Jacob Alexander Falconer (January 26, 1869 – July 1, 1928) was a one-term congressman from the state of Washington, elected at-large in 1912.

Early years
Born in Ontario, Canada, Falconer moved with his parents to Saugatuck, Michigan, in 1873.
He attended the public schools, and moved to Washburn, Wisconsin  Falconer graduated from Beloit (Wisconsin) Academy in 1890 and later took college work at Beloit College.

Political career
He moved west in 1894 to Everett, Washington, and was in the lumber business and served as mayor of Everett in 1897 and 1898. Falconer was member of the state legislature (1904–1908), and was speaker of the house during the 1907 session. He served as member of the state senate from 1909 to 1912.

Falconer ran for Congress in one of two new at-large seats Progressive in 1912, as Washington's congressional apportionment grew from three to five seats following the 1910 census. He was elected to the Sixty-third Congress and served for one term (March 4, 1913 – March 3, 1915), and was an unsuccessful candidate for the nomination for U.S. Senator on the Progressive ticket in 1914. The nomination went to Ole Hanson, who finished third in a five-man general election and was elected mayor of Seattle in 1918.

After politics
After leaving Washington, D.C., Falconer remained on the East Coast and worked in the ship-brokerage business in New York City from 1915 to 1919. He then moved to Fort Worth, Texas, in 1919 and engaged in road-construction contracting, then to Farmington, New Mexico, in 1925 and was in the oil and gas industry. Falconer died in Wingdale, New York, on July 1, 1928, and
was interred in Saugatuck Cemetery in Saugatuck, Michigan.

References

External links

 Washington Secretary of State – History Makers – Jacob Falconer

1869 births
1928 deaths
People from Ontario
Canadian emigrants to the United States
Progressive Party (1912) members of the United States House of Representatives from Washington (state)
Members of the Washington House of Representatives
Washington (state) state senators
Mayors of Everett, Washington
People from Saugatuck, Michigan

Jacob Falconer


The law of definite proportions states that a chemical compound always has exactly the same proportion of elements by mass. Joseph Proust, a French chemist,  first observed it in 1794. For this reason, it is sometimes called  Proust's law.

Amounting to the same thing is the law of constant composition. This states that all samples of a given chemical compound have the same elemental composition by mass. For example, oxygen makes up about 8/9 of the mass of any sample of pure water, while hydrogen makes up the remaining 1/9 of the mass. The law of definite proportions is the basis of stoichiometry, together with the law of multiple proportions.

Note that there are some compoonds, where this law cannot be applied: They are called non-stoichiometric compounds. Commonly they are metals.

Chemistry

Law of definite composition


A subplot, sometimes called a "B story" or a "C story", is a secondary plot that sometimes has to do with the main story. Subplots may connect to main plots, in either time and place. Subplots often involve supporting characters, those besides the protagonist or antagonist.

Fiction

Subplot


Charles Peale Polk (March 17, 1767 – May 6, 1822) was an American portrait painter and the nephew of artist Charles Willson Peale.

Biography
Polk was born in Annapolis, Maryland, to Elizabeth Digby Peale and Robert Polk.  At age eight or ten (sources vary on the exact age), after being orphaned, he was sent to Philadelphia to live with his uncle and study art.  He was married by the time he was eighteen and Philadelphia was his permanent residence.  By the time he was in his twenties, Polk was advertising himself as a portrait artist in Baltimore newspapers.  He was apparently not at all successful since he returned to Philadelphia within a matter of a couple years, advertising his services as a house and sign painter.  But he continued his artistic pursuits, and by 1800 he had opened exhibitions in Baltimore.  In 1800, he held government office in Washington, D.C. at the National Gallery of Art....

Artistry
Polk's earliest paintings were copies of his uncle's originals and he was highly dependent on his uncle's training and guidance.  He continued to make copies of many paintings including his own.  It is said that he produced fifty-seven reproductions of his George Washington portrait.  He was commissioned to do thirty five paintings and this was his largest group of works from any period.  He eventually opened a drawing school and a dry-goods business.  Both ventures failed and he moved to Frederick County, Maryland.  During his period as a politician, he produced few oil paintings. However, he did produce "verre églomisé" miniatures which were made by scratching a gold leaf profile into a glass plate and painting black in the surrounding areas.   Ultimately, he took up life as a farmer in Virginia two years before his death.

In his depiction of Anna Maria Cumpston he delicately depicts a girl holding a flower.  Her arms are awkwardly posed and her gaze is blank.  Equally blank is her facial expression, which is lifeless and lacks any emotional depiction.  The background shows some soft trees against a cloudy sky.  To the right is an unbalanced large countertop.  The light values of the countertop are weighted on the opposite side by the dark trees and floors.  The dress is elegant and the figure glows apparently bathed in light.  The content seems to be meaningless and chosen more for its visual appeal and shape.  This work is very much like other works of this time period and era.

In comparing Polk's works to Joshua Johnson, they have very similar style in positioning objects and creating composition.  The awkwardness of the works is actually somewhat appealing for both artists and probably deliberate.  Both artists often have subjects holding objects in a way that while unnatural also brings interests and causes the hands to be shaped in a visually interesting way.  The art work of both avoids expressiveness and instead chooses to emphasize capturing some likeness of the subject.

References
 Anna Maria Cumpston. The National Gallery of Art.
 Charles Peale Polk. Maryland ArtSource.
 Charles Peale Polk – Biography. National Gallery of Art.

External links
American paintings & historical prints from the Middendorf collection, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Polk (no. 13)

1767 births
1822 deaths
18th-century American painters
18th-century American male artists
American male painters
19th-century American painters
American portrait painters
Artists from Baltimore
Charles
19th-century American male artists

Charles Peale Polk


Gümüşhane University is a state university located in Gümüşhane, Türkiye. It was established on May 31, 2008 by separating from Black Sea Technical University. The name of the Faculty of Engineering was changed to the Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences with the decision of the Council of Ministers published in the Official Gazette dated 26.04.2013 and numbered 28629. Faculty of Tourism was established. Gümüşhane University continues to grow rapidly.

Köse İrfan Can Vocational School, Kelkit Aydın Doğan Vocational School, Şiran Mustafa Beyaz Vocational School, Torul Vocational School, Kürtün Vocational School, Central Library, Social Facilities, Gümüşhane Vocational School, Physical Education and Sports Vocational School, Health Services Vocational School, Faculty of Theology, Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Faculty of Letters, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, and Faculty of Health Sciences have wireless access to the eduroam network.

References

External links
Website

Universities and colleges in Turkey
2008 establishments in Turkey
State universities and colleges in Turkey
Educational institutions established in 2008
Gümüşhane

Gümüşhane University


Volker Wieker  (born 1 March 1954 in Delmenhorst, Lower Saxony) is the former Chief of Staff (Generalinspekteur, lit. Inspector General) of the Bundeswehr, the German armed forces, and a general of the German Army. Trained as an artillery officer, Wieker served in every major foreign Bundeswehr deployment since 1996, including Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

Biography

Wieker was born in Delmenhorst and joined the Bundeswehr in 1974 for officer training in the army's artillery branch.

He studied geodesy at the Bundeswehr University of Munich and served as an officer in an armored artillery battalion in Wildeshausen. He passed his General Staff training at the Führungsakademie der Bundeswehr (Hamburg) in 1989, followed by the US Army's Command and General Staff Officer Course at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Upon his return to Germany, he was assigned as the operations officer of an armored brigade in Augustdorf.

Following battalion command with an armored artillery battalion in 1993–96, Wieker was deployed as the operations and training officer for the German Army Contingent IFOR in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Upon his return, he was assigned to the Federal Ministry of Defence (Germany) in Bonn as Military Assistant of the Federal Minister of Defence (1997–1999). In 1999, he led a ministerial task force on the future force structure of the German Army, before taking command of an armored infantry brigade in Schwerin later that year.

From May to December 2001 Wieker deployed to Kosovo as Commander, Multinational Brigade South and Commander of the 3rd German KFOR contingent.

In 2002, he became Chief of Staff of the Army Office in Cologne, followed by chief of staff in the Army Staff in 2004. In July 2008, Wieker took command of the 1st GE/NL Corps in Münster. Since 9 October 2009 Wieker served as Chief of Staff of ISAF in Kabul, Afghanistan.

On 18 December 2009 German Minister of Defence Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg announced his intention to appoint Wieker chief of staff (Generalinspekteur) of the Bundeswehr. Two days after his promotion to four-star general on 19 January 2010, Wieker was formally appointed Chief of Staff of the Bundeswehr.

Wieker retired on 18 April 2018.

Volker Wieker is married to Sabine. They have two children.

Awards and decorations

  Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2014)
  Badge of Honour of the Bundeswehr in Gold (1999)
 - Armed Forces Deployment MedalIFOR (1996)
 - Armed Forces Deployment Medal, KFOR (2001)
 - Armed Forces Deployment Medal, ISAF (2010)
 - German Sports Badge in Gold
 - NATO Medal, Yugoslavia (1996)
 - NATO Medal, Kosovo (2001)
 - NATO Medal, ISAF (2010)
 - Order For Military Merit (Bulgaria) (2001)
 - Commander with Star of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary (2015)
 - Grand Cross of the Royal Swedish Order of the Polar Star (2013)
 - Royal Norwegian Order of Merit - Commander with Star (2012)
 - Legion of Merit (United States, 2010)
 - Decoration of Merit in Gold (Netherlands, 2011)
 Grand Decoration of Honour in Silver with Star for Services to the Republic of Austria (2015)
 Commander Legion of Merit (United States, 2015) (sea at the picture round his nack)
 Commander of the Legion of Honour (France, 2016)
 Order of Orange-Nassau, Grade: Grand Officer (Netherlands, 2017)
 Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, Grade: Grand Officer (Italy, 2017)
Joint Commendation Medal (Italy, 2017)
 Cross of Commander of the Order for Merits to Lithuania (Lithuania, 2018)

References

External links

1954 births
Living people
People from Delmenhorst
Bundeswehr generals
Bundeswehr University Munich alumni
German military personnel of the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)
Inspectors General of the Bundeswehr
Recipients of the Badge of Honour of the Bundeswehr
Recipients of the Order of Military Merit (Bulgaria)
Foreign recipients of the Legion of Merit
Recipients of the Decoration of Merit
NATO military personnel
Generals of the German Army
Commanders Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
Commanders Grand Cross of the Order of the Polar Star

Commanders of the Legion of Merit
Military personnel from Lower Saxony

Volker Wieker


Gay liberation is a movement that encourages gay people and lesbians to "come out". The movement happened mostly in the 1960s and 1970s. To come out means to publicly show one's sexual orientation to family, friends and others. The movement involved LGBT in North America, Australia, New Zealand and Western Europe.

The Stonewall riots of 1969 led up to the new movement. Gays and lesbians began to protest bad treatment. They began to "come out" because they were angry and upset.

LGBT rights

Gay liberation


Samur Gunj (1380s-c.1455) was a daughter of Elbeg Nigülesügchi Khan and his senior wife Kobeguntai. Throughout her life she struggled for the preservation of the Borjigin clan.

Life

After her father had killed one of his sons and taken his wife as his own, he then killed his advisor Daiyuu for suspecting he had molested her. To prevent Daiyuu's family from taking revenge on him, he gave his daughter Samur in marriage to Daiyuu's son. Samur's husband was given command over the Oirats and made their taishi, or leader.

Since many of her clan were virtual prisoners of their guards, she convinced first her husband and then her son to launch campaigns to free them. After her son died in these struggles, she convinced her grandson Esen to become taishi. Samur supported him as he brought the Mongolian Plateau and most of the Silk Route under his control.

Though Esen first strove for unity between the Oirats and the Borjigin clan of his grandmother, he later turned against the Borjigin. and had several of its nobles killed. When his own daughter was about to give birth, he also intended to have the baby killed if it turned out to be male. Samur helped her great-granddaughter escape and hide. They first pretended a girl had been born. When it became known that this was not true, Samur took the boy to her ger for protection and finally entrusted him to Mongols loyal to the Borjigins to take him out of Esen's reach. The boy was Bayan-Mongke, who would be a direct ancestor of Dayan Khan.

Samur died around the same time as Esen.

Notes

Sources

Women from the Mongol Empire
14th-century Mongol women
14th-century Mongols
15th-century Mongol women
15th-century Mongols
15th-century deaths
Year of birth unknown
Borjigin

Samur Gunj


The Order of St Alexander () was the second highest Bulgarian order during the Kingdom of Bulgaria. It was established by Knyaz Alexander I and named after his patron saint (Alexander Nevsky).

History
The order was established with a decree on 25 December 1881, in honour of the patron saint of Alexander Battenberg. Initially it was planned to have five grades and a Necklace but subsequently four grades and Grand and Lesser Necklace were formed and in 1908 a Grand Cross was added. With time wartime grades with swords in the middle and above the cross were added. The order was awarded to Bulgarian and foreign citizens with the personal benevolence of the Bulgarian monarch, who was the Grand Master.

Description
The order had a white enamelled cross pattée with golden or silver edges according to the grade. On the pendant of the obverse there was a stylized inscription with the name of the order and on the surrounding ring there was the motto СЪ НАМИ БОГЪ (God with us) with laurel wreaths below. On the reverse there was a white background with inscription 19 ФЕВРАЛЪ 1878 (19 February 1878) - the date of the signing of the Treaty of San Stefano. Atop the cross was a royal crown. The first grade was worn with a crimson moire ribbon over the right shoulder with a rosette in the edge. It had its own eight-ray silver star with the obverse of the order placed in the middle.

The Grand necklace consisted of thirty interconnected medallions with crowned lions, alternated with the monogram of the founder Knyaz Alexander I and eight edges Orthodox cross. There was a special issue with two field marshal's batons which belonged to Tsar Ferdinand.

The Lesser Necklace was similar to the Grand Necklace but in smaller size.

The Grand Cross, established in 1908, was also similar to the initial issue but the cross was enamelled in green and in the middle of the pendant was placed a crowned Bulgarian lion. The star was of similar design with green ring around the crowned lion on red background.

The other grades are like the first issue but smaller in size. The sixth grade was made in silver without enamel over the shoulders of the cross.

The Ottoman sultans Abdul Hamid II and Mehmed V were respectively awarded the Grand and Lesser Necklace of the Order of St Alexander with diamonds. They are currently kept in the collection of the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul.

Grades
Great Cross of the Order of St Alexander, Grand and Lesser Necklace
I grade, Grand Cross. Awarded to senior state officers and military personnel. It was worn with a scarf over the shoulder.
II grade, Grand Officer Cross. The cross was with white enamel, it was worn with red ribbon and had a star.
III grade, Commander Cross. The cross was with white or green enamel (according to the emission), it was worn with red ribbon and had no star.
IV grade, Officer Cross. The cross was with white enamel, it was worn on the chest with triangle red ribbon with rosette, it had no star.
V grade, Officer Cross. The cross was with white enamel, it was worn on the chest with triangle red ribbon, it had no star.
VI grade, Silver Cross. The cross was made of silver with no enamel, it was worn on the chest with triangle red ribbon, it had no star.

Notable recipients

I grade, Grand Cross
 Abdul Hamid II
 Giacomo Acerbo
 Duke Adolf Friedrich of Mecklenburg
 Alois Lexa von Aehrenthal
 Albert I of Belgium
 Albert, 8th Prince of Thurn and Taxis
 Alexander I of Yugoslavia
 Alexander of Battenberg
 Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine
 Duke Alexander of Oldenburg
 Alfred, 2nd Prince of Montenuovo
 Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich of Russia
 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
 Prince August Leopold of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
 Theodor Avellan
 Leopold Berchtold
 Victor, Prince Napoléon
 Boris III of Bulgaria
 Kiril Botev
 Walther von Brauchitsch
 Bernhard von Bülow
 Prince Carl, Duke of Västergötland
 Charlotte of Schaumburg-Lippe
 Constantine I of Greece
 Duke Constantine Petrovich of Oldenburg
 Théophile Delcassé
 Radko Dimitriev
 Grand Duke Dmitry Konstantinovich of Russia
 Elena of Montenegro
 Eleonore Reuss of Köstritz
 Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse
 Ernst Gunther, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein
 Ernst II, Duke of Saxe-Altenburg
 Ferdinand I of Bulgaria
 Ferdinand I of Romania
 Prince Francis Joseph of Battenberg
 Frederick VIII of Denmark
 Frederick Francis III, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin
 Frederick Francis IV, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin
 Pietro Gazzera
 Prince Georg of Bavaria
 Giovanna of Italy
 Agenor Maria Gołuchowski
 Sergey Gorshkov
 Wilhelm von Hahnke
 Ulrich von Hassell
 Prince Henry of Prussia (1862–1929)
 Prince Henry of Battenberg
 Duke Henry of Mecklenburg-Schwerin
 Paul von Hindenburg
 Prince Konrad of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst
 Dietrich von Hülsen-Haeseler
 Nikola Ivanov
 Duke John Albert of Mecklenburg
 Archduke Joseph August of Austria
 Archduke Joseph Karl of Austria
 Karl August, 10th Prince of Thurn and Taxis
 Gustav von Kessel
 Stiliyan Kovachev
 Hermann Kövess von Kövessháza
 Prince Kuni Kuniyoshi
 Aleksey Kuropatkin
 Vasil Kutinchev
 Kyril, Prince of Preslav
 Velizar Lazarov
 Archduke Leopold Ferdinand of Austria
 Archduke Leopold Salvator of Austria
 Émile Loubet
 Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse
 Prince Louis of Battenberg
 August von Mackensen
 Maria of Yugoslavia
 Princess Marie Louise of Bourbon-Parma
 Prince Maximilian of Baden
 Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich of Russia
 Milan I of Serbia
 Jovan Mišković
 Helmuth von Moltke the Younger
 Benito Mussolini
 Sava Mutkurov
 Nicholas II of Russia
 Prince Nicholas of Romania
 Danail Nikolaev
 Prince Paul of Yugoslavia
 Prince Pedro Augusto of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
 Racho Petrov
 Philipp, Landgrave of Hesse
 Prince Philippe, Duke of Orléans (1869–1926)
 Hans von Plessen
 Erich Raeder
 Prince Rudolf of Liechtenstein
 Mihail Savov
 Margarita Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
 Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia
 Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich of Russia
 Duke Siegfried August in Bavaria
 Zahari Stoyanov
 Alfred von Tirpitz
 Georgi Todorov (general)
 Stefan Toshev
 Stefan Tsanev
 Umberto II of Italy
 Prince Valdemar of Denmark
 Illarion Vorontsov-Dashkov
 Prince Waldemar of Prussia (1889–1945)
 Wilhelm II, German Emperor
 Wilhelm, German Crown Prince
 William Ernest, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
 William, Prince of Hohenzollern
 Sergei Witte
 Nikola Zhekov
 Arthur Zimmermann
 August zu Eulenburg
II grade, Grand Officer Cross
 Kliment Boyadzhiev
 Cevat Çobanlı
 Ivan Fichev
 Julius Ringel
 Ferdinand Schörner
 Konstantin Zhostov
III grade, Commander Cross
 Rolf Andvord
 Wladimir Giesl von Gieslingen
 Panteley Kiselov
 Ivan Kolev (general)
 Konstantin Lukash
 Hristo Lukov
 Aleksandar Protogerov
 Vladimir Sukhomlinov
 Ivan Valkov
IV or V grade, Officer Cross
 Petar Darvingov
 Heinrich Jacobi (archaeologist)
 Stefan Nerezov
 Rudolf Toussaint
 Damyan Velchev
 Pencho Zlatev
VI grade, Silver Cross
Unknown Grades
 Michail Arnaudov
 Hans Baur
 Friedrich von Boetticher
 Georgi Bogdanov
 Michael von Faulhaber
 Friedrich von Georgi
 Hristo Matov
 Hans Michahelles
 Igor Moiseyev
 Stevan Mokranjac
 Dumitru C. Moruzi
 Eberhard Graf von Schmettow
 Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
 Vladimir Vazov

References

Sources
"Каталог Български ордени и медали". Веселин Денков
"Българските ордени и медали 1878 - 2002". Тодор Петров
"Ордени и медали в България". 1998 Тодор Петров
"Българска Енциклопедия от А-Я". 2005 Авторски колектив към БАН

Military awards and decorations of Bulgaria
Orders of chivalry of Bulgaria
Awards established in 1881
1881 establishments in Bulgaria

Order of Saint Alexander


The dirham, dirhem or dirhm () is a unit of currency and of mass. It is the name of the currencies of Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, and is the name of a currency subdivision in Jordan, Libya, Qatar and Tajikistan. It was historically a silver coin.

Unit of mass
The dirham was a unit of weight used across North Africa, the Middle East, Persia and Ifat; later known as Adal, with varying values.

The value of Islamic dirham was  14 qirat, 10 dirham = 7 mithqal, in Islamic law (2.975 gm of silver).

In the late Ottoman Empire (), the standard dirham was 3.207 g; 400 dirhem equal one oka. The Ottoman dirham was based on the Sasanian drachm (in Middle Persian: drahm), which was itself based on the Roman dram/drachm.

In Egypt in 1895, it was equivalent to 47.661 troy grains (3.088 g).

There is currently a movement within the Islamic world to revive the dirham as a unit of mass for measuring silver, although the exact value is disputed (either 3 or 2.975 grams).

History

The word "dirham" ultimately comes from drachma (δραχμή), the Greek coin. The Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire controlled the Levant and traded with Arabia, circulating the coin there in pre-Islamic times and afterward. It was this currency which was initially adopted as a Persian word (Middle Persian drahm or dram); then near the end of the 7th century the coin became an Islamic currency bearing the name of the sovereign and a religious verse. The Arabs introduced their own coins.
The Islamic dirham was 8 daniq.  The dirham was struck in many Mediterranean countries, including Al-Andalus (Moorish Spain) and the Byzantine Empire (miliaresion), and could be used as currency in Europe between the 10th and 12th centuries, notably in areas with Viking connections, such as Viking York and Dublin.

Dirham in Jewish orthodox law
The dirham is frequently mentioned in Jewish orthodox law as a unit of weight used to measure various requirements in religious functions, such as the weight in silver specie pledged in Marriage Contracts (Ketubbah), the quantity of flour requiring the separation of the dough-portion, etc. Jewish physician and philosopher, Maimonides, uses the Egyptian dirham to approximate the quantity of flour for dough-portion, writing in Mishnah Eduyot 1:2: "And I found the rate of the dough-portion in that measurement to be approximately five-hundred and twenty dirhams of wheat flour, while all these dirhams are the Egyptian [dirham]." This view is repeated by Maran's Shulhan Arukh (Hil. Hallah, Yoreh Deah § 324:3) in the name of the Tur. In Maimonides' commentary of the Mishnah (Eduyot 1:2, note 18), Rabbi Yosef Qafih explains that the weight of each Egyptian dirham was approximately 3.333 grams,  or what was the equivalent to 16 carob-grains which, when taken together, the minimum weight of flour requiring the separation of the dough-portion comes to approx. 1 kilo and 733 grams. Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, in his Sefer Halikhot ʿOlam (vol. 1, pp. 288–291), makes use of a different standard for the Egyptian dirham, saying that it weighed approx. 3.0 grams, meaning the minimum requirement for separating the priest's portion is 1 kilo and 560 grams. Others (e.g. Rabbi Avraham Chaim Naeh) say the Egyptian dirham weighed approx. 3.205 grams, which total weight for the requirement of separating the dough-portion comes to 1 kilo and 666 grams. Rabbi Shelomo Qorah (Chief Rabbi of Bnei Barak) wrote that the traditional weight used in Yemen for each dirham weighed 3.20 grams for a total of 31.5 dirhams given as the redemption of one's firstborn son (pidyon haben), or 3.36 grams for the 30 dirhams required by the Shulhan Arukh (Yoreh De'ah 305:1), and which in relation to the separation of the dough-portion made for a total weight of 1 kilo and 770.72 grams.

The word drachmon (), used in some translations of Maimonides' commentary of the Mishnah, has in all places the same connotation as dirham.

Modern-day currency
Currently the valid national currencies with the name dirham are:

Modern currencies with the subdivision dirham or diram are:

The unofficial modern gold dinar, issued and/or proposed by several states and proto-states, is also divided into dirhams.

See also

Dinar
Gold dinar
Fals

References

Denominations (currency)
Silver coins
Obsolete units of measurement
Ottoman units of measurement
Units of mass
Islamic banking
Islamic banking and finance terminology
Medieval currencies

Dirham


Middlesex is a 2003 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel written in Berlin by Greek-American author Geoffrey Eugenides. The main themes of the novel are: sociogenetism versus biogenetism, the motif of rebirth; the themes of following the American Dream and exploiting gender roles are also revealed. The novel contains many allusions to ancient Greek mythology, such as the images of the Minotaur (an anthropomorphic creature with the head of a bull) and the Chimera (a creature made up of many parts of other animals).

The book is a bestseller, with over a million copies sold as of March 2011. Despite the fact that the novel is not an autobiography in the strict sense of the word, many small details of the narrative outline were taken from the life of the author himself, which he learned about in the process of studying the Greek part of his ancestry. The idea to create such a work came to Eugenides in 1980 while reading the memoirs of Herculine Barbin (eng. Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-century French Hermaphrodite), after which he decided to give his own interpretation of the description of the anatomical structure and emotions of intersexes.

Plot
The narrator and main protagonist of the novel, Cal Stefanidis, originally named "Kalli" (short for "Calliope"), is an intersex male of Greek origin with a 5-alpha reductase deficiency syndrome, as a result of which he is a male with a female appearance (or rather: a character has a female phenotype with a male karyotype).

The first half of the novel tells readers about Cal's family, mainly about the migration of his paternal grandparents to the United States from Bursa, a city in Anatolia, in 1922. What follows is their assimilation into American society in Detroit, Michigan, during the city's industrial boom. The second half of the novel, which is set in the late 20th century, focuses on Cal's life journey in his native Detroit and his subsequent escape to San Francisco, where he settles into his new guise, recognizing his male gender identity.

21st-century American novels

Middlesex (novel)


Windows Desktop Gadgets (called Windows Sidebar in Windows Vista) is a discontinued widget engine for Microsoft Gadgets. Desktop Gadgets have been replaced by Windows 10 Taskbar Widgets.  It was introduced with Windows Vista, in which it features a sidebar anchored to the side of the desktop. Its widgets can perform various tasks, such as displaying the time and date.  In Windows Vista, the widgets are restricted to a sidebar but in Windows 7, they can be freely moved anywhere on the desktop.

Windows Desktop Gadgets was discontinued in Windows 8. The Windows 8 Live Tiles can perform a similar function, but they are only visible when the Start menu is visible. They run in a more restrictive environment, making them less risky, but also less useful for some purposes, like system monitoring.

History
Windows Sidebar originated in a Microsoft Research project called Sideshow (not to be confused with Windows SideShow.) It was developed in the summer of 2000, and was used internally at Microsoft.  It included a clock, traffic reports, and IM integration.

Windows Sidebar appeared in build 3683 of Windows Vista circa September 2002 and was originally intended to replace the notification area and Quick Launch toolbar in Windows, but these plans were scrapped after the development reset in mid-2004. Windows Sidebar was rebuilt and began to appear in Windows Vista builds in the second half of 2005. Some reviewers and Macintosh enthusiasts have pointed out the Sidebar's similarities in form and function to Konfabulator (later Yahoo! Widget Engine), which appeared several years previously, and the Dashboard widget engine first included with Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X v10.4, which had been released a few months earlier.

In Windows 7, Windows Sidebar was renamed Windows Desktop Gadgets, and the sidebar itself was not included in Windows 7.

Windows Desktop Gadgets was included in all beta releases of Windows 8 but did not make it to the final release. Instead, on 10 July 2012 (which is in the intervening time between the last beta of Windows 8 and its final release), Microsoft issued security advisory to disable Sidebar and Desktop Gadgets on Windows Vista and 7 because of a security vulnerability that could allow remote code execution.

Overview
Windows Desktop Gadgets is a feature of Windows Vista and Windows 7 (excluding the Windows Server family of the operating system). It hosts mini-applications or "gadgets" which are a combination of scripts and HTML code. Their use cases include displaying  system time, downloading and displaying RSS feeds, or controlling other software such as Windows Media Player. In Windows Vista, gadgets can run "docked" in the sidebar. In Windows 7, they can "float" anywhere on the desktop. It is also possible to run multiple instances of a gadget simultaneously. Windows Vista and 7 sidebar also works on Windows XP.

Windows Vista ships with eleven gadgets: Calendar, Clock, Contacts, CPU Meter, Currency Conversion, Feed Headlines, Notes, Picture Puzzle, Slide Show, Stocks, and Weather. Several other gadgets available during the Vista beta such as App Launcher, Feed Viewer, Number Puzzle, Recycle Bin and Egg Timer never made it to the final release of Windows Vista. Windows 7 adds a Media Center gadget and removes the Contacts, Notes and Stocks gadgets.

Originally, Microsoft provided a link to a web site called Windows Live Gallery where additional Sidebar gadgets that have been created by third-party developers could be downloaded. The site was officially retired on October 1, 2011.

See also
 Microsoft Gadgets
 Windows SideShow for Device Gadgets
 Desk accessory

References

Further reading

External links
 Gadget Corner — official Windows Sidebar and Microsoft Gadgets team blog
 Windows Sidebar Reference on MSDN

Widget engines
Sidebar
Discontinued Windows components

el:Windows Vista#Πλευρική εργαλειοθήκη

Windows Desktop Gadgets


West Asheville End of Car Line Historic District is a national historic district located at Asheville, Buncombe County, North Carolina.  The district encompasses 24 contributing buildings in a primarily commercial section of West Asheville.  It includes a nearly continuous row of one and two-story brick and concrete block commercial buildings that date from 1916 through the mid-1930s. Their development was influenced by streetcar service along the Haywood Road corridor that operated from 1910 to 1934. Notable buildings include the separately listed Bledsoe Building, along with the Isis Theater (1937), Franklin Building (1923), Pure Oil Station (1947), Wells Building (1917), Palace Theater (1928), Great A&P Tea Company (1926), and West Asheville Post Office (1929).

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2006.

Gallery

References

Commercial buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in North Carolina
Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in North Carolina
Buildings and structures in Asheville, North Carolina
National Register of Historic Places in Buncombe County, North Carolina


The Many-Colored Land  is a science fiction novel by American author Julian May, published in 1981. It is the first book of the Saga of Pliocene Exile (known as the Saga of the Exiles in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth). The novel sets the series up by introducing the story of each of the characters. The main purpose of the book is to provide information for the rest of the series, only beginning the main storyline in its final part.

Characters

Group Green
Elizabeth Orme Elizabeth was a talented metapsychic practitioner on the human-colonised ski-resort planet Denali, but suffered severe injuries which resulted in the loss of her metapsychic abilities. Unable to cope with the trauma of this, she travelled to the Pliocene hoping to travel freely in a hot air balloon. But in an ironic twist, the shock of time travel caused her operant powers to return. The Tanu race regard her with awe as no other naturally operant metapsychics have come through the gate, and treat her as something of a celebrity. Elizabeth is a peace-loving redactor with little interest in politics, but her knowledge of advanced Milieu metapsychic techniques and her high level of metapsychic power make her an important player in the Tanu court, whether she likes it or not.

Aiken Drum A persistent troublemaker, young Aiken Drum refused to bend to the will of society. Offered the choice of incarceration, docilization or euthanasia, he instead chose Exile to the Pliocene. Always landing on his feet, his quick wits and schemes earned him respect from his fellow time travelers, and his latent metapsychic abilities earned him a silver torc from the Tanu. But a greater future lies ahead for this maverick Scot.

Felice Landry Felice is a tremendously talented athlete from the Canadian planet Acadie, with superhuman strength and an uncanny ability to control animals, which allowed her to dominate the planet-wide beloved sport of ring hockey, but also with barely submerged psychopathy. She chooses to go into Exile when she is banned from her sport after two other players accused her of deliberately injuring them. In Exile she discovers her powers are stronger than she expected, but refuses to be tested by the Tanu and have this revealed. Later, Felice joins the Lowlives helping them discover that 'Blood-Metal' (aka iron) can kill the 'Exotics'. She is determined to get a Gold Torc, confident that it will make her powerful enough to take on the Tanu.

Richard Voorhees Richard is a xenophobic ex-spacer who came to the Pliocene after being sued by an alien space crew who he refused to help whilst on a mission for a client. Richard tries to act tough throughout the book and often refuses to help other people, especially the Lowlives, but always comes through for them in the end. Richard is most notable in the book for being the first human to kill a Tanu, in the process discovering the fact that Tanu and Firvulag both are instantly killed upon contact with iron. He also flies the aircraft at the end of the book, as the only one with enough experience to work out how.

Bryan Grenfell Bryan works as an anthropologist in the Galactic Milieu, but goes into Exile in pursuit of his love, Mercy. When he arrives in the Many Colored Land, he is regarded as special by the Tanu, who allow him to work bareneck without any torc, as he refuses to wear even a gold torc while he is there. He often quotes "There is a lady sweet and kind" by Thomas Ford:
There is a lady sweet and kind,
Was never face so pleas'd my mind;
I did but see her passing by,
And yet I love her till I die.
Stein Olsen He is an ex-driller with deep psychological scars from the death of his mother. He is of immediate interest to the Tanu, who want him as a competitor in the ritual Great Combat, due to his heroic physique. With the help of Elizabeth, he is mentally healed by the human woman Sukey, with whom he falls in love.

Annamaria Roccaro A nun who develops complex relationships with Claude and Felice.

Claude Majewski A retired, widowed palaeontologist, planning to see the 'fossil Zoo'. (Majewski was May's father's original family name.)

Other human exiles
 Mercedes Lamballe
Bryan Grenfell's beloved, a woman of Celtic ancestry who never felt 'at home' in the Mileu goes into Exile and is discovered to have grandmaster-level latent creative metafunctions by the Tanu. Her power and beauty attract Nodonn Battlemaster who takes her as his wife and later proves that she has some Tanu ancestry in her DNA, causing shockwaves among Human and Tanu alike considering the 6-million year time gap between the Tanu/Firvulag ascendancy and the rise of Humanity, while also explaining how metafunctions manifested in the Human gene pool in the first place.

The Tanu
Lord Creyn Creyn is a kindly redactor, a specialist in healing, who takes Elizabeth under his wing and appears to know of Marc's destiny.

Lord Velteyn Aggressive and the leader of the Flying Hunt, Velteyn is the city lord of Finiah, site of the barium mine where the raw materials for torcs are produced.

Nodonn Battlemaster Nodonn is a powerful psychokinetic and the battle champion of the Tanu, and the husband of Mercy, Bryan Grenfell's beloved.

Lady Epone Epone is the cruel coercive Tanu lady who oversees the transport of some of the prisoners from Castle Gateway, and also conducts their psychic testing. She is the first Tanu to be killed in the book, at the hands of her prisoners armed with iron.

The Firvulag
Yeochee King of the Firvulag

Pallol One Eye Battlemaster, or military commander and champion of the Firvulag, and a "first-comer" thus over a millennium old at the time of the events of the series.  Pallol was very tall, wide, and strong, called an "ogre". His cognomen came because one of his two eyes was usually patched because it could emit a devastating beam of "creativity".

Fitharn PegLeg

References

External links

1981 American novels
1981 science fiction novels
American science fiction novels
Debut science fiction novels
Novels set in prehistory
1981 debut novels
Houghton Mifflin books

The Many-Colored Land


Lusognathus (meaning "Lusitanian jaw") is an extinct genus of gnathosaurine pterosaurs from the Late Jurassic Lourinhã  Formation of Portugal. The genus contains a single species, Lusognathus almadrava, known from a parts of the upper jaw, teeth, and cervical vertebrae.

Discovery and naming

The Lusognathus holotype specimen, ML 2554, was in November 2018 discovered by amateur paleontologist Filipe Vieira in the Lourinhã Formation of Lisbon Region, Portugal, on the Praia do Caniçal, in Lourinhã. The formation dates from the Kimmeridgian-Tithonian, and the fossil is about 149.2 million years old. In March 2019, the Museu da Lourinhã carried out further excavations uncovering additional elements of the same specimen. Vieira donated the original find to the museum. The specimen was prepared by Carla Alexandra Tomás, Micael Martinho, Laura de Jorge and Carla Hernandez. The specimen consists of an incomplete premaxillary rostrum, a fragment of the maxillae, two isolated partial teeth, and three or four fragmentary cervical vertebrae.

In 2023,  Alexandra E. Fernandes, Victor Beccari, Alexander Wilhelm Armin Kellner and Octávio Mateus described Lusognathus almadrava as a new genus and species of ctenochasmatid pterosaur based on these fossil remains. The generic name, "Lusognathus", combines the Latin prefix "Luso", from Lusitania, an archaic name used by Ancient Romans in reference to Portugal, with the Latinised Greek word "gnathos", meaning "jaw". The specific name, "almadrava", references an elaborate fishing trap traditionally used to catch seafood in Portugal. It is the first pterosaur taxon named from Portugal.

Description

Lusognathus is probably one of the largest pterosaurs known from the Jurassic. The snout pieces have a combined preserved length of 202 millimetres. A comparison with the skull of Gnathosaurus subulatus results in a total length estimate of 608 millimetres. From this a wingspan can be derived of 360 centimetres. Such a considerable size is confirmed by pterosaur tracks found ten kilometres to the south showing foot lengths of between 55 and 150 millimetres. This would make Lusognathus the largest known Jurassic member of the Gnathosaurinae. Only a few Cretaceous gnathosaurines are larger.

A distinguishing combination of traits was provided. The front of the premaxilla shows a rounded triangular expansion. Directly behind the spatula-shaped expansion of the snout the paired maxillae are constricted. The teeth are robust, stick out sideways, have a density of 1.3 teeth per centimetre, have a round to oval cross-section and at the rear of the maxillae are directed obliquely to the front and sides.

As with all gnathosaurines, the snout is strongly flattened vertically. Though elongated, the snout is relatively wide. To the front, it expands sideways, creating a spatula shape. This expansion starts twenty-eight millimetres from the front edge. The widest point is at the level of the largest tooth pair. Behind the constriction the snout begin to widen again but very gradually. There is no sign of a snout crest but with gnathosaurines, such crests tend to be positioned rather posteriorly.

Each upper jaw side bears at least sixteen teeth, eight of which in the premaxilla. The original total was probably higher as relatives have a known total of at least twenty-five teeth, seven in the premaxilla. The anterior teeth are straight, placed perpendicular to the jaw line. Their cross-section is rounded but the upper base and lower point are somewhat pinched causing a certain keeling. The teeth are very robust and large; the fourth tooth is with a crown length of 23.5 millimeter longer than half of the transverse snout width at this point. Each tooth is placed in its own socket. The base of he crown is reinforced by a conspicuous bone ring. To the rear the teeth gradually decrease in size, are oriented more to the front but also curve more to behind. The tooth enamel is completely smooth, without any wrinkles.

Classification

Fernandes et al. (2023) recovered Lusognathus as a member of the ctenochasmatid clade Gnathosaurinae, as the sister taxon to the two known species of Gnathosaurus, G. subulatus and G. macrurus. The results of their phylogenetic analyses are shown in the cladogram below:

Paleobiology
In view of its robust straight teeth, positioned at a rather large distance from each other, Lusognathus probably was not a filter feeder. An alternative lifestyle would have been that of a piscivore, killing fish prey with the spatula.

References

Ctenochasmatoids
Late Jurassic pterosaurs of Europe
Fossils of Portugal
Jurassic Portugal
Fossil taxa described in 2023
Kimmeridgian life
Tithonian life

Lusognathus


Clan Akkaba is a fictional cult appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The cult appears in X-Men comic books and was created by Frank Tieri and Clayton Henry. Members of the cult are the descendants of the mutant supervillain Apocalypse and first appeared in the X-Men: Apocalypse vs. Dracula miniseries.

History

Origins
The name Akkaba has its origins in the time of ancient Egypt, before the arrival of the time travelling Pharaoh Rama-Tut who would one day become Kang the Conqueror and Immortus. Akkaba was a small but promising lone settlement situated on the very edge of the Amentet and the Valley of the Kings. Its members were very superstitious and prided themselves on their culture, which they considered separate and distinct from the rest of Egypt. Their fear of the unknown proved to be their undoing as news spread throughout Egypt about a new Pharaoh who had fallen from the sky and seized control of the throne.

They took this as an ill omen and when one of them gave birth to a gray child with blue lines running across his lips and face, they quickly cast the child out who eventually become Apocalypse. Baal and the Sandstormers later massacred the entire village in search of the child bathing the city in blood. The only survivor was En Sabah Nur, the first one, so named by his new father Baal.

Domination
When Apocalypse fully realized his power and defeated the Pharaoh and his army, Egypt entered a new age, one in which his children walked among them. Apocalypse forged his clan, Clan Akkaba, after his birthplace and those who had abandoned him and left him to die. During this time the site of Akkaba reached somewhat of a renaissance as great monuments were erected there.

At this point, the clan began forming customs, most notably living by the mentality of survival of the fittest. Members would deceive, betray and even kill their own kin to get closer to their leader, Apocalypse. At Egypt's peak, the clan's influence of the world was similarly large. However, following the attacks by Alexander the Great and his Persian armies, the clan's sphere of influence moved onto Ancient Rome.

19th century

For thousands of years, the group had the mission of safeguarding the legacies and mantras of their lord and ancestor. Once in the new world, they gathered many riches and placed themselves in notable and influential positions to better influence and control the world. As the clan grew, it evolved, holding true to its 'survival of the fittest' creed, they continued to battle and kill each other to gain Apocalypse's favor. They officially adopted the formally custom of marking themselves with a blood-red tattoo of their clan's sigil, the more powerful the individual member's level of mutant power, the larger the tattoo on their body. Although it is unknown what threats they faced early on in the new world, Margaret Slade, the eldest known Akkaba member at the time, noted that when she was a girl she witnessed Apocalypse cut a whole tribe of N'Gari demons to pieces. Still, the current chairman Kabar Brashir, who was roughly the age of her eldest son Hamilton, had witnessed the clan summon Apocalypse thirty-six years ago when he was a boy. At that time, the most prominent members of the council were Margaret Slade and her sons Hamilton and Frederick Slade, who were considered to be among the most powerful descendants of Apocalypse at that time.

Dracula

During the Victorian era the clan was set upon by Dracula and they were nearly exterminated. A string of mysterious murders started to take place surrounding members of the clan. When their leader Hamilton disappeared, they were left with no choice but to summon their lord. In 1897, they awoke Apocalypse in order to deal with the threat of Dracula, who unbeknownst to the members of the clan, was turning members into vampires in order to battle Apocalypse. Dracula sought revenge for his earlier defeat and the way the Dark Lord previously shamed him. As punishment for being weak in requesting a boon from him, Apocalypse killed one of the members of the Akkaba.

The ensuing battle saw the massacre and extermination of all members of Clan Akkaba except Jack Starsmore and Frederick Slade and their disbandment by decree of Apocalypse. With help from Apocalypse and Abraham Van Helsing they manage to kill Dracula, although the master vampire would frequently return and suffer many more deaths. The continuation of the Akkaba line is secured by Ozymandias through Frederick Slade having a child with a woman referred to as Miss Ferguson. Ozymandias, realizing an opportunity to get revenge on Apocalypse, secretly plans to reshape the clan in his image for use against his lord eventually.

Re-Birth

The new clan Akkaba assembled in modern times under Ozymandias and an elderly Fredrick Slade. This new clan has also revealed that Chamber is a member of their bloodline being a descendant of Jack Starsmore. While the Starsmore family never forgot about Apocalypse, Chamber rejected their offer of membership.

The Apocalypse Solution

Deadpool, whom Warren Worthington had been paying to search for Clan Akkaba, finds a Celestial ship buried underground where the clan kills one of their own during a ritual. Deadpool ends up caught but not before the rest of X-Force are alerted. X-Force is able to rescue Deadpool and defeat the savage creature that attacked him but the temple itself makes a temporal jump forcing the team to retreat. Warren then comments that the creature they defeated was War and not only was the Clan trying to resurrect Apocalypse, but they had also revived his final horsemen. Later it is revealed that Apocalypse has been revived as a young boy and was being taken care of by the Clan Akkaba's members themselves.

The clan was teaching him that X-Men are tricking mutants into being locked away, telling them it's for their own good. He is told that the X-Men are tyrants and Apocalypse is the savior. That the worshipper of X (Uncanny X-Force) will come to kill him because he threatens their grip on power, and it is his birthright to usher in the salvation of homo superior by bringing about the Age of Apocalypse. When the X-Force came to kill Apocalypse, they were instead defeated by the final Horsemen of Apocalypse. Ozymandias told the young Apocalypse they should kill the X-Force, but the boy did not want to kill anyone, but Ozymandias ordered the horsemen to kill them. Apocalypse is then relocated into his chamber, but Psylocke managed to reach him, however after seeing that Apocalypse is a child now and has no idea about his former life she has no desire to kill him. But Archangel saw otherwise and wanted to kill the boy as he saw no rehabilitating could cleanse the nature of Apocalypse, and almost kills him but is unable to make himself finish the deal. The group agree to take the boy and train him only for Fantomex to kill him by shooting him between his eyes.

Dark Angel Saga
After the death of Apocalypse, the Death Seed in Warren has activated and he started his ascension to become the heir of Apocalypse as the Archangel persona takes control; due to this, he has taken control of the Clan. He and the Dark Beast traveled to Akkaba Metropolis, a large hidden underground city located underneath the North Pole, established at an unknown point in the past by the Clan Akkaba. After taking the Life Seed from the X-Force that was recurred from the Age of Apocalypse timeline and The World he used them to start a new evolution line in a location after making Genocide kill everyone in it. Seeing the result he wanted to do this to the entire planet so he, the clan and the mutants who sided with him would be seen as Gods for the new evolved creatures. He was seen in bed with Pestilence. When the plan failed and Angel was cured from the Death Seed, Dark Beast takes control of the clan under the instruction of Archangel and Pestilence is revealed to be pregnant from Archangel.

Later the Apocalypse Twins, the children of Archangel and Pestilence, travelled to the Metropolis and destroyed the city and almost decimated the Clan Akkaba in its entirety.

Customs
 Survival of the Fittest
The creed 'Survival of the fittest' plays a fundamental role within the clan. Being deemed the fittest is a title worthy of great honor among the members as It signifies that the individual is the closest to Apocalypse in terms of power. The individual would also lead the group in Apocalypse's absence. Various tests and trials are to be undergone by a member who wishes to achieve this title, including battling any other member who questions the legitimacy of their position.

 The Inner Council
The Inner Council is formed of the leaders and those showing talent or possessing enough of Apocalypse's blood to be next in line or challenge the fittest for their title.

 Summoning
For threats that are perceived to precede the group's extinction, a summoning ritual is performed to summon Apocalypse. Consequently, the ritual requires the death of one of the Inner Council as the request for help naturally implied their weakness.

 Secrecy
Marks from dead members' bodies that imply the existence of the group are removed. The group is never referred to and is assumed to not exist when outside of the clan house and outsiders are not invited. Violating these precautions entails a member's death.

 Tattoos
Members are branded whether at birth or during early chlidhood. Either the amount of Apocalypse's blood found in the child's system, or the strength of the bloodline determines the size of the tattoo. An example would be Hamilton and Chamber, who both possess strong doses of Apocalypse's blood as the other murdered members in the 18th century have small tattoos.

Powers and abilities
Each member possesses a degree of Apocalypse's shape-shifting ability. There are members that are shown to have developed abilities of their own such as fire-breathing (Jack Starsmore), spatial displacement (Blink, Frederick Slade), and even bio-blasts (Chamber).

References

External links
 Frank Tieri on Apocalypse vs Dracula and Clan Akkaba

Comics characters introduced in 2006
Marvel Comics mutants
Comic book terrorist organizations
Characters created by Clayton Henry
Fictional families
X-Men supporting characters

Clan Akkaba


Peter Stadlen (14 July 1910 – 21 January 1996) was an Austrian pianist, musicologist and critic, specialising in the study and interpretation of Beethoven and the composers of the Second Viennese School.

Stadlen, who was born in Vienna, initially studied piano there with Paul Weingartner and composition with Joseph Marx and Max Springer (1877–1954). He then continued his piano studies in Berlin between 1929 and 1933 with Leonid Kreutzer. By 1934 he had embarked on a career as concert pianist. Stadlen premiered the Variations for piano, Op. 27 by Webern on 26 October 1937 in Vienna under the direction of the composer. (Much later he edited the definitive interpretive edition, published by Universal Edition in 1979). Stadlen was also the soloist in the German premiere of Schoenberg's Piano Concerto at the Darmstadt Summer School on 17 July 1948.

After the Anschluss, Stadlen left Austria and sought refuge in Britain in 1938. However, two years later he was interned and deported to Austria (between 1940 and 1942). Back in Britain he resumed performances at the National Gallery Concerts (organised by Myra Hess) with the Austrian Musicians Group, and in regular contemporary music broadcasts with the BBC. Eventually, however, a neurological finger malfunction caused him to give up performing, and he became a music critic, serving the Daily Telegraph for 26 years (the last decade as chief music critic, succeeding Martin Cooper). He retired in 1985. He became increasingly disillusioned with serial music and this was reflected in his criticism of contemporary music.

Stadlen spent many years trying to track down Beethoven's metronome, an invention which Beethoven had commissioned. It was believed that the weight on his metronome was faulty as some of the speeds written on his pieces seemed incorrect. He wished to ascertain the make-up of this weight and to see the correct speeds which Beethoven himself had intended. He finally tracked it down to a small antiques shop only to discover that, although the metronome itself was intact, the weight itself was missing.

Stadlen was a lecturer in music at the University of Reading (1965–1969) and visiting fellow of All Souls College, Oxford (1967–1968). He was married to the philosopher, political activist and musicologist Hedi Stadlen, with whom he lived in Hampstead. There were two sons: Nicholas (who became a High Court judge) and Godfrey (a civil servant in the Home Office). He died in London. His archive and scores are preserved by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna.

References
Notes

Sources
 Cummings, David M.; McIntire, Dennis K. (Ed.). International who's who in music and musician's directory. In the classical and light classical fields, 12th edition 1990/91, International Who's Who in Music 1991.
 Kehler, George. The Piano in Concert, Scarecrow Press, 1982.
 Wilson, Lyle G. A dictionary of pianists, Robert Hale, 1985.

Publications
 'Serialism Reconsidered', The Score, No.22, February 1958
 Letter to the Editor, Tempo, New Ser., No. 88 (Spring, 1969), p. 57
 'Schindler's Beethoven Forgeries', The Musical Times, Vol. 118, No. 1613. (July 1977), pp. 549–552.
 'The aesthetics of popular music', in British Journal of Aesthetics 2 (4) (1962), pp. 351–361.

1910 births
1996 deaths
British classical pianists
Male classical pianists
British writers about music
Jewish emigrants from Austria after the Anschluss to the United Kingdom
Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom
Place of birth missing
20th-century classical pianists
20th-century British musicians
Musicians from Vienna
20th-century British musicologists
20th-century British male musicians

Peter Stadlen


Frederick James Perren (May 15, 1943 – December 16, 2004) was an American songwriter, record producer, arranger, and orchestra conductor. He co-wrote and co-produced songs including "Boogie Fever" by the Sylvers, "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor, and "Shake Your Groove Thing" by Peaches & Herb.

Biography

Early life
Perren was born on May 15, 1943, in Englewood, New Jersey, and graduated from Englewood's Dwight Morrow High School with future songwriting partner Alphonse Mizell in 1961. Perren attended Howard University in Washington, D.C. graduating in 1966. It was here he met future Capitol Records R&B A&R executive Larkin Arnold. He met Christine Yarian in 1967, and they married in 1970. They remained married until his death. She also co-wrote some songs with him.

Motown and The Jackson 5
Shortly after moving to California from Washington, D.C., in 1968, Perren and bassist Alphonzo Mizell met guitarist Deke Richards. They started writing songs together. In 1969 Motown president Berry Gordy invited them to be part of his collective The Corporation, a collection of songwriters and record producers for The Jackson 5. "I Want You Back" was the first hit from this new collaboration, going to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1970. They wrote and produced more Jackson 5 hits such as "ABC", "The Love You Save", "Mama's Pearl", and "Maybe Tomorrow", among others. Perren and The Corporation continued their work for Motown on soundtracks such as Hell Up in Harlem and Cooley High, which featured "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday" (later a hit for Boyz II Men).

The birth of disco and a break with Motown
Perren then moved into the disco arena with the hits "Do It Baby" and "Love Machine" for The Miracles. By 1976, Perren had left Motown and headed over to Capitol Records where another old college friend, Larkin Arnold, was now vice-president. In the next two years, Perren had success with The Sylvers, producing their first two Capitol albums. They had two Gold singles, "Boogie Fever" & "Hot Line", and a top ten single "High School Dance".

Tavares and Fever
Also successful collaborations for Perren were Tavares, for whom he produced three albums—Sky High!, Love Storm, and Future Bound. Commercial highlights of his work with the group include co-writing and producing the number-one disco hits "Don't Take Away The Music" and "Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel", and producing the group's take on The Bee Gees' "More Than A Woman". Both groups' versions were featured in the landmark 1977 movie and soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever. The Bee Gees recorded another of their own compositions, "If I Can't Have You", for the film and its soundtrack, but after hearing the Perren-produced version by Yvonne Elliman, preferred it to their own, which was relegated to a b-side. The Elliman production topped the Hot 100 and went Gold for U.S. sales over 1 million. The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack album sold over 15 million copies and in 1979 Perren received a Grammy Award for Album of the Year for his contribution, the first of two back-to-back Grammys he earned.

MVP Productions and "Reunited"
In 1978, Perren signed Peaches & Herb to his production company, MVP Productions. Through him, the duo inked a deal with Polydor Records. Their first Polydor album, 2 Hot, included the Gold single and Top Five pop and R&B hit "Shake Your Groove Thing" as well the number-one crossover smash "Reunited" and third single "We've Got Love". 2 Hot went Platinum on the strength of those three hits, occupying the number-two pop albums spot for six weeks in early 1979. Peaches & Herb follow-up Twice the Fire went Gold and yielded the singles, "Roller Skate Mate (Part 1)", and "I Pledge My Love".

"Survive": the peak and death of disco
He received his second accolade from the Recording Academy by winning the first Grammy Award for Best Disco Recording in 1980 for Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive." Gaynor's recording went to number one in both the U.S. and the UK, eventually being certified Double Platinum by the RIAA for sales of over four million copies in the U.S. The song became a disco classic and has been recorded by dozens of artists in the decades since its debut including charting versions by Cake, Chantay Savage, and Diana Ross. However, the disco craze had been so overwhelming in some quarters that it caused a backlash so strong that the Recording Academy reacted by omitting the category before the following year; this, then, was the only Grammy specifically awarded for the disco genre. After leaving Polydor in 1981, Perren attempted to produce acts on other labels such as Warner Bros. Records (for Atkins in 1982) and Atlantic (for The Spinners' 1982 album Grand Slam and Johnny Gill's self-titled debut).

Later years
Perren last worked with New Edition in 1986 on their Under the Blue Moon, but by the end of the decade he was largely inactive as a writer and producer. In the 1990s, Perren experienced a resurgence of success as the boyband phenomenon sought musical credibility and instant recognizability with covers of 1970s soul-disco hits. Boyz II Men eclipsed the success of the G.C. Cameron original with their cover of Perren's "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday", hitting number two on the Hot 100 and the top spot on the Hot R&B Singles chart. The song was later covered by Irish boyband Westlife. In 1998, British boyband 911 took a cover of "More Than a Woman" to number two in the UK Singles Chart.

In 1993, Perren suffered a massive stroke. He died 11 years later at the age of 61 in his home in Chatsworth, Los Angeles. He is interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills).

References

External links
https://freddieperren.com

1943 births
2004 deaths
African-American pianists
American organists
American rhythm and blues keyboardists
Record producers from New Jersey
Songwriters from New Jersey
Motown artists
Grammy Award winners
Howard University alumni
Dwight Morrow High School alumni
Musicians from Englewood, New Jersey
Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills)
20th-century American keyboardists
African-American songwriters
20th-century African-American musicians
21st-century African-American people

Freddie Perren


Nobscot Hill is a USGS name for a high point in Middlesex County, Massachusetts with many public hiking trails,  and the hill is located in Framingham and Sudbury. At the summit are various radio towers and a fire tower. Below the summit of Nobscot Hill is the Nobscot Scout Reservation (452 acres) which includes Tippling Rock, a popular viewing location. Surrounding the hill are other large parks and parcels of conservation land, including the Nobscot Conservation Land (118 acres), Callahan State Park (958 acres), the Sudbury Weisblatt Conservation Land, and Wittenborg Woods (83 acres), which are connected by various hiking trails, including the Bay Circuit Trail.

Geography
The summit of Nobscot Hill commands a 360-degree view including Boston, MetroWest, the Blue Hills, Lower Kearsarge, Mount Monadnock, Mount Wachusett, Mount Agamenticus, and all of the unremarkable bumps to the SouthWest. Currently, the foliage obscures much of the view from the summit, unless one climbs the fire tower when it is open, but other nearby viewing points, including nearby Jethro's Table and Tippling Rock, offer an unobstructed views to Boston. Other smaller hills surround Nobscot, including Doeskin Hill to the west, which was named in the seventeenth century after someone who lost a deerskin glove on the hill, and Tantamous Hill to the east, which was named after the medicine man who lived on Nobscot.

History
By 1657 the area appeared in the records by the Nipmuc name "Penobscot" (meaning "Place of the Falling Rock") and was later shortened to "Nobscot." Nobscot was considered a spiritual place for the Nipmuc people who resided in the area, and there was also a large stone cairn at the summit which possibly served as a lookout area for the Indians.  A Nipmuc medicine man named Tantamous, also known as Old Jethro, and his son, Peter Jethro and twelve others, lived on Nobscot Hill prior to King Philip's War when they were removed in 1675 to Deer Island. The Jethros had fruit orchards and cornfields on the sides of the hill, and many large Indian grinding stones are still viewable.  Jethro's Field at Nobscot was referred to in the records by 1649, and references were also made to Peter's Field and Concubine's field in various deeds. Tippling Rock may have been used to communicate between local Indian villages (the rock was blasted in half in the early 20th century possibly by a local farmer). Jethro also had a granary and cairn (lookout) which was rebuilt in 1927 and was 8 feet in diameter and 5.5 feet tall with a flat smooth stone on top.

In the 1700s Revolutionary War General, John Nixon lived and farmed on the north side of Nobscot Hill and the cellar hole of his house is viewable. During a 1792 outbreak of small pox a pest house was constructed at the base of Nobscot for quarantining the sick and a small burial ground was built for victims who succumbed, and this cemetery and the cellar hole of the pest house may be visited today.

The area around Nobscot was used for farming for many years. Henry David Thoreau visited Nobscot in the 1850s and wrote about viewing the hill and about a waterfall near the hill. In the 1920s and 1930s Henry Ford purchased hundreds of acres of land around Nobscot Hill and the Wayside Inn to recreate an authentic early American village, similar to what he eventually built at Greenfield Village in Michigan.  Ford constructed a large dam at the base of the hill in the 1930s to create a reservoir to support firefighting near his proposed village, but the dam failed to hold water and is now known as "Ford's Folly," and can be visited by the hiking trails around Nobscot. In 1928 the Boy Scouts purchased a large reservation on Nobscot Hill which is still owned by the organization, but the area is open to the general public as invited guests. In 2008, a  portion of the Nobscot Scout Reservation in Sudbury was permanently conserved by Sudbury Valley Trustees, the Town of Sudbury, and the Mayflower Council, Boy Scouts of America.

References

Framingham, Massachusetts
Hills of Massachusetts
Landforms of Middlesex County, Massachusetts

Nobscot Hill


Gritsamada (, IAST: Gṛtsamada/Gṛtsamāda) was a Rigvedic sage. Most of Mandala II of the Rigveda is attributed to him. He was the son of Śunahotra Āṅgirasa and the adopted son of Śunaka Bhārgava. According to Witzel, Somāhuti Bhārgava is a descendant of Gritsamada, due to the fact that Somāhuti states that he is one among the Gritsamadas. However according to Jamison and Brereton he belongs to the Bhṛgu lineage of Gṛtsamada's adopted father Śunaka. The signature line of the Gritsamadas in the Rigveda was "May we speak loftily at the ritual distribution, in possession of good heroes." Gritsamada was known for connecting the deeds of Indra to the actions of the ritual.

Legend
In the Bṛhaddevatā, Gritsamada is stated to have become as large and strong as Indra through penances, which led to the daityas Dhuni and Cumiri to mistake him for such. When Gritsamada realized their hostile intentions, he praised Indra with hymns so that Indra could defeat them. According to the late medieval commentator Sayana, Gritsamada was captured by asuras and was released on Indra's command and by his was made the son of Śunaka Bhārgava. In the Mahābhārata, not Vasishtha but Varishtha, curses Gritsamada to be a wild animal as a result of Gritsamada faltering in the recitation of formulae in a sacrifice. He cursed that he would be an animal divested of intelligence, subject to grief, ever filled with fear and that he would be an animal for ten thousand years with ten and eight hundred years in addition. However, Śiva restores him to his normal form and grants him immortality. Gritsamada later shared this story to Yudhishthira.

References

Rishis
Rigveda

Gritsamada