Grand Union Supermarkets, later known as Grand Union Family Markets and often referred to simply as Grand Union, is an American chain of grocery stores that does business in upstate New York and Vermont, and used to do business throughout most of the northeastern United States. It operated stores in other areas of the country including the midwestern and southeastern states, and internationally in the Caribbean and Canada. The company was founded and headquartered in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and moved to Brooklyn, New York, in the early 20th century. Grand Union moved again to Elmwood Park, New Jersey and finally to Wayne, New Jersey before the company was forced into Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2001 and sold to C&S Wholesale Grocers.

After C&S bought Grand Union it down-scaled most of its operations, keeping only a number of stores in upstate New York and New England open. The chain was sold to Tops Friendly Markets in 2012; in 2013 Tops rebranded the remaining Grand Union stores with the Tops logo and the Grand Union name was discontinued. After Tops and Price Chopper Supermarkets merged in 2021, the combined entity was forced to sell 12 stores to meet regulatory approval, and on November 9, 2021, C&S announced that they were purchasing the 12 stores and will be converting them to Grand Union stores, reviving the brand.

History

Origins

Grand Union started in Scranton, Pennsylvania, as the Jones Brothers Tea Company in 1872. By the 1930s it was one of the largest grocery chains in the United States. The name "Grand Union" was inspired by the desire to "unite shoppers with low prices in a 'Grand Union of Value as described by company associate Elvin Sanders. The store's mascot was Abraham Lincoln wearing a deli apron, and most stores featured a costumed Lincoln to accomplish deeds, talk to customers, and proclaim the general splendor of the Grand Union, and to urge them to "Save the Union" when the company faced economic hardship.

In the early 1950s, Grand Union merged with Great Eastern and began construction on a new shopping center in what was then known as East Paterson (now Elmwood Park) New Jersey. The strip was to include a new Grand Union store with an office tower attached that would serve as the company's new corporate headquarters. The store and new headquarters opened in 1951. In 1987, Grand Union moved its corporate headquarters to Willowbrook Center in Wayne, abandoning its Elmwood Park offices. Grand Union did not close the Elmwood Park store, though, and it remained in operation until 2001.

In 1956, Grand Union opened a discount department store chain (called Grand Way) in Keansburg, New Jersey. Many of these stores combined a grocery store and a department store, which was similar to the combination Bradlees and Stop & Shop stores that were around during that time as well.
Others were separate stores. For instance, a multi-level Grand Way store was built on a vacant lot across from the Elmwood Park corporate headquarters while the company built a strip mall in nearby Paramus, where the Grand Way anchored one end with the Grand Union anchoring the other. These stores were eventually closed and sold to other competitors, such as Winn-Dixie. The Elmwood Park and Paramus Grand Way stores were sold to Kmart; both of these stores have since closed.

In 1959, Grand Union's 38 stores it operated in Ontario, Canada, were sold to Steinberg's (supermarket), a Quebec-based supermarket and department store chain. Those locations were quickly rebranded into Steinberg's grocery stores, but over time most of their former Grand Union stores were closed and moved to new stores, due to poor locations compared to local competitors.

Ownership by "The Red Raider" James Goldsmith
British corporate raider Sir James Goldsmith acquired Grand Union in the early 1970s through his food conglomerate Cavenham Foods. Grand Union was a money loser during much of Goldsmith's time of ownership. Goldsmith presided over the closing of the Grand Way chain in 1978 and the exit of Grand Union from most of the rest of the nation outside of the Northeast and New England in the mid-1980s.

In the 1980s Grand Union acquired many former A&P stores in northern New Jersey that A&P closed after acquiring the metropolitan New York operations of Stop & Shop and a controlling stake in the southern grocery chain Big Star Markets. In October 1986, Grand Union leased ten stores in the Albany area from Weis Markets, including nine stores that had operated under the Albany Public Markets banner. In the mid-1980s, Goldsmith brought in former Target Corporation executive Floyd Hall to manage the chain. Goldsmith also had world-renowned artist Milton Glaser complete a graphical redesign of the chain, which included the "red dot" theme. Through the new management under Hall, the chain was able to make record-making profits throughout the late 1980s. In 1987, Goldsmith sold is shareholding in Grand Union's parent company, Generale Occidentale to French conglomerate Compagnie Générale d'Electricité (CGE), and in 1988 CGE sold Grand Union to a management buyout led by Hall for $655 million.

1989 acquisition by Gary Hirsch
In 1989, investment banker Gary D. Hirsch, a partner in the firm Miller Tabak Hirsch & Co. acquired a portion of the Grand Union Company with Salomon Brothers. Grand Union was Hirsch's fourth major supermarket purchase since 1987, as he had acquired the Pennsylvania-based Penn Traffic, the Syracuse, New York–based P&C Foods, and the Columbus, Ohio-based Big Bear Stores in the previous two years. Hirsch assumed the position of chairman while Joseph McCaig became CEO. Floyd Hall left upon the acquisition.

Under Hirsch's leadership the company was driven into serious debt and ran out of the necessary capital for store improvements and upgrades, making it difficult for them to compete with other better financed retailers. Still, gradually, Grand Union remodeled most of its stores. Some of its older, run-down stores were closed and converted to other uses. Grand Union's big disadvantage was that its average store was 35,000 square feet while most supermarkets being built were over 50,000. The company also built a few larger stores.

In 1995, Grand Union's ongoing financial difficulties forced the company into its first bankruptcy as it filed for Chapter 11. In 1996, shortly after Grand Union emerged, Hirsch announced his resignation and sold his share of the company.

The J. Wayne Harris era

In 1997, Grand Union brought in J. Wayne Harris to begin a turnaround of the ailing chain. Harris had recently been an executive at A&P and at Kroger, and had an excellent reputation in the industry.

Harris immediately began remodeling stores and building larger ones, which put even more stress on the company's finances and forced another Chapter 11 filing in 1998. The company emerged again in 1999 and had $175 million in new capital, which Harris used to finish the remodels on the stores that were still in the process and to acquire more construction permits for larger stores. He also used some of the money for new store formats, with three emerging. One was "Grand Union Fresh Market", which catered more to an upscale gourmet clientele more in the vein of its competitor Kings. Another was a discount grocery store named "Mega Save". A third was Grand Union's answer to limited selection chains such as Aldi and Save-A-Lot, called "Hot Dot".

None of these ideas worked out, and again Grand Union's finances reached dire straits. In addition to this, many of Grand Union's executives were found to have been stealing money such as Don Vaillancourt, who was  convicted of embezzling over $2 million from the company in 2002. Harris was forced out in 2000 and took a job with JCPenney, who hired him to revive their Eckerd drugstore chain. Harris failed to do that as well, and Eckerd was sold to a combination of Jean Coutu Group and CVS Corporation in 2004. Its stores were converted to the Rite Aid banner.

In addition to the now-critical debt being borne by Grand Union, the company was unable to build the stores it wanted to as there was not enough money left. A Fishkill, New York store was sold to a ShopRite ownership group before it could open, and the construction of a store in its home area of Wayne, New Jersey, was halted for over a year.

In October 2000, Grand Union filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy for a third time. Two months later, the bankruptcy was converted to a Chapter 7 bankruptcy after it was discovered that the damage Harris' failed ideas and the embezzlement scandal had done to the company left it with so little money that Grand Union could not operate or supply any of its stores. A search for a buyer began, but in spite of the filing the stores continued to do business as before.

2001 acquisition by C&S Wholesale Grocers

Grand Union's Chapter 7 filing had a large effect on its supplier C&S Wholesale Grocers, a New England–based wholesale food distributor of which Grand Union was its largest customer. C&S also was one of Grand Union's largest creditors, and made a stalking horse offer to take control of the company in early 2001 that was approved.

Shortly afterward, C&S began reorganizing Grand Union's operations. This resulted in a consolidation that left the chain with only a relatively small number of stores in smaller cities and towns across Upstate New York and New England. In addition, Grand Union's stores in the Northeast, where it was long established, were closed. Many of the medium-sized and most of the larger Grand Union stores, as well as most of the construction permits for stores that had yet to be built or finished, were sold to Ahold while C&S continued to supply the stores. At the time of the acquisition of Grand Union by C&S, Ahold had been looking to establish a presence in the Northeast as well through its Edwards Super Food Stores chain and was initially a bidder for Grand Union. Eventually Ahold converted the Edwards stores to Stop & Shop, reintroducing the brand to the area, and later converted the Grand Union stores it acquired to Stop & Shops as well. Ahold began supplying Grand Union stores for some time prior to their rebranding. This meant that although the store retained the Grand Union sign on the outside and various other signage on the inside, it had Stop & Shop branded items on the shelves.

Other supermarket chains that purchased Grand Union stores included Tops, which was at the time also an Ahold subsidiary, Shaw's, Hannaford, Price Chopper and Pathmark. Some of the other medium-sized stores were sold to department store chains such as Marshalls and Kohl's, while many of the smaller stores were sold to independent grocers and drugstore chains such as Eckerd, Rite Aid, CVS, and Walgreens. Other stores, like the former flagship in Elmwood Park, were demolished after closing and replaced with other buildings.

As for the stores that remained under the Grand Union banner, they became part of a rebranded Grand Union Family Markets, complete with a new logo that discarded the 1980s "Red Dot" logo. Many of the stores did keep the Red Dot, although not all of them did.

Acquisition by Tops Friendly Markets

On July 19, 2012, Tops Friendly Markets announced that it would acquire the 21 remaining Grand Union stores in the Adirondack Region and parts of Vermont. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. On May 28, 2013, grand reopening ceremonies were held for nine stores which had been re-bannered under the Tops name. The remaining 12 stores held grand reopening ceremonies on July 2, 2013, under the Tops banner, effectively bringing an end to the Grand Union supermarket chain.

2021 revival of the brand

In 2021, it was announced that, as part of the merge of Tops and Price Chopper Supermarkets merger, the combined entity had to sell 12 stores to meet regulatory approval. On November 9, 2021, C&S announced that they were purchasing the 12 stores and converting them to Grand Union stores, reviving the brand. As part of the announcement, it was revealed that those 12 stores will be converted to Grand Union and that the grand openings will be from mid-January through mid-February 2022. However, one store in Watertown, New York will go to Piggly-Wiggly instead.

References

External links
Grand Union Family Markets
List of many former locations

Companies based in Bergen County, New Jersey
Companies based in Passaic County, New Jersey
Economy of the Northeastern United States
Retail companies established in 1872
Retail companies disestablished in 2013
Companies based in Saratoga County, New York
1872 establishments in Pennsylvania
2013 disestablishments in New York (state)
American companies established in 1872
Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1995
Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1998
Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2000
Companies that filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2000
Companies that have filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy
Re-established companies
James Goldsmith

Grand Union (supermarket)


Shipbuilding is the construction of ships and other floating vessels. It normally takes place in a specialized facility known as a shipyard. Shipbuilders, also called shipwrights, follow a specialized occupation that traces its roots to before recorded history.

Until recently, with the development of complex non-maritime technologies, a ship has often represented the most advanced structure that the society building it could produce. Some key industrial advances were developed to support shipbuilding, for instance the sawing of timbers by mechanical saws propelled by windmills in Dutch shipyards during the first half of the 17th century. The design process saw the early adoption of the logarithm (invented in 1615) to generate the curves used to produce the shape of a hull, especially when scaling up these curves accurately in the mould loft.

Shipbuilding and ship repairs, both commercial and military, are referred to as "naval engineering". The construction of boats is a similar activity called boat building.

The dismantling of ships is called ship breaking.

The earliest evidence of maritime transport by modern humans is the settlement of Australia between 50,000 and  60,000 years ago. This almost certainly involved rafts, possibly equipped with some sort of sail. Much of the development beyond that raft technology occurred  in the "nursery" areas of the Mediterranean and in Island Southeast Asia. Favoured by warmer waters and a number of inter-visible islands, boats (and, later, ships) with water-tight hulls (unlike the "flow through" structure of a raft) could be developed. The ships of ancient Egypt were built by joining the hull planks together, edge to edge, with tenons set in mortices cut in the mating edges. A similar technique, but with the tenons being pinned in position by dowels was used in the Mediterranean for most of Classical antiquity. Both these variants are "shell first" techniques, where any reinforcing frames are inserted after assembly of the planking has defined the hull shape. Carvel construction then took over in the Mediterranean. Northern Europe used clinker construction, but with some flush-planked ship-building in, for instance, the bottom planking of cogs. The north-European and Mediterranean traditions merged in the late 15th century, with carvel construction being adopted in the North and the centre-line mounted rudder replacing the quarter rudder of the Mediterranean. These changes broadly coincided with improvements in sailing rigs, with the three masted ship becoming common, with square sails on the fore and main masts, and a fore and aft sail on the mizzen.

Ship-building then saw a steady improvement in design techniques and introduction of new materials. Iron was used for more than fastenings (nails and bolts) as structural components such as iron knees were introducedexamples existing in the mid-18th century and greater use from the mid-19th century. This was partly led by the shortage of "compass timber", the naturally curved timber that meant that shapes could be cut without weaknesses caused by cuts across the grain of the timber. Ultimately, whole ships were made of iron and, later, steel.

History

Pre-history
The earliest known depictions (including paintings and models) of shallow-water sailing boats is from the 6th to 5th millennium BC of the Ubaid period of Mesopotamia. They were made from bundled reeds coated in bitumen and had bipod masts. They sailed in shallow coastal waters of the Persian Gulf.

4th millennium BC

Ancient Egypt
Evidence from Ancient Egypt shows that the early Egyptians knew how to assemble planks of wood into a ship hull as early as 3100 BC. Egyptian pottery as old as 4000 BC shows designs of early fluvial boats or other means for navigation. The Archaeological Institute of America reports that some of the oldest ships yet unearthed are known as the Abydos boats. These are a group of 14 ships discovered in Abydos that were constructed of wooden planks which were "sewn" together. Discovered by Egyptologist David O'Connor of New York University, woven straps were found to have been used to lash the planks together, and reeds or grass stuffed between the planks helped to seal the seams. Because the ships are all buried together and near a mortuary belonging to Pharaoh Khasekhemwy, originally they were all thought to have belonged to him, but one of the 14 ships dates to 3000 BC, and the associated pottery jars buried with the vessels also suggest earlier dating. The ship dating to 3000 BC was about 75 feet (23 m) long and is now thought to perhaps have belonged to an earlier pharaoh. According to professor O'Connor, the 5,000-year-old ship may have even belonged to Pharaoh Aha.

Austronesia

The Austronesian expansion, which began  with migration from Taiwan to the island of Luzon in the Philippines, spread across Island Southeast Asia. Then, between 1500 BC and 1500 AD they settled uninhabited islands of the Pacific, and also sailed westward to Madagascar. This is associated with distinctive maritime technology: lashed lug construction techniques (both in outrigger canoes and in large planked sailing vessels), various types of outrigger and twin-hulled canoes and a range of sailing rigs that included the crab claw sail. The origins of this technology is difficult to date, relying largely on linguistics (studying the words for parts of boats), the written comments of people from other cultures, including the observations of European explorers at the time of first contact and the later more systematic ethnographic observations of the types of craft in use. There is only a small body of archaeological evidence available. Since Island Southeast Asia contained effective maritime transport between its very large number of islands long before Austronesian seafaring, it is argued that Austronesians adopted an existing maritime technology from the existing inhabitants of this region.

Austronesian ships varied from simple canoes to large multihull ships. The simplest form of all ancestral Austronesian boats had five parts. The bottom part consists of a single piece of hollowed-out log. At the sides were two planks, and two horseshoe-shaped wood pieces formed the prow and stern. These were fitted tightly together edge-to-edge with dowels inserted into holes in between, and then lashed to each other with ropes (made from rattan or fiber) wrapped around protruding lugs on the planks. This characteristic and ancient Austronesian boatbuilding practice is known as the "lashed-lug" technique. They were commonly caulked with pastes made from various plants as well as tapa bark and fibres which would expand when wet, further tightening joints and making the hull watertight. They formed the shell of the boat, which was then reinforced by horizontal ribs. Shipwrecks of Austronesian ships can be identified from this construction as well as the absence of metal nails. Austronesian ships traditionally had no central rudders but were instead steered using an oar on one side.

Austronesians traditionally made their sails from woven mats of the resilient and salt-resistant pandanus leaves. These sails allowed Austronesians to embark on long-distance voyaging.

The ancient Champa of Vietnam also uniquely developed basket-hulled boats whose hulls were composed of woven and resin-caulked bamboo, either entirely or in conjunction with plank strakes. They range from small coracles (the o thúng) to large ocean-going trading ships like the ghe mành.

3rd millennium BC

Ancient Egypt
Early Egyptians also knew how to assemble planks of wood with treenails to fasten them together, using pitch for caulking the seams. The "Khufu ship", a 43.6-meter vessel sealed into a pit in the Giza pyramid complex at the foot of the Great Pyramid of Giza in the Fourth Dynasty around 2500 BC, is a full-size surviving example which may have fulfilled the symbolic function of a solar barque.  Early Egyptians also knew how to fasten the planks of this ship together with mortise and tenon joints.

Indus Valley
The oldest known tidal dock in the world was built around 2500 BC during the Harappan civilisation at Lothal near the present day Mangrol harbour on the Gujarat coast in India. Other ports were probably at Balakot and Dwarka. However, it is probable that many small-scale ports, and not massive ports, were used for the Harappan maritime trade. Ships from the harbour at these ancient port cities established trade with Mesopotamia. Shipbuilding and boatmaking may have been prosperous industries in ancient India. Native labourers may have manufactured the flotilla of boats used by Alexander the Great to navigate across the Hydaspes and even the Indus, under Nearchos. The Indians also exported teak for shipbuilding to ancient Persia. Other references to Indian timber used for shipbuilding is noted in the works of Ibn Jubayr.

2nd millennium BC

Mediterranean
The ships of Ancient Egypt's Eighteenth Dynasty were typically about 25 meters (80 ft) in length and had a single mast, sometimes consisting of two poles lashed together at the top making an "A" shape. They mounted a single square sail on a yard, with an additional spar along the bottom of the sail. These ships could also be oar propelled. The ocean- and sea-going ships of Ancient Egypt were constructed with cedar wood, most likely hailing from Lebanon.

The ships of Phoenicia seem to have been of a similar design.

1st millennium BC

Austronesia
Austronesians established the Austronesian maritime trade network at around 1000 to 600 BC, linking Southeast Asia with East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and later East Africa. The route later became part of the Spice trade network and the Maritime Silk Road.

China
The naval history of China stems back to the Spring and Autumn period (722 BC–481 BC) of the ancient Chinese Zhou dynasty. The Chinese built large rectangular barges known as "castle ships", which were essentially floating fortresses complete with multiple decks with guarded ramparts. However, the Chinese vessels during this era were essentially fluvial (riverine). True ocean-going Chinese fleets did not appear until the 10th century Song dynasty.

Mediterranean
There is considerable knowledge regarding shipbuilding and seafaring in the ancient Mediterranean.

1st millennium AD

Austronesia

Large multi-masted seafaring ships of Southeast Asian Austronesians first started appearing in Chinese records during the Han dynasty as the k'un-lun po or kunlun bo ("ship of the k'un-lun [dark-skinned southern people]"). These ships used two types of sail of their invention, the junk sail and tanja sail. Large ships are about 50–60 metres (164–197 ft) long, had  tall freeboard, each carrying provisions enough for a year, and could carry 200–1000 people. The Chinese recorded that these Southeast Asian ships were hired for passage to South Asia by Chinese Buddhist pilgrims and travelers, because they did not build seaworthy ships of their own until around the 8–9th century AD.

Austronesians (especially from western Island Southeast Asia) were trading in the Indian Ocean as far as Africa during this period. By around 50 to 500 AD, a group of Austronesians, believed to be from the southeastern coasts of Borneo (possibly a mixed group related to the modern Ma'anyan, Banjar, and/or the Dayak people) crossed the Indian Ocean and colonized Madagascar. This resulted in the introduction of outrigger canoe technology to non-Austronesian cultures in the East African coast.

China
The ancient Chinese also built fluvial ramming vessels as in the Greco-Roman tradition of the trireme, although oar-steered ships in China lost favor very early on since it was in the 1st century China that the stern-mounted rudder was first developed. This was dually met with the introduction of the Han dynasty junk ship design in the same century. The Chinese were using square sails during the Han dynasty and adopted the Austronesian junk sail later in the 12th century. Iconographic remains show that Chinese ships before the 12th century used square sails, and the junk rig of Chinese ships is believed to be developed from tilted sails.

Southern Chinese junks were based on keeled and multi-planked Austronesian ship known as po by the Chinese, from the Old Javanese parahu, Javanese prau, or Malay perahu – large ship. Southern Chinese junks showed characteristics of Austronesian ships that they are made using timbers of tropical origin, with keeled, V-shaped hull. This is different from northern Chinese junks, which are developed from flat-bottomed riverine boats. The northern Chinese junks were primarily built of pine or fir wood, had flat bottoms with no keel, water-tight bulkheads with no frames, transom (squared) stern and stem, and have their planks fastened with iron nails or clamps.

It was unknown when the Chinese people started adopting Southeast Asian (Austronesian) shipbuilding techniques. They may have been started as early as the 8th century, but the development was gradual and the true ocean-going Chinese junks did not appear suddenly. The word "po" survived in Chinese long after, referring to the large ocean-going junks.

Mediterranean
In September 2011, archeological investigations done at the site of Portus in Rome revealed inscriptions in a shipyard constructed during the reign of Trajan (98–117) that indicated the existence of a shipbuilders guild.

Early 2nd millennium AD

Austronesia

Roughly at this time is the last migration wave of the Austronesian expansion, when the Polynesian islands spread over vast distances across the Pacific Ocean were being colonized by the (Austronesian) Polynesians from Island Melanesia using double-hulled voyaging catamarans. At its furthest extent, there is a possibility that they may have reached the Americas. After the 11th century, a new type of ship called djong or jong was recorded in Java and Bali. This type of ship was built using wooden dowels and treenails, unlike the kunlun bo which used vegetal fibres for lashings.

The empire of Majapahit used jong, built in northern Java, for transporting troops overseas. The jongs were transport ships which could carry 100–2000 tons of cargo and 50–1000 people, 28.99–88.56 meter in length. The exact number of jong fielded by Majapahit is unknown, but the largest number of jong deployed in an expedition is about 400 jongs, when Majapahit attacked Pasai, in 1350.

Europe

Until recently, Viking longships were seen as marking an advance on traditional clinker-built hulls where leather thongs were used to join plank boards.  This consensus has recently been challenged. Haywood has argued that earlier Frankish and Anglo-Saxon nautical practice was much more accomplished than had been thought and has described the distribution of clinker vs. carvel construction in Western Europe (see map ). An insight into shipbuilding in the North Sea/Baltic areas of the early medieval period was found at Sutton Hoo, England, where a ship was buried with a chieftain. The ship was  long and  wide. Upward from the keel, the hull was made by overlapping nine strakes on either side with rivets fastening the oaken planks together. It could hold upwards of thirty men.

Sometime around the 12th century, northern European ships began to be built with a straight sternpost, enabling the mounting of a rudder, which was much more durable than a steering oar held over the side. Development in the Middle Ages favored "round ships", with a broad beam and heavily curved at both ends. Another important ship type was the galley, which was constructed with both sails and oars.

The first extant treatise on shipbuilding was written c. 1436 by Michael of Rhodes, a man who began his career as an oarsman on a Venetian galley in 1401 and worked his way up into officer positions. He wrote and illustrated a book that contains a treatise on shipbuilding, a treatise on mathematics, much material on astrology, and other materials. His treatise on shipbuilding treats three kinds of galleys and two kinds of round ships.

China

Shipbuilders in the Ming dynasty (1368~1644) were not the same as the shipbuilders in other Chinese dynasties, due to hundreds of years of accumulated experiences and rapid changes in the Ming dynasty. Shipbuilders in the Ming dynasty primarily worked for the government, under command of the Ministry of Public Works.

During the early years of the Ming dynasty, the Ming government maintained an open policy towards sailing. Between 1405 and 1433, the government conducted seven diplomatic Ming treasure voyages to over thirty countries in Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East and Eastern Africa. The voyages were initiated by the Yongle Emperor, and led by the Admiral Zheng He. Six voyages were conducted under the Yongle Emperor's reign, the last of which returned to China in 1422. After the Yongle Emperor's death in 1424, his successor the Hongxi Emperor ordered the suspension of the voyages. The seventh and final voyage began in 1430, sent by the Xuande Emperor. Although the Hongxi and Xuande Emperors did not emphasize sailing as much as the Yongle Emperor, they were not against it. This led to a high degree of commercialization and an increase in trade. Large numbers of ships were built to meet the demand.

The Ming voyages were large in size, numbering as many as 300 ships and 28,000 men. The shipbuilders were brought from different places in China to the shipyard in Nanjing, including Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Fujian, and Huguang (now the provinces of Hubei and Hunan). One of the most famous shipyards was Long Jiang Shipyard (:zh:龙江船厂), located in Nanjing near the Treasure Shipyard where the ocean-going ships were built. The shipbuilders could build 24 models of ships of varying sizes.

Several types of ships were built for the voyages, including Shachuan (沙船), Fuchuan (福船) and Baochuan (treasure ship) (宝船). Zheng He's treasure ships were regarded as Shachuan types, mainly because they were made in the treasure shipyard in Nanjing. Shachuan, or 'sand-ships', are ships used primarily for inland transport. However, in recent years, some researchers agree that the treasure ships were more of the Fuchuan type. It is said in vol. 176 of San Guo Bei Meng Hui Bian (三朝北盟汇编) that ships made in Fujian are the best ones. Therefore, the best shipbuilders and laborers were brought from these places to support Zheng He's expedition.

The shipyard was under the command of Ministry of Public Works. The shipbuilders had no control over their lives. The builders, commoner's doctors, cooks and errands had lowest social status. The shipbuilders were forced to move away from their hometown to the shipyards. There were two major ways to enter the shipbuilder occupation: family tradition, or apprenticeship. If a shipbuilder entered the occupation due to family tradition, the shipbuilder learned the techniques of shipbuilding from his family and is very likely to earn a higher status in the shipyard. Additionally, the shipbuilder had access to business networking that could help to find clients. If a shipbuilder entered the occupation through an apprenticeship, the shipbuilder was likely a farmer before he was hired as a shipbuilder, or he was previously an experienced shipbuilder.

Many shipbuilders working in the shipyard were forced into the occupation. The ships built for Zheng He's voyages needed to be waterproof, solid, safe, and have ample room to carry large amounts of trading goods. Therefore, due to the highly commercialized society that was being encouraged by the expeditions, trades, and government policies, the shipbuilders needed to acquire the skills to build ships that fulfil these requirements.

Shipbuilding was not the sole industry utilising Chinese lumber at that time; the new capital was being built in Beijing from approximately 1407 onwards, which required huge amounts of high-quality wood. These two ambitious projects commissioned by Emperor Yongle would have had enormous environmental and economic effects, even if the ships were half the dimensions given in the History of Ming. Considerable pressure would also have been placed on the infrastructure required to transport the trees from their point of origin to the shipyards.

Shipbuilders were usually divided into different groups and had separate jobs. Some were responsible for fixing old ships; some were responsible for making the keel and some were responsible for building the helm.

 It was the keel that determined the shape and the structure of the hull of Fuchuan Ships. The keel is the middle of the bottom of the hull, constructed by connecting three sections; stern keel, main keel and poop keel. The hull spreads in the arc towards both sides forming the keel.
 The helm was the device that controls direction when sailing. It was a critical invention in shipbuilding technique in ancient China and was only used by the Chinese for a fairly long time. With a developing recognition of its function, the shape and configuration of the helm was continually improved by shipbuilders. The shipbuilders not only needed to build the ship according to design, but needed to acquire the skills to improve the ships.

After 1477, the Ming government reversed its open maritime policies, enacting a series of isolationist policies in response to piracy. The policies, called Haijin (sea ban), lasted until the end of the Ming dynasty in 1644. During this period, Chinese navigation technology did not make any progress and even declined in some aspect.

Indian Ocean
In the Islamic world, shipbuilding thrived at Basra and Alexandria. The dhow, felucca, baghlah, and the sambuk became symbols of successful maritime trade around the Indian Ocean from the ports of East Africa to Southeast Asia and the ports of Sindh and Hind (India) during the Abbasid period.

Early modern

Bengal
Mughal Empire had a large shipbuilding industry, which was largely centred in the Bengal Subah. Economic historian Indrajit Ray estimates shipbuilding output of Bengal during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries at 223,250 tons annually, compared with 23,061 tons produced in nineteen colonies in North America from 1769 to 1771. He also assesses ship repairing as very advanced in Bengal.

Shipbuilding in Bengal was advanced compared to European shipbuilding at the time, with Bengal selling ships to European firms. An important innovation in shipbuilding was the introduction of a flushed deck design in Bengal rice ships, resulting in hulls that were stronger and less prone to leak than the structurally weak hulls of traditional European ships built with a stepped deck design. The British East India Company later duplicated the flushed deck and hull designs of Bengal rice ships in the 1760s, leading to significant improvements in seaworthiness and navigation for European ships during the Industrial Revolution.

West Africa
Documents from 1506, for example, refer to watercraft on the Sierra Leone river carrying 120 men. Others refer to Guinea coast peoples using war canoes of varying sizes – some 70 feet in length, 7–8 feet broad, with sharp pointed ends, rowing benches on the side, and quarterdecks or forecastles build of reeds. The watercraft included miscellaneous facilities, such as cooking hearths, and storage spaces for the crew's sleeping mats.

From the 17th century, some kingdoms added brass or iron cannons to their vessels. By the 18th century, however, the use of swivel cannons on war canoes accelerated. The city-state of Lagos, for instance, deployed war canoes armed with swivel cannons.

Europe
With the development of the carrack, the west moved into a new era of ship construction by building the first regular oceangoing vessels. In a relatively short time, these ships grew to an unprecedented size, complexity, and cost.

Shipyards became large industrial complexes, and the ships built were financed by consortia of investors. These considerations led to the documentation of design and construction practices in what had previously been a secretive trade run by master shipwrights and ultimately led to the field of naval architecture, in which professional designers and draftsmen played an increasingly important role. Even so, construction techniques changed only very gradually. The ships of the Napoleonic Wars were still built more or less to the same basic plan as those of the Spanish Armada of two centuries earlier, although there had been numerous subtle improvements in ship design and construction throughout this period. For instance, the introduction of tumblehome, adjustments to the shapes of sails and hulls, the introduction of the wheel, the introduction of hardened copper fastenings below the waterline, the introduction of copper sheathing as a deterrent to shipworm and fouling, etc.

Industrial Revolution

Though still largely based on pre-industrial era materials and designs, ships greatly improved during the early Industrial Revolution period (1760 to 1825), as "the risk of being wrecked for Atlantic shipping fell by one-third, and of foundering by two thirds, reflecting improvements in seaworthiness and navigation respectively." The improvements in seaworthiness have been credited to "replacing the traditional stepped deck ship with stronger flushed decked ones derived from Indian designs, and the increasing use of iron reinforcement." The design originated from Bengal rice ships, with Bengal being famous for its shipbuilding industry at the time. Iron was gradually adopted in ship construction, initially to provide stronger joints in a wooden hull e.g. as deck knees, hanging knees, knee riders and the other sharp joints, ones in which a curved, progressive joint could not be achieved. One study finds that there were considerable improvements in ship speed from 1750 to 1850: "we find that average sailing speeds of British ships in moderate to strong winds rose by nearly a third. Driving this steady progress seems to be the continuous evolution of sails and rigging, and improved hulls that allowed a greater area of sail to be set safely in a given wind. By contrast, looking at every voyage between the Netherlands and East Indies undertaken by the Dutch East India Company from 1595 to 1795, we find that journey time fell only by 10 percent, with no improvement in the heavy mortality, averaging six percent per voyage, of those aboard."

Initially copying wooden construction traditions with a frame over which the hull was fastened, Isambard Kingdom Brunel's  of 1843 was the first radical new design, being built entirely of wrought iron. Despite her success,  and the great savings in cost and space provided by the iron hull, compared to a copper-sheathed counterpart, there remained problems with fouling due to the adherence of weeds and barnacles. As a result, composite construction remained the dominant approach where fast ships were required, with wooden timbers laid over an iron frame (Cutty Sark is a famous example). Later Great Britains iron hull was sheathed in wood to enable it to carry a copper-based sheathing.  Brunel's  represented the next great development in shipbuilding. Built-in association with John Scott Russell, it used longitudinal stringers for strength, inner and outer hulls, and bulkheads to form multiple watertight compartments. Steel also supplanted wrought iron when it became readily available in the latter half of the 19th century, providing great savings when compared with iron in cost and weight. Wood continued to be favored for the decks.

During World War II, the need for cargo ships was so great that construction time for Liberty ships went from initially eight months or longer, down to weeks or even days. They employed production line and prefabrication techniques such as those used in shipyards today. The total number of dry-cargo ships built in the United States in a 15-year period just before the war was a grand total of two. During the war, thousands of Liberty ships and Victory ships were built, many of them in shipyards that didn't exist before the war. And, they were built by a workforce consisting largely of women and other inexperienced workers who had never seen a ship before (or even the ocean).

Worldwide shipbuilding industry

After World War II, shipbuilding (which encompasses the shipyards, the marine equipment manufacturers, and many related service and knowledge providers) grew as an important and strategic industry in a number of countries around the world. This importance stems from:
 The large number of skilled workers required directly by the shipyard, along with supporting industries such as steel mills, railroads and engine manufacturers; and
 A nation's need to manufacture and repair its own navy and vessels that support its primary industries

Historically, the industry has suffered from the absence of global rules  and a tendency towards (state-supported) over-investment due to the fact that shipyards offer a wide range of technologies, employ a significant number of workers, and generate income as the shipbuilding market is global.

Japan used shipbuilding in the 1950s and 1960s to rebuild its industrial structure; South Korea started to make shipbuilding a strategic industry in the 1970s, and China is now in the process of repeating these models with large state-supported investments in this industry. Conversely, Croatia is privatising its shipbuilding industry.

As a result, the world shipbuilding market suffers from over-capacities, depressed prices (although the industry experienced a price increase in the period 2003–2005 due to strong demand for new ships which was in excess of actual cost increases), low profit margins, trade distortions and widespread subsidisation. All efforts to address the problems in the OECD have so far failed, with the 1994 international shipbuilding agreement never entering into force and the 2003–2005 round of negotiations being paused in September 2005 after no agreement was possible. After numerous efforts to restart the negotiations these were formally terminated in December 2010.  The OECD's Council Working Party on Shipbuilding (WP6) will continue its efforts to identify and progressively reduce factors that distort the shipbuilding market.

Where state subsidies have been removed and domestic industrial policies do not provide support in high labor cost countries, shipbuilding has gone into decline. The British shipbuilding industry is a prime example of this with its industries suffering badly from the 1960s. In the early 1970s British yards still had the capacity to build all types and sizes of merchant ships but today they have been reduced to a small number specialising in defence contracts, luxury yachts and repair work. Decline has also occurred in other European countries, although to some extent this has reduced by protective measures and industrial support policies. In the US, the Jones Act (which places restrictions on the ships that can be used for moving domestic cargoes) has meant that merchant shipbuilding has continued, albeit at a reduced rate, but such protection has failed to penalise shipbuilding inefficiencies. The consequence of this is that contract prices are far higher than those of any other country building oceangoing ships.

Present day shipbuilding
Beyond the 2000s, the three East Asian manufacturing powerhouses, China, South Korea and Japan, have dominated world shipbuilding by completed gross tonnage.  China State Shipbuilding Corporation, China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, Hyundai Heavy Industries, Samsung Heavy Industries, Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering and Imabari Shipbuilding supply most of the global market for large container, bulk carrier, tanker and Ro-ro ships. During the early 2020s, Chinese shipbuilders saw an increase in orders as operators demand greener fleets.

When referring to the type, then China, South Korea and Japan are the producing countries of the carrier ships as mentioned above. While Italy, France, Finland and Germany and other country in Europe are the makers of cruise ships (the most), icebreakers, crane vessel and so on.

The market share of European ship builders began to decline in the 1960s as they lost work to Japan in the same way Japan most recently lost their work to South Korea and China. Over the four years from 2007, the total number of employees in the European shipbuilding industry declined from 150,000 to 115,000. In 2022, some key shipbuilders in Europe are Fincantieri, Damen Group, Naval Group and BAE Systems.

The output of the United States also underwent a similar change. The US is ranked the 10th largest shipbuilder worldwide. The top companies that build large naval vessels, such as aircraft carriers and frigates, include Huntington Ingalls, Bollinger and General Dynamics. In the small to medium military vessels category, key shipbuilders include Vigor Industrial, and VT Halter Marine. As the US Navy is shifting to a new fleet architecture that is more widely distributed, Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) development is rapidly propelled to higher priority. Key strategic Program of Record includes prototyping and construction of up to 9 MUSVs, for which a sole contract was awarded to L3Harris Technologies, who partnered with Swiftships to build the MUSVs.

2018 Defense Department initiated Overlord Program, and developed USV Prototypes 1 (NOMAD) and 2 (RANGER). Both of them took part in multiple fleet level exercises and demonstrations, traveled 28,982 nautical miles in autonomous mode, and tested numerous payloads. Nomam, formerly known as Riley Claire, is a converted offshore patrol vessel, which was built by Swiftships. The objective of the Ghost Fleet Overlord program is to convert large, commercial vessels to autonomous systems.

Modern shipbuilding manufacturing techniques

Modern shipbuilding makes considerable use of prefabricated sections. Entire multi-deck segments of the hull or superstructure will be built elsewhere in the yard, transported to the building dock or slipway, then lifted into place. This is known as "block construction". The most modern shipyards pre-install equipment, pipes, electrical cables, and any other components within the blocks, to minimize the effort needed to assemble or install components deep within the hull once it is welded together.

Ship design work, also called naval architecture, may be conducted using a ship model basin. Previously, loftsmen at the mould lofts of shipyards were responsible for taking the dimensions, and details from drawings and plans and translating this information into templates, battens, ordinates, cutting sketches, profiles, margins and other data. However, since the early 1970s computer-aided design became normal for the shipbuilding design and lofting process.

Modern ships, since roughly 1940, have been produced almost exclusively of welded steel. Early welded steel ships used steels with inadequate fracture toughness, which resulted in some ships suffering catastrophic brittle fracture structural cracks (see problems of the Liberty ship). Since roughly 1950, specialized steels such as ABS Steels with good properties for ship construction have been used. Although it is commonly accepted that modern steel has eliminated brittle fracture in ships, some controversy still exists. Brittle fracture of modern vessels continues to occur from time to time because grade A and grade B steel of unknown toughness or fracture appearance transition temperature (FATT) in ships' side shells can be less than adequate for all ambient conditions.

As modern shipbuilding panels on a panel line become lighter and thinner, the laser hybrid welding technique is utilized. The laser hybrid blend focuses a higher energy beam on the material to be joined, allowing it to keyhole with a much higher depth to width ratio than comparative traditional welding techniques. Typically a MIG process trails the keyhole providing filler material for the weld joint. This allows for very high penetration without excessive heat input from decreased weld metal deposited leading to less distortion and welding at higher travel speeds.

Ship repair industry

All ships need repair work at some point in their working lives. A part of these jobs must be carried out under the supervision of the classification society.

A lot of maintenance is carried out while at sea or in port by ship's crew.
However, a large number of repair and maintenance works can only be carried out while the ship is out of commercial operation, in a ship repair yard.

Prior to undergoing repairs, a tanker must dock at a deballasting station for completing the tank cleaning operations and pumping ashore its slops (dirty cleaning water and hydrocarbon residues).

See also
 Ancient shipbuilding techniques
 Boat building
 List of shipbuilders and shipyards
 List of the largest shipbuilding companies
 List of Russian marine engineers
 Ships of ancient Rome

References

Notes

External links
 Shipbuilding Picture Dictionary
 U.S. Shipbuildingextensive information about the U.S. shipbuilding industry, including over 500 pages of U.S. shipyard construction records
 Shipbuilding News
 Bataviawerf – the Historic Dutch East Indiaman Ship YardShipyard of the historic ships Batavia and Zeven Provincien in the Netherlands, since 1985 here have been great ships reconstructed using old construction methods.
 Photos of the reconstruction of the Dutch East Indiaman Batavia Photo web site about the reconstruction of the Batavia on the shipyard Batavia werf, a 16th-century East Indiaman in the Netherlands. The site is constantly expanding with more historic images as in 2010 the shipyard celebrates its 25th year.

Naval architecture

Shipbuilding


The year 2003 in architecture involved some significant architectural events and new buildings.

Events
 July 1 – Taipei 101 is topped out to become the tallest building in the world.
 December 20 – Triumph-Palace apartment building in Moscow becomes the highest building in Europe.
 date unknown
 Daniel Libeskind's design, entitled Memory Foundations, is accepted for the World Trade Center site in New York.
 Demolition of the Department of the Environment Building (completed 1971) at Marsham Street, Westminster, London. A new five storey glass-faced Home Office building is being erected in its place.
 Nathaniel Kahn's film, My Architect: A Son's Journey, is nominated for the 2003 Academy Award for Documentary Feature.

Buildings and structures

Buildings opened

January 26 — Friedman Wrestling Center at Cornell University opens, designed by CannonDesign. Friedman is said to be "the first arena in the nation built solely for [wrestling]."
 February 8 – New Salt Lake City Public Library (Utah), USA, designed by Moshe Safdie and VCBO Architecture.
 February 14 – L'Oceanogràfic marine park in Valencia, Spain, designed by Félix Candela, Alberto Domingo and Carlos Lázaro.
 March 30 – Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge across the Charles River in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, a cable-stayed bridge designed by Christian Menn, Theodore Zoli (from HNTB), W. Denney Pate (from FIGG) and Ruchu Hsu with Parsons Brinckerhoff, is opened northbound (southbound December 20).
 May – Fashion and Textile Museum in the London borough of Bermondsey, a warehouse conversion by Ricardo Legorreta.
 May 10 – Christchurch Art Gallery in New Zealand, designed by the Buchan Group.
 July 8 – Oscar Niemeyer Museum (Novo Museu) reopens in Curitiba, Brazil, originally designed by Oscar Niemeyer.
 September 4 – Selfridges store in Birmingham, England, designed by Czech-born British architect Jan Kaplický of Future Systems.
 September – Maggie's Centre, Dundee, Scotland, a drop-in cancer care centre; Frank Gehry's first work in the United Kingdom.
 October 23 – Walt Disney Concert Hall, designed by Frank Gehry, in Los Angeles, California, USA.
 December 30 – Estádio Municipal de Braga, Portugal, designed by Eduardo Souto de Moura.

Buildings completed

 Auditorio de Tenerife in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, designed by Santiago Calatrava
 Centre for Mathematical Sciences (Cambridge), England, designed by Edward Cullinan Architects.
 Corrour Lodge, Inverness-shire, Scotland, designed by Moshe Safdie.
 The Doughnut (Government Communications Headquarters), near Cheltenham, England.
 Eleanor Roosevelt College, University of California, San Diego, designed by Moshe Safdie.
 Kamačnik Bridge, Gorski Kotar, Croatia, designed by Zlatko Šavor and built by Konstruktor.
 Kista Science Tower, Stockholm, Sweden.
 Schaulager, Münchenstein, Switzerland, designed by Herzog & de Meuron.
 Pantages Tower, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, designed by Moshe Safdie and Core Architects.
 Park Pobedy station in the Moscow Metro system.
 Zeughaus Wing of Deutsches Historisches Museum, designed by I. M. Pei, opens in Berlin.
 Peabody Essex Museum new wing, designed by Moshe Safdie, opens in Salem, Massachusetts.
 Latino Cultural Center in Dallas, Texas, designed by Ricardo Legorreta.
 Taipei Treasure Hill designed by Marco Casagrande.
 Keller Estate Winery in Petaluma, California, designed by Ricardo Legorreta.
 Oare Pavilion in Wiltshire, England, designed by I. M. Pei.
 Black rubber house, Dungeness beach, Kent, England, designed by Simon Conder Associates.
 Pie house in Deerfield, Illinois.
 Torre Mayor, the tallest building in Mexico (2003–present).

Awards

 Architecture Firm Award – The Miller Hull Partnership
 Alvar Aalto Medal – Rogelio Salmona
 Driehaus Prize – Léon Krier
 Emporis Skyscraper Award – 30 St Mary Axe
 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture (Mies van der Rohe Prize) – Zaha Hadid for Car Park and Terminus Hoenheim North
 Grand Prix de l'urbanisme – Michel Corajoud
 Mies van der Rohe Prize – Zaha Hadid
 Praemium Imperiale Architecture Laureate – Rem Koolhaas
 Pritzker Prize – Jørn Utzon
 Prix de l'Équerre d'Argent – Yves Lion and Claire Piguet, French Embassy in Beirut
 RAIA Gold Medal – Peter Corrigan
 RIAS Award for Architecture – Sutherland Hussey Architects for An Turas Ferry Shelter, Tiree
 RIBA Royal Gold Medal – Rafael Moneo
 Stirling Prize – Herzog & de Meuron, Laban dance centre
 Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture – Tod Williams and Billie Tsien
 Twenty-five Year Award – Design Research Headquarters Building

Deaths
 March 3 – Peter Smithson, English architect (born 1923)
 March 6 – Sam Scorer, English architect (born 1923)
 April 10 – Abraham Zabludovsky, Polish-born Mexican architect (born 1924)
 May 5 – Sir Philip Powell, English architect (born 1921)
 May 27 – Geoffrey Bawa, Sri Lankan architect (born 1919)
 August 10 – Cedric Price, English architect (born 1934)

See also
Timeline of architecture

References

21st-century architecture

2003 in architecture


Siobhan MacGowan (born in 1963) is the author of two novels, The Trial of Lotta Rae (May 2022) and The Graces (June 2023). Living in Ireland, she has also worked in journalism and the music business. She is the sister of Shane MacGowan, lead singer of the Irish group The Pogues.

The Pogues
When The Pogues started out as "Pogue Mahone" in the early 1980s, MacGowan designed posters and flyers to advertise their gigs.  She also worked for The Pogues in 1988, editing and writing their fanzine, 'Ordnahone'.

Music
In 1988, MacGowan moved to Dublin, Ireland and formed a band called The Frantic. The Frantic performed MacGowan's songs around such venues as The Rock Garden, The Baggot Inn and the Olympia Theatre. She also supported Hazel O'Connor (Breaking Glass) on an Irish tour and Mary Coughlan at the Mean Fiddler in London. In 1992, her video, Chariot, was shown on MTV on Christmas Day. In 1997, she recorded her album, Chariot, for Murgatroid Records, Limerick, which was released in Ireland and the UK in April 1998. She performed at the Point Theatre in Dublin with The Dubliners and Shane MacGowan on Christmas, 1998.

She worked as Van Morrison's personal assistant from 1992-1994, travelling the United States and Europe with him.

In 2002, MacGowan released a second edition of the album Chariot, containing a bonus track: 10. I love him with a Grace

Journalism, press and copywriting
MacGowan worked at the Kent & Sussex Courier (Associated Press) as a copywriter for their advertising pages. She freelanced for various London and Kent based advertising agencies, writing articles for Smash Hits, Record Mirror, and FSM Monthly. She has worked as a freelance journalist, writing for The Irish Times, The Sunday Times and Mizz Magazine. In 1994, she moved to County Tipperary (Ireland) and worked for the Tipperary NR Council Arts Office. She has also undertaken art commissions, Celtic/funky art, under the name of "Cat MacZebedee".  Her story for children, Etain's Dream, was serialised in the 'Nenagh Guardian'. Her debut novel, THE TRIAL OF LOTTA RAE was published by Welbeck in May 2022. Her second novel, THE GRACES, was published in June 2023.

Other work
She has acted in Patrick Bergin's Yeats trilogy, Countess Kathleen.

External links
 Official website
  Twitter

1963 births
Living people
British children's writers
British women singers
British journalists
21st-century British novelists
British people of Irish descent
People from Brighton
The Irish Times people

Siobhan MacGowan


In statistics, gambler's ruin is the fact that a gambler playing a game with negative expected value will eventually go broke, regardless of their betting system.

The concept was initially stated: A persistent gambler who raises their bet to a fixed fraction of the gambler's bankroll after a win, but does not reduce it after a loss, will eventually and inevitably go broke, even if each bet has a positive expected value.

Another statement of the concept is that a persistent gambler with finite wealth, playing a fair game (that is, each bet has expected value of zero to both sides) will eventually and inevitably go broke against an opponent with infinite wealth. Such a situation can be modeled by a random walk on the real number line. In that context, it is probable that the gambler will, with virtual certainty, return to their point of origin, which means going broke, and is ruined an infinite number of times if the random walk continues forever. This is a corollary of a general theorem by Christiaan Huygens, which is also known as gambler's ruin. That theorem shows how to compute the probability of each player winning a series of bets that continues until one's entire initial stake is lost, given the initial stakes of the two players and the constant probability of winning. This is the oldest mathematical idea that goes by the name gambler's ruin, but not the first idea to which the name was applied. The term's common usage today is another corollary to Huygens's result.

The concept has specific relevance for gamblers. However it also leads to mathematical theorems with wide application and many related results in probability and statistics. Huygens's result in particular led to important advances in the mathematical theory of probability.

History
The earliest known mention of the gambler's ruin problem is a letter from Blaise Pascal to Pierre Fermat in 1656 (two years after the more famous correspondence on the problem of points). Pascal's version was summarized in a 1656 letter from Pierre de Carcavi to Huygens:
Let two men play with three dice, the first player scoring a point whenever 11 is thrown, and the second whenever 14 is thrown. But instead of the points accumulating in the ordinary way, let a point be added to a player's score only if his opponent's score is nil, but otherwise let it be subtracted from his opponent's score. It is as if opposing points form pairs, and annihilate each other, so that the trailing player always has zero points. The winner is the first to reach twelve points; what are the relative chances of each player winning?

Huygens reformulated the problem and published it in De ratiociniis in ludo aleae ("On Reasoning in Games of Chance", 1657):
Problem (2-1) Each player starts with 12 points, and a successful roll of the three dice for a player (getting an 11 for the first player or a 14 for the second) adds one to that player's score and subtracts one from the other player's score; the loser of the game is the first to reach zero points. What is the probability of victory for each player? This is the classic gambler's ruin formulation: two players begin with fixed stakes, transferring points until one or the other is "ruined" by getting to zero points. However, the term "gambler's ruin" was not applied until many years later.

The gamblers ruin problem is often applied to gamblers with finite capital playing against a bookie or casino assumed to have "infinite" or much larger amount of capital available. It can then be proven the probability of the gamblers eventual ruin tends to 1 even in the scenario where the game is fair.

Reasons for the four results
Let  be the amount of money a gambler has at his disposal at any moment, and let  be any positive integer. Suppose that he raises his stake to  when he wins, but does not reduce his stake when he loses (this general pattern is not uncommon among real gamblers). Under this betting scheme, it will take at most N losing bets in a row to bankrupt him. If his probability of winning each bet is less than 1 (if it is 1, then he is no gambler), he is virtually certain to eventually lose N bets in  a row, however big N is. It is not necessary that he follow the precise rule, just that he increase his bet fast enough as he wins. This is true even if the expected value of each bet is positive.

The gambler playing a fair game (with probability  of winning) will eventually either go broke or double his wealth. By symmetry, he has a  chance of going broke before doubling his money. If he doubles his money, he repeats this process and he again has a  chance of doubling his money before going broke. After the second process, he has a  chance he has not gone broke yet.  Continuing this way, his chance of not going broke after  processes is , which approaches , and his chance of going broke after  successive processes is  which approaches .

Huygens's result is illustrated in the next section.

The eventual fate of a player at a game with negative expected value cannot be better than the player at a fair game, so he will go broke as well.

Example of Huygens's result

Fair coin flipping
Consider a coin-flipping game with two players where each player has a 50% chance of winning with each flip of the coin. After each flip of the coin the loser transfers one penny to the winner. The game ends when one player has all the pennies.

If there are no other limitations on the number of flips, the probability that the game will eventually end this way is 1. (One way to see this is as follows. Any given finite string of heads and tails will eventually be flipped with certainty: the probability of not seeing this string, while high at first, decays exponentially.  In particular, the players would eventually flip a string of heads as long as the total number of pennies in play, by which time the game must have already ended.)

If player one has n1 pennies and player two n2 pennies, the probabilities  P1 and P2 that players one and two, respectively, will end penniless are:

Two examples of this are if one player has more pennies than the other; and if both players have the same number of pennies.
In the first case say player one  has 8 pennies and player two () were to have 5 pennies then the probability of each losing is:

It follows that even with equal odds of winning the player that starts with fewer pennies is more likely to fail.

In the second case where both players have the same number of pennies (in this case 6) the likelihood of each losing is:

Unfair coin flipping

In the event of an unfair coin, where player one wins each toss with probability p, and player two wins with probability q = 1 − p, then the probability of each ending penniless is:

An argument is that the expected hitting time is finite and so with a Martingale (probability theory), associating the value  with each state so that the expected value of the state is constant, this is the solution to the system of equations:

Alternately, this can be shown as follows: Consider the probability of player 1 experiencing gamblers ruin having started with  amount of money, . Then, using the Law of Total Probability, we have

where W denotes the event that player 1 wins the first bet. Then clearly  and . Also  is the probability that player 1 experiences gambler's ruin having started with  amount of money: ; and  is the probability that player 1 experiences gambler's ruin having started with  amount of money: .

Denoting , we get the linear homogeneous recurrence relation

which we can solve using the fact that  (i.e. the probability of gambler's ruin given that player 1 starts with no money is 1), and  (i.e. the probability of gambler's ruin given that player 1 starts with all the money is 0.) For a more detailed description of the method see e.g. Feller (1970), An introduction to probability theory and its applications, 3rd ed.

N-player ruin problem

The above-described problem (2 players) is a special case of the so-called N-Player Ruin problem.
Here  players with  initial capital  dollars, respectively, play a sequence of (arbitrary) independent games and win and lose certain amounts of dollars from and to each other according to fixed rules.  The sequence of games ends as soon as at least one player is ruined. Standard Markov chain methods can be applied to solve this more general problem in principle, but the computations quickly become prohibitive as soon as the number of players or their initial capitals increase. For  and large initial capitals  the solution can be well approximated by using two-dimensional Brownian motion. (For  this is not possible.)
In practice the true problem is to find the solution for the typical cases of  and limited initial capital.
Swan (2006) proposed an algorithm based on matrix-analytic methods (Folding Algorithm for ruin problems) which significantly reduces the order of the computational task in such cases.

See also

 Fixed-odds betting
 Gambler's conceit
 Gambling
 Gambler's fallacy
 Impossibility of a gambling system
 Kelly criterion
 Martingale (betting system)
 Online gambling
 Risk of ruin
 Volatility tax

Notes

References

Ferguson T. S. Gamblers Ruin in Three Dimensions. Unpublished manuscript: https://www.math.ucla.edu/~tom/

External links
Illustration of Gambler's Ruin
The Gambler's Ruin at MathPages
The Gambler's Ruin Simulation at Wolfram Demonstration Project

Gambling terminology
Probability problems
Causal fallacies
Variants of random walks

Gambler's ruin


Marcel Pauker (rendered in Russian as Марцел Паукер - Martsel Pauker; December 6, 1896, Bucharest – August 16, 1938, Butovo, near Moscow) was a Romanian communist militant and husband of the future Romanian Communist leader Ana Pauker.

During his life, Pauker took a series of pseudonyms, the ones used most being: Burghezul, Herman Gugenheim, Paul Lampart, Luximin, Puiu, Priu, Semionovici Marin, Stepan, and Paul Weiss.

Early life

Born to a secular Jewish family, Marcel Pauker was a polyglot, and noted speaker of Esperanto. He briefly studied engineering in Zürich, before enlisting as an artillery cadet and becoming a Second Lieutenant in 1916 (during World War I).  Between 1919 and 1921, he lived in Switzerland for a second time, receiving his diploma in engineering.

Militancy

In December 1921, Pauker was designated a member of the Provisional Committee of the Communist Party of Romania; in 1922, his position became that of member of the Central Committee and the Politburo, being sent as delegate to the Balkan Communist Federation Conferences in Sofia (June 1922) and Berlin (1923). His activities brought him to the attention of the Romanian authorities: he was arrested and sentenced first to ten years imprisonment, and then to labour for life. Nevertheless, he managed to escape and flee to the Soviet Union in 1925, returning to Romania in 1929. On his arrival he was escorted back to prison, only to be released under the terms of an amnesty. He was yet again arrested in Petroşani, after his activities as an instigator during the Jiu Valley miners' strike of August 1929.

Final years and death
Marcel Pauker got involved in a political fight with Vitali Holostenco, reflecting the struggle between the Bucharest section and that of the Ukrainian SSR that had taken hold of the Party's wing inside the Soviet Union around the proceedings of the 4th Congress in Kharkiv. Again in the Soviet Union, Pauker was reprimanded by the Comintern. Forbidden from contributing to political activities, he was sent to assist as an engineer in the industrial expansion of Magnitogorsk (in western Siberia), a job he undertook between 1930 and 1932. At the same time, Joseph Stalin, whose priority at the time was showing the facade of "unity" within his subject Parties, had Holostenco removed from his position.

In 1935 Pauker was appointed a member of the Secretariat of the Romanian Communist Party. He spent time in Prague until 1937,  when he returned to the Soviet Union. He fell victim to the Great Purge: arrested by the NKVD on March 21, 1937 and held in the infamous Taganka Prison, Marcel Pauker was first interrogated over a year later, being presented with the charge of espionage in favour of Romania. Records show that he finally admitted to the charge (most likely after being subjected to torture). Consequently, he was put on trial, sentenced to death and executed by shooting.

Rehabilitation

Marcel Pauker was rehabilitated by Soviet authorities in 1957 (as part of the De-Stalinization process under Nikita Khrushchev). Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej's rejection of newer Soviet policies prevented this and other such cases from being mirrored in Communist Romania. While Gheorghiu-Dej was exercising a looser control of the society, he was not ready to question most of the Stalinist measures, as these had served to enforce his own rule during the previous decade.

The case was reconsidered under Nicolae Ceauşescu's further distancing measures. Pauker's name was cleared, but mention of his activities and details of his life were kept secret.

Family

Largely thanks to circumstances, Ana Pauker was able to survive her husband's downfall, and she even reached the peak of her political career in the following years.

They had three children together:
Tanio (1921-1922)
Vlad (1926-2016)
Tatiana (1928-2011)

Vlad moved to France.

In 1931 Marcel also fathered a son named Yakov, from his relationship with fellow militant Roza Elbert.

He also had lengthy affairs with Elena Filipovici and Vanda Nicolschi.

Notes

References
Vladimir Tismăneanu, Fantoma lui Gheorghiu-Dej, Editura Univers, 1995.
Dosarele Istoriei, 10/1998

Romanian communists
Comintern people
Executed activists
Deaths by firearm in Russia
Soviet rehabilitations
Romanian Jews
Politicians from Bucharest
1896 births
1938 deaths
Great Purge victims from Romania
Jews executed by the Soviet Union
Jewish socialists
Romanian expatriates in the Soviet Union
International Lenin School alumni
Executed spies
Executed Romanian people
Romanian Esperantists
Executed communists

Marcel Pauker


John W. Parrish  (born November 1, 1939) served as the interim president of Oklahoma Baptist University (OBU), having been appointed on October 12, 2007 after Mark Brister's resignation as OBU president. He began his presidency on November 11, 2007. In his opening address to students, he requested that they use the title "Mister P." when addressing him. This was later parodied by students who called him Master P.

Early years
Parrish was born and raised in Drumright, Oklahoma, where he went through the tenth grade in high School. He then moved with his family to Eureka, Kansas and finished high school. He attended Oklahoma State University (OSU), where he earned a Bachelor of Science in General Business in 1961. He was a member of the Air Force Reserve in 1961-62, then returned to OSU and earned a Master's Degree in Journalism in 1964. He worked briefly for the Southside Times in Tulsa until a college friend told him that there was an opening for an assistant professor of Journalism at OBU.

Career at OBU
Parrish joined the OBU administrative staff in 1964 and retired as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer on November 20, 2002. Serving as the university's director of public relations in the 1960s and 70s, Parrish held several positions at OBU, including assistant professor of journalism, director of alumni and annual giving, assistant vice president for development, vice president for institutional advancement and as executive vice president and chief financial officer.

Parrish is also author of the book The Glory Years of Bison Basketball, a highly detailed review of the OBU dynasty of the mid-1960s, including the 1966 NAIA National Championship season.

Honors and awards
In 2006 Parrish was elected president of the Oklahoma Higher Education Heritage Society.

On February 10, 2010, OBU awarded Parrish an honorary doctor of humanities degrees during the Founders' Day chapel service.

He was inducted into the Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame on October 14, 2014.

Parrish and his wife, Mary Kay (Higginbotham) Parrish, have two children, John Michael and Robin.

Notes

References

External links
 Profile at Oklahoma Baptist University

Presidents of Oklahoma Baptist University
1939 births
Living people
American chief financial officers
Oklahoma State University alumni
Oklahoma Baptist University faculty
Journalists from Oklahoma
People from Shawnee, Oklahoma

John W. Parrish


Fannie "Frantic Fay" Crawford Thomas (September 14, 1922 – July 6, 1978) was an American pianist and vocalist. She recorded for Exclusive Records in the 1949.

Life and career
Thomas was born Fannie Crawford in Memphis, Tennessee. As a teenager, her family moved to Detroit, Michigan. Her father Elijah Crawford and her brother Bayless Crawford were cooks. On March 12, 1940, she married George Thomas in Cleveland, Ohio.

Thomas began performing at Detroit's Four Horsemen Club in 1940. She was discovered by Earl Carroll, who gave her the stage name "Frantic Fay." Thomas was featured with Earl Carroll's Vanities in the spring of 1944 and played eight months at Harry's Show Bar in Detroit. She was managed by Delbridge & Gorrell. Thomas played piano by ear. Billboard magazine described her style as "individual, with a jive touch," adding that "she is at her very best in an interpretation of the deep blues." Through the 1940s, she had appearances at hotels and bars around the country.

In 1949, Thomas recorded four songs for Leon René's Exclusive Records in Los Angeles: "I'm In Town," "Waga-Waga," "I Don't Want Your Money, Honey," and "Lover Man." Her first single "Waga-Waga" / "I Don't Want Your Money, Honey," was released in June 1949. Reviewing the single, Billboard wrote: "New thrush-88er packs a dynamite live style with something of Rose Murphy and Nellie Lutcher and plenty of her own. Her piano work is of pro caliber, too. The record "I Don't Want Your Money, Honey" was Cash Box magazine's Race Disk O' The Week. They noted that track was a "surefire clickeroo if ever there was one. Jut listen to this gal skim thru the 88's and gurgle, chuckle, giggle and sing, and make more sounds than you've heard in a month of Sundays." The single did well in local markets, but it did not chart nationally. Her second single, "I'm In Town" / "Lover Man," was released in September 1949. Later that year, Thomas had another session with Exclusive and recorded four more songs. The single "Thinking Of You" / "I Lost My Sugar In Salt Lake City" was released in December. That month, Exclusive declared bankruptcy and ceased operations in January 1950. Thomas never released another record.

In the 1950s, Thomas performed gigs around California. She married Lonnie I. Riggs in 1954. By the 1960s, Thomas had relocated back to Detroit; she performed around the Midwest. She died in Detroit on July 6, 1978. Years after her death, Thomas' songs were featured in the soundtracks of a few movies. "I'm In Town" was used in the films Men Of Honor (2000), Lonely Hearts (2006), and Trumbo (2015). One of her unreleased Exclusive tracks, "I Only Want You" was used in the films Lovelife (1997) and Second Skin (2000).

Discography

 1949: "Waga-Waga" / "I Don't Want Your Money, Honey" (Exclusive 109x)
 1949: "I'm In Town" / "Lover Man" (Exclusive 126x)
 1949: "Thinking Of You" / "I Lost My Sugar In Salt Lake City" (Exclusive 145x)

References

External links

1922 births
1978 deaths
Musicians from Memphis, Tennessee
Musicians from Detroit
20th-century American pianists
African-American jazz pianists
American women jazz singers
American jazz singers
Exclusive Records artists
20th-century African-American women singers
20th-century American women pianists

"Frantic" Fay Thomas


There have been three baronetcies created for persons with the surname Wilmot, one in the Baronetage of Ireland and two in the Baronetage of Great Britain. One creation (of Chaddesden) is extant as of 2008.

The Wilmot Baronetcy, of Witney in the County of Oxford, was created in the Baronetage of Ireland on 1 October 1621 for Arthur Wilmot. The title became extinct on his death in 1629.  He lived at Wield, Hampshire and was uncle of Charles, Viscount Wilmot to whom he left most of his estate, while also providing for Dorothy Waringe wife of Arnold Waringe, who was probably his natural daughter.

The Wilmot Baronetcy, of Chaddesden in the County of Derby, was created in the Baronetage of Great Britain on 15 February 1759 for Edward Wilmot, Physician to the Army and Physician-in-Ordinary to King George II and King George III. The third and fourth Baronets served as High Sheriff of Derbyshire in 1803 and 1852 respectively. The fifth Baronet represented Derbyshire in the House of Commons.

The Wilmot Baronetcy, of Osmaston in the County of Derby, was created in the Baronetage of Great Britain on 10 October 1772 for Robert Wilmot, Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The second Baronet was High Sheriff of Derbyshire in 1796. The third Baronet, Sir Robert Wilmot-Horton, was a statesman who was Member of Parliament for Newcastle-under-Lyme and served as Governor of Ceylon. The fourth Baronet was high sheriff of Derbyshire in 1846. The title became extinct on the death of the sixth Baronet in 1931.

The Wilmot baronets of Chaddesden and Osmaston both share a common ancestry with the Eardley-Wilmot baronets of Berkswell Hall.

Wilmot baronets, of Witney (1621)
Sir Arthur Wilmot, 1st Baronet (died 1629)

Wilmot baronets, of Chaddesden (1759)

Sir Edward Wilmot, 1st Baronet (1693–1786)
Sir Robert Mead Wilmot, 2nd Baronet (1731–1793)
Sir Robert Wilmot, 3rd Baronet (1765–1842)
Sir Henry Sacheverell Wilmot, 4th Baronet (1801–1872)
Sir Henry Wilmot, 5th Baronet (1831–1901)
Sir Ralph Henry Sacheverell Wilmot, 6th Baronet (1875–1918)
Sir Arthur Ralph Wilmot, 7th Baronet (1909–1942)
Sir Robert Arthur Wilmot, 8th Baronet (1939–1974)
Sir Henry Robert Wilmot, 9th Baronet (born 1967)

Wilmot baronets, of Osmaston (1772)
Sir Robert Wilmot, 1st Baronet (c. 1708–1772)
Sir Robert Wilmot, 2nd Baronet (c. 1752–1834)
Sir Robert John Wilmot-Horton, 3rd Baronet (1784–1841)
Sir Robert Edward Wilmot, 4th Baronet (1808–1880)
Sir George Lewis Wilmot-Horton, 5th Baronet (1825–1887)
Sir Robert Rodney Wilmot, 6th Baronet (1853–1931)

See also
Eardley-Wilmot baronets

Notes

References
Kidd, Charles, Williamson, David (editors). Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage (1990 edition). New York: St Martin's Press, 1990,

Baronetcies in the Baronetage of Great Britain
Extinct baronetcies in the Baronetage of Ireland
Extinct baronetcies in the Baronetage of Great Britain
Baronetcies created with special remainders
1621 establishments in Ireland
1759 establishments in Great Britain

Wilmot baronets


Giant Markets, also known as Giant Food Markets, was a supermarket chain based in Binghamton, New York. Founded in 1933 by Metrie and George Akel, it was the first self-service supermarket in New York. The company eventually employed over 1,000 employees and operated twelve supermarkets in the Greater Binghamton area. Giant sold their franchise to Weis Markets in August 2009.

Buy out
On Thursday, May 21, 2009, Giant Markets was bought by Weis Markets. According to notices received by Giant associates, as of August 23, 2009 their employment ended at Giant Markets, and most of the 1,100 employees were expected to have jobs at Weis. However, many workers were laid off by Weis Markets.

On Wednesday, August 12, 2009, Giant Markets announced that it was closing its store at 56 Main Street in Binghamton effective Saturday, August 15 at 6:00pm, one week prior to the takeover date. All associates at that store were transferred to other Giant Markets locations. The store closure is a decision made by Weis Markets as part of the buyout (it is now a Family Dollar).

Giant Markets formerly in Binghamton, NY,  and the successor Weis Markets in New York, is separate from the larger Giant Food Stores LLC supermarket chain, based in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, that is a subsidiary of European grocery conglomerate Ahold Delhaize.

References

External links
Giant Food Markets of Broome County, New York

Retail companies established in 1933
Retail companies disestablished in 2009
Defunct supermarkets of the United States
Companies based in New York (state)
Binghamton, New York
Companies based in Binghamton, New York

Giant Markets


A Cellarful of Noise is the title of Brian Epstein's 1964 autobiography. His assistant, Derek Taylor, was the ghostwriter of the book, which describes the early days of The Beatles, whom Epstein managed.

Epstein asked John Lennon what he thought the book should be called, and Lennon suggested "Queer Jew". Lennon later was quoted as saying that the book should have been titled "A Cellarful of Boys" in reference to Epstein's homosexuality.

In the 1978 film All You Need Is Cash, a book by Leggy Mountbatten—the manager of the Rutles and a parody of Epstein—is titled A Cellarful of Goys.

The phrase is also in the lyrics of Petula Clark's 1965 hit "I Know a Place".  Harry Shearer "dramatically reproduced" quotations from this book for the  music documentary Pop Chronicles.

The book was reprinted by Souvenir Press with an introduction by Craig Brown in 2021.

Notes

References

External links
Brianepstein.com page on Cellarful

1964 non-fiction books
Books about the Beatles
British autobiographies
Music autobiographies
English-language books
Souvenir Press books

A Cellarful of Noise


The 1956 Progressive Conservative leadership election was held to choose a leader for the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.  The convention was held at the Ottawa Coliseum in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The convention began on December 13, 1956 with voting occurring on December 14 when John Diefenbaker was elected the new leader.

Background
The ailing George A. Drew had taken a leave of absence from his duties as Leader of the Opposition for much of 1956 due to a nearly fatal attack of meningitis. After eight years as party leader, he announced his resignation in the fall of 1956 and a leadership convention was announced for December in Ottawa.

Candidates
John Diefenbaker, 61, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Lake Centre and then Prince Albert, Saskatchewan since 1940, announced his third bid for the leadership having run unsuccessfully in 1942 and 1948.
Donald Fleming, 51, MP for the Toronto riding of Eglinton since 1945, had run in the 1948 leadership election.
E. Davie Fulton, 40, MP for Kamloops, British Columbia since 1945, was running for leadership for the first time.

Declined
 John Borden Hamilton, 43, MP for the Toronto-area riding of York West since a 1954 by-election, considered running but decided against it.
 George Hees, 46, MP for Broadview since 1950, took soundings about a run, but ultimately dropped out and supported Diefenbaker.
 William Earl Rowe, 62, MP for Dufferin—Simcoe since 1925, and the party's interim leader since Drew's resignation. Though there was some speculation that he might seek to remain as permanent leader until the next federal election, he publicly disclaimed a leadership run before the convention, and quietly supported Fleming's campaign.
 Sidney Earle Smith, 59, President of the University of Toronto since 1945. While several prominent Tories sounded him out about the possibility of running, he decided he had too little experience of electoral politics to run for such a prominent position.

Convention
The convention was opened by Ottawa mayor Charlotte Whitton with Nova Scotia Premier Robert Stanfield, a future party leader, giving the keynote address.

Diefenbaker was nominated by New Brunswick Premier Hugh John Flemming and British Columbia MP George Pearkes. Diefenbaker's failure to have a French speaker as one of his nominees reportedly hurt him with Quebec delegates. They held a meeting and considered supporting one of Diefenbaker's opponents en masse, of which Fleming hoped to be the beneficiary.

The convention supported policies to extend funding for veterans who lacked pensions, a health insurance plan, a new Canadian flag, tax cuts, subsidies for wheat exports, support for NATO and the United Nations, and to remove the responsibilities for broadcast regulation from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and instead create an independent regulator. An attempt to remove the word "Progressive" from the party's name was rejected.

Voting
At the time of Drew's resignation, none of the three ultimately-declared candidates enjoyed the universal support of the party's membership; Diefenbaker's western populist stances were seen by some as too reminiscent of those of unpopular former leader John Bracken, Fleming had been a harsh critic of Drew (who was still personally well-liked among much of the party), hurting his support in his native Ontario, while Fulton was generally considered too inexperienced to be a serious contender. Still, after late attempts to draft interim leader William Earl Rowe and University of Toronto president Sidney Smith both failed, Diefenbaker emerged as the clear favourite due to his being the most experienced of the three candidates, and for mounting an energetic speaking campaign across the country.

As expected, the western provinces heavily favoured Diefenbaker, while Quebec backed Fleming. Ontario was thus left as the key vote, and while Drew could probably have swung the vote of his native province, and thereby victory towards either of the two frontrunners (while the unofficial tradition was for outgoing Tory leaders to remain neutral in the leadership contest to succeed them, Drew still held considerable influence behind the scenes), he ultimately did not do so. The Ontario vote thus came down behind Diefenbaker, earning him a decisive victory on the first ballot.

References

1956
Progressive Conservative leadership convention
Progressive Conservative leadership convention
Progressive Conservative leadership convention


Sándor Erkel (2 January 1846 – 14 October 1900)  (Hungarian: Erkel Sándor) was a Hungarian composer, conductor and director of the Hungarian State Opera.

Biography
Born in Buda, Erkel was the youngest son of the famous Hungarian composer, Ferenc Erkel. He first studied music with his father; later his teacher was another Hungarian composer, Mihály Mosonyi.

He started his career just as an orchestra musician of the National Theatre in Pest playing timpani; he was also the dulcimer soloist at the premiere of his father's opera, the Bánk bán. Later he became the conductor of the theatre's orchestra, and at the age of thirty in 1876, he was appointed the music director of the ensemble. In 1884, Erkel became the music director of the newly established Hungarian State Opera (1884–1886), – its founding director was his father, Ferenc – premiering Hungarian and foreign operas.

Erkel accepted the chairman-conductor position of the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra in 1875, a post he held until 1900. Johannes Brahms premiered his Piano concerto no. 2. with the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra on 9 November 1881 in Budapest, with Erkel as conductor.

Erkel died unexpectedly in Békéscsaba on 14 October 1900. As a composer his oeuvre is relatively small, including orchestral and choral works. His only opera, Csobánc, was premiered on 13 December 1865.

References

Sources
 Szabolcsi Bence - Tóth Aladár: Zenei lexikon,  Zeneműkiadó Vállalat, 1965. I. p. 576.
 GOING OUT GUIDE by  Richard F. Shepard ,  November  11, 1981,  The New York Times
 Magyar életrajzi lexikon – Erkel Sándor
Vasárnapi Ujság, 1900/42

Hungarian male conductors (music)
Hungarian composers
Hungarian male composers
19th-century composers
People from Buda
1846 births
1900 deaths
19th-century male musicians
Burials at Kerepesi Cemetery

Sándor Erkel


A sow bug or woodlouse is a small land arthropod (jointed-legged animal). They are often confused with centipedes, millipedes or insects, but are actually crustaceans. They have fourteen legs and breathe through gills. Because of the gills, woodlice need water in the air around them. They mostly eat dead plants, and are considered helpful, because they act as "garbage collectors." Some species can roll up into a ball when in danger. In such position, their hard shell faces out, protecting the softer parts of the body.

Sow bugs do not look like shrimps or crabs, although they are closely related.

isopods

Sow bug


In aviation, the term tractor configuration refers to an  aircraft constructed in the standard configuration with its engine mounted with the propeller in front of it so that the aircraft is "pulled" through the air. Oppositely, the pusher configuration places the airscrew behind and propels the aircraft forward. Through common usage, the word "propeller" has come to mean any airscrew, whether it actually propels or pulls the plane.

In the early years of powered aviation both tractor and pusher designs were common. However, by the midpoint of the First World War, interest in pushers declined and the tractor configuration dominated. Today, propeller-driven aircraft are assumed to be tractors unless it is stated otherwise.

Origins
The first airplane to have a "tractor" configuration was the Goupy No.2 (first flight on 11 March 1909) designed by Mario Calderara and financed by Ambroise Goupy at the French firm Blériot Aéronautique. When it was constructed, it was the fastest airplane in existence. At that time a distinction was made between a propeller ("pushes the machine", akin to a ship's propeller) and a tractor-[air]screw ("pulls the machine through the air"). The Royal Flying Corps called the tractors "Bleriot type" after Louis Bleriot to distinguish them from pushers, or "Farman type".

World War I military aviation
The downside of a single-engine tractor aircraft was that it was initially impossible to fire a gun through the propeller arc without striking the propeller blades. Early solutions included mounting guns (rifles or machine guns) to fire around the propeller arc, either at an angle to the side – which made aiming difficult – or on the top wing of a biplane so that the bullets passed over the propeller arc.

The first system to fire through the propeller was developed by French engineer Eugene Gilbert for Morane-Saulnier, and involved fitting metal "deflector wedges" to the propeller blades of a Morane-Saulnier L monoplane. It was employed with immediate success by French aviator Roland Garros and was also used on at least one Sopwith Tabloid of the Royal Naval Air Service.

A more workable solution was a gun synchronizer, which utilized a synchronization gear developed by aircraft pioneer Anthony Fokker and fitted to the Fokker E.I monoplane in 1915. The first British "tractor" to be specifically designed to be fitted with synchronization gear was the Sopwith 1½ Strutter which did not enter service until early 1916.

Other solutions to avoiding the propeller arc include passing the gun's barrel through the propeller's hub or spinner  – first used in production military aircraft with the World War I French SPAD S.XII – or mounting guns in the wings. The latter solution was generally used from the early 1930s until the beginning of the jet age.

References

See also
Pusher configuration
Push-pull configuration

Aircraft configurations

Tractor configuration


Devon Wills (born March 28, 1984) is an American women's lacrosse player. Having played with the Dartmouth Big Green at the collegiate level, she would become the first female player to sign a contract with the New York Lizards of Major League Lacrosse.
From 2007-13, Wills was a member of the United States national team. In 2016, she became the first-ever draft pick of the Long Island Sound, one of four charter franchises in the United Women's Lacrosse League.

Playing career

NCAA
Named the Ivy League Rookie of the Year in 2003, Wills was also named to the All-Ivy League second-team notice. Wills participated in the 2003 and 2004 NCAA quarterfinals in 2003 and 2004. In 2005, Dartmouth qualified for the national semifinals. In her senior season, Wills was named team captain as the team appeared in the 2006 NCAA national championship game.
During her Dartmouth career, Wills also qualified for a spot on the US national development team.

USA Lacrosse
One of Wills' first experiences with the US national team included a roster spot on the Prague Cup Touring Team in 2008. With the US national team, Wills would capture a pair of gold medals in the FIL World Cup (2009, 2013).
In the aftermath of the 2009 FIL World Cup, Wills logged a 6.69 goals against average and a 46.6 save percentage. Wills was recognized as the Player of the Match in the championship game. She would log eight saves in the 8-7 championship win over Australia. At the 2013 World Cup in Oshawa, Ontario (located east of Toronto), Wills started all seven games. Overall, she would post a goals against average of 5.58. Wills was named to the training squad that shall prepare for the 2017 edition of the FIL World Cup.

UWLX
Selected by the Long Island Sound with their first pick in the 2016 UWLX Draft, Wills would gain the start in the first game in franchise history. In addition, said game was also the first in UWLX history. Opposing the Baltimore Ride, Long Island prevailed by a 13-12 tally. Of note, Wills allowed the first goal in UWLX history to Beth Glaros, while also registering the first win in league history.

Coaching career
Upon graduating from Dartmouth, Wills remained with the program serving as an assistant coach from 2007-08. Serving in the capacities of both defensive coordinator and recruiting coordinator, she also helped to start the Dartmouth Winter Lacrosse Camp.
In 2010, Wills joined the University of Denver as a volunteer assistant in 2010. During the season, the Pioneers enjoyed a 13-5 record, qualifying for the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation finals. In 2011, she would be appointed to a full-time assistant position on the coaching staff.
Joining the USC Trojans women's lacrosse program in 2013, Wills would become the associate head coach in 2016. Other roles that she occupied with the program included assistant coach, defensive coordinator, and recruiting coordinator. On August 1, 2018, Wills was announced as the new head coach for Harvard Women's Lacrosse.

Statistics
GP = Games Played
GAA = Goals Against Average
PCT = Percentage
W = Wins
L = Losses
GB = Ground Balls

Statistics source

Awards and honors
2003 Ivy League Rookie of the Year
2003 All-Ivy Second Team
2004-06 All-Ivy First Team
2004-06 IWLCA/US Lacrosse All-America second team
2013 FIL World Cup All-World Team
2006, 2009 Women's Lacrosse Award from Sportswomen of Colorado
2016 UWLX All-Star Selection

References

1984 births
American lacrosse players
Women's lacrosse players
Living people
Sportspeople from Colorado
World Games gold medalists
Competitors at the 2017 World Games
Dartmouth Big Green athletes
New York Lizards players
Dartmouth Big Green coaches
Denver Pioneers coaches
USC Trojans women's lacrosse coaches
Harvard Crimson coaches
Lacrosse goaltenders
American lacrosse coaches

Devon Wills


Graupel is a form of precipitation, which is very similar to snow and hail. However, hail falls almost always during severe thunderstorms. Snow falls during blizzards or snowstorms. Graupel often falls in wintry mixes, and usually falls apart during contact.

Severe weather
Precipitation

Graupel


Ars Interpres was an online and in-print international literary journal, originating in Stockholm. It published primarily contemporary English language poetry and English translations of modern Scandinavian and European poetry, as well as articles on poetic translation and other related materials. Ars Interpres also includes reviews, review-essays, interviews, art, and photography. According to their website, it stopped publication in 2012.

The magazine featured fiction, poetry, interviews and essays by such internationally renowned writers as Les Murray, Ruth Padel, Göran Sonnevi, Eamon Grennan, Pia Tafdrup, Seamus Heaney, Giannina Braschi, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Tadeusz Różewicz, Diane di Prima, Regina Derieva, Alicia Ostriker, Dennis Nurkse, Tomas Venclova, Mariela Griffor, John Kinsella, and Gunnar Harding. In addition Ars Interpres published translations of international poetry, new versions of classical poems, and translations of European and Russian poets of the past such as Giacomo Leopardi, Gerrit Achterberg, and Osip Mandelstam.

The journal's staff organised the Ars Interpres annual poetry festival.

See also
List of literary magazines

References

 A New Connection in Stockholm, NY Arts Magazine, May/June 2006
 Show #66: Europa & Show #116:  Ars Interpres, Cross-Cultural Poetics (inside PENNsound - Electronic Poetry Center), 10-29-06

External links
Ars Interpres Web site

2003 establishments in Sweden
2012 disestablishments in Sweden
Biannual magazines
Defunct literary magazines published in Europe
Defunct magazines published in Sweden
Literary magazines published in Sweden
Literary translation magazines
Magazines established in 2003
Magazines disestablished in 2012
Magazines published in Stockholm
Poetry literary magazines
Swedish-language magazines

Ars Interpres