Efraín Antonio Valdez (born July 11, 1966) is a former professional baseball pitcher. Valdez played Major League Baseball for the Cleveland Indians in  and  and the Arizona Diamondbacks in . He also played for the Korea Baseball Organization with the LG Twins in .

Professional career
Efraín Valdez's playing career lasted twenty years and during that time Valdez played with a number of different clubs in five countries: The United States, The Dominican Republic, Mexico, Taiwan and South Korea.

Padres organization
Valdez began his professional playing career on May 4, 1983, when he was signed by the San Diego Padres as an amateur free agent. Valdez was assigned to the short season class "A" Northwest League's Spokane Indians. After playing two seasons, 1983 and 1984, with Spokane, Valdez was purchased from the Padres by the Texas Rangers on December 10, 1984.

Rangers organization
Although he did not play in the minor leagues in 1985, Valdez began playing professionally outside the United States, playing a season in the Dominican Summer League. He began the 1986 baseball season in the Mexican League but returned to the Rangers organization, where he was assigned to the class double "A" Texas League's Tulsa Drillers of the Texas League. In 1987, Valdez was sent down to class "A" and spent time with the Florida State League's Charlotte Rangers before returning to the Drillers. After another season with Tulsa in 1988, Valdez was drafted from the Rangers by the Cleveland Indians in the 1988 rule 5 draft on December 5, 1988.

Indians organization
The Indians assigned Valdez to the Canton–Akron Indians of the class double-A Eastern League, where Valdez would play during the 1989 season.

The 1990 season was a year filled with highlights for Valdez. He started the season at triple-A with the Colorado Springs Sky Sox of the Pacific Coast League, then made his major league debut on August 13, 1990, for the Indians. On September 21, Valdez earned his only major league win against the Toronto Blue Jays.

Valdez once again saw playing time with the Colorado Springs Sky Sox and the Cleveland Indians during the 1991 season. But Valdez was placed on waivers by the Cleveland Indians and later selected off waivers by the Toronto Blue Jays on July 3, 1991.

Blue Jays organization
After being picked up by Toronto, Valdez was assigned to the triple-A Syracuse Chiefs of the International League, where he finished the 1991 season. On October 15, 1991, Valdez was granted free agency, and he signed with the Milwaukee Brewers on November 28, 1991.

Milwaukee Brewers organization
After signing with Milwaukee, the Brewers assigned Valdez to the Denver Zephyrs of the triple-A American Association for the 1992 season. After spending the 1992 season with the Zephyrs as well, Valdez once again left the states and began playing in Mexico.

Overseas
After two seasons in the Mexican League 1993–94 Valdez played a season overseas in the Taiwan League in 1995 before returning to the Mexican League for two more years 1996–97.

1998: Mets and Diamondbacks
Valdez returned to the states in 1998 when he was signed as a free agent by the New York Mets on January 24, 1998. After signing with the Mets Valdez was assigned to the Norfolk Tides of the triple-A International League for the 1998 season. On May 26, 1998, Valdez was purchased by the Arizona Diamondbacks from the New York Mets and assigned to the Tucson Sidewinders of the triple-A Pacific Coast League. Valdez had a career highlight that season when he made a return to the Major Leagues in 1998 playing with the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Remaining career
After leaving organized baseball Valdez played a year of independent baseball in 1999 with the Atlantic League's Atlantic City Surf. The following year Valdez returned to the Mexican League and played the 2000 season with the Mexico City Tigres. After spending 2001 with the LG Twins of the KBO, Valdez's career came to a close with two more seasons in the Mexican League. Valdez played with the Cordoba Cafeteros and Tabasco Olmecas in 2002 and with Tabasco and Vaqueros Laguna in 2003.

Personal life
Valdez is the older brother of former major league pitcher Carlos Valdez, and cousin to three other former major leaguers, Sergio Valdez, Julio Valdez and Rafael Valdez.

Notes

External links

1966 births
Arizona Diamondbacks players
Atlantic City Surf players
Cleveland Indians players
Canton-Akron Indians players
Dominican Republic expatriate baseball players in South Korea
Dominican Republic expatriate baseball players in the United States
KBO League pitchers

LG Twins players
Living people
Major League Baseball pitchers
Major League Baseball players from the Dominican Republic
People from Nizao
Dominican Republic expatriate baseball players in Mexico
Dominican Republic expatriate baseball players in Taiwan
Cafeteros de Córdoba players
China Times Eagles players
Chinatrust Whales players
Colorado Springs Sky Sox players
Denver Zephyrs players
Langosteros de Quintana Roo players
Norfolk Tides players
Olmecas de Tabasco players
Pericos de Puebla players
Charlotte Rangers players
Saraperos de Saltillo players
Spokane Indians players
Syracuse Chiefs players
Tucson Sidewinders players
Tulsa Drillers players
Tuneros de San Luis Potosí players
Vaqueros Laguna players
Tigres de Quintana Roo players

Efraín Valdez


Wang Fangqing (王方慶; died 702), formal name Wang Lin (王綝) but went by the courtesy name of Fangqing, formally Duke Zhen of Shiquan (石泉貞公), was a Chinese politician during the Tang dynasty and Wu Zetian's Zhou dynasty, serving as a chancellor during Wu Zetian's reign.

Background
It is not known when Wang Fangqing was born, but it is known that his family was from the Tang dynasty's capital prefecture Yong Prefecture (雍州, roughly modern Xi'an, Shaanxi).  He came from a line of officials who had served during the Jin dynasty (266–420) and the subsequent Liu Song, Southern Qi, and the Liang dynasty, until his great-grandfather Wang Bao () surrendered to Northern Zhou when Northern Zhou forces captured the then-Liang capital Jiangling in 554. Wang Bao and his descendants thereafter served as officials of Northern Zhou and its successors Sui dynasty and Tang. Wang Fangqing's father Wang Hongzhi () successively served as advisor to Li Yuanchang () the Prince of Han and Li Yuanjing () the Prince of Jing, sons of Tang's founder Emperor Gaozu.

Wang Fangqing himself started his official service at age 15, when he served on the military staff of Li Zhen the Prince of Yue, a son of Emperor Taizong (Emperor Gaozu's son and successor).  He studied the Records of the Grand Historian and Book of Han under Li Zhen's secretary Ren Xigu (), and later, when Ren became a staff member of the crown prince, Wang followed him and continued to study under him.  During Emperor Taizong's successor Emperor Gaozong's Yongchun era (682-683), Wang was promoted to be the deputy minister of husbandry (太僕少卿, Taipu Shaoqing), and on one occasion, when Emperor Gaozong was considering creating his grandson Li Chongzhao the unprecedented title of deputy crown prince (皇太孫, Huang Taisun), he consulted Wang, who opined that the action was unprecedented and yet Emperor Gaozong could, if he so wanted, create a new tradition.  After Emperor Gaozong's death later in 683, his powerful wife Empress Wu (later known as Wu Zetian) became empress dowager and regent successively over their sons Emperor Zhongzong (whom she deposed in 684) and Emperor Ruizong. During her regency, Wang became the commandant at Guang Prefecture (廣州, roughly modern Guangzhou, Guangdong).  Guang Prefecture was at that point becoming increasingly important as a port of international trade, and Wang's predecessor Lu Yuanrui () was assassinated in 684 by Malay merchants after he had improperly seized their merchandise.  After Wang succeeded Lu, he was said to be honest and clean, never taking bribes.  Moreover, within his territory, there had long been tribal leaders who had received special treatment and who were corrupt, who in turn kept their corruption going by bribing the officials.  Wang ordered the officials to stop associating with the tribal leaders and arrested the most corrupt of the tribal leaders. The public sentiment at the time believed that since the start of Tang, there had not been anyone who had governed Guang Prefecture better than Wang, and Empress Dowager Wu issued an edict honoring his achievements.

During Wu Zetian's reign
In 695, Wu Zetian, who by that point had taken the throne from Emperor Ruizong as "emperor," establishing a new Zhou dynasty and interrupting Tang, recalled Wang Fangqing to serve as the secretary general of the then-capital prefecture Luo Prefecture (洛州, roughly modern Luoyang, Henan).  She soon gave him the honorific title of Yinqing Guanglu Daifu () and created him the Baron of Shiquan.  In 696, she made him the secretary general at Bing Prefecture (并州, roughly modern Taiyuan, Shanxi) and created him the Baron of Langye—but even before he departed for Bing Prefecture, made him instead Luantai Shilang (), the deputy head of the examination bureau of government (鸞臺, Luantai).  She also gave him the designation of Tong Fengge Luantai Pingzhangshi (), making him a chancellor de facto.  His office was soon changed to be Fengge Shilang (), the deputy head of the legislative bureau (鳳閣, Fengge), and he remained chancellor de facto with the Tong Fengge Luantai Pingzhangshi designation.

In 697, after Wu Youyi () the Prince of Jian'an, the grandson of Wu Zetian's uncle Wu Shirang (), had returned victoriously from a campaign against Khitan forces, tradition called for the playing of a military band as Wu Youyi returned to the capital Luoyang. The chancellor Wang Jishan, as the month that Wu Youyi was returning was the same month when Emperor Gaozong died, requested that the band be only present but not playing. Wang Fangqing, citing precedents from the Jin dynasty, argued that the band should only not play if Wu Youyi were returning on the same day of Emperor Gaozong's death, advocated that the band still play, and Wu Zetian agreed.  Around the same time, there was an occasion when Wu Zetian was visiting Yuquan Temple () at Mount Wan'an (萬安山, near Luoyang). The path up the mountain was steep, and she considered going up the mountain in a litter. Wang Fangqing advocated against it, arguing that it was too dangerous for the sovereign to take such a journey, and she agreed.  Later that year, she upgraded his title to Viscount of Shiquan. Also, around the same time, there was a discussion as to whether the ceremony of having the emperor personally declare the start of each month should be abolished as not being referred to in the Confucian classics.  Wang Fangqing advocated that the ceremonies be kept in place, and Wu Zetian agreed.

Wang kept a large collection of books at his mansion, and on one occasion, Wu Zetian visited his mansion to request to see some of his ancestors' calligraphy. Wang stated that his family had previously already submitted the calligraphy of Wang Xizhi (of another line of his clan) to Emperor Taizong, but that he was willing to submit the calligraphy of his 11th generation ancestor Wang Dao as well as 27 other ancestors' calligraphy. Wu Zetian displayed the calligraphy to the officials and had an official of the legislative bureau, Cui Rong (), collect them into a collection, and then awarded the collection back to Wang, considered a great honor at the time.

In 698, the chancellor Di Renjie advocated recalling Li Zhe the Prince of Luling (the former Emperor Zhongzong) from exile—a suggestion that Wang Jishan and Wang Fangqing concurred in and was also advocated by Wu Zetian's close advisor Ji Xu and her lovers Zhang Yizhi and Zhang Changzong. Wu Zetian agreed and recalled Li Zhe from exile, and soon created him crown prince. Later that year, Wang Fangqing, on account of failing health, requested a less important position, and Wu Zetian made him the director of the imperial library (麟臺監, Lintai Jian), no longer chancellor. Once Li Zhe (whose name was then changed to Li Xian) was made crown prince, she also made Wang Fangqing a member of his staff.  In 699, she created him the Duke of Shiquan and ordered that his salary be the same as if he were still a chancellor, and also ordered him to teach Li Xian in his studies. He died in 702 and was buried with honor.  It was said, however, that as his sons did not attend to his great book collections, the collections were gradually lost after his death.

Notes and references

 Old Book of Tang, vol. 89.
 New Book of Tang, vol. 129.
 Zizhi Tongjian, vols. 203, 205, 206.

External links

702 deaths
Chancellors under Wu Zetian
Politicians from Xi'an
Year of birth unknown

Wang Fangqing


John Jackson (11 Februar 1887 – 9 December 1958) wis a Scots astronomer.

Born in Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland, he wis educatit at Paisley Grammar School, studyin a range o subjects includin the sciences, French an German, but no Laitin or Greek, whit war compulsitor gin he ettelt tae dae the entry examinies for varsity.

Early life an Education
Haein bleckit at science, in parteecular chemistrie, he decidid tae ettle for the entry exam for Glesga Varsity, ill-will o no studyin the classics. In the simmer o 1903 he studied haurd tae impruive his knawledge o Laitin, whit see'd him pass the varsity entry exam weel eneuch tae be awairded a £25 bursary.

Graduatin in 1907 wi a first cless honours Master o Airts (Maister o airts) degree in mathematics an naitural philosophy, he wis than awairded a fellaeship o £100 a year for faurer study. The follaein year he unnerteuk a Batchelor o Science (Batchelor o science) degree, again at Glesgae Varsity, wi speicial distinction in mathematics, naitural philosophy, astronomy an chemistrie, winnin medals in maist o thir subjects.

Astronomy wis studied unner the tutory o Ludwig Becker. Jackson gained a thorou grundin in the fundamental elements o the subject tae the stent required for a fou unnerstaunin o astronomy. He leart hou tae uise aw kynds o astronomical instruments, hou tae correct observations an hou tae applee mathematical an arithmetical analysis tae redd up astronomical problems. Becker's fain teachin weys maun hiv haed a profoond influence on Jackson syne he than chyse tae follae oot a career in astronomy.

As thare seemed tae be nae possibeelity o obtaeenin an appointment in astronomy at Glesgae, Jackson decidit tae gae til Varsity o Cambridge, an, efter takin the entry exam, wis awairded a major bursary tae study at Trinity College as an ordinar unnergraduate in 1909. He awready kent as much spherical an deenamic astronomy as wis than teacht at Cambridge, but wis introduced tae new subjects includin solar pheesics an astropheesics, while faurerin his knawledge o pure an appleed mathematics. In his time at Cambridge, he wis awairded faurer medals for his wirk in astronomy.

Wirkin Life
In 1914, a vacancy as Chief Assistant arose at the Royal Observatory Greenwich an Jackson wis selectit bi the Astronomer Ryal, Sir Frank Watson Dyson. In 1917 Jackson wis granted a commission in the Ryal Engineers. He wis sent tae Fraunce tae wark on soond rangin, but in the ware o 1918, efter the German airmies brakithrou an forder, he wis sent taw the Breetish Fowert Airmy as a trigonometrical vizzie officer, plottin artillery trajectories. His throu-come o observin an his knawledge o spherical astronomy meant he wis suitably qualified tae cairy oot this wirk, e'en howffin tae observations o the sun tae help determine ranges an poseetions.

Jackson hame-come frae Fraunce in 1919 an resumed his duties at Greenwich. The first extensive task he unnerteuk wis tae redd himsel for publication o aw o the observations he haed made o dooble starns, wirkin on this wi Herbert Hall Turner, the Savilian Professor o Astronomy at Varsity o Oxford. Jackson wirked on calculatin the rotation o the planet Neptune an aw, revisin the acceptit tent o a 7 oor rotation tae 19 oor wi a possible mistak o 20 percent, no ower faur frae the true feegur o 15.8 oor.

In 1933 a vacancy arose for the poseetion o His Majesty's Astronomer at Cape Observatory, Cape Toun, Sooth Africae. Jackson wis appointit tae the post.

Jackson's first task on income at the Cape wis taw wirk on the lairge collection o phototae plates taen bi David Gill o the sky abuinn Cape Toun, in order tae derive the richt muivements o thir starns. He published thir in twa volumes, whit kivert the muivements an spectral teeps o ower 41,000 starn.

Maist o Jackson's time at the Cape wis taen up wi the determination o stellar parallax, a programme that haed been stairtit bi his predecessor, Harold Spencer Jones. Jackson wrocht on this for a nummer o year, takin as mony as 1000 photae plates o the sky in a year frae whit tae wirk frae. Jackson obtaeen't results for 1600 starn, published in three volume o the Cape Annals. As a result o his wirk, the knawledge o stellar parallaxes for the soothern hemisphere became better kent nor thon o the northren.

Throu-oot his career, Jackson teuk pairt in fower expedeetion tae observe a hale eclipse o the Sun. The Greenwich observatory haed planned tae send an expedeetion tae Sooth Africae tae observe the eclipse o 1 October 1940, but the oot-brak o the Seicont Warld War made it impossible tae send observers. Gear wis sent insteid an Jackson teuk chairge o an expedeetion frae the Cape Observatory tae the observin site, whaur the hale eclipse wis successfully viewed.

Accolades
Jackson reteert frae the Cape Observatory in 1950, retourin tae Ingland, whaur he sattled wi his wife, Mary Beatrice Marshall, in Ewell, Surrey. In 1952 John Jackson wis awairded The Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society for his wirk on stellar parallaxes an his contreebutions tae the general problems o starn poseetions an richt muivements. Faurer accolades awairded include the Gill Medal o the Astronomical Society o South Africae in 1958 an he wis made a CBE in 1950. He haudit the posts o preses o the Ryal Society o Sooth Africae in 1949 an wis preses o the Ryal Astronomical Society frae 1953 tae 1955. Efter reteerin, he didna lea his passion for astronomy ahind, makin a trip tae Stromatad in Swaden tae observe the hale eclipse o 30 June 1954. Mony o Jackson's medals are on display at Coats Observatory, Paisley.

Ill halth plagued his later years an on 9 December 1958 John Jackson deed efter a brief illness.

References
 John Jackson page at Epsom an Ewell History wab steid
 John Jackson obituary, Glasgae Herald (Inglis)

1887 births
1958 daiths
Fellaes o the Ryal Society

John Jackson (astronomer)


Mary Allen Seminary (later called Mary Allen Junior College) was the first black women's college in the state of Texas. Initially a parochial school founded and run by white Presbyterians, it was restructured in 1924 and became an accredited junior college with an all-black faculty and black administrator in 1933. The school was closed in 1943, reopened the following year, and operated until 1972.

History

Seminary

The school was founded in Crockett, Texas in 1886 by the Presbyterian pastor Revered Richard Allen, and his wife Mary E. Allen. At the time, it was the first and only school that was open to the nearly 200,000 freed black women in the state.

Planning for the institution was started in 1885 by the Board of Missions for Freedmen of the Presbyterian Church and was largely influenced by Mary, whose husband was the secretary of the board. The city of Crockett was chosen as the location for the school because the area had a large black population, and because a parochial school for black students was already located there. In January 1886, the first three teachers arrived in Crockett and settled in a rented farm to begin instruction. Mary died in April 1887, and the school was named in her honor.

At first the school provided a liberal arts education, but later, due to criticism that it and other institutions like it around the country were not providing black women with necessary vocational training, the curriculum shifted to subjects such as cooking, dressmaking, and millinery. By the end of its first year, the school had 46 students, and in that year a brick building was erected to house students and faculty. As enrollment grew over the subsequent years, citizens from Crockett and elsewhere in the United States began donating land and money to the school, and by 1891 the campus consisted of 260 acres of land and an additional brick hall, named after the benefactor, Michigan United States Senator James McMillan.

Though the students were all black, the faculty of the seminary was initially composed of white women. In 1921, a Presbyterian newspaper advertised the position of "white lady teachers" at the school, promising 44 dollars per month for an eight-month term, plus "maintenance and railroad fare both ways."

Junior college

In 1924, the Texas school board appointed the first black administrator, the Reverend Burt Randall Smith, to restructure Mary Allen Seminary. Over the next eight years, Smith oversaw an overhaul of the curriculum, including expansion of the library and science facilities, and in 1932 the school became an accredited junior college with an all-black faculty. In 1933, the school changed its name to Mary Allen Junior College and became a coeducational institution.

The school was closed in 1943 after a failed proposal to transform it into a black state college. In 1944, it was reopened by the National Missionary Baptist Convention of America and operated until 1972.

See also

National Register of Historic Places listings in Houston County, Texas

References

External links

Historically black universities and colleges in Texas
History of women in Texas
Female seminaries in the United States
Defunct schools in Texas
Educational institutions established in 1886
1886 establishments in Texas
Educational institutions disestablished in 1972
1972 disestablishments in Texas
Education in Houston County, Texas
Former women's universities and colleges in the United States

Mary Allen Seminary


The Bhopal disaster or Bhopal gas tragedy was an industrial accident. It happened at a Union Carbide subsidiary pesticide plant in the city of Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. On the night of 2-3 December 1984, the plant released approximately 40 tons of toxic methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas, exposing more than 500,000 people to toxic gases.

The mixture of poisonous gases flooded the city, causing great panic as people woke up with a burning sensation in their lungs. Thousands died immediately from the effects of the gas. Many were trampled in the panic that followed. The first official immediate death toll was 3,598 in 1989. Another estimate is that 8,000 died within two weeks, that an additional 8,000 have since died from gas-related diseases.

The Bhopal disaster is frequently cited as the world's worst industrial disaster. The International Medical Commission on Bhopal was established in 1993 to respond to the long-term health effects of the disaster. The owner of the factory, UCIL, was majority owned by UCC, with Indian Government-controlled banks and the Indian public holding a 49.1 percent stake. In 1989, UCC paid $470 million ($929 million in 2017 dollars) to settle litigation stemming from the disaster. In 1994, UCC sold its stake in UCIL to EverReady Industries India Limited (EIIL), which subsequently merged with McLeod Russel (India) Ltd. Eveready ended clean-up on the site in 1998, when it terminated its 99-year lease and turned over control of the site to the state government of Madhya Pradesh. Dow Chemical Company purchased UCC in 2001, seventeen years after the disaster.

Civil and criminal cases were filed in the District Court of Bhopal, India, involving UCC and Warren Anderson, UCC CEO at the time of the disaster.[7][8] In June 2010, seven former employees, including the former UCIL chairman, were convicted in Bhopal of causing death by negligence and sentenced to two years imprisonment and a fine of about $2,000 each, the maximum punishment allowed by Indian law. An eighth former employee was also convicted but died before the judgment was passed.[2] Anderson died on 29 September 2014. (9)

History
In the 1970s, the Indian government initiated policies to encourage foreign companies to invest in the local industry. Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) was asked to build a plant for the manufacture of Sevin, a pesticide commonly used throughout Asia. As part of the deal, India's government insisted that a significant percentage of the investment come from local shareholders. The government itself had a 22% stake in the company's subsidiary, Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) [1]. The company built the plant in Bhopal because of its central location and access to transport infrastructure. The specific site within the city was zoned for light industrial and commercial use, not for hazardous industry. The plant was initially approved only for formulation of pesticides from component chemicals, such as MIC imported from the parent company, in relatively small quantities. However, pressure from competition in the chemical industry led UCIL to implement "backward integration" – the manufacture of raw materials and intermediate products for formulation of the final product within one facility. This was inherently a more sophisticated and hazardous process [2].

In 1984, the plant was manufacturing Sevin at one quarter of its production capacity due to decreased demand for pesticides. Widespread crop failures and famine on the subcontinent in the 1980s led to increased indebtedness and decreased capital for farmers to invest in pesticides. Local managers were directed to close the plant and prepare it for sale in July 1984 due to decreased profitability [3]. When no ready buyer was found, UCIL made plans to dismantle key production units of the facility for shipment to another developing country. In the meantime, the facility continued to operate with safety equipment and procedures far below the standards found in its sister plant in Institute, West Virginia. The local government was aware of safety problems but was reticent to place heavy industrial safety and pollution control burdens on the struggling industry because it feared the economic effects of the loss of such a large employer [3].

At 11.00 PM on December 2 1984, while most of the one million residents of Bhopal slept, an operator at the plant noticed a small leak of methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas and increasing pressure inside a storage tank. The vent-gas scrubber, a safety device designer to neutralize toxic discharge from the MIC system, had been turned off three weeks prior [3]. Apparently a faulty valve had allowed one ton of water for cleaning internal pipes to mix with forty tons of MIC [1]. A 30-ton refrigeration unit that normally served as a safety component to cool the MIC storage tank had been drained of its coolant for use in another part of the plant [3]. Pressure and heat from the vigorous exothermic reaction in the tank continued to build. The gas flare safety system was out of action and had been for three months. At around 1.00 AM, December 3, loud rumbling reverberated around the plant as a safety valve gave way sending a plume of MIC gas into the early morning air [4]. Within hours, the streets of Bhopal were littered with human corpses and the carcasses of buffaloes, cows, dogs and birds. An estimated 3,800 people died immediately, mostly in the poor slum colony adjacent to the UCC plant [1,5]. Local hospitals were soon overwhelmed with the injured, a crisis further compounded by a lack of knowledge of exactly what gas was involved and what its effects were [1]. It became one of the worst chemical disasters in history and the name Bhopal became synonymous with industrial catastrophe [5].

Estimates of the number of people killed in the first few days by the plume from the UCC plant run as high as 10,000, with 15,000 to 20,000 premature deaths reportedly occurring in the subsequent two decades [6]. The Indian government reported that more than half a million people were exposed to the gas [7]. Several epidemiological studies conducted soon after the accident showed significant morbidity and increased mortality in the exposed population. Table Table1.1. summarizes early and late effects on health. These data are likely to under-represent the true extent of adverse health effects because many exposed individuals left Bhopal immediately following the disaster never to return and were therefore lost to follow-up [8].

Causes
The plant in Bhopal where the disaster happened started to produce 'Carbaryl' in 1977. Carbaryl is mainly used as an insecticide. At first, the production was 2,500 tons per year. There was no problem, as the plant had been designed for an output of 5,000 tons. At the beginning of the 1980s, Carbaryl did not sell very well. For this reason, the owners of the plant started to cut the costs. This included employing fewer people, doing maintenance less frequently, and using parts that were made of lower-grade steel. Closing the plant was being considered as well. When the disaster happened, there was no production at the plant because there was a surplus amount of material on the market.

There is also a theory related to this which says that the owner of the Union Carbide Company (UCC) did this on purpose to just challenge the government to punish him. However, as we all know, he had escaped long ago using the corruption in the Indian government at that time to his advantage.

The disaster happened because water entered Methyl isocyanate. The resulting reaction increased the temperature inside the tank to reach over . The pressure was more than the tank. The tank had two places to restore the gas. As a result, large amounts of toxic gases were released into the environment. The pipes were not well maintained. All the contents of the tank were released within a period of about two hours. The water had entered the tank because of a sequence of events. The tank had been maintained badly. When cleaning work was done, water entered the tank.

Theories

There are different theories on how water could enter the tank. At the time, workers were cleaning pipes with water and according to some claims, because of poor maintenance of machines, leaking valves and use of inferior components for making machines made it possible for the water to leak into tank 610. In the month of December 1985, the New York Times reported that according to the plant managers the hypothesis of this route of entry of water was tested in the presence of official investigators and was found to be negative. UCC also maintains that this route was not possible and that it was an act of sabotage by a "disgruntled worker" who introduced water directly into the tank. See also,http://www.hindustantimes.com/bhopal/cbi-probe-into-gas-tragedy-baseless-and-malicious-says-counsel-of-indian-convict/story-cCzHAuxf6V6bA6vYFwFwPL.html
However, the company's investigation team found no evidence of the necessary connection.

The 1985 reports give a picture of what led to the disaster and how it developed. The reports differ in details, however.
 Possible corroding material in pipelines
 Poor maintenance after the plant ceased production in the early 1980s
 Failure of several safety systems (due to poor maintenance and regulations).
 Safety systems shut down to save money - including the MIC tank refrigeration system which alone would have prevented the disaster.
 Plant design modifications by Indian engineers to abide by government regulations and economic pressures to reduce expenses.

The problem was then made worse by the plant's location near a densely populated area, non-existent catastrophe plans, and shortcomings in health care and socio-economic reh
Factors leading to this gas leak include:
 The use of hazardous chemicals (MIC) instead of less dangerous ones
 Storing these chemicals in large tanks instead of over 200 steel drums.
abilitation. Analysis shows that the parties responsible for the magnitude of the disaster are the two owners, Union Carbide Corporation and the Government of India, and to some extent, the Government of Madhya Pradesh.

Casualties
Between 3,500 and 25,000 people died as a result of contact with the cloud of toxic gas. Up to 500,000 people were injured. Many of the injuries are permanent. Some of the chemicals led to birth defects. The numbers vary so vastly because there are no exact figures about how many people lived in the neighborhood of the plant. About 100.000 people were living in a radius of 1 km around the plant where the disaster happened. The owner of the factory, UCIL, was majority-owned by UCC, with Indian Government-controlled banks and the Indian public holding a 49.1 percent stake. In 1989, UCC paid $470 million ($929 million in 2017 dollars) to settle litigation stemming from the disaster. In 1994, UCC sold its stake in UCIL to EverReady Industries India Limited (EIIL), which subsequently merged with McLeod Russel (India) Ltd. EverReady ended clean-up on the site in 1998, when it terminated its 99-year lease and turned over control of the site to the state government of Madhya Pradesh. Dow Chemical Company purchased UCC in 2001, seventeen years after the disaster.

Civil and criminal cases were filed in the District Court of Bhopal, India, involving UCC and Warren Anderson, UCC CEO at the time of the disaster.[7][8] In June 2010, seven former employees, including the former UCIL chairman, were convicted in Bhopal of causing death by negligence and sentenced to two years imprisonment and a fine of about $2,000 each, the maximum punishment allowed by Indian law. An eighth former employee was also convicted, but died before the judgement was passed.[2] Anderson died on 29 September 2014.[9]

Aftermath
In 1998, the Supreme Court of India reached a settlement with Union Carbide: They had to pay 470 million US dollars to the Indian state. At that time Union Carbide made a turnover of about 9.5 billion dollars, 20 times that amount. In return, there would be no further prosecution. Only very little money actually reached the victims.

The terrain where the plant stands is still contaminated with mercury and other carcinogenic substances. Dow Chemical who owns Union Carbide refuses to decontaminate the soil. Greenpeace has estimated that decontamination would only cost around US$30 million.

Abstract
On December 3, 1984, more than 40 tons of methyl isocyanate gas leaked from a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, immediately killing at least 3,800 people and causing significant morbidity and premature death for many thousands more. The company involved in what became the worst industrial accident in history immediately tried to dissociate itself from legal responsibility. Eventually, it reached a settlement with the Indian Government through the mediation of that country's Supreme Court and accepted moral responsibility. It paid $470 million in compensation, a relatively small amount of based on significant underestimations of the long-term health consequences of exposure and the number of people exposed. The disaster indicated a need for enforceable international standards for environmental safety, preventative strategies to avoid similar accidents, and industrial disaster preparedness.

Since the disaster, India has experienced rapid industrialization. While some positive changes in government policy and behavior of a few industries have taken place, major threats to the environment from rapid and poorly regulated industrial growth remain. Widespread environmental degradation with significant adverse human health consequences continues to occur throughout India.

December 2004 marked the twentieth anniversary of the massive toxic gas leak from Union Carbide Corporation's chemical plant in Bhopal in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India that killed more than 3,800 people. This review examines the health effects of exposure to the disaster, the legal response, the lessons learned, and whether or not these are put into practice in India in terms of industrial development, environmental management, and public health.

References

1984 in Asia
1980s in India
Disaster
Disasters in India
Disasters in the 1980s

Bhopal disaster


Sultan Saodat is a complex of religious structures located on the outskirts of modern Termez, in Uzbekistan.

The complex of Sultan Saodat, which was formed between the 10th and 17th centuries, holds the graves of the influential Sayyid dynasty of Termez. The Termez Sayyids claimed direct descendancy of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. The founder of the family is presumed to be Termez Sayyid Hassan al-Amir, descendant of Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of Muhammad. Another historical tradition mentions that Sultan Saadat (Sodot) is the Sultan of Sayyids and the owner "Sultan Saodat" Mausoleum in Termez city – and Sultan Saadat is Sayyid Ali Akbar Termizi, who is also mentioned with the nickname (kunyat) Abu Muhammad, and is presumed to have died at the end of the 9th century or early in the 10th century in Termez.

Sultan Saodat complex is a series of religious structures – mausoleums, mosques and khanaqa – built around a central passage. The oldest here are two large single-chamber, square, domed mausoleums (10th century). They are united by a 15th-century iwan.

In the second half of the 15th century two new buildings were built in front of the two mausoleums. Two parallel rows were built in the 15th–17th centuries and joined with the other buildings. Also, some new mausoleums were also pairwise connected with intermediate iwan; their decorations no longer exist. In the 16th–17th centuries courtyards to the south and the north were built up with mausoleums of different sizes and from different eras. The entrance was set up on the west side of the yard. The majestic ensemble stands out as a group of mausoleums, homogeneous in structure and decoration, though built in different styles.

See also
 Muhammad ibn Ali al-Hadi

References

External links
Sultan Saodat: Testament of the Sayyids | Caravanistan

Mausoleums in Uzbekistan
Mosques in Uzbekistan
World Heritage Sites in Uzbekistan

Sultan Saodat


Backergunje, or Bakarganj was a former district of British India in the Dacca division of Eastern Bengal and Assam, and is now mostly in Bangladesh. In the year 1901, the population was 2,291,752. The district was mainly flat even country with areas of bamboo and betelnut trees, and was crossed by dark-coloured and sluggish streams. There was not a hill in the whole district.

Rivers
The main rivers of the district were the Meghna, the Arial Khan and the Haringhata or Baleswar. The Haringhata, Baleswar, Madhumati and Garai are different names for the same river - people could travel throughout the district by boat.

People
There were small trading villages throughout the district, and each area had fairs to trade. The condition of the people was good, people had land and were able to grow rice to support their families, for this reason it was very hard to hire people for work.

Districts of British India

Backergunje


In America, a soccer mom is a middle-class woman in the suburbs who spends a lot of time taking her school-aged children to sports events and other activities. The soccer mom often drives a minivan, SUV or station wagon. Soccer moms are often completely involved and coach their children from the sidelines.The term soccer mom dates back to the early or mid 1980s. The term became more popular when newspapers began using it a lot in 1994 or 1995. It became very popular around 1996, when politicians were constantly using it during the presidential election of 1996, including then-President Bill Clinton.

Family
American culture

Soccer mom


Robie Mayhew Macauley (May 31, 1919 – November 20, 1995) was an American editor, novelist and critic whose literary career spanned more than 50 years.

Biography

Early life
Robie Mayhew Macauley was born on May 31, 1919, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He was the older brother of the noted photographer and movie producer C. Cameron Macauley. His uncle owned and published the Hudsonville newspaper, The Ottawa Times (named for Ottawa County), and Macauley used the printing press to publish his first books of fiction and poetry. At age 18 he printed and bound a limited edition of Solomon's Cat, a previously unpublished poem by Walter Duranty, setting the type and engraving the illustrations.

Education
As an undergraduate at Olivet College, he was a student of Ford Madox Ford (describing him as "my first teacher and editorial mentor.") and then won a three-year literary prize scholarship and transferred to Kenyon College to be a student of John Crowe Ransom. There he lived in a writer's house with Robert Lowell, Peter Taylor, and Randall Jarrell. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa during February 1941, and the same year was awarded a fellowship to attend the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. He graduated summa cum laude from Kenyon in June 1941.

War years
He was drafted in March 1942 and served in World War II as a special agent in the Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) with the 97th Infantry Division, in the "Ruhr Pocket" and then in Japan after the war.

On April 23, 1945, Macauley's division helped liberate Flossenbürg concentration camp. Macauley later said, "I entered some concentration camps the day we liberated them--the most horrifying days of my life. My job was to interview survivors. Most of the bodies that I saw had been stripped and it was impossible to tell which were those of Jews and which of Christians. Nazi murder was a great leveler, fully ecumenical... Hitler's bell tolled for all..."

Macauley wrote four autobiographical short stories based on his experiences doing intelligence work, collected in The End of Pity and Other Stories, (1957). In "A Nest of Gentlefolk", (winner of the 1949 Furioso Prize) he describes the CIC's futile search for Nazi war criminals in the war-ravaged town of Hohenlohe; in The Thin Voice he describes the unsuccessful attempt by an American officer to prevent some freed Russian POWs from killing a vicious collaborator in Heiligenkreuz, Germany; in "The End of Pity" he tells the story of a woman's suicide after visiting her ruined house in a combat zone in Oberkassel; and in "The Mind is its Own Place" he describes his brief post-war encounter in Karuizawa, Japan with Captain Kermit Beahan, bombardier of the bomber "The Bockscar" who released the atomic bomb over Nagasaki. Macauley described Beahan as "a young captain with a college-boy face [who] had suffered some strange mutation of feeling so deep and so destructive..."

According to Macauley's letters archived at the University of North Carolina, while in Karuizawa he was friends with former Japanese Ambassador to the US Saburō Kurusu and German Admiral Paul Wenneker, as well as pianist Leo Sirota and artist Paul Jacoulet. He was also acquainted with three-time former Japanese Prime Minister Prince Fumimaro Konoe, to whom he presented a copy of The American Leviathan: The Republic in the Machine Age, written by Charles A. Beard.

In his capacity as CIC Station Chief, he supervised the arrests, on October 30, 1945, of a number of prominent Nazi leaders who were in hiding in Karuizawa: Franz-Josef Spahn, Nazi Gruppenleiter in Japan; Paul Sperringer, a former SS Stormtrooper and assistant to Gestapo Chief Colonel Josef Meisinger; Karl Hamel, Meisinger's secretary; Charles Schmidt-Jucheim, a former San Francisco police officer and an ex-US Army sergeant who attended Gestapo training in Germany and renounced his US citizenship; Karlfried Graf Dürckheim, chief of Nazi propaganda in Japan; Heinrich Loy, a Gestapo spy who allegedly participated in the Munich Beer Hall Putsch; Dr. Karl Kindermann, Meisinger's Jewish interpreter who was an informant for the Gestapo; Alrich Mosaner, chief of the Hitler Youth in Japan; and Otto Burmeister, chief of the Nazi education system in Japan. Most of these individuals were later released by the CIC.

Robie Macauley was awarded the Legion of Merit for his work in detaining members of the Gestapo in Japan.

Career

Iowa Writers Workshop
After the war, he taught briefly at Bard College then worked  at Gourmet Magazine and for Henry Holt and Company. During 1947 he taught at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop with Paul Engle, and Anthony Hecht (with whom Macauley had served during World War II), where he befriended Flannery O'Connor, advising her on drafts of her first novel, Wise Blood. He completed his MFA at the University of Iowa in 1950 and spent the next three years at the Woman's College (now The University of North Carolina at Greensboro) where he taught modern American literature and writing.

The Congress for Cultural Freedom
Macauley received a Rockefeller Fellowship and during 1953 Cord Meyer offered him a position in the International Organizations Division of the Central Intelligence Agency. With John Crowe Ransom's encouragement, Macauley accepted and relocated to Paris where he participated in the  Congress for Cultural Freedom. Macauley assisted in the publication of Quadrant magazine (edited by James McAuley), an Australian literary journal that at the time had "an anticommunist thrust".

He was a U.S. representative to the International PEN Congress in Tokyo (1957) and Brazil (1960).

The Kenyon Review
 During 1958 he returned to the US to succeed John Crowe Ransom as editor of The Kenyon Review. Ransom described Macauley as "wise and thorough, thoroughly experienced, an excellent critic...; a pretty good fiction writer who has just begun to get a lot better; and a person universally admired and liked." During the next seven years, Macauley published works by T. S. Eliot, Nadine Gordimer, Robert Graves, Randall Jarrell, Richmond Lattimore, Doris Lessing, Robert Lowell, V. S. Naipaul, Joyce Carol Oates, Frank O'Connor, V. S. Pritchett, Thomas Pynchon, J. F. Powers, Karl Shapiro, Jean Stafford, Christina Stead, Peter Taylor, and Robert Penn Warren, as well as articles, essays and book reviews by Eric Bentley, Cleanth Brooks, R. P. Blackmur, Malcolm Cowley, Richard Ellmann, Leslie Fiedler, Martin Green, and Raymond Williams. In 1964, he served as a fiction judge for the National Book Awards together with John Cheever and Philip Rahv. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship and took a sabbatical in 1964–65 as a Fulbright Research Fellow at the University of London.

Playboy Magazine
 In 1966 Macauley became the fiction editor at Playboy, where he published fiction by Saul Bellow, Michael Crichton, John Cheever, Roald Dahl, James Dickey, J. P. Donleavy, Nadine Gordimer, John Irving, Arthur Koestler, John le Carré, Ursula K. Le Guin, Doris Lessing, Bernard Malamud, Mary McCarthy, Vladimir Nabokov, Joyce Carol Oates, Seán Ó Faoláin, Anne Sexton, Irwin Shaw, Isaac B. Singer, John Updike, and Kurt Vonnegut as well as poetry by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. David H. Lynn, writing in The Kenyon Review, said that "in the years when he was fiction editor, Playboy was second only to The New Yorker in prestige as a place for serious writers to display their talents." During this period he also taught fiction at the MFA program at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Circle Campus.

In 1967, he co-initiated the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses together with Reed Whittemore (The Carleton Miscellany, The New Republic); Jules Chametzky (The Massachusetts Review); George Plimpton (The Paris Review); and William Phillips (The Partisan Review).

Houghton Mifflin
In 1978, he became a senior editor at Houghton Mifflin, where he was responsible for publishing The Mosquito Coast, The Marrakesh One-Two, Shoeless Joe, and several works of nonfiction such as Breaking the Ring: The Bizarre Case of the Walker Family Spy Ring, Techno-Bandits, Getting to Yes, The Puzzle Palace, The Bunker, The Dungeon Master, and The Nine Nations of North America. He later taught at the Harvard Extension School and during 1990 co-initiated and co-directed the Ploughshares International Writing Seminars, a summer program of the Emerson College European Center at Kasteel Well in the Netherlands.

Death
Macauley died of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in Boston on November 20, 1995.

Publications

Novels
During his life Robie Macauley published two novels, The Disguises of Love (1951), the story of a university professor's love affair with a student and how it affects his wife and son, and A Secret History of Time to Come (1979), an adventure thriller set in a devastated post-apocalypse America 200 years in the future.

His last two novels, Citadel of Ice: Life and Death in a Glacier Fortress during World War I, (2014), and The Escape of Alfred Dreyfus, (2016) were published posthumously.

Short stories
His short fiction appeared in Furioso, the North American Review,  The Kenyon Review, The Sewanee Review, The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Esquire, Fiction, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Cosmopolitan, the Virginia Quarterly Review and Playboy, for which he was awarded the Furioso Prize (1949), The O. Henry Award (1951, 1956 and 1967), and the John Train Humor Prize (1990).

In spite of his expertise and experience, Macauley's own fiction received only moderate recognition. "Robie Macauley's prose, like the best poetry, has a startling economy of means and precision of language", declared Melvin J. Friedman in Contemporary Novelists. "The author's work", continued Friedman, "is the enviable product of years spent in close and sympathetic relationship with the best novels from Jane Austen through James Joyce." David H. Lynn, editor of The Kenyon Review, described Macauley's fiction as "subtle, stinging, disturbing, witty." Eugene Goodheart, commenting on The End of Pity and Other Stories, said "Macauley has all the gifts of a master short story writer: narrative power, a quick and vivid imagination of character...a capacity for delivering the scene that at once surprises and satisfies the reader's expectation, i.e., a fine sense for the significant scene or action, a felicity of phrase that is not merely decoration, but becomes perception."

Since 2001 StoryQuarterly has awarded the annual "Robie Macauley Award for Fiction."

Nonfiction
He co-authored (with George Lanning) a textbook on writing, Technique in Fiction (1964, revised in 1989), and co-authored (with William Betcher) a book on marriage counseling, The Seven Basic Quarrels of Marriage (1990). He edited America and Its Discontents together with Larzer Ziff. Between 1942 and 1990 he contributed dozens of book reviews to The New York Times Book Review, The Kenyon Review, Furioso, Vogue, The New York Herald Tribune, The Partisan Review, The Boston Globe, The New York Review of Books, Encounter, The New Republic, The Chicago Sun-Times, Dialogue, the Boston Review, and other publications. He also wrote a series of contemplative essays on writing, writers and literature which were published in Shenandoah, The Irish University Review, Transition, The Texas Quarterly, Ploughshares, and The Paris Review.

Bibliography
 A Secret History of Time to Come (1979) (Illustrated by Mark Hess)

References

External links
"A Last Conversation with Robie Macauley" by Thomas E. Kennedy
Technique in Fiction by Robie Macauley
Review of The Disguises of Love by Stanley Edgard Hyman
Finding Aid for the Robie MaCauley Papers at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
"Stranger, Tread Light" by Robie Macauley, The Kenyon Review, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Spring, 1955), p. 280.]
"Folie A Deux", short fiction by Robie Macauley
Clive Baldwin's psychoanalysis of The Disguises of Love in Chapter 6 of Masculinity and the Other: Historical Perspectives, pp. 138–154.

1919 births
1995 deaths
20th-century American novelists
American book editors
American literary critics
American magazine editors
American male novelists
Bard College faculty
Iowa Writers' Workshop faculty
Kenyon College alumni
Kenyon College faculty
Olivet College alumni
Writers from Grand Rapids, Michigan
Recipients of the Legion of Merit
United States Army soldiers
University of Iowa alumni
American male short story writers
United States Army personnel of World War II
20th-century American short story writers
20th-century American male writers
Novelists from Ohio
Novelists from Michigan
Novelists from New York (state)
Novelists from Iowa
20th-century American non-fiction writers
American male non-fiction writers
Harvard Extension School faculty

Robie Macauley


"Jenny from the Block" is a song performed by American singer Jennifer Lopez. The song is a contemporary R&B and old school hip hop song. The single is about not changing despite having a fortune and being famous, and never forgetting where one came from.

The song was released on September 26, 2002. It hit #3 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song got mixed reviews from critics. It was a commercial success.

2002 songs
Hip hop songs
R&B songs
Jennifer Lopez songs

Jenny from the Block


was a  Japanese historian specialising in the Renaissance. He was active as a conservative thinker, commentator and major exponent of the Nihonjinron. He was born in Kyōto on 5 March 1916. He graduated from Kyoto University in 1940 and had his master's degree in history interrupted in 1943, when he was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army. He participated in the Burma campaign of 1944 as an infantryman. He surrendered to the British Army at the war's end and was detained at a prisoner-of-war camp in the British colony of Burma. His experiences in the camp are described in his best-selling memoir, Aaron Shūyōjo (1962). Upon his repatriation in 1947, he began to teach at Kobe University. He was appointed full professor at Kyoto University's Humanities Department in 1952. He retired from the University in 1979, when he became an emeritus professor. He died of pneumonia on 17 September 1997.

Theory of European Rationalism

Aida is best remembered for the theory that the "rationality" of Western civilization was consequential upon the practice of raising and killing livestock. This hypothesis, called the , was set forth in his 1966 book Rationalism (Gōrishugi). He associated the slaughter of domestic animals, which had been hitherto reared with great care, with the nonchalant belligerence of Western soldiers. In his view, Westerners are free from the kind of hysteria Japanese soldiers would often show at the sight of bloodshed. Aida blamed this hysteria for the excessive acts of cruelty that the Japanese were accused of during the Second World War. Westerners, on the other hand, have so long been accustomed to calmly butchering animals that they developed a rational approach to slaughter, which they extended to human conflict. The Japanese hardly had any contact with livestock owing to the Buddhist taboo of eating meat and were too emotive to master the Western sort of nonchalance.

Works
 Kyōdai Seiyōshi: 4, Sōgensha, Tokyo 1951
 Runesansu, Kawade Shobō, Tokyo 1974
 Aaron Shūyōjo Chūō Kōronsha, Tokyo 1962
 Gōrishugi Kōdansha Gendai Shinsho, Tokyo 1966
 Mikeranjiero:Ai to Bi to Shi to Seibundō Shinkōsha, 1963
 Haisha no jōken: Sengoku jidai o kangaeru, Chūō Kōronsha, Tokyo 1965
 Nihonjin no ishiki kôzô, Kôdansha Gendai Shinsho, Tokyo 1972
 Ketsudan no jōken, Shichōsha, 1975
 Chōetsusha no shisō: kami to hito no deai, Kōdansha, Tokyo 1975
 Runesansu no bijutsu to shakai, Sōgensha, Tokyo 1981
 Mikeranjiero: Sono kodoku to Eikō, PHP, Kyoto 1996
 Rekishika no tachiba PHP, Kyoto 1997

References

Imperial Japanese Army personnel of World War II
People from Kyoto
Academic staff of Kobe University
Academic staff of Kyoto University
Kyoto University alumni
1916 births
1997 deaths
Deaths from pneumonia in Japan
20th-century Japanese historians
Japanese prisoners of war
World War II prisoners of war held by the United Kingdom
Imperial Japanese Army soldiers

Aida Yūji


The Yusef Abad Synagogue ( Kanise-ye Yusef Ābād, ) is the main synagogue of Tehran, Iran. It is also one of the largest synagogues of the city. The official name of the Yusef Abad Synagogue is Sukkot Shalom Synagogue. The original building that housed the synagogue was completed in the early 1950s. With the growth of the Jewish population of the capital especially in the Yusef Abad neighborhood, it was decided that a newer building was needed. With the help of local community leaders headed by Avraham Yusian, the construction of the new facade was completed in October 1965. The doors of the new synagogue were opened to the public on Rosh Hashanah 5726 (Hebrew calendar).

On February 8, 2003, President Mohammad Khatami visited Yusef Abad Synagogue becoming the first President of Iran to visit a synagogue since the Islamic Revolution. Chief Rabbi Yousef Hamadani Cohen, Haroun Yashayaei, and Morris Motamed attended and represented the Jewish community of Iran. For the event, Chief Rabbi Yosef Hamadani Cohen led the opening the Torah scroll ark and the reciting of prayers.

Gallery

See also
History of the Jews in Iran
List of synagogues in Iran

References

Further reading

External links
The Center for Research & Analysis of Iranian Jewish History
Negaresh Sevom Iranian Jewish Cultural, Social and Analytical Website (Persian)

Synagogues in Tehran

Yusef Abad Synagogue


Stephen Dabiša (; ; died on 8 September 1395) was as a member of the Kotromanić dynasty who reigned as King of Bosnia from March 1391 until his death. Elected to succeed the first king, Tvrtko I, Dabiša at first maintained the integrity of the Kingdom of Bosnia. He successfully resisted Hungary, Naples, and even Ottoman Turks. The latter part of his reign, however, saw the ascent of magnates and considerable loss of Bosnia's territory and influence.

Background

Dabiša's relationship with the rest of the Kotromanić family is uncertain. In a letter, Dabiša called himself younger brother of Tvrtko I, who became Ban of Bosnia in 1353, but this should not be taken literally. Influenced by the writings of the 16th century Ragusan chronicler Mavro Orbini, modern historiography usually describes Dabiša as the illegitimate son of Ninoslav, who was the brother of Tvrtko's father Vladislav.

According to Orbini, Dabiša ruled the župa (county) of Neretva (corresponding to the area around the Upper Neretva and the town of Konjic) and, supporting Tvrtko's brother Vuk, took part in the rebellion that led to the deposition of Tvrtko in 1366. Dabiša, however, is the only rebel mentioned by Orbini whose name does not appear in contemporary accounts of the uprising. Tvrtko prevailed in 1367 and banished Dabiša, revoking his lands. Dabiša spent the following two decades in obscurity, while Tvrtko had himself crowned King of Bosnia in 1377.

Election and initial success
Dabiša appears to have mended his relations with King Tvrtko I in the late 1380s, as he is recorded at royal court in Sutjeska in June 1390. Under unclear circumstances following Tvrtko's sudden death on 10 March 1391, Dabiša was elected king by the rusag. He immediately notified the authorities of the neighbouring republics of Venice and Ragusa, which recognized his accession on 1 and 15 June respectively, as well as the kings Sigismund of Hungary and Ladislaus of Naples. Following in his predecessor's footsteps, Dabiša took up using the royal name Stephen.

In the first years of his reign, Dabiša successfully maintained the integrity of Tvrtko's Kingdom of Bosnia, which included not only Bosnia proper, but also Croatia proper, Dalmatia, Zachlumia, and Rascia. The former two had been conquered from King Sigismund and Queen Mary of Hungary, and the Republic of Ragusa's immediate attempts to convince the Dalmatian cities to return to the fold of the Hungarian Crown ended in failure. Sigismund and Mary were not the only one claiming Dalmatia - or the Hungarian lands in general. Insisting that Dabiša did not support his bid for the Hungarian throne as effectively as his predecessor had, King Ladislaus of Naples started to enforce his own claim to Dalmatia and Croatia. Tvrtko I had professed to support Ladislaus when he expanded his realm to include those lands. Dabiša nevertheless remained at Ladislaus' side in his struggle against Sigismund.

From Tvrtko I, Dabiša also inherited the hostility of the Hungarian king, who strived to recover the territories lost to Tvrtko. Sigismund's wish to have his war against Bosnia equated to a crusade obtained Pope Boniface IX's approval. Dabiša was Roman Catholic, but a substantial population of his kingdom consisted of adherents of the Bosnian Church and the Serbian Orthodox Church, branded "heretics and schismatics" respectively in Sigismund's letter to Boniface. It is not known what came about this planned offensive. In the spring of 1392, Dabiša's troops defeated an Ottoman Turkish incursion, reminiscing Tvrtko's victory at the Battle of Bileća. Within a year, Dabiša and Sigismund had agreed to a truce.

Signs of decline

While the Kingdom of Bosnia retained its standing among neighbouring states in the immediate aftermath of Tvrtko I's death, it was already during Dabiša's reign that conditions within the state started deteriorating. The nobility grew stronger and for the first time acted independently of the king, starting with the Zachlumian Sanković noble family. Dabiša curbed the Sanković power, but the trend was irreversible and eventually led to the weakening of the royal authority. Hrvoje Vukčić Hrvatinić, the kingdom's leading magnate, who governed Croatia on behalf of the Bosnian crown and in defiance of Hungarian claims, came into agreement with Sigismund and Mary but remained loyal to Dabiša. Dabiša and his other vassals were coming closer to an agreement with Sigismund as well, and the two kings were expected to make the Compromise of Đakovo in May 1393. In the end, the meeting did not take place.

By June 1394, King Dabiša was in open conflict with John Horvat, a fervent supporter of Ladislaus and enemy of Sigismund. He ordered that men from his islands of Brač, Hvar, and Korčula assist in the siege of Omiš, a city ruled by Horvat. Sigismund, who had been amassing an army since April, took advantage of the discord. The Battle of Dobor saw John Horvat's defeat and execution as well as destruction of the eponymous town on the river Bosna by Sigismund's troops. Soon thereafter, in a camp near the ruins of the town, Dabiša submitted to Sigismund. He resigned Croatia and Dalmatia to the Hungarian king and, with the agreement of his vassals, recognized him as his feudal overlord as well as heir designate to the Bosnian throne. It is not clear what prompted Dabiša to agree to such harsh terms. In return, as evident from a treaty issued in July 1394, Sigismund included Dabiša among the highest ranking Hungarian officials and named him ispán (count) of Somogy.

Death and legacy

The agreement to recognize Sigismund as king following Dabiša indicates that the latter was by then of advanced age. Indeed, King Dabiša's health deteriorated in early 1395. At the end of March, writing from Bišće in Zachlumia, Dabiša requested that Ragusan authorities send a physician. The following month, in Sutjeska, he issued a charter granting the Zachlumian village of Veljaci to his daughter Stana, whose daughter Vladika was married to the nobleman Juraj Radivojević. He died on 8 September 1395. Despite initially consenting to his agreement with Sigismund, it was Dabiša's widow, Helen, who succeeded in ascending the throne with the support of the magnates.

Despite an auspicious start, Dabiša's reign ended with the Kingdom of Bosnia displaying first signs of decay. Much of Tvrtko's extraordinary legacy was lost in the summer of 1394, and the state resumed its previous boundaries. Dabiša left the Bosnian state more dependent on Hungary than ever before, and the kingdom's influence in the Balkans waned.

References

Bibliography

|-

Bosnian monarchs
14th-century monarchs in Europe
14th-century births
1395 deaths
Kotromanić dynasty
Roman Catholic monarchs
Bosnia and Herzegovina Roman Catholics
14th-century Bosnian people
14th century in Hungary
Year of birth unknown
Burials in Royal Chapel on Bobovac
Kings of Bosnia

Dabiša of Bosnia


Wrath of the Titans is a 2012 American-British-Spanish fantasy-adventure film directed by Jonathan Liebesman. It is a sequel to Clash of the Titans, and stars Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson, Rosamund Pike, Ralph Fiennes, Édgar Ramírez, Toby Kebell and Bill Nighy. The film takes place ten years after the events of the first film and involves Perseus battling to save Zeus-who is being held captive in the Underworld-as well as defeat the Titans (who have broken free from Tartarus thanks to the gods losing control of them while their immortality is draining) and save mankind. Like its predecessor it gained poor critical reviews, but was commercially successful. A sequel called Revenge of the Titans was in production but later scrapped.

Plot
Ten years after battling the Kraken, Perseus (Sam Worthington) lives a simple life as a widower fisherman raising his son Helius (John Bell). Zeus (Liam Neeson) visits Perseus, asking for help, revealing that Kronos, the leader of the Titans, is escaping from the Underworld and the walls of Tartarus-where the Titans are imprisoned-are crumbling thanks to humanity's lack of prayers which is also causing the gods' immortality to drain. Perseus declines, valuing his family's safety.

Zeus travels to the underworld where he meets his brothers Hades (Ralph Fiennes) and Poseidon (Danny Huston) and son Ares (Édgar Ramírez). He asks for Hades' help in rebuilding the walls of Tartarus, but he rejects the offer and attacks Zeus. Ares betrays his father, imprisons him and steals his thunderbolt. Hades and Ares plan to make a deal with Kronos: they will drain Zeus's divine power to revive him in exchange for remaining immortal. The walls of Tartarus crumble and the Titans are unleashed.

After battling a chimera which attacked his village, Perseus travels to the underworld to meet Zeus. He instead discovers Poseidon, who is severely wounded and, after informing of the circumstances, tells Perseus  to find his demigod son Agenor (Toby Kebbell), who will lead him to the blacksmith god Hephaestus (Bill Nighy). Poseidon gives Perseus his trident and dies of his injuries, crumbling into dust.

Perseus, Andromeda (Rosamund Pike) and Agenor travel to a hidden island to find Hephaestus. Agenor explains that Hephaestus the weapons that Zeus, Poseidon and Hades use; the thunderbolt, trident and pitchfork and these weapons can form the Spear of Trium, which can destroy Kronos.

References

2012 movies
Movies based on Greek and Roman mythology
Warner Bros. movies

Wrath of the Titans


The Great Fires of 1947 were a series of forest fires in the State of Maine in the United States that destroyed a total area of  of wooded land on Mount Desert Island and  statewide. Collectively, the fires killed a total of 16 people. This disaster is an important part of the local history of the York County and Mount Desert Island areas.

The fires
After a wet spring, in which the months of April, May and June were inundated with rainy weather, the climate turned to drought conditions in July, 1947. By the end of September, the ground was extremely dry. State and local officials, recognizing the dangers of the dry conditions, began implementing preventive measures such as informing the public to have their chimneys cleaned. By the second week of October, the state was in a Class 4 state of danger, meaning: "high state of inflammability." The State Forest Service reopened fire watch towers normally closed at the end of September.

Reports of small fires in woods began coming into the Forest Service on October 7. These early fires burned in Portland, Bowdoin and Wells. Being  apart from each other, these three fires illustrated the danger. After this, reports of fires poured in, and by October 16, 20 separate fires were burning in the state. By October 19, many communities in Maine breathed air filled with a smoky haze and the smell of burning wood.

York County
Hardest hit was northern York County, the southernmost county in the state. Fires began in the towns of Shapleigh and Waterboro, destroying both communities, including, with only a few exceptions, most homes. The fires swept through the forests and moved with the wind toward the ocean. In addition to Waterboro and Shapleigh, the towns of Alfred; Lyman; Newfield; Kennebunk; Kennebunkport; North Kennebunkport (now Arundel); Dayton; Wells; and the cities of Biddeford and Saco were devastated by fire. With the exception of Shapleigh and Waterboro, most town centers were saved through the tireless work of firefighters, most notably Goodwins Mills in the eastern corner of Lyman, where due in part to a change in wind direction, only the center was saved, and all of the acreage around it burned to the ground.

Restoration
After the fire, bulldozers were brought in to clear the debris and standing chimneys where homes once stood. It took a decade for many to fully recover their losses.

Modern evidence of the Great Fires
Even today evidence exists of the Great Fires that swept through York County. In Waterboro, Shapleigh and Lyman, where the devastation was great, forests of small, undesirable pine trees grow en masse where great forests stood before the fires. One would notice on visits to these communities that homes within them lack historical significance; the oldest were built in the late 1940s. Most historic farms and homes built before 1947 in these communities were destroyed.

In the late 1980s, to commemorate the Great Fires of 1947, the State of Maine developed signs for each community where the fires burned, detailing the effect the fires had on those communities. Signs still stand today in many communities, including Alfred at the Alfred Fire Department on Kennebunk road, Shapleigh at the Ross Corner Fire Department on Ross Corner Road, and North Kennebunkport (Arundel) at the Central Fire Station and Town Hall on Limerick Road.

Many people fought to save their homes. In a book published in 1979, Joyce Butler wrote about the Great Fires of 1947 in Wildfire Loose: The Week Maine Burned:

Juanita and Franklin Spofford lived on the Granite Point Road across Horseshoe Cove from Fortunes Rocks. The Spoffords wet down their house with a garden hose until the pressure failed. Then they filled buckets and tubs and set them around the house. As burning debris carried by the wind fell in the grass, setting it afire, they wet brooms in the buckets and beat the flames out. Bushes beside the garage caught fire. The house across the street and others on Granite Point Road burned, but the Spoffords' did as well.

Bibliography
Joyce Butler, Wildfire Loose: The Week Maine Burned (Downeast Books, 1979)

References

Natural disasters in Maine
Fires in Maine
1947 in Maine
1947 fires in the United States
York County, Maine
Hancock County, Maine
1940s wildfires
20th-century wildfires in the United States
1947 natural disasters in the United States

Great Fires of 1947


Richard Thomas Evans (18 November 1890 – 20 July 1946) was a British Liberal Party politician.

Before Parliament
Evans was educated at the University of Wales. During the First World War he served in the 11th (2nd Gwent) Battalion, South Wales Borderers and attained the rank of captain. In 1918 he married Edith Rhys Williams. In 1923 he published the book Aspects of the Study of Society, in the series Library of Philosophy and Religion. He was for a time a lecturer in economics at University College, Cardiff.

Parliamentary candidate
Evans had fought the Carmarthenshire seat of Llanelly in the general elections of 1923, 1924 and 1929 but was on all three occasions unsuccessful, albeit having campaigned with energy and ability against a complacent Labour party. At the 1929 general election, Evans had hopes of a straight fight with Labour in Llanelly when the local Conservatives voted not to put up a candidate.  However their decision was overturned by Conservative Central Office who sent down Mr. J P L Thomas of Llandilo in Carmarthenshire to stand in the election.

Industrial expert
In the run-up to the 1929 general election, Evans had been involved in drafting the Liberal Party industrial policy. Evans was certainly close to David Lloyd George who was the source of inspiration for many innovative policy initiatives in the late 1920s. In 1925 the Liberal Industrial Inquiry was set up bringing together many well-known politicians and economists including Maynard Keynes, Ramsay Muir and Herbert Samuel as well as Lloyd George himself. This led to the publication in 1928 of Britain's Industrial Future, also known as the Liberal Yellow Book.

MP for Carmarthen
Evans entered Parliament at the 1931 general election as MP for Carmarthen, taking the seat from Labour. As the 1931 general election approached and the debate over the National Government raged, Evans was on the side of official Liberal group in Parliament led by Sir Herbert Samuel but he promised to support the National government of Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald on the basis of Macdonald's published manifesto and, despite the pledge of the Unionist candidate to do the same with the prospect of the splitting of the National vote, this was enough to gain him the seat in a three-cornered contest, although with hardly a safe majority of 1,214. Once elected Evans, although he called himself a free-trader, did initially support the government, voting for a Bill to authorise duties on abnormal imports, despite some declared misgivings. However, in spite of this profession of loyalty to Macdonald, Evans soon crossed the floor to sit with the official Liberal group who were in opposition. Nevertheless, his flirtation with the National Government had soured his relationship with Lloyd George. By 1934 Evans must have been having thoughts about the approaching general election because, according to the diary of Frances Stevenson he wrote to Lloyd George's principal private secretary, A J Sylvester, asking about a rumour he had heard that Lloyd George had told Daniel Hopkin, the former Labour MP for Carmarthen, that he would publicly support him at the next election and possibly even go down to Carmarthen to speak for him. Stevenson also records that Lloyd George thought Evans a man of limited gifts, with some oratorical skills but with only one good speech which he adapted to suit his audience. The speech apparently went down well in Wales but was coldly received in the House of Commons.

Evans's drifting between support of and opposition to the National Government did not endear him to the Conservatives either and they decided to oppose him at the next general election in 1935. Evans's trying to ride two horses at once on the question of his support for the National Government extended into the election campaign itself. Once the Conservative candidate had put himself in the field, Evans put out a statement, undertaking to support Stanley Baldwin's administration. Had he done so earlier he might have attracted more National support but in the end Evans, who described himself on the ballot paper as a plain Liberal (rather than a Liberal National), lost by 1,942 votes to Labour candidate Daniel Hopkin, the man he had defeated in 1931.

Would-be biographer
In 1933, Evans's relationship with Lloyd George had not yet descended into ruin. He approached Lloyd George with a proposal that he should write a biography of the former prime minister in Welsh and they had dinner together at the House of Commons to discuss it. But according to Lloyd George's principal private secretary, A J Sylvester, Lloyd George discouraged Evans from this project and certainly the book was never published. But in the course of their conversation Evans managed to extract from Lloyd George an admission of regret that he had not done more to stop the Passchendaele offensive of 1917 which resulted in tremendous loss of Allied life. Lloyd George said he failed to act to stop the battle because he did not wish to be accused of interfering as prime minister directly with the military decisions of his soldiers, particularly General Jan Smuts who was in favour of the operation.

References

External links

1890 births
1946 deaths
Liberal Party (UK) MPs for Welsh constituencies
UK MPs 1931–1935
Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for Carmarthenshire constituencies

Richard Thomas Evans


Baggage carts, luggage carts, luggage trolleys or trolleys are small vehicles pushed by travelers (human-powered) to carry individual luggage, mostly suitcases. There are two major sizes: One for big luggage and one for small luggage. Carts have usually two parts for carrying luggage: A small section (basket) for carry on luggage at the same level as the handle, and a lowered large section for suitcases a small and large bags.

The carts are provided in airports, large bus stations, hotels, or train stations for transporting luggage and may be free of charge. They are sometimes owned by the operator of the establishment. In some facilities carts may be provided by a contractor such as Smarte Carte for a rental fee. Baggage carts are usually built out of steel and equipped with three or four wheels. For safety reasons, they are generally fitted with a brake. Usually, a handle has to be pushed down in order to move the cart, however, in some cases, such as London airports, the handle activates the brake. Very few carts, e.g. in developing countries such as Sri Lanka, do not have this feature.

Where a charge is made, this can be either a deposit, which is returned automatically when the cart is returned; or a rental fee can be charged.

Parts
In airports, boarding baggage cart parts are:
 Brake and tow arm latch
 Brake assembly
 Bumpers
 Curtains
 Hand holds
 Pintle hook
 Tongue

Baggage tugs
A baggage tug is a small tractor, sometimes an electric vehicle, used by the airline industry to tow baggage carts to and from the terminal/cargo facility and the aircraft.

See also
 Flatbed trolley
 Ground support equipment
 Latch
 Pintle hook
 Sylvan Goldman, the inventor

Notes

External links

Carts
Luggage

Baggage cart


Nicholas Byfield (1579–1622) was an English clergyman, a leading preacher of the reign of James I.

Life
He was a native of Warwickshire, son by his first wife of Richard Byfield, who became vicar of Stratford-on-Avon in January 1597. The ejected minister Richard Byfield was his half-brother.

Nicholas entered Exeter College, Oxford, in the Lent term 1596, and was four years at university, but did not graduate. Taking orders, he intended to exercise his ministry in Ireland; but on his way there he preached at Chester, and was prevailed upon to remain as one of the city preachers, without cure. He lectured at St. Peter's church, and was extremely popular. John Bruen was one of his hearers, and a friend to him.

On 31 March 1615 Byfield was admitted to the vicarage of Isleworth, in succession to Thomas Hawkes. At this point he was chaplain to Edward Russell, 3rd Earl of Bedford. At Isleworth he preached twice every Sunday, and gave expository lectures every Wednesday and Friday. He kept up until five weeks before his death, from the stone. He died on Sunday, 8 September 1622. The following day a surgeon removed from his body a stone which weighed 35 ounces; William Gouge was present at the autopsy. By his wife, Elizabeth, Byfield had at least eight children, of whom the third was Adoniram Byfield.

Works
Byfield's works were numerous, and most of them went through many editions, some as late as 1665. His expository works are Calvinistic.

His first publication was An Essay concerning the Assurance of God's Love and of Man's Salvation, 1614. This was followed by An Exposition upon the Epistle to the Colossians . . . being the substance of neare seaven yeeres weeke-dayes sermons, 1615. The Marrow of the Oracles of God, 1620, (the last work published by Byfield himself), is a collection of six treatises.

In 1611 he got into a controversy on the sabbath question; a Chester boy, John Brerewood, was one of his catechists, and had been trained by Byfield in strict Sabbatarian habits. When John went to London to serve as an apprentice, he refused to do his master's errands on Sundays, such as fetching wine and feeding a horse, and obeyed only under compulsion. He wrote to Byfield with his case of conscience, and was told to disobey. His uncle, Edward Brerewood, gave him contrary advice, taking the ground that the fourth commandment was laid only upon masters. Brerewood opened a correspondence with Byfield on the subject. The discussion was not published till both Brerewood and Byfield had been long dead. It appeared at Oxford as A Learned Treatise of the Sabaoth, . . . 1630; second edition, 1631. Byfield's part in it is curt and harsh; Brerewood charges his correspondent with 'ignorant phantasies'.

Notes

References

External links
Nicholas Byfield (1579-1622) at the Post Reformation Digital Library

1579 births
1622 deaths
English Calvinist and Reformed Christians
Clergy from Warwickshire
16th-century Protestants
17th-century Protestants
Alumni of Exeter College, Oxford
English religious writers
16th-century English writers
16th-century male writers
17th-century English writers
17th-century English male writers
17th-century English Anglican priests

Nicholas Byfield


Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions, or B.U.G.A.U.P. ("bugger up") is an Australian subvertising artistic movement. It practices billboard hijacking using détournement or modification with graffiti of such billboard advertising that promotes something that is deemed unhealthy.

History
The movement started in inner-city Sydney in October 1979, later spreading to Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide and Perth. It has been active ever since, although its peak of activity was in the late 1970s and early-mid 1980s. Many of the members came from professional and university-educated backgrounds. A founding member was Bill Snow, who first started to alter tobacco billboards with graffiti, and continued to be active in anti- smoking and littering campaigns. Together, Bill Snow, Ric Bolzan and Geoff Coleman coined the acronym BUGAUP and began adding it to the altered billboards, to link the graffiti to a movement rather than the random activity of individuals.

The movement aimed mainly at cigarette and alcohol advertising, often blanking out letters and adding others to promote their view that the product is unhealthy. Cola and soft drink ads were also targeted.

The movement did not formalize itself as a group with memberships or meetings. Graffitists "joined" by signing the BUGAUP name to their work. BUGAUP graffiti spread rapidly across Australia and then overseas.

Former New South Wales politician Arthur Chesterfield-Evans was a member of BUGAUP before entering politics.]

Other well-known BUGAUP members were the late Lord Bloody Wog Rolo, Peter Vogel and  Fred Cole.

Impact on tobacco advertising debate in Australia
The Cancer Council of Western Australia states that the BUGA-UP campaign of the mid 1980s "radicalised the advertising debate and made it suddenly more respectable for previously conservative medical associations and colleges to rattle the legislative cage".
Former Daily News reporter Joanne Fowler states that prior to the BUGA-UP campaigns of the 1980s
journalists were unwilling to publish articles critical of the tobacco industry because they were
seen to be mundane.
Almost all forms of tobacco advertising were made illegal in Australia in 1992.

See also
Billboard Liberation Front (aka Billboard Improvement)
Bill Snow
Lord Bloody Wog Rolo
Peter Vogel (computer designer)

External links
B.U.G.A.  U.P. website

References

Civil Disobedience and Tobacco Control: The Case of BUGA UP
B.U.G.A. U.P. : Autumn catalogue 1980, National Library of Australia
Buga-up on Trial, National Library of Australia
"Bugga Up (Smoking History)", George Negus Tonight, ABC TV
"No ifs, no butts – these boys were tough", Sydney Morning Herald, 12 October 2002
"Fred Cole", Sydney Morning Herald, 16 March 2009
"BUGA-UP interview", How to Make Trouble and Influence People, 2009
"BUGA UP – You've come a long way, baby", Overland, 23 August 2012

Australian fringe and underground culture
Graffiti in Australia
Anti-consumerist groups
Culture jamming
Culture of Sydney
Anti-smoking activists
1979 establishments in Australia


Antimony(III) oxide is the inorganic compound with the formula Sb2O3.  It is the most important commercial compound of antimony.  It is found in nature as the minerals valentinite and senarmontite.  Like most polymeric oxides, Sb2O3 dissolves in aqueous solutions with hydrolysis. A mixed arsenic-antimony oxide occurs in nature as the very rare mineral stibioclaudetite.

Production and properties
Global production of antimony(III) oxide  in 2012 was 130,000 tonnes, an increase from 112,600 tonnes in 2002. China produces the largest share followed by US/Mexico, Europe, Japan and South Africa and other countries (2%).

As of 2010, antimony(III) oxide was produced at four sites in the EU. It is produced via two routes, re-volatilizing of crude antimony(III) oxide and by oxidation of antimony metal.
Oxidation of antimony metal dominates in Europe. Several processes for the production of crude antimony(III) oxide or metallic antimony from virgin material. The choice of process depends on the composition of the ore and other factors.  Typical steps include mining, crushing and grinding of ore, sometimes followed by froth flotation and separation of the metal using pyrometallurgical processes (smelting or roasting) or in a few cases (e.g. when the ore is rich in precious metals) by hydrometallurgical processes. These steps do not take place in the EU but closer to the mining location.

Re-volatilizing of crude antimony(III) oxide
Step 1) Crude stibnite is oxidized to crude antimony(III) oxide using furnaces operating at approximately 500 to 1,000 °C. The reaction is the following:
2 Sb2S3  +  9 O2  →   2 Sb2O3  +  6 SO2
Step 2) The crude antimony(III) oxide is purified by sublimation.

Oxidation of antimony metal
Antimony metal is oxidized to antimony(III) oxide in furnaces. The reaction is exothermic. Antimony(III) oxide is formed through sublimation and recovered in bag filters. The size of the formed particles is controlled by process conditions in furnace and gas flow.  The reaction can be schematically described by:
4 Sb  +  3 O2   →   2 Sb2O3

Properties
Antimony(III) oxide is an amphoteric oxide. It dissolves in aqueous sodium hydroxide solution to give the meta-antimonite NaSbO2, which can be isolated as the trihydrate. Antimony(III) oxide also dissolves in concentrated mineral acids to give the corresponding salts, which hydrolyzes upon dilution with water. With nitric acid, the trioxide is oxidized to antimony(V) oxide.

When heated with carbon, the oxide is reduced to antimony metal. With other reducing agents such as sodium borohydride or lithium aluminium hydride, the unstable and very toxic gas stibine is produced. When heated with potassium bitartrate, a complex salt potassium antimony tartrate, KSb(OH)2·C4H2O6, is formed.

Structure
The structure of Sb2O3 depends on the temperature of the sample.  Dimeric Sb4O6 is the high temperature  (1560 °C) gas.  Sb4O6 molecules are bicyclic cages, similar to the related oxide of phosphorus(III), phosphorus trioxide.  The cage structure is retained in a solid that crystallizes in a cubic habit.  The Sb–O distance is 197.7 pm and the O–Sb–O angle of 95.6°.  This form exists in nature as the mineral senarmontite. Above 606 °C, the more stable form is orthorhombic, consisting of pairs of -Sb-O-Sb-O- chains that are linked by oxide bridges between the Sb centers.  This form exists in nature as the mineral valentinite.

Uses
The annual consumption of antimony(III) oxide in the United States and Europe is approximately 10,000 and 25,000 tonnes, respectively. The main application is as flame retardant synergist in combination with halogenated materials. The combination of the halides and the antimony is key to the flame-retardant action for polymers, helping to form less flammable chars. Such flame retardants are found in electrical apparatuses, textiles, leather, and coatings.

Other applications:
Antimony(III) oxide is an opacifying agent for glasses, ceramics and enamels.
Some specialty pigments contain antimony.
Antimony(III) oxide is a useful catalyst in the production of polyethylene terephthalate (PET plastic) and the vulcanization of rubber.

Safety
Antimony(III) oxide has suspected carcinogenic potential for humans. Its TLV is 0.5 mg/m3, as for most antimony compounds. Before 2021, no other human health hazards were identified for antimony(III) oxide, and no risks to human health and the environment were identified from the production and use of antimony trioxide in daily life. However, the 15th Report on Carcinogens released on December 21, 2021 by the US Department of Health and Human Services categorised antimony(III) oxide as carcinogenic.

References

Further reading
 Institut national de recherche et de sécurité (INRS), Fiche toxicologique nº 198 : Trioxyde de diantimoine, 1992.
 The Oxide Handbook, G.V. Samsonov, 1981, 2nd ed. IFI/Plenum,

External links
 International Antimony Association
 International Chemical Safety Card 0012
 Antimony Market And Price
 Société industrielle et chimique de l'Aisne

Antimony(III) compounds
Oxides
Inorganic pigments
IARC Group 2B carcinogens
Sesquioxides
Adamantane-like molecules
Flame retardants

Antimony trioxide