Twelfth century European fashion was simple in cut and differed only in details from the clothing of the preceding centuries, starting to become tighter and more similar for men and women as the century went on, which would continue in the 13th century. Men wore knee-length tunics for most activities, and men of the upper classes wore long tunics, with hose and
mantle or cloaks. Women wore long tunics or gowns. A close fit to the body, full skirts, and long flaring sleeves were characteristic of upper-class fashion for both men and women.

General trends

Overview
As in the previous centuries, two styles of dress existed side-by-side for men: a short (knee-length) costume deriving from a melding of the everyday dress of the later Roman Empire and the short tunics worn by the invading barbarians, and a long (ankle-length) costume descended from the clothing of the Roman upper classes and influenced by Byzantine dress.

Fabrics and furs
Wool remained the primary fabric for clothing of all classes, while linen undergarments, which were more comfortable against the skin and could be washed and then bleached in the sun, were increasingly worn.  Silk, although extremely expensive, was readily available to wealthy people of consequence. Silks from Byzantium were traded in Pavia by way of Venice, and silks from Andalusia reached France via Spain.  In the last decade of the previous century, the Norman conquest of Sicily and the First Crusade had opened additional routes for Eastern fabrics and style influences into Europe.

Fur was worn as an inside lining for warmth. Vair, the fur of the squirrel, was particularly popular and can be seen in many illuminated manuscript illustrations, where it is shown as a white and blue-grey softly striped or checkered pattern lining the mantles of the wealthy.

The bliaut
A new French fashion for both men and women was the bliaut or bliaud, a long outer tunic with full skirts from the hip and sleeves that fitted tightly to the elbow and then flared into a trumpet shape.  Early bliauts were moderately fitted and bloused slightly over the belt at the waist.  Later the bliaut was fitted tightly to the body from shoulder to hip, and the belt, or girdle was wrapped twice around the waist and knotted in front of the abdomen.

Men's clothing

Shirt, braies, and chausses
Underclothes consisted of an inner tunic (French chainse) or shirt with long, tight sleeves, and drawers or braies, usually of linen. Tailored cloth leggings called chausses or hose, made as separate garments for each leg, were often worn with the tunic; striped hose were popular.

During this period, beginning with the middle and upper classes, hose became longer and more fitting, and they reached above the knees. Previously, they were looser and worn with drawers that ranged from knee- to ankle-length. The new type of hose were worn with drawers that reached the knees or above, and they were wide enough at the top to allow the drawers to be tucked into them. They were held up in place by being attached to the girdle of the drawers.

The better fit and girdle attachment of these new hose eliminated the need for the leg bands often worn with earlier hose. In England, however, leg bands continued to be worn by some people, both rich and poor, right up to the reign of Richard I. After 1200, they were largely abandoned.

Outer tunics and doublets
Over the undertunic and hose, men wore an outer tunic that reached to the knees or ankles, and that was fastened at the waist with a belt.  Fitted bliauts, of wool or, increasingly, silk, had sleeves that were cut wide at the wrist and gored skirts.  Men wore bliauts open to the waist front and back or at the side seams.

Newly fashionable were short, fitted garments for the upper body, worn under the tunic: the doublet, made of two layers of linen, and an early form of quilted and padded jupe or gipon.

The sleeveless surcoat or cyclas was introduced during this period as protective covering for armour (especially against the sun) during the Crusades. By the next century, it would become widely adopted as civilian dress.

Rectangular and circular cloaks were worn over the tunic.  These fastened on the right shoulder or at the center front.

Headgear
Men of the upper classes often went hatless.  The chaperon in the form of hood and attached shoulder-length cape was worn during this period, especially by the rural lower classes, and the fitted linen coif tied under the chin appeared very late in the century. Small round or slightly conical caps with rolled brims were worn, and straw hats were worn for outdoor work in summer.

Style gallery

Illustration of the Anti-christ shows long and short tunics and hose or leggings.  The king wears a red mantle lined in vair (squirrel fur) fastened on one shoulder, c. 1180.
Richard the Lionheart is portrayed in a long tunic with tight sleeves and a mantle, late 12th century.
Man feasting wears a cap with a rolled brim and a tunic with wide turned-back cuffs, England, c. 1170.
Monument of Geoffrey of Anjou (d. 1151) depicts him in a calf-length overtunic and long undertunic, with a blue mantle lined in vair. He wears a cap with his coat of arms.

Women's clothing

Chemise and tunic
Women's clothing consisted of an undertunic called a chemise, chainse or smock, usually of linen, over which was worn one or more ankle-to-floor length tunics (also called gowns or kirtles).

Working-class women wore their tunics ankle-length and belted at the waist.

Women of the French court wore a loosely fitted tunic called a cotte or the form-fitting bliaut over a full chemise with tight sleeves. The bliaut had a flaring skirt and sleeves tight to the elbow and then widening to wrist in a trumpet shape.  A bliaut apparently cut in one piece from neckline to hem depicted on a column figure of a woman at the Cathedral of St. Maurice at Angers has visible side-lacing and is belted at the natural waistline.  A new fashion, the bliaut gironé, arose in mid-century: this dress is cut in two pieces, a fitted upper portion with a finely pleated skirt attached to a low waistband.

The fitted bliaut was sometimes worn with a long belt or cincture (in French, ceinture) that looped around a slightly raised waist and was knotted over the abdomen; the cincture could have decorative tassels or metal tags at the ends.

In England, the fashionable dress was wide at the wrist but without the trumpet-shaped flare from the elbow seen in France.

Hairstyles and headdresses
Married women, in keeping with Christian custom, wore veils over their hair, which was often parted in the center and hung down in long braids that might be extended with false hair or purchased hair from the dead, a habit decried by moralists.

During the Middle Ages hair was charged with cultural meaning. Hair could be used to convey messages of social differentiation.

The wimple was introduced in England late in the century. It consisted of a linen cloth that covered the throat (and often the chin as well), and that was fastened about the head, under the veil.

Style gallery

Woman wears a bliaut cut in one piece from neck to hem and laced at the sides, over a chemise with tight sleeves.  Overall she wears a mantle tied with a double cord.  Cathédrale Saint-Maurice d'Angers, between 1130 and 1160.
Bliaut gironé has a finely pleated skirt attached to a decorative waistband at hip level.  The bliaut is worn with a knotted girdle or cincture, Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres, between 1130 and 1160.
Detail of the knotted girdle worn with the bliaut gironé at Chartres.  The waistband of the skirt can be seen above the knotted girdle.
Eve spinning in a long bliaut with straight sleeves and a linen veil, c. 1170.
Two women from the Hunterian Psalter.  The woman on the left wears a veil and mantle.  The young woman on the right wears her hair uncovered, and her bliaut sleeves are wide at the wrist as seen in English fashion c. 1170.
Queen Leonor of England, sitting on the far left, wears a veil that covers most of her body.

Working clothes

Mowing hay.  The man on the right works in linen braies, c. 1170
Man digging has tucked up his long tunic, which he wears with chausses and ankle-high shoes, c. 1170
Men pruning grapevines wear short tunics and chausses.  The man on the left wears a hood over a linen coif, Normandy, c. 1180
Men harvesting grapes.  The man on the right wears braies and a coif, Normandy, c. 1180

Notes

References

 Bradfield, Nancy. Historical Costumes of England: 1066–1968. 3rd Edition. 1970.
 "Dress and Adornment." The New Encyclopædia Britannica. 15th edition. Volume 17. 1994, 478–528.
 Koslin, Désirée and Janet E. Snyder, eds.: Encountering Medieval Textiles and Dress: Objects, texts, and Images, Macmillan, 2002,
Laver, James: The Concise History of Costume and Fashion, Abrams, 1979
Payne, Blanche: History of Costume from the Ancient Egyptians to the Twentieth Century, Harper & Row, 1965. No ISBN for this edition; ASIN B0006BMNFS

External links
12th- and 13th-century clothing (including illustration of 12th-century hose and attachments)
List of passages in the Icelandic Sagas where clothing is mentioned

12th-century fashion
History of clothing (Western fashion)
Medieval European costume
12th century in Europe

1100–1200 in European fashion


Sarah Rose Karr is an American former child actress.

Karr is best known for her roles in the movies Beethoven and Beethoven's 2nd as Emily Newton (the youngest daughter of the characters played by Charles Grodin and Bonnie Hunt), and Kindergarten Cop (1990), where she played a pupil of the kindergarten teacher Arnold Schwarzenegger. As a very short cameo, she also appeared as a young Annie Banks in the film Father of the Bride.

Karr also appeared in multiple television soap operas.

Filmography

References

External links

Living people
21st-century American actresses
American child actresses
American film actresses
Year of birth missing (living people)

Sarah Rose Karr


Samuel Zemurray (born Schmuel Zmurri; January 18, 1877 – November 30, 1961), nicknamed "Sam the Banana Man", was an American businessman who made his fortune in the banana trade. He founded the Cuyamel Fruit Company and later became president of the United Fruit Company, the world's most influential fruit company at the time. Both companies played highly controversial roles in the history of several Latin American countries and had a significant influence on their economic and political development.

Early life
Zemurray's birth name was Schmuel Zmurri (, , Shmuel Davidovich Zmura). He was born to a poor Jewish family in Kishinev, Bessarabia, Russian Empire (present-day Chişinău, Moldova). His grandfather, Mendel Hirsh of Shargorod, was a Klezmer musician and bandleader. Zemurray grew up on a wheat farm. After his father died, he emigrated to America with his aunt in 1891 at age 14. After landing in New York, he settled in Selma, Alabama, where his uncle owned a general store. Zemurray worked many odd jobs during his youth, being a carpenter's assistant, delivery boy, traveling merchant, and housecleaner. Eventually, he saved enough money to bring his siblings from Europe to the United States.

Career

Career beginnings
Zemurray encountered bananas for the first time in Selma in 1893. At the time, bananas were considered a new and exotic delicacy in the United States, and the industry was growing quickly. Zemurray went to the port of Mobile, Alabama in 1895 to enter the banana trade. Because bananas ripen quickly, the banana trade relied on the ability to quickly bring the produce to market. In Mobile, Zemurray specialized in buying cheap bananas in danger of being overripe and quickly transporting and selling them in the surrounding region by rail. Starting with only $150, he had saved $100,000 by age 21. His success earned him the nickname "Sam the Banana Man".

In 1903, Zemurray signed a contract with United Fruit, the dominant company in the banana trade. Along with his partner, Ashbell Hubbard, the newly-formed Hubbard-Zemurray Company would buy and distribute United Fruit's ripest bananas. United Fruit itself bought a portion of Hubbard-Zemurray. In 1905, Zemurray moved to New Orleans and the company acquired Thatcher Brothers Steamship Company. They also acquired the Cuyamel Fruit Company and started using that name for the company. At this time, the company imported bananas from Central American farmers, but did not grow bananas of their own.

In 1910, Zemurray bought 5,000 acres (20 km²) of land along the Cuyamel River in Honduras, near the town of Omoa. He then continued to borrow money and buy more lowland forest land in Honduras, well-suited for growing bananas. He developed this land by adding plantations, railroads, and bridges. The work was done largely by Jamaican workers, but Zemurray also liked to participate in the physical labor of the fields. At this point, Hubbard believed that Cuyamel Fruit Company's debts had grown too large, and Zemurray bought his share of the business.

Honduran coup

Zemurray had increased the efficiency of his business through bribery and special deals with the Honduran government. But in 1910, the government of Honduras was working to reschedule their sovereign debt owed to the United Kingdom. United States Secretary of State Philander C. Knox facilitated the negotiations, which would place agents of bankers J.P. Morgan and Company in the country's customs offices to collect the taxes needed to repay the debt. Zemurray feared that the enforcement of these taxes would ruin his business, and he lobbied Knox to make the deal more favorable to him.

Knox made no concessions for Zemurray, and told him not to meddle in Honduran affairs. In spite of this instruction, Zemurray devised a plan to overthrow Honduran president Miguel Dávila in order to prevent the deal. He recruited mercenary Lee Christmas, who in turn recruited a force of about 100 other mercenaries in New Orleans, including famed Jewish soldier Sam Dreben. They sailed to Honduras in a former United States Navy vessel, where they began a war to install exiled Honduran former president Manuel Bonilla, who had been living in New Orleans. Gaining rebel soldiers from the local population, the coup was successful, and Bonilla was inaugurated on February 1, 1912. He then rewarded Zemurray with very favorable tax and land concessions for Cuyamel Fruit Company.

Sale of Cuyamel and first retirement
In 1913, Zemurray bought back the portion of his company owned by United Fruit, a transaction that was made possible by increasing anti-trust pressure on United Fruit from the United States government. Fully in control of the company, he expanded by buying 20 ships by 1915 that were outfitted with refrigerated holds. Cuyamel Fruit began to cultivate crops beyond bananas: coconuts, pineapples, palm oil, cattle, lumber, and sugarcane.

During the 1910's and 1920's, Zemurray continuously conflicted with United Fruit. Their competition over land in Central America included pranks, sabotage, legal challenges, and approached outright violence. In 1928, a Cuyamel Fruit boat was discovered with a cache of weapons aboard. In 1929, the United States Department of State facilitated discussions between Zemurray and United Fruit to merge their companies and end the conflict, which was endangering American interests abroad. A deal was completed in 1929, in which Zemurray sold Cuyamel to United Fruit for $31.5 million in stock, making him one of the richest people in the United States. Though Zemurray had prided himself on independence, he sold his company because of increasing pressure from the Department of State and because of the financial insecurity brought on by the Great Depression in 1929.

 As part of the deal with United Fruit, Zemurray agreed to retire from the banana business entirely, to make sure he would not start a new fruit company and continue to compete with United Fruit. During this two year period, Zemurray remodeled his ornate Beaux Arts mansion in New Orleans at 2 Audubon Place. He also acquired in 1928 Houltonwood, a 25,000-acre plantation located near Hammond, Louisiana, which became a favorite retreat of Zemurray for the rest of his life. United Fruit suffered financially because of mismanagement and the Great Depression, so much so that its stock declined in value by 90% after it acquired Cuyamel.  This encouraged Zemurray to return to the banana business by buying a controlling share of United Fruit and voting out the board of directors.  Zemurray reorganized the company, decentralized decision-making and made the company profitable once more.

Leading United Fruit Company
After the sale of Cuyamel, United Fruit's business declined because of the impact of the Great Depression. In Zemurray's view, the company could be managed better to handle the economic downturn. Though he sent a letter and attended a board meeting, United Fruit's management was not interested in his ideas. Zemurray then visited individual United Fruit shareholders and collected their proxies, which would enable him to gain control of the company. He then attended a United Fruit board meeting, in which he produced the proxies, dramatically saying, "You've been fucking up this business long enough. I'm going to straighten it out."

Now as president of United Fruit Company, Zemurray succeeded in improving business. He considered his hands-on approach of visiting banana plantations to be the key to his success. He gained a detailed understanding of operations, resulting in mass terminations of weak employees, improved efficiency in the use of ships, and new financial approaches.

Partially as a result of banana diseases Sigatoka and Panama disease, Zemurray presided over very large acquisitions of land in Central America. Because the diseases were not curable, United Fruit would simply move to a new area of land after previous ones became infected. In this way, United Fruit came to own the majority of private land in countries like Honduras, even though much of it was left uncultivated.

Guatemalan coup
In 1953, the U.S. State Department and United Fruit embarked on a major public relations campaign to convince the American people and the rest of the U.S. government that Colonel Jacobo Arbenz intended to make Guatemala a Soviet "satellite".  Zemurray authorized Edward Bernays to launch a propaganda campaign against Col. Arbenz's democratically elected government, which intended to expropriate some of the unused land owned by the United Fruit Co. and redistribute it to the local peasants. In 1954, the campaign succeeded and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency helped orchestrate a coup that replaced Arbenz with a military junta led by Col. Carlos Castillo Armas.

Zemurray retired as president of United Fruit in late 1951.  He and his family made generous donations to Tulane University (including a large collection of Mayan artifacts discovered in banana fields), the Zamorano Pan-American Agricultural School, and to other philanthropic ventures, including the Zionist movement through his personal acquaintance, beginning in the 1920s, with Chaim Weizmann.  Zemurray supported President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policies, helping to draft the Agricultural Adjustment Administration industry codes, and contributed financially to left-wing causes, such as The Nation magazine.

Innovations
Zemurray and his company developed several innovations in banana farming, which contributed toward Cuyamel Fruit Company's increased efficiency over United Fruit.

 Selective pruning: removing the smallest and weakest banana plants.
 Drainage: adding spillways and canals to drain excess water away from plants.
 Silting: some fields were allowed to be flooded, which helped fertilize them with silt.
 Staking: banana plants were attached to a bamboo shoot, helping prevent them from blowing over in the wind.
 Overhead irrigation: sprinklers were added to banana fields so that plants received water year-round.

Personal life
Zemurray married Sarah Weinberger in May 1908. Weinberger was the daughter of Jake Weinberger, an early figure in the banana trade and employee of Zemurray's. Weinberger published a cookbook titled One Hundred Unusual Dinners and How to Prepare Them. Their daughter, archaeologist Doris Zemurray Stone, was born in 1909. Their son, Samuel Jr., was born in 1913. He went missing in action as a pilot in World War II, leaving a widow and two children. In 1945, Zemurray and Coryell McKinney donated  of land in Hammond, Louisiana, for a memorial park to honor Samuel Jr. and his flight crew. The site is now part of the city's Zemurray Park.

Once he had earned substantial amounts of money, Zemurray was actively philanthropic. In the United States, he gave thousands of dollars to Tulane University, Radcliffe College, The Nation magazine, and to clinics and hospitals in New Orleans. In Central America, he funded hospitals, roads, infrastructure, and schools, including the Zamorano Pan-American Agricultural School.

Zemurray was a member of Temple Sinai in New Orleans.

See also

 James Dole, pineapple businessman
 Zemurray Gardens Lodge Complex

References

Bibliography
Peter Chapman.  Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World.  New York, NY: Canongate, 2008.
The Associated Press. "Samuel Zemurray, 84, Is Dead; Headed United Fruit Company". The New York Times, December 2, 1961.
Thomas P. McCann. On the Inside. Beverly, Massachusetts: Quinlan Press, 1987.
Chaim Weizmann (1949). Trial and Error: The Autobiography of Chaim Weizmann. Jewish Publication Society of America.
Maggie Heyn Richardson, "Banana Man", Imagine Louisiana magazine, Summer 2007.
Stephen Kinzer. Overthrow.  New York, NY: Times Books, 2006.
Rich Cohen. The Fish That Ate the Whale. New York, NY: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2012.
Dan Koeppel. Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, Hudson Street Press.

External links
 "America's Gone Bananas: Here's How It Happened", by NPR Staff, June 2, 2012

American food industry businesspeople
American philanthropists
People of the Banana Wars
Bessarabian Jews
Businesspeople from New Orleans
1877 births
1961 deaths
Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States
United Fruit Company
Jews and Judaism in Louisiana
People from Chișinău

Sam Zemurray


The Sprawl trilogy is William Gibson's first set of novels. The three books in the series are: Neuromancer (1984), Count Zero (1986), and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988). It is also called  the Neuromancer, Cyberspace, or Matrix trilogy. The Sprawl is a name for a very large city in the novels.

The stories all happen in the same fictional future. The books share characters and themes. Some of Gibson's short stories "Johnny Mnemonic," "New Rose Hotel," and "Burning Chrome" also happen in the Sprawl.

Series of books
American science fiction books

Sprawl trilogy


Indra Kumar  is an Indian film director and producer. He had five Filmfare nominations, has also appeared in number of Gujarati-language films. Kumar's real name is Indra Irani. His latest film produced is Thank God (2022).

Kumar debuted into direction as well as production with Dil (1990) and then directed the different concept-based drama films Beta (1992), Raja (1995) and Ishq (1997); all four being among the highest-grossing Hindi films of respective years and critically as well as commercially successful. He received two Filmfare Award for Best Director nominations for Beta and Raja. He followed this with a number of average grossers or commercial failures, causing a setback, except the comedy Masti (2004), which ended with Dhamaal (2007). Kumar went on to make commercially successful comedy film sequels including Double Dhamaal (2011), Grand Masti (2013) and Total Dhamaal (2019). The latter ranks among the highest-grossing Hindi films and remains his highest-grossing release till date.

Personal life
He is the brother of actress Aruna Irani. He is father of actress Shweta Kumar.

Career

1990–97: Directorial debut and wider success
In 1990, Kumar made his directorial debut with the romance Dil starring Aamir Khan and Madhuri Dixit. The film, which was co-produced by him and based on a tale of parental opposition of teenage love, emerged as a major commercial success, and finished up as India's highest-grossing Indian film of the year, with domestic gross earnings of . The film was nominated for eight awards at the 36th Filmfare Awards, including a nomination in the Best Film category for Kumar.

The drama Beta (1992), based on the concept of how greediness overtakes family values, was Kumar's next directorial venture. The film starred Madhuri Dixit, Anil Kapoor, and Kumar's elder sister Aruna Irani, and proved to be a major commercial success as well as the highest-grossing Indian film of the year just like Dil. For directing the film, Kumar received his first Best Director nomination at Filmfare.

In 1995, Kumar once again collaborated with Dixit in the romantic action film Raja, which also starred Sanjay Kapoor. The film, which narrated the story of a man and woman who were about to get married in their childhood but fall in love and get married in their youth, proved to be the 3rd highest-grossing Indian film of the year. Kumar received a second Best Director nomination at Filmfare.

In 1997, Kumar directed the action romantic comedy Ishq starring Ajay Devgn, Aamir Khan, Kajol, and Juhi Chawla. The film, based on the subject of true love, received negative reviews from critics but proved to be one of the year's top-grossing productions with grossing revenues of  worldwide.

1999–2006: Commercial failures and Masti
From 1999 to 2006, Kumar continued to direct a number of films but experienced a setback. These films were Mann, Aashiq, Rishtey, Masti (the first film of the Masti franchise), and Pyare Mohan. With the exception of Masti which was moderately successful, all these films were commercial failures and critical successes.

2007–present: Resurgence and expansion into comedies
Kumar's directorial career prospects briefly improved when he directed the ensemble comedy Dhamaal (2007), the first film of the Dhamaal franchise, starring Sanjay Dutt, Riteish Deshmukh, Aashish Chaudhary, Arshad Warsi, and Javed Jaffrey. The film received unfavourable reactions from critics and was a commercial success, grossing over  worldwide.

After a four-year absence from directing films, Kumar directed Double Dhamaal (2011). A sequel to Dhamaal (2007), it retained the five previous lead actors, and also added Kangana Ranaut and Mallika Sherawat in the roles of Sanjay Dutt's sister and wife respectively. Collecting totally  worldwide, Double Dhamaal proved to be a box office hit, despite being critically panned unlike its predecessor

Kumar's next directorial venture was yet another comedy film sequel–Grand Masti (2013)–a sequel to Masti. It saw Riteish Deshmukh, Aftab Shivdasani, and Vivek Oberoi, reprising their roles from Masti, with Karishma Tanna, Manjari Fadnis, and Sonali Kulkarni entering the cast as the new female leads. The film received positive response from critics and became the most successful entry in the Masti franchise, with a gross revenue of more than .

The following year, Kumar directed the drama Super Nani (2014), which starred Sharman Joshi, Rekha, Randhir Kapoor, Anupam Kher, and Kumar's daughter Shweta Kumar. It failed to do well at the box office. He next directed the third installment of the Masti franchise, titled Great Grand Masti (2016), again starring the previous three male leads. Unlike the success of the previous two films, Great Grand Masti was a major financial failure grossing  worldwide on a budget of .

In 2019, Kumar directed the third installment of the Dhamaal franchise, titled Total Dhamaal, which was not a sequel to Double Dhamaal and was a reboot to it, having a different story and a different genre of adventure comedy. Ajay Devgn, Madhuri Dixit, Anil Kapoor, Riteish Deshmukh, Javed Jaffrey, Arshad Warsi, Boman Irani, and Esha Gupta played the lead roles (Deshmukh, Jaffrey, and Warsi reprised their roles). Total Dhamaal proved to be Kumar's highest-grossing film release, collecting  within 12 days of its release, thus attaining a super hit status.

Kumar will next direct Hera Pheri 3, the third installment of the comedy franchise Hera Pheri, starring Akshay Kumar, Paresh Rawal, and Suniel Shetty. Kumar announced to direct the film after the death of Neeraj Vora, who directed the second installment and was to direct Hera Pheri 3 too. Later, reports suggested that Kumar will not direct Hera Pheri 3, so Priyadarshan, who was the director of the first installment, will return for Hera Pheri 3. But it was later finally confirmed by Kumar that he will direct the film. Furthermore, Kumar will also direct the fourth installment of the Dhamaal franchise, titled Full on Dhamaal, which will feature Ajay Devgn, Riteish Deshmukh, Javed Jaffrey, and Arshad Warsi reprising their roles, with Sanjay Dutt and Aashish Chaudhary returning to play the lead roles in this installment though they did not were seen in Total Dhamaal.

Filmography

As director
 Dil (1990)
 Beta (1992)
 Raja (1995)
 Ishq (1997)
 Mann (1999)
 Aashiq (2001)
 Rishtey (2002)
 Masti (2004)
 Pyare Mohan (2006)
 Dhamaal (2007)
 Double Dhamaal (2011)
 Grand Masti (2013)
 Super Nani (2014)
 Great Grand Masti (2016)
 Total Dhamaal (2019)
 Thank God (2022)

As producer
 Mohabbat (1985)
 Kasam (1988)
 Daddy Cool (2009)

Frequent actor collaborations

References

External links

21st-century Indian film directors
Gujarati film producers
Irani (India) people
Living people
Male actors in Gujarati-language films
Year of birth missing (living people)
Hindi-language film directors
Hindi film producers

Indra Kumar


Peppercoin is a cryptographic system for processing micropayments. Peppercoin Inc. was a company that offers services based on the peppercoin method.

The peppercoin system was developed by Silvio Micali and Ron Rivest and first presented at the RSA Conference in 2002 (although it had not yet been named.) The core idea is to bill one randomly selected transaction a lump sum of money rather than bill each transaction a small amount. It uses "universal aggregation", which means that it aggregates transactions over users, merchants as well as payment service providers. The random selection is cryptographically secure—it cannot be influenced by any of the parties. It is claimed to reduce the transaction cost per dollar from 27 cents to "well below 10 cents."

Peppercoin, Inc. was a privately held company founded in late 2001 by Micali and Rivest based in Waltham, MA. It has secured about $15M in venture capital in two rounds of funding. Its services have seen modest adoption. Peppercoin collects 5-9% of transaction cost from the merchant. Peppercoin, Inc. was bought out in 2007 by Chockstone for an undisclosed amount.

References

Financial services companies established in 2001
Financial cryptography
Payment systems

Peppercoin


Gran Pajatén is an archaeological site located in the Andean cloud forests of Peru, on the border of the La Libertad region and the San Martín region, between the Marañon and Huallaga rivers. The archaeological site lies in the Rio Abiseo National Park, which was established in 1983. The park was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Natural Site in 1990, and Cultural Site in 1992. In order to protect the fragile ruins and endangered environment, the archaeological site and the national park are currently not open to visitors without permits from Peru's Ministry of Agriculture and National Institute of Culture.

The related site of Los Pinchudos is located very near Gran Pajaten.

Description
Gran Pajatén sits on a hilltop above the Montecristo River valley, and consists of a series of at least 26 circular stone structures atop numerous terraces and stairways. The ruins occupy an area of about 20,000 m². The principal buildings are decorated with slate mosaics displaying human, bird and geometric motifs. Analysis of ceramic samples and radiocarbon dates show that the area was occupied as early as 200 BCE, but the visible building ruins on the present site were constructed during Inca times. Based primarily on architectural evidence, the settlement is attributed to the Chachapoyas culture.

Discovery

Explorer Gene Savoy is erroneously credited with having found the ruins in 1965. The site is rumored to have been discovered around 1940 by Juanjui resident Eduardo Pena Meza while exploring the area for a possible road project. However, there is no evidence that ruins he encountered were those of Gran Pajatén or ruins of another abandoned prehispanic settlement. Therefore, the "discovery" of Gran Pajatén is attributed to villagers from the town of Pataz in 1963. After he was guided to the site by Pataz villagers in 1965, Savoy claimed credit by publicizing the discovery in the world press as his own. An official Peruvian government expedition visited the site and began to clear vegetation in late 1965. By 1966, the Peruvian government had set up a helicopter pad and cleared much of the protective vegetation that surrounded the site. Many years later, these actions raised criticism due to the delicate nature of the archaeological site. Without the protection of dense vegetation, the stone ruins began to rapidly deteriorate.

Preservation
In 1985, a team led by the anthropology department at University of Colorado began a major research project at Gran Pajatén and surrounding archaeological sites in the park. The expedition was widely publicized, and this second large-scale investigation led to further discussions of opening the site up to tourism. A Peruvian televised expedition in 1990 once again cleared the protective vegetation from the site, and further damaged the ruins. Currently, there are plans for construction of several roads and tourist infrastructure in the region. Neither have been implemented due to the fragile nature of the ruins and the high cost of conserving the site while minimizing tourist impacts on its archaeological integrity and environmental context.

The town of Juanjui is located close to Gran Pajaten, and contains some artistic representations inspired by it.

See also
Kuelap
Peruvian Sol

Notes

External links

Gran Pajatén - World Monuments Fund
Warren Church, Early Occupations at Gran Pajaten, Peru, in Andean Past No. 4 (1994) academia.edu
 Bibliography of Research at Gran Pajatén, Los Pinchudos and the Rio Abiseo National Park since 1985
Warren B. Church (1999), Loving it to Death, Gran Pajáten as a case study of the difficulties of preserving natural and cultural resources georgewright.org
 UNESCO: Rio Abiseo National Park
 Overview of Chachapoya archaeology (PDF)
 Ethnography and archaeology of Chachapoya (PDF)

Archaeological sites in Peru
Former populated places in Peru
Archaeological sites in La Libertad Region
Archaeological sites in San Martín Region

Gran Pajatén


Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge is an expansion pack to Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 developed by Westwood Studios. The game was released in North America on October 9, 2001. The game is centered on a shadowy ex-Soviet figure named Yuri who has established a secret army of his own and poses a threat to the free will of the world.

Plot
In Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge, the story starts off assuming that the Allies were victorious in Red Alert 2. The game begins with the White House announcing DEFCON 2 status, as Yuri, the former head of the Soviet Psychic Corps, plans to take over the world through mind control, accomplished by activating a secretly built network of Psychic Dominators around the world. The U.S. launches an air strike on the Psychic Dominator on Alcatraz Island. Despite heavy casualties, the device loses power after its power plant is destroyed. But Yuri activates the others, and the rest of the planet quickly succumbs to Yuri's mind control.

Allies story branch
The Allied commander is sent to San Francisco to defend and activate a time machine; the Allies plan to go back in time and prevent Yuri's Psychic Dominators from ever coming online. Once enough power plants have been secured, the player goes back in time, arriving at the time that Soviet forces are first invading San Francisco. The Soviets, caught by surprise, are defeated and the Psychic Dominator under construction on Alcatraz island is destroyed.

 The Allied commander is deployed to Los Angeles where Yuri is slaughtering the city's population, converting them to raw materials. The commander liberates Los Angeles with the aid of heavily armed celebrities. Next, the commander is deployed to Seattle after receiving a plea from the chairman of Massivesoft Corporation (parodies of Bill Gates and the Microsoft Corporation): Yuri has taken control of the Massivesoft campus for funds and development of genetic software. The commander engages in urban warfare to control local power stations, preventing Yuri from powering his nuclear silo while powering the Allied superweapon instead. Following these victories, Yuri captures Albert Einstein, forcing him to work on his Psychic Dominator near the Great Pyramid in Egypt. The Allies commando Tanya Adams, however, frees Einstein, who has sabotaged the Psychic Dominator. The commander gets to use it once before it blows up. The Allied forces then attack Yuri's cloning facility in Sydney, Australia. Yuri intends to kidnap world leaders and replace them with mind-controlled clones.

Wishing to bring the war against Yuri to a conclusion, the Allies and Soviets leaders meet in the Parliament Building in London to sign a peace and joint cooperation treaty. Under Yuri's mind control, Allied Lieutenant Eva divulges the location of the meeting. The Allied Commander is forced to defend the building against Yuri's onslaught long enough for the treaty to be ratified before destroying Yuri's London base with some assistance from the Soviets.

Lieutenant Eva traces Yuri's mind-controlling transmission, exposing his home base on Antarctic Peninsula. A joint Soviet-Allied invasion is launched, eradicating the base and capturing Yuri, who is locked away in a Psychic Isolation Chamber, where he "won't be able to mind-control a fly". Just as General Carville congratulates the commander, the two timelines began to merge. In the new timeline, instead of Yuri, it is Carville himself who interrupts the emergency meeting at the White House, much to the shock of President Dugan. Meanwhile, Tanya invites the commander to the victory gala, just like she did in the previous timeline. She is, however, interrupted by Lt. Eva this time, who also invites the commander to attend. Tanya complains to Einstein that he didn't get the timeline straight, and asks to be sent back to two hours ago. She then, with a wink, tells the commander that she'll catch him on the replay.

Soviet story branch
A Soviet strike team manages to capture the Allied time machine. After a misuse, which takes the Soviets to the Cretaceous era, the Soviets arrives at San Francisco during the Soviet occupation and destroys Yuri's still-incomplete Psychic Dominator. To prevent a future in which the Soviet Union loses the war to the Allies, the Soviet commander is put in charge of the assault on the Allied Chronosphere prototype in the Black Forest, Germany. This assault would have otherwise failed, as seen in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2. Without the Chronosphere, the Soviet Union becomes the de facto world superpower and focuses on destroying Yuri.

Yuri has occupied London. Having mind-controlled the Allied forces there, he starts slaughtering its citizens for raw materials and building a Psychic Dominator. To stop this, the Soviet forces infiltrate London and destroy a Psychic Beacon there, freeing the local Allied military from Yuri's mind control. A joint Allied-Soviet force then razes the Psychic Dominator minutes before it becomes operational.

After rescuing the Soviet Premier, whose plane was shot down over Casablanca, Morocco, the Soviet commander is deployed to an uncharted island in the Pacific Ocean where Yuri has set up a large base. After an extensive battle, the base is captured. It is revealed to be a launch facility hosting a spacecraft programmed to fly to the Moon, which Yuri intends to use as a refuge when the Psychic Dominator network goes online. The Soviets use this rocket to send a specialized task force there, razing and looting Yuri's bases.

Yuri is discovered in his ancestral home of Transylvania, where he has combined his own forces with mind-controlled Allied and Soviet forces around his stronghold. Despite his strength, however, the Soviet commander defeats Yuri's forces and razes Yuri's castle. In a last ditch effort, Yuri activates the time machine which he has stolen from San Francisco. Soviet Lieutenant Zofia interferes, causing Yuri to travel to the early Cretaceous with depleted power reserves. Stranded in time, Yuri is eaten by a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The Soviet Union, having imposed communism over the entire world, begins to build its space program, ready to spread its glorious cause to the far reaches of space.

Gameplay
The core gameplay for Yuri's Revenge is very similar to that of its predecessor, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2. The objective of the game is to gather resources while training an army to defend the player's base and attack the player's enemies.

Additions
The expansion presents two new campaigns, one for Allies and one for the Soviet Union, each consisting of seven missions. A new faction, Yuri, is introduced in Yuri's Revenge, which is the main antagonist in both campaigns and is playable in multiplayer mode, but lacks its own single-player campaign. Yuri's faction consists of mostly new units and buildings, as well as Yuri's Clones and Cloning Vats previously available to Soviets. His units generally rely on unconventional tactical elements such as their characteristic mind control.

The factions of Red Alert 2 also receive new features. Allies gain the new Guardian GI anti-tank infantry. Their new Robot Tanks are immune to mind control, and the Battle Fortress mobile bunker can crush enemy vehicles. Their commando, Tanya Adams, can now destroy vehicles. The Soviets receive the Battle Bunker defensive structure from which garrisoned infantry can fire. Their new commando unit Boris (which replaces Yuri) is capable of defeating most ground units one-on-one and calling air strikes on buildings. Their new Siege Chopper can land and deploy artillery guns. Their new Industrial Plant (which replaces Cloning Vats) which decreases the price and build time of vehicles, aircraft, ships, and (Soviet and Allied ore refineries) by 25%.

All unit types now have unique voices. In Red Alert 2, this was restricted to infantry and aircraft; vehicles shared the same per-faction voices.

Various support abilities were also added: Force shields, available to all factions, make buildings temporarily invulnerable at the cost of the faction losing power. Soviets have access to spy planes that can explore territory. Yuri can use his psychic radar to reveal territory, and has access to the genetic mutator and psychic dominator, the latter of which is as powerful as the weather control device of the Allies and the Soviet nuclear missiles.

The concept of "tech buildings" present in Red Alert 2 was expanded on in Yuri's Revenge. As in Red Alert 2, capturing tech buildings gives the player access to various bonuses, but new buildings were added and some of the old ones were modified to be more beneficial. New tech buildings include power plants, machine shops for automatic healing for vehicles and ships, and secret laboratories for unlocking weaponry otherwise not available to the player's faction.

Reception

Yuri's Revenge has received mostly positive reviews. GameRankings reports an average score of 85% based on 30 reviews. IGN gave the game 8.6 out of 10, saying that it "gives a really excellent game some really impressive enhancements". The lack of a single player campaign for Yuri's army was noted as a weakness. GameSpot said that "all its new features combine to make Yuri's Revenge ideal or even downright necessary for anyone who enjoyed Red Alert 2", and awarded 8.5 out of 10.

The editors of PC Gamer US named Yuri's Revenge the best expansion pack of 2001, tied with Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal. They wrote that it "reinvigorates an already excellent game, and is yet another reason to purchase Red Alert 2".

References

External links

2001 video games
Alternate history video games
Cold War video games
Yuri's Revenge
Fiction about mind control
Real-time strategy video games
Video games about time travel
Video game expansion packs
Video games about psychic powers
Video games developed in the United States
Video games set in Antarctica
Video games set in Sydney
Video games set in Egypt
Video games set in Germany
Video games set in Morocco
Video games set in Romania
Video games set in the Soviet Union
Video games set in the United Kingdom
Video games set in the United States
Video games set on the Moon
Video games with isometric graphics
Windows games
Windows-only games

sv:Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2#Yuri's Revenge

Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge


Psyche (pronounced: SY-kee) is a former mortal woman and goddess of the soul in Greek mythology. She is the wife of Eros (Cupid) and the mother of Hedone.  Today, Psyche is known from a story called The Golden Ass, written by Lucius Apuleius in the 2nd century.

Mythology

Early life
Psyche was the youngest daughter of a Greek king and queen. She had two older sisters. She was very beautiful. Many people said she was more beautiful than Aphrodite. People started worshipping Psyche instead of Aphrodite. This made the goddess angry. As a punishment, she sent her son, Eros, to make Psyche fall in love with an ugly person. However, Eros fell in love with Psyche. He decided to save her from his mother's anger.

Psyche's sisters were jealous of her beauty. They eventually married kings and left to be with their husbands. Nobody asked to marry Psyche. She was left alone. Her father decided to ask the Oracle of Delphi for help.

Marriage to Eros

Apollo, spoke to Psyche's father through the Oracle. He told her father that Psyche would marry a monster that even the gods were afraid of. Apollo said to dress Psyche in funeral clothes, take her to the tallest rock in the kingdom, and leave her there. The king sadly obeyed Apollo.

Psyche waited for the monster. When it did not come, she jumped from the rock. Zephyrus, the Greek lord of west wind, held her up to save her from death. He took her to Eros's palace. When Eros returned, he talked to Psyche in the dark. He said that she must not try to see him. He said that it would ruin everything if he told her his name. The first few weeks of Psyche's life in the palace were good. But soon her sisters convinced her to see what her husband looked like.

Psyche sneaked into her husband's room with an oil lamp. Psyche shone the light on her husband's face. A small drop of hot oil fell onto his shoulder. That burned him and woke him up. Eros felt betrayed by his wife's actions. He left Psyche.

Psyche was very unhappy after learning what she had done. Aphrodite found her and made her do four things.
The first thing was to sort a huge pile of seeds. An ant colony helped Psyche do this.
The second thing was to gather wool from a dangerous sheep. A river god helped her by teaching her to collect pieces of wool from bushes.
The third thing was to collect water from the underworld. The eagle of Zeus collected the water for her.
The last thing was the most difficult. She had to bring back some of Persephone's beauty for Aphrodite. Persephone gave Psyche some of her beauty. When she was on her way back to Olympus, Psyche opened the box of Persephone's beauty. The only thing inside was death. Psyche died. Her husband, Eros, forgave her. He took her to Olympus.

Psyche was made the goddess of the soul. Psyche and Eros had a daughter, Hedone. Their daughter was the goddess of physical joy.

Related pages
16 Psyche

References

Greek gods and goddesses

Psyche (mythology)


John Auger Dixon (27 May 1861 – 8 June 1931) was an English sportsman who captained Nottinghamshire at first-class cricket and represented the England national football team.

Dixon was a member of the Nottinghamshire which dominated county cricket from 1882 to 1886. He had his best year with the bat in 1897 when he made 1100 runs at 44.00, the only time he would pass 1000 runs in a season. Amongst those runs was his highest first-class score of 268 not out, which he made opening the batting against Sussex at Trent Bridge. Dixon declared once he had passed Arthur Shrewsbury's Nottinghamshire record of 267 with the team score at 448/7 and they won by an innings.

A right-hander, he was captain of Nottinghamshire when they shared the Championship in 1889 with Surrey and Lancashire. The following season, he captained his county to an innings and 26 runs win over the touring Australians and in the same season he also put in a memorable all-round performance against Leicestershire when he scored an unbeaten 126 and took nine wickets for the match. He remained captain until 1899. Dixon was also a useful part-time medium pacer and in 1900 took a career best season tally of 37 wickets at 23.89.

He represented England at his only international on 14 March 1885 when they drew 1–1 with Wales at Leamington Road, Blackburn. Dixon, a left-winger, played his club football for both Notts County and the Corinthians during the 1880s.

References

External links

1861 births
1931 deaths
English cricketers
Nottinghamshire cricketers
Nottinghamshire cricket captains
English men's footballers
England men's international footballers
Corinthian F.C. players
Notts County F.C. players
Gentlemen cricketers
North v South cricketers
Men's association football midfielders
Sportspeople from Grantham
Cricketers from Lincolnshire

John Dixon (English sportsman)


Perambalur is a municipality town in the state of Tamil Nadu . It is the administrative headquarters of Perambalur district and Perambalur Taluk (Sub-District). Perambalur is the central town of Tamil Nadu. Perambalur district is bounded on the North by Cuddalore and Salem, South by Trichy, East by Ariyalur, West by Trichy and Salem. As of 2011 census, the town had a population of 49,648. There are a set of 11th century Buddhists images around the villages of Perambalur called Perambalur Buddhas.

Population
According to 2011 census, Perambalur had a population of 49,648 with a sex-ratio of 1,013 females for every 1,000 males, much above the national average of 929. A total of 5,190 were under the age of six, constituting 2,678 males and 2,512 females. Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes accounted for 29.43% and .29% of the population respectively. The average literacy of the town was 80.77%, compared to the national average of 72.99%. The town had a total of 12732 households. There were a total of 18,430 workers, comprising 998 cultivators, 1,746 main agricultural labourers, 364 in house hold industries, 13,762 other workers, 1,560 marginal workers, 49 marginal cultivators, 390 marginal agricultural labourers, 78 marginal workers in household industries and 1,043 other marginal workers. As per the religious census of 2011, Perambalur had 86.94% Hindus, 9.29% Muslims, 3.6% Christians, 0.01% Sikhs, 0.01% Buddhists, 0.0% Jains, 0.12% following other religions and 0.03% following no religion or did not indicate any religious preference.

Perambalur district

Perambalur


Alpha-beta pruning is a Search algorithm that tries to remove options that it can take. This algorithm is commonly used for a computer to play two player games, such as chess, go, and checkers. The algorithm stops analyzing a move when it finds another possible move that is proven to be better, and that move will not be analyzed again. This algorithm is a modification of minimax algorithm.

Algorithm

The algorithm keeps track of two values, Alpha and Beta, and assigns "points" to possible moves where the greater the amount of points a move has, the higher chance that choosing that move will lead to victory. Alpha represents the minimum amount of points the player the algorithm wants to win can have(the maximizing player), while beta is the maximum amount of points the algorithm wants to lose can have(the minimizing player). Alpha and Beta start as negative infinity and infinity respectively. Whenever a move is found such that the  maximizing player's score improves or the minimizing player's score decreases, then Alpha and Beta will be replaced with those new values.

In the best case, the complexity of the algorithm is O() while the worst case is O() where b is the branching factor, that is how much each move splits into future options on average, and d is the depth, as in on average how many possible moves are made into the game.

Searching and sorting algorithms

Alpha–beta pruning


The Pars Museum (Persian: موزه پارس)  is a museum in  Shiraz,  Fars Province, southern Iran. Founded in 1936 under Reza Shah Pahlavi, it is located in Nazar Garden.

The octagonal building was the place in which royal guests were hosted during the Zand dynasty of Iran. It was also used for holding official ceremonies.

It is also the burial place of Karim Khan Zand.

Nazar Garden
The old Nazar Garden was one of the largest gardens of Shiraz during the Safavid rule (1501–1722). During Zand dynasty (1750–1794) Karim Khan built an octagon structure which was called Kolah Farangi. It was used to receive and entertain foreign guests and ambassadors and hold official ceremonies.

Pars Museum
In 1936 the pavilion became a museum. It was the first museum which was located outside the capital city of Tehran. The brick designs, tiling, pictures and big stone dadoes are among the architectural features of the building.

Pars museum is a display of almost 30 handwritten Qurans, a number of magnificent paintings of famous Persian artists. Among the paintings is the well-known Karim Khan's Smoking Shisha created by Jafar Naqash.

References

Buildings and structures in Shiraz
Museums in Iran
Tourist attractions in Shiraz
1936 establishments in Iran

Pars Museum


Jean-Jacques Scherrer (1855–1916) was a French academic painter. Now largely forgotten, his historical paintings earned him considerable attention in his day.

Early life

Born in Lutterbach in Alsace, Scherrer was brought up by his uncle following the death of his father when he was only 6 years old. After leaving school, he worked at the Haeffley factory in Pfastatt where his talent for drawing was noticed by one of the directors. In 1871, after the Treaty of Frankfurt he chose French nationality and moved to Paris where he was taught by Pierre-Jules Cavelier in the studio of Félix-Joseph Barrias. Barrias encouraged him to continue his studies at the École des Beaux-Arts where he came under the guidance of Alexandre Cabanel, whose academic style he closely followed.

Career
Although Scherrer began to exhibit in 1877, it was his Résurrection du fils de la veuve de Naïm at the Salon de l'Académie de Peinture which established his reputation. In 1881, his painting  L'Assassinat du maréchal Brune was received with particular success, earning him a stipendium which allowed him to spend two years in Italy. On his return to Paris in 1883, he painted Beaurepaire, la capitulation de Verdun, le 2 septembre 1792. He went on to receive awards for  L'Entrée de Jeanne d'Arc à Orléans, victorieuse des Anglais (1887) and Isabeau de Bavière (1889), exhibited the same year at the Exposition Universelle, and Charlotte Corday à Caen (1892). At the end of the century, after decorating the SEITA pavilion for the Exposition Universelle (1900), he was made a knight of the Legion of Honour.

In addition to his academic works which were painted with almost photographic precision, Scherrer also painted nudes and copied the works of Raphaël in Italy and those of other masters exhibited in the Louvre. He also painted landscapes of northern France, the Netherlands and Italy, and genre paintings including Joueurs de dames. Other important works are Rachel déclamant la tragédie de Phèdre, devant Alfred de Musset and L'Heure du lait en Haute Alsace. He also painted animals (Chevaux à l'abri) and portraits (Gaston Roullet).

For a period of 32 years, Scherrer exhibited his works in Paris, Barcelona, Chicago and Tunis. Today they can be seen in France, Canada and the United States. Following his death in Paris in May 1916, there was an exhibition of his work in 1920. In 2006, a large exhibition of his work was held in his native Lutterbach.

Reception
Although Scherrer is not well known today, eclipsed as he is by contemporary impressionists, he was well received in the early 20th century. A commentator for the Journal d'Alsace wrote: "Scherrer's is characterized by constant attention to form and composition. A powerful colourist, with the gift of a fruitful imagination, our famous countryman is one of the most highly esteemed artists of our times."

Family
In 1880, Scherrer married Mathilde Haquette, a porcelain decorator at the Sèvres factory. They had two children: Jean who died at sea when he was 18, and Lucie-Marthe (1884–1979) who was very close to her father.

References
This article also draws on the French Wikipedia article.

19th-century French painters
French male painters
20th-century French painters
20th-century French male artists
1855 births
1916 deaths
People from Haut-Rhin
Academic art
École des Beaux-Arts alumni
Knights of the Legion of Honour
Painters from Alsace
19th-century French male artists

Jean-Jacques Scherrer


The Paralympic Games or Paralympics, also known as the Games of the Paralympiad, is a periodic series of international multisport events involving athletes with a range of disabilities. There are Winter and Summer Paralympic Games, which since the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, are held almost immediately following the respective Olympic Games. All Paralympic Games are governed by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC).

The Paralympics began as a small gathering of British World War II veterans in 1948. The 1960 Games in Rome drew 400 athletes with disabilities from 23 countries, as proposed by doctor Antonio Maglio. As of the early 21st century, it is one of the largest international sporting events, with 4,520 athletes from 163 National Paralympic Committees at the 2020 Summer Paralympics. Paralympians strive for equal treatment with non-disabled Olympic athletes, but there is a large funding gap between Olympic and Paralympic athletes.

The Paralympic Games are organized in parallel with and in a similar way to the Olympic Games. The IOC-recognized Special Olympics World Games include athletes with intellectual disabilities (although since 1992, intellectually disabled people also participate in the Paralympic Games), and the Deaflympics held since 1924 are exclusive for deaf athletes.

Given the wide variety of disabilities of Para athletes, there are several categories in which they compete. The allowable disabilities are divided into ten eligible impairment types: impaired muscle power, impaired passive range of movement, limb deficiency, leg length difference, short stature, hypertonia, ataxia, athetosis, vision impairment and intellectual impairment. These categories are further divided into various subcategories.

Forerunners

Disabled athletes at the Olympic Games
Athletes with disabilities did compete at the Olympic Games prior to the advent of the Paralympics. The first athlete to do so was German-American gymnast George Eyser in 1904, who had one artificial leg. Olivér Halassy, a Hungarian amputee water polo player who competed in three successive Olympic Games, beginning in 1928. Hungarian Károly Takács competed in shooting events in both the 1948 and 1952 Summer Olympics. He was a right-arm amputee and could shoot left-handed. Another disabled athlete who appeared in the Olympics prior to the Paralympic Games was Lis Hartel, a Danish equestrian athlete who had contracted polio in 1943 and won a silver medal in the dressage event in the 1952 Summer Olympics.

Stoke Mandeville Games
The first organized athletic event for disabled athletes that coincided with the Olympic Games took place on the day of the opening of the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. German-Jewish Ludwig Guttmann of Stoke Mandeville Hospital, who had fled Nazi Germany with the help of the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics (CARA) in 1939, hosted a sports competition for British World War II veteran patients with spinal cord injuries. The first games were called the 1948 International Wheelchair Games, and were intended to coincide with the 1948 Olympics. Guttman's aim was to create an elite sports competition for people with disabilities that would be equivalent to the Olympic Games. The games were held at the same location each year, and in 1952 Dutch and Israeli veterans took part alongside the British, making it the first international competition of its own kind. In 1960, the 9th annual games took place outside of the UK for the first time in Rome, to coincide with the 1960 Summer Olympics which were also being held in Rome. These were to be later designated the 1st Paralympic Games. These early competitions have been described as the precursors of the Paralympic Games, and Stoke Mandeville holds a similar place in the lore of the Paralympic movement as Greece holds in the Olympic.

Milestones

There have been several milestones in the Paralympic movement. The first official Paralympic Games, coincident with the ninth Stoke Mandeville Games but no longer open solely to war veterans, was held in Rome in 1960. They were the brainchild of Dr. Antonio Maglio, a friend and follower of Dr. Guttmann and were financed almost entirely by Dr. Maglio's employer, the Workers National Accident Insurance Fund of Italy, then led by Renato Morelli, who was also Chairman of the International Social Security Association. Four hundred athletes from 23 countries competed at the 1960 Games. Since 1960, the Paralympic Games have taken place in the same year as the Olympic Games. The Games were initially open only to athletes in wheelchairs; at the 1976 Summer Games, athletes with different disabilities were included for the first time at a Summer Paralympics. With the inclusion of more disability classifications the 1976 Summer Games expanded to 1,600 athletes from 40 countries. The 1988 Summer Paralympics in Seoul was another milestone for the Paralympic movement. It was in Seoul that the Paralympic Summer Games were held directly after the 1988 Summer Olympics, in the same host city, and using the majority of the venues. This set a precedent that was followed in 1992, 1996 and 2000. It was eventually formalized in an agreement between the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 2001, and was extended through 2020. On March 10, 2018, the two committees further extended their contract to 2032. Despite being held in the same region, the 1992 Winter Paralympics used different competition venues than those used for the Olympic Games. 1994 Winter Paralympics were the first Winter Games to use the same venues and had the same Organizing Committee as the Winter Olympics.

Winter Games

The first Winter Paralympic Games were held in 1976 in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden. This was the first Paralympics in which multiple categories of athletes with disabilities could compete. The Winter Games were celebrated every four years on the same year as their summer counterpart, just as the Olympics were. This tradition was upheld through the 1992 Games in Albertville, France; after that, beginning with the 1994 Games, the Winter Paralympics and the Winter Olympics have been held in those even-numbered years separate from the Summer Olympics.The winter games happen two years after the summer games.

International Paralympic Committee

The International Paralympic Committee is the global governing body of the Paralympic Movement. It comprises 178 National Paralympic Committees (NPC) and four disability-specific international sports federations. The president of the IPC is Andrew Parsons. The IPC's international headquarters are in Bonn, Germany. The IPC is responsible for organizing the Summer and Winter Paralympic Games. It also serves as the International Federation for nine sports (Paralympic athletics, Paralympic swimming, Paralympic archery, Paralympic powerlifting, Para-alpine skiing, Paralympic biathlon, Paralympic cross-country skiing, ice sledge hockey and Wheelchair DanceSport). This requires the IPC to supervise and coordinate the World Championships and other competitions for each of the nine sports it regulates. IPC membership also includes National Paralympic Committees  and international sporting federations. International Federations are independent sport federations recognized by the IPC as the sole representative of a Paralympic Sport. International Federations responsibilities include technical jurisdiction and guidance over the competition and training venues of their respective sports during the Paralympic Games. The IPC also recognizes media partners, certifies officials, judges, and is responsible for enforcing the bylaws of the Paralympic Charter.

Since your creation in 1989, IPC has a cooperative relationship with the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Delegates of the IPC are also members of the IOC and participate on IOC committees and commissions. The two governing bodies remain distinct, with separate Games, despite the close working relationship.

The Paralympic Games were designed to emphasize the participants' athletic achievements and not their disability. Recent games have emphasized that these games are about ability and not disability. The movement has grown dramatically since its early days – for example, the number of athletes participating in the Summer Paralympic games has increased from 400 athletes in Rome in 1960 to 4,342 athletes from 159 countries in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. Both the Paralympic Summer and Winter Games are recognized on the world stage.

Unlike the Olympic Games, English is the official language of the Paralympic movement. The other languages used at each Paralympic Games are the official languages of the host country or host region. Every proclamation (such as the announcement of each country during the parade of nations in the opening ceremony) is spoken in these two or more languages.

Name and symbols

Although the name was originally coined as a portmanteau combining paraplegic (due to its origins as games for people with spinal injuries) and Olympic, the inclusion of other disability groups meant that this was no longer considered very accurate. The present formal explanation for the name is that it derives from the Greek preposition ,  ('beside' or 'alongside') and thus refers to a competition held in parallel with the Olympic Games. The Summer Games of 1988 held in Seoul was the first time the term Paralympic came into official use.

"Spirit in Motion" is the current motto for the Paralympic movement. The current Paralympic flag is used since 2020 and contains three colours, red, blue, and green, which are the colours most widely represented in the flags of nations. The colours are each in the shape of an Agito (which is Latin for 'I move/I shake/I stir'), which is the name given to an asymmetrical crescent specially designed for the Paralympic movement. The three Agitos circle a central point, which is a symbol for the athletes congregating from all points of the globe. The motto and symbol of the IPC were changed in 2003 to their current versions. The change was intended to convey the idea that Paralympians have a spirit of competition and that the IPC as an organization realizes its potential and is moving forward to achieve it. The vision of the IPC is, "To enable Paralympic athletes to achieve sporting excellence and to inspire and excite the world." The Paralympic anthem is "Hymne de l'Avenir" or "Anthem of the Future". It was composed by Thierry Darnis and adopted as the official anthem in March 1996.

Ceremonies

Opening

As mandated by the Paralympic Charter, various elements frame the opening ceremonies of the Paralympic Games. Most of these rituals were established are the same that 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp and were shared with the Olympic Games. The Opening ceremony typically starts with the hoisting of the host country's flag and a performance of its national anthem. Immediately after the welcome act and the host country anthem and hosting their flag the "Parade of Nations" starts with the athletes into the stadium grouped by nation. Since the 1960 Summer Paralympics, the nations enter the stadium alphabetically according to the host country's or region official language, though with the host country's athletes being the last to enter. The host nation presents artistic displays of their culture and folklore.

Protocolar segments are held with the speechs are given, formally opening the games.After the Opening declaration the Paralympic flag enter on the stadium and is hosted along the Paralympic Anthem aside the host country flag and the oaths by athletes,coaches and judges are taken.Finally, the Paralympic flame is brought into the stadium and passed on until it reaches the final torch carrier—often a Paralympic athlete from the host nation—who lights the Paralympic flame in the stadium's cauldron.

Closing
The closing ceremony of the Paralympic Games takes place after all sporting events have concluded. Flag-bearers from each participating country enter, followed by the athletes who enter together, without any national distinction.
The Paralympic flag is taken down. Since the 1988 Winter Paralympics, with some exceptions, the national flag of the country hosting the next Summer or Winter Paralympic Games is hoisted while the corresponding national anthem is played. The games are officially closed, and the Paralympic flame is extinguished. After these compulsory elements, the next host nation briefly introduces itself with artistic displays of dance and theater representative of its culture.

Medal presentation

A medals ceremony is held after the conclusion of each Paralympic event. The winner, second and third-place competitors or teams stand on top of a three-tiered rostrum when they are awarded their respective medal by an IPC member. The national flags of the medalists are then raised while the national anthem of the gold medalist is played. Volunteering citizens of the host country also act as hosts during the medal ceremonies, as they aid the officials who present the medals and act as flag-bearers. For every Paralympic event, the respective medal ceremony is held, at most, one day after the event's final.

Equality

Relationship with the Olympics
After a troubled relation until the 1996 Summer Paralympics and a successful 2000 Summer Paralympics. In June 2001, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) signed an agreement that would ensure that the staging of the Paralympic Games is automatically included in the bid for the Olympic Games. The agreement came into effect at the 2008 Paralympic Summer Games in Beijing, and the 2010 Paralympic Winter Games in Vancouver. However, the Salt Lake 2002 Organizing Committee (SLOC), chose to follow the practice of "one bid, one city" already at the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City, with one Organizing Committee for both Games, which was followed up by the 2004 Summer Games in Athens. The agreement was adjusted in 2003. An extension was signed in June 2006, after some troubles at 2006 Winter Paralympics. Initially agreed to remain in effect until the 2012 Summer Olympics, this has since been extended,  encompassing all Summer and Winter games up until the 2020 Summer Olympics. Even beyond this, all Summer and Winter host cities currently announced are preparing pairs of Olympic and Paralympics Games. This was further confirmed when on 10 March 2018, the IOC and the IPC agreed to further extend the contract to the 2032 Summer Olympics.

The IOC has written its commitment to equal access to athletics for all people into its charter, which states,
While the charter is silent on discrimination specifically related to disability; given the language in the charter regarding discrimination it is reasonable to infer that discrimination on the basis of disability would be against the ideals of the Olympic Charter and the IOC. This is also consistent with the Paralympic Charter, which forbids discrimination on the basis of political, religious, economic, disability, gender, sexual orientation or racial reasons.

Chairman of the London organising committee, Sebastian Coe, said about the 2012 Summer Paralympics and 2012 Summer Olympics in London, England, that, "We want to change public attitudes towards disability, celebrate the excellence of Paralympic sport and to enshrine from the very outset that the two Games are an integrated whole."

The 2014 Winter Paralympic Games is the first such Paralympics hosted by Russia. Russia ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities during that period. Notably at 2010 Vancouver, their Paralympic team topped the medal table at the Winter Paralympics, while their Olympic team performed well below expectations at the Winter Olympics. This led the media to highlight the contrast between the achievements of the country's Olympic and Paralympic delegations, despite the greater attention and funding awarded to the Olympic athletes. The Russian Federation organizers of the 2014 Winter Paralympic Games have, since 2007, made efforts to make the host city Sochi more accessible.

Paralympians at the Olympics

Paralympic athletes have sought equal opportunities to compete at the Olympic Games. The precedent was set by Neroli Fairhall, a Paralympic archer from New Zealand, who competed at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
In 2008, Oscar Pistorius, a South African sprinter, attempted to qualify for the 2008 Summer Olympics. Pistorius had both his legs amputated below the knee and races with two carbon fibre blades manufactured by Össur. He holds Paralympic world record in the 400 meter event.
Pistorius missed qualifying for the 2008 Summer Olympics in the 400 meter race, by 0.70 seconds. He qualified for the 2008 Summer Paralympics where he won gold medals in the 100, 200, and 400 meter sprints. In 2011, Pistorius qualified for the 2012 Summer Olympics and competed in two events: he made the semi-final in the 400 metres race; and his team came 8th in the final of the 4 × 400 metres relay race. Even though all athletes are given equal opportunities to participate in these events, such as the 400 meter race, there has been growing criticism that the games may not be fair to all athletes. For example, athletes running a race with a left prosthetic leg may be disadvantaged compared to those with a right side prosthesis because the races are run in an anticlockwise direction, giving some athletes an advantage.

Some athletes without a disability also compete at the Paralympics; The sighted guides for athletes with a visual impairment are such a close and essential part of the competition that the athlete with visual impairment and the guide are considered a team, and both athletes are medal candidates.

Funding
Starting at the 1992 Summer Paralympics, recent games have also been supported by contributions from major sponsors. Unlike the Olympics, where the IOC mandates that arenas be clean of sponsor logos, the Paralympics do allow the logos of official sponsors to be displayed inside arenas and on uniforms.

Media coverage
While the Olympic Games have experienced tremendous growth in global media coverage since the 1984 Summer Paralympics, the Paralympics have been unable to maintain a consistent international media presence.

Television broadcasts of Paralympic Games began in 1976, but this early coverage was confined to taped-delay releases to one nation or region. At the 1992 Summer Paralympics, there were 45 hours of live coverage but it was available only in Europe. Other countries broadcast highlight packages during the Games. No meaningful improvements in coverage occurred until the 2000 Summer Paralympics in Sydney.

The 2000 Paralympics represented a significant increase in global media exposure for the Paralympic Games. A deal was reached between the Sydney Paralympic Organizing Committee (SPOC) and All Media Sports (AMS) to broadcast the Games internationally. Deals were reached with Asian, South American, and European broadcast companies to distribute coverage to as many markets as possible. The Games were also webcast for the first time. Because of these efforts, the Sydney Paralympics reached a global audience estimated at 300 million people. Also significant was the fact that the organizers did not have to pay networks to televise the Games as had been done at the 1992 and 1996 Games. Despite these advances, consistent media attention has been a challenge, which was evidenced in the coverage in Great Britain of the 2010 Winter Paralympics.

In the UK, it is a legal requirement for the games to be broadcast live by a free-to-air broadcaster, although a pay-to-view broadcaster can share the rights; the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was criticized for its minimal coverage of the 2010 Winter Paralympics as compared to its coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics. The BBC announced it would stream some content on its website and show a one-hour highlight program after the Games ended. For the Winter Olympics the BBC aired 160 hours of coverage. The response from the BBC was that budget constraints and the "time zone factor" necessitated a limited broadcast schedule. The reduction in coverage was done in spite of increased ratings for the 2008 Summer Paralympics, which was watched by 23% of the population of Great Britain. In Norway, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) broadcast 30 hours of the 2010 Winter Games live. NRK-sport were critical of parts of the TV production from Vancouver, and notified the EBU of issues such as the biathlon coverage excluding the shooting, and cross-country skiing with skiers in the distance, making it hard to follow the progress of the competition. NRK were far more pleased with the production of the ice sledge hockey and wheelchair curling events, which they felt reached the same level as the Olympic Games. Private broadcaster Channel 4 acquired the rights to the Paralympics in the United Kingdom for the 2012 Summer Paralympics, and planned to air extensive coverage of the games; Channel 4 aired 150 hours of coverage, and also offered mobile apps, and three dedicated streaming channels of additional coverage on Sky, Freesat, Virgin Media and Channel 4's website." Channel 4 also made a push to heighten the profile of the Paralympics in the country by producing a two minute trailer for its coverage, "Meet the Superhumans"; which premièred simultaneously on over 70 commercial channels in the UK on 17 July 2012. Channel 4 have also acquired the rights to the 2014 Winter Paralympics and the 2016 Summer Paralympics.

Outside the Games
A 2010 study by the University of British Columbia (UBC) on the Olympic Games Impact (OGI), showed that of roughly 1,600 Canadian respondents, 41 to 50 percent believed the 2010 Paralympic and Olympic Games in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, triggered additional accessibility of buildings, sidewalks and public spaces. 23 percent of employers said the Games had increased their willingness to hire people with disabilities.

Chief Executive Officer for the International Paralympic Committee Xavier Gonzalez said about the 2008 Summer Paralympics in Beijing, China, that:

Classification

The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) has established ten disability categories. Athletes are divided within each category according to their level of impairment, in a functional classification system which differs from sport to sport.

Categories
The IPC has established ten disability categories, including physical, visual, and intellectual impairment. Athletes with one of these disabilities can compete in the Paralympics, though not every sport can allow for every disability category. These categories apply to both Summer and Winter Paralympics.

Physical Impairment – There are eight different types of physical impairment:
 Impaired muscle power – With impairments in this category, the force generated by muscles, such as the muscles of one limb, one side of the body or the lower half of the body is reduced, (e.g. spinal cord injury, spina bifida, post-polio syndrome).
 Impaired passive range of movement – The range of movement in one or more joints is reduced in a systematic way. Acute conditions such as arthritis are not included.
 Loss of limb or limb deficiency – A total or partial absence of bones or joints from partial or total loss due to illness, trauma, or congenital limb deficiency (e.g., dysmelia).
 Leg-length difference – Significant bone shortening occurs in one leg due to congenital deficiency or trauma.
 Short stature – Standing height is reduced due to shortened legs, arms and trunk, which are due to a musculoskeletal deficit of bone or cartilage structures. (e.g., achondroplasia, growth hormone deficiency, osteogenesis imperfecta)
Hypertonia – Hypertonia is marked by an abnormal increase in muscle tension and reduced ability of a muscle to stretch. Hypertonia may result from injury, disease, or conditions which involve damage to the central nervous system (e.g., cerebral palsy).
Ataxia – Ataxia is an impairment that consists of a lack of coordination of muscle movements (e.g., cerebral palsy, Friedreich's ataxia, multiple sclerosis).
Athetosis – Athetosis is generally characterized by unbalanced, involuntary movements and a difficulty maintaining a symmetrical posture (e.g., cerebral palsy, choreoathetosis).

Visual impairment – Athletes with visual impairment ranging from partial vision, sufficient to be judged legally blind, to total blindness. This includes impairment of one or more component of the visual system (eye structure, receptors, optic nerve pathway, and visual cortex). The sighted guides for athletes with a visual impairment are such a close and essential part of the competition that the athlete with visual impairment and the guide are considered a team. Beginning in 2012, these guides along with sighted goalkeepers in 5-a-side football became eligible to receive medals of their own.

Intellectual Disability – Athletes with a significant intellectual impairment and associated limitations in adaptive behaviour. The IPC primarily serves athletes with physical disabilities, but the disability group Intellectual Disability has been added to some Paralympic Games. This includes only elite athletes with intellectual disabilities diagnosed before the age of 18. However, the IOC-recognized Special Olympics World Games are open to all people with intellectual disabilities.

Classification system

Within the disability categories, athletes are further divided into Sport Classes according to the degree of activity limitation resulting from their impairments; this aims to minimise the impact of an athlete's impairment on their sporting performance against their rivals. Sport Classes are numbered, with a lower number signifying a greater level of impairment: for example, in Paralympic swimming athletes with visual impairments compete in three Sport Classes from S/SB11 to S/SB13, with S/SB11 athletes having a very low light acuity and/or no light perception, and S/SB13 athletes having the least severe visual impairment eligible for Paralympic sport.

Medical classification (until the 1980s)
From its inception until the 1980s, the Paralympic system for classifying athletes consisted of a medical evaluation and diagnosis of impairment. An athlete's medical condition was the only factor used to determine what class they competed in. For example, an athlete who had a spinal cord injury that resulted in lower limb paresis, would not compete in the same wheelchair race as an athlete with a double above-knee amputation. The fact that their disability caused the same impairment did not factor into classification determination, the only consideration was their medical diagnosis. It was not until views on disabled athletics shifted from just a form of rehabilitation to an end in itself, that the classification system changed from medical diagnosis to a focus on the functional abilities of the athlete.

Functional classification (since the 1980s)

While there is no clear date when the shift occurred, a functional classification system became the norm for disabled athletic classification in the 1980s. In a functional system, the focus is on what effect the athlete's impairment has on his or her athletic performance. Under this system, athletes with total loss of function in their legs will compete together in most sports, because their functional loss is the same and the reason for the loss is immaterial. The only exception to the functional system is the classification format used by International Blind Sports Federation (IBSA), which still uses a medically based system.

Some sports are only held for certain disability types. For example, goalball is only for visually impaired athletes. The Paralympics recognizes three different grades of visual impairment, consequently all competitors in goalball must wear a visor or "black out mask" so that athletes with less visual impairment will not have an advantage. Other sports, like athletics, are open to athletes with a wide variety of impairments. In athletics, participants are broken down into a range of classes based on the disability they have and then they are placed in a classification within that range based on their level of impairment. For example: classes 11–13 are for visually impaired athletes, which class they are in depends on their level of visual impairment.
There are also team competitions such as wheelchair rugby. Members of the team are each given a point value based on their activity limitation. A lower score indicates a more severe activity limitation than a higher score. A team cannot have more than a certain maximum total of points on the field of play at the same time to ensure equal competition. For example, in wheelchair rugby, the four players' combined disability number must total no more than eight points.

Sports

There are twenty-two sports on the Summer Paralympic program and six sports on the Winter Paralympics program. Within some of the sports are several events. For example, alpine skiing has downhill, super combined, super-G, slalom, giant slalom. The IPC has governance over several of the sports but not all of them. Other international organizations, known as International Sports Federations (IF), notably the International Wheelchair and Amputee Sports Federation (IWAS), the International Blind Sports Federation (IBSA), and the Cerebral Palsy International Sports and Recreation Association (CP-ISRA), govern some sports that are specific to certain disability groups. There are national chapters for these International Sport Federations including National Paralympic Committees, which are responsible for recruitment of athletes and governance of sports at the national level.

Cheating

After the 2000 Sydney games, a Spanish basketball player alleged that several members of the gold medal-winning Spanish basketball intellectually disabled (ID) team were not disabled. He claimed that only two athletes out of the twelve-member team met the qualifications of an intellectually disabled athlete. A controversy ensued and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) called on the Spanish National Paralympic Committee to launch an investigation. The investigation uncovered several Spanish athletes who had flouted the ID rules. In an interview with the president of the federation that oversees ID competition, Fernando Martín Vicente admitted that athletes around the world were breaking the ID eligibility rules. The IPC responded by starting an investigation of its own. The results of the IPC's investigation confirmed the Spanish athlete's allegations and also determined that the incident was not isolated to the basketball ID event or to Spanish athletes. As a result, all ID competitions were suspended indefinitely. The ban was lifted after the 2008 Games after work had been done to tighten the criteria and controls governing admission of athletes with intellectual disabilities. Four sports, swimming, athletics, table tennis and rowing, were anticipated to hold competitions for ID athletes at the 2012 Summer Paralympics.

The Paralympics have also been tainted by steroid use. At the 2008 Games in Beijing, three powerlifters and a German basketball player were banned after having tested positive for banned substances. This was a decrease in comparison to the ten powerlifters and one track athlete who were banned from the 2000 Games. German skier Thomas Oelsner became the first Winter Paralympian to test positive for steroids. He had won two gold medals at the 2002 Winter Paralympics, but his medals were stripped after his positive drug test. At the 2010 Winter Paralympics in Vancouver, Swedish curler Glenn Ikonen tested positive for a banned substance and was suspended for six months by the IPC. He was removed from the rest of the curling competition but his team was allowed to continue. The 54-year-old curler said his doctor had prescribed a medication on the banned substances list.

Another concern now facing Paralympic officials is the technique of "boosting". Athletes can artificially increase their blood pressure, often by self-harming, which has been shown to improve performance by up to 15%. This is most effective in the endurance sports such as cross-country skiing. To increase blood pressure athletes will deliberately cause trauma to limbs below a spinal injury. This trauma can include breaking bones, strapping extremities in too tightly, and using high-pressure compression stockings. The injury is painless but it does affect the athlete's blood pressure.

Another potential concern is the use of gene therapy among Paralympic athletes. All Paralympic athletes are banned from enhancing their abilities through gene doping, but it is extremely difficult to differentiate these concepts. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is currently researching both gene doping and gene therapy, in part to discern the boundary between the two closely related concepts.

The IPC have been working with WADA since 2003, to ensure compliance with WADA's anti-doping code among its Paralympic athletes. The IPC has also promised to continue increasing the number of athletes tested at each of its Games, in order to further minimize the possible effect of doping in Paralympic sports. Mandatory in- and out-of competition testing has also been implemented by the IPC to further ensure all of its athletes are performing in compliance with WADA regulations.

Having sent samples for forensic analysis, the IPC found evidence that the prevalent doping by Russian athletes was in operation at the 2014 Winter Paralympics in Sochi. On 7 August 2016, the IPC's Governing Board voted unanimously to ban the entire Russian team from the 2016 Summer Paralympics, citing the Russian Paralympic Committee's inability to enforce the IPC's Anti-Doping Code and the World Anti-Doping Code which is "a fundamental constitutional requirement". IPC President Sir Philip Craven stated that the Russian government had "catastrophically failed its Para athletes". IPC Athletes' Council Chairperson and CPC Member Todd Nicholson said that Russia had used athletes as "pawns" in order to "show global prowess".

Notable champions and achievements

Trischa Zorn of the United States is the most decorated paralympian in history. She competed in the blind swimming events and won a total of 55 medals, 41 of which are gold. Her Paralympic career spanned 24 years from 1980 to 2004. She was also an alternate on the 1980 American Olympic swim team, but did not go to the Olympics due to a boycott by the United States and several of its allies. Ragnhild Myklebust of Norway holds the record for the most medals ever won at the Winter Paralympic Games. Competing in a variety of events between 1988 and 2002, she won a total of 22 medals, of which 17 were gold. After winning five gold medals at the 2002 Games she retired at the age of 58. Neroli Fairhall, a paraplegic archer from New Zealand, was the first paraplegic competitor, and the third Paralympian, to participate in the Olympic Games, when she competed in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. She placed thirty-fourth in the Olympic archery competition, and won a Paralympic gold medal in the same event.

Host cities

Postponed to 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, marking the first time that the Paralympic Games has been postponed. They are still called the 2020 Summer Paralympics, even with the change in scheduling to one year later. The Games were held from 24 August to 5 September 2021.

See also

 All-time Paralympic Games medal table
 Parapan American Games
 Asian Para Games
 Commonwealth Paraplegic Games
 Cybathlon
 Disability flag

Notes

References

Further reading
 Peterson, Cynthia and Robert D. Steadward. Paralympics : Where Heroes Come, 1998, One Shot Holdings, .
 Thomas and Smith, Disability, Sport and Society, Routledge, 2008, .

External links

 Official website
 Paralympic Sport TV, web-TV channel of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC)

Disabled multi-sport events
Recurring sporting events established in 1960
International Paralympic Committee competitions

Paralympic Games


James Montgomery Bailey (September 25, 1841 – March 4, 1894) was an American journalist who won an ephemeral popularity as the "Danbury News Man."

Biography
He was born at Albany, New York, and after receiving a common school education, learned the trade of a carpenter.  He removed to Danbury, Conn., in 1860, and worked at his trade for the two following years, but found time to write occasionally for the newspapers.  During the Civil War he served in the Seventeenth Connecticut Volunteers.  In 1870 he established the Danbury News, for which he wrote the humorous sketches, sometimes original, often simply descriptive of commonplace happenings, which won for him a national reputation and made his paper known throughout the country.  An example of his ability to humorously depict domestic situations is 'Putting Up A Stovepipe', in which he described the husband/wife tensions caused by an unpleasant household chore.  His first book. Life in Danbury, was published in 1873; it consisted of selections from his newspaper articles.  His other publications were The Danbury News Man's Almanac (1873); They All Do It (1877); England from a Back Window (1878); Mr. Phillip's Goneness (1879); The Danbury Boom; with a Full Account of Mr. Cobleigh's Action Therein (1880); and History of Danbury, Conn., 1684-1896.

References

External links

 Putting Up a Stovepipe – a humorous sketch referenced above.

1841 births
1894 deaths
Writers from Albany, New York
American humorists
19th-century American newspaper publishers (people)
Union Army soldiers
People of Connecticut in the American Civil War
19th-century American newspaper founders
19th-century American journalists
American male journalists
Military personnel from Connecticut
19th-century American male writers
Journalists from New York (state)

James Montgomery Bailey


Mauno Järvelä (born 25. November 1949 in Kaustinen) is a Finnish fiddler, violinist and music pedagogue. He is the uncle of Arto Järvelä, and both of them are members in the successful folk music group JPP, whose roots are the pelimanni tradition from Kaustinen. Mauno Järvelä also plays in Timo Alakotilas tango project Unto Tango Orchestra (Tango-orkesteri Unto) together with, among others, Maria Kalaniemi.

Mauno Järvelä learned fiddling from his father, Johannes Järvelä, who was the son of the well known wedding fiddler Antti Järvelä. He was also trained as a classical violinist at the Sibelius Academy before they had a department for folk music, and he has worked as a violinist in symphony orchestra. In the 2000s (decade), he has so far (2005) been active mainly as music teacher, teaching adults and children in Kaustinen to play the violin using both folk music and classical training, and partly learning by ear. The children's project in Kaustinen is called Näppärit (roughly "the pluckers"). His teaching method is partly related to the Suzuki method and is widely nicknamed the sisuki method (after the Finnish concept sisu).

He also plays an important part in arranging folk music projects including young people from all the Nordic countries, based on the notion that traditional Nordic dance music  from the different Nordic countries have much in common.

References

 Finnish Music Information Center

Living people
Finnish fiddlers
Male violinists
Finnish violinists
Nordic folk musicians
1949 births
21st-century violinists
21st-century male musicians

Mauno Järvelä


Edinburgh Castle is a castle in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is built on the volcanic Castle Rock in the centre of Edinburgh, and is easy to see from the main shopping streets. In 1103, Edinburgh Castle was built which makes the Castle over 900 years old. The castle has a military display every year, called a tattoo, where soldiers show their skills at marching and competitions, and there are brass bands and bands of bagpipes.

Castles in Scotland
Buildings and structures in Edinburgh
12th-century buildings and structures

Edinburgh Castle