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Jenin

Jenin (جنين, , ) is a city in the State of Palestine, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The city serves as the administrative center of the Jenin Governorate of Palestine and is a major center for the surrounding towns. Jenin came under Israeli occupation in 1967, and was put under the administration of the Palestinian National Authority as Area A of the West Bank in 1993.

In 2017, Jenin had a population of approximately 50,000 people, whilst the Jenin refugee camp had a population of about 10,000, housing Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes during the 1948 Palestine War. The camp has since become a stronghold of Palestinian militants, and the location of several incidents relating to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Etymology
Jenin has been identified as the place "Gina" or "Ginah" mentioned in the Amarna letters from the 14th century BCE, as a town in Canaan. Jenin is commonly identified with the later biblical city of Ein-Ganim, from עֵין גַּנִּים, meaning "the spring of gardens" or "the spring of Ganim", probably referring to the many springs located nearby. The present-day Arabic name is believed to preserve the city's ancient name.

Ancient period
Jenin is identified with a number of important towns mentioned in ancient sources. Throughout history, it was referred to as "Ein Ganim", "Beth Hagan", "Ginah", and "Ginae", along other names.

Tell Jenin, believed to constitute the original settlement core of the city, is located at the center of what is today Jenin's business district. The tell is also known as Tell el-Nawar, a term derived from the Arabic word for "gypsies," due to former nomadic encampments in this site. The earliest settlement at the tell dates to the late Neolithic and the early Chalcolithic. In the early 20th century, the tell was occupied by a modern cemetery and a threshing floor.

Bronze Age
Jenin has been identified as the place Gina or Ginah mentioned in the Amarna letters from the 14th century BCE. At the time, it was a vassal state of the New Kingdom of Egypt. The people of Gina managed to kill the warlord Labaya during the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaten.

Iron Age
Jenin is identical to Ein-Ganim, which the Hebrew Bible describes as a Levite city belonging to the Israelite Tribe of Issachar. It has also been associated with Beth-Haggan, mentioned in 2 Kings in connection with Ahaziah's flight from Jehu, before he is wounded at Ibleam and later dies in Megiddo. The Book of Judith renders its name as Gini.

Roman and Byzantine periods
Josephus, a Roman-Jewish historian of the 1st-century CE, mentions Ginae as being in the great plain, on the northern border of Samaria. During the Roman period, Ginae was settled exclusively by Samaritans. The people of Galilee were disposed to pass through their city during the annual pilgrimages to Jerusalem. In 51 CE, a Galilean Jew was killed in Ginae by hostile Samaritans while en route to Jerusalem to celebrate Sukkot. With Roman procurator Cumanus failing to respond, Jewish Zealots led by Elazar the Son of Deinaeus (Ben Dinai) sought vengeance, and several Samaritan villages in Aqrabatene were destroyed.

Biblical commentator F. W. Farrar raised the possibility that this Samaritan village, "the first village at which [a traveler taking the road from Galilee to Judea over Mount Tabor] would arrive", was the one which rejected the disciples of Jesus in Luke's Gospel at the point where Jesus and his followers begin his journey towards Jerusalem.

Ceramics dating from the Byzantine era have been found here. There is no mention of Jenin in the reports of the Muslim conquest of the Levant from the Byzantines, which, according to the historian Moshe Sharon, "is not surprising, since it was a small place of minor importance".

Crusader, Ayyubid and Mamluk periods
Jenin came under Crusader rule in 1103. The Crusaders called it Le Grand Guerin (Latin: Garinum or Gallina Major), to distinguish it from the town of Zir'in, which they called Petit Grin. Under the Crusaders it was a small seigniory, forming part of the Principality of Galilee or the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Shortly before the Battle of Hattin in 1187, Jenin was captured by the Ayyubid sultan Saladin, who destroyed the nearby fort, Castellum Beleismum. In the 1220s, the geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi described Jenin as "a small and beautiful town, lying between Nabulus and Beisan, in the Jordan Province. There is much water, and many springs are found here, and often have I visited it." In 1229, a peace was concluded between Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor and Sultan al-Kamil, during the Sixth Crusade, whereby the city was given to the Crusaders, but Sultan as-Salih Ayyub was able to control it permanently in 1244 after the Battle of La Forbie.

In 1255, it was agreed between the Ayyubid sultan in Syria, an-Nasir Yusuf, and the first Mamluk sultan in Egypt, Izz al-Din Aybak, to give the latter all of the lands lying west of the Jordan River, and thus Jenin entered into the possession of the Mamluks. It was one of eleven subdistricts of Mamlakat Safad (Province of Safed). In the late 13th century, Mamluk emirs (commanders) stationed at Jenin were ordered by Sultan Qalawun ((r. 1279 – 1290)) "to ride every day with their troops before the fortress of 'Akka, so as to protect the coast and the merchants." As one of the stations of the Mamluk barid (postal route) between the Mamluk capital Cairo and Damascus, it was one of the towns where fires were lit to warn of a Mongol attack. The geographer al-Dimashqi mentioned Jenin around 1300. From the time of Qalawun's son, Sultan an-Nasir Muhammad ((r. 1299 – 1309)), it was a station on the route where ice was transported to Cairo for the sultans' drink houses. The Mamluk historian al-Qalqashandi (d. 1418) described Jenin as "an ancient spacious town which is riding on a shoulder of a nice valley in which there is a river of flowing water" north of Qaqun "on the top end of Marj Bani Amer [Jezreel Valley]". He also noted that it contained the mausoleum of Dihyah al-Kalbi, a companion of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

Ottoman era

The Ottomans conquered Mamluk Syria in 1516. Jenin became the administrative center of a nahiya (subdistrict) of the Lajjun Sanjak (Lajjun District). The sanjak was officially called the Iqta (Fief) of Turabay until 1559 when it became officially known as the Lajjun Sanjak. The Turabay dynasty was the ruling house of the Bedouin Banu Haritha tribe, whose members held the governorship of Lajjun from the start of Ottoman rule through 1677.

The tax registers from 1548–1549 report that Jenin had a population of eight households, all Muslim. They paid a fixed tax rate of 25% on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues; a total of 2,000 akçe. All of the revenue went to a waqf (religious endowment) in the name of the Mamluk sultan Qansuh al-Ghuri ((r. 1501 – 1516)). Turabay rule was occasionally interrupted, including in 1564, when a certain Kemal Bey was appointed sanjak-bey (district governor) by the Ottomans. On 15 October 1564 Kemal Bey requested from the beylerbey (provincial governor) of Damascus that the stone caravanserai of Jenin be repaired, garrisoned and serve as the chief headquarters of the Lajjun sanjak-bey in order for Lajjun to prosper and for the road connecting Damascus to Jerusalem and Egypt to become secure. The official response was that the caravanserai be turned into a fortress; the fortress became ruined at some later point and 19th-century residents of Jenin used to claim that certain large rocks strewn in the village were the remnants of the 16th-century fortress.

The Turabays, who remained nomads in the plain between Mount Carmel and Caesarea, made Jenin the administrative headquarters of Lajjun and used the town's Izz al-Din Cemetery to bury their dead. A large, domed mausoleum was built for the grave of one of the chiefs and sanjak-beys of the family, Turabay ibn Ali (d. 1601). Known as Qubbat al-Amir Turabay (Dome of the Emir Turabay), it was described in a 1941 report as a ruined structure, and Sharon, writing in 2017, notes that it "does not exist anymore". No other graves of the Turabays in Jenin had survived into the 20th century. During the conflict between Fakhr al-Din of the Ma'n dynasty, who governed the sanjaks of Sidon-Beirut and Safed, and the Turabays, in 1623, Fakhr al-Din captured Jenin and stationed his men there. In 1624 the most prominent Turabay chief and sanjak-bey of Lajjun, Ahmad ibn Turabay, drove out the Ma'nid troops from Jenin and established his personal residence in the town.

In the mid-18th century, Jenin was designated the administrative capital of the combined districts of Lajjun and Ajlun. There are indications that the area comprising Jenin and Nablus remained functionally autonomous under Ottoman rule and that the empire struggled to collect taxes there. During the Napoleonic Campaign in Egypt which extended into Syria and Palestine in 1799, a local official from Jenin wrote a poem enumerating and calling upon local Arab leaders to resist Bonaparte, without mentioning the Sultan or the need to protect the Ottoman Empire.

In the late 19th century, some members of the Jarrar family, who formed part of the mallakin (elite land-owning families) in Jenin, cooperated with merchants in Haifa to set up an export enterprise there. During the Ottoman era, Jenin was plagued by local warfare between members of the same clan. The French explorer Guérin visited in 1870. In 1882, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine described Jenin as "The capital of the district, the seat of a Caimacam, a town of about 3,000 inhabitants, with a small bazaar. The houses are well built of stone. There are two families of Roman Catholics; the remainder are Moslems. A spring rises east of the town and is conducted to a large masonry reservoir, near the west side, of good squared stonework, with a long stone trough. This reservoir was built by 'And el Hady, Mudir of Acre, in the first half of the century [..], north of the town is the little mosque of 'Ezz ed Din, with a good- sized dome and a minaret."

British Mandate period

According to a census conducted in 1922 by the British Mandate authorities, Jenin had a population of 2,637 (2,307 Muslims, 212 Hindus, 108 Christians, seven Jews, and three Sikhs). A following census in 1931 showed a slight increase to 2,706 (2,610 Muslims, 103 Christians, two Jews, and one Druze) with another 68 in nearby suburbs (all Muslims). From 1936, Jenin became a center of rebellion against the British Mandatory authorities. By the summer of 1938, residents of the city embarked on "an intensified campaign of murder, intimidation and sabotage" that caused the British administration "grave concern", according to a British report to the League of Nations; the population had further increased to 3,100. The city played an important role in the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine, prompted by the death of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam in a fire-fight with British colonial police at the nearby town of Ya'bad months prior to the start of the revolt. On 25 August 1938, the day after the British Assistant District Commissioner was assassinated in his Jenin office, a large British force with explosives entered the town. Despite having captured and killed the assassin, British forces ordered the inhabitants to leave, and blew up one quarter of the town as a form of punishment.

Jenin was used by Fawzi al-Qawuqji's Arab Liberation Army as a base.

The village statistics of 1945 list the population as 3,990 (3,840 Muslims and 150 Christians).

1948 War
In the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the city was defended by the Iraqi Army, then captured briefly by the forces from Israel's Carmeli Brigade during the "Ten Days' fighting" following the cancellation of the first cease-fire. Prior to the battle, the city's residents fled temporarily. The offensive was actually a feint designed to draw Arab forces away from the critical Battle for Jerusalem, and gains in that sector were quickly abandoned when Arab reinforcements arrived.

Jordanian control
In the wake of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and after the 1949 Armistice Agreements, Jenin came under Jordanian rule. It was annexed by Jordan in 1950.

The Jenin refugee camp was founded in 1953 by Jordan to house displaced Palestinians who fled or were expelled during the 1948 War. In 2014 the camp had a population of 16,000. For 19 years, the city was under Jordanian control. A war cemetery for Iraqi soldiers and local combatants is located on the outskirts of Jenin.

The Jordanian census of 1961 found 14,402 inhabitants in Jenin.

Israeli occupation
Jenin has been under Israeli occupation since the Six-Day War, in 1967.

On 14 May 1989, during the early months of the First Intifada. Mohammad Jibrin, aged 45, died in Ramallah Hospital after being beaten by Israeli soldiers in Jenin. Three months later, in response to a question from a member of Knesset Defence Minister Yitzhak Rabin wrote that there was no investigation by the Military Police Investigator.

In 1996, Israel handed over control of the city to the Palestinian National Authority in keeping with the Oslo Accords. Known to Palestinians as "the martyrs' capital", the camp's militants, some 200 armed men, included members of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Tanzim, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Hamas. By Israel's count, at least 28 suicide bombers were dispatched from the Jenin camp from 2000–2003 during the Second Intifada. Israeli army weekly Bamahane attributes at least 31 militant attacks, totaling 124 victims, to Jenin during the same period, more than any other city in the West Bank. During the al-Aqsa Intifada, Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield with the stated aim of dismantling terrorist infrastructure so as to curb suicide bombings and other militant activities. The army encircled and entered six major Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, among them Jenin. During the Battle of Jenin (2002) in April 2002, 23 Israeli soldiers and 52 Palestinians, including civilians,  were killed. Human Rights Watch reported that the refugee camp, which was the major battleground, suffered extensive damage. Witnesses stated unarmed people were shot and denied medical treatment, and as a result died. Human Rights Watch have regarded many killings to be unlawful such as the death of a 57-year-old wheelchair bound man who was shot and run over by a tank despite having attached a white flag on his wheelchair. A 37-year-old man who was paralysed was crushed under the rubble of his house, his family was not allowed to remove his body. A 14-year-old boy was killed as he travelled to purchase groceries during the temporary relief of the curfew that was imposed by the army. Medical staff were shot at (one nurse killed) while trying to reach the wounded even after clearly being in uniform displaying the red crescent symbol. There have also been reports of Israeli soldiers using Palestinians as human shields, one father described how a soldier rested his rifle on his 14-year-old son's shoulder as he shot. Israel denied the entry of rescue teams and journalists into Jenin even after they withdrew. Over the following years, Jenin was subject to extended curfews and targeted killings.

During a gun-battle with Islamic Jihad militants whom Israel says were firing at troops from inside the UN compound, an Israeli military sniper shot and killed a UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) employee, Iain Hook (54) on November 22, 2002. The sniper reportedly mistook a cellphone in Hook's hands for a gun or grenade. In the framework of the Valley of Peace initiative, a joint Arab-Israeli project is under way to promote tourism in the Jenin region. In 2010, 600 new businesses opened in Jenin. The Canaan Fair Trade is headquartered in Jenin. Director of The Freedom Theatre in Jenin, Juliano Mer-Khamis, was killed by masked gunmen in the city in April 2011. Mer-Khamis co-founded the theatre with Zakaria Zubeidi, former military chief of the al-Aqsa Brigades who had renounced violence.

On 6 February 2020, a Palestinian policeman, Tarek Badwan, was shot dead by an Israeli sniper as he stood at the entrance to the Jenin police station and chatted with a colleague. No explanation has been forthcoming. The incident was recorded on video.

On 17 June 2022, Israeli forces conducted a raid in the al-Marah area of the city. During the raid, Israeli forces opened fire on a car, killing three Palestinians and seriously injuring another. On 26 January 2023, Israeli forces killed nine in a clash with Islamic Jihad militants during a raid in the city and refugee camp of Jenin.

On 3 July 2023, shortly after 1 a.m., Israeli forces attacked the city's refugee camp using drone-fired missiles and ground troops. Eight Palestinians died from injuries sustained during the attack and a further eighty were injured, nine of them critically. Fifty Palestinians, whom Israeli forces labeled "militants", were arrested. Israeli forces cut off telecommunications and electricity in the area and medical professionals struggled to reach the injured. Israel claimed that while they were targeting suspected members of the Jenin Brigades, an armed group, they acknowledged that innocent people may have been injured or killed in the raid. Yoav Gallant, the Israeli Minister of Defense, said "The operation is progressing as planned," and Eli Cohen, the Israeli Foreign Minister, said claimed the refugee camp had become a "center for terrorist activity" thanks to funding from Iranian sources. The refugee camp has a population of roughly 17,000 inhabitants and is about a quarter a square mile in size.

On 19 September 2023, four Palestinians were killed during another Israeli military invasion of the city – among them a 15-year-old Palestinian boy, chased and killed for having noticed the Israeli undercover soldiers sneaking into the Jenin refugee camp.

During the 2023 Hamas-Israel war, Israeli forces carried out multiple operations in Jenin. On October 22, the IDF conducted an airstrike targeting an underground compound beneath the Al-Ansar Mosque in the city. It was reported to be the first airstrike in the West Bank since the Second Intifada. The IDF stated that the strike aimed at operatives from Hamas and PIJ who were planning a terror attack.

Jenin has been severely damaged during the Israel–Hamas war. By June 2024 repeated bombing attacks and incursions with bulldozers by Israeli forces had razed every street and reduced every public square to rubble. In one incident on 21 May, according to Gideon Levy, a single Israeli sniper shot dead bystanders, including a surgeon, Dr Oussaid Jabareen (50) shot while on his way to work at the Jenin Government Hospital.

Geography
Jenin is situated at the foot of the rugged northernmost hills (Jabal Nablus) of the West Bank, and along the southern edge of the Jezreel Valley (Marj Ibn Amer), which the city overlooks. Its highest elevation is about 250 meters above sea level and its lowest areas are 90 meters above sea level. Immediately southwest of Jenin is the Sahl Arraba plain (Dothan Valley), while further south is the Marj Sanur valley. About 1.5 kilometers to Jenin's east is Mount Gilboa (Jabal Faqqua).

Jenin is 42 kilometers north of Nablus, 18 kilometers to the south of Afula, and 51 kilometers southeast of Haifa. The nearest localities are Umm at-Tut and Jalqamus to the southeast, Qabatiya and Zababdeh to the south, Burqin to the southwest, Kafr Dan to the west, Arranah, Jalamah and the Arab Israeli village of Muqeible to the north, Deir Ghazaleh to the northeast, and Beit Qad and Deir Abu Da'if to the east.

Government
Jenin municipality was established in 1886 under the Ottoman rule with no more than 80 voters and elections were made every 4 years until 1982 when the Israeli government took control over the municipality until 1995.

List of Jenin mayors:

 * Andulmajeed Mansour
 * Abdulrahman al-Haj Hassan
 * Ragheb Al-Souki
 * Al-Haj Hassan Fazaa
 * Tawfeek Mansour
 * Bishara Atallah
 * Hussein al-Abboushi
 * Aref Abdulrahman
 * Fahmi al-Abboushi

 * Tahseen Abdulhadi
 * Abdulraheem Jarrar
 * Saleh Arif Azzouqa
 * Hussni al-Souki
 * Ahmed Kamal allSa'adi
 * Ahmed Shawki al-Mahmoud
 * Shehab al-Sanouri
 * Abdullah Lahlouh
 * Waleed Abu Mwais (appointed)
 * Hatim Jarrar

Municipal elections were held in Jenin on 15 December 2005. Six seats each were won by Hamas and the local coalition of Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Jenin was one of several Palestinian cities where Hamas showed a dramatic growth in electoral support. Hadem Rida was then elected as Mayor of the city, until he was arrested by the Israel Forces and spent 3 years in jail. After his release, he resigned from the position and went back to practice in his clinic in Jenin city.

Demographics
According to the 2017 census by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Jenin had a population of 49,908, the Jenin Refugee Camp of 10,417 on 373 dunams (92 acres). Some 42.3% of the population of the camp was under the age of 15.

Public institutions and landmarks

 * Great Mosque of Jenin6.jpg]]The Freedom Theatre is a theatre and cinema in the Jenin refugee camp.
 * The Horse of Jenin is a famous monument built in 2003 by German artist Thomas Kilpper and young people from Jenin of scrap metal from cars destroyed by Israeli forces.
 * The city has a monument honoring German pilots shot down in Jenin during the First World War, which incorporates an original wooden propeller.
 * An old British Mandate landing strip, Muqeible Airfield, is located in Jenin.
 * The Khalil Suleiman Hospital is located in Jenin.
 * The main and largest mosque of Jenin is the Fatima Khatun Mosque, built in 1566.
 * Another mosque in Jenin is the Al-Ansar Mosque.

Holy sites
The ancient cemetery in Jenin houses the tomb of Sheikh Izz al-Din, a Sufi saint of the Rifa'i order. According to local traditions, he was a descendant of Ali Zayn al-Abidin, the grandson of Muhammad and the sixth Sh'ia Imam. According to a local tradition, Sheikh Izz al-Din fought alongside Saladin against the Crusaders. The tomb possibly predates the cemetery, which served as a burial site for the people of Jenin and the Turabay dynasty. Another tomb in the same cemetery is al-Sheikh Tarabiya, where the Turabay emir Ahmad ibn Turabay ibn Ali al-Harithi is buried.

Education and culture

The Arab American University is located in Jenin's vicinity.

Cinema Jenin is the largest movie theater in the area. The cinema, which reopened in 2010 after a 23-year intermission, has indoor and outdoor screens, a film library and educational facilities.

Strings of Freedom is an orchestra in Jenin founded by an Arab citizen of Israel, Wafaa Younis, who travels form her home in central Israel to teach music to the local youth.

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User:Jtk

 * John Kristoff's home page

I've made major contributions to the following entries:

 * TCP
 * Token Ring
 * UDP
 * IP multicast

I've made minor contributions to the following entries:

 * Anycast
 * Botnet
 * Multicast
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 * Resource Public Key Infrastructure

I was an early contributor years ago when content was still pretty sparse, but I rarely work on or edit articles any more. Only when I see something of particular importance, missing, or potentially useful that has come in teaching.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User:Jtk


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User:Juuitchan

simple:User:Juuitchan &

In case you want to know how to say my name, in SAMPA it is /dZu:i7tSan/. Or something like that.

I am NOT JAPANESE. I am American. Only my name is Japanese.

Want to split units of WikiMoney? Go to my WikiBank.

This is a link I like: http://www.ream.ais.ne.jp/~aqua/yomma

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title: User:Juuitchan


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User:Justin Johnson

I'm a 31 year old manager of a computer department at a manufacturer of housewares and storage products in Wisconsin. Having immersed myself in the bowels of capitalism, my wet college liberalism has somehow survived intact, as has my Canadian accent--try saying "I'm sorry, Mr. Johnson, but I doubt that the status of the process has been properly documented," and see if you get it right.

I have degrees in printmaking and philosophy, and I'm currently enrolled in a Master's in Computer Science at UWM. If you found this page, it's probably because of my interest in Frank Herbert's novels, but I've been working on the philosophy and logic entries a bit, too, as I manage to remember my classes.

[HiddenMonkey, please see Talk:Mentat for my reply, and in the future, post messages to me on my talk page.]

title: User:Justin Johnson


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User:JustinM

Justin Harwood Moss:

Sometime semi-pro rock musician, part-time used bookseller, science fiction fan, occasional book reviewer, slacker.

Born Oxford, England, June 3, 1962. Grew up in the small town of Petersfield, Hampshire. Briefly studied Politics at the University of Leeds, 1981 - 1982, before dropping out after an excess of social enthusiasm. Studied Social Science at Bristol Polytechnic (now known as the University of the West of England), 1984 - 1987, specialising in Economics.

Played lead guitar in unknown Hampshire band Midnight To Six, 1980 to 1984, and in equally unknown Bristol band Ockham's Razor, 1992 to 1995. Currently attempting to record an album in my home studio, with mixed results. I intend ultimately to release this myself on the Net...

I have a website at my home page, where I write book reviews and other bits & pieces.

I discovered wikipedia January 16, 2002, as a result of a casual mention on the rec.arts.sf.written newsgroup, and have already made some updates. I like it - just hope I haven't committed any gaffes!

title: User:JustinM


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Gaius Julius Vindex

Gaius Julius Vindex (c. AD 25–68), was a Roman governor in the province of Gallia Lugdunensis. He was of a noble Gallic family of Aquitania (given senatorial status under Claudius) and was one of the men belonging to a faction of Empress Agrippina, the mother of Nero. Vindex had taken part in a conspiracy against the emperor in 59.

In either late 67 or early 68, Vindex rebelled against Emperor Nero. Though the aims of his followers may have been more complex, Vindex, as a senator, probably had the aim simply of replacing Nero with a better emperor and ending the tyranny that plagued the empire.

According to the historian Cassius Dio, Vindex "was powerful in body and of shrewd intelligence, was skilled in warfare and full of daring for any great enterprise; and he had a passionate love of freedom and a vast ambition". In order to gain support, he declared his allegiance to the then governor of Hispania Tarraconensis, Servius Sulpicius Galba.

The commander of the army from Germania Superior, governor Lucius Verginius Rufus, advanced against him. The battle between their two forces took place near Vesontio (modern Besançon). What occurred then is unclear, but, despite a meeting between Verginius and Vindex, the forces under Verginius appear to have decided on a battle without orders. Desire for plunder and the weakness of Verginius as a commander are possible explanations. Vindex was defeated in the resulting battle and subsequently killed himself.

By June 68, military support for Galba eventually led to Nero's suicide. Galba, acclaimed by the Senate, struck coins to commemorate Vindex, to whom he owed his position as emperor.

Following normal Roman procedures, his name Gaius Julius indicated that his family had likely been given citizenship under Gaius Julius Caesar, or perhaps Emperor Augustus or Caligula.

title: Gaius Julius Vindex


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Rigging

[[File:Schema-Stehendes-Gut.png|thumb|Standing rigging on a fore-and-aft rigged sailboat.

Key: 1. Forestay 2. Shroud 3. (Spreaders) 4. Backstay 5. Inner forestay 6. Sidestay 7. (Boom) 8. Running backstays]]

Rigging comprises the system of ropes, cables and chains, which support and control a sailing ship or sail boat's masts and sails. Standing rigging is the fixed rigging that supports masts including shrouds and stays. Running rigging is rigging which adjusts the position of the vessel's sails and spars including halyards, braces, sheets and vangs.

Etymology
According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition "rigging" derives from Anglo-Saxon wrigan or wringing, "to clothe". The same source points out that "rigging" a sailing vessel refers to putting all the components in place to allow it to function, including the masts, spars, sails and the rigging.

History
Theophrastus in his History of Plants (c. 300 BCE) states that the rigging on King Antigonus' fleet was made from papyrus reed.

Types of rigging
Rigging is divided into two classes, standing, which supports the mast (and bowsprit), and running, which controls the orientation of the sails and their degree of reefing. Configurations differ for each type of rigging, between fore-and-aft rigged vessels and square-rigged vessels.

Standing
Standing rigging is cordage which is fixed in position. Standing rigging is almost always between a mast and the deck, using tension to hold the mast firmly in place. Due to its role, standing rigging is now most commonly made of steel cable. It was historically made of the same materials as running rigging, only coated in tar for added strength and protection from the elements.

Fore-and-aft rigged vessels
Most fore-and-aft rigged vessels have the following types of standing rigging: a forestay, a backstay, and upper and lower shrouds (side stays). Less common rigging configurations are diamond stays and jumpers. Both of these are used to keep a thin mast in column especially under the load of a large down wind sail or in strong wind. Rigging parts include swageless terminals, swage terminals, shackle toggle terminals and fail-safe wire rigging insulators.

Square-rigged vessels
Whereas 20th-century square-rigged vessels were constructed of steel with steel standing rigging, prior vessels used wood masts with hemp-fiber standing rigging. As rigs became taller by the end of the 19th century, masts relied more heavily on successive spars, stepped one atop the other to form the whole, from bottom to top: the lower mast, top mast, and topgallant mast. This construction relies heavily on support by a complex array of stays and shrouds. Each stay in either the fore-and-aft or athwartships direction has a corresponding one in the opposite direction providing counter-tension. Fore-and-aft the system of tensioning start with the stays that are anchored in front of each mast. Shrouds are tensioned by pairs of deadeyes, circular blocks that have the large-diameter line run around them, whilst multiple holes allow smaller line—lanyards—to pass multiple times between the two and thereby allow tensioning of the shroud. In addition to overlapping the mast below, the top mast and topgallant mast are supported laterally by shrouds that pass around either a platform, called a "top", or cross-wise beams, called "crosstrees". Each additional mast segment is supported fore and aft by a series of stays that lead forward. These lines are countered in tension by backstays, which are secured along the sides of the vessel behind the shrouds.

Running
Running rigging is the cordage used to control the shape and position of the sails. Materials have evolved from the use of Manilla rope to synthetic fibers, which include dacron, nylon and kevlar. Running rigging varies between fore-and-aft rigged vessels and square-rigged vessels. They have common functions between them for supporting, shaping and orienting sails, which employ different mechanisms. For supporting sails, halyards (sometimes haulyards), are used to raise sails and control luff tension. On gaff-rigged vessels, topping lifts hold the yards across the top of the sail aloft. Sail shape is usually controlled by lines that pull at the corners of the sail, including the outhaul at the clew and the downhaul at the tack on fore-and-aft rigs. The orientation of sails to the wind is controlled primarily by sheets, but also by braces, which position the yard arms with respect to the wind on square-rigged vessels.

title: Rigging


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Charles K. Kao

Sir Charles Kao Kuen     (November 4, 1933 – September 23, 2018) was a Chinese physicist and Nobel laureate who contributed to the development and use of fiber optics in telecommunications. In the 1960s, Kao created various methods to combine glass fibers with lasers in order to transmit digital data, which laid the groundwork for the evolution of the Internet.

Kao was born in Shanghai. His family settled in Hong Kong in 1949. He graduated from St. Joseph's College in Hong Kong in 1953 and went to London to study electrical engineering. In the 1960s, Kao worked at Standard Telecommunication Laboratories, the research center of Standard Telephones and Cables (STC) in Harlow, and it was here in 1966 that he laid the groundwork for fiber optics in communication. Known as the "godfather of broadband", the "father of fiber optics",   and the "father of fiber optic communications", he continued his work in Hong Kong at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and in the United States at ITT (the parent corporation for STC) and Yale University. Kao was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for "groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication". In 2010, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for "services to fiber optic communications".

A permanent resident of Hong Kong, Kao was a citizen of the United Kingdom and the United States.

Early life and education
Charles Kao was born in Shanghai in 1933 and lived with his parents in the Shanghai French Concession. He studied Chinese classics at home with his brother, under a tutor. He also studied English and French at the Shanghai World School that was founded by a number of progressive Chinese educators, including Cai Yuanpei.

After the Communist revolution, Kao's family settled in Hong Kong in 1949. Much of his mother's siblings moved to Hong Kong in the late 1930s, among them, his mother's youngest brother took good care of him. Kao's family lived in Lau Sin Street, at the edge of the North Point, a neighbourhood of Shanghai immigrants. In Hong Kong, he spent four years at St. Joseph's College. At the time there were no electrical engineering major at the University of Hong Kong, hence, in 1953, he went to London to retake high school and went to Woolwich Polytechnic (now the University of Greenwich). He then pursued research and received his PhD in electrical engineering in 1965 from University of London, under Professor Harold Barlow of University College London as an external student while working at Standard Telecommunication Laboratories (STL) in Harlow, England, the research center of Standard Telephones and Cables.

Ancestry and family
Kao's father Kao Chun-Hsiang, originally from Jinshan City (now a district of Shanghai City), obtained his Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School in 1925. He was a judge at the Shanghai Concession and later a professor at Soochow University (then in Shanghai) Comparative Law School of China.

His grandfather Kao Hsieh was a scholar, poet and artist, Several writers including Kao Hsü, Yao Guang (poet), and Kao Tseng were also Kao's close relatives.

His father's cousin was astronomer Kao Ping-tse (Kao crater is named after him ). Kao's younger brother Timothy Wu Kao is a civil engineer and Professor Emeritus at the Catholic University of America. His research is in hydrodynamics.

Kao met his future wife Gwen May-Wan Kao (née Wong; ) in London after graduation, when they worked together as engineers at Standard Telephones and Cables. She is British Chinese. They were married in 1959 in London, and had a son and a daughter, both of whom reside and work in Silicon Valley, California. According to Kao's autobiography, Kao was a Catholic who attended Catholic Church while his wife attended the Anglican Communion.

Fiber optics and communications

In the 1960s at Standard Telecommunication Laboratories (STL) based in Harlow, Essex, England, Kao and his coworkers did their pioneering work in creating fiber optics as a telecommunications medium, by demonstrating that the high-loss of existing fiber optics arose from impurities in the glass, rather than from an underlying problem with the technology itself.

In 1963, when Kao first joined the optical communications research team he made notes summarising the background situation and available technology at the time, and identifying the key individuals involved. Initially Kao worked in the team of Antoni E. Karbowiak (Toni Karbowiak), who was working under Alec Reeves to study optical waveguides for communications. Kao's task was to investigate fiber attenuation, for which he collected samples from different fiber manufacturers and also investigated the properties of bulk glasses carefully. Kao's study primarily convinced him that the impurities in material caused the high light losses of those fibers. Later that year, Kao was appointed head of the electro-optics research group at STL. He took over the optical communication program of STL in December 1964, because his supervisor, Karbowiak, left to take the chair in Communications in the School of Electrical Engineering at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia.

Although Kao succeeded Karbowiak as manager of optical communications research, he immediately decided to abandon Karbowiak's plan (thin-film waveguide) and overall change research direction with his colleague George Hockham. They not only considered optical physics but also the material properties. The results were first presented by Kao to the IEE in January 1966 in London, and further published in July with George Hockham (1964–1965 worked with Kao). This study proposed the use of glass fibers for optical communication. The concepts described, especially the electromagnetic theory and performance parameters, are the basis of today's optical fiber communications.

In 1965, Kao with Hockham concluded that the fundamental limitation for glass light attenuation is below 20 dB/km (decibels per kilometer, is a measure of the attenuation of a signal over a distance), which is a key threshold value for optical communications. However, at the time of this determination, optical fibers commonly exhibited light loss as high as 1,000 dB/km and even more. This conclusion opened the intense race to find low-loss materials and suitable fibres for reaching such criteria.

Kao, together with his new team (members including T. W. Davies, M. W. Jones and C. R. Wright), pursued this goal by testing various materials. They precisely measured the attenuation of light with different wavelengths in glasses and other materials. During this period, Kao pointed out that the high purity of fused silica (SiO2) made it an ideal candidate for optical communication. Kao also stated that the impurity of glass material is the main cause for the dramatic decay of light transmission inside glass fiber, rather than fundamental physical effects such as scattering as many physicists thought at that time, and such impurity could be removed. This led to a worldwide study and production of high-purity glass fibers. When Kao first proposed that such glass fiber could be used for long-distance information transfer and could replace copper wires which were used for telecommunication during that era, his ideas were widely disbelieved; later people realized that Kao's ideas revolutionized the whole communication technology and industry.

He also played a leading role in the early stage of engineering and commercial realization of optical communication. In spring 1966, Kao traveled to the U.S. but failed to interest Bell Labs, which was a competitor of STL in communication technology at that time. He subsequently traveled to Japan and gained support. Kao visited many glass and polymer factories, discussed with various people including engineers, scientists, businessmen about the techniques and improvement of glass fiber manufacture. In 1969, Kao with M. W. Jones measured the intrinsic loss of bulk-fused silica at 4 dB/km, which is the first evidence of ultra-transparent glass. Bell Labs started considering fiber optics seriously. As of 2017, fiber optic losses (from both bulk and intrinsic sources) are as low as 0.1419 dB/km at the 1.56 μm wavelength.

Kao developed important techniques and configurations for glass fiber waveguides, and contributed to the development of different fiber types and system devices which met both civil and military application requirements, and peripheral supporting systems for optical fiber communication. In mid-1970s, he did seminal work on glass fiber fatigue strength. When named the first ITT Executive Scientist, Kao launched the "Terabit Technology" program in addressing the high frequency limits of signal processing, so Kao is also known as the "father of the terabit technology concept". Kao has published more than 100 papers and was granted over 30 patents, including the water-resistant high-strength fibers (with M. S. Maklad).

At an early stage of developing optic fibers, Kao already strongly preferred single-mode for long-distance optical communication, instead of using multi-mode systems. His vision later was followed and now is applied almost exclusively. Kao was also a visionary of modern submarine communications cables and largely promoted this idea. He predicted in 1983 that world's seas would be littered with fiber optics, five years ahead of the time that such a trans-oceanic fiber-optic cable first became serviceable.

Ali Javan's introduction of a steady helium–neon laser and Kao's discovery of fiber light-loss properties now are recognized as the two essential milestones for the development of fiber-optic communications.

Later work
Kao joined the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in 1970 to found the Department of Electronics, which later became the Department of Electronic Engineering. During this period, Kao was the reader and then the chair Professor of Electronics at CUHK; he built up both undergraduate and graduate study programs of electronics and oversaw the graduation of his first students. Under his leadership, the School of Education and other new research institutes were established. He returned to ITT Corporation in 1974 (the parent corporation of STC at that time) in the United States and worked in Roanoke, Virginia, first as Chief Scientist and later as Director of Engineering. In 1982, he became the first ITT Executive Scientist and was stationed mainly at the Advanced Technology Center in Connecticut. While there, he served as an adjunct professor and Fellow of Trumbull College at Yale University. In 1985, Kao spent one year in West Germany, at the SEL Research Center. In 1986, Kao was the Corporate Director of Research at ITT.

He was one of the earliest to study the environmental effects of land reclamation in Hong Kong, and presented one of his first related studies at the conference of the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) in Edinburgh in 1972.

Kao was the vice-chancellor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong from 1987 to 1996. From 1991, Kao was an Independent Non-Executive Director and a member of the Audit Committee of the Varitronix International Limited in Hong Kong. From 1993 to 1994, he was the President of the Association of Southeast Asian Institutions of Higher Learning (ASAIHL). In 1996, Kao donated to Yale University, and the Charles Kao Fund Research Grants was established to support Yale's studies, research and creative projects in Asia. The fund currently is managed by Yale University Councils on East Asian and Southeast Asian Studies. After his retirement from CUHK in 1996, Kao spent his six-month sabbatical leave at the Imperial College London Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering; from 1997 to 2002, he also served as visiting professor in the same department.

Kao was chairman and member of the Energy Advisory Committee (EAC) of Hong Kong for two years, and retired from the position on July 15, 2000. Kao was a Member of the Council of Advisors on Innovation and Technology of Hong Kong, appointed on April 20, 2000. In 2000, Kao co-founded the Independent Schools Foundation Academy, which is located in Cyberport, Hong Kong. He was its founding chairman in 2000, and stepped down from the board of the ISF in December 2008. Kao was the keynote speaker at IEEE GLOBECOM 2002 in Taipei, Taiwan. In 2003, Kao was named a Chair Professor by special appointment at the Electronics Institute of the College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, National Taiwan University. Kao then worked as the chairman and CEO of Transtech Services Ltd., a telecommunication consultancy in Hong Kong. He was the founder, chairman and CEO of ITX Services Limited. From 2003 to January 30, 2009, Kao was an independent non-executive director and member of the audit committee of Next Media.

Awards
Kao received numerous awards such as the Nobel Prize in Physics., Grand Bauhinia Medal, Marconi Prize, Prince Philip Medal, Charles Stark Draper Award, Bell Award, SPIE Gold Medal, Japan International Award, Faraday Medal, James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials......

Honors

 * 1993: A Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE)
 * 2010: A Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE)
 * 2010: The Grand Bauhinia Medal (GBM), Hong Kong SAR

Society and academy recognition

 * Life Fellow, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, USA (1979 election)
 * Fellow, The Institution of Engineering and Technology, UK
 * Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1997
 * Fellow, The Royal Academy of Engineering, UK (1989 election)
 * Fellow, The Marconi Society, USA (1985 election)
 * Honorary Fellow (1994 election) and former president, The Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences (HKAES), Hong Kong
 * Distinguished Fellow, The Hong Kong Computer Society, Hong Kong (1989 election)
 * Honorary Fellow, The Hong Kong Institute of Engineers (1994 election)
 * Academician, Academia Sinica, Taipei (1992 election)
 * Member, Optical Society of America, USA
 * Member, European Academy of Sciences and Arts, Austria
 * Member, United States National Academy of Engineering (1990 election)
 * Foreign Member, Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, Sweden (1988 election)
 * Foreign Member, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing (1996 election)
 * Fellow, Trumbull College of Yale University
 * Honorary Fellow, The Queen Mary, University of London
 * Honorary Professor, Chinese University of Hong Kong (appointed in 1996)
 * Honorary Professor, Peking University, Beijing (appointed in 1995)
 * Honorary Professor, Tsinghua University, Beijing (appointed in 1995)
 * Honorary Professor, Beijing University of International Business and Economics, Beijing (appointed in 1995)
 * Honorary Professor, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (appointed in 1995)
 * Chair Professor by special appointment, National Taiwan University, Taipei (appointed in 2003)
 * Honorary Professor (1997–2002), Department of Electronic Engineering, City University of Hong Kong
 * Lifetime Honorary Professorship, City University of Hong Kong (appointed on January 1, 2002)
 * Advisor of Macao Science and Technology Council

Honorary degrees

 * Honorary Doctor of Science, Chinese University of Hong Kong, British Hong Kong (1985)
 * Doctor of Science, The University of Sussex, U.K. (1990)
 * Doctor of Engineering, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan (1990)
 * Degree of Honorary Doctor, Soka University, Japan (1991)
 * Doctor of Engineering, The University of Glasgow, U.K. (1992)
 * Honorary DCL, Durham University, U.K. (1994)
 * Doctor of the university, Griffith University, Australia (1995)
 * Honorary degree in "Telecommunications engineering", University of Padua, Italy (Oct 18, 1996)
 * Doctor of Science, University of Hull, U.K. (1998)
 * Doctor of Science, Yale University, USA (1999)
 * Doctor of Science Honoris Causa, University of Greenwich, U.K. (2002)
 * Doctor of Science, Princeton University, USA (2004)
 * Honorary doctor of laws degree, University of Toronto, Canada (June 16, 2005)
 * Honorary Doctor, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China (2007)
 * Honorary Doctorate of Science, University College London, U.K. (2010)
 * Honorary Degree, University of Strathclyde, U.K. (Sep 24, 2010)
 * Doctor of Science honoris causa, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong S.A.R., China (2011)

Awards

Kao donated most of his prize medals to the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
 * 1976: The Morey Award, American Ceramic Society, USA
 * 1977: The Stuart Ballantine Medal, Franklin Institute, USA
 * 1978: The Rank Prize in Optoelectronics, Rank Trust Fund, UK
 * 1978: The IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award. Citation: "for making communication at optical frequencies practical by discovering, inventing, and developing the material, techniques and configurations for glass fiber waveguides and, in particular, for recognizing and proving by careful measurements in bulk glasses that silicon glass could provide the requisite low optical loss needed for a practical communication system".
 * 1979: The L. M. Ericsson International Prize, Sweden
 * 1980: The Gold Medal, AFCEA, USA
 * 1981: The CESASC Achievement Award, Southern California, USA
 * 1983: USAI Achievement Award, U.S.-Asia Institute, USA
 * 1985: The IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal
 * 1985: The Marconi International Scientist Award, Marconi Foundation, USA
 * 1985: The Columbus Medal of the City of Genoa, Italy
 * 1986: The CIE Achievement Award of the CIE-USA Annual Awards, USA
 * 1987: The C & C Prize, Foundation for Communication and Computer Promotion, Japan
 * 1989: The Faraday Medal, Institution of Electrical Engineers, UK
 * 1989: The James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials, American Physical Society (APS). Citation: "for contribution to the materials research and development that resulted in practical low loss optical fibers, one of the cornerstones of optical communications technology".
 * 1992: The Gold Medal of the Society, SPIE
 * 1995: The Gold Medal for Engineering Excellence, The World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO), UK
 * 1996: The Prince Philip Medal of the Royal Academy of Engineering, UK, in recognition of "his pioneering work which led to the invention of optical fiber and for his leadership in its engineering and commercial realization; and for his distinguished contribution to higher education in Hong Kong"
 * 1996: la Citta' di Padova, Italy
 * 1996: The 12th Japan Prize. Citation: "for pioneering research on wide-band, low-loss optical fiber communications".
 * 1998: The International Lecture Medal, IEE, UK.
 * 1999: The Charles Stark Draper Prize (co-recipient with Robert D. Maurer and John B. MacChesney), USA
 * 2001: Millennium Outstanding Engineer Award, Hong Kong
 * 2006: The HKIE Gold Medal Award, HKIE (The Hong Kong Institute of Engineers), Hong Kong
 * 2009: The Nobel Prize in Physics (1/2 of the prize), Sweden. Citation: "for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication".
 * 2009: The IEEE Photonics Society Plaque
 * 2010 (Feb 27): Distinguished Science & Technology Award, 2010 Asian American Engineer of the Year Award, AAEOY 2010, USA
 * 2010 (Mar 27): 2009/2010 World Chinese Grand Prize, Phoenix Television, Hong Kong
 * 2010 (April 8/9): Chinese American Distinction Award, San Francisco, USA
 * 20 Feb 2014: FTTH Operators Award and Individual Award

Namesakes

 * The minor planet 3463 Kaokuen, discovered in 1981, was named after Kao in 1996.
 * 1996 (November 7): The north wing of the Chinese University of Hong Kong Science Center was named the Charles Kuen Kao Building.
 * 2009 (December 30): The landmark auditorium in the Hong Kong Science Park was named after Kao – the Charles K. Kao Auditorium.
 * 2010 (March 18): Professor Charles Kao Square, a square of the Independent Schools Foundation Academy
 * 2014 (September): Sir Charles Kao UTC (now known as BMAT STEM Academy) was opened.
 * 2014: Kao Data, a data center operator based on the former site of Sir Charles Kao's work on fiber optics cables, was founded.

Others

 * Featured in Science Museum London
 * Hong Kong Affairs Adviser (May 1994 – June 30, 1997)
 * 1999: Asian of the Century, Science and Technology
 * 2002: Leader of the Year – Innovation Technology Category, Sing Tao, Hong Kong
 * October 21, 2002: Inducted into the Engineering Hall of Fame, the 50th Anniversary Issue, Electronic Design
 * January 3, 2008: Inducted into the Celebration 60, British Council's 60th anniversary in Hong Kong
 * November 4, 2009: Honorary citizenship, and the "Dr. Charles Kao Day" in Mountain View, California, USA
 * 2009: Hong Kong's Person of the Year
 * The Top 10 Asian Achievements of 2009 – No. 7
 * 2010 (February): Honoree, Committee of 100, USA
 * The 2010 OFC/NFOEC Conferences were dedicated to Kao, March 23–25, San Diego, California, USA.
 * May 14–15, 2010: Two sessions were dedicated to Kao at the 19th Annual Wireless and Optical Communications Conference (WOCC 2010), Shanghai, P.R. China.
 * May 22, 2010: Inducted into the memento archive of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo
 * Mid-2010: Hong Kong Definitive Stamp Sheetlet (No. 1), Hong Kong SAR
 * March 25, 2011: Blue plaque unveiled in Harlow, Essex, UK
 * November 4, 2014: Gimme Fiber Day on Kao's birthday, FTTH Councils Global Alliance
 * On November 4, 2021, Google celebrated Kao's birthday with a Google Doodle. The binary output in the graphic spells out 'KAO' when converted to ASCII.

Later life and death
Kao's international travels led him to opine that he belonged to the world instead of any country. An open letter published by Kao and his wife in 2010 later clarified that "Charles studied in Hong Kong for his high schooling, he has taught here, he was the Vice-Chancellor of CUHK and retired here too. So he is a Hong Kong belonger."

Pottery making was a hobby of Kao's. Kao also enjoyed reading wuxia (Chinese martial fantasy) novels.

Kao suffered from Alzheimer's disease from early 2004 and had speech difficulty, but had no problem recognising people or addresses. His father suffered from the same disease. Beginning in 2008, he resided in Mountain View, California, United States, where he moved from Hong Kong in order to live near his children and grandchild.

On October 6, 2009, when Kao was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to the study of the transmission of light in optical fibers and for fiber communication, he said, "I am absolutely speechless and never expected such an honor." Kao's wife Gwen told the press that the prize will primarily be used for Charles's medical expenses. In 2010 Charles and Gwen Kao founded the Charles K. Kao Foundation for Alzheimer's Disease to raise public awareness about the disease and provide support for the patients.

In 2016, Kao lost the ability to maintain his balance. At the end-stage of his dementia he was cared for by his wife and intended not to be kept alive with life support or have CPR performed on him. Kao died at Bradbury Hospice in Hong Kong on 23 September 2018 at the age of 84.

Works

 * Optical fiber technology; by Charles K. Kao. IEEE Press, New York, USA; 1981.
 * Optical Fiber Technology, II; by Charles K. Kao. IEEE Press, New York, USA; 1981, 343 pages. ISBN 0-471-09169-3 ISBN 978-0-471-09169-1.
 * Optical Fiber Systems: Technology, Design, and Applications; by Charles K. Kao. McGraw-Hill, USA; 1982; 204 pages. ISBN 0-07-033277-0 ISBN 978-0-07-033277-5.
 * Optical fiber (IEE materials & devices series, Volume 6); by Charles K. Kao. Palgrave Macmillan on behalf of IEEE; 1988; University of Michigan; 158 pages. ISBN 0-86341-125-8 ISBN 978-0-86341-125-0
 * A Choice Fulfilled: the Business of High Technology; by Charles K. Kao. The Chinese University Press/ Palgrave Macmillan; 1991, 203 pages. ISBN 962-201-521-2 ISBN 978-962-201-521-0
 * Tackling the Millennium Bug Together: Public Conferences; by Charles K. Kao. Central Policy Unit, Hong Kong; 48 pages, 1998.
 * Technology Road Maps for Hong Kong: a Preliminary Study; by Charles K. Kao. Office of Industrial and Business Development, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; 126 pages, 1990.
 * Nonlinear Photonics: Nonlinearities in Optics, Optoelectronics and Fiber Communications; by Yili Guo, Kin S. Chiang, E. Herbert Li, and Charles K. Kao. The Chinese University Press, Hong Kong; 2002, 600 pages.

title: Charles K. Kao


text:
Slurry pipeline

A slurry pipeline is a specially engineered pipeline used to move ores, such as coal or iron, or mining waste, called tailings, over long distances. A mixture of the ore concentrate and water, called slurry, is pumped to its destination and the water is filtered out. Due to the abrasive properties of slurry, the pipelines can be lined with high-density polyethylene (HDPE), or manufactured completely from HDPE Pipe, although this requires a very thick pipe wall. Slurry pipelines are used as an alternative to railroad transportation when mines are located in remote, inaccessible areas.

Canadian researchers at the University of Alberta are investigating the use of slurry pipelines to move agricultural and forestry wastes from dispersed sources to centralized biofuel plants. Over distances of 100 kilometres pipeline transport of biomass can be viable provided it is used in processes that can accept very wet feedstocks such as hydrothermal liquefaction or ethanol fermentation. Compared to an equivalently sized oil pipeline, a biomass slurry pipeline would carry around 8% of the energy.

Process
The concentrate of the ore is mixed with water and then pumped over a long distance to a port where it can be shipped for further processing. At the end of the pipeline, the material is separated from the [slurry] in a filter press to remove the water. This water is usually subjected to a waste treatment process before disposal or return to the mine. Slurry pipelines offer an economic advantage over railroad transport and much less noise disturbance to the environment, particularly when mines are in extremely remote areas.

Pipelines must be suitably engineered to resist abrasion from the solids as well as corrosion from the soil. Some of these pipelines are lined with high-density polyethylene (HDPE).

Typical materials that are transferred using slurry pipelines include coal, copper, iron, and phosphate concentrates, limestone, lead, zinc, nickel, bauxite and oil sands.

Slurry pipelines are also used to transport tailings from a mineral processing plant after the ore has been processed in order to dispose of the remaining rocks or clays.

For oil sand plants, a mixture of oil sand and water may be pumped over a long distance to release the bitumen by ablation. These pipelines are also called hydrotransport pipelines.

History
Early modern slurry pipelines include The Ohio 'Consolidation' coal slurry pipeline (1957) and the Kensworth to Rugby limestone slurry pipeline (1965)

The 85 km Savage River Slurry pipeline in Tasmania, Australia, was possibly the world's first slurry pipeline to transport iron ore when it was built in 1967. It includes a 366m bridge span at 167m above the Savage River. It carries iron ore slurry from the Savage River open cut mine owned by Australian Bulk Minerals and was still operational as of 2011.

Planned projects
One of the longest slurry pipelines was to be the proposed ETSI pipeline, to transport coal from Wyoming to Louisiana over a distance of 1036 miles (1675 km). It was never commissioned. It is anticipated that in the next few years some long distance slurry pipelines will be constructed in Australia and South America where mineral deposits are often a few hundred kilometers away from shipping ports.

A 525 km slurry pipeline is planned for the Minas-Rio iron ore mine in Brazil.

Slurry pipelines are also being considered to desilt or remove silts from deposits behind dams in man-made lakes. After the Hurricane Katrina disaster there were proposals to remedy the environment by pumping silt to the shore. Proposals have also been made to de-silt Lake Nubia-Nasser in Egypt and Sudan by slurry pipelines, as Egypt is now deprived of 95% of its alluvium, which used to arrive every year. These projects to remedy the environment might alleviate one of the major problems associated with large dams and man-made lakes.

ESSAR Steel India Limited owns two >250 km slurry pipelines in India; the Kirandul-Vishakhapatnam (slurry pipeline) and Dabuna-Paradeep pipeline.

title: Slurry pipeline


text:
Transit

Transit may refer to:

Film

 * Transit (1979 film), a 1979 Israeli film
 * Transit (1986 film), a Canadian short film
 * Transit (2005 film), a film produced by MTV and Staying-Alive about four people in countries in the world
 * Transit (2006 film), a 2006 film about Russian and American pilots in World War II
 * Transit (2012 film), an American thriller
 * Transit (2013 film), a Filipino independent film
 * Transit (2018 film), a German film

Literature

 * Transit (Cooper novel), a 1964 science fiction by Edmund Cooper
 * Transit (Seghers novel), a 1944 novel by Anna Seghers
 * Transit (Aaronovitch novel), a 1992 novel by Ben Aaronovitch based on the TV series Doctor Who

Music

 * Transit (band), an American emo band from Boston, Massachusetts
 * Transit (Ira Stein and Russel Walder album), an album by acoustic duo Ira Stein and Russel Walder, released 1986
 * Transit (Sponge Cola album)
 * Transit (A. J. Croce album)
 * Transit Transit, an album by the band Autolux
 * Transit (rapper), real name Dan Bennett, Canadian indie hip-hop artist

Computing

 * Internet transit, one of two mechanisms by which Internet traffic is exchanged between internet service providers

Astronomy, navigation, and surveying

 * Transit (astronomy), the apparent motion of one celestial body across the face of another celestial body or meridian
 * Transit telescope, a special-purpose telescope mounted so as to point only at objects transiting the local meridian
 * A specialized type of theodolite used in surveying
 * Transit (satellite), the first satellite navigation system to be used operationally
 * Navigational transit, when a navigator observes two fixed reference points in line

Transportation

 * Transit (app), a mobile application for public transportation trip planning
 * Transit bus, a type of bus used on shorter-distance public transport bus services
 * Public transport systems, sometimes called 'mass transit', 'public transit', or simply 'transit', in which passengers are carried in large numbers using shared vehicles.
 * Ford Transit, a Ford Motor Company van
 * Transit (ship), the name given to the three sailing vessels designed and built for Captain Richard Hall Gower
 * TransIT, a bus service in Frederick County, Maryland
 * Transit passage

Other uses

 * Transit, Canadian shoe retailer now operating under the name Spring
 * Transit hotel

title: Transit


text:
Brest

Brest most commonly refers to:
 * Brest, France
 * Brest, Belarus

Brest may also refer to:

Places

 * Belarus:
 * Brest Region
 * Brest Airport
 * Brest Fortress
 * Brest, Kyustendil Province, Bulgaria
 * Brest, Croatia
 * Břest, Czech Republic
 * France:
 * Arrondissement of Brest
 * Brest Bretagne Airport
 * Château de Brest
 * Brest, Germany
 * Brest, Čučer-Sandevo, North Macedonia
 * Brest, Makedonski Brod, North Macedonia
 * Brest, Štip Municipality, North Macedonia
 * Brest (Merošina), Serbia
 * Brest, Ig, Slovenia
 * Brest, Michigan, a former community

Other uses

 * Brest (surname), including a list of people with the name
 * 3232 Brest, an asteroid
 * BREST (reactor), a Russian nuclear reactor

title: Brest


text:
Siren (mythology)

In Greek mythology, sirens (singular: Σειρήν; plural: Σειρῆνες) are humanlike beings with alluring voices; they appear in a scene in the Odyssey in which Odysseus saves his crew's lives. Roman poets place them on some small islands called Sirenum scopuli. In some later, rationalized traditions, the literal geography of the "flowery" island of Anthemoessa, or Anthemusa, is fixed: sometimes on Cape Pelorum and at others in the islands known as the Sirenuse, near Paestum, or in Capreae. All such locations were surrounded by cliffs and rocks.

Sirens continued to be used as a symbol for the dangerous temptation embodied by women regularly throughout Christian art of the medieval era. "Siren" can also be used as a slang term for a woman considered both very attractive and dangerous.

Nomenclature
The etymology of the name is contested. Robert S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin. Others connect the name to σειρά (seirá, "rope, cord") and εἴρω (eírō, "to tie, join, fasten"), resulting in the meaning "binder, entangler", i.e. one who binds or entangles through magic song. This could be connected to the famous scene of Odysseus being bound to the mast of his ship, in order to resist their song.

Sirens were later often used as a synonym for mermaids, and portrayed with upper human bodies and fish tails. This combination became iconic in the medieval period. The circumstances leading to the commingling involve the treatment of sirens in the medieval Physiologus and bestiaries, both iconographically, as well as textually in translations from Latin to vulgar languages, as described below.

Classical iconography

The sirens of Greek mythology first appeared in Homer's Odyssey, where Homer did not provide any physical descriptions, and their visual appearance was left to the readers' imagination. It was Apollonius of Rhodes in Argonautica (3rd century BC) who described the sirens in writing as part woman and part bird. By the 7th century BC, sirens were regularly depicted in art as human-headed birds. They may have been influenced by the ba-bird of Egyptian religion. In early Greek art, the sirens were generally represented as large birds with women's heads, bird feathers and scaly feet. Later depictions shifted to show sirens with human upper bodies and bird legs, with or without wings. They were often shown playing a variety of musical instruments, especially the lyre, kithara, and aulos.

The tenth-century Byzantine dictionary Suda stated that sirens (Σειρῆνας) had the form of sparrows from their chests up, and below they were women or, alternatively, that they were little birds with women's faces.

Originally, sirens were shown as male or female, but the male siren disappeared from art around the fifth century BC.

Early siren-mermaids
Some surviving Classical period examples had already depicted the siren as mermaid-like. The sirens are depicted as mermaids or "tritonesses" in examples dating to the 3rd century BC, including an earthenware bowl found in Athens and a terracotta oil lamp possibly from the Roman period.

The first known literary attestation of siren as a "mermaid" appeared in the Anglo-Latin catalogue Liber Monstrorum (early 8th century AD), where it says that sirens were "sea-girls... with the body of a maiden, but have scaly fishes' tails".

Medieval Iconography
The siren appeared in a number of illustrated manuscripts of the Physiologus and its successors called the bestiaries. The siren was depicted as a half-woman and half-fish mermaid in the 9th century Berne Physiologus, as an early example, but continued to be illustrated with both bird-like parts (wings, clawed feet) and fish-like tail.

Family tree
Although a Sophocles fragment makes Phorcys their father, when sirens are named, they are usually as daughters of the river god Achelous, either by the Muse Terpsichore, Melpomene or Calliope or lastly by Sterope, daughter of King Porthaon of Calydon.

In Euripides's play Helen (167), Helen in her anguish calls upon "Winged maidens, daughters of the Earth (Chthon)." Although they lured mariners, the Greeks portrayed the sirens in their "meadow starred with flowers" and not as sea deities. Epimenides claimed that the sirens were children of Oceanus and Ge. Sirens are found in many Greek stories, notably in Homer's Odyssey.

List of sirens
Their number is variously reported as from two to eight. In the Odyssey, Homer says nothing of their origin or names, but gives the number of the sirens as two. Later writers mention both their names and number: some state that there were three, Peisinoe, Aglaope and Thelxiepeia or Aglaonoe, Aglaopheme and Thelxiepeia; Parthenope, Ligeia, and Leucosia; Apollonius followed Hesiod gives their names as Thelxinoe, Molpe, and Aglaophonos;  Suidas gives their names as Thelxiepeia, Peisinoe, and Ligeia; Hyginus gives the number of the sirens as four: Teles, Raidne, Molpe, and Thelxiope; Eustathius states that they were two, Aglaopheme and Thelxiepeia; an ancient vase painting attests the two names as Himerope and Thelxiepeia.

Their individual names are variously rendered in the later sources as Thelxiepeia/Thelxiope/Thelxinoe, Molpe, Himerope, Aglaophonos/Aglaope/Aglaopheme, Pisinoe/Peisinoë/Peisithoe, Parthenope, Ligeia, Leucosia, Raidne, and Teles.
 * Molpe (Μολπή)
 * Thelxiepeia (Θελξιέπεια) or Thelxiope (Θελξιόπη) "eye pleasing")

Demeter
According to Ovid (43 BC–17 AD), the sirens were the companions of young Persephone. Demeter gave them wings to search for Persephone when she was abducted by Hades. However, the Fabulae of Hyginus (64 BC–17 AD) has Demeter cursing the sirens for failing to intervene in the abduction of Persephone. According to Hyginus, sirens were fated to live only until the mortals who heard their songs were able to pass by them.

The Muses
One legend says that Hera, queen of the gods, persuaded the sirens to enter a singing contest with the Muses. The Muses won the competition and then plucked out all of the sirens' feathers and made crowns out of them. Out of their anguish from losing the competition, writes Stephanus of Byzantium, the sirens turned white and fell into the sea at Aptera ("featherless"), where they formed the islands in the bay that were called Leukai ("the white ones", modern Souda).

Argonautica
In the Argonautica (third century BC), Jason had been warned by Chiron that Orpheus would be necessary in his journey. When Orpheus heard their voices, he drew out his lyre and played his music more beautifully than they, drowning out their voices. One of the crew, however, the sharp-eared hero Butes, heard the song and leapt into the sea, but he was caught up and carried safely away by the goddess Aphrodite.

Odyssey
Odysseus was curious as to what the sirens sang to him, and so, on the advice of Circe, he had all of his sailors plug their ears with beeswax and tie him to the mast. He ordered his men to leave him tied tightly to the mast, no matter how much he might beg. When he heard their beautiful song, he ordered the sailors to untie him but they bound him tighter. When they had passed out of earshot, Odysseus demonstrated with his frowns to be released. Some post-Homeric authors state that the sirens were fated to die if someone heard their singing and escaped them, and that after Odysseus passed by they therefore flung themselves into the water and perished.

Pliny
The first-century Roman historian Pliny the Elder discounted sirens as a pure fable, "although Dinon, the father of Clearchus, a celebrated writer, asserts that they exist in India, and that they charm men by their song, and, having first lulled them to sleep, tear them to pieces."

Sirens and death
Statues of sirens in a funerary context are attested since the classical era, in mainland Greece, as well as Asia Minor and Magna Graecia. The so-called "Siren of Canosa"—Canosa di Puglia is a site in Apulia that was part of Magna Graecia—was said to accompany the dead among grave goods in a burial. She appeared to have some psychopomp characteristics, guiding the dead on the afterlife journey. The cast terracotta figure bears traces of its original white pigment. The woman bears the feet, wings and tail of a bird. The sculpture is conserved in the National Archaeological Museum of Spain, in Madrid. The sirens were called the Muses of the lower world. Classical scholar Walter Copland Perry (1814–1911) observed: "Their song, though irresistibly sweet, was no less sad than sweet, and lapped both body and soul in a fatal lethargy, the forerunner of death and corruption." Their song is continually calling on Persephone.

The term "siren song" refers to an appeal that is hard to resist but that, if heeded, will lead to a bad conclusion. Later writers have implied that the sirens ate humans, based on Circe's description of them "lolling there in their meadow, round them heaps of corpses rotting away, rags of skin shriveling on their bones." As linguist Jane Ellen Harrison (1850–1928) notes of "The Ker as siren": "It is strange and beautiful that Homer should make the sirens appeal to the spirit, not to the flesh." The siren song is a promise to Odysseus of mantic truths; with a false promise that he will live to tell them, they sing,"Once he hears to his heart's content, sails on, a wiser man. We know all the pains that the Greeks and Trojans once endured on the spreading plain of Troy when the gods willed it so— all that comes to pass on the fertile earth, we know it all!"

"They are mantic creatures like the Sphinx with whom they have much in common, knowing both the past and the future", Harrison observed. "Their song takes effect at midday, in a windless calm. The end of that song is death." That the sailors' flesh is rotting away, suggests it has not been eaten. It has been suggested that, with their feathers stolen, their divine nature kept them alive, but unable to provide food for their visitors, who starved to death by refusing to leave.

Book of Enoch
According to the ancient Hebrew Book of Enoch, the women who were led astray by the fallen angels will be turned into sirens.

Late antiquity
By the fourth century, when pagan beliefs were overtaken by Christianity,

Saint Jerome, who produced the Latin Vulgate version of the bible, used the word sirens to translate Hebrew tannīm ("jackals") in the Book of Isaiah 13:22, and also to translate a word for "owls" in the Book of Jeremiah 50:39.

The siren is allegorically described as a beautiful courtesan or prostitute, who sings pleasant melody to men, and is symbolic vice of Pleasure in the preaching of Clement of Alexandria (2nd century). Later writers such as Ambrose (4th century) reiterated the notion that the siren stood as symbol or allegory for worldly temptations. and not an endorsement of the Greek myth.

Isidorus
The early Christian euhemerist interpretation of mythologized human beings received a long-lasting boost from the Etymologiae by Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636): "They [the Greeks] imagine that 'there were three sirens, part virgins, part birds,' with wings and claws. 'One of them sang, another played the flute, the third the lyre. They drew sailors, decoyed by song, to shipwreck. According to the truth, however, they were prostitutes who led travelers down to poverty and were said to impose shipwreck on them.' They had wings and claws because Love flies and wounds. They are said to have stayed in the waves because a wave created Venus."

The allegorical texts
The siren and the onocentaur, two hybrid creatures, appear as the subject of a single chapter in the Physiologus, owing to the fact that they appear together in the Septuagint translation of the aforementioned Isaiah 13:21–22, and 34:14. They also appear together in some Latin bestiaries of the First Family subgroup called B-Isidore ("B-Is").

The miniatures

The siren's bird-like description from classical sources was retained in the Latin version of the Physiologus (6th century) and a number of subsequent bestiaries into the 13th century, but at some time during the interim, the mermaid shape was introduced to this body of works.

{{further|Mermaid#Sirens}} The siren was illustrated as a woman-fish (mermaid) in the Bern Physiologus dated to the mid 9th century, even though this contradicted the accompanying text which described it as avian.{{Refn|name="berne-physiologus"|Berne, Bürgerbibliotek Cod. 318. fol. 13v. Rubric: "De natura serena et honocentauri". }} An English-made Latin bestiary dated 1220–1250 also depicted a group of sirens as mermaids with fishtails swimming in the sea, even though the text stated they resembled winged fowl ({{lang|la|volatilis habet figuram}}) down to their feet.{{Refn|Oxford, MS Bodley 764, fol. 74v. {{sfnp|Hardwick|2011|p=92}} }}{{Refn|group="lower-alpha"|There is another entry for "siren", as a winged white serpent of Arabia.{{sfnp|Barber tr.|1993|p=150}}}}
 * As woman-fish or mermaid

Illustrating the siren as a pure mermaid became commonplace in the "second family" bestiaries, and she was shown holding a musical instrument in the classical tradition, but also sometimes holding apparently an eel-fish.{{sfnp|Clark|2006|loc=p. 57 and n50}} An example of the siren-mermaid holding such a fish is found in one of the earlier codices in this group, dated the late 12th century.{{efn|Brit. Lib. Add. 11283, late 12c., {{harvp|Clark|2006|p=21}}, fol. 20v{{sfnp|Clark|2006|loc=p. 52 and Fig. 20}} }}{{sfnp|Druce|1915|loc=pp. 174–175, Pl. X, No. 2}}

A counterexample is also given where the illustrated sirens (group of three) are bird-like, conforming to the text.{{Refn|Oxford, MS Bodley 602, fol. 10r. 12th century. }}
 * As bird-like

The siren was sometimes drawn as a hybrid with a human torso, a fish-like lower body, and bird-like wings and feet. While in the Harley 3244 (cf. fig. top right) the wings sprout from around the shoulders, in other hybrid types, the style places the siren's wings "hanging at the waist".{{Refn|Cambridge University Library Ii.4.26, fol. 39v. }}{{Refn|Compare Nothumberland bestiary (Getty MS 100) (olim Alnwick bestiary, Alnwick Castle MS 447). Comment of "webbed feet" in the two examples{{sfnp|George|Yapp|1991|p=99}} seems false for the CUL ms., while "webbed feet of an aquatic animal" is corroborated for the Northumberland bestiary. }}
 * As hybrid

 * Comb and mirror

Also, a siren may be holding a comb,{{sfnp|George|Yapp|1991|p=99}}{{Refn|Or there may be three sirens drawn, two holding fish and third a mirror, as in Getty MS. 100 (olim Alnwick ms.) {{sfnp|George|Yapp|1991|p=99}} A similar composition occurs on the Morgan M.81, cf. fig. right.}} or a mirror.{{Refn|British Library Ms. Royal 2.B.Vii, fol. 96v.{{sfnp|George|Yapp|1991|p=99}} }}

Thus the comb and mirror, which are now emblematic of mermaids across Europe, derive from the bestiaries that describe the siren as a vain creature requiring those accoutrements.{{sfnp|Waugh|1960|p=77}}

Verse bestiaries
Later, bestiary texts appeared which were modified to accommodate the artistic conventions.

It is explained that the siren's "other part" may be "like fish or like bird" in Guillaume le clerc's Old French verse bestiary (1210 or 1211), as well as Philippe de Thaun's Anglo-Norman verse bestiary (c. 1121–1139).

Derivative literature
There also appeared medieval works that conflated sirens with mermaids while citing Physiologus as their source.

Italian poet Dante Alighieri depicts a siren in Canto 19 of Purgatorio, the second canticle of the Divine Comedy. Here, the pilgrim dreams of a female that is described as "stuttering, cross-eyed, and crooked on her feet, with stunted hands, and pallid in color." It is not until the pilgrim "gazes" upon her that she is turned desirable and is revealed by herself to be a siren. This siren then claims that she "turned Ulysses from his course, desirous of my / song, and whoever becomes used to me rarely / leaves me, so wholly do I satisfy him!" Given that Dante did not have access to the Odyssey, the siren's claim that she turned Ulysses from his course is inherently false because the sirens in the Odyssey do not manage to turn Ulysses from his path. Ulysses and his men were warned by Circe and prepared for their encounter by stuffing their ears full of wax, except for Ulysses, who wishes to be bound to the ship's mast as he wants to hear the siren's song. Scholars claim that Dante may have "misinterpreted" the siren's claim from an episode in Cicero's De finibus. The pilgrim's dream comes to an end when a lady "holy and quick" who had not yet been present before suddenly appears and says, "O Virgil, Virgil, who is this?" Virgil, the pilgrim's guide, then steps forward and tears the clothes from the siren's belly which, "awakened me [the pilgrim] with the stench that issued from it." This marks ending the encounter between the pilgrim and the siren.

In Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1136), Brutus of Troy encounters sirens at the Pillars of Hercules on his way to Britain to fulfil a prophecy that he will establish an empire there. The sirens surround and nearly overturn his ships, until Brutus escapes to the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Renaissance
By the time of the Renaissance, female court musicians known as courtesans filled the role of an unmarried companion, and musical performances by unmarried women could be seen as immoral. Seen as a creature who could control a man's reason, female singers became associated with the mythological figure of the siren, who usually took a half-human, half-animal form somewhere on the cusp between nature and culture.

Leonardo da Vinci wrote of them in his notebooks, stating "The siren sings so sweetly that she lulls the mariners to sleep; then she climbs upon the ships and kills the sleeping mariners."

Age of Exploration
However, in the 17th century, some Jesuit writers began to assert their actual existence, including Cornelius a Lapide, who said of woman, "her glance is that of the fabled basilisk, her voice a siren's voice—with her voice she enchants, with her beauty she deprives of reason—voice and sight alike deal destruction and death." Antonio de Lorea also argued for their existence, and Athanasius Kircher argued that compartments must have been built for them aboard Noah's Ark.

Late Modernity (1801–1900)
Charles Burney expounded c. 1789, in A General History of Music: "The name, according to Bochart, who derives it from the Phoenician, implies a songstress. Hence it is probable, that in ancient times there may have been excellent singers, but of corrupt morals, on the coast of Sicily, who by seducing voyagers, gave rise to this fable."

John Lemprière in his Classical Dictionary (1827) wrote, "Some suppose that the sirens were a number of lascivious women in Sicily, who prostituted themselves to strangers, and made them forget their pursuits while drowned in unlawful pleasures. The etymology of Bochart, who deduces the name from a Phoenician term denoting a songstress, favors the explanation given of the fable by Damm. This distinguished critic makes the sirens to have been excellent singers, and divesting the fables respecting them of all their terrific features, he supposes that by the charms of music and song they detained travellers, and made them altogether forgetful of their native land."

Arts and influence
The French impressionist composer, Claude Debussy, composed the orchestral work Nocturnes in which the third movement, "Sirènes", depicts sirens. According to Debussy, "'Sirènes' depicts the sea and its countless rhythms and presently, amongst the waves silvered by the moonlight, is heard the mysterious song of the Sirens as they laugh and pass on".

In 1911, French composer Lili Boulanger composed "Les sirènes" for mezzo-soprano soloist, choir, and piano.

Contemporary British composer and former child prodigy, Alma Deutscher, composed "Waltz of the Sirens", an orchestral work based on the mythology creature.

English artist William Etty portrayed the sirens as young women in fully human form in his 1837 painting The Sirens and Ulysses, a practice copied by future artists.

title: Siren (mythology)