David Pierre Giottino Humbert de Superville (The Hague, 18 July 1770 – Leiden, 9 January 1849) was a Dutch artist and art scholar. He was a draughtsman, lithographer, etcher, and portrait painter, and also wrote treatises on art, including the influential work Essai sur les signes inconditionnels dans l'art (Leiden, 1827). His 1815 painting of the jurist and statesman  Johan Melchior Kemper is now part of the collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

His 1801 etching Allegory may have been a direct visual inspiration for  Paul Gauguin's Spirit of the Dead Watching. Although no direct connection has been made, de Superville was cited by Albert Aurier as one of the forerunners of Symbolist painting and de Superville's book Unconditional Signs in Art (1827–32) was widely known to that group.

A portrait of Humbert de Superville uit 1848, painted by Jacobus Ludovicus Cornet, is now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The biography David Pierre Giottin Humbert de Superville, 1770-1849 by Cornelia Magdalena de Haas was published by A.W. Sijthoff in Leiden in 1941. In 1988, an exhibition of Humbert de Superville's work was held at the Musée Fabre in Montpellier (France) and at the Institut Néerlandais in Paris.

Biography

D.P.G. Humbert de Superville was a son of Jean Humbert, a Dutch painter of Swiss and French extraction. His brother, military engineer Jean Emile Humbert, is credited with rediscovering the lost city of Carthage.  Humbert de Superville's assumed name of Giottino was originally a nickname he was given in Italy because his work showed similarities with the Italian master Giotto. He also took the last name de Superville after his grandmother Emilie de Superville, daughter of the eminent French Calvinist theologian Daniel de Superville, who had fled to the Dutch republic in 1685.

He left the Netherlands for Rome from 1789 and lived there until 1800, when the Papal State was restored and Humbert de Superville was forced to leave the city because he had supported the 1798 occupation of Rome by French revolutionary troops. In 1812 he settled in the Dutch town of Leiden and became a lecturer at the University of Leiden. He served as head of the Leiden drawing academy Ars Aemula Naturae (1814–1823) and as first director of the Leiden cabinet of prints, drawings and plaster statues (1825–1849).

Humbert de Superville married Elisabeth Paradijs in 1816. They had two sons, one of whom died at a very young age; the other son died of typhoid at the age of 24.

Gallery
Images from the collection of the Leiden University Library:

References

External links

 Portrait of Johan Melchior Kemper, painted by David Pierre Giottino Humbert de Superville
 Portrait of David Pierre Giottino Humbert de Superville, painted by Jacobus Ludovicus Cornet
 David Pierre Giottino Humbert de Superville at arthistoricum.net (German)

Sources

 Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek (Dutch)
 Musée Fabre (French)
 Thorbecke-archief, Vol. 2 (1820–1825), Historisch Genootschap (Utrecht) (Dutch)

1770 births
1849 deaths
Dutch draughtsmen
19th-century Dutch painters
Dutch male painters
Painters from The Hague
19th-century Dutch male artists


Pleiotropism is a central term in developmental genetics. In pleiotropism, a single gene affects a number of phenotypic traits in the same organism.

These pleiotropic effects often seem to be unrelated to each other. The usual underlying mechanism is that the same gene is activated in several different tissues, producing apparently different effects. It follows that the phenomenon must be extremely common, since most genes will have effects in more than one tissue.

The term may be contrasted with pleiomorphism, in which a genetically uniform group of organisms shows variable phenotypes.

Evolutionary implications
Pleiotropy has significance for the theory of evolution. It has often been claimed that some heritable features of animals are not the product of adaptation by natural selection. Much of this may be explained by pleiotropism. Strong selection for one or two aspects of gene function will automatically bring along some other pleiotropic traits. These other traits, though inherited, may be neutral or even slightly deleterious in terms of selection.

Antagonistic pleiotropy refers to the expression of a gene resulting in multiple competing effects, some beneficial but others detrimental to the organism. Three circumstances are possible:

1. Simultaneously, a gene may cause deleterious traits which are outbalanced by the survival value of positive traits.

2. A gene may increase fitness in the younger, fertile organism, yet contribute to decreased fitness later in life. The reproductive contribution at the younger stages of life will ensure the spread of such a gene.

3. A gene may increase fitness in some habitats, but not others. Its survival in the population is then balanced. An example is a bacterial gene which enhances glucose use at the expense of the ability to use other energy sources (such as lactose). This has positive effects when there is plenty of glucose, but can be lethal if lactose is the only available food source.

References

Classical genetics
Evolutionary biology

Pleiotropism


Thomas Smithwick Gettys (June 19, 1912 – June 8, 2003) was a U.S. Representative from South Carolina.

Born in Rock Hill, South Carolina, Gettys was educated in the Rock Hill public schools.
He attended Clemson College.
Erskine College, A.B., 1933.
He also completed graduate work at Duke University and Winthrop College.
He was in the United States Navy from 1942 to 1946.
He was a teacher.
School administrator, Central School from 1935 to 1941.
He served as staff for United States Representative James P. Richards from 1942 to 1951.
Postmaster, Rock Hill, South Carolina from 1951 to 1954.
He was a lawyer in private practice.
Past member and chairman of the board of trustees of Rock Hill School District Three from 1953 to 1960.

Gettys was elected as a Democrat to the Eighty-eighth and to the Eighty-ninth Congress by special election to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of United States Representative Robert W. Hemphill, and reelected to the four succeeding Congresses (November 3, 1964 – December 31, 1974).
He resigned on December 31, 1974.
He was not a candidate for reelection to the Ninety-fourth Congress in 1974.
He died on June 8, 2003, in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
He was interred in Neely's Creek Associate Reformed Church Cemetery, Rock Hill, South Carolina.

Sources

1912 births
2003 deaths
Duke University alumni
United States Navy personnel of World War II
Erskine College alumni
Democratic Party members of the United States House of Representatives from South Carolina
20th-century American politicians

Thomas S. Gettys


Adrian Jonathan Smith (born 11 August 1973) is an English former footballer who during his career played for as a youth player for Birmingham City, and went on to a professional career with Willenhall Town, Bromsgrove Rovers, Kidderminster Harriers, Tamworth, Chasetown and Rushall Olympic. He played as a defender.

Career

Birmingham City
Smith started his career in 1994 with his local side Birmingham City With a two year deal

Willenhall Town
Smith failed, however, to make the first team with Birmingham City, and after being released he moved on to join Midland Football Alliance side Willenhall Town in 1995, whilst working on a part-time basis as a roofer.

Smith spent one season with Willenhall Town, in which he turned in some very impressive performances, which alerted interest from other clubs.

Bromsgrove Rovers
Smith began to rise up the leagues and he joined Football Conference side Bromsgrove Rovers on 1 August 1996, with Rovers manager Bobby Hope paying a fee of £1,500 for his services.

Smith spent one season with Bromsgrove Rovers, but the season ended in disappointment when the club was relegated.

Kidderminster Harriers
Smith's performances with Bromsgrove Rovers did not go unnoticed and captured the interest of local rivals Kidderminster Harriers, whom he joined on 1 August 1997 for £19,000. The move gave Smith another crack at Conference football.

Smith became a fans' favourite at Kidderminster and, after just two seasons in the Conference, Smith and Harriers won the Conference title in the 1999–2000 season, and they were promoted to the Third Division.

He stayed with Kidderminster for another three seasons in the Third Division, but on 6 February 2004, it was confirmed that a disappointed Kidderminster manager Jan Mølby had agreed to Smith's request for his contract to be terminated for personal reasons.

Smith had become a great servant to Kidderminster Harriers, playing 243 games and scored 13 goals. He explained that his sudden decision to quit Kidderminster had been based on his wanting to turn semi-professional as he believed he could no longer play at a professional level.

Tamworth
Three days later, Tamworth manager Darron Gee announced the signing of Smith on an 18-month contract. Smith completed the remainder of the season with Tamworth, with the club finishing in 17th position and avoiding relegation.

Smith's second season with Tamworth was without doubt the best for a league perspective, the club were yet again seen as potential relegation battlers, but defied the odds to finish 15th and make history with the Lambs gaining their highest league position in their history, although by the end of this season, Smith's contract had run out.

On 14 April 2005, Smith showed his loyalty to the club by signing a new contract. By this point, he had become the club's captain and led them to a place in the FA Cup Third Round. The club drew Stoke City and managed to take them to a replay at the Lamb, before going out on penalties.

Although Smith and Tamworth had a very successful Cup run, the club failed to emulate the same form in the league and were relegated after finishing 21st. The club were reinstated when Canvey Island withdrew from the league due to financial problems.

Smith and Tamworth started the 2006–07 season and finished it pretty much the same as they did the previous season. He and goalkeeping coach Dale Belford took charge of the first-team following the departure of manager Mark Cooper and assistant manager Richard Dryden in January 2007. The club repeated the success they had enjoyed in the previous season by reaching the third round of the FA Cup, but another disappointing league campaign saw Tamworth finish 22nd and be relegated from the Conference.

Despite their relegation, Smith signed a new one-year contract with the Staffordshire club on 4 May 2007. Smith explained that his decision was an easy one, due to his love for the club, fans and people at the club.

Chasetown
After four years with The Lambs, Smith finally moved on to Southern League Division One Midlands side Chasetown for the 2008/09 season.

Rushall Olympic
On 14 November 2009, Smith joined Rushall Olympic. Smith again became a very popular figure at the club, quickly establishing himself as first team captain. In the conclusion to the 2010–11 season with Rushall seeking promotion Smith was injured in an away game at Romulus in the closing weeks of the season. It seemed his season was over as his cheekbone was broken. However, he returned to lead the team out for the play-off final wearing a protective face mask sourced from Warwickshire County Cricket Club. Rushall won the play-off final and were promoted to Step 3 of English Non-League Football for the first time in their history.
Smith started the 2011–12 campaign in good form but he suffered a serious achilles tendon injury in an away fixture at Hednesford Town and was ruled out for the season.

Stafford Town
Adie was appointed Assistant Manager to Adam Cunningham during the 2013/14 campaign, he also played for them when they were short of players, Adie left his position as assistant at the start of the 2015-16 campaign.

Honours
Kidderminster Harriers
 Football Conference: 1999–2000

References

External links

Adie Smith profile  at thelambs.co.uk

1973 births
Living people
English men's footballers
Men's association football defenders
Birmingham City F.C. players
Willenhall Town F.C. players
Bromsgrove Rovers F.C. players
Kidderminster Harriers F.C. players
Tamworth F.C. players
Chasetown F.C. players
Rushall Olympic F.C. players
English Football League players
National League (English football) players
English football managers
Tamworth F.C. managers
Northern Premier League players
Footballers from Birmingham, West Midlands

Adie Smith


Sol de Fátima is a Spanish-language Catholic devotional magazine published by the Blue Army of Our Lady and is devoted to the message of Our Lady of Fátima.

Description
It caused controversy in the September 1985 issue when it reported that one of the Fatima visionaries, Sister Lúcia claimed that the Vatican had not complied with the Virgin Mary's request to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This was reported to be because there was no specific mention of Russia. It was also claimed that she said that "many bishops attached no importance to it".

It is claimed that the Virgin Mary promised that the Consecration of Russia would lead to Russia's conversion and an era of peace. Many, believe Pope John Paul II fulfilled this request in 1984 by giving a blessing over the world, including Russia, shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is commonly believed that Sister Lúcia verified that this ceremony fulfilled the requests of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

References

See also
 Fátima, Portugal
 Our Lady of Fátima
 Sanctuary of Fátima
 Parish Church of Fátima

Our Lady of Fátima

Sol de Fátima


Grogol is a subdistrict (kecamatan) in Sukoharjo Regency, Central Java, Indonesia. The housing estate, Solo Baru ("New Solo") is located here and this subdistrict is a satellite city of Surakarta.

The Al-Mukmin Islamic school is located here, in Ngruki, a village in this subdistrict. This pesantren is chaired by Abu Bakar Ba'asyir alleged to have been involved in the 2002 Bali bombing.

References

Districts of Central Java

Grogol, Sukoharjo


Observatory Circle is a neighborhood in Northwest Washington, D.C., dominated by the circle of the same name — the grounds of the United States Naval Observatory and the official residence of the U.S. vice president.

The neighborhood is bounded on the northeast by Massachusetts Avenue; on the south by Calvert Street, the Observatory Circle property, and Whitehaven Street; and on the west by 37th Street.

The major thoroughfare of the neighborhood is Massachusetts Avenue, which in the area of Observatory Circle is mostly lined with embassies. Therefore, most of the area is commonly regarded as Embassy Row.

Neighborhoods in Northwest (Washington, D.C.)

Observatory Circle (Washington, D.C.)


Michael Terrance O'Brien (10 August 1893 – 21 September 1940) was an Irish footballer and coach whose career took him to at least 17 different clubs. A well-built six-footer, O'Brien was highly regarded as a centre-half. O'Brien was a dual international and played for both Ireland teams – the IFA XI and the FAI XI. In April 1927, O'Brien made his debut for the FAI XI, four days after he made his last appearance for the IFA XI. During the 1930s, O'Brien managed both Queens Park Rangers and Ipswich Town.

Club career
O'Brien did not play football until he was 18, when his family settled in South Shields in County Durham. He then played for several clubs in the North East of England, including Blyth Spartans, before attracting the interest of Celtic. However, after failing to make it into the Celtic first team he joined Brentford in December 1914. During the First World War, O'Brien served in both the Royal Navy and the Royal Flying Corps.

Between 1919 and 1933, O'Brien went on to make 370 English League appearances, scoring 19 goals, for eight different clubs. These included Queens Park Rangers, Leicester City, Hull City, Walsall, Norwich City and Watford. Although best known as a centre half, he was also capable of playing in the forward line and, while playing as an inside-left, he scored twice for an English League XI against a British Army XI in 1921 In 1926 he also had a brief spell playing for Brooklyn Wanderers, making 7 appearances in the American Soccer League.

Irish international
During the years O'Brien played international football, there were, in effect, two Ireland teams, chosen by two rival associations. Both associations, the Northern Ireland–based IFA and the Irish Free State–based FAI, claimed jurisdiction over the whole of Ireland and selected players from the whole island. As a result, several notable Irish players from this era, including O'Brien, played for both teams.
Meanwhile, many sources claim that O'Brien was from Kilcock, County Kildare. But although he may well have had family there, it has been established by the programme editor at Brentford FC (a former club) that he was born in Ushaw Moor, County Durham. There is speculation that he may have concocted the story about Kilcock in order to be eligible to represent the two Irish Associations (a parent or grandparent was not sufficient to qualify in those days, it had to be birthplace).

IFA XI
Between 1921 and 1927, while playing for Queens Park Rangers, Leicester City and Hull City, O'Brien made 10 appearances for the IFA XI. He made his international debut on 2 February 1921 at Windsor Park in a 2–0 defeat against Scotland. His teammates on the day included Bill Lacey and Louis Bookman. On 13 February 1926, on his ninth appearance, he helped the IFA XI to a 3–0 win against Wales. This was the only time O'Brien played in a winning IFA XI. He made his last appearance for the IFA XI on 19 April 1927 in a 2–2 draw with Wales.

FAI XI
Between 1927 and 1932 O'Brien also made 4 appearances for the FAI XI. O'Brien was playing for four different clubs – Derby County, Walsall, Norwich City and Watford – when he won each of his four FAI caps. He made his debut for the FAI XI on 23 April 1927, four days after he made his last appearance for the IFA XI. Despite the FAI XI losing 2–1 in the friendly against Italy B at Lansdowne Road, O'Brien was noted for his performance. The game also saw him, together with, Tommy Muldoon, Harry Duggan and Joe Kendrick, become one of the first four English League based players to represent the FAI XI. He subsequently played twice for the FAI XI against Belgium in 1929 and 1930, helping them to 4–0 and 3–1 victories respectively. He won his last cap for the FAI XI on 5 May 1932 against the Netherlands. The now veteran O'Brien put in a commanding performance as he captained a young FAI XI that included Paddy Moore, Alex Stevenson and Jimmy Kelly to a 2–0 win.

Coaching career
After retiring as a player O'Brien became a coach, managing Queens Park Rangers between 1933 and 1935. He led the club to fourth place in Third Division South in the 1933–34 season. However a poor season in 1934–35 led to his dismissal. After a spell as assistant manager at Brentford, O'Brien then took charge at Ipswich Town on 29 May 1936. He became the club's first professional manager and during the subsequent 1936–37 season they made their professional debut in the Southern League and finished as champions. In later years O'Brien worked as a coach for the Middlesex FA.

Honours

Manager
Ipswich Town
Southern League: 1936–37

References

1893 births
1940 deaths
Association footballers from County Kildare
Royal Flying Corps officers
Irish people of World War I
British Army personnel of World War I
Royal Navy personnel of World War I
Republic of Ireland men's association footballers
Men's association football midfielders
Blyth Spartans A.F.C. players
Celtic F.C. players
Brentford F.C. players
Alloa Athletic F.C. players
Queens Park Rangers F.C. players
Leicester City F.C. players
Hull City A.F.C. players
American Soccer League (1921–1933) players
Brooklyn Wanderers (1922–1931) players
Derby County F.C. players
Walsall F.C. players
Norwich City F.C. players
Gateshead A.F.C. players
Watford F.C. players
Republic of Ireland association football managers
Queens Park Rangers F.C. managers
Ipswich Town F.C. managers
Irish association footballers (before 1923)
Dual Irish men's international footballers
Irish Free State men's international footballers
Pre-1950 IFA men's international footballers
Irish Free State men's association footballers
English Football League representative players
English Football League players
Brentford F.C. non-playing staff
People from Ushaw Moor
Footballers from County Durham

Mick O'Brien (footballer, born 1893)


Steering ratio refers to the ratio between the turn of the steering wheel (in degrees) or handlebars and the turn of the wheels (in degrees).

The steering ratio is the ratio of the number of degrees of turn of the steering wheel to the number of degrees the wheel(s) turn as a result. In motorcycles, delta tricycles and bicycles, the steering ratio is always 1:1, because the steering wheel is fixed to the front wheel. A steering ratio of x:y means that a turn of the steering wheel x degree(s) causes the wheel(s) to turn y degree(s). In most passenger cars, the ratio is between 12:1 and 20:1. For example, if one and a half  turns of the steering wheel, 540 degrees, causes the inner & outer wheel to turn 35 and 30 degrees respectively, due to Ackermann steering geometry, the ratio is then 540:((35+30)/2) = 16.6:1.

A higher steering ratio means that the steering wheel is turned more to get the wheels turning, but it will be easier to turn the steering wheel. A lower steering ratio means that the steering wheel is turned less to get the wheels turning, but it will be harder to turn the steering wheel. Larger and heavier vehicles will often have a higher steering ratio, which will make the steering wheel easier to turn. If a truck had a low steering ratio, it would be very hard to turn the steering wheel. In normal and lighter cars, the wheels are easier to turn, so the steering ratio doesn't have to be as high. In race cars the ratio is typically very low, because the vehicle must respond to steering input much faster than in normal cars. The steering wheel is therefore harder to turn.

Variable-ratio steering
Variable-ratio steering is a system that uses different ratios on the rack in a rack and pinion steering system. At the center of the rack, the space between the teeth are smaller and the space becomes larger as the pinion moves down the rack. In the middle of the rack there is a higher ratio and the ratio becomes lower as the steering wheel is turned towards lock. That makes the steering less sensitive when the steering wheel is close to its center position and makes it harder for the driver to over steer at high speeds. As the steering wheel is turned towards lock, the wheels begin to react more to steering input.

Steering quickener
A steering quickener is used to modify the steering ratio of factory-installed steering system, which in turn modifies the response time and overall handling of vehicle. When a steering quickener is employed in an automobile, the driver of the automobile can turn the steering wheel a smaller degree compared to a factory-installed steering system without a steering quickener, to turn the vehicle through same distance. On the other hand, the steering effort needed will greatly increase. If the automobile is equipped with power steering, overloading the power steering pump can also be a concern.

References

Engineering ratios
Automotive steering technologies
Motorcycle dynamics

Steering ratio


The Raleigh Cougars was a United States Basketball League team based in Raleigh, North Carolina from 1997 to 1999. The team included many well known players from local colleges.  The team played its home games at Dorton Arena. The Cougars were owned by Clyde "The Glide" Austin, a former Harlem Globetrotters and North Carolina State basketball star, and Cozell McQueen, a former North Carolina State and Euroleague player.

History

In 1997 the team finished with a 14–12 record and advanced to the semifinals of the USBL Postseason Festival, where they lost to Atlantic City. In 1998, they had an 11–14 record and were eliminated in round one of the Festival. In 1999, their final year, the team finished with a 5–21 record.

Notable players

Lorenzo Charles (a.k.a. "Zo") of the famous national champion N.C. State wolfpack. 6' 7" Forward.
Greg Newton - 6' 11" Center Duke University.  Cougars literature noted that Mr. Newton was 1 away from Duke's all-time top 10 in blocks.  (This is no longer the case).
Amere May - After averaging 13 points per game, Amere left Division II Shaw University early to declare for the 1997 NBA draft.  Was quoted by Sports Illustrated as saying that he thought no one in the NBA could stop his game.  One observer quipped that he was right - no one in the NBA ever would stop his game.  Amere was a strong performer off the bench for the Cougars.
Chuck Kornegay - Powerful big man from Villanova University (he transferred there from NC State). Cougars fans dubbed him "the Chuck-wagon", a la NBA star Charles Barkley.
Nate Higgs - Cheered on by the crowd: "Come on Nate-Dawg!  You're better than that!"
Jeremy Hyatt - 6' 6" sharpshooter from NC State
Donald Williams - 6' 3" North Carolina guard.

Trivia

The Cougars drafted National Basketball Association superstar Tracy McGrady in the fourth round of the 1997 USBL draft.

References
ASBR - History of the United States Basketball League

United States Basketball League teams
Defunct basketball teams in the United States
Basketball teams established in 1997
Basketball teams in North Carolina
Basketball in Raleigh, North Carolina
1997 establishments in North Carolina

Raleigh Cougars


The Danish Antiquarian Booksellers' Association () is a Danish organization of professional antiquarian booksellers. It is the oldest league of antiquarian booksellers in Scandinavia as well as one of the oldest of its kind in the world, only preceded by the English ABA and the French SLAM. The purpose of the association is to standardize the descriptions of books, preserve and develop the trade, and represent the trade to the public. All ABF members are bound to adhere to the ILAB Code of Ethics.

History
Since the middle of the 19th century, the Danish antiquarian book-trade had grown considerably, and became a fairly large trade with a great deal of buying and selling. 1920 marked a turning point for the trade, as it had been decided that the second-hand and pawnbroker law be renewed, expanding to comprise the used book trade. The intended law would mean that the antiquarian booksellers would have to register every single book that was bought, and many thought that this would mean the end of the trade; it would simply be impossible to register every single thing that was bought in a trade in which most of the buying was done in form of larger collections. Three antiquarian book dealers, Carl Frederiksen, Martin Jarler and A.L.E.V. Ørnø, agreed to meet on December 16, 1920; on this meeting the Danish Antiquarian Bookseller's Association was grounded.

During the meeting a committee was formed consisting of the three inviters as well as Grandsgaard-Christensen and V.J. Jensen from Johan Rasmussen's antiquarian bookshop. Carl Frederiksen was president of the committee; he negotiated with the Minister of Justice, Svenning Rytter, and the crucial paragraph was finally decided not to form part of the law. As a result of the meeting J.P. Madsen Lind suggested forming an association for antiquarian booksellers, which was unanimously agreed upon. Martin Jarler was elected the first president, and in 1924 he was succeeded by J.P. Madsen Lind. At the end of the year the association consisted of 27 members.

See also
List of booksellers associations

External links
ABF site

References

Antiquarian booksellers
Organizations established in 1920
Trade associations based in Denmark
1920 establishments in Denmark

Danish Antiquarian Booksellers Association


Frank Pick Hon. RIBA (23 November 1878 – 7 November 1941) was a British transport administrator. After qualifying as a solicitor in 1902, he worked at the North Eastern Railway, before moving to the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL) in 1906. He was chief executive officer and vice-chairman of the London Passenger Transport Board from its creation in 1933 until 1940.

Pick had a strong interest in design and its use in public life. He steered the development of the London Underground's corporate identity by commissioning eye-catching commercial art, graphic design and modern architecture, establishing a highly recognisable brand, including the first versions of the roundel and typeface still used today.

Under his direction, the UERL's Underground network and associated bus services expanded considerably, reaching out into new areas and stimulating the growth of London's suburbs. His impact on the growth of London between the world wars led to his being likened to Baron Haussmann and Robert Moses.

Pick's interest extended beyond his own organisation. He was a founding member and later served as president of the Design and Industries Association. He was also the first chairman of the Council for Art and Industry and regularly wrote and lectured on design and urban planning subjects. For the government, Pick prepared the transport plan for the mass evacuation of civilians from London at the outbreak of war and produced reports on the wartime use of canals and ports.

Early life
Frank Pick was born on 23 November 1878 at Spalding, Lincolnshire. He was the first child of five born to draper Francis Pick and his wife Fanny Pick (née Clarke). Pick's paternal grandfather, Charles Pick, was a farmer in Spalding who died in his forties, leaving eight children. His maternal grandfather, Thomas Clarke, was a blacksmith and Wesleyan lay preacher. As a child, Pick was bookish, preferring to read and build collections of moths and butterflies and objects found on the beach rather than take part in sports.

Before becoming a draper, Pick's father had had an ambition to become a lawyer and he encouraged his son to follow this career. Pick attended St Peter's School in York on a scholarship, and was articled to a York solicitor, George Crombie, in March 1897. He qualified in January 1902 and completed a law degree at the University of London in the same year, but did not apply to practice.

In 1902, Pick began working for the North Eastern Railway. He worked first in the company's traffic statistics department before becoming assistant to the company's general manager, Sir George Gibb in 1904. In 1904, Pick married Mabel Mary Caroline Woodhouse. The couple had no children.

London's transport

In 1906, Gibb was appointed managing director of the UERL. At Gibb's invitation, Pick also moved to the UERL to continue working as his assistant. The UERL controlled the District Railway and, during 1906 and 1907, opened three deep-level tube lines – the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway (Bakerloo tube), the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway (Hampstead tube) and the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway (Piccadilly tube).

The UERL had financial problems. Ticket prices were low and passenger numbers were significantly below the pre-opening estimates. The lower than expected passenger numbers were partly the result of competition between the UERL's lines and those of the other tube and sub-surface railway companies. The spread of street-level electric trams and motor buses, replacing slower, horse-drawn road transport, also took a large number of passengers away from the trains.

Branding
By 1908, Pick had become publicity officer responsible for marketing and it was at this time that, working with the company's general manager Albert Stanley, he began developing the strong corporate identity and visual style for which the London Underground later became famous, including the introduction of the "UNDERGROUND" brand. Pick's philosophy on design was that "the test of the goodness of a thing is its fitness for use. If it fails on this first test, no amount of ornamentation or finish will make it any better; it will only make it more expensive, more foolish."

Pick became traffic development officer in 1909 and commercial manager in 1912. Albert Stanley replaced Gibb as managing director in 1910. During 1912 and 1913, the UERL increased its control over transport services in London by purchasing two tube railways, the City & South London Railway (C&SLR) and Central London Railway (CLR), and a number of bus and tram companies. One of Pick's responsibilities was to increase passenger numbers, and he believed that the best way to do so was by encouraging increased patronage of the company's services outside peak hours. He commissioned posters which promoted the Underground's trains and London General Omnibus Company's (LGOC's) buses as a means of reaching the countryside around London and attractions within the city. Realising that variety was important to maintain travellers' interest, he commissioned designs from artists working in many different styles.

At the same time, he rationalised bus routes to ensure that they complemented and acted as feeder services for the company's railway lines, tripling the number of LGOC-operated routes during 1912 and extending the area covered to five times its previous size. Sunday excursion services to leisure destinations were implemented to fully utilise otherwise idle buses and agreements were established with rural bus operators to coordinate services rather than compete with them.

Pick introduced a common advertising policy, improving the appearance of stations by standardising poster sizes, limiting the number used and controlling their positioning. Before he took control of advertising, posters had been stuck up on any available surface on station buildings and platform walls in a crowded jumble of shapes and sizes that led to complaints from passengers that it was difficult to find the station name. Pick standardised commercial poster sizes on printers' double crown sheets, arranging these in organised groups to enable the station name to be easily seen. The Underground's own promotional posters were smaller, using single or paired double royal sheets, and were arranged separately from the commercial advertising. Pick described the process: "after many fumbling experiments I arrived at some notion of how poster advertising ought to be. Everyone seemed quite pleased and I got a reputation that really sprang out of nothing."

To make the Underground Group's posters and signage more distinctive, he commissioned calligrapher and typographer Edward Johnston to design a clear new typeface. Pick specified to Johnston in 1913 that he wanted a typeface that would ensure that the Underground Group's posters would not be mistaken for advertisements; it should have "the bold simplicity of the authentic lettering of the finest periods" and belong "unmistakably to the twentieth century". Johnston's sans serif "Underground" typeface, (now known as Johnston) was first used in 1916 and was so successful that, with minor modifications in recent years, it is still in use today.

In conjunction with his changes to poster display arrangements, Pick experimented with the positioning and sizing of station name signs on platforms, which were often inadequate in number or poorly placed. In 1908, he settled on an arrangement where the sign was backed by a red disc to make it stand out clearly, creating the "bulls-eye" device – the earliest form of what is today known as the roundel. In 1909, Pick started to combine the "bulls-eye" and the "UNDERGROUND" brand on posters and station buildings, but was not satisfied with the arrangement.

By 1916, he had decided to adapt the logo used by the LGOC, the Underground Group's bus company, which was in the form of a ring with a bar bearing the name "GENERAL" across the centre. Pick commissioned Johnston to redesign the "bulls-eye" and the form used today is based on that developed by Johnston and first used in 1919.

Expansion
In 1919, with a return to normality after the First World War, Pick began developing plans to extend the Underground network out into suburbs that lacked adequate transport services. The only major extensions made to the Underground network since the three tube lines had opened were the extension of the District Railway to Uxbridge in 1910, and the extension of the Bakerloo tube to Watford Junction between 1913 and 1917. Approved schemes put on hold during the war were revived: the CLR was extended to Ealing Broadway in 1920, the Hampstead tube was extended to Edgware between 1923 and 1924 and the C&SLR was reconstructed and extended to Camden Town between 1922 and 1924. Finance for the latter two extensions was obtained through the government's Trade Facilities Acts which underwrote loans for public works as a means of alleviating unemployment.

For new lines, Pick first considered extending Underground services to the northeast of London where the mainline suburban services of the Great Northern Railway (GNR) and Great Eastern Railway (GER) were poor and unreliable. Studies were carried out for an extension of the Piccadilly tube on GNR tracks to New Barnet and Enfield or on a new route to Wood Green and plans were developed for an extension of the CLR along GER tracks to Chingford and Ongar, but both mainline companies strongly opposed the Underground's encroachment into their territories.

Wanting to make maximum use of the government's financial backing, which was only available for a limited period, Pick did not have time to press the Underground's case for these extensions. Instead he developed a plan for an extension of the C&SLR southwest from Clapham Common to Sutton in Surrey. Pick still faced strong opposition from the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway and the London and South Western Railway which operated in the area, but the Underground had the advantage of already having an approval for the last few miles of the route as part of an unused prewar permission for a new line from Wimbledon to Sutton. The railway companies challenged the need for a new service, claiming it would simply drain passengers from their own trains and that any extension should only run as far as Tooting, but Pick was able to counter their arguments and negotiated a compromise settlement to extend the C&SLR as far as Morden.

Even before the C&SLR extension had been completed in 1926, possibilities for the northward extension of the Piccadilly tube began to reappear. From 1922, a series of press campaigns called for the improvement of services at the GNR's Finsbury Park station where interchanges between tube lines, mainline trains, buses and trams were notoriously bad. In June 1923, a petition from 30,000 local residents was submitted to Parliament, and in 1925, the government called a public inquiry to review options. Pick presented plans to relieve the congestion at Finsbury Park by extending the Piccadilly tube north to Southgate.

Opposition from the London and North Eastern Railway (successor to the GNR following the 1923 grouping of railway companies) was again considerable and based on claims that the new Underground line would take passengers from the mainline services. Using data from the Bakerloo tube, Hampstead tube and C&SLR extensions, Pick demonstrated that the route planned for the new line would stimulate new residential development and increase passenger numbers for all rail operators in the area, increasing those on the Piccadilly tube by 50 million per year.

Parliamentary approval was granted in 1930 to extend the Piccadilly tube north beyond Southgate to a terminus at Cockfosters. The approval also included complementary extensions of the Piccadilly tube from its western terminus at Hammersmith to supplement District Railway services to Hounslow and South Harrow. The development was again financed with government backed loans, this time through the 1929 Development (Loan Guarantees and Grants) Act. To ensure the most efficient integration between the new tube line and the UERL's bus and tram operations, the stations were located further apart than in central areas and where road transport services could be arranged to deliver and collect the most passengers. At Manor House, the station was designed with subway exits directly on to pedestrian islands in the road served by the local trams.

Design

In 1924, with plans for the C&SLR extension under development, Pick commissioned Charles Holden to design the station buildings in a new style. The designs replaced a set by the Underground's own architect, Stanley Heaps, which Pick had found unsatisfactory. Pick had first met Holden at the Design and Industries Association (DIA) in 1915, and he saw the modernist architect as one he could work with to define what Pick called "a new architectural idiom".

Pick wanted to streamline and simplify the design of the stations to make them welcoming, brightly lit and efficient with large, uncluttered ticket halls for the rapid sale of tickets and quick access to the trains via escalators. At these new stations, tickets were issued from a number of "passimeters", glazed booths in the centre of the ticket hall, rather than the traditional ticket office windows set to one side.

Pick was pleased with the results and at a DIA dinner in 1926 proclaimed "that a new style of architectural decoration will arise" leading to a "Modern London – modern not garbled classic or Renaissance." Amongst Pick's next commissions for Holden were the redesign of Piccadilly Circus station (1925–28), where a wide subterranean concourse and ticket hall were built beneath the road junction, and the Underground Group's new headquarters building at 55 Broadway, St James's (1925–1929).

The new headquarters building was on an awkwardly shaped site, partly over the platforms and tracks of St James's Park station. Although Holden's practice had not designed such a large office building, it did have experience of large hospital design, which Pick saw as complementary to the design of a modern office building. When completed, the twelve-storey,  high cruciform building was the tallest in London and the tower dominated the skyline. The building was well received by architectural critics and won Holden the RIBA's London Architecture Medal for 1929.

Two sculptures commissioned for the building were less well received, generating considerable controversy in the media. The nudity and primitive carving of Day and Night by Jacob Epstein led to calls for them to be removed from the building and the board of the Underground Group considered replacing them with new sculptures by another artist. Although he privately admitted later that the sculptures were not to his taste, Pick publicly supported Holden's selection of Epstein as sculptor and offered to resign over the matter. The crisis was averted when Epstein was persuaded to reduce the length of the penis of one of the figures and the sculptures remained in place.

Pick wanted a new type of building for the more open sites of the stations on the Piccadilly line's extensions. To decide what this new type should look like, he and Holden made a short tour of Germany, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands in July and August 1930 to see the latest developments in modern architecture.

Pick was disappointed with much of the new architecture that he saw in Germany and Sweden, considering it either too extreme or unsatisfactorily experimental. The architecture in the Netherlands was much more to his liking, particularly buildings by Willem Marinus Dudok in Hilversum. Although the architecture in Denmark was not considered remarkable, Pick was impressed with the way in which designers there were often responsible for all elements of a building including the interior fixtures and fittings.

The designs Pick commissioned from Holden (1931–33) established a new standard for the Underground, with the prototype station at Sudbury Town being described by architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner as a "landmark" and the start of "the 'classic' phase of Underground architecture". To ensure that the new stations achieved the complete and coherent design that he wanted, Pick instructed the engineering departments to provide Holden with full details of all equipment needed for the stations. After late equipment changes by the engineers at the first few new stations compromised the integrated design, Pick took personal charge of the coordination of the architectural and engineering elements.

In the mid-1930s when the introduction of trolleybuses to replace trams required the installation of new street poles to support overhead wiring, Pick was keenly interested that the design of the poles was coordinated to accommodate all of the possible equipment and signage that might be needed. He also oversaw the designs of the new bus stops and bus shelters that were installed when specified stopping points were introduced for bus services.

London Passenger Transport Board

At the beginning of the 1920s, with vehicle numbers depleted by wartime service in France and Belgium, the Underground Group's bus operations began to experience a surge in competition from a large number of new independent bus operators. These small operators were unregulated and preyed on the group's most profitable routes taking away a large number of its passengers and a large amount of its income. Albert Stanley (ennobled as Lord Ashfield in 1920) and Pick fought back by calling on parliament to regulate bus operations in the capital. The London Traffic Act 1924 granted their request by establishing the London Traffic Area to regulate road passenger traffic within London and the surrounding districts.

Throughout the 1920s, Pick led the Underground Group's efforts to coordinate its services with the municipal tram operators, the Metropolitan Railway and the suburban mainline rail services. The aim was to achieve a pooling of income between all of the operators and remove wasteful competition. At the end of 1930, a solution was announced in a bill for the formation of the London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB), a public corporation which was to take control of the Underground Group, the Metropolitan Railway and the majority of the bus and tram operators within an area designated as the London Passenger Transport Area covering the County of London and Middlesex and parts of Buckinghamshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Surrey and Sussex.

Pick had become joint managing director of the Underground Group in 1928, and when, on 1 July 1933, the group was taken over by the LPTB, he became chief executive officer and vice-chairman, on an annual salary of £10,000 (approximately ). Ashfield was chairman. Pick led the board's negotiations on the compensation to be paid to the owners and shareholders of each of the transport operations being taken over.

With the majority of London's transport operations now under the control of a single organisation, Pick was able to commence the next round of improvements. On the Metropolitan Railway (renamed the Metropolitan line), Pick and Ashfield began to rationalise services. The barely used and loss-making Brill and Verney Junction branches beyond Aylesbury were closed in 1935 and 1936. Freight services were reduced and electrification of the remaining steam operated sections of the line was planned.

In 1935, the availability of government-backed loans to stimulate the flagging economy allowed Pick to promote system-wide improvements under the New Works Programme for 1935–1940, including the transfer of the Metropolitan line's Stanmore services to the Bakerloo line in 1939, the Northern line's Northern Heights project and extension of the Central line to Ongar in Essex and Denham in Buckinghamshire.

During 1938 and 1939, with war anticipated, an increasing part of Pick's time was spent in planning for the approaching conflict. The Railway Executive Committee was reconstituted in 1938 to act as a central coordinating body for the country's railways with Pick as the LPTB's representative. This role absorbed most of his time after the committee took over control of the railways on 1 September 1939. Following a disagreement with other members of the LPTB board over the government's proposals to limit the dividend that it could pay to its shareholders, Pick stated his intention to retire from the board at the end of his seven-year appointment in May 1940.

Pick had previously suggested a reorganisation of the LPTB's senior management structure and hoped to be able to continue with the organisation in some sort of joint general manager position. Ashfield chose not to find such a continuing role for Pick and, on 18 May 1940, to the surprise of many within the organisation, Pick retired from the LPTB board, officially due to failing health. Pick's post of chief executive was abolished and replaced with a group of six heads of department.

Other activities

Pick's interest in design led to his involvement in the founding, in 1915, of the Design and Industries Association. The organisation aimed to bring manufacturers and designers together to improve the quality of industrial design. Through his improvements in the UERL's advertising and branding, Pick was considered by many of its members to be taking a practical lead in achieving the organisation's aims and he was soon lecturing on the subject, giving talks during 1916 and 1917 at the Art Workers Guild in London, at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh and elsewhere.

After the First World War, Pick continued to give talks regularly and published articles on design. He also began to set out his ideas on reconstruction and town planning, an area of design he became interested in through its connection to transport planning. He wrote and lectured extensively on this subject during the 1920s and 1930s including presenting a 14,000-word paper to the Institute of Transport in 1927 and addressing the International Housing and Town Planning Congress in 1939. Concerned about the uncontrolled and unchecked growth of London, partly facilitated by the new lines that London Underground was building, Pick was a strong supporter of the need for a green belt around the capital to maintain open space within reach of urban areas.

In 1922, he wrote and published privately a pamphlet This is the World that Man Made, or The New Creation that was influenced by the rationalist writing of Ray Lankester. In it Pick was pessimistic that mankind was not achieving its creative potential. He returned to the subject in lectures he gave in the 1930s when he outlined his concern that at some not too distant point progress in civilisation would come to a natural end and a stable condition would arise where, he believed, it would be hard to maintain creativity and an entropic decline would follow.

Later, in the last year of his life and with the Second World War under way, he published two booklets on postwar reconstruction, Britain Must Rebuild and Paths to Peace. Pick wrote the introduction to the English translation of Walter Gropius's The New Architecture and the Bauhaus published in 1935.

Beside his positions at the UERL and LPTB, Pick held a number of industrial administrative and advisory positions. In 1917, during the First World War, Pick was appointed to be head of the Mines Directorate's Household Fuel and Lighting Department at the Board of Trade where Albert Stanley was the President. Pick was responsible for the control of the rationing and distribution of domestic fuel supplies. He remained in this position until June 1919. Also in 1917, Pick was appointed as a member of the Special Committee advising the Civil Aerial Transport Committee on technical and practical questions of aerial transport. From 12 December 1917 he was a member of the main committee.

In 1928, he was appointed as a member of the Royal Commission on Police Powers and Procedure. He also served as a member of the London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee and as a member of the Crown Lands Advisory Committee.

Pick was President of the Institute of Transport for 1931/32. He was President of the Design and Industries Association from 1932 to 1934 and the chairman of the Board of Trade's Council for Art and Industry from 1934 to 1939.

During 1938, the government appointed Pick to plan the transport operations for the evacuation of civilians from London. Initially scheduled for 30 September 1938, the plans were cancelled when Neville Chamberlain's Munich conference with Adolf Hitler averted war that year, but were activated a year later at the beginning of September 1939 on the declaration of war with Germany. After leaving the LPTB, Pick visited British ports for the Ministry of Transport to prepare a report on methods of improving port operations and cargo handling. In August 1940, he reluctantly accepted the position of director-general of the Ministry of Information.

His time at the Ministry of Information was short and unhappy and he left after four months and returned to the Ministry of Transport, where he carried out studies on improvements in the use of Britain's canals and rivers.

Personality
Biographers have characterised Pick as being "very shy", and "brilliant but lonely". Christian Barman described him as a person who inspired conflicting opinions about his personality and his actions: "a man about whom so many people held so many different views". Pick acknowledged that he could be difficult to work with: "I have always kept in mind my own frailties – a short temper. Impatience with fools, quickness rather than thoroughness. I am a bad hand at the gracious word or casual congratulation." His moralistic character led to friends giving him the nickname "Jonah".

Pick valued criticism and savoured challenging debate, though he complained that he found it difficult to get people to stand up to him. UERL board member Sir Ernest Clark considered Pick to be perhaps too efficient and unable to fully delegate and relinquish responsibility: "his own efficiency has a bad effect on the efficiency of others... How can the housemaid take pride in a job to which the mistress will insist on putting the finishing touch?" Pick's friend Noel Carrington thought that his attention to detail made him the "ideal inspector general."

Pick ran his office on a fortnightly cycle and his workload was prodigious. Barman described Pick's office as a training school for future managers, with a regular turnover of staff who would go on to management positions when Pick thought them ready.

Ashfield considered that Pick possessed "a sterling character and steadfast loyalty", and "an administrative ability which was outstanding", with "a keen analytical mind which was able to seize upon essentials and then drive his way through to his goal, always strengthened by a sure knowledge of the problem and confidence in himself." Charles Holden described Pick's management of meetings: "Here his decisions were those of a benevolent dictator, and the members left the meeting with a clear sense of a task to be performed, difficult, perhaps, and sometimes impossible, as might subsequently prove to be, but usually well worth exploring if only in producing convincing proof of obstacles. Out of these exploratory methods there often emerged new and most interesting solutions, which Pick was quick to appreciate, and to adopt in substitution for his own proposals."

Disliking honours, Pick declined offers of a knighthood and a peerage. He did accept, in 1932, the Soviet Union's Honorary Badge of Merit for his advice on the construction of the Moscow Metro. He was an honorary member of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Influences
Pick was widely read and was influenced by many writers on scientific, sociological and social matters including works by Alfred North Whitehead, Leonard Hobhouse, Edwin Lankester, Arthur Eddington and John Ruskin. On design, he was influenced by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's description of design in nature in On Growth and Form and by architect William Lethaby. His admiration for William Morris led him to adopt Morris's favourite colour of green as his own, using green ink for the majority of his correspondence.

Legacy

Pick had not been well for some years. The stresses of his war work took a further toll on his health and he lost two stone during his travels around the country to research his report on the canal industry. Although exhausted at the end of the tour, he wrote to friends that he was struggling with the idleness and was hoping for something new to do. He died at his home, 15 Wildwood Road, Hampstead Garden Suburb, on 7 November 1941 from a cerebral haemorrhage. His funeral was held at Golders Green Crematorium on 11 November 1941 and a memorial service was held at St Peter's Church, Eaton Square on 13 November 1941.

Working with Ashfield, Pick's impact on London's transport system was considerable. Transport historian Christian Wolmar considers it "almost impossible to exaggerate the high regard in which [London Transport] was held during its all too brief heyday, attracting official visitors from around the world eager to learn the lessons of its success and apply them in their own countries" and that "it represented the apogee of a type of confident public administration ... with a reputation that any state organisation today would envy ... only made possible by the brilliance of its two famous leaders, Ashfield and Pick." In his obituary of Pick, Charles Holden described him as "the Maecenas of our time."

Writing in 1968, Nikolaus Pevsner described Pick as "the greatest patron of the arts whom this century has so far produced in England, and indeed the ideal patron of our age." Considering Pick's public statements on art and life, art historian Kenneth Clark suggested that "in a different age he might have become a sort of Thomas Aquinas". Historian Michael Saler compared Pick's influence on London Transport to that of Lord Reith on the BBC's development during the same interwar period. Urban planner Sir Peter Hall suggested that Pick "had as much influence on London's development in the twentieth century as Haussmann had on that of Paris in the nineteenth", and historian Anthony Sutcliffe compared him to Robert Moses, the city planner responsible for many urban infrastructure projects in New York.

Pick's will was probated at £36,000 (£ in present-day terms). In his will he bequeathed a Francis Dodd painting, Ely, to the Tate Gallery. Transport for London and the London Transport Museum hold archives of Pick's business and personal papers.

As part of the Transported by Design programme of activities, on 15 October 2015, after two months of public voting, the work of Frank Pick was elected by Londoners as one of the 10 favourite transport design icons.

Pick is commemorated with a memorial plaque at St Peter's School, York, unveiled in 1953 by Lord Latham, and a blue plaque was erected at his Golders Green home in 1981.

Pick is commemorated with a permanent memorial at Piccadilly Circus station by the BAFTA-winning and Turner Prize-nominated artists Langlands & Bell. The work, entitled Beauty < Immortality, was commissioned by London Transport Museum and installed by Art on the Underground (Transport for London's official art programme). It was unveiled on 7 November 2016, the 75th anniversary of Pick's death.

See also

 London Transport (brand)

Notes and references
Notes

References

Bibliography

External links

 London Transport Museum Photographic Archive

1878 births
1941 deaths
Alumni of the University of London
English chief executives
English solicitors
History of the London Underground
People associated with transport in London
People educated at St Peter's School, York
People from Spalding, Lincolnshire
Transport design in London

Frank Pick


M.P. Abdussamad Samadani (born 1 January 1959) is an Indian politician, orator, writer and scholar. He knows  Malayalam, English, Urdu, Hindi, Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit languages. Samadani was awarded Doctor of Philosophy degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Personal life
M.P. Abdussamad Samadani was born as son of M.P. Abdul Hameed Haidari and Ottakath Zainab on 1 January 1959 at Kottakkal, Malappuram district.

Education
Samadani holds a Bachelor of Arts with First Rank, Master of Arts with Second Rank from Farook College in 1982, and M. Phil. from University of Calicut in 1986, LLB from Government Law College, Kozhikode in 2003. He did his PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Political career
Samadani is a two time Parliament member (Rajya Sabha: 1994-2000, 2000-2006). He was a member of Kerala Legislative Assembly (Kottakkal constituency) from 2011 to 2016. He was nominated as the Convenor of the Parliamentary Sub-committee on Universities and Higher Education and  Member of Central Advisory Board of Education, Government of India.  He was also  a member of India's official and parliamentary delegations to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Jordan, appointed by the Union government. He also worked as a member of Kerala Sahitya Academy and Kerala Kalamandalam. He was elected as Member of parliament, Lok Sabha representing Malappuram (Lok Sabha constituency) through by - election held in 2021.

As an orator
Samadani has translated the speeches of Manmohan Singh, Soniya Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Farooq Abdullah, Gulam Nabi Azad, Kapil Sibal, Mani Shankar Aiyar, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Nitish Kumar, Karan Singh, Gulzar, Raj Babbar, Maulana Abul Hasan Ali Hasani Nadwi, Arjun Singh, Kuldip Nayar, Pandit Jasraj, Ali Sardar Jafri, and Padmashree Shamsur Rahman Faruqi. Shri M. T. Vasudevan Nair called him 'Vashya Vachassu' (The Enchanting Word).

Positions held

1994 – Elected to Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of Indian Parliament
2000 – Re-elected to Rajya Sabha
2002 to 2004 – Convener, Parliamentary Sub-Committee on Universities and Higher Education
2004 – Member, Central Advisory Board of Education, Government of India
2004 – Member, Parliamentary Committee on Health and Family Welfare
1995 to 1996 – Member, Parliamentary Committee on Defence
1996 to 1999 – Member, Parliamentary Committee on Subordinate Legislation
1996 to 2004 and 2004 to 2006 – Member, Parliamentary Committee on Human Resource Development
1996 to 2004 and 2004 to 2006 – Member, Consultative Committee for the Ministry of External Affairs
1998 to 1999 and 2004 to 2006 – Member, Parliamentary Committee on Papers Laid on the Table, Member, Papers Laid on the Table Parliamentary Committee
2001 - Member, Court of the Aligarh Muslim University
Member, Malappuram District Council
Member, Kerala Sahitya Academy
Member, Kerala Kalamandalam
Senior Vice President, Indian Union Muslim League
 Director, Indianness Academy
Chairman, Maulana Azad Foundation
 Chairman, Sukumar Azhikode Foundation
 Patron, Kerala Sanskrit Prachara Samithi
 President, Anjuman Tarqi-e-Urdu, Kerala Branch
Member of Kerala Legislative Assembly from Kottakkal assembly constituency 2011–2016.
Member of Lok Sabha from Malappuram Constituency 2021 - Incumbent

See also

 Syed Muhammedali Shihab Thangal
 Indian Union Muslim League

References

External links
 Stress on humanitarian values
 A website on Indian Union Muslim League

Malayali politicians
People from Malappuram district
Living people
1959 births
Indian Union Muslim League politicians
Rajya Sabha members from Kerala

M. P. Abdussamad Samadani


Cornelis de Vos (1584 – 9 May 1651) was a Flemish painter, draughtsman and art dealer.  He was one of the leading portrait painters in Antwerp and is best known for his sensitive portraits, in particular of children and families.  He was also successful in other genres including history, religious and genre painting.  He was a regular collaborator with Rubens.

Life
He was born in Hulst near Antwerp, now in the Dutch province of Zeeland. Little is known of his childhood. His father moved with his family to Antwerp in 1596. Cornelis and his younger brothers Paul and Jan (or Hans) studied under the little-known painter David Remeeus (1559–1626).  In 1599 de Vos is mentioned as Remeeus' pupil while on 8 May 1604 he is referred to as the chief assistant of Remeeus. On 29 April 1604, de Vos petitioned the Antwerp City Council for a pass that would allow him to travel. This was a necessary procedure for artists who wished to be trained abroad.  It is not known whether the young artist actually left the city to study abroad.  De Vos joined the Guild of Saint Luke in 1608 at the age of 24. When he became a citizen of Antwerp in 1616 he listed his occupation as an art dealer.

Cornelis de Vos married the landscape painter Jan Wildens's half-sister Susanna Cock on 27 May 1617.  The couple had 6 children. His sister Margaretha married the prominent animal painter Frans Snyders.  These marriages confirmed and solidified de Vos' role in Antwerp's artistic life.

In 1619 de Vos served as the dean of the Guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp.  The same year he petitioned the Antwerp city council for permission to frequent the Saint-Germain market in Paris as an art dealer. In 1620 de Vos was elected high dean of the Guild of Saint Luke in recognition of his status in the city.

De Vos developed a busy practice as a painter, particularly of portraits.  In 1620 he painted the portrait of the painter Abraham Grapheus (Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp).  He donated the work to the painters' chamber of the Guild of Saint Luke.  De Vos received multiple commissions for family portraits from local patrons such as the wealthy merchant Joris Vekemans who ordered a portrait cycle of his family members (including his son Jan) in 1624.   In 1627 he enjoyed royal patronage when 6 royal portraits were commissioned by respectively Philip IV of Spain, the Archdukes Albert and Isabella, Henri III of France, Henry IV of France and Marie de' Medici.  He also worked on commissions from religious institutions. In 1628 he painted his only known landscape, a View of Hulst, which he donated to his home town where it is still displayed in the city hall.

During this period of busy activity as a painter de Vos continued to operate an art dealership.  He also created works specifically for export, primarily to Spain.

Cornelis de Vos was one of the artists working on the decorations for the Joyous Entry into Antwerp of the new governor of the Habsburg Netherlands Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635.  Rubens was in overall charge of this project.  De Vos made decorative paintings after designs by Rubens. One of the hewn-out images that crowned the triumphal arch on the Meir, above the Huidevettersstraat, has been preserved and is attributed to the studio of de Vos (Jupiter and Juno, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp).

In the period 1636-1638 Rubens' workshop received a large commission to make mythological decorations for the hunting pavilion Torre de la Parada of the Spanish king Philip IV near Madrid.  For this project de Vos, together with a number of painters from Rubens' circle, painted decorations after oil sketches by Rubens.

De Vos died in Antwerp, where he was buried in the Cathedral of Our Lady.

His pupils included Jan Cossiers, Alexander Daemps and Simon de Vos (to whom he was not related).

Work

General

Cornelis de Vos painted in various genres.  He initially painted mainly portraits and mythological, biblical and history scenes.  He also created in the late 1620s, some monumental genre paintings.  He used the monogram CDVF.

His early work shows a clear influence by Rubens in terms of subject matter, motifs and Carravagesque influences. His work is notable for a warm palette and refined rendering of fabrics and gleaming jewelry with an eye for detail. Important features of his personal style were the lucid plasticity of painted flesh and the bright tactility of highlights. He used a fluid and transparent technique and applied fine brushstrokes.

While in his later work from the thirties he painted with a looser, more painterly technique and was less precise in rendering the details as shown in the Portrait of a young woman (mid 1630s, Metropolitan Museum of Art), his overall technique remained soft and gentle.

Portraits

De Vos was most successful as a painter of individual and group portraits, a genre in which he developed his own style. After the departure of Anthony van Dyck for England in 1621 and Rubens' absences from Antwerp on diplomatic and artistic missions, de Vos became the leading portraitist of the Antwerp haute-bourgeois and patrician society. His portraits show the influence of van Dyck. He placed his subjects set within restrained but rich interiors.  He was able to achieve a sensitive portrayal of the characters of his sitters and the varied textures of their clothes through the use of an even, bright light as well as soft chiaroscuro effects. He only commenced painting full-length portraits after van Dyck's return to Antwerp in 1627.  In these portraits the figure is typically placed in front of architecture and an open landscape.

He was particularly skilled in painting group portraits as well as portraits of children. While de Vos' portraits exhibit a new fluency of painting style and spontaneity in the depiction of children, this was combined with a simplicity free from rhetoric that harked back to the earlier Flemish masters. De Vos' portraits are able to communicate a relaxed and warm human affection.  In his depiction of children he was a master at expressing their assertive personalities and playful energy. This earned him the recognition of patrons commissioned numerous portraits of children or family portraits featuring children.

He produced some striking and intimate portraits of his own children. In a Portrait of his daughter Susanna (1617, Städel) he painted his daughter Susanna in a very informal manner.  At first sight the picture seems to be a genre painting rather than a portrait of a particular child.  It is clear that the painting was intended for personal use in that he depicted his daughter in a very intimate setting munching sweets. In the portrait of his two eldest children Magdalena and Jan-Baptist, de Vos portrays them not from a distance but brought forward close to the viewer's space. Magdalena looks back at the viewer over her shoulder and seems to invite the viewer in while Jan-Baptist leans forward with tilted head and is also staring at the viewer.  He has his feet stretched out and the soles of his shoes are visible.  In many of his portraits, de Vos included fruit as symbolic attributes for his sitters.  In the portrait of his two eldest children Magdalena holds cherries in her right hand and a peach in her left hand. Peaches and cherries are symbols of youth as well as fertility.

His family portraits emphasize the notion of family happiness, with marriage and the immediate family as the core values. As de Vos' patrons were mainly from the Antwerp bourgeoisie rather than the aristocracy, he was less pressured to magnify his sitters through rhetorical gestures and courtly graces as is commonly seen in van Dyck's portraits.  He represents the relationships among the sitters through sensitive hand gestures often deployed in a complex counterpoint: giving, receiving, touching, reassuring.  The achievements of his sitters are displayed through their lavish dress and the expensively decorated interiors while the sitters themselves exude solid, amiable and quiet confidence.

History paintings

While Cornelis de Vos was one of Antwerp's leading portrait painters in the first half of the 17th century, he was also a sought-after painter of history pieces. In particular after circa 1635, de Vos, a successful art dealer, likely realized the growing demand for history paintings in the local and international market. From that date onwards he realized history paintings of a greater diversity in subject matter while his portrait production declined.

De Vos' history paintings relied on compositions of Rubens as their initial inspiration.  An example of his can be seen in The Finding of Moses (c. 1631–1635, auctioned by Christie's on 6 May 2008, Amsterdam, lot 82).  This painting goes back on a lost painting by Rubens with the same composition and subject matter, which is only known through a copy in a private collection in Geneva.

From 1624 onwards, Cornelis de Vos abandoned his thickly produced brush strokes for a lighter painting style and placed landscapes in the background.  This change likely happened under the influence of Rubens.  Starting from circa 1630, his compositions became less relief-like and his figures were placed more realistically in the space. The landscape also gradually got more attention while facial expressions became more intensive and the architecture in the background more developed. These changes followed contemporary developments in the Baroque style.

Genre paintings

Less well-known are the genre paintings of Cornelis de Vos.  These resemble the Caravaggio-influenced compositions of his contemporaries and pupils like Jan Cossiers, Simon de Vos and Theodoor Rombouts.  An example is The card game (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm), which depicts players at a card game, a theme which was very popular with the Flemish followers of Caravaggio.  The composition is also known through an engraving made by Alexander Voet in the 1630s (Royal Collection), which clearly identifies Cornelis de Vos as the author of the original painting.

Another variation on the theme of players, Players and courtesans under a tent (Musée de Picardie), has been attributed to de Vos based on its similarity with the work in Stockholm.  Previously it was attributed to the French follower of Caravaggio, Valentin de Boulogne.

Another genre composition involving backgammon players referred to as The game of backgammon (c. 1630, Musée Boucher-de-Perthes) is attributed to Cornelis de Vos.

Collaborations

Cornelis de Vos often collaborated with fellow artists as was common in Antwerp at the time. He painted the staffage in still lifes by his brother-in-law Frans Snyders and in return his brother Paul and Frans Snyders painted the fruit, animals, silver plate and armour in his own work.  Jan Wildens, another brother-in-law, assisted with the landscapes in many of his works.

De Vos was a frequent collaborator of Rubens. Around 1617 he painted two panels, the Adoration of the shepherds and the  Presentation in the Temple, that were part of a series of paintings on the theme of the "Mystery of the Rosary Cycle" in which other local painters, including Rubens (who oversaw the project), van Dyck, and Jacob Jordaens participated.  De Vos' two paintings joined the 13 paintings made by these other painters in Antwerp's St. Paul's Church. Here they flanked Caravaggio's Madonna of the Rosary, which was placed in the church in 1620.  While Caravaggio's masterwork was later stolen by the Austrian masters of the Southern Netherlands, de Vos' works are still in the St. Paul's Church.

De Vos assisted Rubens with the large commissions of the Rubens workshop in the 1630s.  He worked for Rubens on the Joyous Entry of the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand, a project for which he painted twelve royal portraits after Rubens' designs. Between 1636 and 1638 he, along with his brother Paul and many other Antwerp artists, assisted Rubens in decorating the Torre de la Parada, a hunting lodge of Philip IV of Spain near Madrid. Cornelis contributed four paintings on mythological themes to the series made for the Torre de la Parada: The triumph of Bacchus, The birth of Venus, Apollo and the Python and Daphne chased by Apollo.  These works are now in the collection of the Prado Museum.  They were based on designs by Rubens which have also been preserved.  This makes it possible to compare the designs by Rubens with the works completed by Cornelis de Vos.  In The triumph of Bacchus de Vos' brush stroke is less energetic and free than that displayed in the Rubens sketch.   De Vos' treatment of the faces also differs in that they are less expressive and dramatic than in the sketch.

While de Vos' collaborations with Rubens on projects in the 1630s appear not to have influenced his style, they did influence his technique.

References

External links

Flemish Baroque painters
Flemish portrait painters
Flemish genre painters
Flemish history painters
Painters from Antwerp
People from Hulst
1584 births
1651 deaths
[

Cornelis de Vos


Tove Astri Strand (born 29 September 1946) is a Norwegian director and former politician for the Labour Party. She was active in politics between 1963 and 1992, including two periods as a government minister. She headed the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation from 1997 to 2005, and since 2005 she is the director of Ullevål University Hospital.

Early and personal life
Born in Kongsvinger as the daughter of local bureaucrat Norvald Strand and nurse Svanhild Lundhaug, she chaired the local chapter of the Workers' Youth League from 1963 to 1966. She then enrolled as a student at the University of Oslo, having chosen to study economics over medicine, She graduated in 1971 with the cand.oecon. degree, and cited Leif Johansen and Nobel Prize laureate Trygve Haavelmo as inspirational economists. While living in Oslo she was a member of the board of local Workers' Youth League chapter from 1968 to 1970.

Tove Strand was formerly married to Rune Gerhardsen, a fellow Labour Party politician and son of former Prime Minister Einar Gerhardsen whom she met in university. Due to the marriage she was named Tove Strand Gerhardsen during this period. Before the couple split in 1996, they had two daughters, Marte and Mina Gerhardsen. Both daughters joined the Labour Party too, and Mina Gerhardsen, as political advisor for Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, has been considered particularly influential in Norwegian society.
Tove Strand later married Tor Saglie, the director of the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Service.

Career

Professional career
After graduation, she worked five years as a clerk in the Ministry of Finance. At the same time, she was elected to serve in the city council of Oslo for the term 1971–1975. When the cabinet Nordli assumed office in January 1976, she was appointed personal secretary (today known as political advisor) in the Ministry of Trade and Shipping. She left in January 1979, to concentrate on her career as a civil servant in the Ministry of Finance, where she was promoted to assistant secretary (byråsjef). However, after only one year she returned to the political scene as a personal secretary, this time in the Ministry of Finance. In February 1981, when the first cabinet Brundtland, Strand was again promoted, this time to state secretary. The first cabinet Brundtland losing office to the cabinet Willoch following the 1981 election, Strand returned to work one more year as assistant secretary in the Ministry of Finance.

In 1982 she left the executive branch of government to work as a head of a department at Rikshospitalet. In May 1986, the second cabinet Brundtland took over as the cabinet Willoch lost a vote of confidence. Strand was brought back to the government's offices, this time as Minister of Social Affairs. She stayed in this position until October 1989, when the second cabinet Brundtland fell due to the 1989 election. However, its successor lasted only one year, and Strand returned in 1990 as Norwegian Minister of Government Administration and Labour in the third cabinet Brundtland. In addition, she had been elected to the Oslo city council for the term 1987–1991.

In between the two tenures as government minister, she had worked as a "project leader" at BI, the Norwegian School of Management. When leaving the third cabinet Brundtland in September 1992, she returned to BI to work as a "special advisor". From 1993 to 1996 she worked as a regional director of the Research Council of Norway. From 1997 to 2005 she headed the state-run directorate Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation. In 2005 she returned to the hospital business to work as director of Ullevål University Hospital.

Boards and committees
During her career she has been a member of several boards and committees, both public and private. During her early political career, she was a member of the kindergarten committee of Oslo, as well as a member of the board of the publicly owned electricity company Oslo Lysverker, both from 1971 to 1975. From 1971 to 1979 she was a member of the regional planning council for Oslo and Akershus. She returned in 1990-1991 as a member of the cultural committee in Oslo.

In 1984 she became a board member of the Norwegian Confederation of Sports. She left in 1987, but returned as vice president of the organization from 1994 to 1999. She was also a board member of the Norwegian Handball Federation from 1993 to 1995. She was also a member of the board of the publishing house Universitetsforlaget from 1982 to 1985, and the Bank of Norway from 1990 to 1999. She chaired the board of the National Institute of Occupational Health from 1990 to 1991, and was also involved in the Royal Norwegian Society for Development and the Norwegian UNESCO commission. From 1993 to 1994, she was deputy chair of the organization Sosialdemokrater mot EU, which opposed a Norwegian application for membership in the European Union. Following the 1994 Norwegian European Union membership referendum, such a membership was out of the question.

After some years without committee or board memberships, she joined the board of the International Development Law Organization and Arbeidsgiverforeningen Spekter in 2007. Also, since 2006 she has chaired the Kronprinsparets Humanitære Fond, a humanitarian fund initiated by Haakon, Crown Prince of Norway and the Crown Princess Mette-Marit.

References

1946 births
Living people
Politicians from Kongsvinger
University of Oslo alumni
Politicians from Oslo
Norwegian state secretaries
Government ministers of Norway
Labour Party (Norway) politicians
Directors of government agencies of Norway
Norwegian sports executives and administrators
Women government ministers of Norway
Norwegian women state secretaries

Tove Strand


Davy Crockett was a five-part serial which aired on ABC from 1954-1955 in one-hour episodes, on the Disneyland series. The series starred Fess Parker as real-life frontiersman Davy Crockett and Buddy Ebsen as his friend, George Russel. The first three and last two episodes were respectively edited into the theatrical films Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier (released in 1955) and Davy Crockett and the River Pirates (1956). This series and film are known for the catchy theme song, "The Ballad of Davy Crockett".

Episodes
Walt Disney produced weekly one-hour television programs for ABC as part of a deal that allowed him to build the Disneyland theme park. Disney wished to highlight historical figures, and his company developed three episodes on Crockett – "Davy Crockett, Indian Fighter", "Davy Crockett Goes to Congress", and "Davy Crockett at the Alamo", broadcast December 1954–February 1955. They were shot on color film at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park at the Mountain Farm Museum adjacent to the Oconaluftee Visitor Center, near Qualla Reservation's entrance; and at Janss Conejo Ranch, California. Crockett's death at the Battle of the Alamo is not actually shown; Crockett, the last survivor in the battle, is seen on the parapet swinging his rifle at the oncoming hordes of Mexican soldiers. The picture fades and the flag of Texas is shown flying in the breeze as the male chorus reprises the last lines of "The Ballad of Davy Crockett". The first three episodes of the serial were edited together as the theatrical film Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier (1955).

Although the historical Crockett perished at the Alamo, two other TV segments followed in November–December 1955: "Davy Crockett's Keelboat Race" and "Davy Crockett and the River Pirates", filmed in Cave-In-Rock, Illinois. These episodes were edited together as the theatrical film Davy Crockett and the River Pirates (1956). Crockett faces off against Mike Fink, another early American legend. In "Davy Crockett and the River Pirates", the men pick up a traveling minstrel (Walter Catlett), who unknown to them is in league with local river bandits. On their way to get horses, from friendly Chickasaw tribesmen, Davy and Georgie are kidnapped by a group of Chickasaws, because white men have been murdering members of their tribe. Crockett and Fink discover that the river pirates led by Samuel Mason, portrayed by Mort Mills, are impersonating Indians.

Cast
Kenneth Tobey, later of the syndicated television adventure series Whirlybirds, starred as Jim Bowie in the "Alamo" segment and then as Jocko in the two later episodes. Future Zorro star George J. Lewis portrayed Chickasaw chief Black Eagle. Thirty-three-year-old Don Megowan was cast as 26-year-old William Travis. Pat Hogan portrayed Chief Red Stick. William Bakewell portrayed Major Tobias Norton and in the final episodes as a keelboat race Master of Ceremonies.

York, Parker, Tobey and Megowan met again as cast members for The Great Locomotive Chase.

Popularity
According to historians Randy Roberts and James Olson, "by the end of the three shows, Fess Parker was very well known, the power of television was fully recognized, and Davy Crockett was the most famous frontiersman in American history".

By the end of 1955, Americans had purchased over $300 million worth of Davy Crockett merchandise, including coonskin caps and bubble gum cards. Fess Parker later claimed he lost millions because a contract granting him a percentage of the merchandising sales was voided, as being with Walt Disney personally rather than Walt Disney Productions.

The shows sparked heated debate, with many questioning whether Crockett was really deserving of the amount of attention that he was receiving. Later writers also questioned the series' historical accuracy. Nevertheless, the shows proved very popular. They were combined into a feature-length movie in the summer of 1955, and Parker and his co-star Buddy Ebsen toured the United States, Europe, and Japan. In the following years, Disney made less successful miniseries based on other historical American heroes including Elfego Baca, Texas John Slaughter, and Francis Marion.

Legacy
The Davy Crockett shows were repeated on NBC in the 1960s after Disney had moved his program to that network. The 1960 repeats marked the first time that the programs had actually been shown in color on TV.

In 1971 Disneyland renamed their Indian War Canoes ride to Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes in reference to the miniseries, with the guides wearing the iconic Coonskin caps.

Walt Disney Home Video released the two theatrical films on DVD as Davy Crockett - Two Movie Set, on September 7, 2004. On November 15, 2015, the films were released on Blu-ray on a "60th Anniversary Edition" set through the Disney Movie Club.

A three-episode 1988–89 revival was made entitled The New Adventures of Davy Crockett, in which Tim Dunigan took over Fess Parker's famous role. Johnny Cash played an older Davy in a few scenes set before he went to Texas. In 2002, Disney (under its Touchstone Pictures label) revisited the subject of Davy Crockett and the Alamo, with the film The Alamo. The film, however, was a significant box-office failure.

See also
 Daniel Boone

References

Bibliography

External links

1954 American television series debuts
1955 American television series endings
American Broadcasting Company original programming
1950s American television miniseries
Black-and-white American television shows
Cultural depictions of Davy Crockett
Television shows set in Tennessee
Television shows set in Texas
Television shows set in Kentucky
Television shows set in New Orleans
American folklore films and television series
1950s Western (genre) television series
Television series by Disney
Television shows adapted into comics

Davy Crockett (miniseries)


Wireless Communications Transfer Protocol (WCTP) is the method used to send messages to wireless devices such as pagers on NPCS (Narrowband PCS) networks. It uses HTTP as a transport layer over the World Wide Web.

Development of WCTP was initiated by the Messaging Standards Committee and submitted to the Radio Paging Community. When the first proposal was received, a sub-committee was established to improve the protocol and issue it as a specification. The sub-committee was moved into the PTC (Paging Technical Committee) which is a volunteer committee composed of industry representatives. The PCIA (Personal Communications Industry) accepted the first full release and adopted the protocol as a PCIA standard. The current version is WCTP 1.3.

External links
WCTP 1.3 Update 1 specification
WCTP Settings for Carriers

Application layer protocols


The angklung is an Indonesian music instrument. It is made of many bamboo tubes. In 2010, UNESCO officially declared angklung a World Heritage item.

Angklung typically has two tubes and a base. Master artisans whittle bamboo into tubes of different sizes, which determine the angklung's pitch. When a player gently shakes or taps the bamboo base, the instrument produces a single pitch. Since Angklungs only play a single note, players must work together to create melodies by shaking their angklungs at different pitches.

The Angklung's origin dates back 400 years to West Java, Indonesia. Villagers believed the sound of bamboo could attract the attention of Déwi Sri, the goddess of rice and prosperity. Each year, the village's best craftsmen used special black bamboo to create angklungs. During the harvest season, they held ceremonies and played Angklungs in hopes that the deity would bless them with fertile crops.

The instrument is still a staple in Indonesian culture. The government hosts Angklung performances to welcome honorable guests to Indonesia's Presidential Palace. Angklung's uplifting sound can be heard in classrooms around the world since it's a great way for teachers to introduce students to Indonesian music and culture.

Musical instruments
UNESCO

Angklung


Shanshe, Duke of Ksani () (born end of 17th century – died 1753), was a politician from Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti. From 1718 was eristavi of Ksani.

In 1719 he insurrected against king of Kartli Vakhtang VI, but he was defeated and exiled to Imereti. He managed to escape from exile and rebelled in 1720 and was again defeated. However he adulated to the King Vakhtang VI and was devoted of his oath until the end.

In 1723 when Kartl-kakheti was conquered by Ottoman empire he was fighting against the intruders. In 1735 when Ottoman role in Kartl-Kakheti was changed by Iranians (Qizilbashs) Shanshe together with Givi Amilakhvari and Vakhushti Abashidze led big revolt against Iranian conquerors and from the strengthened fortresses in Ksani Saeristavo he was fighting for two years. But in 1737 he was finally defeated and had to escape to Imereti and later to Russia.

He was trying to help Bakar (Son of Vakhtang VI and factual king of Kartli) return. However, this mission was unsuccessful and he returned to Georgia and continued fighting against Qizilbashs. Because of betrayal he was captured by Iranians and punished by scooping eyes.

In 1745 he was sent back to Tbilisi, after two years he got back his manorial estates.
He died in Tbilisi in prison in 1753. Where he was imprisoned because of rebel against king Erekle II.

References
 GSE, (1986) volume 10, page 683, Tbilisi.
 Gvasalia, J. (1973) Essays on Georgian history. volume 4. Tbilisi

1753 deaths
Politicians from Georgia (country)
Year of birth missing
Nobility of Georgia (country)

Shanshe, Duke of Ksani


On the event of her wedding to Prince Henry of Battenberg at Saint Mildred's Church at Whippingham, near Osborne, on 23 July 1885, Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom wore a wedding dress of white satin, trimmed with orange blossom and lace, the lace overskirt held by bouquets of the blossom entwined with white heather. There was lace on the pointed neck line, and on the sleeves, for the Princess was a lover of, and an expert on, lace. One of her most treasured possessions was a tunic of old point d'Alençon which had belonged to Catherine of Aragon. Knowing her daughter's love of lace, the Queen allowed Princess Beatrice to wear the Honiton lace and veil which she herself had worn on her wedding day. It was a very precious possession to the Queen, and Princess Beatrice was the only one of her daughters to be given the opportunity to wear it. Her veil was emblazoned with a diamond circlet with diamond stars, a wedding gift from her mother.

She was accompanied by ten royal bridesmaids dressed in ivory gowns.

St. Mildred's in Whippingham, where the couple was married, has a replica of the wedding dress worn by Princess Beatrice which, along with photographs from the wedding, can be viewed by visitors.

See also
 List of individual dresses

References

External links
 St. Mildred's Church Exhibit on the wedding of Princess Beatrice

1880s fashion
Beatrice
House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (United Kingdom)
British royal attire

Wedding dress of Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom


.it is the national top-level domain (ccTLD) assigned to Italy.

Registration is open to organisations and individuals of legal age who are citizens or residents of/headquartered in the countries of the European Economic Area (EEA), the Vatican State, the Republic of San Marino and the Swiss Confederation.

Since 11 July 2012, .it has also supported internationalised domain names.

History
The first .it domain requested was that of the CNR (National Research Council: cnuce.cnr.it); the request was sent on 23 December 1987, and the domain became active on 1 January 1988. On 23 December 1987, IANA assigned the .it ccTLD to CNUCE, an institute of the CNR in Pisa, and the first name registered was that of the CNR's CNUCE. In 1997, the task was passed on to the Institute for Telematic Applications (Istituto per le Applicazioni Telematiche, IAT), also at the CNR in Pisa, which was born out of the necessary expansion of the 'Research Network Infrastructure Department' (Reparto Infrastrutture Reti per la Ricerca, RIRR) of the CNUCE.
Policies and rules were agreed with operators in the sector using a variety of forms. After the setting-up of the initial group, called MAIL-ITA, followed by ITA-PE 162 (which held its meetings at the CSELT) in 1994, 1998 saw the establishment of the Italian Naming Authority, which was responsible for drafting the rules for assigning '.it' domains until 2005. This structure differed from the Italian Registration Authority, which was responsible for keeping the Registry of names and made available the technical infrastructure needed to maintain it, thereby also including the management of authoritative DNS delegations. In 1999, the Naming Authority carried out a 'liberalisation' of the ccTLD by removing the limit on the number of domain names that could be registered for organisations of any kind. In the same year, management of the Registry passed to the Institute's Director Franco Denoth.
In 2001, a merger of several institutes of the CNR gave rise to the Institute of Informatics and Telematics, which consequently took over responsibility. In 2004, the limit on the number of registrations was also removed for natural persons. As of 2005, the Registry took over both regulatory and implementation functions with the establishment of an internal committee (the Steering Committee) that included representatives of the sector's operators. In 2009, the '.it' ccTLD Registry changed its name to  Registro .it, the registry of Italian domains.
Following Denoth's death in April 2006, the direction of the Institute (and thus of Registro) was temporarily taken over by Enrico Gregori on 17 May 2006, followed by Domenico Laforenza in 2008. Currently, the Institute is directed by Marco Conti.
Since 11 July 2012, it has also been possible to register .it domains with non-ASCII characters (IDN), i.e., special characters, accented letters, etc.

Reserved and/or special-use second-level domains
Second-level domains are the ones 'before' the .it, and can be of different types:
.gov.it is the official second-level domain for the Government and Public Administration.
.edu.it is the official second-level domain for educational institutions (schools, universities, etc.).
.difesa.it is the official second-level domain for the Italian Armed Forces (excluding the Carabinieri).
.esteri.it is the official second-level domain for the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Italian diplomatic and consular representatives.
Domain names corresponding to provinces (e.g., palermo.it) and their acronyms (pa.it), municipalities, regions, etc. cannot be assigned; they are defined as geographical domains. It is possible to register third-level domains within them, e.g., comune.palermo.it is the domain assigned to the municipality of Palermo, while regione.lazio.it is the domain assigned to the regional government of Lazio. The second-level domain .co.it does not refer to business activities (as is often the case in other countries) but to the regional extension of the province of Como.
There are domains reserved exclusively for government bodies, such as italia.it, italy.it, italie.it, etc.

References

External links
 IANA .it whois information
 Italy NIC
 Technical registration procedures
 Internet in Italy

Country code top-level domains
Internet in Italy
Mass media in Italy
Council of European National Top Level Domain Registries members

he:סיומת אינטרנט#טבלת סיומות המדינות
sv:Toppdomän#I

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