Club career.

Real Madrid.

A product of Real Madrid's youth system, García was born in Mula, Region of Murcia, and played three La Liga matches for the first team while still a junior, making his debut at age 17 in a 5–0 home win against Levante UD on 28 November 2004. After that, he would spend the entire 2005–06 season with the reserves in Segunda División.  The summer of 2006 was a very busy one for García: first, he won the UEFA European Championship with the under-19s, impressing first-team head coach Fabio Capello who recalled him to training sessions. He played in most of Real's pre-season games, including a starting line-up spot in both Ramón de Carranza Trophy fixtures, playing in central midfield alongside new purchase Emerson; however, he failed to appear for the main squad in official matches.  In August 2007, in the campaign of García's supposed definitive promotion to the first team, head coach Bernd Schuster would eventually prevent that golden opportunity – as fellow "cantera" players Rubén de la Red and Esteban Granero also left the club – and offers began to appear from clubs in the Premier League, including Liverpool, and domestic teams such as Atlético Madrid and Deportivo de La Coruña. García would finally settle for CA Osasuna on 31 August, signing for four seasons for a €2.5 million transfer fee as the Navarre side was keen to replace injury-struck midfielder Javad Nekounam (out of action for several months); having first appeared in a 1–1 home draw with Sevilla FC, where he played one minute, he scored twice in his first six matches, in wins against Levante (4–1) and Villarreal CF (3–2).  García's contract included a buy-back clause that could see him return to Real Madrid for €4 million. On 29 April 2008, Osasuna officially reported that the former had exercised their purchase option, and the player returned to the Santiago Bernabéu for 2008–09; he made his first league appearance for Real in his second spell during the 7–1 thrashing of Sporting de Gijón on 24 September, coming on as a second-half substitute for Mahamadou Diarra.

Benfica.

Deemed surplus to requirements at Real Madrid, García signed for S.L. Benfica in Portugal on 21 July 2009 on a five-year contract for a €7 million transfer fee. An undisputed starter throughout his first season, he also scored three goals, most notably through a header in the last minute for the game's only goal against Associação Naval 1o de Maio at home, as the club clung onto the top position on 9 November and eventually won the Primeira Liga.  García made 43 competitive appearances in 2011–12. His only two goals of the season came against Sporting CP in the Lisbon derby 1–0 home win, and at Chelsea in the quarter-finals of the UEFA Champions League – in the latter, he netted off a corner kick in the 85th minute to make it 1–1, but ten-men Benfica eventually lost 1–2 and 1–3 on aggregate.

Manchester City.

On 31 August 2012, García joined Manchester City for £15.8 million. He made his Premier League debut on 15 September in a 1–1 away draw against Stoke City, scoring with a header from a Carlos Tevez free-kick.  After picking up a thigh injury in the early minutes of the Champions League group stage clash against Borussia Dortmund, García missed several weeks of action. He made his return against West Ham United, replacing Tevez in the 84th minute of a 0–0 draw at Upton Park; on 15 December, he started in a 3–1 success at Newcastle United and scored his side's second goal.

Zenit Saint Petersburg.

On 13 August 2014, FC Zenit Saint Petersburg announced the £13 million signing of García after he passed the medical and agreed to personal terms with the Russian Premier League club. He scored his first goal for his new team 18 days later, the only goal in an away win over FC Lokomotiv Moscow.

Betis.

On 14 August 2017, 30-year-old García returned to Spain after eight years to join Real Betis. On 5 July 2019, he signed a new two-year contract with the Andalusians.

International career.

García represented the Spain national under-21 team at the 2009 UEFA European Championship, appearing against England (0–2 loss) in an eventual group stage exit. He earned his first cap for the full side on 26 May 2012, playing 22 minutes in a 2–0 friendly win with Serbia in St. Gallen.

Honours.

Club.

Real Madrid B  Real Madrid  Benfica  Manchester City  Zenit Saint Petersburg

International.

Spain U19

Francisco Javier "Javi" García Fernández (; born 8 February 1987) is a Spanish professional footballer who plays for Real Betis. A defensive midfielder by nature, he can also appear as a central defender.


Terminology.

'Assistance dog' is the internationally established term for a dog that provides assistance to a disabled person, and is task-trained to help mitigate the handler's disability. Assistance Dogs International, an international network of assistance dog providers across the globe, note that there is some variability of terminology in different states, particularly within the USA. They are working to establish consistent global terminology, and note that 'assistance dog' is the term adopted by organisations who train and provide assistance dogs, and the disabled people who partner with assistance dogs.

Distinctive features.

For a dog to be considered an assistance dog, they must meet the following criteria:  Individual countries and regions will have specific laws and regulations, with these international criteria having broad recognition across the globe.

Assistance dog training.

Assistance dogs have traditionally been trained by charities and other organisations who then partner a disabled person with a trained dog when the dog has completed its training programme at about the age of 2. Increasingly, more disabled people are self-training their own assistance dogs, whereby the disabled person selects their own dog (often referred to as a 'prospect') and the dog is trained by the disabled person who also becomes their eventual handler. There is great variability in the length and type of training that any future assistance dog receives, however all assistance dog candidates will go through certain stages.

Selection.

Assistance dog candidates are generally selected with care for appropriate health, temperament and characteristics. Large established organisations such as The Guide Dogs for the Blind select and maintain their own breeding stock to ensure healthy pups with desirable traits. Someone may carefully select prospect puppies from reputable breeders, or they may choose to commence training with a dog who was already part of the family. The reality TV show Rescue Dog to Super Dog featured the process of carefully selecting rescue dogs from shelters to train as assistance dogs.

Socialization.

The first period of a puppy prospect's life is normally spent in socialization rather than formal training. Large formal organisations often use puppy foster parents during the pups first year and the pup grows up in a normal family environment surrounded by the sights, sounds and smells of the type of environment they will later work in, learning to be clean and toilet trained, confident and happy. Owner Trainers raise their pups themselves, so the dog lives with the same person who will later be their handler, but will also focus on giving the puppy confidence, play experiences and socialisation in the environments they will later work in.

Task Training.

Once a puppy is old enough they will commence their specialist training which will include the task training. It is these tasks which will make them distinct and specialised assistance dogs. In the EU to be categorised as an assistance dog, a dog is expected to have at least three specialized tasks which mitigate the owners disability, while in the USA an assistance dog handler may be asked if they have a disability, and what tasks the dog does to mitigate that disability as the only 2 legal questions to ascertain that a dog is indeed an assistance dog. The tasks that an assistance dog prospect will learn depend on the disabilities that their current or future handler has and there is therefore almost no limit on the types of tasks a dog can be trained to. These may vary from picking up dropped items and taking laundry out of a washing machine to interrupting self-harming behaviors to providing deep pressure therapy for an autistic person.

Obedience and Public Access.

At the same time as learning their unique tasks to support their handler, an assistance dog candidate also learns how to be well behaved, polite and to present acceptably in public. Large organisations who train assistance dogs will use their own in house training processes. Owner trainers may also approach this in a variety of ways. Many owner-trainer support groups recommend following established dog obedience schemes such as the Kennel Club Bronze, Silver and Gold obedience training programme to gain a high and dependable recognized standard of obedience and behavior followed by the Public Access Test. Public Access tests evaluate a dogs ability to behave appropriately in public, and in places not normally deemed pet friendly where a person may enter with an assistance dog, such as a supermarket or restaurant.

Classification.

Common examples of assistance dogs include:  Common examples of facility dogs include:  In the United States, assistance dogs fall into two broad categories: service dogs and facility dogs. Service dogs are defined by the Americans with Disabilities Act as dogs that are individually trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities. State and local governments, businesses, and nonprofit organizations that serve the public generally must allow service animals to accompany people with disabilities in all areas of the facility where the public is normally allowed to go. Facility dogs are used by working professionals to aid multiple people.

Similarities and differences between facility dogs and therapy dogs.

Because both may aid people in similar settings such as healthcare environments, facility dogs are often mistakenly called therapy dogs; however, there are several important distinctions between them. Facility dogs are trained by accredited assistance dog organizations and therapy dogs are trained by their owners. Facility dogs may be handled by a wide variety of working professionals, while therapy dogs must be handled by their owners.  Facility dogs are trained by canine professionals or by their owner for a period of 18 to 24 months, and must pass very rigorous tests before graduating from an assistance dog organization. In contrast, registration for therapy dogs by a therapy dog organization does not require enrollment in obedience classes or therapy dog classes, meaning that therapy dogs often undergo a much less rigorous training process. Furthermore, the tests that therapy dogs must pass are less complicated and challenging than those taken by facility dogs.  A person with either a therapy dog or a facility dog must have permission from the facilities they visit before they can enter with their animal. They do not have the right to demand access to places where pets are not generally permitted, or to have fees associated with their pets waived.

In general, an assistance dog, known as a service dog in the United States, is a dog trained to aid or assist an individual with a disability. Many are trained by an assistance dog organization, or by their handler, often with the help of a professional trainer.


Location.

Samtskhe–Javakheti is bordered by the regions of Adjara to the west, Guria and Imereti to the north, Shida Kartli and Kvemo Kartli to the north-east and to the east, and by Armenia and Turkey to the south and southwest.

General Information.

The area of the region is 6413 square kilometers and it has a population of 160,262 inhabitants. The administrative center of the region is Akhaltsikhe. There are 353 populated areas, including:

History.

The current division of Georgia into "regions" ("Mkhare") was introduced by the Shevardnadze government in the mid-1990s, partly as a response to the secession of Abkhazia and the South Ossetia conflict. Samtskhe–Javakheti was basically formed by combining the two traditional provinces of Meskheti (Samtskhe) and Javakheti.

Meskheti.

The ancient tribes of Meskhi (or Moschi) and Mosiniks are the first known inhabitants of the area. Some scholars credit the Mosiniks (or "Mossynoeci") with the invention of iron metallurgy. From the 2nd millennium to the 4th century BC, Meskheti was believed to be part of the Kingdom of Diauehi, in the 4th century BC to the 6th century AD part of the Kingdom of Iberia. From the 10th to the 15th century it was part of the united Georgian Kingdom. In the 16th century Meskheti was integrated into the Safavid Empire, followed by the Ottoman Empire. After the conclusion of the Russo-Persian War of 1826-28, it was a part of Russian Tiflis Governorate from 1817 till 1829, from 1918 to 1921 part of the Democratic Republic of Georgia, and from 1921 to 1990 part of the Georgian SSR. After independence from the USSR Meskheti was reinstalled as a province of Georgia, and later cast into the new Samtskhe–Javakheti region.

Javakheti.

In ancient sources, the region was recorded as "Zabakha" in 785 BC, by the king Argishti I of Urartu. According to Cyril Toumanoff, Javakheti was part of the Iberian duchy of Tsunda from the 4th or 3rd century BC. Saint Nino entered Iberia from Javakheti, and, following the course of the River Kura, she arrived in Mtskheta, the capital of the kingdom, once there, she eventually began to preach Christianity, which culminated by Christianization of Iberia.  In struggle against the Arab occupation, Bagrationi dynasty came to rule over Tao-Klarjeti and established the Kouropalatate of Iberia. rulers of Tao-Klarjeti fought the Arabs from there, gradually incorporating the surrounding lands of Samtskhe and Javakheti, along with a few other lesser lands, from the Arab dominance. For a long time the region became a cultural safe-house and one of the most important religious centers of Georgia.  In the mid-10th century, Javakheti was incorporated into Kingdom of Abkhazia. In 964 Leon III of Abkhazia extended his influence to Javakheti, during his reign was built Kumurdo Cathedral. In subsequent centuries, Javakheti was integral part of unified Georgian monarchy and had a period of significant development: lot of bridges, churches, monasteries, and royal residences (Lgivi, Ghrtila, Bozhano, Vardzia) were built. From the 11th century, the center of upper Javakheti became Akhalkalaki. From the 10th century, the center of lowland Javakheti was Tmogvi. From the 12th century, the domain was ruled by representatives of the feudal family of Toreli.  In the 15th century, Javakheti was incorporated to principality of Samtskhe-Saatabago. In the 16th century, the region, as well as the adjacent territories of western Georgia, was occupied by the Ottoman Empire. The Georgian population of Javakheti was displaced to inner regions of Georgia such as Imereti and Kartli. Those who remained gradually became Muslim.  As a result of the struggles of the Russian Empire with the Ottomans, Russian authorities settled Christian Armenians and Caucasus Greeks in the area after 1828. Armenian refugees from the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire came in the early 20th century. Also a large number of Russian Doukhobor sect members settled the region.

Soviet era.

Georgia came fully under Soviet control in 1921, after the Red Army invasion of Georgia. The remaining Muslim minority in Meskheti, also known as "Meskhetian Turks", were deported in cattle-trucks to Central Asia by order of Stalin and settled within an area that overlaps the boundaries of the modern nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. Today, many are still dispersed across those countries. Of the 100,000 forcibly deported, a total of 10,000 perished.

Subdivisions.

The region comprises six municipalities:

Demographics.

In 2017, Samtskhe–Javakheti province of Georgia had the following ethnic makeup of 160,504 total population:  The most densely populated districts are the Akhaltsikhe and Akhalkalaki municipalities.

Tourist attractions.

The major tourist attractions are the cave monasteries of Vardzia (which was founded by Queen Tamar in 1185), Vanis Kvabebi (which dates from the 8th century), Rabati Castle and Khertvisi fortress. Also, among national visitors is very popular 10th century Sapara Monastery, Tmogvi fortress, and 8th century Zarzma monastery.

Samtskhe–Javakheti (, ), is a region (mkhare) in southern Georgia which includes the historical Georgian provinces of Meskheti, Javakheti and Tori. Akhaltsikhe is its capital.


History.

The Garden of Padua was founded upon deliberation of the Senate of the Venetian Republic. It was devoted to the growth of medicinal plants, the so-called "simple plants" ("Orto dei semplici" - simples were herbs that were used as they are rather than in admixtures) which produced natural remedies, and also to help students distinguish genuine medicinal plants from false ones.  A circular wall enclosure was built to protect the garden from the frequent night thefts which occurred in spite of severe penalties (fines, prison, exile). The Botanical Garden was steadily enriched with plants from all over the world, particularly from the countries that participated in trade with Venice. Consequently, Padua had a leading role in the introduction and study of many exotic plants, and a herbarium, a library and many laboratories were gradually added to its Botanical Garden.  At present, the Botanical Garden allows for intensive didactic activity as well as important research to be conducted on its grounds. It also cares for the preservation of many rare species. In 1997, it was listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site on the following grounds:

Architecture.

The design of the Botanical Garden is commonly attributed to, who created some of the most important public monuments in Padua, such as the Basilica of Santa Giustina in Prato della Valle, the town hall and the university in the first half of the 16th century. However, the real architect was Daniele Barbaro, a Venetian nobleman who was a man of vast learning and translator of Vitruvius' "De Architectura". He followed the example of the medieval "Horti Conclusi", (enclosed gardens), marking the architecture by a perfect pattern of a square within a circle, divided into four parts by two paths oriented according to the cardinal points. The Botanical Garden was inaugurated in 1545, and used as a teaching facility by the University of Padua in the following year.  The current appearance of the principal palace dates back to the 17th and 18th centuries. By the end of the 16th century, the garden was enriched with many fountains fed by a gigantic wheel hydrophore, to ensure proper irrigation. In 1704, four gates and gateways were built with huge embellished acroterions (ornaments) in red stone, decorated with plants made of wrought iron. During the first half of the 18th century, the wall was refined along the external perimeter by a balustrade made of Istria Stone on which vases and half-length portraits of important persons were placed. A statue of Theophrastus was built beside the south door, as well as a statue of Solomon, (signed by Antonio Bonazza), local point for the east door and the four seasons fountain, which was enriched with 18th-century portraits made of Carrara marble. In the first half of the 19th century, greenhouses and a botanic theatre were built and half-length portraits of eminent botanists such as Carl Linnaeus were placed on the cornice. One of the greenhouses still maintains these historic arches and small cast-iron columns.  In the garden there are also three sundials: a cubic one, a circular one and a cylindrical one. On the inside, four "glacises" are divided into collections of flower-beds. At the center, a pool of water for the aquatic plants is fed by a continuous jet of hot water which comes from a water-bearing stratum of earth located three-hundred meters below the level of the garden.

Trees.

Until 1984, the Botanical Garden boasted a "Vitex agnus-castus" (chaste tree) that dated from at least 1550. At present, the oldest plant is a palm planted in 1585 called the "Goethe palm", because the poet referred to it in his essay "Geschichte meines botanisches Studiums"; this tree is situated in a greenhouse inside the "Ortus Sphearicus", where there is also a ginkgo and a magnolia dating back to the mid-18th century, which are regarded as the oldest specimens in Europe. A gigantic plane tree in the outside Arboretum dates from 1680; it has a hollow trunk, owing to a lightning strike. In the Arboretum there is also a sectioned trunk of an elm tree, which died in 1991, with marked year rings.

Collections.

Owing to a shortage of hothouses, the plants are mainly located outdoors. Six thousand types of plants are currently being cultivated and arranged according to taxonomic, utilitarian, ecological-environmental and historical standards. The systematic collection is concentrated in the four biggest central flowerbeds. Among the utilitarian collections, the medicinal plants are the most important. These are classified according to the Engler system, based on evolutionary relationships among the families. Each plant is labelled with its scientific name and its principal therapeutical properties. A poisonous plants collection has recently been set up with didactic aims: many of these poisonous plants are found also in the medicinal plants sector because in suitable quantities they can be used to treat illness and diseases.  Collections of the garden include:

The Orto Botanico di Padova is a botanical garden in Padua, in the northeastern part of Italy. Founded in 1545 by the Venetian Republic, it is the world's oldest academic botanical garden that is still in its original location. The garden, affiliated with the University of Padua, currently covers roughly 22,000 square meters, and is known for its special collections and historical design.


Biography.

Early life.

Sergei Shtemenko was born to a peasant family in the village of Uryupinsk. His original surname was Shtemenkov with the suffix "-ov" like other local people, but after the death of his father, his mother changed the surname to Ukrainian style: Shtemenko. Shtemenko volunteered for the Red Army at 1926. In 1930 he joined the Communist Party, and he graduated from the Anti-Aircraft School in Sevastopol at the same year. After several years in the Artillery, he moved to the Armored Corps, completing his studies in the Mechanization and Motorization Academy in 1937. He commanded a tank regiment until September 1938, when he was summoned to the General Staff Academy. In late August 1939, with other cadets, Shtemenko was assigned as a staff officer to the Soviet forces preparing for the Invasion of Poland, and took part in the operation. During the Soviet-Finnish War he served as an assistant in the General Staff. After matriculating from the Academy at autumn 1940, Shtemenko's request to be transferred to the new Tank Corps was rejected and he was posted as an aide to General Mikhail Sharokhin, a department chief in the Operations Directorate.

World War II.

In August 1941, soon after the German invasion, Shtemenko was appointed as Sharokhin's deputy, an office he held until after the Battle of Moscow, when he was assigned as chief of the Near East department. As such, Shtemenko monitored the conditions of the Soviet troops stationed in the recently occupied Iran. In June 1942, he replaced Sharokhin as the department chief. Shtemenko took part in the operational planning of the Battles for Crimea, the Caucasus and Stalingrad. In May 1943, he was promoted to be the chief of the Operations Directorate, serving directly under Marshal Alexander Vasilevsky. In November of that year he escorted Stalin to the Tehran Conference.  During February and March 1944, Shtemenko served as the Stavka representative in the 2nd Baltic Front during the campaign to relieve the Siege of Leningrad. During the Spring of 1944, he toured between the different fronts fighting in Belarus and coordinated their operations.  After the German surrender, Shtemenko was among the organizers of the Victory Parade. In August 1945, he took part in the planning of the Soviet–Japanese War.

Post-war career.

In April 1946 Shtemenko was promoted to the position of Deputy Chief of the General Staff. In November 1948, the 41-year-old Shtemenko was made a Chief of the General Staff and the Deputy Minister of Defence. However, in June 1952 he was replaced as Chief of the General Staff by Vasily Sokolovsky. Shtemenko was then transferred to command the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. In 1953 Shtemenko was listed as an intended victim of the Doctors' Plot. He continued to serve in the General Staff as deputy chief, and was made a candidate member of the Central Committee, an office he held until 1956.  In June 1953 he was dismissed from the General Staff and demoted to Lieutenant General, after being accused of being an associate of Beria. In 1956 Zhukov appointed him Chief of the Military Intelligence and promoted him to Colonel General. However, Shtemenko again fell out of grace after Zhukov was removed as Defense Minister, and was demoted again to Lieutenant General in 1957. He was sent to occupy the position of deputy commander of the Volga Military District.  Shtemenko slowly regained his status. In June 1962 he was appointed Chief of Staff of the Ground Forces, and in April 1964 he became Chief of the Main Organizational-Mobilization Department of the General Staff. In August 1968 he was promoted to be the Chief of Combined Staff of the Warsaw Pact under the Pact's forces Supreme Commander Marshal Ivan Yakubovsky, and granted the rank of Army General once more.  Shtemenko died in Moscow in 1976. On 10 February 1977, on the 70th anniversary of his birth and 10 months after his death, the Krasnodar Red Banner Military Academy was renamed after him.

Sergei Matveevich Shtemenko (; – 23 April 1976) was a Soviet general who served as the Chief of the Soviet Armed Forces' General Staff from 1948 to 1952.


Biography.

Zakharov was born in Voylovo, a village in Kalininsky District, Tver Oblast to peasant parents. Zakharov joined the Red Guards (precursor to the Red Army) in 1917. He served under Kliment Voroshilov during the Russian Civil War. Zakharov graduated from the Frunze Military Academy in 1928, and from Soviet General Staff Academy in 1937 (his graduation was actually a year ahead of schedule, due to the lack of officers in the Red Army because of the explosive growth of the army, as well as Stalin's purges.) Zakharov held a number of high-ranking positions before World War II even began. In 1937 he was made the Chief of Staff of the Leningrad Military District, then in 1938–1940 he was the Deputy Chief of the General Staff, and then the Chief of Staff of the Odessa Military District.  By the end of 1941, after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, he was moved north, where he was made the Chief of Staff of the Northwestern Theatre. Soon thereafter, he was made the Chief of Staff of the Kalinin Front, a role he held for most of 1942. In 1943, he was made the Chief of Staff of the Steppe Front, which was renamed the 2nd Ukrainian Front around mid-year. It was in this capacity that Zakharov proved himself as one of the Soviet Union’s top military commanders. He helped plan a number of brilliant operations against German forces, first as a subordinate to Marshal Ivan Konev, and then under Marshal Rodion Malinovsky. After the cessation of hostilities with Germany, Zakharov was transferred east, where he was made the Chief of Staff of the Transbaikal Front, and helped plan the subsequent Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation.  After the war, Zakharov held a number of key positions in the army. In 1945–1960, Zakharov was the Commandant of the General Staff Academy, Deputy Chief of the General Staff, Chief Inspector of the Army, Commanding General of the Leningrad Military District and Commander in Chief of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. On May 8, 1959, Zakharov was made a Marshal of the Soviet Union. After attaining that rank, Zakharov was simultaneously made Chief of the General Staff and Deputy Minister of Defence in 1960–1963. He then briefly went back to the General Staff Academy where he was once again the commandant until 1964, when he was made the Deputy Minister of Defense and again Chief of the General Staff, a post he held until his retirement in 1971.  Marshal M. V. Zakharov died on January 31, 1972. The urn containing his ashes is buried by the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.

Matvei Vasilevich Zakharov (, August 17, 1898 – January 31, 1972) was Marshal of the Soviet Union, Chief of the General Staff, Deputy Defense Minister.


Biography.

Arcadi Gaydamak was born in 1952 in Moscow, the capital of the USSR. At the age of 20, Gaydamak was one of the first Jews to emigrate to Israel from Leonid Brezhnev's Soviet Union and receive Israeli citizenship. He lived on Kibbutz Beit HaShita, and studied Hebrew at an ulpan. He said he originally intended to serve in the Israeli Army, but ended up moving to France, where he opened a translation bureau.  In 1982, Gaydamak Translations opened a branch in Canada. During that period he commenced international business, in import and export. After the collapse of the USSR, he built up ties in Russia and Kazakhstan and formed various business organizations across Europe.  Gaydamak won two citations from the French government: "Chevalier de l'Ordre national du Mérite" and the "Ordre du Mérite agricole" for helping to rescue two captured French pilots in the War in Bosnia in the 1990s, as well as two French intelligence officers captured by rebel factions in the Caucasus. Because these operations were secret, the citations referred to his contribution to agriculture. Former French interior minister Charles Pasqua confirmed this, saying that President Jacques Chirac had personally authorized the citations.  Gaydamak owns a home in Caesarea. He is married to Irene Tzirolnicova, with whom he has three children. He speaks Russian, French, and English. He also speaks Portuguese and Hebrew on a basic level.  In December 2008 Gaydamak was reported to have left Israel and returned to Russia, settling in Moscow. In February 2009 it was reported that he was seeking to regain his Russian citizenship, lost when he emigrated to Israel decades before.  Gaydamak was granted honorary Angolan citizenship. He holds French, Canadian, and Israeli passports.

Angola affair.

In October 2009, Gaydamak and French magnate Pierre Falcone were convicted by a French court of organizing arms trafficking in Angola during the civil war in 1993–1998, to the value of US$790 million, in violation of the Lusaka Protocol. He was sentenced "in absentia" to six years in prison. His conviction on the arms dealing charges was overturned by the Court of Appeal in Paris on 29 April 2011. The only conviction remaining was for his incomplete 1994 tax declaration.

Politics.

In February 2007, seeing the social issues in Israel, Gaydamak founded a party devoted to socio-economic issues, which he named Social Justice. Although the organization was established as a social movement, he said it could become a political party if the circumstances warranted it. In late 2007, the party contemplated taking part in the 2008 municipal elections.  Gaydamak ran for mayor of Jerusalem in November 2008, but his party won no seats on the city council. During the campaign, Gaydamak courted the East Jerusalem Palestinian vote. Gaydamak approached the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, Palestinian political figures and media, and came away with a near endorsement.

Sport clubs and media ownership.

In July 2005, Gaydamak became sponsor of the Hapoel Jerusalem basketball team. The following month he donated $400,000 to the Israeli Arab Bnei Sakhnin football club. On the same day, Gaydamak announced the purchase of 55% of the ownership of Beitar Jerusalem, and two days later he announced the acquisition of full ownership. Gaydamak is the patron of several Jewish charities and president of the Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organizations of Russia (KEROOR), Russia's oldest Jewish umbrella group. In the summer of 2008, Gaydamak claimed his son Alexandre was owner of Portsmouth F.C., and it was confirmed by the Premier League.  In March 2006 he announced having bought the French newspaper "France Soir" via his company "Moscow News". He had purchased the Russian "Moskovskie Novosti" newspaper in 2004, fired some senior journalists, and changed the paper's mandate to a firmly pro-government one, appointing a pro-Putin journalist as editor-in-chief.  In January 2006, Portsmouth F.C. were sold to his son, Alexandre Gaydamak by Milan Mandarić. Gaydamak later sold the club to Ali al-Faraj in 2009.  In June 2007, Gaydamak negotiated a deal to buy the non-kosher supermarket chain Tiv Taam. It was reported that he was planning to make the stores comply with Jewish religious practice: close them on Shabbat and halt the sale of pork products. A few days later the deal fell through, resulting in a lawsuit.  In July 2009, Gaydamak announced his decision to give up the ownership of Beitar Jerusalem in favor of Itzik Kornfein and Guma Aguiar. Kornfein would handle buying and selling players, while Aguair would engage in financing.

Philanthropy and community service.

Gaydamak has donated to many Israeli organizations, including Magen David Adom and Hatzalah. He also donated $10 million to the Jewish Agency for Israel  During the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, Gaydamak constructed a tent-village on the beach of Nitzanim, hosting thousands of families who fled the rocket-ridden North and had no place to go. Gaydamak's contributions totaled $15 million (about $500,000 a day). In November 2006, he funded a one-week-long vacation in Eilat for hundreds of Sderot residents who have suffered rocket attacks from Gaza.

Arcadi Aleksandrovich Gaydamak (; ; born 8 April 1952 in Moscow, USSR) is a Russian-born French-Israeli businessman, philanthropist, and President of the Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organizations of Russia (KEROOR). He emigrated to Israel at the age of 20 and lived on a kibbutz, then moved to France and opened a translation bureau.


Biography.

Early life.

Fazil Abdulovich Iskander was born in 1929 in the cosmopolitan port city of Sukhumi, the capital of Abkhazia (then part of the USSR) to an Iranian father (Abdul Ibragimovich Iskander) and an Abkhazian mother (Leili Khasanovna Iskander). His father was deported to Iran in 1938 and sent to a penal camp where he died in 1957. His father was the victim of Joseph Stalin's deportation policies of the national minorities of the Caucasus. As a result, Fazil and his brother Feredun and his sister Giuli were raised by his mother's Abkhazian family. Fazil was only nine years old at that time.

Career.

The most famous intellectual of Abkhazia, he first became well known in the mid-1960s along with other representatives of the "young prose" movement like Yury Kazakov and Vasily Aksyonov, especially for what is perhaps his best story, "Sozvezdie kozlotura" (1966), variously translated as "The Goatibex Constellation," "The Constellation of the Goat-Buffalo," and "Constellation of Capritaurus." It is written from the point of view of a young newspaperman who returns to his native Abkhazia, joins the staff of a local newspaper, and is caught up in the publicity campaign for a newly produced farm animal, a cross between a goat and a West Caucasian tur ("Capra caucasica"); a "remarkable satire of Lysenko's genetics and Khrushchev's agricultural campaigns, it was harshly criticized for showing the Soviet Union in a bad light."  He is probably best known in the English speaking world for "Sandro of Chegem", a picaresque novel that recounts life in a fictional Abkhaz village from the early years of the 20th century until the 1970s, which evoked praise for the author as "an Abkhazian Mark Twain." Mr. Iskander's humor, like Mark Twain's, has a tendency to sneak up on you instead of hitting you over the head. This rambling, amusing and ironic work has been considered as an example of magic realism, although Iskander himself said he "did not care for Latin American magic realism in general". Five films were made based upon parts of the novel.  Iskander distanced himself from the Abkhaz secessionist strivings in the late 1980s and criticised both Georgian and Abkhaz communities of Abkhazia for their ethnic prejudices. He warned that Abkhazia could become a new Nagorno-Karabakh. Later Iskander resided in Moscow and was a writer for the newspaper "Kultura".  On 3 September 2011, a statue of Iskander's literary character "Chik" was unveiled on Sukhumi's Muhajir Quay.

Family.

Iskander had been married to a Russian poet Antonina Mikhailovna Khlebnikova since 1960. In 2011 the couple published a book of poems entitled "Snow and Grapes" to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary. They had one son and one daughter.

Death.

Iskander died in his home on 31 July 2016 in Peredelkino, aged 87.

Quotes.

"Perhaps the most touching and profound characteristic of childhood is an unquestioning belief in the rule of common sense. The child believes that the world is rational and hence regards everything irrational as some sort of obstacle to be pushed aside.... The best people, I think, are those who over the years have managed to retain this childhood faith in the world's rationality. For it is this faith which provides man with passion and zeal in his struggle against the twin follies of cruelty and stupidity." (The Goatibex Constellation)

Awards and prizes.

In 2009, Bank of Abkhazia issued a commemorative silver coin from the series "Outstanding Personalities of Abkhazia", dedicated to Fazil Iskander denomination of 10 apsaras.

Fazil Abdulovich Iskander (; ; 6 March 1929 – 31 July 2016) was a Soviet and Russian writer and poet known in the former Soviet Union for his descriptions of Caucasian life. He authored various stories, most famously "Zashita Chika", which features a crafty and likable young boy named "Chik".


Early life.

Alice Prin was born in Châtillon-sur-Seine, Côte d'Or. An illegitimate child, she was raised in abject poverty by her grandmother. At age twelve, she was sent to live with her mother in Paris in order to find work. She first worked in shops and bakeries, but by the age of fourteen, she was posing nude for sculptors, which created discord with her mother.

Notoriety begins.

Adopting a single name, ""Kiki"", she became a fixture in the Montparnasse social scene and a popular artist's model, posing for dozens of artists, including Sanyu, Chaim Soutine, Julian Mandel, Tsuguharu Foujita, Constant Detré, Francis Picabia, Jean Cocteau, Arno Breker, Alexander Calder, Per Krohg, Hermine David, Pablo Gargallo, Mayo, and Tono Salazar. Moïse Kisling painted a portrait of Kiki titled "Nu assis", one of his best known.  Her companion for most of the 1920s was Man Ray, who made hundreds of portraits of her. She can be considered his muse at this time, she is the subject of some of his best-known images, including the notable surrealist image "Le violon d'Ingres" and "Noire et blanche".  She appeared in nine short and often experimental films, including Fernand Léger's "Ballet mécanique" without any credit.

Artwork and autobiography.

A painter in her own right, in 1927 Prin had a sold-out exhibition of her paintings at the Galerie au Sacre du Printemps in Paris. Signing her work with her chosen single name, "Kiki", she usually noted the year. Her drawings and paintings comprise portraits, self-portraits, social activities, fanciful animals, and dreamy landscapes composed in a light, slightly uneven, expressionist style that is a reflection of her easy-going manner and boundless optimism. Her autobiography was published in 1929 as "Kiki's Memoirs", with Ernest Hemingway and Tsuguharu Foujita providing introductions. In 1930 the book was translated by Samuel Putnam and published in Manhattan by Black Manikin Press, but it was immediately banned by the United States government. A copy of the first US edition was held in the section for banned books in the New York Public Library through the 1970s. However, the book had been reprinted under the title "The Education of a Young Model" throughout the 1950s and 1960s (e.g., a 1954 edition by Bridgehead has the Hemingway Introduction and photos and illustrations by Mahlon Blaine). These editions were mainly put out by Samuel Roth. Taking advantage that the banning of the book meant it did not receive copyright protection in the U.S., Roth put out a series of supposedly copyrighted editions (which were never registered with the Library of Congress) which altered the text and added illustrations – line drawings and photographs – which were not by Prin. Editions published in and after 1955 include an extra 10 chapters supposedly written by Prin 23 years after the original book, including a visit to New York where she meets with Samuel Roth and Ernest Hemingway; none of this was true. The original autobiography finally saw a new translation and publication in 1996.  Her music hall performances in black hose and garters included crowd-pleasing risqué songs, which were uninhibited, yet inoffensive. For a few years during the 1930s, she owned the Montparnasse cabaret L'Oasis, which was later renamed "Chez Kiki."  A symbol of bohemian and creative Paris and of the possibility of being a woman and finding an artistic place, at the age of twenty-eight she was declared the "Queen of Montparnasse". Even during difficult times, she maintained her positive attitude, saying "all I need is an onion, a bit of bread, and a bottle of red [wine]; and I will always find somebody to offer me that."  She left Paris to avoid the occupying German army during World War II, which entered the city in June 1940. She did not return to live in the city immediately after the war.

Death and legacy.

Prin died in 1953 after collapsing outside her flat in Montparnasse, at the age of fifty-one, apparently of complications of alcoholism or drug dependence. A large crowd of artists and fans attended her Paris funeral and followed the procession to her interment in the "Cimetière parisien de Thiais". Her tomb identifies her as ""Kiki, 1901–1953, singer, actress, painter, Queen of Montparnasse."" Tsuguharu Foujita has said that, with Kiki, the glorious days of Montparnasse were buried forever.  Long after her death, Prin remains the embodiment of the outspokenness, audacity, and creativity that marked that period of life in Montparnasse. She represents a strong artistic force in her own right as a woman. In 1989, biographers Billy Klüver and Julie Martin called her "one of the century's first truly independent women." In her honor, a daylily has been named "Kiki de Montparnasse".  Kiki was featured in a three-page obituary in "Life" magazine in the 29 June 1953 edition.

Alice Ernestine Prin (2 October 1901 – 29 April 1953), nicknamed the Queen of Montparnasse, and often known as Kiki de Montparnasse, was a French artist's model, literary muse, nightclub singer, actress, memoirist and painter. She flourished in, and helped define, the liberated culture of Paris in the 1920s.


Early life.

Krafft von Dellmensingen was born into a lower ranking Bavarian noble family in Laufen, Upper Bavaria. His father was a royal notary. Konrad entered the Royal Bavarian Army as an officer candidate in August 1881 and was commissioned a second lieutenant in December 1883. After attending the Bavarian War Academy, he served as a general staff officer in various units. In 1902 he married Helene Zöhrer in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. They would have two sons and one daughter.  Through the pre-war years, Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen proceeded up the ranks, generally alternating command and general staff assignments, until October 1, 1912 when he became Chief of the General Staff of the Royal Bavarian Army, a position he would hold until the mobilization for war in August 1914.

World War I.

On mobilization in 1914, Generalmajor Krafft von Dellmensingen became chief of the general staff of the German 6th Army, and served with that command in the Battle of the Frontiers and the Race to the Sea. On May 27, 1915, shortly after his promotion to Generalleutnant, he took command of the newly formed Alpenkorps, a provisional mountain division. He would lead the division until the end of February 1917, through fighting on the Italian Front, at Verdun, and in the invasions of Serbia and Romania (see Battle of Sălătrucu). He received the Pour le Mérite, Prussia's highest military honor, on September 13, 1916, and oak leaves to the Pour le Mérite on December 11, 1916, as well as honors from Bavaria, other German states, and their Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman allies.  On March 1, 1917, Krafft von Dellmensingen became chief of staff of Army Group Duke Albrecht of Württemberg, where he served until September 9, 1917. On September 11, 1917, he received the Commander's Cross of the Württemberg Military Merit Order, Württemberg's highest military decoration. He then became chief of staff of the 14th Army under Otto von Below, and helped plan the operation that would become the successful Battle of Caporetto. On October 24, 1917, he received the Grand Cross of the Military Order of Max Joseph, Bavaria's highest military decoration.  On February 2, 1918, the 14th Army in Italy was dissolved and the army's staff under Otto von Below took command of the 17th Army, newly formed for the Spring Offensive in France. After helping prepare the army for the offensive, Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen was promoted to General der Artillerie and given command of the II Bavarian Army Corps, which he led from April 18, 1918 through the Spring Offensive and the defensive battles that followed to the war's end.

Post-war.

Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen retired from the army in December 1918. He was active in monarchist circles after the war seeking a return of the Bavarian monarchy. He also participated in the 1920s in the preparation of the official history of the Bavarian Army in the war: in 1926 and 1928, he edited a 2-volume account of the Battle of Caporetto, "Der Durchbruch am Isonzo" (The Breakthrough on the Isonzo).  In 1937, a barracks complex in Garmisch-Partenkirchen was named the "Krafft-von-Dellmensingen-Kaserne". In 1945, the Kaserne was taken over by the United States Army. The program of denazification was launched after the end of the Second World War; the name “Krafft-von-Dellmensingen-Kaserne” was deleted. On 9 July 1975 this decision was reversed; the barracks were named after Dellmensingen again. Today this building houses part of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. The name "Krafft-von-Dellmensingen-Kaserne" was removed from the outside of the barracks on 29 June 2011. Krafft von Dellmensingen had died in Seeshaupt, Upper Bavaria.

Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen (24 November 1862 – 21 February 1953) was a Bavarian Army general in World War I. He served as Chief of the General Staff of the Royal Bavarian Army before World War I and commanded the elite Alpenkorps, the Imperial German Army's mountain division formed in 1915.


Uses and properties.

The pulpy center of the fruits are edible and contain starch. The fruit is sold in local markets in the Americas. The leaves may be used to make a tea. The trees produce a dense wood used for timber in making ships and furniture. The thick bark of some species is used by indigenous peoples of the Amazon to make canoes. Seeds contain large amounts (40% of dry weight) of a highly viscous polysaccharide (xyloglucan) which can be used in several industrial sectors such as food, paper, cosmetic and pharmaceutical.  The trees also make hard resins that are used to manufacture varnish, especially the resin from "Hymenaea courbaril" (jatobá) in Brazil. The resin that is produced in Brazil is known as South American copal, and "Hymenaea verrucosa" is the source of the valuable Zanzibar copal. Resin may be collected from living trees, or from the soil near the place where a tree once stood. Throughout its American range, indigenous peoples use the resin for incense and as a cement. Resin from the extinct species "Hymenaea protera" is the source of Dominican amber, while the extinct "Hymenaea mexicana" produced the resin which is the source of Mexican amber.  "Hymenaea courbaril" has been used as a model organism to study the effect of increased concentration on the rate of photosynthesis in neotropical regions.  When the concentration of was increased from an ambient reference level of 360ppm to 720ppm, the photosynthetic assimilation in the seedlings doubled. This suggests the species could play an important role in greenhouse gas sequestration, as atmospheric is expected to reach ca. 700 ppm by the year 2075 if current levels of fossil fuel consumption are maintained.  "Hymenaea courbaril" is a very important species in programmes of recuperation of degraded rain forests in the Neotropics. It appears late in the natural regeneration process being classified as a 'late successional' or climax species.

Hymenaea L. is a genus in the flowering plant family Fabaceae (legume family). Of fourteen living species in the genus, all but one are native to the tropics of the Americas, with one additional species ("Hymenaea verrucosa") on the east coast of Africa. Some authors place the African species in a separate monotypic genus, "Trachylobium". In the neotropics, "Hymenaea" is distributed through the Caribbean islands, and from southern Mexico to Brazil. Linnaeus named the genus in 1753 in Species Plantarum for Hymenaios, the Greek god of marriage ceremonies. The name is a reference to the paired leaflets.


Competitions.

At the 2006 FINA Short Course World Championships in Shanghai, Dale Oen won a bronze medal in the 100-m breaststroke, behind Oleg Lisogor and Brenton Rickard. Oen became the first Norwegian male to win a World Championships medal in swimming. Four months later, Oen followed that up with success at the 2006 European Swimming Championships, winning the silver medal in the 100-m breaststroke and setting a new Nordic record (long course), with 1:00.63.  Dale Oen won his first short-course medal at the 2006 Short Course European Championships in Helsinki, taking bronze behind two Ukrainians in the 100-m breaststroke in a new personal best of 58.70. In the 2007 World Championships, Dale Oen was second fastest in the heats (in another Nordic record, 1:00.34) and third fastest in the semifinal, but failed in the final, clocking well above 1:01.  Dale Oen repeated the feat of doing better in the semifinal than the final at the 2007 European Short Course Championships. After 58.60, a new personal best and the second-fastest time, in the semifinals, Dale Oen finished in 58.81, fifth place and 0.24 seconds behind the gold medal. However, Dale Oen dominated the 2008 European Championships. Setting a record time of 1:00.11 in the heats, and being fastest in both the heats and the semifinal, Dale Oen swam the final in a European record time of 59.76, and won the gold by 0.02 seconds ahead of Hugues Duboscq, who also swam a personal best.  At the 2008 Summer Olympics, Dale Oen earned Norway's first ever Olympic medal in swimming, placing second in the 100-m breaststroke final.  During the 2011 World Championships in Shanghai, Dale Oen won the gold medal in the 100-m breaststroke with the time 58.71, 0.71 seconds ahead of Fabio Scozzoli. This was Norway's first gold medal at a World Championship in swimming. Dale Oen's win was highly publicized because of his emotional response at the award ceremony because of the Oslo attacks a few days earlier.

Death.

On 30 April 2012, Dale Oen collapsed in the shower at his training camp in Flagstaff, Arizona. When his teammates thought he was spending a long time showering, they knocked on the door and flicked the light on and off, to which there was no response. They then broke in the door and began administering CPR until the ambulance arrived. Dale Oen was transferred to hospital, but was pronounced dead on arrival, aged 26. An initial autopsy was inconclusive, but a second revealed that Dale Oen suffered from severe atherosclerotic coronary artery disease, with the three main coronary arteries feeding his myocardium up to 90 percent occluded by atherosclerotic plaque, as well as an enlarged heart, and that he died of a myocardial infarction. The autopsy also revealed that he had suffered a series of small heart attacks in the months prior to his death, which apparently went unrecognised. He had experienced pain that radiated down his arm, and into his shoulder, face and chest, but this was attributed to a shoulder injury and a pinched nerve. The only conventional risk factors Dale Oen had for heart disease were a "slightly elevated cholesterol level" and the fact that his grandfather died suddenly at 42, of an unknown cause. His death reminded many of the death of fellow athlete Sergei Grinkov, who also died of coronary artery disease seventeen years earlier at age 28. His funeral was held on 11 May 2012, in Oygarden, Norway.

Tribute.

On 2 August 2012, Hungarian swimmer Dániel Gyurta, who won the men's 200m breaststroke at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, offered a copy of his gold medal to Dale Oen's family in order to honor their friendship. Cameron van der Burgh of South Africa, who won the men's 100 m breaststroke and broke the World Record dedicated the swim to Dale Oen because Dale Oen was one of his close friends and greatest rival. The new public swimming pool in Bergen is named Alexander Dale Oen Arena (ADO Arena) in his honour. Among others, the Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg held a speech at the opening of ADO Arena in 2014, naming Dale Oen as perhaps the greatest athlete of the country.

Alexander Dale Oen (; 21 May 198530 April 2012) was a Norwegian swimmer. He represented the clubs Vestkantsvømmerne (1995–2010) and Bærumsvømmerne (2011–2012). Dale Oen's gold at the 2008 European Championships made him the first Norwegian male to win a medal at a major international long course championship.


History.

The Walleye was the first of a family of precision-guided munitions designed to hit targets with minimal collateral damage. This "smart bomb" had no propulsion system, but it could be maneuvered via a television assisted guidance system during its glide from an aircraft to the target. As a pilot dived towards a target, a television camera in the nose of the bomb transmitted images to a monitor in the cockpit. Once the pilot acquired a sharp image of the target on his screen, he designated an aim point and released the bomb, which would continue flying toward the designated target on its own. The bomb was a true fire-and-forget system because once launched, the plane could immediately turn away from the aim point. The Walleye maneuvered itself using four large fins. Later versions employed an extended range data link that let pilots keep flying the weapon after its release, and even change aim points during flight (command guidance).  The idea of a TV guided bomb came out of discussions between an eclectic group of civilian engineers at the Naval Ordnance Test Center (later the Naval Weapons Center) at China Lake, California. One of the engineers, Norman Kay, built televisions in his home as a hobby. Kay built an iconoscope camera in 1958 that could do a "funny thing", recalled fellow project engineer William H. Woodworth. "It occurred to him that he could build a little circuit into there that would put a little blip in the picture, and he could make the little blip track things that would move in the picture". The two engineers, soon joined by Dave Livingston, Jack Crawford, George Lewis, Larry Brown, Steve Brugler, Bob (Sam) Cunningham and several others, decided to research the idea further and quickly secured some seed money from the Navy to advance the concept. Adopting some technology from the AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missile project and developing other components from scratch, the group developed the bomb in just four years. Among other revolutionary breakthroughs, the group developed the world's first solid-state television camera with no vacuum tubes and the first zero-input-impedance amplifier.  The team worked at nights and on weekends to keep the project on track and convince the Navy of its worth. Woodworth was the electronics expert and went so far as to take a year off from work and attend graduate school at his own expense to gain some additional theoretical knowledge needed for the project. Woodworth and Steve Brugler breadboarded the original tracking circuitry. Brugler then did the detailed analysis and design of the tracker for initial production. Larry Brown worked tirelessly to analyze the bomb's flight traits, using an analog-computing instrument. Jack Crawford had an amazing "intuitive feel for physical phenomena", and could envision many of the flying traits of the bomb before it had even been built.

First test and production contract.

On 29 January 1963, a YA-4B Skyhawk flown by Cdr. J. A. Sickel, dropped the first Walleye at China Lake. The bomb scored a direct hit. Martin received the first production contract for the Walleye in 1966 and the bomb entered service with both the Navy and the U.S. Air Force the following year. The original Walleye I carried a 1,100-pound shaped charge and had a range of.  In 1966, the AGM-62 designation was cancelled, the decision having been made not to designate guided bombs in the missile sequence; the AGM-62A was given the new designation Guided Weapon Mk 1 Mod 0, while its training version was Mk 2. Mk 3 was the Walleye ER, featuring extended wings to increase range, while the Mk 4 was also a training round.

Use during Vietnam War.

By May 1967, Navy pilots had dropped several bombs in Vietnam with great success. On 19 May 1967, Ho Chi Minh's 77th birthday, a Navy aircraft from the scored a direct hit against the Hanoi power plant with a Walleye. The Navy hit the plant again with the bomb two days later, knocking out Hanoi's major source of power.  While softer targets such as power plants proved quite vulnerable to the Walleye, sturdier ones such as North Vietnam's well-constructed railroad bridges could not be downed even with a 1,100-pound weapon. Direct hits by the Walleye against the Thanh Hoa Bridge south of Hanoi in 1967 failed to take down even a single span of this notoriously strong structure.

Walleye II, "Fat Albert".

To correct this major deficiency, China Lake developed a 2,000-pound version of the bomb, and deployed it to Vietnam in time for President Richard Nixon's Linebacker raids against Hanoi and Haiphong. The new Walleye II, or "Fat Albert" as it was nicknamed after the cartoon character, officially designated Guided Weapon Mk 5, had an extended range data link and could hit targets up to from its launch point. On 27 April 1972, a flight of eight Air Force fighters, two carrying 2000-pound laser-guided bombs and two carrying Walleye IIs, attacked the Thanh Hoa Bridge. Cloud cover prevented the LGBs from being used, but five of the Walleyes locked on, causing heavy damage to the bridge, even though failing to bring down a span. On 13 May, the Air Force finally brought down the bridge with 3,000 and 2,000-pound LGBs. The Vietnamese, however, soon repaired the bridge, compelling the Navy and Air Force to fly 13 more missions against the target. On one such mission on 23 October, four VA-82 and VA-86 A-7C Corsair II pilots from the carrier USS "America" took down the bridge with a combination of Walleye IIs and conventional 2000-pound bombs.  Guided Weapon Mk 6 was a planned nuclear armed variant of the Walleye II. Designed to employ a modified W72 warhead with an estimated yield of around 600 tons of TNT, no known nuclear armed Guided Weapon Mk 6 Walleye IIs are thought to have been completed.

Overall performance.

While Walleyes accounted for less than six percent of the precision-guided munitions employed by the U.S. Armed Services during the Vietnam War, the weapons system could achieve excellent results under the right circumstances. The Navy often used the Walleye against the most important, hardest to kill targets. After the war, the Navy continued to employ upgraded versions of the Walleye through Operation Desert Storm; shortly after the war the Walleye was retired, along with its main carrier aircraft, the Vought A-7 Corsair II.

The AGM-62 Walleye is a television-guided glide bomb which was produced by Martin Marietta and used by the United States Armed Forces during the 1960s. Most had a 250 lb (113 kg) high-explosive warhead; some had a nuclear warhead. The designation of the "Walleye" as an "air-to-ground missile" is a misnomer, as it is an unpowered bomb with guidance avionics, similar to the more modern GBU-15. The Walleye was superseded by the AGM-65 Maverick.


Organization.

The EBBA Awards were launched by the European Commission and are a European Union award. Since 2009, the awards are organised by Eurosonic Noorderslag and the award is presented at the Eurosonic Noorderslag festival.

Selection of the winners.

The artists or groups nominated for the European Border Breakers Awards are selected on the basis of the following criteria:

Public Choice Award.

Since 2010, an online vote takes place to choose which EBBA Award winner will receive the Public Choice Award, on top of the "regular" award. The first winner was Belgian singer-songwriter Milow. The German rock & roll band The Baseballs won in 2011. Selah Sue from Belgium won the prize in 2012.

The show.

Since 2009 the award ceremony takes place every year in January, during the Eurosonic Noorderslag festival, in the Dutch city of Groningen, presented by BBC host and musician Jools Holland. EBBA Award winners perform live during the show, as well as during the festival itself. Winners from previous years are invited to perform as special guests. The ceremony is recorded by the Dutch public broadcasting channel NOS/NTR and broadcast through NED3. The show is annually broadcast on several European television channels.

Background.

The EBBA Awards were initiated by the European Commission in 2004. With the awards, the European Commission aims to stimulate the cross-border circulation of popular music repertoire and to highlight Europe's great musical diversity. The European Border Breakers Awards are supported through the Culture Programme of the European Union, which seeks to promote cross-border mobility of artists and culture professionals; to encourage the transnational circulation of cultural and artistic output; and to foster intercultural dialogue.

Winners EBBA Awards 2010.

Winner Public Choice Award: Milow

Winners EBBA Awards 2011.

Winner Public Choice Award: The Baseballs

Winners EBBA Awards 2012.

Winner Public Choice Award: Selah Sue

Winners EBBA Awards 2015.

Winner Public Choice Award: The Common Linnets  Best festival act award (awarded for the first time at this edition): Jungle

Winners EBBA Awards 2016.

Winner Public Choice Award: Carnival Youth

Winners EBBA Awards 2017.

Winner of the Public Choice Award: Dua Lipa

Winners EBBA Awards 2018.

Winner of the Public Choice Award: Kristian Kostov

The European Border Breakers Award (EBBA) was an annual prize awarded to recognise the success of ten emerging artists or groups who reached audiences outside their own countries with their first internationally released album in the past year. Winners of a European Border Breakers Award include Adele, Dolores O'Riordan, MØ, Tiziano Ferro, Lykke Li, Katie Melua, Damien Rice, Mumford and Sons and Dua Lipa. In 2019 the prize was renamed as Music Moves Europe Talent Awards.


Playing career.

Professional.

Finland.

Hagman grew up playing with HIFK, appearing with their under-18 and junior teams between 1995 and 1999. He played his first professional games in 1997–98 with HIFK. He appeared in eight games in the SM-liiga, Finland's top league, and scored his first goal. He split the majority of the 1998–99 season between HIFK's senior and junior teams before he was sent to the Espoo Blues to complete the season.  While the Florida Panthers selected Hagman in the third round, 70th overall, at the 1999 NHL Entry Draft, he remained in Finland. He played with Kärpät of the Mestis, the Finnish second division, in 1999–00, and remained with the team for 2000–01 after they gained promotion to the SM-liiga. He led Kärpät with 28 goals that season and finished second on the team in points.

National Hockey League.

Hagman left Finland to join the Panthers for the start of the 2001–02 season. He appeared in 78 games for Florida, scoring 10 goals and 28 points on the season. He was named the NHL's Rookie of the Month for March 2002, and though he fell to 23 points in 2002–03, played in the YoungStars game at the 2003 NHL All-Star Game.  Following another 23-point campaign in 2003–04, Hagman signed with HC Davos of the Swiss National League A as the 2004–05 season was wiped out by a labour dispute. He scored 40 points in 44 games, as Davos won the Swiss championship. He returned to the Panthers to begin the 2005–06 season, but after 30 games, he was traded to the Dallas Stars in exchange for a seventh-round selection at the 2007 NHL Entry Draft.  Hagman recorded his 100th career NHL point in a 2–1 victory over the Vancouver Canucks on October 23, 2006. He enjoyed his career best season in 2007–08, scoring 27 goals and 41 points. He led the Stars with eight game-winning goals and scored his first hat-trick on February 28, 2008, against the Chicago Blackhawks. An unrestricted free agent following the season, Hagman signed a four-year, US$12 million contract with the Toronto Maple Leafs.  Hagman reached numerous milestones en route to his second 20-goal campaign in 2008–09. He played his 500th NHL game on November 17, 2008, against the Boston Bruins, scored his 200th point on February 22, 2009, against the New York Rangers and his 100th goal on March 28, also against Boston. He spent the majority of the 2009–10 season with the Leafs, and was their leading scorer with 20 goals when he was included in a major trade on January 31, 2010.  The Calgary Flames acquired Hagman, along with Jamal Mayers, Matt Stajan and Ian White, in exchange for Dion Phaneuf, Fredrik Sjöström and Keith Aulie. Hagman finished the season with 25 goals and 44 points split between Toronto and Calgary.  Hagman started the 2011–12 season with the Flames, but was a healthy scratch in six of the first 14 games, and scored only one goal and three assists in the eight games he played. The Flames placed Hagman on waivers and, when he cleared waivers on November 11, assigned him to the American Hockey League's Abbotsford Heat, the Flames' top minor league affiliate. The Flames then placed the winger on re-entry waivers to allow another team to pick him up for only half his salary. He was subsequently claimed by the Anaheim Ducks on November 14, 2011, with the Flames remaining responsible to pay the other half of his salary for the duration of his contract.

Europe.

Following the 2011–12 season, Hagman returned to Europe, signing a deal with Lokomotiv Yaroslavl of the KHL. In the 2012–13 season for Yaroslavl, he played 49 games in the regular season, scoring 12 goals and providing eight assists. This was then followed by a six-game playoff run in which Hagman went scoreless.  In July 2013, the Finnish SM-liiga club Ässät announced that Hagman had signed for a one-year contract.

International play.

Hagman first represented his country internationally as a member of the Finnish junior team at the 1998 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships. The tournament was held in Helsinki, and though the Finns were not expected to be contenders, they ultimately won the gold medal. Hagman scored the championship winning goal in overtime to defeat the Russians. He described winning the championship in his home country as being one of the greatest achievements of his career. He again played with the Finnish junior team at the 1999 tournament, but the Finns were unable to duplicate their success, finishing fifth.  An injury to Ville Peltonen shortly before the 2002 Winter Olympics opened up a chance for Hagman to represent the Finnish senior team for the first time. He appeared in four games for the Finns, scoring one goal. Later that spring, he played his first of four consecutive World Championships. He played in the 2004 World Cup of Hockey, scoring one goal in five games for Finland, who finished as the tournament runners-up to Canada.  Hagman made his second Olympic appearance at the 2006 Winter Games in Turin. He scored only one assist in eight games, but was part of a strong team defence that allowed only five goals in seven games as Finland found itself in the gold medal final against Sweden. The Finns lost the game, 3–2, and settled for the silver medal. It was a result Hagman found disappointing, especially in losing to Finland's arch-rivals in hockey. Hagman played his third Olympics at the 2010 Vancouver Games. Following a devastating 6–1 loss to the United States in the semi-final, Finland found itself trailing Slovakia by a 3–1 score entering the third period of the bronze medal game. Hagman sparked a four-goal outburst in the final period, scoring on the powerplay five minutes into the frame to bring the Finns within one goal before teammate Olli Jokinen scored both tying and winning goals. For Hagman, the bronze represented his second Olympic medal.

Personal life.

Hagman's father Matti was the first Finnish player to play in the NHL, and they are the first Finnish father and son to have played in the League. His uncle is Kai Haaskivi, a retired professional football (soccer) player and former member of the Finnish national team and his cousin is the actor Olli Haaskivi. Hagman announced his engagement to Finnish model and first runner-up of Miss Finland 2003, Piritta Hannula, in Spring 2005. They were married on July 8, 2006, in Helsinki. They have a son named Lukas, born in February 2007. Their daughter Lila was born in September 2009.

Niklas Hagman (born December 5, 1979) is a Finnish former professional ice hockey forward. He was a third round pick of the Florida Panthers, 70th overall, at the 1999 NHL Entry Draft and made his National Hockey League (NHL) debut with Florida in 2001. He has also played for the Dallas Stars, Toronto Maple Leafs, Calgary Flames and Anaheim Ducks in the NHL, Lokomotiv Yaroslavl in the KHL, HIFK, Espoo Blues and Kärpät in the SM-liiga and HC Davos in the Swiss National League A.


Distribution.

Distribution of "Helix pomatia" includes:  Southeastern and central Europe:  Western Europe:  Northern Europe:  Eastern Europe:  Southern Europe:

Description.

The shell is creamy white to light brownish, often with indistinct brown colour bands. The shell has five to six whorls. The aperture is large. The apertural margin is white and slightly reflected in adult snails. The umbilicus is narrow and partly covered by the reflected columellar margin.  The width of the shell is 30–50 mm. The height of the shell is 30–45 mm.

Ecology.

Habitat.

In southeastern Europe, "H. pomatia" lives in forests, open habitats, gardens, vineyards, especially along rivers, confined to calcareous substrate. In central Europe, it occurs in open forests and shrubland on calcareous substrate. It prefers high humidity and lower temperatures, and needs loose soil for burrowing to hibernate and lay its eggs. It lives up to 2100 m above sea level in the Alps, but usually below 2000 m. In the south of England, it is restricted to undisturbed grassy or bushy wastelands, usually not in gardens; it has a low reproduction rate and low powers of dispersal.

Life cycle.

Average distance of migration reaches 3.5–6.0 m.  This snail is hermaphroditic. Reproduction in central Europe begins at the end of May.  Eggs are laid in June and July, in clutches of 40–65 eggs. The size of the egg is 5.5–6.5 mm or 8.6 × 7.2 mm. Juveniles hatch after three to four weeks, and may consume their siblings under unfavourable climate conditions. Maturity is reached after two to five years. The life span is up to 20 years, but snails die faster often because of drying in summer and freezing in winter. Ten-year-old individuals are probably not uncommon in natural populations. The maximum lifespan is 35 years.  During estivation or hibernation, this species creates a calcareous epiphragm to seal the opening of the shell.

Conservation.

This species is listed in IUCN Red List, and in European Red List of Non-marine Molluscs as Least Concern. "Helix pomatia" is threatened by continuous habitat destructions and drainage, usually less threatened by commercial collections. Many unsuccessful attempts have been made to establish the species in various parts of England, Scotland and Ireland; it only survived in natural habitats in southern England, and is threatened by intensive farming and habitat destruction. It is of lower concern in Switzerland and Austria, but many regions restrict commercial collecting.

Uses.

The intestinal juice of Helix Pomatia contains large amounts of aryl, steroid and glucosinolate sulfatase activities. The sulfatases from the intestinal juice which have a broad specificity are commonly used as a hydrolyzing agent in analytical procedures like chromatography to prepare the sample for analysis.

References.

This article incorporates public domain text from the reference.

Helix pomatia, common names the Roman snail, Burgundy snail, edible snail or escargot, is a species of large, edible, air-breathing land snail, a pulmonate gastropod terrestrial mollusc in the family Helicidae. It is a European species. In the English language it is called by the French name "escargot" when used in cooking ("escargot" simply means'snail'). Although this species is highly prized as a food, it is difficult to cultivate and rarely farmed commercially.


Background.

Following the Żeligowski's Mutiny and the creation of the short-lived Central Lithuania, in accordance with international agreements ratified in 1923 by the League of Nations, the town of Ponary became part of the Wilno Voivodship (Kresy region) of the Second Polish Republic. The predominant languages in the area were Polish and Yiddish. After the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939, the region was annexed by the Soviets and after about a month, on October 10, transferred to Lithuania according to the Soviet–Lithuanian Treaty.  Following the Soviet annexation of Lithuania and the Baltic states in June 1940, the construction of an oil storage facility began near Ponary in conjunction with the future Soviet military airfield. That project was never completed, and in June 1941 the area was overrun by the Wehrmacht in Operation Barbarossa. The Nazi killing squads decided to use the six large pits excavated for the oil storage tanks to abduct, murder, and to hide the bodies of condemned locals.

Massacres.

The massacres began in July 1941, as soon as SS "Einsatzkommando 9" arrived in Vilna on 2 July 1941. Most of the actual killings were carried out by the Special Platoons of Ypatingasis burys (Lithuanian volunteers) 80 men strong. On 9 August 1941, EK 9 was replaced by EK 3. In September, the Vilna Ghetto was established. In the same month 3,700 Jews were shot in one operation, and 6,000 in another, rounded up in the city and walked to Paneriai. Most victims were stripped before being shot. Further mass killings, aided by Ypatingasis burys, took place throughout the summer and fall.  By the end of the year, about 50,000–60,000 Vilna Jews; men, women, and children, had been killed according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia. According to Snyder 21,700 of them were shot at Ponary, but there are serious discrepancies in the death toll for this period. Yitzhak Arad ("Ghetto In Flames") supplied information based on original Jewish documentation augmented by the Einsatzgruppen reports, ration cards and work permits.  According to his estimates, until the end of December, 33,500 Jews of Vilna were murdered in Ponary, 3,500 fled east, and 20,000 remained in the Ghetto. The reason for such a wide range of estimated deaths was the presence of war refugees arriving from German-occupied western Poland, whose residence rights were denied by the new Lithuanian administration. On the eve of the Soviet annexation of Lithuania in June 1940, Vilna was home to around 100,000 newcomers, including 85,000 Poles, and 10,000 Jews according to Lithuanian Red Cross.  The pace of killings slowed in 1942, as ghettoised Jewish slave-workers were appropriated by the Wehrmacht. As Soviet troops advanced in 1943, the Nazi units tried to cover up the crime under the Aktion 1005 directive. Eighty inmates from the Stutthof concentration camp were formed into "Leichenkommando" ("corpse units"). The workers were forced to dig up bodies, pile them on wood and burn them. The ashes were then ground up, mixed with sand and buried. After months of this gruesome work, the brigade managed to escape through a tunnel dug with spoons on 19 April 1944. Eleven of the 80 who escaped survived the war; their testimony contributed to revealing the massacre.

Victims.

The total number of victims by the end of 1944 was between 70,000 and 100,000. According to post-war exhumation by the forces of Soviet 2nd Belorussian Front the majority (50,000–70,000) of the victims were Polish and Lithuanian Jews from nearby Polish and Lithuanian cities, while the rest were primarily Poles (about 20,000) and Russians (about 8,000). According to Monika Tomkiewicz, author of a 2008 book on the Ponary massacre, 80,000 people were killed, including 72,000 Jews, 5,000 Soviet prisoners, between 1,500 and 2,000 Poles, 1,000 people described as Communists or Soviet activists, and 40 Romani people.  The Polish victims were mostly members of Polish intelligentsia – academics, educators (such as Kazimierz Pelczar, a professor of Stefan Batory University), priests (such as Father Romuald Świrkowski), and members of the Armia Krajowa resistance movement. Among the first victims were approximately 7,500 Soviet POWs shot in 1941 soon after Operation Barbarossa begun. At later stages there were also smaller numbers of victims of other nationalities, including local Russians, Romani and Lithuanians, particularly Communist sympathizers (Liudas Adomauskas, Valerijonas Knyva, Andrius ir Aleksandra Bulotos) and over 80 soldiers of General Povilas Plechavičius' Local Lithuanian Detachment who refused to follow German orders.

Commemoration.

Information about the massacre began to spread as early as 1943, due to the activities and works of Helena Pasierbska, Józef Mackiewicz, Kazimierz Sakowicz and others. Nonetheless the Soviet regime, which supported the resettlement of Poles from the Kresy, found it convenient to deny that Poles or Jews were singled out for massacre in Paneriai; the official line was that Paneriai was a site of massacre of Soviet citizens only. This led some — including Polish Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek — to compare this to the Katyn massacre.  On 22 October 2000, a decade after the fall of communism, in independent Lithuania, an effort by several Polish organizations resulted in raising a monument (a cross) to fallen Polish citizens, during an official ceremony in which representatives of both Polish and Lithuanian governments (Bronisław Komorowski, Polish Minister of Defence, and his Lithuanian counterpart), as well as several NGOs, took place.  The site of the massacre is commemorated by a monument to the victims of the Holocaust (erected in 1991), a memorial to the Polish victims (erected in 1990, reconstructed in 2000), monument to soldiers of Lithuanian Local Squad killed by Nazis in May, 1944 (erected in 2004), memorial stone to Soviet war prisoners, starved to death and shot here in 1941 (erected in 1996) and a small museum (currently Paneriai memorial information center). The first monument in the former mass murder site was built by Vilnius Jews in 1948 but was soon replaced by Soviet regime with conventional obelisk dedicated to "Victims of Fascism".  The murders at Paneriai are currently being investigated by the Gdańsk branch of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance and by the Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania. The basic facts about memorial signs in the Paneriai memorial and the objects of the former mass murder site (killing pits, tranches, gates, paths, etc.) are now presented in the webpage created by the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum.

The Ponary massacre or Paneriai massacre () was the mass murder of up to 100,000 people, mostly Jews, Poles, and Russians by German "SD" and "SS" and their Lithuanian collaborators, including "Ypatingasis būrys" killing squads, during World War II and the Holocaust in "Reichskommissariat Ostland". The murders took place between July 1941 and August 1944 near the railway station at Ponary (now Paneriai), a suburb of today's Vilnius, Lithuania. Some 70,000 Jews were murdered at Ponary, along with up to 20,000 Poles, and 8,000 Russian POWs, most of them from nearby Vilna (Vilnius), and its newly-formed Vilna Ghetto.


Biography.

Guy was the second son of William II of Dampierre and Margaret II of Flanders. The death of his elder brother William in a tournament made him joint Count of Flanders with his mother. (She had made William co-ruler of Flanders 1246 to ensure that it would go to the Dampierre children of her second marriage, rather than the Avesnes children of her first.) Guy and his mother struggled against the Avesnes (led by John I, Count of Hainaut) in the War of the Succession of Flanders and Hainault, but were defeated in 1253 at the Battle of Walcheren, and Guy was taken prisoner. By the mediation of Louis IX of France, he was ransomed in 1256. Some respite was obtained by the death of John of Hainaut in 1257.  In 1270, Margaret confiscated the wares of English merchants in Flanders for non-payment of customs. This led to a devastating trade war with England, which supplied most of the wool for the Flemish weavers. The dispute was ended by a treaty agreed at Montreuil-sur-Mer on 28 July 1274, effectively abolishing customs charged on English merchants in Flanders. Even after her abdication in 1278, Guy often found himself in difficulties with the fractious commoners.  In 1288, complaints over taxes led Philip IV of France to tighten his control over Flanders. Tension built between Guy and the king; in 1294, Guy arranged a marriage between his daughter Philippa and Edward, Prince of Wales. However, Philip imprisoned Guy and two of his sons, forced him to call off the marriage, and imprisoned Philippa in Paris until her death in 1306. Guy was summoned before the king again in 1296, and the principal cities of Flanders were taken under royal protection until Guy paid an indemnity and surrendered his territories, to hold them at the grace of the king.  After these indignities, Guy attempted to revenge himself on Philip by an alliance with Edward I of England in 1297, to which Philip responded by declaring Flanders annexed to the royal domain. The French under Robert II of Artois defeated the Flemings at the Battle of Furnes, and Edward's expedition into Flanders was abortive. He made peace with Philip in 1298 and left Guy to his fate. The French invaded again in 1299 and captured both Guy and his son Robert in January 1300.  The Flemish burghers, however, found direct French rule to be more oppressive than that of the count. After smashing a French army at the Battle of the Golden Spurs in 1302, Guy was briefly released by the French who were negotiating terms to end the Siege of Tournai. His subjects, however, refused to compromise; and a new French offensive in 1304 destroyed a Flemish fleet at the Battle of Zierikzee and fought the Flemings to a draw at the Battle of Mons-en-Pévèle. Guy was returned to prison, where he died.

Family.

In June 1246 he married Matilda of Béthune (d. 8 November 1264), daughter of Robert VII, Lord of Bethune, and had the following children:  In March 1265 he married Isabelle of Luxembourg (d. September 1298), daughter of Henry V of Luxembourg, and had the following children:

Guy of Dampierre (French: "Gui de Dampierre", ) ( – 7 March 1305, Compiègne) was the Count of Flanders (1251–1305) and Marquis of Namur (1268–1297). He was a prisoner of the French when his Flemings defeated the latter at the Battle of the Golden Spurs in 1302.


Plot summary.

The tale begins with an injured narrator (the story offers no further explanation of their impairment) seeking refuge in an abandoned mansion in the Apennines. The narrator spends his time admiring the paintings that decorate the strangely shaped room and perusing a volume, found upon a pillow, that describes them.  Upon moving the candle closer to the book, the narrator immediately discovers a before-unnoticed painting depicting the head and shoulders of a young girl. The picture inexplicably enthralls the narrator "for an hour perhaps". After steady reflection, he realize that the painting's "absolute life-likeliness' of expression is the captivating feature. The narrator eagerly consults the book for an explanation of the picture. The remainder of the story henceforth is a quote from this book – a story within a story.  The book describes a tragic story involving a young maiden of "the rarest beauty". She loved and wedded an eccentric painter who cared more about his work than anything else in the world, including his wife. The painter eventually asked his wife to sit for him, and she obediently consented, sitting "meekly for many weeks" in his turret chamber. The painter worked so diligently at his task that he did not recognize his wife's fading health, as she, being a loving wife, continually "smiled on and still on, uncomplainingly". As the painter neared the end of his work, he let no one enter the turret chamber and rarely took his eyes off the canvas, even to watch his wife. After many weeks had passed, he finally finished his work. As he looked on the completed image, however, he felt appalled, as he exclaimed, "This is indeed itself!" Thereafter, he turned suddenly to regard his bride and discovered that she had died.

Analysis.

The central idea of the story resides in the confusing relationship between art and life. In "The Oval Portrait", art and the addiction to it are ultimately depicted as killers, responsible for the young bride's death. In this context, one can synonymously equate art with death, whereas the relationship between art and life is consequently considered as a rivalry. It takes Poe's theory that poetry as art is the rhythmical creation of beauty, and that the most poetical topic in the world is the death of a beautiful woman (see "The Philosophy of Composition"). "The Oval Portrait" suggests that the woman's beauty condemns her to death. Poe suggests in the tale that art can reveal the artist's guilt or evil and that the artist feeds on and may even destroy the life he has modeled into art.

Publication history.

"The Oval Portrait" was first published as a longer version titled "Life in Death" in "Graham's Magazine" in 1842. "Life in Death" included a few introductory paragraphs explaining how the narrator had been wounded, and that he had eaten opium to relieve the pain. Poe probably excised this introduction because it was not particularly relevant, and it also gave the impression that the story was nothing more than a hallucination. The shorter version, renamed "The Oval Portrait" was published in the April 26, 1845 edition of the "Broadway Journal".

Critical reception and impact.

The story inspired elements in the 1891 novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde. Five years before the novel's publication, Wilde had praised Poe's rhythmical expression. In Wilde's novel, the portrait gradually reveals the evil of its subject rather than that of its artist.  A similar plot is also used in Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1843 tale "The Birth-Mark".  There are similar elements in "The Fall of the House of Usher", such as a painter, his lover/model in a remote setting and especially their obsessions about inanimate objects that are living (the house in Usher, the painting in Portrait). In 1928 a French film-maker, Jean Epstein, filmed "La Chute de la Maison Usher" which combined both stories. Artist Richard Corben combined them in his 2012 adaptation after adapting each on their own.  Lance Tait's 2002 play "The Oval Portrait" is based on Poe's tale. Laura Grace Pattillo wrote in "The Edgar Allan Poe Review" (2006),

"The Oval Portrait" is a horror short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, involving the disturbing circumstances surrounding a portrait in a chateau. It is one of his shortest stories, filling only two pages in its initial publication in 1842.


Life.

Born Claes Pieterszoon, he was the son of a prosperous merchant active in civic affairs in Amsterdam. From 1611 to 1614 he studied medicine in Leiden. When he returned to Amsterdam he became a respected doctor and in 1617 he married Aagfe Van der Voegh. An ambitious young man, he adopted the tulip as his heraldric emblem and changed his name to Nicolaes (a more proper version of the name "Claes") Tulp. He began working in local politics as city treasurer, and in 1622, he became magistrate in Amsterdam.

Career as a physician.

The career of Dr Tulp matched the success of Amsterdam. As the population of Amsterdam grew from 30,000 in 1580 to 210,000 in 1650, Dr Tulp's career as a doctor and politician made him a man of influence. He drove a small carriage to visit all the patients. Thanks to his connections on the city council, in 1628 Tulp was appointed "Praelector Anatomiae" at the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons. His wife died in the same year, leaving him with five young children. In 1630 he married his second wife, the daughter of the mayor of Outshoorn and she bore him three children. It was Dr Tulp who examined and signed the fitness reports for the first Dutch settlers on the island of Manhattan, and his signature was found on these in the long-lost archives of the Dutch settlement uncovered in the 1980s in the basement of the New York public library.  In his job, Tulp was responsible for inspections of apothecary shops. Chemists in Amsterdam had access to an enormous amount of herbs and spices from the East, thanks to the new shipping routes. It became a successful trade and in 1636 there were 66 apothecaries in Amsterdam. Shocked at the exorbitant prices asked for useless anti-plague medicines (Amsterdam was severely hit by the plague in 1635), Dr Tulp decided to do something about it. He gathered his doctor and chemist friends together and they wrote the first pharmacopoeia of Amsterdam in 1636 the "Pharmacopoea Amstelredamensis". The Apothecary guild would require an exam based on Dr Tulp's book for new chemists to set up shop in Amsterdam. This pharmacopoeia became a standard work and set an example for all the other cities of Holland.

Rembrandt's painting.

The praelector would give yearly anatomy lessons each winter, performing them on victims of public hanging. At that time the dissection of bodies was only legal if the subject was a male criminal and considered outside of the Church. The dissections were performed with the consent of the city council, and were a means to collect funds for city council meetings and dinners. All council and guild members were required to attend and pay an admission fee. Throughout Europe, these dissections were attended by prominent learned men, who exchanged ideas about anatomy and the chemical processes of the human body.  As befits a new praelector, the Guild commissioned a new group portrait of the prominent councilmen and guildmasters. Rembrandt, himself a young man of 26 and new to the city, won this commission and made a famous painting of him: "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp". This painting, which now hangs in the Mauritshuis museum of the Hague, depicts Tulp dissecting such a criminal's forearm. There has been much speculation as to why the dissection began on the forearm.  Rembrandt's event depicted in the painting can be dated to 16 January 1632; the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons, of which Tulp was official City Anatomist, permitted only one public dissection a year and the body would have to be that of an executed criminal. The criminal is identified as the robber Aris Kindt. Rembrandt would later make a painting of Tulp's successor in 1656 "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Jan Deijman". Since the painting of Tulp's predecessor in 1619, "The Osteology Lesson of Dr Sebastiaen Egbertsz" was a group portrait around a skeleton, it is clear that the subject of a dead body had set a precedent. It would be another 100 years before the surgeons were allowed to dissect a female cadaver.

"The Book of Monsters".

His most impressive work on medicine was his "Observationes Medicae", published in 1641 and again in 1652 by Lodewijk Elzevir. He wrote the first version for his son who had just graduated from Leiden and dedicated the second edition to him after his death. The book comprises minute descriptions of his work, including 231 cases of disease and death. Some called it the "book of monsters", because Tulp dissected animals brought back from the Dutch East India Company's ships, but also because of the fantastic stories that he relates. An example; Jan de Doot, a blacksmith in Amsterdam, was in such pain from a bladder stone, that he sharpened a knife and removed it himself, because he refused to be the victim of the'stone cutters'. These were the barber-surgeons who performed such procedures but had a high death rate. To everyone's surprise, Jan de Doot survived this operation which was said to produce a stone the size of an egg. A painting illustrating this story is in the collection of the Anatomy Museum of Leiden.  Tulp minutely described the condition we know as migraine, the devastating effects of tobacco smoking on the lungs, and reveals an understanding of human psychology in a description of the placebo effect. Tulp also discovered the ileocecal valve at the junction of the large and small intestines, still known as Tulp's valve.  While Tulp made observations of various diseases, treatment often continued in the age-old way. His description of the symptoms of Beriberi in a Dutch seaman, for example, went unnoticed until the cause (vitamin B1 deficiency) was recognized two hundred years later by Christiaan Eijkman.

Public office.

Partially as a result of the success of his books, Tulp became Mayor of Amsterdam in 1654, a position he held for four terms. His son Dirck married Anna Burgh, the daughter of Albert Burgh, another Mayor of Amsterdam who had, like Tulp, studied medicine in Leiden in 1614. In 1655 Tulp's daughter Margaretha married Jan Six, whom he helped become a Magistrate of family affairs in Amsterdam. Years later, Six would also become Mayor of Amsterdam. Tulp, impressed by his behaviour, invited Paulus Potter to come to Amsterdam, after a quarrel in the Hague.  In 1673 Tulp was admitted to the Governing Committee of the Republic in The Hague.

Legacy and death.

Tulp is buried in the New Church of Amsterdam. Joost van den Vondel, a period poet, wrote several verses about Tulp. Besides the famous painting by Rembrandt there are more paintings and marble and bronze statues of him. The Holstein painter Jurriaen Ovens painted him twice, as his son and daughter. Also Artus Quellijn made a portrait.

Nicolaes Tulp (9 October 1593 – 12 September 1674) was a Dutch surgeon and mayor of Amsterdam. Tulp was well known for his upstanding moral character and as the subject of Rembrandt's famous painting "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp".