InfoFacts

Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle

2017-02-08T18:18:00.001-05:00

Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (November 22, 1890 – November 9,1970), in France commonly referred to as général de Gaulle, was a French military leader and statesman.

Prior to World War II he was mostly known as a tank tactician and an advocate of the concentrated use of armored and aviation forces. He was the leader of Free French government-in-exile and an anti-Nazi French Resistance guerrilla leader during World War II, and head of the provisional government during 1944 – 1946 following the liberation of France from German occupation.

Called by his countrymen to form a government in 1958, he inspired a new constitution and was the Fifth Republic's first president, serving from 1958 to 1969[ His political ideology is known as Gaullism, and it has been a major influence in subsequent French politics. He had played a crucial role in stabilizing Western Europe after World War II especially in normalizing German-French relations and in establishing what is now the European Union. His strong advocacy of France's role in world affairs ensured her permanent seat on the Security Council, although France has fallen early to Hitler's Germany and had been excluded from initial talks about founding the United Nations. Under de Gaulle, France became the world's fourth nuclear power, perhaps earning its place in the Security Council. He strongly identified with his nation, so much so that for many he personified France. Relations between de Gaulle and Winston Churchill as well as Franklin Delano Roosevelt were famously strained. De Gaulle was sometimes impatient with the two leaders but they, unlike, him, were answerable to their respective legislatures and Roosevelt especially was reluctant to treat a self-appointed leader as an equal. Roosevelt, early in the War, did not see him as a significant figure in French affairs. De Gaulle, though, admired Roosevelt.

France has continued to pursue a more independent foreign policy, sometimes at odds with that of the United States in large measure due to de Gaulle's legacy. His political philosophy had three main components, namely, that Government must be dominated by a powerful presidency, that the state should have a major role in the economy and that foreign policy must be independent.

1890–1912: Formative years

Charles de Gaulle was the third child of a morally conservative but socially progressive Roman Catholic family. Born in Lille, de Gaulle grew up and was educated in Paris, at the College Stanislas.

His father's side of the family was a long line of aristocracy from Normandy and Burgundy which had been settled in Paris for about a century, whereas his mother's side was a family of rich entrepreneurs from the industrial region of Lille in French Flanders. The "de" in "de Gaulle" is not a nobiliary particle, although the de Gaulle family were an ancient family of ennobled knighthood. The earliest known de Gaulle ancestor was a squire of the twelfth century King Philip Augustus.

The name "de Gaulle" is thought to have evolved from a Germanic form, "De Walle," meaning "the wall." Most of the old French nobility descended from Germanic lineages and often bore Germanic names. Although not strictly a nobiliary particle, the "de" in "de Gaulle" has for centuries been written with a lower-case d.

De Gaulle's grandfather was a historian, his grandmother a writer, and his father a professor in private Catholic schools who founded his own private school. Political debates were frequent at home, and from an early age de Gaulle was introduced by his father to the important conservative authors. The family was very patriotic, and he was raised in the cult of the Nation (de Gaulle wrote in his memoirs that "my mother felt an uncompromising passion for the fatherland, equal to her religious piety").

Although traditionalist and monarchist, the family was legalist and respected the institutions of the French Republic. Their social ideas were also more liberal, influenced by socially conscious Roman Catholicism. During the Dreyfus Affair the family distanced itself from the more conservative nationalist circles and supported Alfred Dreyfus. His family was a generous and encouraging one and they helped Charles de Gaulle throughout his life.

1912–1940: Military career

Young Charles de Gaulle chose a military career and spent four years at École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr (the French equivalent of the United States' United States Military Academy at West Point and Britain's Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst). Graduating in 1912, he decided to join an infantry regiment rather than an elite corps.

During World War I, then-Captain de Gaulle was severely wounded in March 1916 at the gruesome Battle of Verdun and left for dead on the battlefield. He was, however, found and taken prisoner by the Germans. He made five unsuccessful escape attempts, and was put in solitary confinement at Ingolstadt fortress, a retaliation camp, where he encountered another incorrigible—Russian Lieutenant Mikhail Tukhachevsky.

When World War I ended, de Gaulle remained in the military, serving on the staffs successively of Generals Maxime Weygand and Philippe Pétain. During the Polish-Soviet war (1919-1920|21), he volunteered to be a member of the French Military Mission to Poland and was an infantry instructor with the Polish Army. He distinguished himself in operations near the River Zbrucz and won the highest Polish military decoration, the Virtuti Militari.

He was promoted to Major and offered a further career in Poland, but chose instead to return to France. He was heavily influenced by the Polish-Soviet War—by the use of tanks, rapid maneuvers and limited trench warfare. De Gaulle would also adopt some lessons, for his own military and political career, from Poland's Marshal Józef Piłsudski, who, decades before de Gaulle, sought to create a federation of European states (Międzymorze), retired from active military service and politics, only to return to public service at an hour of national crisis, and made no effort to enrich himself through his office.

De Gaulle, based partly on his observations during the war in Poland, so different from the experience of World War I, published books and articles on reorganization of the military, particularly his book, Vers l'Armée de Métier (published in English as The Army of the Future), in which he proposed the formation of a professional mechanized army with specialized armored divisions, in preference to the static theories exemplified by the Maginot Line.

While views similar to de Gaulle's were advanced by Britain's J.F.C. Fuller, Germany's Heinz Guderian, Russia's Mikhail Tukhachevsky, and Poland's General Władysław Sikorski, most of de Gaulle's theories were rejected by Pétain, and relations between them became strained. French politicians also dismissed de Gaulle's theories, questioning the political reliability of a professional army—with the notable exception of Paul Reynaud, who would play a major role in de Gaulle's career.

At the outbreak of World War II, de Gaulle was only a colonel, having encountered hostility from the leaders of the military through the 1920s and 1930s due to his bold views. After the German breakthrough at Sedan, on May 15, 1940, he was finally given command of the 4th Armoured Division.

On May 17, 1940, de Gaulle attacked the German tank forces at Montcornet. With only 200 French tanks and no air support, the offensive had little impact on the German advance. There was more success on May 28, when de Gaulle's tanks forced the German infantry to retreat at Caumont. This was one of the few significant tactical successes the French gained against the Germans during the campaign. Prime Minister Paul Reynaud promoted him provisional brigadier general (thus his title of général de Gaulle).

On June 6 Paul Reynaud appointed him undersecretary of state for national defense and war and put him in charge of coordination with the United Kingdom. As a junior member of the French government, he opposed unsuccessfully proposals to surrender. He served as a liaison with the British government, and with Churchill carved a project of political union between France and the United Kingdom on the morning of 16 June in London. The project would have resulted in effect in the merger of France and the United Kingdom into a single country, with a single government and a single army, for the duration of the war. This project was a desperate last minute effort to try to strengthen the resolve of those members of the French government who were in favor of continuing the war.

He took the plane back to Bordeaux (provisory seat of the French government) on that same afternoon, but when landing in Bordeaux in the evening he learned that Pétain had become premier with the intention of seeking an armistice with Germany.

That same day he made the most important decision in his life and in the modern history of France: he refused the humiliation of a French surrender and instead rebelled against the apparently legal (but illegitimate in his eyes) government of Pétain, returning to London and calling for the continuation of war. On the morning of June 17, with 100,000 gold francs from the secret funds given to him the previous night by Paul Reynaud, he fled Bordeaux by plane, narrowly escaped German aviation, and landed in London that same afternoon. De Gaulle decided to reject French capitulation and to set about building a movement which would appeal to overseas French, opponents of a separate arrangement with Germany.

1940–1945: The Free French Forces

On June 18, 1940 de Gaulle prepared to speak to the French people, via BBC radio, from London. The British Cabinet attempted to block the speech, but was overruled by Churchill. In France, de Gaulle's Appeal of 18 June could be heard nationwide in the evening. The phrase "France has lost a battle; she has not lost the war," which appeared on posters in Britain at the time, is often incorrectly associated with the BBC broadcast; nevertheless the words aptly capture the spirit of de Gaulle's position.

Only a few people actually heard the speech that night, because the BBC was seldom listened to on the continent, and millions of Frenchmen were refugees on the road. However, excerpts of the speech appeared in French newspapers the next day in the (unoccupied) southern part of France, the speech was repeated for several days on the BBC, and de Gaulle spoke again on subsequent nights.

De Gaulle's June 22 speech on the BBC can be heard here in its entirety. Audio excerpts of other speeches, the full texts of the speeches, and reproductions of posters from June 1940 can be found here.

Soon enough, among the chaos and bewilderment that was France in June 1940, the news that a French general was in London refusing to accept the tide of events and calling for the end of despair and the continuation of a winnable war was spread by word of mouth. To this day it remains one of the most famous speeches in French history.

From London, de Gaulle formed and led the Free French movement. Whereas the United States continued to recognize Vichy France, the British government of Winston Churchill supported de Gaulle, initially maintaining relations with the Vichy government but subsequently recognizing the Free French.

On July 4, 1940, a court-martial in Toulouse sentenced de Gaulle in absentia to four years in prison. At a second court-martial on August 2, 1940, de Gaulle was condemned to death for treason against the Vichy regime.

In his dealings with his British Allies and the United States, de Gaulle insisted at all times in retaining full freedom of action on behalf of France, even where this might embarrass or inconvenience his partners in the war. "France has no friends, only interests" is one of his best-remembered statements. Churchill is often misquoted as having commented, regarding working with de Gaulle, that: "Of all the crosses I have had to bear during this war, the heaviest has been the Cross of Lorraine (de Gaulle's symbol of Free France)." (The actual quote was by Churchill's envoy to France, Major-General Edward Spears

Working with the French resistance and supporters in France's colonial possessions in Africa, after the Anglo-American invasion of North Africa in November 1942, de Gaulle moved his headquarters to Algiers in May 1943. He became first joint head (with the less resolutely independent Gen. Henri Giraud, the candidate preferred by the USA) and then sole chairman of the Committee of National Liberation.

At the liberation of France following Operation Overlord, in which Free French forces played a minor but symbolic role, he quickly established the authority of the Free French Forces in France, avoiding an Allied Military Government for Occupied Territories in France. He was flown into France from the French colony of Algeria a few hours before the liberation of Paris, and drove near the front of the column of liberating forces into the city alongside Allied officials. De Gaulle made a famous speech upon the liberation of Paris which caused raised eyebrows amongst the other western Allies. After his return to Paris, he moved back into his office at the War Ministry, thus proclaiming continuity of the Third Republic and denying the legitimacy of Vichy France.

After the war he served as the President of the provisional government from September 1944 but resigned on January 20, 1946, complaining of conflict between the political parties, and disapproving of the draft constitution for the Fourth Republic which he believed placed too much power in the hands of parliament with its shifting party alliances.

1946–1958: The desert crossing

De Gaulle's opposition to the proposed constitution failed as the parties of the left supported a weak presidency to prevent any repetition of the Vichy regime. The second draft constitution narrowly approved at the referendum of October 1946 was even less to de Gaulle's liking than the first.

In April 1947 de Gaulle made a renewed attempt at transforming the political scene with the creation of the Rassemblement du Peuple Français (Rally of the French People, or RPF), but the movement lost impetus after initial success. In May 1953 he withdrew again from active politics, though the RPF lingered until September 1955.

He retired to Colombey-les-deux-Églises and wrote his war memoirs, Mémoires de guerre. During this period of formal retirement, de Gaulle however maintained regular contact with past political lieutenants from wartime and RPF days, including sympathisers involved in political developments in Algeria.

1958: The collapse of the Fourth Republic

The Fourth Republic was tainted by political instability, its failures in Indochina and its inability to resolve the Algerian question.

On May 13, 1958, the settlers seized the government buildings in Algiers, attacking what they saw as French government weakness in the face of demands among the Arab majority for Algerian independence. A "Committee of Civil and Army Public Security" was created under the presidency of General Jacques Massu, a Gaullist sympathizer. General Raoul Salan, Commander-in-Chief in Algeria, announced on radio that the Army had "provisionally taken over responsibility for the destiny of French Algeria."

Under the pressure of Massu, Salan declared "Vive de Gaulle!" from the balcony of the Algiers Government-General building on May 15. De Gaulle answered two days later that he was ready to "take on the powers of the Republic" (assumer les pouvoirs de la République). Many worried as they saw this answer as support to the army.

On May 19 de Gaulle asserted again (at a press conference) that he was at the disposal of the country. As a journalist expressed the concerns of some who feared that he would violate civil liberties, de Gaulle retorted vehemently: "Have I ever done that? Quite the opposite, I have reestablished them when they had disappeared. Who honestly believes that, at age 67, I would start a career as a dictator?" A republican by conviction, de Gaulle maintained throughout the crisis that he would accept power only from the lawfully constituted authorities of the state.

The crisis deepened as French paratroops from Algeria seized Corsica and a landing near Paris was discussed. Political leaders on all sides agreed to support the General's return to power, except François Mitterrand, and the Communist Party (which denounced de Gaulle as the agent of a fascist coup). Jean-Paul Sartre is quoted as saying "I would rather vote for God." On May 29 the French President, René Coty, appealed to the "most illustrious of Frenchmen" to become the last President of the Council (Prime Minister) of the Fourth Republic.

De Gaulle remained intent on replacing the constitution of the Fourth Republic, which he blamed for France's political weakness. He set as a condition for his return that he be given wide emergency powers for six months and that a new constitution1 be proposed to the French people. On June 1, 1958, de Gaulle became premier and was given emergency powers for six months by the National Assembly.

On September 28, 1958, a referendum took place and 79.2 percent of those who voted supported the new constitution and the creation of the Fifth Republic. The colonies (Algeria was officially a part of France, not a colony) were given the choice between immediate independence and the new constitution. All colonies voted for the new constitution except Guinea, which thus became the first French African colony to gain independence, at the cost of the immediate ending of all French assistance.

De Gaulle described the role he envisaged for the French president when he wrote the new French constitution. He said a Head of State should embody "the spirit of the nation" to the nation itself and to the world: une certaine idée de la France (a certain idea about France).

1958—1962: Founding of the Fifth Republic

In the November 1958 elections, de Gaulle and his supporters (initially organized in the Union pour la Nouvelle République-Union Démocratique du Travail, then the Union des Démocrates pour la Vème République, and later still the Union des Démocrates pour la République) won a comfortable majority. In December de Gaulle was elected President by the parliament with 78 percent of the vote, and was inaugurated in January 1959.

He oversaw tough economic measures to revitalise the country, including the issuing of a new franc (worth 100 old francs). Internationally he rebuffed both the United States and the Soviet Union, pushing for an independent France with its own nuclear weapons, and strongly encouraged a "Free Europe," believing that a confederation of all European nations would restore the past glories of the great European empires. He set about building Franco-German cooperation as the cornerstone of the European Economic Community (EEC, now the European Union (EU)), giving the first state visit to Germany by a French head of state since Napoleon. In 1963 Germany and France signed a treaty of friendship.

On November 23, 1959, in a speech in Strasbourg, de Gaulle announced his vision for Europe: Oui, c'est l'Europe, depuis l'Atlantique jusqu'à l'Oural, c'est tout l'Europe, qui décidera du destin du monde. ("Yes, it is Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals, it is Europe, it is the whole of Europe, that will decide the destiny of the world.") His phrase, "Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals," has oft been cited throughout the history of European integration. It became a favorite political slogan of de Gaulle's for the next ten years, in fact. De Gaulle's vision stood in contrast to the Atlanticism of the United States, Britain, and NATO, preferring instead a Europe which acted as a third pole between the United States and Soviet Union. By including in his ideal of Europe all the territory extending to the Urals, de Gaulle was implicitly offering détente to the Soviets, while his phrase was also interpreted as excluding the United Kingdom from the future of Europe.

He also took the opportunity to deny the British entry to the EEC for the first time (in January 1963), citing his belief that the United Kingdom would not accept the rules of the Community, and would prefer its overseas alliances (the United States and the Commonwealth of Nations) to its European partners, French ties to its own former empire notwithstanding. Although his supporters would argue that British ambivalence toward the EEC justified his fears, many Britons took de Gaulle's "non" as an insult.

De Gaulle believed that while the war in Algeria was militarily winnable it was not defensible internationally, and he became reconciled to the former colony's eventual independence. This stance created huge anger among the French settlers and their metropolitan supporters, and de Gaulle was forced to suppress two uprisings in Algeria by French settlers and troops, in the second of which (in April 1961) France herself faced threatened invasion by rebel paratroops. De Gaulle's government covered up the Paris massacre of 1961. He was also targeted by the settler Organisation de l'Armée Secrète terrorist group and several assassination attempts were made on him; the most famous is that of August 22, 1962, when he and his wife narrowly escaped an assassination attempt when their Citroën DS was targeted by machine gun fire arranged by Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry at the Petit-Clamart. In March 1962 de Gaulle arranged a cease-fire in Algeria and a referendum supported independence, finally accomplished on July 3, 1962.

In September 1962 he sought a constitutional amendment to allow the president to be directly elected by the people. Following a defeat in the National Assembly, he dissolved that body and held new elections; the Gaullists won an increased majority. Although the Algerian issue was settled the prime minister, Michel Debré, still resigned over the final settlement and was replaced with Georges Pompidou.

1962–1968 Politics of Grandeur

With the Algerian conflict behind him, de Gaulle was able to achieve his two main objectives: To reform and develop the French economy, and to promote an independent foreign policy and a strong stance of France on the international stage. This was the so-called "politics of grandeur" (politique de grandeur).

"Thirty glorious years"

In the context of a population boom unseen in France since the eighteenth century, the government under prime minister Georges Pompidou oversaw a rapid transformation and expansion of the French economy. With dirigisme — a unique combination of capitalism and state-directed economy — the government intervened heavily in the economy, using indicative five-year plans as its main tool.

High profile projects, mostly but not always financially successful, were launched: the extension of Marseille harbor (soon becoming number three in Europe and number one on the Mediterranean Sea); the promotion of the Caravelle passenger jetliner (a predecessor of Airbus); the decision to start building the supersonic Franco-British Concorde airliner in Toulouse; the expansion of the French auto industry with state-owned Renault at its center; and the building of the first motorways between Paris and the provinces.

With these projects, the French economy recorded growth rates not seen since the nineteenth century. In 1963 de Gaulle vetoed Britain's entry into the EEC for the first of two times. In 1964, for the first time in 200 years, France's GDP overtook that of the United Kingdom of Great Britain's, a position it held until the UK's GDP again surpassed France's in the 1990s. This period is still remembered in France with some nostalgia as the peak of the Trente Glorieuses ("Thirty Glorious Years" of economic growth between 1945-1975).

The fourth nuclear power

This strong economic foundation enabled de Gaulle to implement his independent foreign policy. In 1960, France became the fourth state to acquire a nuclear arsenal, having successfully detonated an atomic bomb in the Algerian desert. In 1968, at the insistence of de Gaulle, French scientists finally succeeded in detonating a hydrogen bomb, without any American assistance. In what was regarded as a snub to Britain, de Gaulle declared France was the third big independent nuclear power, as Britain's nuclear force was closely coordinated with that of the United States (though critics countered that this "independence" was an illusory luxury France could afford only by being under the protection of the U.S. nuclear umbrella).

While grandeur was surely an essential motive in these nuclear developments, another was the concern that the U.S., involved in an unpopular and costly war in Vietnam, would hesitate to intervene in Europe should the Soviet Union decide to invade. An additional effect of the development was that the French military, which was demoralized close to the point of rebellion after the loss of the Algerian War of Independence, was kept busy. In 1965 France launched its first satellite into orbit, being the third country in the world to build a complete outer space delivery system, after the Soviet Union and the United States.

China

De Gaulle was convinced that a strong and independent France could act as a balancing force in the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, a policy seen as little more than posturing and opportunism by his critics, particularly in Britain and the United States, to which France was formally allied. In January 1964, he officially recognized the People's Republic of China, despite U.S. opposition. It should be noted that de Gaulle came to the same conclusion that would lead to the American President Richard Nixon's visit to China in 1972, eight years later. However Nixon's trip was timed to prevent a North Korean invasion of South Korea.

Richard Nixon's first foreign visit after his election was to visit France and de Gaulle in 1969. They both shared the same non-Wilsonian approach to world affairs, believing in nations and their relative strengths, rather than in ideologies, international organizations, or multilateral agreements. De Gaulle is famously quoted for nicknaming the United Nations le Machin ("the thing").

Second round

In December 1965, de Gaulle was returned as president for a second seven-year term, but for the first time had to go through a second round of voting in which he defeated François Mitterrand. In February 1966, France withdrew from the common NATO military command, but remained within the organization. De Gaulle, haunted by the memories of 1940, wanted France to remain the master of the decisions affecting it, unlike in the 1930s, when France had to follow in step with the British ally. Again, though, the move was seen as further evidence of de Gaulle's hypocrisy; critics charged he was content for France to be protected by NATO, while publicly snubbing the alliance.

In September 1966, in a famous speech in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, he expressed France's disapproval of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War; again, preceding Nixon by seven years, he called for a U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam as the only way to ensure peace. As the Vietnam War had its roots in French colonialism in southeast Asia, this speech did little to endear de Gaulle to the Americans, even if they later drew the same conclusion.

The Six Day War

Having vetoed Britain's entry into the European Economic Community a second time, in June 1967, he condemned the Israelis over their occupation of the West Bank and Gaza following the Six-Day War. This was a major change in French policy towards Israel. Until then, France had been a staunch ally of Israel, helping Israel militarily and jointly planning the Suez Campaign in 1956.

Under de Gaulle, following the independence of Algeria, France embarked on foreign policies more favorable to the Arab side, still a distinct aspect of French foreign policy today. Israel's leadership, stung by what it considered its capricious abandonment in the face of de Gaulle's desire to appease the Arabs, then turned towards the United States for military support.

Nigerian Civil War

During Nigeria's civil war of 1967-1970, de Gaulle's government supported the Republic of Biafra in its struggle to gain independence from Nigeria. Despite lack of official recognition, de Gaulle provided covert military assistance through France's former African colonies. The United Kingdom was in opposition to de Gaulle's stance but he viewed the political position of the Igbo in Nigeria as analogous to that of the French Québécois living in Canada.

Vive le Québec Libre!

In July 1967, de Gaulle visited Canada, which was celebrating its centennial with a world's fair, Expo '67. On July 24, speaking to a large crowd from a balcony on Montreal city hall, de Gaulle uttered Vive le Québec! (Long live Quebec!) then added, Vive le Québec libre! (Long live free Québec!). De Gaulle left Canada of his own accord the next day without proceeding to the capital city Ottawa as scheduled.

The speech caused outrage in Canada; it led to a serious diplomatic rift between the two countries. However, the event was seen as a watershed moment by the Quebec sovereignty movement.

In December 1967, claiming continental European solidarity, he again rejected British entry into the EEC.

Retrospect

Many have commented that the "policy of grandeur" was probably too ambitious and heavy for the shoulders of France. This policy, it is argued, was made possible by the exceptional historical figure of de Gaulle, but was not sustainable by post-imperial France in the long run. In any case, it is still remembered in France as a defining era of French modern foreign policy, and it still largely inspires French foreign policy today.

May 1968

May 1968 poster. Translation: "The Mess, it’s him." The Mess (or more literally the "carnival mask" – a medieval word) was how de Gaulle referred to the May 1968 events

De Gaulle's government, however, was criticized within France, particularly for its heavy-handed style. While the written press and elections were free, the state had a monopoly on television and radio broadcasts (though there were private stations broadcasting from abroad; and the executive occasionally told public broadcasters the bias that they desired on news. In many respects, society was traditionalistic and repressive, especially regarding the position of women. Many factors contributed to a general weariness of sections of the public, particularly the student youth, which led to the events of May 1968.

The huge demonstrations and strikes in France in May 1968 were a big challenge to de Gaulle's presidency. In the course of the May 1968 events he briefly fled to Baden-Baden and met Massu, now French commander in Germany (to discuss army intervention against the protesters, according to popular but unofficial accounts).

But de Gaulle offered to accept some of the reforms the demonstrators sought. He again considered a referendum to support his moves, but Pompidou persuaded him to dissolve parliament (in which the government had all but lost its majority in the March 1967 elections) and hold new elections instead. The June 1968 elections were a major success for the Gaullists and their allies: when offered the spectre of revolution or even civil war, the majority of the country rallied to him. His party won 358 of 487 seats, but Georges Pompidou was suddenly replaced by Maurice Couve de Murville in July.

1969 - Retirement

Charles de Gaulle resigned the presidency on April 28, 1969, following the defeat of his referendum to transform the Senate (upper house of the French parliament, wielding less power than the National Assembly) into an advisory body while giving extended powers to regional councils. Some said this referendum was a self-conscious political suicide committed by de Gaulle after the traumatizing events of May 1968. As proven before in 1946, de Gaulle refused to stay in power without widespread popular support.

1970 - A humble death

He retired once again to Colombey-les-deux-Églises, where he died suddenly in 1970, two weeks before his 80th birthday, in the middle of writing his memoirs. In perfect health until then, it was reported that as he had finished watching the evening news on television and was sitting in his armchair he suddenly said "I feel a pain here," pointing to his neck, just seconds before he fell unconscious due to an aneurysmal rupture. Within minutes he was dead.

His last wish was also a final slap to the establishment and protocol. He specifically asked to be buried in Colombey, and that no presidents or ministers attend his funeral, only his Compagnons de la Libération. Heads of State had to content themselves with a simultaneous service held at Notre-Dame Cathedral.

He also specified that his tombstone bear the simple inscription "Charles de Gaulle, 1890-1970."

Unlike many other politicians, he died nearly destitute, and his family had to sell the Boisserie residence. It was purchased by a foundation and is currently the Charles de Gaulle Museum.

Private life

Charles de Gaulle married on April 7, 1921, to Yvonne Vendroux ("Tante Yvonne"). They had three children: Philippe (1921), Elisabeth (1924) and Anne (1928 – 1948). Anne had Down syndrome and died at 20.

One of Charles de Gaulle's grandsons, Charles de Gaulle, was a member of the European Parliament from 1994 to 2004, his last tenure being for the National Front.

Another grandson, Jean de Gaulle, is a member of the French Parliament.

Retrospect

Though controversial throughout his political career, not least among ideological opponents on the left and among overseas strategic partners, de Gaulle continues to command enormous respect within France, where his presidency is seen as a return to political stability and strength on the international stage. Amongst his admirers, he was the epitome of a roi juste (translatable as "just king"), since he embodied qualities of a just and righteous ruler. De Gaulle's new constitution of the Fifth Republic was able to satiate a lingering feeling for a strong, central, singular political position, which harkens back to the days of the monarchy, connected however with a democratic system. His opponents however see his constitution nothing but a re-cast of the old, with accusation including "caesaropapism," with the president having almost monarchical powers similar to the ancien regime. Nevertheless in his defense, the system of the Fifth Republic (Une certaine idée de la France) has proven remarkably stable in contrast to the previous Fourth Republic, despite constitutional changes since its implementation.

On the domestic front, for all its flaws, he presided over a return to economic prosperity after an initially sluggish postwar performance, while maintaining much of the social contract evolved in previous decades between employers and labor. The associated dirigisme (state economic interventionism) of the Fifth Republic's early decades remains at odds with the current trend of western economic orthodoxy; yet, they resulted in unprecedented growth and much improved standards of living for the French population.

De Gaulle's presidential style of government was continued under his successors. Internationally, the emphasis on French independence which so characterized de Gaulle's policy remains a keynote of foreign policy, together with his alignment with the former rival Germany, still seen in both countries as a foundation for European integration.

France's largest airport in Roissy, France, outside of Paris was named Charles de Gaulle International Airport in de Gaulle's honor.

Marduk

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Marduk (Sumerian for "solar calf"; Biblical Merodach) was the name of a late generation god from ancient Mesopotamia and patron deity of the city of Babylon. When Babylon became the political center of the Euphrates valley in the time of Hammurabi (eighteenth century B.C.E.), Marduk rose to the head of the Babylonian pantheon, a position he fully acquired by the second half of the second millennium B.C.E. He was also referred simply as “Bel," meaning “Lord,” or Bel-Marduk. Marduk was thus the chief deity of the Babylonian Empire during the period of Jewish exile in Babylon (sixth-fifth centuries B.C.E.). It was Marduk whom Cyrus the Great of Persia credited with the inspiration to allow the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple of Yahweh. Marduk's association with the solar system's largest planet led indirectly to its being named Jupiter, after the Roman god who occupied Marduk's place in the pantheon.

History and Character

Marduk literally means "bull calf of the sun," although he was also a deity of fertility and storms. He was one of the sons of Ea (called Enki in the Sumerian myths), the creator/craftsman deity. Sometimes portrayed as double-headed, he was later given the title Bel, or "Lord," and was referred to simply as "Bel" in a manner similar to that of the Canaanite Baal (master/lord) and the Israelite Yahweh (the Lord). After the rise of the city of Babylon, Marduk became identified with the older chief Sumerian deity, Enlil, and has as many as fifty titles in all.

In the Babylonian creation myth Enûma Eliš, Marduk was appointed as the champion of the gods and slew the tyrannical primordial sea-serpent goddess Tiamat together with her own champion, Kingu. Marduk then claimed the Kingu's prized Tablets of Destiny and fashioned a new cosmic order that included humankind, out of Tiamat's body. In this story it is also Marduk who initiated the astrological system and created the signs of the Zodiac.

In Babylonian astrology, Marduk was connected to the planet known to us as Jupiter. As the ruler of the late Babylonian pantheon, he was later equated with the Greek god Zeus (the Greek equivalent for Jupiter). Thus, the planet was eventually given the name for Roman deity who occupied Marduk's position.

Marduk remained an important deity from at least the time of Hammurabi until well into the Persian period around 400 B.C.E.

Marduk in the Enuma Elish

When Babylon became the capital of Mesopotamia, the patron deity of Babylon was elevated to the level of supreme god. Some scholars believe the Enûma Eliš, probably written around the turn of the first millennium B.C.E., was created to explain how Marduk came to a position of supreme power. The story became an important part of Babylonian culture and was re-enacted annually in lavish new year festivities.

In Enûma Eliš, a civil war between the gods was growing to a climactic battle. Marduk, a very young god, answered the call and was promised the position of head god if he would destroy the tyranny of Tiamat and her lieutenant (who was also her son and consort), Kingu. After winning victory, Marduk initiated a new order in which humans were created to bear the burdens of life so the gods could be at leisure. The text reads in part:

"O Marduk, thou art our avenger!

We give thee sovereignty over the whole world.

Sit thou down in might; be exalted in thy command.

Thy weapon shall never lose its power; it shall crush thy foe.

O Lord, spare the life of him that putteth his trust in thee,

But as for the god who began the rebellion, pour out his life."

Then set they in their midst a garment,

And unto Marduk, their first-born, they spake:

"May thy fate, O Lord, be supreme among the gods,

To destroy and to create; speak thou the word, and thy command shall be fulfilled. — Tablet 4

Marduk and the Bible

The Bible refers to an act of Cyrus the Great of Persia—allowing the Jews to return to Jerusalem to rebuild [Temple of Jerusalem|Yahweh's Temple]—that Cyrus himself believed was inspired by Marduk. After his capture of Babylon, Cyrus reversed the policy of his predecessors, who had captured the priests and destroyed the temples of the people they had conquered. He proclaimed the restoration of the indigenous religious cults in the countries he now controlled and provided funds for the rebuilding of temples to local deities.

Ezra 5:13 mentions the event: "In the first year of Cyrus king of Babylon, King Cyrus issued a decree to rebuild this house of God." Furthermore, the Book of Isaiah records a prophecy in which Yahweh takes the credit for inspiring Cyrus' act:

I will raise up Cyrus in my righteousness:

I will make all his ways straight.

He will rebuild my city

and set my exiles free (Isaiah 45:13)

Cyrus' own records, however, give the credit to Marduk rather than Yahweh. The act is memorialized in the "Cyrus Cylinder," which was discovered in 1879 in Babylon. It reads, in part:

Marduk, the great Lord, established as his fate for me a magnanimous heart of one who loves Babylon, and I daily attended to his worship... I returned the images of the gods, who had resided there [in Babylon], to their places; and I let them dwell in eternal abodes. I gathered all their inhabitants and returned to them their dwellings... at the command of Marduk.

Other Biblical Connections

Some Biblical scholars see a connection between Marduk's slaying of Tiamat and the biblical account of Yahweh's conquering the primordial sea-monster Leviathan.

It was you (Yahweh) who split open the sea by your power;

you broke the heads of the monster in the waters.

It was you who crushed the heads of Leviathan

and gave him as food to the creatures of the desert. (Psalm 74:13-14)

Isaiah, on the other hand, places the victory of God over Leviathan in the future. (Isaiah 27:1)
A cigar (tower) devoted to Marduk is thought by some scholars to be the origin of the biblical story of the Tower of Babel.
Jeremiah 50:2 records a purported late prophecy of Jeremiah predicting the downfall Babylon, in which Marduk will be "filled with terror":

Announce and proclaim among the nations,

lift up a banner and proclaim it;

keep nothing back, but say,

'Babylon will be captured;

Bel will be put to shame,

Marduk filled with terror.

Her images will be put to shame

and her idols filled with terror.

The word "Merodach," which is found as a surname of several non-Israelite kings in the Bible, is a Hebrew version of Marduk. The name of the biblical character Mordecai, portrayed in the Bible as the uncle of the Queen Esther of Persia and later prime minister under King Xerxes, is also a derivation of Marduk.
The deity referred to as Bel in Isaiah 46:1, Jeremiah 50: 2, and Jeremiah 51:44, is also probably Marduk.
Finally, the apocryphal story "Bel and the Dragon," appended to the Book of Daniel in some Christian Bibles, describes how the prophet Daniel exposes a fraud by the priests of Bel-Marduk who pretend that an idol consumes large quantities of food which they are actually using to enrich themselves and their families.

On-to-Ottawa Trek

2016-08-14T17:38:00.000-04:00

The On-to-Ottawa Trek was a long journey where thousands of unemployed men protested the dismal conditions in federal relief camps scattered in remote areas across Western Canada. The men lived and worked in these camps at a rate of twenty cents per day before walking out on strike in April 1935. After a two-month protest in Vancouver, British Columbia, camp strikers voted to bring their grievances to the federal government. The Great Depression crippled the Canadian economy and left one in nine citizens on relief. The relief, however, did not come free; the Bennett Government ordered the Department of National Defence to organize work camps where single unemployed men were used to construct roads and other public works at a rate of twenty cents per day. The poor working and living conditions led to general unrest in the camps.

The Workers' Unity League helped the men organize the Relief Camp Workers' Union in 1933. A strike was held in December 1934 with the men leaving the various camps and protesting in Vancouver. They returned to the camps after a promise of a government commission to look into their complaints. When a commission was not appointed a second strike was approved by the members and a walkout was called on April 4, 1935.

About 1,600 strikers headed for Vancouver. The strikers’ demands were wages of 50 cents an hour for unskilled work, union wages for skilled, and at least 120 hours of work a month; the provision of adequate first aid equipment in the camps; the extension of the Workmen’s Compensation Act to include camp workers; recognition of democratically elected workers' committees; that workers in camps be granted the right to vote in elections; and the camps be removed from the prevue of the Department of National Defence. Public support for the men was enormous but the municipal, provincial and federal governments passed responsibility between themselves. They then decided to take their grievances to the federal government. On June 3, 1935, hundreds of men began boarding boxcars headed east in what would become known as the “On-to-Ottawa Trek.”

Meeting in Ottawa

The protesters reached Regina, Saskatchewan, on June 14 and met with two federal cabinet ministers in the government of Prime Minister R. B. Bennett on June 17. Robert Manion and Robert Weir invited eight elected representatives of the protest (including Arthur "Slim" Evans) to Ottawa to meet Bennett on the condition the rest of the protesters stay in Regina, where a large contingent of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was located. The remaining trekkers continued to stay in the stadium located on Regina Exhibition Grounds, eating meals in local restaurants.

The June 22nd Ottawa meeting turned into a shouting match, with Bennett attacking the group as radicals and accusing Trek leader Arthur "Slim" Evans of being an "embezzler." Evans in turn called the Prime Minister "a liar" before the delegation was escorted out of the building and on to the street.

Regina Riot

The eight delegates arrived back in Regina on June 26. Attempts of the Trekkers to travel east by car or truck or train were thwarted by RCMP. A public meeting was called for July 1, 1935, in Market Square in Germantown (now the site of the Regina City Police station) to update the public on the progress of the movement. It was attended by 1,500 to 2,000 people, of whom only 300 were Trekkers. Most Trekkers decided to stay at the exhibition grounds.

Three large moving trucks were parked on three sides of the square concealing RCMP riot squads. Regina police were in the garage of the police station which was in Market Square. At 8:17 p.m. a whistle was blown and the police charged the crowd with batons from all four sides. The attack caught the people off guard before their anger took over. They fought back with sticks, stones, and anything at hand. Mounted RCMP officers then started to use tear gas and fired guns. Driven from the Square, and with the RCMP blocking the roadway back to the Stadium grounds, the battle continued in the surrounding streets for four hours.

Police fired revolvers above and into groups of people. Tear gas bombs were thrown at any groups that gathered together. Plate glass windows in stores and offices were smashed, but with one exception, these stores were not looted, they were burned. People covered their faces with wet handkerchiefs to counter the effects of the tear gas and barricaded streets with cars. Finally the Trekkers who had attended the meeting made their way individually or in small groups back to the exhibition stadium where the main body of Trekkers were quartered.

When it was over, 120 Trekkers and citizens had been arrested. Charles Millar, a plainclothes policeman, died, and Nick Shaack, a Trekker, would later die in the hospital from injuries sustained in the riot. Hundreds of injured local residents and Trekkers were taken to hospitals or private homes. Those taken to hospital were also arrested. Property damage was considerable. The police claimed 39 injuries in addition to the dead police officer, but denied that any protesters had been killed in the melee; the hospital records were subsequently altered to conceal the actual cause of death.

Trekkers Arthur Evans and George Black who were on the speakers' platform were arrested by plainclothes police at the beginning of the melee.

The city's exhibition grounds were surrounded by constables armed with revolvers and machine guns. The next day a barbed wire stockade was erected around the area. News of the police-instigated riot was front page news across Canada. About midnight one of the Trek leaders telephoned Saskatchewan Premier Gardiner, who agreed to meet their delegation the next morning. The RCMP were livid when they heard of this and apprehended the delegates for interrogation but eventually released them in time to see the premier.

Premier Gardiner sent a wire to the Prime Minister, accusing the police of "precipitating a riot" while he had been negotiating a settlement with the Trekkers. He also told the prime minister the "men should be fed where they are and sent back to camp and homes as they request" and stated his government was prepared to "undertake this work of disbanding the men." An agreement to this effect was subsequently negotiated. Bennett was satisfied that he had smashed what he believed was a communist revolt and Gardiner was glad to rid his province of the strikers.

The Federal Minister of Justice Hugh Guthrie made the false statement[citation needed] in the House of Commons on July 2 that "shots were fired by the strikers and the fire was replied to with shots from the city police." During the long trials that followed, no evidence was ever produced to show that strikers fired shots during the riot. For his part, Bennett characterized the On-to-Ottawa Trek as "not a mere uprising against law and order but a definite revolutionary effort on the part of a group of men to usurp authority and destroy government."

Effects

The events helped to discredit Bennett's Conservative government, and in the 1935 federal election, his party went from holding 134 seats to just 39. After the Trek, the Saskatchewan government provided free transportation as a peace sign back to the west. The camps were soon dismantled and replaced by seasonal relief camps run by the provinces and that paid the men slightly more for their labour than the earlier camps. Although the Trek did not reach Ottawa, its reverberations certainly did. Several demands of the Trekkers were eventually met, and the public support that galvanized behind the Trek set the tone for the social and welfare provisions of the postwar era.

Sayhuite

2016-08-07T17:47:00.000-04:00

Sayhuite (Saywite) is an archaeological site 47 kilometres (29 mi) east of the city Abancay, about 3 hours away from the city of Cusco, in the province Abancay in the region Apurímac in Peru. The site is regarded as a center of religious worship for Inca people, focusing on water. In the Monuments of the Inca by John Hemming, Hemming points to a colonial narrative that describes the interior of the Sayhuite temple. The temple featured larger columns draped in fabrics with gold bands the "thickness of one's hand." The temple was also under the care of the priestess Asarpay who jumped to her death in the nearby 400 meter gorge to avoid capture by Spanish forces.

Monolith

An important feature on the site is the Sayhuite monolith, an enormous rock containing more than 200 geometric and zoomorphic figures such as reptiles, frogs, and felines. Found at the top of a hill named Concacha, the stone was sculpted into the likeness of a topographical hydraulic model, complete with terraces, ponds, rivers, tunnels, and irrigation channels. The functions or purposes of this mysterious relic are not known, but researcher Dr. Arlan Andrews, Sr., believes that this monolith was used as a scale model to design, develop, test, and document the properties of water flow for public water projects, and to instruct ancient engineers and technicians in the concepts and practices of the craft. The rock was "edited" several times with new material, either altering the paths of the water or adding new paths altogether. About two meters long, and four meters wide, this monolith is the most popular attraction on the archaeological site.

Significance of the Monolith

While the creators of this monolith remain a mystery, it is significant as it provides archaeologists insight into the culture of past peoples. Through further analysis, archaeologists have determined that the Sayhuite site was a religious center for the Incan people. It is most likely that these people held rituals and ceremonies for the general worship of water at this site. The monolith is an important factor in this discovery, as it depicts a water-like flow between the carvings. It is also speculated, by modern day engineers, that the monolith is a depiction of the irrigation system present within the culture of the Incan people. While the precise meaning of this stone remains unsolved, its importance will always stay the same. The monolith is a part of the material culture of the Incan people, and helps archaeologists piece together how they lived and why they lived this way. Understanding the Incan culture from an archaeological perspective aids in archaeologists applying this knowledge to similar civilizations and finding links between ancient cultures, conducive with high-range theory of archaeological thought.

Tourism

The monolith is a popular site for tourists, due to its abnormally large size and intricate carvings. Tourists enjoy the feeling of awe and wonder as they view the monolith, a remnant of a significant ancient Incan culture. A possible explanation of the intricate carvings is that it depicts a religious ritual, perhaps associated with water, performed by the Incan people. Encouraging tourists to check out this monolith is important as it raises awareness about the archaeological record and urges the general public to get involved in the preservation of material culture. It is crucial that the general public understands the significance of preservation of archaeological sites, so as to prevent looting and vandalism. In addition, it is important that the general public is educated on archaeological findings, such as this one, so that they begin to understand past peoples and how they lived the way that they lived. In this understanding, present day peoples can begin to apply that knowledge to everyday life. In doing so, we as a general population become more educated on issues of culture and become more open minded and caring individuals.

Importance of Preservation

Preserving the site of Sayhuite and the monolith is crucial, because archaeology is a destructive process. In addition, looting is a common problem at archaeological sites and can hinder the analysis performed by archaeologists of past peoples and culture. Preserving the archaeological site of Sayhuite includes leaving parts of the site unexcavated and protecting the monolith from vandalism and erosion. To protect the archaeological site from vandalism and looting, education of the general public is crucial. This creates ways for the public to get involved in a significant part of history and raises awareness for the importance of preservation in the field of archaeology. Preserving the site allows for a chance for new technological advances, which would aid in archaeologists’ study of the site and could possibly help them understand the meaning of the monolith to a greater extent and with more accuracy.

Persepolis

2016-08-01T19:45:00.000-04:00

Persepolis was an ancient ceremonial capital of the second Iranian dynasty, the Achaemenid Empire, situated some 70 km northeast of modern city of Shiraz. It was built by Darius the Great, beginning around 518 B.C.E. To the ancient Persians, the city was known as Parsa, meaning the city of Persians, Persepolis being the Greek interpretation of the name (Περσες (meaning Persian)+ πόλις (meaning city)). In contemporary Iran the site is known as Takht-e Jamshid (Throne of Jamshid).
Persepolis has a long and complex history, designed to be the central city of the ever expanding Persian empire, besieged and destroyed by Alexander the Great, rebuilt and yet again left to waste, the city has produced many fascinating archaeological finds and is a symbol of contemporary Iranian pride. Although maintained as a ruin, it is impressive, commanding a sense of awe. Visitors to this ancient site can well imagine its beauty and splendor and mourn the destruction of its majesty.
History

Archaeological evidence suggests that the earliest remains of Persepolis date from around 518 B.C.E. It is believed that Darius the Great chose the area on a terrace at the foot of mountains to build a city in honor of the Persian empire. The site is marked by a large 125,000 square meter terrace, partly artificial and partly cut out of a mountain, with its east side leaning on Kuh-e Rahmet ("the Mountain of Mercy"). The other three sides are formed by a retaining wall, which varies in height with the slope of the ground. From five to 13 meters on the west side there is a double stair, gently sloping, which leads to the top. To create the level terrace, any depressions that were present were filled up with soil and heavy rocks. They joined the rocks together with metal clips. Darius ordered the construction of Apadana Palace and the Debating hall (Tripylon or the three-gated hall), the main imperial Treasury and its surroundings, which were completed at the time of the reign of his son, King Xerxes I.

The designers were greatly influenced by the Mesopotamians in their construction, and when a significant portion of the city was completed, Darius declared it the new capital of Persia, replacing Pasargadae. However, this was largely symbolic; Susa and Babylon acted as the real centers of governance, while Persepolis was an area of palaces, treasures, and tombs. Festivities and rituals were performed there, but outside the care taking staff and the occasional visiting official, the city was not occupied by a large population. Further construction of the buildings at the terrace continued until the downfall of the Achaemenid dynasty.

In about 333 B.C.E. during his invasion of Persia, Alexander the Great sent the bulk of his army to Persepolis. By the Royal Road, Alexander stormed and captured the Persian Gates (in the modern Zagros Mountains), then took Persepolis before its treasury could be looted. After several months Alexander allowed the troops to loot Persepolis. A fire broke out in the eastern palace of Xerxes and spread to the rest of the city. This was not the end of Persepolis however.

In 316 B.C.E. Persepolis was still the capital of Persia as a province of the great Macedonian Empire. The city must have gradually declined in the course of time; but the ruins of the Achaemenidae remained as a witness to its ancient glory. It is probable that the principal town of the country, or at least of the district, was always in this neighborhood. About 200 C.E. the city Istakhr (properly Stakhr) was established on the site of Persepolis. There the foundations of the second great Persian Empire were laid, and Istakhr acquired special importance as the center of priestly wisdom and orthodoxy. The Sassanian kings covered the faces of the rocks in this neighborhood, and in part even the Achaemenian ruins, with their sculptures and inscriptions, and must themselves have built largely here, although never on the same scale of magnificence as their ancient predecessors.

At the time of the Arabian conquest Istakhr offered a desperate resistance, but the city was still a place of considerable importance in the first century of Islam, although its greatness was speedily eclipsed by the new metropolis Shiraz. During the following centuries Istakhr gradually declined, until, as a city, it ceased to exist. This fruitful region, however, was covered with villages until the frightful devastations of the eighteenth century; and even now it is, comparatively speaking, well cultivated. The "castle of Istakhr" played a conspicuous part several times during the Muslim period as a strong fortress. It was the middlemost and the highest of the three steep crags which rise from the valley of the Kur, at some distance to the west or north-west of Nakshi Rustam.
Discovery

The first scientific excavation at Persepolis was carried out by Ernst Herzfeld in 1931, commissioned by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. He believed the reason behind the construction of Persepolis was the need for a majestic atmosphere, as a symbol for their empire and to celebrate special events, especially the “Nowruz,” (the Iranian New Year held on March 21). For historical reasons and deep rooted interests it was built on the birthplace of the Achaemenid dynasty, although this was not the center of their Empire at that time. For three years Hezfeld's team worked to uncover the Eastern stairwell of the Apadana, the main terrace, the stairs of the council hall and the harem of Xerxes. In 1934, Erich F. Schmidt took over the expedition and cleared out larger sections of the complex.
Ruins

On the terrace are the ruins of a number of colossal buildings, all constructed of dark-grey marble from the adjacent mountain. A few of the remaining pillars are still intact, standing in the ruins. Several of the buildings were never finished. These ruins, for which the name Chehel minar ("the forty columns or minarets"), can be traced back to the thirteenth century, are now known as Takht-e Jamshid - تخت جمشید ("the throne of Jamshid").

Behind Takht-e Jamshid are three sepulchers hewn out of the rock in the hillside. The facades, one of which is incomplete, are richly decorated with reliefs. About 13 km NNE, on the opposite side of the Pulwar, rises a perpendicular wall of rock, in which four similar tombs are cut, at a considerable height from the bottom of the valley. The modern Persians call this place Naqsh-e Rustam - نقش رستام or Nakshi Rostam ("the picture of Rostam"), from the Sassanian reliefs beneath the opening, which they take to be a representation of the mythical hero Rostam. That the occupants of these seven tombs were kings might be inferred from the sculptures, and one of those at Nakshi Rustam is expressly declared in its inscription to be the tomb of Darius Hystaspis.
The Gate of All Nations

The Gate of all Nations, referring to subjects of the empire, consisted of a grand hall that was almost 25 square meters, with four columns and its entrance on the Western Wall. There were two more doors, one to the south which opened to the Apadana yard and the other one opened onto a long road to the east. Pivoting devices found on the inner corners of all the doors indicate that they were two-leafed doors, probably made of wood and covered with sheets of ornate metal. A pair of Lamassus, bulls with the head of a bearded man, stand on the western threshold, and another pair with wings and a Persian head (Gopät-Shäh) on the eastern entrance, to reflect the Empire’s power. Xerxes' name was written in three languages and carved on the entrances, informing everyone that he ordered this to be built.
Apadana Palace

Darius the Great built the greatest and most glorious palace at Persepolis in the western side. This palace was named Apadana and was used for the King of Kings' official audiences. The work began in 515 B.C.E. and was completed 30 years later, by his son Xerxes I. The palace had a grand hall in the shape of a square, each side 60m long with seventy-two columns, thirteen of which still stand on the enormous platform. Each column is 19m high with a square Taurus and plinth. The columns carried the weight of the vast and heavy ceiling. The tops of the columns were made from animal sculptures such as two headed bulls, lions and eagles. The columns were joined to each other with the help of oak and cedar beams, which were brought from Lebanon. The walls were covered with a layer of mud and stucco to a depth of 5cm, which was used for bonding, and then covered with the greenish stucco which is found throughout the palaces.

At the western, northern and eastern sides of the palace there was a rectangular veranda which had twelve columns in two rows of six. At the south of the grand hall a series of rooms were built for storage. Two grand Persepolitan stairways were built, symmetrical to each other and connected to the stone foundations. To avoid the roof being eroded by rain vertical drains were built through the brick walls. In the Four Corners of Apadana, facing outwards, four towers were built.

The walls were tiled and decorated with pictures of lions, bulls, and flowers. Darius ordered his name and the details of his empire to be written in gold and silver on plates, and to place them in covered stone boxes in the foundations under the Four Corners of the palace. Two Persepolitan style symmetrical stairways were built on the northern and eastern sides of Apadana to compensate for a difference in level. There were also two other stairways in the middle of the building. The external front views of the palace were embossed with pictures of the Immortals, the Kings' elite guards. The northern stairway was completed during Darius' reign, but the other stairway was completed much later.
The Throne Hall

Next to the Apadana, second largest building of the Terrace and the final edifices, is the Throne Hall or the Imperial Army's hall of honor (also called the "Hundred-Columns Palace). This 70x70 square meter hall was started by Xerxes and completed by his son Artaxerxes I by the end of the fifth century B.C.E. Its eight stone doorways are decorated on the south and north with reliefs of throne scenes and on the east and west with scenes depicting the king in combat with monsters. In addition, the northern portico of the building is flanked by two colossal stone bulls.

In the beginning of Xerxes's reign the Throne Hall was used mainly for receptions for military commanders and representatives of all the subject nations of the empire, but later the Throne Hall served to be as an imperial museum.
Other palaces & structures

There were other palaces built, these included the Tachara palace which was built under Darius I; the Imperial treasury which was started by Darius in 510 B.C.E. and finished by Xerxes in 480 B.C.E.; and the Hadish palace by Xerxes I, which occupies the highest level of terrace and stand on the living rock. Other structures include: the Council Hall, the Tryplion Hall, the palaces of D, G, H, storerooms, stables and quarters, unfinished gateway, and a few miscellaneous structures at Persepolis near the south-east corner of the Terrace, at the foot of the mountain.
Tombs of King of Kings

The kings buried at Naghsh-e Rustam are probably Darius the Great, Xerxes I, Artaxerxes I, and Darius II. Xerxes II, who reigned for a very short time, could scarcely have obtained so splendid a monument, and still less could the usurper Sogdianus (Secydianus). The two completed graves behind Takhti Jamshid would then belong to Artaxerxes II and Artaxerxes III. The unfinished one is perhaps that of Arses of Persia, who reigned at the longest two years, or, if not his, then that of Darius III (Codomannus), who is one of those whose bodies are said to have been brought "to the Persians."
Persepolis, Silicians delegation

Another small group of ruins in the same style is found at the village of Hajjiäbäd, on the Pulwar, a good hour's walk above Takhti Jamshid. These formed a single building, which was still intact 900 years ago, and was used as the mosque of the then existing city of Istakhr.
Modern events

Modern day Iranians view the ruins of Persepolis in a fashion similar to how modern Egyptians view the pyramids: symbols of national pride. In 1971, Persepolis was the main staging ground for the 2,500 year celebration of Iran's monarchy. The UNESCO declared the citadel of Persepolis a World Heritage Site in 1979, acknowledging it as a site of significant historical and archaeological value. The site is maintained by the Iranian Cultural Heritage Foundation. Very little is allowed to be altered or enhanced, leaving the ruins as they are. Special permits are occasionally granted to archaeological expeditions.

The site continues to be one of the most popular tourist attraction in Iran, easily accessible from the closest city, Shiraz. Although it is decidedly a ruin, yet it remains impressive:

Even today, those who step up to its gigantic terrace of 125,000 square meters and see its majestic columns are filled with a sense of awe drifting into a dream-like trance. A dream in which one tries to visualize the beauty and dazzling splendor of Persepolitan palaces before their sad destruction.

Tarrare

2016-07-22T10:55:00.000-04:00

Tarrare (c. 1772 – 1798), sometimes spelled Tarare, was a French showman and soldier, noted for his unusual eating habits. Able to eat vast amounts of meat, he was constantly hungry; his parents could not provide for him, and he was turned out of the family home as a teenager. He travelled France in the company of a band of thieves and prostitutes, before becoming the warm-up act to a travelling charlatan; he would swallow corks, stones, live animals and a whole basketful of apples. He then took this act to Paris where he worked as a street performer.

At the start of the War of the First Coalition Tarrare joined the French Revolutionary Army. With military rations unable to satisfy his large appetite, he would eat any available food from gutters and refuse heaps but his condition still deteriorated through hunger. Suffering from exhaustion, he was hospitalised and became the subject of a series of medical experiments to test his eating capacity, in which, among other things, he ate a meal intended for 15 people in a single sitting, ate live cats, snakes, lizards and puppies, and swallowed an eel whole without chewing. Despite his unusual diet, he was of normal size and appearance, and showed no signs of mental illness other than what was described as an apathetic temperament.

General Alexandre de Beauharnais decided to put Tarrare's abilities to use, and he was employed as a courier by the French army, with the intention that he would swallow documents, pass through enemy lines, and recover them from his stool once safely at his destination. Unfortunately for Tarrare, he could not speak German, and on his first mission was captured by Prussian forces, severely beaten and underwent a mock execution before being returned to French lines.

Chastened by this experience, he agreed to submit to any procedure that would cure his appetite, and was treated with laudanum, tobacco pills, wine vinegar and soft-boiled eggs. The procedures failed, and doctors could not keep him on a controlled diet; he would sneak out of the hospital to scavenge for offal in gutters, rubbish heaps and outside butchers' shops, and attempted to drink the blood of other patients in the hospital and to eat the corpses in the hospital morgue. After being suspected of eating a toddler he was ejected from the hospital. He reappeared four years later in Versailles suffering from severe tuberculosis, and died shortly afterwards, following a lengthy bout of exudative diarrhoea.

Childhood and early life

Tarrare was born in rural France, near Lyon, around 1772. His date of birth is unrecorded and it is not even known if Tarrare was his real name or a nickname.

As a child, Tarrare had a huge appetite and by his teens could eat a quarter of a bullock, weighing as much as Tarrare himself, in a single day. By this time, his parents could not provide for him and had forced him to leave home. For some years after this, he toured the country with a roaming band of thieves and prostitutes, begging and stealing for food, before gaining employment as a warm-up act to a travelling charlatan. Tarrare would draw a crowd by eating corks, stones and live animals, and by swallowing an entire basketful of apples one after the other. He would eat ravenously and was particularly fond of snake meat.

In 1788, Tarrare moved to Paris to work as a street performer. He appears to have been successful in general, but on one occasion the act went wrong and he suffered severe intestinal obstruction. Members of the crowd carried him to the Hôtel-Dieu hospital, where he was treated with powerful laxatives. He made a full recovery and offered to demonstrate his act by eating his surgeon's watch and chain; M. Giraud, the surgeon, was unimpressed by the offer and warned him that if he did so, he would cut Tarrare open to recover the items.

Appearance and behaviour

Despite his unusual diet, Tarrare was slim and of average height. At the age of 17, he weighed only 100 pounds (45 kg; 7 st 2 lb). He was described as having unusually soft fair hair and an abnormally wide mouth, in which his teeth were heavily stained and on which the lips were almost invisible. When he had not eaten, his skin would hang so loosely that he could wrap the fold of skin from his abdomen around his waist. When full, his abdomen would distend "like a huge balloon". The skin of his cheeks was wrinkled and hung loosely, and when stretched out, he could hold twelve eggs or apples in his mouth. His body was hot to the touch and he sweated heavily, constantly suffering from foul body odour; he was described as stinking "to such a degree that he could not be endured within the distance of twenty paces". This smell would get noticeably worse after he had eaten, his eyes and cheeks would become bloodshot, a visible vapour would rise from his body,[ and he would become lethargic, during which time he would belch noisily and his jaws would make swallowing motions. He suffered from chronic diarrhoea, which was said to be "fetid beyond all conception". Despite his large intake of food, he did not appear either to vomit excessively or to gain weight. Aside from his eating habits, his contemporaries saw no apparent signs of mental illness or unusual behaviour in him, other than an apparently apathetic temperament with "a complete lack of force and ideas".

The cause of Tarrare's behaviour is not known. While there are other documented cases of similar behaviour from the period, none of the subjects other than Tarrare were autopsied and there have been no modern documented cases resembling Tarrare. Hyperthyroidism can induce an extreme appetite, rapid weight loss, profuse sweating, heat intolerance, and fine hair. Bondeson (2006) speculates that Tarrare suffered from a damaged amygdala; it is known that injuries to the amygdala in animals can induce polyphagia.

Military service

On the outbreak of the War of the First Coalition, Tarrare joined the French Revolutionary Army. Unfortunately for him, military rations were insufficient to satisfy his appetite. He would carry out tasks for other soldiers in return for a share of their rations and scavenge on the dungheap for scraps, but this was not enough to satisfy him. Suffering from extreme exhaustion, he was admitted to the military hospital at Soultz-Haut-Rhin. He was granted quadruple rations but remained hungry; he would scavenge for garbage in gutters and refuse containers, eat the scraps of food left by other patients, and creep into the apothecary's room to eat the poultices. Military surgeons could not understand his appetite; Tarrare was ordered to remain in the military hospital to take part in physiological experiments designed by Dr. Courville (surgeon to the 9th Hussar Regiment) and George Didier, Baron Percy, surgeon-in-chief of the hospital.

"The dogs and cats fled in terror at his aspect, as if they had anticipated the kind of fate he was preparing for them"
Baron Percy

Courville and Percy decided to test Tarrare's capacity for food. A meal had been prepared for 15 labourers near the hospital gates; although generally hospital staff restrained Tarrare in the presence of food, on this occasion Courville allowed him to reach the table undisturbed. Tarrare ate the entire meal of two large meat pies, plates of grease and salt and four gallons of milk, and then immediately fell asleep; Courville noted that Tarrare's belly became taut and inflated like a large balloon. On another occasion Tarrare was presented with a live cat. He tore the cat's abdomen open with his teeth and drank its blood, and proceeded to eat the entire cat aside from its bones, before vomiting up its fur and skin. Following this, hospital staff offered Tarrare a variety of other animals including snakes, lizards and puppies, all of which were eaten; he also swallowed an entire eel without chewing, having first crushed its head with his teeth.

Service as a military courier

After several months he spent as an experimental case, military authorities began to press for Tarrare to be returned to active duty. Dr. Courville was keen to continue his investigations into Tarrare's eating habits and digestive system, and approached General Alexandre de Beauharnais with a suggestion that Tarrare's unusual abilities and behaviour could be put to military use. A document was placed inside a wooden box which was in turn fed to Tarrare. Two days later, the box was retrieved from his excrement, with the document still in legible condition. Courville proposed to de Beauharnais that Tarrare could thus serve as a military courier, carrying documents securely through enemy territory with no risk of their being found if he were searched.

Tarrare was called on by Beauharnais to demonstrate his abilities before a gathering of the commanders of the Army of the Rhine. Having swallowed the box successfully, Tarrare was given a wheelbarrow filled with 30 pounds (14 kg) of raw bull's lungs and liver as a reward, which he immediately ate in front of the assembled generals.

Following this successful demonstration, Tarrare became employed officially as a spy of the Army of the Rhine. Although General de Beauharnais was convinced of Tarrare's physical capacity to carry messages internally, he was concerned about his mental state and reluctant to entrust him initially with significant military documents. Tarrare was ordered as his first assignment to carry a message to a French colonel imprisoned by the Prussians near Neustadt; he was told that the documents were of great military significance, but in reality de Beauharnais had merely written a note asking the colonel to confirm that the message had been received successfully, and if so to return a reply of any potentially useful information about Prussian troop movements.

Tarrare crossed Prussian lines under cover of darkness, disguised as a German peasant. Unable to speak German, he soon attracted the attention of local residents, who alerted the Prussian authorities, and he was captured outside Landau. A strip search found nothing suspicious on his person, and despite being whipped by Prussian soldiers, he refused to betray his mission. Brought before the local Prussian commander, General Zoegli, he again refused to talk and was imprisoned. After 24 hours of captivity, Tarrare relented and explained the scheme to his captors. He was chained to a latrine, and eventually, 30 hours after being swallowed, the wooden box emerged. Zoegli was furious when the documents, which Tarrare had said contained vital intelligence, transpired only to be de Beauharnais's dummy message, and Tarrare was taken to a gallows and the noose placed around his neck. (Some sources state that Zoegli never retrieved the box, as Tarrare had the presence of mind to recover and eat the stool containing it before it could be seized by the Prussians.) At the last minute, Zoegli relented, and Tarrare was taken down from the scaffold, given a severe beating, and released near the French lines.

Attempted cures

Following this incident, Tarrare was desperate to avoid further military service, and returned to the hospital, telling Percy that he would attempt any possible cure for his appetite. Percy treated him with laudanum without success; further treatments with wine vinegar and tobacco pills were likewise unsuccessful. Following these failures, Percy fed Tarrare large quantities of soft-boiled eggs, but this also failed to suppress his appetite. Efforts to keep him on any kind of controlled diet failed; he would sneak out of the hospital to scavenge for offal outside butchers' shops and to fight stray dogs for carrion in gutters, alleys and rubbish heaps. He was also caught several times within the hospital drinking from patients undergoing bloodletting, and attempting to eat the bodies in the hospital mortuary. Other doctors believed that Tarrare was mentally ill and pressed for him to be transferred to a lunatic asylum, but Percy was keen to continue his experiments and Tarrare remained in the military hospital.

After some time, a 14-month-old child disappeared from the hospital, and Tarrare was immediately suspected. Percy was unable or unwilling to defend him, and the hospital staff chased Tarrare from the hospital, to which he never returned.

Death

Four years later, in 1798, a M. Tessier of Versailles hospital contacted Percy to notify him that a patient of theirs wished to see him. It was Tarrare, now bedridden and weak. Tarrare told Percy that he had swallowed a golden fork two years earlier, which he believed was lodged inside him and causing his current weakness. He hoped that Percy could find some way to remove it. Percy, however, recognised him as suffering from advanced tuberculosis. A month later, Tarrare began to suffer from continuous exudative diarrhoea, dying shortly afterwards.

The corpse rotted quickly; the surgeons of the hospital refused to dissect it. Tessier, however, wanted to find out how Tarrare differed from the norm internally, and was also curious as to whether the gold fork was actually lodged inside him. At the autopsy, Tarrare's gullet was found to be abnormally wide and when his jaws were opened, surgeons could see down a broad canal into the stomach. His body was found to be filled with pus, his liver and gallbladder were abnormally large, and his stomach was enormous, covered in ulcers and filling most of his abdominal cavity. The fork was never found.

Jamie Fleeman or Fleeming

2016-07-03T18:16:00.001-04:00

Jamie Fleeman or Fleeming (1713–1778) was better known as "the Laird of Udny's Fool" or "the Laird of Udny's Fule" in the Scots language. Although described as a fool, he had a reputation for his clever, witty repartee and many anecdotal tales of his actions are re-capped. He was specifically mentioned in the 1845 Statistical Accounts of Scotland and characterised in novels. Fleeman is associated with the Countess of Erroll and was used by her to carry messages to Jacobite rebels. He was probably the last family jester in Scotland.

Early life

Fleeman was born in Longside, Aberdeenshire, in 1713 and was one of three children. His precise date of birth is not given but he is recorded as being baptised on 7 April 1713. Few details are known about his father except he was a crofter who was also named James Fleming. There is also scant information about his mother other than that she drowned in a deep pool beside the Bridge of Ludquharn. The pool became known as "Fleeman's Pot". Fleeman's sister, Martha, was a Presbyterian and often conversed by quoting Psalms and had the reputation of being demented. Fleeman's brother is believed to have died aboard HMS Serapis.

Fleeman is described as having a large round head with dull hair that stood on end giving the impression he had been "scared out of his wits", broad shouldered and possessing formidable strength. He often went barefoot and wore basic clothing of sack-cloth or serge material.

The home of Sir Alexander Guthrie near Ludquharn was where Fleeman spent his childhood days but he was already being favoured by other local gentry for his ready wit and amusing remarks. Most of his life was then predominantly spent as a part of the Laird of Udny's household although Fleeman still roamed wherever he chose.

Career

Fleeman was employed by the Laird of Udny and was dependent on him. His primary function was to provide amusement to the family but he also worked as a farm labourer tending cows and geese. Although Fleeman has been described as a fool or a family jester, he was listed as a pauper in the statistical accounts. He is specifically mentioned by Reverend John Imray of Longside Parish under Section II, eminent characters of the New Statistical Account of Scotland 1845, where it states:

No offence is meant by introducing here the name of an individual who had a county (if not a national) reputation, and whose printed memorabilia have gone through several editions. This was Jamie Fleeman (or Fleeming), "the Laird of Udny's fool," who flourished here about the middle of last century. His name appears frequently in the session's list of paupers and his sayings and doings have been a theme of wonderment to a generation or two.

In 1734 Fleeman was with the Laird of Udny and his family at Knockhall Castle. The castle was destroyed by fire and Fleeman is credited with saving the lives of the family. He was said to have been woken by a dog who was his companion and after discovering the fire, first woke his friends before throwing a large oak chest through a window; normally the weight of the chest meant it needed three men to lift it. Initially Fleeman did not attempt to rouse anyone he disliked, including a bad-tempered domestic servant who he felt generally treated him badly. It was only after he was begged by other staff that he went back into the castle and woke the woman. The family returned to living at Udny Castle after the fire.

Fleeman is described as a "protector and confidante" of the Countess of Erroll who was a fervent Jacobite supporter. He was able to move around the area without being questioned or suspected of any illicit activity and she used him to deliver messages when she was mustering support for the Jacobite rebellion. She also used him to convey messages to Lord Pitsligo when he was in hiding at Auchiries.

His notoriety extended to Fleeman's name being included in one of Bram Stoker's Dracula stories. In the collection of works entitled Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories, first published after Stoker's death, in the tale called "Crooken Sands", Mr Markham has asked his companion if he saw someone else dressed in the same manner as his own. The reply given was that there had not been any such fool since the time of Jamie Fleeman, the Laird of Udny's Fool. The fictional character of Davie Gellatley who appears in the 1814 novel Waverley by Sir Walter Scott is thought to be based on Fleeman. Gellatley is characterised as an 'innocent' and a 'fool'.

Some of Fleeman's remarks and actions were also recapped in a newspaper article in a significant weekly publication in New Zealand in 1889.

Fleeman is attributed as the last of the "family jesters in Scotland" and is better known than the laird who employed him.

Anecdotes

Several of Fleeman's anecdotes are published. One frequently quoted is the tale of Fleeman approaching a minister with a horse shoe he had found on the road. He asked the minister what it was and received the reply "Why Jamie, any fool would know that it is a horse shoe"; Fleeman's response was "Ah, what it is to be wise – to ken it's no a meer's shoe." On another occasion a rather droll but superior gent condescendingly asked Fleeman "Whose fool are you?" and Fleeman answered "I'm Udny's feel. Wha's feel are ye?"

Death

During a summer evening of 1778, Fleeman became soaked in a heavy rain storm. He quickly developed a fever, which then turned to jaundice. He received no offers of help and spent time wandering between different houses but no one was willing to give him shelter. Fleeman's weakened state caused him to rapidly become emaciated and lose his strength. He eventually found shelter in a barn at Little Ardiffery, in the parish of Cruden. He secured the barn door with a piece of planking and fell asleep. A short while later, some farm labourers, unaware Fleeman was sleeping behind the door, forced it open causing the plank to strike Fleeman's head. The severity of his injury was not discovered until some hours later; he was then taken to the kitchen and his wound attended to. Fleeman insisted he wanted to return to Longside, some eight miles distant. He took a whole day to walk back to his sister's cottage in Kinmundy. Two days later, Fleeman died. Two versions of his last words are given; they were either: "I'm of a gentle persuasion, dinna bury me like a beast" or "I'm a Christian, dinna bury me like a beast."

Fleeman's grave is at Longside and a monument to mark his grave was erected in 1861.

Triboulet

2016-06-26T18:25:00.000-04:00

He appears in Book 3 of François Rabelais' Pantagrueline chronicles. He appears in Victor Hugo's Le Roi s'amuse and its opera version, Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto, a blend of "Triboulet" and French rigoler (to laugh), intended to deflect the censorship that Hugo's work had received. A triboulet, a jester dressed entirely in red, is a character associated with the carnival of Monthey in Switzerland.

Attributed famous quotes

    Triboulet once came to the Monarch with a complaint.

    Triboulet: "A noble has threatened to hang me!"
    The Monarch: "Don't worry! If he hangs you I'll have him beheaded fifteen minutes later."
    Triboulet: "Well, would it be possible to behead him 15 minutes before?"

    Once, Triboulet could not contain himself and slapped the monarch on the bum. The monarch lost his temper and threatened to execute Triboulet. A little later, the monarch calmed down a little and promised to forgive Triboulet if he could think of an apology more insulting than the offending deed.

    A few seconds later, Triboulet responded: "I'm so sorry, your majesty, that I didn't recognize you! I mistook you for the Queen!"

Death

Having broken an order from Francis I forbidding Triboulet from making jokes on the queen and courtesans, the king ordered that he should be put to death. Having served particularly well the king for many years, Francis I granted Triboulet the right to choose the way he would die. Triboulet, with his sharp mind, said the following: "Bon sire, par sainte Nitouche et saint Pansard, patrons de la folie, je demande à mourir de vieillesse." which translates to: "Sir, I implore Saint Nitouche and Saint Pansard, patrons of insanity, to make me die from old age." Having no other choice than to laugh, the king ordered that Triboulet must not be executed, but rather instead be banished from the realm.

Yucca

2016-05-26T09:26:00.000-04:00

Yucca is a genus of perennial shrubs and trees in the family Asparagaceae, subfamily Agavoideae. Its 40-50 species are notable for their rosettes of evergreen, tough, sword-shaped leaves and large terminal panicles of white or whitish flowers. They are native to the hot and dry (arid) parts of the Americas and the Caribbean. Early reports of the species were confused with the cassava (Manihot esculenta). Consequently, Linnaeus mistakenly derived the generic name from the Taíno word for the latter, yuca (spelled with a single "c"). It is commonly found growing in rural graveyards and when in bloom the cluster of (usually pale) flowers on a thin stalk appear as floating apparitions.

Distribution

The natural distribution range of the genus Yucca (49 species and 24 subspecies) covers a vast area of North America, Central America, and South America. From Baja California in the west, northwards into the southwestern United States, through the drier central states as far north as Alberta in Canada (Yucca glauca ssp. albertana). Yucca is also native to the lowlands and dry beach scrub of the Gulf and South Atlantic states from coastal Texas to easternmost Virginia. To the south, the genus is represented throughout Mexico and extends into Guatemala (Yucca guatemalensis). Yuccas have adapted to an equally vast range of climatic and ecological conditions. They are to be found in rocky deserts and badlands, in prairies and grassland, in mountainous regions, in light woodland, in coastal sands (Yucca filamentosa), and even in subtropical and semitemperate zones, although these are generally arid to Semi-arid climate-semiarid.

Ecology

Yuccas have a very specialized, mutualistic pollination system, being pollinated by yucca moths (family Prodoxidae); the insect purposefully transfers the pollen from the stamens of one plant to the stigma of another, and at the same time lays an egg in the flower; the moth larva then feeds on some of the developing seeds, always leaving enough seed to perpetuate the species. Certain species of the yucca moth have evolved antagonistic features against the plant and do not assist in the plants pollination efforts while continuing to lay their eggs in the plant for protection. Yucca species are the host plants for the caterpillars of the yucca giant-skipper (Megathymus yuccae), ursine giant-skipper (Megathymus ursus), and Strecker's giant-skipper (Megathymus streckeri).

Adaptations

Species of yucca have adapted to a wide variety of climates in mountains, coastal sand, grasslands and prairies as well as rocky badlands and deserts. Most species of yucca have thick, waxy skins to prevent loss of water through evaporation. They frequently store water in thick roots. Some yuccas store water in thick, fleshy leaves. Some desert plants have an oily coating on their leaves or pads that traps moisture, thereby reducing water loss. Some species drop their leaves during drought to prevent the loss of water through transpiration. Dead leaves of yucca collecting against the trunk of the trees help protect it from the sun. The channeled leaves of a yucca direct dew and rainfall water to their roots. Yuccas are said to be "fire adapted"; that is, they grow and spread vigorously after wildfires.

Uses

Yuccas are widely grown as ornamental plants in gardens. Many species also bear edible parts, including fruits, seeds, flowers, flowering stems, and more rarely roots. References to yucca root as food often stem from confusion with the similarly pronounced, but botanically unrelated, yuca, also called cassava or manioc (Manihot esculenta). Roots of soaptree yucca (Yucca elata) are high in saponins and are used as a shampoo in Native American rituals. Dried yucca leaves and trunk fibers have a low ignition temperature, making the plant desirable for use in starting fires via friction. In rural Appalachian areas, species such as Yucca filamentosa are referred to as "meat hangers". The tough, fibrous leaves with their sharp-spined tips were used to puncture meat and knotted to form a loop with which to hang meat for salt curing or in smoke houses.

Cultivation

Yuccas are widely grown as architectural plants providing a dramatic accent to landscape design. They tolerate a range of conditions, but are best grown in full sun in subtropical or mild temperate areas. In gardening centres and horticultural catalogues they are usually grouped with other architectural plants such as cordylines and phormiums.

Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia) are protected by law in some states. A permit is needed for wild collection. As a landscape plant, they can be killed by excessive water during their summer dormant phase, so are avoided by landscape contractors.

Several species of yucca can be grown outdoors in mild temperate climates where they are protected from frost. These include:-

    Y. filamentosa
    Y. flaccida



    Y. gloriosa
    Y. recurvifolia

Symbolism

The "yucca flower" is the state flower of New Mexico.

St. John's Anglican Church

2016-05-02T16:57:00.002-04:00

Nestled in the Town's centre and occupying the westernmost of the four blocks that were originally reserved for public purposes, is St. John's Anglican Church.

Tragically, the church suffered substantial damage as a result of a fire in the early hours of November 1, 2001. Details of the fire and the four-year restoration project can be found here.

At the time of the settlement in 1753, services were first held in the open air on this site under the ministry of the first Anglican missionary, Jean Baptiste Moreau.

In 1754, the Lords of Trade and Plantations (the British Colonial Government administrators) made a grant of about 500 pounds for the building of a church, and the oak frame of St. John's was brought to Lunenburg from Boston. It is believed that the frame may have come from the old King's Chapel in Boston, which was being dismantled at the time.

The original building was constructed in the simple two storey New England meeting-house style. It took several years to build the church and it was not until 1763 that the building could be finished to the point where it could be said to be "neat and commodious".

Early sketches indicate that the church originally had a circular tower with a steeply pitched conical roof.

The building remained in this original form for more than 80 years.

In 1840, the tower was redesigned by William Lawson, a school master who later became principal of the Lunenburg Grammer School. The new tower was 12 x 12 ft. square, 70 ft. high and had "handsome pinnacles in the gothic style," heralding the burgeoning overall gothic character of the church. The new tower also facilitated the inclusion of a vestry room, a large entry room, and a singing pew. It cost about 300 pounds to build, and later, housed a bell donated by Admiral Boscowen. Between 1870-75, the church was moved 25 ft. to the west to make room for the addition of a new chancel at the eastern end. At the same time the nave was extended by 10 ft. and the flat, plastered ceiling was changed to the present sloping ceiling. Also, the tower was rebuilt yet again, taking the form in which it can still be seen today.

The next change came in 1892 when the present side aisles, designed by a committee of carpenters from the congregation, were added under the direction of Solomon Morash. Also at this time, the notable hammer beam ceiling structure was installed. The beams occur at each column location and are joined across the width of the church by steel tie rods. In addition to the exposed wooden roof deck, dark wooden pews, wooden floor, marbleized pillars, and many stained glass windows, paintings and plaques have, over the years, added further richness to the interior.

Despite alterations, the church has acquired a unique, highly ornamented "carpenter gothic" character that is in perfect harmony with both its site and with the wooden houses that surround it, these houses themselves having been altered and ornamented in much the same way. The church, which, after St. Paul's in Halifax, was the second Anglican church to be erected in Nova Scotia, is a highly significant local landmark and has been recognized as such by its designation as a Provincial Heritage Property and National Historic Site.

CHARLES FREDERICK ALLISON

2016-04-13T14:28:00.000-04:00

ALLISON, CHARLES FREDERICK, merchant, philanthropist, and college administrator; b. 25 Jan. 1795 in Cornwallis, N.S., son of James Allison, farmer and merchant, and Margaret Hutchinson; m. 23 June 1840 Milcah Trueman, and they had at least one daughter; d. 20 Nov. 1858 in Sackville, N.B.

Of Ulster Scottish descent, Charles Frederick Allison grew up in Cornwallis, N.S., where he received his education. After moving to Parrsboro, he spent several years working as a clerk in a store owned by James Ratchford, a relative by marriage. At the age of 21 he joined the expanding mercantile firm run by his cousin William Crane and Bardin Turner in Sackville, N.B., and within a few years became a partner. The Crane and Allison concern operated both in the Sackville area, as a distributor of local agricultural produce and imported goods, and on the Miramichi River, exporting timber to Liverpool and selling provisions and imported commodities. The firm’s widespread trading links in both Great Britain and the New England states enabled it also to play a significant role in stimulating the development of shipbuilding in Sackville parish, since it bought several vessels from local yards during the 1820s. Allison’s cautious approach to business transactions – a contemporary remarked that he was “inclined to pursue safe rather than rapid modes of acquiring wealth” – made him an effective counterpart to the ebullient Crane. As Crane was active in provincial politics from 1824, the daily conduct of the firm’s affairs fell largely to Allison, until he retired from active business in early 1840 to devote himself to the establishment of Mount Allison Wesleyan Academy in Sackville.

The roots of Allison’s interest in education lay in a spiritual crisis during the mid 1830s which resulted in his conversion from the Church of England to the Methodist denomination. Through the influence of the Reverend William Smithson, he began to attend Methodist services in 1833, and in 1836 he was among those converted at a series of revival meetings held in Sackville by the Reverend John Bass Strong. Allison thus joined a denomination which had aspired for some years to open an educational institution in the Maritime provinces but had been unable to raise the necessary funds. In 1839 he resolved this difficulty by offering to buy land in Sackville for a school and to construct a suitable building at his own expense, and to donate £100 annually for its first ten years of operation. He wanted a preparatory school for boys where “not only the Elementary, but higher branches of Education may be taught.”

First broached at a meeting of New Brunswick Methodist ministers in Saint John, Allison’s offer was then put to a joint meeting of the New Brunswick and Nova Scotia districts in Halifax on 12 July 1839. An observer, the Reverend Enoch Wood*, later recalled Allison’s characteristically unassuming demeanour at the meeting. “One sentence of his address,” Wood wrote, “I have never forgotten. . . . ‘The Lord hath put it into my heart to give this sum towards building a Wesleyan Academy,’ – and then he made a short pause, as though he was afraid he had spoken too strongly, resuming – “I know the impression is from the Lord, for I am naturally fond of money.’”

Allison’s “munificent offer” was accepted by the meeting. Winding up his business affairs by the following January, he laid the foundation-stone for the Mount Allison Wesleyan Academy on 9 July 1840, supervised the construction personally, and saw it opened to students on 19 Jan. 1843. In the years that followed, he took an active interest in its operation: he was a frequent visitor to the school and served as treasurer until his death. Shy by nature and quiet in manner, Allison shunned public attention. In 1849 he declined an appointment to the Legislative Council of New Brunswick offered by the government leader, Edward Barron Chandler*, even though he had been assured that he would not be called upon to identify himself with any political party. Most of his energy continued to be expended on the academy, and during the late 1840s and early 1850s he played a leading role in promoting the idea of adding a school for girls. He again supervised the construction of a building and, in the summer of 1854, after donating £1,000, had the satisfaction of seeing the female academy, with Mary Electa Adams* as lady preceptress, begin to receive students. Allison did not live to see the inauguration of yet a further institution bearing his name – the Mount Allison Wesleyan College, opened in 1862 – but it benefited from a sum left in his will to be put towards a degree-granting college.

Yet when Allison died, it was not his money that was chiefly remembered at Mount Allison, important though his donations had been. In fact, his retirement from business in 1840 had limited his wealth and his fortune was described as “a small one”; his estate was estimated at only £10,000. Humphrey Pickard*, the academy’s principal, declared that Allison’s gift had also included his time and energy, and his passing was mourned as the loss of an able counsellor and a loyal and constant friend of the institution. As a merchant, Allison had participated successfully in the commercial economy of the Maritime provinces; as the founder of Mount Allison, he turned both his wealth and his personal abilities to the service of his religious denomination and to the cause of education in the region.

Red Fox Sparrow

2016-03-26T08:24:00.000-04:00

Red Fox Sparrow is the collective name for the most brightly colored taxa in the American sparrow genus Passerella, the Passerella iliaca iliaca group.

Taxonomy

Pending wider-spread acceptance of species status, the red fox sparrow is currently classified as a "subspecies group" within fox sparrows.

It has long been suspected to be a separate evolutionary lineage due to morphological distinctness, and this is confirmed by analysis of mtDNA sequence and haplotype data. This group appears to be most closely related to the slate-colored fox sparrows, but it is altogether likely to represent the basalmost divergence of the fox sparrow clade.

Description

The red fox sparrow is a large sparrow with a length of 15–19 cm (6–7.5 inches), wingspan of 27 cm (10.5 inches) and an average weight of 32 grams (1.1 oz). The head is gray with a rufus crown auriculars or ear coverts. Throat is white with a rufus lateral stripe on each side. The lower bill is yellow while the top transitions from yellow at the bottom to black at the top. The breast has reddish brown streaks with a messy central spot. The streaks continue down the flanks but the belly is generally white. The combination of distinct rufus and gray streaks on the back with a gray rump is diagnostic. Sexes are morphologically similar.

Vocalization

Its voice is described as "a loud smack like Brown Thrasher".

Behavior

Reproduction

Red fox sparrows breed in a wide band that stretches through mostly taiga habitat, from Newfoundland to northern Alaska. Their preferred breeding habitats are dense willow and alder thickets as well as spruce and fir bogs.

Red fox sparrows may nest on the ground, or in shrubs and trees. They typically nest less than 2 metres off the ground. Clutch consists of 3–5 pale blue to pale green eggs that are thickly spotted with brown. Incubation lasts between 12 to 14 days. The eggs are mostly incubated by the female though both sexes feed the young. Young birds are altricial and fledge in 9 to 11 days.

Wintering and migration

They winter in temperate and subtropical North America; in the northern United States and southern Canada they often only stop over on their migration further south. The spring migration starts around February, and by early May almost all birds have returned to the breeding grounds. In fall, they start to move south around early October, and by mid-November, only the last stragglers still remain up North.

Ranges and geographical variation

Geographic variation in the iliaca complex is minor compared to individual variation, both in morphology and molecular data samples. The western Yukon fox sparrow (Passerella iliaca zaboria) differs from the nominate subspecies, the eastern fox sparrow (Passerella iliaca iliaca) only in having a grayer head and browner malar stripe on average. The morphological distinction between the subspecies is not pronounced and the birds are not resident all year; therefore absolutely certain identification within the red fox sparrow complex is never possible in the field.

However, the populations occupy different ranges, apparently—as far as they can be distinguished—with just a small band of overlap. The contact zone is roughly the area between the Nelson and lower Churchill Rivers, Manitoba, in summer. In winter, the Mississippi River and the US states of Alabama and Georgia mark the approximate boundary between the subspecies' ranges. P. i. iliaca occurs from S Wisconsin and Ontario east to Massachusetts and then along the coast north to southern Canada; it ranges south to the Gulf of Mexico and N Florida, whereas P. i. zaboria occurs from SE Minnesota to the Great Plains, south to Texas and east to the zone of overlap mentioned above.

Marion Power Shovel Company

2016-03-13T13:24:00.000-04:00

Marion Power Shovel Company was an American firm that designed, manufactured and sold steam shovels, power shovels, blast hole drills, excavators, and dragline excavators for use in the construction and mining industries. The company also built the two crawler-transporters used by NASA for transporting the Saturn V rocket and later the Space Shuttle to their launch pads.

Founded in Marion, Ohio in August, 1884 by Henry Barnhart, Edward Huber and George W. King as the Marion Steam Shovel Company, the company grew through sales and acquisitions throughout the 20th century. The company changed its name to Marion Power Shovel Company in 1946 to reflect the industry's change from steam power to diesel power.

The company ceased to be an independent entity when it was sold, becoming the Marion division of Dresser Industries in 1977. In 1992 Dresser spun off the Marion division and certain other assets into a holding company that would eventually become known as Global Industrial Technologies, Inc. Global put the Marion division up for sale in 1997 and its longtime rival Bucyrus International purchased the division for US$40.1 million. Bucyrus integrated the Marion division's products into the Bucyrus product line, then closed the Marion, Ohio, facility.

History
Marion Steam Shovel Company

The Marion Steam Shovel Company was established by Henry Barnhart, George W. King and Edward Huber in August 1884. While steam shovels had been made prior to this date in the United States, Barnhart persuaded Huber to financially back his design, which incorporated a stronger bucket support than other makes. Barnhart and Huber patented Barnhart's changes under United States Patent No. 285,100 on September 18, 1883. One element of Barnhart's design was the use of solid iron rods (hog rings) to support the boom of the shovel, which was stronger than simple chain.

This machine set the record in July 1908 for moving 53,000 cubic yards (41,000 m3) of earth in 25 eight-hour days after American project management began. Marion built large and small steam shovels for building contractors, railroads and the US Army Corps of Engineers who were building the Panama Canal at the time.

A Marion Model 91, the type used at the Panama Canal, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008. Marion was most successful with the Model 20 series contractors shovels.

During the project Marion Shovels broke world records in amount of cubic earth moved within a given time frame (1908) and greatest amount (8-ton) lifted by a single bucket (1911).

The Type 22 and Type 28 Marion shovels were the most popular. They were the fully revolving, wheel or track contractors shovel. Around 800 were built from 1905 to 1930. Contractors and road builders found them very useful. Marion also built floating dredges from land reclamation projects and the famous Klondike Gold dredges in Dawson City. Trenching shovels, stripping shovels, railroad shovels and draglines were also built. Large shovels were built for the Ohio open pit coalfields. By the late 1930s, steam gave way to diesel engine.

By 1911 90% of all large bucket steam shovels and draglines were produced in Marion Ohio, which was also the headquarters of Osgood Steam Shovel, Fairbanks Steam Shovel and General Excavating Corporation. (Competitor Bucyrus Steam Shovel was founded 15 miles (24 km) from Marion in nearby Bucyrus, Ohio; the company relocated soon thereafter to Milwaukee, Wisconsin after Bucyrus city officials refused to approve expansion plans for the company.)

Marion Power Shovel

In April 1946, the company changed its name to the Marion Power Shovel Company to more closely reflect its products.

Marion built its first walking dragline in 1939 and became a key player in providing giant stripping shovels to the coal industry, being the first to put a long-boom revolving stripping shovel to work in North America in 1911. Marion’s succession of giant shovels, many breaking world size records, starting with The Mountaineer in 1956 which was 16 stories, and could in one shovel load move approximately 90 tons, which was in the 1950s one of the world's largest power shovels. Marion's huge power shovel models eventually culminated in the world’s largest: the 1965 Marion 6360. The 6360 at the Captain Mine, Illinois, operated with a 180 cubic yard (138 cubic meter) dipper. With an estimated weight of 15,000 tons (13,600 tonnes), this machine still holds the record as the heaviest mobile land machine ever built.

Marion also designed and built the NASA Crawler-transporter used to transport both the Saturn V rocket and later the Space Shuttle to their launch pads at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
Osgood Company acquisition

In 1955, Marion Power Shovel acquired its crosstown rival, the Osgood Company, which manufactured shovels under the Marion-Osgood and Osgood brand names. Osgood's product line complemented Marion Power Shovel's, with most of Osgood's product line focusing on shovels, cranes and draglines that were small capacity machines as opposed to Marion's line, which focused increasingly on high end strip mining draglines. Osgood also built road-ready mobile units that used Mack truck undercarriages.
Acquisition and end

The Marion Power Shovel Company was refinanced by management in the late 1960s with only the signature guarantee of the primary stockholder, billionaire Henry Hillman, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and PNC Bank fame. In 1977 Dresser Industries, Inc. purchased Marion Power Shovel for approximately US$250 million. The company grew from 1,500 employees in 1974 to over 3,200 employees by 1978 under the direction of Putt McDowell during the massive growth in coal mining demand of the late 1970s.

By 1992, Dresser Industries had decided to exit the production of industrial and mining equipment. The affected assets, including the Marion division, became part of Indresco, a holding company created by Dresser in 1992 and then spun off to Dresser shareholders. On November 1, 1995, Indresco changed its name to Global Industrial Technologies, Inc.

On January 23, 1997 Global Industrial Technologies announced that it was divesting certain assets, including the Marion division. Global Industrial Technologies sold the Marion Power Shovel Company, which had revenues of US$114.4 million in FY 1996, for US$40.1 million to Bucyrus International, Inc. on July 23, 1997. Following the acquisition, Bucyrus International closed Marion Power Shovel Company's Marion, Ohio facility.

Historical corporate files and archives for Marion Power Shovel were split between Bowling Green, Ohio's Historical Construction Equipment Association and the Marion County Historical Society in Marion, Ohio.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

2016-03-06T12:40:00.000-05:00

Algernon Charles Swinburne (April 5, 1837 – April 10, 1909) was a Victorian era English poet. He was one of the founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a movement among painters and poets to return the arts to idealized medieval standards, before the (as they perceived it) detrimental influence of intellectualism and the Renaissance. In this vein, Swinburne and his associates were quite similar, in their sentiments, to the Romantic movement of a generation prior, which had also denounced the rise of the new and longed for the ways of a bygone era.

Although, as a Pre-Raphaelite, he professed to be interested solely in the medieval and ancient classics, Swinburne was primarily influenced by the Elizabethan poets and playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. He wrote a number of plays in imitation of the Elizabethan style, and demonstrated his masterful knowledge of the period on more than one occasion. Like Shakespeare, Swinburne is a master of music. In his own time and in contemporary times, Swinburne is acknowledged as one of the most gifted masters of poetic form. His genius for rhyme, meter, and sound was unparalleled even by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Unfortunately, Swinburne's poetry suffers much too much from a tendency to relish in the music of words without paying sufficient attention to their meaning, and his reputation suffered greatly due to this flaw. Perhaps, despite his natural talents, he lacked the depth of character or a commitment to its cultivation, which in turn hampered his ability to communicate content that is genuinely profound.

Nonetheless, Swinburne was one of the most gifted poets of his generation and one of its most iconic. In an age notorious for its moral decadence, Swinburne's antics, at least in terms of reputation, are unparalleled. Swinburne relished in shocking his audience, and many of his more blasphemous and explicit poems were most likely written specifically for that purpose. One thinks of the contemporary celebrities with God-given talent, yet personally self-indulgent, and childish in their efforts to shock. Swinburne (or "Swineborn" as some of his more ferocious critics would call him) attracted a reputation for controversy.

In his later years, Swinburne would tone down his attacks on organized religion and sexual morality, ultimately becoming, like William Wordsworth, something of a rebel-turned-conservative, turning against the very decadent poetry that had propelled him into notoriety. His opinions, like his poems, are representative of the Victorian era in which he lived, a time of rapid social change, when moral standards were shifting wildly. For all his faults, Swinburne is one of the finest poets his era produced, so far as some of the technical and superficial elements of poetic construction are concerned.
Life and Work

Swinburne was born in Grosvenor Palace, London, but spent most of his childhood on the Isle of Wight. His family was a member of the aristocracy for generations. His father was an admiral of the Royal Navy and his maternal grandfather was an earl. Swinburne was raised in an environment of extreme wealth and luxury. He was particularly close to his paternal grandfather, who had been a nobleman of the French aristocracy before the French Revolution, who taught the boy to speak French and Italian. Swinburne's intimate knowledge of these lyrical languages, it is often suggested, contributed greatly to his lyrical voice.

As soon as he was of age, young Swinburne was sent to Oxford, where he would make many friends who would become the most influential members of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, among them Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris, and Professor Benjamin Jowett. Swinburne made a particularly strong impression on Rossetti who, when he met Swinburne, was in the midst of painting a series of murals celebrating King Arthur, a figure who would later factor prominently in Pre-Raphaelite poetry and art.

Swinburne made a strong impression on his colleagues at Oxford. Although he was a small man, he barely more than five feet tall, Swinburne was known for his imposing presence and powerful voice, and rapidly gained a reputation as a rather unpredictable and wild character on campus. He was known to gallivant about Oxford at night, decanting poems at the top of his lungs and shouting out blasphemies at God. Swinburne's rowdy behavior and outspoken, heretical views swiftly landed him in trouble with the managing authorities of the university and despite Jowett's insistence that he tone down his antics, within two years Swinburne found himself out of college without a degree.

His father had given him an allowance substantial enough to live on, and Swinburne commenced taking up the literary life in earnest, moving in with his friend and fellow-poet, Rossetti. During these youthful years Swinburne continued his uproarious behavior. He succeeded in gaining a reputation as a formidable drunkard, and in time he would find himself accused of virtually every sin and heresy under the sun.

Swinburne relished in his own infamy, responding to accusations of sexual deviance and indecency by propagating even more outrageous rumors about himself, going so far as to suggest that he might have participated in bestiality and cannibalism. Most of the tales of Swinburne's transgressions are regarded as being nothing but gossip and fantasies. Oscar Wilde, a close contemporary, grumbled that Swinburne was nothing but a poseur, and the idea that Swinburne may have led a relatively tame and ordinary life (aside from his constant drinking) has continued to gain wider acceptance. Like that surrounding Lord Byron, the controversy Swinburne generated in his own time has caused a distraction for generations of subsequent readers, who have spent endless hours middling over the details of his personal life rather than assessing his poetry.

While Swinburne was causing a scene in public life he was also busy developing his latent talents as a writer of verse. In 1865, a few years after leaving Oxford, he published his first major work, Atalanta in Calydon, a long dramatic poem meant to reproduce the tone and lyricism of ancient Greek drama in the English language. The poem rocketed Swinburne to instant stardom in the London literary community, and it is still considered by many of Swinburne's critics to be his finest work.

The story, modeled after Greek mythology, centers on Meleager, prince of Calydon, and Atalanta, a beautiful woman who will ultimately and unwittingly doom them both. Meleager's father, King Oeneus, earned the wrath of Artemis, goddess of the hunt, after he sacrificed to every god but her on the eve of a major battle. Oeneus succeeded in winning the battle nonetheless, and in revenge Artemis summoned a monstrous boar to attack the kingdom and kill everyone in it. Then, as Swinburne himself explains in the argument to the poem:

    ...all the chief men of Greece gathered together, and
    among them Atalanta daughter of Iasius the Arcadian, a virgin, for
    whose sake Artemis let slay the boar, seeing she favoured the maiden
    greatly; and Meleager having despatched it gave the spoil thereof to
    Atalanta, as one beyond measure enamoured of her; but the brethren of
    Althaea his mother, Toxeus and Plexippus, with such others as misliked
    that she only should bear off the praise whereas many had borne the
    labour, laid wait for her to take away her spoil; but Meleager fought
    against them and slew them: whom when Althaea their sister beheld and
    knew to be slain of her son, she waxed for wrath and sorrow like as one
    mad, and taking the brand whereby the measure of her son's life was
    meted to him, she cast it upon a fire; and with the wasting thereof his
    life likewise wasted away, that being brought back to his father's
    house he died in a brief space, and his mother also endured not long
    after for very sorrow; and this was his end, and the end of that
    hunting.

The melodramatic nature of the poem, with its themes of love lost and self-sacrifice, resonated powerfully with the largely sentimental audience of Victorians who had grown up reading Romantic literature. The poem's adoption of Greek mythology and its imitation of Greek poetic style also won favor with a reading public that had become fascinated with the ancient world. Swinburne responded to this favorable reception of his work by immediately publishing another volume entitled Poems and Ballads in 1866. The book, filled with heretical sentiments and obscene passages on erotic love immediately made Swinburne notorious; for most of the rest of his life he would be shunned as a decadent, immoral poet, even though in subsequent years he would tone down his language and focus on much deeper, spiritual issues. Among the pieces included in the scandalous Poems and Ballads, defenders of Swinburne will point out that there are a number of works that are not only free of obscenities but are genuinely touching and beautiful. Such poems are indicative of what a poet of his considerable gifts could have done had he been of more even temperament. Of these early works, most critics point to the Hymn of Proserpine as perhaps one of the finest poems of the Victorian age. The poem, written in hexameter and with two rhymes per line in imitation of Latin poetry, is an excellent example of Swinburne's supreme mastery of form. Here follows an excerpt:

    I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an end;
    Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.
    Thou art more than the day or the morrow, the seasons that laugh or that weep;
    For these give joy and sorrow; but thou, Proserpina, sleep.
    Sweet is the treading of wine, and sweet the feet of the dove;
    But a goodlier gift is thine than foam of the grapes or love.
    Yea, is not even Apollo, with hair and harpstring of gold,
    A bitter God to follow, a beautiful God to behold?
    I am sick of singing: the bays burn deep and chafe: I am fain
    To rest a little from praise and grievous pleasure and pain.
    For the Gods we know not of, who give us our daily breath,
    We know they are cruel as love or life, and lovely as death.
    O Gods dethroned and deceased, cast forth, wiped out in a day
    From your wrath is the world released, redeemed from your chains, men say.
    New Gods are crowned in the city; their flowers have broken your rods;
    They are merciful, clothed with pity, the young compassionate Gods.
    But for me their new device is barren, the days are bare;
    Things long past over suffice, and men forgotten that were.
    Time and the Gods are at strife; ye dwell in the midst thereof,
    Draining a little life from the barren breasts of love.

He was dismayed at the reaction to Poems and Ballads. Swinburne continued to write, in much greater obscurity, publishing a volume of politically charged poems Songs before Sunrise in 1867 that were inspired by his meeting the Italian Republican patriot and philosopher politician, Giuseppe Mazzini. Mazinni had been Swinburne's hero since early childhood. His rapid rise to fame and even quicker fall into opprobrium hurt him deeply. Swinburne continued to write and publish, but he also turned even more obsessively to heavy drinking.

By 1879, destitute, homeless, and nearly dead from alcoholism, Swinburne was taken in by his legal adviser, Theodore Watts-Dunton, who housed the poet in his home in The Pines, Putney. Swinburne would spend the remaining 30 years of his life in The Pines, under his friend's care. Watts-Dunton encouraged Swinburne to continue to write, and also exacted him to strict discipline. With Watts-Dunton's help, Swinburne eventually underwent a complete transformation, eventually becoming one of the more respectable poets in English society. He published more than 23 volumes of poetry in the final third of his life. Sadly, Swinburne's years of obscurity and drunkenness seemed to have taken their toll on his powers, and critics agree that although his later poems are more focused and mature than his other works, they lack much of the verbal ingenuity that have made his youthful poems so enduringly popular. Occasionally, glimmers of Swinburne's earlier genius shine through, as in “The Lake of Gaube,” one of the last poems he ever wrote and one of his most widely acclaimed:

                ”The Lake of Gaube”

    The sun is lord and god, sublime, serene,
    And sovereign on the mountains: earth and air
    Lie prone in passion, blind with bliss unseen
    By force of sight and might of rapture, fair
    As dreams that die and know not what they were.
    The lawns, the gorges, and the peaks are one
    Glad glory, thrilled with sense of unison
    In strong compulsive silence of the sun.
    Flowers dense and keen as midnight stars aflame
    And living things of light like flames in flower
    That glance and flash as though no hand might tame
    Lightnings whose life outshone their stormlit hour
    And played and laughed on earth, with all their power
    Gone, and with all their joy of life made long
    And harmless as the lightning life of song,
    Shine sweet like stars when darkness feels them strong.
    The deep mild purple flaked with moonbright gold
    That makes the scales seem flowers of hardened light,
    The flamelike tongue, the feet that noon leaves cold,
    The kindly trust in man, when once the sight
    Grew less than strange, and faith bade fear take flight,
    Outlive the little harmless life that shone
    And gladdened eyes that loved it, and was gone
    Ere love might fear that fear had looked thereon.
    Fear held the bright thing hateful, even as fear,
    Whose name is one with hate and horror, saith
    That heaven, the dark deep heaven of water near,
    Is deadly deep as hell and dark as death.
    The rapturous plunge that quickens blood and breath
    With pause more sweet than passion, ere they strive
    To raise again the limbs that yet would dive
    Deeper, should there have slain the soul alive.
    As the bright salamander in fire of the noonshine exults and is glad of his day,
    The spirit that quickens my body rejoices to pass from the sunlight away,
    To pass from the glow of the mountainous flowerage, the high multitudinous bloom,
    Far down through the fathomless night of the water, the gladness of silence and gloom.
    Death-dark and delicious as death in the dream of a lover and dreamer may be,
    It clasps and encompasses body and soul with delight to be living and free:
    Free utterly now, though the freedom endure but the space of a perilous breath,
    And living, though girdled about with the darkness and coldness and strangeness of death:
    Each limb and each pulse of the body rejoicing, each nerve of the spirit at rest,
    All sense of the soul's life rapture, a passionate peace in its blindness blessed.
    So plunges the downward swimmer, embraced of the water unfathomed of man,
    The darkness unplummeted, icier than seas in midwinter, for blessing or ban;
    And swiftly and sweetly, when strength and breath fall short, and the dive is done,
    Shoots up as a shaft from the dark depth shot, sped straight into sight of the sun;
    And sheer through the snow-soft water, more dark than the roof of the pines above,
    Strikes forth, and is glad as a bird whose flight is impelled and sustained of love.
    As a sea-mew's love of the sea-wind breasted and ridden for rapture's sake
    Is the love of his body and soul for the darkling delight of the soundless lake:
    As the silent speed of a dream too living to live for a thought's space more
    Is the flight of his limbs through the still strong chill of the darkness from shore to shore.
    Might life be as this is and death be as life that casts off time as a robe,
    The likeness of infinite heaven were a symbol revealed of the lake of Gaube.
    Whose thought has fathomed and measured
    The darkness of life and of death,
    The secret within them treasured,
    The spirit that is not breath?
    Whose vision has yet beholden
    The splendor of death and of life?
    Though sunset as dawn be golden,
    Is the word of them peace, not strife?
    Deep silence answers: the glory
    We dream of may be but a dream,
    And the sun of the soul wax hoary
    As ashes that show not a gleam.
    But well shall it be with us ever
    Who drive through the darkness here,
    If the soul that we live by never,
    For aught that a lie saith, fear.

As Swinburne grew older he found himself shunned by his old friends of the Pre-Raphaelite era. They viewed him as a turncoat who had abandoned the sentiments of his youth. Fairer critics see Swinburne as a revolutionary who gradually took his ideals down to earth, having tempered them with the hard experiences of his own brief fame and long sorrow. Alone with Watts-Dunton in The Pines, Swinburne turned into something of a recluse, though his fame was slowly and gradually restored. Deaf by the end of his life and almost friendless, Swinburne died in 1909 from a bout of influenza at the age of 72.

Legacy

Swinburne is remembered as one of the quintessential poets of the Victorian era, embodying the radical outrageousness of early Victorian poetry in his youth as well as the sober morality of the Victorians like Alfred Lord Tennyson in his old age. He was also, like many Victorians, endlessly inventive within the confines of lyrical form. Along with Tennyson, Swinburne is often considered to be one of the supreme masters of English poesy. Although he is largely unread now he was a great influence on the Modernist poets who would emerge in the twentieth century immediately after his death. The young Ezra Pound thought Swinburne and the Pre-Raphaelites to be of the highest order, and although he would later recant his views and go so far as to reject all of the poetry of the Victorians, he and many other Modernist poets were nevertheless influenced strongly by Swinburne's style. After Swinburne, formal poetry, that is to say, poetry written according to the rules of meter and rhyme would largely fall out of fashion. By the middle of the twentieth century, it had become almost entirely anachronistic. In this respect, Swinburne is often thought of as the "high water-mark" for poetry emerging out of the formal tradition. He was one of the last poets to use the old forms exclusively. Although he remains relatively unappreciated today, he continues to gain recognition from scholars and poets alike who recognize his unique contribution to poetic history.

Erik Dean Prince

2016-02-28T12:07:00.000-05:00

Erik Dean Prince (born June 6, 1969) is an American businessman, philanthropist, and former U.S. Navy SEAL officer. Prince was best known for founding the government services and security company Blackwater USA. He served as its CEO until 2009 and later as chairman, until Blackwater Worldwide was sold in 2010 to a group of investors. Prince currently heads the private equity firm Frontier Resource Group and is chairman of Hong Kong-listed Frontier Services Group Ltd. He lives in both Virginia and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

Early life and education

Prince was born on June 6, 1969, in Holland, Michigan, to Edgar D. Prince and Elsa Broekhuizen, the youngest of four children. Both his parents share Dutch heritage (the family name, Prins, was at some point anglicized to Prince). He graduated from Holland Christian High School.

Prince's father had started as a salesman making 40 cents an hour, who founded a die cast machine manufacturing firm, Prince Machine Corporation, in 1965, which became a supplier to the automobile manufacturing industry and eventually a billion-dollar company; As business "exploded" Prince began to invest some of the profit through the Prince Group into other types of car parts and shopping malls, creating a network of companies and real estate worth a billion dollars. In the early 1970s, Edgar Prince's company patented a sun visor that could light up and sold 5,000 to General Motors. In the '90s, the company produced 20,000 a day. Prince and his father toured the world together, visiting the German concentration camp Dachau, a divided Berlin, and Normandy. According to his mother, these trips "made a big impression" on the young Prince.

Prince was accepted into the United States Naval Academy and attended it for three semesters before leaving, citing that he loved the Navy but disliked the Academy. He went on to receive his B.A. in economics from Hillsdale College in 1992. During his time at Hillsdale, Prince served as a volunteer firefighter and as a cold-water diver for the Hillsdale County Sheriff's Department. Prince eventually became an emergency medical technician.

In 1990, Prince secured a low-level internship in the White House under George H.W. Bush, but soon left to intern for California congressman Dana Rohrabacher, President Ronald Reagan's former speechwriter. Rohrabacher described Prince as "a bright, driven young man." At the age of 21, Prince volunteered to search for a mass grave in Nicaragua, to expose killings under President Daniel Ortega and later claimed in an interview in Men's Journal that he found "a mass grave: bones sticking out of the ground, hands tied with wire at the wrists."

After college, Prince was commissioned as an officer in the United States Navy via Officer Candidate School in 1992. He went on to become a Navy SEAL and deployed with SEAL Team 8 to Haiti, the Middle East, and the Balkans. He credits the SEALs for being an outlet for his entrepreneurial spirit. In his autobiography he states that it was during the Yugoslav Wars of the early 1990s that he realized the need for private training facilities for special operations.

Prince ended his U.S. Navy service prematurely in 1995 when his father died. Erik assumed control of daily operations at Prince Machine Corporation for a year until 1996 when his mother sold the company for $1.35 billion in cash to Johnson Controls.

Prince moved to Virginia Beach and personally financed the formation of Blackwater Worldwide in 1997. He bought 6,000 acres (24 km2) of the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina and set up a school for special operations. The name "Blackwater" comes from the peat-colored bogs in which the school is located.

Career

Prince credits the 1994 Rwandan genocide with his decision to start Blackwater. He told an audience in his native Holland, Michigan, "It really bothered me. It made me realize you can't sit back and pontificate. You have to act."

From 1997 to 2010, Blackwater was awarded $2 billion in government security contracts, more than $1.6 billion of which were unclassified federal contracts and an unknown amount of classified work. From 2001 to 2010, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) awarded up to $600 million in classified contracts to Blackwater and its affiliates. It became the largest of the State Department's three private security companies, providing 987 guards for embassies and bases abroad. Prince built a shooting range on his rural Virginia land to serve as a nearby training facility to CIA headquarters in Langley, VA. In his memoir Prince says that he provided the CIA with links to Afghan warlords who helped topple the Taliban and drive al Qaeda into hiding."

Blackwater came under increasing criticism after the Nisour Square killings in Baghdad of 17 Iraqi civilians and the serious wounding of 20 more in September 2007. Three guards were eventually convicted in October 2014 of 14 manslaughter charges, and another of murder, in a U.S. court.

The criticism continued after president Barack Obama took office in 2008. Prince said he believes that much of this criticism stems from politics. "I put myself and my company at the CIA's disposal for some very risky missions," Prince told Vanity Fair for its January 2010 issue. "But when it became politically expedient to do so, someone threw me under the bus."

Nevertheless, in 2010 the Barack Obama administration awarded the company a $120 million United States Department of State security contract and about $100 million in new CIA work .

Prince takes great pride in Blackwater's work and points to its successes. According to him, out of 40,000 personal security missions, only 200 involved guards discharging their weapons. "No one under our care was ever killed or injured. We kept them safe, all the while we had 30 of our men killed."

Prince, according to Robert Young Pelton reportedly thinks of Blackwater's relationship to the military as something similar to FedEx's relationship to the U.S. Post Office "an efficient, privatized solution to sclerotic and wasteful government bureaucracy." He credits his father's competitive streak in the automotive business with the inspiration to design a lighter, faster army.

Prince resigned as CEO of Blackwater on March 2, 2009, and remained chairman of the board until he sold the company in late 2010 to a group of investors.

Disclosure as part of a covert CIA task force

Prince was part of a CIA task force created to kill terrorists. Allegedly, the House intelligence congressional committee leaked his name to the press. Prince has said that he is convinced that former CIA director Leon Panetta outed him as a CIA asset, after shutting down the covert CIA training operation in 2009. Prince compared himself to the target of the similar government leak of Valerie Plame:

    Valerie Plame's identity was compromised for political reasons. A special prosecutor [was even] appointed. Well, what happened to me was worse. People acting for political reasons disclosed not only the existence of a very sensitive program but my name along with it.

Private security for the United Arab Emirates

After Blackwater faced mounting legal problems in the United States, Prince was hired by the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and moved to Abu Dhabi in 2010. His task was to assemble an 800-member troupe of foreign troops for the U.A.E., which was planned months before the Arab Spring. He helped the UAE found a new company Reflex Responses, or R2, with 51 percent local ownership, carefully avoiding his name on corporate documents. He worked to oversee the effort and recruit troops, among others from Executive Outcomes, a former South African mercenary firm hired by several African governments during the 1990s to defeat violent rebellions in addition to protecting oil and diamond reserves.

In January 2011, the Associated Press reported that Prince was training a force of 2000 Somalis for antipiracy operations in the Gulf of Aden. The program was reportedly funded by several Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates and backed by the United States. Prince's spokesman, Mark Corallo, said that Prince has "no financial role" in the project and declined to answer any questions about Prince's involvement.

The Associated Press quotes John Burnett of Maritime Underwater Security Consultants as saying, "There are 34 nations with naval assets trying to stop piracy and it can only be stopped on land. With Prince's background and rather illustrious reputation, I think it's quite possible that it might work.".

Private equity investor in Africa

Prince currently heads a private equity firm called Frontier Resource Group and is chairman of Frontier Services Group Ltd, a Bermuda-incorporated logistics and transport company listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Frontier Services Group is backed by China's state-owned CITIC Group and Hong Kong-based investor Chun Shun Ko. Prince's ventures advise and support Chinese investment in oil and gas in Africa. Of his strategy, Prince stated:

    Africa is so far the most unexplored part of the world, and I think China has seen a lot of promise in Africa. But the problem is if you go alone, you bear the country risk on your own. You have to get support and maintenance there.

In May 2014, it was reported that Prince's plan to build a diesel refinery in South Sudan, in which $10 million had already been invested, was suspended. The halted refinery project was reported to be supported personally by the country's president, Salva Kiir Mayardit. Frontier Services Group was reported to be paid $23.3 million by South Sudan's Ministry of Petroleum to transport supplies and perform maintenance on oil production facilities.

As part of Prince's Africa-focused investment strategy, Frontier Services Group purchased stakes in two Kenyan aviation companies, Kijipwa Aviation and Phoenix Aviation, to provide logistics services for the country's oil and gas industry. In October 2014, the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority denied Kijipwa Aviation an aviation license renewal.

Personal life
Family

Prince is the brother of Betsy DeVos, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party and wife of former Alticor (Amway) president and gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos.

Prince has seven children. His first wife, Joan, died of cancer in 2003. He married his second wife, Joanna Houck, in 2004 but the two later divorced. In his 2013 memoir, titled Civilian Warriors: The Inside Story of Blackwater and the Unsung Heroes of the War on Terror, Prince writes that he was having an affair with Joanna.

His youngest child, Charles Donovan, was named after William "Wild Bill" Donovan.
Philanthropy and political views

Prince describes himself as a libertarian and practicing Roman Catholic. He describes his political views as follows:

    I'm a very free market guy. I'm not a huge believer that government provides a whole lot of solutions. Some think that government can solve society's problems. I tend to think private charities and private organizations are better solutions.

Prince credits his time as a White House intern with some of his political views. He said that "having that White House internship responsibility and badges, I walked around some of these other cavernous federal agencies, and you want to talk about depressing? Walk through HHS or HUD or Commerce, you name it. Leviathan realized."

Prince serves as vice president of the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation, which his family founded. Prince has donated heavily to both Christian and Islamic causes, building mosques at Blackwater's overseas bases and supporting a Muslim orphanage in Afghanistan. He financed the film The Stoning of Soraya M. Between July 2003 and July 2006, the foundation gave at least $670,000 to the Family Research Council and $531,000 to Focus on the Family, headed by James Dobson. The foundation is a major donor to Calvin College, a Christian institution in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Between 1998 and 2007, Prince donated over $200,000 to Republican and third-party causes. In 2006 Prince contributed money to the Green Party of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.

Prince has advocated for a leaner, more efficient military. He suggests several ways to make the military more efficient without compromising security. His suggestions include: greater accountability of costs, using appropriate equipment for each job, reduction of overhead, and operational and procurement reform.

In a televised interview with Charlie Rose, Prince discussed his offer to George Clooney of sending a humanitarian mission to Darfur. Prince expressed disdain over international inaction in the face of the Rwandan genocide:

    Who can watch the movie 'Hotel Rwanda' and not wish it had a different outcome? Who didn't wish that the UN would have sent troops or yank those Belgian commandos back there to secure that hotel and provide some safe havens? You let almost a million people in a country about the size of Maryland get killed by farm tools over four months.

Sandy Cornish

2016-02-08T16:23:00.000-05:00

Sandy Cornish (1793 – 1869) was an African American farmer, businessperson, and civic leader in Key West, Florida. As a former slave who had purchased his freedom, he publicly maimed himself to prevent being returned to slavery.

Slavery and freedom

Cornish was born a slave in Maryland in 1793. In 1839, his master hired him out to a railroad-building project in Port Leon in Florida's Panhandle. The position allowed him to earn money for himself, and after nine years of work at $600 a year, he was able to purchase his own freedom and that of his wife Lillah. However, the papers showing him to be free were destroyed in a fire. Lacking proof of his emancipation, he was seized by slave traders, but managed to break free. The next day he gathered a crowd of onlookers in Port Leon. He loudly proclaimed that, having purchased his freedom once, he would not return to slavery under any circumstances. He then deliberately maimed himself, stabbing himself in the leg, slashing the muscles of one ankle, and cutting off a finger of his left hand, which he proceeded to sew back on with a needle and thread. These injuries made him worthless as a slave and thus immune to recapture. Friends took him home in a wheelbarrow, and he eventually recovered his health.

Key West

Around 1850, he and Lillah bought a farm in Key West, in the area that is now Truman Avenue near Simonton Street. Selling vegetables and fruits to local residents, he became one of the richest people in Key West. He was a leader of the local black community and the founder of the Cornish Chapel of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, now the Cornish Memorial AME Zion church and chapel, which still stands at 702 Whitehead Street.

He died in 1869 at the age of 76. He was buried in Key West Cemetery, but the location of his grave was lost to history. In 2014, the cemetery and the Historic Florida Keys Foundation installed a plaque to his memory. Speakers described his life as an inspiring testament to human freedom. City Commissioner Clayton Lopez, presiding over the ceremony, said, “His actions in life show that he was not going to accept the fate developed for him by lesser men. He is a legend that continues to point the way to human dignity to this day."

Recognition

A memorial bust of Cornish is included in the Mallory Square Sculpture Garden, which honors people who had a significant impact on Key West.

Pocket Watch

2016-01-30T12:20:00.000-05:00

http://www.artinspiredgifts.etsy.com

A pocket watch (or pocketwatch) is a watch that is made to be carried in a pocket, as opposed to a wristwatch, which is strapped to the wrist.

They were the most common type of watch from their development in the 16th century until wristwatches became popular after World War I during which a transitional design, trench watches, were used by the military. Pocket watches generally have an attached chain to allow them to be secured to a waistcoat, lapel, or belt loop, and to prevent them from being dropped. Watches were also mounted on a short leather strap or fob, when a long chain would have been cumbersome or likely to catch on things. This fob could also provide a protective flap over their face and crystal. Women's watches were normally of this form, with a watch fob that was more decorative than protective. Chains were frequently decorated with a silver or enamel pendant, often carrying the arms of some club or society, which by association also became known as a fob. Ostensibly "practical" gadgets such as a watch winding key, vesta case or a cigar cutter also appeared on watch chains, although usually in an overly decorated style. Also common are fasteners designed to be put through a buttonhole and worn in a jacket or waistcoat, this sort being frequently associated with and named after train conductors.

An early reference to the pocket watch is in a letter in November 1462 from the Italian clockmaker Bartholomew Manfredi to the Marchese di Mantova Federico Gonzaga, where he offers him a "pocket clock" better than that belonging to the Duke of Modena. By the end of the 15th century, spring-driven clocks appeared in Italy, and in Germany. Peter Henlein, a master locksmith of Nuremberg, was regularly manufacturing pocket watches by 1524. Thereafter, pocket watch manufacture spread throughout the rest of Europe as the 16th century progressed. Early watches only had an hour hand, the minute hand appearing in the late 17th century. The first American pocket watches with machine made parts were manufactured by Henry Pitkin with his brother in the later 1830s.

History

The first timepieces to be worn, made in 16th-century Europe, were transitional in size between clocks and watches. These 'clock-watches' were fastened to clothing or worn on a chain around the neck. They were heavy drum shaped brass cylinders several inches in diameter, engraved and ornamented. They had only an hour hand. The face was not covered with glass, but usually had a hinged brass cover, often decoratively pierced with grillwork so the time could be read without opening. The movement was made of iron or steel and held together with tapered pins and wedges, until screws began to be used after 1550. Many of the movements included striking or alarm mechanisms. The shape later evolved into a rounded form; these were later called Nuremberg eggs. Still later in the century there was a trend for unusually shaped watches, and clock-watches shaped like books, animals, fruit, stars, flowers, insects, crosses, and even skulls (Death's head watches) were made.

Styles changed in the 17th century and men began to wear watches in pockets instead of as pendants (the woman's watch remained a pendant into the 20th century). This is said to have occurred in 1675 when Charles II of England introduced waistcoats. To fit in pockets, their shape evolved into the typical pocket watch shape, rounded and flattened with no sharp edges. Glass was used to cover the face beginning around 1610. Watch fobs began to be used, the name originating from the German word fuppe, a small pocket. The watch was wound and also set by opening the back and fitting a key to a square arbor, and turning it.

Until the second half of the 18th century, watches were luxury items; as an indication of how highly they were valued, English newspapers of the 18th century often include advertisements offering rewards of between one and five guineas merely for information that might lead to the recovery of stolen watches. By the end of the 18th century, however, watches (while still largely hand-made) were becoming more common; special cheap watches were made for sale to sailors, with crude but colorful paintings of maritime scenes on the dials.

Up to the 1720s, almost all watch movements were based on the verge escapement, which had been developed for large public clocks in the 14th century. This type of escapement involved a high degree of friction and did not include any kind of jewelling to protect the contacting surfaces from wear. As a result, a verge watch could rarely achieve any high standard of accuracy. (Surviving examples mostly run very fast, often gaining an hour a day or more.) The first widely used improvement was the cylinder escapement, developed by the Abbé de Hautefeuille early in the 18th century and applied by the English maker George Graham. Then, towards the end of the 18th century, the lever escapement (invented by Thomas Mudge in 1759) was put into limited production by a handful of makers including Josiah Emery (a Swiss based in London) and Abraham-Louis Breguet. With this, a domestic watch could keep time to within a minute a day. Lever watches became common after about 1820, and this type is still used in most mechanical watches today.

In 1857 the American Watch Company in Waltham, Massachusetts introduced the Waltham Model 57, the first to use interchangeable parts. This cut the cost of manufacture and repair. Most Model 57 pocket watches were in a coin silver ("one nine fine"), a 90% pure silver alloy commonly used in dollar coinage, slightly less pure than the British (92.5%) sterling silver, both of which avoided the higher purity of other types of silver to make circulating coins and other utilitarian silver objects last longer with heavy use.

Watch manufacture was becoming streamlined; the Japy family of Schaffhausen, Switzerland, led the way in this, and soon afterwards the newborn American watch industry developed much new machinery, so that by 1865 the American Watch Company (afterwards known as Waltham) could turn out more than 50,000 reliable watches each year. This development drove the Swiss out of their dominating position at the cheaper end of the market, compelling them to raise the quality of their products and establish themselves as the leaders in precision and accuracy instead.
Use in railroading in the United States

The rise of railroading during the last half of the 19th century led to the widespread use of pocket watches. A famous train wreck on the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway in Kipton, Ohio on April 19, 1891 occurred because one of the engineers' watches had stopped for four minutes. The railroad officials commissioned Webb C. Ball as their Chief Time Inspector, in order to establish precision standards and a reliable timepiece inspection system for Railroad chronometers. This led to the adoption in 1893 of stringent standards for pocket watches used in railroading. These railroad-grade pocket watches, as they became colloquially known, had to meet the General Railroad Timepiece Standards adopted in 1893 by almost all railroads. These standards read, in part:

"...open faced, size 16 or 18, have a minimum of 17 jewels, adjusted to at least five positions, keep time accurately to within 30 seconds a week, adjusted to temps of 34 °F (1 °C) to 100 °F (38 °C), have a double roller, steel escape wheel, lever set, regulator, winding stem at 12 o'clock, and have bold black Arabic numerals on a white dial, with black hands."

Types of pocket watches

There are two main styles of pocket watch, the hunter-case pocket watch, and the open-face pocket watch.

Open-face watches

An open-faced, or Lépine, watch, is one in which the case lacks a metal cover to protect the crystal. It is typical for an open-faced watch to have the pendant located at 12:00 and the sub-second dial located at 6:00. Occasionally, a watch movement intended for a hunting case (with the winding stem at 3:00 and sub second dial at 6:00) will have an open-faced case. Such watch is known as a "sidewinder." Alternatively, such a watch movement may be fitted with a so-called conversion dial, which relocates the winding stem to 12:00 and the sub-second dial to 3:00. After 1908, watches approved for railroad service were required to be cased in open-faced cases with the winding stem at 12:00.

Hunter-case watches

A hunter-case pocket watch ("hunter") is a case with a spring-hinged circular metal lid or cover, that closes over the watch-dial and crystal, protecting them from dust, scratches and other damage or debris. The majority of antique and vintage hunter-case watches have the lid-hinges at the 9 o'clock position and the stem, crown and bow of the watch at the 3 o'clock position. Modern hunter-case pocket watches usually have the hinges for the lid at the 6 o'clock position and the stem, crown and bow at the 12 o'clock position, as with open-face watches. In both styles of watch-cases, the sub-seconds dial was always at the 6 o'clock position.

An intermediate type, known as the demi-hunter (demi hunter, half hunter or half-hunter), is a case style in which the outer lid has a glass panel or hole in the centre giving a view of the hands. The hours are marked, often in blue enamel, on the outer lid itself; thus with this type of case one can tell the time without opening the lid.

Types of watch movements

Key-wind, key-set movements

The very first pocket watches, since their creation in the 16th century, up until the third quarter of the 19th century, had key-wind and key-set movements. A watch key was necessary to wind the watch and to set the time. This was usually done by opening the caseback and putting the key over the winding-arbor (which was set over the watch's winding-wheel, to wind the mainspring) or by putting the key onto the setting-arbor, which was connected with the minute-wheel and turned the hands. Some watches of this period had the setting-arbor at the front of the watch, so that removing the crystal and bezel was necessary to set the time. Watch keys are the origin of the class key, common paraphernalia for American high-school and university graduation.

Many keywind watch movements make use of a fusee, to improve isochronism. The fusee is a specially cut conical pulley attached by a fine chain to the mainspring barrel. When the spring is fully wound (and its torque the highest), the full length of the chain is wrapped around the fusee and the force of the mainspring is exerted on the smallest diameter portion of the fusee cone. As the spring unwinds and its torque decreases, the chain winds back onto the mainspring barrel and pulls on an increasingly larger diameter portion of the fusee. This provides a more uniform amount of torque on the watch train, and thus results in more consistent balance amplitude and better isochronism. A fusee is a practical necessity in watches using a verge escapement, and can also provide considerable benefit with a lever escapement and other high precision types of escapements (Hamiltons WWII era Model 21 chronometer used a fusee in combination with a detent escapement).

Keywind watches are also commonly seen with conventional going barrels and other types of mainspring barrels, particularly in American watchmaking.

Stem-wind, stem-set movements

Invented by Adrien Philippe in 1842 and commercialized by Patek Philippe & Co. in the 1850s, the stem-wind, stem-set movement did away with the watch key which was a necessity for the operation of any pocket watch up to that point. The first stem-wind and stem-set pocket watches were sold during the Great Exhibition in London in 1851 and the first owners of these new kinds of watches were Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Stem-wind, stem-set movements are the most common type of watch-movement found in both vintage and modern pocket watches.

The mainstream transition to the use of stem-wind, stem-set watches occurred at around the same time as the end of the manufacture and use of the fusee watch. Fusee chain-driven timing was replaced with a mainspring of better quality spring steel (commonly known as the "going barrel") allowing for a more even release of power to the escape mechanism. However the reader of this article should not be misled to think that the winding and setting functions are directly related to the balance wheel and balance spring. The balance wheel and balance spring provide a separate function: to regulate the timing (or escape) of the movement.

Stem-wind, lever-set movements

Mandatory for all railroad watches after roughly 1908, this kind of pocket watch was set by opening the crystal and bezel and pulling out the setting-lever (most hunter cases have levers accessible without removing the crystal or bezel), which was generally found at either the 10 or 2 o'clock positions on open-faced watches, and at 5:00 on hunting cased watches. Once the lever was pulled out, the crown could be turned to set the time. The lever was then pushed back in and the crystal and bezel were closed over the dial again. This method of time setting on pocket watches was preferred by American and Canadian railroads, as lever setting watches make accidental time changes impossible. After 1908, lever setting was generally required for new watches entering service on American railroads.

Stem-wind, pin-set movements

Much like the lever-set movements, these pocket watches had a small pin or knob next to the watch-stem that had to be depressed before turning the crown to set the time and releasing the pin when the correct time had been set. This style of watch is occasionally referred to as "nail set", as the set button must be pressed using a finger.
Jeweled movements

Watches of any quality will be jeweled. A jewel in a mechanical watch is a small, shaped piece of a hard mineral. Ruby and sapphire are most common. Diamond, garnet, and glass are also seen. Starting in the early 20th century, synthetic jewels were almost universally used. Before that time, low grade natural jewels which were unsuitable as gemstones were used. In either case, the jewels have virtually no monetary value.

The most common types of jewels are hole jewels. Hole jewels are disks (normally flying saucer shaped) which have a carefully shaped and sized hole. The pivot of an arbor rides in this hole. The jewel provides an extremely smooth and hard surface which is very wear resistant, and when properly lubricated, very low friction. Thus, hole jewels both reduce friction and wear on the moving parts of a watch.

The other basic jewel types are cap jewels, roller jewels, and pallet jewels.

Cap jewels are always paired with hole jewels, and always with a conically shaped pivot. The cap jewels are so called because they "cap" the hole jewels and control the axial movement of the arbor, preventing the shoulder of the pivot contacting the hole jewel. For a properly designed hole and cap jewel system, the arbor pivot bears on the cap jewel as a pin point on a thin film of oil. Thus, a hole and cap jewel offer lower friction and better performance across different positions compared with simply a hole jewel.

The roller jewel, also called the impulse jewel or simply impulse pin, is a thin rod of ruby or sapphire, usually in the shape of a letter "D". The roller jewel is responsible for coupling the motion of the balance wheel to that of the pallet fork.

Pallet jewels are on the pallet fork and interact with the escape wheel. They are the surfaces which, 5 times a second in a typical escapement, lock the gear train of the watch and then transfer power to the balance wheel.

A jeweled watch with a lever escapement should contain at least 7 jewels. The seven jewels are; 2 hole jewels and 2 cap jewels for the pivots of the balance wheel staff (arbor), one impulse (roller) jewel, and 2 pallet jewels.

More highly jeweled watches add jewels to other pivots, starting with the pallet fork, then the escape wheel, fourth wheel, third wheel, then finally the center wheel. Jeweling like this to the third wheel adds eight jewels, giving 15 jewels in total. Jeweling to the center wheel adds two more giving 17 jewels in total. Thus, a 17 jewel watch is considered to be fully jeweled.

With American makers, however, it was common on low-end movements to jewel to the third wheel on only the top (visible) plate of the watch. This gives a total of 11 jewels, but looks identical to a 15 jewel watch unless the dial is removed. Since watches with 15 jewels and less are often not marked as to the jewel count, extreme caution must be exercised when purchasing movements which appear to be 15 jewels.

Additional jewels beyond 17 are used to either add cap jewels, or to jewel the mainspring barrel of the watch. Watches with 19 jewels, particularly those made by Elgin and Waltham, will often have a jeweled mainspring barrel. Alternatively a 19 jewel watch will have additional cap jewels on the escape wheel. 21 jewel watches commonly have cap jewels on both the pallet fork and escape wheel. 23 jewel watches will have a jeweled barrel and fully capped escapement. The timekeeping value of jewels beyond 17 for a time-only movement is often debated.

Greater jewel counts are often associated with better quality watch movements. While it is true that expensive movements often have higher jewel counts, the jewels themselves are not the reason for this. The jewels themselves add essentially no monetary value, and beyond 17 offer a negligible improvement in timekeeping ability and in movement life. Most of the cost of a more expensive watch is associated with better quality finishing and, more importantly, with a greater number of adjustments.

Adjusted movements

Pocket watch movements are occasionally engraved with the word "Adjusted", or "Adjusted to n positions". This means that the watch has been tuned to keep time under various positions and conditions. There are eight possible adjustments:

Positional adjustments are attained by careful poising (ensuring even weight distribution) of the balance-hairspring system as well as careful control of the shape and polish on the balance pivots. All of this achieves an equalization of the effect of gravity on the watch in various positions. Positional adjustments are achieved through careful adjustment of each of these factors, provided by repeated trials on a timing machine. Thus, adjusting a watch to position requires many hours of labor, increasing the cost of the watch. Medium grade watches were commonly adjusted to 3 positions (dial up, dial down, pendant up) while high grade watches were commonly adjusted to 5 positions (dial up, dial down, stem up, stem left, stem right) or even all 6 positions. Railroad watches were required, after 1908, to be adjusted to 5 positions. 3 positions were the general requirement before that time.

Early watches used a solid steel balance. As temperature increased, the solid balance expanded in size, changing the moment of inertia and changing the timing of the watch. In addition, the hairspring would lengthen, decreasing its spring constant. This problem was initially solved through the use of the compensation balance. The compensation balance consisted of a ring of steel sandwiched to a ring of brass. These rings were then split in two places. The balance would, at least theoretically, actually decrease in size with heating to compensate for the lengthening of the hairspring. Through careful adjustment of the placement of the balance screws (brass or gold screws placed in the rim of the balance), a watch could be adjusted to keep time the same at both hot (100 °F) and cold (32°) temperatures. Unfortunately, a watch so adjusted would run slow at temperatures between these two. The problem was completely solved through the use of special alloys for the balance and hairspring which were essentially immune to thermal expansion. Such an alloy is used in Hamilton's 992E and 992B.

Isochronism was occasionally improved through the use of a stopworks, a system designed to only allow the mainspring to operate within its center (most consistent) range. The most common method of achieving isochronism is through the use of the Breguet overcoil. which places part of the outermost turn of the hairspring in a different plane from the rest of the spring. This allows the hairspring to "breathe" more evenly and symmetrically. Two types of overcoils are found - the gradual overcoil and the Z-Bend. The gradual overcoil is obtained by imposing a two gradual twists to the hairspring, forming the rise to the second plane over half the circumference; and the Z-bend does this by imposing two kinks of complementary 45 degree angles, accomplishing a rise to the second plane in about three spring section heights. The second method is done for esthetic reasons and is much more difficult to perform. Due to the difficulty with forming an overcoil, modern watches often use a slightly less effective "dogleg", which uses a series of sharp bends (in plane) to place part of the outermost coil out of the way of the rest of the spring.

Decline in popularity

Pocket watches are not common in modern times, having been superseded by wristwatches. Up until the start of the 20th century, though, the pocket watch was predominant and the wristwatch was considered feminine and unmanly. In men's fashions, pocket watches began to be superseded by wristwatches around the time of World War I, when officers in the field began to appreciate that a watch worn on the wrist was more easily accessed than one kept in a pocket. A watch of transitional design, combining features of pocket watches and modern wristwatches, was called trench watch or "wristlet". However, pocket watches continued to be widely used in railroading even as their popularity declined elsewhere.

The use of pocket watches in a professional environment came to an ultimate end in approximately 1943. The Royal Navy of the British military distributed to their sailors Waltham pocket watches, which were 9 jewel movements, with black dials, and numbers coated with radium for visibility in the dark, in anticipation of the eventual D-Day invasion. The same Walthams were ordered by the Canadian military as well. Hanhart was a brand which was used by the Germans, although the German U-Boat captains (and their allied counterparts) were more likely to use stopwatches for timing torpedo runs.

For a few years in the late 1970s and 1980s three-piece suits for men returned to fashion, and this led to small resurgence in pocket watches, as some men actually used the vest pocket for its original purpose. Since then, some watch companies continue to make pocket watches. As vests have long since fallen out of fashion (in the US) as part of formal business wear, the only available location for carrying a watch is in a trouser pocket. The more recent advent of mobile phones and other gadgets that are worn on the waist has diminished the appeal of carrying an additional item in the same location, especially as such pocketable gadgets usually have timekeeping functionality themselves.

In some countries a gift of a gold-cased pocket watch is traditionally awarded to an employee upon their retirement.

The pocketwatch has regained popularity due to steampunk, a subcultural movement embracing the arts and fashions of the Victorian era, where pocketwatches were nearly ubiquitous. It is now considered an eccentricity to carry a pocketwatch.

Harriet or Harrieta Keōpūolani Nāhiʻenaʻena

2016-01-24T12:30:00.000-05:00

Harriet or Harrieta Keōpūolani Nāhiʻenaʻena (1815–1836) was a high-ranking princess during the founding of the Kingdom of Hawaii and the conversion of some of the ruling class to Christianity.

Life

In the Hawaiian language nā ahi ʻena ʻena means "the red-hot raging fires".

She was born in 1815 at Keauhou Bay, South Kona, island of Hawaiʻi. Her parents were Kamehameha I and Keōpūolani the Queen consort. She had two older brothers, hiapo (first born) Liholiho, and Kauikeaouli, who were to become Kings Kamehameha II and III. This sacred muli loa (last born) child was trained for the immense kuleana (privilege and responsibility) that would accompany someone of such high birth.

In 1825, the ship HMS Blonde returned with the bodies of King Kamehameha II and the Queen Kamāmalu who had died on a trip to London. Ship's artist Robert Dampier painted a portrait of the ten-year-old princess, dressed in a red feather cloak for the state funeral.

She was in love with her brother Kamehameha III and the old chiefs strongly encouraged their marriage, but the missionaries were opposed to the union, calling it incest and therefore a sin. The practice of marriage between siblings in the royal family was considered a way of keeping the bloodlines pure in ancient Hawaii. Nāhiʻenaʻena's own maternal grandparents were half sister and brother.

She was eventually betrothed to William Pitt Leleiohoku I, the son of William Pitt Kalanimoku Prime Minister of Hawaii. Kamehameha III tried to delay the wedding by insisting Leleiohoku be educated first. Leleiohoku and Nāhiʻenaʻena were married November 25, 1835 by William Richards at Waineʻe Church.

In September 17, 1836 she gave birth to a child. Kamehameha III announced that the child would be the heir to the throne because he believed it to be his, but the child lived for only a few hours. Nāhiʻenaʻena never recovered physically or emotionally from the birth of her child. British physician Thomas Charles Byde Rooke, the husband of High Chiefess Grace Kamaʻikuʻi, examined her but was unable to determine the cause of the illness. He called upon Dr. Ruschenberger, a visiting surgeon, to assist him. Nāhiʻenaʻena died on December 30, 1836, near Hale Uluhe, the home of her brother, Kamehameha III. After nearly five weeks of intense grieving, her body was brought in procession to Kawaiahaʻo Church for funeral services. The procession was led by traditional warriors and kāhuna laʻau lapaʻau (healers). On April 12, 1837 her body was brought aboard the ship Don Qixote (purchased and renamed Kai Keōpūolani by her brother), to the sacred resting place called Mokuʻula in Lāhainā, Maui to be buried next to her mother Keōpūolani.

Her death had a sobering effect on her brother, King Kamehameha III.

William Hull

2016-01-17T15:22:00.000-05:00

William Hull (June 24, 1753 – November 29, 1825) was an American soldier and politician. He fought in the American Revolution and was appointed as Governor of Michigan Territory (1805–13), gaining large land cessions from several Native American tribes under the Treaty of Detroit (1807). As a general in the War of 1812, Hull is best remembered for surrendering Fort Detroit to the British on August 16, 1812.

Biography
Early life and Revolutionary War

William Hull was born in Derby, Connecticut on June 24, 1753. He graduated from Yale University in 1772, studied law in Litchfield, Connecticut, and joined the bar in 1775.

At the outbreak of fighting in the American Revolution, Hull joined a local militia and was quickly promoted to captain, then to major, and to lieutenant colonel. He was in the battles of White Plains, Trenton, Princeton, Stillwater, Saratoga, Fort Stanwix, Monmouth, and Stony Point. He was recognized by George Washington and the Continental Congress for his service.

Hull was a friend of Nathan Hale and tried to dissuade Hale from the dangerous spy mission that would cost him his life. Hull was largely responsible for publicizing Hale's famous last words, "I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country." After the American Revolution, he moved to his wife's family estate in Newton, Massachusetts and served as a judge and state senator in Massachusetts. He was elected captain of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts in 1789.

Michigan Territory and War of 1812

On March 22, 1805, President Thomas Jefferson appointed hull as Governor of the recently created Michigan Territory and as its Indian Agent. As almost all of the territory except for two enclaves around Detroit and Fort Mackinac were in the hands of the Indians, Hull worked to gradually purchase Indian land for occupation by European-American settlers. He negotiated the Treaty of Detroit, in 1807, with the Ottawa, Chippewa, Wyandot and Potawatomi nations, which ceded most of present-day Southeast Michigan and northwestern Ohio, to the mouth of the Maumee River where Toledo developed, to the United States. These efforts to expand American settlement began to generate opposition, particularly from the Shawnee leaders Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa, the Shawnee Prophet, who preached resistance to the American culture and to further land cessions.

By February 1812, the US was openly talking about and making plans in Congress for war with Great Britain, including an invasion of Canada. The British responded by recruiting Native American tribes to form part of their defense in the Michigan, Canada area in case the Americans attacked Canada. While Hull was in Washington, Secretary of War William Eustis informed him that President Madison wished to appoint him a Brigadier General in command of the new Army of the Northwest. Hull, then nearly 60 years old, expressed his disinterest in a new military commission. Colonel Kingsbury was selected to lead the force instead. Kingsbury fell ill before taking command, and the offer was repeated to Hull, who this time accepted. His orders were to go to Ohio, whose governor had been charged by Madison with raising a 1,200-man militia that would be augmented by the 4th Infantry Regiment from Vincennes, Indiana, to form the core of the army. From there he was to march the army to Detroit, where he was also to continue managing as Territorial Governor. During this war he was known as the man of sound.

March to Detroit

Hull arrived in Cincinnati on May 10, 1812, and on May 25 took command of the militia at Dayton. The militia comprised three regiments, who elected as their commanding Colonels Duncan McArthur, Lewis Cass, and James Findlay. They marched to Staunton and then to Urbana, where they were joined by the 300-man 4th Infantry Regiment. The men of the militia were ill-equipped and little trained, averse to strong military discipline. Hull relied on the infantry regiment to quell several instances of insubordination on the remainder of the march. By the end of June, the army had reached the rapids of the Maumee River, where Hull committed the first of the errors that would later reflect poorly on him.

The US signed its declaration of war on Great Britain on June 18, 1812, and that same day Secretary Eustis sent two letters to General Hull. One of them, sent by special messenger, arrived on June 24 but did not contain any mention of the declaration of war. The second one, announcing the declaration of war, was sent via the postal service, and did not arrive until July 2. As a result, Hull was still unaware that war had broken out when he reached the rapids of the Maumee. Taking advantage of the waterway, he sent the schooner Cuyahoga Packet ahead of the army to Detroit with a number of invalids, supplies, and official documents. But, the British commander at Fort Amherstburg had received the declaration of war two days earlier, and captured the ship as it sailed past. He gained all of Hull's military papers and plans for an attack on Fort Amherstburg.

Invasion of Canada

Hull was, at least in part, the victim of poor preparation for war by the U.S. government and miscommunication. While governor, Hull's repeated requests to build a naval fleet on Lake Erie to properly defend Detroit, Fort Mackinac, and Fort Dearborn were ignored by General Henry Dearborn, the commander of the northeast. Hull began an invasion of Canada on 12 July 1812; however, he quickly withdrew to the American side of the river after hearing the news of the British capture of Fort Mackinac. He also faced unfriendly Native American forces, which threatened to attack from the other direction.

Surrender of Detroit

Facing what he believed to be superior forces, thanks to his enemy's cunning stratagems such as instructing the Native American warriors to make as much noise as possible around the fort, Hull surrendered Fort Detroit to General Isaac Brock on August 16, 1812. Accounts of the incident varied widely. A subordinate, Colonel Lewis Cass, placed all blame for the surrender on Hull and subsequently succeeded Hull as Territorial Governor.

Hull was court-martialed at a trial presided over by General Henry Dearborn. Evidence against him was given by Robert Lucas, a subordinate and the future governor of Ohio and territorial governor of Iowa. Hull was sentenced to be shot, though upon recommendation of mercy by the court, Hull received a reprieve from President James Madison.

Later life

Hull lived the remainder of his life in Newton, Massachusetts, with his wife Sarah Fuller. (They had had several children.) He wrote two books attempting to clear his name (Detroit: Defence of Brig. Gen. Wm. Hull in 1814 and Memoirs of the Campaign of the Northwestern Army of the United States: A.D. 1812), published in 1824. Some later historians have agreed that Hull was unfairly made a scapegoat for the embarrassing loss of Detroit. The publication of his Memoirs in 1824 changed public opinion somewhat in his favor, and he was honored with a dinner in Boston on May 30, 1825. That June, Lafayette visited Hull and declared, "We both have suffered contumely and reproach; but our characters are vindicated; let us forgive our enemies and die in Christian love and peace with all mankind." Hull died at home in Newton several months later, on November 29, 1825.

His son, Abraham Hull, was an Army Captain during the War of 1812, and died at the Battle of Lundy's Lane. His remains were buried in the Drummond Hill Cemetery in Niagara Falls, Ontario. He is the only American officer to be buried there.

William Hull was also uncle to Isaac Hull, son of his brother Joseph. When Joseph died while Isaac was young, Hull adopted the boy.

Willow

2016-01-10T17:14:00.002-05:00

Willow is the common name for any of the deciduous trees and shrubs comprising the genus Salix of the flowering plant family Salicaceae, characterized by flowers borne in catkins, tiny seeds with long, silky hairs, and alternate leaves. The word willow also is used for the strong, lightweight wood of these plants, which has commercial use. While willow is the common name in general for plants of this genus, and most species have willow as part of their common name, some narrow-leaved shrub species are called osier, and some broader-leaved species are called sallow. (The latter name is derived from the Latin word salix, for "willow.") This article will use the word willow as the general name for members of this genus.

There are about 400 species of willow. Willows are found primarily on moist soils in cold and temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Some willows (particularly arctic and alpine species), are low-growing or creeping shrubs; for example the dwarf willow (Salix herbacea) rarely exceeds six centimeters in height, though spreading widely across the ground.

Willows are very cross-fertile and numerous hybrids occur, both naturally and in cultivation. A well known example is the weeping willow (Salix × sepulcralis), very widely planted as an ornamental tree, which is a hybrid of a Chinese species and a European species—Peking willow and white willow.

Willows provide important ecological functions for erosion control along watercourses, and habitat and food for animals. For people, in addition to aesthetic and shade uses, the wood provides an important source of timber and the plant has a long history of medicinal use as the source of salicylic acid, the precursor to aspirin.

Description

Willows all have slender branches; large, fibrous, often stoloniferous roots; abundant watery sap; bark that is heavily charged with salicylic acid; and soft, usually pliant, tough wood. The roots are remarkable for their toughness, size, and tenacity of life, and roots readily grow from aerial parts of the plant.

The leaves are typically elongated but may also be round to oval, frequently with a serrated margin. All the buds are lateral; no absolutely terminal bud is ever formed. The buds are covered by a single scale, enclosing at its base two very small opposite buds, alternately arranged, with two, small, scale-like, fugacious, opposite leaves. The leaves are alternate, except the first pair, which fall when about an inch long. They are simple, feather-veined, and typically linear-lanceolate. Usually they are serrate, rounded at base, acute, or acuminate. The leaf petioles are short, the stipules often very conspicuous, looking like tiny round leaves and sometimes remaining for half the summer. On some species, however, they are small, inconspicuous, and fugacious (soon falling). In color, the leaves show a great variety of greens, ranging from yellowish to bluish.

Flowers

Willows are dioecious with male and female flowers appearing as catkins on different plants; the catkins are produced early in the spring, often before the leaves, or as the new leaves open.

The staminate (male) flowers are without either calyx or corolla; they consist simply of stamens, varying in number from two to ten, accompanied by a nectariferous gland and inserted on the base of a scale, which is itself borne on the rachis of a drooping raceme called a catkin, or ament. This scale is oval and entire and very hairy. The anthers are rose colored in the bud but orange or purple after the flower opens, they are two-celled and the cells open longitudinally. The filaments are threadlike, usually pale yellow, and often hairy.

The pistillate (female) flowers are also without calyx or corolla; and consist of a single ovary accompanied by a small flat nectar gland and inserted on the base of a scale, which is likewise borne on the rachis of a catkin. The ovary is one-celled, the style two-lobed, and the ovules numerous.

Fruit

The fruit is a small, one-celled, two-valved, cylindrical beaked capsule containing numerous tiny (0.1 mm) seeds. The seeds are furnished with long, silky, white hairs, which allow the fruit to be widely dispersed by the wind.

Cultivation

Almost all willows take root very readily from cuttings or where broken branches lie on the ground. There are a few exceptions, including the goat willow and peachleaf willow.

One famous example of such growth from cuttings involves the poet Alexander Pope, who begged a twig from a parcel tied with twigs sent from Spain to Lady Suffolk. This twig was planted and thrived, and legend has it that all of England's weeping willows are descended from this first one (Hone 1826).

Willows are often planted on the borders of streams so that their interlacing roots may protect the bank against the action of the water. Frequently, the roots are much larger than the stem that grows from them.

Species

There are around 400 species in the genus Salix (Mabberley 1997), including:

Salix acutifolia - violet willow
Salix alaxensis - Alaska willow
Salix alba - white willow
Salix alpina - alpine willow
Salix amygdaloides - peachleaf willow
Salix arbuscula - mountain willow
Salix arbusculoides - littletree willow
Salix arctica - arctic willow
Salix atrocinerea
Salix aurita - eared willow
Salix babylonica - Peking willow
Salix bakko
Salix barrattiana - Barratt's willow
Salix bebbiana - beaked willow
Salix boothii - Booth willow
Salix bouffordii
Salix brachycarpa - barren-ground willow
Salix cacuminis
Salix canariensis
Salix candida - sage willow
Salix caprea - goat willow
Salix caroliniana - coastal plain willow
Salix chaenomeloides
Salix chilensis
Salix cinerea - grey sallow
Salix cordata - heartleaf or sand dune willow
Salix daphnoides
Salix delnortensis
Salix discolor - pussy willow
Salix eastwoodiae - Eastwood's willow
Salix eleagnos
Salix eriocarpa
Salix eriocephala - heartleaf willow
Salix excelsa
Salix exigua - sandbar willow
Salix foetida
Salix fragilis - crack willow
Salix futura
Salix geyeriana
Salix gilgiana
Salix glauca
Salix gooddingii - Goodding willow
Salix gracilistyla
Salix hainanica - Hainan willow
Salix helvetica - Swiss willow
Salix herbacea - dwarf willow
Salix hirsuta
Salix hookeriana - Hooker's willow
Salix hultenii
Salix humboldtiana - Chile willow
Salix humilis - upland willow
Salix integra
Salix interior
Salix japonica
Salix jessoensis
Salix koriyanagi

Salix kusanoi
Salix lanata - woolly willow
Salix lapponum - downy willow
Salix lasiandra - Pacific willow
Salix lasiolepis - Arroyo willow
Salix lucida - shining willow
Salix magnifica
Salix matsudana - Chinese willow
Salix miyabeana
Salix mucronata
Salix myrtilloides - swamp sillow
Salix myrsinifolia - dark-leaved willow
Salix myrsinites - whortle-leaved willow
Salix nakamurana
Salix nigra - black willow
Salix pedicellaris - bog willow
Salix pentandra - bay willow
Salix petiolaris - slender willow
Salix phylicifolia - tea-leaved willow
Salix planifolia- planeleaf willow
Salix polaris - polar willow
Salix pseudo-argentea
Salix purpurea - purple willow
Salix pyrifolia - balsam willow
Salix reinii
Salix repens - creeping willow
Salix reticulata - net-leaved willow
Salix retusa
Salix rorida
Salix rosmarinifolia - rosemary-leaved willow
Salix rupifraga
Salix salicicola
Salix schwerinii
Salix scouleriana - Scouler's willow
Salix sericea - silky willow
Salix serissaefolia
Salix serissima - autumn willow
Salix shiraii
Salix sieboldiana
Salix sitchensis - Sitka willow
Salix subfragilis
Salix subopposita
Salix taraikensis
Salix tetrasperma
Salix thorelii
Salix triandra - almond willow
Salix udensis
Salix viminalis - common osier
Salix vulpina
Salix waldsteiniana
Salix wallichiana
Salix wilmsii
Salix woodii
Salix yezoalpina
Salix yoshinoi

Importance
Ecological

Willows are valuable for erosion control along watercourses. A number of willow species were widely planted in Australia for this purpose. They are now regarded as an invasive weed and many catchment management authorities are removing them to be replaced with native trees (Cremer 2003; AWWMWG 1998).

Willows are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species, and the seeds are consumed by birds. Willow trees produce a modest amount of nectar that bees can make honey from, and are especially valued as a source of pollen for bees.

Medicinal

The leaves and bark of the willow tree have been mentioned in ancient medicinal texts from Assyria, Sumer, and Egypt as a remedy for aches and fever (Breasted 2007; Nobel 2008) and the Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates wrote about its medicinal properties in the fifth century B.C.E.. Native Americans across the American continent relied on it as a staple of their medical treatments. This is because they contain salicylic acid, the precursor to aspirin.

In 1763, the medicinal properties of willow were observed by the Reverend Edward Stone in England. He notified the Royal Society who published his findings. The active extract of the bark, called salicin, was isolated to its crystalline form in 1828 by Henri Leroux, a French pharmacist, and Raffaele Piria, an Italian chemist, who then succeeded in separating out the acid in its pure state. Salicin is acidic when in a saturated solution in water (pH = 2.4), and is called salicylic acid for that reason.

In 1897, Felix Hoffmann created a synthetically altered version of salicin (in his case derived from the Spiraea plant), which caused less digestive upset than pure salicylic acid. The new drug, formally Acetylsalicylic acid, was named aspirin by Hoffmann's employer Bayer AG. This gave rise to the hugely important class of drugs known as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs).

Other uses

Willows are popular as ornamental trees and for shade. For example, the weeping willows, with their long, drooping branches are popular for such purposes. They may be used as hedges and for windbreaks. The catkins also are popular in arrangements for display.

The strong, but soft and pliant wood is used for a number of purposes as timber, including making boxes, crates, wicker furniture, brooms, cricket bats (grown from certain strains of white willow), cradle boards, chairs and other furniture, dolls, flutes, poles, sweat lodges, toys, turnery, tool handles, veneer, wands, whistles, and boats. The wood also is used for fuel and charcoal. Other wood-derived products include paper, rope, and using the shoots for basket weaving, fish traps, and wattle fences, and willows are used for tannin.

Willow bark contains auxins: plant growth hormones, especially those used for rooting new cuttings. The bark can even be used to make a simple extract that will promote cutting growth.

As one of the "Four Species," the willow is used in a ceremony on the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. Also the willow is one of the nine sacred trees mentioned in wicca and witchcraft, with several magical uses.

Charles "Lucky" Luciano

2016-01-07T06:03:00.002-05:00

Charles "Lucky" Luciano ( born Salvatore Lucania November 24, 1897 – January 26, 1962), was an Italian mobster in the United States. Luciano is considered the father of modern organized crime in the United States for the establishment of the first Commission. He was for many years the boss of the modern Genovese crime family. He was, along with his associate Meyer Lansky, instrumental in the development of the National Crime Syndicate in the United States.

Luciano was tried and successfully convicted for compulsory prostitution in 1936 after years of investigation by District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey. Luciano was given a thirty year prison sentence, but was allowed to live his life freely outside of the United States when he struck a deal with the government during World War II while still imprisoned.

Early life

Salvatore Lucania was born on November 24, 1897 in Lercara Friddi, Sicily. Luciano's parents, Antonio and Rosalia Lucania, had four other children: Bartolomeo (born 1890), Giuseppe (born 1898), Filippa (born 1901), and Concetta. Luciano's father worked in a sulfur mine in Sicily. In 1907, when Luciano was nine years old, the family immigrated to the United States. They settled in New York City in the borough of Manhattan on its Lower East Side, a popular destination for Italian immigrants. At age 14, Luciano dropped out of school and started a job delivering hats, earning $7 per week. However, after winning $244 in a dice game, Luciano quit his job and went to earning money on the street. That same year, Luciano's parents sent him to the Brooklyn Truant School.

As a teenager, Luciano started his own gang and was a member of the old Five Points Gang. Unlike other street gangs whose business was petty crime, Luciano offered protection to Jewish youngsters from Italian and Irish gangs for 10 cents per week. He was also learning the pimping trade in the years around World War I. Around this time, he also met Meyer Lansky, his future business partner and close friend.

It is not clear how Luciano earned the nickname "Lucky". It may have come from surviving a severe beating by three men in the 1920s, as well as a throat slashing. This was because Luciano refused to work for another mob boss. From 1916 to 1936, Luciano was arrested 25 times on charges including assault, illegal gambling, blackmail and robbery, but spent no time in prison. The name "Lucky" may have also been a mispronunciation of Luciano's surname "Lucania".

Prohibition

On January 17, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, and Prohibition lasted until the amendment was repealed in 1933. The Amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages. As there was still a substantial demand for alcohol, this provided criminals with an added source of income.

By 1920, Luciano had met many future Mafia leaders, including Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, his longtime friend and future business partner through the Five Points Gang. The same year, Lower Manhattan gang boss Joe Masseria recruited Luciano as one of his gunmen. Around that same time, Luciano and his close associates started working for gambler Arnold "The Brain" Rothstein. Rothstein immediately saw the potential windfall from Prohibition and educated Luciano on running bootleg alcohol as a business. Luciano, Costello, and Genovese started their own bootlegging operation with financing from Rothstein.

Rothstein served as a mentor for Luciano; among other things, Rothstein taught him how to move in high society. In 1923, after a botched drug deal damaged Luciano's criminal reputation, he bought 200 expensive seats to the Jack Dempsey–Luis Firpo boxing match in the Bronx and distributed them to top gangsters and politicians. Rothstein then took Luciano on a shopping trip to Wanamaker's Department Store in Manhattan to buy expensive clothes for the fight. The strategy worked, and Luciano's reputation was saved.

By 1925, Luciano was grossing over $12 million a year. He had a net income of around $4 million each year after the costs of bribing politicians and police. Luciano and his partners ran the largest bootlegging operation in New York, one that also extended into Philadelphia. He imported Scotch whisky from Scotland, rum from the Caribbean, and whisky from Canada. Luciano was also involved in illegal gambling.

Rise to power

Luciano soon became a top aide in the Masseria organization. In contrast to Rothstein, Masseria was an uneducated man with poor manners and limited managerial skills. By the late 1920s, Masseria's main rival was boss Salvatore Maranzano, who had come from Sicily to run the Castellammarese clan activities. Maranzano didn't want to pay commission to Masseria, and the ensuing rivalry eventually escalated into the infamous Castellammarese War, which raged from 1928 to 1931 and resulted in the deaths of both Maranzano and Masseria.

Masseria and Maranzano were so-called "Mustache Petes": older, traditional Mafia bosses who had started their criminal careers in Italy. They believed in upholding the supposed Old World Mafia principles of "honor", "tradition", "respect", and "dignity". These bosses refused to work with non-Italians, and were even skeptical of working with non-Sicilians. Some of the most traditional bosses only worked with men with roots in their own Sicilian village. Luciano, in contrast, was willing to work with Italian, Jewish, and Irish gangsters. For this reason, he was shocked to hear traditional Sicilian mafiosi lecture him about his dealings with close friend Frank Costello, whom they called "the dirty Calabrian".

Luciano soon began cultivating ties with other younger mobsters who had been born in Italy, but began their criminal careers in the United States. Known as the Young Turks, they chafed at their bosses' conservatism. Luciano wanted to use lessons he learned from Rothstein to turn their gang activities into criminal empires. As the war progressed, this group came to include future mob leaders such as Costello, Vito Genovese, Albert Anastasia, Joe Adonis, Joe Bonanno, Carlo Gambino, Joe Profaci, Tommy Gagliano, and Tommy Lucchese. The Young Turks believed that their bosses' greed and conservatism were keeping them poor while the Irish and Jewish gangs got rich. Luciano's vision was to form a national crime syndicate in which the Italian, Jewish, and Irish gangs could pool their resources and turn organized crime into a lucrative business for all.

In October 1929, Luciano was forced into a limousine at gun point by three men, beaten and stabbed, and dumped on a beach on Staten Island. He somehow survived the ordeal but was forever marked with a scar and droopy eye. The identity of his abductors was never established. When picked up by the police after the beating, Luciano said that he had no idea who did it. However, in 1953, Luciano told an interviewer that it was the police who kidnapped and beat him. Another story was that Maranzano ordered the attack. The most important consequence of this episode was the press coverage it engendered, introducing Luciano to the New York public.

Power play

In early 1931, Luciano decided to eliminate Masseria. The war had been going poorly for Masseria, and Luciano saw an opportunity to switch allegiance. In a secret deal with Maranzano, Luciano agreed to engineer Masseria's death in return for receiving Masseria's rackets and becoming Maranzano's second-in-command.

On April 15, 1931, Luciano invited Masseria and two other associates to lunch in a Coney Island restaurant. After finishing their meal, the mobsters decided to play cards. At that point, Luciano went to the bathroom. Four gunmen – Genovese, Anastasia, Adonis and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel – then walked into the dining room and shot and killed Masseria and his two men. With Maranzano's blessing, Luciano took over Masseria's gang and became Maranzano's lieutenant. The Castellammarese War was over.

With Masseria gone, Maranzano divided all the Italian-American gangs in New York City into Five Families. As per his original deal with Maranzano, Luciano took over the old Masseria gang. The other four families were headed by Maranzano, Profaci, Gagliano, and Vincent Mangano. Maranzano promised that all the families would be equal and free to make money. However, at a meeting of crime bosses in Upstate New York, Maranzano declared himself capo di tutti capi, the absolute boss of organized crime in America. Maranzano also whittled down the rival families' rackets in favor of his own. Luciano appeared to accept these changes, but was merely biding his time before removing Maranzano. Although Maranzano was slightly more forward-thinking than Masseria, Luciano had come to believe that Maranzano was even more greedy and hidebound than Masseria had been.

By September 1931, Maranzano realized that Luciano was a threat, and hired Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll, an Irish gangster, to kill him. However, Lucchese alerted Luciano that he was marked for death. On September 10, Maranzano ordered Luciano and Genovese to come to his office at 230 Park Avenue in Manhattan. Convinced that Maranzano planned to murder them, Luciano decided to act first. He sent to Maranzano's office four Jewish gangsters whose faces were unknown to Maranzano's people. They had been secured with the aid of Lansky and Siegel, who were both Jewish. Disguised as government agents, two of the gangsters disarmed Maranzano's bodyguards. The other two, aided by Tommy Lucchese, who was there to point Maranzano out, stabbed Maranzano multiple times before shooting him.

This assassination was the first of what would later be fabled as the "Night of the Sicilian Vespers." Then on September 13 the corpses of two other Maranzano allies, Samuel Monaco and Louis Russo were retrieved from Newark Bay, showing evidence of torture. Meanwhile, Joseph Siragusa, leader of the Pittsburgh crime family, was shot to death in his home. The October 15 disappearance of Joe Ardizonne, head of the Los Angeles crime family, would later be regarded as part of this alleged plan to quickly eliminate the old-world Sicilian bosses. The idea of an organized mass purge, directed by Luciano, is a myth, however.

Reorganizing Cosa Nostra

With the death of Maranzano, Luciano became the dominant organized crime boss in the United States. He had reached the pinnacle of America's underworld, directing criminal rules, policies, and activities along with the other family bosses. Luciano also had his own crime family, which controlled lucrative criminal rackets in New York City such as illegal gambling, bookmaking, loan-sharking, drug trafficking, and extortion. Luciano became very influential in labor and union activities and controlled the Manhattan Waterfront, garbage hauling, construction, Garment Center businesses, and trucking.

Luciano abolished the title of capo di tutti i capi or "boss of all bosses", insisting that the position created trouble between the families, rather than declare himself the most powerful and make himself a target for other families. Luciano preferred to quietly maintain control through unofficial alliances with other family bosses. Luciano felt that the ceremony of becoming a "made-man", or an amico nostro, in a crime family was a Sicilian anachronism that should be discontinued. However, Lansky persuaded Luciano to keep the practice, arguing that young people needed rituals to promote obedience to the family. Luciano also stressed the importance of omertà, the oath of silence. Finally, Luciano kept the five crime families that Maranzano had instituted.

Luciano elevated his most trusted Italian associates to high-level positions in what was now the Luciano crime family. Genovese became underboss and Costello consigliere. Michael "Trigger Mike" Coppola, Anthony Strollo, Joe Adonis, and Anthony Carfano all served as caporegimes. Because Lansky and Siegel were non-Italians, neither man could hold official positions within any Cosa Nostra family. However, Lansky was a top advisor to Luciano and Siegel a trusted associate.

The Commission

Luciano, on the urging of former Chicago boss Johnny Torrio, set up the Commission to serve as the governing body for organized crime. Designed to settle all disputes and decide which families controlled which territories, the Commission has been called Luciano's greatest innovation. Luciano's goals with the Commission were to quietly maintain his own power over all the families, and to prevent future gang wars.

The Commission was originally composed of representatives of the Five Families of New York City, the Philadelphia crime family, the Buffalo crime family, the Los Angeles crime family, and the Chicago Outfit of Al Capone; later, the Detroit crime family and Kansas City crime family were added. The Commission also provided representation for the Irish and Jewish criminal organizations in New York. All Commission members were supposed to retain the same power and had one vote, but in reality some families and bosses were more powerful than others.

The Commission's first test as an authority came in 1935 when it ordered gang boss Dutch Schultz to drop his plans to murder Special Prosecutor Thomas Dewey. Luciano argued that a Dewey assassination would precipitate a massive law enforcement crackdown. When Schultz announced that he was going to kill Dewey (or his Assistant David Asch) in the next three days, regardless of the Commission's instructions, the Commission quickly arranged Schultz's murder. On October 24, 1935, Schultz was murdered in a tavern in Newark, New Jersey.

Prosecution for pandering

During the early 1930s, Luciano's crime family started taking over small scale prostitution operations in New York City. In June 1935, New York Governor Herbert H. Lehman appointed U.S. Attorney Thomas E. Dewey as a special prosecutor to combat organized crime in New York City. Dewey soon realized that he could attack Luciano, the most powerful gangster in New York, through this prostitution network with the assistance of his aide David Asch.

On February 2, 1936, Dewey launched a massive police raid against 200 brothels in Brooklyn and Manhattan, earning him nationwide recognition as a major "gangbuster". Ten men and 100 women were arrested. However, unlike previous vice raids, Dewey did not release the arrestees. Instead, he took them to court where a judge set bails of $10,000, far beyond their means to pay. By mid-March, several defendants had implicated Luciano. Three of these prostitutes implicated Luciano as the ringleader, who made collections, although David Betillo was in charge of the prostitution ring in New York, and any money that Luciano received was from Betillo. In late March 1936, Luciano received a tip that he was going to be arrested and fled to Hot Springs, Arkansas. Unfortunately for Luciano, a New York detective in Hot Springs on a different assignment spotted Luciano and notified Dewey.

On April 3, 1936, Luciano was arrested in Hot Springs on a criminal warrant from New York. The next day in New York, Dewey indicted Luciano and his accomplices on 60 counts of compulsory prostitution. Luciano's lawyers in Arkansas then began a fierce legal battle against extradition. On April 6, someone offered a $50,000 bribe to Arkansas Attorney General Carl E. Bailey to facilitate Luciano's case. However, Bailey refused the bribe and immediately reported it. On April 17, after all of Luciano's legal motions had been exhausted, Arkansas authorities handed Luciano to three New York City Police Department detectives for transport by train back to New York for trial. When the detectives and their prisoner reached St. Louis, Missouri and changed trains, they were guarded by 20 local policemen to prevent a mob rescue attempt. The men arrived in New York City on April 18, and Luciano was held without bail.

On May 13, 1936, Luciano's pandering trial began. He was accused of being part of a massive prostitution ring known as "the Combination". During the trial, Dewey exposed Luciano for lying on the witness stand through direct quizzing and records of telephone calls; Luciano also had no explanation for why his federal income tax records claimed he made only $22,000 a year, while he was obviously a wealthy man. Dewey ruthlessly pressed Luciano on his long arrest record and his relationships with well-known gangsters such as Ciro Terranova, Louis Buchalter, and Joseph Masseria.

On June 7, 1936, Luciano was convicted on 62 counts of compulsory prostitution. On July 18, 1936, Luciano was sentenced to 30 to 50 years in state prison, along with Betillo and others.

Many observers have questioned whether there was enough evidence to support the charges against Luciano. Like nearly all crime families, the Luciano family almost certainly profited from prostitution and extorted money from madams and brothel keepers. However, like most bosses, Luciano created layers of insulation between himself and criminal acts. It would have been significantly out of character for him to be directly involved in any criminal enterprise, let alone a prostitution ring. At least two of his contemporaries have denied that Luciano was ever part of "the Combination". In her memoirs, New York society madam Polly Adler wrote that if Luciano had been involved with "the Combination", she would have known about it. Bonanno, the last surviving contemporary of Luciano's who wasn't in prison, also denied that Luciano was directly involved in prostitution in his book, A Man of Honor.

Prison

Luciano continued to run the Luciano crime family from prison, relaying his orders through acting boss Vito Genovese. However, in 1937 Genovese fled to Naples, Italy, to avoid an impending murder indictment in New York. Luciano appointed his consigliere, Costello, as the new acting boss and the overseer of Luciano's interests.

Luciano was first imprisoned at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York, but was moved later in 1936 to Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, far away from New York City. At Clinton, co-defendant Dave Betillo prepared special dishes for Luciano in a kitchen set aside by authorities. Luciano was assigned a job in the prison laundry. Luciano used his influence to help get the materials to build a church at the prison, which became famous for being one of the only freestanding churches in the New York State correctional system and also for the fact that on the church's altar are two of the original doors from the Victoria, the ship of Ferdinand Magellan.

Legal appeals of Luciano's conviction continued until October 10, 1938, when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review his case. At this point, Luciano stepped down as boss, and Costello formally took over the family.

World War II, freedom, and deportation

During World War II, the U.S. government struck a secret deal with the imprisoned Luciano. In 1942, the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence was concerned about German and Italian agents entering the United States through the New York waterfront. They also worried about sabotage in these facilities. Knowing that the Cosa Nostra controlled the waterfront, the Navy contacted Lansky about a deal with Luciano. To facilitate negotiations, the State of New York transferred Luciano from Clinton prison to Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock, New York, which was much closer to New York City.

The Navy, the State of New York and Luciano eventually concluded a deal. In exchange for a commutation of his sentence, Luciano promised the complete assistance of his organization in providing intelligence to the Navy. Luciano ally Albert Anastasia, who controlled the docks, allegedly promised no dockworker strikes during war. In preparation for the 1943 allied invasion of Sicily, Luciano allegedly provided the U.S. military with Mafia contacts in Sicily.

The value of Luciano's contribution to the war effort is highly debated. In 1947, the naval officer in charge of Operation Underworld discounted the value of Luciano's wartime aid. A 1954 report ordered by Governor Dewey stated that Luciano provided many valuable services to Naval Intelligence. The enemy threat to the docks, Luciano allegedly said, was manufactured by the sinking of the SS Normandie in New York harbor, supposedly directed by Anastasia's brother, Anthony Anastasio. However, the official investigation of the ship sinking found no evidence of sabotage.

On January 3, 1946, as a presumed reward for his alleged wartime cooperation, now Governor Thomas E. Dewey reluctantly commuted Luciano's pandering sentence on condition that he did not resist deportation to Italy. Luciano accepted the deal, although he still maintained that he was a U.S. citizen and not subject to deportation. On February 2, 1946, two federal immigration agents transported Luciano from Sing Sing prison to Ellis Island in New York Harbor for deportation proceedings. On February 9, the night before his departure, Luciano shared a spaghetti dinner on his freighter with Anastasia and five other guests.

On February 10, 1946, Luciano's ship sailed from Brooklyn harbor for Italy. This was the last time he would see the United States. On February 28, after a 17-day voyage, Luciano's ship arrived in Naples. On arrival, Luciano told reporters he would probably reside in Sicily.

Luciano was deeply hurt about having to leave the United States, a country he had considered his home ever since his arrival at age 9. During his exile, Luciano frequently encountered US military men and American tourists during train trips in Italy. Luciano enjoyed these meetings and gladly posed for photographs and signed autographs.

The Havana Conference

In October 1946, Luciano secretly moved to Havana, Cuba. Luciano first took a freighter from Naples to Caracas, Venezuela, then flew to Rio de Janeiro. He then flew to Mexico City and doubled back to Caracas, where he took a private plane to Camaguey, Cuba, finally arriving on October 29. Luciano was then driven to Havana, where he moved into an estate in the Miramar section of the city.

Luciano's objective in going to Cuba was to be closer to the United States so that he could resume control over American Cosa Nostra operations and eventually return to the United States. Lansky was already established as a major investor in Cuban gambling and hotel projects.

In 1946, Lansky called a meeting of the heads of the major crime families in Havana that December. The ostensible reason was to see singer Frank Sinatra perform. However, the real reason was to discuss mob business with Luciano in attendance. The three topics to discuss: the heroin trade, Cuban gambling, and what to do about Siegel and the floundering Flamingo Hotel project in Las Vegas. The Conference took place at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba and lasted a little more than a week.

On December 20, during the conference, Luciano had a private meeting with Genovese in Luciano's hotel suite. In 1945, Genovese had been returned from Italy to New York to face trial on his 1934 murder charge. However, in June 1946, the charges were dismissed and Genovese was free to return to mob business. Unlike Costello, Luciano had never trusted Genovese. In the meeting, Genovese tried to convince Luciano to become a titular boss of bosses and let Genovese run everything. Luciano calmly rejected Genovese's suggestion:

There is no Boss of Bosses. I turned it down in front of everybody. If I ever change my mind, I will take the title. But it won't be up to you. Right now you work for me and I ain't in the mood to retire. Don't you ever let me hear this again, or I'll lose my temper.

Soon after the Havana Conference began, the U.S. government learned about Luciano in Cuba. Luciano had been publicly fraternizing with Sinatra as well as visiting numerous nightclubs, so his presence was no secret in Havana. The U.S. started putting pressure on the Cuban government to expel him. On February 21, 1947, U.S. Narcotics Commissioner Harry J. Anslinger notified the Cuban government that the United States would block all shipment of narcotic prescription drugs to Cuba while Luciano was there. Two days later, the Cuban government announced that Luciano was in custody and would be deported to Italy within 48 hours. Luciano was placed on a Turkish freighter that was sailing to Genoa, Italy.

Operating in Italy

After Luciano's secret trip to Cuba, he spent the rest of his life in Italy under tight police surveillance.

When Luciano arrived in Genoa from Cuba on April 11, 1947, he was arrested and sent to a jail in Palermo. On May 11, a regional commission in Palermo warned Luciano to stay out of trouble and released him from jail.

In early July 1949, police in Rome arrested Luciano on suspicion of involvement in the shipping of narcotics to New York. On July 15, after a week in jail, police released Luciano without filing any charges. He was also permanently banned from visiting Rome.

On June 9, 1951, Luciano was questioned by police in Naples on suspicion of illegally bringing $57,000 in cash and a new American car into Italy. After 20 hours of questioning, police released Luciano without any charges.

In 1952, the Italian government revoked Luciano's Italian passport after complaints from U.S. and Canadian law enforcement officials.

On November 19, 1954, an Italian judicial commission in Naples applied strict limits on Luciano for two years. He was required to report to the police every Sunday, to stay home every night, and to not leave Naples without police permission. The commission cited Luciano's alleged involvement in the narcotics trade as the reason for these restrictions.

Personal life

In 1929, Luciano met Gay Orlova, a featured dancer in one of Broadway's leading nightclubs, Hollywood. They were inseparable, but never married up until he went to prison.

In early 1948, Luciano met Igea Lissoni, an Italian nightclub dancer 20 years his junior, whom he later described as the love of his life. In the summer, Lissoni moved in with him. Although some reports said the couple married in 1949, others state that they only exchanged rings. Luciano and Lissoni lived together in Luciano's house in Naples. Although Luciano adored Lissoni, he continued to have affairs with other women. This led to numerous arguments with Lissoni, with Luciano striking her on several occasions. In 1959, Lissoni died of breast cancer.

Luciano never had children. He once provided his reasons for that: "I didn't want no son of mine to go through life as the son of Luciano, the gangster. That's one thing I still hate Dewey for, making me a gangster in the eyes of the world."

American power struggle

By 1957, Genovese felt strong enough to move against Luciano and his acting boss in New York, Frank Costello. He was aided in this move by Anastasia crime family underboss Carlo Gambino. On May 2, 1957, following Vito Genovese's orders Vincent "Chin" Gigante ambushed Frank Costello in the lobby of Frank's Central Park apartment building The Majestic. Gigante called out, "This is for you, Frank," and as Costello turned, shot him in the head. After firing his weapon Vincent quickly left thinking he had killed Frank. The bullet had just grazed Costello's head and he was not seriously injured. Although Costello refused to cooperate with the police, Gigante was arrested for the crime. Gigante was acquitted at trial, thanking Costello in the courtroom after the verdict. Costello was allowed to retire after conceding control of what is called today the Genovese crime family to Genovese. Luciano was powerless to stop it. On October 26, 1957, Genovese and Gambino arranged the murder of Albert Anastasia, another Luciano ally. Gambino took over what is now called the Gambino crime family. Genovese now believed himself to be the top boss in the Cosa Nostra.

In November 1957, Genovese called a meeting of Cosa Nostra bosses in Apalachin, New York to approve his takeover of the Luciano family and to establish his national power. Instead, the Apalachin Meeting turned into a fiasco when law enforcement raided the meeting. Over 65 high-ranking mobsters were arrested and the Cosa Nostra was subjected to publicity and numerous grand jury summons. The enraged mobsters blamed Genovese for this disaster, opening a window of opportunity for Genovese's opponents.

Costello, Luciano, and Gambino met in a hotel in Palermo, Sicily, to discuss their plan of action. In his own power move, Gambino had deserted Genovese. After their meeting, Luciano allegedly paid an American drug seller $100,000 to falsely implicate Genovese in a drug deal.

On April 4, 1959, Genovese was convicted in New York of conspiracy to violate federal narcotics laws. Sent to prison for 15 years, Genovese tried to run his crime family from prison until his death in 1969. Meanwhile, Gambino now became the most powerful man in the Cosa Nostra.

Death and legacy

On January 26, 1962, Luciano died of a heart attack at Naples International Airport. Luciano had gone to the airport to meet with American producer Martin Gosch about a film based on his life. To avoid antagonizing other Cosa Nostra members, Luciano had previously refused to authorize a film, but reportedly relented after Lissoni's death. After the meeting with Gosch, Luciano was stricken with a heart attack and died. Luciano was unaware that Italian drug agents had followed him to the airport in anticipation of arresting him on drug smuggling charges.

Three days later, 300 people attended a funeral service for Luciano in Naples. Luciano's body was conveyed along the streets of Naples in a horse-drawn black hearse. With the permission of the U.S. government, Luciano's relatives took his body back to New York for burial. He was buried in St. John's Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens. More than 2,000 mourners attended his funeral. Luciano's longtime friend, Gambino crime family boss Carlo Gambino, gave his eulogy.

Gambino was the only other boss besides Luciano to have complete control of the Commission and virtually every Mafia family in the United States. In popular culture, proponents of the Mafia and its history often debate as to who was the greater between Luciano and his contemporary, Al Capone. The much-publicized exploits of Capone with the Chicago Outfit made him the most famous mobster in American history, but he did not exert influence over other Mafia families as Luciano did in creating and running The Commission.

In 1998, Time characterized Luciano as the "criminal mastermind" among the top 20 most influential builders and titans of the 20th century.

Laurence J. Peter

2016-01-04T06:00:00.000-05:00

Laurence J. Peter (September 16, 1919 - January 12, 1990) was a Canadian educator and author. Peter began his career as an educator, teaching both within the school system and as a professor of education at the college level. He was particularly interested in special education, and published several texts in the field. He is best known to the general public, however, for the formulation of the "Peter Principle."

The "Peter Principle" was first published in a humorous book co-authored with Raymond Hull. This "principle" basically states that each employee rises to the level of his incompetence. Although written in a humorous style, Peter's book contained many real-world examples and thought-provoking explanations of human behavior.

Peter had clear insights into weaknesses in human nature. In particular, he recognized that those who rise to positions of authority often become ineffective, while others, particularly those with original and creative ways of thinking, find their talents are unused. Peter suggested that these problems are particularly pronounced in classless societies, and thus that some form of assigning individuals according to their talents and abilities to different classes of work is more efficient. Such a system better serves the whole purpose of the organization or society, and also is more satisfying to each individual, as they are able to fulfill their potential and contribute to society in the way that best suits their abilities. Although some may deny its validity, for many in the world of business and management, Peter's accounts and suggestions ring true.

Life

Laurence Johnston Peter was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on September 16, 1919. He received his bachelor's (1957) and master's (1958) degrees in education from Western Washington State College. He then obtained a Doctor of Education degree from Washington State University in 1963.

He taught in Vancouver schools from 1941. Peter married Nancy Bailey and they had four children: two sons, John and Edward, and two daughters, Alice and Margaret. He then joined the faculty of the University of British Columbia in 1965. In 1967 Peter married Irene (Howe) Taylor.

Peter moved to California, where he became an Associate Professor of Education, Director of the Evelyn Frieden Centre for Prescriptive Teaching, and Coordinator of Programs for Emotionally Disturbed Children at the University of Southern California.

He became widely famous in 1968, after the publication of The Peter Principle. The manuscript had been rejected by thirty publishers, including McGraw-Hill which had previously published his texts on education. In the rejection slip from McGraw-Hill, the editor wrote, "I can foresee no commercial possibilities for such a book and consequently can offer no encouragement" (Barron 1990).

Finally, William Morrow and Company accepted the manuscript. Not expecting it to be successful, they printed only 10,000 copies. It sold more than 200,000 copies in the first year and was on the New York Times best-seller list, and was translated into 38 languages (Barron 1990). Following this success, Peter retired from academic life, authoring several other popular books.

Peter received the WSU Regents’ Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1980. From 1985 to his death in 1990, Peter attended and was involved in management of the Kinetic Sculpture Race in Humboldt County, California. He proposed an award for the race, titled "The Golden Dinosaur Award," which has been handed out every year since to the first sculptural machine to utterly break down immediately after the start.

Peter died on January 12, 1990, at his home in Palos Verdes, California.

Work

Laurence Peter began his career as an educator, teaching both within the school system and as a professor of education at the college level. He was very involved in special education, and published several texts in the field. He is best known, however, for his authorship of the "Peter Principle" published in a humorous book co-authored with Raymond Hull. He also "inadvertently founded" the "salutary science of Hierarchiology" in the same work. While written in a humorous style, Peter's observations have been found to have validity.
The Peter Principle

The "Peter Principle" was stated in the 1968 publication of the same name as follows:

    In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.

This principle holds that in a hierarchical organization, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their "level of incompetence"), and there they remain. Peter's Corollary states that "in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties" and adds that "work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence" (Peter and Hull 1969).

Peter noted that although competence would appear to be a vital asset in performing tasks, promotion to higher levels of responsibility depends almost entirely on competence at tasks that the person has already accomplished not on their competence at the new level of responsibility. With his clever wit, Peter was able to satirize both hierarchical organizations and those who wished to succeed in them: "Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent" (Peter 1984). He also highlighted a number of problems and obsessions that befall those who seek promotion to the highest levels, including "Tabulatory Gigantism," the obsession with having a bigger desk than one's colleagues.

Peter's description of management, "the cream rises until it sours," was based on his observations of incompetence in a wide variety of organizations including businesses, school systems, churches, and government agencies. In fact, he noted that bureaucracies of all sorts were inevitably made up of those inadequate to deal with their responsibilities. Continuing his sarcastic insights, Peter noted that "Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status" (Peter 1977, 83).

The employee's incompetence is not necessarily exposed as a result of the higher-ranking position being more difficult—simply, that job is different from the job in which the employee previously excelled, and thus, requires different work skills, which the employee usually does not possess. For example, a factory worker's excellence in his job can earn him promotion to manager, at which point the skills that earned him his promotion no longer apply to his job.

Peter wrote that some workers, recognizing that their abilities lay in the tasks required in their current positions, resorted to "Creative Incompetence," or "creating the impression that you have already reached your level of incompetence" to avoid promotion to their level of incompetence. Peter noted that "for a clerical worker, leaving one's desk drawers open at the end of the working day will, in some hierarchies, have the desired effect" (Peter and Hull, 1969).
Hierarchiology

Along with the Peter Principle, Peter also coined "hierarchiology" as the social science concerned with the basic principles of hierarchically organized systems in human society:

    Having formulated the Principle, I discovered that I had inadvertently founded a new science, hierarchiology, the study of hierarchies. The term hierarchy was originally used to describe the system of church government by priests graded into ranks. The contemporary meaning includes any organization whose members or employees are arranged in order of rank, grade or class. Hierarchiology, although a relatively recent discipline, appears to have great applicability to the fields of public and private administration (Peter and Hull 1969).

Entry-level jobs are usually detail-oriented and restrictive, thereby favoring detail-oriented workers, yet hindering creative and innovative workers. By definition and necessity, entry-level jobs are the assembly line of an organization, and thus, the most creative and innovative employees start in positions of incompetence. The detail-oriented persons are thus promoted over the creative employees. Often these creative employees are incapable of showing their work strengths because of the structured and restrictive assembly line environments, and then are tagged as bad employees.

In reality, creative employees may be more suited to management jobs, but because they are unable to use their strengths in the low-level jobs they hold, they never rise to management, and the innate flexibility and innovation needed for managing is lost to the company. The end result for an organization as a whole is that it will collapse when the incompetents in the ranks outnumber the competent because the organization is no longer able to produce results favorable to its continual existence.

Peter pointed out that a social class, or caste, system is more efficient at avoiding incompetence. Lower-level competent workers will not be promoted above their level of competence as the higher jobs are reserved for members of a higher class.

    The prospect of starting near the top of the pyramid will attract to the hierarchy a group of brilliant [higher class] employees who would never have come there at all if they had been forced to start at the bottom (Peter and Hull 1969).

Thus, he reasoned, hierarchies with different classes of people "are more efficient than those of a classless or equalitarian society."
Legacy

Although humorous, Peter's book contains many real-world examples and thought-provoking explanations of human behavior.

In an organizational structure, practical application of the Peter Principle involves assessment of the potential of an employee for a promotion based on performance in the current job, in other words, members of a hierarchical organization eventually are promoted to their highest level of competence, after which further promotion raises them to incompetence. That level is the employee's "level of incompetence," where the employee has no chance of further promotion, thus reaching his or her career's ceiling in an organization.

One way that organizations attempt to avoid this effect is to refrain from promoting a worker until he or she shows the skills and work habits needed to succeed to the next higher job. Thus, a worker is not promoted to managing others if he or she does not already display management abilities. The corollary is that employees who are dedicated to their current jobs will not be promoted for their efforts, but might, instead, receive a pay increase.

In a similar vein, some organizations recognize that technical people may be very valuable for their skills, but poor managers, and so provide parallel career paths allowing a good technical person to acquire pay and status reserved for management in other organizations.

Peter's humorous descriptions of incompetence, and the ways employees and management deal with it, made his Peter Principle part of popular culture. While business and management are areas to be taken seriously, Peter's use of humor made his critical insights acceptable to a greater degree than perhaps a more serious analysis would have been. Similar humorous observations on incompetence in management can be found in the Dilbert cartoon series (such as "The Dilbert Principle"), the movie Office Space, and the television show, The Office.

Tyr

2015-12-25T11:18:00.000-05:00

Tyr (Old Norse: Týr) is the god of single combat and heroic glory in Norse mythology, portrayed as a one-handed man. In the late Icelandic Eddas, he is described, alternately, as the son of Odin (in the Prose Edda) or of the giant Hymir (in the Poetic Edda), while the origins of his name suggest that he was once considered the father of the gods and head of the Norse pantheon.
Tyr in a Norse Context

As mentioned above, Tyr is a Norse deity, a designation that signifies his membership in a complex religious, mythological and cosmological belief system shared by the Scandinavian and Germanic peoples. This mythological tradition, of which the Scandinavian (and particularly Icelandic) sub-groups are best preserved, developed in the period from the first manifestations of religious and material culture in approximately 1000 B.C.E. until the Christianization of the area, a process that occurred primarily from 900-1200 C.E. The tales recorded within this mythological corpus tend to exemplify a unified cultural focus on physical prowess and military might.

Within this framework, Norse cosmology postulates three separate "clans" of deities: the Aesir, the Vanir, and the Jotun. The distinction between Aesir and Vanir is relative, for the two are said to have made peace, exchanged hostages, intermarried and reigned together after a prolonged war. In fact, the greatest divergence between the two groups is in their respective areas of influence, with the Aesir representing war and conquest, and the Vanir representing exploration, fertility and wealth. The Jotun, on the other hand, are seen as a generally malefic (though wise) race of giants who represented the primary adversaries of the Aesir and Vanir.

Tyr is generally recognized as a "ruler" god among the Aesir, and it is postulated that his role as the head of the pantheon was displaced only gradually by the worship of Odin.
Characteristics

Associated with vigor and victory in battle, Tyr was a warrior god par excellence whose runes were thought to protect the Viking hordes who inscribed them on their weapons and bodies. This historical identification is evidenced by the Roman tendency to conflate the Germanic cult of Tyr with their own veneration of Mars. Further, Tyr was also understood as the god of oaths and legal proceedings:

    In general, too much emphasis has been placed on the warlike aspects of Tyr, and his significance for Germanic law has not been sufficiently recognized. In should be noted that, from the Germanic point of view, there is no contradiction between the concepts "God of War" and "God of Law." War is in fact not only the bloody mingling of combat, but no less a decision obtained between the two combatants and secured by precise rules of law.... So is explained ... how combat between two armies can be replaced by a legal duel, in which the gods grant victory to the party whose right they recognize.

This attribution is also supported by evidence from the Roman period, which seems to describe Tyr as Mars Thingsus ("the god of the þing, or judicial assembly").

In his instruction manual for Nordic skalds (lyric poets), Snorri Sturluson (1178-1241 C.E.) describes some possible kennings (poetic allusions) that could be used to describe Tyr, including "One-handed God, and Fosterer of the Wolf, God of Battles, Son of Odin." His hand was lost in the feeding of Fenrir (an important myth that is discussed below).
Historical Origins

The name Tyr literally means "god," with an etymology that can be traced by to the Proto-Germanic Tîwaz, earlier Teiwaz, after emerging from the conjectured Proto-Indo-European root *deywos ("god"). Due to this linguistic factor, Tyr is thought to have, at one time, been a major deity (and perhaps even the head of the pantheon), despite his limited representation in the extant mythological corpus.

The oldest attestation of the god is Gothic Tyz (Vienna cod. 140), though the word "Teiw" found inscribed on the Negau Helm may very well be a direct reference to this particular deity, rather than to gods (in general). If this was the case, the runic inscription on this helmet would be the oldest reference to Tyr, as it predates the Gothic evidence by several centuries.

Tîwaz was overtaken in popularity and in authority by both Odin and Thor at some point before the Migration Age (c. 300-700 C.E.). In terms of his relationship to Thor, it is clear that Tyr's linguistic cognates in other Indo-European pantheons were the original possessors of the thunder (i.e. Zeus), though in some cases control of this attribute was ultimately passed on to another god (e.g. Dyaus to Indra). Despite this gradual transfer of authority, it is still the case that Tyr is the one of the few gods whose strength is ever compared to Thor's in Eddaic myth.
Major Mythic Tales

When considering Tyr, one particular mythic episode stands out from the rest due to the frequency of re-tellings and allusions to it: namely, the loss of his arm to the demonic wolf Fenrir.

According to the Eddas, Odin was informed through magical means that the three children of Loki (Jormungandr, the world-serpent; Hel, the queen of the Underworld; and Fenrir, the demon wolf) would play a decisive role in the war against the Aesir at Ragnarök (the cataclysmic battle at the end of time). Thus, the high god decided to banish the serpent and the giantess from Asgard, though he, perhaps unwisely, permitted the wolf to stay (likely due to his affinity with lupines). Over time, the gods noticed that the animal was consistently increasing in size, which eventually led them to decide to shackle the beast, in order to keep him from wreaking havoc in their ranks. Unfortunately, the strength of the animal was already so great that he was able to shatter any fetter placed upon him.

Eventually, they visited the dwarves (the craftsmen of the gods), who manufactured them a magical ribbon called Gleipnir that looked like a fragile thread but was actually unbreakable. When they attempted to bind Fenrir, however, the animal, sensing deception, refused to submit unless one of the Aesir agreed to place their hand in his mouth (as a security). Tyr, known for his great courage, was the only one who agreed to this compromise—knowing full well what the consequences would be. As the bonds tightened and Fenris realized that he had been tricked, he clamped his mammoth teeth down upon the brave god's flesh. Once the deed was done, "all laughed except Tyr: he lost his hand."

According to Dumézil, the fact that Tyr (a god associated with legal issues) willingly deceived Fenrir in this way had negative effects upon the Norse understanding of law:

    In vain do the Scandinavian gods punish sacrilege and perjury, avenge violated peace or scorned law. No one incarnated any more in pure, exemplary fashion those absolute values that a society, even hypocritically, needs to shelter under high patronage.... Even if polytheistic gods cannot be impeccable, they should at least, to fulfill their role, have one of them speak for and respond to man's conscience... Tyr [due to the incompatibility between his false oath and his role as a god of law] can do that no longer."

In the end times, Tyr is destined to kill and be killed by Garm, the guard dog of Hel, at least according to the vision of Ragnarök described in the Prose Edda,.
Toponyms (and Other Linguistic Traces) of Tyr

Though Tyr/Tiw became relatively unimportant compared to Odin/Woden in the Nordic and Germanic pantheons, traces of his once-high status can still be seen through linguistic evidence. For example, the third day of week throughout the English, Germanic and Nordic world is Tuesday (literally "Tiw's day"), which is named after Tyr (as a god of war) in following the Roman example (whose third day (Martis dies) was dedicated to the Roman god of war and the father-god of Rome, Mars). Likewise, this importance can be seen in the names of some plants, including Old Norse Týsfiola (after the Latin Viola Martis); Týviðr, "Tý's wood"; the Swedish Tibast (the Daphne mezereum); and Týrhialm (Aconitum (one of the most poisonous plants in Europe whose helmet-like shape might suggest a warlike connection)).

In Norway, the parish and municipality of Tysnes is named after the god. Additionally, the Swedish forest, Tiveden, may also be named after Tyr, though this may also be due to the definition of tyr as a generic word for "god" (i.e. the forest of the gods).
Tyr rune

The t-rune is named after Tyr and was identified with this god. As Turville-Pietrie notes:

    Tyr plainly had much to do with runes and with runic magic. The rune t (↑) is called by his name both in Norwegian and Icelandic runic poems, and the name tir given to in in the Old English Runic Poem, varying with ti in the Salzburg manuscript, must be of the same origin.

    In the Sigrdrifumál (Words of Sigrdrífa, str. 16), it is said that one who hopes for victory must carve runes on the hilt and other parts of his sword, and he must repeat the name of Tyr three times.

Wheelbarrow

2015-12-23T06:06:00.000-05:00

A wheelbarrow is a small hand-propelled vehicle, usually with just one wheel, designed to be pushed and guided by a single person using two handles at the rear, or by a sail to push the ancient wheelbarrow by wind. The term "wheelbarrow" is made of two words: "wheel" and "barrow." "Barrow" is a derivation of the Old English "bearwe" which was a device used for carrying loads.

The wheelbarrow is designed to distribute the weight of its load between the wheel and the operator so enabling the convenient carriage of heavier and bulkier loads than would be possible were the weight carried entirely by the operator. As such it is a second-class lever. Traditional Chinese wheelbarrows, however, had a central wheel supporting the whole load. Use of wheelbarrows is common in the construction industry and in gardening. Typical capacity is approximately 100 liters (4 cubic feet) of material.

A two-wheel type is more stable on level ground, while the almost universal one-wheel type has better maneuverability in small spaces, on planks or when tilted ground would throw the load off balance. The use of one wheel also permits greater control of the deposition of the load on emptying.

History
China

The earliest wheelbarrows with archaeological evidence in the form of a one-wheel cart come from 2nd century Han Dynasty Emperor Hui's tomb murals and brick tomb reliefs. The painted tomb mural of a man pushing a wheelbarrow was found in a tomb at Chengdu, Sichuan province, dated precisely to 118 AD. The stone carved relief of a man pushing a wheelbarrow was found in the tomb of Shen Fujun in Sichuan province, dated circa 150 AD. And then there is the story of the pious Dong Yuan pushing his father around in a single-wheel lu che barrow, depicted in a mural of the Wu Liang tomb-shrine of Shandong (dated to 147 AD). However, there are even earlier accounts than this that hark back to the 1st century BC and 1st century AD. The 5th century Book of Later Han stated that the wife of the once poor and youthful imperial censor Bao Xuan helped him push a lu che back to his village during their feeble wedding ceremony, around 30 BC. Later, during the Red Eyebrows Rebellion (c. 20 AD) against Xin dynasty's Wang Mang (45 BC–23 AD), the official Zhao Xi saved his wife from danger by disguising himself and pushing her along in his lu che barrow, past a group of brigand rebels who questioned him, and allowed him to pass after he convinced them that his wife was terribly ill.

Nevertheless, the Chinese historical text of the Sanguozhi (Records of the Three Kingdoms), compiled by the ancient historian Chen Shou (233–297 AD), credits the invention of the wheelbarrow to Prime Minister Zhuge Liang (181–234 AD) of Shu Han from 197–234. It was written that in 231 AD, Zhuge Liang developed the vehicle of the wooden ox and used it as a transport for military supplies in a campaign against Cao Wei. Further annotations of the text by Pei Songzhi (430 AD) described the design in detail as a large single central wheel and axle around which a wooden frame was constructed in representation of an ox. Writing later in the 11th century, the Song Dynasty (960–1279) scholar Gao Cheng wrote that the small wheelbarrow of his day, with shafts pointing forward (so that it was pulled), was the direct descendent of Zhuge Liang's wooden ox. Furthermore, he pointed out that the 3rd century 'gliding horse' wheelbarrow featured the simple difference of the shaft pointing backwards (so that it was pushed instead).

Wheelbarrows in China came in two types. The more common type after the 3rd century has a large, centrally mounted wheel. Prior types were universally front-wheeled wheelbarrows. The central-wheeled wheelbarrow could generally transport six human passengers at once, and instead of a laborious amount of energy exacted upon the animal or human driver pulling the wheelbarrow, the weight of the burden was distributed equally between the wheel and the puller. European visitors to China from the 17th century onwards had an appreciation for this, and was given a considerable amount of attention by a member of the Dutch East India Company, Andreas Everardus van Braam Houckgeest, in his writings of 1797 (who accurately described its design and ability to hold large amounts of heavy baggage). However, the lower carrying surface made the European wheelbarrow clearly more useful for short-haul work. As of the 1960s, traditional wheelbarrows in China were still in wide use.
Chinese sailing carriage

Although there are records of Chinese sailing carriages from the 6th century these land sailing vehicles were not wheelbarrows, and the date of which the sail assisted wheelbarrow was invented is uncertain. Engravings are found in van Braam Houckgeest's 1797 book.

European interest in the Chinese sailing carriage is also seen in the writings of Andreas Everardus van Braam Houckgeest in 1797, who wrote:

Near the southern border of Shandong one finds a kind of wheelbarrow much larger than that which I have been describing, and drawn by a horse or a mule. But judge by my surprise when today I saw a whole fleet of wheelbarrows of the same size. I say, with deliberation, a fleet, for each of them had a sail, mounted on a small mast exactly fixed in a socket arranged at the forward end of the barrow. The sail, made of matting, or more often of cloth, is five or six feet high, and three or four feet broad, with stays, sheets, and halyards, just as on a Chinese ship. The sheets join the shafts of the wheelbarrow and can thus be manipulated by the man in charge.

Ancient Greece and Rome

M. J. T. Lewis surmised the wheelbarrow may have existed in ancient Greece in the form of a one-wheel cart， Two building material inventories for 408/407 and 407/406 B.C. from the temple of Eleusis list, among other machines and tools, "1 body for a one-wheeler ", although there is no evidence to prove this hypothesis.

Since dikyklos and tetrakyklos mean nothing but "two-wheeler" and "four-wheeler," and since the monokyklos body is sandwiched in the Eleusis inventory between a four-wheeler body and its four wheels, to take it as anything but a one-wheeler strains credulity far beyond breaking point. It can only be a wheelbarrow, necessarily guided and balanced by a man...what does now emerge as certainty is that the wheelbarrow did not, as is universally claimed, make its European debut in the Middle Ages. It was there some sixteen centuries before.

M. J. T. Lewis admits that the current consensus among technology historians, including Bertrand Gille, Andrea Matthies, and Joseph Needham, is that the wheelbarrow was invented in China around 100 AD. However, Lewis proposes that the wheelbarrow could have also existed in ancient Greece. Based on the Eleusis list, Lewis states that it is possible that wheelbarrows were used on Greek construction sites, but admits that evidence for the wheelbarrow in ancient farming and mining is absent. He surmised that wheelbarrows were not uncommon on Greek construction sites for carrying moderately light loads. He speculates the possibility of wheelbarrows in the Roman Empire and the later Eastern Roman, or Byzantine Empire, although Lewis concludes that the evidence is scarce, and that "most of this scenario, perforce, is pure speculation." The 4th century Historia Augusta reports emperor Elagabalus to have used a wheelbarrow (Latin: pabillus from pabo, one-wheeled vehicle) to transport women in his frivolous games at court. While the present evidence does not indicate any use of wheelbarrows into medieval times, the question of continuity in the Byzantine Empire is still open, due to a lack of research yet. Currently, there is no archaeological evidence for the wheelbarrow in ancient Greece and Rome.
Medieval Europe
Types of medieval wheelbarrows

The first wheelbarrow in Europe appeared sometime between 1170 and 1250. Medieval wheelbarrows universally featured a wheel at or near the front (in contrast to their Chinese counterparts, which typically had a wheel in the center of the barrow), the arrangement now universally found on wheelbarrows.

Research on the early history of the wheelbarrow is made difficult by the marked absence of a common terminology. The English historian of science M.J.T. Lewis has identified in English and French sources four mentions of wheelbarrows between 1172 and 1222, three of them designated with a different term. According to the medieval art historian Andrea Matthies, the first archival reference to a wheelbarrow in medieval Europe is dated 1222, specifying the purchase of several wheelbarrows for the English king's works at Dover. The first depiction appears in an English manuscript, Matthew Paris's Vitae duorum Offarum, completed in 1250.

By the 13th century, the wheelbarrow proved useful in building construction, mining operations, and agriculture. However, going by surviving documents and illustrations the wheelbarrow remained a relative rarity until the 15th century. It also seemed to be limited to England, France, and the Low Countries.
Variations

In the 1970s, British inventor James Dyson introduced the Ballbarrow, an injection molded plastic wheelbarrow with a spherical ball on the front end instead of a wheel. Compared to a conventional design, the larger surface area of the ball made the wheelbarrow easier to use in soft soil, and more laterally stable with heavy loads on uneven ground.

Power assisted wheelbarrows are now widely available from a number of different manufacturers. Powered wheelbarrows are used in a range of applications; the technology has improved to enable them to take much heavier loads, beyond weights that a human could transport alone without assistance. Motorised Wheelbarrows are generally either diesel powered or electric battery powered. Often used in small scale construction applications where access for larger plant machinery might be restricted.

The Great Smog of '52

2015-12-21T06:14:00.000-05:00

The Great Smog of '52 or Big Smoke was a severe air-pollution event that affected London during December 1952. A period of cold weather, combined with an anticyclone and windless conditions, collected airborne pollutants mostly from the use of coal to form a thick layer of smog over the city. It lasted from Friday 5 December to Tuesday 9 December 1952, and then dispersed quickly after a change of weather.

Although it caused major disruption due to the effect on visibility, and even penetrated indoor areas, it was not thought to be a significant event at the time, with London having experienced many smog events in the past, so-called "pea soupers". Government medical reports in the following weeks estimated that up until 8 December 4,000 people had died prematurely and 100,000 more were made ill because of the smog's effects on the human respiratory tract. More recent research suggests that the total number of fatalities was considerably greater, at about 12,000.

It is known to be the worst air-pollution event in the history of the United Kingdom, and the most significant in terms of its effect on environmental research, government regulation, and public awareness of the relationship between air quality and health. It led to several changes in practices and regulations, including the Clean Air Act 1956.

Background
Sources of pollution

The cold weather preceding and during the smog meant that Londoners were burning more coal than usual to keep warm. Post-war domestic coal tended to be of a relatively low-grade, sulphurous variety (economic necessity meant that better-quality "hard" coals tended to be exported), which increased the amount of sulphur dioxide in the smoke. There were also numerous coal-fired power stations in the Greater London area, including Fulham, Battersea, Bankside, and Kingston upon Thames, all of which added to the pollution. According to the UK MetOffice, the following pollutants were emitted each day during the smoggy period: 1,000 tonnes of smoke particles, 2,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, 140 tonnes of hydrochloric acid, 14 tonnes of fluorine compounds and 370 tonnes of sulphur dioxide.

Research suggests that additional pollution-prevention systems fitted at Battersea may have worsened the air quality, reducing the output of soot at the cost of increased sulphur dioxide, though this is not certain. Additionally, there were pollution and smoke from vehicle exhaust — particularly from steam locomotives and diesel-fuelled buses, which had replaced the recently abandoned electric tram system — and from other industrial and commercial sources. Prevailing winds had also blown heavily polluted air across the English Channel from industrial areas of Continental Europe.
Weather

On 4 December 1952, an anticyclone settled over a windless London, causing a temperature inversion with cold, stagnant air trapped under a layer (or "lid") of warm air. The resultant fog, mixed with chimney smoke, particulates such as those from vehicle exhausts, and other pollutants such as sulphur dioxide, formed a persistent smog, which blanketed the capital the following day. The presence of tarry particles of soot gave the smog its yellow-black colour, hence the nickname "peasouper". The absence of significant wind prevented its dispersal and allowed an unprecedented accumulation of pollutants.
Effects
Effect on London

Although London was accustomed to heavy fogs, this one was denser and longer-lasting than any previous fog. Visibility was reduced to a few yards ("It's like you were blind") making driving difficult or impossible.

Public transport ceased, apart from the London Underground; and the ambulance service stopped functioning, forcing users to transport themselves to hospital. The smog even seeped indoors, resulting in the cancellation or abandonment of concerts and film screenings as visibility decreased in large enclosed spaces, and stages and screens became harder to see from the seats. Outdoor sports events were also affected.

In the inner London suburbs and away from town centres there was no disturbance by moving traffic to thin out the dense fog in the back streets. The result was that visibility could be down to a metre or so in the daytime. Walking out of doors became a matter of shuffling one’s feet to feel for road curbs, etc. This was made even worse at night because each back street lamp at the time was fitted with an incandescent light-bulb which gave no penetrating light onto the pavement for pedestrians to see their feet, or even the lamp post. Fog-penetrating fluorescent lamps did not become widely available until later on in the 1950s. ‘Smog masks’ were worn by those who were able to purchase them from chemists.

Near railway lines, on which 'fog working' was implemented, loud explosions similar to the report of a shotgun were a common feature. These explosions were made by 'detonators', a form of large percussion cap placed on the track and activated by the wheels of trains. These were placed by certain signals to provide an audible warning to match the visual indication provided by the signal for the driver.
Health effects

There was no panic, as London was renowned for its fog. In the weeks that ensued, however, statistics compiled by medical services found that the fog had killed 4,000 people. Most of the victims were very young or elderly, or had pre-existing respiratory problems. In February 1953, Lieutenant-Colonel Lipton suggested in the House of Commons that the fog had caused 6,000 deaths and that 25,000 more people had claimed sickness benefits in London during that period.

Most of the deaths were caused by respiratory tract infections from hypoxia and as a result of mechanical obstruction of the air passages by pus arising from lung infections caused by the smog. The lung infections were mainly bronchopneumonia or acute purulent bronchitis superimposed upon chronic bronchitis.

More recent research suggests that the number of fatalities was considerably greater, at about 12,000.
Environmental impact

The death toll formed an important impetus to modern environmentalism, and it caused a rethinking of air pollution, as the smog had demonstrated its lethal potential.

New regulations were implemented, restricting the use of dirty fuels in industry and banning black smoke.

Environmental legislation since 1952, such as the City of London (Various Powers) Act 1954 and the Clean Air Acts of 1956 and 1968, led to a reduction in air pollution. Financial incentives were offered to householders to replace open coal fires with alternatives (such as installing gas fires), or for those who preferred, to burn coke instead (a byproduct of town gas production) which produces minimal smoke. Central heating (using gas, electricity, oil or permitted solid fuel) was rare in most dwellings at that time, not finding favour until the late 1960s onwards.

Despite improvements, insufficient progress had been made to prevent one further smog event approximately ten years later, in early December 1962.