J. A. Topf and Sons () was an engineering company, founded in 1878 in Erfurt, Germany by Johannes Andreas Topf (1816–1891). Originally, it made heating systems and brewing and malting equipment. Later, the company diversified into silos, chimneys, incinerators for burning municipal waste, and crematoria. During World War I it made weapons shells, limbers (carts for carrying artillery) and other military vehicles. In World War II it also made weapons shells and aircraft parts for the Luftwaffe.

It is now infamous as the largest of 12 companies that designed and built crematorium ovens for concentration and extermination camps during the Holocaust, planned and carried out by the Nazi regime from 1935 to 1945. The company not only made crematorium ovens, it also made ventilation systems for the gas chambers at Auschwitz II–Birkenau.

Topf & Söhne's main competitor in making concentration camp ovens was the Berlin firm , founded in 1887.

At its peak Topf & Söhne was the largest company of its type in the world. It sold its products globally: as far afield as Russia, Asia, North and South America, Australia, and New Zealand. In the 1940s, less than 2% of its total business came from its concentration camp contracts.

In addition to Auschwitz and Auschwitz II–Birkenau, Topf & Söhne built crematorium ovens for Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen-Gusen, Mogilev ghetto, and the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. Out of the five ovens at Dachau concentration camp, four were made by H. Kori and one by Topf & Söhne. In all, Topf built 25 crematorium ovens which had a total of 76 incineration chambers (called 'muffles') for concentration camps. H. Kori built 42 single chamber ovens at various camps.

Epithets such as 'the engineers of the final solution' and 'the technicians of mass murder' have been applied to Töpf & Söhne, because, to a greater extent than its competitors, it used its considerable expertise to assist the Nazi regime to make mass execution into an efficient, industrial process.

From 1941, Topf & Söhne used forced labour in its factory, as did many other German firms in the Nazi period. At least 620 foreigners were forced to work for the company. These people received wages, but they were paid 25–30% less than the German employees.
After the war, the company was confiscated and nationalised by the Soviet administration. The company's history was not fully researched until after German reunification in 1990.

The site of the former factory is now a Holocaust memorial site and a museum. It is the only memorial of its type relating to a civilian company's collaboration in the Holocaust.

Early history

When Johannes Topf founded the firm on 1 July 1878 he was already 62 years old. He owned his own brewery and had also worked in the fuel technology industry. He established the new company to sell a system for heating brewing coppers which he had invented and patented.

He had four sons: Gustav (1853–1893); Albert (1857–1896); Max Julius Ernst, known as Julius (1859–1914) and Wilhelm Louis, known as Ludwig, (1863–1914). A fifth son died in childhood. He founded the firm against the advice of his sons, although the younger two sons, Julius and Ludwig, joined him. By 1885 J.A. Topf & Söhne was producing heating, brewing and malting systems and working collaboratively with other firms to sell products all over Germany and beyond.
The two older brothers also joined the company in the late 1880s, but they both died by the mid-1890s; Gustav, aged 40 and Albert, aged 39. Johannes Topf died in 1891, and in 1904 Julius Topf stepped down to become a sleeping partner due to ill health, leaving Ludwig managing it on his own.

The company began manufacturing incinerators for burning municipal waste and, from 1914, crematoria for local authorities, due to the increasing acceptability of cremation as a means of body disposal. By 1914, it was one of the largest firms of its type in the world, employing over 500 staff and exporting to 50 countries.

Ludwig Topf was wealthy and successful, but committed suicide in February 1914, aged 51, due to the stress of running the business. His brother Julius died of blood poisoning later the same year.  With the second generation of the Topf brothers all dead, Else Topf (1882–1940), Ludwig's widow, became the owner. The firm's senior managers already had a lot of independence and operations continued without any major upheaval. It prospered during World War I due to contracts for weapons shells and military vehicles.

Third generation

Ludwig and Else Topf had three children: Johanna, known as Hanna, (1902–?); Ludwig (1903–1945), and Ernst Wolfgang (1904–1979). When their father died, the two sons, aged 10 and 9, were sent away to a boarding school. The brothers later became the owners and managers of the firm during the Nazi period.

After leaving school, Ludwig studied machine engineering at the Technische Hochschule Hannover, now the University of Hannover. After graduating from Hannover, he spent a further five years at Leipzig, Berlin, and Rostock universities, studying a wide range of subjects, including economics, law, and sociology. Ernst also studied at Hannover, but took business studies. He returned to Erfurt to do two six-month internships, one in a bank and another in a malting company. He then joined Ludwig in Leipzig, studying at the Handelshochschule, now the Leipzig Graduate School of Management, graduating in 1929.

In 1929, Ernst was employed at Topf & Söhne, and in 1931 Ludwig also joined the firm. In the early 1930s, due to the economic crisis of the Weimar Republic, the company lost business to such an extent that by Spring 1933 it was in danger of bankruptcy. Because of this, at the end of 1932, the brothers were made redundant. They were banned from the company site, due to a rift with their mother, who would not speak to them, and because of political problems. Elsa Topf was also estranged from her daughter, whose marriage she disapproved of.

This was happening against a backdrop of rising Nazism. The Nazi party first gained seats in the German parliament in 1928. In the 1932 elections they became the second largest party; Hitler became chancellor in March 1933.

The influence of Nazi staff within the firm also grew. The Topf brothers wanted to return and manage the firm, but at a company works council meeting on 30 January 1933, they were labelled "Judengenossen" (friends of Jews) and not suitable to lead the company. Else Topf supported this stance. The brothers, like their father, did have many good relationships with Jewish friends, neighbours and business contacts. However, for appearances sake, they were persuaded to join the Nazi party, in April 1933. The ambitious engineer Kurt Prüfer joined at the same time. They were then permitted to return and were appointed joint managers, with Ludwig as the technical manager, and Ernst as the business manager.

Concentration camp crematoria

Kurt Prüfer, the head of Topf & Söhne's small crematoria department, was the main oven designer. He developed a two-muffle transportable oven in September 1939, which was delivered to Dachau concentration camp in November 1939. A 'muffle' is the incineration chamber where the body is put. In order to improve the speed at which bodies burned, the muffles were internally joined, resulting in the ashes of individual bodies being mixed. This was illegal, but all subsequent multi-muffle ovens built for the concentration camps were designed in the same way. A further four, single-muffle ovens were built at Dachau by Topf & Söhne's competitor H. Kori.

Initially, Buchenwald camp, which opened in July 1937, sent bodies to the local Weimar city crematorium. From April 1938 to March 1939, 90% of all cremations at Weimar came from Buchenwald. The unusually high numbers looked suspicious, so the SS wanted their own on-site facilities, although it was illegal for crematoria to be outside of local authority control. A Topf transportable, double-muffle oven was delivered in winter 1939/40, and two, three-muffle stationary ovens were ordered. As with all Topf & Söhne stationary ovens, the parts were made in the factory in Erfurt, and the firm's staff went on site to build them, often spending months at the camps. One staff member, Martin Holich, spent almost 12 months in 1942–43 installing and repairing equipment at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The muffles of the concentration camp ovens were smaller than those for civil crematoria, because no space for a coffin was needed, which saved both space and fuel. Prüfer later designed ovens with muffles large enough for multiple bodies to be burned simultaneously. Later, in Topf & Söhne's instructions on using the ovens, they advised adding bodies to the muffles at 20-minute intervals as the previous body burned down. Bodies were often pushed in four, five or even six at once.

In addition to making ovens for Buchenwald, Auschwitz and Dachau, Topf & Söhne also supplied a transportable double-muffle oven and a stationary double-muffle oven for Mauthausen-Gusen, a triple-muffle oven at Groß-Rosen and a four-muffle oven at Mogilev ghetto. It is also thought that they supplied transportable ovens to at least one of the Nazi euthanasia institutions, in which a total of over 70,000 physically and mentally disabled people were murdered in 1940 and 1941.

Auschwitz I and II

From August 1940 to May 1942, Topf & Söhne built three double-muffle ovens at Auschwitz I. In October 1941, the SS placed an order for five three-muffle ovens for the new Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp (Auschwitz II), where it was initially estimated that over 1000 people per day would die. According to calculations made by the  on June 28, 1943, the crematoria could burn 4,416 corpses per day—1,440 each in crematoria II and III, and 768 each in crematoria IV and V. This meant that the crematoria could potentially burn over 1.6 million corpses per year, however, the actual numbers were lower.

The first transport of Jews arrived at Auschwitz I on 26 March 1942. To deal with the increased demand for body disposal, Topf & Söhne installed a further two 8-muffle ovens in September 1942. An additional five triple-muffle ovens were installed at Auschwitz II by mid-March 1943.

Surviving Sonderkommando prisoners assigned to burn the bodies stated that all four of Auschwitz II's crematoria had the capacity to cremate a total of 8000 bodies per day, although the actual numbers were usually lower. From 1942 until spring 1944 about 1000 people per day were transported to Auschwitz, although not all of them were killed. In the summer of 1944, almost 437,000 Hungarian Jews were transported to the camp and during this period up to 9,000 bodies per day, and sometimes as many as 10,000 per day, were cremated in the ovens, as well as in outdoor burning pits. Crematorium IV was out of use from May 1943, after only two months of service, because it developed cracks. From March 1943 until November 1944, nearly 1 million people were murdered and disposed of at the camp.

Observations, innovations and patent applications

In December 1939, a patent application was made for Prüfer's double-muffle transportable cremation unit, although it was not approved, possibly because of the legal problem of ash mixing.

On 26 October 1942, the engineer Fritz Sander, Prüfer's manager, applied for a patent for what he called a "continuous operation corpse incineration oven for mass use". This was a four-storey oven designed for Auschwitz II. The idea was that the bodies would be loaded by a type of conveyor belt and the heat of the bodies already in the oven would ignite them, thus, after an initial heating period, it would remain in continuous operation without the need for any further fuel – the heat of burning corpses would keep the apparatus running. Prüfer and Sander, who disliked each other and competed with one another, disagreed about how well the device would work in practice. It was never built.

Gas chamber exhaust fans

In early 1943, the Topf & Söhne fitter Heinrich Messing installed exhaust fans in the Auschwitz II crematoria and also in the gas chambers. Initially, the process of gassing prisoners and then letting fresh air into the gas chambers lasted several hours, but after the exhaust fans were installed this was reduced to about an hour, thus reducing the turn around time.

On site observations

Topf & Söhne engineers and other staff visited the concentration camps many times, not only to install and repair equipment, but also to observe processes to help make them more efficient. Before crematoria II, III and IV at Auschwitz II were officially put into operation, on 5 March 1943, in the presence of high-ranking SS officers from Berlin, camp authorities and Topf & Söhne staff, a test of crematorium II was held to measure the speed at which bodies could be disposed of. Those present observed the bodies being put in the ovens and burned. They used stop-watches to time the process and took notes.

On 13 March 1943 the engineer Karl Schultze and Heinrich Messing witnessed a test sample of 1,492 Jews from Kraków Ghetto being killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz II and then cremated. Karl Schultze later gave a full report about this to Ludwig Topf. Messing, who was a communist, not a Nazi, spent from January to June 1943 working at the camp. In an interview given in 2005, his daughter Hildegard who was 16 in 1943, said she would never forget him saying on his return, "If what I have seen comes out, we will all be wading up to our knees in blood".

Use of forced labour
From 1941 until the end of the war at least 620 people were engaged as forced labour (German:Zwangsarbeiter). Most of them came from France, Italy, the Soviet Union and Belgium. There were also small numbers of Poles, Dutch, Croatians and Czechs. The majority of the French, Soviets and Italians were prisoners of war. Barracks that could accommodate 52 Zwangsarbeiter were built on the Topf & Söhne factory site. The Zwangsarbeiter had to work 56 hours per week in comparison with the 42 hours worked by German employees, although they were paid 25–30% less. In addition, deductions were made for food and accommodation, and other costs. Abuse is known to have occurred; the camp manager, Wilhelm Buchröder, a Nazi, was dismissed in 1944 by Ernst Topf for beating Zwangsarbeiter, although it is reported that his successor also mistreated them.

End of World War II and afterwards

Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps were liberated by the Red Army on the 26 and 27 January 1945. To try to conceal what had been going on, the SS blew up the crematoria and gas chambers before the Soviet troops arrived. However, in an administration office at Birkenau camp, the Soviets found documentation relating to Topf & Söhne, detailing "the construction of the technology of mass death, complete with the precise costs of crematoria and calculations of the number of corpses each could incinerate in a day".

In April 1945, Erfurt and Buchenwald were liberated by the US Army. It had already been agreed in the Yalta Conference, held in February 1945, that the area would come under Soviet control after the Germans had been defeated. It was handed over on 3 July 1945. In 1949 the Soviet Occupied Zone became the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).

At Buchenwald, liberated on 11 April, the crematoria ovens remained intact. The Americans forced the citizens of nearby Weimar to walk through the camp to witness what had been going on. They also filmed the camp, including the crematoria, with the camera pointedly focusing on the J.A. Topf & Söhne logo and manufacturer's name plate attached to the ovens. The film and still photographs of the camp were shown around the world. Film from Buchenwald and other concentration camps was used as evidence at the Nuremberg Trials.

The US Army's Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) started to investigate Topf & Söhne within a few days of the Buchenwald liberation, and took company documents.

Ludwig Topf

On 27 April 1945, Ludwig Topf organised a meeting with company's works council at which it was agreed that the line to be taken with investigators was that workers and management knew that the ovens were delivered to concentration camps, but that they did not know the details of what was going on. Topf committed suicide on 31 May 1945, by cyanide poisoning. A senior engineer, Kurt Prüfer, was arrested the day before, and Topf was warned that he was about to be arrested himself. He left a suicide note claiming that he and his brother were innocent and that he was the 'opposite' of a Nazi, but he thought he would be used as a scapegoat anyway. He was unmarried and had no children. He had a reputation as a womaniser and was living with his secretary, 19 years his junior, at the time of his death.

Ernst Wolfgang Topf

At the end of June 1945, Ernst Topf travelled to an insurance company in Stuttgart, then in the French occupied zone, to collect a 300,000 Reichsmark life insurance payout that was due following his brother Ludwig's death. Erfurt was handed over to the Soviet administration on 3 July, and Soviets would not give Topf permission to return. From October 1945 he went to live in the town of Gudensberg, in the district Fritzlar-Homberg, in the American zone, where his niece, the daughter of his sister Hanna, was working for the American military administration.

In 1951 Topf founded a new company, in Wiesbaden, to make crematoria and refuse incinerators. He used the old family firm's name, J.A. Topf & Söhne, hoping to capitalise on its good reputation prior to World War II. However, his business never did well. After the truth about the concentration camps was exposed, Topf & Söhne's involvement was quite widely known. Topf moved the company to Mainz in 1954. There was further bad publicity when the book Macht ohne Moral ('Power without Morals') was published in 1957. The book contains photographs of piles of bodies and crematoria at various concentration camps. It also includes transcripts of two documents from the original Topf company, making its collaboration with the SS clear. The company went bankrupt in May 1963. Topf's wife Erika, aged 52, died in April 1963. They had two children.

Investigations into Ernst Topf

Topf, now living in the American occupied zone, was arrested by the American CIC on 25 March 1946. He was held in custody and interrogated for two or three weeks and then let go. He maintained that the ovens they had delivered to the concentration camps were standard equipment, of the same type that they made for city crematoria for civilian use and claimed that if they had refused to work with the SS they would have been severely punished.

Later, in December 1946, because of his membership of the Nazi party, the Fritzlar-Homberg Spruchkammer, a German civilian denazification court, started investigating Ernst Topf. About 8.5 million Germans had been members of the party and the Spruchkammer were set up to investigate them. Topf was required to provide two sworn witness statements regarding his non-Nazi political leanings – two employees of Topf & Söhne provided these and vouched for him. The Spruchkammer had difficulties in getting evidence, partly due to a lack of co-operation between American officials and officials in Soviet occupied Erfurt.

In March 1948 the Spruchkammer in Wiesbaden, where Topf had moved to, took over his files. This closed at the end of 1949 and Topf's file was handed over to the Wiesbaden state prosecutors office, where investigations into him as an accessory to murder for his role in the Holocaust began. However, important witness statements were lost and Soviet authorities in Erfurt were no longer interested in assisting with the case. The investigation was suspended in 1951.

In 1959 the state prosecutors in Frankfurt reopened investigations into Topf. Two further legal proceedings followed in 1962 but neither resulted in a formal charge. Topf died in 1979. He never made any apology for Topf & Söhne's involvement with the Nazi regime.

Staff

Kurt Prüfer (1891–1952), a senior engineer and the main designer of the ovens, was initially arrested by the American CIC on 30 May 1945 and interrogated. He was released three weeks later and returned to work.

On 1 March 1946 the firm was given a large contract for malting and brewing equipment by the reparations department of the Soviet military, however a few days later, four engineers of the firm were arrested. These were Kurt Prüfer, Fritz Sander (1876–1946), Karl Schultze (1900-died after 1955) and Gustav Braun (1889–1958). Braun, also a qualified engineer, was the factory's production manager.

Fritz Sander, Prüfer's manager, who was 70, died of heart failure on 26 March 1946 in Berlin, three weeks after his arrest and after four interrogation sessions. He is quoted as saying during the interrogations "I was a German engineer and key member of the Topf works and I saw it as my duty to apply my specialist knowledge in this way in order to help Germany win the war, just as an aircraft construction engineer builds airplanes in wartime, which are also connected with the destruction of human beings."

Over the next two years, the other three men remained in custody and were interrogated in Germany and in Moscow, where, on 17 April 1948, they were sentenced to 25 years in a Russian labour camp. That was the highest sentence that could be given without having a full trial. Prüfer died in October 1952 of a stroke while in prison. In 1955 Schultze and Braun were released early.

Nationalisation of company
As Ernst Topf was now in western Germany and his brother Ludwig was dead, Topf & Söhne was declared an "ownerless company" and in 1946 it was taken over by the state and renamed "Topfwerke Erfurt VEB". It was made a subsidiary of VVB NAGEMA, a group of East German state-owned engineering companies. In 1952 it was renamed "NAGEMA VEB Maschinenfabrik 'Nikos Belojannis'", after a Greek communist who had been an inmate in a German concentration camp in Greece. The company's crematoria department was closed in 1955 and in 1957 it stopped production of all forms of combustion machinery and was renamed VEB Erfurter Mälzerei- und Speicherbau (VEB EMS, "Erfurt Oasthouse and Granary Construction"). It was privatised in 1993 after German reunification and it went bankrupt in 1996.

After German reunification

Property claim
After German reunification in 1990, over 2.5 million claims were made for restitution of property that had been confiscated during the Nazi period, or by the East German government. Some descendants of the Topf family made a claim for the former family villa and factory in Erfurt which had been made state property. It was refused in 1992, because property confiscated during the Soviet occupation period could not be claimed. However, the family made a further claim for financial compensation. In 1994 Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, the German Justice Minister, also refused that claim because, she said, the factory was used to manufacture the "murder machinery of the extermination camp."

Hartmut Topf (born 1934), a grandson of Julius Topf, publicly criticised the attempt to claim back the property, saying that they should not profit from Holocaust crimes. He was later involved with researching the history of the firm and in setting up the memorial site and museum.

Site occupation

Squatters moved onto part of the site of the former factory on 12 April 2001 and set up an independent culture centre known as Das Besetzte Haus (the occupied house). They ran social and cultural projects, and organised events and guided tours which drew attention to the history of Topf & Söhne during the Nazi period, which had been largely forgotten. The occupation was one of the most well known actions of left-radicals of that period in Germany. A book about the occupation was published in 2012, titled Topf & Söhne – Besetzung auf einem Täterort (Topf & Söhne – Occupation of a crime scene). About 30 remaining squatters were evicted by the police on 16 April 2009.

Museum and memorial site

After falling into decay for many years, the former Topf & Söhne site was given historic monument protection status by the state of Thuringia in 2003.

The factory workshops no longer remain, but a museum and education centre opened in the former administration building on 27 January 2011, Holocaust Memorial Day. The Topf brothers and the design engineers worked from this building. The site of Buchenwald concentration camp can still be seen in the distance from the window where engineer Kurt Prüfer's desk stood. The state of Thuringia contributed over one million euros to establishing the museum.
The museum documents the history of Topf & Söhne and its collaboration with the Nazi regime using material from the company's archives, oral history and items found at the Buchenwald concentration camp site. It also has changing exhibitions, film viewings, talks, etc. on Holocaust related topics.

The motto "Stets gern für Sie beschäftigt, ..." ("Always happy to be at your service, ...") is painted in large letters on the outside of the restored building. This bland valediction (complimentary close) was often used at the end of letters Topf & Söhne sent to the SS, in which details of orders for concentration camp ovens were discussed.

Film

The Big Denial documentary

In 2007 the Dutch broadcaster VPRO made a television documentary about Topf & Söhne called The Big Denial as part of the In Europe series. It includes archival footage from the 1930s and 40s, and footage of the ruins of the Topf family villa in 2007 and the Erfurt factory site and administration building before it was restored as a memorial site.

Das Besetzte Haus

On 16 April 2009 about 30 remaining squatters who occupied part of the Topf & Söhne site from 2001 to 2009 were evicted by the police.  The occupation was known throughout Germany simply as "Das Besetzte Haus" (the occupied house). The University of Erfurt's television channel, UNIcut, made a short report about the occupation shortly before the eviction.

See also
Degussa
Forced labour under German rule during World War II
Nazi war crimes
Tesch & Stabenow

References

Further reading
 Knigge, Volkhard, et al. (2005) Engineers of the "final solution": Topf & Sons, builders of the Auschwitz ovens. Book accompanying an exhibition. [Weimar]: Stiftung Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora. (English translation of the original German book).
Schule, Annegret (ed.) (2017) Industrie und Holocaust: Topf & Söhne – Die Ofenbauer von Auschwitz = Industry and the Holocaust: Topf & Sons – Builders of the Auschwitz ovens. Berlin: Hentrich und Hentrich Verlag.  (Book to accompany an international travelling exhibition.) (In English and German).

In German
 Assmann, Aleida; Hidderman, Frank  (eds) (2002) Firma Topf & Söhne – Hersteller der Öfen für Auschwitz: Ein Fabrikgelände als Erinnerungsort? Frankfurt/New York: Campus Verlag.
 Meyerbeer, Karl; Späth, Pascal (eds) (2012) Topf & Söhne – Besetzung auf einem Täterort. Heidelberg: Graswurzel-Verlag.
Pressac, Jean Claude (1994) Die Krematorien von Auschwitz. Die Technik des Massenmordes. Munich: Piper Verlag.
 Saupe, Bianca (2010) Die Firma Topf und Söhne. Munich: GRIN Publishing.
 Schüle, Annegret (2017) J.A Topf & Söhne: ein Erfurter Familieunternehmen und der Holocaust. Erfurt: Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Thüringen.
 Schüle, Annegret; Sowade, Tobias (2015) Willy Wiemokli: Buchhalter bei J. A. Topf & Söhne – zwischen Verfolgung und Mitwisserschaft. Berlin: Hentrich & Hentrich.

External links
Topf & Sons Remembrance Site official website
Erfurt city website. Topf and Söhne.

Holocaust memorials in Germany
Holocaust museums
Defunct companies of Germany
Infrastructure of the Holocaust
Unfree labor during World War II
History of Erfurt
Buildings and structures in Erfurt
Heritage sites in Thuringia
Museums in Erfurt
1878 establishments in Germany
Companies established in 1878
Companies involved in the Holocaust

Topf and Sons


Old Russell County Courthouse, also known as the Dickenson-Fugate House, is a historic courthouse building located near Dickensonville, Russell County, Virginia. It consists of a simple stone court house built about 1799, attached to the side of a more sophisticated brick farmhouse, which probably dates from the second quarter of the 19th century.  Both sections are two stories and three bays wide and the brick section has a rear ell.  It served as the second location for the Russell County courthouse, until the county seat moved to Lebanon in 1818.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

References

County courthouses in Virginia
Courthouses on the National Register of Historic Places in Virginia
Government buildings completed in 1799
Buildings and structures in Russell County, Virginia
National Register of Historic Places in Russell County, Virginia

Old Russell County Courthouse


Manuel Ángel Núñez Soto (born January 30, 1951) is a Mexican politician affiliated with the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI). He is a former governor of Hidalgo.

Núñez Soto received a bachelor's degree in economics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and specialized in public administration, commerce and finance at the Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale of Italy and at the École nationale d'administration in France.

In 1971 he started a career in the public sector by joining the Secretariat of Industry and Commerce (nowadays Secretariat of Economy). Later on he joined the Mexican Institute of Foreign Trade (in Spanish: Instituto Mexicano de Comercio Exterior) and the Secretariat of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP). Between 1991 and 1993, during the North American Free Trade Agreement negotiations, he also headed the Mexican delegation in Canada.

By mid-1993 Núñez Soto had moved to the Mexican state of Hidalgo to join the cabinet of governor Jesús Murillo Karam as secretary of industry and commerce. In 1995 he took over the state Secretariat of the Interior and two years later he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies representing the district of Pachuca.

After two years in the Chamber Núñez Soto resigned to become the PRI candidate to the governorship of Hidalgo. He won the election in 1999 and served in the post until April 2005. During his administration the employment rate grew 18% and the agricultural production grew 52%.

During the early months of 2005 Núñez Soto sought the 2006 PRI presidential candidacy.

External links
 Manuel Ángel Núñez Soto Official Web Site
 A.M.: Interview with Manuel Ángel Núñez Soto

1951 births
Living people
Governors of Hidalgo (state)
Members of the Chamber of Deputies (Mexico)
Institutional Revolutionary Party politicians

Manuel Ángel Núñez Soto


US Airways Flight 1549 was an airplane flight that landed in the Hudson River in New York City on January 15, 2009. The plane was on a commercial flight with 155 people on board and had left LaGuardia Airport six minutes earlier, but it had to land after a flock of birds hit its engines. The event was remarkable because no one died. Because of this, the event was called the Miracle on the Hudson. In 2016, a movie was made recreating the crash. The movie is named Sully, after the plane's main pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger.

Accident
The plane took off from LaGuardia Airport at 3:26 pm. It was going to fly to Charlotte, North Carolina, and then it would fly onwards to Seattle, Washington state. Two minutes after the plane left the ground, it flew into a flock of Canada geese. Some of the geese were sucked into the plane's two engines. Both engines stopped working. The pilots, Chesley Sullenberger and Jeffrey Skiles, realized that they needed to land the plane as soon as possible. They thought about heading back to LaGuardia Airport or trying to land at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. They decided that they could not land at an airport and instead they would have to land the plane in the river. This was also dangerous for two reasons. Firstly, the plane would break apart if it hit the water too quickly or if it hit something else. Secondly, the passengers would drown if they were not rescued quickly, as it would be hard to swim in the cold river.

The pilots landed the plane in the river at 3:31 pm. Unfortunately, because a passenger opened a rear emergency exit door, the plane started to slowly fill with water and sink. The passengers climbed out onto the wings and life rafts of the plane. Sullenberger had landed the plane near some boats, and the first boats reached the plane a few minutes after the landing. The boats rescued the passengers and crew. By 3:55 pm, everyone had been rescued. They were taken to both sides of the river. 24 passengers and two rescuers had to go to a hospital, but most of them left the hospital before the end of the day.

Aftermath
The National Transportation Safety Board investigated the event. In May 2010, they released a report which said that Sullenberger had made the right decision. The plane is now on display in the Carolinas Aviation Museum in Charlotte.

Aviation accidents and incidents in 2009
Aviation accidents and incidents
Hudson River

US Airways Flight 1549


The Liberal Union (), simply and collectively called Liberals (), was a political alliance formed in the first years of the 20th century by the Italian Prime Minister and leader of the Historical Left Giovanni Giolitti. The alliance was formed when the Left and the Right merged in a single centrist and liberal coalition which largely dominated the Italian Parliament.

History
The origins of liberalism in Italy are in the Historical Right, a parliamentary group formed by Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour in the Parliament of the Kingdom of Sardinia following the 1848 revolution. The group was moderately conservative and supported centralised government, restricted suffrage, regressive taxation and free trade. They dominated politics following Italian unification in 1861, but never formed a party, basing their power on census suffrage and first-past-the-post voting system. The Right was opposed by the more progressive Historical Left, which overthrew Marco Minghetti's government during the so-called Parliamentary Revolution of 1876, which brought Agostino Depretis to become Prime Minister. However, Depretis immediately began to look for support among Rightist Members of Parliament, who readily changed their positions, in a context of widespread corruption. This phenomenon, known in Italian as trasformismo (roughly translatable in English as transformism—Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti was depicted as a chameleon in a satirical newspaper), effectively removed political differences in Parliament, which was dominated by an undistinguished liberal bloc with a landslide majority until after World War I. Two parliamentary factions alternated in government, one led by Sidney Sonnino and the other, by far the largest of the two, by Giolitti. At that time, the Liberals governed in alliance with the Radicals, the Democrats and eventually the Reform Socialists. This alliance governed against two smaller opposition, namely The Clericals composed by some Vatican-oriented politicians and The Extreme formed by the socialist faction which represented a real left in a present-day concept.

Giolitti was a master in the political art of trasformismo, the method of making a flexible centrist coalition of government which isolated the extremes of the left and the right in Italian politics after the unification. Under his influence, the Liberals did not develop as a structured party. They were instead a series of informal personal groupings with no formal links to political constituencies. The period between the start of the 20th century and the start of World War I, when he was Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior from 1901 to 1914 with only brief interruptions, is often called the Giolittian Era.

A left liberal with strong ethical concerns, Giolitti's periods in office were notable for the passage of a wide range of progressive social reforms which improved the living standards of ordinary Italians, together with the enactment of several policies of government intervention. Besides putting in place several tariffs, subsidies and government projects, Giolitti also nationalized the private telephone and railroad operators. Liberal proponents of free trade criticized the Giolittian System, although Giolitti himself saw the development of the national economy as essential in the production of wealth.

In the 1913 general election, the Liberals were voted by more than two millions people, with 47.6% of votes and gaining 270 out 508 seats, therefore becoming by far the first party of the country. Under the premiership of Antonio Salandra, a member of the right-wing faction of the Liberals, Italy declared war to Austria-Hungary and Germany in 1915, entering in World War I. This decision was against the thought of Liberal leader Giolitti, who was a strong supporter of neutrality. In 1917, a member of the party's left-wing, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, became Prime Minister and during his government Italy defeated Austria, earning him the title Premier of Victory.

At the end of World War I, universal suffrage and proportional representation were introduced. These reforms caused big problems to the Liberals which found themselves unable to stop the rise of two mass parties, the Italian Socialist Party and the Italian People's Party which had taken the control of many local authorities in Northern Italy even before the war. The Italian particularity was that although the Catholic party opposed the Socialists in accordance with European standards, it was also in contrast with the Liberals and generally the right under the consequences of the capture of Rome and the struggles between the Holy See and the Italian state which the Liberals had ruled for more than fifty years. The general election in 1919 saw success for the Socialist Party led by Filippo Turati, which gained the 32.3% of the vote. Giolitti's Liberals came only fifth, with 8.6% of the vote and 41 seats, behind the Italian People's Party of Don Luigi Sturzo, with 20.5%. The Parliament was thus divided into three different blocks with huge instability while the Socialists and the rising Fascists instigators of political violence on opposite sides.

In this chaotic situation, the Liberals founded the Italian Liberal Party in 1922 which joined an alliance led by Fascists and formed a joint list for the 1924 general election, transforming the Fascists from a small political force into an absolute-majority party. Albeit banned by Benito Mussolini in 1925, many old Liberal politicians were given prestigious yet not influential political posts such as seats in the Senate, which was stripped of any real power by Fascist reforms.

Electoral results

See also
 Liberalism and radicalism in Italy

References

1922 disestablishments in Italy
Liberal parties in Italy
Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946)
Defunct political parties in Italy
1913 establishments in Italy
Centre-right parties in Europe
Political parties established in 1913
Political parties disestablished in 1922
Defunct liberal political parties
Right-wing politics in Italy

Liberal Union (Italy)


Slavín is a memorial monument and military cemetery in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. It is the burial ground of thousands of Soviet Army soldiers who fell during World War II while taking over the city in April 1945 from the occupying German Wehrmacht units and the remaining Slovak troops who supported the clero-fascist Tiso government. It is situated on a hill amidst a rich villa quarter of the capital and embassy residences close to the centre of Bratislava.

It was constructed between 1957 and 1960 on the site of a field cemetery, and opened on April 3, 1960 on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the city's liberation. The monument was constructed similar in kind to the Palace of Culture and Science in Stalinist architectural style. In 1961 it was declared a National Cultural Monument. Its designer was Ján Svetlík.

History
The monument was inaugurated in 1960 on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the liberation of the city by the Soviet army. Cities with dates of their liberation are listed on its walls. 6,845 soldiers are buried in the cemetery.

Description
This monument and cemetery of the soldiers of the Soviet Army killed while liberating Bratislava near the end of the Second World War was designated a National Cultural Monument in 1961. On top of the 42 metre tall obelisk is a 12.5 metre tall statue of a soldier from Slovak sculptor Alexander Trizuljak. The soldier is holding up a flag in his right hand and crushing the swastika with his left boot. The bronze caisson door of the memorial auditorium is decorated with reliefs by R. Pribiš.

The site consists of:

A solemn staircase
A cemetery with graves (6 mass graves, 278 individual graves) of 6,845 Soviet soldiers who fell while liberating Bratislava
The central solemn hall with various statues, inscriptions, and a symbolic sarcophagus made of white marble. It also features a 42 m high obelisk topped with a statue of a Soviet soldier, and on the outside walls are inscriptions of the dates of liberation of various places in Slovakia during 1944–45.

Other facts about Slavín:

The monument is situated on top of the Slavín hill, one of Bratislava Old Town's topographic highs (part of the Male Karpaty mts.). The location offers excellent views of much of Bratislava, which makes it a popular destination for walks for local residents.
In the area of Slavín there are also more statues of Slovak famous artists, such as Jan Kulich, Tibor Bártfay and Jozef Kostka.
In 2005, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, visited it during his meeting with G. W. Bush in Bratislava.
The day of Bratislava's liberation is 4 April, when people and president show their honor to fallen Soviet soldiers.
In 2015, Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, visited Slavín on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of Bratislava's liberation.

See also
 Devín Carpathians

Buildings and structures completed in 1960
1960 establishments in Czechoslovakia
Buildings and structures in Bratislava
Monuments and memorials in Slovakia
Socialist realism
Stalinist architecture
Cemeteries in Slovakia
Soviet military memorials and cemeteries
Czechoslovakia–Soviet Union relations
Tourist attractions in Bratislava

Slavín


ITU-T Recommendation X.1035 specifies a password-authenticated key agreement protocol that ensures mutual authentication of two parties by using a Diffie–Hellman key exchange to establish a symmetric cryptographic key. The use of Diffie-Hellman exchange ensures perfect forward secrecy—a property of a key establishment protocol that guarantees that compromise of a session key or long-term private key after a given session does not cause the compromise of any earlier session.

In X.1035, the exchange is protected from the man-in-the-middle attack. The authentication relies on a pre-shared secret (e.g., password), which is protected (i.e., remains unrevealed) to an eavesdropper preventing an off-line dictionary attack.

The protocol can be used in a wide variety of applications including those with pre-shared secrets based on possibly weak passwords.

X.1035 was approved on 13 February 2007 by ITU-T Study Group 17.

Applications
G.hn, an ITU-T standard that specifies high-speed (up to 1 Gbit/s) local area networking over existing home wires (power lines, phone lines and coaxial cables), uses X.1035 for authentication and key exchange.

References

Cryptographic protocols
Secure communication
Applications of cryptography
Open standards
International standards
Computer networks
Internet Standards
ITU-T recommendations
ITU-T X Series Recommendations

X.1035


Richard Whiteing (27 July 1840 – 29 June 1928) was an English author and journalist.

Biography
Richard Whiteing was born in London the son of Mary Lander and William Whiteing, a civil servant employed as an Inland Revenue Officer. His mother died early and Richard claimed to have spent much of his upbringing with foster parents.

For seven years in his youth Whiteing was apprenticed to Benjamin Wyon as a medalist and seal-engraver; meanwhile he was also educating himself on the side. In 1866, after a failed attempt to start his own medalist business, he turned to journalism as a career. He made his debut with a series of papers in the Evening Star in 1866, printed separately in the next year as Mr Sprouts, His Opinions. He became leader-writer and correspondent on the Morning Star, and was subsequently on the staff of the Manchester Guardian, the New York World, and for many years the Daily News, resigning from the last-named paper in 1899.

His first novel The Democracy (3 vols, 1876) was published under the pseudonym of Whyte Thorne. His second novel The Island (1888) was about a utopian life on Pitcairn Island; it attracted little attention until, years afterwards, its successor, No. 5 John Street (1899), made him famous; the earlier novel was then republished. No. 5 John Street has the character from the first novel return to London, but has no money, and describes the low-life of London. Later works were The Yellow Van (1903), Ring in the New (1906), All Moonshine (1907). In 1919, Whiteing coined the precursor term to the name of World War II, which he referred to as "World War No. 2." He predicted that this war would arise some time in the future to resolve the social upheaval caused by World War I.

Whiteing died 29 June 1928 in Hampstead and is buried in the Parish Church of St. John-at-Hampstead, Church Row, London near his son Richard Clifford (1870–1923).

Family
Whiteing's autobiography, My Harvest, written in 1915, led many to believe he was an only child, whose mother had died in the 1840s when he was quite young. However family historian, Kathleen Whiteing Fitzgerald, revealed that Whiteing actually had three siblings. There were two brothers, Robert & George, who had both lived well into adulthood and a sister Elizabeth who died as an infant. Fitzgerald noted that in the 1861 London census Whiteing, then 20 years old, was listed as living with both of his parents and his younger brother George. Richard's father, William, died in Beverley in 1876, and his mother died in Kensington in 1884.

In 1869 Whiteing married Helen Watson Harris (1848-1921), the ward/niece of Townsend Harris, US Ambassador to Japan. To their marriage was born an only child in 1872, Richard Clifford Whiteing. Their son married Ellen Marie Louise "Nell" du Maurier in 1908, the niece of illustrator and novelist George du Maurier and cousin of actor Gerald du Maurier.

After Whiteing's separation from Helen, he lived for many years with journalist and children's author Alice Corkran. He was also friends with her sister Henriette, who wrote an intimate account of him in her Celebrities and I.

References

Attribution

Vincent Brome, Four Realist Novelists: Arthur Morrison, Edwin Pugh, Richard Whiteing, William Pett Ridge (1965), 'Writers and their Work'

External links

1840 births
1928 deaths
English male journalists
19th-century English novelists
20th-century English novelists
English male novelists
19th-century English male writers
20th-century English male writers

Richard Whiteing


Bertha Amy Lewis (12 May 1887 – 8 May 1931) was an English opera singer and actress primarily known for her work as principal contralto in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.

Life and career

Early life and career
Lewis was born in Forest Gate, London. She attended St. Angela's High School, Upton and then studied voice at the Royal Academy of Music, gaining an A.R.A.M. qualification.  She had made professional appearances on the concert stage but had not acted before she joined D'Oyly Carte at the age of 19 in 1906 as Kate in The Pirates of Penzance. She soon was touring with the company as Kate, Lady Saphir in Patience, Leila in Iolanthe, Ada in Princess Ida, Vittoria in The Gondoliers, and First Bridesmaid in Trial by Jury. In 1908, at the Savoy Theatre, she played the part of Gwenny Davis in Fenn and Faraday's A Welsh Sunset, a curtain raiser to H.M.S. Pinafore. She soon added to her repertoire Leila in Iolanthe and Inez in The Gondoliers.

In 1909 she replaced Ethel Morrison as principal contralto, playing Little Buttercup in H.M.S. Pinafore, Ruth in Pirates, Lady Jane in Patience, the Queen of the Fairies in Iolanthe, Lady Blanche in Princess Ida, Katisha in The Mikado, Dame Carruthers in The Yeomen of the Guard, and the Duchess of Plaza-Toro in The Gondoliers. In 1910 she married the baritone Herbert Heyner; in the same year she left the company to tour the UK in concerts and grand opera, appearing in the title role of Bizet's Carmen, as Delilah in Camille Saint-Saëns's  Samson and Delilah, and as Amneris in Verdi's Aida.

Principal contralto and untimely death

She returned to the company in 1914, replacing Louie René as principal contralto. Derek Oldham later reported that, in 1920, at the insistence of musical director Geoffrey Toye, Rupert D'Oyly Carte considered expanding the company's repertoire so she could play Carmen. For more than 16 years after her return, Lewis portrayed all the leading contralto roles in the company's repertory: Lady Sangazure in The Sorcerer, Buttercup, Ruth, Lady Jane, Fairy Queen, Lady Blanche, Katisha, Dame Hannah in Ruddigore, Dame Carruthers, and the Duchess of Plaza-Toro.

Lewis died at the age of 43 in May 1931 after sustaining fatal injuries in a car accident. She was travelling from Manchester to Cambridge in a car driven by Henry Lytton in a rainstorm. Lytton was injured in the accident but recovered and returned to performing after a few months. Lewis was in the hospital for five days before succumbing to her injuries. Queen Mary made personal enquiries, and the newspapers and the BBC gave daily news reports about her condition. She was buried in Cambridge City Cemetery and, whilst it was a double grave, she lies there alone. Her husband, Herbert Heyner, did not attend her funeral. In June 1931 he married Mary Louise Hamilton.

Lewis is often cited as the greatest contralto in the history of the  D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.  Her powerful voice (preserved on recordings), crisp diction and formidable stage personality were well known.  Of her performance in the production of The Mikado in 1926, The Times wrote that she "was majestic as Katisha. ... getting a serious dramatic significance into her part and illustrating the fact that the humour of Gilbert and Sullivan comes out best by serious treatment."

Recordings
With the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, Lewis recorded Buttercup (part in 1922, all in 1930), Ruth (1931), Lady Jane (1930), Queen of the Fairies (1929), Lady Blanche (1924), Katisha (1926), Dame Hannah (1924) and The Duchess of Plaza-Toro (1927).  She participated in the 1926 BBC radio broadcast of The Mikado, and appeared as Katisha in a four-minute silent promotional film made to promote the Charles Ricketts-redressed Mikado also in 1926.

References

Sources

External links
Profile of Lewis
Another profile of Lewis
Photos of Lewis
More photos of Lewis

1887 births
1931 deaths
20th-century English actresses
20th-century English singers
20th-century English women singers
Actresses from London
Burials at the Cambridge City Cemetery
English contraltos
English opera singers
Operatic contraltos
People from Forest Gate
Road incident deaths in England
Singers from London

Bertha Lewis


The Menai Bay Conservation Area (MBCA) is located in Menai Bay, Zanzibar Tanzania. At , it is Zanzibar's largest marine protected area. It was officially established as a conservation area in August 1997 in the traditional fishing area, known as Unguja Island, covering the tropical marine environment comprising extensive coral reefs, tropical fish, sea grasses, and mangrove forests. In addition to controlling illegal fishing, MBCA's alternative initiatives have included bee keeping, mangrove replanting, tree nurseries and tourism. The management of the MBCA falls upon the Fisheries Department and the bay's local villages. It is rated by the IUCN as Category VI Managed Resource Protected Area.

The conservation project started operating one year after it was formally established. The project was initiated by WWF and has been fully supported with funds by USAID, the British Government and Switzerland. It is a participatory project with community of 19 villages in the project area actively involved in pursuing the conservation efforts, and to this end they have set up village level Conservation Committees to restrain illegal fishing using circular nets and blasting techniques. Of all the villages, the villagers of Kizimkazi on the eastern part of the project area have been successful in their conservation efforts largely because of good network of paved roads and financial support from WWF. These efforts have attracted 200 bottlenose and humpback dolphins to the shores of their village. The villagers who were earlier killing these animals for food are now deriving economic benefits working with their boats as guides to show the dolphins to visitors. About 20,000 tourists have visited the area in 1998.

Legislation
Marine Reserves were designated in 1975 but were not legislated. However, as the legislation of the Marine Parks and Reserves Act 1994 came into effect, five marines reserves and two marine parks came to be established. The new marine protected area that came to be established in 1997 was named the Marine Bay Conservation Area.  It is situated on the south coast of Zanzibar.  It administratively includes the islands of Unguja (also known as Zanzibar Island) and Pemba Island, with operation and management responsibility decreed as a joint effort of the local government and village community.

Geography
Located in southwest of Unguja Island of the Zanzibar Archipelago, has six islets, a coast line of 61 km and is the largest conservation area in Zanzibar. The average water depth in the bay area is about 10 m during high tide. Initially the reserve area covered 17 villages with a population of about 16,000 people with fishing in the reserve area as their main avocation (other avenues being agriculture, livestock, carpentry and trading). The initial 17 villages covered under the project were Fumba, Bweleo, Dimani, Kombeni, Mtende, Kizimkazi Dimbani, Kizimkazi, Mkunguni, Muyuni A, Muyuni B, Muyuni C, Muungoni, Bungi, Unguja Ukuu, Kaepwani, Unguja Ukuu Kaebona, Kikungwi, Uzi and Ng'amb'wa. By 2003, 19 of the area villages were participating in the conservation work.

Traditionally, the Menai Bay area is a heterogeneous habitat of mangrove forest, sea grasses, coral rag land, and a marine ecosystem with a rich biodiversity of in biodiversity of plant, invertebrate and bird species. Mangrove forests abound on Uzi, Nyamanzi, Nga'mbwa shorelines and also around some of the islets. Mangrove resources have provided livelihood to generations of community residing around Menai Bay either directly or indirectly. The forests have been the source of wood for domestic fuel and also an economic source of income, the extraction of which has been the prerogative of the women, with men concentrating on its use as construction material and to make charcoal. The mangroves have 10 different species that protect the coast against the open sea. Locals have been traditionally harvesting them for boat building also.

The coral reefs which are of the fringe coral type are found all along the coast line of Zanzibar, which includes MBCA, contain layers of calcium carbonate created by secretions of millions of polyps (150 species have been reported in the entire coastline); they provide food and shelter to fish, crabs, lobsters and clams. The open sea in the MBCA is reach in phytoplankton and zooplankton, which serve as food for sardines and small pelagic fish having commercial value for local firshmen. It is also a safe habitat for marine mammals such as sea turtles, whales, dolphins and dugongs.

History
A forest reserve decree of 1950 protects the mangrove in the project area. In 1978, a subcommission of fisheries was established which was a followed by sea weed farming in one of the villages of the project area where after in the 1980s the area starts deteriorating.

In the 1980s and 1990s, fishing operations had a deleterious effect on the conditions in the area due to increased number of fishermen (many from outside the area) also adopting unacceptable practices for fishing such as dynamite, beach seines and kigumi fishing, where corals are broken deliberately to force fish out into the surrounding net. Local poisonous weed called "Utupa" also aggravated the problem. Studies also indicated that the traditional "dago" system of temporary fishing camp during the fishing season was replaced by permanent settlements, which caused serious damage to the coral reefs of the bay. In order to control these activities, local villagers started operating patrols in the fishing zones, such as in Fumbal peninsula, with proactive support of the Commission of Natural Resources. Though these operations failed to be effective due to inadequate knowledge of such operations, it resulted in the eventual creation of the MBCA.

In early 1990s, the heavy degradation of the area is confirmed by Institute of Marine Science (IMS) and WWF establish their office in 1990 in Zanzibar. A fund for self-reliance gets established in 1991. In 1994, the World Wide Fund for Nature established a conservation program in MBCA to address over–fishing. A marine reserve was announced in August 1997.

Practices

The historical practices in the area consisted of cultivation of Eucheuma seaweed and use of Ulva and Enteromorpha species as fish baits; green algae was also collected for medicinal use. USAID supported pilot projects in three islands where seaweed grew densely, given the protection provided at these locations from waves. The subspecies of Eucheuma, namely Eucheuma spinosum and Eucheuma striatum, were selected for the purpose by adopting fixed bottom cultivation method. They were also developed as demonstration farms to provide training and extension services to the local fishermen in enhancing the quality of dry seaweed. Though Eucheuma spinosum was grown largely in the area, Eucheuma cottonii was also considered but proved to be not profitable due to climatic effects. Commercial collection of seaweed were also started by private companies, which contributed nearly 20% to the island's earning and employed a significant fraction of women. The local women have engaged in seaweed farming and coconut-husk weaving. However, a "monopsonyl arrangement" of farming controlled by individual buyers to buy the yield at their predetermined rates, on the basis of the initial supply of materials such as lines and seaweed seedlings to the producers, is in vogue.

In 1998, 160 resident Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins and 69 Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins were reported under a dolphin photo-ID project undertaken by the Stockholm University and the Institute of Marine Sciences of Zanzibar. Evaluation carried out in 2001 indicated that as a result of control of bad practices followed in the past in fishing operations, fish catch has improved. Other improvements were establishment of a radio network, providing environmental education to the villagers and community members assisting in legal proceeding in the court against unlawful activities. In the same year Kizimkazi became the headquarters of MBCA, and the area has also started attracting tourists. While the first phase of the project was completed, in June 2002, further activity has been continued under the World Bank funded project titled the "Marine and Coastal Environment Management Project" (MACEMP) which includes the MBCA area also under the multimillion-dollar funding programme. In 2003, under a grant received from the McKnight Foundation, instituted bivalve farming in the Fumba Peninsula of the project area to increase resource base of the intertidal zone and of wild stocks of oysters, isognomon, mussels and clams. In 2002, approximately 12,000 tourists visited the MBCA.

Now, MBCA supports 2000 fishers and is also a tourist area. Non-resident fishers are permitted to use the area for fishing only after buying a specific permit. The revenue so generated is used for management and community development of the area.

References

Protected areas of Zanzibar
Protected areas established in 1997
1997 establishments in Tanzania

Menai Bay Conservation Area


To short an asset means to bet that the asset will lose value, or that the current price is overvalued (higher than its supposed value). If the asset in question does indeed lose value, the person who shorted it will win the bet, and make a profit. This can be done by borrowing assets and selling them at a higher price, returning the asset once you can buy it back at a lower price.

For example, if you think that Tesla stock will lose 10% of its value, you could short the stock, and make a 10% profit once it goes down by 10%. However, if Tesla stock gains value, then you will lose the equivalent amount.

Finance
Stock market

Short (finance)


The City Center District is an area in north-central downtown Dallas, Texas (USA). It lies south of the Arts District, north of the Main Street District, northwest of Deep Ellum, southwest of Bryan Place and east of the West End Historic District. The district contains a large concentration of downtown commercial space which prior to 1950 had been concentrated along Main Street. The district also contains remnants of Theatre Row, the historical entertainment area along Elm Street which contained theatres such as the Majestic Theatre.

Notable structures and parks

 2100 Ross Avenue
 Sheraton Dallas Hotel
 Bryan Tower
 The Drever
 Energy Plaza
 Fidelity Union Tower
 Republic Center
 Harwood Center
 JPMorgan Chase Tower
 KPMG Centre
 Majestic Theatre
 Patriot Tower
 Plaza of the Americas
 Renaissance Tower
 Ross Tower
 Thanksgiving Tower
 U.S. Post Office
 Corrigan Tower
 211 North Ervay
 505 North Ervay
 Hartford Building
 Thanks-Giving Square
 Aston Park

Transportation

Highways
  US 75 Central Expressway/ I-45 connection (unsigned  I-345)

Trains
DART , ,  listed south to north
 Akard Station
 St. Paul Station
 Pearl Station

Education

The City Center District is served by the Dallas Independent School District.

The neighborhood schools for downtown are outside of the loop.

Four elementary schools—City Park, Sam Houston, Hope Medrano, and Ignacio Zaragoza; three middle schools—Billy Earl Dade, Thomas J. Rusk, and Alex W. Spence; and two high schools—James Madison and North Dallas, serve the district.

Private Schools

Holy Trinity Catholic School has served Dallas' central neighborhoods since 1914 and is located at the corner of Oak Lawn Avenue and Gilbert Avenue. Providing early education for three-year-olds through eighth grade, Holy Trinity is the oldest continually operating Catholic school in North Texas.

Residents are also served by First Baptist Academy of Dallas, a Biblically-integrated, college preparatory K-12 school located in the city center district of downtown Dallas.

References

Neighborhoods in Downtown Dallas

City Center District, Dallas


Ivan Pavlovich Mashkov (, 13 January 1867 – 13 August 1945) was a Russian  architect and preservationist, notable for surveying and restoration of Dormition Cathedral of Moscow Kremlin, Novodevichy Convent and other medieval buildings. His best known extant building is Sokol (Falcon) luxury Art Nouveau apartment building in Kuznetsky Most Street, Moscow. A prolific architect, Mashkov built mostly eclectic buildings with Russian Revival features.

Biography

Education and early career

Ivan Mikhailovich Sokolov (Иван Михайлович Евдокимов), son of a village blacksmith, lost both his parents in early childhood. He was adopted by Pavel Karpovich Mashkov, a Lipetsk businessman, and his wife, Natalya Yefimovna (née Andreyeva), thus acquiring the name of Mashkov. Natalya's brother, Alexey Yefimovich Andreev, was a town architect in Lipetsk.

In 1881, Ivan was admitted to Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. He graduated Alexander Kaminsky class of architecture with an honorary medal and a construction license in 1886 at the age of 19 – an exceptionally quick education by any standard (normally, it would take 10 to 15 years from admissions to professional license).

In 1885–1888, Mashkov assisted  on Devichye Pole campus planning and  on the completion of Polytechnical Museum in Moscow. In 1889–1890 he visited Lipetsk and completed there two schools, a hospital and a prison chapel – at the age of 23. Back in Moscow, Mashkov completed over a dozen buildings still in his twenties, and his masterpiece – the Sokol – at the age of 36.

Sokol Building

Mashkov's Sokol (Falcon) building is unique not only for his career, but to Moscow Art Nouveau in general. It is the only building in the city designed in original Vienna Secession style (see Illarion Ivanov-Schitz for a modified version of Secession). Its gilded roof and abundant forged iron ornaments looked like a citation from Otto Wagner (these ornaments were eventually lost). At the same time, the building is definitely Muscovite; the shape of its frieze repeats the lines of nearby Hotel Metropol.

The majolica mosaic of a falcon flying over a stormy sea was made by Nikolai Sapunov (of Mir Iskusstva art group). The subject of this picture itself is a double citation – from Maxim Gorky's Song of a falcon (1899) and from nearby Moscow Art Theater's Seagull symbol (1903). However, the building has nothing to do with these symbols or with Mashkov's natural name – it was named after M.V. Sokol, the owner.

Neoclassical revival

Mashkov's work prior to Sokol belongs to traditional muscovite eclectics and moderate Russian Revival of 1880s-1890s, and does not stand out among hundreds of similar buildings of this period. An unusually large share of his work was built for public charities, which ruled out expensive decorations and interiors. The only decoration he allowed was Abramtsevo majolica.

After the Russian Revolution of 1905, the public lost the interest in Art Nouveau; architects responded with a revival of Neoclassicism. Mashkov completed two private buildings (Tverskoy Pawn Shop and Eggert Apartments) in a stern, Saint Petersburg version of this style. In 1912-1913, he built his last major project - psychiatric hospital in Poteshnaya Street (now, Gannushkin Hospital). These buildings didn't make architectural landmarks; Mashkov, however, did make a lasting statement with his iconic monument to Ivan Fydorov (sculpture by Sergei Volnukhin).

Preservation and public activities

Like many contemporary architects, Mashkov was keen on studying and preserving historical national architecture, and in 1898 joined the . He surveyed many historical churches and monasteries in Moscow, Dmitrov, Borovsk etc., published his own studies and edited the journal of Society. Mashkov supervised restoration of Kremlin cathedrals, Sukharev Tower, St. Basil Cathedral and other memorial buildings. In 1908-1918, he also co-chaired Moscow Architectural Society and contributed to the construction of House of Architects (17, Yermolayevsky Lane, currently Museum of Modern Art). In 1908-1933, he managed the Architectural Department of Polytechnical Museum, the forerunner of present-day Museum of Architecture. He is credited with editing the best guide to architecture of Moscow (1913).

Despite his reputation as preservationist and archaeologist, Mashkov joined the emerging skyscraper movement in 1913, and proposed a 13-story highrise on Tverskaya Street. The City Hall blocked this proposal and banned further highrise construction in the center of Moscow.

Soviet period

At the time of Russian Revolution of 1917, Mashkov was employed by the City of Moscow as deputy to City Architect. Bolshevik administration retained him in his office, and for some time Mashkov acted as the City Architect, engaged mostly in maintenance of the city in the middle of a civil war.

In 1929, Mashkov and sculptor Nikolay Andreyev erected the neoclassical monument to Aleksandr Ostrovsky near Maly Theater. Mashkov continued surveying memorial buildings (some of them already scheduled for demolition) and headed the restoration of Pashkov House (then known as Rumyantsev Museum, later Lenin Library and Russian State Library). He took no part in architectural disputes of 1920s, but was present in professional journals and wrote college textbooks (1935).

In 1934, Mashkov became a professor in Moscow Architectural Institute; since 1935 he chaired the department of architecture of Moscow Construction Institute. In 1937, he was awarded the title of Hero of Labor (1927 statute, predecessor of 1938 Hero of Socialist Labor title). Mashkov remained well established in Soviet academic circles until his death and was buried with honors at Novodevichy Cemetery; his book on Novodevichy Convent was reissued posthumously in 1949.

Buildings

Own design (extant buildings and monuments)

 1890-1891 Rebuilding of Suchkova Estate, 15/28 Bolshoy Levshinsky Lane (now, UNESCO mission)
 1899-1902 Public housing and almshouses, 6 and 10, Gospitalnaya Square
 1899-1903 Public housing and almshouse, 19 Protopopovsky Lane
 1900-1902 Mental asylum and almshouse, 16 Leningradsky Prospect
 1902 - 3, Lopukhinsky Lane
 1903 - 13, Mansurovsky Lane
 1902-1904 - Cathedral of Trinity and St. Alexander Nevsky Convent in Akatovo, Klin district (demolished in part)
 1903-1904 - Sokol Apartment Building, 3 Kuznetsky Most Street
 1904 - Novodevichy Cemetery wall
 1904 - 8, Second Boyevskaya Street
 1904 - 60/2, Bolshaya Polyanka Street
 1904-1907 - Polytechnical Museum expansion (Left Wing, Auditorium)
 1905-1906 - 21, Leontyevsky Lane
 1909 - monument to Ivan Fyodorov
 1910 - School, 28 Vyatskaya Street
 1912 - Tverskoy Pawn Shop, 23 Bolshaya Bronnaya Street
 1912-1913 Gannushkin Psychiatric Hospital
 1914 - Eggert Apartments, 4, Rossolimo Street
 1929 - monument to Aleksandr Ostrovsky

Restoration

1899 - Church of St. George "v Pushkariakh", Moscow (demolished 1935)
1905-1945 - Smolensky Cathedral of Novodevichy Convent
1890s - Pafnutiev Monastery in Borovsk
1890s - Cathedral in Borisoglebsky Monastery, Dmitrov
1908 - Zyuzino church in Moscow photo
1911-1915 - Cathedral of the Dormition in Moscow Kremlin
1925-1927 - Pashkov House of Russian State Library

References
 Russian: Нащокина М. В. Архитекторы московского модерна М., Жираф, 2005,   (Maria Naschokina. All dates are referenced to pp. 330–338 of this edition)
 Russian: Нащокина М. В. Московский модерн. М., изд. Жираф, 2005
 Russian: Brandenburg and Tatarzhinskaya, "Serving the Russian Art" illustrated bio
 Russian: Sokol Building, phorographs, floorplan
 Russian: History of UNESCO headquarters in Moscow
 Russian: Genealogy of Mashkovs by Tatiana Shakhbazova
 Russian: Zyuzino Estate, official site of South-Western Okrug

1867 births
1945 deaths
People from Lipetsk Oblast
People from Lebedyansky Uyezd
Academic staff of Moscow Architectural Institute
Art Nouveau architects
Russian neoclassical architects
Burials at Novodevichy Cemetery
Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture alumni

Ivan Mashkov


Neofavolus alveolaris is a species of polypore fungus in the family Polyporaceae. It is widely distributed in the temperate areas of the Northern Hemisphere. Its kidney- or fan-shaped fruit bodies measure  in diameter. Initially reddish, they become cream to white when dry. The pores on the cap underside are angular to hexagonal and relatively large (0.5–3 mm diameter). The fungus causes a white rot in hardwoods.

References

Fungi described in 1815
Fungi of Asia
Fungi of North America
Fungi of Europe
Polyporaceae

Neofavolus alveolaris


The Rhine-Main-Danube Canal (also known in German as the Main-Danube Canal, RMD Canal or Europa Canal) is a canal that joins up the three rivers Rhine, Main and Danube so that boats can travel from one to the other. It is in Bavaria in the south of Germany. It goes from Bamberg, past Nuremberg, to Regensburg. It was finished in 1992. Boats can now travel from Rotterdam in the Netherlands all the way to the Black Sea. The canal is 171km (106 miles) long.

A previous "Ludwig Canal" connected the Danube to the Main from the middle 19th century until it was damaged in World War II and abandoned.

From Bamberg to Fürth the canal follows the valley of the Regnitz, a tributary of the Main. From Fuerth to beyond Roth it follows the valley of the Rednitz, a tributary of the Regnitz. It crosses the Frankish Alb mountains and joins the river Altmuehl near Dietfurt. From Dietfurt to Kelheim on the Danube the canal follows the Altmuehl valley.

Buildings and structures in Bavaria
Canals in Germany

Rhine-Main-Danube Canal


The West Virginia Central and Pittsburg Railway (WVC&P) was a railroad in West Virginia and Maryland operating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It had main lines radiating from Elkins, West Virginia in four principal directions: north to Cumberland, Maryland; west to Belington, WV; south to Huttonsville, WV; and east to Durbin, WV.  Some of the routes were constructed through subsidiary companies, the Piedmont and Cumberland Railway and the Coal and Iron Railway.

History
West Virginia businessman Henry G. Davis founded the Potomac and Piedmont Coal and Railroad Company in 1866. In 1880 the company began to construct a rail line from a junction on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) near Bloomington, Maryland, south along the North Branch Potomac River. In 1881 the line reached coal fields near Elk Garden, WV, and Davis obtained new charters from the states of West Virginia and Maryland, renaming the company as WVC&P.

By 1884 the line reached Fairfax, WV and the location of the future town of Davis, WV. Davis became a center for logging, sawmills and leather tanning, and in the 1890s it was the starting point for the rapidly growing Davis Coal and Coke Company. In 1886 the WVC&P began construction north from the Bloomington junction (known as WVC Junction) toward Westernport, Maryland and Cumberland, using a newly created subsidiary, the Piedmont and Cumberland (P&C). The P&C reached Cumberland in July 1887. Connections with the B&O were established at Cumberland and Rawlings, Maryland.

Southward construction on the WVC&P continued, and the line reached Parsons in 1888 and Elkins (formerly Leadville) in 1889.  Elkins became a major hub for the railroad. A branch out of Elkins west and north along the Tygart Valley River was constructed and reached Belington in 1891. Another branch followed the river south, reaching Beverly in 1891 and Huttonsville in 1899.

In 1899 the WVC&P established the Coal and Iron Railway (C&I) to build a line from Elkins to Durbin. By 1903 the line to Durbin was complete and a connection was made there with the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad (C&O).

Acquisition
The WVC&P and subsidiaries were sold to the Fuller Syndicate, led by George Gould, in 1902 and merged into the Western Maryland Railway (WM) in 1905. The newly built WM connected to the WVC&P in Ridgeley, WV.  The WM was taken over by the Chessie System in 1973, and the Chessie System in turn was merged out of existence and into CSX Transportation in 1980.

Current Operation
Portions of the original WVC&P lines are used by CSX for freight operations. Other portions are owned by the West Virginia State Rail Authority, which contracts with the Durbin and Greenbrier Valley Railroad to operate a tourist railroad from Elkins, Belington and Durbin.

See also
Durbin and Greenbrier Valley Railroad
List of defunct Maryland railroads
List of defunct West Virginia railroads

References

External links
Mountain State Railroad and Logging Historical Association
West Virginia Railroad Museum – Elkins, WV
Durbin and Greenbrier Valley Railroad

Defunct Maryland railroads
Defunct West Virginia railroads
Predecessors of the Western Maryland Railway
Predecessors of CSX Transportation
Railway companies established in 1881
Railway companies disestablished in 1905
American companies established in 1881


Paul Felix Schmidt ( – 11 August 1984) was an Estonian and German chess player, writer and chemist.

Biography
Schmidt was born in 1916, in Narva (then Russian Empire), two years before Estonia became an independent country. He excelled in chess from an early age. In June 1935, Schmidt won, ahead of Paul Keres, at a nationwide tournament in Tallinn. In May 1936, he drew a match against Keres (+3 –3 =1) at Pärnu. In 1936, he won the 8th Estonian Championship at Tallinn. In December 1936, he placed 2nd, behind Keres, at Tallinn. In July 1937, he won Estonia's first-ever international tournament at Pärnu, ahead of two world title contenders, Salo Flohr and Keres, as well as Gideon Ståhlberg. In 1937, he won at Tallinn (9th EST–ch).

In August 1937, he played for Estonia (2nd board) at the 7th Chess Olympiad in Stockholm (+4 –4 =8). In June 1938, he tied for 8th-10th at Noordwijk. The event was won by Erich Eliskases. In August–September 1939, he played for Estonia (3rd board) at the 8th Chess Olympiad at Buenos Aires (+2 –5 =6). Estonia took 3rd place, behind Germany and Poland.

Schmidt emigrated from Estonia to Germany in the autumn of 1939. In August 1940, he took 2nd, behind Georg Kieninger, at the 7th German Championship, held in Bad Oeynhausen. In August 1941, he tied for 1st with Klaus Junge at Bad Oeynhausen (8th GER–ch). In 1941, he won a play-off match for the German championship against Junge (+3 –0 =1) at Bromberg. In October 1941, he tied for 1st with Alexander Alekhine at Kraków/Warsaw (the 2nd General Government chess tournament). In June 1942, he tied for 3rd-4th with Junge, behind Alekhine and Keres, at Salzburg. In June 1943, he took 3rd, behind Keres and Alekhine, at Salzburg. In August 1943, he took 2nd, behind Josef Lokvenc, at Vienna (10th GER–ch).

After World War II, in May 1946, he tied for 2nd-3rd with Carl Ahues, behind Wilfried Lange, at Hamburg. In May 1947, he took 2nd, behind Efim Bogoljubov at Kassel. In 1949, he tied for 3rd-5th at Heidelberg. The event was won by Wolfgang Unzicker.

In 1949, he published the book Schachmeister denken (Dietmannsriel-Allgau 1949). In 1950, he was awarded the title of International Master by FIDE. In 1951, he earned a PhD in chemistry from Heidelberg University, and moved to Canada, then to the United States, settling in Philadelphia, where he took a job as a professor.

After this, he and his wife Eva moved to Bell Telephone Laboratories, Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he made contributions to electrochemistry and anodic oxidation of silicon, was expert in neutron activation analysis, and published many papers, till his retirement in 1982. He continued playing occasional games of chess, regularly visiting Reuben Fine in New York.

Notable chess games
 Paul Felix Schmidt vs Paul Keres, Pärnu 1937, Queen's Gambit Declined, D06, 1-0
 Paul Felix Schmidt vs Klaus Junge, Bad Oeynhausen 1941, 8th GER-ch, Queen's Gambit Declined Semi-Slav, Meran Variation, D49, 1-0
 Paul Felix Schmidt vs Teodor Regedzinski, Krakow/Warsaw 1941, Caro-Kann Defense, Two Knights Attack, B10, 1-0
 Paul Felix Schmidt vs Gösta Stoltz, Salzburg 1942, Sicilian Defense, Najdorf, Opocensky Variation, B92, 1-0
 Efim Bogoljubow vs Paul Felix Schmidt, Salzburg 1943, Queen's Gambit Declined, Semi-Slav, Meran Variation, D49, 0-1

References

External links

 Passengers of the Piriápolis

1916 births
1984 deaths
20th-century German chemists
20th-century American chemists
Chess International Masters
Estonian chess players
German chess players
American chess players
Chess Olympiad competitors
German chess writers
American chess writers
Estonian chemists
Baltic-German people
Estonian emigrants to the United States
Sportspeople from Narva
German male non-fiction writers
20th-century American essayists
20th-century American male writers
American male non-fiction writers
20th-century chess players

Paul Felix Schmidt


Malkhaz Abdushelishvili (February 28, 1926 – February 23, 1998) was a famous Soviet and Georgian scientist, one of the founders of the Georgian scientific school of Anthropology, Academician of the Georgian Academy of Sciences (GAS), Meritorious Scholar of Georgia, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor.

He was born in 1926, in Tbilisi. In 1948 he graduated from the Tbilisi State Medical University. He received a PhD degree in 1952, and in 1964 a degree of the Doctor of Historical Sciences.

Between 1948 and 1998 Abdushelishvili was a research fellow (1948–1952), senior research fellow (1952–1959), and head of the Department of Anthropology of the Institute of History and Ethnology of the Georgian Academy of Sciences (GAS).

From 1964 to 1998, Abdushelishvili was a professor of the Tbilisi State University (TSU).

In 1993 he was elected as academician of the Georgian Academy of Sciences.

Main fields of scientific activity of Professor Abdushelishvili were: anthropology of the population of Georgia and the Caucasus, anthropology of the population of India, kranology of the population of the Caucasus, etc. He was author about 200 scientific-research works and more than 10 monographs.

He was a chief expert of UNESCO in anthropology (1964–1998), an honorary member of the European Anthropological Association (1973), and honorary member of the Indian Society of Human Genetics (1975).

Abdushelishvili died in Tbilisi in 1998 (aged 71).

The award-winning popular science book on human evolution Who Asked the First Question? Origins of Human Choral Singing, Intelligence, Language and Speech (2006) is dedicated to the memory of  Abdushelishvili and his lifelong friend, Russian anthropologist Valery Alekseyev.

Select bibliography

 "Anthropology of the population of old and modern Georgia" (a monograph), Tbilisi, 1964 (in Russian)
 "Kranology of the population of the old and modern Caucasus" (a monograph), Tbilisi, 1966 (in Russian)
 "The genesis of the aboriginal population of the Caucasus in the light of Anthropological data" (a monograph), Tokyo, 1968 (in English)
 "New data of Anthropology of Northern India" (a monograph), Moscow, 1980 (in Russian, English summary)
 "New material about the Anthropology of Western India" (a monograph), Moscow, 1982 (in Russian, English summary)
 "Paleostomatology of Georgia" (a monograph), Tbilisi, 1989 (Co-author M. Inashvili. In Georgian, English summary)
 "Methodics of anthropological investigations" (a monograph), Tbilisi, 1992 (in Russian, English summary)

References

1926 births
1998 deaths
Scientists from Tbilisi
Anthropologists from Georgia (country)
Physical anthropologists
Tbilisi State Medical University alumni
Academic staff of Tbilisi State University
20th-century anthropologists
Soviet anthropologists
Honoured Scientists of Georgia (country)

Malkhaz Abdushelishvili


The Iona Nunnery was an Augustinian convent of nuns located on the island of Iona in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. It was established sometime after the foundation of the nearby Benedictine monastery in 1203. Bethóc, daughter of Somerled, was first prioress. The ruins of the nunnery stand in a peaceful precinct adjacent to Iona's main (and only) village, Baile Mor.  They form the most complete remains of a medieval nunnery extant in Scotland. After the Reformation, the priory was dissolved and reduced to a ruin.

History

The nunnery was founded after the establishment of the Benedictine monastery, which was likely founded by Raghnall mac Somhairle in 1203. Raghnall's sister, Bethóc, became the first prioress. This was one of the two Augustinian monasteries of women in Scotland, St. Leonards Nunnery located at Perth being the other.

In the Abbey museum of the nearby Iona Abbey, the top half of a headstone of Anna MacLean, a prioress of the monastery of nuns who died in 1543, is on display.

Restoration work on the nunnery occurred in 1923 and 1993.

Construction

The construction of the Iona Nunnery follows the typical Irish style. The Church consists of a building with three bays with a passage to the north side and a small chapel on the east side of the passage. The monastic cloister measures 14 metres square, but it was originally smaller. The east wing had three rooms on ground level, above was the dormitory. The south wing contained the refectory. In the sixteenth century a floor was added. The west wing is below the modern road and was most likely the guests wing.

Management
The Iona Nunnery is managed by Historic Environment Scotland and is a scheduled monument.

References

External links

Historic Environment Scotland - Iona Nunnery

Iona Nunnery
1203 establishments in Scotland
Nunnery
Christian religious orders established in the 13th century
Augustinian nunneries in Scotland
Historic Scotland properties in Argyll and Bute
Organisations based in Argyll and Bute
Scheduled Ancient Monuments in Argyll and Bute

Iona Nunnery


The Dickerson Whitewater Course, on  the Potomac River near Dickerson, Maryland, was built for use by canoe and kayak paddlers training for the 1992 Olympic Games in Spain.  It was the first pump-powered artificial whitewater course built in North America, and is still the only one anywhere with heated water. It remains an active training center for whitewater slalom racing, swiftwater rescue training, and other whitewater activities.

The facility is owned by the NRG Energy company.  Except during special events, access requires membership in the Potomac Whitewater Racing Center, a USA Canoe/Kayak National Training Center.

The course was constructed in 1991, inside a pre-existing straight, -long concrete channel,  wide.  Since 1959, the channel has returned cooling water from the Dickerson Generating Station to the Potomac River,  upstream from Washington, D.C.  Water is pumped from the river, warmed as much as 35 °F (20 °C) as it cools the power plant's three coal-fired generators, and then emptied into the channel for gravity flow back to the river.  (The plant has three other generators which use a different cooling system.)

Streamflow through the course is  to , depending on the operation of the plant's three coal-fired generators and their six cooling water pumps.  In the summer months, when water temperature in the channel exceeds , the course is closed for health reasons.  It is also closed when the Potomac River rises above  on the Little Falls gauge , flooding the lower section of the course.

History
In the 1960s, local canoe and kayak paddlers began conducting winter practice in the heated Potomac River water immediately below the discharge channel.  Nearly three decades went by before paddler Scott Wilkinson got the idea of moving the practice up into the concrete-lined channel itself.  In 1991, he sold his idea to two of the power plant managers, and, in support of the 1992 Olympics team, the Potomac Electric Power Company, Pepco, which owned the plant at the time, approved the insertion of approximately 75 artificial concrete boulders and two wing dams into the channel.

Wilkinson's fellow paddler John Anderson, an architect, built a 1:12 scale model with flow-diversion features similar to those in the Segre Olympic Park artificial course in La Seu d'Urgell, Spain, built for the 1992 games.  The model was tested at the Navy's David Taylor Model Basin.

Construction companies building combustion turbine units on (and for) the Pepco Site, donated time and equipment, and the course was opened in December 1991.  The first race was held in June 1992.  Athletes who trained at the Dickerson course won bronze and gold medals in the 1992 Olympics, and others have continued to win Olympic medals and world championships in subsequent years.

The course was redesigned in the fall of 2002, once again by John Anderson.  A new scale model was built, this one outdoors and onsite.  After testing his new arrangement of flow-diversion features on the model, he specified new locations for some of the artificial boulders.  The wing dam on the left side was moved downstream into section four.  A crane was deployed for the moving job.

In October 2003 a persistent problem at the end of the course was fixed.  Whenever the Potomac River level is below  on the Little Falls gauge , there is a sheer drop between the end of the concrete channel and the river.  In certain conditions of high course flow and low river level, a stream-wide retentive hydraulic, or "sticky hole," posed a hazard to paddlers who failed to correctly "boof stroke" across the drop.  It was a worse problem for paddlers who had made a wet exit from an upside-down boat and were swimming the course.

This feature was modified by adding a concrete slab under the drop and two trapezoid-shaped diverters on the sides.  The hydraulic was converted into a central tongue of water ending in a wave train, with an eddy on each side.

Present course design
The course has four  sections, connected in a straight line, end-to-end, with a  drop at the end of each section.  A final  section ends in the river, with or without a drop, depending on the river level.  Overall slope adds another seven feet of drop, for a total course drop of 15 feet (4.6 m), plus zero to four feet (0 to 1.2 meters) into the river at the end.  The following map shows the arrangement of the visible and submerged features.

To use the course without a certified instructor present, a paddler must pass a "blue card" test: namely, pause in each of the numbered eddies, in sequence, and roll in the current, not in an eddy, between eddies 1 and 5 at the top, and again between eddies 1 and 5 at the bottom.  During the blue card test, the course must be running near full flow, , and the river must be low enough that there is a significant drop from the bottom of the course into the river.

Unique features of the course
Because the water channel was designed for an industrial, rather than a recreational, function, there are no wide pools to serve as resting spots, and there is no easy way off the water, short of the end.  The water is deceptively fast, and all but two of the eddies have swirling water with an upstream component.  From the river, paddlers must carry their boats the length of the course to re-enter and make another run.

There are two other artificial whitewater courses in the mid-Atlantic region: in Charlotte, NC, and McHenry, MD.  The Charlotte course, U.S. National Whitewater Center, USNWC, opened in 2006, and the McHenry course, Adventure Sports Center International, ASCI, opened in 2007.  They do not have heated water.  The Dickerson Power Plant operates at a fraction of what it did 10 years ago, so the heated water is decreased accordingly. They both feature circular water channels with conveyor belt lifts from the course end to the beginning, plus bigger drops, wider eddies, mid-course pools, and guided raft trips for tourists.  Dickerson is for decked, hard-shell boats only.  All three facilities are used for canoe and kayak training and as venues for competitions.

Gallery

Washington Post full-page graphic

References

Video Links
 The course at low flow, medium flow, and full flow.
 Kibler's Hole at medium flow.
 Slide Show 2006
 The Bottom Hole before the 2003 fix.
 Two complete slalom runs 1 and 2 by 2008 U.S. Olympian Scott Parsons.

Artificial whitewater courses
Sports venues in Maryland
Canoeing and kayaking venues in the United States

Dickerson Whitewater Course


William Gordon Fallows KCVO (1913 – 17 August 1979) was a Church of England bishop from the broad church tradition. He served as the sixth suffragan Bishop of Pontefract and subsequently fourth diocesan Bishop of Sheffield. He is also known for having chaired the working party which produced the "Sheffield Report" used to allocate clergy numbers between the dioceses of the Church of England.

Personal life and education
Fallows was born in 1913 in Barrow-in-Furness. He attended Barrow Grammar School and then St Edmund Hall, Oxford. He trained for ordination at Ripon Hall, Oxford. He died in office in August 1979 after suffering from cancer and Parkinson's disease.

Ministry positions
Curate in Leamington Spa

Vicar of Styvechale, Coventry

Vicar of Preston, Lancashire

Archdeacon of Lancaster

Principal of Ripon Hall, Oxford 1959 – 1968

Bishop of Pontefract 1968 – 71

Bishop of Sheffield 1971 – 79

Vice Chairman of the Church's Central Board of Finance

Vice Chairman Church of England Pensions Board

Chaplain to the Queen

Clerk of the Closet 1975 – 79

Fallows chaired the Clergy Deployment Commission, created to address the concentration of Church of England clergy in London and the south-east of England. In 1974 it produced the Sheffield Report recommending a formula to calculate what proportion of available clergy each diocese should receive, known as the Sheffield Number. Although at the time it was "denounced by some critics as striking at the roots of the church" it remains in use as of 2008.

Biography
Gordon Fallows of Sheffield, John S. Peart-Binns, The Memoir Club

References

External links

 A Brief Synopsis Of Previous Bishops Of The See Of Sheffield

1913 births
1979 deaths
Alumni of St Edmund Hall, Oxford
Alumni of Ripon College Cuddesdon
20th-century Church of England bishops
Bishops of Pontefract
Bishops of Sheffield
Archdeacons of Lancaster
Clerks of the Closet
Knights Commander of the Royal Victorian Order
People educated at Barrow-in-Furness Grammar School for Boys
People from Barrow-in-Furness
Staff of Ripon College Cuddesdon

Gordon Fallows


Scottish Borders is a council area (region) in south Scotland. Its name is because it is on the border with England.

The name is usually shortened to    " the Borders".

It is made up of the counties of :-

 Berwickshire
 Peeblesshire
 Selkirkshire

The main town of the region is Newtown St Boswells.

Scottish Borders

Scottish Borders


Buy Me is a television program that has aired on HGTV in the U.S. since 2005, and on HGTV Canada since 2003, where it is that cable network's most popular show. It is also seen in Belgium and South Africa, either dubbed or with subtitles. It is produced by Whalley-Abbey Media Holdings (WHAM), which is owned by Debbie Travis and her husband, and produced Debbie Travis' Facelift.

It shows the entire process of selling a home, from listing the property, to repairing any problems with it, to open houses, to the negotiations of the selling process. It covers all of the details of the process, including home inspections, and occasionally even mild arguments between the sellers and real estate agents. Occasionally, the home fails to sell within the six-month period allotted, but in most cases (whether it sells or not) a postscript of sorts is given by the narrator or in text, stating how things turned out.

The show is generally taped around WHAM's native Montreal, and receives a Quebec tax credit for film and video production. A few more recent episodes are clearly shot around Vancouver in coastal British Columbia, and some in Calgary, Alberta's largest city. New episodes are being taped in the U.S., in both Raleigh, North Carolina and Denver, Colorado. The show has been renewed for five more 13-episode seasons.

Apparently because the show is seen by both Canadian and American audiences, any obvious indications of the shooting location are eliminated, including the blurring of street signs, and the omission of any place names by the narrator. Prices discussed are not changed or converted however, particularly since the U.S. dollar and Canadian dollar are nearly equal in value ().

A similar series, Bought & Sold, has started airing  on HGTV in the U.S.

External links
Buy Me at HGTV Canada
Buy Me at HGTV (U.S.)
Montreal Gazette article

HGTV (Canada) original programming
2003 Canadian television series debuts
2000s Canadian reality television series

Buy Me


Kyle Eric Hill (born April 7, 1979) is an American retired professional basketball player. He was picked by the Dallas Mavericks in the 2001 NBA draft with the 44th overall draft pick. Hill's NBA rights were then traded by the Mavericks shortly after the draft to the Houston Rockets. Hill ended up never playing in an NBA game and is 1 of 8 players from the 2001 NBA Draft that never played a game in the league.

High school and college career
Hill attended and played basketball at Argo Community High School in Summit, Illinois. He played college basketball at Eastern Illinois University.

Pro career
After being selected in the 2001 NBA draft, Hill immediately went to Europe and signed with the French team ASVEL, where he played in the Euroleague with Nikola Vujčić, where he averaged 13.4 points per game and won the French Cup.

Hill next moved to another French club Pau-Orthez, where he recorded 9.5 points per game in 25 minutes per game. He then played briefly with AEK Athens in Greece, and then with Lauretana Biella in Italy during the 2003–04 season. He followed that with an excellent season with the Croatian club KK Zadar.

After Zadar, he moved to the Italian club Snaidero Udine, where he played well and averaged more than 15 points per game during the 2005–06 season. Soon after that he moved to the Spanish team Girona, but an injury that he suffered to his achilles tendon prevented him from playing much. During the 2007–08 season, Hill played five games with KK Bosna from Sarajevo and he then returned to Udine. He finished the season playing with Snaidero Udine, where he formed one half of the same dynamic duo along with Jerome Allen for the team, and was once again coached by Cesare Pancotto, just like in the 2005–06 season.

On March 1, 2010, Hill signed a contract with Hemofarm Vršac from Serbia. Later, on 2012, Hill signs for Aguas de Sousas Ourense of LEB Plata, Spanish third division.

Coaching career
Hill continues to coach in the Atlanta area with the private coaching service, CoachUp.

References

External links
 ACB.com Profile
 Legabasket Profile
 AEK Athens Profile
 Euroleague.net Profile

1979 births
Living people
ABA League players
AEK B.C. players
African-American basketball players
American expatriate basketball people in Bosnia and Herzegovina
American expatriate basketball people in France
American expatriate basketball people in Greece
American expatriate basketball people in Italy
American expatriate basketball people in Serbia
American expatriate basketball people in Spain
American men's basketball players
ASVEL Basket players
Basketball players from Chicago
CB Lucentum Alicante players
Club Ourense Baloncesto players
Dallas Mavericks draft picks
Eastern Illinois Panthers men's basketball players
Élan Béarnais players
KK Bosna Royal players
KK Hemofarm players
KK Zadar players
Liga ACB players
Pallacanestro Biella players
Pallalcesto Amatori Udine players
Point guards
Shooting guards
21st-century African-American sportspeople
20th-century African-American sportspeople

Kyle Hill