Marri Channa Reddy (13 January 1919 – 2 December 1996) was an Indian politician active in several states. He was the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh from 1978 to 1980 and from 1989 to 1990. He also served as the governor of Uttar Pradesh (1974–1977), governor of Punjab (1982–1983), governor of Rajasthan from February 1992 to May 1993, and governor of Tamil Nadu from 1993 until his death. He was a leader of Indian National Congress Party.

Reddy was among the stalwarts who headed the Telangana movement of Andhra Pradesh in the late 1960s. He also has the credit of being one of the youngest ministers; He became a minister of Andhra Pradesh at the age of 30.

Early life
Marri Channa Reddy was born to Marri Lakshma Reddy and Buchamma on 13 January 1919 in Siripuram village (currently in Marpally Mandal), Atraf-i-Balda, Hyderabad State. He obtained his MBBS degree in 1941. He was the founder of Andhra Yuvajana Samiti and Students Congress. He was associated with several student, youth, social, educational, literary and cultural organisations. He edited a weekly for about two years and has also contributed articles to leading dailies and Journals.

Political life
He took active part in the political struggle in the erstwhile Hyderabad State and in 1942 was the General Secretary of Andhra Mahasabha (which was a precursor of the State Congress). In 1946, he became a member of the Standing Committee of the State Congress and General Secretary of Hyderabad City Congress. He was one of the founders and as well General Secretary of the Ideological K.M.P.Group in the Congress. He was General Secretary of the Andhra Provincial Congress Committee for several years and a member of the P.C.C Working Committee for 30 years.

Tenure as Member of Legislature and Parliament
In 1950, Reddy was nominated to the Provisional Parliament and was appointed Whip of Congress Parliamentary Party. He was elected member of the Hyderabad Legislative Assembly in the first General Elections and from 1952–1956 was Minister for Agriculture and Food, Planning_and Rehabilitation in Hyderabad State. As Minister he held the Indian Delegation to the World Conference of Agriculturists held in Rome under the auspices of the F.A.O. in 1953, Subsequently, in 1955, he represented India as the Deputy Leader of the Indian Delegation to F.A.O. Conference in Rome.

He opposed Telangana merger with Andhra State and was one of the four signatories to Gentleman's agreement after which Andhra Pradesh state formed.

He was elected to the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly again from Vikarabad constituency. During 1957–62, he was a member of the Public Accounts Committee, twice Chairman of the Estimates Committee and Chairman of the Andhra Pradesh Regional (Telangana) Development Committee in State Legislative Assemably. In 1962 he was again elected, now from Tandur Constituency, and was Minister for Planning and Panchayat Raj and later for Finance, Commercial Taxes and Industries. In 1967, he was again returned to the Legislative Assembly and was Minister for Finance, Education and Commercial Taxes. He resigned the State Ministry on his appointment as Minister for Steel, Mines and Metals in the Union Cabinet (1967–68).  Subsequently, in April 1967, he was elected to the Rajya Sabha.

As Minister for Steel and Mines, he introduced several reforms to improve production and brought about decontrol of distribution of steel and coal. At the invitation of the British Government he visited the U.K for talks on steel industry and other allied matters. He resigned from the Union Cabinet in April 1968.

Role in the First Telangana Movement
Reddy took an active part in several public movements and played a notable role in the split of the Congress political party.  He also a took an active role in the movement for a separate Telangana State. Chenna Reddy became president of the Telangana Praja Samithi, then a popular youth movement, so as to politicalize the movement. This party supporting the separation secured the popular mandate in terms of winning 11 Loksabha seats (out of 14 seats). As head of the movement for separate Telangana he made a significant contribution in resolving the issues. He is credited for drafting of the Six Point Formula in 1971. This was later incorporated as 'New Deal for Telangana' in the Congress Manifesto when the elections to the Andhra Pradesh Assembly took place in 1972.

Tenure as Governor of Uttar Pradesh
In 1974, Reddy accepted the office of Governor of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous State of the country on a reported personal plea of Indira Gandhi made that she required Reddy's assistance to help her as the Governor of Uttar Pradesh, her home State. However this is widely seen as a reward for ending the Separate Telangana Movement. As Chancellor for the state Universities, he set a practice of conferring Honorary Degrees on great scholars and renowned scientists from others parts of the country, particularly, from the South. He also administered the state when it came under President's rule within 55 days of him taking office. He sought advice from leaders of repute and public men like Nirmal Chandra Chaturvedi, CB Gupta and Ali Zaheer to cleanse the state administration.

Tenure as Chief Minister

He was twice the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh. Reddy successfully brought the congress party to power on two occasions. He was the Pradesh Congress Committee President. He has also been Governor of Uttar Pradesh (during president rule in the mid-1970s), Rajasthan, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Pondicheri. He was actually the person who created the peace process and eradication of terrorism in Punjab while being the Governor there.

Personal life
Reddy was married to M. Savitri Devi and had two sons and a daughter. His younger son, Marri Shashidhar Reddy, was Vice Chairman of National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) with a Union Cabinet status; he was also a four-time MLA from Sanathnagar.

Reddy arrived in Hyderabad on 1 December 1996 from Chennai to attend his grandson's wedding. He was taken to a private hospital in the city after he complained of a chest pain at around midnight before he slipped into coma. He died at 7 a.m. the following day there.

In an obituary, author Parsa Venkateshwar Rao wrote of Reddy: "Marri Chenna Reddy was an eternal rebel in Andhra politics. He never toed any line, be it a party or a leader. He dared his cautious peers, and did not hesitate to antagonise them though he never had permanent enemies. He held positions of power on his own terms, and lost them too for the same reasons."

References

Union Ministers from United Andhra Pradesh

Telugu politicians
Telangana Praja Samithi politicians
Indian National Congress politicians
People from Ranga Reddy district
1919 births
1996 deaths
Chief ministers from Indian National Congress
Rajya Sabha members from Andhra Pradesh

Marri Chenna Reddy


Carpathian Biosphere Reserve () is a biosphere reserve that was established as a nature reserve in 1968 and became part of the World Network of Biosphere Reserves of UNESCO in 1992. Since 2007 bigger portion of the reserve along with some territories of the Uzh River National Park was listed with the UNESCO World Heritage Sites as part of the Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe.

Located in the eastern parts of the Zakarpattia Oblast, it consists of six separate preservation massifs and two botanic zakazniks (Chorna Hora and Yulivska Hora) with a total area of . The greatest part of the reserve is covered by virgin forests. Administratively, the biosphere reserve is located in four districts of Zakarpattia Oblast, Ukraine.

It is adjacent to the Carpathian National Nature Park.

Territory division
The territory of Carpathian Biosphere Reserve is divided into several functional zones: core (A) and buffer zones (B), zone of the regulated protected regime (D) and anthropogenic landscapes (C). They differ one from another by the nature use regimes. Such division helps to achieve the most appropriate balance between nature protection needs and the requirements of local people.

Composition

The biosphere reserve consists of six separate preservation massifs as well as two botanical reserves (zakazniks).
 Chornohora preservation massif
 Svydovets preservation massif
 Marmorosh preservation massif
 Kuziy preservation massif
 Uholka and Shyroka Luzhanka preservation massif
 Preservation massif "Dolyna Nartsysiv" (Narcissus Valley)
 Botanical zakaznyk "Chorna Hora" (Black Mountain)
 Botanical zakaznyk "Yulivska Hora" (Julius Mountain)

Chornohora preservation massif is located on the southern macroslope of the Chornohora, the highest mountain belt in the Eastern Beskids and the Ukrainian Carpathians. Its total area is .

Svydovets preservation massif has an area of  and is located at an elevation of 600–1883 m.a.s.l in the highest region of the Svydovets mountains.

Marmorosh preservation massif is located on the northern macroslope of the Rakhiv Mountains and covers a territory of  at an elevation of 750–1940 m.a.s.l.

Kuziy preservation massif is located on the southern branches of the Svydovets mountain range at an elevation of 350–1409 m.a.s.l. with total area of 4925 ha. Its territory is completely located in the forest area.

Uholka and Shyroka Luzhanka preservation massif is located on the southern slopes of the Krasna and the Menchil mountains grasslands at an elevation of 400 – 1280 m.a.s.l. The total area of the protected territory is 15580 ha.

Preservation massif "Narcissus Valley" is located at an elevation of 180–200 m.a.s.l. in the western part of Khustsko-Solotvynska Valley and lies in a flatland of the Khustets river flood plain.

The "Chorna hora" botanical zakaznik occupies a territory of 823 ha in the Volcanic Carpathians, on the Chornahora mountain, which is a part of the Hutynskiy range. It was established to preserve oak, hornbeam-oak, oak-beech and beech-oak forests in 1974 and became a part of the Carpathians biosphere reserve in 1997.

The "Yulivska Hora" botanical zakaznik covers an area of 176 ha on the slopes of the Yulivski mountains island massif in the Vyhorlat-Hutynskiy volcanic ridge. It was established in 1974 and became a part of the Carpathian biosphere reserve in 1997. It aimed to preserve the oak-groves formed by many heat-loving Balkan and Mediterranean species. It is characterized by the warmest climate in the whole Ukrainian Carpathians.

Flora and fauna
The flora of CBR consists of 262 fungi species, 392 species of lichens, 440 species of mosses and 1062 species of vascular plants. The algal flora includes 465 species. 64 of plants species represented in this reserve are listed in the Ukrainian Red Data Book as well as in IUCN and the European Red Lists. The fauna of the Carpathian biosphere reserve is represented by 64 mammal species, 173 birds, 9 reptiles, 13 amphibians, 23 fish and more than 10,000 invertebrate species. 72 of these species are listed in the Ukrainian Red Data Book and in IUCN and the European Red Lists.

References

External links

 Carpathian Biosphere Reserve official website
 Detailed information on areas of the reserve

Biosphere reserves of Ukraine
Geography of Zakarpattia Oblast
Carpathians
Zakarpattia Oblast outdoor recreation
Old-growth forests
Protected areas established in 1968
Protected areas of Zakarpattia Oblast
World Heritage Sites in Ukraine
Protected areas of the Eastern Carpathians
1968 establishments in Ukraine

Carpathian Biosphere Reserve


The University of Wrocław is a public university in Wrocław, Poland.  It was started in 1702 by Leopold I (Holy Roman Emperor), and has nearly 25,000 students.

History
The first attempt to found a university in Wroclaw was in 1505. The initiator was Vladislav II. Due to wars, lack of money, the university was not opened.

In 1702, the Society of Jesus founded a university called Leopoldina. It had the only faculty of philosophy and сatholic theology.

In 1811, as a result of a reform, the universities in Breslau and Frankfurt an der Oder were merged. The university was called Silesian Friedrich Wilhelm University. Here students studied at 5 faculties — Catholic theology, Protestant theology, law, philosophy and medicine. The University of Breslau became the first German university to have both Catholic and Protestant faculties.

After the end of World War II, the German university in the city was closed and then transformed into a Polish state university, which was officially opened on June 9, 1946.

In 1952 — 1989 the university was named after the President of Poland Bolesław Bierut.

In 2001, there were celebrations in Wroclaw dedicated to the 300th anniversary of the foundation of the University.

General information
The University of Wroclaw is a higher education institution in the Republic of Poland.

There are 10 departments that provide 44 areas of study, classes are mostly Polish, with only some in English. The University of Wrocław provides Bachelor, Master, and Doctoral level programmes.

Teaching at the university is conducted at the following faculties:

 Philological
 History and pedagogy
 Law, administration and economics
 Physicists and Astronomy
 Biotechnology
 Biology
 Geography, geology and environment
 Social Sciences
 Chemistry
 Mathematics and Computer Science.

References

Other websites

The Wrocław University

1700s establishments in Europe
1702 establishments
Wroclaw
Wrocław

University of Wrocław


The Vancouver Maritime Museum is a maritime museum devoted to presenting the maritime history of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and the Canadian Arctic. Opened in 1959 as a Vancouver centennial project, it is located within Vanier Park just west of False Creek on the Vancouver waterfront. The museum is affiliated with CMA, CHIN, and Virtual Museum of Canada.

Collection

The main exhibit is the St. Roch, a historic arctic exploration vessel used by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The museum also has extensive galleries of model ships, including one with historic model ships built entirely from cardboard or paper as well as a particularly fine bone model of the French warship Vengeur du Peuple which was built around 1800 by French prisoners of war, a Children's Maritime Discovery Centre, a recreation of the forecastle of Vancouver's ship Discovery, an extensive collection of maritime art, and a large library and archives.

Outdoor displays include the NASA undersea research vessel Ben Franklin and the boiler of the Beaver, the first steamship in the Pacific Northwest; it also has a small heritage harbour. There is a workshop where visitors can watch craftsmen build models. Of particular significance is the extensive Chung collection of material relating to Canadian Pacific steamships and original hand drawn charts from Captain Cook's exploration of the Pacific. This collection is separate from the Wally Chung material housed at the Rare Books and Archives Collection at the University of British Columbia.

See also

 Maritime Museum of British Columbia
 Museum ship
 List of museum ships
 Ship replica
 Ships preserved in museums

References

External links

History museums in British Columbia
Maritime museums in British Columbia
Museums in Vancouver
Kitsilano

Vancouver Maritime Museum


Female Trouble is an American LGBT comedy movie. It is about 1960s Baltimore mixed with sexual adventures and criminal activity. This movie was released on October 4, 1974 in the United States by New Line Cinema. The rating is NC-17. This movie got very positive reviews. John Waters directed this movie.

1974 comedy movies
1974 crime movies
1970s LGBT movies
American criminal comedy movies
English-language movies
Movies set in Baltimore
American independent movies
Movies about dysfunctional families
Movies directed by John Waters

Female Trouble


Ngô Đình Luyện (1914 – 1990) was a Vietnamese diplomat.

He was one of six sons born to affluent Roman Catholic parents and also had three sisters. His father, Ngô Đình Khả, was a mandarin during the French colonial era. Luyện's brothers included Provincial Governor Ngô Đình Khôi, South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm and Pierre Martin Ngô Đình Thục, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Huế. Khôi was killed by Việt Minh insurgents in the 1940s, who reportedly buried him alive.

Diệm appointed Luyện as ambassador to the United Kingdom. Diệm and another brother, Ngô Đình Nhu, were executed on 2 November 1963 during a military coup. Another brother, Ngô Đình Cẩn, was captured a few days later and eventually sentenced to death and executed. Luyện was able to escape assassination because he was in London at the time.

Luyện and Thục were the only brothers to survive the political upheavals in Vietnam.

References

Ngo family
Vietnamese Roman Catholics
Vietnamese people of the Vietnam War
Ambassadors of Vietnam to the United Kingdom
1914 births
1990 deaths
Date of birth unknown
Date of death unknown
Place of death missing

Ngô Đình Luyện


Kenneth Albert Emerson (9 July 1927 – 12 February 2010) was an Australian cartoonist and comic strip creator. He is best known for writing the comic strips The Warrumbunglers and  On The Rocks. Emerson was the son-in-law of cartoonist Eric Jolliffe.

Background
Emerson was born in Sydney, the son of Albert Emerson and his wife, Ruth (Booth), who had emigrated from Belfast. He had one brother, Alf.  His father died from malaria, which he contracted whilst they were based in New Guinea.  His mother remarried and had another son, Denis. He spent part of his youth working in central Queensland. After leaving school, Emerson experienced a wide range of jobs including greaser, surveyor's assistant, barman, stagehand, boilermaker's assistant and builder's labourer. He spent three years studying art  at East Sydney Technical College before travelling to New Zealand, where his brother Alf had moved to. In New Zealand he worked in assorted jobs including as a freelance artist.

On his return to Sydney, Emerson subsequently became a full-time artist. His began as a commercial artist and photograph retoucher in advertising, then went on to television animation before returning to advertising, where he remained until 1976.

Cartoonist
In May 1960 had a comic strip, Bush Folks, accepted by the Australian Woman's Mirror. In November 1960 the magazine was taken over by Australian Consolidated Press, following which it was merged with the Weekend. The two magazines had nothing in common and ended up being called Everybody's. The strip was dropped but Emerson continued to sell cartoons to the new magazine for several years before it folded late in 1967.

In 1967 Emerson began drawing the outback comic strip The Warrumbunglers, originally for The Sunday Telegraph, where it was dropped in July 1969 only to re-appear in The Sun-Herald in December 1969.  It was dropped again in 1971 and didn't re-appear until May 1977 as one of the replacement strips for Fatty Finn. The Warrumbunglers became Australia's second-longest running comic strip; Emerson completed his last strip shortly before his death.

The Warrumbunglers featured numerous Australian animals, kangaroos, echidnas, bandicoots, goannas and koalas, as an anthropomorphic community. The strip's themes reflect mateship, tall tales and bush sayings.

In February 1974 Sydney's The Sun published Emerson's, pseudo-colonial convict comic strip, On The Rocks, where it ran until 2001. The strip featured the exploits of Floyd Fingal, a transported con-man, Major Upheaval, a paymaster with the New South Wales Rum Corps, the bumbling Colonial Governor and his hopeless aide, De Camp. In August 1975 it was bought by Brisbane's Sunday Mail and the name of the strip was changed to Ball and Chain. The strip continued in The Sun-Herald until late April 1988.

In 1986 Emerson was awarded the Stanley Award for best comic strip by the Australian Cartoonists' Association.

Ginger Meggs
Ginger Meggs is an iconic Australian comic strip. Following the deaths of its creator Jimmy Bancks in 1952 and his replacement Ron Vivian in 1973, Emerson was one of several artists who submitted drawings to take over the strip. The role, however, went to Lloyd Piper. When Piper died in 1984 Emerson again applied for the job and was appointed. As he already had two strips published in The Sun-Herald, he was asked to drop either The Warrumbunglers or On The Rocks in favour of Ginger Meggs. He declined, and the role was offered instead to James Kemsley.

Personal
In 1956 he married Margaret 'Meg' Jolliffe (the daughter of Eric Jolliffe), whom he met whilst studying at the East Sydney Technical College. In 1963 they had a daughter, Jane, who is a graphic artist. Meg died in 1997 and Emerson died on 12 February 2010.

Anthologies
The Warrumbunglers
On The Rocks
The Warrumbunglers bushed! (1983)
On The Rocks No. 2 (1983)
The Warrumbunglers No. 3 (1984)
On The Rocks No. 3 (1984)

Note

References

1930 births
2010 deaths
Australian comic strip cartoonists
Australian comics artists

Ken Emerson


Bandwidth has several related meanings:

 Bandwidth (signal processing) or analog bandwidth, frequency bandwidth or radio bandwidth, a measure of the width of a range of frequencies, measured in hertz
 Bandwidth (computing), the rate of data transfer, bit rate or throughput, measured in bits per second (bit/s)
 Spectral linewidth, the width of an atomic or molecular spectral line, measured in hertz

Bandwidth may also refer to:
 Bandwidth (company), an American communications provider
 Bandwidth (linear algebra), the width of the non-zero terms around the diagonal of a matrix
 In statistics kernel density estimation, the width of the convolution kernel used
 In language expectancy theory, a normative expected range of linguistic behavior
 In business jargon, the resources needed to complete a task or project
 Bandwidth (radio program), a Canadian radio program
Graph bandwidth, in graph theory
Coherence bandwidth, a frequency range over which a channel can be considered "flat"
Power bandwidth of an amplifier, a frequency range for which power output exceeds a given fraction of full rated power

Bandwidth


The death and state funeral of Pierre Trudeau took place in September 2000. Pierre Trudeau was the 15th Prime Minister of Canada, serving from 1968 to 1984, with a brief interruption in 1979–1980.

Trudeau died on September 28, 2000. His coffin lay in state on Parliament Hill from September 30 to October 1 and the following day at Montréal City Hall. On October 3, a state funeral was held at Notre-Dame Basilica in Montreal.

The official state funeral was held at Montreal's Notre-Dame Basilica on October 3, 2000.

The day began at City Hall. Trudeau's family spent some moments alone with his casket before it was removed and driven to the Basilica, accompanied by ten RCMP officers marching alongside. Along the route, some clapped, while others wept, waved Canadian flags or simply stood silently as Trudeau made his final journey through his native Montreal.

Other websites
CBC Coverage of the Passing of Pierre Trudeau
CTV Coverage of the Passing of Pierre Trudeau
Detailed account of the funeral liturgy at the Basilica of Our Lady, Montreal in Ship of Fools

Trudeau, Pierre
September events
2000 in Canada

Death and state funeral of Pierre Trudeau


Organic acid is a type of organic compound that typically has acidic properties. A common example of organic acids are called carboxyl acids, which are generally known as weak acids and do not totally dissociate in a medium such as water, unlike with strong minerals.

The simplest form of organic acids, such as acetic and formic, are typically used in stimulation treatments against corrosion for gas and oil, since these are less reactive compared to hydrochloric acid and other strong acids.

References

Organic compounds

Organic acid


In environmental toxicology, effects range low (ERL) and effects range median (ERM) are measures of toxicity in marine sediment. They are used by public agencies in the United States in formulating guidelines in assessing toxicity hazards, in particular from trace metals or organic contaminants.

The ERL and ERM measures are expressed as specific chemical concentrations of a toxic substance in sediment. The ERL indicates the concentration below which toxic effects are scarcely observed or predicted: the ERM indicates that above which effects are generally or always observed. They are derived from biological toxicity assays and synoptic sampling.

The numerical values are incorporated in sediment quality guidelines (SQGs) that were developed by Long and Morgan for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Status & Trends program as informal tools to evaluate whether a concentration of a contaminant in sediment might have toxicological effects.  These guidelines are used for screening sediments for trace metals and organic contaminants. They are not regulatory criteria in any way and are not intended to be used as such.

Derivation
NOAA originally calculated ERL/ERMs using existing toxicity data compiled from completed toxicity assays with varying endpoints, including effects on commonly tested organisms, particularly at sensitive life stages. The process is considered a "weight of evidence approach", in which results are based on a large database of previously conducted studies. The studies used included synoptically collected sediment chemical analyses and toxicity effects data. Using data already collected ("data mining") has the advantage of being able to quickly and inexpensively make an assessment with a large dataset that would otherwise require much more time-consuming and costly specific toxicity assays. Compiled data sets include a variety of endpoints including mortality, reproduction, growth rate, and juvenile survival in sediment toxicity data sets for all organisms for which tests have been conducted. Studies are screened, and only those assays using standardized methods and resulting in significant effects are used for the determination of ERL/ERM guidelines.

In summary, the key links between the compiled studies are the testing of a specific analyte - toxicity assays used are for sediment, and a significant effect must be determined. The data is arranged by ordering the concentrations from lowest to highest. After ranking, both the 10th and 50th percentile concentrations are determined over the range of endpoint concentrations. The 10th percentile of the ranked data is identified as the ERL, and is considered indicative of concentrations below which adverse effects (relatively) rarely occur. The 50th percentile of the ranked data is identified as the ERM, and is indicative of concentrations above which adverse effects (relatively) frequently occur.

Government agency use
Sediment Quality Guidelines (SQGs) are used by US federal agencies, state agencies, and environmental consulting firms to characterize toxic levels of chemicals in marine and freshwater sediment. Following here is a summary of how the ERL/ERM guidelines are used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, United States Geological Survey (USGS), and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

NOAA
NOAA scientists use SQGs as a way to estimate if a concentration of contaminant in a sediment sample may have toxicological effects. The original intent of using SQGs was to rank order areas that may need further toxicological testing and potential chemicals of concern. Across the United States, NOAA has used these guidelines in regional surveys to determine the degree of contamination relative to other areas, and to identify if the concentration of a chemical exceeded guidelines, indicating a possible adverse effect.

NOAA also reports ERLs and ERMs, along with other guidelines, on tables known as Screening Quick Reference Tables (SQuiRT) cards. These tables offer values that may be used in the preliminary screening of sediment or other media for toxic hazards.

USGS
The USGS makes use of both ERL and ERM on a case-by-case basis. During a study involving the concentration of heavy metals, pesticides, and semi-volatile organic compounds in stream sediments from the Schuylkill River within the Valley Forge National Historical Park, the USGS used the ERL and ERM to determine locations that could potentially pose a threat to living organisms. The USGS has also integrated ERL and ERM values into an Alert Range Table, a table that provides ranges of contaminant concentrations that predict the likelihood of adverse effects occurring in benthic organisms for the Lake Pontchartrain Basin in Louisiana. Both the ERL and ERM have proven to be useful guideline values for predicting toxicity during studies conducted by the USGS.

EPA
The EPA uses ERL and ERM values as a type of sediment "benchmark". They define a benchmark as a concentration that, when exceeded, has the potential to cause harm or significant risk to humans or animals in the environment. The EPA has also used ERL and ERM values for sediment contamination studies. Assessment categories defining the condition of sampled sediments have been used by the EPA in the past. Categories have been characterized as "good" for zero ERL exceedances, "intermediate" if there are ERL exceedances but zero ERM exceedances, and "poor" for any ERM exceedance.  The EPA credits the ERL and ERM as valuable benchmarks that assist in providing a uniform context for evaluating contaminant levels within estuaries.

Reliability
Long and colleagues, using both "effects" and "no effects" data, determined measures of the accuracy of the guidelines by calculating the percent incidence of effects occurring within the ranges delineated by ERL/ERM. The percent incidence of effects was calculated by dividing the number of effects entries by the total number of entries and multiplying by 100.

For trace metals, the guidelines for copper, lead, and silver were the most accurate - below the ERL concentration, there was less than a 10% incidence of effects. A steady increase was seen between the ERL and ERM concentrations, and above the ERM, the incidence of effects was greater than 83%.

The organic contaminant guidelines also appeared to be very accurate for all classes of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and most of the individual PAHs. The incidence of effects was 25% or below when the concentrations were below the respective ERL value, with only (fluorene as an exception, while the incidence of effects was 75% or greater at concentrations above the respective ERM, excepting dibenzo(a,h)anthracene, p,p'-DDE, total dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), and total Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Importantly, one hundred percent effects were seen in concentrations above the ERM for acenaphthylene, 2-methyl naphthalene, and low-molecular weight PAHs, and ninety percent or greater effects in this range were seen for chromium, lead, silver, benz(a)anthracene, and fluoranthene.

Contaminants that were reported as having low accuracies included nickel, mercury, chromium, total PCBs, p,p'-DDE, and total DDT.

Comparison to other SQGs (case studies)
Multiple case studies have been conducted to compare different sediment quality guidelines (SQGs) and their ability to predict sediment toxicity. The original intent of NOAA in developing ERL/ERMs was to create a ranking system for sediment site toxicity in order to compare one site to another. Although not the original intent, these guidelines have been compared to other SQGs to assess their ability to predict sediment toxicity in different organisms.

Long and co-workers also  conducted a meta-analysis using 1068 sediment toxicity assays to evaluate the predictive ability of the ERL/ERM, PEL (predicted effects level), and TEL (threshold effects level) sediment quality guidelines.  They found that the ERL most accurately predicted no-effects toxicity in benthic organisms. Furthermore, it was shown that as the number of SQGs exceeded increased, the resulting toxicity of the sediment increased as well, providing strong evidence that SCGs are useful in predicting sediment toxicities. It was noted, however, that when chemicals existed in mixtures, the toxicity of sediments increased, possibly at concentrations lower than the ERL and TEL.

Vidal and Bay  showed that the ERM performed better than the AET (apparent effects threshold) and EqP (equilibrium partitioning) at predicting a non-toxic sediment concentration, and in general was more conservative in its estimates than the SQGQ1 (sediment quality guideline quotient) and MECq (moderate effects concentration). The purpose of their study was to compare common SQGs used for site assessments in California. Both of these studies suggested using multiple SQGs, and gave guidance on selecting the best method based on site characteristics and the contaminants of immediate concern.

Drawbacks to the ERL/ERM approach
ERLs and ERMs must be used with caution. Overestimating the ability of these values to signal whether or not sediment may be toxic can lead to poor decisionmaking. Certain considerations must be made, and the weaknesses of these values understood, so that ERL and ERM screening levels are used properly.

The ERL and ERM are not threshold values to determine whether toxicity will occur - they are relationships between bulk chemical concentrations and toxicity effects that are expressed along a continuum. There is no concentration above which toxicity will occur and below which toxicity will not occur. This fact may be overlooked by some users of ERL/ERM's, and do so could mislead the decisionmaking process.

The derivation of ERL and ERM can also cause further misconceptions - since only effects data is used in determining an ERL/ERM, there are also overlapping concentrations where there is no co-occurrence of toxicity. Concentrations that did not elicit a significant effect are left out of the calculation when determining the 10th and 50th percentile values (ERL and ERM respectively). Therefore, within the ranges delineated by the ERL and ERM values, concentrations exist that were found to not have a significant biological effect.

Many substances that are found to be very toxic do not have SQGs associated with them. The ability of an SQG to predict toxicity when other substances, without SQGs, are present, is currently unknown.

Particle size also plays an important role in chemical concentrations, and this factor is ignored in calculating the ERL and ERM. When using these values for screening contaminated sediment, it is likely that the ERL will be exceeded more often when the sediment contains a larger proportion of fine-grained material. This is due to the inverse relationship between chemical concentration and particle size. Due to sediment concentrations being measured on a dry weight basis, other geochemical factors of sediment that may also influence contaminant bioavailibility are not considered.

Another consideration is that effects to wildlife and humans from bioaccumulation are not considered in ERL and ERM measurements.

Furthermore, Vidal and Bay  noted that the use of ERMs when DDT is present resulted in a less accurate predictive level. The authors suggested that this provides evidence that other methods could prove more protective in cases where mixtures of organics are present.

References

Concentration indicators
Toxicology

Effects range low and effects range median


Walter Robert Booth (12 July 1869 – 1938) was a British magician and early pioneer of British film. Collaborating with Robert W. Paul and then Charles Urban mostly on "trick" films, he pioneered techniques that led to what has been described as the first British animated film, The Hand of the Artist (1906). Booth is also notable for making the earliest film adaptation of A Christmas Carol with the silent film Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost (1901).

Biography
Booth was born in July 1869, the son of a porcelain painter. He followed his father with an apprenticeship at the Royal Worcester porcelain factory in 1882, where he worked until 1890. He had been a keen amateur magician and subsequently he joined the magic company of John Nevil Maskelyne and David Devant at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, London, where he is presumed to have first encountered filmmaker Robert W. Paul, who exhibited some of his earliest films there in 1896.

Booth went to work for Paul first devising and then later directing short trick films, beginning with The Miser's Doom and Upside Down; or, the Human Flies (both 1899). Many of their early collaborations, such as Hindoo Jugglers and Chinese Magic (both 1900) were based on conjuring tricks, whilst A Railway Collision (1900) pioneered the use of scale models. They reached the height of their collaboration in 1901; with simple trick films, such as Undressing Extraordinary, The Waif and the Wizard and An Over-Incubated Baby which relied on jump-cuts, The Devil in the Studio and Artistic Creation which integrated hand drawn elements, and Cheese Mites; or, Lilliputians in a London Restaurant  which experimented with superimposition; as well as more complex films, such as The Haunted Curiosity Shop, Scrooge; or, Marley's Ghost and The Magic Sword which has been compared to the work of Georges Méliès. Their collaborations continued for the next five years with such films as The Extraordinary Waiter (1902), Extraordinary Cab Accident and The Voyage of the Arctic (both 1903), before culminating with Is Spiritualism A Fraud? and The '?' Motorist (both 1906).

In 1906 Booth went to work for Charles Urban and constructed his own outdoor studio in the back garden of Neville Lodge, Woodlands, Isleworth, London, where, with  F. Harold Bastick, he made The Hand of the Artist (1906), which has been described as the first British animated film. He went on to produce at least 15 films a year for Urban including  semi-animated trick films The Sorcerer's Scissors (1907), When the Devil Drives (1907), and proto-science fiction invasion fantasies The Airship Destroyer (1909) and The Aerial Submarine (1910), as well as The Automatic Motorist (1911), a partial remake of The '?' Motorist (1906), up until 1915.

He subsequently went on to produce advertising films, including A Cure for Cross Words for Cadbury's cocoa and chocolate and he invented an advertising method called Flashing Film Ads, described as unique colour effects in light and movement. He died in Birmingham in 1938.

Filmography

For Robert W. Paul
The Miser's Doom (1899)
Upside Down; or, the Human Flies (1899)
The Last Days of Pompeii (1900, short, first cinematographic adaptation of Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel of the same name)
Chinese Magic (1900)
Hindoo Jugglers (1900)
A Railway Collision (1900)
Artistic Creation (1901)
Cheese Mites; or, Lilliputians in a London Restaurant (1901)
The Devil in the Studio (1901)
The Haunted Curiosity Shop (1901)
The Magic Sword (1901)
An Over-Incubated Baby (1901)
Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost (1901)
Undressing Extraordinary (1901)
The Waif and the Wizard (1901)
The Extraordinary Waiter (1902)
Extraordinary Cab Accident (1903)
Political Favourites (1903)
The Voyage of the Arctic (1903)
The '?' Motorist (1906)
Is Spiritualism a Fraud? (1906)

For Charles Urban
The Hand of the Artist (1906)
The Sorcerer's Scissors (1907)
When the Devil Drives (1907)
Willie's Magic Wand (1907)
The Airship Destroyer (1909)
The Aerial Submarine (1910)
Aerial Anarchists (1911)
The Automatic Motorist (1911)
Santa Claus (1912)

References

External links

1869 births
1938 deaths
British animated film directors
British cinema pioneers
English film directors
Fantasy film directors
Mass media people from Worcester, England
Science fiction film directors
Silent film directors

Walter R. Booth


Clivia nobilis, the green-tip forest lily, is a species of flowering plant in the genus Clivia, of the family Amaryllidaceae, native to South Africa. It grows to about . It has evergreen strap-shaped leaves, and bears pendent umbels of multiple narrow, trumpet-shaped, red and yellow flowers, tipped with green.

At a minimum temperature of , in temperate regions it is normally cultivated as a houseplant. Like its relative C. miniata It has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit (confirmed 2017).

Charlotte Percy (née Clive), Duchess of Northumberland (1787–1866), governess of Queen Victoria, was the first to cultivate the plant in the United Kingdom and bring it to flower. The whole genus was subsequently named after the Duchess.

References

External links
A picture of Clivia nobilis
A picture of Clivia nobilis

Amaryllidoideae

Clivia nobilis


Sandy Bentley (born May 18, 1978 in Joliet, Illinois) is notable both individually and with her sister Amanda (Mandy) Bentley as the Bentley Twins. The 5 foot 9 inch tall twins were featured on the May 2000 cover of Playboy and were well known as Hugh Hefner's live-in lovers at the Playboy Mansion during 1999 and 2000.

The sisters were featured on the October 3, 2005 episode of Two and a Half Men, the September 17, 2000 episode of Sex and the City, and the April 24, 2000 episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

The Mark Yagalla episode
Subsequent to her relationship with Hefner, Sandy became involved with financier Mark Yagalla, who lavished her with expensive gifts, including jewels. After Yagalla was arrested for conducting a Ponzi scam, a USA federal receiver was appointed to recover assets which Yagalla had embezzled from the clients of his $40 million Asbury Capital Fund. Sandy was ordered to return the gifts he had given her, including nearly one million dollars in jewelry.

Sandy and her new boyfriend, nightclub doorman Michael Tardio, collaborated to sell some of the jewelry. Tardio made arrangements to meet a potential buyer on the evening of September 2, 2002; however, Tardio and his accomplice Christopher Monson were found later that night, riddled with bullets in a burning Mercedes SUV, parked in Studio City, California. The jewelry was never recovered.

In 2003, Yagalla pleaded guilty to securities fraud, and was sentenced to five years and five months at Pensacola Federal Prison. The government recovered $1.3 million from an auction of his assets.

In February 2011, the crime was featured in the CBS documentary series 48 Hours Mystery and a $75,000 reward was offered by the City Council of Studio City, California, to help solve the crime. Many of those involved in the events were patrons of Garden of Eden nightclub, where Tardio was a doorman.

Bibliography

 New York Daily News, Nancy Dillon, 2/19/2011
 Millions of Dollars in Hot Jewelry Leads to Murder, CBS News, Greg Fisher, 2/19/2011
 A Playmate, a Ponzi scheme, Jewels and Murder, CBS News, Chris O'Connell, Ira Sutow and Greg Fisher, 2/19/2011
 Fund Manager, 23 Years Old, Is Arrested on Fraud Charges, Seth Schiesel, New York Times, 10/18/2000
 Reward Offered For Info In 2002 Double Murder, CBS Los Angeles, 2/18/2011
 Police seek help solving 2002 LA double killing, Thomas Watkins, Washington, Times, 2/18/2011
 A Camera-Ready Life, Gina Piccalo and Louise Roug, Los Angeles Times, 12/12/2001
 Hedge Fund Has-Beens Amanda Cantrell, CNN/Money, 7/11/2005
 City Council offers $75,000 reward in Studio City murder case, C.J. Lin, Daily News Los Angeles, 2/18/2011
 Carpet Burns and a Bite Mark TV Guide
 Police Revisit 2002 Homicide Case Richard Fausset and Andrew Blankstein, Los Angeles Times, 12/19/2003
 The Playboy After Dark, Sharon Waxman, Washington Post, 10/10/1999

References

External links

1978 births
Living people
Female models from Illinois
People from Joliet, Illinois
Playboy people
Twin models
21st-century American women

Sandy Bentley


The Westfries Museum is a museum of regional history in Hoorn, Netherlands.

It was opened on 10 January 1880 and has been established in a monumental building dating to 1632.  This building originally belonged to the Gecommitteerde Raden van West-Friesland en het Noorderkwartier, as a part of the Staten van Holland en West-Friesland, and later became a court.  Until 1932 part of the building housed the kanton's court and part of its museum.

The museum has an extensive collection of paintings, silver objects, porcelain, historic firearms, objects of the schutterij and VOC objects.  The collection is exhibited in 25 rooms, of which one is a style-room.  In 1953, 15th century cellars were discovered under the building.  These have been restored and are now used as exhibition spaces for archaeological objects from Hoorn and its surroundings.

The museum is supported by the Friends Foundation of the Westfries Museum that was set up on the initiative of the Westfries Society.

On 10 January 2005, the night the museum celebrated its 125th anniversary, four people stole 21 paintings of its paintings, including a piece by Jan van Goyen from his youth, and part of the silver collection, valued in the millions of Euros. Four of the paintings were found back in Ukraine in April 2016.

Stolen from the Westfries Museum

External links

Museums in North Holland
Hoorn
History museums in the Netherlands
Local museums in the Netherlands
Decorative arts museums
1880 establishments in the Netherlands
19th-century architecture in the Netherlands

Westfries Museum


The Lonely Voice (1962) is a study of the short story form, written by Frank O'Connor.

Description
Within the study, O'Connor expounds on some of his own major theories of the short story as well as discusses the work of many influential short story writers. Each chapter focuses on a different author:

Ivan Turgenev
Guy de Maupassant
Anton Chekhov
Rudyard Kipling
James Joyce
Katherine Mansfield
D. H. Lawrence
Ernest Hemingway
A. E. Coppard
Isaac Babel
Mary Lavin

Reception
One of the work's major contributions is that of "the submerged population group" - a term that O'Connor uses to characterise those individuals who, for whatever reasons, are left on the fringes of society. The term was taken up again in the twenty-first century by Amit Chaudhuri to usefully characterise modernist writing in the Indian subcontinent.

The book is seen by many critics as the first lengthy examination of the short story form, and it has been heralded by many writers as an influential work.

References

Works by Frank O'Connor
1962 non-fiction books
Books of literary criticism
Short stories

The Lonely Voice


Peter Hofmann (22 August 1944 – 30 November 2010) was a German tenor who had a successful performance career within the fields of opera, rock, pop, and musical theatre. He first rose to prominence as a heldentenor at the Bayreuth festival's Jahrhundertring (Centenary Ring) in 1976, where he drew critical acclaim for his performance of Siegmund in Richard Wagner's Die Walküre. He was active as one of the world's leading Wagnerian tenors over the next decade, performing roles like Lohengrin, Parsifal, Siegmund and Tristan at major opera houses and festivals internationally.

Hofmann's busy and demanding schedule in combination with an "imperfect vocal technique", led to intermittent vocal problems which became more prominent in the singer's opera performances in the late 1980s. These difficulties led him to completely abandon his opera career in 1989 in favor of pursuing a full-time career in popular music. Hofmann had already spent portions of his opera career performing and recording popular music, and he had already achieved success with tours and recordings of classic rock during the mid to late 1980s. He continued to perform pop and rock songs until his retirement from performance due to health reasons in 1999. He had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1994.

Early life and education
Hofmann was born in Marienbad, German Sudetenland (now modern Mariánské Lázně, Czech Republic), and grew up in Darmstadt. In his youth, before receiving any training in classical music, he was a singer in a rock band. He was a youth decathlon competitor and served seven years in the West German Armed Forces, during which time he began studying singing privately. After being honorably discharged with a financial bonus, he entered the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe where he was trained as an opera singer.

Opera career
Hofmann made his professional opera debut in 1972 as Tamino in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's The Magic Flute at Theater Lübeck. He sang his first Siegmund in Richard Wagner's Die Walküre, a role which he became closely associated with, at the Wuppertal Opera in 1974. It was as Siegmund that Hofmann first drew international acclaim when he performed the role in the historic Jahrhundertring (Centenary Ring) at the Bayreuth Festival in 1976, celebrating the centenary of both the festival and the first performance of the complete cycle, conducted by Pierre Boulez and staged by Patrice Chéreau, recorded and filmed in 1979 and 1980. He was also heard at Bayreuth as the title heroes in Parsifal (both 1976 and 1978) and Lohengrin (1979 and 1982), as Tristan in Tristan und Isolde (1986), and Walther in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1988).

He subsequently appeared in Stuttgart, Paris, Vienna, London, Chicago, and San Francisco. He is best known for singing the heldentenor roles of Wagner, he has performed Siegmund, Lohengrin, Parsifal, Tristan and Loge, notably at the Bayreuth Festival where he first appeared in 1976. He was heard at the Metropolitan Opera from 1980 to 1988, in Lohengrin, Parsifal, Die Meistersinger and Die Walküre.

Light music career
At the same time as singing classic roles in opera, Hofmann was also busy performing and recording popular music. He performed concerts of Elvis Presley songs and other classic rock songs on tour across Europe. He made a number of pop albums which sold well in Europe such as Rock Classics (1982) and Love Me Tender: Peter Hofmann Sings Elvis Presley (1992). In 1987, Hallmark released  Songs for the Holidays, an album featuring Hofmann and his wife Deborah Sasson (née O'Brien, Miss Massachusetts 1971) (de).

By the late 1980s, Hofmann had abandoned opera completely in favour of musical theatre. From 1990 to 1991, he played the title role in The Phantom of the Opera, in the original Hamburg production, making 300 appearances in the show. He also hosted a TV show in Germany.

Personal life and later years
Hofmann was married and divorced twice, the second time to singer Deborah Sasson from 1983 to 1990 (Correction required: Note:
Spouse: Sabine Zimmerer (m. 2007–2010), Deborah Sasson (m. 1983–1990).
His divorces cost him a fortune, and he lived the last years of his life in relative poverty.

Peter Hofmann moved to Bayreuth and spent his time writing his autobiography and supporting research through the Peter Hofmann Parkinson Project. After battling Parkinson's disease for more than a decade, he died of pneumonia in November 2010 at the age of 66.

Recordings
From Bayreuth, Hofmann appeared as Siegmund in the 1980 Die Walküre (with Dame Gwyneth Jones as Brünnhilde) conducted by Pierre Boulez, in Patrice Chéreau's 1976 Ring production (Deutsche Grammophon), and in the title role of the 1982 Lohengrin (opposite Karan Armstrong as Elsa) conducted by Woldemar Nelsson (EuroArts), in Götz Friedrich's production.

In the studio, he made a 1978 recording of Die Zauberflöte under French conductor Alain Lombard with Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Kathleen Battle, then Fidelio (conducted by Sir Georg Solti, 1979), Parsifal (opposite Dunja Vejzovic's Kundry, led by Herbert von Karajan, 1979–80; also opposite Waltraud Meier's Kundry, led by James Levine, live 1985), Orfeo ed Euridice (1982) and Der fliegende Holländer (with José van Dam and Vejzovic, conducted by von Karajan 1981–83). A 1986 performance as Lohengrin at the Metropolitan Opera, conducted by James Levine, was released on Pioneer Classics in 2000. Hofmann is also heard in Leonard Bernstein's "live" recording of Tristan und Isolde (1981).

References

Sources
The Oxford Dictionary of Opera, by John Warrack and Ewan West (1992), 782 pages,

External links
 http://peterhofmannstartenor.wordpress.com
 Peter Hofmann at the Bayreuth Festival

1944 births
2010 deaths
People from Mariánské Lázně
People from Sudetenland
Sudeten German people
German operatic tenors
Heldentenors
Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe alumni
Deaths from Parkinson's disease
Deaths from pneumonia in Germany
20th-century German male musicians
20th-century German musicians
Neurological disease deaths in Germany
Grammy Award winners

Peter Hofmann


The Arnhem Land Region is one of the five regions of the Northern Territory of Australia. It is in the north east corner of the territory and is about 500km from the territory capital Darwin. It has an area of 97,000 km². This area includes Kakadu National Park. About 16,230 people live in Arnhem Land. It was named by Matthew Flinders after the Dutch ship Arnhem, which explored the coast in 1623.

Geography

Arnhem Land goes from Port Roper on the Gulf of Carpentaria around the coast to the East Alligator River where it joins Kakadu National Park. The major towns are Jabiru on the Kakadu National Park border, Maningrida on the Liverpool River mouth, and Nhulunbuy (also known as Gove) in the far north east, on the Gove Peninsula. Gove is the site of large bauxite mine with an alumina refinery. Its administrative centre is the town of Nhulunbuy, the fourth largest town in the Northern Territory.

The climate of Arnhem Land is tropical monsoon with a wet and dry season.  Temperatures do not vary much during the year. It can get as cold as 15 degrees Celsius during nights in the dry season (April to September). In the wet season (October to March) the days can be as hot as 33 degrees Celsius.

The people
Arnhem Land became an Aboriginal Reserve in 1931. It is still one of the largest Aboriginal Reserves in Australia. It is best known for its remoteness, its art, and the strong continuing traditions of its people. North east Arnhem Land is home to the Yolngu people, one of the largest indigenous groups in Australia. They have been able to keep their traditional indigenous culture. The Malays and Macassans are believed to have had contact with the coastal Aboriginal groups and traded with them prior to European settlement of Australia.

The 2006 movie Ten Canoes shows life in Arnhem land with a story that uses old Aboriginal stories. It was co-directed by one of the cast members.  The movie and also the movie about how it was made, The Balano and the Bark Canoes, shows the great struggle the indigenous people have made to keep their culture alive.

Art
The Aboriginal town of Yirrkala, just outside Nhulunbuy, is famous throughout the world. This is because of its bark paintings, and its role in supporting the rights of Indigenous Australians. It is also the place where the Yidaki, or Didgeridoo, came from. The town of Gunbalanya, once called Oenpelli, in Western Arnhem Land is also famous for its bark painting.

Arnhem Land is famous for its Aboriginal rock art. Some of the best art can be found at Ubirr Rock, Injalak Hill, and in the Canon Hill area. Some of these show early visits by Europeans, sometimes in such detail that Martini-Henry rifles can be identified. Other paintings show axes, aircraft and ships. In one rock shelter, hundreds of kilometres from Darwin, there is a painting the wharf at Darwin. It shows buildings and boats, the Europeans with their hats and pipes. Some are shown without hands, which they have in their pockets. There is a painting, near the East Alligator River crossing, which shows a man with a gun and long pigtails down his back. This would be one of the Chinese workers brought to Darwin in the late 19th century. The people also make ritual sand sculptures which do not last.

One Yolngu stone arrangement, at Maccasans Beach near Yirrkala, shows the layout of the Macassan praus (ships) used for Trepang fishing. The Yolngu traded with the people of Makassar on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. This trading was happening 200 years before European settlement.

Related pages
Kakadu National Park
Indigenous Australians

References

Arnhem Land. Its History and Its People. 1954. R. M. & C. H. Berndt. F. W. Cheshire, Melbourne.

Other websites

Arnhem Region
Gove Online Community Website

Geography of the Northern Territory
Indigenous peoples of Australia
Regions of Australia

Arnhem Land


The Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC) is an annual international robotics competition for teams of undergraduate and graduate students. Teams design and build an autonomous ground vehicle capable of completing several difficult challenges. The competition is well suited to senior design "capstone" courses as well as extracurricular design projects.

The competition has taken place each year since 1993. The competition is normally held on the campus of Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, although it has occasionally moved to other venues within the state of Michigan. Approximately 40 teams typically participate in this competition.

Competition Overview
The details of the competition change from year to year. In 2010 the competition included the following four events.

 Design Competition: The design competition includes a written design report, an oral presentation, and an examination of the vehicle.
 Autonomous Challenge: The autonomous challenge is the major event. Qualification for this event is required. A fully autonomous ground vehicle must navigate an outdoor obstacle course. The course consists of a lane painted with white or yellow lines on a grassy field. Obstacles come in a wide variety of shapes and colors including barrels, cones, saw horses, and posts. The vehicles often use a camera to detect the boundary lines and a laser rangefinder to detect obstacles, although a variety of other approaches have been used.
 Navigation Challenge: This event requires the vehicle to travel autonomously from a specified starting point to a sequence of destinations specified by latitude and longitude. Qualification for this event is also required. Various obstacles are placed around the course including a fence with a randomly relocated opening.
 JAUS Challenge: The JAUS challenge is optional. This challenge requires a vehicle to demonstrate compatibility with the JAUS (Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems) standard by receiving and responding to a specified list of JAUS commands from the judges.

The competition is often sponsored by the United States Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) and the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) in addition to other sponsors.

References

3. Theisen, Bernard L., Maslach, Dan., "The Twelfth Annual Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition: Team Approaches to Intelligent Vehicles", Proceedings Vol. 5608, Intelligent Robots and Computer Vision XXII: Algorithms, Techniques, and Active Vision, 25 October 2004.

Robotics competitions
Recurring events established in 1993

Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition


Yonin shōgi, (四人将棋, 'four-person chess'), is a four-person variant of shogi (Japanese chess). It may be played with a dedicated yonin shogi set or with two sets of standard shogi pieces, and is played on a standard sized shogi board.

Rules of the game

Objective

The objective of the game is to capture all of the opponents' kings as an individual or with the option of teaming up with one or two fellow players. Fast matches are common.

Game equipment

Four players play on a standard 9×9 shogi board, which is commonly colored black in dedicated yonin shogi sets. Each player has a 9-piece subset of the standard shogi pieces:

 1 king
 1 rook
 2 gold generals
 2 silver generals
 3 pawns

Setup

Each side places his pieces in a triangular arrangement, facing toward the player opposite him, as shown below.

 In the rank nearest the player,
 The king is placed in the center file;
 The two gold generals are placed on either side of the king;
 The two silver generals are placed next to the gold generals.
The four outside files are left empty.

 In the second rank,
 The rook is placed in the same file as the king;
 A pawn is placed on either side of the rook, in front of the gold generals.
 In the third rank, a pawn is placed in the same file as the king and rook.

Note: some common sets feature a black board with white pieces.

Game play
The order of play may be decided by flipping four pawns and counting the number that land promoted-side up. Turns proceed clockwise from the first player.

Movement and capture are identical to standard shogi, except for check and checkmate. Each player has a full three-rank promotion zone as in standard shogi. Repetition, perpetual check, and illegal moves are also dealt with as in standard shogi.

Check and mate
Yonin shogi departs from standard shogi in its rules for check and checkmate, due to the complications of having four players. In yonin shogi, it is checkmate rather than forcing resignation that ends a player's game. These are not equivalent as they are in standard shogi: In yonin shogi a third player might capture the mating piece before the defeated player has a chance to resign; this is avoided by ending a player's game immediately upon checkmate.

In team play, check and checkmate do not count against the other member of one's team. They are simply ignored.

One player may inadvertently place a second player in check due to the movement of a third player's piece. This is a special form of discovered check unique to multiplayer chess variants. Similarly, if one player places a second player in check, a move of a third player may result in checkmate for the second player without the third player attacking directly. In yonin shogi, it is the player who makes the move that results in checkmate that gets credit for the checkmate, not the player who makes the initial check.

Once a king is in check, the threatened player immediately takes the next turn in defense and play continues clockwise from there. If two or three kings are placed in check simultaneously, the first player in the clockwise direction to defend takes the next turn.

Game end
When a player is mated, all remaining pieces except the king are left on the board and placed under the control of the mating player. Their original direction of movement is maintained. Any pieces held in hand are given to the mating player, but can only be dropped in the original direction of the mating player. The defeated king is turned upside-down and left as an obstacle for the remaining players. It cannot be captured or removed from the board.

In some descriptions of the game, the winner is the first player to checkmate twice, or to checkmate a player who has already checkmated another. In others, the winner is the last player standing. In the latter case, the first player to be checkmated is ranked fourth, the next is ranked third, and the player losing at the end is ranked second.

Because of the dead kings left as obstacles, it is possible for a player to be unable to make a legal move. This also counts as a loss.

It is possible to check or checkmate two or three players with a single move.

A bare king may remain on the board in opposition to the other players in an effort to increase its ranking.  In a timed game, a bare king can move faster than its opponent, therefore it may attempt to win the game by forcing its opponent to run out of time. Note that some league tournaments may disallow this.

Game notation

Yonin game notation is the same as that of shogi, except that there are four columns instead of two.

History

This version of Yonin shogi was devised in 1993 by Ota Mitsuyasu, former mayor of Hirata (present day Izumo) in Shimane Prefecture. It is a recognized variant and plastic play sets are available for as little as ¥300 (≈US$2.50).  Yonin shogi sets were sold at the stand of the shogi hall. Some elementary schools even hold tournaments.

It is likely that four-person shogi has been played for many decades with rules made up as players went along. A fully complete and playable set of rules first appeared in a weekly children's magazine in February 1991. The primary differences between this and the current rules are in the pieces used (nearly a complete standard shogi set for each player) and the initial setup, which is also closer to standard shogi. In the diagram below, pieces are color-coded as to the player to whom they belong.

Yonin shogi products
Besides game sets, there are a few other products available:
4 Nin Shōgi, a video game for the Super Famicom
The book Yonin Shogi Introduction to Which Rule and Strategy Et Cetera of Yonin Shogi Have Been Recorded.

See also
Sannin shogi (three-person shogi)
Shogi variant
Whale shogi
Hasami shogi
Annan shogi
Unashogi
Ko shogi

External links
Chess Variants - Yonin Shogi

Shogi variants
Board games introduced in 1993

Yonin shogi


Grand Vizier, Sadr-ı Azam (Sadrazam) or Serdar-ı Ekrem (in Ottoman Turkish "صدر اعظم" or "وزیر اعظم"), was the most important minister of the Sultan. The Grand Vizier had absolute power of attorney and could only be removed by the Sultan. He held the imperial seal and he could gather all other viziers to attend meetings regarding state affairs. The title is derived originally from the Persian word "Vizier" (وزير). The title of Grand Vizier corresponds to that of a prime minister.

Related pages
List of Ottoman Grand Viziers

History of Turkey
Government of Turkey
Government occupations

Grand vizier


Rienzi is an opera by Richard Wagner.  Its full title is Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen (Rienzi, the Last of the Tribunes).  It is one of the earliest operas Wagner wrote.  There are five acts.  Wagner wrote the libretto himself, using the story from a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton.  It was composed between 1838 and 1840  It was first performed at the Hofoper, Dresden on 20 October 1842.  It was the first time Wagner had a success as an opera composer.

Story
The story of the opera is set in Rome and is based on the life of Cola di Rienzi (1313–1354), a medieval Italian populist figure who manages to trick the nobles and their followers.  He helps the people to get power.  At first he is very popular, but then he has to use force against the nobles, and the Church turns against him.  In the end the ordinary people burn the Capitol where Rienzi and his friends are sheltering.

Operas by Richard Wagner
1840s operas

Rienzi


Horseshoe Bay is a well-known beach in Bermuda. As a tourist spot, it lies on the main island's south (Atlantic Ocean) coast, in the parish of Southampton. It is one of two beaches of the same name in Bermuda, with the other located at Tucker's Island: since the 1940s part of a peninsula that housed the former US Naval Operating Base, and is now called Morgan's Point.

The sand of Horseshoe Bay's beach is very fine and displays a white colour. The beach is equipped with one lifeguard station which is manned during the summer between 10 AM and 6 PM. There is also a café where lunch can be purchased during the summer months. The same building also provides toilet facilities, showers and a foot-washing area for removing sand before departing. A shuttle bus is available from 11 am to 6 pm to transport beach-goers between the beach and the nearest bus stop, carrying passengers down the hill for $10 each, and up for $20. The Government provides a special bus service for tourists at the top of the hill that leaves about every 15 minutes. This service is operates from about 12 to 6 pm. If you miss the last special bus the regular buses run about every 45 minutes until about 10 pm.

A beach volleyball competition takes place once a week in the summer months, and is a regular activity for both tourists and locals alike.  Horseshoe Bay is also the usual location for a New Years party organised by those members of the significant expat population who have opted not to go overseas for the season. The Bermuda Good Friday KiteFest is a great family event that takes place annually on Good Friday at Horseshoe Bay. The largest annual event in Bermuda also takes place at Horseshoe Bay on Emancipation Day (usually the last Wednesday night & Thursday in July or the first Wednesday night & Thursday in August) called The Bermuda Beachfest Emancipation Celebration. Beachfest (as it is known) is an action packed 2 day event full of live entertainment, beach sports, cultural traditions, activities and more, and attracts the largest cross-section of locals and visitors on the island.

Part of an army base, Warwick Camp, the area is still used for training by the Bermuda Regiment, especially in the winter months. The headland separating the western end from East Whale Bay holds the remains of fortifications that housed a coastal artillery battery, with another on the high ground behind. Horseshoe Bay itself lies in the danger area behind the butts of the  rifle range of , and the western end of the beach is littered with bullets fired from Enfield, Snider–Enfield, Martini–Henry, Lee–Metford, and Lee–Enfield rifles and other weapons of similar calibres. However, this range is no longer used due to the limited range of the 5.56mm NATO rifle cartridge, which has been used for the last three decades.

References

External links
 TripAdvisor

Bays of Bermuda
Beaches of Bermuda
Southampton Parish, Bermuda

Horseshoe Bay, Bermuda


The Frederick C. Bogk House is Frank Lloyd Wright's only single-family residential project in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Bogk was an alderman and secretary-treasurer of the Ricketson Paint Works. This house embodies Wright's prairie style elements into a solid-looking structure that appears impregnable.

History

In the mid-1910s, developer Arthur Richards was promoting Wright's new American System-Built Homes, which were standardized home designs for moderate income housing. During this time, Wright had designed several projects for associates of Richards, but only two were built: the Munkwitz Apartments (Milwaukee, 1916), and this residence for Frederick C. Bogk. By this time, Wright's popularity was in decline, mostly due to personal troubles. The house was designed in 1916, shortly after the murder of his mistress, Mamah Borthwick, and destruction of the residential wing at his home, Taliesin, and during the same period as his Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.

The house was built in 1917 at a cost of $15,000. The current owners, Robert and Barbara Elsner, purchased the home in 1955.

Design

The façade of the Bogk house, with its buff brick columns framing leaded art glass windows, capped by decorative cast concrete under broad eaves and a low pitched hip roof suggests the influence of the Imperial Hotel in Japan, which was under construction at the time this house was built. The sophisticated balance of horizontal and vertical lines further reflects the strong Japanese influence.

The understated entrance is located at the side of the house, opening onto the driveway. The first-floor interior is a fluid succession of rooms sprawling under a low-lying ceiling. The living room extends across the front of the house, with a dining room at the right rear of the living room, up a few steps. A bedroom above the attached garage at the rear was for the maid; this extends out of the rectangular plan of the main house. There are four bedrooms and a sitting room upstairs.

Tall, narrow leaded glass windows both frame the regular windows, and appear by themselves as design elements. Similar glass panes are embedded in interior brick walls, with lights behind. There is a tiled goldfish pond against one wall of the living room, and a plaque above it with an image of cranes. Built-in light fixtures and other decorative elements are common. There is some built-in furniture, such as desks and bookshelves. The other furniture is not original to the house, but is Wright's design. The current carpeting is a reproduction of Wright's original design.

See also
 List of Frank Lloyd Wright works

References

 Storrer, William Allin. The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion. University Of Chicago Press, 2006,  (S.196)

External links
WRIGHT AND LIKE: MILWAUKEE TOUR
Architecture Travel: Unpronounceable, Unforgettable Bogk

 UWM Libraries Digital Collections : Item Viewer
Wright in Wisconsin
Photos on Arcaid
Bogk House on LoC

Frank Lloyd Wright buildings
Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Wisconsin
Houses in Milwaukee
National Register of Historic Places in Milwaukee
Prairie School architecture in Wisconsin
Houses completed in 1917

Frederick C. Bogk House


Artful (1902–1927) was an American Thoroughbred racehorse.

Background
Artful was born at the Westbury Stable at Old Westbury on Long Island into a prominent racing family begun in 1898 by William Collins Whitney.  The Whitney family remain to this day a leading name in the sport of Thoroughbred horse racing.

Artful raced in the days when horses could be "declared" to win. This meant that if a stable entered more than one of its horses, it would announce beforehand which horse they expected to win the event.

Racing career
In both of Artful's first two starts at age two at Saratoga Race Course (a track that William Collins Whitney had a hand in rejuvenating), her stablemate was declared to win against her.  In the first of these races in August 1904 that horse was her stablemate Dreamer.  In order to achieve this result, Artful had to be held back. Frank Brunnell of The Daily Racing Form hailed her as "a genuine crackerjack" who should have won both races with ease. On both occasions it was written that she was: "…hard held and close up throughout, finished as easily and probably could have won the race."  Her second race was won by Princess Rupert.

These two "declared" races would be the only races Artful ever lost.

In her third "undeclared" race, the Futurity Stakes, Artful handed Sysonby his only defeat by five lengths. Artful's victory was also over a field of exceptional strength (and said at the time to be the finest juvenile field ever assembled): the Canadian champion Oiseau, the fillies and future classic winners Tanya and Agile, and the unbeaten filly Tradition.  Artful raced four days later in the winning the Great Filly Stakes. She then took the White Plains Handicap under 130 pounds, giving away 29 pounds to a colt named Dandelion, and setting a new track record of 1:08 for six furlongs.  That record stood for fifty years, only broken on a straight course and under a much lighter burden of 115 pounds.

William Whitney died in Artful's two-year-old season and his son, Harry Payne Whitney, succeeded him.

In her three-year-old season, Artful won two sprints to prepare for the Brighton Handicap which she took "pulling up," (slowing down).  She defeated, Beldame as well as Delhi, the 1904 winner of the Belmont Stakes.  Her last win was a quarter of a mile race.

Stud record
As a broodmare, Artful did not reproduce herself.  Her few foals were winners but not stakes winners.  She died in 1927 at the age of twenty five.

References

 "The History of Thoroughbred Racing in America" by William H.P. Roberton, Bonanza Books, New York, 1964
 "Champions, The Lives, Times, and Past Performances of America's Greatest Thoroughbreds, Revised Edition, Champions from 1893-2004," the Daily Racing Form.

External links
 Artful's pedigree
 Artful in the Hall of Fame

1902 racehorse births
1927 racehorse deaths
Racehorses trained in the United States
American Champion racehorses
Racehorses bred in New York (state)
United States Thoroughbred Racing Hall of Fame inductees
Thoroughbred family 4-r
Byerley Turk sire line

Artful


The height of this pass is 3738 m above sea level, it connects Gupis, Gilgit with Chitral. The top is flat, a plateau and can be crossed between late April and early November. The grade is very gradual, and the area is crossed by small streams of trout. Grazing in summer is plentiful.

Every year there is a Polo match played on Shandur Top between a team from Chitral and a team from Gilgit.

Shandur Top is one of the four major mountain passes to enter Chitral. The others are Dorah Pass from Badakshan in Afghanistan, Lowari Pass from Dir, and Broghol Pass from the Wakhan Corridor in Afghanistan.

The people who live on both sides of Shandur Top speak the Khowar language.

Mountain passes of Pakistan

Shandur Pass


Ankylosaurs were herbivorous armoured dinosaurs in the order Ornithischia. Their armour was made of scutes (bony scales). They were quadrupeds with short and strong legs. Fossils of Ankylosaurs have been found on every continent. They were of two types:

 Ankylosauria
Ankylosauridae: armoured from their head to their club-ended tail.
Nodosauridae: no tail club but spikes and bony bumps on body.

They first appeared in the Middle Jurassic, and lived until the end of the Cretaceous period.

Size
When adult, they were large: Edmontonia was bulky, broad and tank-like. Its length when adult was about 6.6 m (22 ft). Both main Edmontonia species, E. longiceps and E. rugosidens weighed about three tonnes.

Diet and feeding
Ankylosaurs were low to the ground. The large hyoid bones left in skeletons shows they had long, flexible tongues. They also had a large, side secondary palate. This means that they could breathe while chewing.

Their huge gut suggests they fermented their food, using symbiotic bacteria and gut flora. Their diet was mainly ferns and cycads, which were hugely widespread, especially in the Lower Jurassic. The tropical climate supported plant growth, as it does today. Ankylosaurs fed on vegetation at or below the height of a meter.

An unresolved question is whether they could feed higher than their usual mouth level, by raising the front of their body somewhat. This possibility which would give them access to many tree ferns and cycads which would otherwise be out of reach. Given the unevenness of terrain, there might be places they could stand on higher ground, and eat plants normally out of reach.

The Ankylosaur "message"
Ankylosaurs got some protection, not just from their armour, but from their being a miserable reward from the carnivore's point of view. They were signalling something like "I'm going to be tough to kill and poor to eat".

Distribution
Most ankylosaurs have been found in Laurasia. The first definitive ankylosaur to be recognized from Gondwana was discovered in Australia in 1964 and later named in 1980 as Minmi paravertebra. Ankylosaurs would be expected to live in heavily wooded areas.

References

Ankylosauria


Memleben Abbey () was a Benedictine monastery in Memleben on the Unstrut river, today part of the Kaiserpfalz municipality in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. The convent, now ruined, was established by Emperor Otto II and his consort Theophanu about 979.

History

The settlement of Mimilebo was already mentioned in an urbarium register of Hersfeld Abbey under the rule of Archbishop Lullus of Mainz (died 786). A Hersfeld tithe register, compiled between 881 and 899, again documents the locality of Mimileba in the Saxon shire (Gau) of Friesenfeld, west of the Hassegau.

Royal palace
Memleben acquired considerable importance under the Saxon dukes of the Ottonian dynasty about 900. Duke Otto the Illustrious (d. 912) served as Hersfeld abbot, his son Henry the Fowler married Hatheburg of Merseburg, a daughter of Count Erwin of Merseburg and heiress of large estates in Hassegau und Friesenfeld. Her brother-in-law, Count Thietmar of Merseburg was one of Henry's tutors. In 909 the couple separated and Hatheburg again took the veil, nevertheless, Henry retained her Eastphalian estates. He spent much time in this area; when he succeeded Conrad I as King of East Francia in 919, he had a royal villa in Memleben. Later greatly enlarged, this Royal Palace (villa regia or Königspfalz) became his favourite residence next only to Quedlinburg.

In 935, while hunting near the royal palace of Bodfeld in the Harz mountains, King Henry seriously fell ill (presumably from a stroke). According to the reports by Bishop Liutprand of Cremona, he assembled the East Frankish princes in Erfurt the next year, to arrange the succession of his son Otto I, and afterwards retired to the castellum of Memleben, where he died after another stroke on 2 July 936. His mortal remains were transferred to the Quedlinburg abbey church.

Otto I, like his father, often stayed in Memleben and issued a number of documents from here. However, no festive ceremonies or diets are documented and parts of the Memleben estates were granted to the newly established Bishops of Zeitz. Crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 962, Otto apparently planned to celebrate the feast of Pentecost at Memleben in 973. The sixty-year-old may have felt his end drawing near when he arrived at his father's place of death. According to the Saxon chronicles by Widukind of Corvey and Thietmar of Merseburg, he died here on 7 May 973 and was buried in Magdeburg Cathedral alongside his first wife Eadgyth. Legend has it, that although his body was buried in Magdeburg, his heart was buried in Memleben.

Imperial abbey

Otto's son and successor, Emperor Otto II, also issued several documents from Memleben. In his father's memory, and perhaps as an intended site of dynastic memorial, his son and successor Otto II with his consort Theophanu founded about 979 a Benedictine monastery near his Kaiserpfalz, which within a short time had become one of the richest and most influential of the Imperial abbeys.

Otto II endowed Memleben with large estates and privileges in present-day Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt and Hesse, several of them formerly held by Hersfeld Abbey, and also tithe privileges in the Friesenfeld and Hassegau counties. The abbey also received Hevelli lands in the Northern March (present-day Brandenburg), which however were lost in the Great Slav Rising of 983, and further territories in the Saxon Eastern March. After the early death of Otto II, his son, Otto III, stayed at the abbey several times. He granted market, mint and customs rights in the Memleben territory in 994 and donated the Thuringian Wiehe estates to the abbey four years later. He even had plans to make it the centre of a projected See of Thuringia, but died aged 22 in Italy before he was able to act on his intention.

In 1015 the golden age of Memleben Abbey ended. On his accession in 1002, Henry II, the successor of Otto III, initially had confirmed to Abbot Reinhold of Memleben the privileges and possessions of his predecessors, on par with the Imperial abbeys of Fulda, Corvey and Reichenau. However, thirteen years later, he substantially disempowered and dispossessed the Memleben community in favour of Hersfeld Abbey, to whom he subordinated it, in return for estates for his pet project, the newly created Bishopric of Bamberg. The decline of Memleben Abbey, and its Ottonian memoria, was thus ensured.

The Salian emperor Conrad II was the last documented German monarch who stayed at Memleben in 1033. The Memleben convent existed until in 1525 the abbey was plundered during the German Peasants' War and after a steadily worsening decline in the wake of the Protestant Reformation it was finally dissolved in 1548. The abbey's estates were taken over by the Electors of Saxony in 1551 and given to the school at Pforta, which had just been re-founded, and which retained possession of them until the end of World War II.

Memleben today

Since the roof of the former abbey church was struck by lightning and destroyed in 1722, several attempts were made later to demolish the rest of the building. Nevertheless, the remaining ruins are still of interest, particularly the Late Romanesque crypt. Of the first monumental church building erected in the 10th century, some walls and foundations are preserved, particularly the southwestern transept and crossing piers, as well as the southern side of the nave.

The former monastic buildings were given during the East German period after World War II to an agricultural collective, who made considerable alterations to them. They now house a museum with a permanent exhibition relating to the royal and monastic history of the abbey and the town, directly perceptible also in an extended monastery garden and a medieval scriptorium. Memleben is a stop on the scenic Romanesque Road. Since 2011, the premises are temporarily attended by Benedictine monks from Münsterschwarzach Abbey.

Notes

References
 Andert, Reinhold, 1995: Von Ritteburg nach Memleben in Der Thüringer Königshort. Querfurt: Dingsda-Verlag.
 Größler, Hermann, nd: Führer durch das Unstruttal von Artern nach Naumburg, reprinted by Dingsda-Verlag, Querfurt, 1995.
 Kühnlenz, Fritz, 1992: Städte und Burgen an der Unstrut, 1st edition.  Greifenverlag.  (also special edition, 1999, Verlagshaus Thüringen, )
 Wittmann, Helge, 2001: Memleben: Königspfalz — Reichskloster — Probstei. Imhof Petersberg.

External links

 Kloster Memleben  - official site

 Memleben

979 establishments
970s establishments in the Holy Roman Empire
Benedictine monasteries in Germany
Monasteries in Saxony-Anhalt
Christian monasteries established in the 10th century
Buildings and structures in Burgenlandkreis
Ruins in Germany
Museums in Saxony-Anhalt
Religious museums in Germany
Ruined abbeys and monasteries
10th-century establishments in Germany
Imperial palaces of the Holy Roman Empire
Otto III, Holy Roman Emperor
Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor
Theophanu
Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor

Memleben Abbey


Anna of Cilli or Anne of Celje (1386 – 21 May 1416) was Queen of Poland (1402–1416). She was the second wife of Jogaila (Władysław II Jagiełło), King of Poland and Supreme Duke of Lithuania (reigned 1387–1434). Their marriage was politically motivated to strengthen Jogaila's ties with the Piast dynasty and his claims to the Polish throne. Their marriage was rather distant and during fourteen years Anna bore only one daughter, Hedwig Jagiellon, who died without issue.

Early life
Anna was the only child of William (1361–1392), Count of Celje, and his wife Anna of Poland (1366–1425), the youngest surviving daughter of the late king Casimir III of Poland. It is likely that Anna was born in Celje Castle (in the Duchy of Styria, now in Slovenia), which was ruled by her father William and his cousin Herman II. William died when Anna was around ten years of age. Two years later, her mother married Ulrich, Duke of Teck, and left Anna in care of Herman II and his wife Anna of Schaunberg in Celje. It is very likely that the girl was illiterate and spoke no Polish.

Marriage
Jogaila's first wife and reigning Queen Jadwiga of Poland, Anna's second cousin, died in July 1399 after childbirth complications. Jogaila, who hailed from Lithuania, was left a ruler of a foreign country with no heir. Therefore, he sought a wife from Piast heirs with claims to the Kingdom of Poland to strengthen his claims to Poland and legitimize his rule. In 1401, Jogaila dispatched envoys to Celje to ask Herman II for the hand of Anna. Herman was related to the late queen Jadwiga through his mother's side: his mother Catherine was the sister of Jadwiga's mother Elizabeth of Bosnia, Queen of Hungary (according to some accounts, they were cousins). The House of Celje was thus related to the Polish court on two sides, and the proposed marriage would further strengthen the alliance, while bringing the House of Celje closer to the highest levels of European nobility.

On 16 July 1401 Anna arrived to Kraków where she was met by Jogaila at the city gates. However, Jogaila took a strong dislike to his intended bride. According to Jan Długosz, Jogaila was furious with the envoys who brought Anna to Poland for several years. The wedding was postponed citing the need for Anna to learn Polish. Anna lived in a monastery while Jogaila traveled in eastern territories of his kingdom. He returned only in January 1402. The wedding ceremony took place on 29 January 1402 in Wawel Cathedral. For unknown reasons, Anna's coronation as Queen of Poland was postponed for a year until 25 February 1403.

Queen
The marriage was rather distant. There was an approximately thirty-year age gap between Anna and Jogaila. It was acknowledged that Anna was not a very attractive woman. The King traveled frequently leaving Anna alone in the Wawel Castle. Anna was not very ambitious or politically active. She was known as a religious woman and obedient wife.

In fall 1407, five years after the marriage, Anna was pregnant. Klemens Moskarzewski, Castellan of Wiślica, accused the queen of marital infidelity with Jakub Kobylański and Mikołaj Chrząstowski. Jogaila believed the rumors and imprisoned Jakub. During a congress in Niepołomice, Polish nobles defended the queen and the accusations were dismissed. A year later, Jogaila accused Anna of an affair with Jędrzej Tęczyński, but that case did not reach a public hearing. In 1411, Mikołaj Kurowski, Archbishop of Gniezno, accused Anna again, but he died before the rumors could be investigated.

On 8 April 1408 Anna gave birth to a daughter, Hedwig. It was not a male heir desired by Jogaila or Polish nobles, but it still strengthened Anna's position and she became a little more visible in politics. In February 1410, during the Polish–Lithuanian–Teutonic War, Anna was present when Jogaila met with Herman II. After the Battle of Grunwald, Jogaila wrote two letters – one to Anna and another to Bishop Wojciech Jastrzębiec. In February 1412, Anna and Jogaila hosted the wedding of Ernest, Duke of Austria, and Cymburgis of Masovia. After the wedding, Anna and Jogaila traveled to Hungary for negotiations between Jogaila and Sigismund von Luxembourg. Anna met with Barbara of Cilli, Sigismund's wife and daughter of Herman II – the girls grew up together. However, Anna did not participate in the negotiations in Buda between April and August 1412.

In early 1413, Anna's five-year-old daughter Hedwig was officially proclaimed heir presumptive to the Polish throne during a congress in Jedlnia. It was an important political victory for Anna. Jogaila, Anna, and Hedwig traveled to Lithuania to introduce the princess to the Lithuanian nobility. There the Union of Horodło was signed in October 1413. Anna also visited Samogitia to observe its Christianization; later she sent a report to the Council of Constance. In early 1415, Anna traveled with Jogaila and in May met with Alexander I of Moldavia in Sniatyn. It was her last known political action.

Death

At the end of 1415, Jogaila traveled to Lithuania while Anna stayed in Kraków, perhaps already ill. In February 1416, a special envoy was dispatched to inform Jogaila that the queen was seriously ill. Despite the news, Jogaila did not hurry back to Kraków. He reached the capital city only in May and Anna died after a few days. She was buried in Wawel Cathedral.

References
Notes

References

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1381 births
1416 deaths
Queens consort of Poland
Countesses of Celje
Burials at Wawel Cathedral
14th-century Polish women
14th-century Polish people
15th-century Polish women
15th-century Polish people

Anna of Cilli