The raccoon ( or , Procyon lotor), also spelled racoon and sometimes called the common raccoon to distinguish it from other species, is a mammal native to North America. It is the largest of the procyonid family, having a body length of , and a body weight of . Its grayish coat mostly consists of dense underfur, which insulates it against cold weather. Three of the raccoon's most distinctive features are its extremely dexterous front paws, its facial mask, and its ringed tail, which are themes in the mythologies of the indigenous peoples of the Americas relating to the animal. The raccoon is noted for its intelligence, as studies show that it is able to remember the solution to tasks for at least three years. It is usually nocturnal and omnivorous, eating about 40% invertebrates, 33% plants, and 27% vertebrates.

The original habitats of the raccoon are deciduous and mixed forests, but due to their adaptability, they have extended their range to mountainous areas, coastal marshes, and urban areas, where some homeowners consider them to be pests. As a result of escapes and deliberate introductions in the mid-20th century, raccoons are now also distributed across central Europe, the Caucasus, and Japan.

In Europe, the raccoon is included since 2016 in the list of Invasive Alien Species of Union concern (the Union list). This implies that this species cannot be imported, bred, transported, commercialized, or intentionally released into the environment in the whole of the European Union.

Though previously thought to be generally solitary, there is now evidence that raccoons engage in sex-specific social behavior. Related females often share a common area, while unrelated males live together in groups of up to four raccoons in order to maintain their positions against foreign males during the mating season and against other potential invaders. Home range sizes vary anywhere from  for females in cities, to  for males in prairies. After a gestation period of about 65 days, two to five young known as "kits" are born in spring. The kits are subsequently raised by their mother until dispersal in late fall. Although captive raccoons have been known to live over 20 years, their life expectancy in the wild is only 1.8 to 3.1 years. In many areas, hunting and vehicular injury are the two most common causes of death.

Etymology

Names for the species include the common raccoon, North American raccoon, and northern raccoon. In various North American native languages, the reference to the animal's manual dexterity, or use of its hands is the source for the names. The word raccoon was adopted into English from the native Powhatan term meaning 'animal that scratches with its hands', as used in the Colony of Virginia. It was recorded on John Smith's list of Powhatan words as , and on that of William Strachey as . It has also been identified as a reflex of a Proto-Algonquian root , meaning '[the] one who rubs, scrubs and scratches with its hands'. The word is sometimes spelled as racoon.

In Spanish, the raccoon is called , derived from the Nahuatl  of the Aztecs, meaning '[the] one who takes everything in its hands'.

Its Latin name literally means 'before-dog washer'. The genus Procyon was named by Gottlieb Conrad Christian Storr. The animal's observed habit of "washing" or "dowsing" (see below) is the source of its name in other languages. For example, the French "raton laveur" means "washing rat".

The colloquial abbreviation coon is used in words like coonskin for fur clothing and in phrases like old coon as a self-designation of trappers. In the 1830s, the United States Whig Party used the raccoon as an emblem, causing them to be pejoratively known as "coons" by their political opponents, who saw them as too sympathetic to African-Americans. Soon after that the term became an ethnic slur, especially in use between 1880 and 1920 (see coon song), and the term is still considered offensive. Dogs bred to hunt raccoons are called coonhound and coon dog.

Taxonomy

In the first decades after its discovery by the members of the expedition of Christopher Columbus, who were the first Europeans to leave a written record about the species, taxonomists thought the raccoon was related to many different species, including dogs, cats, badgers and particularly bears. Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy, placed the raccoon in the genus Ursus, first as Ursus cauda elongata ('long-tailed bear') in the second edition of his Systema Naturae (1740), then as Ursus Lotor ('washer bear') in the tenth edition (1758–59). In 1780, Gottlieb Conrad Christian Storr placed the raccoon in its own genus Procyon, which can be translated as either 'before the dog' or 'doglike'. It is also possible that Storr had its nocturnal lifestyle in mind and chose the star Procyon as eponym for the species.

Evolution
Based on fossil evidence from Russia and Bulgaria, the first known members of the family Procyonidae lived in Europe in the late Oligocene about 25 million years ago. Similar tooth and skull structures suggest procyonids and weasels share a common ancestor, but molecular analysis indicates a closer relationship between raccoons and bears. After the then-existing species crossed the Bering Strait at least six million years later in the early Miocene, the center of its distribution was probably in Central America. Coatis (Nasua and Nasuella) and raccoons (Procyon) have been considered to share common descent from a species in the genus Paranasua present between 5.2 and 6.0 million years ago. This assumption, based on morphological comparisons of fossils, conflicts with a 2006 genetic analysis which indicates raccoons are more closely related to ringtails. Unlike other procyonids, such as the crab-eating raccoon (Procyon cancrivorus), the ancestors of the common raccoon left tropical and subtropical areas and migrated farther north about 2.5 million years ago, in a migration that has been confirmed by the discovery of fossils in the Great Plains dating back to the middle of the Pliocene. Its most recent ancestor was likely Procyon rexroadensis, a large Blancan raccoon from the Rexroad Formation characterized by its narrow back teeth and large lower jaw.

Subspecies

As of 2005, Mammal Species of the World recognizes 22 subspecies of raccoons. Four of these subspecies living only on small Central American and Caribbean islands were often regarded as distinct species after their discovery. These are the Bahamian raccoon and Guadeloupe raccoon, which are very similar to each other; the Tres Marias raccoon, which is larger than average and has an angular skull; and the extinct Barbados raccoon. Studies of their morphological and genetic traits in 1999, 2003 and 2005 led all these island raccoons to be listed as subspecies of the common raccoon in Mammal Species of the World's third edition. A fifth island raccoon population, the Cozumel raccoon, which weighs only  and has notably small teeth, is still regarded as a separate species.

The four smallest raccoon subspecies, with a typical weight of , live along the southern coast of Florida and on the adjacent islands; an example is the Ten Thousand Islands raccoon (Procyon lotor marinus). Most of the other 15 subspecies differ only slightly from each other in coat color, size and other physical characteristics. The two most widespread subspecies are the eastern raccoon (Procyon lotor lotor) and the Upper Mississippi Valley raccoon (Procyon lotor hirtus). Both share a comparatively dark coat with long hairs, but the Upper Mississippi Valley raccoon is larger than the eastern raccoon. The eastern raccoon occurs in all U.S. states and Canadian provinces to the north of South Carolina and Tennessee. The adjacent range of the Upper Mississippi Valley raccoon covers all U.S. states and Canadian provinces to the north of Louisiana, Texas and New Mexico.

The taxonomic identity of feral raccoons inhabiting Central Europe, Causasia and Japan is unknown, as the founding populations consisted of uncategorized specimens from zoos and fur farms.

Description

Physical characteristics

Head to hindquarters, raccoons measure between , not including the bushy tail which can measure between , but is usually not much longer than . The shoulder height is between . The body weight of an adult raccoon varies considerably with habitat, making the raccoon one of the most variably sized mammals. It can range from , but is usually between . The smallest specimens live in southern Florida, while those near the northern limits of the raccoon's range tend to be the largest (see Bergmann's rule). Males are usually 15 to 20% heavier than females. At the beginning of winter, a raccoon can weigh twice as much as in spring because of fat storage. The largest recorded wild raccoon weighed  and measured  in total length, by far the largest size recorded for a procyonid.

The most characteristic physical feature of the raccoon is the area of black fur around the eyes, which contrasts sharply with the surrounding white face coloring. This is reminiscent of a "bandit's mask" and has thus enhanced the animal's reputation for mischief. The slightly rounded ears are also bordered by white fur. Raccoons are assumed to recognize the facial expression and posture of other members of their species more quickly because of the conspicuous facial coloration and the alternating light and dark rings on the tail. The dark mask may also reduce glare and thus enhance night vision. On other parts of the body, the long and stiff guard hairs, which shed moisture, are usually colored in shades of gray and, to a lesser extent, brown. Raccoons with a very dark coat are more common in the German population because individuals with such coloring were among those initially released to the wild. The dense underfur, which accounts for almost 90% of the coat, insulates against cold weather and is composed of  long hairs.

The raccoon, whose method of locomotion is usually considered to be plantigrade, can stand on its hind legs to examine objects with its front paws. As raccoons have short legs compared to their compact torso, they are usually not able either to run quickly or jump great distances. Their top speed over short distances is . Raccoons can swim with an average speed of about  and can stay in the water for several hours. For climbing down a tree headfirst—an unusual ability for a mammal of its size—a raccoon rotates its hind feet so they are pointing backwards. Raccoons have a dual cooling system to regulate their temperature; that is, they are able to both sweat and pant for heat dissipation.

Raccoon skulls have a short and wide facial region and a voluminous braincase. The facial length of the skull is less than the cranial, and their nasal bones are short and quite broad. The auditory bullae are inflated in form, and the sagittal crest is weakly developed. The dentition—40 teeth with the dental formula:—is adapted to their omnivorous diet: the carnassials are not as sharp and pointed as those of a full-time carnivore, but the molars are not as wide as those of a herbivore. The penis bone of males is about  long and strongly bent at the front end, and its shape can be used to distinguish juvenile males from mature males. Seven of the thirteen identified vocal calls are used in communication between the mother and her kits, one of these being the birdlike twittering of newborns.

Senses
The most important sense for the raccoon is its sense of touch. The "hyper sensitive" front paws are protected by a thin horny layer that becomes pliable when wet. The five digits of the paws have no webbing between them, which is unusual for a carnivoran. Almost two-thirds of the area responsible for sensory perception in the raccoon's cerebral cortex is specialized for the interpretation of tactile impulses, more than in any other studied animal. They are able to identify objects before touching them with vibrissae located above their sharp, nonretractable claws. The raccoon's paws lack an opposable thumb; thus, it does not have the agility of the hands of primates. There is no observed negative effect on tactile perception when a raccoon stands in water below 10 °C (50 °F) for hours.

Raccoons are thought to be color blind or at least poorly able to distinguish color, though their eyes are well-adapted for sensing green light. Although their accommodation of 11 dioptre is comparable to that of humans and they see well in twilight because of the tapetum lucidum behind the retina, visual perception is of subordinate importance to raccoons because of their poor long-distance vision. In addition to being useful for orientation in the dark, their sense of smell is important for intraspecific communication. Glandular secretions (usually from their anal glands), urine and feces are used for marking. With their broad auditory range, they can perceive tones up to 50–85 kHz as well as quiet noises, like those produced by earthworms underground.

Intelligence
Zoologist Clinton Hart Merriam described raccoons as "clever beasts", and that "in certain directions their cunning surpasses that of the fox". The animal's intelligence gave rise to the epithet "sly coon". Only a few studies have been undertaken to determine the mental abilities of raccoons, most of them based on the animal's sense of touch. In a study by the ethologist H. B. Davis in 1908, raccoons were able to open 11 of 13 complex locks in fewer than 10 tries and had no problems repeating the action when the locks were rearranged or turned upside down. Davis concluded that they understood the abstract principles of the locking mechanisms and their learning speed was equivalent to that of rhesus macaques.

Studies in 1963, 1973, 1975 and 1992 concentrated on raccoon memory showed that they can remember the solutions to tasks for at least three years. In a study by B. Pohl in 1992, raccoons were able to instantly differentiate between identical and different symbols three years after the short initial learning phase. Stanislas Dehaene reports in his book The Number Sense that raccoons can distinguish boxes containing two or four grapes from those containing three. In research by Suzana Herculano-Houzel and other neuroscientists, raccoons have been found to be comparable to primates in density of neurons in the cerebral cortex, which they have proposed to be a neuroanatomical indicator of intelligence.

Behavior

Social behavior

Studies in the 1990s by the ethologists Stanley D. Gehrt and Ulf Hohmann suggest that raccoons engage in sex-specific social behaviors and are not typically solitary, as was previously thought. Related females often live in a so-called "fission-fusion society"; that is, they share a common area and occasionally meet at feeding or resting grounds. Unrelated males often form loose male social groups to maintain their position against foreign males during the mating season—or against other potential invaders. Such a group does not usually consist of more than four individuals. Since some males show aggressive behavior towards unrelated kits, mothers will isolate themselves from other raccoons until their kits are big enough to defend themselves.

With respect to these three different modes of life prevalent among raccoons, Hohmann called their social structure a "three-class society". Samuel I. Zeveloff, professor of zoology at Weber State University and author of the book Raccoons: A Natural History, is more cautious in his interpretation and concludes at least the females are solitary most of the time and, according to Erik K. Fritzell's study in North Dakota in 1978, males in areas with low population densities are solitary as well.

The shape and size of a raccoon's home range varies depending on age, sex, and habitat, with adults claiming areas more than twice as large as juveniles. While the size of home ranges in the habitat of North Dakota's prairies lie between  for males and between  for females, the average size in a marsh at Lake Erie was . Irrespective of whether the home ranges of adjacent groups overlap, they are most likely not actively defended outside the mating season if food supplies are sufficient. Odor marks on prominent spots are assumed to establish home ranges and identify individuals. Urine and feces left at shared raccoon latrines may provide additional information about feeding grounds, since raccoons were observed to meet there later for collective eating, sleeping and playing.

Concerning the general behavior patterns of raccoons, Gehrt points out that "typically you'll find 10 to 15 percent that will do the opposite" of what is expected.

Diet
Though usually nocturnal, the raccoon is sometimes active in daylight to take advantage of available food sources. Its diet consists of about 40% invertebrates, 33% plant material and 27% vertebrates. Since its diet consists of such a variety of different foods, Zeveloff argues the raccoon "may well be one of the world's most omnivorous animals". While its diet in spring and early summer consists mostly of insects, worms, and other animals already available early in the year, it prefers fruits and nuts, such as acorns and walnuts, which emerge in late summer and autumn, and represent a rich calorie source for building up fat needed for winter.

Contrary to popular belief, raccoons only occasionally eat active or large prey, such as birds and mammals. They prefer prey that is easier to catch, specifically crayfish, insects, fish, amphibians and bird eggs. Raccoons are virulent predators of eggs and hatchlings in both birds and reptile nests, to such a degree that, for threatened prey species, raccoons may need to be removed from the area or nests may need to be relocated to mitigate the effect of their predations (i.e. in the case of some globally threatened turtles). When food is plentiful, raccoons can develop strong individual preferences for specific foods. In the northern parts of their range, raccoons go into a winter rest, reducing their activity drastically as long as a permanent snow cover makes searching for food difficult.

Dousing

One aspect of raccoon behavior is so well known that it gives the animal part of its scientific name, Procyon lotor;  is Latin for 'washer'. In the wild, raccoons often dabble for underwater food near the shore-line. They then often pick up the food item with their front paws to examine it and rub the item, sometimes to remove unwanted parts. This gives the appearance of the raccoon "washing" the food. The tactile sensitivity of raccoons' paws is increased if this rubbing action is performed underwater, since the water softens the hard layer covering the paws. However, the behavior observed in captive raccoons in which they carry their food to water to "wash" or douse it before eating has not been observed in the wild. Naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, believed that raccoons do not have adequate saliva production to moisten food thereby necessitating dousing, but this hypothesis is now considered to be incorrect. Captive raccoons douse their food more frequently when a watering hole with a layout similar to a stream is not farther away than . The widely accepted theory is that dousing in captive raccoons is a fixed action pattern from the dabbling behavior performed when foraging at shores for aquatic foods. This is supported by the observation that aquatic foods are doused more frequently. Cleaning dirty food does not seem to be a reason for "washing".

Reproduction
Raccoons usually mate in a period triggered by increasing daylight between late January and mid-March. However, there are large regional differences which are not completely explicable by solar conditions. For example, while raccoons in southern states typically mate later than average, the mating season in Manitoba also peaks later than usual in March and extends until June. During the mating season, males restlessly roam their home ranges in search of females in an attempt to court them during the three- to four-day period when conception is possible. These encounters will often occur at central meeting places. Copulation, including foreplay, can last over an hour and is repeated over several nights. The weaker members of a male social group also are assumed to get the opportunity to mate, since the stronger ones cannot mate with all available females. In a study in southern Texas during the mating seasons from 1990 to 1992, about one third of all females mated with more than one male. If a female does not become pregnant or if she loses her kits early, she will sometimes become fertile again 80 to 140 days later.

After usually 63 to 65 days of gestation (although anywhere from 54 to 70 days is possible), a litter of typically two to five young is born. The average litter size varies widely with habitat, ranging from 2.5 in Alabama to 4.8 in North Dakota. Larger litters are more common in areas with a high mortality rate, due, for example, to hunting or severe winters. While male yearlings usually reach their sexual maturity only after the main mating season, female yearlings can compensate for high mortality rates and may be responsible for about 50% of all young born in a year. Males have no part in raising young. The kits (also called "cubs") are blind and deaf at birth, but their mask is already visible against their light fur. The birth weight of the about -long kits is between . Their ear canals open after around 18 to 23 days, a few days before their eyes open for the first time. Once the kits weigh about , they begin to explore outside the den, consuming solid food for the first time after six to nine weeks. After this point, their mother suckles them with decreasing frequency; they are usually weaned by 16 weeks. In the fall, after their mother has shown them dens and feeding grounds, the juvenile group splits up.  While many females will stay close to the home range of their mother, males can sometimes move more than  away. This is considered an instinctive behavior, preventing inbreeding. However, mother and offspring may share a den during the first winter in cold areas.

Life expectancy

Captive raccoons have been known to live for more than 20 years. However, the species' life expectancy in the wild is only 1.8 to 3.1 years, depending on the local conditions such as traffic volume, hunting, and weather severity. It is not unusual for only half of the young born in one year to survive a full year. After this point, the annual mortality rate drops to between 10% and 30%. Young raccoons are vulnerable to losing their mother and to starvation, particularly in long and cold winters. The most frequent natural cause of death in the North American raccoon population is distemper, which can reach epidemic proportions and kill most of a local raccoon population. In areas with heavy vehicular traffic and extensive hunting, these factors can account for up to 90% of all deaths of adult raccoons. The most important natural predators of the raccoon are bobcats, coyotes, and great horned owls, the latter mainly preying on young raccoons but capable of killing adults in some cases. In Florida, they have been reported to fall victim to larger carnivores like American black bear and cougars and these species may also be a threat on occasion in other areas. Where still present, gray wolves may still occasionally take raccoons as a supplemental prey item. Also in the southeast, they are among the favored prey for adult American alligators. On occasion, both bald and golden eagles will prey on raccoons. In the tropics, raccoons are known to fall prey to smaller eagles such as ornate hawk-eagles and black hawk-eagles, although it is not clear whether adults or merely juvenile raccoons are taken by these. In rare cases of overlap, they may fall victim from carnivores ranging from species averaging smaller than themselves such as fishers to those as large and formidable as jaguars in Mexico. In their introduced range in the former Soviet Union, their main predators are wolves, lynxes and Eurasian eagle-owls. However, predation is not a significant cause of death, especially because larger predators have been exterminated in many areas inhabited by raccoons.

Range

Habitat
Although they have thrived in sparsely wooded areas in the last decades, raccoons depend on vertical structures to climb when they feel threatened. Therefore, they avoid open terrain and areas with high concentrations of beech trees, as beech bark is too smooth to climb. Tree hollows in old oaks or other trees and rock crevices are preferred by raccoons as sleeping, winter and litter dens. If such dens are unavailable or accessing them is inconvenient, raccoons use burrows dug by other mammals, dense undergrowth or tree crotches. In a study in the Solling range of hills in Germany, more than 60% of all sleeping places were used only once, but those used at least ten times accounted for about 70% of all uses. Since amphibians, crustaceans, and other animals around the shore of lakes and rivers are an important part of the raccoon's diet, lowland deciduous or mixed forests abundant with water and marshes sustain the highest population densities. While population densities range from 0.5 to 3.2 animals per square kilometer (1.3 to 8.3 animals per square mile) in prairies and do not usually exceed 6 animals per square kilometer (15.5 animals per square mile) in upland hardwood forests, more than 20 raccoons per square kilometer (51.8 animals per square mile) can live in lowland forests and marshes.

Distribution in North America

Raccoons are common throughout North America from Canada to Panama, where the subspecies Procyon lotor pumilus coexists with the crab-eating raccoon (Procyon cancrivorus). The population on Hispaniola was exterminated as early as 1513 by Spanish colonists who hunted them for their meat. Raccoons were also exterminated in Cuba and Jamaica, where the last sightings were reported in 1687. The Barbados raccoon became extinct relatively recently, in 1964. When they were still considered separate species, the Bahamas raccoon, Guadeloupe raccoon and Tres Marias raccoon were classified as endangered by the IUCN in 1996.

There is archeological evidence that in pre-Columbian times raccoons were numerous only along rivers and in the woodlands of the Southeastern United States. As raccoons were not mentioned in earlier reports of pioneers exploring the central and north-central parts of the United States, their initial spread may have begun a few decades before the 20th century. Since the 1950s, raccoons have expanded their range from Vancouver Island—formerly the northernmost limit of their range—far into the northern portions of the four south-central Canadian provinces. New habitats which have recently been occupied by raccoons (aside from urban areas) include mountain ranges, such as the Western Rocky Mountains, prairies and coastal marshes. After a population explosion starting in the 1940s, the estimated number of raccoons in North America in the late 1980s was 15 to 20 times higher than in the 1930s, when raccoons were comparatively rare. Urbanization, the expansion of agriculture, deliberate introductions, and the extermination of natural predators of the raccoon have probably caused this increase in abundance and distribution.

Distribution outside North America

As a result of escapes and deliberate introductions in the mid-20th century, the raccoon is now distributed in several European and Asian countries. Sightings have occurred in all the countries bordering Germany, which hosts the largest population outside of North America. Another stable population exists in northern France, where several pet raccoons were released by members of the U.S. Air Force near the Laon-Couvron Air Base in 1966. Furthermore, raccoons have been known to be in the area around Madrid since the early 1970s. In 2013, the city authorized "the capture and death of any specimen". It is also present in Italy, with one self-sustaining population in Lombardy.

About 1,240 animals were released in nine regions of the former Soviet Union between 1936 and 1958 for the purpose of establishing a population to be hunted for their fur. Two of these introductions were successful – one in the south of Belarus between 1954 and 1958, and another in Azerbaijan between 1941 and 1957. With a seasonal harvest of between 1,000~1,500 animals, in 1974 the estimated size of the population distributed in the Caucasus region was around 20,000 animals and the density was four animals per square kilometer (10 animals per square mile).

Distribution in Japan
In Japan, up to 1,500 raccoons were imported as pets each year after the success of the anime series Rascal the Raccoon (1977). In 2004, the descendants of discarded or escaped animals lived in 42 of 47 prefectures. The range of raccoons in the wild in Japan grew from 17 prefectures in 2000 to all 47 prefectures in 2008. It is estimated that raccoons cause thirty million yen (~$275,000) of agricultural damage on Hokkaido alone.

Distribution in Germany
In Germany – where the raccoon is called the  (literally, 'wash-bear' or 'washing bear') due to its habit of "dousing" food in water – two pairs of pet raccoons were released into the German countryside at the Edersee reservoir in the north of Hesse in April 1934 by a forester upon request of their owner, a poultry farmer. He released them two weeks before receiving permission from the Prussian hunting office to "enrich the fauna". Several prior attempts to introduce raccoons in Germany had been unsuccessful. A second population was established in eastern Germany in 1945 when 25 raccoons escaped from a fur farm at Wolfshagen (today district of Altlandsberg), east of Berlin, after an air strike. The two populations are parasitologically distinguishable: 70% of the raccoons of the Hessian population are infected with the roundworm Baylisascaris procyonis, but none of the Brandenburgian population is known to have the parasite. In the Hessian region, there were an estimated 285 raccoons in 1956, which increased to over 20,000 in 1970; in 2008 there were between 200,000 and 400,000 raccoons in the whole of Germany. By 2012 it was estimated that Germany now had more than a million raccoons.

The raccoon was once a protected species in Germany, but has been declared a game animal in 14 of the 16 German states since 1954. Hunters and environmentalists argue the raccoon spreads uncontrollably, threatens protected bird species, and supersedes indigenous competitors. This view is opposed by the zoologist Frank-Uwe Michler, who finds no evidence that a high population density of raccoons leads to negative effects on the biodiversity of an area. Hohmann holds that extensive hunting cannot be justified by the absence of natural predators, because predation is not a significant cause of death in the North American raccoon population.

The raccoon is extensively hunted in Germany as it is seen as an invasive species and pest. In the 1990s, only about 400 raccoons were hunted yearly. This increased dramatically over the next quarter-century: during the 2015–2016 hunting season, 128,100 raccoons were hunted, 60 percent of them in the state of Hesse.

Distribution in the former Soviet Union
Experiments in acclimatising raccoons into the Soviet Union began in 1936, and were repeated a further 25 times until 1962. Overall, 1,222 individuals were released, 64 of which came from zoos and fur farms (38 of them having been imports from western Europe). The remainder originated from a population previously established in Transcaucasia. The range of Soviet raccoons was never single or continuous, as they were often introduced to different locations far from each other. All introductions into the Russian Far East failed; melanistic raccoons were released on Petrov Island near Vladivostok and some areas of southern Primorsky Krai, but died. In Middle Asia, raccoons were released in Kyrgyzstan's Jalal-Abad Province, though they were later recorded as "practically absent" there in January 1963. A large and stable raccoon population (yielding 1,000~1,500 catches a year) was established in Azerbaijan after an introduction to the area in 1937. Raccoons apparently survived an introduction near Terek, along the Sulak River into the Dagestani lowlands. Attempts to settle raccoons on the Kuban River's left tributary and Kabardino-Balkaria were unsuccessful. A successful acclimatization occurred in Belarus, where three introductions (consisting of 52, 37, and 38 individuals in 1954 and 1958) took place. By January 1963, 700 individuals were recorded in the country.

Urban raccoons

Due to its adaptability, the raccoon has been able to use urban areas as a habitat. The first sightings were recorded in a suburb of Cincinnati in the 1920s. Since the 1950s, raccoons have been present in metropolitan areas like Washington, DC, Chicago, Toronto, and New York City. Since the 1960s, Kassel has hosted Europe's first and densest population in a large urban area, with about 50 to 150 animals per square kilometer (130 to 390 animals per square mile), a figure comparable to those of urban habitats in North America. Home range sizes of urban raccoons are only 3 to 40 hectares (7.5 to 100 acres) for females and 8 to 80 hectares (20 to 200 acres) for males. In small towns and suburbs, many raccoons sleep in a nearby forest after foraging in the settlement area. Fruit and insects in gardens and leftovers in municipal waste are easily available food sources. Furthermore, a large number of additional sleeping areas exist in these areas, such as hollows in old garden trees, cottages, garages, abandoned houses, and attics. The percentage of urban raccoons sleeping in abandoned or occupied houses varies from 15% in Washington, DC (1991) to 43% in Kassel (2003).

Health

Raccoons can carry rabies, a lethal disease caused by the neurotropic rabies virus carried in the saliva and transmitted by bites. Its spread began in Florida and Georgia in the 1950s and was facilitated by the introduction of infected individuals to Virginia and North Dakota in the late 1970s. Of the 6,940 documented rabies cases reported in the United States in 2006, 2,615 (37.7%) were in raccoons. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, as well as local authorities in several U.S. states and Canadian provinces, has developed oral vaccination programs to fight the spread of the disease in endangered populations. Only one human fatality has been reported after transmission of the rabies virus strain commonly known as "raccoon rabies". Among the main symptoms for rabies in raccoons are a generally sickly appearance, impaired mobility, abnormal vocalization, and aggressiveness. There may be no visible signs at all, however, and most individuals do not show the aggressive behavior seen in infected canids; rabid raccoons will often retire to their dens instead. Organizations like the U.S. Forest Service encourage people to stay away from animals with unusual behavior or appearance, and to notify the proper authorities, such as an animal control officer from the local health department. Since healthy animals, especially nursing mothers, will occasionally forage during the day, daylight activity is not a reliable indicator of illness in raccoons.

Unlike rabies and at least a dozen other pathogens carried by raccoons, distemper, an epizootic virus, does not affect humans. This disease is the most frequent natural cause of death in the North American raccoon population and affects individuals of all age groups. For example, 94 of 145 raccoons died during an outbreak in Clifton, Ohio, in 1968. It may occur along with a following inflammation of the brain (encephalitis), causing the animal to display rabies-like symptoms. In Germany, the first eight cases of distemper were reported in 2007.

Some of the most important bacterial diseases which affect raccoons are leptospirosis, listeriosis, tetanus, and tularemia. Although internal parasites weaken their immune systems, well-fed individuals can carry a great many roundworms in their digestive tracts without showing symptoms. The larvae of the roundworm Baylisascaris procyonis, which can be contained in the feces and seldom causes a severe illness in humans, can be ingested when cleaning raccoon latrines without wearing breathing protection.

While not endemic, the worm Trichinella does infect raccoons, and undercooked raccoon meat has caused trichinosis in humans.

Trematode Metorchis conjunctus can also infect raccoons.

Relationship with humans

Conflicts
Raccoons have become notorious in urban areas for consuming food waste. They possess impressive problem-solving abilities and can break into all but the most secure food waste bins, which has earned them the derisive nickname trash panda. The presence of raccoons in close proximity to humans may be undesirable, as raccoon droppings (like most wild animals) contain parasites and other disease vectors. Raccoon roundworm is of particular concern to public health. It can be contracted in humans by accidental ingestion or inhalation of the eggs, which are present in the feces of infected raccoons. While usually harmless to the host, it causes progressive neurological damage in humans, and is eventually fatal if untreated. It is found in about 60% of adult raccoons. The general presence of raccoons in an area is not typically of concern, but nests or droppings found within or near structures should be destroyed. Roundworm eggs are very robust and bleach alone is insufficient; burning or treatment with hot solutions of sodium hydroxide is required. The keeping of raccoons as pets is illegal in some jurisdictions due to these risks.

The increasing number of raccoons in urban areas has resulted in diverse reactions in humans, ranging from outrage at their presence to deliberate feeding. Some wildlife experts and most public authorities caution against feeding wild animals because they might become increasingly obtrusive and dependent on humans as a food source. Other experts challenge such arguments and give advice on feeding raccoons and other wildlife in their books. Raccoons without a fear of humans are a concern to those who attribute this trait to rabies, but scientists point out this behavior is much more likely to be a behavioral adjustment to living in habitats with regular contact to humans for many generations. Raccoons usually do not prey on domestic cats and dogs, but isolated cases of killings have been reported. Attacks on pets may also target their owners.

While overturned waste containers and raided fruit trees are just a nuisance to homeowners, it can cost several thousand dollars to repair damage caused by the use of attic space as dens. Relocating or killing raccoons without a permit is forbidden in many urban areas on grounds of animal welfare. These methods usually only solve problems with particularly wild or aggressive individuals, since adequate dens are either known to several raccoons or will quickly be rediscovered. Loud noises, flashing lights, and unpleasant odors have proven particularly effective in driving away a mother and her kits before they would normally leave the nesting place (when the kits are about eight weeks old). Typically, though, only precautionary measures to restrict access to food waste and den sites are effective in the long term.

Among all fruits and crops cultivated in agricultural areas, sweet corn in its milk stage is particularly popular among raccoons. In a two-year study by Purdue University researchers, published in 2004, raccoons were responsible for 87% of the damage to corn plants. Like other predators, raccoons searching for food can break into poultry houses to feed on chickens, ducks, their eggs, or food.

Mythology, arts, and entertainment

In the mythology of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, the raccoon is the subject of folk tales. Stories such as "How raccoons catch so many crayfish" from the Tuscarora centered on its skills at foraging. In other tales, the raccoon played the role of the trickster which outsmarts other animals, like coyotes and wolves. Among others, the Dakota believe the raccoon has natural spirit powers, since its mask resembles the facial paintings, two-fingered swashes of black and white, used during rituals to connect to spirit beings. The Aztecs linked supernatural abilities especially to females, whose commitment to their young was associated with the role of wise women in their society.

The raccoon also appears in Native American art across a wide geographic range. Petroglyphs with engraved raccoon tracks were found in Lewis Canyon, Texas; at the Crow Hollow petroglyph site in Grayson County, Kentucky; and in river drainages near Tularosa, the San Francisco River of New Mexico and Arizona. The meaning and significance of the Raccoon Priests Gorget, which features a stylized carving of a raccoon and was found at the Spiro Mounds, Oklahoma, remains unknown.

Hunting and fur trade

The fur of raccoons is used for clothing, especially for coats and coonskin caps. At present, it is the material used for the inaccurately named "sealskin" cap worn by the Royal Fusiliers of Great Britain. Sporrans made of raccoon pelt and hide have sometimes been used as part of traditional Scottish highland men's apparel since the 18th century, especially in North America. Such sporrans may or may not be of the "full-mask" type. Historically, Native American tribes not only used the fur for winter clothing, but also used the tails for ornament. The famous Sioux leader Spotted Tail took his name from a raccoon skin hat with the tail attached he acquired from a fur trader. Since the late 18th century, various types of scent hounds, called coonhounds, which are able to tree animals have been bred in the United States. In the 19th century, when coonskins occasionally even served as means of payment, several thousand raccoons were killed each year in the United States. This number rose quickly when automobile coats became popular after the turn of the 20th century. In the 1920s, wearing a raccoon coat was regarded as status symbol among college students. Attempts to breed raccoons in fur farms in the 1920s and 1930s in North America and Europe turned out not to be profitable, and farming was abandoned after prices for long-haired pelts dropped in the 1940s. Although raccoons had become rare in the 1930s, at least 388,000 were killed during the hunting season of 1934–1935.

After persistent population increases began in the 1940s, the seasonal coon hunting harvest reached about one million animals in 1946–1947 and two million in 1962–1963. The broadcast of three television episodes about the frontiersman Davy Crockett and the film Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier in 1954 and 1955 led to a high demand for coonskin caps in the United States, although it is unlikely either Crockett or the actor who played him, Fess Parker, actually wore a cap made from raccoon fur. The seasonal hunt reached an all-time high with 5.2 million animals in 1976–1977 and ranged between 3.2 and 4.7 million for most of the 1980s. In 1982, the average pelt price was $20. As of 1987, the raccoon was identified as the most important wild furbearer in North America in terms of revenue. In the first half of the 1990s, the seasonal hunt dropped to 0.9 from 1.9 million due to decreasing pelt prices.

Food
While primarily hunted for their fur, raccoons were also a source of food for Native Americans and early American settlers. According to Ernest Thompson Seton, young specimens killed without a fight are palatable, whereas old raccoons caught after a lengthy battle are inedible. Raccoon meat was extensively eaten during the early years of California, where it was sold in the San Francisco market for $1–3 apiece. American slaves occasionally ate raccoon at Christmas, but it was not necessarily a dish of the poor or rural. The first edition of The Joy of Cooking, released in 1931, contained a recipe for preparing raccoon, and US President Calvin Coolidge's pet raccoon Rebecca was originally sent to be served at the White House Thanksgiving Dinner.

Although the idea of eating raccoons may seem repulsive to most mainstream consumers, who see them as endearing, cute, or vermin, several thousand raccoons are still eaten each year in the United States, primarily in the Southern United States. Some people tout the taste of the meat.

Other uses
In addition to the fur and meat, the raccoon baculum (penis bone) have had numerous traditional uses in the Southern United States and beyond.  Aboriginals used the bones as a pipe cleaning tool.  The bones were used by moonshine distillers to guide the flow of whiskey from the drip tube to the bottle.  With their tips filed down, the bones were used as toothpicks under the moniker "coon rods".  In hoodoo, the folk magic of the American South, the baculum is sometimes worn as an amulet for love or luck.  The bones also have decorative uses (e.g. on the trademark hat of stock car racer Richard Petty or as earrings by actresses Sarah Jessica Parker and Vanessa Williams).

Pet raccoons
Raccoons are sometimes kept as pets, which is discouraged by many experts because the raccoon is not a domesticated species. Raccoons may act unpredictably and aggressively and it is extremely difficult to teach them to obey commands. In places where keeping raccoons as pets is not forbidden, such as in Wisconsin and other U.S. states, an exotic pet permit may be required. One notable pet raccoon was Rebecca, kept by US president Calvin Coolidge.

Their propensity for unruly behavior exceeds that of captive skunks, and they are even less trustworthy when allowed to roam freely. Because of their intelligence and nimble forelimbs, even inexperienced raccoons are easily capable of unscrewing jars, uncorking bottles and opening door latches, with more experienced specimens having been recorded to open door knobs. Sexually mature raccoons often show aggressive natural behaviors such as biting during the mating season. Neutering them at around five or six months of age decreases the chances of aggressive behavior developing. Raccoons can become obese and suffer from other disorders due to poor diet and lack of exercise. When fed with cat food over a long time period, raccoons can develop gout. With respect to the research results regarding their social behavior, it is now required by law in Austria and Germany to keep at least two individuals to prevent loneliness. Raccoons are usually kept in a pen (indoor or outdoor), also a legal requirement in Austria and Germany, rather than in the apartment where their natural curiosity may result in damage to property.

When orphaned, it is possible for kits to be rehabilitated and reintroduced to the wild. However, it is uncertain whether they readapt well to life in the wild. Feeding unweaned kits with cow's milk rather than a kitten replacement milk or a similar product can be dangerous to their health.

Local and indigenous names

See also
 Cozumel raccoon, an endangered species in the Yucatán Peninsula
 Crab-eating raccoon, of Central and South America, eats crustaceans amongst other things
 Raccoon dog, native to East Asia

Explanatory notes

Citations

General and cited sources

External links
 Raccoon Tracks – general information about raccoons
 Raccoons – Living with Wildlife – information about dealing with urban raccoons from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife

 The Biology and Management of the Raccoon, c. 1970, Archives of Ontario YouTube Channel

Articles containing video clips
Mammals described in 1758
Mammals of Azerbaijan
Mammals of the Caribbean
Mammals of Central America
Mammals of Europe
Mammals of Japan
Mammals of North America
Procyonidae
Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus

Raccoon


John Donald Wade (September 28, 1892 – October 9, 1963) was an American biographer, author, essayist, and teacher.

Early life
Wade was born in Marshallville, Georgia.  His father was a country doctor who served as a surgeon in the Civil War.  Wade was descended from the first governor of Georgia, John Adam Treutlen.

Wade received his bachelor's degree from the University of Georgia in 1914.  While a student there, he was a member of the Phi Kappa Literary Society and was awarded Phi Beta Kappa.  Wade later earned a master's degree from Harvard University in 1915.  Since Harvard didn't have a concentration in American literature at that time, Wade completed his Doctorate at Columbia University in 1924, studying under Dr. Trent.  He served in World War I.

Career
Wade was a teacher at the University of Georgia between 1919 and 1926 where he was a key founder of the graduate program in American literature.

Wade developed an interest in biography and published Augustus Baldwin Longstreet: A Study in the Development of Culture in the South in 1925 and published a biography of Methodist Church leader John Wesley in 1930.  His research for his Wesley biography was financed by a Guggenheim grant and took him to England to gather information.  Wade researched and wrote 116 biographical sketches for the Dictionary of American Biography and served as an assistant editor for that work in 1927 and 1928.

By 1930 Wade was teaching at Vanderbilt University as a member of the English faculty and became involved with the Southern Agrarians.  Wade is probably best remembered for his contribution to the Agrarian manifesto I'll Take My Stand, which was named by Wade and published that year.  His contribution to the manifesto was "The Live and Death of Cousin Lucius," an exemplum of the Agrarian life.  He also contributed to the Agrarian follow-up to "I"ll Take My Stand" with his essay "Of the Mean and Sure Estate."

He returned to the University of Georgia to be the head of the Department of Language and Literature, a position he held for many years.

In the 1930s and 1940s Wade wrote critical essays on Southern culture and biographical sketches of Southern literary and political figures that were published in learned journals such as the Virginia Quarterly.  He also continued to support his agrarian ideals in his writing.

In 1941 he co-edited Masterworks of World Literature.  In 1950 he retired from active teaching but continued to work as founding editor of The Georgia Review and was active in his local community, forming the Marshallville Foundation to foster his home town.  He became a horticulturist and planted many gardens with plants from all over the world.

Death
Wade died on October 9, 1963, in Marshallville.

External links
 John Donald Wade at New Georgia Encyclopedia

20th-century American biographers
American book editors
Writers from Georgia (U.S. state)
University of Georgia faculty
Vanderbilt University faculty
University of Georgia alumni
Harvard University alumni
Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
Southern Agrarians
1892 births
1963 deaths
People from Macon County, Georgia
Writers of American Southern literature

John Donald Wade


"Avant-Garde and Kitsch" is the title of a 1939 essay by Clement Greenberg, first published in the Partisan Review, in which he claimed that avant-garde and modernist art was a means to resist the "dumbing down" of culture caused by consumerism.

The term "kitsch" came into use in the 1860s or 1870s in Germany's street markets, and referred to pictures that were cheap, popular, and marketable. Greenberg considers kitsch to be "ersatz culture," a simulacrum of high culture that adopts many of its exterior trappings but none of its subtleties.

Key ideas
Greenberg believed that the avant-garde arose in order to defend aesthetic standards from the decline of taste perpetuated by the mass-production of consumer society, and saw kitsch and art as opposites.

One of his more controversial claims was that kitsch was equivalent to Academic art: "All kitsch is academic, and conversely, all that is academic is kitsch." He argued this based on the fact that Academic art, such as that in the 19th century, was heavily centered in rules and formulations that were taught and tried to make art into something learnable and easily expressible. He later came to withdraw from his position of equating the two, as it became heavily criticized.

Sources
 Greenberg, Clement. Art and Culture. Beacon Press, 1961
 Greenberg, Clement. Homemade Esthetics: Observations on Art and Taste. Oxford University Press, 1999.
 Rubenfeld, Florence. Clement Greenberg: A Life. Scribner, 1997.

References

External links
 "Avant-Garde and Kitsch"

Aesthetics literature
1939 essays
Works originally published in Partisan Review
Works about avant-garde and experimental art

Avant-Garde and Kitsch


Borghild Bondevik Haga (8 December 1906 – 12 April 1990) was a Norwegian politician for the Liberal Party.

She was born in Austre Moland as a daughter of teacher Nils Bondevik (1874–1961) and Kari Hauge (1867–1958). She was a sister of Ottar and Gunnar Bondevik, first cousin of Johannes and Kjell Bondevik, and through that part of the family a first cousin once removed of Odd and Kjell Magne Bondevik.

She finished her secondary education in 1929. After a period as secretary for the YWCA in Kristiansand she became a farmer's wife in 1935. Haga was a member of Brunlanes municipal council from 1959 to 1965. She has been a member of the school board from 1940 to 1954 (chairing it the last four years) and the county school board from 1968 to 1975 (chairing it the last three years).

She was elected to the Parliament of Norway from Vestfold in 1965. She served as a member of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and the Election Committee, but was not re-elected in 1969.

She chaired Norges Husflidslag from 1968 to 1974. She also held regional board memberships in the YWCA, the Norges Bondekvinnelag and the Norwegian Missionary Society.

References

1906 births
1990 deaths
Politicians from Arendal
Politicians from Larvik
Members of the Storting
Vestfold politicians
Liberal Party (Norway) politicians
Women members of the Storting
Norwegian farmers
Norwegian Lutherans
20th-century Norwegian women politicians
20th-century Norwegian politicians
20th-century Lutherans
20th-century farmers
20th-century women farmers

Borghild Bondevik Haga


Eidsvoll (; sometimes written as Eidsvold) is a municipality in Akershus in Viken county, Norway.  It is part of the Romerike traditional region.  The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Sundet.

General information

Etymology
The first element is the genitive case of the word eid (Old Norse: eið) and the last element is voll (Old Norse: vǫllr) which means "meadow" or "field". The meaning of the word eid in this case is "a road passing around a waterfall". People from the districts around the lake (Mjøsa) who were sailing down the river Vorma, and people from Romerike sailing up the same river, both had to enter this area by passing the Sundfossen waterfall. Because of this, the site became an important meeting place long before the introduction of Christianity. Prior to 1918, the name was spelled "Eidsvold". The town of Eidsvold in Queensland, Australia and Eidsvold Township, Lyon County, Minnesota, United States still use this old spelling.

Eidsvoll Church
Eidsvoll Church (Eidsvoll Kirke) is a cruciform church from approx 1200. It is part of the Norwegian Church and belongs to Øvre Romerike deanery in the Diocese of Borg. The Romanesque building is in stone.  Eidsvoll church is repeatedly burned and rebuilt. The old church records were lost in a fire. The altarpiece in Eidsvoll church is from 1765. It is a wooden structure with three floors, decreasing towards the top, where each floor concludes with gilded pilasters with capitals and rococo decor on each side of a painting. The altarpiece was restored after a fire in 1883, the next restoration occurred in 1915 and a third restoration occurred late 1960s. Access to the church is a well traveled tourist destination is via Rv181 and Fv502 / Rv177. Pilegrimsleden goes through Eidsvoll. Eidsvoll church is one of the more prominent stops along the path, which was officially opened on 16 June 2002.

Coat-of-arms
The coat-of-arms is from modern times.  They were granted on 20 November 1987.  The arms show a balance as a symbol of justice. In the early Middle Ages a local court was established in Eidsvoll.

History
The parish of Eidsvold was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838 (see formannskapsdistrikt). The municipality of Feiring was merged with Eidsvoll on 1 January 1964.

Eidsvoll is mentioned in Old Norse manuscripts. In the 11th century, it became the site of court and assembly (ting) for eastern parts of Norway, replacing Vang, now a part of Hamar in Hedmark.  Because of its access to the river Vorma and the lake Mjøsa, Eidsvoll has long provided a thoroughfare to northern parts of inland Norway.  Historically  the main industry of Eidsvoll was agriculture, though the soil is rich in clay. Eastern parts of Eidsvoll were for a short time the site of a minor gold rush when gold was found in 1758, and these areas are still known as Gullverket.

Eidsvoll Verk was opened to smelt iron ore by King Christian IV of Denmark in 1624, relying on the excellent water power from the Andelva river. In 1688, it was owned by the director of the Kongsberg Silver Mines, Schlanbusch, and remained in his family until 1781. Carsten Anker came into possession of works in 1794, at which time it was in decay since many of the surrounding forests required for charcoal had been depleted.  He restored it and set up the production of stoves and similar iron goods. He also took residence in Eidsvoll in 1811, rebuilding  the manor house which is now the Eidsvollsbygningen, the site where the constitutional assembly met to draft and sign the Constitution of Norway on 17 May 1814. Eidsvollsbygningen  is today a famous museum.

In 1854, Eidsvoll became the end point for the first railroad line in Norway from Oslo.  This became the transit point for travel with the steamship Skibladner to Hamar, Gjøvik, and Lillehammer on the lake Mjøsa. In addition to the historic Eidsvoll Church, Eidsvoll is the site of the Langset Church (Langset kirke) which dates to 1859  and the Feiring Church (Feiring Kirke) which dates to 1875.

Eidsvoll gallery

Geography
Eidsvoll municipality is bordered on the north by Østre Toten (in Oppland county on the west side of Mjøsa) and by Stange (on the east side of the lake) and to the east by Nord-Odal (both in Hedmark county). In the county of Akershus to the southeast lies Nes, to the south lies Ullensaker, and to the west lies Nannestad and Hurdal.

In addition to being a commuter town for Oslo, it also has agriculture and forestry industries. The main population and commercial centres are Sundet and Råholt.

Notable residents

 Henrik Wergeland (1808–1845) poet, writer and playwright; brought up in Eidsvoll; son of Professor Nicolai Wergeland (1780–1848)
 Alf Collett (1844–1919) a Norwegian writer, genealogist and historian
 Hans Langseth (1846–1927) Norwegian-American world record holder for the longest beard
 Cecilie Thoresen Krog (1858–1911) feminist pioneer, first female university student in Norway
 Fredrikke Waaler (1865-1952) composer, violinist and proponent for women's rights
 Maja Flagstad (1871–1958) a pianist, choral conductor and répétiteur
 F. Melius Christiansen (1871–1955) Lutheran choral conductor in Marinette, Wisconsin
 Arne Ekeland (1908–1994), artist, lived and worked in Bøn his entire life
 Ola Skjåk Bræk (1912–1999), minister of industry, born and raised in Eidsvoll
 Per Gjestvang (1915-2002) a veterinarian, resistance member, military officer and politician
 Dagmar Lahlum (1923–1999), resistance worker in WWII , fiancée of Eddie Chapman
 Åsmund Lønning Strømnes (1927–2009), professor of education; lived in Eidsvoll
 Leif Johansen (1930-1982) an economist and professor
 Sivert Donali (1931–2010) a Norwegian sculptor, lived in Feiring from 1973
 Drude Berntsen (born 1939) a computer scientist, director of Norwegian Computing Center
 Kari Hag (born 1941) mathematician, researched complex analysis on quasicircles
 Siv Stubsveen (born 1968) a Norwegian model, saleswoman and media personality
 Stian Carstensen (born 1971) a multi-instrument jazz musician, member of Farmers market
 Jan Gunnar Røise (born 1975) a Norwegian theatre and film actor
 Stella Mwangi (born 1986) a Kenyan-Norwegian singer, musician, songwriter and rapper.
 Alexandra Rotan (born 1996) a singer for Norway in the Eurovision Song Contest 2019

Sport
 Tormod Knutsen (born 1932) a retired Nordic combined skier, silver and gold medallist at the 1960 & 1964 Winter Olympics
 Ole Einar Martinsen (born 1967) a retired footballer with 300 club caps and two with Norway
 Henning Berg (born 1969) a football manager and former player with 422 club caps and 100 with Norway
 Espen Aarnes Hvammen (born 1988) a Norwegian champion speed skater
 Henrik Furuseth (born 1996) a Norwegian racing driver

Sister cities
The following cities are twinned with Eidsvoll:
  - Egilsstaðir, Iceland
  - Skara, Västra Götaland County, Sweden
  - Sorø, Region Sjælland, Denmark
  - Suolahti, Länsi-Suomi, Finland

References

External links

Municipal fact sheet from Statistics Norway

Eidsvollbygningen museum

Municipalities of Akershus
Municipalities of Viken (county)
Constitution of Norway

Eidsvoll


John Donald Carrick (1787–1837) was a Scottish journalist and songwriter.

Life
Carrick was born in Glasgow in April 1787; his father was originally from Buchlyvie in Stirlingshire. He was placed in the office of Nicholson, a Glasgow architect, while still young, leaving about 1805 for a clerkship in a counting-house. In 1807 he ran away, and walked to London, where a Scottish tradesman gave him a trial as shopboy.

In 1809 Carrick found work with Spode & Co., potters in Staffordshire, who had warehouses in London; and he acquired sufficient knowledge of the business to return to Glasgow, 1811, and set up shop in Hutcheson Street. In 1825 prolonged litigation led to his insolvency. As agent to manufacturers he visited the Highlands, and acquired the Gaelic language.

On returning to Glasgow in 1828 Carrick was engaged as sub-editor of the Scots Times. In 1833 he accepted the editorship of the Perth Advertiser, but quarrelled with the managing committee in a year, and in February 1834 started the Kilmarnock Journal. He again fell out with the proprietors, and was attacked by paralysis of the mouth; in 1835 he returned to Glasgow, in bad health.

Carrick died 17 August 1837, aged 50.

Works
In Glasgow Carrick took to writing, producing several humorous Scotch songs, and a Life of Wallace for the young. Later he contributed articles to The Day, a Glasgow daily paper which lasted only six months; and published 1830, his extended Life of Sir William Wallace of Elderslie, 2 vols. (vols. liii. and liv. of Constable's Miscellany). In 1832 he edited and partly wrote Whistle-Binkie, or the Piper of the Party, a collection of humorous songs.

Carrick edited and contributed to the Laird of Logan a collection of Scotch tales and witticism, which appeared in 1835. From Rothesay he contributed some papers to the Scottish Monthly Magazine, and announced a new work, Tales of the Bannock Men.   He left in manuscript Logan House, or the Laird at Home, a comedy. A new edition of the Laird of Logan, accompanied by an anonymous "Biographical Sketch". came out in 1841. Whistle-Binkie appeared in numerous issues.

Notes

Attribution

External links

1787 births
1837 deaths
Journalists from Glasgow
Scottish male songwriters

John Donald Carrick


The Rylands Papyri are a collection of thousands of papyrus fragments and documents from North Africa and Greece housed at the John Rylands University Library, Manchester, UK. The collection includes the Rylands Library Papyrus P52, also known as the "St John's fragment", a fragment from a papyrus codex, generally accepted as the earliest extant record of a Canonical gospel.

The collection
The Rylands Papyri collection held by the John Rylands University Library, is one of the most extensive and wide-ranging papyrus manuscript collections in the United Kingdom. It includes religious, devotional, literary and administrative texts. The collection includes 7 hieroglyphic and 19 hieratic papyri which are funerary documents dating from the 14th century BCE to the 2nd century CE. It also holds 166 demotic papyri, mostly dating from the Ptolemaic period, including the famous Petition of Petiese (pRylands 9) from the reign of Darius I of Persia.

The collection also houses about 500 Coptic papyri, and around 800 Arabic papyri consisting of private letters, together with tradesmen's and household accounts. Among the roughly 2,000 Greek papyri are the famous fragments of the Gospel of John and Deuteronomy, the earliest surviving fragments of the New Testament and the Septuagint (Papyrus 957, the Rylands Papyrus iii.458) respectively; Papyrus 31, a fragment of a papyrus manuscript of the Epistle to the Romans; and Papyrus 32, a fragment of the Epistle to Titus. Also held in the collection is Papyrus Rylands 463, a copy of the apocryphal Gospel of Mary in Greek, and John Rylands Papyrus 470, a prayer in Koine Greek to the Theotokos, written about 250 CE in brown ink, the earliest known copy of such a prayer. It was acquired by the Library in 1917.

Volumes
 . (P.Ryl.Copt.)
 . (P.Ryl.Dem.)
 Volume I: Atlas of Facsimiles.
 Volume II: Hand-copies of the earlier documents.
 Volume III: Key-list, Translations, Commentaries and Indices.
 . (P.Ryl. I)
 . (P.Ryl. II)
  (P.Ryl. III)
 . (P.Ryl. IV)

See also
John Rylands Library
 P.Ryl. I 4 (p4 on the list Gregory-Aland) — fragment of the Epistle to the Romans in Greek;
 P. Ryl. I 5 (p5 on the list Gregory-Aland) — fragment of the Epistle to Titus in Greek;
 P.Ryl. III 457 (p52 on the list Gregory-Aland) — fragment of the Gospel of John in Greek; 2nd century;
 P.Ryl. III 458 — fragments of the Book of Deuteronomy in Greek; 2nd century BC;
 P.Ryl. III 463 — Greek manuscript of the apocryphal Gospel of Mary; 3rd century

Notes

External links
The Rylands Papyri on the John Rylands University Library website
An Arabic Papyrus From The John Rylands Library, 65 AH / 684-685 CE
Petition by Pediese, a priest of Amen serving during the reign of Darius I

2nd-millennium BC manuscripts
1st-millennium BC manuscripts
1st-century manuscripts
2nd-century manuscripts
3rd-century biblical manuscripts
New Testament papyri
Biblical manuscripts
Papyri from ancient Egypt
University of Manchester
Egyptian inscriptions
Arabic inscriptions
Roman-era Greek inscriptions

Rylands Papyri


Abdelbaki Sahraoui () was a co-founder of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in Algeria.

He was born in 1910 in Constantine, Algeria.  In 1926, he joined the circle of Sheikh Mubarak el-Mili.  Five years later, he was conscripted by the French army, where he spent two years.  He then moved to Algiers, where he was involved with the Muslim Scholars' Society. In 1990, he helped found the FIS; after the Algerian Civil War began, he fled to Paris, from which he preached in favor of armed struggle—jihad—against the Algerian government. However, he opposed the extension of the jihad to France, and was assassinated because of this in Paris, on 11 July 1995, by the Armed Islamic Group. His death was followed by a series of bombings in France.

References

Sources
 Interview

1910 births
1995 deaths
People from Constantine, Algeria
Islamic terrorism in France
Terrorism deaths in France
Algerian Islamists
Assassinations in France

Abdelbaki Sahraoui


The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), also known as Congo-Kinshasa and formerly known as Zaire, be sam country for Central Africa. By land area, de DRC be sam second-largest country for Africa, after Algeria, den de 11th-largest for de world inside. plus sam  population of around 112 million, de Democratic Republic of de Congo be de most populous officially Francophone country for de de world inside.

Democratic Republic of the Congo


Science fiction in Spanish-language literature has its roots in authors such as Antonio de Guevara with The Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius (1527), Miguel de Cervantes in Don Quixote, Anastasio Pantaleón de Ribera's Vejamen de la luna (Satirical tract on the Moon, 1626/1634), Luis Vélez de Guevara's El Diablo Cojuelo (The Limping Devil, 1641) and Antonio Enríquez Gómez's La torre de Babilonia (The Tower of Babylon).

In the 20th century, magazines such as Nueva Dimensión and Narraciones Terroríficas (the Spanish-language version of Weird Tales) popularized science fiction among Spanish speakers worldwide.

History

Spanish science fiction starts mid 19th century; depending on how it is defined, Lunigrafía (1855) from  M. Krotse or Una temporada en el más bello de los planetas from Tirso Aguimana de Veca — a trip to Saturn published in 1870-1871, but written in the 1840s — is the first science fiction novel. As such, science fiction was very popular in the second half of the 19th century, but mainly produced alternate history and post-apocalyptic futures, written by some of the most important authors of the generations of '98 and  '14. The influence of Verne also produced some singular works, like Enrique Gaspar y Rimbau's El anacronópete (1887), a
story about time travel that predates the publication of The Chronic Argonauts by H. G. Wells; Rafael Zamora y Pérez de Urría's Crímenes literarios (1906), that describes robots and a "brain machine" very similar to our modern laptops; or Frederich Pujulà i Vallès' Homes artificials (1912), the first Science Fiction book in Catalan, and the first in Spain about "artificial people". But the most prolific were Coronel Ignotus, and Coronel Sirius, who published their adventures in the magazine Biblioteca Novelesco-Científica. The 19th century literature up to the Spanish Civil War saw no less than four fictional trips to the Moon, one to Venus, five to Mars, one to Jupiter, and one to Saturn.

The Spanish Civil War devastated this rich literary landscape. With few exceptions, only the arrival of pulp science fiction in the 1950s would reintroduce the genre in Spanish literature. The space opera series La Saga de los Aznar (1953-1958 and 1973-1978) by Pascual Enguídanos won the Hugo Award in 1978. Also in the 1950s started the radio serial for children Diego Valor; inspired by Dan Dare, the serial produced 1200 episodes of 15 min., and spun a comic (1954-1964), three theater plays (1956-1959) and the first Spanish Science Fiction TV series (1958), that has been lost.

Modern, prospective, self-aware science fiction crystallized in the 1970s around the magazine Nueva Dimensión (1968-1983), and its editor Domingo Santos, one of the most important Spanish Science Fiction authors of the time. Other important authors of the 70s and 80s are Manuel de Pedrolo (Mecanoscrit del segon origen, 1974), Carlos Saiz Cidoncha (La caída del Imperio galáctico, 1978), Rafael Marín (Lágrimas de luz, 1984), and Juan Miguel Aguilera (the Akasa-Puspa saga, 1988-2005). In the 1990s the genre exploded with the creation many small dedicated fanzines, important Science Fiction prizes, and the convention HispaCon; Elia Barceló (El mundo de Yarek, 1992), became the most prolific, and possibly the best Science Fiction author from Spain. Other recent authors are Eduardo Vaquerizo (Danza de tinieblas, 2005), Félix J. Palma (The Victorian trilogy, 2008-2014), and Carlos Sisí (Panteón, 2013).

Spain has been continuously producing Science Fiction films since the 1960s, at a rate of 5 to 10 per decade. The 1970s was specially prolific; the director, and screenwriter Juan Piquer Simón is the most important figure of fantaterror, producing a few low budget Science Fiction films. La cabina (1972) is the most awarded Spanish TV production in history. In the 90s Acción mutante (1992) by Álex de la Iglesia, and Abre los ojos (1997) by Alejandro Amenábar, represent a watershed in Spanish Science Fiction filming, with a quality that would not be reached again until Los cronocrímenes (2007) by Nacho Vigalondo. The most important Science Fiction TV series produced in Spain is El ministerio del tiempo (2015-), even though Mañana puede ser verdad (1964-1964) by Chicho Ibáñez Serrador, and Plutón BRB Nero (2008-2009), should also be mentioned.

See also
 Ciencia ficción española Spanish Wikipedia page for Spanish science fiction in Spain.

References

External links
 20minutos Newspaper List: Science Fiction Books in Spanish
 Sci-Fi Books in Spanish
 Spain in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
 Pulp SciFi List about Latin and Spanish Science Fiction
 Novelas de ciencia ficción en español at the National Library of Spain.

Science fiction

Spanish science fiction


Chelsi Mariam Pearl Smith (August 23, 1973 – September 8, 2018) was an American actress, singer, television host and beauty queen who was crowned Miss USA 1995 and Miss Universe 1995. Smith was the third Miss USA of African-American origin, after Carole Gist (1990) and Kenya Moore (1993), in addition to being the sixth American woman to win Miss Universe and the first since Shawn Weatherly was crowned Miss Universe 1980.

Early life
Smith was born in Redwood City, California, to 19-year-old parents Craig Smith, an African-American maintenance man, and Mary Denise Trimble, a white American secretary. Her parents divorced before she was two, and her mother, an alcoholic at the time, granted Smith's maternal grandparents Barnie and Jeanette custody of her.

When Smith was seven years old, she moved with her grandparents to Kingwood, Texas, where they would later get divorced as well, causing Smith to grow up in a divided home while she attended high school in Deer Park. Prior to her win at Miss USA, she was a sophomore majoring in education at San Jacinto College.

Pageantry

Miss Texas USA
Smith competed in her first major beauty contest in 1994, when she was a semifinalist in the Miss Texas USA pageant, as Miss South East Texas USA. The following year, she competed again as Miss Galveston County USA, and won the title, as well as the Miss Congeniality award. Smith, a multiracial American, was the first titleholder of African-American heritage in the pageant's history.

Miss USA
Smith went on to compete in the 1995 Miss USA pageant on February 10, 1995. During the final telecast, Smith obtained the highest average preliminary score and entering the semifinals in first place, becoming the fourth consecutive woman from her state to make the semifinals. She became a semifinalist, and advanced to the top six in first place. The next two rounds of competition: the Top 6 judges' questions and the Top 3 final question.

When asked how she, as an advisor, would change the First Lady's image if asked for a consultation, Smith replied: "I would tell her not to change her image, actually. I believe very strongly in who I am, and I've seen 50 ladies tonight who believe very strongly in who they are, and I really think that she wouldn't have made it as far as she has if she wouldn't have been herself, so I really truly think she should stay exactly the way she is." She became the seventh woman from her state to hold the Miss USA title and also won the Miss Congeniality award as she had at her state pageant, becoming the only Miss USA winner and Miss Texas USA in history to win this award.

After her crowning, Smith was a celebrity contestant on Wheel of Fortune and an award presenter at the People's Choice Awards.

Miss Universe
After becoming Miss USA, Smith traveled to Windhoek, Namibia, to compete in the 1995 Miss Universe pageant, broadcast live from Windhoek Country Club on May 12, 1995. She was again the highest placed contestant after the preliminary competition, which propelled her into the top ten. Once again, Smith was among the final 3 contestants and went on to win the title ahead of first runner-up Manpreet Brar of India, becoming the first Miss USA and sixth representative to capture the Miss Universe crown in 15 years. At the end of her reign, she crowned Alicia Machado of Venezuela as her successor.

Life after Miss Universe
As a model, Smith worked for Hawaiian Tropic, Jantzen, Pontiac, Venus Swimwear, and Pure Protein among others. She made appearances on Martin, Due South and the TLC documentary The History of the Bathing Suit.

With the support of Music World Entertainment/Sony, Smith co-wrote and recorded with producer Damon Elliott her first single, "Dom Da Da", part of the soundtrack for The Sweetest Thing, starring Cameron Diaz. In 2003, she acted in the independent film Playas Ball, where she co-starred with Allen Payne and Elise Neal. She also co-hosted Beyoncé Knowles' special Beyonce: Family and Friends Tour on pay-per-view and appeared on HBO in Saladin Patterson's short film One Flight Stand with Marc Blucas and Aisha Tyler. She was a judge at the 2006 Miss Teen USA pageant and a guest judge for the Miss Peru 2016 beauty pageant.

In 2011, she was presented the Influential Multiracial Public Figure award.

Smith married fitness coach Kelly Blair after her reign as Miss Universe and moved to Los Angeles. They later divorced.

Death
Smith was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2017. Growing increasingly weak throughout 2018, she traveled to her mother's home in Mifflin, Pennsylvania, and she died there at the age of 45 on September 8, 2018.

References

External links
 Official Miss Universe website - Past titleholders

Place of death missing
1973 births
2018 deaths
African-American actresses
20th-century African-American women singers
American female models
American film actresses
Deaths from liver cancer
Miss Universe 1995 contestants
Miss Universe winners
Miss USA 1995 delegates
Miss USA winners
People from Kingwood, Texas
People from Redwood City, California
Deaths from cancer in Pennsylvania
African-American beauty pageant winners
20th-century American people
21st-century African-American people
21st-century African-American women

Chelsi Smith


"Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)" is a show tune composed by Irving Berlin for the 1946 Broadway musical Annie Get Your Gun. The song is a duet, with one male singer and one female singer attempting to outdo each other in increasingly complex tasks.

In the musical, the song sets the scene for the climactic sharpshooting contest between Annie Oakley and Frank Butler. Its most memorable lines are, "Anything you can do, I can do better; I can do anything better than you." The song was first performed in Annie Get Your Gun by Ethel Merman and Ray Middleton.

During the song, they argue playfully about who can, for example, sing softer, sing higher, sing sweeter, and hold a note for longer, and boast of their abilities and accomplishments, such as opening safes and living on bread and cheese, although Annie almost always seems to counter Frank's argument. Neither can "bake a pie," though.

Notable versions
 Ethel Merman and Ray Middleton from original cast recording (1946).
 Bing Crosby, Dick Haymes and The Andrews Sisters—recorded for Decca Records on March 19, 1947.
 Groucho Marx and his daughter Melinda Marx (a child at the time) in home movie footage used for select TV specials.
 Ethel Merman and Howard Keel (1950)
 Betty Hutton and Howard Keel in the 1950 film version of the musical
 Mary Martin and John Raitt on the 1957 National Tour recording
 Doris Day and Robert Goulet for the Columbia Records album Annie Get Your Gun (1963)
 In 1963, Heidi Brühl and Robert Trehy performed a German version in the stage version of this musical at the Theater des Westens in Berlin.
 Ethel Merman and Bruce Yarnell in the 1966 revival recording.
 Dusty Springfield and Freddie Paris on Bandstand (1967).
 Robert Morse and an office computer in 1968 TV series That's Life, episode S1E11 "Bobby's Pink Slip"
 Two dogs in The Goodies episode "Kitten Kong" (1971).
 Barbara Walters and Howard Cosell on Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell in 1975 debating who interviews people better.
 Ethel Merman and Miss Piggy (1976) in The Muppet Show, episode 1.22
 In 1977, Tina Arena and John Bowles recorded a version for their album Tiny Tina and Little John.
 In 1990, Kidsongs released Ride the Roller Coaster, which contained a version of this song, where they play various arcade games at the Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement park.
 Fran Drescher and Madeline Zima (1994) in The Nanny, episode S1E22 "I Don't Remember Mama"
 Michael Jordan and Mia Hamm, Gatorade "Michael vs. Mia" commercial (1999), performed by Sophia Ramos
 Bernadette Peters and Tom Wopat in the 1999 Broadway revival version of the musical
 Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso in a 2007 Mercedes-Benz commercial with Mika Häkkinen performing the last line.
 Blaire Elbert and Madeline Powell Cactus Cuties, performed at Cactus Theater in Texas in 2008.
 American rapper J. Cole used the "Anything you can do" line in his 2010 single "Who Dat".
 Lindsay Pearce sang a mashup of "Anything Goes"/"Anything You Can Do" in the Glee 2011 third-season premiere, "The Purple Piano Project".
 Dirty Rice sampled the opening lines of the song in the 116 Clique song "Envy", from the 2011 album Man Up by the 116 Clique.
Laura Osnes and Jeremy Jordan live at Cafe Carlyle in 2012
 Internet comedy personalities Smosh performed a parody of the song in 2014 titled "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Dumber", as a tie-in to promote the film Dumb and Dumber To.
 Julianne Hough and Derek Hough on their Move Live on Tour in 2014.
 Dame Shirley Bassey performed this song with the group Blake on the 2016 TV Special titled David Walliams Celebrates Dame Shirley Bassey.
 Barbra Streisand and Melissa McCarthy perform the duet as part of Streisand's 2016 album Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway, with altered lyrics.
 AP-5 and Chopper on the Star Wars Rebels 2017 episode "Double Agent Droid," argue about their capabilities using lines from the song.
 Darci Lynne and Terry Fator with their two puppets, Petunia and Winston on the finale of season 12 of America's Got Talent.
 Abby Wambach and Usain Bolt in a 2021 Gatorade commercial, also featuring Michael Jordan and Mia Hamm at the end in a reference to a 1999 commercial featuring Jordan and Hamm.

Other recorded versions
 Ethel Merman and Neilson Taylor (1973)
 Judy Garland and Howard Keel (Pre-Production of film Annie Get Your Gun)
 The Majors
 Von Trapp Children (song is on their Live in Concert DVD)
 Jim McNaught (1964)

Variants
 Peter Tosh: "I'm the Toughest"
 Neil Patrick Harris and Hugh Jackman: Live performance, 2011 Tony Awards

References

Songs from Annie Get Your Gun
Songs written by Irving Berlin
1946 songs
Doris Day songs
Male–female vocal duets
The Muppets songs
Songs with feminist themes

Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)


Maurice Le Guilloux (born 14 May 1950) is a French former racing cyclist. He rode in eleven Grand Tours between 1975 and 1984. He spent much of his career as a domestique for fellow Breton cyclist Bernard Hinault and subsequently became a directeur sportif at La Vie Claire. However Le Guilloux and Hinault's friendship was damaged by the events of the 1986 Tour de France, where Le Guilloux was the directeur sportif responsible for Hinault's rival and team-mate at La Vie Claire, Greg LeMond.

References

External links

1950 births
Living people
French male cyclists
Sportspeople from Côtes-d'Armor
Cyclists from Brittany

Maurice Le Guilloux


Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson (; or de Roucy), also known as Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson or simply Girodet (29 January 17679 December 1824), was a French painter and pupil of Jacques-Louis David, who participated in the early Romantic movement by including elements of eroticism in his paintings. Girodet is remembered for his precise and clear style and for his paintings of members of the Napoleonic family.

Early career
Girodet was born at Montargis. Both of his parents died when he was a young adult. The care of his inheritance and education fell to his guardian, a prominent physician named Benoît-François Trioson, "médecin-de-mesdames", who later adopted him. The two men remained close throughout their lives and Girodet took the surname Trioson in 1812. In school he first studied architecture and pursued a military career. He changed to the study of painting under a teacher named Luquin and then entered the school of Jacques-Louis David. At the age of 22 he successfully competed for the Prix de Rome with a painting of the Story of Joseph and his Brethren. From 1789 to 1793 he lived in Italy and while in Rome he painted his Hippocrate refusant les presents d'Artaxerxes and Endymion-dormant (now in the Louvre), a work which gained him great acclaim at the Salon of 1793 and secured his reputation as a leading painter in the French school.

Once he returned to France, Girodet painted many portraits, including some of members of the Bonaparte family. In 1806, in competition with the Sabines of David, he exhibited his Scène de déluge (Louvre), which was awarded the decennial prize. In 1808 he produced the Reddition de Vienne and Atala au tombeau, a work which won immense popularity, by its fortunate choice of subject – François-René de Chateaubriand's novel Atala, first published in 1801 – and its remarkable departure from the theatricality of Girodet's usual manner. He would return to his theatrical style in La Révolte du Caire (1810).

Later life

Girodet was a member of the Academy of Painting and of the Institut de France, a knight of the Order of Saint Michael, and officer of the Legion of Honour. Among his pupils were Hyacinthe Aubry-Lecomte, Augustin Van den Berghe the Younger, François Edouard Bertin, Angélique Bouillet, Alexandre-Marie Colin, Marie Philippe Coupin de la Couperie, Henri Decaisne, Paul-Emile Destouches, Achille Devéria, Eugène Devéria, Savinien Edme Dubourjal, Joseph Ferdinand Lancrenon, Antonin Marie Moine, Jean Jacques François Monanteuil, Henry Bonaventure Monnier, Rosalie Renaudin, Johann Heinrich Richter, François Edme Ricois, Joseph Nicolas Robert-Fleury, and Philippe Jacques Van Brée.

In his forties his powers began to fail, and his habit of working at night and other excesses weakened his constitution. In the Salon of 1812 he exhibited only a Tête de Vierge; in 1819 Pygmalion et Galatée showed a further decline of strength. In 1824, the year in which he produced his portraits of Cathelineau and Bonchamps, Girodet died on December 9 in Paris. At a sale of his effects after his death, some of his drawings realized enormous prices.

Posthumously published work

Girodet produced a vast quantity of illustrations, amongst which may be cited those for the Didot editions of the works of Virgil (1798) and Racine (1801–1805). Fifty-four of his designs for the works of the ancient Greek poet Anacreon were engraved by M.  Châtillon. Girodet used much of his time on literary composition. His poem Le Peintre (rather a string of commonplaces), together with poor imitations of classical poets, and essays on Le Génie and La Grâce, were published posthumously in 1829, with a biographical notice by his friend Coupin de la Couperie. Delecluze, in his Louis David et son temps, has also a brief life of Girodet.

Girodet: Romantic Rebel at the Art Institute of Chicago (2006) was the first retrospective in the United States devoted to the works of Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson. The exhibition assembled more than 100 seminal works (about 60 paintings and 40 drawings) that demonstrated the artist's range as a painter as well as a draftsman.

Analysis of the works
Girodet was trained in the neoclassical style of his teacher, Jacques-Louis David, seen in his treatment of the male nude body and his reference to models from the Renaissance and Classical antiquity. However, he also deviated from this style in several ways. The peculiarities which mark Girodet's position as the herald of the romantic movement are already evident in his Sleep of Endymion (1791, also called Effet de lune or "effect of the Moon"). Although the subject matter and pose are inspired by classical precedents, Girodet's diffuse lighting is more theatrical and atmospheric. The androgynous depiction of the sleeping shepherd Endymion is also noteworthy. These early romantic effects were even more notable in his Ossian, exhibited in 1802. Girodet portrayed recently killed Napoleonic soldiers being welcomed into Valhalla by the fictional bard Ossian. The painting is striking for its inclusion of phosphorescent meteors, vaporous luminosity, and spectral protagonists.

The same coupling of classic and romantic elements marks Girodet's Danae (1799) and his Quatre Saisons, executed for the king of Spain (repeated for Compiègne), and shows itself to a ludicrous extent in his Fingal (Leuchtenberg collection, St. Petersburg), executed for Napoleon in 1802. Girodet can be seen here combining aspects of his classical training and traditional education with new literary trends, popular scientific spectacles, and a consummate interest in the strange and the bizarre. In this way his work announces the rise of a romantic aesthetic which prizes individuality, expression, and imagination over an adherence to classical academic precedents.

Gallery

See also
 List of Orientalist artists

References

Further reading
 (see index)

External links

 Miscellaneous works (Art Renewal Center)
 Three portraits by Girodet (Insecula encyclopedia)
 Works of Girodet at http://www.the-athenaeum.org

1767 births
1824 deaths
People from Montargis
18th-century French painters
19th-century French painters
Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery
Knights of the Legion of Honour
French male painters
French romantic painters
Prix de Rome for painting
Pupils of Jacques-Louis David
Orientalist painters
19th-century male artists
18th-century French male artists

Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson


Äänekoski is a city in Central Finland. It had about 20,060 people living there in January 2014. The municipalities next to it are Kannonkoski, Konnevesi, Laukaa, Saarijärvi, Uurainen, Vesanto  and Viitasaari.

The former municipalities of Sumiainen and Suolahti were merged with Äänekoski in 2007.

Other websites

 The official Äänekoski page

Municipalities of Central Finland

Äänekoski


William Tod Otto (January 19, 1816 – November 7, 1905) was an American judge and the eighth reporter of decisions of the United States Supreme Court, serving as reporter from 1875 to 1883.

Biography
Born in Philadelphia, he was the son of noted physician John Conrad Otto. He received his A.B. in 1833 and his A.M. in 1836, both from the University of Pennsylvania, and then read law with Joseph R. Ingersoll.  He moved west and practiced law in Brownstown, Indiana and was a judge on the Indiana Second Circuit Court from 1844 to 1852.  He taught law at a predecessor school of the now Indiana University Maurer School of Law from 1847 to 1852 and unsuccessfully ran for Attorney General of Indiana in 1858.

A personal friend of Abraham Lincoln, Judge Otto headed the Indiana delegation to the 1860 Republican National Convention that nominated Lincoln for the presidency. Subsequently, he was among those instrumental in delivering Indiana, a key swing state, to Lincoln in the presidential election. Lincoln appointed him Assistant Secretary of the Interior after the previous man in the position, John Palmer Usher, was promoted to Secretary of the Interior. Anticipating the outbreak of southern hostilities, Lincoln wanted Otto to be involved in military organization. He served in the Interior Department from 1863 to 1871.  According to The New York Times (Page 1, April 16, 1865), Judge Otto was among those surrounding Lincoln's bedside when the great man died after being shot by John Wilkes Booth.

Otto went on to serve as a diplomat, helping arbitrate claims against Spain, as well as a delegate to the Universal Postal Union congress in Lisbon, Portugal. In 1875, he was named Reporter of Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, a position he held until 1883.

References

1816 births
1905 deaths
Lawyers from Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania alumni
Indiana lawyers
Indiana state court judges
Indiana University faculty
19th-century American diplomats
American legal scholars
Reporters of Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States
Indiana Republicans
19th-century American judges

William Tod Otto


John Cartier (23 May 1733 – 25 January 1802) was a British colonial governor in India. He served as Governor of Bengal from 1769 to 1772.

Early career
Cartier first arrived in India as a writer in the service of the British East India Company. He was expelled from Dacca in 1756 while serving there as an assistant. After fleeing with other fugitives to Fulta, he joined Clive of India and helped in the retaking of Bengal, for which he was praised by the Court of Directors of the British East India Company. Cartier's career accelerated after the Battle of Plassey. In 1761, Cartier became chief of the Dacca factory. By 1767, he was Second in the Calcutta Council.

Governor of Bengal
On 26 December 1769 Cartier succeeded Harry Verelst as Governor of Bengal. Cartier was governor at time of the Bengal famine of 1770, during which one-third of the populace died. Cartier was blamed for ignoring warnings about the impending disaster but was able to use a magazine of grain to feed fifteen thousand people every day for some months.

In response to the crisis, the Court of Directors sent a three-person commission to Bengal to assess the situation. En route, however, the ship carrying the three members foundered at sea. The Court of Directors did not send a replacement and recalled Cartier. Warren Hastings was selected as his replacement; he took office on 28 April 1772.

Cartier became a High Sheriff of Kent in 1789. Unusually the previous incumbent, James Bond, continued from the year before and Cartier served only for the latter part of the year.

Cartier died in Bedgbury, Kent on 25 January 1802 and was buried at Goudhurst, Kent. He was eulogized by Edmund Burke for his government of Bengal. His wife Stephana, the daughter of Stephen Law, survived him and also died in Bedgbury on 22 August 1825.

Notes

References

1733 births
1802 deaths
British East India Company civil servants
British governors of Bengal
18th-century British writers
High Sheriffs of Kent

John Cartier