56 Group Wales

The 56 Group Wales () is an artists' organisation founded in Wales in 1956, with the aim of promoting Welsh Modernist art and artists. The name was originally simply the 56 Group: "Wales" was added in 1967, in response to a feeling that the organisation's "Welsh origins ought to be re-affirmed". The Welsh-language version of the name was first used on publicity in 1976.
Formation.
The post-war art establishment in Wales was still very conservative and moves had been afoot since the late 1930s to create a modern art group. In March 1956, following a failed attempt to become a "South Wales Academy of Art", a "rebellion" took place within the ranks of the "South Wales Group" and the "56 Group" was established. Artists Eric Malthouse, David Tinker and Michael Edmonds were the leading instigators. They circulated a statement of purpose and aims and an invitation to join the group to ten leading Welsh artists.
Of those invited to join, nine accepted: Trevor Bates, Hubert Dalwood, George Fairley, Arthur Giardelli, Robert Hunter, Heinz Koppel, Will Roberts, John Wright and Ernest Zobole. Brenda Chamberlain, the only female artist invited, declined.
Although all twelve of the founder-members worked in a broadly modernist and internationalist idiom, they did not share a recognisably common style or ideology. Their average age was 36; and ten worked as art lecturers (Roberts and Edmonds did not). Only two, Roberts and Zobole, had been born in Wales: Fairley was born in Scotland, Koppel in Germany and the others in England.
Activities.
The 56 Group has always been essentially an exhibiting association of artists who retain their own independence and individuality. The group's first exhibition was held at Worcester Museum and Art Gallery in June 1957, and versions of the same exhibition were held later the same year at the National Museum of Wales and Tenby Civic Centre. It subsequently exhibited widely in both Wales and England. Its first continental exhibition was held in Amsterdam in 1967, and later exhibitions went to Nantes in 1974–5, Bologna in 1983, Czechoslovakia in 1986–7 and again in 1991, and Libramont, Belgium, in 1994. An exhibition of modern Welsh art held at the Jefferson Place Gallery, Washington, D.C. in 1965, although not formally associated with the Group, included work by several of its members. By 2012, the Group's 56th anniversary year, it could claim to have had a total of 88 full members (plus a number of guest, associate and honorary members); and to have held 225 exhibition showings.
Painter, sculptor and teacher Arthur Giardelli was the chair of the Group from 1961 to 1998. Some of its success – exhibitions and tours outside Wales – have been attributed to his language skills and European outlook.
In 2012, marking the 56th anniversary of the group's formation, a touring exhibition visited galleries around Wales. Called "The 56 Group Wales: The Founders", it includes artworks of the twelve original founders, as well as work from current members. For the previous ten years, businessman Barrie Maskell had spent time tracking down and purchasing work made by each of the twelve original members. This included a visit to one of the surviving founders, John Wright, who was living in Spain. Fifty-six of Maskell's paintings were chosen for the exhibition. The exhibition was shown at venues in Pontypridd, Cardiff and MOMA Wales in Machynlleth. In the same year, a history of the Group's first 56 years by David Moore was published.
In January 2013 a touring exhibition of the group's work, "56:56", opened at Newport Art Gallery.
Criticism.
The Group's activities have not always been eulogised. Will Roberts, one of the founder members, who was afterwards (in 1964) asked to withdraw from exhibitions because his work was seen as insufficiently radical, later dismissed the Group as having been "set up by art school teachers who wanted to sell their work". When Rollo Charles, keeper of art at the National Museum of Wales, commented in 1976 that the Group "is now generally regarded as the official avant garde of Welsh art", critic Bryn Richards responded "[t]his must seem to those who founded the group, with such hope, as a veritable kiss of death". Renowned Welsh artist Kyffin Williams was reported in 1981 to have had a strong antipathy for what he described as a group of "predominantly abstract painters or English carpetbaggers, ... who came down to Wales because they could not make it in the metropolis. The 56 Group has taken over Welsh art, and he [Williams] is out of favour in his homeland as a result."
Notable members.
Wikipedia articles are available on the following members and ex-members:


Bessarabia Governorate

Bessarabia Governorate or Bessarabia Oblast was a governorate of the Russian Empire from 1812–1871. Initially an oblast and following 1871 a governorate (), it included the eastern part of the Principality of Moldavia along with the neighboring Ottoman-ruled territories annexed by Russia by the Treaty of Bucharest following the Russo-Turkish War (1806–1812). The Governorate was disbanded in 1917, with the establishment of Sfatul Țării, a national assembly which proclaimed the Moldavian Democratic Republic in December 1917. The latter united with Romania in April 1918.
Around 65% of the territory of the former governorate now belongs to the Republic of Moldova (and the breakaway region of Transnistria), and around 35% to Ukraine.
History.
Annexation.
As the Russian Empire noticed the weakening of the Ottoman Empire, it occupied the eastern half of the autonomous Principality of Moldavia, between the Prut and Dniester rivers. This was followed by six years of warfare, which were concluded by the Treaty of Bucharest (1812), by which the Ottoman Empire acknowledged the Russian annexation of the province.
Before the Russian annexation, the territory had no particular name, Moldavia being traditionally divided into "Ţara de Sus" (the Upper Lands, the mountainous area of the Carpathians) and "Ţara de Jos" (the Lower Lands, the plains which included this territory). Bessarabia was the southern part of this territory (now known as Budjak); it is believed that the region was named after the Wallachian house of Basarab, which may have ruled it in the 14th century. The Russians used the name "Bessarabia" for the whole region rather than the southern area.
Bessarabia had an area of 45,630 km², more than the rest of Moldavia and a population between 240,000 and 360,000, most of them being Romanian-speaking Moldavians. The boyars of Bessarabia protested against the annexation, arguing that the Ottoman Empire had no right to cede a territory that was not theirs in the first place (Moldavia being only a vassal, not an Ottoman province), but this did not prevent the Sultan from signing the treaty in May 1812.
Oblast and gubernya.
After the annexation, the local boyars, led by Gavril Bănulescu-Bodoni, the Metropolitan of Chişinău and Hotin, petitioned for self-rule and the establishment of a civil government based on the Moldavian traditional laws. In 1818, a special autonomous region was created, which had both Romanian and Russian as languages used in the local administration. Bănulescu-Bodoni also obtained permission for opening a seminary and a printing press, with the Bessarabian church being an eparchy of the Russian Orthodox Church.
After the death of Bănulescu-Bodoni in 1821, Bessarabia lacked a strong leader and as the Russians feared nationalism, which triggered the anti-Ottoman 1821 Wallachian Revolution in neighbouring Wallachia, the local authorities began a gradual retraction of many of the freedoms.
Nicholas I of Russia, crowned in 1825, began a campaign of reforms which had the goal of gaining more control over the western provinces. Autonomy of the region was retracted in 1829, with the new constitution written by the governor of New Russia and Bessarabia, Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov. In 1834, Romanian was banned in schools and government facilities, and soon, books, the press, and churches despite 80% of the population being Romanian. Those who fought the changes could be exiled to Siberia. The constitution no longer made the usage of Romanian compulsory for public announcements and in 1854, Russian was made the official language. Also around 1850, Romanian was no longer used in schools and the importation of books from Moldavia and Wallachia was banned.
Integration within the Russian Empire continued with the introduction of the zemstva in 1869. Although this system was meant to increase the participation of the locals in civic affairs, it was run by Russians and other non-Moldavian functionaries brought from across the Empire.
The Moldavian boyars protested against the reforms, which decreased their own powers, but their protests were not well organized and they were mostly ignored. Some Moldavian boyar families were however integrated in the Russian nobility, but most of the nobles of Bessarabia were foreigners: in 1911, there were 468 noble families in Bessarabia, of which only 138 were Moldavian. One of the known Jewish nobles was Count Landsman whose great-grandson, Alexander Zanzer is now leading major Jewish organisations in Europe. In the beginning of the 20th century, the Jewish population made up to 40% of Chisinau.
Romania became independent in 1878, but millions of ethnic Romanians lived outside its borders and as such it had aspirations toward Transylvania, as well as Bessarabia.
Southern Bessarabia returned to Moldavia.
In 1856, under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, Russia was forced to return a significant territory in Southern Bessarabia (organised as the Cahul and Ismail counties, with the Bolgrad later split from the second) to Moldavia, which joined Wallachia in 1859 to form Romania.
In 1877, the Russian Empire and Romania signed a treaty by the terms of which, Romania and Russia were allies against the Ottoman Empire, while Russia recognized Romania's independence and guaranteed its territorial integrity after the war. However, at the end of the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), Russia took southern Bessarabia, Alexander Gorchakov justifying this as a "matter of national honour" for Russia and arguing that the territory was ceded in 1856 to Moldavia, not to Romania and that the Russian guarantee of territorial integrity was directed against Turkish claims.
The Romanian politicians and public were angered by this action: Romanian politician Mihail Kogălniceanu accused Russia of deception and of treating an ally like a conquered province. He even started a memorandum against Russia to try to influence the Western governments, denouncing not only the annexation of Southern Bessarabia, but the 1812 annexation of Bessarabia as well. Despite this, none of the European powers wanted to risk a conflict with Russia.
According to the Treaty of Berlin (1878), Romania gained Dobruja as a compensation for the loss of Southern Bessarabia. Despite being a larger territory, Romanians considered it an unfair exchange and accepted it reluctantly, because there was no other alternative.
Culture.
As a consequence of Russification policy, Bessarabia was the most backward of the western provinces of the Russian Empire. In 1897, literacy was just 15.4% for the whole Bessarabia, with only 6% of ethnically Moldavians being literate, the main reason behind this being that Russian was the only language of instruction. As of 1920, an estimated ten percent of men and one percent of women were able to read and write.
Alexander II's reign brought a policy of establishing schools in every parish: 400 rural schools were founded in the 1860s in Bessarabia, but the Orthodox Church insisted everything be taught in Russian, whereas neither priests (who were teachers in most villages) nor pupils were speaking it. Thus, by the 1880s only 23 schools remained.
As a result, the literature and cultural life stagnated, only a few notable literary figures arising from Bessarabia, among them being Alexandru Hasdeu (1811–1872), Constantin Stamati (1786–1869) and Teodor Vîrnav (1801–1860). In the second half of the 19th century, all links with Romanian literature were cut and no literary currents or schools of criticism developed in Bessarabia. In fact, in 1899, a visitor found no Romanian books in the Chişinău public library.
Kishinev pogroms.
The Kishinev pogrom was an anti-Jewish riot that took place in Kishinev, then the capital of the Bessarabia Governorate in the Russian Empire, on April 19 and 20, 1903. Further rioting erupted in October 1905.<ref name="JEncyclo/"></ref> In the first wave of violence, which was associated with Easter, 49 Jews were killed, large numbers of Jewish women were raped and 1,500 homes were damaged. American Jews began large-scale organized financial help, and assisted in emigration. The incident focused worldwide negative attention on the persecution of Jews in Russia.
Politics.
There was no Moldavian political party or movement in Bessarabia until 1905, when two major groups were founded. The moderates, led by landowner Pavel Dicescu, organized around the "Societatea pentru Cultură Naţională" ("The Society for National Culture"), argued for the usage of Romanian as a language of instruction in schools, but against social reforms. In 1909, they were successful in passing a resolution in the zemstvo of the gubernia related to the usage of Romanian in schools.
The radicals ("national democrats"), mostly students educated at Russian universities and influenced by socialist revolutionaries, wanted a real national awakening, as well as social justice. They founded a newspaper called "Basarabia" (first issue on 24 May 1906) led by Constantin Stere, which called for autonomy of Bessarabia and more rights to protect their language and culture, while making clear that they do not want secession from the Russian Empire.
Their movement had little success because in 1907, the extreme right won in the elections for the second Duma. In March 1907, the newspaper published "Deşteaptă-te, române!" ("Wake up, Romanian!"), a Romanian patriotic song, which made Kharuzin, the governor of Bessarabia, to order the closure of the newspaper only nine months after its first issue. Most of the contributors of the newspaper fled to Iaşi afterwards.
When the February Revolution happened in Petrograd in 1917, the governor of Bessarabia Governorate, Mihail Mihail Voronovici, stepped down on 13 March and passed his legal powers to Constantin Mimi, the President of the Gubernial Zemstvo, which was named "the Comissar of the Provisional Government in Bessarabia", with Vladimir Criste his deputy. Similar procedures took place in all regions of the Empire: the chiefs of the Tsarist administrations passed their legal powers to the chiefs of the County and Governorate Zemstvos, which were then called "County/Governorate Commissars".
Demographics.
According to Bessarabian historian Ștefan Ciobanu, at the beginning of the 19th century the ethnic Romanians (Moldavians) proportion was approximately 95% (1810), not including the territories formerly under direct Turkish administration (Budjak and Khotyn), which also purportedly had a Romanian majority. The Russian rule resulted in important changes in the ethnic structure of Bessarabia, especially due to the Russian policy of immigration from neighbouring provinces and Russification. The immigration was not uniform: in some districts in the northern and southern parts of Bessarabia (for instance Hotin and Akkerman), the immigration resulted in Ukrainians outnumbering Romanians, while the rural areas of the centre were mostly Romanian.
Initially, the purpose of the colonization policy was unrelated to the ethnic makeup, being to increase the population of the rather sparsely populated area, in order to better exploit its resources. It was part of the larger campaign of colonization of Novorossiya, under which Russia appealed to everyone who wanted to work and live under its authority, no matter if they came from the Russian Empire or from elsewhere.
Most of the Moldavians of Bessarabia were free peasants, of which most being landless, leasing their land from landlords and monasteries, while 12% (in 1861) were răzeşi ("yeomen"). The Emancipation reform of 1861 had little effects in Bessarabia, where there were few serfs: just 12,000 most of which being brought from Russia for non-agricultural activities.
The urban population was quite low, amounting just 14.7% in 1912, most of the cities being just local administrative centres and having little industry. Also, few of the urban dwellers were Moldavians, in 1912, 37.2% being Jewish, 24.4% Russian, 15.8% Ukrainian, with just 14.2% Moldavian.
Administrative divisions.
From 1812 to 1818, there were 12 counties, which were then merged into 6, afterwards split into 9 counties. Two of the latter, Cahul County and Ismail County were returned to Moldavia in 1856. There they were known as three counties because a Bolgrad County was split out of Ismail County. When again annexed by the Russian Empire in 1878, these there were lumped together as one Ismail County, thus from 1878 till 1917, there were 8 counties. The original terms for "county" were , .
Church.
Split from the Metropolis of Moldavia, the orthodox church in Bessarabia became an eparchy of the Russian Orthodox Church, and after Bănulescu-Bodoni's death, it became an agent in the state policy of Russification.
All the archbishops after 1821 tried to bring the eparchy in conformity with the regulations of the Russian Orthodox Church and because of that, all the high-ranked clerics were brought from Russia, because they were more familiar with the rules of the Russian church.
Archbishop Irinarh Popov (1844–1858) tried to promote Russian nationalism and loyalty to the tsar and brought clerics from Russia. Archbishop Pavel Lebedev forced Moldavian churches and monasteries to use Russian during the religious service, making knowledge of Russian compulsory for becoming a priest, but despite of his attempts, by the end of his rule (1882), there were still 417 churches which used only Romanian in the liturgy.
Following the 1905 Russian Revolution, the church decided to allow the usage of Romanian by the village priests and the re-establishment of the eparchy printing press, which would publish religious literature and of a newspaper.


Arrondissement of Roermond

The Arrondissement of Roermond was an arrondissement of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands until the Treaty of London in 1839. It was a part of the Province of Limburg, which also included the Hasselt and Maastricht. It was centred on the city of Roermond.
After the Belgian Revolution and the Treaty of London, the arrondissement was split between the Netherlands and Belgium. The Belgian portion formed the rump of the new arrondissement of Maaseik (which also absorbed the canton of Peer from Hasselt).
In the National Congress of Belgium, Roermond was represented by five delegates, including Henri de Brouckère, who would go on to be the Prime Minister of Belgium (1852–55).
An arrondissement of Roermond had also existed as part of the department of Meuse-Inférieure in the French First Empire.


General Confederation of Labour (Italy)

General Confederation of Labour (, CGdL) was an Italian labor union, founded in 1906, under the initiative of socialist militants. Having survived the Fascist dictatorship and the Second World War as an underground organization, the CGL joined the cross-party CGIL labor federation in 1945.
History.
Founding.
The Confederazione Generale del Lavoro was founded 1 October 1906 but its formation goes back to the first Camera del Lavoro (Workers' Hall) begun in Milan in 1891, and to the founding of its largest constituent unions (especially the FIOM national metal workers' union created in 1901). The CGdL's first secretary was the Reformist Socialist Rinaldo Rigola (1906–1918). It affiliated to the International Secretariat of National Trade Union Centres.
Growth and decline.
In the first few years, membership of the federation grew rapidly, reaching 383,770 in 1911. It then fell, but boomed at the end of World War I, and by 1920 had reached a peak, of 2,200,100. Over time, the trades councils became less important, and the national industrial unions became the dominant force; the CGdL itself always lacked authority, with affiliates freely joining and leaving. During the war, it was the only major European trade union federation to oppose its government's participation in the conflict.
After the war, the federation was reluctant to follow the more radical line of the Italian Socialist Party, and this led Rigola to resign in 1918. He was replaced by fellow reformist Ludovico D'Aragona. The unions undertook a major campaign for a maximum eight-hour working day, but this was soon overtaken by the rise of fascism. The CGdL formed an Alliance of Labour with the syndicalist USI and UIL, which called a general strike in 1922, but achieved little.
Membership of the federation began falling, and by 1924 was down to only 200,000. Its leaders proclaimed that it was apolitical, in the hope of avoiding a ban, but after the right to strike was abolished, in 1926, it could do little. Bruno Buozzi became the general secretary in January 1926, but was forced to flee the country later in the year. On 4 January 1927, the federation decided to dissolve itself.
Underground and Liberation.
The decision to disband was opposed by communists, and by left socialists like Buozzi. The communists held a secret trade union congress in Milan in February 1927, also attended by some left-wing socialists. Little activity was possible, and the members largely began working in the official fascist trade unions, in the hope of inspiring resistance.
Buozzi, based in France, also maintained a CGdL in exile, which had little influence in Italy. In 1936, he and the communists announced that they had agreed to co-operate, which had little immediate impact, but paved the way for a resurgence of trade union activity in the later part of World War II.
Postwar.
After its forced suspension, unions were reconstituted under the Pact of Rome (3 June 1944), confederating the socialist, communist and Christian Democrat unions in the CGIL (Italian General Confederation of Labor). The influence of the PCI and Palmiro Togliatti, was strong in the federation, and in 1948 the PSI and Christian Democrat unions left to form the UIL and CISL.
Affiliates.
The following unions were in existence by 1902, and were later involved with the CGdL:


Norman and Medieval London

This article covers the history of London from the Norman conquest of England in 1066 to the late 15th century.
Norman invasion.
The Norman invasion of Britain in 1066 is usually considered to be the beginning of a new era in English history. William, Duke of Normandy, defeated English king Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings. Having conquered Hampshire and Kent, William and his army turned to London. Having failed to cross London bridge at Southwark, William's army marched clockwise around London and waited to the north-west at Berkhamsted. Where, having realised that resistance was pointless, a delegation from London arrived to surrender the city, and recognise William as King. William soon granted a charter for London in 1067 which upheld previous Saxon rights, privileges and laws.
Under William (now known as William the Conqueror) several royal forts were constructed along the riverfront of London (the Tower of London, Baynard's Castle and Montfichet's Castle) to defend against seaborne attacks by Vikings and prevent rebellions. Its growing self-government became firm with election rights granted by King John in 1199 and 1215.
Buildings.
In 1097 William Rufus, the third son of William I of England (William the Conqueror) began the construction of Westminster Hall. The hall was to become the basis of the Palace of Westminster which, throughout the Medieval period, was the prime royal residence. In 1089/90 William had given the royal manor of Bermondsey for the site of Bermondsey Abbey, founded in 1082 by Alwinus Child, a citizen of London. The new abbey thus lay directly across the Thames from the White Tower, then still under construction. In 1123 the Augustinian Priory Church of St Bartholomew-the-Great was founded at West Smithfield in the City of London. Whilst only the chancel of this once large church now survives, as a parish church, the entire nave having been demolished, it is one of the most important remnants of Norman architecture in London.
In 1176 construction began of the most famous incarnation of London Bridge (completed in 1209) which was built on the site of several earlier wooden bridges. This bridge would last for 600 years, and remained the only bridge across the River Thames until 1739.
War and revolt.
London was a centre of England's Jewish population. Violence against Jews took place in 1190, after it was rumoured that the new King had ordered their massacre after they had presented themselves at his coronation.
May 1216 saw the last time that London was truly occupied by a continental armed force, during the First Barons' War. This was when the young Louis VIII of France marched through the streets to St Paul's Cathedral. Throughout the city and in the cathedral he was celebrated as the new ruler.
It was expected that this would free the English from the tyranny of King John. This was only temporarily true. The barons supporting the 29-year-old French prince decided to throw their support back to an English king when John died. Over the next several hundred years, London would shake off the heavy French cultural and linguistic influence which had been there since the times of the Norman conquest. The city, like Dover, would figure heavily into the development of Early Modern English.
In 1264 during the Second Barons' War, Simon de Montfort's rebels occupied London and killed 500 Jews while attempting to seize records of debts.
London's Jewish community was forced to leave England by the expulsion by Edward I in 1290. They left for France, Holland and further afield; their property was seized, and many suffered robbery and murder as they departed.
During the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 led by Wat Tyler, London was invaded. A group of peasants stormed the Tower of London and executed the Lord Chancellor, Archbishop Simon Sudbury, and the Lord Treasurer. The peasants looted the city and set fire to numerous buildings. Tyler was stabbed to death by the Lord Mayor William Walworth in a confrontation at Smithfield, thus ending the revolt.
During the Wars of the Roses there was strong support in London for the Yorkist cause. The Lancastrian Henry VI was forced to leave London for the Midlands in 1456 due to hostile attitudes in the capital. He was later captured and kept for five years in the Tower of London. London was eventually captured by the Yorkist Edward IV in 1471, and Henry murdered. This established the Yorkist claim on the throne and ended the first phase of the Wars of the Roses.
Capital of England.
In the early Middle Ages, England had no fixed capital per se; Kings moved from place to place taking their court with them. The closest thing to a capital was Winchester where the royal treasury and financial records were stored. This changed from about 1200 when these were moved to Westminster. From this point on, Royal government became increasingly centered upon Westminster, which steadily became the de facto capital.
In the Middle Ages, Westminster was a small town up river from the City of London. From the 13th century onwards London grew up in two different parts. Westminster became the Royal capital and centre of government, whereas the City of London became the centre of commerce and trade, a distinction which is still evident to this day. The area between them became entirely urbanised by 1600.
Trade and commerce.
Trade and commerce grew steadily during the Middle Ages, and London grew rapidly as a result. In 1100 London's population was little more than 15,000. By 1300 it had grown to roughly 80,000. Trade in London was organised into various guilds, which effectively controlled the city, and elected the Lord Mayor of London.
Fire and plague.
Medieval London was made up of narrow and twisting streets, and most of the buildings were made from combustible materials such as wood and straw, which made fire a constant threat. Sanitation in London was poor. London lost at least half of its population during the Black Death in the mid-14th century. Between 1348 and the Great Plague of 1666 there were sixteen outbreaks of plague in the city. In 1666, the Great Fire gutted much of London within the city wall.


Naissus


Suessetani

The Suessetani were a pre-Roman people of the Iberian Peninsula that dwelt mainly in the plains area of the Alba (Arba) river basin (a northern tributary of the Ebro river), in today's Cinco Villas, Aragon, Zaragoza Province (westernmost Aragon region) and Bardenas Reales area (southernmost Navarra region), west of the "Gallicus" river (today's Gállego river), east of the low course of the Aragon river and north of the Iberus (Ebro) river, in the valley plains of this same river. Their location, in relation to other tribes, was south of the Iacetani (Aquitanian tribe), west of the Vescetani or Oscenses (Iberian tribe) north of the Lusones and Pellendones (Celtiberian tribes), also north of the Sedetani (Iberian tribe), and southeast of the Vascones (Aquitanian tribe or people).
Corbio was the capital of the Suessetani and an important fortified city, yet unlocated (maybe between Sangüesa and Sos del Rey Católico).
Ethnic and linguistic affiliation.
There is yet no definitive conclusion about their ethnic affiliation. They could have been an Iberian or an Aquitanian tribe, but because of their ethnic name, and place and river names (toponyms and hydronyms), the indo-European, pre-Celtic indo-European and Celtic affiliation possibility is more likely. They may have been a Celtic tribe (Belgic), related to the Suessiones that dwelt in Gallia Belgica, northern Gallia (Gaul) in today's Soissons area. Suessiones tribe, that dwelt in the Marne river territory, had a city called Corbio (today's Corbeil), like the Suessetani. So there is an association between the root words "suess"- and "corb"- in these two tribes (Corbeil comes from the galo-Celtic "Corbio ialo" – "Corbius field").
It is not known when did they arrived in the region that they dwelt but some estimate that they arrived around 600 BCE, or maybe earlier, along with a belgic Celtic migration.
Their ethnic name, Suessetani, means “Lucky People” or "Good People" from the root word "suessio", being lucky, good luck. The Caristii tribe had a place name - "Suessatio" ("Lucky Settlement" or "Well Settled") that was derived from a related word (on the other hand this word is cognate with the word "swasti" or "svasti" in sanskrit, that has the meaning of "lucky", "well fortunate").
The place names (toponyms) and river names (hydronyms) of their territory are clearly indo-European, probably Celtic or pre-Celtic indo-European. The place names are for example: "Corbio", "Viridunum" (Berdún), "Gordunum" (Gordún), "Navardunum" (Navardún), "Sekia/Segia", "Setia", "Gallicum", "Forum Gallorum". The river names are "Alba" (today's Arba river), "Gallicus" river (Gállego). This seems to indicate that they spoke an indo-European language, maybe a Celtic one.
Roman conquest.
Titus Livius wrote about Marcus Porcius Cato's campaigns in Hispania. In his work he reports that the Suessetani were enemies of the Iacetani, because, on other things, Iacetani sacked the fields and crops of the Suessetani. Marcus Porcius Cato (Cato the Elder), knowing the bad relations between Suessetani and Iacetani, took this to Roman advantage and managed to gain their support for the Roman conquest of the Iacetani territory and their capital, Iaca (Jaca), in 195 BCE.
So the Suessetani, at the beginning of the 2nd Century BCE, were Roman allies, but some years after they rebelled and resisted against Roman expansion, an action that had terrible consequences for the Suessetani as a tribe with his own identity. Because of this, their territory and capital was taken by a Roman army on the orders of the governor of Hispania Citerior, Aulus Terentius Varro, in the year 184 BCE. Corbio, the capital, had to be taken using siege weapons and was destroyed after that siege.
Assimilation by the Vascones.
The Vascones, that dwelt to the northwest of the Suessetani, in alliance with the Romans and with Roman incentive, took advantage of the Suessetani defeat, they took Suessetani lands and assimilated most of them in the middle and the end of the 2nd century BCE. The Suessetani ceased to exist as a different tribe with his own identity. When later authors such as Strabo and Ptolemy wrote their works (in the 1st century BCE and 1st century CE), the Suessetani had already been assimilated by the Vascones, as they don't mention them. They describe the Suessetani former territory as a vasconian one. Partially because of this, Suessetani are sometimes ignored as a different tribe or wrongly classified as a tribe of the Vascones or the Iberians.
References.
FATÁS, Guillermo. Sobre Suessetanos Y Sedetanos. Archivo Español de Arqueología 44.109-125.
FATÁS, Guillermo. Los Pirineos meridionales y la conquista romana (289-316) in Jürgen Untermann y Francisco Villar (Eds.). (1993). "Lengua y Cultura en la Hispania Prerromana". Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca.
SAYAS, J.J. “El poblamiento romano en el área de los vascones”, Veleia 1, 1984, 289-310.


Redwood Building

The Redwood Building is a Cardiff University building, in the Cathays Park area of Cardiff, Wales.
The building was opened in 1961 by the Welsh College of Advanced Technology, which in 1968 became the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology (UWIST). In 1988 UWIST merged into the University of Wales College Cardiff, which became Cardiff University in 1999.
The building was designed by the Sir Percy Thomas & Son and is a rectangular three-story block in the modernist style. The main entrance is at the extreme left end of the west façade, above which is a large relief sculpture by Edward Bainbridge Copnall, showing an elderly toga-clad man with his foot on a globe, reaching out protectively over a scientist and a nurse.
In 1979 the building was named after the Redwood family of Orchard House, Boverton, near Llantwit Major, namely the pharmacist Theophilus Redwood, his son Sir Boverton Redwood as well as Theophilus's medical brother Lewis Redwood and his son Thomas Redwood (after whom the former Redwood Hospital of Rhymney was named). Theophilus Redwood was a founding father of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain among connections with the Chemical Society and as founder president of the Society of Public Analysts, while his son Sir Boverton Redwood was a distinguished petroleum chemist – sometime president of the Society of Chemical Industry. [The 1979 naming by UWIST Council followed a suggestion by Dr J D R Thomas in a letter to UWIST Secretary and Registrar on 18 December 1978 that the building be named "Redwood Building" coupled with the names of Theophilus Redwood and of his son Sir Thomas Boverton Redwood Bart. to whom were later added the other family names of Lewis and Thomas Redwood (mentioned in the first two paragraphs of 'External links' - "Theophilus Redwood and the Redwood Building"). Dr J D R Thomas of UWIST Chemistry Department conducted most of his research in the Redwood Building - including that for his 1972 DSc degree, the first for a member of UWIST.]


Suchodus

Suchodus is an extinct genus of marine crocodyliform from the Middle to Late Jurassic period of England and France.
Taxonomy and phylogeny.
In the 2000s, phylogenetic analysis has shown that "Suchodus" is a distinct metriorhynchid genus.
Valid species are:


Mene rhombea

Mene rhombea is an extinct perciform fish belonging to the family Menidae. During the Middle Eocene (Lutetian epoch), about 48 to 40 mya, these fishes lived in the Tethys Ocean, a large tropical sea in the area corresponding to the current Mediterranean. This ocean was extended between the continents of Gondwana and Laurasia. At this time, where Monte Bolca is today, "M. rhombea", and its relative, "M. oblonga", lived in a tropical lagoon.
Description.
"Mene rhombea" had a laterally compressed body, very long and slim pelvic fins and a wide triangular tail fin. As suggested by their fossils' small, upturned mouths, and by comparison of its living relative, as "Mene maculata", fishes of this species were planktivore. The species shows close affinities with contemporary species inhabiting the coral reef environment of the Indo-Pacific warm seas.
Distribution.
Their greatly valued fossils comes from the laggerstat Monte Bolca, about 30 kilometres north-east of Verona, Italy.


Vidrik Rootare

Vidrik "Frits" Rootare (born in Tallinn, Estonia August 20, 1906 – March 5, 1981) was an Estonian chess player. His wife, Salme Rootare, was also an Estonian chess player, 15-time Estonian Champion and a Women's International Master (WIM).
In 1942, in one of his best showings, he came in third in an Estonian Chess Championship behind Johannes Türn, in second place, and Paul Keres, in first. In the 1930s, he played in the Estonian Club championships. In 1930 his team won the silver medal, with Leho Laurine, Nedsvedski, and Karring. Frits, as Vidrik was known—short for Friedrich, the German spelling of his name that he used prior to Estonian independence after World War I, was a contemporary and friend of Estonia's greatest—and one of the world's greatest-ever chess players, Paul Keres, and several of their games against each other in tournament play are anthologised in chess history books and on the World Wide Web. He was also a contemporary of such Estonian players as Paul Felix Schmidt, Gunnar Friedemann, Ilmar Raud, and Tallinn-born Lithuanian international master and honorary grandmaster Vladas Mikėnas, who won the Estonian championship in 1930. Frits and his brother, Karl Johannes Rootare, also a chess player of international renown, although not twins, were often mistaken for such with the same physical stature, blond hair and blue eyes, and their shared love of chess and service in the Estonian Army. Both were Cavalry officers in the Estonian War of Independence following World War I. Karl and his wife, Karin (Kangas), left Estonia in 1944, while Frits and Salme stayed in Tallinn. Although the two near-twins and their families corresponded over the years, they were never to see each other again. Frits and Salme had a daughter, Reet Rootare, who gained some notoriety as an actress.


Netherlands in World War I

The Netherlands remained neutral during World War I. This stance arose partly from a strict policy of neutrality in international affairs that started in 1830 with the secession of Belgium from the north. Dutch neutrality was not guaranteed by the major powers in Europe, nor was it a part of the Dutch constitution. The country's neutrality was based on the belief that its strategic position between the German Empire, German-occupied Belgium, and the British guaranteed its safety.
The Royal Netherlands Army was mobilized throughout the conflict, as belligerents regularly attempted to intimidate the Netherlands and place demands on it. In addition to providing a credible deterrence, the army had to house refugees, guard internment camps for captured soldiers, and prevent smuggling. The government also restricted the free movement of people, monitored spies, and took other wartime measures.
Pre-war status.
Before the First World War, the Netherlands hosted two major international peace conferences. The first, the First Hague Conference, was held in May 1899 on the initiative of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. Representatives of 26 nations conferred on the limitation of certain types of weapons, including poison gas, hollow point bullets, and aerial bombardment from hot air balloons. The conference was a surprising success, and agreements were reached on the laws of war and on war crimes.
Politics.
The Dutch monarch, Queen Wilhelmina, was known for her fierce patriotism and strong-willed nature. Wilhelmina leaned towards sympathy for France and Belgium, but only in private. She evinced a neutral stance in public. Her German husband, the prince-consort Duke Henry of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, was openly pro-German. His nephew, Frederick Francis IV, served in the German army.
On 29 August 1913, a centrist liberal minority cabinet was appointed under the leadership of independent liberal Prime Minister Pieter Cort van der Linden. His cabinet governed until 9 September 1918, an unusually long period for a Dutch cabinet. During this period, the important post of Minister of Foreign Affairs was taken by John Loudon.
Although the government as a whole was strictly neutral, each member maintained individual preferences. Some ministers were in favor of France, while Prime Minister Cort van der Linden was privately seen as German-friendly and nicknamed "Kurt Unter der Linden," after Berlin's Unter den Linden boulevard.
During the war, the Dutch people were generally sympathetic towards the Allies. However, in Dutch protestant or Neo-Calvinist circles, there was sympathy for the German cause. This was partly inspired by the memory of the Boer War (1899-1902) in South Africa.
Food shortages.
War conditions disrupted the Netherlands' food imports and caused shortages. From 3 July 1917, authorities in Amsterdam held back the potato supply until there was enough to feed the whole city. This led to a large riot and looting of stores and markets. Rioters broke into warehouses and took potatoes intended to be exported to England.
Two thousand soldiers were called in to break up the riot but were repelled by the rioters. Another clash took place in the city of Kattenberg where three groups of workmen, one from the Stoomvaart Maatschappij Nederland, protested the lack of food for manual laborers. They also demanded that they receive actual food and not promissory papers.
Neutrality.
In the aftermath of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on the Kingdom of Serbia at 11 a.m. on 28 July 1914. The Netherlands declared themselves neutral on 30 July. According to international law, neutrality had to be declared in each instance of a war declaration between two sovereign nations. During August, the Dutch declaration of neutrality had to be repeated regularly.
The declaration consisted of 18 articles. The most important article stated that hostilities were not allowed within the territory and waters of the Dutch Empire; that no nation was allowed to use this territory and waters as a base for military operations; and that foreign soldiers who, for whatever reason, crossed into Dutch territory would be interned in POW camps for the duration of the war.
Violations.
At the beginning of the war the German army marched near the Dutch–Belgian border in the province of Limburg. For a stretch of between border markers 42 and 43, the road was half Belgian and half Dutch territory. Dutch border guards made clear which part of the road was Dutch territory, and as a consequence, the German army avoided it on their westward march. Despite this, the Dutch were falsely accused by Belgian and French newspapers at the time of supporting the German invasion of Belgium.
Dutch sailors suffered from war-related incidents and neutrality violations. Several ships were torpedoed by German U-boats or sunk by British sea mines. The fishing town of Scheveningen lost 300 fishermen. In total, 862 fishermen died and 175 fishing boats were sunk. Some sea mines washed ashore and killed civilians or military specialists tasked with disarming the sea mines. In order to protect merchant ships, the Netherlands negotiated a free channel from the coast via the Dogger Bank to the North Sea with Germany.
Both Allied and German military aircraft violated Dutch airspace. On several occasions, lost British and German pilots dropped bombs on Dutch towns. The worst incident occurred on 30 April 1917, when a lost British pilot of the Royal Naval Air Service mistakenly dropped eight bombs on the town of Zierikzee, damaging several houses and killing a family of three. After initially denying the incident, the British government apologized and agreed to compensate the Dutch for damage and loss of life. A total of 107 airplanes and 24 seaplanes landed in the Netherlands, and 220 crewmen were taken prisoner. Of the crashed planes, 67 were repaired and added to the army's air department.
German Zeppelins on bombing raids against England frequently violated Dutch airspace due to weather conditions such as wind or fog. It is unclear whether Dutch fire was responsible for the downing of the Zeppelin LZ 54. It came down in the sea and led to the "King Stephen" incident when British sailors let the German crew drown.
Espionage.
Due to its geographical significance and its international connections, the Netherlands became a hotbed of espionage. The country's neutrality allowed citizens of belligerent countries to travel freely to or from the Netherlands. Most spy agencies had operatives in the country. MI6 had a station in Rotterdam under the command of Richard B. Tinsley. It handled several important spy networks in Belgium, such as "La Dame Blanche". These networks provided the Allies with intelligence concerning German troops behind the Western Front. The German secret services also used Rotterdam as a base for espionage in Britain. From Rotterdam, spies were sent by ferry to spy on the Royal Navy.
Dutch citizens were in demand as spies, as they could travel freely throughout Europe. Some of these spies were executed for espionage. Haicke Janssen and Willem Roos, two unemployed Dutch sailors, were executed in 1915. Exotic dancer and courtesan Mata Hari, convicted of spying for Germany in France, was executed in 1917. In total seven Dutch citizens were executed by the British, French, and Germans. Many more were imprisoned.
Armed forces.
On 31 July, the Dutch government ordered the full mobilization of its conscript armed forces of 200,000 men, including reserves and regional militias. The chief of staff, Lieutenant-General Cornelis Snijders, was promoted to full general and commander-in-chief, a position which only existed in wartime. Snijders was the first non-aristocratic Dutch general to become commander-in-chief; a position which, until then, had been reserved for senior princes of the House of Orange.
The Dutch military strategy was purely defensive and rested on three pillars. First, there was the Dutch Water Line, a defensive ring of rivers and lowland surrounding the core Dutch region of Holland, that could be inundated. An older version had existed since the sixteenth century. The second line of defense was formed by a circle of 19th-century fortresses and further inundations around the capital of Amsterdam. The third pillar was the Veldleger or mobile field army, that would operate outside the Waterline in the rural eastern and southern provinces. In August 1914 the field army had an operational strength of 88,770 soldiers.
During the war, militarily sensitive border areas and places considered essential to national defense were declared to be in a state of siege, a status immediately below a state of war. There, military authorities ruled under martial law, and non-residents could only travel there with a special permit. These prohibited border areas were expanded during the war in order to fight espionage and restrict the access of suspect individuals.
The main weapons used by the Dutch army were the Männlicher rifle and the Schwarzlose machine gun, both manufactured in Austria. Artillery was German and French, but was mostly outdated. The fortifications were also outdated. At the start of the war, there was no air force, only a small aviation department within the army. During the war, foreign planes which crashed in Dutch territory were repaired to serve in the aviation department.
Volunteers in foreign armies.
Some Dutchmen volunteered for service in the French, British, German or Austro-Hungarian armies, but exact numbers are unknown. The German army did not accept foreign volunteers unless they possessed German nationality; they were often directed to allied armies such as the Austro-Hungarian, Bulgarian or Ottoman. Some immigrants from the Netherlands to Canada, and a few who lived in the United States, served with various Canadian regiments of the British Expeditionary Force. About 80 of those who served have been identified through the personnel records of the First World War held at Library and Archives Canada.
Refugees.
After the German invasion of Belgium on 4 August 1914, one million Belgians—out of a total population of six million—fled their country to the Netherlands. The first wave consisted of Belgians of German descent, German-speaking East Europeans, and Jews, who fell victim to the Belgian public’s outrage directly after the invasion. Many chose to leave because their businesses and homes were raided by angry mobs.
The second wave was caused by the German army’s invasion and its war crimes against civilians. Most of these refugees returned when the focus of military action became concentrated on the Western Front. Others moved on to England or France. An estimated 100,000 Belgians stayed in refugee camps during the war; the largest of the camps was in Nunspeet.
As well as Belgian civilians, there were political refugees from Germany such as the German-American socialist Carl Minster, Germans escaping conscription into the army, and prisoners of war who had escaped from German camps – mostly Russians, Ukrainians, and Poles.
Prisoners of war.
According to international law, soldiers of the warring nations who entered a neutral country were to be interned for the duration of the war. Of the soldiers who entered the Netherlands, on purpose or by mistake, 33,105 were Belgian, 1,751 British, 1,461 German, eight French, and four American. Among these prisoners were pilots who had flown into Dutch airspace and crashed.
The majority of Belgian and British internees had fled to the Netherlands after the fall of Antwerp in 1914. Belgian prisoners were held captive in a camp in Amersfoort. The camp initially had a very strict regime, but after a revolt that resulted in the death of seven Belgians, the rules softened. As the prisoners would not be released until the end of the war, their wives and children often sought accommodation in the vicinity.
Most British prisoners of war were members of the 1st Royal Naval Brigade. They were interned in Groningen, where they were held captive under a mild regime, which allowed for trips into the city. Some British soldiers formed a cabaret group named The Timbertown Follies, which toured throughout the country. The proceeds were donated to charities.
Many German soldiers entered the Netherlands by mistake. This occurred most frequently at the beginning of the war, as the border between the Netherlands and Belgium was confusing. The German prisoner of war camp was at Bergen in the province of North Holland.
Deserters were not considered foreign soldiers when they entered neutral territory if they were unarmed, removed badges from their uniforms, and proclaimed themselves deserters to the proper authorities. Numbers are unknown, but the majority of deserters by far were German. As deserters had no right to free accommodation or food, some of them were voluntarily interned in POW camps.


Oisin

Oisín ( or [ˈʌʃiːn(ʲ)]) pronounced in Irish as USH-een with stress on first syllable, is an Irish male given name; meaning "fawn" or "little deer", derived from the Old Irish word: os (“deer”) + ín (diminutive suffix). It is sometimes anglicized as Osheen or spelt without the diacritic (fada), as Oisin.
Variants include (), and the English "Ossian".


Teredina

Teredina is an extinct genus of fossil bivalve mollusc that lived from the Late Cretaceous to the late Pliocene in Asia, Europe, and North America.
"Teredina" shells consist of 2 short, hooked valves with a pair of furrows and each valve with transverse ridges. The overall body was long and clud-shaped. "Teredina" used the ridges on each valve to bore into drift wood by rocking back and forth; its long body shape allowed for large intestines for it to carry bacteria capable of breaking down the cellulose in the wood. Petrified drift wood with "Teridina" burrows can be found in the Cretaceous rocks of Vancouver Island.


Viktor Ader

Viktor Ader (4 October 1910 – 7 September 1966) was an Estonian football player. He was born and died in Tallinn.


Foggia Cathedral

Foggia Cathedral (, "Cattedrale della Santa Maria Assunta in Coelo" or "della Santa Maria in Fovea"; ), otherwise the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary or Church of Saint Mary of Foggia ( or "Chiesa della Santa Maria di Foggia"), is a Roman Catholic cathedral in the city of Foggia, Italy, dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Foggia-Bovino.
The present Romanesque building was constructed as a collegiate church in the 1170s, but was damaged in the earthquake of 1731 and restored in a Baroque style.
When the Diocese of Foggia was created in 1855, the collegiate church was declared its cathedral. The diocese was elevated to an archdiocese in 1979 and amalgamated with the Diocese of Bovino to form the Archdiocese of Foggia-Bovino in 1986.
The church contains an ancient icon of the Virgin Mary, whence its alternative name of "Santa Maria Icona Vetere". The icon is also sometimes known as the "Madonna dei sette veli", or the Madonna of the Seven Veils.


Elyesa Bazna

Elyesa Bazna (), sometimed known as Iliaz and Ilyaz Bazna (; 28 July 1904  – 21 December 1970), was a secret agent for Nazi Germany during World War II, operating under the code name Cicero.
Born in Pristina, Bazna attended a military academy, and joined a French military unit at age 16. He was caught stealing cars and weapons, for which he served three years in a penal labor camp in France. Bazna held a number of manual jobs in Turkish and French cities before obtaining work for foreign diplomats and consulates as a doorman, driver, and guard. He spoke several languages fluently, including French, which was the predominant diplomatic language at the time.
In 1943, Bazna was hired as a valet by Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, the British ambassador in Ankara, Turkey. He photographed British documents in Knatchbull-Hugessen's possession, and sold them to the Germans through their attaché Ludwig Carl Moyzisch in what became known as the "Cicero affair".
As Cicero, Bazna passed on important information about many of the Allied leaders' conferences, including the Moscow, Tehran and Cairo Conferences. The details for the Tehran Conference were important for Operation Long Jump, the unsuccessful plot to kill Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill.
Bazna had also conveyed a document that carried the highest security restriction (BIGOT list) about Operation Overlord (the code name for the Invasion of Normandy in June 1944). It included intelligence that the British ambassador was to request the use of Turkish air bases "to maintain a threat to the Germans from the eastern Mediterranean until Overlord is launched." The information about the Normandy Invasion was not known by the Germans until after the war. Had it been provided in time, Operation Overlord (the preparations for D-Day) would have been compromised. He also provided intelligence that might have made the Germans believe that there was no danger of attack in the Balkans.
The information that he leaked is believed to have been among the potentially more damaging disclosures made by an agent during WWII. The German Foreign Office questioned the reliability of the intelligence provided by "Cicero" due to the large quantity of transmitted documents, which meant that apparently little, if any, of it was acted upon.
Once the British became aware that there was a spy operating within the Turkish Embassy, they investigated Bazna, installed a new alarm system, and initiated an unsuccessful sting to catch him selling intelligence. He stopped selling information to the Germans by the end of February 1944 and left the embassy within a month or so.
After the war, Bazna was questioned for war crimes, but was never charged with espionage. He attempted to buy and operate a hotel in Ankara with the proceeds of his spying career, but it was discovered that much of the money was counterfeit. He served a brief prison sentence for circulating forged notes.
Bazna lived in Ankara with his family for many years and obtained work doing odd jobs. He moved to Munich in 1960 and worked as a night watchman before dying in 1970 of kidney disease. In 1962, Bazna published a memoir about the "Cicero" affair.
Early life and family.
Bazna was born in 1904 in Pristina, Kosovo Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire (now Kosovo). His parents were of Albanian heritage. His father was a teacher of Islamic doctrine and a landowner. He later stated that his father was a Muslim mullah named Hafiz Yazan Bazna, his uncle was Maj. Gen. Kemal, and his grandfather was Tahir Pasha. Both his grandfather and uncle were Young Turks who served under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
When he was 14, Serb forces captured Bazna's birthplace and his family relocated during the defeat and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire to Istanbul, which was then occupied by British, Italian and American Allied forces of World War I. The nationalists opposed the occupying forces.
Writer Yakub Kadri Karaosmanoğlu claimed "the occupying forces in Istanbul considered all the cruelty and oppression committed by them against the people [of Istanbul] as lawful."
According to Bazna, he attended a military academy in Fatih, Turkey, before 1919. At age 16 he joined a French military unit in Istanbul. He claimed to have stolen British weapons and cars for the Turkish National Movement, which was led by Atatürk.
Richard Wires, author of "Cicero", stated that Bazna was not motivated to steal for political or patriotic reasons. When he was caught stealing he was sent to a penal labor camp in Marseille, France, for three years. He reportedly worked at the Berliet motor company after he left the labor camp. While there, he learned locksmithing skills.
In 1925, Bazna moved to Istanbul, where he worked for the Istanbul Corp. in the transportation department. He then worked as a fire brigade chief in Yozgat before returning to Istanbul to drive taxis.
Bazna spoke Albanian, Turkish, Serbo-Croatian, and French, the latter of which was the standard language of diplomacy at that time. He knew a little German from singing Lieder and said that he could read basic English but had difficulty speaking it. He was trained as an opera singer.
Bazna married twice; with his first wife, whom he later divorced, he had four children. He had several live-in mistresses, one of whom, Mara, was a nursemaid to the children of David Busk, a British ambassador. Mara lived with him in the Kavaklıdere hills in a small house that he called "Cicero Villa". Their relationship was tumultuous and Bazna ended the affair due to their fighting and her jealousy. However, she was loyal to him and passed important information to him twice, once about the upcoming arrival of British security men at the embassy and the second time when she said that she had heard rumors that the Germans had a good source of intelligence. Once he began seeing a new mistress, Esra, his relationship with Mara ended permanently.
After Esra, he took a woman named Aika as his mistress and set her up in an apartment. She left after his pound notes were determined to be counterfeit. He married for a second time to a woman named Duriet and had four more children.
Espionage career.
Background: Turkey during World War II.
Turkey was neutral during much of World War II, although in October 1939 Britain signed a treaty to protect Turkey should Germany attack it. Turkey maintained its neutrality by preventing German troops from crossing its borders into Syria or the USSR. During this time Turkey had lucrative trade relationships with Germany and the UK.
Germany had significant business interests in Turkey, including banks, and beginning in 1941 it was reliant on chromite ore from Turkey for its armament production. In 1943 all of the chromite ore Germany imported for its weaponry came from Turkey.
Throughout the war Turkey's economy was reliant on and prospered by virtue of its affiliation with both the Allies and the Axis powers. As a result, the country's gold reserve had risen to 216 tons by the end of 1945, from 27 tons at the beginning of the war.
Starting in 1942 the Allies provided military aid, and then began imposing economic sanctions in 1943 to force Turkey to enter the war. The Allied powers wanted Turkey to become engaged in a fight against Germany's eastern flank; however, Turkey was afraid of being overrun by the Russian and German armies, both of which were led by dictators.
The Allied and Axis powers became increasingly involved in espionage in Turkey to protect their own strategic interests beginning in 1943. There were two Allied factions, the western Allies and the Soviet Union. Germany was the third entity engaged in intelligence gathering. The Germans were able to fund their espionage, propaganda and diplomacy efforts from the profits of its banks in Turkey.
By August 1944 Turkey broke off relations with Germany, as its defeat began to seem inevitable. In February 1945 it declared war on Germany and Japan, a symbolic move that allowed Turkey to join the emerging United Nations.
Employment by diplomats.
Bazna worked for foreign diplomats and consulates as a doorman, driver and guard upon his return to Turkey. Aided by his ability to speak French, he served as a "kavass" or valet, first to the Yugoslav ambassador to Turkey. In 1942, he worked as a valet for Albert Jenke, a German businessman and later embassy staff member, who came to fire Bazna for reading his mail.
Before he worked for Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen in 1943, Bazna was hired to do some household and vehicle repairs for Douglas Busk, the First Secretary of the British Embassy. Due to Bazna's poor English, he answered all interview questions in French. Although he supplied some written biographical information, excluding having been employed and fired by Jenke, none of the biographical information was checked. The Turkish secret service apparently warned the embassy at some point about Bazna. Over the few months that he worked for Busk, Bazna secretly photographed a few documents and, with the help of Mrs. Busk's nursemaid Mara, he tried to gain access to more valuable forms of intelligence.
Busk agreed to recommend Bazna for the open position of valet to Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, the British ambassador to Turkey, who hired him in 1943 assuming that a background check had been performed. Knatchbull-Hugessen had been the British ambassador in Riga, Latvia, until 1935.
Anthony Cave Brown, author of "Bodyguard of Lies", wrote, "Soon, Bazna had ingratiated himself to the extent that Sir Hughe elevated him from purely household duties to a position of some power within the residency and embassy. He dressed him in an imposing blue uniform, gave him a peaked cap, and used him as a guard to the door of his study; Bazna excluded visitors when Sir Hughe was thinking or napping. For ceremonial occasions, Sir Hughe dressed him in richly embroidered brocade, shoes with turned up toes, a fez with a tassel, gave him an immense scimitar, and placed him on the main door. Sir Hughe also paid him more than the 100 Turkish "lira" that was standard for a valet, and quietly turned a blind eye to the fact that Bazna was having an affair with Lady Knatchbull-Hugessen's handmaiden in the servants' quarters." Bazna often sang German Lieder after lunch while Knatchbull-Hugessen played the piano, much to the ambassador's enjoyment.
Beginning of espionage career.
While at Riga, Knatchbull-Hugessen had developed a habit of taking secret papers to his home from the British embassy, and continued that practice in Ankara. Bazna gained access to documents in the ambassador's document box and safe using his locksmithing skills, including making impressions and then copies of the key for the document box. He began photographing secret documents about war strategy, troop movements and negotiations with Turkey to enter the war. He took the photographs while the ambassador slept, took a bath or played the piano.
Bazna approached the German Embassy in Ankara on 1943, indicating that he wanted two rolls of film of the ambassador's documents. He became a spy through the connection with his former employer, Albert Jenke. Jenke was the brother-in-law of Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German Foreign Minister. Although Bazna was fired by Jenke, his wife contacted German intelligence officer Ludwig Carl Moyzisch, serving as the SD officer attached to the German embassy in Ankara, and told him of the photographs that Bazna had taken of classified information at the British Embassy. He became a paid German agent under Moyzisch and was given the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) code name "Cicero" by German Ambassador Franz von Papen due to Bazna's "astonishing eloquence". His Nazi paymasters made about of his payments in counterfeit bank notes under Operation Bernhard.
According to Mummer Kaylan, author of "The Kemalists: Islamic Revival and the Fate of Secular Turkey", Bazna said he had begun spying for the Germans because he needed the money and, although he was not a Nazi, he liked Germans and disliked the British. He also alluded to involvement with the "Milli Emniyet Hizmeti", which became the Turkish National Security Service in 1965.
British historian Richard Wires wrote that Bazna was motivated entirely by greed, as he had dreams of becoming rich by selling secrets to the Germans. Wires described Bazna as a typical petty criminal from the Balkans, a man of low intelligence with no values except greed who was apolitical and opportunistic, taking advantages of whatever chances he found to try to get rich but who was easily duped by the Germans.
Intelligence.
During the first three months of 1944, "Cicero" supplied the Germans with copies of documents taken from his employer's dispatch box or safe. Photographs of top-secret documents were generally handed over in Moyzisch's car, which was parked inconspicuously on an Ankara street. On one occasion this led to a high-speed chase around Ankara, as someone had taken an interest in the hand-over. Bazna, who had perhaps been tailed, escaped.
Ultra, the British codebreaking system based at Bletchley Park, routinely read German messages, coded by the Enigma machine. From that information the codebreakers knew that there was an intelligence breach, but did not know that the source was the British Embassy in Turkey.
Guy Liddell, who worked for MI5, recorded that there was a breach in security at the embassy on 1943, which was later reported by ISOS, Intelligence Service Oliver Strachey. The leak involved an embassy diplomat bag and two agents. On Liddell talked to Stewart Menzies, head of the British Secret Intelligence Service. From the discussion Liddell learned that the leak of the diplomatic bag occurred during or after the air attaché brought it back from Cairo, which put not-yet-deployed re-ciphering tables at risk and required the abandonment of the tables. There were also missing blueprints for a gun at the office of a military attaché. Menzies stated that there was an investigation underway at the embassy, but nothing more was said about the leak for a few months.
As Cicero, Bazna passed on important information about many of the Allied leaders' conferences, including the Moscow, Tehran and Cairo Conferences. Fortunately for the British, Knatchbull-Hugessen only had possession of one document of notes from the conferences.
The intelligence provided by "Cicero" included a document instructing Knatchbull-Hugessen to request the use of Turkish air bases "to maintain a threat to the Germans from the eastern Mediterranean until Overlord is launched." The document carried the highest security restriction (BIGOT list). "Cicero" conveyed limited information about Operation Overlord (the code name for the Invasion of Normandy in June 1944), which was not correlated by the Germans until after the war when films about Cicero were released.
According to the British Foreign Office's postwar review of Cicero's potential impacts, "It [Bazna's intelligence] provided the Germans with streams of information from the desk of the ambassador about British and Allied intentions in the Near and Middle East and for the conduct of the war generally, and might easily have compromised Operation Overlord (the preparations for D-Day)."
When the Cicero documents predicted Allied bombing missions in the Balkans, which took place on the predicted date, the authenticity of the information was supported and his reputation enhanced. Moyzisch told Cicero that at the end of the war Hitler intended to give him a villa.
Appraisal by the Germans.
Copies of the developed film or summaries prepared by Moyzisch were promptly passed on to senior German leaders. Ribbentrop showed the initial set of photographs to Hitler immediately upon receipt. Hitler entered a conference with some Cicero materials in December 1943 and declared that the invasion in the west would come in spring 1944. He concluded, though, that there would also be attacks in other locations, such as Norway or the Balkans.
According to Moyzisch, the German Foreign Office did not make much use of the documents, because officers there were divided about their reliability for several reasons. There was a steady stream of documents, which was highly unusual. Cicero seemed to have used sophisticated photography techniques to create unusually clear images, which raised the question of whether he acted alone. Antipathy between von Papen and Ribbentrop added to the ineffective analysis of the intelligence. Aware of the Allied forces' attempts to bring Turkey into the war, however, von Papen was able to thwart their efforts for a time by threatening to destroy İzmir and Istanbul if Turkey declared war against Germany. Being able to postpone Turkey's alliance with the Allied forces and the use of their airfields, von Papen told Ribbentrop that the way was now clear to take the Balkans.
Double agent hypothesis.
The Abwehr was right to worry about the presence of British double agents within their secret service. They were at that time already running "Garbo" (Juan Pujol), "Zig-Zag" (Eddie Chapman) and "Tricycle" (Dušan Popov), supposedly German agents to whom they were paying large sums of money but who were in reality working for the British and supplying the Germans with false information.
The head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, Stewart Menzies, stated that Cicero was indeed a double agent and that among the documents submitted to the Germans were documents of misinformation. Author James Srodes states in his biography of Allen Dulles that some British historians believed that Cicero was "'turned' into a double agent to send disinformation via von Papen". Malcolm Gladwell, author of "Pandora's Briefcase", said that an interviewer had questioned Menzies before he died about whether he was telling the truth. Menzies told the interviewer, "Of course, Cicero was under our control," but his truthfulness is questioned. Gladwell stated in an article in "The New Yorker", "If you had been the wartime head of M.I.6, giving an interview shortly before your death, you probably would say that Cicero was one of yours." Gladwell also mentions that while Ribbentrop was wary of Bazna, which curtailed the dissemination of some of Bazna's intelligence, most German intelligence officials were not wary of him.
Anthony Cave Brown suggests in his book "Bodyguard of Lies" that MI6's continental secret service chief, Lt. Col. Montague Reaney Chidson, who was responsible for security of the embassy, would not have overlooked Bazna as a potential threat and may have fed the documents that Bazna found in the ambassador's keeping or directly led Cicero as a double agent. Brown states that "Bazna was indeed under British control within a short time after he started to photograph the documents", and he was a participant in Plan Jael and Operation Bodyguard.
Mummer Kaylan states that through his personal knowledge of Bazna, he thought that Bazna supported Turkish interests and was not guided by British Intelligence. Further, he says that Bazna having passed on "genuine", "important" intelligence and the codeword for Operation Overlord to the Germans supports his theory that Bazna was not a double agent. If he was a double agent, Kaylan believes, he was an agent for the Turkish Security Service, Milli Emniyet Hizmeti. Walter Schellenberg, too, wondered if Bazna passed on intelligence to the Turkish Secret Service.
Discovery of intelligence leaks.
Kolbe, assistant to German diplomat Karl Ritter, screened German cable messages for information to summarize and supply to Allen Dulles, who was the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) chief representative in Bern. In late December 1943 Kolbe reported that there was a spy operating out of a British Embassy with the code name "Cicero". Dulles forwarded this information to MI6 agent Frederick Vanden Heuvel on 1944.
Cave Brown contends that Dulles passed the information to London in December. As Bazna was about to carry out acts of espionage in December, Brown concludes that Bazna was likely a double agent.
American agents in Ankara investigated Cicero's identity based upon Dulles' intelligence. British intelligence, which was asked by Dulles to interrogate Cicero, gave the impression that it believed Bazna could not speak English and, furthermore, was "too stupid" to be a spy. British Foreign Office workers, though, were concerned about Operation Overlord leaks and thought that Bazna might be Cicero. They implemented a sting in January 1944 using a false Cabinet Office document that was drafted by the chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, and given the forged signature of Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. The document was planted in the embassy, but the sting was unsuccessful in trapping Bazna.
Around January 1944,
 Moyzisch hired a new secretary named Cornelia Kapp, also known as Nele Kapp, who had spied for the British and Americans in exchange for permission to emigrate to the US. She had worked at the German embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria, beginning in July 1943 and within a month had become a spy. In January 1944 she moved to Ankara to work at the German embassy under Moyzisch. Kapp was asked by the OSS to learn about the spy that Moyzisch met with. She was adept at gathering intelligence within the office. She flirted with "Cicero" when he called the office to schedule a meeting with Moyzisch. When she could, she also followed the two men to try to see what the spy looked like, but was unsuccessful at getting a good view of him. Kapp had gathered and shared a lot of information with the OSS over the months that she worked at the embassy, including all she felt she could expect to learn about Cicero.
Once the embassy had been tipped off that there was a spy operating in the facility in early 1944, Bazna found it increasingly difficult to gather intelligence. The British Field Office had warned the embassy of a security leak. Bazna forwarded the document to the Germans. The warning had come to Churchill from Roosevelt, who obtained the information given by a defector to the US. A new alarm system in the British Embassy now required Bazna to remove a fuse whenever he wanted to look in the ambassador's safe.
Bazna gave notice about the third week of January 1944 that he would be leaving the ambassador's employment. He stopped selling information to the Germans by the end of February 1944 and left the embassy at the end of the month or about without any trouble. Bazna was identified as Cicero after the war ended.
Potential consequences.
In March 2005 British Foreign and Commonwealth Office historians issued "The Cicero Papers", an analysis of the potential consequences of the 'Cicero Affair'. In it they identified four important ways in which Cicero's intelligence could have harmed the Allied forces during World War II.
One of the key potential consequences was the possibility of alerting the German regime to the scope of Project Overlord. Fortunately, the location and date of the planned invasion were not conveyed. Allied forces wanted Turkey to declare war and join them in their efforts against Germany, particularly after they had taken the Dodecanese Islands and had secured Italy as a partner against Germany.
Turkish airfields were important to maintain their strategic advantage in the area, particularly to support Operation Accolade, the British assault on Rhodes and the Dodecanese Islands. With Cicero's intelligence, von Papen was able to delay Turkey's entry into the war.
Bazna passed on the details for the Tehran Conference plans. Once the British became aware of the leak they were concerned "Cicero" had leaked information that might help crack the British cipher, but that did not occur. Lastly, the intelligence might have made the Germans believe that there was no danger of attack in the Balkans, which may have been the most potentially damaging information gleaned by Cicero for the Germans.
After the war.
After the war ended the OSS conducted an investigation into "Cicero", interviewing key German players including Moyzisch. It was postulated that of the intelligence conveyed by "Cicero" to the Germans, the most notable information came from Knatchbull-Hugessen's notes, particularly regarding diplomatic efforts with the Turkish government. Many of the other documents were considered by Ostuf Schuddekoft, head of the British section of Amt VI [one of the 11 departments of Hauptamt Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle], to be too old to be of much value to the Germans.
Moyzisch was aggressively interviewed by the Allies and was a witness at the Nuremberg trials, after which he wrote a book to address rumours and explain his role during the war. He was never charged with war crimes.
Knatchbull-Hugessen's reputation was severely affected by the Cicero Affair, particularly as he had been previously warned about leaving his keys and document boxes unattended. On 1945, Knatchbull-Hugessen received a formal reprimand.
The Abwehr paid Bazna £300,000, which he kept hidden. After the war he tried to build a hotel with a partner, but when his sterling notes were checked by the Bank of England, they were found to be mostly counterfeit (see Operation Bernhard). The spy remarked that the notes were "not worth even the price of the Turkish linen out of which they had been manufactured." Bazna served some time in prison for using counterfeit money.
Bazna lived in an apartment in the European Aksaray neighbourhood of Istanbul with his family in the 1950s. He gave singing lessons and worked selling used cars and as a night watchman.
Much of the money he earned went to the creditors who had been paid with forged money. He contacted the West German government to be reimbursed for the counterfeit money that he received. Although he tried many times and in many ways to get paid, he never received any money.
In 1960 Bazna moved to Germany and worked in Munich as a night watchman. Bazna and Hans Nogly wrote "I Was Cicero", which was published in 1962. It told the story of the "Cicero Affair" from Bazna's perspective following Moyzisch's book "Operation Cicero" published in 1950. Bazna died in Munich of kidney disease in December 1970, aged 66.
In popular culture.
According to the British Foreign Office: "The tale has become a popular (and frequently mis-told) war story."
Moyzisch published his memoirs, titled "Operation Cicero", in 1950. Franz von Papen and Allen Dulles suggested that there was more to the story than was published in the book, but neither provided any details. Twelve years later, in 1962, "I Was Cicero" was published by Cicero himself.
A film based on the book "Operation Cicero" by Moyzisch was released by 20th Century-Fox in 1952. It was titled "5 Fingers" and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Bazna, renamed Ulysses Diello, was played by James Mason.


Teodora-Evdokija

Teodora Nemanjić (; 1330 – after 1381) was the despotess of Kumanovo as the wife of Despot Dejan (fl. 1355). She was the daughter of King Stephen Uroš III Dečanski of Serbia and her eldest half-brother was Serbian emperor, Stephen Uroš IV Dušan. She was the mother of two sons, Constantine Dragaš and Jovan Dragaš, and one daughter. She later became a nun adopting the name Evdokija (Евдокија, gr. "Eudokia"), hence she is known in historiography as Teodora-Evdokija (Теодора-Евдокија).
Family.
Theodora was born in 1330, the youngest daughter and child of King Stephen Uroš III Dečanski of Serbia by his second wife, Maria Palaiologina. Her maternal grandparents were John Komnenos Palaiologos, Governor of Thessaloniki and Irene Metochitissa. Theodora had one full brother, Simeon Uroš and a sister, Jelena; she also had two half-siblings from her father's first marriage to Theodora Smilets of Bulgaria, Stephen Uroš Dušan and Dušica. When Theodora was a year old, at the insistence of the nobility, Stephen Uroš Dušan had their father deposed and imprisoned in chains. He consequently usurped the Serbian throne as Stephen Uroš IV Dušan. Five years later, Theodora's father was murdered by strangulation. Her mother unsuccessfully attempted to obtain the crown for Simeon; defeated in her efforts, she retired to a convent and died in 1355.
Marriage.
In 1347, at 17 years of age, Theodora married Despot Dejan. He was granted the title of "sebastokrator" by her brother, Stephen Dušan. Sometime after her marriage a fresco painting of Theodora was executed at the Serbian Orthodox Christian monastery of Visoki Dečani. Together Theodora and Dejan had three children:
Religious life.
On an unrecorded date, Theodora followed in her mother's footsteps and also entered a religious life. Her mother had taken the name Marta, and Theodora, upon becoming a nun, adopted the name Eudokia. In a charter dated 1379, it was recorded that "Eudocia imperatrix et filius Constantinus" donated property to the Chilandar Monastery.


Edmund Russow

Edmund August Friedrich Russow (; – ) was a Baltic German biologist.
Academic career.
Son of a military engineer, Edmund Russow studied at the Universities of Dorpat (now Tartu, Tartu County, Estonia) and Berlin. In 1867 he became an associate professor at Dorpat, where from 1874 to 1897, he served as a full professor. In 1895-97 he was president of the Estonian Naturalists' Society. Russow was at the forefront of nature conservation in Estonia, and associated with the work of Hugo Conwentz (1865-1922), a founder of nature conservation efforts throughout Europe.
Botanical work.
Russow was an authority on Sphagnaceae (sphagnum mosses) and remembered for his research in plant anatomy and histology, in particular studies of the plant family Marsileaceae (aquatic and semi-aquatic ferns). The plant genus "Russowia" is named in his honor, as is "Sphagnum russowii" (Russow's sphagnum).


Casaleia

Casaleia is an extinct genus of ants in the formicid subfamily Amblyoponinae described by Pagliano & Scaramozzino in 1990 from fossils found in Europe. The genus contains four species dating from the Eocene to Miocene, Casaleia eocenica, Casaleia inversa, Casaleia longiventris, Casaleia orientalis.
History and classification.
The species placed in "Casaleia" have a varied history, with the type species "Casaleia inversa" originally described by Gennady Dlussky in 1981 as ""Protamblyopone" inversa". The fossil was recovered from Middle Miocene age sediments exposed in the Chon-Tyz mine, Naryn Region, Kyrgyzstan. However "Protamblyopone" was already used by William Morton Wheeler as a subgenus of "Amblyopone". To correct the homonym status, the species was moved to the new genus "Casaleia" by Pagliano and Scaramozzino in a 1990 paper.
The second species in the genus, "C. eocenica", is of Lutetian age, and was recovered as a solitary compression-impression fossil preserved in a layer of soft sedimentary rock. Along with other well preserved insect fossils, the "C. eocenica" specimen was collected from layers of the Lutetian Messel pit World Heritage Site. The formation is composed of brown coals, oil shales, and bituminous shale, which preserved numerous insects, fish, birds, reptiles, and terrestrial mammals as a notable lagerstätten. The area is a preserved maar lake which initially formed approximately 47 million years ago as the result of volcanic explosions. The fossil was described by Dlussky and Sonja Wedmann in a 2012 paper on the poneromorph ants of Messel. The specific epithet "eocenica" is derived from the Eocene age of the fossil. At the time of description, the fossil was preserved in the collections of the Forschungsstation Grube Messel as number FIS MeI 5565.
"C. longiventris" was originally described 132 years before "C. inversa" and the erection of a new genus for the species. The species was based on a group of seven separate fossil ants, which were preserved as compression fossils in sedimentary rock from the Radoboj area of what is now Croatia. The deposits are the result of sedimentation in an inland sea basin, possibly a shallow lagoon environment, during the Burdigalian of the Early Miocene. The fossil impressions are preserved in micrite limestones, resulting in low quality preservation of fine details. The fossils were first studied by Oswald Heer, then a professor with the University of Zürich, who placed the fossils into the genus "Formica" as "F. longiventris" in 1849. This placement was not changed until a re-examination of two of Heers type specimens was published in 2014. Examination by Dlussky and Putyatina of two of Heers "syntypes" resulted in the removal of the species from "Formica" and placement into "Casaleia". Of the two specimens, one was designated lectotype for the species, while the second was determined not to belong to the genus.
"C. orientalis" was described in 2015 from a single holotype gyne missing its head. The fossil was recovered from the late Eocene Bol’shaya Svetlovodnaya fossil site, in the Sikhote-Alin area of far-eastern Russia. The type specimen numbered PIN 3429/1174 is currently preserved in the A.A. Borissiak Paleontological Institute fossil collections of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The Bol’shaya Svetlovodnaya site preserves diatomaceous sediments from a small lake which existed near an active volcanic center. The diatomites have been grouped as either the Maksimovka formation or Salibez Formation, and the age range for the fossils is varied, ranging from upper Eocene to Upper Oligocene. Dlussky, Rasnitsyn, and Perfilieva opted to treat the fossil age as that of probably Priabonian. They coined the specific epithet from the Latin "orientalis", meaning "eastern", in reference to the type locality.
Description.
In all three species the broad abdomen rests against the thorax with a single node petiole connecting. The eyes are sometimes not present on worker caste individuals, but in all castes where they are present they are placed just behind the mid length of the head capsule. In the known gynes the antennae are twelve segments and geniculate in structure, while the mandibles are triangular.
"C. eocenica".
The type fossil for "C. eocenica" is a winged female gyne that was preserved as a dorsal imprint in the matrix. Overall the body length as preserved is with fore-wings that are long. The eyes are placed nearly at the midpoint of the head which is a little longer than its width. The antennae differ from "C. inversa" by having a scape which extends beyond the back corner of the head. The fore-wings have a vein structure that has resulted in closed cells 1 + 2r, 3r, rm and mcu.
"C. inversa".
"C. inversa" is medium length for the genus, being .
"C. longiventris".
The largest of the species, "C. longiventris" has a body length of , and a hind-wing length of . The mesosoma is elongated compared to the other two species and additionally separating the three. Neither the antennae or the fore-wings are preserved on the single examined lectotype.
"C. orientalis".
The single fossil is incomplete, but estimates give the length of . The front are of the mesosoma has a convex outline in profile. Due to the preservation positioning of the gyne, comparison to the other species was not possible.


Erni Krusten

Erni Krusten (30 April 1900 – 16 June 1984) was an Estonian writer. He was born Ernst Krustein in Muraste, Harku Parish, in a gardening family, and worked as a gardener himself.
In 1920 he began to pursue writing and his first book was published in 1927. He wrote prolifically, and often favored writing short works in prose.
He died 1984 in Tallinn.


955 in Norway

Events in the year 955 in Norway.


Fatherland Defense Force

The Fatherland Defense Force ( or TAR) or Kampfgruppe Mäder () was a short-lived military unit hastily formed in northwestern Lithuania towards the end of World War II to combat approaching Soviet forces. Formed from local Lithuanians, the unit was directly subordinate to the Wehrmacht. Their German commander was Hellmuth Mäder who was hoping to raise a division. However, only two ill-equipped and ill-trained regiments were actually formed. The total membership is estimated at 6,000 men. On October 7, TAR took defensive positions in Seda against the of the 6th Guards Army. TAR suffered heavy losses and retreated towards Klaipėda (Memel). In East Prussia, the remaining men were reassigned to various pioneer units.
Formation.
As a result of the Operation Bagration, Soviet 1st Baltic Front reached eastern borders of Lithuania in summer 1944 and continued to push forward during the Baltic Offensive. In occupied territories, young men were forcibly mobilized into the Red Army. Lithuanians, having suffered the repressive Soviet occupation in 1940–41, began evacuating towards the west and forming armed groups in Samogitia. On 28 July 1944, Lithuanian officers met in the village of and discussed options for defending Lithuania: either join the Wehrmacht and fight openly or become partisans and wage a guerrilla war, a tactic chosen by the Lithuanian Freedom Army. The former option won by a narrow margin of votes and these improvised units were organized into TAR, commanded by Captain Izidorius Jatulis. The Lithuanians established contacts with Hellmuth Mäder, an officer in the 9th Army, via priest Jonas Steponavičius. Mäder agreed to support the new unit and provide it with weapons and uniforms.
The staff headquarters were soon moved from Pievėnai to a school of agriculture in .
Organisation.
The 1st Lithuanian Volunteer Regiment, commanded by Major Alfonsas Urbonas, was formed during August 1944. On August 26, it had two battalions and about 1,200 men, but only 47 officers. The 2nd Lithuanian Volunteer Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Mečys Kareiva, was formed during September 1944. There were plans for the 3rd Regiment that would have included the remaining Lithuanian Auxiliary Police Battalions and elevated TAR to the status of a division, but they were not realized. In total, TAR had about 6,000 men.
Officers and men.
TAR sorely lacked experienced officers: there were only 112 officers and even fewer had relevant combat experience. Five generals were present in the area and were asked to join TAR. One, Kazys Navakas, accepted but only as the head of the Provisions and Finance Department. Povilas Plechavičius, just released from his arrest due to his command of the Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force, accepted the invitation on a condition that Germans would grant him full authority over TAR. The Germans never replied and Plechavičius never joined TAR. Three other generals refused as they considered the effort to be futile and a waste of men's lives.
Majority of the men were enthusiastic but inexperienced 18- to 20-year-olds, including 17-year-old Valdas Adamkus, future President of Lithuania.
Equipment.
TAR also lacked weapons, radios, and other provisions.
Activities.
From the first days, the men were involved in strengthening and guarding the front line along the Venta River. The period of August–September was a relatively quiet period as part of the Soviet Army was attacking towards Riga while the other was regrouping and reorganizing in preparation for the offensive towards Klaipėda (Memel). From July 18 to September 19, TAR published five issues of its own newspaper "Lietuvos Gynėjas" (Defender of Lithuania). TAR also established a relief fund to provide aid to war refugees, firstly to family members of TAR soldiers.
On October 5, 1944, Soviet 1st Baltic Front began the Memel Offensive. The main strategic goal of the offensive was to separate German armies and create the Courland Pocket. The Lithuanians were tasked with defending the towns of Seda (1st Regiment) and Barstyčiai (2nd Regiment). Despite promises, Lithuanians were not reinforced by German troops. The 1st Regiment was commanded by Major Pranas Puodžiūnas, former commander of the 4th police battalion, and Lieutenant Liudas Norkus, who also had experience in the Eastern Front. However, the regiment took a poor defensive position: the trenches were dug about in front of the Varduva so that retreating soldiers would have to cross the river which had only one bridge. Germans intended to sacrifice the unit so that main German forces could regroup.
On October 7, Seda was attacked by the , commanded by General , of the 6th Guards Army. Lithuanians, armed with "Panzerfausts", managed to destroy eight Soviet tanks T-34 but quickly ran out of ammunition and were forced to retreat. The regiment lost about 100 men, most of them during the retreat, particularly across Varduva. About 30 were taken captive by the Soviets. Order 193, signed by Stalin on October 8, mentioned Seda as a point of strong resistance and ordered to award most distinguished Soviet fighters.
The remaining men retreated to Barstyčiai where TAR unsuccessfully attempted to regroup. Facing further attacks form the Soviets, TAR retreated towards Kretinga and Klaipėda. The men faced a difficult choice – retreat west with the Germans or return home and join underground resistance that would become the Lithuanian partisans. Perhaps as much as half of the men joined the partisans. About 1,000 men reached East Prussia where they were organized into eight pioneer companies and used them to construct military defenses near Gdańsk, Łomża, Lübeck.
Evaluation.
Overall, TAR is a rather obscure and poorly researched event in the history of Lithuania. One of the issues is lack of archival date. Archives of the 1st Regiment were saved by Captain Jonas Čėsna, who after the war immigrated to the United States. After the restoration of the independence, the archive was transferred to Vladas Kazlauskas, a former member of TAR who wrote several books on the topic. However, these writings are disorganized and self-contradictory. The archives still await attention from scholars. Archives of the 2nd Regiment did not survive; therefore, very little is known about its structure or activities.
The unit was organized by Lithuanian initiative when German forces were becoming more and more disorganized. Unlike the Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force, which shared the same goals, TAR was not controlled by the Germans. For example, the oath, which had to be signed by each TAR recruit, mentioned only defending the fatherland and combating Bolshevism making no mention of the Third Reich. Lithuanian historians consider TAR as one of the attempts to reestablish the Lithuanian Army and fight for Lithuania's independence.


Scunthorpe Mudstone

The Scunthorpe Mudstone is a geologic formation in England. It preserves plesiosaur fossils dating back to the Late Triassic (Rhaetian) to Early Jurassic (Hettangian) period. It predominantly consists of grey mudstone with thin beds of argillaceous limestone and calcareous siltstone. The Ichthyosaur "Wahlisaurus" is known from the formation. As is the holotype specimen of the dinosaur "Sarcosaurus".


Hamina

Hamina (; , , ) is a town and a municipality of Finland. It is located approximately east of the country's capital Helsinki, in the Kymenlaakso region, and formerly the province of Southern Finland. The municipality's population is (as of ) and covers an area of , of which
is water. The population density is
. The population of the central town is approximately 10,000. The municipal language of Hamina is Finnish.
Highway 7 (E18) is the town's road connection to Helsinki, after it was upgraded to a continuous motorway in September 2014. Hamina is also one of the most important harbors of Finland, the Port of Hamina-Kotka. The port specializes in forest products and the transit of cargo to Russia. One of Google's five European data centers is situated in Hamina.
History.
Vehkalahti was as a municipality first mentioned in 1336. At the proposal of Count Peter Brahe, the area surrounding the Vehkalahti church (today St. Mary's Church) received its charter in 1653 through the establishment of Vehkalahden Uusikaupunki (Veckelax Nystad in Swedish, "The New Town of Vehkalahti"). The town was later destroyed during the Great Northern War in 1712.
As the commercially vibrant city of Vyborg was lost to Russia in 1721, Fredrikshamn (named in 1723 in the honor of King Frederick I of Sweden) was dedicated to replace it. The town, hitherto a small domestic port with restricted trading privilege's, was granted extensive rights to conduct foreign trade. The Finnish speaking population soon abbreviated the name og the town to Hamina. The reconstruction of the town was completed between 1722 and 1724. The star-shaped fortress and the circular town plan, designed by Axel Löwen, were based on Central European and Italian Renaissance concepts from the 16th century. Fortress towns with a circular street plan like this are quite rare; one example is Palmanova in Italy.
In 1743, Hamina was surrendered to Russia, after the Russo–Swedish War, 1741–1743, and the town of Loviisa was the next Swedish candidate for an Eastern-Finnish trade center. Hamina became a Russian frontier town, for which a fortress was desirable.
The Treaty of Fredrikshamn (1809), by which Sweden ceded Finland, including parts of the province of Lappland and the Åland Islands, was signed in Hamina. Thus Sweden was split, and the eastern half was formed into the Grand Duchy of Finland, an autonomous part of the Russian Empire. In 1812, the previously conquered territories known as Old Finland (including Hamina) were joined to the Grand Duchy.
Hamina Cadet School was founded in 1819 and was in operation until 1903. In 1920 the Reserve Officer School began in the same facilities.
Because the town was founded next to the Vehkalahti Church, the municipal center had always been inside the town borders. Vehkalahti and Hamina were consolidated in 2003, and the old coat of arms was replaced with Vehkalahti's coat of arms. The old coat of arms was readopted in January 2013.