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Svyetlahorsk

Svyetlahorsk (Светлагорск, ) or Svetlogorsk (Светлогорск), previously known as Shatsilki (Шацілкі; Шатилки) until 1961, is a town in Gomel Region, Belarus. It serves as the administrative center of Svyetlahorsk District. It is situated on the Berezina River. In 2019, its population was 67,054. As of 2024, it has a population of 62,602.

Svyetlаhorsk-na-Byarezinye (Svyetlаhorsk-on-Byarezina) is also a railroad station on the Zhlobin — Kalinkavichy railway line. It has suffered radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl disaster.

Town structure
Svyetlahorsk is divided into two major parts: agricultural-industrial area on the east of Svyetlahorsk and the residential area on the west of Svyetlahorsk. There are no occupied residential buildings in its industrial area (apart from lechebno-trudovoy profilaktoriy, which is a type of prison of the Soviet legacy, dedicated to forced rehab of alcoholics and drug-addicts).

Industrial area
The industrial area's main street is the Zavadskaja vulica. Along Zavadskaja street, five major factories are located:
 * Svetlogorskkhimvolokno ("Svyetlahorsk Chemical Fibre Plant"), an artificial fibre plant, one of the main chemical plants in Belarusian chemical sector.
 * The cellulose and cardboard factory, which mainly produces cardboard and cardboard packaging.
 * The cellulose whitening plant, a recently built plant which produces sulfur-whitened crude cellulose from raw wood.
 * Svetlogorskiy domostroitelnyy kombinat ("Svyetlahorsk house-building plant") which is dedicated to production of mixed metal-concrete blocs used for large-scale apartment block buildings.

Near the center of Zavadskaja street there is a turn to vulica Sviardlova (Sverdlova street) the start of which is also located in industrial area. Along it there are large stretches of ogorods (kitchen gardens) and garage blocks. There are also industrial railway lines of Svetlogorskkhimvolokno's cellulose and cardboard factories, crossing Sverdlova street under the bridge. At the end of the industrial area, Sverdlova street's part is the:
 * Svetlogorskiy ZhBiK ("Svyetlahorsk Mixed Metal-Concrete Plant") which mass-produces smaller metal-concrete blocks used in construction. But unlike Svyetlahorsk house-building plant, ZhBiK does not produce complete sections of multifloor apartment blocks, mainly the smaller blocks like metal-concrete curbstones and metal-concrete blocks used to enclose technical wells.

Near the end of Zavadskaja street, near the cellulose-whitening plant, there is a crossing with Savieckaja vulica (Saveckaja street) and a few other plants are located along its starting part:
 * Svetlogorskaya ovoschnaya fabrika ("Svyetlahorsk vegetable greenhouses") which produces a range of vegetables for the local population: potatoes, beets, carrots, onions, etc.
 * Svetlogorskiy rybkhoz ("Svyetlahorsk fish farm") which mainly produces locally bred fish for local consumption
 * Svetlogorskaya TETs ("Svyetlahorsk Power Plant"), the 150MWt mixed-fuel (mainly gas) power plant, supplying Svyetlahorsk, and also partly Rechitsa and Zhlobin.

Residential area
The residential area encompasses the town of Svyetlohorsk's main part and it is the area were all people in Svyetlahorsk live. It is mainly divided into the communal area and the private area, which a few exceptions there and in between.

Communal living area
Communal living area of Svyetlahorsk is the area where all utilities (electricity, water, sewerage, TV, broadband, and, most importantly, external house renovation) are all largely provided by the state-owned Kommunalno-zhilischnoye unitarnoe predpriyatie Svetoch ("Svyetac communal-living unitary enterprise"). It's a densely-populated main residential area of Svyetlahorsk, which is home to around 55,000 of its people.

Unlike the name may suggest, there are almost no true communal residential houses in the area, and this is where most multifloor apartments blocks of Svyetlahorsk are located. Most apartments are privately owned by families living in them, although in the same buildings there are a number of state-owned apartments which the state leases to people living in them.

Communal residential area at first was built along two first streets of modern Svyetlahorsk: Lienina vulica and Internacyajanalnaja vulica and that part of the communal residential area in Svielahorsk is now called Stary horad ("The Old Town")

From 1964 to the current time, coinciding with the start of Chemical fibre plant construction the approach to housing in Svyetlahorsk changed. Instead of building houses along expanding streets, the experimental architectural policy demanded that the rapidly-built apartment blocks were only subdivided to mikrorajón (microdistricts) without the internal street-based addressing in the borders of mikrorajón.

Addressing schemes
From 1964 on, all buildings within mikrorajón were getting mikrorajón-based addresses, e.g. mikrorajón 1, house 14, flat 30, if it was for flats, or mikrorajón 1, house 12A, if it was a kindergarten or other building not dedicated to housing.

To add to this experimental scheme, at first, mikrorajón were only listed by natural numbers, which led to the short addressing scheme which looked like 1-10-11, which stood for "mikrorajón 1, house 10, flat 11". This short addressing scheme is still widely used in Svyetlahorsk hospital patients' medical records.

Later, the mikrorajón numbers were augmented with human-sounding names, for instance, mikrorajón 1 became mikrorajón "Oktyabrski". However, the previous short scheme persists to this day, and still it is widespread to call mikrorajón by numbers.

To add to the complexity of addressing, not all multi-storey apartment blocks were parts of mikrorajón. There were de facto mikrorajóns which had no mikrorajón-level subdivision (for instance the "Pyatisotki" district) of addresses, but street-level subdivision. From 2018 onwards, "Svetoch" started to implement the all-Belarusian law demanding the street-level addressing for all buildings in Belarus.

Mikrorajón, according to implementation of the aforementioned law by "Svetoch" have not perished, but were left only as to signify the discrete sets of apartment blocks delimited from one another. That is how the "Pyatisotki", which was previously addressed by streets and not by mikrorajón, became the new valid mikrorajón. For the mikrorajóns like Stary Horad and Piatisotki, the older, sole street-based addressing was left in place, as the houses in them were never previously addressed by mikrorajón.

The normalization of addresses led to the fact that all following addresses are currently referring to the single flat in Svyetlahorsk (and all of them are correct and being used as of 2021):

 * 1-48-1
 * Mikrorayon 1, house 48, flat 1
 * Mikrorayon Oktyabrski, house 48, flat 1
 * Zavulak Startavy, house 1, flat 1

whereas, "Zavulak Startavy, 1" is the new address for the same house that was previously called "Mikrorajón Oktyabrski, house 48".

Despite the new street-level addressing, the post offices continue to serve mikrorajón-level addressed parcels, and so do the rest of administrative and commercial structures in Svyetlahorsk.

Current microdistricts
The list of microdistricts (mikrorayons) of Svyetlahorsk, as of 2021:
 * Mikrarajon Stary Horad (Mikrorayon Staryy Gorod, previously unnumbered)
 * Mikrarajon Kastrycnicki (Mikrorayon Oktyabrski, mikrorayon 1)
 * Mikrarajon Piersamajski (Mikrorayon Pervomayskiy, mikrorayon 2)
 * Mikrarajon Maladziozny (Mikrorayon Molodezhnyy, mikrorayon 3)
 * Mikrarajon Jubiliejny (Mikrorayon Yubileynyy, mikrorayon 4)
 * Mikrarajon Piatisotki (Mikrorayon Pyatisotki, previously unnumbered)
 * Mikrarajon Sacilki (Mikrorayon Shatilki, mikrorayon 5)
 * Mikrarajon Biarezina (Mikrorayon Berezina, mikrorayon 6)
 * Mikrarajon Paliessie (Mikrorayon Polesye, mikrorayon 6A)
 * Mikrarajon Paudniovy (Mikrorayon Yuzhnyy, mikrorayon 8)

Mikrarajon Kastrycnicki
Mikrarajon Kastrycnicki was the first numbered mikrorajón of Svyetlahorsk, largely built between 1964 and 1969, with an additional houses built on its edge during the 1989 to 1991 and some additional houses being built there to this day, albeit sporadically (the last one was built in 2012). It mostly consists of five-floor khrushchyovkas spanning several podyezds (but not less than 2 podyezds per apartment block) with, typically 60-120 apartments per block.

Houses built in 1989 - 1991 are nine-storey apartment buildings with one to five podyezds each.

Mikrorajón Kastrycnicki has one school, one stadium with taekwondo school, sprint running school and a gym, four kindergartens, one kindergarten for children with special needs, one boxing sportschool and an internal park.

Mikrarajon Piersamajski
Mikrarajon Piersamajski was the second numbered mikrorajón built in Svyetlahorsk, largely in 1967–1972. It is around the size of the Kastrycnicki mikrorajón, and also largely consists of khrushchyovka. Few additional sets of nine-floor apartment blocks were built there in the late 1980s and in the 1990s. nine-storey apartment blocks built along the vulica Batava, contain two-floor apartments, which was a novelty for Svyetlahorsk at the time they were built.

Mikrarajon Piersamajski has two schools, four kindergartens.

Unlike Kastrycnicki, which was built from a cleaned-up construction site and later planted with mainly deciduous trees, Piersamajski was built preserving the pine forest where it was sited, so all internal yards of Piersamajski contain actual pine forest.

Mikrarajon Maladziozny
Mikrarajon Maladziozny is by far the largest mikrorajón in Svyetlahorsk. It has more than 90 apartment blocks and most of those apartment blocks are 9-floor houses spanning several podyezds. It was the Maladziozny, which foreseen the architectural policy change in 1976 which forbade the construction of 5-floor blocks in favour of 9-floor blocks. Maladziozny was mostly built in the 1970s and the 1980s, with the most recent houses built there in the early 2010s.

Maladziozny is the first numbered mikrorajón in Svyetlahorsk not completely contained within enclosing streets: Maladziozny is itself crossed by vulica Azalava and vulica Lunacarskaha.

Maladziozny has four schools, multiple kindergartens, a pediatric clinic, and a center for after-school education of children.

Mikrarajon Piatisotki
Mikrarajon Piatisotki is a small mikrorajón mostly built in the late 1960s to the early 1970s behind the market on Internacyajanalnaja street, which first passed through the Stary Horad, then went through the central town market. Unlike with all other previously built mikrorajón, Piatisotki apartment blocks largely consisted of malosemeykas (reduced-area single room flats), built to house the growing worker population of Svyetlahorsk around that time. Two houses, five-floor and nine-storey with full-fledged non-malosemeyka apartments where additionally built there later, in the late 1980s.

Piatisotki has one school, no kindergartens, Svyetlahorsk court and Svyetlahorsk military command office.

Mikrorajón Jubiliejny
Internacyajanalnaja street, before the Jubiliejny was built, spanned the Stary Horad, then it went through the town market and then to Piatisotki. In the late 1980s, architectural policy demanded to demolish the town market and to establish a new town square and town center, enclosed by two new mikrorajóns.

Jubiliejny was one of these two mikrorajóns and it was built on the site of the demolished town market. It completely consists of 9-floor apartment buildings with the only exception of the so-called shesnadtsatietazhka ("the 16-floor one"), which has 16 floors and is a peak of architectural ensemble, foreseeing the new town square.

Mikrorajón Šacilki
Construction of the new town square demanded also that the village Šacilki, where Svyetlahorsk started, had to be mostly demolished near the new town square. But the construction, which started in the early 1990s, stopped halfway, due to Soviet Union collapse and the changed attitudes towards property and private housing, which became preferable to apartment-block living in the new post-communist era. Therefore, mikrorajón (microdistrict) Šacilki was never properly built. It now consists of one five-storey two-entrance house, one nine-floor residential house and two conjoined 10-storey multi-entrance residential houses overlooking the town square, including the so-called dom s chasami (house with a clock).

In the early 2010s, the renewed interest to construction in this mikrorajón was brought in by the Iranian investment to the construction of two-large malls in mikrorajón Šacilki, which are popularly called Iranskiy kvartal (Persian quarter). Malls were built, went into service, but the further plans to construct several more multifloor apartment blocks behind Iranskiy kvartal by 2015 were never realized.

Apart from Iranskiy kvartal, mikrorajón Šacilki also hosts Svyetlahorsk Office of Prosecutor.

Industry
Within Svyetlahorsk there are many industrial activities and organizations, including the power plant, a chemical man-made fiber plant, a reinforced concrete industrial complex, a petroleum producing industry, a pulp and paper milk industry, butter-making factory, a bakery, and an industrial college.

Religion
Eastern Orthodoxy is by far the dominant religion in Svyetlahorsk, followed by Catholicism. There are several Protestant churches. There are three Eastern Orthodox churches, one Catholic cathedral built in 1997, a Baptist prayer house on Paryckaja street, an Evangelical church behind the sixth microdistrict and a New Apostolic church near the town's banya (public baths).

Apart from mainstream Christian congregations, there is a prominent Jehovah's Witnesses community in Svyetlahorask. Earlier, in the 1990s and the early 2000s there has also been an active local Protestant community called "The Light Of Truth" (in Svet Istiny), which ceased most of its operations by the late 2000s.

Sights

 * Eastern Orthodox cathedral with a gold-plated domes near the fourth microdistrict.
 * Catholic cathedral near the city near the Svyetlahorsk waterfront
 * The quay
 * Museum of local lore on Lenina street
 * Art gallery "Tradition" (Karcinnaja halereja Tradycyja) near the corner of the second microdistrict, which hosts exhibitions and a variety of paintings, drawings and art objects by the painters from Svyetlahorsk and beyond
 * Monument to Raman Sacila, the purported founder of Sacilki
 * Monument to Petr Miroshnichenko, Hero of the Soviet Union who shielded the battalion of Soviet soldiers from a German machinegun with his chest in battles near Svyetlahorsk, depicting Petr in his battle munition, kneeling
 * monument to the Unknown Soldier near the town's railway station, where particularly harsh battles between German and Soviet army units took place, depicting an unknown soldier in his battle munition, kneeling
 * Monument on the town's waterfront dedicated to all and everyone who fell a victim to the Second World War; it is bell-shaped
 * Monument to soldiers from Svyetlahorsk who died in Soviet-Afghan war, depicting two Soviet male soldiers near a crashed helicopter, on the town's waterfront
 * Tank remade into a monument on the town's waterfront.
 * A wedding vow arc on the town's waterfront where newly-wed couples leave locked doorlocks on it as a symbol to their marital commitment.
 * Vityaz (knight) sculpture carved from tree stump near the Pyatisotki microdistrict.
 * Wooden sculpture of mother and child near the "Tradition" art gallery.
 * Wooden monument to youth near the corner of the third microdistrict
 * Statue of Prometheus holding fire near the House of Culture of the Energy Workers.
 * Additional monuments to Prometheus near all major highway entrances to Svyetlahorsk
 * Great Gatsby mural on the private house near the town's waterfront.

Health
Svyetlahorsk, like much of Gomel Region, suffered extensive radioactive fallout after the Chernobyl Accident of 1986. This has led to significant health and ecological issues in the city and surrounding countryside.

International relations
Svyetlahorsk is twinned with:

 * 🇲🇩 Călărași District, Moldova
 * 🇷🇴 Călărași, Romania
 * 🇷🇺 Chernushinsky District, Russia
 * 🇩🇪 Helmstedt, Germany
 * 🇷🇺 Ivanteyevka, Russia

 * 🇷🇺 Kingisepp, Russia
 * 🇷🇺 Kommunar, Russia
 * 🏴 Mendip, England, United Kingdom
 * Mtskheta, Georgia
 * 🇧🇬 Obzor (Nesebar), Bulgaria
 * 🇷🇺 Pushkinsky District, Russia
 * 🇧🇬 Sliven, Bulgaria
 * 🇷🇺 Svetlogorsk, Russia
 * 🇷🇺 Svetly, Russia

title: Svyetlahorsk


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Belfry (architecture)

The belfry is a structure enclosing bells for ringing as part of a building, usually as part of a bell tower or steeple. It can also refer to the entire tower or building, particularly in continental Europe for such a tower attached to a city hall or other civic building.

A belfry encloses the bell chamber, the room in which the bells are housed; its walls are pierced by openings which allow the sound to escape. The openings may be left uncovered but are commonly filled with louvers to prevent rain and snow from entering and damaging the bells. There may be a separate room below the bell chamber to house the ringers.

Etymology
The word belfry comes from the Old North French berfroi or berfrei, meaning 'movable wooden siege tower'. The Old French word itself is derived from Middle High German bercfrit, 'protecting shelter' (cf. the cognate bergfried), combining the Proto-Germanic bergen, 'to protect', or bergaz, 'mountain, high place', with frithu-, 'peace; personal security', to create berg-frithu, lit. 'high place of security' or 'that which watches over peace'. The etymology was forgotten with time, which led to a variety of folk etymologies and spellings, with the initial meaning being lost in the process, and sometime between the late 13th and the mid-15th century the new sense of "bell tower" was adopted in Anglo-Latin and Middle English. This new and current meaning came as a result of the common association with bell. Merriam-Webster explains the transformation by the fact that the initial word was later used for different types of towers and protective buildings, many containing bells. People associated the belfrey with bells, and by dissimilation or by association the word was successively spelled bellfrey, belfrey, and finally belfry. In larger towns, explains Kingsley Amis, watchmen placed in towers were also on the lookout for fires. Though flags were used by the watchmen for communication, these towers usually contained an alarm bell or bells built into a bell-cot, thus Middle English speakers thought berfrei had something to do with bells: they altered it to belfry, an interesting example of the process of folk etymology.

In Medieval Latin, the variants bertefredum, berfredum, and belfredum are known. Today's Dutch belfort combines the term bell with the term stronghold. It was a watchtower that a city was permitted to build in its defence, while the Dutch term klokkenstoel ('bell-chair') refers only to the construction of the hanging system, or the way the bell or bells are installed within the tower. The Old French berfroi or alike has become beffroi [fr] in modern French.

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

title: Belfry (architecture)


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Grodno (disambiguation)

Grodno (Hrodna), a city in Belarus.

Grodno may also refer to:

 * Grodno, Greater Poland Voivodeship (west-central Poland)
 * Grodno, Toruń County in Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship (north-central Poland)
 * Grodno, Włocławek County in Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship (north-central Poland)
 * Grodno, Łódź Voivodeship (central Poland)
 * Grodno, West Pomeranian Voivodeship (north-west Poland)
 * Grodno Castle (Poland), Lower Silesian Voivodeship

title: Grodno (disambiguation)


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Hoverla

Mount Hoverla (Ukrainian and Говерла), at 2061 m, is the highest mountain in Ukraine and part of the Ukrainian Carpathians. The mountain is located in the Eastern Beskids, in the Chornohora region. The slopes are covered with beech and spruce forests, above which there is a belt of sub-alpine meadows called polonyna in Ukrainian. The main spring of the Prut River is on the eastern slope. The name is most likely of Romanian origin and means 'difficult ascent.' Some sources offer a Hungarian word for a 'snow fortress' as the origin, however this claim lacks logical evidence. Hoverla is composed of sandstone.

The date of the first ascent is unknown. In the late 19th century, the mountain became a notable tourist attraction, especially among tourists from nearby cities of Galicia. In 1880 the first tourist route between the peak of Hoverla and Krasny Luh was marked by Leopold Wajgel of the Galician Tatra Society. The first tourist shelter was built the following year.

In the 20th century, the mountain increasingly gained popularity as an extreme sports site. Some routes are classified as 1A in the winter period (from late autumn to May), according to the Soviet grading system. The most popular approach to the summit starts from the tour-basa Zarosliak on the mountain's eastern face and gains more than 1100 m elevation along a steep path with few hairpin turns. There is a steeper route (marked with blue signs) and a gentler, longer one (marked with green).

External link

 * Info, advice and equipment lists on winter Hoverla ascents

title: Hoverla


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Gravensteen

The Gravensteen (Dutch; lit. 'the Counts' rock') is a medieval castle in the city of Ghent, East Flanders in Belgium. The current castle dates from 1180 and was the residence of the Counts of Flanders until 1353. It was subsequently re-purposed as a court, prison, mint, and even as a cotton factory. It was restored over 1893–1903 and is now a museum and a major landmark in the city.

Origins
The origins of the Gravensteen date to the reign of Arnulf I (890–965). The site, which sat between two branches of the river Lys, was first fortified around 1000, initially in wood and later in stone. This was soon transformed into a motte-and-bailey castle which was burnt down in around 1176.

The current castle dates to 1180 and was built by Philip of Alsace (1143–1191) on the site of the older fortification. It may have been inspired by crusader castles witnessed by Philip during the Second Crusade. As well as a protective citadel, the Gravensteen was intended to intimidate the burghers of Ghent who often challenged the counts' authority. It incorporates a large central donjon, a residence and various smaller buildings. These are surrounded by a fortified, oval-shaped enceinte lined with 24 small échauguettes. It also has a sizeable moat, fed with water from the Lys.

From 1180 until 1353, the Gravensteen was the residence of the Counts of Flanders. The decision to leave was taken by Louis of Male (1330–1384) who transferred the court to the nearby Hof ten Walle.

The foot of a wolf was once nailed to the gate and provides the last known archaeozoological evidence for the wolf in Flanders.

Subsequent history
After ceasing to be the residence of the counts of Flanders, the castle entered a decline. It was used as a court and prison until the 18th century. From 1353 to 1491, it was the site of Ghent's mint and private buildings were later constructed on or around the Medieval remains. During the Industrial Revolution, the Gravensteen was converted into a cotton mill by an industrialist who purchased the site. It was even scheduled for demolition.

Parts of the castle were bought up gradually by the City of Ghent which began a major restoration in a romanticising Gothic style between 1893 and 1907 under the architect Joseph de Waele. De Waele was inspired the approach of the French architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc and attempted to restore the castle to its imagined appearance in the 12th century. Many details added during this period, such as the flat roofs and the windows of the eastern outbuilding, are not thought to be historically accurate.

The Gravensteen was the centrepiece of the Ghent World Fair of 1913 during which the city centre was significantly reshaped. It remains open to the public.

"The Battle of Gravensteen Castle" took place on November 16, 1949 when 138 students from the University of Ghent occupied the castle over a new tax on beer. In addition to barricading the castle gates and lowering the portcullis, they captured the only guard on duty and locked him in a closet. After raising banners along the castle walls and pelting passing police officers with rotten fruit, they were eventually detained and removed from the castle, though a public outcry of support led to none of the students being prosecuted for their actions. Their campaign against the beer tax was unsuccessful.

title: Gravensteen


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Abdul Karim Telgi

Abdul Karim Telgi (29 July 1961 – 23 October 2017) was an Indian counterfeiter. He earned money by printing counterfeit stamp paper in India, with the size of the scam estimated to be around inr 300000000000.

Early life
Telgi's mother was Shariefabee Ladsaab Telgi, and his father was an employee of Indian Railways. His father died while he was young. Telgi paid for his education at Sarvodaya Vidyalaya Khanapur, an English medium school, by selling fruits and vegetables on trains. He later studied at Gogte College of Commerce, Belgaum. He completed his B.Com in 1984. Eventually, he moved to the Gulf, Saudi Arabia. Seven years later, he returned to India, where he began a counterfeiting career, originally focusing on fake passports. He started a business to export manpower to Saudi Arabia and opened a company, Arabian Metro Travels at New Marine Lines. He used to create several fake documents that would facilitate laborers' smooth passage at the airport even if their passport had an ECR (emigration check required) stamp or other issues that could raise red flags for immigration officials. This practice was called "pushing" in the parlance of manpower exporters.

Counterfeiting charges
Telgi moved to more complex counterfeiting when he began to counterfeit stamp paper. He appointed 300 people as agents who sold the fakes to bulk purchasers, including banks, insurance companies, and stock brokerage firms. The size of the scam was estimated to be around inr 300000000000 One aspect of the scandal that caused much concern was that it required the involvement of many police officers and other government employees including Nikhil Kothari, an Assistant Police Investigator who was found to have a net worth of over inr 1000000000, despite making a salary of only inr 9000 per month. Several police officers were implicated in the case. Pradip Sawant, then Deputy Commissioner of Police, Special Branch, Mumbai, was discharged but subsequently reinstated after being found innocent. Then police officer S M Mushrif, known for the book Who killed Karkare took decisive measures in this case.

On 17 January 2006, Telgi and several associates were sentenced to 30 years rigorous imprisonment. On 28 June 2007, Telgi was sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for 13 years for another aspect of the scandal. He was also fined inr 10000000000. The Income Tax Department requested that Telgi's property be confiscated to pay the fine. He had been in jail for 13 years.

Death
Telgi was suffering from meningitis and died on 23 October 2017 at Victoria Hospital, Bengaluru. He was suffering from diabetes and hypertension for over 20 years, besides other ailments like HIV.

In popular culture

 * Mudrank: The Stamp is a 2009 Indian Hindi-language thriller film directed by Shakir Shaikh based on the stamp scandal.
 * Paper is a 2020 Indian web series by Ullu based on the stamp scandal and stars Rohit Roy as Telgi.
 * Money Mafia is a documentary series that showcases the details of eight scandals in India. The first episode, Fake Stamp Papers, is about Telgi's scandal.
 * Scam 2003 is an Indian web series directed by Tushar Hiranandani and produced by Applause Entertainment and stars Gagan Dev Riar as Telgi. It is inspired from Sanjay Singh's book Telgi Scam: Reporter's ki Diary.

title: Abdul Karim Telgi


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The Civil War (miniseries)

The Civil War is a 1990 American television documentary miniseries created by Ken Burns about the American Civil War. It was the first broadcast to air on PBS for five consecutive nights, from September 23 to 27, 1990.

More than 39 million viewers tuned in to at least one episode, and viewership averaged more than 14 million viewers each evening, making it the most-watched program ever to air on PBS. It was awarded more than 40 major television and film honors. A companion book to the documentary was released shortly after the series aired.

The film's production techniques were groundbreaking for the time, and spawned film techniques such as the Ken Burns effect. Its theme song, "Ashokan Farewell" is widely acclaimed. The series was extremely influential, and serves as the main source of knowledge about the Civil War to many Americans. However, some historians have criticized the film for not delving into the subsequent, racially contentious Reconstruction era, and having an all-white production team.

The series was rebroadcast in June 1994 as a lead-up to Burns's next series Baseball, then remastered for its 12th anniversary in 2002, although it remained in standard definition resolution. To commemorate the film's 25th anniversary and the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War and Lincoln's assassination, the film underwent a complete digital restoration to high-definition format in 2015.

Production
Mathew Brady's photographs inspired Burns to make The Civil War, which (in nine episodes totaling more than 10 hours) explores the war's military, social, and political facets through some 16,000 contemporary photographs and paintings, and excerpts from the letters and journals of persons famous and obscure.

The series' slow zooming and panning across still images was later termed the "Ken Burns effect". Burns combined these images with modern cinematography, music, narration by David McCullough, anecdotes and insights from authors such as Shelby Foote, historians Barbara J. Fields, Ed Bearss, and Stephen B. Oates; and actors reading contemporary quotes from historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Walt Whitman, Stonewall Jackson, and Frederick Douglass, as well as diaries by Mary Boykin Chesnut, Samuel R. Watkins, Elisha Hunt Rhodes and George Templeton Strong and commentary from James W. Symington. A large cast of actors voiced correspondence, memoirs, news articles, and stood in for historical figures from the Civil War.

Burns also interviewed Daisy Turner, then a 104-year-old daughter of an ex-slave, whose poetry features prominently in the series. Turner died in February 1988, a full two-and-a-half years before the series aired.

Production ran five years. The film was co-produced by Ken's brother Ric Burns, written by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ric Burns with Ken Burns, and edited by Paul Barnes with cinematography by Buddy Squires. It was funded by General Motors, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Music
The theme song of the documentary is the instrumental "Ashokan Farewell", which is heard twenty-five times during the film. The song was composed by Jay Ungar in 1982 and he describes it as "the song coming out of 'a sense of loss and longing' after the annual Ashokan Music & Dance Camps ended." It is the only modern piece of music heard in the film, and subsequently became the first ever single release for the Elektra Nonesuch label, which released the series' soundtrack album. It became so closely associated with the series that people frequently and erroneously believe it was a Civil War song.

Ungar, his band Fiddle Fever and pianist Jacqueline Schwab performed this song and many of the other 19th-century songs used in the film. Schwab's piano arrangements in particular have been acclaimed by many critics. Musicologist Alexander Klein wrote: "Upon watching the full documentary, one is immediately struck by the lyricism of Schwab's playing and, more importantly, her exceptional arranging skills. What had been originally rousing and at times bellicose songs such as the southern "Bonnie Blue Flag" or the northern "Battle Cry of Freedom" now suddenly sounded like heart-warming, lyrical melodies due to Schwab's interpretations. The pianist not only changed the songs' original mood but also allowed herself some harmonic liberties so as to make these century-old marching tunes into piano lamentations that contemporary audiences could fully identify with".

A major piece of vocal music in the series is a version of the old spiritual "We Are Climbing Jacob's Ladder", performed a cappella by the African-American singer, scholar and activist Bernice Johnson Reagon and several other female voices. The song appears on Reagon's album River of Life.

Voices
• Narrated by David McCullough

• Sam Waterston as Abraham Lincoln

• Julie Harris as Mary Chesnut

• Jason Robards as Ulysses S. Grant

• Morgan Freeman as Frederick Douglass and others

• Paul Roebling as Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Sullivan Ballou, Washington Roebling, Oliver Wendell Holmes and others

• Garrison Keillor as Walt Whitman and others

• George Black as Robert E. Lee

• Arthur Miller as William Tecumseh Sherman and others

• Christopher Murney as Elisha Hunt Rhodes

• Charley McDowell as Sam Watkins

• Horton Foote as Jefferson Davis

• George Plimpton as George Templeton Strong

• Philip Bosco as Horace Greeley

• Terry Courier as George B. McClellan

• Jody Powell as Stonewall Jackson and others

• Studs Terkel as Benjamin Butler and others

• Hoyt Axton as various

• John Hartford as various

• Colleen Dewhurst as various

• Shelby Foote as various

• Ronnie Gilbert as various

• Jeremy Irons as various

• Gene Jones as various

• Derek Jacobi as various

• Kurt Vonnegut as various

• Laurence Fishburne (credited as Larry Fishburne) as various

• Pamela Reed as various

• M. Emmet Walsh as various

Interviewees

 * Ed Bearss – Military historian and author
 * Barbara J. Fields – Professor of American history at Columbia University
 * Shelby Foote – American writer, journalist, and Civil War historian
 * Stephen Oates – Professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
 * William Safire – American author, columnist, journalist, and presidential speechwriter
 * James W. Symington – former Congressman
 * Daisy Turner – 104-year-old daughter of a former plantation slave, oral historian
 * Robert Penn Warren – American poet, novelist, and literary critic

Episode list
Each episode was divided into numerous chapters or vignettes, but each generally had a primary theme or focus (i.e., a specific battle or topic). The series followed a fairly consistent chronological order of history.

Reception and awards
The series received more than forty major film and television awards, including two Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards, Producer of the Year Award from the Producers Guild of America, People's Choice Award, Peabody Award, duPont-Columbia Award, D.W. Griffith Award, and the US$50,000 Lincoln Prize, among dozens of others.

The series sparked a major renewal of interest in the Civil War. It was widely acclaimed for its skillful depiction and retelling of the Civil War events, and also for drawing huge numbers of viewers into a new awareness of the historical importance of the conflict. Before the series, the Civil War had receded in popular historical consciousness since its 1960s centennial. Following the series, there was a sharp upturn in popular books and other works about the Civil War.

Robert Brent Toplin in 1996 wrote Ken Burns's The Civil War: Historians Respond, which included essays from critical academic historians who felt their topics of interest were not covered in enough detail and responses from Ken Burns and others involved in the series' production.

The series has been criticized for perceived historical inaccuracies, since it focuses mostly on the battles of the Civil War to the detriment of other areas. Some also believe it provides a weak or faulty explanation of the causes of the war. While academic historians concur that the war was fought to preserve slavery, Burns presented Shelby Foote's framing of that dispute as a "failure to compromise". Though Foote was a journalist and novelist rather than a trained historian, he was given more screen time than any other commentator. The fact that Burns himself was not a historian, nor were most of his production team, has similarly led to accusations that his series did not contain a thorough enough historical overview of its subject. That most of them were also white men has also been fingered for a lack of coverage of women, blacks, or Reconstruction. The series has also been criticized for propagating the Lost Cause of the Confederacy ideology. Because Burns' documentary has been so influential, and serves as the main source of knowledge about the Civil War for many Americans, some critics fear it has perpetuated this discredited view.

12th Anniversary
The entire series was digitally remastered for re-release on September 17, 2002 in VHS and DVD by PBS Home Video and Warner Home Video. The DVD release included a short documentary on how a Spirit DataCine was used to transfer and remaster the film. The remastering was limited to producing an improved fullscreen standard-definition digital video of the film's interpositive negatives, for broadcast and DVD. The soundtrack was also re-mastered and remixed in 5.1 Dolby Digital AC3 surround sound.

Paul Barnes, Editor & Post-Production Supervisor, Florentine Films at that time commented:

"Ken Burns and I decided to remaster The Civil War for several reasons. First of all, when we completed the film in 1989, we were operating under a very tight schedule and budget. As the main editor on the film, I always wanted to go back and improve the overall quality of the film. The other reason for remastering the film at this time is that the technology to color correct, print and transfer a film to video for broadcast has vastly improved, especially in the realm of digital computer technology... We also were able to eliminate a great deal of the dust and dirt that often get embedded into 16mm film when it is printed."

25th Anniversary
For the 150th anniversary of the end of the war, and the 25th anniversary of the series, PBS remastered the series in high definition. This work involved creating a new 4K ultra-high-definition digital master of the film's original camera negatives and was carried out in association with the George Eastman House, where the original 16mm negatives are preserved. It aired on PBS from September 7 to 11, 2015. Blu-ray and DVD editions were released on October 13, 2015.

Soundtrack
A soundtrack featuring songs from the miniseries, many of which were songs popular during the Civil War, has been released.

title: The Civil War (miniseries)


text:
Otto Strandman

Otto August Strandman (30 November 1875 – 5 February 1941) was an Estonian politician, who served as Prime Minister (1919) and State Elder of Estonia (1929–1931).

Strandman was one of the leaders of the centre-left Estonian Labour Party, that saw its biggest support after the 1919 and 1920 elections. Strandman was a key figure in composing the radical land reform law and the 1920 Constitution. He also served as Minister of Agriculture (1918–1919), Minister of Justice (acting 1918; 1920–1921), Minister of Finance (1924), Minister of Foreign Affairs (1918, 1920–1921 and 1924) and Minister of War (1919). During his tenure Minister of Finance, having been a critic of the previous government's policies,he pursued an anti-inflationary policy, seeing it as a method of avoiding hyperinflation and crisis. He was aiming at a 'Danish' model of a modern agricultural economy rather than indsutrialization, Strandman served as the speaker of the Estonian Provincial Assembly in 1917–1918, and as speaker of the newly independent country's parliament (Riigikogu) in 1921. He was also a diplomat, serving as the Estonian envoy in Warsaw, Poland (1927–1929), and in Paris, France (1933–1939).

After the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Estonia and the other Baltic states in June 1940, Strandman committed suicide in February 1941, after being called to appear at the local headquarters of the NKVD.

Early life
Strandman was born in the village of Vandu, Undla Parish (now Kadrina Parish). His father, Hans Strandman, was a schoolteacher, and Otto was his third child.

Strandman was first educated by his father, until he began his studies at the municipal school of Rakvere in 1886, and later at Emperor Alexander State High School in Tallinn and the 5th and the 7th High School in Saint Petersburg. He graduated as an extern in 1896 after his exams in the Estonian Governorate High School of Tallinn.

After graduation, Strandman served as an official at the Tallinn Office of the State Bank of the Russian Empire until he went on to study law at the University of Tartu in 1899. In 1901 he continued his studies at the Saint Petersburg Imperial University, graduating in 1903.

Early career
After graduating, Strandman worked as a lawyer in Narva and Tallinn. He became known for his eloquence and was elected to be a member of Tallinn city council from 1904 to 1905. As a lawyer, he defended Estonians against Baltic Germans and state officials.

Strandman was also active in Estonian national organizations and became an activist on self-government reform, where he supported national autonomy in the Baltic governorates. Strandman was among the politicians who were supposed to compose the draft of self-government reform, but in the course of the 1905 Revolution, Strandman, like many other Estonian activists, was forced to flee abroad. At the time of the revolution, he supported radical socialist political positions, but later in his life moved towards the centre-left.

During his exile years, Strandman lived in Switzerland and other European countries. In Switzerland, Strandman and other Estonian exiles eventually did form the draft of self-government reform, but it was never implemented. Strandman returned to the Russian Empire in 1906, but he was banned from living in the Baltic governorates for three years, forcing him to live in Narva and Saint Petersburg. He returned to Estonia in 1909 and worked as an attorney, defending participants of the 1905 Revolution. He was also a keen supporter of free speech in the media. In 1917, he became a prosecutor at Tallinn District Court.

In March 1917, Strandman and some other known politicians, who were known supporters of autonomy, were chosen to compose the draft of self-government reform, that eventually created the Autonomous Governorate of Estonia. Strandman was again elected to the Tallinn City Council and, in the summer of 1917, to the Estonian Provincial Assembly, where he was part of the leftist Estonian Radical Socialist Party, led by Jüri Vilms. He served as the Chairman of the assembly between 25 October 1917 and 27 November 1918, although with periods of non-activity in between, due to the October Revolution and German occupation. After the October Revolution, Strandman led the Provincial Assembly session of 28 November 1917, where the assembly declared itself the highest legitimate power in Estonia. After his work as the speaker of the parliament, Strandman was acknowledged for his neutrality and punctuality.

Leader of the centre-left
After Jüri Vilms was mysteriously executed in Finland in 1918, Otto Strandman took over as acting Minister of Court. He also became one of the leaders of the Estonian Radical Socialist Party, which in 1919 would merge with the Social Travaillist Party to form the centre-left Estonian Labour Party. Strandman was however arrested by Germans in the summer of 1918.

After the German occupation ended in November 1918, Strandman continued in the Provisional Government, first as Minister of Foreign Affairs and then as Minister of Agriculture, when he also served as a deputy for Minister of Foreign Affairs Jaan Poska. As Minister of Agriculture, Strandman became the key person in composing and implementing a new land reform law. Being one of the leaders of the Labour Party, he fought hard to make the land reform as radical as possible. In result, land that had belonged to Baltic German nobility was redistributed to ethnic Estonians.

His diplomatic career started in December 1918, when he was part of the delegation to Sweden as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, asking for support in the Estonian War of Independence. Eventually Sweden sent a group of volunteers to the war. To pay for his trip to Stockholm, Strandman was forced to sell his own furniture.

In the Constituent Assembly elections of 1919, the Estonian Labour Party won 30 of the 120 seats with a majority held by centre-left parties. This gave the Labour Party a chance to shape Estonian politics on a larger scale. Otto Strandman became the first Prime Minister of the country on 8 May 1919, and additionally Minister of War.

Strandman's first cabinet was a centre-left coalition with the Estonian People's Party and the Estonian Social Democratic Workers' Party. The Estonian People's Party left the coalition in September, and Strandman's cabinet resigned on 18 November 1919, being in office for half a year. The Estonian Labour Party's Ants Piip then headed a one-party minority government between 26 October 1920 and 25 January 1921, where Otto Strandman served as both Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Justice. As Minister of Foreign Affairs, he established diplomatic relations between Estonia and Soviet Russia, making Estonia one of the first countries to do so.

The 1920 elections made the Estonian Labour Party the biggest party in Estonia with 22 of the 100 seats in Riigikogu, the first constitutional parliament, but the centre-right parties had also gained strength. The Estonian Labour Party remained in the coalition, headed by State Elder Konstantin Päts of Farmers' Assemblies. Strandman went on to serve as the first speaker of the Riigikogu between 4 January and 18 November 1921.

Juhan Kukk headed another Estonian Labour Party cabinet in 1922–1923, but without Strandman. In the following cabinet of Christian Democrat Friedrich Karl Akel, he returned as Minister of Foreign Affairs between 26 and 14 March May 1924 and then Minister of Finance until 16 December 1924.

Economic policies
Strandman figured several times in financial affairs. On 7 and 19 December 1923, he accused long-term inflationist Minister of Finance Georg Vestel in the parliament for incorrect spending of the state treasury. It was Strandman's criticism that eventually led to the fall of Konstantin Päts's cabinet and caused him to stay away from power from 1924 to 1931.

After the Estonian War of Independence, a large number of new businesses were started in a short time period and the industry was developed on loans, something which eventually led to financial difficulties. As Minister of Finance, Strandman proposed a plan for economic redevelopment that was supposed to reduce loans, lower the state budget and achieve a trade surplus by raising customs duties. At first, his actions saw little effect and he was criticised from both left- and right-wing parties, but eventually the Estonian mark stabilized, integrating the Estonian economy more with Europe. He also supported building the economy on agriculture rather than transit between Russia and Europe, regarding Denmark as a model agricultural country. In the media, his policies were mockingly called UMP (Uus majanduspoliitika – "New Economic Policy" (nep)) and KUMP (Kõige uuem majanduspoliitika – "Newest Economic Policy") after the economic policy in the Soviet Union at the time. In May 1924, Strandman didn't blame his predecessor Georg Vestel for deliberately creating hyperinflation, only for sheer optimism about his policies.

For almost five years, Strandman didn't hold any important offices. He remained active in parliamentary politics and became known for his eloquence. As leader of the centre-left, his work continued to have a great effect on the economy, since he achieved for same kind of policies as he had implemented during his term as Minister of Finance. Economic historian Jaak Valge has argued that it was thanks to Strandman's rapid and decisive work that Estonia was able to avoid hyperinflation in the early 1920s. It was Strandman who made the suggestion to name the new Estonian currency the "kroon", after the currencies of the Scandinavian countries.

Late political career
As the Estonian Labour Party slowly turned from leftist to centrist, its popularity fell, leaving its highlights to the 1919 Constituent Assembly and 1920 Riigikogu elections. The party achieved only 12 of the 100 seats in 1923 elections, 13 in 1926 and 10 in 1929, until it finally merged with other centrist parties to form the National Centre Party in 1932.

During a governmental crisis in July 1926, the speaker of the Riigikogu Karl August Einbund gave Strandman the task to form a cabinet. His economic programme still consisted of lowering the budget and reducing loans, something which was unacceptable to the right-wing Settlers' Party and Farmers' Assemblies.

From 1927 to 1929, Strandman served as Estonian envoy to Poland, with additional accreditation to Czechoslovakia and Romania, residing in Warsaw. In June 1929, he unexpectedly resigned and returned to Estonian politics to head his second cabinet, starting from 9 July 1929. It was a coalition between his Labour Party, People's Party, Christian People's Party, Farmers' Assemblies and the Settlers' Party, combining almost all political parties from the centre-left to right. Before taking office, he criticized the parliament for becoming a "factory of inadequate laws". His cabinet remained in office until 12 February 1931. It is however ironic, that the Great Depression reached Estonia when the head of government was Strandman, who had always supported cautious economic and financial policies. It was thanks to his strong skills in economics and finance that the coalition lasted for a relatively long time, 1 year and 7 months.

During his time in office, he made a state visit to Poland in February 1930, where he met both President Ignacy Mościcki and Marshal Józef Piłsudski to propose the formation of a Baltic Entente, something which however didn't find Polish support. On his return home, he visited Vilnius, which was controlled by Poland at the time. The visit damaged the relations between Estonia and Lithuania, with Dovas Zaunius, Lithuania's Minister of Foreign Affairs, protesting the visit as a breach of neutrality in the Vilnius disputeBy 1931, Estonian-Lithuanian relations had somewhat healed. In August 1930, Strandman hosted President Mościcki in Estonia.

Membership in the parliament:
 * 1917–1919 Estonian Provincial Assembly (Maapäev)
 * 1919–1920 Estonian Constituent Assembly (Asutav kogu)
 * 1920–1923 I Riigikogu
 * 1923–1926 II Riigikogu
 * 1926–1927 III Riigikogu
 * 1929–1932 IV Riigikogu
 * 1932 V Riigikogu

Later diplomatic career and death
From 1933 to 1939 Strandman was envoy of Estonia to France, Belgium, Spain and the Holy See, residing in Paris. In 1936 he supported Juhan Kukk, Ants Piip, Jaan Teemant, and Jaan Tõnisson, who signed a memorandum addressed to Prime Minister in duties of the State Elder Konstantin Päts, demanding civil freedoms and an end to his authoritarian rule. In 1938, Strandman became a judge at the Permanent Court of International Justice in The Hague.

In 1939, Strandman returned to Estonia, but retired from public life due to ill health. As he was not active in politics, he was initially left alone after the Soviet occupation in 1940. In 1941 however, Strandman received a formal notice to appear at the local headquarters of the NKVD. Realizing his fate, he shot himself to death in his home in Kadrina on 5 February 1941. He was buried in Tallinn's Sisekalmistu Cemetery.

Cultural activities
Strandman was on the board of the Estonia Society and Tallinn Savings and Loans Society (Tallinna Vastastikune Krediitühisus). He was a member of the Estonian Students' Society since 1899, and received honorary doctorates from the University of Tartu in 1928 and Warsaw University in 1930. Strandman renounced all honours and awards that had been given to him.

Personal life
In 1907, Strandman married Lydia Hindrikson (1889–1934). They had three children; their daughter Hella (1909–1913) and son Hans (1911–1913) both died at an early age, with only the second daughter, Lydia (1914–1966), surviving into adulthood.

National Honours

 * 🇪🇪 Estonia: Cross of Liberty, III class, 1st degree (1920)
 * 🇪🇪 Estonia: Order of the Estonian Red Cross, 3rd class (1921)
 * 🇪🇪 Estonia: Order of the Estonian Red Cross, 2nd class (1928)
 * 🇪🇪 Estonia: Order of the Estonian Red Cross, 1st class (1929)
 * 🇪🇪 Estonia: Order of the Cross of the Eagle, 1st class (1930)

title: Otto Strandman


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Franz von Suppé

Franz von Suppé, born Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo de Suppé (18 April 1819 – 21 May 1895) was an Austrian composer of light operas and other theatre music. He came from the Kingdom of Dalmatia, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now part of Croatia). A composer and conductor of the Romantic period, he is notable for his four dozen operettas, including the first operetta to a German libretto. Some of them remain in the repertory, particularly in German-speaking countries, and he composed a substantial quantity of church music, but he is now chiefly known for his overtures, which remain popular in the concert hall and on record. Among the best-known are Poet and Peasant, Light Cavalry, Morning, Noon, and Night in Vienna and Pique Dame.

Life and career
Suppé's parents named him Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo when he was born on 18 April 1819 in Spalato, now Split, Dalmatia, Croatia. His father – like his father before him – was a civil servant in the service of the Austrian Empire. Suppé's mother was Viennese by birth.

The facts of Suppé's early years are disputed. Both during his lifetime and after his death various unfounded statements circulated about his background. The first edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1884) incorrectly states that the Suppés were of Belgian descent, that Suppé was born in 1820 on board ship at Spalato, and that his full name was Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo Cavaliere Suppe Demelli. Other incorrect information is given in a 1905 biography of Suppé by Otto Keller, husband of one of the composer's granddaughters, based on the unreliable recollections of Suppé's widow.

Suppé spent his childhood in Zara, now Zadar, where he had his first music lessons and began to compose at an early age. As a boy he had encouragement in music from a local bandmaster and the Zara cathedral choirmaster. As a teenager in Zara, Suppé studied flute and harmony. According to some accounts his father wanted him to be a lawyer, and sent him to study in Padua, from where he supposedly visited Milan and met Rossini, Donizetti and Verdi and attended performances of their operas. By another account he studied philosophy in Padua and studied law later in Vienna.

After Suppé's father died in 1835 the family moved to Vienna, where Suppé studied music under Ignaz von Seyfried, a pupil of Mozart. Suppé played the flute in various orchestras and taught Italian. (His mother tongue was Italian, and although he learned to speak German fluently he did so with what one journalist called "a decided Italian accent".) In 1837 and 1841 he wrote two operas, neither of which was performed but both of which may have been influenced by Donizetti, allegedly a distant relation of the Suppés.

From 1840 Suppé worked as a composer and conductor for Franz Pokorny, the director of several theatres in Vienna, Pressburg (now Bratislava), Ödenburg (now Sopron) and Baden bei Wien. In Operetta: A Theatrical History (1983), Richard Traubner writes that 24 November 1860 is considered by many to be "the birthdate of the true Viennese operetta", with the production of Suppé’s Das Pensionat (The Boarding School) at the Theater an der Wien. Pokorny’s son, Alois, who ran the theatre, did not have enough money to buy the rights for the first Viennese productions of Offenbach's operas, and he presented instead Das Pensionat, which had, by the standards of the time, an excellent run: it was played for 20 nights in succession, and 34 times in all during the six months it remained in the repertoire. Das Pensionat was the first operetta composed to an original German text, and the first Viennese operetta to be heard abroad: there were productions in Germany and Hungary, and in November 1861 it was given (in German) at the Stadt Theater, New York. Suppé was heavily influenced by Offenbach; he studied Offenbach's works carefully and wrote many successful operettas using them as a model. The operetta specialist Richard Traubner writes that Suppé's early works frankly imitated Offenbach's. Das Pensionat not only emulates Offenbach, but refers to him in the first act, when the heroine, the schoolgirl Sophie, and her friends learn about the can-can and proceed to dance it.

Suppé's most enduring one-act success, Die schöne Galathée (The Beautiful Galatea), dates from 1865. It was modelled, Traubner comments, in both title and style, on Offenbach’s La belle Hélène which had been a great success in Vienna earlier that year. It has had frequent revivals throughout German-speaking countries, and was played in German and in English translation in both New York and London. A full-length operatic success eluded Suppé for some years, and it was not until after the triumph of Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus in 1874 that he caught up. His Fatinitza (1876) was a critical and box office success, not only in Vienna but in London and Paris, though less so in New York, where it coincided with and was somewhat eclipsed by the first production there of H.M.S. Pinafore. Suppé surpassed the success of Fatinitza in 1879 with Boccaccio and had his final lasting success in 1880 with Donna Juanita. Traubner writes, "nothing after Donna Juanita has endured, though several were very popular in their time": Der Gascogner (Theater an der Wien, 22 March 1881) was an outright failure, but Die Afrikareise (A Trip to Africa, Theater an der Wien, 17 March 1883) ran for a month, and received several productions, including an American revival with Lillian Russell in the lead, which ran for five weeks in 1887.

Suppé wrote music for over a hundred productions at the Theater in der Josefstadt as well as the Carltheater in Leopoldstadt, at the Theater an der Wien. He also worked on some landmark opera productions, such as the 1846 production of Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots with Jenny Lind.

Suppé was twice married: first to Therese Merville, and after her death in 1865 to Sofie Strasser. He died in Vienna on 21 May 1895, at the age of 76.

Works
Suppé composed about 30 operettas and 180 farces, ballets, and other stage works. Although some of the overtures remain popular the bulk of his operettas have sunk into obscurity. Exceptions include Boccaccio, Die schöne Galathée and Fatinitza; Peter Branscombe, writing in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, characterises Suppé's song "O du mein Österreich" as "Austria's second national song".

Suppé retained links with his native Dalmatia, occasionally visiting Split (Spalato), Zadar (Zara), and Šibenik. Some of his works are linked with the region, in particular his operetta Des Matrosen Heimkehr, the action of which takes place in Hvar. After retiring from conducting, Suppé continued to write stage works, but increasingly shifted his interest to sacred music. He wrote a Requiem for Pokorny in 1855; an oratorio, Extremum Judicium; three masses, among them the Missa Dalmatica; songs; symphonies; and concert overtures. When the Requiem Mass was published in 1997, a reviewer found that it reveals Suppé's admiration for Mozart's Requiem, "from the choice of tonality (D minor), movement layout, and melodic figuration" to a direct quote in the "Mors stupebit" section of Suppé's work from the "Tuba mirum" from Mozart"s "Lacrimosa". The work was revived for a first performance in modern times by BBC Radio 3, broadcast on 5 July 1984. After Suppé's death thirty unpublished songs were found in his papers, as well as the nearly completed score of another mass.

The musicologist Robert Letellier writes that Suppé was a master of three styles, the Italian (opera buffa), the French (opéra-comique) and the German: "He knew how to blend them irresistibly, assisted in the instrumentation by his rich experience as a theatre orchestra conductor, and with a sure symphonic technique deriving from his classical training." Letellier comments that Suppé's overtures were a major feature of his operatic works: "some attaining immense popularity, and securing him an enduring fame in the concert hall ... Poet and Peasant and Light Cavalry are among the most famous overtures ever written". To these, the music critic Andrew Lamb adds as outstanding among Suppé's overtures those to Ein Morgen, ein Mittag und ein Abend in Wien (Morning, Noon, and Night in Vienna, 1844), Pique Dame (Queen of Spades, 1862), Flotte Bursche (Jolly Students, 1863), and Banditenstreiche (Bandits' Pranks, 1867).

Recordings
There are many sets of Suppé overtures on disc, but few of his stage works. A complete recording of Die schöne Galatée conducted by Bruno Weil was issued in 2005, the Lehár Festival in Bad Ischl staged and recorded Fatinitza in 2006, Dario Salvi and the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra have recorded Suppé's incidental music for Die Reise um die Erde in 80 Tagen (Around the World in 80 Days) and Mozart. The Requiem was recorded in 1997 with soloists and the Cracow Philharmonic Chorus and Orchestra conducted by Roland Bader. The Musical Times described it as an accomplished piece and singled out the quieter passages "such as the obsessive orchestral motif that backs the Liber scriptus, the lovely oboe solo at the beginning of Recordare, or the high violins irradiating the brief Sanctus".

Collections of Suppé overtures have been recorded by conductors including Sir John Barbirolli, Charles Dutoit, Neeme Järvi, Herbert von Karajan, Sir Neville Marriner, Zubin Mehta, Paul Paray and Sir Georg Solti. The most extensive recorded collection is in six volumes on the Marco Polo label, released between 1994 and 2001 with the Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra and various conductors.

Surname
Most sources have spelled the name with an acute accent. Recently an alternative spelling with a grave accent has sometimes been used, on the grounds that Suppé used it when signing his name (see lead image, above); his name is written with the acute accent on his tombstone and in the baptismal registry it was written without any accent.

Partial list of works

 * Virginia (opera, L. Holt), 1837, not performed
 * Gertrude della valle (opera, G. Brazzanovich), 1841, not performed
 * Jung lustig, im Alter traurig, oder Die Folgen der Erziehung (comedy with songs, 3 acts, C. Wallis), TJ, 5 March 1841
 * Die Hammerschmiedin aus Steyermark, oder Folgen einer Landpartie (local farce with songs, 2 acts, J. Schickh), Theater in der Josefstadt, 14 October 1842
 * Ein Morgen, ein Mittag und ein Abend in Wien (local play with songs, 2 acts), Theater in der Josefstadt, 26 February 1844
 * Marie, die Tochter des Regiments (vaudeville, 2 acts, F. Blum, after J. H. St Georges and J. F. A. Bayard), Theater in der Josefstadt, 13 June 1844
 * Der Krämer und sein Kommis (farce with songs, 2 acts, F. Kaiser), Theater in der Josefstadt, 28 September 1844
 * Die Müllerin von Burgos (vaudeville, 2 acts, J. Kupelwieser), Theater in der Josefstadt, 8 March 1845
 * Sie ist verheiratet (comedy with songs, 3 acts, Kaiser), Theater an der Wien, 7 November 1845
 * Dichter und Bauer (comedy with songs, 3 acts, K. Elmar), Theater an der Wien, 24 August 1846, full score (1900)
 * Das Mädchen vom Lande (opera, 3 acts, Elmar), Theater an der Wien, 7 August 1847
 * Martl, oder Der Portiunculatag in Schnabelhausen (farce with music, parody of Flotow: Martha, 3 acts, A. Berla), Theater an der Wien, 16 December 1848
 * Des Teufels Brautfahrt, oder Böser Feind und guter Freund (magic farce with songs, 3 acts, Elmar), Theater an der Wien, 30 January 1849
 * Gervinus, der Narr von Untersberg, oder Ein patriotischer Wunsch (farce with songs, 3 acts, Berla), Braunhirschen-Arena [and Theater an der Wien], 1 July 1849
 * Unterthänig und unabhängig, oder Vor und nach einem Jahre (comedy with songs, 3 acts, Elmar), Theater an der Wien, 13 October 1849
 * s'Alraunl (romantic tale with songs, 3 acts, A. von Klesheim), Theater an der Wien, 13 November 1849
 * Der Dumme hat's Glück (farce with songs, 3 acts, Berla), Theater an der Wien, 29 June 1850
 * Dame Valentine, oder Frauenräuber und Wanderbursche (Singspiel, 3 acts, Elmar), Theater an der Wien, 9 January 1851
 * Der Tannenhäuser (dramatic poem with music, H. von Levitschnigg), Theater an der Wien, 27 February 1852
 * Wo steckt der Teufel? (farce with songs, 3 acts, ?Grün), Theater an der Wien, 28 June 1854
 * Paragraph 3 (opera, 3 acts, M. A. Grandjean), Hofoper, 8 January 1858
 * Das Pensionat (operetta, 1 acts, C. K.), Theater an der Wien, 24 November 1860, vocal score (n.d.)
 * Die Kartenschlägerin (Pique-Dame) (operetta, 1 act), Kaitheater, 26 April 1862
 * Zehn Mädchen und kein Mann (operetta, 1 act, W. Friedrich), Kaitheater, 25 October 1862, vocal score (n.d.)
 * Flotte Bursche (operetta, 1, J. Braun), Kaitheater, 18 April 1863, vocal score (n.d.)
 * Das Corps der Rache (operetta, 1 act, J. L. Harisch), Carltheater, 5 March 1864
 * Franz Schubert (operetta) (Liederspiel, 1 act, H. Max), Carltheater, 10 September 1864
 * Dinorah, oder Die Turnerfahrt nach Hütteldorf (parody opera, of Meyerbeer's Dinorah, 3 acts, F. Hopp), Carltheater, 4 May 1865
 * Die schöne Galathée (The Beautiful Galatea) (comic-mythological operetta, l act, Poly Henrion), Berlin, Meysels-Theater, 30 June 1865, vocal score (n.d.)
 * Leichte Kavallerie or Die Tochter der Puszta (operetta, 2 acts, C. Costa), Carltheater, 21 March 1866
 * Freigeister (operetta, 2, Costa), Carltheater, 23 October 1866
 * Banditenstreiche (operetta, 1 act, B. Boutonnier), Carltheater, 27 April 1867
 * Die Frau Meisterin (magic operetta, 3, Costa), Carltheater, 20 January 1868, vocal score (Leipzig, n.d.)
 * Isabella (operetta, J. Weyl), Carltheater, 5 November 1869
 * Tantalusqualen (operetta), Carltheater, 3 October 1868
 * Lohengelb oder Die Jungfrau von Dragant (parody operetta of Wagner's Lohengrin, 3 acts, Costa, Grandjean), Carltheater, 30 November 1870
 * Canebas (operetta, 1 act, J. Doppler), Carltheater, 2 November 1872
 * Fatinitza (operetta, 3 acts, F. Zell, R. Genée), Carltheater, 5 January 1876, full score (n.d.)
 * Der Teufel auf Erden (fantastic operetta, 3 acts, J. Hopp), Carltheater, 5 January 1878, vocal score (London, n.d.)
 * Boccaccio (operetta, 3 acts, Zell, Genée), Carltheater, 1 February 1879, full score (Hamburg, n.d.)
 * Donna Juanita (operetta, 3 acts, Zell, Genée), Carltheater, 21 February 1880, full score (Brussels, n.d.); arr. K. Pauspertl as Die grosse Unbekannte, 1925
 * Der Gascogner (operetta, 3 acts, Zell, Genée), Carltheater, 21 or ?22 March 1881, vocal score (Hamburg, n.d.)
 * Das Herzblättchen (operetta, 3 acts, C. Tetzlaff), Carltheater, 4 February 1882
 * Die Afrikareise (operetta, 3 acts, M. West, Genée, O. F. Berg), Theater an der Wien, 17 March 1883, full score (Hamburg, n.d.)
 * Des Matrosen Heimkehr (romantic opera, 2 acts, A. Langner), Hamburg, 4 May 1885, vocal score (Hamburg, 1885)
 * Bellman (comic opera, 3 acts, West, L. Held), Theater an der Wien, 26 or ?24 February 1887
 * Joseph Haydn (musical portrait with melodies by Haydn, F. von Radler), Theater in der Josefstadt, 30 April 1887
 * Die Jagd nach dem Glücke (operetta, 3 acts, Genée, B. Zappert), Carltheater, 27 October 1888, full score (Hamburg, n.d.)
 * Das Modell (operetta, 3 acts, V. Leon, Held), Carltheater, 4 October 1895, full score (Leipzig, n.d.) [completed by J. Stern and A. Zamara]
 * Die Pariserin, oder Das heimliche Bild (operetta, 3 acts, Léon, Held), Carltheater, 26 January 1898 [arr. of Die Frau Meisterin, 1868]

title: Franz von Suppé


text:
User talk:Phr00t

http://phr00t.two.am/

"There is no failure. You either learn or you succeed."

title: User talk:Phr00t


text:
Dnieper

The Dnieper, also called Dnepr or Dnipro , is one of the major transboundary rivers of Europe, rising in the Valdai Hills near Smolensk, Russia, before flowing through Belarus and Ukraine to the Black Sea. Approximately 2200 km long, with a drainage basin of 504000 km2, it is the longest river of Ukraine and Belarus and the fourth-longest river in Europe, after the Volga, Danube, and Ural rivers.

In antiquity, the river was part of the Amber Road trade routes. During the Ruin in the later 17th century, the area was contested between the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Russia, dividing what is now Ukraine into areas described by its right and left banks. During the Soviet period, the river became noted for its major hydroelectric dams and large reservoirs. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster occurred on the Pripyat River, a tributary of the Dnieper, just upstream from its confluence with the Dnieper. The Dnieper is an important navigable waterway for the economy of Ukraine and is connected by the Dnieper–Bug Canal to other waterways in Europe. During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, certain segments of the river were made part of the defensive lines between territory controlled by the Russians and the Ukrainians.

Dnieper
The river is also sometimes called by the Russian name Dnepr. The initial D in Dnieper is generally silent when pronounced in English, although it may be sounded: or. It derives from Днепр (pre-revolutionary spelling Днѣпръ).

Dnipro derives from Дніпро. The English pronunciation is. The Ukrainian name has a rare form Дніпр and rare dialectal Дніпер. The Middle Ukrainian form attested in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries was Днѣпръ. The city of Dnipro is named for the river.

The name varies slightly in the local Slavic languages of the three countries through which it flows: These names are all cognate, deriving from Old East Slavic Дънѣпръ (Dŭněprŭ). The origin of this name is disputed but generally derived from either Sarmatian *Dānu Apara ("Farther River") in parallel with the Dniester ("Nearer River") or from Scythian *Dānu Apr ("Deep River") in reference to its lack of fords, from which was also derived the Late Antique name of the river, Danapris (Δαναπρις).
 * Дняпро,, or Днепр Dnyepr,
 * Днепр; formerly spelled Днѣпръ
 * Дніпро, ; poetic Дніпр; formerly Дніпер Dniper,, or older Днѣпръ (Dnipr, )

Borysthenes
The earlier Graeco-Roman name of the river was Borysthenes (Βορυσθενης; Borysthenes, Бористен, Борисфен ), which was derived from a Scythian name whose form was:
 * either, meaning "yellow place,"
 * or meant "place of beavers."
 * this name was linked to the mantle of beaver skins worn by the Iranic water goddess Arəduuī Sūrā Anāhitā, whose epithet of  was connected to the name of the daughter of the river-god Borysthenēs in Scythian mythology, the Earth-and-Water goddess Api, whose own name meant "water."

Ovid used Borysthenius, an adjective derived from Borysthenes, as the river's poetic Latin name.

Var
The Huns' name for the river,, was derived from Scythian , meaning "Broad." This name was connected to the Graeco-Roman name of the Volga river, (Οαρος; Oarus), which was also derived from Scythian.

Other names
In Ukrainian it is also known poetically as Славутич or Славута, from an old name used in Kievan Rus'. This is due to the influence of the Old East Slavic epic The Tale of Igor's Campaign and its modern adaptations on Ukrainian literature. This usage also lent its name to the city of Slavutych, founded in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 to house displaced workers, and to the Slavutych station of the Kyiv Metro.

In Crimean Tatar, the river is known as Özü. In Turkish it is Özü or Özi.

Geography
The total length of the river is variously given as 2145 km or 2201 km,   of which 485 km are within Russia, 700 km are within Belarus, and 1095 km are within Ukraine. Its basin covers 504000 km2, of which 289000 km2 are within Ukraine, 118360 km2 are within Belarus.

The source of the Dnieper is the sedge bogs (Akseninsky Mokh) of the Valdai Hills in central Russia, at an elevation of 220 m. For 115 km of its length, it serves as the border between Belarus and Ukraine. Its estuary, or liman, used to be defended by the strong fortress of Ochakiv.

The southernmost point in Belarus is on the Dnieper to the south of Kamaryn in Brahin Raion.

Tributaries
The Dnieper has many tributaries (up to 32,000) with 89 being rivers of 100+ km. The main ones are, from its source to its mouth, with left (L) or right (R) bank indicated:

 * Vyazma (L)
 * Vop (R)
 * Khmost (R)
 * Myareya (L)
 * Drut (R)
 * Berezina (R)
 * Sozh (L)
 * Pripyat (R)
 * Teteriv (R)
 * Irpin (R)
 * Desna (L)
 * Stuhna (R)
 * Trubizh (L)
 * Ros (R)
 * Tiasmyn (R)
 * Supii (L)
 * Sula (L)
 * Psel (L)
 * Vorskla (L)
 * Oril (L)
 * Samara (L)
 * Konka (Kherson Oblast)
 * Konka (Zaporizhzhia Oblast)
 * Bilozerka (L)
 * Bazavluk (R)
 * Inhulets (R)

Many small direct tributaries also exist, such as, in the Kyiv area, the Syrets (right bank) in the north of the city, the historically significant Lybid (right bank) passing west of the centre, and the Borshahivka (right bank) to the south.

The water resources of the Dnieper basin compose around 80% of the total for all Ukraine.

Rapids
The Dnieper Rapids were part of the trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks, first mentioned in the Kyiv Chronicle. The route was probably established in the late eighth and early ninth centuries and gained significant importance from the tenth until the first third of the eleventh century. On the Dnieper the Varangians had to portage their ships round seven rapids, where they had to be on guard for Pecheneg nomads.

Along this middle flow of the Dnieper, there were 9 major rapids (although some sources cite a smaller number), obstructing almost the whole width of the river, about 30 to 40 smaller rapids, obstructing only part of the river, and about 60 islands and islets.

After the Dnieper hydroelectric station was built in 1932, they were inundated by Dnieper Reservoir.

Canals
There are a number of canals connected to the Dnieper:
 * The Dnieper–Donbas Canal;
 * The Dnieper–Kryvyi Rih Canal;
 * The Kakhovka Canal (southeast of the Kherson region);
 * The Krasnoznamianka Irrigation System in the southwest of the Kherson region;
 * The North Crimean Canal—will largely solve the water problem of the peninsula, especially in the arid northern and eastern Crimea;
 * The Inhulets Irrigation System.

Fauna
The river is part of the quagga mussel's native range. The mussel has been accidentally introduced around the world, where it has become an invasive species.

Delta
The city of Kherson lies on the northern bank, upstream of the Dnieper delta, before the Dnieper meets the Southern Bug river in the Dnieper–Bug estuary.

Ecology
Nowadays the Dnieper River suffers from anthropogenic influence resulting in numerous emissions of pollutants. The Dnieper is close to the Prydniprovsky Chemical Plant radioactive dumps (near Kamianske) and susceptible to leakage of its radioactive waste. The river is also close to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station (Chernobyl Exclusion Zone) which is located next to the mouth of the Pripyat River.

Navigation
Almost 2000 km of the river is navigable (to the city of Dorogobuzh). The Dnieper is important for transportation in the economy of Ukraine. Its reservoirs have large ship locks, allowing vessels of up to 270 x access as far as the port of Kyiv, and thus are an important transportation corridor. The river is used by passenger vessels as well. Inland cruises on the rivers Danube and Dnieper have had a growing market in recent decades.

Upstream from Kyiv, the Dnieper receives the water of the Pripyat River. This navigable river connects to the Dnieper-Bug canal, the link with the Bug River. Historically, a connection with the Western European waterways was possible, but a weir without any ship lock near the town of Brest, Belarus, has interrupted this international waterway. Poor political relations between Western Europe and Belarus mean there is little likelihood of reopening this waterway in the near future. River navigation is interrupted each year by freezing and severe winter storms.

Reservoirs and hydroelectric power
From the mouth of the Pripyat River to the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Station, there are six sets of dams and hydroelectric stations, which produce 10% of Ukraine's electricity. The Kakhovka dam was destroyed on 6 June 2023 during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with the subsequent drying up of the Kakhovka Reservoir revealing the original course of the river in the area and disconnecting four canal networks.

The first constructed was the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station (or DniproHES) near Zaporizhzhia, built between 1927 and 1932 with an output of 558 MW. It was destroyed during World War II, but was rebuilt in 1948 with an output of 750 MW.

Cities
Major cities, over 100,000 in population, are in bold script. Cities and towns located on the Dnieper are listed in order from the river's source (in Russia) to its mouth (in Ukraine):

Arheimar, a capital of the Goths, was located on the Dnieper, according to the Hervarar saga.

Literature
The River Dnieper has been a subject of chapter X of a story by Nikolai Gogol A Terrible Vengeance (1831, published in 1832 as a part of the Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka short stories collection). It is considered as a classical example of description of the nature in Russian literature. The river was also described in the works of Taras Shevchenko.

In the adventure novel The Long Ships (also translated Red Orm), set during the Viking Age, a Scanian chieftain travels to the Dnieper Rapids to retrieve a treasure hidden there by his brother, encountering many difficulties. The novel was very popular in Sweden and is one of few to depict a Viking voyage to eastern Europe.

Visual arts
The River Dnieper has been a subject for artists, great and minor, over the centuries. Major artists with works based on the Dnieper are Arkhip Kuindzhi and Ivan Aivazovsky.

Films
The River Dnieper makes an appearance in the 1964 Hungarian drama film The Sons of the Stone-Hearted Man (based on the novel of the same name by Mór Jókai), where it appears when two characters are leaving Saint Petersburg but get attacked by wolves.

In 1983, the concert program "Song of the Dnieper" from the "Victory Salute" series was released, dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the liberation of the city of Kiev from the German fascist invaders. The program includes songs by Soviet composers, Ukrainian folk songs, and dances performed by the Song and Dance Ensemble of the Kiev Military District led by A. Pustovalov, P. Virsky Ukrainian National Folk Dance Ensemble, Kyiv Bandurist Capella, the Military Band of the Headquarters of the Kiev Military District led by A. Kuzmenko, singers Anatoliy Mokrenko, Lyudmila Zykina, Anatoliy Solovianenko, Dmytro Hnatyuk, Mykola Hnatyuk. Filming on the battlefield, streets and squares of Kiev. Scriptwriter – Victor Meerovsky. Directed by Victor Cherkasov. Operator – Alexander Platonov.

The 2018 film Volcano was filmed at the river in Beryslav, Kherson Oblast.

Music
In 1941, Mark Fradkin wrote "Song of the Dnieper" to the words of Yevgeniy Dolmatovsky.

Popular culture

 * The river is one of the symbols of the Ukrainian nation and is mentioned in the national anthem of Ukraine.
 * There are several historical names that connect the name of the river with Ukraine: Dnieper Ukraine, Right-bank Ukraine, Left-bank Ukraine, and others.
 * The cities Dnipro, Dniprorudne, Kamianka-Dniprovska are named after the river.
 * The Zaporozhian Cossacks lived on the lower Dnieper and their name refers to their location "beyond the rapids".
 * The folk metal band Turisas have a song called "The Dnieper Rapids" on their 2007 album The Varangian Way.

title: Dnieper


text: Talk:Denver (disambiguation)

title: Talk:Denver (disambiguation)


text:
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (ISBN 0-385-19195-2) is a book by Steven Levy about hacker culture. It was published in 1984 in Garden City, New York by Doubleday. Levy describes the people, the machines, and the events that defined the Hacker culture and the Hacker Ethic, from the early mainframe hackers at MIT, to the self-made hardware hackers and game hackers.

The book saw an edition with a new afterword (entitled "Afterword: Ten Years After") by the author in 1994. In 2010, a 25th anniversary edition with updated material was published by O'Reilly.

Summary
Levy traces developments in the history of hacking, beginning with The Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT, whose members were among the first hackers. He discusses the Hacker Ethic, a set of concepts, beliefs, and morals that came out of a symbiotic relationship between the hackers and the machines. The Ethic consisted of allowing all information to be open and accessible in order to learn about how the world worked; using the already available knowledge to create more knowledge.

Several chapters discuss the history of computer gaming, beginning with Spacewar! in September 1961. This paved the way for major gaming companies such as On-Line, Broderbund, and Sirius Software.

Other highlights include:

Conway's Game of Life, a computer simulation written by John Horton Conway which became Bill Gosper's focus in 1970.

Revolt in 2100: Lee Felsenstein and Jude Milhon founded Community Memory, an offshoot of Resource One based in Berkeley, California. Bob Albrecht and his computer-book publishing company Dymax also brought computing to the people by teaching young students to program. Albrecht formed People's Computer Company, a storefront in Menlo Park, California, to offer computer time and classes.

Every Man a God: In Albuquerque, New Mexico, Ed Roberts founded Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems created the Altair 8800, a computer kit that cost only $397.

The Homebrew Computer Club was founded by Fred Moore and Gordon French as a way for electronics hobbyists and hackers to get together and exchange information and talk about their projects. The first meeting took place on March 5, 1975 in Gordon's garage.

Tiny BASIC: Altair BASIC was an interpreter that translated instructions from the BASIC programming language into assembly instructions that the Altair 8800 could understand. It was developed by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, the founders of Microsoft, then styled "Micro-soft", specifically for the 8800 and it would fit in 4K of memory.

In addition, Levy profiles important hacker figures, including John Draper, Bill Gates, Richard Greenblatt, and Steve Wozniak.

Reception
PC Magazine stated that Levy "does capture the essential composite of the hacker personality but fails to accept that the true hacker, driven by machine lust, is equally content to hack in the corporate corridors. He is also naively optimistic about the collective spirit of computing, which he believes will ultimately prevail". There are later criticisms of Levy's book that point out his failure to acknowledge that the hacker world excluded women and minorities, not consciously but by cultural bias of its early participants.


text:
Dnieper (disambiguation)

Dnieper or Dnipro is a major river, rising in Russia and flowing through Belarus and Ukraine to the Black Sea.

Dnieper may also refer to:

 * Dnieper Ukraine, usually referring territory on either side of the middle course of the Dnieper River
 * Battle of the Dnieper, a World War II military campaign

title: Dnieper (disambiguation)