Bute House (Gaelic: Taigh Bhòid) is the official residence of the First Minister of Scotland located within Charlotte Square in Edinburgh. Alongside two other personal offices at the Scottish Parliament Building and St. Andrew's House, Bute House also contains a smaller office used by the First Minister when in official residence.

Located at 6 Charlotte Square in the New Town, it is the central house on the north side of the square and was designed by Robert Adam. Bute House was conveyed to the National Trust for Scotland by the Marquess of Bute in 1966. Between 1970 and 1999, it served as the official residence of the Secretary of State for Scotland. Since July 1999, it has been the official residence of the First Minister.

The four-storey house contains the Cabinet Room, offices and conference, reception, sitting and dining rooms where the First Minister works and where Scottish Government ministers, official visitors and guests are received and entertained. The second and third floors contain the private residence of the First Minister. As well as serving as the official residence of the First Minister, Bute House is frequently used by the First Minister to hold press conferences, media briefings, meetings of the cabinet of the Scottish Government and appointing members to the Scottish Cabinet.

History of the building

Early occupants

Charlotte Square was designed by Scottish architect Robert Adam. The Lord Provost and Edinburgh Town Council commissioned Adam to draw up plans for the square in 1791 as the culmination of Edinburgh's first New Town. However, Adam died in 1792, and his completed designs had to be realised by others. The north side of the square was built first and is faithful to his intentions.

The plot where Bute House now stands was sold in 1792 by public roup (auction) to Orlando Hart, a shoemaker, prominent member of the Town Council and deacon-convener of the trades in Edinburgh, for £290.

The house was occupied by John Innes Crawford, who lived there between 1796 and 1800.  He was born in Jamaica on 27 October 1776.  In 1781 he inherited the Bellfield estate in St James, Jamaica, from his father, John Crawford.  The Bellfield sugar plantation, with its six hundred enslaved workers, generated a net income of £3,000 a year. He later moved to 91 George Street, Edinburgh where he lived between 1801 and 1825.  He died on 22 November 1839.

In 1806, Sir John Sinclair, 1st Baronet bought the newly completed house for £2,950. Sinclair was a Whig politician and a writer on finance and agriculture. He was also responsible for the compilation of the First Statistical Account of Scotland. Sinclair sold the house in 1816 to Lieutenant Colonel William Gabriel Davy.

In May 1818, the house was purchased from Davy by Henry Ritchie of Busbie. Ritchie was a Glasgow merchant, a partner in the Thistle Bank, and the owner of landed estates in Lanarkshire and Ayrshire. He sold his Charlotte Square townhouse to Charles Oman, a hotel keeper and vintner, in May 1825. Oman, a native of Caithness, had owned various hotels and coffee houses in Edinburgh over the decades, including the Waterloo Hotel on the city's Waterloo Place, up until his purchase of 6 Charlotte Square. Oman turned his new townhouse into Oman's Hotel, which was to remain for over 20 years. The fixings for the letters of the hotel's name can still be seen today on the exterior wall above the front entrance door of Bute House.

Oman died in August 1826, but the hotel continued to operate under the ownership of his widow, Mrs Grace Oman (née Burns). The exiled Charles X of France stayed at the hotel for a brief time in 1832, during his second period of exile in Edinburgh. Following Mrs Oman's death in 1845, 6 Charlotte Square was sold by her heirs to Alexander Campbell of Cammo, who lived in the house with his family until his death in 1887. Campbell commissioned David Rhind to make various alterations and additions to the house in 1867. The house's next owner was Sir Mitchell Mitchell-Thomson, 1st Baronet, who was to make it his home for the next 30 years. A partner in his family's timber business, and a director of the Bank of Scotland, he also served as the Lord Provost of Edinburgh from 1897 until 1900. In 1889, Mitchell-Thomson employed the architect Thomas Leadbetter to carry out further alterations.

Bute family: 1922–66

The 4th Marquess of Bute had a particular enthusiasm for the amenity value of the Scottish townscape. From the early 1900s onwards, he began to buy up the central houses on the north side of Charlotte Square to restore Adam's original design, which 19th-century intrusions had compromised, including dormer windows and alterations to the proportions of the first-floor windows. Lord Bute acquired the house at No. 5 first, in 1903, and thoroughly restored its interior in an Adam Revival style, furnishing the principal rooms with antique furniture so that it could function as the Butes' townhouse in Edinburgh. He subsequently acquired No. 6 in 1922 and No. 7 in 1927. Lord Bute's enthusiasm for Charlotte Square was given permanent expression when the City of Edinburgh invoked the Town Planning (Scotland) Act 1925 to effect the Edinburgh Town Planning (Charlotte Square) Scheme Order, 1930. The Bute family thereafter moved from the house at No. 5 to the neighbouring property at No. 6, taking many of the contents of No. 5 with them.

Transfer to the National Trust for Scotland
In May 1966, the Treasury accepted Nos. 5, 6 and 7 Charlotte Square in lieu of part payment of death duties on the estate of the 5th Marquess of Bute, who had died in August 1956. The three houses became the property of the National Trust for Scotland, which proposed to lease No. 6 to a new trust which would administer the house as an official residence for the Secretary of State for Scotland, as a building where he could reside when in Edinburgh and where distinguished visitors could be received and entertained. The Bute House Trust was formed in 1966 to bring this idea to fruition. The Trustees raised the £40,000 required for the alteration and redecoration of the house and its furnishings. The interior decoration and colour schemes were the responsibility of Lady Victoria Wemyss and Colin McWilliam. Because funding was tight, the interior refurbishment of Bute House was dependent on a number of loans.

Bute House is not owned by the Scottish Government but remains in the ownership of the National Trust for Scotland, a charitable organisation dedicated to the preservation of historic buildings and sites of natural significance across the country. The property is also legally under the supervision of the Bute House Trustees, a group whose existence was provided for in the original trust deed passing ownership from the Bute family.

Official residence

From 1970 onwards, after the House was refurbished after its previous owners had given it and two adjoining houses to the National Trust for Scotland, Bute House became the grace-and-favour residence in Edinburgh of the Secretary of State for Scotland, the UK government minister charged with looking after Scotland's interests in Westminster, who remained as a resident in it until devolution in 1999. It is now the setting for the weekly meeting of the Scottish Government's Cabinet, which meets in what used to be the Secretary of State's study.

Willie Ross was the first Secretary of State for Scotland to occupy Bute House in May 1966. The Secretary of State for Scotland ceased the ability to reside in Bute House in 1999 following the establishment of the office of First Minister of Scotland. In 1999, Donald Dewar became the first First Minister of Scotland and the first occupant of Bute House in the office of First Minister. Dewar died whilst in office in October 2000, and since then, Bute House has been occupied by successive first ministers; Henry McLeish (2000–2001), Jack McConnell (2001–2007), Alex Salmond (2007–2014), Nicola Sturgeon (2014–2023) and Humza Yousaf (2023–present). A portrait of each of the first ministers are currently on display in the main staircase of Bute House.

Repairs and restoration

In 2017, following extensive survey work on the condition of the building undertaken by the building's conservators, Bute House was closed for urgent repairs, with the First Minister having to decant the building until necessary work was completed. The work to Bute House was coordinated by Historic Environment Scotland, with "temporary measures" put in place for the First Minister to reside and for meetings of the Cabinet whilst the building was being restored.

Rooms and features

Front door and vestibule

Bute House is unusual for an Edinburgh New Town house because it has a central front door. The main entrance door for most New Townhouses would more normally be placed on the same side as the staircase. However, the central door of Bute House was a necessary function of Adam's palace front. The wide, four-panelled entrance door is made of polished black oak. Between the top sets of panels are the brass Roman numerals "VI". Below the numerals, between the bottom sets of panels, there is a brass letter box on the left-hand side of the door and a brass door knocker on the right-hand side. The door is framed by small side windows and adorned with a semicircular fanlight window. A black ironwork fence runs along the front of the house and up each side of the flight of six steps leading up to the entrance door. The fence rises on either side of the front step to support iron gas lamps.

As the vestibule does not open directly into the stairwell, Balfour Paul sought to ensure that it would not appear dark and forbidding by deciding to greet the visitor with a welcoming central chimneypiece in white marble facing the front door. The plan of the vestibule is T-shaped, with archways leading through from the right-hand and left-hand sides of the fireplace. The vestibule features a rosette ceiling, highly decorative plasterwork in the Adam Revival style, and a floor of polished flagstones in octagons and black squares.

Drawing room

The room features original elaborate ceiling plasterwork, with the frieze repeating the same festoons found in the ceiling decoration. In 1923, Lord Bute and Balfour Paul complemented this ceiling by introducing new doorcases in the same Adam style, together with an inlaid chimneypiece with a central tablet depicting Venus and Cupid and vases carried by dolphins. The new single-leafed doors replaced 19th-century double doors, which connected this large drawing room at the front of Bute House, to the back drawing-room that is now the cabinet room. The fine gilded rococo mirror is attributed to the London cabinet-maker John Mackie. The 18th-century mirror was originally made for the drawing room of Duff House in Banffshire.

Cabinet room

When Bute House was first furnished as an official residence in 1970, this room was intended as the Library or private study of the Secretary of State. With the establishment of the Scottish Government in 1999, it became the cabinet room. The room's original appearance, with its robust colour scheme picking up the brown marble of the chimneypiece, is recorded in Harry More Gordon's conversation piece portraying all the successive Secretaries of State for Scotland. This room retains its original cornice, but the chimneypiece and the shaped treatment of the south wall, which replaces the 19th-century double folding doors that led into the front drawing room, were introduced in the 1920s by Lord Bute and Balfour Paul.

Colin McWilliam designed a desk and a bookcase incorporating copies of the portrait medallion of Robert Adam by James Tassie for this room. The modern reproduction Georgian ladder back chairs were intended to complement the existing suite of dining chairs at Bute House. The chandelier was originally in the Butes' dining room on the ground floor.

The dining room
The dining room in Bute House today is thought to have been the original dining room used in Bute House since its construction. In 1967, the Bute House Trust commissioned the reproduction furniture in this room: the chairs are from Whytock and Reid.

The cornice is thought to be original design from the original construction of the house, however, a shallow recess to allow a sideboard to be included was added at some point by Lord Bute. The gilded curtain boxes features above each of the windows in the drawing room were commissioned by Lord Bute and were modelled on designs produced by Robert Adam for the 3rd Earl of Bute's house located in Luton.

Art work to feature in the drawing room include a painting by Thomas Faed titled Sir Walter Scott and his Friends. The Millennium Silverware Collection, pieces of silverware art from fifteen of Scotland's top silversmiths which were created to mark the reopening of the Scottish Parliament also feature in the drawing room. The silverware collection is on permanent loan to Bute House from the Scottish Goldsmiths Trust.

Security and incidents

In 2002, a drunken woman was able to enter Bute House and attend a private function that was taking place within Bute House. During this incident, neither then-First Minister Jack McConnell nor his wife were in residence at Bute House.

In 2004, it was reported, incorrectly, that a bomb had been found close to Bute House whilst McConnell was serving as First Minister. After an investigation, it was concluded that the suspect was indeed carrying nothing that could be deemed harmful and was later sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

In 2016, a man walked up to the front door of Bute House and began to shout abuse, asking if Nicola Sturgeon was inside the building. Sturgeon was not in residence at Bute House during this incident, but the man was later found guilty of two charges of breach of the peace.

As a result of further restrictions to tackle rising COVID-19 cases in Scotland, 70 protesters gathered outside Bute House to protest against further restrictions in Scotland, claiming that it was a "conspiracy theory". Four men were later arrested for breaking the coronavirus lockdown restrictions that were currently in place within the Edinburgh area at the time of the protest.

Notes

References

 Gifford, John; McWilliam, Colin & Walker, David (1984). Edinburgh: The Buildings of Scotland. (Pevsner Architectural Guides.) New Haven: Yale University Press. .
 Paton, Hugh (1842). A Series of Original Portraits and Caricature Etchings by the late John Kay. Edinburgh: Hugh Paton.
 Youngson, A. J. (2001). The Companion Guide to Edinburgh and the Borders. Companion Guides. .

External links

 Office of the First Minister of Scotland
 The Scottish Government
History at Random Blog: The History of Bute House – Home to the First Minister of Scotland

Houses completed in 1805
Category A listed buildings in Edinburgh
Government buildings in Edinburgh
New Town, Edinburgh
19th century in Scotland
Official residences in the United Kingdom
Official residences of subnational executives
Government buildings in Scotland
Listed houses in Scotland
Listed government buildings in Scotland
1805 establishments in Scotland
National Trust for Scotland properties

Bute House


Lycium andersonii is a species of flowering plant in the nightshade family, Solanaceae. Its common names include water-jacket, redberry desert-thorn, Anderson thornbush, Anderson's desert thorn, Anderson boxthorn, Anderson lycium, Anderson wolfberry, and squawberry.

The species is native to the Southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, where it is distributed in New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, Baja California, Sinaloa, and Sonora. It grows in many habitat types and plant communities, including pinyon-juniper woodland, creosote bush scrub, sagebrush scrub, chaparral, and coastal sage scrub.

This plant is a shrub growing up to about  in maximum height. It grows from a large fibrous root system which can extend over  from the base of the plant. The shrub is rounded in shape with many branches covered in many thin spines up to  long. The flat leaves are thick and fleshy, measuring up to  long. They are shed from the plant in dry conditions. The flowers have funnel-shaped white or purple-tinged corollas up to a centimeter long. The fruit is a red or orange berry less than a centimeter long.

This plant grows in sandy, gravelly washes and on slopes and mesas. It tolerates some soil salinity and alkaline soils such as caliche. It thrives in hot, dry climates. It is rarely dominant in the local flora. Common associates include creosote bush (Larrea tridentata), yellow palo verde (Parkinsonia microphylla), white bursage, (Ambrosia dumosa), smoke tree (Psorothamnus spinosus), Nevada ephedra (Ephedra nevadensis), hop sage (Grayia spinosa), pale wolfberry (Lycium pallidum), blackbrush (Coleogyne ramosissima), singlewhorl burrobrush (Hymenoclea monogyra), and Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia).

It was named after Charles Lewis Anderson by Asa Gray.

References

External links
Calflora Database: Lycium andersonii (Anderson Thornbush, Anderson's desert thorn, water jacket)
Lycium andersonii — U.C. Photo gallery

andersonii
North American desert flora
Flora of Arizona
Flora of Baja California
Flora of California
Flora of Nevada
Flora of New Mexico
Flora of Sinaloa
Flora of Sonora
Flora of Utah
Flora of the California desert regions
Flora of the Great Basin
Flora of the Sonoran Deserts
Natural history of the Colorado Desert
Natural history of the Mojave Desert
Natural history of the Peninsular Ranges

Lycium andersonii


Henry Gauthier-Villars (8 August 1859 – 12 January 1931), known by the pen name Willy , was a French fin de siècle writer and music critic who is today mostly known as the mentor and first husband of Colette. Other pseudonyms used by Gauthiers-Villars are: Henry Maugis, Robert Parville, l'Ex-ouvreuse du Cirque d'été, L'Ouvreuse, L'Ouvreuse du Cirque d'été, Jim Smiley, Henry Willy and Boris Zichine.

Biography
Born on 8 August 1859 in Villiers-sur-Orge, Essonne into a bourgeois Catholic family, he attended the Lycée Fontanes and later the Jesuit Collège Stanislas in Paris. He became fluent in Latin and German.  In 1885, he obtained a law degree and subsequently started with a job in the family's publishing firm of Gauthier-Villars.

Willy was a ladies' man; Rachilde described him "as a man of the world, a brilliant Parisian rake". In 1889, he met Colette, 14 years younger than he was; they married on 15 May 1893.  As a writer and music critic he was an incessant and effective self-promoter, under whose directions his "slaves" wrote articles and novels. His ghostwriters may or may not have received recognition but participated because publication under the Willy name secured a high publication rate and good income. With his literary workshops, Willy published more than 50 novels. Curnonsky was one of his ghostwriters, as was his fellow gastronomist Marcel Boulestin.
His participation varied and included conceptualizing, editing, and adding sections, plots, and puns. Henry's favourite song, which he could often be heard singing on his way to dinner, was "I'm Henery the Eighth".

Colette was initially handling his correspondence, but soon became involved in writing on her own starting with Claudine, her first work under the Willy label. The success led to more novels in the Claudine series. It is generally acknowledged that these books were written by Colette, but he had his hand in editing and honing the manuscripts. Willy also went into merchandizing dolls and other items based on the Claudine novels.

Colette soon learned that Willy had other affairs, and she met his mistress Charlotte Kinceler, who later became her friend. Later, Willy and Colette had an affair unbeknownst to each other with the same woman, the American socialite Georgie Raoul-Duval, née Urquhart. Upon discovery, they made it a threesome and attended the Bayreuth festival together.

The marriage to Colette lasted until 1910, although they separated in 1906. While Willy made a lot of money, he squandered it with ease on women and gambling and was facing bankruptcy. Willy went on to marry Marguerite Maniez, also known as Meg Villars after her marriage. He had no children from his two marriages; his son, Jacques, was the offspring from a prior affair. Willy died on 12 January 1931 in Paris. Three thousand mourners followed his casket to the Montparnasse cemetery.

In 1905, Willy was painted by Giovanni Boldini.

In popular culture
Willy is played by Dominic West in the 2018 film Colette which stars Keira Knightley in the eponymous role of his first wife.

Bibliography
Willy, Colette et moi, Sylvain Bonmariage, introduction by Jean-Pierre Thiollet, Anagramme, Paris, 2004 (reprint)

References

External links

1859 births
1931 deaths
People from Essonne
19th-century French journalists
20th-century French journalists
19th-century French novelists
20th-century French novelists
French bisexual writers
French music critics
Writers from Île-de-France
Bisexual male writers
Bisexual novelists
Bisexual journalists
French LGBT journalists
French LGBT novelists
Collège Stanislas de Paris alumni
Burials at Montparnasse Cemetery
French male novelists
Members of the Ligue de la patrie française
19th-century French male writers
20th-century French male writers
Colette

Henry Gauthier-Villars


Stefanos Lazaridis (28 July 1942 – 8 May 2010) was a stage designer, best known for his work in opera. Originally intended for a business career, he studied stage design in London, and was quickly in demand in theatres and opera houses, working with John Copley and other directors.

Originally his style was lavish and naturalistic, but he changed to a less traditional style, working with David Pountney and other more avant garde directors at English National Opera and elsewhere.

He occasionally directed operas, and was for a short time director of the Greek National Opera.

Life and career
Lazaridis was born in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, son of a prosperous expatriate Greek businessman, Nicholas Lazaridis. He was educated at the Greek School in Addis Ababa and the Ecole Internationale in Geneva. In 1962 he went to London to take a course in business administration, but instead enrolled at the Byam Shaw School of Art in Kensington and later transferred to the Central School of Speech and Drama where he studied theatre design. His fellow Greek, the designer Nicholas Georgiadis, took him on as an apprentice, and he designed his first theatre production in Guildford in 1967, Tennessee Williams's Eccentricities of a Nightingale. He attracted attention for his designs for Antony Tudor's "Knight Errant" for The Royal Ballet's touring company in 1968, and was invited to design a new production of Carmen for the director John Copley at Sadler's Wells Opera in 1970.

Lazaridis's early designs were naturalistic and lavish, and suited Copley's approach to production. They worked together both at English National Opera (ENO) (The Seraglio, 1971, Il trovatore, 1972) and Covent Garden (Le nozze di Figaro, 1971, Don Giovanni, 1973). In the 1980s, Lazaridis worked a great deal with David Pountney at ENO. His design style moved away from opulent naturalism, and embraced Pountney's non-naturalistic approach. Pountney later wrote,

Lazaridis designed more than 30 productions for ENO. Pountney rated among the best of them Rusalka, Hansel and Gretel, Dr Faustus and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, the last of them set in a meat-packing factory. Other directors with whom Lazaridis worked were Nicholas Hytner, Patrick Garland, Colin Graham, Tim Albery and Phyllida Lloyd. Not all his productions were well received. The Times described his set for an ENO Tosca as "one of the ugliest and drabbest ever devised for Tosca." Together with the director Steven Pimlott, Lazaridis presented a 1989 Carmen in the vast Earls Court arena in London, which The Times considered "a new benchmark in the intelligent popularisation of opera.".

With Pountney, Lazaridis worked on three lake-stage productions for the Bregenz Festival, Der fliegende Holländer (1989), Nabucco (1991) and Fidelio (1995). Pountney called Lazaridis's designs for these productions "astonishing … The opportunity to work on this scale somehow triggered Stefan's most sensitive dramaturgical instincts, allied to his phenomenal aesthetic sense and understanding of scale."

Away from opera, Lazaridis designed productions of a wide range of plays from a show about the Mitford sisters to Ibsen dramas and Shakespeare comedy. In 1993 he directed and designed the Duran Duran tour of the U.S.

Among Lazaridis's later designs for the opera house was the Covent Garden Ring cycle (2004–06) directed by Keith Warner, of which The Guardian wrote, "Warner and Lazaridis can't decide if the Ring is heroic myth, political allegory, or human story. Instead, they cram the stage with a vast range of imagery, from the uninspired video art which depicts Siegfried's journey on the Rhine, to the surrealist kitsch of the Gibichung Hall and the dark naturalism of the hunt scene."

Between 2006 and 2007 Lazaridis was artistic director and general manager of the Greek National Opera; he found himself frustrated in his attempts to vitalise the company, and resigned. Pountney observed, "the Greeks have themselves to blame that they squandered such an astounding talent."

National Life Stories conducted an interview (C1173/28) with Lazaridis in 2007 for An Oral History of Theatre Design collection held by the British Library.

Lazaridis died of cancer at the age of 67. He was survived by Tim Williams, his partner of 47 years.

Notes

1942 births
2010 deaths
Ballet designers
Greek costume designers
Opera designers
Greek scenic designers
Alumni of the Byam Shaw School of Art
People from Dire Dawa
People from Addis Ababa

Stefanos Lazaridis


The following lists events that happened during 1841 in South Africa.

Events
 Missionary David Livingstone arrives in the Cape Colony and proceeds to Kuruman before journeying through Central Africa.
 Voortrekkers set up a council in Potchefstroom

Deaths
 1 May - Sir Rufane Shaw Donkin, acting Governor of the Cape Colony who supervised the arrival and settling of the British settlers and who founded Port Elizabeth, dies in Southampton, England

References
See Years in South Africa for list of References

South Africa
Years in South Africa

1841 in South Africa


In the context of cryptocurrency mining, a mining pool is the pooling of resources by miners, who share their processing power over a network, to split the reward equally, according to the amount of work they contributed to the probability of finding a block. A "share" is awarded to members of the mining pool who present a valid partial proof-of-work. Mining in pools began when the difficulty for mining increased to the point where it could take centuries for slower miners to generate a block. The solution to this problem was for miners to pool their resources so they could generate blocks more quickly and therefore receive a portion of the block reward on a consistent basis, rather than randomly once every few years.

History

 November 2010:  Slush launched in 2010 and is the first mining pool.<
 2011–2013:  The era of deepbit, which at its peak held up to 45% of the network hashrate.
 2013–2014:  Since the introduction of ASIC, and when deepbit failed to support the newer stratum protocol, GHash.IO replaced deepbit and became the largest.
 2014–2015:  F2Pool, which launched in May 2013, overtook GHash.IO and became then the largest mining pool.
 2016–2018:  Rise of Bitmain and its AntPool. Bitmain also controls a few other smaller pools like BTC.com and ViaBTC.
 2019–2020:  The launch of Poolin. Poolin and F2Pool each held about 15% of the network hashrate at this time period, with smaller pools following.
 2020:  Binance launches a mining pool, following Huobi and OKex. Luxor launches a US-based mining pool..
 2022:  Cruxpool launches the first french mining pool. PEGA Pool launches the first eco friendly focused mining pool. But at the end of summer 2023, PEGA Pool announced the closure of its mining operation.

Mining pool share
Share is the principal concept of the mining pool operation. Share is a potential block solution. So it may be a block solution, but it is not necessarily so. For example, suppose a block solution is a number that ends with 10 zeros and, a share may be a number with 5 zeros at the end. Sooner or later one of the shares will have not only 5, but 10 zeros at the end, and this will be the block solution.

Mining pools need shares to estimate the miner's contribution to the work performed by the pool to find a block. There are numerous miner reward systems: PPS, PROP, PPLNS, PPLNT, and many more.

Mining pool methods
Mining pools may contain hundreds or thousands of miners using specialized protocols.  In all these schemes  stands for a block reward minus pool fee and  is a probability of finding a block in a share attempt (, where  is current block difficulty). A pool can support "variable share difficulty" feature, which means that a miner can select the share target (the lower bound of share difficulty) on their own and change  accordingly.

Pay-per-Share

The Pay-per-Share (PPS) approach offers an instant, guaranteed payout to a miner for their contribution to the probability that the pool finds a block. Miners are paid out from the pool's existing balance and can withdraw their payout immediately. This model allows for the least possible variance in payment for miners while also transferring much of the risk to the pool's operator.

Each share costs exactly the expected value of each hash attempt .

Proportional

Miners earn shares until the pool finds a block (the end of the mining round). After that each user gets reward , where  is amount of their own shares, and  is amount of all shares in this round. In other words, all shares are equal, but its value is calculated only at the end of each round.

Pooled mining
Pooled mining (BPM), also known as "slush's system", due to its first use on a pool called "slush's pool', uses a system where older shares from the beginning of a block round are given less weight than more recent shares. A new round starts the moment the pool solves a block and miners are rewarded Proportional to the shares submitted. This reduces the ability to cheat the mining pool system by switching pools during a round, to maximize profit.

Pay-per-last-N-shares

Pay-per-last-N-shares (PPLNS) method is similar to Proportional, but the miner's reward is calculated on a basis of N last shares, instead of all shares for the last round. It means that when a block is found, the reward of each miner is calculated based on the miner contribution to the last N pool shares. Therefore, if the round was short enough all miners get more profit and vice versa.

Solo Mining Pool

Solo pools operate the same way as usual pools, with the only difference being that block reward is not distributed among all miners. The entire reward in a solo pool goes to the miner who finds the block.

Peer-to-Peer Mining Pool
Peer-to-peer mining pool (P2Pool) decentralizes the responsibilities of a pool server, removing the chance of the pool operator cheating or the server being a single point of failure. Miners work on a side blockchain called a share chain, mining at a lower difficulty at a rate of one share block per 30 seconds. Once a share block reaches the network target, it is transmitted and merged onto the blockchain. Miners are rewarded when this occurs proportional to the shares submitted prior to the target block. A P2Pool requires the miners to run a full node, bearing the weight of hardware expenses and network bandwidth.

Geometric method

Geometric Method (GM) was invented by Meni Rosenfeld. It is based on the same "score" idea, as Slush's method: the score granted for every new share, relatively to already existing score and the score of future shares, is always the same, thus there is no advantage to mining early or late in the round.

The method goes as follows:
 Choose parameters  and  (fixed and variable fee).
 At the start of every round, set . For every worker , let  be the worker's score for this round, and set .
 Set , where . If the difficulty changes during the round,  needs to be updated.
 When worker  submits a share, set , and then .
 If the share is a valid block, end the round. For every worker  pay

Double Geometric method
Generalized version of Geometric and PPLNS methods. It involves new parameter:  ("cross-round leakage"). When  this becomes the Geometric method. When  this becomes a variant of PPLNS, with exponential decay instead of a step function.

 Choose parameters , , and .
 When the pool first starts running, initialize . For every worker , let  be the worker's score, and set .
 Set . If at any point the difficulty or the parameters change,  should be recalculated.
 When worker  submits a share, set  (where  is the block reward at the time it was submitted), and then .
 If the share is a valid block, then also do the following for each worker : Give him a payout of , and then set .

Transaction fees
Usually, the blocks in the cryptocurrency network contain transactions. Transaction fees are paid to the miner (mining pool). Different mining pools could share these fees between their miners or not. Pay-per-last-N-shares (PPLNS), Pay-Per-Share Plus (PPS+) or Full Pay-Per-Share (FPPS) are the most fair methods where the payouts from the pool include not only the block subsidy but also the transaction fees.

Multipool mining

Multipools switch between different altcoins and constantly calculate which coin is at that moment the most profitable to mine. Two key factors are involved in the algorithm that calculates profitability, the block time, and the price on the exchanges. To avoid the need for many different wallets for all possible minable coins, multipools may automatically exchange the mined coin to a coin that is accepted in the mainstream (for example bitcoin). Using this method, because the most profitable coins are being mined and then sold for the intended coin, it is possible to receive more coins in the intended currency than by mining that currency alone. This method also increases demand on the intended coin, which has the side effect of increasing or stabilizing the value of the intended coin.

Some companies that sell hash power may do so by aggregating the work of many small miners (for example, NiceHash), paying them proportionally by share like a pool would. Some such companies operate their own pools. These can be considered multipools, because they usually employ a similar method of work switching, although the work they assign is determined by customer demand rather than "raw" profitability.

PoC mining

Similar to other mining technologies, the PoC, PoC+, PoS Proof of Space method allows the computing to be performed beforehand and all answers are stored on a miners hard drive, the heavy energy consumption for PoC is not required like it is for PoW mining and therefore PoC is almost always a more environmentally friendly blockchain choice. When mining happens the miner simply "looks" through the pre-stored answers and submits the best one found to the network, with minimal energy used to read the hard drives. Due to the low hardware specification requirements of the PoC mining process, this type of mining can be conducted on a regular PC still being used for other day-to-day tasks.  The first PoC blockchain was brought online in 2014 and is known as Signum today, with other PoC chains coming out much later, examples: Chia, Flax, and BitcoinHD. The network difficulty, as well as other network and mining status information, can be viewed on any of the public mining pool dashboards, example: Mining Pool Dashboard  A list of current PoC, PoS, PoC+ type mining pools are also tracked by some third party "Mining Pool Stats" pages, an example of one is Mining Pool Stats.

See also

 Cryptographic protocol
 Digital currency exchanger
 Electronic money

References

External links
 An estimation of hashrate distribution amongst the largest mining pools
 First PoC blockchain
 example of a PoC+ Mining Pool
 example of a PoC mining pool stats tracking site

Bitcoin
Cryptocurrencies
Decentralization

Mining pool


Arrudas is a stream that begins its course in Contagem and goes down through Belo Horizonte in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. It is one of the source of Das Velhas River Rio das Velhas in Sabará. Ribeirão Arrudas is formed by many streams: Jatobá, Barreiro, Bonsucesso, Cercadinho, Piteiras, Leitão, Acaba Mundo, Serra, Taquaril, Navio-baleia, Santa Terezinha, Ferrugem, Tijuco, Pastinho, among others, which are the tributaries of Arrudas. Together, Arrudas and its affluents form the Arrudas River Basin Bacia do Ribeirão Arrudas.

Although most of the sources that make this important tributary of the Rio das Velhas are still clean, almost all sewage from Contagem and from Belo Horizonte is being dumped into Arrudas, which also jeopardizes Rio das Velhas Basin and Rio São Francisco Basin. The rapid and disorderly Urbanization of Contagem Belo Horizonte and later the construction of avenues to alleviate traffic in Belo Horizonte had removed the green on the banks of Arrudas, contributing to the increase in temperature in the city. In addition, the concrete riverbed added to the increasing soil sealing of the city have caused increasingly destructive floods along the basins of the Arruda and Rio das Velhas, in recent years.

The recent construction of boulevards, as government attempts to solve the traffic problem in Belo Horizonte covered part of the stream, altering significantly the landscape of the city.

External links
 Projeto Manuelzão
 Bacia do Ribeirão Arrudas
 Cartilha sobre o Arrudas do Comitê da Bacia Hidrográfica do Rio das Velhas
 Comitê da Bacia Hidrográfica do Rio das Velhas
 Blog ribeiraoarrudas
 Kadinsky, Sergey "Ribeirao Arrudas, Belo Horizonte" Hidden Waters Blog July 18, 2016

Rivers of Minas Gerais

References

Ribeirão Arrudas


Marston Road is a football ground in Stafford, England. It is the home ground of Stafford Rangers F.C., a semi-professional team who play in the Northern Premier League.

Ground history
The first competitive game at the ground took place on Saturday 5 September 1896, a North Staffordshire League fixture against Dresden United Reserves. Players changed in an upstairs club room at the Albion Hotel before crossing the road to what was then referred to as the Albion Ground. During 1920 the ground was purchased when Rangers became a limited company, and soon banking appeared around the pitch and four huts were bought from Cannock Chase War Training Group. The first Supporters' Club built a stand on the Lotus site which is quite possibly the structure in use today, and work also commenced on dressing rooms, offices and turnstiles ready for the 1921 season. Two years later the club hit financial difficulties and the ground was mortgaged for £500, but worse followed, for in 1929 fire destroyed part of it.

During the war Marston Road fell into disrepair but was renovated by Supporters Club members ready for use at the start of the 1946/47 season. It remained more or less unchanged until an upturn in playing fortunes during the late sixties saw the launch of a floodlighting fund. £6,000 was raised and on Monday 5 September 1969 a crowd of 3,045 watched the official opener against Port Vale. The seventies saw the ground develop to its current status with a new seated stand to replace the ramshackle old stand which stood along the Marston Road side. Considerable delays were experienced following planning permission for the 450-seater and the old stand was still in place when Rotherham United's visit in the FA Cup 3rd Round on 4 January 1975 brought in the record gate of 8,536. The stand was used for the last time the following month and volunteer work helped create the new one in time for the start of the following season.

The next significant work at Marston Road was the building of the new dressing room block and office complex which was officially opened in December 1977 following a match with Stoke City. New terrace steps were constructed at the Social Club end of the ground during the 1988 close season. When the new board of directors took over in 1997, work was carried out to tidy up the ground and the Social Club was extended. During the 2005/06 season, the floodlights were replaced and the seating capacity of the stand was increased to over 500 seats.

Stands

Main Stand Side
530 seats in a single stand which sits on the halfway line, containing press/directors facilities. The blue seats now in place were bought from Leicester City's doomed Main Stand, due to ground improvements required for National Conference football. Either side of the stand lies shallow terracing.

Lotus Side
Small terrace stand that runs the length of the pitch with old wooden roof supports that according to some date back to before the First World War.

Shed End
The traditional gathering point for the more vocal parts of Rangers' support. The Shed End is said to have equal ability to "suck a goal in" as other supporter strongholds such as Manchester United's Stretford End and Wolverhampton Wanderers' Sir Jack Hayward Stand. The Shed End was knocked down, and a new 2,000-seat stand erected by 4 April 2007, when it was tested by the Conference Safety Officers. In May 2009 the 2,000 seated temporary Shed End stand was taken away, with crowds set to average just over 525 in the second season back in the Conference North, it was no longer necessary. The stand heavily cost the club, and they were forced to establish a '250 Club' to keep the club alive, where fans loaned the club £200, and the loan was used to pay off the debt to the seating company, which could have led to administration. For the first half of the 2009–10 season the Shed End was just a terraced end, and in early 2010 crush barriers were tested, and a row were installed to increase the capacity of the Shed End, however, the Shed End still has no roof, which means the electric atmosphere is currently not created. The cost to cover the whole end was suggested to be approximately £180,000.

Social Club End
Area of the ground in which the Social Club sits. In 1997 the Social Club was extended and a result there is limited capacity on this side of the ground. A new terrace was erected here, in time for the safety tests on 4 April 2007. As with the Shed End, the temporary covered terrace was sent back, and nothing has yet replaced the stand or any plans announced, as the 2009–2010 season has drawn to a close.

The future
Because of the land-locked nature of Marston Road, it is widely accepted that for the club to progress then they must move away from their home of over 100 years. At present there are no official plans to do this and the club are instead upgrading the ground to meet league requirements.

References

External links
Page at Stafford Rangers site

Football venues in England
Sports venues in Staffordshire
Stafford Rangers F.C.
Sports venues completed in 1896
Buildings and structures in Stafford

Marston Road (Stafford)


John Hookham Frere  (21 May 1769 – 7 January 1846) was an English diplomat and author.

Early life
Frere was born in London.  His father, John Frere, a member of a Suffolk family, had been educated at Caius College, Cambridge, and became Second Wrangler in 1763. His mother, Jane, daughter of John Hookham, a rich London merchant, was cultured and wrote verse in private. His father's sister Ellenor, who married Sir John Fenn, editor of the Paston Letters, wrote educational works for children under the pseudonyms "Mrs Lovechild" and "Mrs Teachwell". Young Frere was sent to Eton College in 1785, and there began a friendship with George Canning which greatly affected his life. From Eton, he went to his father's college at Cambridge, and graduated BA in 1792 and MA in 1795. He entered public service in the foreign office under Lord Grenville, and sat from 1796 to 1802 as Member of Parliament for the borough of West Looe in Cornwall.

Career

From his boyhood he had admired William Pitt the Younger, and along with Canning he entered into the defence of his government, and contributed to the pages of the Anti-Jacobin, edited by Gifford. He contributed, in collaboration with Canning, The Loves of the Triangles, a parody of Erasmus Darwin's Loves of the Plants, The Needy Knife-Grinder and The Rovers. On Canning's promotion to the board of trade in 1809 he succeeded him as Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. In October 1800, he was appointed envoy to Lisbon; and in September 1802 he was transferred to Madrid, where he remained for two years. He was recalled on account of a personal disagreement he had with Spanish Prime Minister Godoy, but the ministry showed its approval of his action with a pension of £700 a year.

Frere was made a member of the Privy Council in 1805. In 1807 he was appointed plenipotentiary at Berlin, but the mission was abandoned, and Frere was sent to Spain in 1808 as plenipotentiary to the Central Junta. The condition of Spain rendered his position difficult. When Napoleon began to advance on Madrid, it became a matter of great importance to decide whether Sir John Moore, who was then in the north of Spain, should occupy the capital or retreat, and if he did retreat whether he should go to Portugal or to Galicia. Frere strongly felt that the bolder was the better course, and he urged his views with an urgent and fearless persistency that on sometimes overstepped the limits of his commission. After the disastrous retreat to A Coruña, the public accused Frere of having endangered the British army; though no direct censure was passed upon his conduct by the government, he was recalled, and Marquess Wellesley was appointed in his place.

This ended Frere's public life. He afterwards refused to go to St Petersburg as ambassador, and twice declined a peerage. In 1816, he married Elizabeth Jemima Hay, dowager Countess of Erroll. In 1820, on account of her failing health, he went with her to Malta, where he lived for the rest of his life. In retirement, he devoted himself to literature, studied his favourite Greek authors, and taught himself Hebrew and Maltese. He welcomed English guests, was popular with his Maltese neighbours, and befriended Mikiel Anton Vassalli, the first Professor of Maltese at the University of Malta. He died at Villa Frere in Pietà close to Valletta and is buried at Msida Bastion Cemetery.

In 1833–34, as President of the General Council of the University of Malta, he donated eighty-five volumes of medical books to the Public Library collection with the specific intention of being "for the use of the young students of the medical art".

Works
Frere's literary reputation now rests upon his verse translations of Aristophanes. The translations of The Acharnians, The Knights, The Birds, and The Frogs were privately printed, and were first brought into general notice by George Cornewall Lewis in the Classical Museum for 1847. They were followed by Theognis Restilutus, the personal history of the poet Theognis of Megara. In 1817, he published a mock-heroic Arthurian poem, Prospectus and Specimen of an intended National Work, by William and Robert Whistlecraft, of Stowmarket in Suffolk, Harness and Collar Makers,. William Tennant in Anster Fair used the ottava rima for semi-burlesque poetry five years earlier, but Frere's experiment is interesting because Byron borrowed it in Don Juan.

Frere's complete works were published in 1871, with a memoir by his nephews, WE and Sir Henry Bartle Frere.

References

Sources

External links

1769 births
1846 deaths
Alumni of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
Members of the Privy Council of Great Britain
Members of the Parliament of Great Britain for West Looe
British MPs 1796–1800
Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for constituencies in Cornwall
UK MPs 1801–1802
Ambassadors of the United Kingdom to Spain
Ambassadors of Great Britain to Portugal
Ambassadors of the United Kingdom to Portugal
English male poets
John Hookham

John Hookham Frere


German automobile number plates (Kfz-Kennzeichen) show the place where the automobile carrying them is registered. When a person changes their main home in Germany, or buys a new automobile, they must buy new number plates.

Number plates can be bought which are valid all year round or between 2 to 11 months within any 12 months. This allows changing between summer and winter automobiles, such as a convertible and a sedan/saloon without having the time and money wasted for de- and re-registering.

Format

The present number plate format, used since 1994, uses black print on a white background and first provides information about the country where the automobile is registered within the European Union. German licence plates show a D (for Deutschland=Germany) on the blue strip on the left, which shows the European Union's flag, 12 golden stars in a circle on blue ground.

After that, there are between one and three letters for the city or region where the automobile is registered, such as B for Berlin. These units usually coincide with the German districts, in few cases an urban district and the surrounding district share the same letter code. Usually if an urban district and a rural district share the code, the number of the following letters is different. For example, the urban district (Straubing) SR has one letter after the code (SR - A 123). The surrounding district Straubing-Bogen has two letters (SR - AB 123) after the code. It depends on the number of registered automobiles (or citizens) whether the City or the district has two letters, because there are more possibilities with two letters, so the part with more citizens usually has two letters. For example, the urban district Regensburg has more citizens than the rural district Regensburg, so the city has two letters after the code R.

The number of letters in the city/region code usually shows the size and location of the district: the largest German cities generally only have one letter codes (B=Berlin, M=München (Munich), K=Köln (Cologne), F=Frankfurt am Main), most other districts in Germany have two or three letter codes. Districts in eastern Germany usually have more letters, for two reasons:
 As they only started using the modern system in 1990 after German reunification, many of the possible shorter combinations had already been used up in western Germany. Thus, big east German cities like Dresden have two letter codes (DD) instead of one (D) which was already in use for Düsseldorf. L is, however, now in use for Leipzig because in West Germany it was used for a regional area of Hesse (Lahn) apparently in order to keep the code available for Leipzig as there were no suitably large cities in W. Germany whose names began with the letter L.
 Fewer people live in eastern Germany, so the number of automobiles registered is smaller and hence the use of three letter codes.

This is only a rule of thumb, there are a number of exceptions e.g. Germany's second largest city Hamburg (HH, Hansestadt Hamburg, because of its historical membership in the Hanseatic League) or the west German district Ammerland (WST, Westerstede is the capital of the district).

The reason for this scheme is however not to display size or location, but simply to have enough combinations available within the maximum length of eight characters per plate.

After the location name there are the emission test and vehicle safety test stickers (see below), followed by one or two letters and one to four numbers. These letters and numbers can be chosen by the vehicle owner or if they prefer, random ones can be allocated by the licensing office. The total quantity of letters and numbers on the plate is never higher than eight. One letter with low numbers are normally reserved for motorcycle use since the plate space of these vehicles is smaller.

Prohibited combinations
Various combinations that could be considered politically unacceptable—mainly due to implications relating to Nazi Germany—are disallowed or otherwise avoided. The district Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge uses the name of its main town, Pirna, in its code PIR, to avoid the use of SS, the name of the nazi group; similarly SA is also unused. This is why automobiles for the government and parliament in Saxony-Anhalt are registered with LSA (Land Sachsen Anhalt). In 2004 in Nuremberg, an automobile owner was refused a number plate beginning N-PD because of the connection to the political party, the NPD.

Banned combinations include the Nazi abbreviations HJ (Hitlerjugend, Hitler Youth), NS (Nationalsozialismus, National Socialism), SA (Sturmabteilung), SS (Schutzstaffel) and KZ (Konzentrationslager, concentration camp). Some registration offices have overlooked this rule by mistake, however; there are a few automobiles registered carrying prohibited codes, such as B-SS 12. Some counties also allow these combinations if they are the initials of the owner (e.g., Norbert Schmidt might be able to get XX-NS 1234), but in this case, if the automobile is sold and re-registered in the same county by the new owner, the number can be changed (otherwise the number stays with the automobile until it registered in a different area).

Special codes
Certain types of vehicle bear special codes:

 Classic cars (known in German by the pseudo-English expression Oldtimer) can get an H (historisch, historic) at the end of the plate, such as K-AA 100H in order to preserve the so called "vehicle of cultural value" (kraftfahrtechnisches Kulturgut"). It includes also a flat tax of appr. €300 per year. The requirements for a vehicle for an H-Plate are:
minimum age of the vehicle of 30 years from first registering
must be in original condition and well maintained. Some features such as safety belts or a catalytic converter which have been added are accepted and are not in conflict with the "original condition" rule

 Automobiles with seasonal number plates have two numbers at the end of the plate indicating the months between which they are registered to drive, with the licence being valid from the start of the upper month until the end of the lower month. This results in lower fees for de- and re-registering automobiles, as well lower insurance premiums.

 Official cars such as police, fire fighting and municipality vehicles do not carry a letter after the sticker, such as M-1234.
These include:

 vehicles of the district government: 1-199, 1000-1999, 10000-19999
 vehicles of the local government (for example: fire brigade): 200-299, 2000-2999, 20000-29999, 300-399
 police:  3000-3999, 7000-7999, 30000-39999, 70000-79999
 disaster relief (mostly changed "THW", see below): 8000-8999, 80000-89999
 consular corps: 900-999, 9000-9999.
However the registration law has changed in 2006 so that in after March 2007 official vehicles will get standard number plates.

The German Federal President's license plate is 0-1, the Chancellor's 0-2, the Foreign Secretary's 0-3. The plate of the President of the Bundestag is an exception: it shows 1-1. This is to show that the Bundestag's President is not part of the government but still ranks higher in  importance than the Chancellor. These vehicles are tax-exempt and need not to be insured since the German government acts as insurer.

Other websites

More information about German automboile number plates and their history
 List of currently issued registration codes (German Wikipedia)
 List of all ever issued registration codes of the current registration system (German Wikipedia)

Transport in Germany
Germany
Law of Germany

Vehicle registration plates of Germany


Air Force Headquarters (AFHQ) is the Headquarters of the Royal Australian Air Force provides strategic leadership to the Air Force and provides policy guidance for Air Force activities to the rest of the Australian Defence Force and Australian Government.

Through AFHQ, the Chief of Air Force oversees Air Force activities that raise, train and sustain assigned Air Force capabilities.

The Deputy Chief of Air Force acts as the manager of the headquarters and provides strategic leadership of Air Force Headquarters in the following domains:

 Air Power concepts and doctrine
 Enterprise Design Strategy
 Preparedness
 Policy
 AFHQ Resource and Business Management
 Corporate Governance
 Reputation, brand management and heritage preservation
 Holistic workforce and Cadet management
 Personnel wellbeing mechanisms and organisational culture.

The Head of Air Force Capability acts as the Air Force Capability Manager representative during modernisation and sustainment activities and provides strategic leadership of Air Force Headquarters in the following domains:

 air and space enabling capability concepts
 force structure requirements for Air Force
 IIP management and affordable development of new capability systems
 transition of new capabilities
 joint logistics systems planning
 capability workforce planning.

Key focus areas include:

 resources
 personnel
 force placement;
 infrastructure; and
 future force considerations.

References

Royal Australian Air Force
Air force headquarters

Air Force Headquarters RAAF


Filadelfia is the caipital o Boquerón Depairtment in the Gran Chaco o wastren Paraguay. It is the centre o the Fernheim Colony It is aboot a 5 hour drive frae the caipital o Asunción. Filadelfia wis foondit in 1930 bi Roushie Mennonites who fled frae the Soviet Union. Filadelfia lay near the front o the Chaco War, but wis little affectit.  It became dividit in the Seicont Warld War, wi some o the originally German colonists supportin the Nazis an later being expelled.

The day the toun is hame tae a museum, a library, a radio station an a hospital.  The colony's villages lie aroond Filadelfia, as dae several native reserves, hame tae muckle o the aurie's native population, frae the Chulupí, Lengua, Toba-Pilaga, Sanapaná an Ayoreo groups. A modern supermarket is locatit in the centre o the toun, which is the last place tae get groceries afore headin farther oot intae the Chaco. Maist o the toun's potable water supply is drawn frae undergrund cisterns, being replenisht bi intermittent rainfall; the undergrund water  is too salty tae drink. A sma commemorative pairk kent as Parque Trebol lies aboot 5 km (3 mi) tae the east o toun. It nou serves as a place for visitors tae camp for the nicht.

The newly asphaltit hieway frae Asunción continues past Filadelfia for anither 70 km (40 mi) an runs oot at the military checkpoint Mariscal Estigarribia. Frae this point onwards, the road tae the border toun fort General Eugenio A. Garay wi Bolivie is amaist impassable.

A distinguisht Roushie Mennonite writer an historian livin in Filadelfia is Peter P. Klassen.

References
World Gazeteer: Paraguay

Freemit airtins
 Filadelfia (Fernheim Colony, Boquerón Department, Paraguay) at Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online
The 'Green Hell' Becomes Home: Mennonites in Paraguay as Described in the Writings of Peter P. Klassen A review essay bi Gerhard Reimer, Mennonite Quarterly Review 76, no. 4 (October 2002): 460-480.

Populatit places in Paraguay
Populatit places established in 1930
Mennonitism

Filadelfia


Dr Rex Gibson (29 October 1932, in Bristol – 1 May 2005, in Cambridge) was an English academic writing on the theatre.  He is best known for his creation and editing of the Cambridge School Shakespeare series, for which he was given the first Sam Wanamaker Award in 1994.

Life
He attended Bristol University, graduating in commerce in 1953 before serving his National Service as a lieutenant in the Dorset Regiment.  He then returned to Bristol to take his Certificate of Education (at Redland College) in 1958 and by 1963 was teaching at a school in Mangotsfield, south Gloucestershire.  He married another teacher, Margaret Powell, in 1963 and continued to study and gain academic qualifications, ending up in a 1973 PhD from London University (his thesis was under the title "A Study of the Professional Socialisation of Student Teachers in a College of Education").  Also in 1973 he was appointed to join the staff of Cambridge University.

He taught Shakespeare from Key Stage 3 to university in the UK, as well as providing several Shakespeare courses in Germany and the United States of America and publishing over 100 reviews and articles on Shakespeare and teaching Shakespeare. He acted as Director of the Shakespeare and Schools Project and as lecturer in education in the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education.

Works
Teaching Shakespeare (Cambridge University Press), Highly Commended by the committee of the English-Speaking Union Duke of Edinburgh Prize.
Shakespeare's Language (Cambridge University Press)
Stepping into Shakespeare (Cambridge University Press)
Discovering Shakespeare's Language (Cambridge University Press)

External links
Cambridge School Shakespeare - About Rex Gibson
The Independent - Obituary of Rex Gibson
Cambridge School Shakespeare Online

1932 births
2005 deaths
Academics from Bristol
Shakespearean scholars
Schoolteachers from Somerset
Alumni of the University of Bristol
Academics of the University of Cambridge

Rex Gibson


Franz Rellich (September 14, 1906 – September 25, 1955) was an Austrian-German mathematician. He made important contributions in mathematical physics, in particular for the foundations of quantum mechanics and for the theory of partial differential equations. The Rellich–Kondrachov theorem is named after him.

Biography
Rellich was born in Tramin, then in the County of Tyrol. He studied from 1924 to 1929 at the universities of Graz and Göttingen and received his doctor's degree in 1929 under Richard Courant at Georg August University of Göttingen with the thesis about "Verallgemeinerung der Riemannschen Integrationsmethode auf Differentialgleichungen n-ter Ordnung in zwei Veränderlichen" ("Generalization of Riemann's integration method on differential equations of n-th order in two variables").
When in 1933 the great mathematical-physical tradition in Göttingen terminated with the Machtergreifung of the Nazis, Rellich, having taken an active position against Nazism, was among those forced to leave.
In 1934 he became Privatdozent'' in Marburg, in 1942 professor in Dresden, and in 1946 director of the Mathematical Institute in Göttingen, being instrumental in its reconstruction. Erhard Heinz, Konrad Jörgens, and Jürgen Moser were among of his doctoral students.
His sister Camilla Juliana Anna was the wife of mathematician Bartel Leendert van der Waerden. Rellich died in Göttingen.

Contributions
Among Rellich's most important mathematical contributions are his work in the perturbation theory of linear operators on
Hilbert spaces:  he studied the dependence of the spectral family  of a self-adjoint operator  on the parameter .
Although the origins and applications of the problem are in quantum mechanics, Rellich's approach was completely abstract.

Rellich successfully worked on many partial differential equations with degeneracies.
For instance, he showed that in the elliptic case, the Monge-Ampère differential equation, while not necessarily uniquely soluble, can have at most two solutions.

Particularly relevant to physics was Rellich's mathematical clarification of the outgoing Sommerfeld conditions.

Sources
 Biographical notes by Göttingen University (in German)
 S. Gottwald, H.-J. Ilgauds, K.-H. Schlote (Hrsg.): Lexikon bedeutender Mathematiker. Verlag Harri Thun, Frankfurt a. M. 1990

External links

1906 births
1955 deaths
20th-century Austrian mathematicians
University of Göttingen alumni
Academic staff of the University of Göttingen
Mathematical physicists
Mathematicians from Austria-Hungary
People from Tramin an der Weinstraße
Austrian emigrants to Germany

Franz Rellich


Lake Esrum (, ) is the largest lake in Denmark by water volume and the second-largest lake by surface area, after lake Arresø. It is situated in the central part of North Zealand (the northeastern region of Zealand), straddling the boundaries of the municipalities Hillerød, Fredensborg, Helsingør and Gribskov, some 40 kilometres north of Copenhagen.

The lake covers 17 km2, Its length from north to south is 8.4 km and its maximum depth is 22 m. Its principal drainage is Esrum Å, a 10-km stream which passes Esrum Watermill and the remains of Esrum Abbey on its way to the Kattegat at Dronningmølle. The western shore of the lake is dominated by Gribskov, one of Denmark's largest forests, and the small town of Nødebo. Fredensborg Palace, one of the official residences of the Danish Royal Family, with its extensive gardens, is situated on the southeast shore. Boat trips operate on the lake from Sørup, a village just south of the palace gardens.

History

Commercial fishing
Like many of the surrounding forests, Lake Esrum was originally a royal domain. It was first administrated by Eentekammeret and later by Frederiksborg Amtsstue on behalf of the Danish government. Fishing in the lake was entrusted with a fishing master (Danish: fiskemester) who resided at Fiskergården, located next to Slotsmøllen at Slotssøen in Hillerød. From 1864, fishing was carried out by private citizens and from 1907, fishing rights were sold at auction. Commercial fishing continued until 1989.

Esrum canal

From the beginning of the 19th century, Lake Esrum played a role in the transport of firewood from Grib Forest to Copenhagen. From 1802 to 1805, a canal was constructed between the north end of the lake and Dronningmølle. Here firewood was loaded onto large cargo ships and sailed to Copenhagen. The canal was 9 km long, 9 m wide and 1.5 m deep. The work was led by Adolph von der Recke and carried out by local peasants, soldiers and forced labour workers. A towpath ran on the banks of the canal and on the western shores of lake Esrum. The timber had to pass a 4-metre crater-like ramp called Væltningen, which connected the upper section of the canal to its lower part. The upper part of the canal passed two ponds. One of them, Storedam (Great Pond), was the site of a watermill which was first used as backup for the gunpowder mill in Frederiksværk during the English Wars and later for the manufacturing of textiles for the army. Transportation of firewood on the canal continued until 1874 and it was later used for leisure trips. It has now dried out and been covered by forest, but Væltningen and other elements are still visible in the landscape.

Sørup's washhouses
From the middle of the 19th century, the small village of Sørup on the southeastern shores of the lake was home to numerous laundries. The laundry was picked up at institutions and wealthy households in Copenhagen, Hillerød and Elsinore. When the industry peaked, Sørup was home to 20 laundries with some one hundred employees.

Hydrology
The water quality of lake Esrum is considered good.

Since 2002, there have been a few incidences of trematoda plaguing swimmers in the summertime every year. The trematodes are a natural part of lake Esrums' aquatic life.

Ecology
Lake Esrum have a large population of European perch and Northern pike. Other species includes European eel, ruffe, bream, roach, tench and bleak. A smaller population of brown trout is living here, having adapted to the freshwater.

The professional fishing for eel, was previously substantial, but in 1997 the annual catch had fallen to 388 kg from a mere 14 tons. Nowadays, the lake is exclusively fished by anglers.

The birdlife at the lake is varied. The common goldeneye was formerly a rare breeding bird in Denmark, but after a determined effort involving artificial nests, the species is almost a signature of lake Esrum. Other common birds here includes Eurasian coot, mallard, tufted duck, great crested grebe and mute swan. The reed beds along the lake brinks, hold many swan nests and in the southern end, a colony of the great cormorant have found a home, with several hundreds of nests.

Protections
Lake Esrum is part of a larger 7,400 ha Natura 2000 area, comprising Gribskov and a few smaller woodlands nearby. It is included in the Kongernes Nordsjælland National Park.

Recreation
"Esrum Sø Bådfart" (Lake Esrum Boat Service) operates boat trips on the lake from Chaluphuset, a former royal boathouse located at Sørup on the south side of Fredensborg Palace gardens. Chaluphuset is also used as a venue from special events. Esrum Sø Bådfart also operates a café in Fendrikshus, a former forest worker's house in Gribskov on the other side of the lake. The café is open Friday-Sunday and can be reached by boat or on foot or bicycle through the forest. Skipperhuset, Chaluphuset's next door neighbour, is a lunch restaurant overlooking the lake.

Cultural references
Egon (Ove Sprogøe) and Kjeld (Morten Grunwald) are quarrelling with Lake Esrum as a backdrop (in Nødebo Holt) at 1:02:54 in the 1978 Olsen-banden film The Olsen Gang Sees Red.

References

Sources
 Esrum Sø Danish Nature Agency
 Driftsplan, management plan for Lake Esrum from Naturstyrelsen (in Danish)

External links

 Esrum Sø Danish Nature Agency
 Driftsplan, management plan for Lake Esrum from Naturstyrelsen (in Danish)

Lakes of Zealand
Lakes of the Øresund Region
Fredensborg Municipality
Gribskov Municipality
Hillerød Municipality
Natura 2000 in Denmark

Lake Esrum


James Richard "Jungle Jim" Martin (April 8, 1924 – October 9, 2002) was an American football guard, linebacker and placekicker who played fourteen seasons in the National Football League (NFL) in the 1950s and 1960s, mainly for the Detroit Lions. He was selected to the Pro Bowl, the NFL's all-star game, after the 1961 season, and went on to be an assistant coach after his playing career. He was an All-American at the University of Notre Dame and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1995.

Martin was a star athlete at his high school in Cleveland, Ohio. He joined the United States Marine Corps after graduating, and served in the Pacific War until it ended in 1945. He then enrolled at Notre Dame, where he was part of a teams that won the college football national championship in 1946, 1947 and 1949 under head coach Frank Leahy. Martin was named a first-team All-American in 1949 by several news organizations.

The NFL's Cleveland Browns selected Martin in the 1950 draft, and he played there for one season during which the team won the NFL championship. Browns head coach Paul Brown traded him to the Detroit Lions, where he played between 1951 and 1961, at first as a guard and later as a linebacker and placekicker. The Lions won NFL championships in 1952, 1953 and 1957, all three of them victories over the Browns. After spending a year as an assistant coach for the Denver Broncos, an American Football League team, Martin returned to playing in 1963 for the Baltimore Colts, and played for a final year in 1964 for the Washington Redskins. When he left the Lions, Martin was the team's all-time leading field goal kicker; he also became the first NFL player to kick two field goals of more than 50 yards in a single game in 1960.

Martin was an assistant high school coach in California and at Idaho State University before taking a job as an assistant with the Lions between 1967 and 1972. He also coached in the World Football League in the mid-1970s. Martin later worked as a court officer in Michigan. He was inducted into the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame in 1976 and into the college hall of fame in 1995. He died in 2002.

Early life and college

Martin grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and attended the city's East Technical High School, where he was captain of the football and swimming teams. He played center on the football team. After graduating, Martin joined the U.S. Marines during World War II, and served in the Pacific War. He was part of a small crew in the Marines' Fifth Amphibious Reconnaissance Battalion that landed on the island of Tinian in 1944 to do preliminary scouting in preparation for its seizure by Allied forces in the Battle of Tinian. Wearing only black swim trunks, diving fins and face masks, Martin and his three-man unit discovered a string of sea mines near a beach where Allied forces were set to land, helping guide the invasion to safer landing places. He was awarded a Bronze Star for his service in the war.

After the war ended in 1945, Martin returned to the U.S. and enrolled at the University of Notre Dame. Coached by Frank Leahy, who had met and recruited Martin during the war on Iwo Jima, Notre Dame won the college football national championship by finishing first in the AP Poll in both 1946 and 1947. Martin played as an end on the team, working on both offense and defense, and was nicknamed "Jungle Jim" because of his service in the jungles of the Pacific islands. Notre Dame finished the 1948 season with a 9–0–1 win–loss–tie record and ranked second in the AP Poll. Martin switched from end to left offensive and defensive tackle for the 1949 season, when Notre Dame again finished first in the polls and won a national championship. Notre Dame did not lose a game during Martin's tenure, although it tied twice. Martin, who was co-captain in 1949, was named a first-team All-American that year by the Associated Press, the Newspaper Enterprise Association and the International News Service. He also boxed, and won Notre Dame's heavyweight title in 1949. The following summer, he played in the College All-Star Game, a now-defunct contest between the National Football League (NFL) champion and a selection of the country's best college players. He also played in the East–West Shrine Game, another college all-star game.

Professional career

The Cleveland Browns of the NFL selected Martin in the second round of the 1950 draft. Led by an offense that featured quarterback Otto Graham, fullback Marion Motley and ends Dante Lavelli and Mac Speedie, Cleveland had won four championships in the All-America Football Conference leading up to the 1950 season, the team's first in the NFL. With Martin playing at defensive end, the Browns finished the 1950 season with a 10–2 record and beat the Los Angeles Rams to win the NFL championship. In a divisional playoff game against the New York Giants before the championship, Martin sacked Giants quarterback Charlie Conerly in his own end zone for a safety that helped secure a narrow 8–3 victory. The Rams scored a touchdown on their first play from scrimmage in the championship game, an 82-yard pass from Bob Waterfield to Glenn Davis. Martin was covering Davis and slipped on the play, although the Browns came back to win in the final seconds of the game.

Cleveland head coach Paul Brown orchestrated a trade in 1951 that sent Martin and four other players to the Detroit Lions in exchange for the Lions' first and sixteenth picks in the following year's draft, plus cash. With the Lions, Martin helped fill a gap left by the departure of defensive end Jim Cain for service in the Army. The team finished the 1951 season with a 7–4–1 record, good for second in the NFL's National division. Led by budding quarterback Bobby Layne and halfback Doak Walker, the Lions improved to 9–3 the following year, when Martin switched to left guard. The team went on to beat the Browns in the NFL championship. Another championship victory over the Browns followed in 1953, this time by a narrow 17–16 margin.

Detroit finished the 1954 regular season on top of the NFL West and again faced the Browns in the championship game, but lost by a score of 56–10. Martin switched from guard to linebacker the following year, when Detroit had a losing record. The team improved in 1956 and won another NFL championship over the Browns in 1957. Martin stayed with the Lions through the 1961 season. A strong placekicker, Martin was used primarily on kickoffs and on field goals in his later seasons in Detroit. In 1960, he became the first player in NFL history to kick two field goals longer than 50 yards in one game. He was selected for the Pro Bowl, the NFL's annual all-star game, in 1961 after leading the team in scoring with 15 field goals and 25 extra points.

Martin, who had become the Lions' all-time leading field goal kicker in 1961, left the team the following February to take a job as an assistant coach with the Denver Broncos, a team in the American Football League. He returned to playing in 1963 as a kicker for the Baltimore Colts, spending one year there. He then spent a final year kicking for the Washington Redskins before retiring as a player.

Coaching career

After ending his playing career, Martin became an assistant coach at Mater Dei High School in California in 1965. After a year there, he became an assistant coach in 1966 at Idaho State University. The Lions then hired him as an assistant in 1967, and he stayed with his old team through the 1972 season. Martin subsequently coached for the Portland Storm in the World Football League between 1974 and 1975.

Later life and death

Later in life, Martin served as an officer in Michigan's 48th Michigan District Courts. He was inducted into the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame in 1976 and into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1995. He died in 2002.

References

Bibliography

1924 births
2002 deaths
American football linebackers
Baltimore Colts players
Cleveland Browns players
College Football Hall of Fame inductees
Detroit Lions players
Notre Dame Fighting Irish football players
Washington Redskins players
Western Conference Pro Bowl players
United States Marine Corps personnel of World War II
Players of American football from Cleveland

Jim Martin (American football)


Robert (Bobby) Alexander Mann (born 11 January 1974) is a Scottish former professional footballer who last played for Formartine United.

During his youth career, Mann played for St Columba U9s, West Park U10s, Fairmuir u11s to U15s and Dundee United Social Club U16s.

Mann, a defender, started his career with St Johnstone in 1991 before joining Forfar Athletic a year later. He remained with Forfar for 7 years before moving to Inverness Caledonian Thistle in 1999. He was part of the Inverness team who famously defeated Celtic in the Scottish Cup in February 2000 and he helped them reach the Scottish Premier League for the first time in season 2003–04.

Despite having reached the Premier League with Inverness, he joined fellow Premier League club Dundee. In his first season at Dens Park, Dundee were relegated to the First Division. Although he was appointed club captain, Mann became an increasingly peripheral figure for the Dark Blues during the 2006–07 season. He reached an agreement to leave Dens Park and was re-united with former boss Steve Paterson on 31 January 2007, after signing with Scottish 2nd Division side Peterhead. Mann was once again re-united with Paterson when he left Peterhead and signed for Scottish Highland League side Formartine United F.C as player/assistant manager to Paterson.

Ian McCall once said of Bobby Mann, after missing out on his signing when manager of Dundee United, "Bobby Mann is without a doubt the best distributor of a ball from defence, bar none".

Current status: Bobby is currently a taxi driver in the City of Dundee

References

External links

Living people
1974 births
Footballers from Dundee
Scottish men's footballers
Men's association football defenders
St Johnstone F.C. players
Forfar Athletic F.C. players
Inverness Caledonian Thistle F.C. players
Dundee F.C. players
Peterhead F.C. players
Scottish Premier League players
Scottish Football League players
Formartine United F.C. players

Bobby Mann


Fred Seibert (born September 15, 1951) is an American serial entrepreneur and television producer. He is the founder of Felix Films. Seibert has held leading position with MTV Networks and is an angel investor in several technology and media start-ups. He has produced live action and animated programs and movies for cable television, cinemas, and the internet, and began his professional career as a jazz and blues record producer. Seibert's work has been honored in numerous fields. In music production his production has been nominated for a Grammy Award. He has received an AIGA Medal for exceptional achievements. He is a member of the Animation Magazine Hall of Fame and has been awarded several Annie Awards and Emmy Awards for his television and film productions.

1951 births
Living people
American television producers
People from Manhattan
Emmy Award winners

Fred Seibert


Eristicophis is a monotypic genus made for the venomous viper species "E. macmahonii". It is found in the desert areas near the borders of Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. There are currently no subspecies recognized. The E. macmahonii is also known as the "McMahon's Viper", the "Asian Sand Viper", the "Leaf-nosed Viper", and the "Whiskered Viper".

Description
The McMahon's Viper is a small species of snake, growing up to less than one meter. Males are smaller than females; males can grow up to the length of 22-40 cm, and females can grow up to the length of 28-72 cm. They are reddish-brown or yellowish brown in color.

Where they live
The McMahon's Viper is found in the desert regions of Balochistan, near the borders of Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

Behavior
The McMahon's Viper is said to be nocturnal, but some say it is crepuscular, meaning it is active during the early morning or late evening. It is able to sidewind on loose sand, and sometimes climbs into bushes. It is a aggressive snake, hissing very loudly when disturbed or annoyed, and sometimes it raising its head of the ground and starts striking aggressively. It is able to sink into the sand by moving in a rocking motion. When it sinks into the sand it leaves its eyes and snout sticking out of the sand.

Feeding
The McMahon's Viper eats small lizards, small rodents like mice, and sometimes birds.

Reproduction
The McMahon's Viper is oviparous, meaning it lays eggs. It lays around a dozen eggs at a time, and these eggs take around 6-8 weeks to hatch. When the eggs hatch the young are about 6 inches (15 cm) long.

Venom
Not much is known about the McMahon's Viper venom, but some say it is similar to the venom of the Echis.

Vipers
Snakes of Asia

Eristicophis


The Old Man and the Sea is a novella by Ernest Hemingway that was written in 1951 and then published in 1952. It is Hemingway's most famous work, and also his final work to be published while he was alive. Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954 for this work. Hemingway wrote it while he was in the Bahamas. The work tells the story of Santiago, an old Cuban fisherman who catches a giant marlin in the Gulf Stream.

1952 books
Works about old age
American novellas

The Old Man and the Sea


A chain is like a rope, but made up of several elements called links.
 A chain (unit) is also a measure of length
 A human chain can be made by people standing next to one another and who hold hands or link arms. It is a chain that has people for its links.
 Chain store, retail stores which share a brand and central management, usually with standardized business methods and practices. They may all have the same owners or may be franchised.

Basic English 850 words

Chain


Winston-Salem is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It has about 230,000 people. It is near Greensboro, North Carolina. Winston-Salem used to sell tobacco. It is called Winston-Salem because there were two towns, Winston and Salem, that combined.

Winston-Salem is in central North Carolina. Interstate 40 goes through it. It has a mild climate, with hot summers and cool winters. It gets about 40 inches of rain per year. It can also snow in Winston-Salem.

Old Salem is a historic part of Winston-Salem. There people can learn what life was like there around 1800.

County seats in North Carolina

Winston-Salem, North Carolina


Mexploitation (sometimes called Cabrito Western or Mexican video-home) is a film genre of low-budget films that combine elements of an exploitation film and Mexican culture or portrayals of Mexican life within Mexico often dealing with crime, drug trafficking, money and sex.

Mexican narco-cinema
The Mexican narco-cine (Spanish for narco-cinema) or narco-películas (Spanish for narco-films/narco-movies), are a subgenre of the Mexploitation style films, focused solely on the violence and luxurious lives of drug lords and cartels. The title and the storyline of these films are usually inspired by popular narco corridos (drug ballads, drug songs), and are marketed as low budget tie-in merchandising to the narcocorrido songs. Sometimes these films feature famous narco-corrido singers on them, and are rumored to be financed by drug lords themselves. However, only a few such cases have been proven.

Common qualities

The typical Mexploitation film takes place in major cities and drugs, sex, and crime are nearly always involved. These movies are usually low-budget and are filmed in a couple of weeks. They typically feature one or two B-movie actors in major roles with the rest of the cast being played by unknown actors.

Mexploitation movies made in the 1960s and 1970s in Mexico were closer to their American exploitation film counterparts, with low-budget science-fiction films that often starred Mexican luchadores such as El Santo and Huracan Ramirez. However, in the early 1980s and 1990s there was a notable change with films increasingly dealing with real-life issues such as drug cartels and the murders of their rivals. Notable actors in these films include Mario Almada, Hugo Stiglitz, Sergio Goyri, Valentin Trujillo, Jorge Reynoso, Rodolfo de Anda, Fernando Almada, Rosa Gloria Chagoyán and David Reynoso.

The director Robert Rodriguez has been considered a pioneer of Mexploitation in the United States. His first film, El Mariachi, contains many Mexploitation elements and his 2007 film, Planet Terror, contained a fake trailer which developed into a feature film called Machete (2010), which contains many familiar elements of the genre.

K. Gordon Murray

An exploitation film producer and distributor named K. Gordon Murray created a unique collection of horror films in Mexico which began to appear on American late-night television and drive-in screens in the 1960s. Ranging from monster movies clearly owing to the heyday of Universal Studios, to the lucha libre horror films featuring El Santo and the "Wrestling Women" alongside the 1959 Christmas classic "Santa Claus",  these low-budget films are still notably campy and inspired a  small cult following.

See also
Zapata Western
Narcoculture in Mexico
Exploitation film
Mexican Ficheras films

References

Cinema of Mexico
Film genres
Mexican culture

Films about Mexican drug cartels
Film genres particular to the United States

Mexploitation


HOMO stands for highest occupied molecular orbital. LUMO stands for lowest unoccupied molecular orbital. The energy difference between the HOMO and LUMO is termed the HOMO-LUMO gap. HOMO and LUMO are sometimes referred to as frontier orbitals.

Each molecular orbital has a calculated energy level. Chemists sort the molecular orbitals (MOs) by energy levels. Chemists assume that the electrons will occupy the lowest energy level MOs first. For example, if a molecule has enough electrons to fill 15 MOs, the 15 MOs with the lowest energy levels will be occupied. The 15th MO on the list would be called the "highest occupied molecular orbital" (HOMO) and the 16th MO on the list would be the "lowest unoccupied molecular orbital" (LUMO). The difference in the HOMO's energy level and the LUMO's energy level is called the band gap. The band gap can sometimes serve as a measure of the excitability of the molecule: the smaller the energy, the more easily a molecule's electrons will be excited. For example, this can help predict whether a substance will have luminescence.

SOMO
A SOMO is a singly occupied molecular orbital such as half-filled HOMO of a radical.

Related pages
 Diels–Alder reaction
 Electron configuration
 Ligand
 Organic semiconductor

References

Physical chemistry

HOMO/LUMO


Peter Peckard (c. 1718 – 8 December 1797) was an English Whig, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, Church of England minister and abolitionist.
From 1781 he was Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge. He was incorporated at Cambridge in 1782, appointed vice-chancellor in 1784, and created Doctor of Divinity (DD) per literas regias in 1785. In April 1792 he became Dean of Peterborough.

Life
The son of the Rev. John Peckard of Welbourn, Lincolnshire, he matriculated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford on 20 July 1734, then aged 16, and was admitted on 9 October. He graduated B.A. 1738, M.A. March 1741–2, and became scholaris, or probationary fellow, in 1744. He was ordained as a priest of the Church of England in 1746. He seems to have become a chaplain in the army and to have settled for a time at Huntingdon. On 13 June 1755 he married Martha Ferrar (1729–1805), eldest daughter of Edward Ferrar, attorney at Huntingdon. He was vicar of St Martin's Church, Lincoln (1747 - 1750) and rector of Skelton (1748 - 1760).

He was appointed in 1760 to the rectory of Fletton and the vicarage of Yaxley, both near Peterborough. A dispensation for the holding of these two livings at the same time was needed, and it was obtained with difficulty from Thomas Secker, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Peckard was considered heterodox upon the question concerning an intermediate or separate state of conscious existence between death and the resurrection, and his examination was several times adjourned. He obtained his dispensation at last, but only after he had signed four articles to some extent modifying his views, and it was given at a date when the second benefice was within a day or two of lapsing. Edward Law commented that "Peter Peckard has escaped out of Lollard's tower with the loss of his tail."

In 1766 Peckard became chaplain to the first troop of Grenadier Guards, and served with it in Germany. The rectory of Fletton was held by him until his death, but he vacated the vicarage of Yaxley in 1777. He was prebendary of Clifton in Lincoln Cathedral from 9 May 1774, and of Rampton in Southwell Minster from 23 October 1777 to his death. He was also appointed in 1777, under dispensation, to the rectory of Tansor in Northamptonshire, and from 1793 to 1797 he retained the rectory of Abbot's Ripton, near Huntingdon.

In 1781 he was appointed to the mastership of Magdalene College, Cambridge, by the Visitor of the College, John Griffin, afterwards Lord Howard de Walden, who had the right of presentation as owner of the estate of Audley End. He was incorporated at Cambridge in 1782, appointed vice-chancellor in 1784, and created Doctor of Divinity (DD) per literas regias in 1785. In April 1792 he was advanced by the crown to the deanery of Peterborough. He built a new parsonage-house at Fletton, and was permitted by the patron, John Proby, 2nd Earl of Carysfort, to nominate his successor to the benefice. Peckard died on 8 December 1797, and was buried in Peterborough Cathedral. Peckard left property to Magdalene College, and also founded two scholarships.

Works

The Zong massacre of 1781 prompted Peckard to speak strongly against slave trade in his sermons, some of which were published as tracts and pamphlets.

On becoming vice-chancellor at Cambridge he set the Latin essay competition question,  "Anne Liceat Invitos in Servitutem Dare?" ("Is it lawful to enslave the unconsenting?") The first prize went to Thomas Clarkson, later the leading activist in the cause of abolition.

Peckard published sermons of a liberal tendency, and those of later life drew attention to the evils of slavery. The views which Archbishop Secker deemed heterodox were set out in:

 Observations on the Doctrine of an Intermediate State, 1756.
 Further Observations on the Doctrine of an Intermediate State, 1757. This was in reply to the queries of Thomas Morton, rector of Bassingham.

Peckard's opinions were also criticised by Caleb Fleming, in his Survey of the Search of the Souls, 1759, and defended by him in Observations on Mr. Fleming's Survey, 1759, which provoked from Fleming A Defence of the Conscious Scheme against that of the Mortalist.

Among Peckard's other sermons and tracts were:

 The popular Clamour against the Jews indefensible, 1753.
 A Dissertation on Revelation, chap. xi. ver. 13, 1756. This was written to prove that the passage was prophetical, and fulfilled by the Lisbon earthquake. It was criticised at some length in The Gentleman's Magazine, 1756 (pp. 138–139), and defended by the author in the same periodical (pp. 213–14).
 The proper Stile of Christian Oratory, 1770 (against theatrical declamation).
 National Crimes the Cause of National Punishments, 1795. It passed through three editions, and referred mainly to the slave trade, on which subject Peckard often preached.

He published anonymously in 1776 a treatise on Subscription with Historical Extracts, and in 1778 a pamphlet Am I not a Man and a Brother?

Peckard's father-in-law, Edward Ferrar, left him by will many books and papers, including a Life by John Ferrar of Nicholas Ferrar of the Little Gidding community. It was published by him in 1790 as Memoirs of the Life of Mr. Nicholas Ferrar, but with some heavy edits. It was reprinted, with a few omissions, in Christopher Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Biography (v. 69–266), and published separately in an abridged form in 1852. Some of Peckard's manuscripts, which were helpful to students of the genealogy of the early New England settlers, are referred to in John Wingate Thornton's First Records of Anglo-American Colonisation, Boston, 1859.

A poetical essay on Peckard is in The Gentleman's Magazine, 1799 (pt. i. p. 325), and one epitaph by him and his wife Martha Ferrar Peckard, are in that periodical for 1789 (pt. ii. p. 748).

Notes

Attribution

References

1710s births
1797 deaths
English abolitionists
Deans of Peterborough
English Anglicans
Masters of Magdalene College, Cambridge
Alumni of Corpus Christi College, Oxford
Vice-Chancellors of the University of Cambridge

Peter Peckard


List of hospitals Alaska (U.S. state), sorted by hospital name.

Hospitals

The American Hospital Directory lists 28 hospitals in Alaska.

 Alaska Native Medical Center, Anchorage
 Alaska Regional Hospital, Anchorage
 Bartlett Regional Hospital, Juneau
 Bassett Army Community Hospital, Fort Wainwright
 Central Peninsula General Hospital, Soldotna
 Cordova Community Medical Center, Cordova
 Elmendorf AFB Hospital, Anchorage
 Fairbanks Memorial Hospital, Fairbanks
 Kanakanak Hospital, Dillingham
 PeaceHealth Ketchikan Medical Center, Ketchikan
 Maniilaq Health Center, Kotzebue
 Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, Palmer
 Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center, Sitka
 Northstar Hospital, Anchorage
 Norton Sound Regional Hospital, Nome
 Petersburg Medical Center, Petersburg
 Providence Alaska Medical Center, Anchorage
 Providence Kodiak Island Medical Center, Kodiak
 Providence Seward Medical and Care Center, Seward
 Samuel Simmonds Memorial Hospital, Utqiaġvik
 Sitka Community Hospital, Sitka
 South Peninsula Hospital, Homer
 St. Elias Specialty Hospital, Anchorage
 Wrangell Medical Center, Wrangell
 Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta Regional Hospital, Bethel

References

Hospitals

Alaska

List of hospitals in Alaska


Kindergarten, literally meaning "children's garden", is the first stage in the move from home to formal education. Children learn through play. In most countries kindergarten is part of the pre-school system. In North America and some parts of Australia kindergarten is the first year of school. Kindergarten children are usually between three and seven years of age. Kindergarten ages vary from country to country. In Malaysia, for example, kindergarten children are six and when they are seven years old they go to primary school.

The name kindergarten was coined by Friedrich Fröbel (1782–1852). His work influenced early-years education around the world.

Sometimes, children go to pre-kindergarten for a year, before they go to kindergarten. Pre-kindergarten is more common in United States, Canada, and Turkey than other countries.

Types of educational institutions

Kindergarten