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Rudolf Caracciola

Otto Wilhelm Rudolf Caracciola (30 January 1901 – 28 September 1959) was a German racing driver. He won the European Drivers' Championship, the pre-1950 equivalent of the modern Formula One World Championship, an unsurpassed three times. He also won the European Hillclimbing Championship three times – twice in sports cars, and once in Grand Prix cars. Caracciola raced for Mercedes-Benz during their original dominating Silver Arrows period, named after the silver colour of the cars, and set speed records for the firm. He was affectionately dubbed Caratsch by the German public, and was known by the title of Regenmeister, or "Rainmaster", for his prowess in wet conditions.

Caracciola began racing while he was working as apprentice at the Fafnir automobile factory in Aachen during the early 1920s, first on motorcycles and then in cars. Racing for Mercedes-Benz, he won his first two Hillclimbing Championships in 1930 and 1931, and moved to Alfa Romeo for 1932, where he won the Hillclimbing Championship for the third time. In 1933, he established the privateer team Scuderia C.C. with his fellow driver Louis Chiron, but a crash in practice for the Monaco Grand Prix left him with multiple fractures of his right thigh, which ruled him out of racing for more than a year. He returned to the newly reformed Mercedes-Benz racing team in 1934, with whom he won three European Championships, in 1935, 1937 and 1938. Like most German racing drivers in the 1930s, Caracciola was a member of the Nazi paramilitary group National Socialist Motor Corps (NSKK), but never a member of the Nazi Party. He returned to racing after the Second World War, but crashed in qualifying for the 1946 Indianapolis 500. A second comeback in 1952 was halted by another crash, in a sports car race in Switzerland.

After he retired, Caracciola worked as a Mercedes-Benz salesman targeting North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops stationed in Europe. He died in the German city of Kassel, after suffering liver failure. He was buried in Switzerland, where he had lived since the early 1930s. He is remembered as one of the greatest pre-1939 Grand Prix drivers, a perfectionist who excelled in all conditions. His record of six German Grand Prix wins remains unbeaten.

Early life and career
Caracciola was born in Remagen, Germany, just south of Bonn on 30 January 1901. He was the fourth child of Maximilian and Mathilde, who ran the Hotel Fürstenberg. His ancestors had migrated during the Thirty Years' War from Naples to the German Rhineland, where Prince Bartolomeo Caracciolo (nephew of Spanish-allegiance Field Marshal Tommaso Caracciolo) had commanded the Ehrenbreitstein Fortress near Koblenz.

Caracciola was interested in cars from a young age, and from his fourteenth birthday wanted to become a racing driver. He drove an early Mercedes during the First World War, and gained his driver's license before the legal age of 18. After Caracciola's graduation from school soon after the war, his father wanted him to attend university, but when he died Caracciola instead became an apprentice in the Fafnir automobile factory in Aachen.

Motorsport in Germany at the time, as in the rest of Europe, was an exclusive sport, mainly limited to the upper classes. As the sport became more professional in the early 1920s, specialist drivers, like Caracciola, began to dominate. Caracciola enjoyed his first success in motorsport while working for Fafnir, taking his NSU motorcycle to several victories in endurance events. When Fafnir decided to take part in the first race at the Automobil-Verkehrs- und Übungs-Straße (AVUS) track in 1922, Caracciola drove one of the works cars to fourth overall, the first in his class and the quickest Fafnir. He followed this with victory in a race at the Opelbahn in Rüsselsheim. He did not stay long in Aachen, however; in 1923, after punching a soldier from the occupying Belgian Army in a nightclub, he fled the city. He moved to Dresden, where he continued to work as a Fafnir representative. In April of that year, Caracciola won the 1923 ADAC race at the Berlin Stadium in a borrowed Ego 4 hp. In his autobiography, Caracciola said he only ever sold one car for Fafnir, but due to inflation by "the time the car was delivered the money was just enough to pay for the horn and two headlights".

Later in 1923, he was hired by the Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft as a car salesman at their Dresden outlet. Caracciola continued racing, driving a Mercedes 6/25/40 hp to victory in four of the eight races he entered in 1923. His success continued in 1924 with the new supercharged Mercedes 1.5-litre; he won 15 races during the season, including the Klausenpass hillclimb in Switzerland. He attended the Italian Grand Prix at Monza as a reserve driver for Mercedes, but did not take part in the race. He drove his 1.5-litre to five victories in 1925, and won the hillclimbs at Kniebis and Freiburg in a Mercedes 24/100/140 hp. With his racing career becoming increasingly successful, he abandoned his plans to study mechanical engineering.

1926–1930: Breakthrough

Caracciola's breakthrough year was in 1926. The inaugural German Grand Prix was held at the AVUS track on 11 July, but the date clashed with a more prestigious race in Spain. The newly merged company Mercedes-Benz, conscious of export considerations, chose the latter race to run their main team. Hearing this, Caracciola took a short leave from his job and went to the Mercedes office in Stuttgart to ask for a car. Mercedes agreed to lend Caracciola and Adolf Rosenberger two 1923 2-litre M218s, provided they enter not as works drivers but independents. Rosenberger started well in front of the 230,000 spectators, but Caracciola stalled his engine. His riding mechanic, Eugen Salzer, jumped out and pushed the car to get it started, but by the time they began moving they had lost more than a minute to the leaders. It started to rain, and Caracciola passed many cars that had retired in the poor conditions. Rosenberger lost control at the North Curve on the eighth lap when trying to pass a slower car, and crashed into the timekeepers' box, killing all three occupants; Caracciola kept driving. In the fog and rain, he had no idea which position he was in, but resolved to keep driving so he could at least finish the race. When he finished the 20th and final lap, he was surprised to find that he had won the race. The German press dubbed him Regenmeister, or "Rainmaster", for his prowess in the wet conditions.

Caracciola used the prize money——to set up a Mercedes-Benz dealership on the prestigious Kurfürstendamm in Berlin. He also married his girlfriend, Charlotte, whom he had met in 1923 while working at the Mercedes-Benz outlet in Dresden. He continued racing in domestic competitions, returning again to Freiburg to compete in the Flying Kilometre race where he set a new sports car record in the new Mercedes-Benz 2-litre Model K, and finished first. Caracciola entered the Klausenpass hillclimb and set a new touring car record; he also won the touring car class at the Semmering hillclimb before driving a newly supercharged 1914 Mercedes Grand Prix car over the same route to set the fastest time of the day for any class. The recently completed Nürburgring was the host of the 1927 Eifelrennen, a race which had been held on public roads in the Eifel mountains since 1922. Caracciola won the first race on the track, and returned to the Nürburgring a month later for the 1927 German Grand Prix, but his car broke down and the race was won by Otto Merz. However, he won 11 competitions in 1927, almost all of them in the Ferdinand Porsche-developed Mercedes-Benz Model S.

Caracciola regained his German Grand Prix title at the Nürburgring at the 1928 German Grand Prix, driving the new 7.1-litre Mercedes-Benz SS. He shared the driving with Christian Werner, who took over Caracciola's car when the latter collapsed with heat exhaustion at a pit stop. The German Grand Prix, like many other races at the time, ignored the official Grand Prix racing rules set by the Association Internationale des Automobile Clubs Reconnus (International Association of Recognized Auto Clubs, or AIACR), which limited weight and fuel consumption, and instead ran races under a Formula Libre, or free formula. As a result, Mercedes-Benz focused less on producing Grand Prix cars and more on sports cars, and Caracciola drove the latest incarnation of this line, the SSK, at the Semmering hillclimb, and further reduced his own record on the course by half a second.

The inaugural Monaco Grand Prix was held on 14 April 1929. Caracciola, driving a 7.1-litre Mercedes-Benz SSK, started from the back row of the grid (which was allocated randomly), and battled Bugatti driver William Grover-Williams for the lead early on. However, his pit stop, which took four and a half minutes to refill his car with petrol, left him unable to recover the time, and he eventually finished third. He won the RAC Tourist Trophy in slippery conditions, and confirmed his reputation as a specialist in wet track racing. He partnered Werner in the Mille Miglia and Le Mans endurance races in 1930; they finished sixth in the former but were forced to retire after leading for most of the race in the latter after their car's generator burnt out. Caracciola took victory in the 1930 Irish Grand Prix at Phoenix Park, and won four hillclimbs to take the title of European Hillclimb Champion for the first time. However, he was forced to close his dealership in Berlin after the firm went bankrupt.

1931–1932: Move to Alfa Romeo
Mercedes-Benz officially withdrew from motor racing in 1931—citing the global economic downturn as a reason for their decision—although they continued to support Caracciola and a few other drivers covertly, retaining manager Alfred Neubauer to run the 'independent' operation. In part because of the financial situation, Caracciola was the only Mercedes driver to appear at the 1931 Monaco Grand Prix, driving an SSKL (a shorter version of the SSK). Caracciola and Maserati driver Luigi Fagioli challenged the Bugattis of Louis Chiron and Achille Varzi for the lead early in the race, but when the SSKL's clutch failed Caracciola withdrew from the race. A crowd of 100,000 turned out for the German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring. Rain began to fall before the race, and continued as Caracciola chased Fagioli for the lead in the early laps. The spray from Fagioli's Maserati severely impaired Caracciola's vision, but he was able to pass to take the lead at the Schwalbenschwanz corner. The track began to dry on lap six, and Chiron's Bugatti, which was by then running second, began to catch the heavier Mercedes. Caracciola's pit stop, completed in record time, kept him ahead of Chiron, and despite the Bugatti lapping 15 seconds faster than the Mercedes late in the race, Caracciola won by more than one minute.

Caracciola was lucky to escape from a crash in the Masaryk Grand Prix. He and Chiron were chasing Fagioli when Fagioli crashed into a wooden footbridge, bringing it crashing down onto the road. Caracciola and Chiron drove into a ditch at the side of the road to avoid the debris; while Chiron drove out of the ditch and was able to continue, Caracciola drove into a tree and retired. Despite this accident, Caracciola again performed strongly in the Hillclimbing Championship; he won eight climbs in his SSKL to take the title. Perhaps his most significant achievement of 1931 was his win in the Mille Miglia. The local fleet of Alfa Romeos battled for the lead early in the race, but when they fell back Caracciola in his SSKL was able to take control. His win, in record time, made him and his co-driver Wilhelm Sebastian (who allowed Caracciola to drive the entire race) the first foreigners to win the Italian race. The only other foreigners to win the race on the full course were Stirling Moss and Denis Jenkinson in 1955, also in a Mercedes-made car.

Mercedes-Benz withdrew entirely from motor racing at the start of 1932 in the face of the economic crisis, so Caracciola moved to Alfa Romeo with a promise to return to Mercedes if they resumed racing. His contract stipulated he would begin racing for the Italian team as a semi-independent. Caracciola later wrote that the Alfa Romeo manager was defensive when he questioned him about this clause; Caracciola believed it was because the firm's Italian drivers did not believe he could adjust smoothly from the big Mercedes cars to the smaller Alfa Romeos. His first race for his new team was at the Mille Miglia; he led early in the race, but retired when a valve connection broke. Caracciola later wrote, "I can still see the expression on [Alfa Romeo driver Giuseppe] Campari's face when I arrived back at the factory. He smiled to himself as if to say, Well, didn't I tell you that one wasn't going to make it?"

The next race was the Monaco Grand Prix, where Caracciola was again entered as a semi-independent. He ran fourth early in the race, but moved to second as Alfa Romeo driver Baconin Borzacchini pitted for a wheel change and the axle on Achille Varzi's Bugatti broke. Tazio Nuvolari, in the other Alfa Romeo, found his lead reduced rapidly as Caracciola closed in; with ten laps remaining in the race Caracciola was so close he could see Nuvolari changing gears. He finished the race just behind Nuvolari. The crowd jeered Caracciola: they believed he had deliberately lost for the team, denying them a fight for the win. However, on the strength of his performance, Caracciola was offered a full spot on the Alfa Romeo team, which he accepted.

Alfa Romeo dominated the rest of the Grand Prix season. Nuvolari and Campari drove the light and newly introduced Alfa Romeo P3 at the Italian Grand Prix, while Borzacchini and Caracciola drove much heavier 8Cs. Caracciola was forced to retire when his car broke down, but he took over Borzacchini's car when the Italian was hit by a stone, and came third, behind Nuvolari and Fagioli. In the French Grand Prix, Caracciola, now driving a P3, battled Nuvolari for the lead early on. Alfa Romeo's dominance was so great and their cars were so far ahead the team could choose the top three finishing positions, thus Nuvolari won from Borzacchini and Caracciola, with the two Italians ahead of the German. The order was different at the 1932 German Grand Prix, where Caracciola won from Nuvolari and Borzacchini.

Caracciola performed strongly in other races; he won the Polish and Monza Grands Prix and the Eifelrennen at the Nürburgring, and took five more hill climbs to win that Championship for the third and final time. He was, however, beaten by the Mercedes-Benz of Manfred von Brauchitsch at the Avusrennen (the yearly race at the AVUS track). Von Brauchitsch drove a privately entered SSK with streamlined bodywork and beat Caracciola's Alfa Romeo, which finished in second place. Caracciola was seen by the German crowd as having defected to the Italian team and was booed, while von Brauchitsch's all-German victory drew mass support.

1933–1934: Injury and return for Mercedes
Alfa Romeo withdrew its factory team from motor racing at the start of the 1933 season, leaving Caracciola without a contract. He was close friends with the French-Monegasque driver Louis Chiron, who had been fired from Bugatti, and while on vacation in Arosa in Switzerland the two decided to form their own team, Scuderia C.C. (Caracciola-Chiron). They bought three Alfa Romeo 8Cs (known as Monzas), and Daimler-Benz provided a truck to transport them. Chiron's car was painted blue with a white stripe, and Caracciola's white with a blue stripe. The new team's first race was at the Monaco Grand Prix. On the second day of practice for the race, while Caracciola was showing Chiron around the circuit (it was Chiron's first time in an Alfa Romeo), the German lost control heading into the Tabac corner. Three of the four brakes failed, which destabilised the car. Faced with diving into the sea or smashing into the wall, Caracciola instinctively chose the latter. Caracciola later recounted what happened after the impact:

"Only the body of the car was smashed, especially around my seat. Carefully I drew my leg out of the steel trap. Bracing myself against the frame of the body, I slowly extricated myself from the seat ... I tried to hurry out of the car. I wanted to show that nothing had happened to me, that I was absolutely unhurt. I stepped to the ground. At that instant, the pain flashed through my leg. It was a ferocious pain, as if my leg were being slashed by hot, glowing knives. I collapsed, Chiron catching me in his arms."

Caracciola was carried on a chair to the local tobacco shop, and from there he went to the hospital. He had sustained multiple fractures of his right thigh, and his doctors doubted he would race again. He transferred to a private clinic in Bologna, where his injured leg remained in a plaster cast for six months. Caracciola defied the predictions of his doctors and healed faster than expected, and in the winter Charlotte took her husband back to Arosa, where the altitude and fresh air would aid his recovery.

The rise to power of the Nazi Party on 30 January 1933 gave German motor companies, notably Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union, an opportunity to return to motor racing. Having secured promises of funding shortly after the Nazis' rise to power, both companies spent the better part of 1933 developing their racing projects. Alfred Neubauer, the Mercedes racing manager, travelled to the Caracciolas' chalet in Lugano in November with a plan to sign him for the 1934 Grand Prix season if he was fit. Neubauer challenged Caracciola to walk, and although the driver laughed and smiled while he did so Neubauer was not fooled: Caracciola was not yet fit. Nevertheless, he offered him a contract, provided he prove his fitness in testing at the AVUS track early in the next year. Caracciola agreed and went to Stuttgart to sign the contract. The trip wore him out so much he spent much of his time lying on his hotel bed recuperating.

Upon his return to Lugano, another tragedy befell him. In February, Charlotte died when the party she was skiing with in the Swiss Alps was hit by an avalanche. Caracciola withdrew almost entirely from public life while he mourned, almost deciding to retire completely from motor racing. A visit from Chiron encouraged him to return to racing, and despite his initial reservations he was persuaded to drive the lap of honour before the 1934 Monaco Grand Prix. Although his leg still ached while he drove, the experience convinced him to return to racing.

Caracciola tested the new Mercedes-Benz W25 at the AVUS track in April, and despite his injuries—his right leg had healed five 5 cm shorter than his left, leaving him with a noticeable limp—he was cleared to race. However, Neubauer withdrew the Mercedes team from their first race, also at the AVUS track, as their practice times compared too unfavourably to Auto Union's. Caracciola was judged not fit to race for the Eifelrennen at the Nürburgring, but made the start for the German Grand Prix at the same track six weeks later. He took the lead from Auto Union driver Hans Stuck on the outside of the Karussel on the 13th lap, but retired a lap later when his engine failed. He had better luck at the 1934 Italian Grand Prix in September. In very hot weather, Caracciola started from fourth and moved to second, where he trailed Stuck. After 59 laps, the pain in his leg overwhelmed him, and he pitted, letting teammate Fagioli take over his car. Fagioli won from Stuck's car which by then had been taken over by Nuvolari. His best results in the rest of the season were a second place in the Spanish Grand Prix—he led before Fagioli passed him, much to the anger of Neubauer, who had ordered the Italian to hold position—and first at the Klausenpass hillclimb.

1935–1936: First Championship and rivalry with Rosemeyer
Caracciola took the first of his three European Drivers' Championships in 1935. Seven Grands Prix—the Monaco, French, Belgian, German, Swiss, Italian and Spanish—would be included for Championship consideration. He opened the Championship season with a pole in Monaco but he retired just after the half of the race, then he won in France and took the lead of the standings with another win in Belgium, ahead of Fagioli and von Brauchitsch, who shared the other Mercedes-Benz W25. Nuvolari won a surprise victory at the Nürburgring in his Alfa Romeo P3, ahead of Stuck and Caracciola. The Swiss Grand Prix was held at the Bremgarten Circuit in Bern, and Caracciola won from Fagioli and the new Auto Union star Bernd Rosemeyer. Caracciola won the Spanish Grand Prix from Fagioli and von Brauchitsch; although his transmission failed at the Italian Grand Prix and he was forced to retire, his four wins allowed him to take the Championship.

In the other races of the 1935 season, Caracciola won the Eifelrennen at the Nürburgring and finished second at the Penya Rhin Grand Prix in Barcelona. He also won the Tripoli Grand Prix, organised by the Libyan Governor-General Italo Balbo. The Grand Prix was held in the desert, around a salt lake, and because of the intense heat Neubauer was concerned that the tyres on the Mercedes-Benz cars would not last. Caracciola started poorly, but moved to third, after four pit stops to change tyres, by lap 30 of 40. He inherited the lead from Nuvolari and Varzi when the two Italians pitted, and held it to the finish, despite a late charge from Varzi. Caracciola later wrote that this was the race where he began to feel he had recovered from his crash in Monaco two years before, and he was now back among the contenders.

Remaining in such a position would require Mercedes-Benz to produce a competitive car for the 1936 season. Although the chassis of the W25 was shortened, and the engine was significantly upgraded to 4.74 litres, the car proved inferior to the Type C developed by Auto Union. Mercedes had not improved the chassis to match the engine, and the W25 proved uncompetitive and unreliable. Despite this, Caracciola opened the season with a win in the rain at the Monaco Grand Prix, after starting from third position. He led the Hungarian Grand Prix early but retired with mechanical problems. At the German Grand Prix, he retired with a failed fuel pump, before taking over his teammate Hermann Lang's car; he later retired that car with supercharger problems. Caracciola led the Swiss Grand Prix for several laps, Rosemeyer trailing him closely, but the Clerk of the Course ordered Caracciola to cede the lead to Rosemeyer on the ninth lap after he was found to be blocking the Auto Union. The two had a heated argument after the race despite Caracciola's later retirement with a rear axle problem. Mercedes were so uncompetitive in 1936—Caracciola won only twice, in Monaco and Tunis—that Neubauer withdrew the team mid-season, leaving Rosemeyer to take the Championship for Auto Union.

1937: Second Championship

Mercedes-Benz returned to Grand Prix racing at the start of the 1937 season with a new car. The W125 was a vast improvement on its predecessor, its supercharged eight cylinder 5.6-litre straight-8 engine delivered significantly more power than the W25: 650 brake horsepower compared to 500- an incredible output for the time, and this figure would not be surpassed in Grand Prix racing until the early 1980s, and would also not be surpassed in any form of racing until Can-Am racing in the late 1960s. The first major race of 1937 was the Avusrennen where 300,000 people turned out to see the cars race on the newly re-constructed track. In order to keep speeds consistently high, the north curve was turned into a steeply banked turn, apparently at the suggestion of Adolf Hitler. Driving a streamlined Mercedes-Benz, Caracciola won his heat against Rosemeyer, averaging around 250 km/h, although a transmission failure forced him to retire in the final. Following the AVUS race, Caracciola, along with Rosemeyer, Nuvolari and Mercedes' new driver, Richard Seaman, went to race in the revived Vanderbilt Cup, sanctioned by the American Automobile Association (AAA) in America, and in doing so missed the Belgian Grand Prix, which took place six days later. After starting from pole position, Caracciola led until lap ten, when he retired with a broken supercharger.

Caracciola started from the second row of the grid at the German Grand Prix, but was into the lead soon after the start. There he remained to the finish, in front of von Brauchitsch and Rosemeyer. He took pole position at the Monaco Grand Prix three weeks later, and was soon engaged in a hard fight with von Brauchitsch. The Mercedes-Benz drivers took the lead from each other several times, but von Brauchitsch won after a screw fell into Caracciola's induction system during a pit stop, costing him three and a half minutes. Caracciola won his second race of the season at the Swiss Grand Prix. Despite heavy rain which made the Bremgarten Circuit slippery and hazardous, Caracciola set a new lap record, at an average speed of 169 km/h, and cemented his reputation as the Regenmeister.

For the first time, the Italian Grand Prix was held at the Livorno Circuit rather than the traditional venue of Monza. Caracciola took pole position, and despite two false starts caused by spectators pouring onto the track, held his lead for the majority of the race and won from his teammate Lang by just 0.4 seconds. In doing so Caracciola clinched the European Championship for the second time. He backed up the win with another at the Masaryk Grand Prix two weeks later. He trailed Rosemeyer for much of the race until the Auto Union skidded against a kerb and allowed the Mercedes into the lead.

Caracciola married for the second time in 1937, to Alice Hoffman-Trobeck, who worked as a timekeeper for Mercedes-Benz. He had met her in 1932, when she was having an affair with Chiron. She was, at that time, married to Alfred Hoffman-Trobeck, a Swiss businessman and heir to a pharmaceutical empire. She had taken care of Caracciola after Charlotte died, and shortly after began an affair with him, unbeknownst to Chiron. They were married in June in Lugano, just before the trip to America.

1938: Speed records and third Championship

On 28 January 1938, Caracciola and the Mercedes-Benz record team appeared on the Reichs-Autobahn A5 between Frankfurt and Darmstadt, in an attempt to break numerous speed records set by the Auto Union team. The system of speed records at the time used classes based on engine capacity, allowing modified Grand Prix cars, in this case a W125, to be used to break records. Caracciola had broken previous records—he reached 311.985 km/h in 1935—but these had been superseded by Auto Union drivers, first Stuck and then Rosemeyer. Driving a Mercedes-Benz W125 Rekordwagen, essentially a W125 with streamlined bodywork and a larger engine, Caracciola set a new average speed of 432.7 km/h for the flying kilometre and 432.4 km/h for the flying mile, speeds which remain to this day as some of the fastest ever achieved on public roads. The day ended in tragedy however; Rosemeyer set off in his Auto Union in an attempt to break Caracciola's new records, but his car was struck by a violent gust of wind while he was travelling at around 400 km/h, hurling the car off the road, where it rolled twice, killing its driver. Rosemeyer's death had a profound effect on Caracciola, as he later wrote:

"What was the sense in men chasing each other to death for the sake of a few seconds? To serve progress? To serve mankind? What a ridiculous phrase in the face of the great reality of death. But then—why? Why? And for the first time, at that moment, I felt that every life is lived according to its own laws. And that the law for a fighter is: to burn oneself up to the last fibre, no matter what happens to the ashes."

The Grand Prix formula was changed again in 1938, abandoning the previous system of weight restrictions and instead limiting piston displacement. Mercedes-Benz' new car, the W154, proved its abilities at the French Grand Prix, where von Brauchitsch won ahead of Caracciola and Lang to make it a Mercedes 1–2–3. Caracciola won two races in the 1938 season: the Swiss Grand Prix and the Coppa Acerbo; finished second in three: the French, German and Pau Grands Prix; and third in two: the Tripoli and Italian Grands Prix, to take the European Championship for the third and final time. The highlight of Caracciola's season was his win in the pouring rain at the Swiss Grand Prix. His teammate Seaman led for the first 11 laps before Caracciola passed him; he remained in the lead for the rest of the race, despite losing the visor on his helmet, severely reducing visibility, especially given the spray thrown up by the tyres of the many lapped cars.

1939: Claims of favouritism towards Lang
The 1939 season took place under the looming shadow of the coming Second World War, and the schedule was only halted with the invasion of Poland in September. The Championship season began with the Belgian Grand Prix in June. In heavy rain, Caracciola spun at La Source, got out and pushed his car off into the safety of the trees. Later in the race, Seaman left the track at the same corner, his car bursting into flames upon impact with the trees, where he was burnt alive in the cockpit. He died that night in hospital, after briefly regaining consciousness. The entire Mercedes team travelled to London for his burial. In the rest of the season, Caracciola won the German Grand Prix for the sixth and final time, again in the rain, after starting third on the grid. He finished second behind Lang at the Swiss and Tripoli Grands Prix. The latter race was seen as a major win for Mercedes-Benz. In an effort to halt German dominance at the event, the Italian organisers decided to limit engine sizes to 1.5 litres (the German teams at the time ran 3-litre engines), and announced the change at the last moment. The change was, however, leaked to Mercedes-Benz well in advance, and in just eight months the firm developed and built two W165s under the new restrictions; both of them beat the combined might of 28 Italian cars, much to the disappointment of the organisers. Caracciola believed that the Mercedes-Benz team were favouring Lang during the 1939 season; in a letter sent to Mercedes' brand owner Daimler-Benz CEO Dr. Wilhelm Kissel, he wrote:

"I see little chance of the situation changing at all. Starting with Herr (Mr.) Sailer [ Max Sailer, then the head of the Mercedes racing division] through Neubauer, down to the mechanics, there is an obsession with Lang. Herr Neubauer admitted frankly to Herr von Brauchitsch that he was standing by the man who has good luck, and whom the sun shines on ... I really enjoy racing and want to go on driving for a long time. However, this presupposes that I fight with the same weapons as my stablemates. Yet this will be hardly possible in the future, as almost all the mechanics and engine specialists in the racing division are on Lang's side ..."

Despite Caracciola's protests, Lang was declared the 1939 European Champion by the NSKK (Nationalsozialistisches Kraftfahrkorps, or National Socialist Motor Corps)—although this was never ratified by the AIACR, and Auto Union driver Hermann Paul Müller may have a valid claim to the title under the official scoring system—and motor racing was put on hold upon the outbreak of war.

War, comeback and later years
Caracciola and his wife Alice returned to their home in Lugano. For the duration of the war, he was unable to drive; the rationing of petrol meant motor racing was unfeasible. The pain in his leg grew worse, and they returned to the Bologna clinic to consult a specialist. Surgery was recommended, but Caracciola decided against that option, deterred by the minimum three months it would take to recover from the operation. He spent much of the last part of the war—from 1941 onwards—attempting to gain possession of the two W165s used at the 1939 Tripoli Grand Prix, with a view to maintaining them for the duration of the hostilities. When they finally arrived in Switzerland in early 1945, they were confiscated as German property by the Swiss authorities.

He was invited to participate in the 1946 Indianapolis 500, and originally intended to drive one of the W165s, but was unable to have them released in time by Swiss customs. Nevertheless, he headed to the United States to watch the race. Joel Thorne, a local team owner, offered him one of his Thorne Engineering Specials to drive, but during a practice session before the race Caracciola suffered his second major accident when was hit on the head by an object, believed to be a bird, and crashed into the south wall. His life was saved by a tank driver's helmet the organisers insisted he wear. He suffered a severe concussion and was in a coma for several days. Tony Hulman, owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, invited Caracciola and his wife to stay at his lodge near Terre Haute to let him fully recover.

Caracciola returned to racing in 1952, when he was recalled to the Mercedes-Benz factory team to drive the new Mercedes-Benz W194 in sports car races. The first major race with the car was the Mille Miglia, alongside Karl Kling and his old teammate Hermann Lang. Kling finished second in the race, Caracciola fourth. It later emerged that Caracciola had been given a car with an inferior engine to his teammates, perhaps because of a lack of time to prepare for the race. Caracciola's career ended with his third major crash; during a support race for the 1952 Swiss Grand Prix, the brakes on his 300SL locked and he skidded into a tree at the fast, tree-lined Bremgarten circuit, fracturing his left leg.

After he retired from racing, Caracciola continued to work for Daimler-Benz as a salesman, targeting NATO troops stationed in Europe. He organised shows and demonstrations which toured military bases, leading in part to an increase in Mercedes-Benz sales during that period. In early 1959, he became sick and developed signs of jaundice, which worsened despite treatment. Later in the year, he was diagnosed with advanced cirrhosis. On 28 September 1959, in Kassel, Germany, he suffered liver failure and died, aged 58. He was buried in his home town of Lugano.

Nazi interactions

Caracciola first met Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, in 1931. Hitler had ordered a Mercedes-Benz 770, at that point Mercedes' most expensive car, but due to the amount of time spent upgrading the car in line with the Nazi leader's wishes, the delivery was late. To mollify Hitler's anger, Caracciola was dispatched by Mercedes to deliver the car to the Brown House in Munich. Caracciola drove Hitler and his niece Geli Raubal around Munich to demonstrate the car. He later wrote (after the fall of the Nazi Party) that he was not particularly awed by Hitler: "I could not imagine that this man would have the requirements for taking over the government someday."

As were most German racing drivers in Nazi Germany, Caracciola was a member of the NSKK, a paramilitary organisation of the Nazi Party devoted to motor racing and motor cars; during the Second World War it handled transport and supply. In reports on races by German media Caracciola was referred to as NSKK-Staffelführer Caracciola, the equivalent of a Squadron Leader. After races in Germany the drivers took part in presentations to the crowd coordinated by NSKK leader Adolf Hühnlein and attended by senior Nazis. Although he wrote after the fall of the Nazi regime that he found such presentations dull and uninspiring, Caracciola occasionally used his position as a famous racing driver to publicly support the Nazi regime; for example, in 1938, while supporting the Nazi platform at the Reichstag elections, he said, "[t]he unique successes of these new racing cars in the past four years are a victorious symbol of our Führer's (Hitler's) achievement in rebuilding the nation."

Despite this, when Caracciola socialised with the upper Nazi echelons he did so merely as an "accessory", not as an active member, and at no time was he a member of the Nazi Party. According to his autobiography, he turned down a request from the NSKK in 1942 to entertain German troops, as he "could not find it in myself to cheer up young men so that they would believe in a victory I myself could not believe in". Caracciola lived in Switzerland from the early 1930s, and despite strict currency controls, his salary was paid in Swiss francs. During the war, he continued to receive a pension from Daimler-Benz, until the firm ceased his payments under pressure from the Nazi party in 1942.

Legacy

Caracciola is remembered—along with Nuvolari and Rosemeyer—as one of the greatest pre-1939 Grand Prix drivers. He has a reputation as a perfectionist, who very rarely had accidents or caused mechanical failures in his cars, and who could deliver when needed regardless of the conditions. His relationship with Mercedes racing manager Alfred Neubauer, one of mutual respect, is often cited as a contributing factor to his success. After Caracciola's death, Neubauer described him as:

"... the greatest driver of the twenties and thirties, perhaps even of all time. He combined, to an extraordinary extent, determination with concentration, physical strength with intelligence. Caracciola was second to none in his ability to triumph over shortcomings."

His trophy collection was donated to the Indianapolis Hall of Fame Museum, and he was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1998. In 2001, on the 100th anniversary of his birth, a monument to Caracciola was erected in his birth town of Remagen, and on the 50th anniversary of his death in 2009 Caracciola Square was dedicated off of the town's Rheinpromenade. Karussel corner at the Nürburgring was renamed after him, officially becoming the Caracciola Karussel. , Caracciola's record of six German Grand Prix victories remains unbeaten.

During the inaugural official meeting of the 200 Mile Per Hour Club on 2 September 1953, Caracciola was inducted as one of the original three foreigners who met the club's requirements of achieving an average of over 200 mph over two runs for his past achievements prior to the club's foundation.

European Championship results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap)

Notable victories

 * European Drivers Championship (3): 1935, 1937, 1938
 * European Hill Climb Championship GP Cars (1): 1932
 * European Hill Climb Championship Sports Cars (2): 1930, 1931

Grandes Épreuves:
 * French Grand Prix (1): 1935
 * Italian Grand Prix (2): 1934, 1937
 * Belgian Grand Prix (1): 1935
 * Spanish Grand Prix (1): 1935
 * German Grand Prix (6): 1926, 1928, 1931; 1932, 1937; 1939
 * Monaco Grand Prix (1): 1936
 * Swiss Grand Prix (3): 1935, 1937, 1938

Minor Grand Prix:
 * Eifelrennen (4): 1927, 1931, 1932, 1935
 * Irish Grand Prix (1): 1930
 * Avusrennen (1): 1931
 * Lviv Grand Prix (1): 1932
 * Monza Grand Prix (1): 1932
 * Tripoli Grand Prix (1): 1935
 * Tunis Grand Prix (1): 1936
 * Czechoslovakian Grand Prix (1): 1937
 * Coppa Arcebo (1): 1938

Other notable Events:
 * Tourist Trophy: (1): 1929
 * Mille Miglia: (1): 1931

title: Rudolf Caracciola


text:
Dori Seda

Dorothea Antoinette "Dori" Seda (22 June 1951 – February 25, 1988) was an artist best known for her underground comix work in the 1980s. She occasionally used the pen name "Sylvia Silicosis." Her comics combined exaggerated fantasy and ribald humor with documentation of her life in the Mission District of San Francisco, California.

Fine Arts
Seda was originally a painter and ceramics artist, graduating from Illinois State University with a B.A. in art. Seda emphasized that she was primarily invested in "pure" art forms, having business cards printed to read, "Dori Seda--ARTIST--San Francisco." Seda was creating a lot of fine arts content in 1979 and 1980. Some of her notable art works include Punch Bowl (with cups and ladle), The Wreck in Heaven, Vibrator with 3 Attachments for ceramics and Jaded Fish and The Vampire Painting for acrylic on canvas.

Comics
To pursue her interest in comics, Seda took a job as a janitor at the San Francisco publisher Last Gasp, and soon after became a bookkeeper there. (This work was primarily viewed as a financial necessity to Seda, her true passion being the "pure arts.") Seda worked exclusively night hours and was known as "The Vampire Bookkeeper."

Her first published comics work was a strip titled "Bloods in Space", written by Kevin Lambert, which appeared in Robert Crumb's anthology magazine Weirdo, issue #2, in 1981. Seda's comic work was centered around taboo sexual subject matters, including swinging and bestiality. Her work intended to push boundaries that individuals upheld as communal prejudices. The reaction of Seda's audience is "less an affirmation of community standards than a kind of self-righteous consumerism." She submitted her work under the pen name "David Seda" but was published in the magazine under her true name. She was subsequently published in Wimmen's Comix, San Francisco Comic Book, Viper, Yellow Silk, Prime Cuts, Cannibal Romance, Weird Smut Comix, Tits & Clits, Twisted Sisters, and her solo book Lonely Nights Comics (which was banned in England upon its release).

In 1999, her work was collected in the book Dori Stories, which also includes memorial tributes. This body of work almost was not published due to legal troubles regarding the reproduction of Seda's work. Ultimately, Dori Stories won a 2000 Firecracker Alternative Book Award in the Special Recognition/Wildcard Category "Books about Gap-Toothed Deceased Female Cartoonists with Smelly Dogs".

In 1988, Last Gasp established the Dori Seda Memorial Award for Women. The first recipient was Carol Tyler.

Film
Seda was featured in the short documentary Gap-Toothed Women by Les Blank, a tribute to women with the commonality of a gap between their two front teeth. Seda was originally cut from the film, as her interview answers were seen as bland, so Seda requested that she be given a second chance and preplanned a response that would gain greater reaction. Seda explained how she was not inherently "valuable" because she was not beautiful because of her "funny teeth." She attributed her value to the work she had done in spite of her gap saying, she was "kind of glad that [her] teeth are like this, because if I had nice straight teeth, I might never have done anything.” She created a poster for the film.

Death and copyright issues
Seda died at age 37 from respiratory failure after catching the flu during a severe outbreak in San Francisco in the spring of 1988. Her lungs were weakened by silicosis contracted from the toxic fumes released by firing metallic glazes, while neglecting to wear a protective mask for her ceramics work. She was also a heavy smoker who suffered from emphysema which contributed to the deterioration of her health.

After Seda's death, conflict arose over the rights to reproduce her work. Friends of Seda wanted to collect and publish the collection that became Dori Stories, but at her death, Seda's estate passed to the next of kin, her mother. Due to the sexual nature of Seda's work, her mother did not wish to see Seda's writing in print again and refused requests to publish it. However, a year prior to her death, Seda had written a will that gave partner Don Donahue (also involved in the comics industry) full ownership of her work if she died. The will was written in a humorous tone, opening with the statement, "This is sort of a contract and sort of a will (although I don’t plan on dying soon.)” Regardless, this document held the legal power of a written contract and allowed for Seda's full body of work to be published. The will was witnessed and signed by Seda, Donohue, and fellow cartoonists Krystine Kryttre and Dan O'Neill. Seda's friends successfully filed the will in 1991, conferring full ownership of her work on Donohue.

In Popular Culture

 * Dori Seda is a character in the short story "Dori Bangs" by Bruce Sterling in which Sterling imagines what would have happened if Dori hadn't died young and had instead met the writer Lester Bangs.

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

title: Dori Seda


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Long-tailed glossy starling

The long-tailed glossy starling (Lamprotornis caudatus) is a member of the starling family of birds. It is a resident breeder in tropical Africa from Senegal east to Sudan.

This common passerine is typically found in open woodland and cultivation. The long-tailed glossy starling builds a nest in a hole. The normal clutch is two to four eggs.

This ubiquitous bird is gregarious and noisy, with a harsh grating call.

The adults of these 54 cm long birds have metallic green upperparts, violet underparts and a 34 cm long purple tail. The face is black with a yellow eye. The sexes are similar, but juveniles are duller, with a brownish tone to the plumage. Like most starlings, the long-tailed glossy starling is an omnivore, eating fruit and insects.

title: Long-tailed glossy starling


text:
Talk:List of curves

rational curves
There are some things going wrong in this list. Why are curves like elliptic curves and hyper-elliptic curves sorted under rational curves? They are not rational. Plane singular cubic curves (i.e. nodal or cuspidal cubic) are rational, but they are not called elliptic curves. For example the Portugues version of this article has it right. Please somebody with time and knowledge correct this list. 2001:638:501:526C:8117:449B:5EF5:B3DA (talk) 13:00, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Conchoid branch
I was going to put together some briefs (trisectrix, limacons) to flesh out a conchoid branch. Also possibly expanding on the epicycloids. I want to make sure I'm not missing an overall scheme someone is working on here. Scottdbruns 05:45, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

Don't think anything systematic is in evidence - go ahead. Charles Matthews 08:03, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

 * I've introduced a system by separating algebraic from transcendental curves, and separating the rational curves among the algebraic ones. I'll be checking the list of genus zero curves. Gene Ward Smith 10:53, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Tricuspid
The link to tricuspid under classical curves currently redirects to the tricuspid heart valve. I can't find an entry on wikipedia for a tricuspid curve. If it really exists, someone should add it, and change the redirect to a disambiguation page; if it doesn't, we should remove it from this list and edit talk:tricuspid to remove the section about conflict (mathematical curve). Tbutzon 14:43, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

 * The tricuspid is the deltoid (curve), so one should redirect to the other. I'll try to find which is more standard. Gene Ward Smith 10:56, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

u curve
"U Curve" may be appropriate addation.

On merging with Curves in differential geometry
The page currently has a header suggesting a merger with the Curves in differential geometry page. I don't see the point of this, as curves may be (and are) studied outside the realm of differential geometry. Indeed they were studied by greeks long before the invention of differential analysis. At any rate, the page on Curves in differential geometry needs to be expanded, but not merged with this one.

CraigDesjardins

There might be some logic in splitting the algebraic curves from the transcendental ones. Gene Ward Smith 03:50, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think this merger proposal is going anywhere, so I'm removing the tag. Gene Ward Smith 03:18, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Commons
I linked the list from commons:Category:Curves as a reverence of names and catogories. imho they two should be permanently syncronised. please correct all my typing, I'n no native EN --W!B: 00:54, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

elementary functions
imho all the trigonometric, hyperbolic functions, logarithm, and even straight line should be added here --W!B: 01:01, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I second the motion. --131.193.179.146 07:14, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Squoval
Is Squoval appropriate for this list? Hyacinth (talk) 05:52, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

S-curve
Shouldn't S-curve go on this list? If so, I am not sure where on the list. - Badgettrg (talk) 13:17, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

External links modified
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Zindler curve
Zindler curve is not included.

y = 1 / x²
Is there a name for a curve like $$y = 1 / x^2$$ (equivalently, $$y\, x^2 = 1$$), and its generalisations, such as $$y\, (x+\alpha)^2 = \beta$$? How about $$y\, x^n = 1$$? —DIV (137.111.13.4 (talk) 04:06, 13 March 2022 (UTC))

title: Talk:List of curves


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Al Simmons

Aloysius Harry Simmons (May 22, 1902 – May 26, 1956), born Alois Szymanski, better known as Al Simmons. was an American professional baseball player. Nicknamed "Bucketfoot Al", he played for two decades in Major League Baseball (MLB) as an outfielder and had his best years with Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics during the late 1920s and early 1930s, winning two World Series with Philadelphia. Simmons also played for the Chicago White Sox, Detroit Tigers, Washington Senators, Boston Braves, Cincinnati Reds and Boston Red Sox. After his playing career ended, Simmons served as a coach for the Athletics and Cleveland Indians. A career .334 hitter, Simmons was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1953.

Early life
Simmons was born in Milwaukee and grew up as a fan of the Philadelphia Athletics. In the fourth grade, he received a spanking from his father for insisting that he wanted to play professional baseball. When he persisted in asserting his desire to be a baseball player, his father replied that he had better become a good player. Simmons was known by his birth last name (Szymanski) until he was playing for a local minor league team and he was tired of hearing people mispronounce it. He saw an advertisement for a company named Simmons Hardware and decided to take on the last name of Simmons.

Philadelphia Athletics (1924–1932)
In 1925, his second season with Philadelphia, Simmons led the AL with 253 hits and 392 total bases, while posting a .387 batting average, 24 home runs and 129 runs batted in (RBI). He scored 122 runs, hit 43 doubles, and finished with a .599 slugging percentage. Simmons' 85 multi-hit games constitute a single-season MLB record. He earned the second-most votes for the league's Most Valuable Player Award. In the following three seasons, he hit .341, .392 and .351 and drove in 110, 108 and 107 runs in those respective years, while finishing fifth in 1926 MVP voting and fourth in 1927.

Simmons led the A's to the AL pennant in 1929 as Philadelphia went 104–46, finishing 18 games ahead of the New York Yankees. The A's went on to defeat the Chicago Cubs in five games to win the World Series. That season, he hit .365 with 34 home runs and led the AL with 157 RBI. He also scored 114 runs, had 212 hits with 41 doubles and a .642 slugging percentage. In his first World Series Simmons batted .300 with two home runs, five RBIs and scored six runs.

Simmons' best year as a player was in 1930, when he won his first of successive batting titles, hitting .381 with 36 home runs, 211 hits, 41 doubles and 16 triples. He had a slugging percentage of .708, drove in 165 runs and scored 152 runs in 138 games. The A's won the AL pennant again, going 102–52, and defeated the St. Louis Cardinals to win back-to-back World Series titles. In that World Series, Simmons batted .364 with two home runs and four RBI with a .727 slugging percentage.

In 1931, the A's won their third straight AL pennant, by 13.5 games over the Yankees, going 107–45. Simmons won his second batting title, hitting .390 with 22 home runs, 128 RBI, 100 runs scored, 200 hits, 37 doubles, 13 triples and a .641 slugging percentage while playing in only 128 games. He finished third in AL MVP voting behind his MVP teammate Lefty Grove and the Yankees' Lou Gehrig. The A's were upset in their quest for a third consecutive World Series title, losing the World Series in seven games to the Cardinals. Simmons hit .333 with two home runs and eight RBI in the series.

In a final season with Philadelphia, Simmons led the AL with 216 hits. He batted .322, with 35 home runs, 151 RBIs and 144 runs scored in 1932. Simmons finished his Philadelphia Athletics tenure with a .356 batting average, 209 home runs, 1,179 RBI and 969 runs scored in 1,290 games. He drove in 100+ runs in all nine seasons and scored 100 or more runs in five seasons. In three World Series appearances for the A's, Simmons hit .333 with six home runs, 17 RBI and 15 runs scored in 18 games.

Later career (1933–1944)
In late September 1932 the Athletics sold Simmons, Mule Haas and Jimmy Dykes to the Chicago White Sox for cash. The amount of the purchase was not disclosed at the time the sale was reported, though it was said to be the largest cash purchase ever made by the White Sox and possibly the largest purchase in AL history. Newspaper reports speculated that Athletics owner Connie Mack might be breaking apart the Athletics team that had been so successful between 1929 and 1931.

During his first season in Chicago, Simmons batted .331 with 14 home runs, 119 RBI and 200 hits. In 1934 he batted .344 with 18 home runs, 104 RBI, 102 runs scored and 192 hits in 138 games. After a disappointing final season with the White Sox which saw Simmons bat just. 267 with 16 home runs and 79 RBI in 128 games (first time in his 11-year career he did not reach .300 and 100+ RBI) he rebounded by hitting .327 with 13 home runs, 112 RBI and 96 runs scored in 1936 for the Detroit Tigers.

In 1937 he struggled again, this time with the Washington Senators, batting just .279 with 8 home runs and 84 RBIs in 103 games. He rebounded with a stellar season in 1938, batting .302 with 21 home runs and 95 RBI in just 125 games for Washington. His 21 home runs that year gave Simmons the distinction of being the first player to hit 20 home runs in a year for the Senators.

Simmons was purchased from the Senators by the Boston Bees in December 1938. The purchase price was not immediately revealed, though Simmons was reported as not getting along with Senators owner Clark Griffith.

Simmons was purchased from the Bees by the Cincinnati Reds on August 31, 1939. The Reds won the NL pennant that year, and Simmons got to play in his final World Series. He played in one game in the Series, going one for four with a double and a run scored.

Simmons played in the major leagues until 1944, when he finished his career with his original team, the Philadelphia A’s.

Overview
Simmons was one of the best hitters in MLB history. He had a career batting average of .334. He hit .340 or better in eight different seasons, with four seasons of better than .380. He recorded a .300 batting average and 100 or more RBI in his first 11 major league seasons.

Simmons accumulated 1,500 hits in 1,040 games and 2,000 hits in 1,393 games, numbers that remain the fewest games needed to attain both marks in major league history. He compiled 200 hits or better in a season six times, with five of those being consecutive (1929–33), and had 199 and 192 hits in 1926 and 1934. He compiled more hits than any right-handed batter in AL history until surpassed by Al Kaline.

Simmons recorded 8 five-hit games and 52 four-hit games in the majors.

Simmons hit 307 career home runs, finishing in the top six in AL in home runs for seven consecutive seasons (1925–32). In 19 World Series games, he hit .329 with 6 home runs, 17 RBI, 15 runs scored and a .658 slugging percentage. He was also a fine outfielder in his era, recording a career .982 fielding percentage. He recorded exactly 5,000 putouts in his MLB career.

Simmons was nicknamed "Bucketfoot Al" because he strode toward third base when hitting.

Later life and legacy
After his playing days ended, Simmons served as a coach for Mack's Athletics (1945–49) and the Cleveland Indians (1950). In early April 1951, Simmons announced he was dealing with an undisclosed illness and would be stepping down as a coach of the Indians. While Cleveland manager Al López encouraged Simmons to think about his decision, Simmons said he could no longer help the team.

Simmons died on May 26, 1956. He had collapsed on a sidewalk near the Milwaukee Athletic Club, where he lived, and was thought to have suffered a heart attack. He was pronounced dead at a hospital a short time later. He was buried at St. Adalbert's Cemetery in Milwaukee.

Simmons was elected to the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame in 1951, the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1953, and the National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame in 1975.

In 1999, Simmons ranked number 43 on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, and was a nominee for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. In the 2001 book The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, Bill James ranked Simmons as the 71st greatest baseball player of all time and the seventh greatest MLB left fielder of all time.

title: Al Simmons


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Whiteness

The only thing here is a quote from Moby Dick about the state of being white. I can't imagine any encyclopedic value in it, nor any potential replacement article. Bryan 05:48, 9 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Charmingly idiosyncratic. Nevertheless: delete --bodnotbod 15:15, May 9, 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete -- Cyrius|&#9998 16:14, May 9, 2004 (UTC)
 * Now look you for'ard on the Pequod, where Queequeg and Stubb sit with yon ill-favored Lascars, worrying at a piece of rope. With what skill do they fashion it into that knot of all knots, the Turks-Head, that tangled complexity of cunning artifice.  Yet, mark you, landsman, this knot with its sundry mystifications has no use in the fastenings and attachments. Every sheet-bend, inside-clinch, diamond-knot, double-crown, half-hitch, clove-hitch, blackwall-hitch, and carrick-bend has its place in the regulation of the Pequod. The humblest of the bowlines, stings, dead-eyes, splices, reefs, bends, hitches, knots, grommets, tarpaulins, epidydimides, and seizings, keeps our little world sailing on its appointed course. And yet the Turks-Head, which binds no sail, chocks no reeve, fillets no quoin, braces no cutting-spade, like some rough Kabbalah of the folio Parsees, is the Prince of Knots!  Bethink yourself well on it, landsman! Aye, what are your bankers, your stock-brokers, your clergy, your Senators, your professors, your players with railroads, your stackers of wheat, your hog-butchers to the nation, but the Turks-Head Knots of human discourse, while it is the lowest square-knots and sheep-shanks that connect and bind our souls like some fragrant, oleaginous, glutinous, nacreous, viscous antinomian asphodel from the rarest and most prized of the far Barbadoes. Oh, by the way... delete. Dpbsmith 01:21, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
 * KEEP THIS PAGE! IT HAS BEEN CHANGED! I have replaced the previous blather with a useful article on the topic. "Whiteness" is a concept from a real and emerging field called Whiteness Studies. Read the new article before voting to delete, PLEASE. Worldtyrant 00:33, 12 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Whiteness studies is a valid topic, and I have created an article on it, based on Worldtyrant's work but reworked for a more neutral point of view. That material does not properly belong under Whiteness and accordingly I have reverted it to the version previously under discussion, until VfD can run its normal course. I wasn't sure what to do with Worldtyrant's statement that "Harvard University has proposed to, in their own words; 'Abolish the White race'". This is not correct as stated; a better statement would be "Harvard University graduate Noel Ignatiev, in an article in Harvard Magazine entitled "Abolish the White race," describes his 1992 founding of the magazine Race Traitor." However, I haven't included this in Whiteness studies (although I did leave it as an external link) because I am unsure what the relationship is between this article and the general field of Whiteness studies. Dpbsmith 22:21, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

Whiteness studies looks fine. Delete whiteness and redirect to Whiteness studies. --Starx 00:29, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete and redirect to Whiteness studies. Maybe find some room for the quote too. Burgundavia 20:14, May 13, 2004 (UTC)
 * Thank you Dpbsmith. I should point out that I did not post the Harvard quote. There is another user (unregistered) who has changed my entries more than once. Even now, I see the page has been changed ONCE AGAIN to be nothing but a Melville quote. What can we do? Worldtyrant 22:28, 13 May 2004 (UTC)


text:
Cape Dutch

Cape Dutch, also commonly known as Cape Afrikaners, were a historic socioeconomic class of Afrikaners who lived in the Western Cape during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The terms have been evoked to describe an affluent, educated section of the Cape Colony's Afrikaner population which did not participate in the Great Trek or the subsequent founding of the Boer republics. Today, the Cape Dutch are credited with helping shape and promote a unique Afrikaner cultural identity through their formation of civic associations such as the Afrikaner Bond, and promotion of the Afrikaans language.

Nomenclature
At the onset of British rule in the Cape Colony, the preexisting population of European origin settled during the Dutch era was universally classified by the new colonial government as "Hollanders" or "Dutch". In 1805, a relative majority still represented old Dutch families brought to the Cape during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; however, close to one-fourth of this demographic group was of German origin and one-sixth, of French Huguenot descent. Nevertheless, to the British authorities they represented a rather homogeneous bloc which could be easily distinguished by their common use of the Dutch language and shared adherence to the Dutch Reformed Church. Among the colonists themselves there had developed a notion of a Boer people; although the term could denote any Dutch-speaking white settler it was usually only the impoverished pastoral farmers on the colony's frontier who applied this concept to themselves and formed a unique subgroup accordingly. In response, British immigrants and officials adopted the informal moniker "Cape Dutch" to distinguish between the better educated, wealthier Dutch speakers concentrated in the Western Cape and the self-styled "Boers", whom they considered ignorant, illiterate, and uncouth. "Cape Dutch" may thus be regarded correctly as an English description rather than any sense of self-concept. When first introduced, the term was not actually used by Dutch-speaking whites in the Western Cape to describe themselves, and the idea of a unique Cape Dutch identity did not find widespread expression until the 1870s. The term's explicit connotation to the Netherlands, and the indiscriminate manner in which it was applied by English speakers, also sparked a revival of interest among colonists of German or French origin in their ancestral roots.

History
Following the establishment of the Dutch East India Company's initial settlement at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, it became home to a large population of vrijlieden, also known as Free Burghers vrijburgers (free citizens). The earliest free burghers were Company employees who applied for grants of land and permission to retire in South Africa as independent farmers. Most were married Dutch citizens who committed to spend at least twenty years on the African continent. In exchange they received plots of thirteen and a half morgen apiece, a twelve-year exemption from property taxes, and loans of seeds and agricultural implements. Reflecting the multi-national character of the company's workforce and overseas settlements, smaller numbers of German and French Huguenot immigrants were also allowed to settle in South Africa, and by 1691 over a quarter of the Cape's European population was not ethnically Dutch. Nevertheless, there was a degree of cultural assimilation due to intermarriage, and the almost universal adoption of the Dutch language. Cleavages were likelier to occur along socioeconomic rather than ethnic lines; broadly speaking, the Cape colonists were delineated into Boers, poor farmers who settled directly on the frontier, and the more affluent, predominantly urbanised Cape Dutch.

Differences between the Boers and the Cape Dutch increased as a result of the end of Dutch rule and the Great Trek. The Netherlands formally ceded its South African colony to Great Britain around 1815. While most of the Cape Dutch community accepted British rule and embraced the status of British subjects, the Boers remained fiercely independent and felt alienated by the new colonial administration. This culminated in the Great Trek, a mass migration of between 12,000 and 15,000 Boers deep into South Africa's interior to escape British rule. Four-fifths of the Cape Colony's Dutch-speaking white population at the time did not participate in the trek. The Dutch Reformed Church, to which most of the Cape Dutch and Boers belonged, explicitly refused to endorse the Great Trek as well.

Many Cape Dutch regarded the subsequent founding of the Boer republics with suspicion, as they perceived the cause of Boer republican nationalism to be retrogressive. Nevertheless, the Cape Dutch went on to develop their own nationalist movement in the late nineteenth century, which initially promoted cooperation and political alliances with the British. This policy began to dissolve after 1895, when local political leaders sought to distance themselves from Britain's imperial agenda and what they perceived as unwanted interference by English capitalists such as Cecil Rhodes in the legal and constitutional traditions of the colony. Popular affectation for British imperial traditions, culture, and patriotism among the Cape Dutch was rapidly replaced by a more exclusive commitment to a greater Afrikaner nationalism. For his part Rhodes regarded the growth of pan-Afrikaner nationalism as an imminent threat, since a political union between the Boers and Cape Dutch would threaten British primacy in South Africa. He helped perpetuate preexisting rivalries between the two groups to circumvent this possibility.

The outbreak of hostilities between the British government and the Boer republics during the Second Boer War deeply split Cape Dutch society. Boer victories intensified patriotic pan-Afrikaner sentiments among the Cape Dutch. While many fought on the side of the British, an unknown number also defected to the Boer republics. As the Cape Dutch controlled over half the colonial legislature in the Cape Colony at the time, the perceived proliferation of pro-Boer sentiments led to unsuccessful attempts by Governor Lord Milner to disenfranchise them. Milner believed that most Cape Dutch secretly supported the Boer cause, and sought to ensure the local English-speaking population achieved political dominance through excessive gerrymandering. Many of the troops among the enlisted and officer ranks in the British Army shared Milner's suspicions, with one soldier writing a letter explicitly detailing the British soldiers' animosity towards Afrikaners at large: "The Cape Dutch and Boers are a dirty treacherous lot and as soon as the Transvaal is subdued and the beggars trek farther out of our way the better. We do hate them down here like poison." Relatively few returning Cape Dutch fighters were disenfranchised as a result of joining the Boer war effort.

Prior to the Second Boer War, the narrow principles of Boer republicanism and the political alignment many Cape Dutch still held with the British Empire undercut any hopes for pan-Afrikaner unity. However, following the dismantling of the Boer republics, the exodus of many impoverished Boers to the cities, and the subsequent establishment of the Union of South Africa, the Cape Dutch and Boers increasingly formed a unified political bloc and socioeconomic differences between the two groups gradually diminished. The single most decisive factor in encouraging Cape Dutch and Boer unity in the postwar period appears to have been the preservation and promotion of the Afrikaans language.

Society and politics
The creation of a distinct Cape Dutch society was closely linked to the evolution of Cape Dutch group identities and Afrikaner nationalism. During the 1830s a small group of professionals in Cape Town made the first concerted attempt to simulate a sense of cultural identity among white Dutch speakers in the Western Cape, based on a shared language and history. This led to the formation of the first true Cape Dutch social institutions, namely the first Dutch university in the colony, the Zuid-Afrikaansche Athenaeum, and periodicals and societies aimed at Dutch speakers. In 1824, a Dutch periodical, the Nederduitsch Zuid-Afrikaansch Tijdschrift, appeared. A society for the promotion of the community's history and the arts was also established, the Maatschappij ter uitbreiding van Beschaving en Letterkunde. Christoffel Brand, son of a former Dutch colonial official and first Speaker of the Parliament of the Cape of Good Hope, was one of the most outspoken proponents for a unique Afrikaner ethnic consciousness. Brand argued that "England has taken from the old colonists of the Cape everything that was dear to them: their country, their laws, their customs, their slaves, their money, yes even their mother tongue...[they] had done everything to prove that they wanted to be British, while their conquerors had continually worked to remind them they were Hollanders". In 1830, De Zuid-Afrikaan was started as a Dutch-language newspaper to counter the dominant influence of English journalism in the Western Cape.

In sharp contrast with the independently minded Boers, the Cape Dutch had no initial objection to the imposition of British rule for several decades, or even with the political domination of British colonists at the Cape. They hoped that the British government could grant preferential tariffs on Cape exports and were grateful for the latter's decision to impose local tariffs on imported wine and other products. For its part the Cape Dutch elite stressed its loyalty to the British Empire and indeed looked for common cause with British immigrants as part of a wider white South African nationality rather than focusing on a narrow Cape colonial identity. Despite this, heavy-handed attempts to assimilate the Cape Dutch into the British way of life, including the adoption of the English language and British customs, aroused resentment. As the Cape Dutch began to embrace their position as a distinct society, concerns mounted that they were becoming estranged from their language and heritage. Opposition mounted toward the perceived campaign to make English the sole official language and give the colony an essentially British identity. The imposition of English in the Cape commerce, judiciary, and its political affairs made English a prerequisite for most professional careers. However, the Cape Dutch made no significant moves to resist until the British abolished the use of Dutch in public education, around 1865. This provoked a storm of outrage by Cape Dutch journalists, teachers, and clergy and alienated the Dutch-speaking intelligentsia. Shortly afterwards the Cape Dutch began to articulate widespread ethnic sentiments for the first time, and explore political strategies based on ethnic mobilisation. This may be regarded as the beginning of militant Afrikaner nationalism in the Cape, as the previously apolitical community began to form movements to defend its traditional values and dogma from anglicisation. Among these was the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners, established with a sworn determination to stand for "our language, our nation, and our people". This coincided the beginning of a new trend as the Cape Dutch embraced the Afrikaans language for the first time as a symbol of their ethnic and national pride; for example, in 1876, Cape Dutch civic leaders sponsored the publication of the first Afrikaans language newspaper, Die Afrikaanse Patriot. Previously, most Cape Dutch were actually bilingual in both Netherlands Dutch and Afrikaans, although they preferred the former. Afrikaans was seen as a language of servants, illiterate Boers, and nonwhites. The wholehearted embrace and promotion of Afrikaans during the late nineteenth century marked a reversal in this respect, although it did meet some resistance. The Dutch Reformed Church continued to uphold Netherlands Dutch as the language of worship, and Cape intellectuals also ridiculed what they saw as an attempt to elevate the status of a "crude patois". In 1880 Stephanus Jacobus du Toit founded the Afrikaner Bond political party to coordinate activities between the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners and other civic associations. One of the goals of the Afrikaner Bond was to challenge the preponderance of English-speaking settlers in commerce by establishing their own banks, which then set up education funds for the Afrikaner community and helped Afrikaans-speaking entrepreneurs secure loans. With the renewed Cape Dutch interest in political affairs, their representation in parliament reached parity with English speakers and the Afrikaner Bond's influence grew. Most of the parliamentarians were merchants or financial middlemen, who won their seats not only on the votes of the Cape Dutch, but also Boers in their outlying constituencies who felt indebted to them. Over the next decade, the Afrikaner Bond successfully lobbied for equal recognition of the Dutch language in courts and schools.

The Bond's rhetoric of economic empowerment attracted widespread support from the small but wealthy Cape Dutch landowning gentry, which felt threatened by the growing influence Anglophone farmers were acquiring over aspects of state policy pertaining to agriculture and land use. However, as time went on it focused less on immediate practical concerns such as opposing Anglophone agendas and adopted pan-Afrikaner nationalism and the eventual unification of South Africa under a unitary state as its core principles. The Bond did succeed in unifying Cape Dutch and Boer political agendas when it became amalgamated with Het Volk and the Oranje Unie, the leading parties in the Transvaal and former Orange Free State, respectively, to form the South African Party in 1910. This became the first ruling party of the Union of South Africa and retained power until 1924.

Demographics
The Cape Dutch population was predominantly urban and concentrated around Cape Town and various settlements in the Western Cape's interior. Cape Dutch settlement and migration patterns in the nineteenth century tended to reflect those of British colonists. Unlike the Boers, Cape Dutch emigrants were most likely to settle in other British territories in southern Africa, namely Southern Rhodesia and the Colony of Natal. During the late 1800s smaller numbers found employment in one of the Boer republics, the Orange Free State, where they were in high demand due to their education and technical skills. At one point all the civil servants and teachers residing in the Orange Free State were Dutch expatriates or Cape Dutch. Not all the Boer leaders were receptive to the idea of employing Cape Dutch, whom they regarded as foreigners; for example, Paul Kruger discouraged Cape Dutch immigration to the Transvaal Republic, because he feared they would compete with the Boers for jobs.

Since the Cape Colony's census never differentiated between individual segments of the Dutch- or Afrikaans-speaking white population, the historic size of the Cape Dutch community is almost impossible to accurately calculate. It was estimated at 250,000 people in 1899.

title: Cape Dutch


text:
Korean count word

The Korean language uses special measure or counting words for specific objects and events. These suffixes are called subullyusa in Korean. They are similar to the ones employed in the Chinese and the Japanese languages.

In English it is "two sheets of paper", not "two papers". Analogously, in Korean jang (장/張) is used to count sheets or anything that is a paper-like material, for example:

In fact, the meanings of counter words are frequently extended in metaphorical or other image-based ways. For instance, in addition to counting simply sheets of paper, jang in Korean can be used to refer to any number of thin, paper-like objects. Leaves (namunnip 나뭇잎) are counted using this count word. In this way, a particular count word may be used generally in a very open-ended manner and up to the construal or creativity of the speaker.

There are two systems of numerals in Korean: native Korean and Sino-Korean. Native Korean numerals are used with most counter words, and usually count the number of an object, while Sino-Korean numerals are generally used for indicating a specific object in series, such as a specific lesson in a book, as well as monetary units and scientific measurements. Sometimes both types of numerals may be used, usually native Korean numerals indicating a quantity and Sino-Korean numerals indicating an ordinal. For example:

There are exceptions, such as native Korean numbers being used with 시, meaning "hour of the day". Additionally some counters (mostly those associated with traditional units) modify the pronunciation and spelling of the numerals that precede it, most notably 6월 is 유월 and 10월 is 시월.

List of count words
Some count words take native Korean numerals:

Some count words take Sino-Korean numerals:

Some nouns can also function as counter words:

Some words are used for counting in multiples:

title: Korean count word


text:
Fecal occult blood

Fecal occult blood (FOB) refers to blood in the feces that is not visibly apparent (unlike other types of blood in stool such as melena or hematochezia). A fecal occult blood test (FOBT) checks for hidden (occult) blood in the stool (feces).

The American College of Gastroenterology has recommended the abandoning of gFOBT testing as a colorectal cancer screening tool, in favor of the fecal immunochemical test (FIT). The newer and recommended tests look for globin, DNA, or other blood factors including transferrin, while conventional stool guaiac tests look for heme.

Medical uses
Fecal occult blood testing (FOBT), as its name implies, aims to detect subtle blood loss in the gastrointestinal tract, anywhere from the mouth to the colon. Positive tests ("positive stool") may result from either upper gastrointestinal bleeding or lower gastrointestinal bleeding and warrant further investigation for peptic ulcers or a malignancy (such as colorectal cancer or gastric cancer). The test does not directly detect colon cancer but is often used in clinical screening for that disease. It can also be used to look for active occult blood loss in anemia or when there are gastrointestinal symptoms.

Colorectal cancer screening
An estimated 1–5% of large tested populations have a positive fecal occult blood test. Of those, about 2–10% have cancer, while 20–30% have adenomas. Screening methods for colon cancer depend on detecting either precancerous changes such as certain kinds of polyps or on finding early and thus more treatable cancer. The extent to which screening procedures reduce the risk of gastrointestinal cancer or deaths depends on the rate of precancerous and cancerous disease in that population. gFOBT (guaiac fecal occult blood test) and flexible sigmoidoscopy screening have each shown benefit. Other colon cancer screening tools such as iFOBT (immunochemical fecal occult blood test) or colonoscopy are also included in guidelines.

In 2009, the American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) suggested that colon cancer screening modalities that are also directly preventive by removing precursor lesions should be given precedence, and prefer a colonoscopy every ten years in average-risk individuals, beginning at age 50. The ACG suggests that cancer detection tests such as any type of FOB are an alternative that is less preferred, and if a colonoscopy is declined, the FIT (fecal immunochemical test, or iFOBT) should be offered instead. The 2017 US Multi-Society Task Force (MSTF)'s recommended first-tier tests are a colonoscopy every 10 years or annual FIT test. If FIT is utilized, proper steps must be taken to ensure appropriate use and follow-up of abnormal FIT results. FIT tests however are not that useful in picking up adenomas, even when advanced.

The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF)'s 2016 recommendation, instead of emphasizing specific screening approaches, has instead chosen to highlight that there is convincing evidence that colorectal cancer screening substantially reduces deaths from the disease among adults aged 50 to 75 years and that not enough adults are using this effective preventive intervention. The ACG and MSTF also included CT colonography every five years, and fecal DNA testing as considerations. All three recommendation panels recommended replacing any older low-sensitivity, guaiac-based fecal occult blood testing (gFOBT) with either newer high-sensitivity guaiac-based fecal occult blood testing (hs gFOBT) or fecal immunochemical testing (FIT). MSTF looked at six studies that compared high-sensitivity gFOBT (Hemoccult SENSA) to FIT, and concluded that there was no clear difference in overall performance between these methods.

The English National Health Service (NHS) introduced a Bowel Cancer Screening Program in 2006. It is now offered to patients aged 60–74 years. In 2019 FIT was introduced as the primary screening test in England and Wales, replacing gFOBt. However, research carried out in the UK has suggested that the FIT threshold for further investigation is set at a point that may miss more than half of bowel cancer cases and only identifies one in four high-risk polyps.

The American College of Gastroenterology has recommended the abandoning of gFOBT testing as a colorectal cancer screening tool, in favor of the fecal immunochemical test. Though the FIT test is preferred, even the guaiac FOB testing of average risk populations may have been sufficient to reduce the mortality associated with colon cancer by about 25%. With this lower efficacy, it was not always cost-effective to screen a large population with gFOBT. If colon cancer is suspected in an individual (such as in someone with an unexplained anemia), fecal occult blood tests may not be clinically helpful. If a doctor suspects colon cancer, more rigorous investigation is necessary, whether or not the test is positive.

In 2006, the Australian Government introduced the National Bowel Cancer Program which has been updated several times since; targeted screening will be done of all Australians aged from 50 to 74 by 2020. Cancer Council Australia recommended that FOBT should be done every two years. People over 50 not yet eligible for the national program can arrange with their doctor for an FOBT. The Canadian Cancer Society recommends that men and women aged 50 and over have an FOBT at least every two years. In colon cancer screening, using only one sample of feces collected by a doctor performing a digital rectal examination is discouraged.

The use of the M2-PK Test is encouraged over gFOBT for routine screening, as it may pick up tumors whether or not they are bleeding. It is able to detect 80 percent of colorectal cancers and 44 percent for adenoma > 1 centimeter, while gFOBT picks up 13 to 50 percent of colorectal cancers.

Other sources of bleeding
Gastrointestinal bleeding has many potential sources, and positive results usually result in further testing for the bleeding site, usually looking for lower gastrointestinal bleeding before upper gastrointestinal bleeding causes unless there are other clues. Colonoscopy is usually preferred to computerized tomographic colonography.

A positive test can result from upper gastrointestinal bleeding or lower gastrointestinal bleeding. The common causes are:
 * 2–10%: cancer (colorectal cancer, gastric cancer)
 * 20–30% adenoma or polyps
 * Diverticular disease
 * Hemorrhoids
 * Inflammatory bowel disease
 * Angiodysplasia of the colon
 * Sickle cell anemia

In the event of a positive fecal occult blood test, the next step in the workup is a form of visualization of the gastrointestinal tract by one of several means:
 * 1) Sigmoidoscopy, an examination of the rectum and lower colon with a lighted instrument to look for abnormalities, such as polyps.
 * 2) Colonoscopy, a more thorough examination of the rectum and entire colon.
 * 3) Virtual colonoscopy
 * 4) Upper gastrointestinal endoscopy. It is sometimes performed with chromoendoscopy, a method that assists the endoscopist by enhancing the visual difference between cancerous and normal tissue, by either marking the abnormally increased DNA content (toluidine blue) or failing to stain the tumor, possibly due to decreased surface glycogen on tumor cells(Lugol).  Infrared fluorescent endoscopy and ultrasonic endoscopy can interrogate vascular abnormalities such as esophageal varices.
 * 5) Double-contrast barium enema: a series of x-rays of the colon and rectum.

Testing secretions for blood
The use of an FOBT for bleeding from the mouth, nose, esophagus, lungs, stomach and the initial portion of the small intestine, while the same as fecal testing, is discouraged, due to technical considerations including poorly characterized test performance characteristics such as sensitivity, specificity, and analytical interference. However, chemical confirmation that coloration is due to blood rather than coffee, beets, medications, or food additives can be of significant clinical assistance.

Marathon runners
Gastrointestinal (GI) complaints and low-intensity GI bleeding frequently occur in marathon runners. Strenuous exercise, particularly in elite athlete runners and less frequently in other exercise activities, can cause acute incapacitating gastrointestinal symptoms including heartburn, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea and gastrointestinal bleeding. Approximately one third of endurance runners experience transient but exercise-limiting symptoms, and repetitive gastrointestinal bleeding occasionally causes iron deficiency and anaemia. Runners can sometimes experience significant symptoms including hematemesis. Exercise is associated with extensive changes in gastrointestinal (GI) tract physiology, including diversion of blood flow from the GI tract to muscles and lungs, decreased GI absorption and small intestinal motility, increased colonic transit, neuroimmunoendocrine changes in hormones and peptides such as vasoactive intestinal peptide, secretin and peptide-histidine-methionine. Substantial changes occur in stress hormones including cortisol, in circulating concentrations and metabolic behavior of various leucocytes, and in immunoglobulin levels and major histocompatibility complex expression. Symptoms can be exacerbated by dehydration or by pre-exercise ingestion of certain foods and hypertonic liquids, and lessened by adequate training.

Ingestion of 800mg of cimetidine two hours before running a marathon did not significantly affect the frequency of gastrointestinal symptoms or occult gastrointestinal bleeding. Conversely, 800mg of cimetidine 1 hr before the start and again at 50 miles of a 100-mile running race substantially decreased GI symptoms and post-race guaiac test positivity but did not affect race performance.

Methodology
There are four methods in clinical use to test for occult blood in feces. These look at different properties, such as antibodies, heme, globin, or porphyrins in blood, or at DNA from cellular material such as from lesions of the intestinal mucosa.

 * Fecal immunochemical testing (FIT), and immunochemical fecal occult blood test (iFOBT). FIT products utilize specific antibodies to detect globin. FIT screening is more effective in terms of health outcomes and cost compared with guaiac FOBT. According to the guidelines of the American College of Gastroenterology, "Annual fecal immunochemical testing is the preferred colorectal cancer detection test." A FIT test detects globin levels in feces at or above 50 nanograms per mL, the established cutoff by the World Health Organization for Colorectal Cancer Screening. FIT testing has replaced most gFOBT tests as the colon cancer screening test of choice. This methodology can be adapted for automated test reading and to report quantitative results, which are potential factors in design of a widescale screening strategy. The number of fecal samples submitted for FIT may affect the clinical sensitivity and specificity of the methodology.[8] High-sensitivity gFOBT tests such as Hemoccult SENSA remain an accepted option[8] and may retain a role in monitoring gastrointestinal conditions such as ulcerative colitis; however, the FIT test is preferred in recent guidelines.  FIT is widely used outside of the US, and generally cost less than US$20 per test in 2020, compared to US$1,000 or more for a colonoscopy.
 * Stool guaiac test for fecal occult blood (gFOBT): – The stool guaiac test involves smearing some feces onto some absorbent paper that has been treated with a chemical. Hydrogen peroxide is then dropped onto the paper; if trace amounts of blood are present, the paper will change color in one or two seconds. This method works as the heme component in hemoglobin has a peroxidase-like effect, rapidly breaking down hydrogen peroxide. In some settings such as gastric or proximal upper intestinal bleeding, the guaiac method may be more sensitive than tests detecting globin because globin is broken down in the upper intestine to a greater extent than is heme. There are various commercially available gFOBT tests which have been categorized as being of low or high sensitivity, and only high-sensitivity tests remain an acceptable alternative to FIT testing, which is now the best-practices recommendation in colon cancer screening. Optimal clinical performance of the stool guaiac test depends on preparatory dietary adjustment. The stool guaiac test for hidden (occult) blood in the stool should be used at home following the test kit's directions with spontaneously passed stool or on samples submitted to a clinical laboratory. Testing kits are available at pharmacies in some countries without a prescription, or a health professional may order a testing kit for use at home. If a home fecal occult blood test detects blood in the stool it is recommended to see a health professional to arrange further testing.
 * Stool DNA screening tests look for DNA alterations that have been associated with cancer.

Additional methods of looking for occult blood are being explored, including transferrin dipstick and stool cytology.

Reference standards
The estimates for test performance characteristics are based on comparison with a variety of reference methods including 51-chromium studies, analytical recovery studies in spiked stool samples, analytical recovery after ingestion of autologous blood, rarer studies of carefully quantified blood instilled at bowel surgery, as well as other research approaches. Additionally, clinical studies look at a variety of additional factors.

Gastrointestinal blood loss
In healthy people about 0.5 to 1.5ml of blood escapes blood vessels into the stool each day. Significant amounts of blood can be lost without producing visible blood in the stool, estimated as 200ml in the stomach, 100ml in the duodenum, and lesser amounts in the lower intestine. Tests for occult blood identify lesser blood loss.

Clinical sensitivity and specificity
Fecal immunochemical testing (FIT) can identify as little as 0.3ml of daily blood in the stool; yet this test threshold does not cause undue false positives from normal upper intestinal blood leakage because it does not detect occult blood from the stomach and upper small intestine. Thus, the FIT test is much more specific for bleeding from the colon or lower gastrointestinal tract than alternatives. The detection rate of the test decreases if the time from sample collection to laboratory processing is delayed; processing the sample in under five days from collection is recommended. It does not appear to be affected by aspirin, anticoagulants, or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.

Stool guaiac test for fecal occult blood (gFOBT) sensitivity varies depending on the site of bleeding. Moderately sensitive gFOBT can pick up a daily blood loss of about 10ml (about two teaspoonfuls), and higher sensitivity gFOBT can pick up lesser amounts, requires at least 2ml to become positive. The sensitivity of a single-stool guaiac test to pick up bleeding has been quoted at 10 to 30%, but if a standard three tests are done as recommended the sensitivity rises to 92%. Reduced patient compliance with the collection of three samples hampers the usefulness of this test. Further discussion of sensitivity and specificity issues that relate particularly to the guaiac method is found in the stool guaiac test article.

Fecal porphyrin quantification by HemoQuant can yield a false positive result due to exogenous blood and various porphyrins. HemoQuant is the most sensitive test for upper gastrointestinal bleeding and therefore may be most appropriate fecal occult blood test to use in the evaluation of iron deficiency. It is advisable to stop ingesting red meat and aspirin for three days prior to specimen collection. False positives can occur with myoglobin, catalase, or protohemes and in certain types of porphyria.

Fecal DNA tests as of 2008 had not been studied enough to support widespread use.

Regulation
Safety regulations from US accreditor the Joint Commission may have unintentionally decreased digital rectal examination and FOBT in hospital settings such as Emergency Departments.

title: Fecal occult blood