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History of Hanover (region)

Hanover (Hannover) is a territory that was at various times a principality within the Holy Roman Empire, an Electorate within the same, an independent Kingdom, and a subordinate Province within the Kingdom of Prussia. The territory was named after its capital, the city of Hanover, which was the principal town of the region from 1636. In contemporary usage, the name is used only for the city. Most of the historical territory of Hanover forms the greater part of the German state of Lower Saxony but excludes certain areas.

Formation
Hanover was formed by the union of several dynastic divisions of the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg, with the sole exception of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. From 1714 to 1837, it was joined in a personal union with the United Kingdom, which terminated upon the accession in Britain of Queen Victoria, as in Hanover, a woman could not rule if there was a male descendant. Until 1803, when it was occupied by French and Prussian troops, Hanover was a constituent state of the Holy Roman Empire; when it regained independence in 1814, Hanover was raised to a kingdom, which lasted until 1866.

Duchy of Brunswick and Lüneburg
The title "Duke of Brunswick and Lüneburg" (Herzog zu Braunschweig und Lüneburg) was held, from 1235, by various members of the Welf family who ruled several small territories in northwest Germany. These holdings did not have all of the formal characteristics of a state, being neither compact nor indivisible. When several sons of a Duke competed for power, the lands were often divided between them; when a branch of the family lost power or became extinct, the lands were reallocated among surviving members of the family; different dukes might also exchange territories. The territories were named after notable towns where the dukes had (or had had at one time) their residences, e.g. Calenberg, Göttingen, Grubenhagen, Lüneburg, Wolfenbüttel. The unifying element of all these territories was that they were ruled by male-line descendants of Duke Otto I, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, nephew of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV.

Principality of Lüneburg
The line that would lead to the House of Hanover was that of Bernard, one of the three sons of Duke Magnus II who had jointly ruled a united Duchy of Brunswick since 1388, but who partitioned the territory in 1428 and 1432. Bernard received the territory of Lüneburg, whose principal town was Celle.

From 1527 until 1642 the Principality of Harburg, seated in Harburg, was partitioned from Lüneburg. In 1569, Lüneburg was divided between Henry III (line of Dannenberg) and William VI (line of Lüneburg), the sons of Ernest the Confessor, Bernard's great-great-grandson.

A distant cousin of the line of Lüneburg, Frederick Ulrich, who ruled the territories of Wolfenbüttel and Calenberg, died in 1634. After some dispute, his territories were divided in 1635 between the Dannenberg and Celle branches of the Lüneburg line. Henry III's son Augustus became Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and his descendants eventually ruled the Duchy of Brunswick.

William's first four sons ruled Lüneburg in sequence from their father's death in 1592 to 1648. The fifth son, George received the territories of Calenberg and Göttingen in 1635. In 1636 he moved the seat of the Dukes of Calenberg from Pattensen to the town of Hannover in the Calenberg territory. This was the nucleus of the state of Hanover, though the territory would have to wait until 1814 before receiving "Hanover" as its official name.

In 1648, the Duke of Calenberg inherited Lüneburg from his uncle Frederick, the last survivor of William's five sons. From 1648 to 1705, Lüneburg (the larger territory) was held by the senior of the Lüneburg line, and Calenberg by the next junior.

In 1692, the Emperor promised to raise the Duke of Calenberg, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg to the rank of Elector. This promotion did not become effective until it was recognized by the Imperial Diet in 1708, ten years after Ernest Augustus's death.

In the meantime, his son, George Louis, inherited Lüneburg from his uncle in 1705, doubling Hanover's size.

Electorate of Hanover 1708–1814
In 1692, the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I, elevated George's son, Duke Ernest Augustus to the rank of Elector of the Empire as a reward for aid given in the War of the Grand Alliance. There were protests against the addition of a new Elector, and the elevation did not become official (with the approval of the Imperial Diet) until 1708, in the person of Ernest Augustus's son, George Louis. Though the Elector's titles were properly Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and Elector of the Holy Roman Empire, he is commonly referred to as the Elector of Hanover after his residence.

The Electorate was legally bound to be indivisible: it could add to its territory, but not alienate territory or be split up among several heirs; and its succession was to follow male primogeniture. The territory assigned to the Electorate included the Brunswick-Lüneburg principalities of Calenberg, Grubenhagen, and Lüneburg (even though at the time Lüneburg was ruled by Ernest Augustus's older brother) and the counties of Diepholz and Hoya.

George Louis became king of Great Britain in 1714 (see House of Hanover). The influence of the electors in Germany grew also: they inherited the formerly Swedish territories of Bremen and Verden in 1719. As part of the German Mediatisation of 1803, the Electorate received the Prince-Bishopric of Osnabrück.

The Electorate became a battleground during the Seven Years' War following the French Invasion of Hanover. In the Convention of Klosterzeven it was agreed that Hanover should be neutral with large parts of the Electorate occupied by French forces. George II subsequently revoked the convention, and the re-formed Army of Observation counter-attacked and drove the French from the Electorate. Subsequent French attacks were repulsed.

In 1803, the Electorate of Hanover was occupied by France after the Convention of Artlenburg. From 1807 to 1813, the Hanoverian territory was part of the Kingdom of Westphalia. However, the government of George III did not recognize the French annexation (being at war continuously with France through the entire period) and Hanoverian ministers continued to operate from London. The Hanoverian government maintained its own separate diplomatic service, which maintained links to countries such as Austria and Prussia, with whom the United Kingdom itself was technically at war. The Hanoverian Army was dissolved, but many of the officers and soldiers went to England, where they formed the King's German Legion. The KGL was the only German army to fight continually throughout the Napoleonic wars against the French. They played an important part in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

Although the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved in 1806, George III's government did not consider the dissolution to be final, and he continued to be styled "Elector of Hanover" down to 1814.

Kingdom of Hanover 1814–1866
In 1813, George III was restored to his Hanoverian territories, and in October 1814 they were erected into the independent Kingdom of Hanover at the Congress of Vienna. The Congress of Vienna instituted a territorial exchange between Hanover and Prussia, in which Hanover increased its area substantially, gaining the Bishopric of Hildesheim, East Frisia, the Lower County of Lingen and the northern part of the Bishopric of Münster. It lost the parts of the Duchy of Lauenburg to the right of the Elbe and several small exclaves in the east.

The personal union with the United Kingdom ended in 1837 on the accession of Queen Victoria because the semi-Salic succession laws in Hanover prevented a female from inheriting the throne if there was a male descendant.

In the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Hanover was annexed by Prussia and became the Province of Hanover.

Province of Hanover 1866–1946
The Province of Hanover (Provinz Hannover) was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Free State of Prussia from 1868 to 1946.

In 1946, the British military administration made the Province of Hanover the main part of the land of Lower Saxony, along with the states of Oldenburg, Brunswick, and Schaumburg-Lippe, with the city of Hanover as the capital of the new state.

title: History of Hanover (region)


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Piastów

Piastów is a town in central Poland, near Warsaw, with 23,331 inhabitants (2006 est). It is situated in the Masovian Voivodship (since 1999); previously, it was in Warszawa Voivodship (1975–1998). With 3963 persons/km², it is the second most densely populated township in Poland (after Świętochłowice).

In the Middle Age, the villages of Żdżary and Utrata existed in the place of today's' Piastów. Piastów is served by Piastów railway station.

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

title: Piastów


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Grodzisk Mazowiecki

Grodzisk Mazowiecki is a town in central Poland, the capital of Grodzisk Mazowiecki County in the Masovian Voivodeship, with 29,363 inhabitants (2011). It is 30 km southwest of Warsaw.

History
The origins of Grodzisk Mazowiecki can be traced back to the 12th century when medieval village Grodzisk was founded. This settlement was built on the outskirts of the Jaktorowska Forest and its remains are a part of the existing town area. In 1355 the first known owner of the settlement Tomasz Grodzinski founded a church which was later destroyed by fire (1441). In 15th century Grodzisk remained the parish seat. Dating from the end of the 15th century to 1623 Grodzisk was owned by the Okunia and Mokrowski families. In 1522 Grodzisk has received municipal rights from king Sigismund I the Old. It was administratively located in the Mszczonów County in the Rawa Voivodeship in the Greater Poland Province of the Kingdom of Poland. In 1540 Grodzisk was destroyed by the fire and was not reconstructed until the end of 16th century. After the reconstruction, Grodzisk became a local trade and production centre due to its location and the local traffic routes. In 1655 it was again destroyed during Swedish Deluge and then restored. In 1708 the town was struck by a cholera epidemic and as a result, its population diminished down to 370 people.

Grodzisk was annexed by Prussia in the Third Partition of Poland in 1795. In 1807 it was regained by Poles and included within the short-lived Duchy of Warsaw, and after its dissolution in 1815, it fell to the Russian Partition of Poland. During the November Uprising (1830–1831) the town was the place of fights between the insurrectionists’ forces and Russian army. The recovery of the local economy was possible to the prosperous railway route connecting Warsaw and Skierniewice built in 1846. In 1870 the town's municipal rights were taken away by the Tsarist authorities as punishment for the unsuccessful Polish January Uprising. Between the 19th and 20th century Grodzisk was known as recreation center with hydropathic establishment founded by Michał Bojasiński. In 1915 Grodzisk regained its municipal rights In interwar Poland, Grodzisk was the seat of Błonie County in the Warsaw Voivodeship. In 1928, the town was renamed to Grodzisk Mazowiecki by the addition of the adjective "Mazowiecki" after the region of Masovia, within which it is located, to distinguish it from the town of Grodzisk Wielkopolski in western Poland.

Following the joint German-Soviet invasion of Poland, which started World War II in September 1939, Grodzisk Mazowiecki was occupied by Germany until 1945. Administratively it was located in the Warsaw District of the General Government. The Polish resistance was active in the town, and even the underground University of the Western Lands gave secret lectures. In 1944, the National Military Union was founded in Grodzisk Mazowiecki. Local Polish farmer Stanisława Sławińska hid Jews from the Nazis in her house in Grodzisk Mazowiecki. In 2008, she was honoured as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. Among those she saved was the mother of the Israeli businessperson Yossi Maiman.

After the war, it was administratively located in the "large" Warsaw Voivodeship until 1975, and then the "small" Warsaw Voivodeship until 1998. Currently, Grodzisk Mazowiecki is a local industrial center for the area of Warsaw.

Legends
According to a legend regarding the town charter, monarchs were riding through the settlement of Grodzisk on their way to hunt in Jaktorowska forest. One of the monarchs, who was tired, was offered a cup of water from the town's spring to regain his strength. It was the extraordinary taste of the water that convinced the king to grant the town a charter.

Jewish community
The town had a Jewish community and it had been the center of the Hasidic Grodzhisk dynasty, (Grodzisk Mazowiecki being pronounced as "Grodzhisk" in Yiddish.) Grodzisk was the birthplace of Kalonymus Kalman Shapira (1889–1943), also known as the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto. During the wartime, all the Jewish population was deported and murdered.

In 2016, the remains of the Jewish cemetery in town were saved from being developed into a residential complex, and the city council pledged to preserve the cemetery, restore the original gate with Hebrew inscription, and build a fence around the property. Plans to build the residential complex were originally halted in 2014 when residents of the nearby Jewish community of Warsaw, as well as activist Robert Augustyniak, protested the plan.

Sights

 * Foksal Villa, built in 1845 in a shape of a small locomotive. It was built right after launching the first part of the Warsaw–Vienna railway. The building is situated next to the old railway station.
 * Baroque St. Anne's Parish Church was established in 1687. In the church, there are numerous examples of sacred paintings from the 18th century.
 * Baroque Holy Cross Chapel, built in 1713 as a gesture of gratitude for the end of cholera epidemic. In 1995 the Chapel was moved next to the St. Anne's Church.
 * Baroque Skarbek manor house, constructed in the 18th century. Dating from 1869 it was the residence of the Skarbek family. Today, the building serves as a National Music School of the first degree.
 * Old Jewish cemetery, established in the 18th century
 * Historic villas, including the Milusin Villa, Niespodzianka Villa, Radogoszcz Villa, Kaprys Villa, Kniaziew Villa, Janówek Villa
 * Józef Chełmoński Monument

Recreational areas

 * Walczewski Ponds
 * Golian Ponds
 * Skarbek Park

Sister City

 * Radviliškis, Lithuania

title: Grodzisk Mazowiecki


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Piaseczno

Piaseczno is a town in east-central Poland with 47,660 inhabitants. It is situated in the Masovian Voivodeship, within the Warsaw metropolitan area, just south of Warsaw, approximately 16 km south of its center. It is a residential area and a suburb of Warsaw. It is the capital city of Piaseczno County.

Early history
The origins of the city date back to a 13th-century village, located on the route between Warsaw and Czersk. Its strategic position meant that the village grew quickly. On 5 November 1429 the town obtained a charter, and soon became a local market. A further charter was confirmed in 1461.

In 1537 the town became Royal property and in the second half of the 16th century reached 1200 inhabitants based round the brewing and transport industries. Piaseczno was a royal town of Poland, administratively located in the Masovian Voivodeship in the Greater Poland Province. However, the city suffered setbacks because of numerous fires in the late 16th and early 17th centuries but returned to its former glory in the first half of the 18th century.

During the Kościuszko Uprising, on 9–10 July 1794, the Battle of Gołków was fought nearby between the Poles and the Russians, and then the town was burned by the Russians. Only a church and few houses survived.

Late modern era
From 1806 to 1807 a French cavalry unit was stationed in the town as part of the Napoleonic wars, and from 1808 to 1811 this was replaced by the Polish 1st Regiment mounted rifles. The Congress of Vienna, saw the area ceded to Russia in 1815.

In 1825 the road from Warsaw and shortly afterward the railway improved links to Warsaw. As a result, Piaseczno experienced a period of economic recovery. Local Poles took part in the large January Uprising of 1863–1864. On June 15, 1864, a clash between Polish insurgents and Russian troops took place near Piaseczno.

In 1890, Countess Cecylia Plater-Zyberk bought the Chyliczki estate with the Poniatówka manor house, where she settled. The following year she established a nationally renowned school for girls, where women from low-income families could also receive an education.

In September and October 1914 Piaseczno was the site of fierce fighting between German and Russian forces in the battle for Warsaw. In May 1917, the new City Council held its first council meeting. In November 1918, German gendarmerie surrendered to local Poles and the town was restored to Poland, which just regained independence. In the interbellum Piaseczno formed part of the Polish Warsaw Voivodeship.

On June 4, 1928, Polish President Ignacy Mościcki laid the cornerstone for the folk house and in 1933 Marshal Józef Piłsudski was made an honorary citizen of the city.

World War II
World War II began for the city on 9 and 10 September 1939, when the Polish 54 light artillery regiment fought a skirmish with a German armored division. On September 10, 1939, German troops committed a massacre of 21 Polish prisoners of war in the town (see also Nazi crimes against the Polish nation). Afterwards, the Germans terrorized the population, and Poles over the age of 14 were subjected to forced labour. Additionally, around 400 people were captured in roundups and deported to forced labour in Germany. The Germans also committed massacres of Poles in nearby forests as part of the AB-Aktion.

In 1940, during the Nazi Occupation of Poland, German authorities established a Jewish ghetto in Piaseczno (the Piaseczno Ghetto), in order to confine its Jewish population for the purpose of persecution and exploitation. The ghetto was liquidated in January 1941, when all its 2,500 inhabitants were transported in cattle trucks to the Warsaw Ghetto, the largest ghetto in all of Nazi occupied Europe with over 400,000 Jews crammed into an area of 1.3 sqmi. From there, most victims were sent to Treblinka extermination camp.

The Polish resistance was active, secret Polish education was organized, and the present-day district of Zalesie Dolne was the location of secret meetings of both the command of the Grey Ranks and the Education Department of the Government Delegation for Poland.

In 1944, local Poles supported the Polish Warsaw Uprising, which took place in nearby Warsaw, and some were killed by the Germans in revenge. During the uprising, the occupiers perpetrated two massacres of Poles within the present-day town limits, killing over 50 people. From August 1944, a secret Polish hospital for wounded insurgents from Warsaw operated in the town. Many Poles fled from the Germans from Warsaw to Piaseczno, and were sheltered by the local population. After the uprising, in October 1944, the German army surrounded Piaseczno and caught some 1,000 Polish refugees from Warsaw. The German occupation ended on January 17, 1945, when the Polish 1st Warsaw Armoured Brigade entered the town without a fight.

Recent history
In 1952, town limits were expanded by including the settlements of Orężna, Zalesie Dolne and Zalesinek as new neighbourhoods.

Town Hall
The original Town Hall was burned down in 1655 by the Swedes during the Deluge. The second accidentally burned down in 1730. A third Town Hall was constructed in the middle of the 18th century but was burned down during the Kościuszko Uprising in 1794. In 1815 the rebuilding was initiated and the current Town hall was built in a classical style between 1823 and 1824.

Religious communities
For some time the town of Piaseczno had a diverse religious community.

 * In 1820 there were 893 inhabitants, of whom 171 were Jews (about 19%).
 * The 1897 census showed Piaseczno had 2760 inhabitants with 41.5% Catholics, 40% Jewish and 17.9% protestant.
 * In 1918 there were 6956 people in the town. Catholics were about 40%, Jews about 56% and sizable protestant and Orthodox populations also existed.

As stated above, the Jewish community was deported by the German occupiers to the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940.

Piaseczno was the seat of a Hasidic dynasty founded by Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapiro, currently maintained by his extended family in Israel.

Historic and modern landmarks

 * Gothic-Renaissance Church of St. Anne
 * Piaseczno Town Hall
 * Regional Museum (Muzeum Regionalne)
 * The parish cemetery (1795)
 * Villa Besserówka, where the Poles disarmed the German gendarmerie and thus liberated the town from German occupation in 1918
 * Narrow gauge railway
 * Memorials at the sites of massacres of Poles, perpetrated by the Germans in August 1944
 * Former secret Polish hospital for Warsaw Uprising participants with a memorial plaque
 * House-Museum of Georgian Officers of the Polish Army (Dom Muzeum Gruzińskich Oficerów Wojska Polskiego)
 * Jewish bath
 * Jewish cemetery with a memorial to over 60 Poles and Jews executed there by the German occupiers in 1942–1944
 * Former Piaseczno Ghetto

Twin towns — Sister cities
Piaseczno is twinned with:
 * 🇸🇪 Upplands Vasby, Sweden
 * 🇪🇪 Harku Parish, Estonia
 * 🇺🇦 Zviahel, Ukraine
 * 🇪🇸 Guadix, Spain

title: Piaseczno


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User talk:Tintedglasses

OK, but please don't add junk to articles. Adam Bishop 03:45, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

title: User talk:Tintedglasses


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Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki

Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki (pronounced, meaning New Masovian Court), often simply referred to as Nowy Dwór, is a town in east-central Poland with ca. 42500 inhabitants (2008). It is situated in the Masovian Voivodeship (since 1999); previously, it was in Warszawa Voivodeship (1975–1998). It is the capital of Nowy Dwór County.

History
One of its districts is Modlin, created from incorporating the former village of Modlin into the growing town in 1961. Modlin Fortress is now also part of the city. Many structures related to the fort can be seen in the Modlin district, including ruins from defensive structures designed by Napoleon Bonaparte and Tsarist Blocks built between 1899 and 1901 to house soldiers of the Russian army, and which are still in use as private flats today.

The Germans occupied the town beginning in September 1939. They immediately began to persecute the Jewish population. Many Jews fled to Warsaw, others to Soviet occupied territory in the east. From 1941 to 1942, the Germans set up a ghetto between the four streets Nałęcza, Warszawska, Mazowiecka, and Piaskowa. Most of the 9000 or more Jewish inhabitants of the town were murdered. Some were murdered in the environs of the town; most were sent to Auschwitz concentration camp. Typhus was rampant in the ghetto taking many lives there. Only about 400 Nowy Dwor Jews survived; most of the survivors had fled to Soviet occupied territory and later to the Soviet Union itself, where they stayed throughout the war. Holocaust survivor Yehudis Pshenitse has recounted the efforts of a parish priest from Nowy Dwór to save her life after the murder of more than 2000 Jews in Rembertów ghetto in August 1942. Hiding her in his cellar, he gave her false papers identifying her as a Christian. Betrayed to the German occupying forces, the priest was tortured. He was released, but mortally wounded. Pshenitse described how he blessed her before dying: "Once again, he asked [his housekeeper] that I be hidden in a safe place, and then he died." The housekeeper took her to Modlin, where she was able to survive, living "by her own wits, posing as a Christian child."

The Israeli city of Holon has a Nowy Dwór Street (רחוב נובידבור). The name was given at the request of survivors of the Nowy Dwór Jewish community, who arrived in Holon after 1945.

Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki is also renowned for its wooden architecture, which is still faintly visible within the city limits. Some of the wooden houses and villas date back to the late 18th century. The name Nowy Dwór itself, which literally means "New Manor" in English, relates to the manor-like architecture of the region.

Sports

 * Świt Nowy Dwór - football team (1st league in season 2003/2004)

title: Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki


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Wołomin

Wołomin is the main town of Wołomin County situated in the Masovian Voivodship. Wołomin is situated approximately 20 km east of Warsaw, the capital of Poland, near the railway to Białystok. It has approximately 43,000 inhabitants and covers an area of 14 km².

In the 1990s and 2000s, the town was synonymous with the "Wołomin gang", one of two major organised crime groups in the country.

History
Wołomin was first mentioned in chronicles from the 15th century. It remained a small village in central Masovia without much significance. Since the 19th century, and especially after the foundation of the railway in 1862, Wołomin became a summer holiday destination for Warsaw citizens. The Wołomin glassworks were founded in the beginning of the 20th century.

Wołomin was declared a town in 1919 after the return of Poland's sovereignty. In 1920 the Polish counter-attack in the Battle of Warsaw was conducted near Wołomin. In the interbellum, Wołomin retained its status as a multinational town. There was a big Jewish and Russian minority. Polish writer Zofia Nałkowska had a house in Wołomin, which became an inspiration for her 1925 book House over meadows (Dom nad łąkami).

World War II
At the beginning of the War, Wołomin was bombed by the German Air Force. In Wołomin there were no big fights on land, but there were regular air fights between German and Polish planes from the airport in Zielonka. 157 soldiers from Wołomin participated in the war against the Germans. A large proportion were killed, the rest of them were taken prisoner. German forces occupied Wołomin on September 14, 1939. A number of activists of pre-war Polish social organizations were sent to concentration camps by Germans.

A resistance movement was created in Wołomin based on scouts and national organizations. Eventually, the Wołomin conspiracy was subordinated to the Narodowe Siły Zbrojne organization.

During World War II, the Jews of Wołomin were forced into a ghetto set up by Nazi German administration on 15 November 1940, along the railway line between the streets of Kobyłka, Wspólna, Wiejska, Glinka and Cementowa. The ghetto inmates numbered about 2,700 people including Jews expelled from other locations. The Judenrat was established in the building at 17 Nałkowskiego Street. Deportations aboard Holocaust trains to Treblinka extermination camp began on 19 August 1942. The ghetto was liquidated on 6 October 1942. A few hundred people (416-620 according to different sources) were shot in the ghetto, including many elderly and sick people. Their bodies were buried in a mass grave near the J. Korsaka Road. Some Jews were deported to the Warsaw Ghetto as slave labour and exterminated during the Grossaktion Warsaw.

In 1944 a substantial battle was fought near the town between the Soviet armoured units and German 39th Panzer Corps. Soviet losses were high and the Red Army was forced to retreat. Most of the Russian minority escaped westwards before the arrival of the Red Army.

Postwar history
After the war, Wołomin became a capital of the powiat of Wołomin and started to grow rapidly. The window assembly plant was founded and Wołomin soon became a suburb of Warsaw. Even today most of the town's inhabitants commute to Warsaw on a daily basis.

After 1989 Wołomin's glassworks were temporarily closed during the recession. However, the technology of production of temperature resistant glass, invented in the facility, allowed the factory to continue production and recover under new ownership.

Sports
BS Wołomin is a professional women's basketball team, they play in the Basket League.

Crime
The most well known of the Polish organised crime groups in the 1990s was the so-called "Wołomin gang" and their arch-nemesis' the "Pruszków gang", with whom they fought bloody turf wars. Eventually the groups were finally crushed by the Polish police in cooperation with the German police in a spectacular raid on the A2 motorway between Konin and Poznań in September 2011.

Twin towns — Sister cities
Wołomin is twinned with:
 * 🇮🇹 Salerno, Italy

title: Wołomin


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Otwock

Otwock (Yiddish: אָטוואָצק) is a city in the Masovian Voivodship in east-central Poland, some 23 km southeast of Warsaw, with 44,635 inhabitants (2019). Otwock is a part of the Warsaw metropolitan area. It is situated on the right bank of Vistula River below the mouth of Świder River. Otwock is home to a unique architectural style called Świdermajer.

It is the capital of Otwock County. The town covers the area of 47 km2. Forested areas make up 23% of the territory, and there are several nature reserves.

History

Even though the first mention of a village called Otwosko comes from the early 15th century, Otwock did not fully develop until the second half of the 19th century, when in 1877 the Vistula River Railroad was opened, which ran from Mława via Warsaw, to Lublin and Chełm. Otwock, which is located along the line, became a popular suburb, with numerous spas and several notable guests, including Józef Piłsudski and Władysław Reymont, who wrote his Nobel prize-winning novel Chłopi there. The Zofiówka Sanatorium was opened in Otwock in 1908. In 1916, Otwock was incorporated as a town and became the seat of a powiat.

During the Battle of Warsaw (1920), Otwock, along with nearby Karczew, constituted the edge of the right wing of the first line of Polish defense and was manned by the Polish 15th Infantry Division, whereas the second line of Polish defense began in the present-day neighborhood of Świdry Wielkie; however, there was no Polish-Russian fighting in Otwock.

In 1936 the Warsaw - Otwock railway connection was the first rail line to be electrified in Poland.

World War II
Following the German–Soviet invasion of Poland, which started World War II in September 1939, the town was occupied by Germany. In December 1939, the German authorities established a Jewish ghetto in Otwock. A murderous Action T4 euthanasia program was carried out by the Nazis in the local Zofiówka Sanatorium for the psychiatric patients in order to confine its Jewish population for the purpose of persecution and exploitation. The Ghetto was liquidated between August and 19 September 1942, when 75% of its Jewish population of 12,000–15,000 numbering at around 8,000 were assembled by the Nazis at a layover yard in Otwock (pictured) and transported in cattle trucks to extermination camps in Treblinka and Auschwitz. Jews who remained were summarily shot at Reymonta Street soon after.

Otwock is the hometown of Irena Sendler (1910 – 2008), the Polish humanitarian who saved thousands of Jewish children during the Holocaust; as well as Krystyna Dańko, both awarded the titles of Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem. Writer Calel Perechodnik, a Jewish Ghetto Policeman from Otwock also hailed from this town. Following the liberation, a children's home for Holocaust survivors was established in Otwock.

Post-war period
In 1952, the town's limits were expanded by including Świder, Świdry Wielkie, Teklin and Zamlądz as new neighbourhoods. Following the Korean War, in 1953–1959, Poland admitted 200 North Korean orphans in Świder.

From 1975 to 1998, it was administratively located in the Warsaw Voivodeship.

Sights
In Otwock there are many buildings in the Świdermajer style, unique to the town and its surroundings. There are also memorials to Józef Piłsudski and to local Jews, who were murdered by Nazi Germany in the Holocaust.

The Mszar Pogorzelski, Świder and Wyspy Świderskie nature reserves are located in Otwock.

Economy
In 1958, Ewa, the first Polish nuclear reactor was activated in Swierk district of Otwock. A second research reactor, Maria, was erected in 1974.

Sports
Otwock is home to the sports club Start Otwock (founded in 1924). The club is renowned for its weight-lifters such as Szymon Kołecki and Marcin Dołęga.The club's own prodigy is football forward Janusz Żmijewski, who in the 1960s played for Legia Warszawa and the national team of Poland.

Twin towns – Sister cities
Otwock is twinned with:
 * 🇩🇪 Lennestadt, Germany
 * 🇫🇷 Saint-Amand-Montrond, France
 * Ōarai, Ibaraki, Japan
 * 🇺🇦 Shumsk, Ukraine

title: Otwock


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Legionowo

Legionowo is a city in Masovian Voivodeship in east-central Poland, seat of the Legionowo County.

Location
Legionowo is located 23 km to the north-east of the center of Warsaw and only 7 km to the south of Zegrze Reservoir (Jezioro Zegrzyńskie or Zalew Zegrzyński), near the Warsaw-Gdańsk railroad and Warsaw-Suwałki road.

Adjoining counties

(from north, clockwise): Pułtusk County, Wyszków County, Wołomin County, Warsaw, Warsaw West County, Nowy Dwór County.

Education
There are four high schools in the town of which three are public and one is private faith-based.

Higher education is only currently represented by a police training academy. Between 2001 and 2006 a private Economic-Technical College (Wyższa Szkoła Ekonomiczno-Techniczna) was present in the town.

History

 * Legionowo's history dates back to 1877, when Jabłonna Nowa (New Jabłonna) rail station was built. The name comes from Jabłonna, the nearby village, where in 1774-1779 Bishop Michał Poniatowski (brother of Poland's last king, Stanisław Poniatowski) built his palace Jabłonna Palace (Pałac w Jabłonnie) - now owned by the Polish Academy of Sciences.
 * In 1892, the Russian army barracks were built near the railroad station (Obóz Hurki) and a local garrison of the Russian army was stationed there, as a part of Warsaw Stronghold Region (Warszawski Rejon Umocniony), until the beginning of World War I, when this region was occupied by the German troops.
 * In 1912, Legionowo is given a city rights.
 * In 1919, Jabłonna Nowa was renamed as Legionowo to honour Polish Legions.
 * Ca. 1920 Institute of Aerology (currently Aerology Centre within Institute of Meteorology and Water Administration, Ośrodek Aerologii Instytutu Meteorologii i Gospodarki Wodnej) was opened.
 * During the Battle for Warsaw (Bitwa o Warszawę) in August 1920, from barracks in Legionowo, General Żeligowski led the 10th Infantry Division (10. Dywizja Piechoty) to Radzymin, which helped to save Warsaw from the Red Army.
 * In 1922, the Aviotex balloon and parachute factory, which also produced tents and other camping equipment (e.g. sleeping bags), opened in Legionowo.
 * After 1925, Legionowo became a summer resort for inhabitants of Warsaw, as by that time, it was a wooded and unpolluted area.
 * Between World War I and World War II, narrow-gauge railroad line connected Legionowo with Warsaw, going through Jabłonna.
 * In 1930, Legionowo became a commune (gmina).
 * During World War II, a ward of the Stalag 368 prisoner-of-war camp in Beniaminów and a ghetto were located in Legionowo.
 * During World War II, in 1944, Legionowo took part in Warsaw uprising, as so-called District 7: Collar (Obwód 7: Obroża). During the first week of August 1944, Legionowo was a place of regular fights between German troops and Polish rebels. After a week or so, Germans put down the uprising and several Poles were executed in one of the military shelters near the railroad line.
 * After World War II, there was a brick factory, now non-existent.
 * In the 1950s, the standard-gauge railroad line was electrified.
 * In the late 1960s, a narrow-gauge railroad line was closed and in the early 1970s, the tracks were removed. The terminus and depot buildings remain, currently in private use.
 * In the 1960s, the first 4-storey blocks of flats were built. In the 1970s and 1980s, three large groups of flats (4-storey and 11-storey) were built.
 * In 1977, a tinware factory "Bistyp" was opened.
 * In the early 1980s, a house factory was built near Legionowo, which made prefabricated elements for blocks of flats built in the region. The factory is now closed.
 * In August 1990, the Police Training Centre (Centrum Szkolenia Policji), one of two such institutions in Poland, was opened.
 * After the big flood in southern parts of Poland in 1997, the Aerology Institute was equipped with Doppler meteorological radar, able to scan about a fifth of Poland's area for storm and rain clouds. It is now part of SMOK (The Hydrological and Meteorological Monitoring Forecasting and Protection System, Polish: System Monitoringu i Osłony Kraju).
 * In 2012, Legionowo hosted the Greek football team during the Euro 2012 football competition.

Railway station
One of the things to be found in Legionowo is the Legionowo railway station. As of 2011, it is served by Koleje Mazowieckie, who run the KM9 services from Warszawa Zachodnia or Warszawa Wola to Działdowo, Szybka Kolej Miejska, who run the S9 services from Warszawa Gdańska to Wieliszew and by PKP Intercity by their cross-country services to Kraków, Kołobrzeg, Olsztyn, Bielsko-Biała, Gdynia and also to Warszawa Zachodnia.

A major redevelopment of the station has been made between 2014 and 2016 with a large amount of the funding coming from Swiss Contribution. It included a transport hub, a multi-storey car park, shops and more.

Sport
The Legionovia Legionowo association football team is based at the local municipal stadium and play in the fourth division.

A club of the same name is also one of the top professional women's volleyball clubs, playing in the highest division.

The local arena hosts all the town's indoor sports clubs as well as music, MMA, boxing and other events.

Sights

 * Russian army barracks, made of red Russian bricks (larger than standard Polish ones)
 * Wooden summer resort houses, nowadays some of them located in the centre of Legionowo
 * St. Joseph's Church (Kościół Św. Józefa, Kościół Garnizonowy) built in 1945
 * Holy Spirit Church (Kościół Św. Ducha) built in years 1979–1985 in place of an old wooden one.

Notable people

 * Ola Jordan (born 1982), Ballroom Dancer
 * Wojciech Lemański (born 1960), a suspended Roman Catholic priest

Twin towns — Sister cities
Legionowo is twinned with:

 * 🇺🇦 Kovel, Ukraine
 * 🇧🇬 Sevlievo, Bulgaria
 * Jiujiang, China
 * Carnikava, Latvia
 * Borjomi, Georgia

Former twin towns:
 * 🇷🇺 Rzhev, Russia (terminated due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine)

title: Legionowo


text:
Pruszków

Pruszków (פּרושקאָוו Prushkov) is a city in east-central Poland, situated in the Masovian Voivodeship since 1999. It was previously in Warszawa Voivodeship (1975–1998). Pruszków is the capital of Pruszków County, located along the western edge of the Warsaw urban area.

In the 1990s and 2000s the city was synonymous with the "Pruszków gang", one of two major organised crime groups in the country. Currently it is best known for being the country's cycling centre with a purpose built indoor velodrome.

History
Pruszków was incorporated as a town in 1916 during World War I, although the village was first mentioned in chronicles in the 15th century. Within the Kingdom of Poland, it was a private village of Polish nobility, administratively located in the Masovian Voivodeship in the Greater Poland Province. The development of the town was aided by the construction of the Warsaw-Vienna Railway in the 19th century and the construction of the Elektryczna Kolej Dojazdowa (now Warszawska Kolej Dojazdowa), Poland's first electrified commuter train line, in 1927. In the late 19th century, industry developed intensively in Pruszków. There were needles, porcelain, faience, and soap factories in Pruszków. A large psychiatric hospital opened in the outlying village of Tworki in 1891 and is still operating to this day. During World War I, a battle between German and Russian forces took place in Pruszków on 12–18 October 1914 (part of Battle of the Vistula River). Despite the initial success of the German forces on 12 October, they were push-backed out of town after successful Russian counter-attack on 14th. An intense artillery fire by both sides caused severe damages to many buildings in Pruszków including train station, power plant, and two churches. In August 1915 Pruszków was taken by the German forces without a fight. Within interwar Poland, it was administratively located in the Warsaw County in the Warsaw Voivodeship.

World War II
The city was occupied by Germany following the German–Soviet invasion of Poland, which started World War II in September 1939. On 14 December 1939, the Germans murdered 46 Poles from Pruszków during the large Palmiry massacre. Before the invasion, the city had a large Jewish population. In 1940, the German occupation authorities established a Jewish ghetto in Pruszków, in order to confine its Jewish population for the purpose of persecution and exploitation. The ghetto was liquidated on 31 January 1941, when all its 1,400 –3,000 inhabitants were transported in cattle trucks to Warsaw Ghetto, the largest ghetto in all of Nazi occupied Europe with over 400,000 Jews crammed into an area of 1.3 sqmi. From there, most victims were sent to Treblinka extermination camp.

During the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, the Nazis created the large Durchgangslager 121 (Dulag 121) transit camp in Pruszków on the site of the Train Repair Shops (Zakłady Naprawcze Taboru Kolejowego) to intern the evacuees expelled from the capital. Around 550,000 Warsaw residents and approximately 100,000 more from its outskirts were incarcerated in the camp. The SS and Gestapo segregated the Poles, who were then either deported to forced labour in Germany, sent to Nazi concentration camps, or expelled to more southern locations of German-occupied Poland. Approximately 650,000 Poles passed through the Pruszków camp in August, September and October 1944. Approximately 55,000 were sent to concentration camps, including 13,500 to Auschwitz, 12,000 to Ravensbrück and 8,700 to Mauthausen. They included people from a variety of social classes and occupations (government officials, scholars, artists, physicians, merchants, and blue-collar workers), in varying physical conditions (the injured, the sick, invalids, and pregnant women), and of various ages from infants only a few weeks old to the elderly, aged 86 or more. In a few cases, these were also people of different ethnic backgrounds including Jews living on "Aryan papers." The Germans murdered several Polish Catholic monks and nuns in the camp.

Following the Soviet westward offensive, on 26 March 1945, the 16 members of the Polish Underground Government were invited by the Russians for talks, to a house in Pruszków on Armii Krajowej Street. They were captured by the Soviet NKVD agents, transported to USSR, imprisoned, tortured and sentenced in Moscow during the so-called Trial of the Sixteen.

Post-war Poland
After World War II, Pruszków became one of Masovia's largest industrial centers. Due to its proximity to Warsaw, it is now home to several factories and companies, including Herbapol, Daewoo Electronics, L'Oréal Cosmetics as well as logistic centers. It is also an important sports center, with a sports gymnasium, soccer stadium and a cycling course.

Crime
The most well known of the Polish organised crime groups in the 1990s was the so-called "Pruszków gang" and their arch-nemesis' the "Wołomin gang", with whom they fought bloody turf wars. Eventually the groups were finally crushed by the Polish police in cooperation with the German police in a spectacular raid on the A2 motorway between Konin and Poznań in September 2011.

Sports

The city's local football team is Znicz Pruszków. It plays in the second division since 2023 where they previously competed between 2007-2010 and 2016-2017. Robert Lewandowski played for Znicz from 2006 to 2008, whereas Pruszków-born Jacek Gmoch and Radosław Majewski also played in Znicz: Gmoch from 1953 to 1958, Majewski from 2002 to 2006.

The city has two professional basketball teams: women's PTS Lider Pruszków and the basketball section of the football club, men's Znicz Basket Pruszków.

The Pruszków Arena is a modern indoor velodrome.

Buildings and structures
256 metres tall chimney of former "Pruszków II Power Plant", now used as radio tower.

Education

 * Physical Culture and Tourism High School (Wyższa Szkoła Kultury Fizycznej i Turystyki)

Notable people

 * Leszek Cichy (born 1951), mountaineer and high-altitude climber
 * Jacek Gmoch (born 1939), footballer and football manager
 * Ałbena Grabowska (born 1971), writer, neurologist
 * Bronisław Komorowski (born 1952), former President of Poland, spent part of his childhood in Pruszków
 * Jan Lechoń (1899–1956), poet, spent part of his childhood in Pruszków
 * Radosław Majewski (born 1986), footballer
 * Konrad Morawski (1913–1985), television and theatre actor

title: Pruszków


text:
Chełmno

Chełmno (older Culm;, formerly also Culm) is a town in northern Poland near the Vistula river with 18,915 inhabitants as of December 2021. It is the seat of the Chełmno County in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship.

Due to its regional importance in the Middle Ages, the town gave its name to the entire area, Chełmno Land (and later an administrative unit of the Kingdom of Poland, the Chełmno Voivodeship), the local Catholic diocese and Kulm law, a municipal form of government for cities and towns around Poland, including the current capital city of Warsaw.

Name
The city's name Chełmno comes from chelm, the old Polish word for hill. After the area was granted to the Teutonic Knights as a Polish fief in 1232, the Germanized name Culm/Kulm was used in official documents regarding the town, as the city was a member of the Hanseatic League and part of the State of the Teutonic Order. Chełmno was annexed by Prussia in the First Partition of Poland in 1772 and, as part of a larger Germanization effort, it was officially renamed Kulm. During the German occupation in World War II, the town was again renamed from Chełmno to Kulm.

History
The first written mention of Chełmno is known from a document allegedly issued in 1065 by Duke Bolesław II the Generous of Poland for the Benedictine monastery in Mogilno. In 1226 Duke Konrad I of Masovia invited the Teutonic Knights to Chełmno Land. In 1233 Kulm was granted city rights known as "Kulm law" (renewed in 1251), the model system for over 200 currently Polish, Lithuanian and Russian towns. The town was made the nominal see of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Chełmno under the archbishop of Riga by the papal legate William of Modena in 1243 (however, the cathedral and the residence of the bishop were located actually in the adjacent Chełmża). The town grew prosperous as a member of the mercantile Hanseatic League.

In the 14th century, papal verdicts ordered the restoration of the town and region to Poland, however, the Teutonic Knights did not comply and continued to occupy it. The town remained part of the Teutonic Knights' state until 1454. In 1440, the town was one of the founding members of the Prussian Confederation, which opposed Teutonic rule, and upon the request of which King Casimir IV Jagiellon reincorporated the territory to the Kingdom of Poland in 1454. In May 1454 the town pledged allegiance to the Polish King in Toruń. After the end of the Thirteen Years' War, the Teutonic Knights renounced claims to the town, and recognized it as part of Poland. It was made the capital of Chełmno Voivodeship. After dissolution of the Archdiocese of Riga in 1566, the bishops of Chełmno attended the councils of the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan of Gniezno. This practice was recognised by the Holy See by the Bull De salute animarum in 1821, when Chełmno diocese became de jure a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Gniezno. Chełmno diocese was enlarged on that occasion (Górzno, Krajna and Działdowo). In 1692, the local gymnasium was transformed into the Chełmno Academy (Akademia Chełmińska), which in 1756 became a branch of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, the oldest and leading Polish university. Grzegorz Gerwazy Gorczycki, one of the greatest Polish Baroque composers, was a lecturer at the Academy in the 1690s.

In 1772, following the First Partition of Poland, the town was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia. Between 1807 and 1815 Chełmno was part of the short-lived Polish Duchy of Warsaw, being re-annexed by Prussia at the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

As Kulm, it had been a garrison town. In 1776 Frederick the Great founded here a cadet school which was to serve in Germanising Polish areas and nobility. In 1890 the garrison included 561 military staff. On 1 October 1890 the cadet school was moved to Koszalin (then Köslin) in Pomerania. Also as part of anti-Polish policies, the Prussians expelled the Kraków professors from Chełmno, abolished the local Polish academy, and closed down Catholic monasteries. Poles were subjected to various repressions, local Polish newspapers were confiscated.

Renown Polish surgeon Ludwik Rydygier opened his private clinic in the town in 1878, where he conducted pioneering surgical operations, including the first in Poland and second in the world surgical removal of the pylorus in a patient suffering from stomach cancer in 1880 and the first in the world peptic ulcer resection in 1881. Rydygier sold the clinic to one of his employees, Leon Polewski, in 1887, due to harassment from the Prussian authorities.

On 22 January 1920 Polish troops were greeted by a large crowd of residents and Chełmno was reintegrated with Poland, which regained independence after World War I.

When World War II broke out in 1939, Nazi German authorities murdered 5,000 Polish civilians upon taking control of the territory. The atrocities took place in Klamry, Małe Czyste, Podwiesk, Płutowo, Dąbrowa Chełmińska, and Wielkie Łunawy, while many other Poles were executed in forests. A number of Chelmno citizens are interviewed about these events in the documentary film Shoah (1985). The rest of the Polish population was expelled to the General Government in the more eastern part of German-occupied Poland in line with the German policy of Lebensraum. Polish Secret State resistance groups such as Polska Żyje ("Poland Lives"), Rota, Grunwald, and Szare Szeregi were also active in the area. The area was administered as part of Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia and served as the seat of the district/county (kreis) of Kulm. On 25 January 1945 German forces set fire to several buildings in the city, including a hospital, a railway terminal, and a brewery, while retreating (see scorched earth). The town was administratively part of the Toruń Voivodeship from 1975 to 1998.

Demographics
Since its founding, the city had a mixed population of Poles and Germans, with the former making up ⅔ of its population in the second half of the 19th century.

Main sights
Chełmno has a well-preserved medieval center, with five Gothic churches and a beautiful Renaissance town hall in the middle of the market square.

The Old Town is one of Poland's official national Historic Monuments (Pomnik historii), as designated 20 April 2005, and tracked by the National Heritage Board of Poland.

 * Gothic churches:
 * Church of St Mary, former main parochial church of town, built 1280-1320 (with St. Valentine relic)
 * Church of Saints James and Nicholas, former Franciscan church, from the 14th century, rebuilt in the 19th century
 * Church of Saints Peter and Paul, former Dominican church, from the 13th and 14th centuries, rebuilt in the 18th and 19th centuries
 * Church of Saints John the Baptist and Johns the Evangelist, former Benedictine and Cistercian nuns' church, with monastery, built 1290-1330
 * Church of Holy Ghost, from 1280–90
 * Town hall, whose oldest part comes from the end of the 13th century, rebuilt in manneristic style (under Italian influence) in 1567-1572
 * City walls which surround whole city, preserved almost as a whole, with watch towers and Grudziądzka Gate
 * Arsenal building constructed in 1811, now the seat of public library in Chełmno
 * Baroque building of the Chełmno Academy, reconstructed in the 19th century
 * Park Planty
 * Monument of Ludwik Rydygier

Chełmno gives its name to the protected area called Chełmno Landscape Park, which stretches along the right bank of the Vistula.

Notable residents

 * Brunon Bendig (1938–2006), amateur boxer
 * Adam Cieśliński (born 1982), footballer
 * Friedrich-Carl Cranz (1886–1941), general
 * Hans Dominik (1870–1910), colonial officer
 * Roderich von Erckert (1821-1900), ethnographer
 * Friedrich Fülleborn (1866–1933), physician and tropical disease specialist
 * Grzegorz Gerwazy Gorczycki (ca. 1665–1734), Polish Baroque composer, lecturer at the Chełmno Academy
 * Antoni Grabowski (1857–1921), chemical engineer, Esperanto activist
 * Heinz Guderian (1888–1954), German general, blitzkrieg and tank theorist
 * Hyacinth (Jacek) Gulski (1847-1911), Roman Catholic Priest, leader of the Polish Diaspora in the United States, particularly in Milwaukee
 * Wojciech Stanisław Leski (1702–1758), Bishop of Chelmno
 * Hermann Löns (1866–1914), writer
 * Grzegorz Mielcarski, (born 1971), former professional footballer
 * Dariusz Mioduski (born 1964), entrepreneur, lawyer, owner of Legia Warsaw
 * Michael Otto (born 1943), entrepreneur
 * Franciszek Raszeja (1896–1942), doctor
 * Leon Raszeja (1901–1939), lawyer
 * Ludwik Rydygier (1850–1920), renown surgeon and professor of medicine
 * Walter Schilling (1895–1943), Wehrmacht general
 * Kurt Schumacher (1895–1952), German politician
 * Max Sperling (1905–1984), Wehrmacht officer
 * Max Stirner (1806–1856), philosopher
 * Adolf Wach (1843–1926), German jurist
 * Jakub Zabłocki (1984–2015), footballer

title: Chełmno


text:
Talk:Shawn Green

Jewish-American
Isn't it enough to simply say he is Jewish, not Jewish-American? Especially in that context? I pose the question, rather than reverting it, so you can revert it .......

From the opening para it is apparent that he is American.

--Epeefleche 00:16, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

 * My issue was more about consistency with the other Jewish NY Mets (Shoeneweis, Newhan). It is redundant but I think its all-right as is. Agree/Disagree? SERSeanCrane 03:28, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I could go either way. I guess my preference would be to go your way, but in the opening paragraph. It seems least artificial to say it your way, but to avoid being redundant that would be the place I imagine it would go. But others may of course differ. Cheers. --Epeefleche 05:59, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I took out the American part, as it says right on top that he was born in Des Plaines, Illinois. Duprees62 00:43, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Former Teams
I took out the "former teams" section near the top because it included the Mets, and he is still on the Mets. I probably shouldn't have done it, looking back on it, and I apologize to whoever put it in. I meant to just take the Mets out of the list because he's still on the Mets, but I didn't know how to do it, and accidentally deleted the other teams. If you want to put the other teams back in, feel free to put them in. Just leave the Mets out, as he's still with the Mets. Once again, I apologize. Duprees62 00:48, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

 * Hey Dupree--sounds like an honest mistake, and though it wasn't my contribution that you deleted I don't understand why you don't just fix it yourslef, rather than write this note?Epeefleche 02:53, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

There's a simple answer to that, Epeefleche. I don't know how to! If I understood that technical stuff, I wouldn't have made the mistake in the first place. I'm still relatively new to Wikipedia. From now on, though, I'll try to not do things that are obviously "over my head." But, what the heck, maybe I'll take your advice and at least try to fix it myself. I just hope that I don't screw up the whole article, as I feel that it's an excellent one. Duprees62 03:10, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

No. I just tried to fix it for about a half an hour, but I couldn't do it. Duprees62 03:48, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Review by Midnightdreary

 * This is one of the few leads I've seen that is too long. Consider clipping away at it. Check out WP:LEAD to get a good idea of how it's done. In essence, it should serve as a stand-alone "mini" article for those that choose not to read the whole thing. As I understand it, it should also summarize and introduce what the article is going to discuss in more detail. You also should be careful about single-sentence paragraphs; try to always have three sentences (personal recommendation; not sure what FAC reviewers would say).

By the way, using numbers in sports articles can be hard. Generally, for non-stats related info, go with writing the full word for the number for smaller numbers. Case in point, the fourth paragraph: "He is one of only 4" should be "He is one of only four..."✅

 * The problem with this article throughout is sources. This would probably not pass a good article review. So, do some digging, get some sources (preferably print sources to balance the web sources). Really, I would suggest that editors stop working on adding info to this article and just work on verifying what's already there. See WP:RS and WP:CITE for some info.

 * Also, throughout, there are short single-sentences paragraphs that should be expanded or merged itno another 'graph.✅

 * I'd also consider turning the "Charitable work" section into prose rather than just another list; there's already plenty of list-based sections here.✅

 * There's also a trivia section in here. See WP:TRIVIA.

Best of luck. --Midnightdreary 13:09, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

 * Will mark done as generally addressed ... others are welcome to join in .. tx.--Epeefleche 07:35, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

VIOLATES NEUTRALNESS POLICY
There are many comments on him that are not neutral. When I change them, someone also reverts it. There is much information listed stating how he is "the greatest jewish (fill in category here, ex. lefty home run hitter, etc.) Nowhere does it say on Rickey Henderson's page that he is the all-time black stolen base leader, it just says he is the all-time leader. Are you saying we should make a separate listing for the Canadian, Dominican, Mexican, Columbian, Cuban, etc for every category? Unless this is thoroughly done, it is not neutral to write comments simply because he is Jewish. I am not simply trying to vandalize, but I feel that if there is a policy, all articles should adhere to it, not just certain ones. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.145.91.135 (talk) 19:00, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Oops! I am really sorry I acted very quickly by looking at your edit summary and reverted. Sorry again! -- S M S  Talk 19:02, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

What is wrong with Jewish-American? Jewish tells his ancestry, and American tells his current residence. Saying he is Jewish makes it sound like he is from Israel. J.d ela noy gabs adds 01:59, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Are you seriously that ignorant? "Saying he is Jewish makes it sound like he is from Israel". Um, no, that would make him Israeli, not Jewish. Just because someone is Jewish does not mean that they are automatically from Israel. In the first sentence, it says he is from US. Why mention it seven more times? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.145.91.135 (talk) 14:58, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
 * What is wrong with it saying he is Jewish-American? I fail to see what the problem is. J.d ela noy gabs adds  15:21, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

More Violations of Neutralness/Fairness policy...

Why does this article make so many mentions of his religion... how come this is nowhere to be found on any currents superstars pages, such as Adrian Gonzalez, Jose Bautista, Ryan Howard, Prince Fielder, Paul Konerko... etc.... his religion shouldnt matter one bit when it comes to baseball — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.141.119.218 (talk) 23:41, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 5 external links on Shawn Green. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added tag to http://jewishmajorleaguers.org/crrldrs/crrldrs.html
 * Added tag to http://www.5tjt.com/news/read.asp?Id=4256
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070216010016/http://www.nypost.com/seven/02132007/sports/mets/green__im_not_retiring_mets_mark_hale.htm to http://www.nypost.com/seven/02132007/sports/mets/green__im_not_retiring_mets_mark_hale.htm
 * Added tag to http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Sports/2007/05/26/shawn_green_out_with_foot_injury/9735/
 * Added tag to http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkxMDYmZmdiZWw3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTcxNTA1NDQmeXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk2
 * Added archive https://archive.is/20130801085942/http://baseballhall.org/hall-famers/bbwaa-voting/year?year=2013 to http://baseballhall.org/hall-famers/bbwaa-voting/year?year=2013
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090417233001/http://lansner.freedomblogging.com/2007/12/06/shady-canyons-last-lot-is-sold/ to http://lansner.freedomblogging.com/2007/12/06/shady-canyons-last-lot-is-sold/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070414070539/http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/101141.html to http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/101141.html
 * Added archive https://archive.is/20020210203317/http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/teams/NL/dodgers.htm to http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/teams/NL/dodgers.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

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title: Talk:Shawn Green


text:
Northeastern Manitoulin and the Islands

Northeastern Manitoulin and the Islands is a municipality with town status in Manitoulin District in Northeastern Ontario, Canada, approximately 30 km south of Espanola. Its main town is Little Current, located on the northeast side of Manitoulin Island. However, its territory also includes most of the small islands surrounding Manitoulin, even those at the far western end of Manitoulin.

The town was created on January 1, 1998, by amalgamating the Town of Little Current with the Township of Howland and the unorganized small islands in Lake Huron.

It is the administrative headquarters of the Aundeck Omni Kaning First Nations band government.

Communities
Little Current is the largest community within the town, as well as its administrative centre. Formerly an independent town, Little Current was named variously by different groups for the swift strong currents of water running between the narrow passageway which connects the North Channel and Georgian Bay. Past names for the community included Waebijewung, Le Petit Courant and Shaftesbury.

The town also includes the smaller communities of Cold Springs, Dinner Point Depot, Eads Bush, Green Bay, Honora, Rockville, and Sheguiandah.

Economy
In the late 19th century lake vessels stopped here to take on wood for fuel. A settlement developed, with George Abotossaway, an Anishinaabe man, selling fuel to the steamers. The westbound passengers on board the vessels were usually from Upper Canada. One group included the Turner family which disembarked and, being merchants, set up a general store still in business today.

The lumbering trade was foremost in the region at the time and saw mills were established at nearby Low Island, now a park in the community. Settlers cleared the land for farming.

Today the local economy continues to include farming and lumbering but tourism is a main aspect.

Transportation
Being a safe haven from the ravages of Lake Huron, the community may be found on Canadian Hydrographic Chart #2205. It is well marked from the east by Strawberry Island Lighthouse and from the west by a series of navigational markers.

The only land access to Manitoulin is the Little Current Swing Bridge, located on Highway 6, crossing the North Channel of Lake Huron to the mainland, where the highway continues northward to Espanola. In summer the swing bridge opens to marine traffic on the hour for 15 minutes from sunrise to sunset, delaying road traffic.

Historically, Little Current was the western terminus of the Algoma Eastern Railway before the AER's acquisition by the Canadian Pacific Railway. After acquisition, the portion from McKerrow to Little Current was designated as the Little Current subdivision of the CPR, and became a spur of its Sault Ste. Marie line. Passenger rail ridership through Espanola and Little Current continued for some time due to the relatively difficult road access to the island, but passenger operations along the spur ended in 1963, and the line became an infrequently-used "ghost railway". Over the following decades, the CPR gradually removed sections of the track: in the 1980s, the section connecting Goat Island to Manitoulin Island across the Little Current Swing Bridge (which was converted to service road traffic only), and in the 1990s, the section connecting Espanola to Goat Island. Currently only a small portion of the track still exists, which connects the Domtar pulp and paper mill in Espanola to the CPR line using the junction at McKerrow; this stretch of track is the only surviving remnant of the AER.

In April 2018, Ontario Northland announced that it would begin bus service on Manitoulin Island, with buses stopping at Little Current upon arrival from Sudbury before travelling around the island using a circular route. The new route also includes Sheguiandah. This new route marked the first time the island had seen bus service in decades. Manitoulin Island service ended in 2019.

Climate
The climate is characterized by warm, humid summers (sometimes rainy/cooler) and snowy, rigorous winters. The cold season does not have many differences with other North American places of the same parallel. However, the obvious differing factor is that all weather is dictated by Lake Huron. As such, the lake generates microclimates similar to coastal cities, thousands of miles away; one example is Asahikawa, on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.

Culture
Each year the town hosts "Haweater Weekend," a weeklong celebration which takes its name from the Haweaters, the name given to one who is born on Manitoulin Island. The main celebrations take place on the first weekend of August, and include a fireworks display, a video dance, street vendors, and a parade.

The prominent American sportsman John W. Galbreath (1897-1988), owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates Major League Baseball club as well as the Darby Dan Farm thoroughbred horse racing operation, owned a summer retreat here and named one of his horses after the village. Little Current won the 1974 Preakness and Belmont Stakes and was voted that year's United States Champion 3-Yr-Old Colt.

Radio
The town has two radio stations, CFRM and CHAW. Some radio stations from Sudbury can also be heard in the area, as can Elliot Lake's CKNR.

Newspaper
The town's primary community newspaper is the weekly Manitoulin Expositor, which is the oldest still-extant newspaper in Northern Ontario.

Demographics
In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Northeastern Manitoulin and the Islands had a population of $2,641$ living in $1,205$ of its $1,903$ total private dwellings, a change of NaN% from its 2016 population of $2,712$. With a land area of 489.19 km2, it had a population density of in 2021.

title: Northeastern Manitoulin and the Islands


text:
Brodnica

Brodnica (Strasburg in Westpreußen or Strasburg an der Drewenz) is a town in northern Poland with 28,574 inhabitants. It is the seat of Brodnica County in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship. The nearby Brodnica Landscape Park, a protected area, gets its name from Brodnica.

Brodnica is the capital of the district whose present quarter Michałowo, a settlement mentioned as early as in 1138 and then in 1240 as castrum Michałowo, hides relics from Neolithic era. As it is confirmed in old documents Michałowo was the capital of the Masovian Castellany. The town was chosen owing to its good position on the Drwęca (on the trade route leading from Masovia to Prussia) and a customs house between Dobrzyń and Chełmno Land (mentioned in 1252).

History
The first reference to the town of Brodnica dates from 1263. In 1285–1370 the construction of the Gothic Church of St. Catherine took place. Brodnica received town privileges in 1298. In 1414, a Polish–Teutonic truce was signed there, ending the Hunger War. In 1440, the town was one of the founding members of the Prussian Confederation, which opposed Teutonic rule, and upon the request of which King Casimir IV Jagiellon reincorporated the territory to the Kingdom of Poland in 1454. In May 1454 the town pledged allegiance to the Polish King in Toruń. After the end of the Thirteen Years' War, the Teutonic Knights renounced claims to the town, and recognized it as part of Poland. It became a royal town of the Polish Crown, administratively located in the Chełmno Voivodeship. In the Teutonic state Brodnica was the seat of the Commander, in the Polish Kingdom it was the capital of the district starosty, and the former Commander's lands were then royal property.

A favourable location on the intersection of important routes used for transportation of different goods (wood, fish, furs, animal skin, grain, wool) accelerated the development of the town, making it an important trading centre, the status still reflected in the number of well-preserved granaries along the Drwęca. Between 1486 and 1604 the town belonged to the Działyński family, then between 1604 and 1625 to Anna Vasa of Sweden who was the royal sister of Sigismund III Vasa, King of Poland, Lithuania, and Sweden. In later years it was the property Queen Cecily Renata, Chancellor Jerzy Ossoliński, Queen Maria Casimira, and Marshal Franciszek Bieliński.

Brodnica was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia in 1772, during the First Partition of Poland, but in 1807, during the Napoleonic Wars, Brodnica became part of the short-lived Duchy of Warsaw. In 1815, Brodnica, known as Strasburg in German, was again annexed by Prussia. In 1871, it also became part of the German Empire. After 1785, the Prussians dismantled the Brodnica Castle, preserving only the tower, which is currently the highest Gothic tower in Poland east of the Vistula, and serves as a museum and a watchtower. The town had a Protestant church, a Catholic church, a synagogue, a grammar school, a district court, a main customs office and several commercial operations.

The 19th century saw 20 thousand Polish soldiers interned after the failure of the November Uprising (1830–1831) and many townspeople and noblemen involved in the January Uprising (1863). It is in the Brodnica region too that Masovian insurgents sought refuge from Russian persecution after the failure of the January Uprising. Bank Spółdzielczy w Brodnicy, which is the oldest continuously operating Polish bank, was established in 1862. In 1873 a Polish philomath organization was founded in the local gymnasium, whose activity ended in 1901 due to Germany's anti-Polish policies.

Between 1886 and 1910, Brodnica received railway connections with Działdowo, Grudziądz, Iława, Sierpc and Jabłonowo Pomorskie, which made it an important railway junction and triggered industrial progress. In the 19th century, the Chełmno Land (and Brodnica in particular) was a refuge for Polish patriots who contributed greatly to social, cultural and economic life of the region, like Ignacy Łyskowski.

In January 1920, after the end of World War I and the Treaty of Versailles, Brodnica was reintegrated with Poland, which had recently regained independence. On 18 August 1920, the town was the site of a Polish victory over the invading Soviets in the during the Polish–Soviet War. In the 1920s the town was visited by highest Polish dignitaries: Prime Minister Wincenty Witos, Marshal Józef Piłsudski and President Stanisław Wojciechowski.

During the occupation of Poland (World War II), in 1939, Germans carried out mass arrests of local Poles, who were later murdered in the area or deported to Nazi concentration camps. Some of these Poles were murdered in Skrwilno between 15 October and 15 November 1939 and in Brzezinki in October 1939. The interwar principal of the local high school, Klemens Malicki, was among the Polish principals and teachers murdered in the Oranienburg concentration camp as part of the Intelligenzaktion Pommern. In 1940–1941, the Germans carried out expulsions of Poles, whose homes, shops and workshops were then handed over to German colonists as part of the Lebensraum policy. An Einsatzgruppen penal camp was operated in the town during the occupation, and in 1944, the Germans also established a subcamp of the Stutthof concentration camp, intended for female prisoners. The German occupation ended in January 1945.

In 1975–1998, it was administratively located in the Toruń Voivodeship.

Climate
Climate in this area has mild differences between highs and lows, and there is adequate rainfall year-round. The Köppen Climate Classification subtype for this climate is "Cfb". (Marine West Coast Climate).

Location
Brodnica is located in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship on an important route transit over the small river Drwęca, about 48 km south-east of Grudziądz, 90 km south-west of Olsztyn and 98 km south of Elbląg.

Points of interest
During World War I, Brodnica became the site of a German war cemetery. During the Polish–Soviet War, 31 Polish soldiers killed during the Battle of Brodnica on 18 August 1920 were laid to rest here. In 1943, German soldiers who died in the local hospital together with those who lost their lives on 21 January 1945 during the Soviet offensive were put in the ground. A curiosity is that the Red Army soldiers who died on the same day were buried here as well. It is also a burial place for agents of the Ministry of Public Security who fought Polish anti-communist partisans during the Polish People's Republic.

Sport
The sports teams in the city include the football club Sparta Brodnica, the handball MKS Brodnica club, the Karate Shotokan Brodnica club, the Aikido Brodnicka Akademia Aikido club, the boxing Klub Bokserski Gladiator Brodnica, and the MMA Fight Team MMA Brodnica.

Culture
The Museum of Brodnica (Muzeum w Brodnicy) consists of three branches, focusing on history, archeology and contemporary art. It is located in the Renaissance granary, the Brodnica Castle tower and the Gothic Chełmińska Gate.

Musicians
Sebastian Kuchczynski – (born 9 August 1986 in Brodnica) is a drummer, composer and arranger. He graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston, Master's degree, 2017. He is an influential jazz, hip hop, funk and pop drummer. He is a member of bands such as "Radiostatik", "Schmidt Electric", "Ola Trzaska" etc. He also plays with George Garzone, Zbigniew Namysłowski and Maciej Sikała.

Twin towns – Sister cities

Brodnica is twinned with:
 * 🇩🇪 Strasburg, Germany
 * Brørup, Denmark
 * 🇱🇹 Kėdainiai, Lithuania
 * 🇸🇪 Kristinehamn, Sweden
 * 🇫🇷 Chamalières, France
 * Koprivnica, Croatia
 * Hummelo en Keppel, Netherlands
 * 🇦🇲 Sevan, Armenia

People who were born or lived in Brodnica and Brodnica County

 * Martin Truchseß von Wetzhausen – Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights
 * Simon Syrenius – Polish botanist and academic
 * Anna Vasa of Sweden – Swedish princess made starosta of Brodnica in 1605 by Sigismund III Vasa
 * Wojciech Dębołęcki – Polish monk, writer and composer
 * Paul von Krause – German jurist and politician
 * Robert Garrison – German film actor
 * Stanisława Walasiewicz – Polish athlete, who became a women's Olympic champion.
 * Jan Zumbach – Polish fighter pilot who became an ace during the Second World War
 * Małgorzata Birbach – Polish long-distance runner
 * Łukasz Fabiański – Polish footballer
 * Jakub Wawrzyniak – Polish footballer
 * Robert Kłos – Polish footballer
 * Jakub Zabłocki – Polish footballer
 * Daniel Trojanowski – Polish rower
 * Patryk Kuchczyński – Polish team handball player
 * Mateusz Łęgowski – Polish footballer

title: Brodnica


text:
Uraga Channel

The Uraga Channel (浦賀水道) is a waterway connecting Tokyo Bay to the Sagami Gulf. It is an important channel for ships headed from Tokyo, Yokohama, and Chiba to the Pacific Ocean and beyond.

Geography
The Uraga channel is at the southern end of Tokyo Bay (formerly known as Edo Bay, prior to 1868).

Tokyo Bay is surrounded by the Bōsō Peninsula (Chiba Prefecture) to the east and the Miura Peninsula (Kanagawa Prefecture) to the west. In a narrow sense, Tokyo Bay is the area north of the straight line formed by the Cape Kannon (観音崎) on the Miura Peninsula on one end and Cape Futtsu (富津岬) on the Boso Peninsula on the other end. This area covers about 922 km². Tokyo Bay, in a broader sense, would be understood to include the Uraga Channel as well (its southwestern demarcation being the straight line between the Tsurugisaki Lighthouse and Sunosaki Lighthouse); and the total area of the bay would then be 1320 km².

The city of Uraga is located at the northern end of the channel on the Miura Peninsula. Due to its strategic location at the entrance of Edo Bay, Uraga has often been the first point of contact between visiting foreign ships and Japan.

At its narrowest, between Cape Kannon and Futtsu Point, the channel is 6 km wide. During the late Edo period, it was defended against foreign ships by twelve artillery batteries on both the Bōsō Peninsula and Miura Peninsula.

History
In 1846, Captain James Biddle of the U.S. Navy anchored two warships, the USS Columbus and the USS Vincennes in Uraga Channel at the mouth to Tokyo Bay. This was a step in what turned out to be an unsuccessful effort to open Japan to trade with the United States.

On July 14, 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry lowered the anchor of the squadron the Japanese called the Black Ships near Uraga at Kurihama (in present-day Yokosuka in Kanagawa Prefecture) at the mouth of the channel. On the return of the Commodore's squadron in 1854, the ships by-passed Uraga to anchor closer to Edo at Kanagawa, which is where the city of Yokohama now stands.

title: Uraga Channel


text:
Cynthia Ann Parker

Cynthia Ann Parker, Naduah, Narua, or Preloch (Na'ura,, lit. 'Was found'; October 28, 1827 – March 1871), was a woman who was captured, aged around nine, by a Comanche band during the Fort Parker massacre in 1836, where several of her relatives were killed. She was taken with several of her family members, including her younger brother John Richard Parker. Parker was later adopted into the tribe and had three children with a chief. Twenty-four years later she was relocated and taken captive by Texas Rangers, aged approximately 33, and unwillingly forced to separate from her sons and conform to European-American society. Her Comanche name means "was found" or "someone found" in English.

Thoroughly assimilated as Comanche, Parker had married Peta Nocona, a chief. They had three children together, including son Quanah Parker, who became the last free Comanche chief.

Parker was captured by the Texas Rangers during the Battle of Pease River, also known as the "Pease River Massacre". During this raid, the Rangers killed an estimated six to twelve people, mostly women and children. Afterwards, Parker was taken back to her extended biological family against her will. For the remaining 10 years of her life, she mourned for her Comanche family, and refused to adjust to white society. She escaped at least once but was recaptured and brought back. Unable to grasp how thoroughly she identified with the Comanche, the European-American settlers believed that she had been saved or redeemed by being returned to their society. Heartbroken over her daughter's death from influenza and pneumonia, Parker died within seven years.

She died in 1871. Although initially buried in Anderson County, Texas, her remains were moved twice after her death. In 1910 her son Quanah had her moved to Post Oak Mission Cemetery, Comanche County, Oklahoma; and in 1957 the mother and son were both reinterred in Fort Sill Cemetery in Oklahoma. In 1965 the state of Texas arranged for her daughter's remains to be moved from Texas and reinterred next to the mother and son.

Early life
Cynthia Ann Parker was born to Silas Mercer Parker and Lucinda Parker (née Duty) in Crawford County, Illinois. Her birth date is uncertain; according to the 1870 census of Anderson County, Texas, she was born in 1824 or 1825. When she was nine or 10 years old, her grandfather, John Parker, was recruited to settle his family in north-central Texas; he was to establish a settlement fortified against Comanche raids, which had been devastating to the Euro-American colonization of Texas and northern Mexico. The Parker family, its extended kin, and surrounding families established fortified blockhouses and a central citadel—later named Fort Parker—on the headwaters of the Navasota River in what is now Limestone County.

Fort Parker massacre
John Parker, the patriarch of the family, had been a noted ranger, scout, Native American fighter, and soldier for the United States. Historians conjecture that when he negotiated treaties with the local non-Comanche natives, he believed those treaties would bind all Native Americans. If so, his experience did not give him an understanding of the highly decentralized nature of Indian bands.

On May 19, 1836, a force of from 100 to 600 Native American warriors, composed of Comanche and Kiowa and Kichai allies, attacked the community. John Parker and his men did not comprehend the military prowess of the Comanche, and were unprepared for the ferocity and speed of the Indian warriors. They fought a rearguard action to protect some of the escaping women and children, but soon the settlers retreated into the fort. The Native Americans attacked the fort and quickly overpowered the outnumbered defenders. The Comanche took Cynthia Ann Parker, a young girl, and five other captives with them back to Comanche territory. The Texans quickly mounted a rescue force. During the Texans' pursuit of the Native Americans, a teenage girl escaped. Over a period of years, the Comanche released other captives as their families paid ransoms but Parker was adopted by a Comanche family and became thoroughly assimilated. She is estimated to have been aged 9 or so when taken.

Marriage to Peta Nocona
Parker became assimilated into the tribe. She was adopted by a Tenowish Comanche couple, who raised her as their own daughter. She became Comanche in every sense. She married Peta Nocona, a chief. They enjoyed a happy marriage. As a tribute to his great affection for her, he never took another wife, even though it was traditional for chieftains to have several wives. They had three children: sons Quanah, who became the last free Comanche chief, and Pecos (Pecan), and a daughter Topsannah (Prairie Flower).

Return to Texas
In December 1860, after years of searching at the behest of Parker's father and various scouts, a band of Texas Rangers led by Lawrence Sullivan Ross discovered a band of Comanche, deep in the heart of Comancheria, that was rumored to hold American captives. In a surprise raid, the Rangers attacked a group of Comanche in the Battle of Pease River.

After limited fighting, the Comanche attempted to flee. Ranger Ross and several of his men pursued the man who had appeared as the leader, and who was fleeing alongside a woman rider. As Ross and his men neared, she held a child over her head. The men did not shoot, but instead surrounded and stopped her. Ross continued to follow the chief, eventually shooting him three times. Although he fell off his horse, he was still alive and refused to surrender. Ross's cook, Antonio Martinez, identified the man as Nocona and killed him.

The Rangers began questioning the woman and other surviving Comanche. In broken English, she identified herself and her family name. Her information matched what Ross knew of captives taken in the 1836 Fort Parker Massacre.

Ross sent Parker and her daughter to Camp Cooper, and notified her uncle, Colonel Isaac Parker that she had been returned. He took her to his home near Birdville.

Parker's return to her birth family captured the country's imagination. In 1861, the Texas legislature granted her a square league of land (about 4,400 acres or 4428 acre) and an annual pension of $100 (~$ in ) for the next five years. They appointed her cousins, Isaac Duke Parker and Benjamin F. Parker, as her legal guardians.

However, Parker never adjusted to her new surroundings. Although white and physically part of the community, she was uncomfortable with the attention she received. Her brother, Silas Jr., was appointed her guardian in 1862, and took her to his home in Van Zandt County. When he entered the Confederate Army, she went to live with her sister, Orlena Parker O'Quinn. Some said that she missed her sons and worried about them.

Death
In 1864, Parker's daughter, Topʉsana, caught influenza and died of pneumonia. Parker was stricken with grief, added to her missing her sons and Comanche way of life. She began refusing food and water. She died in March 1871 at the O'Quinn home and was buried in Foster Cemetery on County Road 478 in Anderson County near Poynor.

There is some confusion about Parker's birth and death dates. Different sources place her birth from 1825 to 1827 in Coles, Clark, or Crawford counties of Illinois, and her death from 1864 to 1871 in Anderson County. The only record of her death, given as March 1871, is found in the unpublished notebook of Susan Parker St. John. The only known document from the period supports the March 1871 date; an 1870 census for Anderson County lists her as a member of the O'Quinn household, born "abt 1825," age forty-five. Her tombstone marks her year of death as 1870.

In 1910, Parker's son, Quanah, moved her remains and had them reinterred in Post Oak Mission Cemetery near Cache, Oklahoma. When he died in February 1911, he was buried next to her.

Their bodies were moved in 1957 to the Fort Sill Post Cemetery at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. In 1965 the state of Texas had Prairie Flower's body moved from her grave in Edom, Van Zandt County, Texas, to be reinterred near her mother and brother.

Legacy
The city of Crowell, Texas, has held a Cynthia Ann Parker Festival to honor her memory. The town of Groesbeck holds an annual Christmas Festival at the site of old Fort Parker every December. It has been rebuilt on the original site to historic specifications.

Film portrayal
Author and screenwriter Michael Blake said that the character of Stands with a Fist in the 1990 film Dances With Wolves, was actually based upon Parker.

Representation in other media

 * Cynthia Parker (c. 1939) is a one-act opera composed by Julia Smith.
 * The novel The Searchers (1954) by Alan Le May is loosely based on Parker's life.
 * The movie The Searchers (1956) was based on Le May's novel. It was directed by John Ford and starred John Wayne as a frontiersman searching for years for his kidnapped niece. Natalie Wood and her younger sister, Lana Wood, portray the captive woman at different ages.
 * In The Hanging Tree (1957), a collection of short stories by Western writer Dorothy M. Johnson, the story "Lost Sister" is a fictional account of Parker's forced return to and difficulties in European-American society.
 * The graphic novel Comanche Moon (1979) by Jaxon depicts Parker's story from her adoption by the Comanche through the life of her son Quanah.
 * Ride the Wind (1982) by Lucia St. Clair Robson is an historical novel of Parker's capture and life among the Comanche.
 * Season of Yellow Leaf (1983) by Douglas C. Jones is a novel about a girl, Chosen, who is taken captive in the 1830s; it is loosely based on Parker's life.
 * Gone the Dreams and Dancing (1984), also by Jones, is a novel loosely based on Quanah Parker, following a band of Comanche after they settle on a reservation.
 * The movie Dances with Wolves (1990) has a woman character, Stands with a Fist, loosely based on Parker, but she is adopted by Sioux.
 * Where the Broken Heart Still Beats: The Story of Cynthia Ann Parker (1992) by Carolyn Meyer is a historical novel about Parker's life, written for middle grade children, age 9+.
 * The Dutch writer Arthur Japin wrote De overgave (2007), a novel about the Parker family and the capture of Parker as a child.
 * The novel Comanche Moon (1997) by Larry McMurtry refers briefly to Texas rangers "rescuing" Parker from an Indian camp.
 * The miniseries Comanche Moon (2008), adapted from McMurtry's book, briefly notes Parker's capture from the Comanche and forced return to White society.
 * The non-fiction account Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History (2016) by S. C. Gwynne provides a detailed account of the Parker raid, abductions and fates of various Parker family members with an especial focus on the lives of Cynthia Ann and Quanah Parker.

title: Cynthia Ann Parker


text:
Fluidized bed combustion

Fluidized bed combustion (FBC) is a combustion technology used to burn solid fuels.

In its most basic form, fuel particles are suspended in a hot, bubbling fluidity bed of ash and other particulate materials (sand, limestone etc.) through which jets of air are blown to provide the oxygen required for combustion or gasification. The resultant fast and intimate mixing of gas and solids promotes rapid heat transfer and chemical reactions within the bed. FBC plants are capable of burning a variety of low-grade solid fuels, including most types of coal, coal waste and woody biomass, at high efficiency and without the necessity for expensive fuel preparation (e.g., pulverising). In addition, for any given thermal duty, FBCs are smaller than the equivalent conventional furnace, so may offer significant advantages over the latter in terms of cost and flexibility.

FBC reduces the amount of sulfur emitted in the form of SOx emissions. Limestone is used to precipitate out sulfate during combustion, which also allows more efficient heat transfer from the boiler to the apparatus used to capture the heat energy (usually water tubes). The heated precipitate coming in direct contact with the tubes (heating by conduction) increases the efficiency. Since this allows coal plants to burn at cooler temperatures, less NOx is also emitted. However, burning at low temperatures also causes increased polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon emissions. FBC boilers can burn fuels other than coal, and the lower temperatures of combustion (800 °C / 1500 °F) have other added benefits as well.

Benefits
There are two reasons for the rapid increase of FBC in combustors. First, the liberty of choice in respect of fuels in general, not only the possibility of using fuels which are difficult to burn using other technologies, is an important advantage of fluidized bed combustion. The second reason, which has become increasingly important, is the possibility of achieving, during combustion, a low emission of nitric oxides and the possibility of removing sulfur in a simple manner by using limestone as bed material.

Fluidized--bed combustion evolved from efforts to find a combustion process able to control pollutant emissions without external emission controls (such as scrubbers-flue gas desulfurization). The technology burns fuel at temperatures of 1,400 to 1,700 °F (750-900 °C), well below the threshold where nitrogen oxides form (at approximately 2,500 °F / 1400 °C, the nitrogen and oxygen atoms in the combustion air combine to form nitrogen oxide pollutants); it also avoids the ash melting problems related to high combustion temperature. The mixing action of the fluidized bed brings the flue gases into contact with a sulfur-absorbing chemical, such as limestone or dolomite. More than 95% of the sulfur pollutants in coal can be captured inside the boiler by the sorbent. The reductions may be less substantial than they seem, however, as they coincide with dramatic increases in polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and possibly other carbon compound emissions.

Commercial FBC units operate at competitive efficiencies, cost less than today's conventional boiler units, and have SO2 and NO2 emissions below levels mandated by Federal standards. However, they have some disadvantages such as erosion on the tubes inside the boiler, uneven temperature distribution caused by clogs on the air inlet of the bed, long starting times reaching up to 48 hours in some cases.

 * 1) FBC has a lower combustion temperature of 750 °C whereas an ordinary boiler operates at 850 °C.
 * 2) FBC has low sintering process (melting of Ash).
 * 3) Lower production of NOx due to lower temperature.
 * 4) Lower production of SOx due to capture by limestone.
 * 5) Higher combustion efficiency due to 10 times more heat transfer than other combustion processes because of burning particle.
 * 6) Less area is required for FBC due to high coefficient of convective heat transfer.
 * 7) Iso-thermal bed combustion as temperature in free belt and active belt remain constant.

Types
FBC systems fit into essentially two major groups, atmospheric systems (FBC) and pressurized systems (PFBC), and two minor subgroups, bubbling (BFB) and circulating fluidized bed (CFB).

Atmospheric Fluidized Bed Combustion
Atmospheric fluidized beds use limestone or dolomite to capture sulfur released by the combustion of coal. Jets of air suspend the mixture of sorbent and burning coal during combustion, converting the mixture into a suspension of red-hot particles that flow like a fluid. These boilers operate at atmospheric pressure.

Pressurized Fluidized Bed Combustion
The first-generation PFBC system also uses a sorbent and jets of air to suspend the mixture of sorbent and burning coal during combustion. However, these systems operate at elevated pressures and produce a high-pressure gas stream at temperatures that can drive a gas turbine. Steam generated from the heat in the fluidized bed is sent to a steam turbine, creating a highly efficient combined cycle system.

Advanced PFBC

 * A 1½ generation PFBC system increases the gas turbine firing temperature by using natural gas in addition to the vitiated air from the PFB combustor. This mixture is burned in a topping combustor to provide higher inlet temperatures for greater combined cycle efficiency. However, this uses natural gas, usually a higher priced fuel than coal.
 * APFBC. In more advanced second-generation PFBC systems, a pressurized carbonizer is incorporated to process the feed coal into fuel gas and char. The PFBC burns the char to produce steam and to heat combustion air for the gas turbine. The fuel gas from the carbonizer burns in a topping combustor linked to a gas turbine, heating the gases to the combustion turbine's rated firing temperature. Heat is recovered from the gas turbine exhaust in order to produce steam, which is used to drive a conventional steam turbine, resulting in a higher overall efficiency for the combined cycle power output.  These systems are also called APFBC, or advanced circulating pressurized fluidized-bed combustion combined cycle systems.  An APFBC system is entirely coal-fueled.
 * GFBCC. Gasification fluidized-bed combustion combined cycle systems, GFBCC, have a pressurized circulating fluidized-bed (PCFB) partial gasifier feeding fuel syngas to the gas turbine topping combustor. The gas turbine exhaust supplies combustion air for the atmospheric circulating fluidized-bed combustor that burns the char from the PCFB partial gasifier.
 * CHIPPS. A CHIPPS system is similar, but uses a furnace instead of an atmospheric fluidized-bed combustor. It also has gas turbine air preheater tubes to increase gas turbine cycle efficiency. CHIPPS stands for combustion-based high performance power system.

References (Requires update in links)

 * National Energy Technology Laboratory
 * EU regulation: Pollution from large combustion plants
 * Simulation of a commercial CFB coal combustor

title: Fluidized bed combustion