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Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart (Newark)

The Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart, the fifth-largest cathedral in North America, is the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark. Headed by Cardinal Tobin for the archdiocese, it is located in the Lower Broadway neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey. Catholic mass is offered daily and three times on Sunday in English and in Spanish.

Background
The building, facing Branch Brook Park, is generally regarded as the "most perfect and exact example of French Gothic architecture in the Western Hemisphere." Construction began in 1899 and was finished in 1954. The original design called for an English-Irish Gothic Revival church, but plans were later modified in favor of a French Gothic Revival style.

Many art historians consider the cathedral’s stained glass to be the second finest in the world, after the Chartres Cathedral. Large circular rose windows of stained glass by the Zettler studio adorn the structure. The 36-foot rose window over the primary entrance is the largest such window in the Catholic Church in the Western Hemisphere.

The building is roughly the size of Westminster Abbey, with towers higher than those of that structure as well as those of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame.

It is home to the largest pipe organ ever built by the Schantz Organ Company, also the largest church organ in New Jersey. The cathedral basilica encloses a variety of chapels honoring saints representing different ethnic Catholic groups who live in the Newark area and helped build the cathedral.

The structure is named for the Catholic devotion to what is known as the Sacred Heart of Jesus, considered by followers of that religion to be a symbolic reference to Jesus Christ's love and compassion for humanity.

Music at the Cathedral Basilica
The free concert series at the cathedral basilica, open to the public, is in its 55th season as of 2023-24.

The pipe organ, the largest Schantz ever built, includes 154 stops playable from two consoles. When installed in 1953, the organ held 144 stops; it was expanded and renovated in 1989.

Performances of religious music at the cathedral basilica also include the New Jersey Symphony's annual Advent season performance of Handel's Messiah (a ticketed event).

Holy Week
The cathedral basilica is home to a number of special religious events during Holy Week, including a Palm Sunday mass, Chrism Mass, and services on Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Vigil in anticipation of Easter Sunday.

Black History Month Mass
The cathedral typically celebrates Black history with an annual mass in which the cathedral basilica is decorated with images of Black Catholic candidates for sainthood and participants frequently wear African, African-American and Caribbean cultural attire.

Hispanic Heritage Mass
The church celebrates Hispanic heritage with an annual mass, featuring Spanish-language music, and participants often wear cultural dress to represent their nations of origin.

Golden Anniversary Mass
Each spring, frequently during the cherry blossom season at Branch Brook Park across from the cathedral basilica, Cardinal Tobin holds a mass to honor and bless local couples celebrating 50 years of marriage.

Blue Mass
The cathedral basilica hosts the Blue Mass annually to honor the dedication and sacrifices of fallen, active, and retired New Jersey law enforcement personnel. Numerous dignitaries typically attend, including Governor Phil Murphy, Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin and others.

Red Mass
A red mass is held annually for members of the legal profession and government officials.

Visit by Pope John Paul II and cathedral's elevation to basilica
During Pope John Paul II's visit to the United States in 1995, he celebrated evening prayer at the cathedral. At this occasion, the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart was elevated to a minor basilica to become the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart.

Twenty-first century events
In 2017, Cardinal Tobin welcomed a pilgrimage of LGBTQ Catholics to the cathedral basilica.

Planning for the church
The Cathedral of the Sacred Heart was proposed in 1859 by James Roosevelt Bayley, the Bishop of Newark, just six years after his appointment by Pope Pius IX. In 1870, Bishop Bailey sent architect Jeremiah O'Rourke and Monsignor George Hobart Doane to Europe to view various cathedrals.

Proposed sites included a corner at High and Kinney Streets and an alternate at South and Broad Streets. However, the current site, next to Branch Brook Park in the Forest Hill section of Newark's North Ward, was chosen. Bayley waited to buy the land until the site was recommended by O'Rourke, the architect of the planned cathedral; and Monsignor Doane. Doane liked the current site because it "commands a view of the Orange Mountains on the west and the Newark Valley, the hills of Staten Island, and New York on the east." The property purchase was completed January 2, 1871, for US$60,000.

In 1872, Bayley was elevated to Archbishop of Baltimore and the project was handed over to the new bishop, Michael Corrigan. Corrigan ordered the excavation of the site in 1875 and 1876. In 1881, the project was handed over to yet another new bishop, Winand Wigger.

The City of Newark wanted to buy the site for the new Newark High School in 1896 but was rejected by Wigger. As the plans moved on, Wigger erected a temporary church under the same name on February 15, 1889. In July 1897, a fundraiser was started to build the cathedral. O'Rourke was chosen to design an English-Irish gothic design. In accepting the commission, O'Rourke pledged to Wigger that the work would be "a labor of love and not of fees and profits."

Early stages
Following groundbreaking in January 1898, the cornerstone was laid on June 11, 1899. O'Rourke wanted to get the walls and towers built first and selected a Vermont Rockport granite as the exterior stone. By 1902, the walls then stood 50 feet at the nave and ambulatory, with the first four tiers of the front towers under construction. Wigger died on January 5, 1901, and the new bishop, John Joseph O'Connor, asked O'Rourke to cut costs not to exceed a price tag of US$1 million.

Halt in construction
O'Rourke was removed as head architect in 1910 following a series of feuds between O'Rourke and another architect. The new architect, Mr. Waldron noticed a dangerous shift in weight and hired Fred Metcalf to observe this shift. An order went out to remove all 24 pillars, excavate underneath, re-level the ground and reset 22 pillars. The decision to eliminate two pillars allowed the builders to eliminate the clerestory wall connecting the nave and the chancel, widening the transept to 165 ft. As the arches and clerestory began to rise in the latter half of 1910, architects provided extra reinforcement in the form of steel girders at the clerestory level down either side of the nave and around the ambulatory.

Design changes
The original English/Irish-gothic style was switched to a French-gothic one with those plans accepted in June 1913 and work starting in August 1913. Changes included:

 * reducing the height of the towers from 332 ft to 232 ft;
 * eliminating the spires to reduce the weight loads on the tower;
 * eliminating the exterior nave buttresses and pinnacles,;
 * substituting three rose windows instead of a concentric-circle design; and
 * increasing use of sculptures at the entrances.

The last stage
By 1918, construction moved at a steady pace to allow the completion of the steel-slated roof in November 1919; by the roofing company Conrad & Baier. The granite tympanum canopies and medallions were finished and, by July 1924, the windows were completed. With this, the building was finally insulated for the first time since the construction's start. The carving of the medallions' scriptural scenes and bishops' portraits took place on-site between April 1922 and November 1924 under the direction of Rochette and Parzini of New York City.

In 1925, officials wanted the cathedral completed by December 1926, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of O'Connor's ordination as a priest. The dedication was postponed because of a dispute over the type of limestone used and the many delays in construction. Limestone installation, vaulting, the work on the sanctuary floor and sacristies continued.

With O'Connor's death in May 1927, construction focus shifted to the crypt where he would be laid to rest.

General work re-commenced in August 1927 and ended some months later with the installation of an Italian Botticino-marble altar purchased from Benziger Brothers of New York City.

Pre-dedication
The new bishop, Thomas Joseph Walsh, opened the cathedral even though construction was ongoing. Walsh believed it was time for the cathedral to be open even though it was unfinished.

The first ordination was his own as Bishop of Newark on May 1, 1928. A Pontifical Mass followed, celebrated by Father Joseph H. Conroy, with a crowd of nearly 4,000 people.

Walsh's elevation to Archbishop of Newark took place on April 27, 1938. He celebrated his Silver Jubilee on July 29, 1943, and the 50th anniversary of his ordination as a priest on May 1, 1950.

During the pre-dedication, Walsh ordained six bishops in the cathedral.

Dedication
After nearly 95 years of planning and building, Thomas Aloysius Boland, Archbishop of Newark, finally dedicated the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart on October 19, 1954. During the ceremony, Boland received the pallium from then-Archbishop Amleto Giovanni Cicognani, Apostolic Nuncio (delegate) to the United States.

Post-dedication
The Father Monsignor Joseph A. Doyle, who spent his entire priestly life in the cathedral parish, was appointed first rector.

In addition to the six bishops he ordained during the pre-dedication, Boland ordained many priests in this cathedral and showed people's contributions in this church.

Thousands came to celebrate his Golden Jubilee in 1972. In 1974, Pope Paul VI named as Boland's successor Peter Leo Gerety from Portland, Maine.


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The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone

"The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone" is one of 12 Sherlock Holmes short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle in The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927). It was first published in The Strand Magazine in the United Kingdom in October 1921, and was also published in Hearst's International in the United States in November 1921.

Plot

Watson arrives in 221B Baker Street where the page boy Billy shows him a wax effigy of Holmes placed near a curtained window in the sitting room. The effigy produces a shadow on the curtain that, when viewed from outside, is the unmistakable profile of Sherlock Holmes. Using this visual trick, Holmes aims to give a perfect target to a would-be murderer with a rifle. Holmes names his murderer as Count Negretto Sylvius, the diamond thief he has been following in disguise. He gives the criminal's address to Watson, then sends the doctor out the back for the police. As the Count arrives, Holmes has Billy invite him inside, then takes him by surprise when he attempts an assault on the effigy. Holmes then offers the Count and his helper, boxer Sam Merton, freedom if they give up the jewel, or jail if not.

He invites them to discuss the deal while he plays violin in the next room. When the Count decides to double-cross Holmes and takes the stone from his secret pocket to show Sam in window light, the detective springs from the chair in place of his replica and grabs the £100K jewel. His bedroom has a gramophone and secret passage to behind the curtain.

After the police take away the villains, Lord Cantlemere sweeps in. Unlike the Prime Minister and Home Secretary, he did not want Holmes. When tricked into insisting on arrest for whoever is found possessing the diamond, he finds the jewel in his pocket – where Holmes has placed it – and apologizes. Finally, Holmes can eat.

Unusual aspects
It is notable for being one of only two Arthur Conan Doyle Holmes stories, aside from a couple of humorous vignettes, to be written in third person. The other is "His Last Bow". "The Mazarin Stone" was written this way because it was adapted from a stage play, The Crown Diamond, in which Watson hardly appeared. Its adaptation from the theatre also explains why the action in this story is confined to one room. The plot twist in which Holmes reveals he had been listening to the two criminals as they spoke freely would also not have been possible using a first person narrative.

The Crown Diamond, subtitled An Evening with Sherlock Holmes, was first performed on 2 May 1921 at the Bristol Hippodrome, and was written before the short story, which was first published in October 1921. However, historians do not agree on when the play was written, with some believing it was penned in early 1921 while others believe it was written years earlier. In the original play, the villain was Holmes's enemy Colonel Sebastian Moran of "The Adventure of the Empty House" infamy, not Count Negretto Sylvius.

According to Leslie S. Klinger, the name used to describe the "Mazarin stone" in the short story implies the stone once belonged to Cardinal Jules Mazarin, who, upon his death in 1661, bequeathed to the French monarch a collection of eighteen diamonds thereafter called the "Mazarin Diamonds". The name "Mazarin" is not mentioned in the original play, though the stone is described as a yellow Crown diamond in both the play and the short story.

Publication history
"The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone" was published in the UK in The Strand Magazine in October 1921, and in the US in Hearst's International in November 1921. The story was published with three illustrations by Alfred Gilbert in the Strand, and with four illustrations by Frederic Dorr Steele in Hearst's International. It was included in the short story collection The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, which was published in the UK and the US in June 1927.

Film and television
A short silent film based on the story was released in 1923 as part of the Sherlock Holmes film series by Stoll Pictures, with Eille Norwood as Holmes and Hubert Willis as Watson.

An episode of BBC's For the Children adapted the story for television in 1951. Featuring Andrew Osborn as Holmes and Philip King as Watson, no footage is believed to have survived.

This story was heavily rewritten for Granada Television's Sherlock Holmes series. In 1994, it was merged with another story, "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs". The most noticeable change is that Holmes does not feature except in the prologue and final scene (actor Jeremy Brett was away due to illness). It is Mycroft Holmes (Charles Gray) who takes up the case of the stolen diamond, while Watson is retained to look into the Garrideb mystery.

"The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone" was adapted as "The Adventure of the Mazarin Chip" for a 2001 episode of the animated television show Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century.

Radio
"The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone" was adapted by Edith Meiser as an episode of the American radio series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The episode aired on 9 February 1931, with Richard Gordon as Sherlock Holmes and Leigh Lovell as Dr. Watson. Another dramatisation of the story adapted by Meiser aired on 23 May 1936 (with Gordon as Holmes and Harry West as Watson).

Meiser also adapted the story as episodes of the American radio series The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes that aired on 5 January 1941 (with Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Watson) and 4 January 1948 (with John Stanley as Holmes and Alfred Shirley as Watson).

Two BBC radio adaptations of the story aired as part of the 1952–1969 radio series starring Carleton Hobbs as Sherlock Holmes and Norman Shelley as Dr. Watson. The first aired on 2 December 1954 on the BBC Home Service and was dramatised by Felix Felton, with Ralph Truman as Count Negretto Sylvius. The second aired on 4 September 1962 on the BBC Light Programme, and was dramatised by Michael Hardwick, with Francis de Wolff as Count Sylvius.

"The Mazarin Stone" was dramatised for BBC Radio 4 in 1994 by Bert Coules as part of the 1989–1998 radio series starring Clive Merrison as Holmes and Michael Williams as Watson. It featured Anthony Bate as Lord Cantlemere and Nigel Anthony as Count Sylvius.

In 2006, the story was adapted for radio as part of The Classic Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, a series on the American radio show Imagination Theatre, with John Patrick Lowrie as Holmes and Lawrence Albert as Watson.

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

title: The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone


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List of national parks of Guatemala

National parks in Guatemala include:

title: List of national parks of Guatemala


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Winnemac (fictional U.S. state)

Winnemac is a fictional U.S. state invented by the writer Sinclair Lewis. His novel Babbitt takes place in Zenith, its largest city (population 361,000, according to a sketch-map Lewis made to guide his writing ). Winnemac is also a setting for Gideon Planish, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, and Dodsworth.

Description
Lewis turned to the creation of a fictional locale after residents of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, were upset with the town's portrayal in Main Street. In one of the essays in "Sinclair Lewis: A Collection of Critical Essays" Mark Schorer describes "the state of Winnemac" as "more typical than any real state in the Union". In "The Last of the Provincials: The American Novel, 1915–1925" critic H. L. Mencken sees Winnemac as exemplifying the "standardized chain-store state" of the midwest. In his critical study of Sinclair Lewis, Sheldon Grebstein notes that the "average mid-western state called Winnemac" is an amalgamation of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan.

According to Helen Batchelor, following the breakthrough success of Main Street, Lewis conceived an ambitious plan for a series of interrelated novels that required a common fictional locale. Reviewing Lewis's last novel and his literary career, Malcolm Cowley says:

"[Lewis] didn't write easy books after Main Street. He laid out for himself an extensive plan of work: he would invent the state of Winnemac, more typical than any real state in the Union, and in one book after another would describe the representative activities of its inhabitants, until he had completed a wide survey of American society."

In Arrowsmith, Lewis describes Winnemac thus:

"The state of Winnemac is bounded by Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana, and like them it is half Eastern, half Midwestern. There is a feeling of New England in its brick and sycamore villages, its stable industries, and a tradition which goes back to the Revolutionary War. Zenith, the largest city in the state, was founded in 1792. But Winnemac is Midwestern in its fields of corn and wheat, its red barns and silos, and, despite the immense antiquity of Zenith, many counties were not settled till 1860.

The University of Winnemac is at Mohalis, fifteen miles from Zenith. There are twelve thousand students; beside this prodigy Oxford is a tiny theological school and Harvard a select college for young gentlemen. The University has a baseball field under glass; its buildings are measured by the mile; it hires hundreds of young Doctors of Philosophy to give rapid instruction in Sanskrit, navigation, accountancy, spectacle-fitting, sanitary engineering, Provencal poetry, tariff schedules, rutabaga-growing, motor-car designing, the history of Voronezh, the style of Matthew Arnold, the diagnosis of myohypertrophia kymoparalytica, and department-store advertising. Its president is the best money-raiser and the best after-dinner speaker in the United States; and Winnemac was the first school in the world to conduct its extension courses by radio."

Other novels mention that its capital is Galop de Vache, its river is the Chaloosa, and its important cities are Monarch, Sparta, Pioneer, Catawba, and Eureka. Lewis' novel Work of Art mentions the city of Golden Glow as 'the dirtiest and noisiest industrial huddle' in Winnemac.

Lewis's map of Winnemac
According to Batchelor, in 1921, Lewis's wife wrote to a friend that Lewis had made "the most astonishingly complete set of maps of Zenith, so that the city, the suburbs, the state" were clear in his mind. John S. Mayfield of Syracuse University discovered the maps in Lewis's Vermont study in 1961. One map was entitled "The State in which is Zenith." Batchelor called it "the most exciting" and said that it was "of greater imaginative importance than the city [because it] provides in a greater way than Zenith the interrelatedness among these works." In 1934, an earlier commentator, George Annand, had deduced and published a "Map of Sinclair Lewis's United States," but the discovery of Lewis's own map showed significant differences. Winnemac "is much further north than had previously been thought... New York City is decidedly southeast of Zenith... Lake Michigan is simply ignored by Lewis in creating the state." Lewis's map places Zenith due east of Chicago and 17½ miles from the Illinois border. Besides those mentioned above, cities and towns on the map include Minnemegantic, Banjo Crossing, Roysburg, Tuttleville, Vulcan, Hamburg, New Paris, St. Ruan, Babylon, Chestnut Grove, Parkinton, Eureka, Aetna, Madrid, St. Agatha, and (of course) a Springfield.

title: Winnemac (fictional U.S. state)


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Mingrelia

Mingrelia (სამეგრელო; ; Агырны) is a historic province in the western part of Georgia, formerly known as Odishi. It is primarily inhabited by the Mingrelians, a subgroup of Georgians.

Geography and climate
Mingrelia is bordered by the secessionist region of Abkhazia to the north-west, Svaneti to the north, Imereti to the east, Guria to the south and the Black Sea to the west.

Administratively, the historic province of Mingrelia is incorporated joined with the northern part of the neighboring mountainous province of Svaneti to form the Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti region, the capital of which is Mingrelia's main city, Zugdidi.

As it is the case with most Black Sea coastal areas of Georgia, Mingrelia's climate is subtropical with frequent rains. The coastal areas have many marshlands despite the Soviet Georgian authorities' efforts to dry them up. These marshlands contain many rare birds and animals not found in other parts of the country. For this reason, substantial part of the territories is protected by the Georgian law as part of the Colchetian Nature Reserve.

History
In ancient times Mingrelia was a major part of the kingdom of Colchis (9th-6th centuries BC) and its successor Egrisi (4th century BC-6th century AD). In the 11th-15th centuries, Mingrelia was a part of the united Kingdom of Georgia. From the 16th century to 1857, the independent Kingdom of Mingrelia was under the rule of the House of Dadiani. Between 1568 and 1803, it was vassal of Ottoman Empire.

In December 1803, the kingdom came under the patronage of the Russian Empire by an agreement between the Tsar and the Megrelian Prince Grigol Dadiani. The last adult Prince, David Dadiani, died in 1853, leaving his wife Ekaterine as regent for his young son, Niko. However, in 1867, the principality was abolished and absorbed into the Tsarist Russian Empire. Prince Niko Dadiani officially renounced his rights to the throne in 1868.

Plant specimens of Astrantia colchica were found on Mt. Kwira in Mingrelia in 1894 by the Russian botanist Nikolai Albov.

From 1918 to 1921, Mingrelia was part of the Democratic Republic of Georgia (DRG). In 1921, Georgia was Sovietized and later became part of the Soviet Union, as the Georgian SSR. On 9 April 1991, independence was restored to Georgia, of which Mingrelia is now part.

The first President of the post-Soviet Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, was a Megrelian. After the violent coup d'etat of 21 December 1991 – 6 January 1992, Mingrelia became the centre of a civil war, which ended with the defeat of Gamsakhurdia's Megrelian supporters. Even so, this region was unmanageable by the central government throughout the presidency of Eduard Shevardnadze (1992–2003). The fact that the Georgian refugees from the Abkhazian war zone (who are considered by Georgians as victims of ethnic cleansing) are mostly Mingrelians has contributed to the region's instability. In 2004, following the Rose Revolution of November 2003, newly elected Georgian President, Mikheil Saakashvili, who vowed to resolve the conflict with the breakaway region of Abkhazia, disarmed groups of Megrelians who tried to fight a guerrilla war against the Abkhazians by incursions from Mingrelia.

title: Mingrelia


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SpeakEasy

SpeakEasy was a United States military project to use software-defined radio technology to make it possible to communicate with over 10 different types of military radios from a single system.

History
"The SpectrumWare project applied a software-oriented wireless communications approach with distributed signal processing. The research direction of the SpectrumWare project was heavily influenced by two software radio efforts: the military SpeakEasy project and the commercial products of the Steinbrecher Corporation.

According to Upmal and Lackey in “SPEAKeasy, the Military Software Radio” IEEE Communications Magazine (NY: IEEE Press) 1995, the SpeakEasy project was started in 1991 and was the first large-scale software radio. SpeakEasy was motivated in large part by the communications interoperability problems that resulted from different branches of the military services having dissimilar (non-interoperable) radio systems. This lack of communications interoperability can be directly linked to casualties in several conflicts. SpeakEasy had a very aggressive goal of implementing ten different radio waveforms in software on a single platform. The designers chose the fastest DSP available at the time, the Texas Instruments TMS320C40 processor, which ran at 40 MHz. Since this was not enough processing power to implement all of the waveform processing, the system boards were designed to each support four ’C40s as well as some FPGAs.

In 1994, Phase I was successfully demonstrated; however it involved several hundred processors and filled the back of a truck. Moore’s Law provides a doubling in speed every eighteen months, and since it had taken three years to build the system and write all of the software, two doublings had taken place. This seemed to indicate that the number of processors could be reduced by a factor of four. However, SpeakEasy could not take advantage of these newer faster processors, and the reason was the software.

The software was tied to ’C40 assembly language, plus all of the specialized glue code to get four C40s to work together with the code for the particular chosen FPGA. The observation was that it had taken three years to write software for a platform that Moore’s Law made obsolete in eighteen months. Further-more, a software radio pushes most of the complexity of the radio into software, so the software development could easily become the largest, most expensive part of the system. These observations led to software portability being a key goal of the SpectrumWare project."

title: SpeakEasy


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Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach

Gustav Georg Friedrich Maria Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach (born Gustav von Bohlen und Halbach; 7 August 1870 – 16 January 1950) was a German foreign service official who became chairman of the board of Friedrich Krupp AG, a heavy industry conglomerate, after his marriage to Bertha Krupp, who had inherited the company. He and his son Alfried would lead the company through two world wars, producing almost everything for the German war machine from U-boats, battleships, howitzers, trains, railway guns, machine guns, cars, tanks, and much more. Krupp produced the Tiger I tank, Big Bertha and the Paris Gun, among other inventions, under Gustav. Following World War II, plans to prosecute him as a war criminal at the 1945 Nuremberg Trials were dropped because by then he was bedridden, senile, and considered medically unfit for trial. The charges against him were held in abeyance in case he were found fit for trial.

Early life

Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach was born 7 August 1870 in The Hague, Netherlands, to American-born Gustav von Bohlen und Halbach, and Sophie (née Bohlen). His paternal grandfather, Arnold Halbach, served as Prussian consul in Philadelphia from 1828 to 1838.

He was a grandson of Henry Bohlen and related to Charles E. Bohlen and Karoline of Wartensleben on his mothers side.

He married Bertha Krupp in October 1906. Bertha had inherited her family's company in 1902 at age 16 after the death of her father, Friedrich Alfred Krupp. German Emperor Kaiser William II personally led a search for a suitable spouse for Bertha, as the Krupp empire could not be headed by a woman. Gustav was picked from his previous post at the Vatican. The Kaiser announced at the wedding that Gustav would be allowed to add the Krupp name to his own. Gustav became company chairman in 1909.

After 1910, the Krupp company became a member and major funder of the Pan-German League (Alldeutscher Verband) which mobilised popular support in favour of two army bills, in 1912 and 1913, to raise Germany's standing army to 738,000 men.

World War I

By World War I, the company had a near monopoly in heavy arms manufacture in Germany. At the start of the war, the company lost access to most of its overseas markets, but this was more than offset by increased demand for weapons by Germany and her allies (Central Powers). In 1902, before Krupp's marriage, the company leased a fuse patent to Vickers Limited of the United Kingdom. Among the company's products was a 94-ton howitzer named Big Bertha, after Krupp's wife, and the Paris Gun. Gustav also won the lucrative contract for Germany's U-boats, which were built at the family's shipyard in Kiel. Krupp's estate, the Villa Hügel, had a suite of rooms for Wilhelm II whenever he came to visit.

Interwar years

During the occupation of the Ruhr in 1923, a French military court had Krupp imprisoned for seven months until the German government stopped their politics of passive resistance.

The Versailles Treaty prevented Germany from making armaments and submarines, forcing Krupp to significantly reduce his labour force. His company diversified to agricultural equipment, vehicles and consumer goods. However, using the profits from the Vickers patent deal and subsidies from the Weimar government, Krupp secretly began the rearming of Germany with the ink barely dry on the treaty of Versailles. It secretly continued to work on artillery through subsidiaries in Sweden, and built submarine pens in the Netherlands. In the 1930s, it restarted manufacture of tanks such as the Tiger I and other war materials, again using foreign subsidiaries.

Krupp was a member of the Prussian State Council from 1921 to 1933. Krupp was an avowed monarchist, but his first loyalty was to whoever held power. He once left a business meeting in disgust when another industrialist, who was the one hosting the meeting, referred to the late President Friedrich Ebert as "that saddlemaker" (Der Sattelhersteller).

Krupp initially opposed the Nazis, yet, after Hitler became chancellor of Germany, at the secret meeting with Adolf Hitler and leading German industrialists on February 20, 1933, he contributed one million Reichsmark to the Nazi party's fund for the March 1933 election, which enabled Hitler to take control of the government. After Hitler won power, Krupp became, as Fritz Thyssen later put it, "a super Nazi", and contributed to the Adolf Hitler Fund of German Trade and Industry which was established in June 1933 to support the NSDAP. As president of the Reichsverband of German industry he led the effort to expel its Jewish members.

Like many German nationalists, Krupp believed that the Nazis could be used to end the Republic, and then be pushed aside to restore the Kaiser and the old elites. When all parties were abolished and civil liberties suspended following the Reichstag fire and Hitler's grab for absolute power, Krupp found that he and the rest of the old elites were in the grip of the Party; the movement they had hoped to ride back into power upon had instead ridden them. Always flexible, Krupp cooperated with the new dictatorship.

"I wanted and had to maintain Krupp, in spite of all opposition, as an armament plant for the later future, even if in camouflaged form. I could only speak in the smallest, most intimate circles about the real reasons which made me undertake the changeover of the plants for certain lines of production for I had to expect that many people would not understand me"

- Krupp in an interview for Krupp magazine on 1 March 1942

Hitler had tried to gain entry to the Krupp factories in 1929, but was rebuffed because Krupp felt he would see some of the secret armament work there and reveal it to the world. Bertha Krupp never liked Hitler even though she never complained when the company's bottom line rose through the armaments contracts and production. She referred to him as "that certain gentleman" (Dieser gewisse Herr) and pleaded illness when Hitler came on an official tour in 1934. Her daughter Irmgard acted as hostess.

World War II

Krupp suffered failing health from 1939 onwards, and a stroke left him partially paralysed in 1941. He became a figurehead until he formally handed over the running of the business to his son Alfried in 1943. Krupp industries, under both his leadership and later that of his son, was offered facilities in eastern Europe and made extensive use of forced labor during the war.

On 25 July 1943 the Royal Air Force attacked the Krupp Works with 627 heavy bombers, dropping 2,032 long tons of bombs in an Oboe-marked attack. Upon his arrival at the works the next morning, Krupp suffered a fit from which he never recovered.

Nuremberg Trials
Following the Allied victory, plans to prosecute Gustav Krupp as a war criminal at the 1945 Nuremberg Trials were dropped because by then he was bedridden and senile. Despite his personal absence from the prisoners' dock, however, Krupp remained technically still under indictment and liable to prosecution in subsequent proceedings.

Death
Krupp died at his residence near Werfen, Salzburg in Austria on 16 January 1950. His widow died in 1957. He had eight children including Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach (1907–1967), the last owner of Krupp (succeeded by his Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation).

title: Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach


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Doug Naylor

Douglas Rodger Naylor (born 31 December 1955) is an English comedy writer, science fiction writer, director and television producer.

Life and career
Naylor was born in Manchester, Lancashire, England, and studied at Chetham's School of Music and the University of Liverpool. In the mid-1980s Naylor created and wrote two comedy sketch shows for BBC Radio 4 entitled Cliché and Son of Cliché, as well as two sitcoms, Wrinkles and Wally Who? for the same station. These shows were scripted by Naylor along with another writer, Rob Grant. This writing partnership was successful, with Grant and Naylor going on to co-write and produce numerous British radio and television series throughout the 1980s and 1990s, including programmes such as The Cannon and Ball Show, A Kick Up The Eighties, Three of A Kind, Comic Relief, Spitting Image and they wrote the singles, Father Christmas is on the Dole which charted in 1986 and The Chicken Song which was No. 1 in the charts for three weeks (1986). They created the sitcomThe 10 Percenters which was awarded "Best ITV Sitcom" at the 1996 British Comedy Awards for the second series after Grant had left the partnership.

The collaborations between Grant and Naylor have often used the pseudonym Grant Naylor. Together, they wrote the British science fiction comedy television series Red Dwarf under this name. Their earlier radio sketch shows formed the basis for the show; Chris Barrie starred in both of these, as well as Red Dwarf.

In 1994, an episode of Red Dwarf from the sixth series, Gunmen of the Apocalypse, won an International Emmy Award in the Popular Arts category, and in the same year the series was also awarded 'Best BBC Comedy Series' at the British Comedy Awards. The series attracted its highest ratings, of over eight million viewers, during the eighth series in 1999.

Some time between the airing of the sixth series of Red Dwarf in 1993, and the writing of the seventh series in 1996, Grant ended his partnership with Naylor after revealing he was tired of it and that he intended to quit and pursue other projects. The pair announced their professional split and cited creative and professional differences, along with Grant's desire to move into new areas.

With this split, it appeared as though Red Dwarf was finished; other obstacles included the fact that Chris Barrie was tied up starring in The Brittas Empire and the other star of Red Dwarf, Craig Charles, was in prison awaiting trial. However, when Charles was acquitted and Barrie became available for a few episodes, a seventh series finally went ahead. Naylor went on to write the seventh and eighth series of Red Dwarf mostly on his own (70% of the series, by his own estimate), although some episodes were co-written with Paul Alexander and Kim Fuller, and one episode co-written with one of the cast members, Robert Llewellyn.

Naylor is the author of a Red Dwarf novel: Last Human (1995). He also wrote Primordial Soup (1993), Son of Soup (1996) and Red Dwarf VII: The Official Book (1999).

In 2007, Naylor and Grant Naylor Productions were primarily focused on the production of the DVD releases of Red Dwarf and the postulated movie. In 2008 it was announced by Grant Naylor Productions that Red Dwarf would return to television in the form of four half-hour specials for the UKTV Network channel Dave. The episodes were broadcast over the Easter weekend of 2009, and comprising a three-part special (20 minutes each), "Back to Earth", and a behind-the-scenes 'Making of' special. Naylor wrote the scripts for the three new episodes and also directed them. "Back to Earth" received record ratings for the Dave channel.

In 2011, Dave commissioned Naylor to write and direct a new six episode series of Red Dwarf, later entitled Red Dwarf XI. The series won the Royal Television Society's award for Best Special Effects, presented in 2013.

Naylor formed Three Feet Productions in October 2017 with his son Richard and wrote and directed a one-off comedy for BBC One, entitled Over To Bill, starring Hugh Dennis, Neil Morrissey, Tracy Ann Oberman and Helen George and produced by Richard Naylor.

In 20152016, Naylor wrote and directed 12 more episodes of Red Dwarf for Dave). Red Dwarf XI was broadcast from September 2016 onwards, and Red Dwarf XII from September 2017. Both series were a Baby Cow Productions commission, with Richard Naylor and Kerry Waddell as producers.

In 2020 Red Dwarf: The Promised Land, a 90 minute TV Special was again written and directed by Naylor for Dave and was a Baby Cow Production, with Richard Naylor as Producer. Naylor has now written or co-written all 74 episodes of Red Dwarf and was Executive Producer on 51 episodes.

Personal life
Naylor is married with two sons, one of whom (Richard) is a television writer and producer, the other a doctor. Naylor has a prosthetic leg due to a road accident when he was seven years old, hence the naming of his and Richard's production company ‘Three Feet Productions’

title: Doug Naylor


text:
Rob Grant

Robert Grant is an English comedy writer, television producer and co-creator of the Red Dwarf comedy franchise. Since Red Dwarf, Grant has written two television series, The Strangerers and Dark Ages, and four solo novels, his most recent being Fat. During his career Grant has been involved in two distinct writing partnerships: the first with Doug Naylor, and the second and most recent with Andrew Marshall.

Early life
Grant was born in Salford and studied Psychology at Liverpool University for two years.

Career
In the mid-1980s, Grant collaborated with co-writer Doug Naylor on radio programmes such as Son Of Cliché, Wrinkles for Radio 4 and television programmes such as Spitting Image, The 10 Percenters, and various projects for Jasper Carrott.

The 'Grant Naylor' collaboration, as it had become known, created the cult science-fiction comedy series, Red Dwarf, which evolved from Dave Hollins: Space Cadet, a recurring sketch within Son Of Cliché. Grant was briefly seen (uncredited) in an episode of Red Dwarf entitled "Backwards" (1989), as a man who 'un-smoked' a cigarette. In the mid-1990s, the 'Grant Naylor' collaboration was ended when Grant left Red Dwarf after the sixth series, citing creative differences ("... it was basically 'musical differences' ...") with Doug Naylor. His main reason however, he said, was that he "wished to have more on his 'tombstone' than Red Dwarf on its own".

In 2018, Grant collaborated with Andrew Marshall to produce, direct and write the BBC Radio 4 Series, "The Quanderhorn Xperimentations" - and also the novel version published by Gollancz Publishers.

In 2021, it was announced that Grant had written a short Red Dwarf script, Into the Gloop, which was performed live via Zoom on the 7th February 2021 as part of the Official Red Dwarf Fan Club's Holly Hop convention.

title: Rob Grant


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The 10%ers

The 10%ers is a British television comedy series, broadcast on ITV.

Set in the office of a theatrical agent, it began as a pilot in 1993 shown as part of ITV's short-lived Comedy Playhouse (not to be confused with the BBC's long-running Comedy Playhouse), then ran for two series, shown in 1994 and 1996. The regular cast were: Clive Francis, who played the main character Dominic Eden, Benedict Taylor as Atin,  Colin Stinton as Tony,  and Elizabeth Bennett as Joan. There were cameo appearances from Jonathan Ross and Nicholas Parsons. The pilot was written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, though the first and second series were written by Naylor and various co-writers, including Steve Punt and Paul Alexander. The producer was Ed Bye, then Marcus Mortimer.

Transmissions

 * Pilot: Comedy Playhouse - 23 February 1993
 * Series 1: Monday 18 April – 6 June 1994 - 7 episodes
 * Series 2: Tuesday 9 July – 3 September 1996 - 7 episodes.

title: The 10%ers


text:
Vincent de Paul

Vincent de Paul, CM (24 April 1581 – 27 September 1660), commonly known as Saint Vincent de Paul, was an Occitan French Catholic priest who dedicated himself to serving the poor.

In 1622, Vincent was appointed as chaplain to the galleys. After working for some time in Paris among imprisoned galley slaves, he returned to be the superior of what is now known as the Congregation of the Mission, or the "Vincentians" (in France known as "Lazaristes"), which he co-founded.

These Vincentian priests, with vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and stability, were to devote themselves entirely to the people in smaller towns and villages. Vincent was zealous in conducting retreats for clergy at a time when the local clergy's morals were flagging. He was a pioneer in seminary education and also founded the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul. He is the namesake of the Vincentian Family of organizations, which includes both of the religious communities he founded.

He was renowned for his compassion, humility, and generosity. Vincent was canonized in 1737 and is venerated as a saint in both the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion.

Early life and education
Vincent de Paul was born in 1581 in the village of Pouy, in the province of Guyenne and Gascony, the Kingdom of France, to peasant farmers; his father was Jean and his mother Bertrande de Moras de Paul. There was a stream named the "Paul" in the vicinity and it is believed that this might have been the derivation of the family name. He wrote the name as one word – Depaul, possibly to avoid the inference that he was of noble birth, but none of his correspondents did so. He had three brothers – Jean, Bernard, and Gayon – and two sisters, Marie and Marie-Claudine. He was the third child. He demonstrated a talent for literacy early in life, but also worked as a child, herding his family's livestock. At 15, his father sent him to seminary, which he paid for by selling the family's oxen.

For three years, Vincent studied at a college in Dax, France. It adjoined a monastery of the Friars Minor, where he resided. In 1597, he enrolled in theology at the University of Toulouse. The atmosphere at the university was rough. Fights broke out between various factions of students which escalated into armed battles. An official was murdered by two students. Nevertheless, he continued his studies, financing them by tutoring others. He was ordained on 23 September 1600, at the age of nineteen, in Château-l'Évêque, near Périgueux. This was against the regulations established by the Council of Trent which required a minimum of 24 years of age for ordination, so when he was appointed parish priest in Tilh, the appointment was appealed in the Court of Rome. Rather than respond to a lawsuit in which he would probably not have prevailed, he resigned from the position and continued his studies. On 12 October 1604, he received his Bachelor of Theology from the University of Toulouse. Later he received a Licentiate in Canon Law from the University of Paris.

Abduction and slavery
Vincent wrote a letter in July 1607 and a postscript in February 1608 that described his experience of abduction and slavery. In 1605, Vincent sailed from Marseilles on his way back from Castres where he had gone to sell property he had inherited from a wealthy patron in Toulouse. He was taken captive by Barbary pirates, who took him to Tunis. De Paul was auctioned off as a slave, and spent two years in bondage.

His first master was a fisherman, but Vincent was unsuitable for this line of work due to sea sickness and was soon sold. His next master was a spagyrical physician, alchemist and inventor. He became fascinated by his art and was taught how to prepare and administer his master's remedies. The fame of Vincent's master became so great that it attracted the attention of men who summoned him to Istanbul. During the passage, the old man died and Vincent was sold once again. His new master was a former Catholic priest and Franciscan from Nice, Guillaume Gautier. Gautier had converted to Islam in order to gain his freedom from slavery and was living in the mountains with three wives. The second wife, a Muslim by birth, was drawn to and visited Vincent in the fields to question him about his faith. She became convinced that his faith was true and admonished her husband for renouncing his Christianity. Her husband became remorseful and decided to escape back to France with his slave. They had to wait ten months, but finally they secretly boarded a small boat and crossed the Mediterranean, landing in Aigues-Mortes on 29 June 1607.

Controversies about abduction narrative
Early biographies referred to Vincent's letters in describing his capture and enslavement from 1605 to 1607. More recently, however, some biographers have raised doubts about that narrative but have not suggested any alternative account of Vincent's life during those two years. The biographer Pierre Coste, who wrote Monsieur Vincent, a comprehensive biography based on correspondence, interviews, and documents, publicly confirmed the accuracy of Vincent's captivity and enslavement. According to Rédier, however, Coste privately questioned the reliability of Vincent's letters about his enslavement but kept those doubts private to avoid scandal and potential backlash. Skeptics agree that the letters themselves were written by Vincent, but question Vincent's account of the events of 1605–1607. Pierre Grandchamps and Paul Debongnie have argued that the captivity narrative is implausible, whereas the analysis of Guy Turbet‑Delof strongly supported Vincent's account and concluded as follows: "There is nothing in Vincent's writing, or in other sources, that would lead us to reject his testimony. In conclusion, we must accept one of two alternatives; either Vincent de Paul was a prisoner in Tunis from 1605 to 1607, or we must regard his letter of 24th July, 1607, and the postscript dated 28th February, 1608, as a brilliant fraud which he perpetrated without any possible access to literary or other sources for inspiration."

Return to Europe
After returning to France, Vincent went to Rome. There he continued his studies until 1609, when he was sent back to France on a mission to King Henry IV. Once in France, he made the acquaintance of Pierre de Bérulle, whom he took as his spiritual advisor. André Duval, of the Sorbonne introduced him to Canfield's "Rule of Perfection". Vincent was by nature a rather irascible person, but he slowly learned to become more sensitive to the needs of others.

In 1612 he was sent as a parish priest to the Church of Saint-Medard in Clichy. In less than a year, Bérulle recalled him to Paris to serve as a chaplain and tutor to the Gondi family. "Although Vincent had initially begun his priesthood with the intention of securing a life of leisure for himself, he underwent a change of heart after hearing the confession of a dying peasant." It was the Countess de Gondi who persuaded her husband to endow and support a group of able and zealous missionaries who would work among poor tenant farmers and country people in general.

On 13 May 1643, with Louis XIII dead, Queen Anne had her husband's will annulled by the Parlement de Paris (a judicial body comprising mostly nobles and high clergymen), making her the sole Regent of France. Anne nominated Vincent de Paul as her spiritual adviser; he helped her deal with religious policy and the Jansenism question.

Foundations of the Vincentian Family
Vincent is the patron of all works of charity. A number of organizations specifically inspired by his work and teaching and which claim Vincent as their founder or patron saint are grouped in a loose federation known as the Vincentian Family. The 1996 publication The Vincentian Family Tree presents an overview of related communities from a genealogical perspective.

Confraternities, Ladies, and Daughters of Charity
In 1617, Vincent began serving poor families in Paris, bringing them food and comfort. He organized wealthy women of Paris as the Confraternities of Charity to assist with this work, collect funds for missionary projects, found hospitals, and gather relief funds to assist victims of war and ransom 1,200 galley slaves from North Africa. This participation of women would eventually result in, with the help of Louise de Marillac, the founding of the lay-led Ladies of Charity and the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul (Filles de la Charité), a society of apostolic life for women.

Congregation of the Mission
In 1622 Vincent was appointed a chaplain to the galleys. After working for some time in Paris among imprisoned slaves there, he founded what is now known as the Congregation of the Mission, or the "Vincentians" (also known in parts of Europe as the "Lazarists"). These priests, with vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and stability, were to devote themselves entirely to the people in smaller towns and villages.

Vincent was zealous in conducting retreats for clergy at a time when there was great laxity, abuse, and ignorance among them. He was a pioneer in clerical training and was instrumental in establishing seminaries. He spent 28 years serving as the spiritual director of the Convent of St. Mary of Angels.

Death
Vincent died in Paris on 27 September 1660.

The Society of Saint Vincent de Paul
The Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, a charitable organization dedicated to the service of the poor, was established in 1833 by French university students, led by Frédéric Ozanam. The society is today present in 153 countries.

Veneration
In 1705, the Superior General of the Congregation of the Mission requested that the holy process of Vincent's canonization be instituted. On 13 August 1729 he was declared blessed by Pope Benedict XIII. He was canonized nearly eight years later by Pope Clement XII on 16 June 1737.

Vincent's body was exhumed in 1712, 53 years after his death. The written account of an eyewitness states that "the eyes and nose alone showed some decay". However, when it was exhumed again during the canonization in 1737, it was found to have decomposed due to an underground flood. His bones have been encased in a waxen figure which is displayed in a glass reliquary in the chapel of the headquarters of the Vincentian fathers in Paris, Saint Vincent de Paul Chapel, rue de Sèvres. His heart is still incorrupt, and is displayed in a reliquary in the chapel of the motherhouse of the Daughters of Charity in Paris.

In 1737, Vincent's feast day was included in the Roman Calendar for celebration on 19 July, this date being chosen because his day of death was already used for the feast of Saints Cosmas and Damian. The new celebration was given the rank of "Double", and was changed to the rank of "Third-Class Feast" in 1960. The 1969 revision of the General Roman Calendar transferred his memorial to 27 September, moving Cosmas and Damian to 26 September to make way for him, as he is now better known in the West than them.

Vincent is honored with a Lesser Festival on 27 September in the Church of England. The Episcopal Church liturgical calendar honors him together with Louise de Marillac on 15 March.

One of the feasts celebrated by the French Deist Church of the Theophilanthropy was dedicated to Vincent.

Legacy
Niagara University in Lewiston, New York, St. John's University in New York City, and DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois, were founded in 1856, 1870 and 1898, respectively, by the Congregation of the Mission in the United States. Many high schools are named after Vincent.

Parishes are dedicated to Vincent in Los Angeles; Washington, DC; Syracuse, New York; Chicago, Illinois; Omaha, Nebraska; Mays Landing, New Jersey; Mt. Vernon, Ohio. Houston, Texas; Delray Beach, Florida; Wheeling, West Virginia, Coventry, Rhode Island, Churchville, New York, Peryville, Missouri, Lenox Dale, Massachusetts, Girardville, Pennsylvania, Arlington, Texas, Denver, Colorado, and elsewhere.

Countless books, films, and monuments have been erected in his memory around the globe.

title: Vincent de Paul


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South Pyongan Province

South Pyongan Province is a province of North Korea. The province was formed in 1896 from the southern half of the former Pyongan Province, remained a province of Korea until 1945, then became a province of North Korea. Its capital is Pyongsong.

Geography
The province is bordered by North Pyongan and Chagang Provinces to the north, South Hamgyong and Kangwon Provinces to the east and southeast and North Hwanghae Province and Pyongyang to the south. The Yellow Sea and Korea Bay are located to the west.

Administrative divisions
South P'yŏngan is divided into 1 special city (tŭkpyŏlsi); 5 cities (si); 16 counties (kun); and 3 districts (1 ku and 2 chigu).

Its administrative divisions are:

Cities

 * Nampo Special City (남포특별시/; created in 2010)
 * Pyongsong (평성시/; the provincial capital, established December 1969)
 * Anju (안주시/; established August 1987)
 * Kaechon (개천시/; established August 1990)
 * Sunchon-si (순천시/; established October 1983)
 * Tokchon (덕천시/; established June 1986)

Counties

 * Chungsan County (증산군/)
 * Hoechang County (회창군/)
 * Maengsan County (맹산군/)
 * Mundok County (문덕군/)
 * Nyongwon County (녕원군/)
 * Onchon County (온천군/)
 * Pukchang County (북창군/)
 * Pyongwon County (평원군/)
 * Ryonggang County (룡강군/)
 * Sinyang County (신양군/)
 * Songchon County (성천군/)
 * Sukchon County (숙천군/)
 * Taehung County (대흥군/)
 * Taedong County (대동군/)
 * Unsan County (은산군/)
 * Yangdok County (양덕군/)

Districts

 * Chongnam (청남구/)
 * Tukchang (득장지구/)
 * Ungok (운곡지구/)

The below former counties of South Pyongan were merged with Nampo in 2004 and are administered as part of that city: In 2010 the following county was merged with Nampo:
 * Chollima-guyok (천리마군/)
 * Kangso-guyok (강서군/)
 * Ryonggang County (룡강군/)
 * Taean-guyok-gun (대안군/)
 * Onchon County (온천군/)

title: South Pyongan Province


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The Brittas Empire

The Brittas Empire is a British sitcom created and originally written by Andrew Norriss and Richard Fegen. Chris Barrie played titular character Gordon Brittas, the well-intentioned but hugely incompetent manager of the fictional Whitbury New Town Leisure Centre. The show ran for seven series and 52 episodes – including two Christmas specials – from 1991 to 1997 on BBC1. Creators Norriss and Fegen co-wrote the first five series. The series peaked at 10 million viewers.

The Brittas Empire enjoyed a long and successful run throughout the 1990s, and gained large mainstream audiences. In 2004, the show came 47th on the BBC's Britain's Best Sitcom poll, and all series have been released on DVD both individually as series and as a complete boxset. Best of the Britcoms noted the series has been hailed as "the Fawlty Towers of the 1990s" due to its "fast-paced, outrageous [comedy] full of inventive gags".

The creators Andrew Norriss and Richard Fegen often combined farce with either surreal or dramatic elements in episodes. For example, in the first series, the leisure centre prepares for a royal visit, only for the doors to seal, the boiler room to flood and a visitor to become electrocuted. Unlike many traditional sitcoms, deaths were quite commonplace in The Brittas Empire. Barrie described the humour as "straightfoward, slapstick, very accessible characters, larger-than-life abnormal things happening in a very normal situation".

Plot summary
Gordon Brittas (Chris Barrie) is the well-meaning but incompetent manager of Whitbury New Town Leisure Centre. He trained at the fictional Aldershot Leisure Centre. Completely tactless, totally annoying, and forever coming up with 'half-baked' ideas (and oblivious to all of his aforementioned faults), Brittas frequently upsets his staff, public, and his frazzled wife Helen (Pippa Haywood), often bringing confusion and chaos into their lives. Helen Brittas finds coping with Gordon increasingly difficult and often turns to medication and affairs with other men to maintain her sanity.

Helen is often helped by her supportive friend Laura Lancing (Julia St John), Brittas' calm, efficient deputy manager. Though she is fully aware of his incompetence and the annoyance he causes his colleagues and customers, Laura has a grudging admiration for Brittas, regarding him as honest and decent. His other deputy manager is the dim-witted but kind Colin Weatherby (Mike Burns) (credited as Michael Burns in series 1, 2 and 3). Colin has several medical problems including skin allergies, a constantly bandaged infected hand, and a sizeable boil on his face. Technically a deputy manager, he works more efficiently as the centre's caretaker.

The other core members of the team are Carole (Harriet Thorpe) the unfortunate, often tearful receptionist, who keeps her three children in the reception drawers and cupboards; the gentle-hearted Gavin (Tim Marriott) who becomes Deputy Manager in Series 5; his paranoid, sometimes-manic partner Tim (Russell Porter); lively, principled Linda (Jill Greenacre); and Julie (Judy Flynn), Brittas' sarcastic secretary, who hates her boss and refuses to do any work for him.

Outside the core staff is Councillor Jack Druggett (Stephen Churchett), who is unable to sack Brittas despite numerous attempts.

Cast alterations in the series: 'Angie' (Andrée Bernard), who appears as a main character in the first series, is replaced by 'Julie' from series two onwards. 'Laura' left the show after series five, at the same time as the creators and writers. She is replaced in series six by the character 'Penny' (Anouschka Menzies). 'Penny' did not return in series seven.

According to Barrie, Gordon Brittas is well-meaning but insensitive because he has a lofty dream to make the world a better place, but he doesn't know how to execute it on the small-scale. At the same time Barrie was playing Brittas, he was also playing his other well-known role of Arnold Rimmer in Red Dwarf. Both characters had similar personality flaws (although Brittas always attempted to be friendly to those around him while Rimmer treated everyone with nothing but contempt) and even some of their history matched; for instance both characters had brief and unsuccessful stints at the Samaritans. Unlocking your potential describes Colin as a habitual 'yes' man, who seeks validation through compliance. While Gordon himself is a larger than life creation, he is balanced out by his slightly more 'normal' long suffering staff as foil to offset his antics.

Episodes
The Brittas Empire was broadcast for 52 episodes between 1991 and 1997, spanning seven series and two Christmas Specials, along with one short episode for Children in Need. The cast also performed in the 1996 Royal Variety Performance. Chris Barrie played Brittas again in the short fitness series spin-off, Get Fit with Brittas.

For the first five series the show's creators Richard Fegen and Andrew Norriss co-wrote every episode. After series 5 they left, along with actress Julia St John who played deputy manager Laura. At the end of Series 5 Norriss and Fegen killed off Brittas when he was crushed to death by a falling water tank. This was originally meant to be the end of the show's run.

However, the show's popularity meant the BBC resurrected Brittas and brought on a new team of writers who carried the show on for a further two series and one further Christmas special in 1996. These writers were: Paul Smith (who also wrote the series seven episode "Malcolm ex" for Andrew Marshall's 2point4 Children), Terry Kyan, Tony Millan, Mike Walling, Ian Davidson and Peter Vincent.

"Curse of the Tiger Women" is the final episode which aired in 1997. This ending claims all seven series were part of a dream that Brittas is having on his way to the job interview for manager of the leisure centre. It is an ending that is not well regarded by many critics and is viewed as a poor ending for such a popular show.

Episodes of the show were shown at the 1992 Visions convention.

Tickets for the live recordings were available by writing to the BBC TV Ticket unit – while tickets were free, participants had to be aged 14 and up.

The series was rerun on Gold in 2009.

In 2014, Chris Barrie reprised his role as Gordon Brittas for a brief appearance in the Sport Relief music video, "Word Up!" by Little Mix.

Forces TV aired the series from 9 September 2021 until the channel shut down.

On 6 March 2023, Drama began repeating the series.

Series 1–5 are currently available to subscribers of BritBox in both the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

DVD and VHS releases
All seven series were released on DVD in the United Kingdom by Eureka Video, and also in Australia by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The Eureka releases are now out of print. Prior to these DVD releases, the BBC brought episodes to VHS in the 1990s.

 * The VHS title: The Brittas Empire - Laying the Foundations VHS was released; it features: 'Laying the Foundations' (Series 1: Episode 1), 'Back from the dead' (Series 2: Episode 1), 'Set in Concrete' (Series 2: Episode 4), 'An Inspector Calls' (Series 2: Episode 3) and 'The Trial' (Series 3: Episode 1).
 * Then on 7 August 1995, Brittas Empire - The Stuff of Dreams was released and features the episodes: 'The Christening' (Series 4: Episode 2), 'The Stuff of Dreams' (Series 3: Episode 6) and 'Not a Good Day' (Series 4: Episode 1).
 * From 2003, Eureka Video began bringing the entire series to DVD, in single series box sets. The Brittas Empire - Complete Series One was released on 21 July 2003, followed by series two on 20 October 2003, and then series three was released on 29 January 2004. Series four was released in the same year on 29 July, and the final series by Norriss and Fegen, series five, was released on 4 October 2004.
 * The Brittas Empire, Complete Series Six was released on 21 February 2005, and the final series along with the 1996 Christmas Special, was released on 23 May 2005.
 * The Brittas Empire, Complete Series One-Seven, a set comprising the entire series, was released on 8 October 2007.

Critical response
The series has received a highly positive reception from critics and fans, and has been analysed for its themes.

The book Writing Dialogue for Scripts argues that the show's comedy is largely fuelled by the dramatic irony of the audience knowing that the main character is not important, while he believes he is, and compared Brittas to Captain Mainwaring in Dad's Army. Critics John Lewis and Penny Stempel noted the series' theme of "an incompetent in charge of others" in the vein of TV humour from Dad's Army to Are You Being Served?, coupled with an element of absurdism. The Shakespeare Library lists it as an example of a TV show that has fun with the idea of a man given a little power and authority that goes to his head. I'm Too Busy to be Stressed described Gordon as a classic example of an over-compensating individual who exhibits a sense of authority to camouflage the inferiority beneath.

The website British Comedy Guide wrote in 2021 that The Brittas Empire had "aged very well" in the 30 years since its debut. The character has been described by critics as a popular portrayal of an Aspergers character along with Mr. Bean, as they both demonstrate inappropriate social behaviour. According to the Eastern Europe Travel Survivors Kit 1994, shows like The Brittas Empire and American primetime soap opera Dynasty formed the backbone of Poland's two state TV channels. British Cultural Identities believed the series successfully critiqued contemporary British pretensions. Red Dwarf Smegazine argued in 1993 that while Red Dwarf had been a success, "Chris [Barrie] is perhaps better known by many TV viewers for The Brittas Empire". The Encyclopedia of TV Science Fiction wrote that the series saw Barrie achieve more mainstream success.

Revival
Talks of a Christmas special or a revival were raised in 2015, though ultimately neither project were picked up. On a revival, The Guardian wrote that while the original run "never really entered the fabric of popular culture...arguably, tastes have advanced enough for people to warm to a mainstream sitcom that includes the chainsaw dismemberment of several innocent people". In 2017, Digital Spy wrote that the show "arguably inspired Ricky Gervais' The Office in the early noughties, which went on to have huge success – so it's only natural The Brittas Empire may be in for a reboot". In 2018, a Comic Relief producer worked with Barrie to get a Brittas Empire skit on the programme, but was unsuccessful.

In October 2020, the cast and original writers attended the re-launching of the Ringwood Recreation Centre, where the series was filmed, and Barrie hoped the event would be a catalyst for an eighth series. He advised "there's so much momentum for it, now's the time." At this stage, original writers Andrew Norriss and Richard Fegen were working on a new script.

Influence
The show has been credited with having an influence on Alan Partridge and The Office.

Setting
The exterior shots and interior swimming pools of 'Whitbury New Town Leisure Centre' were filmed at Ringwood Leisure Centre, Hampshire.

title: The Brittas Empire


text:
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (زين العابدين بن علي, Tunisian Arabic: Zīn il-ʿĀbdīn bin ʿAlī; 3 September 1936 – 19 September 2019), commonly known as Ben Ali or Ezzine, was a Tunisian politician who served as the second president of Tunisia from 1987 to 2011. In that year, during the Tunisian revolution, he was overthrown and fled to Saudi Arabia.

Ben Ali was appointed Prime Minister in October 1987. He assumed the Presidency on 7 November 1987 in a bloodless coup d'état that ousted President Habib Bourguiba by declaring him incompetent. Ben Ali led an authoritarian regime. He was reelected in several non-democratic elections where he won with enormous majorities, each time exceeding 90% of the vote; his final re-election coming on 25 October 2009. Ben Ali was the penultimate surviving leader deposed in the Arab Spring; he was survived by Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, the latter dying in February 2020.

On 14 January 2011, following a month of protests against his rule, he fled to Saudi Arabia along with his wife Leïla Ben Ali and their three children. The interim Tunisian government asked Interpol to issue an international arrest warrant, charging him with money laundering and drug trafficking. A Tunisian court sentenced Ben Ali and his wife in absentia to 35 years in prison on 20 June 2011 on charges of theft and unlawful possession of cash and jewelry, which was put up for auction. In June 2012, a Tunisian court sentenced him in absentia to life imprisonment for inciting violence and murder and another life sentence by a military court in April 2013 for violent repression of protests in Sfax. He served none of those sentences, subsequently dying in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on 19 September 2019 at the age of 83 after nearly a decade in exile.

Early life, education and military career
Ben Ali was born in 1936 to moderate-income parents as the fourth of eleven children in the family. His father worked as a guard at the port city of Sousse. Ben Ali joined the local resistance against French colonial forces and was imprisoned. His expulsion from secondary school was the reason why he never completed his secondary education. He studied at the Sousse Technical Institute but failed to earn a professional certificate and joined the newly formed Tunisian Army in 1958. Nevertheless, after being chosen as one of a group of young officers, he was awarded training in France at the École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr in Coëtquidan and the School of Applied Artillery in Châlons-sur-Marne, and also in the United States at the Senior Intelligence School in Maryland and the School for Anti-Aircraft Field Artillery in Texas. He also held a diploma in electronics engineering from a local university. Returning to Tunisia in 1964, he began his professional military career the same year as a Tunisian staff officer. During his time in military service, he established the Military Security Department and directed its operations for 10 years. He briefly served as military attaché in the Tunisian embassy of Morocco and Spain before being appointed General Director of National Security in 1977.

In April 1980, Ben Ali was appointed ambassador to Poland, and served in that position for four years. He also served as the military intelligence chief from 1964 to 1974 and later Director General of national security between December 1977 and 1980 until he was appointed as Minister of Defense. Soon after the Tunisian bread riots in January 1984, he was reappointed director-general of national security. Ben Ali subsequently served as Minister of State in charge of the interior before being appointed Interior Minister on 28 April 1986 then Prime Minister by President Habib Bourguiba in October 1987.

Rise to presidency
On the morning of 7 November 1987, doctors attending to President Bourguiba filed an official medical report declaring him medically incapacitated and unable to fulfill the duties of the presidency. Ben Ali, next in line to the presidency, removed Bourguiba from office and assumed the presidency himself. The day of his accession to power was celebrated annually in Tunisia as New Era Day. Two of the names given to Ben Ali's rise to the presidency include "the medical coup d'état" and the "Tunisian revolution". Ben Ali favoured the latter. Ben Ali’s assumption of the presidency was in conformity with Article 57 of the Tunisian Constitution. The country had faced 10% inflation, external debt accounting for 46% of GDP and a debt service ratio of 21% of GDP.

In 1999, Fulvio Martini, former head of Italian military secret service SISMI, declared to a parliamentary committee that "from 1985 to 1987, we organized a coup of sorts in Tunisia, putting president Ben Ali as head of state, replacing Bourguiba who wanted to flee". Bourguiba, although a symbol of anti-colonial resistance, was considered incapable of leading his country any longer, and his reaction to the rising Islamic integrism was deemed "a bit too energetic" by Martini; Bourguiba's threat to execute the suspects might have generated strong negative responses in neighbouring countries. Acting under directives from Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi and Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti, Martini claims to have brokered the accord that led to the peaceful transition of powers.

According to Martini, the SISMI did not have an operational role in Ben Ali's rise to power, but organised a move to support his new government politically and economically, preventing Tunisia from falling into an open confrontation with fundamentalists, as happened in Algeria in the following years.

Politics
Alan Cowell, a prominent New York Times journalist, believed Ben Ali's initial promises of a more democratic way of ruling the country than had prevailed under Bourguiba. One of his first acts upon taking office was to loosen restrictions on the press; for the first time state-controlled newspapers published statements from the opposition. Ben Ali also released some political prisoners and granted them with pardons. In 1988, he changed the name of the ruling Destourian Socialist Party to the Democratic Constitutional Rally (RCD), and pushed through constitutional amendments that limited the president to three five-year terms, with no more than two in a row. However, the conduct of the 1989 elections was little different from past elections. The RCD swept every seat in the legislature, and Ben Ali appeared alone on the ballot in Tunisia's first presidential election since 1974. Although opposition parties had been legal since 1981, presidential candidates were required to get endorsements from 30 political figures. Given the RCD's near-absolute dominance of the political scene, prospective opposition candidates discovered they could not get their nomination papers signed. The subsequent years saw the return of several Bourguiba-era restrictions. For many years, the press had been expected to practice self-censorship, but this increasingly gave way to official censorship. Amendments to the press code allowed the Interior Ministry to review all newspaper and magazine articles before publication. In 1992, the president's younger brother Habib Ben Ali was tried in absentia in France for laundering the proceeds of drug trafficking, in a case known as the "couscous connection". French television news was blocked in Tunisia during the trial. At the 1994 elections, opposition parties polled 2.25% and gained 19 of 163 seats in Parliament—the first time opposition parties had actually managed to get into the chamber. Ben Ali was unopposed for a second full term, again after being the only candidate to get enough endorsements to qualify. Turnout was officially reported at 95%. However, at this and subsequent elections, opposition parties never accounted for more than 24 percent of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies. All legislation continued to originate with the president, and there was little meaningful opposition to executive decisions.

In 1999, Ben Ali became the first Tunisian president to actually face an opponent after the 30-signature requirement was lifted a few months earlier. However, he won a third full term with an implausible 99.4 percent of the vote.

A constitutional referendum in 2002—the first ever held in Tunisia—established a two-chambered parliament, creating the Chamber of Advisers. It also allowed the president to run for an unlimited number of five-year terms and amended the upper age limit for a presidential candidate to 75 years old (previously 70). The latter measures were clearly aimed at keeping Ben Ali in office; he faced having to give up the presidency in 2004. He was duly reelected in 2004, again by an implausibly high margin—this time 94 percent of the vote. Tunisia under Ben Ali had problems with human rights violations, such as freedom of the press, highlighted by the official treatment of the journalist Taoufik Ben Brik, who was harassed and imprisoned for his criticism of Ben Ali. By the dawn of the new millennium, Ben Ali was reckoned as leading one of the most repressive regimes in the world. Under his rule, Tunisia consistently ranked near the bottom of most international rankings for human rights and press freedom.

On 25 October 2009, Ben Ali was re-elected for a fifth term with 89% of the vote. The African Union sent a team of observers to cover the election. The delegation was led by Benjamin Bounkoulou, who described the election as "free and fair". However, a spokesperson from the US State Department indicated that Tunisia had not permitted monitoring of the election by international observers, but that the U.S. was still committed to working with the Ben Ali and the Tunisian government. There also were reports of mistreatment of an opposition candidate.

In December 2010 and January 2011, riots over unemployment escalated into a widespread popular protest movement against Ben Ali's government. On 13 January 2011, he announced he would not run for another term in 2014, and pledged steps to improve the economy and loosen restrictions on the press. The following day, however, thousands demonstrated in the center of Tunis, demanding Ben Ali's immediate resignation. On 14 January 2011, Ben Ali, his wife and children fled to Saudi Arabia, and a caretaker ruling committee headed by Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi was announced.

Economy
As president, Ben Ali instituted economic reforms that increased Tunisia's growth rate and foreign investment. During his administration, Tunisia's per capita GDP more than tripled from $1,201 in 1986 to $3,786 in 2008. Although growth in 2002 slowed to a 15-year low of 1.9% due to drought and lackluster tourism (partly due to some tourists being nervous about flying in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in New York), better conditions after 2003 helped push growth to about 5% of GDP. For about 20 years after 1987, the GDP annual growth averaged nearly 5%. A report published in July 2010 by the Boston Consulting Group (The African Challengers: Global Competitors Emerge from the Overlooked Continent) listed Tunisia as one of the African "Lions" and indicated the eight such countries account for 70% of the continent's gross domestic product.

Steady increases in GDP growth continued through positive trade relations with the European Union, a revitalised tourism industry and sustained agricultural production. Privatization, increasing foreign investment, improvements in government efficiency and reduction of the trade deficit presented challenges for the future. The 2010/11 Global Competitiveness Report (Davos World Economic Forum) ranked Tunisia 1st in Africa and 32nd globally out of 139 countries but it dropped to 40th in 2011/12 as a result of political instability and was not ranked in 2012/13.

According to the Oxford Business Group, Tunisia's economy was likely to grow from 2008 thanks to its diversified industries.

Committed to fighting poverty at home, Ben Ali instituted reforms, including the National Solidarity Fund, which slashed the Tunisian poverty rate from 7.4% in 1990 to an estimated 3.8% in 2005. The National Solidarity Fund was part of a dual strategy to fight current and potential terrorism through economic assistance, development and the rule of law, but also increased opportunities for corruption and clientelism. The fund provided opportunities to those living in impoverished areas and are vulnerable to recruitment by terrorists. It was a critical element in the fight against terrorism.

However, Tunisia continued to suffer from high unemployment, especially among youth. Left out of the recent prosperity were many rural and urban poor, including small businesses facing the world market. This and the blocking of free speech were the causes of the Tunisian revolution.

Diplomacy
During Ben Ali's presidency, Tunisia pursued a moderate foreign policy promoting peaceful settlement of conflicts. Tunisia took a middle of the road approach contributing to peacemaking, especially in the Middle East and Africa. Tunisia hosted the first-ever Palestinian American dialogue. While contributing actively to the Middle East peace process, Tunisian diplomacy has supported the Palestinian cause. As host to the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1982–1993, Ben Ali's government tried to moderate the views of that organisation. Tunisia, since the early 1990s, called for a "concerted" international effort against terrorism. It was also a key US partner in the effort to fight global terrorism through the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative. Ben Ali mostly retained his predecessor's pro-western foreign policy, though he improved ties with the Arab and Muslim world. He took several initiatives to promote solidarity, dialogue and cooperation among nations. Ben Ali initiated the creation of the United Nations World Solidarity Fund to eradicate poverty and promote social development based on the successful experience of the Tunisian National Solidarity Fund. Ben Ali also played a lead role in the UN's proclaiming 2010 as the International Year of Youth.

International characterisations
Ben Ali's government was considered to have one of the worst human rights records in the world, and largely bucked the trend toward greater democracy in Africa. His regime was dictatorial, and massively repressive, especially towards the conclusion of his 23-year iron grip on the country. It was deemed authoritarian and undemocratic by international human rights groups such as Amnesty International, Freedom House, and Protection International. They criticised Tunisian officials for not observing international standards of political rights  and interfering with the work of local human rights organisations. In The Economist's 2010 Democracy Index, Tunisia was classified as an authoritarian regime, ranking 144th out of 167 countries studied. In 2008, in terms of freedom of the press, Tunisia was ranked 143 out of 173.

Revolution and overthrow
In response to the protests, Ben Ali declared a state of emergency, dissolved the government on 14 January 2011, and promised new legislative elections within six months. However, events moved quickly, and it appears the armed forces and key members of the legislature had lost confidence in Ben Ali and had decided to take steps of their own. With power slipping from Ben Ali's grasp, prime minister Mohamed Ghannouchi announced that he would act as head of state during the president's "temporary" absence. With the army surrounding the Presidential Palace in Tunis, Ben Ali and close members of his family hastily left and headed to Laouina airport (annexed to the Tunis–Carthage International Airport). The military allowed Ben Ali's plane to take off, immediately after which the Tunisian airspace was closed. The presidential plane then left for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Subsequent reports in the media rumoured that Ben Ali was seeking protection in either France or Malta, although a Tunisian pilot who was involved in the arrangement of the flight stated that the plan was "to fly directly to Jeddah", which is also supported by recordings released by the BBC in 2022. Ben Ali and his family were accepted by King Abdullah to live in Saudi Arabia under the condition that he should keep out of politics. Ben Ali and his family went to exile in Jeddah, the same city where Idi Amin, the late dictator of Uganda, lived in exile until his death in 2003 after being removed from power in 1979 at the end of the Uganda–Tanzania War.

Other close associates and family members who attempted to leave the country via Tunis-Carthage were prevented from doing so by the army, which had seized the airport.

Succession confusion
At about 18:00, Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi went on state television to say "Since the president is temporarily unable to exercise his duties, it has been decided that the prime minister will temporarily exercise the (presidential) duties."

However, this arrangement was very short-lived, because early the following day (15 January 2011), the Constitutional Council of Tunisia determined that Ben Ali was not "temporarily unable" to exercise his duties and that the presidency was in fact vacant. The arrangements he had made with the Prime Minister before leaving the country were found to be unconstitutional under article 57 of the constitution. The country's constitutional council, at the time the highest legal authority on constitutional matters, announced the transition saying that Fouad Mebazaa, the Speaker of Parliament, had been appointed acting president.

Mebazaa took the oath in his office in parliament, swearing to respect the constitution in the presence of his senate counterpart, Abdallal Kallel, and representatives of both houses. It was also announced that the speaker of parliament would occupy the post of president temporarily and that elections would be held within a period of between 45 and 60 days.

Flight and trial in absentia
On 26 January 2011, the Tunisian government issued an international arrest warrant for Ben Ali, accusing him of taking money out of the nation illegally and illegally acquiring real estate and other assets abroad, Justice Minister Lazhar Karoui Chebbi said. Videos show that the president stashed cash and jewellery in the president's palace. The gold and jewellery will be redistributed to the people by the government. The Swiss government announced that it was freezing millions of dollars held in bank accounts by his family. On 28 January 2011, Interpol issued an arrest warrant for Ben Ali and his six family members, including his wife Leïla.

After Ben Ali fled Tunisia following the Tunisian revolution, he and his wife were tried in absentia for his suspected involvement in some of the country's largest businesses during his 23-year-long reign. On 20 June 2011, Ben Ali and his wife were sentenced to 35 years in prison after being found guilty of theft and unlawful possession of cash and jewelry. The verdict also included a penalty of 91 million Tunisian dinars (approximately €50 million, and $64 million) that Ben Ali was required to pay. This verdict was dismissed as a "charade" by some Tunisians dissatisfied with the trial and as a "joke" by Ben Ali's lawyer. The sentences were to take immediate effect, although Ben Ali and his wife were living in Saudi Arabia and the Saudi government ignored Tunisia's requests to extradite them.

In November 2016, Ben Ali made a statement via the office of his lawyer, Mounir Ben Salha, acknowledging his regime made "errors, abuses and violations". His statement came as a reaction to the public hearing sessions made by the Truth and Dignity Commission in Tunisia.

Family
Ben Ali and his family were accused of corruption, which was a major contribution to the Tunisian Revolution which led to the fall of his government. Many of Ben Ali's family members subsequently also fled the country. On 20 January 2011, Tunisian television reported that 33 members of Ben Ali's family had been arrested in the past week, as they tried to flee the country.

Leïla Ben Ali was the chair of the BASMA Association, a group that promotes social integration and provides employment opportunities for the disabled. She was also the president of the Arab Women Organization, which works to empower women in Arab states. She has three children: Nesrine, Halima and Mohamed Zine El Abidine. Ben Ali has three daughters from his first marriage: Ghazwa, Dorsaf and Cyrine.

Health condition and death
On 17 February 2011, it was reported that Ben Ali had suffered a stroke, and had been hospitalised for an indefinite period. Al Jazeera reported that a Saudi source had confirmed that Ben Ali had indeed sustained severe complications of a stroke and that he was in critical condition. The information has never been confirmed or denied by the Saudi government. However, on 17 June 2011, Ben Ali's attorney, Jean-Yves Leborgne, stated that Ben Ali "is not in the state that he's said to be in" and that "a meeting with his client took place under 'normal circumstances'".

Ben Ali died at a hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, due to prostate cancer on 19 September 2019 at the age of 83. He was buried on 21 September at the Al-Baqi Cemetery in Medina.

Tunisian national honours

 * Grand Master of the Order of Independence
 * Grand Master of the Order of the Republic
 * Grand Master of the National Order of Merit
 * Grand Master of the Order of the Seventh of November

Foreign honours

 * 🇦🇷 Argentina: Grand Cross of Order of the Liberator General San Martín (1997)
 * 🇦🇹 Austria : Grand Star of the Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria (2003)
 * 🇪🇬 Egypt : Collar of the Order of the Nile (1990)
 * 🇫🇷 France : Grand Cross of the Order of the Legion of Honour (1989)
 * 🇯🇵 Japan : Grand Cordon of the Order of the Chrysanthemum (1996)
 * 🇱🇾 Libya : Collar of the Order of the Grand Conqueror (1992)
 * 🇲🇹 Malta : Honorary Companions of Honour with Collar of the National Order of Merit (Malta) (2005)
 * 🇲🇨 Monaco : Grand Cross of the Order of Saint-Charles (7 September 2006)
 * 🇲🇦 Morocco : Grand Cross of the Order of Ouissam Alaouite (1987)
 * Palestine: Grand Collar of the State of Palestine (1996)
 * 🇵🇹 Portugal: Grand Collar of the Order of Prince Henry (1995)
 * 🇷🇴 Romania : Collar of the Order of the Star of Romania (2003)
 * 🇿🇦 South Africa : Grand Cross of the Order of Good Hope (5 April 1995)
 * 🇪🇸 Spain : Collar of the Order of Isabella the Catholic (25 May 1991)

title: Zine El Abidine Ben Ali


text:
Talk:South Pyongan Province

Untitled
I write all with three different steps: First in English, what I take from Korean map, then I translate it into Korean, and then I seek in dictionary Hanja version.-- Egon

And then I put it all in alphabedical order...-- Egon

Fabulous work! I've added in that it is in North Korea, as I felt that it needed some context. Secretlondon 16:43, Dec 6, 2003 (UTC)

Can anyone fix the map so that the background is transparent as the map for Namp'o. I need the maps for the swedish wikipedia. // Wellparp 11:37, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I have moved this article from "South P'yongan" to "South Pyongan," in order to avoid using diacritical marks (namely, ') in article titles. This reflects the move someone else already made of "P'yongyang" to "Pyongyang." --Sewing 18:23, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

County or not county ?

 * The below former counties of South Pyongan were merged with Nampo in 2004 and are administered as part of that city:
 * Chollima-guyok (천리마군/千里馬郡)
 * Kangso-guyok (강서군/江西郡)
 * Ryonggang County (룡강군/龍岡郡)
 * Taean-guyok-gun (대안군/大安郡)

This looks weird. Each former county was formerly named 군. When merged wit Nampo, some were renamed 구역. The parenthetical Hangul names are the former names (why not, this can be an editorial choice). But the Roman names should be either all new or all former. We should have either Ryonggang-gun or Ryonggang-guyok (according to the actual name). And either Taean-guyok or Taean-gun. But what could be a guyok-gun ? Pldx1 (talk) 08:55, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Does population figure include Nampo?
--JWB (talk) 16:23, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

title: Talk:South Pyongan Province


text:
Pentonville

Pentonville is an area in North London, located in the London Borough of Islington. It is located 1.75 mi north-northeast of Charing Cross on the Inner Ring Road. Pentonville developed in the northwestern edge of the ancient parish of Clerkenwell on the New Road. It is named after Henry Penton, the developer of the area.

History
The area is named after Henry Penton, who developed a number of streets in the 1770s in what was open countryside adjacent to the New Road. Pentonville was part of the ancient parish of Clerkenwell, and was incorporated into the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury by the London Government Act 1899. It has been part of the London Borough of Islington since 1965. There was a Pentonville ward from 1965 to 1978, electing three councillors to Islington London Borough Council.

Pentonville is the birthplace of John Stuart Mill (1806) and Forbes Benignus Winslow (1810), the noted psychiatrist. In 1902 Vladimir Lenin and his wife lived just off Pentonville Road, and it was at this time that he first met his fellow exile Leon Trotsky.

Geography
Nearby places include Islington, St. Pancras and Finsbury.

Pentonville is not the location of HM Prison Pentonville, which is located on Caledonian Road, some distance north in Barnsbury.

Transport
The closest tube stations are Angel and King's Cross St Pancras.

In popular culture

 * Mr Brownlow, a character in Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist (1838), lives in "a quiet shady street near Pentonville" in the novel and most film versions. However, in the musical adaptation, Oliver!, he lives in Bloomsbury Square.
 * Mr Guppy, a law clerk in Dickens's novel Bleak House (1853), has "lodgings at Penton Place, Pentonville. It is lowly, but airy, open at the back, and considered one of the 'ealthiest outlets."
 * Hyacinth Robinson, the central character in Henry James' The Princess Casamassima (1886), lives in Pentonville with his adoptive mother who works as a seamstress.
 * "Pentonville" is a track on the Babyshambles album Down in Albion (2005).

title: Pentonville


text:
Brazilian Flag Anthem

The "Brazilian Flag Anthem" (Hino à Bandeira Nacional, "Hymn to the National Flag") is a Brazilian patriotic song dedicated to the national flag of Brazil.

History
The song's lyrics were written by poet Olavo Bilac, and the music composed by Francisco Braga, at the request of the then mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Francisco Pereira Passos. The anthem was presented for the first time on November 9, 1906, and was originally intended to be sung by the schoolchildren of Rio de Janeiro during flag replacement ceremonies in the city's schools. Hence the reference to "youthful chest" in the lyrics. Around that same time, the anthem was considered as a possible replacement for the Brazilian National Anthem, that at that time had no official lyrics.

The Flag Anthem (as all other patriotic anthems and songs) was highly praised in the past, especially during the military dictatorship of 1964–1985, but has since lost some of its appeal. It is still performed on November 19 (Flag Day), as well as in flag replacement ceremonies.

Protocol
Flag replacement ceremonies (held in military institutions, in schools, etc., and periodically also at the Praça dos Três Poderes in Brasília, the capital of Brazil, to replace the flag that hovers over the seat of the Brazilian government), usually consist of the Flag Anthem being played while the old flag is lowered, and the National Anthem being played while the new flag is raised. In the case of perpetual displays of the flag (places where the national flag is always displayed without even minimal interruptions), such as the case of the aforementioned flag in the Praça dos Três Poderes, the new flag is raised first, while the national anthem is played, and only then the old flag is lowered, while the Flag Anthem is sung.

title: Brazilian Flag Anthem