


Hiong Liong Tan, a.k.a. Tan Hoan Liong or H.L Tan (; 20 August 1938, Buitenzorg - September 2009, Bogor) was an Indonesian–Dutch chess player. He was the first Indonesian and one of the first Asian chess players to hold the International Master title.

Tan moved from Indonesia to Amsterdam in 1956 to finish high school, after which he went to study Insurance Mathematics. His first foray in chess was a 31 move loss in one of Botvinnik's simultaneous games in 1958, but he soon became a much stronger player.

He played for Indonesia at fourth board in the 14th Chess Olympiad at Leipzig 1960, and won an individual gold medal (+14 –1 =5).

Tan also took the Dutch Chess Championship at The Hague in 1961, defeating Jan Hein Donner on the way.

In 1962, he was co-winner of the traditional IBM international chess tournament at Amsterdam, alongside Moshe Czerniak.

He was awarded the International Master (IM) title in 1963 after scoring 7.5 out of 17 games at that year's Hoogovens tournament.

Tan also had a dan rank in Go.

Not long after this tournament Tan was hospitalized for schizophrenia and alcohol addiction. His parents came over from Indonesia, and brought him back to Bandung, where he initially lived in a clinic. After his parents' death, he returned to his birthplace of Bogor, where his family had built him a house. He did not play chess in international tournaments since 1963.

References

External links

 De mysterieuze Hoan Liong Tan (in Dutch)

1938 births
2009 deaths
Chess International Masters
Indonesian chess players
Dutch chess players
European Go players
Asian Go players
Indonesian people of Chinese descent
Indonesian Hokkien people
People from Bogor
20th-century chess players

Hiong Liong Tan


Francis II (Neapolitan and , christened Francesco d'Assisi Maria Leopoldo; ; 16 January 1836 – 27 December 1894) was King of the Two Sicilies from 1859 to 1861. He was the last King of the Two Sicilies, as successive invasions by Giuseppe Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia ultimately brought an end to his rule, as part of Italian unification. After he was deposed, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the Kingdom of Sardinia were merged into the newly formed Kingdom of Italy.

Early life
The only son and heir of King Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies by his first wife, Maria Christina of Savoy, Francis II was the last of the Bourbon kings of Naples, where he was born in 1836. His education had been much neglected and he proved a man of weak character, greatly influenced by his stepmother, Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria, whom he feared, and also by the priests and the camarilla, the reactionary court set.

On 3 February 1859 in Bari, Francis married Duchess Maria Sophie of Bavaria, of the royal Bavarian house of Wittelsbach (a younger sister of Empress Elisabeth "Sissi" of Austria) However, their marriage was unhappy. Their only daughter, Maria Cristina, was born ten years after her parents married and lived only three months (24 December 1869 – 28 March 1870).

Reign
Francis II took the throne on 22 May 1859, after the death of his father. For the post of prime minister, he at once appointed Carlo Filangieri, who realised the importance of the Franco-Piedmontese victories in Lombardy and advised Francis II to accept the alliance with the Kingdom of Sardinia proposed by Cavour. On 7 June, a part of the Swiss Guard mutinied, and while the king mollified them by promising to redress their grievances, General Alessandro Nunziante gathered his troops, who surrounded the mutineers and shot them down. The incident resulted in the disbanding of the whole Swiss Guard, which was the strongest bulwark of the Bourbon dynasty.

Cavour again proposed an alliance to divide the Papal States between Piedmont and Naples (the province of Rome excepted), but Francis rejected the idea, which to him seemed like heresy. Filangieri strongly advocated a constitution as the only measure which might save the dynasty, but on the king's refusal, he resigned.

Garibaldi's invasion

Meanwhile, the revolutionary parties were conspiring for the overthrow of the Bourbons in Calabria and Sicily, and Giuseppe Garibaldi was preparing for a raid in the south of Italy. A conspiracy in Sicily was discovered and the plotters punished with brutal severity, but Rosalino Pilo and Francesco Crispi, who had organised the movement, escaped execution. When Garibaldi landed at Marsala (May 1860) with his Expedition of the Thousand, he conquered the island with astonishing ease.

Those events at last coaxed Francis II into granting a constitution, but its promulgation was followed by disorders in Naples and the resignation of several ministers; Liborio Romano became head of the government. The disintegration of the army and navy proceeded apace, and Cavour sent a Piedmontese squadron carrying troops on board to watch over these events. Garibaldi, who had crossed the strait of Messina, was advancing northwards and was everywhere received by the people as a liberator. After long hesitations and even an appeal to Garibaldi himself and on the advice of Romano, Francis II left Naples on 6 September with his wife, Maria Sophia; the court; and the diplomatic corps (except the French and British ministers) and went by sea to Gaeta, where a large part of the army was concentrated.

The next day, Garibaldi entered Naples, was enthusiastically welcomed, and formed a provisional government.

Piedmontese invasion
King Victor Emmanuel II had decided on the invasion of the Papal States and after occupying Umbria and the Marche, he entered the Neapolitan kingdom. Garibaldi's troops defeated the Neapolitan royalists at the Battle of Volturno, which took place on 1 October 1860, and the Piedmontese captured Capua.

By late 1860, only Gaeta, Messina and Civitella del Tronto still held out. The Siege of Gaeta by the Piedmontese began on 6 November 1860. Both Francis II and his wife behaved with great coolness and courage. Even after the French fleet, whose presence had prevented an attack by sea, was withdrawn, they still resisted. It was not until 13 February 1861 that the fortress capitulated.

Overthrow
Thus, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies ceased to exist, and its territory was incorporated into that of the Kingdom of Sardinia (soon renamed the Kingdom of Italy), and Francis II was deposed. Francis and Maria Sophia first lived in Rome as guests of the Pope, where they maintained a government in exile that was recognised by some Catholic powers including France, Spain, Austria-Hungary and Bavaria. After the Prussian victory against Austria in 1866 and the subsequent expansion of Italian territory, they disbanded this government and left Rome before it was occupied by the Italians in 1870. They led a wandering life from then on by living in Austria, France and Bavaria. In 1894, Francis died at Arco in Trentino (now north-eastern Italy, but at the time in Austria-Hungary). His widow survived him by 31 years and died in Munich.

Upon the death of Francis II, his half-brother, Prince Alfonso, became the pretender to the throne of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

Cause of beatification and canonization
On 11 December 2020, the cause of the beatification of King Francis II of the Two Sicilies was introduced by Crescenzio Cardinal Sepe, the Archbishop of Naples. Pope Francis declared the king a Servant of God.

Honours

 : Grand Cordon of the Order of Leopold, 9 June 1855
 : Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece, 15 June 1844
 : Grand Cross of the Order of Pedro I
 :
 Grand Cross of the Order of St. Stephen, 1849
 Knight of the Military Order of Maria Theresa, 1861
 : Knight Grand Cross of the Royal and Military Order of Saint Louis
  Kingdom of Prussia:
 Knight of the Order of the Black Eagle, 4 June 1853
 Pour le Mérite (military), 20 February 1861
 : Knight of the Order of Saint Hubert, 1857
 : Knight of the Order of the Rue Crown, 1860
  Grand Duchy of Tuscany: Grand Cross of the Order of St. Joseph
 : Grand Cross of the Order of the Württemberg Crown, 1864

Ancestors

See also

 History of Italy
 Siege of Gaeta

References

External links

1836 births
1894 deaths
Princes of Bourbon-Two Sicilies
Monarchs of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
Deaths from diabetes
Burials at the Basilica of Santa Chiara
Grand Crosses of the Order of Saint Stephen of Hungary
Knights Cross of the Military Order of Maria Theresa
Knights of the Golden Fleece of Spain
Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (military class)
19th-century Roman Catholics
Italian Roman Catholics
Italian Servants of God
Roman Catholic royal saints
Royal reburials

Francis II of the Two Sicilies


Ethan Pringle (born May 30, 1986, in San Francisco, California) is an American rock climber with notable ascents in sport climbing (his 2015 repeat of Jumbo Love, the world's first 9b-graded route), in traditional climbing (his 2016 ascent of Blackbeard's Tears, one of the world's hardest traditional climbs), and in bouldering.  He has also been active in competition climbing, winning the American national competition lead climbing championships in both youth and adult formats, and silver at the World Youth Championships.

Early life
Pringle was born and raised in the Mission District, San Francisco, and started climbing when he was 8 years old and began competition climbing when he was 12. By age 12 he had redpointed his first , and by age 13, had redpointed his first .

Climbing career

Competition climbing
Pringle was the American youth national champion in lead climbing for four consecutive years from 1998 to 2002. In 2000, he won silver in lead at the IFSC Climbing World Youth Championships in lead climbing.

Pringle won the gold in the men's USA national championships in lead in 2005, silver in 2004, and bronze in 2009. He won the silver at the men's USA national championships bouldering in 2006 and 2012.  He also won bronze in the men's USA national championships in speed in 2004.

In 2009, Pringle suffered a severe tear of his labrum at the men's USA national championships in bouldering, which nearly ended his professional climbing career, and from which he only recovered over a year later.

Sport climbing

Pringle came to international attention with his September 2007 repeat of Chris Sharma's groundbreaking 2001 route, Realization/Biographie , in Ceuse, France. At the time, 9a+ was the highest recognized consensus grade for a sport climbing route in the world.  He followed his up with a short visit to Rodellar in Spain, where he onsighted several routes up to , including Iron Man (this was just before the Patxi Usobiaga made the first-ever onsight of an  graded route in December 2007).

During 2007, Pringle and Sharma spent weeks trying to make the first free ascent (FFA) of Jumbo Love at Clark Mountain.  Injury caused Pringle to withdraw from the project, and in September 2008, Sharma freed the route, which is now regarded as the first-ever  graded sport climb in history.

Recovering from his serious injury in 2009–2010, Pringle began to make FFAs of  routes including Spicy Dumpling (2010, China's hardest sport climbing route) and Arrested Development (2012).  In 2015, Pringle completed the first repeat of Jumbo Love, and later that year visited the famous Hanshelleren Cave in Norway, repeating Adam Ondra's 2012 route Thor's Hammer , and making his own FFA of The Eye of Odin at .  The following year, Pringle made the FFA of Everything is Karate, one of America's hardest sport routes at the time at .

Traditional climbing

Pringle is also known for traditional climbing. In October 2008, Pringle made the second repeat of Cobra Crack, Sonnie Trotter's famous  graded traditional climbing route; considered one of the world's hardest at the time. In 2016, Pringle made the FFA of Blackbeard's Tears on the Redwood Coast in California, which at , was regarded as one of the hardest – if not the hardest – traditional climbing routes at the time.

Notable ascents

Sport climbing

:

 Jumbo Love – Clark Mountain (USA) – May 2015. First repeat of Chris Sharma's 2008 route.

:

 Empath – Kirkwood, California (US) – June 2021. Fourth repeat of Carlo Traversi's 2020 route.

 Thor's Hammer – Flatanger (NOR) – October 2015. Fourth repeat of Adam Ondra's 2012 route.

 Realization – Ceuse (FRA) – September 2007. Fourth repeat of Chris Sharma's 2001 route.

:

 Everything is Karate – Bishop, California (US) – April 2017. First ascent.

 La Reina Mora – Siurana (ESP) – March 2016. Repeat.

 Arrested Development – Mount Charleston, Nevada (US) – June 2012. First ascent.

 Spicy Dumpling: – Yangshoo (CHN) – December 2010. First ascent of Chris Sharma's bolted line, and China's hardest sport climb.

Onsight

:

 Iron Man – Rodellar (ESP) – October 2007. Repeat onsight.

:

 Pequena Estrella – Rodellar (ESP) – October 2007. Repeat onsight.
 Philipe Cuisinere – Rodellar (ESP) – October 2007. Repeat onsight.

Traditional climbing

:

 Blackbeard's Tears – Redwood Coast, California (USA) – September 2016. First free ascent, and was considered to be probably the hardest traditional climbs in the world at the time; and still one of the most difficult.

:

 Cobra Crack – Squamish, British Columbia (CAN) – August 2008. Second repeat of Sonnie Trotter's famous 2006 route, and still considered to be one of the world's hardest traditional climbs.

Bouldering

:

 The Wheel of Life – Grampians National Park (AUS) – June 2010. Second repeat of Dai Koyamada's famous 2004 boulder.

 The Nest – Red Rocks, Nevada (US) – July 2018. Fourth repeat of Daniel Woods' 2013 boulder.

 Kintsugi – Red Rocks, Nevada (US) – April 2019. Fourth repeat of Nalle Hukkataival's 2015 boulder.

See also
History of rock climbing
List of first ascents (sport climbing)

References

External links
VIDEO: The Full Send Footage of Ethan Pringle's Jumbo Love (5.15b) Ascent, Rock & Ice (May 2015)

1986 births
Living people
Sportspeople from San Francisco
American rock climbers
Boulder climbers

Ethan Pringle


Idrettsklubben Våg is a Norwegian sports club from Vågsbygd in Kristiansand.

It has sections for association football, team handball, badminton and athletics. The club was founded on 12 January 1938, and the club colors are green and white.

The women's handball team plays in the highest Norwegian league. The twin sisters and international handballstars Kristine Lunde-Borgersen and Katrine Lunde originally played for "Våg Vipers". The club later changed its name to "Vipers Kristiansand", and is what the club is currently called.

The Norwegian heptathlete Ida Marcussen represents IK Våg, after changing in 2005 after a disagreement with her club Kristiansands IF.

The football section is called Våg FK, and played in the Third Division from 1997 to 2010.

References

External links
 Official site

Athletics clubs in Norway
Sports clubs and teams established in 1938
Sport in Kristiansand
Handball clubs in Norway
1938 establishments in Norway
Multi-sport clubs in Norway

IK Våg


James Bradley FRS (1693 – 13 July 1762) was an English astronomer. He was born in Sherborne, Gloucestershire, England. Bradley was educated at Northleach Grammar School and at Balliol College, Oxford. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1714 and a Master of Arts in 1717.

He became a member of the clergy and received an income at Bridstow in Herefordshire. Because of his friendship with Edmond Halley, in 1718 he was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society. He gave up his living at Bridstow to become a professor at Oxford in 1721. Bradley succeeded Edmond Halley as Astronomer Royal at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich in 1742. He held this post until his death in 1762.In 1729 he published his discovery of the aberration of light (also called astronomical aberration). This was he first observational proof of the Copernican Hypothesis that the Sun is at the centre of the Solar System and not the Earth. He noticed a motion in the stars that did not fit the accepted pattern of the time. What he discovered was stellar aberration. In 1748 he published his discovery. That same year he was awarded the Copley Medal from the Royal Society for his discovery.

References

1693 births
1762 deaths
English astronomers

James Bradley


A dialog system or conversational agent (CA) is a computer system intended to converse with a human, in coherent, structured language. Various so-called "dialog systems" have employed text, speech, graphics, haptics, gestures and other modes of communication on both the input and output channel.

What does and does not constitute a dialog system may be debatable. The typical GUI wizard does engage in some sort of dialog, but it includes very few of the common dialog system components, and dialog state is trivial.

Alexa, Bixby, Cortana, Siri, and digital PAs generally, are meant to be CAs, as are conversational AI bots like the GPT-3 Lena. But modern systems have a latency time of 4 years. An up-to-date CA would be able to read this text.

Computing

Dialogue system


is a 1982 maze game developed by Universal. It is the first arcade video game to be released as a conversion kit for other arcade machines; Taito published the conversion kit in Japan. The game was inspired by Namco's Dig Dug released earlier in 1982. Mr. Do! was a commercial success in Japan and North America, selling 30,000 arcade units in the US, and it was followed by several arcade sequels.

Gameplay

The object of Mr. Do! is to score as many points as possible by digging tunnels through the ground and collecting cherries. The title character, Mr. Do (a circus clown—except for the original Japanese version of the game, in which he is a snowman), is constantly chased by red dinosaur-like monsters called creeps, and the player loses a life if Mr. Do is caught by one. The game ends when the last life is lost.

Cherries are distributed throughout the level in groups of eight, and collecting all the cherries in one group without a pause awards bonus points. A level is complete either when all cherries are removed, all creeps are destroyed, "EXTRA" is spelled, or a diamond is found.

Mr. Do can defeat creeps by hitting them with his bouncing "power ball" or by dropping large apples on them. While the power ball is bouncing toward a creep, Mr. Do is defenseless. If the ball bounces into an area where there are no creeps to hit (such as behind a fallen apple), Mr. Do cannot use it again until he has retrieved it. When the power ball hits a creep, it then reforms in Mr. Do's hands after a delay that increases with each use.

Mr. Do or the creeps can push an apple off the edge of a vertical tunnel and crush one or more creeps. If an apple falls more than its own height, it breaks and disappears. Mr. Do can also be crushed by a falling apple, causing a loss of life.

Occasionally, the creeps transform briefly into more powerful multicolored monsters that can tunnel through the ground. If one of these digs through a cherry, it leaves fewer cherries for Mr. Do to collect. When it digs under an apple, it often crushes itself, other creeps, and/or Mr. Do.

As the game progresses, a display at the top of the screen cycles through the letters in the word EXTRA. Every time the player's score reaches a multiple of 5,000 points, the highlighted letter enters the playfield as an Alphamonster, which can be defeated in the same manner as a creep. Defeating the Alphamonster awards its letter; collecting all five letters ends the level, plays a cut scene accompanied by the theme to Astro Boy, and awards the player an extra life. Alphamonsters attempt to eat any apples they encounter, which makes them difficult to crush.

The creeps spawn at the center of the screen. After they have all appeared, the generator will turn into a food item; picking this up scores bonus points, freezes all the creeps, and calls out an Alphamonster (if one is not already on the field) and three large blue monsters. The latter can eat apples as well. The creeps stay frozen until the player either defeats all three blue monsters, defeats the Alphamonster (in which case any remaining blue monsters are turned into apples), loses a life, or completes the stage.

Rarely, dropping an apple reveals a diamond which, if collected, completes the level and awards a bonus credit to the player.

Development

Mr. Do! was created by Kazutoshi Ueda. It was inspired by the gameplay in Namco's Dig Dug game, similar to how many of Universal's other games took license from other companies' more successful games, e.g. Lady Bug (also designed by Ueda) being similar to Pac-Man. The  idea for the power ball came from Mr. Ueda observing a Super Ball stuck on the roof of a home near the Universal office in Japan.

Ports
Mr. Do! was ported to the Atari 2600, Atari 8-bit family, ColecoVision, Apple II, MSX, Neo Geo, Tomy Tutor, and Commodore 64. A handheld LCD version was released by Tomy in 1983.

In the ColecoVision adaptation, the Alphamonster and sidekicks are unable to eat apples, making them easier to crush, but the blue monsters eat the shrubbery and cherries. Also, if an Alphamonster is over a letter that has already been acquired, the dinosaur monsters just freeze for a few seconds.

The Apple II and Atari 8-bit computer versions were released in May 1985.

Reception

In Japan, Mr. Do! was one of the top ten highest-grossing arcade games of 1982, on the annual Game Machine chart. Game Machine later listed Mr. Do! on their June 15, 1983 issue as being the 21st highest-earning table arcade cabinet of the month.

The arcade game was also a commercial success in North America, where it became the best-selling conversion kit up until 1984, selling approximately 30,000 arcade units in the United States. On the Play Meter arcade charts, it topped the street locations chart in May 1983. On the RePlay arcade charts, it topped the software conversion kit charts for five months in 1983, in June and then from August through November. It was among the thirteen highest-earning arcade games of 1983 in the United States, according to the Amusement & Music Operators Association (AMOA).

Computer and Video Games magazine gave the arcade original a positive review, stating that it "takes the best from" Dig Dug "and improves on it." Computer and Video Games later rated the ColecoVision version 81% and Atari VCS version 77% in 1989. Computer Games magazine gave the ColecoVision and Coleco Adam conversions a B+ rating in 1985.

Famicom Tsūshin awarded the Super Famicom version of the game 25 out of 40. The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly gave it 4.875 out of 10. All but Dan Hsu felt that Mr. Do! has fun gameplay, but they criticized the lack of enhancements to what was by then over a decade old game, and recommended that players only get it if it were released at significantly less than the normal retail price for an SNES cartridge. Their later feature on 16-bit games reported that, contrary to their hopes, the game was priced at over $50. In 1995, Flux magazine ranked the arcade version  67th on their "Top 100 Video Games."

Legacy
Mr. Do! was followed by three sequels: Mr. Do's Castle in 1983, Mr. Do's Wild Ride, and Do! Run Run both in 1984. An expanded 99-level version of Mr. Do! was released in arcades by Electrocoin in 1988.

Neo Mr. Do!, was developed by Visco and licensed by Universal for SNK's Neo Geo system in 1997. Mr. Do! was adapted to Nintendo's Game Boy and Super NES with some new gameplay features. A rebranded adaptation of the game was released for the Game Boy Color in 1999 as Quest: Fantasy Challenge (Holy Magic Century in Europe). It was developed by Imagineer.

The arcade version was released for the Wii Virtual Console in Japan on April 27, 2010.

Impact
Mr. Do! is credited as the first arcade game to be released as a conversion kit. Multiple clones of Mr. Do! were released for home systems, including Magic Meanies (ZX Spectrum), Henri (Atari 8-bit), Fruity Frank (Amstrad CPC, MSX),  Mr. Dig (TRS-80 Color Computer, Atari 8-bit). and Mr Ee for the BBC Micro.

The game's creator Kazutoshi Ueda went on to work at Tehkan (now Tecmo) and then became a co-founder of Atlus, where he worked on the Megami Tensei series. Ueda's work at Universal, particularly Mr. Do!, inspired the game design style of Tehkan's Michitaka Tsuruta, who went on to create Guzzler (1983), Bomb Jack (1984), Solomon's Key (1986), and the Captain Tsubasa game series.

Notes

References

External links

1982 video games
Arcade video games
Apple II games
Atari 2600 games
Atari 8-bit family games
ColecoVision games
Commodore 64 games
MSX games
Game Boy games
Game Boy Color games
Super Nintendo Entertainment System games
X68000 games
U.S. Gold games
Video games about clowns
Video games developed in Japan
Virtual Console games
Universal Entertainment games
Single-player video games
Taito arcade games

Mr. Do!


A toponymic surname or topographic surname is a  surname derived from a place name, which included names of specific locations, such as the individual's place of origin, residence, or lands that they held, or, more generically, names that were derived from regional topographic features. Some toponymic surnames originated as personal by-names that later were used as hereditary family names.

The origins of toponymic by-names have been largely attributed to two non-mutually exclusive trends. One linked the nobility to their places of origin and feudal holdings and provided a marker of their status. The other related to the growth of the burgher class in the cities, which partly developed due to migration from the countryside to cities. Also linked was the increased popularity of using the names of saints for naming new-borns, which reduced the pool of given-names in play and stimulated a popular demand (and personal desire) for by-nameswhich were helpful in distinguishing an individual among increasing numbers of like-named persons. In London in the 13th century, the use of toponymic surnames became dominant.

Some forms originally included a prepositionsuch as by, in, at (ten in Dutch, zu in German), or of (de in French, Italian and Spanish, van in Dutch, von in German)that was subsequently dropped, as in "de Guzmán" (of Guzman) becoming simply Guzmán. While the disappearance of the preposition has been linked to toponymic by-names becoming inherited family names, it (dropping the preposition) predates the trend of inherited family surnames. In England, this can be seen as early as the 11th century. And although there is some regional variation, a significant shift away from using the preposition can be seen during the 14th century.

In some cases, the preposition coalesced (fused) into the name, such as Atwood (at wood) and Daubney (originating as de Albigni, from Saint-Martin-d'Aubigny). In the aristocratic societies of Europe, both nobiliary and non-nobiliary forms of toponymic surnames exist, as in some languages they evolved differently. In France, non-nobiliary forms tended to fuse the preposition, where nobiliary forms tended to retain it as the discrete particle, although this was never an invariable practice.

Issues such as local pronunciation can cause toponymic surnames to take a form that varies significantly from the toponym that gave rise to them.  Examples include Wyndham, derived from Wymondham, Anster from Anstruther, and Badgerly from Badgworthy.

One must be cautious to interpret a surname as toponymic based on its spelling alone, without knowing its history. A notable example is the name of Jeanne d'Arc, which is not related to a place called Arc but instead is a distorted patronymic (see "Name of Joan of Arc").  Likewise, it has been suggested that a toponymic cannot be assumed to be a place of residence or origin: merchants could have adopted a toponymic by-name to associate themselves with a place where they never resided.

In Polish, a toponymic surname may be created by adding "(w)ski" or "cki" at the end. For example, Maliszewski is a toponymic surname associated with one of the places in Poland named Maliszew, Maliszewo, or Maliszów.

In anthroponymic terminology, toponymic surnames belong among topoanthroponyms (class of anthroponyms that are formed from toponyms).

See also
 Nisba (onomastics)
 Sinhalese name
 Territorial designation
 Toponymy

References

Further reading
 David Hey, Family Names and Family History, 2006,

Surname

Toponymic surname


The West Bengal Legislative Assembly (IAST: Paścima Baṃga Vidhāna Sabhā) is the unicameral legislature of the Indian state of West Bengal. It is located in the B. B. D. Bagh area of Kolkata, the capital of the state. Members of the Legislative assembly are directly elected by the people. The legislative assembly comprises 294 Members of Legislative Assembly, all directly elected from single-seat constituencies. Its term is five years, unless sooner dissolved.

History

The history of the West Bengal Legislature can be traced back to 18 January 1862 when under the Indian Councils Act of 1861, a 12 Member Legislative Council for Bengal Presidency was established by the Governor-General of British India with the Lt. Governor of Bengal and some nominated members. The strength of the council was gradually enlarged by subsequent acts. Under the Indian Councils Act of 1892, the maximum strength of the council was raised to 20 out of which seven were to be elected. The Indian Councils Act of 1909 further raised the number of members of the council to 50. Under the Government of India Act 1919, the number of members of the Legislative Council was once again raised to 125. The Bengal Legislative Council constituted under the Act of 1919 was formally inaugurated on 1 February 1921 by the Duke of Connaught.

A few years later, under the provisions of the Government of India Act 1935, two chambers of the Bengal Provincial Legislature: the Legislative Council and the Legislative Assembly, were created. The life of the Assembly, consisting of 250 members, was to be five years unless dissolved sooner; while the council, with a membership of not less than 63 and not more than 65, was made a permanent body and not subject to dissolution with the provision that one-third of the members should retire every three years.

On the eve of Independence in 1947, Bengal Province was partitioned into West Bengal and East Bengal (East Pakistan). The West Bengal Legislative Assembly was constituted with 90 members representing the constituencies that fell within the area of West Bengal and two nominated members from Anglo-Indian community. The Bengal Legislative Council stood abolished.  The Legislative Assembly met for the first time after Independence on 21 November 1947.

The Constitution of India again provided for a bicameral Legislature for West Bengal. Accordingly, the West Bengal Legislative Council consisting of 51 members was constituted on 5 June 1952. The number of members in the Legislative Assembly was 240 including two nominated members from the Anglo-Indian Community. After the first General Elections, the new Assembly met for the first time on 18 June 1952.

On 21 March 1969, a resolution was passed by the West Bengal Legislative Assembly for the abolition of the Legislative Council. Subsequently, Indian Parliament passed the West Bengal Legislative Council (Abolition) Act, 1969 abolishing the Legislative Council with effect from 1 August 1969.

List of Assemblies

Members of Legislative Assembly

References

 West Bengal Lok Sabha Election 2019 Results Website

State legislatures of India
Unicameral legislatures
1862 establishments in India

West Bengal Legislative Assembly


Stealing Beauty (; ) is a 1996 drama film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and starring Liv Tyler, Joseph Fiennes, Jeremy Irons, Sinéad Cusack, and Rachel Weisz. Written by Bertolucci and Susan Minot, the film is about a nineteen-year-old American woman who travels to a lush Tuscan villa near Siena to stay with family friends of her poet mother, who recently died. The film was an international co-production between France, Italy, and the United Kingdom, and was Tyler's first leading film role.

Stealing Beauty premiered in Italy in March 1996, and was officially selected for the 1996 Cannes Film Festival in France in May. It was released in the United States on June 14, 1996.

The film was made entirely in the Tuscany region of Italy during the summer of 1995. The main location for filming was the estate of Castello di Brolio, and a small villa on the property.

Plot
Lucy, 19, daughter of the recently deceased American poet and model Sara Harmon, arrives at the Tuscan villa of her mom's friends Ian and Diana Grayson. Other guests include a New York art gallery owner, an Italian advice columnist and a dying English writer, Alex Parrish.

Lucy goes for a swim and finds Diana's daughter Miranda with her boyfriend, entertainment lawyer Richard Reed. Her brother, Christopher, has yet to arrive and is on a road trip with Niccolò Donati, from a nearby villa. Lucy hoped to see Niccolò, as she had met him four years before and he was her first kiss. They had briefly written, and Lucy had memorized one letter of his in particular.

Lucy's father sent her so Ian could sculpt her, but she says it's really just an excuse for him to send her to Italy. Smoking marijuana with Parrish, Lucy reveals she is a virgin, which he shares with the rest of the villa the next day. Furious, Lucy decides to end her visit. However, before she can book the flight, Christopher and Niccolò appear, and Lucy is happy, but disappointed Niccolò did not recognize her.

That evening, Niccolò and his brother, Osvaldo come to the Graysons'. After dinner, the youth separate from the adults to smoke marijuana. Lucy is now over Parrish's betrayal, and they take turns recounting how they each lost their virginity. When it's Osvaldo's turn, he demurs, saying, "I don't know which is more ridiculous, this conversation or the silly political one going on over there [at the adults' table]." Lucy fawns over Niccolò, but then vomits in his lap.

The next day, Lucy cycles to the Donati's, seeking Niccolò. She's told he's in the garden, where Lucy finds him with another. Upset, she hastily cycles away from the compound. When she passes Osvaldo, he cries out, "Ciao, Lucy!", she doesn't hear, then crashes. Ignoring his offer to help, she rides on.

Lucy, posing outdoors for Ian's sketch, exposes one of her breasts. When Niccolò and Osvaldo arrive by car, Niccolò ogles Lucy, but Osvaldo looks away. Lucy wanders off into an adjacent olive grove, followed by Niccolò. They begin to kiss, but Lucy soon pushes him away.

Retreating to the guest house, Lucy shares her notebook with Parrish. It is one of her mother's last notebooks, containing a poem Lucy thinks holds clues to the identity of her real father. Throughout the film, she has been asking probing questions about her mother. Did Parrish ever know Sara to wear green sandals? Had Ian ever eaten olive leaves? Had Carlo Lisca, a war correspondent friend of the Graysons whom Sara had known, ever killed a viper? These images are all found in the poem, which Lucy now reads to Parrish. He agrees it must refer to her dad.

That evening, Lucy wears her mother's dress to the Donati's annual party. Soon after arriving, she sees Niccolò with another girl, and they do not speak. Then she sees Osvaldo playing clarinet in the band. Later, seeing him dancing with a girl, they exchange earnest glances. Lucy picks up a young Englishman to take back to the Grayson's villa. On the way out, Osvaldo chases Lucy down, saying he's interested in visiting America. They agree to meet the next day. The Englishman spends the night with her at the villa, but without having sex.

The next day, Parrish is hospitalized. Lucy skulks around his quarters in the guest house afterward. Looking out a window, seeing Ian's sculpture of a mother and child, she has an epiphany. Lucy asks Ian where he was in August 1975, when she was conceived. He says he was here, fixing up the villa, possibly when he was doing Lucy's mother's portrait. He says they could ask Diana, but then remembers she was in London, finalizing her divorce. They realize Ian is Lucy's biological father, and she promises to keep the secret.

Meanwhile, Osvaldo arrives. Lucy gets stung by bees as she exits Ian's studio, so he helps, putting clay on the welts. Walking through the countryside, Osvaldo confesses he wrote to her once. This was the letter Lucy loved above all, the one she knew by heart. Osvaldo then takes her to the tree from the letter.

Lucy and Osvaldo spend the night having sex under the tree. As they part the next morning, Osvaldo reveals that it was his first time, too.

Cast

 Liv Tyler as Lucy Harmon
 Joseph Fiennes as Christopher Fox
 Jeremy Irons as Alex Parrish
 Sinéad Cusack as Diana Grayson
 Donal McCann as Ian Grayson
 Rebecca Valpy as Daisy Grayson
 Jean Marais (in his last film role) as M. Guillaume
 Rachel Weisz as Miranda Fox
 D. W. Moffett as Richard Reed
 Carlo Cecchi as Carlo Lisca
 Jason Flemyng as Gregory
 Anna Maria Gherardi as Chiarella Donati
 Ignazio Oliva as Osvaldo Donati
 Stefania Sandrelli as Noemi
 Francesco Siciliano as Michele Lisca
 Mary Jo Sorgani as Maria
 Leonardo Treviglio as Lieutenant
 Alessandra Vanzi as Marta
 Roberto Zibetti as Niccolò Donati

Production
Liv Tyler admitted she bitterly fought against appearing topless in this movie. "Of course the thought of showing your body parts is a terrifying thought - I find it terrifying. Let alone the whole world. And I fought it until the very end."

Soundtrack
 "2 Wicky" (Burt Bacharach) by Hooverphonic
 "Glory Box" by Portishead
 "If 6 Was 9" (Jimi Hendrix) by Axiom Funk
 "Annie Mae" by John Lee Hooker
 "Rocket Boy" by Liz Phair
 "Superstition" by Stevie Wonder
 "My Baby Just Cares For Me" (Walter Donaldson) by Nina Simone
 "I'll Be Seeing You" (Sammy Fain) by Billie Holiday
 "Rhymes Of An Hour" (Hope Sandoval) by Mazzy Star
 "Alice" by Cocteau Twins
 "You Won't Fall" by Lori Carson
 "I Need Love" by Sam Phillips
 "Say It Ain't So" by Roland Gift
 "Horn concerto in D K412, 2nd movement" by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
 "Clarinet concerto in A K622, 2nd movement" by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Additional songs
 "Rock Star" by Hole was also used in the film. Tyler is shown dancing and singing wildly along to the track, listening with her headphones and walkman.
 Björk's song "Bachelorette" of her 1997 album Homogenic was originally written to be part of the soundtrack and its first working title was "Bertolucci". Björk later faxed Bertolucci to inform him the song would be used on her upcoming album instead.

Reception
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, gave it 2 out of 4, and wrote: "The movie plays like the kind of line a rich older guy would lay on a teenage model, suppressing his own intelligence and irony in order to spread out before her the wonderful world he would like to give her as a gift....The problem here is that many 19-year-old women, especially the beautiful international model types, would rather stain their teeth with cigarettes and go to discos with cretins on motorcycles than have all Tuscany as their sandbox."

Critics such as Desson Thomson of The Washington Post, Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle, and James Berardinelli of ReelViews gave negative reviews, with Berardinelli in particular, calling the movie 'an atmosphere study, lacking characters', and Thompson calling it 'inscrutable'.

Others, such as Jonathan Rosenbaum of Chicago Reader, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, Janet Maslin of The New York Times, and Jack Mathews of the Los Angeles Times were more positive, with Rosenbaum in particular praising the movie's 'mellowness' and 'charm'.

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 50% based on 52 reviews, with an average rating of 6/10. On Metacritic the film has a score of 60% based on reviews from 20 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "B−" on scale of A to F.

Box office
The film had admissions in France of 184,721.

References

External links

1990s coming-of-age drama films
1996 romantic drama films
1990s teen drama films
1990s teen romance films
1996 films
British coming-of-age drama films
British romantic drama films
British teen drama films
British teen romance films
Coming-of-age romance films
1990s English-language films
English-language French films
English-language Italian films
Films about virginity
Films directed by Bernardo Bertolucci
Films produced by Jeremy Thomas
Films set in Tuscany
Films shot in Tuscany
Fox Searchlight Pictures films
French coming-of-age drama films
French romantic drama films
French teen films
1990s French-language films
1990s German-language films
Italian coming-of-age drama films
Italian romantic drama films
1990s Italian-language films
1990s Spanish-language films
1996 multilingual films
British multilingual films
French multilingual films
Italian multilingual films
1990s British films
1990s French films
Films with screenplays by Bernardo Bertolucci

Stealing Beauty


The 4.2-kiloyear (thousand years) BP aridification event (long-term drought), also known as the 4.2 ka event, was one of the most severe climatic events of the Holocene epoch. It defines the beginning of the current Meghalayan age in the Holocene epoch.

Starting around 2200 BC, it probably lasted the entire 22nd century BC. It has been hypothesised to have caused the collapse of the Old Kingdom in Egypt, the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, and the Liangzhu culture in the lower Yangtze River area. The drought may also have initiated the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilisation, with some of its population moving southeastward to follow the movement of their desired habitat, as well as the migration of Indo-European-speaking people into India. Some scientists disagree with that conclusion, citing evidence that the event was not a global drought and did not happen in a clear timeline.

Causes
Modelling evidence suggests that the 4.2 ka event was the result of a significant weakening of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), disrupting global ocean currents and generating precipitation and temperature changes in various regions. The Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) abruptly shifted southward. Evidence suggests increased El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) variability also played a role in generating the climatic conditions associated with the event. Explosive volcanism in Iceland has also been proposed as a cause, though the low sulphur content of Icelandic volcanoes has led other studies to suggest it had a negligible impact on global climate.

Evidence
 A phase of intense aridity about 4.2 ka BP is recorded across North Africa, the Middle East, the Red Sea, the Arabian Peninsula, the Indian subcontinent, and midcontinental North America. Glaciers throughout the mountain ranges of western Canada advanced about that time. Iceland also experienced glacial advance. Evidence has also been found in an Italian cave flowstone, the Kilimanjaro ice sheet, and in Andean glacier ice. The onset of the aridification in Mesopotamia in about 4100 BP also coincided with a cooling event in the North Atlantic, known as Bond event 3. Despite the geographic diversity of these examples, evidence for the 4.2 ka event in Northern Europe is ambiguous, which suggests that the origins and effects of the event are spatially complex.

In 2018, the International Commission on Stratigraphy divided the Holocene epoch into three periods, with the late Holocene from approximately 2250 BC onwards designated as the Meghalayan stage/age. The boundary stratotype is a speleothem in Mawmluh cave in India, and the global auxiliary stratotype is an ice core from Mount Logan in Canada. However, justification for this division is debated as the event was not a global drought and did not happen within a clear timeframe. Jessica Tierney, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, states that proponents of the new partitioning mistakenly "lumped together evidence of other droughts and wet periods, sometimes centuries away from the event."

Effects

Europe

British Isles
In Ireland, there is little definitive record of the 4.2 ka event outside of a brief isotopic excursion in some cave speleothem records. The manner in which this climatic event manifested itself in the region is thus unclear. In Great Britain as in Ireland, the nature of the 4.2 ka event is ambiguous and unclear.

Eastern Europe
Analysis of sediments from Lake Spore reveals that in Poland, winters became colder between 4250 and 4000 BP, with this cooling likely responsible for a podzolisation (generation of boreal forest soil type) event around 4200 BP, whereas summer temperatures remained constant. Humidity levels were not affected by the 4.2 ka event.

Iberian Peninsula
In the Alboran Sea, the western Mediterranean,  a dry phase occurred from about 4400 BP to 4300 BP but was abruptly followed by a shift towards wetter conditions, suggesting a more complex pattern of climate change than other regions during the 4.2 ka event.

On the Iberian Peninsula, the construction of motillas-type settlements in the period after 2200 BC is believed to be the consequence of the severe aridification that affected this area. According to M. Meíjas Moreno, who reported the first palaeohydrogeological interdisciplinary research in La Mancha, Spain, these motillas may represent the oldest, most ancient system of groundwater collection in the Iberian Peninsula and their construction might have been directly connected to the prolonged, harsh drought and other climatic perturbations brought by the 4.2 ka event. The authors' analysis verified a relationship between the geological substrate and the spatial distribution of the motillas.

Italian Peninsula
In the Gulf of Genoa, mean annual temperature dropped, winters became drier, and summers became wetter and cooler, a phenomenon most likely caused by the southward retreat of the ITCZ in summer that weakened the high pressure and reduced ocean warming over the western Mediterranean, which led to retarded evaporation rates in the autumn and early winter. The 4.2 ka event appears to have wettened the climate in the Alps. Lake Petit saw increased precipitation during the ice-free season, evidenced by an increase in δ18Odiatom. Southern Italy, in contrast, experienced intense aridification. A major decline in forests occurred in Italy as a result of the climatic perturbation.

North Africa
At the site of Sidi Ali in the Middle Atlas, δ18O values indicate not a dry spell but a centennial-scale period of cooler and more humid climate. In c. 2150 BC, Egypt was hit by a series of exceptionally low Nile floods that may have influenced the collapse of the centralised government of the Old Kingdom after a famine.

Middle East
The south-central Levant experienced two phases of dry climate punctuated by a wet interval in between and thus the 4.2 ka event in the region has been termed a W-shaped event.

Enhanced dust flux coeval with δ18O peaks is recorded in Mesopotamia from 4260 to 3970 BP, reflecting intense aridity. The aridification of Mesopotamia may have been related to the onset of cooler sea-surface temperatures in the North Atlantic (Bond event 3), as analysis of the modern instrumental record shows that large (50%) interannual reductions in Mesopotamian water supply result when subpolar northwest Atlantic sea surface temperatures are anomalously cool. The headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers are fed by elevation-induced capture of winter Mediterranean rainfall.

The Akkadian Empire in 2300 BC was the second civilisation to subsume independent societies into a single state (the first being ancient Egypt in around 3100 BC). It has been claimed that the collapse of the state was influenced by a wide-ranging, centuries-long drought. Archaeological evidence documents widespread abandonment of the agricultural plains of northern Mesopotamia and dramatic influxes of refugees into southern Mesopotamia, around 2170 BC, which may have weakened the Akkadian state. A 180-km-long wall, the "Repeller of the Amorites", was built across central Mesopotamia to stem nomadic incursions to the south. Around 2150 BC, the Gutian people, who originally inhabited the Zagros Mountains, defeated the demoralised Akkadian army, took Akkad and destroyed it around 2115 BC. Widespread agricultural change in the Near East is visible at the end of the 3rd millennium BC. Resettlement of the northern plains by smaller sedentary populations occurred near 1900 BC, three centuries after the collapse.

In the Persian Gulf region, there was a sudden change in settlement pattern, style of pottery and tombs. The 22nd century BC drought marks the end of the Umm Al Nar culture and the change to the Wadi Suq culture. A study of fossil corals in Oman provides evidence that prolonged winter shamal seasons, around 4200 years ago, led to the salinization of the irrigated field, which made a dramatic decrease in crop production trigger a widespread famine and eventually the collapse of the ancient Akkadian Empire.

South and Central Asia
The Siberian High increased in area and magnitude, which blocked moisture-carrying westerly winds, causing intense aridity in Central Asia.

The Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) and Indian Winter Monsoon (IWM) both declined in strength, leading to highly arid conditions in northwestern South Asia. The ISM's decline is evident from low Mn/Ti and Mn/Fe values in Rara Lake from this time. The area around PankangTeng Tso Lake in the Tawang district of Arunachal Pradesh had cold and dry conditions and was dominated by subalpine vegetation. Though some proxy records suggest a prolonged, multicentennial dry period, others indicate that the 4.2 ka event was a series of multidecadal droughts instead.

Effects on the Indus Valley civilisation

In the 2nd millennium BC, widespread aridification occurred in the Eurasian steppes and in South Asia. On the steppes, the vegetation changed, driving "higher mobility and transition to the nomadic cattle breeding." Water shortage also strongly affected South Asia:

Urban centers of the Indus Valley civilisation were abandoned and replaced by disparate local cultures because of the same climate change that affected the neighbouring regions to the west. , many scholars believed that drought and a decline in trade with Egypt and Mesopotamia caused the collapse of the Indus civilisation. The Ghaggar-Hakra system was rain-fed, and water supply depended on the monsoons. The Indus Valley climate grew significantly cooler and drier from about 1800 BC, which is linked to a contemporary general weakening of the monsoon. Aridity increased, with the Ghaggar-Hakra River retracting its reach towards the foothills of the Himalayas, leading to erratic and less-extensive floods, which made inundation agriculture less sustainable. Aridification reduced the water supply enough to cause the civilisation's demise, and to scatter its population eastward.

East Asia
The 4.2 ka event resulted in an enormous reduction in the strength of the East Asian Summer Monsoon (EASM). This profound weakening of the EASM has been postulated to have resulted from a reduction in the strength of the AMOC; the cooling of North Atlantic waters led to retardation of northward movements of the EASM and diminished rainfall on its northern margin. A stark humidity gradient emerged between northern and southern China because of the EASM's southward move. Northeastern China was strongly affected; proxy records from Hulun Lake in Inner Mongolia reveal a major dry event from 4210–3840 BP. δ18O values from Yonglu Cave in Hubei confirm that the region became characterised by increased aridity and show that the onset of the event was gradual but that its end was sudden.

In the Korean Peninsula, the 4.2 ka event was associated with significant aridification, measured by the large decline in arboreal pollen percentage (AP).

The Sannai-Maruyama site declined during the same period; the growing population of the Jomon culture gradually turned to decline after that.

Rebun Island experienced an abrupt, intense cooling around 4,130 BP believed to be associated with the 4.2 ka event.

Effects on Chinese civilisation
The drought may have caused the collapse of Neolithic cultures around Central China in the late 3rd millennium BC. In the Yishu River Basin (a river basin that consists of the Yi River (沂河) of Shandong and Shu River), the flourishing Longshan culture was affected by a cooling that severely reduced rice output and led to a substantial decrease in population and to fewer archaeological sites. In about 2000 BC, Longshan was displaced by the Yueshi culture, which had fewer and less-sophisticated artifacts of ceramic and bronze.The Liangzhu civilization in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River also declined during the same period. The 4.2 ka event is also believed to have helped collapse the Dawenkou culture. The 4.2 ka event had no discernible impact on the spread of millet cultivation in the region.

Southern Africa
Stalagmites from northeastern Namibia demonstrate the region became wetter thanks to the southward shift of the ITCZ. The Namibian humidification event had two pulses.

Mascarenes
No signal of the 4.2 ka event has been found in Rodrigues.

See also

2300–2200 BCE Great Flood (China)
2354–2345 BCE climate anomaly
8.2-kiloyear event
African humid period
Bond event
Climate variability and change
Late Bronze Age collapse § Environmental (c. 1200-1150 BC)
Timeline of environmental history

Notes

References

Further reading

External links
 The Egyptian Old Kingdom, Sumer and Akkad
 The End of the Old Kingdom
Michael Marshall (26 January 2022), 'Did a mega drought topple empires 4,200 years ago?', Nature

Droughts
22nd century BC
22nd century BC in Egypt
Ancient Near East
Old Kingdom of Egypt
First Intermediate Period of Egypt
Akkadian Empire
Pepi II Neferkare

4.2-kiloyear event


Poison Springs Battleground State Park is an Arkansas state park located southeast of Bluff City. It commemorates the Battle of Poison Spring in the American Civil War, which was part of the 1864 Camden Expedition, an element of a Union Army initiative to gain control of Shreveport, Louisiana and get a foothold in Texas.

In the battle, which was fought on April 18, 1864, Confederates and Choctaw Indians attacked and overcame a supply wagon of Union soldiers. The term "poison spring" arises from the apocryphal story that Confederate soldiers poisoned nearby springwater. The battle hastened the failure of the Camden expedition, and garnered notoriety for the slaughter of black Union soldiers from Kansas by the Confederate forces, which took no prisoners.

The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969 as Poison Springs State Park, and, with other sites, is part of the Camden Expedition Sites National Historic Landmark. It was declared part of the National Historic Landmark in 1994.

Description and administrative history
The park includes about  of land. It is located on both sides of Arkansas Highway 76, about  northwest of Camden in Ouachita County.  Highway 76 was constructed along the historic road that was used by the Union supply train when it was roadblocked and attacked by the Confederate force during the battle.  The improved portion of the park, with a picnic area and interpretive signs, is located on the north side of the highway.

The battle, however, covered a much larger area, estimated at more than . The surrounding area is in roughly the same condition as it was at the time of the battle. The land that was then under cultivation has since been allowed to revert to forest.

The heavily wooded park features a small interpretive display and a shady trail. Sightings of deer and woodpeckers are common along the trail. The park provides an excellent example of the Gulf Coast forest region, consisting primarily of pine trees, but with some oak and with dogwood understory trees.

See also
List of Arkansas state parks
List of National Historic Landmarks in Arkansas
National Register of Historic Places listings in Ouachita County, Arkansas

References

External links

 Government

 General information
 Poison Springs Battleground State Park at Civil War Trust

1961 establishments in Arkansas
American Civil War on the National Register of Historic Places
Arkansas Heritage Trails System
Battlefields of the Trans-Mississippi Theater of the American Civil War
Camden Expedition Sites National Historic Landmark
Conflict sites on the National Register of Historic Places in Arkansas
National Register of Historic Places in Ouachita County, Arkansas
Parks in Ouachita County, Arkansas
Parks on the National Register of Historic Places in Arkansas
Protected areas established in 1961
State parks of Arkansas

Poison Springs Battleground State Park


Kōbe Rapid Transit Railway Company, Limited (神戸高速鉄道株式会社 Kōbe kōsoku-tetsudō) is a railway infrastructure company in central Kobe, Japan.

Lines
Kobe Rapid Railway owns two lines.
Tozai Line (east-west)
Namboku Line (north-south)

The Tozai and Namboku lines have been operated since the founding of the railway company while the Hokushin Line is a recent addition to its business. The company is a  under the 1986 Railway Business Act of Japan in respect to all three lines.

Tozai Line and Namboku Line
The company does not run its own services on these lines, but provides the necessary infrastructure for four private railway lines (Hankyu Kobe Line (Hankyu), Hanshin Main Line (Hanshin), Shintetsu Arima Line (Shintetsu) and Sanyo Electric Railway Main Line (Sanyo) to be able to run trains through Kobe.

The company operated and administered the stations on the Tozai Line and the Namboku Line (except for Sannomiya Station operated by Hankyu, Motomachi Station operated by Hanshin, Nishidai Station operated by Sanyo and Minatogawa Station operated by Shintetsu) until September 2010, when the operation of the stations on the Tozai Line were transferred to Hanshin and Hankyu, and Shinkaichi Station on the Namboku Line to Shintetsu.

Hokushin Line
The Hokushin Line was formerly owned by the operator Hokushin Kyuko Electric Railway. When Hokushin Kyuko suffered financial difficulties in 2002, Kobe Rapid Railway purchased the assets of the railway trackage from Hokushin Kyuko.

Unlike the Tozai Line and the Namboku Line stations, the stations of the Hokushin Line are operated and administrated by Hokushin Kyuko (Tanigami Station) and Kobe Municipal Subway (Shin-Kobe Station). On 1 June 2020, the operation of the line was transferred to Kobe Municipal Subway.

References

External links

 Official site

Transport in Kobe
Railway companies of Japan
Underground rapid transit in Japan
Railway infrastructure companies

Kōbe Rapid Transit Railway