Out of the Shelter (1970) is a novel by British author David Lodge.

Plot
Timothy Young, at five, enjoys having to go to his neighbor's shelter during the Blitz, partly because he gets to sleep with his friend Jill.  However, Jill and her mother are killed in an air raid.  Timothy spends some of the war in the country before he and his rather narrow-minded Catholic parents return to their lower-middle-class neighbourhood in London.  He sees his sister Kath, who is eleven years older, only on her rare visits home, as she is now working in Germany with the occupying forces.

In 1951, he faces a decision of whether to apply his mathematical and artistic talent to an apprenticeship as a draughtsman or to the study of architecture at university.  Kath invites him to visit her in Heidelberg during the summer.  After some trepidation, he agrees.  The boat and train journey is highly unpleasant, but he is befriended by a young American man with unconventional views, Don Kowalski.  Kath's life in Heidelberg is far more luxurious than anything Timothy knew in England, where some basic foods are still rationed and economic growth is slow.  He joins in the good meals, games, and pleasure trips Kath has with her fun-loving friends, especially two Americans, Greg and Vince.  Timothy lives surreptitiously in an empty room in a woman's hostel.  When he spends a day with Rudolf, the young German porter of Kath's residence, and his family, he sees the much lower German standard of living and deals with his conflicted feelings about the Germans.  He also visits an American family with boys his own age and the American school where Don teaches, but doesn't get along well there.

His sexual awakening includes hearing his neighbor in the hostel having sex, seeing Kath in bed with Don (who has been sacked because he'd been a conscientious objector), refusing a sexual offer from a woman in the hostel, and developing an infatuation with an American girl.  He finally meets her at another American girl's birthday party on a riverboat and then has an erotic encounter with her in his room.

Kath's routine is disturbed when Greg and Vince disappear on a trip to Berlin, but they return a few days later, apparently having strayed into the Russian zone and been interrogated as possible spies.  Timothy goes to a party with Kath where she and her friends dress up in Vince's collection of Nazi uniforms and medals.  Don breaks up this nightmarish scene and reveals that Vince has had a sexual relationship with Rudolf, possibly extorting sexual favours in return for help denazifying Rudolf's father.

An epilogue takes place in a motel in California, where Timothy, now a thirty-year-old academic in Environmental Studies, and his wife and sons are visiting Kath, who's still single.  It's revealed that Vince and Greg were both homosexual and their disappearance in Berlin was an attempt to defect to the Soviets.  Don is now a professor and has been married and divorced.  Timothy reflects on how lucky he is to have a good career and a loving family when things have not gone so well for others.

Origins
The most autobiographical of Lodge's novels, it reflects the author's own rite of passage in Heidelberg visiting a young aunt, though he points out a number of differences between his visit and what happened in the novel. The naive tone of the narration, especially that of Timothy's early childhood, alters as he matures.

In the afterword to the 1984 edition, Lodge explains the novel's origins, as well as the serious problems with the typesetting of the earlier edition.

See also

Bildungsroman

1970 British novels
Novels by David Lodge
Novels set during World War II
Macmillan Publishers books
British bildungsromans

Out of the Shelter


Carle McGetchin Pieters (born 1943) is an American planetary scientist. Pieters has published more than 150 research articles in peer-reviewed journals and was co-author of the book Remote Geochemical Analyses: Elemental and Mineralogical Composition along with Peter Englert. Her general research efforts include planetary exploration and evolution of planetary surfaces with an emphasis on remote compositional analyses.

Career
Pieters earned her B.A. from Antioch College in 1966 in math education. After teaching high school math for one year in Massachusetts, she spent two years teaching science as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Malaysia.  Upon her return to the US, she received her B.S. (1971), M.S. (1972) and Ph.D. (1977) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Planetary Science. Pieters spent three years at NASA Johnson Space Center before becoming a professor at Brown University in 1980 and has remained there ever since. She is the Principal Investigator for the Moon Mineralogy Mapper, an imaging spectrometer (0.4-3.0 µm) designed to characterize and map the mineralogy of the Moon at high resolution, an instrument that was sent to the Moon on the Indian Chandraayan-1 spacecraft. She is also a co-investigator on NASA's Dawn mission to the asteroids Vesta and Ceres. Additionally, she is a sitting member of the NASA Advisory Council's Planetary Protection Subcommittee and a Fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Geophysical Union.

Awards and honors
Asteroid 3713 Pieters
Awarded the 2015 Shoemaker Distinguished Scientist Medal for lifetime dedication and impact to the planetary science research community, awarded by NASA's Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI)
Awarded the 2010 GK Gilbert Award, the highest award given by the Geological Society of America's Division for Planetary Sciences
Awarded the Kuiper Prize in 2004, the most distinguished award given by the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences
Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2007
Elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2001
Elected a Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society in 2020.

References

1943 births
Living people
Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni
Brown University faculty
Planetary scientists
American geologists
Antioch College alumni
Fellows of the American Geophysical Union
Women planetary scientists
Fellows of the American Astronomical Society

Carle M. Pieters


The Palazzo Marigliano, also known as Palazzo di Capua is a Renaissance-style palace in Central Naples, Italy. It is located on the Via San Biagio dei Librai number 39.

History

The palace we see today was designed by Giovanni Donadio, known as il Mormando, and built in 1512-1513. This palace replaced a prior home belonging to  Bartolomeo di Capua, Prince of Riccia and Count of Altavilla. The structure has been modified over the years.

Two marble tablets in the entry portal recall historical associations of the palace.
Constance Chiaramonte was a daughter of Manfredi III Chiaramonte, the lord of Palermo. She was married in Gaeta at the age of 12 years, to Ladislaus of Durazzo, who soon became King Ladislaus of Naples.  However the fortunes of the Chiaramonte family were changing: her father died in 1391, and her brother was caught and executed by the Aragonese forces of Martin I of Aragon, who had declared himself Martin II of Sicily. With this turn of fortunes, Ladislaus obtained an annulment or divorce by decree of the pope, and in 1392 even had the Archbishop of Gaeta announce the dissolution of the marriage in church and obtain the marriage ring. Constance was forced to marry the 4th Count of Altavilla, Andrea di Capua, son of Bartolomeo, and Protonotary of the Kingdom, who was residing in this palace. At the public wedding ceremony, Costanza was said to have proclaimed to her groom, to pride himself as having the king's wife and queen for a concubine.
This palace was a meeting place for those involved, led by Gaetano Gambacorta, in the unsuccessful 1701 Conspiracy of Macchia (Congioura di Macchia) that occurred during the Wars of Spanish Succession.

In the mid-1750s, the palace was refurbished by Bartolommeo di Capua. He commissioned from Francesco de Mura, frescoes for the ballroom, recalling the exploits of his similarly named father in battles with King Charles VII of Naples (Charles III of Spain). At the 1744 Battle of Velletri, Bartolomeo the elder sacrificed his life by providing the King with a horse. The work was heavily damaged by bombardment during 1942. Other paintings inside are allegorical scenes (1765) by Giovanni Battista Maffei.

With the end of the family line of Capua the house passed on to a second son of Sanserverino di Bisognano, count of Saponara. In the 19th century, they sold palace to Francesco Saverio Marigliano, duke of Monte. In the hall of Armor, the walls are painted heraldic symbols of families related to the Marigliano family. The private chapel has a fresco by Maffei.

Today much of the palace is occupied by the Soprintendenza Archivistica della Campania.

References
Visit Palazzo Marigliano

Palaces in Naples
Renaissance architecture in Naples

Palazzo Marigliano, Naples


Walter Dieminger, (July 7, 1907 – September 29, 2000) was a German space scientist and director of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy from 1955 to 1975. Dieminger's research was focused on the ionosphere.

Life and work
Dieminger studied physics between 1926 and 1935 at the Technical University of Munich. After receiving his Ph.D. for work on electromagnetic waves and the ionosphere with Jonathan Zenneck, he worked at the Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt (German Experimental Institute for Aviation). With his focus on research of the ionosphere and electromagnetic waves at his new institute, called the Zentralstelle für Funkberatung (Central Counseling Office for Radio Communication). Applying a code invented by his cooperator Karl Rawer he was able to make predictions on shortwave communication for the military and the police. The institute at Leobersdorf continued to monitor the ionosphere until the end of World War II.

A group of British physicists supervised the dissolution of the institute. The ionospheric physicist William Roy Piggott opposed the dissolution and managed to transfer most of its scientists and equipment to Lindau am Harz in the British sector of Germany. This research institute became later, after several name changes, the Max Planck Institute for Ionospheric Research in 1948.

Dieminger became the director of the institute in 1951, which was renamed the Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy in 1958. He continued his research of the upper atmosphere and was able to participate in several international collaborations. For example, he established a station for ionospheric observations in Tsumeb, Namibia and cooperated with the Finnish EISCAT facility in Sodankylä. Dieminger was one of the most active  scientists in the International Union of Radio Science (URSI): Vice-President 1963-69, President 1969-72. He retired in 1975 but continued with his research. He died in 2000 in Northeim.

Honors
Dieminger was a member of several academic societies including the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Austrian Academy of Sciences, International Academy of Astronautics and the Finnish Academy of Sciences. He was made an honorary citizen of Katlenbug-Lindau in 1975 and received the Federal Cross of Merit in 1975.

References

External links
 Complete list of publications

1907 births
2000 deaths
20th-century German physicists
Recipients of the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
Max Planck Institute directors

Walter Dieminger


Charles Despiau (November 4, 1874 – October 28, 1946) was a French sculptor.

Early life
Charles-Albert Despiau was born at Mont-de-Marsan, Landes and attended first the École des Arts Décoratifs and later the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts. He began exhibiting at the Salon des Artistes Français, from 1898 to 1900; then at the less academic Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, where he showed from 1901 to 1921, and finally to the Salon des Tuileries, where he exhibited from 1923 to 1944.

Career

Rodin hired him as an assistant in 1907. Despiau worked with Rodin, as well as doing his own sculpture, until 1914, when he was drafted for service in the camouflage unit in World War I.

Returning to sculpture after the war, his success was established with his one-man show at the Brummer Gallery in New York in late 1927. He died in Paris in 1946.

Despiau was not a prolific sculptor, preferring to work for as long as it took to realize his vision. There are several surviving plaster statues which repeat a model with only slight variations.

His works, mostly portraits and nudes exemplifying a calm classicism, are in the collections of over thirty museums in France and over 100 museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The Museum of Modern Art in New York owns the bronze Assia, perhaps his best-known work.

The largest collection is in his native Mont-de-Marsan, in a museum he shares with Robert Wlérick, established in the Donjon Lacataye. Despiau produced a total of 150 sculptures and 1,000 drawings over a fifty-year career.

References

External links
 Despiau at www.ilovefiguresculpture.com (Web gallery of 20th Century figure sculpture)
 Charles Despiau website

1874 births
1946 deaths
People from Mont-de-Marsan
École des Beaux-Arts alumni
French military personnel of World War I
20th-century French sculptors
French male sculptors

Charles Despiau


The Suhr House (Danish: Den Suhrske Gård) is a listed Neoclassical property located at Gammeltorv 22 in central Copenhagen, Denmark. The site has been owned by the Suhr family since 1749. The current buildings was built for Peter Bernt Suhr and are now owned by Den Suhrske Stiftelse, a family trust created by his son Theodor Suhr.

It is owned by the Den Suhrske Stiftelse, a foundation created by Theodor Suhr, its owner from 1815 to 1860.

History

Johan Peter Suhr took over his father-in-law's business at Gammeltorv in 1749. Under his leadership, it developed into a thriving trading house. His son Ole Bernt Suhr became a partner in the company in 1782.

Johan Peter Suhr died on 28 May 1785. Ten years later, on 5 July 1795, the Copenhagen Fire of 1795 destroyed the entire area around Gammeltorv. The current complex of buildings at the site was built for Ole Berendt Suhr in 1796–1797. The architect or builder is not known.

Ole Bernt Suhr's son, Theodor Suhr (1792–1858) took over the company as well as the property in Gammeltorv after his father in 1814. He mixed with the cultural and political elite. Johan Ludvig Heiberg and Johanne Luise Heiberg were frequent visitors in the house. Later, Suhr also acquired the country house Sølyst north of Copenhagen and the estate Bonderup at Holbæk.

Suhr lived in the house until 1856. Having no children, he passed it on to his nephew Ole Suhr. Ole Suhr lived in the complex from 1839 to 1847 and again from 1860 to 1875.

Architecture
The ground floor has rustication and the central projects is on the upper floors decorated with four Ionic order pilasters and is tipped by a reiangular pediment. The complex also comprises a side wing and a rear wing. All walls facing the courtyard stand in blank, red brick.

See also
 Listed buildings in Copenhagen Municipality

References

External links

 Det Sihrske Hus
 Den Suhrske Stiftelse
 Source
 Source

Listed residential buildings in Copenhagen
Neoclassical architecture in Copenhagen
Buildings and structures of the Suhr family
Buildings and structures completed in 1686

Suhr House


Lady Chen (陳夫人, personal name unknown), formally the Lady Dowager Zhaoyi of Jin (晉國昭懿太夫人), was the mother of Qian Yuanguan (King Wenmu) (né Qian Chuanguan, name changed to Qian Yuanguan upon his succession to the throne), the second king of the Chinese state Wuyue of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period.

Little is known about Lady Chen's background.  She was a concubine of Qian Chuanguan's father, Wuyue's first king Qian Liu (King Wusu) (whose wife was Lady Wu).  She gave birth to his seventh son, Qian Chuanguan, in 887.  Qian Chuanguan was designated Qian Liu's heir in 928, and that year, Qian Liu, with permission from Emperor Mingzong of Later Tang, whom Qian Liu was a vassal of, transferred the title of military governor (Jiedushi) of Zhenhai (鎮海, headquartered in modern Hangzhou, Zhejiang) and Zhendong (鎮東, headquartered in modern Shaoxing, Zhejiang) — which made up the vast majority of Wuyue's territory — to Qian Chuanguan, while remaining king himself.  It is unclear what title, if any, Lady Chen carried during Qian Liu's lifetime.

Qian Liu died in 932, and Qian Chuanguan took over administration of the state (and changed his name to Qian Yuanguan), although for some time did not use the title of King of Wuyue but instead referred to himself by the military governor title (and, in succession, the Later Tang-bestowed titles of Prince of Wu and Prince of Yue) when reporting to Later Tang, to whom Wuyue was a vassal.  (He would assume the king title only years after Lady Chen's death, in 937.)  It was said that Qian Yuanguan was respectful and filially pious toward his mother.  He also treated her family well, presenting them with many gifts, but never gave them offices on account of her.  She died in the early Qingtai era (934-936) of the Later Tang emperor Li Congke and was posthumously created the Lady Dowager of Jin, with the posthumous name of Zhaoyi ("accomplished and benevolent").

Notes and references

9th-century births
930s deaths
Year of birth unknown
Year of death uncertain
Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms imperial consorts
Wuyue people

zh:钱镠#妻

Lady Chen (Wusu)


Kathryn Elizabeth Granahan (December 7, 1894 – July 10, 1979) was an American politician. She served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania and as the Treasurer of the United States, having been appointed by President John F. Kennedy.

Granahan was a member of the Democratic Party and was the first woman to be elected to the United States Congress from Philadelphia.

Early life and education
Born Kathryn Elizabeth O'Hay in Easton, Pennsylvania, all four of her grandparents were Irish immigrants. She graduated from Mount St. Joseph Collegiate Institute in Philadelphia, which was later renamed Chestnut Hill College.

Career
She was supervisor of public assistance in the State Auditor General's Department, and liaison officer between that department and Department of Public Assistance, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania from 1940 to 1943. She was a member of national board, Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania and a delegate to the 1960 Democratic National Convention.

Congress
Her husband, Rep. William T. Granahan served in Congress from 1945 to 1947 and from 1949 until his death in 1956. His death came shortly after the 1956 primary election and the Democratic Party in Philadelphia selected Kathryn to succeed her husband in both the special election and general election. She was simultaneously elected to serve out her husband's term in the 84th United States Congress and a term in the 85th United States Congress in her own right.

She served as chair of the House Subcommittee on Postal Operations, and worked with Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield to pass the Granahan bill "to seize and detain the mail of anyone suspected of trafficking in obscenity."

Treasurer of the United States
After the 1960 census, Pennsylvania was expected to lose three seats in redistricting. The Democratic Party leadership chose Granahan's seat as one of those to be eliminated. Rep. Bill Green secured her assurance not to run in the 1962 elections. In return, Green convinced then U.S. president John F. Kennedy to appoint her as Treasurer of the United States.

She began her term as Treasurer on January 9, 1963 after her term in Congress ended. In 1965, Granahan suffered a blood clot after a fall and worked a reduced schedule afterwards. In 1966, an effort to declare her incompetent failed; however, she resigned four months later.

Television appearances
Granahan made guest appearances on What's My Line? on March 3, 1963, and To Tell the Truth in November 1963.

Death
Granahan died in Norristown, Pennsylvania on July 10, 1979.

See also
 Women in the United States House of Representatives

References

Sources

 Remarks by Joseph M. Hoeffel of Pennsylvania
 Kathryn E. Granahan at The Political Graveyard

1894 births
1979 deaths
20th-century American politicians
20th-century American women politicians
American people of Irish descent
Chestnut Hill College alumni
Democratic Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Pennsylvania
Easton Area High School alumni
Female members of the United States House of Representatives
Politicians from Easton, Pennsylvania
Spouses of Pennsylvania politicians
Treasurers of the United States
Women in Pennsylvania politics

Kathryn E. Granahan


Hrútafjörður () is a fjord in the north-west of Iceland. It is around 36 km long and lies to the south of Húnaflói bay.

The junction and farmstead of Brú is at its southern tip and serves as a local agricultural service station.

"Hrúta" is plural possessive of "Hrútur" which means the male sheep.

See also

Fjords of Iceland

Hrútafjörður


Mohizam Shah Dawood Shah (born 8 May 1985) is a Malaysian former football player. His preferred position is as a striker.

Career
Mohizam Shah formerly played in PKNS FC for seven years. He transferred to Sime Darby FC, at the time a club in Malaysia FAM Cup league, in 2010. He helped the club win the competition in that season, and promoted to 2011 Malaysia Premier League. In April 2013, he joined Felda United FC.

He joined Malacca FA in 2014 for the 2014 Malaysia FAM League season.

Mohizam also have represented Universiti Putra Malaysia in their football team, that enters in the Malaysian inter-varsity league.

National team
He has been called to the Malaysia national football team in early 2006, for the friendly match against club team PDRM FA and two game friendly tour to New Zealand against New Zealand national football team. He played and scored against PDRM FA, however he does not play for the 'A'-class international match against New Zealand.

He also has represented Malaysia university team in the Asean University Games 2008, held in Kuala Lumpur.

References

External links

1985 births
Living people
Malaysian men's footballers
Selangor F.C. II players
Sime Darby F.C. players
Footballers from Malacca
Men's association football forwards

Mohizam Shah Dawood Shah


Dinner theater (sometimes called dinner and a show) is a form of entertainment that combines a restaurant meal with a staged play or musical. "Dinner and a show" can also refer to a restaurant meal in combination with live concert music, where patrons listen to a performance during a break in the meal. In the case of a theatrical performance, sometimes the play is incidental entertainment, secondary to the meal. In the style of a night club, the play may be the main feature of the evening, with dinner less important or optional. Dinner theater requires the management of three distinct entities: a live theater, a restaurant and, usually, a bar.

History
The Madrigal dinners in the Renaissance were early forms of dinner theater. Some early dinner theaters, known as "theatre restaurants", served dinner in one room and staged the play in another.

Notable venues in the United States

Narroway Productions
Narroway Productions  is a Christian Dinner Theatre, founded by Yvonne Clark and Rebecca Martin in September 1996, located in Fort Mill, South Carolina. The theater started out in the "King's Arena" amphitheater. After 8 years of performing at the King's Arena amphitheater, their lease had ended and they were forced to switch locations.
In 2005 an old gambling warehouse, on Carowinds Blvd, went for sale. after some negotiation, the owner of the warehouse agreed to sell the property to Narroway Productions under value. Since then they have written 3+ new shows, they created 4 shops across the parking lot, and even hosted a golf tournament.

Barksdale Theatre
Barksdale Theatre in Richmond, Virginia, founded in 1953 by David and Nancy Kilgore at the Hanover Tavern, was the first formal dinner theater in the United States. After the theatre was established, an adjoining room in the theatre was changed to accommodate a buffet dinner for groups attending the performance, eventually becoming available to all patrons.

Drury Lane Theatres
Tony DeSantis opened the Martinique Restaurant in Evergreen Park, Illinois and began producing plays in 1949 in a tent adjacent to the restaurant to attract customers. The enterprise was successful, prompting him to build his first theater, Drury Lane Evergreen Park in 1958. It was the first of six dinner theaters he started and a local entertainment fixture for 45 years before closing in 2003. Drury Lane North began operations in 1976 and was sold to the Marriott Lincolnshire Resort, becoming the Marriott Theatre. Drury Lane Oak Brook Terrace opened in 1984. The facility uses local performers and shows are limited to musicals.

Meadowbrook Theatre Restaurant
Cedar Grove, New Jersey, was the location of the Meadowbrook Theatre Restaurant, which opened in 1960 with 700+ seats of table service. It closed after 13 years, in part due to nearby competition from Broadway and Actors' Equity Association (Equity) requirements that the facility follow the rules that applied to Broadway theatres, including pay scales and other restrictions.

Candlelight Theatre Restaurant
The first facility where dinner and the show were together in one room was the Candlelight Theatre Restaurant in Washington, D.C. Bill Pullinsi was a theater student in 1959 who conceived and implemented the entertainment concept at the Presidential Arms Hotel during summer breaks. The venture was successful but it was unable to convert to a year-round operation due to the hotel's convention business. Pullinsi returned to his Chicago home and opened the Candlelight Dinner Playhouse, first in a building owned by his grandfather, then in a new facility with seating for 550. The Candlelight introduced several innovations, including the hydraulic stage, lighting equipment located in the mezzanine, and stage wagons on wheels.

Barn Dinner Theatres

Howard Douglass Wolfe, an entrepreneur from Roanoke, Virginia, created the Barn Dinner Theatre franchise and has been called the "Father of Dinner Theater". He began the franchise in 1961 with Conley Jones. The chain included 27 theaters in New York, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, and Georgia. Each franchise featured Wolfe's architectural barn designs, farm-themed decorations that included a plow and other tools, and a stage elevator that Wolfe called the "Magic Stage". At the end of an act or scene, the stage would disappear into the ceiling, then reappear set for the next scene. The whole process took less than a minute. During the franchise phase of The Barn, all the productions were staged at a studio in New York City, then sent out to the individual theaters. At the break-up of the franchise, the production facilities were moved to Nashville. In its early days, the performance's cast also served as the waiters and waitresses. Actors were selected and cast in New York and resided in living quarters above the theater for the duration of the productions. Mickey Rooney and many other well-known performers acted in roles at The Barn.

The Barn in Greensboro, North Carolina, was founded in 1964 and is the oldest continuously running dinner theater in America and the last of the original Barn Dinner Theatres.

Chaffin's Barn in Nashville, Tennessee, opened in 1967, as Nashville's first professional theater. The dinner theatre was forced to close in October 2020, after 50 years of business due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Alhambra Dinner Theatre
The Alhambra Dinner Theatre in Jacksonville, Florida was opened in 1967 by Leon Simon. It was purchased in 1985 by Tod Booth, who left Chicago's Drury Lane Theatres. The Alhambra is the oldest dinner theater still open. The facility uses a thrust stage to provide all 400 seats with an unobstructed view.

Chanhassen Dinner Theatres
The Chanhassen Dinner Theatres in Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota were founded in 1968. Herb Bloomberg, who designed and built the expanded Old Log Theatre near Lake Minnetonka, subsequently constructed and operated the Chanhassen Dinner Theatres. The Old Log Theatre has an attached dining room. Revenue from food sales is necessary for financial success, but is not a dinner theater. The Chanhassen claims to be the largest professional dinner theater in the U.S. The Main Stage seats 577, the Fireside Theatre contains 230 seats for non-dining patrons, and the Playhouse Theatre has tables for 126.

Carousel Dinner Theatre
The Carousel Dinner Theatre opened in 1973 and moved to Akron, Ohio in 1988 to what had been a Las Vegas-style nightclub. With 1200 seats, it was the largest dinner theater in the United States until it closed in 2009. Some believe the theater was a victim of the late 2000s US economic crisis, however it was more likely the change in ownership and poor decisions on their part that triggered events leading to the theatre closing.

Beef & Boards Dinner Theatre
Beef & Boards Dinner Theatre in Indianapolis, Indiana, opened in 1973 and was one of a chain of dinner theatres founded by J. Scott Talbott. It has a 450-seat house and features Broadway shows and concerts preceded by a buffet dinner. It is a professional Equity theatre.

Riddlesbrood Touring Theater
The Riddlesbrood Touring Theater Company stages dinner theater, murder mystery shows, and comedy shows. Based in Stratford, New Jersey, some of their shows have been performed entirely in made-up languages and have incorporated ideas from the New Thought movement.

Westchester Broadway Theatre
Westchester Broadway Theatre in Elmsford, NY. The theatre continuously presents Broadway Musical Revivals and many special events and concerts including tribute bands, comedy shows, rock bands, dance shows, magic shows, and more. It is the longest running year-round professional theatre in the State of New York. The Theatre originally opened as An Evening Dinner Theatre on July 9, 1974. In 1991, the theatre moved to a larger performance space with state-of-the-art technology, hydraulic lifts, increased seating capacity, and many other features. The theatre was also given the new name, "Westchester Broadway Theatre".

The Derby Dinner Playhouse

The Derby Dinner Playhouse in Clarksville, Indiana opened in 1974 and was still open in 2009, operating continuously for 35 years. They utilized a "magic stage" similar to those used by the Barn Dinner Theatre. An orchestra, if utilized, plays in the "attic", out of sight.

Popularity and decline
Dinner theaters as regional entertainments for local audiences in the US peaked in the 1970s. Alhambra Dinner Theatre owner Tod Booth stated that in 1976, there were 147 professional dinner theaters in operation nationwide.
The dinner theaters that used former movie actors to star in the productions were particularly successful. Van Johnson, Lana Turner, Don Ameche, Eve Arden, Mickey Rooney, June Allyson, Shelley Winters, Dorothy Lamour, Tab Hunter, Betty Grable, Sandra Dee, Mamie Van Doren, Joan Blondell, Debbie Reynolds, Cyd Charisse, Kathryn Grayson, Betty Hutton, Jane Withers, Martha Raye, Elke Sommer, Donald O'Connor, Roddy McDowall, Jane Russell, Cesar Romero, and Ann Miller are just a few Hollywood stars who were featured in dinner theatre. Actors from well remembered television series, such as Betty White, Ann B. Davis, Vivian Vance, Bob Denver, JoAnne Worley, Bernie Kopell, Dawn Wells, Ken Berry, Gavin MacLeod, Nancy Kulp, Frank Sutton, and Bob Crane were also used as headliners. Burt Reynolds owned a dinner theater in Jupiter, Florida from 1979 to 1997, as did actor Earl Holliman, who owned the Fiesta Dinner Playhouse in San Antonio, Texas.

The boom ended in the mid-1980s, with many of the theaters closing. Film and television stars ceased working in dinner theater. Booth commented: "They could make more in a day doing a commercial than they could make during the entire run of dinner theater show, and they didn't have to travel. Plus, a lot of the stars just started dying off. It was a fine gig for a while." He said that, in 1999, you could count the number of surviving professional dinner theaters on two hands. There was a stigma attached to dinner theater and audiences got tired of such shows like The Last of the Red Hot Lovers and Arsenic and Old Lace.

Resurgence
After 2000, new dinner theaters began opening. Chicago's original Drury Lane Water Tower Place was founded in 1976, but closed in 1983. A new $7 million version opened in 2004.
The Desert Star Theater in Murray, Utah opened a dinner theater in 2004 and the Gathering Dinner Theatre in Jacksonville opened in early 2009. At the end of 2006, the National Dinner Theatre Association had 32 members, compared to 9 in 1999.

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 led to a resurgence of the form as a way of giving employment back to musicians and entertainment back to patrons in an industry severely affected by closures.

Different types

Union vs. non-union
In the United States, union theatres are known as equity theatres, where performers are members of the Actors' Equity Association, the union that represents professional stage actors and stage managers. Union shows have a higher cost because equity contracts typically require the theater to pay for lodging, a minimum salary, insurance and pension payments, among other work rules regarding auditions and hiring.

The reduction in professional dinner theaters from 147 in 1976 to 9 in 1999 was partly because union theaters changed to non-union to reduce expenses. Although actors are often housed at non-union theatres, salary for non-union actors may be significantly lower than at Equity theaters.

Commercial vs. non-profit
Tony DeSantis commented that theater operations break even at best, while the restaurant and especially the bar, are more likely to be profitable. While many theaters operate as not-for-profit organizations in order to take advantage of grants and funding from government agencies or private foundations, most dinner theaters are commercial businesses. Commercial dinner theatres often have shows six or seven nights a week and matinees. They also have short breaks between shows, usually less than a week.

An example of a non-profit theater is the Starlight Dinner Theatre in Lansing, Michigan, where the dinner is catered. The shows are staged at a school cafetorium and the season includes only four productions with four performances per production (on Friday and Saturday nights).

Some non-profits use amateur actors or casts where the leading role may be a professional with the rest of the cast composed of amateurs.

Variations

Tourist
Vacation American destinations such as Las Vegas, Destin, Florida, Branson, Missouri, Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, Anaheim, and Los Angeles, California, saw the emergence of specialty dinner theaters, where the show stays the same for an extended run because the vast majority of their customers are tourists, not local residents. The most popular vacation destination in the United States, Orlando, Florida, had more than a dozen dinner theaters operating in 1999; through the 1990s, sixteen opened and closed there.

Murder mystery
Murder mystery games are interactive dinner theater events that have become popular on their own. The productions may be public where anyone can attend for the price of admission, or private where a company, social group or organization sponsors an event for its members. While utilizing the "dinner and a show" concept, the murder mystery show generally targets a smaller audience than typical dinner theater. Public performances usually feature professional actors while private showings may offer "roles" to the guests who participate in the production as either characters or detectives.

Others
The Wedding Comedy is similar to Murder Mystery as the staging requirements are minimal and the audience has interaction with the actors while they perform. Joey and Maria's Comedy Italian Wedding was written by Darlyne Franklin in 1992 and the franchise rights were sold in 2001. Other examples include Tony n' Tina's Wedding and a gay version, Joni and Gina's Wedding.

Riverboat Dinner Cruises combine a showboat with a meal. They are limited to locations on a navigable body of water, such as the Showboat Branson Belle or the Goldenrod Showboat.

Madrigal dinners aka Madrigal Feasts are seasonal, typically held during the Christmas season. They are often staged by educational or religious entities for fundraising and include food, singing, poetry, humor, costumes, and a play from the Middle Ages, ranging from medieval to the Renaissance periods.

Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament is a chain of dinner theaters with shows featuring horses and jousting.

See also

 Cabaret
 List of dinner theaters

Sources
Lynk, William M. Dinner Theatre-A Survey and Directory, Greenwood Publishing (1993)
McAuley, Muriel: Going On...Barksdale Theatre, The First Thirty-One Years, Taylor Publishing, 1984.

References

External links

National Dinner Theater Association website

Theatrical genres
Restaurants by type
Dinner theatre

Dinner theater


Lucca Comics & Games is an annual comic book and gaming convention in Lucca, Italy. It usually happens at the end of October.
It is the largest comics festival in Europe, and the second biggest in the world after Comiket in Japan.

It was founded in 1965 as "Il salone internazionale di Comics".

2700 attendees came to the convention in 2016. Over 3000 attendees came in 2022.
Italian culture

Lucca Comics & Games


Sir Robert Atkyns (1620–1710) was an English Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, Member of parliament, and Speaker of the House of Lords.

Early life
He was the eldest son of Sir Edward Atkyns, one of the Barons of the Exchequer during the Commonwealth, and the elder brother of Sir Edward Atkyns, who preceded him as Lord Chief Baron. There had been lawyers in the family for many generations: "He himself, and his three immediate ancestors, having been of the profession for near two hundred years, and in judicial places; and (through the blessing of Almighty God) have prospered by it." In The History of Gloucestershire written by his son Sir Robert Atkyns the record of the family is carried still further back, in an unbroken legal line, to a Richard Atkyns who lived at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and "followed the profession of the law in Monmouthshire". Robert Atkyns was born in Gloucestershire in 1620. It is not certain whether he went to Oxford or to Cambridge, Alexander Chalmers including him among the famous men of Balliol College, and George Dyer among those of Sidney Sussex College. Chalmers's statement may have originated in the fact that in 1663 Atkyns received from Oxford the degree of master of arts. In 1638 he was admitted to Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar in 1645. Mention of his name is made in some reported cases.

Parliamentary and judicial career
In 1659, he entered Richard Cromwell's parliament as member for Evesham. Probably he was already known to sympathise with the king's party, for he was among the sixty-eight who were made knights of the Bath at Charles's coronation. His name does not appear in the list of members of Charles's first parliament, but in that of 1661, he sat for East Looe, speaking frequently upon legal questions, and, as appears from the record of the debates, with acknowledged authority. In 1661 he was made a bencher of his inn and a King's Serjeant, and about the same time was appointed recorder of Bristol. He served as one of the fire judges after the 1666 great fire of London. On the death of Sir Thomas Tyrrell in 1672 he became a judge of the court of Common Pleas.

Along with Sir William Scroggs, he was a judge in some of the trials arising from the Popish Plot, but there is little trace of the part which he took. According to Roger North, who was an eyewitness to the Plot trials, Scroggs entirely dominated the proceedings: the other judges, in his view "were passive and meddled little". Atkyns shared in the opinion that papists should be sternly dealt with; yet, to judge from his writings and his later life, it is inconceivable that he could have shared in the passion of the time. The chief civil case in which Atkyns took part during this period was that brought by Sir Samuel Barnardiston against Sir William Soame, the High Sheriff of Suffolk, which led ultimately to the passing of the act 7 & 8 Wm. III, c. 7, declaring it illegal for a sheriff to make a double return in the election of members of parliament. The points of the case are technical, but it excited keen political interest, and Atkyns's judgment, in which he differed from the majority of the court, marks the beginning of his separation from the party in power (reprinted in his Tracts, and in 6 St. Tr. 1074). In 1679 he retired from the bench in circumstances which lead one to believe that he was practically dismissed. Being questioned before a committee of the House of Commons in 1689, he mentioned several causes for his enforced retirement.

His judgment in Barnardiston v. Soame had given offence; he had declared against pensions to parliament men; he had quarrelled with Scroggs about the right to petition; and he had offended North by speaking against the sale of offices. "As to pensions, Lord Clifford took occasion to tell me 'that I had attended diligently in parliament, and was taken from my profession, therefore the king had thought fit to send me £500' I replied: 'I thank you. I will not accept anything for my attendance in parliament.' ... I did take occasion upon this to advise my countrymen 'that those who took pensions were not fit to be sent up to parliament again'". In fact, Atkyns was marked out as a disaffected man. He settled in Gloucestershire, with the intention of abandoning the law, but his political opinions again brought him into trouble. When the Oxford Parliament was summoned, he was persuaded, though unwillingly, to stand for Bristol, but was defeated by Sir Richard Hart and Thomas Earle, both Tories. A strong party in the city, not content with his defeat, sought to force him to resign the recordership. The occasion was found in an illegality of which Atkyns along with others was said to be guilty in proceeding to the election of an alderman in the absence of the mayor, who was the same Sir R. Hart. The prosecution failed, but "Sir Robert Atkyns, on the Lord Pemberton's and his brother's persuasion, resigned his recordership; which was all that the city of Bristol aimed at by their indictment". In the following year came the trial of Lord Russell; he could not appear by counsel, but his friends exerted themselves in the preparation of his defence, and applied to Atkyns, who wrote to them a statement of the law. "And the like assistance being afterwards desired from me, by many more persons of the best quality, who soon after fell into the same danger, I, living at some distance from London, did venture by letters, to find the best rules and directions I could, towards the making of their just defence, being heartily concerned with them". Five years afterwards he published the letters, together with A Defence of the late Lord Russel's Innocency, a spirited and eloquent reply to an anonymous pamphlet called An Antidote against Poyson. To a rejoinder from the same pen, The Magistracy and Government of England vindicated, he wrote in answer The Lord Russel's Innocency further defended, assailing his opponent with abuse and almost expressly naming him as Sir Bartholomew Shower. In point of legal criticism, Atkyns's letters and pamphlets are effective and still worth reading, but they do not shake the received opinion that the law of treason was not strained against Lord Russell. In 1684 we find his name associated with another great case, when Sir William Williams, the speaker of the House of Commons, was indicted for printing and publishing Dangerfield's narrative of the Popish Plot. Williams had acted under the orders of the House, so that the case raised the whole question of the powers and privileges of Parliament. Atkyns's argument in his defence is an elaborate review of the authorities, to show that the actions of Parliament, itself the highest court of the nation, were beyond the jurisdiction of inferior courts. Judgment was given against Williams, but in later cases, the decision has been described as disgraceful. The report in the State Trials says that Atkyns took part in the case, and even notices that he had to borrow a wig for the purpose; but in the other reports there is no mention of his name as counsel.

His steady attitude of resistance during these years of misgovernment met with recognition at the Revolution. In 1689 he succeeded his brother as chief baron, and in October of the same year, the great seal being in commission, he was appointed speaker of the House of Lords in the place of the Marquis of Halifax. He held the speakership until 1693, and for his services was recommended by the House to the king's favour. Towards the end of the following year he retired from the bench – through disappointment, it has been said, at not being chosen Master of the Rolls, but more likely owing to advancing age. Yet he still gave proof of continued vigour. In a pamphlet published in 1695, and "humbly submitted to the consideration of the House of Lords, to whom it belongeth to keep the inferior courts within their bounds," he renewed Edward Coke's protest against the insidious encroachments of the court of Chancery, tracing the growth of equitable jurisdiction, and suggesting how the common law might be restored.  This was followed a few years afterwards by another tract, addressed as a petition to the House of Commons, in which, while repeating his complaint against the court of Chancery, and lamenting the uncertainty of the law, he argued from the history of Parliament that the exercise of judicial functions by the Lords was a usurpation. It should be read along with Skinner's case, in which the Lords failed in their attempt to exercise original jurisdiction, and Dr. Shirley's case, in which they maintained their right to an appellate jurisdiction. Atkyns had himself, while in parliament, taken a vigorous part in this struggle. After 1699 we hear nothing more of him till his death. He spent his later years at Sapperton Hall in Gloucestershire, and died on 18 Feb. 1710, a few weeks before his 90th birthday. Lord Campbell calls him a "virtuous judge," in what was an age of judicial scandals.

Family

By his first wife Mary, he had an only son and heir, Sir Robert Atkyns the younger. Mary died in 1680. Sir Robert remarried in the following year Anne Dacres, who died in 1712. His son married in 1669 Louisa-Margaret (Louisonne) Carteret, daughter of Sir George Carteret, and died in 1741 without issue.

Works
Parliamentary and Political Tracts, collected 1734, 2nd ed. 1741. Besides those already mentioned it contains other tracts published in Atkyns's lifetime:
An Enquiry into the Power of dispensing with Penal Statutes, which sums up the whole history of dispensations and denies their antiquity
a reply to Chief Justice Herbert's review of the authorities in Hale's case, which raised the question of the dispensing power (see both tracts, 11 St. Tr. 1200)
a discourse on the ecclesiastical commission of 1686 (in 11 St. Tr. 1148)
a speech as chief baron to the lord mayor in 1693 (also in 2 St. Tr. 361), a word of warning as to Louis XIV's designs for a universal and arbitrary monarchy.
An Enquiry into the Jurisdiction of the Chancery in Causes of Equity, 1695
A Treatise of the True and Ancient Jurisdiction of the House of Peers, 1699. In many copies of this work is included the case of Tooke v. Atkyns, in which he was defendant, and which, as he allows, makes him write warmly on the subject of equitable jurisdiction.

References

Attribution

External links

|-

1621 births
1710 deaths
Knights of the Bath
Serjeants-at-law (England)
Chief Barons of the Exchequer
Justices of the Common Pleas
17th-century English judges
Members of the Parliament of England (pre-1707) for East Looe
English MPs 1656–1658
English MPs 1659
English MPs 1661–1679
English MPs 1681

Robert Atkyns (judge)


Jon Wells (born 1983) is an American record producer, record executive, and rapper. He is a member of the Likwit Crew.

Biography
Wells was born and raised in Chicago but moved to California, then later to Atlanta, Georgia when he was young. He took the alias "J Roc" when he began rapping in local clubs. A  high school friend introduced him to K-Boogs, Young and DJ7 with whom he later formed the group Rocswell, as well as a production company under the same name - Rocswell Entertainment. The group recorded its first album Chilahyork in 1997 which sold 5,000 copies. A second album, Tha Classiks, was released in 1999 and sold 8,000 copies.

In 2000 Wells began producing a Dallas-based hip hop group called Virus and they briefly signed with Warner Brothers in 2001, before being dropped from the label. As a result, the group's first album Outbreak was never released and shelved indefinitely.

In 2001 Wells was invited to join the group Likwit Crew, which includes: Xzibit, Tha Alkaholiks, (E-Swift, J Ro, Tash), King Tee, Lootpack, Phil Da Agony, and Defari, who in 2002 toured with Snoop Dogg's Puff Puff Pass tour, where he met Kurupt from the Dogg Pound (with whom he later formed a duo and released an album). He went on to work on the Wolfpac's Roger Troutman Project and put together his own Wolf Pac Mix tape Volume One which featured artists such as James Debarge, Kurupt, Tha Alkaholiks, Shyheim and Sunz of Man. It sold 25,000 copies.

In 2005, after creative differences with Wolfpac Records, Wells launched another record label, Bonzi Records,  before releasing his debut album, Digital Master which featured: Bishop Lamont, Method Man, Mitchy Slick, Goodie Mob, Tha Liks, Jayo Felony, Kurupt, Roscoe, and Planet Asia. The same year Wells produced the Goodie Mob single, "Play Yo Flutes", featuring Sleepy Brown

Wells produced Work It Out on Keyshia Cole's album Just like You in 2007. He also produced songs for Snoop Dogg's EP and animated DVD The Adventures of The Blue Carpet Treatment, as well as music used on TV shows such as, The Sopranos and Six Feet Under, and for the film Be Cool directed by F. Gary Gray.

His songs are also feature in the video games: EA Sports 2004 Tiger Woods Golf, and EA Sports 2006 Fight Night, as well as commercials for major corporations including McDonald's, Smirnoff, Starbucks, and Coors Light. He released his collaboration album with Kurupt, Digital Smoke under his own label Bonzi Records / Fontana Distribution.

He went on to release Digital Master Vol. 2.1 in 2009 which featured: Snoop Dogg, Estelle, Rah Digga, WC, Mack 10, and  Da Brat. The single "Already Famous" featuring Da Brat and Kurupt was released on Bonzi Records in March 2009. The video was released without Da Brat due to her incarceration in the Georgia state prison. In 2016 Wells formed rap group Stylz & Wells with Likwit Crew member Styliztik Jones the duo released a music video for lead single "Involved" in August 2017. The duo announced signing a label deal with Capitol Records's Priority Records in October 2017. The duo released their first single on S & W Recordings / Priority Records entitled "Involved" via Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, and other online retailers on November 8, 2017.

Establishing Bonzi Records
Bonzi Records is an American record label founded by Wells. Fontana Distribution is the distributor for Bonzi. In 2005 after leaving Wolfpac Records, Wells established Bonzi Records and began to release a series of rap music compilations to establish the new brand.  In 2006 the label went on to sign a distribution deal with Fontana Distribution, and in 2007 released a Kurupt collaboration album Digital Smoke. In 2010 Bonzi began ushering in more acts through a joint venture deal with Ingrooves. Through the venture Wells worked as executive producer for D. Woods of Danity Kane, Kokane, Ray J, Sir Michael Rocks of The Cool Kids, Ruff Ryders, Dope House Records, King Chip, and Lil' Scrappy. In 2012 Bonzi Records in partnership with Ingrooves released Lil Scrappy's The Grustle.

Productions discography
 West Coast All Stars - Still Mo Bounce (2000)
 "Crushed Grapes" ft. Merciless Stylz, K Boogs
 J-Ro - "What U Lookin' At?" (single, 2002)
 Wolfpac Records Presents: Still More Bou (2002)
 "Grape Juice" ft. Merciless Stylz, K. Boogs
 Hieroglyphics present "One Big Trip" (2003)
 J Ro - "What U Lookin' At?"
 Roscoe- Young Roscoe Philaphornia (2003)
 "Get Low"
 "Trouble"
 J. Wells Presents: The Wolfpac Mixtape (full album) (2004)
 Shyheim - The Greatest Story Never Told (2004)
 "160.15"
 Goodie Mob - One Monkey Don't Stop No Show (2004)
 "Play Your Flutes"  ft. Sleepy Brown, Kurupt
 Kurupt - Kurupt Presents The Originals (2004)
 "I Didn't Change"
 "Y'z Up A'z Down"
 Planet Asia - The Grand Opening (2004)
 "It's All Big"
 The Sopranos "All Happy Families..." series episode music -  Roscoe's "Nothin But Trouble"  (2004)
 Six Feet Under series episode music (2001–2005)
 Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 EA Sports video game soundtrack -  Roscoe's "Nothin But Trouble"
 Fight Night Round 3 EA Sports video game soundtrack -  Roscoe's "Nothin But Trouble"  (2006)
 Digital Master (full album) (2005)
 Be Cool soundtrack (2005)
 Planet Asia featuring Kurupt - "G'z & Soldiers"
 Prodigal Sunn - Return Of The Prodigal Sunn (2005)
 "Procrastinators" ft. Freemurder, Young Masta, Bonzi J. Wells
 Digital Smoke (with Kurupt) (full album) (2007)
 Keyshia Cole - Just like You (platinum) (2007)
 "Work It Out"
 stic.man of Dead Prez - Manhood
 "Black Girl Shine"
 "Independent Hustler"
 Canibus - For Whom The Beat Tolls (2007)
 "702-386-5397"
 "Javelin Fangz"
 J-Ro - Rare Earth B-Boy Funk Vol.2 (2007)
 "It Don't Stop"
 "Akser"
 Rza's - "Afro Samurai" (2007)
 "Caught Up" (as performed by Black Knights (rap group))
 Snoop Dogg - "The Great Adventures of The Blue Carpet Treatment" DVD Tha Blue Carpet Treatment Mixtape (2007)
 "Listen" (All My Bitches)
 Ralph Myerz -"Ralphorama" (2008)
 "We Don't Give A Fuck" Feat. WC
 "Summertime Heat""
 Tash -Control Freek (2009)
 "A Penny For My Thoughts (feat. Samuel Christian)"
 Rakim -The Seventh Seal (2009)
 "You and I"
 D. Woods - "Legalize Me" - single (2009)
 Executive Producer
 Bizarre - Friday Night At St. Andrew's (2010)
 "School Teacher"
Stacee Adamz - Katharsis (Street Album) (2010)
"Late Nite Ridin'"
 Kokane - Gimme All Mine (2010)
 Executive Producer
 Talib Kweli Presents: Strong Arm Steady • "Arms & Hammers" (2011)
 "Smoking Drinking" (Bonus Track)
 Jay Rock - "Do You Know Me" - Mixtape (2011)
 "Do You Know" Feat. Kokane
 Terminal 3 Presents "The Academy" "Kurupt's Welcome To The Academy" (2011)
 Executive Producer
 Lil Scrappy - The Grustle (2012)
 Executive Producer
 Sir Michael Rocks of The Cool Kids - "Lap of Lux" (2012)
 Co- Executive Producer
 Sir Michael Rocks of The Cool Kids - "While You Wait" mixtape (2013)
 "Hold On, Hold Up"
Kurupt - "Money, Bitches, Power" (2013)
 "Money (Do It For Me)
 Produced with DJ Battlecat & Knotch
Kurupt - "Single" (2015)
 "Shuv It" Feat. Roscoe
 T.I. Presents: "Hustle Gang" - "We Want Smoke" (2017)
 "Do No Wrong" Feat. Young Dro & Brycce
 Co-Producer
 Stylz & Wells - "VIBES" (2017)
 "Bottles"
 Stylz & Wells - "VIBES" (2018)
 "Involved"
 Too Short - "The Sex Tape" (2018)
 "I Aint Throwin No" Feat. Mowii The Rejects
 Nivea - Mirrors (2019)
 "Flower Power"
 Stylz & Wells - "VIBES" (2019)
 "VIBES" Feat. Too $hort
 Stylz & Wells - "VIBES" (2020)
 "Product of the Ghetto" Feat. Nipsey Hussle
 Stylz & Wells - "VIBES" (2020)
 Full Album

Discography
 Rocswell - Chilahyork (1999)
 Marley Marl - Re-Entry (2001)
 "Foundation Symphony" feat. J. Wells, Larry-O, Miss Man, Seven Shawn(produced by J-Force)
 "So Good" feat. J. Wells, Edwin Birdsong (produced by Marley Marl)
 Rocswell - Tha Classiks  (2002)
 J. Wells - "Presents Wolfpac Mixtape" - (2003)
 J. Wells - Digital Master Vol.1 (2005)
 Kurupt and J. Wells - Digital Smoke (2007)
 J. Wells - Digital Master Vol. 2.1 (2009)
 Inebriated (TBD)

Filmography
 Mindbenders - Number Two
 Grand Theft Auto V - MC Clip, The Local Population (voice)

Commercials music composed by
 McDonald's
 Smirnoff
 Starbucks
 Coors Light
 HTC
 Dr. Dre's Beats Electronics

References

External links

1983 births
Living people
Rappers from Chicago
American hip hop record producers
Record producers from Illinois
Likwit Crew members

J. Wells


The Abbaye Blanche ("White Abbey") was a nunnery founded in 1112 in Mortain, France.
Shortly after establishing an abbey for men called Holy Trinity of Savigny, Saint Vitalis, founder of the monastic order of Savigny, set up the Abbaye Blanche for women, with his sister Adelina as abbess. The nuns of the Abbaye Blanche wore habits of undyed wool and followed a very strict interpretation of the Rule of Saint Benedict.

The church is built on a Latin cross floorplan of a central nave and a wide transept. The style is Early Gothic, though unfortunately only the chapter house, cellar and Romanesque cloister remain in their original 12th-century form.
The communities of Holy Trinity and the Abbaye Blanche joined the Cistercian order in 1147, as did the other 30 or so houses of the Order of Savigny.Saint Adelina (died 1125) was a French Benedictine nun honored as a  saint by the Catholic Church. She was a noblewoman of Normandy, the sister of Saint Vitalis. She became the abbess of the Benedictine convent Abbaye Blanche in Normandy, a religious community founded by her brother. Her feast day is celebrated on October 20.

References

External links

1125 deaths
Buildings and structures in Manche
1112 establishments in Europe
1110s establishments in France
Cistercian nunneries in France
Religious organizations established in the 1110s
Christian monasteries established in the 12th century
11th-century births
Year of birth unknown
Benedictine nuns
12th-century Christian saints
Medieval French saints
Christian female saints of the Middle Ages

Abbaye Blanche


In United States presidential elections, an unpledged elector is a person nominated to stand as an elector but who has not pledged to support any particular presidential or vice presidential candidate, and is free to vote for any candidate when elected a member of the Electoral College. Presidential elections are indirect, with voters in each state choosing electors on Election Day in November, and these electors choosing the president and vice president of the United States in December.  Electors in practice have since the 19th century almost always agreed in advance to vote for a particular candidate — that is, they are said to have been pledged to that candidate. In several elections in the 20th century, however, competitive campaigns were mounted by candidates who made no pledge to any presidential nominee before the election. These anomalies largely arose from fissures within the Democratic Party over the issues of civil rights and segregation. No serious general election campaign has been mounted to elect unpledged electors in any state since 1964.

An unpledged elector is distinct from a faithless elector who pledges their vote for a particular candidate before the election but ultimately votes for someone else or fails to vote at all.

Constitutional background
When the United States Constitution was written, the Founding Fathers intended the Electoral College to be a truly deliberative body whose members would choose a president (and vice president, after 1800) based on their own preferences. They also left the method for selecting the electors for each state to the discretion of that state's legislature. Other than the implied expectation that the electors vote for candidates who are constitutionally qualified to serve as president and vice president, the Constitution otherwise places no restriction on the behavior of the electors, and assumes that each is an independent agent.

The system worked without much controversy for the first two presidential elections in which George Washington was the unanimous choice for president and electors' opinions diverged only on the choice for vice president, which was widely seen to be an unimportant post. Washington was not a member of any political party, and had hoped they would not be formed. Nevertheless, "Federalist" and "Anti-Federalist" factions quickly coalesced in the United States Congress.

Once Washington announced his intention to retire after his second presidential term, U.S. politics very quickly became dominated by strong political party organizations. Even without this particular development, the reality was that electors had only one constitutional duty – electing the president and vice president, while at the same time seeking no other federal office since federal officials are constitutionally barred from serving as electors. In several states, legislatures chose electors. Among the states that selected electors by popular vote, different electoral systems were in place. Some effectively held a statewide vote for all electors – essentially the system most similar to that used in 48 of 50 states today although at this time an electoral mechanism that could effectively compel voters to vote for any particular "slate" of presidential electors had not yet been contemplated. Some states elected two electors in a statewide vote and one in each congressional district (essentially, the system used today in Maine and Nebraska) and a few states experimented with selecting presidential electors in special districts distinct from its congressional districts. More broadly, the franchise (that is, the qualifications that determined who among the adult male population was allowed to vote for state and federal legislators and, where applicable, for presidential electors) varied widely from state to state. However, no matter who was allowed to vote for electors and no matter how they were selected, the only meaningful question any prospective elector had to answer was for whom they would vote for president (and, from 1804 onward, for vice president) and the only real issues of importance to those selecting electors, beyond deciding who they wanted to become president and vice president, was perhaps whether the person or people they selected to represent them in the Electoral College could be trusted to keep their word. Thus, it rapidly became increasingly unrealistic for anyone to be elected to the Electoral College without making a trustworthy "pledge" to vote for particular candidates on behalf of those electing them.

By the 1830s, most states chose their electors by popular vote.  While voting for individual electors was still the norm at this point, by this time the electors who appeared on ballots were nominated by the state chapters of national parties with the understanding that they would cast their votes for their party's candidate if elected. Also by this time, political parties had successfully lobbied most states to allow voters to cast one vote for every elector that state had apportioned to it. The main rationale of this system was to greatly simplify the distribution of presidential ballots. Prior to the introduction of the secret ballot, political parties were responsible for printing and distributing their own ballots, thus, allowing voters to cast as many votes as the state had electors meant a party could print a standardized ballot containing the same slate of the party's presidential electors for each state. Also, whether an intended consequence or not, this system resulted in most states having a de facto (but not de jure) winner-take-all method of allocating presidential electors.

Eventually, this arrangement became such a given in presidential elections that when the time came for the states to take over the printing and distribution of ballots (a development necessitated by the introduction of the secret ballot in the 1880s) most states did not bother to list the names of the electors on ballots, instead listing the candidates to whom those electors were pledged. In doing so, they also ensured that the winner-take-all method of selecting presidential electors that had become so firmly entrenched in the U.S. presidential electoral system by that point would become established by law in most states. There were some exceptions, however, such as Alabama, described below.

Unpledged electors in the 20th century

Background
After the American Civil War and Reconstruction, the Democratic Party gained an almost unbreakable dominance in the Southern United States, and the Republicans, associated with Abraham Lincoln and the Union cause, were correspondingly unelectable there. The nationwide Democratic party became increasingly liberal in the early 20th century, a shift that accelerated with the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt. By contrast, the leaders of the Democratic Party in the South, although somewhat supportive of certain parts of the New Deal and other liberal Democratic economic policies, were in many other aspects conservative. In particular, they were vehemently protective of segregation and strongly opposed to civil rights for African Americans.

In several mid-20th century elections, unpledged Democratic electors appeared on the ballots in several Southern states; in some cases they ran in opposition to electors pledged to the nationwide Democratic candidate, and in others they were the only Democratic electors that appeared on the ballot. The goal was to have electors who could act as kingmakers in a close election, extracting concessions that would favor conservative Southern Democrats in exchange for their votes.

Election

1944
The first modern slates of unpledged electors were fielded in the 1944 election as a protest against certain aspects of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and support for desegregation.

In Texas, a splinter group of Democrats known as the Texas Regulars fielded a slate of electors not pledged to any candidate; similar slates were on the ballot in South Carolina and Mississippi. While they won or placed second in several counties, none of the groups met much success.

1956
In 1956, unpledged slates were on the ballot in Alabama (20,150 votes, 4.1% of the vote), Louisiana (44,520 votes, 7.2% of the vote and they won four parishes), Mississippi (42,266 votes, 17.3% of the vote and they won seven counties) and South Carolina (88,509 votes, 29.5% of the vote and 21 counties).

1960
The 1960 election was the only election that saw unpledged electors actually elected to the electoral college.

In that year, a slate of eight unpledged electors in Mississippi won a plurality of the vote there (116,248 votes, or 39% of the total).

Louisiana's popular vote went to a slate of electors pledged to Kennedy and Johnson, but a slate of unpledged electors on the ballot there won 169,572 votes (21% of the vote).

In Georgia, the state legislature, although allowing for a separate group of unpledged electors according to state law, requested the people give a non-binding straw vote to determine whether Kennedy should have pledged electors on the ballot at all or whether his electors should be replaced by unpledged electors. The voters overwhelmingly supported the "Pledge Free" Electors, but the legislature decided not to enforce the decision into law; all electors would remain legally pledged and all would ultimately vote for Kennedy, despite concerns they would abandon their pledges and become faithless electors.

In Alabama, the vote was not for the presidential candidates but for individual electors, with each of the 11 electors having their own separate elections. As a result of Alabama's Democratic primaries, five of the eleven nominated Democratic electors were pledged to Democratic nominees John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson and six were unpledged. Although all eleven Democratic electors were elected, the unusual situation has led to ambiguity about the correct method to calculate popular votes for Kennedy and the unpledged electors. The common practice is to give Kennedy the votes for his most-voted pledged elector and to give unpledged electors their popular votes by subtracting the votes for the most-voted unpledged elector by the votes for the most-voted Kennedy-pledged elector; the unusual calculation for the unpledged electors is done so that the total votes align with the estimated total number of people who voted in Alabama's presidential contest (although the exact number is uncertain because voters are allowed to abstain from voting for all 11 electors' elections). However, the electoral split between Kennedy and the Unpledged Electors has been used to argue for an lesser-used method of splitting the vote of the highest-voted Democratic elector proportionally between Kennedy and the Unpledged; some have used said vote split to argue that Kennedy had lost the popular vote to Nixon, both in the Alabama popular vote and resultantly the national popular vote. Even disregarding proportionally splitting the vote of the highest-voted Democratic elector, simply summing Kennedy and Nixon's total votes from their multiple electors and evenly splitting them among the 11 electors' races would give Nixon a national popular vote victory of 34,108,157 to 34,076,629. Such calculation would temporarily be used in the Congressional Quarterly before the change to the current vote-counting method.

When the electoral college cast its vote, all fourteen unpledged electors cast their votes for conservative Democrat Harry F. Byrd for president and Strom Thurmond for vice president after trying to influence other Southern states into unpledging their electors to join them. They were joined by Henry D. Irwin from Oklahoma, a faithless Republican elector who objected to Republican nominee Richard M. Nixon. Irwin cast his vice presidential vote for Barry Goldwater. Irwin had attempted to broker a coalition between the unpledged electors and other Republican electors, but to no avail: Kennedy and Johnson won a clear majority of the electoral vote.

1964
The last slate of unpledged electors to date was filed in Alabama in the 1964 election. The slate was supported by Democratic Alabama Governor George C. Wallace while the national Democratic nominees, Lyndon B. Johnson and Hubert H. Humphrey, did not appear on Alabama ballots. The electors won 30.6 percent of the vote, but the state was ultimately won by Republican nominees Barry Goldwater and William E. Miller.

Aftermath
The Republican ticket's victory in Alabama and four other Southern states (the only states Goldwater carried besides his home state of Arizona) heralded a trend that would put an end to the practice of nominating unpledged electors.

As a strategy, it had been largely ineffective, and southern conservatives, many of whom were still reluctant to vote Republican, began urging Governor Wallace to run for the White House in 1968 under the auspices of a traditional third-party presidential campaign. Once Wallace announced his intention to run for president, the rationale for running slates of formally unpledged electors disappeared. Nevertheless, Wallace sought commitments from his "pledged" electors in the states he was most likely to win that they would not necessarily vote for him but rather as he directed, thus allowing the Alabama Governor to act as a power broker in case of an election with no clear winner in the weeks between the general election and the Electoral College vote. Wallace ultimately carried four Southern states under the American Independent Party banner, in addition to his home state of Alabama in which he ran as the official nominee of the state's Democratic Party. While a shift of a few thousand votes in a handful of key states would have resulted in no candidate winning a clear majority of the electoral vote, Republican Richard Nixon ultimately won a clear majority of the electoral vote. Unable to influence the result, Wallace's 45 electors voted as pledged - he ultimately finished with 46 electoral votes due to the support of a North Carolinian faithless elector.

Following Nixon's triumph in 1968, former Southern Democratic supporters began voting Republican in large numbers. By 1972, Wallace was seeking the national Democratic nomination on a more moderate platform in a presidential campaign that was ultimately cut short after he was seriously wounded by a would-be assassin. Nixon would sweep the South in his landslide victory that year. By the time the Democrats regained the White House following the 1976 election, it was under the candidacy of Jimmy Carter, a Southerner who in contrast to most of his predecessors was firmly opposed to segregation. Carter nevertheless managed to almost sweep the South, with Virginia being the only former Confederate state to not vote for him. Many other Southern Democrats, including Wallace himself, would soon follow Carter's lead.

The 1976 presidential was the last such contest in which the Democratic nominee carried a majority of Southern states. Today, the practice of nominating unpledged electors combined with Wallace's third-party presidential campaign can be seen as a transitional phase between the Democrats' traditional hold on the South and the modern political environment where the region is a Republican stronghold and where state Democratic parties, while still more conservative in some respects compared to other regions, tend to be to the left of the Republicans as in the rest of the country and tend to be more supported in predominantly African-American locales.

References

United States presidential elections terminology
Conservatism in the United States

Unpledged elector


The Toungoo–Ava War (1538–1545) () was a military conflict that took place in present-day Lower and Central Burma (Myanmar) between the Toungoo Dynasty, and the Ava-led Confederation of Shan States, Hanthawaddy Pegu, and Arakan (Mrauk-U). Toungoo's decisive victory gave the upstart kingdom control of all of central Burma, and cemented its emergence as the largest polity in Burma since the fall of Pagan Empire in 1287.

The war began in 1538 when Ava, through its vassal Prome, threw its support behind Pegu in the four-year-old war between Toungoo and Pegu. After its troops broke the siege of Prome in 1539, Ava got its Confederation allies agreed to prepare for war, and formed an alliance with Arakan. But the loose alliance crucially failed to open a second front during the seven dry-season months of 1540–41 when Toungoo was struggling to conquer Martaban (Mottama).

The allies were initially unprepared when Toungoo forces renewed the war against Prome in November 1541. Due to poor coordination, the armies of the Ava-led Confederation and Arakan were driven back by better organized Toungoo forces in April 1542, after which the Arakanese navy, which had already taken two key Irrawaddy delta ports, retreated. Prome surrendered a month later. The war then entered an 18-month hiatus during which Arakan left the alliance, and Ava underwent a contentious leadership change. In December 1543, the largest army and naval forces of Ava and the Confederation came down to retake Prome. But Toungoo forces, which had now enlisted foreign mercenaries and firearms, not only drove back the numerically superior invasion force but also took over all of Central Burma up to Pagan (Bagan) by April 1544. In the following dry season, a small Ava army raided down to Salin but was destroyed by larger Toungoo forces.

The successive defeats brought the long simmering disagreements between Ava and Mohnyin of the Confederation to the forefront. Faced with a serious Mohnyin-backed rebellion, Ava in 1545 sought and agreed to a peace treaty with Toungoo in which Ava formally ceded all of Central Burma between Pagan and Prome. Ava would be beset by the rebellion for the next six years while an emboldened Toungoo would turn its attention to conquering Arakan in 1545–47, and Siam in 1547–49.

Background

Early 16th century Upper Burma

In the early 16th century, the present-day Myanmar (Burma) comprised several small kingdoms. The Ava Kingdom, the principal power in Upper Burma in the 14th and 15th centuries, had been fighting a long losing war against an alliance of its former vassal states: the Confederation of Shan States and Prome (Pyay). Another former vassal state Toungoo (Taungoo), hemmed in by the Bago Yoma range in the west and the Shan Hills in the east, stayed out of the internecine warfare raging in Upper Burma. As the only peaceful state in Upper Burma, Toungoo had received a steady stream of refugees.

Then, in 1527, the Confederation finally defeated Ava, and in 1532, its erstwhile ally Prome. Its paramount leader Sawlon I of Mohnyin had now reunited most of Upper Burma and cis-Salween Shan states for the first time since 1480. Toungoo, the only remaining holdout, was his "obvious next target." Fortunately for Toungoo, Sawlon I was assassinated in 1533 on his return trip from Prome, and his son and successor Thohanbwa, based out of Ava, was not accepted as the first among equals by other saophas (chiefs) of the Confederation. Without a strong leader, the Confederation suddenly ceased to be a unified force capable of combined action.

Toungoo's gambit

The Toungoo leadership nonetheless concluded that their kingdom "had to act quickly if it wished to avoid being swallowed up" by the Confederation. In 1534, Toungoo began raiding Pegu's territory to the south in a gambit to break out of its increasingly narrow realm. Although a united polity of Toungoo and Pegu could in theory challenge their possessions in western central Burma (the Prome to Pagan corridor along the Irrawaddy), the Confederation's fractured leadership took no action. They apparently did not believe that the tiny Toungoo could defeat the larger, wealthier Pegu; or that Pegu's weak leader Takayutpi, who was also facing an internal rebellion by Martaban (Mottama), could conquer either Toungoo or Martaban, much less pose a threat to Prome.

At first, their nonchalance proved justified: Toungoo's annual dry-season raids of Lower Burma (1534–37) all failed while Pegu could not organize a counterattack against either Toungoo or Martaban. Closer to the battleground, however, King Narapati of Prome was increasingly concerned by Toungoo's deeper and longer raids with each successive campaign, and raised the alarm with Ava. In 1538, Prome, presumably with Ava's permission, entered into an alliance with Takayutpi. Though he had now taken sides, Thohanbwa still did not see a compelling reason to commit his troops, or ask his Confederation allies for additional troops. Indeed, no Ava or Confederation troops were in Prome at the start of the 1538–39 dry season when Toungoo would change the course of history.

First Toungoo siege of Prome (1538–39)

In late 1538, Toungoo again opened its annual dry season campaign. It would have been like any previous one except that in a series of improbable events, Toungoo went on to conquer Lower Burma (except Martaban) in a blitz. By using a stratagem, Toungoo armies took Pegu without firing a shot. A few weeks later, Hanthawaddy's larger but poorly-led forces were decisively defeated at the Battle of Naungyo by light forces of Gen. Kyawhtin Nawrahta (Bayinnaung). Only a weakened Hanthawaddy force made it to Prome.

The rapid turn of events caught everyone by surprise. Narapati immediately asked Ava for help. While a flatfooted Thohanbwa scrambled to round up the troops, about 7000 Toungoo land and naval forces converged on Prome, the gateway to central Burma. But the city's fortified defenses held out long enough. Finally, 5000 Ava troops arrived in 300 war boats to break up the siege, and chased Toungoo forces back to the delta. The Confederation's advance was halted at Inbyaw Island () where six Confederation commanders, including Gen. Nawrahta of Kanni, were captured in a naval battle.

It turned out to be the last battle of the season. Despite Takayutpi's repeated urges to push on, his allies decided not to proceed any further. A deeply frustrated Takayutpi died soon after while trying to catch wild elephants for his army. Narapati too died shortly after from dysentery.

First interlude (1539–41)

An uneasy stalemate ensued. In order to consolidate his gains in Lower Burma, Tabinshwehti moved his capital to Pegu in 1539; reappointed former Hanthawaddy lords to their posts; and appointed many of them to the highest positions of his government. By successfully gaining the loyalty of Hanthawaddy officials, the king now controlled much of Lower Burma's manpower and trade wealth, and for the first time gained access to Portuguese mercenaries and their firearms. This fortuitous combination of Toungoo's "more martial culture", and Lower Burma's manpower, access to foreign firearms, and maritime wealth to pay for them would enable the men from a "small frontier outpost" to further wage war on their neighbors in the following decades.

Other polities in the region were now forced to act. The chiefs of the dormant Confederation finally agreed to prepare for war. The western kingdom of Arakan (Mrauk-U) agreed to an alliance with Ava to defend Prome. At Martaban, the only remaining independent Hanthawaddy province, its ruler Saw Binnya had completely fortified his wealthy port, and enlisted Portuguese mercenaries and warships in his service.

The Toungoo command decided to pick off Martaban first. In November 1540, three Toungoo armies (13,000 troops, 2,100 horses, 130 elephants), laid siege to Martaban. Seven months later, Toungoo forces brutally sacked the city, completing Toungoo's conquest of all three Hanthawaddy provinces. Although the siege presented the Confederation and Arakan with several opportunities to attack Toungoo's lightly defended northern perimeter and southern delta, they took no action. Even after Martaban's fall, they still did not raise armies to reinforce Prome. They appeared to have calculated that Tabinshwehti would take a break in the upcoming dry season (as he took a break in 1539–40 after his 1538–39 campaign). By the start of the next dry season in November 1541, neither Ava nor Mrauk-U had raised any sizable standing armies that could be dispatched to Prome.

Second Toungoo siege of Prome (1541–42)

The allies' indecision and lack of preparation would come back to haunt them. It turned out that Tabinshwehti had decided to attack Prome right after the rainy season when no one expected him to. He secretly prepared for war throughout the rainy season (June to October) of 1541. Only King Minkhaung of Prome reinforced his city's defensive fortifications, and stockpiled supplies and provisions.

Siege of Prome
By November, Tabinshwehti had assembled a 17,000-strong naval and land invasion force, his largest mobilization to date. His 13 naval squadrons (9000 troops, nearly 1400 war boats and transport boats) were commanded by ethnic Mon lords of Lower Burma while his army (8000 troops, 2500 horses, 300 elephants) were led by himself and Bayinnaung. As in Martaban, his troops now included much prized Portuguese mercenaries and their firearms. Their plan was to take Prome quickly before Ava and Mrauk-U had time to come to its aid. In case of a long siege, they would take positions around the city would prevent Ava and Arakan forces from linking up, and they would drive the enemy separately. They however did not plan for a large Arakanese seaborne invasion; the delta was largely undefended. They believed their war boats intended for Prome, if necessary, could sail down to meet the Arakanese navy in the delta. Only the capital Pegu was defended with a rearguard army.

Right after the Buddhist Lent, on 19 November 1541, Toungoo naval and land forces invaded. As expected, Confederation and Arakanese forces had not arrived. Taken by surprise, Prome's allies frantically raised their armies and navies. Their armies were to break the siege while the well-regarded Arakanese navy, equipped with Portuguese weaponry and mercenaries, was to invade the delta from the south.

Meanwhile, Toungoo forces launched attacks to take the city but could not break through the fortified city's musket and artillery fire. They were forced to set up a perimeter around the city.

Battle of northern Prome
The stalemate lasted for nearly five months. It was only in April 1542 that the Confederation armies (16,000 troops, 1,000 horses, 80 elephants), led by Thohanbwa and Hkonmaing I of Onbaung–Hsipaw, the chief of Onbaung, approached the northern perimeter. The armies consisted of troops from Upper Burma, as well as from four members of the Confederation (Mohnyin, Mogaung, Hsipaw, Momeik).

To meet the enemy, Tabinshwehti fielded three armies, each of which consisted of 3000 men, 700 horses, and 50 elephants. The overall commander Bayinnaung led one of the armies while Thiri Zeya Kyawhtin and Saw Lagun Ein respectively commanded armies to his left and right. One day's march north of Prome by the Irrawaddy, they waited with their artillery and muskets ready. Cavalry from both sides engaged first. Toungoo cavalry retreated, drawing Confederation cavalry and vanguard battalions into the firing zone, who were subsequently wiped out. The Ava command sent two more waves but both were driven back with heavy losses. Then, all three Toungoo armies counterattacked, with their elephant and cavalry corps leading the way. After a long battle, the Confederation armies were driven back. Over two thousand troops, including two of their commanders, over 300 horses, and 60 elephants were captured.

Though both sides suffered heavy casualties, it proved to be a strategically important victory for Toungoo since it took the Confederation out of the equation for the time being. (Soon after, Thohanbwa was assassinated by his chief minister, throwing the Confederation into another bout of leadership turmoil. The Confederation left the task of relieving its vassal Prome to Arakan alone.)

Preparations for Arakanese offensive
For Toungoo, there was no time to waste. Right after the battle, the Toungoo command received intelligence that the Arakanese army led by Min Aung Hla, Viceroy of Sandoway (Thandwe), was crossing the Arakan Yoma range at the Padaung Pass, and that a sizable Arakanese navy led by Crown Prince Min Dikkha was sailing past Cape Negrais. They had expected a land invasion but the size of the Arakanese naval force caught them by surprise. It was late April 1542.

To refill his depleted forces, Tabinshwehti immediately ordered his vassals to raise more men, and send more provisions. But there was not enough time. The Toungoo command was split as to what to do next. One faction led by Gen. Nanda Thingyan recommended lifting the siege, reasoning that it was more important to defend the delta. But others including Bayinnaung disliked an outright lifting of the siege because Prome's forces, they feared, could join in on an attack from the north. In the end, they settled on the proposal by Thiri Zeya Kyawhtin: (1) continue the appearance of a siege with a minimal force, (2) meet the enemy on both fronts, (3) if either front fails, lift the siege and defend the homeland, and (4) resume the siege if the Arakanese were defeated.

To defend the delta, they rushed four army and naval troops led by Smim Payu, Smim Bya Thamaik (later Minister-General Binnya Law), Smim Than-Kye, and Thiri Zeya Nawrahta. The four commanders were to defend four key delta towns (Myaungmya, Bassein, Khebaung, Dala). Smim Payu was the admiral of the southern Toungoo navy, which had the unenviable task of facing the highly experienced Arakanese navy. Nanda Yawda was appointed commander of the remaining Toungoo war boats at Prome. To meet the Arakanese army, Bayinnaung formed three armies, each consisted of 2000 troops, 800 horses, and 50 elephants. He personally commanded the center army while Thiri Zeya Kyawhtin and Nanda Thingyan led the armies to his left and right respectively. They quietly left their positions since they did not want the Prome command to know that only a skeleton crew was in charge of the "siege".

Battle of Padaung Pass
Meanwhile, the Arakanese army (5000 troops, 200 horses, 100 elephants) had just come out of the Padaung pass. Its commander Min Aung Hla had set up camp about five marches away from Prome in order to gather intelligence. Unsure of the Arakanese strength, Bayinnaung plotted to lure the Arakanese to a place where he could ambush them. He sent five men pretending to be messengers from Prome, who informed the Arakanese command that Toungoo armies were still fighting Confederation forces north of the city, and that the Arakanese should attack the Toungoo armies from the rear. Armed with the misinformation, the unsuspecting Arakanese troops marched right into the trap, and were thoroughly routed by Toungoo muskets and artillery. Over 2000 were captured. Min Aung Hla and a few of his men barely escaped.

The victory came at a crucial time. The Arakanese navy had already taken Bassein and Myaungmya, two of the four key delta ports. But after hearing the news of their army's defeat, they decided to retreat. It was the best outcome the Toungoo command could have hoped for. Tabinshwehti was so pleased with Bayinnaung's victory that he appointed his childhood friend heir-apparent of his kingdom.

Prome's surrender
Prome was now totally on its own. Still in late April, Tabinshwehti renewed his ultimatum that Prome submit, or receive the fate of Martaban. Minkhaung still refused, hoping that Toungoo would retreat once the rainy season began in a month. But Tabinshwehti made it clear through his emissaries that he no longer had to worry about Ava or Arakan, and that he would continue the siege even during the rainy season. Finally, on 19 May 1542, Minkhaung accepted the offer of amnesty, and surrendered. Minkhaung and his chief queen Thiri Hpone-Htut were sent to Toungoo. Tabinshwehti appointed one of his fathers-in-law Shin Nita viceroy of Prome.

Second interlude (1542–43)
Toungoo's foothold in central Burma had come at a great cost. After two consecutive exhaustive dry-season campaigns, not only was Toungoo in no position to proceed any further but it was also concerned with a possible invasion by the Confederation.

Toungoo was to get a much needed breather, however. For much of the rainy season of 1542, the Confederation chiefs were still coming to terms with their new leader Hkonmaing (son of Hkonmaing I of Onbaung), and had no time to plan for an invasion. Initially, the leadership of Mohnyin was deeply unsatisfied with Hkonmaing, who was put on the throne by the Ava court, not only because the heirs of Sawlon felt the throne of Ava was theirs but also because Hkonmaing's father was someone they bitterly fought against in the 1520s. In the end, in August/September 1542, the chiefs reluctantly decided to back Hkonmaing, and form a united front against a rising Toungoo. They agreed to invade Lower Burma in the dry season of 1543–44.

Resumption of war (1543–45)

Preparations
The invasion would have to be by the Confederation itself. The chiefs apparently were not able to persuade King Min Bin of Arakan to stay in the alliance; Mrauk-U did not contribute any troops. By December 1543, the seven chiefs of the Confederation had assembled a large army (16,000 army troops, 1000 horses, 120 elephants) and a large navy (12,000 troops, 300 large war boats, 300 fast war boats, 500 cargo boats). They planned to take Prome with their massive naval and land forces; fortify Prome; launch an attack on Toungoo; and launch a joint attack on Pegu.

At Pegu, Tabinshwehti was ready. His land forces consisted of 12 regiments and 4 cavalry battalions (12,000 men, 800 horses, 80 elephants), and his navy consisted of 12 squadrons (9000 men, 800 large war boats, 300 fast war boats, 500 cargo boats). More importantly, his troops included foreign mercenaries who manned his much prized musket and artillery corps.

Battle of Prome
On 7 December 1543, the Confederation land and naval forces left Ava to start the invasion. The invaders easily overran Toungoo defenses en route to Prome, gaining complete control around Prome by late December. They launched several attacks on the city but could not take the city.

By then, the Toungoo command had determined that Ava would probably not open a second front. They moved most of their troops from the Toungoo theater, and massed all their land and naval forces at Tharrawaddy (Thayawadi), about 160 km south of Prome. In response, Hkonmaing lifted the siege, moved his army and navy to 3.2 km north of the city, and fortified their positions.

The Toungoo navy led the counterattack. The larger and better equipped Toungoo war boats defeated smaller, less equipped Ava war boats. The surviving Ava war boats fled upriver, and were not heard from again. The Toungoo navy then sent 4000 troops who bypassed Prome and went on to occupy Thayet and Myede, about 60 km north of Prome, and successfully cut off from the Ava supply lines. Ava armies in the north tried to regain the strategic towns but were driven back each time. About a month later, c. late January/earlyFebruary 1544, the Confederation command decided to retreat.

The retreating Confederation forces had to fight off the Toungoo armies led by Bayinnaung. They split into four smaller armies, and made their way to Salin, about 200 km north of Myede.

Battle of Salin (1544)
Toungoo forces followed up on the retreating forces. Tabinshwehti himself led the navy while Bayinnaung commanded the army. The Confederation command, who had not expected a counteroffensive this deep into their own territory, were greatly concerned. They hastily planned to make a stand at Salin long enough for them to prepare their defenses farther (90 km) north in Pagan (Bagan). They left Mingyi Yan Taing, son of Governor Sithu Kyawhtin of Salin, in charge of the fortified city. But the plan did not work. Salin fell in just three days (after a section of the walls was mined and brought down). Tabinshwehti appointed Shin Thiha, one of his servants since his birth, governor of Salin with the title of Sithu Kyawhtin II.

Conquest of central Burma
The quick fall of Salin forced the Confederation armies to evacuate Pagan, and retreat farther north yet again. Toungoo forces now marched up to and took Pagan. Though Ava was now just another 160 km away, Tabinshwehti was unwilling to overstretch, and stopped the advance. At the ancient capital, he was crowned in the full ritual and ceremony of the great kings of Pagan. In order to consolidate his rule, he received oaths of allegiance by the hereditary chiefs and governors from the region, and appointed his loyalists to rule key towns. He set up sentinel garrisons at the new border with Ava. The king and the main army returned south in July/August 1544.

Battle of Salin (1544–45)
At Ava, the Confederation appeared unsure how to respond. On one hand, they were unwilling to launch another full-scale invasion lest they be exposed to another counterattack. On the other hand, they were not yet ready to cede all of central Burma uncontested. When the dry season of 1544 arrived, they saw no Toungoo armies on the horizon, and ultimately decided on a limited attack across the new ill-defined border. In late 1544, they sent a small army (3000 troops, 300 horses) led by Sithu Kyawhtin I down the Irrawaddy. The Confederation army overran the Toungoo frontier garrisons at the border. At Salin, a senior official loyal to Sithu Kyawhtin I revolted, driving out Sithu Kyawhtin II (Shin Thiha). Sithu Kyawhtin I entered Salin unopposed.

To be sure, this fortuitous takeover of Salin was backed by no additional Ava troops, and could not last. Sithu Kyawhtin II returned with a 7000-strong army (2000 horses, 15 elephants). Though his army was outnumbered more than two-to-one, Sithu Kyawhtin I chose to make a stand. But Salin's defenses were breached on the second day. Inside the city, Sithu Kyawhtin I fought atop his war elephant, and even engaged Sithu Kyawhtin II, who was also on his war elephant. In the end, Toungoo troops won the battle. Sithu Kyawhtin barely escaped, fleeing to the Chin Hills.

Aftermath

Salin turned out to be the last battle of the war. After the successive battlefield defeats, the bickering between the Confederation's two main powers broke out in full force. Sawlon II of Mohnyin, who had only grudgingly agreed to Hkonmaing's takeover of the Ava throne, blamed Hkonmaing for the defeats, and now planned to put Sithu Kyawhtin I of Salin on the Ava throne. In April/May 1545, Sawlon II sent Sithu Kyawhtin with an army (5000 men, 800 horses, 60 elephants), which went on to occupy Sagaing, the city directly across the Irrawaddy from Ava. During the rainy season, c. September 1545, Hkonmaing died, and was succeeded by his son Narapati III. The new king promptly sent a mission to Pegu to secure friendly relations in exchange for his recognition of the new de facto border between the two kingdoms. Tabinshwehti accepted the offer.

Toungoo's decisive victory gave the upstart kingdom control of all of central Burma, and cemented its emergence as the largest polity in Burma since the fall of Pagan Empire in 1287. Indeed, "there was once more a king in Burma". In the following years, Ava and Mohnyin-backed Sagaing would be locked in a war until 1551, while an emboldened Toungoo would turn its attention to conquering Arakan in 1545–47, and Siam in 1547–49.

Notes

References

Bibliography

Wars involving Myanmar
1530s in Asia
1540s in Asia
1530s conflicts
1540s conflicts
First Toungoo Empire

Toungoo–Ava War


John Mitchell (March 8, 1781 – August 3, 1849) was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.

Background

John Mitchell was born near Newport, Pennsylvania.  He moved to Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, in 1800 and was employed as a clerk in the ironworks.  He was elected sheriff of Centre County, Pennsylvania, in 1818.  He worked as an engineer and surveyor and laid out the Centre and Kishacoquillas Turnpike in 1821 and constructed many of the turnpikes in middle and northern Pennsylvania.  He was a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 1822 and 1823.

Mitchell was elected as a Jacksonian to the Nineteenth and Twentieth Congresses.  After his time in congress, Mitchell surveyed proposed canal routes between the Susquehanna and Potomac Rivers in 1826.  He was an engineer on the Erie extension in 1827 and canal commissioner in 1829.  He moved to Bridgewater, Pennsylvania, in 1842 and engaged in civil engineering and iron manufacturing.  He was member of the canal survey commission from 1845 until his death in Bridgewater in 1849.  Interment in Old Beaver Cemetery.

Sources

The Political Graveyard

1781 births
1849 deaths
Members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives
American surveyors
Jacksonian members of the United States House of Representatives from Pennsylvania
19th-century American politicians
People from Newport, Pennsylvania

John Mitchell (Pennsylvania politician)