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Sixth United States Army Group

The  6th United States Army Group was an Allied army group that fought in the European Theater of Operations during World War II. Made up of field armies from both the United States Army and the French Army, it fought in France, Germany, Austria, and, briefly, Italy. Also referred to as the Southern Group of Armies, it was established in July 1944 and commanded throughout its duration by General Jacob L. Devers.

In a lead role in Operation Undertone, its Seventh Army fought its way across the Rhine into Germany, captured Nuremberg and then Munich. Finally it crossed the Brenner Pass and made contact with the US Fifth Army at Vipiteno, Italy.

History
The Sixth Army Group was originally created in Corsica, France (specifically activated on 29 July 1944) as "Advanced Allied Force HQ", a special headquarters within AFHQ (the headquarters of Henry Maitland Wilson, the Supreme Commander Mediterranean Theatre) commanded by Lieutenant General Jacob L. Devers. Its initial role was to supervise the planning of the combined French and American forces which invaded southern France in Operation Dragoon and provide liaison between these forces and AFHQ. Dragoon was the operational responsibility of the Seventh United States Army commanded by Lt. Gen. Alexander Patch. Available to Patch were three corps (US VI Corps and French I and II Corps) and 24,000 Maquis of the Forces Francaises de l'Interieur. The two French corps constituted French Army B commanded by Général Jean de Lattre de Tassigny which was later renamed French First Army. Although Sixth Army Group Headquarters was officially activated on 1 August, it consisted of only the personnel of the Advanced Detachment AFHQ and, for reasons of security, retained the detachment title. The Advanced Detachment headquarters on Corsica had no command or operational duties and functioned primarily as a liaison and coordinating agency while preparing itself for the day it would become operational in France as Sixth Army Group headquarters.

Devers' headquarters remained subordinate to AFHQ during the invasion and in the weeks immediately afterwards while operational control of the troops on the ground resided with Patch until his forces linked near Dijon, France, with Twelfth United States Army Group's Third Army advancing from the west after breaking out of the Normandy beachhead. At this time, on 15 September, Devers' headquarters was designated Sixth Army Group to take operational control of Seventh Army and French Army B and came under the overall command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander at SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces).

In late 1944 and early 1945 the Sixth Army Group was involved in fierce fighting in the Alsace repelling the German advance during Operation Nordwind and subsequent pitched engagements closing off the Colmar Pocket. The 63rd Infantry Division was the first Seventh Army unit to cross the Siegfried Line, and the first to get an entire division through it. The 3rd Infantry Division suffered the highest casualty count of all US divisions, with over 27,000 casualties.

The Army Group later advanced through Bavaria, and eventually into western Austria in the waning days of the war. Elements of Sixth Army Group linked up south of the Brenner Pass on 4 May 1945 with troops of the Fifth United States Army of the Allied 15th Army Group advancing north from Italy. Germany surrendered on 9 May 1945.

The Sixth Army Group effectively inactivated on 15 June 1945 when the US Seventh Army was selected, along with the Third Army, to form the occupation forces of Germany. It remained as an occupation and defensive force in southern Germany into the early 21st Century. It also occupied part of Austria until that country was released from occupation in the mid-1950s.

The French First Army reverted to the control of the provisional French government shortly after the surrender of Germany.

Devers relinquished command of the Sixth Army Group in late June 1945 when he was selected to take command of the Army Ground Forces in lieu of General Joseph Stilwell who was reassigned as commander of the Tenth United States Army following the death of General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr.

The Sixth Army Group was officially inactivated on 20 July 1945.

Order of battle – 8 May 1945
Order of battle shifted frequently in the Sixth Army Group, but accelerated dramatically during its late-war push through southern Bavaria into the Austrian Alps to head off German establishment of a National Redoubt and close off passes to Nazi escape. Order of Battle on 8 May represents a significantly different disposition in some instances than in the weeks and even days leading up to it.

 * US 6th Army Group.png 6th Army Group – General Jacob L. Devers
 * Seventh United States Army CSIB.svg Seventh Army – Lieutenant General Alexander M. Patch
 * 12th U.S. Armored Division CSIB.svg 12th Armored Division – Major General Roderick R. Allen
 * 45thIBCTSSI.png 45th Infantry Division – Major General Robert T. Frederick
 * 63rd Infantry Division SSI.svg 63rd Infantry Division – Major General Louis E. Hibbs
 * 100th Infantry Division SSI.svg 100th Infantry Division – Major General Withers A. Burress
 * [[Image:US VI Corps SSI.png|22px]] VI Corps – Major General Edward H. Brooks
 * 10th US Armored Division SSI.svg 10th Armored Division – Major General William H. H. Morris, Jr.
 * 44 INF DIV SSI.svg 44th Infantry Division – Major General William F. Dean
 * US 103rd Infantry Division.svg 103rd Infantry Division – Major General Anthony C. McAuliffe
 * [[Image:US XV Corps SSI.svg|22px]] XV Corps – Major General Wade H. Haislip
 * 3rd Infantry Division SSI (1918-2015).svg 3rd Infantry Division – Major General John W. O'Daniel
 * 20th US Armored Division SSI.svg 20th Armored Division – Major General Orlando Ward
 * 42nd Infantry Division SSI.svg 42nd Infantry Division – Major General Harry J. Collins
 * 86 Inf Div SSI.jpg 86th Infantry Division – Major General Harris M. Melasky
 * [[Image:XXI CORPS SSI.gif|22px]] XXI Corps – Major General Frank W. Milburn
 * [[Image:2eDB-insigne.jpg|22px]] French 2nd Armored Division – Major General Philippe Leclerc
 * 36th Infantry Division CSIB.svg 36th Infantry Division – Major General John E. Dahlquist
 * US 101st Airborne Division patch.svg 101st Airborne Division – Major General Maxwell D. Taylor
 * Insigne Rhin et Danube-1èrearmée.jpg French First Army – General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny
 * French 1st Corps – Lieutenant General Antoine Béthouart
 * Insigne 2° DIM.jpg French 2nd Moroccan Infantry Division – Brigadier General François de Linarès
 * Question Mark in a Circle.png French 4th Moroccan Mountain Division – Major General Rene de Hasdin
 * Insigne9emDIC.jpg French 9th Colonial Infantry Division – Brigadier General Jean-Étienne Valluy
 * Insigne 10° DI FFI.jpg French 10th Infantry Division  – Brigadier General Pierre Billotte
 * Question Mark in a Circle.png French 1st Armored Division – Brigadier General Aime Sudre
 * French 2nd Corps – Lieutenant General Joseph de Goislard de Monsabert
 * Insigne-1dlf-ghemard.jpg French 1st Motorised Infantry Division – Brigadier General Pierre Garbay
 * Insigne de la 1er Division d’Infanterie.jpg French 1st Infantry Division – Brigadier General Jean Callies
 * Insigne de la 3° DIA.JPG French 3rd Algerian Infantry Division – Major General Augustin Guillaume
 * Insigne de la 14e Division d’Infanterie.jpg French 14th Infantry Division – Brigadier General Raoul Salan
 * Insigne 5° DB.JPG French 5th Armored Division – Brigadier General Guy Schlesser
 * Detachment Army of the Alps – Lieutenant General Paul Doyen
 * Insigne de la 27e Brigade d’Infanterie de Montagne.jpg French 27th Alpine Infantry Division – Colonel Jean Vallette d'Osia

title: Sixth United States Army Group


text:
Oisc of Kent

Oisc (early Old English or ), or, in a later spelling, Ēsc  was, if he existed, an early king of Kent and, according to Bede, the eponymous founder of the tribe known as Oiscingas (early Old English.

Etymology and spellings
Most scholars agree that, like many names in the Germanic languages, the root of the name Oisc is an Old English word ōs, meaning '(non-Christian) god', cognate with Old Norse Áss (deriving from Proto-Germanic ansuz). The etymology of the name has been studied most thoroughly by John Insley, who concluded that cognate forms of the name Oisc are found in Old Saxon (Ōsic, alongside the corresponding weak noun Ōsica), to which later scholarship possibly adds the runic inscription on a shield boss dating from between 150 and 220 CE found on Thorsberg moor in Schleswig-Holstein which in 2015 Lisbeth M. Imer interpreted as a Roman-influenced maker's mark reading aṇsgz h.

In Insley's interpretation, in Oisc the ōs element is combined with a suffix which in Proto-Germanic took the form *ika, which in this context had a diminutive function. The name was thus a hypocoristic (nickname) form of longer dithematic names beginning in Ōs- such as Ōswald and Ōsrīc. In this reading, the phonetic development of the name from Proto-Germanic to early Old English was * => * (by the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law) => (by i-mutation) =>  (by high vowel loss and apocope). This form was represented graphically in early Old English as Oisc and Oesc. Later in Old English, the vowel developed to, giving the spelling Ēsc.

Bernard Mees, however, has suggested that Oisc and its cognates come from the Germanic root an found in, for example, the Old Norse verb anda ('to breathe'), combined with the suffix sk; other adjectives formed with this suffix generally mean something like 'quick, lively, brave'.

Mis-spellings
The name is also found in a couple of West Saxon sources as Æsc (along with the tribal name Æscingas). Insley interprets these spellings as etymologically incorrect attempts by later Old English-speakers to update the then unfamiliar word Oisc into their variety of the language, influenced by the familiar name-element Æsc-. An early modern transcription of the early medieval manuscript London, British Library, Cotton Otho B. xi by Laurence Nowell gives not the name Oeric and Oisc as found in Bede, but ósric and oese, but Insley concluded that these are merely inaccurate transcriptions.

Portrayal in the early sources
Little is known about Oisc, and the information that does survive regarding his life is often vague and suspect.

Anglo-Saxon king-lists generally present Oisc as the son or the grandson of Hengest, who according to other sources led the initial Anglo-Saxon conquest and settlement of Kent.

According to Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Oisc's given name was Oeric. Bede indicates that he was the son of Hengest and travelled to Britain with him, with the permission of the British king Vortigern. He was the father of Octa, who succeeded him. His descendants called themselves "Oiscingas" after him.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which in its present form was compiled by people who knew Bede's account, portrays Oisc as ruling 488–512CE.

Possible portrayal in the Ravenna Cosmography
Oisc has been widely viewed the same person as one Ansehis, who is described as a leader of the Saxon invaders of Britain in the Ravenna Cosmography. This says that "in oceano vero occidentale est insula quae dicitur Britania, ubi olim gens Saxonum veniens ab antiqua Saxonia cum principe suo nomine Ansehis modo habitare videtur" (indeed in the western ocean is an island which is called Britania, which the people of the Saxons, coming from Old Saxony under their chief, named Ansehis, seem now to inhabit". Ansehis (or, as some manuscripts have it, Ansehys) is plausibly an error for Anschis, which would be a plausible archaic or Continental Germanic form of Oisc's name. However, Insley has argued that an older idea, that Anschis would also be a plausible attempt to represent proto-Old English *Hangista-, is more plausible, and that it is Hengest whom the Ravenna Cosmography represents.

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

title: Oisc of Kent


text:
Twelfth United States Army Group

The Twelfth United States Army Group was the largest and most powerful United States Army formation ever to take to the field, commanding four field armies at its peak in 1945: First United States Army, Third United States Army, Ninth United States Army, and Fifteenth United States Army. The order of battle across the four armies comprised 12 corps, containing a total of 48 divisions. Formed eight days after the Normandy landings, it initially controlled the First and the Third US Armies. Through various configurations in 1944 and 1945, the Twelfth US Army Group controlled the majority of American forces on the Western Front. It was commanded by General Omar Bradley with its headquarters established in London on 14 July 1944.

During the first week of the Normandy landings and the Battle of Normandy, Bradley's First US Army formed the right wing of the Allied lines. They were joined during July by the Third US Army, under the command of General George S. Patton, to form the Twelfth Army Group. Twelfth Army Group became operational in France on 1 August 1944. With General Omar Bradley assuming command of the Twelfth Army Group, Lieutenant General Courtney Hodges assumed command of the First Army. In addition, the USAAF's Ninth Air Force (not included in the 1.3 million soldiers figure) was attached to support the field armies of the Twelfth Army Group.

Until 1 September 1944, when General Dwight D. Eisenhower assumed overall command of the Allied land forces in Northwest Europe, the US forces in Normandy were included with the British Second Army and the First Canadian Army in the British headquarters formation 21st Army Group, commanded by General Bernard Montgomery.

After the breakout from the beach-head at Normandy, the Twelfth Army Group formed the center of the Allied forces on the Western Front. To the north was the British 21st Army Group (the First Canadian and British Second) and, to the south, advancing from their landing on the Mediterranean coast, was the Sixth United States Army Group (Seventh United States Army and French First Army).

As the Twelfth advanced through Germany in 1945, it grew to control four United States field armies: the First, the Third, the Ninth and the Fifteenth. By V-E Day, the Twelfth Army Group was a force that numbered over 1.3 million men.

Twelfth Army Group was inactivated on 12 July 1945 upon Bradley's departure to become Director of the Veterans Administration. Its subordinate elements then became directly subordinate to United States Army Europe.

Order of battle – 8 May 1945

 * 12th Army Group.svg 12th Army Group – General Omar N. Bradley
 * 1st Army.svg First Army – General Courtney H. Hodges
 * 78th Infantry Division SSI.svg 78th Infantry Division – Major General Edwin P. Parker Jr.
 * US VII Corps SSI.png VII Corps – Lieutenant General J. Lawton Collins
 * 3rd US Armored Division SSI.svg 3rd Armored Division – Brigadier General Doyle O. Hickey
 * 9th Infantry Division patch.svg 9th Infantry Division – Major General Louis A. Craig
 * US 69th Infantry Division.svg 69th Infantry Division – Major General Emil F. Reinhardt
 * 104TrngDivLdrTrngSSI.svg 104th Infantry Division – Major General Terry de la Mesa Allen Sr.
 * VIII CORPS SSI.gif VIII Corps – Major General Troy H. Middleton
 * 6th US Armored Division SSI.svg 6th Armored Division – Major General Robert W. Grow
 * 76 Inf Div SSI.svg 76th Infantry Division – Major General William R. Schmidt
 * US 87th Infantry Division.svg 87th Infantry Division – Major General Frank L. Culin Jr.
 * 89th Regional Readiness Command SSI.svg 89th Infantry Division – Major General Thomas D. Finley
 * US3ASSI.svg Third Army – General George S. Patton Jr.
 * 4th Infantry Division SSI.svg 4th Infantry Division – Major General Harold W. Blakeley
 * 70th Infantry Division patch.svg 70th Infantry Division – Major General Allison J. Barnett
 * 3 Corps Shoulder Sleeve Insignia.svg III Corps – Major General James Van Fleet
 * 14th US Armored Division SSI.svg 14th Armored Division – Major General Albert C. Smith
 * US 99th Infantry Division.svg 99th Infantry Division – Major General Walter E. Lauer
 * V Corps.svg V Corps – Major General Clarence R. Huebner
 * 9th US Armored Division SSI.svg 9th Armored Division – Major General John W. Leonard
 * 16th US Armored Division SSI.svg 16th Armored Division – Brigadier General John L. Pierce
 * US 1st Infantry Division SSI.svg 1st Infantry Division – Major General Clift Andrus
 * 2nd Infantry Division SSI (full color).svg 2nd Infantry Division – Major General Walter M. Robertson
 * 97THID.svg 97th Infantry Division – Brigadier General Milton B. Halsey
 * XII CORPS SSI.gif XII Corps – Major General Stafford LeRoy Irwin
 * 4th US Armored Division SSI.svg 4th Armored Division – Major General William M. Hoge
 * 11th US Armored Division SSI.svg 11th Armored Division – Major General Holmes E. Dager
 * US 5th Infantry Division.svg 5th Infantry Division – Major General Albert E. Brown
 * Yankee Division.svg 26th Infantry Division – Major General Willard S. Paul
 * 90th Infantry Division.patch.svg 90th Infantry Division – Major General Herbert L. Earnest
 * XX Corps ssi.gif XX Corps – Major General Walton H. Walker
 * 13th US Armored Division SSI.svg 13th Armored Division – Major General John Millikin
 * 65th Infantry Division SVG.svg 65th Infantry Division – Major General Stanley E. Reinhart
 * US 71st Infantry Division.svg 71st Infantry Division – Major General Willard G. Wyman
 * 80th Inf Div SSI SVG.svg 80th Infantry Division – Major General Horace L. McBride
 * US Ninth Army patch.svg Ninth Army – Lieutenant General William H. Simpson
 * USA - XIII Corps.png XIII Corps – Major General Alvan C. Gillem, Jr.
 * 35th Infantry Division SSI.svg 35th Infantry Division – Major General Paul W. Baade
 * US 84th Infantry Division.svg 84th Infantry Division – Major General Alexander R. Bolling
 * 102 INF DIV SSI.svg 102nd Infantry Division – Major General Frank A. Keating
 * XVI Corps SSI.svg XVI Corps – Major General John B. Anderson
 * 29th Infantry Division SSI.svg 29th Infantry Division – Major General Charles H. Gerhardt
 * 75e Division d'Infanterie (USA).svg 75th Infantry Division – Major General Ray E. Porter
 * 79th Infantry Division SSI.svg 79th Infantry Division – Major General Ira T. Wyche
 * 95TrainingDivSSI SVG.svg 95th Infantry Division – Major General Harry L. Twaddle
 * XIX Corps SSI.svg XIX Corps – Major General Raymond S. McLain
 * United States Army 2nd Armored Division CSIB.svg 2nd Armored Division – Major General Isaac D. White
 * 8th US Armored Division SSI.svg 8th Armored Division – Major General John M. Devine
 * 30th Infantry Division SSI.svg 30th Infantry Division – Major General Leland S. Hobbs
 * 83rd Infantry Division SSI.svg 83rd Infantry Division – Major General Robert C. Macon
 * 15th US Army SSI.svg Fifteenth Army – Lieutenant General Leonard T. Gerow
 * 66th Infantry Division shoulder sleeve insignia.jpg 66th Infantry Division – Major General Herman F. Kramer
 * 106Infantry Division.svg 106th Infantry Division – Major General Donald A. Stroh
 * XXII Corps SSI.svg XXII Corps – Major General Ernest N. Harmon
 * USA - 17 ABN DIV.svg 17th Airborne Division – Major General William M. Miley
 * 94th Regional Readiness Command SSI.svg 94th Infantry Division – Major General Harry J. Malony
 * XXIII Corps SSI.gif XXIII Corps – Major General Hugh J. Gaffey
 * 28th Infantry Division SSI (1918-2015).svg 28th Infantry Division – Major General Norman D. Cota
 * XVIII Airborne Corps CSIB.svg XVIII Airborne Corps (attached to 21st Army Group) – Major General Matthew B. Ridgway
 * 5th US Armored Division SSI.svg 5th Armored Division – Major General Lunsford E. Oliver
 * 7th US Armored Division SSI.svg 7th Armored Division – Major General Robert W. Hasbrouck
 * 8th Infantry Division patch.svg 8th Infantry Division – Major General Bryant E. Moore
 * 82nd Airborne Division CSIB.svg 82nd Airborne Division – Major General James M. Gavin

Source: Bradley, Omar, A Soldier's Story, New York: Henry Holt and Company (1950), pp. 557–561

title: Twelfth United States Army Group


text:
Expo 2010

Expo 2010, officially the Expo 2010 Shanghai China, was held on both banks of the Huangpu River in Shanghai, China, from 1 May to 31 October 2010. It was a major World Expo registered by the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), in the tradition of international fairs and expositions, the first since 2005. The theme of the exposition was "Better City – Better Life" and signifies Shanghai's new status in the 21st century as the "next great world city". The Expo emblem features the Chinese character 世 ('world', Chinese "shì") modified to represent three people together with the 2010 date. It had the largest number of countries participating and was the most expensive Expo in the history of the world's fairs. The Shanghai World Expo was also the largest World's Fair site ever at 5.28 square km.

By the end of the expo, over 73 million people had visited – a record attendance – and 246 countries and international organizations had participated. On 16 October 2010, the expo set a single-day record of over 1.03 million visitors.

Early participation and hosting
Shanghai has been one of the main cities envisioned to host the expos for some time. Many scholars have written about the possibility and made suggestions in books. Unofficial participation in fairs outside China have happened since 1851. In 1910, the Qing dynasty decided to host China's first fair with the Nanyang industrial exposition.

Selection process
Shanghai scored the highest in each of the four rounds of voting at the 132nd Meeting of the Bureau of International Expositions in Prince's Palace of Monaco, Monte Carlo, Monaco, with Yeosu, South Korea maintaining second place. Yeosu later won the bid to host Expo 2012, a three-month specialized world expo.

Organization

In 2004, the Chinese central government established the Shanghai World Expo Organising Committee as the organization dedicated to host the event. The Organising Committee set up an Executive Committee which is responsible for the execution and management of expo affairs. Besides, the Shanghai World Expo Coordination is founded for the daily affairs of the Executive Committee.

The site of the event was the Nanpu Bridge–Lupu Bridge region in the center of Shanghai along both sides of the Huangpu River. The area of the Expo 2010 covers 5.28 km2.

After winning the bid to host the Expo in 2002, Shanghai began a monumental task to reshape the city. More than $48 billion was spent for the preparation, more than the cost of cleaning up Beijing in the preparations for the Olympics in 2008. Shanghai began clearing 2.6 square kilometres along the Huangpu River; that involved moving 18,000 families and 270 factories, including the Jiang Nan Shipyard, which employs 10,000 workers.

Six new subway lines were opened between 2008 and 2010; four thousand brand new taxis were added in the month before Expo 2010 opened and the city's buildings along the river were decorated with more energy-efficient LEDs.

During the expo, the expo site was crowded with national pavilions, sculpture gardens, shops, a sports arena and clam-shaped performing arts centre.

Shanghai trained more than 1.7 million volunteers and adopted Olympic-level security measures, adding metal detectors to subway entrances and screening cars entering the city.

The Shanghai Expo also featured an online version of the expo grounds featuring 3D renderings of the expo grounds, and a 3D version of the pavilion interior and offerings.

Participation
The Shanghai World Expo provided an unparalleled opportunity for the tourism industry. During 2010's Spring Festival, Shanghai received 2.79 million tourists, an increase of 12 percent from the previous year, resulting in record high numbers of visitors. Overall Shanghai's tourism revenue achieved an increase of 13 percent year on year during Spring Festival, resulting in RMB 2.1 billion in total revenue.

192 countries and 50 organizations registered to participate in the Shanghai World Expo, a record number for that time.

Attendance
Over 73 million people visited Expo 2010 during the 184-day event, breaking the previous record of 64 million visitors set by Expo 70 in Osaka. Organizers had expected 70 million visitors at the start of the expo. About 5.8 percent of the visitors, or 4.25 million, were foreigners.

Finances
Shanghai spent 11.964 billion yuan in operating cost to host the event, making it the most expensive World Expo ever, but the organizers still made an operating profit of more than 1 billion yuan (US$157 million) thanks to the record attendance. The total revenue was 13.014 billion yuan, including 7.36 billion yuan in admission fees and almost 4 billion yuan in sponsorship income. However, the city invested another 19.74 billion yuan to prepare and construct the 5.28 square kilometer site, exceeding the budget of 18 billion yuan.

Opening ceremony

The opening ceremony was held in the evening of 30 April 2010 attended by dozens of world leaders. The ceremony consisted of an indoor and outdoor component. Jackie Chan, Lang Lang, and Andrea Bocelli were among the performers in the indoor component. The event featured an outdoor display of fireworks, lasers, and dancing fountains after a performance by singers and dancers. The outdoor ceremony was produced by David Atkins Enterprises. 6,000 LED balls were floated into the Huangpu River representing fish. Organisers called the outdoor show "the largest searchlight display in history, the largest collection of multi-coloured laser firepower ever assembled in one place, the world's largest LED screen, one of the largest dancing water fountains ever, and the "largest light show ever attempted"." President Hu Jintao inaugurated the opening of the Shanghai World Expo.

Closing ceremony
The closing ceremony was held on 31 October 2010, with numerous world leaders in attendance including Wen Jiabao, Prime Minister of China, Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary, Mari Kiviniemi, Prime Minister of Finland, Hubert Ingraham, Prime Minister of Bahamas, Pakalitha Mosisili, Prime Minister of Lesotho, Ram Baran Yadav, President of Nepal and Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Performances
About 20,000 performances were set to be staged between 1 May and 31 October in 2010, many singers present at the expo song writing and preparation process since 2008. Performers included Alan Tam, Gigi Leung, Stephanie Cheng, Khalil Fong, Hacken Lee, Denise Ho, Hins Cheung, Vincy Chan, Philadelphia Boys Choir, National Boys Choir of Australia, Salut Salon, the Cross Border Orchestra of Ireland and the Harvard Din & Tonics, and others.

Theme songs

 * The official theme songs of the Expo were "City" by Jackie Chan and "Better City, Better Life" by Quincy Jones.
 * The promotional song of the Expo was "Right Here Waiting for You 2010" . Released during the 30-day countdown on 1 April, Right Here Waiting for You 2010 was plagiarized from the 1997 Japanese song "Sonomama no Kimi de Ite" ("Stay the Way You Are") by Mayo Okamoto. This resulted in its use as the Expo theme being suspended. After discussions with Okamoto's management, a compromise was reached such that "Sonomama no Kimi de Ite" is now the official song of the 2010 Expo
 * The theme song for Shanghai World Expo volunteers was "By Your Side" by Eason Chan.
 * The theme song for the Shanghai World Expo for the Chinese culture was "The World Watching China", sung by Chinese singer Han Geng.
 * The theme song for Norway was "Powered By Nature" which was composed by Rolf Løvland and performed by his group Secret Garden. The song was recorded for their 2011 album Winter Poem.

Mascot
Haibao was the mascot of the Shanghai Expo 2010. It means treasure of the sea and was based on the Chinese character for man or person, "人". Some said that Haibao resembles Gumby, but the expo's secretariat said that it was an original design chosen through a competition and that they had never heard of Gumby.

Expo Axis

The main building – called "Expo Axis" – has the world's largest membrane construction and was built by SBA (architects) and Knippers Helbig (structural engineers). The building consists of some steel-glass funnels with a 1,000 m long membrane construction. The main construction was completed at the end of 2009.

Theme pavilions
There were five central theme pavilions at the Expo 2010, exploring different aspects of urban development. They were called Urban Footprints, Urban Planet, Urbanian, City Being, and Urban Future.

National pavilions

National pavilions included: Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Cambodia, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lebanon, Libya, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macau, Macedonia, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Monaco, Mongolia, Morocco, Myanmar, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, North Korea, Norway, Oman, Pacific Pavilion, Pakistan, Palestine, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam and Yemen.

Corporate pavilions
Corporate pavilions included: Aurora Pavilion, Broad Pavilion, China Railway, China State Shipbuilding Corporation Pavilion, Coca-Cola Pavilion, Cisco Pavilion, Information and Communication Pavilion, Oil Pavilion, Japanese Industry, PICC, Private Enterprises Joint Pavilion, Republic of Korea Business, SAIC-GM Pavilion, Shanghai Corporate Joint Pavilion, Space Pavilion, Space Home Pavilion, State Grid and Vanke Pavilion.

International organizations
The Expo also included a pavilion for the Red Cross and Red Crescent and several others.

Urban Best Practice Area pavilions
The Urban Best Practice Area allowed cities and regions an opportunity to share experiences of improving urban living. San Francisco (a Shanghai sister city) was one participant here, as were Dafeng Town in Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Liverpool, London, Montreal, Rotterdam and Seoul.

The Expo also included Chinese displays about Hong Kong and Ningbo.

Legacy
The Expo introduced numerous urban best practices and concepts from all over the world which the organisers hope will be a lasting legacy for better urban life in China and around the world. It advocated for future development to focus on environmental sustainability, efficiency and diversity. The innovations and achievements of the event were summarised in the Shanghai Declaration issued by the participants of the Expo. The declaration also nominated the Shanghai Expo's closing day 31 October as "World Better Cities Day". United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated at the closing of the Expo, "Thanks to this Expo, millions of people learned about possibilities for making our cities healthier and safer, cities that better integrate nature and technology, cities that offer their citizens cleaner air and water, and better lives all around".

Within Shanghai, the grounds of the former Expo site now constitute the Expo Park, including the former China Pavilion. The Bureau of International Expositions (BIE) and the Shanghai government have announced plans to construct the world's only official World Expo Museum in Shanghai, on the Puxi side of the expo site. Construction began in 2012, and the museum opened its doors on 1 May 2017. More than 200 participants from Expo 2010 have donated over 30,000 exhibits to the future museum. The BIE has added into its formal requirements that all future Expo bidders shall support the new Expo Museum.

The Shanghai Expo was touted by the Chinese government as yet another first-rate global scale event, similar in significance to the Beijing Olympics, which would symbolise the economic and political rise of China in the 21st century. The event would demonstrate to both the Chinese populace and foreign nations the enormous progress of China's urban development in the heart of the nation's economic hub of Shanghai. The event received extensive media coverage in the Chinese media both in the lead up and during the World Expo. According to China analyst Tom Doctoroff, "In terms of what the city was able to achieve, the Chinese were impressed. Shanghai stepped up a level in internationalization". Outside China, the Expo propelled Shanghai onto magazine covers, newspaper front pages and television programmes at a time when it is laying the groundwork to become an international financial centre by 2020.

Controversies
A group of NGOs protested a month before the expo against the alleged displacement of 18,000 families in the Shanghai area in connection with the Expo. Dissident Feng Zhenghu was detained in mid April 2010 for threatening to publicly seek redress for them in the courts. According to the U.S. government-run Congressional-Executive Commission on China, Shanghai authorities used the expo as an excuse to conduct a surveillance, propaganda, and detention campaign against members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual group.

Denmark controversially sent the original Little Mermaid statue from Copenhagen to the expo, putting a video replica recorded by dissident Ai Weiwei in its place. Some observers criticized the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office's payment for the 9 Hong Kong undersecretaries to inspect infrastructure projects and hold discussions on city-to-city cooperation. Six legislators from the pro-democracy camp boycotted an invitation to the expo by the Shanghai government because of the issue of political reform and the 2010 Hong Kong by-election. The Chinese government postponed the planned visit of 1,000 Japanese youths to the expo in September because of the 2010 Senkaku boat collision incident, which Japanese prime minister Naoto Kan called regrettable.

State employees were given free one-day vouchers to the expo, and according to one worker, threatened with wage cuts, in order to fulfill the target of 70 million visitors. Long lines at the Germany pavilion caused visitors to shout "Nazi, Nazi" and attack workers, according to general commissioner for Germany's pavilion Dietmar Schmitz. Free tickets to an expo show featuring K-pop group Super Junior caused a stampede that injured 100 people, which spokespersons for the expo and the Korean pavilion allegedly denied.

title: Expo 2010


text:
Tonawanda

Tonawanda may refer to:

 * Tonawanda (CDP), New York, consisting of the Town of Tonawanda less the Village of Kenmore
 * Tonawanda (city), New York, officially City of Tonawanda, bordered on three sides by the Town of Tonawanda
 * Tonawanda (town), New York, officially Town of Tonawanda in Erie County north of Buffalo, New York
 * North Tonawanda, New York, a city in Niagara County, north across Tonawanda Creek from the City and Town
 * Tonawanda Armory, listed on the National Register of Historic Places
 * Tonawanda Band of Seneca, federally recognized tribe in New York state
 * Tonawanda Creek, a tributary of the Niagara River and part of the Erie Canal
 * Tonawanda Engine, a General Motors engine factory in Buffalo, New York
 * Tonawanda Kardex Lumbermen, a defunct NFL team based in North Tonawanda
 * Tonawanda Reservation, on Tonawanda Creek in Erie, Genesee, and Niagara counties
 * Lake Tonawanda, prehistoric glacial lake

title: Tonawanda


text:
Talk:Over the Edge (radio program)

Untitled

 * I am finding it very hard to stay NPOV on this topic. Personally I am a fan of the show and would appreciate anyones help in helping un-stub this page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jubal (talk • contribs) 04:11, 22 February 2004 (UTC)

I'd like to hear more about where it's broadcast (what region of the US?), and whether the show tends to be more liberal or conservative. Also, is the show comedy, talk, informational with hard facts, or some other category? I want to know what it's about. As for staying NPOV, see if you can think up some criticisms, that might help calm you down. ;) --zandperl 01:39, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * To the "fan" above (Jubal), I'm afraid I'm in the same boat! :) And presumably the article's present state has answered Zandperl's questions, but "some other category" hits the nail on the head! Lusanaherandraton (talk) 18:33, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Callers no longer enjoy uncensored access to the air
>>The audience phone participation ("Receptacle Programming") is another element: listeners are encouraged to call-in, and are placed on-air with no prior screening.<<

Sadly, due to the current climate of censorship on broadcast media, callers do not find themselves directly plugged-in to the airwaves on "Over The Edge" any longer. KPFA has instituted a delay of approximately 15 seconds.

Could the entry please be edited to reflect this development? Ordinary 06:07, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

External links modified
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title: Talk:Over the Edge (radio program)


text:
Motława

The Motława (Mottlau; Mòtława) is a river in Eastern Pomerania in Poland. Its source is in Szpęgawskie Lake, northeast from the town of Starogard Gdański. The Motlawa goes through Rokickie Lake to Martwa Wisła, a branch of the Vistula. The total length of the river is estimated at 68 km, with an area of 1511.3 km2.

The city of Gdańsk is situated at its mouth in the Martwa Wisła. In Gdańsk, the Motława ferry crosses the river, a service that has run since the year 1687.

The Polish name Motława is derived from Old Prussian language. In German the river is known as Mottlau.

A common theory for the etymology of the cities Gdańsk and Gdynia is that they are named after an older Polish and Kashubian name for the river, Gdania.

Route
The Motława flows through the following municipalities: Starogard Gdański, Tczew, Suchy Dąb, Pruszcz Gdański, and the city of Gdańsk.

title: Motława


text:
Talk:Motława

[Untitled]
Any chance we can rename this to something readable? RickK 04:13, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * Done, thanks. -- Naive cynic 28 June 2005 15:20 (UTC)

External links modified (February 2018)
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title: Talk:Motława


text:
Industrialization of Sweden

The industrialization of Sweden began during the second half of the nineteenth century. The industrial breakthrough occurred in the 1870s during the international boom period, and it carried on through the decades in response to the growing demand of the home market. By the end of this period, the first multinational companies based on advanced technology had emerged.

During the early phase of World War I in which Sweden remained neutral, the country benefited from increasing demand. However, with the German submarine war, Sweden was cut off from its markets, which led to a severe economic downturn. Between the world wars, major Swedish exports were steel, ball-bearings, wood pulp, and matches. Prosperity after World War II provided the foundations for the social welfare policies characteristic of modern Sweden.

Foreign policy concerns in the 1930s centred on Soviet and German expansionism, which stimulated abortive efforts at Nordic defence co-operation.

In 2016, the Swedish government reported that the industrial and industrial-services sectors accounted for 77 per cent of the country's exports, equivalent to almost 50 per cent of the total gross domestic product (GDP).

Communications
The mainline railways (stambanor), built and owned by the State, were of major importance for the development of Swedish industry and economy in general.

The two first main line railways, were the Southern Main Line, stretching from Stockholm to Malmö in the south, and the Western Main Line, from Stockholm to Gothenburg on the west coast. They were completed between 1860 and 1864. The Northern railways (East Coast Line, Northern Main Line & Main Line Through Upper Norrland) runs parallel to the Baltic coast up to Boden, in northern Sweden, and was finished in 1894. The Inland Line runs through the central parts of northern Sweden and was built between 1908 and 1937.

The construction of the early main lines provided a fast and safe connection from the mines in the north to the rest of Sweden. It also facilitated business (and private) travel, that had earlier required horse-driven carriages.

The Iron Ore Line (not a main line), from Luleå to Narvik in Norway, provided a highly efficient transportation linkage from the iron ores near Kiruna and Gällivare to harbours on both the Atlantic and the Baltic coasts. The sections of the Iron Ore Line were completed in stages between 1888 and 1903.

title: Industrialization of Sweden


text:
Eadric of Kent

Eadric (died August 686/ 687?) was a King of Kent (685–686). He was the son of Ecgberht I.

Historical context
In the 7th century the Kingdom of Kent had been politically stable for some time. According to Bede:

"In the year of our Lord 640, Eadbald king of Kent, departed this life, and left his kingdom to his son Eorcenberht, which he most nobly governed twenty-four years and some months."

Eorcenberht was succeeded by his sons Ecgberht (664-673) and Hlothhere (673-685). Ecgberht's court seems to have had many diplomatic and ecclesiastic contacts. He hosted Wilfrid and Benedict Biscop, and provided escorts to Archbishop Theodore and Abbot Adrian of Canterbury for their travels in Gaul. However, increasing dynastic tensions occurred at this time, when according to tradition Ecgberht had his cousins Æthelred and Æthelberht murdered, effectively removing them as they had a strong claim on the throne.

Joint ruler of Kent?
Hlothhere succeeded his brother as ruler of Kent in 673. It was not unusual for Kent to be divided between rulers at that time. However although there has been some suggestion that Eadric jointly ruled with his uncle Hlothhere, there is no certain evidence for it. The Law of Hlothhere and Eadric is a single law code that was issued in the name of Hlothhere and Eadric as joint rulers of Kent, but it may just have been a conflation of two earlier separate codes.

In 679 Hlothhere granted land in Thanet to Beorhtwald, abbot of Reculver. In the charter document there is a statement noting the agreement of Archbishop Theodore and "Eadric, son of my brother".

Sole ruler
The charter of 679 implies that, at that date, the relationship between Eadric and his uncle were not unfriendly, however in about 685 Eadric revolted against his uncle. With help from Æthelwealh of Sussex he raised a South Saxon army and defeated Hlothhere in battle. Hlothhere died of his wounds shortly after and Eadric became sole ruler of Kent.

Eadric was a nephew of Wulfhere of Mercia. Wulfhere was in an alliance with the South Saxons, so it would have served the politics of the time for Æthelwealh to support Eadric's coup against Hlothhere.

Invaded by Wessex
Also, in 685 a West Saxon warband invaded Sussex under  the command of the Wessex prince Cædwalla and killed Æthelwealh. Cædwalla was subsequently driven out of Sussex by two of Æthelwealh's ealdormen, Berhthun and Andhun. William of Malmesbury suggests that Eadric became king of the South Saxon kingdom at that time. Then in 686, Cædwalla, now king of Wessex, and his brother Mul, removed Eadric from power  and made Mul king of Kent. "[Cædwalla's] hatred and hostility towards the South Saxons were inextinguishable, and he totally destroyed Edric [Eadric] the successor of Ethelwalch [Æthelwealh] who opposed him with renovated boldness:....he also gained repeated victories over the people of Kent.."

There is a discussion on the actual date of Eadric's death. Bede lists his death, but does not provide a precise date, however one of the Kent annals, suggest that he was buried on 31 August 686 and  another 31 August 687.

title: Eadric of Kent


text:
Jean de Lattre de Tassigny

Jean Joseph Marie Gabriel de Lattre de Tassigny (2 February 1889 – 11 January 1952) was a French général d'armée during World War II and the First Indochina War. He was posthumously elevated to the dignity of Marshal of France in 1952.

As an officer during World War I, he fought in various battles, including at Verdun, and was wounded five times, surviving the war with eight citations, the Legion of Honour, and the Military Cross. During the Interwar period, he took part in the Rif War in Morocco, where he was again wounded in action. He went on to serve in the Ministry of War and the staff of Conseil supérieur de la guerre under the vice president Général d'armée Maxime Weygand.

Early in World War II, from May to June 1940, he was the youngest French general. He led the 14th Infantry Division during the Battle of France in the battles of Rethel, Champagne-Ardenne, and Loire, until the Armistice of 22 June 1940. During the Vichy Regime, he remained in the Armistice Army, first in regional command posts, then as commander-in-chief of troops in Tunisia. After the Allied invasion of French North Africa in November 1942, the Germans invaded the unoccupied portion of France; de Lattre, Commander of the 16th Military Division at Montpellier, refused the orders not to fight the Germans and was the only active general to order his troops to oppose the invaders. He was arrested, but escaped and defected to Charles de Gaulle's Free French Forces at the end of 1943. From 1943 to 1945 he was one of the senior leaders of the Liberation Army, commanding the forces which landed in the South of France on 15 August 1944, then fought up to the Rivers Rhine and Danube. He commanded large numbers of American troops when the US XXI Corps was assigned to his First Army during the battle of the Colmar Pocket. He was also the French representative at the signing of the German Instrument of Surrender in Berlin on 8 May 1945.

He became Commander-in-Chief of French Forces in Germany in 1945, then Inspector General and Chief of Staff of the French Army. In March 1947 he became the vice-president of the Conseil supérieur de la guerre. From 1948 to 1950 he served as Commander-in-chief of the Western Union's ground forces. In 1951, he was the High Commissioner, commander-in-chief in Indochina and commander-in-chief of the French Far East Expeditionary Corps, winning several battles against the Việt Minh. His only son was killed there, and then illness forced him to return to Paris where he died of cancer in 1952. He was elevated to the dignity of Marshal of France posthumously in 1952 during his state funeral.

Early life
Jean Joseph Marie Gabriel de Lattre de Tassigny was born on 2 February 1889 in Mouilleron-en-Pareds, Vendée, in the same village as World War I leader Georges Clemenceau. He was the son of Roger de Lattre de Tassigny and Anne-Marie Louise Henault, the daughter of the mayor of Mouilleron. Her grandfather had been his predecessor, assuming the office in 1817. In turn, Roger de Lattre succeeded his father-in-law as mayor in 1911, and still held the office forty years later. An ancestor had added the suffix "de Tassigny" to the family name in 1740, after the family property of Tassigny near Guise. He had an older sister, Anne-Marie, who later became the Comtesse de Marcé.

From 1898 to 1904, de Lattre attended the College of Saint-Joseph in Poitiers, where his father had gone. He then decided that he would join the Navy, and to prepare he went to the College de Vaugirard, where Henri de Gaulle was a teacher. He passed the written examinations for the Navy, but missed the oral examination due to illness. He then went to the Corniche (preparatory school) at Lycée privé Sainte-Geneviève in Versailles to prepare for the École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr, where he won a place in 1908. Before he entered, his father sent him to Brighton in England to improve his English. As was the custom in the French Army, he also served in the ranks for four months, in his case, with the 29th Dragoon Regiment (France) at Provins, south east of Paris. He was a cadet at Saint-Cyr from 1909 to 1911 (Mauritanie promotion). One instructor expressed the hope that de Lattre was not related to the one who had raised the white flag of Henri, Count of Chambord over Saint-Cyr in 1873. This was his uncle, and henceforth de Lattre refused to have anything to do with the instructor. He ultimately graduated 201st out of 210 in his class, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant on 1 October 1910. He then went on to the Cavalry School in Saumur.

First World War
De Lattre was assigned to the 12th Dragoon Regiment (France), which was stationed at Toul and Pont-à-Mousson near the frontier with Germany and still wore red riding breeches and a helmet with a plume. He was promoted to lieutenant on 1 October 1912. He was still serving there when the First World War broke out in August 1914. On 11 August 1914, he was wounded for the first time when he was hit in the knee by a shell fragment during a reconnaissance mission. On 14 September, he was wounded a second time, in an engagement with four Bavarian Uhlans during which he killed two with his sword, but a third struck him in the chest with a lance, perforating his lung. His troop sergeant took him to a cellar in Pont-à-Mousson, where they hid from German patrols until one from the 5th Hussar Regiment reached them. He received the Legion of Honour on 20 December 1914.

In 1915, de Lattre responded to an appeal for cavalry officers to volunteer for service in the infantry, and he joined a Vendée regiment, the 93rd Infantry Regiment (France). He was promoted to captain on 18 December 1915, and was a company commander and then assistant battalion commander in its 3rd Battalion. As part of the 21st Infantry Division, the 93rd Infantry Regiment fought in the Battle of Verdun, where he was gassed in July 1916. The mustard gas affected his injured lung, necessitating time in hospital. He was back with the 21st Infantry Division in time to participate in the ill-fated Nivelle offensive in April 1917. In an attack on 5 May, his battalion suffered 300 casualties, but captured 500 prisoners. De Lattre received his eighth mention in despatches. He was hospitalised again that month, and did not return until December, when he became an intelligence officer on the 21st Infantry Division staff. The division was decimated in the Third Battle of the Aisne in May 1918, but it was reconstituted and fought in the Meuse-Argonne offensive later that year, during which de Lattre liaised with the staffs of three divisions of the United States Army.

Between the wars
In February 1919, de Lattre was assigned to the 18th Military District section at Bordeaux, where his duties included providing recreation for American troops prior to their repatriation. At the end of the year he joined the 49th Infantry Regiment (France), which was stationed at Bayonne. From 1921 to 1926, he was in Morocco, where he participated in the campaigns of the Rif War. He became the head of the Third Bureau (the staff section responsible for operations) of the Meknes area, and directed operations in Upper Moulouya. These normally involved two or more columns, each with between four and eight battalions of infantry and attached artillery and transport, converging on a locality. The following year operations moved on to the rugged Taza Province. De Lattre was critical of the tactics used by Marshal Philippe Pétain, which he regarded as slow, expensive and materialistic. He was slashed in the right cheek by an assailant wielding a dagger on 13 March 1924, resulting in a prominent scar, and he was wounded in the knee by a bullet on 26 August 1925 during a reconnaissance mission. He was promoted to the rank of chef de bataillon (commandant) on 25 June 1926.

De Lattre returned to France, where he spent several weeks with his parents at Mouilleron-en-Pareds. At a luncheon given by a deputy for Vendée, he met Simonne Calary de Lamazière, the nineteen-year-old daughter of a Paris deputy. They met again at a party on the Île d'Yeu, an island off the Vendée coast. They were married on 22 March 1927, at Saint-Pierre-de-Chaillot in Paris. They had one child, Bernard de Lattre de Tassigny, who was born on 11 February 1928. (Driving with him on his daily tour of inspection in January 1945, the seventeen-year-old John Julius Norwich recalled: "I did have a little trouble keeping his hand off my thigh in the car on the way home...but nothing serious." )

De Lattre commanded a battalion of the 4th Infantry Regiment, which was stationed at Auxerre, and prepared for the entrance examination for the École de guerre, coached by Captain Augustin Guillaume, an officer he had met while serving in Morocco. He managed to pass the examinations, and entered the École de guerre as the senior officer of his year. One of the staff exercises involved command of an invading force tasked with capturing Cherbourg from the sea. After graduation in 1928, he was assigned to the 59th Infantry Regiment (France) at Coulommiers as a battalion commander.

In 1931, de Lattre was assigned to the 4th Bureau of the Ministry of War, responsible for logistics. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel (France) on 24 March 1932. On 20 June, he joined the staff of the Conseil supérieur de la guerre, serving under the vice president, Général d'armée Maxime Weygand. During this posting, he was tasked mainly with following foreign international policies, internal politics, and the challenges of complex military budget initiatives. He became embroiled in the Stavisky affair and had to appear before a parliamentary commission.With the retirement of Weygand, who had reached mandatory retirement age, de Lattre was retained on the general headquarters staff of Général Alphonse Joseph Georges. On 20 June 1935, he was promoted to colonel and appointed commander of the 151st Infantry Regiment (France) at Metz. Between 1937 and 1938, he studied at the Centre des hautes études militaires (CHEM), an advanced staff college for generals. In July 1938 he became Chief of Staff at the headquarters of the military governor of Strasbourg, Général d'armée Pierre Héring. Hering retired in March 1939, and was succeeded by Général d'armée Victor Bourret. On 20 March, de Lattre was promoted to général de brigade.

Battle of France

De Lattre became the chief of staff at general headquarters of the Fifth Army on 2 September 1939. The following day France declared war on Germany again. In January 1940, he was given command of the 14th Infantry Division, which was holding the sector between Sarreguemines and Forbach. On 14 May, four days after the main German offensive began, the 14th Infantry Division was ordered to move to Rheims, where it came under the command of André Corap's Ninth Army.

De Lattre engaged the German forces around Rethel, where his division resisted for an entire month, repelling German assaults in front of the River Aisne. On 9 June, the German Twelfth Army launched a major assault on the 14th Infantry Division's positions. Although it managed to hold on, the divisions on its flanks could not, and de Lattre was forced to retreat to the Marne, and then the Loire. Part of his division was cut off at Chalons. Although it lost about two-thirds of its strength, the division retained its cohesion in the midst of chaos. When the Armistice of 22 June 1940 ended the fighting, the 14th Infantry Division was at Clermont-Ferrand.

Army of Vichy
Following the armistice, de Lattre remained in the Army of Vichy France. He was made a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour on 12 July for his handling of the 14th Infantry Division in the Battle of France, an award Weygand, to whom he remained loyal, conferred on him in person. De Lattre was appointed to command the 13th Military Division, the military district at Puy-de-Dôme in the Massif Central, where he established a training centre for officers and non-commissioned officers at Château d'Opme. He was promoted to général de division on 26 June 1941.

In September 1941, Weygand, now the Delegate-General of The Vichy government in North Africa, summoned de Lattre to North Africa as the commander-in-chief of troops in the protectorate of Tunisia. De Lattre opened another military instruction centre there at Salammbô near Carthage, modelled on the one at Opme. He clashed with his superior, Général de Corps d'Armée Alphonse Juin over the best way to defend Tunisia against a British attack. De Lattre was determined to resist on the frontier, fearing that a fighting withdrawal might lead to the Germans and Italians occupying Vichy France; Juin, a native of North Africa, was more concerned with the security of Algeria. De Lattre may have also hoped that he would have been appointed head of the French forces in North Africa instead of Juin. Nonetheless, Juin recommended de Lattre for promotion. He was promoted to général de corps d'armée on 2 January 1942, but Weygand had been recalled to France in October 1941, and on 2 February 1942 de Lattre was also recalled.

Returning to France, de Lattre took charge of the 16th Military Division, based in Montpellier. The post was a backwater, and one usually held by an officer of lower rank. Following the Allied landings in French North Africa on 8 November 1942, Germany and Italian troops occupied southern France and disbanded the Vichy Army. De Lattre received orders from Vichy that troops were to remain in their barracks, which he decided to disobey, instead carrying out a previously prepared plan to resist the German occupation. Staff officers informed de Lattre's superior in Avignon of his intentions. The troops did not move, and the Vichy Minister of War, Eugène Bridoux, ordered de Lattre's arrest. He was brought before a special State Tribunal on 9 January 1943, charged with treason and abandoning his post. The former charge was dropped, but he was found guilty of the latter and was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment.

De Lattre was initially held at Montluc prison, but was later transferred to Riom. Simonne secured accommodation where the garden adjoined the prison wall, and worked with de Lattre's driver, Louis Roetsch, and accomplices inside the prison to plan an escape. They managed to smuggle in tools, including a hammer, screwdriver and gimlet, along with paint, a paintbrush, putty and a rope. De Lattre had noticed that the sentry underneath his window went to wake up his relief in the middle of the night instead of being relieved in place, leaving the window unguarded for up to ten minutes. He also found that with one of the bars on his window removed, he was able to squeeze through. On the night of 1 September 1943 he removed the window frame and one bar, squeezed through, and used the rope to descend, although it proved to be several feet too short. Bernard threw a rope ladder over the prison wall, allowing de Lattre to scale it. They then departed in two cars that Roetsch provided, along with false papers identifying de Lattre as Charles Dequenne, his headquarters clerk who had been killed in the fighting in June 1940. They hid on a farm near Compains until 1 October, when some of his prison break accomplices were arrested. De Lattre then made his way to a field near Pont-de-Vaux, from whence he and others, including Eugène Claudius-Petit, where whisked away by a British aircraft and taken to London. Simonne and Bernard moved to Paris, where they lived under false names.

Operation Dragoon
De Lattre was promoted to the rank of général d'armée by Général de brigade Charles de Gaulle on 11 November 1943. Problems with his damaged lung led to de Lattre being admitted to Middlesex Hospital. He was discharged from hospital on 11 December, and on 19 December he flew from Glasgow Prestwick Airport to Algiers, where he met with de Gaulle. He then went to see the Commander-in-Chief of the French forces in North Africa, Général d'Armée Henri Giraud. On 26 December, Giraud appointed him the commander of the Second Army, which was renamed Army B on 23 January 1944. This put him in change of all the forces in North Africa being re-equipped by the Americans. Army B was as an amalgam of Free French forces, the Army of Africa forces and volunteers, with a strength of 256,000, including 5,000 women of the AFAT (auxiliaire féminine de l'armée de terre – Women's Auxiliary Army). In the first half of 1944 over 100,000 personnel departed for Italy, where they formed the French Expeditionary Corps (CEF) under Juin's command. This left de Lattre with just three divisions. Once again, he opened a cadre training centre, this time at Douéra in Algiers. His manner at this time gave rise to the sobriquet Le Roi Jean (King John).

On 17 April 1944, de Gaulle informed General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson's Allied Force Headquarters (AFHQ) in Algiers that de Lattre would be in command of all French forces participating in Operation Anvil, the projected Allied landings in Southern France. He was also placed in charge of Operation Brassard, the invasion of Elba. This involved landing a force of about 12,000 under Général de brigade Joseph Magnan, and largely drawn from his 9th Colonial Infantry Division on Corsica. Increases in the size of the German garrison, a need to provide more amphibious warfare training for the assault troops, and a desire to minimise casualties and maximise the chance of success led to de Lattre securing a postponement of the operation from 25 May to 17 June. The rapid advance of the Allied forces, which captured Rome on 5 June, caused the need for the operation to be questioned, but the Germans showed no sign of immediately withdrawing from the area north of Rome, nor from Elba. Operation Brassard therefore went ahead, although Wilson cancelled the planned parachute assault by the 1st Parachute Chasseur Regiment, as the required transport aircraft were committed to the Italian campaign. Operation Brassard was successful, liberating the island in two days of hard fighting between 17 and 19 June.

As commander of Army B, de Lattre assisted in the preparations for Operation Anvil, which was renamed Operation Dragoon on 1 August 1944. He was successful in securing Allied agreement for an independent French command, although the II Corps, under Général de corps d'armée Edgard de Larminat, would operate as part of American Lieutenant General Alexander Patch's US Seventh Army in the initial stages, as would Army B until the American Sixth United States Army Group, under Lieutenant General Jacob L. Devers, became active. Juin handed over command of the CEF in Italy to de Lattre on 23 July, and its headquarters was absorbed into that of Army B, with Juin's chief of staff, General de brigade Marcel Carpentier, becoming de Lattre's. De Lattre embarked for France from Toronto on a Polish liner, the MS Batory. Accompanying him was Bernard. Fearing that at age sixteen he would soon become eligible for forced labour in Germany, Simmone and Bernard had fled to Algiers via Spain. Bernard was then sent to Douera for training, becoming one of the youngest soldiers in de Lattre's army.

The Operation Dragoon landings commenced on 15 August, and de Lattre came ashore the following evening. The American advance had proceeded faster than anticipated, and the 9e division d'infanterie coloniale to arrive early. In a characteristically aggressive move, de Lattre moved immediately on Toulon and Marseille in the hope that they could be secured before the Germans could organise their defence. He sent General de division Joseph de Goislard de Monsabert's 3rd Algerian Infantry Division to encircle Toulon while General de brigade Diego Brosset's 1st Motorised Infantry Division attacked along the coast and Magnan's 9th Colonial Infantry Division, which had been landed early, attacked in the middle. Toulon was encircled on 21 August, and the port was taken by the 9th Colonial Infantry Division five days later. Meanwhile, de Lattre had already moved on Marseille, which was reached by General de brigade Aimé Sudre's Combat Command 1 of the 1st Armoured Division on 21 August. De Lattre had not intended to rush the city, but Sudre's arrival sparked a popular uprising, enabling Combat Command 1 to reach the old port. The progress of operations against Toulon allowed de Lattre to release the 3rd Algerian Infantry Division to participate in the Battle of Marseille. The German garrison surrendered on 28 August, and a thanksgiving ceremony was held at Notre-Dame de la Garde the following day.

Lyon was taken by the 1st Motorised Infantry Division on 3 September, and on 12 September contact was made with Général de division Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque's 2nd Armoured Division, which had come from Normandy. This allowed Army B to officially become the French 1st Army on 25 September 1944. As summer turned to autumn and units moved into higher altitudes and latitudes of the Vosges, many of them still wearing summer uniforms, the troops began to feel the cold. This was especially true of the Army of Africa and Colonial Army units that made up the bulk of de Lattre's forces, which had come from warmer climates. Many of them had been fighting in Italy since early in the year, and had become exhausted by the rapid advance up the Rhône Valley. Equipment wore out even faster, and the French logistical system was stretched to its limit just to provide the army with its daily requirements of food, fuel and ammunition. On occasion they encountered an apathetic local population, and what de Lattre regarded as a dangerous sentiment arose among the North African troops that the French people should be making a bigger contribution.

De Lattre sought to address this by incorporating units of the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) into the Army, which would enable him to replace his losses and relieve the burden on African units of his Army. The French authorities were eager to bring the estimated 200,000 armed men of the FFI under control as soon as possible, but this was no easy task; the soldiers were suspicious of the discipline and reliability of FFI units, and resented the ranks and titles its leaders had accorded themselves. The FFI were also suspicious of the army, but by the end of the year 137,000 had enlisted in the French Army for the duration of the war. Uniforms and equipment had to be provided by the Americans, but while they agreed to equip security battalions and five regiments to replace North African ones, they were reluctant to provide equipment for the activation of new divisions. Eventually they relented, and among the reactivated divisions in February 1945 was de Lattre's old command, the 14th Infantry Division. Once agan, he opened a training centre, this time at Rouffach near Colmar.

Final campaigns

The Americans envisaged a passive role for the First Army in view of its logistical difficulties, but de Lattre pressed for a more active role. A combination of stubborn German resistance and bad weather brought operations in Alsace to a halt in October. On the eve of the resumption of his offensive in November, de Lattre learned that the Provisional Government wanted to take the 1st Armoured Division and 1st Infantry Division from him for an operation to clear German forces from the Royan pocket on the Gironde Estuary and reopen the port of Bordeaux. De Lattre appealed to Devers, who agreed to seek a postponement of the Bordeaux operation. He ultimately managed to get it postponed until April 1945. De Lattre's attack went ahead on 14 November. Belfort was taken on 25 November, but his attempt at encircling the German forces did not cut off any many as he hoped, although 17,000 prisoners were taken.

In December, the Battle of the Bulge briefly halted the Allied advance, and for a while it seemed they would have to abandon Alsace and Strasbourg. This was not a politically feasible option for de Gaulle, especially since Strasbourg had so recently been liberated. De Lattre assumed responsibility for the defence of Strasbourg on 5 January; he had already acted to save it on his own initiative and contrary to his orders. Despite heavy pressure from the advancing German forces, which came within 10 mi of the city, he managed to hold it. The German offensive was finally halted by the US VI Corps in the north and the 1st Motorised Division in the south. De Lattre then moved to eliminate the Colmar Pocket. For this operation, Devers placed the four US divisions of Major General Frank W. Milburn's US XXI Corps under de Lattre's command. Colmar was liberated on 2 February 1945. On 11 February, de Gaulle visited the city and invested de Lattre with the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour.

The First Army breached the Siegfried Line on 19 March 1945. On 31 March 1945, it crossed the Rhine at Speyer and Germersheim and advanced through the Black Forest to Karlsruhe and Stuttgart. The Danube was crossed on 22 April. Ulm lay 40 mi outside the First Army's zone, but meant a great deal to French people as the site of Napoleon's victory in the Battle of Ulm in 1805. On the way, they passed through Sigmaringen, to whence the heads of the Vichy government had fled in August 1944 to establish a government in exile in Germany, although de Lattre's forces did not reach it in time to capture Pétain or Pierre Laval. Ulm was taken by American and French units on 24 April, and they raised the tricolour over the city's old fort, as Napoleon had done. Devers ordered de Lattre to withdraw from the city, and with the mission accomplished, this was done. In a tribute to de Lattre on 13 May, Devers quipped: "For many months we have fought together – often on the same side."

On 8 May 1945, de Lattre flew to Berlin, where he went to headquarters of Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov for the official German surrender ceremony. Already there was Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, General Carl Spaatz and Admiral Sir Harold Burrough. No preparations had been made for a French representative, but some Russian women improvised a tricolour from a flag of Nazi Germany, a white bed sheet and blue mechanic's boiler suit. Tedder championed de Lattre's right to sign the document as the French representative, and as a compromise it was signed by Zhukov and Spaatz with Tedder and de Lattre as witnesses. On the nine copies that Zhukov signed first de Lattre was first witness while Tedder signed as first witness on the nine that Spaatz signed first.

On 15 June, de Lattre attended the first meeting of the Allied Control Council. The First Army was dissolved on 24 July, and he succeeded as Commander in Chief of the French Army of Occupation by Général de Corps d'Armée Marie-Pierre Koenig three days later. On 4 August 1945 de Lattre departed. Colour parties from each of the regiments of the First Army were drawn up along the banks of the Rhine at Kehl, and he saluted each one in turn.

Postwar
In July 1945, de Lattre was offered the position of Inspector General of the Army an honorific position he regarded as beneath the status that he had earned as commander of the First Army. He declined and asked to be retired instead. De Gaulle then offered to combine the position with that of the Chief of Staff of the French Army, and de Lattre accepted, assuming the post on 29 November 1945. His task was demobilising the wartime army and building a new one. Most of the officer corps had spent the war since 1940 in prisoner of war camps in Germany, and their training was out of date. To build a force that was both democratic and national, he resolved to create a conscript army rather than a professional one. To prepare the 1946 conscripts, de Lattre opened a dozen new training centres modelled on those he had created during the war at Opme, Douera and Rouffach, where they would be schooled in citizenship. To address the shortage of instructors, he devised a system whereby the national servicemen would train themselves. Careers in the post-war army would be open to the best regardless of their social status. In his personal selection, though, de Lattre tended to favour those who had served with the First Army.

De Lattre was abruptly relieved of his responsibilities as Chief of Staff in March 1947, although he remained Inspector General, and was elevated to Inspector General of the Armed Forces in the spring of 1948, and on 2 June 1948 he was made vice president of the Conseil supérieur de la guerre, positions which had little authority in peacetime. From September to November 1947, he led a diplomatic and economic mission to South America where he held numerous talks with presidents from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Brazil and high-ranking ministers, including French communities there. He also took part in several related economic and diplomatic conferences.

From 4 October 1948 to 13 December 1950, de Lattre was the first commander-in-chief of Western Union Defence Organisation ground forces in Western Europe. While in that post he often came into conflict with British Field Marshal Lord Montgomery, the Commander-in-Chief of the Western Union forces. The two clashed over many issues, the most important of which was whether the Allies were prepared to meet a Soviet attack on the Rhine, something Montgomery tried hard to get his government to accept. De Lattre insisted on speaking to Montgomery in French, although he had a good command of English. However, on the occasion of Montgomery's 63rd birthday in November 1950, Montgomery invited de Lattre to tea. Montgomery cut his birthday cake and gave de Lattre an extra slice for Bernard, who was then serving in French Indochina. What was a spontaneous gesture touched de Lattre deeply.

Indochina
From December 1950 to November 1951, de Lattre commanded French troops in Indochina during the First Indochina War. He was highly regarded by both his French subordinates and Việt Minh adversaries and has been described as the "Gallic version of [General Douglas] MacArthur – handsome, stylish, sometimes charming, yet egocentric to the point of megalomania" and "brilliant and vain" and "flamboyant". After de Lattre's arrival in Vietnam, Việt Minh General Giap proclaimed that his army would face "an adversary worthy of its steel". De Lattre's arrival raised the morale of French troops significantly and inspired his forces to inflict heavy defeats on the Việt Minh. He won three major victories at Vĩnh Yên, Mạo Khê and Yen Cu Ha and successfully defended the north of the country against the Việt Minh. At the Battle of Vĩnh Yên, he defeated 2 Việt Minh divisions, totalling 20,000 men under Giap's personal command. He personally took charge of the outnumbered French forces, flying in reinforcements and mustering every available aircraft for airstrikes against the massive Việt Minh formation. Giap retreated after three fierce days of combat that killed 6,000 and wounded 8,000. De Lattre had anticipated Giap's attacks and had reinforced French defences with hundreds of cement blockhouses and new airfields.

In March 1951, at the Battle of Mạo Khê near the port of Haiphong, de Lattre again defeated Giap, who had underestimated de Lattre's army's ability to deploy naval guns and to move reinforcements aboard assault boats on deep estuaries and canals. However, Bernard was killed in action in the Battle for Nam Định, in late May 1951. He had obeyed his father's orders to hold the town at all costs against three Việt Minh divisions. After three weeks of battle the French victory halted Giap's offensive in the Red River Delta. On 20 September 1951, de Lattre spoke at The Pentagon to request American aid and warned of the danger of the spread of communism throughout Southeast Asia if northern Vietnam fell completely to the Việt Minh. However, the United States was preoccupied with the Korean War. The US sent de Lattre some transport planes and trucks and other equipment: a "significant contribution" but "scarcely enough to turn the tide for France" in Vietnam.

Death
On 20 November 1951, illness forced de Lattre to return to Paris for medical treatment for prostate cancer. He entered the Clinique Maillot in Neuilly-sur-Seine on 18 December. His condition deteriorated in January. His last words before losing consciousness on 9 January were: "Where is Bernard?" He died on 11 January.

De Lattre was posthumously elevated to the dignity of Marshal of France by the President of France, Vincent Auriol, on the day of his funeral procession, 15 January 1952 at Notre-Dame de Paris, Les Invalides in presence of de Gaulle, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Montgomery. He was buried in a state funeral lasting five days, in what Life magazine described as the "biggest military funeral France had seen since the death of Marshal Foch in 1929". His body was moved through the streets of Paris in a series of funeral processions, with the coffin lying in state at four separate locations: his home, the chapel at Les Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe and before Notre-Dame. Those marching in the funeral procession included members of the French cabinet, judges, bishops and Western military leaders. The route included the Rue de Rivoli and the Champs-Élysées.

The processions went from the Arc de Triomphe to Notre-Dame and then from Notre-Dame to Les Invalides. The stage of the journey from the Arc de Triomphe to Notre-Dame took place in the evening, and cavalrymen from the Garde républicaine flanked the coffin on horseback bearing flaming torches. Walking behind the soldiers marching in the funeral processions was the lone figure of the Marshal's widow, Simonne de Lattre de Tassigny, who was dressed in black and prayed as she walked. Thousands of people lined the funeral route, forming crowds that were ten-deep. The pageantry included the tolling of bells, and flags being flown at half-mast. The final stage of the funeral was a journey of 400 km to his birthplace of Mouilleron-en-Pareds, in western France. There his 97-year-old father, Roger de Lattre, aged and blind, ran his hands over the ceremonial accoutrements on the coffin, which included the posthumously-awarded marshal's baton and his son's képi. The family line became extinct with his death. The coffin was lowered into the ground and the Marshal was laid to rest beside his only son, Bernard, who had been killed fighting under his father's command in Indochina about eight months earlier.

Honours and decorations
De Lattre was awarded the following awards and decorations:

Legacy
An annual military service, involving serving soldiers, veteran associations, and ceremonial carriage of the Marshal's baton, takes place at the graves of his family in his birthplace, Mouilleron-en-Pareds.

Publications

 * Histoire de la Première Armée française Rhin et Danube. Plon, Paris 1949
 * Ne pas subir. Writings between 1914 and 1952, Plon, Paris 1984
 * Reconquérir : 1944–1945. Texts gathered and presented by Jean-Luc Barré, Plon, Paris 1985
 * La Ferveur et le sacrifice : Indochine 1951. Texts gathered and presented by Jean-Luc Barré, Plon, Paris 1987

title: Jean de Lattre de Tassigny


text:
User:Chayves4u

Hey, all. My name is Chris and I live in Clear Lake, a southeast suburb of the great H-town, Texas. My hobbies including shopping, surfing the net and just going around town, especially Uptown and the Med Center. I'm 15 going on 16, and my AIM screen name is catsarenotdogs.

title: User:Chayves4u


text:
Akamai Technologies

Akamai Technologies, Inc. is an American delivery company that provides content delivery network (CDN), cybersecurity, DDoS mitigation, and cloud services. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it operates a worldwide network of servers whose capacity it rents to customers running websites and other web services.

History
The company was named after akamai, which means 'clever,' or more colloquially, 'cool' in Hawaiian. Co-founder Daniel M. Lewin found the term in a Hawaiian-English dictionary after a colleague's suggestion.

Akamai Technologies entered the 1998 MIT $50K competition with a business proposition based on their research on consistent hashing, and was selected as one of the finalists. By August 1998, they had developed a working prototype, and with the help of Jonathan Seelig and Randall Kaplan, they took steps to incorporate the company. Akamai Technologies was incorporated on August 20, 1998. In late 1998 and early 1999, a group of business professionals and scientists joined the founding team—most notably, Paul Sagan, former president of New Media for Time Inc., and George Conrades, former chairman and chief executive officer of BBN Corp. and senior vice president of US operations for IBM. Conrades became chief executive officer of Akamai in April 1999. The company launched its commercial service in April 1999 and was listed on the NASDAQ Stock Market from October 29, 1999. On July 1, 2001, Akamai was added to the Russell 3000 Index and Russell 2000 Index.

On September 11, 2001, co-founder Daniel M. Lewin died in the September 11 attacks at the age of 31 when he was stabbed by one of the hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center. He was seated closest to the hijackers and may have tried to stop them.

In 2005, Paul Sagan was named chief executive officer of Akamai, taking over from Conrades. Sagan worked to differentiate Akamai from its competitors by expanding its breadth of services. Under his leadership, it grew to $1.37 billion in revenue.

In July 2007, Akamai was added to the S&P 500 Index.

In 2013, co-founder Tom Leighton was elected chief executive officer, replacing Sagan.

On February 9, 2021, Akamai announced it would reorganize into two internal groups, Security Technology and Edge Technology. It also re-established the role of chief technology officer, and named Robert Blumofe to that role. Long-time chief security officer (CSO) Andy Ellis announced he would leave in March 2021.

Akamai's headquarters are in Kendall Square. It started in Technology Square and later expanded to multiple buildings in Cambridge Center. It consolidated its offices in a purpose-built building at 145 Broadway in December 2019.

Akamai Intelligent Edge Platform
The Akamai Intelligent Platform is a distributed cloud computing platform that operates worldwide, a network of over approximately 365,000 servers in more than 135 countries. These servers reside on roughly 1,350 of the world's networks, gathering real-time information about traffic, congestion, and trouble spots. Each Akamai server is equipped with proprietary software that uses complex algorithms to process requests from nearby users.

Content delivery process

The content delivery process begins with a user submitting a request to a browser. When a user enters a URL, a DNS request is triggered to Akamai's authoritative DNS and an IP address is retrieved. With the IP address, the browser can then directly contact the Akamai edge server for subsequent requests. In a content delivery network (CDN) structure, the domain name of the URL is translated by the mapping system into the IP address of an edge server to serve the content to the user.

Akamai delivers web content over its Intelligent Platform by transparently mirroring elements such as HTML, CSS, software downloads, and media objects from customers' servers. The Akamai server is automatically chosen depending on the type of content and the user's network location. The servers are located in more than 200 countries and territories. Receiving content from a server nearer to the user allows for faster downloads and less vulnerability to network congestion. Akamai claims to provide better scalability by delivering the content over the last mile from servers close to end-users, avoiding the middle-mile bottleneck of the Internet. The Download Delivery product line includes HTTP downloads for large downloadable objects, a customizable application for consumers, and analytics tools with metrics that monitor and report on the download process.

Peer-to-peer networking
In addition to using its own servers, Akamai delivers certain content from other end-users' computers, in the form of peer-to-peer networking.

Network Operations Command Center
Akamai's Network Operations Command Center (NOCC) proactively monitors and troubleshoots all servers in the global Akamai network and generates real-time statistics, providing a view of Internet traffic conditions on Akamai's servers and customers' websites.

State of the Internet
Akamai releases The State of the Internet, a quarterly a report based on data gathered from its Intelligent Platform, with statistics including connection speeds, broadband adoption, attack traffic, network connectivity, and mobile connectivity.

Internet visualization tools
Akamai's data visualization tools display how data is moving across the Internet in real-time, including global web conditions, malicious attack traffic, and Internet connectivity. Their net-usage indices also monitor global news consumption, industry-specific traffic, and mobile trends. Akamai also offers the Internet Visualization application, allowing users to see real-time data on their mobile devices.

OPEN Initiative
On October 9, 2013, Akamai announced its Open Initiative at the 2013 Akamai Edge Conference. OPEN allows customers and partners to develop and customize how they interact with the Akamai Intelligent Platform. Its key components include system and development operations integration, real-time big data integration, and a single-point user interface.

Plume Partnership
In January 2021, Akamai partnered with Plume, combining the Akamai Security and Personalization Services (SPS) mobile security suite and real-time threat intelligence with Plume's Consumer Experience Management (CEM) Platform.

Primary domains
In addition to about 60 other domains, Akamai Technologies' primary domains include:

Corporate

 * akamai.com

Content delivery domains

 * akamai.net
 * akamaiedge.net
 * akamaihd.net
 * edgesuite.net
 * edgekey.net
 * srip.net
 * akamaitechnologies.com
 * akamaitechnologies.fr

DNS servers

 * akamaitech.net
 * akadns.net
 * akagtm.org
 * akam.net
 * akamaistream.net
 * akamaiedge.net
 * akamaihd.net
 * akamai.com

Customers
On July 21, 1999, at Macworld Expo New York, Apple and Akamai announced a strategic partnership to build Apple's new media network, QuickTime TV (QTV), based on QuickTime Streaming Server. Both companies later announced that Apple had made a $12.5 million investment in the company the previous month. Apple continues to use Akamai as their primary CDN for a wide range of applications, including software downloads from Apple's Website, QuickTime movie trailers, and the iTunes Store.

In September 1999, Microsoft and Akamai formed a strategic relationship to incorporate Windows Media technology in Akamai's FreeFlow service, and to facilitate the porting of the FreeFlow product to the Windows platform; this relationship exists to this day. Microsoft Azure offers Akamai (along with Verizon) as options for its "standard" CDN service.

Arabic news network Al-Jazeera was an Akamai customer from March 28, 2003 to April 2, 2003, when Akamai decided to end the relationship, which the network's English-language managing editor claimed was due to "political pressure".

In June 2008, The NewsMarket teamed with Akamai to accelerate dynamic content and applications to global media ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

The BBC iPlayer uses Akamai to stream its recorded and live programs, focused through an XML playlist.

The entire China Central Television website, including its streaming video, has been hosted on Akamai's edge servers since late 2009. Hulu uses Akamai for hosting video. MIT OpenCourseWare utilizes Akamai's EdgeSuite for its CDN.

Trend Micro uses Akamai for their Housecall antivirus application.

Valve's Steam service uses Akamai's CDN for storing screenshots and icons uploaded by users.

Akamai provided streaming services to ESPN Star (India) during the course of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011.

Rackspace's Cloud Files use Akamai's CDN for storing its customer's files.

Akamai's other customers include Adobe Systems, Airbnb, AMD, AutoTrader.com, COS, ESPN, The Great Courses, Hewlett-Packard, Hilton Worldwide, IBM, J. C. Penney, Jehovah's Witnesses, MTV Networks, NASA, National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, NBC Sports, Pearson Education, Red Bull GmbH, Red Hat, Sony PlayStation and Yahoo!.

Nintendo uses Akamai's Media Delivery Solutions for the Nintendo Switch Online service, and in their mobile apps such as Super Mario Run.

Acquisitions

 * On February 10, 2000, Akamai acquired Network24 Communications for 621,000 shares of common stock and $12.5 million in cash.
 * On April 20, 2000, Akamai acquired InterVU Inc. for 10.0 million shares of common stock.
 * On July 25, 2000, Akamai acquired CallTheShots, Inc., for an aggregate purchase price of $3.7 million.
 * On June 10, 2005, Akamai acquired Speedera Networks, Inc. for 10.6 million shares of Akamai common stock and options to purchase 1.7 million shares of Akamai common stock.
 * On December 13, 2006, Akamai acquired Nine Systems, Inc., for an aggregate purchase price of $157.5 million.
 * On March 13, 2007, Akamai acquired Netli Inc. (Netli), for an aggregate purchase price of $154.4 million.
 * On April 12, 2007, Akamai acquired Red Swoosh Inc. for an aggregate purchase price of $18.7 million.
 * On November 3, 2008, Akamai acquired aCerno Inc., for an aggregate purchase price of $90.8 million.
 * On June 10, 2010, Akamai acquired Velocitude LLC, for an aggregate purchase price of $12 million.
 * On February 7, 2012, Akamai acquired Blaze Software, Inc., for an aggregate purchase price of $19.3 million.
 * On March 6, 2012, Akamai acquired Cotendo, Inc., for an aggregate purchase price of $278.9 million.
 * On September 13, 2012, Akamai acquired FastSoft, Inc., for an aggregate purchase price of $14.4 million.
 * On December 4, 2012, Akamai acquired Verivue, Inc., for an aggregate purchase price of $30.9 million.
 * On November 8, 2013, Akamai acquired Velocius Networks for an aggregate purchase price of $4.3 million.
 * In February 2014, Akamai acquired cyber security provider Prolexic Technologies for an aggregate purchase price of $390 million.
 * In February 2015, Akamai acquired Xerocole Inc., a domain name system technology company.
 * On April 6, 2015, Akamai acquired Octoshape, a cloud OTT IPTV service provider, for an undisclosed amount.
 * On November 2, 2015, Akamai acquired Bloxx, a provider of Secure Web Gateway (SWG) technology, for an undisclosed amount.
 * On September 28, 2016, Akamai acquired Concord Systems, a provider of technology for the high performance processing of data at scale, for an undisclosed amount.
 * On October 4, 2016, Akamai acquired Soha Systems, an enterprise secure access delivered as a service provider, for an undisclosed amount.
 * On December 19, 2016, Akamai acquired Cyberfend, a bot and automation detection solutions provider, for an undisclosed amount.
 * On March 29, 2017, Akamai acquired SOASTA, a digital performance management company based in Mountain View, CA, for an undisclosed all-cash amount.
 * On October 11, 2017, Akamai acquired Nominum, a carrier-grade DNS and DHCP provider and one of the major players in the creation of the modern DNS, for an undisclosed all-cash amount.
 * On January 24, 2019, Akamai acquired CIAM provider Janrain.
 * In October 2019, Akamai agreed to acquire security software provider ChameleonX for $20 million.
 * On October 27, 2020, Akamai acquired IoT and mobile security provider Asavie.
 * On February 1, 2021, Akamai acquired Inverse Inc. a Montreal Canadian based security company making an open source Network Access Controller (NAC) called PacketFence.
 * On September 29, 2021, Akamai Technologies acquired Guardicore for $600 million.
 * On February 15, 2022, Akamai acquired Linode for $900 million.
 * On May 7, 2024, Akamai announced its intent to acquire API Security vendor for $450 million.

Litigation
One of Akamai's patents covers delivering electronic data using a CDN. Internet Web site proprietors (content providers) contract with Akamai to deliver their sites' content to individual Internet users. The patented method permits large files, such as video and music files, to be accessed more quickly.

Akamai's patent was written in a way that called for or permitted actions by multiple persons or entities, such as the content-provider customer and the company providing the CDN service. Akamai's competitor Limelight operated its allegedly infringing service in that manner—it performed most steps of the patented process, and its customers performed a so-called tagging step. Akamai sued Limelight for patent infringement, but the court ruled that a method patent could be infringed upon only when a single actor performed all the steps, overturning a $40 million jury verdict in Akamai's favor.

The case reached the Supreme Court, which returned it to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit; however, with an invitation to re-evaluate its rule, if it chose to do so, that all the steps of a method had to be performed by a single actor for there to be infringement. On remand, the Federal Circuit considered the matter en banc (all active circuit judges) and modified its rule. It now held that a patent could also be directly infringed upon if "an alleged infringer conditions participation in an activity or receipt of a benefit upon performance of a step or steps of a patented method and establishes the manner or timing of that performance". On that basis, the Federal Circuit reinstated the $40 million jury verdict, saying that "Akamai presented substantial evidence demonstrating that Limelight conditions its customers' use of its CDN upon its customers' performance of" the steps that Limelight does not itself perform. It was considered a substantial change in patent law.

Controversies
In 2013, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged a former executive at Akamai Technologies for illegally tipping non-public information about the company's financial predicament as part of the insider trading scheme operated by now-imprisoned Galleon Management hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam.

The National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation have reportedly used Facebook's Akamai CDN to collect information on Facebook users. This report appears to show intelligence analysts intercepting communications between Facebook and its CDN provider, but does not indicate Akamai as being complicit in this process.

According to researchers from the Universities of Cambridge and California-Berkeley, University College London, and International Computer Science Institute-Berkeley, Akamai has been blocking access to web sites for visitors using Tor. This feature, known as 'network lists,' is optional for and implemented by customers of Akamai, and is a feature common to many major IT vendors that provide network security feeds, such as Emerging Threats, which provides such a feed for free.

Key scientific publications
These papers in scientific conferences and journals describe Akamai's technology in greater detail:

 * Karger, D., Lehman, E., Leighton, T., Panigrahy, R., Levine, M., Lewin, D. Consistent Hashing and Random Trees: Distributed Caching Protocols for Relieving Hot Spots on the World Wide Web. ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, 1997, pp. 654–663.
 * J. Dilley, B. Maggs, J. Parikh, H. Prokop, R. Sitaraman, and B. Weihl. "Globally Distributed Content Delivery", IEEE Internet Computing, September/October 2002, pp. 50–58.
 * Bruce Maggs and Ramesh Sitaraman. "Algorithmic nuggets in content delivery". ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, Volume=45, Issue=3, 2015.
 * F. Chen, R. Sitaraman, and M. Torres. "End-User Mapping: Next Generation Request Routing for Content Delivery". ACM SIGCOMM conference, Aug 2015.
 * Kyle Schomp, Onkar Bhardwaj, Eymen Kurdoglu, Mashooq Muhaimen, and Ramesh K. Sitaraman. "Akamai DNS: Providing Authoritative Answers to the World's Queries", ``ACM SIGCOMM conference, Aug 2020.
 * D. Gillman, Y. Lin, B. Maggs and R. K. Sitaraman. "Protecting Websites from Attack with Secure Delivery Networks", IEEE Computer, vol. 48, no. 4, pp. 26–34, Apr. 2015.

Notable people

 * Martin McKeay (born 1971), computer security expert and blogger

title: Akamai Technologies