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Adoniram Judson

Adoniram Judson  (August 9, 1788 – April 12, 1850) was an American Congregationalist and later Particular Baptist missionary, who worked in Burma for almost forty years. At the age of 25, Judson was sent from North America to preach in Burma. His mission and work with Luther Rice led to the formation of the first Baptist association in America to support missionaries.

Judson was one of the first Protestant missionaries to Burma. He translated the Bible into Burmese and established a number of Baptist churches in Burma.

Early life
Judson was born on August 9, 1788, in Malden, Middlesex County, Massachusetts. He was born to Adoniram Judson Sr., a Congregational minister, and Abigail (née Brown). Judson entered the College of Rhode Island & Providence Plantations (now Brown University) when he was sixteen, and graduated as valedictorian of his class at the age of nineteen. While studying at college, he met a young man named Jacob Eames, a devout deist and skeptic. Judson and Eames developed a strong friendship, leading to Judson's abandonment of his childhood faith and parents' religious instruction. During this time, Judson embraced the writings of the French philosophes. After graduating from college, Judson opened a school and wrote an English grammar and mathematics textbook for girls.

Judson's deist views were shaken when his friend Eames fell violently ill and died. Both had been sleeping in separate rooms at an inn, and Judson heard the death throes of the person next door, only to learn from the clerk the next morning that his anonymous neighbor had been Mr. Eames, who had indeed died. The shock of learning the dying neighbor's identity – and that Eames had led Judson away from the Christian faith into skepticism, but was now dead – returned Judson back to the faith of his youth, although he was already attending the Andover Theological Seminary. In 1808, Judson "made a solemn dedication of himself to God". During his final year at the school, Judson decided upon a missionary career.

In 1810, Judson joined a group of mission-minded students who called themselves "The Brethren"; the students inspired the establishment of America's first organized missionary society. Eager to serve abroad, Judson became convinced that "Asia with its idolatrous myriads, was the most important field in the world for missionary effort". He, and three other students from the seminary, appeared before the Congregationalists' General Association to appeal for support. In 1810, the elders voted to form the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

Marriage

On September 19, Judson was appointed by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions as a missionary to the East. Judson was also commissioned by the Congregational Church, and married Ann Hasseltine on February 5, 1812. He was ordained the next day at the Tabernacle Church in Salem. On February 19, he set sail aboard the brig Caravan with Luther Rice; Samuel Newell and Harriet Newell; and his wife, Ann (known as "Nancy") Judson.

Voyage to India
The Judsons arrived in Calcutta on June 17, 1812. While aboard ship en route to India, he did a focused study on the theology of baptism. He came to the position that believer's baptism was theologically valid and should be done as a matter of obedience to the command of Jesus.

On September 6, 1812, he switched to the Baptist denomination along with his wife and they were baptized by immersion in Calcutta by an English missionary associate of William Carey named William Ward.

Both the local and British authorities did not want Americans evangelizing Hindus in the area, so the group of missionaries separated and sought other mission fields. They were ordered out of India by the British East India Company, to whom American missionaries were even less welcome than British (they were baptized in September, and already in June, the United States had declared war on Great Britain). The following year, on July 13, 1813, he moved to Burma, and en route his wife miscarried their first child aboard ship.

Judson offered to Baptists in the United States to serve as their missionary. Luther Rice, who had also converted, was in poor health and returned to America where his work and William Carey's urging resulted in the 1814 formation of the first national Baptist denomination in the United States for Foreign Missions (commonly called the Triennial Convention) and its offshoot the American Baptist Missionary Union.

Missionaries in Burma
It was another difficult year before the Judsons finally reached their intended destination, Burma. Buddhist Burma, Judson was told by the Serampore Baptists, was impermeable to Christian evangelism. Judson, who already knew Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, immediately began studying Burmese grammar but took over three years to learn to speak it. This was due, in part, to the radical difference in structure between Burmese and Western languages. He found a tutor and spent twelve hours per day studying the language. He and his wife firmly dedicated themselves to understanding it.

During this time they were almost entirely isolated from contact with any European or American. Four years passed before Judson dared even to hold a semi-public service. At first, he tried adapting to Burmese customs by wearing a yellow robe to mark himself as a teacher of religion, but he soon changed to white to show he was not a Buddhist. Then, he gave up the whole attempt as artificial and decided that, regardless of his dress, no Burmese would identify him as anything but a foreigner. He accommodated some Burmese customs and built a zayat, the customary bamboo and thatch reception shelter, on the street near his home as a reception room and meeting place for Burmese men. Fifteen men came to his first public meeting in April 1819. He was encouraged but suspected they had come more out of curiosity than anything else. Their attention wandered, and they soon seemed uninterested. Two months later, he baptized his first Burmese convert, Maung Naw, a 35-year-old timber worker from the hill tribes. "Burma Baptist Chronicle" stated that Maung Naw (Nai Naw) was an ethnic Mon. First attempts by the Judsons to interest the natives of Rangoon with the Gospel of Jesus met with almost total indifference. Buddhist traditions and the Burmese worldview at that time led many to disregard the pleadings of Adoniram and his wife to believe in one living and all-powerful God. Their second child, Roger William Judson, died at almost eight months of age.

Judson completed the translation of the Grammatical Notices of the Burman Language the following July and the Gospel of Matthew, in 1817. Judson began public evangelism in 1818 sitting in a zayat by the roadside calling out "Ho! Every one that thirsteth for knowledge!" The first believer was baptized in 1819, and there were 18 believers by 1822.

In 1820, Judson and a fellow missionary named Colman petitioned the Emperor of Burma, King Bagyidaw, in the hope that he would grant freedom for the missionaries to preach and teach throughout the country, as well as remove the sentence of death that was given for those Burmese who changed religion. Bagyidaw disregarded their appeal and threw one of their Gospel tracts to the ground after reading a few lines. The missionaries returned to Rangoon and met with the fledgling church there to consider what to do next. The progress of Christianity would continue to be slow with much risk of endangerment and death in the Burmese Empire.

It took Judson 12 years to make 18 converts. His wife, Ann, was even more fluent in the spoken language of the people than her more academically literate husband. She befriended the wife of the viceroy of Rangoon, as quickly as she did illiterate workers and women.

A printing press had been sent from Serampore, and a missionary printer, George H. Hough, who arrived from America with his wife in 1817, produced the first printed materials in Burmese ever printed in Burma, which included 800 copies of Judson's translation of the Gospel of Matthew. The chronicler of the church, Maung Shwe Wa, concludes this part of the story, "So was born the church in Rangoon–logger and fisherman, the poor and the rich, men and women. One traveled the whole path to Christ in three days; another took two years. But once they had decided for Christ they were his for all time." One of the early disciples was U Shwe Ngong, a teacher and leader of a group of intellectuals dissatisfied with Buddhism, who were attracted to the new faith. He was a Deist skeptic to whose mind the preaching of Judson, once a college skeptic himself, was singularly challenging. After consideration, he assured Judson that he was ready to believe in God, Jesus Christ, and the atonement.

Judson, instead of welcoming him to the faith, pressed him further asking if he believed what he had read in the gospel of Matthew that Jesus the son of God died on the cross. U Shwe Ngong shook his head and said, "Ah, you have caught me now. I believe that he suffered death, but I cannot believe he suffered the shameful death on the cross." Not long after, he came back to tell Judson, "I have been trusting in my own reason, not the word of God…. I now believe the crucifixion of Christ because it is contained in scripture."

The essence of Judson's preaching was a combination of conviction of the truth with the rationality of the Christian faith, a firm belief in the authority of the Bible, and a determination to make Christianity relevant to the Burmese mind without violating the integrity of Christian truth, or as he put it, "to preach the gospel, not anti-Buddhism."

By 1823, ten years after his arrival, membership of the little church had grown to 18, and Judson finished the first draft of his translation of the New Testament in Burmese.

Anglo-Burmese War (1824–1826)
Two opposite hungers triggered the First Anglo-Burmese War of 1824: Burma's desire for more territory, and Britain's desire for more trade. Burma threatened Assam and Bengal; Britain responded by attacking and absorbing two Burmese provinces into her India holdings to broaden her trade routes to East Asia. The war was a rough interruption of the Baptists' missionary work. English-speaking Americans were too easily confused with the enemy and suspected of spying.

Judson was imprisoned for 17 months during the war between the United Kingdom and Burma, first at Ava and then at Aung Pinle. Judson and Price were violently arrested. Officers led by an official executioner burst into the Judson home, threw Judson to the ground in front of his wife, bound him with torture thongs, and dragged him off to the prison of Ava.

Twelve months later, Judson and Price, along with a small group of surviving Western prisoners, were marched overland for six more months of misery in a primitive village near Mandalay. Of the sepoy British prisoners-of-war imprisoned with them, all but one died. He spent 20 months in prison.

After her husband was released by the Burmese, Ann wrote that one good result of the war could be that terms of the treaty which ceded Burmese provinces to the British might provide opportunity to expand the witness of the mission into unreached parts of the country.

On October 24, 1826, Ann died at Amherst (now Kyaikkami), Burma. Their third child died six months later. She died while her husband was out exploring the ceded province of Tenasserim. Within a few years of the end of the war, Baptist membership doubled on an average of every eight years for the 32 years between 1834 and 1866. The collapse of Burma's armies brought Judson out of prison, but his release was not complete freedom. In 1826, several months after the surrender, Burma pressed Judson into service as a translator for the peace negotiations.

Most of the growth of Baptist churches in Burma was in British-ruled territory, rather than the Burmese-ruled kingdom. Most of the growth came from animist tribes, rather than from the major population group, the Buddhist Burmese. The first Burmese pastor Judson ordained was Ko-Thah-a, one of the original group of converts, who refounded the church at Rangoon.

Karen apostle

The Karen people were a hunted minority group of ancient Tibeto-Burman ancestry scattered in the forests and jungles of the Salween River and in the hills along the southeast coast. Judson was the first missionary to make contact with them in 1827, when he ransomed and freed a debt-slave from one of his early converts. The freed slave, Ko Tha Byu, was an illiterate, surly man who spoke almost no Burmese and was reputed to be not only a thief, but also a murderer who admitted killing at least 30 men, but could not remember exactly how many more.

In 1828, the former Karen bandit, "whose rough, undisciplined genius, energy and zeal for Christ" (Sarah B Judson) had caught the notice of the missionaries, was sent south with a new missionary couple, the Boardmans, into the territory of the strongly animistic, non-Buddhist Karen. Ko Tha Byu was no sooner baptized, when he set off into the jungle alone to preach to his fellow tribe members. Astonishingly, he found them prepared for his preaching. Their ancient oracle traditions, handed down for centuries, contained some startling echoes of the Old Testament that some scholars conjecture a linkage with Jewish communities (or possibly even Nestorians), before their migrations from western China into Burma perhaps as early as the 12th century.

The core of what they called their "Tradition of the Elders" was a belief in an unchangeable, eternal, all-powerful God, creator of heaven and earth, of man, and of woman formed from a rib taken from the man (Genesis). They believed in humanity's temptation by a devil, and its fall, and that some day a Great Messiah would come to its rescue. They lived in expectation of a prophecy that white foreigners would bring them a sacred parchment roll.

While the Boardmans and Ko Tha Byu were penetrating the jungles to the south, Judson shook off a paralyzing year-long siege of depression that overcame him after the death of his wife and set out alone on long canoe trips up the Salween River into the tiger-infested jungles to evangelize the northern Karen. Between trips, he worked unceasingly at his lifelong goal of translating the entire Bible into Burmese. When he finished it at last in 1834, he had been labouring on it for 24 years. It was printed and published in 1835.

In April of that same year, he married Sarah Hall Boardman, widow of fellow missionary George Boardman. They had eight children, five of whom survived to adulthood. Sarah's health began failing and physicians recommended a return to America. Sarah died en route at St. Helena on September 1, 1845. He continued home, where he was greeted as a celebrity and toured the eastern seaboard raising the profile of and money for missionary activity. Because he could barely speak above a whisper, due to pulmonary illness, his public addresses were made by speaking to an assistant, who would then address the audience.

On June 2, 1846, Judson married for the third time, to writer Emily Chubbuck, who he had commissioned to write memoirs for Sarah Hall Boardman. They had a daughter born in 1847.

Sarah Cummings and Jason Tuma arrived in 1832. Cummings proved her mettle at once, choosing to work alone with Karen evangelists in the malaria-ridden Salween River valley north of Moulmein, but within two years she died of fever.

In 1835, a second single woman, Eleanor Macomber, after five years of mission to the Ojibway Indians in Michigan, joined the mission in Burma. Alone, with the help of Karen evangelistic assistants, she planted a church in a remote Karen village and nurtured it to the point where it could be placed under the care of an ordinary missionary. She lived there five years and died of jungle fever.

Judson developed a serious lung disease and doctors prescribed a sea voyage as a cure. On April 12, 1850, he died at age 61 on board ship in the Bay of Bengal and was buried at sea, having spent 37 years abroad with only one trip back home to America. A memorial to Judson was built on Burial Hill in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Legacy
By the time of Judson's death, he had translated the Bible into Burmese as well as a half-completed Burmese-English dictionary. Burma at the time had 100 churches, and over 8,000 believers.

By 2006, Myanmar had the third largest number of Baptists worldwide, behind the United States and India. The majority of adherents are Karen, Kachin and Chin.

Judson compiled the first ever Burmese-English dictionary; missionary E. A. Steven completed the English-Burmese half. Every dictionary and grammar written in Burma in the last two centuries has been based on ones originally created by Judson. Judson "became a symbol of the preeminence of Bible translation for" Protestant missionaries. In the 1950s, Burma's Buddhist prime minister U Nu told the Burma Christian Council "Oh no, a new translation is not necessary. Judson's captures the language and idiom of Burmese perfectly and is very clear and understandable." Though the Bible has been translated numerous times into Burmese, Judson's translation remains the most popular version in Myanmar.

Each July, Baptist churches in Myanmar celebrate "Judson Day," commemorating his arrival as a missionary. Inside the campus of Yangon University is Judson Church, named in his honor, and in 1920 Judson College, named in his honor, merged into Rangoon College, which has since been renamed Yangon University. The American University named in his honor, Judson University was founded in Elgin, Illinois, in 1963, as the liberal arts Judson College was separated from the Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, which moved from Chicago to Lombard, Illinois. This American Judson College became Judson University in 2007 and now also has a campus in Rockford, Illinois.

Judson's change to the validity of believer's baptism, and subsequent need of support, led to the founding of the first national Baptist organization in the United States and subsequently to all American Baptist associations, including the Southern Baptists that were the first to break off from the national organization. Publication of his wife Ann's letters about their mission inspired many Americans to become or support Christian missionaries. At least 36 Baptist churches in the United States are named after Judson, as well as the town of Judsonia, Arkansas. Judson College in Alabama is named after his wife Ann and a dormitory at Maranatha Baptist University carries his name. Christian Union owns and operates a ministry center named after him at his undergraduate alma mater, Brown University. His seminary alma mater, Andover Theological Seminary, (now Andover Newton Theological School), gives out an annual The Judson Award.

Judson Harmon, a former Governor of Ohio, was named after him.

Published works

 * Burmese Bible, as well as portions published before the entire text was translated
 * A Burmese-English dictionary (English-Burmese portion completed posthumously, see below)
 * A Burmese Grammar
 * Two hymns: Our Father, God, Who art in Heaven and Come Holy Spirit, Dove Divine

title: Adoniram Judson


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Talk:Algebraic structure

Graph (in graph theory)
Is the graph an algebraic structure or not? Mx1024 (talk) 09:37, 22 October 2017 (UTC)
 * In any obvious way it is not a set with operations. Which set could it be? Wikisaurus (talk) 11:50, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Deciding if a graph is an algebraic structure depends on the definition that is given to "algebraic structure", and to "operation". In fact, a graph is a set (of vertices) with an operation with values in {true, false}, the result being true if the two vertices are connected by an edge. The incidence matrix of a graph is thus the table of this operation. The graph is undirected if and only if the operation is commutative.
 * More precisely, there is no commonly accepted definition of "algebraic structure". This does not cause trouble for mathematicians, as most of them do not work on algebraic structures in general, but consider only specific structures that have been given a name (such as groups). Although a graph is rarely viewed as an algebraic structure, graph theory is generally considered by mathematicians as a part of algebra. D.Lazard (talk) 14:01, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Two uses of the term "algebra"
The lead now uses the term "algebra" in two senses. My textbooks define an algebra as a vector space V over a field F with a binary operation of multiplication of vectors satisfying three additional axioms. If the two meanings of algebra in the lead are distinct and valid, I think they should be clearly defined.—Anita5192 (talk) 16:39, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Good point. I have tryed to fix it. D.Lazard (talk) 19:10, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

 * Thank you!   —Anita5192 (talk) 19:22, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

The explanation of "involving multiple sets" has become misguided.
I think at some point this article went the wrong way with explaining how algebraic structures involve multiple sets. This became clearer to me when someone recently made an edit to the effect that an algebraic structure "can have more than one underlying set" which I do not think is true. I have a hard time believing the exposition in this article accurately reflects what universal algebraists have established.

To take vector spaces as an example, the article currently unzips the algebraic structure of the scalar field as if it was on an equal footing with the operations on the vector space. This doesn't make any sense: the field furnishes operations on the abelian group. It provides unary operations on the group, not more underlying sets and more binary operations.

So we shouldn't be saying "a vector space is two sets with five operations" we should be saying "a vector space is one set with a binary operation and many unary operations." And indeed, this is already the case at the universal algebra article.

Unless I see some compelling counterarguments and citations, I may be bold and revise accordingly. Rschwieb (talk) 14:50, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

 * I find the advice to pretend that, for instance, the scalar multiplication of a vector space or, more generally, the ring action on a module should be primarily (or even exclusively, as sugested above!) viewed (or even defined) as a loose collection of operators without acknowledging the respective algebraic objects, just an obsolete obfuscation of the algebraic structure.

 * Therefore I object to the above proposal. We would be gaining nothing by hiding the obvious intrinsic structure and by artificially narrowing down the general definition and, thus, misrepresenting the algebraic nature of algebraic structures and creating confusion.

 * Filozofo (talk) 15:35, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with above 's post, but I disagree with their edit. IMO, one must consider structures such as vector spaces as structures that are parametrized by other structures. I believe that this is one of the great advantage of category theory over universal algebra to allow an easy definition of parametrized structures. 's point of view is misleading because it does not correspond to the common way of thinking of mathematicians, and requires an infinity of operations, which is strange for pure algebra.
 * I have thus edited the lead for explaining informally this point of view. Also, I have removed the mention of abstract algebra and universal algebra, as the concept is encountered in all mathematics, and is formalized also in category theory. D.Lazard (talk) 16:43, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

 * I get your point that we don't usually explicitly phrase it this way, but with respect I do not think it is as unusual as you say: I think it's the essence of thinking of an R module M as R being mapped into the endomorphism ring of M. I do not think it is a common way of thinking of mathematicians to say that an algebraic object has "multiple underlying sets," and I sense we agree on that point.  I'm willing to bend toward some middle point.
 * It's OK, perhaps to say that the structure "has" multiple sets and operations, but I wouldn't dream of calling them all underlying sets, or saying that all the operations involved belong to the structure at hand. There ought to be some way to say it, as you preserved in my edit, that keeps the other algebraic structures used as separate entities. Or perhaps it should be said "from the point of view of universal algebra ". Perhaps the real issue is that we can't take the POV of universal algebra throughout the article.
 * You have put a lot of words in my mouth and come to the wrong conclusions about what I hope to accomplish. I'm not completely married to expressing it as I did in that first draft, but I do object to the way it is currently written because I've never seen it in print that way. I don't have access to the citations, but if you can help me determine which ones might support the point of view that an algebraic structure is "a union of the algebraic structures its composed of", I could try to obtain the text.
 * Next time we talk, kindly restrain the artistic license that you've taken with my words. It is quite incorrect and not constructive. I didn't hide or narrow anything, and I think my revision (however imperfect) is far less misleading than what I revised. Rschwieb (talk) 19:48, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

 * Rschwieb I am sincerely sorry if the tone of my earlier (well-intentioned) objection came through as "unrestrained". I did not intend it as such. Please accept my apology!
 * However the essense of my objection still stands. I think, it is common enough to think of various types of algebraic structures/systems as an ensemble of multiple more "elementary" structures combined in a certain way and, therefore, such algebraic structure is based on multiple supporting sets. It is not always obvious or reasonable/natural/productive to consider one of such constituents as principal and the other(s) as accessory. A simple and commonly known example of such algebraic structure would be the concept of group ring.
 * D.Lazard probably had in mind similar considerations in the above comment.
 * So I suggest that it makes sense to eliminate the artificial narrowing down of the allowable assortment of what is naturally considered an algebraic structure (or, in another terminological tradition, an algebraic system).
 * Sincerely, Filozofo (talk) 01:30, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I never suggested that one of the "constituents is principal and the other(s) are accessory". Auxiliary is not accessory. To know whether one of the constituents is principal, it suffices to consider the membership relation. If $$x\in S$$ is commonly used with $S$ being a structure, it generally means that $x$ belongs to the principal component. IMO, it is fundamental to define algebraic structures in a way that $$x\in S$$ does not require a specific definition. This means, for example, that the definition of a group as a pair of a set and an operation must be avoided in elementary texts (it may be needed in formal definitions required by computer aided proofs). I have recently rewrote Affine space, and one of the writing difficulties was that an affine space is constitued by a set and a vector space, and the phrase "$x$ belongs to the affine space" means "$x$ belongs to the set".
 * However, there are algebraic structures without "principal constituent". The most common such structure, is probably the structure of a graph: although a graph can be defined as a set with a binary operation taking its values in $$\{0,1\},$$ there is no commonly accepted definition of "$x$ belongs to a graph". In other words, neither the set of vertices, neither the set of edges is a principal constituent. IMO, these considerations are too subtle for appearing in the lead of the article without making it confusing. D.Lazard (talk) 10:13, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Definition given in short description
Since there have been two reverts on the short description recently I'm opening up a discussion of the short description because this seems to represent an unresolved disagreement as to the article's intended content. In reverting my edit User:D.Lazard said that the only classes of algebraic structures which are not defined by some axioms are sets and magmas. I would first of all like to point out that this is false, since the class of all algebras of any fixed signature would also work. Moreover, the actual point under consideration is, to my mind, whether or not an algebraic structure itself should include a set of axioms which it obeys (whether identities in the sense of universal algebra or other axioms). I am of the opinion that including axioms in the definition is akin to saying that a topological space is a set equipped with a topology which obeys certain axioms. While it is true that the topological spaces which are typically considered obey some axioms (they might be Hausdorff or separable for example) a space itself is not given along with some axioms it might satisfy. Saying that some axioms should be included along with an algebraic structure itself seems to stem from the first examples of algebras being groups or members of other classes so defined, but this would be like saying that since the first examples of spaces one sees in an undergraduate course are metric spaces that a topological space should carry with it some axioms that it satisfies. The literature is consistent with this viewpoint, and the only place where algebraic structures are rigorously defined in the article are in the context of universal algebra, where the definition certainly does not include any particular axioms beyond a set with an indexed collection of finitary operations. caterpillar_tree (talk) 20:38, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Please read WP:short description. Short descriptions are not here for providing definitions, but for helping readers to decide whether they are interested in the article, generally found with a research engine. The definition of an algebraic structure given in the first paragraph of the lead mention axioms explicitely. So, before removing axioms from the short description, you must get a consensus for removing them from the lead. There is no hope for that, as you have no reliable source supporting your views. D.Lazard (talk) 21:14, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you for pointing out the purpose of a short description. I still stand by eliminating the mention of axioms in the short description, however, as "satisfying given axioms" may be appended to the short description of any large class of mathematical object, as in the example I gave before of topological spaces, but doesn't add any useful information. You are correct that I would like to get a consensus for removing the discussion of axioms from the lead. It seems a bit prejudicial to say that I have no reliable sources for doing so when the only citation in the introduction is to a universal algebra text which gives the concrete definition I mentioned previously. It would seem that the onus is on those who would like the page to remain they way it is to provide sources for this treatment of algebraic structures. At the moment this page appears to be trying to be a page on algebras in the sense of Universal algebra (and indeed the section on algebras on that page links to Algebraic structure) but it is at the moment largely an unsourced list of various classes of algebraic structures, broadly construed. I agree with you that the term "algebraic structure" has a broader meaning within mathematics, but without a clear source on what exactly that is it seems better to remake this page into one solely on the universal algebra notion and point people to the well-written disambiguation page Algebra (disambiguation) for other meanings. Trying to lay down what exactly an algebraic structure is outside of the universal algebra definition without producing an original authoritative source would be in violation of No_original_research. caterpillar_tree (talk) 03:57, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
 * You are pointing a difficulty that arises rather commonly when writing encyclopedic articles in mathematics: the term "algebraic structure" is commonly used in mathematics, mathematicians knows what is an algebraic structure, but there is no consensus for a formal definition. Universal algebra is a tentative for such a definition, but fields are not algebraic structures for it, as the field axioms require an existential quantifier. Category theory provides another definition, which does not distinguish algebraic structures from non-algebraic ones. Also, there is no consensus whether partial orders and graphs are algebraic structures. I agree that Algebraic structure is not well sourced and requires improvements. In particular, it lacks a discussion of the various definitions that have been given, and examples illustrating the differences between these definitions. Nevertheless, IMO, there is not too much to change in the lead. D.Lazard (talk) 11:16, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I confer that the current introductory paragraph may be considered misleading for various reasons.

For instance, "algebraic structure" very often (probably more often than not) refers to the structure itself (the notion roughly equivalent to the class of the algebraic systems embodying it) than to a specific instance of such a structure.

Furthermore, algebraic structure is a notion more abstract than a specific way to present it with a concrete set of axioms. For example, group (or field) as an algebraic structure may be defined using different signatures.

And, by the way, signatures of algebraic structures may contain not only operations, but also relations: such are, for instance, the more common, natural definitions of (various types of) lattices and semi-lattices. Filozofo (talk) 11:51, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

 * I agree that it is ambiguous whether "algebraic structure" refers to a structure (group in general) or to a specific realization of the structure (a specific group). Imo, the distinction is too technical for the lead, but a specific section would be needed for discussing this.
 * The last paragraph of your post points the fact that there is no consensus on the exact meaning of "algebraic structure": If relations are accepted, a partial order and a graph are algebraic structures. Otherwise they are not. This is the implicit choice of the article, and this requires to be clarified. D.Lazard (talk) 13:55, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Mentioning the adjective "Closed" in the definition
Hi again. No, every operation is not closed within a set, for example "minus" is an operation, but is not closed within natural numbers, e.g., 2 and 3 are natural numbers but -1 (2-3=-1) is not a natural number.

Here https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/groups-discrete-mathematics/ explicitly mentions the adjective "Closure" for algebraic structures. And here www.javatpoint.com/algebraic-structure-in-discrete-mathematics implicitly says an algebraic structure must be closed. But explicitly says that the operation must be closed (closure property) for Semigroup, Monoid, Group, and Abelian Groups. This way, I really think that this definition lacks an important property of algebraic structure's operation, and in the definition, the adjective "closed" must be preceded the word "operation". Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 15:15, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Minus is not an operation in the sense of Operation (mathematics). However, it is a partial operation. I know that some US teachers insist on "closure", but this seems specific to North America and to low level courses. Here, "operation" is linked to a mathematical definition, which, as far as I know, is the most common one; if you add "closed", this means that you consider another definition of "operation"; this may clearly be confusing for some readers. In other words, adding "closed" would need to first get a consensus for changing the definition given in Operation (mathematics).
 * Even if one considers, as you do implicitly, that an operation may be a partial operation, "closed" must not be added here, as this would imply that, in a field, division is not an operation (see ). So, even if there may be some ambiguity in the meaning of "operation", disambiguating here is more harmful than keeping the ambiguity. D.Lazard (talk) 17:35, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

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

title: Talk:Algebraic structure


text:
George Mathews

George Mathews may refer to:

 * George Mathews (soldier) (1739–1812), U.S. General and Governor of Georgia
 * George Mathews (judge) (1774–1836), Chief Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court
 * George A. Mathews (1852–1941), Delegate from Dakota Territory to the United States House of Representatives
 * George G. Mathews Jr. (1855–1944), American diplomat and politician
 * George Ballard Mathews (1861–1922), English mathematician
 * George W. Mathews (1874–1906), Medal of Honor recipient
 * George C. Mathews (1886–1946), American economist
 * George Mathews (actor) (1911–1984), American actor

title: George Mathews


text:
Electronic Industries Alliance

The Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA; until 1997 Electronic Industries Association) was an American standards and trade organization composed as an alliance of trade associations for electronics manufacturers in the United States. They developed standards to ensure the equipment of different manufacturers was compatible and interchangeable. The EIA ceased operations on February 11, 2011, but the former sectors continue to serve the constituencies of EIA.

History

In 1924, 50 radio manufacturers in Chicago formed a trade group called the Associated Radio Manufacturers. This organization was designed to control the licensing of the large number of radio patents so that each member could have access to all the relevant patents necessary to build radio transmitters, antennas and receivers. Over time, new electronic technologies brought new members, non-manufacturer members, and name changes.

Names in chronological order:
 * 1924 – Associated Radio Manufacturers
 * 1924 – Radio Manufacturers Association (RMA)
 * 1950 – Radio Television Manufacturers Association (RTMA)
 * 1953 – Radio Electronics Television Manufacturers Association (RETMA)
 * 1957 – Electronic Industries Association (EIA)
 * 1997 – Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA)

The organization's headquarters were in Arlington, Virginia. The EIA divided its activities into the following sectors:
 * ECA – Electronic Components, Assemblies, Equipment & Supplies Association
 * JEDEC – JEDEC Solid State Technology Association, former Joint Electron Device Engineering Council
 * GEIA – (now part of TechAmerica), Government Electronics and Information Technology Association
 * TIA – Telecommunications Industry Association
 * CEA – Consumer Electronics Association

The EIA announced in 2007 that it would be dissolved into its constituent divisions, and transferred operations soon after. The Alliance formally ceased to exist on February 11, 2011. EIA designated ECA to continue to develop standards for interconnect, passive and electro-mechanical (IP&E) electronic components under the ANSI-designation of EIA standards. All other electronic components standards will be managed by their respective sectors.

The ECA merged with the National Electronic Distributors Association (NEDA) in 2011 to form the Electronic Components Industry Association (ECIA). However, the EIA standards brand will continue for IP&E standards within ECIA.

EIA standards
With the changing names of the EIA, the naming convention of the standards was also adapted. For example, a standard defining serial communication between computers and modems e.g. was originally drafted as a Recommended Standard, thus the "RS" RS-232. Later it was taken over by the EIA as EIA-232. Later this standard was managed by the TIA and the name was changed to the current TIA-232. Because the EIA was accredited by ANSI to help develop standards in its areas, these standards are often described as (e.g. ANSI TIA-232, or formerly as ANSI EIA/TIA-232). As currently authorized, any ANSI standard designated at ANSI EIA-xxx is developed or managed by ECA (and, in the future, ECIA).

title: Electronic Industries Alliance


text:
EIA

Eia or EIA may refer to:

Medicine

 * Enzyme immunoassay
 * Equine infectious anemia
 * Exercise-induced anaphylaxis
 * Exercise-induced asthma
 * External iliac artery

Transport

 * Edmonton International Airport, in Alberta, Canada
 * Erbil International Airport, in Kurdistan Region, Iraq
 * Evergreen International Airlines, an American airline

Other uses

 * Eia, a former Medieval manor that is now part of Central London
 * Electronic Industries Alliance, formerly Electronic Industries Association, an American trade organization
 * EIA standards
 * Emerging issues analysis
 * Emirates Investment Authority
 * Energy Information Administration of the United States Department of Energy
 * Environmental impact assessment
 * Environmental Investigation Agency, a British environmental organisation
 * Equity-indexed annuity
 * European Inventor Award, awarded annually by the European Patent Office
 * International Anticommunist Entente (French: Entente Internationale Anticommuniste)

People with the surname

 * Harald Eia (born 1966), Norwegian comedian
 * Magnhild Eia (born 1960), Norwegian politician

title: EIA


text:
List of land-grant universities

This is a list of land-grant colleges and universities in the United States of America and its associated territories.

Land-grant institutions are often categorized as 1862, 1890, and 1994 institutions, based on the date of the legislation that designated most of them with land-grant status.

Of the 106 land-grant institutions, all but two (the Community College of Micronesia and Northern Marianas College) are members of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (formerly the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges).

Note: Historically black colleges or universities on this list are listed in italics.

Native American
The 31 tribal colleges of 1994 are represented as a system by the single membership of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC).

The AIHEC has its headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia for the benefits of ready access to the federal government in Washington, D.C. None of its member schools are located in Virginia. They are located from Michigan westward to Arizona, California and Alaska.

Alabama

 * Alabama A&M University
 * Auburn University (designated as a land-grant college in 1872 under the name Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama)
 * Tuskegee University (private)

Though Alabama A&M is Alabama's official 1890 Morrill Act institution, the mission and unique history of Tuskegee are so similar to those of the 1890 institutions that it functions as a de facto land-grant university and is almost universally regarded as one of them. Tuskegee is a land-grant member of APLU, as are Alabama A&M and Auburn. However, only Alabama A&M and Auburn formally participate in the now-combined Alabama Cooperative Extension System, with Tuskegee listed as a "cooperating partner" in ACES. Tuskegee has also received Smith-Lever Act funds since 1972 to operate its own Cooperative Extension program. Tuskegee is also explicitly granted the same status as the 1890 land-grant institutions in a number of Federal laws.

Alaska

 * University of Alaska Fairbanks

Arizona

 * Diné College
 * Tohono O'odham Community College, Sells
 * University of Arizona, Tucson

Arkansas

 * University of Arkansas (Fayetteville) (designated in 1871; opened in 1872)
 * University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (formerly Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal)

California

 * University of California (designated in 1866; University of California, Berkeley opened in 1868)

Colorado

 * Colorado State University

Connecticut
Originally, in 1863, the Sheffield Scientific School, part of Yale University, was designated as the state's land-grant college. Despite the fact that Yale's agricultural efforts and education were lauded by state officials and others (with 50 to 60 students graduating annually from its tuition-free agricultural program within the "Sheff"), the Connecticut State Grange felt farmers were not receiving the full benefits of the Morrill Act due to Yale's high admissions standards; thus, in 1893, they persuaded the Connecticut General Assembly to establish Storrs Agricultural College (now called the University of Connecticut) and make it the state's sole land-grant institution (thereby removing Yale University's designation). In compensation, the General Assembly awarded Yale University $155,000.
 * University of Connecticut

Delaware

 * University of Delaware (designated on March 14, 1867; reopened in 1870)
 * Delaware State University (original name was State College for Colored Students)

Florida

 * University of Florida
 * Florida A&M University (after the second Morrill Act the name of this institution was State Normal and Industrial College for Colored Students)

Georgia

 * University of Georgia
 * A portion of the University of Georgia's funds were used to establish a branch in [Dahlonega, Georgia] that became [North Georgia Agricultural College, then North Georgia College, then North Georgia College and State University], which in turn was merged into the current University of North Georgia in 2013.
 * Fort Valley State University

Hawaii

 * University of Hawaii

Idaho

 * University of Idaho (designated in 1889; opened in 1892)

Illinois

 * University of Illinois (designated on February 28, 1867; opened in 1868)

Indiana
Indiana accepted the provisions of the Morrill Act on March 6, 1865.
 * Purdue University (designated in 1869)

Iowa
On September 11, 1862, Iowa became the first state in the nation to accept the provisions of the Morrill Act.
 * Iowa State University (designated on March 29, 1864)

Kansas

 * Haskell Indian Nations University
 * Kansas State University (designated on February 16, 1863 but was not opened until September 2, 1863)

Kentucky

 * University of Kentucky (designated in February 1865)
 * Kentucky State University (designated in the Land Grant Act of 1890)

Louisiana

 * Louisiana State University
 * Southern University and A&M College

Maine

 * University of Maine (designated on February 25, 1865; opened in 1868)

Maryland
The State of Maryland, in operating its land-grant program at the Maryland Agricultural College at College Park, which did not admit African American students, sought to provide a land-grant program for African Americans. In 1919 the state of Maryland assumed control of the Delaware Conference Academy (of the Delaware Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church) and changed its name to Eastern Shore Branch of the Maryland Agricultural College.
 * University of Maryland, College Park (designated on March 21, 1865)
 * University of Maryland Eastern Shore

Massachusetts

 * University of Massachusetts Amherst
 * Massachusetts Institute of Technology (private)

Michigan
Founded in 1855 by the State of Michigan, and known as the "Agricultural College of the State of Michigan" with its own state grants of land, the Michigan State model provided a precedent for the federal Morrill Act of 1862. In 1955, Michigan State University and Pennsylvania State University were included on a US postage stamp commemorating MSU and PSU as the "First of the Land Grant Colleges."
 * Michigan State University (designated on March 18, 1863)

Minnesota

 * University of Minnesota
 * White Earth Tribal and Community College
 * Red Lake Nation College (designated a 1994 Land Grant College in the 2008 Farm Bill)
 * Leech Lake Tribal College
 * Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College

The 1862 land grant was originally provided in 1865 to a fledgling state agricultural college in Glencoe, Minnesota, but was re-appropriated to the University of Minnesota by an act of the Legislature on February 18, 1868.

Mississippi
The State of Mississippi granted Alcorn three-fifths of the proceeds earned from the sale of thirty thousand acres of land scrip for agricultural colleges. From its beginning, it was a land grant college, and the money from the sale of the land scrip of the Morrill Act was used solely for the agricultural and mechanical components of this college.
 * Mississippi State University
 * Alcorn State University

Missouri
Founded in 1866 as the Lincoln Institute by members of the 62nd and 65th United States Colored Infantry, under the Morrill Act of 1890, Lincoln was designated by Missouri as a land-grant university for black students. It integrated in 1956.
 * University of Missouri (designated in 1870)
 * Lincoln University

Montana

 * Montana State University (Bozeman), so designated upon its founding in 1893 as the Agricultural College of the State of Montana.

Nebraska

 * University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Nevada

 * University of Nevada, Las Vegas
 * University of Nevada, Reno

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is technically considered a land-grant university according to the attorney-general of Nevada, but has received minuscule land-grant benefits as compared to the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), and does not have an agricultural program. However, former Governor Brian Sandoval, a UNR graduate and the current president of UNR, opposes that interpretation and views UNR as the sole land grant institution in the state.

New Hampshire

 * University of New Hampshire

New Jersey

 * Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (designated on April 4, 1864)

New Mexico

 * New Mexico State University

New York

 * Cornell University (designated on April 27, 1865) (Cornell is a private university with four statutory colleges, supported by the State of New York; however all of its colleges help to fulfill its land-grant mission.) The original land-grant designee was the People's College in Havana, New York, from 1863 to 1865.

North Carolina
North Carolina State University (NCSU) was founded after citizens criticized the misuse of federal land-grant resources by the University of North Carolina (UNC).
 * North Carolina State University
 * North Carolina A&T State University (founded in 1891 as The Agricultural and Mechanical College for the Colored Race)

North Dakota

 * North Dakota State University
 * Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College (designated in 1994 with 31 other tribal colleges)

Ohio
Central State University was given status as an 1890 land-grant institution in 2014. Unlike the other states with historically black land-grant colleges, Ohio did not segregate its public universities, and African-American students have been admitted to Ohio State University since 1889.
 * Ohio State University
 * Central State University

Oklahoma

 * Oklahoma State University
 * Langston University (Founded in 1897 as the Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal University. Langston University was created as a result of the second Morrill Act in 1890.)

Oregon

 * Oregon State University

Pennsylvania

 * Pennsylvania State University (designated in April 1863)

Rhode Island
Originally, in January 1863, Brown University was designated as the state's land-grant college. Soon though, in the state's opinion, Brown University provided inadequate agricultural education, which was, in part, due to the fact that it could not afford to hire a specific professor or faculty of agricultural sciences and also, in part, due to the fact that Rhode Island's method for allocating land-grant scholarships favored urbanites and effectively produced few to no farmers. The curator of the University's museum of natural history had been reluctantly recruited to give series of lectures on agricultural topics, which included visits to local farms. When the Hatch Act of 1887 was passed, the Grange had made sure it was stated therein that funds did not need to be applied to current colleges and could be used for agricultural experiment stations not connected with them, so the Rhode Island General Assembly, having grown disenchanted with Brown's lackluster performance, established an agricultural school at Kingston and applied the Hatch Act's funds to it. Eventually, in 1890, Brown felt it drew no benefit from being the state's land-grant university, so it offered to return the Morrill trust to the state and withdraw as the land-grant institution. Shortly thereafter, Congress passed the second Morrill Act to increase funding to land-grant universities, and, following a controversy as to which school should benefit decided in Brown's favor by the Rhode Island Supreme Court, Brown promptly withdrew its offer. On May 19, 1892, after growing increasingly displeased with Brown's agricultural program, the General Assembly decided to restructure the Kingston school as the Rhode Island College for the Agricultural and Mechanical Arts (now called the University of Rhode Island) and to designate it as the state's only land-grant institution (thereby removing Brown from that status). The university protested by suing the state and the case was transferred to the US District Court for Rhode Island, which decided against Brown, which then appealed to the United States Supreme Court. When the US Supreme Court refused to hear the case, Brown conceded defeat such that, in 1894, the state, as related by Encyclopedia Brunoniana, "approved an agreement in which Brown would repay the $50,000 received from the sale of the land in Kansas and assume the expense of educating the present holders of the state scholarships, and in return [Brown] would receive $40,000 in compensation for the education of earlier state scholars and would be relieved of the responsibility for agricultural education assumed in connection with the Morrill Act of 1863."
 * University of Rhode Island

South Carolina

 * Clemson University
 * South Carolina State University (Founded in 1896 as the Colored Normal, Industrial, Agricultural and Mechanical College of South Carolina. It still has the 1890 land-grant legacy of service to the citizenry of the state.)

South Dakota

 * South Dakota State University

Tennessee

 * University of Tennessee
 * Tennessee State University

TSU is the only state-funded historically black university in Tennessee. It was founded in 1909 as the Agricultural and Industrial State Normal School and became the Agricultural and Industrial State Normal College two years later.

Texas
Founded in 1876, Prairie View is the third oldest state-sponsored institution of higher education in Texas (after University of Texas & A&M College). Consistent with terms of the federal Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act, which provided public lands for the establishment of colleges, the State of Texas authorized an "Agricultural and Mechanical College for the Benefit of Colored Youth" as part of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas A&M University) System.
 * Texas A&M University
 * Prairie View A&M University

Utah

 * Utah State University

Vermont

 * University of Vermont

Virginia

 * Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech)
 * Virginia State University

Virginia State University was founded in 1882, as the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute. In 1902, the legislature revised the school's charter and renamed it the "Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute". In 1923, this college was renamed "Virginia State College for Negroes". It was designated one of Virginia's land grant colleges in response to the Amendments to the Morrill Act in 1890, which required that the states either open their land-grant colleges to all races, or else establish separate land-grant schools for African-Americans.

Washington

 * Washington State University

West Virginia

 * West Virginia University (designated on February 7, 1867)
 * West Virginia State University (Established as the West Virginia Colored Institute in 1891.)

After the desegregation of West Virginia schools in the 1950s, the state board of education voted to terminate West Virginia State University's land-grant funding structure. West Virginia State University was restored to land-grant status in 2001.

Wisconsin

 * University of Wisconsin–Madison (designated on April 12, 1866)

Wyoming

 * University of Wyoming

American Samoa

 * American Samoa Community College

District of Columbia

 * University of the District of Columbia

Guam

 * University of Guam

Northern Marianas

 * Northern Marianas College

Puerto Rico

 * University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez

Virgin Islands

 * University of the Virgin Islands

title: List of land-grant universities


text:
George Wells

George Wells may refer to:

 * George A. Wells (politician) (1910–1979), American politician
 * G. A. Wells (George Albert Wells, 1926–2017), professor of German at Birkbeck, University of London
 * George H. Wells (1833–1905), American soldier, lawyer and Louisiana politician
 * George Wells (bishop) (1877–1964), Anglican bishop in Canada
 * George Wells (cricketer) (1830–1891), English cricketer
 * George Wells (engineer) (fl. 1860s), English marine engineer
 * George Wells (Georgia politician) (1751–1834), acting governor of Georgia in 1780
 * George Wells (Vanuatuan politician), internal affairs minister of Vanuatu
 * George Wells (screenwriter) (1909–2000), American screenwriter
 * George Wells (wrestler) (born 1947), retired American professional wrestler
 * G. P. Wells (1901–1985), zoologist and author
 * George B. Wells, American football coach in the United States
 * George Crichton Wells (1914–1999), dermatologist

title: George Wells


text: User talk:68.96.211.132

title: User talk:68.96.211.132


text:
User talk:Chris Roy

 * Removed all comments up to April 26 2007. Chris Roy 06:54, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Leaving
Did you leave Wikipedia?

Anonymously?
I'm very curious why you prefer to edit anonymously. I'd like it if you would write up your reasons and put them on your user page.

I also want to thank you for the nice welcome message you left on my Talk page back in 2004. It was useful. Saugart (talk) 16:07, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

 * Ditto, just came across your welcome message while I was perusing my old talk archives. zoney ♣ talk 23:29, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Suspension of admin privileges due to inactivity
Following a community discussion in June 2011, consensus was reached to provisionally suspend the administrative privileges of users who have been inactive for one year, meaning administrators who have made neither any edits nor any logged actions in over one year. As a result of this discussion, your administrative privileges have been removed pending your return. If you wish to have these privileges reinstated, please post to the Bureaucrats' noticeboard and the userright will be restored per the re-sysopping process (i.e., as long as the attending bureaucrats are reasonably satisfied that your account has not been compromised and that your inactivity did not have the effect of evading scrutiny of any actions which might have led to sanctions). This removal of access is procedural only, and not intended to reflect negatively upon you in any way. We wish you the best in future endeavors, and thank you for your past administrative efforts. RL0919 (talk) 20:16, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Notice of change
Hello. You are receiving this message because of a recent change to the administrator policy that alters what you were told at the time of your desysopping. The effect of the change is that you will not longer be able to request restoration of the tools because of your prior inactivity. You have until December 30, 2012 to request restoration or else the policy will prevent you from doing so in the future; you would need to seek a new WP:RFA. Until December 30, you can file a request at WP:BN for review by the crats. Thank you.  MBisanz  talk 04:22, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

(delivered by mabdul 23:10, 3 December 2012 (UTC))

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:54, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Chris Roy


text:
User talk:Michael Shields

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

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

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

Angela 03:40, Nov 8, 2003 (UTC)

Hi. I removed the second link to Gutzon Borglum from Mount Rushmore National Memorial, because one link is enough. (I should have perhaps said so in my summary). Note also that Gutzon Borglum was newly created. Secondly, I removed the italics in the "See also:" section because of Manual of Style. You just made me notice that boilerplate text and manual of style are contradictory - I'll announce it on the village pump and we'll agree on a standard. Thanks, snoyes 22:16, 9 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Interested in an L.A.-area Wiki meetup?
It appears as though L.A. has never had a Wiki meetup. Would you be interested in attending such an event? If so, checkout User:Eric Shalov/Wikimeetup.

- Eric 29 June 2005 01:27 (UTC)

WikiProject Cycling
I've noticed you've made more than a few edits to cycling-related articles. I've created WikiProject on Cycling. Please come and join us in building up Wikipedia's articles relating to bicycles, cycling, and bicycle racing. --Christopherlin 05:33, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Camouflage Peer Review
Hello, you once edited Camouflage. You might be interested to know, this article has been nominated for peer peer review. novacatz 03:41, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:Threadless-bicycle-headset.jpg
Thanks for uploading Image:Threadless-bicycle-headset.jpg. However, the image may soon be deleted unless we can determine the copyright holder and copyright status. The Wikimedia Foundation is very careful about the images included in Wikipedia because of copyright law (see Wikipedia's Copyright policy).

The copyright holder is usually the creator, the creator's employer, or the last person who was transferred ownership rights. Copyright information on images is signified using copyright templates. The three basic license types on Wikipedia are open content, public domain, and fair use. Find the appropriate template in Image copyright tags and place it on the image page like this:.

Please signify the copyright information on any other images you have uploaded or will upload. Remember that images without this important information can be deleted by an administrator. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. Thank you.

 * I am the copyright holder. I'll add an appropriate tag. —Michael Shields 03:15, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for contributing to nutrition!
- Samsara contrib talk 12:08, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Zip Code as a trademark== ==

In response to your question about "Zip Code" as a postal service trademark. The reason Coca Cola and Bass Ale are still trademarks is the owners of those marks have complied with use and renewal requirements.

When one registers a trademark, one is required to send a notice of continued use after a certain period of time after the initial registration, I think it's 4 or 5 years. If the notice is not sent, the Patent & Trademark office presumes the mark has been abandoned and automatically cancels the registration. Then, presuming a registrant complies with this, 20 years after the initial registration, if it is not renewed, the PTO presumes the mark has been abandoned and, you guessed it, automatically cancels the registration for failure to pay maintenance fees. Then, if it is renewed, the owner must renew it again in 20 years.

As long as the owner keeps renewing every 20 years the mark will remain "live" and the registration will remain in force. The postal service failed to comply with the rules (or decided it wasn't necessary) and their registration was cancelled.

So now you know why the Postal Service no longer has a registration in "Zip Code" while the other companies do. This sort of mistake is easy to make, the Washington Post company forgot to renew their trademark on the name of the newspaper, and had to re-register. Only problem is now you don't get an exclusive right in the name of a city as part of your mark any more, so the term "Washington Post" is not protected, only "Post" in combination with it; while it's only a technical difference it means the mark is somewhat "weaker" than it would have been had they not allowed their registration to lapse.

DayJet
I've added the "prod" template to the article DayJet, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but I don't believe it satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and I've explained why in the deletion notice (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). Please either work to improve the article if the topic is worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia, or, if you disagree with the notice, discuss the issues at Talk:DayJet. You may remove the deletion notice, and the article will not be deleted, but note that it may still be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached, or if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria.

Mountain Biking on Mount Tamalpais
Hello, An article that I created as a part of Wikiproject Cycling called Mountain Biking on Mount Tamalpais, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Articles for deletion/Mountain Biking on Mount Tamalpais. Thank you, Bob in Las Vegas - uriel8   (talk)  09:25, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Disputed fair use rationale for Image:AboveNet logo.jpg
Thanks for uploading Image:AboveNet logo.jpg. However, there is a concern that the rationale you have provided for using this image under "fair use" may be invalid. Please read the instructions at Non-free content carefully, then go to the image description page and clarify why you think the image qualifies for fair use. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If it is determined that the image does not qualify under fair use, it will be deleted within a couple of days according to our criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot (talk) 05:21, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:AboveNet logo.jpg
 Thanks for uploading File:AboveNet logo.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of "file" pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "File" from the dropdown box. Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Hugahoody (talk) 23:29, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:53, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

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

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

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Theroadislong (talk) 16:57, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

title: User talk:Michael Shields


text:
Saluda, Virginia

Saluda is a census-designated place (CDP) in and the county seat of Middlesex County, Virginia, United States.

History
The Middlesex County Courthouse was built between 1850 and 1874 by architects William R. Jones and John P. Hill, and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. A new courthouse complex was built in the 2003–2004 time-frame, but the opening was stalled due to various construction problems, leading to a legal dispute between the County board and the contractor. It was eventually opened in 2007.

An older notable building is the Christ Church. The highly decorated Marine, veteran of the Banana Wars, World War II, and the Korean War, Lieutenant General Lewis Burwell "Chesty" Puller was raised in Saluda. He died in Hampton, Virginia in 1971, and was buried in historic Christ Church's Cemetery near Saluda.

Demographics
The population stated in the 2010 Census was 769. As of the 2020 Census, the population was 627. According to the 2020 Census, Saluda has a 55.6% employment rate, 228 total houses with 125 belonging to families, and a medium income of $115,221 with a 10.7% poverty rate. Out of the population, 451 are white, 134 are black, 28 are mixed race, 1 is Asian, 1 is Native American, and 12 are other.

title: Saluda, Virginia


text:
Eugène Scribe

Augustin Eugène Scribe (24 December 1791 – 20 February 1861) was a French dramatist and librettist. He is known for writing "well-made plays" ("pièces bien faites"), a mainstay of popular theatre for over 100 years, and as the librettist of many of the most successful grand operas and opéras-comiques.

Born to a middle-class Parisian family, Scribe was intended for a legal career, but was drawn to the theatre, and began writing plays while still in his teens. His early years as a playwright were unsuccessful, but from 1815 onwards he prospered. Writing, usually with one or more collaborators, he produced several hundred stage works. He wrote to entertain the public rather than educate it. Many of his plays were written in a formulaic manner which aimed at neatness of plot and focus on dramatic incident rather than naturalism, depth of characterisation or intellectual substance. For this he was much criticised by intellectuals, but the "well-made play" remained established in the theatre in France and elsewhere long after his death.

In 1813 Scribe wrote his first opera libretto. From 1822 until his death he was closely associated with the composer Daniel Auber for whom he wrote or co-wrote 39 librettos, among them that for the first French grand opera, La Muette de Portici (1828). His second most frequent musical partner was Giacomo Meyerbeer, who took grand opera further and made it a dominant feature of French musical life. Among the other composers with whom Scribe worked were Adolphe Adam, Adrien Boieldieu, Gaetano Donizetti, Fromental Halévy, Jacques Offenbach and Giuseppe Verdi.

Scribe's librettos are still performed in opera houses around the world, and although few of his non-musical plays have been revived frequently in the 20th or 21st centuries, his influence on subsequent generations of playwrights in France and elsewhere was profound and lasting.

Early years
Scribe was born in Paris on 24 December 1791, at the family house in the Rue Saint-Denis near Les Halles. His father, a silk merchant, died while the boy was an infant, but left his widow comfortably off. Scribe was educated at the prestigious Collège Sainte-Barbe, where he was an outstanding pupil, winning the college's top prize in his final year and being ceremonially crowned with a laurel wreath at the Académie Française. His mother intended him to pursue a career in the legal profession, and sent him to study with Louis-Ferdinand Bonnet, a leading Parisian lawyer. Although he was conscientious in his studies, Scribe's ambition was to write for the theatre, and when his mother died in 1807 he turned from the law, and together with his former classmate Germain Delavigne he set his sights on a theatrical career. His first piece, a one-act vaudeville Le Prétendu par hasard, was produced anonymously at the Théâtre des Variétés in January 1810 and was a failure. Numerous other plays, written in collaboration with Delavigne and others, followed; but for the next five years Scribe earned little from the theatre and was reliant on his inheritance. He had modest successes with Les Derviches (1811) and L'Auberge, (1812), both written with Delavigne for the Théâtre du Vaudeville. In 1813 he wrote the first of three melodramas, of which the third, Les Frères invisibles, did reasonably well at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin. In the same year he wrote his first opera libretto, for Luc Guénée's opéra comique La Chambre à coucher.

Scribe's first substantial success came in 1815, with the comedy Une Nuit de la garde nationale (A Night at the National Guard), a collaboration with his friend Charles Delestre-Poirson. Over the next five years Scribe built a position as a dramatist, writing under his own name or pseudonyms, usually in collaboration with others. In 1820 Delestre-Poirson established the Théâtre du Gymnase, and opened on 23 December with Le Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle by Scribe and two friends who had also abandoned law for the theatre, Baron Anne-Honoré-Joseph Duveyrier, who wrote under the pen name Mélesville, and Charles Moreau. Delestre-Poirson gave Scribe a remunerative contract that made him, in effect, the theatre's resident playwright, with the Gymnase having first call on his services.

1820s
Between 1820 and 1830 Scribe wrote more than a hundred plays for the Gymnase, and librettos and plays for the Comédie-Française, the Opéra, the Opéra-Comique and seven other theatres. In 1822 he began a collaboration with the composer Daniel Auber that lasted for 41 years and produced 39 operas. Auber's biographer Robert Letellier writes that the names of Scribe and Auber became as linked in French minds as those of Gilbert and Sullivan later were in British ones. The partners' first collaboration was Leicester, ou Le château de Kenilworth, a three-act opéra comique, with a plot that Scribe, in collaboration with Mélesville, derived from Walter Scott's historical romance Kenilworth. As with his plays, Scribe customarily wrote his librettos in collaboration with other writers. For Auber he worked with, among others, X. B. Saintine, E.-J.-E. Mazères and Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges as well as Mélesville and Delavigne. Letellier writes that "part of Scribe's genius lay in his careful selection of his collaborators". A story grew that Scribe would hire one man to write the narrative, a different one for the dialogue, a third for the jokes, a fourth for the lyrics, and so on. The story was apocryphal, but literary collaboration was a French tradition in which Scribe was thoroughly at home:

During his career Scribe worked with more than 60 co-authors, in addition to writing more than 130 stage works on his own. He wrote or co-wrote librettos for 48 composers. During the 1820s Scribe collaborated with Adrien Boieldieu on La Dame blanche (1825), a Romantic opera based on stories by Walter Scott. Scribe's libretto was one of the first to introduce the supernatural into an operatic plot. The piece was enormously popular, and reached its thousandth performance at the Opéra-Comique shortly after Scribe's death. In 1827 Scribe wrote the scenario for La Somnambule, a ballet with music by Ferdinand Hérold, for the Paris Opéra. It was a landmark – the first time the Opéra had presented a ballet with a scenario by a leading dramatist. Until then the storyline and staging of a ballet had been left to the in-house chef de danse. This was the precursor of the fusion of opera and ballet in the first French grand opera, given the following year – La Muette de Portici, with music by Auber and libretto by Scribe and Delavigne.

In 1828 Scribe collaborated with Gioachino Rossini on Le Comte Ory, an unusual undertaking as the words for about half the numbers had to be written to fit existing music, repurposed by Rossini from Il viaggio a Reims, a pièce d'occasion composed three years earlier. The opera was a success, and was seen in London within six months of the Paris premiere, and in New York in 1831.

1830s
In the 1830s Scribe's works were twice adapted by others for new operas that became well known. His scenario for La Somnambule was used by Felice Romani as the basis of Vincenzo Bellini's 1831 opera La sonnambula; his libretto for Auber's Le Philtre (1831) was adapted by Romani for Gaetano Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore (1832). The Opéra-Comique commissioned a grand opera, Robert le diable, from Scribe, Delavigne and Giacomo Meyerbeer. For reasons of musical politics the work was premiered by the Paris Opéra, at the Salle Le Peletier in 1831, after extensive re-writing. Within three years it reached 100 performances on the stage of the Opéra, and by 1835 it had been seen at 77 houses in ten different countries.

For the non-musical theatre, Scribe wrote Bertrand et Raton ou l'art de conspirer (The School for Politicians, 1830) a "serious" five-act comedy for the Comedie-Française. This began a series of historical or political comedies, which, as Pierre Larousse comments, have little to do with real politics and history, but which became the models of a new genre. The series continued with L'Ambitieux (1834), La Camaraderie (1836), Les Indépendants (1837), La Calomnie (1840) and Le Verre d'eau (1840), all comedies in five acts, developing a more or less original theme. In 1836 Scribe was elected to the Académie Française, and in 1839, at the age of 48 he married. His wife, whom he had known for several years, was the widow of a wine merchant. She worried about his tendency to overwork, and attempted, with only limited success, to get him to slow down. His working habits varied little throughout his life. He began work at five in the morning during the summer and at six in the winter, writing until noon. He spent the rest of the day planning new work, attending rehearsals of his plays or operas, and in the evening visiting friends or going to the theatre. During the 1830s Scribe introduced social questions into his plays, although never losing sight of his principal purpose, which was to entertain. By this point in his career he had honed his skills as a dramatist and developed what became known as the "well-made play" – la pièce bien faite – characterised by concise plotting, compelling narrative and a largely standardised structure, with little emphasis on characterisation and intellectual ideas. In the words of one literary critic:

One of Scribe's key devices was the quiproquo, in which two or more characters interpret a word, a situation or a person's identity in different ways, all the time assuming that their interpretations are the same. This important feature of Scribe's "well-made plays" was raised to its greatest heights by Georges Feydeau later in the 19th century.

Scribe's earnings from his plays and librettos were considerable and he amassed a large fortune. He was a good businessman: commenting on a dispute over payment with Léon Pillet, the director of the Opéra, in 1841, he said he wanted to be paid for his librettos "according to what they bring in, that is to say, a great deal. The present director only wants to pay for them according to what they are worth, that is to say, very little". He bought a mansion in the fashionable Rue Olivier-Saint-Georges and two country houses. He was unobtrusively generous to deserving causes; among his benefactions was a fund for impoverished musicians and theatre people, into which he paid 13,000 francs (roughly €125,000 in 2015 values) a year.

Later years
In Larousse's view the latter part of Scribe's career, from 1840 to 1861, was "just as full and as glorious as the first". Larousse singled out from the long list of Scribe's plays for the Théâtre Français: Une chaîne (1841), Le Puff (1848), Adrienne Lecouvreur (1819), Les Contes de la reine de Navarre (1850), Bataille de dames (1851) and La Czarine (1855). Of these, Bataille de dames – battle of the ladies – has been seen by literary critics including Brander Matthews and Stephen Stanton as among the best and most characteristic of Scribe's plays. It combines a story of a young man's successful attempts to escape official attempts to arrest him on a political charge with the depiction of the love two women have for him. It combines action, romance and a happy, albeit bitter-sweet, ending. Henrik Ibsen thought highly of the work, and drew on it in his own early writing; Bernard Shaw also drew on it, in his Arms and the Man.

Of Scribe's later librettos for the Opéra or the Opéra-comique, Larousse listed as among the most notable: Les Diamants de la couronne, La Part du diable and Haydée (with Auber, 1841, 1843 and 1847) and Le Prophète and L'Etoile du Nord (with Meyerbeer, 1849 and 1854). In 1855 Scribe had his only direct collaboration with Giuseppe Verdi. (The libretto for the latter's Un ballo in maschera (1859) was translated from Scribe's libretto for Auber's Gustave III, ou Le bal masqué (1833), but Scribe was not involved with the adaptation.) Scribe and Charles Duveyrier provided Verdi with the libretto for Les Vêpres siciliennes, premiered at the Opéra in June. It was well received; Hector Berlioz judged it a perfect mixture of French and Italian sensibilities, but it did not become a core part of the Verdian operatic repertoire.

Scribe was the subject of continual criticism from highbrow writers. Théophile Gautier and Théodore de Banville accused him of being "the ultimate in bourgeois art and philistinism, pleasing the masses and writing théâtre vide" – empty plays. Gautier asked, "How is it that an author devoid of poetry, lyricism, style, philosophy, truth and naturalness could have become the most fashionable dramatic writer of an era?" Scribe's answer to the question was:

Scribe elaborated on his views in a speech to the Académie Française: "I do not think the comic author should be a historian: that is not his mission. I do not believe that even in Molière himself you can recover the history of our country". In a 2012 study, David Conway writes of Scribe's historical operas:

At the Académie, Scribe went on to give his views on the purpose of the theatre of his own time, maintaining that the public no longer went to the theatre to be instructed – as had been the theory in the 18th century – but to be diverted and entertained.

Scribe never retired. He was working on the libretto for Meyerbeer's last opera, L'Africaine, when he died suddenly of a stroke on 20 February 1861, in his carriage on the way home from a meeting of the Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques. He was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Works

 * See also Well-made play, Category: Libretti by Eugène Scribe and Category: Plays by Eugène Scribe

Estimates differ considerably of the number of stage works Scribe wrote or co-wrote. The published edition of his known works ran to 76 volumes, but it is inevitably incomplete, as he is known to have written pseudonymously and even anonymously. His total output of stage works is variously reckoned as between 300 and nearly 500. The known works include more than 120 librettos for 48 composers, collaborations in musical and non-musical theatre with more than 60 co-authors, and over 130 stage works written solo.

Among the many later playwrights drawing on Scribe's precepts for the well-made play were Alexandre Dumas fils, Victorien Sardou and Georges Feydeau in France, W. S. Gilbert, Oscar Wilde, Noël Coward and Alan Ayckbourn in Britain, and Lillian Hellman and Arthur Miller in the US.

Librettos
Among the best-known operas for which Scribe contributed to the libretto are:

 * 1825: Boieldieu's La Dame blanche
 * 1828: Auber's La Muette de Portici
 * 1828: Rossini's Le Comte Ory
 * 1830: Auber's Fra Diavolo
 * 1831: Meyerbeer's Robert le diable
 * 1831: Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots
 * 1835: Halévy's La Juive

 * 1843: Donizetti's Dom Sébastien
 * 1849: Meyerbeer's Le Prophète
 * 1855: Verdi's Les Vêpres siciliennes
 * 1858: Offenbach's La chatte métamorphosée en femme
 * 1860: Offenbach's ''Barkouf
 * 1865: Meyerbeer's L'Africaine (posthumous)

Among the other composers with whom Scribe worked were Adolphe Adam, Michael Balfe, Luigi Cherubini, Charles Gounod, Ferdinand Hérold and Ambroise Thomas.

Film adaptations
There have been at least 30 films based on works by Scribe, from the 1916 silent The Dumb Girl of Portici, directed by Phillips Smalley and Lois Weber to A Glass of Water (1960), based on Le Verre d'eau.

title: Eugène Scribe


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Sharpeville massacre

The Sharpeville massacre occurred on 21 March 1960 at the police station in the township of Sharpeville in the then Transvaal Province of the then Union of South Africa (today part of Gauteng). After demonstrating against anti-black pass laws, a crowd of about 7,000 black protesters went to the police station. Sources disagree as to the behaviour of the crowd: some state that the crowd was peaceful, while others state that the crowd had been hurling stones at the police and that the mood had turned "ugly". The South African Police (SAP) opened fire on the crowd when the crowd started advancing toward the fence around the police station; tear-gas had proved ineffectual. There were 249 victims in total, including 29 children, with 69 people killed and 180 injured. Some were shot in the back as they fled.

The massacre was photographed by photographer Ian Berry, who initially thought the police were firing blanks. In present-day South Africa, 21 March is commemorated as a public holiday in honour of human rights and to commemorate the Sharpeville massacre.

Life in Sharpeville before the massacre
Sharpeville was first built in 1943 to replace Topville, a nearby township that suffered overcrowding where illnesses like pneumonia were widespread. Due to the illness, removals from Topville began in 1958. Approximately 10,000 Africans were forcibly removed to Sharpeville. Sharpeville had a high rate of unemployment as well as high crime rates. There were also youth problems because many children joined gangs and were affiliated with crimes instead of schools. Furthermore, a new police station was created, from which the police were energetic to check passes, deporting illegal residents, and raiding illegal shebeens.

Preceding events
South African governments since the eighteenth century had enacted measures to restrict the flow of African South Africans into cities. Pass laws, intended to control and direct their movement and employment, were updated in the 1950s. Under the country's National Party government, African residents in urban districts were subject to influx control measures. Individuals over sixteen were required to carry passbooks, which contained an identity card, employment and influx authorisation from a labour bureau, name of employer and address, and details of personal history. Leading up to the Sharpeville massacre, the National Party administration under the leadership of Hendrik Verwoerd used these laws to enforce greater racial segregation and, in 1959–1960, extended them to include women. From the 1960s, the pass laws were the primary instrument used by the state to detain and harass its political opponents.

The African National Congress (ANC) prepared to initiate a campaign of protests against pass laws. These protests were to begin on 31 March 1960, but the rival Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), led by Robert Sobukwe, decided to pre-empt the ANC by launching its own campaign ten days earlier, on 21 March, because they believed that the ANC could not win the campaign.

Massacre
On 21 March 1960, a group of between 5,000 and 10,000 people converged on the local police station, offering themselves up for arrest for not carrying their passbooks. The Sharpeville police were not completely unprepared for the demonstration, as they had already driven smaller groups of more militant activists away the previous night.

PAC actively organized to increase turnout to the demonstration, distributing pamphlets and appearing in person to urge people not to go to work on the day of the protest. Many of the civilians present attended voluntarily to support the protest, but there is evidence that the PAC also used coercive means to draw the crowd there, including the cutting of telephone lines into Sharpeville, and preventing bus drivers from driving their routes.

By 10:00, a large crowd had gathered, and the atmosphere was initially peaceful and festive. Fewer than 20 police officers were present in the station at the start of the protest. Later the crowd grew to about 20,000, and the mood was described as "ugly", prompting about 130 police reinforcements, supported by four Saracen armoured personnel carriers, to be rushed in. The police were armed with firearms, including Sten submachine guns and Lee–Enfield rifles. There was no evidence that anyone in the gathering was armed with anything other than stones.

F-86 Sabre jets and Harvard Trainers approached to within 30 m of the ground, flying low over the crowd in an attempt to scatter it. The protesters responded by hurling stones (striking three policemen) and rushing the police barricades. Police officers attempted to use tear gas to repel these advances, but it proved ineffectual, and the police fell back on the use of their batons. At about 13:00 the police tried to arrest a protester, and the crowd surged forward. The police began shooting shortly thereafter.

Death and injury toll
The official figure is that 69 people were killed, including 10 children, and 180 injured, including 19 children. The police shot many in the back as they turned to flee, causing some to be paralyzed.

Victims were buried en masse in a ceremony performed by clergy. Philip Finkie Molefe, responsible for establishing the first Assemblies of God church in the Vaal, was among the clergy that conducted the service.

Pretext for firing
Police reports in 1960 claimed that young and inexperienced police officers panicked and opened fire spontaneously, setting off a chain reaction that lasted about forty seconds. It is likely that the police were quick to fire as two months before the massacre, nine constables had been assaulted and killed, some disembowelled, during a raid at Cato Manor. Few of the policemen present had received public order training. Some of them had been on duty for over twenty-four hours without respite. Some insight into the mindset of those on the police force was provided by Lieutenant Colonel Pienaar, the commanding officer of the police reinforcements at Sharpeville, who said in his statement that "the native mentality does not allow them to gather for a peaceful demonstration. For them to gather means violence." He also denied giving any order to fire and stated that he would not have done so.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission found in 1998 that "the evidence of Commission deponents reveals a degree of deliberation in the decision to open fire at Sharpeville and indicates that the shooting was more than the result of inexperienced and frightened police officers losing their nerve."

Response
The uproar among South Africa's black population was immediate, and the following week saw demonstrations, protest marches, strikes, and riots around the country. On 30 March 1960, the government declared a state of emergency, detaining more than 18,000 people, including prominent anti-apartheid activists who were known as members of the Congress Alliance including Nelson Mandela and some still enmeshed in the Treason Trial.

Many white South Africans were also horrified by the massacre. The poet Duncan Livingstone, a Scottish immigrant from the Isle of Mull who lived in Pretoria, wrote in response to the massacre the Scottish Gaelic poem "Bean Dubh a' Caoidh a Fir a Chaidh a Marbhadh leis a' Phoileas" ("A Black Woman Mourns her Husband Killed by the Police").

A storm of international protest followed the Sharpeville shootings, including sympathetic demonstrations in many countries and condemnation by the United Nations. On 1 April 1960, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 134. Sharpeville marked a turning point in South Africa's history; the country found itself increasingly isolated in the international community. The event also played a role in South Africa's departure from the Commonwealth of Nations in 1961.

The Sharpeville massacre contributed to the banning of the PAC and ANC as illegal organisations. The massacre was one of the catalysts for a shift from passive resistance to armed resistance by these organisations. The foundation of Poqo, the military wing of the PAC, and Umkhonto we Sizwe, the military wing of the ANC, followed shortly afterwards.

Not all reactions were negative: embroiled in its opposition to the Civil Rights Movement, the Mississippi House of Representatives voted for a resolution supporting the South African government "for its steadfast policy of segregation and the [staunch] adherence to their traditions in the face of overwhelming external agitation." The resolution passed 78-8 in the Mississippi House of Representatives and 45-0 in the Mississippi State Senate.

Commemoration
Since 1994, 21 March has been commemorated as Human Rights Day in South Africa.

Sharpeville was the site selected by President Nelson Mandela for the signing into law of the Constitution of South Africa on 10 December 1996.

In 1998, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) found that the police actions constituted "gross human rights violations in that excessive force was unnecessarily used to stop a gathering of unarmed people."

On 21 March 2002, the 42nd anniversary of the massacre, a memorial was opened by former President Nelson Mandela as part of the Sharpeville Human Rights Precinct.

International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
UNESCO marks 21 March as the yearly International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, in memory of the massacre.

References in art and literature
The Afrikaner poet Ingrid Jonker mentioned the Sharpeville Massacre in her verse.

The event was an inspiration for painter Oliver Lee Jackson in his Sharpeville Series from the 1970s.

Ingrid de Kok was a child living on a mining compound near Johannesburg where her father worked at the time of the Sharpeville massacre. In her poem "Our Sharpeville" she reflects on the atrocity through the eyes of a child.

Max Roach's 1960 album We Insist! Freedom Now Suite includes the composition "Tears for Johannesburg" in response to the massacre.

South African artist Gavin Jantjes dedicated several prints in his series A South African Colouring Book (1974-75) to the Sharpeville Massacre. Iconic reportage photographs of scattering protesters are arranged alongside stenciled and handwritten captions pulled from news reporting of the unfolding event.

title: Sharpeville massacre


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Talk:Nikolai Lobachevsky

Polish origin?
His mother was evidently Russian. At least no Russian sources even doubt it. She had the Russian name and patronymic and no evidences exist she was Polish. Moreover there are strong evidences brought by some Russian historians that even his real father was Russian land-surveyor S.S. Shebarshin. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.70.96.209 (talk) 01:37, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
 * We don't go by what is "evident" or "obvious". Any information which is removed from an article because it is unsourced cannot be returned to the article without a citation from a reliable source. This is basic Wikipedia policy. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:40, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Birth Year
The Wikipedia article (as of November 30, 2015) shows his birth year as 1792. In the "Mathematics Encyclopedia” published by Doubleday & Company in 1977, Lobachevski's biographical entry shows his birth year to be 1793. Does anyone have a reference source for the birth year of 1792 which is presented in the Wikipedia article? Cosmo1976 (talk) 19:34, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Disregard my birth year question. I now see the notation in the article. With gracious apology, Cosmo1976 (talk) 19:42, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

title: Talk:Nikolai Lobachevsky