Landmarks.

Portuguese cistern.

Expanded since 1514, this former warehouse (possibly an armory) was converted into a cistern in the sixteenth century. The underground chamber, measuring 34 meters by 34 meters, was constructed with five rows of five stone pillars. The cistern is famous especially for the thin layer of water that covers the floor, and which creates fine and ever-changing reflections from the little light there is and the spartan shapes of the columns and the roof. Its visual qualities are such that several movies have been filmed within the cavernous space, of which Orson Welles' "Othello" is the best known internationally.

Fortress of Mazagan.

The design of the Fortress of Mazagan is a response to the development of modern artillery in the Renaissance. The star form of the fortress measures "c" 250m by 300m. The slightly inclined, massive walls are "c" 8m high on average, with a thickness of 10m, enclosing a patrolling peripheral walkway 2m wide. At the present time the fortification has four bastions: the Angel Bastion in the east, St Sebastian in the north, St Antoine in the west, and the Holy Ghost Bastion in the south. The fifth, the Governor's Bastion at the main entrance, is in ruins, having been destroyed by the Portuguese in 1769. Numerous colonial-era Portuguese cannons are still positioned on top of the bastions.  The fort had three gates: the Seagate, forming a small port with the north-east rampart, the Bull Gate in the north-west rampart, and the main entrance with a double arch in the centre of the south rampart, originally connected to land via a drawbridge. A ditch, "c" 20m wide and 3m deep, formerly filled with seawater, surrounded the fort. During the time of the French Protectorate the ditch was filled in with earth and a new entrance gate was opened leading to the main street, the Rua da Carreira, and to the Seagate. Along this street are situated the best preserved historic buildings, including the Catholic Church of the Assumption and the cistern.

History.

El Jadida, was first known as "al-Breyja" when it was seized by the Portuguese in 1502. Then, it became known as "Mazagão". The Portuguese built a citadel in 1514, and a larger fortification in 1541. The Portuguese would continue to control the city until 1769, when they abandoned Mazagão, their last territory in Morocco. Upon their forced departure, the Portuguese destroyed the Governor's Bastion and evacuated to the Portuguese colony of Brazil, where they founded a new settlement called "Nova Mazagão" (now in Amapá). The city was then taken over by Sultan Mohammed ben Abdallah in 1769 and remained uninhabited, having been dubbed al-Mahdouma ("The Ruined"). Eventually, Sultan Abd al-Rahman of Morocco ordered that a mosque be built and the destroyed portions of the city rebuilt. The reinvigorated city was renamed al-Jadida, or "The New".

Climate.

El Jadida has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen climate classification "Csa"). In winter there is more rainfall than in summer. The average annual temperature in El Jadida is. About of precipitation falls annually.

Education.

The city houses many post-secondary academic institutions:  Chouaib Doukkali University, including the following institutions:  Office of Vocational Training and Promotion of Labor (OFPPT), including the following institutions:  and:

Nearby cities.

Near El Jadida, are located the city of Azemmour in the northeast and the town of Sidi Bouzid in the southwest. Within a perimeter of around 120 km or less, are located Casablanca, Berrechid, Settat, Sidi Bennour, Oualidia, Youssoufia, Safi.

El Jadida or al-Jadida (Arabic: "الجديدة", Berber: "ⴰⵍ-ⵊⴰⴷⵉⴷⴰ", French: "el-Jadida"), with former names Cap Soleis, Portus Rutilis, Rusibis, Mazighen (Arabic: "مازيغن", Berber: "ⵎⴰⵣⵉⴳⴻⵏ"), al-Breyja (Arabic: "البريجة"), Mazagão (Arabic: "مازاگاو", Berber: "ⵎⴰⵣⴰⴳⴰⵡ"), al-Mahdouma (Arabic: "المهدومة") and Mazagan (Arabic: "مازاگان", Berber: "ⵎⴰⵣⴰⴳⴰⵏ"), is a port city on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, located 100 km south of the city of Casablanca, in the province of El Jadida and the region of Casablanca-Settat. It has a population of 194,934 (2014 census). From the sea, El Jadida's old city has a very "un-Moorish" appearance because of its massive Portuguese-built walls of hewn stone, one of the Seven Wonders of Portuguese Origin in the World. The "Portuguese Fortified City of Mazagan" was registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004, on the basis of its status as an "outstanding example of the interchange of influences between European and Moroccan cultures" and as an "early example of the realisation of the Renaissance ideals integrated with Portuguese construction technology". According to UNESCO, the most important buildings from the Portuguese period are the cistern, and the Manueline Church of the Assumption.


Life and career.

Bonnefoy was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, the son of Marius Elie Bonnefoy, a railroad worker, and Hélène Maury, a teacher. He studied mathematics and philosophy at the Universities of Poitiers and the Sorbonne in Paris. After the Second World War he travelled in Europe and the United States and studied art history. From 1945 to 1947 he was associated with the Surrealists in Paris (a short-lived influence that is at its strongest in his first published work, "Traité du pianiste" (1946)). But it was with the highly personal "" ("On the Motion and Immobility of Douve", 1953) that Bonnefoy found his voice and that his name first came to public notice. Bonnefoy's style is remarkable for the deceptive simplicity of its vocabulary.  Bonnefoy's work has been translated into English by, among others, Emily Grosholz, Galway Kinnell, John Naughton, Alan Baker, Hoyt Rogers, Antony Rudolf, Beverley Bie Brahic and Richard Stamelmann. In 1967 he joined with André du Bouchet, Gaëtan Picon, and Louis-René des Forêts to found "L'éphémère", a journal of art and literature. Commenting on his work, Bonnefoy has said:  He taught literature at a number of universities in Europe and in the USA: Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts (1962–64); Centre Universitaire, Vincennes (1969–1970); Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore; Princeton University, New Jersey; University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut;Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut; University of Geneva; University of Nice (1973–1976); University of Provence, Aix (1979–1981); and Graduate Center, City University of New York, where he was made an honorary member of the Academy of the Humanities and Sciences. In 1981, following the death of Roland Barthes, he was given the chair of comparative study of poetry at the Collège de France.  Bonnefoy died on 1 July 2016 at the age of 93 in Paris. President François Hollande stated of Bonnefoy on his death that he would be remembered for "elevating our language to its supreme degree of precision and beauty".

Awards and honours.

Bonnefoy was honoured with a number of prizes throughout his creative life. Early on he was awarded the "Prix des Critiques" in 1971. Ten years later, in 1981, The French Academy gave him its grand prize, which was soon followed by the Goncourt Prize for Poetry in 1987. Over the next 15 years, Bonnefoy was awarded both the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca and the Balzan Prize (for Art History and Art Criticism in Europe) in 1995, the Golden Wreath of Struga Poetry Evenings in 1999, and the Grand Prize of the First Masaoka Shiki International Haiku Awards in 2000. Toward the final years of his life, Bonnefoy was recognized with the Franz Kafka Prize in 2007 and, in 2011, he received the Griffin Lifetime Recognition Award, presented by the trustees of the Griffin Poetry Prize. In 2014, he was co-winner of the Janus Pannonius International Poetry Prize.

Yves Jean Bonnefoy (24 June 1923, Tours – 1 July 2016 Paris) was a French poet and art historian. He also published a number of translations, most notably the plays of William Shakespeare which are considered among the best in French. He was professor at the Collège de France from 1981 to 1993 and is the author of several works on art, art history, and artists including Miró and Giacometti, and a monograph on Paris-based Iranian artist Farhad Ostovani. "The Encyclopædia Britannica" states that Bonnefoy was ′′perhaps the most important French poet of the latter half of the 20th century.′′


Education.

Öpik was born in Kunda, Lääne-Viru, Governorate of Estonia, then a part of the Russian Empire. He went to the University of Moscow to specialize in the study of minor bodies, such as asteroids, comets, and meteors. He completed his doctorate at the University of Tartu.

Astronomical work.

In 1916 Öpik published an article in the "Astrophysical Journal", in which he estimated the densities of visual binary stars. In his sample was ο Eridani B, a white dwarf star. Öpik determined its density as 25,000 times the density of the Sun but concluded that the result is impossible.  In 1922, Ernst Öpik published a paper in which he estimated the distance of the Andromeda Galaxy. He determined the distance using a novel astrophysical method based on the observed rotational velocities of the galaxy, which depends on the total mass around which stars are rotating, and on the assumption that the luminosity per unit mass was the same as that of our galaxy. He concluded that the distance was 450 kpc. His result was in good accordance with other estimates of these days (100 to 1000 kpc) and were closer to recent estimates (778 kpc) than Hubble's result (275 kpc). His method is still widely used.  In 1922 he correctly predicted the frequency of craters on Mars long before they were detected by space probes. In 1932 he postulated a theory concerning the origins of comets in our solar system. He believed that they originated in a cloud orbiting far beyond the orbit of Pluto. This cloud is now known as the Oort cloud or alternatively the Öpik-Oort Cloud in his honour. From October 1931 to the end of July 1933, Öpik, Harlow Shapley and Samuel L. Boothroyd headed the Arizona meteor expedition, which detected approximately 22,000 meteors. He also invented a rocking camera for the study of meteors. In 1951 he published a paper concerning the triple-alpha process, describing the burning of helium-4 into carbon-12 in the cores of red giant stars. However, this achievement is often overlooked because Edwin Salpeter's paper on the same subject had already been published by the time Öpik's paper reached Britain and the United States.  In 1958 he published "Physics of Meteor Flight in the Atmosphere".  In 1972, Öpik published a piece on the origin of the Moon by capture in the "Irish Astronomical Journal" (vol. 10, pp. 190–238). He included breakup and re-assembly of rings into which the Moon was broken.

Yarkovsky effect connection.

The Yarkovsky effect was discovered by the Russian civil engineer Ivan Osipovich Yarkovsky (1844–1902), who worked on scientific problems in his spare time. Writing in a pamphlet around the year 1900, Yarkovsky noted that the diurnal heating of a rotating object in space would cause it to experience a force that, while tiny, could lead to large long-term effects in the orbits of small bodies, especially meteoroids and small asteroids. Yarkovsky's work might have been forgotten had it not been for Öpik, who read Yarkovsky's pamphlet sometime around 1909. Decades later, Öpik discussed the possible importance of the Yarkovsky effect for moving meteoroids about the solar system.

Exile.

Öpik fled his native country in 1944 because the approaching Red Army raised fear among Estonians. Living as a refugee in Germany, he became the Estonian rector of the Baltic University in Exile in the displaced persons camps. In 1948 he was offered a post in Armagh and remained there despite offers of lucrative jobs in America. From the early 1960s to the mid-1970s he also held a position at the University of Maryland, which he visited annually, typically for one semester. As air travel became more common, his refusal to fly made travel to the U.S. from Armagh systematically more difficult and he eventually ceased the annual ritual.

Awards.

He won the J. Lawrence Smith Medal from the National Academy of Sciences in 1960, the Meteoritical Society Frederick C. Leonard Memorial Medal in 1968, the Kepler Gold Medal from the American Association for the Advancement of Science & Meteoritical Society in 1972, the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1975 and the Bruce Medal in 1976.

Legacy.

The asteroid 2099 Öpik is named in his honour. The crater Öpik on the Martian moon Phobos is also named for him.  His grandson, Lembit Öpik, was the Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for Montgomeryshire in Wales from 1997 to 2010, and has advocated searching for asteroids that may collide with the Earth. Lembit also became Chairman of the Parliament of Asgardia in 2019 and is a Member of the Supreme Space Council (SSC)

Ernst Julius Öpik ( – 10 September 1985) was an Estonian astronomer and astrophysicist who spent the second half of his career (1948–1981) at the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland.


History.

Roy Fielding defined REST in his 2000 PhD dissertation "Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures" at UC Irvine. He developed the REST architectural style in parallel with HTTP 1.1 of 1996–1999, based on the existing design of HTTP 1.0 of 1996.  In a retrospective look at the development of REST, Fielding said:

Architectural properties.

The constraints of the REST architectural style affect the following architectural properties:

Architectural constraints.

Six guiding constraints define a RESTful system. These constraints restrict the ways that the server can process and respond to client requests so that, by operating within these constraints, the system gains desirable non-functional properties, such as performance, scalability, simplicity, modifiability, visibility, portability, and reliability. If a system violates any of the required constraints, it cannot be considered RESTful.  The formal REST constraints are as follows:

Client-server architecture.

The principle behind the client-server constraints is the separation of concerns. Separating the user interface concerns from the data storage concerns improves the portability of the user interfaces across multiple platforms. It also improves scalability by simplifying the server components. Perhaps most significant to the Web is that the separation allows the components to evolve independently, thus supporting the Internet-scale requirement of multiple organizational domains.

Statelessness.

The client-server communication is constrained by no client context being stored on the server between requests. Each request from any client contains all the information necessary to service the request, and the session state is held in the client. The session state can be transferred by the server to another service such as a database to maintain a persistent state for a period and allow authentication. The client begins sending requests when it is ready to make the transition to a new state. While one or more requests are outstanding, the client is considered to be "in transition". The representation of each application state contains links that can be used the next time the client chooses to initiate a new state-transition.

Cacheability.

As on the World Wide Web, clients and intermediaries can cache responses. Responses must, implicitly or explicitly, define themselves as either cacheable or non-cacheable to prevent clients from providing stale or inappropriate data in response to further requests. Well-managed caching partially or completely eliminates some client-server interactions, further improving scalability and performance.

Layered system.

A client cannot ordinarily tell whether it is connected directly to the end server, or to an intermediary along the way. If a proxy or load balancer is placed between the client and server, it won't affect their communications and there won't be a need to update the client or server code. Intermediary servers can improve system scalability by enabling load balancing and by providing shared caches. Also, security can be added as a layer on top of the web services, and then clearly separate business logic from security logic. Adding security as a separate layer enforces security policies. Finally, it also means that a server can call multiple other servers to generate a response to the client.

Code on demand (optional).

Servers can temporarily extend or customize the functionality of a client by transferring executable code: for example, compiled components such as Java applets, or client-side scripts such as JavaScript.

Uniform interface.

The uniform interface constraint is fundamental to the design of any RESTful system. It simplifies and decouples the architecture, which enables each part to evolve independently. The four constraints for this uniform interface are:

Applied to Web services.

Web service APIs that adhere to the REST architectural constraints are called RESTful APIs. HTTP-based RESTful APIs are defined with the following aspects:

Relationship between URI and HTTP methods.

The following table shows how HTTP methods are intended to be used in HTTP APIs, including RESTful ones.  The GET method is safe, meaning that applying it to a resource does not result in a state change of the resource (read-only semantics). The GET, PUT and DELETE methods are idempotent, meaning that applying them multiple times to a resource results in the same state change of the resource as applying them once, though the response might differ.

Discussion.

Unlike SOAP-based Web services, there is no "official" standard for RESTful Web APIs. This is because REST is an architectural style, while SOAP is a protocol. REST is not a standard in itself, but RESTful implementations make use of standards, such as HTTP, URI, JSON, and XML. Many developers also describe their APIs as being RESTful, even though these APIs actually don't fulfill all of the architectural constraints described above (especially the uniform interface constraint).  The following table shows how HTTP methods are typically used in REST APIs based on HTTP with historical method semantics.

Representational state transfer (REST) is a software architectural style that defines a set of constraints to be used for creating Web services. Web services that conform to the REST architectural style, called "RESTful" Web services, provide interoperability between computer systems on the Internet. RESTful Web services allow the requesting systems to access and manipulate textual representations of Web resources by using a uniform and predefined set of stateless operations. Other kinds of Web services, such as SOAP Web services, expose their own arbitrary sets of operations.


Life.

Peter Fendi was born in Vienna on 4 September 1796 to Joseph and Elizabeth Fendi. His father was a schoolmaster. He fell from a changing table as an infant, an accident which caused irreparable damage to his spine. Fendi demonstrated a talent for drawing from childhood. He was admitted to the St. Anna's Academy of Fine Art in 1810 at the age of thirteen, where he studied for three years under, Hubert Maurer and Johann Baptist von Lampi the Elder.  Fendi met Joseph Barth, an art collector and the personal ophthalmologist of Joseph II, and through Barth's connections to other influential artists, in 1818 Fendi found a job at the Imperial Gallery of Coins and Antiquities, where he worked as a draughtsman and engraver. Fendi received a gold medal in 1821 for his oil painting "Vilenica", and was elected a member of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 1836.  Both nobles and commoners occasionally employed Fendi to give instruction in drawing and painting, and later in life teaching took up more of his time; his pupils included Carl Schindler and. He died on 28 August 1842.

Works.

Fendi painted in oil and watercolours, as well as working with printing, etching, lithography and wood carving. Multicolored prints by Fendi are considered pioneering achievements in the field of lithography. Fendi is remembered for his genre scenes, influenced by Dutch painters such as Adriaen Brouwer, Adriaen van Ostade and Rembrandt. Other influences on Fendi's artistic development included the works of Italians such as Giovanni Bellini, Tintoretto, Titian, and Paolo Veronese, which he saw on a trip to Venice in 1821. He is also well known for his portraits of the aristocracy.  Fendi engraved a series five of Austrian banknotes that were issued in 1841.  His works are preserved in the Albertina Museum, the Austrian Gallery in the Belvedere, Kunsthistorisches Museum, and in the collections of the Prince of Liechtenstein in Vaduz.

Peter Fendi (4 September 1796 – 28 August 1842) was an Austrian court painter, portrait and genre painter, engraver, and lithographer. He was one of the leading artists of the Biedermeier period.


History.

DIP Research Ltd. based in Guildford, Surrey, UK released a product in the UK called the "DIP Pocket PC" in 1989. Soon after its release, DIP licensed this product to Atari for sale as the "Portfolio" in the UK and US. In Italy, Spain and Germany, it was originally marketed as "PC Folio" instead. DIP officially stood for "Distributed Information Processing", although secretly it actually stood for "David, Ian and Peter", the three founding members of the company who were former employees of Psion. The original founder of the company (first called "Crushproof Software") was Ian H. S. Cullimore, and the other two David Frodsham and Peter Baldwin. Cullimore was involved in designing the early Organiser products at Psion before the DIP Pocket PC project. The technologic successor of the Portfolio was the also DIP-developed Sharp PC-3000/3100. DIP Research was later acquired by Phoenix Technologies in 1994.

Technology.

The Portfolio uses an Intel 80C88 CPU running at 4.9152 MHz and runs "DIP Operating System 2.11" (DIP DOS), an operating system mostly compatible to MS-DOS 2.11, but with some DOS 2.xx functionality lacking and some internal data structures more compatible with DOS 3.xx. It has 128 KB of RAM and 256 KB of ROM which contains the OS and built-in applications. The on-board RAM is divided between system memory and local storage (the C: drive). The LCD is monochrome without backlight and had 240×64 pixels or 40 characters × 8 lines.  Power is supplied by three AA size removable alkaline batteries. The computer's memory is preserved during battery changes. There is also an optional AC adapter (110 V: HPC-401, 220 V: HPC-402).  There is an expansion port on the right side of the computer for parallel (HPC-101), serial (HPC-102), modem or MIDI expansion modules. It uses a Bee Card expansion port for removable memory (aka Credit Card Memory or CCM), which is not compatible with PC card as it predated that standard. Expansion cards were available in sizes of 32 KB (HPC-201), 64 KB (HPC-202), and 128 KB (HPC-203) initially, and later were available in capacities up to 4 MB. The expansion cards were backed up by a replaceable battery, which last approximately two years. Built-in applications include a text editor, spreadsheet (Lotus 1-2-3 compatible), phone book and time manager. Expansion cards contain programs such as a chess game (HPC-750), a file manager (HPC-704), and a finance manager (HPC-702). Most text-based DOS applications can run on the Portfolio as long as they did not directly access the hardware and could fit into the small memory.  Other expansion modules include a floppy drive, and a memory expansion unit (HPC-104). The memory expansion unit gives the Portfolio an additional 256 KB of RAM, which can be partitioned into several drives. It also features a pass-through expansion connector, allowing the use of more than one expansion unit. In theory, multiple memory expanders can be attached, increasing the available storage to over 640 KB.  A card reader (HPC-301) connects to a desktop PC to read and write to the expansion cards. The kit contains an ISA card, a special cable, the card reader, and software distributed on floppy disk.  A modem expansion module converts the portfolio into a miniature computer terminal. The modem is powered from the portfolio and came with an acoustic coupler consisting of two round shells that could be mounted over both ends of a handset with the aid of velcro strips. A direct connection to a telephone with a standard telephone lead is also possible. The complete terminal and coupler are portable, weighing only a few hundred grams.  Also, using the parallel port expansion module (HPC-101), a standard parallel cable and the software supplied (DOS based), the Portfolio can be connected to a PC for transferring files to and from the unit.  Credits for the development of the product can be found in an easter egg if one selects Setup, then Help, and then presses + ("Alt" plus "left square bracket").

The Atari Portfolio (Atari PC Folio) is an IBM PC-compatible palmtop PC, released by Atari Corporation in June 1989. This makes it the world's first palmtop computer.


Biography.

Origin.

The first biography of Ivan Sirko, written by Dmytro Yavornytsky in 1890, gave Sirko's place of birth as the sloboda of Merefa near the city of Kharkiv. Historian Yuriy Mytsyik states that this could not be the case. In his book "Otaman Ivan Sirko" (1999) he writes that Merefa was established only in 1658 (more than 40 years after the birth of the future otaman). The author also notes that Sirko later in his life did actually live in Merefa with his family on his own estate, and according to some earlier local chronicles there even existed a small settlement called Sirkivka. However, Mytsyik also points out that in 1658–1660 Sirko served as a colonel of the Kalnyk Polk (a military and administrative division of the Cossack Hetmanate) in Podilia, a position usually awarded to the representative of a local population. The author also gives a reference to the letter of Ivan Samiylovych to kniaz G. Romodanovsky (the tsar's voyevoda) in which the hetman refers to Sirko as one born in Polish lands instead of in Sloboda Ukraine (part of Moscovy). Mytsyik also recalls that another historian, Volodymyr Borysenko, allowed for the possibility that Sirko was born in Murafa near the city of Sharhorod (now in Vinnytsia Oblast). The author explains during that time when people were fleeing the war (known as the "Ruin", 1659–1686) they may have established a similarly named town in Sloboda Ukraine further east.  Further, Mytsyik in his book states that Sirko probably was not of Cossack heritage, but rather of the Ukrainian (Ruthenian) Orthodox szlachta. Mytsyik points out that a local Podilian nobleman, Wojciech Sirko, married a certain Olena Kozynska sometime in 1592. Also in official letters the Polish administration referred to Sirko as "urodzonim", implying a native-born Polish subject. Mytsyik states that Sirko stood about 174–176 cm tall and had a birthmark on the right side of the lower lip, a detail which Ilya Repin failed to depict in his artwork when he used General Dragomirov as a prototype of the otaman. Mytsyik also recalls the letter of the Field Hetman of the Crown John III Sobieski (later king of Poland) which referred to Sirko as "a very quiet, noble, polite [man], and has... great trust among Cossacks".

Career.

He changed his political orientation several times. In 1654 he came to Zaporozhian Sich became polkovnyk (colonel) and in 1659 together with Russian prince Aleksei Trubetskoi fought against the Crimean Khanate. Although Sirko opposed the alliance with Moscow during the Pereyaslav Rada after he became Koshovyi Otaman of the Zaporozhian Host in 1663 he won several battles against Poles, Tatars and hetman Petro Doroshenko in alliance with Muscovy. In 1664, he was one of the inspirators of an uprising in Right-bank Ukraine against Poland which is known from his letter to the Czar.  He was the first Cossack ataman to accept Kalmyks into his army. Despite his pro-Moscow orientation he distrusted and hated pro-Russian hetman Ivan Briukhovetsky, but at the same time married his son Roman to Briukhovetsky's daughter. In 1668 this rivalry even forced Ivan Sirko to switch sides again and briefly join Petro Doroshenko in his fight against "Muscovite boyars and Voivodes", but in 1670 once again Sirko pledged loyalty to Russian tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. Afterwards he captured Turkish stronghold Ochakiv and besieged Ismail which he failed to capture.  Following the death of Demian Mnohohrishny in 1672 Sirko entered the struggle for the hetman title, but instead was sent by the Russian tsar to Tobolsk, Siberia. In 1673 he returned to Ukraine and once again fought against Tatars and Turks, and captured the fortresses Arslan and Ochakiv. In 1675 Zaporozhian Cossacks defeated Ottoman Turkish forces in a major battle, however, the Sultan of Turkey Mehmed IV still demanded that the Cossacks submit to Turkish rule. The Cossacks led by Ivan Sirko replied in an uncharacteristic manner: they wrote a letter, replete with insults and profanities, which later became the subject of a painting by Ilya Repin. After his death, Ivan Sirko – one of the most popular otamans in Ukrainian history – was remembered as a legendary Cossack and became a hero of many myths, folk songs and poems.

Burial.

Sirko died at his estate Hrushivka (today Soloniansky Raion, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast) on August 11, 1680. Next day he was buried near the Chortomlynska Sich. In 1709 the Russian Army totally destroyed the Sich and the grave of the otaman was not fixed until 1734. The Cossacks replaced the broken cross with a memorial rock that has survived to the present, but they erroneously marked the date of his death as May 4. In 1967 the Kakhovka Reservoir was threatening the otaman's burial site, forcing him to be reburied near the village of Kapulivka, Nikopol Raion, but without his skull. The skull of Sirko was sent to the Leningrad laboratory for a plastic-archaeological reconstruction for the Ethnographic Institute of the Soviet Academy of Science. It was not until 1987 when writer Yuriy Mushketyk remembered the 'beheaded otaman' and wrote a letter to the Association for Preservation of History and Culture of Ukraine. The journal "Pamyatky Ukrainy" (Attractions of Ukraine) responded to the call of the writer and after over 20 years with the help of anthropologist Serhiy Seheda the remains of Ivan Sirko were returned to his native land.

Legacy.

The otaman is widely remembered in numerous literary works of Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky, Adrian Kashchenko, Volodymyr Malyk, Mykola Zerov, Borys Modzalevsky, and many others.  In 1966 when the President of France Charles de Gaulle was visiting the Soviet Union, he personally requested to bring him to the burial location of Ivan Sirko.

Ivan Sirko (, tr., ;, ;, ; c. 1610–1680) was a Ukrainian Cossack military leader, Koshovyi Otaman of the Zaporozhian Host and putative co-author of the famous semi-legendary Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks that inspired a major painting by the 19th-century artist Ilya Repin. Known as Urus-shaitan () among the Ottoman Turkish authorities and their Khanate allies, he was reputed and highly regarded by his contemporaries for his daring raids and unorthodox tactics.


History.

Nizhny Novgorod (known during the Soviet era as Gorky) is a large city on the Volga River. In the mid-1970s its population exceeded one million, meeting the Soviet requirement for the development of a rapid-transit system. Construction began on December 17, 1977, and the network was opened to the public on November 20, 1985. Russia's third subway system, it is the tenth in the former Soviet Union.  Drilling of tunnels began in September 1978 from the Leninskaya station. Developing design documentation, modifying roads and tram lines, and demolishing houses were time-consuming. In 1979, piles were driven for the foundation of the Moskovskaya station. In June 1980, it was proposed to expand the Gorky Metro to three lines.  On July 13, 1984, during construction of the Moskovskaya station, its walls collapsed; two workers from the student brigade, who were helping with construction, died. According to urban legend, the ghosts of the dead students still walk through the tunnels and metro stations.  On November 20, 1985, the Gorky Metro was opened. The first line was long, with six stations (Moskovskaya, Chkalovskaya, Leninskaya, Zarechnaya, Dvigatel Revolyutsii, and Proletarskaya), a depot and an engineering building. Two more stations were opened (Avtozavodskaya and Komsomolskaya, from the Proletarskaya station) in 1987, and Kirovskaya and Park Kultury opened in 1989.

Post-Soviet era.

Although the pace of metro construction in the Soviet Union was impressive, the consequences of the dissolution of the Soviet Union complicated the metro's future. When the first stage was completed in 1989, construction began on the second stage. Throughout Russia, segments which opened in the early 1990s were mainly completed; bankrupt companies and workers struggled to finish them. On December 20, 1993, two stations opened on the new Line 2: Kanavinskaya and Burnakovskaya.  On September 9, 2002, the 13th station (Burevestnik, on Line 2) was opened. On September 22, 2012, the metro was closed for the first time to switch power to the new control system of the Line 1 Gorkovskaya station, which was under construction; the station opened on November 4 of that year. The Line 2 Strelka station was opened on June 12, 2018.

System.

The metro has 14 stations, 13 of which are underground. There is also a ghost station: Yarmarka, whose construction was abandoned in favour of the Strelka station. The system has two lines, with a cross-platform interchange at Moskovskaya. After the construction of Line 3 (Nagornaya), there will be two more transfer stations: Operny Teatr and Olgino.  Line 1 has right-hand traffic. Line 2 has left-hand traffic because the rails split at Moskovskaya due to the lack of a full-length tunnel on that line.  The underground stations have shallow level designs. Moskovskaya has the typical USSR five-pillar span; Chkalovskaya, Leninskaya, Park Kultury, and Kanaviskaya are standard single-vaults, and the rest are standard pillar tri-spans. The surface station, Burevestnik, has a side-platform layout.  The metro's rolling stock, supplied by the Proletarskoye depot, consists of eighty Metrovagonmash 81-717/81-714s; each train is four cars long. The interval between trains is 71⁄2 to eight minutes at midday.

City layout.

Unlike other Soviet-era metros, Nizhny Novgorod does not have the usual triangular layout (three lines and six spokes intersecting in the city centre) because of the city's unusual layout. Nizhny Novgorod is on the Volga River, at its confluence with the Oka River. During the 20th century, the city developed polycentrically. The historic city centre (including the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin), including most of its administrative, cultural, and educational facilities, is on the high, hilly bank of the Oka. The low, flat, opposite bank contains most of the city's industries and some large residential districts grouped around Kanavino. Kanavino also has the city's central railway station and the largest urban transport hubs; Sormovo's largest industries are the Krasnoye Sormovo plant and Avtozavod (GAZ).

Metro layout.

Faced with such a geographical arrangement, the metro planners adopted a design which would have two lines with four spokes, opened in a series of stages (and each stage in segments). The system's hub, the Moskovskaya station (next to Nizhny Novgorod's main railway station), would have a four-track, two-island platform for cross-platform transfer.

Stages.

The first stage would be the Avtozavodskaya Line, following the south bank of the Oka through the residential and industrial zones of the Leninsky district, the GAZ automobile plant and into the Avtozavodsky City District. The second stage, the Sormovskaya Line, would run west from Moskovskaya into the Sormovo districts. The third stage would incorporate a combined auto-metro bridge across the Oka, bringing the Avtozavodskaya Line into the city centre. The fourth and final stage would be the Sormovskaya Line to the Meshcherskoye Ozero residential area north-west of the railway station, on the Volga. The system, with over 20 stations, was planned for completion by the late 1990s.  The order in which the stages were opened was influenced by industry-specific Soviet-era passenger flow and the depot-placement issue; cross-river traffic was less heavy. GAZ was the Avtozavodsky district's chief employer, and many workers lived in the northern parts of the city. The only suitable location for the rail depot was near the automobile plant.

Lines.

Line 1.

Line 1, Avtozavodskaya, runs between Park Kultury and Gorkovskaya and was opened in 1985. It has one interchange station (Moskovskaya, on line 2), and connects the lower and upper cities by bridge.  It was designed in 1980. During the Soviet era, the line was called Avtozavodsko-Meshcherskaya and was intended to last until the residential micro-district near Meshchersky Lake was built.

Line 2.

Line 2, also known as Sormovsko-Meshcherskaya or Sormovskaya, runs between the Burevestnik and Moskovskaya stations and was opened in 1993. In January 1981, the line was known as Sormovsko-Nagornaya and was planned to connect the industrial lower city and the historic upper city. Construction of the line was halted several times due to crises in Russia. For the 2018 FIFA World Cup, the Strelka station was built near Nizhny Novgorod Stadium. After the World Cup, it is planned to extend the line to the Volga station in Meshchera and the Varya station in Sormovo. The Yarmarka ghost station is also planned to be completed.

Future plans.

The Gorkovskaya station, the first station on the Oka River, opened in November 2012. Before the extension of Line 1 in 2012, low ridership was a challenge. Despite a longer line than other Russian Metro systems at the time (including Novosibirsk, Samara and Yekaterinburg), its passenger traffic was one of the lowest with a 16.8 million annual ridership in 2004. In comparison, the Novosibirsk system had almost double the annual ridership of the Nizhny Novgorod Metro.  Construction of the metro bridge began in 1995 and was completed in November 2009. After the extension of Line 1 to the city centre, there are three proposals for development. The first was the extension of the Sormovskaya Line to the Strelka station, near the Nizhny Novgorod Stadium for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. The second is the extension of the Sormovskaya Line to Sormovo. The third proposal is the eastern extension of the line in the city centre, with construction of the Operny Teatr and Sennaya stations.

The Nizhny Novgorod Metro (), formerly known as the Gorky Metro (), is a rapid-transit system which serves the city of Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. Opened in 1985, it consists of 15 stations and is long. The metro connects with the City Rail system at the Moskovskaya station. It has the third-largest number of stations of any Russian subway system, the largest two being Moscow and St. Petersburg.


Life.

Zhu Zhanji was the eldest son of the Hongxi Emperor and Empress Chengxiaozhao. He was described as a crown prince who was endowed with the quality of an excellent monarch in a section of his biography surrounded by superstition. His grandfather, the Yongle Emperor, had high hopes that he might play an important part to assist his father.  He was fond of poetry and literature. Although he continued to refer to Beijing as the secondary capital on all official documents, he maintained it as his residence and continued to rule there in the style of his grandfather, the Yongle Emperor. He permitted Zheng He to lead the seventh and last of his maritime expeditions.  The Xuande Emperor's uncle, Zhu Gaoxu (the Prince of Han), had been a favorite of the Yongle Emperor for his military successes, but he disobeyed imperial instructions and in 1417 had been exiled to the small fief of Le'an in Shandong. When Zhu Gaoxu revolted, the Xuande Emperor took 20,000 soldiers and attacked him at Le'an. Zhu Gaoxu surrendered soon afterward, was reduced to the status of a commoner. Six hundred rebelling officials were executed, and 2,200 were banished. The emperor did not wish to execute his uncle at the start, but later events angered the emperor so much that Zhu Gaoxu was executed through fire torture. All his sons were executed as well. It is very likely that Zhu Gaoxu's arrogance, well detailed in many historic texts, offended the emperor. A theory states that when the emperor went to visit his uncle, Zhu Gaoxu intentionally tripped him.  In 1428, the Xuande Emperor granted King Hashi of Chūzan the family name Shang (尚, Shō in Japanese), gave him the title of "Liuqiu Wang" (琉球王, Jap: "Ryūkyū-Ō", King of Ryūkyū), and gifted him a red lacquered tablet with "Chung Shan" (中山, "Chūzan" in Japanese) inscribed in gold, which was then placed on the Chūzonmon gate near Shuri Castle.  The Xuande Emperor wanted to withdraw his troops from Việt Nam, but some of his advisors disagreed. After Ming garrisons suffered heavy casualties, the emperor sent Liu Sheng with an army. These were badly defeated by the Vietnamese. The Ming forces withdrew and the Xuande Emperor eventually recognized the independence of Việt Nam. In the north, the Xuande Emperor was inspecting the border with 3,000 cavalry troops in 1428 and was able to retaliate against a raid by the Mongols of the Northern Yuan dynasty. The Ming government let Arughtai's Eastern Mongols battle with Toghon's Oirat tribes of the west. The Ming imperial court received horses annually from Arughtai, but he was defeated by the Oirats in 1431 and was killed in 1434 when Toghon took over eastern Mongolia. The Ming government then maintained friendly relations with the Oirats. China's diplomatic relations with Japan improved in 1432. Relations with Korea were generally good with the exception of the Koreans resenting having to send virgins occasionally to the Xuande Emperor's imperial harem.  A privy council of eunuchs strengthened centralized power by controlling the Jinyiwei (secret police), and their influence continued to grow. In 1428, the notorious censor Liu Guan was sentenced to penal servitude and was replaced by the incorruptible Gu Zuo (d. 1446), who dismissed 43 members of the Beijing and Nanjing censorates for incompetence. Some censors were demoted, imprisoned, and banished, but none were executed. Replacements were put on probation as the censorate investigated the entire Ming administration including the military. The same year the emperor reformed the rules governing military conscription and the treatment of deserters. Yet the hereditary military continued to be inefficient and to suffer from poor morale. Huge inequalities in tax burdens had caused many farmers in some areas to leave their farms in the past forty years. In 1430, the Xuande Emperor ordered tax reductions on all imperial lands and sent out "touring pacifiers" to coordinate provincial administration, exercising civilian control over the military. They attempted to eliminate the irregularities and the corruption of the revenue collectors. The emperor often ordered retrials that allowed thousands of innocent people to be released.  In the ninth year of the Ming Xuande emperor the Jurchens in Manchuria under Ming rule suffered from famine forcing them to sell their daughters into slavery and moving to Liaodong to beg for help amd relief from the Ming dynasty government.  The Xuande Emperor died of illness in 1435 after ruling for ten years. He ruled over a remarkably peaceful period with no significant external or internal problems. Later historians have considered his reign to be the height of the Ming dynasty's golden age.

The emperor as an artist.

The Xuande Emperor was known as an accomplished painter, particularly skilled at painting animals. Some of his art work is preserved in the National Palace Museum, Taipei and Arthur M. Sackler Museum (a division of Harvard Art Museum) in Cambridge. Robert D. Mowry, the curator of Chinese art at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, described him as "the only Ming emperor who displayed genuine artistic talent and interest."  Also, the Xuande mark and period (1426–35) is often considered one of the most sophisticated periods in the history of Chinese Blue and White porcelain crafts.

References.

For details on the Xuande Emperor see "The Cambridge History of China" Vol 7, pages 285 to 304. This article is essentially a summary of those pages.

The Xuande Emperor (; 16 March 1399 31 January 1435), personal name Zhu Zhanji (朱瞻基), was the fifth Emperor of the Ming dynasty, reigned from 1425 to 1435. His era name "Xuande" means "Proclamation of Virtue".


Life and career.

Early life.

Born Gérard Albert Philip in Cannes in a well-off family, he was of one quarter Czech ancestry from his maternal grandmother. His father, Marcel Philip (1893–1973), was a barrister and businessman in Cannes; his mother was Maria Elisa "Minou" Philip, née Vilette (1894–1970). On his mother's advice, in 1944 Gérard changed his surname from "Philip" to "Philipe".  As a teenager Philipe took acting lessons before going to Paris to study at the Conservatoire of Dramatic Art.

Early Films.

Philipe made his film debut in "Les Petites du quai aux fleurs" (1943), directed by Marc Allégret, in an uncredited role.  He had a minor role in "Box of Dreams" (1945) then was third billed in "Land Without Stars" (1946) after Jani Holt and Pierre Brasseur; George Lacombe wrote and directed.  When he was 19 years old, he made his stage debut at a theater in Nice; and the following year his strong performance in the Albert Camus play "Caligula" made his reputation.

Stardom.

Philippe had a lead role in "The Idiot" (1946), an adaptation of the novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky, co-starring Edwige Feuillère for director Georges Lampin. This was widely seen overseas and established Philippe as a leading man. He was in "Ouvert pour cause d'inventaire" (1946), a short film that was an early work for Alain Renais.  He was invited to work with the "Théâtre national populaire" (T.N.P.) in Paris and Avignon, whose festival, founded in 1947 by Jean Vilar, is France's oldest and most famous.  Philippe gained fame as a result of his performance in Claude Autant-Lara's "Devil in the Flesh" (1947), alongside Micheline Presle. It was a huge box office success.  He went on to star in "La Chartreuse de Parme" (1948) for director Christian-Jacque, which was even more popular than "Devil in the Flesh". He followed it with "Such a Pretty Little Beach" (1949) for Yves Allegret; "All Roads Lead to Rome" (1949), a reunion with Presle, for Jean Boyer; and "Beauty and the Devil" (1950) for Rene Clair.  Philippe was one of several stars in Max Ophuls' version of "La Ronde" (1950). He followed it with another all-star film, "Lost Souvenirs" (1951) for Christian-Jacques.  In 1951, Philipe married Nicole Fourcade (1917–1990), an actress/writer, with whom he had two children. She adopted the pseudonym, Anne Philipe, and wrote about her husband in two books, the first called " Souvenirs" (1960) and a second biography titled "Le Temps d'un soupir" ("No Longer Than a Sigh", 1963).  Philippe was in "Juliette, or Key of Dreams" (1951) with Suzanne Cloutier for Marcel Carne; "The Seven Deadly Sins" (1952), an all-star anthology film; and "Fan Fan the Tulip" (1953), a swashbuckling adventure with Gina Lollobrigida for Christian-Jacque which was very popular.  He was in "Beauties of the Night" (1952), again with Lollobrigida, and Martine Carol, directed by Clair; "The Proud and the Beautiful" (1953) with Michele Morgan; two more all-star anthologies: "It Happened in the Park" (1953) and "Royal Affairs in Versailles" (1954).  Philippe tried an English movie, "Lovers, Happy Lovers!" (1954) (also known as "Knave of Hearts"), directed by Rene Clement and co-starring Valerie Hobson.  He then did "The Red and the Black" (1954) with Danielle Darrieux and had a big success with "The Grand Maneuver" (1955) for Rene Clair, co-starring Morgan.  Phillippe did "The Best Part" (1956) for Yves Allegret and was one of many stars in "If Paris Were Told to Us" (1956).  He wrote, directed and starred in "Bold Adventure" (1956), a comic adventure film.  He starred in "Lovers of Paris" (1957) for Julien Duvivier and "Montparnasse 19" (1958) for Jacques Becker. He was one of many stars in "Life Together" (1958) and top billed in "The Gambler" (1958).  In 1958 he went to New York and performed on Broadway in the all-French "Lorenzaccio" and "Le Cid".  Phillipe played Valmont in Roger Vadim's modern day version of "Les liaisons dangereuses" (1959), appearing alongside Jeanne Moreau.  His last film was "Fever Mounts at El Pao" (1960) for Luis Buñuel.

Death.

He died from liver cancer while working on a film project in Paris, a few days short of his 37th birthday. (His doctors concealed from him the nature of his disease.) In accordance with his last wishes, he is buried, dressed in the costume of Don Rodrigue (The Cid), in the village cemetery in Ramatuelle, Var near the Mediterranean Sea coast.  To commemorate the centenary of the cinema in 1995, the French government issued a series of limited edition coins that included a 100 franc coin bearing the image of Philipe. Among the most popular French actors of modern times, he has been elevated to mythic status in his homeland, not least because of his early death at the peak of his popularity.  In 1986, his portrait appeared on a French commemorative postage stamp. There is a film festival named in his honour as well as a number of theatres and schools (such as the College Gérard Philipe - Cogolin) in various parts of France. In Germany he has been scarcely less respected than in his native country; a cultural centre is named after him in Berlin.

References.

Gérard Philipe (4 December 1922 – 25 November 1959) was a prominent French actor who appeared in 34 films between 1944 and 1959. Active in both theater and cinema, he was, until his untimely death, one of the main stars of the post-war period. His image has remained youthful and romantic, which has made him one of the icons of French cinema.


Early life.

Fulk, born 1043, was the younger son of Geoffrey II, Count of Gâtinais (sometimes known as Aubri), and Ermengarde of Anjou. Ermengarde was a daughter of Fulk the Black, count of Anjou, and the sister of Geoffrey Martel who preceded Fulk and his brother Geoffrey as Count of Anjou.

Count of Anjou.

When Geoffrey Martel died without direct heirs he left Anjou to his nephew Geoffrey III of Anjou, Fulk le Réchin's older brother. Fulk fought with his brother, whose rule was deemed incompetent, and captured him in 1067. Under pressure from the Church he released Geoffrey. The two brothers soon fell to fighting again, and the next year Geoffrey was again imprisoned by Fulk, this time for good. Substantial territory was lost to Angevin control due to the difficulties resulting from Geoffrey's poor rule and the subsequent civil war. Saintonge was lost, and Fulk had to give the Gâtinais to Philip I of France to placate the king. Much of Fulk's rule was devoted to regaining control over the Angevin baronage, and to a complex struggle with Normandy for influence in Maine and Brittany.

Author of the "History of Anjou".

In 1096 Fulk wrote an incomplete history of Anjou and its rulers titled "Fragmentum historiae Andegavensis" or "History of Anjou." The authorship and authenticity of this work is disputed. Only the first part of the history, describing Fulk's ancestry, is extant. The second part, supposedly describing Fulk's own rule, has not been recovered. If he did write it, it is one of the first medieval works of history written by a layman.

Succession.

He died in 1109 leaving the restoration of the countship, as it was under Geoffrey Martel, to his successors.

Family.

Fulk may have married as many as five times; there is some doubt regarding the exact number or how many he repudiated.  His first wife was Hildegarde of Beaugency. Together they had a daughter:  After her death, before or by 1070, he married Ermengarde de Bourbon. Together they had a son before Fulk repudiated her in 1075, possibly on grounds of consanguinity:  Around 1076 he married Orengarde de Châtellailon. He repudiated her in 1080, possibly on grounds of consanguinity.  He then married an unnamed daughter of Walter I of Brienne by 1080. This marriage also ended in divorce, in 1087.  Lastly, in 1089, he married Bertrade de Montfort, who was apparently "abducted" by King Philip I of France in or around 1092. They had a son:

Fulk IV (in French "Foulques IV") (1043–14 April 1109), called le Réchin, was the Count of Anjou from 1068 until his death. The nickname by which he is usually referred has no certain translation. Philologists have made numerous very different suggestions, including "quarreler", "rude", "sullen", "surly" and "heroic". He was noted to be "a man with many reprehensible, even scandalous, habits" by Orderic Vitalis.


Geography and History.

The city is located inland, in a mountain valley on the banks of the Qvirila River.  In 1879 the Georgian poet Akaki Tsereteli explored the area in search of manganese and iron ores, discovering deposits in the area. After other intense explorations it was discovered that there are several layers of commercially exploitable manganese oxide, peroxide and carbonate with thickness varying between and. The state set up the JSC Chiaturmanganese company to manage and exploit the huge deposit. The gross-balance of workable manganese ores of all commercial categories is estimated as 239 million tonnes, which include manganese oxide ores (41.6%), carbonate ores (39%), and peroxide ores (19%). As a result, the company developed a rail link to transport manganese ore to the ferro-alloy plant in Zestaphoni, which operated today by Georgian Railways is fully electrified. Manganese production rose to 60% of global output by 1905.  In Chiatura are located the Tsereteli State Theater, 10 schools, Faculty of the Georgian Technical University, and the Mgvimevi Cathedral (10th-11th centuries). During the 1905 Russian Revolution Chiatura was the only Bolshevik stronghold in mostly Menshevik Georgia. 3,700 miners worked 18 hours a day sleeping in the mines, always covered in soot. They didn't even have baths. Joseph Stalin persuaded them to back Bolshevism during a debate with the Mensheviks. They preferred his simple 15-minute speech to his rivals' oratory. They called him "sergeant major Koba". He set up a printing press, protection racket and "red battle squads". Stalin put Vano Kiasashvili in charge of the armed miners. The mine owners actually sheltered him as he would protect them from thieves in return and he destroyed mines whose owners refused to pay up.  In 1906 a gold train carrying the miners' wages was attacked by Kote Tsintsadze's Druzhina (Bolshevik Expropriators' Club). They fought for two hours, killing a Gendarme and soldier, and stealing 21,000 roubles. The miners went on a successful 55-day strike in June–July 1913. They demanded an 8-hour day, higher wages and no more night work. The police allowed the RSDRP to lead the strike provided they didn't make any political demands. They were supported by fellow strikers in Batumi and Poti.  Chiatura is the seat of the Archbishop of Chiatura.

Cablecars.

Due to the steep sided river valley, production workers spent a large amount of time walking up from the town to the mines, there by reducing productivity. In 1954 an extensive cable car system was installed to transport workers around the valley and up to the mines. Still utilising the same infrastructure installed originally in the 1950s, today some 17 separate aerial lift cable car systems still exist around the town. Some of the most interesting lines are just outside the city. As of October 2017, the central hub with 4 lines is being rebuilt with modern cable car technology.

Twin towns – sister cities.

Chiatura is twinned with:

Chiatura () is a city in the Imereti region of Western Georgia. In 1989, it had a population of about 30,000.


Early life.

Duncan was born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in a single-parent household with his sister, Judy, and mother, Jean Duncan (a house cleaner), after his father left. He always wanted to act, but had to drop out of the Communications program at Alcorn State University to support his family when his mother became ill.  Duncan's large frame— and —helped him in his jobs digging ditches for Peoples Gas Company and being a bouncer at several Chicago clubs. Duncan also played basketball at Kankakee Community College and for one season for the Alcorn State Braves.  In 1979, he participated in the Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park, home of the Chicago White Sox, where he was among the first 100 people to run onto the field and he slid into third base. During the ensuing riot his silver belt buckle was stolen while he was stealing a baseball bat from the dugout.

Career.

Duncan took security jobs while in Los Angeles while trying to get some acting work in commercials. During this time, he worked as a bodyguard for celebrities like Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Jamie Foxx, LL Cool J, and The Notorious B.I.G., all the while doing bit parts in television and films. When rapper Notorious B.I.G. was killed in 1997, Duncan quit the personal-protection business.  After having begun his career with several bit parts playing bouncers in films such as "Bulworth" and "A Night at the Roxbury", Duncan first came to prominence when he was cast as Bear in the blockbuster Michael Bay action film "Armageddon" (1998). During the production of the film, Duncan struck up a friendship with castmate Bruce Willis and it was Willis' influence that helped him to get his breakout role as gentle giant John Coffey in the Frank Darabont film "The Green Mile" (1999). Starring alongside Tom Hanks, Duncan's performance netted him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture.  Following his role as Coffey, Duncan was then cast in a string of films that helped to establish him as an actor in both action and comedy roles: "The Whole Nine Yards" (2000), "See Spot Run" (2001), "Planet of the Apes" (2001), "The Scorpion King" (2002), and "Daredevil" (2003), in the last of which he played The Kingpin from Marvel Comics.  When Duncan was cast as the Kingpin in 2002, he faced the dual challenge of portraying a typically white character and having to gain to fit the character's large physique. In July 2006, Duncan showed interest in returning for the role of the Kingpin, but stated that he would not be willing to regain the weight that he had lost. In 2009, he stopped eating meat and later appeared in a PETA ad campaign, touting the health benefits and his increased strength from a vegetarian diet.  In 2005, Duncan appeared in two action films, "The Island" and "Sin City" where he played Manute, a powerful mobster. Critic Roger Ebert singled out Duncan for praise for his role in "The Island", writing that "[Duncan] has only three or four scenes, but they're of central importance, and he brings true horror to them." Duncan appeared in a supporting role in the 2006 comedy "" as Lucius Washington and, in 2009, Duncan played Balrog in "" and starred as the titular Cleon "Slammin Salmon in Broken Lizard's farce "The Slammin' Salmon".  Famous for his deep, resonant voice, Duncan also did voice roles for films such as "Brother Bear" (2003) and its sequel, "Brother Bear 2" (2006), "Kung Fu Panda" (2008) and "Green Lantern" (2011) playing the voice of Kilowog from DC Comics alongside Ryan Reynolds.  His other voice roles include' TV series such as "Loonatics Unleashed" and "", Quiznos commercials, and a number of video games such as "", "", "", "Saints Row", "Soldier of Fortune", and "God of War II", where he provided the voice of the Titan Atlas. He additionally reprised his role as the Kingpin in "".  In addition to his film roles, Duncan also guest starred in numerous television shows. Among these, he appeared in an episode of "The Suite Life of Zack & Cody" and a first-season episode of "". In 2008, he appeared as "Mr. Colt" in the second-season premiere of "Chuck", "Chuck Versus the First Date" and as a guest star on two episodes of "Two and a Half Men". Most notably, in April 2011, Duncan guest starred on an episode of TV series "Bones" as Leo Knox which, in 2012, led to Duncan receiving his first starring role as the same character in the spinoff series "The Finder". The "Bones" Season 8 episode "The Partners in the Divorce", which aired three weeks after his death, was dedicated to him.  During the week of May 14, 2012, Duncan appeared as a guest on the late night talk show "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" when the show was taping for a week in Scotland. Duncan was one of the show's most frequent guests, appearing a total of 18 times, and, the day after Duncan's death in September, Ferguson began his show with a tribute to him. In January 2013 during "The Late Late Show"s winter break, reruns of the Scotland episodes were broadcast with a tribute to Duncan at the beginning of each of the five episodes, featuring Duncan on a pink background and the text "In memory of our friend Michael Clarke Duncan."

Personal life.

At the time of his death, Duncan was with reality television personality Omarosa Manigault.  In 2013, Manigault appeared in the cast of "The All-Star Celebrity Apprentice" and played in Duncan's honor for his favorite charity and one he had benefited from himself, the Sue Duncan Children's Center. In episode 2 of the season, Manigault won $40,000 for the charity.

Health problems and death.

On July 12, 2012, Duncan was taken to Cedars Sinai Medical Center after suffering a heart attack. Duncan's publicist, Joy Fehily, issued a statement on August 6 that read he was moved from the intensive-care unit but remained hospitalized following his heart attack. On September 3, Duncan died in Los Angeles at the age of 54.

Funeral.

On September 10, 2012, a private funeral was held in Los Angeles, and Duncan was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills.  Seven months after his death and according to his family, Omarosa was under suspicion for changing his will and testament. They also claim that Omarosa manipulated Duncan in his final days, lied about her engagement and sold his belongings without the family's knowledge.  Following Duncan's death, many memorials used one of his most famous lines from "The Green Mile": “Heaven. I’m in heaven.”

Michael Clarke Duncan (December 10, 1957September 3, 2012) was an American actor best known for his breakout role as John Coffey in "The Green Mile" (1999), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and various similar honors. He also appeared in motion pictures such as "Armageddon" (1998), "The Whole Nine Yards" (2000), "The Scorpion King" (2002), "Daredevil" (2003), and "" (2006), and had voice roles in films such as "Brother Bear" (2003), "Kung Fu Panda" (2008) and "Green Lantern" (2011).


Theology.

"Ex nihilo nihil fit": uncreated matter.

"Ex nihilo nihil fit" means that nothing comes from nothing. In ancient creation myths the universe is formed from eternal formless matter, namely the dark and still primordial ocean of chaos. In Sumerian myth this cosmic ocean is personified as the goddess Nammu "who gave birth to heaven and earth" and had existed forever; in the Babylonian creation epic Enuma Elish pre-existent chaos is made up of fresh-water Apsu and salt-water Tiamat, and from Tiamat the god Marduk created Heaven and Earth; in Egyptian creation myths a pre-existent watery chaos personified as the god Nun and associated with darkness, gave birth to the primeval hill (or in some versions a primeval lotus flower, or in others a celestial cow); and in Greek traditions the ultimate origin of the universe, depending on the source, is sometimes Okeanos (a river that circles the Earth), Night, or water.  To these can be added the account of the Book of Genesis, which opens with God separating and restraining the waters, not creating the waters themselves out of nothing. The Hebrew sentence which opens Genesis, "Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve'et ha'aretz", can be translated into English in at least three ways:  It has been known since the Middle Ages that on strictly linguistic and exegetical grounds option 1 is not the preferred translation. Our society sees the origin of matter as a question of crucial importance, but for ancient cultures this was not the case, and the authors of Genesis wrote of creation they were concerned with God bringing the cosmos into operation by assigning roles and functions. This was still the situation in the early 2nd century CE, but by that time Christian scholars were beginning to see a tension between the idea of world-formation and the omnipotence of God, and by the beginning of the 3rd century the tension was resolved, world-formation was overcome, and creation "ex nihilo" had become a fundamental tenet of Christian theology.

"Creatio ex nihilo": the creation of matter.

"Creatio ex nihilo", in contrast to "ex nihilo nihil fit", is the idea that matter is not eternal but was created by God at the initial cosmic moment. The concept is sometimes claimed to be present in a 2nd century BCE Jewish work called Second Maccabees, or in the 1st century CE Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, but it seems to have originated around 200 CE in disputes between Christians, gnostics, and neo-Platonists, and by the 3rd century creation "ex nihilo" had become a fundamental tenet of Christian theology.  Most modern biblical scholars are aware that scripture does not support "ex nihilo" creation, and consequently find other reasons for continuing to hold it. Some argue that it is indeed implied in scripture, even if never actually stated; others that it gains validity from having been held by so many for so long; and others find support in modern cosmological theories surrounding the Big Bang. Some examine alternatives to "creatio ex nihilo", such as the idea that God created from his own self or from Christ, but this seems to imply that the world is more or less identical with God; or that God created from pre-existent matter, which at least has biblical support, but this implies that the world does not depend on God for its existence.

Metaphysics.

Cosmological argument and Kalam osmological argument.

A major argument for "creatio ex nihilo", the cosmological argument, states in summary:  An expansion of the first cause argument is the Kalam cosmological argument, which also requires "creatio ex nihilo":

In Jewish philosophy.

The idea of creation "ex nihilo" was introduced into Judaism in the 10th century CE by Saadia Gaon, who in his work "Book of Beliefs and Opinions" imagined a God far more awesome and omnipotent than that of the rabbis, the traditional Jewish teachers who had so far dominated Judaism and whose God had created the world from pre-existing matter. Today Jews, like Christians, tend to believe in creation "ex nihilo," although some Jewish scholars recognise that Genesis 1:1 recognises the pre-existence of matter to which God gives form.

Islamic.

Islam shares with Christianity and Judaism the concept that God is First Cause and absolute creator; he did not create the world from pre-existing matter.

Creation "ex nihilo" is a theistic answer to the question of how the universe comes to exist: the Big Bang theory, by contrast, is a scientific theory; it offers no explanation of cosmic existence but only a description of the first few moments of that existence.


Early life.

Maria Luisa was born at the Palace of Caserta. She was baptised with the names "Maria Luisa Immacolata"; her godmother was Princess Maria Luisa Carlota of Parma. Her father died when she was only four years old and she was raised primarily by her mother.  In 1860, when Maria Luisa was five, her half-brother King Francis II of the Two Sicilies was defeated by the Expedition of the Thousand. She and her family fled to Rome where they resided briefly at the Quirinal Palace at the invitation of the Pope Pius IX. Her mother rented the Palazzo Nipoti in Rome, and it was there that she lived for the next seven years.  Even as a child Maria Luisa was known for her piety. She was particularly devoted to her namesake patrons, the Immaculate Heart of Mary and Saint Aloysius Gonzaga. On 24 December 1865, she made her first communion in the chapel in the Roman College where Saint Aloysius made his vows.  In the summer of 1867 Maria Luisa and her family were vacationing at Albano Laziale when cholera broke out. Her mother died on 8 August, followed by her youngest brother Gennaro on 13 August.  Following their mother's death, Maria Luisa and her siblings moved into the Palazzo Farnese, the residence of her half-brother King Francis II. She was taught Italian, French, and German. She became a competent artist in both oil and watercolour.  In October 1867 Rome was attacked by the forces of Giuseppe Garibaldi. Maria Luisa and her sister Maria Pia were given refuge in the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City until the papal victory at the Battle of Mentana.  In 1870 Rome was again attacked by the armies of the King of Italy. Maria Luisa and her sister Maria Pia fled to Bolzano and then to Cannes in France.

Marriage.

On 25 November 1873 in Cannes, Maria Luisa married Prince Henry of Bourbon-Parma, Count of Bardi, son of Charles III, Duke of Parma and his wife Princess Louise Marie Thérèse of France. Henry's older brother Robert had married Maria Luisa's older sister Maria Pia in 1869.  After the wedding Henry and Maria Luisa went to Egypt for their honeymoon. There she became sick with a fever. The couple decided to return home, and on 30 March 1874 they disembarked at Marseilles.

Death.

It was decided to take Maria Luisa to the town of Cauterets where there were sulphur baths. On the way they stopped at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes where she was immersed in the water twice. Her physicians said that her case was hopeless, and at the end of July it was decided to move her to Pau. She died there on 23 August, the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  Maria Luisa's remains were buried in the chapel at Villa Borbone, near Viareggio.

Princess Maria Luisa of Bourbon-Two Sicilies (full Italian name: "Maria Luisa Immacolata di Borbone, Principessa di Borbone delle Due Sicilie") (21 January 1855, Naples, Two Sicilies – 23 August 1874, Pau, Armagnac, France) was the youngest daughter of King Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies and his wife Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria. She was known for her piety and for her charity to the poor.


Life and work.

Lyonel Feininger was born to German-American violinist and composer Karl Feininger and American singer Elizabeth Feininger. He was born and grew up in New York City, but traveled to Germany at the age of 16 in 1887 to study. In 1888, he moved to Berlin and studied at the Königliche Akademie Berlin under Ernst Hancke. He continued his studies at art schools in Berlin with Karl Schlabitz, and in Paris with sculptor Filippo Colarossi. He started as a caricaturist for several magazines including "Harper's Round Table", "Harper's Young People", "Humoristische Blätter", "Lustige Blätter", "Das Narrenschiff", "Berliner Tageblatt" and "Ulk".  In 1900, he met Clara Fürst, daughter of the painter. He married her in 1901, and they had two daughters. In 1905, he separated from his wife after meeting Julia Berg. He married Berg in 1908 and the couple had three boys.  The artist was represented with drawings at the exhibitions of the annual Berlin Secession in the years 1901 through 1903.  Feininger's career as cartoonist started in 1894. He was working for several German, French and American magazines. In February 1906, when a quarter of Chicago's population was of German descent, James Keeley, editor of The "Chicago Tribune" traveled to Germany to procure the services of the most popular humor artists. He recruited Feininger to illustrate two comic strips "The Kin-der-Kids" and "Wee Willie Winkie's World" for the "Chicago Tribune". The strips were noted for their fey humor and graphic experimentation. He also worked as a commercial caricaturist for 20 years for various newspapers and magazines in both the United States and Germany. Later, Art Spiegelman wrote in "The New York Times Book Review," that Feininger's comics have "achieved a breathtaking formal grace unsurpassed in the history of the medium."  Feininger started working as a fine artist at the age of 36. He was a member of the "Berliner Sezession" in 1909, and he was associated with German expressionist groups: Die Brücke, the Novembergruppe, Gruppe 1919, the Blaue Reiter circle and Die Blaue Vier (The Blue Four). His first solo exhibit was at Sturm Gallery in Berlin, 1917. When Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus in Germany in 1919, Feininger was his first faculty appointment, and became the master artist in charge of the printmaking workshop. From 1909 until 1921, Feininger spent summer vacations on the island of Usedom to recover and to get new inspiration. Typical of works from this period were marine settings from the shores of the Baltic See (Ostsee). He continued to create paintings and drawings of Benz for the rest of his life, even after returning to live in the United States. A tour of the sites appearing in the works of Feininger follows a path with markers in the ground to guide visitors.  He designed the cover for the Bauhaus 1919 manifesto: an expressionist woodcut 'cathedral'. He taught at the Bauhaus for several years. Among the students who attended his workshops were Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack (German/Australian (1893–1965), Hans Friedrich Grohs (German 1892 - 1981), and Margarete Koehler-Bittkow (German/American, 1898–1964).  When the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, the situation became unbearable for Feininger and his wife. The Nazi Party declared his work to be "degenerate". They moved to America after his work was exhibited in the 'degenerate art' ("Entartete Kunst") in 1936, but before the 1937 exhibition in Munich. He taught at Mills College before returning to New York. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1955.  In addition to drawing, Feininger created art with painted toy figures being photographed in front of drawn backgrounds.  Feininger produced a large body of photographic works between 1928 and the mid-1950s. He kept his photographic work within his circle of friends, and it was not shared with the public in his lifetime. He gave some prints away to his colleagues Walter Gropius and Alfred H. Barr Jr..  Feininger also had intermittent activity as a pianist and composer, with several piano compositions and fugues for organ extant.  His sons, Andreas Feininger and T. Lux Feininger, both became noted artists, the former as a photographer and the latter as a photographer and painter. T. Lux Feininger died July 7, 2011 at the age of 101.

Major retrospective.

A major retrospective exhibition of Lyonel Feininger's work was put on in 2011-2012: it opened initially at the Whitney Museum of American Art, June 30 through October 16, 2011, subsequently at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, January 1 through May 13, 2012. The exhibition is described as "the first in Feininger's native country in more than forty-five years, and the first ever to include the full breadth of his art" and as "accompanied by a richly illustrated monograph with a feature essay that provides a broad overview of Feininger's career..." Many critics have argued that the artist's work was at its most mature around 1910 in works in which the power of Feininger as illustrator balance his abstract side; however, we have to consider the possibility that Feininger used cubism as a more artistically succinct tool to establish his version of the concept known as the objective correlative.  Feininger was also a composer: in tandem with the Whitney retrospective, the American Symphony Orchestra under Leon Botstein, at Carnegie Hall on 21 October 2011, performed three orchestral fugues written by Feininger. Barbara Haskell, curator of the Whitney exhibit, wrote that for his entire life, Feininger credited Bach with having been his "master in painting."

Art market.

At a 2001 Christie's auction in London, Feininger's painting "The Green Bridge" (1909) was sold for £2.42 million.  At a 2007 Sotheby’s auction in New York, Feininger’s oil painting "Jesuits III" (1915) sold for $23,280,000.  At a 2017 Sotheby's auction in New York, Feininger's oil painting "Fin de séance" (1910) sold for $5,637,500.

Lyonel Charles Feininger (July 17, 1871January 13, 1956) was a German-American painter, and a leading exponent of Expressionism. He also worked as a caricaturist and comic strip artist. He was born and grew up in New York City, traveling to Germany at 16 to study and perfect his art. He started his career as a cartoonist in 1894 and met with much success in this area. He was also a commercial caricaturist for 20 years for magazines and newspapers in the USA and Germany. At the age of 36, he started to work as a fine artist. He also produced a large body of photographic works between 1928 and the mid 1950s, but he kept these primarily within his circle of friends. He was also a pianist and composer, with several piano compositions and fugues for organ extant.


Career.

Count Palatine John Casimir was born in Simmern as the third son of Frederick III, Elector Palatine, and Marie of Brandenburg-Kulmbach, of the Simmern middle electoral line of the House of Wittelsbach. In 1564 John Casimir suggested himself as a bridegroom for Elizabeth I of England and sent her his portrait via the Scottish courtier Sir James Melville. Elizabeth, however, showed no interest in him.  On 26 November 1568 he was engaged to the 16-year-old Lutheran Elisabeth of Saxony, a daughter of Augustus, Elector of Saxony and his first wife Anne of Denmark. The wedding took place in Heidelberg on June 6, 1570. The marriage was political, as John Casimir wanted to link Calvinism to Saxony through the marriage. Their marriage turned out to be unhappy, and not only because of religious differences. John Casimir ordered his wife under house arrest accusing her of adultery. Elisabeth gave birth to six children, three of whom were stillborn; the other three were daughters. She died in prison on April 2, 1590.  From March, 1571 Johann Casimir resided in Kaiserslautern for a decade. When his father died in 1576, he ordered in his will that the Palatinate was to remain Calvinist. His son, Louis VI, inherited the main part of the Palatinate, including Heidelberg, and John Casimir inherited a smaller portion, which became the independent Count Palatine of Lautern (essentially consisting of the city of Kaiserslautern and surrounding area). John Casimir's brother Ludwig, who had been secretly raised by his mother as a Lutheran, did not honor his father's wish and instead supported Lutheranism. Many professors of theology, including Zacharias Ursinus, left the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg and were welcomed to Lautern by Johann Casimir who built the Collegium Casimirianum in Neustadt as a substitute university for them in 1578.  John Casimir was in regular contact with Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester and his nephew Sir Philip Sidney who, as agent for Elizabeth I, was sent to the continent to assist in the formation of a Protestant league. In 1576, John Casimir entered France leading four thousand troops. As a result of this campaign, he was made "duc d’Étampes" by Henry III of France for a few months, in 1576–1577. This was a theoretical position, as he never actually visited his French duchy. He visited England in 1579 to seek the Queen's financial support for his campaigns on behalf of the United Provinces. In February 1579 the Earl of Leicester took him to Oxford and he was entertained for three weeks at the English court. From 1583 to 1592 Casimir acted as regent for his nephew Elector Frederick IV.

Issue.

With Elisabeth of Saxony:

John Casimir, Count Palatine of Simmern (German: "Johann Casimir von Pfalz-Simmern") (7 March 1543 – ) was a German prince and a younger son of Frederick III, Elector Palatine. A firm Calvinist, he was a leader of mercenary troops in the religious wars of the time, including the Dutch Revolt. From 1583–1592 he acted as regent for his nephew, Elector Palatine Frederick IV.


Early life.

Valachi was born on September 22, 1904, in the East Harlem area of New York City, United States, into an impoverished Italian immigrant family from the region of Campania. His father was a violent alcoholic, and Valachi would later blame his background for his turn to organized crime.

Career.

Minutemen.

Valachi's criminal career began with a small gang, known as the Minutemen, which was so called for carrying out smash and grab burglaries and escaping within a minute. Valachi was the driver for the gang, and his ability to make a quick getaway earned him a reputation as a rising star in the New York City criminal underworld. In 1921, Valachi was arrested on grand larceny charges, and in 1923, he was arrested in the aftermath of a botched robbery. He pleaded guilty to attempted burglary and was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment but was released after he had served only nine months. Valachi returned to discover he had been replaced with a new driver by the Minutemen and so he formed a new burglary gang.

Italian-American Mafia.

In 1930, Valachi was inducted as a made man into the American Mafia, also known as the "Cosa Nostra" ("our thing"). He soon became a "soldato" (soldier) in the Reina family, now known as the Lucchese family, led by Gaetano Reina. Valachi joined during the height of the Castellammarese War, a violent power struggle within Italian organized crime between the factions of Joe Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano over control of operations in the United States. Reina was assassinated after he had switched allegiances from Masseria to Maranzano. Valachi fought as part of the Reina family on the side of Maranzano, which eventually emerged victorious after Masseria's assassination on April 15, 1931. Maranzano proclaimed himself "capo di tutti capi" ("boss of all bosses") in the Italian-American Mafia, and Valachi became one of his bodyguards. That position was short-lived, as Maranzano himself was assassinated five months after the end of the Castellammarese War by a coalition of his subordinates, led by Charles "Lucky" Luciano. Valachi then became a soldier in the family headed by Luciano, eventually known as the Genovese family, in the crew headed by Anthony "Tony Bender" Strollo. In July 1932, Valachi married Carmela Reina, the eldest daughter of Gaetano Reina.  In 1953, boss Vito Genovese allegedly ordered the murder of mobster Steven Franse. Genovese had tasked Franse with supervising his wife Anna while he hid in Italy. Outraged over Anna's potential love affairs and her lawsuit against him, Genovese ordered Valachi to set up Franse's murder. On June 18, 1953, Valachi lured Franse to his restaurant in the Bronx, where Franse was strangled to death by Pasquale Pagano and Fiore Siano (Valachi's nephew).

Federal testimony.

Valachi was convicted of narcotics violations in 1959 and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Valachi's motivations for becoming an informer had been the subject of some debate: Valachi claimed to be testifying as a public service and to expose a powerful criminal organization that he had blamed for ruining his life, but it is also possible he was hoping for government protection as part of a plea bargain in which he was sentenced to life imprisonment instead of the death penalty for a murder, which he had committed in 1962 while in prison for his narcotics violation.  Valachi murdered a man in prison who he feared mob boss, and fellow prisoner, Vito Genovese had ordered to kill him. Valachi and Genovese were both serving sentences for heroin trafficking. On June 22, 1962, using a pipe left near some construction work, Valachi bludgeoned an inmate to death who he had mistaken for Joseph DiPalermo, a Mafia member who he believed had been contracted to kill him. After time with FBI handlers, Valachi came forward with a story of Genovese giving him a kiss on the cheek, which he took as a "kiss of death." A $100,000 bounty for Valachi's death had been placed by Genovese.  When Valachi decided to co-operate with the U.S. Justice Department, Attorney William G. Hundley became his protector and later stated, "We'd put dark glasses and wigs on him and take him to the Roma restaurant. He was a hell of a guy... My days with Valachi convinced me that the Cosa Nostra was the most overrated thing since the Communist Party."  In October 1963, Valachi testified before Arkansas Senator John L. McClellan's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.S. Senate Committee on Government Operations, known as the Valachi hearings, stating that the Italian-American Mafia actually existed, the first time a member had acknowledged its existence in public. Valachi's testimony was the first major violation of omertà, breaking his blood oath. He was the first member of the Italian-American Mafia to acknowledge its existence publicly, and is credited with popularization of the term "cosa nostra".  Although Valachi's disclosures never led directly to the prosecution of any Mafia leaders, he provided many details of history of the Mafia, operations and rituals; aided in the solution of several unsolved murders; and named many members and the major crime families. The trial exposed American organized crime to the world through Valachi's televised testimony.  After the Justice Department first encouraged and then blocked publication of Valachi's memoirs, a biography, heavily influenced by the memoirs as well as interviews with Valachi, was written by journalist Peter Maas and published in 1968 as "The Valachi Papers", forming the basis for a later film of the same title, starring Charles Bronson in the titular role.

Death.

On April 3, 1971, Valachi died of a heart attack while he was serving his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution, La Tuna, in Anthony, Texas. He was buried four days later at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Lewiston, New York.

Joseph Michael Valachi (September 22, 1904 – April 3, 1971) was an American gangster in the Genovese crime family who is notable as the first member of the Italian-American Mafia to, in 1963, acknowledge its existence publicly. He is credited with popularization of the term "cosa nostra".


History.

Brush painting was one of the "Four Arts" expected to be learnt by China's class of scholar-officials. Ink wash painting appeared during the Tang dynasty (618–907), and its early development is credited to Wang Wei and Zhang Zao, among others.  In the Ming dynasty, Dong Qichang would identify two distinct styles: a clearer, grander Northern School (Beizonghua or Beihua J: Hokushūga), and a freer, more expressive Southern School (Nanzonghua or Nanhua J: Nanshuga), also called "Literati Painting" (Wenrenhua J: Bunjinga).

Philosophy.

East Asian writing on aesthetics is generally consistent in stating that the goal of ink and wash painting is not simply to reproduce the appearance of the subject, but to capture its spirit. To paint a horse, the ink wash painting artist must understand its temperament better than its muscles and bones. To paint a flower, there is no need to perfectly match its petals and colors, but it is essential to convey its liveliness and fragrance. In this, it has been compared to the later Western movement of Impressionism. It is also particularly associated with the Chán or Zen sect of Buddhism, which emphasises "simplicity, spontaneity and self-expression", and Daoism, which emphasises "spontaneity and harmony with nature," especially when compared with the less spiritually-oriented Confucianism.  In landscape painting the scenes depicted are typically imaginary, or very loose adaptations of actual views. Mountain landscapes are by far the most common, often evoking particular areas traditionally famous for their beauty, from which the artist may have been very distant. Water is very often included.  East Asian ink wash painting has long inspired modern artists in the West. In his classic book "Composition", American artist and educator Arthur Wesley Dow (1857–1922) wrote this about ink wash painting: "The painter... put upon the paper the fewest possible lines and tones; just enough to cause form, texture and effect to be felt. Every brush-touch must be full-charged with meaning, and useless detail eliminated. Put together all the good points in such a method, and you have the qualities of the highest art". Dow's fascination with ink wash painting not only shaped his own approach to art but also helped free many American modernists of the era, including his student Georgia O'Keeffe, from what he called a "story-telling" approach. Dow strived for harmonic compositions through three elements: line, shading, and color. He advocated practicing with East Asian brushes and ink to develop aesthetic acuity with line and shading.

Technique.

Ink wash painting uses tonality and shading achieved by varying the ink density, both by differential grinding of the ink stick in water and by varying the ink load and pressure within a single brushstroke. Ink wash painting artists spend years practicing basic brush strokes to refine their brush movement and ink flow. In the hand of a master, a single stroke can produce astonishing variations in tonality, from deep black to silvery gray. Thus, in its original context, shading means more than just dark-light arrangement: It is the basis for the beautiful nuance in tonality found in East Asian ink wash painting and brush-and-ink calligraphy.

Materials and tools.

Ink wash painting is usually done on xuan paper (Chinese) or washi (Japanese paper) both of which are highly absorbent and unsized. Silk is also used in some forms of ink painting. Many types of xuan paper and washi do not lend themselves readily to a smooth wash the way watercolor paper does. Each brush stroke is visible, so any "wash" in the sense of Western style painting requires partially sized paper. Paper manufacturers today understand artists' demands for more versatile papers and work to produce kinds that are more flexible. If one uses traditional paper, the idea of an "ink wash" refers to a wet-on-wet technique, applying black ink to paper where a lighter ink has already been applied, or by quickly manipulating watery diluted ink once it has been applied to the paper by using a very large brush.  In ink wash paintings, as in calligraphy, artists usually grind inkstick over an inkstone to obtain black ink, but prepared liquid inks (墨汁 in Japanese, "bokuju") are also available. Most inksticks are made of soot from pine or oil combined with animal glue. An artist puts a few drops of water on an inkstone and grinds the inkstick in a circular motion until a smooth, black ink of the desired concentration is made. Prepared liquid inks vary in viscosity, solubility, concentration, etc., but are in general more suitable for practicing Chinese calligraphy than executing paintings. Inksticks themselves are sometimes ornately decorated with landscapes or flowers in bas-relief and some are highlighted with gold.  Ink wash painting brushes are similar to the brushes used for calligraphy and are traditionally made from bamboo with goat, cattle, horse, sheep, rabbit, marten, badger, deer, boar and wolf hair. The brush hairs are tapered to a fine point, a feature vital to the style of wash paintings.  Different brushes have different qualities. A small wolf-hair brush that is tapered to a fine point can deliver an even thin line of ink (much like a pen). A large wool brush (one variation called the "big cloud") can hold a large volume of water and ink. When the big cloud brush rains down upon the paper, it delivers a graded swath of ink encompassing myriad shades of gray to black.  Once a stroke is painted, it cannot be changed or erased. This makes ink and wash painting a technically demanding art-form requiring great skill, concentration, and years of training.

Ink wash painting (; ; ), or sumi-e (), is a type of East Asian brush painting that uses black ink – as used in East Asian calligraphy – in different concentrations. Emerging in Tang dynasty China (618–907), it, and associated stylistic features, overturned earlier, more realistic techniques. These associated features include a preference for shades of black over variations in colour, and an emphasis on brushwork and the perceived "spirit" or "essence" of a subject over direct imitation. It flourished in the Song dynasty China (960–1279), as well as in Japan after it was introduced by Zen Buddhist monks in the 14th century.


Milestones.

Highest national league participation: From the league foundation in 1936 to 1950 and from 1951 up to this day.

History.

The HC Sparta Praha hockey club is one of the oldest hockey clubs in the world and one of the most successful and famous clubs in Czechoslovakian and later Czech ice hockey history.  Sparta’s great successes were reached in the years following World War II as it won two national titles in a row—1952–53 and 1953–54—under the name Spartak Sokolovo. The next highly successful period came much more recently when Sparta won the national league in 1989–90 and again in 1992–93. Another recent achievement (along with two third-place finishes in 1995–96 and 1996–97) was Sparta’s participation in the final group of the European League (EHL) in 1996–97.  After a few years of bad luck and less success, Sparta returned to the top of the Czech Extraliga in 1999/00 when they were crowned league champions. That victory was the first of four championships they would win over seven seasons, adding Extraliga titles in 2002, 2006 and 2007. In addition to those achievements, Sparta managed to be part of the Top Four in the European League (EHL) again in 1999–2000 and achieved the greatest result in Czech hockey history: second place.

Present.

HC Sparta Praha has regularly been one of the best teams in the Czech Extraliga, making the playoffs almost every year. HC Sparta Praha's home games are played at O Arena which is the largest hockey arena in the Czech Republic with a capacity of over 17,300 spectators. They moved there from the Tipsport Arena in 2015.

Honours.

Domestic.

Czech Extraliga  Czechoslovak Extraliga  Bohemian-Moravian League

International.

Spengler Cup  Tatra Cup  IIHF European Champions Cup  European Hockey League  Champions Hockey League

Pre-season.

Tipsport Hockey Cu

Hockey Club Sparta Praha, commonly known as HC Sparta Prague, is a Prague based Czech ice hockey team playing in the Czech Extraliga. The club has won four Czech championships (most recently in 2007) and four Czechoslovak championships, as well as two Spengler Cups, making it one of the most successful hockey clubs in Czech history. The team HC Sparta Praha plays its home games at O Arena, the largest arena in the country.