text:
Mielec

Mielec (מעליץ-Melitz) is the largest city and seat of Mielec County. Mielec is located in south-eastern Poland (Lesser Poland), in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship (Województwo Podkarpackie). The population of Mielec in December 2021 was 59,509.

Mielec is an industrial center, with technical and IT schools, craft schools and colleges (providing bachelor's degree and master's degree in several fields of study. Postgraduate studies are also available - e.g. MBA). The city lies within the Special Economic Zone Euro-Park Mielec with access to Mielec Airport and railway. About 15 km north of Mielec runs LHS railway - The transshipment terminal in Wola Baranowska enables the exchange of cargo between the broad gauge and standard gauge railways and trucks. About 20 km south of Mielec runs the A4 motorway. Moreover, the city of Mielec supports a recognizable soccer team - Stal Mielec.

The motto of the city is Here wings spread! in reference to many successful domestic and foreign investments.

History
The first mention of a place called Mielec occurs in the thirteenth century in the 1229 bull of Pope Gregory IX. In the second half of the fourteenth century, "Mielecka" was mentioned in a list of parishes. The city of Mielec, part of Sandomierz Voivodeship and Lesser Poland Province of the Kingdom of Poland, was founded on 17 March 1457, when King Casimir IV granted a charter to Jan Mielecki for the establishment of a city under the name of Nowy Targ. For unknown reasons Jan Mielecki did not go on to found the city; it was eventually established by his two sons, Jan and Bernardyn, by an Act of 18 December 1470. The Mielecki family owned the town of Mielec until the last of the Mieleckis died in 1771. Under their rule, there was intensive development of craft industries. In 1522, the first guild was founded. This was the blacksmiths' guild. It was followed by guilds of tailors, cobblers, potters, spinners, and weavers.

The next owners of Mielec were the Ossolinski and Morsztyn families. In 1775, Anna Ossilińska married Jan Pieniążek, bringing as a dowry her share of part of the city. The next owner was Ignacy Suchorzewski, who married Pieniążek's daughter Paulina. Suchorzewski sold Mielec's property to Ludwik Starzeński in 1847, who then disposed of it ten years later to a Jewish family named Gross. The last owner of Mielec was the Oborski family in 1891.

In 1853, the county town of Mielec governed an area in which there were 106 settlements and 91 castral municipalities. In 1892, on Kosciuszko Street a new City Council building and police barracks were built. The development of the county town was interrupted by a huge fire, which destroyed three quarters of the city. This catastrophe caused the city to apply for a state loan of 12 crowns, the receipt of which led to the rapid development of the city. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the market place in Mielec was surrounded by brick houses, and in 1902, a courthouse was built. In 1912, a gymnasium (or academic high school) and the office of County Council were established and buildings constructed to house them.

World War I caused much damage to the infrastructure and economy of city of Mielec and the county. In the interwar years many streets were paved with cobbles. In addition, a private power plant, various craft workshops, and retail businesses were established. In 1934, the Mielec region suffered a huge flood that destroyed more than 11,000 households. The house and photographic studio of the early 20th-century Polish photographer was a meeting place of the local artistic community in the interbellum.

Mielec's economy has been based for the last 70 years around a single industrial enterprise, which transformed the city and increased its population sixfold. This process began in the 1930s, when Poland launched a significant expansion of its armaments industry, focused on building factories in the newly created Central Industrial Region (Polish: Centralny Okręg Przemysłowy, abbreviated COP). In 1936, a state-owned factory making airplane chassis was established (State Aviation Works - Airframe Fakcory No. 2) on the outskirts of the town, an area then known as Cyranka. The factory started to build a new bomber, the PZL P-37 or "Łoś" (English: "Moose"). Additionally, in the years 1937-1939 a large aviation factory belonging to the PZL company was set up. This new manufacturing industry necessitated the development of residential housing for factory workers and management personnel.

After the outbreak of World War II, the city and the airplane company fell into the hands of the German invaders. The period of German occupation lasted from 9 September 1939 to 6 August 1944 in Mielec. In the years of 1939–1944, the factory produced German bombers, and from 1943 also manufactured the fighter plane He–297. The Nazis staffed much of the factory with slave labour. Initially, Jews from Mielec were enslaved in this forced labor camp. In 1942, the Jewish population of Mielec was deported to death camps, except for a few who remained as slave labour at the factory. Before the war, the Jewish population of Mielec was 2,800 out of a total population of 5,500. During the deportation, the factory hangars were the site of a mass murder of several hundred of Mielec's Jews, who were buried there. Subsequently, the factory used slave labour composed of Jews from other regions, prisoners of war, political prisoners, etc. The Gestapo used Jewish informants, the so-called V-leute in region to penetrate underground resistance and denounce hiding Jews;special barracks were set up in labour camp near Mielec for Jewish informers and their families, who were granted special privileges. These informants operated between 1942 and 1943 when they were finally executed by Gestapo themselves. After the war, a monument was placed at the factory with a vague inscription typical of holocaust memorials during the Communist era: "To those employees of the Factory and the inhabitants from the area of both Polish and Jewish nationality murdered during World War II: A tribute from Mielec's Youth." Another mass grave of Jews with a monument may be found in one corner of the Mielec Catholic cemetery, where the victims of a 1941 Nazi atrocity were buried. During the German occupation, all of Mielec's Jewish institutions and the Jewish cemetery were destroyed, and also many of the Jewish homes. During the German occupation, the Polish underground resistance movement had important centers in the former house of photographer August Jaderny and in the house of the Dębicki family. On March 29, 1943, a Polish underground partisan unit Jędrusie and the Home Army successfully carried out a daring attack on a German prison and liberated about 180 prisoners.

After 1945, the factory became the largest aviation factory in Poland under the name WSK-Mielec "Wytwórnia Sprzętu Komunikacyjnego" (English: "Transport Equipment Manufacturing Centre"). This plant was the main source of employment for people in Mielec and surrounding communities. At first, the factory produced Soviet-designed planes under license. Thus, it was the primary production site of the widely used An-2 transport plane. It also manufactured Polish versions of the MiG-15 and MiG-17fighters. The factory also built planes designed in Poland such as the trainer plane TS-11 Iskra used by Poland and India. It produced over 16,000 aircraft, which were mainly licensed for export to the USSR.

After 1989 and the economic changes due to the fall of communism, factory orders declined and the plant encountered serious financial difficulties. It continued to produce successful aircraft types, but at much lower volumes than during the Cold War. Self-government of Mielec Township was established in 1990.

The situation changed in 1995, due to the establishment of Poland's first Special Economic Zone EURO-PARK Mielec. In 1998 the aviation plant changed its name to PZL-Mielec "Polskie Zakłady Lotnicze" (English: "Polish Aviation Works"). In 2007 the factory was acquired by Sikorsky (in 2015 Sikorsky was acquired by Lockheed Martin), and was planned to be the main production site of the export version UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. Also Mielec has been the production site of sports-luxury car Leopard 6 Litre Roadster.

Historic sites

 * Baroque Minor Basilica of Matthew the Evangelist;
 * The Oborski family manor-house from the 17th century, now housing the Regional Museum (Muzeum Regionalne);
 * The Jaderny house (Jadernówka), former house and photographic studio of the early 20th-century Polish photographer August Jaderny, meeting point of the Polish underground resistance movement during World War II, now housing the Museum of the History of Photography;
 * The Dębicki house with a bust of Tadeusz Kościuszko, hero of Polish and American independence fights, also a focal point of the Polish underground resistance movement during World War II;
 * Courthouse, site of an operation in which Polish partisans liberated 180 prisoners from the Germans in March 1943, during World War II;
 * Musical School;
 * Baroque St. Mark's church;
 * Historic townhouses, villas, etc.;
 * Numerous memorials, including multiple World War II memorials.

Economy
From the beginning of Centralny Okręg Przemysłowy, Mielec is commonly associated with PZL Mielec aviation factory.

The first Special Economic Zone in Poland, SEZ EURO-PARK MIELEC, has been founded in Mielec in 1995 and has a positive impact on the economy of Mielec. In 2020 Mielec is close to enlarging the zone of SEZ EURO-PARK MIELEC

Other products manufactured in the city:

 * consumer electronics
 * furniture
 * metal and electrotechnical components for the automotive industry
 * other components for the production of cars
 * golf carts
 * tempered glass
 * handmade bicycle frames
 * Geyer & Hosaja retread tires
 * Husqvarna petrol lawn mowers
 * Fakro roof windows
 * PVC windows
 * styrofoam
 * chipboard, MDF, floor panels, countertops
 * Cobi blocks for kids
 * AUTOPART starter batteries
 * Froneri ice cream

Climate
Mielec has warm summers, cold winters and a wide but not extreme variation in temperature between seasons. In the Köppen climate classification, Mielec is on the border between a humid continental climate (Dfb) if the 0 °C (32 °F) isotherm is used or an oceanic climate (Cfb) if the −3 °C (27 °F) isotherm is used. There is rain or snow in all months of the year.

Sports

 * FKS Stal Mielec – men's football team, playing in the Ekstraklasa (country's top division):
 * Two times Polish champions: 1972–73, 1975–76, and 1974–75 runners-up.
 * Polish Cup: finalist in 1976 season
 * UEFA Cup: quarter-finalist in 1975/76 season
 * European Champions Cup: first round elimination in 1973/74 season; first round elimination in 1976/77 season
 * Notable players: Grzegorz Lato, Henryk Kasperczak, Andrzej Szarmach, Jan Domarski
 * KPSK Stal Mielec - women's volleyball, team went bankrupt: 2nd place in 1999/2000 season, 3rd place in 1991/1992, 1993/1994, 1998/1999, 2003/2004 seasons.
 * SPR Stal Mielec – men's handball team playing in PGNiG Superliga: 2nd place in 1974/45 season; 3rd place in 2011/12 season.

Education
Elementary schools
 * Szkoła Podstawowa nr 1 im. Władysława Szafera w Mielcu
 * Szkoła Podstawowa nr 2 im. Tadeusza Kościuszki w Mielcu
 * Szkoła Podstawowa nr 3 im. Wojska Polskiego w Mielcu
 * Szkoła Podstawowa nr 6 im. Żwirki i Wigury w Mielcu
 * Szkoła Podstawowa nr 9 im. Władysława Jasińskiego "Jędrusia" w Mielcu
 * Szkoła Podstawowa nr 11 im. Jana Pawła II w Mielcu
 * Szkoła Podstawowa nr 12 im. Henryka Sienkiewicza w Mielcu
 * Szkoła Podstawowa nr 13 im. Jana Bytnara "Rudego" w Mielcu
 * Szkoła Podstawowa przy Niepublicznej Szkole Mistrzostwa Sportowego w Mielcu im. Grzegorza Lato

Junior High Schools
 * Gimnazjum nr 1 w Mielcu
 * Gimnazjum nr 2 w Mielcu
 * Gimnazjum nr 3 w Mielcu
 * Gimnazjum nr 4 w Mielcu
 * Gimnazjum przy Niepublicznej Szkole Mistrzostwa Sportowego w Mielcu im. Grzegorza Lato
 * Niepubliczne Gimnazjum w Mielcu

High Schools and Vo-Tech Schools
 * I Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. Stanisława Konarskiego w Mielcu
 * II Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. Mikołaja Kopernika w Mielcu
 * Zespół Szkół Ogólnokształcących nr 1 w Mielcu im. st. sierż. pilota Stanisława Działowskiego
 * V Liceum Ogólnokształcące
 * Liceum przy Niepublicznej Szkole Mistrzostwa Sportowego w Mielcu im. Grzegorza Lato
 * Zespół Szkół Budowlanych im. Żołnierzy Armii Krajowej w Mielcu
 * Zasadnicza Szkoła Zawodowa Nr 2
 * Technikum Nr 2
 * II Liceum Profilowane
 * Zespół Szkół Ekonomicznych w Mielcu
 * Zasadnicza Szkoła Zawodowa Nr 1
 * Technikum Nr 1
 * I Liceum Profilowane
 * Zespół Szkół Technicznych w Mielcu
 * Zasadnicza Szkoła Zawodowa Nr 3
 * Technikum Nr 3
 * III Liceum Profilowane
 * III Liceum Ogólnokształcące
 * Szkoła Policealna Nr 3
 * Technikum Uzupełniające Nr 3
 * III Uzupełniające Liceum Ogólnokształcące
 * Zespół Szkół im. prof. Janusza Groszkowskiego w Mielcu
 * Zasadnicza Szkoła Zawodowa Nr 4
 * Technikum Nr 4
 * IV Liceum Profilowane
 * IV Liceum Ogólnokształcące

Colleges and universities
 * Wyższa Szkoła Gospodarki i Zarządzania
 * Nauczycielskie Kolegium Języków Obcych (UMCS patronage)

Notable people

 * Grzegorz Lato (born 1950), Polish football player, World Cup 1974 top goalscorer, senator, former president of the Polish Football Association
 * Nate Mack (1891–1965), American banker, born in Mielec, co-founder of the Bank of Las Vegas.
 * Kamil Rado (born 1990), Polish footballer
 * Andrzej Rżany (born 1973), Polish boxer
 * Józef Stala (born 1966), Polish Catholic priest, theologian, and philosopher
 * Władysław Szafer (1886–1970), Polish biologist

Twin Towns - Sister Cities
Mielec is twinned with:

title: Mielec


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Adjala-Tosorontio

Adjala–Tosorontio is a township in south-central Ontario, Canada, in the County of Simcoe.

A predominantly rural area, Adjala–Tosorontio contains numerous small villages and hamlets. Many communities were started in Adjala by Irish Catholics who named their hamlets after their home towns in Ireland, or after prominent pioneer families who first settled the area. The municipality has increasingly become home to residents who commute to the Greater Toronto Area.

Geographically the area is rolling countryside below the Niagara Escarpment to the west, with the Nottawasaga River cutting through it.

"Tosorontio" is a Huron word meaning "Beautiful Mountain", and Adjala was the name of the wife of Chief Tecumseh, for whom the neighbouring township (now called New Tecumseth) was named.

History
Adjala–Tosorontio Township was created in 1993 when the County of Simcoe Act merged the townships of Adjala and Tosorontio. The amalgamation took effect on January 1, 1994.

Communities
The township comprises the communities of Achill, Airlie, Athlone, Ballycroy, Cedarville, Colgan, Connor, Everett, Glencairn, Hockley, Keenansville, Lisle, Loretto, Rosemont, Sheldon, Tioga and Tuam.

Loretto
Loretto ( 44.05°N, -79.89028°W ) is one of the oldest communities in Adjala–Tosorontio. It has one of the oldest and most famous taverns in Simcoe County, the Loretto Inn. Highway 50 runs through the town.

Loretto was named after Loreto, Marche in Italy.

Demographics
In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Adjala-Tosorontio had a population of $10,989$ living in $3,836$ of its $3,995$ total private dwellings, a change of NaN% from its 2016 population of $10,975$. With a land area of 371.53 km2, it had a population density of in 2021.

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

title: Adjala-Tosorontio


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User:Catbar

Hi, welcome to. It's UTC on July 29, 2024.

Just another resident of Hotel Wikipedia.

Want a Life-changing tip?

About me
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: INTP

If you want to know a bit about me: I'm a Ph.D. analytical chemist who really never used his degree directly. I've had a lot of experience with computers, statistics, and simulation, and it turns out those lead to more interesting employment, as well as more interesting resumes. If you want to find stuff related to my technical background, Google "Brian Rock" and 1) "chemometrics" or 2) "ion thruster". This won't get any hits against my dissertation, "Development of an Optical Emission Model for the Determination of Sputter Rates in Ion Thruster Propulsion Systems". For some odd reason, my dissertation seems to be invisible on the web.

I grew up to some degree in Saint Joseph, Missouri USA, went to school at the University of Missouri–Rolla (Rolla, Missouri) and Arizona State University (Tempe, Arizona), worked numerous summers for Phillips Petroleum Company in Bartlesville, Oklahoma and now live in Akron, Ohio.

Other places where I've spent some significant time are Kingston and Napanee, Ontario, Dillsburg, Pennsylvania, and Lawton, Oklahoma.

Here's a link to a picture I took a few years ago in New Orleans that I'm proud of. Note: this view doesn't actually exist in the real world. An incredibly ugly building would normally be in the background. The weeping child Details about the picture

My Wikihistory
I've been active in Wikipedia since December, 2003 and I've been an administrator since early May, 2004. I see my role in Wikipedia, at this point, to cruise around looking for articles that just should be in any decent encyclopedia, but are missing from the Wikipedia, and give them a reasonable start. I don't do sub-stubs - my typical first efforts are 1000-1500 bytes long. As time and inclination permits, I return to enhance and expand them.

As I tool around, I also fix typos and add content to things that I care about and which need it. I can and like to do chemical structure drawings, so I add them as the fancy strikes me.

My interests
My especial interests are beer and homebrewing, wine and wine making, supercharged breeds of cats, like the Egyptian Mau cat and the American Keuda cat, chemistry, science, and engineering, computers, statistics, especially data mining and related areas, weather, biology, medicine, entertainers, movies, especially cult films, history and other things.

My homepages
You can find my web homepages at.

The sites above have some interesting stuff, including my An Introduction to Chemometrics, The Catbar Egyptian Mau Gallery, individual pages for our maus, The Shrine of the Unsung Musician, and an Ohio wines page.

Of special interest is Brain Candy Central, which contains a bunch of columns I have written for our local Mensa group's newsletter. Some of these have morphed to become Wikipedia articles, and others may do so soon.

Dot Project
Lately, I've been working on User:Sethant's Dot Project, which intends to display the location every US city and town on its state map. I've completed Missouri, which was a booger, because Missouri has a jillion counties, with a bunch of villages in each. St. Louis County, Missouri was the toughest, with 100 cities, towns and villages, and there were 110 other counties as well. The final tally was 974 maps uploaded, and of course 974 article edits for various Missouri places, plus I fixed a bunch of typos and irregularities I found, as well as placed some cities and towns in the correct counties, etc.

Then I worked on Arizona which had fewer cities, towns and especially counties, but the state of Missouri had a lot of good online and downloadable things I could use to speed things up (like good state maps) that Arizona doesn't have. Another complication: some Arizona towns were very tiny in the 1990 census and are sizable now. They don't all show up on the maps I could find. In these cases, I let my regression-predicted coordinates determine the position of the dot, but I preferred verifying positions with a map when I could.

This was followed by Ohio. Even more places than Missouri, but I had really excellent maps to help, so it was relatively easy. My regression predictions for point coordinates were very accurate for Ohio, too, so it went relatively quickly.

Next, I completed Louisiana. Unlike the other states I've done so far, I've never lived in or near Louisiana, so I didn't have any memories to draw on. The best Louisiana state map I found on-line was a rather slow-updating pdf file that was a real pain to work with. With the arrival of Squeezit, my new built-by-hand computer, things improved some.

Kansas is done as of late January, 2005. It was slow-going, to say the least. For Kansas, I found that using the Census Bureau's Tiger Map Server Browser at http://tiger.census.gov/ worked nicely for verifying and tweaking dot placement on a county-by-county basis.

I finished Arkansas in late February, 2005. The default Tiger Map Server Browser wasn't sufficient for the more densely populated counties of Arkansas, but I found out how to access an older version of the software (mapbrowser) that lets me specify the size of the output map. The bigger maps show more detail and solved my problem quite nicely. I wish I knew about this when I did Kansas. It would have helped, but it was necessary for Arkansas, since I didn't find a decent on-line map source.

Minnesota is finished. No more dots for me.

New Articles I've created

 * American Keuda - a fascinating new cat breed (actually not recognized yet)
 * Bass Islands - in Lake Erie, near Sandusky, Ohio
 * Bitrex - Denatonium - bitterest stuff known to date, needs work
 * Black 47 - the Irish-American rock group
 * Carbonation - replaced a redirect to 'carbon dioxide'
 * Carl Palmer - Atomic Rooster and Emerson, Lake and Palmer
 * Cat Fanciers' Association - world's largest cat registry
 * Clara Rockmore - Theremin virtuoso
 * Cleveland Torso Murderer - Cleveland's Jack the Ripper during the Depression
 * Continuous positive airway pressure - CPAP for short
 * Country Club Plaza - first auto-oriented shopping center, Kansas City, early 1920s
 * Downburst - microburst on a larger scale
 * Egyptian Mau - the essence of cat
 * Encore (Klaus Nomi album)
 * Fast neutron - faster than a thermal neutron
 * Forbidden Zone - bizarre 1980 cult film by Richard Elfman
 * Greg Lake - King Crimson and Emerson, Lake and Palmer
 * Haboob - baaad dust storms, I've been through several of these
 * Havana Brown
 * Hemotoxin - tissue-destroying toxin
 * Hind's Crimson Star - R Leporis, a very red variable star
 * Hope (album) - Klaatu's landmark second album
 * Jake - 1930s product adulteration incident (Jake leg, Jake walk)
 * Jalapeño - not much, but it links to very good chili articles
 * Joey Bishop - early talk show host & Rat Pack member
 * John Louis Mansi - Smallhausen!
 * Klaus Nomi (album)
 * Linda Hunt - Academy Award winning actress and narrator
 * List of grape varieties - who doesn't like grapes in some form or another?
 * Markko Vineyards
 * Microburst - damaging straight line winds
 * Must - proto-wine
 * Niagara grape - foxy wine, but good when done well
 * Phenylthiocarbamide - the stuff that tastes bitter to some, tasteless to others
 * Phossy jaw - nasty occupational hazard of the 19th century
 * Rattlesnake - lovely creatures
 * Remote Control (album) - album by The Tubes
 * Riders in the Sky - America's Favorite Cowboy Band
 * Rita Dove - American poet laureate 1993 - 1995
 * Simple Man (album) - Klaus Nomi's second album
 * SL-1 - a 1961 lethal reactor accident, west of Idaho Falls
 * Spider Baby - great horror film from the early '60s
 * Stasis - that staple of good and bad sci-fi
 * Sue Grafton - popular author of the Kinsey Millhone detective series
 * Survival Research Laboratories - dangerous performance art
 * Susan Tyrrell - actress, lost both legs in 2000 to essential thrombocythemia
 * Teri Garr - actress, suffers from multiple sclerosis
 * Tetsuya Theodore Fujita - famous severe storms researcher
 * The Tubes (album) - album by The Tubes
 * Thomas Akers - astronaut - Hubble Space Telescope repairman and my 1975 Calc 3 instructor
 * Toni Basil - a rather versatile artist
 * Tonkinese cat
 * Triangle Fraternity - I'm an alumnus of the Missouri Mines chapter
 * USS Los Angeles (ZR-3) - the amazing acrobatic airship
 * Vaughn Monroe - famous singer
 * Vienna lager - eg Dos Equis
 * Viognier - grape variety
 * What Do You Want From Live - album by The Tubes
 * Wild leek - also known as ramps
 * ZMC-2 - perhaps the coolest airship ever to fly

Things I've improved significantly

 * Black Box (game)
 * Glazier-Higgins-Woodward tornadoes
 * Manx (cat) - I think I helped improve it
 * Tempranillo

My new article to-do list
If you see something you like on here, feel free to tackle it with my blessing.

 * Cleveland Clinic Disaster - May 15, 1929, 123 killed by fire and toxic fumes
 * Red Clay Ramblers - country/folk group
 * The Nomi Song - film about Klaus Nomi
 * Triclocarban - antibacterial

Articles I think I can improve

 * Adrian Belew - Twang Bar King, master guitarist, of King Crimson and The Bears
 * Al Stewart - historical musician
 * The Black Dahlia - 1947 LA murder victim
 * Capercaillie (band) - such a sad little stub for a great band
 * Colin Henry Wilson - great writer, needs at least a more complete list of his books
 * Dead Again - great, complex movie, article just a stub
 * Fear (band)
 * Greg Lake - maybe Keith Emerson and some more work on Carl Palmer, too
 * Louis Slotin - 1946 nuclear accident victim
 * Michael Keaton - He's Batman!
 * Prompt critical - nuclear engineering stuff
 * Purring - not much known, but maybe I can help
 * Randy California - late singer for Spirit
 * Rodger Young - American war hero of the past (and future)
 * Thujone - needs a better structural drawing at least
 * Urgh! A Music War - document the album and CD (as opposed to the movie)

Life-changing tips
... and if that doesn't work for you a little pomegranate molasses in lightly sweetened ice tea is good, too.

Images I've done Brian Rock

title: User:Catbar


text:
Pionki

Pionki is a town in Radom County, Masovian Voivodeship, central Poland with 18,846 inhabitants (2016). Surrounded by the Kozienice Wilderness, Pionki is located in northern part of historic province of Lesser Poland, 20 km from Radom, and 105 km from Warsaw.

History
The mills of Pionki and Zagożdżon were first mentioned in medieval documents in 1391. Both settlements were royal villages, administratively located in the Radom County in the Sandomierz Voivodeship in the Lesser Poland Province of the Kingdom of Poland.

Until 1932, the settlement was a village named Zagożdżon. Its development was closely associated with Chemical Plant Pronit (Zakłady Tworzyw Sztucznych ZTS Pronit), founded in 1923 as State Manufacturer of Gunpowder and Explosives (Państwowa Wytwórnia Prochu i Materiałów Kruszących PWPiMK). Originally, it was an arms factory, which manufactured explosives, and its location was deliberate - next to the village of Zagożdżon, among the forests and swamps of the Kozienice Wilderness, away from main population centers, and along the strategic rail line Radom-Dęblin. After World War II, the Chemical Plant Pronit began manufacturing glue, plastic, as well as gramophone records.

In the interbellum period, Pionki prospered due to government contracts, as demand for explosives of its chemical plant was high. In 1925, a new rail station was opened, three years later - a post office. In 1929, overhead power line joined Pionki with Skarżysko-Kamienna, and a vocational high school was opened. Later on, a new police station was opened, and in 1937, the construction of a hospital was initiated.

During the joint German-Soviet invasion of Poland, which started World War II, in 1939, Pionki was bombed by the Luftwaffe and afterwards the Germans occupied the town. In addition to the other destruction, the Germans brutalized the Poles and the small Jewish population of around 200. As part of the AB-Aktion, in June 1940, the Germans carried out mass arrests of Poles, who were afterwards imprisoned and tortured in Skarżysko-Kamienna and then murdered in a forest near Skarżysko-Kamienna. Many Jews were conscripted for slave labor including the most dangerous jobs at a local gunpowder faculty. In late 1941, a ghetto was established and Jews from surrounding towns brought there, resulting in a population of around 700 and such severe overcrowding that some people lived in the street. Some local Poles were helpful in providing food for the impoverished residents. In August 1942, some of the healthier workers were sent to live at a work camp while the rest were sent to the Zwolen ghetto and then, in late September, to the Treblinka extermination camp. They were immediately murdered there by gassing. The number of Pionki Jewish survivors was small, but at least eight. In April 1944, the Germans executed 10 Polish resistance members in Pionki.

In 1919–1939, and after the war, until 1975, Pionki belonged to the Kielce Voivodeship. In 1975–1998, it administratively belonged to the Radom Voivodeship. In 1957–1991, the largest vinyl record pressing plant in Poland was located in Pionki.

Sports
The town is home to a sports club Proch Pionki, established in 1926.

Notable people
Punk rock band The Bill comes from Pionki. Polish musician Andrzej Piaseczny was born there.

Twin towns
Pionki are twinned with:
 * 🇷🇴 Breaza
 * 🇺🇦 Vyshneve

title: Pionki


text:
Talk:SL-1

2003
Just starting out - more on SL-1 and other topics to come. Brian Rock 03:03, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Just found an entry for SL-1_Reactor_Accident, as I've learned to better navigate. I'll be merging this article into that one. Brian Rock 04:26, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The SL-1_Reactor_Accident article doesn't follow the Wikipedia naming convention, so it's better to merge that description into this one and make it redirect here. Nothing links to it, perhaps because of the name. This one gets several links, probably because it has the most obvious naming. Jamesday 12:05, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

2004
What are the names of the three victims? --Mizchalmers 22:32, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * This link http://www.radiationworks.com/sl1reactor.htm names the victims --Zdv 04:18, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Zdv, Why have you removed my open link to prompt criticality in SL-1? I understand removing a redirect to nothing, but highlighting an obviously non-trivial term is deliberate and done to prompt the writing of a new article with that name. Your actions are not good editorial practice. --Azazello 02:39, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Suicide-homicide
I think it is now proven fact that the explosion happened due to sabotage (homicide-suicide), because one operator learned that his wife is cheating with the other operator and decided to take the amoroso with him to the afterlife. The third, unconnected operator was just "collateral damage", so to speak.

Human passion is stronger than the atom. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.70.32.136 (talk • contribs) 10:36, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

 * One of the theories, but hardly a proven fact. Read Idaho Falls for what I think is the definative public account. The operator who pulled the center rod out too far, John Byrnes, was recently separated from his wife (crashing at friend's places for the last several nights) and had money problems. Byrnes was mostly at fault in the marital strife: he was a philanderer and drunk.

 * Richard Legg's wife was a local Mormon girl, several months pregnant, and by all accounts hardly likely to be engaged in any kind of relationship with Byrnes. Most likely, they never met. Both the widows Legg and Byrnes have denied there were any extramarital affairs among them.

 * The murder suicide rumor had swirled around the industry for years following the accident. It became a semi-official claim when a nuclear safety researcher repeated the rumor in a memo stressing the importance of making reactors operator-proof. Previous reactor safety guidelines always assumed the operators were in their right minds when at work, and instead concentrated on commies with grenade launchers.

 * The most plausible reasoning I've read was Byrnes resented Legg because Legg was recently given a supervisory role. They had fought some months earlier at a bachelor's party (both men were drunk, and Byrnes had just fucked a whore--Legg probably taunted him about it). Byrnes had a temper, and had been known to throw shit around inside the reactor control room when frustrated. He was recently passed on the same supervisor job Legg now held. The men were several hours behind in their night's task list. Legg (a pranskter and under scrutiny for poor performance as a supervisor) probably said something to chide Byrnes (perhaps officiously restating the rule that the control rod mustn't be raised too far, or telling him to "excersize it" to prevent sticking), and Byrnes just had a "to hell with this" moment and raised the rod too far to piss everybody else off. Kaboom.

 * There's no evidence anybody, least of all the poorly trained operators, knew that withdrawing the rod too far would lead to an explosion. They guessed it could possibly melt down the core, but that wouldn't constitute a murder-suicide.
 * Tafinucane 21:30, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Causes ideas
From the article:
 * The three most common theories proposed for this discrepancy are sabotage or suicide attempt by one of the operators, inadvertent withdrawal of the main control rod, which was known to be "sticky," or an intentional attempt to "exercise" the sticky rod, to make it travel more smoothly within its sheath.

Suicide is right out, since the designers didn't even know you could cause an explosion by withdrawing the control rod too far. The main control rod was the only control rod that didn't have a history of sticking. Not to say that it didn't stick that night, just that it hadn't before. AEC investigators made extensive trials to reproduce the accident by having men pull on mock-control rods and releasing the rods suddenly. They also tried goosing the men (giving the test lifters an unexpected pinch in the rear, as Legg was suspected of having done), but never were the 100-lb bars lifted more than a few inches. Similarly, the "exersizing" the operators had been doing previously only consisted of sliding the rod up and down a few inches.

The article's statement remains true, however, that those are the three most common theories. The article needs to also mention that the reactor design was also to blame. The control rods could get stuck, as mentioned. Withdrawing a single center control rod could send the core to critical (which is a reactor flaw unique to the SL-1 design). Boron "poison" meant to quell the excessive radiation when the uranium fuel was new was supposed to be alloyed into the fuel itself. This proved to great a metalurogical challenge for the time, so they just tacked on boron-alluminum allow strips to the fuel. The strips flaked off over time, so the degree of control the operators had over the nuclear reaction was narrowed and partially unknown. Tafinucane 21:05, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

 * There was an article on this in one of the science magazines in the 1960's. I don't recall which one, could've been Popular Science or Science and Mechanics. It had a few photos, including one of the flaked and swelled boron "poison strips" that frequently caused the control rods to stick. The theory it presented was that the strips caused the main rod to stick and the operator had to pull hard on the rod to reconnect it to its motor drive. The rod popped free and *boom*. IIRC it said that a different crew had been there earlier to service the control rod drives and had left it to the next shift to reconnect them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bizzybody (talk • contribs) 04:45, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Problem with date
I'm not sure if the SL-1 accident took place on January 3 (1961). I have a Ryszard Szepke's book in which it is written that the event was on January 10. Please, verify this information. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Krzy B (talk • contribs) 20:14, 12 April 2007 (UTC).

Steven Casey in Set Phasers On Stun reports that the accident took place on January 3, 1961.
 * Casey, Steven (1998). "Genie in the Bottle". In Set Phasers On Stun (2nd ed.), p. 117. Santa Barbara, Aegean Publishing Company.

—Iain marcuson (talk) 01:35, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Röntgen -- rubbish text?
My edit was intended to fix the link for Roentgen to point to the unit of measurement rather than the disambiguation page. Although it appears as R%C3%B6ntgen in the edit summary, the text appears properly in the rendered page in my browser and the link in my revision points where I intended. Is there a problem in other browsers or is the "rubbish text" just in the edit summary? Langhorner 13:15, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

 * Hi there,I am very sorry, and you are correct, your version does appear correct in the rendered page-to me the edit appeared as rubbish characters-as you described. Next time I'll be a little more careful before I jump on perceived vandalism. your edit does appear to fix the link! i'll revert my own (incorrect) edit.--Read-write-services 22:51, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Weight of "the" control rod
My recollection from many years ago is that the operator's actions regarding over-withdrawal were established by after-accident analysis to be intentional, though his reasoning for doing so remained unknown. Reasoning: the weight of the control rod was fairly substantial (75 lbs or so?) and precluded an unintentional move of 16 inches or so, including the scenario of the sudden freeing of a stuck rod. Reconstruction via manual tests, including stuck-rod scenarios, confirmed this (again, as best I can recall). However, I'm so-far not able to find a reference for the weight of the rod. At this point, I can only leave this note for future editors' consideration. --71.42.142.238 18:57, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Parting note: I can't help but comment that the whole thing leaves one wondering as to why they weren't simply employing a mechanical or hydraulic jack of some kind to move the control rod, stuck or otherwise. It just doesn't pass the common sense test to not use one, especially if the rod was sticking...and known to be somewhat heavy...and highly reactive. Whatever...but it seems that a car jack would have done the trick. --71.42.142.238 19:22, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

The rod weighed 84 pounds, and the tests done by many men determined it was feasible and had been contemplated by the reactor operators in case the Russians attacked (I kid you not). See the Stacy book, it's free online. I like to saw logs! (talk) 13:01, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

"Jordan redector"
As far as I can tell, Jordan is a company that does manufacture dosimeters and the like. But a "redector" is likely a misspelling of "detector", and in any case, I don't see the point of pointing it out as a Jordan model. I'm going to revert this phrase to the verbiage as of two years ago, at here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=SL-1&oldid=11833643 John Sheu 23:53, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Additional citations needed
I've added a {MoreSources} tag to the top of this article as many more citations are needed to support what is being said. Please see WP:When to cite for guidance and some of the WP:GA articles for examples of how this is best done. Johnfos (talk) 02:24, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

 * There are plenty of sources referenced and cited. Do you have concerns about specific sections not being sourced? Please be as precise as possible, I don't quite get what your current objection is. Thanks. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 02:33, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

 * The specific problem is that as I read through the article, there is no indication about where the information being provided has come from. Sure, there are many unnumbered "References" listed at the end but there are very few links (citations) between specific references and particular parts of the text. So, in most cases, there is no way for the reader to check a particular piece of information against the specific source used. And so the content cannot be verified. This is just not satisfactory. Johnfos (talk) 11:04, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

 * I am sorry that we're asking you to actually read the sources. The references are voluminous, and citing each paragraph as to where a description of it appears and in what sources is possible, but clumsy and pointless. There are a number of detailed accounts of the accident in the sources. All the specifics are accurate. Having to read the references does not mean it's unreferenced.
 * If you would like to make it easier for people to specifically find a link for particular information, take one of the overall DOE reports (the Interim Report is a good place to start) and make links to pages.
 * But you shouldn't tag an article as needing references when it's got them. I'm going to delete the tag. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 20:07, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

 * Georgewilliamherbert, what I believe is being asked is that the facts as they are presented in the article be wiki-referenced. There's a particular way to place a tag next to a piece of text that allows Wikipedia to create a list of reference tags automatically. This is prefered for many reasons, the biggest of which is the ability to reuse named reference tags or correct all uses of a reference tag by simply correcting the first instance. Take a look at Citation templates page for the different ways WP has for citing references. There is no need to cite a specific paragraph/line/word in most cases, a simple citation of the book or article is usually enough. For example I changed the two initial references to wikirefs which now renumber the other wikirefs near the bottom (in the movie section).
 * Having said that Johnfos, could have just done the ref edits and showed Georgewilliamherbert what he meant. I think requesting a 3O was simply lazy on your part. Padillah (talk) 21:00, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I read about this on the WP:3O page and decided that what's needed for now is a more appropriate tag, namely the {citations} tag; see if you all agree (I have placed it on the article, so read what it says). Hopefully some helpful editors will take the hint and move toward improving the citations. But don't be bashful about adding {citation needed} tags wherever you feel a reference is needed. Dicklyon (talk) 00:23, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Leave Chernobyl alone
Why does this page and Three Mile Island's page always mention how these two reactor designs were much better then RBMK? The three had accidents, for chrissake. You don't go on comparing designs when you are talking about malfunctions. The negative void coefficient didn't help to prevent the core at TMI from partially melting, and didn't prevent the explosion in SL-1. What does mentioning Chernobyl here helps to explain? It seems like someone wants to say: "Even though this one exploded, it was still much better then the commie nucular plants." -- NIC1138 (talk) 16:22, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

 * Of course you go around comparing designs when you're talking about malfunctions. All of modern safety design is based around safety in depth; even though things are going wrong, it's all about not going too wrong. Yes, Air France Flight 358 burned to the ground after landing, as did Saudia Flight 163; so why did one have a 100% survival rate and the other a 0% survival rate? Furthermore, comparing reactor designs gives readers insight into what the features of this reactor mean, and what the other options were.

 * And, well, all politics aside, there's no question that Chernobyl and friends sucked, that they failed to learn lessons from SL-1 and Windscale despite 25 years in which to learn those lessons. There's a huge difference in loss of life and economic damage between Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. That's a point that should be made, that Chernobyl cannot be taken as the end-all and be-all of nuclear reactors. Frankly, I think that nuclear gets a bum deal, that we mention a bunch of nuclear accidents that caused no injuries but far from every fatal coal mine incident.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:02, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

 * I agree I exaggerated about we being able to compare... But my fear is that we might be comparing different things. This talk about negative void coefficient being more "stable" sounds to me more like a subtle (and desirable) characteristic of the dynamic of the reactors in proper operation then overall safety under accidents. It seems to me some people are trying to pin-point this single characteristic of the reactors as a sufficient reason to consider the American reactors safer than the Sovietic. This makes difficult a more detailed discussion. Negative or positive coefficient, both Chernobyl and SL-1 had the rods improperly removed when problems began. The reactor at TMI, on the other hand, was being shut down. What if it were under operation? It partially melted even without the water mediating the reaction, imagine if the rods were out.
 * There are (were) many problems with RBMK and with SL-1. I just believe there is too much emphasis in this article on the void coefficient being positive or negative... Nuclear reactors use chain reactions, which is an inherently unstable phenomenon being controlled by several factors. So, it's always difficult to understand when a reactor would be more "stable" than other. More importantly: I believe in all accidents we had more water vapour then we wanted in the reactors. I'm not sure if the conditions were inside the scope of the this coefficient, which I believe models a linear operating point of the system, with liquid water. It's not easy to extrapolate the behaviour of the three reactors in pathological conditions just considering this coefficient...
 * Now, regarding details in Chernobyl's design, according to the wikipedia page on the Chernobyl disaster the control rods there were not fully graphite, but just its end tips. I'm not sure that what this article here is stating regarding Chernobyl is coherent with this other article... Plus, the RBMK design was largely modified after Chernobyl, but kept the positive void coefficient. Does that single characteristic suffice to say that it is still an "unstable" design, and that because of this it is still inherently more dangerous than TMI or SL-1?...
 * And regarding lessons from SL-1: did Chernobyl have a too high thermal resistance, as SL-1, or a too high sensibility to the effects of removing a single rod?
 * I'm sorry if I am sounding a bit harsh in these comments, I would like to have a little more time to write properly. I'm just an electrical engineer wanting to learn science, and to avoid any kind of political arguments!... -- NIC1138 (talk) 01:10, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Contractors? Construction timeline?
In other sources, I find references that contractors' representatives were visiting the site, etc. I can't seem to find the name of the primary contractors on the project. Was it the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers? Westinghouse? Who? If this were an article entirely on the accident, it might not be as relevant. But in an article on the reactor itself, it certainly seems relevant -- "built between June 2040 and January 2041 by Spacely Sprockets," certainly would be a useful fact to include. This article actually starts with a maintenance shutdown, which obviously implies that it had been operational for at least one period previously. --Thatnewguy (talk) 13:48, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't have a copy of the references handy but I'm pretty sure the maintenance was handled by the Army itself and the construction was done by military personnel. I think that the design was probably contracted out, but I don't know who made it. IIRC, the reactor was operational for a year or so--long enough to discover that the control rod channel was getting clogged by material rubbing off the walls. Protonk (talk) 20:35, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Inherent Safety of a Water Moderated Design
"The accident also showed that in a genuine extreme accident both the vaporizing of the core and the water to steam conversion would shut down the nuclear reaction. This demonstrates in a real accident the inherent safety of the water moderated design against the possibility of a nuclear explosion."

I could be wrong, but isn't this balony? if the moderator has a negative co-efficient, then the reaction is shut down and you don't *get* a core which "safely ends the excursion by exploding".

Arguing water moderation is safe because the steam explosion destroys the core (which causes massive local contamination, plus potentially larger scale contamination depending on chance and circumstance), which ends the excursion, seems absolutely duplicious, when a negative co-efficient moderator would end the excursion *without* exploding the core.

Toby Douglass (talk) 12:28, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

 * For one, in theory there is no steam explosion, merely water to steam conversion that reduces the moderating effect enough to shutdown the reaction. For another, in practice, even on SL-1, which had a pretty minimal safety shell compared to any modern nuclear power reactor, there was negligible larger scale contamination.

 * More importantly, saying that something else is safer doesn't change whether or not this design is fundamentally safe, and this statement is about what was seen at the time about this design, not what can be seen from our current time-position about various designs.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:17, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Toby Douglass, Prosfilaes this was intended to address those unfamiliar with nuclear power who are worried about power reactors becoming nuclear explosions. The design was safe against that and one of my goals when describing the incident was to explain to a lay audience what happened and why it couldn't have become a nuclear explosion. Even after it killed or disabled everyone looking after it, with talk that it might have been deliberate, the design still shut itself down to the point of becoming definitively subcritical in this event. That's a success story. Not a good enough one, but it beats the alternative fears that many in the general public have.

It's still grossly unacceptable today and you're completely right that there are more inherently safe designs around. We can do without more successes like this but they still beat failures to protect the general public. Jamesday (talk) 13:18, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

At least one wrong date; added a link.
"abandoned its reactor program in 1965" I'm a veteran of the Army Nuclear Power Program, and I served there from March 1968 to March 1971. Best I recall, the program shut down around 1974. Several years ago I had a website on the ANPP (and the Army Air Defense Command Nike missile system), and I had some materials from other ANPP vets who knew the folks killed at the SL-1, personally. I don't know, however, being a newbie, how I can incorporate any of that here, since it would be hearsay and not reference-able. Also, there was a comment above about "poorly trained operators." That, I can from personal experience assure you, is nonsense. The ANPP program was quite rigorous (I was a licensed Control Room Operator, and for a time the Health Physics Supervisor, of the SM-1 at Ft. Belvoir). Also, I added a link for "health physics" since many readers won't know what that is. Rb88guy (talk) 02:39, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Impaled by "the" control rod?
Was the operator impaled by "the" control rod, meaning the central control rod or was he impaled by another control rod? The "Idaho Falls" book says that there were several control rods. Was the operator squatting over the top of one while working on the central control rod? Tashiro (talk) 22:03, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

We were always told in debriefs of the accident at the INEL (late 1980's) that it was the central control rod, which was moved by hand. He was presumably leaning over the reactor moving the rod when the criticality excursion occurred. Shirakhan

 * Nope. First, it was the supervisor (Navy) standing by the guy yanking the control rod who got nailed. Second, he was impaled by the control rod's shield plug. This all likely happened when the vessel and the 2 men hit the ceiling. The rod actually fell back down. In fact, the center rod inserted itself far enough to ensure a good safety margin for the reactor to keep it shut down. I don't know which shield plug impaled him, but it wasn't from the center rod. I think maybe 2 or 3 rods didn't go back into their slots and merely fell on top of the vessel, but the fact that most of the water boiled away kept any further reaction from happening as much as the rods in the core. I like to saw logs! (talk) 13:16, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

 * That's great, but we need a citation to use it in the article.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:53, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

 * Read the book by Tucker. Every gruesome detail is in there, because he finally got at least a redacted version of the autopsy released... the doctor who did it died in the last few years. The old guesses as to who was who were wrong for a few reasons... #1, the original identifications of the 2 bodies found first were confused. #2, the identities of the dead men were purposely undisclosed in practically every publicly available story of the events. People assumed that the one impaled was the one who pulled it, but there are plenty of reports which say that the central rod did NOT stay in the ceiling... it went back in. Also, the location of the entry wound would make it hard to believe that he had pulled the rod up with his hands. Just read the SL-1 article and follow the links to Tucker's book. Follow the ISBN link, go to Google or Amazon, and do a search for "Legg" or "impaled" or "control rod" or "autopsy" or "shield plug" and you can read the sections that are pertinent.

 * But here is the "Summary" which you can view for free, with many of the details you seek: http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0904/2008013842-s.html (this is linked in the SL-1 article). It appears to have been the #7 rod's shield plug. I like to saw logs! (talk) 06:59, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Prompt Criticality is a function of delayed neutrons, not thermalization
Whoever wrote the section on prompt criticality seems to be confusing two important concepts in reactor control: prompt criticality and fast fission. Prompt criticality is determined by prompted and delayed neutrons. Fast fission is determined by fast or thermal neutrons. "Prompt" and "fast" are not the same thing.

Fast fission occurs when a high-energy (i.e. not thermalized) neutron splits a nucleus, usually U-238, which would simply absorb a thermal neutron. Fast fission happens all the time, and is a minor contributing component of the overall reactivity of the core.

Prompt neutrons are created by the fission of a nucleus. Delayed neutrons are released during the radioactive decay of certain fission products, and they occur up to several seconds after the initial fission. Prompt Criticality occurs when the core achieves criticality using only prompt neutrons (i.e. those produced by fission alone), and the additional "delayed neutrons" released by fission product decay serve to accelerate the chain reaction to a state of supercriticality (i.e. increasing power level). Prompt Criticality has nothing to do with the thermalization time of the neutrons.

The explanation of how the accident occurred seems to confuse these two concepts (unless they're teaching a whole new kind of nuclear engineering now than they were 20 years ago). Would take some effort to disentangle the two.Shirakhan —Preceding undated comment added 19:00, 16 October 2009 (UTC).

 * Shirakhan, your point is noted. I just read through the article and indeed it's my judgment as well that the reactor physics and kinetics discussion in that section were misleading and seemed confused particularly on the issues of delayed neutrons and moderation. I've attempted a quick fix; give it a look. Much more could be done to make this article accurate, documented, and comprehensive. I hope some other people with particular expertise in the subject will kick the can down the road.--Carlwillis (talk) 10:00, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I worked out there a little
Not right at SL1 and post-accident. But at the site. It is an eerie place. It really resembles something you would expect in Nevada or the like. The climate is a true dessert (less than 10 inches per year rain), more arid than most of the arid Southwest. Nobody lives near the site. Everyone drives or more usually is bussed in (this is a lot like the Nevada test site, I've also been there and it is eerie too.) You could LITERARALLY blow up a big atom bomb at the site and people in nearby towns would be OK. I'm not saying a reactor is a bomb...but it seems like they were super cautious when siting this stuff at the beninging of the atomic age. There are all kinds of little tiny antelope (well really small) that run around. They have the use of the site since there is no hunting there. It's really an amazing place... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.250.46.136 (talk) 17:49, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

The reactor core "vaporized"?
The article repeatedly says that the core and its components vaporized. That's usually a term for liquids... or for magic. Which is it? The fuel plates made of aluminum probably did not turn into a vapor. The article makes this assertion SIX times (as a verb form) for the core, whereas it mentions the water vapor as a (noun) ONE time. I think we need a revision here unless someone has some temperatures to corroborate this. I like to saw logs! (talk) 12:55, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

 * Okay, to answer my own question, the fuel in the core apparently did vaporize. Although a prompt critical reactor can be shown to avoid a core meltdown and vaporization, the huge amount of positive reactivity (well over $3, with one dollar being prompt critical) caused the fuel to literally fly apart before the water boiled to steam and appreciably cooling it. I would imagine the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution of the atoms made the fuel quite erratic to pin down what phase it was in! This is reported in IDO-19313 Additional Analysis of the SL-1 Excursion, Final Report of Progress July through October 1962, November 1962. I like to saw logs! (talk) 07:33, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Firefighters
I personally know Bob Archer (Rupert Idaho) one of the first responder firefighters. I asked him for the names of those firefighters on duty who responded to the incident. He named Ken Dearolon Asst Chief, Mel Hess Lt., Bob Archer, Carl Johnson, Egon Lamprecht, & Vern Conlon. I have added their names to the page. According to Bob, he and Egon are the only ones still alive. As a side note Bob has never had cancer! --Tomhung357 (talk) 15:32, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Cleanup
In the fourth paragraph "Results from the surveys indicated that cesium-137 and its progeny (decay product) are the primary surface-soil contaminants." I do not believe that the product of Cs-137 decay, stable Ba-137 possibly as the carbonate, would be a significant source of contamination. Darian2 (talk) 03:17, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

 * Well if cesium-137 decays to barium, isn't its poisonous nature enough to be a "contaminant"? The sentence doesn't define what sort of contamination it is speaking of. In any case, 137m1Ba can be detectable in the debris with instrumentation that can find the characteristic 661 KeV gamma rays. 95% of the cesium will therefore emit this gamma on top of the already significant contamination beta of 512 KeV. The beta is indicative of contamination. Since its progeny emits the gamma a few minutes later, I would call this a contaminant. And if the cesium/barium (meta state) are indeed so plentiful after 50 years, they would surely top the list of any other contaminants as far as abundance and radioactivity goes. Strontium-90 might be a distant third here, especially since no one is crawling around the Idaho desert where SL-1 blew up and it is unlikely to get mobile in the environment there.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cs-137-decay.svg I like to saw logs! (talk) 07:20, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

New Personal Testimony on Cause
At that time, I worked at the OMRE (Organic Moderated Reactor Experiment) which was a couple of miles west of the SL-1 reactor. It was clearly visible from where I worked. That night I had worked until 9 PM, which was about the same time as the SL-1 explosion. I drove home, going right in front of the road to that reactor; but emergency vehicles had not arrived yet, because they were stationed further away from the SL-1 than where I worked (they arrived about 5 minutes after I drove by). When I drove by, there was no visible evidence of any problem.

The next day, reports started coming to us regularly. Most of the report here and on YouTube is accurate, but not all. It was stated that the truth could not be told since the Army would give a large cash donation to anyone’s family who was killed by a military accident. But no such donation could be given to anyone’s family if the military person died from their own accident. This was clearly an accident caused by these three men, not a military accident. Here are some unmentioned facts that I was told in the hours and days following that accident.

There had been several alarms from the SL-1 reactor over the past few weeks or months, and the emergency vehicles always went to find the problem, but it was always something wrong with the alarm system, not a reactor or building problem. The alarm that night seem different so they were in a hurry to get there. It was known that the reactor was shut down because the main, central control rod had been sticking and was not moving up and down properly. This made the operation of that reactor very dangerous. There was a requirement that any reactor with fuel in it had to have all the monitoring equipment (electronic data recorders, meters, etc.) always on and operating so that if any strange unexpected event occurred, the data could give a clue if not all the facts as to what happened. It was also required that a control room crew would always be on duty in the control room, even if nothing was going on. So that crew that night would be bored stiff. There would never be an assignment for the control room men to do any attempts to repair the reactor problem, especially at night.

The report was that at first only one man went inside to investigate if there was any real problem. He noted that all of the recording equipment in the control room had been turned off and nobody was in there, a forbidden action. Then he went into the reactor room and saw the two men on the floor by the exploded reactor. He was not wearing any special protective clothing and he realized that he was likely seriously contaminated with radioactive material, so he promptly went outside and was monitored by another person with a radiation meter, which showed a high level of contamination. Therefore he had to strip naked (at minus 17 degrees) and go to an outside shower facility to wash most of the rest of the contamination off of his skin. This was a very difficult task, but he succeeded. He was then taken back to the main building while others started the investigation as described on YouTube.

At first, only the two men on the floor were seen, and the third man was not seen for several hours, probably not until daylight. It was seen that both of these men had their faces impacted with many pieces of glass. When the third man was seen, it was obvious that the reactor's central main control rod had gone into his body and pinned him to the ceiling. This made it perfectly obvious that he had been standing above that control rod when the explosion occurred.

Putting these known facts together made it obvious what had happened. The top of the reactor cover had a few glass windows so that a person could look inside the reactor when needed. But it was not allowed just for curiosity. These men decided that they wanted to go and see the beautiful blue-purple colors of a nuclear reactor in water. I have seen such more than once, and it is just indescribable in its beauty. No doubt these men had heard of such a sight, so they decided to shut off the monitoring equipment to prevent their experiment from being recorded (all but an outside air monitor which really recorded very little).

Whether or not this was the first experiment, it is obvious that the one on top was pulling the control rod up while the other two were watching to see the reaction. So the control rod must have jammed just below the critical elevation. Then that person on top pulled with all his might to get it to move again. When he pulled hard enough, he raised it several inches too far! That caused an immediate nuclear reaction (much heat), not like an atomic bomb, just an extreme amount of heat in a very short time, a few thousandths of a second. That heat boiled the water making a very high powered steam explosion which blew the glass out of the viewing windows into the faces of the two men looking inside, and it ejected the control rod with such velocity that it sent the man holding it to the ceiling and pinned him there. Of course, as the control rod went out, the reactor power went much higher, causing an increase in the steam explosion's power.

The rest of the report is quite accurate. I remember watching the big rigs that went inside the reactor casing to remove the man on top and do the other work as described. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.31.196.155 (talk) 02:45, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

 * I am wondering if some of the assumptions you make are correct. Was there really supposed to be someone in the control room for this reactor? If so, who? This was supposed to be a maintenance procedure that they were embarking on, and only 2 of the men were qualified to do anything. As far as I have read, I don't remember anyone mentioning that the Army made control room monitoring necessary for a shutdown reactor plant. The story of SL-1 has been told and retold countless times. It's a pretty obvious question that pops up in most people's minds... Why was there no one in the control room? Nowadays, there is always someone watching the meters, and as far as I can tell, this was made a requirement or made an unbreakable rule... that the control room cannot be vacated.

 * The way I understand SL-1 is that these men were following the normal procedures and nothing forced anyone to stay inside the control room of a shutdown reactor. The main thing I can say that backs this up is the lack of personnel assigned to a night shift. Three men is a pretty small crew to be doing all of those things that night. One is a trainee. Let's say one of the qualified men has to sit inside the control room. Now suppose one man is in the bathroom or it is lunchtime. Those facilities are down the hall. So during those breaks, nothing can get down inside the reactor building because one man is watching the meters. My opinion is that the operations manager assigned only 2 qualified men to this shift because they were permitted free access to the reactor without having to sit in the control room.

 * By the way. Stop saying that one guy was impaled by a control rod. It was the #7 shield plug. I have it in the article in 5 different places. This is in Tucker's book with quote. I like to saw logs! (talk) 06:16, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

 * All of my comments are based on the reports that we received, no assumptions at all on my part. We were told all of these ideas as facts on a regular basis. Today I have no source on the requirement to always have a person in the control room whenever there was fuel in the reactor except that is what we were told. It could have been a local rule only with nothing to do with the Army or maybe only at OMRE.

 * As I wrote before, we were told that all of the real truth could not be told or the Army could not give cash donation to the families. But we were told that the main control rod was what pinned the third man to the ceiling. That is not my opinion, just what we were told. Nothing that I wrote was my opinion, it is all what I was told.  Unless there is a photograph of whatever pinned him up there while he was there, neither report can be documented as the correct one. However I believe that the official report is most likely not the correct one. Just because any part of the official report is repeated many times will never be proof that it is true or false.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.146.60.100 (talk) 22:20, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

 * Well, then, you should read all of the reports listed as references to the article. They are all listed at the bottom, most of them are free to download. The original reports have "IDO" in their titles. Those reports are linked to facts described in the article. So if you read about a person being impaled not by the central rod but by a peripheral one (#7) and not the rod but essentially its sheath called the shield plug, then you can look it up. You will notice that in the IDO official reports that the central rod is inspected, that it returned to roughly the SCRAM position, and that there is no way that the central rod could have been stuck in the ceiling for a week. This also implies that the guy impaled was not the one who yanked out the central rod.

 * Your facts are all hearsay at this point, including the idea that the men were looking at pretty colors. I have also never heard of any "glass" covers on top of this reactor or any other. There is no engineering purpose for a piece of glass on top of a reactor vessel head that is torqued down to 10s or 100s of thousands of lb-ft. What type of glass can withstand that kind of torque? Were there rubber o-rings that sealed these glass panels? Can you show me a cross-section of the SL-1 plant with glass covers?

 * Your story about seeing the pretty colors is apocryphal to put it mildly. It is patently false to be blunt. You purport that these things were told to you as facts, however a cursory examination of these falsehoods reveals that the story has no leg to stand on. The nuclear power folks did quite a good job of metallurgical engineering to design reactors to be durable. Putting a glass window on a reactor vessel is the epitome of absurdity.

 * I think that the facts indicate that the operations manager was at fault, the designers were at fault, and the people writing the procedures were partially at fault. If I was a judge attributing blame, I would put the operators at 1 to 5% fault, and lay the rest of the blame upon the ones who were overseeing the design, maintenance, procedures, and personnel. The ones implementing and operating this widow maker were likely just doing their jobs. This is a tragedy in which the reactor was unsafe, the oversight (especially on the fateful night) was deplorable, and the tasks to be accomplished were potentially life-threatening. Read the article again and see if you can come to a similar conclusion. I like to saw logs! (talk) 19:01, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

New title
There appears to be a document titled "SL-1 Accident Investigations Report," of which I know of a few pictures appearing elsewhere. I am not sure if this is available by a FOIA, but here is the link to some of it: http://www.mooj.com/rxdept_page28.htm see http://www.mooj.com/images/rx-041204-SL1.jpg I like to saw logs! (talk) 17:13, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Cool, thanks!

Reactor configuration
The T and cross shaped control/fuel rods, are these vertical in the reactor core? It is hard to visualise from the description. Why are they this shape Vs just straight control rods? Tttonyyy (talk) 11:51, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

Without sufficient moderator, cores such as SL-1 would be unable to sustain a nuclear chain reaction.
The article says: Without sufficient moderator, cores such as SL-1 would be unable to sustain a nuclear chain reaction. Note that this has over 93% enrichment, which can easily sustain a reaction without moderator. But yes, at low enrichment moderators are needed. Gah4 (talk) 09:15, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Wrong. The design of the reactor fuel plates did not allow enough reactivity in anyplace to sustain a nuclear chain reaction without moderation. This is true of every nuclear reactor ever designed that needs a moderator. Examples of reactors that need no moderator exist, such as the fast reactors used in the Kosmos satellites, e.g. Kosmos 954. A moderated reactor, however, cannot magically convert itself to a fast fission reactor when the moderator is absent. It simply won't work and is considered shutdown and safe when the moderator is removed. SL-1 is one such reactor in which the moderator was expelled during the accident, making it intrinsically safe as long as rain (or some other water) did not enter the core. I like to saw logs! (talk) 20:45, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
 * It seems that the critical mass of U235 with a good (I am not sure how good) reflector is about 15kg, so 14kg is close, but maybe not close enough. Even so, I would be careful around 14kg of U235! I don't know about the reflectivity of any nearby materials. Gah4 (talk) 22:49, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Reflectors are generally used with moderated neutrons, however. It seems that you are not very knowledgeable about reactor design. Anything that reduces neutron leakage can be considered a reflector, with water being a common one. Tungsten Carbide is a reflector of fast neutrons, but is uncommon. The SL-1 core can be considered an example in which water is the primary reflector, and thus moderated neutrons are the primary ones being reflected. Let's think about this core in particular. Any of the original reflectors that were designed in were made pretty useless when they decided to operate with a smaller fuel loading, causing the distance to them to increase by several centimeters - except the reflections done by water.
 * Regardless, after the loss of water in the area of the core, the neutrons essentially fly away without a chain reaction. The shutdown margin was very large. Thankfully, it was a small core and apparently not a lot of melting occurred (20% or so), and so the vessel remained intact before they drilled a massive hole in it to look inside. The only appreciable heat was from decay. Sure, it may have been several kilowatts of heat, but the melting didn't bring enough of the fuel together to be critical. There would have been considerable amounts of aluminum mixed in with it. The only thing left to reflect the neutrons was the steel and gravel. Because the neutrons were fast, the U-235 was unable to sustain the reaction. I like to saw logs! (talk) 09:37, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Reflectors are generally used with moderated neutrons, however. It seems that you are not very knowledgeable about reactor design. Anything that reduces neutron leakage can be considered a reflector, with water being a common one. Tungsten Carbide is a reflector of fast neutrons, but is uncommon. The SL-1 core can be considered an example in which water is the primary reflector, and thus moderated neutrons are the primary ones being reflected. Let's think about this core in particular. Any of the original reflectors that were designed in were made pretty useless when they decided to operate with a smaller fuel loading, causing the distance to them to increase by several centimeters - except the reflections done by water.
 * Regardless, after the loss of water in the area of the core, the neutrons essentially fly away without a chain reaction. The shutdown margin was very large. Thankfully, it was a small core and apparently not a lot of melting occurred (20% or so), and so the vessel remained intact before they drilled a massive hole in it to look inside. The only appreciable heat was from decay. Sure, it may have been several kilowatts of heat, but the melting didn't bring enough of the fuel together to be critical. There would have been considerable amounts of aluminum mixed in with it. The only thing left to reflect the neutrons was the steel and gravel. Because the neutrons were fast, the U-235 was unable to sustain the reaction. I like to saw logs! (talk) 09:37, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Not a meltdown
This core did not melt down. Using the term "meltdown" is completely erroneous, since it was destroyed by mechanical explosion. i.e. "catastrophic disassembly." I have kept a single incidence of the erroneous term at the top of the article, primarily due to its use as a non-technical description of a nuclear reactor that overheats and is destroyed from its own heat. It probably should have scare quotes, as it is a so-called "meltdown." As the article states, corium was not found in it. I like to saw logs! (talk) 18:32, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

abnormally large reactivity worth
Can abnormally large reactivity worth be made to sound better. The worth seems especially strange here. Gah4 (talk) 22:46, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:SL-1


text:
Kozienice

Kozienice (קאזשניץ Kozhnits; Koschnitz) is a town in eastern Poland with 21,500 inhabitants (1995). Located four miles from the Vistula, it is the capital of Kozienice County.

Even though Kozienice is part of Lesser Poland, it is situated in the Masovian Voivodeship (since 1999); previously, it was in Radom Voivodeship (1975–1998) and in Kielce Voivodeship (1919–1939, 1945–1975). North-west of Kozienice, in Świerże Górne, Poland's second largest coal-fired thermal Kozienice Power Station is located. Kozienice gives its name to the protected area called Kozienice Landscape Park.

Etymology
In records from 1429, the name of the town was spelled in Latin Coszinicze (Kozinice). In 1569 it was called Kozienycze – the name comes from the given name Kozina.

History
History of the town dates back to 1206, when – together with neighboring villages, Kozienice was owned by the Norbertine Nuns from Płock. Subsequently, it used to belong to Polish crown, and remained so until the Partitions of Poland. In 1326 Kozienice was incorporated by King Władysław I the Elbow-high. Located on the ancient road from Kraków to Vilnius and on the edge of the Kozienice Forest, the town became one of favorite retreats of King Władysław II Jagiełło, who founded a church there in 1394. Due to close proximity of the Kozienice Forest and, thus the easily accessible wood supply a pontoon bridge was built over the river, which was later moved to Czerwińsk and used by Polish troops to cross the Vistula (Wisła) between June 30 and July 3, 1410 (see Polish–Lithuanian–Teutonic War).

In 1467, future King Sigismund I the Old was born in Kozienice at a manor house, which is marked by a monument, erected in 1518 (the oldest non-religious monument in Poland). Kozienice was incorporated as a city in 1549, by King Sigismund II Augustus. In 1559 the king established three annual fairs in Kozienice. It was a royal town, administratively located in the Radom County in the Sandomierz Voivodeship in the Lesser Poland Province of the Polish Crown. In 1652, the town was decimated by a cholera outbreak, and four years later, during the Deluge, a battle between Poles and Swedes took place there. In 1782 Kozienice burns in a fire, and due to the efforts of King Stanisław August Poniatowski, the town was rebuilt, and wooden buildings were replaced by stone houses. In 1784-1788, a manufacture, producing rifles, was founded in Kozienice. The 2nd Polish National Cavalry Brigade was stationed in Kozienice in 1792.

The town was annexed by Austria in the Third Partition of Poland in 1795. In 1809, Poles led by General Józef Zajączek defeated the Austrians in the Battle of Kozienice, and the town then became part of the short-lived Polish Duchy of Warsaw. After its dissolution in 1815 it fell to the Russian Partition of Poland. In 1867, for the first time in history, Kozienice became the seat of a county. A road to Radom was built, as well as barracks of the Imperial Russian Army. In 1897 it was inhabited by 6,391 people (including 3,764 Jews). In 1918 Poland regained independence and the town was reintegrated with the reborn state.

After the joint German-Soviet invasion of Poland, which started World War II, the town was occupied by Germany from 1939 to 1945, administratively included in the Radom District of the General Government (German-occupied central Poland). As part of the AB-Aktion, in June 1940, the Germans carried out mass arrests of Poles, who were afterwards imprisoned and tortured in Skarżysko-Kamienna and then murdered in a forest near Skarżysko-Kamienna. The Polish resistance movement was active in the town.

Jews in Kozienice
Kozienice had a Jewish community with a long history dating back to 1596. Kozienice is pronounced as "Kozhnitz" in Yiddish. In the early 19th century, the Kozhnitzer Magid Yisroel Hopsztajn was one of the pioneers of Hasidism in Poland. He established the Kozhnitz dynasty. In 1856, there were 2,885 people in Kozienice with 1,961 Jews, and in 1897, there were 6,882 people and 3,700 were Jews. Before World War II, about 15,000 souls lived in this region. The Jewish community lived there for about 400 years. The two main industries there were tourism, with Jewish pilgrims visiting the Maggid's tomb, and shoe manufacturing. Kozienice had approximately 5,000 Jews before World War II.

In the mid-19th century we must highlight the enormous influence of the Jewish community of Kozienice composed of the Aidenbaum, Borensztein, Cytron, Fiszman, Frydman, Goldsztein, Grossman, Hopstein, Horowicz, Rotenberg, Tenenbaum and Wolbergier families among many others.

During the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the Germans forced 2,000 Jews into a small local church, where many of them died of suffocation. Kozienice had 15 streets. The Germans established a ghetto in the fall of 1940 in an area of only three streets. A Jewish Judenrat council was established by the Germans, but most prominent Jews refused to serve. On September 27, 1942, 8,000 Jews from Kozienice and nearby towns were sent to the Treblinka extermination camp, where they were murdered on arrival. Only 70–120 Jews were then left in the Kozienice ghetto, but they were deported in late December 1942 to the Pionki slave labor camp and to Skarzysko Kamienna camp. Some Jews, however, were able to survive the Holocaust by hiding with the Poles. Several Poles from Kozienice were sentenced to death or deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp for rescuing Jews. After World War II the survivors emigrated and with time created the Memorial Book of Kozienice, with supplementary List of Martyrs from Kozienice which includes residents of Kozienice killed in Kozienice itself as well as those deported to death camps where they were gassed.

Notable people

 * Frans Krajcberg (1921–2017) a Polish Brazilian painter, sculptor, engraver and photographer.
 * Edmund Lesisz (1906-1943) a Polish Captain, a leader of the Raid on Fraustadt in 1939
 * Julia Michalska (born 1985) a Polish rower and team bronze medallist at the 2008 Summer Olympics
 * Irene Gut Opdyke (1922–2003) a Polish nurse, aided Polish Jews persecuted by Nazi Germany during WWII.
 * Sigismund I the Old (1467–1548) King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1506-1548.

Climate
Kozienice has an oceanic climate (Köppen climate classification: Cfb) using the -3 C isotherm or a humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification: Dfb) using the 0 C isotherm.

Sport
The local football team is. It competes in the lower leagues.

Twin towns — sister cities
Kozienice is twinned with:

 * 🇺🇸 Roswell, United States (2023)
 * 🇩🇪 Göllheim, Germany (1996)
 * 🇺🇦 Chuhuiv, Ukraine (2001)
 * 🇸🇰 Medzilaborce, Slovakia (2005)

title: Kozienice


text:
New Tecumseth

New Tecumseth is a town in Simcoe County, in south-central Ontario, Canada. While it is not officially a part of the Greater Toronto Area, it is counted, in terms of the census, as being a part of the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area.

History
The municipality was created through the amalgamation of the municipal governments of several communities with the Township of Tecumseth. The name 'New Tecumseth' was chosen because a Town of Tecumseh already exists in Essex County. The borders of the old township, with some adjustments along the eastern edge, and with the addition of all of Alliston, are the borders of the new town.

Communities
The main centres in New Tecumseth are the communities of Alliston, Tottenham, and Beeton.

The town also includes the smaller communities of Allimil, Green Briar, Nicolston, Penville, Randall, Rich Hill, Schomberg Heights and Thompsonville.

Education
New Tecumseth has nine elementary schools and two area high schools:

 * Alliston Union PS (Alliston)
 * Banting Memorial High School (Alliston)
 * Boyne River PS (Alliston)
 * Ernest Cumberland ES (Alliston)
 * FX O'Reilly Catholic School (Tottenham)
 * Monsignor Ronan Catholic School (Beeton)
 * St. James Catholic School (Tottenham)
 * St. Paul's Catholic School (Alliston)
 * St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Secondary School (Tottenham)
 * Tecumseth Beeton ES (Beeton)
 * Tecumseth South Central PS (Tottenham)
 * Tottenham PS (Tottenham)
 * Alliston Community Christian School (Alliston)(Private)

Public schools are in the Simcoe County District School Board and Catholic with the Simcoe Muskoka Catholic District School Board.

Demographics
In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, New Tecumseth had a population of $43,948$ living in $15,854$ of its $16,249$ total private dwellings, a change of NaN% from its 2016 population of $34,242$. With a land area of 273.87 km2, it had a population density of in 2021.

Notable persons

 * Kate Aitken, influential cooking and homemaking expert, television and radio broadcaster, born in Beeton. A plaque was placed in Beeton Park in her honour.
 * Dr Sir Frederick Banting, physician and scientist born in Alliston. Discovered insulin with his assistant, Charles Best.
 * Sir William Osler, physician and professor of medicine was born in Bond Head (formerly in Tecumseth and now part of Bradford West Gwillimbury). He has been called 'the Father of Modern Medicine'.
 * Deanne Rose, Olympic medal-winning soccer player was born in New Tecumseth.
 * Jim Rutherford, retired NHL goaltender and Stanley-Cup-winning General Manager was born in Beeton.

title: New Tecumseth


text:
Opoczno

Opoczno is a town in south-central Poland, seat of Opoczno County in the Łódź Voivodeship. It has a long and rich history, and in the past it used to be one of the most important urban centers of northwestern Lesser Poland. Currently, Opoczno is an important road and rail junction; its patron saint is Saint Cecilia, and the town is famous across Poland for its folklore.

Location
Opoczno lies on the Wąglanka river, in northwestern corner of historic Lesser Poland, on the boundary between Lesser Polish Upland, and Mazovian Lowland. On December 31, 2020, its population was 20,746. The town and its commune have a total area of 190 km2, which makes it one of the largest communes in the voivodeship. In the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Opoczno was part of Sandomierz Voivodeship, and for centuries was the seat of a large county; in the Second Polish Republic (and from 1950 to 1975), it belonged to Kielce Voivodeship until 1 April 1938 and to Łódź Voivodeship after that.

Transport
The town is an important communication hub. It lies near the Central Rail Line, which connects Silesia and Kraków with Warsaw. Opoczno has a rail station, along the line nr. 25, with connections to Tomaszów Mazowiecki and Skarżysko-Kamienna. Furthermore, the town lies along National Road Nr. 12 (future Expressway S12), which creates a connection between western and eastern parts of Poland, and has a good connection with the nearby A1 Motorway.

Kingdom of Poland
First mention of Opoczno comes from 1284, when Prince Leszek II the Black wrote in documents that the village belonged to the Sandomierz Collegiate church. According to historian F. Kiryk, the history of Opoczno as a town date from the mid-13th century, when it was granted town charter by Duke of Sandomierz, Bolesław V the Chaste. For unknown reason, Opoczno declined in the late 13th century, and turned into a village called Staromieście or Old Opoczno.

The prosperity for Opoczno began during the reign of King Kazimierz Wielki. In the year 1347 he decided to move the village to another location, and to found the so-called New Town, located southwest of Staromieście. The New Opoczno had the original area of 6 hectares, and was surrounded with a defensive wall. Staromieście, together with the ancient Mary Magdalene church remained outside of the wall. A new church of St. Bartholomew was built, together with a royal castle, located in southwestern part of the town. Opoczno gained its Magdeburg rights in 1365, and its first starosta was Sobek z Wyszkowic. The defensive wall had the length of 940 meters, with two gates. Opoczno quickly developed, due to convenient location along two busy merchant routes – from Kyiv to Wrocław, and from Toruń to Sandomierz. According to legend, King Kazimierz Wielki favored Opoczno over other towns because it was the birthplace of his legendary mistress Esterka. In the second half of the 14th century Opoczno prospered, and in the 1360s, it was named the capital of a newly created county, which meant that it was no longer subjected to the Castellany of Żarnów. In ca. 1405, the complex of a hospital together with a Holy Spirit church was built. Opoczno was a county seat and royal town of, administratively located in the Sandomierz Voivodeship in the Lesser Poland Province. During the Polish Golden Age, good times continued, as both in the Kingdom of Poland and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Opoczno was one of the most important urban centers of the Sandomierz Voivodeship. In 1405, a hospital was opened here, and in 1550, with the permission of King Sigismund II Augustus, waterworks were built. In 1599, the third gate in the defensive wall was added. At that time, Opoczno had as many as 90 artisans, with several guilds, such as shoemakers, blacksmiths, saddlers, and coppersmiths. In 1646, a synagogue was opened for the Jewish minority. The period of prosperity came to an end during the Swedish invasion of Poland (1655–1660), when Opoczno together with its castle was burned to the ground by the invaders, and most of its inhabitants were murdered. Several skirmishes and battles between Poles and Swedish invaders took place at that time in Opoczno County. On September 9, 1655, the division of Stefan Czarniecki attacked Swedish reiters near Inowłódz. Three days later, the Poles attacked Swedish units under Arvid Wittenberg, which were resting by Opoczno. On September 16, 1655, the Battle of Żarnów took place, which resulted in Polish defeat. After the invasion, the destruction of Opoczno was complete, with only 15 houses still standing in the town in 1660. All artisans were killed, and the development of the town was stopped for many years. Similar was the fate of other towns of the county; in Drzewica, only 21 houses remained, and 22 in Odrzywół.

19th century
Following the Third Partition of Poland, the town was annexed by the Habsburg Empire. After the Polish victory in the Austro-Polish War of 1809, it was regained by Poles and included within the short-lived Duchy of Warsaw, and after its dissolution in 1815, it became part of Russian-controlledCongress Poland. At that time, the town was divided into Catholic and Jewish districts. The population was decimated by frequent outbreaks of cholera, which returned several times until as late as the 1890s. In 1834, the Opoczno County was re-created, and until World War I, Opoczno belonged to Radom Governorate. In 1828, the population of the town was app. 3,500, with 342 houses. Both Polish rebellions in Congress Poland (November Uprising and January Uprising) resulted in Tsarist repressions, which were particularly hard in the 1860s. Opoczno was one of major center of the insurrection, and the town was temporarily captured by the rebels on January 31, 1863. In early 1863, and in the summer of that year, several skirmishes took place here In the late 19th century, the process of industrialization and development began, spurred by the construction of a rail line from Koluszki to Skarżysko-Kamienna (1885). Several new businesses and shops opened, with the largest one being the tile manufacturer Dziewulski i Lange (D✡L), which today is known as Opoczno S.A. founded in Congress Poland by Jan Dziewulski with brothers Józef and Władysław Lange in 1883–86. In the early stages of World War I, heavy fighting took place here between Austro-German and Russian units. On May 15, 1915, Austrian troops entered Opoczno, together with Polish Legionnaires of Józef Piłsudski. The Austrians, among whom were many Czech soldiers, surrendered without fighting in October 1918.

20th century
By the early 20th century, the town had a hospital, a library, schools, a rail station (built in 1885), a mail office, a telegraph station, administrative offices, churches and a synagogue. Also, at that time the royal castle, destroyed by the Swedes in the 1650s, was rebuilt. On August 2, 1919, Opoczno was attached to Kielce Voivodeship, where it remained until March 31, 1939, when it was transferred to Łódź Voivodeship (see Territorial changes of Polish Voivodeships on April 1, 1938). Before the outbreak of World War II, the population of the town was app. 11,000. In the early stages of World War II, Opoczno was the site of fierce combat during the Invasion of Poland. The Wehrmacht entered the town on Thursday, September 7, 1939, at 2 p.m., after a heavy bombing by the Luftwaffe. The area of Opoczno was defended by Prusy Army, which concentrated between Piotrków Trybunalski and Tomaszów Mazowiecki. Wilhelm Fritz von Roettig, the first general to be killed in the war, was killed here just a few days after the war began, on September 10, on the road between Inowłódz and Opoczno. Opoczno was one of main centers of anti-German resistance. The area of the town saw first underground activity as early as spring 1940, when Major Henryk Dobrzański's partisan "Separated Unit of the Polish Army" operated there. The Home Army district of Opoczno had more than 2,000 soldiers (as for December 1, 1944). In 1940, a Jewish ghetto was opened, which housed several thousand people, forcibly transferred here from other locations. The ghetto was liquidated in January 1943, when its residents were transported to Treblinka extermination camp. German occupation ended on January 17, 1945, when the Wehrmacht was pushed out by the Red Army, with 150 Soviet soldiers killed during the fighting in the town. Two weeks later, first high school in the history of Opoczno was opened. Until 1975, Opoczno belonged to Kielce Voivodeship, and afterwards it was part of the Piotrków Voivodeship until 1998. In 1958–1964, a new hospital was built, and in September 1960, the town celebrated its 600th anniversary.

Sights
Among most interesting points of interest in the town is the Opoczno Castle. Its origins date from the mid-14th century, when King Casimir III the Great initiated construction of a number of castles across Poland. Opoczno Castle was located within town walls, and was the seat of a starosta. It burned down in the great fire in the 15th century, and its current shape is the result of the reconstruction of the original complex. Another interesting object is the House of Esterka. According to legend, Esterka was a Jewish mistress of Casimir the Great, was the daughter of a tailor from Opoczno, and the house in which she allegedly was raised is located in Opoczno's market square. The house was reconstructed in 1893, and it still preserves original, 16th-century Latin inscriptions, together with coat of arms of Sandomierz Voivodeship, to which Opoczno belonged for centuries. The house currently serves as a library.

Another sight in Opoczno is a monument to the Holocaust victims which was unveiled on October 25, 2012. The monument bears the inscription carved in stone: "In memory of the Jewish inhabitants of the Opoczno county, who were gathered on this square on october 27, 1942, and sent by the Germans to the death camp in Treblinka" and is signed "On the 70th anniversary of these events, the city and people of the city and county of Opoczno." On November 16, 2012, the plaque became target of night-time vandalism; it was lifted with a crow bar, overturned, and shattered. The shocked community rebuilt it in no time with additional stone base, and the second ceremonial unveiling took place on December 18, 2012 in the presence of Opoczno mayor, as well as numerous state dignitaries and parliamentarians, Catholic priests, and the Chief Rabi of Poland, Michael Schudrich.

Sports
Opoczno is home to People’s Sports Club (Ludowy Klub Sportowy) Ceramika Opoczno, which was established in 1945 as OMTUR, and which in the past bore several names. For eight seasons (1996–2004), Ceramika played in Polish Second Division.

Notable residents

 * Edmund Biernacki (1866–1911), physician
 * Grzegorz Bociek (born 1991), volleyball player
 * Adam Kszczot (born 1989), middle-distance runner
 * Wlodzimierz Perzynski (1877–1930), writer and dramatist
 * Grzegorz Piechna (born 1976), footballer
 * Patryk Dominik Sztyber (born 1979), heavy metal musician
 * Żabson (born 1994), rapper and songwriter

Twin towns
Opoczno is twinned with:

 * 🇨🇿 Opočno, Czech Republic
 * 🇵🇱 Jarocin, Poland
 * 🇸🇰 Bytča, Slovakia
 * 🇺🇦 Sloviansk, Ukraine
 * 🇺🇦 Zviahel, Ukraine

title: Opoczno