Marriage.

Upon the disputed Papal election of 1159 and the succeeding schism, King Henry II established closer ties to the Holy Roman Empire; particularly when he himself came into conflict with the English clergy led by Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. Sent by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, the Cologne archbishop Rainald of Dassel arrived at the court of King Henry II at Rouen in 1165 to negotiate an English–German matrimonial alliance and the Welf duke Henry the Lion was chosen as a match for Matilda. There was conflict during the negotiations, however, when Robert de Beaumont, 2nd Earl of Leicester refused to greet the German archbishop, alleging him to be a schismatic and a supporter of the anti-pope, Victor IV. The original plan to match the second daughter of King Henry II, Eleanor Plantagenet, with a son of Emperor Frederick, was abandoned, and instead, Matilda left England with a large dowry in September 1167.  Matilda married Henry the Lion, then Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, on 1 February 1168 at Minden Cathedral in Saxony. The Welf duke had divorced from his first wife, Clementia of Zähringen, in 1162. He and Matilda had four sons and one daughter:  Three other children are listed, by some sources, as having belonged to Henry and Matilda:

Regency and exile.

At the time of their marriage, Duke Henry the Lion was one of the most powerful allies of the Hohenstaufen emperor, and his royal consort added to his dominant position. Matilda governed her husband's vast estates during his pilgrimage to the Holy Land from 1172 to 1173. Back in Germany, Henry built up his residence in Brunswick, where he and Matilda held a magnificent court at Dankwarderode Castle. They had Brunswick Cathedral erected from 1173 onwards and initiated the "Lucidarius", the first original German language work in prose, as well as the Gospels of Henry the Lion, a masterpiece of Romanesque book illumination.  Soon after, however, Henry the Lion became involved in a fierce conflict with Emperor Frederick. Allegedly, both men fell out with each other, when they met in Chiavenna in 1176, and Henry refused to support the emperor in his fight against the Italian Lombard League. Frederick's forces were defeated in the Battle of Legnano and the emperor had to make peace with the hostile Pope Alexander III. A number of rivaling princes intrigued against Henry and the duke was finally declared deposed in 1180. Henry submitted to the emperor in November 1181; nevertheless, he and his family were forced to flee Germany and take refuge in Normandy at the court of Matilda's father in 1182. During this time at the royal court at Argentan, Matilda became acquainted with the troubadour Bertran de Born, who, calling her "Elena" or "Lana", made her the object of his desire in two of his poems of "courtly love".  Matilda, her husband, and their family remained under the protection and financial support of King Henry II until 1185, when, by the mediation of the English monarch, they were allowed to return to Saxony. Any hopes to regain the Saxon and Bavarian duchies were disappointed. Early in 1189, the emperor gave Henry the Lion a choice to accompany him on the Third Crusade or go into exile. Henry returned to England, while this time Matilda remained at Brunswick to defend the interests of her husband. However, she died three months later at the age of 33, 8 days before her father. After her death, her husband again entered Germany and finally reconciled with Emperor Frederick's son Henry VI. In 1194, his first-born son Henry the Elder was enfeoffed with the County Palatine of the Rhine.

Matilda of England (, also called Maud; 6 January 1156 – 28 June 1189) was the eldest daughter of King Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Through her marriage with the Welf duke Henry the Lion, she was Duchess consort of Saxony and Bavaria from 1168 until her husband's deposition in 1180. She was named after her grandmother Matilda of England.


Appearance.

The Norwegian Lundehund is a small, rectangular Spitz type dog. The Lundehund has a great range of motion in its joints, allowing it to fit into and extricate itself from narrow passages. Dogs of this breed are able to bend their head backwards along their own spine and turn their forelegs to the side at a 90-degree horizontal angle to their body, much like human arms. Their pricked, upright ears can be folded shut to form a near-tight seal by folding forward or backward.  The Norwegian Lundehund is a polydactyl: instead of the normal four toes per foot, the Lundehund normally has six toes, all fully formed, jointed and muscled. Some specimens may on occasion have more or fewer than six toes per foot, but this is then outside the breed standard.  The outercoat is dense and rough with a soft undercoat. The Lundehund is adapted to climb narrow cliff paths in Værøy where it originally would have hunted puffins. Some general information can be found on the Norwegian Lundehund Association webpages

History.

The Lundehund was a valuable working animal, essential in hunting puffin birds along the Norwegian coast for food as well as the commercial export of puffin down from the Viking Age through the 16th and 17th centuries. Its flexibility and extra toes were ideal for hunting the birds in their inaccessible nesting locations on cliffs and in caves. Interest for the breed declined when new methods for hunting puffins were incorporated and a dog tax was created. Around 1900, they were only found in the isolated village of Mostad (spelled Måstad in Norwegian), Lofoten. The breed was nearly extinct around World War II when canine distemper struck Værøy and the surrounding islands. In 1963, the population was further decimated by another outbreak of distemper. This time, only six dogs survived, one on Værøy and five in southern Norway, Hamar. The latter five were from the same mother. This created a population bottleneck. Due to careful breeding with strict guidelines, there are now an estimated 1400 dogs in the world (2010), with around 600 of the population in Norway and ~350 in the United States.  The breed is being tested in Tromsø airport by the Norwegian Air Traffic and Airport Management as a solution to airplane bird strikes. The dog is used to search for bird eggs around the airport for disposal.  Height:. Weight: ; there is no weight range in the American Kennel Club breed standard. The Norwegian Lundehund Association of America, Inc. is recognized by the AKC as the Breed Parent Club for the USA.

Health.

A minor issue with the Lundehund is gastroenteropathy which is a set of digestive disorders, and a loss of ability to absorb nutrients from food. In extreme cases the dog can starve due to its inability to derive nutrients and protein from food, regardless of food intake. It is uncertain or not if all Lundehunds have the genetics to have this illness, since not every Lundehund is severely afflicted and some are symptom free. There is no cure, though the disease can be managed. There are indications that for the Lundehund to go on a low fat and higher protein diet has very positive effects on the health with respect to digestive problems.  Primarily the breed suffers from a very high inbreeding. This leads to low fertility, short lifespans, and high puppy mortality. The breed was threatened by extinction and is now undergoing a crossbreeding program spearheaded by the Norwegian Lundehund club with assistance from a group of geneticists. The program aims to employ a strategy of breeding the Norwegian Lundehund with various other Nordic dog breeds in order to reduce deleterious recessive genetic disorders.

AKC recognition.

The Norwegian Lundehund was approved into the American Kennel Club's Non-Sporting Group on July 1, 2008, after a unanimous vote by the AKC Board of Directors on November 13, 2007. The Lundehund made its AKC conformation debut at the Roaring Fork Kennel Club show in Eagle, Colorado on July 12, 2008. It made its introductory premier at a major US event at the AKC/Eukanuba National Championship in Long Beach, California, on December 13 and 14, 2008.  On February 12, 2010, the Board of Directors of the American Kennel Club voted to accept the Norwegian Lundehund into the AKC stud book on December 1, 2010. On January 1, 2011, it became a part of the Non-Sporting Group.

The Norwegian Lundehund ("Norsk lundehund") is a small dog breed of the Spitz type that originates from Norway. Its name is a compound noun composed of the elements "lunde", meaning puffin (Norwegian "lunde", "puffin", or "lundefugl", "puffin-bird"), and "hund", meaning dog. The breed was originally developed for the hunting of puffins and their eggs on inaccessible nesting places on cliffs and in caves.


Construction.

Snow becomes suitable for packing when it approaches its melting point and becomes moist and compact. Making a snowman of powdered snow is difficult since it will not stick to itself, and if the temperature of packing snow drops, it will form an unusable denser form of powdered snow called crust. Thus, a good time to build a snowman may be the next warm afternoon directly following a snowfall with a sufficient amount of snow. Using more compact snow allows for the construction of a large snowball by simply rolling it until it grows to the desired size. If the snowball reaches the bottom of the grass it may pick up traces of grass, gravel or dirt.  In North America, snowmen are generally built with three spheres representing the head, torso, and lower body. In the United Kingdom, two spheres are used, one sphere representing the body and one representing the head. The usual practice is to then decorate and optionally dress the snowman. Sticks can be used for arms, and a face is traditionally made with stones or coal for eyes and a carrot for a nose. Some like to dress their snowmen in clothing such as a scarf or hat, while others prefer not to risk leaving supplies out doors where they could easily be stolen or become stuck under melting ice.  There are variations to these standard forms; for instance, the popular song "Frosty the Snowman" describes a snowman being decorated with a corncob pipe, button nose, coal eyes and an old silk hat (usually depicted as a top hat). These other types range from snow columns to elaborate snow sculptures similar to ice sculptures.  One book describes classic snowman attachments as a black felt top hat, red scarf, coal eye pieces, carrot nose, and corn cob pipe.

History.

Documentation of the first snowman is unclear. However, Bob Eckstein, author of "The History of the Snowman" documented snowmen from medieval times, by researching artistic depictions in European museums, art galleries, and libraries. The earliest documentation he found was a marginal illustration from a 1380 book of hours, found in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague. The earliest known photograph of a snowman was taken in 1853 by Welsh photographer Mary Dillwyn, the original of which is in the collections of the National Library of Wales.

In popular culture.

In media.

Snowmen are a popular theme for Christmas and winter decorations and also in children's media. A famous snowman character is Frosty, the titular snowman in the popular holiday song "Frosty the Snowman" (later adapted into film and television specials), who was magically brought to life by the old silk hat used on his head. In addition to numerous related music and other media for Frosty, snow-men also feature as:

Snowman-themed items.

Snowmen can also be a theme for toys, costumes, and decorations. They have been featured on New Year stamps, for example, in Russia and other post-Soviet states.  One common time for snowman-themed decorations is during the winter holiday and Christmas season, where it is celebrated. One craft book suggested a plan making a small snowman doll out of white glove, ribbon, and other craft supplies.  One book on snowmen, which included instructions on working with real snow, also mentions snowman-themed sweets and confections. Some options for snowman-themed dessert items include ice cream, marshmallows, and macaroons.

Giant snowmen and records.

In 2015, a man from the U.S. State of Wisconsin was noted for making a large snowman 22 feet tall and with a base 12 feet wide.  The record for the world's largest snowman was set in 2008 in Bethel, Maine. The snow-woman stood in height, and was named in honor of Olympia Snowe, a U.S. Senator representing the state of Maine.  The previous record was also a snowman built in Bethel, Maine, in February 1999. The snowman was named "Angus, King of the Mountain" in honor of the then current governor of Maine, Angus King. It was tall and weighed over.  A large snowman known as "Snowzilla" has been built each winter in Anchorage, Alaska.  In December 2016 the smallest snowman of sorts was created in a nano-fabrication facility at University of Western Ontario. It consisted of three roughly 0.9 micron spheres of silica, platinum arms and nose, and a face made by an ion beam.

Variations.

In addition to snowmen, other things can be produced. Typical variations on the snowman concept involve producing other snow creatures or snow decorations. The Yuki-Cone, named after the Japanese word for snow, involves building a small cone-shaped structure from snowballs, illuminated from the inside with a tea-light.  Sometimes other raw material might be used to create objects that mimic the snowman concept.

Japan.

In Japanese, snowmen are called "Yukidaruma" (). Possibly because the shape is related to a Daruma doll, they usually only have two sections instead of three. There is also a longstanding tradition in Japan of creating snow rabbits, or "Yukiusagi" ().

A snowman is an anthropomorphic snow sculpture often built in regions with sufficient snowfall. In many places, typical snowmen consist of three large snowballs of different sizes with some additional accoutrements for facial and other features. Due to the sculptability of snow, there is also a wide variety of other styles. Common accessories include branches for arms and a rudimentary smiley face, with a carrot used for a nose. Clothing, such as a hat or scarf, may be included. Low cost and availability are the common issues, since snowmen are usually abandoned to the elements once completed.


Life, work, and interests.

Janssen was born in Paris into a cultivated family. His father, Antoine César Janssen (born in Paris, 1780 – 1860) was a well known clarinettist from Dutch/Belgian descent (his father emigrated from Walloon Brabant to Paris). His mother Pauline Marie Le Moyne (1789 – 1871) was a daughter of the architect Paul Guillaume Le Moyne.  Pierre Janssen studied mathematics and physics at the faculty of sciences. He taught at the Lycée Charlemagne in 1853, and in the school of architecture 1865 – 1871, but his energies were mainly devoted to various scientific missions entrusted to him. Thus in 1857 he went to Peru in order to determine the magnetic equator; in 1861–1862 and 1864, he studied telluric absorption in the solar spectrum in Italy and Switzerland; in 1867 he carried out optical and magnetic experiments at the Azores; he successfully observed both transits of Venus, that of 1874 in Japan, that of 1882 at Oran in Algeria; and he took part in a long series of solar eclipse-expeditions, e.g. to Trani (1867), Guntur (1868), Algiers (1870), Siam (1875), the Caroline Islands (1883), and to Alcosebre in Spain (1905). To see the eclipse of 1870, he escaped from the Siege of Paris in a balloon. Unfortunately the eclipse was obscured from him by cloud.  In the year 1874, Janssen invented the Revolver of Janssen or Photographic Revolver, instrument that originated the chronophotography. Later this invention was of great use for researchers like Etienne Jules Marey to carry out exhibitions and inventions.

Discovery of helium.

In 1868 Janssen discovered how to observe solar prominences without an eclipse. While observing the solar eclipse of 18 August 1868, at Guntur, Madras State (now in Andhra Pradesh), British India, he noticed bright lines in the spectrum of the chromosphere, showing that the chromosphere is gaseous. Present in the spectrum of the Sun, though not immediately noticed or commented upon, was a bright yellow line later measured to have a wavelength of 587.49 nm. This was the first observation of this particular spectral line, and one possible source for it was an element not yet discovered on the earth. From the brightness of the spectral lines, Janssen realized that the chromospheric spectrum could be observed even without an eclipse, and he proceeded to do so.  On 20 October, Joseph Norman Lockyer in England set up a new, relatively powerful spectroscope. He also observed the emission spectrum of the chromosphere, including the same yellow line. Within a few years, he worked with a chemist and they concluded that it could be caused by an unknown element, after unsuccessfully testing to see if it were some new type of hydrogen. This was the first time a chemical element was discovered on an extraterrestrial body before being found on the earth. Lockyer and the English chemist Edward Frankland named the element after the Greek word for the Sun, ἥλιος ("helios").

Observatories.

At the great Indian eclipse of 1868 that occurred in Guntur, Janssen also demonstrated the gaseous nature of the red prominences, and devised a method of observing them under ordinary daylight conditions. One main purpose of his spectroscopic inquiries was to answer the question whether the Sun contains oxygen or not. An indispensable preliminary was the virtual elimination of oxygen-absorption in the Earth's atmosphere, and his bold project of establishing an observatory on the top of Mont Blanc was prompted by a perception of the advantages to be gained by reducing the thickness of air through which observations have to be made. This observatory, the foundations of which were fixed in the hard ice that appeared to cover the summit to a depth of over ten metres, was built in September 1893, and Janssen, in spite of his sixty-nine years, made the ascent and spent four days taking observations.  In 1875, Janssen was appointed director of the new astrophysical observatory established by the French government at Meudon, and set on foot there in 1876 the remarkable series of solar photographs collected in his great "Atlas de photographies solaires" (1904). The first volume of the "Annales de l'observatoire de Meudon" was published by him in 1896. (see also Meudon Great Refractor)  Janssen was the President of the Société Astronomique de France (SAF), the French astronomical society, from 1895–1897.

International Meridian Conference.

In 1884 he took part in the International Meridian Conference.

Death, honors, and legacy.

Janssen died at Meudon on 23 December 1907 and was buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, with the name "J. Janssen" inscribed on his tomb. During his life he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London.  Craters on both Mars and the Moon are named in his honor. The public square in front of Meudon Observatory is named "Place Jules Janssen" after him. Two major prizes carry his name: the Prix Jules Janssen of the French Astronomical Society, and the Janssen Medal of the French Academy of Sciences.  Janssen named minor planet 225 Henrietta discovered by Johann Palisa, after his wife, Henrietta.

Pierre Jules César Janssen (22 February 1824 – 23 December 1907), also known as Jules Janssen, was a French astronomer who, along with English scientist Joseph Norman Lockyer, is credited with discovering the gaseous nature of the solar chromosphere, and with some justification the element helium.


History and etymology.

Haggis is popularly assumed to be of Scottish origin, but many countries have produced similar dishes, albeit with different names. However, the recipes as known and standardised now are distinctly Scottish. The first known written recipes for a dish of the name, made with offal and herbs, are as "hagese", in the verse cookbook "Liber Cure Cocorum" dating from around 1430 in Lancashire, north west England, and, as "hagws of a schepe" from an English cookbook also of c. 1430.  The Scottish poem, "Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy", which is dated before 1520 (the generally accepted date prior to the death of William Dunbar, one of the composers), refers to 'haggeis'.  An early printed recipe for haggis appears in 1615 in "The English Huswife" by Gervase Markham. It contains a section entitled "Skill in Oate meale": "The use and vertues of these two severall kinds of Oate-meales in maintaining the Family, they are so many (according to the many customes of many Nations) that it is almost impossible to recken all"; and then proceeds to give a description of "oat-meale mixed with blood, and the Liver of either Sheepe, Calfe or Swine, maketh that pudding which is called the Haggas or Haggus, of whose goodnesse it is in vaine to boast, because there is hardly to be found a man that doth not affect them." (Gervase Markham, "The English Huswife")  Food writer Alan Davidson suggests that the ancient Romans were the first known to have made products of the haggis type. Haggis was "born of necessity, as a way to utilize the least expensive cuts of meat and the innards as well".  Clarissa Dickson Wright says that it "came to Scotland in a longship [i.e., from Scandinavia] even before Scotland was a single nation". She cites etymologist Walter William Skeat as further suggestion of possible Scandinavian origins: Skeat claimed that the "hag–" element of the word is derived from the Old Norse "haggw" or the Old Icelandic "hoggva" ("höggva" meaning 'to chop' in modern Icelandic), Modern Scots "hag", meaning 'to hew' or strike with a sharp weapon, relating to the chopped-up contents of the dish.  In her book, "The Haggis: A Little History", Dickson Wright suggests that haggis was invented as a way of cooking quick-spoiling offal near the site of a hunt, without the need to carry along an additional cooking vessel. The liver and kidneys could be grilled directly over a fire, but this treatment was unsuitable for the stomach, intestines, or lungs. Chopping up the lungs and stuffing the stomach with them and whatever fillers might have been on hand, then boiling the assembly – probably in a vessel made from the animal's hide – was one way to make sure these parts were not wasted.

Folklore.

In the absence of hard facts as to haggis' origins, popular folklore has provided some notions. One is that the dish originates from the days of the old Scottish cattle drovers. When the men left the Highlands to drive their cattle to market in Edinburgh, the women would prepare rations for them to eat during the long journey down through the glens. They used the ingredients that were most readily available in their homes and conveniently packaged them in a sheep's stomach allowing for easy transportation during the journey. Other speculations have been based on Scottish slaughtering practices. When a chieftain or laird required an animal to be slaughtered for meat (whether sheep or cattle) the workmen were allowed to keep the offal as their share.  A joke sometimes maintained is that a haggis is a small Scottish animal with longer legs on one side, so that it can run around the steep hills of the Scottish highlands without falling over. According to one poll, 33 percent of American visitors to Scotland believed haggis to be an animal.

Modern use.

Haggis is traditionally served as part of the Burns supper on or near January 25, the birthday of Scotland's national poet Robert Burns. Burns wrote the poem "Address to a Haggis", which starts "Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o' the puddin-race!" In Burns's lifetime haggis was a common dish of the poor as it was nourishing yet very cheap, being made from leftover parts of sheep otherwise discarded.  Haggis is widely available in supermarkets in Scotland all year, with cheaper brands normally packed in artificial casings, rather than stomachs. Sometimes haggis is sold in tins or a container which can be cooked in a microwave or conventional oven. Some commercial haggis is largely made from pig, rather than sheep, offal. Kosher haggis, not only pork-free but fully conformant to Jewish dietary laws, is produced.  Haggis is often served in Scottish fast-food establishments, in the shape of a large sausage and deep fried in batter. Together with chips, this comprises a "haggis supper". A "haggis burger" is a patty of fried haggis served on a bun. A "haggis pakora" is another deep fried variant, available in some Indian restaurants in Scotland. Haggis can be used as an ingredient in other dishes, even pizza, rather than the main part of a dish.  A traditional haggis recipe describes haggis as "sheep's 'pluck' (heart, liver, and lungs), minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and traditionally encased in the animal's stomach and boiled". Ingredients are sheep stomach, heart and lungs of one lamb, onions, oatmeal, salt, pepper, stock, and water, with optional ingredients dried coriander, cinnamon, and nutmeg. It can be boiled, baked, or deep fried.  In the north-east of Scotland, from Aberdeen northwards, in addition to the customary neeps and tatties, haggis is commonly served with mince.

Vegetarian haggis.

Vegetarian haggis was first available commercially in 1984, and now can account for between 25 - 40% of haggis sales. It substitutes various pulses, nuts and vegetables for the meat. Oats and barley may be included as may different types of lentils, split peas, aduki beans, kidney beans, borlotti beans, peanuts, other nuts and mushrooms, onions, and carrots.

Outside Scotland.

Haggis remains popular with Scottish immigrants in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, owing to the strong influence of Scottish culture, especially for Burns Suppers. It can easily be made in any country, but is sometimes imported from Scotland. A recipe from the Canadian province of New Brunswick uses pork and bakes it in a loaf pan.  In 1971 it became illegal to import haggis into the US from the UK due to a ban on food containing sheep lung, which constitutes 10–15% of the traditional recipe. The ban encompasses all lungs, as fluids such as stomach acid and phlegm may enter the lung during slaughter. The situation was further complicated in 1989 when all UK beef and lamb was banned from importation to the US due to a BSE crisis. In 2010 a spokeswoman for the US Department of Agriculture stated that they were reviewing the ban on beef and lamb products, but that the ban on food containing sheep lung would remain in force.  As haggis cannot be exported to the United States, it is instead made there, sometimes by Scottish companies. One such uses what is stated to be the same 150-year-old recipe and ingredients as in Scotland, except that sheep lung is not used, and the casing is always artificial.

Haggis () is a savoury pudding containing sheep's pluck (heart, liver, and lungs), minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and cooked while traditionally encased in the animal's stomach though now often in an artificial casing instead. According to the 2001 English edition of the "Larousse Gastronomique": "Although its description is not immediately appealing, haggis has an excellent nutty texture and delicious savoury flavour".


Overview.

The name is derived from the fused Russian words "" ("five mountains") and the city is so called because of the five peaks of the Beshtau (which also means "five mountains" in Turkic) of the Caucasian mountain range overlooking the city. It was founded in 1780, and has been a health spa with mineral springs since 1803. Pyatigorsk is one of the oldest spa resorts in Russia. The health resort provides unique medical resources, and its underground wealth supplies 50 different mineral springs, medical mud taken from Lake Tambukan located from Pyatigorsk, and the mild climate of the area. It is one of 116 historical towns of the Russian Federation.  Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov was shot in a duel at Pyatigorsk on July 27, 1841. There is a museum in the city devoted to his memory. The Zionist activist Joseph Trumpeldor was born in Pyatigorsk.

History.

The writings of the 14th-century Arabian traveler Ibn Battuta included the earliest known mention of the mineral springs. Peter the Great (reigned 1682-1725) fostered the earliest scientific study of them, but the information collected on his expedition has not survived. Interest revived at the end of the 18th century with the foundation of the first Russian settlement (Konstantinogorskaya fortress), erected at Mt. Mashuk in 1780.  The value of the Caucasian mineral waters led to the construction of a resort in 1803, and studies of their medical properties began thereafter: on April 24, Alexander I signed a decree which made the mineral waters state property. Many settlements developed near the springs: first Goryachevodsk (now part of Pyatigorsk) at the bottom of Mt. Mashuk, then Kislovodsk, Yessentuki, and Zheleznovodsk.  During World War II the German Wehrmacht temporarily occupied Pyatigorsk. The Einsatzkommando 12 of Einsatzgruppe D had its headquarters in Pyatigorsk in 1942. The German occupation resulted in the killing of many Jewish inhabitants of the region.

Geography and climate.

The city is situated on a small plateau, above sea level, at the foot of Beshtau, Mashuk, and three other outliers of the Caucasus Mountains, which protect it on the north. The snow-covered summits of Mount Elbrus are visible to the south.  The climate of Pyatigorsk falls within humid continental (Dfb) classification under the Köppen-Geiger climate classification system and is characterized by absence of sharp fluctuations of annual and daily temperatures. Summers are steadily warm with the average July temperature of while winters, lasting two to three months, are cold, with the average January temperature of. Spring is cool, with a sharp transition by the summer, and a warm, dry, and long fall. There are an average of ninety-eight sunny days in a year.

Administrative and municipal status.

Within the framework of administrative divisions, it is, together with two urban-type settlements (Goryachevodsky and Svobody) and five rural localities, incorporated as the city of krai significance of Pyatigorsk—an administrative unit with the status equal to that of the districts. As a municipal division, the city of krai significance of Pyatigorsk is incorporated as Pyatigorsk Urban Okrug.

Economy.

The industry of Pyatigorsk is primarily oriented towards service of the health resort. There is also food industry (a meat-processing plant, a winery, a dairy, a brewery, a confectionery), textiles (clothing, shoe plant, carpet factories), machine industry and metal working (PО "Pyatigorskselmash" specializes in machines and equipment for aviculture; a special automobile equipment works, an electromechanical plant, etc.); a chemical factory and a ceramics factory who specialize in porcelain and ceramic gifts such as samovars, figurines, vases, and decorative ceramic wall hanging panels.  In 1991, the Pyatigorsk health resort had ten sanatoria, four boarding houses and five sanatoria-preventoria. The number of people who stayed at the health resort within a year totalled about 170,000.

Points of interest.

The state memorial estate of Mikhail Lermontov was founded in 1973. It unites all of the Lermontov memorial places in the region: the place where he fought his duel and was killed, a necropolis, Lermontov's small house, Verzilin's houses, the house of Alexander Alyabyev, the Lermontov square, and monument.  The Aeolian harp is a small stone pavilion in the classical style, constructed by the brothers Bernardacci in 1828.  Diana's grotto was built in 1830, in honor of the first ascent of Mount Elbrus.  Pyatigorsk is well known in the Caucasus region for its excellent restaurants and nightlife, as well as for its extremely large marketplace. A major thoroughfare is known to locals as "Broadway", which runs through the center of the city, and on which most of the best restaurants, nightclubs, and attractions are located. Broadway is also a popular spot for people watching. The influence of the Caucasus region is felt here most noticeably in the music and cuisine, which incorporate aspects of many former Soviet republics such as Armenia.  Pyatigorsk features prominently in Jonathan Littell's 2009 novel, "The Kindly Ones".

Honors.

Asteroid 2192 Pyatigoriya discovered in 1972 by Soviet astronomer Tamara Smirnova is named after the city.

Twin towns – sister cities.

Pyatigorsk is twinned with:

Pyatigorsk (; Circassian: Псыхуабэ, "Psıxwabæ") is a city in Stavropol Krai located on the Podkumok River, about from the town of Mineralnye Vody where there is an international airport and about from Kislovodsk. Since January 19, 2010, it has been the administrative center of the North Caucasian Federal District of Russia. Population:


Life.

Gaspard-Félix Tournachon was born in April 1820 in Paris, though some sources state he was born in Lyon. His father, Victor Tournachon, was a printer and bookseller. Nadar began to study medicine but quit for economic reasons after his father's death.  Nadar started working as a caricaturist and novelist for various newspapers. He fell in with the Parisian bohemian group of Gérard de Nerval, Charles Baudelaire, and Théodore de Banville. His friends picked a nickname for him: Tournadar, which later became Nadar. His work was published in "Le Charivari" for the first time in 1848. In 1849, he founded "La Revue Comique à l'Usage des Gens Sérieux". He also edited "Le Petit Journal pour Rire".  From work as a caricaturist, he moved on to photography. He took his first photographs in 1853, and in 1854 opened a photographic studio at 113 rue St. Lazare. He moved to 35 Boulevard des Capucines in 1860. Nadar photographed a wide range of personalities: politicians (Guizot, Proudhon), stage actors (Sarah Bernhardt), writers (Hugo, Baudelaire, Sand, Nerval, Gautier, Dumas), painters (Corot, Delacroix, Millet), and musicians (Liszt, Rossini, Offenbach, Verdi, Berlioz). Portrait photography was going through a period of native industrialization, and Nadar refused to use the traditional sumptuous decors; he preferred natural daylight and despised useless accessories. In 1886, with his son Paul, he did what may be the first photo-report: an interview with the great scientist Michel Eugène Chevreul, who at the time was 100 years old. It was published in "Le Journal Illustré".  In 1858, he became the first person to take aerial photographs. This was done using the wet plate collodion process, and since the plates had to be prepared and developed (a process that required a chemically neutral setting) while the basket was aloft, Nadar experienced imaging problems as gas escaped from his balloons. After Nadar invented a gas-proof cotton cover and draped it over his balloon baskets, he was able to capture stable images. He also pioneered the use of artificial lighting in photography, working in the catacombs of Paris. He was thus the first person to photograph from the air with his balloons, as well as the first to photograph underground, in the Catacombs of Paris. In 1867, he published the first magazine to focus on air travel: "L'Aéronaute".  In 1863, Nadar commissioned the prominent balloonist Eugène Godard to construct an enormous balloon, high and with a capacity of, and named "Le Géant" (The Giant). On his visit to Brussels with "Le Géant", on 26 September 1864, Nadar erected mobile barriers to keep the crowd at a safe distance. Crowd control barriers are still known in Belgium as "Nadar barriers". "Le Géant" was badly damaged at the end of its second flight, but Nadar rebuilt the gondola and the envelope, and continued his flights. In 1867, he was able to take as many as a dozen passengers aloft at once, serving cold chicken and wine.  "Le Géant" (The Giant), inspired Jules Verne's "Five Weeks in a Balloon". Nadar was the inspiration for the character of Michael Ardan in Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon". In 1862, Verne and Nadar established a "Société pour la recherche de la navigation aérienne", which later became "La Société d'encouragement de la locomotion aérienne au moyen du plus lourd que l'air" (The Society for the Encouragement of Aerial Locomotion by Means of Heavier than Air Machines). Nadar served as president and Verne as secretary.  During the Siege of Paris in 1870–71, Nadar was instrumental in organising balloon flights carrying mail to reconnect the besieged Parisians with the rest of the world, thus establishing the world's first airmail service.  In April 1874, he lent his photo studio to a group of painters to present the first exhibition of the Impressionists. He photographed Victor Hugo on his death-bed in 1885. He is credited with having published (in 1886) the first "photo-interview" (of famous chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul, then a centenarian). His photographs of women are notable for their natural poses and individual character.  As of 1 April 1895, Nadar turned over the Paris Nadar Studio to his son Paul. He moved to Marseille, where he established another photography studio in 1897. On 3 January 1909 he returned to Paris.  Nadar died in 1910, aged 89. He was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. The studio continued under the direction of his son and long-term collaborator, Paul Nadar (1856–1939).

Works.

Towards the end of his life, Nadar published "Quand j’étais photographe", which was translated into English and published by MIT Press in 2015. The book is full of both anecdotes and samples of his photography, including many portraits of recognizable names.  The painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres sent some of his clients to Nadar to have their photographs taken as studies for his paintings.

Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (6 April 1820 – 20 March 1910), known by the mononymous pseudonym Nadar, was a French photographer, caricaturist, journalist, novelist, balloonist, and proponent of heavier-than-air flight. In 1858 he became the first person to take aerial photographs.


Thor-Able.

Thor was first used as a launch vehicle during the testing program of the warhead reentry vehicle for the Atlas missile. For these three tests a Thor core stage was topped by the Able second stage. Able used the Aerojet AJ-10-40 engine from the Vanguard second stage. The first such launch, 116, was lost on 23 April 1958 due to a turbopump failure in the main engine. The recovery of the reentry vehicles on the succeeding two attempts were not successful. Three mice, one on each vehicle, died in these tests.  The Able stage from the Atlas reentry vehicle tests was upgraded to become the Able I with a third stage consisting of an unguided Altair X-248 solid-fuel rocket motor. A Thor Able I was used in an attempt to place the 84 lb (38 kg) Pioneer 0 spacecraft into lunar orbit where it would take pictures of the lunar surface with a TV camera. The mission ended prematurely at 73.6 seconds after launch on 17 August 1958 due to a turbopump failure.  On 7 August 1959, a Thor-Able was used to successfully launch Explorer 6, the first satellite to transmit pictures of Earth taken from orbit.

Ablestar.

Ablestar was a liquid rocket stage burning hypergolic propellants fed from gas-pressurized propellant tanks. It was used as the upper stage, and provided improved performance. On 13 April 1960, a Thor-Ablestar launched Transit 1B, the first experimental satellite of what eventually became the Global Navigation Satellite System. On 22 June 1960, a Thor-Ablestar launched the first Galactic Radiation and Background (GRAB) electronic intelligence (ELINT) satellite for the United States Navy. These now-declassified satellites operated under a cover story of providing solar radiation data and included an electronics package to detect Soviet air defense radar signals. GRAB-1 was the world's first successful reconnaissance satellite, preceding the first Corona mission to return film (Discoverer 14 on August 18) by almost two months. On 29 June 1961, the Ablestar stage used to launch Transit 4A, which became the first object to unintentionally explode in space, creating at least 294 trackable pieces of space debris.

Thor-Delta.

The Delta second stage was derived from the Able second stage. Members of the Delta rocket family derived from the Thor-Delta continue to launch satellites and space probes.  By 1969, the Thor core was being used regularly both in Delta vehicles and in the USAF Standard Space Launch Vehicle (SLV-2), with thrust augmentation and a variety of upper stages.

Thor-Agena.

Together with the Agena upper stage, Thor was the booster of the Thor-Agena vehicle used to launch the early Corona (also known as "Keyhole" and "Discoverer") satellites from Vandenberg AFB. These were the first photographic spy satellites, used for photographic surveillance of the Soviet Union, China and other areas. Thor-Agenas were used as launch vehicles for Corona satellites from June 1959 through May 1963.  The Thrust Augmented Thor (TAT) was developed to handle the growing satellites of the Corona program. It added three Castor solid-fuel rocket strapon boosters—each providing 53,000 lbf (236 kN) thrust—to the standard Thor core stage. The boosters were lit on the ground and jettisoned after burnout.  The Thrust-Augmented Long Tank Thor/Agena incorporated modifications allowing 49,000 lb (22,000 kg) more propellant and was capable of sending payloads ranging from 1400 to about 2800 pounds into polar circular orbits.

Thorad-Agena.

The Thorad-Agena (pictured) was developed from Thor. It used a Long Tank Thor to launch an Agena-D upper stage.

Thor was a US space launch vehicle derived from the PGM-17 Thor intermediate-range ballistic missile. The Thor rocket was the first member of the Delta rocket family of space launch vehicles. The last launch of a direct derivative of the Thor missile occurred in 2018 as the first stage of the final Delta II.


Life.

Fleck was born in Lemberg ("Lwów" in Polish; "Lvov" in Russian; now L'viv, Ukraine) and grew up in the cultural autonomy of the Austrian province of Galicia. He graduated from a Polish lyceum (secondary school) in 1914 and enrolled at Lwów's Jan Kazimierz University, where he received his medical degree.  In 1920 he became an assistant to the famous typhus specialist Rudolf Weigl at Jan Kazimierz University. From 1923 to 1935 Fleck worked in the department of internal medicine at Lwów General Hospital, then became director of the bacteriological laboratory at the local social security authority. From 1935 he worked at the private bacteriological laboratory which he had earlier founded.  With Nazi Germany's occupation of L'viv, Fleck was deported with his wife, Ernestina Waldmann, and son Ryszard to the city's Jewish ghetto. He continued his research in the hospital and developed a new procedure in which he procured a vaccine from the urine of typhus patients. Fleck's work was known to the German occupiers and his family were arrested in December 1942 and deported to the Laokoon pharmaceutical factory to produce a typhus serum. He and his family were arrested again and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp on February 7, 1943. His task was to diagnose syphilis, typhus and other illnesses using serological tests. From December 1943 until the liberation of Poland on April 11, 1945 Fleck was detained in Buchenwald concentration camp; there, he worked with Marian Ciepielowski to produce a working typhus vaccine for camp inmates, while producing a fake vaccine for the SS.  Between 1945 and 1952, he served as the head of the Institute of Microbiology of the School of Medicine of Maria Sklodowska-Curie University of Lublin. In 1952, he moved to Warsaw to become the Director of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Mother and Child State Institute. In 1954 he was elected a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Fleck's research during these years focused on the question of the behavior of leucocytes in infectious and stress situations. Between 1946 and 1957 he published 87 medical and scientific articles in Polish, French, English and Swiss journals. In 1951 Fleck was awarded the National Prize for Scientific Achievements and in 1955 the Officer's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.  In 1956, after a heart attack and the discovery that he was suffering from lymphosarcoma, Fleck emigrated to Israel where a position was created for him at the Israel Institute for Biological Research. He died in 1961 at the age of 64 of a second heart attack.  The Ludwik Fleck Prize is awarded annually for the best book in the area of science and technology studies. It was created by the 4S Council (Society for the Social Studies of Science) in 1992.

Thought collective.

Fleck wrote that the development of truth in scientific research was an unattainable ideal as different researchers were locked into thought collectives (or thought-styles). This means "that a pure and direct observation cannot exist: in the act of perceiving objects the observer, i.e. the epistemological subject, is always influenced by the epoch and the environment to which he belongs, that is by what Fleck calls the thought style." A "truth" was a relative value, expressed in the language or symbolism of the thought collective in which it belonged, and subject to the social and temporal structure of this collective. To state therefore that a specific truth is true or false is impossible. It is true in its own collective, but incomprehensible or unverifiable in most others. He felt that the development of scientific insights was not unidirectional and does not consist of just accumulating new pieces of information, but also in overthrowing the old ones. This overthrowing of old insights is difficult because a collective attains over time a specific way of investigating, bringing with it a blindness to alternative ways of observing and conceptualization. Change was especially possible when members of two thought collectives met and cooperated in observing, formulating hypothesis and ideas. He strongly advocated comparative epistemology. This approach anticipated later developments in social constructionism, and especially the development of critical science and technology studies.

Ludwik Fleck (11 July 1896 – 5 June 1961) was a Polish and Israeli physician and biologist who did important work in epidemic typhus in Lwów, Poland, with Rudolf Weigl and in the 1930s developed the concepts of the ""Denkstil"" ("thought style") and the ""Denkkollektiv"" ("thought collective").


Description.

The town has two marinas, a string of carbonated mineral water springs, listed buildings from the middle of the 18th and the 19th centuries and fine restaurants. It has modern hotels and guest-houses to accommodate about fifty thousand visitors in the summer. The nearest villages around Balatonfüred are Tihany, Aszófő, Balatonszőlős and Csopak, all renowned for their wine, land and beaches. Highway No 71 crosses the town as well as a single track railway line between Budapest and Tapolca. Although a shipyard was once the town's largest employer, now that place has been taken by the State Hospital for Cardiology. The largest industry is catering and providing boarding and other accommodations. The town has a pier, a harbour, a large camping site and several private marinas.  Visitors come for the mild micro-climate, scenery, the local wine, made of Olaszrizling grapes, and sailing and swimming facilities, as well as to revive the two-century-old tradition of socializing around spas, bathing and vacationing. The main events of the two-month-long summer holiday season include a ball for first-time visitors with a beauty contest and a wine-tasting festival, both in August.  Füred (short for Balatonfüred) has six comprehensive schools, three grammar schools, a secondary modern school for viniculture, the Lajos Loczy High School and Janos Ferencsik Music School (conservatory). A number of choirs, bands and sporting clubs are also present. The town has a local TV studio and a monthly newspaper. Füred has a newly built conference and sport centre as well. There are three churches in town: a typical red-sandstone Catholic church, a white Protestant church and a modern Evangelist church. A Pentecostal, American type of Christian denomination Faith Church is also active in the former Communist party headquarters.  Balatonfüred has a number of conference halls, and a large clinic for heart patients. It also has a number of wine cellars that sell white house wine in the vineyards on the hillside overlooking the town and the lake.  In winter, the lake may freeze over for weeks so that skaters and ice boaters take over.

State Hospital for Cardiology.

With its 429 beds the State Hospital for Cardiology in Balatonfüred boasts the largest cardiac-rehabilitation center in Hungary. The hospital is built on the lake shore and is flanked by the Tagore promenade, named after the Nobel-laureate Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, who was treated here. Many other patients come here to heal and recuperate year-round thanks to the carbonated springs and baths, which are one of the best-known healing agents in Balatonfüred since the 17th century. The town was officially declared a spa in 1772. The Kossuth Spring and other springs near the hospital supply water containing free and bound carbon dioxide as well as iron, magnesium, potassium, hydrocarbonate, calcium, sodium, sulfur and other minerals. The temperature of the spring waters is they are collected into a large basin and conducted to the spa building. Then the carbonated water is warmed up to and used for treatment.

Twin towns — sister cities.

Balatonfüred is twinned with:

Balatonfüred () is a resort town in Veszprém county, in Hungary, with a population of 13,000, situated on the northern shore of Lake Balaton. It is considered to be the capital of the Northern lake shore and is a yachting destination. It is also a location for fishing, carp being the most common catch, although the introduction of eels and other non-indigenous species has caused ecological damage in recent years.


Biography.

Jeritza was born in Brno in 1887 as Mitzi Jedlicka or Marie Jedličková. In 1910, she made her debut as "Elsa", in Wagner's "Lohengrin", at Olomouc. The Emperor Franz Josef heard her and immediately ordered that she be offered a contract at the Imperial Hofoper, Vienna. She created the roles of "Blanchefleur" in Kienzl's opera "Der Kuhreigen" (1911), Ariadne in Strauss's "Ariadne auf Naxos" (1912), the Empress in his "Die Frau ohne Schatten" (1919), and Hariette/Juliette in Korngold's "Die tote Stadt" (Hamburg, 1920), though later became famous for her leading role of Marietta/Marie in the same opera in its January 1921 Vienna premiere, which was also the role in which she debuted at the Metropolitan Opera on 19 November 1921.  On 16 November 1926, she starred in the title role of Puccini's "Turandot" in its North American premiere at the Metropolitan, where she also created the title or leading soprano roles in Janáček's "Jenůfa" (1924), Wolf-Ferrari's "I gioielli della Madonna" (1925), Korngold's "Violanta" (1927), Richard Strauss's "Die Ägyptische Helena" (1928), and Suppé's "Boccaccio" (1931) and "Donna Juanita" (1932). She was as popular at the Metropolitan as in Vienna, especially as Tosca, Carmen and Massenet's Thaïs. She appeared in an early sound film Grossfürstin Alexandra for which Franz Lehár wrote the song 'Du und ich sind für einander bestimmt'.  After a two-year marriage to a man named Wiener, she married an Austrian Baron, Friedrich Leopold Salvator Freiherr Popper von Podhragy (1886-1953). She married her third husband in 1935, Hollywood mogul Winfield R. Sheehan, who died in 1945. In 1948 she married New Jersey businessman Irving Seery and moved to a mansion in the Forest Hill neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey, where she lived until her death in 1982, at the age of 94. She died in Orange, New Jersey, and was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in North Arlington, New Jersey. Richard Strauss dedicated his final song Malven to her, but she would not allow the manuscript to be seen by anyone during her lifetime. After her death, the Strauss family allowed it to be performed in public for the first time by Kiri te Kanawa, who has also recorded it.  Jeritza made a number of 78-rpm recordings which testify to the high quality of her voice. Many of these recordings have been released on CD.

Maria Jeritza (6 October 188710 July 1982) was a Czech soprano singer, long associated with the Vienna State Opera (1912–1935) and the Metropolitan Opera (1921–1932 and 1951). Her rapid rise to fame, beauty and personality earned her the nickname "The Moravian Thunderbolt".


World War I and inter-war years.

Student entered the Prussian Army as a Fähnrich in 1910 and was commissioned a lieutenant in March 1911. He qualified as a pilot in 1913 and served during World War I. In July 1916, he became a charter member of the Fokker Scourge, when he scored his first confirmed victory, forcing Nieuport 11 no. 1324 to land behind German lines. He then served in aerial units of the Third Army on the Western Front, including "Jagdstaffel 9" ("Jasta 9"), which he commanded from 5 October 1916 to 2 May 1917, when he was wounded. He scored six air-to-air victories over French aircraft between 1916 and 1917, with two coming after his wound. He left "Jasta 9" on 14 March 1918.  In the immediate post-war years, Student was assigned to military research and development. He became involved in military gliders, since gliding was not forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. He also attended the Red Army Air Forces maneuvres, where he first came in contact with the idea of airborne operations. After Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, the "Luftwaffe" was secretly reestablished. Student transferred from the Army to the air force and was appointed by Hermann Göring to be the head of its training schools. In July 1938, he was named commander of airborne and air-landing troops, and in September commanding general of the 7th Air Division, Germany's first paratroop division.

World War II.

After the invasion of Poland, which marked the beginning of the Second World War in Europe, the "Fallschirmjäger" were first deployed during the invasions of Norway and Denmark in Operation Weserübung. In this operation the "Fallschirmjäger" were deployed on several locations. In Denmark, a small unit dropped on Masnedø island to seize the Storstrøm Bridge linking Falster and Zealand. A paratroop detachment also dropped at Aalborg Airfield, which was crucial for Luftwaffe operations over Norway. In Norway, a company of paratroopers dropped at Oslo's undefended airstrip. Over the course of the morning and early afternoon of April 9, 1940, the Germans flew in sufficient reinforcements to seize the capital, but by that time the Norwegian government had fled. The paratroopers' first major action and the first large scale airborne operation in history, was the Battle for The Hague on 10 May 1940. German paratroopers landed at three airfields near The Hague. From one of these airfields, they were driven out after the first wave of reinforcements, brought in by Ju 52s, was annihilated by anti-aircraft fire and fierce resistance by some remaining Dutch defenders. The other two airfields were recaptured as well. Simultaneously, small packets of paratroopers seized the crucial bridges that led directly across the Netherlands and into the heart of the country. They opened the way for the 9th Panzer Division. Within a day, the Dutch position became undefendable. Nevertheless, Dutch forces inflicted high losses on German transportation aircraft. Moreover, 1200 German elite troops from the "Luftlandekorps" taken prisoner around The Hague, were shipped to England just before the capitulation of the Dutch armed forces.  During airborne operations in the Battle of Rotterdam, Student was almost taken prisoner, and was shot in the head – by what was later determined to be a stray German round. His capture was halted by the "Rotterdam Blitz" on 14 May and subsequent capitulation of the Netherlands.  On 10 May 1940, the "Fallschirmjäger" performed a successful raid on the largest fort in the world at the time, Eben-Emael, manned by 1,200 Belgian troops. The raid was accomplished by an assault group which consisted of only 85 soldiers. It took the "Fallschirmjäger" only hours to take control of the fort. The fall of Eben-Emael opened up Belgium for invasion by Army Group B. For his role in the raid, Student was decorated with the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.  In January 1941, Student was named commanding general of the "XI. Fliegerkorps", the newly formed command for the expanding German airborne forces. In May 1941, Student directed Operation Mercury ("Unternehmen Merkur"), the airborne invasion of Crete, defended by British, Greek and Commonwealth forces. Crete was taken, in what became the "Fallschirmjäger"'s greatest victory, but the high casualties caused Hitler to forbid future major airborne operations.  During the invasion of Crete, the German forces encountered unexpected mass resistance from the Cretan civilian population, and several German parachutists were killed by civilians armed only with knives and clubs. The German troops were initially surprised and later outraged. German military intelligence, the "Abwehr", had predicted that the Cretan population would welcome the Germans as liberators, due to their strong republican and anti-monarchist feelings and would want to receive the "... favourable terms which had been arranged on the mainland...". Student was made the temporary commander of Crete, immediately after the island's surrender on 31 May 1941. On Hermann Göring's orders, Student launched a wave of brutal reprisals against the local population with the Massacre of Kondomari, Alikianos, and the Razing of Kandanos being well-known examples.  In 1943, Student ordered Major Harald Mors to plan Operation Oak ("Unternehmen Eiche"), the successful raid conducted by a special "Fallschirmjäger" unit to free Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. They landed with gliders and STOL aircraft on a hilltop. Student received the Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross for his role in the operation.  Student was transferred to Italy and later to France, where he was involved in the battles of Normandy in 1944. He was put in charge of the First Paratroop Army and took part in countering the Allied Operation Market Garden, near Arnhem. After a brief time at the Eastern Front in Mecklenburg in 1945, he was captured by British forces in Schleswig-Holstein in April of that same year, before he could take command of Army Group Vistula.

War crimes conviction.

In May 1947, Student was put on trial on eight charges of mistreatment and murder of prisoners of war by his men in Crete (but not with crimes against the civilian population of Crete, like those at Kondomari, Alikianos and Kandanos). He was found guilty of three charges, but avoided a stern punishment owing to the testimony of Brigadier Lindsay Inglis, commander of the 4th New Zealand Brigade. Student was sentenced to five years of imprisonment but was given an early discharge in 1948 for medical reasons. He died in 1978.

Kurt Arthur Benno Student (12 May 1890 – 1 July 1978) was a German general in the Luftwaffe during World War II. An early pioneer of airborne forces, Student was in overall command of developing a paratrooper force to be known as the "Fallschirmjäger", and as the most senior member of the "Fallschirmjäger", commanded it throughout the war. Student led the first major airborne attack in history, the Battle for The Hague in May 1940. He also commanded the "Fallschirmjägers" in its last major airborne operation, the invasion of Crete in May 1941. The operation was a success despite German losses, and led the Allies to hasten the training and development of their own airborne units.


Etymology.

Al-Ahsa is a plural word of "Al-Ḥisā" () which refers to the accumulated sand with an impermeable layer underneath. Thus, when rain comes down, the water will soak through the sand, protected from evaporation by the sand, and be retained by the base layer, forming an aquifer. Hence, the site would become when drilled like a sweet cold spring.

History.

Al-Ahsa has been inhabited since prehistoric times, due to its abundance of water in an otherwise arid region. Natural fresh-water springs have surfaced at oases in the region for millennia, encouraging human habitation and agricultural efforts (date palm cultivation especially) since prehistoric times. Recently, Al-Ahsa Oasis has been nominated as one of the seven wonders of the world.  Its early history is similar to that of Eastern Arabia. In 899 A.D., the region came under the control of the Qarmatian leader, Abu Tahir al-Jannabi, and was declared independent from the Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad. Its capital was at al-Mu'miniya near modern Hofuf. By circa 1000, Al-Hasa became the 9th largest city worldwide supporting 100,000 inhabitants. In 1077, the Qarmatian state of Al-Ahsa was overthrown by the Uyunids. Al-Ahsa subsequently fell under the rule of the Bahrani dynasty of the Usfurids, followed by their relatives, the Jabrids, who became one of the most formidable powers in the region, retaking the islands of Bahrain from the princes of Hormuz. The last Jabrid ruler of Bahrain was Muqrin ibn Zamil.  In 1521, the Portuguese Empire conquered the Awal Islands (the islands that comprise present day Bahrain) from the Jabrid ruler Muqrin ibn Zamil, who fell strongly in battle. The Jabrids struggled to maintain their position on the mainland in the face of the Ottomans and their tribal allies, the Muntafiq. In 1550, Al-Ahsa and nearby Qatif came under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire with Sultan Suleiman I. Al-Ahsa was nominally the Eyalet of Lahsa in the Ottoman administrative system, and was usually a vassal of the Porte. Qatif was later lost to the Portuguese.  The Ottomans were expelled from Al-Ahsa in 1670, and the region came under the rule of the chiefs of Banu Khalid tribe.  Al-Ahsa, along with Qatif, was incorporated into the Wahhabist Emirate of Diriyah in 1795, but returned to Ottoman control in 1818 with an invasion ordered by Muhammad Ali of Egypt. The Banu Khalid were again installed as rulers of the region but, in 1830, the Emirate of Nejd retook the region.  Direct Ottoman rule was restored in 1871, and Al-Ahsa was placed first under Baghdad Vilayet and with Baghdad's subdivision Basra Vilayet in 1875. In 1913, ibn Saud, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, annexed Al-Ahsa and Qatif into his domain of Najd.  On December 2, 1922, Percy Cox officially notified Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Ahmad Al-Sabah that Kuwait's borders had been modified. Earlier that year, Major John More, the British representative in Kuwait, had met with Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia to settle the border issue between Kuwait and Najd. The result of the meeting was the Uqair Protocol of 1922, in which Britain recognized ibn Saud's sovereignty over territories claimed by the emir of Kuwait. Al-Ahsa under the control of the al Saud 3rd country, it was taken from the Ottomans in 1913, bringing him control of the Persian Gulf coast and what would become Saudi Arabia's vast oil reserves.

Economy.

Historically, Al-Hasa was one of the few areas in Arabian Peninsula growing rice. In 1938, petroleum deposits were discovered near Dammam, resulting in the rapid modernization of the region. By the early 1960s, production levels reached per day. Today, Al-Hasa engulfs the largest conventional oil field in the world, the Ghawar Field.  Al-Hasa is known for its palm trees and dates. Al-Hasa has over 2 million palm trees which produce over 100 thousand tons of dates every year.  The number of springs and freshwater sources in Al-Hasa oasis range from 60 to 70 like those in "Ummsaba'ah", "Al-Harrah" and "Al-Khadod".  Al-Hasa oasis filled with a number of archaeological sites that give witness to the area's importance.

Tourist sites.

12 locations were defined as the Cultural Landscape of Al-Hasa Oasis (the World Heritage site):

Al-Aḥsāʾ (, "al-ʾAhasā"), also known as al-Ḥasāʾ () or Hajar (), is a traditional oasis historical region in eastern Saudi Arabia whose name is used by the Al-Ahsa Governorate, which makes up much of that country's Eastern Province. The oasis is located about inland from the coast of the Persian Gulf.


Early life.

McDormand was born Cynthia Ann Smith in Gibson City, Illinois. She was adopted at one and a half years of age by Noreen (Nickelson) and Vernon McDormand and renamed Frances Louise McDormand. Her adoptive mother was a nurse and receptionist while her adoptive father was a Disciples of Christ pastor; both were originally from Canada. McDormand has said that her biological mother, to whom she proudly referred, along with herself, as "white trash," may have been one of the parishioners at Vernon's church. She has a sister, Dorothy A. "Dot" McDormand, who is an ordained Disciples of Christ minister and chaplain, as well as another sibling, both of whom were adopted by the McDormands, who had no biological children.  Because her father specialized in restoring congregations, he frequently moved their family, and they lived in several small towns in Illinois, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, before settling in Monessen, Pennsylvania, where McDormand graduated from Monessen High School in 1975. She attended Bethany College in West Virginia, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in theater in 1979. In 1982, she earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Yale School of Drama. She was a roommate of actress Holly Hunter while living in New York City.

Career.

McDormand's first professional acting job was in Derek Walcott's play "In a Fine Castle" also known as "The Last Carnival", which was funded by the MacArthur Foundation and performed in Trinidad. In 1984 she made her film debut in "Blood Simple", the first film by the Coen brothers. In 1987, she appeared as wacky friend Dot in "Raising Arizona", starring Holly Hunter and Nicolas Cage. In addition to her early film roles, McDormand played Connie Chapman in the fifth season of the television police drama "Hill Street Blues". In 1988, she played Stella Kowalski in a stage production of Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire", for which she was nominated for a Tony Award. McDormand is an associate member of the experimental theater company The Wooster Group. In 2002, "the game and talented" McDormand performed as Oenone in the Wooster Group's production of an "exhilarating dissection" of Racine's tragedy "Phèdre" entitled "To You, the Birdie!", at Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York.  After appearing in several theatrical and television roles during the 1980s, McDormand gradually gained renown and critical acclaim for her dramatic work in film. In 1988, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for "Mississippi Burning." Cast alongside Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe, McDormand was singled out for praise, with Sheila Benson in her review for the "Los Angeles Times" writing, "Hackman's mastery reaches a peak here, but McDormand soars right with him. And since she is the film's sole voice of morality, it's right that she is so memorable." In 1996, she won her first Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as pregnant police Chief Marge Gunderson in "Fargo", written and directed by the Coen brothers. Writing for the "Chicago Sun-Times", Roger Ebert called "Fargo" "one of the best films I've ever seen" and felt that McDormand "should have a lock on an Academy Award nomination with this performance, which is true in every individual moment, and yet slyly, quietly, over the top in its cumulative effect."  In 2000, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture for her portrayal of an overbearing mother in "Almost Famous." For her role in "Wonder Boys" (2000), she won Best Supporting Actress from the Broadcast Film Critics Association, the Florida Film Critics Circle, and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. In 2006, McDormand received her fourth nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in "North Country" (2005). The same year she won an Independent Spirit Award for her supporting role in Nicole Holofcener's dark comedy "Friends with Money" (2006). She also voiced the role of the principal Melanie Upfoot in "The Simpsons" episode "Girls Just Want to Have Sums", which aired on April 30, 2006.  In 2008, McDormand starred in the films "Burn After Reading" and "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day". She then appeared in the action movie "", playing the US government's National Intelligence Director, alongside her "Burn After Reading" co-star John Malkovich. She returned to the stage in the David Lindsay-Abaire play "Good People", in a limited engagement on Broadway from February 8, 2011 to May 29, 2011. Her performance earned her the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. In the animated film "" (2012), she voiced Captain Chantel Dubois and also sang a version of the French song "Non, je ne regrette rien".  McDormand starred in "Promised Land" with Matt Damon, released in December 2012. In November 2014, HBO telecast a four-part mini-series based upon the series of short stories by Elizabeth Strout, "Olive Kitteridge", co-produced by and starring McDormand. The role won her the Primetime Emmy Award and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actress. With her Emmy win, McDormand became the 12th actress in history to achieve the "Triple Crown of Acting", for competitive Oscar, Emmy, and Tony Award wins in the acting categories.  McDormand starred in the 2017 film "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri", for which she won her second Academy Award for Best Actress (her statuette was stolen briefly following the awards ceremony), the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama, and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role. During the award season, she received significant media attention for her feminist provoking speeches which came with the advent of Time's Up and Me Too movement.  In 2019, McDormand played God in "Good Omens".

Personal life.

McDormand has been married to director Joel Coen since 1984. In 1995, they adopted a son from Paraguay, Pedro McDormand Coen, when he was six months old. They live in New York City and also own a residence in Bolinas, California.

Frances Louise McDormand (born Cynthia Ann Smith, June 23, 1957) is an American actress. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards (Primetime) and a Tony Award, making her one of the few performers to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting.


Etymology.

The phrase "Shangri-La" most probably comes from the Tibetan ',"Shang" – a district of Ü-Tsang, north of Tashilhunpo" + ', pronounced "ri", "Mountain" = "Shang Mountain" + "", Mountain Pass, which suggests that the area is accessed to, or is named by, "Shang Mountain Pass".

Location.

Academic scholars believe they have debunked the myth of Shangri-La and argued that this has less to do with an unexplored place and is more connected to a fantasy of the Western world.

Ancient sources with similar descriptions.

In China, the poet Tao Yuanming of the Jin Dynasty (265–420 CE) described a kind of Shangri-La in his work "The Tale of the Peach Blossom Spring" (). The story goes that there was a fisherman from Wuling, who came across a beautiful peach grove, and he discovered happy and content people who lived completely cut off from the troubles in the outside world since the Qin Dynasty (221–207 BCE).  Some scholars believe that the Shangri-La story owes a literary debt to Shambhala, a mythical kingdom in Tibetan Buddhist tradition, which was sought by Eastern and Western explorers. Shambhala is a core concept in Tibetan Buddhism that describes a realm of harmony between man and nature that is also connected with the Kalachakra or "wheel of time". The Shambhala ideal is described in detail in the "Shambhala Sutra", a historical text written by the Sixth Panchen Lama which describes some of the Shambhala locations as being in Ngari, the western prefecture of Tibet.  Folklore from the Altai Mountains describe Belukha Mountain as a gateway to Shambhala. The Kun Lun Mountains (崑崙山) offer another possible place for valleys like the Shangri-La, since Hilton specifically described the “Kuen-Lun” mountains as its likely location in the book, however, Hilton is not known to have visited or studied the area. Parts of the Kunlun Mountains lie within Ngari, mentioned in the "Shambhala Sutra".

Possible sources for Hilton.

In a "New York Times" interview in 1936, Hilton states that he used "Tibetan material" from the British Museum, particularly the travelogue of two French priests, Evariste Regis Huc and Joseph Gabet, to provide the Tibetan cultural and Buddhist spiritual inspiration for Shangri-La. Huc and Gabet travelled a round trip between Beijing and Lhasa in 1844–1846 on a route more than north of Yunnan. Their famous travelogue, first published in French in 1850, went through many editions in many languages. A popular "condensed translation" was published in England in 1928.

Current claimants.

Today various places, such as parts of southern Kham in northwestern Yunnan province, including the tourist destinations of Lijiang and Zhongdian, claim the title. In modern China, Zhongdian county was renamed Xiānggélǐlā (香格里拉, Shangri-La in Chinese) in 2001, to attract tourists.  Hilton visited the Hunza Valley in northern Pakistan Kashmir, close to the Chinese border, a few years before "Lost Horizon" was published; hence it is a popularly believed inspiration for Hilton's physical description of Shangri-La. Being an isolated green valley surrounded by mountains, enclosed on the western end of the Himalayas, it closely matches the description in the novel; also, in an ironic reversal on the story, due to increased exposure to ultraviolet radiation, inhabitants of the high-altitude parts of the valley appear to age quickly.  Places like Sichuan and Tibet also lay claim to the real Shangri-La. In 2001, Tibet Autonomous Region put forward a proposal that the three regions optimise all Shangri-La tourism resources and promote them as one. After failed attempts to establish a China Shangri-la Ecological Tourism Zone in 2002 and 2003, government representatives of Sichuan and Yunnan provinces and Tibet Autonomous Region signed a declaration of co-operation in 2004. Also in 2001, Zhongdian County in northwestern Yunnan officially renamed itself Shangri-La County.

Recent searches and documentaries.

American explorers Ted Vaill and Peter Klika visited the Muli area of southern Sichuan Province in 1999, and claimed that the Muli monastery in this remote region was the model for James Hilton's Shangri-La, which they thought Hilton learned about from articles on this area in several "National Geographic" magazines in the late 1920s and early 1930s written by Austrian-American explorer Joseph Rock. Vaill completed a film based on their research, "Finding Shangri-La", which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007. However, Michael McRae unearthed an obscure James Hilton interview from a "New York Times" gossip column in which he reveals that his cultural inspiration for Shangri-La, if it is any place, is more than 250 km north of Muli on the route travelled by Huc and Gabet.  Between 2002–2004 a series of expeditions were led by author and film maker Laurence Brahm in western China which determined that the Shangri-La mythical location in Hilton's book "Lost Horizon" was based on references to northern Yunnan Province from articles published by National Geographic's first resident explorer Joseph Rock.  On 2 December 2010, OPB televised one of Martin Yan's "Hidden China" episodes, "Life in Shangri-La", in which Yan said that "Shangri-La" is the actual name of a real town in the hilly and mountainous region in northwestern Yunnan Province, frequented by both Han and Tibetan locals. Martin Yan visited arts and craft shops and local farmers as they harvested crops, and sampled their cuisine.  Television presenter and historian Michael Wood, in the "Shangri-La" episode of the BBC documentary series "In Search of Myths and Heroes", suggests that the legendary Shangri-La is the abandoned city of Tsaparang in upper Satluj valley, and that its two great temples were once home to the kings of Guge in modern Tibet.  The Travel Channel in 2016 aired two episodes of "Expedition Unknown" that followed host Josh Gates to Nepal and its surrounding areas, including the sky caves found there, in search of Shangri-La. His findings offer no proof that Shangri-La is or was real.

Usage.

Shangri-La is often used in a context similar to "Garden of Eden," to represent a paradise hidden from modern man. It is sometimes used as an analogy for a lifelong quest or something elusive but much sought; for a man who spends his life obsessively looking for a cure to a disease, such a cure could be said to be that man's "Shangri-La." It also might be used to represent a sought-for perfection in the form of love, happiness, or Utopian ideals. It may be used in this context alongside other mythical and famous examples of similar metaphors such as El Dorado, The Fountain of Youth, and The Holy Grail.

In popular culture.

There are a number of cultural usages of the Shangri-La idea that have developed since 1933 in the wake of the novel and the film made from it.

World War II.

An unusual consequence of the Doolittle Raid of 1942 came after, when (in the interests of secrecy) President Franklin Roosevelt answered a reporter's question by saying that the raid had been launched from "Shangri-La". The true details of the raid were revealed to the public one year later, in April 1943. In 1944, the US Navy commissioned the, with Doolittle's wife Josephine as the sponsor.

In astronomy.

In 2006 the International Astronomical Union gave the equatorial, dark, low-lying area of Saturn's moon Titan the name Shangri-La.

In literature.

Eiichi Ikegami wrote a novel titled "Shangri-La" (2005); an anime adaptation of the novel was released in 2008.

Shangri-La is a fictional place described in the 1933 novel "Lost Horizon" by British author James Hilton. Hilton describes Shangri-La as a mystical, harmonious valley, gently guided from a lamasery, enclosed in the western end of the Kunlun Mountains. Shangri-La has become synonymous with any earthly paradise, particularly a mythical Himalayan utopia – a permanently happy land, isolated from the world. In the novel, the people who live at Shangri-La are almost immortal, living hundreds of years beyond the normal lifespan and only very slowly aging in appearance. The name also evokes the imagery of the exoticism of the Orient.


Playing career.

NHL.

Lemieux was drafted in the second round of the 1983 NHL Entry Draft by the Montreal Canadiens. He played with the Canadiens from 1983–1990, winning the Stanley Cup with the team in 1986.  In September 1990, Lemieux was traded to the New Jersey Devils for Sylvain Turgeon. Lemieux won his second Stanley Cup in 1995 as New Jersey defeated the Detroit Red Wings. Completing the post-season with 13 goals, he also won the Conn Smythe Trophy that year as the playoff MVP.  Shortly before the beginning of the 1995–96 season, Lemieux was traded to the Colorado Avalanche in a three-team deal that also involved Wendel Clark and Steve Thomas. When the Avalanche won the Stanley Cup in 1996, Lemieux became the tenth player to win back-to-back Stanley Cups with different teams.  In November 1999, Lemieux was traded back to New Jersey in a deal that sent Brian Rolston to Colorado. He won his fourth and final Stanley Cup with the Devils in 2000. In that off-season, Lemieux signed as a free agent with the Phoenix Coyotes.  In January 2003, the Coyotes traded him to the Dallas Stars for Scott Pellerin and a conditional draft pick. Lemieux ended his NHL playing career with Dallas at the conclusion of the 2002–03 season. He played briefly the following season for EV Zug of the Swiss Nationalliga A.

Retirement.

In 2005, Lemieux became president of the ECHL incarnation of the Phoenix RoadRunners until resigning in 2007. In 2007, Lemieux took part in the second season of the Spike TV television show "Pros vs. Joes". In October 2009, Lemieux began competing as a pairs figure skater on the CBC Television reality show "Battle of the Blades" with Shae-Lynn Bourne. For one of their routines, the pair skated to Lemieux's recorded version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah", which he sang as a duet with Kathryn Rose.

2008 comeback.

In September 2008, on RDS, Lemieux expressed an interest in making a comeback to the NHL. He began the season with the China Sharks of the Asia League Ice Hockey before signing a contract with the Worcester Sharks on November 25. After scoring 2 goals and 6 points in 14 games with Worcester, Lemieux signed a two-way contract with the San Jose Sharks on December 29, 2008. The following day, he cleared waivers and continued to play for Worcester. On January 19, 2009, the San Jose Sharks recalled Lemieux to the NHL and, on February 19, he recorded the first (and only) NHL point of his comeback, assisting on Milan Michalek's second-period goal against the Los Angeles Kings.

Playing style and criticism.

Throughout his career, Lemieux was noted for playing his best games during the postseason. Once Lemieux was called up to the NHL for good during the 1985-86 season he played in 15 consecutive postseasons. In his career, starting with the 1986 playoffs, he played in the postseason 18 different years, missing only the 2001 playoffs while with the Phoenix Coyotes. Lemieux played in 234 playoff games, which is fourth all-time in the NHL. On three occasions, he scored more goals during the playoffs than he did during the regular season (1985–86 with Montreal, 1994–95 with New Jersey, and 1996–97 with Colorado). Lemieux retired with 80 career playoff goals, ninth all-time in the NHL.  Despite his playoff success, Lemieux also had a reputation as one of the league's hated and dirtiest players; in fact, a recent TSN special entitled "The Top 10 Most Hated NHL Players of All Time" ranked him second, behind only Sean Avery. While playing for Montreal, during a playoff game against the Calgary Flames, Lemieux bit Calgary's Jim Peplinski on the finger during a scuffle, prompting the Calgary winger to say, "I didn't know they allowed cannibalism in the NHL."

Hit on Kris Draper.

Lemieux's title of being a dirty player was solidified in a 1996 incident with the Avalanche when Lemieux checked Kris Draper of the Detroit Red Wings into the boards from behind during a playoff series. Draper suffered a concussion, broken jaw, broken nose and broken cheekbone, all of which all led to Draper having reconstructive surgery on his face and having his jaw wired shut for several weeks. This incident is generally believed to have sparked a bitter rivalry between the two teams. Unhappy with his actions, the NHL suspended him two games, despite outcry from some fans who felt that Lemieux deserved a harsher penalty. Red Wings player Dino Ciccarelli said after the series "I can't believe I shook this guy's friggin' hand after the game. That pisses me right off".  Tensions between the two teams would continue to rise, reaching a breaking point the next season. During a fight in the infamous Red Wings–Avalanche brawl, Wings forward Darren McCarty engaged Lemieux shortly after a fight started by Peter Forsberg with Igor Larionov had stopped play. Lemieux turtled on the ice, and was badly beaten before the officials could remove McCarty from him, who was assessed a double minor for roughing. Several fights erupted around the two as both teams, including the goalies, fought. In the next regular season game between the teams, Lemieux switched sides on the opening face off to line up across from McCarty. He challenged him face to face, and the two had their second fight.

International play.

Lemieux represented Canada three times in international competitions over the course of his career. He made his first international appearance as a member of the Canadian national junior team at the 1985 World Junior Championships in Helsinki, Finland. Lemieux finished the tournament with 3 goals and 2 assist in 6 games to help Canada win its second World Junior gold medal. Lemieux was also a member of the 1987 Canada Cup winning team where he tallied 2 points in 6 games. His final appearance in international play came when he was selected to the Team Canada roster for the 1996 World Cup of Hockey. Lemieux picked up 19 penalty minutes in the eight games as Canada finished second.

Personal life.

Lemieux was born in Buckingham, Quebec and resides in Huntington Beach, California.  Lemieux is the older brother of former NHL forward Jocelyn Lemieux. Lemieux has another brother, Serge, who was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. Despite his surname, he is not related to hockey great Mario Lemieux.  Lemieux has four children between two marriages; three sons and a daughter. One of his sons, Brendan is a forward for the New York Rangers.  Lemieux became a naturalized U.S. citizen on 26 June 2009.  Since his retirement from the NHL, Lemieux was often a guest of TSN's "Off the Record with Michael Landsberg", sharing his personal insight of his playing days in the NHL.

Claude Percy Lemieux (born July 16, 1965) is a Canadian retired professional ice hockey player. He last played for the San Jose Sharks before announcing his retirement on July 8, 2009. He is one of only 11 players in Stanley Cup history to win the Cup with three or more different teams. His 80 career playoff goals are the ninth-most in NHL history. Lemieux is also a former president of the ECHL's Phoenix RoadRunners. He is also the father of New York Rangers forward Brendan Lemieux.


History.

Achaeans, probably from Zacynthos island (in Greece, founded in the 5th c. BCE the town Zacynthos (now Zakantha or Sagundo), at the foot of the Peñas de Pajarito and on the west bank of river Palancia of the main river Ebro, in Iberia, in the Valencia province [Appian, Wars in Spain, 2], where the vestiges of an Acropolis, Temples of Artemis and Aphrodite, and a small Theater still survive. During the 5th century BC, the Iberians built a walled settlement on the hill overseeing the plain; a stretch of cyclopean limestone slabs from the former temple of Diana survives, close to the modern church of Santa Maria, but the settlement site is still older. The city traded with coastal colonies in the western Mediterranean such as Carthage and, under their influence, minted its own coins. During this period, the city was known as Arse (Ripollès i Alegre 2002). By 219 BC, Saguntum was a large and commercially prosperous town, which sided with the local colonists and Rome against Carthage, and drew Hannibal's first assault, his siege of Saguntum, which triggered the Second Punic War, one of the most important wars of antiquity.  After stiff resistance over the course of eight months, related by the Roman historian Livy and in more detail by Silius Italicus, Saguntum was captured in 219 BC by the armies of Hannibal.  Seven years later, the town was retaken by the Romans. In 214 BC, it became a municipium, was rebuilt and flourished. Hispania was not easily pacified and Romanised, as the Iberian career of Quintus Sertorius makes clear. Saguntum minted coins under his protection, but continued to house a mint in later Roman times. The Romans built a great circus in the lower part of the city and a theatre seating 8,000 spectators. Texts found indicate that the city had an amphitheatre and had about 50,000 inhabitants. This prosperity lasted for most of the empire, and is attested by inscriptions and ruins (notably a theatre, demolished by Napoleon's marshal Louis Gabriel Suchet, who also destroyed the Roman tower of Hercules).  Under the Arian Visigothic kings, Saguntum received its Catholic patron saint, a bishop named Sacerdos, "the priest", who died peacefully of natural causes about AD 560.  In the early 8th century, the Muslim Arabs conquered Hispania and the city became part of the Caliphate of Cordoba and at that time the city reached an era of splendor, with baths, palaces, mosques and schools open for its cosmopolitan population. Then, the town was known as "Morvedre" ("Morviedro" in Spanish), a name derived from Latin "muri veteres" "ancient walls." However, as Valencia grew, Saguntum declined.  In 1098, the city was conquered by El Cid but the Muslims recovered it shortly thereafter. The city had been under the Muslim Arab rule for over 500 years when James I of Aragon conquered it in 1238.  During the Peninsular War, a Spanish attempt to raise the French siege of the castle failed in the Battle of Saguntum on 25 October 1811. In the weeks before the battle, the Spanish garrison made a valiant and successful defense; but it surrendered the day after the battle. Historian Charles Oman stated that the site was converted into a fortress in 1810–1811 by General Joaquín Blake at the suggestion of British officer Charles William Doyle. At that time, much of the largely intact Roman theater was dismantled to provide stone for restoring the old walls.  Saguntum was badly damaged in warfare, but has retained many Valencian Gothic structures. In the late 19th century, a steel-making industry grew up that supported the modern city, which extends in the coastal plain below the citadel hill. The last steel oven closed in April 1984. It has been restored and is now a tourist attraction.  The famed composer Don Joaquín Rodrigo, who composed Concierto de Aranjuez, among others, was born in Sagunt.

Sagunto (; ) is a city in Eastern Spain, in the modern fertile "comarca" of Camp de Morvedre in the province of Valencia. It is located c. 30 km north of Valencia, close to the Costa del Azahar on the Mediterranean Sea.


Personal life.

He was born in Rue du Mouton, Paris, France, on 25 October 1827 the son of a doctor. He decided with his friend, the great historian Ernest Renan, not to attend a where the vast majority of intellectuals were being educated. After doing well at school in history and philosophy, he became a scientist.  He was an atheist but was very influenced by his wife, who was a Calvinist (his wife came from Louis Breguet's family).

Discoveries.

The fundamental conception that underlay all Berthelot's chemical work was that all chemical phenomena depend on the action of physical forces which can be determined and measured. When he began his active career it was generally believed that, although some instances of the synthetic production of organic substances had been observed, on the whole organic chemistry remained an analytical science and could not become a constructive one, because the formation of the substances with which it deals required the intervention of vital activity in some shape.  To this attitude he offered uncompromising opposition, and by the synthetic production of numerous hydrocarbons, natural fats, sugars and other bodies he proved that organic compounds can be formed by ordinary methods of chemical manipulation and obey the same principles as inorganic substances, thus exhibiting the "creative character in virtue of which chemistry actually realizes the abstract conceptions of its theories and classifications—a prerogative so far possessed neither by the natural nor by the historical sciences."

Recognition.

In 1863 he became a member of the Académie Nationale de Médecine; he was also awarded the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1880. In 1881 he became a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Publications.

His investigations on the synthesis of organic compounds were published in numerous papers and books, including "Chimie organique fondée sur la synthèse" (1860) and "Les Carbures d'hydrogène" (1901). He stated that chemical phenomena are not governed by any peculiar laws special to themselves, but are explicable in terms of the general laws of mechanics that are in operation throughout the universe; and this view he developed, with the aid of thousands of experiments, in his "Mécanique chimique" (1878) and his "Thermochimie" (1897). This branch of study naturally conducted him to the investigation of explosives, and on the theoretical side led to the results published in his work "Sur la force de la poudre et des matières explosives" (1872), while in practical terms it enabled him to render important services to his country as president of the scientific defence committee during the siege of Paris (1870–1871) and subsequently as chief of the French explosives committee. He performed experiments to determine gas pressures during hydrogen explosions using a special chamber fitted with a piston, and was able to distinguish burning of mixtures of hydrogen and oxygen from true explosions.

Historical and philosophical work.

During later life he researched and wrote books on the early history of chemistry such as "Les Origines de l'alchimie" (1885) and "Introduction à l'étude de la chimie des anciens et du moyen âge" (1889), He also translated various old Greek, Syriac and Arabic treatises on alchemy and chemistry: "Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs" (1887–1888) and "La Chimie au moyen âge" (1893). He was the author of "Science et philosophie" (1886), which contains a well-known letter to Renan on ""La Science idéale et la science positive"," of "La Révolution chimique, Lavoisier" (1890), of "Science et morale" (1897), and of numerous articles in "La Grande Encyclopédie", which he helped to establish.

Family.

Berthelot died suddenly on 18 March 1907, immediately after the death of his wife Sophie Niaudet (1837–1907), in Paris. His professorship was filled by Emil Jungfleisch.  He was buried with his wife in the Panthéon. He had six children: Marcel André (1862–1939), Marie-Hélène (1863–1895), Camille (1864–1928), Daniel (1865–1927), Philippe (1866–1934), and René (1872–1960).

In art.

Auguste Rodin created a bust of Berthelot.

Pierre Eugène Marcellin Berthelot (; 1827–1907) was a French chemist and politician noted for the ThomsenBerthelot principle of thermochemistry. He synthesized many organic compounds from inorganic substances, providing a large amount of counter-evidence to the theory of Jöns Jakob Berzelius that organic compounds required organisms in their synthesis. Berthelot was convinced that chemical synthesis would revolutionize the food industry by the year 2000, and that synthesized foods would replace farms and pastures. "Why not", he asked, "if it proved cheaper and better to make the same materials than to grow them?"