text:
User talk:JackofOz

You are very welcome to leave a new message here at the PLEASANTRY EXCHANGE. Messages not displaying the requisite degree of pleasantry will be given short shrift.  With this in mind, I command you - in the nicest possible way - to clickHERE.

How?
... do you shrive a message, exactly?

(Fill in lovely pleasantries here, wishing you a delightful new year and recalling our happy previous interactions.) --Trovatore (talk) 23:14, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

 * Happy new year to you and all, User:Trovatore.
 * Sadly, the meaning of your question is not readily apparent to me, and Wiktionary:shrive has not helped. Over. -- Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  23:24, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, you mentioned a class of messages that would get "short shrift", which means they have little shriving time allowed. --Trovatore (talk) 00:23, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Ah yes, indeed. How easily one forgets when one is at my advanced stage of life. Not much point making threats if one forgets one has made them, is there?
 * Anyhoo, let us proceed in a forwardly direction. See Wiktionary: short shrift, Meaning 4. -- Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  02:14, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, glad we got that cleared up before Shrove Tuesday.
 * I remember there was an episode of The Rockford Files called "Rosa Krantz and Gilda Stern are dead". Don't remember anything else about it but presumably those were the names of the murder victims.  Sometimes writers have to have a little fun. --Trovatore (talk) 23:28, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Just in case anyone comes across this exchange and decides to Google the title, it turns out it's actually "Rosendahl and Gilda Stern are Dead", so they made the allusion very slightly less obvious than I had remembered. --Trovatore (talk) 02:20, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Paul Bowles vandalism
have you tried reading the article linked in the new york review of books? Search the quotations? Thank you, if you have any further thoughts please reply to my talk page before reverting any edits to Paul bowles article. here is the link for your convenience, you may start at the middle where he described the locals as "bunch of Ay-rabs"  https://archive.is/8mSH0#selection-527.0-535.11  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:4040:9900:C000:2538:45A5:2CBE:C89C (talk) 02:14, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * In my edit summary there was no denial of the veracity of your cites. I removed the text because of (1) lack of balance, and (2) the fact that there was nothing about these claims in the body of the article. The WP:lede section is meant to summarise what appears below ("In Wikipedia, the lead section is an introduction to an article and a summary of its most important contents"), but as there was nothing below of any relevance, there was nothing to summarise.
 * Please post new threads at the bottom of a talk page.
 * Please learn the rules of Wikipedia. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  07:06, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * hello
 * I understand we have a difference of opinion between what you described as being "lack of balance". I cannot understand how a white predator who engaged in such heinous and unforgiveable crimes. whose "works of art" are a source of inspiration for deviant white pedophilias who continue to plague the sovereign and honorable country of Morocco to this very day; warrant no mention of it in the lead paragraph because you happen to believe it is "lack of balance".
 * In respect of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Civility, I will now request a 3rd party moderator to meditate this matter, in the meantime; as you do not dispute the essence of the claim, I will ask you to wait and refrain from further editing the article until the process resolves itself. 2600:4040:9900:C000:ED31:ECD:F340:1FEC (talk) 00:54, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * In respect of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Civility, I will now request a 3rd party moderator to meditate this matter, in the meantime; as you do not dispute the essence of the claim, I will ask you to wait and refrain from further editing the article until the process resolves itself. 2600:4040:9900:C000:ED31:ECD:F340:1FEC (talk) 00:54, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

 * You seem to misinterpret me. The lack of balance, and the mention of these matters in the lede para and nowhere else, are completely separate issues. -- Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  03:10, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Also, it's rather disingenuous of you to reinstate your edits, then immediately request me to refrain from further editing. If you want to call in a moderator, that is your right; but you do it while things stand as they are. You don't request a moderator and then make a further edit before requesting me not to do likewise. As I said above, learn the rules of Wikipedia. -- Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  03:15, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Russian music publishers (people)

A tag has been placed on Category:Russian music publishers (people) indicating that it is currently empty, and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion. If it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and removing the speedy deletion tag. Liz Read! Talk! 03:22, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

2024

Die Zeit, die Tag und Jahre macht

Happy New Year

2024

-- Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:28, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

On the Main page: the person who made the pictured festival possible --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:25, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Today a friend's birthday, with related music and new vacation pics --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:30, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Some more weird/cool names for ya
Hello. You may or may not be aware that your list of cool names was shared a coupla days ago on Twitter by Annie Rauwerda of Depths of Wikipedia. Here's her post. Predictably, people responded with lots of suggestions of names to add. I added Marijuana Pepsi Vandyck, but lack the motivation to do any more. I'm sharing the suggestions here, in case you wanna do it. I haven't bothered to check the veracity of these names, so buyer beware. For what it's worth, many if not most of these folks have Wikipedia articles about them; I've boldfaced a few that do.

Thelonius Sphere Monk, God Shammgod, Stirling Mortlock, Staff Sgt. Max Fightmaster, Cardinal Sin, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Rad Heroman, Kool-Aid McKinstry, Christ Bongo, Radek Bonk, Blinky Palermo, Storm Hunter, Amillion Buggs, Dick Trickle, Dong Dong, Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart, D'Brickashaw Ferguson, Hotman Paris, Preserved Fish, Ponty Bone, Greg Killmaster, Major Dick Bong, Eagle-Eye Cherry, Pootie Tang, Percival Spear, Shamus Beagelhole, and Tanqueray Beavers.

While I'm here, I'll just share that I'm very impressed with your userpage, and with all the work you've done on WP. I'm a newbie, so all I can do is gape in awe, and dream of making a userpage half that cool. Cheers ... Yesthatbruce (talk) 06:07, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

 * Thanks for that. I'm not a Twitterist so I wasn't aware. But anyone's welcome to add names.
 * I too was a newbie once. It feels like just yesterday, but nooo. Persevere and all good things will happen. -- Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  06:26, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Update: I have discovered I do indeed have a Twitter account. I've upgraded my profile a bit. -- Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  07:45, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for January 26
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February
Today, I remember 12 years of musical company and give thanks to Seiji Ozawa. -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:27, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

 * Thank you, Gerda. I've loved Ozawa's recording of Gurre-Lieder for decades. He used to be a young man. So did I, come to think of it. Better get on with it ... -- Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:00, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Did you see my personal memories? - I took a photo then, but not in focus, and probably not really permitted ;) ... and today a woman and her views --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:26, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes; lovely. -- Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:36, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you! - The image, taken on a cemetery last year after the funeral of a distant but dear family member, commemorates today, with thanks for their achievements, four subjects mentioned on the Main page and Vami_IV, a friend here. Listen to music by Tchaikovsky (an article where one of the four is pictured), sung by today's subject (whose performance on stage I enjoyed two days ago). --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:16, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Mozart wrote Die Zauberflöte, posters and sources say Die Zauberflöte. I assume a requested move might result in renaming, as for Der fliegende Holländer, but have better things to do. Can we agree? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:18, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Not really, Gerda. As I said in my edit summary, it all comes down to how Wikipedia names its articles. That can of course change over time, for a range of reasons, but currently the article is The Magic Flute, and Die Zauberflöte is a redirect. Redirects have their place, but imo as a general rule we should not be linking to redirects but to articles proper. -- Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  01:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Hmm, mixing in — why not link to redirects???? It's usually the best solution (better than using a pipe) when the text that you'd like to have appear in the linking article does not match the article title.  And I don't see any reason why the choice of the article title, from multiple plausible possibilities, needs to influence the text you write in the linking article. --Trovatore (talk) 02:12, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the support. When there's a good redirect, why not use it? A woman who gets married but keeps her maiden name as her professional name. A village with a German name and a Polish name. Depending on context, the redirect may be the better choice. If a production of Die Zauberflöte is performed by the English National Opera, it's of course better to use The Magic Flute, but a work composed in German (as one of the first few notable ones in the language), performed in German in Germany, should be Zauberflöte, imho. I wouldn't typically correct others, but in an article I stand behind, I mean it ;) - During the FAC for Rossini, I talked to the principal editors, explaining that we can't speak of the premiere of The Barber of Seville, when it was given composed in Italian and performed in Italy. And they understood, and I began to believe in miracles. On Rossini's rare birthday --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:04, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
 * For the life of me, I cannot see why the nationality of the presenting organisation is relevant. If both the ENO and the Vienna State Opera presented The Magic Flute, both in the original German, why would we call the first one "The Magic Flute" merely because ENO happens to be an organisation based in an English-speaking country, but the second one "Die Zauberflöte" merely because VSO happens to be based in a German-speaking country? What if they both presented their productions as part of the BBC Proms in London? Would the organisers risk confusing the public by giving them different titles?
 * What if the opera were presented in Athens, Moscow, Saigon, Beijing or Riyadh (either in German or in the local languages)? Would we be required, under your thesis, to refer to the productions as Ο Μαγικός Αυλός, Волшебная флейта, Cây sáo thần, 魔笛 and الناي السحري, respectively? I hope you're not suggesting that. -- Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:17, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I wasn't clear. Nationality plays no role (for me). The ENO has a program of performing everything in English, like the Komische Oper Berlin has a program to play everything in German. For the ENO, I'd say Dido and Aneas and The Magic Flute, and for the KOB I'd say Dido und Äneas and Die Zauberflöte, as their posters have. The Metropolitan Opera and the Berlin State Opera, however, will probably play (in the original language) Le nozze di Figaro and Die Zauberflöte, look at Met (they also play The Magic Flute, for the Holiday Presentation), look State Opera. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:44, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

 * That's all still irrelevant, for me. La bohème was written in Italian and is almost always sung in Italian. Yet it has a French title. Why? Because that is the title that it was given and is universally used. Do Italian opera companies use an Italian title? Not that I've ever heard of. Now, I'm sure it has been performed in English (hence "Your tiny hand is frozen" instead of "Che gelida manina"), and German (I've heard Tauber et al. singing arias in German) and probably various other languages too. Does the title change each time? No.
 * The crucial point is that we're writing an English-language encyclopedia for English readers, and we cannot assume that they read or understand any other languages. If it's necessary to explicitly state what language an opera is being performed in or a book is written in, that's fine, but that is a world away from actually referring to the opera's title or book's title in that language. We might tell readers that "Peter Ustinov recorded excerpts from War and Peace in the original Russian", but we would never tell readers that "Peter Ustinov recorded excerpts from Война и Мир". English Wikipedia decides, by consensus, what the titles of its articles are. Those are the titles we should use when referring to those things in other articles. -- Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:23, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
 * By (changing) consensus, Wagner's work is now Der fliegende Holländer. I'd still write The Flying Dutchman if I referred to a performance at the ENO. It's good practise to add a translation to English when using foreign titles, especially in biographies. Rossini composed Il barbiere di Siviglia, and that's what the Met announces. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:32, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
 * ps: Perhaps just read Rossini's or Wagner's article and see how these things are handled in FA class articles. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:36, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Janszoon
I understand your reasoning. It's just jarring that the first person named in the lead (one of only two) is unknown to the vast majority of Australians. To give him such prominence might suggest that he's some iconic figure in the culture. There's a general awareness though that the Dutch founded Australia first, hence why I condensed it to that. - HappyWaldo (talk) 09:58, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

 * How many people know the name of our first prime minister, or our first governor-general? I'd say a lot fewer these days than one might suppose, thanks partly to our "world class" [sic] "education system" [sic]. George Washington probably rings a bell with more Aussies than Edmund Barton or Lord Hopetoun do. On this basis, would you propose skipping any mention of them from our articles? I certainly hope not.
 * Re Janszoon: Telling people what they already know, but going no further when the information is available, seems a recipe for dumbing our readers down. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  11:11, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

CfD nomination at
A category or categories you have created have been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at  on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. House Blaster  (talk · he/him) 20:13, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Category:Novels by Alexandre Dumas fils has been nominated for deletion
Category:Novels by Alexandre Dumas fils has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to decide whether it complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Mason (talk) 05:01, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Nomination of Yermolay for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Yermolay is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/Yermolay until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished. AllTheUsernamesAreInUse (talk) 18:20, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

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May music
I remember our recent uplifting choral concert, with Bach cantatas and an oratorio, in pictures, on my user page and in my concerts. -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:59, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Today is the Feast of the Ascension for which Bach composed his oratorio, - perhaps watch a bit how the closing movement was performed in Bach's church. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:55, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Magdalena Hinterdobler is on the Main page today, together with an opera that reviewers deemed not interesting and too obscure for our general readers. The soprano thought differently, - listen and see. - Also on the Main page: a TFA by sadly missed Vami_IV. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:28, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for improving articles in May! - Today's story mentions a concert I loved to hear and a piece I loved to sing in choir, 150 years old OTD. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:52, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Noblesse oblige. :) -- Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:31, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
 * What do you think about the notablity of the baritone's colleague? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:34, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not really interested in getting involved, thanks Gerda. -- Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  09:18, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
 * understand ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:33, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
 * closed as keep - I just couldn't understand how the lead - a few sentences - wouldn't clearly state that she is notable. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:00, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * 29 May 1913: The Rite of Spring - today's story --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:56, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Today's story is about Samuel Kummer, one of five items on the Main page - more musing on my talk --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:06, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Gratitude
I have learnt a lot from you, JackofOz. Many thanks. 04:57, 22 May 2024 (UTC) Omidinist (talk) 04:57, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

 * Wow. I cannot imagine what has prompted this effusion of gratitude, but I do appreciate it. Thank you, User:Omidinist. -- Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  07:20, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

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Disambigs, etc.
Hiya, cobber, Did You Know™ that you can prevent the notices from DPL bot by clicking on → Gadgets → and enabling "Display links to disambiguation pages in orange"? It does what it says on the tin. The bot will henceforth leave you alone. If you really want to make a WL to a disambig page, you can link to.

Thanks for your edits on the BSO and its discography. On another matter, I wonder if you would be at all interested in helping me get User:MinorProphet/Draft subpages/Joseph Beecham to a publishable state. Apart from some standard ce, I'm not quite sure what to do with the fairly extensive quotes from contemporary newspapers, which are not easily available for the average reader, but which contain (i fink) lots of relevant info.

Best, MinorProphet (talk) 17:43, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

 * Greetings, O prophetic one. Thanks for the Gadgets suggestion. Very helpful indeed.
 * I'll give Joe Beecham my world-famous once-over soon. It seems to have a lot of useful stuff, but it can probably be trimmed somewhat. Cheers. -- Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  00:52, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

 * Ha! Checking to see if you even bothered to reply, I glanced at your previous messages: I could listen to/natter about Gurrelieder for ever. Strangely enough, only a few years ago (after I wrote the BSO articles) I went to a performance of Schoenberg's farewell to late Romanticism given (appropriately enough) in Central Hall where the British Symphony Orchestra made those recordings in the 1930s. Maybe I was sitting in one of the least favoured seats, but even with the vast assembled combined forces of perhaps 130 players and 200 singers, the music just seemed to disappear completely, utterly swallowed up in that huge and somehow unsympathetic space. Ah well, the technology of the time seemed to cope better than my all-too-human ear. MinorProphet (talk) 21:23, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Category:Music pedagogues by instrument has been nominated for renaming
Category:Music pedagogues by instrument has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether it complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. QuietHere (talk | contributions) 21:51, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

July music
Thank you for having created April Cantelo! - I'll look at "her" tomorrow. - Today's story is about Ruth Hesse, with a (new) pic in the article only, sadly. I found it difficult to point at a YouTube sample, because yes, her signature roles - the Nurse and Brangäne - exist in great full-length operas with great casts, but hard to find her. - Talking of YouTube: today I was pointed at Elijah by a friend who performed in the concert of the Dessoff Choirs in their centenary year, and I'm quite impressed by samples (beginning and No. 32 where I linked it) - enjoy! -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:19, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

(sadly, another musician needs attention sooner than Cantelo) - Today's story is about a photographer who took iconic pictures, especially View from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Manhattan, 9/11, yesterday's was a great mezzo, and on Thursday we watched a sublime ballerina. If that's not enough my talk offers chamber music from two amazing concerts. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:35, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

title: User talk:JackofOz


text:
User talk:Hideshi

Hello, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them:

 * How to edit a page
 * How to write a great article
 * Naming conventions
 * Manual of Style

If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

Tip: you can sign your name with ~

Dori | Talk 05:21, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Hideshi! and welcome to wikipedia. Thanks for your additions to the signal transduction article, the information is good, but I think the introduction still needs some work to be a good general encyclopedia entry, please have a look at the Talk:Signal transduction page for my comments. Cheers, --Lexor 10:28, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

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

title: User talk:Hideshi


text:
User talk:Blashyrk

Hello, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them:

 * How to edit a page
 * How to write a great article
 * Naming conventions
 * Manual of Style

If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

Tip: you can sign your name with ~

Dori | Talk 05:21, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)

What exactly are you trying to achieve over at Distributed Coordination Function? Dysprosia 12:54, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

title: User talk:Blashyrk


text:
Piano Concerto No. 17 (Mozart)

The Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major, K. 453, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was written in 1784.

The work is orchestrated for solo piano, flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns in G (and C for Andante), and strings. Like most of Mozart's concertos, it is in three movements: 1. Allegro, (includes a cadenza)

2. Andante, in C major

3. Allegretto – Presto,

According to the date that the composer himself noted on the score, the concerto was completed on 12 April 1784.

The date of the premiere is uncertain. In one view, the work is said to have been premiered by Mozart's student Barbara Ployer on June 13, 1784, at a concert to which Mozart had invited Giovanni Paisiello to hear both her and his new compositions, including also his recently written Quintet in E flat for Piano and Winds. Afterwards, Ployer was joined by Mozart in a performance of the Sonata for Two Pianos, K. 448. Another possibility, advanced by Lorenz (2006, 314), is that Mozart did not wait over two months to premiere the work, but performed it in his concert with Regina Strinasacchi on 29 April 1784 at the Kärntnertortheater. As a general consensus for researchers, it can be said with relative certainty that the work premiered during the mid-to-late spring of 1784, following its completion.

The finale is a variation movement whose theme was sung by Mozart's starling.

title: Piano Concerto No. 17 (Mozart)


text:
PCF

PCF may refer to:

Computing

 * PC Format, a monthly magazine
 * Percentage-closer filtering, a shadow mapping technique in computer graphics

 * Pivotal Cloud Foundry, a version of the open source Cloud Foundry PaaS software supported by Pivotal Software
 * Point coordination function, a media access control technique used in wireless LANs
 * Pair correlation function, a statistical tool to measure spatial correlation
 * Polymer-clad fiber, a type of optical fiber
 * Programming Computable Functions, a functional programming language

File formats

 * Physical Constraints File, a file format for the specification of FPGA
 * Portable Compiled Format, a file format for distributing bitmap fonts
 * Portable Content Format, a file format for DVB-based interactive television
 * Profile Configuration File, a configuration file used to set up VPN connections
 * Page configuration Format (Guidewire)

Technology

 * Photonic-crystal fiber
 * Pounds per cubic foot, a non-SI unit for density
 * Pivotal Cloud Foundry
 * Product carbon footprint method

Other

 * Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change
 * PAP Community Foundation, Singapore charity
 * Parti Communiste Français, the French Communist party
 * Participatory Culture Foundation, U.S. charity to encourage individual political participation
 * A US Navy hull classification symbol: Patrol craft fast (PCF) (Swift boats)
 * PathCheck Foundation, COVID-19 Exposure Notification App
 * PCF theory, in mathematics
 * President's Choice Financial, Canadian financial service company
 * Prevent Cancer Foundation, U.S. charity
 * Princeton Christian Fellowship, campus ministry
 * Prostate Cancer Foundation, U.S. charity
 * People Can Fly, a video game developer
 * Port Canaveral, Florida, United States

title: PCF


text:
User:JackofOz

"Let me go quietly on with my work; if it is that of a madman, well, so much the worse - I can't help it - Vincent van Gogh" I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils - Theodore Roethke "Shut your eyes and open your eyes - Jack of Oz" "La vie s'arrange, mais autrement. (Life works out, but not in the way you expect.) - Sebastian Faulks"

For a complete catalogue of my (mis)deeds, see:

 * Research Notes: Research redlinks & greenlinks

 * The Sinister World of Jack of Oz

 * Honours, awards and DYKs

Bragging

 * Alpha Index: A-B • C-D • E-H • I-L • M-O • P-R • S • T-end

 * Chronological Index: 2004-08 • 2009-10 • 2011-12 • 2013-14 • 2015-16 • 2017-18 • 2019-20 • 2021-22 • 2023-24

 * Thematic Index

WIP & research notes

 * Research notes: User:JackofOz/Research redlinks

 * Unresolved questions
 * Anagrams
 * Arthur Benjamin
 * Dedications
 * Funereana
 * Ministers not in Parliament
 * Monuments to composers
 * Related classical musicians
 * Surname-related film titles
 * Cool names of real people
 * Poems for remembrance

Style/spelling issues

 * Music style issues
 * Musical styles
 * Spelling errors

Favourites

 * Favourites
 * Timeless Tunes for Tuneless Times
 * Well-loved films

Personal

 * The Sinister World of Jack of Oz
 * My Wikipedia interests and activities
 * Honours, awards and DYKs
 * User:JackofOz/PENISS
 * User:JackofOz/LIKEMINDED
 * Ref Desk questions
 * Family connections
 * People I've met or wish I had
 * Published Letters to Editors
 * Synchronicity

 * Who would I be?
 * Things I must have
 * Sandbox
 * Bits and Pieces

title: User:JackofOz


text:
Talk:Kamal Haasan

Removing reference to Thirakatha Movie
I have removed a line with reference to the Thirakatha movie. As can be seen from the Wikipedia article of the movie, the director has categorically stated that the movie is a work of fiction. Wikipedia can not be spreading speculation. Hence removed the line regarding the movie. 183.82.27.248 (talk) 08:40, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Regarding edit
Why you are constantly deleting my edit.i added a reliable source.why you are deleting that, it's not an external link, the link I attached to it is an wikipedia page only.why u are doing this?pls answer me. VishKum (talk) 13:31, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Why you are constantly deleting my edit.i added a reliable source.why you are deleting that, it's not an external link, the link I attached to it is an wikipedia page only.why u are doing this?pls answer me. VishKum (talk) 13:56, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Details for Rajinikanth not Kamal Haasan in document
The page shows information for Rajinikanth not Kamal Haasan. Attempt to revert to previous correct version is not allowed. 2601:645:8400:621:CC75:13C6:D1C:B7FD (talk) 05:35, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

 * so tomorrow you will put info of Barrack obama with name of Joe biden  and say it cannot be reverted back? 223.190.92.223 (talk) 05:51, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

I have taken care of it. Vaazan (talk) 06:56, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Kamal Haasan


text:
User talk:Sdibb

Hello, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them:

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Dori | Talk 05:30, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)

Arnold Friberg
I noticed this article was on your TODO list. Well, I just created it, so enjoy. (^_^) ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjo e  22:52, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

title: User talk:Sdibb


text:
Access point

Access point or Access Point may refer to:
 * Access Point (Antarctica), a rocky point on Anvers Island, Antarctica
 * Wireless access point, a device to connect to a wireless computer network
 * Subject access point, a method in a bibliographic database by which books, journals, and other documents are accessed

title: Access point


text:
James Bowdoin

James Bowdoin II (August 7, 1726 – November 6, 1790) was an American political and intellectual leader from Boston, Massachusetts, during the American Revolution and the following decade. He initially gained fame and influence as a wealthy merchant. He served in both branches of the Massachusetts General Court from the 1750s to the 1770s. Although he was initially supportive of the royal governors, he opposed British colonial policy and eventually became an influential advocate of independence. He authored a highly political report on the 1770 Boston Massacre that has been described by historian Francis Walett as one of the most influential pieces of writing that shaped public opinion in the colonies.

From 1775 to 1777, he served as president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress's executive council, the de facto head of the Massachusetts government. He was elected president of the constitutional convention that drafted the state's constitution in 1779, and ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1780, losing to John Hancock. In 1785, following Hancock's resignation, he was elected governor. Due to the large debts of Massachusetts, incurred from the Revolutionary War, Bowdoin ran on a platform of fiscal responsibility. During his two years in office, the combination of poor economic conditions and his harsh fiscal policy laid down by his government led to the uprising known as Shays' Rebellion. Bowdoin personally funded militia forces that were instrumental in putting down the uprising. His high-handed treatment of the rebels may have contributed to his loss of the 1787 election, in which the populist Hancock was returned to office.

In addition to his political activities, Bowdoin was active in scientific pursuits, collaborating with Benjamin Franklin in his pioneering research on electricity. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1787. He was a founder and first president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, to whom he bequeathed his library. Bowdoin College in Maine was named in his honor after a bequest by his son James III.

Early life
James Bowdoin II was born in Boston to Hannah Portage Bowdoin and James Bowdoin, a wealthy Boston merchant. His grandfather, Pierre Baudouin, was a Huguenot refugee from France. Pierre took his family first to Ireland, then to eastern Massachusetts (present-day Maine), before finally settling in Boston in 1690. James Bowdoin I had a modest inheritance from his parents, but greatly expanded his father's merchant business and land holdings to become one of the wealthiest men in the province. Young James attended the South Grammar School (now Boston Latin School), then graduated from Harvard College in 1745. When his father died in 1747, he inherited a considerable fortune. He married Elizabeth Erving, sister of his Harvard roommate, in 1748. They had two children. That same year, he received his master's degree from Harvard.

Scientific and other pursuits
Bowdoin may have met Benjamin Franklin as early as 1743, and the two became frequent collaborators and correspondents on scientific subjects. During his Harvard years, he was educated in the sciences by John Winthrop, and developed an interest in electricity and astronomy. In 1750, Bowdoin traveled to Philadelphia to meet with Franklin. Bowdoin was interested in Franklin's experiments on electricity, and Franklin solicited his advice on papers he prepared for submission to the Royal Society. Through the offices of Franklin, some of Bowdoin's letters were read to the Society. Bowdoin was instrumental in gaining support in the provincial assembly for an expedition to Newfoundland to observe the 1761 transit of Venus across the sun, and in the same year published a treatise suggesting improvements to the telescope. In 1785 he published a series of memoirs arguing against Isaac Newton's theory that light was transmitted by "corpuscles", citing both natural observations and Scripture.

Bowdoin maintained a lifelong interest in the sciences. In 1780 he was one of the founders of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served as its first president until his death and left the society his library. Bowdoin published not only scientific papers, but poetry in both English and Latin. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Edinburgh and made a fellow of Harvard. His 1788 election to the Royal Society of London was the first such honor bestowed on an American after independence.

Bowdoin also had extensive business interests. Although he was often characterized as a merchant, and he engaged in the Atlantic trade, his principal interest was in land. His inheritance included major tracts of land, most of which he kept, in present-day Maine as well as in the agriculturally rich Elizabeth Islands off the state's south coast. Bowdoin expanded his holdings, eventually acquiring property in all of the New England states except Rhode Island. He was one of the managing proprietors of a large territory on the Kennebec River, where he was frequently involved in legal proceedings with squatters on the land, and with competing land interests. The dealings with squatters in particular left Bowdoin with a dislike of the lower classes in Massachusetts society, something that affected his politics. His inheritance also included an ironworks in Attleboro (now Bridgewater) that he sold in 1770, apparently because it was too time-consuming to manage. Despite the upheavals of the Revolution, Bowdoin was careful to always manage his financial affairs. He supported the cause of independence financially, but he did so without damaging his own business interests, unlike John Hancock, whose business suffered from neglect.

In later years he served as the first president of the Massachusetts Bank in 1784 and was also the first president of the Massachusetts Humane Society (an organization initially devoted to rescuing survivors from shipwrecks and other water-based disasters).

Governor's Council and opposition to British rule
Bowdoin was elected to the provincial assembly in 1753 and served there until named to the governor's council in 1756. Although at first supportive of the royal governor, his politics became more radical as British colonial policy became increasingly unpopular, and Bowdoin believed those policies would have a negative effect on the New England economy. Personal factors may also have played a role in Bowdoin's shift in views: John Temple, the local customs commissioner and Bowdoin's son in law, was embroiled in nasty disputes with Governor Francis Bernard in the 1760s. By 1769 Bowdoin was one of the principal spokesmen of the opposition to the governor on the council. In that year Bernard rejected Bowdoin's renewed election to the council. Bowdoin, however, was instrumental in causing Bernard's downfall from office. Private letters critical of the provincial government that Bernard had written were published in 1769 to great outrage. Bowdoin rebutted the charges and claims made in Bernard's letters, and published a highly polemic pamphlet arguing for Bernard's removal that was sent to the colonial secretary, Lord Hillsborough.

Bowdoin won reelection to the assembly in 1770, and was promptly reelected to the council the same year, soon after Bernard left the province. Acting Governor Thomas Hutchinson acquiesced to Bowdoin's return to the council, reasoning that he was less dangerous there than as an outspoken critic in the lower house. However, the seat Bowdoin vacated in the assembly was taken by Samuel Adams, another leading political opponent of the royal governors, and Hutchinson was faced with the prospect of opposition on both fronts.

After the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770, Bowdoin was chosen by the Boston town meeting to serve on a committee that investigated the affair. The committee took depositions and produced a report describing the event that was published as A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre. The work was highly critical not only of the governor, but also the behavior of the British Army troops that were stationed in Boston, and is characterized by historian Francis Walett as one of the major propaganda pieces influencing public opinion in the colonies. Bowdoin's opposition to British policies continued during the Hutchinson administration, and when letters by Hutchinson were published to outrage similar to the Bernard letters affair, Bowdoin again penned works highly critical of the governor and calling for his removal. Hutchinson's successor, General Thomas Gage, vetoed Bowdoin's reelection to the council in 1774, citing "express orders from His Majesty" that he be excluded from that body.

Government of Massachusetts
Bowdoin as named as a delegate to the First Continental Congress in 1774 but did not attend, citing the poor health of his wife. A bout of poor health, probably caused by tuberculosis, at the time also affected him. Bowdoin was again ill in 1775 when the American Revolutionary War broke out, and the family was relocated from British-occupied Boston (which was then under siege by area militia) first to Dorchester, and eventually to Middleborough, where he resided until 1778. (Bowdoin's Beacon Street mansion was occupied by General John Burgoyne.) Despite his convalescence he was kept apprised of events occurring in and around Boston, and was elected president of the executive council of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. This position, which he held until 1777, made him the de facto head of the Massachusetts government. Citing his ongoing poor health, he resigned the post and withdrew from public view. He continued to correspond with other revolutionaries, and enjoyed their confidence, although his absence from the war effort would lead to later political difficulties. He began to return to public life in 1778, and when Massachusetts wrote its own constitution in 1779, he was president of the convention called to create it, and chairman of the committee that drafted it. John Adams, also a committee member, is generally credited as the major author of the new constitution, although Bowdoin and Samuel Adams likely made significant contributions.

In the first gubernatorial election, held in 1780, Bowdoin ran for the office against John Hancock. In the absence of formal party politics, the contest was one of personality, popularity, and patriotism. Hancock was immensely popular, and unquestionably patriotic given his personal sacrifices and his leadership of the Second Continental Congress. Bowdoin was cast by Hancock supporters as unpatriotic, citing among other things his refusal to serve in the First Continental Congress (even though it was due to his illness). Bowdoin's supporters, who were principally well-off commercial interests from Massachusetts coastal communities, cast Hancock as a foppish demagogue who pandered to the populace. Hancock won the election easily, receiving more than 90% of the vote. The Massachusetts House of Representatives offered Bowdoin either the lieutenant governorship or a seat in the state senate, but Bowdoin declined both on account of his poor health. After the election Hancock appointed him to a commission to revise and consolidate the state's laws.

Bowdoin ran against Hancock in subsequent elections, but was never able to overcome Hancock's enormous popularity. The contest between the two men was just one element of a long-running rivalry that encompassed business, politics, and religion, and was apparently deeply personal. The two men were both involved in the administration of Harvard, where their feud sometimes became ugly. For example, in 1776, while Hancock was simultaneously treasurer of Harvard and president of the Second Continental Congress, a committee headed by Bowdoin decided that securities physically held by Hancock were at risk because of the war, and a delegation was sent to Philadelphia to receive an accounting of them and physical custody of the papers. Hancock's dilatory responses and refusal to produce an accounting of the college books dragged on for several years, as a result of which Bowdoin orchestrated his censure by the Harvard board of overseers. The matter reached a peak of sorts in 1783 when the college's issues with Hancock were read and discussed in an open meeting at which Hancock was the presiding officer. Both Bowdoin and Hancock attended the Brattle Street Church, where they competed with each other over the size and quality of the improvements to the building (and even the location of a new one) that they funded. James Warren captured the differences between the two men: "I don't envy either of them their feelings. the Vanity of one will Sting like an Adder if it is disappointed, and the Advancements made by the other if they dont succeed will hurt his Modest pride." The rivalry between the men was so bitter that the founding of Bowdoin College, named in his honor, had to be delayed until after Hancock died.

In 1785, apparently sensitive to rising unrest in western Massachusetts over the poor economy, Hancock offered to resign, expecting to be asked to stay in office. However, the legislature made no such request, and he eventually did resign, pleading poor health. The gubernatorial race that year was dominated by Bowdoin, Lieutenant Governor Thomas Cushing (who was widely viewed as a stand-in for Hancock but lacked his charisma), and Revolutionary War General Benjamin Lincoln. The campaign was at times nasty. Bowdoin and Samuel Adams went after the Hancock-Cushing faction, seizing on the recently established and locally controversial social club (known either as "Sans Souci" or the "Tea Assembly"), at which card play and dancing took place (these activities had previously been banned in socially conservative Boston), as a sign of moral decay that took place under Hancock's term. Cushing supporters accused Bowdoin of cowardice in the war and insulting the people for refusing the lieutenant governorship in 1780. The electorate gave no candidate a majority, and the General Court ended up choosing Bowdoin over the others in bitterly divisive voting.

Shays' Rebellion
Governor Hancock had, during his time in office, refused to vigorously act to collect delinquent taxes. Bowdoin, seeking to make payments the state owed against the nation's foreign debt, raised taxes and stepped up collection of back taxes. These actions, which were combined with a general post-war economic depression and a credit squeeze caused by a shortage of hard currency, wrought havoc throughout the rural parts of the state. Conventions organized in the rural parts of the state submitted letters of protest to the state legislature, which was dominated by Bowdoin and the conservative wholesale merchants of the coastal portions of the state.

After the legislature adjourned on July 18, 1786, without substantively addressing these complaints, rural Massachusetts protestors organized direct action, and began protest marches that shut down the state's court system, which enforced tax and civil forfeiture judgments and had become a focus of the discontent. Bowdoin issued a proclamation in early September denouncing these actions, but took no overt steps to immediately organize a militia response (unlike governors in neighboring Connecticut and New Hampshire). When the foreclosure court in Worcester was shut down by similar action on September 5, the county militia (composed mainly of men sympathetic to the protestors) refused to turn out, much to Bowdoin's chagrin. The closure of the Worcester court was followed by closings in Concord and Taunton, and when the militia marched into Great Barrington to force court open there, one of the Judges, William Whiting asked the militiamen to take sides. 800 of the 1,000 men took the people's side of the road. By October, one correspondent wrote, "We are now in a state of Anarchy and Confusion bordering on Civil War".

These court closings mirrored closings in 1774, when colonists had shut down the King's business everywhere west of Boston. Fearing a new Revolution, and continuing to ignore the farmers' petitions, Bowdoin and Samuel Adams and their legislature enacted a Riot Act, suspended habeas corpus, and passed a bill that unsuccessfully attempted to address the financial reasons for the protests. By January 1787, the protests, which began as demands for reform, had grown to become a direct attack on the "tyrannical government of Massachusetts". Hampshire County in particular (which then included what are now Hampden and Franklin Counties) had become a hotbed of rebellion, with leaders like Daniel Shays and Luke Day beginning to organize for an attack on government institutions.

Because the federal government had been unable to raise any significant number of troops and Bowdoin could no longer trust local militias in the western counties, he proposed in early January 1787 the creation of a private militia to be funded by eastern merchants. Revolutionary War General Benjamin Lincoln raised funds and men for the effort, and had 3,000 men in Worcester by January 19. A standoff at the Springfield Armory on January 25 resulted in the death of several rebels, and Lincoln broke the main rebel force on February 4 in Petersham, ending large-scale resistance.

The same day that Lincoln arrived at Petersham, the state legislature passed bills authorizing a state of martial law, giving the governor broad powers to act against the rebels. It also authorized state payments to reimburse Lincoln and the merchants who had funded the army, and authorized the recruitment of additional militia. On February 12 the legislature passed the Disqualification Act, seeking to prevent a legislative response by rebel sympathizers. This bill expressly forbade any acknowledged rebels from holding a variety of elected and appointed offices.

The crushing of the rebellion and the harsh terms of reconciliation imposed by the Disqualification Act all worked against Governor Bowdoin politically. In the election held in April 1787, Bowdoin received few votes from the rural parts of the state and was trounced by John Hancock.

In 1788 Bowdoin served as a member of the Massachusetts convention that ratified the United States Constitution. A strong supporter of Federalism, Bowdoin worked hard for its ratification, bringing a skeptical Samuel Adams and his supporters into the fold by inviting him to a dinner with other pro-ratification delegates, and offering Federalist support to John Hancock in future elections. Bowdoin's Federalist supporters backed Hancock in the 1789 election, even though Bowdoin also stood for election. He remained active in his charitable and scientific pursuits in his later years, continuing his leadership of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as that of the Humane Society. He also continued to engage in new business ventures, buying in 1789 an interest in one of the first American merchant ships to sail to China.

Death and legacy
He died in Boston on November 6, 1790, of "putrid fever and dysentery". Bowdoin's funeral was one of the largest of the time in Boston, with people lining the streets to view the funeral procession. He was interred in Boston's Granary Burying Ground. Among his bequests was a gift to Harvard College for awards that are now known as the Bowdoin Prizes. His son James III donated lands from the family estate in Brunswick, Maine, as well as funds and books, to establish Bowdoin College in his honor.

An orrery constructed by clockmaker Joseph Pope, now in Harvard's science department, includes bronze figures of Bowdoin and Benjamin Franklin that were supposedly cast by Paul Revere. (Bowdoin was responsible for having the device rescued when Pope's house caught fire in 1787.)

Landmarks bearing the Bowdoin name in Boston include Bowdoin Street, Bowdoin Square, and the Bowdoin MBTA station. Bowdoin, Maine, incorporated 1788, was named for Bowdoin; neighboring Bowdoinham, Maine (incorporated 1762) was named either for his grandfather Pierre or his brother William.

title: James Bowdoin


text:
Talk:Saratoga, Wyoming

Untitled
There is a blog about life in Saratoga, written by a young woman who grew up there, runs the chamber of commerce there and is an elected member of the Saratoga Town Council. It's a mixture of personal observations, explanations of how and why she voted on key municipal issues, funny stories about her friends, and reviews of books she likes. You can read all about it at http://saratogalife.blogspot.com

I removed the above - Hemanshu 05:34, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

External links modified
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title: Talk:Saratoga, Wyoming


text:
Corneliu Vadim Tudor

Corneliu Vadim Tudor (28 November 1949 – 14 September 2015), also colloquially known as "Tribunul", was a poet, writer, and journalist who was the leader of the Greater Romania Party (Partidul România Mare) and a Member of the European Parliament. He was a Romanian senator from 1992 to 2008. He was born and died in Bucharest, Romania.

As a political figure, he was known for having held strong nationalist views, which were reflected in his rhetoric and his denunciation of political opponents (a tactic which the judgements in several civil lawsuits handed down against him deemed to be slanderous). He was most commonly referred to as "Vadim", which was a name he selected for himself, not a family name (and not shared with his brother, former Romanian Army officer Marcu Tudor).

Biography
Tudor was born in Bucharest on 28 November 1949, into a working-class family, his father being a tailor. In his youth, being an admirer of the French film director Roger Vadim, he chose the pseudonym Vadim as his middle name.

In 1971, he received a degree in sociology from the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Bucharest, and in 1975, he studied at the School for Reserve Officers in Bucharest. With the help of his mentor, Herder Prize winner Eugen Barbu, he obtained a scholarship and studied in Vienna from 1978 to 1979. During the communist era, he worked as a journalist, editor, and poet: in the early 1970s, he was one of the editors at România liberă, and after 1975 was an editor at the Romanian official press agency, Agerpress. He served as senator from 1992 to 2008. For the first time since 1990, after the election of 30 November 2008, he and his party were no longer present in either of the Romanian legislative chambers. On 25 September 2001, Tudor renounced his parliamentary immunity from prosecution.

In December 2004, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel returned the Steaua României medal, one of the country's highest honors, after President Ion Iliescu awarded Tudor the same honor in the last days of his presidency. Wiesel said he was returning the honor because he could not "accept being placed on the same level" as Tudor and fellow party member (and honor recipient) Gheorghe Buzatu. 15 Radio Free Europe journalists, Timișoara mayor Gheorghe Ciuhandu, songwriter Alexandru Andrieș, and historian Randolph Braham all returned their Steaua României medals as well due to the awards given Tudor and Buzatu. Tudor's Steaua României award was revoked by Romanian president Traian Băsescu in May 2007. Tudor consequently announced that he would sue Băsescu for abuse of power; in the end, Tudor won the trial with Băsescu.

As a poet he made his debut in May 1965 at the national radio station with a poem read in the George Călinescu literary circle. He published several volumes of prose and poetry: Poezii (Poems; 1977), Epistole vieneze (Viennese Epistles; 1979), Poeme de dragoste, ură și speranță (Poems of Love, Hatred and Hope; 1981), Idealuri (Ideals; 1983), Saturnalii (Saturnalia, 1983), Istorie și civilizatie (History and Civilization; 1983), Mândria de a fi români (The Pride of Being Romanian; 1985), Miracole (Miracles; 1986 anthology), Jurnal de vacanță (Holiday Journal, 1996), Poems (translated in seven languages, published in Torino, Italy, 1998), Europa Creștină (Christian Europe), and Artificii (Artifices; 2010).

Personal life
Tudor was married and had two children. He died of a heart attack on 14 September 2015 in his native Bucharest, and was buried in the city's Ghencea Cemetery.

His daughter, Lidia Vadim Tudor, is a candidate for the Alliance for the Union of Romanians in the 2024 Romanian local elections.

Ideology
In June 1990, Tudor and Eugen Barbu founded the nationalist weekly magazine România Mare ("Greater Romania"), which began as a magazine for the government's policies. Later evidence affirmed "Greater Romania" was released with the help of the left-wing administration in Bucharest.

In 1991, they founded the Greater Romania Party, the platform of which Time magazine described as "a crude mixture of anti-Semitism, racism and nostalgia for the good old days of communism". Some statements and articles by Tudor and his colleagues can be described as ultranationalist, anti-Hungarian, anti-Roma and homophobic.

Besides Moldova, Tudor wanted Greater Romania to include Bessarabia, Budjak, Northern Bukovina, and the Hertsa region, which have belonged to Ukraine since the dissolution of the Soviet Union but were part of Moldavia until the Russian annexation in 1812, and part of Romania between 1918 and 1940 and between 1941 and 1944. România Mare has been sued for libel with stunning frequency, often for Tudor's own writings (which he usually, if not always, signed under the pseudonym Alcibiade). Between 1993 and 1996, his party supported the leftist governmental coalition (the "Red Quadrilateral").

Tudor's and his party's change from national communism to ultranationalism took place after 1996. In 1999, Dan Corneliu Hudici, a former reporter at România Mare, claimed there was a "secret blacklist" of dozens of politicians (including President Emil Constantinescu), journalists, and businessmen to be arrested if Tudor's party came to power. That allegation only increase Tudor's popularity. In the first round of the Romanian presidential elections on 26 November 2000, Tudor finished second with 28% of the vote. Four years earlier, he had come in fifth. However, nearly all other parties backed Ion Iliescu in the 11 December runoff, and Tudor only gained five points compared to his first round performance while Iliescu surged from 36% to 67%.

Tudor supported Romania's entry to the European Union and sustained its presence in NATO. In 2003, Tudor claimed to have changed his views on Jews and the Holocaust. In a letter dated 1 February 2004, he retracted certain earlier statements he had made as inappropriately anti-Semitic. Further, he wrote: "I know that I was wrong to have denied the Holocaust in Romania, which happened between 1941 and 1944 under Antonescu's regime". Many publicly questioned his sincerity and motivations of the change and viewed it simply as a political ploy.

Ahead of the 2000 presidential election, Tudor, who finished in second, made the reintroduction of capital punishment a major plank of his campaign.

On 18 October 2012, while he was speaking on the talk show Romania la Raport, Tudor said that "in Romania there was never a Holocaust ... I will deny it till I die because I love my people".

He fired an advisor, who happened to be Jewish and a member of the Romanian Chamber of Deputies, Nati Meir. Tudor claimed it was because of allegations of bribery, but Meir claimed it was because of antisemitism. It turned out that the Romanian press discovered that Meir had been convicted in Israel of banking fraud and so was incompatible with the office of member of the Chamber of Deputies.

On 15 November 2006, Meir was brought to trial by the Romanian authorities for tax evasion, fraud and swindling and was accused of illegalities concerning work permits for Israel. Tudor styled himself The Tribune, a title that originates in Ancient Rome but has more combative meaning in Romanian history since it stood for certain activists in the self-defence of Romanian communities in Transylvania against the Revolutionary government in Hungary (see Revolutions of 1848 in the Habsburg areas).

Awards

 * Knight of the Order of the Star of Romania (2004)

 * Corresponding member of the Pontificia Accademia Tiberina – November 2004
 * Member of the Academy of Political Science in New York;
 * Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences.

title: Corneliu Vadim Tudor


text:
James Bowdoin III

James Bowdoin III (September 22, 1752 – October 11, 1811) was an American philanthropist and statesman from Boston, Massachusetts. He has born to James Bowdoin in Boston, and graduated from Harvard College in 1771. James then studied law at Oxford and traveled widely in Europe until 1775. When he got the news of the Battle of Lexington he returned home. He served in the Massachusetts state legislature and on the council before attending the Massachusetts’ constitutional convention in 1779 and 1780.

James devoted several years to scholarly pursuits, until he was appointed the United States Ambassador to Spain in 1804. He arrived in Madrid in May, 1805 but never actually assumed the post of ambassador. In March 1806 he and John Armstrong of New York were named commissioners to negotiate boundaries and other issues with Spain. He returned home in 1808 when the talks in Paris ended without success. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1786.

When Bowdoin College was founded in Maine, he gave the new school 6,000 acres (24 km2) and $5,500. When he died, he also bequeathed his considerable library, papers, mineral collection, scientific apparatus and art collection to the school. He died in 1811 on Naushon Island in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts.

title: James Bowdoin III


text:
Neal Dow

Neal Dow (March 20, 1804 – October 2, 1897) was an American Prohibition advocate and politician. Nicknamed the "Napoleon of Temperance" and the "Father of Prohibition", Dow was born to a Quaker family in Portland, Maine. From a young age, he believed alcohol to be the cause of many of society's problems and wanted to ban it through legislation. In 1850, Dow was elected president of the Maine Temperance Union, and the next year he was elected mayor of Portland. Soon after, largely due to Dow's efforts, the state legislature banned the sale and production of alcohol in what became known as the Maine law. Serving twice as mayor of Portland, Dow enforced the law with vigor and called for increasingly harsh penalties for violators. In 1855, his opponents rioted and he ordered the state militia to fire on the crowd. One man was killed and several wounded, and when public reaction to the violence turned against Dow, he chose not to seek reelection.

Dow was later elected to two terms in the Maine House of Representatives, but retired after a financial scandal. He joined the Union Army shortly after the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, eventually attaining the rank of brigadier general. He was wounded at the siege of Port Hudson and later captured. After being exchanged for another officer in 1864, Dow resigned from the military and devoted himself once more to prohibition. He spoke across the United States, Canada, and Great Britain in support of the cause. In 1880, Dow headed the Prohibition Party ticket for President of the United States. After losing the election, he continued to write and speak on behalf of the prohibition movement for the rest of his life until his death in Portland at the age of 93.

Early life and family
Dow was born in Portland, Maine on March 20, 1804, the son of Josiah Dow and his wife, Dorcas Allen Dow. Josiah Dow was a member of the Society of Friends (commonly known as Quakers) and a farmer originally from New Hampshire. Dorcas Allen was also a Quaker, and a member of a prosperous Maine family headed by her prominent grandfather, Hate-Evil Hall. They had three children, of whom Neal was the middle child and only son. After his marriage, Dow's father opened a tannery in Portland, which soon became a successful business. After attending a Friends school in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and further schooling at Edward Payson's Portland Academy, Dow followed his father into the tanning trade in 1826. He embraced technology, becoming one of the first in the city to incorporate steam power in the tanning process. Dow struggled to conform to the tenets of his parents' Quaker faith; he was hot-tempered and enjoyed brawling from a young age. As he became wealthy later in life, he enjoyed wearing fine clothes, contrary to the Quakers' preference for plain dress. Some of his family's other virtues, such as thrift and abstinence from alcohol and tobacco, he adopted early in life. When he turned eighteen, Dow sought to avoid the required militia musters, more out of distaste for the drunkenness that they often involved than out of Quaker belief in pacifism. Instead, he joined the volunteer fire department, whose members were exempted from the muster. In 1827, Dow lobbied the Maine legislature to reform the fire companies to increase their efficiency. That same year, he argued against his fire company serving alcohol at its anniversary celebration; the members compromised, and served only wine, not hard liquor. At times Dow let his politics interfere with his duties; after being promoted to fire chief, he allowed a liquor store to burn to the ground.

The next year, Dow met his future wife, Maria Cornelia Maynard, the daughter of a Massachusetts merchant. They married on January 20, 1830. Over the next twenty years, they had nine children, five of whom (two sons and three daughters) survived infancy. Maria Cornelia was a Congregationalist, and Dow attended services with her at Second Parish Church regularly, although he never became a member. Their home, built at 714 Congress Street in Portland in 1829, was converted into a museum after Dow's death and is administered by the local chapter of the Women's Christian Temperance Union as the Neal Dow House.

Early Prohibition efforts
In the 19th century, a typical American male consumed on average more than three times the alcohol of his modern-day counterpart. In his memoirs, Dow noted that in Portland a significant portion of a working man's pay was in the form of daily rum rations: "it was ... the rule to quit work at eleven in the forenoon and four in the afternoon to drink ... In every grocer's shop were casks [of] ... rum punch constantly prepared in a tub, sometimes on the sidewalk, just as lemonade is to be seen now on the Fourth of July." He saw alcohol as responsible for the downfall of individuals, families, and fortunes, often pointing out ramshackle homes or businesses to his family and saying "Rum did that." His quest to reform people by reforming their environment grew out of the religious movements of the Second Great Awakening and, as historian Judith N. McArthur later wrote, "temperance reformers urged their listeners to cast Demon Rum out of their lives just as evangelical ministers exhorted them to cast the Devil out of their hearts."

Many of Portland's middle- and upper-class citizens, including Dow, believed drunkenness was a great threat to the city's moral and financial well-being. In 1827, he became a founding member of the Maine Temperance Society. The group initially focused its efforts on the evils of distilled beverages, but by 1829, Dow declared he would abstain from all alcoholic beverages. At the same time, he associated himself with anti-Masonic and anti-slavery causes and became more involved with politics generally. In the 1832 presidential election, unsatisfied with both Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay, Dow backed William Wirt, a minor-party candidate.

In 1837, the Maine Temperance Society split over whether they should seek to ban wine as well as spirits; Dow sided with the anti-wine forces, who formed their own organization, the Maine Temperance Union. That year James Appleton, a Whig representative in the state legislature, proposed a prohibition law, and Dow spoke often and forcefully in favor of the effort, which was unsuccessful. Appleton proposed a similar law in 1838 and 1839, but despite his and Dow's best efforts, he continued to be defeated.

Dow worked fervently on behalf of Whig candidates and came to detest Democrats as the tools of the alcohol industry. Maine's Whig governor, Edward Kent, granted Dow a colonel's commission in the state militia in 1841 as a reward for his efforts, despite his lack of military experience. Nevertheless, Dow did not consider himself "a party man in the politician's understanding of the term," and had no qualms about encouraging his supporters to vote against any Whig whom he considered insufficiently anti-alcohol.

Dow spent the early 1840s attending to his tanning business, but also found time to encourage individual drinkers to take up abstinence. In 1842, he and his allies succeeded in getting the city government in Portland to require licenses for liquor dealers and to prosecute unlicensed sellers; a referendum on the question was decided in the prohibitionists' favor later that year. The next year saw the Democrats win election to city government, replacing the more prohibition-friendly Whigs, and many liquor-sellers resumed their trade as prosecutions were deferred indefinitely. Dow kept up his speaking efforts around the state, despite once being assaulted by a man hired by a liquor dealer.

In 1846, Dow spoke before the legislature in favor of statewide prohibition. The bill passed but lacked the enforcement mechanisms necessary to give it effect. The following year, he ran for the state legislature in a special election but was narrowly defeated. In 1850, now a member of the new Free Soil Party, he encouraged like-minded legislators to pass a stronger prohibition law. They did so but saw it vetoed by Democratic governor John W. Dana. The legislature fell one vote short of overriding the veto.

Mayor of Portland
In 1850, Dow was elected president of the Maine Temperance Union. The next year, he ran for mayor of Portland on the Whig ticket, and was elected by a vote of 1332 to 986. Within a month of taking office, he lobbied the state legislature to pass a statewide prohibition law. It did so, and Dow met with the new Governor, John Hubbard, who signed the bill into law on June 2. Maine was the first state to ban alcohol, and statewide prohibition became known around the country as "the Maine law". The law's passage propelled Dow to national fame. He was called the "Napoleon of Temperance", and was the featured speaker in August at a National Temperance Convention in New York City.

After the Maine law came into force, Dow allowed liquor dealers a two-week grace period to sell their stock out of state, then began confiscations. His enforcement efforts quickly drove respectable drinking establishments out of business, but less fancy saloons, especially those frequented by Portland's poor and immigrant residents, simply moved their operations to secret locations. Even so, Dow proclaimed in an address to the city council that he had eliminated all but a "few secret grog-shops", whose persistence he blamed on "foreigners".

Despite his growing national fame, Dow continued to face opposition at home. Both Dow and his opponents engaged in anonymous newspaper campaigns against the other, often making personal attacks alongside political arguments. For the 1852 municipal election, the Democrats nominated Albion Parris, a former governor and United States Senator, to run against Dow. While the Democrats rallied behind their candidate, Dow's vigorous enforcement of prohibition divided his party, and in two wards the Whigs ran an anti-Dow ticket instead. On election day, Dow slightly increased his vote total from the year before, with 1496, but Parris outpolled him, bringing in 1900 votes. Although the Whigs controlled voter registration at the time, Dow blamed his loss on illegal voting by Irish immigrants.

After his defeat, Dow continued to promote prohibition around the country, and was gratified to see it spread to eleven states. He also made efforts to refute the charge made by his enemies (including his cousin John Neal) that the Maine law was ineffective and that drinking had actually increased in Portland during Dow's term in office. In 1854, Dow ran for mayor again unsuccessfully; as the Whig Party began to break apart, Dow attracted support from the Free Soilers and the Know Nothings, a nativist party. By the next year, those two parties began to join anti-slavery Whigs in a new party, the Republicans. They soon controlled the state legislature and, with Dow's encouragement, strengthened the enforcement provisions of the Maine law. Dow ran again for mayor in 1855 and was narrowly re-elected to the office he had left three years earlier.

Portland Rum Riot

Two months into his term, Dow inadvertently ran afoul of his own prohibition laws. After setting up a committee to dispense alcohol for medicinal and industrial use (the only uses permitted), Dow ordered $1600 worth of alcohol and stored it at City Hall. Dow neglected to appoint an official agent to hold it there; because the invoice was in his name, this placed Dow in technical violation of the law. Dow's enemies seized on the mistake and demanded that the police search the municipal building for illegal liquor. Because the recent additions to the Maine law had removed judicial discretion, the judge had no choice but to issue the warrant. Police seized the alcohol, but did not arrest Dow.

That evening, June 2, a crowd of anti-prohibitionists gathered to demand that the law be enforced, shouting threats to spill "Neal Dow's liquor". Dow ordered the state militia to block the protesters and had the sheriff read the crowd the Riot Act. As darkness fell, Dow ordered the crowd to disperse; when they refused, he ordered the militia to fire. One man was killed and seven were wounded, and the crowd fled. On learning of the fatality, Dow maintained that the shooting was justified.

The violence turned public opinion against Dow, and he was denounced in newspapers across the nation. He was tried for violation of the prohibition law; the prosecutor was former U.S. Attorney General Nathan Clifford, a longtime Dow opponent, and the defense attorney was a fellow founder of the Maine Temperance Society, future senator William P. Fessenden. Dow was acquitted, but his opponents convinced the coroner to impanel a jury that pronounced the protester's death a homicide. He was ultimately acquitted of that charge, but his popularity had suffered and he declined to run for re-election as mayor.

State legislator
Republicans lost the governorship that fall, and in 1856 the Democrats combined with the remaining Whigs in the state legislature to repeal the Maine law entirely. Some of the other states that had passed Maine laws followed suit as they learned that the promised benefits were not forthcoming and enforcement was difficult, if not impossible. Dow continued to travel the country (and the United Kingdom) speaking in support of prohibition, but to little legislative effect. Maine passed a new, much milder Maine law in 1858, which Dow disliked but defended as better than nothing.

In 1858, Dow won a special election to the Maine House of Representatives as a Republican when one of the members elected declined to serve. He won reelection to a full term in 1859, and continued to agitate for stricter prohibition laws, but was unsuccessful. He also became entangled in scandal when the State Treasurer, Benjamin D. Peck, lent out state funds to private citizens (including Dow) contravening state law. Peck lent large sums to himself, which were lost when his business ventures failed. Dow had guaranteed some of Peck's borrowing, and faced ruin as it became clear that Peck could not repay the state treasury. Dow was able to settle the debts and conceal much of his role in the affair, but enough of the scandal became known that some of his many enemies attacked him in local newspapers. Even some of his prohibitionist allies became less openly supportive of him. In September 1860, he did not run for re-election.

Civil War
Dow continued to promote prohibition after leaving office, but also added his voice to the growing chorus advocating the abolition of slavery. Several slaveholding states seceded after the election of Republican presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln, and formed the Confederate States of America; even before the outbreak of the Civil War, Dow called for the rebellion to be crushed and slavery abolished. He was 57 years old at the outbreak of the war, and determined to stay home and tend to his business and care for his aging father. After the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, however, Dow felt compelled to join the Union cause. Governor Israel Washburn appointed him Colonel of the 13th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment on November 23, 1861. Many of the officers Dow recruited to the cause were his associates from the prohibition movement.

New Orleans
After a winter of training in Maine, Dow and the 13th Maine were dispatched to the Gulf of Mexico in February 1862. Even before departing, Dow quarreled with his superiors when he learned his unit would be placed under the command of Major General Benjamin F. Butler, a Democrat whom Dow regarded as soft on slavery and "pro-rum". Dow's protests were ineffective, but they earned Butler's enmity. After joining Butler at Fort Monroe, Virginia, the regiment sailed south and was forced to land in North Carolina after a storm; Dow's performance in the emergency won Butler's praise, but the two still cordially loathed each other. After the damaged ships were repaired, Butler's army continued south to Ship Island, Mississippi.

Butler's army, aided by Flag Officer David Farragut's fleet, captured New Orleans on April 29, 1862. Dow and the 13th Maine did not join in the attack, remaining behind to guard Ship Island. A day earlier, Congress had approved Dow's promotion to brigadier general. He blamed Butler for excluding him from the battle, believing that Butler was threatened by his promotion and calling him a "bully and a beast". He spent much of the time quarreling with his second-in-command, Lieutenant Colonel Francis S. Hesseltine, while the regiment occupied forts around New Orleans. While there, Dow encouraged black slaves to run away from captivity and take shelter with the Union Army. He also confiscated property from nearby planters, including those who supported the Union, and tried unsuccessfully to claim personal salvage rights over Confederate military property abandoned in the river.

In October 1862, Dow was given command over the District of Pensacola, and moved to join other units there. He immediately earned the troops' disfavor by placing Pensacola under prohibition. He also (without authorization from Washington) began to recruit black troops from the local slave population while continuing his confiscation of rebel property. Butler soon countermanded the confiscation order, which Dow believed was done in revenge for his banning of alcohol.

Port Hudson and capture
In December 1862, Nathaniel P. Banks replaced Butler in command at New Orleans. Banks, a Massachusetts Republican with prohibitionist sympathies, had known Dow before the war, but he initially displeased Dow by refusing to repeal Butler's order against confiscation of rebel property. He did, however, allow Dow to return to New Orleans to take part in the planned spring offensive. As the Union armies looked to complete their control over the Mississippi River, only Vicksburg, Mississippi and Port Hudson, Louisiana held out against federal control. Major General Ulysses S. Grant moved on Vicksburg from the north while Banks advanced to Port Hudson from the south. By May 21, the town was surrounded.

Banks was determined to break the siege by a direct assault on the Confederate lines. Dow believed the attack to be a mistake, and delayed his units' participation until later in the day. In the assault, which was unsuccessful, Dow was wounded in the right arm and left thigh and sent to a nearby plantation to convalesce. While in the hospital, he lobbied for a transfer to a theater where his chances of promotion would be greater. On June 30, having healed enough to mount a horse again, Dow visited his troops. As he returned to the hospital after dark, he was captured by Confederate cavalry operating behind Union lines.

Dow was taken by wagon and train to Jackson, Mississippi, then to Montgomery, Alabama, before finally being confined to Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia, the Confederacy's capital. In August, he was transferred to Mobile, Alabama, where Confederate officials investigated whether Dow had armed slaves to fight against the rebels, which the Confederate Congress had made a capital offense. Dow had done so, but his prosecutors could find no evidence of such an action after the law was passed, so the charges were dropped and Dow was returned to Libby Prison in October. He remained there until February 1864, when he was exchanged for captive Confederate General William Henry Fitzhugh Lee, son of General Robert E. Lee. His health was damaged by his prison experience, and after spending several months convalescing in Portland, he resigned from the Army in November 1864.

Postwar politics
After the war, Dow returned to his leadership of the prohibition movement, co-founding the National Temperance Society and Publishing House with James Black in 1865. He spent the rest of the 1860s and 1870s giving speeches in support of temperance across the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. His efforts produced little success, as the public turned against prohibition and the alcohol industry was better organized to resist. Dow expended a great deal of effort organizing and giving speeches in support of the Liberal Party before the British elections of 1874, as their leader, William Ewart Gladstone, was sympathetic to prohibition; the Liberals lost decisively, a result Gladstone and Dow blamed on liquor interests. Dow continued to promote prohibition in Britain until May 1875 when, exhausted, he returned home.

Against calls for personal temperance instead of government restraint, Dow remained steadfast, saying that the only way to fight drunkenness was "more jail for the rascals." In 1876, he supported the election of Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican and teetotaler. The following year, Dow saw some success for prohibition as Maine's legislature strengthened the weak prohibition law there by banning distilling in the state. Despite that minor victory, Dow began to sour on the Republican party, believing them insufficiently committed to his cause and disappointed at their failure to protect the rights of Southern blacks as Reconstruction came to an end. Other temperance advocates felt the same way, and some had organized a new Prohibition Party in 1869. The Prohibitionists focused their efforts on banning alcohol to the exclusion of all other issues. Most party members came from pietist churches, and most, like Dow, were former Republicans. They had won very few votes in the 1872 and 1876 presidential elections, but as temperance advocates grew disenchanted with the Republican Party, they hoped to win converts in 1880.

Presidential election of 1880
In 1880, Maine Republicans refused to pass more anti-alcohol legislation, and Dow quit the party to join the Prohibitionists; he instantly became the party's most prominent member. His friend and ally James Black requested that Dow's name be placed in nomination for the presidency at the 1880 convention, to which Dow agreed. The convention that met in Cleveland that June welcomed delegates from twelve states, but attracted almost no attention from the press. Dow himself did not attend, staying home with his ailing wife (candidates for a party's nomination often did not attend conventions in person at that time). He was nominated, heading a ticket with vice-presidential nominee Henry Adams Thompson of Ohio.

Dow mostly ignored the national contest that summer, focusing on campaigning for pro-temperance candidates in local Maine elections. Republicans,especially James G. Blaine, pressured Dow to withdraw, fearing that he would claim enough votes to cost their nominee, James A. Garfield, the election. Dow declined to do so, but his vote totals were too small to harm Garfield in any case. The Prohibition ticket polled just 10,305 votes, 0.1% of the total. Garfield narrowly won the popular vote over Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock, but in the electoral college, he carried a clear majority. Dow was not displeased with the result, happy that the Republicans had triumphed over the "ex-slavedriving rebel element".

Later years
After the election, Dow began to work with Republicans again in Maine to advance prohibition issues, and in 1884 he endorsed fellow Mainer and Republican candidate for president James G. Blaine. Blaine narrowly lost the election, the first Republican loss in 28 years, and many Republicans blamed the Prohibition Party, whose votes would have tipped New York (and with it the electoral college majority) to Blaine. Resentful Republicans in Maine refused to advance any more prohibition laws, and as a result Dow made his final break with the Republican Party in 1885. In the 1886 state election, he spoke fervently against his former party and in support of the Prohibitionist candidate for governor. In 1888, at the age of 84, Dow accepted the Prohibition Party nomination for mayor of Portland, an office he had held more than thirty years earlier. The Democrats were unable to decide on a candidate, so they endorsed their former enemy, Dow, in an effort to unseat the Republican incumbent. Many regular Democrats refused to support the fusion ticket, and Dow lost the election by 1934 votes to 3504. Later that year, Dow attended the 1888 Prohibition Party National Convention in Indianapolis. In a break from his erstwhile contempt for the former Confederacy, Dow called for sectional unity and "no more waving of the bloody shirt". He also spoke against the political expediency of the party backing women's suffrage, although he personally endorsed the idea.

Cornelia Dow had died in 1883, but Dow's unmarried daughter, also named Cornelia, lived with him and assisted in temperance causes. In 1891, his son Frederick and his family moved in as well. Frederick remained active in his father's former Republican Party and was the editor of the Portland Evening Express. Despite a fall from a horse in 1890, Dow continued in good health, reading and writing about his signature issue, but travelling less. On his ninetieth birthday in 1894, a large crowd gathered to celebrate him and his life's work. In 1895, he gave his final public speech, criticizing the city government for not enforcing the prohibition laws. He began to write his memoirs, The Reminiscences of Neal Dow: Recollections of Eighty Years, but died on October 2, 1897, before completing the book. Dow's body lay in state at the Second Parish Church in Portland before being buried in that city's Evergreen Cemetery. He had seen the rise of the prohibition movement and, as biographer Frank L. Byrne notes, proselytized the cause "more than any man of the 19th century".

title: Neal Dow


text:
Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies

Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies (Maria Cristina Ferdinanda di Borbone, Principessa delle Due Sicilie, María Cristina de Borbón, Princesa de las Dos Sicilias; 27 April 1806 – 22 August 1878) was the queen consort of Spain from 1829 to 1833 and queen regent of the kingdom from 1833, when her daughter became queen at age two, to 1840. By virtue of her short marriage to King Ferdinand VII of Spain, she became a central character in Spanish history for nearly 50 years, thanks to introducing a bicameral model of government based on the Bourbon Restoration in France: the Spanish Royal Statute of 1834.

Early life
Born in Palermo, Sicily on 27 April 1806, she was the daughter of King Francis I of the Two Sicilies by his second wife, Maria Isabella of Spain.

Queen of Spain
On 27 May 1829, Maria Josepha Amalia of Saxony, the third wife of King Ferdinand VII of Spain, died. Ferdinand VII, old and ill, had not sired a male heir, sparking a succession duel between the Infanta Maria Francisca and the Infante Carlos, and the Infanta Luisa Carlotta and the Infante Francisco de Paula. Ferdinand VII declared his intention to marry and assembled the Council of Castile, who tasked the King with remarriage. Following Luisa Carlotta's suggestion, Ferdinand VII sent for Maria Christina, his niece, who pleased the King's eyes. The two were wed on 12 December 1829 at the Basilica of Nuestra Señora de Atocha.

With her betrothal and then marriage to Ferdinand VII, Maria Christina became embroiled in the conflict between the Spanish Liberals and the Carlists. The former faction, and the Spanish people, greatly revered Maria Christina, and made her their champion; when she first arrived in Madrid in 1829, the blue of the cloak she wore became their official color. The latter were absolutists and highly conservative, and derived their name from the Carlos's, who they favored for the throne. Using King Philip V's enactment of Salic law, which banned women from taking the throne, Maria Francisca and Carlos pushed for the latter's claim. Ferdinand VII and Maria Christina produced two daughters, Isabella on 10 October 1830 and Luisa Fernanda a little over a year later on 30 January 1832. However, in a secret session of the Cortes in 1789, King Charles IV reversed this law with the Pragmatic Sanction. Seeking to secure the succession of an heir of his siring, no matter their gender, Ferdinand VII announced the Pragmatic Sanction in March 1830.

In July 1832, Maria Christina, Ferdinand VII, their daughters, Maria Francisca and Carlos, and Maria Teresa, Princess of Beira, set out for the Royal Palace of La Granja. On the trip to La Granja, Ferdinand VII was badly injured by a coach accident. He became ill and increasingly sick over the summer. At one point, Ferdinand VII was found unconscious at the palace chapel. Seeking counsel in the event of Ferdinand VII's death, Maria approached the Carlist Francisco Calomarde, who advised her that the Spanish people would rally behind Carlos. Acting on this, she coerced Ferdinand VII into signing a decree making her regent if he died, with Carlos as her chief adviser. Carlos refused, demanding total governance. Calomarde, with Maria Francisca and Maria Theresa, reissued his warning, coercing King and Queen into repealing the Pragmatic Sanction. When Ferdinand VII appeared to have died, the repealing was announced publicly, and Maria Christina deserted by her courtiers. Ferdinand VII was discovered to be alive, and news of this also spread. Luisa Carlotta, at that time in Andalusia, soon arrived at La Granja and speedily persuaded Ferdinand to re-enact the Pragmatic Sanction and orchestrated Calomarde's dismissal.

Regency
When Ferdinand died on 29 September 1833, Maria Christina became regent for their daughter Isabella. Isabella's claim to the throne was disputed by Carlos, who claimed that his brother Ferdinand had unlawfully changed the succession law to permit females to inherit the crown again (see Carlism). Some supporters of Don Carlos went so far as to claim that Ferdinand had actually bequeathed the crown to his brother but that Maria Christina had suppressed that fact. It was further alleged that the Queen had signed her dead husband's name to a decree recognizing Isabella as heir.

Carlos' attempt to seize power resulted in the First Carlist War. Despite considerable support for Carlos from conservative elements in Spain, Cristina's side (also known as "Isabelinos") successfully retained the throne for her daughter.

Downfall
On 28 December 1833, shortly after the death of Ferdinand VII, Maria Christina secretly married an ex-sergeant from the royal guard, Agustín Fernando Muñoz (1808–1873). Maria Christina and Muñoz had several children together while trying to keep their marriage a secret.

Muñoz enlisted in the royal bodyguard, and attracted the attention of Maria Christina. According to one account, he distinguished himself by stopping the runaway horses of her carriage; according to another, he only picked up her handkerchief; a third, scandalous explanation of his fortune has been given. Maria Christina's husband, King Ferdinand VII of Spain died on 29 September 1833, and on 28 December 1833 she and Muñoz were privately married.
 * Maria de los Desamparados, Countess of Vista Alegre (17 November 1834 - 19 August 1864); married Prince Władysław Czartoryski (1828–1894).
 * Maria de los Milagros, Marchioness of Castillejo (8 November 1835 – 9 July 1903); married Filippo Massimiliano Del Drago Biscia Gentili, II principe di Mazzano ed Antuni (1824–1913). Their fourth son Giovanni Battista was known as the Prince del Drago in New York society.
 * Agustín Maria, 1st Duke of Tarancón (15 March 1837 - 15 July 1855)
 * Fernando Maria, 2nd Duke of Riansares and Tarancon (27 April 1838 – 7 December 1910); married Eladia Bernaldo de Quirós y González de Cienfuegos (1839–1909).
 * Maria Cristina, Marchioness of La Isabella (19 April 1840 – 19 December 1921).
 * Juan Bautista, Count of Recuerdo (29 August 1841 – 2 April 1863)
 * Antonio Muñoz y de Borbón (3 November 1842 – 1847)
 * Jose Maria, Count of Gracia (21 December 1843 – 17 December 1863)

If Maria Christina had officially made the marriage public, she would have forfeited the regency; but her relations with Muñoz were perfectly well known within the Spanish court. When on 13 August 1836 the soldiers on duty at the La Granja summer palace mutinied and forced the regent to grant a constitution, it was generally, though wrongly, believed that they overcame her reluctance by seizing Muñoz, whom they called her guapo, or fancy man, and threatening to shoot him.

Eventually, news of Maria Christina's marriage to this low-ranking soldier became public. That news made Maria Christina deeply unpopular. Her position was undermined by news of her remarriage and concerns that she was not actually supportive of her liberal ministers and their policies. Eventually, the army, which was the backbone of Isabella II's support, and the liberal leadership in the Cortes combined to demand that Maria Christina stand aside from the regency. In 1840 Maria Christina found her position intolerable; she renounced the regency and left Spain with Muñoz. The army commander, General Baldomero Espartero, replaced her as regent.

Exile
In 1842 Maria Christina purchased the Château de Malmaison as her residence. In 1843, on the overthrow of General Baldomero Espartero she returned to Spain with her husband. In 1844, Muñoz's stepdaughter Queen Isabella II was declared to be of age. On 23 June 1844 Isabella gave to Muñoz the title Duque de Riánsares, to which was attached a Grandeza de España; the title came from the River Riánsares, near Muñoz's birthplace in Tarancón. On 12 October 1844 Isabella gave official consent to the marriage between her mother and Muñoz, and it was publicly performed. In 1846 Isabella made Muñoz a Knight of the Golden Fleece. On 30 May 1846 she gave Muñoz a second title, Marqués de San Agustín. Muñoz was made a Captain General, the highest rank in the Spanish Army. In 1847 Louis Philippe, King of the French, gave Muñoz the title Duc de Montmorot; he also invested Muñoz with the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur. In 1854, Maria Christina left for France a second time. France remained her primary residence for the remainder of her life.

Death and burial
Maria Christina's illness returned and she suffered from serious coughing, fainting and fever. She died in Le Havre, France on 22 August 1878. As the mother of Isabella II and consort of Ferdinand VII, Maria Christina was buried in the royal crypt of El Escorial.

title: Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies