Rocket Cottage is the ninth studio album by British folk rock band Steeleye Span. It was released  in 1976 by Chrysalis Records. Produced by Mike Batt, it was hoped that the album would cement the band's popular and commercial success, building on their breakthrough into the UK Top 10 with their previous album All Around My Hat and its title track, which reached #5 on the UK singles chart. By the time it was released, the sudden explosion of the British Punk scene saw audience tastes in the UK rapidly shift away from formerly popular genres like folk rock and progressive rock, and groups that previously been critical favourites, like Steeleye Span and Yes, soon found themselves being derided as "dinosaurs". Rocket Cottage did not reach the Top 40, and it was the last album recorded by the "classic" mid-seventies lineup of the group, with Peter Knight and Bob Johnson both subsequently leaving the group.

The album is perhaps the band's most rock-influenced album, with very prominent guitars and a strong rhythm section.  Some fans consider this one of the band's best efforts, pointing to strong tracks like "London", "Fighting for Strangers", "Sir James the Rose", and "Orfeo/Nathan's Reel", the first three of which became classics of the band and fan favorites.  Others, however, find the album erratic, complaining that the band's rhythm section tends to overwhelm the vocals, particularly on "Orfeo", "The Twelve Witches", and (to a lesser extent) "The Brown Girl". Oddly for an instrumental piece, "Nathan's Reel" simply fades out.  The most peculiar decision was the inclusion of an unrehearsed version of "Camptown Racetrack"; years later Maddy Prior remarked, "I can't think what we were thinking of with that." This was the band's ninth album in five years, and many feel that their exhaustion is evident.

Peter Knight has said that the band was being pressured to write and adapt music for the commercial market, which led to considerable dissatisfaction among the band members. Both he and Bob Johnson were seriously considering leaving the band, particularly because they wanted to work on a musical version of The King of Elfland's Daughter, Chrysalis Records agreed to allow them to record that album if they agreed to record 'Rocket'. Lacking any interest in the album that Knight and Johnson produced, Chrysalis made little effort to promote the album, and Knight and Johnson chose to depart the band after 'Rocket'  was released.

Personnel
Steeleye Span
Maddy Prior - vocals
Tim Hart - vocals, guitar
Bob Johnson - vocals, guitar
Rick Kemp - bass guitar, vocals
Peter Knight - violin, mandolin
Nigel Pegrum - drums

Track listing
"London" (Hart, Johnson, Kemp, Knight, Pegrum, Prior) – 4:14
"The Bosnian Hornpipes" (Traditional) – 0:57
"Orfeo/Nathan's Reel" (Hart, Johnson, Kemp, Knight, Pegrum, Prior) – 6:00
"The Twelve Witches" (Traditional) – 4:32
"The Brown Girl" (Hart, Johnson, Kemp, Knight, Pegrum, Prior) – 5:05
"Fighting for Strangers" (Traditional) – 4:25
"Sligo Maid" (Traditional) – 3:44
"Sir James the Rose" (Traditional) – 6:15
"The Drunkard" (Traditional, prefaced by Camptown Racetrack) – 7:55

References

1976 albums
Chrysalis Records albums
Steeleye Span albums
Albums produced by Mike Batt

Rocket Cottage


The Karlovci Gymnasium () is the high school (gymnasium) located in the town of Sremski Karlovci. It is the oldest secondary school in Serbia. This type of school is comparable to U.S. college preparatory schools or English grammar schools.

History

Under foreign rule
After the Treaty of Karlowitz, the early eighteenth century was a difficult time for the Serbs in their northern lands (particularly in the region now called Vojvodina) under the new yoke of the Habsburg monarchy. The principle Cuius regio, eius religio was still in force throughout central Europe, though now pointing at members of the Eastern Orthodox Church instead of the Protestants. Judicial torture and cruel methods of execution were part of the legal process in the Holy Roman Empire until at least the nineteenth century. Despite the hardships and uncertainty of Ottoman rule, it is doubtful whether the many Serbs in Turkish-occupied Serbia would have preferred the life of millions of their Eastern Orthodox faithful who lived as serfs or feudal tenants in the Austrian Empire. Families were often forcefully removed from the feudal lands, deported, tortured and even executed at the whim of feudal landlords. Many Serbian families in the 1740s left for Imperial Russia to settle and start a new life among neighboring Zaporozhian Cossacks by founding New Serbia (historical province) and Slavo-Serbia. Enlightened Serbian bishops sent their students to Imperial Russia to study at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (now the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy) and Moscow Academy with instructions to return home and teach in their newly founded institutions of learning.

Revulsion against the nature of Turkish rule should be measured against the standards prevailing in Christian central Europe during the eighteenth century. Schools of higher learning under the Habsburg empresses or emperors for Slavs in general and Serbs in particular were at a premium. Perhaps this explains the late flowering of educational institutions in territories under western European occupation, not to mention the territories of neighboring Serbs whose lot fared no better under Turkish domination.

Resurgence to modern period
The Serbian gymnasium was founded in 1791, though its origins go further back with a few reincarnations in between and different locations in town. According to Jovan Skerlić's Istorija Nove Srpske Književnosti (Belgrade, 1921, pages 19–20), the school's first organizer and teacher was Maksim Suvorov, a Russian scholar and educator, sent by Empress Catherine I of Russia in 1725 to open the Latin Gymnasium (Latinska Škola) a year later in Karlovci. It was due to the efforts of Metropolitan Mojsije Petrović of Karlovci who wrote a telling letter to the Tsar:

I don't ask for material amenities, but spiritual. I don't ask for money but for help enlightening the souls living amongst us. Be a second Moses for us and lead us from the ignorance of Egypt!

In February 1724, Peter the Great issued a decree on educational assistance, although during his lifetime these plans were not carried out for some reason. The first Russian teacher, Maksim Suvorov, arrived in the Balkans in August 1725, when Catherine I was already in power. At the request of the Metropolitan of Belgrade-Karlovac Vikentije Jovanović, and at the order of the Kiev Metropolitan Rafail Zaborovski, Emanuil Kozačinski with twelve other professors, among whom were a few Serb graduates from Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, arrived in Sremski Karlovci in early October 1733 and immediately began work on the reconstruction and organization of the newly built schools.

In 1729 the name was changed to Latinsko-Slavenska Škola (the Latin-Slavonic Gymnasium). Then in 1733 the name changed again to Škola Emanuila Kozačinskoga (Emanuil Kozačinski Gymnasium). The high school which had the longest existence was Pokrovo-Bogoradnična Škola, founded in 1749. It lasted for two decades before it was closed on political grounds by Austrian authorities. It wasn't until Metropolitan Stefan Stratimirović and Merchant Dimitrije Anastasijević (nicknamed Sabo), who donated 20,000 Austrian forints, that the construction of the new gymnasium began, but only after negotiations with the emperor were finalized and the licence to build was finally given.

The High School of Karlovci began its operations on 1 November 1791 and had six classes, four lower ( "Grammar"), and two higher (humanities). Also, there were two boarding schools in the complex, one for students whose families had means of support and the other for those of limited means. Blagodjejanije, one of a class of students at the gymnasium, who, being persons of 'limited' means, were received for lower fees, and obtained free commons, lodgings and other assistance towards their education during their terms of residence. The class of students who had 'means' was called konvikt. The teaching language—as in many other schools in the Holy Roman Empire of the time—was Latin, and the following subjects were taught:
 German language
 History
 Geography
 Natural science
 Anthropology
 Roman Antiquity
 Physics
 Logic
 Philosophy and Morals
 Greek language

The first director of the school was Andrija Gros, a Slovak by ethnicity, who received his doctorate from the University of Jena, and later came Andrija Volni, also a Slovak, who for 21 years managed the school. Metropolitan Stratimirović brought professors from the Slavic land of Slovakia, then under Austrian rule, and elected directors from there as well. The reason for this was to keep zealous Roman Catholic proselytizers, Hungarian and German  influences at bay as much as possible. The next directors of the school were George Charles Ruma, and Paul Magda
The present building was constructed in 1891 by Gyula Pártos. The school has a very valuable library of Serbian history in Hungary.

Departments
The Gymnasium of Karlovci provides two departments: classical languages and modern languages. The classical language department concentrates on the study of Ancient Greek, while the modern language department offers English, Russian, German, Japanese, Chinese, Norwegian, Spanish and Italian. Classes in Latin and English are mandatory for both departments throughout the four-year study.
Students from either department may choose to pursue additional languages in the form of extracurricular activity. Also, classes learn about theory and techniques of translation accompanying only the primary language. Today philology is studied at the school.

Notable alumni
 Sima Milutinović Sarajlija
 Vuk Karadžić
 Branko Radičević
 Jovan Sterija Popović
 Milorad Popović Šapčanin
 Josif Rajačić
 Stevan Šupljikac
 Dimitrije Ruvarac
 Ilarion Ruvarac
 Vida Ognjenović
 Dejan Medaković
 Oto Horvat
 Miodrag Radulovacki
Vojislav Stanimirović
 Emanuel Kozačinski, noted professor

See also
Sremski Karlovci
Buildings and structures in Sremski Karlovci

References

External links
 Карловачка гимназија, website Karlovci Gymnasium.

Sremski Karlovci
Educational institutions established in 1791
Schools in Vojvodina
Schools in Serbia
Gymnasiums in Serbia
Palaces in Serbia

Karlovci Gymnasium


Gry is an indie/electronic music band featuring Danish female singer Gry Bagøien and German musician FM Einheit (ex-Einstürzende Neubauten).

The music of Gry can be described as electronic with elements of trip hop, live instruments, many loops and samples (also orchestral samples) with a female voice.

Their debut album The Touch Of E! was released in 1998, followed by live shows in Europe and America.

Their second album Public Recording was made in 2000 in the Marstall Theater in Munich during a public performance with numerous special guests: Alexander Hacke, Caspar Brötzmann, Æter, Anatol Baginsky, Terranova, Pan Sonic, Funkstörung, Meret Becker, Chrislo Haas, and Sebastian Hess. The song "Summer Wine" from this album, sung by Gry Bagøien and Alexander Hacke, is a cover-version of a Lee Hazlewood/Nancy Sinatra song.

In 2002, Gry Bagøien left the band and Gry disbanded.

Band members
 FM Einheit: electro, percussive and non-percussive instruments
 Gry Bagøien: vocals
 Sjang Coenen: bass
 Saskia von Klitzing: drums

Discography

Albums

 1998 The Touch Of E!
 2000 Public Recording

Singles, MCDs

 1998 Touch of Me
 1998 Remixes
 1998 Everything Or All
 1998 I Never Asked
 1999 Poles Apart
 2000 Rocket
 2000 Summer Wine
 2000 Princess Crocodile

Other full-length releases

 2000 Frost 79° 40''' (Ammer / F.M. Einheit / Pan Sonic / Gry) — (Recorded live at the Stadttheater Oberhausen'' on 28 August 1998.)

External links

 Gry Bagøien's official website
 F.M. Einheit's official website
 Saskia von Klitzing's Official site of (German)

Danish electronic music groups
Experimental musical groups
German electronic music groups

Gry (band)


Noël Dorion,  (July 24, 1904 – March 9, 1980) was a Canadian law professor, lawyer and politician.

Dorion was called to the bar in 1927 and was the founding president of the Jeune Barreau de Québec in 1934. He was the crown attorney who prosecuted Wilbert Coffin in 1954. The "Coffin affair", as it became known, was a contributing factor in the decision to abolish the death penalty in Canada as it became a widespread belief that Coffin was wrongly convicted and executed.

Dorion entered politics in the 1945 federal election, running as an Independent in Quebec East, but was unsuccessful. Dorion finished in second place behind Louis St. Laurent, and was the unofficial Conservative standard-bearer as the riding had no official Tory candidate. He ran as an independent along with his brother Frédéric Dorion, an incumbent MP, due to his opposition to conscription in the Conscription Crisis of 1944.

In the 1958 election he was elected as the Progressive Conservative (PC)  Member of Parliament (MP) for Bellechasse riding as part of PC leader John Diefenbaker's landslide victory.

Dorion was appointed to the Canadian Cabinet in 1960 as Secretary of State for Canada, and was reassigned to the position of President of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada in 1961. He held this position until his defeat in the 1962 federal election. Dorion returned to his law practice and remained an active lawyer until his death.

His brothers Frédéric Dorion and Charles Napoléon Dorion were also MPs at various times.

Sources
Law Society of Quebec biographies

External links

Members of the King's Privy Council for Canada
Progressive Conservative Party of Canada MPs
Members of the House of Commons of Canada from Quebec
Lawyers in Quebec
1904 births
1980 deaths

Noël Dorion


Children that are homeless, and that have to look for themselves are called street children. They may have run away, or they may have no relatives who look after them.

Looking at it more closely, there are two different concepts:

 Children on the street: They spend most of the day on the street, because they have to work. They sleep at home.
 Street children in the proper sense: The center of the lives of these children is on the street. They also sleep there (because they have nowhere else to go).
According to the European Federation for Street Children, they are an extremely vulnerable group living in very difficult conditions. The human rights of many of these children are often violated: They are exposed to violence or sexual exploitation and abuse. They may be addicted to drugs.

Article 27 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) says that the state recognises the right of every child to a standard of living that is adequate for the development of the child.

"State parties recognize the right of every child to a standard of living adequate for the child's physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social

development." Homelessness denies each one of those rights. According to an Inter-NGO Program on street children and youth, a street child is "any girl or boy who has not reached adulthood, for whom the street (in the widest sense of the word, including unoccupied dwellings, wasteland, etc.) has become his or her habitual abode and/or source of livelihood, and who is inadequately protected, directed, and supervised by responsible adults."

Children who have no home but the streets, and no family support. They move from place to place, living in shelters and abandoned buildings.
'Child on the street': children who visit their families regularly and might even return every night to sleep at home, but spends most days and some nights on the street because of poverty, overcrowding, child sexual abuse or physical abuse at home.
Part of a street family: these children live on sidewalks or city squares with the rest of their families. They may be displaced due to poverty, wars, or natural disasters. The families often live a nomadic life, carrying their possessions with them. Children in this case often work on the streets with other members of their families.
In institutionalized care: children in this situation come from a situation of homelessness and are at risk of returning to a life on the street or facing at the child labour or child prostitution.

References

Street children

Street children


José Duarte de Almeida Ribeiro e Castro (born Lisbon, 24 December 1953) is a Portuguese lawyer and politician. He was the leader of the People's Party from 24 April 2005 to 2007, when he was replaced again by Paulo Portas.
He was also a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 1999 to 2009, for the Social Democratic Party–People's Party coalition; part of the European People's Party–European Democrats group.

Education
He is a Graduate in law (Lisbon, 1975).

Politician

He was a member of Odemira Municipal Assembly (1982-1985).

EPP/ED group coordinator at the Human Rights Subcommittee in the European Parliament (since 2004).
Member and Chairman of Sintra Municipal Assembly (since 2002).
Legal adviser to the Ministry of Labour and Social Security (since 1991).
Member of the Higher Council for Social Policy of the Ministry of Social Affairs (1988–1990).
Member of the Portuguese Parliament (1976–1983 and 1999).
Adviser and assistant to the Ministry of Education (1987–1991).
Secretary of State in the Deputy Prime Minister's Office (1980 and 1981–1983).

CDS
He is a member of the National Board of the CDS party (1975–1983) and the CDS-PP (1998-2003).
Member of the CDS-PP's National Board Executive Committee (since 2004).
Vice-Chairman of the CDS' parliamentary group  for 1981 and CDS spokesman 1976–1983.

Career

He founded Juventude Centrista in 1974.

He worked as a legal expert and counsellor (1976–1999).

He worked in television, being a member (1988–1990), and Chairman (1990–1991), of the inspection board of RTP (Portuguese Radio and Television). Between 1991 and 1999, he held a number of managerial posts at TVI television.

He was vice-chairman of Sport Lisboa e Benfica for 1997–1998.

He is a contributor to various newspapers.

References

1957 births
Living people
People from Lisbon
Members of the Assembly of the Republic (Portugal)
MEPs for Portugal 2004–2009
MEPs for Portugal 1999–2004

José Ribeiro e Castro


Biff Howard Tannen is a fictional character in the Back to the Future trilogy. Thomas F. Wilson plays Biff in all three movies as well as the Universal Studios ride, and voiced the character in the animated series.

Biff is the series' antagonist. He is a tall, mean, violent bully who gets what he wants by bullying others into doing his work for him, or by cheating. He and his family members usually misuse idioms in a way that makes them sound foolish and doesn't sound like an insult.

Back to the Future characters
Fictional American people
Fictional characters introduced in 1985
Movie characters

Biff Tannen


Maria Angela Ardinghelli (1730–1825) was an Italian translator, mathematician, physicist and noble, mostly known as the Italian translator of the works of Stephen Hales, a Newtonian physiologist. She translated two of his works; Haemastaticks and Vegetable Staticks. Aside from Ardinghelli's historical invisibility, she managed to remain relevant without being shunned into social isolation or derision by sharing her works with specific audiences.

Background

Maria Angela Ardinghelli was born in Naples (Kingdom of Naples) into a noble family of Florentine origin. Having lost her brother during their childhood, Maria Angela thus became an only child. Her father turned to educating her, and by the age of fourteen she was fluent in Latin. She studied philosophy and physical-mathematical sciences under the physicist and mathematician Giovanni Maria Della Torre and Vito Caravelli. She also studied English and French.

Ardinghelli was neither an aristocrat nor a member of ascendant middle class. Her family was from Florence, described as "one of the most distinguished and ancient of Italy", in the sixteenth century. When the Medici family climbed into power in Tuscany the Ardinghelli family fled Tuscany for Naples.

As was obligatory for the aristocratic women of the time, Maria Angela was a literate poet and Latinist, as well as expert of mathematical physics. She belonged to the circle of the prince of Tarsia, founded in 1747, which, in intellectual circles in Naples, had the strongest association to Newton, experimental physics and electricity. The library and the laboratory of Tarsia was to be of much use to her.

Ardinghelli never wanted to leave Naples. She made it clear that she would never leave her family, rejecting marriage with French architect Julien Leroy and the possibility of becoming the scientific tutor to the royal princesses at Versailles. She stayed in Naples where she hosted many conversazioni as meeting points for traveling naturalist and corresponding with the Paris Academy of Science.

Maria Angela Ardinghelli had acted as an informal correspondent for the Paris Academy of Sciences. She had connected the scientific communities of Naples and France. When Maria Angela reached the apex of her popularity she devised a few strategies to maintain her anonymity, which she succeeded at. In spite of Ardinghelli's historical invisibility, she selectively chose from her works what she wanted visible to specific audiences in order to protect herself from social isolation.

Ardinghelli and Nollet
As a correspondent and member of the Paris Academy of Sciences Maria Angela was catapulted to fame by abbé Jean-Antoine Nollet. Nollet met Ardinghelli at conversazioni, hosted by her in Naples during his journey through Italy in 1749. Nollet, an acclaimed celebrity, published a volume on electricity in which he needed to defend his theories against those of Benjamin Franklin. Nollet wrote nine letters to nine different savants distinguished in the field of physics. The first letter was to Ardinghelli. In the letter he writes about her translation of Hales's Haemastaticks and writes: "very virtuous young lady, who in a short time has made a lot of progress in the field of physics." This public declaration of esteem made Ardinghelli well known.

Accomplishments
Expert in mathematical physics, Ardinghelli's fame is mainly due to the translation of key works of the English physicist Stephen Hales Haemastaticks and Vegetable Staticks. She also performed scientific experiments inspired by Hales works. She was identified as an informal correspondent and cultural mediator for foreign scientist and naturalist traveling to Italy. Being a mediator opened a door and put her in the position to meet Jean-Antoine Nollet, whom appointed her to be an informal correspondent for the Paris Academy of Sciences. Working for the Paris Academy of Sciences had her connection the scientific communities of France and Naples.
In Maria Angela's translations, she broadened herself to more than just the footnotes that typical translators confined themselves to. She opened herself in the dedication and in the "To the Reader" sections of her translations. In these sections, she opened herself up to the members of higher classes.
She corresponded with leading scientists of the time, including, to name a few, the mathematician and astronomer and physicist Alexis Claude Clairaut and Jean-Antoine Nollet.

References

http://scienzaa2voci.unibo.it/biografie/67-ardinghelli-maria-angela

1730 births
1825 deaths
Scientists from Naples
18th-century Italian physicists
Italian women physicists
18th-century Neapolitan people
Italian untitled nobility
Italian women mathematicians
18th-century Italian women scientists
19th-century Italian women scientists
Nobility from Naples
19th-century Italian translators
18th-century Italian translators

Maria Angela Ardinghelli


Flickers' Rhode Island International Film Festival (RIIFF) takes place every year in Providence and Newport, Rhode Island as well as satellite locations throughout the state.

Started in 1997, the Festival is produced by Flickers, the Newport Film/Video Society & Arts Collaborative, a 501(c)(3) non-profit created in 1981. RIIFF has been a qualifying festival for the Academy Awards since 2002.

History
The Festival was created by George T. Marshall, the founder of the Flickers Arts Collaborative. He has been the Executive Director/CEO of the Festival since its creation. Shawn Quirk is the Programming Director. J.Scott Oberacker, Ph.D. is the Educational Outreach Director. Timothy Haggerty is the Technical Director. Katie Reaves, Mary McSally and Reshad Kulenovic are the Educational Program Directors. Lawrence J. Andrade serves as the Executive Advisor and Human Resource Director. Michael Drywa, Esq. is the Board President.

In 1998, it hosted the world premiere of the Farrelly brothers film, There's Something About Mary. The Festival draws over 45,000 people annually along with a strong filmmaker presence attending its main event each August and its Horror Film sidebar in October. In 2018, the Festival screened 295 films; with 84 being world and US premieres.

In 2010, the Festival has been designated as the host for Oscar Night America in Rhode Island, which it continues to host each year. In 2014, that event was renamed the "Red Carpet Experience: Providence," and continues annually.

The festival often attracts major industry talent and celebrities who attend to participate in conversations about varied aspects of filmmaking.

Attending filmmakers in the past have included actor Andrew McCarthy, who premiered his directorial debut, News for the Church; Michael Showalter discussing his feature film The Baxter, and actors Seymour Cassel, Kim Chan, and Ernest Borgnine (2009) who received Festival Lifetime Achievement Awards.

Director Blake Edwards received a Festival Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001, which was accepted by his wife, actress/singer, Julie Andrews.

Actress Blythe Danner received the Festival's Creative Vision Award in 2008 for "significant contributions to the arts." That same year, actor Richard Jenkins received the George M. Cohan Ambassador Award which honors "unique Americans who have made a timeless contribution to the arts and have inspired future generations of Rhode Islanders."

In 2009, film composer Klaus Badelt was awarded the Festival's Crystal Image Award for his contribution to the art of filmmaking. In 2010, the award went to children's author/filmmaker, Sandra Boynton. In 2011, the Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to actors Paul Sorvino and Ken Howard. In 2014, the Award was presented to actor/artist, Theo Bikel.

In 2017, the Award was renamed the Gilbert Stuart Artistic Vision Lifetime Achievement Award and presented to special effects creator, Douglas Trumbull. In 2018, the Award was presented to production designer, Joseph M. Alves.

Sidebar events for the Festival include the KidsEye International Film Festival, the RI International Horror Film Festival, the Vortex Sci-Fi and Fantasy Film Festival, Cine ¡Ole! (Spanish Film Series), the Golden Jasmine Chinese Film Festival, the Roving Eye International Film Festival, the Annual Flickers' Japanese Film Festival, the Providence Underground Film Festival and the First Look Series. Educational programs include the KidsEye Summer Filmmaking Workshop (started in 1998), the Youth Film Jury, ScriptBiz,  the Providence LGBTQ Film Festival, and the Rhode Island Film Forum.

In 2010, the Flickers North Country Film Festival was introduced as a companion event to the annual RIIFF. The location for the Festival is in Coos County, New Hampshire. The principal location for exhibition is at the Balsams Grand Hotel Resort in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire. Programming took place in late September through early October. In 2011, the event moved to Brattleboro, Vermont and was held in collaboration with the Brattleboro Retreat.

In 2010, the Festival introduced three new outreach programs that were designed to reach beyond the Rhode Island border: the 7DayPSA Competition and the New England Film Festival Alliance. In 2017, the Flickers introduced a new program geared to youngsters confined to hospitals called the Children's Hospital International Film Festival.

In 2022, the Festival's founder George T. Marshall passed away three months after the 40th annual edition of the Festival.

The Festival is berthed at The Vets (formerly the VMA Arts & Cultural Center), a 1,900-seat facility located at One Avenue of the Arts in Providence and presents screenings throughout the state of Rhode Island during the year.

References

External links
 Rhode Island International Film Festival

Film festivals in Rhode Island
1997 establishments in Rhode Island
Children's film festivals in the United States
LGBT film festivals in the United States
Asian-American film festivals
Film festivals established in 1997


Jaromar I was a Prince of Rügen between 1170 and 1218.

Background
Jaromar was a  Ranish nobleman,  who was a native of the island of Rügen. Jaromar rose to be ruler of the Principality of Rügen as result of the Danish conquest of Rügen in 1168. His predecessor was Tetzlav, who in 1168 had submitted to the Danish.

Danish conquest
The Danish organized a war to Christianize the formerly pagan islanders and to destroy the pagan strongholds and cult places. This action also served to have their piracy and raids to Danish lands ended.  The Danish navy, led by among other militaries, Archbishop Absalon, conquered and destroyed the fortress of Cape Arkona. The temple fortress of Arkona (Jaromarsburg) had been the religious centre of the Slavic Rani. The island of Rügen was incorporated into the Danish Archdiocese of Roskilde.

The Danish set up Rügen as their vassal. Jaromar, who was not committed to hitherto pagan rulers of the island, accepted Christianity and promised loyalty to King Valdemar I of Denmark.

Jaromar allied with the Hvide and Galen magnate clans, who were leaders of Zealand and Skåne. Jaromar had his son and heir Wizlaw I marry a lady from these Danish magnates' families, who were influential in those parts of Denmark that were closest to Rügen.

By 1185, Jaromar I had started construction of St. Mary's Church (Marienkirche) erected in his stronghold Rugard (which later became the town Bergen-auf-Rügen). In 1193, the church was completed and then consecrated as a monastery church, making it Rügen's oldest maintained building. It is commonly believed that Jaromar was buried under the gravestone embedded in the church's outer wall. Additionally he founded the Cistercian Eldena Abbey (Kloster Eldena).

Family
He married Hildegard, illegitimate daughter of Canute V of Denmark, and had a son, Vitslav, who succeeded him.

References

Other sources
Buchholz, Werner Deutsche Geschichte im Osten Europas. Pommern (Siedler Verlag. 2002)
Addison, James Thayer  Medieval Missionary: A Study of the Conversion of Northern Europe Ad 500 to 1300 (Kessinger Publishing. 2003) .

12th-century births
1218 deaths
People from Vorpommern-Rügen
Danish nobility
Princes of Rügen
House of Vizlav

Jaromar I, Prince of Rügen


Willard Robison (September 18, 1894 – June 24, 1968) was an American vocalist, pianist, and composer of popular songs, born in Shelbina, Missouri. His songs reflect a rural, melancholy theme steeped in Americana and their warm style has drawn comparison to Hoagy Carmichael. Many of his compositions, notably "A Cottage for Sale", "Round My Old Deserted Farm", "Don't Smoke in Bed", "'Taint So, Honey, 'Taint So" and "Old Folks", have become standards and have been recorded countless times by jazz and pop artists including Peggy Lee, Nina Simone, Nat King Cole, Billy Eckstine, Bing Crosby and Mildred Bailey. "A Cottage for Sale" alone has been recorded over 100 times.

Life and career
In the early 1920s, Robison led and toured with several territory bands in the Southwest. He met Jack Teagarden in this period, whom he befriended. In the late 1920s, Robison organized the Deep River Orchestra, later hosting a radio show entitled The Deep River Hour in the early 1930s.

During the 1920s, Robison recorded extensively for Perfect Records, with scores of vocal recordings accompanying himself on piano (displaying his rather eccentric stride piano style), as well as "Deep River Orchestra" recordings using standard stock arrangements (including many popular and obscure songs)  One recording was his fox trot arrangement of George Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue on both sides of Perfect 14825 and Pathe 36644.

In Alec Wilder's  definitive study, American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900–1950, the songwriter and critic writes of Robison:  He, if ever there was one, was the maverick among song writers. Everyone loved him and many tried to help him, among them John Mercer. Mildred Bailey revered him and sang every song of his she could lay her hands on...He did manage, during his almost euphoric life, to write a few successful songs--A Cottage for Sale, and 'Taint so, My Honey, 'Taint So--but generally his songs were known only to a few singers and lovers of the off-beat and the non-urban song. He had a special flair for gentleness and childhood, the lost and the religious.
Wilder concludes that although Robison's songs may not have significantly influenced the development of American popular song, "[I]f they could so much bolster John Mercer's conviction that there was more to write lyrics about than city life, that the world of memory, of remembered sayings and scenes, was as evocative as the whispered words of lovers, then he did make a contribution."

American Suite songs
In 1926-1927, Robison recorded a series of eight jazz songs under name of American Suite:
 "After Hours" (American Suite No. 1) (Perfect 14728/Pathe 36547) 10/1/26
 "Piano Tuner's Dream" (American Suite No. 2) (Perfect 14743/Pathe 36562) 10/22/26
 "Darby Hicks" (American Suite No. 3) (Perfect 14744/Pathe 36563) 10/22/26
 "The Music Of A Mountain Stream" (American Suite No. 4) (Perfect 14755/Pathe 36574) 11/22/26
 "Tampico" (American Suite No. 5) (Perfect 14755/Pathe 36574) 11/22/26
 "Mobile Mud" (American Suite No. 6) (Perfect 14756/Pathe 36575) 10/22/26
 "Deep River" (American Suite No. 7) (Perfect 14774/Pathe 36593) 11/22/26
 "Harlem Blues" (American Suite No. 8) (Perfect 14821/Pathe 36640) 4/20/27

He recorded for Perfect Records and Pathé Records from 1926 to 1928. Between 1928 and 1930, he recorded for Columbia, Harmony (and associated Diva and Velvet Tone labels) and Victor. He also recorded a session in 1937 for Master Records.

Jack Teagarden recorded a critically praised album of Robison's songs in 1962 entitled Think Well of Me. Robison died in Peekskill, New York in 1968, aged 73.

List of notable compositions
 "'Round My Old Deserted Farm"
 "'Tain't So, Honey, 'Tain't So"
 "Jubilee"
 "A Cottage for Sale"
 "Don't Smoke in Bed"
 "Down to Steamboat, Tennessee"
 "Guess I'll Go Back Home (This Summer)"
 "Harlem Lullaby"
 "I'm a Fool About My Mama"
 "In A Little Waterfront Cafe"
 "Barrel-House Music"
 "It's Never Too Late to Pray"
 "Old Folks"
 "The Devil is Afraid of Music"
 "Deep Elm (You Tell 'Em I'm Blue)"
 "(Like a Bird That's On The Wing) I'm Wingin' Home"
 "Peaceful Valley"
 "Dem Deming Blues" ("The Sandstorm Division is Coming") (1918)

References

External links
[ Willard Robison at AllMusic]
Willard Robison and His Deep River Boys music library, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University
 Willard Robison recordings at the Discography of American Historical Recordings.

1894 births
1968 deaths
People from Shelby County, Missouri
Songwriters from Missouri
American jazz composers
American male jazz composers
American jazz bandleaders
20th-century American conductors (music)
20th-century American composers
Jazz musicians from Missouri
20th-century American male musicians
20th-century jazz composers
American male songwriters

Willard Robison


Hannah Moscovitch (born June 5, 1978) is a Canadian playwright who rose to national prominence in the 2000s. She is best known for her plays East of Berlin, This Is War, "Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story", and Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes, for which she received the 2021 Governor General's Award for English-language drama.

Life and career
Today based in Toronto and Halifax, she was born in Ottawa. Her father, Allan Moscovitch, is a social policy professor at Carleton University. Her mother, Julie White, is a labour researcher. Both have long been active in left wing politics. Moscovitch's father is Jewish, of Romanian and Ukrainian background, while her mother is from a Christian background (of English and Irish ancestry). Moscovitch was "raised as an atheist", and has said that there is "implicitly Jewish sensibility" to her plays. She studied at the National Theatre School in the acting stream.

Moscovitch gained considerable notice for two short plays written for Toronto's SummerWorks. In 2005 she presented Essay, a play about gender politics in modern academia. The next year at the festival The Russian Play premiered, a romance set in Stalinist Russia. Both were well received by critics and audiences. In 2007 her first full-length play, East of Berlin, premiered at the Tarragon Theatre. The play focuses on the legacy of the Holocaust on the children of those involved. The main character is the son of a Nazi war criminal who grows up in Paraguay. He eventually travels to Berlin and meets the daughter of an Auschwitz survivor. The play was acclaimed for its complex subject, humour, and characters and was also a popular success, returning to Tarragon in winter 2009 and 2010.

2013 saw the premiere of This Is War, a play depicting the lives of Canadian troops in Afghanistan. This Is War won multiple awards with one reviewer writing "Moscovitch shines a light on massive issues like sexual harassment within the military without making her play a morality tale or exposé. It's a story about four good people in a bad place and all the gray area that that produces." In 2015, Moscovitch wrote the play Infinity about a physicist who becomes involved in a love story while contemplating the nature of time. She collaborated with Lee Smolin to lend verisimilitude to some of the theoretical ideas.

Moscovitch's plays have been widely produced across Canada, including at the Magnetic North Theatre Festival, Ottawa's Great Canadian Theatre Company, The National Arts Centre, Toronto's Factory Theatre, Edmonton's Theatre Network, the Manitoba Theatre Centre, Vancouver's Firehall Arts Centre, the Alberta Theatre Projects, and Montreal's Imago Theatre. Moscovitch is currently playwright-in-residence at Tarragon Theatre and was previously a contributing writer to the CBC radio drama series Afghanada (2006-2011).

She has been dubbed "an indie sensation" by Toronto Life Magazine; "the wunderkind of Canadian theatre" by CBC Radio; "irritatingly talented" by the now defunct Eye Weekly; and the "dark angel of Toronto theatre" by Toronto Star. The National Post, The Globe and Mail, and Now Magazine have all hailed Moscovitch as "Canada's Hottest Young Playwright".

In 2021, Moscovitch and Jennifer Podemski created the drama series Little Bird for Crave.

Works
 Essay – 2005
 The Russian Play – 2006
 East of Berlin – 2007
 In This World – 2008
 The Children's Republic – 2009
 Little One – 2011
 Other People's Children – 2012
 This Is War – 2012
 I Have no Stories to Tell You – 2013
 Infinity – 2014
 What a Young Wife Ought To Know – 2015
The Kaufman Cabaret - 2016 - Commissioned by the University of Alberta
 Bunny – 2016
 Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story - 2017
 Secret Life of a Mother - 2018
 Sky on Swings - 2019
 Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes - 2020
 "Post-Democracy" - 2021

Awards and honours
Moscovitch won Dora Mavor Moore Awards for In This World (2010) and "Infinity" (2015). She won both the Trillium Book Award and Toronto Critic's Awards in 2014 for This Is War. She has won the Nova Scotia Masterworks Award for "Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story", and the SummerWorks Prize for Best Production for The Russian Play.

She received the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize (2016) in the Drama category, becoming the first Canadian woman to win the prize.

She was the winner of the Governor General's Award for English-language drama at the 2021 Governor General's Awards for her play Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes.

Award nominations received by Moscovitch include the Siminovitch Prize, the Governor General's Award, the Carol Bolt Award, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the KM Hunter Award and the Toronto Arts Council Foundation Emerging Artist Award.

References

External links
 "Moscovitch is already famous" Toronto Star October 20, 2007
 "Hannah Moscovitch: Playwright revisits the production that set her career in motion" NOW Magazine January 16, 2008
 "Hannah Moscovitch: Hit factory The Globe and Mail. January 13, 2009

1978 births
Living people
Canadian women dramatists and playwrights
Canadian people of English descent
Canadian people of Irish descent
Canadian people of Romanian-Jewish descent
Canadian people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent
Dora Mavor Moore Award winners
Canadian atheists
Jewish atheists
National Theatre School of Canada alumni
University of Toronto alumni
Writers from Ottawa
21st-century Canadian dramatists and playwrights
21st-century Canadian women writers
Governor General's Award-winning dramatists

Hannah Moscovitch


Dekkersduin (or Oostblok) is a former dune in The Hague, Netherlands. The dune existed in the 19th century at the current location of the district Duinoord, west of the current Peace Palace and was located roughly 2 kilometers from the sea. The dune was popular amongst landscape painters, such as Jacob Maris and Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch, because it offered a good outlook to the area to produce perspectives. A painting with the same name, Dekkersduin, by Weissenbruch shows the panorama from this dune.

The dune disappeared over time because the sand was removed for use in construction.

Sources
 http://www.mesdagvancalcar.nl/Leesstukken/SchildersDekkersduin.htm

Dunes of the Netherlands
History of The Hague

Dekkersduin


Lángos () is a typical Hungarian food. Today it is a deep fried flatbread, but in the past it was made of the last bits of the bread-dough and baked at the front of the brick or clay oven, to be served hot as the breakfast of the bread-baking day.

Etymology and history

The name comes from láng, the Hungarian word for flame.

Up to the mid 20th century, bread was baked once a week due to the cost of heating up the large oven and the lengthy process kneading up to 80 pounds of dough. Because the bread loaf, typical to Hungary, was 6 to 10 pounds each, traditionally they used to bake smaller (1-2 pounds) "cipó" rolls for the evening and the next day. The name lángos (literally meaning "flamed") comes from baking these flat breads in the morning while the oven was still heating up. "Lángos" were also used as a side to lunch.

After the communist takeover, with no large scale flour stocks in private households, and as nearly everybody became an employee working in shifts, traditional bread-baking procedure diminished. People started to buy their bread in foodstores in smaller quantities. With no leftover dough and no oven heated up, no lángos was baked.
After the revolution in 1956, very small scale businesses were allowed again and some people started to open small booths in the larger markets to sell a new kind of lángos, fried in lard or sunflower oil. It became very popular and it was the ultimate streetfood along with hurka and kolbász sausages in the 1960s and '70s. Up to the early '80s, there were only 3 varieties: plain (with or without garlic and salt) and with cabbage or potato in the dough. The first new varieties introduced in the '80s were with sour cream and grated cheese. In the mid 1980s hotdogs and hamburgers became the new favorite streetfoods of the Hungarians, but in the mid '90s lángos came back with many new varieties and has since spread across the globe.

Variations

The dough for lángos is made of water or milk, flour, yeast, and salt. The ingredients are worked together either by hand or a kneading machine. As the yeast starts to metabolize the carbohydrates in the flour, carbon dioxide is released which causes the dough to rise, creating the air bubbles in the lángos. The dough is basically the same as pizza dough, but it is not baked but fried in oil. Adding sour cream, yoghurt or mashed potatoes to the dough is optional but highly encouraged, in the latter case it is called potato lángos (in Hungarian krumplis lángos). It is eaten fresh and warm, topped with sour cream and grated cheese, or Liptauer, ham, or sausages, or most frequently, without toppings, just rubbed with garlic or garlic butter, or doused with garlic water. Other ingredients and accompaniments can be mushroom, quark cheese, eggplant, cabbage, kefir, omelet, and confectioner's sugar or jam.

In the early 2000s, some people built small, portable clay ovens and started to sell oven baked lángos, called "kenyérlángos" (bread-lángos) at festivals and fairs. Although reminiscent of the traditional lángos, it is more like a pizza with sour cream, onions and bacon.

Lángos is popular all year long. As it is a rather affordable and simple food, it is often sold around bus stations, fairs, local markets and all over Eastern European countries during local celebrations or sport events. It is sold at many fast-food restaurants not only in Hungary but also in Austria. In Austria, especially in Vienna, lángos is very popular as a fast food at fairs and in amusement parks like the Prater. Lángos is known in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Croatia as langoš, in Serbia as languš (although it is commonly called "Mekike"). In Slovenia it is known as Langaš and in Macedonia and Bulgaria  as Mekitsa. It is also popular in Romania (especially in Transylvania) as langoși.  It is also extremely popular in Poland where it is known as "langosz" and in the UK where it is called "langos" or "Hungarian Fried Bread."

See also
 List of doughnut varieties
 List of deep fried foods
 Frybread
 Shelpek
 Bhatoora
 Mekitsa
 BeaverTails
 National symbols of Hungary

References

External links

Hungarian dishes
Flatbreads
Romanian breads
Ottoman cuisine
Street food
Doughnuts
Greek breads
Turkish breads

Lángos


In cryptography, the EFF DES cracker (nicknamed "Deep Crack") is a machine built by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to perform a brute force search of DES cipher's key space — that is, to decrypt an encrypted message by trying every possible key. The aim in doing this was to prove that DES's key is not long enough to be secure.

The DES uses a 56-bit key, meaning that there are 256 possible keys under which a message can be encrypted. This is approximately 7.21 (more than 72 quadrillion). When DES was approved as a federal standard in 1976, a machine fast enough to test such a number of keys in a reasonable time would have cost an unreasonable amount of money to build.

Other websites
 The DES Cracker page on EFF's site
 Photos of the machine on Cryptography Research's site
 COPACOBANA, an off-the-shelf DES cracking device

Cryptography

EFF DES cracker


The Goldfish (Carassius auratus) is a freshwater fish in the family Cyprinidae of order Cypriniformes. It is commonly kept as a pet in indoor aquariums, and is one of the most popular aquarium fish. Goldfish released into the wild have become an invasive pest in parts of North America.

Native to China, the goldfish is a relatively small member of the carp family (which also includes the Prussian carp and the crucian carp). It was first selectively bred for color in imperial China more than 1,000 years ago, where several distinct breeds were developed. Goldfish breeds vary greatly in size, body shape, fin configuration, and coloration (various combinations of white, yellow, orange, red, brown, and black are known).

History

Various species of carp (collectively known as Asian carp) have been bred and reared as food fish for thousands of years in East Asia. Some of these normally gray or silver species have a tendency to produce red, orange or yellow color mutations; this was first recorded in Imperial China, during the Jin dynasty (266–420).

During the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907), it was popular to raise carp in ornamental ponds and water gardens. A natural genetic mutation produced gold (actually yellowish orange) rather than silver coloration. People began to selectively breed the gold variety instead of the silver variety, keeping them in ponds or other bodies of water. On special occasions at which guests were expected, they would be moved to a much smaller container for display.

By the Song dynasty (AD 960–1279), the selective domestic breeding of goldfish was firmly established. In 1162, the empress of the Song dynasty ordered the construction of a pond to collect the red and gold variety. By this time, people outside the imperial family were forbidden to keep goldfish of the gold (yellow) variety, yellow being the imperial color. The occurrence of other colors (apart from red and gold) was first recorded in 1276.

During the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), goldfish also began to be raised indoors, which permitted selection for mutations that would not be able to survive in ponds. The first occurrence of -tailed goldfish was recorded in the Ming dynasty. In 1603, goldfish were introduced to Japan. In 1611, goldfish were introduced to Portugal and from there to other parts of Europe.

During the 1620s, goldfish were highly regarded in southern Europe because of their metallic scales, and symbolized good luck and fortune. It became a tradition for married men to give their wives a goldfish on their first anniversary, as a symbol for the prosperous years to come. This tradition quickly died, as goldfish became more available, losing their status. Goldfish were first introduced to North America around 1850 and quickly became popular in the United States.

Biology

Taxonomy

There has been considerable debate about the taxonomy of the goldfish. Previously, the goldfish was believed to be either a subspecies of the crucian carp (Carassius carassius), or of the Prussian carp (Carassius gibelio). However, modern genetic sequencing has suggested otherwise, and that modern goldfish are domesticated varieties of C. auratus that are native to Southern China. C. auratus are differentiated from other Carassius species by several characteristics. C. auratus have a more pointed snout, while the snout of C. carassius is well rounded. C. gibelio often has a grayish/greenish color, while crucian carp are always golden bronze. Juvenile crucian carp have a black spot on the base of the tail, which disappears with age. In C. auratus, this tail spot is never present. C. auratus have fewer than 31 scales along the lateral line, while crucian carp have 33 scales or more.

Goldfish can hybridize with some other Carassius species of carp. Koi and common carp may also interbreed with goldfish to produce sterile hybrids.

Size
Wild goldfish typically grow to between 4.7 inches (12 cm) and 8.7 inches (22 cm) but can reach 16 inches (41 cm). When kept in small indoor aquariums, goldfish tend to stay about  to  long. Goldfish may grow larger if moved to bigger fish tanks, but they usually do not grow longer than .

As of April 2008, the largest goldfish in the world was believed by the BBC to measure , in the Netherlands. At the time, a goldfish named "Goldie", kept as a pet in a tank in Folkestone, England, was measured as  and over , and named as the second largest in the world behind the Netherlands fish. The secretary of the Federation of British Aquatic Societies (FBAS) stated of Goldie's size, "I would think there are probably a few bigger goldfish that people don't think of as record holders, perhaps in ornamental lakes". In July 2010, a goldfish measuring  and  was caught in a pond in Poole, England, thought to have been abandoned there after outgrowing a tank. On November 16, 2020, a  goldfish weighing  was found in a  lake in Greenville, South Carolina, while conducting a population survey of Oak Grove Lake.

Vision
Goldfish have one of the most studied senses of vision in fishes. Goldfish have four kinds of cone cells, which are respectively sensitive to different colors: red, green, blue and ultraviolet. The ability to distinguish between four different primary colors classifies them as tetrachromats.

Hearing
Goldfish have one of the most studied senses of hearing in fish. They have two otoliths, permitting the detection of sound particle motion, and Weberian ossicles connecting the swimbladder to the otoliths, facilitating the detection of sound pressure.

Reproduction

Goldfish can only grow to sexual maturity with enough water and the right nutrition. Most goldfish breed in captivity, particularly in pond settings. Breeding usually happens after a significant temperature change, often in spring. Males chase gravid female goldfish (females carrying eggs), and prompt them to release their eggs by bumping and nudging them.

Goldfish, like all cyprinids, are egg-layers. Their eggs are adhesive and attach to aquatic vegetation, typically dense plants such as Cabomba or Elodea or a spawning mop. The eggs hatch within 48 to 72 hours.

Within a week or so, the fry begins to assume its final shape, although a year may pass before they develop a mature goldfish color; until then they are a metallic brown like their wild ancestors. In their first weeks of life, the fry grow quickly—an adaptation born of the high risk of getting devoured by the adult goldfish (or other fish and insects) in their environment.

Some highly selectively bred goldfish can no longer breed naturally due to their altered shape. The artificial breeding method called "hand stripping" can assist in breeding, but can harm the fish if not done correctly. In captivity, adults may also eat young that they encounter.

Breeding goldfish by the hobbyist is the process of selecting adult fish to reproduce, allowing them to reproduce and then raising the resulting offspring while continually removing fish that do not approach the desired pedigree.

Respiration
Goldfish are able to survive short periods of entirely anoxic conditions. Survival is shorter under higher temperatures, suggesting that this is a cold weather adaptation. Researchers speculate that this is specifically an adaptation to survival in frozen water bodies over winter.

Energy is obtained from liver glycogen. This process depends upon a pyruvate decarboxylase – the first known in vertebrates.

Salinity
Although they are a freshwater fish, goldfish have been found in brackish water with a salinity of 17.

Behavior

Goldfish are gregarious, displaying schooling behavior, as well as displaying the same types of feeding behaviors. Goldfish may display similar behaviors when responding to their reflections in a mirror.

Goldfish have learned behaviors, both as groups and as individuals, that stem from native carp behavior. They are a generalist species with varied feeding, breeding, and predator avoidance behaviors that contribute to their success. As fish, they can be described as "friendly" towards each other. Very rarely does a goldfish harm another goldfish, nor do the males harm the females during breeding. The only real threat that goldfish present to each other is competing for food. Commons, comets, and other faster varieties can easily eat all the food during a feeding before  varieties can reach it. This can lead to stunted growth or possible starvation of fancier varieties when they are kept in a pond with their single-tailed brethren. As a result, care should be taken to combine only breeds with similar body type and swim characteristics.

Cognitive abilities

Goldfish have strong associative learning abilities, as well as social learning skills. In addition, their visual acuity allows them to distinguish between individual humans. Owners may notice that fish react favorably to them (swimming to the front of the glass, swimming rapidly around the tank, and going to the surface mouthing for food) while hiding when other people approach the tank. Over time, goldfish learn to associate their owners and other humans with food, often "begging" for food whenever their owners approach.

Goldfish that have constant visual contact with humans also stop considering them to be a threat. After being kept in a tank for several weeks, sometimes months, it becomes possible to feed a goldfish by hand without it shying away.

Goldfish have a memory-span of at least three months and can distinguish between different shapes, colors, and sounds. By using positive reinforcement, goldfish can be trained to recognize and to react to light signals of different colors or to perform tricks. Fish respond to certain colors most evidently in relation to feeding. Fish learn to anticipate feedings provided they occur at around the same time every day.

Classification

Western

As with many other examples of animal, selective breeding of Goldfish over centuries has produced several color variations, some of them far removed from the "golden" color of the original fish. There are also different body shapes, and fin and eye configurations. Some extreme versions of the goldfish live only in aquariums—they are much less hardy than varieties closer to the "wild" original. However, some variations are hardier, such as the Shubunkin. Currently, there are about 300 breeds recognized in China. The vast majority of goldfish breeds today originated from China. Some of the main varieties are:

Chinese
Chinese tradition classifies goldfish into four main types. These classifications are not commonly used in the West.
 Crucian (also called "grass") — Goldfish without  anatomical features, similar to Crucian carp or grass carp except for their coloration. These include the common goldfish, comet goldfish and Shubunkin.
 Wen — Goldfish having a  tail, e.g., Fantails and Veiltails ("Wen" is also the name of the characteristic headgrowth on such strains as Oranda and Lionhead)
 Dragon Eye — Goldfish having extended eyes, e.g., Black Moor, Bubble Eye, and Telescope Eye
 Egg — Goldfish having no dorsal fin, usually with an 'egg-shaped' body, e.g., Lionhead. This group includes a Bubble Eye without a dorsal fin.

Cultivation

In aquaria
Like most species in the carp family, goldfish produce a large amount of waste both in their feces and through their gills, releasing harmful chemicals into the water. Build-up of this waste to toxic levels can occur in a relatively short period of time, and can easily cause a goldfish's death. For common and comet varieties, each goldfish should have about  of water. Goldfish (which are smaller) should have about  per goldfish. The water surface area determines how much oxygen diffuses and dissolves into the water. A general rule is have . Active aeration by way of a water pump, filter or fountain effectively increases the surface area.

The goldfish is classified as a coldwater fish, and can live in unheated aquaria at a temperature comfortable for humans. However, rapid changes in temperature (for example in an office building in winter when the heat is turned off at night) can kill them, especially if the tank is small. Care must also be taken when adding water, as the new water may be of a different temperature. Temperatures under about  are dangerous to  varieties, though commons and comets can survive slightly lower temperatures. Extremely high temperatures (over ) can also harm goldfish. However, higher temperatures may help fight protozoan infestations by accelerating the parasite's life-cycle—thus eliminating it more quickly. The optimum temperature for goldfish is between  and .

Like all fish, goldfish do not like to be petted. In fact, touching a goldfish can endanger its health, because it can cause the protective slime coat to be damaged or removed, exposing the fish's skin to infection from bacteria or water-born parasites. However, goldfish respond to people by surfacing at feeding time, and can be trained or acclimated to taking pellets or flakes from human fingers. The reputation of goldfish dying quickly is often due to poor care. The lifespan of goldfish in captivity can extend beyond 10 years.

If left in the dark for a period of time, goldfish gradually change color until they are almost gray. Goldfish produce pigment in response to light, similarly to how human skin becomes tanned in the sun. Fish have cells called chromatophores that produce pigments which reflect light, and give the fish coloration. The color of a goldfish is determined by which pigments are in the cells, how many pigment molecules there are, and whether the pigment is grouped inside the cell or is spaced throughout the cytoplasm.

Because goldfish eat live plants, their presence in a planted aquarium can be problematic. Only a few aquarium plant species (for example Cryptocoryne and Anubias) can survive around goldfish, but they require special attention so that they are not uprooted. Plastic plants are more durable.

In ponds

Goldfish are popular pond fish, since they are small, inexpensive, colorful and very hardy. In an outdoor pond or water garden, they may even survive for brief periods if ice forms on the surface, as long as there is enough oxygen remaining in the water and the pond does not freeze solid. Common, London and Bristol shubunkins, jikin, wakin, comet and some hardier fantail goldfish can be kept in a pond all year round in temperate and subtropical climates. Moor, veiltail, oranda and lionhead can be kept safely in outdoor ponds year-round only in more tropical climates and only in summer elsewhere.

Compatible fish include rudd, tench, orfe and koi, but the last require specialized care. Ramshorn snails are helpful by eating any algae that grows in the pond. Without some form of animal population control, goldfish ponds can easily become overstocked. Fish such as orfe consume goldfish eggs.

Ponds small and large are fine in warmer areas (although it ought to be noted that goldfish can "overheat" in small volumes of water in the summer in tropical climates). In frosty climes, the depth should be at least  to preclude freezing. During winter, goldfish become sluggish, stop eating and often stay on the bottom of the pond. This is normal; they become active again in the spring. Unless the pond is large enough to maintain its own ecosystem without interference from humans, a filter is important to clear waste and keep the pond clean. Plants are essential as they act as part of the filtration system, as well as a food source for the fish. Plants are further beneficial since they raise oxygen levels in the water.

Like their wild ancestors, common and comet goldfish as well as shubunkin can survive, and even thrive, in any climate that can support a pond, whereas  goldfish are unlikely to survive in the wild as their bright colors and long fins make them easy prey.

Feeding

In the wild, the diet of goldfish consists of crustaceans, insects, and various plant matter. Like most fish, they are opportunistic feeders and do not stop eating on their own accord. Overfeeding can be deleterious to their health, typically by blocking the intestines. This happens most often with selectively bred goldfish, which have a convoluted intestinal tract. When excess food is available, they produce more waste and feces, partly due to incomplete protein digestion. Overfeeding can sometimes be diagnosed by observing feces trailing from the fish's cloaca.

Goldfish-specific food has less protein and more carbohydrate than conventional fish food. Enthusiasts may supplement this diet with shelled peas (with outer skins removed), blanched green leafy vegetables, and bloodworms. Young goldfish benefit from the addition of brine shrimp to their diet. As with all animals, goldfish preferences vary.

For mosquito control
Like some other popular aquarium fish, such as the guppy, goldfish and other carp are frequently added to stagnant bodies of water to reduce mosquito populations. They are used to prevent the spread of West Nile virus, which relies on mosquitoes to migrate. However, introducing goldfish has often had negative consequences for local ecosystems.

Market
The market for live goldfish and other crucian carp usually imported from China was $1.2million in 2018. Some high quality varieties cost between $125 and $300.

Welfare concerns

Fishbowls are detrimental to the health of goldfish and are prohibited by animal welfare legislation in several municipalities. The practice of using bowls as permanent fish housing originated from a misunderstanding of Chinese "display" vessels: goldfish which were normally housed in ponds were, on occasion, temporarily displayed in smaller containers to be better admired by guests.

Goldfish kept in bowls or "mini-aquariums" suffer from death, disease, and stunting, due primarily to the low oxygen and very high ammonia/nitrite levels inherent in such an environment. In comparison to other common aquarium fish, goldfish have high oxygen needs and produce a large amount of waste due to the fact they lack a stomach; therefore they require a substantial volume of well-filtered water to thrive. In addition, all goldfish varieties have the potential to reach  in total length, with single-tailed breeds often exceeding . Single-tailed varieties include common and comet goldfish.

In many countries, carnival and fair operators commonly give goldfish away in plastic bags as prizes. In late 2005 Rome banned the use of goldfish and other animals as carnival prizes. Rome has also banned the use of "goldfish bowls", on animal cruelty grounds, as well as Monza, Italy, in 2004. In the United Kingdom, the government proposed banning this practice as part of its Animal Welfare Bill, though this has since been amended to only prevent goldfish being given as prizes to unaccompanied minors.

In Japan, during summer festivals and religious holidays (ennichi), a traditional game called goldfish scooping is played, in which a player scoops goldfish from a basin with a special scooper. Sometimes bouncy balls are substituted for goldfish.

Although edible and closely related to some fairly widely eaten species, goldfish are rarely eaten. A fad among American college students for many years was swallowing goldfish as a stunt and as a fraternity initiation process. The first recorded instance was in 1939 at Harvard University. The practice gradually fell out of popularity over the course of several decades and is rarely practiced today.

Some animal advocates have called for boycotts of goldfish purchases, citing industrial farming and low survival rates of the fish.

In popular culture

In Chinese history, goldfish was seen "as a symbol of luck and fortune". Moreover, only members of the Song dynasty could own goldfish. In Iran and among the international Iranian diaspora, goldfish is a traditional part of Nowruz celebrations. Goldfish is usually used in Haft-sin table as the symbol of progress.

See also
 Aquaculture
 List of goldfish varieties

References

External links

 Goldfish Types — Description of 50 plus varieties of goldfish with pictures
 Bristol Aquarists' Society: Goldfish — Photographs and descriptions of the different goldfish varieties

Fish described in 1758
Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus
Carassius
Fishkeeping
Fish of China

Goldfish


Devika Rani Choudhuri  (30 March 1908 – 9 March 1994), usually known as Devika Rani, was an Indian actress who was active in Hindi films during the 1930s and 1940s. She was the first recipient of the Dadasaheb Phalke Award. Widely acknowledged as the first lady of Indian cinema, Devika Rani had a successful film career that spanned 10 years.

Born into a wealthy, anglicized Indian family, Devika Rani was sent to boarding school in England at age nine and grew up in that country. In 1928, she met Himanshu Rai, an Indian film-producer, and married him the following year. She assisted in costume design and art direction for Rai's experimental silent film A Throw of Dice (1929). Both of them then went to Germany and received training in film-making at UFA Studios in Berlin. Rai then cast himself as hero and her as heroine in his next production, the bilingual film Karma, made simultaneously in English and Hindi. The film premiered in England in 1933, elicited interest there for a prolonged kissing scene featuring the real-life couple, and flopped badly in India. The couple returned to India in 1934, where Himanshu Rai established a production studio, Bombay Talkies, in partnership with certain other people. The studio produced several successful films over the next 5–6 years, and Devika Rani played the lead role in many of them. Her on-screen pairing with Ashok Kumar became popular in India.

Following Rai's death in 1940, Devika Rani took control of the studio and produced some more films in partnership with her late husband's associates, namely Sashadhar Mukherjee and Ashok Kumar. As she was to recollect in her old age, the films which she supervised tended to flop, while the films supervised by the partners tended to be hits. In 1945, she retired from films, married the Russian painter Svetoslav Roerich and moved to his estate on the outskirts of Bangalore, thereafter leading a very reclusive life for the next five decades. Her persona, no less than her film roles, were considered socially unconventional. Her awards include the Padma Shri (1958), Dadasaheb Phalke Award (1970) and the Soviet Land Nehru Award (1990).

Background and education
Devika Rani was born as Devika Rani Choudhury on 30 March 1908 in Waltair near Visakhapatnam in present-day Andhra Pradesh, into an extremely affluent and educated Bengali family, the daughter of Col. Dr. Manmathnath Choudhury by his wife Leela Devi Choudhury.

Devika's father, Colonel Manmatha Nath Chaudhuri, scion of a large landowning zamindari family, was the first Indian Surgeon-General of Madras Presidency. Devika's paternal grandfather, Durgadas Choudhury, was the Zamindar (landlord) of Chatmohar Upazila of Pabna district of present-day Bangladesh. Her paternal grandmother, Sukumari Devi (wife of Durgadas), was a sister of the nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Devika's father had five brothers, all of them distinguished in their own fields, mainly law, medicine and literature. They were Sir Ashutosh Chaudhuri, Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court during the British Raj; Jogesh Chandra Chaudhuri and Kumudnath Chaudhuri, both prominent Kolkata-based barristers; Pramathanath Choudhary, the famous Bengali writer, and Dr. Suhridnath Chaudhuri, a noted medical practitioner. The future Chief of Army Staff, Jayanto Nath Chaudhuri, was Devika's first cousin: their fathers were brothers to each other.

Devika's mother, Leela Devi Choudhury, also came from an equally educated family and was a niece of Rabindranath Tagore. Thus, Devika Rani was related through both her parents to the poet and Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Her father, Manmathnath Choudhury, was the son of Sukumari Devi Choudhury, sister of Rabindranath Tagore. Devika's mother, Leela Devi Chaudhuri, was the daughter of Indumati Devi Chattopadhyay, whose mother Saudamini Devi Gangopadhyay was another sister of the Nobel laureate. Thus, Devika's father and maternal grandmother were first cousins to each other, being the children of two sisters of Rabindranath Tagore. Nor was this all: Two of Devika's uncles (Chief Justice Sir Ashutosh and Pramathanath) were married to their first cousins (mother's brother's daughters), the nieces of Rabindranath Tagore: Prativa Devi Choudhury, wife of Sir Ashutosh Choudhury, was the daughter of Hemendranath Tagore, and Indira Devi Choudhury, wife of Pramathanath Choudhury, was the daughter of Satyendranath Tagore. Devika thus had extremely strong family ties to Jarasanko, seat of the Tagore family in Kolkata and a major crucible of the Bengali Renaissance.

Devika Rani was sent to boarding school in England at the age of nine, and grew up there. After completing her schooling in the mid-1920s, she enrolled in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and the Royal Academy of Music in London to study acting and music. She also enrolled for courses in architecture, textile and decor design, and even apprenticed under Elizabeth Arden. All of these courses, each of them a few months long, were completed by 1927, and Devika Rani then took up a job in textile design.

Career
In 1928, Devika Rani first met her future husband, Himanshu Rai, an Indian barrister-turned-film maker, who was in London preparing to shoot his forthcoming film A Throw of Dice. Rai was impressed with Devika's "exceptional skills" and invited her to join the production team of the film, although not as an actress. She readily agreed, assisting him in areas such as costume designing and art direction. The two also traveled to Germany for the post-production work, where she had occasion to observe the film-making techniques of the German film industry, specifically of G. W. Pabst and Fritz Lang. Inspired by their methods of film-making, she enrolled for a short film-making course at Universum Film AG studio in Berlin. Devika Rani learnt various aspects of film-making and also took a special course in film acting. Around this time, they both acted in a play together, for which they received many accolades in Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries. During this time she was also trained in the production unit of Max Reinhardt, an Austrian theatre director.

In 1929, shortly after the release of A Throw of Dice, Devika Rani and Himanshu Rai were married.

Acting debut

Devika and Himanshu Rai returned to India, where Himanshu produced a film titled Karma (1933). The film was his first talkie, and like his previous films, it was a joint production between people from India, Germany and the United Kingdom. Rai, who played the lead role, decided to cast Devika Rani as the female lead, and this marked her acting debut. Karma is credited as having been the first English language talkie made by an Indian. It was one of the earliest Indian films to feature a kissing scene. The kissing scene, involving Himanshu Rai and Devika Rani, lasted for about four minutes, and eighty years later, this stands as the record for duration of a kissing scene in Indian cinema as of 2014. Devika Rani also sang a song in the film, a bi-lingual song in English and Hindi. This song is said to be Bollywood's first English song.

Made simultaneously in both English and Hindi, Karma premiered in London in May 1933. Alongside a special screening for the Royal family at Windsor, the film was well received throughout Europe. Devika Rani's performance was internationally acclaimed as she won "rave reviews" in the London media. A critic from The Daily Telegraph noted Devika Rani for her "beauty" and "charm" while also crediting her to be a "potential star of the first magnitude". Following the release of the film, she was invited by the BBC to enact a role in their first ever television broadcast in Britain in 1933. She also inaugurated the company's first short wave radio transmission to India. In spite of its success in England, Karma did not interest Indian audiences and turned out be a failure in India when it was released in Hindi as Nagin Ki Ragini in early 1934. However, the film received good critical response and helped Devika Rani establish herself as a leading actress in Indian cinema. Indian independence activist and poet Sarojini Naidu called her a "lovely and gifted little lady".

Bombay Talkies
After the critical success of Karma, the couple returned to India in 1934. Although the Hindi version of the film, released in India in 1934, flopped without a trace, Himanshu Rai had established the required networks in Europe, and was able to start a film studio named Bombay Talkies, partnering with Niranjan Pal, a Bengali playwright and screenwriter who he had met previously in London and Franz Osten, who directed several of Rai's films.

Upon inception, Bombay Talkies was one of the "best-equipped" film studios in the country. The studio would serve as a launch pad for future actors including Dilip Kumar, Leela Chitnis, Madhubala, Raj Kapoor, Ashok Kumar and Mumtaz. The studio's first film Jawani Ki Hawa (1935), a crime thriller,  starring Devika Rani and Najm-ul-Hassan, was shot fully on a train.

Elopement
Najm-ul-Hassan was also Devika's co-star in the studio's next venture, Jeevan Naiya. The two co-stars developed a romantic relationship, and during the shooting schedule of Jeevan Naiya, Devika eloped with Hassan. Himanshu was both enraged and distraught. Since the leading pair were absent, production was stalled. A significant portion of the movie had been shot and a large sum of money, which had been taken as credit from financers, had been spent. The studio therefore suffered severe financial losses and a loss of credit among bankers in the city while the runaway couple made merry.

Sashadhar Mukherjee, an assistant sound-engineer at the studio, had a brotherly bond with Devika Rani because both of them were Bengalis and spoke that language with each other. He established contact with the runaway couple and managed to convince Devika Rani to return to her husband. In the India of that era, divorce was legally almost impossible and women who eloped were regarded as no better than prostitutes and were shunned by their own families. In her heart of hearts, Devika Rani knew that she could not secure a divorce or marry Hassan under any circumstances. She negotiated with her husband through the auspices of Sashadhar Mukherjee, seeking the separation of her finances from those of her husband as a condition for her return. Henceforth, she would be paid separately for working in his films, but he would be required to single-handedly pay the household expenses for the home in which both of them would live. Himanshu agreed to this, in order to save face in society and to prevent his studio from going bankrupt. Devika Rani returned to her marital home. However, things would never be the same between husband and wife again, and it is said that thenceforth, their relationship was largely confined to work and little or no intimacy transpired between them after this episode.

Despite the additional expense involved in re-shooting many portions of the film, Himanshu Rai replaced Najm-ul-Hassan with Ashok Kumar, who was the brother of Sashadhar Mukherjee's wife, as the hero of Jeevan Naiya. This marked the debut, improbable as it may seem, of Ashok Kumar's six-decade-long career in Hindi films. Najm-ul-Hassan was dismissed from his job at Bombay Talkies (this was the period in which actors and actresses were paid regular monthly salaries by one specific film studio and could not work in any other studio). His reputation as a dangerous cad established, he could not find work in any other studio. His career was ruined and he sank into obscurity.

Golden era of Bombay Talkies

Achhut Kannya (1936), the studio's next production was a tragedy drama that had Devika Rani and Ashok Kumar portraying the roles of an untouchable girl and a Brahmin boy who fall in love. The film is considered a "landmark" in Indian cinema as it challenged the caste system in the country. The casting of Devika Rani was considered a mismatch as her looks did not match the role of a poor untouchable girl by virtue of her "upper-class upbringing". However, her pairing with Ashok Kumar became popular and they went on to star in as many as ten films together with most of them being Bombay Talkies productions.

In the 1930s, Bombay Talkies produced several women-centric films with Devika Rani playing the lead role in all of them. In majority of the films produced by the studio, she was paired opposite Ashok Kumar, who was "overshadowed" by her. Jeevan Prabhat, released in 1937, saw a role-reversal between Devika Rani and Ashok Kumar—she played a higher-caste Brahmin woman who is mistaken by society of having an extra-marital affair with an untouchable man. Her next release Izzat (1937), based on Romeo and Juliet, was set in the medieval period and depicted two lovers belonging to enemy clans of a Maratha empire. Nirmala, released in the following year, dealt with the plight of a child-less woman who is told by an astrologer to abandon her husband to ensure successful pregnancy. In Vachan, her second release of the year, she played a Rajput princess. Durga, her only release in 1939, was a romantic drama that told the story of an orphaned girl and a village doctor, played by Ashok Kumar.

Widowhood and studio decline
Following the death of Rai in 1940, there was a rift between two parties of the Bombay Talkies led by Mukherjee and Amiya Chakravarty. Devika Rani assumed principal responsibility and took over the studio along with Mukherjee. In 1941, she produced and acted in Anjaan co-starring Ashok Kumar. In the subsequent years, she produced two successful films under the studio—Basant and Kismet. Basant   Kismet (1943) contained anti-British messages (India was under British rule at that time) and turned out to be a "record-breaking" film. Devika Rani made her last film appearance in Hamari Baat (1943), which had Raj Kapoor playing a small role.

She handpicked newcomer Dilip Kumar for a role in Jwar Bhata (1944), produced by her on behalf of the studio. An internal politics that arose in the studio led prominent personalities including Mukherjee and Ashok Kumar to part ways with her and set up a new studio called Filmistan. Due to lack of support and interest, she decided to quit the film industry. In an interview to journalist Raju Bharatan, she mentioned that her idea of not willing to compromise on "artistic values" of film-making as one of the major reasons for her quitting the industry.

Retirement
Following her retirement from films, Devika Rani married Russian painter Svetoslav Roerich, son of Russian artist Nicholas Roerich, in 1945. After marriage, the couple moved to Manali, Himachal Pradesh where they got acquainted with the Nehru family. During her stay in Manali, Devika Rani made a few documentaries on wildlife. After staying in Manali for some years, they moved to Bangalore, Karnataka, and settled there managing an export company. The couple bought a  estate on the outskirts of the city and led a solitary life for the remainder of their lives.

Death
She died of bronchitis on 9 March 1994—a year after Roerich died—in Bangalore. At her funeral, Devika Rani was given full state honors. Following her death, the estate was on litigation for many years as the couple had no legal claimants; Devika Rani remained childless throughout her life. In August 2011, the Government of Karnataka acquired the estate after the Supreme Court of India passed the verdict in favour of them.

Legacy

Devika Rani was called the first lady of Indian cinema. She is credited for being one of the earliest personalities who took the position of Indian cinema to global standards. Her films were mostly tragic romantic dramas that contained social themes. The roles played by her in films of Bombay Talkies usually involved in romantic relationship with men who were unusual for the social norms prevailing in the society at that time, mainly for their caste background or community identity. Rani was highly influenced by the German cinema by virtue of her training at the UFA Studios;

Although she was influenced by German actress Marlene Dietrich, her acting style was compared to Greta Garbo, thus leading to Devika Rani being named the "Indian Garbo".

Rani's attire, both in films and sometimes in real life, were considered "risque" at that time. In his book Bless You Bollywood!: A tribute to Hindi Cinema on completing 100 years, Tilak Rishi mentions that Devika Rani was known as the "Dragon Lady" for her "smoking, drinking, cursing and hot temper".

In 1958, the Government of India honoured Devika Rani with a Padma Shri, the country's fourth highest civilian honour. She became the first ever recipient of the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, the country's highest award for films, when it was instituted in 1969.

In 1990, Soviet Russia honoured her with the "Soviet Land Nehru Award".

A postage stamp commemorating her life was released by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in February 2011.

In 2020, Kishwar Desai published a book titled The Longest Kiss: The Life and Times of Devika Rani, which sheds light on Devika Rani's professional accomplishments and her personal misfortunes.

Filmography

 Karma (1933)
 Jawani Ki Hawa (1935)
 Mamta Aur Mian Biwi (1936)
 Jeevan Naiya (1936)
 Janmabhoomi (1936)
 Achhoot Kannya (1936)
 Savitri (1937)
 Jeevan Prabhat (1937)
 Izzat (1937)
 Prem Kahani (1937)
 Nirmala (1938)
 Vachan (1938)
 Durga (1939)
 Anjaan (1941)
 Hamari Baat (1943)

Notes

References

Citations

Bibliography

External links

1908 births
1994 deaths
Actresses from Visakhapatnam
Bengali people
Tagore family
Indian film actresses
20th-century Indian actresses
Actresses in Hindi cinema
People associated with the University of London
Alumni of RADA
Alumni of the Royal Academy of Music
Recipients of the Padma Shri in arts
Dadasaheb Phalke Award recipients
People from Uttarandhra
21st-century Indian actresses

Devika Rani


Banz Abbey (), now known as Banz Castle (), is a former Benedictine monastery, since 1978 a part of the town of Bad Staffelstein north of Bamberg, Bavaria, southern Germany.

History

The abbey was founded in about 1070 by Countess Alberada of Schweinfurt and her husband, Count Hermann of Habsburg-Kastl, and until the secularisation of 1803 was the oldest monastery on the upper Main.

In the late Middle Ages and until 1575 only members of the nobility were accepted as monks.

After the Thirty Years' War the abbey had to be rebuilt. The abbots Eucharius Weiner and Kilian Düring commissioned Johann Leonhard Dientzenhofer and after his death in 1707, his brother Johann Dientzenhofer. Construction began in 1698. The church, built in Baroque style, was consecrated in 1719. The interior is built, not with right angles, but with a series of ellipses. The main altar, the chancel and the statues of saints in the church and on the façade are by Balthasar Esterbauer; the ceiling frescoes are by Melchior Steidl. The choir stalls were made by the court cabinet maker and ebonist of Schönborn, Johann Georg Nesstfell.

In the second half of the 18th century Banz Abbey was known throughout the Holy Roman Empire as a place of Catholic enlightenment and for the scholarship of its monks. This did not save it from secularisation and dissolution in 1803.

After dissolution
In 1813 Duke Wilhelm in Bavaria acquired the former abbey premises, which were thereafter known as Schloss Banz ("Banz Castle").

In 1933 Duke Ludwig Wilhelm in Bavaria sold the buildings to the Community of the Holy Angels ("Gemeinschaft von den heiligen Engeln"), an order dedicated to the spiritual care of expatriate Germans. Since 1978 the former monastery has been in the possession of the Hanns Seidel Foundation, an organisation closely associated with the political party CSU, and is used as a conference centre. It also accommodates a collection of fossils and other curiosities, such as Egyptian mummies.

The estate of the former monastery, including vast forests, is today owned by Duke Max Emanuel's eldest daughter Sophie, Hereditary Princess of Liechtenstein.

See also
Valentin Rathgeber
History of early modern period domes

Sources
Dippold, G., 1991. Kloster Banz. Natur, Kultur, Architektur. Staffelstein: Obermain Buch- und Bildverlag.
Wüst, W., 2001. Kloster Banz als ein benediktinisches Modell. Zur Stiftsstaatlichkeit in Franken. in: "Zeitschrift für bayerische Kirchengeschichte" 70 (2001), pp. 44–72.
Stühlmeyer, B., Stühlmeyer, L., 2016. Johann Valentin Rathgeber. Leben und Werk. Verlag Sankt Michaelsbund, München 2016, .

External links

  Official website
 Klöster in Bayern: Kloster Banz
  History of the Upper Main: Banz
 Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung, Kloster Banz

Monasteries in Bavaria
Benedictine monasteries in Germany
1070s establishments in the Holy Roman Empire
Christian monasteries established in the 11th century
Baroque architecture in Bavaria
Lichtenfels (district)
1803 disestablishments in the Holy Roman Empire

Banz Abbey


Blue Mounds is a town in Dane County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 899 at the 2020 census. The Village of Blue Mounds is located within the town.

Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 33.0 square miles (85.5 km2), of which, 33.0 square miles (85.5 km2) of it is land and 0.03% is water.

Demographics
As of the census of 2000, there were 842 people, 291 households, and 247 families residing in the town. The population density was 25.5 people per square mile (9.8/km2).  There were 300 housing units at an average density of 9.1 per square mile (3.5/km2). The racial makeup of the town was 98.34% White, 0.12% Black or African American, 0.59% Native American, 0.36% Asian, 0.12% from other races, and 0.48% from two or more races. 0.48% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

There were 291 households, out of which 41.6% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 77.0% were married couples living together, 4.5% had a female householder with no husband present, and 14.8% were non-families. 10.0% of all households were made up of individuals, and 3.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.89 and the average family size was 3.13.

In the town, the population was spread out, with 30.6% under the age of 18, 4.2% from 18 to 24, 28.5% from 25 to 44, 26.6% from 45 to 64, and 10.1% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 39 years. For every 100 females, there were 101.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 104.9 males.

The median income for a household in the town was $61,429, and the median income for a family was $64,028. Males had a median income of $41,563 versus $29,205 for females. The per capita income for the town was $27,696. About 4.4% of families and 5.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 7.0% of those under age 18 and none of those age 65 or over.

References

Towns in Dane County, Wisconsin
Madison, Wisconsin, metropolitan statistical area
Towns in Wisconsin

Blue Mounds (town), Wisconsin


Thunderstone is an Australian science fiction television series produced by Jonathan M. Shiff Productions set in a post-apocalyptic world after Earth is hit by a comet. The main character Noah is played by Jeffrey Walker (also known for his roles in Ocean Girl, The Wayne Manifesto, and Mirror, Mirror). Other actors who appear in the series are Gerard Kennedy, Christopher Elliott (who later appeared in Under Jakob's Ladder), Emily Browning (who later appeared in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events), and Daniel Daperis.

The show was originally broadcast on Network Ten from 12 February 1999 until 8 September 2000. Both the first and second seasons were also shown on ABC Kids.

Synopsis
The main character Noah Daniels, his family and other survivors who live in an underground colony called North Col in the year 2020. It is impossible to live on the planet's surface, because of the extreme cold and constant snow storms caused by the impact of a comet known as Nemesis. As all animal life was destroyed by the comet's strike, the children are taught about these extinct animals with the aid of a holodeck. As a side effect of the holodeck, Noah finds himself transported into the future, into a place called Haven, where a group of children known as the Nomads battle the evil Tao and his men, The Protectors, for control of a valuable blue mineral called thunderstone.

Thunderstone is the name given to the chemical compound of which the Nemesis comet was made. It is a source of energy and power, and can be used to do anything from making explosives to allowing vehicles to run on it like gas. It also reacts violently when it comes into contact with itself, causing it to disintegrate if enough impact is made. When drunk as a compounded solution, it grants long life to the drinker. Much of the plot revolves around attempts to control the supplies of thunderstone due to its many useful properties.

Characters

North Col
 Noah Daniels (played by Jeffrey Walker) – a teenage boy who lives in the underground research station North Col in the year 2020. Noah is bright, resourceful and inquisitive. He is faithful to his friends and family and will do whatever it takes to help them.
 Becky Daniels (Kate Keltie) – Noah's younger sister. When Noah disappears from North Col, Becky becomes determined to find him. She is the one who first suggests that Noah has traveled through time.
 Dr. Liz Daniels (Nikki Coghill) – Noah and Becky's mother.
 Dr. Simon Daniels (Andrew Larkins) – Noah and Becky's father.
 Dr. Pretorius (Gerard Kennedy) – a member of the Triumvirate, the law-making body of North Col. He acts as a mentor to Noah and aids him in some of his endeavors.

Haven
 Arushka (Mereoni Vuki) – leader of the Nomads and best friend of Noah.
 Sundance (Damien Fotiou) – a Nomad. Twin brother of Sutch.
 Geneva (Anna-Grace Hopkins) – a Nomad.
 Kwan (Nathan Wentworth) – a Nomad. Specialises in cooking.
 Chip (Daniel Daperis) – a Nomad.

Series history

Season 1
Season one revolves around Noah's adventures in Haven. As he brings more and more animals from the past to inhabit Haven and continues to jump back and forth through North Col, Haven, and the past before the Nemesis Comet hit, he attracts attention from the Triumvirate in North Col and the Shadow Master in Haven. This causes a chain of events that reveal the true identity of the Shadow Master, and his goal to acquire enough thunderstone to become immortal. Noah and company devise a plot to destroy the core of the Nemesis Comet which was recently discovered by the Shadow Master, to prevent him from gaining absolute control over Haven. They destroy it using its explosive property by combining it with huge amounts of salt and igniting it. The Shadow Master is killed as he approaches the supply of thunderstone, watching his life's work become terminated. Tao's true nature is also revealed, and his minions flee and become no more.

Season 2
With the Shadow Master and his minions defeated, Noah stays at North Col but misses Haven and is tempted to go back. When he does, he becomes stranded since there is no longer any thunderstone left, or so it seems. In this season, the plot revolves around acquiring a large Thunderstone Cube, which Noah learns about from fugitives from the future, named Mayah and her brothers, who brought it there under a lake. After obtaining it, Noah realises he could travel back in time and use its power to destroy the Nemesis Comet completely, preventing the apocalypse. The season ends with Noah using the energy to completely incinerate the comet and thus, ironically, cause everything he did in Season 1 to cease to exist, in his own words: "Not in this dimension". This causes Mayah and her brothers to cease to exist, and the Earth now has a brighter future. The comet broke off into a ring of thunderstone that revolves around the Earth, which is a major plot point for season three.

Season 3
Noah is recognised for his genius, and this season begins with experimental wormholes of his design. This allows him to set up a space colony. The people from the future of this space colony wish to assassinate young Noah, because his future self was said to have murdered their parents. They use Noah's time travel technology and make several attempts on his life. The season involves Noah trying to find the truth about what happened and making peace with these people.

Broadcast history
The show aired in the Republic of Ireland on RTÉ Two from 5 February 2001 in the early 2000s.

DVD releases
Season 1 was released on a three-disc DVD set by Umbrella Entertainment on 28 June 2008.

References

External links

Jonathan M. Shiff Productions – producer's website which contains a wealth of information on the series.
Thunderstone at the National Film and Sound Archive
Thunderstone – Episode 3 at Australian Screen Online

Network 10 original programming
APRA Award winners
Australian adventure television series
Australian children's television series
Australian time travel television series
Australian science fiction television series
BAFTA winners (television series)
Post-apocalyptic television series
English-language television shows
1999 Australian television series debuts
2000 Australian television series endings
Television series about teenagers
Holography in television
Television series about impact events
Television series by Beyond Television Productions
Television series set in 2020

Thunderstone (TV series)