The Barryville–Shohola Bridge is the fifth generation of bridges constructed over the Delaware River at the communities of Shohola Township, Pennsylvania and Barryville, New York. The bridge serves both communities, with two major state legislative highways, Pennsylvania Traffic Route 434 and New York State Touring Route 55 (along with the co-designation of Sullivan County Route 11). The bridge itself is  long and is  wide, using four total spans across the river. It is maintained by the NY–PA Joint Interstate Bridge Commission, which is jointly owned by the states of New York and Pennsylvania.

The area of the bridge itself dates as a ford for Native Americans, mostly the Lenni Lenapi, traveling between from the Wyoming valley and Delaware Valley and present-day Connecticut in the early 18th century; archaeologists date human habitation and use of the area to 10,900 BCE. The river at Shohola, which means "place of peace," widens perceptibly above the falls, allowing for a natural, shallow crossing.  By the early 19th century, a ferry facilitated crossing the river.  Due to the construction of the nearby Delaware and Hudson Canal in 1827, commerce and business boomed in the area.  In 1856, a bridge company, under the leadership of Chauncey Thomas, constructed a span between the two communities, but it was poorly designed and collapsed during a windstorm in 1859.  Thomas then constructed a suspension bridge, but its cables snapped in 1865.

In 1866, the bridge was reconstructed as a two-lane, single span wooden suspension structure and remained in use for over seventy years. Ownership changed several times, eventually ending with the bridge in the control of the Joint Delaware River Bridge Commission. The bridge was replaced again in 1941 for $174,300 (1941 USD ($ in )), with a steel truss span. This structure lasted another sixty-five years, finally deteriorating until the demolition of the structure in 2007, upon completion of the new bridge.

Early history
Originally the site of a ford, the area was used by the Lenni Lenape and Delawares on their way to and from the shores of present-day Long Island Sound. The original trail followed the Shohola Creek, where it enters the Delaware, to a location along the eastern bank of the river near Shohola. By the end of the 18th century, European settlers operated a ferry near the current span, crossing between Shohola to a settlement on the opposite bank, that later became Barryville.  The 1827 construction of the Delaware and Hudson Canal and the subsequent construction of the  Erie Railroad in 1849) accentuated the need for a bridge to accommodate the increase in population and business in the area.

First two spans (1856–1865)

As the need for a bridge from Shohola to Barryville grew, the Shohola and Barryville Bridge Company, formed in 1854, planned the construction of the first bridge. The company's president, Chauncey Thomas, attempted to hire John Augustus Robeling, a bridge expert, who was building a bridge in the Niagara region of New York and Canada (which came to be known as the Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge), which was to be built as an  two-deck span over the Niagara River, and who had completed successful spans over the rivers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Roebling declined the offer but gave Thomas verbal and written instructions on its construction during a visit to the Niagara construction site. Thomas returned to Shohola and supervised the construction himself, using some inexperienced local men he hired.  A respected historian, John Willard Johnston, who knew Chauncey Thomas personally, visited the bridge and told the owner at the time that Thomas was very inexperienced in bridge construction. The result of the construction was a  wide, double-span bridge that was  long but which had no underlying span support. The bridge stood  above the waters of the Delaware to avoid flooding, and cost a total of $9,000 (1856 USD ($ in ).  The rapid growth of the area due to the construction of the Canal and the Erie Railroad meant the bridge was immediately in heavy use.

Thomas' wire-rope span bridge was damaged by a severe wind storm on July 2, 1859, exactly three years after it opened. The storm, which destroyed almost the entire bridge, was not a singular experience.  Wind storms often build in the river valley, bring strong winds down the valley against weaker pressure systems to the south and east. A man and a woman who were crossing the bridge were injured when it collapsed. The local ferry, which had been out of commission for only three years, was still in good condition and re-fitted for use in 1859, to operate along the remaining abutments and piers that survived the storm.

The bridge was rebuilt quickly, again under the supervision of Thomas, who was still company president. Thomas was able to complete the bridge, and ended up raising a total cost for construction of $4,000 (1859 USD ($ in ))), an expedient necessitated by the lack of funds in the company treasury. Shortly after the new construction, Thomas was replaced by James E. Gardner as company president; Gardner died soon after his election, and was succeeded by Napoleon B. Johnson. Johnson ran the bridge company well, and remained as president of the corporation for several years. However, on January 1, 1865, the cables snapped under the weight of mules and wagons, and the entire bridge fell into the river, injuring the wagoners, and drowning three of the mules. Once again, ferries filled the needs that were previously fulfilled by the suspension bridge.

Third span (1866–1939)
With the second span of the Barryville–Shohola Suspension Bridge having fallen into the Delaware River in 1865, the bridge company that maintained the span fell into a financial depression. After the destruction of the second span, company president Johnson had borrowed money for the company itself that he was unable to pay back. In 1865, company had no funds to repair the partially collapsed bridge, nor credit to borrow any. The former president Chauncey Thomas bought the bankrupt company in a sheriff's sale for $1,979 (1865 USD ($ in )). Thomas was now the sole owner of the wrecked bridge.

To repair the bridge, Thomas would need to receive and pay more money, and he did. Along with the complete repair in 1866, another pier was added to increase the stability of the weak structure.
The 1866 construction was considerably stronger, compared to the two previous spans, due to major renovations. The old cables that snapped had been replaced by newer, stronger ones. Thomas also gave the span a new deck floor, a bridge railing and new stringers. The bridge was much better cared for this time around, as it also survived a local flood in 1903 and an icestorm in the early months of spring 1904.

Chauncey Thomas died at his home in Shohola on October 5, 1882, sixteen years after the new bridge was repaired. Since Thomas had never written a will, estate and property were divided between his children and his grandchildren. A friend to the Thomas family, Stephen St. John Gardiner, became the administrator of the estate. With the job, Gardiner was able to buy the bridge. He became controller and majority of the bridge's stock.

By the start of the 20th century, regional economic conditions changed. The Delaware and Hudson Canal Company had closed, as had local logging and mining companies. Shohola and Barryville had become summer resorts and the now-aging antique bridge had become a local picturesque attraction for out-of-town visitors. On June 26, 1920, the suspension bridge was bought by the Joint Bridge Commission of Pennsylvania and New York for $22,600.00 (1923 USD ($ in )). Half of the $22,600.00 was to be paid for by the state of New York, the other by Pennsylvania. The toll that was used on the span was removed. The single-lane, aging structure, now owned by the commission, served the local residents well into the new century. However, the old age of the bridge showed on the bridge itself. In 1939, the commission closed off the structurally deficient bridge to traffic, and began looking into ways to build a new bridge in the area. In 1940, the bridge was reopened for light, local car traffic. but demolished in 1941, when the fourth and then-newest span of the bridge was opened.

Fourth span (1941–2007)

The Joint Bridge Commission of Pennsylvania and New York hired the Whittaker and Diehl Company in early of 1941 to construct a $174,300 (1941 USD ($ in )) steel, two-lane truss bridge to replace the aging structure.

With the construction, there was a tunnel built on the Pennsylvania side for the Erie Railroad line that went nearby. This helped end the constant traffic jams and accidents caused by the railroad crossing.   This bridge was slightly downriver from the former spans. The bridge itself was  long, consisted of three spans, and was  wide. It had an average daily traffic rate of 1,635 people in 2004. Replacing the fourth bridge, according to the United States Department of Transportation, would cost about $5,628,000 (2006 USD$,  in )).

The fourth span went into commission just days before Attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. After the United States entered World War II, construction and reconstruction in the area had ended, while the nation transformed into a war economy. and the residents had received their new bridge span just in time. The bridge structure lasted through World War II and several river floods. The bridge lasted for several decades, until the start of the 21st century, when plans were made to replace the deteriorating truss structure.

Fifth span (2007–present)

With the deterioration of the fourth span, the bridge commission and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation started construction on a $9.38 million (2007 USD ($ in )) concrete bridge with steel beams connecting Traffic Route 434 on the Pennsylvania side (assigned in 1967) and Touring Route 55/Sullivan County Route 11 (assigned in 1930). The construction began in February 2004, and since there was no place to perform a groundbreaking ceremony, the construction company hired, Fahs Construction Group of Binghamton, New York performed a "bridge-breaking" ceremony on March 25, 2004, taking sledgehammers to the bridge. The bridge was expected to have resemble the Roebling Aqueduct, which lay to the north in Minisink Ford, New York. The bridge was proposed to be  with twin  travel lanes and an  shoulder. It was to also have three balconies facing upstream of the Delaware River, to offer travelers scenic views.

A number of difficulties and unforeseen circumstances delayed construction.  First, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission had been conducting archaeological digs in the area since 1996, and had found a variety of artifacts dating from the Clovis period, with radio carbon age dating around 10,900 BCE, making them one of the oldest sites in the eastern United States; the sites also includes evidence of food, making it one of the rarer paleolithic finds. The next circumstance was that there was worry that the construction of the bridge might affect the river ecosystem, particularly some of the river water organisms. After some regulations were added and problems were sorted out, the construction continued. The third issue was that the bridge may run into problems with boaters, and therefore, the bridge was given the same regulations as bridges upstream. Finally, the Delaware's low water level meant that barges could not be used in the construction. When Hurricane Ivan struck in 2004, the water level rose, allowing for the use of the barges, but destroying several construction items used for the bridge in the process.

The bridge, which had an estimated completion in the autumn of 2006 according to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, was opened on-time on October 26, 2006. This closed the old 1940 structure from use, coned off from Route 434 and Route 55. Once abutment work was finished, the now Fahs-Rolson Construction Company began demolishing the old structure. However, unfinished paving work was completed in October 2007. The total cost for the replacement project came out in 2009 at $11.62 million (2007 USD ($ in )).

The bridge had temporary fencing and new walkways along a six-lane span, with locals saying that the stone structure fitting into the looks of the scenic Delaware River Valley. The old bridge was demolished after construction completed.

See also

 List of crossings of the Delaware River
 New York–Pennsylvania Joint Interstate Bridge Commission

References

External links
Bridgemeister's page on the 1855 bridge

Bridges over the Delaware River
Bridges in Sullivan County, New York
Bridges in Pike County, Pennsylvania
Road bridges in New York (state)
Road bridges in Pennsylvania
Former toll bridges in New York (state)
Former toll bridges in Pennsylvania
Concrete bridges in the United States
New York–Pennsylvania Joint Interstate Bridge Commission

Barryville–Shohola Bridge


Sir William Mackinnon, 1st Baronet,  (13 March 1823 – 22 June 1893) was a Scottish ship-owner and businessman who built up substantial commercial interests in India and East Africa. He established the British-India Steam Navigation Company and the Imperial British East Africa Company.

Biography

Early life
He was born in Campbeltown, Argyll, and after starting in the grocery trade there, went to Glasgow and worked for a merchant who had Asian trading interests.

Career
Mackinnon went to India in 1847 and joined an old schoolfriend, Robert Mackenzie, in the coasting trade, carrying merchandise from port to port around the Bay of Bengal. Together they formed the firm of Mackinnon Mackenzie & Co and Mackinnon chose to make Cossipore the base for his own activities.

In 1856, he founded the shipping company Calcutta and Burma Steam Navigation Company, which would become British India Steam Navigation Company in 1862. It grew into a huge business trading round the coasts of the Indian Ocean, extending its operations to Burma, the Persian Gulf and the east coast of Africa, from Aden to Zanzibar.

In 1865 he established Gray, Dawes and Company as a merchant partnership for his nephew Archibald Gray and Edwyn Sandys Dawes (1838–1903), knighted in 1894. The company, founded as a shipping and insurance agency in the City of London, went through several reorganizations and ownership changes, obtaining recognition as a merchant bank in 1915, becoming fully fledged as Gray Dawes Bank in 1973 (sold in 1983), and now known as Gray Dawes Group Ltd.

In 1888, Mackinnon founded the Imperial British East Africa Company and became its Chairman. The company, supported by the United Kingdom government as a means of establishing British influence in the region, was committed to eliminating the slave trade, prohibiting trade monopoly, and equal treatment for all nations. The company would later be taken over by the British government and became the East Africa Protectorate.

In 1889, Mackinnon was made 1st Baronet of Strathaird and Loup.

Mackinnon promoted Henry Morton Stanley's Emin Pasha Relief Expedition, first enlisting Stanley, then writing to government ministers including Lord Iddesleigh, the Foreign Secretary, and enlisting friends to form a committee which could oversee the expedition and meet more than half the cost. In 1891 he founded the Free Church of Scotland East African Scottish Mission.

Death
He died at the Burlington Hotel in London in 1893 and was buried at Clachan in Kintyre, near his home, Balinakill House.

Legacy
He and his  nephew, Duncan MacNeil, left bequests which were used to start the Mackinnon MacNeil Trust with a mandate to "provide a decent education to deserving Highland lads".

The trustees purchased the former estate of James Nicol Fleming on Keil Point, Southend, Kintyre, including Keil House, and set up the Kintyre Technical School. After only nine years a fire destroyed the building and the school, renamed Keil School, moved to Helenslee House in Dumbarton where it continued until 2000.

Following the closure of the school, and the sale of the land, the Mackinnon MacNeil Trust was able to continue to help young people and exists now to give bursaries to students from the Western Highlands and Islands going to university. The Trust is still chaired  by a member of the Mackinnon family.

In 1890, a statue dedicated to Sir William Mackinnon was erected in Mombasa, Kenya.  It was later moved to the Dunbarton School in 1964, and finally moved again and re-erected in Campbelltown in 2004.

References

Archives
The papers of Sir William Mackinnon (PP MS 1) are held by Archives and Special Collections at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.

Further reading
J. Forbes Munro, Maritime Enterprise and Empire: Sir William Mackinnon and His Business Network, 1823–1893 (2003)
John S. Galbraith,  Mackinnon and East Africa 1878–1895 (Cambridge 1972)
Sir William Mackinnon
Kintyre Magazine
BI Ship (British India Steam Navigation) site

1823 births
1893 deaths
Baronets in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom
People from Campbeltown
19th-century Scottish businesspeople
Scottish businesspeople in shipping
Scottish people of the British Empire
Companions of the Order of the Indian Empire
Fellows of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society
British people in colonial India

Sir William Mackinnon, 1st Baronet


The Sile (Venetian: Sil) is a 95 km river in the Veneto region in north-eastern Italy. Its springs are in the municipality of Vedelago in the Province of Treviso. It flows into the northern part of the Lagoon of Venice at the mouth of the River Piave Vecchia. It receives the waters of its tributary, the Botteniga, at Treviso.

Some of the rivers in the plain of the Veneto come from springs in the nearby Alps, while others have groundwater springs in the plain. The Sile originates in the plain and therefore it is a short river. Its springs are in the area of  Albaredo, Casacorba and Cavasagra in the municipality of Vedelago. The fontanasso dea Coa Longa is considered to be the main spring. Two initial branches join at Morgano. The river has an initial west-east windy course which passes through or by Santa Cristina, Quinto di Treviso, Canizzano and Treviso. In Treviso it turns in a northwest-southeast direction towards the lagoon and passes by Silea, Casier, Cendon, Lughignano, Sant'Elena, Casale sul Sile, Quarto d'Altino, Trepalade and Portegrandi.

The Sile used to flow into the lagoon at Portegrandi in the municipality of Quarto d'Altino. However, in 1683 the Republic of Venice diverted its course through the Taglio del Sile canal and made it flow into the old bed of the River Piave which at the time was dry because Venice had earlier diverted it further east. Hence, this final tract of the Piave is called Piave Vecchia, Old Piave. The Sile's old final tract into the lagoon was preserved. Its water flow was (and still is) regulated with locks. It now called Canale Silone. It continues to flow through the northern part of the lagoon through a lagunar channel whose tracts are called Canale della Taia Grande, Canale  Silone, Canale Borgononi, Canale di Burano and Canale di Treporti. It reaches the Adriatic Sea through the lido inlet. It flows between the islands of Torcello, Mazzorbo and Burano, between the Palude dei Mortesini, Palude  i Cona and Palude dei Laghi marshes and between the Palude della Centrega and Palude  di Burano mashes. There are barene (saltmarshes) along this lagunar course.

During Antiquity the Sile was connected to port town of Altinum through an eastern tract of the Siloncello canal which went close to its mouth at Portegrandi. At the time the River Piave must have flowed into the Sile. The Piave was a preferred route for the transport of wood from the forests of Cadore towards Altinum as attested by an inscription found in Feltre. Thus, this canal was of strategic importance for Altinum's supply of wood.

The eastern tract of the Siloncello canal also turned south before reaching Portegrandi and reached the Palude di Cona in the Lagoon of Venice. Through this Altinum was connected with the lagunar channel of the Sile. This was a navigable route that gave Altinum's sea trade access to the Adriatic Sea. Altinum was eventually abandoned and its inhabitants moved to the islands of the northern part of the Lagoon of Venice. Torcello became the main administrative, religious and trading centre of these islands. It was the seat of the governor of the northern part of the lagoon. Its bishopric covered the whole of this area. Torcello and other islands in the northern part of the lagoon were later abandoned because of environmental degradation in the area and malaria and because many families moved to the nascent Venice, which became the commercial and political heart of the lagoon.

In Dante's "Third Sphere" of the Paradiso of his Divine Comedy, Cunizza da Romano predicts the fate of Riccardo da Camino, who was apparently murdered at a chess game. Dante located this event at the confluence of the Sile and the Cagnan, one of the branches the River Botteniga splits into when it reaches the gates of the town wall of Treviso:

Notes

Rivers of the Metropolitan City of Venice
Province of Treviso
Rivers of Italy
Adriatic Italian coast basins

Sile (river)


Abba bar Abba (Aramic: אבא בר אבא, or Father of Samuel, Aramic: אבוה דשמואל; Cited in the Jerusalem Talmud as Abba bar Ba, Aramic: אבא בר בא) was a  Jewish Talmudist who lived in Babylonia in the 2nd-3rd centuries (first generation of amoraim).

Biography
He was distinguished for piety, benevolence, and learning. He is known chiefly through his son Samuel of Nehardea, principal of the Academy of Nehardea, and is nearly always referred to as "Samuel's father." Abba traveled to Palestine, where he entered into relations with Judah haNasi, with whose pupil Levi bar Sisi he was on terms of intimate friendship. When Levi died, Abba delivered the funeral oration and glorified the memory of his deceased friend.

References
 It has the following bibliography:
 Midr. Samuel, ed. Buber, 1893, x. 3; Yer. Peah, viii. 21b; Ket. 51b; Frankel, Mebo, pp. 56a et seq.; Heilprin, Seder ha-Dorot, 1882, ii. 3.

Talmud rabbis of Babylonia
3rd-century rabbis

Abba bar Abba


The Peugeot Type 7 was built on the same chassis as the Peugeot Type 6 and shared some mechanicals but its engine was twice the size, and twice as powerful. It had a phaeton style body for 4 persons.  25 units were built between 1894 and 1897. The engine was carried over to the Type 8.

Description
The 1,282 cc V-twin Daimler engine was mounted at the back, and produced 3.7 hp. The cooling radiator was mounted at the front of the vehicle and the coolant flowed within the chassis tubing. Transmission was via a cone clutch, 4 speed gearbox and chains propelling the rear wheels. Some models had steel wire wheels with rubber tyres and others had wooden wheels. The weight was circa 650 kg and top speed was 18-20 km/h.

Competition
In 1894 Peugeot entered the 'Le Petit Journal' Competition for Horseless Carriages that ran from  Paris to Rouen with several Type 5's and 7s. Albert Lemaître's Type 7 Phaeton was the first petrol powered vehicle to finish, 3 minutes behind Jules-Albert, Comte de Dion on his steam powered tractor.

In 1895, a Peugeot Type 7 driven by Paul Koechlin with Rubichon as a mechanic, won the Paris–Bordeaux–Paris race.

References

1890s cars
Type 7
Rear-engined vehicles
Vehicles introduced in 1894

Peugeot Type 7


John B. Matthias (January 1, 1767 – May 27, 1848) is known as the writer of the words and music for the gospel song, "Palms of Victory" (also known as "Deliverance Will Come" or "I Saw a Way-worn Traveler"), for which he is generally given credit. He was typical of Methodist Episcopal circuit riders in early 19th Century United States.

There are two major primary sources for information about his life. First, the minutes of the New York Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church from 1811 through 1848, especially his official obituary written by his son, the Rev. John J. Matthias  Much of the obituary is available on-line in Sacred Memories, or Annals of deceased preachers, etc. The second primary source is John B. Matthias' personal journal, housed in the United Methodist Archives, Madison, NJ.

	John B. Matthias was born January 1, 1767, in Germantown, PA., a post of the British troops, and a field of one of the battles of the revolution. His father was a German emigrant, a firm adherent to the cause of the American Revolution, and a member of the Reformed Dutch Church. John B. was educated in the German language and grew up to be a strong American patriot who spoke frequently about the political privileges enjoyed by U.S. citizens. He learned the trade of a ship-joiner, in Philadelphia, and on the expiration of his apprenticeship he went to New-York.

	In New York he began attending John Street Methodist Episcopal Church, where the Rev. John Dickens was pastor. During the 19th century it was common for the bishop to move Methodist ministers every year or two, and Mathias was apparently upset when Dickens was moved, but he warmed to the ministry of Dickens' successors and became a regular attender. One of these successors, the Rev. Thomas Morrell, was reassigned to the Bowery where he started a congregation known as the Forsyth Street Church. Matthias followed him to that church, where he was converted. A year after his conversion, he married Sarah Jarvis, a member of the John Street Church.

	He subsequently felt that God was calling him to preach, and the New York Annual Conference granted him a license to preach in 1793. In 1796 he moved to Tarrytown, New York, where he followed the ship-joiner trade for twelve years while preaching on Sundays (often three times on a Sunday). His son, John J. Matthias, was born at Tarrytown.

	The beginning of his ordained ministry is unclear. His obituary indicated that he was ordained as a Deacon in 1797, but the Minutes indicate that he was not admitted "on trial" until 1811, and apparently ordained Deacon in 1812. In any case, he clearly was active in ministry, whether lay or ordained, from 1793 onward. (The Minutes kept no record of lay ministers or their appointments, even though they were a significant part of the development of the early Methodist Episcopal Church. Dixon noted that in 1848, almost half of the clergy in the New York Conference were lay ministers: 254 ministers and 220 local preachers.)

	The obituary indicates that he had hoped to be appointed as a full-time minister in 1810, but he was married with a family, and the church officials preferred young single men for the arduous work of circuit riding. Since there were enough such single ministers in the New York Conference, Matthias was passed over, much to his disappointment. Then, in the fall of 1810, he was asked to take responsibility for a circuit where the appointed minister had become ill. A layman from Rhinebeck, NY, gave him a horse, and he began his full-time ministry. For the next 30 years he served as minister on circuits up and down the Hudson River valley from just north of New York City to Schenectady.

	We don't have good records of the boundaries of the circuits, but their size is suggested by one bit of data: In 1814–1815, Matthias served two years on the Albany circuit (apparently not including the main congregation in Albany, but possibly including another, smaller congregation in the city), and one of the congregations on this circuit was Windham, more than  south.

In 1840 Matthias had such a serious problem with cataracts that he could not see well enough to guide his horse, so for his last year of active ministry, his wife had to accompany him on the circuit. At the 1841 meeting of the New York Annual Conference he received a superannuated relation (i.e., retired), and resided at his son's home on Hempstead, L. I. until his death on May 27, 1848. At his death, his son, John J. Matthias, was attending the infamous Methodist Episcopal General Conference of 1848, at which the decision was made to split the denomination over the issue of slavery, and was called home from Pittsburgh via the telegraph.

John B. Matthias also had a grandson who was a Methodist minister, Rev. Benjamin M. Adams, and it is possible that some traditions about the elder Matthias were never documented, but were passed down through the family. This could be the basis for the attribution that he is author of "Palms of Victory."

During his years of retirement, Matthias received a pension based on whatever congregation members in the New York Conference contributed that year. The Minutes indicate that his annual pension ranged between $86.40 and $157.28.

References

1767 births
1848 deaths
Converts to Methodism
American Methodist clergy
Christian hymnwriters

John B. Matthias


John Goodwin Lyman (September 29, 1886 – May 26, 1967) was an American-born Canadian modernist painter active largely in Montreal, Quebec. In the 1930s he did much to promote modern art in Canada, founding the Contemporary Art Society in 1939. Stylistically he opposed both the Group of Seven and the Canadian Group of Painters, painting in a more refined style influenced by the School of Paris.

Biography

Formative Years (1886–1913)
Lyman was born in Biddeford, Maine.  His parents were Americans who emigrated to Victoria, British Columbia.

After attending the High School of Montreal and spending two years at McGill University, Lyman departed for Paris in the spring of 1907, where he studied art until the fall, when at his father's urging he returned to study architecture at the Royal College of Art. January of next year found him back in Paris, where he studied at Académie Julian under Jean-Paul Laurens. There he formed a friendship with fellow Canadian James Wilson Morrice. Lyman enrolled at the Académie Matisse in the fall of 1909, which he left due to illness the next spring, returning to Montreal in the summer of 1910. Despite the brevity of his encounter with the master, Matisse would be a primary influence upon Lyman in the years to come.

That summer he married Corrine St. Pierre, and the two spent the next two years traveling intermittently in France. Upon his return to Montreal he exhibited four Fauve inspired works in the spring exhibit of the Art Association of Montreal, which were met with vitriol in the conservative press of Quebec. Another exhibit of forty-two oil paintings, his first one-man show, opened on May twenty-first and received a similar reaction.

Years of Exile (1913–31)

Due to his rejection in his native country, Lyman and his wife spent twenty-eight peripatetic years living in France, Spain, and North Africa. He bought a villa in Southern France in 1922, where he corresponded with Matisse. In October 1927 he briefly returned to Montreal for the opening of his second one-man show. The Great Depression lessened his income, forcing him to return to Montreal in 1931.

Return to Montreal (1931–1948)
A third one-man show was held in Montreal in February 1931. In November of that year Lyman began his attempts to bring European ideas of modern art to Canada with the opening of his Atelier, an academy-style school of art, established under the auspices of McGill University. It closed after just over a year due to lack of profit. In 1936 he began to write a column on art for The Montrealer that ran through 1942. The years 1936–39 saw three more one man shows, including one in New York City in May 1937.

In 1938 Lyman began to gather together Montreal painters who were disillusioned with the Canadian Group of Painters and The Group of Seven, and in December of that year they exhibited together as The Eastern Group of Painters. The Contemporary Arts Society was formally organized in January 1939, with Lyman as its first president. Through this body he organized exhibits of modern European art in Montreal, the first of which, titled "Art of Our Day" opened in May 1939. It included work by Kandinsky, Derain, and Modigliani. The first exhibit of the group was held in December 1939. By 1948 the CAS was rent by opposing factions with Paul-Emile Borduas and Alfred Pellan at their heads. After Borduas' election as president of the group in 1948, Pellan withdrew his group from the society, upon which Borduas resigned. Lyman, seeing that the Contemporary Art Society could no longer effectively fulfill its purpose, made a motion to dissolve the body. This was accepted at a meeting on November 18, 1948.

Later Years (1948–1967)
Lyman continued to paint figures in the years following the dissolution of the CAS, but the avant garde had shifted to the Automatism of Borduas and pure abstraction. In 1949 he accepted a professorship at McGill University, becoming the director of the fine arts department in 1952.  He died, aged 80, in Christ Church, Barbados.

Work

Matisse, and other Fauvist painters, were the primary influence upon Lyman's work. His paintings were among the first in this style to be exhibited in Quebec, and his exhibit openings were met with derision in the popular press. In the 1920s, however, Lyman's work was more readily accepted. This was partly because of greater public exposure to modern art from Europe, and partly because of a change in Lyman's painting style.

While strongly influenced by Fauvism, Lyman's work is characterized by an emotional reserve and psychological distance out of keeping with that movement. His mature work does not stray far from Matisse in terms of subject matter (portraits, nudes, etc.), but displays relatively muted colors and smooth paint-handling.

Woman With a White Collar especially shows this mixture of Fauvist influence with Lyman's calm, classical personal style.  It can be compared with similar portraits by Matisse in its handling of the facial planes and the somewhat arbitrary use of color, but displays a prim and static elegance in its contrast of the solidly formed head against the neutral background.

Selected list of works
Profile of Corinne, 1913. Maurice Corbeil, Montreal.
Reading, 1925. Anatoly Ciakca, Vancouver.
Woman With a White Collar, 1936. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. The woman depicted is Mrs. Leonard Marsh.

References

Additional sources

Further reading

External links
 Entry for John Goodwin Lyman in the Union List of Artist Names
 National Gallery of Canada biography
 Works at the NGC
John Lyman Letter at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario
 Exhibition of the sketches from 1910, 20 & 30 at the Gallery Valentin

20th-century Canadian painters
Canadian male painters
Académie Julian alumni
High School of Montreal alumni
1886 births
1967 deaths
20th-century Canadian male artists
American emigrants to Canada

John Goodwin Lyman


The Maira is an Italian river, a right tributary of the Po, which runs through the province of Cuneo in eastern Piedmont. Its source is in the Cottian Alps near the Col de Mary (or Col Maurin) on the French border. Its name, in the Occitan and Piedmontese languages, means 'lean' or 'meagre'.

During its upper course the river descends rapidly through the scenic Valle Maira, passing through the centres of Acceglio,  Prazzo,  Stroppo,  Macra,  San Damiano Macra,  Cartignano and  Dronero; at Busca it leaves the valley and enters the plains, continuing through Villafalletto and Vottignasco. It passes just to the left of Savigliano, while the Grana-Mellea, its main tributary, passes to the right of the town: they continue in parallel before joining near Cavallermaggiore.

The next town the river meets is Racconigi, where it follows the edge of the park of the Royal Castle of Racconigi, the celebrated summer residence of the House of Savoy. Finally the river enters briefly into the territory of the Province of Turin before joining the Po from the right within the municipal bounds of the Comune of Lombriasco.

The Maira's regime is typical of an Alpine torrent: full flowing in the spring, and tending to dry up in the summer months. Over a typical year its mean discharge is equal to .

During Roman times, the river was known as the Macra.

References
''This article, as of 30 March 2008, was a free translation of its counterpart in the Italian Wikipedia: specifically this version.

Rivers of the Province of Cuneo
Rivers of the Province of Turin
Rivers of Italy
Rivers of the Alps

Maira (river)


Stephen Noel Furness (18 December 1902 – 14 April 1974), was a British barrister and Liberal National politician. He was Member of Parliament for Sunderland from 1935 to 1945. From 1938 to 1940 he was made a Lord Commissioner of the Treasury.

Background
Furness was born the second son of Sir Stephen Wilson Furness, who was Liberal MP for The Hartlepools. He was younger brother of Sir Christopher Furness, 2nd Baronet. He was educated at Charterhouse School and Oriel College, Oxford.

Professional career
Furness was Called to Bar by Middle Temple in 1927.

Political career
Furness was Liberal candidate for The Hartlepools division of Durham at the 1929 General Election. His father had represented this constituency for the Liberals from 1910 to 1914. The Liberals had lost the seat to the Unionists at the previous election in 1924 by about 3,000 votes. A UK-wide Liberal revival in 1929 helped Furness, but not enough for him to re-take the seat, falling just 138 votes short. He was re-selected by the local Liberal Association to contest the following general election.

In 1931, following the economic crisis, a National Government was formed that included both Liberals and Conservatives. A snap election was called and Liberals were encouraged not to oppose sitting Conservative MPs. Furness thus withdrew as Liberal candidate on 14 October, just 13 days before polling day. Four years later, his personal sacrifice for the National Government was rewarded when he was chosen as a Liberal National candidate for the dual member seat of Sunderland. The Conservatives won both seats in 1931 when there were no Liberals standing. In 1935 one of those MPs retired and Furness was chosen to run in harness with the other Conservative. With no opposition Liberal candidates standing, he was easily elected, topping the poll.

In parliament he was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Sir John Simon, the Liberal National Leader, from 1936 to 1937. He was an Assistant Government Whip from 1937 to 1938 and a Junior Lord of the Treasury from 1938 to 1940. When the National Government of Neville Chamberlain fell in 1940 and Winston Churchill formed his Coalition Government, Furness went to the back benches. He served as a second lieutenant in the 1st Battalion, London Irish Rifles, which was commanded by the MP John Robert Jermain Macnamara. He was unmarried.

At the end of the war, he ran for re-election, again as a Liberal National in harness with a Conservative. However, this time he was defeated as the country turned to the Labour Party. He did not stand for parliament again.

Electoral record

References

1902 births
1974 deaths
Alumni of Oriel College, Oxford
Liberal Party (UK) parliamentary candidates
Members of the Middle Temple
Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for English constituencies
Ministers in the Churchill wartime government, 1940–1945
National Liberal Party (UK, 1931) politicians
People educated at Charterhouse School
UK MPs 1935–1945
Ministers in the Chamberlain wartime government, 1939–1940
Ministers in the Chamberlain peacetime government, 1937–1939

Stephen Furness (Sunderland MP)


Rambling Rose is a 1991 American drama film set in Georgia during the Great Depression starring Laura Dern and Robert Duvall in leading roles with Lukas Haas, John Heard and Diane Ladd in supporting roles. Rambling Rose was directed by Martha Coolidge and written by Calder Willingham (adapted from his own 1972 novel of the same name).

Laura Dern and Diane Ladd, daughter and mother in real life, were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, respectively, making them the first mother-daughter duo to be nominated for Academy Awards for the same film or in the same year. The film won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Film and Martha Coolidge won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Director.

Plot
In 1971, a grown Buddy returns to his former family home and reflects on his youth during The Great Depression when Rose came to live with his family in order to escape her miserable life in Birmingham, where she was being forced into prostitution. The Hillyers are an eccentric family who take Rose in as a domestic servant. Rose quickly begins to admire Mrs. Hillyer, who is working on her master's thesis and who she learns was orphaned at a young age, just as Rose had been. Rose also develops a crush on the paternal and warm Mr. Hillyer that the three Hillyer children and Mr. Hillyer become aware of while Mrs. Hillyer remains oblivious.  Because she is hard of hearing (she carries an early kind of hearing aid) she misses some of the byplay.

Eventually Rose kisses Mr. Hillyer, who at first responds to her advances and then becomes angered at her and rebuffs her. Buddy witnesses Rose and Mr. Hillyer kissing and later, when Rose gets into his bed to talk to him at night, he repeatedly tries and eventually is allowed to grab and massage her breast just as his father had done while he was kissing Rose. Eventually to satisfy his curiosity Rose allows 13-year-old Buddy to masturbate her. Afterwards she is apologetic and upset and begs him not to tell anyone.

The Hillyers begin to disagree about Rose's presence in their lives. Mr. Hillyer worries that Rose is too promiscuous when she goes to town and will cause them problems but Mrs. Hillyer sees her promiscuity as her way of trying to obtain love and attention.

Strange men begin lurking around the house and even fighting with one another. Mr. Hillyer attributes this to Rose but she repeatedly denies knowing them before eventually admitting it. However, Rose is eventually arrested when some of her men begin brawling in a bar over her and she bites the finger of a policeman. Though the police and Mrs. Hillyer are willing to forgive Rose, Mr. Hillyer insists on firing her, but before he can Rose is hospitalized with a bad case of pneumonia. The attending doctor tells them that Rose has too strong a basic constitution to have had the desperately poor country background she has asserted. She develops a passion for the doctor, who spends a rather long time in her bedroom in his visits to her during her convalescence. After she recovers, Rose seems to be on her best behaviour but Mr. Hillyer eventually catches her with another man in her room. He fires her but obtains a position on a dairy farm in Tennessee for her. When he informs Rose she begins crying as she does not want her baby being born on a farm.

Mr. Hillyer believes she is lying about being pregnant and the Hillyers take her to a doctor where they learn that while she is showing signs of being pregnant she actually has an ovarian cyst and is sterile because of untreated gonorrhea contracted when she was 15. The doctor recommends a radical full hysterectomy, involving the removal of the womb and both ovaries, potentially resulting in a less feminine appearance and reduced sexual drive, as it would reduce Rose's promiscuous behaviour. While Mr. Hillyer at first agrees to the operation Mrs. Hillyer argues against it and eventually persuades the two men. Rose is treated for her cyst and returns home where she eventually marries the policeman whose finger she bit. Returning to the 1971 reflection, Buddy reveals that Rose married three more times and was eventually happy with and faithful to her last husband with whom she lived for 25 years. He goes to talk to his father who tells him that Rose died the previous week. When Buddy begins crying Mr. Hillyer tells him that Rose is a person who will never really die as she will live on forever in their hearts.

Cast
 Laura Dern as Rose, an orphan who comes to work for the Hillyer family
 Diane Ladd as Mrs. Hillyer
 Robert Duvall as Mr. Hillyer
 Lukas Haas as Willcox "Buddy" Hillyer
 John Heard as adult Buddy Hillyer
 Lisa Jakub as Frances "Dolly" Hillyer
 Evan Lockwood as Warren "Waski" Hillyer
 Kevin Conway as Dr. Martinson
 Robert John Burke as Dave Wilkie, Rose's first husband

Production
In reference to the bed scene between Laura Dern and Lukas Haas, director Martha Coolidge said Lukas was sort of the perfect age to play the part of Buddy. "It was important not to have a child, because the scene would have been unpleasant. It was also important not to have a man, because the scene would have meant something else." Capitalizing on the actor's curiosity about sex, Coolidge said, "Lukas knows that acting is living. He has made 25 movies. His great gift in Rambling Rose is that he shared something important, his first experience with sex, with the audience. Yet the whole scene is an illusion, except when he touches Laura's breasts."

Reception
The film received overwhelmingly positive reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 100% approval rating, based on 20 reviews. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone praised the storytelling and performances, summarizing the film as a "beauty." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, saying "The movie is all character and situation, and contains some of the best performances of the year, especially in the ensemble acting of the four main characters." On his TV program with Gene Siskel, both critics gave it a thumbs up. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B, extolling the performances, particularly Dern. He wrote that, "No young actress today can play emotionally hungry postadolescents with such purity and yearning."

Awards and nominations

Notes

References

External links

1991 films
1991 drama films
American drama films
Carolco Pictures films
1990s English-language films
Films scored by Elmer Bernstein
Films about sexuality
Films based on American novels
Films directed by Martha Coolidge
Films set in Georgia (U.S. state)
Films set in the 1930s
Films set in 1971
Films shot in North Carolina
Independent Spirit Award for Best Film winners
1991 independent films
Films set in the 1970s
Films about puberty
1990s coming-of-age drama films
1990s American films
Films produced by Mario F. Kassar

Rambling Rose (film)


The Jordan–Wigner transformation is a transformation that maps spin operators onto fermionic creation and annihilation operators. It was proposed by Pascual Jordan and Eugene Wigner for one-dimensional lattice models, but now two-dimensional analogues of the transformation have also been created. The Jordan–Wigner transformation is often used to exactly solve 1D spin-chains such as the Ising and XY models by transforming the spin operators to fermionic operators and then diagonalizing in the fermionic basis.

This transformation actually shows that the distinction between spin-1/2 particles and fermions is nonexistent. It can be applied to systems with an arbitrary dimension.

Analogy between spins and fermions

In what follows we will show how to map a 1D spin chain of spin-1/2 particles to fermions.

Take spin-1/2 Pauli operators acting on a site  of a 1D chain, . Taking the anticommutator of  and , we find , as would be expected from fermionic creation and annihilation operators. We might then be tempted to set

Now, we have the correct same-site fermionic relations ; however, on different sites, we have the relation , where , and so spins on different sites commute unlike fermions which anti-commute.  We must remedy this before we can take the analogy very seriously.

A transformation which recovers the true fermion commutation relations from spin-operators was performed in 1928 by Jordan and Wigner. This is a special example of a Klein transformation. We take a chain of fermions, and define a new set of operators

They differ from the above only by a phase . The phase is determined by the number of occupied fermionic modes in modes  of the field. The phase is equal to  if the number of occupied modes is even, and  if the number of occupied modes is odd. This phase is often expressed as

The transformed spin operators now have the appropriate fermionic canonical anti-commutation relations

The inverse transformation is given by

Note that the definition of the fermionic operators is nonlocal with respect to the bosonic operators because we have to deal with an entire chain of operators to the left of the site the fermionic operators are defined with respect to. This is also true the other way around. This is an example of a 't Hooft loop, which is a disorder operator instead of an order operator. This is also an example of an S-duality.

If the system has more than one dimension the transformation can still be applied. It is only necessary to label the sites in an arbitrary way by a single index.

Quantum computing
The Jordan–Wigner transformation can be inverted to map a fermionic Hamiltonian into a spin Hamiltonian. A series of spins is equivalent to a chain of qubits for quantum computing. Some molecular potentials can be efficiently simulated by a quantum computer using this transformation.

See also
 S-duality
 Klein transformation
 Bogoliubov transformation
 Holstein–Primakoff transformation
 Jordan–Schwinger transformation

References

Further reading
 Michael Nielsen,
 Piers Coleman, simple examples of second quantization

Condensed matter physics
Statistical mechanics
Quantum field theory
Lattice models

Jordan–Wigner transformation


Baker's Hole is a  geological Site of Special Scientific Interest, mostly consisting of a back-filled quarry, adjacent to  Ebbsfleet International railway station in Kent. It is a Geological Conservation Review site.  It is a nationally significant site for finds during quarrying of Stone Age tools, which are now dispersed among many museums.

Location
Baker's Hole is in the Ebbsfleet valley south of the river Thames in Kent, an area rich in significant Paleolithic sites, including Swanscombe Heritage Park just to the west, and Swanscombe Thameside Community School ("Swan Valley School" in some sources) across Southfleet Road.  Baker's Hole is traditionally described as in Northfleet, Gravesham but is now described as in the parish of "Swanscombe and Greenhithe" by Kent County Council. For the main periods of archaeological finds, the site was quarried by the Associated Portland Cement Manufacturers Ltd – the Swanscombe/Northfleet area was where William Aspdin had pioneered Portland cement in the 1840s. Quarrying is now finished and most of the site has been back-filled. Locating the precise findspots for the material described as coming from Baker's Hole is somewhat complicated, and the area from which they came is more precisely described as "Southfleet Pit" within the larger quarry; "Baker's Hole" proper is to the north, and has produced no finds.

Archaeological investigations
The site has been described as "the best known British Early Middle Paleolithic (MIS 9-7) site". It produced "mostly large Levallois cores and flakes", representing the discarded remains of production on a considerable scale of stone hand axe tools by a population probably consisting of Neanderthals. It is described by the Kent County Council archaeological service as a "Mousterian factory", with a sequence through the Clactonian, Acheulian and Mousterian archaeological industries. Many of the finds are now in the British Museum, which in the past distributed small sets of artefacts to several other museums.

The first finds from the Ebbsfleet valley were made in 1881 in a tramway cutting, and a local amateur archaeologist, James Cross, began collecting finds from Southfleet Pit from soon after quarrying began in 1909. Finds were published by R.A. Smith, an archaeologist from the British Museum, in 1911, although it appears that he never excavated at the site himself, but inspected, borrowed, and later published finds produced for him by the company, which they had paid the quarry workers to hand in as they came across them in their work.  These were finally transferred to the British Museum in 1914 and then numbered some 750 pieces.  The British Museum subsequently distributed small collections of "duplicate" material to any local museum that asked for one, and now holds 299 pieces from the "Smith Collection".

The implications of this history are that, according to Rebecca Scott of the British Museum, it cannot safely be assumed that the many hand axes found on the site are from the same levels as the cores and flakes, as has often been claimed in the past.

Access
The site is private land with no public access.

References

Bibliography
British History Online, "Archaeology: The Lower Palaeolithic Age", in A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 1: Physique, Archaeology, Domesday, Ecclesiastical Organization, The Jews, Religious Houses, Education of Working Classes to 1870, Private Education from Sixteenth Century (1969), pp. 11–21. online, Date accessed: 21 October 2011.
"Early Palaeolithic Cultural Facies and the Levalloisian at Baker's Hole" by Francis Wenban-Smith
Wenham-Smith website

1881 archaeological discoveries
Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Kent
Geological Conservation Review sites
Stone Age sites in Kent
Borough of Dartford
Mousterian

Baker's Hole


Gustav Johann Georg Hellmann or Georg Gustav Hellmann (3 July 1854 – 21 February 1939) was a German meteorologist.

Hellmann was born in Löwen (Lewin Brzeski), Prussian Silesia. Since 1907 to 1922, he was the principal of the Preußischen Meteorologischen Institut (Prussian Meteorological Institute) in Berlin. He died in Berlin.

Works
 An editor of the "Meteorologische Zeitschrift" 1892-1907 (with Julius von Hann)
 Repertorium der Deutschen Meteorologie, 1883

Work with snowflakes
In 1892 Hellmann piqued an interest in pictures of snowflakes, after seeing some of Wilson Bentley's photography, he commissioned a microphotographer to take shots of snowflakes to study. Upon review of these microphotographs, Hellmann noted a large difference in the snowflake pictures he took, and the ones Wilson Bentley had taken. Hellmann's snowflakes were irregular, there were various types, sizes, shapes, and forms. Bentley's snowflakes however, were perfect, symmetrical, six-sided and reminiscent of stars. Hellmann was perplexed by this, and openly questioned the accuracy of Bentley's work. He accused Bentley of manipulating the snowflake to get these perfect results. Bentley eventually admitted to somewhat doctoring the photographs, by scraping emulsion off the negatives, but he claimed that this did not change the integrity or accuracy of the photograph. This argument persisted for years, Hellmann insisted that altering the snowflake was unethical, as it misrepresented the snowflake in its truest form, Bentley argued the opposite. Although the argument never formally ended with one side winning, it is still Bentley's snowflake the world thinks of when they see snow fall.

Hellmann number
In Germany and especially the Netherlands, Hellmann is known for the Hellmann number, a measure for the severity of a winter. This figure is derived by adding up all negative temperatures in the period of 1 November of the previous year up to and including 31 March of the current year.

See also
Wind gradient

References

External links
 MeteoKust / KiteMeteo - De ultieme kustwebsite met webcams aan zee at www.infometeo.be (about his meter; Flemish)
 NEWI Meteo Fijnaart: Weerkundig woordenboek -H- at home.planet.nl (about his meter; Flemish)
 Jubilaeen 2003 at fa-gem.dmg-ev.de (German)
 Chronik: Berlin am 3. Juli, Fakten Jahr für Jahr at www.luise-berlin.de (German)
 Hellmann numbers for the Bilt from 1901 at knmi.nl (Dutch)

1854 births
1939 deaths
German meteorologists
Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences
People from the Province of Silesia
People from Brzeg County

Gustav Hellmann


Bulileka Sanatan College, Labasa ke ek school hae jiske 1968 me suruu karaa gais rahaa. Iske pahile Bulileka Junior Secondary School ke naam se jaana jaawat rahaa. Ii Collegeme 500 larrkan parrhe hae, jisme se 400 Hindustani aur baaki Kaiviti hae. In addition to that there are 34 teachers, a burser, typist, a librarian, a machinist, a culture teacher, gardener and watchman.
Furthermore, there are two steams of form 1 and 2. There are four streams of form 3 and three streams of form 4, form 5 and form 6. There are two streams of form 7.
 The College has two science labs, a computer lab, home economics room, technical drawing room, woodwork shop, library, bookroom, common HOD's office, PEMAC room, canteen, staff room, Assistance principal, Vice principal and a main office inclusive of the Principal's office.
 The sister schools are Bulileka Sanatan Dharam Primary School and Boubale Indian School.
 Students that attend the College are from the Bulileka community namely of Dreketilailai, Anuve, Boubale, Urata, Boca, Vitadra, Low cost housing, Bangladesh and even some travel from Labasa.
 The College is a religious institution where it observes certain religious festivals namely: Holi, Sanatan Diwas, Ram Naumi, Hanuman Jayanti, Krishan Janam Astmi, Deepawali and Moata Saraswati Pooja.
 Apart from academic studies, the College also participates in secondary school soccer and athletics.
 The College does not have ample sports equipment however has managed to win a few medals in the Fiji Secondary School Athletics final.
 Likewise the College's soccer team has qualified to represent Labasa in the Interdistrict Competition (IDC) in 1980, 1990, 1996 and 1997.
 In 2006 the soccer team qualified to play in the secondary school IDC tournament.
 The College's soccer team participated in the local league sanctioned by the Labasa Soccer Association and was declared the overall winner.
 This year, the Under- 15 side was the runners up in their competition.
 Apart from sports, the College also runs an annual event known as the Bulileka Sanatan College's concert night. The purpose of the concert is to raise funds for the school's projects with part of the funds directed towards students' welfare.
 The College provides internal scholarships to all who achieve an A grade in the Fiji Junior Certificate examination. The person who scores the highest mark in Fiji School Leaving Certificate examination receives $US200 to help in fund their form 7 studies if they intend to stay with the College. The fund is donated by Dinesh Chand, a former resident of Bouleka who is now living in America.
 Some of the problems faced by the College is the poor water supply and on rainy weather there is a danger of flooding which affects the students' attendance to their respective classes

Bahaari jorr
 school ke chaapa
Facebook
Graduates
Google site

References
 Fiji sun ke report
Ex Students
Old friends

Labasa ke school

Bulileka Sanatan College


Dov Gazit came to Israel from Baku, Azerbaijan by way of the Russian Gulags. He joined the Haganah, and rose to chief-commander of the IAF (Israeli Air Force) Technical School in Haifa.

While serving in Africa, he acquired a lion cub, which became the first lion in Dr. Aharon Shulov's Jerusalem Biblical Zoo.

Early life

Dov Gazit (Hebrew: דב גזית, Born: June 17, 1908, in Baku, Azerbaijan) was born Borys (shortened form of the Russian name Borislav) Reuvenovich/Romanovich Grobshtein (Russian: Борис Рувинович/Романович Гробштейн), was the brother of Solomon Grobshtein, and one of three sons of Reuven (Roman) Grobshtein, an engineer in the Baku oil fields.

He was 8 years old (1916), when his father was murdered during the Armenian-Tatar uprisings.

At age 18, Borys went to study at the Saint Petersburg State Institute of Technology (Russian: Санкт-Петербургский Технологический Институт (Технологический Университет), where became a member of a Zionist student group.

The NKVD crashed a Zionist group meeting, and arrested all the participants, including Borys, who was convicted and sent to a Gulag in Siberia for three years.

After many applications for release, he was allowed to leave the Soviet Union and go to Palestine, without permission to see his family, and nor to ever return to the Soviet Union.

Borys worked in the fields around Ra'anana, but later moved to Jerusalem, to the Zikhron Moshe neighbourhood, next door to Ephraim Katzir, a friend of Borys', and later to become the President of Israel.

After arriving in Palestine, Borys changed his name to Dov (Hebrew: דוב, lit: bear) Gazit (Hebrew: גָזִית, lit: huge stone. dressed stone, ashlar, as used in construction of Solomon's Temple).

Military service

While the British fought the German and Italian armies in the Arab Desert, Dov, and his friend, Yeri (Yerachmiel) Shrem, were sent to Eritrea, by the Israeli Air Service (Hebrew: שירות האוויר, lit: Sherut Avir, where he worked for British Airways. The two stayed in Eritrea for more than three years, constructing an airbase for the British. Their mandate was not only to build the airbase, but to learn how to develop and to manage the infrastructure which would be so important in sustaining the new state of Israel.

During his term of service in Africa, Dov also studied aeronautical engineering, and graduated from the British University in Egypt, in Cairo.

Dov served in the Haganah. He spent much of his time in Jerusalem, walking patrols through the streets of Jewish sections.

Dov Gazit was sent to Czechoslovakia,  as part of the group that acquired and delivered the first aircraft, Avia S-199s and Spitfires, for the newly formed Israeli air force.

After Israel declared independence, Dov served as chief-commander of the IAF (Israeli Air Force) Technical School in Haifa. After his term, he continued to serve in additional management/administration positions at the school, as a Civilian Employee, with the rank equal to `Sgan Aluf` or 'Sa'al' (Lieutenant Colonel).

Jerusalem Biblical Zoo

While stationed in Eritrea with his compatriot, Yeri (Yerachmiel) Shrem, Dov obtained a very important addition for the little Jerusalem Biblical Zoo, now called the Tisch Family Zoological Gardens).

Dr. Aaron Schulow (Aharon Shulov, who, like Dov Gazit, had also come to Palestine after being accused and jailed for Jewish Crimes in his native Russia (Dr. Shulov established the faculty of Zoology in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem), and the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo, asked Dov to find and send back to Jerusalem an African lion.

Dov found a lion cub for sale in the market. He took the Zoo's new acquisition back to his, where he and Yeri cared for the cub for several months. With the lion cub growing too large to keep in their quarters, he managed to get the cat to Alexandria, and on a boat to Palestine. The lion cub, the first lion in the Dr. Shulov's new zoo, was renamed Yehudah (Lion of Judah).
Dr. Aharon Shulov wrote a history of the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo, and on pages 47–51, he detailed Dov Gazit's adventures in acquiring Fifi, and getting the cub from Africa to Jerusalem.

After the Military

Dov retired from the Air Force Technical School, and died in  1986, at the age of 78.

He is buried in the cemetery at Hof haCarmel, on the slope of Mount Carmel.

References

Israeli people of Azerbaijani-Jewish descent
1908 births
1986 deaths
Soviet emigrants to Mandatory Palestine
Azerbaijani Jews
Israeli people of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War
Aviation in Israel
Saint Petersburg State Institute of Technology alumni

Dov Gazit


American Sniper is a 2014 American biographical war drama film directed by Clint Eastwood and written by Jason Hall. It is loosely based on the memoir American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History (2012) by Chris Kyle, with Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice. The film follows the life of Kyle, who became the deadliest marksman in U.S. military history with 255 kills from four tours in the Iraq War, 160 of which were officially confirmed by the Department of Defense. While Kyle was celebrated for his military successes, his tours of duty took a heavy toll on his personal and family life. The film was produced by Eastwood, Robert Lorenz, Andrew Lazar, Bradley Cooper, and Peter Morgan. It stars Cooper as Kyle and Sienna Miller as his wife Taya, with Luke Grimes, Jake McDorman, Cory Hardrict, Kevin Lacz, Navid Negahban, and Keir O'Donnell in supporting roles.

The world premiere was on November 11, 2014, at the American Film Institute Festival, followed by a limited theatrical release in the United States on December 25, 2014, and a wide release on January 16, 2015. The film became a major success, with a worldwide gross of over $547 million, making it the 13th most successful film at the 2014 worldwide box office, the highest-grossing film with a wide release during the month of January, and Eastwood's highest-grossing film to date.

The film received mostly positive reviews, with praise for Cooper's lead performance and Eastwood's direction, although it attracted some controversy over its portrayal of both the War in Iraq and Chris Kyle. At the 87th Academy Awards, American Sniper received six nominations, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor for Cooper, ultimately winning one award for Best Sound Editing.

Plot

Growing up in Texas, Chris Kyle is taught by his father how to shoot a rifle and hunt deer. Years later, Kyle has become a ranch hand and rodeo cowboy, and returns home early, to find his girlfriend in bed with another man. After telling her to leave, he is mulling it over with his brother when he sees news coverage of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings and decides to enlist in the Navy. He qualifies for special training and becomes a sniper with the U.S. Navy SEALs.

Kyle meets Taya Studebaker at an Irish pub in San Diego, and the two soon marry. He is sent to Iraq after the September 11 attacks. His first kills are a woman and boy who attacked U.S. Marines on patrol with a Russian made RKG-3 anti-tank grenade. Kyle is visibly upset by the experience, but later earns the nickname "Legend" for his many kills.

Assigned to hunt for the al-Qaeda leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Kyle interrogates a family whose father offers to lead the SEALs to "The Butcher", al-Zarqawi's second-in-command. The plan goes awry when The Butcher captures the father and his son, killing them while Kyle is pinned down by a sniper. This sniper goes by the name Mustafa and is an Olympic Games medalist from Syria. Meanwhile, the insurgents issue a bounty on Kyle.

Kyle returns home to his wife and the birth of his son. He is distracted by memories of his war experiences and by Taya's concern for them as a couple – she wishes he would focus on his home and family.

Kyle leaves for a second tour and is promoted to chief petty officer. Involved in a shootout with The Butcher, he helps in killing him. When he returns home to a newborn daughter, Kyle becomes increasingly distant from his family. On Kyle's third tour, Mustafa seriously injures a unit member, Ryan "Biggles" Job, and the unit is evacuated back to base. When they decide to return to the field and continue the mission, another SEAL, Marc Lee, is killed by gunfire.

Guilt compels Kyle to undertake a fourth tour, and Taya tells him she may not be there when he returns. Back in Iraq, Kyle is shocked to learn Biggles died in surgery to repair the wounds he sustained. Assigned to kill Mustafa, who has been sniping U.S. Army combat engineers building a barricade, Kyle's sniper team is placed on a rooftop inside enemy territory. Kyle spots Mustafa and takes him out with a risky long distance shot at , but this exposes his team's position to numerous armed insurgents. In the midst of the gunfight, and low on ammunition, Kyle tearfully calls Taya and tells her he is ready to come home. A sandstorm provides cover for a chaotic escape in which he is injured and almost left behind.

After Kyle gets back stateside, on edge and unable to adjust fully to civilian life, he is asked by a Veterans Affairs psychiatrist if he is haunted by all the things he did in war. When he replies it is "all the guys [he] couldn't save" that haunt him, the psychiatrist encourages him to help severely wounded veterans in the VA hospital. After that, Kyle gradually begins to adjust to home life.

Years later, on February 2, 2013, Kyle says goodbye to his wife and family as he leaves in good spirits to spend time with Eddie Ray Routh, a veteran suffering from PTSD at a shooting range. An on-screen subtitle reveals that  Kyle was killed that day by Routh, followed by archive footage of crowds standing along the highway for his funeral procession. More are shown attending his memorial service.

Cast

 Bradley Cooper as Chris Kyle
 Sienna Miller as Taya
 Luke Grimes as Marc Lee
 Jake McDorman as Biggles
 Cory Hardrict as "D" / Dandridge
 Kevin Lacz as Dauber / himself
 Navid Negahban as Sheikh Al-Obodi
 Keir O'Donnell as Jeff Kyle

In addition, Sammy Sheik appears as Mustafa, a character partially based on Iraqi sniper Juba, while Mido Hamada portrays The Butcher,  a character possibly based on Abu Deraa.

Production

Development

On May 24, 2012, it was announced that Warner Bros. (WB) had acquired the rights to the book with Bradley Cooper set to produce and star in the screen adaptation. Cooper had thought of Chris Pratt to play Kyle, but WB agreed to buy it only if Cooper would star. In September 2012, David O. Russell said he was interested in directing the film. On February 2, 2013, Chris Kyle was murdered. On May 2, 2013, it was announced that Steven Spielberg would direct. Spielberg had read Kyle's book, though he desired to have a more psychological conflict present in the screenplay so an "enemy sniper" character could serve as the insurgent sharpshooter who was trying to track down and kill Kyle. Spielberg's ideas contributed to the development of a lengthy screenplay approaching 160 pages. Due to WB's budget constraints, Spielberg felt he could not bring his vision of the story to the screen. On August 5, 2013, Spielberg dropped out of directing. On August 21, 2013, it was reported that Clint Eastwood would instead direct the film.

Casting
On March 14, 2014, Sienna Miller joined the cast. On March 16, 2014, Kyle Gallner was cast, as was Cory Hardrict on March 18, 2014. On March 20, 2014, Navid Negahban, Eric Close, Eric Ladin, Rey Gallegos, and Jake McDorman also joined the cast,
 as did Luke Grimes and Sam Jaeger on March 25, 2014. Kevin Lacz, a former Navy SEAL, was also cast and served as a technical advisor. Another former Navy SEAL, Joel Lambert, also joined the film, portraying a Delta sniper. On June 3, Max Charles was added to the cast to portray Kyle's son, Colton Kyle.

Filming
Principal photography began on March 31, 2014 in Los Angeles; it was also shot in Morocco. On April 23, the Los Angeles Times reported that ten days of filming set in an Afghan village was set to begin at the Blue Cloud Movie Ranch in the Santa Clarita area. On May 7, shooting of the film was spotted around El Centro; a milk factory was used as the abandoned date factory which insurgents close in on from all directions at the climax of the film. The pier and bar scenes were filmed in Seal Beach, California.

Cinematographer Tom Stern shot the film with Arri Alexa XT digital cameras and Panavision C-, E- and G-Series anamorphic lenses. The film is Eastwood's second to be shot digitally, after Jersey Boys.

Music
There is no "Music by" credit on this film. Clint Eastwood, who has composed the scores for most of his films since Mystic River (2003), is credited as the composer of "Taya's Theme". Joseph S. DeBeasi is credited as composer of additional music and as music editor. The film also features the song "Someone Like You" by Van Morrison, which plays during the wedding scene, and "The Funeral" by Ennio Morricone.

Reception

Box office

American Sniper grossed $350.1 million in North America and $197 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $547.1 million, against a budget of around $58 million. Calculating in all expenses and revenues, Deadline Hollywood estimated that the film made a profit of $243 million, making it the second-most profitable film of 2014 only behind Paramount's Transformers: Age of Extinction. Worldwide, it is the highest-grossing war film of all time (breaking Saving Private Ryan record) and Eastwood's highest-grossing film to date. It is the seventh R-rated film to gross over $500 million.

North America
In North America, it was the highest-grossing film of 2014, the highest-grossing war film unadjusted for inflation (and, on an adjusted basis, second to Saving Private Ryan with $379 million), the fourth-highest-grossing R-rated film of all time (behind The Passion of the Christ, Deadpool, and Deadpool 2), Warner Bros.' fourth-highest-grossing film (behind The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2), and the eighth-highest-grossing Best Picture nominee film (behind Avatar, Titanic, Star Wars, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Toy Story 3, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers). It became the seventh Warner Bros.' film to earn over $300 million in the U.S. and Canada and the 50th film to reach the mark. It earned as much as the combined earnings of all of the other 2014 Best Picture nominees. On March 8, 2015, it surpassed The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 to become the highest-grossing film of 2014, making it the first R-rated film since Saving Private Ryan (1998) and the first non-franchise film since Avatar (2009) to top the year-end rankings.

American Sniper premiered at the AFI Fest on November 11, 2014, just after a screening of Selma at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles. In North America, the film opened to a limited release on December 25, 2014, playing at four theaters—two in New York, one in Los Angeles, and one in Dallas—and earned $610,000 in its opening weekend ($850,000 including Christmas Day) at an average of $152,500 per venue debuting at #22. The following week the film earned $676,909 playing at the same number of locations at an average of $169,277 per theater, which is the second-biggest weekend average ever for a live-action movie (previously held by 2001's Moulin Rouge!). American Sniper holds the record for the most entries in the top 20 Top Weekend Theater Averages with 3 entries (at #12, #14 and #17). It earned a total of $3.4 million from limited release in three weekends.

The film began its wide debut across North American theaters on January 16, 2015 (Thursday night showings began at 7:00 pm). It set an all-time-highest Thursday night opening record for an R-rated drama with $5.3 million (previously held by Lone Survivor). The film topped the box office on its opening day grossing $30.5 million (including Thursday previews) from 3,555 theaters setting January records for both biggest debut opening (previously held by Cloverfield) and single-day gross (previously held by Avatar). In its traditional three-day opening the film earned $89.2 million which was double than expected and broke the record for the largest January opening (previously held by Ride Along) and the largest winter opening, which is also Eastwood's top opening as a director (breaking Gran Torinos opening). The three-day opening is also the biggest opening weekend for a drama film (previously held by The Passion of the Christ), the second-biggest debut for a Best Picture Oscar nominee (behind Toy Story 3), the second-biggest debut for an R-rated film (behind The Matrix Reloaded), and the third-biggest for a non-comic book, non-fantasy/sci-fi film (behind Furious 7 and Fast & Furious 6). It also set an IMAX January opening and single weekend record with $10.6 million (previously held by Avatar in its fourth weekend) and an R-rated IMAX debut record (previously held by Prometheus). It earned $107.2 million during its four-day Martin Luther King weekend setting a record for the biggest R-rated four-day gross.

In its second weekend, the film expanded to 3,705 theaters making it the second-widest launch for an R-rated movie (behind the film itself). It grossed an estimated $64.6 million in its second weekend, declining only by 28%—and set the record for the second-best hold ever for a movie opening to more than $85 million and also set the record for the eighth-largest second-weekend gross. In just 10 days of release, the film surpassed Pearl Harbor ($198.5 million) to become the second-highest-grossing war film in North America. By its second weekend, Box Office Mojo had already reported that the film was on poise to become the highest-grossing film of 2014 in North America, a record that was, at the time held by The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 ($334 million), judging from its gradual decline and strong holdovers. It became the highest-grossing IMAX film of January grossing $18.8 million from 333 IMAX theaters. On Thursday, January 29, 2015–35 days after its initial release, the film surpassed Saving Private Ryan ($216.5 million) to become the highest-grossing war film in North America, unadjusted for inflation.

By its third weekend of wide release, the film expanded to 3,885 theaters (180 additional theaters added), breaking its own record of being the widest R-rated film ever released. The film topped the box office through its third weekend earning $30.66 million, which is the second-highest Super Bowl weekend gross (behind Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert). After topping the box office for three consecutive weekends, the film was overtaken by The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water in its fourth weekend.

Outside North America
The film had the biggest debut weekend for a Clint Eastwood film, and went on to become the director's top-grossing film of all time in each of the countries in which it was released. In Italy the film opened at number two with $7.1 million, Eastwood's best opening of all time, and Warner Bros.' second-biggest opening for a non-franchise U.S. film there; it went on to top the box office the following weekend as well. Its other largest openings occurred in France ($6.3 million), where it topped the box office for four consecutive weekends, Australia ($4.3 million, $4.6 million including previews), the UK, Ireland and Malta ($3.8 million), Spain ($3.2 million), Japan ($2.8 million), Mexico ($2.6 million), Brazil ($1.8 million), and South Korea ($1.2 million). In total earnings, its largest market outside of the U.S. are Italy ($23 million) and France ($22.8 million).

Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 72%, based on 294 reviews, with an average rating of 6.90/10. The website's critical consensus states, "Powered by Clint Eastwood's sure-handed direction and a gripping central performance from Bradley Cooper, American Sniper delivers a tense, vivid tribute to its real-life subject." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 72 out of 100, based on 48 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". In CinemaScore polls conducted during the opening weekend, audiences gave American Sniper a rare grade of "A+" on an A+ to F scale.

Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter called the film "A taut, vivid and sad account of the brief life of the most accomplished marksman in American military annals." Justin Chang of Variety gave the film a positive review, saying: "an excellent performance from a bulked-up Bradley Cooper, this harrowing and intimate character study offers fairly blunt insights into the physical and psychological toll exacted on the front lines". David Denby of The New Yorker gave the film a positive review, saying "Both a devastating war movie and a devastating antiwar movie, a subdued celebration of a warrior's skill and a sorrowful lament over his alienation and misery." Keith Phipps of The Dissolve wrote that the film, while well made, missed a chance to explore the toll that such service exacts on soldiers. Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a C+, saying "The film's just a repetition of context-free combat missions and one-dimensional targets." Elizabeth Weitzman of New York Daily News gave the film four out of five stars, saying "The best movies are ever-shifting, intelligent and open-hearted enough to expand alongside an audience. American Sniper ... is built on this foundation of uncommon compassion." Kyle Smith of the New York Post gave the film four out of four stars, saying "After 40 years of Hollywood counterpropaganda telling us war is necessarily corrupting and malign, ... American Sniper nobly presents the case for the other side."

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, saying "Bradley Cooper, as Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, and director Eastwood salute Kyle's patriotism best by not denying its toll. Their targets are clearly in sight, and their aim is true." Ignatiy Vishnevetsky of The A.V. Club gave the film a B, saying "American Sniper is imperfect and at times a little corny, but also ambivalent and complicated in ways that are uniquely Eastwoodian." James Berardinelli of ReelViews gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, saying "American Sniper lifts director Clint Eastwood out of the doldrums that have plagued his last few films." Rafer Guzman of Newsday gave the film three out of four stars, saying "Cooper nails the role of an American killing machine in Clint Eastwood's clear-eyed look at the Iraq War." Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times gave the film a positive review, saying "Eastwood's impeccably crafted action sequences so catch us up in the chaos of combat we are almost not aware that we're watching a film at all." Claudia Puig of USA Today gave the film three out of four stars, saying "It's clearly Cooper's show. Substantially bulked up and affecting a believable Texas drawl, Cooper embodies Kyle's confidence, intensity and vulnerability." Joshua Rothkopf of Time Out New York gave the film four out of five stars, saying "Only Clint Eastwood could make a movie about an Iraq War veteran and infuse it with doubts, mission anxiety and ruination." Dean Obeidallah praised the film, saying "His focus was not on whom we were fighting, but the unbearably high price Americans pay for waging war regardless of its target. The film is a cautionary tale for Americans about why we must avoid war. It is not a celebration of waging it."

The film drew some negative reviews. Matt Taibbi, in Rolling Stone, wrote that the movie turned the complicated moral questions and mass-bloodshed of the Iraq war into a black and white fairy tale, without presenting the historical context. Alex von Tunzelmann of The Guardian argued that the film presented a simplified black and white portrayal of the Iraq war, and that it features the distortion of facts into unreliable myths based upon previous legends. David Masciotra of Salon criticized the movie's focus on physical rather than moral courage as the ultimate manly virtue. Cavalry scout sniper Garett Reppenhagen stated that he did not view Iraqi civilians as savages, but as part of a friendly culture for which the movie has furthered ignorance, fear, and bigotry. Inkoo Kang of TheWrap gave the film a negative review, saying "Director Clint Eastwood's focus on Kyle is so tight that no other character, including wife Taya (Sienna Miller), comes through as a person, and the scope so narrow that the film engages only superficially with the many moral issues surrounding the Iraq War." Several other articles have also been critical of the movie.

Responding to critics, Eastwood said that American Sniper shows "what [war] does to the people left behind", and that presenting "the fact of what [war] does to the family and the people who have to go back into civilian life like Chris Kyle did" is the "biggest antiwar statement any film" can make. He stated: "One of my favorite war movies that I've been involved with is Letters from Iwo Jima and that was about family, about being taken away from life, being sent someplace. In World War II, everybody just sort of went home and got over it. Now there is some effort to help people through it." He also said: "I was a child growing up during World War II. That was supposed to be the one to end all wars. And four years later, I was standing at the draft board being drafted during the Korean conflict, and then after that there was Vietnam, and it goes on and on forever ... I just wonder ... does this ever stop? And no, it doesn't. So each time we get in these conflicts, it deserves a lot of thought before we go wading in or wading out. Going in or coming out. It needs a better thought process, I think."

Bradley Cooper stated that much of the criticism ignores that the film was about widespread neglect of returning veterans, and that people who take issue with Kyle should redirect their attention to the leaders who put the troops there in the first place. He said: "We looked at hopefully igniting attention about the lack of care that goes to vets. [Any] discussion that has nothing to do with vets, or what we did or did not do [for them], every conversation in those terms is moving farther and farther from what our soldiers go through, and the fact that 22 veterans commit suicide each day." Cooper said that an increasing number of soldiers are returning from conflict psychologically damaged, only to be more or less discarded.

Former First Lady Michelle Obama and former Republican Party vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin also spoke out in support of the movie.

Historical accuracy
Several major news sources commented on the accuracy of the film and how it differs from Chris Kyle's written accounts. The enemy sniper Mustafa is a major character in the film but receives only a small mention in the memoir; Kyle noted: "I never saw him, but other snipers later killed an Iraqi sniper we think was him." According to the memoir, Kyle's 2100-yard shot was taken against an insurgent holding a rocket launcher, not Mustafa. Time notes that according to screenwriter Jason Hall, Kyle said of Mustafa: "He shot my friend. I'm not going to put his name in my book." The first combat scene in the film has Kyle killing a boy and mother who try to attack U.S. troops with a grenade; the boy was added for the film. The film's narrative has Navy SEAL Ryan "Biggles" Job dying from surgical complications from an operation on his face relatively soon after being shot in Iraq, but in reality it was   several years later. The character "the Butcher" was created for the film, although this character may have been based on the real-life Abu Deraa and/or Ahmad Hashim Abd al-Isawi. The visual blog Information is Beautiful stated that, while taking creative licence into account, the film was 56.9% accurate when compared to real-life events, summarizing: "a lot of the events in the movie did happen, although Kyle's involvement in them was repeatedly exaggerated".

In the film, Kyle decides to join the army after watching the 1998 United States embassy bombings on TV, in reality this did not contribute to his decision.

Prop baby
One aspect of the film that received negative comment was its use of a fake baby doll in one scene, which was said to look obviously artificial and that it was a distraction to critics and viewers. In at least one media screening of the film, the audience laughed out loud at how artificial the doll appeared. When discussing the film's prospects for winning an Academy Award, Fandango critic Dave Karger said, "The reason why American Sniper is not going to win is because of the plastic baby." In The Telegraph, journalist Mark Harris said, "That plastic baby is going to be rationalised by Eastwood auteur cultists until the end of days." In response, screenwriter Jason Hall replied, "Hate to ruin the fun but real baby #1 showed up with a fever. Real baby #2 was no show. [Clint voice] 'Gimme the doll, kid.

Top ten lists
American Sniper was listed on many critics' top ten lists.

 1st – Kyle Smith, New York Post
 3rd – Ty Burr, Boston Globe
 6th – Richard Brody, The New Yorker
 6th – James Verniere, Boston Herald
 7th – James Berardinelli, Reelviews
 7th – Lou Lumenick, New York Post
 8th – Mara Reinstein, Us Weekly
 9th – Scott Feinberg, The Hollywood Reporter
 9th – Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News
 10th – Scott Foundas, Variety
 10th – People
 Top 10 (ranked alphabetically) – David Denby, The New Yorker
 Best of 2014 (listed alphabetically, not ranked) – Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
 Best of 2014 (listed alphabetically, not ranked) – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

Home media
American Sniper was released on Blu-ray and DVD on May 19, 2015.

Upon its first week of release on home media in the U.S., the film topped both the Nielsen VideoScan First Alert chart, which tracks overall disc sales, as well as the Blu-ray Disc sales chart in the week ending May 24, 2015.

Accolades

See also
 List of films featuring the United States Navy SEALs
 Battle for Sevastopol
 Enemy at the Gates

References

External links

2014 films
2014 action drama films
2014 biographical drama films
2014 war drama films
American biographical drama films
American action drama films
American war drama films
Biographical action films
Anti-war films about the Iraq War
Biographical films about military personnel
Drama films based on actual events
Dune Entertainment films
2010s English-language films
Films about snipers
Films about United States Navy SEALs
Films about veterans
Films about post-traumatic stress disorder
Films based on autobiographies
Films directed by Clint Eastwood
Films produced by Bradley Cooper
Films produced by Clint Eastwood
Films set in 1998
Films set in 2013
Films set in Texas
Films set in the 1980s
Films set in the 2000s
Films shot in California
Films shot in Los Angeles
Films that won the Best Sound Editing Academy Award
IMAX films
Iraq War films
Malpaso Productions films
Village Roadshow Pictures films
War films based on actual events
Warner Bros. films
Films shot in Morocco

American Sniper


A pitch clock (also known as a pitch timer) is used in various baseball leagues to limit the amount of time a pitcher uses before he throws the ball to the hitter and/or limit the amount of time the hitter uses before he is prepared to hit.

Various baseball leagues and tournaments around the world have started using a pitch clock to speed up the pace of play. Major League Baseball (MLB) began using a pitch clock in the  season following a period of tests on MLB partner leagues, minor league baseball, and college baseball.

History
In college baseball, the Southeastern Conference experimented with using pitch clocks in 2010. Pitchers were given twenty seconds to throw the pitch, or a ball would be added to the count. Similarly, a batter stepping out of the batter's box with less than five seconds on the clock will be assessed an additional strike. After the 2010 season, the National Collegiate Athletic Association sought to make the pitch clocks mandatory, and instituted it for the 2011 college baseball season, but only for when there are no runners on base.

Pitch clocks made their professional debut in the Arizona Fall League in 2014. On January 15, 2015, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced it would institute a 20-second pitch clock in Minor League Baseball for Double-A and Triple-A teams during the 2015 season. Pitchers were given twenty seconds to throw the pitch, with the penalty of a ball awarded to the batter if not followed. Along with other rule changes addressing the pace of play, the clocks contributed to a 12-minute reduction in game times at those levels between the 2014 and 2015 seasons, compared to the leagues that did not use the clock, which saw game times change from an increase of three minutes per game to a decrease in five minutes per game. Game times increased in 2016 and 2017, but were still faster than games in 2014. The independent Atlantic League began using a 12-second pitch clock.

MLB and the MLB Players Association (MLBPA) discussed the possibility of introducing the pitch clock at the major league level for the 2018 season. MLB opted against imposing it unilaterally, over the opposition of the MLBPA. MLB implemented a 20-second pitch clock in spring training games in 2019. The collective bargaining agreement reached to end the 2021–22 Major League Baseball lockout included the possibility of introducing a pitch clock as of the 2023 MLB season. Four active players, six persons appointed by MLB, and one umpire were formed into a Joint Competition Committee to review and recommend any changes to playing rules.

On September 8, 2022, MLB announced a set of rules changes that would take effect in 2023, including the use of a pitch clock. Pitchers will have 15 seconds between pitches when there are no baserunners and 20 seconds when there is at least one baserunner. Additionally, the batter will have seven seconds to be in the stance, ready to hit, otherwise a strike will be called. The clock starts when the pitcher gets the ball and the catcher and batter are ready.

In addition to its primary use to time pitches, the clock is also used to indicate the time remaining in a media timeout for commercials (usually between each half of an inning), and will also be used to time the warmup period on the mound for a relief pitcher coming out of the bullpen. There will also be multiple clocks displayed throughout a major league stadium on the same timing system allow full visibility of the pitch clock for players, coaches, umpires, press, and spectators throughout the venue, with implementation within the graphics of television broadcasts to be determined at the start of the season.

The first 400 of Major League Baseball's games during the  were, on average, about 30 minutes shorter than the first 400 of the previous season were. In addition, the standard deviation of game times was down significantly. The game length distribution had not been this consistent since the .

The Japan Amateur Baseball Association, which organizes most Japanese adult baseball outside Nippon Professional Baseball and its minor league teams, decided to adopt the pitch clock after MLB's success in 2023 Spring Training.

Marcus Stroman of the Chicago Cubs became the first pitcher in violation of the pitch clock during the regular season while in the third inning of the 2023 opening day game against the Milwaukee Brewers. The Baltimore Oriole's Austin Hays was the first batter to receive a strike call due to a time infraction, while Rafael Devers of the Boston Red Sox was the first to be called for a strike out.

See also
Play clock
Shot clock
Over rate

References

External links

Baseball terminology
Baseball rules
Time measurement systems
Timers

Pitch clock


Public Bank Berhad () is a bank based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, offering financial services in Malaysia as well as the Asia-Pacific region.

The bank was founded in 1966 by Teh Hong Piow, the then general manager of Malayan Banking. The bank was listed on the Malaysian Stock Exchange in 1967.

Public Bank is currently one of the largest banks in Southeast Asia, with over RM 363.76 billion (US$91.26 billion) of assets and RM71.90 billion (US$18.04 billion) in market capitalization in 2015.

Public Bank is the largest bank in Malaysia by shareholders' funds, second largest by market capitalization, just behind Maybank and third largest by total assets, behind Maybank and CIMB.

Public Bank currently offers a comprehensive range of financial products and services which include personal banking, commercial banking, Islamic banking, investment banking, share broking, trustee services, nominee services, sale and management of unit trust funds, bancassurance and general insurance products. Public Bank's strategy is centered on growth in the retail banking business particularly on the retail consumers and small and medium enterprises ("SMEs").

Operations
The Public Bank Group is well known for its strong financial performance and consistent prudent management. It is consistently accorded with strong credit and financial ratings from local and foreign rating agencies. Public Bank gained a long-term rating of AAA the Rating Agency Malaysia. It is the highest rating accorded by Rating Agency Malaysia. It also received a short-term rating of P1 with stable outlook. Standard & Poor's reaffirmed Public Bank's A- long-term rating and A-2 short-term counterparty credit rating with stable outlook. Moody's Investors Service reaffirmed Public Bank's foreign currency long-term deposit rating of A3 and short-term deposit rating of P-2 with stable outlook.

Public Bank currently has a network of 259 branches and over 2000 self terminals in Malaysia. The company also has its presence in the Asia-Pacific region with a network of 1 subsidiary in Hong Kong (Public Bank (Hong Kong) Limited, with 79 branches), 1 subsidiary in Cambodia (Cambodian Public Bank Plc, with 30 branches), 1 subsidiary in Vietnam (Public Bank Vietnam Limited, with 12 branches), 4 branches in Laos, 3 branches in China and 3 branches in Sri Lanka.

In total, the company serves more than 9 million customers in countries where it operates.

Subsidiaries

Malaysia
Public Islamic Bank
Public Investment Bank
Public Mutual Berhad
Public Bank (Labuan)
PB Trustee Services

Hong Kong
Public Bank (Hong Kong) Limited
Public Finance Limited
Winton (B.V.I.) Limited

Cambodia
Cambodian Public Bank Plc
Campu Lonpac Insurance Plc
Campu Securities Plc

Vietnam
Public Bank Vietnam Limited

See also
 Public Bank (Hong Kong)
List of largest Malaysian banks
List of largest banks in Southeast Asia

References

External links

1966 establishments in Malaysia
Banks of Cambodia
Banks of Malaysia
Companies listed on Bursa Malaysia
Banks established in 1966
1960s initial public offerings

Public Bank Berhad


An extracurricular activity or extra academic activity (EAA) is an activity, performed by students, that is not part of the normal curriculum of school, college or university education.

These activities are often voluntary (as opposed to mandatory), social, philanthropic, and often involve other people of the same age. Students and staff run these activities under faculty sponsorship. Activities created by students, such as independent newspapers, are also very common.

Other websites
 Using extracurricular activity as an indicator of interpersonal skill: prudent evaluation or recruiting malpractice, Human Resource Management, Rubin, R.S., Bommer, W.H. & Baldwin, T.T. (2002).
 Extra Curricular Network Australia (ECNA) promotes Extra curricular programs for tertiary students in Australia.
 Extra-Curricular Activities After School Programs for Kids in Houston

Education

Extracurricular activity