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History of Afghanistan (1992–present)

This article on the history of Afghanistan covers the period from the fall of the Najibullah government in 1992 to the end of the international military presence in Afghanistan.

Background
After the Soviet Union withdrew completely from Afghanistan in February 1989, fighting between the communist backed government and mujahideen continued. With material help from the Soviets, Mohammad Najibullah's government survived, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was overthrown on April 28, 1992. The forces of Abdul Rashid Dostum surrendered to Ahmed Shah Massoud and Kabul was left without defenses and soon fell to Massoud. At the time, Doustum had 1,500 militia in Kabul airport.

Islamic State of Afghanistan (1992-1996)
Seeking to resolve these differences, the leaders of the Peshawar-based mujahideen groups established an interim Jamiat-e Islami in mid-April to assume power in Kabul. Moderate leader Prof. Sibghatullah Mojadeddi was to chair the council for 2 months, after which a 10-member leadership council composed of mujahideen leaders and presided over by the head of the Jamiat-i-Islami, Prof. Burhanuddin Rabbani, was to be set up for 4 months. During this 6-month period, a Loya Jirga, or grand council of Afghan elders and notables, would convene and designate an interim administration which would hold power up to a year, pending elections.

But in May 1992, Rabbani prematurely formed the leadership council, undermining Mojaddedi's fragile authority. On June 28, 1992, Mojaddedi surrendered power to the Leadership Council, which then elected Rabbani as President. Nonetheless, heavy fighting broke out in August 1992 in Kabul between forces loyal to President Rabbani and rival factions, particularly those who supported Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami Gulbuddin. After Rabbani extended his tenure in December 1992, fighting in the capital flared up in January and February 1993. The Islamabad Accord, signed in March 1993, which appointed Hekmatyar as Prime Minister, failed to have a lasting effect. A follow-up agreement, the Jalalabad Accord, called for the militias to be disarmed but was never fully implemented. Through 1993, Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami forces, allied with the Shi'a Hezb-i-Wahdat militia, clashed intermittently with Rabbani and Massoud's Jamiat forces. Cooperating with Jamiat were militants of Sayyaf's Ittehad-i-Islami and, periodically, troops loyal to ethnic Uzbek strongman Abdul Rashid Dostam. On January 1, 1994, Dostam switched sides, precipitating large scale fighting in Kabul and in northern provinces, which caused thousands of civilian casualties in Kabul and elsewhere and created a new wave of displaced persons and refugees. The country sank even further into anomie, forces loyal to Rabbani and Masud, both ethnic Tajiks, controlled Kabul and much of the northeast, while local warlords exerted power over the rest of the country

Islamic Emirate and the Taliban (1996-2001)
In reaction to the warlordism prevalent in the country, and the lack of Pashtun representation in the Kabul government, the Taliban movement arose. Many Taliban had been educated in madrasas in Pakistan and were largely from rural Pashtun backgrounds. This group was made up of mostly Pashtuns that dedicated itself to removing the warlords, providing law and order, and imposing strict Islamic Sharia law on the country. In 1994 it developed enough strength to capture the city of Kandahar from a local warlord and proceeded to expand its control throughout Afghanistan, controlling Herat in September 1995, then Kabul in September 1996, and declaring the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. By this time Afghanistan was in its 17th year of war. It had the highest infant, child and maternal mortality rates in Asia. An estimated 10 million landmines covered its terrain. Two million refugees were in camps.

Pakistan recognized the Taliban as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan in 1997. By the end of 2000, the Taliban controlled about 95% of the country, limiting the opposition to a small corner in the northeast Panjshir Valley. Efforts by the UN, prominent Afghans living outside the country, and other interested countries to bring about a peaceful solution to the continuing conflict came to nothing, largely because of intransigence on the part of the Taliban.

The Taliban sought to impose an extreme interpretation of Islam—based in part upon rural Pashtun tradition—upon the entire country and committed human rights violations, particularly directed against women and girls, in the process. Women were restricted from working outside the home or pursuing an education, were not to leave their homes without an accompanying male relative, and required to wear a traditional burqa.The Taliban repressed minority populations, particularly the Shia, as a retaliation in which approximately 2,500 Taliban soldiers were massacred by Abdul Malik and his Shia followers; attacked the Iranian embassy, killing eight diplomats and a television reporter, claiming them as spies.

In 2001, as part of a drive against relics of Afghanistan's pre-Islamic past, the Taliban destroyed two large statues of Buddha outside of the city of Bamiyan and announced destruction of all pre-Islamic statues in Afghanistan, including the remaining holdings of the Kabul Museum.In addition to the continuing civil strife, the country suffered from widespread poverty, drought, a devastated infrastructure, and ubiquitous use of landmines. These conditions led to about a million Afghans facing starvation. The February and May 1998 earthquakes killed thousands of Afghans in the northeast Badakhshan Province.

International Intervention and Interim Government (2001-2004)
From the mid-1990s the Taliban provided sanctuary to Osama bin Laden, a Saudi national who had fought with them against the Soviets, and provided a base for his and other terrorist organizations. The United Nations Security Council repeatedly sanctioned the Taliban for these activities. Bin Laden provided both financial and political support to the Taliban, as did Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, until American pressure forced them to drop their public support for the Taliban after September 11, 2001. Bin Laden and his al Qaeda group were charged with the bombing of the United States embassies in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam in 1998, and in August 1998 the United States launched a cruise missile attack against bin Laden's terrorist camp in Afghanistan. Bin Laden and al Qaeda are believed responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, among other crimes.

By September 2001 the remaining opposition to the Taliban had been confined to the Panjshir Valley and a small region in the northeast. The opposition by this time had formed the Afghan Northern Alliance but controlled less than 5% of the country. Nevertheless, they held onto Afghanistan's diplomatic representation in the United Nations as only three countries in the world continued to recognize the Taliban government. On September 9, agents working on behalf of the Taliban and believed to be associated with bin Laden's al Qaeda group assassinated Northern Alliance Defense Minister and chief military commander Ahmed Shah Massoud, a hero of the Afghan resistance against the Soviets and the Taliban's principal military opponent. Following the Taliban's repeated refusal to expel bin Laden and his group and end its support for international terrorism, the United States and its partners launched an invasion of Afghanistan on October 7, 2001.

A period of bombing followed, which for about a month appeared to be having little effect. The US required the assistance of countries around Afghanistan to provide a route for the attack, but criticism increased as various mosques, aid agencies, hospitals, and other civilian buildings were damaged by US bombs. However, the Northern Alliance, fighting against a Taliban weakened by US bombing and massive defections, captured Mazari Sharif on November 9. It rapidly gained control of most of northern Afghanistan and took control of Kabul on November 13 after the Taliban unexpectedly fled the city. The Taliban were restricted to a smaller and smaller region, with Kunduz, the last Taliban-held city in the north, captured on November 26. Most of the Taliban fled to Pakistan. The war continued in the south of the country, where the Taliban retreated to Kandahar. After Kandahar fell in December, remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaeda continued to mount resistance.

Following the Ioya Jirga in June 2002, a transitional government was put in place to govern Afghanistan, overseen by the United Nations and the Bush administration of the United States. The assembly voted Hamid Karzai as President, a position he was reelected to in successor governments until 2014.

Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (2004-2021)
The 2003 Ioya Jirga saw an assembly vote and approve the foundations of a new republic and constitution for Afghanistan. The Islamic Republic saw NATO troops being maintained in the country while fighting the Taliban insurgency. The first election for president was held in 2004, Hamid Karzai was declared the winner and became President of the Islamic Republic. Karzai won reelection in 2009 and left office in 2014. He was succeeded by Ashraf Ghani who won the 2014 presidential election and reelected in 2019.

Reinstatement of the Islamic Emirate (2021-present)
NATO troops began to slowly withdraw international troops from Afghanistan as the war continued. Concurrently in 2021, the Taliban insurgency quickly began to see success, capturing 33 of the 34 provincial capitals of Afghanistan in the span of three months. On August 15, 2021, the Taliban captured Kabul with President Ghani fleeing the country. Anti Taliban-forces along with the remnants of the Islamic Republic formed the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, launching an insurgency against the Taliban from the Panjshir Valley.

title: History of Afghanistan (1992–present)


text:
Islamic State of Afghanistan

The Islamic State of Afghanistan was established by the Peshawar Accords of 26 April 1992. Many Afghan mujahideen parties participated in its creation, after the fall of the socialist government. Its power was limited due to the country's second civil war, which was won by the Taliban, who took control of Kabul in 1996. The Islamic state then transitioned to a government in exile and led the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. It remained the internationally recognized government of Afghanistan at the United Nations until 2001, when the Transitional Islamic State of Afghanistan was created and an Afghan Interim Administration took control of Afghanistan with US and NATO assistance following the overthrow of the first Taliban government. The Transitional Islamic State was subsequently transformed into the Islamic Republic, which existed until the Taliban seized power again in 2021 following a prolonged insurgency.

Background
In March 1992, President Mohammad Najibullah, having lost the Russian support that upheld his government, agreed to resign and make way for a neutral, interim government. Several mujahideen parties started negotiations to form a national coalition government. But one group, the Hezb-e Islami led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, presumably supported and directed by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), did not join the negotiations and announced its intent to conquer Kabul alone. Hekmatyar moved his troops to Kabul, and was allowed into the town soon after 17 April. This left the other mujahideen groups no choice but to enter Kabul, on 24 April, to prevent Hekmatyar from taking over national government. This ignited a civil war between five or six rival armies, (nearly) all backed by foreign states. Several mujahideen groups proclaimed an 'interim government' on 26 April 1992 but this never attained real authority over Afghanistan.

Rabbani and Hekmatyar
President Mohammad Najibullah, leader of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, was forced to resign on 15 April 1992. The Peshawar Accord of 25 April 1992, which established a power-sharing interim government to take control of Kabul, was signed by six of the seven major Afghan anti-Soviet resistance parties (notably excluding the Hezb-e Islami ["Islamic Party"] faction of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a Pashtun, who refused to sign the Accord), and supported by some remnants of the Najibullah administration. An Islamic state was proclaimed, Islamic law introduced, bars were closed, and women were ordered to wear the hijab. In June, Burhanuddin Rabbani, leader of the Tajik-dominated Jamiat-e Islami ("Islamic Association") faction, was made interim-president of the new Islamic State of Afghanistan, and on 30 December 1992 he was elected head of the 7-member Government Council for a two-year term. However, Hekmatyar's Hezb-e Islami rebel faction (which had split from Jamiat-e Islami in 1976) demanded a share in power as well, and started clashing with Rabbani's troops. After months of fighting, they signed an agreement in March 1993 making Hekmatyar the Prime Minister of Afghanistan in June, and shortening Rabbani's presidency from 2 years to 1.5 year. Fighting between different rebel factions continued, however, and Kabul was largely destroyed.

Rise of the Taliban
In late 1994, a new Pashtun-dominated Islamic fundamentalist militia called the Taliban (lit. '"Religious students"') managed to conquer large parts of southern Afghanistan with the support of Pakistan. Making steady gains throughout 1995 and 1996, the Taliban were able to seize control of the capital city of Kabul in September 1996, driving the Rabbani government and other factions northward, and by the end of the year occupying two-thirds of Afghanistan. Former president Najibullah was arrested and executed in public by hanging on 27 September 1996.

The Taliban renamed the country the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, and imposed an even more strict version of Sharia and purdah on the population they controlled. This especially negatively impacted women, who were forced to wear a burqa, stay indoors and banned from working outside the house with rare exceptions. Almost all girls lost access to education, increasing illiteracy rates. Movie theaters, soccer stadiums, and television stations were now closed as well.

The Northern Alliance
The ousted Rabbani government formed a political coalition with Tajik leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, and the Shia Hizb-i-Wahdat faction (dominated by Hazaras) of Karim Khalili. Its formal name was United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, known in the Western world as the Northern Alliance, and its goal was to take back the country from the Taliban.

By the end of May 1997, the Taliban offensive came to a halt due to a number of strategic victories by the Northern Alliance. International pressure forced both sides to negotiate, but the demands posed by either party were so high that the differences were irreconcilable, and a political impasse ensued. The country was in a dire state according to a 1997 United Nations report, which found that the infant mortality rate was 25%, numerous civil casualties due to landmines, economic blockades imposed by the militias causing hunger, and international humanitarian organisations being unable to carry out their work. A February 1998 earthquake in northeastern Afghanistan killed 4,500 people.

In the first half of 1998, the negotiations appeared to reach a peace settlement, but then the Northern Alliance fell apart. Taking advantage of the resistance factions' disunity the Taliban launched a campaign, rapidly conquering the provincial capital cities of Maimana, Sheberghan, and finally Mazar-i-Sharif (8 August 1998). Taliban fighters committed a massacre amongst the Shia population of the last city, also killing eight Iranian diplomats and journalists. This aroused international outrage, and brought the Taliban regime on the brink of war with Iran.

The Northern Alliance drove the Taliban away in December 2001, following the United States invasion of Afghanistan. The Islamic State of Afghanistan was succeeded by the interim Transitional Islamic State of Afghanistan in 2002.

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

title: Islamic State of Afghanistan


text:
Talk:São Tomé/Archive 1

lets communicate!! see my post on nigeria.

 * Um, ok, But since it's not at talk:Nigeria, where is it?  Koyaanis Qatsi 09:00, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC)

title: Talk:São Tomé/Archive 1


text: Talk:Petroleum geology

title: Talk:Petroleum geology


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Argenteuil

Argenteuil is a commune in the northwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located 12.3 km from the center of Paris. Argenteuil is a sub-prefecture of the Val-d'Oise department, the seat of the arrondissement of Argenteuil. Argenteuil is part of the Métropole du Grand Paris.

Argenteuil is the fourth most populous commune in the suburbs of Paris (after Boulogne-Billancourt, Saint-Denis, and Montreuil) and the most populous one in the Val-d'Oise department, although it is not its prefecture, which is shared between the communes of Cergy and Pontoise.

Argenteuil shares borders with communes in 3 departements others than Val d'Oise : the Yvelines, Hauts-de-Seine, and Seine-Saint-Denis departements.

Name
The name Argenteuil is recorded for the first time in a royal charter of 697 as Argentoialum, from a Latin/Gaulish root argento meaning "silver", "silvery", "shiny", perhaps in reference to the gleaming surface of the river Seine, on the banks of which Argenteuil is located, and from a Gaulish language suffix -ialo meaning "clearing, glade" or "place of".

History
Argenteuil was founded as a convent in the 7th century (see Pierre Abélard and the Convent of Argenteuil). The monastery that arose from the convent was later destroyed during the French Revolution.

A rural escape for Parisians, it is now a suburb of Paris. Painters made Argenteuil famous, including Claude Monet, Eugène Delacroix, Auguste Renoir, Gustave Caillebotte, Alfred Sisley and Georges Braque.

Transport
Argenteuil is served by two stations on the Transilien Paris-Saint-Lazare suburban rail line, which are Argenteuil and Val d'Argenteuil.

Since redeveloped by STIF and SNCF, Argenteuil has been equipped with the new Paris-Saint-Lazare-Ermont-Eaubonne line. The new line was launched in 2006, adding the Paris-Saint Lazare / Cormeilles-en-Parisis - Pontoise / Mantes-la-Jolie service to Paris for about ten minutes.

By Bus* :

361 Gare d'Argenteuil à Gare de Pierrefitte - Stains RER;

140 Gare d'Argenteuil - Asnières-Gennevilliers - Gabriel Péri;

164 Argenteuil - Claude Monet College - Porte de Champerret;

By train* :

Gare d'Argenteuil (SNCF-J): Paris Saint-Lazare in 15 minutes and Colombes in 4 minutes

Gare Saint-Gratien (T-8): Porte Maillot in 22 minutes

Épinay Orgemont (T-8): Gare Saint-Denis in 20 minutes

Travel by car:

City centre: 10 minutes;

Paris Saint-Lazare: 25 minutes

La Défense: 20 minutes;

Colombes: 10 minutes;

la Plaine-Saint-Denis: 18 minutes;

Porte de Clichy: 15 minutes;

Education
, the commune's schools have over 12,000 students. The commune has:
 * 30 public preschools (maternelles) and one private elementary school with a preschool
 * 26 public and 2 private elementary schools
 * 11 junior high schools (collèges) - 10 public and 1 private
 * 6 senior high schools/sixth-form colleges:
 * Lycée Georges Braque
 * Lycée Cognacq-Jay
 * Lycée Julie-Victoire Daubié
 * Lycée Jean Jaurès
 * Lycée Fernand et Nadia Léger
 * Ecole nationale des professions de l'automobile (private)

Paris 13 University serves as the area university.

The Conservatoire à rayonnement départemental de Musique, Danse et Théâtre is located in Argenteuil. André Bon is one of its former students.

Twin towns – sister cities
Argenteuil is twinned with:
 * 🇮🇹 Alessandria, Italy
 * 🇩🇪 Dessau-Roßlau, Germany
 * 🇷🇴 Hunedoara, Romania
 * West Dunbartonshire, Scotland, United Kingdom

Notable people

 * Héloïse (c. 1100/01 – 1163/64), nun, philosopher and writer
 * Charles Longuet (1839–1903, journalist and socialist activist
 * Claude Monet (1840–1926), painter, lived and worked here in 1871–1878
 * Georges Braque (1882–1963), painter, sculptor and co-founder of cubism
 * Sidney Duteil (born 1955), musician and television host
 * Ingrid Chauvin (born 1971), actress
 * Thomas Henry (born 1994), professional footballer
 * Franck Béria (born 1983), retired professional footballer and functionary
 * Ibrahim Gary (born 1985), karateka
 * Fabien Ateba (born 1991), basketball player
 * Kevin Mayer (born 1992), athlete, Olympic medalist
 * Cécile Pelous, philanthropist and designer
 * Laurina Fazer (born 2003), footballer for France

Famous paintings of Argenteuil

 * By Claude Monet:

Autumn at Argenteuil, Regatta at Argenteuil, Red Boats, Argenteuil, The Bridge at Argenteuil, The Port at Argenteuil, The Seine at Argenteuil, View of Argenteuil-Snow, Bords de la Seine a Argenteuil, and Snow at Argenteuil. And Train in snow at Argenteuil.

 * By other painters:

Argenteuil and Seine near Argenteuil by Édouard Manet, Regatta at Argenteuil by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and The Bridge in Argenteuil by Gustave Caillebotte.

title: Argenteuil


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Emergency tourniquet

Emergency tourniquets are cuff-like devices designed to stop severe traumatic bleeding before or during transport to a care facility. They are wrapped around the limb, proximal to the site of trauma, and tightened until all blood vessels underneath are occluded. The design and construction of emergency tourniquets allows quick application by first aid responders or the injured persons themselves. Correct use of tourniquet devices has been shown to save lives under austere conditions with comparatively low risk of injury. In field trials, prompt application of emergency tourniquets before the patient goes into shock are associated with higher survival rates than any other scenario where tourniquets were used later or not at all.

Tourniquet design
Existing guidelines call for the use of improvised "rope-and-stick" tourniquets as a last resort to stop severe bleeding. However, purpose-made tourniquet devices that are well designed can provide greatly increased safety and efficacy. Variability in performance has been shown to exist between various designs and application methods.

Mechanical advantage
Mechanisms that confer sufficient mechanical advantage are essential for applying adequate pressure to stop bleeding, particularly on the lower extremities. Pressures that occlude venous but not arterial flow can exacerbate hemorrhage and cause damage to healthy tissue.

Mechanical characteristics of emergency tourniquet devices
Most commercial tourniquets cost in the range from $30-$50 (USD). Results from laboratory and field testing suggest that windlass and pneumatic mechanisms are effective where other systems fail due to excessive pain, slipping, inadequate force, or mechanical failure.

Pressure gradients
Pressure underneath a tourniquet cuff is not evenly distributed, with the highest pressures localized around the cuff center line and decreasing to zero near the cuff edges. A high rate of change of pressure across the cuff width, or a high cuff pressure gradient, is a leading cause of nerve and muscle injury from tourniquet use. Tourniquets with wider straps or cuffs, especially those with pneumatic actuation in contrast to mechanical force, distribute pressure more evenly and produce lower pressure gradients. They are therefore more likely to stop bleeding and less likely to cause damage to underlying tissue, in addition to being significantly less painful than tourniquets with narrow straps and bands. Over pressure protection in certain emergency tourniquets also help to prevent excessive force from damaging the limb.

Risks

Possible risks of complications—morbidity—related to emergency tourniquet use include

Emergency care services implementing routine tourniquet use, especially in the civilian setting, should exercise caution and ensure that training is adequate for optimal results. However, given proper precautions, the occurrence of complications due to tourniquet use is quite rare. Designed tourniquet devices are routinely tightened over healthy limbs during training with no ill effects, and recent evidence from combat hospitals in Iraq suggests that morbidity rates are low when users adhere to standard best practices. Since no better alternatives exist for users to self-apply with only basic training, the benefit of tourniquet use far outweighs the risks.

Safe tourniquet practice involves:

Field experience
Latest field trials suggest that wider straps are more effective and less painful than tourniquets with thinner straps. The concept of limb occlusion pressure is also gaining prominence over the misconception that greater applied force results in greater effectiveness. In addition, studies of failed cases indicate that the correct devices should be coupled with training that facilitates realistic expectations and correct user actions. The Stop The Bleed educational initiative provides knowledge aimed at the greater public on when to use a tourniquet and the correct user actions.

Emerging needs
Despite the success of widespread tourniquet deployment to limit combat casualties, many preventable deaths from hemorrhage occur where conventional tourniquet use is inappropriate. The need exists for controlling junctional bleeding, especially in the pelvic area. In 2012, the Combat Ready Clamp (CRoC) was selected by the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research (USAISR) for that purpose. Another emerging need is more refined training regimes and doctrine based on scientific evidence, which can ensure that future tourniquet practice and policies are in line with the most current body of knowledge.

title: Emergency tourniquet


text:
Hemostat

A hemostat (also called a hemostatic clamp; arterial forceps; and pean, after Jules-Émile Péan) is a tool used to control bleeding during surgery. Similar in design to both pliers and scissors, it is used to clamp exposed blood vessels shut.

Hemostats belong to a group of instruments that pivot (similar to scissors, and including needle holders, tissue holders, and some other clamps) where the structure of the tip determines the tool's function.

A hemostat has handles that can be held in place by their locking mechanism, which usually is a series of interlocking teeth, a few on each handle, that allow the user to adjust the clamping force of the pliers. When the tips are locked together, the force between them is about 40 N (9 lbf).

Often in the first phases of surgery, the incision is lined with hemostats on blood vessels that are awaiting ligation.

History
The earliest known drawing of a pivoting surgical instrument dates from 1500 B.C. and is on a tomb at Thebes, Egypt. Later Roman bronze and steel pivot-controlled instruments were found in Pompeii. In the ninth century A.D., Abulcasis made illustrations of pivoting instruments for tooth extraction.

The concept of clamping a bleeding vessel with an instrument before tying it off is generally attributed to Galen, in the second century A.D. This method of hemostasis was largely forgotten until it was rediscovered by a French barber-surgeon, Ambroise Paré, in the 16th century. He made the predecessor to the modern hemostat and called it the Bec de Corbin (crow's beak). With it he could clamp a bleeding vessel before securing it with a ligature.

Credit for the modern hemostat has been given to several persons, the foremost of whom is Jules-Émile Péan. Later surgeons, such as William Halsted, made small changes to the design.

List of hemostats

 * Rankin forceps
 * Kelly forceps
 * Satinsky clamps
 * Kocher forceps
 * Crile forceps
 * Halsted Mosquito forceps
 * Mixter "right angle" forceps
 * Spencer Wells artery forceps (the father of all artery forceps used today)

title: Hemostat


text:
Punk'd

Punk'd is an American hidden camera–practical joke reality television series that first aired on MTV in 2003. It was created by Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg, with Kutcher serving as producer and host. It bears a resemblance to both the classic hidden camera show Candid Camera and to TV's Bloopers & Practical Jokes, which also featured pranks on celebrities. Being "punk'd" referred to being the victim of such a prank. New episodes hosted by King Bach and DeStorm Power aired on BET.

A new reboot of the series hosted by Chance the Rapper premiered on Quibi in 2020 and moved to The Roku Channel upon the platform's demise, premiering the second and final season in December 2021.

History and format
Originally, Ashton Kutcher and MTV were developing a program called Harassment, a hidden camera show which would feature pranks on regular everyday anonymous people. However, a January 2002 prank involving a fake dead body at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas backfired and the couple who were targets of the prank sued Kutcher, MTV, and the hotel for $10 million. The concept was later retooled to involve celebrities instead. Pranks would be set at a variety of locations, public and private. One of the show's first pranks was set at singer Justin Timberlake's home, where he was led to believe that government agents were seizing his home and valuables because of unpaid income taxes. Time magazine ranked the prank #3 on its list of 32 Epic Moments in Reality-TV History. Another (the very first) involved Frankie Muniz's special custom-made limited edition Porsche being stolen.

A frequent segment during the first two seasons was a Punk'd cast member pretending to interview celebrities at red carpet events, only to mock them instead. This segment closely copies what originated on The Howard Stern Show in the 1980s, when Stern and his writers began sending interns (most notably Stuttering John Melendez) to ask celebrities embarrassing questions on the red carpet. During the first season then-fifteen-year-old Ryan Pinkston posed as a reporter from a children's television program, and would insult the celebrities. During season two, the producers then chose a foreign interviewer accompanied by her interpreter who would then ask inane questions to the guests. Several actors, like Jill Wagner, Masi Oka, B. J. Novak, Caitlyn Taylor Love, Dax Shepard, and a then-unknown Bill Hader were accomplices in the pranks. But when the next celebrity targets who saw the show would recognize the members of Punk'd and realized what was happening to them, the show would get new field agents every season.

The series finale aired on MTV on May 29, 2007, and culminated in early June with the Punk'd Awards.

Revival
In October 2010, New York Magazine revealed that Punk'd was being revived with Justin Bieber replacing Kutcher as the host; however, it stated that Kutcher would remain as executive producer. After a five-year hiatus, the program was revived with a March 2012 premiere. The first episode of the ninth season, featuring Bieber as a guest host, was filmed in late August 2011. On December 31, 2011, MTV confirmed that the program would be revived in 2012, and that a different celebrity guest host would be featured each episode, the guests included: Tyler, the Creator, Justin Bieber, Bam Margera, Hayden Panettiere, Lucy Hale, Nick Cannon, Dax Shepard, Ashley Tisdale, Demi Lovato, Miley Cyrus, Heather Morris, Kellan Lutz, Daniel Tosh, and Mac Miller. Ashton Kutcher made a returning appearance on an episode where he got to punk again.

The ninth season ended on June 7, 2012.

BET reboot
On May 25, 2013, Katalyst Media stated that a tenth season was in development. At their 2015 upfronts, BET announced that they would be rebooting the program for their network. Although Katalyst had closed by then Goldberg returned as executive producer with a revival of the Katalyst banner without Kutcher. Ryan Good also executive produced. The reboot is tailored for the network's audience and goes behind the scenes of many pranks. The reboot premiered on August 18, 2015.

To promote the program, BET announced the return of BET: Uncut, a block for uncut music videos, on August 11, 2015. In reality, after a revelation and introduction from new hosts, King Bach and DeStorm Power, BET aired highlights from past segments of the program as well as previews for their program.

Quibi reboot
In 2020, it was announced that a new Punk'd reboot would air on the mobile video platform Quibi hosted by Chance the Rapper. After Quibi was shut down in December 2020, on January 8, 2021, Roku bought the rights to Quibi's content library, including Punk'd for seven years. Season 2 premiered on The Roku Channel on December 10, 2021.

Syndication
Punk'd began in off-network syndication in 2008 and in the fall of that year, Trifecta Entertainment & Media put it into barter syndication and aired on affiliates of Fox, MyNetworkTV, The CW, and Independent stations. However, as of fall 2012, the show has left local syndication along with The Hills and Laguna Beach due to lack of ratings.

title: Punk'd


text:
Great Fire of Rome

The Great Fire of Rome (incendium magnum Romae) began on the 18th of July 64 AD. The fire began in the merchant shops around Rome's chariot stadium, Circus Maximus. After six days, the fire was brought under control, but before the damage could be assessed, the fire reignited and burned for another three days. In the aftermath of the fire, 71% of Rome had been destroyed (10 out of 14 districts).

According to Tacitus and later Christian tradition, Emperor Nero blamed the devastation on the Christian community in the city, initiating the empire's first persecution against the Christians. Other contemporary historians blamed Nero's incompetence but it is commonly agreed by historians now that Rome was so tightly packed a fire was inevitable.

Previous recorded fires in Rome
Fires in Rome were common, especially in houses, and fires that had occurred previously in Rome and destroyed parts of major buildings include:
 * AD 6, which led to the introduction of the Cohortes Vigiles
 * AD 12 which destroyed the Basilica Julia
 * AD 14 at the Basilica Aemilia
 * AD 22 at the Campus Martius
 * AD 26 at Caelian Hill
 * AD 36 at the Circus Maximus

Nero
Nero was proclaimed Roman emperor in AD 54 at the age of 17. His rule has commonly been associated with impulsiveness and tyranny but was, for the most part, liked by the general populace and only really disliked by the aristocracy. Early in his reign, he was heavily advised, but he slowly became more independent. In AD 59, encouraged by his mistress Poppaea, Nero murdered his mother Agrippina. His leading adviser, Seneca, was discharged and forced to commit suicide. After the Great Fire of Rome occurred in July AD 64, it was rumored that Nero had ordered the fire to clear space for a new palace, the Domus Aurea. At the time of the fire Nero may not have been in the city but 35 miles away at his villa in Antium, and possibly returned to the city before the fire was out.

Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and historian of the Roman Empire. His exact birth date is unknown, but most sources place it in either AD 56 or 57. His two main works, the Annals and the Histories, covered the history of the empire between AD 14 and AD 96. However, much of the work has been lost, including the books covering events after AD 70. Tacitus was only eight years old at the time of the fire, but he was able to use public records and reports to write an accurate account.

Vigiles
In 22 BC, Augustus funded a fire brigade. In AD 6, he introduced the Vigiles ("cohorts of the watchmen"). The cohortes vigilum, run by freedmen, were tasked with guarding Rome at night while the cohortes urbanae were tasked with guarding Rome during the day. By the time of the Great Fire of Rome, there were thousands of Vigiles in the city, and they went to work trying to stop the flames by pouring buckets of water into buildings, trying to move flammable material from the fire's path, and even demolishing buildings to attempt to make a fire break.

Rome's water system
Before the fire, Rome's water was brought in by nine aqueducts, which were not set up with equipment to fight fires. Carrying out repairs to the aqueducts was an ongoing task for the Curator Aquarum or Water Commissioner of Rome. The Curator Aquarum was also in charge of investigations into those who were illegally piping water away without paying a license fee to the state. Firefighters relied on blankets, buckets of water, vinegar, and demolition of buildings to put fires out.

Outbreak and progress of fire
According to Tacitus, the fire began in shops where flammable goods were stored, in the region of the Circus neighboring the Caelian and Palatine Hills of Rome. The night brought strong winds and the flames rapidly spread along the full length of the Circus. The fire expanded through an area of narrow, twisting streets and closely located apartment blocks. In this lower area of ancient Rome, there were no large buildings such as temples, or open areas of ground, to impede the conflagration. It then spread along the Palatine and Caelian slopes. The population fled first to areas unaffected by the fire and then to the open fields and rural roads outside the city. Looters and arsonists were reported to have spread the flames by throwing torches or, acting in groups, hindering measures being made to halt or slow the progress of the flames. Some groups responsible for throwing torches and stopping those from fighting the fire were reported to have claimed they were under orders to do so. The fire stopped after six days of continuous burning. However, it soon reignited and burned for another three days.

Tests into how fires spread have shown that large fires are able to create their own wind and this, combined with embers being blown to new buildings, could have caused the fire to spread further and could account for witnesses claiming that random fires started in houses that were away from the flames. As well as wind playing a factor in fire spread, those who had claimed to be under orders to stop people from fighting the fires never named the one who ordered them and they were also reported to have looted buildings.

Aftermath
According to Tacitus, Nero was away from Rome, in Antium, when the fire broke out. Nero returned to the city and took measures to bring in food supplies and to open gardens and public buildings to accommodate refugees. Of Rome's fourteen districts, three were completely devastated, seven more were reduced to a few scorched and mangled ruins and only four completely escaped damage. The Temple of Jupiter Stator, the House of the Vestals, and Nero's palace, the Domus Transitoria were damaged or destroyed. Also destroyed in the fire was the portion of the Forum where the Roman senators lived and worked. However, the open space in the middle of the Forum remained a shopping/meeting centre. The accusations of Nero having started the fire were further exacerbated by his quickness to rebuild burned neighbourhoods in the Greek style and to launch construction of his new palace.

For the city's reconstruction, Nero dictated new and far-sighted building rules, intended to curb the excesses of speculation and trace a new urban plan, which still can be discerned from the city layout today. He rebuilt much of the destroyed area, and had the ostentatious building complex known as Domus Aurea (Golden House) built, his personal residence (replacing the Domus Transitoria and including an extension of about 2.5 km2), which came to include the Palatine, the slopes of the Esquiline (Opium) and part of the Celio. This may not have been a possible motive for the fire, as he could have requisitioned the necessary land anyway, and most was already in his possession.

To find the necessary funds for the reconstruction, Nero's government increased taxation. In particular heavy tributes were imposed on the provinces of the empire. To meet at least a proportion of the costs, Nero devalued the Roman currency, increasing inflationary pressure for the first time in the Empire's history.

Debris from the fire was used as fill for the nearby malaria-infested marshes.

Varying historical accounts
The varying historical accounts of the event come from three secondary sources—Cassius Dio, Suetonius, and Tacitus. The primary accounts, which possibly included histories written by Fabius Rusticus, Marcus Cluvius Rufus, and Pliny the Elder, do not survive. At least six separate stories circulate regarding Nero and the fire:
 * Motivated by a desire to destroy the city, Nero secretly sent out men pretending to be drunk to set fire to the city. Nero watched from his palace on the Palatine Hill, singing and playing the lyre.
 * Nero openly sent out men to set fire to the city. Nero watched from the Tower of Maecenas on the Esquiline Hill while singing.
 * Nero sent out men to set fire to the city. There were unconfirmed rumors that Nero sang from a private stage during the fire.
 * Nero was motivated to destroy the city so he would be able to bypass the senate and rebuild Rome in his image.
 * Rumor had it that Nero had started the fire. Therefore, to blame someone else for it (and thus exonerate Nero from blame), the fire was said to have been caused by the already unpopular Christians.
 * The fire was an accident that occurred while Nero was in Antium.

title: Great Fire of Rome


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Seaplane

A seaplane is a powered fixed-wing aircraft capable of taking off and landing (alighting) on water. Seaplanes are usually divided into two categories based on their technological characteristics: floatplanes and flying boats; the latter are generally far larger and can carry far more. Seaplanes that can also take off and land on airfields are in a subclass called amphibious aircraft, or amphibians. Seaplanes were sometimes called hydroplanes, but currently this term applies instead to motor-powered watercraft that use the technique of hydrodynamic lift to skim the surface of water when running at speed.

The use of seaplanes gradually tapered off after World War II, partially because of the investments in airports during the war but mainly because landplanes were less constrained by weather conditions that could result in sea states being too high to operate seaplanes while landplanes could continue to operate. In the 21st century, seaplanes maintain a few niche uses, such as for aerial firefighting, air transport around archipelagos, and access to undeveloped or roadless areas, some of which have numerous lakes. In British English, seaplane is sometimes used specifically to refer to a floatplane, rather than a flying boat.

Types
The word "seaplane" is used to describe two types of air/water vehicles: the floatplane and the flying boat.
 * A floatplane has slender floats, mounted under the fuselage. Two floats are common, but other configurations are possible. Only the floats of a floatplane normally come into contact with water. The fuselage remains above water. Some small land aircraft can be modified to become float planes, and in general, floatplanes are small aircraft. Floatplanes are limited by their inability to handle wave heights typically greater than 12 inches (0.31 m). These floats add to the empty weight of the airplane and to the drag coefficient, resulting in reduced payload capacity, slower rate of climb, and slower cruise speed.
 * In a flying boat, the main source of buoyancy is the fuselage, which acts like a ship's hull in the water because the fuselage's underside has been hydrodynamically shaped to allow water to flow around it. Most flying boats have small floats mounted on their wings to keep them stable. Not all small seaplanes have been floatplanes, but most large seaplanes have been flying boats, with their great weight supported by their hulls.

The term "seaplane" is used by some instead of "floatplane". This is the standard British usage. This article treats both flying boats and floatplanes as types of seaplane, in the US fashion.

An amphibious aircraft can take off and land both on conventional runways and water. A true seaplane can only take off and land on water. There are amphibious flying boats and amphibious floatplanes, as well as some hybrid designs, e.g., floatplanes with retractable floats.

Modern (2019) production seaplanes range in size from flying-boat type light-sport aircraft amphibians, such as the Icon A5 and AirMax SeaMax, to the 100,000 lb ShinMaywa US-2 and Beriev Be-200 multi-role amphibians. Examples in between include the Dornier Seastar flying-boat type, 12-seat, utility amphibian and the Canadair CL-415 amphibious water-bomber. The Viking Air DHC-6 Twin Otter and Cessna Caravan utility aircraft have landing gear options which include amphibious floats.

History
Taking off on water was attempted by some early flight attempts, but water take off and landing began in earnest in the 1910s and seaplanes pioneered transatlantic routes, and were used in World War I. They continued to develop before World War II, and had widespread use. After World War II, the creation of so many land airstrips meant water landings began to drift into special applications. They continued in niches such as access in remote areas, forest fire fighting, and maritime patrol.

Early pioneers
The Frenchman Alphonse Pénaud filed the first patent for a flying machine with a boat hull and retractable landing gear in 1876, but Austrian Wilhelm Kress is credited with building the first seaplane, Drachenflieger, in 1898, although its two 30 hp Daimler engines were inadequate for take-off, and it later sank when one of its two floats collapsed.

On 6 June 1905, Gabriel Voisin took off and landed on the River Seine with a towed kite glider on floats. The first of his unpowered flights was 150 yd. He later built a powered floatplane in partnership with Louis Blériot, but the machine was unsuccessful.

Other pioneers also attempted to attach floats to aircraft in Britain, Australia, France and the United States.

On 28 March 1910, Frenchman Henri Fabre flew the first successful powered seaplane, the Gnome Omega-powered hydravion, a trimaran floatplane. Fabre's first successful take off and landing by a powered seaplane inspired other aviators, and he designed floats for several other flyers. The first hydro-aeroplane competition was held in Monaco in March 1912, featuring aircraft using floats from Fabre, Curtiss, Tellier and Farman. This led to the first scheduled seaplane passenger services, at Aix-les-Bains, using a five-seat Sanchez-Besa from 1 August 1912. The French Navy ordered its first floatplane in 1912. On May 10, 1912 Glenn L. Martin flew a homemade seaplane in California, setting records for distance and time. In 1911−12, François Denhaut constructed the first seaplane with a fuselage forming a hull, using various designs to give hydrodynamic lift at take-off. Its first successful flight was on 13 April 1912. Throughout 1910 and 1911, American pioneering aviator Glenn Curtiss developed his floatplane into the successful Curtiss Model D land-plane, which used a larger central float and sponsons. Combining floats with wheels, he made the first amphibian flights in February 1911 and was awarded the first Collier Trophy for US flight achievement. From 1912, his experiments with a hulled seaplane resulted in the 1913 Model E and Model F, which he called "flying-boats". In February 1911, the United States Navy took delivery of the Curtiss Model E and soon tested landings on and take-offs from ships, using the Curtiss Model D.

There were experiments by aviators to adapt the Wright Model B to a water landing. The first motion picture recorded from an airplane was from a Wright Model B floatplane, by Frank Coffyn in 1911. The Wright Brothers, widely celebrated for their breakthrough aircraft designs, were slower to develop a seaplane; Wilbur died in 1912, and the company was bogged down in lawsuits. However, by 1913, the Wright Brother company developed the Wright Model CH Flyer. In 1913, the Wright company also came out withe Wright Model G Aerboat, which was a seaplane with an enclosed cabin (a first for the company);the chief engineer of this version was Grover Loening.

In Britain, Captain Edward Wakefield and Oscar Gnosspelius began to explore the feasibility of flight from water in 1908. They decided to make use of Windermere in the Lake District, England's largest lake. The latter's first attempts to fly attracted large crowds, though the aircraft failed to take off and required a re-design of the floats incorporating features from the boat hulls of the lake's motor boat racing club member Isaac Borwick. Meanwhile, Wakefield ordered a floatplane similar to the design of the 1910 Fabre Hydravion. By November 1911, both Gnosspelius and Wakefield had aircraft capable of flight from water and awaited suitable weather conditions. Gnosspelius's flight was short-lived, as the aircraft crashed into the lake. Wakefield's pilot, however, taking advantage of a light northerly wind, successfully took off and flew at a height of 50 ft to Ferry Nab, where he made a wide turn and returned for a perfect landing on the lake's surface.

In Switzerland, Émile Taddéoli equipped the Dufaux 4 biplane with swimmers and successfully took off in 1912. A seaplane was used during the Balkan Wars in 1913, when a Greek "Astra Hydravion" did a reconnaissance of the Turkish fleet and dropped four bombs.

Birth of an industry
In 1913, the Daily Mail newspaper put up a £10,000 prize for the first non-stop aerial crossing of the Atlantic, which was soon "enhanced by a further sum" from the Women's Aerial League of Great Britain.

American businessman Rodman Wanamaker became determined that the prize should go to an American aircraft and commissioned the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company to design and build an aircraft capable of making the flight. Curtiss's development of the Flying Fish flying boat in 1913 brought him into contact with John Cyril Porte, a retired Royal Navy Lieutenant, aircraft designer and test pilot who was to become an influential British aviation pioneer. Recognising that many of the early accidents were attributable to a poor understanding of handling while in contact with the water, the pair's efforts went into developing practical hull designs to make the transatlantic crossing possible.

The two years before World War I's breakout also saw the privately produced pair of Benoist XIV biplane flying boats, designed by Thomas W. Benoist, initiate the start of the first heavier-than-air airline service anywhere in the world, and the first airline service of any kind at all in the United States.

At the same time, the British boat-building firm J. Samuel White of Cowes on the Isle of Wight set up a new aircraft division and produced a flying boat in the United Kingdom. This was displayed at the London Air Show at Olympia in 1913. In that same year, a collaboration between the S. E. Saunders boatyard of East Cowes and the Sopwith Aviation Company produced the "Bat Boat", an aircraft with a consuta laminated hull that could operate from land or on water, which today is called an amphibious aircraft. The "Bat Boat" completed several landings on sea and on land and was duly awarded the Mortimer Singer Prize. It was the first all-British aeroplane capable of making six return flights over five miles within five hours. In the US, Wanamaker's commission built on Glen Curtiss's previous development and experience with the Curtiss Model F for the U.S. Navy, which rapidly resulted in the America, designed under Porte's supervision following his study and rearrangement of the flight plan; the aircraft was a conventional biplane design with two-bay, unstaggered wings of unequal span with two pusher inline engines mounted side-by-side above the fuselage in the interplane gap. Wingtip pontoons were attached directly below the lower wings near their tips. The design (later developed into the Model H) resembled Curtiss's earlier flying boats but was built considerably larger so it could carry enough fuel to cover 1100 mi. The three crew members were accommodated in a fully enclosed cabin.

Trials of the America began 23 June 1914 with Porte also as Chief Test Pilot; testing soon revealed serious shortcomings in the design; it was under-powered, so the engines were replaced with more powerful tractor engines. There was also a tendency for the nose of the aircraft to try to submerge as engine power increased while taxiing on water. This phenomenon had not been encountered before, since Curtiss's earlier designs had not used such powerful engines nor large fuel/cargo loads and so were relatively more buoyant. In order to counteract this effect, Curtiss fitted fins to the sides of the bow to add hydrodynamic lift, but soon replaced these with sponsons, a type of underwater pontoon mounted in pairs on either side of a hull. These sponsons (or their engineering equivalents) and the flared, notched hull would remain a prominent feature of flying-boat hull design in the decades to follow. With the problem resolved, preparations for the crossing resumed. While the craft was found to handle "heavily" on takeoff, and required rather longer take-off distances than expected, the full moon on 5 August 1914 was selected for the trans-Atlantic flight; Porte was to pilot the America with George Hallett as co-pilot and mechanic.

World War I (1914-18)
Curtiss and Porte's plans were interrupted by the outbreak of World War I. Porte sailed for England on 4 August 1914 and rejoined the Navy as a member of the Royal Naval Air Service. Appointed Squadron Commander of Royal Navy Air Station Hendon, he soon convinced the Admiralty of the potential of flying boats and was put in charge of the naval air station at Felixstowe in 1915. Porte persuaded the Admiralty to commandeer (and later, purchase) the America and a sister craft from Curtiss. This was followed by an order for 12 more similar aircraft, one Model H-2 and the remaining as Model H-4s. Four examples of the latter were assembled in the UK by Saunders. All of these were similar to the design of the America and, indeed, were all referred to as Americas in Royal Navy service. The engines, however, were changed from the under-powered 160 hp Curtiss engines to 250 hp Rolls-Royce Falcon engines. The initial batch was followed by an order for 50 more (totalling 64 Americas overall during the war). Porte also acquired permission to modify and experiment with the Curtiss aircraft.

The Curtiss H-4s were soon found to have a number of problems; they were underpowered, their hulls were too weak for sustained operations, and they had poor handling characteristics when afloat or taking off. One flying boat pilot, Major Theodore Douglas Hallam, wrote that they were "comic machines, weighing well under two tons; with two comic engines giving, when they functioned, 180 horsepower; and comic control, being nose heavy with engines on and tail heavy in a glide."

At Felixstowe, Porte made advances in flying-boat design and developed a practical hull design with the distinctive "Felixstowe notch". Porte's first design to be implemented in Felixstowe was the Felixstowe Porte Baby, a large, three-engined biplane flying boat, powered by one central pusher and two outboard tractor Rolls-Royce Eagle engines.

Porte modified an H-4 with a new hull whose improved hydrodynamic qualities made taxiing, take-off and landing much more practical and called it the Felixstowe F.1.

Porte's innovation of the "Felixstowe notch" enabled the craft to overcome suction from the water more quickly and break free for flight much more easily. This made operating the craft far safer and more reliable. The "notch" breakthrough would soon after evolve into a "step", with the rear section of the lower hull sharply recessed above the forward lower hull section, and that characteristic became a feature of both flying-boat hulls and seaplane floats. The resulting aircraft would be large enough to carry sufficient fuel to fly long distances and could berth alongside ships to take on more fuel.

Porte then designed a similar hull for the larger Curtiss H-12 flying boat which, while larger and more capable than the H-4s, shared failings of a weak hull and poor water handling. The combination of the new Porte-designed hull, this time fitted with two steps, with the wings of the H-12 and a new tail, and powered by two Rolls-Royce Eagle engines, was named the Felixstowe F.2 and first flew in July 1916, proving greatly superior to the Curtiss on which it was based. It was used as the basis for all future designs. It entered production as the Felixstowe F.2A, being used as a patrol aircraft, with about 100 being completed by the end of World War I. Another seventy were built, and these were followed by two F.2c, which were built at Felixstowe.

In February 1917, the first prototype of the Felixstowe F.3 was flown. It was larger and heavier than the F.2, giving it greater range and heavier bomb load, but poorer agility. Approximately 100 Felixstowe F.3s were produced before the end of the war.

The Felixstowe F.5 was intended to combine the good qualities of the F.2 and F.3, with the prototype first flying in May 1918. The prototype showed superior qualities to its predecessors but, to ease production, the production version was modified to make extensive use of components from the F.3, which resulted in lower performance than the F.2A or F.5.

Porte's final design at the Seaplane Experimental Station was the 123-foot-span five-engined Felixstowe Fury triplane (also known as the "Porte Super-Baby" or "PSB").

F.2, F.3, and F.5 flying boats were extensively employed by the Royal Navy for coastal patrols and to search for German U-boats. In 1918, they were towed on lighters towards the northern German ports to extend their range; on 4 June 1918, this resulted in three F.2As engaging in a dogfight with ten German seaplanes, shooting down two confirmed and four probables at no loss. As a result of this action, British flying boats were dazzle-painted to aid identification in combat.

The Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company independently developed its designs into the small Model F, the larger Model K (several of which were sold to the Russian Naval Air Service), and the Model C for the U.S. Navy. Curtiss, among others, also built the Felixstowe F.5 as the Curtiss F5L, based on the final Porte hull designs and powered by American Liberty engines.

Meanwhile, the pioneering flying-boat designs of François Denhaut had been steadily developed by the Franco-British Aviation Company into a range of practical craft. Smaller than the Felixstowes, several thousand FBAs served with almost all of the Allied forces as reconnaissance craft, patrolling the North Sea, Atlantic and Mediterranean Oceans.

In Italy, several seaplanes were developed, starting with the L series and progressing with the M series. The Macchi M.5, in particular, was extremely manoeuvrable and agile and matched the land-based aircraft it had to fight. Two hundred forty-four were built in total. Towards the end of World War I, the aircraft were flown by Italian Navy Aviation, United States Navy and United States Marine Corps airmen. Ensign Charles Hammann won the first Medal of Honor awarded to a United States naval aviator in an M.5

The German aircraft manufacturing company Hansa-Brandenburg built flying boats starting with the model Hansa-Brandenburg GW in 1916, and had a degree of military success with their Hansa-Brandenburg W.12 two-seat floatplane fighter the following year, being the primary aircraft flown by Imperial Germany's maritime fighter ace, Friedrich Christiansen. The Austro-Hungarian firm Lohner-Werke began building flying boats, starting with the Lohner E in 1914 and the later (1915) widely copied Lohner L.

Between the wars

In September 1919, British company Supermarine started operating the first flying-boat service in the world, from Woolston to Le Havre in France, but it was short-lived.

A Curtiss NC-4 became the first airplane to fly across the Atlantic Ocean in 1919, crossing with multiple stops via the Azores. Of the four that made the attempt, only one completed the flight.

In 1923, the first successful commercial flying-boat service was introduced, with flights to and from the Channel Islands. After frequent appeals by the industry for subsidies, the Government decided that nationalization was necessary and ordered five aviation companies to merge to form the state-owned Imperial Airways of London (IAL). IAL became the international flag-carrying British airline, providing flying-boat passenger and mail-transport links between Britain and South Africa and India using aircraft such as the Short S.8 Calcutta.

In 1928, four Supermarine Southampton flying boats of the RAF Far East flight arrived in Melbourne, Australia. The flight was considered proof that flying boats had become a reliable means of long-distance transport.

In the 1930s, flying boats made it possible to have regular air transport between the U.S. and Europe, opening up new air travel routes to South America, Africa, and Asia. Foynes, Ireland and Botwood, Newfoundland and Labrador were the terminals for many early transatlantic flights. In areas where there were no airfields for land-based aircraft, flying boats could stop at small river, lake or coastal stations to refuel and resupply. The Pan Am Boeing 314 "Clipper" flying boats brought new exotic destinations like the Far East within reach and came to represent the romance of flight.

By 1931, mail from Australia was reaching Britain in 16 days, or less than half the time taken by sea. In that year, government tenders on both sides of the world invited applications to run new passenger and mail services between the ends of the Empire, and Qantas and IAL were successful with a joint bid. A company under combined ownership was then formed, Qantas Empire Airways. The new ten-day service between Rose Bay, New South Wales, (near Sydney) and Southampton was such a success that the volume of mail soon exceeded aircraft storage space.

A solution was found by the British government, who had requested Short Brothers to design a large long-range monoplane for IAL in 1933. Partner Qantas purchased six Short Empire flying boats.

Delivering the mail as quickly as possible generated a lot of competition and some innovative designs. One variant of the Short Empire flying boats was the strange-looking Maia and Mercury. It was a four-engined floatplane Mercury (the winged messenger) fixed on top of Maia, a heavily modified Short Empire flying boat. The larger Maia took off, carrying the smaller Mercury loaded to a weight greater than it could take off with. This allowed the Mercury to carry sufficient fuel for a direct trans-Atlantic flight with the mail. Unfortunately, this was too complex, and the Mercury had to be returned from America by ship. The Mercury did set some distance records before in-flight refuelling was adopted.

Sir Alan Cobham devised a method of in-flight refuelling in the 1930s. In the air, the Short Empire could be loaded with more fuel than it could take off with. Short Empire flying boats serving the trans-Atlantic crossing were refueled over Foynes; with the extra fuel load, they could make a direct trans-Atlantic flight. A Handley Page H.P.54 Harrow was used as the fuel tanker.

The German Dornier Do X flying boat was noticeably different from its UK and U.S.-built counterparts. It had wing-like protrusions from the fuselage, called sponsons, to stabilize it on the water without the need for wing-mounted outboard floats. This feature was pioneered by Claudius Dornier during World War I on his Dornier Rs. I giant flying boat and perfected on the Dornier Wal in 1924. The enormous Do X was powered by 12 engines and carried 170 people. It flew across the Atlantic to the Americas in 1929, It was the largest flying boat of its time, but was severely underpowered and was limited by a very low operational ceiling. Only three were built, with a variety of engines installed, in an attempt to overcome the lack of power. Two of these were sold to Italy.

World War II
The military value of flying boats was well-recognized, and every country bordering on water operated them in a military capacity at the outbreak of the war. They were utilized in various tasks from anti-submarine patrol to air-sea rescue and gunfire spotting for battleships. Aircraft such as the PBM Mariner patrol bomber, PBY Catalina, Short Sunderland, and Grumman Goose recovered downed airmen and operated as scout aircraft over the vast distances of the Pacific Theater and Atlantic. They also sank numerous submarines and found enemy ships. In May 1941, the German battleship Bismarck was discovered by a PBY Catalina flying out of Castle Archdale Flying boat base, Lower Lough Erne, Northern Ireland.

The largest flying boat of the war was the Blohm & Voss BV 238, which was also the heaviest plane to fly during World War II and the largest aircraft built and flown by any of the Axis Powers.

In November 1939, IAL was restructured into three separate companies: British European Airways, British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC), and British South American Airways (which merged with BOAC in 1949), with the change being made official on 1 April 1940. BOAC continued to operate flying-boat services from the (slightly) safer confines of Poole Harbour during wartime, returning to Southampton in 1947. When Italy entered the war in June 1940, the Mediterranean was closed to Allied planes and BOAC and Qantas operated the Horseshoe Route between Durban and Sydney using Short Empire flying boats.

The Martin Company produced the prototype XPB2M Mars based on their PBM Mariner patrol bomber, with flight tests between 1941 and 1943. The Mars was converted by the Navy into a transport aircraft designated the XPB2M-1R. Satisfied with the performance, twenty of the modified JRM-1 Mars were ordered. The first, named Hawaii Mars, was delivered in June 1945, but the Navy scaled back their order at the end of World War II, buying only the five aircraft which were then on the production line. The five Mars were completed, and the last delivered in 1947.

Post-War

After World War II, the use of flying boats rapidly declined for several reasons. The ability to land on water became less of an advantage owing to the considerable increase in the number and length of land-based runways during World War II. Further, as the speed and range of land-based aircraft increased, the commercial competitiveness of flying boats diminished; their design compromised aerodynamic efficiency and speed to accomplish the feat of waterborne takeoff and landing. Competing with new civilian jet aircraft like the de Havilland Comet and Boeing 707 proved impossible.

The Hughes H-4 Hercules, in development in the U.S. during the war, was even larger than the BV 238, but it did not fly until 1947. The "Spruce Goose", as the 180-ton H-4 was nicknamed, was the largest flying boat ever to fly. Carried out during Senate hearings into Hughes's use of government funds on its construction, the short hop of about a mile (1.6 km) at 70 ft above the water by the "Flying Lumberyard" was claimed by Hughes as vindication of his efforts. Cutbacks in expenditure after the war and the disappearance of its intended mission as a transatlantic transport left it no purpose.

In 1944, the Royal Air Force began development of a small jet-powered flying boat that it intended to use as an air defence aircraft optimised for the Pacific, where the relatively calm sea conditions around the many archipelagos made the use of seaplanes easier. By making the aircraft jet-powered, it was possible to design it with a hull rather than making it a floatplane. The Saunders-Roe SR.A/1 prototype first flew in 1947 and was relatively successful in terms of its performance and handling. However, by the end of the war, carrier-based aircraft were becoming more sophisticated, and the need for the SR.A/1 evaporated.

During the Berlin Airlift (which lasted from June 1948 until August 1949), ten Sunderlands and two Hythes were used to transport goods from Finkenwerder on the Elbe near Hamburg to isolated Berlin, landing on the Havelsee beside RAF Gatow until it iced over. The Sunderlands were particularly used for transporting salt, as their airframes were already protected against corrosion from seawater. Transporting salt in standard aircraft risked rapid and severe structural corrosion in the event of a spillage. In addition, three Aquila flying boats were used during the airlift. This is the only known operational use of flying boats within central Europe.

BOAC ceased flying boat services out of Southampton in November 1950.

Bucking the trend, in 1948, Aquila Airways was founded to serve destinations that were still inaccessible to land-based aircraft. This company operated Short S.25 and Short S.45 flying boats out of Southampton on routes to Madeira, Las Palmas, Lisbon, Jersey, Majorca, Marseille, Capri, Genoa, Montreux and Santa Margherita. From 1950 to 1957, Aquila also operated a service from Southampton to Edinburgh and Glasgow. The flying boats of Aquila Airways were also chartered for one-off trips, usually to deploy troops where scheduled services did not exist or where there were political considerations. The longest charter, in 1952, was from Southampton to the Falkland Islands. In 1953, the flying boats were chartered for troop-deployment trips to Freetown and Lagos, and there was a special trip from Hull to Helsinki to relocate a ship's crew. The airline ceased operations on 30 September 1958.

The technically advanced Saunders-Roe Princess first flew in 1952 and later received a certificate of airworthiness. Despite being the pinnacle of flying-boat development, none were sold, though Aquila Airways reportedly attempted to buy them. Of the three Princesses that were built, two never flew, and all were scrapped in 1967. In the late 1940s, Saunders-Roe also produced the jet-powered SR.A/1 flying-boat fighter, which did not progress beyond flying prototypes.

The U.S. Navy continued to operate flying boats (notably the Martin P5M Marlin) until the early 1970s. The Navy even built a jet-powered seaplane bomber, the Martin Seamaster.

The U.S. Coast Guard operated HU-16 Albatross (affectionately known as the 'goat') well into the 1980s, retiring them as the airframes clocked out their flying 11 thousand flying hours. About twenty were still in service in the 1970s, and the last operation flight was in 1983. The aircraft was very popular with the Coast Guard due to its unique capabilities compared to other types, and was noted for its versatility, range, and ability to land on water which was especially useful for water rescues.

Ansett Australia operated a flying-boat service from Rose Bay to Lord Howe Island until 1974, using Short Sandringhams.

On 18 December 1990, Pilot Tom Casey completed the first round-the-world flight in a floatplane with only water landings using a Cessna 206 named Liberty II.

Uses and operation

Many modern civilian aircraft have a floatplane variant, usually as utility transports to lakes and other remote areas. Most of these are offered as third-party modifications under a supplemental type certificate (STC), although there are several aircraft manufacturers that build floatplanes from scratch, and a few that continue to build flying boats. Some older flying boats remain in service for firefighting duty, as well as the Canadair CL-415 which remains in production as of 2022, and Chalk's Ocean Airways operated a fleet of Grumman Mallards in passenger service until service was suspended after a crash on December 19, 2005, which was linked to maintenance, not to design of the aircraft. Purely water-based seaplanes have largely been supplanted by amphibious aircraft. Seaplanes can only take off and land on water with little or no wave action and, like other aircraft, have trouble in extreme weather. The size of waves a given design can withstand depends on, among other factors, the aircraft's size, hull or float design, and its weight, all making for a much more unstable aircraft, limiting actual operational days. Flying boats can typically handle rougher water and are generally more stable than floatplanes while on the water.

Seaplanes are also used in remote areas such as the Alaskan and Canadian wilderness, especially in areas with a large number of lakes convenient for takeoff and landing. They may operate on a charter basis, provide scheduled service, or be operated by residents of the area for personal use. There are seaplane operators that offer services between islands such as in the Caribbean Sea or the Maldives. Usually these are converted from reliable commercial models, and fitted for floats.

One of the modern floatplane conversions under consideration in the 2020s, is floatplane version of the C-130 for special military applications.

title: Seaplane


text:
Ya (Cyrillic)

Ya, Ia or Ja (Я я; italics: Я я ) is a letter of the Cyrillic script, the civil script variant of Old Cyrillic Little Yus, and possibly Iotated A. Among modern Slavic languages, it is used in the East Slavic languages and Bulgarian. It is also used in the Cyrillic alphabets used by Mongolian and many Uralic, Caucasian and Turkic languages of the former Soviet Union.

Pronunciation
The iotated vowel is pronounced in initial or post-vocalic positions, like the English pronunciation of $⟨ya⟩$ in "yard".

When $⟨я⟩$ follows a soft consonant, no sound occurs between the consonant and the vowel.

The exact pronunciation of the vowel sound of $⟨я⟩$ depends also on the following sound by allophony in the Slavic languages. In Russian, before a soft consonant, it is, like in the English "cat". If a hard consonant follows $⟨я⟩$ or none, the result is an open vowel, usually []. This difference does not exist in the other Cyrillic languages.

In non-stressed positions, the vowel reduction depends on the language and the dialect. The standard Russian language reduces the vowel to [], but yakanye dialects $⟨я⟩$ undergo no reduction unlike other instances of the phoneme (represented with the letter $⟨а⟩$). In Bulgarian, the vowel sound is reduced to in unstressed syllables and is pronounced  in both stressed verb and definite article endings.

History
The letter, known as little jus (yus) (малка носовка, юс малый) originally stood for a front nasal vowel, conventionally transcribed as ę. The history of the letter (in both Church Slavonic and vernacular texts) varies according to the development of this sound in the different areas where Cyrillic was used.

In Serbia, [ɛ̃] became [e] at a very early period and the letter ceased to be used, being replaced by e. In Bulgaria the situation is complicated by the fact that dialects differ and that there were different orthographic systems in use, but broadly speaking [ɛ̃] became [ɛ] in most positions, but in some circumstances it merged with [ǫ], particularly in inflexional endings, e.g. the third person plural ending of the present tense of certain verbs such as (Modern Bulgarian правят). The letter continued to be used, but its distribution, particularly in regard to the other yuses, was governed as much by orthographical convention as by phonetic value or etymology.

After the Bulgarian language adopted the civil script, the sound /ja/ would come to be represented by the letter я, despite etymological я being pronounced /ɛ/.

Among the Eastern Slavs, [ɛ̃] was denasalised, probably to [æ], which palatalised the preceding consonant; after palatalisation became phonemic, the /æ/ phoneme merged with /a/, and ѧ henceforth indicated /a/ after a palatalised consonant, or else, in initial or post-vocalic position, /ja/. However, Cyrillic already had a character with this function, namely, so that for the Eastern Slavs these two characters were henceforth equivalent. The alphabet in Meletij Smotrickij's grammar of 1619 accordingly lists "" ("ꙗ ili ѧ", "ꙗ or ѧ"); he explains that is used initially and  elsewhere. (In fact he also distinguishes the feminine form of the accusative plural of the third person pronoun from the masculine and neuter .) This reflects the practice of earlier scribes and was further codified by the Muscovite printers of the seventeenth century (and is continued in modern Church Slavonic). However, in vernacular and informal writing of the period, the two letters may be used completely indiscriminately. It was in Russian cursive (skoropis') writing of this time that the letter acquired its modern form: the left-hand leg of was progressively shortened, eventually disappearing altogether, while the foot of the middle leg shifted towards the left, producing the я shape.

In the specimens of the civil script produced for Peter I, forms of and я were grouped together; Peter removed the first two, leaving only я in the modern alphabet, and its use in Russian remains the same to the present day. It was similarly adopted for the standardised orthographies of modern Ukrainian and Belarusian. In nineteenth-century Bulgaria, both Old Cyrillic and civil scripts were used for printing, with я in the latter corresponding to in the former, and there were various attempts to standardise the orthography, of which some, such as the Plovdiv school exemplified by Nayden Gerov, were more conservative, essentially preserving the Middle Bulgarian distribution of the letter, others attempted to rationalise spelling on more phonetic principles, and one project in 1893 proposed abolishing the letter я altogether. By the early twentieth century, under Russian influence, я came to be used for (which is not a reflex of ę in Bulgarian), retaining its use for  but was no longer used for other purposes; this is its function today.

Use in loanwords and transcriptions
In Russian, the letter has little use in loanwords and orthographic transcriptions of foreign words. A notable exception is the use of $⟨ля⟩$ to transcribe, mostly from Romance languages, Polish, German and Arabic. This makes $⟨л⟩$ to match [] better than its dark l pronunciation in $⟨ла⟩$. $⟨Я⟩$ is also used to transcribe Romanian $⟨ea⟩$, pronounced as.

Although is a distinctive pronunciation of $⟨я⟩$ in Russian, the letter is almost never used to transcribe that sound, unlike ю|the use of $⟨ю⟩$ to approximate close front and central rounded vowels. Nonetheless, $⟨я⟩$ is used for Estonian and Finnish $⟨ä⟩$ – for instance, Pärnu is written $⟨Пярну⟩$ in Russian, although the Russian pronunciation does not match the original.

Related letters and other similar characters

 * Ѧ ѧ: Cyrillic letter Little Yus
 * Ꙗ|Cyrillic letter Iotated A
 * ᴙ : Latin letter small capital reversed R, used informally in phonetics to represent the epiglottal trill (see IPA consonants)
 * Â â: Â|Latin letter Â - a Romanian and Vietnamese letter
 * R r: R|Latin letter R

Computing codes
Unicode provides separate code-points for the Old Cyrillic and civil script forms of this letter. A number of Old Cyrillic fonts developed before the publication of Unicode 5.1 placed iotated A at the code points for Ya (Я/я) instead of the Private Use Area, but since Unicode 5.1, iotated A has been encoded separately from Ya.

title: Ya (Cyrillic)


text:
Talk:Ya (Cyrillic)

Template
I think I did good job on this and that it could serve as a template for other Cyrillic letters. If there are any objections to this being used as a template, put them here. Nikola 09:52, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC)

 * It's good, Nikola, but the see also section should be broken up into two or three lines, so that I don't need to scroll horizontally. And some letters need disambiguation (be points to a disambiguation page; this should be fixed before using this article as template). Keep up the good work -- Cordyph 09:59, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC)

 * Now? Perhaps all letters should link to Cy (cyrillic) as ambiguations might appear later? Nikola 05:22, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)

 * Hi Nikola. Comments in articles are likely to be deleted. If you want to create the articles for other Cyrillic letters yourself, I suggest to store the template on your user page. If you want others to participate, you might think about setting up a WikiProject. -- Cordyph 19:55, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)

 * Perhaps not. I'm not so good at working with people :) If people start writing about other letters, I'll easily correct the mistakes, comments or not. If not, I'll write about them myself. Thanks for all your help :)
 * By the way, I admit that table should have borders but this way it is again off the screen :( Nikola 05:45, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

 * That depends on the screen ;-) It was okay on my monitor, but if it looks ugly on a small monitor, I suggest adding another row. -- Cordyph 12:45, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

 * If one row is added then there are three empty spots bottom left, which is ugly. If two, even more. The way it is now it fits on my screen, maybe it'll be ugly for someone but I wouldn't touch it anymore. Nikola 18:12, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Page Move
(from the village pump and User_talk:Vancouverguy)

I accidentally moved Ya to whatever russian charecter it was to conform to A, B, C, etc., and messed up the "move page" button. Vancouverguy

 * I'm not sure I understand the Ya problem. Do you want it moved back or somewhere else? Where should it be? How can you mess up a button? Angela 21:04, Sep 27, 2003 (UTC)

 * And I was just going to ask for moving it back ;) Nikola 21:18, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

 * I was going to move it back, too.Vancouverguy 21:24, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Click on the "move page" button on Ya, it brings up:

Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /usr/local/apache/common/php/SpecialMovepage.php on line 52

I was trying to move it to "Я" Vancouverguy 21:26, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

 * Seems to be back at Ya now. Do you still want it at Я? Angela 21:31, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

 * I moved it back. Worked fine for me... --Brion 21:31, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

It would be nice to have it in line with A, B, etc.Vancouverguy 21:32, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I don't think it's technically feasible to move it to Я that might throw off the software (like with Kanji etc.). Article titles are a lot more finicky than article text. - Hephaestos 21:34, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

 * I just tried to create an article at Я and it won't let me do that. Angela 21:35, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

 * Why does it work for ß, and not Ya? Vancouverguy 21:36, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

 * ß is a lower-order ASCII. - Hephaestos 21:38, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

 * Oh.Vancouverguy 21:49, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

 * It's ISO-8859-1 actually. Nikola 06:08, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Guys — keep the pages at Ya (Cyrillic) (etc.) for now; we can still move them to & (etc.) when Wikipedia switches to UTF-8. — Timwi 13:58, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Use in English
Ya and I (И if that comes out) are used in English in place of R and N to indicate Russianness (if that's a word). Perhaps a section on this page can discuss this.  —msh210 23:15, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * There's already a link to faux Cyrillic. —Michael Z.
 * The link got lost in the rewrite by, but I re-added it. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 15:57, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Yabloko
Isn't there a pun dividing Yabloko as "I (=Grigori Yavlinskiy)-block"? --Error 01:24, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't think that would be grammatical. Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]
 * No. Yabloko has been never treated as a block because it wasn't formed by blocking some pre-existent orgs together. KonstKaras 00:13, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Should this be moved to Ja (Cyrillic)?
Maybe the name "Ja (Cyrillic)" is more consistent? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pkukiss (talk • contribs) 02:57, 7 April 2009 (UTC) No.--Orange-kun (talk) 15:07, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Should "Backwards r" be pointed to a disambiguation page instead?
Even though speakers of English and other European languages written in the Latin alphabet often use the phrase "backwards r" to refer to the Cyrillic letter Я, the phrase "backwards r" can also refer to ʁ, which is the symbol for a voiced uvular fricative in the International Phonetic Alphabet. The Я is pronounced as /ja/ (the English ya sound), whereas /ʁ/ has a "guttural r" sound.

Jplatts (talk) 23:44, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Pronunciation
That section is sorely needed of examples. --Manfariel (talk) 13:22, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

title: Talk:Ya (Cyrillic)