Early Pandyan Kingdom

The Early Pandyas of the Sangam period were one of the three main kingdoms of the ancient Tamil country, the other two being the Cholas, and Cheras Dynasty. As with many other kingdoms around this period (earlier than 200 BCE), most of the information about the Early Pandyas come to modern historians mainly through literary sources and some epigraphic, archaeological and numismatic evidence. The capital of the Early Pandyan kingdom was initially Korkai, Thoothukudi and was later moved to Koodal (now Madurai) during the reign of Nedunjeliyan I. The kingdom lay to the south of the Maurya Empire of India.

The kings of the Pandyan Dynasty are frequently mentioned in Sangam literature of the third century BCE and onwards, in literary works such as the Mathuraikkanci and other early Tamil literary works such as Cilapatikaram, which have been used by historians to identify their names and, to some extent, their genealogy. Nedunjeliyan II is referred to as the most popular warrior among the Early Pandyas, winning a battle at Talaialanganam against a coalition of forces from Cholas and Cheras and five other kingdoms. The early Pandyan kingdom extended between Travancore in the west, Vellaru river in the north and all the way to the ocean in the east and the south.

The Early Pandyas had active maritime trade relationships with the west, a fact testified by western classical writers such as Pliny the Elder (1st century CE), Strabo, Ptolemy and the author of the Periplus. The Pandyan country was well known for pearl fishery, with Korkai being the principal center of the trade. Some of the exports were pearls, spices, ivory and shells, while the imports included horses, gold, glass and wine.

Origin and Sources
The origin of the word "Pandya" has been a subject of much speculation.

Historians have used several sources to identify the origins of the Early Pandyan dynasty with the pre-Christian Era and also to piece together the names of the Pandyan kings. Unfortunately, the exact genealogy of these kings has not been authoritatively established yet.

One theory is that the word Pandya is derived from the Tamil word "Pandi" meaning bull. Ancient Tamils, considered the bull as a sign of masculinity and valor. Pandya became the epithet of the first Pandyan king of Thenmadurai (lit. south Mathura), Kulasekharan Pandya as he was built like a bull. It was used as an epithet of masculinity. His son, the second king of Thenmadurai, the legendary Malayadhwaja Pandya who sided with the Pandavas and took part in the Kurukshetra battle is described as follows in Karna Parva(verse 20.25):

Malayadhwaja Pandya and his queen Kanchanamala had one daughter Thathagai alias Meenakshi who succeeded her father and ruled the kingdom successfully. The Madurai Meenakshi Amman temple was built after her. The city of Madurai was built around this temple.

Yet another theory suggests that in Sangam Tamil lexicon, the word Pandya means old country in contrast with Chola meaning new country, Chera meaning hill country and Pallava meaning branch in Sanskrit. The Chera, Chola and Pandya are the traditional Tamil siblings and together with the Athiyamaan are the major Kings that ruled ancient Tamilakkam.

Literary sources in Tamil

Several Tamil literary works, such as Iraiyanar Akapporul, mention the legend of three separate Tamil Sangams lasting several centuries before the Christian Era and ascribe their patronage to the Pandyas.The Sangam poem Maduraikkanci by Mankudi Maruthanaar contains a full-length description of Madurai and the Pandyan country under the rule of Nedunjeliyan II. The Nedunalvadai by Nakkirar contains a description of the king’s palace. The Purananuru and Agananuru collections of the third century BCE contain poems sung in praise of various Pandyan kings and also poems that were composed by the kings themselves. Kaliththokai mentions that many Dravidian tribes such as Maravar, Eyinar, Oliar, Oviar, Aruvalur and Parathavar migrated to the Pandyan kingdom and started living there in the Third Tamil Sangam period 2000 years ago.

The Chinese historian Yu Huan in his 3rd century text, the Weilüe, mentions The Kingdom of Panyue:
"...The kingdom of Panyue is also called Hanyuewang. It is several thousand li to the southeast of Tianzhu (Northern India)...The inhabitants are small; they are the same height as the Chinese..."

The Roman emperor Julian received an embassy from a Pandya about 361 CE. A Roman trading centre was located on the Pandyan coast (Alagankulam - at the mouth of the Vaigai river, southeast of Madurai). Pandyas also had trade contacts with Ptolemaic Egypt and, through Egypt, with Rome by the first century, and with China by the 3rd century. The 1st century Greek historian Nicolaus of Damascus met, at Damascus, the ambassador sent by an Indian King "named Pandion or, according to others, Porus" to Caesar Augustus around 13 CE (Strabo XV.1-4, and Strabo XV.1-73).

Epigraphical sources

The 2nd and 13th rock edicts of Ashoka (273 - 232 BCE) refers to the Pandyas, Cholas, Cheras and the Satyaputras. According to the edicts, these kingdoms lay outside the southern boundary of the Mauryan Empire. The Hathigumpha inscriptions of the Kalinga King Kharavela, (c. 150 BCE), refers to the arrival of a tribute of jewels and elephants from the Pandyan king. The stone inscriptions discovered at Mangulam (a.k.a. Meenakshipuram) mentions the name of Nedunj Cheliyan III and his contemporary and subordinate, Kadalan Vazhuthi.

Archeological sources

Excavations in Tamil Nadu in the last fifty years or so have yielded remnants of black-and-red pottery ware, normally assigned to the Tamil speaking areas around 300 BCE. Some all-black and Russet coated ware assigned to the same time period have also been found. Rouletted and Amphorae wares, made in the Roman empire and brought by traders, have been excavated in several parts of Tamil Nadu, including the Pandyan country. These imported wares are dated to the early centuries of the Christian Era.

Numismatic sources

The excavations at Alagankulam, near Madurai, recovered two copper coins of the early Pandyas along with Northern Black Polished Ware. These coins have been assigned a broad time period ranging from 200 BCE to 200 CE. Several coins issued by the Pandyan king Mudukudumi Peruvaludhi have been recovered in the Madurai area and have been dated to around 200 BCE. Many gold and silver coins of the Roman empire have been found around Madurai: these coins bear the names of emperors ranging from Augustus (27 BCE) to Alexander Severus (235 CE).

History
Scholars have attempted to reconstruct the political history of the ancient Pandya country based on  classical works such as the Purananuru, the Pattuppāṭṭu and the Padirrupattu.

The first Pandyan king who has been mentioned in the Sangam works recovered so far is Nedunjeliyan I, who ruled from the coastal town of Korkai, at the mouth of river Tamraparni. During this time, the Tamil country consisted of several small kingdoms ruled over by independent chieftains, in addition to the three monarchies of Cheras, Cholas and Pandyas. In a bid to expand his territory, Nedunj Cheliyan I invaded the kingdom of Koodal (later renamed Madurai), which was under the rule of an independent chieftain, Akutai. He defeated Akutai and moved the capital of Pandyan kingdom to Madurai. This king also defeated an invading army from the Deccan Plateau and hence was called Aariyap Padaikadantha Pandyan or the king who conquered the Aryan army. He was succeeded by his son Pudappandiyan, who expanded the kingdom by conquering Ollaiyur (near modern-day Pudukkottai) – an act that earned him the name Ollaiyur thantha Pudappandian. Both Pudappandiyan and his predecessor, Nedunj Cheliyan I, were poets themselves who contributed to the Purananuru collection.

The successor of Pudappandiyan was Nedunj Cheliyan II also known as "Pasumpun Pandyan." Immediately after ascending the throne, he marched with his troops to the north of Vaigai and defeated the chieftain Evvi II. He then headed west and captured the Aayi territory controlled by another chieftain, Atiyan. Both Evvi II and Atiyan were made commanders of the Pandyan army for his battles against Kongu country that was further west. From here he expanded the Pandyan kingdom almost to the western coast, which earned him the title Vidambalamba Ninra Pandyan (the Pandyan whose kingdom was washed by two seas). Since he was responsible for expanding the Pandyan kingdom by annexing several kingdoms, he was also called Pannadu thantha Pandyan (the Pandyan who annexed many lands).  His successor, Mudukudumi Peruvaludhi, was also a great warrior and carried the devastation into enemy territories. He performed yagas with the aid of Brahmin priests, similar to the tradition in northern India at that time.

The next king in the hierarchy was Nedunj Cheliyan III, who is considered the greatest of all the early Pandyan kings. Since the Pandyan kingdom was considerably larger than a few generations ago, he had to defend it against many neighbors invading from various fronts. Not only did he succeed in defending his territory, he also seems to have advanced into the enemy territories – the southern province of Cholas and eastern province of the Cheras. At one point, it is said that a coalition of his neighbors including the Cheras, Cholas and five other kingdoms, met him at a pitched battle in Talaialanganam, in present-day Tanjore district. Nedunj Cheliyan emerged victorious in the battle that ensued and ended up annexing several new territories to his kingdom. He thus came to be known as Talaialanganathu Seruvendra Pandyan. The genealogy after this king is not very clear but there are at least four other kings who are thought to have ruled in the immediate succeeding generations. Notable among them were, Musiri Mutriya Cheliyan for the fact that he conquered the town of Musiri on the coast of the Arabian Sea and Ukkirap Peruvaludi for the fact that it was in his court that the famous poet Tiruvalluvar submitted his much-acclaimed work Tirukkural.

Government

The head of the Government was the king, a hereditary monarch. His power was restricted by the Aimberunguzhu (Tamil: ஐம்பெருங்குழு) or the Five Great Assemblies, which consisted of the representatives of the people, priests, physicians, astrologers and the ministers. There was another assembly of officials that served the king called the Enberaayam (Tamil: எண்பேராயம்) or the Eight Groups of Attendants. While some scholars believe it consisted of attendants on the king’s person like the perfumers, dressing valets, etc., others believe it consisted of more important persons like the people of the capital city, the leaders of the elephant corps and of the cavalry. The principal officers of State were the high priest, the chief astrologer, the ministers and the commanders of the army. The king divided his territory into a number of administrative units or principalities, each called a Kootram (Tamil: கூற்றம்). A Kootram was further divided into provinces called Mandalam, which in turn was divided into many sub-provinces called Nadus, with each Nadu consisting of many villages. A locality inside a town or village was called Ur and each neighborhood inside an Ur was called a Cheri. While the king ruled over his entire territory from the capital, he often placed one or more principalities (Kootram) under the near-sovereign government of some senior member of the royal family or a feudatary. The village was the most fundamental unit of administration under the Pandyas. The affairs of a village were the responsibility of its elders, who supervised the judicial, administrative and financial functions.

Justice was administered free of charge, by special officers appointed as judges and magistrates, but the king was supreme and the final arbiter in all civil and criminal cases. Mortgage, lease, trust property, loans, breach of contract were some common sources of civil litigation, while criminal offences included theft, adultery, forgery and treason. The punishments were very severe and hence crimes were rare: one caught in the act of burglary, adultery or spying was given the death penalty and one giving false testimony would have his tongue cut off. The king was the chief commander of the army and usually led his army in the battlefield. The military was said to be fourfold : the infantry, the cavalry, the elephantry and the chariotry. A wide variety of war weapons filled the military arsenal including shields, swords, spears, tridents, maces, bows and arrows. The main sources of royal revenue were taxes, tributes, customs duties and tolls. Land tax, paid in money or in kind, and income tax, equal to one-sixth of an individual’s income, were the major types of taxes collected. Other sources of revenue include tributes paid by feudal subordinates, war booty presents by loyal and visiting subjects, treasure troves besides land revenue, cess and forced gifts. The items incurring expenditure for the king include the military, gifts to poets and temples, maintenance of educational and health services, building infrastructure such as roads and irrigation and the palace household expenses.

Society

The Tamil society during the early Pandyan age had several class distinctions among the people, which were different from the Brahminical classification of Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras.

Women were exposed to education, a fact testified by the presence of many women poets in the Sangam works – some of them include Avvaiyar, Mudatamakkanniar, Kaakkaippaadiniyaar, Naachchellayaar, Naagaiyaar, Nanmullaiyaar, Ponmudiyaar, Ilaveyiniyaar and Nappasaliyaar.

A variety of clothing was used by people during this age, including those made of cotton and silk. People living in hilly and deserted areas wore dresses made of foliage and flowers. Sheaths of grassy weeds (Korai) were used for making dress by the hill and forest area people. Skins of animals and barks of trees were also used. Men of the poorer classes wore only one piece of cloth around the waist. Women covered their upper body with a kind of dress called, kachchu. Among the higher classes, men wore two pieces: one around the waist and the other, the upper cloth, thrown over the shoulders. Women of sophisticated society wore half sarees, made of the finest cotton and silk fabrics, with embroidery. Both men and women sported long tresses of hair. The diet was plain, rice being the staple cereal, with millet, milk, butter and honey being in common use. Meat eating was common - people ate flesh of rams, deer, hare, fowl, porcupines, pigs and boar, fresh and dried fish. The kind of housing was determined by the type of geography of the land and the economic status of the occupants. The rich built their houses with tiled roofs and walls made of burnt bricks and mud, while the poor built their huts with mud and thatched it with grass, coconut leaves or palmyra palm leaves. Both in the huts and houses, the flooring was smeared with cowdung. The affluent had houses with porticoes, many storeys, open terraces and furnished their houses well. The inner walls of their houses were decorated with flowers and paintings, with cottages to protect them from the wind. Cots were in common use – the rich had luxurious beds decked with swan’s feathers and flowers, while the common people had beds woven with the straw of maize and the poorest people used beds made of grass or hay.

Culture

Religion

Economy

Notes

References

Category:Tamil history
Category:Pandyan dynasty
Category:Ancient Tamil Nadu
Category:Tamilakam


Euclid's orchard

In mathematics, informally speaking, Euclid's orchard is an array of one-dimensional "trees" of unit height planted at the lattice points in one quadrant of a square lattice. More formally, Euclid's orchard is the set of line segments from  to , where i and j are positive integers.

The trees visible from the origin are those at lattice points , where m and n are coprime, i.e., where the fraction  is in reduced form. The name Euclid's orchard is derived from the Euclidean algorithm.

If the orchard is projected relative to the origin onto the plane  (or, equivalently, drawn in perspective from a viewpoint at the origin) the tops of the trees form a graph of Thomae's function. The point  projects to

See also
Opaque forest problem

References

External links
Euclid's Orchard, Grade 9-11 activities and problem sheet, Texas Instruments Inc.
 Project Euler related problem

Category:Greek_mathematics
Category:Lattice points


Woodland-Larchmere Commercial Historic District

The Woodland-Larchmere Commercial Historic District is a historic district which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2015.  It is spans the border of Cleveland, Ohio and Shaker Heights, Ohio, in Cuyahoga County, Ohio.

The process to achieve National Register listing was a "'long haul'" according to Charles "Chip" Bromley, director of the Shaker Square Alliance and the Ohio Fair Lending Coalition.

The district was deemed to be "a well intact urban neighborhood commercial corridor which maintains a high level of historic architectural integrity throughout the District. This is exhibited in the various types and styles of commercial buildings which span from 1904-1965 and through the retention of historic architectural elements, fabric, materials, and craftsmanship. The historic commercial buildings located along Larchmere Avenue in both Shaker Heights and Cleveland maintain their historic setting, feeling and design associated with the historic character as noted in historic images of the buildings in their historic setting."

The listing included 67 contributing buildings and 12 non-contributing ones.

References

Category:Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Ohio
Category:Shaker Heights, Ohio
Category:National Register of Historic Places in Cleveland, Ohio
Category:National Register of Historic Places in Lorain County, Ohio
Category:Buildings and structures completed in 1898


Pilot (Supergirl)

The pilot episode of the television series Supergirl premiered on CBS on October 26, 2015. It was written by series developers/creators Greg Berlanti, Ali Adler and Andrew Kreisberg, and directed by Glen Winter.

The Supergirl pilot details the origins of Kryptonian Kara Zor-El, whose quest to follow in her famous cousin's footsteps would emerge while maintaining a mild mannered life as Kara Danvers.

The episode received positive reviews, especially for the performance of the series' star Melissa Benoist. It also became CBS' most watched new series of the 2015-16 television season, and the most watched new scripted series overall by Nielsen, with 12.9 million viewers tuning in and an estimated 19 million over the next week, once delayed viewing is tabulated. It also gave CBS its first successful series to target a younger demo in the 18-49 age group, which is favored by advertiser groups.

Plot
Kara Zor-El is sent by her parents, Alura and Zor-El, from Krypton to Earth to watch over her infant cousin, Kal-El. Krypton explodes, knocking Kara’s pod off-course into the Phantom Zone. She remains frozen in time for 24 years before her pod crashes to Earth. Kal-El, now Superman, rescues Kara and takes her to live with Eliza and Jeremiah Danvers, the scientists who helped him come into his powers, and their daughter Alex.

Twelve years later in National City, Kara Danvers is as an assistant to Cat Grant, the head of mega-media conglomerate CatCo. About to board a flight to Geneva, Alex believes Kara should remain normal, despite Kara's yearning to use her powers. After a news report reveals Alex’s plane is about to crash, Kara uses her powers for the first time in years, saving the plane. As Kara wonders if she could become a hero like her cousin, Alex worries Kara is putting herself in danger. Kara reveals her secret to co-worker Winn Schott, who helps Kara perfect her abilities and designs her a uniform. As a public hero, Kara is dubbed "Supergirl" by Cat Grant, unaware of her true identity. Vartox, the alien responsible for the attempted plane crash, learns of Supergirl’s actions.

Kara is shot down by a tranquilizer containing Kryptonite and brought to the secret headquarters of the Department of Extra-Normal Operations (DEO), where Alex is revealed to work. Director Hank Henshaw informs Kara that when she landed on Earth, Fort Rozz – a prison housing some of Krypton's worst criminals, most of whom were sentenced by Kara’s mother – crashed onto Earth as well. Nearly killed by Vartox, Kara worries she is not yet ready to be Supergirl, but Alex convinces her to follow in Superman’s footsteps. Challenging Vartox to a rematch, Kara causes his axe to explode with her heat vision before he commits suicide. Her actions convince Hank that Supergirl, with help from Alex, can be useful to the DEO. CatCo's new art director, James Olsen, reveals to Kara that he knows her secret identity, and passes on a gift: an indestructible cape made from Kal-El's baby wrappings.

In another part of the universe, news of Vartox's death reaches his commander, revealed to be General Astra, Alura's identical twin sister and Kara's aunt, who plans to take over Earth and kill Kara.

Production
The plant where Supergirl and Vartox first do battle was shot in San Pedro, California but the producers' plan to extend the fight scene beyond the plant was scrapped. The rematch scene took two days of filming in the Mojave Desert.

The producers also note that Alex Danvers was created for the series, as she does not exist in the comic series. The producers also enlisted real-life Los Angeles news reporter Rick Garcia and Leyna Nguyen to make cameo appearances in this episode, and plan to utilize more media news talent from the Los Angeles area in the series.

The twist in the final scene featuring Astra was a last minute addition by the producers, as she was also created for the television series, along with her background that featured another Kryptonian House without the "S" in its shield, which will also add to Kara's family background in future episodes.

Casting
In January 2015, it was announced that Melissa Benoist had been cast as Supergirl.

Reception

Ratings
More than 12.96 million viewers tuned in to see the episode, making it one of CBS' most watch scripted dramas of the night and of this season, tying it with NBC's Blindspot as the top-rated series premiere of the 2015-16 fall season.

The episode attracted 1,606,000 viewers for its British premiere, making it the most watched programme on Sky One for the week.

Critical response
The episode received positive reviews, praising Melissa Benoist's take on the character and the well scripted storyline.

Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly gave the episode a B-, and notes in his assessment of the review, "I’m glad Supergirl exists and I want it to succeed. If it never becomes anything more than a solid superhero genre show with a female lead, that’s more than fine, especially since that lead is fantastic: The best counter to all my complaints is that Benoist makes it all work. The redeeming magic of perfect casting. Her performance embraces, internalizes, and sells the character’s contradictions and paradoxes. She makes Kara feel real, she wears the costume proudly and easily, she’s joy and complexity at once. Supergirl begins to fill a shameful void that needs to be followed with cleaner, more artful wins. It will most likely come from original creations — the next Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the next Veronica Mars — or adaptations of edgier, more contemporary properties that can allow for more creative daring, like The CW’s excellent iZombie or (hopefully) the upcoming Netflix series, Marvel’s Jessica Jones. The frustrations of Supergirl remind us that super-powered super-people often make for problematic vehicles for exploring issues of Otherness, diversity, race and gender – especially intrinsically flawed comic book brands beholden to the values of another era and bound by franchise restrictions. “Can you believe it? A female hero. Nice for my daughter to have someone like that to look up to.” Yes, that is nice. Now, we need better."

Cliff Wheatley of IGN gave the pilot episode a 7/10, praising Melissa Benoist's performance as Kara and the fun take on the Superman mythos. In a review from The Hollywood Reporter, Daniel Feinberg said, "CBS' Supergirl shouldn't have to be a feminist landmark, but it is." Caroline Siede of The A.V. Club gave the episode a positive review, giving it a B. With the exception of the Kara backstory, she was pleased with the executed fast pace of how well the episode was structured: "While Supergirl is a little more grounded than The Flash, this premiere establishes the show’s appropriately upbeat tone and sets up more than enough threads to explore across its first 13 episodes—and hopefully many more to come." Stacy Glanzman of TV Fanatic gave the episode a 5.0 out of 5 stars.

References

External links

Category:2015 American television episodes
Pilot
Supergirl
Category:Television episodes about adoption


Time Bites: Views and Reviews

Time Bites: Views and Reviews is a 2004 collection of essays by Doris Lessing. It contains book reviews, literary criticism and commentaries that have appeared in various works since the 1970s.

Reception
Booklist wrote "Most of her conversational, fast-moving, often wry inquiries into literature, politics, and ethics were originally published in England, hence little known in America, a lack redressed in this generous and pleasurable collection. Knowing books as intimately as she does, and caring deeply about reading and writing, Lessing pens critical essays that are vibrant and illuminating, with quotable lines on every page." and the Library Journal stated "Lessing comments cleverly on the classic novelists (e.g., Leo Tolstoy), but some of the most interesting pieces are centered on less well known or virtually forgotten writers. There are quite a few essays on the Sufi author Idries Shah (1924-96); other topics Lessing covers range from politics to cats."

Kirkus Reviews wrote "While this collection of random journalism—some dating back to 1974, but most from the past decade—has the inevitable repetitions and a rather scattershot feel, it still gives a nice sense of Lessing’s character and commitments in vigorous old age." Publishers Weekly wrote "The main theme, whether addressed overtly or underlying her literary criticism, is the indispensable place of books in the life of an educated person and an enlightened culture. Hers is a clarion call."

Time Bites has also been reviewed by The New York Review of Books, and The Daily Telegraph.

References

External links
Library holdings of Time Bites: Views and Reviews

Category:2004 non-fiction books
Category:Literary criticism
Category:Essay collections
Category:British essays


Star of Ishtar

The Star of Ishtar or Star of Inanna is a symbol of the ancient Sumerian goddess Inanna and her East Semitic counterpart Ishtar. Alongside the lion, it was one of Ishtar's primary symbols. Because Ishtar was associated with the planet Venus, the star is also known as the Star of Venus.

History

The star of Inanna usually had eight points, though the exact number of points sometimes varies. Six-pointed stars also occur frequently, but their symbolic meaning is unknown. It was Inanna's most common symbol and, in later times, it became the most common symbol of the goddess Ishtar, Inanna's East Semitic counterpart. It seems to have originally borne a general association with the heavens, but, by the Old Babylonian Period, it had come to be specifically associated with the planet Venus, with which Ishtar was identified. Starting during this same period, the star of Ishtar was normally enclosed within a circular disc.

During later times, slaves who worked in Ishtar's temples were sometimes branded with the seal of the eight-pointed star. On boundary stones and cylinder seals, the eight-pointed star is sometimes shown alongside the crescent moon, which was the symbol of Sin, god of the Moon, and the rayed solar disk, which was a symbol of Shamash, the god of the Sun.

The rosette was another important symbol of Ishtar which had originally belonged to Inanna. During the Neo-Assyrian Period, the rosette may have actually eclipsed the eight-pointed star and become Ishtar's primary symbol. The temple of Ishtar in the city of Aššur was adorned with numerous rosettes.

Flag of Iraq

In Arabic, the symbol is known as ().  The stars of Ishtar and Shamash featured on the coat of arms of the Kingdom of Iraq from 1932-1959.

A simplified version with red rays and a yellow centre was incorporated into the flag of Iraq from 1959–1963. It also featured in a combination with the sun of Shamash on the national emblem of Iraq from 1959-1965.

References

Bibliography

See also
 Lion of Babylon
Octagram

External links

Category:Mesopotamian mythology
Category:National symbols of Iraq
Category:Religious symbols
Category:Venus in culture
Category:Star symbols
Category:Heraldic charges
Category:History of astrology


36th parallel south

The 36th parallel south is a circle of latitude that is 36 degrees south of the Earth's equatorial plane. It crosses the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, Australasia, the Pacific Ocean and South America.

Around the world
Starting at the Prime Meridian and heading eastwards, the parallel 36° south passes through:

{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders"
! scope="col" width="125" | Co-ordinates
! scope="col" | Country, territory or ocean
! scope="col" | Notes
|-
| style="background:#b0e0e6;" |
! scope="row" style="background:#b0e0e6;" | Atlantic Ocean
| style="background:#b0e0e6;" |
|-
| style="background:#b0e0e6;" |
! scope="row" style="background:#b0e0e6;" | Indian Ocean
| style="background:#b0e0e6;" |
|-
|
! scope="row" |
| South Australia - Kangaroo Island
|-
| style="background:#b0e0e6;" |
! scope="row" style="background:#b0e0e6;" | Indian Ocean
| style="background:#b0e0e6;" | D'Estrees Bay, Backstairs Passage and Encounter Bay
|-valign="top"
|
! scope="row" |
|
|-
| style="background:#b0e0e6;" |
! scope="row" style="background:#b0e0e6;" | Pacific Ocean
| style="background:#b0e0e6;" | Tasman Sea
|-
|
! scope="row" |
| North Island
|-
| style="background:#b0e0e6;" |
! scope="row" style="background:#b0e0e6;" | Pacific Ocean
| style="background:#b0e0e6;" | Passing just south of the Hen and Chicken Islands,  Passing just north of Great Barrier Island,
|-
|
! scope="row" |
| Maule Region
|-
|
! scope="row" |
| The parallel defines part of the border between Mendoza Province and La Pampa Province, and part of the border between San Luis Province and La Pampa Province
|-
| style="background:#b0e0e6;" |
! scope="row" style="background:#b0e0e6;" | Atlantic Ocean
| style="background:#b0e0e6;" |
|}

See also
35th parallel south
37th parallel south

s36
Category:Borders of Argentina


Castellanos, Santa Fe

Castellanos is a locality in Santa Fe Province in northeastern Argentina.

References

Category:Populated places in Santa Fe Province


The Price of Love

"The Price of Love" is a song by the Everly Brothers, released in 1965. It charted at number 2 in the UK and number 3 in Ireland. On the NME chart in spent one week at Number 1 in the UK, meanwhile in the US, the song failed to chart at the hot 100.

Cover versions

"The Price of Love" is a single released by the British Rock band Status Quo in 1969. Bob Young is featured on Harmonica. It was released on the same day as the album Spare Parts, but was not included on it, and it failed to chart.  They re-recorded it in 1991 for inclusion on a later album, Rock 'til You Drop.

Track listing
 "The Price of Love" (D Everly/P Everly) (3.40)
 "Little Miss Nothing" (Rossi/Parfitt) (2.58)

Other versions
Bryan Ferry in 1976 on his album Let's Stick Together, and as the first track on the EP Extended Play which reached No. 7 in the UK chart, Poco in 1982, on their album Cowboys & Englishmen, Insiders in 1987 on their album Ghost On The Beach, and Depeche Mode during their early tours, and by The Levellers as a b-side of their "What a Beautiful Day" single (4/8/1997). British band The Move recorded a live version at the Marquee Club for their planned live EP in 1968; a studio recording was unfinished and exists as an instrumental only. British duo Robson & Jerome included a version of the tune on their 1997 album Take Two, which reached No. 1 in England. Croatian punk rock band Psihomodo Pop used the background tune in their song Daj Mi Pusu(Give me a kiss). 2002 - Buddy Miller - recorded the song on his album (Midnight & Lonesome). Marianne Faithfull recorded the song on her 2014 album Give My Love to London. The song has also been recorded and performed by Elvis Costello and Linda Ronstadt; both versions remain unreleased.

Chart performance

References

External links

Category:The Everly Brothers songs
Category:Status Quo (band) songs
Category:1965 singles
Category:1969 singles
Category:Songs written by Phil Everly
Category:Songs written by Don Everly
Category:Song recordings produced by John Schroeder (musician)
Category:1965 songs


Miguel Figueroa (bishop)

Miguel Figueroa (died 10 May 1517) was a Roman Catholic prelate who served as Bishop of Patti (1500–1517) and as Auxiliary Bishop of Zaragoza (1500)

Biography
On 4 September 1500, he was appointed by Pope Alexander VI as Bishop of Patti and Auxiliary Bishop of Zaragoza. On 8 November 1501, he was consecrated bishop by Juan Ortega Bravo de la Laguna, Bishop of Calahorra y La Calzada, with Guillermo Ramón de Moncada, Bishop of Tarazona, and Juan Crespo, Bishop of Ales, serving as co-consecrators. He served as Bishop of Patti until his death on 10 May 1517.

See also
Catholic Church in Italy

References

External links and additional sources
 (for Chronology of Bishops)
 (for Chronology of Bishops)

Category:1517 deaths
Category:16th-century Roman Catholic bishops
Category:Bishops appointed by Pope Alexander VI


Friedrich Kohlrausch (physicist)

Friedrich Wilhelm Georg Kohlrausch (14 October 1840 – 17 January 1910) was a German physicist who investigated the conductive properties of electrolytes and contributed to knowledge of their behaviour. He also investigated elasticity, thermoelasticity, and thermal conduction as well as magnetic and electrical precision measurements.

Nowadays, Friedrich Kohlrausch is classed as one of the most important experimental physicists. His early work helped to extend the absolute system of Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Weber to include electrical and magnetic measuring units.

Biography

Education
Son of Rudolf Kohlrausch, Friedrich Wilhelm Georg Kohlrausch was born on October 14, 1840, in Rinteln, Germany. After studying physics at Erlangen and Göttingen, Friedrich Kohlrausch completed his doctorate in Göttingen.

Teaching
After a two-year work as a lecturer in Frankfurt, Kohlrausch was appointed a professor of physics at the University of Göttingen (1866–70).
During 1870 Kohlrausch became a professor at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. One year later, he moved to the Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany.

In 1875, he responded to an offer from the University of Würzburg in southern Germany, where he subsequently conducted his experiments in quantity determination and the conductivity of electrolytes. From 1888 he researched and taught at Strasbourg University.

He refused a professorship at the Humboldt University in Berlin in 1894, but from 1900 he was also a professor there.  He was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences during 1902.

Research work
Kohlrausch was an important researcher of electrochemistry for many reasons. First, the experiments from which he deduced his law of independent migration of ions became canonical and disseminated from Kohlrausch's laboratories in Göttingen, Zurich, and Darmstadt; Svante Arrhenius, Wilhelm Ostwald and Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, the original Ionists, all trained with methods and equipment of Kohlrauschian lineage. Moreover, because Kohlrausch also continued to test and confirm the Ionist theory after it had been first proposed, his work tied "measuring physics" and its consequent capability of producing plenty of empirical data to the results and methods of the Ionists and their devotees.

Electrolyte conductivity in solution
In 1874 he demonstrated that an electrolyte has a definite and constant amount of electrical resistance. By observing the dependence of conductivity upon dilution, he could determine the transfer velocities of the ions (charged atoms or molecules) in solution. He used alternating current to prevent the deposition of electrolysis products; this enabled him to obtain very precise results.

From 1875 to 1879, he examined numerous salt solutions, acids and solutions of other materials. His efforts resulted in the law of the independent migration of ions, that is, each type of migrating ion has a specific electrical resistance no matter what its original molecular combination may have been, and therefore that a solution's electrical resistance was due only to the migrating ions of a given substances. Kohlrausch showed for weak (incompletely dissociated) electrolytes that the more dilute a solution, the greater its molar conductivity due to increased ionic dissociation.

Measuring techniques and instruments
During 1895 he succeeded Hermann von Helmholtz as President of the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt (PTR – Imperial Physical Technical Institute), an office which he held until 1905.

Here, as in the past, his activities were focused on experimental and instrumental physics: he constructed instruments and devised new measuring techniques to examine electrolytic conduction in solutions. He concluded the setup of the PTR, a task which had not yet been completed on the death of its first president. He introduced fixed regulations, work schedules and working hours for the Institute.

Under direction of Kohlrausch, the PTR created numerous standards and calibration standards which were also used internationally outside Germany.

Kohlrausch was intent on creating optimum working conditions in the laboratories and to shield the labs from unwanted external influences. For six years, for instance, he fought against a streetcar line which was due to be laid near the PTR. However, before the streetcar was to make its first journey, the institute succeeded in developing an astatic torsion magnetometer which was uninfluenced by disturbing electromagnetic fields. The use of this instrument and the shielded wire galvanometer developed by du Bois and Rubens meant that precision electrical and magnetic work continued to be possible.

Over the years, Kohlrausch added experiments which met the needs of physical chemistry and electrical technology in particular. He improved precision measuring instruments and developed numerous measuring methods in almost all of the fields of physics known during his lifetime, including a reflectivity meter, a tangent galvanometer, and various types of magnetometers and dynamometers. The Kohlrausch bridge, which he invented at that time for the purpose of measuring conductivity, is still well known today.
Like Helmholtz and Siemens, Kohlrausch also saw the possibilities inherent in applied and basic research in the natural sciences and technology. He lay the foundations for scientific knowledge which promoted and advanced industry and technology. The PTR developed standardized precision instruments for university research institutes and industrial laboratories. It introduced uniform electrical units for Germany and also played a significant role in their international usage. In the period to 1905, there were many examples of the importance of the PTR for German industry, in particular for the high technologies of the time – the electrical, optical and mechanical industries.

Overall, Kohlrausch was involved in the measurement of electrical, magnetic and electrochemical phenomena for almost 50 years. In 1905 Kohlrausch retired from his post as President of the PTR.

Friedrich Kohlrausch died in Marburg on 17 January 1910 at the age of 69.

Writings
In the University of Göttingen, Kohlrausch documented his practical experiments resulting in the book Leitfaden der praktischen Physik (Guidelines to Practical Physics), which was published in 1870 as the first book of its type in Germany. It contained not only descriptions of experiments, experimental setups and measuring techniques, but also tables of physical quantities. It was issued in many editions (the 9th enlarged and revised edition of 1901 being entitled Lehrbuch der praktischen Physik; a more elementary work based on it being entitled Kleiner Leitfaden der praktischen Physik) and translated into English.  It was considered the standard work on physical laboratory methods and measurements.

To this day, the textbook Praktische Physik (Practical Physics), which originated in Kohlrausch's Leitfaden der praktischen Physik, is standard reading for physicists and engineers in Germany. This is attributable, above all, to the detailed descriptions provided of the measuring methods that form the basis of technical and experimental applications in many fields in physics.

Kohlrausch was also the author of Ueber den absoluten Leitungswiderstand des Quecksilbers (On the electrical resistance of mercury, 1888), and of many papers contributed to the Annalen der Physik und Chemie, and other scientific journals.

See also
 Kohlrausch bridge

Further reading

 Biographical sketch and reprint of paper on conductivity

External links

Category:1840 births
Category:1910 deaths
Category:People from Rinteln
Category:German physicists
Category:Electrochemists
Category:Foreign Members of the Royal Society
Category:Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences
Category:Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences
Category:People from the Electorate of Hesse
Category:Scientific instrument makers
Category:University of Marburg alumni
Category:University of Erlangen-Nuremberg alumni
Category:University of Göttingen alumni
Category:University of Göttingen faculty
Category:ETH Zurich faculty
Category:Technische Universität Darmstadt faculty
Category:University of Würzburg faculty
Category:University of Strasbourg faculty
Category:Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Category:Members of the Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art
Category:Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class)


Stéphane Hillel

Stéphane Hillel (born 1955) is a French stage, film and television actor.

Selected filmography
 À nous les petites Anglaises (1976)
 Arrête ton char... bidasse! (1977)
 The Wonderful Day (1980)

References

Bibliography
 Jean-François Prévand. Camus, Sartre... et "Les Autres. Editions Lansman, 1996.

External links

Category:1955 births
Category:Living people
Category:French male film actors
Category:French male television actors


Ankazomihaboka Formation

The Ankazomihaboka Formation is a Coniacian geologic formation in the Mahajanga Basin of northwestern Madagascar. The formation comprises claystones and sandstones deposited in a fluvial to lacustrine environment. The formation is overlain by the Marovoay Beds and overlies basalt.

Dinosaur remains diagnostic to the genus level are among the fossils that have been recovered from the formation.

Fossil content
 "Titanosaurus" madagascariensis
 Majungasaurus crenatissimus (theropod indet.)
 Axelrodichthys sp.
 Ceratodus madagascariensis

See also

 List of dinosaur-bearing rock formations
 List of stratigraphic units with few dinosaur genera
 List of fossiliferous stratigraphic units in Madagascar
 Geology of Madagascar

References

Bibliography

Further reading
 Curry, K. A. 1997. Vertebrate fossils from the Upper Cre-taceous Ankazomihaboka Sandstones, Mahajanga Ba-sin, Madagascar. J. Vertebr. Paleontol. 17(suppl.):40A
 M. D. Gottfried, R. R. Rogers, and K. A. Curry Rogers. 2004. First record of Late Cretaceous coelacanths from Madagascar. Recent Advances in the Origin and Early Radiation of Vertebrates, in G. Arratia, M. V. H. Wilson, and R. Cloutier (eds.), Verlag Dr. Friedrich Pfeil, München 687-691

Category:Geologic formations of Madagascar
Category:Cretaceous System of Africa
Category:Late Cretaceous Africa
Category:Cretaceous Madagascar
Category:Coniacian Stage
Category:Shale formations
Category:Sandstone formations
Category:Fluvial deposits
Category:Lacustrine deposits
Category:Paleontology in Madagascar
Formations


Te Llegará Mi Olvido

Te Llegará Mi Olvido (I Will Forget You) is the eighth studio album by Mexican singer-songwriter Juan Gabriel, originally released in 1978 and re-released in April 1992. Mariachi América de Jesús Rodríguez de Hijar was involved with this production.

Track listing

References

External links
Juan Gabriel official website
 Te Llegará Mi Olvido on amazon.com
[] Te Llegará Mi Olvido on allmusic.com

Category:1978 albums
Category:Juan Gabriel albums
Category:RCA Records albums
Category:Spanish-language albums


Île Illiec

Île Illiec (Enez Ilieg in Breton) is a small island located off the coast of Port-Blanc, Brittany, France.

In 1876, Ambroise Thomas constructed the three-storey house, chapel and conical tower that all currently stand on the island.

Île Illiec was purchased by the American aviator Charles Lindbergh, following the kidnapping and murder of his son in 1932 and his subsequent move to Europe in 1936. In March 1938, the family bought the  ( or ) island for $16,000, a cost of approximately $1 per square metre, but lived there only until December. The Lindbergh family returned to the USA in April 1939, shortly after the German occupation of Czechoslovakia.

The island's inside is now privately owned by the Heidsieck family.

Notes

External links
lesilesdefrance.com - Aerial photo

Category:Islands of Brittany


Ray Sasaki

Ray Sasaki (born October 22, 1948) is an American trumpeter. He is Professor of Trumpet at the University of Texas at Austin and a member of the St. Louis Brass Quintet. Sasaki is also one of the founding members of the Tone Road Ramblers, a composer/performer collective ensemble started in 1981 in New York City. He was previously on the faculty of the University of Illinois.

References

Category:American trumpeters
Category:American male trumpeters
Category:University of North Texas College of Music alumni
Category:Texas classical music
Category:Living people
Category:1948 births
Category:21st-century trumpeters
Category:21st-century American male musicians


2014 London Broncos season

The 2014 London Broncos season is the London Broncos rugby league football club's 2014 season. It was the last season in the Super League and their first since moving to the Hive Stadium. The Broncos competed in both Super League and the 2014 Challenge Cup. They exited the Challenge Cup with a defeat by the Catalans Dragons.

2014 milestones

Tables

Regular season

Table

Squad

References

External links
Rugby League Project

Category:London Broncos seasons
London Broncos season
Category:2014 in rugby league by club
Category:2014 in English rugby league


Tomoko Ukishima

is a Japanese politician of the New Komeito Party, a member of the House of Councillors in the Diet (national legislature). A native of Suginami, Tokyo and high school graduate, she was elected for the first time in 2004.

References

External links
 Official website in Japanese.

Category:Members of the House of Councillors (Japan)
Category:Living people
Category:1963 births
Category:People from Suginami
Category:New Komeito politicians


Caesar cipher

In cryptography, a Caesar cipher, also known as Caesar's cipher, the shift cipher, Caesar's code or Caesar shift, is one of the simplest and most widely known encryption techniques. It is a type of substitution cipher in which each letter in the plaintext is replaced by a letter some fixed number of positions down the alphabet. For example, with a left shift of 3, D would be replaced by A, E would become B, and so on. The method is named after Julius Caesar, who used it in his private correspondence.

The encryption step performed by a Caesar cipher is often incorporated as part of more complex schemes, such as the Vigenère cipher, and still has modern application in the ROT13 system. As with all single-alphabet substitution ciphers, the Caesar cipher is easily broken and in modern practice offers essentially no communications security.

Example
The transformation can be represented by aligning two alphabets; the cipher alphabet is the plain alphabet rotated left or right by some number of positions. For instance, here is a Caesar cipher using a left rotation of three places, equivalent to a right shift of 23 (the shift parameter is used as the key):

 Plain:    ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
 Cipher:   XYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVW

When encrypting, a person looks up each letter of the message in the "plain" line and writes down the corresponding letter in the "cipher" line.

 Plaintext:  THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG
 Ciphertext: QEB NRFZH YOLTK CLU GRJMP LSBO QEB IXWV ALD

Deciphering is done in reverse, with a right shift of 3.

The encryption can also be represented using modular arithmetic by first transforming the letters into numbers, according to the scheme, A → 0, B → 1, ..., Z → 25. Encryption of a letter x by a shift n can be described mathematically as,

Decryption is performed similarly,

(There are different definitions for the modulo operation. In the above, the result is in the range 0 to 25; i.e., if  or  are not in the range 0 to 25, we have to subtract or add 26.)

The replacement remains the same throughout the message, so the cipher is classed as a type of monoalphabetic substitution, as opposed to polyalphabetic substitution.

History and usage

The Caesar cipher is named after Julius Caesar, who, according to Suetonius, used it with a shift of three (A becoming D when encrypting, and D becoming A when decrypting) to protect messages of military significance. While Caesar's was the first recorded use of this scheme, other substitution ciphers are known to have been used earlier.

His nephew, Augustus, also used the cipher, but with a right shift of one, and it did not wrap around to the beginning of the alphabet:

Evidence exists that Julius Caesar also used more complicated systems, and one writer, Aulus Gellius, refers to a (now lost) treatise on his ciphers:

It is unknown how effective the Caesar cipher was at the time, but it is likely to have been reasonably secure, not least because most of Caesar's enemies would have been illiterate and others would have assumed that the messages were written in an unknown foreign language. There is no record at that time of any techniques for the solution of simple substitution ciphers. The earliest surviving records date to the 9th century works of Al-Kindi in the Arab world with the discovery of frequency analysis.

A Caesar cipher with a shift of one is used on the back of the mezuzah to encrypt the names of God. This may be a holdover from an earlier time when Jewish people were not allowed to have mezuzot. The letters of the cryptogram themselves comprise a religiously significant "divine name" which Orthodox belief holds keeps the forces of evil in check.

In the 19th century, the personal advertisements section in newspapers would sometimes be used to exchange messages encrypted using simple cipher schemes. Kahn (1967) describes instances of lovers engaging in secret communications enciphered using the Caesar cipher in The Times. Even as late as 1915, the Caesar cipher was in use: the Russian army employed it as a replacement for more complicated ciphers which had proved to be too difficult for their troops to master; German and Austrian cryptanalysts had little difficulty in decrypting their messages.

Caesar ciphers can be found today in children's toys such as secret decoder rings. A Caesar shift of thirteen is also performed in the ROT13 algorithm, a simple method of obfuscating text widely found on Usenet and used to obscure text (such as joke punchlines and story spoilers), but not seriously used as a method of encryption.

The Vigenère cipher uses a Caesar cipher with a different shift at each position in the text; the value of the shift is defined using a repeating keyword. If the keyword is as long as the message, is chosen at random, never becomes known to anyone else, and is never reused, this is the one-time pad cipher, proven unbreakable. The conditions are so difficult they are, in practical effect, never achieved. Keywords shorter than the message (e.g., "Complete Victory" used by the Confederacy during the American Civil War), introduce a cyclic pattern that might be detected with a statistically advanced version of frequency analysis.

In April 2006, fugitive Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano was captured in Sicily partly because some of his messages, clumsily written in a variation of the Caesar cipher, were broken. Provenzano's cipher used numbers, so that "A" would be written as "4", "B" as "5", and so on.

In 2011, Rajib Karim was convicted in the United Kingdom of "terrorism offences" after using the Caesar cipher to communicate with Bangladeshi Islamic activists discussing plots to blow up British Airways planes or disrupt their IT networks.  Although the parties had access to far better encryption techniques (Karim himself used PGP for data storage on computer disks), they chose to use their own scheme (implemented in Microsoft Excel), rejecting a more sophisticated code program called Mujhaddin Secrets "because 'kaffirs', or non-believers, know about it, so it must be less secure". This constituted an application of security through obscurity.

Breaking the cipher

The Caesar cipher can be easily broken even in a ciphertext-only scenario. Two situations can be considered:
 an attacker knows (or guesses) that some sort of simple substitution cipher has been used, but not specifically that it is a Caesar scheme;
 an attacker knows that a Caesar cipher is in use, but does not know the shift value.

In the first case, the cipher can be broken using the same techniques as for a general simple substitution cipher, such as frequency analysis  or pattern words. While solving, it is likely that an attacker will quickly notice the regularity in the solution and deduce that a Caesar cipher is the specific algorithm employed.

In the second instance, breaking the scheme is even more straightforward. Since there are only a limited number of possible shifts (26 in English), they can each be tested in turn in a brute force attack. One way to do this is to write out a snippet of the ciphertext in a table of all possible shifts – a technique sometimes known as "completing the plain component". The example given is for the ciphertext "EXXEGOEXSRGI"; the plaintext is instantly recognisable by eye at a shift of four. Another way of viewing this method is that, under each letter of the ciphertext, the entire alphabet is written out in reverse starting at that letter. This attack can be accelerated using a set of strips prepared with the alphabet written down in reverse order. The strips are then aligned to form the ciphertext along one row, and the plaintext should appear in one of the other rows.

Another brute force approach is to match up the frequency distribution of the letters. By graphing the frequencies of letters in the ciphertext, and by knowing the expected distribution of those letters in the original language of the plaintext, a human can easily spot the value of the shift by looking at the displacement of particular features of the graph. This is known as frequency analysis. For example, in the English language the plaintext frequencies of the letters E, T, (usually most frequent), and Q, Z (typically least frequent) are particularly distinctive. Computers can also do this by measuring how well the actual frequency distribution matches up with the expected distribution; for example, the chi-squared statistic can be used.

For natural language plaintext, there will typically be only one plausible decryption, although for extremely short plaintexts, multiple candidates are possible. For example, the ciphertext MPQY could, plausibly, decrypt to either "aden" or "know" (assuming the plaintext is in English); similarly, "ALIIP" to "dolls" or "wheel"; and "AFCCP" to "jolly" or "cheer" (see also unicity distance).

With the Caesar cipher, encrypting a text multiple times provides no additional security. This is because two encryptions of, say, shift A and shift B, will be equivalent to a single encryption with shift . In mathematical terms, the set of encryption operations under each possible key forms a group under composition.

See also
 Scytale

Notes

Bibliography
 F. L. Bauer, Decrypted Secrets, 2nd edition, 2000, Springer. .
 David Kahn, The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing, Revised ed. 1996. .
  Chris Savarese and Brian Hart, The Caesar Cipher, 1999

External links

Category:Things named after Julius Caesar
Category:Classical ciphers
Category:Group theory


Trexx and Flipside

Trexx and Flipside is a multi-platform British sitcom shown as part of BBC Three's spring schedule. It follows the story of Trexx and Flipside, two "wannabe hip hop stars". The duo are managed by "Wu Hah Management", as shown in the first episode. The show premiered on Sunday, 6 July 2008 at 11PM.

The cast includes Rebecca Atkinson, known to British audiences for her work on Shameless. It also stars Rich Fulcher, who shot to fame as Bob Fossil in the cult TV hit The Mighty Boosh, and BBC 1Xtra DJ MistaJam as Trexx. David Ajala, who plays 'Flipside', has played Sean Campbell on Dream Team and had recently appeared in 'The Dark Knight', credited as 'Bounty Hunter #2', and appears in the scene where The Joker is brought in a bin-liner to the residence of one of the Gotham Mobsters. The show also starred Actor and musician Tyronne Lewis (Eastenders, Casualty, Teachers) as Trexx and Flipside's nemesis B-ICE.

References

External links

Category:2008 British television series debuts
Category:2008 British television series endings
Category:2000s British comedy television series
Category:BBC high definition programmes
Category:BBC television sitcoms
Category:2000s British teen sitcoms
Category:English-language television programs


List of mayors of North Sydney

This is a list of mayors of the North Sydney Council, a local government area in the lower north shore region of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

The Council was incorporated initially on 29 July 1890 as the Borough of North Sydney. Initially elected by alderman of the Council, since 1983 the mayor has been directly elected for a four-year term by the voters in the local government area. The official title of mayors while holding office is His/Her Worship the Mayor of the North Sydney Council.

The current mayor of North Sydney Council is Cr. Jilly Gibson, an independent politician, elected on 8 September 2012. Gibson was first elected on 8 September 2012 and was re-elected for a second term on 9 September 2017.

History
The area now covered by North Sydney Council originally comprised three municipalities: the Borough of East St Leonards from 1860 (Kirribilli, Cremorne Point, Milsons Point), the Borough of St Leonards from 1867 (Cammeray, Mosman, Waverton, Wollstonecraft) and the very small Borough of Victoria from 1871 (McMahons Point and parts of North Sydney and Lavender Bay). These boroughs lasted until 29 July 1890 when they merged to form the "Borough of North Sydney".

Following a petition submitted by residents in 1892, on 11 April 1893 the Mossman Ward of North Sydney confirmed its separation as the Borough of Mosman, being proclaimed by Lieutenant-Governor Sir Frederick Darley. From 28 December 1906, following the passing of the Local Government Act, 1906, the council was renamed as the "Municipality of North Sydney". With the passing of the Local Government Act, 1993, the Municipality of North Sydney was legally renamed as North Sydney Council and aldermen were renamed councillors.

A referendum passed at the 9 September 2017 election altered the system of electing the mayor. Starting in 2020, the mayor will no longer be directly-elected and will be elected by the councillors from among their members for a two-year term.

List of incumbents

The following individuals has served as the Mayor of North Sydney Council, or any predecessor titles.

Notes

References

External links

*Mayors of North Sydney
North Sydney
Mayors North Sydney


Brainwash: The Secret History of Mind Control

Brainwash: The Secret History of Mind Control () is a 2006 non-fiction book published by Hodder & Stoughton
about the evolution of mind control from its origins in the Cold War through to today's War on Terror. The author, Dominic Streatfeild,
uses formerly classified documentation and interviews from the CIA, U.S. Army, MI5, MI6 and British Intelligence Corps to investigate the methods intended to destroy and reconstruct the minds of captives, to extract information and convert dissidents. Brainwash is Streatfeild's second book, following on from his 2002 book, Cocaine: An Unauthorised Biography.

Brainwash covers a wide range of disturbing techniques used to subvert the human will, ranging from inducing chemical imbalance through stressing (wall standing, hooding and malnutrition), sensory deprivation, hypnosis, the 'Deep Narcosis' therapy employed by Dr William Sargant and Ewan Cameron, subliminal messaging, socialisation and various forms of mind control.

The author investigates the use of these techniques by the CIA, British Intelligence Services (against the IRA), the KGB, large corporations, the Moonies and various Satanic abuse trials in the 1980s and 1990s.

Brainwash details the work carried out by William Sargant and Donald Ewan Cameron (both now deceased) on the MKULTRA project before becoming disillusioned with the results after the pair had destroyed the health, memories and lives of countless patients.

Samuel Johnson Award
Post publication, Brainwash was nominated for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2007. The book was then longlisted and ultimately shortlisted for the 2007 prize but lost out to Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran.

References

External links
 How to turn a human into a robot, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, The Daily Telegraph, 30 July 2006
Dominic Streatfeild, "Brainwash: The Secret History of Mind Control"
 Source Material interview regarding 'Deep Narcosis' Therapy
 Source Material interview with MI6 Psychiatrist
 Source Material interview with Monsignor Denis Faul
 Source Material interview with Reverend Sam Davies
 Source Material interview with Dr David Owen

Category:2006 non-fiction books
Category:Books about mind control
Category:Hodder & Stoughton books


Theatre Royal, Bath

The Theatre Royal in Bath, England, was built in 1805. A Grade II* listed building, it has been described by the Theatres Trust as "One of the most important surviving examples of Georgian theatre architecture". It has a capacity for an audience of around 900.

The Theatre Royal was built to replace the Old Orchard Street Theatre, funded by a Tontine and elaborately decorated. The architect was George Dance the Younger, with John Palmer carrying out much of the work. It opened with a performance of Shakespeare's Richard III and hosted performances by many leading actors of the time including Dorothea Jordan, William Macready and Edmund Kean. A major fire in 1862 destroyed the interior of the building and was quickly followed by a rebuilding programme by Charles J. Phipps, which included the construction of the current entrance. Further redecoration was undertaken in 1892; more extensive building work, including a new staircase and the installation of electric lighting, followed in 1902. Despite performances by casts including Sarah Bernhardt, the ballerina Anna Pavlova and Mrs. Patrick Campbell, the theatre was rarely very profitable. During World War II Donald Wolfit, Irene Vanbrugh, John Gielgud and Sybil Thorndike appeared, with shows including Noël Coward's Private Lives and Blyth Spirit, a performance by Ballet Rambert and light entertainment such as Charley's Aunt, but audiences declined.

In 1979 the theatre was bought by a trust and, following public donations, it underwent refurbishment, with the rebuilding of the stage and the installation of a new taller fly tower for scenery and lighting. In 1997 a new 150 seat theatre, known as the Ustinov Studio, was opened. Further restoration work to the main auditorium was needed in 2010. In 2005 a children's theatre known as The Egg was opened. The complex also includes bars and restaurants.

History

Construction
The theatre was erected in 1805, replacing the Old Orchard Street Theatre which had obtained a royal patent in 1768 enabling the use of the title 'Theatre Royal', the first to achieve this outside London. The Orchard Street site became a church and is now a Freemason's Hall. The new theatre was first proposed in 1802 at several sites in Bath until the current site was chosen in 1804; funding was raised by the use of a Tontine, an investment plan named after the Neapolitan banker Lorenzo de Tonti, who is credited with inventing it in France in 1653. It combined features of a group annuity and a lottery. Each subscriber paid an agreed sum into the fund, and thereafter received an annuity. As members died, their shares devolved to the other participants, and so the value of each annuity increased. On the death of the last member, the scheme was wound up. Shares, which cost £200, were rapidly purchased, with the Prince Regent who later became George IV and his brother Prince Frederick among the subscribers. A similar scheme had previously been used for the construction of the Bath Assembly Rooms.

The exterior of the building, with arches, pilasters, garlands and ornaments, which is visible from Beauford Square, was designed by George Dance the Younger who also designed the decorative sections of the interior. The main fabric of the building was by John Palmer, who supervised the construction. The ceiling was decorated with panels from Fonthill Splendens, a mile from Fonthill Abbey, which were painted by Andrea Casali and donated to the theatre by Paul Cobb Methuen. Because of the potential damage from the gas lights, which were installed in 1827, the paintings were moved by William Blathwayt to Dyrham Park.

The opening night was on 12 October 1805 was a production of Richard III, with an unknown actor in the lead. Though not a success, the theatre soon established a good reputation and thrived under the management of William Wyatt Dimond. Early performances included appearances by the child actors Master Betty and Clara Fisher, with adult leads from prominent actors on the London stage including Dorothea Jordan, William Macready and Edmund Kean. In addition to Shakespeare and other serious drama, the productions included opera and comedy with Joseph Grimaldi playing the clown in a pantomime of Mother Goose in November 1815.

Between the 1810s and 1850s there were a series of changes in ownership and management. These coincided with a Puritan revival and a fall in Bath's popularity; reductions in receipts were compounded by rising payments for actors from London. As a result, the theatre underwent financial crises and fell into a period of decline. Fortunes began to improve when James Henry Chute, who was the manager of the Bath Assembly Rooms and the son-in-law of the owner Mrs Macready, took over as the manager of the theatre and once again audiences began to rise.

Fire and rebuilding
On 18 April 1862 a major fire destroyed the interior of the building including the stage, scenery, wardrobe and library, leaving just the exterior walls still standing. A new company was formed to rebuild the theatre and a competition held for designs. The winner was C.J. Phipps and rebuilding, which included the new entrance on Sawclose, quickly followed. The present main entrance to the Theatre Royal, in Sawclose, was built in 1720 by Thomas Greenway, and was previously at Beau Nash's house. Pevsner criticizes the mouldings of window-frames, frieze and volutes of the door-hood brackets as "characteristically overdone", and mentions Wood citing its "profuse ornament" which was typical of a mason rather than an architect. Chute remained as manager and employed Charles Kean and Ellen Terry to play in A Midsummer Night's Dream on the opening night, 3 March 1863.

Initially the reopened theatre struggled to become profitable despite appearances by Henry Irving among others. In 1885 William Lewis took over as the lessee and was followed, in 1892, by his son Egbert Lewis. They redecorated the theatre in 1892 and attracted larger regular audiences to performances of melodrama and comedy while starting to put on Gilbert and Sullivan operas and other attractions.

20th century
In 1902 the theatre closed for nine months to enable extensive building work to be carried out in accordance with the terms of the Royal Charter. This involved a new staircase, the installation of electric lighting, a new fire curtain and hot water radiators throughout the auditorium. In 1905, on the anniversary of the opening of the Theatre Royal, numerous William Shakespeare's plays were performed by the company of actors led by Frank Benson.

In 1914 the theatre impresario Arthur Carlton, from Worcester, took over the lease. As he was responsible for 14 theatres around the country at the time, he appointed Mrs D. Valantine Munro as the local manager. Performances were maintained during World War I, and in 1916 Sarah Bernhardt portrayed a wounded male French soldier in Du Théâtre au Champ d'Honneur. In the 1920s there were appearances by the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova and Mrs. Patrick Campbell. During the Great Depression of the 1930s the theatre was not profitable and closed completely for six months. In 1938 the lease was taken over by Reg Maddox, whose family were involved with the theatre for the next 40 years. During World War II the theatre fared better, with appearances by prominent actors including Donald Wolfit, Irene Vanbrugh, John Gielgud and Sybil Thorndike. In the Post-War years, receipts suffered as audiences dwindled in the face of competition from cinema and television. Unsuccessful proposals were made for a trust to run the theatre in 1968, and in the 1970s, shares in the owning company were bought by the property developer Charles Ware, who sold to Charles Clarke, a solicitor from Bristol. Clarke was responsible for a redecoration of the building, but as profits were still small, in 1976 he sold it to Louis I. Michaels, who ran the Haymarket Theatre in London.

In March 1979, the dilapidated theatre was purchased by a trust headed by Jeremy Fry for £155,000. The following year, an appeal was launched to raise money for renovations, including the complete rebuilding of the stage, installation of a steel grid to hold stage lighting and scenery and a higher fly system, to allow major touring companies, including the Royal National Theatre under Peter Hall, to be booked to perform. The total projected cost was £3.5 million, of which £1.8 million was seen as being essential to reopening the theatre. Money and donations in kind were received from the city council, Arts Council England, Bath Preservation Trust, Leche Trust, Historic buildings council, Manifold Trust, South-West Stonecleaning and Restoration Company and many individuals. Work on the building started to designs by Dowton and Hurst. However, as insufficient funds had been raised by 1982 to complete the work, loans were negotiated with the Bristol & West and Lombard North Central with guarantees from local councils. The theatre reopened on 30 November 1982 with a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream, featuring a cast from the National Theatre led by Paul Scofield. The event was attended by Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon.

2010 refurbishment

In October 2009, the '2010 Refurbishment Appeal' was launched by Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Royal Patron of the Theatre Royal Bath, to raise money for a programme of work to preserve the 200-year-old building, while ensuring that it remained suitable for 21st-century audiences.
The £3million refurbishment by Fry, the most extensive programme of work since the theatre had been saved from virtual collapse almost 30 years before, included an expanded foyer, improved lift and disabled access to the stalls and royal circle levels, complete refurbishment of the bars and the creation of The Jeremy Fry Bar, in the former cellars of The Garrick's Head pub, and redecoration of the auditorium. Technical improvements included the rebuilding of the Main House stage, and an extensive rewiring and lighting programme around the entire building, with new fire alarm systems, air-conditioning and lighting, all designed to improve the building's efficiency and reduce the carbon footprint by some 30%. The design was by architects of the Fielden Clegg Bradley Studios, and the construction firm Midas was contracted to complete the building work.

A successful campaign, led by writer and novelist Bel Mooney, who had been instrumental in previous fund-raising campaigns for the Theatre Royal Bath, saw almost a third of the money raised through donations and sponsorship, enabling work to begin away from public areas in March 2010. The theatre's Main House was closed in July 2010, to allow the work on the foyer, bars and auditorium to be completed.

The official re-opening took place on Wednesday, 8 September 2010, just ten and a half months after the original campaign was launched, with the building work being completed on schedule. The ceremonial re-opening was performed on-stage by actors Penelope Keith and Peter Bowles, who were starring in the Theatre Royal's own production of The Rivals, Richard Brinsley Sheridan's classic Restoration comedy, set in and around 18th-century Bath. In 2011, the theatre won a British Construction Industry Award Conservation Award.

The theatre itself is said to be haunted by several ghosts including the Grey Lady, who was an actress centuries ago. She has been seen watching productions in the Grey Lady Box, and she leaves the distinctive scent of jasmine. She has purportedly been seen and scented in recent years.

Architecture and features

The theatre, along with the neighbouring Garrick's Head public house, is a Grade II* listed building and is considered a prime example of Georgian architecture. The oldest part of the building is the former Garrick's Head on St John's Close. The three storey five bay building, with a basement, has a hipped roof with a part-balustraded parapet. Above the door is a bust of David Garrick, which was made in 1831 by Lucius Gahagan. The Beauford Square side of the building, originally designed by George Dance the Younger, is of five bays with pilasters carrying a frieze of comic and tragic muses. The central door was the main entrance for the pit and galleries. The east front, now the main entrance which opens onto Sawclose, was altered from a plain six-bay entrance by the addition of the round-arched foyer hiding four of the original bays. The 900 seat auditorium has tiers of ornate plasterwork, with red and gilt decoration, and a trompe-l'œil ceiling and glittering chandelier. It has three galleries in a horseshoe plan, supported by cast iron pillars.

In 2017 the Sawclose area between the current Theatre Royal main entrance and the former Bluecoat School was made into a pedestrian-friendly shared space area for pedestrians, cyclists and cars.

Ustinov Studio

In 1997, a studio theatre was built at the rear of the building on Monmouth Street, called the Ustinov Studio, named after the actor Peter Ustinov. The front of the building is decorated with a bronze winged figure which was designed by his son, Igor Ustinov, entitled Hopefully. The 150-seat auditorium was originally a space for the youth theatre and small-scale touring productions, but the Ustinov programme soon expanded to encompass classical concerts, stand-up comedy (including high-profile acts such as Bill Bailey, Stewart Lee and Lucy Porter) and in-house productions. To accommodate the technical needs of these productions, a refurbishment was planned to take place throughout 2007, improving the backstage & technical facilities, the foyer, bar and auditorium. The Ustinov Studio re-opened in February 2008, with their own production of Breakfast With Mugabe, starring Joseph Marcell, Miles Anderson and Nicholas Bailey.

In 2011, Olivier Award-winning director Laurence Boswell was appointed the first Artistic Director of the Ustinov Studio. In the 2012 American Season at the Ustinov Studio, Sarah Ruhl's In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) was the winner of the Best New Play — Theatre Awards UK 2012 and nominated for three Tony Awards. The Ustinov Studio was also nominated for the prestigious Empty Space ... Peter Brook Award 2012. The Daily Telegraph'''s Dominic Cavendish praised the venue as a "constantly bubbling fount of marvels" at the awards ceremony. The Ustinov also received a second consecutive nomination for the 2013 awards.

In Autumn 2013, the Ustinov presented The Spanish Golden Age Season, three new translations of rarely seen plays. These included the tragedy Punishment without Revenge, and the romantic comedies Don Gil of the Green Breeches and A Lady of Little Sense'', which ran in repertory with a cast of ten actors in all three plays between September and December 2013. It was later transferred to the Arcola Theatre.

In Summer 2014, the Ustinov Studio presented a new comedy, 'Bad Jews', and in November of the same year, a black comedy by Florian Zeller, 'The Father' starring Kenneth Cranham. Both of these plays have gone on to huge national and international success in following two years, running almost continuously on several tours and West End transfers, culminating in Kenneth Cranham winning the Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Play at the 2016 Awards Ceremony.

In January 2020, the internationally acclaimed and multi-award-winning theatre and opera director Deborah Warner, was appointed Artistic Director of the Ustinov Studio.

The Egg

In 2005 another new theatre was opened behind the Theatre Royal, The Egg, which provides professional theatre productions for children and their families, alongside workshops and youth theatre productions. It includes a cafe, which is also the venue for children's and family events, and occasional teenage arts events.

Performances
Alongside the weekly touring productions which make up most of its programme, the Theatre Royal hosts a Summer Season, curated by Jonathan Church. This followed on from the highly acclaimedPeter Hall Company Season, which was held from 2003 until 2011. Many plays start at the Theatre Royal before their official opening in London.

References

Bibliography

External links

Official website
Short article and photographs of the theatre

Category:1805 establishments in England
Category:Theatres completed in 1805
Category:Theatres in Bath, Somerset
Category:Grade II* listed buildings in Bath, Somerset
Category:Grade II* listed theatres


Trimioplectus

Trimioplectus is a genus of ant-loving beetles in the family Staphylinidae. There are at least three described species in Trimioplectus.

Species
These three species belong to the genus Trimioplectus:
 Trimioplectus auerbachi Park, 1949
 Trimioplectus australis Chandler, 1990
 Trimioplectus obsoletus Brendel, 1891

References

Further reading

External links

Category:Pselaphinae
Category:Articles created by Qbugbot


2,3-Oxidosqualene

(S)-2,3-Oxidosqualene ((S)-2,3-epoxysqualene) is an intermediate in the synthesis of the cell membrane sterol precursors lanosterol and cycloartenol, as well as saponins.  It is formed when squalene is oxidized by the enzyme squalene monooxygenase.  2,3-Oxidosqualene is the substrate of various oxidosqualene cyclases, including lanosterol synthase, which produces lanosterol, a precursor to cholesterol.

The stereoisomer 2,3-(R)-oxidosqualene is an inhibitor of lanosterol synthase.

References

External links
 Oxidosqualene cyclase, PDB December 2007 Molecule of the Month

Category:Epoxides
Category:Triterpenes


Eleni Mandell

Eleni Mandell (born in Los Angeles, California) is an American singer-songwriter. Since 2000, she has published albums through Zedtone Records in Toronto, Ontario, which in 2012 began licensing her releases to Yep Roc in the United States, and Make My Day in Europe. She is also a member of folk supergroup The Living Sisters with Inara George and Becky Stark.

Mandell attended punk and underground rock shows while growing up in Los Angeles in the 1980s. She was inspired as a young songwriter by Tom Waits, X, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and Randy Newman. Chuck E. Weiss, a socialite musician and associate of Tom Waits, was a mentor to Mandell.

Eleni Mandell's first album, Wishbone (1998), was produced by Jon Brion. Her second album, Thrill, was released in 2000, earning her comparisons to PJ Harvey and Tom Waits. Around 2001, The New Yorker magazine described Mandell "as perhaps the best unsigned artist in the business." In the same year, Mandell won the Los Angeles Regional Poll at The 1st Independent Music Awards for the song "Pauline." In 2003, she released Country For True Lovers, which was produced by X guitarist Tony Gilkyson. Miracle of Five (2007) featured contributions from Wilco guitarist Nels Cline and X drummer DJ Bonebrake.

Mandell's eighth full-length release, I Can See the Future (2012), was her first album to be licensed by Yep Roc, a U.S. record label. Produced by Joe Chiccarelli (The Shins, The Strokes, White Stripes), guest appearances include drummer Joey Waronker (Beck, Atoms for Peace), saxophonist Steve Berlin (Los Lobos), a duet with Benji Hughes, backing vocals throughout by Becky Stark and Inara George (The Living Sisters), and arrangements by Nate Walcott (Bright Eyes).

Discography

Albums
 Wishbone | Mr. Charles (1998)
 Thrill | Zedtone (2000)
 Snakebite | Space Baby (2001)
 Country for True Lovers | Zedtone (2003)
 Afternoon | Zedtone (2004)
 Miracle of Five | Zedtone (2007)
 Voxhall and WUK (live) | Mr. Charles (2007)
 Artificial Fire | Zedtone (2009)
 I Can See the Future | Yep Roc (2012)
 Let's Fly A Kite | Yep Roc (2014)
 Dark Lights Up | Yep Roc (2015)
 Wake Up Again | Yep Roc (2019)

Singles and EPs
 "Turn On the Lights" b/w "I Still Think About You" (7") | Heart of a Champion (2001)
 "Los Fishes" (split 7" with Mike Gunther) | Heart of a Champion (2004)
 Maybe, Yes [EP] | Heart of a Champion (2004)
 "Dis-Moi Au Revoir Encore" b/w "Francais 1" (7") | Bonsound (2007)

Also featured on (as full group member)
 The Grabs - Sex, Fashion, And Money | The Grabs Records (2005)
 The Living Sisters - Love To Live | Vanguard (2010)
 The Grabs - Political Disco | Heart OF A Champion (2011)
 The Living Sisters - Run For Cover | Vanguard (2013)

References

External links

 Zedtone Records
 Eleni Mandell at Yep Roc Records
 Make My Day Records
 Eleni Mandell at NPR.org
 Eleni Mandell at Answers.com
 Live video of Eleni Mandell at scheduletwo.com
 Concert photos by Laurent Orseau
 The Dreamboat An Eleni Mandell Yahoo Group

Category:Songwriters from California
Category:Living people
Category:American female singer-songwriters
Category:American singer-songwriters
Category:1969 births
Category:Independent Music Awards winners
Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni
Category:Musicians from Los Angeles
Category:Yep Roc Records artists


Murr, Baden-Württemberg

Murr is a municipality in the district of Ludwigsburg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated on the river Murr, 2 km upstream from its confluence with the Neckar and about 9 km northeast of Ludwigsburg.

References

Category:Ludwigsburg (district)


Darnick

Darnick is a village near Melrose in the Scottish Borders area of Scotland, in the former Roxburghshire. The name was first recorded in 1124, and has changed from Dernewic, Dernwick and Darnwick to the present Darnick.  was built in c. 1425, and another tower house, Fisher's Tower, is still recognisable by its remains.

Skirmish Hill by Darnick is the site of a battle which took place on 18 June 1526 between the Scotts of Buccleuch and the Kerrs of Ferniehirst, trying to intercept King James V who was then under the guardianship of Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus.

John Smith of Darnick created the Wallace Statue at Bemersyde House. His family were builders and masons during the first half of the 19th century, and they have to their credit an extension to Abbotsford, Dryburgh Abbey House, Eckford Church, Gattonside House, Hawick North Bridge, the bridge over the Hermitage Water, Melrose Parish Church, and Yetholm Parish Church.

Places nearby include Abbotsford, Buckholm, Eildon, the Gala Water, Galashiels, Gattonside, Lindean and Newtown St Boswells.

See also

List of places in the Scottish Borders
List of places in Scotland

References
Douglas, Sir George (1899)  History of the Border Counties: Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood & Sons.

Sources
A walk around Darnick, described by Nigel Tranter in his 'Illustrated Portrait of the Border Country' 1972

External links

RCAHMS record of Darnick, Skirmish Field
 Darnick Tower; information and pictures published by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland

Category:Villages in the Scottish Borders


Disappearance of Lauren Spierer

Lauren Spierer (born January 17, 1991) is an American woman who is presumed dead after she disappeared on June 3, 2011, following an evening at a bar in Bloomington, Indiana. At the time, she was a 20-year-old student at Indiana University. Her disappearance generated national press coverage and remains unsolved.

History
Lauren Spierer was born in January 1991 to Charlene and Robert Spierer; her father was an accountant. She grew up in Scarsdale, New York, an affluent town in lower Westchester County. Spierer graduated from Edgemont High School in 2009 and enrolled at Indiana University, where she was studying textiles merchandising. Spierer was active in the Jewish community at IU and had spent the previous spring break planting trees in Israel on behalf of the Jewish National Fund.

Spierer met her boyfriend Jesse Wolff and her friend Jay Rosenbaum years earlier at Camp Towanda, a summer camp in the mountain town of Honesdale, Pennsylvania. It was there that she also met various other future IU students who later became her circle of friends when she enrolled there in 2009.

Disappearance
On the night she disappeared, Spierer was drinking with several friends. Wolff stated that he did not go out with Spierer or her friends that evening, texting back and forth with Spierer before he went to bed. According to witnesses, Spierer was very intoxicated. Bloomington police used video surveillance footage and witness statements to create a timeline of Spierer's whereabouts before her disappearance.

Timeline

The timestamps in bold indicate surveillance footage. The other times mentioned are on the basis of witness statements.

Friday, June 3, 2011
 12:30 a.m. – Witnesses report that Spierer left her apartment with a friend named David Rohn. The pair went to Jay Rosenbaum's apartment, and she met up with Cory Rossman, Rosenbaum's neighbor.
1:46 a.m. – Spierer is seen entering Kilroy's Sports Bar.
2:27 a.m. – Spierer is seen exiting the bar with Rossman. Lauren left her cell phone and shoes at the bar. She had taken off her shoes when she walked out onto the sand-covered patio. Rossman walked with Spierer to her apartment complex.
2:30 a.m. – Spierer is seen entering Smallwood Plaza apartments, where her residence is located. A passerby named Zach Oakes noticed her level of inebriation and asked if she was okay.
2:48 a.m. – After she left the apartments, Spierer entered an alley that runs between College Avenue and Morton Street. Security cameras mounted on nearby apartments show her exit the alley at 2:51 a.m. and walk toward an empty lot. Spierer's keys and purse were found along this route through the alley. Spierer and Rossman arrived at Rossman's apartment shortly afterward. Michael Beth, Rossman's roommate, was at the apartment. Rossman himself was very intoxicated and stumbling. He vomited on the carpet on the way upstairs. Beth stated that he escorted Rossman to bed. He then tried to persuade Spierer to sleep over for her own safety. He claimed Spierer said she wanted to return to her own apartment.
3:30 a.m. – Beth said he then phoned his neighbor, Rosenbaum, wanting him to take care of Spierer. Beth said that Spierer was attempting to get Beth to drink with her at her own apartment. She eventually went to Rosenbaum's apartment, where he observed a bruise under her eye, presumably sustained in a fall earlier that evening. She told him she didn't know how she got the bruise. Two calls were placed from Rosenbaum's phone shortly before she is reported to have left. Rosenbaum said Spierer placed both calls, one to Rohn and one to another friend. Neither picked up, and no messages were left.
4:30 a.m. – Rosenbaum reports that Spierer left the apartment. This is the last reported sighting of her. He reported last seeing Spierer at the intersection of 11th Street and College Avenue, headed south on College. She was last seen barefoot, wearing black leggings and a white shirt.
Several hours later that morning, Wolff sent Spierer a text. He received a reply from an employee at the bar. Wolff reported Spierer missing.

Investigation
In August 2011, police conducted a nine-day search of the Sycamore Ridge Landfill in Pimento (south of Terre Haute) for clues in the disappearance. The landfill is where trash from Bloomington is hauled after a stop at a transfer station. The Bloomington Police Department, the Indiana University Police Department, and the FBI took part in the search. As of May 24, 2013, investigators had received 3,060 tips on Spierer's disappearance, 100 of them received during the first half of 2013.

On January 28, 2016, the FBI conducted a raid of a home in Martinsville (approximately  north of Bloomington). The raid was connected to a man suspected of exposing himself to numerous women. The FBI and other police agencies converged on the home, with Bloomington Police confirming they were involved in the search. Investigators sifted dirt removed from a barn near the property after cadaver dogs finished their work. The searchers would not discuss whether anything significant was found. Investigators towed a white truck from the property. The truck may be connected to 35-year-old Justin Wagers, who lived there with his mother and stepfather until his last arrest.

Speculation
A number of theories have emerged in reference to what happened to Spierer that evening. Spierer's parents have stated that they believe their daughter is dead. Based on her level of intoxication, they also felt that she may have been drugged while at the bar. "We felt somebody could have slipped something into her drink at Kilroy's," said Robert Spierer. The family has voiced suspicions about the men she was with that evening as well as Wolff, since they refused to take police-issued polygraphs and retained lawyers soon after Spierer's disappearance. While the parents have not made any specific accusations, they do believe the two know more than they have told police so far. The men responded that they have taken privately administered polygraphs, as well as one from the FBI. Since they do not trust the Bloomington police, they say, they have retained lawyers.

Regarding Spierer's level of intoxication, her friends and Wolff told police that she used drugs in addition to alcohol on the night leading up to her disappearance. Wolff's mother alleged that Spierer was asked to leave the summer camp where she met her son and Rosenbaum years earlier because of drug use. "This poor little girl is not with us today because of her drug abuse," she said.

Rosenbaum told investigators that Spierer consumed alcohol, snorted cocaine and crushed up Klonopin tablets that evening. Her rare heart condition—long QT syndrome—added to the danger of drug use. Police addressed rumors that implied Spierer may have overdosed and those with her may have hidden her body to avoid criminal charges. The police also acknowledged that they have not ruled out other possibilities, such as abduction by a stranger. Bo Dietl, a private investigator hired by the Spierer family, doubts that a fatal drug overdose could be enough motive to hide her death; he cited the prevalence of drug abuse on the IU campus. "Every kid's buying pot, cocaine, drinking, pills," he said. "I mean, it's all over the place. So that really can't be the motive behind it."

On September 2, 2010, nine months before her disappearance, Spierer was arrested on charges of public intoxication and illegal consumption. After her disappearance, police found a "small amount of cocaine" in her room.

Missing white woman syndrome
The intense press coverage of the disappearance has been dubbed an example of missing white woman syndrome, a phenomenon wherein the news media disproportionately covers missing-person cases that involve young, white, upper-middle class females. The Indiana Daily Student, IU's student paper, ran a story that documented the disparity between their own coverage of Spierer's disappearance and their coverage of another local disappearance, Crystal Grubb, 29, who was also white but came from a working-class family wherein many relatives had criminal histories. Following Grubb's disappearance in 2010, the Daily Student ran a total of seven stories on the case compared to multiple front-page articles and the extensive national awareness of the Spierer case. An acquaintance of Grubb's commented: "When Crystal went missing, it was in the newspaper like once. For Spierer's disappearance, everyone's here and there's posters everywhere, people walking around. Definitely nothing like that was afforded Crystal. I don't want to say it's because she was of a lower economic class, but that's what it seems to me."

Civil lawsuit
Spierer's parents filed a civil lawsuit against Rossman, Rosenbaum, and Beth. The suit accused the men of negligence, alleging that Rossman and Rosenbaum supplied Spierer with alcohol after she was already "visibly intoxicated," and then neglected to assure she returned safely to her apartment, which likely led to her death. The family has stated that they hope the lawsuit will lead to the men's coming forward with more information about what occurred that night. "I truly don't think it was a random abduction, I think that somebody that Lauren knew was responsible for the events of that evening," her mother said. As part of the suit, they subpoenaed private cell phone and academic records spanning 134 days before and after the night Spierer disappeared, a move that the men have called a "fishing expedition." None of the men have been named as suspects in her disappearance.

In 2013, federal judge Tanya Walton Pratt dismissed the suit against Beth, ruling that he had no duty to care for Spierer. In 2014, Pratt dismissed the suit against the other two men, stating: "Unfortunately, there could be any number of theories as to what happened to Lauren and what, if any, injuries she may have sustained. Without evidence to prove these theories, it would be impossible for a jury to determine if whatever happened to  Spierer was a natural and probable consequence of her intoxication, without any other intervening acts that would break the causal chain." Spierer's parents have appealed the ruling. Lawyers for the men have stated that their clients have cooperated fully with police and the private investigators hired by the Spierer family, and that all of them have passed private polygraphs. "They've been interviewed and interviewed and interviewed, and to say they've been less than forthcoming is just not accurate," said Chapman, who represents Beth and Rohn.

Further investigation
In April 2015, the Bloomington Police announced that they were investigating a possible link between Lauren's disappearance and the murder of another IU student, Hannah Wilson. Wilson went missing on April 24, 2015, after visiting Kilroy's, the same bar that Spierer visited the night she disappeared. Wilson was last seen getting into a taxi in front of the bar and driving away. Her body was found the next morning in Brown County. A local man named Daniel Messel was arrested for the murder after his cell phone was discovered near the body. Spierer's parents have previously stated that they do not believe her disappearance was a random abduction. In July 2015, Dietl concluded that the two cases are unrelated and any similarities between the two cases were coincidental.

On January 28, 2016, the FBI and other police agencies investigated a property in the 2900 block of Old Morgantown Road in Martinsville. According to a statement released by the FBI, the investigators were "following up on leads and tips in Morgan County today regarding the disappearance of Lauren Spierer". Investigators searched the property with cadaver dogs, which indicated potential evidence. Anthropologists conducted a dig, but found nothing.

In the media
Spierer's case has been covered in multiple podcasts. Among those: Going West: True Crime's 34th Episode, "Lauren Spierer", True Crime All The Time Unsolved's 106th Episode, "Lauren Spierer", Trace Evidence's third episode, "The Vanishing of Lauren Spierer" and Not Another True Crime Podcast's episode, "Where is Lauren Spierer". On 9/30/2019, the podcast Crime Junkie, released an episode about Lauren's disappearance. On 12/16/2019, HLN show Real Life Nightmare detailed the Lauren Spierer case in an hourlong episode called "Night of No Return".

See also
List of people who disappeared

References

External links
FindLauren.com

Category:2010s missing person cases
Category:2011 in Indiana
Category:American Jews
Category:Bloomington, Indiana
Category:Indiana University
Category:June 2011 events in the United States
Category:Missing person cases in Indiana
Category:People from Greenburgh, New York