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August von Kotzebue

August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue (, Евстафий Леонтьевич Коцебу; 3 May 1761 – 23 March 1819) was a German playwright, who had also worked as a Russian diplomat.

In 1817, one of Kotzebue's books was burned during the Wartburg festival. He was murdered in 1819 by Karl Ludwig Sand, a militant member of the Burschenschaften. This murder gave Metternich the pretext to issue the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819, which dissolved the Burschenschaften, cracked down on the liberal press, and seriously restricted academic freedom in the states of the German Confederation.

Life
Kotzebue was born on May 3, 1761 in Weimar, Saxe-Weimar, to the respected merchant Kotzebue family and was educated at Wilhelm-Ernst-Gymnasium in Weimar, where his uncle, the writer and critic Johann Karl August Musäus was among his teachers. In 1776 the young Kotzebue acted alongside Goethe in the latter's play Die Geschwister when it premiered in Weimar. In 1777, aged sixteen, he enrolled at the University of Jena to study legal science. He continued his studies at the University of Duisburg, graduating in 1780, and practiced initially as a lawyer in Weimar.

Through his association with Graf Goertz, Prussian ambassador at the Russian court, Kotzebue became secretary to the Governor General of Saint Petersburg. In 1783 he was appointed assessor to the high court of appeals in Reval, where he married the daughter of a Russian lieutenant general. He was ennobled in 1785 and became president of the Magistrat of the Governorate of Estonia, a province of the Russian Empire.

In Reval his first literary works were favourably received. His novels Die Leiden der Ortenbergischen Familie (The Sorrows of the Ortenberg Family) (1785) and Geschichte meines Vaters (History of my Father) (1788) met with appreciation; even more so did his plays Adelheid von Wulfingen (1789), Menschenhass und Reue (Misanthropy and Repentance) (1790) and Die Indianer in England (The Indians in England) (1790).

The good reputation of these works was, however, almost destroyed by a controversial dramatic satire, Doktor Bahrdt mit der eisernen Stirn (Doctor Bahrdt with the Iron Brow), which appeared in 1790 with the name of Knigge on the title page. Written in response to contention between Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann and leaders of Berlin's party of the Enlightenment, it linked each of Zimmermann's opponents to a particular sexual perversion. Kotzebue denied authorship, even when the police began to investigate the matter. This alienated both Zimmermann and Knigge, formerly his allies, and also gained Kotzebue a reputation for dishonesty and lasciviousness that he would never shake off.

After the death of his first wife in 1790, Kotzebue retired from the Russian service and lived for a time in Paris and Mainz. In 1795 he settled on an estate which he had acquired near Reval and devoted himself to writing. In the space of only a few years, he published six volumes of miscellaneous sketches and stories (Die jüngsten Kinder meiner Laune, 1793–1796) and more than twenty plays, many of which were translated into several European languages.

In 1798 he was appointed dramatist to the court theatre in Vienna, but differences with the actors soon obliged him to resign. He then returned to his native town, but as he was not on good terms with the powerful Goethe and had openly attacked the romantic style for which Goethe was known, his position in Weimar was uncomfortable.

In April 1800 he decided to return to Saint Petersburg, but on his journey there he was arrested at the border on suspicion of being a Jacobin and was escorted to Tobolsk in Siberia. On June 11, 1800, he was sent from Tobolsk to Kurgan, where he arrived 6 days later. However, he had written a comedy which flattered the vanity of Emperor Paul I of Russia; he was soon brought back, presented with an estate in Vooru from the crown lands of Livonia, have received rank of court councillor, and appointed director of the German theatre in Saint Petersburg. On July 7, 1800, he left Kurgan. Kotzebue wrote about this period in his life in the autobiographical Das merkwürdigste Jahr meines Lebens (The strangest Year of my Life).

Kotzebue returned to Germany in 1801, after the assassination of the Emperor Paul I. Failing to establish himself in Weimar's literary circles, he moved to Berlin, where he edited Der Freimutige in collaboration with Garlieb Merkel from 1803 to 1807. In 1803 he began his Almanach dramatischer Spiele (Almanac of the Dramatic Arts), which was published posthumously in 1820.

In 1806, after Napoleon's victory in the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt, Kotzebue fled to Russia and, in the safety of his estate in Jerlep, Estonia, wrote many satirical articles against Napoleon Bonaparte, published in his journals Die Biene (The Bee) and Die Grille (The Cricket).

He started working for the department of foreign affairs in Saint Petersburg in 1816 and was sent to Germany as consul general for Russia a year later. Some suspected him of being a spy, and this view persisted for a long time, but in modern times it has been shown to be unfounded: he reported only on matters that were already public knowledge. Nevertheless, it is fair to say he was Russia's advocate in Germany.

Assassination
In a weekly journal (Literarisches Wochenblatt) which he published in Weimar, he scoffed at the pretensions of those Germans who demanded free institutions, and soon became detested by nationalist liberals. One of them, Karl Ludwig Sand, a theology student, plotted to kill him. On 18 March 1819, soon after Kotzebue had moved with his family to Mannheim, Sand attacked Kotzebue at his house. According to Alexandre Dumas, père, when one of Kotzebue's children appeared and started to cry, Sand became overwrought and stabbed himself.

Sand was arrested and carefully nursed back to health. At his trial, he protested that Kotzebue was an enemy of the German people, but he was convicted of the murder and executed later that year.

The assassination of Kotzebue provided Prince Metternich with arguments to convince the Confederation to enact the Carlsbad Decrees, imposing greater restrictions on universities and the press. After the death of Kotzebue, Ernst Ackermann remained as the sole editor of the Literarisches Wochenblatt.

Work

Though he was unfavourably reviewed by critics – many of whom saw his work as immoral –  Kotzebue was one of the most popular writers of his time. In his essay "Why Do I Have So Many Enemies?", he blamed jealousy of his fame. He was politically conservative and cosmopolitan in outlook and spoke out against the antisemitism of student nationalists.

He was approached in 1812 by Beethoven, who suggested that Kotzebue write the libretto for an opera about Attila, which was never written. Beethoven did, however, produce incidental music for two of Kotzebue's plays, The Ruins of Athens (Beethoven's opus 113) and King Stephen (opus 117).

Besides his plays, Kotzebue wrote several historical works: his History of the German Empires was burned by nationalist students at the 1817 Wartburg Festival (which Sand attended).

Still read are his autobiographical writings, Meine Flucht nach Paris im Winter 1790 (1791), Über meinen Aufenthalt in Wien (1799), Das merkwürdigste Jahr meines Lebens (1801), Erinnerungen aus Paris (1804), and Erinnerungen von meiner Reise aus Liefland nach Rom und Neapel (1805).

As a dramatist he was extremely prolific: his plays numbered over 200 and were highly popular, not only in Germany but throughout Europe. His success, however, was seen as due less to any conspicuous literary or poetic ability than to his great facility in the invention of effective situations. He is at his best in comedies such as Der Wildfang, Die beiden Klingsberg and Die deutschen Kleinstädter, which contain cameos of German life. These plays held the stage in Germany long after the once-famous Menschenhass und Reue (Misanthropy and Repentance, but known in England as The Stranger), Graf Benjowsky, and ambitious exotic tragedies like Die Sonnenjungfrau and Die Spanier in Peru (which Sheridan adapted as Pizarro) were forgotten.

Theatre historians usually consider the runaway success of The Stranger, the English version of Menschenhass und Reue, in both England (where it opened in 1798) and the United States as one of the harbingers of the emerging popularity of theatrical melodrama, which dominated European and American stages for the first seventy-five years of the nineteenth century.

Two collections of Kotzebue's dramas were published during his lifetime: Schauspiele (5 vols., 1797); Neue Schauspiele (23 vols., 1798–1820). His Sämtliche dramatische Werke appeared in 44 volumes in 1827–1829, and again, under the title Theater, in 40 volumes in 1840–1841. A selection of his plays in 10 volumes appeared in Leipzig in 1867–1868. See Heinrich Doring, A. von Kotzebues Leben (1830); W. von Kotzebue, A. von Kotzebue (1881); Ch. Rabany, Kotzebue, sa vie et son temps (1893); W. Sellier, Kotzebue in England (1901).

Legacy
Kotzebue was the father of 18 children, among them Karl von Kotzebue (diplomat), Moritz von Kotzebue, Paul Demetrius Kotzebue, Alexander Kotzebue and the explorer Otto von Kotzebue.

Kotzebue Street in Kalamaja, Tallinn, Estonia, is named after him and other family members who lived on the street, especially his son Otto.

Rejected Addresses (1812) by Robert and Horace Smith, contains a "travestie" parody of The Stranger.

Beethoven's "Turkish March", originally written as part of the incidental music to von Kotzebue's The Ruins of Athens, became one of this composer's most well-known pieces.

Jane Austen saw a Kotzebue play, The Birthday, at Bath in 1799. In her novel Mansfield Park she used a version of another of his plays, Das Kind der Liebe, adapted by Elizabeth Inchbald as Lover's Vows (1798).

title: August von Kotzebue


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Whittaker Chambers

Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer and intelligence agent. After early years as a Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet spy (1932–1938), he defected from the Soviet underground (1938), worked for Time magazine (1939–1948), and then testified about the Ware Group in what became the Hiss case for perjury (1949–1950), often referred to as the trial of the century, all described in his 1952 memoir Witness. Afterwards, he worked as a senior editor at National Review (1957–1959). US President Ronald Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1984.

Background
Chambers was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and spent his infancy in Brooklyn. His family moved to Lynbrook, Long Island, New York State, in 1904, where he grew up and attended school. His parents were Jay Chambers and Laha Whittaker. He described his childhood as troubled because of his parents' separation and their need to care for their mentally-ill grandmother. His father was an artist and member of the Decorative Designers; his mother was last a social worker. Chambers's brother, Richard Godfrey Chambers committed suicide shortly after he had withdrawn from college at age 22. Chambers cited his brother's fate as one of many reasons that he was then drawn to communism. As he wrote, it "offered me what nothing else in the dying world had power to offer at the same intensity, faith and a vision, something for which to live and something for which to die."

Education
After graduating from South Side High School in neighboring Rockville Centre in 1919, Chambers worked itinerantly in Washington and New Orleans, briefly attended Williams College and then enrolled as a day student at Columbia College of Columbia University. At Columbia, his undergraduate peers included Meyer Schapiro, Frank S. Hogan, Herbert Solow, Louis Zukofsky, Arthur F. Burns, Clifton Fadiman, Elliott V. Bell, John Gassner, Lionel Trilling (who later fictionalized him as a main character in his novel The Middle of the Journey), Guy Endore, and City College student poet Henry Zolinsky. In the intellectual environment of Columbia, he gained friends and respect. His professors and fellow students found him a talented writer and believed he might become a major poet or novelist.

In his sophomore year, Chambers joined the Boar's Head Society and wrote a play called A Play for Puppets for Columbia's literary magazine The Morningside, which he edited. The work was deemed blasphemous by many students and administrators, and the controversy spread to New York City newspapers. Later, the play would be used against Chambers during his testimony against Hiss. Disheartened over the controversy, Chambers left Columbia in 1925. From Columbia, Chambers also knew Isaiah Oggins, who went into the Soviet underground a few years earlier; Chambers's wife, Esther Shemitz Chambers, knew Oggins's wife, Nerma Berman Oggins, from the Rand School of Social Science, the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, and The World Tomorrow.

Communism espionage
In 1924, Chambers read Vladimir Lenin's Soviets at Work and was deeply affected by it. He now saw the dysfunctional nature of his family, he would write, as "in miniature the whole crisis of the middle class", a malaise from which communism promised liberation. Chambers's biographer Sam Tanenhaus wrote that Lenin's authoritarianism was "precisely what attracts Chambers. ... He had at last found his church." Chambers became a Marxist and, in 1925, joined the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA), then known as the Workers Party of America.

Communist
Chambers wrote and edited for the magazine New Masses and was an editor for the Daily Worker newspaper from 1927 to 1929.

Combining his literary talents with his devotion to communism, Chambers wrote four short stories for New Masses in 1931 about proletarian hardship and revolt, including Can You Make Out Their Voices?, which was considered by critics as one of the best pieces of fiction of American communism. Hallie Flanagan co-adapted and produced it as a play entitled Can You Hear Their Voices? (see Bibliography of Whittaker Chambers), staged across America and in many other countries. Chambers also worked as a translator, his works including the English version of Felix Salten's 1923 novel Bambi, a Life in the Woods.

Ware group
Chambers was recruited to join the "communist underground" and began his career as a spy, working for a GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate) spy ring headed by Alexander Ulanovsky, also known as Ulrich. Later, his main handler was Josef Peters, who was replaced by CPUSA General Secretary Earl Browder with Rudy Baker. Chambers claimed that Peters introduced him to Harold Ware (although he later denied Peters had ever been introduced to Ware, and also testified to HUAC that he, Chambers, never knew Ware). Chambers claimed that Ware was head of a communist underground cell in Washington that reportedly included the following: Apart from Marion Bachrach, these individuals were all members of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal administration. Chambers worked in Washington as an organizer in communists in the city and as a courier between New York and Washington for stolen documents, which were delivered to Boris Bykov, the GRU station chief.

Other covert sources
Using the codename "Karl" or "Carl", Chambers served during the mid-1930s as a courier between various covert sources and Soviet intelligence. In addition to the Ware group mentioned above, other sources that Chambers alleged to have dealt with included the following:

Defection
Chambers carried on his espionage activities from 1932 until 1937 or 1938 even while his faith in communism was waning. He became increasingly disturbed by Joseph Stalin's Great Purge, which began in 1936. He was also fearful for his own life since he had noted the murder in Switzerland of Ignace Reiss, a high-ranking Soviet spy who had broken with Stalin, and the disappearance of Chambers's friend and fellow spy Juliet Stuart Poyntz in the United States. Poyntz had vanished in 1937, shortly after she had visited Moscow and returned disillusioned with the communist cause because of the Stalinist Purges.

Chambers ignored several orders that he travel to Moscow since he worried that he might be "purged". He also started concealing some of the documents he collected from his sources. He planned to use them, along with several rolls of microfilm photographs of documents, as a "life preserver" to prevent the Soviets from killing him and his family.

In 1938, Chambers broke with communism and took his family into hiding. He stored the "life preserver" at the home of his wife's sister, whose son Nathan Levine was Chambers's lawyer. Initially, he had no plans to give information on his espionage activities to the U.S. government. His espionage contacts were his friends, and he had no desire to inform on them.

In his examination of Chambers's conversion from the left to the right, author Daniel Oppenheimer noted that Chambers substituted his passion for communism with a passion for God and saw the world in black-and-white terms both before and after his defection. In his autobiography, Chambers presented his devotion to communism as a reason for living, but after his defection, he saw his actions as being part of an "absolute evil".

Berle meeting

The August 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact drove Chambers to take action against the Soviet Union. In September 1939, at the urging of the anticommunist Russian-born journalist Isaac Don Levine, Chambers and Levine met with Assistant Secretary of State Adolf A. Berle. Levine had introduced Chambers to Walter Krivitsky, who was already informing American and British authorities about Soviet agents who held posts in both governments. Krivitsky told Chambers that it was their duty to inform. Chambers agreed to reveal what he knew on the condition of immunity from prosecution. During the meeting, which took place at Berle's home, Woodley Mansion, in Washington, Chambers named several current and former government employees as spies or communist sympathizers. Many names mentioned held relatively minor posts or were already under suspicion. Some names, however, were more significant and surprising: Alger Hiss, his brother Donald Hiss, and Laurence Duggan, who were all respected, mid-level officials in the State Department, and Lauchlin Currie, a special assistant to Franklin Roosevelt. Another person named Vincent Reno had worked on a top secret bombsight project at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds.

Berle found Chambers's information tentative, unclear, and uncorroborated. He took the information to the White House, but President Franklin Roosevelt dismissed it. Berle made little if any objection. He kept his notes, however, which were later used as evidence during Hiss's perjury trials.

Berle notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation of Chambers's information in March 1940. In February 1941, Krivitsky was found dead in his hotel room. Police ruled the death a suicide, but it was widely speculated that Krivitsky had been killed by Soviet intelligence. Worried that the Soviets might try to kill Chambers too, Berle again told the FBI about his interview with Chambers. The FBI interviewed Chambers in May 1942 and June 1945 but took no immediate action in line with the political orientation of the United States, which viewed the potential threat from the Soviet Union as minor compared to that of Nazi Germany. Only in November 1945, when Elizabeth Bentley defected and corroborated much of Chambers's story, would the FBI begin to take Chambers seriously.

Time

During the Berle meeting, Chambers had come out of hiding after a year and joined the staff of Time (April 1939). He landed a cover story within a month on James Joyce's latest book, Finnegans Wake. He started at the back of the magazine, reviewing books and film with James Agee and then Calvin Fixx. When Fixx suffered a heart attack in October 1942, Wilder Hobson succeeded him as Chambers' assistant editor in Arts & Entertainment. Other writers working for Chambers in that section included novelist Nigel Dennis, future New York Times Book Review editor Harvey Breit, and poets Howard Moss and Weldon Kees.

A struggle had arisen between those, like Theodore H. White and Richard Lauterbach, who raised criticism of what they saw as the elitism, corruption and ineptitude of Chiang Kai-shek's regime in China and advocated greater co-operation with Mao's Red Army in the struggle against Japanese imperialism, and Chambers and others like Willi Schlamm who adhered to a perspective that was staunchly pro-Chiang, anticommunist, and both later joined the founding editorial board of William F. Buckley, Jr.'s National Review. Time founder Henry Luce, who grew up in China and was a personal friend of Chiang and his wife, Soong Mei-ling, came down squarely on the side of Chambers to the point that White complained that his stories were being censored and even suppressed in their entirety, and he left Time shortly after the war as a result.

In 1940, William Saroyan lists Fixx among "contributing editors" at Time in Saroyan's play, Love's Old Sweet Song. Luce promoted him senior editor in either summer 1942 (Weinstein ) or September 1943 (Tanenhaus ) and became a member of Time "Senior Group", which determined editorial policy, in December 1943.

Chambers, close colleagues, and many staff members in the 1930s helped elevate Time and have been called "interstitial intellectuals" by the historian Robert Vanderlan. His colleague John Hersey described them as follows:

Time was in an interesting phase; an editor named Tom Matthews had gathered a brilliant group of writers, including James Agee, Robert Fitzgerald, Whittaker Chambers, Robert Cantwell, Louis Kronenberger, and Calvin Fixx. ... They were dazzling. Time style was still very hokey—"backward ran sentences till reeled the mind"—but I could tell, even as a neophyte, who had written each of the pieces in the magazine, because each of these writers had such a distinctive voice.

By early 1948, Chambers had become one of the best known writer-editors at Time. First had come his scathing commentary "The Ghosts on the Roof" (March 5, 1945) on the Yalta Conference in which Hiss partook. Subsequent cover-story essays profiled Marian Anderson, Arnold J. Toynbee, Rebecca West and Reinhold Niebuhr. The cover story on Marian Anderson ("Religion: In Egypt Land", December 30, 1946) proved so popular that the magazine broke its rule of non-attribution in response to readers' letters:

Most Time cover stories are written and edited by the regular staffs of the section in which they appear. Certain cover stories, that present special difficulties or call for a special literary skill, are written by Senior Editor Whittaker Chambers.

In a 1945 letter to Time colleague Charles Wertenbaker, Time-Life deputy editorial director John Shaw Billings said of Chambers, "Whit puts on the best show in words of any writer we've ever had ... a superb technician, particularly skilled in the mosaic art of putting a Time section together." Chambers was at the height of his career when the Hiss case broke later that year.

Meanwhile, Chambers and his family became Quakers, attending Pipe Creek Friends Meetinghouse near his Maryland farm.

Hiss case

On August 3, 1948, Chambers was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), where he gave the names of individuals he said were part of the underground "Ware group" in the late 1930s, including Alger Hiss. He once again named Hiss as a member of the Communist Party but did not yet make any accusations of espionage. In subsequent sessions, Hiss testified and initially denied that he knew anyone by the name of Chambers, but on seeing him in person and after it became clear that Chambers knew details about Hiss's life, Hiss said that he had known Chambers under the name "George Crosley". Hiss denied that he had ever been a communist, however. Since Chambers still presented no evidence, the committee had initially been inclined to take the word of Hiss on the matter. However, a committee member, Richard Nixon, received secret information from the FBI that had led him to pursue the issue. When it issued its report, HUAC described Hiss's testimony as "vague and evasive".

Biographer Timothy Naftali describes the trial as "a battle between two queers,” an allusion to the fact that both parties were supposedly homosexual. Additionally, Hiss' stepson, Timothy Hobson, alleged that Chambers' accusation was borne out of unrequited romantic feelings for Hiss.

"Red Herring"

The country quickly became divided over Hiss and Chambers. President Harry S. Truman, not pleased with the allegation that the man who had presided over the United Nations Charter Conference was a communist, dismissed the case as a "red herring". In the atmosphere of increasing anticommunism that would later be termed McCarthyism, many conservatives viewed the Hiss case as emblematic of what they saw as Democrats' laxity towards the danger of communist infiltration and influence in the State Department. Many liberals, in turn, saw the Hiss case as part of the desperation of the Republican Party to regain the office of president since it had been out of power for 16 years. Truman also issued Executive Order 9835, which initiated a program of loyalty reviews for federal employees in 1947.

"Pumpkin Papers"
Hiss filed a $75,000 libel suit against Chambers on October 8, 1948. Under pressure from Hiss's lawyers, Chambers finally retrieved his envelope of evidence and presented it to the HUAC after it had subpoenaed them. It contained four notes in Hiss's handwriting, 65 typewritten copies of State Department documents and five strips of microfilm, some of which contained photographs of State Department documents. The press came to call these the "Pumpkin Papers" since Chambers had briefly hidden the microfilm in a hollowed-out pumpkin. The documents indicated that Hiss knew Chambers long after mid-1936, when Hiss said he had last seen "Crosley", and also that Hiss had engaged in espionage with Chambers. Chambers explained his delay in producing the evidence as an effort to spare an old friend from more trouble than necessary. Until October 1948, Chambers had repeatedly stated that Hiss had not engaged in espionage, even when Chambers testified under oath. Chambers was forced to testify at the Hiss trials that he had committed perjury several times, which reduced his credibility in the eyes of his critics.

The five rolls of 35 mm film known as the "pumpkin papers" were thought until late 1974 to be locked in HUAC files. The independent researcher Stephen W. Salant, an economist at the University of Michigan, sued the U.S. Justice Department in 1975 when his request for access to them under the Freedom of Information Act was denied. On July 31, 1975, as a result of this lawsuit and follow-on suits filed by Peter Irons and by Alger Hiss and William Reuben, the Justice Department released copies of the "pumpkin papers" that had been used to implicate Hiss. One roll of film turned out to be totally blank because of overexposure, two others are faintly-legible copies of nonclassified Navy Department documents relating to such subjects as life rafts and fire extinguishers, and the remaining two are photographs of the State Department documents introduced by the prosecution at the two Hiss trials, relating to US-German relations in the late 1930s.

That story, however, as reported by The New York Times in the 1970s, contains only a partial truth. The blank roll had been mentioned by Chambers in his autobiography, Witness. However, in addition to innocuous farm reports, the documents on the other pumpkin patch microfilms also included "confidential memos sent from overseas embassies to diplomatic staff in Washington, D.C." Worse, those memos had originally been transmitted in code, which, thanks to their presumable possession of both coded originals and the translations (claimed by Chambers, to be forwarded by Hiss), the Soviets now could easily understand.

In taped recordings of President Nixon on July 1, 1971, he admitted that he had not checked the Pumpkin Papers prior to their use and he felt that the Justice Department was out to exonerate Hiss and a federal grand jury would indict Nixon's ally Chambers for perjury. The FBI continued investigating Hiss's innocence into 1953.

Perjury
Hiss was indicted for two counts of perjury relating to testimony he had given before a federal grand jury the previous December. He had denied giving any documents to Chambers and testified that he had not seen Chambers after mid-1936.

Hiss was tried twice for perjury. The first trial, in June 1949, ended with the jury deadlocked 8–4 for conviction. In addition to Chambers's testimony, a government expert testified that other papers typed on a typewriter belonging to the Hiss family matched the secret papers produced by Chambers. An impressive array of character witnesses appeared on behalf of Hiss: two Supreme Court justices, Felix Frankfurter and Stanley Reed, the former Democratic presidential nominee John W. Davis, and the future Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson. Chambers, on the other hand, was attacked by Hiss's attorneys as "an enemy of the Republic, a blasphemer of Christ, a disbeliever in God, with no respect for matrimony or motherhood". In the second trial, Hiss's defense produced a psychiatrist who characterized Chambers as a "psychopathic personality" and "a pathological liar".

The second trial ended in January 1950 with Hiss being found guilty on both counts of perjury. He was sentenced to five years in prison.

Chambers had resigned from Time in December 1948. After the Hiss case, he wrote a few articles for Fortune, Life, and Look magazines.

In 1951, during the HUAC hearings, William Spiegel of Baltimore identified a photo of "Carl Schroeder" as Chambers while Spiegel was describing his involvement with David Zimmerman, a spy in Chambers's network.

Witness
In 1952, Chambers's book Witness was published to widespread acclaim. It was a combination of autobiography and a warning about the dangers of communism. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. called it "a powerful book". Ronald Reagan credited the book as the inspiration behind his conversion from a New Deal Democrat to a conservative Republican. Witness was a bestseller for more than a year and helped to pay off Chambers's legal debts, but bills lingered ("as Odysseus was beset by a ghost").

According to the commentator George Will in 2017: Witness became a canonical text of conservatism. Unfortunately, it injected conservatism with a sour, whiney, complaining, crybaby populism. It is the screechy and dominant tone of the loutish faux conservatism that today is erasing [William F.] Buckley's legacy of infectious cheerfulness and unapologetic embrace of high culture. Chambers wallowed in cloying sentimentality and curdled resentment about "the plain men and women"—"my people, humble people, strong in common sense, in common goodness"—enduring the "musk of snobbism" emanating from the "socially formidable circles" of the "nicest people" produced by "certain collegiate eyries".

National Review

In 1955, William F. Buckley Jr. started the magazine National Review, and Chambers worked there as senior editor, publishing articles there for a little over a year and a half (October 1957 – June 1959). The most widely cited article to date    is a scathing review, "Big Sister is Watching You", of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

In 1959, Chambers resigned from National Review, although he continued correspondence with Buckley despite having suffered a series of heart attacks. In one letter, he noted, "I am a man of the Right because I mean to uphold capitalism in its American version. But I claim that capitalism is not, and by its essential nature cannot conceivably be, conservative.”

In that same year, Chambers and his wife embarked on a visit to Europe, the highlight of which was a meeting with Arthur Koestler and Margarete Buber-Neumann at Koestler's home in Austria. That fall, he recommenced studies at Western Maryland College (now McDaniel College) in Westminster, Maryland.

Personal life and death
In 1930 or 1931, Chambers married the artist Esther Shemitz (1900–1986). Shemitz, who had studied at the Art Students League and integrated herself into New York City's intellectual circles, met Chambers at the 1926 textile strike at Passaic, New Jersey. They then underwent a courtship that faced resistance from her mentor comrade Grace Hutchins. In the 1920s, she worked for The World Tomorrow, a pacifist magazine.

The couple had two children, Ellen and John, during the 1930s. While some Communist leadership expected professional revolutionists to go childless, the couple refused, a choice Chambers cited as part of his gradual disillusionment with communism. His daughter Ellen died in 2017.

In 1978, Allen Weinstein's Perjury revealed that the FBI has a copy of a letter in which Chambers described homosexual liaisons during the 1930s. The letter copy states that Chambers gave up the practices in 1938 when he left the underground, which he attributed to his newfound Christianity. The letter has remained controversial from many perspectives.

Chambers's conversion to Christianity was expressed by his baptism and confirmation in the Episcopal Church, but more permanently in he and his family's request for membership in Pipe Creek Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) near their home in Maryland on August 17, 1943; they remained a part of this meeting until long after his death. In 1952 Chambers wrote a memoir, Witness, that was serialized in The Saturday Evening Post. Historian H. Larry Ingle argues that Witness is a "twentieth-century addition to the classic Quaker journals", and that "it is impossible to understand him without taking his religious convictions into consideration".

Chambers died of a heart attack on July 9, 1961, at his 300 acre farm in Westminster, Maryland. He had had angina since the age of 38 and had had several heart attacks previously.

Awards

 * 1952 – Honorary Doctorate of Law from Mount Mary College (Milwaukee)
 * 1953 – National Book Award finalist for nonfiction (Witness)
 * 1984 – Presidential Medal of Freedom (posthumously) (for contribution to "the century's epic struggle between freedom and totalitarianism")

Legacy
In 2011, author Elena Maria Vidal interviewed David Chambers about his grandfather's legacy. Versions of the interview were published in the National Observer and The American Conservative.

Presidential Medal of Freedom (1984)
In 1984, President Ronald Reagan posthumously awarded Chambers the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for his contribution to "the century's epic struggle between freedom and totalitarianism". In 1988, Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel granted national landmark status to the Pipe Creek Farm. In 2001, members of the George W. Bush administration held a private ceremony to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of Chambers's birth. Speakers included William F. Buckley, Jr.

Shortlived "Whittaker Chambers Award" (2017–2019)
In January 2017, the National Review Institute (NRI) inaugurated a "Whittaker Chambers Award" for its 2017 Ideas Summit.

Recipients:
 * Daniel Hannan: On March 16, 2017, the first recipient was Daniel Hannan MEP, dubbed "the man who brought you Brexit" by The Guardian.
 * Mark Janus: In February 2019, NRI announced its second biennial winner of the award, Mark Janus. Supporters say Janus champions free speech; detractors say he seeks to erode public unions by enabling free rides.

In March 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported strong opposition from the family of Whittaker Chambers. It quoted from a family statement: "All of us agree: the efforts of the two awardees run counter to the instincts and experience of Whittaker Chambers. All of us agree: their efforts have not matched his." Chambers's son said that the two awardees "are way, way off the target of the man whose name goes along with the award". One grandchild said, "I almost thought, well, 'Gosh, did the National Review guys read his book?'" Regarding the award to Daniel Hannan, another grandchild said, "My grandfather would have been horrified" by a Brexiteer who sought to divide the West (the European Union), as if it were a favor to the "very Stalin-like" Vladimir Putin. Regarding the anti-union Mark Janus, the family noted that Chambers's wife, Esther Shemitz, had been a member of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and that other family members were active in unions, including Chambers himself in the Newspaper Guild.

In response, National Review conceded, "We don't own the Chambers name". While it refused the family's request to withdraw the two awards, it did agree to discontinue it. It also agreed to publish the Chambers family's statement on its website the weekend after the award.

After National Review did not publish on time as promised, the family published themselves ("Withdraw Whittaker").

(Christopher Buckley, author and son of William F. Buckley Jr., supported the Chambers family with a similar story about the William F. Buckley Jr. Award for Media Excellence: when Media Research Center awarded Sean Hannity, Buckley objected, the center rescinded the award, and stopped making the award altogether. )

Proposed Whittaker Chambers monument (2020)
In September 2020, two senators from Carroll County to the Maryland General Assembly, Justin Ready and Michael Hough, announced their intention, reported in the Carroll County Times to recommend a "Whittaker Chambers Memorial" for a "National Garden of American Heroes, following an executive order by Donald J. Trump to create an Interagency Task Force for Building and Rebuilding Monuments to American Heroes to establish that garden. Two members of the Whittaker Chambers family also wrote the Carroll County Times to oppose the senators' intention: Whittaker Chambers sought a simple life of farming the Pipe Creek Farm. He was a Quaker. His beliefs ran toward austerity and self-effacement. Quaker meeting houses stand unadorned, without monuments or statues. He would not have liked such fanfare. The best way to remember our grandfather is to read his books. They are his memoir Witness (1952) and his later writings in Cold Friday (1964). Rather than a monument, he left testimony to read. As President Ronald Reagan said, when posthumously presenting the Medal of Freedom to him in 1984, "The witness is gone; the testimony will stand."

Works
See Bibliography of Whittaker Chambers

In 1928, Chambers translated Bambi, a Life in the Woods, by Felix Salten, into English.

Chambers's book Witness is on the reading lists of The Heritage Foundation, The Leadership Institute, and the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal. He is regularly cited by conservative writers such as Heritage's president Edwin Feulner and George H. Nash.

Cold Friday, Chambers's second memoir, was published posthumously in 1964 with the help of Duncan Norton-Taylor, & widow, Esther Shemitz Chambers. The book predicted that the fall of communism would start in the satellite states surrounding the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe. A collection of his correspondence with William F. Buckley, Jr., Odyssey of a Friend, was published in 1968; a collection of his journalism—including several of his Time and National Review writings, was published in 1989 as Ghosts on the Roof: Selected Journalism of Whittaker Chambers.

title: Whittaker Chambers


text:
Prolepsis

Prolepsis may refer to:

 * Prolepsis (rhetoric), a figure of speech in which the speaker raises an objection and then immediately answers it
 * Prolepsis (literary), anticipating action, a flash forward, see Foreshadowing
 * Cataphora, using an expression or word that co-refers with a later expression in the discourse
 * Flashforward, in storytelling, an interjected scene that represent events in the future
 * Prolepsis, one of the three criteria of truth in Epicureanism
 * Prolepsis (fly), a genus of robber flies
 * Prolepsis (album), by Arrogance

title: Prolepsis


text:
A Philosophical Investigation

A Philosophical Investigation is a 1992 techno-thriller by Philip Kerr.

Plot summary
In a near-future, a British neuroscientist named Professor Burgess Phelan has discovered a portion of the brain, the VMN, that is typically twice the size in men as it is in women. In certain men, however (approximately 1 in 100,000), it is the same size as a woman's, and that abnormality is an exceptionally accurate indicator of violent sociopathy. Professor Phelan developed an imaging device called L.O.M.B.R.O.S.O. (Localisation of Modullar Brain Resonations Obliging Social Orthopraxy) used to help diagnose men with the VMN deficiency.

In the interests of public safety, the Lombroso institute is set up to test all the men in Britain. Males are enticed with ad campaigns to submit for testing; those who are VMN-negative are given confidential treatment, including counselling and drugs, and assigned a code name out of the Penguin book of Great Thinkers (e.g., Shakespeare, Plato, etc.). The police aren't given the names of the VMN-negative, but they are allowed to confirm whether or not a particular person is in the Lombroso Institutes system as VMN-negative.

"Wittgenstein" is the code name of a VMN-negative who, until he was made aware of his status, was living a well-adjusted, if solitary, life, venting his sociopathic tendencies harmlessly through virtual reality entertainment systems. Upon discovering his pathology, though, he undertakes a public service of his own: after hacking into the Lombroso Institute's systems and obtaining a list of all VMN-negative men in Britain, he undertakes to kill them all.

The narrative unfolds from a dual perspective: Wittgenstein's, and the female police lieutenant, Isadora "Jake" Jakowicz, assigned to catch him. Wittgenstein's portion is told from the first person as a diary of his assassinations and subsequent downfall; the detective's portion is told in a more traditional third-person perspective.

Themes
In the novel's setting, the national government was elected partly on a platform of "retributive justice", rather than rehabilitative, and punitive coma has replaced the death penalty (and, to a lesser extent, incarceration) as punishment for extreme crimes. In its favour, punitive coma is safely reversed, should someone later prove innocent; as well, prison costs have plunged since the inmates are sentenced to years of sleep rather than restraint, and require much less guarding and care. Opponents of punitive coma (of whom Jake is one) argue that the state is now stealing years from people's lives, and giving the guilty no opportunity to rehabilitate themselves; thus, punitive coma is inhumane. This position is defeated, however, by proponents who observe that any long-term space travel will necessarily involve long-term medically induced comas of the same kind, so the process itself is not inhumane; furthermore, criminals are not subject to the dangerous criminal environment of prison, so punitive coma may be considered a more, rather than less, humane punishment.

A portion of the narrative involves the use of a Cambridge philosophy professor to engage Wittgenstein in a debate on the morality of his actions. Since the killer comes to see his whole act through the lens of the real Wittgenstein's philosophy (including his mid-career reversal following Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus), it's hoped that he will be amenable to philosophical persuasion. However, as Wittgenstein's killings continue, the government presses the Cambridge don to talk Wittgenstein into committing suicide, a position with which the philosopher agrees, much to Jake's dismay.

title: A Philosophical Investigation


text:
Mezzo-soprano

A mezzo-soprano or mezzo (meaning "half soprano") is a type of classical female singing voice whose vocal range lies between the soprano and the contralto voice types. The mezzo-soprano's vocal range usually extends from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above (i.e. A3–A5 in scientific pitch notation, where middle C = C4; 220–880 Hz). In the lower and upper extremes, some mezzo-sopranos may extend down to the F below middle C (F3, 175 Hz) and as high as "high C" (C6, 1047 Hz). The mezzo-soprano voice type is generally divided into the coloratura, lyric, and dramatic.

History
While mezzo-sopranos typically sing secondary roles in operas, notable exceptions include the title role in Bizet's Carmen, Angelina (Cinderella) in Rossini's La Cenerentola, and Rosina in Rossini's Barber of Seville (all of which are also sung by sopranos and contraltos). Many 19th-century French-language operas give the leading female role to mezzos, including Béatrice et Bénédict, La damnation de Faust, Don Quichotte, La favorite, Dom Sébastien, Charles VI, Mignon, Samson et Dalila, Les Troyens, and Werther, as well as Carmen.

Typical roles for mezzo-sopranos include the stereotypical triad associated with contraltos of "witches, bitches, and britches": witches, nurses, and wise women, such as Azucena in Verdi's Il trovatore; villains and seductresses such as Amneris in Verdi's Aida; and "breeches roles" or "trouser roles" (male characters played by female singers) such as Cherubino in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro. Mezzo-sopranos are well represented in baroque music, early music, and baroque opera. Some roles designated for lighter soubrette sopranos are sung by mezzo-sopranos, who often provide a fuller, more dramatic quality. Such roles include Despina in Mozart's Così fan tutte and Zerlina in his Don Giovanni. Mezzos sometimes play dramatic soprano roles such as Santuzza in Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana, Lady Macbeth in Verdi's Macbeth, and Kundry in Wagner's Parsifal.

Vocal range
The vocal range of the mezzo-sopranos lies between the soprano and the contralto voice types. Mezzo-sopranos generally have a heavier, darker tone than sopranos. The mezzo-soprano voice resonates in a higher range than that of a contralto. The terms Dugazon and Galli-Marié are sometimes used to refer to light mezzo-sopranos, after the names of famous singers. Usually men singing within the female range are called countertenors since there is a lighter more breathy tonal (falsetto) quality difference. In current operatic practice, female singers with very low tessituras are often included among mezzo-sopranos, because singers in both ranges are able to cover the other, and true operatic contraltos are very rare.

Subtypes and roles in opera
Within the mezzo-soprano voice type category are three generally recognized subcategories: coloratura mezzo-soprano, lyric mezzo-soprano, and dramatic mezzo-soprano.

Coloratura
A coloratura mezzo-soprano has a warm lower register and an agile high register. The roles they sing often demand not only the use of the lower register but also leaps into the upper tessitura with highly ornamented, rapid passages. They have a range from approximately the G below middle C (G3, 196 Hz) to the B two octaves above middle C (B5, 988 Hz). Some coloratura mezzo-sopranos can sing up to high C (C6, 1047 Hz) or high D (D6, 1175 Hz), but this is very rare. What distinguishes these voices from being called sopranos is their extension into the lower register and warmer vocal quality. Although coloratura mezzo-sopranos have impressive and at times thrilling high notes, they are most comfortable singing in the middle of their range, rather than the top.

Many of the hero roles in the operas of Handel and Monteverdi, originally sung by male castrati, can be successfully sung today by coloratura mezzo-sopranos. Rossini demanded similar qualities for his comic heroines, and Vivaldi wrote roles frequently for this voice as well. Coloratura mezzo-sopranos also often sing lyric-mezzo-soprano roles or soubrette roles.

Coloratura mezzo-soprano roles in operas (*denotes a lead role):

Lyric
The lyric mezzo-soprano has a range from approximately the G note below middle C (G3, 196 Hz) to the A two octaves above middle C (A5, 880 Hz). This voice has a very smooth, sensitive and at times lachrymose quality. Lyric mezzo-sopranos do not have the vocal agility of the coloratura mezzo-soprano or the size of the dramatic mezzo-soprano. The lyric mezzo-soprano is ideal for most trouser roles.

Lyric mezzo-soprano roles in operas (*denotes a lead role):

Dramatic
A dramatic mezzo-soprano has a strong medium register, a warm high register and a voice that is broader and more powerful than the lyric and coloratura mezzo-sopranos. This voice has less vocal facility than the coloratura mezzo-soprano. The range of the dramatic mezzo-soprano is from approximately the F below middle C (F3, 175 Hz) to the G two octaves above middle C (G5, 784 Hz). The dramatic mezzo-soprano can sing over an orchestra and chorus with ease and was often used in the 19th century opera, to portray older women, mothers, witches and evil characters. Verdi wrote many roles for this voice in the Italian repertoire and there are also a few good roles in the French Literature. The majority of these roles, however, are within the German Romantic repertoire of composers like Wagner and Richard Strauss. Like coloratura mezzos, dramatic mezzos are also often cast in lyric mezzo-soprano roles.

Dramatic mezzo-soprano roles in operas (*denotes a lead role):

Gilbert and Sullivan and operetta
All of Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy operas have at least one mezzo-soprano character. Notable operetta roles are:

 * The Lady Angela, Patience (Gilbert and Sullivan)
 * Constance, The Sorcerer (Gilbert and Sullivan)
 * Cousin Hebe, H.M.S. Pinafore (Gilbert and Sullivan)
 * Edith, The Pirates of Penzance (Gilbert and Sullivan)
 * Iolanthe, Iolanthe (Gilbert and Sullivan)
 * Mad Margaret, Ruddigore (Gilbert and Sullivan)
 * Melissa, Princess Ida (Gilbert and Sullivan)
 * Pitti-Sing, The Mikado (Gilbert and Sullivan)
 * Phoebe Meryll, The Yeomen of the Guard (Gilbert and Sullivan)
 * The Lady Saphir, Patience (Gilbert and Sullivan)
 * Tessa, The Gondoliers (Gilbert and Sullivan)

title: Mezzo-soprano


text:
Beta blocker

Beta blockers, also spelled β-blockers, are a class of medications that are predominantly used to manage abnormal heart rhythms (arrhythmia), and to protect the heart from a second heart attack after a first heart attack (secondary prevention). They are also widely used to treat high blood pressure, although they are no longer the first choice for initial treatment of most patients.

Beta blockers are competitive antagonists that block the receptor sites for the endogenous catecholamines epinephrine (adrenaline) and norepinephrine (noradrenaline) on adrenergic beta receptors, of the sympathetic nervous system, which mediates the fight-or-flight response. Some block activation of all types of β-adrenergic receptors and others are selective for one of the three known types of beta receptors, designated β1, β2 and β3 receptors. β1-adrenergic receptors are located mainly in the heart and in the kidneys. β2-adrenergic receptors are located mainly in the lungs, gastrointestinal tract, liver, uterus, vascular smooth muscle, and skeletal muscle. β3-adrenergic receptors are located in fat cells.

Beta receptors are found on cells of the heart muscles, smooth muscles, airways, arteries, kidneys, and other tissues that are part of the sympathetic nervous system and lead to stress responses, especially when they are stimulated by epinephrine (adrenaline). Beta blockers interfere with the binding to the receptor of epinephrine and other stress hormones and weaken the effects of stress hormones.

In 1964, James Black synthesized the first clinically significant beta blockers—propranolol and pronethalol; it revolutionized the medical management of angina pectoris and is considered by many to be one of the most important contributions to clinical medicine and pharmacology of the 20th century.

For the treatment of primary hypertension, meta-analyses of studies which mostly used atenolol have shown that although beta blockers are more effective than placebo in preventing stroke and total cardiovascular events, they are not as effective as diuretics, medications inhibiting the renin–angiotensin system (e.g., ACE inhibitors), or calcium channel blockers.

Medical uses
Beta blockers are utilized in the treatment of various conditions related to the heart and vascular system, as well as several other medical conditions. Common heart-related conditions for which beta blockers are well-established include angina pectoris, acute coronary syndromes, hypertension, and arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation and heart failure. They are also used in the management of other heart diseases, such as hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy, mitral valve stenosis or prolapse, and dissecting aneurysm. Additionally, beta blockers find applications in vascular surgery, the treatment of anxiety states, cases of thyrotoxicosis, glaucoma, migraines, and esophageal varices.

Congestive heart failure
Although beta blockers were once contraindicated in congestive heart failure, as they have the potential to worsen the condition due to their effect of decreasing cardiac contractility, studies in the late 1990s showed their efficacy at reducing morbidity and mortality. Bisoprolol, carvedilol, and sustained-release metoprolol are specifically indicated as adjuncts to standard ACE inhibitor and diuretic therapy in congestive heart failure, although at doses typically much lower than those indicated for other conditions. Beta blockers are only indicated in cases of compensated, stable congestive heart failure; in cases of acute decompensated heart failure, beta blockers will cause a further decrease in ejection fraction, worsening the patient's current symptoms.

Beta blockers are known primarily for their reductive effect on heart rate, although this is not the only mechanism of action of importance in congestive heart failure. Beta blockers, in addition to their sympatholytic β1 activity in the heart, influence the renin–angiotensin system at the kidneys. Beta blockers cause a decrease in renin secretion, which in turn reduces the heart oxygen demand by lowering the extracellular volume and increasing the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood. Heart failure characteristically involves increased catecholamine activity on the heart, which is responsible for several deleterious effects, including increased oxygen demand, propagation of inflammatory mediators, and abnormal cardiac tissue remodeling, all of which decrease the efficiency of cardiac contraction and contribute to the low ejection fraction. Beta blockers counter this inappropriately high sympathetic activity, eventually leading to an improved ejection fraction, despite an initial reduction in ejection fraction.

Trials have shown beta blockers reduce the absolute risk of death by 4.5% over a 13-month period. In addition to reducing the risk of mortality, the numbers of hospital visits and hospitalizations were also reduced in the trials. A 2020 Cochrane review found minimal evidence to support the use of beta blockers in congestive heart failure in children, however did identify that from the data available, that they may be of benefit.

Therapeutic administration of beta blockers for congestive heart failure ought to begin at very low doses ($1/8$ of target) with a gradual escalation of the dose. The heart of the patient must adjust to decreasing stimulation by catecholamines and find a new equilibrium at a lower adrenergic drive.

Acute myocardial infarction
Beta blockers are indicated for the treatment of acute myocardial infarctions. During a myocardial infarction, systemic stress causes an increase in circulating catecholamines. This results an increase in heart rate and blood pressure, therefore increasing myocardial oxygen demand. Beta blockers competitively inhibit catecholamines acting on the β1-adrenergic receptors, thus reducing these detrimental effects and resulting in reduced myocardial oxygen consumption and demand.

A 2019 Cochrane review compared beta blockers with placebo or no intervention, it found that beta blockers probably reduced the short-term risk of reinfarction and the long-term risk of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular mortality. The review identified that beta blockers likely had little to no impact on short-term all-cause mortality and cardiovascular mortality.

Hypertension
Beta blockers are widely used for the treatment of hypertension.

A 2014 Cochrane review found that in individuals with mild-to-moderate hypertension, non-selective beta blockers led to a reduction of -10/-7mmHg (systolic/diastolic) without increased rates of adverse events. At higher doses, it was found to increase the rate of adverse effects such as a reduction in heart rate, without a corresponding reduction in blood pressure.

A 2017 Cochrane review on the use of beta blockers in hypertension found a modest reduction in cardiovascular disease but little to no change in mortality It suggested that the effects of beta blockers are inferior to other anti-hypertensive medications.

Anxiety
Officially, beta blockers are not approved for anxiolytic use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. However, many controlled trials in the past 25 years indicate beta blockers are effective in anxiety disorders, though the mechanism of action is not known. The physiological symptoms of the fight-or-flight response (pounding heart, cold/clammy hands, increased respiration, sweating, etc.) are significantly reduced, thus enabling anxious individuals to concentrate on the task at hand.

Musicians, public speakers, actors, and professional dancers have been known to use beta blockers to avoid performance anxiety, stage fright, and tremor during both auditions and public performances. The application to stage fright was first recognized in The Lancet in 1976, and by 1987, a survey conducted by the International Conference of Symphony Orchestra Musicians, representing the 51 largest orchestras in the United States, revealed 27% of its musicians had used beta blockers and 70% obtained them from friends, not physicians. Beta blockers are inexpensive, said to be relatively safe, and on one hand, seem to improve musicians' performances on a technical level, while some, such as Barry Green, the author of "The Inner Game of Music" and Don Greene, a former Olympic diving coach who teaches Juilliard students to overcome their stage fright naturally, say the performances may be perceived as "soulless and inauthentic".

Surgery
Low certainty evidence indicates that the use of beta blockers around the time of cardiac surgery may decrease the risk of heart dysrhythmias and atrial fibrillation. Starting them around the time of other types of surgery, however, may worsen outcomes. For non-cardiac surgery, the use of beta blockers to prevent adverse effects may reduce the risk of atrial fibrillation and myocardial infarctions (very low certainty evidence), however, there is moderate certainty evidence that this approach may increase the risk of hypotension. Low-certainty evidence suggests that beta blockers used perioperatively in non-cardiac surgeries may increase the risk of bradycardia.

Other
A 2014 Cochrane review investigated the use of beta blockers in the maintenance of chronic type B thoracic aortic aneurysm in comparison to other anti hypertensive medications. The review found no suitable evidence to support the current guidelines recommending its use.

A 2017 Cochrane review on the use of beta blockers to prevent aortic dissections in people with Marfan syndrome was unable to draw definitive conclusions due to lack of evidence.

Performance-enhancing use
Because they promote lower heart rates and reduce tremors, beta blockers have been used in professional sports where high accuracy is required, including archery, shooting, golf and snooker. Beta blockers are banned in some sports by the International Olympic Committee. In the 2008 Summer Olympics, 50-metre pistol silver medalist and 10-metre air pistol bronze medalist Kim Jong-su tested positive for propranolol and was stripped of his medals.

For similar reasons, beta blockers have also been used by surgeons.

Classical musicians have commonly used beta blockers since the 1970s to reduce stage fright.

Adverse effects
Adverse drug reactions associated with the use of beta blockers include: nausea, diarrhea, bronchospasm, dyspnea, cold extremities, exacerbation of Raynaud's syndrome, bradycardia, hypotension, heart failure, heart block, fatigue, dizziness, alopecia (hair loss), abnormal vision, hallucinations, insomnia, nightmares, sexual dysfunction, erectile dysfunction, alteration of glucose and lipid metabolism. Mixed α1/β-antagonist therapy is also commonly associated with orthostatic hypotension. Carvedilol therapy is commonly associated with edema. Due to the high penetration across the blood–brain barrier, lipophilic beta blockers, such as propranolol and metoprolol, are more likely than other less lipophilic beta blockers to cause sleep disturbances, such as insomnia, vivid dreams and nightmares.

Adverse effects associated with β2-adrenergic receptor antagonist activity (bronchospasm, peripheral vasoconstriction, alteration of glucose and lipid metabolism) are less common with β1-selective (often termed "cardioselective") agents, but receptor selectivity diminishes at higher doses. Beta blockade, especially of the beta-1 receptor at the macula densa, inhibits renin release, thus decreasing the release of aldosterone. This causes hyponatremia and hyperkalemia.

Hypoglycemia can occur with beta blockade because β2-adrenoceptors normally stimulate glycogen breakdown (glycogenolysis) in the liver and pancreatic release of the hormone glucagon, which work together to increase plasma glucose. Therefore, blocking β2-adrenoceptors lowers plasma glucose. β1-blockers have fewer metabolic side effects in diabetic patients; however, the fast heart rate that serves as a warning sign for insulin-induced low blood sugar may be masked, resulting in hypoglycemia unawareness. This is termed beta blocker-induced hypoglycemia unawareness. Therefore, beta blockers are to be used cautiously in diabetics.

A 2007 study revealed diuretics and beta blockers used for hypertension increase a patient's risk of developing diabetes mellitus, while ACE inhibitors and angiotensin II receptor antagonists (angiotensin receptor blockers) actually decrease the risk of diabetes. Clinical guidelines in Great Britain, but not in the United States, call for avoiding diuretics and beta blockers as first-line treatment of hypertension due to the risk of diabetes.

Beta blockers must not be used in the treatment of selective alpha-adrenergic agonist overdose. The blockade of only beta receptors increases blood pressure, reduces coronary blood flow, left ventricular function, and cardiac output and tissue perfusion by means of leaving the alpha-adrenergic system stimulation unopposed. Beta blockers with lipophilic properties and CNS penetration such as metoprolol and labetalol may be useful for treating CNS and cardiovascular toxicity from a methamphetamine overdose. The mixed alpha- and beta blocker labetalol is especially useful for treatment of concomitant tachycardia and hypertension induced by methamphetamine. The phenomenon of "unopposed alpha stimulation" has not been reported with the use of beta blockers for treatment of methamphetamine toxicity. Other appropriate antihypertensive drugs to administer during hypertensive crisis resulting from stimulant overdose are vasodilators such as nitroglycerin, diuretics such as furosemide, and alpha blockers such as phentolamine.

Contraindications and cautions
Absolute contraindications:
 * Bradycardia
 * Hypotension
 * Hypersensitivity to beta blockers
 * Cardiogenic shock
 * Second or third degree AV block

Relative contraindications, or contraindications specific to certain beta-blockers:
 * Long QT syndrome: sotalol is contraindicated
 * History of torsades de pointes: sotalol is contraindicated

Cautions:
 * Abrupt discontinuations
 * Acute bronchospasm
 * Acute heart failure
 * Asthma: see below
 * Bronchitis
 * Cerebrovascular disease
 * Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
 * Emphysema
 * Kidney failure
 * Hepatic disease
 * Myopathy
 * Pheochromocytoma
 * Psoriasis
 * Reynaud phenomenon
 * Stroke
 * Vasospastic angina
 * Wolff–Parkinson–White syndrome

Asthma
The 2007 National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) asthma guidelines recommend against the use of non-selective beta blockers in asthmatics, while allowing for the use of cardio selective beta blockers.

Cardio selective beta blocker (β1 blockers) can be prescribed at the least possible dose to those with mild to moderate respiratory symptoms. β2-agonists can somewhat mitigate β-blocker-induced bronchospasm where it exerts greater efficacy on reversing selective β-blocker-induced bronchospasm than the nonselective β-blocker-induced worsening asthma and/or COPD.

Diabetes mellitus
Epinephrine signals early warning of the upcoming hypoglycemia.

Beta blockers' inhibition on epinephrine's effect can somewhat exacerbate hypoglycemia by interfering with glycogenolysis and mask signs of hypoglycemia such as tachycardia, palpitations, diaphoresis, and tremors. Diligent blood glucose level monitoring is necessary for a patient with diabetes mellitus on beta blocker.

Hyperthyroidism
Abrupt withdrawal can result in a thyroid storm.

Bradycardia or AV block
Unless a pacemaker is present, beta blockers can severely depress conduction in the AV node, resulting in a reduction of heart rate and cardiac output. One should be very cautious with the use of beta blockers in tachycardia patients with Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome, as it can result in life-threatening arrhythmia in certain patients. By slowing the conduction through the AV node, preferential conduction through the accessory pathway is favored. If the patient happens to develop atrial flutter, this could lead to a 1:1 conduction with very fast ventricular rate, or worse, ventricular fibrillation in the case of atrial fibrillation.

Toxicity
Glucagon, used in the treatment of overdose, increases the strength of heart contractions, increases intracellular cAMP, and decreases renal vascular resistance. It is, therefore, useful in patients with beta blocker cardiotoxicity. Cardiac pacing is usually reserved for patients unresponsive to pharmacological therapy.

People experiencing bronchospasm due to the β2 receptor-blocking effects of nonselective beta blockers may be treated with anticholinergic drugs, such as ipratropium, which are safer than beta agonists in patients with cardiovascular disease. Other antidotes for beta blocker poisoning are salbutamol and isoprenaline.

Intrinsic sympathomimetic activity
Also referred to as intrinsic sympathomimetic effect, this term is used particularly with beta blockers that can show both agonism and antagonism at a given beta receptor, depending on the concentration of the agent (beta blocker) and the concentration of the antagonized agent (usually an endogenous compound, such as norepinephrine). See partial agonist for a more general description.

Some beta blockers (e.g. oxprenolol, pindolol, penbutolol, labetalol and acebutolol) exhibit intrinsic sympathomimetic activity (ISA). These agents are capable of exerting low-level agonist activity at the β-adrenergic receptor while simultaneously acting as a receptor site antagonist. These agents, therefore, may be useful in individuals exhibiting excessive bradycardia with sustained beta blocker therapy.

Agents with ISA should not be used for patients with any kind of angina as it can aggravate or after myocardial infarctions. They may also be less effective than other beta blockers in the management of angina and tachyarrhythmia.

β-Adrenergic receptor antagonism
Stimulation of β1 receptors by epinephrine and norepinephrine induces a positive chronotropic and inotropic effect on the heart and increases cardiac conduction velocity and automaticity. Stimulation of β1 receptors on the kidney causes renin release. Stimulation of β2 receptors induces smooth muscle relaxation, induces tremor in skeletal muscle, and increases glycogenolysis in the liver and skeletal muscle. Stimulation of β3 receptors induces lipolysis.

Beta blockers inhibit these normal epinephrine- and norepinephrine-mediated sympathetic actions, but have minimal effect on resting subjects. That is, they reduce the effect of excitement or physical exertion on heart rate and force of contraction, and also tremor, and breakdown of glycogen. Beta blockers can have a constricting effect on the bronchi of the lungs, possibly worsening or causing asthma symptoms.

Since β2 adrenergic receptors can cause vascular smooth muscle dilation, beta blockers may cause some vasoconstriction. However, this effect tends to be small because the activity of β2 receptors is overshadowed by the more dominant vasoconstricting α1 receptors. By far the greatest effect of beta blockers remains in the heart. Newer, third-generation beta blockers can cause vasodilation through blockade of alpha-adrenergic receptors.

Accordingly, nonselective beta blockers are expected to have antihypertensive effects. The primary antihypertensive mechanism of beta blockers is unclear, but may involve reduction in cardiac output (due to negative chronotropic and inotropic effects). It may also be due to reduction in renin release from the kidneys, and a central nervous system effect to reduce sympathetic activity (for those beta blockers that do cross the blood–brain barrier, e.g. propranolol).

Antianginal effects result from negative chronotropic and inotropic effects, which decrease cardiac workload and oxygen demand. Negative chronotropic properties of beta blockers allow the lifesaving property of heart rate control. Beta blockers are readily titrated to optimal rate control in many pathologic states.

The antiarrhythmic effects of beta blockers arise from sympathetic nervous system blockade—resulting in depression of sinus node function and atrioventricular node conduction, and prolonged atrial refractory periods. Sotalol, in particular, has additional antiarrhythmic properties and prolongs action potential duration through potassium channel blockade.

Blockade of the sympathetic nervous system on renin release leads to reduced aldosterone via the renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system, with a resultant decrease in blood pressure due to decreased sodium and water retention.

α1-Adrenergic receptor antagonism
Some beta blockers (e.g., labetalol and carvedilol) exhibit mixed antagonism of both β- and α1-adrenergic receptors, which provides additional arteriolar vasodilating action.

Blood–brain barrier permeability
Beta blockers vary in their lipophilicity (fat solubility) and in turn in their ability to cross the blood–brain barrier and exert effects in the central nervous system. Beta blockers with greater blood–brain barrier permeability can have both neuropsychiatric therapeutic benefits and side effects, as well as adverse cognitive effects. Central nervous system-related side effects and risks of beta blockers may include fatigue, depression, sleep disorders (namely insomnia) and nightmares, visual hallucinations, delirium, psychosis, Parkinson's disease, and falling. Conversely, central nervous system-related benefits of beta blockers may include prevention and treatment of migraine, essential tremor, akathisia, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, aggression, and obsessive–compulsive disorder.

Most beta blockers are lipophilic and can cross into the brain, but there are a number of exceptions. Highly lipophilic beta blockers include penbutolol, pindolol, propranolol, and timolol, moderately lipophilic beta blockers include acebutolol, betaxolol, bisoprolol, carvedilol, metoprolol, and nebivolol, and low lipophilicity or hydrophilic beta blockers include atenolol, carteolol, esmolol, labetalol, nadolol, and sotalol. It is thought that highly lipophilic beta blockers are able to readily cross into the brain, moderately lipophilic beta blockers are able to cross to a lesser degree, and low lipophilicity or hydrophilic beta blockers are minimally able to cross. More lipophilic beta-blockers are known to suppress melatonin release by 50-80%. The preceding beta blockers also vary in their intrinsic sympathomimetic activity and β1-adrenergic receptor selectivity (or cardioselectivity), resulting in further differences in pharmacological profiles and suitability in different contexts between them.

Nonselective agents
Nonselective beta blockers display both β1 and β2 antagonism.
 * Propranolol
 * Bucindolol (has additional α1-blocking activity)
 * Carteolol
 * Carvedilol (has additional α1-blocking activity)
 * Labetalol (has intrinsic sympathomimetic activity and additional α1-blocking activity)
 * Nadolol
 * Oxprenolol (has intrinsic sympathomimetic activity)
 * Penbutolol (has intrinsic sympathomimetic activity)
 * Pindolol (has intrinsic sympathomimetic activity)
 * Sotalol (not considered a "typical beta blocker")
 * Timolol

β1-selective agents
β1-selective beta blockers are also known as cardioselective beta blockers. Pharmacologically, the beta-blockade of the β1 receptors in the heart will act on cAMP. The function of cAMP as a second messenger in the cardiac cell is that it phosphorylates the LTCC and the ryanodine receptor to increase intracellular calcium levels and cause contraction. Beta-blockade of the β1 receptor will inhibit cAMP from phosphorylating, and it will decrease the ionotrophic and chronotropic effect. Note that drugs may be cardioselective, or act on β1 receptors in the heart only, but still have instrinsic sympathomimetic activity. Nebivolol and bisoprolol are the most β1 cardioselective beta blockers.
 * Acebutolol (has intrinsic sympathomimetic activity, ISA)
 * Atenolol
 * Betaxolol
 * Bisoprolol
 * Celiprolol (has intrinsic sympathomimetic activity)
 * Metoprolol
 * Nebivolol
 * Esmolol

β2-selective agents

 * Butaxamine
 * ICI-118,551

β3-selective agents

 * SR 59230A

β1 selective antagonist and β3 agonist agents

 * Nebivolol

Pharmacological differences

 * Agents with intrinsic sympathomimetic action (ISA)
 * Acebutolol, pindolol, labetalol, mepindolol, oxprenolol, celiprolol, penbutolol
 * Agents organized by lipid solubility (lipophilicity)
 * High lipophilicity: propranolol, labetalol
 * Intermediate lipophilicity: metoprolol, bisoprolol, carvedilol, acebutolol, timolol, pindolol
 * Low lipophilicity (also known as hydrophilic beta blockers): atenolol, nadolol, and sotalol
 * Agents with membrane stabilizing effect
 * Carvedilol, propranolol > oxprenolol > labetalol, metoprolol, timolol

Indication differences

 * Agents specifically labeled for cardiac arrhythmia
 * Esmolol, sotalol, landiolol (Japan)
 * Agents specifically labeled for congestive heart failure
 * Bisoprolol, carvedilol, sustained-release metoprolol
 * Agents specifically labeled for glaucoma
 * Betaxolol, carteolol, levobunolol, timolol, metipranolol
 * Agents specifically labeled for myocardial infarction
 * Atenolol, metoprolol (immediate release), propranolol (immediate release), timolol, carvedilol (after left ventricular dysfunction), bisoprolol (preventive treatment before and primary treatment after heart attacks)
 * Agents specifically labeled for migraine prophylaxis
 * Timolol, propranolol

Propranolol is the only agent indicated for the control of tremor, portal hypertension, and esophageal variceal bleeding, and used in conjunction with α-blocker therapy in phaeochromocytoma.

Other effects
Beta blockers, due to their antagonism at beta-1 adrenergic receptors, inhibit both the synthesis of new melatonin and its secretion by the pineal gland. The neuropsychiatric side effects of some beta blockers (e.g. sleep disruption, insomnia) may be due to this effect.

Some pre-clinical and clinical research suggests that some beta blockers may be beneficial for cancer treatment. However, other studies do not show a correlation between cancer survival and beta blocker usage. Also, a 2017 meta-analysis failed to show any benefit for the use of beta blockers in breast cancer.

Beta blockers have also been used for the treatment of schizoid personality disorder. However, there is limited evidence supporting the efficacy of supplemental beta blocker use in addition to antipsychotic drugs for treating schizophrenia.

Contrast agents are not contraindicated in those receiving beta blockers.

title: Beta blocker


text:
Silent Snow, Secret Snow

"Silent Snow, Secret Snow" (1932) is Conrad Aiken's best-known short story, often included in anthologies of classic American horror and fantasy short fiction. It was first published in the Autumn 1932 issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review. It later appeared in The Collected Stories of Conrad Aiken in 1934, and since then has been widely anthologized.

Plot
The story tells of a boy named Paul Hasleman, who finds it increasingly difficult to pay attention to his classwork while growing more distant from his family. He is, instead, becoming more and more entranced by daydreaming about snow. This began when he was lying in bed one morning, awaiting the approach of the postman. Unable to hear the expected footfalls, the boy imagines that they have been muffled by newly fallen snow, and is surprised when he looks out the window and discovers that there is no snow on the ground.

Paul's increasing distance and indifference to the world around him alarms his parents. He has to struggle to get dressed and converse with others, because of the allure of his daydream about snow. His parents eventually call in a physician, who makes a house call to examine Paul. After revealing that he likes to think about snow, Paul tears himself away from the meeting with the physician and retreats to his room. When his mother pursues him, he tells her "Go away ... I hate you!", and is lost in the dreamworld of the snow.

Interpretations
The story tells of a normal boy's descent into a dream world of snow that he finds preferable to the dirty and mundane world. The story can also be thought of as a Symbolist rejection of reality. The progressive withdrawal from reality and social relationships, as well as preoccupation with idiosyncratically meaningful ideas could be interpreted as characteristic of schizophrenia.

Adaptations
In 1964 a 17-minute short film based on the story was produced by Gene Kearney.

It was dramatized as an episode of Rod Serling's Night Gallery, also directed by Kearney, starring Radames Pera and narrated by Orson Welles. The original broadcast date was October 20, 1971.

The story was the inspiration for an instrumental song of the same name by guitarist Jim Matheos on his first solo album, First Impressions.

The story inspired the song "Silent Snow" by musician Scott Appel on his album Nine of Swords.

title: Silent Snow, Secret Snow


text:
Geography of Missouri

Missouri, a state near the geographical center of the United States, has three distinct physiographic divisions:

The boundary between the northern plains and the Ozark region follows the Missouri River from its mouth at St. Louis to Columbia. This also corresponds to the southernmost extent of glaciation during the Pre-Illinoian Stage which destroyed the remnant plateau to the north but left the ancient landforms to the south unaltered. The Ozark boundary runs southwestward from there towards Joplin at the southeast corner of Kansas. The boundary between the Ozark and lowland regions runs southwest from Cape Girardeau on the Mississippi River to the Arkansas border just southwest of Poplar Bluff. Missouri borders eight other US States, more than any other state except Tennessee, which also borders eight states.
 * a north-western upland plain or prairie region part of the Interior Plains' Central Lowland (areas Osage Plain 12f and Dissected Till Plains 12e) known as the northern plains
 * a lowland in the extreme southeast bootheel region of Missouri, part of the Atlantic Plain known as the Mississippi Alluvial Plain (areas 3e) or the Mississippi embayment
 * the Missouri portion of the Ozark Plateau (areas 14a and 14b) which lies between the Mississippi Alluvial Plain and the Central lowland.

Northern Plains
The Dissected Till Plains portion of the northern plains region lies in the portion of the state north of the Missouri River, while the Osage plains portion extends into the southwestern portion of the state bordering the Ozark Plateau. Thus the northern plains covers an area slightly more than a third of the state. This region is a beautiful, rolling country, with a great abundance of streams.

It is more hilly and broken in its western half than in its eastern half. The elevation in the extreme northwestern Missouri is about 1200 ft. and in the extreme northeastern portion about 500 ft., while the rim of the region to the southeast, along the border of the Ozark region, has an elevation of about 900 ft. The valleys for the larger streams are about 250 to 300 ft deep and sometimes 8 to 20 mi wide with the country bordering them being the most broken of the region.

The smaller streams have so eroded the whole face of the country that little of the original surface plain is to be seen. The Mississippi River runs along the length of Missouri's eastern side and is skirted throughout by topographic relief of 400 to 600 ft. elevation.

Ozark Plateau
The Ozark region is essentially a low dome, with local faulting and minor undulations, dominated by a ridge or, more exactly, a relatively even belt of highland that runs from near the Mississippi river about Ste. Genevieve to McDonald County on the Arkansas border. High rocky bluffs rise precipitously on the Mississippi, sometimes to a height of 150 ft or so above the water, from the mouth of the Meramec River to Ste. Genevieve. These mark where that river cuts the Ozark ridge. Across the Mississippi River, this ridge is continued by the Shawnee Hills in Illinois. The elevations of the crests in Missouri vary from 1,100 to 1700 ft. This second physiographic region comprises somewhat less than two-thirds of the area of the state. The Burlington escarpment of Mississippian rocks, which in places is as much as 250 to 300 ft in height, runs along the western edge of the Ordovician formations and divides the region into an eastern and a western area, known respectively to physiographers as the Salem Plateau and the Springfield Plateau. Headward erosion by the south flowing tributaries to the White River in northern Arkansas has created a southern escarpment to both the Springfield and Salem plateaus that runs from McDonald through Barry, Stone, Christian, Douglas, and Howell counties. To the south of this escarpment lies some of the more rugged and highly dissected parts of the Missouri Ozarks. The famed Shepherd of the Hills region near Branson lies within this rugged area. To the east of the West Plains plain lies the dissected valleys of the Eleven Point River and the Current River.

Superficially, each is a simple rolling plateau, much broken by erosion (though considerable undissected areas drained by underground channels remain), especially in the east, and dotted with hills. Some of these are residual outliers of the eroded Mississippian limestones to the west, and others are the summits of a Precambrian topography above and around which sedimentary formations were deposited and then eroded. There is no arrangement in chains, but only scattered rounded peaks and short ridges, with winding valleys about them.

The two highest points in the state are Taum Sauk Mountain at 1772 ft in the St. Francois Mountains in Iron County and Lead Hill just east of the community of Cedar Gap at 1744 ft in the southwestern corner of Wright County. Few localities have an elevation exceeding 1400 ft. Rather broad, smooth valleys, well degraded hills with rounded summits, and despite the escarpments generally smooth contours and sky-lines, characterize the bulk of the Ozark region.

Mississippi Alluvial Plain
The third region, the lowlands of the south-east and part of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain, has an area of some 3000 sqmi. It is an undulating country, for the most part well drained, but swampy in its lowest portions. The Mississippi is skirted with lagoons, lakes and morasses from Ste. Genevieve to the Arkansas border, and in places is confined by levees. These lowlands are the northernmost extent of the Mississippi embayment. The area is within the New Madrid Seismic Zone and includes the epicenter location of the 1811–12 New Madrid earthquakes at New Madrid, Missouri.

Climate

Missouri generally has a humid continental climate with cool, sometimes cold, winters and hot, humid, and wet summers. In the southern part of the state, particularly in the Bootheel, the climate becomes humid subtropical. Located in the interior United States, Missouri often experiences extreme temperatures. Without high mountains or oceans nearby to moderate temperature, its climate is alternately influenced by air from the cold Arctic and the hot and humid Gulf of Mexico. Missouri's highest recorded temperature is 118 F at Warsaw and Union on July 14, 1954, while the lowest recorded temperature is -40 F also at Warsaw on February 13, 1905.

Located in Tornado Alley, Missouri also receives extreme weather in the form of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. On May 22, 2011, a massive EF-5 tornado killed 158 people and destroyed roughly one-third of the city of Joplin. The tornado caused an estimated $1–3 billion in damages and injured more than a thousand people as it tore through the urban area. It was the first EF5 to hit the state since 1957 and the deadliest in the U.S. since 1947, making it the seventh deadliest tornado in American history and 27th deadliest in the world. St. Louis and its suburbs also have a history of experiencing particularly severe tornadoes, the most recent one of note being an EF4 that damaged Lambert-St. Louis International Airport on April 22, 2011. One of the worst tornadoes in American history struck St. Louis on May 27, 1896, killing at least 255 people and causing $10 million in damage (equivalent to $3.9 billion in 2009 or $ in today's dollars).

Drainage
The drainage of the state is wholly into the Mississippi River, directly or indirectly, and to a large extent into either that river or the Missouri River within the borders of the state. The latter stream, crossing the state and cutting the eastern and western borders at or near St Louis and Kansas City respectively, has a length within Missouri of 430 mi. The areas drained into the Mississippi outside the state through the St. Francis, White and other minor streams are relatively small. The larger streams of the Ozark dome are of decided interest to the physiographer. Those of the White system have open trough valleys bordered by hills in their upper courses and canyons in their lower courses.

Both the Ozark region and the northern plain region are divided by minor escarpments into ten or twelve sub-regions. There are remarkable differences in the drainage areas of their two sides, with interesting illustrations of shifting water-partings; and the White, Gasconade, Osage and other rivers are remarkable for upland meanders, lying, not on flood-plains, but around the spurs of a highland country. These incised meanders have been interpreted to have formed by downward erosion after uplift of an older peneplain surface.

Many streams in Missouri are called "rivers" though they are small enough perhaps to be called "creeks". This is due to a direct translation of the French word "rivière" which implies a stream size smaller than the French word "fleuve", meaning "a river that flows to the sea". An example of this is "Loutre River", from "Rivière Loutre", or "Otter Stream".

Caves
The Ozarks region has a well-developed karst topography with numerous areas of sinkholes, stream capture, and cavern development.

Caves, within areas of limestone and dolomite bedrock, occur in great numbers in and near the Ozark Mountain region in the southwestern part of Missouri. More than a hundred have been discovered in Stone County alone, and there are many in Christian, Greene and McDonald counties.

Marvel Cave is located a short distance southeast of the center of Stone county. The entrance originally was through a large sink-hole at the top of Roark Mountain, though now an easier entrance has been made. Marvel Cave has a large hall-like room about 350 ft long and about 125 ft wide with bluish-grey limestone walls, and a vaulted roof, rising from 100 to 295 ft. Due to its acoustic properties the room has been named the Auditorium. At one end is a large stalagmite formation about 65 ft in height and about 200 ft in girth, called the White Throne.

Exploration of Jacobs Cavern, near Pineville, McDonald county, revealed human and animal skeletons along with crude implements. Crystal Cave, near Joplin, Jasper county, has its entire surface lined with calcite crystals and scalenohedron formations, from 1 to 2 ft in length.

Other caves include Friede's Cave, about six miles (10 km) northeast of Rolla, Phelps County and Mark Twain Cave (in Marion County, about one mile (1.6 km) south of Hannibal), which has a deep pool containing many eyeless fish.

title: Geography of Missouri