Umberto II (; 15 September 190418 March 1983), was the last King of Italy. He reigned for 34 days, from 9 May 1946 until his formal abdication on 12 June 1946, although he had been the de facto head of state since 1944. Due to his short reign, he was nicknamed the May King ().

Umberto was the only son among the five children of Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and Elena of Montenegro. As heir apparent to the throne, he received a customary military education and pursued a military career afterwards. He commanded an army group during the brief Italian invasion of France shortly before French capitulation. In 1942, he was promoted to Marshal of Italy but was otherwise inactive as an army commander during much of the Second World War. Umberto turned against the war following Italian defeats at Stalingrad and El Alamein, and tacitly supported the ouster of Benito Mussolini.

In 1944, Victor Emmanuel, compromised by his association with Italian fascism and desperate to repair the monarchy's image, transferred most of his powers to Umberto. He transferred his remaining powers to Umberto later in 1944 and named him Lieutenant General (Luogotenente) of the Realm; Victor Emmanuel retained the title of King. As the country prepared for the 1946 Italian institutional referendum on the continuation of the Italian monarchy, Victor Emmanuel abdicated his throne in favour of Umberto, in the hope that his exit might bolster the monarchy. The May 1946 referendum saw voters voting to abolish the monarchy, and Italy was declared a republic days later. Umberto departed the country; he and other male members of the House of Savoy were barred from returning. He lived out the rest of his life in exile in Cascais, on the Portuguese Riviera. He died in Geneva in 1983.

Early life

Umberto was born at the Castle of Racconigi in Piedmont. He was the third child and the only son of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and his wife, Jelena of Montenegro. As such, he became heir apparent upon his birth since the Italian throne was limited to male descendants. Umberto was given the formal military education of a Savoyard prince.

During the crisis of May 1915, when Victor Emmanuel III decided to break the terms of the Triple Alliance by declaring war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he found himself in a quandary as the Italian Parliament was against declaring war; several times, the king discussed abdication with the throne to pass to the 2nd Duke of Aosta instead of Umberto. The British historian Denis Mack Smith wrote that it is not entirely clear why Victor Emmanuel was prepared to sacrifice his 10-year-old son's right to succeed to the throne in favour of the Duke of Aosta.

Umberto was brought up in an authoritarian and militaristic household and was expected to "show an exaggerated deference to his father"; both in private and public, Umberto always had to get down on his knees and kiss his father's hand before being allowed to speak, even as an adult, and he was expected to stand to attention and salute whenever his father entered a room. Like the other Savoyard princes before him, Umberto received a military education that was notably short on politics; Savoyard monarchs customarily excluded politics from their heirs' education with the expectation that they would learn about the art of politics when they inherited the throne.

Umberto was the first cousin of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia. He was accorded the title Prince of Piedmont, which Royal Decree formalised on 29 September 1904. In a 1959 interview, Umberto told the Italian newspaper La Settimana Incom Illustrata that in 1922 his father had felt that appointing Benito Mussolini as Prime Minister was a "justifiable risk".

Career as Prince of Piedmont

State visit to South America, 1924

As Prince of Piedmont, Umberto visited South America, between July and September 1924. With his preceptor, Bonaldi, he went to Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile. This trip was part of the political plan of Fascism to link the Italian people living outside of Italy with their mother country and the interests of the regime.
In Brazil, visits were scheduled to the national capital Rio de Janeiro and the State of São Paulo, where the largest Italian colony in the country lived. However, a major rebellion broke out on 5 July 1924, when Umberto had already departed from Europe, imposing a change in the Royal tour. The prince had to stop in Salvador, capital of Bahia, to supply the ships, going directly to the other countries of South America. On his return, Umberto could only be received in Salvador again. Governor Góis Calmon, the Italian colony and other entities warmly welcomed the heir to the Italian Throne.

Military positions and attempted assassination

Umberto was educated for a military career and in time became the commander-in-chief of the Northern Armies, and then the Southern ones. This role was merely formal, the de facto command belonging to his father, King Victor Emmanuel III, who jealously guarded his power of supreme command from Il Duce, Benito Mussolini. By mutual agreement, Umberto and Mussolini always kept a distance. In 1926, Mussolini passed a law allowing the Fascist Grand Council to decide the succession, though in practice he admitted the prince would succeed his father.

An attempted assassination took place in Brussels on 24 October 1929, the day of the announcement of his betrothal to Princess Marie José. Umberto was about to lay a wreath on the Tomb of the Belgian Unknown Soldier at the foot of the Colonne du Congrès when, with a cry of 'Down with Mussolini!', Fernando de Rosa fired a single shot that missed him.

De Rosa was arrested and, under interrogation, claimed to be a member of the Second International who had fled Italy to avoid arrest for his political views. His trial was a major political event, and although he was found guilty of attempted murder, he was given a light sentence of five years in prison. This sentence caused a political uproar in Italy and a brief rift in Belgian-Italian relations, but in March 1932 Umberto asked for a pardon for de Rosa, who was released after having served slightly less than half his sentence and was eventually killed in the Spanish Civil War.

Visit to Italian Somaliland

In 1928, after the colonial authorities in Italian Somaliland built Mogadishu Cathedral (Cattedrale di Mogadiscio), Umberto made his first publicised visit to Mogadishu, the territory's capital. Umberto made his second publicised visit to Italian Somaliland in October 1934.

Marriage and issue
Umberto was married in the city of Rome on 8 January 1930 to Princess Marie José of Belgium (1906–2001), the daughter of King Albert I of the Belgians and his wife, Queen Elisabeth (née Duchess Elisabeth in Bavaria).

They had four children:
Princess Maria Pia (born 1934)
Prince Vittorio Emanuele (born 1937)
Princess Maria Gabriella (born 1940)
Princess Maria Beatrice (born 1943)

Under the Fascist Regime
Following the Savoyards' tradition ("Only one Savoy reigns at a time"), Umberto was kept apart from active politics until he was named Lieutenant General of the Realm. He made an exception when Adolf Hitler asked for a meeting. This was not considered proper, given the international situation; thereafter, Umberto was more rigorously excluded from political events. In 1935, Umberto supported the war against the Ethiopian Empire, which he called a "legitimate war" that even Giovanni Giolitti would have supported had he still been alive. Umberto wanted to serve in the Ethiopian war, but was prevented from doing so by his father, who did, however, allow four royal dukes to serve in East Africa. Umberto conformed to his father's expectations and behaved like an army officer; the prince obediently got down on his knees to kiss his father's hand before speaking. However, Umberto privately resented what he regarded as a deeply humiliating relationship with his cold and emotionally distant father. Umberto's attitude toward the Fascist regime varied: at times, he mocked the more pompous aspects of Fascism and his father for supporting such a regime, while at other times, he praised Mussolini as a great leader.

Italian expansion during the Second World War
Umberto shared his father's fears that Mussolini's policy of alliance with Nazi Germany was reckless and dangerous, but he made no move to oppose Italy becoming one of the Axis powers. When Mussolini decided to enter the Second World War in June 1940, Umberto hinted to his father that he should use the royal veto to block the Italian declarations of war on Britain and France, but was ignored. After the war, Umberto criticised the decision to enter the war, saying that Victor Emmanuel was too much under "Mussolini's spell" in June 1940 to oppose it. Following Italy's entry into the war, Umberto ostensibly commanded Army Group West, made up of the First, Fourth and the Seventh Army (kept in reserve), which attacked French forces during the Italian invasion of France. Umberto was appointed to this position by his father, who wanted the expected Italian victory to also be a victory for the House of Savoy, as the King feared Mussolini's ambitions. A few hours after France signed an armistice with Germany on 21 June 1940, the Italians invaded France. The Italian offensive was a complete fiasco, with Umberto's reputation as a general only being saved by the fact that the already defeated French signed an armistice with Italy on 24 June 1940. Thus, he could present the offensive as a victory. The Italian plans called for the Regio Esercito to reach the Rhone river valley, which the Italians came nowhere close to reaching, having penetrated only a few kilometres into France.

After the capitulation of France, Mussolini kept Umberto inactive as an Army commander. In the summer of 1940, Umberto was to command a planned invasion of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Still, Mussolini subsequently canceled the invasion of Yugoslavia in favour of invading the Kingdom of Greece. In June 1941, supported by his father, Umberto strongly lobbied to be given command of the Italian expeditionary force sent to the Soviet Union, saying that, as a Catholic, he fully supported Operation Barbarossa and wanted to do battle with the "godless communists". Mussolini refused the request, and instead gave Umberto the responsibility of training the Italian forces scheduled to participate in Operation Hercules, the planned Axis invasion of Malta. On 29 October 1942, he was awarded the rank of Marshal of Italy (Maresciallo d'Italia). During October–November 1942, in the Battle of El Alamein, the Italo-German force was defeated by the British Eighth Army, marking the end of Axis hopes of conquering Egypt. The Axis retreated back into Libya. In November 1942, as part of the Battle of Stalingrad, the Red Army launched Operation Uranus, which saw the Soviets annihilate much of the Italian expeditionary force in Russia and encircle the German 6th Army. The disastrous Italian defeats at Stalingrad and El Alamein turned Umberto against the war and led him to conclude that Italy must sign an armistice before it was too late. In late 1942, Umberto had his cousin, the 4th Duke of Aosta, visit Switzerland to contact the British consulate in Geneva, where he passed on a message to London that the King was willing to sign an armistice with the Allies in exchange for a promise that he be allowed to keep his throne.

Attempts at armistice

In 1943, Marie José, Princess of Piedmont, involved herself in vain attempts to arrange a separate peace treaty between Italy and the United States. Her interlocutor from the Vatican was Giovanni Battista Monsignor Montini, a senior Papal diplomat who later became Pope Paul VI. Her attempts were not sponsored by her father-in-law, the King, and Umberto was not (directly at least) involved in them. Victor Emmanuel III was anti-clerical, distrusting the Catholic Church, and wanted nothing to do with a peace attempt made through Papal intermediaries. More importantly, Victor Emmanuel was proudly misogynistic, holding women in complete contempt as the King believed it to be a scientific fact that the brains of women were significantly more underdeveloped than the brains of men. Victor Emmanuel simply did not believe that Marie José was competent to serve as a diplomat. For all these reasons, the King vetoed Marie José's peace attempt. After her failure – she never met the American agents – she was sent with her children to Sarre, in the Aosta Valley, and isolated from the political life of the Royal House.

In the first half of 1943, as the war continued to go badly for Italy, a number of senior Fascist officials, upon learning that the Allies would never sign an armistice with Mussolini, began to plot his overthrow with the support of the King. Adding to their worries were a number of strikes in Milan starting on 5 March 1943, with the workers openly criticising both the war and the Fascist regime which had led Italy into the war, leading to fears in Rome that Italy was on the brink of revolution. The strike wave in Milan quickly spread to the industrial city of Turin, where the working class likewise denounced the war and Fascism. The fact that during the strikes in Milan and Turin, Italian soldiers fraternised with the striking workers, who used slogans associated with the banned Socialist and Communist parties, deeply worried Italy's conservative establishment. By this point, the successive Italian defeats had so psychologically shattered Mussolini that he become close to being catatonic, staring into space for hours on end and saying the war would soon turn around for the Axis because it had to, leading even his closest admirers to become disillusioned and to begin looking for a new leader. Umberto was seen as supportive of these efforts to depose Mussolini, but as Ciano (who had turned against Mussolini by this point) complained in his diary, the prince was far too passive, refusing to make a move or even state his views unless his father expressed his approval first.

On 10 July 1943, in Operation Husky, the Allies invaded Sicily. Just before the invasion of Sicily, Umberto had gone on an inspection tour of the Italian forces in Sicily and reported to his father that the Italians had no hope of holding Sicily. Mussolini had assured the King that the Regio Esercito could hold Sicily, and the poor performance of the Italian forces defending Sicily helped to persuade the King to finally dismiss Mussolini, as Umberto informed his father that Il Duce had lied to him. On 16 July 1943, the visiting Papal Assistant Secretary of State told the American diplomats in Madrid that King Victor Emmanuel III and Prince Umberto were now hated by the Italian people even more than Mussolini. By this time, many Fascist gerarchi had become convinced that it was necessary to depose Mussolini to save the Fascist system, and on the night of 24–25 July 1943, at a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council, a motion introduced by the gerarchi Dino Grandi to take away Mussolini's powers was approved by a vote of 19 to 8. The fact that the majority of the Fascist Grand Council voted for the motion showed just how disillusioned the Fascist gerarchi had become with Mussolini by the summer of 1943. The intransigent and radical group of Fascists led by the gerarchi Roberto Farinacci, who wanted to continue the war, were only a minority, while the majority of the gerarchi supported Grandi's call to jettison Mussolini as the best way of saving Fascism.

On 25 July 1943, Victor Emmanuel III finally dismissed Mussolini and appointed Marshal Pietro Badoglio, 1st Duke of Addis Abeba, as Prime Minister with secret orders to negotiate an armistice with the Allies. Baron Raffaele Guariglia, the Italian ambassador to Spain, contacted British diplomats to begin the negotiations. Badoglio went about the negotiations halfheartedly while allowing many German forces to enter Italy. The American historian Gerhard Weinberg wrote that Badoglio as Prime Minister "...did almost everything as stupidly and slowly as possible", as he dragged out the secret peace talks going on in Lisbon and Tangier, being unwilling to accept the Allied demand for unconditional surrender. During the secret armistice talks, Badoglio told Count Pietro d'Acquarone that he thought he might get better terms if Victor Emmanuel abdicated in favour of Umberto, complaining that the armistice terms that the King wanted were unacceptable to the Allies. D'Acquarone told Badoglio to keep his views to himself as the King was completely unwilling to abdicate, all the more so as he believed that Umberto was unfit to be monarch.

Partition of Italy
On 17 August 1943, Sicily was taken and the last Axis forces crossed over to the Italian mainland. On 3 September 1943, the British Eighth Army landed on the Italian mainland at Reggio Calabria while the U.S. 5th Army landed at Salerno on 9 September 1943, a few hours after it was announced that Italy had signed an armistice. Adolf Hitler had other plans for Italy, and in response to the Italian armistice ordered Operation Achse on 8 September 1943, as the Germans turned against their Italian allies and occupied all of the parts of Italy not taken by the Allies. In response to the German occupation of Italy, neither Victor Emmanuel nor Marshal Pietro Badoglio made any effort at organised resistance; they instead issued vague instructions to the Italian military and civil servants to do their best and fled Rome during the night of 8–9 September 1943. Not trusting his son, Victor Emmanuel had told Umberto nothing about his attempts to negotiate an armistice nor about his plans to flee Rome if the Germans should occupy it. For the first time in his life, Umberto openly criticised his father, saying the King of Italy should not be fleeing Rome and only reluctantly obeyed his father's orders to go south with him towards the Allied lines. The King and the rest of the Royal Family fled Rome via a car to Ortona to board a corvette, the Baionetta, that took them south. A small riot occurred at the Ortona dock as about 200 senior-ranking Italian military officers, who had abandoned their commands and unexpectedly showed up, begged the King to take them with him. Almost all of them were refused permission to board, making the struggle to get to the head of the queue pointless. With the exceptions of Marshal Enrico Caviglia, General Calvi di Bergolo and General Antonio Sorice, the Italian generals simply abandoned their posts on the night of 8–9 September to try to flee south, which greatly facilitated the German take-over, as the Regio Esercito was left without senior leadership. On the morning of 9 September 1943, Umberto arrived with Victor Emmanuel and Badoglio in Brindisi.

In September 1943, Italy was partitioned between the south of Italy, administered by the Italian government with an Allied Control Commission (ACC) having supervisory powers, while Germany occupied northern and central Italy with a puppet Italian Social Republic (popularly called the Salò Republic), headed by Mussolini holding nominal power. By 16 September 1943, a line had formed across Italy with everything to the north held by the Germans and to the south by the Allies. Because of what Weinberg called the "extraordinary incompetence" of Badoglio, who, like Victor Emmanuel, had not anticipated Operation Achse until it was far too late, thousands of Italian soldiers with no leadership were taken prisoner by the Germans without resisting in the Balkans, France and Italy itself, to be taken off to work as slave labour in factories in Germany, an experience that many did not survive. How Victor Emmanuel mishandled the armistice was to become almost as controversial in Italy as his support for Fascism. Under the terms of the armistice, the ACC had the ultimate power with the Royal Italian Government in the south, being in many ways a similar position to the Italian Social Republic under the Germans. However, as the British historian James Holland noted, the crucial difference was that: "In the south, Italy was now moving closer towards democracy". In the part of Italy under the control of the ACC, which issued orders to the Italian civil servants, freedom of the press, association and expression were restored along with other civil rights and liberties.

During 1943–45, the Italian economy collapsed with much of the infrastructure destroyed, inflation rampant, the black market becoming the dominant form of economic activity, and food shortages reducing much of the population to the brink of starvation in both northern and southern Italy. In 1943–44, the cost of living in southern Italy skyrocketed by 321%, while it was estimated that people in Naples needed 2,000 calories per day to survive while the average Neapolitan was doing well if they consumed 500 calories a day in 1943–44. Naples in 1944 was described as a city without cats or dogs which had all been eaten by the Neapolitans, while much of the female population of Naples turned to prostitution to survive. As dire as the economic situation was in southern Italy, food shortages and inflation were even worse in northern Italy as the Germans carried out a policy of ruthless economic exploitation. Since the war in which Mussolini had involved Italy in 1940 had become such an utter catastrophe for the Italian people by 1943, it had the effect of discrediting all those associated with the Fascist system, including Victor Emmanuel.  In late 1943, Victor Emmanuel stated that that he felt he bore no responsibility for Italy's plight, for appointing Mussolini as Prime Minister in 1922 and for entering the war in 1940. This further increased his unpopularity and led to demands that he abdicate at once.

In northern Italy, a guerrilla war began against the fascists, both Italian and German, with most of the guerrilla units fighting under the banner of the National Liberation Committee (Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale-CLN), who were very strongly left-wing and republican. Of the six parties that made up the CLN, the Communists, the Socialists and the Action Party were republican; the Christian Democrats and the Labour Party were ambiguous on the "institutional question", and only the Liberal Party was committed to preserving the monarchy, though many individual Liberals were republicans. Only a minority of the partisan bands fighting for the CLN were monarchists, and a prince of the House of Savoy led none. After the war, Umberto claimed that he wanted to join the partisans, and only his wartime duties prevented him from doing so. The Italian Royal Court relocated itself to Brindisi in the south of Italy after fleeing Rome. In the fall of 1943, many Italian monarchists, like Benedetto Croce and Count Carlo Sforza, pressed for Victor Emmanuel III to abdicate and for Umberto to renounce his right to the succession in favour of his 6-year-old son, with a regency council to govern Italy as the best hope of saving the monarchy. Count Sforza tried to interest the British members of the ACC in this plan, calling Victor Emmanuel a "despicable weakling" and Umberto "a pathological case", saying neither was qualified to rule Italy. However, given the unwillingness of the King to abdicate, nothing came of it.

At a meeting of the leading politicians from the six revived political parties on 13 January 1944 in Bari, the demand was made that the ACC should force Victor Emmanuel to abdicate to "wash away the shame of the past". Beyond removing Victor Emmanuel, which everyone at the Congress of Bari wanted, the Italian politicians differed, with some calling for a republic to be proclaimed at once, some willing to see Umberto succeed to the throne, others wanting Umberto to renounce his claim to the throne in favour of his son, and finally those who were willing to accept Umberto as Luogotenente Generale del Regno () to govern in place of his father. Since northern and central Italy were still occupied by Germany, it was finally decided at the Bari conference that the "institutional question" should be settled only once all of Italy was liberated, so all of the Italian people could have their say.

Outing and appointment as regent

In the Salò Republic, Mussolini returned to his original republicanism and, as part of his attack on the House of Savoy, Fascist newspapers in the area under the control of the Italian Social Republic "outed" Umberto, calling him Stellassa ("Ugly Starlet" in the Piedmontese language). The Fascist newspapers reported in a lurid, sensationalist, and decidedly homophobic way Umberto's various relationships with men as a way of discrediting him. It was after Umberto was "outed" by the Fascist press in late 1943 that the issue of his homosexuality came to widespread public notice.

As the Allies freed more and more of Italy from the Salò Republic, it became apparent that Victor Emmanuel was too tainted by his previous support of Fascism to have any further role. A sign of how unpopular the House of Savoy had become was that on 28 March 1944, when the Italian Communist leader Palmiro Togliatti returned to Italy after a long exile in the Soviet Union, he did not press for an immediate proclamation of a republic. Togliatti wanted the monarchy to continue as the best way of winning the Communists' support after the war. For the same reason, Count Sforza wanted a republic as soon as possible, arguing the House of Savoy was far too closely associated with Fascism to enjoy moral legitimacy, and the only hope of establishing a liberal democracy in Italy after the war was a republic. By this point, the government of Pietro Badoglio was so unpopular with the Italian people that Umberto was willing to accept the support of any party with a mass following, even the Communists. The fact that, contrary to expectations, Togliatti and Badoglio got along very well, led to widespread fears amongst liberal-minded Italians that a Togliatti-Badoglio duumvirate might emerge, forming an alliance between what rapidly was becoming Italy's largest mass party and the military. The power and influence of Badoglio's government, based in Salerno, was very limited, but the entry of the Communists, followed by representatives of the other anti-Fascist parties, into the Cabinet of that government in April 1944 marked the moment when, as the British historian David Ellwood noted, "...anti-Fascism had compromised with the traditional state and the defenders of Fascism, and the Communist Party had engineered this compromise. A quite new phase in Italy's liberation was opening". Besides the "institutional question", the principle responsibility of the Royal Italian Government was the reconstruction of the liberated areas of Italy. As the Allies pushed northwards, aside from the damage caused by the fighting, the retreating Germans systematically destroyed all of the infrastructure, leading to a humanitarian disaster in the liberated parts. Umberto, together with the rest of his father's government, spent time attempting to have humanitarian aid delivered.

Under intense pressure from Robert Murphy and Harold Macmillan of the ACC at a meeting on 10 April 1944, Victor Emmanuel transferred most of his powers to Umberto. The King bitterly told Lieutenant-General Sir Noel Mason-MacFarlane that Umberto was unqualified to rule, and that handing power over to him was equivalent to letting the Communists come to power. However, events had moved beyond Victor Emmanuel's ability to control. After Rome was liberated in June, Victor Emmanuel transferred his remaining constitutional powers to Umberto, naming his son Lieutenant General of the Realm. However, Victor Emmanuel retained the title and position of King. During his period as Regent, Umberto saw his father only three times, partly out of a bid to distance himself and partly because of tensions between father and son. Mack Smith wrote that Umberto was: "More attractive and outgoing than his father, he was even more a soldier at heart, and completely inexperienced as a politician...In personality-less astute and intelligent than his father...less obstinate, he was far more open, affable and ready to learn".

As Regent, Umberto initially made a poor impression on almost everyone as he surrounded himself with Fascist-era generals as his advisers, spoke of the military as the basis of his power, frequently threatened to sue for libel anyone who made even the slightest critical remarks about the House of Savoy, and asked the ACC to censor the press to prevent the criticism of himself or his father. The British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, wrote after meeting Umberto, in a message to London, that he was "the poorest of poor creatures", and his only qualification for the throne was that he had more charm than his charmless father. The historian and philosopher Benedetto Croce, a minister in Badoglio's cabinet, called Umberto "entirely insignificant" as he found the Prince of Piedmont to be shallow, vain, superficial, and of low intelligence, and alluding to his homosexuality stated his private life was "tainted by scandal".

The diplomat and politician Count Carlo Sforza wrote in his diary that Umberto was utterly unqualified to be King as he called the prince "a stupid young man who knew nothing of the real Italy" and "he had been as closely associated with fascism as his father. In addition he is weak and dissipated, with a degenerate and even oriental disposition inherited from his Balkan mother". Sam Reber, an American official with the ACC, who had known Umberto before the war, met the prince in Naples in early 1944 and wrote he found him "greatly improved. The Balkan playboy period was over. But he has a weak face and, to judge by first meeting, has not, I should say, the personality to inspire confidence and devotion in others". More damaging, Victor Emmanuel let it be known that he regretted handing over his powers to his son, and made clear that he felt that Umberto was unfit to succeed him as part of a bid to take back his lost powers.

After Togliatti and the Communists entered Badoglio's cabinet, taking the oaths of loyalty to Umberto in the so-called Svolta di Salerno ("Salerno turn"), the leaders of the other anti-Fascist parties felt they had no choice but to join the cabinet as to continue to boycott it might lead Italy to be open to Communist domination. The other parties entered the cabinet on 22 April 1944 to preempt the Communists who joined the cabinet on 24 April. The Christian Democratic leader Alcide De Gasperi believed in 1944 that a popular vote would ensure a republic immediately, and sources from the Vatican suggested to him that only 25% of Italians favoured continuing the monarchy. The Catholic Church was in favour of Umberto, who, unlike his father, was a sincere Catholic who it was believed would keep the Communists out of power. However, De Gasperi admitted that though the monarchy was a conservative institution, "it was difficult to answer the argument that the monarchy had done little to serve the interests of the country or people during the past thirty years".

Umberto's relations with the Allies were strained by his insistence that after the war, Italy should keep all of its colonial empire, including Ethiopia and the parts of Yugoslavia that Mussolini had annexed in 1941. Both the British and Americans told Umberto that Ethiopia had its independence restored in 1941 and would not revert to Italian rule, while the Allies had promised that Yugoslavia would be restored to its pre-war frontiers after the war. Umberto later stated that he would have never signed the peace treaty of 1947 under which Italy renounced its empire. On 15 April 1944, in an interview with The Daily Express, Umberto stated his hope that Italy would become a full Allied power, expressing his wish that the Regia Marina would fight in the Pacific against the Japanese Empire and the Regio Esercito would march alongside the other Allied armies in invading Germany. In the same interview, Umberto stated that he wanted post-war Italy to have a government "patterned on the British monarchy, and at the same time incorporating as much of America's political framework as possible". Umberto admitted that, in retrospect, his father had made grave mistakes as King and criticised Victor Emmanuel for a suffocating childhood, where he was never permitted to express his personality or hold views of his own. In the same interview, Umberto stated that his hope was to make Italy a democracy by executing "the vastest education programme Italy has ever seen" to eliminate illiteracy in Italy once and for all.

A few days later, on 19 April 1944, Umberto in an interview with The Times complained that the ACC was too liberal in giving Italians too much freedom, as the commissioners "seemed to expect the Italian people to run before they could walk". In the same interview, Umberto demanded the ACC censor the Italian press to end the criticism of the Royal Family, and claimed he had no choice but to support Mussolini because otherwise he would have been disinherited. Finally, Umberto made the controversial statement that Mussolini "at first had the full support of the nation" in bringing Italy into the war in June 1940. Victor Emmanuel III had only signed the declarations of war because "there was no sign that the nation wanted it otherwise. No single voice was raised in protest. No demand was made for summoning parliament". The interview with The Times caused a storm of controversy in Italy, with many Italians objecting to Umberto's claim that the responsibility for Italy entering the war rested with ordinary Italians and his apparent ignorance of the difficulties of holding public protests under the Fascist regime in 1940. Sforza wrote in his diary of his belief that Victor Emmanuel, "that little monster", had put Umberto up to the interview to discredit his son. Croce wrote:"The Prince of Piedmont for twenty-two years has never shown any sign of acting independently of his father. Now he is simply repeating his father's arguments. He chooses to do this at the very moment when, having been designated lieutenant of the kingdom, he ought to be overcoming doubt and distrust as I personally hoped he would succeed in doing. To me it seems unworthy to try to unload the blame and errors of royalty on the people. I, an old monarchist, am therefore specially grieved when I see the monarchs themselves working to discredit the monarchy". Various Italian politicians had attempted to persuade the Allies to revise the armistice of 1943 in Italy's favour because there was a difference between the Fascist regime and the Italian people. Umberto's statement that the House of Savoy bore no responsibility when he asserted that the Italian people had been of one mind with Mussolini in June 1940, was widely seen as weakening the case for revising the armistice.

Liberation and republicanism
Most of the Committee of National Liberation (CLN) leaders operating underground in the north tended to lean in a republican direction. Still, they were willing to accept Umberto temporarily out of the belief that his personality and widespread rumours about his private life would ensure that he would not last long as either Lieutenant General of the Realm or as King, should his father abdicate. After the liberation of Rome on 6 June 1944, the various Italian political parties all applied strong pressure on Umberto to dismiss Pietro Badoglio as Prime Minister, as the Duke had loyally served the Fascist regime until the Royal coup on 25 July 1943, which resulted in the social democrat Ivanoe Bonomi being appointed Prime Minister. On 5 June 1944, Victor Emmanuel formally gave up his powers to Umberto, finally recognising his son as Lieutenant General of the Realm. After the liberation of Rome, Umberto received a warm welcome from ordinary people when he returned to the Eternal City. Mack Smith cautioned that the friendly reception that Umberto received in Rome may have been due to him being a symbol of normalcy after the harsh German occupation as opposed to genuine affection for the prince. During the German occupation, much of the Roman population had lived on the brink of starvation, young people had been arrested on the streets to be taken off to work as slave labour in Germany, while the Fascist Milizia, together with the Wehrmacht and SS, had committed numerous atrocities. Badoglio, by contrast, was greeted with widespread hostility when he returned to Rome, being blamed by many Italians as the man, together with the King, who was responsible for abandoning Rome to the Germans without a fight in September 1943.

Umberto had ordered Badoglio to bring members of the Committee of National Liberation (CLN) into his cabinet after the liberation of Rome to broaden his basis of support and ensure national unity by preventing the emergence of a rival government. Umberto moved into the Quirinal Palace, while at The Grand Hotel, the Rome branch of the CLN met with the cabinet. Speaking on behalf of the CLN in general, the Roman leadership of the CLN refused to join the cabinet as long Badoglio headed it but indicated that Bonomi was an acceptable choice as Prime Minister for them. Lieutenant-General Sir Noel Mason-MacFarlane of the ACC visited the Quirinal Palace and convinced Umberto to accept Bonomi as Prime Minister because the Crown needed to bring the CLN into the government, which required sacrificing Badoglio. As Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin were willing to see Badoglio continue as Prime Minister, seeing him as a force for order, Umberto could have held out for him. However, as part of his efforts to distance himself from Fascism, Umberto agreed to appoint Bonomi as Prime Minister. Reflecting the tense "institutional question" of republic vs. monarchy, Umberto, when swearing in the Bonomi cabinet, allowed the ministers to take either their oaths to himself as the Lieutenant General of the Realm or to the Italian state; Bonomi himself chose to take his oath to Umberto while the rest of his cabinet chose to take their oaths only to the Italian state. Churchill especially disapproved of the replacement of Badoglio with Bonomi, complaining that, in his view, Umberto was being used by "a group of aged and hungry politicians trying to intrigue themselves into an undue share of power". Through the Allied occupation, the Americans were far more supportive of Italian republicanism than the British, with Churchill in particular believing the Italian monarchy was the only institution that was capable of preventing the Italian Communists from coming to power after the war.

Unlike the conservative Badoglio, the social democrat Bonomi started to move Italian politics in an increasingly democratic direction as he argued that King Victor Emmanuel III, who had only turned against Mussolini when it was clear that the war was lost, was unfit to continue as monarch. On 25 June 1944, the Bonomi government, which like Badoglio's government, ruled by Royal Decree as there was no parliament in Italy, had a Royal Decree issued in Umberto's name promising a Constituent Assembly for Italy after the war. As Umberto continued as regent, he surprised many, after his rocky start in the spring of 1944, with greater maturity and judgement than was expected. Croce advised him to make a break with his father by choosing his advisers from the democratic parties, and it was due to Croce's influence that Umberto appointed Falcone Lucifero, a socialist lawyer, as Minister of the Royal House. Lucifero suggested reforms, which were implemented, such as reducing the number of aristocrats and generals at the Royal Court, while bringing in people from all the regions of Italy instead of just Piedmont to make the Royal Court more representative of Italy.

Umberto, in September 1944, vetoed an attempt by the Bonomi government to start an investigation of who was responsible for abandoning Rome in September 1943 as he feared that it would show his father was a coward. The same month, Badoglio, who was kept on as an adviser by Umberto, made an offer to the British and the Americans on behalf of the regent in September 1944 for Italy to be governed by a triumvirate consisting of himself, Bonomi and another former Prime Minister, Vittorio Orlando, which purged the prefects in the liberated areas who were "agents of Togliatti and Nenni" with Fascist-era civil servants. Badoglio also spoke of Umberto's desire not to lose any territory after the war to Greece, Yugoslavia and France. Badoglio's offer was rejected as Admiral Ellery W. Stone of the ACC was opposed to Umberto's plans to have Bonomi share power with Badoglio and Orlando, seeing this as upsetting the delicately achieved political consensus for no other reason than to increase the Crown's power.

In October 1944, Umberto, in an interview with The New York Times, stated that he favoured a referendum to decide whether Italy was to be a republic or a monarchy instead of having the "institutional question" decided by the national assembly that would write Italy's post-war constitution. Umberto's interview caused controversy as the republican parties widely feared that a referendum would be rigged, especially in the south of Italy. In the same interview, Umberto mentioned his belief that, after the war, monarchies all over the world would move towards the left, and stated that under his leadership Italy would go leftwards "in an ordered, liberal way" as he understood "the weight of the past is the monarchy's greatest handicap", which he would resolve by a "radical revision" of the Statuto Albertino. Umberto spoke favourably of Togliatti as he was "clever, agreeable, and easy to discuss problems with". In private, Umberto said he found Togliatti "to be a very congenial companion whose intelligence he respected, but was afraid that he suited his conversation according to his company".

By late 1944, the question of whether the CLN or the Crown represented the Italian people came to a head. On 25 November 1944, Bonomi resigned as Prime Minister, saying he could not govern owing to his difficulties with the CLN, and as the politicians could not agree on a successor. Umberto used the impasse to reassert the Crown's powers. The crisis ended on 12 December 1944 with Umberto appointing a new government under Bonomi consisting of ministers from four parties, the most important of which were the Communists and the Christian Democrats. In response to objections from the CLN, Bonomi, in practice, accepted their claim that they represented the Italian people rather than the Crown, while still swearing an oath of loyalty to Umberto as the Lieutenant General of the Realm when he took the Prime Minister's oath. An attempt by Umberto to have Churchill issue a public statement in favour of the monarchy led Macmillan to warn Umberto to try to be more politically neutral as regent. However, Churchill,  during a visit to Rome in January 1945, called Umberto "a far more impressive figure than the politicians". As a gesture to promote national unity after the traumas of the war, in June 1945, Umberto appointed as Prime Minister, a prominent guerrilla leader, Ferruccio Parri.

In December 1945, Umberto appointed a new, more conservative government under Alcide De Gasperi. One of the first acts of the new government was to announce the High Commission for Sanctions Against Fascism would cease operating as of 31 March 1946 and to start purging from the liberated areas of northern Italy civil servants appointed by the CLN, restoring the career civil servants who had served the Fascist regime back to their former posts. Over the opposition of the left-wing parties who wanted the "institutional question" resolved by the Constituent Assembly, De Gasperi announced that a referendum would be held to decide the "institutional question". At the same time, Italian women were given the right to vote and to hold official office for the first time, again over the opposition of the left-wing parties, who viewed Italian women as more conservative than their menfolk, and believed that female suffrage would benefit the monarchist side in the referendum. The monarchists favoured putting off the referendum as long as possible out of the hope that a return to normalcy would cause the Italians to take a more favourable view of their monarchy, while the republicans wanted a referendum as soon as possible, hoping that wartime radicalisation would work in their favour.

King of Italy

Umberto earned widespread praise for his role in the following three years, with the Italian historian Giuseppe Mammarella calling Umberto a man "whose Fascist past was less compromising" than that of Victor Emmanuel and who, as Lieutenant General of the Realm, showed certain "progressive" tendencies. In April 1946, a public opinion poll of registered members of the conservative Christian Democratic party showed that 73% were republicans, a poll that caused immense panic in the monarchist camp. The American historian Norman Kogan cautioned the poll was of Christian Democratic members, which was not the same thing as Christian Democratic voters who tended to be "...rural, female, or generally apolitical". Nonetheless, the poll led to appeals from Umberto to the ACC to postpone the referendum, leading to the reply that the De Gasperi cabinet had set the date for the referendum, not the ACC. The possibility of losing the referendum also led to the monarchists to appeal to Victor Emmanuel to finally abdicate. De Gasperi and the other Christian Democratic leaders refused to take sides in the referendum, urging Christian Democratic voters to follow their consciences when it came time to vote.

In the belated hope of influencing public opinion ahead of a referendum on the continuation of the monarchy, Victor Emmanuel formally abdicated in favour of Umberto on 9 May 1946 and left for Egypt. Before departing for Egypt, Victor Emmanuel saw Umberto for the last time, saying farewell in a cold, emotionless way. The Catholic Church saw the continuation of the monarchy as the best way of keeping the Italian left out of power, and during the referendum campaign, Catholic priests used their pulpits to warn that "all the pains of hell" were reserved for those who voted for a republic. The Catholic Church presented the referendum not as a question of republic vs monarchy, but instead as a question of Communism vs Catholicism, warning to vote for a republic would be to vote for the Communists. On the day before the referendum, 1 June 1946, Pope Pius XII, in a sermon on St. Peter's Square, said in what was widely seen as endorsing Umberto: "What is the problem? The problem is whether one or the other of those nations, of those two Latin sisters [elections were taking place in France on the same day] with several thousands of years of civilisation, will continue to learn against the solid rock of Christianity;... or on the contrary, do they want to hand over the fate of their future to the impossible omnipotence of a secular state without extraterrestrial ideals, without religion, and without God. One of these two alternatives shall occur according to whether the names of the champions or the destroyers of Christian civilization emerge victorious from the urns". Umberto believed that the support from the Catholic Church would be decisive and that he would win the referendum by a narrow margin. The De Gasperi cabinet accepted Umberto as King, but refused to accept the standard appellation for Italian kings "by the Grace of God and the will of the people".

In northern Italy, which had been the scene of the guerrilla struggle against the Italian Social Republic and the Germans, much of the population had been radicalised by the struggle, and feelings were very much against the monarchy. Kogan wrote Victor Emmanuel's flight from Rome was "bitterly remembered" in the Nord as an act of cowardice and betrayal by the King who abandoned his people to the German occupation without a fight. The socialist leader Sandro Pertini warned Umberto not to campaign in Milan as otherwise he would be lynched by the Milanese working class if he should appear in that city. Republican cartoonists mercilessly mocked Umberto's physical quirks, as the American historian Anthony Di Renzo wrote that he was: "Tall, stiff, and balding, he had smooth, clean-shaven blue cheeks, thin lips, and a weak chin. Dressed in military uniform as First Marshal of the Empire, decorated with the Supreme Order of the Most Holy Annunciation, he seemed more like a majordomo than a king. On the campaign trail, Umberto was received with much more friendliness in the south of Italy than in the north. People in the Mezzogiorno loved their King, who on the campaign trail in Sicily showed an encyclopedic knowledge of Sicilian villages which greatly endeared him to the Sicilians. Umberto's principal arguments for retaining the monarchy were it was the best way to revive Italy as a great power; it was the only institution capable of holding Italy together by checking regional separatism; and it would uphold Catholicism against anti-clericalism. The republicans charged that Umberto had done nothing to oppose Fascism, with his major interest being his "glittering social life" in the high society of Rome and Turin, and that as a general knew that Italy was unready for war in 1940, but did not warn Mussolini against entering the war.

Mack Smith wrote that "some of the more extreme monarchists" expressed doubts about the legitimacy of the referendum, claiming that millions of voters, many of them pro-monarchist, were unable to vote because they had not yet been able to return to their own local areas to register. Nor had the issue of Italy's borders been settled definitively, so the voting rights of those in disputed areas had not been satisfactorily clarified. Other allegations were made about voter manipulation, and even the issue of how to interpret the votes became controversial, as it appeared that not just a majority of those validly voting but of those votes cast (including spoiled votes), was needed to reach an outcome in the event the monarchy lost by a tight margin.

On the 2 June 1946 referendum, which saw the participation of almost 90% of voters, over 54% majority voted to make Italy a republic. The conservative, rural Mezzogiorno (southern Italy) region voted solidly for the monarchy while the more urbanised and industrialised Nord (northern Italy) voted equally firmly for a republic. In northern Italy, which had been ruled by the Italian Social Republic, the charges of homosexuality made against Umberto had an impact on the voters, causing at least some conservatives to vote for the republic. From his exile in Egypt, where King Farouk had welcomed him as a guest, Victor Emmanuel expressed no surprise at the result of the referendum as he always viewed Umberto as a failure who was unfit to be King, and claimed that the monarchists would have won the referendum if only he had not abdicated. Umberto himself had expected to win the referendum and was deeply shocked when the majority of his subjects chose a republic.

The republic was formally proclaimed four days later, ending Umberto's brief 34-day reign as King. Umberto at first refused to accept what he called "the outrageous illegality" of the referendum, and took his deposition badly. In his last official statement as King, Umberto refused to accept the republic, saying he was the victim of a coup d'état by his ministers and the referendum had been rigged against him. In response, De Gasperi, who became Acting President, replied in a press statement: "We must strive to understand the tragedy of someone who, after inheriting a military defeat and a disastrous complicity with dictatorship, tried hard in recent months to work with patience and good will towards a better future. But this final act of the thousand-year old House of Savoy must be seen as part of our national catastrophe; it is an expiation, an expiation forced upon all of us, even those who have not shared directly in the guilt of the dynasty". Some monarchists advocated using force to prevent a republic from being proclaimed, even at the risk of a civil war, but Mack Smith wrote that: "Common sense and patriotism saved Umberto from accepting such counsel". Umberto rejected the advice that he should go to Naples, proclaim a rival government to start a civil war in which the Army would presumably side with the House of Savoy, under the grounds that "My House united Italy. I will not divide it". The monarchy of the House of Savoy formally ended on 12 June 1946, and Umberto left the country. Prime Minister Alcide de Gasperi assumed office as Italy's interim Head of State. At about 3 pm on 13 June 1946, Umberto left the Quirinal Palace for the last time with the servants assembled in the courtyard to see him off, and many were in tears. At Ciampino Airport in Rome, as Umberto boarded the aeroplane that was to take him to Lisbon, a carabiniere grabbed him by the hand and said: "Your Majesty, we will never forget you!"

In exile
King Umberto II lived for 37 years in exile, in Cascais, on the Portuguese Riviera. He never set foot in his native land again; the 1948 constitution of the Italian Republic not only forbade amending the constitution to restore the monarchy but, until 2002, barred all male heirs to the defunct Italian throne from ever returning to Italian soil. Female members of the Savoy family were not barred, except queens consort. Relations between Umberto and Queen Marie José grew more strained during their exile, and in effect, their marriage broke up, with Marie José moving to Switzerland. At the same time, Umberto remained in Portugal, though, as Catholics, the couple never filed for divorce.

At the time when Umberto was dying, in 1983, President Sandro Pertini wanted the Italian Parliament to allow Umberto to return to his native country.  Umberto died in Geneva and was interred in Hautecombe Abbey, which for centuries was the burial place of the members of the House of Savoy.

Titles, styles and honours

Titles and styles
 15 September 1904 – 29 September 1904: His Royal Highness Prince Umberto of Savoy
 29 September 1904 – 9 May 1946: His Royal Highness The Prince of Piedmont
 9 May 1946 – 12 June 1946: His Majesty The King of Italy
 12 June 1946 – 18 March 1983: His Majesty King Umberto II of Italy

Umberto was granted the traditional title of Prince of Piedmont at birth. This was formalised by Royal Decree on 29 September 1904.

Honours

National honours

 SS Principe Umberto, a passenger and cargo ship built in 1908, named after him, sunk in 1916.

Foreign honours

Ancestry

Patrilineal ancestry
 Humbert I of Savoy, 980–1047
 Otto of Savoy, 1015–1057
 Amadeus II of Savoy, 1039–1080
 Humbert II of Savoy, 1070–1103
 Amadeus III of Savoy, 1095–1148
 Humbert III of Savoy, 1135–1189
 Thomas I of Savoy, 1176–1233
 Thomas II, Count of Piedmont, 1199–1259
 Amadeus V, Count of Savoy, 1251–1323
 Aimone, Count of Savoy, 1291–1343
 Amadeus VI, Count of Savoy, 1334–1383
 Amadeus VII, Count of Savoy, 1360–1391
 Amadeus VIII, Duke of Savoy, 1383–1451
 Louis, Duke of Savoy, 1402–1465
 Philip II, Duke of Savoy, 1438–1497
 Charles III, Duke of Savoy, 1486–1553
 Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, 1528–1580
 Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy, 1562–1630
 Thomas Francis, Prince of Carignano, 1596–1656
 Emmanuel Philibert, Prince of Carignano, 1628–1709
 Victor Amadeus I, Prince of Carignano, 1690–1741
 Louis Victor, Prince of Carignano, 1721–1778
 Victor Amadeus II, Prince of Carignano, 1743–1780
 Charles Emmanuel, Prince of Carignano, 1770–1800
 Charles Albert of Sardinia, 1798–1849
 Victor Emmanuel II of Italy, 1820–1878
 Umberto I of Italy, 1844–1900
 Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, 1869–1947
 Umberto II of Italy, 1904–1983

See also
 List of shortest reigning monarchs of all time

References

Further reading

External links

 Genealogy of recent members of the House of Savoy
 a portrait of his
 Website with Information on Italian Royal news stories

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1904 births
1983 deaths
20th-century kings of Italy
20th-century Italian military personnel
20th-century Roman Catholics
20th-century regents
Claimant kings of Jerusalem
Italian princes
Princes of Piedmont
Princes of Savoy
Dukes in Italy
Dukes of Savoy
Field marshals of Italy
Italian admirals
Italian monarchists
Italian exiles
Exiled royalty
People from Cascais
Burials at Hautecombe Abbey
People from Racconigi
Roman Catholic monarchs
Italian people of Montenegrin descent
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus
Grand Crosses of the Order of Christ (Portugal)
Knights of the Golden Fleece of Spain
Recipients of the Order of the White Eagle (Poland)
Grand Crosses of the Order of Saint-Charles
Sons of emperors
Children of Victor Emmanuel III of Italy
Italian military personnel of World War II

Umberto II of Italy


When humans first learned how to control fire, it was an important step in their culture. It allowed them to cook food and get warmth and protection. Making fire also allowed activity into the dark, and gave some protection from predators and insects.

The cooking of food was probably the most useful effect of fire. There are foods like nuts and fruits which do not need cooking, but others, such as root vegetables, mostly need cooking.

It is not known for sure when fire was first controlled by humans. Evidence for the use of fire by Homo erectus by about 400,000 years ago has wide scholarly support. Claims for the  earliest definitive evidence of control of fire by a member of Homo range from 0.2 to 1.7 million years ago (mya).

Evidence

East Africa
The earliest evidence of humans using fire comes from many archaeological sites in East Africa, like Chesowanja near Lake Baringo, Koobi Fora, and Olorgesailie in Kenya. The evidence at Chesowanja is the discovery of red clay shards that scientists estimate are 1.42 million years old. Scientists reheated some of the shards at the site, and found that the clay must have been heated to 400 °C to harden.

At Koobi Fora, there are archaeological sites with evidence of control of fire by Homo erectus 1.5 million years ago, with the reddening of sediment that can only come from heating at 200—400 °C. There is a hearth-like depression at a site in Olorgesailie, Kenya. Some very tiny charcoal was found, but it could have come from a natural brush fire.

In Gadeb, Ethiopia, fragments of welded tuff that seemed to have been burned were found in Locality 8E, but re-firing of the rocks may have happened because of volcanoes erupting nearby. These have been found among  Herculean artifacts made by H. erectus.

In the Middle Awash River Valley, cone-shaped depressions of reddish clay were found that could be made by temperatures of 200 °C. These features are thought to be burned tree stumps such that they would have fire away from their habitation site. There are also burnt stones in the "Awash Valley", but volcanic welded tuff is also in the area.

Southern Africa
The earliest certain evidence of human control of fire was found at Swartkrans, South Africa. Many burnt bones were found among Acheulean tools, bone tools, and bones with cut marks that were made by hominids. This site also shows some of the earliest evidence of H. erectus eating meat. The Cave of Hearths in South Africa has burned deposits dated from 0.2 to 0.7 mya, as do many other places such as Montagu Cave (0.058 to 0.2 mya and at the Klasies River Mouth (0.12 to 0.13 mya.

The most powerful evidence comes from Kalambo Falls in Zambia where many things related to the use of fire by humans had been found, like charred wood, charcoal, reddened areas, carbonized grass stems and plants, and wooden implements which may have been hardened by fire. The place was dated through radiocarbon dating to be at 61,000 BP and 110,000 BP through amino acid racemization.

Fire was used to heat silcrete stones to increase their works before they were knapped into tools by Stillbay culture. This clue shows this not only with Stillbay sites that date back to 72,000 BP but sites that could be as old as 164,000 BP.

Changes to behavior

An important change in the behavior of humans happened because of their control of fire and the light that came from the fire. Activity was no longer restricted to the daylight hours. Some mammals and biting insects avoid fire and smoke. Fire also led to better nutrition through cooked proteins.

Richard Wrangham of Harvard University argues that cooking of plant foods may have caused the brain to get bigger, because it made complex carbohydrates in starchy foods easier to digest. This allowed humans to absorb more calories from their food.

Changes to diet
Stahl thought that because some parts of plants, like raw cellulose and starch are hard to digest in uncooked form, they would likely not be a part of the hominid diet before fire could be controlled. These parts include stems, mature leaves, enlarged roots, and tubers. Instead, the diet was made up of the parts of the plants that were made of simpler sugars and carbohydrates such as seeds, flowers, and fleshy fruits. Another problem was that some seeds and carbohydrate sources are poisonous. Cyanogenic glycosides, which are in linseed, cassava, and manioc, amongst others, are made non-poisonous through cooking. The teeth of H. erectus and the wear on the teeth reflect the consumption of foods such as tough meats and crisp root vegetables.

The cooking of meat, as can be seen from burned and blackened mammal bones, makes the meats easier to eat. It is also easier to get the nutrition from proteins because the meat itself is easier to digest. The amount of energy needed to digest cooked meat is less than that needed for raw meat, and cooking gelatinizes collagen and other connective tissues as well, it "opens up tightly woven carbohydrate molecules for easier absorption." Cooking also kills parasites and food poisoning bacteria.

References

Fire
Human skills

Control of fire by early humans


Gate Dancer (1981–1998) was an American Thoroughbred racehorse best known as a winner of an American Classic Race, the Preakness Stakes, and for his part in a three-horse finish in the inaugural running of the Breeders' Cup Classic.

Bred in Florida by William R. Davis, Gate Dancer was a son of Sovereign Dancer, in turn a son of the great Northern Dancer. He was out of the mare Sun Gate, whose sire was Bull Lea, a five-time Leading sire in North America. Owned by Ken Opstein. Trained by Jack Van Berg, on the racetrack the high-strung colt became distressed from the sounds of the crowd until his trainer devised a hood for his head with earmuffs that minimized the noise.

Racing career

Early career
In June 1983, Gate Dancer won his two-year-old racing debut Ak-Sar-Ben Racetrack in Omaha, Nebraska. He raced once more in Omaha, then compete twice in California. Of his four starts that year, he ended up with two wins and two seconds. In his three-year-old season, Gate Dancer was aimed toward the Kentucky Derby. Staying in California, in February 1984 he ran second in the El Camino Real Derby at Bay Meadows and two weeks later at Santa Anita Park won an allowance race. In March, he finished second in the San Felipe and third in the Santa Catalina Stakes. Gate Dancer then had another third in April's Arkansas Derby behind Althea, whose winning time equaled the Oaklawn Park track record for 1⅛ miles. Althea, the 1983 U.S. Champion 2-Year-Old Filly, became the heavy betting favorite going into the Kentucky Derby.

1984 U.S. Triple Crown
Ridden by Eddie Delahoussaye in the Kentucky Derby, Gate Dancer was sent off at longshot odds of 19:1. Starting at the far outside in post position twenty, he immediately ran into difficulty but by the mile pole had moved up to ninth place with race favorite Althea tiring badly and dropping out of contention. Gate Dancer tried in vain to catch the leaders down the homestretch but veered in, bumping another horse several times. He finished fourth behind Claiborne Farm's winning colt, Swale. Following an interference complaint over the bumping incident, Churchill Downs stewards set Gate Dancer back to fifth place.

For the Preakness Stakes, jockey Ángel Cordero Jr. was aboard Gate Dancer. This time, the colt had a clean start in the much smaller field of nine and won the second leg of the Triple Crown series. Swale, the heavily favored Derby winner, finished well back in seventh place. However, in the grueling 1½ mile Belmont Stakes, Gate Dancer moved into contention as they headed into the homestretch but after making a charge at the front-running Swale, he tired and dropped back to finish sixth.

Breeders' Cup Classic
Following his loss in the Belmont Stakes, Gate Dancer's handlers brought him back to his first home at Ak-Sar-Ben Racetrack in Nebraska, where in August he won the 1984 Omaha Gold Cup. In his next start in September, he set a new track record for a mile and a quarter in winning the 1984 Super Derby at Louisiana Downs. In November, he was shipped to Hollywood Park Racetrack for the inaugural running of the Breeders' Cup Classic. Gate Dancer, Wild Again, and Slew o' Gold battled head to head through the stretch and all the way to the finish line. Wild Again was on the rail, with Gate Dancer on the outside and Slew o' Gold in close quarters between his rivals. The stretch run contained bumping, with Wild Again coming out on top and Gate Dancer crossing the wire second. However, Gate Dancer was disqualified for interfering with Slew o' Gold and moved down to third place, while Slew o' Gold officially finished second. At the end of 1984, Jack Van Berg was voted the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Trainer.

1985 and 1986
In 1985, Gate Dancer started ten times, winning once and capturing second and third place on three occasions each. Back for his second attempt in the Breeders' Cup Classic, he finished second to the Darby Dan Farm colt  Proud Truth. Raced three times in 1986, Gate Dancer earned a fifth-place finish in the Santa Anita Handicap and a third in the Widener. In the final race of his career, he came in second in the Oaklawn Handicap.

Career as a sire
Retired to Florida, Gate Dancer initially stood at stud at owner Kenneth Opstein's Good Chance Farm near Ocala in south Marion County, Florida and eventually ended up at Silverleaf Farm near Summerfield. Although he sired 27 stakes winners, none achieved the same level of racing success as Gate Dancer. On March 6, 1998, after a long struggle with laminitis, he was humanely euthanized. He was buried at Johnson Hollow Farm, near Oxford, Florida.

Nebraska artist Gwen G. Sides painted a portrait of Gate Dancer.

Breeding

References
 Gate Dancer's offspring at the Triple
 Video Winning 1984 Ak-Sar-Ben Omaha Gold Cup
 Crown database by Kathleen Irwin and Joy Reeves

1981 racehorse births
Racehorses bred in Florida
Racehorses trained in the United States
Preakness Stakes winners
American Grade 1 Stakes winners
Thoroughbred family 3-l

Gate Dancer


Midland () is a farming unincorporated community and census-designated place in Acadia Parish, Louisiana, United States. It was first listed as a CDP in the 2020 census with a population of 249.

It is located at the intersection of U.S. Highway 90 and Louisiana Highway 91. It is also located at the intersection of the former Louisiana Western Railroad (later a Southern Pacific Transportation Company subsidiary and now a joint BNSF Railway/Union Pacific Railroad line) and its branches to Eunice and Gueydan.

The community is part of the Crowley Micropolitan Statistical Area.

History
Some people say it was given its name because it was the halfway point on the old railroad running westward from New Orleans to Houston. Midland first appeared on an Acadia Parish map as Midland Junction.

During the 1870s, Frank Quebodeaux operated a horse-and-buggy ferry over Bayou Plaquemine Brûlée built of cypress logs and was hauled across the bayou by ropes.

In 1896, the railroad was extended from Midland to Gueydan, Louisiana and then from Gueydan to Abbeville, Louisiana in 1902. Southern Pacific began plans to put a railroad roundhouse at Midland due to Charles H. Cowen, one of the area's most successful rice farmers, developing the town.  Cowen was an Illinois native who bought  of land in the Midland area in 1892, and bought another  shortly after that. In 1902, he formed the Midland Development Co. and the Midland Rice Milling Co.. and on April 22 of that year, sold 156 town lots at auction. After Cowen lost a leg in a rice threshing accident and died soon after, Southern Pacific withdrew plans to place a roundhouse in Midland.

Midland's first post office was opened on June 13, 1902, in the Callahan general store, with Eugene T. Callahan as postmaster. The first school at Midland was established in 1903.

Demographics

2020 census

Note: the US Census treats Hispanic/Latino as an ethnic category. This table excludes Latinos from the racial categories and assigns them to a separate category. Hispanics/Latinos can be of any race.

See also
 Midland High School (Louisiana)

References

Unincorporated communities in Acadia Parish, Louisiana
Acadiana
Census-designated places in Acadia Parish, Louisiana
Populated places established in 1902

Midland, Louisiana


The Candy Band is a punk rock band designed specifically to appeal to children.  It is composed of four Detroit area moms who were tired of what they deemed wimpy music for kids. Paula Messner sang for Vertical Pillows in the 1980s and then with Motor Dolls. She decided to find three other stay-at-home moms to form a band. In 2003 they formed The Candy Band, playing punk covers of nursery rhymes, movie themes and other children's favorites, along with original tunes.

Media attention
With influences including the Ramones and Iggy Pop, they instantly attracted attention from The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, The Times, Blender, XM Radio, Woman's Day, USA Today, People, The Early Show, and The Today Show.

Performances
The band performed at schools, festivals, libraries, and sometimes at a bar. They were on Washington, D.C.'s Pancake Mountain TV show, they were part of the Vans Warped Tour and they played the "Kidzapalooza" stage at Chicago's Lollapalooza festival in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2010.  They have both performed and recorded with the Detroit Symphony Civic Youth Orchestra and they appeared regularly at the Detroit Zoo.

Albums
Their first album, Candy Band, was released in 2003. It was followed by More Candy in 2004, Lollipunk in 2005, and Calling All Kids in 2007. Their fifth album, High Five, was recorded in 2009 at Rustbelt Studios, with engineer Al Sutton.

References

American children's musical groups
Punk rock groups from Michigan
Musical groups from Detroit
Musical groups established in 2003
2003 establishments in Michigan

The Candy Band


The good language learner (GLL) studies are a group of academic studies in the area of second language acquisition that deal with the strategies that good language learners exhibit. The rationale for the studies was that there is more benefit from studying the habits of successful language learners than there is from studying learners who fossilize at an early stage or stop studying altogether. It was thought that if the strategies of successful learners could be found, then that knowledge could help learners who were not getting such good results.

The original studies were made in the 1970s, but petered out in the 1980s as researchers concentrated on individual learning strategies.  However, some research on the topic has also been carried out in more recent years. The main body of GLL research investigated language learning in classroom situations. It found that good language learners could not be distinguished on the basis of observable behavior alone, although personality did seem to have an effect. It also found that teachers did not treat these learners differently from other students, although they could distinguish good language learners from learners who were not so effective.

Original studies
The first studies in the good language learner tradition were made by Joan Rubin and David Stern, both of which were completed in 1975. Both of these studies proposed similar lists of strategies that good language learners use. On the basis of this, a large-scale study was performed at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) which investigated 34 language learners with good learning habits. This study found a list of six different strategies, which were similar to those proposed by Rubin and Stern:

 Good language learners find an appropriate style of learning.
 Good language learners involve themselves in the language-learning process.
 Good language learners develop an awareness of language as both system and communication.
 Good language learners pay constant attention to expanding their language knowledge.
 Good language learners develop the second language as a separate system.
 Good language learners take into account the demands that second language learning imposes.

Later work
In spite of the flurry of interest in the GLL in the mid to late 70s, in the 80s and 90s interest moved more in the direction of socio/cultural influences and individual differences, as well as developing the concept of communicative competence into a communicative approach to language teaching.

In the new millennium, Norton and Toohey re-visited the GLL. Their new perspective emphasized the influence of situation, investment and identity on successful language learning.

Seven years later, Griffiths, harking back to Joan Rubin's original title, published "Lessons from Good Language Learners". Whereas the early work in the GLL field had tended to emphasize the role of strategies, Griffiths' work took a broader view and presented the GLL as a highly complex being involving many different variables, including motivation, age, style, personality, gender, metacognition, autonomy, beliefs, culture and aptitude. In addition, the target variables (including grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, function and skills) and some of the situational factors (including method and error correction practices) which learners must manage if they are to be successful were discussed.

See also
 Individual variation in second language acquisition
 Interlanguage

Notes

References

Language acquisition
Language-teaching methodology

Good language learner studies


Margaret Joy Tibbetts (August 26, 1919 – April 25, 2010) was an American diplomat. A career Foreign Service Officer, she was the United States Ambassador to Norway from 1964 to 1969 under President Lyndon Johnson. She attended Gould Academy, Wheaton College in Massachusetts and her Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College. She was awarded an honorary degree from Bates College in 1962 and Bowdoin College in 1973.

Early career
Tibbetts was sworn into the Foreign Service in 1949, and her first assignment was in the Political Affairs section of the U.S. embassy in England. One of her major tasks over the next few years was to monitor British policy towards Africa, especially the debate over whether or not to create a Central African Federation. The Federation was formed in 1953, and it consisted of Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), and Nyasaland (Malawi). Tibbetts encouraged the U.S. government to support the British decision, and thus helped facilitate American involvement in the Federation. While serving at the embassy in London, Tibbetts attended a conference in Mozambique, visiting several parts of Africa on her journey. In 1955, the State Department posted her to the consulate in Leopoldville (Kinshasa), in what was then the Belgian Congo (Democratic Republic of Congo). She served for two years, focusing on economic issues. In one noteworthy message, she warned her colleagues back in Washington about the potential for Congolese union leaders such as Patrice Lumumba to play a key role in future nationalist movements. In 1957, Tibbetts returned to the State Department and joined the European Bureau.

Ambassador to Norway
After two years working in the State Department's office of European affairs, in 1959 Tibbetts joined the staff of the International Cooperation Administration and served a two-year stint. Then, in 1961, she was posted at the U.S. embassy in Belgium and labored for three years. After that tenure she was enrolled in the prestigious State Department senior seminar, and it was while she was participating in that seminar that news of her possible appointment as an ambassador became known.

On 28 March 1964 during a press conference at his ranch in Texas, President Lyndon Johnson announced that "We have named, or planned to name, as Ambassador, Miss Margaret Tibbetts, who is a foreign service officer of the first class." He then added that "she has a Ph.D from Bryn Mawr. She was born in Maine." In her diary the next morning Tibbetts mentioned the president's announcement, and also the speculation that she might be posted to Finland. On 28 April Tibbetts, along with two other women diplomats, met with Johnson in the Oval Office. In her diary she described the meeting as "rather fabulous." On 20 July 1964 Johnson notified Tibbetts that she was being nominated as ambassador to Norway. Her hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations committee took place on 28 July and she was soon approved by the entire Senate. On 12 September 1964, Tibbetts again met briefly with Johnson in the Oval Office before her departure for Norway.

Tibbetts arrived in Oslo by ship and took over as ambassador. One of the highlights of her tenure took place in December 1964 when she hosted Martin Luther King and his entourage, as King was receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. While ambassador to Norway she participated in negotiations regarding military bases and atomic weapons. She also helped with the diplomatic arrangements for the visit to Washington by King Olav of Norway. She returned to the United States in 1968, and then served briefly as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs. In 1971 she retired and returned to her home town of Bethel, Maine to take care of her mother. She taught courses at Bowdoin College, and was an active member of the Bethel Historical Society. She also worked to support Gould Academy and the Bethel Public Library. For nearly 40 years she was a well-known figure in Bethel, and could often be seen walking briskly on Paradise Hill. She died in April 2010 at the age of 90.

References

1919 births
2010 deaths
People from Bethel, Maine
Ambassadors of the United States to Norway
Wheaton College (Massachusetts) alumni
Bryn Mawr College alumni
American women ambassadors
United States Foreign Service personnel
21st-century American women

Margaret Joy Tibbetts


Lê Quan Ninh (born Paris, 1961) is a French percussionist active in contemporary music and free improvisation.

He began studying piano at the age of 7, but turned towards percussion as a teenager.  When he was 16,  he entered the National Conservatory in Versailles. During this time he discovered free jazz.  After graduating, he taught percussion for 3 years at a conservatory in Bondy, France while performing with contemporary music, dance, and theater groups often using self-taught techniques and found objects in his improvisation.

In the 1980s Ninh collaborated with Daunik Lazro, Michel Doneda, Serge Pey, Peter Kowald, Butch Morris, and  Nicolas Peskine's  Compagnie du Hasard.

In 1992 Ninh founded the Association La Flibuste which organized and presented improvisational artistic events across genres.
He was a member of the multi-media percussion ensemble Quatuor Helios and, along with cellist Martine Altenburger, a founder of the .

External links
Homepage
Biography and list of releases
FMP releases
Le Ventre Négatif album review

1961 births
Living people
French jazz musicians
Free improvisation
French percussionists

Lê Quan Ninh


Don García de Silva Figueroa (December 29, 1550 – July 22, 1624) was a Spanish diplomat, and the first Western traveller to correctly identify the ruins of Takht-e Jamshid in Persia as the location of Persepolis, the ancient capital of the Achaemenid Empire and one of the great cities of antiquity.

Life and work

De Silva was born in Zafra in the Spanish province of Badajoz. He served in the military in Flanders, and later was appointed governor of Badajoz. In 1612, Philip III, King of both Spain and Portugal, chose De Silva as his ambassador to the court of Shah Abbas, the Safavid monarch. Before he could reach Persia, however, De Silva was detained in Goa due to his strong disagreements with its Portuguese viceroy, and he did not arrive at his destination until October 1617.

De Silva's embassy was Philip III's return to the two Abbas I had sent to him shortly before, one of them in the person of the Englishman Robert Shirley and the other in the ones of the Persian Dengiz Beg and the Portuguese Augustinian friar Antonio de Gouvea.

During his stay in Persia, De Silva dealt with various diplomatic issues of importance, including the sealing of an alliance against the Ottoman Empire, a longstanding enemy of the three powers involved: Persia, Portugal and Spain.

De Silva travelled extensively throughout Persia, visiting the cities of Shiraz, Qom and Isfahan among others. He went to see the ruins of Persepolis, and described its splendours in a vivid letter to Alfonso de la Cueva, marqués de Bedmar. This letter made a great impression in the learned circles of Europe, and was quickly translated into Latin and English. In Isfahan he met the Italian traveller Pietro della Valle, who later went to Goa following the way De Silva had done to reach there.

On his travels, De Silva had amassed a large collection of rare art objects; these he tried to take home with him to Spain when his sojourn ended in 1619. He wrote a full account of his travels under the title Totius legationis suae et Indicarum rerum Persidisque commentarii. It was translated into French by the Dutchman Abraham de Wicquefort in 1667. The original manuscript is preserved today in the National Library in Madrid, and was published completely for the first time there in 1903.

De Silva's memoirs contain a great deal of detailed information relating to Persian geography, history and culture. He described, among many other things, the funerary practices of the Zoroastrians, the sport of organized bull-fighting in Persian towns, and the cultivation of date palms in southern Iran. His narrative is now regarded as a valuable source document on early 17th-century Persia.

De Silva's return trip to Spain was eventful and frustrating. He reached Ormuz and Goa in 1621, and then, in 1622, Mozambique, but too late in season to round the Cape of Good Hope he had to go back again to Goa. When, after a long delay, he was able to re-embark for Spain, he died at sea before reaching his destination.

Fictional character
García de Silva y Figueroa becomes the star of the horror and mystery story Denn die Toten segeln schnell ("Because the dead sail quickly"), by the Spanish writer Salomé Guadalupe Ingelmo. The text is part of the anthology Lo Siniestro.

Portraits
In 2017, inspired by the physical description that Pietro Della Valle left of the Spanish ambassador to the Shah of Persia, the Spanish painter Alejandro Cabeza made a portrait in oil on canvas through which he offers a careful physiognomic reconstruction of García de Silva.

See also
Robert Shirley
Thomas Shirley
Anthony Shirley

References

Bibliography
 .

External links

1550 births
1624 deaths
People from Zafra
Explorers of Asia
Spanish explorers
Spanish art collectors
16th-century Spanish people
17th-century Spanish people
17th-century Spanish writers
17th-century travel writers
Spanish travel writers
Ambassadors of the Spanish Empire to Safavid Iran
People who died at sea
Explorers of Iran
17th-century diplomats
University of Salamanca alumni
Ambassadors of Spain

García de Silva Figueroa


Edward Greenspon (born March 26, 1957) is a  Canadian journalist who joined Bloomberg News in January 2014 as Editor-at-Large for Canada after four years as vice president of strategic investments for Star Media Group, a division of Torstar Corp. and publisher of the Toronto Star. Before that, he was the editor-in-chief of The Globe and Mail newspaper, based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, for seven years. In 2002, he assumed the position at a turning point in the paper's history, and, during his tenure, he instituted several sectional revamps, launched new web sites and maintained circulation levels. On May 25, 2009, he was replaced by John Stackhouse.

Greenspon is a former managing editor of the Globe's Report on Business Section and was the Globe's Ottawa bureau chief before becoming editor-in-chief.

Greenspon is currently the CEO of the Public Policy Forum.

Early life
Greenspon was born in Montreal, Quebec, on March 26, 1957. His father, Mortimer Greenspon, was an insurance agent and financial planner, while his mother, Rosalie, was a teacher. Edward Greenspon's first job was as a paperboy for the now defunct Montreal Star. Greenspon's interest in journalism began as the Watergate scandal broke. Inspired by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, he chose to go to Ottawa and study journalism and political science at Carleton University.

Education
Greenspon began his journalism career at Carleton University. While living on campus he worked for the residence newspaper, The Resin. Greenspon broke a story of corruption with the residence student government. He exposed student officials who misappropriated student fees to buy champagne, lobsters, and cigars. The story was soon picked up by the Ottawa Citizen. Later, the disgraced treasurer was denied a job at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) after a background check revealed the article in the Citizen. Greenspon graduated from Carleton in 1979 with honours. He earned an M.Sc. at the London School of Economics after winning a Commonwealth Scholarship.

After stints with papers in Western Canada, Greenspon went on to study with the assistance of a Commonwealth Scholarship at the London School of Economics in England. He received his master's degree in politics and government in 1985.

The Globe and Mail
Greenspon began working at The Globe and Mail in 1986 as a reporter for the paper's Report on Business section. He soon found himself back in London as the Globe's first European business correspondent.

With the collapse of communism, he and his colleagues in the London bureau spent most of the 1989 to 1991 period in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. In 1991, Greenspon returned to Canada and became the managing editor of the Report on Business section and then deputy managing editor of the newspaper. Following his lifelong fascination with politics, Greenspon became the Ottawa bureau chief and associate editor of the paper in 1993, a position he held for more than six years.

In 1996, Greenspon partnered with Anthony Wilson-Smith to write the book Double Vision. The work is a thorough analysis of the first three years, from 1993 to 1996, of the Liberal government led by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and Finance Minister Paul Martin and received the Canadian Economics Association's Douglas Purvis Prize for excellence in public policy writing.

In 1999, at the height of a newspaper war in Canada, Greenspon was asked to commute to Toronto to manage the newsroom in the capacity of executive news editor. During this period, he became the founding editor for the Globe's internet site, www.theglobeandmail.com, and encouraged the paper to heavily invest in the soon to be very important internet news market.

In late 2000, he returned to Ottawa as political editor and columnist in time for his third national election campaign and co-wrote a second book called Searching for Certainty: Inside the New Canadian Mindset with pollster Darrell Bricker. Greenspon won the Hyman Solomon Award for his contributions to public policy writing.

In 2002, Greenspon accepted a position as the new editor-in-chief of the Globe and moved to Toronto. As chief editor, Greenspon instituted several changes to the paper, including a revamped Report on Business section, more investigative journalism, expanded politics coverage, and a new Science and Technology page. In 2007, he led a major redesign of The Globe that introduced the Globe Life section, reportonbusiness.com and globesports.com, as well as placing a greater emphasis on investigative journalism and web-print integration.

During his tenure, The Globe led every year in the number of National Newspaper Awards and won the Michener Award for Public Service Journalism in an unprecedented three out of four years for stories about the sponsorship scandal, foot-dragging over introduction of the anti-breast cancer drug, Herceptin, and Afghan detainees. He also locked horns with former Brian Mulroney in revealing secret cash payments the former Prime Minister had received from German-Canadian businessman, Karl-Heinz Schreiber.

On May 25, 2009, Greenspon was fired as editor-in-chief by Globe publisher Phillip Crawley. He was replaced by John Stackhouse. He subsequently headed up a 12-person panel for the Canadian International Council that produced a major report called 'Open Canada: A Global Positioning Strategy for a Networked Age' before joining Star Media Group in 2010.

Personal life
He is the father of three children: Bailey, Joshua and Jacob.

Major works
 Double Vision, by Edward Greenspon and Anthony Wilson-Smith, Toronto 1996, Doubleday Canada publishers, .
 Searching for Certainty: Inside the New Canadian Mindset, by Edward Greenspon and Darrell Bricker, Toronto 2001, Doubleday Canada publishers, .
 Open Canada: A Global Positioning Strategy for a Networked Age, by Edward Greenpson, 2010, Canadian International Council,  (online)

References

External links
 The Globe and Mail

1957 births
Alumni of the London School of Economics
Anglophone Quebec people
Canadian columnists
Canadian newspaper editors
Canadian male journalists
Carleton University alumni
Journalists from Montreal
Members of the Order of Ontario
The Globe and Mail editors
Living people
Jewish Canadian journalists
Canadian political journalists
CTV Television Network people

Edward Greenspon


In geomechanics, a tilt test is a simple test to estimate the shear strength parameters of a discontinuity. Two pieces of rock containing a discontinuity are held in hand or mounted in test equipment with the discontinuity horizontal. The sample is slowly tilted until the top block moves. The angle with the horizontal at onset of movement is called the tilt-angle.

The size of the specimen is limited to 10–20 cm for hand-held tests, while machine-operated tilt test equipment may handle up to meter-sized samples. In the field, the angle can be determined most easily with an inclinometer as present in most geological or structural compasses.

Tilt-angle
The tilt-angle equals the material friction of the discontinuity wall plus the roughness i-angle (tilt-angle = φwall material + i) if no real cohesion is present (i.e. no cementing or gluing material between the two blocks), no infill material is present, the asperities do not break, and the walls of the discontinuity are completely fitting at the start of the test, while if the walls of the discontinuity are completely non-fitting, the tilt-angle equals the friction of the material of the discontinuity walls (tilt-angle = φwall material). If cementation or gluing material is present or asperities break, the tilt-angle represents a combination of the (apparent or real) cohesion and the friction along the discontinuity. If infill material is present, the tilt-angle is governed partially or completely by the infill, depending on the thickness of the infill and height of asperities.

See also
Direct shear test
Triaxial shear test

References

Further reading

Tests in geotechnical laboratories
Rocks
Tunnel construction

Tilt test (geotechnical engineering)


Perpetual motion refers to a movement that goes on forever once started without additional energy added. A machine that could be set in motion once would continue to move forever. Such a device or system would be against the law of conservation of energy. This law states that energy cannot be created, or destroyed, but one form of energy can be transformed into a different one.

Perpetual motion machines have interested inventors for a long time, and even though it has been shown that such a machine cannot exist, people still try to build them.

Perpetual motion machines have been classified into different types. Each type breaks a different law of thermodynamics:
A perpetual motion machine of the first kind produces energy from nothing. It gives its user unlimited free energy. It violates the law of the conservation of energy.
A perpetual motion machine of the second kind spontaneously converts thermal energy into mechanical work. In itself, this does not violate the law of the conservation of energy, because there is the same amount of mechanical work than there was of thermal energy. Such machines violate the Second law of thermodynamics. Real heat engines, such as those found in cars, also convert heat energy to work. Such engines have two reservoirs: the heat is transferred from the hot one to the cold one. Some of the heat is converted into mechanical work, the rest is used to heat the cold reservoir. Perpetual motion machines only have one reservoir for the heat. For this reason, they can convert all the heat into mechanical work.
A perpetual motion machine of the third kind is one that can eliminate effects like friction and other effects that use energy. Because of the inertia of the mass, it can therefore maintain motion forever. This violates the third law of thermodynamics. Although it is impossible to make such a machine, because the loss of energy cannot be completely eliminated in a mechanical system, it is still possible to reduce the loss a great deal.  Even if such a machine could be built, it could only be used to store energy forever, and not to produce energy. A frictionless flywheel, for example, would eventually slow down and stop if its kinetic energy were tapped for useful work, and we would get no more energy out than the amount that was initially put in to spin up the flywheel.

Notes

Other websites

 Perpetuum Mobile Video.
   Perpetual park video.
 Perpetuum Mobile  Site.

Engineering
Mechanics
Pseudoscience

Perpetual motion


The Auburn Public Library is a former library building located in Auburn, Washington listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Auburn Carnegie library is a rectangular 2-story brick building with a cast concrete foundation. It has a hip roof with a slight flare at the projecting eaves. The roof is composition tile. The building measures , and there is a  extension at the center of the west facade.
The extension projects above the eaves. The gable is highlighted with a parapet trimmed with pressed metal. A  cast stone entrance arch with two panel doors in the face of the extension forms the main entry.
Fenestration consists of long casement windows in front and smaller ones on the sides and in back. Above each is a small fixed window divided by muntins into eight triangular panes.

History
Women volunteers promoted and staffed the early libraries of Auburn. In 1912, the city was promised $9,000 by Andrew Carnegie for a library. It opened in 1914. The land was donated by Mr. and Mrs. Authur C. Ballard, who originally had plated Auburn as the "Town of Slaughter." The donation contained a condition that the land would revert to the original owners when it ceased to be used for a library. The Carnegie building served the community for many years, but it ultimately proved too small to hold all the books and magazines it owned. In 1962, a $225,000 bond issue was approved by the voters and a new library opened in 1964. The proviso about the land being used for library purposes was then discovered and the property reverted to the Ballard family.
It is a pure example of the typical Carnegie Library and is unaltered.  The architect made a conscientious effort to incorporate all Carnegie's suggestions for library design, and all the elements of what Carnegie considered important are faithfully represented.

Bibliography
Morley, Roberta. The Official Book of the City of Auburn from 1891 to 1976. Auburn, WA 1976.

See also
 National Register of Historic Places listings in King County, Washington

References

1914 establishments in Washington (state)
Buildings and structures in Auburn, Washington
Libraries in Washington (state)
Libraries on the National Register of Historic Places in Washington (state)
Library buildings completed in 1914
National Register of Historic Places in King County, Washington

Auburn Public Library (Washington)