The Boeing CST-100 Starliner is a class of two partially reusable spacecraft designed to transport crew to the International Space Station (ISS) and other low-Earth-orbit destinations. It is manufactured by Boeing for its participation in NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCP). The spacecraft consists of a reusable crew capsule and an expendable service module.

The capsule has a diameter of , which is slightly larger than the Apollo command module and SpaceX Dragon 2, but smaller than the Orion capsule. The Boeing Starliner can hold a crew of up to seven people and can remain docked to the ISS for up to seven months. The Starliner is designed to be reusable for up to ten missions. Starliner launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on the Atlas V.

After several rounds of competitive development contracts within the Commercial Crew Program starting in 2010, NASA selected the Boeing Starliner, along with SpaceX Crew Dragon, for the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract round. The first crewed test flight test was initially planned to occur in 2017.

After a lengthy development process with multiple delays, Boeing flew the Orbital Flight Test 2 on May 19, 2022. , the Crewed Flight Test has been delayed until no earlier than mid-April 2024. This is expected to be the last test flight before Starliner enters operational service with the Starliner-1 mission.

Spacecraft characteristics

Boeing's Starliner spacecraft is designed to accommodate seven passengers, or a mix of crew and cargo, for missions to low Earth orbit. For the NASA  missions to the ISS, it will carry four passengers and a small amount of cargo. Starliner uses a weldless structure and is reusable up to 10 times with a six-month turnaround time. Boeing plans to alternate between two reusable crew modules for all planned Starliner missions. Each flight uses a new service module, which provides propulsion and power-generation capacity for the spacecraft. It features wireless Internet and tablet technology for crew interfaces.

Starliner uses the NASA Docking System. Boeing modified the design of the Starliner docking system prior to OFT-2, adding a hinged re-entry cover below the expendable nosecone for additional protection during the capsule's fiery descent through the atmosphere, similar to the one used in the SpaceX Dragon 2 nosecone. This was tested on the OFT-2 mission. This re-entry cover is hinged, like the SpaceX design. The capsule uses the Boeing Lightweight Ablator for its heat shield.

Solar cells, provided by Boeing subsidiary Spectrolab, are installed onto the aft face of the spacecraft's service module, and provide 2.9 kW of electricity. Also on the service module are four Rocketdyne RS-88 engines burning hypergolic propellants, which will be used for launch escape capability in the event of an abort.

In addition to the capsule and service module, a  structure is integrated into the launch vehicle adapter of Atlas V, called aeroskirt, to provide aerodynamic stability and dampen the shock waves that come from the front of the rocket.

History

Starliner was unveiled in 2010 as the CST-100, as Boeing's first commercially developed space capsule, where the company would take on the financial risk for development, rather than the US government under cost-plus contracting. The company stated that the capsule would draw upon Boeing's experience with NASA's Apollo, Space Shuttle and ISS programs as well as the Orbital Express project sponsored by the Department of Defense.  The new design was intended to be compatible with multiple launch vehicles, including the ULA Atlas V and Delta IV, and the SpaceX Falcon 9 at the time, In July 2010, Boeing stated that the capsule could be operational as early as 2015 with sufficient near-term approvals and funding.

In October 2011, NASA announced that the Orbiter Processing Facility-3 at Kennedy Space Center would be leased to Boeing for manufacture and test of Starliner, through a partnership with Space Florida.

On September 16, 2014, NASA chose Boeing (Starliner) and SpaceX (Crew Dragon) as the two companies to be funded to develop systems to transport U.S. government crews to and from the International Space Station. Boeing won a US$4.2 billion contract to complete and certify the Starliner by 2017, while SpaceX won a US$2.6 billion contract to complete and certify their crewed Dragon spacecraft. The contracts include at least one crewed flight test with at least one NASA astronaut aboard. Once the Starliner achieves NASA certification, the initial contract required Boeing to conduct at least two, and as many as six, crewed missions to the space station. NASA's William H. Gerstenmaier had considered the Starliner proposal as stronger than the Crew Dragon and Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser spacecraft.
, the capsule was to include one space tourist seat, and the Boeing contract with NASA would allow Boeing to price and sell passage to low-Earth orbit using that seat.

On September 4, 2015, Boeing announced that the spacecraft would officially be called the CST-100 Starliner, following the naming conventions of the 787 Dreamliner produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. In November 2015, NASA announced that it had dropped Boeing from consideration in the multibillion-dollar Commercial Resupply Services second-phase competition to fly cargo to the International Space Station.

In May 2016, Boeing delayed its first scheduled Starliner launch from 2017 to early 2018. Then in October 2016, Boeing delayed its program by six months, from early 2018 to late 2018, following supplier holdups and a production problem on the Spacecraft 2. By 2016, they were hoping to fly NASA astronauts to the ISS by December 2018.

In April 2018, NASA suggested that the first planned two-person flight of the Starliner, then slated for November 2018, would likely be in 2019 or 2020. It was expected to carry one additional crew member and extra supplies. Instead of staying for two weeks, as originally planned, NASA said that the expanded crew could stay at the station for as long as six months as a normal rotational flight.

In November 2019, NASA's Office of Inspector General released a report revealing that a change to Boeing's contract had occurred in 2016, stating: "For Boeing's third through sixth crewed missions, we found that NASA agreed to pay an additional $287.2 million above Boeing's fixed prices to mitigate a perceived 18-month gap in ISS flights anticipated in 2019 and to ensure the contractor continued as a second commercial crew provider", and NASA and Boeing committed to six missions instead of the last four being optional.

After the failure of its first uncrewed orbital test flight in late 2019, NASA agreed that Boeing would fund another uncrewed orbital test, OFT-2, in August 2021. That launch was stopped late in the countdown due to valve problems. By late September 2021, Boeing had not determined the root cause of the problem, and the flight was delayed indefinitely. After analysis and corrective actions it was launched on May 19, 2022, and completed a successful mission to the ISS, clearing the way for the crewed flight test.

After various delays pushed the planned launch of the Crewed Flight Test to 21 July 2023, Boeing announced in June 2023 that it would delay indefinitely due to issues with the parachute system and wiring harnesses. The mission entails flying a crew of two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station for a one-week test flight.

Funding
Boeing funded development of Starliner in 2010 only after both commercial space station opportunities and NASA commercial crew contracts on offer allowed the business case to close. While the company had received $18 million under the NASA Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) contract by 2010 for early design work, substantial Boeing private funds would be required to complete development, even with Boeing competing for additional NASA contracts. This exposed Boeing to ordinary business financial risk that had not been a large part of traditional cost-plus contracting that Boeing had previously done for work on space capsules.

Boeing was awarded a US$92.3 million contract by NASA in April 2011 to continue to develop the CST-100 under CCDev phase 2. On August 3, 2012, NASA announced the award of US$460 million to Boeing to continue work on the CST-100 under the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) program.

Due to delays and technical problems, Boeing has taken a number of charges against earnings for the Starliner program by 2022. This includes $410 million in 2020, $185 million in October 2021, and $288 million through the third quarter of 2022.

Launch profile
The Atlas V N22 (no fairing, two SRBs, and 2 Centaur engines) launches the Starliner. After passing through the stages of max q, SRB jettison, booster separation, Centaur ignition, nosecone and aeroskirt jettison, it finally releases the Starliner spacecraft at stage separation, nearly 15 minutes after lift-off on a  suborbital trajectory, just below the orbital velocity needed to enter a stable orbit around Earth. After separating from the Dual Engine Centaur, the Starliner's own thrusters, mounted on its service module, boost the spacecraft into orbit to continue its journey to the International Space Station.

The suborbital trajectory is unusual for a satellite launch, but it is similar to the technique used by the Space Shuttle and Space Launch System. It makes sure the upper stage of the rocket re-enters the atmosphere in a controlled way. The Starliner's orbit insertion burn begins about 31 minutes into the mission and lasts 45 seconds.

The N22 configuration is specific to Starliner. All other Atlas V payloads require fairings, but Starliner cannot use a fairing because it must be able to perform a "launch abort". In addition, all other Atlas V payloads use the single-engine version of the Centaur upper stage, but Starliner uses the two-engine version to provide more flexible abort options in the case of failures in the later phases of the launch. These changes increase crew safety. Starliner is the only crewed payload for Atlas V.

Development

The CST-100 (Crew Space Transportation-100) name was first used when the capsule was revealed to the public by Bigelow Aerospace CEO Robert Bigelow in June 2010. The letters CST stand for Crew Space Transportation. It was often reported that the number 100 in the name stands for , the height of the Kármán line, which is one of several definitions of the boundary of space. The design draws upon Boeing's experience with NASA's Apollo, Space Shuttle and ISS programs, as well as the Orbital Express project sponsored by the Department of Defense. (Starliner has no Orion heritage, but it is sometimes confused with the earlier and similar Orion-derived Orion Lite proposal that Bigelow Aerospace was reportedly working on with technical assistance from Lockheed Martin.)

Receiving the full fixed-price payments for the Commercial Crew Program Phase 1 Space Act Agreement required a set of specific milestones to be met during 2010:
 Trade study and down-select between pusher-type and tractor-style launch escape system
 System definition review
 Abort system hardware demonstration test
 Base heat shield fabrication demonstration
 Avionics systems integration facility demonstration
 CM pressure shell fabrication demonstration
 Landing system demonstration (drop test and water uprighting test)
 Life-support air revitalization demonstration
 Autonomous rendezvous and docking (AR&D) hardware/software demonstration
 Crew module mockup demonstration.

Part of the agreement with NASA allows Boeing to sell seats for space tourists on CCP flights to the ISS. Boeing proposed including one seat per flight for a space-flight participant at a price that would be competitive with what Roscosmos charges tourists. Under the contract the Starliners are owned and operated by Boeing, not NASA, and Boeing is free to offer non-CCP commercial flights if they do not interfere with the contracted CCP flights.

Boeing designed the capsule to make airbag-cushioned landings on the ground rather than into water like earlier US space capsules, with five landing areas planned in the Western United States, enabling ≈450 landing opportunities each year.

Testing

A variety of validation tests began on test articles in 2011 and continued on actual spacecraft starting in 2019.

In September 2011, Boeing announced the completion of a set of ground drop tests to validate the design of the airbag cushioning system. The airbags are located underneath the heat shield of the Starliner, which is designed to be separated from the capsule while under parachute descent at about  altitude. The airbags, manufactured by ILC Dover, are deployed by filling with a mixture of compressed nitrogen and oxygen gas, not with the pyro-explosive mixture sometimes used in automotive airbags. The tests were carried out in the Mojave Desert of southeast California, at ground speeds between  in order to simulate crosswind conditions at the time of landing. Bigelow Aerospace built the mobile test rig and conducted the tests.

In April 2012, Boeing dropped a mock-up of its Starliner over the Nevada desert at the Delamar Dry Lake, Nevada, successfully testing the craft's three main landing parachutes from .

In August 2013, Boeing announced that two NASA astronauts evaluated communications, ergonomics, and crew-interface aspects of the Starliner, showing how future astronauts will operate in the spacecraft as it transports them to the International Space Station and other low Earth orbit destinations.

Boeing reported in May 2016 that its test schedule would slip by eight months in order to reduce the mass of the spacecraft, address aerodynamics issues anticipated during launch and ascent on the Atlas V rocket, and meet new NASA-imposed software requirements. The Orbital Flight Test was scheduled for spring 2019. The booster for this Orbital Flight Test, an Atlas V N22 rocket, was assembled at United Launch Alliance's (ULA) facility at Decatur, Alabama by the end of 2017. The first crewed flight (Boe-CFT) was scheduled for summer 2019, pending test results from Boe-OFT. It was planned to last 14 days and carry one NASA astronaut and one Boeing test pilot to the ISS. On April 5, 2018, NASA announced that the first planned two-person flight, originally slated for November 2018, was likely to occur in 2019 or 2020. In July 2018, Boeing announced the assignment of former NASA astronaut Christopher Ferguson to the Boe-CFT mission. On August 3, 2018, NASA named its first Commercial Crew astronaut cadre of four veteran astronauts to work with SpaceX and Boeing: Robert Behnken, Eric Boe, Sunita Williams, and Douglas Hurley.

In July 2018, a test anomaly was reported in which there was a hypergolic propellant leak due to several faulty abort-system valves. Consequentially, the first unpiloted orbital mission was delayed to April 2019, and the first crew launch rescheduled to August 2019. In March 2019, Reuters reported that these test flights had been delayed by at least three months, and in April 2019 Boeing announced that the unpiloted orbital mission was scheduled for August 2019.

In May 2019, all major hot-fire testing, including simulations of low-altitude abort-thruster testing, was completed using a full up to service module test article that was "flight-like", meaning that the service module test rig used in the hot-fire testing included fuel and helium tanks, reaction control system, orbital maneuvering, and attitude-control thrusters, launch abort engines and all necessary fuel lines and avionics that will be used for crewed missions. This cleared the way for the pad abort test and the subsequent uncrewed and crewed flights.

A pad abort test took place on November 4, 2019. The capsule accelerated away from its pad, but then one of the three parachutes failed to deploy, and the capsule landed with only two parachutes. Landing was, however, deemed safe, and the test a success. Boeing did not expect the malfunction of one parachute to affect the Starliner development schedule.

First orbital flight test

The uncrewed orbital flight test launched on December 20, 2019, but after deployment, an 11-hour offset in the mission clock of Starliner caused the spacecraft to compute that "it was in an orbital insertion burn", when it was not. This caused the attitude control thrusters to consume more fuel than planned, precluding a docking with the International Space Station. The spacecraft landed at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, two days after launch. After the successful landing, the spacecraft was named Calypso (after the research vessel  for the oceanographic researcher Jacques-Yves Cousteau) by the commander of the Boeing Starliner-1 mission, NASA astronaut Sunita Williams. The flight carried an Anthropomorphic Test Device (ATD) wearing Boeing's blue IVA spacesuit, named "Rosie the Rocketeer".

Two software errors detected during the test, one of which prevented a planned docking with the International Space Station, could each have led to the destruction of the spacecraft, had they not been caught and corrected in time, NASA said on February 7, 2020. A joint NASA–Boeing investigation team found that "the two critical software defects were not detected ahead of flight despite multiple safeguards", according to an agency statement. "Ground intervention prevented the loss of the vehicle in both cases". Before re-entry, engineers discovered the second critical software error that affected the thruster firings needed to safely jettison the Starliner's service module. The service module software error "incorrectly translated" the jettison thruster firing sequence.

With the completion of the NASA/Boeing investigation into the Starliner OFT-1 flight of December 2019, the review team identified 80 recommendations that Boeing, in collaboration with NASA, was addressing in 2020, when action plans for each were already well under way. Since the full list of these recommendations are company-sensitive and proprietary, only those changes publicly disclosed are known.

Second orbital flight test

Software problems and other issues occurred during the first test flight, preventing the spacecraft from reaching the International Space Station. Boeing officials said on April 6, 2020 that the Starliner crew capsule would fly a second uncrewed demonstration mission, Orbital flight test 2, before flying astronauts. NASA said that it had accepted a recommendation from Boeing to fly a second unpiloted mission. The Washington Post reported that the second orbital flight test, with much the same objectives as the first, was expected to launch from Cape Canaveral "sometime in October or November 2020". Boeing said that it would fund the unplanned crew capsule test flight "at no cost to the taxpayer". Boeing told investors earlier in 2020 that it was taking a US$410 million charge against its earnings to cover the expected costs of a second unpiloted test flight. Boeing officials said on August 25, 2020 that they set the stage for the first Starliner demonstration mission with astronauts in mid-2021. Boeing modified the design of the Starliner docking system prior to OFT-2 to add a re-entry cover for additional protection during the capsule's fiery descent through the atmosphere. This re-entry cover is hinged, like the SpaceX design. Teams also installed the OFT-2 spacecraft's propellant heater, thermal-protection tiles, and the airbags used to cushion the capsule's landing. The crew module for the OFT-2 mission began acceptance testing in August 2020, which is designed to validate the spacecraft's systems before it is mated with its service module, according to NASA. On November 10, 2020, NASA's Commercial Crew Program manager Steve Stich said that the second orbital flight test would be delayed until first quarter 2021 due to software issues. The uncrewed test continued to slip, with the OFT-2 uncrewed test flight being scheduled for March 2021 and the crewed flight targeted for a launch the following summer. The launch date of OFT-2 moved again with the earliest estimated launch date set for August 2021.

During the August 2021 launch window some issues were detected with 13 propulsion-system valves in the spacecraft prior to launch. The spacecraft had already been mated to its launch rocket, United Launch Alliance's (ULA) Atlas V, and taken to the launchpad. Attempts to fix the problem while on the launchpad failed, and the rocket was returned to the ULA's VIF (Vertical Integration Facility). Attempts to fix the problem at the VIF also failed, and Boeing decided to return the spacecraft to the factory, thus cancelling the launch at that launch window. There was a commercial dispute between Boeing and Aerojet Rocketdyne over responsibility for fixing the problem. The valves had been corroded by intrusion of moisture, which interacted with the propellant, but the source of the moisture was not apparent. By late September 2021, Boeing had not determined the root cause of the problem, and the flight was delayed indefinitely. Through October 2021, NASA and Boeing continued to make progress and were "working toward launch opportunities in the first half of 2022",  In December 2021, Boeing decided to replace the entire service module and anticipated OFT-2 to occur in May 2022.

The OFT-2 mission launched on May 19, 2022. It again carried Rosie the Rocketeer test dummy suited in the blue Boeing inflight spacesuit. Two Orbital Maneuvering and Attitude Control System (OMACS) thrusters failed during the orbital insertion burn, but the spacecraft was able to compensate using the remaining OMACS thrusters with the addition of the Reaction Control System (RCS) thrusters. A couple of RCS thrusters used to maneuver Starliner also failed during docking due to low chamber pressure. Some thermal systems used to cool the spacecraft showed extra cold temperatures, requiring engineers to manage it during the docking.

On May 22, the capsule docked with the International Space Station. On May 25, the capsule returned from space and landed successfully. During reentry one of the navigation systems dropped communication with the GPS satellites, but Steve Stich, program manager for NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said this is not unexpected during reentry.

Crewed flight test

The last planned test flight is the crewed flight test. The Crewed Flight Test will send a crew of two to the ISS for a short stay. This is the final test flight of Starliner, which will be cleared to begin operational flights after the results of this test are evaluated.

Although it had an original goal of 2017, various delays pushed this back to no earlier than July 2023. Then on June 1, 2023, Boeing announced the flight was indefinitely delayed, due to problems with the parachute harness and flammable tape on wiring. On August 7, 2023, Boeing announced their plans for the launch. They intend to address the issue with the flammable tape by September 2023, while the work on the parachute harness is expected to finish in November 2023. If all goes well, the flight might take place from March 2024.

Commercial use
On October 25, 2021, Blue Origin, Boeing, and Sierra Nevada Corporation's Sierra Space subsidiary for commercial space activities and space tourism released their plan for a commercial space station. The station, called Orbital Reef, is intended as a "mixed-use business park". Boeing was announced as a partner and Starliner, along with the Sierra Nevada Corporation's Dream Chaser, was chosen as one of the commercial spacecraft to transport commercial crew to and from the space station.

Launch vehicle availability
Starliner is compatible with Atlas V, Delta IV, Falcon 9, and Vulcan Centaur. Delta IV is retired and no longer available. ULA has announced that Atlas V is retiring and all remaining Atlas V launchers have been allocated to customers. , seven of these have been allocated to Starliner flights; enough for the crewed flight test and six operational missions. ULA plans to have Vulcan Centaur available in time for any additional flights.

List of spacecraft
As of January 2020, Boeing planned to have three Boeing Starliner spacecraft in service to fulfill the needs of the Commercial Crew Program with each spacecraft expected to be capable of being reused up to ten times with a six-month refurbishment time. On August 25, 2020, Boeing announced its plan to alternate between just two capsules for all planned Starliner missions instead of three.

List of flights
List includes only completed or currently manifested missions. Launch dates are listed in UTC.

Technology partners

 Aerojet Rocketdyne, for reaction control system (RCS) and retrorockets
 Airborne Systems, for parachutes
 Collins Aerospace, life support systems
 Bigelow Aerospace, elements of crew capsule
 Samsung, mobile communications technology
 Spincraft, crew module pressure shell spin-form work
 ILC Dover, for airbags, spacesuits

See also

 List of crewed spacecraft
 Orion (spacecraft)
 SpaceX Dragon 2, human-rated capsule-type spacecraft
 Dream Chaser, a human-rated spaceplane under development
 Orel, a human-rated spacecraft being developed in Russia
 Next-generation crewed spacecraft, a human-rated spacecraft being developed in China

Notes

References

External links
  Starliner at Boeing.com
  by Boeing (2010)
  by Boeing (2014)
 Reporter's Starliner Notebook
 Astronaut Doug Hines enters the Boeing Starliner for the first time during OFT-2

Bigelow Aerospace
Crewed spacecraft
Commercial spaceflight
Supply vehicles for the International Space Station
American spacecraft
Starliner
Reusable spacecraft

Boeing Starliner


The Battle of Almaraz was a battle of the Peninsular War which took place on 18–19 May 1812, in which the Anglo-Portuguese Army under Lord Hill destroyed a French pontoon bridge across the River Tagus, in Almaraz, Spain. The bridge was protected by two French garrisons at either end.

The action was swift-moving, deceptive, and daring. The decisive result produced a substantial improvement in the Allied position by keeping French forces separated ahead of the imminent Battle of Salamanca.

Background

By late April 1812, the Duke of Wellington had successfully captured the strategic border fortresses of Badajoz and Ciudad Rodrigo, commanding the two major routes between Spain and Portugal. He now prepared to advance into Spain with the largest army he had commanded to date, which was strong enough to take on any French army. There were two French armies in Spain, however: Marmont's Army of Portugal, garrisoned near Salamanca, and Soult's Army of the South. The Tagus River separated the two armies.

The only bridges over the Tagus were at Toledo, Talavera, Arzobispo, Almaraz, and Alcántara. The Alcántara Bridge was destroyed by the Portuguese, under Col. Mayne, on 14 May 1809. The bridges at Toledo, Talavera, and Arzobispo were under French control but, according to Napier, the left bank of the Tagus at Talavera and Arzobispo was "so crowded by the rugged shoots of the Sierra de Guadalupe, that it may be broadly stated as impassable for an army". Any artillery and heavy baggage moving between the two armies would have to cross at Toledo or Almaraz.

The battle
The latter bridge, built by the city of Plasencia under the reign of Emperor Charles V in the 16th century and known by the local people as the Albalat Bridge, was partially destroyed by the Spanish on 14 March 1809, to prevent its use by the French. The Portuguese under Colonel Mayne destroyed the bridge at Alcantara on 14 May 1809, for the same reason. The French built a pontoon bridge in the autumn of 1809, just west of the Albalat bridge. It was about 200 metres long and built with heavy pontoons. The central span was a light boat, designed to be removed at night for security.

General Rowland Hill was detached with his 2nd Division to attack the pontoon bridge over the Tagus. His force, numbering around 6000 men with nine guns, was virtually the same as that which surprised Jean-Baptiste Girard at the Battle of Arroyo dos Molinos, in 1811. The task facing Hill was a considerable one as the bridge of boats was protected on both banks by strong earthworks. The southern end of the bridge was protected by a bridge-head that was overlooked by Fort Napoleon.

Fort Napoleon was a strong fort, capable of holding 450 men and situated atop a hill above a steep embankment. It was not a difficult climb for any attacking troops, however, and entry into the fort was eased slightly by two large scarps, rather like steps, which led onto the fort's ramparts. The rear of the fort sloped down to the bridge-head and was protected by a palisaded ditch and loop-holed tower that would act as the last place of refuge should Hill's men gain entry into the fort. On the northern bank of the Tagus stood Fort Ragusa, in which was stored all the garrison's supplies and ammunition. This five-sided fort also had a 25-foot high, loop-holed tower that was to be the last place of defence. This fort was also covered by a field work close to the bridge.

The French had further strengthened the position at the bridge by securing the main road from Trujillo at a point about six miles south of the bridge. Here, where the road ascends the Sierra de Mirabete, the pass was commanded by a castle around which the French had built a  rampart that housed eight guns. This was connected to a fortified house close to the road by two small works, Forts Colbert and Senarmont. The mountains were impassable to any wheeled vehicles, and the only other pass through the mountains, La Cueva, was two miles to the east of Mirabete. The road on the southern side of the mountains was passable to vehicles, but once through the pass the road deteriorated into little more than a footpath.

Hill's plan involved dividing his force into three columns. The first, comprising the 28th, 34th, and the 6th Caçadores, under Christopher Chowne, was to storm the castle of Mirabete. The second, or centre column, comprising the 6th and 18th Portuguese infantry along with all the artillery, was to proceed along the main road and attack the works defending the pass. The third column, Kenneth Howard's brigade comprising the 50th, 71st, 92nd and a single company of the 5/60th, and commanded by Hill himself, was to climb the road leading through the pass of La Cueva and approach Almaraz via the path. The three columns set off at nightfall on 16 May, but at dawn all three were far from their objectives due to the rough nature of the terrain.

It was clear to Hill that there was little chance of being able to surprise the garrison at the bridge. Therefore, he sought another way to get his guns through the mountains. The French garrison was still unaware of Hill's force, and Hill thought he might succeed if he attacked Fort Napoleon and the bridge using only his infantry.

On the evening of May 18, Howard's brigade proceeded through the pass of La Cueva, reinforced by the Portuguese Caçadores. By dawn on 19 May, Hill's men had reached a point just half a mile from Fort Napoleon, but they were seen that morning as they crossed the mountains. The garrison inside Fort Napoleon, commanded by Colonel Aubert, was alerted, and the two centre boats of the bridge were removed.

The attack on the bridge at Almaraz began at dawn on 19 May, when Chowne's guns opened up against the castle at Mirabete. The defenders of Fort Napoleon, warned of the presence of Hill's troops, were prepared for the assault but were still taken by surprise when the 50th and part of the 71st burst from their cover and charged up towards the fort in the face of fire from the defenders and from the guns in Fort Ragusa. British troops were struck down as they dashed forward, but some reached the top of the hill and flung their ladders against the scarp. The men pulled themselves onto the first of the two steps and drew their ladders up. They placed the ladders on the step, climbed to the top of the ramparts, and were soon engaged in hand-to-hand fighting with the defenders along the ramparts.

First up was Captain Candler of the 50th, who leapt over the parapet and was struck by several French musket balls. His men followed him, and the defenders soon began to retreat to the bridge-head. The commander of the fort, Colonel Aubert, refused to run and put up a gallant fight. He refused the offer of surrender, and a sergeant of the 50th ran him through with his pike. French troops tried to get to safety inside the tower but were forced to surrender. The guns of Fort Ragusa were unable to fire for fear of hitting their own men fleeing to the river.

The defenders of the bridge-head joined in the retreat across the pontoon bridge. The guns inside Fort Ragusa fired briefly against Fort Napoleon until answered by the captured guns. The action had lasted just 40 minutes. Four grenadiers of the 92nd swam to Fort Ragusa and brought back some boats to repair the pontoon bridge. Soon the rest of Hill's force arrived to find the French abandoning all their works on both sides of the river. Hill had these works blown up and the bridge burned.

Aftermath

The castle at Mirabete remained in French hands after Sir William Erskine, 2nd Baronet spread a rumour that Soult's entire force was approaching. This caused Hill, who had intended to level the castle, to retire to Trujillo and lose the chance to achieve complete success. The raid on the bridge at Almaraz cost the British 33 killed and 148 wounded, of which 28 of those killed and 110 of those wounded belonged to the 50th Regiment. French losses were estimated at about 400, 259 of whom were prisoners.

In 1813, the Duke of Wellington sent Lieutenant Colonel Henry Sturgeon of the British Royal Staff Corps to repair the bridge. Sturgeon constructed a suspension bridge, similar to the one he built at Alcántara. The Spanish built the present bridge between 1841 and 1845.

Notes

References

External links

Battles of the Peninsular War
Battles of the Napoleonic Wars
Battles involving Portugal
Battles involving the United Kingdom
Battles involving France
Battles in Extremadura
Conflicts in 1812
1812 in Spain
May 1812 events

Battle of Almaraz


Homeopathy
Baryta
Baryta Carb.
Barium Carbonate / Witherite
Baryta carbonica
The homeopathic remedy Baryta carb. (Baryta Carbonate) is prepared using the chemical barium carbonate, which is also known as witherite. English botanist and geologist William Withering was the first to discover witherite way back in 1783. Therapeutically, this compound was used to treat tuberculosis as well as swellings of the glands. It may be noted that the element barium is found in the crust of the earth in other minerals like barite and witherite. When this compound is heated in the dark, it glows and currently the amalgams enclosed by witherite are being employed in radiology. In addition, witherite is also used to manufacture superior quality glassware as well as optical glass.

बेराइटा


Tom Kane is an American retired voice actor. He is best known for his work in animation and video games, most notably the Star Wars franchise.

Career
Kane began his voice-over career in 1977, at 15 years old. He is known for his animation work throughout his career, including Jedi Master Yoda and Admiral Yularen in Star Wars: The Clone Wars feature film and TV series, The Chancellor in 9, Magneto in Wolverine and the X-Men and Marvel vs Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, Ultron in Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow and The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Mr. Herriman in Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Lord Monkey Fist on Kim Possible, Professor Utonium and HIM in The Powerpuff Girls. He has voiced Oxnard Montalvo in The Angry Beavers and the chimpanzee sidekick Darwin in The Wild Thornberrys.

Kane was also a prominent video game voice actor, appearing in numerous titles - from bit parts, to major roles such as Gandalf, Professor X and lead characters in many Star Wars games like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed as Imperial Captain Ozzik Sturn, Lobot and Kento Marek (the father of Sam Witwer's Galen Marek) thanks to ILM's motion capture technology. In Call of Duty: World at War, Black Ops, Black Ops II, Black Ops III and Black Ops IV, he provides the voice of Takeo Masaki, a Japanese WWII soldier and WWI warrior in the Zombies game mode.

In the arena of non-animation voiceover work, Kane recorded commercials, film trailers and television promos. In addition, he has been the announcer for the AFI Life Achievement Award show twice, as well as the 78th, 80th, 83rd, 84th, and 90th Academy Awards. He also played Odin (the father of Thor and Loki) in the video game adaptation of Thor as well as the Disneyland attraction: Thor: Treasures of Asgard, taking over the role from Anthony Hopkins from the film.

On April 13, 2012, Kane took over for Joe Hursh as the voice of the Walt Disney World Monorail System. In 2013, he took over as the announcer of The Eric Andre Show, replacing Gary Anthony Williams.

Kane made his debut in the Star Wars film saga as the voice of Admiral Ackbar in 2017's Star Wars: The Last Jedi, taking over the role from the late Erik Bauersfeld. He had experience in voicing the character on several occasions for video games in the franchise prior to the film's release. He also voiced Plague Champion in Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II - Chaos Rising and Retribution.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kane was one of several voices for health and safety announcements at Walt Disney World. He also narrated the series premiere of Star Wars: The Bad Batch in May 2021.

Retirement
In November 2020, Kane suffered a stroke which left him with weakness on the right side of his body and damage to his speaking, writing, and reading abilities. In September 2021, his daughter Sam confirmed that, due to his stroke, he had decided to officially enter an early retirement from voice acting.

Personal life
Kane has been married to Cindy Roberts since 1981 and is the father of 9 children, including a daughter named Sam, who began giving regular updates on his condition after his stroke on Facebook.

Filmography

Voice acting

Film

Television

Video games

Live-action

Television

Awards and nominations

References

External links

20th-century American male actors
21st-century American male actors
American male television actors
American male voice actors
American male video game actors
Audiobook narrators
Cartoon Network people
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)

Tom Kane


John Whiteway (1614 – c 1677) was an English wool merchant and politician who sat in the House of Commons  at various times between 1654 and 1660.

Whiteway was the only surviving son of William Whiteway of Dorchester and his wife Mary Mounsell, daughter of John Mounsell, merchant of Weymouth, Dorset. His father was a wool merchant and had been MP for Dorchester. He was a captain of militia at Dorchester in 1643 and a commissioner for assessment for Dorset from 1643 to 1652. In 1645 he became mayor of Dorchester 1645. In 1646, he inherited two farms near Dorchester on the death of a nephew and became a J.P. for Dorset from 1647 to July 1660. In 1648, he was again commissioner for militia and in 1653 a commissioner for prisoners and piracy. He was a commissioner for scandalous ministers in 1654.

In 1654, Whiteway was elected Member of Parliament for Dorchester in the First Protectorate Parliament. He was re-elected MP for Dorchester in 1656 for the Second Protectorate Parliament. He was commissioner for assessment for Dorset in 1657 and became mayor of Dorchester in 1658. In 1659, he was commissioner for militia again and from January 1660 he was commissioner  for assessment for Dorset until 1661. In March 1660, he was commissioner for militia again and in April 1660 was re-elected MP for Dorchester in the Convention Parliament.

Whiteway's will was proved in February 1679 by a creditor.

Whiteway first married Mary White, daughter of Stephen White of Stanton St. John, Oxfordshire on 28 Feb 1639. They had four sons and two daughters. Mary died in 1658. He married secondly Martha, widow of Francis Sedgwicke and of Timothy Alsop, brewer of Hackney, Middlesex and daughter of Ralph Triplett, brewer of Thames Street, London on 9 July 1667.

References

1614 births
1670s deaths
Members of the Parliament of England for Dorchester
Mayors of Dorchester, Dorset
English merchants
Year of death uncertain
English MPs 1654–1655
English MPs 1656–1658
English MPs 1660

John Whiteway (politician)


Richard Godhard "Rich" Becker (born February 1, 1972) is an American former professional baseball outfielder. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Minnesota Twins, New York Mets, Baltimore Orioles, Milwaukee Brewers, Oakland Athletics, and Detroit Tigers.

Career
Born in Aurora, Illinois, Becker was selected in the third round of the 1990 MLB draft out of West Aurora High School by the Minnesota Twins.  In high school Becker, played competitive football and baseball.  In football, he played quarterback and running back on offense and corner back on defense.  However, he excelled on the baseball diamond and as a result had come to the attention of elite college baseball programs and scouts from MLB. Becker spent his first minor league season with the Elizabethton Twins. He played in 56 games, had 194 at-bats with 56 base hits, including six home runs for a .289 batting average. He played for the Kenosha Twins, Visalia Oaks and the Nashville Xpress teams before being called up to the Minnesota Twins in 1993.

Becker made his MLB debut in 1993 as a switch hitter.  Appearing in three games with seven at-bats, getting two hits and it was decided that he needed another trip to the PCL Salt Lake Buzz before getting a full-time job.  He was called upon again in 1994 and in 28 games with 98 at-bats he hit .265.  However, he achieved greater success batting exclusively from the left side of the plate.  During the 1995 minor league season, for 36 games he hit .316 and was called up again to the show with the Minnesota Twins.  1995 was Becker's first full year with the Twins.  In 1996, manager Tom Kelly put Becker in the position of succeeding Kirby Puckett as the Twins starting center fielder.  However, he responded with his best year as a major leaguer, batting .291 with 12 home runs, 71 runs batted in (RBIs) and 19 stolen bases.  On July 13 of that year, he had his best day, getting four hits—including two home runs, a double, and six RBIs.  However, his numbers declined the following year, and the Twins traded Becker for Alex Ochoa in December 1997.  Subsequent to the trade, Becker bounced among several teams, finding marginal playing time with the Baltimore Orioles, New York Mets, Milwaukee Brewers, Oakland Athletics, and Detroit Tigers.

Following the 2002 season, Becker retired from baseball.  His career stats in 789 MLB games are: 2,227 at-bats, 570 base hits, with 45 home runs with a .256 batting average and 66 stolen bases.

Becker's minor league numbers show 770 games, 2,851 at-bats, 821 hits, with 75 home runs and a .287 batting average. Becker had spent 13 seasons in professional baseball and was just 31 years of age upon retirement.

Rich Becker was the only player to come out of the third round of the 1990 draft and sustain any sort of long-term career.

References

External links

West Aurora Baseball Alumni

1972 births
Living people
American expatriate baseball players in Canada
Baltimore Orioles players
Baseball players from Illinois
Calgary Cannons players
Detroit Tigers players
Elizabethton Twins players
Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks players
Kenosha Twins players
Major League Baseball outfielders
Milwaukee Brewers players
Minnesota Twins players
Nashville Xpress players
New York Mets players
Oakland Athletics players
Salt Lake Buzz players
Baseball players from Aurora, Illinois
Toledo Mud Hens players
Visalia Oaks players

Rich Becker


Achdé (), the pseudonym of Hervé Darmenton (; born July 30, 1961), is a French comic book writer and artist. The pseudonym is based on the French pronunciation of his initials, "H.D." (similar to Hergé and Jijé). After the death of Morris, the creator of Lucky Luke, Achdé continued the task of drawing new Lucky Luke stories from 2003 onwards.

Career
Before dedicating himself to his craft, Achdé worked as a doctor with a specialty in radiology, but abandoned a career in medicine in 1985 to dedicate himself fully to drawing.  He began illustrating newspapers and self-published Destins Croisés, his first comic book, in 1988. He joined the French publishing house Dargaud in 1991 and created several new series, alone and in partnership, including Fort Braillard, Woker (which concerns an interplanetary Tarzan), and Doc Véto.  In 1993, he launched the series CRS=Détresse, CRS being a reference to the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité, the French security forces attached to the national police force, who are deployed during riots and demonstrations.

Following the death of Morris, Achdé was given the assignment to carry on the Lucky Luke series in collaboration with writer Laurent Gerra, and has stated, "For me it's been a childhood dream; when I was little, Lucky Luke was my favorite hero, and when I was young I knew I wanted to be a cartoonist."

Notes

References
 Achdé publications in Spirou BDoubliées
 Achdé albums Bedetheque

External links
 Achdé biography on Lambiek Comiclopedia
 Interview with Achdé, Barcelona, 2005

1961 births
Living people
Writers from Lyon
French comics writers
French comics artists
Artists from Lyon

Achdé


Consort Dowager Zhao (趙太妃, personal name unknown) was the mother of Liu Bin (né Liu Hongdu) (Emperor Shang), the second emperor of the Chinese Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period state Southern Han.  She was a concubine to Liu Bin's father, the founding emperor Liu Yan (Emperor Gaozu).

Very little is known about the future Consort Dowager Zhao's background.  It is known that she was considered very beautiful and was favored by Liu Yan.  In 920, she gave birth to his third son Liu Hongdu — who would effectively become his oldest son since Liu Hongdu's older brothers Liu Yaoshu (劉耀樞) and Liu Guitu (劉龜圖) would both die early.  During Liu Yan's Dayou era (928-942), she would receive the imperial consort title Zhaoyi (昭儀).

Liu Yan died in 942 and was succeeded by Liu Hongdu, who changed his name to Liu Bin.  He honored Consort Zhao as consort dowager, but not as empress dowager.  In 943, his younger brother Liu Hongxi the Prince of Jin, whom he had put in command of the government, had his associates Chen Daoxiang (陳道庠) and Liu Sichao (劉思潮) assassinate him, and Liu Hongxi subsequently took the throne (as Emperor Zhongzong).  It is not known what occurred to Consort Dowager Zhao.

References

 Spring and Autumn Annals of the Ten Kingdoms (十國春秋), vol. 61.
 Zizhi Tongjian, vol. 283.

Later Liang (Five Dynasties) people
Southern Han people
Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms imperial consorts
10th-century deaths
Year of birth unknown
Chinese concubines

Consort Dowager Zhao


The Rallye du Maroc (Morocco Rally) was a marathon rally, similar to the Safari Rally, but that should not be confused with the  Rallye du Maroc rally raid introduced in 2000.

History
It was first run in 1934, and held intermittently until 1988. Established by the Royal Automobile Club of Morocco, it is one of the more difficult automotive rallies. In 1969 for example, 7 cars completed the course, out of a starting field of 68 vehicles.

The event was a World Rally Championship round in 1973, 1975 and 1976. The stages were varied – from shorter, but rough and challenging more typical ones to desert crossings (like in the Dakar Rally), which were very long, reaching even few hundred kilometers, making refueling during the stage mandatory.

List of winners

References

Alpha Encyclopedie/Editeur : Editions Grange Batellière / Editions Kister, Genève / Editions Erasme, Bruxelles, Anvers.
List of winners

External links
Morocco Rally at  juwra.com
French description at

Recurring sporting events established in 1934
Recurring sporting events disestablished in 1988
Morocco
Motorsport competitions in Morocco
1934 establishments in Morocco
1988 disestablishments in Morocco

Rallye du Maroc


Saint John Vianney, a confessor, was a priest who had a special gift for confession. He was known for his loyalty to the Virgin Mary. Vianney was born on 8 May 1786, in a small city in France called Dardilly. He died on 4 August 1859 in France.

He spent most of his childhood in Dardilly, France and inspired many people.

Vianney is known for his confession sessions. When he does confession, he already knows your sins. He works in the church for about 15-16 hours a day, Vianney is also known for the multiplication of flour. One time there was a family who was really hungry so they asked John to see if he could do anything about it. He prayed to God and like that the bowl was full of flour that had enough to make some bread in the oven.

1786 births
1859 deaths

John Vianney


Koninklijke Racing Club Zuid-West-Vlaanderen was a Belgian football club from the municipality of Harelbeke, West Flanders from 1930 to 2002.  It played one spell in the first division from 1995 to 2001.

At the end of the 2000–01 season, the club was relegated to the second division and it subsequently changed its name from K.R.C. Harelbeke to K.R.C. Zuid-West-Vlaanderen. The following year, the matricule n°1615 merged with K.S.V. Ingelmunster to become K.S.V. Ingelmunster-Zuid-West, a club now known again as KRC Harelbeke. The reason of the fusion was that Zuid-West-Vlaanderen went into liquidation after it was refused its license.

History
Racing Club Harelbeke was founded in 1930 and it registered the same year to the Belgian Football Association to become the matricule n°1615.  In 1955 the club changed its name to K.R.C. Harelbeke. It appeared for the first time in the second division in 1978 and would eventually become a regular in that division, playing the final round four times before it won it in 1995. Harelbeke achieved its best ranking with a 5th place in 1998 right behind Anderlecht.

Honours
Belgian Second Division final round:
Winners (1): 1995

References
 Belgian football clubs history
 RSSSF archive – 1st and 2nd division final tables

Association football clubs established in 1930
Defunct football clubs in Belgium
Association football clubs disestablished in 2002
1930 establishments in Belgium
2002 disestablishments in Belgium
Organisations based in Belgium with royal patronage
K.R.C. Zuid-West-Vlaanderen
Belgian Pro League clubs

K.R.C. Zuid-West-Vlaanderen


The Myth of Hitler's Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis is a 2005 book by American historian and Rabbi David G. Dalin. It was published by Regnery Publishing.

Background
In 2001 Joseph Bottum, the Literary Editor of The Weekly Standard, commissioned Dalin to write an omnibus review article on the books relating to Pope Pius XII, who was the center of controversy in the wake of John Cornwell's book Hitler's Pope.

Published in February 2001, Dalin's essay (later expanded into the book) concluded that Pius XII was a Righteous Gentile who saved hundreds of thousands of lives during the Holocaust. Bottum stated that the essay "went far beyond any claim I had been willing to make", though he did not say whether he disagreed with any of the claims in the essay, and also noted that one New York Times reviewer who "responded in the way I had supposed most would" and "grumbled a little but eventually concluded the claims about Pius XII were overwrought and Dalin was basically right: the Pope did "more than most to shelter Jews".

Dalin's book, The Myth of Hitler's Pope, has been translated into Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Polish.

Contents

Dalin first presents evidence to support his contention that many popes through history have defended the Jews, and that they have refuted attacks like the blood libel.

Then he gets to the main part of the book: defending the reputation of the late Pope Pius XII by presenting extensive documentation collated from Church and State archives throughout Europe. Rabbi Dalin suggests that Yad Vashem might honor Pope Pius XII as a "Righteous Gentile", and documents that Pius was praised by many Jewish leaders of his day for his role in saving more Jews than Schindler. Pius's admirers included Chief Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog of Pre-State Palestine and then later the State of Israel, Israeli Prime Ministers Golda Meir and Moshe Sharett, and Israel's first president Chaim Weizmann.

Dalin also presents Albert Einstein as one of the Jews who praised Pius XII, writing that Einstein "paid tribute to the 'courage' of Pope Pius and the Catholic Church" in a 23 December 1940 article in Time magazine.

Dalin writes:

Dalin also argues that there really was a "Hitler's cleric", Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who spent the war with Hitler, was a friend of Adolf Eichmann, and later became the mentor of Yasser Arafat.

Reviews

In the July/August 2006 issue of The American Spectator, Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Winston Churchill and the author of ten books on the Holocaust, writes:
"Building on earlier, documented defenses of Pius XII...[ Dalin ] builds a powerful case for Pius XII, suggesting that the desire of Pope John Paul II to canonize Pius need not have been offensive -- or insensitive -- to Jews, as it was widely portrayed."
Gilbert asserts that "Professor Dalin's book is an essential contribution to our understanding of the reality of Pope Pius XII's support for Jews at their time of greatest danger."

Francis Phillips of the Jerusalem Post wrote: "(This) book, which is robust, polemical and argumentative, deploys much documentation to show that the portrayal of the pope as a Nazi sympathizer and anti-Semite is at best grotesque, at worst deliberately false... Dalin has done an excellent job in defending the wartime record of Pius XII... Because of the author's scholarly research, it is to be hoped that history in the long term will be kinder to the reputation of a man maligned."

See also

Pius XII and the German Resistance
Catholic Church and Nazi Germany
Catholic resistance to Nazi Germany

References

Notes

Goldhagenizing the Catholic Church, Paul Gottfried (18 January 2002)
The Defamation of Pope Pius XII, Tom Woods (25 July 2005)
Gilbert, Martin, "Hitler's Pope?," The American Spectator, http://spectator.org/articles/46578/hitlers-pope (July/August 2006)
 Lapomarda, Vincent A., "Not Hitler's Pope," New Oxford Review, October 2000, and "Pius XII as 'Phayer's Pope'," New Oxford Review, April 2009

2005 in Christianity
2005 non-fiction books
21st-century history books
American non-fiction books
Books about Nazism
Books about Pope Pius XII
Catholicism and politics
English-language books
History books about Catholicism
History books about World War II
History of the papacy
Pope Pius XII and World War II
Regnery Publishing books

The Myth of Hitler's Pope


Lucius Nonius Asprenas was a Roman politician and general who fought with Julius Caesar and was elected consul suffectus in 36 BC.

Biography
A novus homo of the late republic, and originally hailing from Picenum, Asprenas was elected to the office of praetor by 47 BC.  Although having no obvious connections or political ties to Julius Caesar he held a proconsular command under Caesar in Africa during the civil war, holding the town of Thapsus with two legions in 46 BC.  The following year he followed Caesar to Hispania, where he was given a command over the cavalry, possibly as a legate.

During the early years of the Second Triumvirate Asprenas was largely overlooked for military command, but eventually he was given a role in Caesar Octavianus's war against Sextus Pompeius.  He was rewarded for his services with his election as suffect consul in 36 BC.  In 31 BC, Asprenas was elected as one of the Septemviri epulones.

He had at least one son, Lucius Nonius Asprenas, who was the father of Lucius Nonius Asprenas, the consul suffectus of AD 6. He also had a daughter, Nonia Polla, who married Lucius Volusius Saturninus.

See also
 List of Roman consuls
 List of Roman generals

Notes

Sources
 T. Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, Vol II (1952).
 Syme, Ronald, The Roman Revolution (1939)

Senators of the Roman Republic
Asprenas, Lucius
1st-century BC Roman consuls
Military personnel of Julius Caesar

Lucius Nonius Asprenas (consul 36 BC)


Frank Noah Proffitt (June 1, 1913 – November 24, 1965) was an Appalachian old time banjoist who preserved the song "Tom Dooley" in the form we know it today and was a key figure in inspiring musicians of the 1960s and 1970s to play the traditional five-string banjo.

He was born in Laurel Bloomery, Tennessee, United States, and was raised in the Reese area of Watauga County, North Carolina, where he worked in a variety of jobs and lived on a farm with his wife and six children. He grew tobacco, worked as a carpenter, and in a spark plug factory. He was known for his skills as a carpenter and luthier; Proffitt's fretless banjos and dulcimers were homemade.

In 1937, Frank Proffitt met folksong collectors Anne and Frank Warner. Frank Warner was searching for a dulcimer builder and thus began a 30-year friendship and song swapping.  Warner collected his songs and shared them with Alan Lomax, who included many, including the ballad "Tom Dooley" that Warner had learned from Proffitt, in his book, Folksong U.S.A..  Proffitt had learned the song from his aunt Nancy Prather, who had in turn learnt it from her mother Edy Adeline (Pardue) Proffitt, who had known both Dula (locally pronounced "Dooley") and Laura Foster. The Kingston Trio learned "Tom Dooley" from a recording by Warner, and were eventually required by court judgement to acknowledge their debt to Proffitt and pay him royalties for the use of the song.

Proffitt recorded "Tom Dooley" and other ballad songs in 1961, on the album Frank Proffitt Sings Folk Songs, edited by Warner and issued by Folkways Records.  A second set of Proffitt's recordings, Frank Proffitt of Reece NC: Traditional Songs and Ballads of Appalachia, was released in 1962,  and  Proffitt performed at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival. He also performed at the 1964 New York World's Fair, and recorded several more tracks released on the compilation album High Atmosphere: Ballads and Banjo Tunes from Virginia and North Carolina.

Proffitt died in 1965, aged 52.  The Frank Proffitt Memorial Album was released by Folk Legacy Records in 1969, followed by a tribute album, Nothing Seems Better To Me: The Music of Frank Proffitt and North Carolina, was issued in 2000.

Discography
Frank Proffitt Sings Folk Songs, Folkways Records
Frank Proffitt of Reese NC, Folk-Legacy Records
Frank Proffitt Memorial Album, Folk Legacy
High Atmosphere: Ballads and Banjo Tunes from Virginia and North Carolina, Rounder Records

References

1913 births
1965 deaths
People from Johnson County, Tennessee
American folk musicians
American folk singers
American banjoists
American folk-song collectors
Old-time musicians
Music of East Tennessee
Music of Johnson County, Tennessee
Musicians from Appalachia
20th-century American singer-songwriters
Singer-songwriters from Tennessee
People from Beech Mountain, North Carolina

Frank Proffitt


Koh Boon Hwee, DUBC (; born 1950) is a Singaporean businessman.

Education
Koh was educated at Saint Andrew's School, Singapore. He went on to receive a first class honours degree in mechanical engineering from the Imperial College of Science and Technology, University of London, and an MBA (Distinction) from the Harvard Business School.

Career
Koh was appointed Chairman of the Singapore Telecom Group in 1986 and then joined the Singapore Airlines board in March 2001.

He served as Chairman of the SIA Engineering Company; a Director of Agilent Technologies Inc, Four Soft Ltd and Norelco UMS Holdings Limited; Executive Director of MediaRing Limited and Tech Group Asia Limited. He serves on the boards of Temasek Holdings (Private) Limited as a Director; AAC Acoustic Technologies Holdings Ltd and Infiniti Solutions Private Limited. He is also a Council Member of the Singapore Business Federation.

On 1 January 2006, Koh became chairman of DBS Bank. He joined DBS as a director on 15 June 2005. He stepped down on 30 April 2010, replaced by Peter Seah.

At the 2008 National Day Awards, Koh was awarded the Darjah Utama Bakti Cemerlang (Distinguished Service Order).

References

1950 births
Living people
DBS Bank people
Harvard Business School alumni
Saint Andrew's School, Singapore alumni
Recipients of the Darjah Utama Bakti Cemerlang
Hewlett Foundation
Singapore Business Federation

Koh Boon Hwee


The End of Alice is a 1996 novel by American writer A. M. Homes. It was published in the United States by Scribner and in the United Kingdom by Anchor Books.

The story is narrated mostly by a middle-aged pedophile and child killer who is serving a life sentence. He receives correspondence from a 19-year-old girl who plans to seduce a 12-year-old neighborhood boy. The child killer encourages her and gives her tips on grooming children. He delights in the girl's letters detailing her progress. The scenes involving the girl (who is never named) are written from a third-person perspective.

Plot summary
When the novel opens, a pedophile and child murderer – identified only as "Chappy" – has been in prison for 23 years. (He narrates most of the novel, including accounts of his treatment by his unstable, emotionally and sexually abusive mother.) Now in his 50s and with a parole hearing approaching, Chappy tells of receiving a letter from an unnamed 19-year-old girl who takes a morbid interest in his case. She tells him that she is on summer holiday from college and plans to groom a 12-year-old boy named Matthew, who lives in her neighborhood.

As the girl corresponds with Chappy, he recounts his past, contrasting events in his life with the explicit details given by the girl of how she grooms Matthew, who is an outcast and easy to manipulate. Chappy encourages the girl, and she soon accomplishes her goal. She gives Matthew tennis lessons, and eventually becomes his babysitter. While babysitting she exposes herself to Matthew and she begins to rape him regularly.

Chappy eagerly reads the girl's letters as she describes her successes. He berates her for her poor grammar and for her liberal use of exclamation points. He recounts several scenes of prison sex.

During the novel, Chappy refers frequently to "Alice," his 12-year-old victim, who he continuously sexually assaults. During his parole hearing it is revealed that he brutally murdered and decapitated Alice after she protested when the assault resulted in bleeding. He tried to convince her it was the start of her period, but she did not comply. He overpowered and killed her, framing the exchange as Alice provoking him with a fight.

The girl's sexual abuse of Matthew ends when she goes to Europe for an end-of-summer trip. While traveling, she receives a letter from her parents, who have found a letter from the narrator and know what she has done; they write that she will need to "see someone" when she returns home.

Reception
The book generated significant controversy and received mixed reviews in the United States and even more so in the United Kingdom. It was criticized for its explicit scenes of child sexual abuse and prison rape, and for its sympathetic portrayal of two protagonists who believed that sex with minors was perfectly acceptable. Defenders of the book argued that, as it was written mostly from the perspective of the pedophiles, it needed to express their beliefs.

When the novel was published in the UK in 1997, representatives of the National Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Children complained about it and appealed to bookstores not to stock it. Only W. H. Smith observed this request. The NSPCC's spokesman, Jim Harding, described The End Of Alice as "the most vile and perverted novel I've ever read."

Randall Kenan of Elle magazine, wrote: "Homes manages — with language both lyrical and frighteningly direct — to usher the reader into the horrific landscape of a disturbed mind and, at the same time, of a funny, vulnerable, ultimately very sad human being."

The Barcelona Review said this is a novel that "rings true from beginning to end, that adds real insight into its characters and their worlds, that crawls under the skin, disturbs, digs at the reader's own psyche, and pushes him into a new position in the author-reader relationship."

Footnotes

External links
Jill Adams, "An Interview with A. M. Homes", The Barcelona Review, June/July 2007, #58/59
Excerpt and reviews, A.M. Homes Books website

1996 American novels
Fiction with unreliable narrators
Obscenity controversies in literature
Pedophilia in literature
Novels about child sexual abuse
Charles Scribner's Sons books
Anchor Books books

The End of Alice


The Second Battle of Ramla (or Ramleh) took place on 17 May 1102 between the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Fatimids of Egypt.

Background
The town of Ramla lay on the road from Jerusalem to Ascalon, the latter of which was the largest Fatimid fortress in Palestine. From Ascalon the Fatimid vizier, Al-Afdal Shahanshah, launched almost annual attacks into the newly founded Crusader kingdom from 1099 to 1107. It was thrice the case that the two armies met each other at Ramla.

Egyptian armies of the period relied on masses of Sudanese bowmen supported by Arab and Berber cavalry. Since the archers were on foot and the horsemen awaited attack with lance and sword, an Egyptian army provided exactly the sort of immobile target that the Frankish heavy cavalry excelled in attacking. Whereas the Crusaders developed a healthy respect for the harass and surround tactics of the Turkish horse archers, they tended to discount the effectiveness of the Egyptian armies. While overconfidence led to a Crusader disaster at the second battle of Ramla, the more frequent result was a Fatimid defeat. "The Franks never, until the reign of Saladin, feared the Egyptian as they did the armies from Muslim Syria and Mesopotamia."

Battle
The surprising victory of the crusaders at the first Battle of Ramla the previous year, al-Afdal was soon ready to strike at the crusaders once again and dispatched around 20,000 troops under the command of his son Sharaf al-Ma'ali. Baldwin I of Jerusalem was in Jaffa seeing off survivors of the defeated Crusade of 1101, when news reached him of the Fatimid invasion force. William of Aquitaine had already departed, but many others such as Stephen of Blois and Count Stephen of Burgundy had been forced back due to unfavorable winds and consequently joined Baldwin's force in order to help in the battle. Due to faulty reconnaissance Baldwin severely underestimated the size of the Egyptian army, believing it to be no more than a minor expeditionary force, and rode to face an army of several thousand with only two hundred mounted knights and no infantry.

Realizing his error too late and already cut off from escape, Baldwin and his army were charged by the Egyptian forces and many were quickly slaughtered, although Baldwin and a handful of others managed to barricade themselves in Ramla's single tower. Baldwin was left with no other option than to flee and escaped the tower under the cover of night with just his scribe and a single knight, Hugh of Brulis, who is never mentioned in any source afterwards. Baldwin spent the next two days evading Fatimid search parties until he arrived exhausted, starved, and parched in the reasonably safe haven of Arsuf on May 19.

The situation of the remaining knights in Ramla deteriorated when Fatimid forces stormed the town on the morning after Baldwin's escape, with only the tower remaining under Crusader control. The Fatimids ruthlessly attacked the tower, undermining walls and setting fires to smoke out the desperate defenders. After a day of desperately holding their ground the remaining knights, all but abandoned by their king, decided to launch a suicidal last stand and charged the besiegers. Almost all of the meagre force was immediately slain including Stephen of Blois, who finally recovered the honour that he had lost when he deserted the Siege of Antioch four years previously. However, Conrad of Germany, the constable of Henry IV who had previously led a contingent at the Crusade of 1101, fought so valiantly that even after everyone around him was dead he still fought on, holding off the Fatimids to the point that his awestruck foe offered to spare his life if he surrendered.

Siege of Jaffa and aftermath
Having recuperated in Arsuf, Baldwin commandeered an English pirate ship to break through the Egyptian blockade of Jaffa while a force of eighty knights under Hugh of Falchenburg attempted to break in by land. The victorious Sharaf al-Ma'ali had surrounded the city and, with their king missing and the army presumed destroyed, capitulation seemed inevitable. In order to coax the city into surrender, the Fatimids made the corpse of Gerbod of Scheldewindeke, a knight who had fallen in battle previously, to look like Baldwin I before mutilating the body and parading it in front of the walls of Jaffa. Gerbod had apparently held a resemblance to Baldwin and the crusaders fell for the ruse, with preparations to flee the city underway when Baldwin arrived just in time. Baldwin's arrival disheartened and Sharaf withdrew, allowing Baldwin time to organize a counterattack. With Baldwin's forces strengthened by the arrival of a fleet of French and German Crusaders, he was able to assemble an army of eight thousand men and surprised the unprepared Egyptians. Discontent was already arising from Sharaf's indecisive leadership and the Fatimids quickly retreated back to Ascalon. Although Baldwin succeeded in defending his kingdom, his miscalculation had cost the lives of a number of prominent knights which the nascent Kingdom of Jerusalem could ill afford to lose. Further Fatimid incursions continued, with the two nations meeting in battle at Ramla for a third time in 1105.

Citations

Bibliography

Battles involving the Kingdom of Jerusalem
Battles involving the Fatimid Caliphate
Conflicts in 1102
History of Ramla
1100s in the Kingdom of Jerusalem
1102 in Asia
Crusader–Fatimid wars

Battle of Ramla (1102)


The Xbox 360 technical specifications and other things  describe the various components of the Xbox 360 video game console.

The console features a port on the top when vertical (left side when horizontal) to which a custom-housed hard disk drive unit can be attached in sizes of either 20, 60, 120, 250, 320, 500 GB; and as of April 2015 all 2.5" SATA Hard Drives up to 2 TB, the user can use the format option from system settings to utilize the new HDD. Inside, the Xbox 360 uses the triple-core IBM designed Xenon as its CPU, with each core capable of simultaneously processing two threads, and can therefore operate on up to six threads at once. Graphics processing is handled by the ATI Xenos, which has 10 MB of eDRAM. Its main memory pool is 512 MB in size.

Central processing unit

Xbox 360 took a different approach to hardware compared to its predecessor. The XCPU, named Xenon at Microsoft and "Waternoose" at IBM, is a custom triple-core 64-bit PowerPC-based design by IBM. The CPU emphasized high floating point performance through multiple FPU and SIMD vector processors in each core.
The SIMD vector processor (VMX128) was modified for the Xbox to include a dot-product instruction. The dot-product instruction took far less latency than discrete instructions. The VMX128 was also modified by the addition of direct 3D (D3D) compressed data format. This led to an approximate 50 percent savings in required band-width and memory footprint making the CPU having a theoretical peak performance of 115.2 GFLOPS, being capable of 9.6 billion dot products per second. Each core of the CPU was capable of simultaneous multithreading and was clocked at 3.2 GHz. However, to reduce CPU die size, complexity, cost, and power demands, the processor used in-order execution in contrast to the Intel Coppermine 128-based Pentium III used in the original Xbox, which used more complex out-of-order execution. The original chip used a 90 nm process, although a newer 65 nm process SOI revision was implemented on later models, which was in-turn superseded by a 45 nm combined CPU and GPU chip. A 21.6 GB/s front side bus, aggregated 10.8 GB/s upstream and downstream, connected Xenon with the graphics processor/northbridge. Xenon was equipped with an 8th way set associative 1 MB Level 2 cache on-die running at half CPU clock speed. This cache was shared amongst the three CPU cores. Each core had separate L1 caches, each containing a two-way set associative 32-Kbyte L1 instruction cache and a four-way set associative 32-Kbyte L1 data cache. The write-through data cache did not allocate cache lines on writes. The CPU also contained ROM storing Microsoft private encrypted keys, used to decrypt game data. The heat sink implemented to cool the Xenon CPU was composed of aluminum fins with a copper base, and a heat pipe. Newer revisions, which had a smaller core, do not feature the heat pipe or copper base. The heat sink was cooled by two 70 mm fans at the rear of the console on original-style consoles, while a single fan mounted on the side of the consoles was used in Xbox 360 S consoles. There were several types of fan used in Xbox 360s, which were produced by Nidec, Sunon, and Delta Electronics.

CPU data streaming
During read streaming into the CPU, a custom prefetch instruction, extended data cache block touch (xDCBT) prefetches data directly to the L1 data cache of the intended core, which skips putting the data in the L2 cache to avoid thrashing the L2 cache. Writes streaming from each core skip the L1 cache, due to its no-write allocation (avoids thrashing of high-bandwidth, transient, write-only data streams on the L1 cache), and goes directly to the L2 cache.
The system allows for the GPU to directly read data produced by the CPU without going to main memory. In this specific case of data streaming, called Xbox procedural synthesis (XPS), the CPU is effectively a data decompressor, generating geometry on-the-fly for consumption by the GPU 3D core.

Graphics processing unit

While the first Xbox's graphics processing unit was produced by Nvidia, the Xbox 360 had a chip designed by ATI called Xenos. The chip was developed under the name "C1" and "R500" was often used to refer to it. The GPU package contains two separate silicon dies, each built on a 90 nm process with a clock speed of 500 MHz; the GPU proper, manufactured by TSMC and a 10 MB eDRAM daughter-die, manufactured by NEC. Thanks to the daughter die, the Xenos can do 4× MSAA, z-buffering, and alpha blending with no appreciable performance penalty on the GPU. The GPU also houses additional capabilities typically separated into a motherboard chipset in PC systems, effectively replacing the northbridge chip. It has a theoretical peak of 240 GFLOPS. Due to the GPU frequently overheating in early motherboard models, Microsoft revised the GPU heat sink in order to eliminate thermal throttling.

Memory and system bandwidth

The console features 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM clocked at 700 MHz with an effective transmission rate of 1.4 GHz on a 128-bit bus. The memory is shared by the CPU and the GPU via the unified memory architecture. This memory is produced by either Samsung or Qimonda.

According to Mark Rein of Epic Games, Microsoft had originally planned on using only 256 MB of RAM, but the decision to increase it was based on Epic's upcoming Gears of War title. Epic had been arguing for Microsoft to increase the memory for some time, and Tim Sweeney had sent Microsoft screenshots of what Gears would look like at 256 MB, and then at their proposed 512 MB. Shortly thereafter, Epic was the first studio told of new 512 MB size specification and claimed it cost them a billion dollars but felt it was better for gamers.

The Xbox 360 has an extensive amount of bandwidth in comparison to its competition; however, this statistic includes the eDRAM logic to memory bandwidth, and not internal CPU bandwidths. The eDRAM internal logic to its internal memory bandwidth is 256 GB/s. The high bandwidth is used primarily for z-buffering, alpha blending, and antialiasing; it saves time and space on the GPU die. Between the eDRAM die and the GPU, data is transferred at 32 GB/s. The memory interface bus has a bandwidth of 22.40 GB/s and the Southbridge a bandwidth of 0.5 GB/s.

Audio and video
All games made for the Xbox 360 are required to support at least Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound. The console works with over 256 audio channels and 320 independent decompression channels using 32-bit processing for audio, with support for 48 kHz 16-bit sound. Sound files for games are encoded using Microsoft's XMA audio format. An MPEG-2 decoder is included for DVD video playback. VC-1 or WMV is used for streaming video and other video is compressed using VC-1 at non-HD NTSC and PAL resolutions or WMV HD. The Xbox 360 also supports H.263 and H.264 MPEG-4 videos. Unlike the original Xbox, voice communication is handled by the console, not by the game code, allowing for cross-game communication. There is no voice echo to game players on the same console; voice only goes to remote consoles.

Initially there were no digital video outputs such as DVI or HDMI on the Xbox 360; instead, HD-quality output could only be produced over  component video (used by both the 3 RCA component cable and the Japanese D-terminal cable) and later VGA (via a software update). An HDMI port was introduced to the Xbox 360 by July 2007 with the introduction of the Elite model. A wide array of SDTV and HDTV resolutions are supported by the console hardware; up to 1080p after the October 2006 software upgrade. While most games are rendered natively at 720p, the video from all games can be scaled by the hardware to whatever resolution the user has set in the console's settings; from 480i NTSC and 576i PAL all the way to 1080p HDTV.

DVD storage

Xbox 360 is equipped with a 12× DVD drive, with a data transfer rate of 16.5 MB/s. The original production DVD drives were manufactured by LG, Samsung, and Sony. Beginning in November 2006, a new model the BenQ VAD6038 was introduced, which is said to run faster than the previous models and, in addition, is much quieter. There is a new drive by LiteOn.

Games are stored on standard 8.5 GB dual-layer DVD-ROMs; however initially only 7.3 GB (6.8 GiB) were allocated to be used for games on the "Xbox Game Disc 2" (XGD2) early format. With the XGD3 later format introduced in 2011, the usable space was brought up to 8.3 GB (7.8 GiB). This marked an increase in available space for games from 85% to nearly 98%. In both formats, the unallocated space for games is used for anti-piracy security software.

The option to apply a regional lockout to games is available to publishers, although DVD region codes are always enforced for movies. Microsoft has implemented methods to prevent hacking through the drive. Later drive models have the external debug triggering removed and black hard glue added to cover all the chip and controller pins. The drive is able to read both DVD±R and DVD±RW in addition to being able to play DVD-Video out of the box, unlike its predecessor, which required the purchase of an add-on remote. The system is also capable of playing standard CDs along with CD-R/RW, CD-DA, CD-ROM XA, CD-Extra, WMA-CD, MP3-CD, and JPEG Photo CD. Some users reported problems with the disc drive, as when a user changes the console's orientation, the inserted disc may brush against the drive's pickup assembly and incur scratches to it. The users manual advises against changing the console's position while there is a disc in the drive. Other users report experiencing disc scratching during normal horizontal usage.

Announced at CES 2006 and first publicly shown at E3 2006, an external HD DVD drive was released in North America on November 7, 2006 (for US$199.99) and in Japan on November 17, 2006 (for ¥19,800). In the UK, France and Germany, the HD DVD drive was released for €199.99/£129.99. The HD DVD drive was bundled for a limited time with an Xbox 360 Universal Media Remote, as well as an HD DVD copy of Peter Jackson's King Kong. The drive plays HD DVD movies, although all Xbox 360 games will remain on the DVD format. Microsoft had no plans to include an internal HD DVD player in future Xbox 360 designs. The drive connects to the Xbox 360 via USB and contains two integrated USB ports on the rear. Games can not be played on the HD DVD drive. Microsoft has since discontinued the HD DVD add-on since the format was officially dropped by Toshiba.

List of DVD drives

Hard drive storage

The Xbox 360 uses standard 2.5" SATA hard disk drives (HDDs) held within custom enclosures. These units have a custom connector to facilitate connection to the Xbox 360 and the drives themselves feature custom firmware (making stand-alone drives incompatible). The drives are detachable, making it possible to move data from one console to another, and to upgrade the size of drive on a console. The hard drives themselves are manufactured by various companies, including Fujitsu, Seagate, Samsung, Hitachi and Western Digital. Certain Western Digital hard disk drives can be modified with a program called HDDHackr to be used with the Xbox 360.

Approximately 7 GB are reserved for system use (4 GB of that portion are reserved for game title caching and other hard drive specific elements in games that support the hard drive, and an additional 2 GB are reserved for use by the Xbox 360 backwards-compatibility software). The original Pro configuration of the system came with a 20 GB hard drive, which was also available to purchase separately (for the Core model, and later the Arcade model, which did not include a HDD). This was upgraded to 60 GB in September 2008, and the 60 GB HDD was also made available at retail. In April 2007, Microsoft released the Elite console, which included a black 120 GB HDD; a grey 120 GB drive was also later made available at retail. In November 2009, Microsoft released the "Super Elite" console, as a bundle with the highly anticipated game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. This console was like the typical black Elite, but with Call of Duty graphics added and for the first time included a 250 GB hard drive (which holds up to 228 GB of data after system information is stored). This was followed by various other 250 GB special/limited edition bundles. No standard (non-special edition) configuration of the original console ever included a 250 GB drive, but they were later made available at retail.

In June 2010, Microsoft announced a new version of the console, the Xbox 360 S, which used a new form factor for its 250 GB hard drives. As such, original style hard drives cannot be used in Xbox 360 S consoles, and vice versa, without modification. In June 2011, Microsoft announced a specially branded Gears of War 3 Limited Collector's Edition Xbox 360 S console to coincide with the launch of Gears of War 3. At 320 GB, the included hard drive is the largest available for/with the original Xbox 360 model.

In August 2014, Microsoft announced and released a new 500 GB hard drive for the Xbox 360 S console model, currently the largest hard drive available for or with any Xbox 360 model.

Networking
All versions of the Xbox 360 come with a built-in 10 to 100Mbit/s wired Ethernet network adapter. The "Xbox 360 Wireless Adapter"  (identifiable as white with one antenna) connects via a USB port and adds support for 802.11a and 802.11b/g Wi-Fi. This was replaced by the "Wireless N Adapter" (black with two antennas), which added support for 802.11n on both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands. The original Xbox 360 model features a pair of notches on the rear of the console, above the USB socket, to which the adapter can be attached. Alternatively, a pair of fold-out feet on the adapter can be used to stand it up separately.

The Xbox 360 S and Xbox 360 E consoles feature built-in support for 802.11b/g/n but on the 2.4 GHz band only. The Wireless and Wireless N Adapters can be used on these models to add support for the 5 GHz band (albeit the former losing support for 802.11n over 2.4 GHz) and will, in some cases, offer "... better range and bandwidth compared with the internal wireless feature ..." If this adapter is connected, the internal wireless adapter is disabled. The S and E models lack the notches for the adapter.

Motherboards
Microsoft avoids outright announcements of new motherboard production runs and their subsequent appearance in the market in part due to uneven distribution causing buyer's remorse and to prevent purchaser delay. However, several major (and many minor) motherboard revisions are introduced to reduce costs and to allow them to run cooler while consuming less power. Note that there is no clear divide between the appearance of motherboard revisions in retail. Due to individual stock production, distribution and rotation, it may become difficult to find specific versions.

The power connectors on the back of these systems incorporate a "keying" system that will prevent plugging a (newer) lower-rated power supply into an older system (which needs more power). The keying system does, however, allow older power supplies to be connected to newer systems, as this poses no problem. The initial motherboard version was known as "Xenon" and used a 203 watt power supply, and lacked an HDMI video port. Later models had an improved GPU heatsink. The "Zephyr" revision was a redesigned motherboard adding the HANA and HDMI, but used the same 90 nm CPU as the Xenon. It did however, move to an 80 nm GPU and eDRAM, with an improved GPU heatsink. The "Falcon" incorporated a newer 65 nm CPU, and required less power so it came packaged with a 175 watt power supply. "Jasper" (released late November 2008) used both a 65 nm CPU and GPU, as well as 16, 256 or 512 MB of on-board flash memory. (This was to help run a then-recent Dashboard update. Without the addition of this internal memory, a hard disk drive or memory card is required.) The "Jasper" revision required even less power, and so the power supply was also reduced to 150 watts. The "Kronos" revision is a minor upgrade of the "Jasper", moving to a new "Kronos1" GPU with a 65 nm eDRAM, and adding a new Ring of Light/RF board called "XFreedom". Due to all dies now being at 65 nm, the GPU heatsink returned to the original one used on the "Xenon". Xbox 360 S introduced a new motherboard version called "Trinity" with a 45 nm integrated CPU, GPU, and eDRAM. It consisted of 2 dies, one for the XCGPU, and one for the eDRAM. In 2011 a second model of the Xbox 360 S motherboard has been released known as "Corona" which integrates the HANA chip into the southbridge chip, and used either the traditional 16MB NAND, or a 4GB "Phison" eMMC. "Corona" was used in both the Xbox 360 S and Xbox 360 E. In August 2014, the "Winchester" model was released, with a new XCGPU. This chip removes the heatspreader and integrated the eDRAM into the main die on the XCGPU. This version also patches the "Reset Glitch Hack".

List of revisions

Connectivity to accessories

The Xbox 360 features three USB 2.0 ports (two on the front, one on the back). The Xbox 360 S, however, has five USB 2.0 ports (two on the front, three in the back) along with a dedicated Kinect port. The Xbox 360 E has four ports (two on the front, two on the back) and a dedicated Kinect port. These are used for connection of accessories such as wired controllers, the wireless networking adapter, the Xbox Live Vision camera and USB storage devices. Although the number of wired controllers is limited by the number of ports, up to four may be used through the use of a USB hub.

The Xbox 360 also features wireless connectivity of accessories via a proprietary 2.4 GHz radio system. This is mainly used to connect the official wireless controllers, but is also used for other devices such as the wireless racing wheel and wireless headsets. With the exception of some rhythm game controllers, and the Fanatec CSR wheel, this wireless connectivity is limited to first-party Microsoft accessories. The console can connect to Xbox Live over the Internet through a variety of networking interfaces.

Original style consoles also have two front-mounted memory card slots for the system's proprietary Memory Unit. These can be used to transfer profile and game data from one Xbox 360 to another. Memory Units up to 512 MB are available from Microsoft. The "Arcade" model formerly came with a 256 MB Memory Unit, but with the Jasper motherboard revision of September 2008, the "Arcade" model began to include 256 MB of built-in flash memory. This was later increased to 512 MB. The memory card slots were replaced with USB ports on the newer Xbox 360 S models.

The Universal Media Remote can be used to control several functions of the console, including the Windows Media Center functions if connected to the network. It communicates with the console via infrared through a receiver port on the front of the console. All standard controllers for the system feature a 2.5 mm headset jack to allow the use of wired headsets for voice chatting. The 2.5mm jack can also accept the chatpad accessory. Various other accessories for the console exist, such as decorative faceplates to change the physical appearance of the console.

Physical appearance

The physical outline of the original style Xbox 360 is  and is similar in form factor to its predecessor. It is slightly slimmer in every dimension and is slightly concave, while the original Xbox was noticeably convex.

It comes as standard in either black or white, with other colors available as special editions. It was designed by Astro Studios in cooperation with Hers Experimental Design Laboratory. The original case has a concaveness to it; Astro Studios' president Brett Lovelady said that part of this was to keep an "X" shape to the console when looked at from the front, while it also served to help with cooling the system components, as the narrower section helped the console to "inhale" more air, particularly when placed in the vertical orientation.

In June 2010 a redesign of the console, known as the Xbox 360 S, was announced. This version of the console retains the same basic shape but is noticeably smaller and more angular than the original version. It comes as standard in either matte or glossy black; like its predecessor, other colors are available as special editions.

The front of the console features a "ring of light" that displays four illuminated quadrants in either red or green (Some special editions replaced the green for blue). When the lights turn red, the console has encountered an error, with the number of sectors illuminated informing the user what category the error falls into. Since the redesign of the console removed the red LEDs, this error reporting system is no longer used.

The original Xbox 360 weighs approximately , about 350 grams heavier than the new Xbox. The new version weighs in at .

Power supply
The console uses an external power supply with a 10 A/100–120 V or 5 A/220-230 V (AC) input and DC output rated at 203/175/150/130/115 W (depending on revision). An estimated 2 W of power are used while the older versions of console are in standby mode giving a yearly usage of approximately 17.5 kWh. The new version uses around 0.5W while in standby. Saving the console size and weight, the power supply displaces . Xbox 360 power supplies are designed with keys in the plug to be forwards, but not backwards compatible. For example, a 203 watt supply would fit and work on a 175 watt console, but not the other way around.

See also
 Xbox 360 technical problems

Notes
1.Video output and system control chip.

References

External links

 Xbox Development Team Blog

Backward-compatible video game consoles
Computer-related introductions in 2005
PowerPC-based video game consoles
Video game hardware
Xbox 360 hardware

Xbox 360 technical specifications


Ezana of Axum was a king in 4th century Ethiopia. Ezana was the son of King Ousanas and was taught by Bishop Frumentius. Ezana ruled a tribe called the Axum but he also conquered a lot of other territory in Ethiopia. At first, Ezana called himself a Son of the Roman war deity Mars but Frumentius managed to talk him into becoming a Christian instead. Ezana is known as the King who brought Christianity to Ethiopia and the Orthodox Church there has him as one of their saints.

Kings and queens

Ezana of Axum