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Cuirassier

Cuirassiers were cavalry equipped with a cuirass, sword, and pistols. Cuirassiers first appeared in mid-to-late 16th century Europe as a result of armoured cavalry, such as men-at-arms and demi-lancers discarding their lances and adopting pistols as their primary weapon. In the later part of the 17th century, the cuirassier lost his limb armour and subsequently wore only the cuirass (breastplate and backplate), and sometimes a helmet. By this time, the sword or sabre had become his primary weapon, with pistols relegated to a secondary function.

Cuirassiers achieved increased prominence during the Napoleonic Wars and were last fielded in the opening stages of World War I (1914–1918). A number of countries continue to use cuirassiers as ceremonial troops.

The French term cuirassier means "one with a cuirass" (cuirasse), the breastplate armour which they wore.

16th and 17th centuries

The first cuirassiers were similar in appearance to the fully armoured Late Medieval man-at-arms. They wore three-quarter armour that covered the entire upper body as well as the front half of the legs down to the knee. The head was protected by a close helm, burgonet, or lobster-tailed pot helmet, usually worn with a gorget for the neck. The torso was protected by a breast and back plate, sometimes reinforced by a plackart. The arms and shoulders were fully armoured with pauldrons, rerebraces, elbow couters, and vambraces. Armoured gauntlets were often abandoned, particularly for the right hand, as they interfered with the loading of pistols. Long tassets, instead of a combination of short tassets with cuisses, protected the front of the thighs and knees, and riding boots were substituted for lower leg armour (greaves and sabatons). Weapons included a pair of pistols in saddle holsters (these were the primary weapons instead of a lance), a sword, and sometimes a "horseman's pick" (a type of war hammer). By the mid-16th century, Barding (horse armour) largely fell into disuse on the battlefield. Therefore, it was more commonly used for ceremonial purposes such as parades or festivals.

The armour of a cuirassier was very expensive; in England, in 1629, a cuirassier's equipment cost four pounds and 10 shillings (equivalent to £0 in ), whilst a harquebusier's (a lighter type of cavalry) was a mere one pound and six shillings (equivalent to £0 in ).

During the latter half of the 16th century, the heavy "knightly" lance gradually fell out of use perhaps because of the widespread adoption of the infantry pike. Also, the lance required a great amount of practice to perfect its use, whilst proficiency in the use of firearms was considerably more easily acquired. The lancer or demi-lancer, when he had abandoned his lance, became the pistol-armed cuirassier or reiter.

The adoption of the pistol as the primary weapon led to the development of the stately caracole tactic, where cuirassiers fired their pistols at the enemy, then retired to reload whilst their comrades advanced in turn to maintain the firing. Following some initial successes, this tactic proved to be extremely ineffective as infantry, with superior firearms and numbers, could easily outgun the cuirassiers. The change from cavalry reliant on firearms to shock-capable close combat cavalry reliant mainly on the sword was often attributed to Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden in the 1620s and early 1630s. Gustavus Adolphus also reduced the number of ranks in a cavalry formation from the previously usual six to ten, for pistol-based tactics, to three to suit his sword-based shock tactics, or as a partial remedy to the frequent numerical inferiority of his cavalry arm.

Only two cuirassier regiments were raised during the English Civil War, the Lifeguard of the Earl of Essex and the 'London lobsters,' though individuals within other regiments did serve in full armour. With the refinement of infantry firearms, especially the introduction of the powerful musket, the usefulness of the protection afforded by full armour became greatly lessened. By the mid-17th century, the fully armoured cuirassier was becoming increasingly anachronistic. "It will kill a man to serve in a whole cuirass" commented a late 17th century observer. The cuirassier lost his limb armour and entered the 18th century with just the breast and backplate.

18th and 19th centuries
Body armour, was restricted to a cuirass, which fell in and out of use during the 18th century; for example British cavalry entered the War of the Spanish Succession without body armour, although they readopted it during the conflict. Cuirassiers played a prominent role in the armies of Austria, and of Frederick the Great of Prussia. By the time of the French Revolutionary Wars, few heavy cavalry regiments, except those of Austria, wore the cuirass on campaign. The twelve Austrian cuirassier regiments in existence between 1768 and 1802 (when the number was reduced) unusually wore only a front plate. This reduced the burden of the weight carried by the individual trooper, but left his back unprotected during a swirling cavalry melee.

Most heavy cavalry from c. 1700 to c. 1785 wore the tricorne hat, which evolved into the bicorne, or cocked hat, towards the close of the century. In the first two decades of the 19th century, helmets, often of hardened leather with brass reinforcement (though the French used iron-skulled helmets for their cuirassiers), replaced the bicorne hat.

A resurgence of armoured cavalry took place in France under the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte, who increased the number of armoured regiments from one to, ultimately, sixteen (fourteen cuirassier regiments plus two Carabiniers-à-Cheval regiments).

During the first few decades of the 19th century most of the major states of Europe, except Austria which had retained its armoured cavalry, readopted the cuirass for some of their heavy cavalry in emulation of the French. The Russians fielded two divisions of armoured cavalry, but most other states armoured a few senior regiments: Prussia three regiments, the Kingdom of Saxony three, the Kingdom of Westphalia two, Spain one (Coraceros Españoles) and the Duchy of Warsaw one. The three Household Cavalry regiments of the British Army (1st and 2nd Life Guards and Royal Horse Guards) adopted cuirasses shortly after the Napoleonic Wars as a part of their full dress uniforms, but never had occasion to wear the armour in battle.. However as late as 1887 these regiments were still wearing cuirasses on maneuvers in "field day order".

Cuirassiers were generally the senior branch of the mounted portion of an army, retaining their status as heavy cavalry—"big men on big horses". Their value as a heavy striking force during the Napoleonic Wars ensured that the French, Russian, and Prussian armies continued to use cuirassier regiments throughout the 19th century. The Austrian cuirassiers were abolished in 1868.

For the reasons of both climate and cost, cuirassiers of the 19th century type seldom appeared outside of Europe and Latin America. However Ranjit Singh's Sikh Army (the Khalsa) of the 1830s included two regiments of cuirassiers equipped and armed in French fashion. Four hundred carabinier cuirasses were imported from France while helmets and uniforms were manufactured in Wazirabad.

Effectiveness during the Napoleonic Wars
Though the armour could not protect against contemporary flintlock musket fire, it could deflect shots fired from long range, stop ricochets, and offer protection from all but very close-range pistol fire. More importantly, in an age which saw cavalry used in large numbers, the breastplates (along with the helmets) provided excellent protection against the swords and lances of opposing cavalry and infantry equipped with bayonets, and, on a much smaller scale, polearms (including sergeants equipped with spontoons and halberds). It also had some psychological effect for the wearer (effectively making the cuirassier more willing to plunge into the thick of fighting) and the enemy (adding intimidation), while it also added weight to a charge, especially in cavalry versus cavalry actions. Napoleonic French cuirasses were originally intended to be proof against three musket shots at close range; however, this was never achieved in practice. The regulations eventually recognised this, and cuirasses were subsequently only expected to be proof against one shot at long range.

The utility of this armour was sometimes disputed. Prussian cuirassiers had abandoned the armoured cuirass before the Napoleonic Wars, but were reissued with it in 1814. During this period, a single British cavalry regiment (Royal Horse Guards) wore cuirasses during the Netherlands campaign of 1794, using breastplates taken from store. The Austrian cuirassiers traded protection for mobility by wearing only the half-cuirass (without back plate) and helmet. Napoleon believed it sufficiently useful that he had cuirassier-style armour issued to his two carabinier regiments after the Battle of Wagram. The Russians, having abandoned Austrian-style half-cuirasses in 1801, reissued full cuirasses in 1812 for all Army and Guard cuirassier regiments, with troops receiving them during the summer 1812 and wearing cuirasses at Borodino. After the Battle of Tarutino the Pskov dragoon regiment received captured French cuirasses and was officially upgraded to a cuirassier regiment. Despite being metallurgically more advanced than the plate armour of old, the Napoleonic era cuirass was still quite cumbersome and hot to wear in warm weather; however, the added protection that it gave to the wearer and the imposing appearance of an armoured cavalryman were factors favouring its retention.

Franco-Prussian War
The last occasions when cuirassiers played a major tactical role as shock cavalry wearing traditional armour was during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871). The French cuirassiers numbered 11 regiments at the outbreak of war but had not seen active service since the Battle of Waterloo. A brigade comprising the 6th and 9th Regiments had served in the Crimean War but had not actually encountered the enemy. Accordingly, the prospect of action against the Prussian Army, which included 10 cuirassier regiments of its own, was seen as an opportunity for a strongly traditional branch of the French cavalry to prove its continuing relevance. In the event, in a series of massed charges against Prussian infantry and artillery at Froeschwiller and Rezonville, the French cuirassiers suffered very heavy losses for little return.

19th and 20th centuries

In 1914, the German Army still retained cuirassiers (ten regiments including the Gardes du Corps and the Guards Cuirassiers); as did the French (twelve regiments) and the Russian (four regiments, all of the Imperial Guard) armies. The Austrians had dispensed with breastplates in 1860 and formally abolished the twelve Kuirassier regiments as the heavy cavalry branch of their army in 1868. Influenced by the French example, the Belgian Army created two regiments of cuirassiers in 1830 and then for reasons of economy they were converted to lancers in 1863.

By the end of the 19th century, the German and Russian cuirassiers used the breastplates only as part of their peacetime parade dress, but the French regiments still wore the cuirass and plumed helmet (both with cloth covers) on active service during the first few weeks of World War I. Amongst ceremonial units the Spanish Escolta Real (Royal Escort) Squadron, the Argentinian Presidential Bodyguard, and the Italian Cuirassier (Corazzieri) Corps all wore cuirasses as part of their mounted full dress in the early 20th century.

The retention of cuirasses as part of their field uniform by the French Army in 1914 reflected the historic prestige of this branch of the cavalry, dating back through the Franco-Prussian War to the campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars. Before the war, it had been argued within the army that the cuirass should be limited to parade dress, but upon mobilisation in 1914 the only concession made to active service was the addition of a cover of brown or blue cloth over the shining steel and brass of the metal equipment to make the wearer less visible. Within a few weeks, most French regiments stopped wearing the cuirass, as it served no real purpose in this new war. It was not however formally withdrawn until October 1915.

The Russian and German cuirassiers ceased to exist when the Imperial armies in both countries were disbanded; respectively in 1917 (due to the Russian Revolution) and in 1918 (due to the Treaty of Versailles). The French cuirassiers continued in existence after World War I, although without their traditional armour and reduced in numbers to only the six regiments that had been most decorated during the war. Five of these units had achieved their distinctions serving as "cuirassiers à pied" or dismounted cavalry in the trenches. The surviving cuirassier regiments were amongst the first mounted cavalry in the French Army to be mechanised during the 1930s. One cuirassier regiment still forms part of the French Army in the modern day.

Cuirassiers today

 * The French army maintains one historic cuirassier regiment as a mechanised armoured unit: the 12e Régiment de Cuirassiers based at Olivet.
 * The Italian army maintains the Cuirassiers' Regiment (Italian: Reggimento Corazzieri) as the honour guard of the President of the Italian Republic. They are part of the Carabinieri.
 * The Spanish army maintains a cavalry detachment as part of the Spanish Royal Guard, who wear cuirasses and are sometimes known as cuirassiers (Spanish: Coraceros). Their proper title is Royal Escort Squadron (Escuadrón de Escolta Real).
 * The British army maintains cuirassiers through the Household Cavalry, they wear cuirasses as part of their parade equipment on formal occasions but were never formally designated as cuirassiers, instead retaining the titles Lifeguards and Horse Guards.
 * The Chilean army maintains an armored brigade which uses the title 1st Cuirassiers Armored Brigade.
 * The Argentine army maintains the 7th Tank Cavalry, which also uses the title of Colonel Ramon Estomba's "Cuirassiers" . In addition the 4th Reconnaissance Cavalry Regiment (Mountain) retains the title of Coraceros General Lavalle (General Lavalle's Cuirassiers). This latter regiment maintains a mounted fanfare and ceremonial escort in the Argentine cuirassier uniform of 1910, although the body armor of that period is no longer worn.

Cuirassier harness evolution
The development of firearms, which reduced the effectiveness of expensive heavy armour, led to a considerable reduction of the size and complexity of the latter. This form of protection was reduced in the latter half of the 17th century to the breastplate and the helmet, both of which eventually became largely decorative against projectiles but still retained their effectiveness against swords, lances, bayonets, and other edged weapons.

title: Cuirassier


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Eric VI of Denmark

Eric VI Menved (1274 – 13 November 1319) was King of Denmark (1286–1319). A son of King Eric V and Agnes of Brandenburg, he became king in 1286 at age 12, when his father was murdered on 22 November by unknown assailants. On account of his age, his mother ruled for him until 1294.

Regency
Eric Menved's rule was a central period during the "Age of Decay" in Denmark 1241–1340. His early reign – during which he was led by his mother and her German relatives – was affected by the unrest and wars that followed the murder of his father.

The first act of the new government was to settle the case of the former king's murder at a court convened at Nyborg at Whitsun 1287. Twenty-seven honorable men were appointed to decide the case. Marshal Stig Andersen Hvide and Jacob Nielsen, Count of Halland and seven others were accused. After a one-day trial, the jury found all the accused guilty. The properties and incomes of the condemned were declared forfeit and they were exiled from Denmark on pain of death. Even the pope became involved when he excommunicated those who had been judged guilty.

The verdict was questionable on several counts. None of the accused could be proven to be in the immediate vicinity when the king was stabbed to death. The accused were not allowed to swear their innocence before the court or have other honorable men swear as to their innocence, a right granted to them by law. Despite the unclear circumstances surrounding Eric V's death, the jury only took one day to arrive at a guilty verdict. The accused had all belonged to Erik V's inner circle; it is uncertain what they were supposed to gain by the king's death.

For these reasons historians Erik Arup (1876–1951) and Hugo Yrwing (1908–2002) labelled the verdict as a miscarriage of justice. They consider the murder a result of a power struggle between two noble factions, one led by Marsk Stig and one led by Valdemar, Duke of South Jutland. Duke Valdemar had fallen from grace in 1283, but quickly rose in influence after 1288. They suggest that Valdemar and his allies conspired to kill the king and then to successfully cast suspicion on their rivals at court. Another historian, Kai Hørby (1935–1993) pointed out that the murder might well have its origin in the dynastic struggle for the throne of Denmark. There were others who thought they had equal or better claim to the throne than Eric V, such as Norway's king, Eirik Magnusson and his brother and successor Haakon V who were grandsons of Eric IV of Denmark.

Andersen and the others fled to Norway where they were welcomed by King Eirik who gladly supported enemies of the Danish king. He gave Andersen the fortress of Kongshelle near the border with Denmark. Andersen became a pirate who harried the coast of Denmark for years. The exiles managed to build forts on Samsø, Hjelm, Sprogø, and Helgenæs. No ship was safe and no coastal town immune from Stig Andersen Hvide. The high point of his depredations occurred in 1289 when he landed with a small Norwegian army at Stubbekøbing on Falster. Wizlau II of Rűgen, Denmark's regent, used his Wendish fleet to drive Andersen back to Norway. Andersen's activities sparked four decades of conflict and warfare between the Nordic kingdoms.

Reign
At the same time an ecclesiastical conflict appeared because of the ambitious new Archbishop of Lund Jens Grand who supported the outlaws, his kinsmen, despite his oath to support the king. Once his selection was confirmed by the pope, Bishop Jens reneged on his oath of allegiance. "It doesn't matter to me whether Duke Valdemar, a Jew, a Turk, a pagan, or the devil himself is King of Denmark so long as it is neither Erik nor his brother Christopher," he said. Bishop Jens gave a piece of church land at Hundehals to the exiles to build a fortress and entertained them at his table in public. The king could not tolerate this and ordered Bishop Jens' arrest in 1294. The archbishop was sent to Duke Christopher in chains to be close confined in Søborg's "dark tower". After some months in terrible conditions, the king sent a messenger to Bishop Jens to see if he would swear allegiance again and promise to seek no revenge for his captivity. "Rather than bend to his will, I would rather that the king sliced me apart joint by joint than submit to his commands," the bishop replied. After two years in awful conditions, Bishop Jens managed to escape with the help of a kitchen servant. Bishop Jens fled directly to Rome to lay his case before the Holy See. The pope immediately excommunicated the king and put all of Denmark under interdict until the kingdom paid Archbishop Jens Grand 49,000 silver marks. Denmark could not or would not raise such a sum and languished under interdict for four years. In 1302 King Erik wrote to the pope asking for mercy for himself and the kingdom which had been without any of the sacraments for years. Promising to do whatever the pope said, King Erik humbled himself in public. Pope Boniface VIII – negotiated by Martin (Morten Mogensen) of Dacia – agreed to reduce the fine by 80%, interdict and excommunication were lifted and Archbishop Jens accepted another papal assignment which kept him out of King Erik's hair.

Erik had a great love of tournaments, and money poured out of the treasury for his entertainments. At one knightly tournament at Rostock, wine, mead, and beer "flowed" for an entire month for any who wished to drink. The king paid for the upkeep of all the horses and livestock at the tournament including a mountain of oats for any and all. He crafted new and unusual taxes to squeeze peasants and nobles alike. When the tax money didn't cover his expenses, the king borrowed money heavily from various German nobles, going so far as to mortgage pieces of Denmark to them. Erik sent several expeditions to Germany to win new territories in an attempt to recover Denmark's position as a Scandinavian great power. Through alliances with German princes, among them the Duke of Mecklenburg he managed to become the formal lord of several Hanseatic cities which meant fighting Brandenburg and some other minor states. He also intervened in Sweden in order to support his brother-in-law against the opposition in 1305 and again in 1307–1309 while fighting in Germany at the same time, hiring German troops to turn the tide in his favor.

In 1312 famine struck Denmark and when the king demanded the same taxes as before, the peasants on Zealand rebelled. Erik put down the rebellion fiercely, hanging hundreds of peasants outside Copenhagen. The very next year at the Viborg Assembly (Danish: landsting) the peasant and nobles declared open rebellion against the king. Those who refused to aid the rebels were hanged from their own house beams. Erik put down the rebellion with mercenary troops from Germany, ravaging as far north as Randers. The king began a round of fortress building with peasant slave labor, one of the penalties imposed for rebellion. The nobles involved were exiled or executed and their property taken by the crown. Four such strongholds were constructed; Bygholm in Horsens, Kalø north of Aarhus, Borgvold in Viborg and Ulstrup east of Struer. Niels Brok was executed for hiding Rane Jonsen (1254–1294) who had aided those who murdered Erik's father at Finderup.

In 1313 King Erik surrendered all crown property in southern Jutland to the Duke for cash. From 1315 to 1317 the crops failed yet again. There was nothing left to tax. The treasury was empty. In 1317 Erik mortgaged all of the island of Funen to Gerhard III, Count of Holstein-Rendsburg and John II, Count of Holstein-Kiel for 200 mounted knights. Before he died, Erik also mortgaged Skåne to German nobles for money to continue his extravagances. As a last blow to Danish pride, Henry II, Lord of Mecklenburg captured the Danish fortress at Rostock.

When Erik died in 1319 having survived all his 14 children; Denmark was bankrupt. He was succeeded by his younger brother Christopher (1276–1332) who ruled Denmark as King Christopher II between 1320 and 1326.

Judgements
Traditionally the rule of Eric VI has been regarded one of the few bright spots of the period because of his attempt to recover Denmark's far-flung empire. He has been hailed in Danish romantic literature. Viewed today, however, his policies began the dissolution of the Danish empire in the Baltic and northern Europe that followed during the next generation.

The nickname of King Eric has been much discussed. A popular explanation is that it is an abbreviation of his alleged favourite oath (“ved alle hellige mænd” – Eng.: by all holy men). Another explanation is that it derives from the elder Danish “menvett” (Eng.: bird of ill omen).

Children and family
Married in June 1296 to Ingeborg Magnusdotter of Sweden. She was the daughter of King Magnus III of Sweden and sister of Birger, King of Sweden. The couple had eight sons who died as children, as well as six miscarriages, although the sources differ between eight and fourteen children: her many pregnancies led to miscarriages, or the birth of children who died soon after.
 * Valdemar (d. 1302)
 * Eric
 * Magnus
 * An unnamed son (b. & d. 1318); according to tradition, Queen Ingeborg was so happy to finally have a live born child, she took the boy out for a carriage ride to show him off, holding him out the window, where she lost her grip on him, and he fell and broke his neck. Queen Ingeborg subsequently entered the Convent of St. Clare in Roskilde where she died the following year.

Evidence also indicate Eric VI may have had an illegitimate son,or possibly a son of Ingeborg later in life named Erik Sjællandsfar (ca. 1300–1364) at Orebygård on Zealand, buried in Roskilde Cathedral with a crown. However, other theories indicate that he was a son of King Valdemar IV of Denmark.

Other sources

 * Arup, Erik (1951) Danmarks historie (Copenhagen: Hagerup)
 * Fagerland, Tor Einar (2006) Krigføring og politisk kultur i nordisk middelalder, (NTNU)
 * Hørby, Kai (1989) Gyldendals og Politikens -danmarkshistorie. 1250-1400 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal)

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

title: Eric VI of Denmark


text:
Talk:Bowls

1234567890
You can talk about this sport that is played on a lawn, maybe find a compromise to the edit war ? Slowart (talk) 02:41, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * There isn't an edit war - there is a history of petty vandalism that is cleaned up as it is found. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 02:55, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Whether bowls is a sport is debatable, but it is undoubtedly a lawn game, the change from 'sport to 'lawn game' should remain. 82.153.127.229 (talk) 15:22, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * "Whether bowls is a sport is debatable" No it isn't "it is undoubtedly a lawn game" No it isn't "the change from 'sport to 'lawn game' should remain" No, it shouldn't. Three strikes there. -- Mattinbgn (talk)

Who do you think you are, to be making such judgements?21:50, 4 April 2012 (UTC)Alley baba (talk) 12:08, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
 * A 'sport' is all forms of competitive physical activity. A 'lawn game' is any outdoor game that can be played on a lawn. So it's both right ? Slowart (talk) 00:43, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
 * There are some options, if the edit war continues. For starters we can ask that the page be semi-protected so that only autoconfirmed_users can edit. That would mean you need an account to edit the page, no more anonymous editing. Slowart (talk) 16:52, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Bowls is not played on lawn but on sports turf. In New Zealand it's not even played on grass but cotula, a dense low-growing weed. We neeed to get with the modern terminology here. At the end of the day bowls is a sport because World Bowls say it's a sport as in the foundation document "Laws of the Sport of Bowls". Xtie (talk) 21:03, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree Xtie and I'm asking that anonymous users be blocked from editing. I think the undo button is getting worn out.Slowart (talk) 00:25, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

 * There is at least one source for "lawn game" -, and one for "sport" - . I don't think it needs to be either-or, it can be both. And all disputes over content should be referred to reliable sources rather than the opinions of Wikipedia editors. This article is lacking sources, even though there are plenty of books on the subject.  SilkTork  ✔Tea time  23:27, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
 * No, it can't. The term "Lawn game" presupposes a non-competitive pastime rather than a competitive sport - which it is at all levels. The overwhelming weight of sources suggest bowls is a sport. We are indulging an IP whose aim to have the term "lawn game" in the article to mock the claims of bowls to be considered a sport. He/she is a troll and a vandal and you are basically indulging him/her by giving his/her argument any credence whatsoever. WP:RBI is how this should be dealt with. Your red herring about the lack of sources for the article is irrelevant. Feel free to remove any unsourced content you wish - bowls will still remain a sport. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 09:14, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

 SilkTork  ✔Tea time  23:02, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Sadly croquet is now dealing with this nonsense. Xtie (talk) 22:38, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 14 July 2012
Please replace:

The exercise is then repeated for the next end, a game of bowls typically being of twenty one ends

with:

The exercise is then repeated for the next end, a game of bowls typically finishing when a player or team has scored twenty one points.

Additional: There is actually no limit to the number of ends that may be played in a game, only a target number of points to achieve to win the game.

DaveHornby (talk) 19:02, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
 * ❌ After a few more edits you can change it yourself.--Canoe1967 (talk) 03:03, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

uneven?
played on a pitch which may be flat (for "flat-green bowls") or convex or uneven. What is the nature of the unevenness? - clarification needed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.85.36.229 (talk) 07:06, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

a crown green bowling green is supposed to be a surface which rises up from the outer edges to a 'crown' in the middle. Most of the crown greens have lumps and bumps (swillies) in their make up which make the play trickier, these are down to the natural 'settling' of the surface.

DeeGee58 (talk) 13:12, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 30 August 2012
Hi my name is Debbie Smith. YOU have in your archive that Charmain Smith won one gold medal and one silver medal in 1976 Toronto Olympiad lawns bowls for visually impaired. You need to make to corrections to your information. It is Clare Smith(my mother) and she won 2 gold medals. 1 in singles and 1 in pairs. I can confirm this information. I would appreciate it if you would please correct this information. Yours sincerely Debbie Smith.

101.178.174.28 (talk) 11:08, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done for now: If you can "confirm this information", why don't you do it now with a reliable source? A boat   that can float!  (watch me float!)  12:48, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

edit request
Please add to the see also section
 * Disabled lawn bowls player classification

-- 70.24.247.121 (talk) 07:56, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

 * ✅ — Dianna (talk) 17:35, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Name of Sport on Wikipedia
Is there any background/history as to the naming of this sport as Bowls on Wikipedia as compared to Lawn Bowls or Lawn Bowling? As a person new to Wikepedia searching and editing, it appears that the hierarchy stems from Bowling to the variants including Bowls (Lawn Bowling), ten pin bowling etc. and it may have been clearer if the distinction existed on pages referring to Lawn Bowls/Lawn Bowling. MasterTTFV (talk) 05:23, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

 * I might have expected to see "Lawn bowls" used as the title. It maybe seems that little bit more correct. But "Bowls" is a unique name for the sport anyway. Perhaps now that so many bowling greens are synthetic, the use of "Lawn" has become inappropriate. "Tennis" used to be "lawn tennis", but very little is played on grass these days, and we all accept "Tennis" as the name. I've never heard the sport called "Lawn bowling". HiLo48 (talk) 07:00, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
 * The sport is called, simply "bowls". That is what the World Bowls Board calls it, that is its name. I know Wikipedia has a habit of ignoring the views of peak bodies on what they call their sport. Let's not make the same mistake here. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 07:16, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

 * Sounds good to me. HiLo48 (talk) 07:29, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the responses. There are redirects in place from lawn bowls so I can see how it makes sense to use Bowls.  Perhaps a Bowls Wikiproject could be set up to help consolidate existing pages and provide a structure for ongoing bowls articles on Wikipedia. MasterTTFV (talk) 01:00, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Theoretically this topic comes under the bowling project but that project seems to be focussed on ten pin bowling. Hack (talk) 01:39, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

 * Yes. Too much difference between the sports methinks. Very few people will be interested in both. HiLo48 (talk) 02:29, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

 * I doubt there is enough interest to sustain a project but it couldn't hurt to ask. Hack (talk) 08:00, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

 * I agree with keeping Bowls as the name of the Sport, and separating it from 'Bowling' (as in 10-pin Bowling). Many fundamental differences exist. However within Bowls, I think there need to be some sub-categories to reflect the multiple different variants. There are at least 4 different variants administered by separate governing bodies. Each variant has different equipment, bowls surface specifications, rules and geographic spread. Even whether they are played indoor or outdoors. I will try to work on this as it will mean an overhaul of the existing article. There is some commonality in history. Scootermacc (talk) 21:42, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Separate articles for the separate Bowls codes
Further to my comment in the 'Name of the Sport' discussion, I believe this article needs separate articles for each 'code' of Bowls in the same way that the rugby football article refers to the separate codes of rugby union and rugby league. I will start with 3 new articles for the following codes, including links to their governing bodies: lawn bowls (also known as flat-green bowls), crown green bowls and indoor bowls. I found there is an existing article on short-mat bowls that will be included to then refer to 4 'codes'. So, most of the information on the current Bowls article is relevant only to the 'Lawn Bowls' code - specifically in reference to the bowling surface, rules and equipment. I plan to move a lot of this to a dedicated Lawn Bowls article. The existing History section is probably common to all codes but could be embellished. Bear with me, I am new here and this will take a bit of time! I'm also raising it here because I see that searching on Lawn Bowls on wikipedia already forwards to this Bowls page and I am not sure how to change that! Scootermacc (talk) 22:07, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

 * To me, there's a fundamental issue with having an article called "Lawn bowls". Today the game is really called, simply, bowls. These days the game is very often played on a range of surfaces that aren't lawn. The world association is simply called World Bowls. It's gone the way of tennis, which was called lawn tennis when I was very young, but not now. Maybe this article can become the article explicitly for that form of the game, with other articles having more descriptive names. HiLo48 (talk) 23:16, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

 * I appreciate your feelings and appreciate that World Bowls refer to the sport simply as 'Bowls'. However the national governing body for the sport in England states this on their website: "Bowls England is the National Governing Body (NGB) for the sport of Flat Green Lawn Bowls in England." It also states this: "World Bowls is the World Governing Body for the sport of flat green outdoor bowls. It currently has 53 Member National Authorities (including Bowls England). World Bowls is responsible for the development of the sport of flat green outdoor bowls across the globe, and produces the Laws of the Sport of Bowls on behalf of its Member National Authorities." I'm not sure the comparison to tennis is a fair comparison. Whether you play tennis on grass, artificial surface or clay the rules are the same. That is not the case with Bowls. To use the generic term Bowls as the name for 'lawn bowls' on Wikipedia suggests there is only 1 Bowls code/variant, and in my view that undermines the other codes' validity. I feel it would be best represented to have a 'lawn bowls' titled page and in the first sentence state "Lawn Bowls also known as Flat-green bowls, and more recently referred to simply as 'Bowls', is..." We can then cite the traditional naming and the more recent change adopted by World Bowls without affecting the other Bowls code's pages. Either way I think it's important each code has it's own dedicated page, and we have a general Bowls page much like the 'Football' Wikipedia page which can explain the history and how we ended up with the Bowls codes (and their names) that we have today. Scootermacc (talk) 19:53, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

 * Yes, having dedicated pages for each code is important, but Lawn Bowls is simply wrong in most of the world. It might be the historic name, but it's not the common one now. "Flat green outdoor bowls" is gruesome, never used as a common name, and probably inaccurate. (I'll bet someone has an indoor centre somewhere.) HiLo48 (talk) 22:02, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

 * I can't disagree with your views on the name, but have no answer to that other than the suggestion above.

Scootermacc (talk) 20:25, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

 * For what it's worth: Tennis was formally known for centuries as "lawn tennis" (at first to distinguish it from the now-rare sport of royal (court) tennis).  Even in my childhood, the U.S. governing body for it was USLTA, the United States Lawn Tennis Association.  Finally they realized that it was no longer necessary, or even appropriate, to keep the word "lawn" in the name of the organization, or the sport itself for that matter.  I would suggest that this is about the point at which "bowls" has now arrived. In other words, HiLo48 has it exactly right.  2600:1004:B152:7609:A592:C778:907C:634 (talk) 23:48, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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Semi-protected edit request on 21 November 2019
Hi all,

please consider the following citation. I believe this should cover the point

Add citation for "This makes it particularly appropriate for small communities as it can be played in village halls, schools, sports and social clubs."

77.98.9.134 (talk) 12:24, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
 * That is a self-published blog, so it's not a good source to use. If you could point to a published book or a newspaper article about it, that would be ideal. – Thjarkur (talk) 13:08, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Edit request on 1 December 2021
There is a typo in the Scoring section where it says: but should say:
 * best-or-three
 * best-of-three — Preceding unsigned comment added by Scottharden (talk • contribs) 19:45, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

 * Fixed. HiLo48 (talk) 05:18, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

In popular Culture
In the Popular culture section, bowls was prominent in the BBC's Father Brown 'the devil you know' episode 2018 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.133.12.147 (talk) 21:37, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Game
The "Game" section is very poorly written and refers to many unexplained technical terms 27.125.159.118 (talk) 13:56, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 30 October 2022
Hello! In the section "In Popular Culture", you could mention the episode of the series "Heartbeat" called "Off The Rails" (S14E20). Bowls is the secondary lighter plot here, but is prominently featured in the Heartbeat way. -Steve B./ Canada 2607:FEA8:C31F:F3B4:7C8B:2B17:30F7:F97D (talk) 00:57, 30 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Please provide independent, secondary sources to demonstrate that this is noteworthy. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 01:06, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

Seventeenth century private bowling greens
The article on Bowling Greens is excellent except that it ignores the importance they played in royal and aristocratic gardens in the seventeenth century. Here is an analysis the numbers of new such bowling greens starting in 1660 from a PhD thesis.

I am also including extracts from

David Jacques, Gardens of Court and Country: English Design 1630-1730, New Haven : Yale University Press, 2017, ISBN 9780300222012

41-2

The moist English climate is conducive to good grass. The game of bowls had been popular since the Middle Ages, and became associated with taverns frequented by gamesters and prostitutes. It was seen as diverting yeomen from practising archery and was thus subject to a succession of restrictive statutes: an Act of 1541 banned the playing of bowls outside a person’s own garden or orchard with a penalty of 6s 8d. Accordingly, a yeoman, John Snelson of Croxton, Staffordshire, was fined in 1599 when he was found playing unlawful games, namely ‘English Bowles against the form of the statute in this case published and provided’.47 An exception was made for those with lands of the yearly value of £100, who might obtain licences to play on their own greens.

However, it was a losing battle to enforce the restrictions, as John Stow explained in 1598 in writing about London’s suburbs.48 Any spare ground was likely to be purloined for bowling and gaming, as had formerly happened at Northumberland House in Aldgate, though ‘so many Bowling Alleys, and other houses for unlawful gaming have been raised in other parts of the City &suburbs, that this [place] is left and forsaken by the Gamesters’.

Grub Street was one of these: it had been the area for bowyers, fletchers, and bow-string makers, but was in Stow’s time ‘giving place to a number of bowling-alleys and dicing-houses, which in all places are increased, and too much frequented’.49 It had long been a custom in England that sports and games were played on Sunday afternoons, though the Puritans saw this as a violation of the Fourth Commandment, which prescribed that the Sabbath should be holy and no manner of work should take place on it. Its interpretation had become a point of contention with the gentry, and James I attempted to adjudicate by issuing a proclamation in 1617 called ‘The Book of Sports’, which forbade bowls on Sundays. Many places of public entertainment were already based around greens, and as the craze spread, private greens were made in the gardens of gentleman enthusiasts. William Lawson remarked in 1618 that in his ideal garden ‘it shall be a pleasure to have a Bowling Alley. . . to stretch your armes’.50 Gray’s Inn had already made a green in 1609 immediately outside the garden wall.51 The master of Magdalen College, Oxford, no doubt attempting to divert his charges away from worse temptations, had a bowling green made within the grounds of the college about 1630.52

Around 1610 Prince Henry installed a bowling green in the north-east corner of St James’s Park, called ‘The Spring Garden’, and in 1631 the keeper for both was mentioned in a grant. Members of the Court, and increasingly gentlemen with no connection to it, already walked in the park. As the door into the Spring Garden was just next to the park’s Tiltyard Gate, it had by 1635 become enough of a public resort, serving food and drink, and witnessing scandalous behaviour, for an attempt to close it.53 In 1647 it was closed on Sundays and public fast days. Evelyn found this so in 1654: ‘Cromwell and his partisans having shut up, and seiz’d on Spring Garden, which ’til now had ben the usual rendezvous for the Ladys & Gallants’.54

Instead, Evelyn was entertained at the Mulberry Garden, a four-acre walled garden at the west end of St James’s Park in which James I had attempted to establish silk growing, and which was added to the gardens of Goring House (later Arlington House) in the 1630s. Confiscated and disposed of by Parliament in 1645, it opened shortly after as ‘the onely place of refreshment about the Towne for persons of the best quality’. The Spring Garden itself could not reopen, as it had been divided up for building plots in the 1650s, but the Restoration in 1660 was an opportunity for a ‘New Spring Garden’, a former market garden just across the river at Vauxhall, which became instantly popular.55 The Mulberry Garden served its last mulberry pie in about 1670, when it was reincorporated into the gardens of Goring House, its gambling and whoring having already removed to the New Spring Garden.

Bowling greens continued to be the main attraction for many places of entertainment, especially for the lower orders. Around 1650 the gardens of Marylebone Manor House, including its bowling green, were detached from it and made accessible through the Rose of Normandie tavern, later being known as ‘Marylebone Gardens’. A green on Putney Heath, operated between 1690 and 1750, and became perhaps the most noted in the neighbourhood of London. However, interest in bowling amongst the gentry was to wane by George I’s reign. According to Sir John Cullum, a Suffolk antiquary, ‘Sr Thomas Hanmer, the Speaker, who died in 1746, had a very fine bowling green, contiguous to his house at Mildenhall; and was perhaps one of the last gentlemen of any fashion in the county, that amused themselves with that diversion.’56

67-8

André Mollet, a Frenchman working in England but also familiar with the Low Countries and Sweden, wrote that ‘England excelleth other Countreys. . . in the art of Turffing’.58 He noted that the beautiful effect of English turf depended on frequent mowing. It was well rolled with wooden rollers for removing wormcasts, and beaten down or compacted to an even surface with stone rollers. He also advised a careful selection of turf, such as could be found on sheepwalks, to avoid coarse or tangled grass. London and Wise later added the detail that ‘the Turf-cutters make choice of some part of a fine green Common or Down; such as Black-Heath, Putney-Heath, or Moulsey-Hurst.’59

At mid-century Evelyn, recognising that bowling greens had become an integral part of English gardens, could write that ‘the incomparable divertissement which they afford us, is singular to the English Nation above all others in the World’.60 As new gardens came to be made, bowling greens could be integrated in the layout; for example, at Sir John Danvers’s at Chelsea in the 1620s.61 As mentioned in the previous chapter, Prince Henry had a green in the Spring Garden in St James’s Park, and Charles I contracted with John Tradescant to make one at Oatlands Palace in 1633.62

Several of the private bowling greens were placed outside the garden enclosure, often in the park, as the preserve of the menfolk (fig. 49). For example, that at Hampton Court, made in 1636, was placed at the edge of the park, overlooking the Thames (see fig. 90). When Charles I was confined to Carisbrooke Castle in 1648–9 his gaoler, Colonel Hammond, constructed a green of 350 by 250 feet in the vacant east bailey of the castle to be the King’s chief recreation.63 The greens at Burley-on-the-Hill, Rutland (see fig. 38), and Belvoir, Leicestershire (see fig. 112), took advantage of hill-top positions, both maybe in the 1670s, but from about that time most new greens were incorporated into planned walled layouts (fig. 50). At Dawley one was placed to the side of the open grove at the far end of the Great Garden and at Badminton the green was to the side of the forecourt (see fig. 117).

In the early 1630s Best Gardens were for the first time converted to simple grass plats, and the English skills in maintaining bowling greens were transferred to them. Sometimes grass plats were actually referred to as ‘bowling greens’ – for example, as Evelyn did in 1651 when drawing the plats in his forecourt – and the French term ‘boulingrin’ appears to have derived from this usage. This fashion altered the appearance of pleasure gardens, in that fencing was dispensed with and grass introduced, but the old geometry continued, often emphasised by pencil-thin cypress trees, or another evergreen, at corners. It gave a garden restfulness and made it suitable for walking, and was retained throughout Charles II’s reign (fig. 51). 1948dlj (talk) 09:51, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Bowls


text:
Martian canals

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was erroneously believed that there were "canals" on the planet Mars. These were a network of long straight lines in the equatorial regions from 60° north to 60° south latitude on Mars, observed by astronomers using early telescopes without photography.

They were first described by the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli during the opposition of 1877, and attested to by later observers. Schiaparelli called these canali ("channels"), which was mis-translated into English as "canals". The Irish astronomer Charles E. Burton made some of the earliest drawings of straight-line features on Mars, although his drawings did not match Schiaparelli's.

Around the turn of the century there was even speculation that they were engineering works, irrigation canals constructed by a civilization of intelligent aliens indigenous to Mars. By the early 20th century, improved astronomical observations revealed the "canals" to be an optical illusion, and modern high-resolution mapping of the Martian surface by spacecraft shows no such features.

Supposed "discoveries"
The Italian word canale (plural canali) can mean "canal", "channel", "duct" or "gully". The first person to use the word canale in connection with Mars was Angelo Secchi in 1858, although he did not see any straight lines and applied the term to large features—for example, he used the name "Canale Atlantico" for what later came to be called Syrtis Major Planum. The canals were named by Schiaparelli and others after both real and legendary rivers of various places on Earth, or the mythological underworld.

At this time in the late 19th century, astronomical observations were made without photography. Astronomers had to stare for hours through their telescopes, waiting for a moment of still air when the image was clear, and then draw a picture of what they had seen. Astronomers believed at the time that Mars had a relatively substantial atmosphere. They knew that the rotation period of Mars (the length of its day) was almost the same as Earth's, and they knew that Mars' axial tilt was also almost the same as Earth's, which meant it had seasons in the astronomical and meteorological sense. They could also see Mars' polar ice caps shrinking and growing with these changing seasons. The similarities with Earth led them to interpret darker albedo features (for instance Syrtis Major) on the lighter surface as oceans. By the late 1920s, however, it was known that Mars is very dry and has a very low atmospheric pressure.In 1889, American astronomer Charles A. Young reported that Schiaparelli's canal discovery of 1877 had been confirmed in 1881, though new canals had appeared where there had not been any before, prompting "very important and perplexing" questions as to their origin.

During the favourable opposition of 1892, W. H. Pickering observed numerous small circular black spots occurring at every intersection or starting-point of the "canals". Many of these had been seen by Schiaparelli as larger dark patches, and were termed seas or lakes; but Pickering's observatory was at Arequipa, Peru, about 2400 meters above the sea, and with such atmospheric conditions as were, in his opinion, equal to a doubling of telescopic aperture. They were soon detected by other observers, especially by Lowell.

During the oppositions of 1892 and 1894, seasonal color changes were reported. As the polar snows melted the adjacent seas appeared to overflow and spread out as far as the tropics, and were often seen to assume a distinctly green colour. At this time (1894) it began to be doubted whether there were any seas at all on Mars. Under the best conditions, these supposed 'seas' were seen to lose all trace of uniformity, their appearance being that of a mountainous country, broken by ridges, rifts, and canyons, seen from a great elevation. These doubts soon became certainties, and it is now universally agreed that Mars possesses no permanent bodies of surface water.

Interpretation as engineering works
The hypothesis that there was life on Mars originated from seasonal changes observed in surface features, which began to be interpreted as due to seasonal growth of plants (in fact, Martian dust storms are responsible for some of this).

During the 1894 opposition, the idea that Schiaparelli's canali were really irrigation canals made by intelligent beings was first hinted at, and then adopted as the only intelligible explanation, by American astronomer Percival Lowell and a few others. The visible seasonal melting of Mars polar icecaps fueled speculation that an advanced alien race indigenous to Mars built canals to transport the water to drier equatorial regions. Newspaper and magazine articles about Martian canals and "Martians" captured the public imagination. Lowell published his views in three books: Mars (1895), Mars and Its Canals (1906), and Mars As the Abode of Life (1908). He remained a strong proponent for the rest of his life of the idea that the canals were built for irrigation by an intelligent civilization, going much further than Schiaparelli, who for his part considered much of the detail on Lowell's drawings to be imaginary. Some observers drew maps in which dozens if not hundreds of canals were shown with an elaborate nomenclature for all of them. Some observers saw a phenomenon they called "gemination", or doubling – two parallel canals.

Contemporary doubts and definitive debunk
Other observers disputed the notion of canals. The influential observer Eugène Antoniadi used the 83 cm (32.6 inch) aperture telescope at Meudon Observatory during the 1909 opposition of Mars and saw no canals, the outstanding photos of Mars taken at the new Baillaud dome at the Pic du Midi observatory also brought formal discredit to the Martian canals theory in 1909, and the notion of canals began to fall out of favor. Around this time spectroscopic analysis also began to show that no water was present in the Martian atmosphere. However, as of 1916 Waldemar Kaempffert (editor of Scientific American and later Popular Science Monthly) was still vigorously defending the Martian canals theory against skeptics.

In 1907 the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace published the book Is Mars Habitable? that severely criticized Lowell's claims. Wallace's analysis showed that the surface of Mars was almost certainly much colder than Lowell had estimated, and that the atmospheric pressure was too low for liquid water to exist on the surface. He also pointed out that several recent efforts to find evidence of water vapor in the Martian atmosphere with spectroscopic analysis had failed. He concluded that complex life was impossible, let alone the planet-girding irrigation system claimed by Lowell.

The existence of Martian canals was still controversial even at the dawn of the Space Race. In 1965, the Sourcebook on the space sciences said that "Although there is no unanimous opinion concerning the existence of the canals, most astronomers would probably agree that there are apparently linear (or approximately linear) markings, perhaps 40 to 160 kilometers (25 to 100 miles) or more across and of considerable length." Later in the same year, the arrival of the United States' Mariner 4 spacecraft debunked for good the idea that Mars could be inhabited by higher forms of life, or that any canal features existed. It took pictures revealing impact craters and a generally barren Martian landscape, with a surface atmospheric pressure of 4.1 to 7.0 millibars (410 to 700 pascals), 0.4% to 0.7% of Earth atmospheric pressure, and daytime temperatures of −100 degrees Celsius were measured. No magnetic field, nor radiation belts were detected.

As early as 1903, Joseph Edward Evans and Edward Maunder conducted visual experiments using schoolboy volunteers that demonstrated how the canals could arise as an optical illusion. This is because when a poor-quality telescope views many point-like features (e.g. sunspots or craters) they appear to join up to form lines. Based on his own experiments, Lowell's assistant, A. E. Douglass, was led to explain the observations in essentially psychological terms. In hindsight, William Kenneth Hartmann, a Mars imaging scientist from the 1960s to the 2000s, hypothesized that the "canals" were streaks of dust caused by wind on the leeward side of mountains and craters.

In popular culture
"A clement twilight zone on a synchronously rotating Mercury, a swamp-and-jungle Venus, and a canal-infested Mars, while all classic science-fiction devices, are all, in fact, based upon earlier misapprehensions by planetary scientists."

- Carl Sagan, 1978 Martian canals first appeared in fiction in the anonymously published 1883 novel Politics and Life in Mars. Following the popularization of the idea that they were artificial constructs by Lowell's books, they appeared in numerous works of fiction until the Mariner 4 flyby conclusively demonstrated that they did not exist.

title: Martian canals


text:
Strasbourg–Saint-Denis station

Strasbourg–Saint-Denis is a station on Line 4, Line 8 and Line 9 of the Paris Métro. Opened in 1908 under the name Boulevard Saint-Denis, it takes its current name in 1931, which refers to Rue Saint-Denis and the Boulevard de Strasbourg.

Location
The station of Line 4 is located under the Boulevard de Strasbourg while the stations of Lines 8 and 9 are located under the Boulevard de Bonne-Nouvelle. These last two lines cross Line 4 perpendicularly and from below, and which replaced the Louis XIII wall and is in soft ground, which was once the course of the Seine. Line 8 is on the higher level and Line 9 in the lower level. The platforms are at the sides and the box containing the lines and supporting the road above is strengthened by a central wall between the tracks.

History
The station was opened on 5 May 1908, two weeks after the opening of the first section of Line 4 from Porte de Clignancourt to Châtelet on 21 April 1908. The Line 8 platforms opened on 5 May 1931 with the extension of the line from Richelieu–Drouot to Porte de Charenton. The Line 9 platforms were opened on 10 December 1933 with the extension of the line from Richelieu–Drouot to Porte de Montreuil.

On 13 August 1941, an anti-Nazi demonstration took place at the Strasbourg-Saint-Denis metro station. On 19 August 1941, Samuel Tyszelman and Henri Gautherot, two young communist activists who took part in the demonstration, were shot in the Forêt de Verrières. Maria Leonor Rubiano, who had made a tricolor flag with Angèle Martinez, was arrested a few weeks later by the Gestapo, imprisoned and then died in deportation.

The term Saint-Denis refers to Saint Denis, apostle of the Gauls and first bishop of Paris, who gave his name to the city of Saint-Denis and its abbey. Rue Saint-Denis in Paris, located in the immediate vicinity of the station, stretches from Rue de Rivoli in the south to the Porte Saint-Denis, built in memory of Louis XIV's triumphs in Holland and Germany. It was the link between Paris and Saint-Denis.

In 2019, 9,524,965 passengers entered the station, making it the 20th-most frequented metro station.

Access
The station has seven entrances:
 * Entrance 1: 8 Saint-Denis Boulevard;
 * Entrance 2: 9 Saint-Denis Boulevard;
 * Entrance 3: 13 Saint-Denis Boulevard;
 * Entrance 4: 18 Saint-Denis Boulevard;
 * Entrance 5: 19 Saint-Denis Boulevard;
 * Entrance 6: 28 Saint-Denis Boulevard;
 * Entrance 7: 10 Bonne-New Boulevard.

Platforms
The platforms of Line 4 are standard configuration. The two platforms are separated by the centre tracks. The ceiling is a metal apron whose beams are supported by vertical walls. The platforms are laid out in the Andreu-Motte style with two bright blue lighting canopies and blue Motte seats. Blue paint is also applied to the metal ceiling beams. The walls and tunnel exits are covered with flat white tiles laid vertically and aligned. The advertising frames are metallic and the name of the station is in Parisine font on enamelled plate.

As part of the automation of Line 4, its platforms have been upgraded to platform screen doors, which were installed between February and March 2020. The platforms of the lines 8 and 9, are 105 metres long, are of particular configuration, they are isolated as two half-stations each, separated by a central wall because of their construction within unstable terrain.

Bus connections
The station is served by the 20, 32, 38 and 39 lines of the RATP Bus Network and, at night, by the N13 and N14 lines of the Noctilien bus network.

Nearby attractions

 * Porte Saint-Denis
 * Porte Saint-Martin
 * Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin

In popular culture
Roy Hargrove wrote a jazz composition titled "Strasbourg/Saint-Denis", released on the 2008 album Earfood, in reference to nearby New Morning jazz club where he often performed. In 2016, French pop band La Femme wrote a song entitled "S.S.D" about Strasbourg–Saint-Denis.

title: Strasbourg–Saint-Denis station


text:
Christopher II of Denmark

Christopher II (Christoffer 2.; 29 September 1276 – 2 August 1332) was King of Denmark from 1320 to 1326 and again from 1329 until his death. He was a younger son of Eric V. His name is connected with national disaster, as his rule ended in a near-total dissolution of the Danish state.

Biography
Being the brother of King Eric VI who reigned from 1286 until 1319, Christopher was a possible heir to the throne. As a young man with the title of Duke of Estonia, he supported the politics of his brother. Among other things he arrested Archbishop Jens Grand in 1294. But later on he joined the opposition and went into exile at the death of Eric in 1319.

The magnates wanted a weak royal power, and Christopher was elected as king in January 1320; in return he signed a contractual håndfæstning, the first time this kind of document was used as a coronation charter. He received a "bankrupt estate" in which entire regions of the kingdom were mortgaged to German and Danish magnates. The conditions of the charter were very hard, because they limited his ability to assess taxes, as well as demanded payments on the mortgages. Christopher could make no decision regarding the realm without the consent of the nobility and the bishops. The privileges of the nobility and the church were included in the charter and new ones were included. No bishop could be imprisoned, exiled, or fined without the pope's approval, no secular court could try any churchman, no church land or property could be taxed, the nobles could raise fees or rents on peasants, no noble could be forced to fight abroad or forced to pay to outfit soldiers to fight abroad, the king was required to ransom captured noblemen within a year, all taxes imposed since the reign of Valdemar Sejr on nobles or church were to be lifted, but the kingdom's debts were to be paid. This shift of power away from the king would last until 1660.

Despite signing the charter, King Christopher ruled as if it did not exist. Since he could not tax the church or Danish nobles he levied disastrous taxes on the German territories and peasants. During the following years Christopher tried to strengthen his position by reviving Erik's policy of warfare against the duchies, counties, and cities of northern Germany. This resulted in new mortgages and taxes, and very soon he was in conflict with both the church and the magnates.

During a rebellion in 1326 he was overthrown by an alliance between Danish magnates and Gerhard III,  Count of Holstein-Rendsburg and John I, Count of Holstein-Kiel, son of Adolf IV of Holstein). Christopher was forced into abdication and exile, while the 12-year-old Duke Valdemar of Southern Jutland was made king of Denmark, with Count Gerhard as regent. They forced Valdemar in his coronation charter to separate southern Jutland from Denmark so that never again would the King of Denmark rule there. Danish nobleman Knud Porse took Halland for himself for his services to Count Gerhard and Count Johann. The squabbling over who got which pieces of Denmark broke down the alliances which had forced Christopher out of the country.

Until 1329 Christopher lived in exile, but a growing chaos in the "magnates’ republic" of Denmark gave him another chance. Frictions developed between Gerhard and his cousin John the Mild, Count of Schauenburg and Holstein-Plön and Holstein-Kiel who was also Christopher's half-brother through  his widowed mother's marriage to Gerhard II, Count of Holstein-Plön.

Suddenly, with the help of Henry of Mecklenburg, Christopher stood poised at Vordingborg with 2000 mounted German knights. Unfortunately for Christopher they allowed themselves to be surrounded and were forced to surrender. After a peasant uprising in Jutland which was crushed ruthlessly by Count Gerhard, the peasants in Skåne begged King Magnus IV of Sweden to rule them. He readily accepted and Denmark ceased to exist as a united kingdom.

Christopher was restored as Danish king in 1329–1330 with the cooperation of Count Johan, but this time he was reduced to the position of a puppet from the start. Most of his country was mortgaged, and he had no chance of holding real royal power. Jutland for example was mortgaged for 100,000 silver marks which had to be "laid on the table all at once" or the mortgage was not redeemed. It was an enormous mortgage and impossible to pay. Count Gerhard took all of Jutland as his personal property. Count Johan did the same on Funen and Zealand. In 1331 Christopher attempted to exploit a conflict between Counts Gerhard and Johan by joining the latter, but it ended in a clear military defeat at Dannevirke. Under the terms of the settlement between the counts, Christopher was allowed to retain the title of king, but in reality had no power whatsoever. He was given a simple house at Sakskøbing on Lolland, but even that was burned by German mercenaries. Christopher was imprisoned at Ålholm Castle on Lolland where he died a ruined and broken man the next year. He was buried at Sorø Abbey.

Upon his death Denmark ceased being a formal kingdom, and for the next eight years it was subdued by various mortgagees to German military rule.

Legacy
History's judgment of Christopher has been extremely hard, and he has often been regarded as a weak, unreliable and incapable tyrant— "the king who mortgaged Denmark to the Germans". He in many ways simply carried on the policy of his predecessor. The policy of mortgaging parts of Denmark was common practice by nobles and kings alike to raise money. It would be incorrect to call him a passive ruler; the power of the Danish and German high nobility and their co-operation with church establishment undermined his freedom of action.

Issue
With his wife, Euphemia of Pomerania, whom he wed before 1307:

 * Margaret (1305–1340); married Louis V, Duke of Bavaria
 * Eric (1307–1331); married Elizabeth of Holstein-Rendsburg, sister of Count Gerhard III and widow of John II, Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg
 * Otto, Duke of Lolland and Estonia (1310-aft. 1347)
 * Agnes (d. 1312); died young
 * Heilwig (born c. 1315)
 * Valdemar (1320–1375)

Illegitimate with a lady, who according to legend was of the noble family Lunge:
 * Regitze Christofferdatter Løvenbalk, married Peder Stigsen (Krognos) (-1352-1365-) of Krapperup. They can be seen in pedigrees and lexica, but Regitze was not a Løvenbalk.
 * Erik Christoffersen Løvenbalk, had issue in Danish nobility.

title: Christopher II of Denmark


text:
Alpha particle X-ray spectrometer

 * APXS is also an abbreviation for APache eXtenSion tool, an extension for Apache web servers.

An alpha particle X-ray spectrometer (APXS) is a spectrometer that analyses the chemical element composition of a sample from scattered alpha particles and fluorescent X-rays after a sample is irradiated with alpha particles and X-rays from radioactive sources. This method of analysing the elemental composition of a sample is most often used on space missions, which require low weight, small size, and minimal power consumption. Other methods (e.g. mass spectrometry) are faster, and do not require the use of radioactive materials, but require larger equipment with greater power requirements. A variation is the alpha proton X-ray spectrometer, such as on the Pathfinder mission, which also detects protons.

Over the years several modified versions of this type of instrument such as APS (without X-ray spectrometer) or APXS have been flown: Surveyor 5-7, Mars Pathfinder, Mars 96, Mars Exploration Rover, Phobos, Mars Science Laboratory and the Philae comet lander. APS/APXS devices will be included on several upcoming missions including the Chandrayaan-2 lunar rover.

Alpha particles

Some of the alpha particles of a defined energy are backscattered to the detector if they collide with an atomic nucleus. The physical laws for Rutherford backscattering in an angle close to 180° are conservation of energy and conservation of linear momentum. This makes it possible to calculate the mass of the nucleus hit by the alpha particle.

Light elements absorb more energy of the alpha particle, while alpha particles are reflected by heavy nuclei nearly with the same energy. The energy spectrum of the scattered alpha particle shows peaks from 25% up to nearly 100% of the initial alpha particles. This spectrum makes it possible to determine the composition of the sample, especially for the lighter elements. The low backscattering rate makes prolonged irradiation necessary, approximately 10 hours.

Protons
Some of the alpha particles are absorbed by the atomic nuclei. The [alpha,proton] process produces protons of a defined energy which are detected. Sodium, magnesium, silicon, aluminium and sulfur can be detected by this method. This method was only used in the Mars Pathfinder APXS. For the Mars Exploration Rovers the proton detector was replaced by a second alpha particle sensor. So it is also called alpha particle X-ray spectrometer.

X-ray
The alpha particles are also able to eject electrons from the inner shell (K- and L-shell) of an atom. These vacancies are filled by electrons from outer shells, which results in the emission of a characteristic X-ray. This process is termed particle-induced X-ray emission and is relatively easy to detect and has its best sensitivity and resolution for the heavier elements.

Specific instruments

 * Alpha-X, for DAS lander on Phobos 1 and Phobos 2.
 * ALPHA, for Mars 96 landers. Collaboration between Germany, Russia, and USA.
 * Alpha Proton X-Ray Spectrometer, for Mars Pathfinder by the Max Planck Institute and the University of Chicago.
 * Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer, for Spirit (MER-A) and Opportunity (MER-B) Mars Exploration Rovers.
 * Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer, for Curiosity (MSL). The principal investigator for Curiosity's APXS is Ralf Gellert, a physicist at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. It was developed and funded by the Canadian Space Agency, with operations also supported by Guelph and United States' space administration.
 * Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer, for Philae, the European Space Agency's lander attached to Rosetta, to study the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

title: Alpha particle X-ray spectrometer


text:
National Day of Commemoration

In Ireland, the National Day of Commemoration (Lá Cuimhneacháin Náisiúnta) commemorates all Irish people who died in past wars or United Nations peacekeeping missions. It occurs on the Sunday nearest 11 July (see Irish Calendar), the anniversary of the date in 1921 that a truce was signed ending the Irish War of Independence. The principal ceremony is held at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin, Ireland.

Background
The commemoration of Irish soldiers and wars has been fragmented within Ireland for historical and political reasons.

Ceremonies to honour Irish soldiers who fought in the First World War have been held in Ireland in November on Remembrance Sunday and Remembrance Day since the war's end. These are mainly organised by the Royal British Legion and observed by Unionists and ex-servicemen and relatives. The focal points were St Patrick's Cathedral and the Irish National War Memorial Gardens, both in Dublin. Though many Irish nationalists served in the British Army prior to independence, this was not generally held in high esteem by later generations. Independent Ireland remained neutral in World War II, and although thousands of its citizens served in the allied armies, the state did not at first mark this.

Commemoration of the Irish War of Independence was muted by the bitterness of the Irish Civil War that followed from it. The preceding 1916 Easter Rising against British rule in Ireland was the focus, with Easter Day considered the "National Day of Commemoration". There was a major parade each Easter until 1971, when the Troubles in Northern Ireland made the commemoration of the earlier Irish Republican rebels more problematic in symbolism. Smaller official commemorations persisted at Arbour Hill Prison.

Within the Defence Forces, a Commemoration Day for deceased former members is held on All Souls' Day, 2 November. 11 July, the anniversary of the 1921 truce, had already been a special Army holiday before being the base date for the National Day of Commemoration.

Establishment
In 1974, the coalition government proposed Saint Patrick's Day as a day for commemorating all Irish people who had given their lives in wars, marked with a message from the President, prayer and a moment of silence. The Fianna Fáil opposition objected. In the early 1980s, in response to the Northern Ireland Troubles, the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation in County Wicklow was organising "Walks of Remembrance" around sites in Dublin significant to all historical combatants. In 1983, the Irish Defence Forces were represented in the British Legion's Remembrance Sunday service in Saint Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, under the flag of the United Nations. This was controversial and the Fianna Fáil opposition suggested a separate day of commemoration would be more inclusive.

An informal Oireachtas all-party committee was established in late 1984 to examine the question of a single National Day of Commemoration. It held four meetings and reported to the government in October 1985. The view of this Committee was that there should be a religious service and a military ceremony. This has been the tradition since, although Noel Treacy complained that the military presence was "on a small scale compared with that visualised by the all party committee".

The first National Day of Commemoration was held on 13 July 1986 in the Garden of Remembrance. Old IRA veterans objected to the venue, which commemorates those who died in "the cause of Irish freedom", being used to honour British Army veterans. The absence was noted of Leader of the Opposition, Charles Haughey, and Lord Mayor of Dublin, Bertie Ahern, both represented by subordinates. This was ascribed to discontent within Fianna Fáil about the event.

Haughey became Taoiseach after the February 1987 election. He announced the commemoration ceremony would be replaced by separate church services by the various denominations, with no military or government presence. The opposition parties objected, and both sides negotiated a compromise, whereby the ceremony, and the commemorative plaque which had been unveiled in 1986 by President Patrick Hillery, were moved to the Royal Hospital. This, originally a British Army hospital, is now the Irish Museum of Modern Art. However Irish Republicans and some IRA veterans of the Irish War of Independence objected to the presence of the British Legion at the ceremony. Subsequent ceremonies have not proved controversial.

Ceremonies
One of the main recommendations made by the All-Party Oireachtas Committee was that the National Day of Commemoration should be organised in a way which would reflect its national importance, which would encourage people of different traditions to participate and which would attract the interest and support of the public. The current service and ceremonies closely follow these recommendations.

The military and religious ceremonies are held in the presence of the President, the Taoiseach and other members of the Government of Ireland, members of the Oireachtas, the Council of State, the Diplomatic Corps, the Judiciary, relatives of 1916 leaders, next-of-kin of those who died on service with the UN, Northern Ireland representatives and a wide cross-section of the community, including ex-servicemen and ex-servicewomen.

Representatives of the three divisions of the Defence Forces parade and render military honours. Since its inception, music has been provided by the combined bands of the several Army Commands and Dr. Bernadette Greevy until her death in September 2008.

The ceremonies begin with an interfaith service, comprising prayers, hymns and readings by senior representatives of the main Christian denominations and of the Jewish and (since 1994 ) Islamic faiths.

The military ceremonies include an honour guard of the Cadet School, the laying of a wreath by the President on behalf of the people of Ireland, Reveille, the raising of the national flag and the playing of the National Anthem.

The National Day of Commemoration is, along with Easter Sunday, Easter Monday, and Saint Patrick's Day, one of the days on which the Department of the Taoiseach's protocol section has advised all government buildings to fly the national flag.

The main 2012 ceremony moved from the Royal Hospital Kilmainham to the Collins Barracks campus of the National Museum of Ireland, as the Kilmainham site closed for renovation. Regional ceremonies are planned for Sligo City Hall; Kilkenny Castle; NUI Galway; Fitzgerald's Park, Cork; Limerick City Hall; and Bishops Palace Museum, Waterford.

The ceremony returned to the Royal Hospital in 2013.

title: National Day of Commemoration


text:
Seelenluft

Beat Solèr, (born 8 July 1971) better known by his stage name Seelenluft, is a Swiss record producer of electronic music.

Career
Seelenluft is Beat Soler from Zürich. He has been playing music since he was seven. He made a number of records in the 2000s.

He signed up with Klein Records and released his first record The Rise and Fall of Silvercity Bob in 2000. Silvercity Bob is an imaginary trumpet player and the album relies heavily on Beat Soler's collection of 1950s easy listening records.

The Synchronschwimmer EP was released, in 2001, as a soundtrack for Acapulco 11, a synchronized swimming team.

Seelenluft recorded his next album Out of the Woods in Los Angeles, over a couple of months in 2002. The single "Manila" featured Michael Smith, a 12-year-old boy from Compton singing lead vocals was released in the UK by Back Yard Recordings. Influential BBC Radio 1 disc jockey Pete Tong declared it was an 'essential new tune'. The track has been featured on more than 60 compilations. It peaked at number 45 on the ARIA Charts in March 2004.

Seelenluft's third album The Way We Go for Klein Records, his fourth overall, was issued in 2004 and was preceded by the track "I Can See Clearly Now". A remix by Tiga was featured on the maxi-single.

Contributing few remixes of his own, Seelenluft's work appeared on projects by diverse artists such as electronic music duo Tipsy, dance-pop singer Almamy or alternative rock band Mauracher among others. He also composed a piece for the Tonhalle Orchestra of Zürich and worked on various film soundtracks.

An association with International DeeJay Gigolo Records started in 2007. Leading to the release of Seelenluft's Birds And Plants And Rocks And Things LP on DJ Hell's label in June 2008. "Comme Dans Un Rêve" from the album was featured in the Fall/Winter 2008/9 Haute Couture Fashion Show for Chanel.

Albums

 * Bellatrax (1997), Hypnotic
 * The Rise and Fall of Silvercity Bob (2000), Klein Records
 * Out of the Woods (2002), Klein Records
 * Way We Go (2004), Klein Records
 * Birds and Plants and Rocks and Things (2008), International DeeJay Gigolo Records

EPs

 * Synchronswimmer (2001), Klein Records

Singles

 * "Manila" (2002), Klein Records / Back Yard Recordings
 * "L.A. Woman" (2003), Klein Records
 * "I Can See Clearly Now" (2004), Klein Records
 * "You Came Along" (2004), Klein Records
 * "Horse with No Name" (2007), International DeeJay Gigolo Records

Remixes

 * Shirley Bassey - "Moonraker" (1998), Hypnotic Records
 * Tipsy - "Something Tropical" (2002), Asphodel
 * Sinner DC - "Piano J" (2002), Polaris Records
 * Mauracher - "Noonee" (2003), Fabrique Records
 * I N Fused - "Paranoid" (2003), Art Brut
 * Ethan - "In My Heart" (2005), Back Yard Recordings
 * Moonbootica - "June" (2005), Moonbootique Recordings
 * Tim & Puma Mimi - "Namida" (2006), Alpinechic
 * Almamy - "Like You Do" (2008), ModyWorks
 * Electric Blanket - "My Eyes My Heart" (2008), Wankdorf Recordings

title: Seelenluft


text:
Archaeoraptor

"Archaeoraptor" is the informal generic name for a fossil chimera from China in an article published in National Geographic magazine in 1999. The magazine claimed that the fossil was a "missing link" between birds and terrestrial theropod dinosaurs. Even before this publication, there had been severe doubts about the fossil's authenticity. A further scientific study showed it to be a forgery constructed from rearranged pieces of real fossils from different species. Zhou et al. found that the head and upper body belong to a specimen of the primitive fossil bird Yanornis. A 2002 study found that the tail belongs to a small winged dromaeosaur, Microraptor, named in 2000. The legs and feet belong to an as-yet-unknown-animal.

The scandal brought attention to illegal fossil deals conducted in China. Although "Archaeoraptor" was a forgery, many true examples of feathered dinosaurs have been found and demonstrate the evolutionary connection between birds and other theropods.

Scandal
"Archaeoraptor" was unveiled at a press conference held by National Geographic magazine in October 1999. At the same press conference, plans were announced to return the fossil to Chinese authorities, as it was illegally exported. In November 1999 National Geographic featured the fossil in an article written by art editor Christopher Sloan. The article in general discussed feathered dinosaurs and the origin of birds. It claimed the fossil was "a missing link between terrestrial dinosaurs and birds that could fly" and informally referred to it as "Archaeoraptor liaoningensis", announcing it would later be formally named as such. This name means "ancient raptor of Liaoning". This drew immediate criticism from Storrs L. Olson, Curator of Birds at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Writing in Backbone, the newsletter of his museum, he denounced the publication of a scientific name in a popular journal, without peer review, as a "nightmare".

On February 3, 2000, National Geographic issued a press release stating that the fossil could be a composite and that an internal investigation had begun. In that same month Bill Allen, National Geographic editor, told Nature that he was "furious" to learn that the fossil might have been faked. In the March issue, in the forum section, a letter from Dr. Xu Xing pointed out that the tail section probably did not match the upper body. In October 2000 National Geographic published the results of their investigation, in an article written by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Lewis M. Simons. Simons concluded that the fossil was a composite and that virtually everyone involved in the project had made some mistakes.

Chronology
According to National Geographic's report, the story of "Archaeoraptor" begins in July 1997 in Xiasanjiazi, China, where farmers routinely dug in the shale pits with picks and sold fossils to dealers for a few dollars. This was an illegal practice, but it was common then. In this case, one farmer found a rare fossil of a toothed bird, complete with feather impressions. The fossil broke into pieces during collection. Nearby, in the same pit, he found pieces including a feathered tail and legs. He cemented several of these pieces together in a manner that he believed was correct. He knew that it would make a more complete-looking and, thus, more expensive fossil. It was sold in June 1998 to an anonymous dealer and smuggled to the United States. According to authorities in Beijing, no fossils may leave China legally.

By the fall 1998 annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, held in Utah, United States, rumors were circulating about a striking fossil of a primitive bird that was in private hands. This fossil was presented by an anonymous dealer at a gem show in Tucson, Arizona. The Dinosaur Museum in Blanding, Utah, purchased it in February 1999. The museum was run by the late Stephen A. Czerkas (d. 2015) and his wife, Sylvia Czerkas. Mr. Czerkas did not hold a university degree, but he was a dinosaur enthusiast and artist. He arranged for patrons of his museum, including trustee Dale Slade, to provide $80,000 for the purchase of the fossil, to study it scientifically, and prevent it from disappearing into an anonymous private collection.

The Czerkases contacted paleontologist Phil Currie, who contacted the National Geographic Society. Currie agreed to study the fossil on condition that it was eventually returned to China. The National Geographic Society intended to get the fossil formally published in the peer-reviewed science journal Nature, and then follow up immediately with a press conference and an issue of National Geographic. Editor Bill Allen asked that all members of the project keep the fossil secret so that the magazine would have a scoop on the story.

Slade and the Czerkases intended the fossil to be the "crown jewel" of the Dinosaur Museum and planned to keep it on display there for five years. Sloan says that he flew to Utah in the spring of 1999 to convince Stephen Czerkas to return the fossil to China immediately after publication, or he would not write about it for National Geographic and Currie would not work on it. Czerkas then agreed. Currie then contacted the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, and National Geographic flew the IVPP's Xu Xing to Utah to be part of the "Archaeoraptor" team.

During the initial examination of the fossil on March 6, 1999, it had already become clear to Currie that the left and right feet mirrored each other perfectly and that the fossil had been completed by using both slab and counter slab. He also noticed no connection could be seen between the tail and the body. In July 1999, Currie and the Czerkases brought the fossil to the High-Resolution X-ray CT Facility of the University of Texas (Austin) founded and operated by Dr. Timothy Rowe to make CT scans. Rowe, having made the scans on July 29, determined that they indicated that the bottom fragments, showing the tail and the lower legs, were not part of the larger fossil. He informed the Czerkases on August 2 that there was a chance of the whole being a fraud. During a subsequent discussion, Rowe and Currie were pressured by the Czerkases to keep their reservations private.

Currie in the first week of September sent his preparator, Kevin Aulenback, to the Dinosaur Museum in Blanding to prepare the fossil for better study. Aulenback concluded that the fossil was "a composite specimen of at least 3 specimens...with a maximum...of five...separate specimens", but the Czerkases angrily denied this and Aulenbeck only reported this to Currie. Currie did not inform National Geographic of these problems.

On August 13, 1999, the team submitted a manuscript titled "A New Toothed Bird With a Dromaeosaur-like Tail" under the names of Stephen Czerkas, Currie, Rowe, and Xu, to the journal Nature in London. The paper mentions two places and includes a figure illustrating the point that one of the legs and the tail are counterparts that were composited into the main slab.

On August 20 Nature rejected the paper, indicating to the Czerkases that National Geographic had refused to delay publication, leaving too little time for peer review. The authors then submitted the paper to Science, which sent it out for peer review. Two reviewers informed Science that "the specimen was smuggled out of China and illegally purchased" and that the fossil had been "doctored" in China "to enhance its value." Science then rejected the paper. According to Sloan, the Czerkases did not inform National Geographic about the details of the two rejections.

By that time the November issue of National Geographic was already in preparation for printing, but "Archaeoraptor" was never formally published in any peer-reviewed journal.

National Geographic went ahead and published without peer review. The fossil was unveiled in a press conference on October 15, 1999, and in November 1999 National Geographic contained an article by Christopher P. Sloan—a National Geographic art editor. Sloan described it as a missing link that helped elucidate the connection between dinosaurs and birds. The original fossil was put on display at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C., pending return to China. In the article Sloan used the name "Archaeoraptor liaoningensis" but with a disclaimer (so that it would not count as a nomenclatural act for scientific classification ) in anticipation of Czerkas being able to publish a peer-reviewed description at some point in the future.

After the November National Geographic came out, Storrs L. Olson, curator of birds in the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution published an open letter on 1 November 1999, pointing out that "the specimen in question is known to have been illegally exported" and protesting the "prevailing dogma that birds evolved from dinosaurs." Olson complained that Sloan, a journalist, had usurped the process of scientific nomenclature by publishing a name first in the popular press: "This is the worst nightmare of many zoologists—that their chance to name a new organism will be inadvertently scooped by some witless journalist."

In October 1999, after having been informed by Currie of the problems and seeing the specimen for the first time, Xu noticed that the tail of "Archaeoraptor" strongly resembled an unnamed maniraptoran dinosaur that he was studying—later to be named Microraptor zhaoianus. He returned to China and traveled to Liaoning Province where he inspected the fossil site and contacted several fossil dealers. He eventually found a fairly complete fossil of a tiny dromaeosaur, and the tail of this new fossil corresponded so exactly to the tail on the "Archaeoraptor" fossil that it had to be the counter slab— it even had two matching yellow oxide stains. On December 20, 1999, Xu Xing sent e-mails to the authors and Sloan, announcing that the fossil was a fake.

On February 3, 2000, The National Geographic News issued a press release stating that the "Archaeoraptor" fossil might be a composite and that an internal investigation had begun. In the March issue of National Geographic Xu's letter ran in the Forum section of the magazine, and Bill Allen had Xu change the word "fake" to "composite".

On April 4, 2000, Stephen Czerkas told a group of paleontologists in Washington that he and Sylvia had made "an idiot, bone-stupid mistake". Currie, Allen, and Sloan all expressed regret. Rowe felt vindicated, claiming the affair as evidence that his scans were correct. Rowe published a Brief Communication in Nature in 2001 describing his findings. He concluded that, apart from the top part, several specimens had been used to complete the fossil: a first for the left femur, a second for the tibiae, a third for both feet, and at least one more for the tail, which alone consisted of five separate parts.

In June 2000 the fossil was returned to China. In the October 2000 issue, National Geographic published the results of their investigation.

Ongoing confusion
The fossils involved in the "Archaeoraptor" scandal have led to ongoing confusion over taxon names. In December 2000, Microraptor was described in Nature. Zhou et al. (2002) examined the upper body of the "Archaeoraptor" fossil and reported that it belonged to the previously-named genus Yanornis.

Dinosaur Museum Journal
In 2002 the Czerkases published a volume through their Dinosaur Museum titled Feathered Dinosaurs and the Origin of Flight. In this journal, they described and named several species. Of the six species named in the book, five are disputed.

Despite the work of Zhou et al. (2002), Czerkas and co-author Xu Xing described the upper portion of the "Archaeoraptor" fossil as a new bird genus, Archaeovolans, in the Dinosaur Museum Journal. The article does include the caveat that it might be a specimen of Yanornis. Thus, this same fossil specimen has been named "Archaeoraptor", Archeovolans, and Yanornis in different places.

Across the monographs in the Dinosaur Museum Journal, Stephen Czerkas built a case for his controversial view that maniraptoran dinosaurs are secondarily flightless birds. In so doing, he criticized prominent paleontologists. In the text on Cryptovolans, Czerkas accused Dr. Mark Norell of misinterpreting the fossil BPM 1 3-13 as having long leg feathers due to the "blinding influences of preconceived ideas." Though Norell's interpretation was correct, Czerkas added leg feathers to his reconstruction of the fossil in the art that promotes the traveling exhibit.

Two other taxa that Czerkas and his co-authors named were later treated as junior synonyms by other authors. Czerkas' Cryptovolans was treated as Microraptor, and his Scansoriopteryx was treated as Epidendrosaurus. Czerkas described Omnivoropteryx, noting that it was similar to Sapeornis. Later specimens of Sapeornis with skulls demonstrated that the two were probably synonymous.

Another taxon that Czerkas assigned to the Pterosauria and named Utahdactylus was reviewed by Dr. Chris Bennett. Bennett found multiple misidentifications of bones and inconsistencies between Czerkas' diagrams and the actual fossils. Bennett found the specimen to be an indeterminate diapsid and criticized the previous authors for publishing a species name when no diagnostic characters below the class level could be verified. He made Utahdactylus a nomen dubium.

Traveling exhibit
In 2001 Stephen and Sylvia Czerkas compiled a traveling exhibit containing 34 other Chinese fossils. The show is titled Feathered Dinosaurs and the Origin of Flight. The San Diego Natural History Museum paid a set fee to the Dinosaur Museum to display this show in 2004. When the show opened, Dr. Ji Qiang told reporters from Nature that about a dozen of the fossils had left China illegally. Ji arranged with the Czerkases to assign accession numbers to three of the most valuable specimens, thus formally adding them to the collection of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences in Beijing, although they remain in the possession of the Czerkases. Stephen Czerkas denied Ji's assertion that the fossils were illegal. Sylvia Czerkas told the journal Nature that she had worked out an agreement with officials of Liaoning Province in 2001 to borrow the fossils and that they were to be repatriated in 2007. Through March 2009, however, the show was scheduled for the Fresno Metropolitan Museum of Art and Science in California. According to Nature, the Czerkases refused requests to make the officials from Liaoning available for an interview.

Many scientists consider it unethical to work on fossils if there is any chance that they have been smuggled, and many disregard privately owned fossils altogether. Some professionals feel that private collectors put fossils in private hands where science may not be able to access or study them. Some believe that private collectors may damage important fossils, subject them to forgery, and obscure their origins or evidence about their ages. Illegal dealers have also participated in and may encourage, governmental corruption. Another philosophy argues that if scientists could bend their ethics and agree to publish on important private fossils, this would encourage private holders to make them available for study.

The fossil most recently appeared in an exhibition in Wollaton Hall, near Nottingham, titled Dinosaurs of China: Ground Shakers to Feathered Flyers, where it was exhibited along with fossils of Yanoris and Microraptor, its main components.

Taxonomic history
In April 2000 Olson published an article in Backbone, the newsletter of the National Museum of Natural History. In this article, he justified his views on the evolution of birds, but also revised and redescribed the species "Archaeoraptor liaoningensis" by designating just the tail of the original fraudulent specimen as the type specimen. To prevent the tainted name "Archaeoraptor" from entering paleornithological literature, this redescription assigned the name to that part of the chimeric specimen least likely to be classified under Aves, rather than to the portion which was later shown to represent a true bird species. Olson presumed that the National Geographic article had already validly named the fossil, and he, therefore, failed to explicitly indicate the name was new, as demanded by article 16 of the ICZN as a condition for a name to be valid. Several months afterward Xu, Zhou, and Wang published their description of Microraptor zhaoianus in Nature.

Creationism
The scandal is sometimes used by creationists like Kent Hovind, Kirk Cameron, and Ray Comfort to cast doubt on the hypothesis that birds evolved from dinosaurs. Many creationists insist that no missing links between birds and dinosaurs have been found, and commonly point to "Archaeoraptor" as evidence of misconduct performed to support the evolutionary theory. They see "Archaeoraptor" as a "Piltdown Bird". However, contrary to the Piltdown Man, "Archaeoraptor" was not deliberately fabricated to support some evolutionary claim. Furthermore, the authenticity of "Archaeoraptor" would not have been essential proof for the hypothesis that birds are theropods, as this is sufficiently corroborated by other data; paleontologist Christopher Brochu concluded in November 2001: "That birds are derived from theropod dinosaurs is no longer the subject of scholarly dispute." Though playing the role of "terrestrial dinosaur" in the "Archaeoraptor" affair, the Microraptor, showing wings and clear traces of rectrices, is generally assumed to have had at least a gliding capacity and is itself an excellent example of a transitional fossil.

title: Archaeoraptor