title: Baltimore

text: During the 1870s there was an economic depression called the "Panic of 1873." After the Panic, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad company decided to pay its workers less. This caused the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. These strikes stopped train service in Cumberland in western Maryland. On July 20, 1877, the Maryland Governor, John Lee Carroll, ordered the Maryland Army National Guard to stop the strikes. People who supported the railroad workers attacked the national guard soldiers. Soldiers from the 6th Regiment fired their guns at the crowd. 10 people were killed, and 25 people were hurt. This started a riot. Trains were damaged and parts of Camden Station were burned. US Army soldiers came to Baltimore to protect the railroad and end the strike. The riot and strike ended on July 21–22, 1877.


title: Baltimore

text: The Great Baltimore Fire started on February 7, 1904. It burned for 30 hours and destroyed 1,500 buildings. More than 70 blocks of downtown burned to the ground. The fire caused about $150 million of damage (US$ million in 2022.)


title: Baltimore

text: The city grew bigger by annexing (absorbing) suburbs from nearby counties. The last suburb was added in 1918. The city added parts of Baltimore County and Anne Arundel County. In 1948, the state constitution was amended (changed). It now required a special vote by citizens before an area could be added to the city. This stopped the expansion (growth) of the city.


title: Baltimore

text: In 1950, the city was 23.8% black. By 1970, it was 46.4% black. After Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968, the Baltimore riot of 1968 started. It lasted until April 12, 1968. The riot cost the city about $10 million (US$ million in 2022). During the riot, 11,000 Maryland National Guard soldiers and US Army soldiers tried to protect the city. It is possible to see some effects of the riots today. Parts of North Avenue, Howard Street, Gay Street, and Pennsylvania Avenue are barren, empty, and not taken care of.


title: Baltimore

text: During the 1970s, Baltimore's downtown area, called the "Inner Harbor," was run down and neglected. It was full of empty and abandoned warehouses. The city began trying to redevelop the area. The Baltimore Convention Center was opened in 1979. Harborplace, a shopping and restaurant area, opened in 1980. The National Aquarium in Baltimore (Maryland's largest tourist destination) and the Baltimore Museum of Industry opened in 1981. In 1992, the Baltimore Orioles baseball team moved from Memorial Stadium to Oriole Park at Camden Yards near the harbor. Six years later the Baltimore Ravens football team moved into M&T Bank Stadium next to Camden Yards.


title: Baltimore

text: Baltimore is in north-central Maryland. It is on the Patapsco River, close to where it empties into the Chesapeake Bay. It is on the fall line between the Piedmont Plateau and the Atlantic Coastal Plain. (The "fall line" is a phrase in geology that means that this is a place where two different kinds of earth meet.) The fall line splits Baltimore into a "lower city" and "upper city."


title: Baltimore

text: At the harbor, the city is at sea level. The highest point is near Pimlico in the northwest. There the elevation is .


title: Baltimore

text: According to the 2010 census, the city has a total area of . This is of land and of water. The total area of Baltimore City is 12.07% water.


title: Baltimore

text: Baltimore is in the humid subtropical climate zone ("Cfa".) This is according to the Köppen climate classification


title: Baltimore

text: July is usually the hottest month of the year. The average temperature in July is . Summer is usually very humid. The highest temperature on record is in 1936.


title: Baltimore

text: January is the coldest month of the year. Sometimes wind from the subtropics brings springlike weather during winter. At night, winds from the Arctic make temperatures drop into the teens (in Fahrenheit; less than -7 °C.) Some nights the temperature drops to the single digits (less than -12 °C.) The coldest temperature on record is from 1934.


title: Baltimore

text: Downtown Baltimore and the parts of the city that are on the coast are usually warmer than other parts of Baltimore. This is because of the urban heat island effect. Also the Chesapeake Bay acts to moderate the effects of temperature. This means that the water helps keep the temperature from changing greatly.


title: Baltimore

text: Baltimore gets a lot of rain during the whole year. There is no "rainy season" or "dry season." This is normal in most cities on the East Coast of the United States. Every month, about of precipitation (rain, snow, sleet, etc.) falls in Baltimore. The total rainfall yearly average is around . There are usually about 105 sunny days in a year. There are lots of rain showers and thunderstorms during spring, summer, and fall. In the winter, there are longer but lighter rain showers, and less sunshine and more clouds. It sometimes snows in the winter. The average snowfall is .


title: Baltimore

text: Baltimore has architecture in every style from the last 200-plus years. Many famous architects have designed buildings in the city. Some of these architects are Benjamin Latrobe, George A. Frederick, John Russell Pope, Mies Van Der Rohe and I. M. Pei.


title: Baltimore

text: The city has some buildings that are thought to be important to the history of architecture. Baltimore Basilica (1806–1821) was designed by Benjamin Latrobe in the neoclassical style. It is the oldest Roman Catholic Cathedral in the United States. The Municipal Museum of Baltimore, often called the Peale Museum, was build in 1813 by Robert Cary Long, Sr. It was built for Rembrandt Peale and is the first building in the United States designed specifically to be a museum. The McKim Free School, built by Isaac McKim in 1822, shows the interest of early American architects in ancient Greek art.


title: Baltimore

text: The Phoenix Shot Tower (1828) was the tallest building in the United States until the Civil War. It is tall. The tower was build without scaffolding. The Sun Iron Building (1851) was the first iron-front building. Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church (1870) has stained glass windows by Louis Comfort Tiffany. It has been called "one of the most significant buildings in this city, a treasure of art and architecture" by "Baltimore Magazine". The 1845 Greek Revival style Lloyd Street Synagogue is one of the oldest synagogues in the United States.


title: Baltimore

text: The Baltimore World Trade Center was built in 1977 by architect I.M. Pei. The building is in the shape of an equilateral pentagon (it has five equal sides.) It is the tallest building of this shape in the world.


title: Baltimore

text: Oriole Park at Camden Yards is considered by many to be the most beautiful baseball park in Major League Baseball. It is designed to be "retro style". The park has inspired many other cities to build their own retro ballparks. Camden Yards and the National Aquarium have helped revive the Inner Harbor. The area used to be an industrial district of run-down and abandoned warehouses. Today it is a lively commercial district full of bars, restaurants, and stores.


title: Baltimore

text: Baltimore is officially split into nine regions. These regions are based on geography. Each region is patrolled by their own Baltimore Police Department district. These regions are: Northern, Northwestern, Northeastern, Western, Central, Eastern, Southern, Southwestern, and Southeastern. Locals sometimes split the city into "East Baltimore" and "West Baltimore" along Charles Street. Other locals sometimes split the city into "North Baltimore" and "South Baltimore" along Baltimore Street.


title: Baltimore

text: The Central district includes Downtown Baltimore, Harborplace, The Camden Yards Sports Complex (Oriole Park at Camden Yards and M&T Bank Stadium), the Convention Center, and the National Aquarium in Baltimore. It is the city's main commercial area. It also has many nightclubs, bars, restaurants, shopping centers, and other attractions. Many of the city's key businesses are in this area as well. The University of Maryland, Baltimore campus, University of Maryland Medical System, Maryland Institute College of Art, the Peabody Institute of music, the Lyric Opera House, The Walters Art Museum, and The Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall are also in the central district.


title: Baltimore

text: The Northern District is north of the Central district. Loyola University Maryland, The Johns Hopkins University and College of Notre Dame of Maryland are in this district. Some of the richer residential neighborhoods are also here. The neighborhood of Roland Park, the first planned suburban community in America, is one of these richer neighborhoods. The borders of the district are made by The Alameda on the east and Pimlico Road on the west.


title: Baltimore

text: The Southern district is the part of the city below the Inner Harbor and east of the B&O Railroad tracks. It is a mix of industrial and residential areas. It is also a mix of many demographics, cultures, and ethnicities. It is home to the ethnically diverse neighborhood of Locust Point, the historic neighborhood Federal Hill, and poor residential neighborhoods like Cherry Hill. There are two Port of Baltimore terminals in this district. The old Domino Sugar plant is also here.


title: Baltimore

text: The Northeastern district is mostly residential. It is home to Morgan State University. Today it is mostly African-American. The district is bordered by the city line to the north and east; Sinclair Lane, Erdman Avenue, and Pulaski Highway on the south; and The Alameda on the west.


title: Baltimore

text: The Eastern district is mostly poor, African-American residential neighborhoods. There are entire blocks of abandoned buildings. The district is also dangerous and has a problem with drug trafficking. For this reason, the TV show "The Wire" was often filmed in this district. This area is also home to Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The district is bordered by Erdman Avenue, Sinclair Lane, and Orleans Street.


title: Baltimore

text: The Southeastern district is a mix of industrial and residential areas. Neighborhoods in this district usually have a mix of races and cultures. The district is bordered by Orleans Street, the Inner Harbor, the city line, and the Baltimore harbor.


title: Baltimore

text: The Northwestern district is mostly residential. It is also home to the Pimlico Race Course and Sinai Hospital. Until the 1960s, Baltimore's Jewish community was based in the Park Heights neighborhood. Since then, there has been "white flight" and the neighborhood today is almost all black. Northern Parkway is a dividing line in the district. North of the parkway, the neighborhoods are mostly white. Some of these are Mount Washington and Cheswolde. South of the parkway, the neighborhoods are mostly black. The borders of the district are made up by the county line on the north and west, Gwynns Falls Parkway on the south and Pimlico Road on the east.


title: Baltimore

text: The Western district is the home of Coppin State University, Mondawmin Mall, and Edmondson Village. These are important to the culture, economy and history of the city's African American community. This district used to be the home to many middle and upper class African Americans, but they have moved away since. Today, more than 45% of people living in some neighborhoods have income levels below the poverty line. Some of the crime from this district was used in the TV show "The Wire". The district is west of downtown. Its borders are Gwynns Falls Parkway, Fremont Avenue, and Baltimore Street.


title: Baltimore

text: The Southwestern district is a mix of industrial parks and residential areas. St. Agnes Hospital is in this district. It has Baltimore County to the west, Baltimore Street to the north, and the downtown area to the east.


title: Baltimore

text: The City of Baltimore is next to several communities. All of these are unincorporated census-designated places.


title: Baltimore

text: Baltimore is sometimes called the "city of neighborhoods." This name comes from the fact that it has 72 official historic districts (areas). People of one ethnic group mainly live in each one of these areas. Some of the most important today are downtown. These are the Inner Harbor, Fells Point, and Little Italy. The Inner Harbor has lots of hotels, shops, and museums. Many tourists visit the Inner Harbor. Fells Point used to be a place where sailors went for entertainment. Today it has been rebuilt and cleaned up. This is the neighborhood in the movie "Sleepless in Seattle". Little Italy is where the Italian-American people live and work. Nancy Pelosi grew up in this neighborhood. She used to be Speaker of the House in Congress.


title: Baltimore

text: Another important neighborhood is Mount Vernon. This neighborhood is the center of culture and art in Baltimore. There are many important monuments and museums there. One important monument is the Washington Monument. This monument was built in the 1800s in a plaza. It is older than the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C..


title: Baltimore

text: Every year there is an art festival called Artscape. The festival is in the Bolton Hill neighborhood. This is very close to the Maryland Institute College of Art. Artscape is called the "largest free arts festival in America." Another art festival that happens in Baltmore is the Maryland Film Festival. It happens every year in May. At the Film Festival, movies are shown at the Charles Theatre. (The Charles Theatre is an old cinema.)


title: Baltimore

text: One of Baltimore's nicknames is "Charm City." Some advertisers wanted to make the city's reputation better. They started using the name in 1975.


title: Baltimore

text: People in Baltimore speak English. They have a very unique accent and way of speaking (dialect). For example, they pronounce "Baltimore" as "Balamer" or "Balmer." The Baltimore dialect is sometimes called "Baltimorese." It is a kind of Mid-Atlantic English. People from Baltimore will often call each other "Hon."


title: Baltimore

text: There are movies that parody (make fun of) the way people from Baltimore talk. A lot of these movies are made by John Waters. He is a movie maker from Baltimore. Most of Waters's movies were made in Baltimore. "Pink Flamingos" and "Hairspray" are some of these movies. Waters also wrote the musical version of "Hairspray."


title: Baltimore

text: Baltimore used to be mostly industrial. There was a lot of steel processing, shipping, car manufacturing, and transportation. Deindustrialization happened, and Baltimore lost a lot of jobs that paid a lot of money and did not need a lot of training or skill. Today, most of the jobs in Baltimore are service economy jobs. These jobs do not pay very much. 90% of jobs are service jobs today.


title: Baltimore

text: In July 2012, the unemployment rate was 11%. Also in 2012, the steel mill (factory) at Sparrow's Point closed. This will mean more people will lose their jobs. 25% of people who live in Baltimore, and 37% of all children living in Baltimore, live in poverty.


title: Baltimore

text: Johns Hopkins Hospital is in Baltimore. Some big companies from Baltimore are Under Armour, Cordish Company, and Royal Farms. There is a big sugar refinery in Baltimore. It is owned by American Sugar Refining.


title: Baltimore

text: Some of these highways do not connect to each other. I-70 stops at a parking lot just inside of the city. This is because of "freeway revolts" that happened in Baltimore. The interstate highways were supposed to go through downtown Baltimore, but the people in the city did not want this to happen. Barbara Mikulski, now a United States Senator, started the "freeway revolts" to keep the highways from being built in downtown.


title: Baltimore

text: Today there are some highways numbered U.S. highways and state routes that run through downtown. These are US 1, US 40 National Road, and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. There are also some tunnels underneath the Baltimore harbor. I-95 runs through the Fort McHenry Tunnel. I-895 runs through the Harbor Tunnel.


title: Baltimore

text: Baltimore has a beltway. A beltway is a highway that circles around a city. The Baltimore Beltway is I-695. It crosses over the Chesapeake Bay on the Francis Scott Key Bridge. This bridge is just south of the Inner Harbor.


title: Baltimore

text: Baltimore is an important train stop. Amtrak trains in the Northeast Corridor stop in Baltimore. Penn Station is one of the busiest train stations in the country. In 2008 it was the 8th busiest train station in the United States. That year, more than 1 million people took a train to or from Penn Station. Another important train station is at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. Many Amtrak trains stop at the BWI Rail Station. The Amtrak trains that stop in Baltimore are: "Acela Express", "Palmetto", "Carolinian", "Silver Star", "Silver Meteor", "Vermonter", "Crescent", and "Northeast Regional". The MARC commuter rail service also has trains that stop in Baltimore. The MARC trains run from Camden Station and Penn Station in Baltimore to Union Station in Washington, D.C..


title: Baltimore

text: Baltimore has many colleges and universities. These are both public (run by the government) and private. Some of them are:


title: Baltimore

text: Baltimore City Public School System runs Baltimore's public schools. Some of these schools are well known. Carver Vocational-Technical High School was the first vocational high school for African-Americans in Maryland. Lake Clifton Eastern High School is the biggest school campus in Baltimore City. Frederick Douglass High School is the second-oldest African-American high school in the United States. Baltimore City College is the third oldest public high school in the country. Western High School is the oldest public all-girls school in the nation. Baltimore City College and Baltimore Polytechnic Institute are football rivals. This is the second-oldest high school football rivalry in the country.


title: Baltimore

text: Baltimore's main newspaper is "The Baltimore Sun." In 1986, the newspaper was sold to the Times Mirror Company. This company was bought by the Tribune Company in 2000. Today, "The Sun" is still a Tribune newspaper.


title: Baltimore

text: Baltimore had two newspapers until 1986. (It was very common for US cities to have two newspapers.) The other main newspaper was the "Baltimore News-American". The "News-American" went out of business in 1986.


title: Baltimore

text: "The Baltimore Examiner" was started in 2006 to compete with "The Sun." It was owned and run by a company that also published newspapers like "The San Francisco Examiner" and "The Washington Examiner". "The Examiner" was a free newspaper that was paid for by advertising. ("The Sun" is not free.) "The Examiner" was not able to make money, and it stopped being published on February 15, 2009.


title: Baltimore

text: According to Nielsen Market Research, Baltimore had the 26th-largest television market in 2008-2009. It was the 27th-largest market for 2009-2010. Arbitron listed Baltimore as the 22nd-largest radio market in Fall 2010.


title: Baltimore

text: Baltimore has a long baseball history. The first team to play for Baltimore were the 19th century Baltimore Orioles (1882-1899). This was one of the most successful early baseball teams. The team had many hall of famers play for them. The great Babe Ruth was born in Baltimore in 1895. He played for the minor league Baltimore Orioles team. This team existed from 1903 to 1914 and from 1916 to 1953.


title: Baltimore

text: Today, Baltimore's Major League Baseball team is the Baltimore Orioles. They play in the American League. The Orioles came to Baltimore in 1954. Before that, the team had been in St. Louis, Missouri, where they were called the St. Louis Browns. The Orioles went to the World Series in 1966, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1979 and 1983. They won the World Series three times: in 1966, 1960, and 1983.


title: Baltimore

text: In 1995, Cal Ripken, Jr. broke the record for the most games played in a row. The old record was set by Lou Gehrig, and was 2,130 games. Ripken was added to the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was also named "Sportsman of the Year" by "Sports Illustrated" magazine. There are six Orioles players and two managers in the hall of fame.


title: Baltimore

text: Baltimore's first football team were the Baltimore Colts. The team came to Baltimore in 1953. Before then, they had played in Dallas, Texas as the Dallas Texans. The Colts played for Baltimore until 1984. In 1984, the team moved to Indianapolis and took the name. Today the team still plays as the Indianapolis Colts.


title: Baltimore

text: In 1996, the Cleveland Browns came to Baltimore. They were renamed the Baltimore Ravens. The Ravens won a Super Bowl championship in 2000 and again in 2012. They also won three American Football Conference (AFC) North division championships in 2003, 2006, and 2011. In addition, the played in three AFC Championship Games in 2000, 2009, and 2011.


title: Baltimore

text: Baltimore has an indoor soccer team, the Baltimore Blast. They play for the Major Indoor Soccer League at the 1st Mariner Arena. The team joined the League in 2001. The Blast have won 5 league championships: 2002, 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2008.


title: Baltimore

text: The Baltimore Blues are a semi-professional rugby league football club. They will compete in the USA Rugby League in 2012. Other professional or semi-professional Baltimore teams include Crystal Palace Baltimore, an outdoor soccer franchise of


title: Baltimore

text: USL Second Division. The Charm City Roller Girls are a member of the Women's Flat Track Derby Association since 2005.


title: Baltimore

text: The Preakness Stakes are held every May at the Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore. The Preakness is the "second jewel" in the United States Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing.


title: Baltimore

text: Car races are held on the streets of downtown every year in September. The Baltimore Grand Prix runs through the Inner Harbor. It started in 2011. The American Le Mans Series, IndyCar Series, Indy Lights, and other races are a part of it.


title: Baltimore

text: Baltimore is very politically liberal. The mayor of Baltimore is a Democrat. 84.7% of the voters in 2016 voted for the Democrat Hillary Clinton, and 87.2% of the voters in 2012 voted for the Democrat Barack Obama. The last time a Republican running for president won more votes than the Democratic candidate in Baltimore was 1956. Even in 1984, when Ronald Reagan won 49 states in his reelction campaign, only 28.2% of the voters in Baltimore voted for him.


title: Sharia

text: Sharia, Sharia law or Islamic law is a set of religious principles which form part of the Islamic culture. The Arabic word "sharīʿah" () refers to the revealed law of God and originally meant "way" or "path".


title: Sharia

text: Classical sharia deals with many aspects of public and private life, including religious rituals, family life, business, crimes, and warfare. In former times, sharia was interpreted by independent jurists, who based their legal opinions on Qur'an, Hadith and centuries of debate, interpretation and precedent. Some parts of sharia can be described as "law" in the usual sense of that word, while other parts are better understood as rules for living life in accordance with God's will.


title: Sharia

text: Modern countries in the Muslim world all have their own laws. In most of them only a small part of the legal system is based on classical sharia. Muslims disagree on how sharia should be applied in the modern world.


title: Sharia

text: People of different religions who speak Arabic use the word "sharīʿah" to describe a religious tradition that comes from teachings of prophets. Christians and Jews in the Middle East have used it to describe their own religion. For many Muslims the word "sharia" means simply "justice". They will say that any law agrees with sharia as long as it helps to build a more fair and prosperous society.


title: Sharia

text: Most Muslims think that sharia should be interpreted by experts in Islamic law. In Arabic, the word "sharīʿah" refers to God's revelation, which does not change. In contrast, the rules of behavior created by scholars as they try to understand God's revelation are called "fiqh". These rules can change and Islamic scholars have often disagreed about them.


title: Sharia

text: Scholars disagree about the origins of the word "sharia". Some say that "sharia" comes from the old Arabic word meaning "pathway to be followed". This would make it similar to "halakha" (the way to go), the Hebrew word for Jewish law. Other scholars think that the word "sharia" originally meant "path to the water hole". They say that knowing the way to a water hole could save a man's life in the dry deserts where many Arabs lived in ancient times, and that is why this word came to refer to God's guidance to man.


title: Sharia

text: Islamic scholars who lived during the first centuries of Islam developed different methods for interpreting sharia. Most of them came to agree that sharia rules should be derived from the following main sources:


title: Sharia

text: The process of deriving sharia rules from the Qur'an and hadith is called "ijtihad". Sharia rules classify actions into one of the following categories:


title: Sharia

text: These acts have "material or moral" provisions in the understanding of Sharia. The abandonment of the actions "that are considered fard, wajib and sunnah", and doing the forbidden ones "that are considered makruh and haram" are penalized. (hadd or tazir punishments). E.g; Beating, imprisoning and killing those who insist on not praying can be considered in this context.


title: Sharia

text: Sharia in Islam is viewed as the revealed law of God, which cannot be altered. On the other hand, its interpretation, called "fiqh", is the work of legal scholars, who have frequently differed in their legal opinions. Some parts of sharia are similar to what people in the West call "law", while other parts are better understood as rules for living life in accordance with God's will.


title: Sharia

text: There are several schools of legal thought in Islam, of which the most important are the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali schools of Sunni Islam and the Ja'fari school of Shia Islam.


title: Sharia

text: The divisions of sharia are called "branches" ("furu") in Arabic. The main branches are "ibadat" (rituals or acts of worship) and "mu'amalat" (human interactions or social relations). These branches are divided into many smaller branches, some of which are listed bellow:


title: Sharia

text: While Islamic law prohibits already-dead meat, this does not apply to fish and locusts. Also, hadith literature prohibits beasts having sharp canine teeth, birds having claws and talons in their feet, tamed donkeys, and any piece cut from a living animal.


title: Sharia

text: Although there is some disagreement about which crimes are "hudud" crimes, they usually include theft, highway robbery, zina (sex with forbidden partners), falsely accusing someone of "zina", and drinking alcohol. The prescribed punishments for these crimes range from 80 lashes to death. However, classical jurists developed very strict rules which restrict when these punishments could be applied, so that in many cases it became almost impossible to convict anyone under these rules. For example, there must be four adult male Muslim witnesses to a hudud crime or a confession repeated four times, before someone can be punished. If a criminal could not be convicted of a "hudud" crime, they could still receive a "tazir" punishment.


title: Sharia

text: In the historical practice, qisas appears in two ways. One of them is the punishment of the perpetrator with a “counter-action”, exactly the same as the crime committed, in crimes against the person's bodily integrity; A life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth... etc.


title: Sharia

text: Another application is related to the social status of the perpetrator and the victim. In the tribal understanding, when a person kills a woman, a slave or an honorable person from another tribe, a person "of similar status from the tribe to which the murderer belongs" will be killed in return. As a general custom, killing the master's to slave, father's to child, husband's to wife was not punished with retaliation, and retaliation was not applied to the man who killed the woman as a rule. The condition of "social equality" in qisas means that; "if a socially inferior person kills someone from the upper class, qisas will be applied", whereas "if someone from the upper class kills someone from the lower class, it cannot be applied". On this pre-islamic understandings the discussion "whether a Muslim could be executed for a non-Muslim" was added in Islamic period.


title: Sharia

text: ": "'Believers! Retaliation is ordained for you regarding the people who were killed. Free versus free, captive versus captive, woman versus woman. Whoever is forgiven by the brother of the slain for a price, let him abide by the custom and pay the price well."


title: Sharia

text: While retaliation is certain in crimes of murder, according to the verse(2:178)), the situation is not clear in the crimes of wounding. For such (an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, etc.) punishments, the expression "This is how we wrote to them (the Children of Israel) in the book", is used. (5: 45)


title: Sharia

text: Murder, bodily injury and property damage - intentional or unintentional - is considered a civil dispute under sharia law. The victim, victim's heir(s) or guardian is given the option to either forgive the offender, demand Qisas (equal retaliation) or accept a compensation (Diyya). Under sharia law, the Diyya compensation received by the victim or victim's family is in cash.


title: Sharia

text: During the Islamic Golden Age, sharia was interpreted by experts in Islamic law ("muftis"), most of whom were independent religious scholars. Anyone could ask them a question about law, and they were expected to give an answer for free. Their legal opinions were called "fatwas".


title: Sharia

text: When there was a legal dispute about family or financial matters, it would be handled in a court headed by a "qadi" (judge). These judges also had a legal education, and they were appointed to their post by the ruler. In simple cases, qadis would pronounce a verdict based on their own knowledge of sharia. In more difficult cases, they would express the details of the case in general terms and ask a mufti for his legal opinion.


title: Sharia

text: Criminal cases were usually handled in "maẓālim" courts. These courts were controlled by the ruler's council. "Mazalim" courts were supposed to follow "the spirit of sharia". Qadis and muftis were present in those courts to make sure the verdicts did not go against it. However, these courts did not necessarily follow the letter of the law, and they had fewer legal restrictions than qadi's courts. "Mazalim" courts also handled complaints against government officials. Their purpose of "mazalim" courts was to "right wrongs" which could not be addressed through procedures of qadi's courts. Less serious crimes were often handled by local police and market inspectors according to local customs, which were only loosely related to sharia.


title: Sharia

text: Non-Muslim communities living under Islamic rule were allowed to follow their own laws. The government kept out of their internal legal affairs, except when there was a dispute between people of different religions. Such cases were handled by a qadi. When that happened, sharia rules gave Muslims some legal advantages over non-Muslims. However, non-Muslims often won cases against Muslims and even against high government officials, because people thought that sharia was a reflection of divine justice which should defend the weak against the powerful.


title: Sharia

text: In the modern era, most parts of the Muslim world came under influence or control of European powers. This led to major changes in the legal systems of these lands. In some cases, this was because Muslim governments wanted to make their states more powerful and they took European states as models of what a modern state should look like. In other cases, it was because Europeans who colonized these lands forced them to abandon parts of Islamic law and follow European laws instead.


title: Sharia

text: In modern times, criminal laws in the Muslim world were widely replaced by codes which were inspired by European laws. Court procedures and legal education were also made similar to European practice. The constitutions of most Muslim-majority states mention sharia in one way or another. However, the classical rules of sharia were preserved mostly in family laws. In earlier times, sharia was interpreted by independent scholars who often disagreed with each other, and all their opinions were never written down in one place. In the modern era, it was the government who controlled the laws. Different states created their own legal codes, where the laws were clearly stated. The governments wanted to make family laws fit better in the modern world, but they still wanted people to view them as laws based on sharia. In order to do this, the scholars who wrote down these laws decided to pick and choose rules from the different legal opinions available in the classical books of law. When some of the laws they picked disagreed with the current norms of society, the government tried to solve this problem by creating additional court procedures. For example, when family laws in some states seemed to treat women unfairly to the population, the government created procedures that made it more difficult for men to take advantage of these laws in an unfair manner.


title: Sharia

text: In the last quarter of the 20th century, many Muslims around the world became disappointed in their governments. These governments had adopted Western ways in their legal systems and other matters, but many people regarded their actions as oppressive, corrupt, and ineffective. More and more Muslims started to think that things would improve if their government returned to Islamic traditions. They began calling for return of sharia, and conservative members of the public wanted the government to deal with crime using all the traditional methods, including "hudud" punishments. In a few countries, the government put some elements of classical criminal law into the legal code. However, in some of these countries (for example, Iran and Sudan) the supreme court has rarely approved the harsher "hudud" punishments, while in the other countries which adopted "hudud" laws (for example, Pakistan and Nigeria), the supreme court never approves them.


title: Sharia

text: In some countries, progressive Muslim reformers have been able to change how the state interprets sharia family laws to make them more fair to women.


title: Sharia

text: Saudi Arabia is an exceptional case in the legal history of the Muslim world. It has always continued to use sharia in different areas of law, and it never codified its laws. Its judges have always tried to follow traditional sharia rules for dealing with crimes, and they often impose harsh punishments that inspire international protests. However, these punishments are not necessarily prescribed by sharia. Judges in Saudi Arabia follow the classical principle which says that "hudud" punishments should be avoided if at all possible, and the punishments which they apply are usually "tazir" punishments which are left to their own choice. Saudi Arabia is often criticized for its public executions, and their frequency has increased in recent decades. Executions became more frequent because the government and courts decided to crack down on violent crime which became more frequent during the 1970s, as also happened in the U.S. and China.


title: Aries

text: Aries is the astrological Zodiac sign that s the constellation Aries. In the tropical zodiac, Aries is from March 21 to April 20 beginning at the vernal equinox. Under the sidereal zodiac, it is now from April 15 to May 15. The opposite sign to Aries is Libra. The corresponding month in the Babylonian calendar is "Arax Nisânu", which is made for Anu.


title: Aries

text: This sign for Aries was made from many stars which made up the head of the Aries (constellation) . The head of Aries is called "Aluathay" or "Salhay" and it is made up of four stars.


title: Aries

text: In mythology Aries is related to Greek myth of the ram which carried Athamas's son Phrixus and daughter Helle to Colchis away from their evil stepmother Ino. This ram is also related to Theseus, from the Greek myth of the Minotaur.


title: Pipe organ

text: The pipe organ is a keyboard instrument in which the sound is made by air blowing through pipes. A person who plays the organ is called an organist. The organist plays the instrument using both the hands and the feet. The hands play the keyboards (called manuals), while the feet play pedals which also make notes.


title: Pipe organ

text: Organs have been made for many centuries. They are usually found in places for Christian worship such as churches and cathedrals, although they may also be found in places like town halls and concert halls or even large private houses. Very small organs can be called “chamber organs”. Organs in large churches, cathedrals or halls are very large instruments indeed, and are built especially for the building they are in. They are called “pipe organs” to distinguish them from modern “electronic organs”.


title: Pipe organ

text: No two organs are ever quite the same, and they vary greatly from one country to another and one historical period to another. The information here is about organs from Europe, Great Britain and America.


title: Pipe organ

text: In a pipe organ, the musical notes are made by blowing air through pipes. Every organ must have pipes, something to blow the air and a way of controlling which pipes are played.


title: Pipe organ

text: The pipes are made of metal or wood. They are lined up in rows in the "organ case" which can be as big as a room. The metal pipes are round tubes. They can be made of different types of metal, but the most common type is an alloy (or mixture of metals) of tin and lead called "spotted metal" because it has round shiny spots on it. This alloy makes pipes sound good as the harder tin provides clarity and definition while the softer lead produces tonal warmth. Very small pipes can sometimes be made of silver, like flutes. Some organs also have some pipes made of brass that sound like trumpets. Most organs have a lot of wooden pipes. The wooden pipes have four flat sides and make a sound different from that of the "spotted metal" pipes. They are not usually seen; they are neatly lined up behind the large metal pipes at the front of the organ which are sometimes painted with colours and patterns. All the pipes have to be made with an end that tapers at the bottom where the air blows in.


title: Pipe organ

text: Each pipe can play only one note which depends on its size. The small pipes play high notes and the large pipes play low notes. Each pipe has its own special sound which depends on the material it is made from (whether it is wood or brass or spotted metal) and on the shape of the pipe. The pipes are arranged in "ranks" so that all the pipes of the same shape and material can be controlled to play a tune together, without all the others.


title: Pipe organ

text: To blow air through the organ, there are boxes called "wind chests". When the organist is playing, he/she can see a little gauge that tells whether there is enough air. The wind chests can be kept full in two ways. The old-fashioned way is to have an enormous set of "bellows" which are pumped up and down by a person using a large handle. This sucks in air and fills the wind chest. Pumping the bellows of a large pipe organ is heavy work. For this reason, most organs nowadays have an electric motor and a large fan which fills the wind chest.


title: Pipe organ

text: The organist uses keyboards like those on a piano to play the organ. A small organ may have just one keyboard, but many organs have two keyboards and a very big one may even have five. Organists do not call them keyboards; they call them "manuals". An organist will talk about "a four-manual organ" (which means it is a large one). The manuals are arranged on the organ "console", and the organist sits on a bench in front of the console to play. Apart from the manuals there are two other important parts of the console. There are a set of long wooden pedals which the organist can play with his/her feet. Each pedal plays a different note.


title: Pipe organ

text: On either side of the manuals there are rows of "stops" which look like knobs. The stops can be pulled out or pushed in. When a stop is pulled out, it turns on some sets of pipes. The organist can choose whether to play loud pipes or soft pipes, flute-sounding pipes or brassy pipes, sweet pipes or harsh-sounding pipes. As the organist plays, he/she does not just have to think about the right notes. He/she also has to think about the sort of "voice" that the organ should play in. He/she can play different ranks of pipes together by pulling out several stops. Some pipes, usually the biggest decorated pipes at the very front of the organ, are used only for the grandest music. By tradition, these pipes are the symbol of the "Voice of God".


title: Pipe organ

text: When the organist presses the keys of the organ, the sound comes from the air blowing through the pipes. This is because a valve (an opening with a one-way door) opens up to let the air into the pipe, and closes again when the organist stops pressing that key. This can happen in several ways. Traditional organs have what is called a "tracker action". The trackers are thin wooden rods and wires which move backwards and forwards, opening and shutting all the valves. They are worked by levers under the keyboard. A tracker action organ has to have the console right near the organ, usually under the big front pipes.


title: Pipe organ

text: A more modern development was to have a "tubular pneumatic" action, in which the console could be away from the organ, but connected to it by tubes through which air could be pushed to open the valves. In the most modern pipe organs, the manual is connected to the organ pipes by electric wires. The power to open and shut the valves is controlled by electro-magnetic switches. The console does not have to be close to the organ. This makes it possible for the organist to sit in a position where he/she has good contact with the people in the church, or with other musicians.


title: Pipe organ

text: A very small organ may only have one manual (keyboard). Most organs have at least two. In English and American Organs the lower manual is the main one and is called the "Great". The upper manual is called the "Swell" because it operates pipes which are inside a “swell box” which has shutters that can be opened or closed. This makes the music get louder or quieter (crescendo or diminuendo). The organist operates the swell box with a pedal which pivots (rocks to and fro). It is in the centre just above the pedal board. On old English organs the swell box is operated by a lever at the side. This is quite difficult to use. Most of these have now been replaced by central swell boxes.


title: Pipe organ

text: If there is a third manual, it is called the "Choir" in English-speaking countries. Originally the English called them “chair organs” because they were a separate instrument. The organist had to turn round and face the other way to play it. It is thought that the word "chair" gradually changed to "choir" because it was often used to accompany the choir. In German organs the third manual was called the “Positiv”. The name “Rückpositiv” (“back positive”) was used because the pipes were behind the organist’s back as he/she sat facing the main organ. These started to become popular again with organ builders in the 1950s when it was felt that the Romantic organ was not suitable for old music, and some organ builders started using Baroque principles again so that the music of composers such as Bach could sound like it used to. The Choir manual is nearest to the player, the Great is in the middle and the Swell is farthest away. The Choir or Positiv often contains soft stops which are suitable for accompanying the choir. On French organs from the late 19th century onwards, the three manuals are arranged differently: the Great (“Grande Orgue”) is nearest to the player, the “Positif” is the middle manual and is like a smaller version of the Great, and the Swell (“Recit”) is the top manual. This makes it easy for the organist to build up the music, getting louder gradually, by starting at the top and gradually coming down.


title: Pipe organ

text: The fourth manual is called the "Solo" because the stops on this manual are used to play out the tune as a solo. This manual is even farther away from the player than the Swell. Large cathedral organs usually have four manuals. The Solo will probably have a very loud stop indeed called the “Tuba” or “Tuba Mirabilis”.


title: Pipe organ

text: If there is a fifth manual it may be called the "Echo" because it has very quiet stops that echo. Alternatively, especially on American organs, it might be a "Bombarde". The Bombarde usually contains loud, bold reed stops, including stops called 'Bombarde'. For instance: a State Trumpet or Pontifical Trumpet might be placed on this manual which can be heard above all the other stops playing. The Bombarde is borrowed from French Organs where it is a standard stop on nearly all the manuals and pedals. Having a Bombarde Manual is something of a luxury for an organist. It can be found, for example, on the organ of Westminster Abbey.


title: Pipe organ

text: It is extremely unusual to have more than five manuals, but in America there are a few very large organs. The Wanamaker organ at Macy's store in Philadelphia has six manuals. The world’s largest organ is in the Atlantic City Convention Hall. It has seven manuals and over 33,000 pipes. However, the largest organ in the world does not work since it would be too expensive to run it.


title: Pipe organ

text: Having two or three manuals makes it possible to have quick changes of sound during a piece. The player can also play on two manuals at once: one with the left hand and one with the right. This is particularly useful to make a tune louder than the accompaniment (on a piano this can be done by pressing harder). The manuals can also be coupled together, for example, pulling out the “Swell to Great” stop will make all the sounds from the Swell come out on the Great as well. On an organ with mechanical action the keys of the Swell will be seen “playing by themselves” like a pianola, but on some older organs it can be hard work for the organist’s fingers when the manuals are coupled as it makes the action very heavy.


title: Pipe organ

text: The notes on the pedals are arranged like the notes on a keyboard, but are obviously much bigger. The player needs to learn to play by 'feel', otherwise he will have to spend all his time looking at his feet. He plays each note, either with the toe or the heel and either on the inside of the foot or the outside. The American and British Standard organ contains 30 notes giving a range of nearly 2 octaves (C to F, or sometimes C to G: 32 notes). They are not quite in a straight line but fan out a little to make it easier to play (it is called a "radiating, concave pedalboard"). In German and French organs and organs built before 1920, the pedalboard will be straight without any fan curvature to it. Many organists find that this makes it more difficult to play. Organists need a good pair of shoes: ones which have good narrow heels and preferably pointed toes. The soles need to be fairly slippery, but not too much, so that the player can slide the foot from one pedal to another. Organists usually like to keep a pair of shoes which are worn only for playing the organ so that the soles do not have grit or dirt from the street.


title: Pipe organ

text: The stops on an organ console give different sounds, like the instruments of an orchestra, and have names which tell the organist what kind of sound they will produce. The stops are usually to the left and right of the organist and they are pulled out (“drawstops” or “pulls” because they are “drawn” i.e. pulled). Some organs have “tab stops” or “rocker stops” which are in front of the player and can be rocked forwards and backwards for on/off.


title: Pipe organ

text: The "chorus" stops are the foundation stops, the basic ones which are good for building up the big, solid sound. A "diapason" or "principal" is a chorus stop.


title: Pipe organ

text: The "flute" stops sound like flutes in an orchestra. They are gentler than the diapasons and sound good for very quick and light music.


title: Pipe organ

text: The "reeds" are stops like the "oboe", "clarinet", "trumpet", "fagotto", "trombone". Each pipe has a reed inside. Their sound is very strong and nasal (like speaking through the nose).


title: Pipe organ

text: The "strings" are quiet stops which sound like string instruments. These are stops like the "violone" and "gamba".


title: Pipe organ

text: There is another way of grouping the stops. Each stop will have a number underneath the name. The number may be 16, 8, 4, 2, 1 or even 2 2/3 or 1 3/5. If the number is 8 this is called an “eight foot stop”. This is the normal pitch: the note will sound as it is written, e.g. when playing Middle C the sound will be Middle C. A 4-foot stop will sound an octave higher than written, a 2-foot stop will be two octaves higher. A 16-foot stop will sound an octave lower than an 8-foot stop. 8 foot is therefore the normal pitch, and the others are added to it to make a larger, brighter sound. 16 foot stops are normal in pedal parts.


title: Pipe organ

text: Mutation stops are stops in which a note does not sound a whole number of octaves above the normal pitch. Examples are the Tierce 1 3/5 (which sounds 2 octaves and a third above) and the Nazard or Twelfth 2 2/3 (one octave and a fifth).


title: Pipe organ

text: An organist needs to learn which combinations of stops sound good together and how to balance them well. Each organ is different and has its own character.


title: Pipe organ

text: The combination of stops that an organist chooses for a particular piece of music is called the “registration”. The list of all the stops that a particular organ has is called the “specification”. The specification of an organ shows the names of the stops for each of the manuals and for the pedals, as well as the list of couplers.


title: Pipe organ

text: Organs also have buttons called “pistons” which help to change the registration in the middle of a piece. There are “toe pistons” operated by the feet, and “thumb pistons” which are placed just below each manual so that they can be pushed by the thumb while the fingers keep playing. Large organs often have “general pistons” which change any combination of stops across the organ. These are often be computerised so that players can set them up differently depending on the music they are going to play. If several players regularly use the instrument they can each have their own personal settings for the pistons which they can lock so that no one else can change them.


title: Pipe organ

text: Each stop controls a row of pipes, called a “rank”. Each rank makes a different sound (one row for the “diapason” sound, another row for the “flute”, another for the “trumpet” and so on). The stops control the air flow through the ranks. Some stops may control more than one rank. For instance, a Mixture stop of three ranks will have 182 pipes (3 ranks of 61 pipes each) and in some organs the Celeste is a 2 rank stop. The celeste pipes are tuned slightly sharper than the rest of the organ so that, when played together with another quiet stop such as the Salicional, there will be a pleasant throbbing beat because two pipes are slightly out of tune with one another. Organ Pipes are normally made of metal or wood. High quality metal organ pipes usually contain 75 percent tin or more, and the rest is lead. The Pipes are placed on windchests inside an "organ case" in a special room called an Organ chamber. A windchest is a box-like device which contains pallets that are opened and closed to admit air to a pipe so that it sounds. The pallets are operated by pull wires and rollers in the case of a tracker instrument but may also be operated by pneumatics or direct electric action using magnets.


title: Pipe organ

text: There is always air being pumped into the windchest when the organ is switched on. In the days before electricity someone (an organ blower) had to pump the air into the windchest using bellows. This was hard work. Large organs would have needed more than one organ blower to do this job.


title: Pipe organ

text: No other instrument has developed in such a wide variety of ways as the organ. If Bach, who lived in the early 18th century, had gone from his home in Germany to France, he would have found it impossible to play his music properly on French organs. If Couperin, who lived at the same time, had gone from his home in France to Germany, he would not have been able to play his music on the organs that Bach was using. Neither of them could possibly have played on an organ in England at the time. For one thing, English organs in the 18th century still had no pedals. This means that organists need to know a lot about what organs were like in other countries in other centuries in order to know what registrations to use when playing music by composers of the past.


title: Pipe organ

text: The earliest organs were water organs invented in Ancient Greece. The Romans used them in circuses and gladiator combats because they were loud. They were still popular in some countries a few hundred years ago, for example, in pleasure gardens.


title: Pipe organ

text: In the Middle Ages large organs were built in the huge Gothic cathedrals in Britain. These instruments did not have different stops: all the ranks sounded at once. They were played by a slider mechanism. Only in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries did they start to use a keyboard. The so-called "Mixture Organ" (or "Blockwerk") still sounded several pitches at once. Very small organs called "portatives" (because they could be carried) were used in processions. "Positives" were a bit bigger and were used to accompany singing in the church. The "Regal" was like a portative but it had reeds and no pipes. It could be put on a table. The world's oldest organ is generally agreed to be the one built at Sion, Switzerland in the 15th century. the organ.


title: Pipe organ

text: By about 1450, the organs that were being built in Germany and the Netherlands had two or three manuals and pedals. There were stops so that the player could choose which ranks he wanted to sound. The collection of pieces called the "Buxheimer Orgelbuch" (about 1470), is one of the first collections we have of organ music. French organs, too, were developing. In England, organs were quite small. Composers like John Bull, William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons wrote music for chamber organs. In the Netherlands Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck was a very famous organist and teacher.


title: Pipe organ

text: The Baroque period was a great period for organ music in Germany. Organs there were built on the "Werkprinzip" (literally: "work principle") which meant that each keyboard with its pipes was built separately, like two or three different organs, although they were played from the same console. Organs like these were built by the famous Arp Schnitger (1648-1719). Many famous German composers wrote organ music, especially Johann Pachelbel (1653-1709) in South Germany and (Dietrich Buxtehude) (1637-1707) in North Germany. The great composer Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) learnt from these composers and wrote some of the most famous organ music of all times. The great organ builder Gottfried Silbermann (1683-1753) lived during this time and built organs with a very beautiful tone. Instead of a keyboard called a Choir (or Chair Organ) he built an "Oberwerk" which was above the "Hauptwerk" (Great).


title: Pipe organ

text: French organ builders at this time were very interested in colour (meaning: different sounds). Many stops had names like Cornet, Tierce and Prestant. When all the stops of the Principal chorus played together it was called the "Plein jeux". This was like the medieval Blockwerk. All the reed chorus together was called "Grand jeux". This would have sounded very loud and was used for dialogues and fugues. Composers included Nicolas de Grigny (1672-1703), Louis Marchand (1669-1732), Louis Nicolas Clérambault (1676-1749), Louis Claude Daquin (1694-1772) and François Couperin (1683-1733).


title: Pipe organ

text: In England there was not much interest in developing the organ. It was used for accompanying the choir. There were no pedals. Pieces for organ were called voluntaries. Henry Purcell wrote a few organ pieces.


title: Pipe organ

text: Organ composition reached a great peak in the work of J.S.Bach, but then people started to lose interest. Not many developments took place in organ-building during the Classical music period. Although Mozart played the organ and called it the “King of Instruments” he did not often write music for it. Among the organ builders at this time were Joseph and Claude-Ignace Callinet who built the organ at Notre-Dame's (St. Etienne, Loire) in 1837.


title: Pipe organ

text: The organ in 19th century Germany started to be used for imitating the sound of an orchestra. People also started to be interested in playing the music of J.S. Bach. Many Classical organs were re-built and sometimes they lost their original character. Organs in different countries started to sound the same.


title: Pipe organ

text: Gradually, composers started writing for the organ again. Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) wrote some excellent sonatas and preludes and fugues which were inspired by Bach’s music and made other composers want to write organ music. Robert Schumann (1810-1856) and Franz Liszt (1811-1886) wrote for the organ and later in the century Max Reger (1873-1916) and Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933).


title: Pipe organ

text: In France, the organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll (1811-1899) was a real genius. His organs had lots of new ideas including the Barker lever (which made it easier to play on coupled manuals) and placing families of stops on to separate chests. Organists could change their registrations quickly, pushing in or pulling out the stops that they needed. Composers included César Franck (1822-1890), Charles-Marie Widor (1845-1937) and Louis Vierne (1870-1937). The last two wrote long works in several movements which they called Symphonies because they were full of colourful sounds like those in a symphony orchestra. There were usually three manuals called "Grand", "Positif" and "Récit" placed in that order (with Grand nearest to the player). The Grand had warm foundation stops and big reeds (it was like combining the classical plein jeux and grand jeux). The Positif had string stops as well as a solo reed, and the Récit had lighter reeds.


title: Pipe organ

text: In England, Samuel Wesley (1766-1837) wrote some important organ music inspired by J.S. Bach, and his son Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810-1876) was influenced by Continental Romantic composers such as Mendelssohn. In 1851, the organ builder Henry Willis built a large organ for Crystal Palace Exhibition. It had three manuals and a pedal board. This set the standard in English organ building for the future.


title: Pipe organ

text: During the 20th century organ builders became more and more interested in returning to some of the ideas of the Baroque and Classical periods. Many organs now have electric action, but a good mechanical action has the advantage that the player feels more close to the instrument that he is playing. Some large 20th century organs are able to play many kinds of organ music. Other 20th century organs were built as copies of Baroque or Classical instruments, but this means these instruments are mainly suitable for Baroque or Classical music, and are not well suited for music of the 19th and 20th centuries.


title: Pipe organ

text: In the 19th century, many organs in England and America were placed in corners of churches where they could not be heard very well. In the 20th century, organ builders thought more about the best position for the organ, so that the sound would fill the main part of the church, the nave.


title: Pipe organ

text: Among the most famous 20th century organ composers are Marcel Dupré (1886-1971), Jehan Alain (1911-1940) and Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) in France, Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) in Germany, and Edward Elgar (1857-1934) and Herbert Howells (1892-1983) in England. The Czech composer Petr Eben (1929-2007) was one of the most important organ composers at the end of the 20th century, writing in an individual style.


title: Pipe organ

text: As well as the obvious use of the organ for accompanying church choirs and congregational singing the organ has often been used to accompany instruments. In the Baroque period small organs were used to accompany solo instruments or small groups of instruments or orchestras. This kind of accompaniment was called continuo. Occasionally composers have written organ concertos in which the organ is the solo instrument and the orchestra accompanies. Handel wrote several of these. In modern times Francis Poulenc wrote an organ concerto. There is an important organ solo in Symphony no 3 by Saint-Saëns. Other orchestral works sometimes have organ parts. Organists have often made organ “transcriptions”, i.e. arranged music written for other instruments so that it can be played on the organ.


title: Nitrogen

text: Nitrogen is a nonmetal chemical element. The atmosphere contains more than 78 percent of nitrogen. It has the chemical symbol N and atomic number 7. Its stable inside typically contains 14 nucleons (7 protons and 7 neutrons). It has 5 electrons in its outer shell.


title: Nitrogen

text: Nitrogen is a colorless odorless gas at normal temperature. It is normally attached to another nitrogen atom, making a nitrogen molecule (N). This bond is very strong. That is why many explosives contain nitrogen. The bond is broken when the explosive is made. When it explodes the bond reforms, releasing a lot of energy.


title: Nitrogen

text: It turns into a liquid at -195.8°C and turns into a solid at -210°C. If it is compressed, it can be turned into a liquid without making it cold.


title: Nitrogen

text: It usually does not combine with other atoms because its strong bond prevents it from reacting. Lithium is one of the few chemical elements that react with nitrogen without being heated. Magnesium can burn in nitrogen. Nitrogen also makes blue electric sparks. The blue color is caused by the atoms being excited. When they get normal again, they release light. When nitrogen is excited, it reacts with many things that it does not normally react with.


title: Nitrogen

text: Many chemical compounds that are important for industrial purposes contain nitrogen ions. These include ammonia, nitric acid, nitrates and cyanides. Nitrogen comes in several oxidation states; -3, -2, -/, +1, +3, +4, and +5. Each of those oxidation states has its set of compounds.


title: Nitrogen

text: Compounds in the -3 oxidation state are weak reducing agents. These include ammonia, ammonium, amide and nitrides. Amino acids and proteins contain nitrogen in this oxidation state. Hydrazine, a compound in the -2 oxidation state, is a strong reducing agent. Azides contain nitrogen in the -/ oxidation state. They are extremely powerful reducing agents, and most are very toxic.


title: Nitrogen

text: Nitrous oxide contains nitrogen in the +1 oxidation state. It is used as an anesthetic. Compounds containing nitrogen in the +2 oxidation state, such as nitric oxide, are reducing agents. +3 oxidation state compounds are strong oxidizing agents and weak reducing agents. Nitrites are the most common +3 compounds. Compounds in the +4 oxidation state are strong oxidizing agents. They include nitrogen dioxide and dinitrogen tetroxide.


title: Nitrogen

text: Compounds containing nitrogen in the +5 oxidation state are strong oxidizing agents. They are one of the more common groups of nitrogen compounds. They include nitric acid and dinitrogen pentoxide. They also include nitrates, which are used in explosives such as dynamite, nitroglycerin and trinitrotoluene.


title: Nitrogen

text: Air is made up of about 78% nitrogen and about 20.95% oxygen, < 1% argon, and traces of other gasses such as carbon dioxide, and water vapor, among others. It is also in a few nitrates in the ground. Ammonium minerals are rare. Nitrogen is in proteins.


title: Nitrogen

text: Pure liquid nitrogen can be made by cooling air. The nitrogen turns into a liquid at a different temperature than the oxygen. It can also be made by heating certain chemical compounds, such as sodium azide.


title: Nitrogen

text: Nitrogen as an element is used to prevent things from reacting with the oxygen in the air. It can be used to fill crisp bags and incandescent bulbs. It is also used to fill some tires. It can be used to make electric components like transistors. Liquid nitrogen can be used to freeze things.


title: Nitrogen

text: Nitrogen compounds have many uses, such as anesthetics (nitrous oxide), explosives (dynamite), cleaners (ammonia), and meat (protein), and planes (fuel).


title: Nitrogen

text: Nitrogen is also used as a way to relieve body aches. It contributes to the torn bones in your body and helps.


title: Nitrogen

text: Nitrogen was discovered by Daniel Rutherford in 1772, who called it "noxious gas" or "fixed gas". They discovered that part of air did not burn. It was found that animals died in it. It was known as "azote". Many nitrogen compounds also contain the "azide" or "azine" letters, such as hydrazine.


title: Nitrogen

text: In 1910, Lord Rayleigh found out that when a spark was passed through nitrogen, it made a reactive form of nitrogen. This nitrogen reacted with many metals and compounds.


title: China Airlines Flight 611

text: China Airlines Flight 611 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Taipei to Hong Kong, China. On May 25, 2002, the Boeing 747-209B airplane broke apart while flying over the Taiwan Straits and crashed into the water. It happened about 25 minutes after takeoff. The accident was caused by metal fatigue in the rear part of the plane. This was traced back to an incorrect repair that was done 22 years before the accident. All 225 people on board the plane were killed.


title: China Airlines Flight 611

text: The Boeing 747-209B that flew China Airlines Flight 611 was registered as B-1866. This was changed to B-18255 on May 18, 1999. The plane was delivered to China Airlines on July 31, 1979. It was powered by 4 Pratt & Whitney JT9D engines. At time of crash it had flown for 64,394 hours, taking off and landing 21,180 times.


title: China Airlines Flight 611

text: On February 7, 1980 the tail of the plane struck the runway while landing at Hong Kong airport. The plane was then ferried back to Taipei. A temporary repair was done on February 8, 1980, while a permanent repair was done from May 23 to 26, 1980. Later it was discovered the repair was not done to Boeing repair standards. It was also discovered that from 1997 a total of 29 corrosion inspections were not completed. When the repair patch was recovered from the crash site, there was evidence that deep scratches had been polished out, thinning the metal. Several fatigue cracks were found in the scratches. Crash estimate a crack of about 71 inches may have caused the plane to break up.


title: China Airlines Flight 611

text: The captain was Yi Ching-Fung (in Traditional Chinese, 易清豐), who was 51 years old. He joined China Airlines in 1991 before becoming a captain in 1997. He had flown for 10,148 hours. First Officer Hsieh Ya Shiung (In Traditional Chinese, 謝亞雄), who was 52 years old, joined China Airlines in 1990. He had flown for a total of 10,173 hours.


title: China Airlines Flight 611

text: As the Boeing 747-200B was an older type of airplane, a flight engineer was needed. The flight engineer on this flight was Sen Kuo Chao (in Traditional Chinese, 趙盛國). He joined China Airlines in 1977 and had a total flying time of 19,117 hours.


title: China Airlines Flight 611

text: On the flight to Hong Kong, there were 190 Taiwanese passengers. Of the rest 16, 9 were from the People's Republic Of China and 5 were from Hong Kong. There were also 1 Singaporean and 1 Swiss.


title: China Airlines Flight 611

text: On May 25, 2002, B-18255 was actually going to be sold to Orient Thai Airlines. This was the plane's last day of service with China Airlines. Takeoff was at 3.07 pm, and the plane was cleared to climb to 20,000 feet. At 3.16 pm the plane was again cleared to climb and maintain 35,000 feet. At about 3.30 pm, the plane was about to reach 35,000 feet when it suddenly disappeared from the radar systems of the air traffic controllers. Communications were also lost. No distress signals were sent out. However, two Cathay Pacific planes nearby received flight 611's emergency location-indicator signals.


title: China Airlines Flight 611

text: Later, the investigators discovered that flight 611 broke apart in mid-air when as it was reaching 35,000 feet. All 225 people on the plane were killed. This was one of the worst disaster in aviation history involving explosive decompression. China Airlines has had nine fatal crashes between 1970 and 2002. This is the worst record in commercial aviation.


title: China Airlines Flight 611

text: Shortly after the plane vanished, Taiwan launched one of the country's largest search-and-rescue operations. As the plane broke apart in mid-air, wreckage were spread over a large area and this makes it difficult to recover all the wreckage. When the search-and-rescue teams arrived, they realised they could not do anything; all 225 people onboard were dead.


title: China Airlines Flight 611

text: When there was no more hope for survivors, the teams started to recover wreckage and human remains. These were sent to Penghu Islands. There, the wreckage were numbered and the human remains were sent for identification. In the end, out of 225 people on board, 175 bodies were recovered. 50 remain in the sea.


title: China Airlines Flight 611

text: The investigation of the crash was by Aviation Safety Council (ASC) of Taiwan. During the investigation, it was found that the crash of China Airlines Flight 611 was similar with another crash, TWA flight 800. Investigators found out that both crashes had similar points such as:


title: China Airlines Flight 611

text: However, unlike flight 800, investigators determined that flight 611 was not caused by a fuel tank explosion.


title: China Airlines Flight 611

text: As the investigation continues, both recorders of the flight were recovered. However, investigators could not find any possible cause from the recorders as the flight data recorder showed that the plane was working properly before it broke up. The cockpit voice recorder also showed nothing unusual. The recorder started ten minutes before the flight. After a last sentence said by captain Yi Ching-Fung, "two thousand" at 3.26pm, the recorder captured nothing more spoken. Then, the sound of the plane breaking up was heard at about 3.29pm.


title: China Airlines Flight 611

text: With nothing possible showing up, investigators decided to use a method that the investigators of TWA Flight 800 used. Using several pieces of wreckage, investigators were able to use a computer and find out which piece fell off first. This provided a major clue-the wreckage from the back of the plane fell first. So, investigators began looking for wreckage from the back of the plane.


title: China Airlines Flight 611

text: Finally, investigators managed to find a piece of wreckage which was damaged in the tailstrike incident in 1980. A doubler plate was placed over the scratches that the tailstrike caused. The piece, item number 640, was sent to Taipei for further examination.


title: China Airlines Flight 611

text: When investigators removed the doubler that was installed over Item 640, they found out that the scratches, caused by the tailstrike 22 years ago, were still there. This was not the proper way to repair the damage from the tailstrike. From this investigators found out what really happened 22 years ago.


title: China Airlines Flight 611

text: According to the Boeing SRM (Structural Repair Manual), the scratches should be sanded down. But as the scratches caused by the tailstrike were too deep, the correct way to repair is to cut out the damaged section, then put a doubler plate that is 30% larger than the section that was cut out. However, in the repair of the accident plane, the workers did not follow the instructions. Instead they just placed a doubler plate over the damaged section, which was not 30% larger than the section that was supposed to be cut out. This weakened the structure behind the doubler. The workers then made one more mistake, by writing in the repair log that the repair was done correctly. So, anyone reading the log book would assume that the repair was done correctly and that the workers had cut out the damaged section and replaced it.


title: China Airlines Flight 611

text: Over the years, the cracks under the doubler grew worse and worse. Every time the plane took off and landed the cracks increased in length, in the end reaching 2.3 metres. Then, on May 25, 2002, the cracks reached the breaking point. It grew in all directions and caused the whole tail to break away from the plane. The plane went into a steep dive and was torn apart.


title: China Airlines Flight 611

text: Another possible reason why the mistake could not be found out is that the maintenance procedures of China Airlines. In 1988, the roof of Aloha Airlines Flight 243 peeled off when the plane was cruising, causing explosive decompression. The plane landed safely. After the accident, the FAA ordered that the airlines evaluate again all the previous repairs that was done on planes.


title: China Airlines Flight 611

text: China Airlines began evaluating the repairs in 2001. The workers took photographs of 31 different doublers on different 747s, including the one on B-18255. Although there was a stain on the doubler, the workers chose to ignore it. The stain was actually caused by smoke as passengers were allowed to smoke until 1995. The smoke was forced out through the crack and nicotine stained the plane's skin. It was said in Mayday that if China Airlines went on to find out how the stain formed, they may find out the cracks and prevent the crash.


title: China Airlines Flight 611

text: The workers then scheduled the next maintenance check, 7C, on November 2, 2002. The check would definitely have led the workers to find out the cracks. However, the plane crashed 5 months before the check.


title: Writing's on the Wall (Sam Smith song)

text: "Writing's on the Wall" is a song by British singer Sam Smith. It was the theme song for the "James Bond" movie "Spectre" in 2015. The song was released as a digital download on 25 September 2015. The song was written by Smith and Jimmy Napes, and produced by Napes, Steve Fitzmaurice and Disclosure. It was released on 25 September 2015.


title: Writing's on the Wall (Sam Smith song)

text: "Writing's on the Wall" received mixed reviews, especially when compared to other Bond theme songs. The mixed reception to the song led to Shirley Bassey being a popular topic on Twitter on the day it was released.


title: Writing's on the Wall (Sam Smith song)

text: The single became the first Bond movie theme to reach number 1 in the UK Singles Chart. It also reached the Top 10 in a few other European countries. Unlike other James Bond themes, it was not as successful outside Europe. It only peaked at Number 43 in Canada and Australia and Number 71 on the "Billboard" Hot 100. Only the instrumental version of the song appeared on the movie's official soundtrack album.


title: Writing's on the Wall (Sam Smith song)

text: The song won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song at the 73rd Golden Globe Awards and the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 88th Academy Awards.


title: Fibonacci number

text: The Fibonacci numbers are a sequence of numbers in mathematics named after Leonardo of Pisa, known as Fibonacci. Fibonacci wrote a book in 1202, called "Liber Abaci" ("Book of Calculation"), which introduced the number pattern to Western European mathematics, although mathematicians in India already knew about it.


title: Fibonacci number

text: The first number of the pattern is 0, the second number is 1, and each number after that is equal to adding the two numbers right before it together. For example 0+1=1 and 3+5=8. This sequence goes on forever.


title: Fibonacci number

text: For this to make sense, at least two starting points need to be given. Here, formula_2 and formula_3.


title: Fibonacci number

text: Fibonacci numbers are related to the "golden ratio", which shows up in many places in buildings and in nature. Some examples are the pattern of leaves on a stem, the parts of a pineapple, the flowering of artichoke, the uncurling of a fern and the arrangement of a pine cone. The Fibonacci numbers are also found in the family tree of honeybees.


title: Fibonacci number

text: The nth Fibonacci number can be written in terms of the golden ratio. This avoids having to use recursion to calculate Fibonacci numbers, which can take a computer a long time to do.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Microsoft Excel (full name Microsoft Office Excel) is a part of Microsoft Office. It is also available on Mac. It is made by Microsoft and it is proprietary software. It is used on the operating systems Microsoft Windows and macOS. It can do calculations and graphics. For example, it can make charts and other pictures from data tables. It also has a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). Excel is part of Microsoft Office. The current versions are 2016 for Windows and 2016 for Mac.


title: Xin Zhui

text: Xin Zhui (213 BC-163 BC) also known as Lady Dai or the Diva Mummy is a 2,100-year-old mummy from the Western Han Dynasty. To date, she is the best preserved ancient human ever found. She was the wife of Li Cang, the marquis of Dai. She had gained fame more than 2,000 years after her death. This was when her tomb was discovered inside a hill in Hunan, China. She and her jewels are located at the Hunan Provincial Museum.


title: Xin Zhui

text: In 1971, her mummified body was found. All her organs and blood vessels were still seen. They found out that she had Type A blood. Her skin was still elastic. Her joints could still be moved. She still had her eyelashes and hair in her nostrils. Lady Dai was overweight. She suffered from diabetes. She also had high blood pressure, clogged arteries and her heart was badly damaged.


title: Xin Zhui

text: Xin died from a heart attack because of poor health conditions at the time. She also suffered internal parasites and had gallstones logged in her gall bladder. She had also suffered a lot of pain from a fused spinal disc.


"(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me" is a pop song written in the 1960s by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. The song is about breaking up with a lover and wanting to forget about them. However, something always reminds the singer of them.


title: (There's) Always Something There to Remind Me

text: The song was originally recorded by Dionne Warwick. Lou Johnson charted his version first in the summer of 1964. His version peaked at #49. Other versions of the song were by Sandie Shaw and Naked Eyes. The latter was a Top 20 single. The Naked Eyes song peaked at #8 on "Billboard" Hot 100 in June 1983.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: The Battle of Iwo Jima was the American capture of the Japanese island of Iwo Jima during the Pacific Campaign of World War II. The USA needed to capture Iwo Jima to be able to defeat Japan. Many films were made about it, for example "Flags of our Fathers" and "Letters from Iwo Jima", that were both directed by Clint Eastwood.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: It lasted from 19 February – 26 March 1945. It was a major battle in which the United States Armed Forces captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Japanese Empire.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: The Americans wanted to capture the island, including its three airfields, and use this area for attacks on the Japanese main islands. This five-week battle had violent fighting.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: After suffering such heavy losses, people questioned why the US went into the battle. The island was not useful for the Navy or Air Force.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: The Imperial Japanese Army had thick defenses and underground tunnels for cover. The Americans had ships that could fire on the island and total control of the air.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: The Japanese general, Tadamichi Kuribayashi, and his soldiers refused to surrender. He and his officers said they would fight until they died.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: There were 22,000 Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima at the beginning of the battle, and only 216 were taken prisoner at the end.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: With no retreat and no possibility of reinforcements, the Japanese had dug in and prepared to fight until they died. This meant that winning the battle, meant the Americans would have to destroy the entire Japanese force stationed on the island.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: The battle was made famous by Joe Rosenthal's photograph of the raising of the U.S. flag on top of the Mount Suribachi.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: This photo became an important image of this battle, of the war in the Pacific, and of the Marine Corps.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: After the Americans captured the Marshall Islands in January 1944, the Japanese military leaders thought about their situation.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: It looked like the Americans would go toward the Mariana Islands and the Carolines. The Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy (I.J.N.) set up a line of defences.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: In March 1945, the Japanese 31st Army, commanded by General Hideyoshi Obata, was ordered to defend this line.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: The commander of the Japanese group on Chichi Jima was placed in command of Army and Navy units in the Volcano Islands. The Americans had started bombing Japan every day after they captured the Marianas. The Japanese were using Iwo Jima to transmit radio reports of American bomber activity.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: After the U.S. captured bases in the Marshalls in February 1944, Japanese Army and Navy troops were sent to Iwo Jima. Iwo Jima had more than 5,000 men.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: The loss of the Marianas during the summer of 1944 made the Japanese worried about the Volcano Islands. They knew that the Americans could launch airattacks on Japan if these islands were captured. However, it was hard for Japan to defend the Volcano Islands because the Imperial Japanese Navy had lost almost all of its ships.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: Japan could not build new airplanes until March or April 1945. Even then, these planes could not fly to Iwo Jima from Japan. Japan did mot have enough pilots and other aircrew.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: Iwo Jima was important for two reasons: it was an air base for Japanese fighter planes, and it was a safe place for Japanese ships. In addition, it was used by the Japanese to do air attacks on the Mariana Islands.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: Capturing Iwo Jima would deny the air base from the Japanese and provide a place from which to launch the invasion of Japan.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: When the US decided to invade Iwo Jima, experts thought it would be captured in one week, but hundreds of tons of Allied bombs had not harmed the entrenched Japanese defenders.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: By June 1944, Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi was ordered to defend Iwo Jima. He knew that Japan could not win the battle, but hoped to inflict enough casualties to dissuade the Allies from invading Japan.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: Kuribayashi created strong defences with heavy weapons such as heavy machine guns and artillery. Extensive tunnels were dug, and Land mines were placed all over the island.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: Starting on 15 June 1944, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Army Air Forces began to attack the island. Naval artillery shellings and air bombings were done for nine months. Each heavy warship fired for approximately six hours.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: These efforts failed to achieve desired effects due to the Japanese defenses. The American bombings continued until 19 February 1945: the day the Marines landed on the island.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: At 08:59, 30,000 Marines began landing on the island. The Japanese held their fire for some time while men and material began to fill the beaches. Then the Japanese opened fire, and many in the first group of Marines were killed by the machine guns.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: Japanese heavy artillery was protected by steel doors that closed to protect the guns between shots. This made it difficult for American units to destroy Japanese artillery. The Japanese soldiers hid in the tunnel system.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: With tanks, naval artillery, and air bombing on Mount Suribachi, the Marines were able to get past the beaches. About 40,000 more Marines landed later.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: The fighting on Iwo Jima was very violent. The Marines’ advance was stopped by defensive positions and artillery. The Marines used flamethrowers and grenades to kill Japanese troops in the tunnels.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: Eight Sherman M4A3R3 medium tanks with a flamethrower destroyed Japanese defences. The Japanese ran out of water, food, and supplies. The Japanese made more nighttime attacks. Most Japanese soldiers fought to the death.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: "Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima" is a photograph taken on 23 February 1945 by Joe Rosenthal. It shows five Marines and a U.S. Navy corpsman raising the flag of the United States on Mount Suribachi. The photograph was popular. It won a Pulitzer Prize for Photography.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: The Japanese still held positions on the north end. Kuribayashi had eight infantry battalions, a tank regiment, two artillery battalions, and three heavy mortar battalions. He also had about 5,000 gunners and naval infantry.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: The Marines attacked in the darkness with no bombing before the attack. Many Japanese soldiers were killed while still sleeping.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: On the evening of 8 March, Captain Samaji Inouye and his 1,000 men attacked the Americans causing 347 casualties (90 deaths). The Marines counted 784 dead Japanese soldiers the next day.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: There was also a "kamikaze" air attack on the ships anchored at sea on 21 February. This sunk the escort carrier and severely damaged the . There was minor damage to the escort carrier , an LST, and a transport.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: On 16 March, Kuribayashi's soldiers were still alive on the northwestern end of the island. On 21 March, the Marines blew up the Japanese with four tons of explosives. On 24 March, Marines sealed up the caves.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: A 300-man Japanese force attacked Airfield No. 2. There was a 90-minute fight and it suffered heavy casualties (53 killed, 120 wounded). The island was finally captured at 09:00 on 26 March.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: In the Pacific the United States used the M2 flamethrower. These flamethrowers were used to kill Japanese in caves. Marines also had flamethrowers on tanks which were used during battle. They were less useful because of Iwo Jima's rough land. Many other infantry weapons were utilized, including the infamous M1 Garand.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: Of the 22,060 Japanese soldiers on the island, 18,844 died from fighting or by suicide. Only 216 were captured during the battle. After Iwo Jima, 3,000 hid in the tunnels.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: The 36-day battle for Iwo Jima resulted in more than 26,000 American casualties, including 6,800 dead. By comparison, the 82-day battle for Okinawa resulted in casualties of over 62,000, of whom over 12,000 were killed or missing. Iwo Jima was also the only U.S. Marine battle where the Americans suffered more casualties than the Japanese.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: Because they had all been removed, there were no civilian casualties at Iwo Jima, unlike at Saipan and Okinawa.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: Iwo Jima was not used by the US Army Air Corp to drop the atomic bombs on Japan. Tinian was the Island both bombers left to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were 12 hours out and back.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: The argument for capturing Iwo Jima was that it provided a landing and refueling airfield for fighter escorts. Yet, only ten missions were ever flown from Iwo Jima.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: Japanese fighter aircraft based on Iwo Jima sometimes attacked the US forces. Only 11 B-29s were lost.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: The Japanese on Iwo Jima had radar and could notify Japanese forces at home of B-29 Superfortresses flying from the Mariana Islands.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: On 19 February 1985, the 40th anniversary of the landings, an event called the Reunion of Honor was held. The veterans of both sides who fought in the battle of Iwo Jima attended the event. A memorial was built. Representatives of both countries shook hands.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: The importance of the battle to Marines today can be seen. Marines go to the island and to the summit of Suribachi.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: The Japanese government continues to search for the bodies of Japanese military troops who were killed during the battle.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration awarded by the United States government. It is given to a member of the United States armed forces who show bravery and risks his life in a battle. The medal is often awarded after death. It has been given only 3,464 times.


title: Battle of Iwo Jima

text: During this one-month-long battle, 27 U.S. military personnel were given the Medal of Honor for their actions, 14 of them after death.


title: Execution

text: Execution is where state authorities kill someone for having committed an extremely serious crime, usually treason or especially terrible murders. In most countries where the death penalty is still provided for by law, using it is an option available to the sentencing judge: even if the jury or judicial panel recommends the death penalty, the presiding judge still has the option to lock the convicted person in a prison for the rest of their life. A person whose job is to execute others is an executioner.


title: Execution

text: Beheading means cutting the person's head off. It is one of the oldest execution methods and mentioned in the Bible. Beheading used to be the standard method of execution in Scandinavia and Germany. Commoners were usually beheaded with an axe and noblemen with a sword. A special device, like the guillotine, may be used, as in France. Nazi Germany used the guillotine to execute criminal convicts, such as murderers.


title: Execution

text: Many countries formerly used beheading as an execution for important people, including England. In England, many noblemen and even some kings and queens have been beheaded. There, the prisoner would be led up the scaffold and might be allowed a last speech. Then, he/she would be blindfolded and put his/her neck onto a block. Then, the executioner would lift up his axe and swing it down onto the victim's neck. If the executioner was skilled and the axe was sharp, then the axe would usually cut through the bone and organs of the victim in one stroke. But if the executioner was inexperienced, then it might take several strokes before the head was cut off.


title: Execution

text: Many countries do not allow executions as punishment any more, because it is too violent or immoral. However, many states of the United States and some other countries use it. In the United States, less violent ways of execution are used than in the past. Here are some ways of executing people:


title: Lemmy

text: Ian Fraser "Lemmy" Kilmister (24 December 1945 – 28 December 2015), commonly known by Lemmy, was a British musician, singer-songwriter and actor. He was best known as the bassist of the heavy metal band Motörhead.


title: Lemmy

text: Lemmy was born in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England. He went to school at Ysgol Syr Thomas Jones in Amlwch, Wales. At age 16 he attended a concert by The Beatles in the Cavern Club. Lemmy liked the sarcastic attitude of the Beatles, especially John Lennon. Around that time he began playing guitar in small local bands like The Sundowners.


title: Lemmy

text: In mid-1960, he played guitar in bands like The Rainmakers, then The Motown Sect, playing clubs in the north. In 1965, he joined the band The Rockin 'Vickers, and signed a contract with CBS. The band released three single albums and toured Europe. In 1967, he moved to London and got a job as a roadie on The Jimi Hendrix Experience. In 1968, he recorded an album titled "Escalator" with the band Sam Gopal. After that, Lemmy met Simon King in a shopping center in Chelsea and then joined the band Opal Butterfly for a short period.


title: Lemmy

text: Lemmy joined the Ladbroke Grove rock band Hawkwind as a bassist and vocalist. He gained experience as a bassist, because until then he had only worked as a guitarist. Lemmy was also lead vocals on several songs for the band.


title: Lemmy

text: In 1975, Lemmy founded a new band called Bastard with guitarist Larry Wallis and Lucas Fox on drums. Later, Lemmy changed the name of the band to Motörhead. Wallis and Fox left the band and were replaced by the guitarist Eddie Clarke and drummer Phil "Philthy Animal" Taylor. This new formation would begin Motörhead's success in live performances. In 1977, the band recorded their first album, "Motörhead", released 24 September 1977. The second album, titled "Overkill", contained two songs that would become Motörhead classics: "Louie Louie" and "Overkill". The peak of the band was 1980 and 1981 with a series of chart hits in the UK, including the classic single "Ace of Spades", one of the biggest hits of the band.


title: Lemmy

text: Motörhead's members changed throughout the band's career, but Lemmy remained on bass and vocals from their start 1975 until today.


title: Lemmy

text: Lemmy's career as an actor began by playing small roles in low-budget UK films "Eat the Rich" (1988) and "Hardware" (1990). His credits include "Terror Firmer" (1998), "Frezno Smooth" (1999), and "Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV" (2000).


title: Lemmy

text: On 28 December 2015, Lemmy died of prostate cancer, cardiac arrhythmia and congestive heart failure at his home in Los Angeles, California at the age of 70.


title: Arabic alphabet

text: The Arabic alphabet is an abjad that is used to write several languages of the Middle East such as Arabic, Persian, Pashto and Urdu. The script is the third most widely used script in the world, after the Latin and Chinese scripts.


title: Arabic alphabet

text: The script is written from right to left. When it is used to write the Arabic language, the script has 28 different characters. Usually only consonants are written in an abjad. Vowels are omitted most of the time. The Arabic script is a cursive script. This means that letters of a word are joined together, both in handwriting and in print. Each letter can have up to four different forms. Which of the forms is used depends on the letters before and after it. There is no different form for uppercase letters and lowercase letters.


title: Arabic alphabet

text: There are two basic modern variants of the Arabic script. One is called Naskh, it is the one commonly used for printing. The most common script in everyday life is called Kufic, after the city Kufa, in Iraq, where it was developed. There are several variants of both scripts.


title: Arabic alphabet

text: The alphabet can also be used to write numbers, which was common in the Middle Ages. They are less used today and usually replaced by Latin-alphabet ("Arabic") numbers.


title: Arabic alphabet

text: When the alphabet is used to write numbers, ' is 1, ' is 2, ' is 3 and so on until ' = 10, ' = 20, ' = 30, …, ' = 200, …, ' = 1000. That is sometimes used to produce chronograms in which specific letters, interpreted as numerals, stand for a particular date when they are rearranged.


title: Arabic alphabet

text: For dictionaries, it is necessary to put the letters into a predetermined sequence, which is usually called sort order, or alphabetical order. The Arabic script has two sort orders: The one, "abjid", derives from the position of the letters in the Phoenician alphabet. The other, "hijā," sorts letters by similarity of shape.


title: Arabic alphabet

text: As Islam spread throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia, Arabic spread along with it. Islam requires its followers to learn Arabic because it states that Gabriel (Jibril) spoke the words of Allah to Muhammad in Arabic. The language is used for Muslim rituals such as prayer and the reciting of Quranic verses. As Arabic spread, the Quran's script also spread. It replaced the Pahlavi writing system as Islam conquered Persia.


title: Arabic alphabet

text: Another alphabet, the Uighur alphabet, was based on the shapes of Arabic letters. However, the Uighur alphabet always has vowel letters, unlike in Arabic.