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Professional wrestling in the United Kingdom

The history of professional wrestling in the United Kingdom spans over one hundred years beginning in the 1920s, when it was popularised under the concept of "All in Wrestling", which emphasised an "anything goes" style and presentation. Following World War II, the style and presentation of professional wrestling in the UK underwent a dramatic shift, as the Admiral-Lord Mountevans rules were introduced to make British professional wrestling appear much closer to a legitimate sport. Professional wrestling entered the mainstream British culture when the newly-formed independent television network ITV began broadcasting it in 1955, firstly on Saturday afternoons and then also in a late-night midweek slot. Domestically produced professional wrestling was at its peak of popularity when the television show World of Sport was launched in the mid-1960s, making household names out of Adrian Street, Mick McManus, Giant Haystacks, Jackie Pallo, Big Daddy, Mark Rocco, Steve Veidor, Dynamite Kid, and Kendo Nagasaki.

An upmarket rebrand of ITV's sports coverage, alongside the entry of the American World Wrestling Federation into the market in the late 1980s, contributed to a decline in support for domestic British wrestling and stars. In 1985, World of Sport ended, and a subsequent stand-alone wrestling programme lasted until the end of 1988. Without mainstream television access, domestically produced professional wrestling would struggle in the United Kingdom. Nonetheless, the largely untelevised live circuit survived and at times thrived with some promotions featuring the traditional British style of wrestling, while others adopted the contemporary American independent style.

In the 21st century, mirroring the growing strength of the Independent circuit in the United States, support for domestic professional wrestling once again began to grow, leading to the rise of several prominent and stable independent wrestling promotions throughout the United Kingdom. This, combined with strategic partnerships with Japanese professional wrestling promotions, allowed for a new generation of professional wrestlers such as Will Ospreay, Zack Sabre Jr. and Pete Dunne to rise to prominence internationally.

Folk-wrestling roots and Greco Roman wrestling boom
For many centuries, there have been wrestling tournaments (for example in Cornish wrestling or Scottish Backhold) throughout the British Isles where individual prizes have been comparable to yearly salaries and where monarchs and lords have been in the audiences or indeed participated.

At the start of the 20th century, wrestling was introduced to the public as part of a variety act to spice up the limited action involved in the bodybuilder strongman attractions. One of its earliest stars was a Cornish-American ex-miner named Jack Carkeek (world Cornish wrestling champion in 1886  ), who would challenge audience members to last ten minutes with him in the ring.

The development of wrestling within the UK brought legitimate Greco-Roman grappler Georg Hackenschmidt who was born in the Russian Empire to the country, where he would quickly associate himself with promoter and entrepreneur Charles B. Cochran. Cochran took Hackenschmidt under his wing and booked him into a match in which Hackenschmidt defeated another top British wrestler, Tom Cannon, for the European Greco-Roman Heavyweight Championship. This win gave Hackenschmidt a credible claim to the world title, cemented in 1905 with a win over American Heavyweight Champion Tom Jenkins in the United States. Hackenschmidt took a series of bookings in Manchester for a then impressive £150 a week. Noting Hackenschmidt's legitimately dominant style of wrestling threatened to kill crowd interest, Cochran persuaded Hackenschmidt to learn showmanship from Cannon and wrestle many of his matches for entertainment rather than sport; this displayed the future elements of "sports entertainment".

Numerous big-name stars came and went during the early inception of wrestling within the UK, with many, like Hackenschmidt, leaving for the US. The resulting loss of big-name stars sent the business into decline before the outbreak of World War I in 1914 halted it completely.

1930s: All-in wrestling
While various styles of amateur wrestling continued as legitimate sports, grappling as a promotional business did not return to Britain until the beginning of the 1930s when the success of the more worked aspects of professional wrestling in America, like gimmickry and showmanship, were introduced to British wrestling. It was with this revival that the more submission-based Catch As Catch Can wrestling style, which had already replaced Greco Roman wrestling as the dominant style of professional wrestling in the United States back in the 1890s, became the new dominant style in Britain. With Lancashire catch-as-catch-can already a major amateur sport particularly in Northern England, there existed a ready-made source of potential recruits to professional wrestling.

Amateur wrestler, Sir Atholl Oakeley got together with fellow grappler Henry Irslinger to launch one of the first promotions to employ the new style of wrestling which was coined "All-in" wrestling. Though, like many wrestlers throughout the business, Oakley would claim his wrestling was entirely legitimate, his claim was highly dubious. Under the British Wrestling Association banner, Oakley's promotion took off with wrestlers such as Tommy Mann, Black Butcher Johnson, Jack Pye, Norman "the Butcher" Ansell, "College Boy", and Jack Sherry on the roster, while Oakley himself would win a series of matches to be crowned the first British Heavyweight Champion.

The business was reaching one of its highest points at the time, with the best part of forty regular venues in London alone. The great demand for wrestling, however, meant there were not enough skilled amateurs to go around, and many promoters switched to more violent styles, with weapons and chairshots part of the proceedings. Women wrestlers and mud-filled rings also became common place. In the late 1930s, the London County Council banned professional wrestling, leaving the business in rough shape just before World War II.

1940s: Mountevans' committee
After the war, attempts to relaunch the business in 1947 failed to catch on with journalists, who condemned the gimmickry of professional wrestling as "fake". The revelation of this, and the general chaos which had surrounded "All In" Wrestling prior to the War prompted Admiral Lord Mountevans, a fan of the sport, to collaborate with Commander Campbell (a member of the popular "The Brains Trust" radio panel show), member of parliament Maurice Webb and Olympic wrestler Norman Morell to create a committee to produce official rules for wrestling. These rules became known as Admiral-Lord Mountevans rules.

The most notable action of the committee was to create seven formal weight divisions, calling for champions to be crowned at each weight. These weight divisions included lightweight (154-pound limit), welterweight (165), middleweight (176), heavy middleweight (187), light heavyweight (198), mid heavyweight (209), and heavyweight. Many of these rules diverged heavily from those used in American Wrestling – five-minute rounds (three minutes for title matches), two public warnings for rule breaking before a disqualification, "knockouts" (countouts) and disqualifications counting as automatic two falls in best of three falls matches (which were predominant), and no follow-up moves allowed on a grounded opponent. Similar rule systems were adopted by most major promotions in mainland Western Europe (although French wrestling abandoned rounds early on.)

The existence of the committee was readily acknowledged by promoters who used its existence to counter any accusations of wrongdoings within the business. It was the promoters themselves, however, who revolutionized the business. During this time, under the guise of an alliance of promoters attempting to regulate the sport and uphold the committee's ideas, the promoters created a cartel based on America's National Wrestling Alliance territory system that was designed to carve up control of the business among a handful of promoters—which it did in 1952 under the name of Joint Promotions.

Joint Promotions
Joint Promotions was represented in London by the Dale Martin promotion, which had incorporated in 1948, and involved Les Martin, and the brothers Jack, Johnny and Billy Dale. Other promoters included Norman Morell and Ted Beresford in Yorkshire, Billy Best in Liverpool, Arthur Wright in Manchester and George de Relywyskow in Scotland, with Arthur Green the secretary of the group. By agreeing to rotate talent and block out rival promoters, Joint Promotions was soon running 40 shows a week, while leaving wrestlers with little bargaining power. The financial advantages of this arrangement helped the members survive the tough conditions caused by a post-war tax that took 25% of all entertainment revenue. Other promoters were not so successful. The closure of Harringay Arena in 1954 was the last straw for Atholl Oakeley, and Joint Promotions were the only major player left to benefit when Chancellor Peter Thorneycroft abolished the entertainment tax in the 1957 budget.

From a press report, some wrestlers decided to go on strike against the Joint Promotions cartel and formed the Wrestlers' Welfare Society for hardship relief but also to act as an employment agency. Bill Benny ('Man Mountain', 1918, Cornwall - 1963, Manchester) wrestler, promoter and nightclubs owner, was a founder and was quoted, "We're the pirates".

One of Joint Promotions' first moves was establishing (and controlling) the championships called for by the Mountevans' committee. At first, this proved a profitable venture, with title matches leading to raised ticket prices. However, perhaps inevitably, attempts to extend this success by bringing in additional titles led to overexposure. While the World and British titles had some credibility (particularly as they were often placed on the more legitimate wrestlers), the addition of European, Empire/Commonwealth, Scottish, Welsh, and area championships got out of hand, and at one point there were conceivably 70 different titleholders to keep track of within Joint Promotions alone. In practice, the British, European and World titles were given most prominence. The "regional" titles were mainly honorific, with only the "southern Area" titles actually being fought for. The Empire/Commonwealth titles were a "long stop" title, being used by promotions outside of the Joint monopoly, for the most part.

1950s: Introduction of British wrestling to Television audiences
But while titles had some success, it was television that took British wrestling to the next level. The first show aired on ABC and ATV (the weekend franchise holders on ITV) on 9 November 1955, featuring Francis St Clair Gregory (9 times Cornish wrestling heavyweight title holder and father of Tony St Clair) versus Mike Marino and Cliff Beaumont versus Bert Royal live from West Ham baths. The show was successful, and wrestling became a featured attraction every Saturday afternoon from Autumn to Spring each year. In 1964, it went full-time as part of the World of Sport sports compilation programme.

Televised wrestling allowed wrestlers to become household names and allowing personality to get a wrestler over just as much as size. The exposure of wrestling on television proved the ultimate boost to the live event business as wrestling became part of mainstream culture. By the mid-1960s, Joint Promotions had doubled their live event schedule to somewhere in the region of 4,500 shows a year. Every town of note had a show at least once a month, and at some points more than 30 cities had a weekly date.

The style of wrestling at the time was unique – not only in terms of the rule system, but also for the strong emphasis on clean technical wrestling. Heels made up a minority of the roster, with most shows containing an abnormally high proportion of clean sportsmanly matches between two "blue-eyes" (as faces were known backstage in the UK). This would remain the case for several decades to come. Gimmick matches were a rarity, midget wrestling failed to catch on, while women were banned by the Greater London Council until the late 1980s. Tag wrestling, however, did prove to be popular, with televised tag matches happening a mere eight or so times a year to keep them special.

The success of wrestling on television did however create a better opportunity for the independent groups. The opposition to Joint came from the Australian-born promoter, Paul Lincoln. Having promoted shows in the 1950s with himself in the main event as masked heel Doctor Death, Lincoln led a consortium of independent promoters under the British Wrestling Federation (BWF) whose name was used for a rival championship, built around Heavyweight champion Bert Assirati who split away from Joint Promotions in 1958 while still champion. Although Joint Promotions considered the title vacant and held a tournament for a new champion (won by Billy Joyce), Assirati continued to claim it within the BWF.

The group later built itself around a new champion in Shirley Crabtree, a young bodybuilder who won the title after it was vacated by Assirati while injured in 1960. The BWF faded away in the late 1960s after a campaign of pestilence by a disgruntled Assirati (vastly superior as a shooter to Crabtree) in the form of unsolicited appearances and challenges to his successor at BWF shows, eventually resulting in the abrupt retirement of Crabtree in 1966. Lincoln's own promotion was bought out and amalgamated into Joint Promotions at the end of the 1960s.

1970s-1980s: Max Crabtree and Big Daddy
By 1975, the stranglehold of Joint Promotions had almost crumbled, with many of its founding members retiring and the company being bought out several times, leading to the wrestling industry being run as a private subsidiary of state-run bookmakers William Hill PLC a public company whose staff had little experience of the unique business. Finally, promotions were left in the hands of Max Crabtree, the brother of Shirley, who was headhunted by Joint as the most experienced booker still in the business.

Crabtree produced the next boom in British wrestling by creating the legend of Big Daddy, the alter ego of Shirley, who had been unemployed for the best part of 6 years before joining Joint in 1972 as the heel "Battling Guardsman" and then being rebranded as Big Daddy two years later. After an initial transition period as a heel/tweener in the mid-1970s (most notable for his tag team partnership with future arch-rival Giant Haystacks and a heel vs heel feud with legendary masked wrestler Kendo Nagasaki, whom Daddy unmasked during a 1975 televised bout), from the summer of 1977 onwards, Big Daddy became a larger-than-life fan favourite of children and pensioners alike. That he was no longer a bodybuilder youth, rather an overweight man in his forties, did not seem to be an obstacle as every major heel in the country was defeated by Daddy. This was usually in short order with Daddy gaining quick wins in his few singles matches and cleaning up quickly when tagged into his more frequent tag matches. Disgruntled contemporaries such as Adrian Street have attributed this to Shirley's lack of conditioning, although Max in response insisted that this was what people wanted to see.

Big Daddy became one of the best-known wrestler in British history and even had his own comic strip in Buster comic. Due to his popularity, Crabtree's run was extended by carefully positioning him in tag matches, allowing a host of young partners (which included Young David, Dynamite Kid, Chris Adams, Sammy Lee, Kwik Kick Lee and Steve Regal) to carry the match before tagging Daddy in for the finish.

Basing a whole cartel around one performer, however, though good for television, produced mixed results for live events. While Big Daddy was a massive draw in terms of family audiences, in equal part he alienated much of the existing adult fanbase for wrestling. Many wrestlers shared the adult fans' dislike of the Big Daddy phenomenon. They were dissatisfied with their position within the Joint Promotions and soon looked elsewhere for exposure mainly outside the UK as a whole. As a result, there was a rise in New Japan Pro-Wrestling and Stampede Wrestling's junior-heavyweight divisions, both of which had their roots in British wrestling of the time.

1980s-1990s: End of ITV era and aftermath
One English promoter that benefited from the backlash against the Crabtrees was Merseyside promoter Brian Dixon, operator of All Star Wrestling which began capitalizing on this disaffection by taking many of Joint Promotions' top stars.

Professional wrestling as a whole seemingly began to fall into disarray as the true nature of wrestling began to fall into question as many newspapers tried to expose the worked aspects of the sport. However, this trend did not ultimately harm the industries as the suspension of disbelief was all too easy to maintain for fans, even if they knew the truth. On 28 September 1985, the Crabtrees received another blow when World of Sport was taken off the air. Wrestling instead got its own show, but the time slot changed from week to week, slowly driving away the regular audience. Far worse for Joint Promotions, however, was that with their contract up for renewal, they were forced to share the TV rights as part of a rotation system with All Star Wrestling and America's World Wrestling Federation (WWF).

The introduction of American wrestling to the UK and the eventual axing in 1988 by Greg Dyke of Wrestling shows on terrestrial TV saw the eclipse of Joint Promotions from its dominant position in the British wrestling scene. The promotion, renamed Ring Wrestling Stars (RWS) in 1991, continued to tour the old venues with Big Daddy in the headline slot until his retirement in December 1993 after suffering a stroke. Even then, Max Crabtree continued to tour, using the same business model, with British-born former WWF star "British Bulldog" Davey Boy Smith replacing Daddy as the headlining household name, until Smith was lured back to the WWF in the summer of 1994. Thereafter, RWS went into decline and eventually ceased promoting in 1995.

By contrast, All Star had used its two years of TV exposure to build up a returning Kendo Nagasaki as its lead heel and established such storylines as his tag team-cum-feud with Rollerball Rocco and his "hypnotism" of Robbie Brookside. The end of TV coverage left many of these storylines at a cliffhanger and consequently, All Star underwent a box office boom as hardcore fans turned up to live shows to see what happened next, and kept coming for several years due to careful use of show-to-show storylines. Headline matches frequently pitted Nagasaki in violent heel vs heel battles against the likes of Rocco, Dave 'Fit' Finlay, Skull Murphy (Peter Northey) and even Giant Haystacks, or at smaller venues teaming with regular partner "Blondie" Bob Barrett to usually defeat blue-eye opposition. All Star's post-television boom wore off after 1993 when Nagasaki retired for a second time. However, the promotion kept afloat on live shows at certain established venues and particularly on the holiday camp circuit and remains active right up to the present. Meanwhile, the WWF continued on Sky television, while its chief rival back home in America, World Championship Wrestling (WCW) made the jump from late-night ITV to British Wrestling's old Saturday afternoon ITV timeslot, where it stayed until moving to Super Channel at the end of 1995 and then Channel 5 on Friday evenings from mid-1999 until WCW's demise in 2001. Both major 1990s US promotions made several arena tours of the UK while the WWF held the pay-per-view event SummerSlam 1992 in London's Wembley Stadium before a crowd of around 80,000.

1990s-2000s: "Old school" and "New school"
Following the demise of Joint Promotions and the slowdown at All Star, several of British wrestling's old mainstay attractions chose to retire, while many younger stars such as Steve Regal and Dave Taylor as well as veterans like Finlay and Haystacks emigrated to the United States to continue their careers. Nevertheless, several Independent promoters attempted to capture what remained of the domestic market. Some, such as All Star, Steve Barker's Rumble Wrestling and John Freemantle's Premier Promotions, continued to preserve the traditional British wrestling style while many newly created promotions rejected the Mountevans rules and technical style of wrestling entirely in favour of the American variant. Features such as timed rounds and multiple falls were dropped in favour of American "one fall to a finish" matches.

Conditions in the British scene would remain at a low ebb (with some smaller promoters resorting to "WWF tribute" shows ) until the early-2000s, when a new generation of domestic stars would emerge, amongst them Doug Williams and Nigel McGuinness, who would split their time between performing in the United Kingdom and appearing for American promotions such as Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA). For example, TNA's "2004 X Cup" featured All Star Wrestling wrestlers James Mason, Dean Allmark, Robbie Dynamite and Frankie Sloan while McGuinness would become highly prominent in Ring of Honor (ROH), first as their ROH Pure Champion in 2005 before becoming their ROH World Champion in 2007. In addition to British stars increasingly performing in the US, likewise, this period saw the increasing use of American stars on British shows. There was also an increasing degree of crossover between the traditional "Old School" and Americanised "New School" promotions after one of the latter, Frontier Wrestling Alliance featured an invasion storyline featuring traditional veterans from the former faction.

New promotions such as One Pro Wrestling and the FWA commonly featured a mixture of British and American performers, beginning a trend that would continue for the decades to come. By the early 2010s, wrestling stars such as PAC, Britani Knight, and Martin Stone continued to gravitate towards immigrating to the United States, however not before having spent several years performing in the UK first. Digital TV channel The Wrestling Channel, later rebranded The Fight Network, ran for five years in the United Kingdom combining worldwide wrestling programming with coverage of selected current British promotions as well as extensive rescreenings of vintage 1970s/1980s ITV footage (branded as World of Sport after the segment's parent show), exposing the history of British wrestling to a new younger audience. After the channel's 2008 closure, the repeats continued on other stations such as Men and Movies.

2010s: Attempts to return to ITV and WWE's NXT UK
The mid 2010s saw an increasing drive to return British Wrestling to ITV. A pilot for World of Sport Wrestling (branding itself as a direct revival of the old slot on the World Of Sport programme) was filmed at the Fairfield Halls, Croydon in 2013, however it was not picked up by ITV. Another attempt was given an airing by ITV on New Year's Eve 2016. A follow-up series of 10 episodes was due to be filmed at Preston Guild Hall in May 2017 but this was postponed until a year later. Around this time, WWE also took an active interest in the local UK wrestling circuit, organising a WWE United Kingdom Championship Tournament in Blackpool in January 2017, which crowned the inaugural WWE United Kingdom Champion. Several professional wrestling journalists reported that the WWE's renewed interest in the region was to prevent the World of Sport Wrestling programme from succeeding.

The World Of Sport Wrestling TV revival resumed production in May 2018 and was broadcast on ITV between 28 July and 29 September 2018. In July 2018 WWE announced that they would be launching NXT UK, a new development promotion to be based directly in the UK. Ultimately, the attempted revival would flounder and in 2019 a frustrated ITV moved on from the project, opting instead to begin airing programming from the newly created American promotion All Elite Wrestling. On 1 September 2022 the final episode of NXT UK aired, with WWE folding the entire NXT UK project.

The 2010s were also characterised by increasing cooperation between British promotions such as Progress Wrestling and RevPro with Japanese promotions such as New Japan Pro Wrestling. Through these partnerships, professional wrestlers such as Zack Sabre Jr and Will Ospreay were able to split their time between performing in the UK and Japan, helping to develop their prominence in both countries.

2020s
As the American professional wrestling market became more competitive following the creation of All Elite Wrestling in 2019, this resulted in American companies taking a renewed interest in directly securing the British market. In 2020, at WrestleMania 36, Scotland's Drew McIntyre became the first British wrestler to win the WWE Championship and in 2022, McIntyre headlined WWE Clash at the Castle, which took place in front of 62,296 paid attendees in Cardiff, Wales. The next year saw All Elite Wrestling hold AEW All In 2023 in Wembley Stadium, London, England before 72,265 paid attendees. Excluding SummerSlam 1992, these were the largest professional wrestling events to ever be held in the UK.

Wales
Wales had a strong foothold in British Wrestling, dominated by Orig Williams from the mid/late 1960s onward up to the 21st century. Williams' British Wrestling Federation produced Welsh-language television wrestling programmes for the bilingual S4C channel in the 1980s and 1990s under the title Reslo. One compilation from the early 1990s was released on VHS (in English) as Wrestling Madness. As with old ITV footage on the Wrestling Channel and elsewhere, copious old Reslo footage has also been repeated on S4C Digidol and uploaded to Youtube. Since Williams' death in November 2009, he was succeeded by Alan Ravenhill, who operates Welsh Wrestling. Other promotions in Wales include Attack! Pro Wrestling, Britannia Pro Wrestling (BWP), FUSION Pro Wrestling, Slammasters Wrestling, Basix, Pro Wrestling Karnage, Exist, Exposure Wrestling, and Creation Pro.

Scotland
Scotland was represented as part of Joint Promotions by Relwyskow Promotions, run by the family of George de Relwyskow. Relwyskow Promotions was not included in the buyouts of Joint Promotions in the 1960s-1980s and remained under its original management while continuing to receive a proportion of Joint Promotions' TV coverage. It remained active until the retirement of Ann Relwyskow in 1994. In 1990 and again in 1993, television tapings were held in Scotland and matches screened on Grampian Television and STV. During the 1960s, World Lightweight champion George Kidd was a successful television broadcaster, hosting his own chat show in Scotland's ITV regions.

Northern Ireland (and Republic of Ireland)
The dominant promoter in Northern Ireland in the 1960s/1970s was former Irish national Olympic coach David "Fit" Finlay Senior who promoted wrestling on both sides of the border and trained such stars as his son Dave Finlay, Eddie Hammill and Sean "Rasputin" Doyle. Due to The Troubles, in the 1970s and 1980s these wrestlers and others would migrate to mainland Britain and find success there (in Hamill's case, under a mask, billed as Kung Fu.) The younger Finlay would become a multiple champion and later succeed in America. Although RTÉ never had a wrestling show of its own, in the mid-1980s, a major championship match between Mighty John Quinn and Haystacks in Claremorris was publicised with a contract signing ceremony on Derek Davis' Davis at Large show. Later in the 1980s and 1990s, transmissions of Williams' Reslo programme on S4C could be received in much of the southern and eastern Republic of Ireland and Williams organised several tours of Ireland with his show's roster during this time. In the 21st century, the dominant promotion in Ireland had been Irish Whip Wrestling before being replaced in popularity by Over The Top Wrestling.

Selected bibliography

 * Lister, John. "The History of British Wrestling". Pro Wrestling Press #6, (May 2002)
 * House of Deception Golden Age 1911–1979: bibliography, photos, Lister article.
 * Curley, Mallory. Beatle Pete, Time Traveller (2005): information on Liverpool Stadium wrestling promoter Bill Best, uncle of original Beatles drummer Pete Best.
 * "Catch – The Hold Not Taken", a documentary on the origins of catch-as-catch-can wrestling


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A World Lit Only by Fire

A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age is an informal history of the European Middle Ages by American historian William Manchester. Published in 1992, the book is divided into three sections: "The Medieval Mind", "The Shattering", and "One Man Alone". In the book, Manchester scathingly posits, as the title suggests, that the Middle Ages were ten centuries of technological stagnation, short-sightedness, bloodshed, feudalism, and an oppressive Church wedged between the golden ages of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance.

Contents
In the book's "Author's Note", Manchester says, "It is, after all, a slight work, with no scholarly pretensions. All the sources are secondary, and few are new; I have not mastered recent scholarship on the early sixteenth century."

"The Medieval Mind" extensively covers notable occurrences centered in approximately the year 500, including a description of the fall of the Roman Empire. The book further delineates the Dark Ages that immediately followed the collapse of the Roman Empire, including details regarding a number of adverse events that were characteristic of what Manchester regards as a "stark" era. It includes commentary on St. Augustine and the effects he had on medieval civilization. It talks about the overall ignorance of the masses during this time period.

The second section of the book, "The Shattering", is the book's longest section, expanding upon a number of events that Manchester regards as embodying the end of the Middle Ages as well as the early period of the Renaissance. It relates extensive anecdotes regarding a pope from the formidable medieval Borgia family, Pope Alexander VI, focusing on his "wild" celebrations and extensive nepotism, contrasted with a narrative centered around Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. Continuing with his focus in regard to spirituality, Manchester writes on the rise of humanism in the early Renaissance days and its celebration of secularism over piety. The section further covers humanist scholars, and concentrates upon the humanist tendencies of Renaissance leaders such as Michelangelo and Leonardo. The European nobility of the era are also touched upon in chapters elaborately describing the life and decisions made by England's King Henry VIII. Henry's wives and eventual separation from the Church despite his being once an "ardent Catholic" are treated extensively.

The final section of the work, "One Man Alone", is a description of the voyage of the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who circumnavigated the globe. The section expands upon the life and personality of Magellan and his eventual death in the Philippines in an attempt to convert the natives to Catholicism there. Manchester's argument is ultimately that Magellan's voyage was concurrent with and, on several levels, symptomatic of changing ways in which Renaissance people thought.

Reception
A World Lit Only by Fire became a New York Times bestseller and was praised for its lively storytelling in some journalistic reviews. Ron Grossman of the Chicago Tribune, for instance, wrote that "by taking readers along on Magellan's voyage, Manchester provides them with easy access to a fascinating age when our modern mentality was just being born."

Some professional historians, however, have dismissed or ignored the book because of accusations regarding numerous factual errors and its dependence on interpretations that largely fell out of favor by the 1930s. In a review for Speculum, the journal of the Medieval Academy of America, Jeremy duQuesnay Adams remarked that Manchester’s work contained "some of the most gratuitous errors of fact and eccentricities of judgment this reviewer has read (or heard) in quite some time." In particular, Adams pointed out that Manchester's claims about diet, clothing, and medieval people's views of time and their sense of self all ran counter to the conclusions of 20th-century historians of the Middle Ages. Manchester’s views on the transition from medieval to modern civilization, though they were popular in the 19th and early 20th century (and still are current in some segments of contemporary culture), have long been rejected by professional scholars in the relevant fields. Despite this, the book is often taught at the beginning of College Board's AP European History class.

In 2014, the English industrial metal band Godflesh released an album named after Manchester's book. Frontman Justin Broadrick found the brutality and bleakness of A World Lit Only by Fire inspiring.

In 2016, the book was chosen by Tom Hanks as the book he would take with him when castaway on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs.

The book was also featured in a season 3 episode of Billy on the Street. Billy believed the book was written by 2 Chainz.

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

title: A World Lit Only by Fire


text: Template:Regions of the United States

title: Template:Regions of the United States


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Eudyptula

The genus Eudyptula ("good little diver") contains two species of penguin, found in southern Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand (including the Chatham Islands). They are commonly known as the little penguin, little blue penguin, or, in Australia, fairy penguin. In the language of the Māori people of New Zealand, little penguins are known as kororā.

For many years, a white-flippered form of the little penguin found only in North Canterbury, New Zealand was considered either a separate species, Eudyptula albosignata, or just a subspecies, Eudyptula minor albosignata. Analysis of mtDNA revealed that Eudyptula falls instead into two groups: a western one, found along the southern coast of Australia and the Otago region of New Zealand, and another found in the rest of New Zealand. These two groups are now considered full species: Eudyptula novaehollandiae in Australia and Otago, and Eudyptula minor elsewhere. E. novaehollandiae probably arrived in New Zealand from Australia less than 500 years ago, following the local extinction of E. minor in Otago.

Classification
Order Sphenisciformes
 * Family Spheniscidae
 * Genus Eudyptula
 * Eudyptula minor – little penguin
 * Eudyptula novaehollandiae – Australian little penguin
 * Eudyptula wilsonae

title: Eudyptula


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NRM

NRM may refer to:

 * National Railway Museum, York, England
 * National Railway Museum (disambiguation)
 * National Record Mart, former US stores
 * National Resistance Movement, a political organisation in Uganda
 * Natural remanent magnetization of a rock or sediment
 * Natural resource management
 * New religious movement or new religion
 * Nordic Resistance Movement, a neo-Nazi organization
 * Normal Response Mode in the HDLC communications protocol
 * North Richmond railway station, Melbourne
 * N.R.M., a rock band from Minsk, Belarus
 * Nucleus raphes medianus, area within the brain
 * ISO 639-3 code for Narom language

title: NRM


text: User talk:128.135.200.122

title: User talk:128.135.200.122


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Chorionic villus sampling

Chorionic villus sampling (CVS), sometimes called "chorionic villous sampling" (as "villous" is the adjectival form of the word "villus"), is a form of prenatal diagnosis done to determine chromosomal or genetic disorders in the fetus. It entails sampling of the chorionic villus                             (placental tissue) and testing it for chromosomal abnormalities, usually with FISH or PCR. CVS usually takes place at 10–12 weeks' gestation, earlier than amniocentesis or percutaneous umbilical cord blood sampling. It is the preferred technique before 15 weeks.

CVS was performed for the first time in Milan by Italian biologist Giuseppe Simoni, scientific director of Biocell Center, in 1983. Use as early as eight weeks in special circumstances has been described. It can be performed in a transcervical or transabdominal manner. Although this procedure is mostly associated with testing for Down syndrome, overall, CVS can detect more than 200 disorders.

Indications
Possible reasons for having a CVS can include:
 * Abnormal first trimester screen results
 * Increased nuchal translucency or other abnormal ultrasound findings
 * Family history of a chromosomal abnormality or other genetic disorder
 * Parents are known carriers for a genetic disorder
 * Advanced maternal age (maternal age above 35). AMA is associated with increase risk of Down's syndrome and at age 35, risk is 1:400. Screening tests are usually carried out first before deciding if CVS should be done.

Risks
The risk of miscarriage in CVS is estimated to be potentially as high as 1–2%. However some recent research has suggested that only a very small number of miscarriages that occur after CVS are a direct result of the procedure. Apart from a risk of miscarriage, there is a risk of infection and amniotic fluid leakage. The resulting amniotic fluid leak can develop into a condition known as oligohydramnios, which is low amniotic fluid level. If the resulting oligohydramnios is not treated and the amniotic fluid continues to leak it can result in the baby developing hypoplastic lungs (underdeveloped lungs).

Additionally, there is also mild risk of limb reduction defects associated with CVS, with the risk being higher the earlier the procedure is carried.

It is important after having CVS that the obstetrician follows the patient closely to ensure the patient does not develop infection.

Chorionic villi and stem cells
Recent studies have discovered that chorionic villi can be a rich source of fetal stem cells, multipotent mesenchymal stem cells.

A potential benefit of using fetal stem cells over those obtained from embryos is that they side-step ethical concerns among anti-abortion activists by obtaining pluripotent lines of undifferentiated cells without harm to a fetus or destruction of an embryo. These stem cells would also, if used to treat the same individual they came from, sidestep the donor/recipient issue which has so far stymied all attempts to use donor-derived stem cells in therapies.

Artificial heart valves, working tracheas, as well as muscle, fat, bone, heart, neural and liver cells have all been engineered through use of fetal stem cells.

The first fetal stem cells bank in US is active in Boston, Massachusetts.

Limitations
A small percentage (1-2%) of pregnancies have confined placental mosaicism, where some but not all of the placental cells tested in the CVS are abnormal, even though the pregnancy is unaffected. Cells from the mother can be mixed with the placental cells obtained from the CVS procedure. Occasionally if these maternal cells are not completely separated from the placental sample, this can lead to discrepancies with the results. This phenomenon is called Maternal Cell Contamination (MCC). CVS cannot detect all birth defects. It is used for testing chromosomal abnormalities or other specific genetic disorders only if there is family history or other reason to test.

title: Chorionic villus sampling


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User:Sarch

Greetings !!!

title: User:Sarch


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Castle Rock State Park

Castle Rock State Park is the name of two parks in the United States:

 * Castle Rock State Park (California)
 * Castle Rock State Park (Illinois)

title: Castle Rock State Park


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Category:Fictional planets

__NOGALLERY__

title: Category:Fictional planets


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Rifle grenade

A rifle grenade is a grenade that uses a rifle-based launcher to permit a longer effective range than would be possible if the grenade were thrown by hand.

The practice of projecting grenades with rifle-mounted launchers was first widely used during World War I and World War II and continues to the present, with the term "rifle grenade" now encompassing many different types of payloads including high explosive, fragmentation, anti-tank warheads, concussion, smoke, incendiary, and flare missiles.

Rifle grenades have largely been supplanted in the infantry fire support role by a combination of grenade launchers (typically affixed to rifles) and disposable anti-armor rockets.

Early use

Adaptation of grenades for use in rifles began around the 18th century, when cup-shaped dischargers were fitted to the barrels of flintlock muskets, with the grenades propelled by the force of a blank cartridge. During the early 20th century a Japanese Colonel Amazawa experimented with rifle fired grenades during the Battle of Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War, and the idea was further used by the Spanish, though the French were the first to put it to widespread use during the trench warfare of World War I.

World War I
In 1908, Frederick Marten Hale patented the rod grenade. "A simple rod was attached to a specialized grenade, inserted into the barrel of a standard service rifle and launched using a blank cartridge." The British did not immediately adopt the idea and entered World War I without any rifle grenades. However, as soon as the trench warfare started, there was a sudden need for rifle grenades. The British government purchased a rodded variant of the No 2 grenade as a temporary solution.

By 1915, Hales had developed the No 3, which is commonly known as the Hales rifle grenade. The Hales grenade was improved throughout World War I to make it more reliable and easier to manufacture. However, production of the grenade was slow. In order to speed rod grenades to the front, the British also made rodded versions of the Mills bomb.

Although a simple approach, launching a rod grenade "...placed an extreme amount of stress on the rifle barrel and the rifle itself, resulting in the need to dedicate specific rifles to the grenade launching role, as they quickly became useless as an accurate firearm. This led to the search for an alternative and resulted in the reappearance of the cup launcher during the latter years of World War I". After World War I, the rod-type rifle grenade was declared obsolete and the remaining Hales were replaced with gas check equipped Mills Bombs shot from a rifle via a cup launcher.

The French grenade, named the V-B grenade after its inventors, Viven and Bessières, was fired from the standard service rifle with the use of a special adapter and a standard cartridge, providing an effective range of around 175 to 200 yd, while the effective radius of the bursting grenade was 75 yd. The grenade had a hollow through the middle, allowing the bullet to pass through, while the muzzle blast was captured by the launching device and used to propel the grenade. The bullet, after passing through the body of the grenade, struck a small plate that ignited the primer. This then lit the fuse in the grenade, providing an eight-second delay before detonation. It could be fired from the shoulder, but due to the heavy recoil and poor balance of the rifle fitted with the grenade, it was more common to fire it with the butt of the rifle resting on the ground, and either held at an appropriate angle, or resting on a tripod. The rifle grenade was useful in offense, particularly in attacking sandbag fortified machine gun nests, as well as in defense. Eight men armed with rifle grenades could fire 150 shots in a minute, providing a heavy barrage to break up an attacker's lines.

Upon entering World War I, the United States attempted to adopt the V-B grenade, but this was not very successful. The difference in bore diameter between the French and American service cartridges (8 mm vs. 7.62 mm) meant that the grenade had to be re-designed with a smaller hole, but even this was not sufficient to ensure reliable functioning, due to differences in bullet design. The American bullet would often break apart in the grenade, and this led to the V-B derived grenade design being scrapped in May 1918.

The next United States attempt at a rifle grenade was to return to and develop an improved rod-grenade. The Babbitt grenade, developed by Colonel E. B. Babbitt of the U.S. Ordnance Department, used a long stem projecting from the rear of the grenade, which was slipped into the barrel of the Springfield 1903 rifle, and propelled with a special blank cartridge. The stem was calibrated with a number of grooves and a split ring, which allowed the user to set the grenade to slide a certain distance into the muzzle of the rifle. When the stem was inserted only part way, the chamber pressure upon firing was reduced, propelling the grenade a shorter distance. When fired at a 45-degree angle, ranges from 50 to 300 yd were possible; with the rifle angled at 80 degrees, ranges as short as 15 yd were possible. In addition to providing the force to propel the grenade, the gases from firing were directed through a hollow in the stem, and provided force to arm the grenade. Once armed, the grenade had a heavy plunger that would detonate the grenade upon impact.

World War II
After World War I, the rifle grenade was steadily modified to increase its effectiveness when launched from a rifle.

In 1928, the Italian Army adopted an unusual cup-type 38.5 mm rifle grenade launcher bolted to the side of a normal Carcano 6.5 mm carbine, the ''Moschetto di Fanteria Mod. 91/28 con Tromboncino''. In use, the rifle's bolt was removed and installed in the launcher chamber. The rifle was placed butt-first against the ground, a grenade loaded down the launcher's muzzle and standard rifle round loaded into the grenade launcher's chamber. When fired, the bullet was trapped, the neck of the cartridge case expanded and the gases passed into launcher's barrel through four holes providing the energy needed to launch the grenade. After the grenade was launched, the chamber was opened, ejecting the spent cartridge case and making the bullet fall out. The necessity of changing the rifle bolt kept the rifle out of use until the bolt could be replaced, a slow and clumsy procedure. The bolt-changing procedure could also result in lost rifle bolts in the heat of battle, putting the weapon out of action completely. As a result, this design was not adopted by any other nation. Today, it can be seen as an early, if unsuccessful ancestor of modern under-barrel grenade launchers such as the M203.

The Japanese military continued to experiment with rifle and hand-thrown grenades between the wars and would adopt a family of fragmentation grenades with almost universal adaptability. Introduced in 1931, the Type 91 fragmentation grenade could be thrown by hand, fired from a cup-type grenade launcher (the Type 100), discharged by a lightweight mortar-like projector (the Type 89 grenade discharger, or knee mortar). or fitted with tail-fin assembly and fired from a spigot-type rifle grenade launcher.

The spigot-type grenade launchers were used by Japanese Special Naval Landing Forces to launch an anti-tank (hollow-charge) finned grenade. They were also used to propel Type 91 hand grenades fitted with tail-fin assemblies. These grenades had wood-bulleted launching cartridges stored in their tail-fin assemblies. The cartridges are fired from the rifle and the wooden bullets are trapped by the tail-fin assemblies launching and arming the grenades. These launchers are not numbered, and production figures are not available and examples of spigot grenade launchers are rarely encountered.

In 1939, the Japanese introduced the Type 89 grenade discharger, the Type 91 fragmentation grenade was fitted with a propellant base and time fuse. It did not explode upon contact, but was designed to ignite its fuse while in flight. A weak creep spring inside the grenade firing mechanism allowed the firing pin to be thrown back upon launching, igniting a time fuse with a 7-8 second delay. Using this system, the Type 91 grenades could be launched through jungle cover or through small openings without the danger of premature detonation in the event the grenade struck an object on its way to the target. Although the Type 89 could be fired by a single person, it was typically operated with a crew of 3, enabling it to reach a rate of fire of about 25 rounds per minute.

In 1939, The Japanese also introduced the Type 100 grenade discharger for the Type 38 and Type 99 Arisaka rifles. It launches standard Type 91 and Type 99 hand-grenades. The launcher is somewhat unusual in that rather than using the more common cup designs it is a gas trap system, meaning that it incorporates a barrel extension which taps off excess propellant gases to launch the grenade from a cup offset from the barrel. This has the advantage that standard rifle cartridges could be used along with the standard hand-grenades which simplified logistics, at the expense of increased weight and decreased efficiency. The effective range is approximately 100 yd.

In 1940, Britain put the first anti-tank grenade into the field during World War II the No. 68 AT grenade, which was one of the first "of any" type anti-tank weapons with a shaped charge or high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) type warhead. The design of the warhead was simple and could penetrate 52 mm of armor in 1940. The simple fins gave it some stability in the air and detonation occurred on impact.

In 1942, an attachable rifle grenade launcher called the Gewehrgranatengerät or Schiessbecher ('shooting cup') was introduced that was developed based on rifle grenade launcher models designed during World War I. The 30 mm Schiessbecher cup-type rifle grenade launcher could be mounted on any Karabiner 98k and was intended to replace all previous rifle grenade launcher models. The rifle grenade launcher could be used against infantry, fortifications and light armored vehicles up to a range of 280 m (306 yd). For these differing tasks, several specialized grenades with accompanying special propelling cartridges were developed for the 1,450,113 produced Schiessbecher rifle grenade launchers. The rifle grenade-propelling cartridges fired a wooden projectile through the barrel to the rifle grenade that, upon impact, automatically primed the rifle grenade. The Schiessbecher could be mounted on the Karabiner 98a, G98/40, StG 44, and FG 42

The Japanese would also adopt a version of the German Schiessbecher grenade launcher. The Type 2 rifle grenade launcher was an attachment for the Type 38 and Type 99 rifles that allowed them to fire special hollow charge grenades. Two grenades were produced for the launcher: a 30 mm grenade and a larger, 40 mm grenade, both designated Type 2. The launcher sits over the end of the barrel, held in place with a clamping device. A special crimped blank cartridge or wooden bullet is used to fire the grenades.

In the years just before World War II, the United States adopted the spigot-type 22 mm rifle grenade launchers. These 22 mm launchers are attached to a rifles muzzle, in the form of a detachable adapter. As with most rifle grenades, it is propelled by a blank cartridge inserted into the chamber of the rifle. A 22 mm grenade can range from powerful anti-tank rounds such as the M9 rifle grenade, to simple finned tubes with a fragmentation hand grenade attached to the end such as the M1 grenade adapter. The "22 mm" refers to the diameter of the base tube which fits over the spigot of the launcher, not the diameter of the warhead section, which is much wider.

Modern use
After World War II, many countries adopted 22 mm spigot-type launchers and anti-tank rifle grenades with shaped charge or high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) warheads. The Belgian ENERGA anti-tank rifle grenade design in particular was widely adopted by Western nations. These post-war designs come in "standard" type which are propelled by a blank cartridge inserted into the chamber of the rifle. And, the newer "bullet trap" and "shoot through" types, as their names imply use live ammunition.

The M31 HEAT rifle grenade is a fin-stabilized anti-tank rifle grenade designed in the late 1950s to replace the Belgian ENERGA rifle grenade which was adopted by the US Army and US Marines as an emergency stop-gap measure during the Korean War. Compared to the ENERGA, the M31 is slightly lighter in weight and has a smaller-diameter warhead—i.e. 75 mm vs 66 mm. Penetration for the M31 is estimated to be 200 mm for steel armor plating and twice that estimate for concrete.

The bullet-trap rifle grenade became increasing popular in the post-war years, most notably the French AC58 anti-armor and APAV40 multi-purpose grenades. The 22 mm rifle grenade launchers were further simplified, becoming an integral part of the rifle itself. All current NATO rifles are capable of launching STANAG 22 mm rifle grenades from their flash hiders without the use of an adapter.

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, rifle grenades and their launchers were slowly replaced by disposable single shot rocket launchers such as the M72 LAW (light anti-tank weapon), and dedicated 40 mm grenade launchers. First seen in the United States armed forces, these 40 mm grenade launchers generally took the form of separate weapons, such as the M79 grenade launcher. Or, as an under-barrel attachment to an assault rifle, such as the M203 grenade launcher attached to an M16 rifle.

Today, there is a return to the concept of the rifle grenade, such as the SIMON breach grenade, the IMI Refaim, FN Herstal Telgren and the Japanese Type 06 advance grenades. These grenades were designed to be used by ordinary riflemen as opposed to specially trained grenadiers. For example, the MECAR rifle grenades are equipped with simple ballistic sights and have an effective range of 300 m.

Modern combined arms doctrine dictates that every infantry unit should have a certain percentage of dedicated grenadiers, or soldiers equipped with a grenade launcher or combination rifle/grenade launcher. The criticism of this doctrine is that if the grenadiers in a group are disabled or separated from the group, then the group has completely lost the grenade launcher as a heavy fire support. With the addition rifle grenades, each soldier would be equipped with a small number of rifle grenades, so every individual soldier could use some form of heavy firepower. However, all of these rifle grenades add additional weight to the soldiers war-load and as a consequence they must reduce the amount of rifle ammunition that they carry. For example, a modern French AC58 "bullet trap" rifle grenade weighs 0.5 kg, the equivalent of a loaded M16 STANAG magazine.

The AK-47 can mount the Kalashnikov cup-type grenade-launcher that uses standard Soviet RGD-5 hand-grenades. The soup-can shaped launcher is screwed onto an AK-47's muzzle. The maximum effective range is approximately 150 m. The M16 has a similar device used to launch tear-gas hand-grenades.

On 10 April 2021, during 2021 Myanmar protests, security forces killed at least 82 protesters in Bago town with rifle grenades.

Rod-type
The rod-type rifle grenade is a standard hand grenade with a metallic rod attached to the base. They were developed before World War I. To use:

 * 1) Insert the rod-type rifle grenade down the barrel of a standard rifle
 * 2) Insert a special blank cartridge into the rifle's chamber
 * 3) Place the rifle's butt-stock on the ground
 * 4) While holding the grenade's safety spoon with one hand, remove the safety pin with the other
 * 5) Place free hand on the rifle's grip and prepare to fire
 * 6) Release the grenade's safety spoon, quickly place said hand on the rifle's fore stock and immediately fire the rifle

If the soldier does not immediately launch the grenade, it will time out and explode. It was later found that the repeated launching of rod grenades caused damage to a rifle's barrel and the rod-type rifle grenade fell from favor.

Cup-type
The cup-type launcher replaced the rod-type rifle grenade during World War I. This soup-can shaped launcher is attached to a rifle's muzzle. The cup-type launcher could launch a standard hand-grenade or a purpose built cup-type grenade. To use:

 * 1) Insert a grenade into the cup launcher. When using a standard hand-grenade remove the safety pin, the cup holds the safety-spoon in place until launched
 * 2) Insert a special blank cartridge into the rifle's chamber
 * 3) Place the butt-stock of the rifle on the ground and fire from this position

"Shoot-through" type
The cup-type launcher has the advantage of using standard hand-grenades. However, the need to load a blank cartridge into the rifle's chamber in order to launch the grenade proved to be clumsy in combat. This difficulty lead to the development the French "Vivien and Bessières" shoot-through grenade (or VB grenade). As the name implies, these grenades allow for the use of standard ball ammunition. The VB grenade has a hole through the middle that permits the passage of a standard bullet; this arms the grenade, the expanding gasses launch the grenade, and the grenade explodes 8 seconds later. This removes the need to provide a special blank round to launch the grenade. To use:

 * 1) Insert VB grenade into the cup-type launcher
 * 2) Place the butt-stock of the rifle on the ground and fire from this position

Spigot-type
The 22mm type rifle grenade launcher was developed before World War II. This type of launcher is attached to a rifle's muzzle and allows for the use of a wide range of rifle grenades, from powerful anti-tank rounds to simple finned tubes with a fragmentation hand-grenade attached to the end. These rifle grenades come in "standard" type, which are propelled by a blank cartridge inserted into the chamber of the rifle; or, "bullet trap" and "shoot through" types, which allow the use of live ammunition. All modern 22mm rifle grenades explode on impact. All Standard issue NATO rifles are capable of launching STANAG type 22mm rifle grenades from their integral flash hiders without the use of an adapter. Modern bullet-trap rifle grenades such as the French APAV40 can be fired as fast as a soldier can place a grenade on an FAMAS rifle's muzzle and pull the trigger. To use:

 * 1) Place 22mm rifle grenade over the spigot attachment or the rifle's flash hider
 * 2) Aim at target and fire rifle

Other uses and similar devices

During the Second World War, Nazi Germany developed and fielded a propaganda rifle grenade (Propaganda-Gewehrgranate). It was designed for front-line troops to disperse propaganda leaflets via a rifle grenade that would disperse the printed material via a small ejecting charge.

The advent of less lethal grenades for riot control has led to the creation of gun launched versions of these grenades, though they are typically launched by riot shotguns, not rifles. These systems use a cup-type launcher attached to the muzzle of the gun to launch various less lethal grenade types.

A golf ball launcher is a cup-type launcher which is used for sport or recreational purposes. These launchers will shoot a standard golf ball over 250 yd with little to no recoil. These launchers are designed to replace an AR-15 type rifle's flash hider.

There's also a soda/beer can launcher. Unlike the golf ball launcher that screws onto the end of the barrel, where the AR-15 family of rifles' flash hider attaches, the can launcher tube is fitted directly to the AR-15 upper receiver and is the entire barrel assembly. Both the golf ball launcher and can launcher require the use of blank ammunition.

Advantages and disadvantages
Compared to a standard hand-grenade, a rifle grenade:
 * Can be projected to a much greater distance
 * Can carry a larger, heavier payload
 * Can effectively project a shaped charge warhead which can penetrate armor
 * Has the advantage of detonating upon impact
 * Is more accurate

However, a rifle grenade:
 * Requires a rifle to launch
 * Is more complicated to use than a hand grenade.
 * Is larger and heavier than a hand grenade.
 * Produces very high levels of recoil when launched from a rifle.

Compared to a dedicated grenade launcher, a rifle grenade:
 * Can be of a variety of different sizes and shapes of warheads and payloads
 * Can be projected from any rifle fitted with an appropriate muzzle base or spigot tube fitting; in essence, every soldier armed with a rifle can be a grenadier
 * Can fire up to 10 grenades per minute for area suppression, for a modern bullet-trap rifle grenade
 * Requires a simple, smaller, and cheaper launcher attachment (or even no attachment at all) when compared to a standalone grenade launcher

However:
 * A rifle grenade will temporarily disable the normal use of the rifle
 * A dedicated grenade launcher can be fired from the shoulder without undue discomfort, something not normally possible with a rifle grenade
 * A soldier armed with a dedicated grenade launcher can carry 2 to 3 times more grenade ammo than rifle grenades
 * A dedicated grenade launcher is more accurate than a rifle grenade

Compared to a rocket launcher, a rifle grenade:
 * Has a curved trajectory, allowing indirect fire against targets in defilade, behind walls and buildings or rooftops
 * Is much lighter and does not require the user to carry a bulky launcher tube
 * Can be safely fired from inside a building whereas a Rocket Launcher cannot due to the danger of backblast

However:
 * Rocket launchers have a flatter trajectory making them more accurate "point-and-shoot" weapons
 * Rocket launchers generally have more powerful warheads
 * Rocket launchers generally have a longer effective range

title: Rifle grenade


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Hilton Smith

Hilton Lee Smith (February 27, 1907 – November 18, 1983) was an American right-handed pitcher in Negro league baseball. He pitched alongside Satchel Paige for the Kansas City Monarchs and Bismarck Churchills between 1932 and 1948. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2001.

Early life
Born in Giddings, Texas, Smith began his career in black baseball's equivalent of the minor leagues with the Austin Black Senators in Austin, Texas. Smith made the dean's list as a student at Prairie View A&M College in 1928 and 1929. He was an outfielder in his first college season and a pitcher in his second year.

His big league debut was with the Monroe Monarchs of Monroe, Louisiana in 1932. In 1934, Smith wed Louise Humphrey. They had two children.

Semi-pro career
From 1935 to 1936, Smith pitched for the Bismarck semi-professional team organized by Neil Churchill. In 1935, his teammates included Satchel Paige, Ted "Double Duty" Radcliffe, Quincy Trouppe, Barney Morris, and Chet Brewer. In August, the team won the national semipro championship in Wichita, Kansas. In 1936, Paige, Radcliffe, and Brewer departed and Smith became the ace of the Bismarck team. They returned to the national championship, where Smith won four games, but Bismarck failed to repeat as champions.

Negro league career
In late 1936, Smith signed with the Kansas City Monarchs. From 1937 until his retirement in 1948, Smith was a star pitcher on the Monarchs. He possessed an outstanding curveball, but was overshadowed by his more flamboyant teammate Satchel Paige. Often Paige would pitch the first three innings of a game, leaving Smith to pitch the remaining six. Also, unlike Paige, Smith was a very good hitter.

Post-playing career and death
After retiring from baseball, Smith worked as a schoolteacher and later as a steel plant foreman. He also scouted for the Chicago Cubs. Smith had a quiet, reserved temperament, but in his later years he stood up for Negro leaguers in their struggle to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He died in 1983 in Kansas City, Missouri. It was not until 2001 that he was posthumously inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

title: Hilton Smith


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Riptide (American TV series)

Riptide is an American detective television series that ran on NBC between January 3, 1984 and April 22, 1986, starring Perry King, Joe Penny, and Thom Bray.

The series was created by Frank Lupo and Stephen J. Cannell and was a joint production of Stephen J. Cannell Productions in association with Columbia Pictures Television for NBC. The main theme was composed by Mike Post and Pete Carpenter. A midseason replacement, it debuted as a two-hour TV movie in early 1984. After its cancellation, reruns were aired on the USA Network during the late 1980s. The series currently appears occasionally on the schedules of getTV and Decades.

Premise
Cody Allen (Perry King) and Nick Ryder (Joe Penny) are two former Vietnam War Army buddies who decided to open the Pier 56 Detective Agency (later known as the Riptide Detective Agency) in Los Angeles, California. Realizing that computers and technology play a major role in many investigations, they recruit the help of Murray "Boz" Bozinsky (Thom Bray), a brilliant but nerdy scientist and computer hacker whom they met while serving in the Army.

The team operates out of Cody's boat, the Riptide, moored at Pier 56 at King Harbor Marina in Redondo Beach. The men have several other tools in their fight against crime and injustice, including Murray's robot, The Roboz (which, unlike most television robots, does not speak); Nick's aging Sikorsky S-58T helicopter, The Screaming Mimi, which Nick occasionally used for his sideline business, aerial harbor tours; and Cody's speedboat, the Ebb Tide. Nick also owns a classic red Chevrolet Corvette, and in early episodes, Cody drives an orange "Woodie" station wagon which is later replaced by a four-wheel drive custom GMC Jimmy.

Lt. Quinlan (Jack Ging) is a local police officer who continually harasses the trio. Lt. Parisi (June Chadwick), the agency's police contact during the final episodes, is more cooperative. During the first few episodes, Mama Jo (Anne Francis) is the crusty skipper of the Barefoot Contessa, a tourist boat with an all-female crew. Introduced later in the first season is Max, a comedian at a local club. Second-season episodes also feature Dooley (Ken Olandt), a dock boy who occasionally assists the team in their escapades.

The show's penultimate episode, "If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em", shows Cody and Nick acting as consultants to Rosalind Grant (Annette McCarthy) and Cary Russell (H. Richard Greene), the bickering stars of a television detective show pilot that closely resembles and parodies Moonlighting, Riptide's former primetime competition on Tuesday nights.

Although local mobsters were depicted in most episodes, some reflected sensitive topics, such as corruption within the U.S. Army, high-level cover-ups, and black operations by corporate America. The third season's "Home for Christmas", with a performance by James Whitmore, has a strongly emotional tone.

Cast

 * Perry King as Cody Allen
 * Joe Penny as Nick Ryder
 * Thom Bray as Murray "Boz" Bozinsky

United States
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released a three-disc DVD set of Riptide: The Complete First Season on February 14, 2006, available in the United States only. Although the Sony release includes all of the episodes from the season, many of the opening teasers are missing.

Canada
Visual Entertainment has released all three seasons of Riptide, available in Canada only. Unlike the U.S. release, all of the opening teasers are intact. However, several episodes have music replaced and sequences edited out due to copyright issues. On October 14, 2008, VEI released Riptide: The Complete Series, a 13-disc box set featuring all 58 episodes of the show. The release was initially scheduled to be released on September 9, 2008, but was delayed for unknown reasons. As of 2013, these releases have been discontinued and are out of print.

Germany
In Germany the show is known under the title Trio mit vier Fäusten (Trio with Four Fists).

Universum Films has released all three seasons of Riptide for Germany on May 29, 2009 (Season 1), July 31, 2009 (Season 2) and September 25, 2009 (Season 3).

The DVD sets feature 4:3 Pal, DD 2.0 mono German and English, no teasers, but with a bonus episode of 21 Jump Street (Season 1). The Season 2 boxes will contain an episode not broadcast in Germany, "The Twisted Cross", in English with German subtitles. The German box sets have the original music of the U.S. series, unlike the Canadian box sets 2 and 3.

title: Riptide (American TV series)


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Talk:Bioethics

Hi my name is Buket. I'm a Molecular Biology master student and I am editing the page was given to me as an assignment for Recent Developments in Biotechnology (MLC501) in Uskudar University. https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Uskudar_University,_Istanbul,_Turkiye/MLC501_Recent_Developments_in_Biotechnology_2022-2023_Fall_(2022-2023)/home

Claims that this article supports the political left
The intro shows a clear leaning to the politcal left, with how it brings up that "many bioethicists are simply christians in sheeps clothing" point.

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Deleting references to the implicit politics shows a "clear leaning" to the political right. That many conservatives see bioethics as a possible replacement for abortion issue or as a means for expanding the anti-abortion constituency is no secret. Avoiding the all too obvious is hardly the expression of a neutral point of view.

 * Why is this a lean to the right? You are attributing views to me that I do not have. As for "avoiding the obvious", you may miss the point. We cannot make anti-right (or anti-left) political statements in an encyclopedia. See our [NPOV policy for more details. I would agree with you that people on the political right are using certain bioethical issues as a hammer to push their policies. So do people on the political left. (The question, who is right to do so?!) But that isn't quite the subject of this specific article; this specific article is about the field of philosophy known as bioethics. I agree with you that a discussion of how bioethics has been used for political purposes can and should be written; however, it would be more appropriate if it is only briefly discussed here, and then linked to another article.

Request for info on Christian bioethics
Why is there no list of Christian bioethics references?

 * Sadly, no one has yet volunteered the time to research this issue. It would be a great idea if someone did some research on this topic. Which universities, or seminaries, have specialists in Christian bioethics? Who are the most respected Christian authorities in this field? What are their major works? How do the stands of Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant Christianity compare and contrast on these issues? Any help would be appreciated. RK 03:16, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)

Transhumanist biologists see their work as inherently ethical ? o.O
"Transhumanist biologists in particular can be prone to this misunderstanding, as they see their work as inherently ethical, and attacks on it as unethical."

Is there a reference to back this up ? I'm quite skeptic about the "transhumanist biologists see their work as inherently ethical" part. Flammifer 9 July 2005 13:02 (UTC)

Are you crazy? Transhumanism is a type of humanism! A secular movement in ethics!

Missing discussion on the definition of "harm"
Most modern and many ancient bioethics commitments center around "not doing harm". But the definition of harm, and how broad that definition should be is very limited. This article would be far more useful if it included a discussion of this controversy. Ftrotter (talk) 26 May 2018

title: Talk:Bioethics


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Dead Calm (film)

Dead Calm is a 1989 Australian psychological thriller film directed by Phillip Noyce and starring Sam Neill, Nicole Kidman and Billy Zane. The screenplay by Terry Hayes was based on the 1963 novel of the same name by Charles Williams. Filmed around the Great Barrier Reef, the plot focuses on a married couple, who, after tragically losing their son, are spending some time isolated at sea, when they come across a stranger who has abandoned a sinking ship.

Notably, the movie is the first successful film adaptation of the novel, after Orson Welles worked for a number of years to complete his own film based on it titled The Deep, though it ultimately went unreleased and uncompleted. Dead Calm was generally well received, with critics praising Neill, Kidman, and Zane's performances and the oceanic cinematography, although some film critics criticised elements of the script for being what they viewed as sensationalisation and an over-the-top ending; a critique directed at Warner Brothers who had requested that it be re-shot to provide a less ambiguous resolution for one of the characters. Modern retrospective analysis assesses the film more favourably, with The New York Times naming it one of the 1000 best films ever made.

Plot
Rae Ingram (Nicole Kidman) is involved in a car crash which results in the death of her son. Her older husband, Royal Australian Navy officer John Ingram (Sam Neill), suggests that they help deal with their grief by heading out for a vacation alone on their yacht. In the middle of the Pacific, they encounter a drifting schooner that seems to be taking on water. A man, Hughie Warriner (Billy Zane), rows over to the Ingrams' yacht for help. He claims that his ship is sinking and that his companions have all died of food poisoning.

Suspicious of Hughie's story, John rows over to the other ship, instructing Rae to assemble and load the ship's shotgun, though she ignores this. Inside, John discovers the mangled corpses of the other passengers and video footage indicating that Hughie may have murdered them in a feat of extraordinary violence. John rushes back to his own boat, but he's too late as Hughie awakes, knocks out Rae and sails their yacht away, leaving John behind.

As John attempts to keep Hughie's ship from sinking and catch up with them, Rae awakens and tries to convince Hughie to go back for her husband. Hughie denies her request and keeps on sailing, alternating between kindness and bouts of rage. John manages to get through to his wife on the radio, but the water damage makes him unable to reply save for clicks on his ship's radio receiver. He can respond only yes or no to her questions. John assures her that he is following close by. Rae tries to stall the yacht by turning off the engine and tossing the keys overboard. Her dog jumps in to retrieve the keys and brings them back as he had done earlier with his fetch ball. Hughie starts the yacht back up and tries to convince Rae to be friends with him. Rae accepts, attempting to earn his trust. After a while, she goes back to the radar room to contact John. A blip appears on the edge of the radar's range, signifying the damaged boat. She soon learns that it is too far gone and will sink in the next several hours. With John unable to come to her rescue, Rae assures her husband that she will come back for him. John's radio shorts before Rae has a chance to tell him that she loves him. Unable to make further contact with him, Rae breaks down and cries.

Hughie comes down to see Rae sobbing, and heads over to soothe her. Rae formulates a plan to seduce Hughie and gain his trust long enough for her to get to the shotgun on deck. She and Hughie start to kiss and undress on the floor, before Rae stalls for time by telling him that she has to go to the bathroom. She runs on deck to assemble the shotgun, but Ben the dog follows her. Before she has a chance to load the gun, the dog starts barking causing Hughie to go investigate. In a panic, Rae leaves the gun behind and takes cigarettes down with her as an excuse for being on deck. She eases his suspicion by taking him to the bedroom where she buys herself more time by allowing Hughie to have sex with her. Later, Rae fixes some lemonade, and places a heavy dose of her prescription sedatives into her drink after noticing the bottle on the counter, correctly anticipating she could trick Hughie into drinking it. Claiming to go get dressed, Rae heads back for the shotgun, and is discovered soon after. As a fierce storm approaches, Rae and Hughie come to blows. Hughie takes hold of the shotgun, but the effects of the sedative cause him to aim poorly and shoot the radio by mistake. Rae eventually takes hold of a harpoon gun and locks herself in the bedroom. As the door opens she fires off a harpoon. Seeing blood she pushes it open, only to discover she killed her dog. Hughie comes out of hiding to strangle her, but passes out from the drugs. Rae ties him up and sails back to rescue John. Hughie recovers consciousness and cuts himself free with a shard of broken mirror, but after making his way to Rae, she shoots him in the shoulder with a harpoon and knocks him unconscious. She then sets him adrift in the yacht's life raft and continues to look for her husband.

Meanwhile, the damage and the storm have caused the schooner to sink almost completely. The storm intensifies and breaks the ship's main mast, trapping John below deck. The water rises and eventually he is submerged over his head, able to breathe only through a piece of pipe leading to the deck. The only way he can go is down into the schooner's hull, he notices a sizable fish indicating a significant hole. He takes one last breath from the pipe and dives. Through a gaping hole in the bottom of the hull, John emerges back on the surface. He sets the wreck on fire to signal his location to Rae, who is now desperate to find him. Dusk sets in as Rae notices the flames and sets course to the faint fire on the horizon. Without any means to signal his wife, all John can do is wait on a piece of floating debris. After night falls, the pair reunite when Rae arrives and pulls John aboard.

Later they find the life raft and Rae shoots it with a flare, setting it on fire. The next day they are relaxing on deck when John takes a break from washing Rae's hair to prepare breakfast for her. Her eyes closed, Rae feels a pair of hands begin massaging her scalp and assumes it is John, but when she opens her eyes she sees a bloody Hughie, who begins to strangle her. While Rae struggles, John arrives from below deck. Seeing Rae being attacked, John shoots Hughie in the mouth with a flare, killing him instantly.

Cast

 * Sam Neill as Captain John Ingram, R.A.N.
 * Nicole Kidman as Rae Ingram
 * Billy Zane as Hughie Warriner

Production
The film is based on the novel Dead Calm by Charles Williams, of which Orson Welles had started filming an adaptation starring himself, Jeanne Moreau and Laurence Harvey titled The Deep in the late 1960s but never completed. Producer Tony Bill had tried to buy the rights from Welles but was never successful. He mentioned this to Phil Noyce, giving him a copy of the book in 1984. Noyce enjoyed the book and showed it to George Miller and Terry Hayes, who were enthusiastic. Miller managed to persuade Oja Kodar, Welles' companion who controlled the rights to the novel, to sell the book to Kennedy Miller.

The book features several other main characters (including Hughie's wife and survivors John finds on the Orpheus), and presented Hughie as a nominally asexual manchild. It also goes into further detail about what caused Hughie's psychotic break. The film was shot over a 6-month span in Queensland's Whitsunday Islands beginning in May 1987. George Miller directed some sequences himself, including one where Sam Neill's character is tormented in the boat by a shark. This scene ended up being dropped from the final film. The sequence in which John kills Hughie with a flare was filmed at the request of Warner Bros seven months after principal photography finished. As written, the film originally ended with Rae setting Hughie adrift on a life raft to ostensibly die at sea; the studio was unhappy with this ambiguity and wanted a definite fate for the film's antagonist.

Box office
Dead Calm grossed $2,444,407 at the box office in Australia, which is equivalent to $4,253,268 in 2009 dollars. It grossed $7,825,009 in the U.S.

Critical reception
Dead Calm has an 84% "fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes based on 31 reviews, albeit significantly lower with audiences, culminating in a score of 63% "fresh" and a critical rating of 7.5/10. The site's consensus states that "Nicole Kidman's coiled intensity and muscular direction by Phillip Noyce give this nautical thriller a disquieting sense of dread". On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 70 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.

According to David Stratton of Variety, "throughout the film, Nicole Kidman is excellent" and "she gives the character of Rae real tenacity and energy" and "though not always entirely credible" the picture "is a nail-biting suspense pic, handsomely produced and inventively directed." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote that the film "generates genuine tension." Desson Howe of The Washington Post praised the film's creators: "Noyce's direction moves impressively from sensual tenderness (between husband and wife) to edge-of-the-seat horror. With accomplished editing by Richard Francis-Bruce and scoring by Graeme Revell, he finds lurking dangers in quiet, peaceful waters."

On the other hand, Caryn James of The New York Times felt that the film was "an unsettling hybrid of escapist suspense and the kind of pure trash that depends on dead babies and murdered dogs for effect," and that Dead Calm "becomes disturbing for all the wrong reasons." A number of critics faulted the film's ending as being over-the-top, with the Post's Howe writing, "... while it's afloat, 'Dead Calm' is a majestic horror cruise. ... For much of the movie, you're enthralled. By the end, you're laughing."

The acting was generally considered excellent, with Zane being cited for injecting "unforgettable humanity and evil puckishness into his role" and being "suitably manic and evil." And while Rita Kempley of The Washington Post wrote "what's most fascinating about it is Rae's place in the pantheon of heroines, an Amazon for the '90s," the Times' James called Kidman's character "tough but stupid."

The film is listed on The New York Times Top 1000 Movies list, derived from editor Peter M. Nichols' The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made (St. Martin's Griffin, 2004). The film was partly the inspiration for 1993 Hindi-language film Darr.

title: Dead Calm (film)


text:
Johnny Donovan

Johnny Donovan is an American radio announcer and former producer at New York's WABC (AM).

He grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York, nicknamed "Sarge," after his father's rank in the United States Army during World War II. A radio enthusiast from an early age (with an amateur radio station K2KOQ in a corner of the basement), he became a DJ ("Large Sarge") on WHVW in nearby Hyde Park, after helping build the station. He went on to stations in Kingston (WBAZ) and Binghamton (WENE), New York and Atlantic City, New Jersey (WMID) before landing in New York City, first at WOR-FM, and finally at WABC (at the time the "Holy Grail" for DJs), where he preceded Dan Ingram on the air.

Donovan stayed on at WABC as Production Director and chief staff announcer when WABC went to a talk format in 1982.

With the assistance of Peter Kanze, Rob Frankel and Allan Sniffen, he produced the now defunct WABC Rewound program each Memorial Day.

In May 2015 he retired from WABC after 43 years. He remained the "voice" of Rush Limbaugh's syndicated show, for which WABC was the flagship station from 1988 until the end of 2013, since then airing on WOR.

title: Johnny Donovan


text:
Billy Bathgate

Billy Bathgate is a 1989 novel by author E. L. Doctorow that won the 1989 National Book Critics Circle award for fiction for 1990, the 1990 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the 1990 William Dean Howells Medal, and was the runner-up for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize and the 1989 National Book Award. The book was dedicated to Jason Epstein.

A film based on the novel was released in 1991 to very mixed reviews.

Plot summary
Billy Behan is an impoverished fifteen-year-old living in The Bronx with his mother. One afternoon, Billy is present when infamous Jewish mobster Dutch Schultz arrives to inspect a shipment of illegal beer. When Billy demonstrates his skill at juggling, an amused Schultz calls him a "capable boy" and tips him. Billy later finds and infiltrates Schultz's offices without being seen, resulting in Schultz's accountant and trusted advisor Otto Berman agreeing to take him into the gang. To avoid the stigma of having an Irish boy work for a Jewish crime boss, Billy changes his last name to "Bathgate" after a local street.

When Berman tasks Billy to spy on the gangsters who go to Schultz's nightclub, Billy witnesses Bo Weinberg, Schultz's lieutenant, meeting with a pair of men affiliated with the rival Italian mafia. Believing that Weinberg is a traitor, Schultz has him and his girlfriend, a socialite named Drew Preston, kidnapped at gunpoint. Billy follows them out to a riverboat, where he witnesses Schultz having Weinberg thrown into the East River with his feet encased in cement. Afterwards, Schultz has Billy take Drew back to her apartment to gather her things. Billy discovers Drew is married, and that her wealthy husband, Harvey, is gay.

Seeing Schultz as simply the latest of her sexual conquests, Drew agrees to become his gun moll and is taken with him when he settles in Onondaga as part of his plan to avoid conviction for tax evasion. Billy poses as Schulz's ward with Drew as his governess, while Schultz works to win over the locals by paying off debts, making charitable gifts, and even converting to Roman Catholicism at the town church. One afternoon, Drew goes for a country hike with Billy and asks him to tell her the truth about Bo's death. She then scrambles down the side of a waterfall and swims in the pool underneath, where Billy comforts her. Eventually, the two start an affair.

On the day of the trial, Berman instructs Billy to take Drew to the horse races at Saratoga Springs. Billy quickly realizes that he's been set up, and that Schultz has arranged for his best hitmen to kill Drew as he fears she will implicate him in Bo's murder. Billy uses the allowance Berman provided him with to have flowers and expensive gifts delivered to Drew, making it impossible for her to be harmed without attracting attention. The ruse buys enough time for Harvey, whom Billy contacted beforehand, to pick up Drew and take her out of the country to safety. Billy, questioned as to why he bought the gifts, lies and says that he bought them on impulse without admitting his relationship with Drew. Schultz is acquitted, but his enemy, federal prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey, issues an arrest order for the mobster if he returns to New York.

Schultz flees to Newark and sets up an office in the back room of a chophouse. Against Berman's advice that going after Dewey would not sit well with the other gangs, Schultz decides to assassinate his enemy and orders Billy to case his apartment block. Just as Billy returns, Mafia gunmen storm the restaurant; Schultz, Berman, and their bodyguards are killed. Billy is small enough to escape out of a bathroom window and returns in time for the dying Berman to give Billy the code to Schultz's personal safe. Billy sneaks into the hospital and notes down the delirious Schultz's stream of consciousness monologue as he is dying, using clues from this to locate the exact spot where Dutch has buried all of his money.

The Mafia tries to intimidate Billy into giving up the money, but he convinces them that only Schultz's lawyer, Dixie Davis, knows where it is. Billy then returns to the Bronx and moves back in with his mother. A year later, Drew, having given birth to Billy's child, gives him sole custody. Using the contents of Schultz's safe, Billy is able to attend college and fight in World War II. After being discharged, he returns to New York and quietly digs up Schultz's fortune, planning to use it to build a new life for himself and his family.

The novel
Billy Bathgate is the eighth in a series of what critic James Wood has called "intricate historical brocades". Earlier novels by Doctorow that were also set in the 1930s include Loon Lake and World's Fair; the latter also shares poetical evocations of the Bronx in which the author himself grew up. Doctorow has described his novel as "a young man's sentimental education in the tribal life of gangsters". A reviewer saw in it "Doctorow’s shapeliest piece of work: a richly detailed report of a 15-year-old boy's journey from childhood to adulthood".

In a radio broadcast, Doctorow described the novel's genesis in a picture, whose origin he could no longer remember, of men in tuxedos and black tie on a tugboat. Trying to interpret that image prompted him to ponder "the culture of gangsterism" and its mythic appeal. The novel leads off with Billy's description of Bo Weinberg's execution (before backtracking to account for how he got there): a performance of which Doctorow explained that "the very first sentence I wrote in Billy Bathgate is the first sentence that appears in the book, and it actually delivered the character Billy to me. He was sort of built into the diction and the syntax, and even the rhythm of the sentence gave me the way he breathed." With this as a start, the novel develops into what is largely a first person monologue, less narration than an act of lyrical remembrance.

In fact, the act of speaking and its interpretation is at the heart of the novel. Through paying close attention to the gangster's death-bed ramblings, Billy finds the clue to locate Schultz's hidden treasure. And as he himself describes, such attention also leads to his equally valuable discovery of the verbal means to preserve as a lasting memory the lesson of what is otherwise a purely destructive force. "Whereas Schultz's rage appropriates everything to his need to destroy, Billy's words bear permanent witness to whatever is threatened with impermanence."

While most reviewers responded to Doctorow's verbal dexterity and reinterpretation of historical facts, they found the ending unconvincingly sentimental. And for one interpreter, at least, the entire plot was grounded in sentimentality, "pure and defiant daydream" based on pulp fiction, its deficiency disguised in a heightened prose that scarcely stops to draw breath and a "vocabulary charged with overkill".

title: Billy Bathgate


text:
Luftschiffer

Luftschiffertruppe, a German word meaning "airshipmen's troop", was the designation of the German airship units.

Military lighter-than-air aviation
The origin of the Luftschiffertruppe was the Versuchsabteilung der Luftschiffertruppe ("experimental airship unit") first raised in 1884 as part of the army which was tasked with the evaluation of tethered observation balloons, first using ball-type balloons but in 1896 introducing elongated Parseval-Sigsfeld kite balloons.

On August 1, 1914, the distinction was made between

 * Feldluftschiffer units operating observation balloons at the frontline,
 * Festungsluftschiffer units with territorial defense duties,
 * the Luftschifftruppe operating free-flying airships.

In October 1916, the Feldluftschiffer were subordinated to the "Commanding General of the Air Force".

The Luftschifftruppe
The origin of the Luftschifftruppe ("airship troop") was a special Versuchskompanie für Motorluftschiffahrt ("experimental unit for powered airship navigation") organized in 1906 as part of the Luftschiffertruppe. After tests of the different available airship types, the semi-rigid Groß airship and the Parseval blimp were abandoned while the rigid airships of Zeppelin and Schütte-Lanz design were selected for service.

While the use of airships for military purposes had been pioneered by the German army, in 1913 the navy raised their own airship troops. After operating in varying command structures for the first years of the war, in late 1916 the navy took over airship operations on the western front while the army became responsible for the east and the Balkans.

World War I
Until 1918, the army launched 50 airships, the navy 73. 17 army and 23 navy ships were lost to the enemy, 9 army and 30 navy ships were lost to other causes.

The Luftschiffer became the backbone of German aerial warfare in the first years of the War, conducting reconnaissance flights as well as the first bombings of cities, including Paris and London.

Upon the outbreak of World War I, the Luftschifftruppe numbered around 20–25 zeppelins in service. The Luftschifftruppe began aerial surveillance early on in Belgium and France, but often came under fire by anti-aircraft guns. Because of their slow speed, they were very vulnerable. After three Zeppelins were shot down in the first month alone, the Luftschiffer were switched to naval surveillance, observing British ship movements, in which capacity they played a decisive role in the Battle of Jutland. Tests were done of dropping bombs from Zeppelins in order to increase their potential. Zeppelins had a typical carrying capacity of almost 9 metric tons, making them useful enough for this operation. Following the Christmas truce, Kaiser Wilhelm II approved of the Luftschifftruppe's bombing of England. On January 19, 1915, the first bombs fell over Britain, when two Zeppelins dropped 50 kg explosives on villages outside Great Yarmouth. Five people died in the first raid; 18 more raids that year would end in almost 900 casualties. Following the terror, the British government began taking measures to stop the bombings. Anti-aircraft guns were set up all over south-eastern England, as well as spotlights for night time.

The bombings in 1916 were more intense than in 1915. After an accidental bomb-dropping on London, the Kaiser approved of raids directly against the city's urban center. Twenty-three raids on London resulted in around 1,800 casualties. Despite safety precautions, civilians were still unprepared for the raids and zeppelins were still able to avoid defenses. By 1917 and 1918 the threat the Luftschifftruppe posed to London was diminished. Large-scale introduction of fighter planes caused nearly half of the planned bombings to end in failure. Only eleven successful raids occurred in the last year of the war. Nearly 80 zeppelins had been built for the Luftschifftruppe during the war; around 60 of them were shot down, including Peter Strasser's own zeppelin, with himself on board.

The Treaty of Versailles
The Luftschiffer's career and service to Germany came to an end when, following World War I, the Luftschifftruppe was dismantled and barred from existence by the Treaty of Versailles, which prohibited Germany from owning an air force under articles 198 and 202.

title: Luftschiffer


text:
Talk:Peter Strasser

Untitled
On the German WP it says that he joined the KM on am 16 April 1894, which would make him 18 and not 15 as it says in this article. BoH 08:35, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi, for what i have read Kaiser William 2nd indeed prohibited the bombing of civilian targets, and of national monuments in England, especially London - there's some propaganda e.g. in the film Hell's Angels where the Zepp crew wants to bomb Trafalgar square, which is plain wrong. Strasser agreed to not attack those targets listed by William 2nd, but he certainly knew that exact bombing by plane or Zeppelin with navigation errors, wind and drift was not really possible at that time. Agreed targets were chemical factories, plants, all military installations - and the Bank of England. There is however no doubt that hundreds of civilians died, along with women and children. Following the logic of the BPB propaganda, the Zeppelins were then called the "baby killers". I think we should not (yet) change the article until there is some real evidence whether the Kaiser's position regarding civilian targets as allowed, has changed later in the war (?) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.15.163.29 (talk) 10:23, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Edit, quote from First World War.com: " ... This was the first of many raids, which continued at a rate of about two per month, in parallel with the continuing reconnaissance patrols. The German Admiralty was very enthusiastic about the results, and asked for permission to bomb London.  This was only granted by the Kaiser after a series of raids by French bombers on German cities.  On the 31st of May 1915 the first raid was carried out against London, killing seven and injuring thirty five. ..." Seems the Kasier changed his mind after the french raids. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.15.163.29 (talk) 10:29, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

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title: Talk:Peter Strasser


text: File:Riptide (American TV series).jpg

title: File:Riptide (American TV series).jpg