Pedro José Ramírez Codina (born 26 March 1952), widely known as Pedro J. Ramírez, is a Spanish journalist. When he was appointed to manage Diario 16 at the age of 28, he became Spain's youngest editor of a national newspaper. In 1989 he founded the newspaper El Mundo, managing it continuously until 2014, making him the longest-serving editor of any Spanish national newspaper. He has collaborated with several radio and television programmes and has published a dozen books.

He was married (until 2016) to the designer Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada, and they have two children born in 1987 and 1990. He has a daughter from a previous marriage to Rocío Fernández Iglesias.

Early life
Born on 26 March 1952 in Logroño, he was raised in a middle-class family and for 13 years he received his primary and secondary education at the Hermanos Maristas school in Logroño. He studied journalism at the University of Navarra, where he also began a degree in law. While there, he directed the university's Theatre Group, participating in several national and international festivals. He graduated with a degree in journalism in 1973 with a thesis titled 'Towards Informative Theatre'. Upon finishing his degree, he worked as a lecturer in Contemporary Spanish Literature at Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania, living in the United States during the decisive year of the Watergate case. He interviewed the editor of The Washington Post, Ben Bradlee, for the magazine La Actualidad Española, along with other important figures at the time in US media. Lebanon Valley College presented him with an 'honorary degree' in Humanities.

Professional beginnings

From 1975 to 1980 he worked at the newspaper ABC, writing the Sunday section on political analysis called Crónica de la Semana. On 17 June 1980, at 28 years old, he was appointed editor of the newspaper Diario 16, then selling barely 15,000 copies and threatened with closure. However, within two years the newspaper had reached a circulation of 100,000 copies, and five years after that it would attain 150,000, according to figures of the OJD, the Office of Circulation Verification.

The most important event of the time was coverage of the attempted coup d'état on 23 February 1981. Diario 16 maintained a resolute editorial stance against those leading the coup. On 23 February 1982, on the first anniversary of the coup attempt, Pedro J. Ramírez was expelled from the Court of Justice where the trial was held against those involved, as supporters of the coup refused to appear in court as long as the editor of Diario 16 was present. The Military Justice Supreme Council revoked his credentials and forced him to leave the courtroom. This incident led to a historic resolution issued by the Constitutional Court, dismissing the decision by the Military Justice and proclaiming readers' rights to information for the first time since the establishment of democracy.

In 1986 he was named publications director for the newspaper's parent company, Grupo 16. He was elected president of the Spanish Committee of the International Press Institute (IPI), and in September 1988 joined the organisation's global Executive Committee. On 8 March 1989 he was dismissed as director of Diario 16 because of disagreements with the editor of the newspaper about the allegedly sensationalist tone of reports concerning the GAL (Anti-terrorist Liberation Groups).

During this period, Ramírez was sued several times for libel, the most serious of these being when he was found guilty on 4 October 1993 by the Supreme Court of Spain and disqualified from the exercise of journalism. This sentence was appealed, and the appeal denied and the first sentence confirmed by the Constitutional Court of Spain on 14 October 1998.

Editor of El Mundo
On 23 October 1989, seven months after his dismissal, he founded the newspaper El Mundo, along with three high-ranking executives from Grupo 16: Alfonso de Salas, Balbino Fraga and Juan González. More than 50 Diario 16 journalists quit their jobs and joined the project. The parent group of the British newspaper The Guardian was one of its first shareholders, and the Italian daily  invested a year later.

In the 1990s, El Mundo stood out for its investigations on corruption scandals carried out by successive socialist governments, and particularly for its exclusive exposure of the socialist government's implication in the GAL plot that led to the murder of more than two dozen Basque activists, mainly in the south of France. These revelations led to trials and convictions, including those of the former Interior Minister José Barrionuevo and his associate Rafael Vera, for the kidnapping of Segundo Marey; those of General Galindo and the civil governor of Guipuzcoa, Julen Elgorriaga, for the murder of Lasa and Zabala, and that of Rafael Vera himself for illegal appropriation of funds belonging to the Ministry.

In 1997, Pedro J. Ramírez was appointed president of the Commission for Freedom of Expression of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), and for many years travelled to countries including China, Algeria, Turkey and Venezuela to request the freedom of imprisoned journalists and the repeal of oppressive laws against the media.

El Mundo supported the Aznar government in general terms during its first term (1996-2000), but was somewhat critical when during its second term when it decided to support the Bush policy in Iraq. On the eve of the Azores summit, Pedro J. Ramírez published one of his routine Sunday letters, titled 'One Hundred Reasons against the Invasion of Iraq.'

After Zapatero's rise to power, El Mundo pushed forward with the investigation of the March 11 massacre, presenting what the newspaper deemed significant flaws in the official version, but with a less rigorous investigation policy than their former exclusives during the 1990s. From the editorial perspective, it has opposed negotiations with ETA and the new Catalan Statute, which led to votes cast for the Partido Popular and the small party headed by Rosa Díez during the general elections held on 9 March 2008.

The Office of Circulation Verification (OJD) confirmed that during its first year El Mundo obtained a circulation of more than 100,000 copies, while in 2007 it surpassed the mark of 335,000. According to the General Study on Media (EGM), El Mundo has more than 1,300,000 readers. All of these indicators consolidate it as the second-largest national newspaper, behind El País.

According to the OJD, at the end of 2007 El Mundo had more than 11 million individual users per month. Based on the Alexa rankings, it was the world leader for electronic information in Spanish.

In 2013 it became evident that the Rajoy government was not happy about some of the content of El Mundo, for example, the publication of text messages from Rajoy to Luis Barcenas.  Ramirez blamed government pressure for his being replaced as editor in 2014, although there may have been other factors given the decline in the paper's finances since 2007. After being ousted as editor he contributed a series of Sunday letters to the newspaper for a few months, before turning his attention to setting up a news website El Español, which went online in 2015.

Sex video scandal

In October 1997 a covertly filmed sex video was circulated which involved Ramírez and a woman, Exuperancia Rapú Muebake. Following a criminal investigation, the Madrid Court convicted the former personal aide of Felipe González at the Moncloa, Ángel Patón; the former civil governor of Guipúzcoa, José Ramón Goñi Tirapu; and four others, of violation of the right to privacy, sentencing them from two to four years in prison. The sentence, upheld by the Supreme Court, established that the purpose of the entrapment had been to change the editorial stance of El Mundo.

His wife, Agatha Ruiz de la Prada, has never mentioned this matter in public.

The purchase of Recoletos

In 2007, Unedisa, the publishing company of El Mundo -already widely controlled by the RCS group, owner of Corriere della Sera- acquired 100% of the shares in Grupo Recoletos, a leader in specialised press in Spain. As a result of this operation, Pedro J. Ramírez, as General Editorial Director, was put in charge of content published in newspapers such as Marca, Expansión and Diario Médico; magazines including Telva and Actualidad Económica, and the television channel Televisión Digital Veo TV. Until 2014 he shared these responsibilities along with those of Editor of El Mundo.

Awards
 1981. Golden Oscar of Communication for Best Information Contributor
 1983. Journalist of the Year (Roundtable discussions for Mundo Abierto radio)
 1983. Premio Libertad (Freedom Award) as Editor of Diario 16 (Club Liberal 1812)
 1984. Liderman Award for Best Newspaper Editor
 1991. Víctor de la Serna Award for Best Journalistic Effort (Madrid Press Association)
 1992. Mariano José de Larra Award (Roundtable discussions for Mundo Abierto)
 1995. Premio Libertad de Expresión (Freedom of Speech Award) (León Felipe Foundation)
 2006. Montaigne Award (Tübingen University, Germany)
 2006. Fape Award (Federation of Press Associations)
 2007. Isaiah Berlin International Award (Santa Margherita Ligure, Italy)
 2013. First Amendment Award given by the Eisenhower Fellows, Spain.

References

Publications
 How the Elections Were Won. (1977) Editorial Planeta  e
 Press and Freedom. (1980)
 The Complete King. (1981) (in collaboration with the journalists, Pilar Cernuda, José Oneto and Ramón Pí) ,  and
 The Year Franco Died. (1985)
 The Rose and its Thorn: Both Sides of Felipism. (1989)
 The World in My Hands. (1991)
 Spain without a Project: The Felipista Decade. (1993)
 David against Goliath: Felipism Checkmated. (1995)
 Bitter Victory: The Hidden Story behind Aznar's Historic Victory over González.(2000)  and
 Getting Even: The Aznar Years (1996-2000).
 My 100 Best Letters from the Editor: 25 Years in the Life of Spain (1980-2005).

External links

Biography of Pedro J. Ramirez at Freelance Spain

1952 births
Lebanon Valley College faculty
Living people
People from Logroño
University of Navarra alumni
2004 Madrid train bombings conspiracy theorists
El Mundo (Spain) people
ABC (newspaper) people
Diario 16 people
20th-century Spanish journalists
Spanish conspiracy theorists

Pedro J. Ramírez


Lady Mary Elizabeth Peters LG CH DBE (born 6 July 1939) is a retired athlete and sportsperson from Northern Ireland. She won a gold medal at the 1972 Olympic Games for pentathlon, as well as three gold medals in the Commonwealth Games in shot put and pentathlon.

She founded the Mary Peters Trust which helps young people in Northern Ireland to take part in sport. She was also Lord Lieutenant of Belfast from 2009 to 2014.

She was made a dame in 2000, a Companion of Honour in 2015, and a Lady Companion of the Order of the Garter in 2019.

1939 births
Living people
British athletes
Lord-lieutenants
Sportspeople from Belfast

Mary Peters


Jean-François Reubell () or Rewbell (6 October 1747 – 24 November 1807) was a French lawyer, diplomat, and politician of the Revolution.

The revolutionary
Born at Colmar (now in the département of Haut-Rhin), he became president of the local order of lawyers, and in 1789 was elected as a deputy to the Estates-General by the Third Estate of the bailliage of Colmar-Schlestadt.

In the National Constituent Assembly his oratory, legal knowledge and austerity of life gave him much influence. A partisan of revolutionary reforms, Rewbell voted in favor of reforms such as the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, but opposed the recognition of citizenship rights for Alsatian Jews.

In July 1791, after the flight of Louis XVI, the constitutional king, Rewbell left the Jacobin Club and joined the Feuillants. During the session of the Legislative Assembly, after the Constituent Assembly was dissolved in September of that year, he exercised the functions of procureur syndic, and was subsequently secretary-general of the département of Haut-Rhin. He was elected to the Republic's National Convention in 1792, and was its envoy to the Rhineland, advocating the union of the Electorate of the Palatinate and other territories with France. A zealous promoter of the Trial of Louis XVI, he was absent on mission at the time of the king's condemnation.

Directorate and retirement
He took part in the Thermidorian Reaction movement which led to the fall of Maximilien Robespierre, and became a member of the reorganised Committee of Public Safety and of the Committee of General Security. In early 1795, he assisted Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès in negotiating the surrender of the Batavian Republic to the French Republic. His moderation caused his election by seventeen départements to the Council of Five Hundred.

Appointed a member of the Directory in November 1795, he became its president in 1796; he then entered the Council of Ancients. In office, Rewbell dealt with the Royalist attempted coup d'état (The 18 Fructidor), as well as the Conspiracy of the Equals; he engineered the annexation of the Rhineland and the southern Low Countries to the Republic, as well as the invasion of the Old Swiss Confederacy and the creation of the Helvetic Republic. He was retired by ballot in 1799, after being held responsible for the French defeats of that year in front of the Second Coalition. After Napoleon Bonaparte's coup of 18 Brumaire he retired from public life, and died at Colmar.

References
L. Sciout, Le Directoire (Paris, 1895—97).

1747 births
1807 deaths
18th-century French diplomats
18th-century French lawyers
Deputies to the French National Convention
Directeurs of the First French Republic
Feuillants
Jacobins
Members of the Council of Five Hundred
People from Colmar
People on the Committee of Public Safety

Jean-François Rewbell


Macaroni is a pasta food which is made of wheat and flour. It is from Italy. It is in the shape of a small tube.  It can either be straight or curved. The curved type is called elbow macaroni.

Macaroni is almost never eaten by itself. It is usually eaten with another food or covered in a sauce. A very popular type of macaroni is "Macaroni and cheese", which is macaroni covered in melted cheese.

In Libya, macaroni is called Macroona Imbakbaka. Libya has Italian food because it used to be an Italian colony.

References

Pasta

Macaroni


The Jallianwalah Bagh Massacre, also known as the Amritsar Massacre was a massacre that happened in Amritsar, in 1919. It is named after the Jallianwala Bagh (Temple) in the northern Indian city of Amritsar, Punjab. On April 13, 1919, British Indian Army soldiers started shooting at an unarmed crowd of men, women and children. The person in charge was  Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, the military commander of Amritsar.

The shooting lasted about ten minutes. According to official British Raj sources, 379 people were killed. According to other sources, there were over 1,000 deaths, with more than 2,000 hurt badly, and Civil Surgeon Dr. Smith said that there were 1500 casualties.

Background

India during World War I
World War I began with large support and friendliness towards the United Kingdom from the leaders of India. This was not expected by the British, who thought there may be a revolt. India helped a lot to the British war effort by providing men and resources. About 1.3 million Indian soldiers and workers served in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, while both the Indian government and the princes sent large supplies of food, money, and ammunition.

However, Bengal and Punjab were areas where people still did not like the British. Terrorist-style attacks in Bengal were connected with the unrest in Punjab. Also, from the beginning of the war, the overseas Indian population (mainly from Canada, Germany, and the United States) tried to start a rebellion in India similar to the 1857 uprising. With Irish Republican, German and Turkish help, a large conspiracy was made called the HinduGerman Conspiracy. This conspiracy also tried to make Afghanistan not support British India.

After the war
After World War I, the high number of dead and wounded, inflation, heavy taxation and other problems greatly affected the people of India. Indian soldiers smuggled weapons into India to get rid of British rule. Different groups joined together to demand independence from Britain. In 1916, the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League signed the Lucknow Pact, agreeing to build a border dividing Punjab (India) and Pakistan.

Rowlatt Act
The worsening civil unrest throughout India, especially amongst the Bombay millworkers, led to the Rowlatt committee in 1919. The Rowlatt committee was named after Sydney Rowlatt, an English judge. The job of the committee was to understand German and Bolshevik links to the militant movement in India, especially in Punjab and Bengal.

The committee asked for an extension of the Defence of India act of 1915  The act gave the Viceroy's government with great power, that included silencing the press, including detaining the political activists without trial, arrest without warrant of any individual suspected of treason. This act sparked huge anger within India.

Before the massacre
The events that followed the Rowlatt Act in 1919 were also influenced by the events linked to the Ghadar conspiracy, At the time, British Indian Army troops were returning from the battlefields of Europe and Mesopotamia to an economic depression in India. There were many attempts to mutiny in 1915 and the Lahore conspiracy trials were still in public attention. News of young Mohajirs who fought on behalf of the Turkish Caliphate and later for the Red Army during the Russian Civil War was also beginning to reach India. The Russian Revolution had also started to influence India. It was at this time that Mahatma Gandhi, until then relatively unknown on the Indian political scene, began emerging as a mass leader.

Gandhi's call for protest against the Rowlatt act got an expected response - of furious unrest and protests. The situation especially in Punjab became bad very quickly. Rail, telegraph and communication systems were all disrupted. A huge crowd of 20,000 marched through Lahore.

In Amritsar, over 5,000 people gathered at Jallianwala Bagh.  Michael O'Dwyer is said to have believed that this was part of an attempt to rebel against the British. James Houssemayne Du Boulay is said to have ascribed a direct relationship between the fear of a Ghadarite uprising in the midst of an increasingly tensed situation in Punjab, and the British response that ended in the massacre.

On April 10, 1919, a protest was held at the residence of the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar, a city in Punjab, a large province in the northwestern part of what was then undivided India. The demonstration was held to demand the release of two popular leaders of the Indian Independence Movement, Satya Pal and Saifuddin Kitchlew, who had been earlier arrested on account of their protests. The crowd was shot at by British troops, the shooting stated more violence. Later in the day, several banks and other government buildings, including the Town Hall and the railway station were attacked and set on fire. The violence continued to increase, and resulted in the deaths of at least 5 Europeans, including government employees and civilians.

For the next two days, the city of Amritsar was quiet, but violence continued in other parts of the Punjab. Railway lines were cut, telegraph posts destroyed, government buildings burnt, and three Europeans were killed. By April 13, the British government had decided to place most of the Punjab under martial law. The legislation placed restrictions on a number of civil liberties,  including freedom of assembly, banning gatherings of more than four people.

The massacre
On April 13, 1919, thousands of people gathered in the Jallianwala Bagh (garden) near the Golden Temple in Amritsar. The date was for the Baisakhi festival which was also the Sikh new year. For more than two hundred years, this festival had drawn thousands from all over India. People had travelled for days to get to Amritsar.

The Jallianwala Bagh was surrounded on all sides by houses and buildings and had few narrow entrances, most of which were kept locked. Unable to escape people tried to climb the walls of the park. Many jumped into a well inside the compound to escape from the bullets. A plaque in the monument says that 120 bodies were plucked out of the well.

As a result of the shooting, hundreds of people were killed and thousands were injured. The shooting lasted for ten minutes.  In a telegram sent to Dyer, British Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab, Sir Michael O'Dwyer wrote: "Your action is correct. Lieutenant Governor approves."

O'Dwyer asked for martial law to be imposed upon Amritsar and other areas; this was allowed by the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, after the massacre.

Dyer dismissed
Dyer was initially applauded by some, but in July 1920 he was censured and forced to retire by the House of Commons.

References

1910s in India
Massacres in Asia
1919 in Asia

Jallianwala Bagh massacre


The Russell-Cotes Museum (formally, the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum) is an art gallery and museum in Bournemouth, England. A Grade II* listed building originally known as East Cliff Hall, it is located on the top of the East Cliff, next to the Royal Bath Hotel.

History and collections

In 1897, the architect John Frederick Fogerty was commissioned by Merton Russell-Cotes, then the owner of the Royal Bath Hotel, to build a house as a birthday present for his wife Annie. Originally called East Cliff Hall, it was built in the northeast section of his hotel's garden. Built in the Art Nouveau style with interiors by John Thomas and his son Oliver. It was completed in its first form in 1901.

In 1907, Annie Russell-Cotes donated East Cliff Hall and its contents as a museum to the town of Bournemouth and Merton donated his fine art collection. In return they were made honorary freemen of the town. They continued living in part of the house and over the next ten years they paid for an extension to be built and made further donations including the freehold of the site. It was formally opened by Princess Beatrice in 1919. After their deaths the Borough of Bournemouth took over the running of East Cliff Hall and re-opened it as the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum on 10 March 1922. After Sir Merton's death, it was extended into his part of the house; a further extension was opened in 2000.

The house and the new annexe display various items collected in the course of Sir Merton's foreign travels, especially to Japan, and paintings from his personal art collection. One room is the Sir Henry Irving Museum; Irving, a friend of the Russell-Cotes', had stayed in that room. When Irving died in 1905, this room was devoted to his memory. Items purchased at the sale of Irving's effects formed the basis of the Irving Museum and were displayed with memorabilia associated with his contemporaries such as Ellen Terry and Sarah Bernhardt.

Exhibitions
Twice-yearly exhibitions of contemporary art support works from the main collection, and have included painter Jonathan Yeo and sculptor Jon Edgar in 2011.

Children's facilities

The new annexe also has a restaurant and a play area for young children. The art gallery in the old annexe displays a wide and frequently changing collection of pictures and statues. Older children are invited to complete a "detective sheet", for example finding where there are pictures of a bat, a kingfisher and other animals and birds.

Gallery

References

External links

 The Joy of Shards Mosaics Resource information

Houses completed in 1901
1919 establishments in England

Buildings and structures in Bournemouth
Biographical museums in Dorset
Art museums and galleries in Dorset
Musical instrument museums
Museums in Bournemouth
Historic house museums in Dorset
Art museums established in 1919
Art Nouveau architecture in England
Tourist attractions in Bournemouth
Grade II* listed buildings in Dorset
Grade II* listed museum buildings

Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum


Super DX-Ball is a shareware game by BlitWise Productions, released on November 10, 2004. It is an enhanced remake to the classic brick-buster hit DX-Ball. Among new features since previous games, Super DX-Ball introduces refined, classic-style graphics (as a tribute to the original game) and a new dimension of bricks with various shapes and sizes (originally inspired from Rival Ball Tournament), adding a unique gameplay experience in a Breakout-style game.

Gameplay
As a common concept of Breakout clone, the objective of the game is to clear all the bricks on the screen in order to advance to the next board. The player controls a paddle at the bottom of the screen by using the mouse or keyboard, keeping one or more balls by deflecting them into a field of bricks on the screen without missing the only ball in play. Some bricks may appear to be solid, take multiple hits to clear, invisible, or explosive. As bricks are being cleared, a random power-up will occasionally released onto the screen. The player may choose to catch these with the paddle, or avoid them depending on the effect whether it is positive, neutral or negative. Negative power-ups usually increases the difficulty, while neutral may vary depending on the situation. The power-ups of Super DX-Ball are direct clones from previous games, with several minor alterations (e.g. when the player gets a "Fast Ball", the ball now will only speed up slightly instead of accelerating to full speed, and the "Extra Life" were no longer remove the paddle enhancements).

Similar to previous installments, if only one brick remain on the board and taking too long to hit it, the brick will be destroyed by a lightning bolt.

A unique element of the game is when the ball gets stuck between the unbreakable bricks for too long, the ball transforms into a "gold ball" and can clear any bricks in one hit, unlike in previous games where unbreakable bricks are transformed into regular ones when the ball is stuck for a certain amount of time.

Development
Programmed by Michael P. Welch in 2004, Super DX-Ball was considered to be indirect sequel and as a tribute to the original game, rather than a follow-up to Rival Ball. Unlike its predecessors, the graphics were designed to retain the classic style, recycling the graphics for the bricks and power-ups, a pure black background, but with an updated texture for the paddle (vaguely resembling the "Vaus" from Arkanoid). However, these graphics are greatly refined with a high-colour 32-bit 2D engine, giving a more smoother look and solid colours.

The key aspect of Super DX-Ball is the introduction of geometric bricks with various shapes and sizes that creates an artistic board design and eye-catching patterns, adding a unique gameplay experience of a Breakout clone. Most of these new board designs are usually based on abstract art and mosaics, though several others form simple pictures and clip-arts. While the freeware version only offer 27 of these boards, the full pack of 90 other boards are only available in the registered version.

Aside from the newly designed geometric boards, the game also offer the classic gameplay experience with regular rectangular bricks, by introducing several classic-style boards that paid tribute to the original game, including the original boards from DX-Ball. There are a total of 145 classic boards, with only 70 of them are made available in the freeware version.

Board packs
The freeware version comes with six different board packs: Classic, Super, Challenge (demo), Surprise (demo), Fun (demo), and Retro (demo), and features a total of 97 boards. The game also features a tribute to MegaBall 3 for the Amiga, including a hidden MegaBall board pack, which contains the 20 boards from the original game. This easter egg can be discovered by clicking on the Mega Ball power-up icon on the title screen. Notably, the Classic board pack (which contains all 50 boards from the original DX-Ball) also used to be an easter egg, prior to version 1.1, in which it could be obtained by clicking the grey Amiga Boing Ball icon on the title screen, between the words "DX" and "BALL".

The registered version of the game, referred to as Super DX-Ball Deluxe, features a total of 245 boards, expanding the demo board packs to their entirety of 30 boards each for Challenge, Surprise, and Fun, and 75 boards for Retro. It also adds support for additional board expansion packs, of which there are two available, as of June, 2012:

Bonus Pack:    15 new levels (Free)
Treasure Pack: 10 new levels (Free)

Trivially, there is a secret message encoded (via binary code) into the final level of Treasure Pack, which reads "DX-BALL 1996 TO 2006 AND STILL THE BEST ; )".

References

External links
BlitWise Productions

2004 video games
Breakout clones
Video games developed in the United States
Windows games
MacOS games

Super DX-Ball


Car design is the process of determining how cars and other motor vehicles like trucks look and feel. Most cars are designed by a large group of people that usually includes artists and engineers.

Design process
Typically, cars are designed based on many sketches and drawings, along with computer-aided design models. When the design team is satisfied with the basic shape of the car, a life-size model is sculpted from clay. Details are added to the clay model, and its shape may be changed by a small amount.

Then, the interior design team designs the car's interior, making sure that it fits the needs of the customer. These needs include things like comfort and entertainment systems. High-end cars like luxury cars and supercars have fancy interiors and are designed for an enjoyable driving experience, while utility vehicles like vans have plain, rugged interiors designed to endure various types of cargo.

Other parts of the car, such as the chassis and engine, are designed primarily by engineers, as it is less important for these parts to look attractive than it is for them to work properly.

History
While most early cars were designed around usability rather than looks, that began to change when American businessman Alfred P. Sloan came up with the idea of changing a car's styling every year. This was done from the 1920s onward to keep cars looking "new" for each year they were sold, leaving customers unhappy with older models of the same car and increasing car sales in the United States. Sloan got this idea from bicycle companies.

After World War I, car companies in European countries focused on luxury, and companies called coachbuilders made bodies for luxury cars. Some of these bodies were customized for especially rich customers.

After World War II, the American economy grew and most American citizens were now able to afford cars. Because cars became more important in the United States, so did their styling, with the most famous American car designer being Harley Earl. The influence of car design would also grow massively in Europe, especially within France, Italy, and Germany.

References

Vehicles
Design

Car design


Guaco, huaco, vejuco and bejuco are terms applied to various vine-like Central American, South American, and West Indian climbing plants, reputed to have curative powers. Several species in the genus Mikania are among those referred to as guaco. Even though it is not a vine guaco is also used to refer to Cleome serrulata, the Rocky Mountain beeplant.

Native Americans and Colombians believe that the guaco was named after a species of kite, in imitation of its cry, which they say it uses to attract the snakes which it feeds on.  Tradition says that the plant's powers as an antidote were discovered through watching the bird eat the leaves, and even spread the juice on its wings, before attacking the snakes.

Any twining plant with a heart-shaped leaf, white and green above and purple beneath, is called a guaco by Native Americans, which does not necessarily coincide with which plants are "true" guacos, as far as naturalists are concerned.

What is most commonly recognized in Colombia as guaco, or vejuco del guaco, would appear to be Mikania guaco, a climbing composite plant of the tribe Eupatorieae, preferring moist and shady situations, and having a much-branched and deep-growing root, variegated, serrated, opposite leaves and dull white flowers, in axillary clusters. The whole plant emits a disagreeable odour.

Uses
It was stated that the Central American natives, after taking guaco, catch with impunity the most dangerous snakes, which  writhe in their hands as though touched by a hot iron. The odour alone of guaco, has been said to cause, in snakes, a state of stupor; and Humboldt, who observed that proximity of a rod steeped in guaco-juice was obnoxious to the venomous Coluber corallinus, was of opinion that inoculation with it gives perspiration an odour which makes reptiles unwilling to bite. The drug is not used in modern medicine.

In Brazil, guaco (Mikania glomerata) is commonly used as a medicinal tea as an expectorant and anti-inflammatory due to its compound coumarin.

Notes

References

Medicinal plants
Flora of Colombia
Natural history of Colombia
Plant common names
Mikania

Guaco


Maya Darpan () is a 1972 Indian Hindi-language film directed by Kumar Shahani. It is a significant work of the Indian Parallel Cinema movement which started during the 1950s with filmmakers Satyajit Ray ,Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak. The film was forgotten soon after its release, but was rediscovered and is today considered a landmark work of Indian cinema. The film stars Aditi and Anil Pandya.

Synopsis
The film is set in a provincial town in Northern India, at a time following the nation's independence in 1947 when India was yet to be completely integrated as a political entity and when Nehruvian socialism was about to take on the existing feudal hierarchy.

Taran (Aditi) is the daughter of a wealthy landlord (Anil Pandya) and lives with her father and her widowed aunt (Kanta Vyas) in their ancestral mansion (which goes on to represent the whole of upper class in the film). The town is witnessing protests by newly formed labour unions which are partly being politically educated by the local railroad engineer (Iqbalnath Kaul), who seems to have an unspoken romantic relationship with Taran. Taran's unseen brother, who had, to the chagrin of their father, renounced his class privileges and gone off to an Assamese tea estate, asks Taran to join him. Stuck in a stifling patriarchal order, with pressure to marry an upper-class groom mounting, Taran decides to talk to her father about her plans.

Cast
 Aditi
 Anil Pandya
 Kanta Vyas
 Iqbalnath Kaul

Soundtrack
"Aaja Ri Nindiya" - Vani Jairam

Rediscovery and Appreciation
After its original release in 1972, Maya Darpan won the Filmfare Award for Critic's Choice Best Film, but was quickly forgotten soon after.

In an interview with Shahani, Rafique Bhagdadi and Rajiv Rao reveal the initial reaction to the film: "Despite the lavish praise it received abroad, Maya Darpan (1972) met with hostile reception in India. Critics panned it for its excessively languid pace. Others found the film to be too European in its sensibility. Those who expected poverty of metaphysics were disappointed."

The film was rediscovered through independent film enthusiasts in India dedicated to bringing Indian Parallel Cinema to the forefront of serious critical artistic discussion. The movie found a revival amongst film enthusiasts. A film blog, The Seventh Art, stated that "We are now at a point where even the original negatives of the film face the risk of extinction. One can only hope that institutions like the World Cinema Foundation will do something about it. Kumar Shahani's Maya Darpan is a seminal work in Indian Parallel Cinema not just because it canvasses critical social issues (a facet that, more or less, in hindsight, has become a characteristic of the movement) but also because it attempts to seek out a new aesthetic, which does not try to straddle mainstream cinema and art cinema, to do that."

References

External links

 Maya Darpan review

1972 films
1970s Hindi-language films
1972 drama films
Films whose cinematographer won the Best Cinematography National Film Award
Best Hindi Feature Film National Film Award winners

Maya Darpan


Taylor Michel Momsen (born July 26, 1993) is an American singer, songwriter, model, and former actress. She is known for portraying the character of Jenny Humphrey on The CW's teen drama series Gossip Girl (2007–2012) and Cindy Lou Who in the film How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000). After her retirement from acting, she became widely known for being the frontwoman of the American rock band The Pretty Reckless.

Momsen was signed with Ford Models at a very young age, she began acting professionally at three years of age in a 1997 national commercial for Shake 'n Bake. She was then cast in The Prophet's Game.

She played the character of Jenny Humphrey in The CW television series Gossip Girl, based on the book series by Cecily von Ziegesar. Momsen's appearances on the series became increasingly sporadic, and, by the end of the first half of the fou

rth season, she had only appeared in four episodes. It was then announced that the actress would be scheduled for an indefinite hiatus from the show, which ended with her leaving the series as a regular cast member after the completion of the fourth season in 2011. On August 16, 2011, Momsen told Elle magazine that she had quit acting to focus on her music career. On October 16, 2012, it was reported that Momsen would be returning to Gossip Girl for its final episode, in which she appeared briefly in the wedding sequence.

In March 2009, Momsen's band The Pretty Reckless had signed a deal with Interscope Records. The band's debut album Light Me Up was released on August 30, 2010 in the UK, where it debuted at number 6, as well as at number 18 in Ireland. The first single "Make Me Wanna Die" was released on May 30, 2010, while the second single "Miss Nothing" which was released on August 23, 2010 peaked at number 39. "Just Tonight" was released as the album's third single. Songs from this album have been in the movie Kick-Ass as well as shows like The Vampire Diaries and Gossip Girl.

1993 births
21st-century American singers
Actors from Missouri
Alternative rock
American Roman Catholics
American child actors
American child singers
American composers
American feminists
American movie actors
American models
American pianists
American rock guitarists
American rock singers
American singer-songwriters
American television actors
Former Roman Catholics
Interscope Records artists
Living people
Mezzo-sopranos
Musicians from Missouri
People from St. Louis, Missouri
Singers from Missouri

Taylor Momsen


Tamsui-Xinyi Line is a line of the Taipei Metro in Taipei and New Taipei, Taiwan. This line is also called the Red Line. The line connects Xiangshan to Tamsui. You can transfer to the Wenhu Line at Daan, to the Bannan Line at Taipei Main Station, to the Songshan-Xindian Line at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall or Zhongshan, or you can transfer to the Zhonghe-Xinlu Line at Dongmen or Minquan West Road. When Phase 1 of the Wanda-Zhonghe-Shulin Line (Light Green Line) is completed in 2025, passengers will be able to transfer to the Wanda-Zhonghe-Shulin Line at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall metro station. When Phase 2 of the CIrcular Line has been completed, transfers to the Circular Line can be made at Shilin station.

The line currently consists of 28 stations with station codes from R02 to R28. Station R01 is still under construction, and R22A (Xinbeitou) is located on the branch line from R22 (Beitou.)

Stations
Guangci/Fengtian Temple R01 (opening 2022)
Xiangshan R02
Taipei 101/World Trade Center R03
Xinyi Anhe R04
Daan R05 (transfer to Wenhu line)
Daan Park R06
Dongmen R07 (transfer to Zhonghe-Xinlu line)
Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall R08 (transfer to Songshan-Xindian line and future transfer to Wanda-Zhonghe-Shulin line)
NTU Hospital R09
Taipei Main Station R10 (transfer to Bannan line)
Zhongshan R11 (transfer to Songshan-Xindian line)
Shuanglian R12
Minquan West Road R13 (transfer to Zhonghe-Xinlu line)
Yuanshan R14
Jiantan  R15
Shilin R16 (future transfer to Circular line)
Zhishan R17
Mingde R18
Shipai R19
Qilian R20
Qiyan R21
Beitou R22 (transfer for Xinbeitou)
Fuxinggang R23
Zhongyi R24
Guandu R25
Zhuwei R26
Hongshulin R27
Tamsui R28

Xinbeitou branch line
Beitou R22 (transfer to Tamsui-Xinyi line)
Xinbeitou R22A (terminal station)
Taipei
Railway stations

Tamsui–Xinyi line


Worcestershire (ˈwʊs.təˌʃə; abbreviated Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands region of central England. From 1974 to 1998 it was part of Hereford and Worcester. The city of Worcester, where the sauce named after Worcestershire was invented, is within this county.

The county borders Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, West Midlands, Warwickshire, and Gloucestershire.

Physical geography
Worcestershire is a fairly rural county. The Malvern Hills, which run from the south of the county into Herefordshire, are made up mainly of volcanic rock, some of which date from before 1200 million years ago. For more on the geology of the Malvern Hills, see the other websites section below.

Places of interest
Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings
Walton Hill and the Clent Hills
Malvern Hills Area of Outstanding Natural beauty
Severn Valley Railway
Worcester Cathedral
Great Malvern Priory
Leigh Court Tithe Barn
Claines Church
River Teme and valley
Tenbury Wells with its unique Pump Rooms.
River Severn at Worcester, River Avon at Pershore or Evesham
Witley Court at Great Witley. A burnt out shell of a large English stately home, famous for its gigantic fountain, now restored to working order. Currently owned by English Heritage.
West Midlands Safari Park
Hanbury Hall
Forge Mill Needle Museum at Redditch, the only remaining working needle mill in the world.

Local groups
Worcestershire Conservative Future
Herefordshire and Worcestershire Earth Heritage Trust

Related pages
 Worcestershire sauce

Other websites
Worcestershire County Council main site
Official Worcestershire County Council eHub

Ceremonial counties of England

Worcestershire


Roeselare is a municipality in the Belgian province of West Flanders. In 2016, more than 61 000 people lived there.
It is at 50° 56 North, 03° 07 East.

History

Begin

Roeselare was already known in 847 and was from the 10th century an important centre for industrial and commercial activities. Since 1250, the place was recognized as a city with several rights.

Around 1260, there was built a belfry and a city hall at the 'Grand Place'. Because there were no defense facilities around the city, it was an easy target for ennemies. To guarantee safety, they started in Roeselare soon with a few teams of city guards. Of course, they could not much do in times of war. In 1488 and 1492, the city was destroyed by the army of Maximilian from Austria. Almost every building from the early Middle Ages collapsed. Around 1500, the city was rebuilt in a different architecture.

The centre of Roeselare always belonged to the property of Wijnendale.

There was peace in Roeselare during a short time. On the 26th August 1566, several statues in the Saint-Michaels Church and the hall were destroyed because of religeous protests called 'the beeldenstorm'.  After the Eighty Years War, all the successful textile industries were completely gone out of the city. Then started a period with a lot of economical problems but there was also something positive. In Venice became a componist from Roeselare named Adrian Willaert popular.

In 1609 the war came to an end for 12 years. Roeselare was rebuilt but the war started again from 1640.

After the peace of Nijmegen became Roeselare a part of France and a frontier city famous for its illegal frontier traffic. There was no money to restore the belfry and hall that collapsed on the 30th October 1704. The fall of the tower caused a lot of damage. A smaller new hall burned down in 1749. Under the present-day grand place are the cellars of the old belfry.

In spite of all the disasters that came over Roeselare in the past, the Saint-Michaels Church is still in quite good condition. Because of heavy weather on the 19th January 1735 has the tower collapsed. The tower was rebuilt but a few ten metres shorter. The 3 big disasters are the reason that the church has 3 architectures. Around 1770, the townhall was built in rococostyle.

After the Battle of Waterloo became Roeselare Dutch again, untill the independence of Belgium that caused also poverty. The construction of the railway Kortrijk-Brugge (1838) and the invention of the steam-engine made the situation much better.
From 1862 till 1872, the canal to the river Leie was dug. That gave a boost to the economy. The industry in Roeselare and the population grew. Roeselare was kown as the Manchester of Belgium.

On the 28th July 1875 took the 'Groote Stooringe' place, a student-revolt against the use of French at school. The leader of this revolt was Albrecht Rodenbach, a writer who founded a lot of students' associations.

World War
The people of Roeselare suffered a lot during World War I. French soldiers, who left Roeselare, offered resistance but the Germans thougth that the inhabitants were shooting on them. Because of this misunderstanding, German soldiers killed 240 citizens and destroyed 252 houses on the 19th October 1914, called 'Schuwe Maandag'.

After the first World War was the city rebuilt but when that work was done, World War II started. The city has less suffered during this second World War and was liberated by Polish soldiers. Since that liberation, the square 'Woodmarket' (Houtmarkt) is now called 'Polenplein' and there are monuments for the killed soldiers.

Trade
During the 19th and the 20th century, Roeselare was known for its 'nieuwmarkters'. Nieuwmarkters were merchants / traders from the so called 'new market' and they formed in this neighbourhood a ghetto. Nieuwmarkters had their own language for example 'the Bargoens' to speak with each other  and people said that this merchants could sell everything to everybody. Even they did not speak very well French, German or English, they sold in Wallonia and to foreigners in Roeselare (for example during the two world wars) a lot of products with big profits. The small cheap houses in which the nieuwmarkters lived still exist today and you can see these houses around the Blekerijstraat and in a few streets around the old cemetery in Roeselare.

In the sixties started the REO-vegetables and fruit mart. This is today the biggest vegetables and fruit mart in Flanders. Since 1977 the town of Roeselare and the villages of Beveren, Oekene and Rumbeke form the present-day city.

Specialists think that the name of Roeselare refers to the elements Roes (= reed) + laar (= open space). So the place-name Roeselare means a marshy open space with reed in the wood.

Areas

Besides the centre of Roeselare proper, the municipality consists of the villages of Beveren, Oekene and Rumbeke.
Just like in a few other cities, there are in Roeselare several parts of town. These are:

Meiboom
Waterdam
Biezenhof
Lindeke
Havenbuurt
Zuidmolen
Schiervelde
Krottegem
Beekkwartier
Rodenbachkwartier
Sint-Jozef
Havenbuurt
Roeselare-Centre

The villages of Beveren and Rumbeke are because of new buildings connected with the centre of Roeselare. The small village of Oekene is situated between the open rural area to the south of the city and the urbanisation near Rumbeke. The conurbation of the city extends along the canal Roeselare-Leie to the conurbation of the smaller neighbour city of Izegem.

The municipality of Roeselare consists also of a few smaller hamlets. Along the road Roeselare-Menen (N32) lie successively the hamlet of Zilverberg, less than one kilometre to the south of the city centre, and almost two kilometres further the hamlet of Beitem. Both hamlets belong to the territory of the village of Rumbeke.

The city has a few Catholic parishes and a Protestant church.

The municipality of Roeselare borders on:

a.	Oostnieuwkerke (municipality of Staden)
b.	Hooglede (municipality of Hooglede)
c.	Gits (municipality of Hooglede)
d.	Lichtervelde (municipality of Lichtervelde)
e.	Koolskamp (municipality of Ardooie)
f.	Ardooie, with hamlet Tasse (municipality of Ardooie)
g.	Kachtem (municipality of Izegem)
h.	Izegem (municipality of Izegem)
i.	Sint-Eloois-Winkel (municipality of Ledegem)
j.	Rollegem-Kapelle (municipality of Ledegem)
k.	Ledegem (municipality of Ledegem)
l.	Moorslede (municipality of Moorslede)
m.	Passendale (municipality of Zonnebeke)

Tourism and attractions

Monuments

The Saint-Michaels Church is the most important church. It's a late Gothic church from 1504.
The Saint-Amands Church is a neo Roman church from 1869-1872, mostly built in brick.
The townhall consists of two parts. The old part dates from 1770-71 and is partly built in Rococostyle. In 1924 was a modern part added, with a belfry tower at the corner. Under the present-day grand place are the rests of the cityhall and the old belfry from ca 1260 that collapsed on the 30th October 1704. These rests were discovered again about ten years ago when the grand place was restored.
The Minor Seminary (Klein Seminarie) is a building with parts from the 17th till the 20th century. Original it was a cloister. In 1806 started the school 'Klein Seminarie' where Albrecht Rodenbach studied and where Guido Gezelle and Hugo Verriest teached. The additional church was built at the beginning of the 18th century.
The nunnery of the Arme Klaren was founded in 1867. Around 1871, they added a small church.
In 1868-1871 was the monastery for the fathers redemptorists (paters redemptoristen) built with in 1872-1874 a neo Gothic church, consecrated to Lady Mary of  Everlasting Support.
The parish church of the Sacred Heart is a church from 1933. It's a quite modern church with art deco characteristics that was built when, during the southern urbanisation, a separate Sacred Heart Parish was founded.
The Protestant church, also called 'Geuzentempel', is a small church from 1877.
The Brewery Rodenbach.
Just out of the city centre, in the village of Rumbeke, lies the Castle of Rumbeke at the Domain 'Sterrebos'.
In the city centre lies the old municipal cemetery.

Musea

Roeselare has a few musea such as the National Cycling Museum (WieMu). There are art galleries for example the Galery Alfons Blomme. In the tower of the Saint-Michaels church is the bell-tower museum. You can arrange a visit to see the filmmuseum which is a private collection.

Public parks

There is the Domain 'Sterrebos' and nature reserve 'De Kleiputten'. In the city centre you can take a rest in a few parks such as 'De Grote Bassin' which is a lake with green surroundings for example 'Het Sint-Sebastiaanspark' and 'Het Noordhof'. De 'Kleine Bassin' and 'De Ronde Kom' are two smaller lakes. You have also 'Het Rodenbachpark', 'Het Collegepark' and 'Het Heilig Hartpark' that are nice resting places in the city. You can enjoy the silence of the old municipal cemetery in the Groenestraat, the park of the famous inhabitants in popular language. In summer, there are parkconcerts in 'Het Sint-Sebastiaanspark', better known as 'De Grote Bassin'. The idea of 'garden-suburb' arised in the neighbourhood of Roeselare at the beginning of the last century. So was 'Batavia' one of the first garden-suburbs in Belgium.

Shopping
Roeselare has an important commerce centre. The most famous shopping-street is 'De Ooststraat'. The city centre is one big shopping-quarter. Important yearly shopping-events are 'De Winkelnacht' (= shopping-night),  'De Batjes' (= summer-sale), fun fairs, Christmas-shopping, street-events for example 'De Westlaanpromenade'.  Carnival and 'De Groote Stooringe' are city-festivals with a cultural importance. 'De Brugsesteenweg' is an approach road with a lot of medium size retail trade.

Events
The weekly market on Tuesday morning is a tradition in Roeselare and is organized at the Grand Place, 'De Botermarkt' and 'Het Polenplein'. These 3 squares are pedestrian precinct. On the 1st May, the inhabitants celebrate Labour Day at the station-square. Each year on the National Holiday (the 21st July) there is a street run with music.

Economy

Roeselare is in West-Flanders a regional commerce centre. There are a few shopping-streets in the city centre: Ooststraat, Noordstraat, Sint-Amandsstraat, Manestraat, Wallenstraat, Zuidstraat etc. These are situated around 4 squares: de Grote Markt (the Grand Place), het Polenplein, de Botermarkt en het De Coninckplein. There is also de Ardooisesteenweg, an approach road near the railway-station. Along the restored inner ring road (Noordlaan, Westlaan…) and the approach road Brugsesteenweg are a lot of big stores.

In the quarter 'Schiervelde' along the outer ring road is the Expo located. In this hall are commercial events where businesses show their services to business-people, -friends and the public. Examples of such events are: de Jaarbeurs, de Bouwbeurs, Agro Expo and Roslar Expo.

In Roeselare is the head-office and printing-business of Roularta Media Group located. The regional Television WTV-FOCUS broadcasts from the Accent Business Park. Roeselare is also known for the foodindustry (Soubry) and the lightdesign.

The most important business-sites and industrial estates are located to the north of Roeselare-city in Beveren and to the east along the canal Roeselare-Leie and the factory site 'Mandeldal'.

Transport and traffic

Roeselare has a central situation along the most important north-south connecting roads through the province. The highway A17/E403 passes by the city and has three exits to Roeselare. The road Brugge-Torhout-Roeselare-Menen (N32) dates from the Austrian time and runs parallel to the A17/E403.  De Westlaan, a half small ring road, leads the road-user around the historic centre of the city. A more recent ring road (R32) surrounds the whole built-up area of Roeselare and links also up to the highway A17.

At the end of 2014, the software of the parkingguidesystem was renewed. Along the approach roads, the motor drivers are informed about free parkings. The most important parkings in the centre are 'Wallenparking', 'De Munt' and 'B-Parking Station'.  When the city centre is shopping precinct, inhabitants and visitors are advised to use for example the parking of the Expo and / or to come into the centre with public transport (train, bus).

The city has a railway-station, the station of Roeselare, with two rails on the line Brugge-Kortrijk.  There is a half-hourly connection service with both cities. Near the railway-station is a busstation with 11 platforms. When the station was built in 1976-1979,  it looked modern at the time with a raising railway that replaced four level crossings. At the end of 2007, the municipality and several partners of public transport organizations decided to modernize the neighbourhood of the station. They invest together 35 million euro. The work was planned to be done in 2012 but they worked at the new building of the station until the summer of 2018. Meanwhile are the underground parking and new busstation ready. The surroundings of the station are mainly shopping precinct.

Sport and leisure

Since 1910, two football-clubs dominated in Roeselare: Sportvereniging Roeselare (after World War I known as SK Roeselare) and Football Club Roeselare (FC). In 1999 fused both clubs and in 2005 played that new club for the first time in the first division. In 2010 reduced the club back to the second division. The quarter 'Krottegem' and home of FC Roeselare started in 2000 again with that club.

Roeselare had a restored municipal swimming-bath, 'het Spillebad'. Since the summer of 2018, there is the new swimming-bath 'Sportoase Schiervelde'. There is sportinfrastructure in the villages of Beveren, Rumbeke and Roeselare proper (such as the Schiervelde Stadium, home of KSV Roeselare). Around 2000 was near that stadium a new sportaccommodation built for volleyball-club Knack Randstad Roeselare that belongs to the national top in Belgium. In that building, there are also concerts. Other sportclubs are Basketball-club BBC Wytewa (1957) and the Knack Handball-team Roeselare. The Rodenbach horsemen represent the city in the national ridersclubs.

Culture and education

Since 2014 a new knowledge and educationcentre ARhus with library was founded in the city centre. There are the municipal academy for music, word and dance (STAP in Dutch) 'Adriaan Willaert', the municipal academy for modern art (SASK in Dutch) and the cultural centre 'De Spil'.

There are a lot of schools in Roeselare of each level except for an university. The main providers of education such as Catholic education (ARKORUM), municipal education and community education are represented. There are rooms, pubs and festive halls for students. There are youth organizations, youth clubs and youth work. There are municipal play-grounds and recreation-grounds.

There are a lot of music associations for example: de Koninklijke Stadsharmonie Roeselare, de Koninklijke Harmonie 'Het Gildemuziek' Roeselare and Vox Musica, a youth choir with hundred members and an amateur theatrical company, 'het Spiegeltheater'.

Services

The two medium size hospitals of Roeselare, a municipal and private one, are fused at the beginning of 2015 and got the name AZ Delta.

The magazine 'RSL' explains the municipal policy and the magazine 'Uit' describes which social-cultural activities take place in a specified period.

Other websites

 Official city website

References

Municipalities of West Flanders

Roeselare


A scorewriter, or music notation program is software for creating, editing and printing sheet music. A scorewriter is to music notation what a word processor is to text, in that they typically provide flexible editing and automatic layout, and produce high-quality printed results.

Most scorewriters, especially those from the 2000s, can record notes played on a MIDI keyboard (or other MIDI instruments), and play music back via MIDI or virtual instruments. Playback is especially useful for novice composers and music students, and when musicians are not available or affordable. Several free programs are widely used, such as MuseScore. The three main professional-level programs are Finale, Sibelius and Dorico.

Comparison with multitrack sequencer software
Multitrack sequencer software and scorewriters typically employ different methods for notation input and display.

Scorewriters are based on traditional music notation, using staff lines and round note heads, which originates from European classical music. They use symbols representing durations in sound and silence, dynamics, articulations and tempo. Some also allow users to import and/or create their own symbols. Multitrack sequencer software typically uses a multitrack recorder metaphor as the main interface, with multiple tracks and track segments. Individual tracks can be edited using graphic notation in the form of a "piano roll"-guided input for the control of MIDI-based hardware and software instruments.

A third approach has also emerged that combines the first two input methods into a digital audio workstation, allowing users to score parts using traditional notation, the graphic notation of the piano roll, and recording acoustic or electronic instruments in real time alongside the existing scores. With all three methods, the computer keyboard, mouse, and a MIDI musical keyboard can be used to enter music that can then be edited with traditional or piano-roll-based notation.

History
The rapid growth of desktop computers in the 1980s saw the creation of dozens of early scorewriters (see list of scorewriters). They were a boon to young composers, music educators and composition students, providing a much less expensive way to create scores and parts for orchestral music and other works. However, they were hard to use; and while scores were readable, they did not look like professionally engraved scores or parts. An exception was SCORE notation software. Developed in the late '80s, it was used mostly by commercial publishers, as its price put it out of the reach of most non-professional composers/copyists. During the 1990s, many of these early programs, such as the Mosaic notation program, fell into disuse, as newer programs surpassed them in ease of use and output quality. Finale and Sibelius were released, with high-quality output and a wide range of sophisticated features that made them suitable for almost all kinds of music applications.

By 2000, the market was dominated by Finale (particularly in the US) and Sibelius (which had dominated the UK since 1993, and expanded worldwide after its Windows release in 1998). Inexpensive programs such as capella gained a significant share of the market in some countries. Sibelius and Finale still dominated the market as of 2012.

In 2006, Sibelius was purchased by Avid. In a 2012 restructuring, Sibelius's London office was closed and the development team dismissed. In February 2013, Steinberg announced it had hired the former Sibelius team to create a new scorewriter, Dorico, which was released in October 2016. The trio of Finale, Sibelius and Dorico are today's leading professional-level programs.

Functionality

All scorewriters allow the user to input, edit and print music notation to varying degrees of sophistication. They range from programs which can write a simple song, piano piece or guitar tab, to those that can handle the complexities of orchestral music, specialist notations (from early music to avant-garde), and high-quality music engraving.

Music can usually be input using the mouse, computer keyboard, or a MIDI keyboard. A few allow input by scanning scores using musical OCR; by playing or singing into a microphone; or by using a touch screen.

Most scorewriters also allow users to play the music back, using MIDI or virtual instruments such as VST instruments. The screen can show at one time both the score and, by changing the colour of keys on a virtual piano's keyboard, the notes being played. Although sequencers can also write some musical notation, they are primarily for recording and playing music. Scorewriters can typically write more complex and sophisticated notation than sequencers can.

Some scorewriters allow users to customize and fine-tune the printed output to a considerable degree, as is required by publishers to produce high-quality music engraving and to suit their individual house style.

A few scorewriters allow users to publish scores on the Internet, where they can be (for example) played back, transposed, and printed out, perhaps for a fee.

Most scorewriters provide other musical functions such as transposing; producing separate instrumental parts from a full score; or applying musical transformations such as retrograde. Some can automatically create instrumental exercises and student worksheets. Some support plug-ins, often developed by users or other companies. Other features may include version control, change tracking, graphics import and export, Post-It-like sticky notes, etc.

File formats
Almost all scorewriters use their own file formats for saving files. Hence, in order to move notation between different scorewriters (or to/from other kinds of music software such as sequencers), most scorewriters can also import or export one or more standard interchange file formats, such as:

Standard MIDI File is supported by almost all scorewriters. However, as this format was designed for playback (e.g. by sequencers) rather than notation, it only produces approximate results and much notational information is lost in the process. If the score is to be presented, a WAV file (rather than MIDI) may be made from the score to give a more natural and accurate rendition of the written score.
MusicXML has in recent years (as of 2012) become the standard interchange format for accurate notation.
NIFF is a now-obsolete file format that was supported by a few scorewriters.

This Comparison of scorewriters details which score writers can import and export to PDF, text (ASCII), picture (PNG, SVG, EMF) and sound (Vorbis OGG) file formats.

There are also human-readable text-based formats such as ABC notation, LilyPond, ASCII tab and NoteWorthy Composer text files. These are easily rendered as speech by screen reading software. The  to MediaWiki can render, and generate an audio preview of, the first two formats.

See also
Comparison of scorewriters
International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
Player piano
Scorereader
List of music software

References

External links
Musical notation codes – information on most known musical notation file formats
Comparison of 200 Music Fonts from Standard Notation Software
List of typeset music formats, International Music Score Library Project

Music software

Scorewriter


Babbitt metal is a metal that has very little friction. It is used for bearings. It can be made from tin, copper, antimony, or lead. Normally it is a certain mixture of these metals. It is very soft. There are harder and softer parts in it, though. This creates small holes where grease can go in when the soft parts rub away. An item with bearings could be a fidget spinner or a bicycle wheel.

Alloys

Babbitt metal


The RPK is a Soviet machine gun that was designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov. The RPK is a replacement of the older RPD. The RPK production began in 1961 and ended in 1978. The RPK-74 began in 1974 replacing the older RPK. The RPK was based on the AK-47. The RPK was used by the NVA and Viet Congs in the Vietnam War.

Machine guns

RPK machine gun


Washington Bangla Radio on Internet (WBRi) is an online streaming Bengali language radio station and associated news and entertainment web portal that operated from Washington, DC metro area in the United States. The free service was provided until July 2016 by privately owned WBRi Inc. headquartered at Germantown, Maryland, United States, which also owned the trademark and has been featured in SPAN magazine published by the United States Department of State for bridging India-US cultures.

Founded in 2008 by Indian-American computing enthusiast Supratim Sanyal, Washington Bangla Radio is one of the oldest legal online Bengali radio stations with a private test stream running from 2005.

Washington Bangla Radio pioneered digital music download sales in the Bengali music segment and provides a highly targeted digital sales channel to record companies from Kolkata. Its online store service remains the only MP3 download store dedicated to Bengali music.

WBRi became the first South Asia focused internet radio service to broadcast an event live globally from India on Sunday June 21, 2009, when it streamed Kolkata Music Academy's World Music Day Concert conducted by Abraham Mazumder directly from St. John's Church, the Oldest Cathedral in Kolkata where Job Charnock's Tomb is laid. It subsequently streamed more live events, with the first worldwide live video webcast from Kolkata of Balaka's Kali Puja from BD Block, Salt Lake in 2011.

For its contribution to growth of technology-based media convergence, the Gazette weekly[4] published from Montgomery county, Maryland featured WBRi on its front page.

References

Asian-American culture in Maryland
Asian-American culture in Washington, D.C.
Bangladeshi-American culture
Bengali-American culture
Bengali-language radio stations
Foreign-language radio stations in the United States
Indian-American culture
Internet radio stations in the United States
Radio stations in Washington, D.C.
2008 establishments in Maryland
Indian-American culture in Maryland
Indian-American culture in Washington, D.C.

Washington Bangla Radio on Internet


Francis Clay (November 16, 1923 – January 21, 2008) was an American jazz and blues drummer, best known for his work behind Muddy Waters in the 1950s and 1960s, and as an original member of the James Cotton band. Clay's jazz-influenced style is cited as an influence by many of the British Invasion rock 'n' rollers of the 1960s such as Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones and Faces, respectively.

Born and raised in Rock Island, Illinois, he started playing jazz, professionally at the age of 15, played drums behind many of the biggest names of 20th century popular American music.

In his career, Clay claimed to have backed Gypsy Rose Lee, and played with Jay McShann and Charlie Parker early on and with Jimi Hendrix while in New York's Greenwich Village. He can be heard on recordings including John Lee Hooker's Live at Cafe Au Go Go and can be seen and heard on documents from the Waters band's 1960 Newport Jazz Festival appearance, and on albums issued by the Arhoolie label by Big Mama Thornton and Lightning Hopkins, among many others.

Clay made his home in San Francisco in the late 1960s and became a part of the music scene in the Bay Area throughout the rest of his life. His birthday parties at the Biscuits and Blues nightclub were an annual gathering of the tribe, and he was known also as "the ambassador" at the annual San Francisco Blues Festival, where he was the subject of a tribute in 2007, and mourned in 2008.

Clay claimed to have been deprived of recognition for his compositional contributions to the Waters oeuvre. Songs he claimed to have composed and/or arranged included "Walking in the Park," "She's Nineteen Years Old" and "Tiger in Your Hole."

Discography

With John Lee Hooker
Live at Cafe Au Go Go (BluesWay, 1967)
With Lightnin' Hopkins
Lightnin'! (Poppy, 1969)
In the Key of Lightnin' (Tomato, 1969 [2002])
Lightning Hopkins in Berkeley (Arhoolie, 1969 [1972])
With Jimmy Rogers
Jimmy Rogers (Chess, 1950–60)
With Otis Spann
The Blues Is Where It's At (BluesWay, 1966)
With Muddy Waters
Muddy Waters Sings "Big Bill" (Chess, 1960)
At Newport 1960 (Chess, 1960)
Folk Singer (Chess, 1964)

References

Bibliography
Ronnie, by Ronnie Wood, St. Martin's Press, 2007,

1923 births
2008 deaths
People from Rock Island, Illinois
American jazz musicians
20th-century American musicians
American blues drummers
Jazz musicians from Illinois

Francis Clay


The Square René Viviani (Official French name: Square René Viviani-Montebello) is a public square adjacent to the Church of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre in the 5th arrondissement of Paris.

Location
The Square René Viviani is a city park located slightly to the north of the Gothic church of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, built at the same time as Notre-Dame Cathedral and consequently one of Paris' oldest churches. Disaffected during the Revolution, in the 19th century the ruinous church was taken over by the city's Greek Melchite Church and is today the center of that religious community in Paris. The Square is an irregular polygon in shape, bounded by the Rue Galande and church buildings to the south; by the Rue Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre on the west; by the Quai de Montebello to the north; and by the Rue Lagrange and the Rue du Fouarre on the east.  The Rue de la Bûcherie ends on the western side of the square, but it resumes its course on the eastern side, and the Pont au Double, a bridge to the Île de la Cité, lies across the Quai de Montebello from the square. The Square René Viviani offers one of the best views of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in all of Paris.

Around the corner, in the Rue de la Bûcherie, stands the well-known English-language bookshop, Shakespeare and Company, established in 1951. In 1964 founder George Whitman named it after Sylvia Beach's former legendary bookshop and independent publishing house near the Place de l'Odéon, which first published James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses and was a literary center for English-speaking writers until it was closed in 1941 when Germany occupied France.

Inside the square, there are two features, other than the lawns, walkways, well-trimmed plane trees, and benches, that deserve a mention here.  There is an odd-looking fountain, known as the Saint Julien fountain, that was erected in 1995.  It is the work of the French sculptor, Georges Jeanclos (1933–1997), and it is emblematic of the legend of St. Julien the Hospitaller, a tale, now largely discounted, involving a curse by witches, a talking deer, a case of mistaken identity, a horrific crime, several improbable coincidences, and a supernatural intervention.  The story was told and retold during the Middle Ages, and it became a favorite.  Consequently, hospitals, hospices, and churches all over Europe adopted Julien as their patron. He was also a patron saint of hunters, innkeepers, and ferrymen; traveling pilgrims often prayed for his help in finding comfortable lodgings.

The other feature worthy of note is an ancient tree that is surrounded by a circular curbstone.

History
Before 1909, this plot was occupied by one of the annexes of the Hôtel-Dieu, the ancient Paris hospital on the nearby Île de la Cité. In even earlier times, monastic buildings, dormitories and a refectory belonging to the Clunesian priory of St. Julien, occupied this site. Earlier still, this place was a cemetery established next to a 6th-century basilica, the original Church of St. Julien. Merovingian-era graves and tombs were excavated near the walls of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre during the 19th century. Some of the relics are now in the Carnavalet Museum.

Here and there on the square, there are odd pieces of carved stone. They are pieces of architectural rubble salvaged from the Cathedral of Notre Dame, when, during the 19th century, the exterior of the cathedral was partially restored by the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. Many of the most seriously degraded pieces of carved limestone were replaced by newly carved reproductions, and the older pieces were eventually deposited here.

The square is noted for being the site of the oldest planted tree in Paris.  The Robinia pseudoacacia, a species commonly known as a locust tree, is believed to have been planted by its namesake, Jean Robin (1550–1620), in 1601; if so, it has now been standing on the rive gauche for over four hundred years.  It is supported by two concrete crutches.  The tree lost its upper branches to a shell during World War I, but it proves its continuing vitality by blooming every year. Despite some speculation about its true age, it is universally recognized as the oldest tree in the city.

Metro station
The Square René Viviani is:

It is served by lines 4 and 10.

René Viviani
The Square René Viviani is named for the French political figure René Viviani (1863–1925) who, notably, was France's first Minister of Labour. After several old buildings standing on the site were cleared away in 1928, including an annex of the public hospital across the river, the empty space was arranged to be a public park.

References

External links

Le square René Viviani-Montebello on Paris.fr

Rene Viviani
Buildings and structures in the 5th arrondissement of Paris

Square René-Viviani


Xexyz (pronounced zeks'-zees/zeks'-iz), known in Japan as , is a 1988 video game published by Hudson Soft for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The game was released in Japan on August 26, 1988, and saw a North American release sometime in April 1990. The game was never released in Europe and the game is not playable on PAL consoles.

The story takes place in the post-apocalyptic year of 2777, after Earth has been devastated by nuclear war and natural disasters, with the island nation of Xexyz now being threatened by alien robots.

The Japanese Famicom version is based on the tales of Urashima Tarō, features cutscenes throughout the game, a choice of three endings and has minor graphical differences in some of the NPCs.

Gameplay
The game revolves around the main character Apollo, who progresses through the game in an alternating format that switches between platform, side-scrolling action (similar to the Super Mario Bros. series) and side-scrolling shooter action (similar to Konami's Gradius series). The goal of the game is to destroy the evil Goruza, rescue Princess Maria, and save the planet.

In the platforming levels, defeated enemies drop life ('L' blocks) or money ('E' blocks) power-ups. Apollo can collect the currency of the land ('Balls'/'E Ball') in order to exchange it for power-ups and information, as well as access to minigames. Vendors are scattered throughout the platforming levels through doors or hidden gates. In the shooter levels, the player can obtain 'S' and 'P' items that upgrade speed and weapons, respectively.

Platformer gameplay
The odd-numbered stages in the game (1, 3, 5, etc.) utilize mostly platform-style gameplay. These stages work in the familiar manner; the character progresses at his/her own pace, picking up new weapons and power-ups along the way. To leave the initial area of each of these levels the player has to collect a "force star" by defeating an enemy found in a hidden room. Once this star is obtained the character is able to enter the "mechanical castle" in the region. The mechanical castles, being mazelike indoor environments full of robots and machines, stand in stark contrast to the earlier parts of each level, which are organic outdoor environments. Each mechanical castle also has a brief auto-scrolling shooter segment through which the player must pass; these segments foreshadow the imminent transition to the following even-numbered stages. The segments in question consist of a sequence of corridors, at the end of which are two doors; choosing the wrong door loops the player back. Finally, at the very end of each mechanical castle, there is a door leading to a boss fight. The boss fights are set against a solid black background and Apollo must fight while standing on a controllable floating platform.

Side-scrolling shooter gameplay
For the even-numbered stages (2, 4, 6, etc.) the character is prompted to jump into a vehicle (a different one each time) and take part in an auto-scrolling Gradius-like level ending with a boss fight.

Boss fights

In the transition area after the platform-style levels, prior to the boss fight, Apollo is prompted to jump on a platform that lets him float. After moving into a previously out-of-reach door, the fight begins.

In side-scrolling shooter areas, the player simply appears in a boss area in the ship they played the level in.

The fights consist of a black area where the player fights a giant robot/ship. Their attack pattern, resembling that of a Manic shooter, is repetitive and avoidable; the player shoots the boss with either their conventional weapon or the in-ship weapon.

Tube Shooter gameplay
The final level is a "fixed" shooter. More specifically, it is a "tube shooter" where the player approaches the last boss's fortress and attempts to destroy it. Apollo, in a more enhanced ship than any seen before, rotates from the sides of the screen to the bottom, shooting at the center while avoiding enemy fire.

Weapons and items
Apollo receives weapons and items from a goddess character to help him on his way. All weapons can be powered up by visiting a shop that specializes in powering up weapons, or by talking to the goddess character a second time.

Reception

Xexyz was met with generally positive reception from critics. However, public reception in Japan was mixed; in a poll taken by Family Computer Magazine, it received a score of 18.38 out of 30.

References

External links

 Xexyz at MobyGames

1988 video games
Atlus games
Hudson Soft games
Nintendo Entertainment System games
Nintendo Entertainment System-only games
Platformers
Post-apocalyptic video games
Video games developed in Japan
Video games scored by Hirohiko Takayama
Video games set in castles
Video games set in the 28th century
Single-player video games

Xexyz


The Transcontinental Airway System was a navigational aid deployed in the United States during the 1920s.

History

In 1923, the United States Congress funded a sequential lighted airway along the transcontinental airmail route. The lighted airway was proposed by National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and deployed by the Department of Commerce. It was managed by the Bureau of Standards Aeronautical Branch. The first segment built was between Chicago and Cheyenne, Wyoming. It was situated in the middle of the airmail route to enable aircraft to depart from either coast in the daytime, and reach the lighted airway by nightfall. Lighted emergency airfields were also funded along the route every 15–20 miles.

Construction pace was fast, and pilots wishing to become airmail pilots were first exposed to the harsh wintertime work with the crews building the first segments of the lighting system.

By the end of the year, the public anticipated anchored lighted airways across the Atlantic, Pacific, and to China.

The first nighttime airmail flights started on July 1, 1924. By eliminating the transfer of mail to rail cars at night, the coast to coast delivery time for airmail was reduced by two business days. Eventually, there were 284 beacons in service. With a June 1925  deadline, the 2,665 mile lighted airway was completed from New York to San Francisco. In 1927, the lighted airway was complete between New York City and Salt Lake City, Los Angeles to Las Vegas, Los Angeles to San Francisco, New York to Atlanta, and Chicago to Dallas, 4121 miles in total. In 1933, the Transcontinental Airway System totaled 1500 beacons, and 18000 miles

Technical

The lighted Airway Beacons were a substantial navigation aid in an era prior to the development of radio navigation. However, their effectiveness was limited by visibility and weather conditions.

 diameter rotating beacons were mounted on  high towers, and spaced ten miles apart. The spacing was closer in the mountains, and farther apart in the plains. The beacons were five million candlepower, and rotated six times a minute. "Ford beacons" (named after Ford Car headlights) were also used, placing four separate lights at different angles.
Airports used green beacons and airways used red beacons. The beacons flashed identification numbers in Morse code. The sequence was "WUVHRKDBGM", which prompted the mnemonic "When Undertaking Very Hard Routes Keep Directions By Good Methods". Engineers believed the variations of beacon height along hills and valleys would allow pilots to see beacons both above ground fog, and below cloud layers.

Towers were built of numbered angle iron sections with concrete footings. Some facilities used concrete arrows pointing in the direction of towers. In areas where no connection to a power grid was available, a generator was housed in a small building. Some buildings also served as weather stations. Many arrow markings were removed during World War II, to prevent aiding enemy bombers in navigation. Nineteen updated beacons remained in service in Montana until 2018, maintained by the Montana Department of Transportation's Aviation Division.

Gallery

References

External links

A comprehensive map of airway beacons with downloadable beacon data   The Survey Station
Concrete Arrows and the U.S. Airmail Beacon System.   Sometimes Interesting. 04 Dec 2013
 "Arrows Across America; Transcontinental Air Mail Routes"

Air traffic control
Aviation history of the United States

Transcontinental Airway System


Johannes Wildner (born 1956) is an Austrian conductor, conducting professor, and former member violinist with the Vienna Philharmonic.

Biography
Born in Mürzzuschlag, Austria, Wildner studied conducting, violin and musicology and has established himself as one of the foremost Austrian conductors.

His years of experience as a member of the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna State Opera Orchestra have given his conducting a distinctive stamp. After positions as Chief Conductor of Prague State Opera (1994–95) and First Permanent Conductor of Leipzig Opera (1996–98), Wildner was the General Music Director of the  for ten years from 1997. He has been Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra in London from 2010 to 2014. In 2014 he became the director of the Austrian opera festival  in Gars am Kamp. He was appointed Professor of Conducting at the Vienna University of Music with the effect of October 1, 2014. From 2019/2020, Johannes Wildner will also be the Chief Conductor of Sønderjyllands Symphony Orchestra in Sønderborg, Denmark.

He regularly appears as a guest conductor in major opera houses such as the New National Theatre Tokyo, the Arena di Verona, Leipzig, Vienna Volksoper, Graz, Salzburg, Prague and Zagreb State Opera, and with orchestras such as the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra London, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana at the Teatro Politeama, Palermo, the MDR Symphony, the Dresden Philharmonic, the Vienna Symphony, the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Bruckner Orchestra Linz, the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, the China Philharmonic, and the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.

Wildner has recorded over 100 CDs, DVDs and videos, including Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus and Mozart's Così fan tutte, live recordings of Carmen and Le nozze di Figaro, Bruckner's Third and Ninth symphonies, and various CDs of previously unknown repertoire by Erich Zeisl, Joseph Marx and Johann Nepomuk David. In 2010 he released Robert Schumann's complete works for piano and orchestra, with pianist Lev Vinocour and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. In 2013, a recording of Beethoven's violin concerto with violinist Alexandre Da Costa and Beethoven's Seventh Symphony with Taipei Symphony Orchestra was released, as well as recordings of works by Walter Braunfels and Frédéric d'Erlanger with the BBC Concert Orchestra.

Opera Burg Gars
List of performances at Opera Burg Gars under Wildner's direction
 2014: Der Freischütz by Carl Maria von Weber
 2015: Don Carlos by Giuseppe Verdi
 2016: Otello by Giuseppe Verdi
 2017: Die Zauberflöte by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
2018: Tosca, by Giacomo Puccini
2019: Fidelio by Ludwig van Beethoven

References

External links

1956 births
Living people
Male conductors (music)
Austrian violinists
Male violinists
Austrian opera directors
People from Mürzzuschlag
21st-century Austrian conductors (music)
21st-century violinists
21st-century male musicians
Players of the Vienna Philharmonic

Johannes Wildner


Avintes is a Portuguese civil parish in the municipality of Vila Nova de Gaia. The population in 2021 was 10,838, in an area of 8.82 km2. It is known in Portugal as "Terra da Broa", meaning "Land of the Broa", referring to the Broa de Avintes, a typical farmhouse bread widely consumed in Northern Portugal, which originated in Avintes.

History

Some origins of the parish, date back to the early settlement during the Megalithic cultures of the Iberian peninsula; there are references to the area of Arcas, an ancient necropole, designated for its dolmens that might have been constructed in this region. Arcas and Arcaínhas were synonymous with Celtic dolmen and Castro culture populations. Yet, other historians suggest this name was actually a corruption of the term Areias referring to "sand". Regardless, few direct links specify the association with Neolithic cultures and settlement, although most assume that region was settled by Castro builders. Roman occupation of the peninsula occurred from the 2nd century B.C., forcing-out many of the indigenous cultures and imposing a provincial system in which the region of Avintes was part of the much larger Scallabitanus. There, too, is little to substantiate Roman occupation of this area. Even the celebrated "Roman bridge" over the Febros is likely medieval in construction.

After successive politico-administrative reorganizations (first by the Suebi, then the Visigoths), the region was taken by Arab forces from the south, following the Battle of Guadalete, in 714. The Reconquista that retook the lands south of the Douro, brought the region under the domain of the Galician province of Coimbra temporarily, under the regency of Count Vimara Peres, who organized the defense of the lands for King Alfonso III. But the land returned to Arab control around the 10th century. It was during this time that the first concrete reference to the village of Abientes, by celebrated writer D. Gundesindo, appeared (today in the Torre do Tombo), but whose reproduction is uncertain, even as Alexandre Herculano transcribed it.

Avintes was later referenced during the Inquirições (Inquiries) of King Afonso III in 1258, where it pertained to the judicial sector of Gondomar (south of the Douro River).  In similar inquiries during the reign of King Denis, around 1284 (or 1288), the area was referenced as São Pedro de Avintes, where its religious limits were identified and its stewardship fixed to its vicar, Martim Anes. Little more is mentioned of the area, which was part of the parish of Seixezelo.

In 1300, the religious administration was donated to the Monastery of Santo Tirso, through a donation made by D. Constança Gil, who transferred several lands in Avintes, along the Douro, Porto and Soalhães, in memory of her husband and son, D. Gomes Sobrado and Martim Anes, respectively. Yet, by 16 April 1346, these lands were under the stewardship of the clerics of the Monastery of Pedroso.  By 1487, it, once again, changed hands, passing to the Brandão family, through the donation made by D. Francisco de Sonsa, Abbott of Pedroso to Fernão Brandão.  Fernão Brandão and his son, Diogo Brandão, were masters of the Estates of Avintes, and their descendants, by matrimonial descent, Counts of Avintes and Marquesses of Lavradio.

It was the daughter of Diogo Brandão, D. Isabel Brandão, who married, in 1570, D. Francisco de Almeida (eldest son of D. João de Almeida, Governor General of Tangiers and Governor of Angola), thus transferring the Estates of Avintes to the Almeida clan. D. Luís de Almeida received the title of Count of Avintes on 17 February 1664 from King Afonso, and in 1689 from King Peter II full rights of donatario to the comarca. The history of the Almeidas is ripe with grand deeds and illustrious personalities, who occupied their seat in Avintes until the First Portuguese Republic. On 17 January 1725, the fourth Count, D. António de Almeida Soares Portugal, was made Count of Lavradio by King John V, in recognition of the service of his uncle, D. Tomaz de Almeida, first patriarch of Lisbon; by royal proclamation, signed 18 October 1753, the family was elevated to the status of Marquesses of Lavradio (António de Almeida Soares Portugal who was also Governor of Angola and Viceroy of Brasil).

During the French invasion of the peninsula, Avintes was likely a sideshow; the parish did not have part in the great battles, although the Duke of Wellington may have chased Marshall Soult's forces, crossing the Douro in the immediate location, since crossing at Porto would have been difficult. Osório Gondim, was clearer, when he pronounced that "...nothing occurred here of note, unless you count the sack of the church". General Junot ordered all objects of value be carted to Porto, and from there they escaped to France.

During the Liberal Wars, Avintes hosted several pro- and anti-Miguelist/Absolutist disturbances: like an old woman who was injured by pro-Liberal supporters for having cheered passing Miguelist forces; or the time after the breaking of the siege of Porto, when there celebrating in Valbom, a Miguelist regiment attacked sympathizers traveling to the festival-like party, causing only one death in Avintes, while in Gramido the bodies covered the ground.

With these events, on 16 May 1832, Avintes became a municipality (formalized on 28 June 1834), and the first municipal council is installed in Tulha dos Dízimos on the 1 June, presided by António Francisco Aleixo (elected in September 1834). This small council had a working budget of 37,635 réis, in addition to a tax of meat sales, and a fee on sales made in the market along the Largo da Gandra (which itself had been operating since the reign of John IV).

Geography
It is a town (pt. Vila) on the left bank of river Douro, east of the city of Gaia and south of Porto.

Architecture

Although best known for its Baroque-era church, the parish has a small number of classified architectural constructions dating back to the early period of Portuguese expansion. These include:

Civic
 Audience Stones (), constructed in mid-18th century, at a time when Avintes was a municipality in its own right, the audience stones comprise three stone benches and table in the raised platform central to the parish, originally used meetings and trials. In addition, an oak tree is part of the collection of objects;
 Manorhouse of the Estate of Santo Inácio de Fiães (), a signeurial estate and residence, dated to the 17th century

Religious
 Church of São Pedro de Avintes (), which was constructed in 1758, under the direction of Jacome do Lago, following a Baroque-style;
 Cross of Alferes (), constructed in 1737, by an ensign, recognizable for the image of Nossa Senhora do Bom Successo (Our Lady of Good Success), which surmounts the cross.

Tourism

Gaia Biological Park (Parque Biológico de Gaia) is a 34-acre natural reserve which features diverse flora and fauna in their natural habitat. Founded in 1983, it features more than 40 species of wild birds and a 3 km pedestrian route.
 Saint Inácio Zoo (Zoo Santo Inácio) founded in 2000, is the biggest zoo in Northern Portugal, housing more than 800 animals of 270 different species.
 Areinho de Avintes, an area surrounding the fluvial beach bathed by the Douro. Frequented by a lot of Gaia residents in the Summer time for beach-going, picnics, sports and other leisure activities.
 Monument to Combatants (Monumento aos Combatentes), a sculpture honoring the memory of all the Avintes citizens who fought in the Portuguese Colonial War, specially the 10 who perished.

People
 Maria Isabel Wittenhall van Zeller, a pioneer of smallpox vaccination in Portugal, was born in Avintes in 1749.
 António Fernandes de Sá, sculptor, was born in Avintes in 1874.
 Henrique Moreira, sculptor, was born in Avintes in 1890.
 Manuel Pereira da Silva, sculptor, was born in Avintes in 1920.
 José Vaz, writer, was born in Avintes in 1940.
 Adriano Correia de Oliveira, musician known for his fado and protest music was raised in Avintes since few months old.
 Joaquim Pinto Vieira, painter, was born in Avintes in 1946.
 Tulipa, ex-footballer and football manager, was born in Avintes in 1972.

Futebol Clube de Avintes
Founded in 23 July of 1923, Futebol Clube de Avintes is the local football club. As of the 2022/23 season, the senior team, coached by Bruno Cunha, competes in the Divisão de Elite of the Porto Football Association, equivalent to the Portuguese 5th tier. The club's president is Rúben Rodrigues Pereira.

See also
Broa de Avintes, a bread from the region
Count of Avintes

References
Notes

Sources

Freguesias of Vila Nova de Gaia

Avintes


Chai Zemin (; October 1916 – June 7, 2010) was a Chinese diplomat, and the first ambassador of the People's Republic of China to the United States after the normalization of the Sino-US relationship in 1979.

Early life
Chai Zemin was born in October 1916 in an ordinary family in Wenxi, Shanxi. After he graduated from high school, he became politically active and joined the Communist Party of China.

Chai's career as a diplomat started in December 1960 when he entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China. He was appointed China's ambassador to Hungary in 1961, to Guinea in 1964, and to Egypt in 1970.

In 1975, China and Thailand established diplomatic relations, and Chai became the first China's ambassador to Thailand. During his two-and-half-year term in Thailand, he experienced two general elections, three coups d'état, four different prime ministers and five different governments in the country. It had been a great challenge for him to work in such a turbulent environment, and the King of Thailand awarded him a White Elephant Medal for his diplomatic achievement.

In the summer of 1978, China and the United States started negotiations on normalizing relations between the two countries, and Chai Zemin took the position of director in the People's Republic of China Liaison Office (PRCLO) in Washington, D.C., and participated in the negotiations. It was agreed at the end of 1978 that China and the United States would officially establish relations on January 1, 1979, and set up embassies and appoint ambassadors to each other's country. Chai thus became the first China's ambassador to the United States thirty years after the founding of the People's Republic of China.

In the fall of 1981, Michigan State University conferred an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws on Chai for his contributions to China–US relations.

In 1983, Chai Zeming left his ambassador position and assumed the title of vice director of the Chinese Foreign Affairs Society, and had since been a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference for three terms.

In the early 1990s, Chai resigned his position at the Chinese Foreign Affairs Society, and afterwards, he became director and consultant of a number of other societies and organizations.

References

1916 births
2010 deaths
Politicians from Yuncheng
Ambassadors of China to Hungary
Ambassadors of China to the United States
Ambassadors of China to Thailand
Ambassadors of China to Egypt
Ambassadors of China to Guinea
Chinese Communist Party politicians from Shanxi
People's Republic of China politicians from Shanxi
Chinese Esperantists
Diplomats of the People's Republic of China

Chai Zemin