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Leopoldo Cicognara

Count Leopoldo Cicognara (17 November 1767, in Ferrara – 5 March 1834, in Venice) was an Italian artist, art collector, art historian and bibliophile.

Early life, education, and political career
Cicognara attended the Collegio dei Nobili in Modena from 1776 to 1785. From 1788-1790, he attended the Societá dell'Arcadia in Rome where he studied painting under Jacob Philipp Hackert and Domenico Corvi. There he also became interested in art criticism and archeology. He later he visited Naples and Sicily, and published one of his first works of poetry in Palermo. Cicognara studied archeology during travels to Florence, Milan, Bologna and Venice.

In 1795, he moved to Modena and began a brief political career, becoming a member of the legislative body, serving as a councilor of state, and minister plenipotentiary of the Cisalpine Republic at Turin. Napoleon decorated him with the Iron Crown.

Academic career and scholarship
Cicognara left politics in 1805 to devote himself to art history. He settled in Venice and in 1808 was made president of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, a post in which he worked until 1826. He was influential in opening the Galleria dell’Accademia to the public in 1817, increasing the number of the professors at the academy, improving the curriculum, and establishing prizes.

In 1808, his treatise Del bello regionamenti was published, which he dedicated to Napoleon. Wilhelm Schlegel advised Cicognara on his magnum opus, the Storia della scultura dal suo risorgimento in Italia al secolo di Napoleone, The book was designed to complete the works of Winckelmann and D'Agincourt and is illustrated with 180 plates.

In 1814, after the fall of Napoleon, Cicognara was patronized by Francis I of Austria, and between 1815 and 1820 published, under the auspices of that sovereign, his Fabbriche più cospicue di Venezia, two folios, containing some 150 plates. Charged by the Venetians with the presentation of their gifts to the Princess Caroline Augusta of Bavaria at Vienna, Cicognara added to the offering an illustrated catalogue of the objects it comprised; this book, Omaggio delle Provincie Venete alla maestri Carolina Augusta, has since become of great value to bibliophiles.

The other works by Cicognara are the Memorie storiche de litterati ed artisti Ferraresi (1811); the Vite de' più insigni pittori e scultori Ferraresi, MS.; the Memorie spettanti alla storia della calcografia (1831); and a large number of dissertations on painting, sculpture, engraving and other kindred subjects.

In 1833, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Honorary Academician.

Cicognara Library
During his career, Cicognara collected about five thousand volumes on art and archeology, an important resource for scholars. In 1821 he published at Pisa a well-known catalog of his collection, the result of thirty years labor, the Catalogo ragionato de’ libri d’arte e di antichità. In 1824 his library was purchased en bloc by Pope Leo XII, and added to the Vatican library.

Philipp Fehl and Raina Fehl were the directors of The Leopoldo Cicognara Program at the University of Illinois Library, dedicated to the study and promulgation of literary sources in the history of art, 1987–2007. They cataloged the collection of work found in the Fondo Cicognara at the Vatican Library.

The Digital Cicognara Library is a collaborative project aiming to create an online version of the Fondo Cicognara by digitizing each title in the collection.

List of works

 * Le belle arti (Ferrara: Per gli eredi di G. Rinaldi, 1790)
 * Lettera ad un amico su di alcune attuali controversie giudiciarie e su diverse opinioni degli eruditi intorno al Panteon di M. Agrippa detto la Rotonda (Pisa: Impresso co' caratteri di Firmino Didot, 1807)
 * Del bello: Ragionamenti (Florence and Pisa, 1808)
 * Storia della scultura dal suo risorgimento in Italia sino al secolo di Napoleone per servire di continuazione alle opere di Winckelmann e di d’Agincourt. Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3 (Venice: Venezia: Nella tipografia Picotti, 1813)
 * De' propilei e della inutilità e dei danni dei perni metallici nella costruzione degli edifizii (Venice: Nella Tip. di Alvisopoli, 1814)
 * Le fabbriche più cospicue di Venezia... (Venice, 1815–1820)
 * Catalogo ragionato de’ libri d’arte e di antichità (Pisa: N. Capurro, co'caratteri di F. Didot, 1821)
 * Biografia di Antonio Canova, aggiuntivi il catalogo completo delle opere (Venice: G. Missiaglia, 1823)
 * Storia della scultura dal suo risorgimento in Italia fino al secolo di Canova: fino al secolo di Canova. Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3, Vol. 4, Vol. 5, Vol. 6, Vol. 7, Vol. 8 (Prato: Frat. Giachetti, 1823–1825)
 * Memorie spettanti alla storia della calcografia (Prato, 1831)

title: Leopoldo Cicognara


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Olympic sports

Olympic sports are sports that are contested in the Summer Olympic Games and Winter Olympic Games. The 2020 Summer Olympics included 33 sports; the 2022 Winter Olympics included seven sports. Each Olympic sport is represented at the International Olympic Committee (IOC) by an international governing body called an International Federation (IF).

The 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo saw the introduction of four new sports, with karate, skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing making their Olympic debuts. Breakdancing will make its debut at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, and ski mountaineering will make its debut at the 2026 Winter Olympics.

Olympic sports definitions
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) considers an Olympic sport to comprise all disciplines governed by an international sports federation. For example, aquatics is a summer Olympic sport that includes six disciplines: swimming, artistic swimming, diving, water polo, open water swimming, and high diving (a non-Olympic discipline), all of which are governed at international level by World Aquatics. Skating is a winter Olympic sport represented by the International Skating Union, and includes four disciplines: figure skating, speed skating, short track speed skating, and synchronized skating (a non-Olympic discipline). The sport with the largest number of Olympic disciplines is skiing, with six: alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, ski jumping, Nordic combined, snowboarding, and freestyle skiing.

Other notable multi-discipline sports are gymnastics (artistic, rhythmic, and trampoline), cycling (road, track, mountain, and BMX), volleyball (indoors and beach), wrestling (freestyle and Greco-Roman), canoeing (flatwater and slalom), and bobsleigh (includes skeleton). The disciplines listed here are only those contested in the Olympics—gymnastics has two non-Olympic disciplines, while cycling and wrestling have three each.

The IOC definition of a "discipline" may differ from that used by an international federation. For example, the IOC considers artistic gymnastics a single discipline, but the International Federation of Gymnastics (FIG) classifies men's and women's artistic gymnastics as separate disciplines. Similarly, the IOC considers freestyle wrestling to be a single discipline, but United World Wrestling classifies women's freestyle wrestling as the separate discipline of "female wrestling".

An event, by IOC definition, is a competition that leads to the award of medals. Therefore, the sport of aquatics includes a total of 46 Olympic events, of which 32 are in the discipline of swimming, eight in diving, and two each in artistic swimming, water polo, and open water swimming. The number of events per sport ranges from a minimum of two (until 2008, there were sports with only one event) to a maximum of 47 in athletics, which despite its large number of diverse events is not divided into separate disciplines like aquatics is.

Criteria for inclusion and thresholds
Sports eligible for inclusion in the Olympic programme are only those governed by international federations recognized by the IOC, as stated in Bye-laws 1.3.2 and 1.4.2 to Rule 45 of the Olympic Charter (2023). The opportunity to propose additional sports to the programme is at the full discretion of the respective Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and subject to the final decision of the IOC Session.

In the past, several criteria concerning widely practiced sports, disciplines or events have been abolished. However, the number of sports remains constrained by athlete and event limits. According to Bye-law 3.2 to Rule 45 of the Olympic Charter (2023), Summer Olympics should be approximately limited to 10,500 athletes, 5,000 coaches and support personnel and 310 events, while Winter Olympics should be capped at around 2,900 athletes, 2,000 coaches and support personnel and 100 events, unless agreed to otherwise by the Organizing Committee. These thresholds are likely to be surpassed for the 2028 Summer Olympics; sports director Kit McConnell stated that they would aim to "limit the increase, but limit the impact on the existing sport".

In previous years, sports that depend primarily on mechanical propulsion, such as motor sports, could not be considered for recognition as Olympic sports, though there were power-boating events in 1908 before this rule was enacted by the IOC. The rule excluding motorsports was removed from the Olympic Charter in 2016. The FIA (governing body for automobile sports) and FAI (governing body for air sports) are recognised by the International Olympic Committee, and therefore, in theory, could be eligible for inclusion at future Olympic Games.

Changes in Olympic sports
The list of Olympic sports has changed considerably during the course of Olympic history, and has gradually increased over time. The Olympic Charter decrees that Olympic sports for each edition of the Olympic Games should be decided at an IOC Session no later than seven years prior to the Games.

The only summer sports that have never been absent from the Olympic program are athletics, aquatics (swimming), cycling, fencing, and gymnastics (artistic gymnastics). The only winter sports that were included in all Winter Olympic Games are skiing (nordic skiing), skating (figure skating and speed skating), and ice hockey. Figure skating and ice hockey were also included in the Summer Olympics (in 1908 and 1920) before the Winter Olympics were introduced in 1924.

Early Olympic Games prior to World War II included eight sports that have since been discontinued from the Olympics: basque pelota, croquet, jeu de paume, polo, rackets, roque, tug of war and water motorsports. Organizers were able to decide which sports or disciplines were included on the program from 1896–1920, with the IOC taking control of the program in 1924. As a result, a number of sports were on the Olympic program for relatively brief periods: of the eight discontinued early Olympic sports, the only one on the program after 1920 was polo (in 1924 and 1936). These sports were removed because of lack of interest and/or the absence of an appropriate governing body, and are considered unlikely to ever return.

Five early Olympic sports that were removed by the IOC have managed to return to the Olympic program: archery in 1972, tennis in 1988, curling in 1998, golf in 2016 and cricket in 2028. Further, three other early Olympic sports returned in a different format from which they were originally competed in: handball in 1972 (as indoor handball instead of field handball), rugby in 2016 (as rugby sevens instead of rugby union), and lacrosse in 2028 (as lacrosse sixes instead of field lacrosse).

For most of the 20th century, the Olympics included one or more demonstration sports, normally to promote a local sport from the host country or to gauge interest in an entirely new sport. Some such sports, like baseball and curling, were later added to the official Olympic program (in 1992 and 1998, respectively). The competitions and ceremonies in these sports were identical to official Olympic sports, except that the medals were not counted in the official record. On some occasions, both official medal events and demonstration events have been contested in the same sport at the same Games. Due to logistical issues, the International Olympic Committee decided in 1989 to eliminate demonstration sports from the Olympic Games after 1992. An exception was made in 2008, when the Beijing Organizing Committee received permission to organize a wushu tournament.

Women first competed in the 1900 Olympic Games, participating in five sports (croquet, sailing, tennis, golf and equestrian). With the addition of women's boxing in 2012 and women's ski jumping in 2014, women can now compete in all Olympic disciplines except for Greco-Roman wrestling and nordic combined; there are also two women-only disciplines, rhythmic gymnastics and artistic swimming.

Changes since 2000
The sports of baseball and softball were both voted off the program by the IOC Session in Singapore on 11 July 2005, a decision that was reaffirmed on 9 February 2006. Baseball and softball, before their reinstatement for the 2020 Olympics, were last included in 2008: therefore, the number of sports in the 2012 Summer Olympics was dropped from 28 to 26. This was the first time a sport or discipline had been removed from the Olympic program since canoe slalom after 1972 (though it returned in 1992).

Two previously long-discontinued sports, golf (last competed in 1904) and rugby (last competed in 1924), returned for the 2016 Summer Olympics. On 13 August 2009, the IOC Executive Board proposed that golf and rugby sevens be added to the Olympic program for 2016. On 9 October 2009, during the 121st IOC Session in Copenhagen, the IOC voted to admit both as official Olympic sports and to include them in the 2016 Summer Olympics. The IOC voted 81–8 in favor of rugby sevens and 63–27 in favor of golf, thus bringing the number of sports back to 28.

In February 2013, the IOC considered dropping a sport from the 2020 Summer Olympics to make way for a new sport: modern pentathlon and taekwondo were thought to be vulnerable, but instead the IOC recommended removing wrestling. On 8 September 2013, the IOC added wrestling to the 2020 and 2024 Summer Games.

Starting with the 2020 Games, the IOC altered the way it plans the Olympic sports program: rather than basing it on a maximum number of sports, the total number of events are now taken into account, opening the schedule up for the inclusion on a per-Games basis of additional sports to the 28 "core" sports. For the 2020 Summer Olympics, the local organizing committee was thus permitted to add five sports to the program in addition to the existing 28, taking the total to 33. Baseball and softball have been treated by the IOC as a single sport since the governing bodies for baseball and softball merged into a single international federation, the World Baseball Softball Confederation, in 2013 (with male athletes competing in baseball and female athletes competing in softball). On 3 August 2016, the IOC voted to add baseball/softball, karate, sport climbing, surfing, and skateboarding as optional sports for the 2020 Summer Olympics.

On 21 February 2019, the Paris 2024 Organising Committee announced they would propose the inclusion of breakdancing (breaking), as well as skateboarding, sport climbing, and surfing. All four sports were approved during the 134th IOC Session in Lausanne, Switzerland on 24 June 2019.

On 18 June 2021, the IOC issued a proposal for a new winter sport, ski mountaineering, for the 2026 Winter Olympics. The proposal was approved during the IOC's session in Tokyo on 20 July.

On 3 February 2022, the IOC designated skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing to be core Summer Olympic sports starting in 2028, raising the number of core sports to 31. On 16 October 2023, the IOC approved the addition of five optional sports for the 2028 Summer Olympics: baseball/softball, cricket, flag football, lacrosse and squash, while breakdancing was dropped. Cricket's only previous Olympic appearance was in 1900, while lacrosse was last on the Olympic program in 1908.

Summer Olympics
At the first Olympic Games, ten sports were contested. Since then, the number of sports contested at the Summer Olympic Games has gradually risen to thirty-six on the program for 2028.

In order for a sport or discipline to be considered for inclusion in the list of Summer Olympic sports, it must be widely practiced in at least 75 countries, spread over four continents.

Current and discontinued summer program
The following sports (and disciplines) make up the current and discontinued Summer Olympic Games official program and are listed alphabetically according to the name used by the IOC. The figures in each cell indicate the number of events for each sport contested at the respective Games; a bullet denotes that the sport was contested as a demonstration or unofficial sport.

Eight of the 32 sports at the 2024 Summer Olympics consist of multiple disciplines. Each discipline is marked with a unique 3-character identifier code by the IOC.

Demonstration summer sports
Between 1924 and 1992, the IOC officially recognized demonstration sports, allowing host countries to organize demonstrations of non-Olympic sports during the Games; no demonstration sports were held in 1976 or 1980 due to the IOC temporarily eliminating them.

The following sports or disciplines have been demonstration sports at the Summer Olympic Games for the years shown, but have never been included on the Olympic program as a medal event.

 * American football pictogram.svg American football (1932)
 * Australian football pictogram.svg Australian football (1956)
 * Kendo pictogram.svg Kyuodo Archery pictogram.svg Sumo pictogram.svg Budō (1964)
 * Gliding pictogram.svg Gliding (1936)
 * Korfball pictogram.svg Korfball (1928)
 * Fencing pictogram.svg La canne (1924)
 * Pesäpallo pictogram.svg Pesäpallo (1952)
 * Roller hockey pictogram.svg Roller hockey (1992)
 * Savate pictogram.svg Savate (1924)
 * Gymnastics (ling) pictogram.svg Swedish (Ling) gymnastics (1948)
 * Water skiing pictogram.svg Water skiing (1972)

American football (1904) and Korfball (1920) first appeared as unofficial sports before becoming demonstration sports. Flag football, a non-contact version of American football, will make its Olympic debut in 2028.

Gliding was promoted from a demonstration sport to an official Olympic sport for the 1940 Summer Olympics, but the Games were cancelled due to World War II.

Unofficial summer sports
Several sports, while not officially recognized by the IOC as demonstration sports, have nonetheless been held alongside or as part of the Olympic program. Events held during Games prior to 1924 are considered demonstration sports by some scholars, though not by the IOC. Bowling at the 1988 Games (along with badminton) was considered an exhibition sport in that it was not part of the official Olympic schedule and did not require IOC approval for staging, unlike demonstration sports.

Art competitions were held between the 1912 and 1948 Games, and medals were awarded, though they are not considered by the IOC to be equivalent to regular Olympic medals. Olympic medals have also been awarded for feats of alpinism and aeronautics.

Organizers of the 1900 and 1904 Olympic Games, which were staged in conjunction with the 1900 and 1904 World's Fairs, included numerous sporting events on an equal footing under their programmes. Historians generally regard many of these as not satisfying retrospective inclusion criteria to qualify as "official." Through 1995, the IOC never made a determination regarding which events were Olympic and which were not, although the present IOC website generally conforms to historians' views.

 * Aeronautics (1936)
 * Mountaineering pictogram (2).svg Alpinism (1924, 1932, 1936)
 * Angling pictogram.svg Angling (1900)
 * Art competitions (1912–1948)
 * Ballooning pictogram.svg Ballooning (1900)
 * Boules sports pictogram.svg Boules (1900)
 * Bowling pictogram.svg Bowling (1988)
 * Cannon shooting (1900)
 * Chess pictogram.svg Chess (2000)
 * Cycling polo pictogram.svg Cycle polo (1908)
 * Fire fighting (1900)
 * Gaelic football pictogram.svg Gaelic football (1904)
 * Glima Wrestling pictogram.svg Glima (1908, 1912)
 * Gotland sports (1912)
 * Hurling pictogram.svg Hurling (1904)
 * Kabaddi pictogram.svgKho kho pictogram.svg Indian sports (1936)
 * Kaatsen pictogram.svg Kaatsen (1928)
 * Kite flying (1900)
 * Lifesaving pictogram.svg Life saving (1900)
 * Jeu de paume pictogram.svg Longue paume (1900)
 * Military exercise (1900)
 * Motor sport (automobile) pictogram.svg Motor racing (1900, 1936)
 * Motor sport (motorcycle) pictogram.svg Motorcycle racing (1900)
 * Pigeon racing (1900)
 * Pistol dueling (1906, 1908)
 * Wheelchair racing (1984–2004)
 * Wushu pictogram.svg Wushu (1936, 2008)

Classification of Olympic sports for revenue share
Summer Olympic sports are divided into categories based on popularity, gauged by: television viewers (40%), internet popularity (20%), public surveys (15%), ticket requests (10%), press coverage (10%), and number of national federations (5%). The categories determine the share each sport's International Federation receives of Olympic revenue. The below table shows the categorization of sports as of 2013. Category A represents the most popular sports; category E lists either the sports that are the least popular or that are new to the Olympics (golf and rugby).

Winter Olympics
Before 1924, ice sports like figure skating and ice hockey were held at the Summer Olympic Games. These two sports made their debuts at the 1908 and the 1920 Summer Olympics respectively, but in 1924 they were moved to the first edition of the Winter Olympic Games and became permanent fixtures on the sports program for the Winter Olympics from then on.

The 1924 International Winter Sports Week, later dubbed the first Olympic Winter Games and retroactively recognized as such by the IOC, consisted of nine disciplines in six sports.

A sport or discipline must be widely practised in at least 25 countries, and on three different continents, to be eligible for inclusion on the Olympic program for the Winter Games.

Current winter program
The following sports (or disciplines of a sport) make up the current Winter Olympic Games official program and are listed alphabetically, according to the name used by the IOC. The figures in each cell indicate the number of events for each sport that were contested at the respective Games (the red cells indicate that those sports were held at the Summer Games); a bullet denotes that the sport was contested as a demonstration or unofficial sport.

Three out of the eight sports consist of multiple disciplines.

Demonstration winter sports
The following sports or disciplines have been demonstration sports at the Winter Olympic Games for the years shown, but have never been included on the Olympic program as a medal event.

 * Bandy pictogram.svg Bandy (1952)
 * Ice stock sport pictogram.svg Ice stock sport (1936, 1964)
 * Ski ballet pictogram.svg Ski ballet (acroski) (1988, 1992)
 * Skijoring pictogram.svg Skijoring (1928)
 * Sled dog racing pictogram.svg Sled-dog racing (1932)
 * Speed skiing pictogram.svg Speed skiing (1992)
 * Winter pentathlon (all stages) pictogram.svg Winter pentathlon (1948)

Unofficial winter sports

 * Alpine skiing - Paralympic pictogram.svgled skiing (1984, 1988)

Recognized international federations

Many sports have their governing bodies recognized by the IOC, but are not contested at the Olympics.

Such sports, if eligible under the terms of the Olympic Charter, may apply for inclusion in the program at future Games, through a recommendation by the IOC Olympic Programme Commission, followed by a decision of the IOC Executive Board and a vote of the IOC Session. When Olympic demonstration sports took place, a sport usually appeared as such before being officially admitted.

An International Sport Federation (IF) is responsible for ensuring that the sport's activities follow the Olympic Charter. When a sport is recognized by the IOC, the IF becomes an official Olympic sport federation and joins either the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF, for summer Olympic sports), the Association of International Olympic Winter Sports Federations (AIOWF, for winter Olympic sports), or the Association of IOC Recognised International Sports Federations (ARISF, for non-Olympic sports).

A number of recognized sports are included in the program of the World Games, a multi-sport event run by the International World Games Association, an organization that operates under the patronage of the IOC. Since the start of the World Games in 1981, 16 sports and disciplines that have been competed there - badminton and baseball (1992), beach volleyball and softball (1996), taekwondo, trampoline, triathlon, women's water polo and women's weightlifting (2000), rugby sevens (2016), karate and sport climbing (2020), breakdancing (2024), and flag football, lacrosse sixes and squash (2028) - have subsequently been added to the Olympic program.

The governing bodies of the following sports currently not contested at the Olympic Games are recognized by the IOC:

 * Paragliding pictogram.svg Air sports1
 * American football pictogram.svg American football 6
 * F1 pictogram.svg Auto racing
 * Bandy pictogram.svg Bandy
 * Baseball pictogram.svg Baseball4,6
 * Cue sports pictogram.svg Billiard sports1
 * Boules pictogram.svg Boules1
 * Bowling pictogram.svg Bowling1
 * Contract bridge pictogram.svg Bridge
 * Cheerleading pictogram converted.svg Cheerleading
 * Chess pictogram.svg Chess
 * Cricket pictogram.svg Cricket 6
 * Floorball pictogram.svg Floorball1
 * Ultimate pictogram.svg Flying disc1
 * Ice stock sport pictogram.svg Ice stock sport
 * Karate pictogram.svg Karate1,7
 * Kickboxing pictogram.svg Kickboxing1
 * Korfball pictogram.svg Korfball1
 * Lacrosse pictogram.svg Lacrosse1,6
 * Lifesaving pictogram.jpg Lifesaving1
 * Motor cycle pictogram.svg Motorcycle racing
 * Mountaineering pictogram (2).svg Mountaineering and climbing
 * Muay pictogram.svg Muaythai1
 * Netball pictogram.svg Netball
 * Orienteering pictogram.svg Orienteering1
 * Basque pelota pictogram.svg Pelota vasca2
 * Polo pictogram.svg Polo2
 * Motor sport (boat) pictogram.svg Powerboating2
 * Racquets pictogram.svg Racquetball1
 * Skating pictogram.svg Roller sports1,3
 * Sambo pictogram.svg Sambo
 * Softball pictogram.svg Softball1,4,6
 * Squash pictogram.svg Squash1,6
 * Sumo pictogram.svg Sumo1
 * Tug of war pictogram.svg Tug of war1,2
 * Finswimming pictogram.svg Underwater sports1
 * Water skiing pictogram.svg Water skiing1,5
 * Wakeboarding pictogram.svg Wakeboarding1,5
 * Wushu pictogram.svg Wushu

1 Official sport at the World Games.

2 Discontinued Olympic sport.

3 Skateboarding, a discipline within roller sports, was included at the 2020 Summer Olympics. Inline and roller skating have not yet been added.

4 Baseball and softball share the same governing body.

5 Waterskiing and wakeboarding share the same governing body.

6 Will be on the program at the 2028 Summer Olympics.

7 Was on the program at the 2020 Summer Olympics, but is not on the program for the 2024 or 2028 Summer Olympics.

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

title: Olympic sports


text:
George Williams (philanthropist)

Sir George Williams (11 October 1821 – 6 November 1905) was an English philanthropist, businessman and founder of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). The oldest and largest youth charity in the world, its aim is to support young people to belong, contribute and thrive in their communities.

Williams was knighted by Queen Victoria in her 1894 Birthday Honours. He died in 1905 and is buried in St Paul's Cathedral.

Early life and education
Williams was born on a farm in Dulverton, Somerset, England, as the youngest of seven surviving sons of Amos Williams and Elizabeth Vickery. He was baptised into the Church of England. He came from several generations of farmers in Somerset, and attended Gloyn's in Tiverton, Devon until he was age 13, when he began working on his family farm. As a young man, he described himself as a "careless, thoughtless, godless, swearing young fellow". For unknown reasons, his family sent him to Bridgwater to be an apprentice at Henry William Holmes' draper shop. In 1837, Williams converted from Anglicanism to Congregationalism. He went to the Zion Congregational Church and became an involved member.

Works
In 1841, he went to London and worked as an apprentice at Hitchcock & Rogers, a draper's shop and became a member of the King's Weigh House Congregational Church, using his time for evangelisation. After three years, in 1844, Williams was promoted to department manager. He married the owner George Hitchcock's daughter, Helen Jane Maunder Hitchcock in 1853, and was taken into partnership at the drapers, renaming to George Hitchcock, Williams & Co. When Hitchcock died in 1863, Williams became the sole owner of the firm.

Hitchcock and Williams had 7 children, his son Albert, a solicitor would go on to marry the granddaughter of Thomas Cook. Williams's nephew John Williams married the only child of his lifelong London friend, Matthew Hodder, founder of British publisher Hodder & Stoughton.

In 1868, Williams offered to contribute towards the election expenses of Charles Reed (British politician). When Williams died on 6 November 1905 at the Victoria and Albert Hotel, Torquay, England, he was president for societies including Band of Hope, London City Mission, Railway Mission and YWCA.

His funeral took place at St Paul's Cathedral on 14 November 1905, with 2,600 people in attendance and is commemorated with a bust atop his family vault at Highgate Cemetery (west).

Founding of YMCA
Appalled by the terrible conditions in London for young working men, on 6 June 1844 Williams gathered a group of 11 fellow drapers in the living quarters of Hitchcock & Rogers to create a place that would not tempt young men into sin. They were James Smith (from W D Owen drapers), Christopher. W Smith, Norton Smith, Edward Valentine, Edward Beaumont, M Glasson, William Creese, Francis John Crockett, E Rogers, John Harvey and John C Symons.

The name, Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), was settled on at the suggestion of Christopher W Smith, a fellow draper at Hitchcock & Rogers. It promoted Muscular Christianity. One of the earliest converts and contributors to the new association was George's employer, George Hitchcock, who was the organisation's first treasurer.

Honours
Williams was knighted by Queen Victoria in her 1894 Birthday Honours, YMCA's silver jubilee year, as well as receiving the Freedom of the City of London. After his death in 1905, he was commemorated by a stained-glass window in the nave of Westminster Abbey. Sir George Williams is buried in St Paul's Cathedral.

Sir George Williams University in Montreal, which was founded by YMCA, was named in commemoration of Williams; it was later merged into Concordia University, with its former campus retaining the name Sir George Williams Campus. George Williams College, located on the shores of Geneva Lake in Wisconsin, USA, is a satellite of Aurora University, and is also named after Williams.

Williams House in YMCA of Hong Kong Christian College, which was founded by YMCA of Hong Kong, was named in commemoration of Williams.

title: George Williams (philanthropist)


text: Template:Colorado River system

title: Template:Colorado River system


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Talk:Morning

Morning does not start at midnight!
Midnight is called as such because, obviously, it occurs at the middle of the night. So, it means that there was some amount of time of NIGHT before the midnight, and has to be some amount of time of NIGHT after it. Morning starts at 4-5 a.m., when most of the working people start waking up. 46.19.41.30 (talk) 13:08, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

 * ... so what time is "one o'clock in the morning"?   D b f i r s   12:44, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Maybe we'd better call it “one eigh em” (1:00 AM). This time can probably be called the small hours  --Yejianfei (talk) 00:57, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Breakfast
Mention morning meal = (usually) breakfast? Charles Matthews 18:23, 12 May 2004 (UTC)
 * I think so -- I'll add it and you can fiddle with it if it doesn't flow well. :-) Jwrosenzweig 18:59, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

Also brunch then (elevenses must be obsolescent). I wondered about matins; and then found there is no such article, so perhaps wait.

Charles Matthews 19:19, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

Time?
What time does the 'Morning' starts? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.205.144.15 (talk) 21:26, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

 * It starts in the morning. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.72.54.14 (talk) 06:57, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

 * Has the article referred to in the section on early/late risers simplified the science? From what I understand, genetics is commonly simplified in the media. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.47.101.40 (talk) 04:02, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

 * There seems to be no real agreement on when morning actually begins. The Oxford, Cambridge, Webster and American Heritage dictionaries as well as Wikitionary all say it either starts at midnight or at dawn/sunrise (or even whenever wake up). The article should reflect this. J IM ptalk·cont 05:13, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Maybe there is "morning proper" and "general morning". The former one is either 7:00 AM - 9:00 AM or sunrise to noon, and the latter one is from midnight to noon. -- Yejianfei (talk) 17:03, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Merge with Morning
Merge- Whenever we want to say "morning" occurs per social convention, it's accepted a day begins at 0000 local time; that the next 12 hours, to 1200, are a.m., ante meridiem, before noon; and only after that is p.m. Morning, morrow, forenoon, matins- there's no real controversy as to when to apply such general terminology. No need of 2 entries... Veryproicelandic (talk) 16:59, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

 * ✅. ɯ ɐ ɔ  💬 10:07, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

 * Merge with which article?   D b f i r s   20:39, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
 * This discussion seems to have been provoked by the November 2016 merge proposal from Forenoon, which seems uncontentious. Klbrain (talk) 05:51, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Should this discussion be at Talk:Forenoon?  Anyway it seems reasonable that the term forenoon should just be a sentence in this article rather than meriting a stand-alone article where it is unlikely to be expanded beyond a stub.  The OED defines forenoon as "The portion of the day before noon."   Dbfirs  08:31, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

External links modified (February 2018)
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Over-sectioning of the 'Significance' section
Per WP:OVERSECTION, the 'Significance' section includes three single-paragraph sections that I think should be combined into a single 'Cultural implications' section: 'Greeting', 'Religious observances', and 'Cultural use'. All three are regarding the cultural aspects of Morning. Praemonitus (talk) 14:36, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

 * Fair call. We could probably stand to lose the "Significance" heading entirely and just have three regular sections. Belbury (talk) 14:24, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Probably true. The section on genetics could also be expanded by a summary of crepuscular animals. Praemonitus (talk) 15:34, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Morning


text:
Jean Baptiste Seroux d'Agincourt

Jean Baptiste Louis George Seroux D'Agincourt (5 April 1730 – 24 September 1814) was a French archaeologist and historian.

Born in Beauvais, he was a descendant of the counts of Namur, and in his youth he served as an officer in a regiment of cavalry. Finding it necessary to quit the army in order to take charge of his younger brothers who had been left orphans, he was appointed a farmer-general by Louis XV. In 1777 he visited England, Germany and the Dutch Republic; and in the following year he travelled through Italy, with the view of exploring thoroughly the remains of ancient art. He afterwards settled in Rome and devoted himself to preparing the results of his researches for publication.

He died in 1814, leaving the work, which was being issued in parts, unfinished; but it was carried on by M. Gence, and published complete under the title L'Histoire de l'Art par les monuments, depuis sa décadence au quatrième siècle jusqu'à son renouvellement au seizième (6 vols. fol. with 325 plates, Paris, 1823). In the year of his death D'Agincourt published in Paris a Recueil de fragments de sculpture antique, en terre cuite.

title: Jean Baptiste Seroux d'Agincourt


text:
User:UninvitedCompany/becoming

Here are my criteria for supporting candidates on WP:RFA:

 * Participation in the project for at least four months
 * Adequate edit history. At least 500 edits, but more depending on the quality, extent, and subject of the edits.
 * Substantive contributions to truly encyclopedic topics.
 * Respect for the project and the community.
 * Interest in administrative matters.

Four months
I believe that it is important to be around the project and to be able to observe firsthand how things get done. This takes time and is mostly independent of the intensity of involvement. In four months, a contributor will see a fair number of featured articles, a certain number of policy discussions, arrivals of various users (good and bad), and will see how other users go through a maturing process after they arrive. These are all important.

500 edits
500 edits is really not that many. I do review quality and content. Generally I don't consider articles about television shows, fictional realms, or sports figures in my count, unless the edits appear to be unusually well researched. Where many edits to the same article are made in succession, I only consider those edits that are substantive.

Substantive contributions to truly encyclopedic topics
Writers who add new, well referenced, informative, properly organized content are worth their weight in gold. I expect prospective admins to do at least some of this, to show that they can, and to show that they value such work.

Respect for project and community
Prospective administrators should show, through their actions, that they see Wikipedia as both an encyclopedia project and as a community. They should refrain from adding or defending dubious content. They should respect community consensus even when they do not agree with it. They should avoid personal attacks. They should revert only with care and thought. They should respect the community's time by refraining from bringing up matters recently discussed and settled. They should use edit summaries in a way that will make others' work more efficient.

Interest in administrative matters
Use of administrative features for the furtherance of Wikipedia's goals involves:

 * Following WP:VFD
 * Following Recentchanges
 * Reviewing disputes

Prospective administrators should show some interest in at least one of these areas, otherwise granting adminship accomplishes nothing for the project.

title: User:UninvitedCompany/becoming


text:
Talk:Killing of Nick Berg/Nunh-huh

==== This page was rather annoyingly and tacitly protected while I was in the midst of editing it. Presumably because of the picture issue, as no one bothered to explain? So I'm storing the changed previewed text here.

 * Please restore or rephrase "His capture and killing was said to have been carried out to avenge abuses of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison." of the first paragraph. This was the known reason why he was killed. Without this line, his death could be out of context. -- Toytoy

 * Toytoy, if he was killed in Early April and The Abu Ghraib story didn't break until weeks later, isn't it likely that the reason for the act was manufactured later in order to grab headlines? - Tεx τ urε 18:48, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

 * As my (attempted) edit summary would have explained, the purported "reason" for the killing is already mentioned in an appropriate place in the article: it doesn't belong in the "lede". - Nunh-huh 18:50, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

 * Good. Update Nick Berg/Draft so we can see the whole thing. - Tεx τ urε 19:12, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

 * That's it for now (I must confess I don't see the point of protecting a page and cloning it to enforce one's "no-gory-picture" rule...now that someone's placed the picture in question on the cloned page I suppose that too will be protected.) Maybe we'll have better info on dates of birth and death when all the protectionism is over. - Nunh-huh 19:17, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

--begin--

Nicholas Berg (about 1978 - about May 2004), an American businessman seeking telecommunications work in Iraq during the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq, was captured and beheaded by Islamist militants who boasted of their Al-Qaida affiliation.

Berg was graduated from West Chester Henderson High School in 1996, and attended four universities, Cornell, Drexel, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Oklahoma. He once traveled to Africa to help a village; in Ghana, he taught villagers how to make bricks, and returned emaciated because he gave away most of his food: he returned with only the clothes on his back.

Berg was a practicing Jew; his father feels this fact was one reason he was murdered.

Berg, age 26 at the time of his death, was a native of West Chester, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, and owned his own company, Prometheus Methods Tower Service. He worked inspecting and rebuilding communication antennas, and had previously visited Kenya and Ghana on similar projects.

end
-

title: Talk:Killing of Nick Berg/Nunh-huh


text: User talk:82.42.41.15

title: User talk:82.42.41.15


text:
Giacinto Scelsi

Giacinto Francesco Maria Scelsi (8 January 1905 – 9 August 1988, sometimes cited as 8 August 1988 ) was an Italian composer who also wrote surrealist poetry in French.

He is best known for having composed music based around only one pitch, altered in all manners through microtonal oscillations, harmonic allusions, and changes in timbre and dynamics, as paradigmatically exemplified in his Quattro pezzi su una nota sola ("Four Pieces on a single note", 1959). This composition remains his most famous work and one of the few performed to significant recognition during his lifetime. His musical output, which encompassed all Western classical genres except scenic music, remained largely undiscovered even within contemporary musical circles during most of his life. Today, some of his music has gained popularity in certain postmodern composition circles, with pieces like his "Anahit" and his String Quartets rising to increased prominence.

Scelsi collaborated with American composers including John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Earle Brown, as well as being a friend and a mentor to Alvin Curran. His work was a source of inspiration to Ennio Morricone's Gruppo di Improvvisazione di Nuova Consonanza, and his music influenced composers like Tristan Murail and Solange Ancona.

Life
Born in the village of Pitelli near La Spezia, Scelsi spent most of his time in his mother's old castle where he received education from a private tutor who taught him Latin, chess and fencing. Later, his family moved to Rome and his musical talents were encouraged by private lessons with Giacinto Sallustio. In Vienna, he studied with Walther Klein, a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg. He became the first exponent of dodecaphony in Italy, although he did not continue to use this system.

In the 1920s, Scelsi made friends with intellectuals like Jean Cocteau and Virginia Woolf, and traveled abroad extensively. He first came into contact with non-European music in Egypt in 1927. His first composition was Chemin du coeur (1929). Then followed Rotativa, first conducted by Pierre Monteux at Salle Pleyel, Paris, on 20 December 1931.

In 1937, he organised a series of concerts of contemporary works, introducing the music of (among others) Paul Hindemith, Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Sergei Prokofiev to an Italian audience for the first time. Due to the enforcement of racial laws under the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, which prevented the performance of works by Jewish composers, these concerts did not continue for long. Scelsi refused to comply, and gradually distanced himself from Italy. In 1940, when Italy entered the war, Scelsi was in Switzerland, where he remained until the end of the conflict, composing and honing his conception of music. He married Dorothy Kate Ramsden, a divorced Englishwoman.

Back in Rome after the war, his wife left him (eventually inspiring Elegia per Ty), and he underwent a profound psychological crisis that eventually led him to the discovery of Eastern spirituality, and also to a radical transformation of his view of music. In this so-called second period, he rejected the notions of composition and authorship in favour of sheer improvisation. His improvisations were recorded on tape and later transcribed by collaborators under his guidance. They were then orchestrated and filled out by his meticulous performance instructions, or adjusted from time to time in close collaboration with the performers.

Scelsi came to conceive of artistic creation as a means of communicating a higher, transcendent reality to the listener. In this view, the artist is considered a mere intermediary. For this reason, Scelsi never allowed his image to be shown in connection with his music; he preferred instead to identify himself by a line under a circle, as a symbol of Eastern provenance. Some photographs of Scelsi have emerged since his death.

One of the earliest interpreters Scelsi closely worked with was the singer Michiko Hirayama, whom he met in 1957 in Rome. From 1962 to 1972 he wrote the extensive song cycle Canti del Capricorno directly for her in view of her special and unique vocal range. The writing process of the piece set an example for Scelsi's very personal way of working: developing pieces through improvisation, recording, and then making a final transcription.

From the late 1970s, Scelsi met several leading interpreters, such as the Arditti String Quartet, the cellist Frances-Marie Uitti, and the pianists Yvar Mikhashoff and Marianne Schroeder, who have promoted his music all over the world and gradually opened the gates to wider audiences.

Scelsi was a friend and a mentor to Alvin Curran (whose VSTO is a tribute) and other immigrant American composers such as Frederic Rzewski who were residing in Rome during the 1960s. Scelsi also collaborated with other American composers including John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Earle Brown (who visited him in Rome).

Frances-Marie Uitti, dedicatee of all Scelsi's cello works, collaborated intensively with him for over 10 years editing and then recording La Trilogia, a massive 3 part work of 45 minutes in length which Morton Feldman called his "autobiography in sound". It was first premiered in Festival di Como, and recorded on Fore records (Raretone) with Scelsi in the studio and later for Etcetera Records. A more recent acclaimed version with several of the Latin Prayers is to be found on ECM under the title Natura Renovatur. Uitti also transcribed many of the chamber works for contrabass, contrabass and cello, viola, and two improvisations based on the ondiolina tapes that are found under the title Voyages.

Alvin Curran recalled that: "Scelsi ... came to all my concerts in Rome even right up to the very last one I gave just a few days before he died. This was in the summer time, and he was such a nut about being outdoors. He was there in a fur coat and a fur hat. It was an outdoor concert. He waved from a distance, beautiful sparking eyes and smile that he always had, and that's the last time I saw him" (Ross, 2005).

Scelsi died of a cerebral hemorrhage on 8 August 1988, in Rome.

Music
Scelsi remained largely unknown for most of his career. A series of concerts in the mid to late 1980s finally premiered many of his pieces to great acclaim, notably his orchestral masterpieces in October 1987 in Cologne, about a quarter of a century after those works had been composed and less than a year before the composer's death. Scelsi was able to attend the premieres and personally supervised the rehearsals. The impact caused by the late discovery of Scelsi's works was described by Belgian musicologist Harry Halbreich:

"A whole chapter of recent musical history must be rewritten: the second half of this century is now unthinkable without Scelsi... He has inaugurated a completely new way of making music, hitherto unknown in the West. In the early fifties, there were few alternatives to serialism's strait jacket that did not lead back to the past. Then, toward 1960–61, came the shock of the discovery of Ligeti's Apparitions and Atmosphères. There were few people at the time who knew that Friedrich Cerha, in his orchestral cycle Spiegel, had already reached rather similar results, and nobody knew that there was a composer who had followed the same path even years before, and in a far more radical way: Giacinto Scelsi himself."

Scelsi was also an idol of Ennio Morricone's Gruppo di Improvvisazione di Nuova Consonanza, whose sixteen-minute track 'Omaggio a Giacinto Scelsi' features on their live album 'Musica Su Schemi', released in 1976.

The music of Scelsi was heard by millions in Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island, in which excerpts of his two works Quattro pezzi su una nota sola and Uaxuctum (3rd movement) were featured alongside the music of his contemporaries György Ligeti, Krzysztof Penderecki, John Cage and Morton Feldman.

Scelsi's archives are held at the Isabella Scelsi Foundation.

Works

 * See List of compositions by Giacinto Scelsi.

Accord/Universal-Musidisc

 * Œuvre intégrale pour choeur et orchestre symphonique (1. Aion – Pfhat – Konx-Om-Pax, 2. Quattro Pezzi – Anahit – Uaxuctum, 3. Hurqualia – Hymnos – Chukrum). Orchestre et chœur de la Radio-Télévision Polonaise de Cracovie, conducted by Jürg Wyttenbach (recorded 1988, 1989 and 1990; ref. 201692, 1992, 3 CDs: 1. ref. 200402, 1988 2. ref. 200612, 1989 3. ref. 201112, 1990; re-released by Universal-Musidisc in 2002)
 * Scelsi collection, vol. 3: Aion, Hymnos, Four pieces for Orchestra, Ballata. RAI Symphony Orchestra, Francesco Dillon (cello), conducted by Tito Ceccherini (recorded 2007). released by Stradivarius 2009 (STR33803)
 * Elegia per Ty – Divertimento nº3 pour violon – L’Âme ailée – L’Âme ouverte – Coelocanth – Trio à cordes. Zimansky, violin; Schiller, viola; Demenga, cello (ref. 200611, 1989)
 * Quattro illustrazioni – Xnoybis – Cinque incantesimi – Duo pour violon et violoncelle. Suzanne Fournier, piano; Carmen Fournier, violin; David Simpson, cello (ref. 200742, 1990)
 * Suite No.8 (Bot-Ba) – Suite No.9 (Ttai). Werner Bärtschi, piano (ref. 200802, 1990)
 * Intégrale des œuvres chorales (Sauh III & IV – TKRDG – 3 Canti populari – 3 Canti sacri – 3 Latin Prayers – Yliam). New London Chamber Choir, Percussive Rotterdam, conducted by James Wood (ref. 206812)
 * Scelsi collection, vol. 7: Suite N. 6, Divertimento N. 1, L'Âme Ailée / L'Âme Ouverte, Xnoybis. Marco Fusi (violinist), Anna D'Errico, piano. released by Stradivarius 2017 (STR 33807).

CPO

 * Chamber Works for Flute and Piano (CPO 999340-2) played by Carin Levine, flutes; Kristi Becker, piano; Peter Veale, oboe; Edith Salmen, percussion; and Giacinto Scelsi, piano
 * The Complete Works for Clarinet (CPO 999266-2) played by the Ensemble Avance conducted by Zsolt Nagy, with David Smeyers, clarinets; and Susanne Mohr, flute

Kairos

 * Yamaon; Anahit; I presagi; Tre Pezzi; Okanagon (Kairos 1203) Klangforum Wien conducted by Hans Zender
 * Streichquartett Nr. 4; Elohim; Duo; Anagamin; Maknongan; Natura renovatur (Kairos 1216) Klangforum Wien conducted by Hans Zender
 * Action Music, Suite No 8 "bot-ba" (Kairos 1231) played on piano by Bernhard Wambach

Mode

 * The Piano Works 1 (Mode Records 92) played by Louise Bessette
 * The Orchestral Works 1 (Mode Records 95) Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic & Choir conducted by Juan Pablo Izquierdo, with Pauline Vaillancourt, soprano, and Douglas Ahlstedt, tenor
 * Music For High Winds (Mode Records 102) played by Carol Robinson, clarinets, Clara Novakova, flute and piccolo, Cathy Milliken, oboe
 * The Piano Works 2 (Mode Records 143) played by Stephen Clarke
 * The Piano Works 3 (Mode Records 159) played by Aki Takahashi
 * The Orchestral Works 2 (Mode Records 176) Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra
 * The Works For Double Bass (Mode Records 188) played by Robert Black
 * The Piano Works 4 (Mode Records 227) played by Stephen Clarke
 * The Works for Viola (Mode Records 231) played by Vincent Royer with Séverine Ballon, cello
 * The Works for Violin (Mode Records 256) played by Weiping Lin

Other labels

 * 5 string quartets, String trio, Khoom. Arditti String Quartet; Michiko Hirayama, voice; et al. (recorded 1988; Salabert Actuels, ref. 2SCD 8904-5; re-released by Montaigne / Naïve, ref. MO 782156, 2002; 2 CDs)
 * Trilogia (Triphon, Dithome, Igghur) – Ko-Tha. Frances-Marie Uitti, cello (Fore 80, No.6 [LP]; Etcetera, KTC 1136 [CD])
 * Intégrale de la musique de chambre pour orchestre a cordes (Natura renovatur, Anagamin, Ohoi, Elohim). Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie, conducted by Jean-Paul Dessy (recorded May 1998; Forlane, ref. UCD16800, 2000)
 * Canti del Capricorno. Michiko Hirayama, voice; et al. (recorded 1969 & 1981/1982; WERGO, ref. WER 60127-50, 1988)
 * Complete Works For Flute And Clarinet (Col Legno 200350) played by the Ebony Duo
 * Trilogia (CTH 2480, together with Aşk Havasi by Frangis Ali-Sade) played by Jessica Kuhn, cello
 * Natura renovatur (ECM 1963) Münchener Kammerorchester conducted by Christoph Poppen, Frances-Marie Uitti on violoncello
 * Trilogy: Triphon, Dithome, Ygghur (for cello solo) – 1957–1961/65. Arne Deforce, cello on AEON, AECD 0748, 2007.

title: Giacinto Scelsi


text: User talk:69.40.141.172

title: User talk:69.40.141.172


text:
Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg

Abbé Charles-Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg (8 September 1814 – 8 January 1874) was a noted French writer, ethnographer, historian, archaeologist, and Catholic priest. He became a specialist in Mesoamerican studies, travelling extensively in the region. His writings, publications, and recovery of historical documents contributed much to knowledge of the region's languages, writing, history and culture, particularly those of the Maya and Aztec civilizations. However, his speculations concerning relationships between the ancient Maya and the lost continent of Atlantis inspired Ignatius L. Donnelly and encouraged the pseudo-science of Mayanism.

Early life and writings
He was born in Bourbourg, a small town with many Flemish influences near Dunkirk, France, as the First French Empire was ending.

As a youth he went to Ghent in newly independent Belgium to study theology and philosophy. He became interested in writing during his studies there. Enthusiastic about Flanders' history, he wrote several essays about local folklore, which enabled him to enter literary circles. In 1837 aged 23, Brasseur traveled to Paris with supported by French poet Alphonse-Marie-Louis de Prat Lamartine's, and became involved with political newspapers that sought the democratization of power such as Le Monde. During this time, he began contributing essays to a Parisian journal. He wrote several historical accounts (using a pseudonym), including one concerning Jerusalem. He published several novels of Romantic style which was then very much in vogue. One of these, Le Sérapéon, received reviews which implied it had a very close resemblance to François-René de Chateaubriand's 1809 novel Les Martyrs. Such near-allegations of plagiarism and inaccuracies in his works were to be made several times during his career.

Despite such criticisms, his reputation as a notable young writer and intellectual continued to develop. He transferred his studies and residence to Rome, where in 1845 he was ordained into the Roman Catholic priesthood, at the age of 30.

Dispatched to Quebec
A year previously he had come to the attention of the Canadian Abbé, Léon Gingras, whom he had met (and apparently impressed) in Rome. Abbé Gingras entreated his friend and colleague the vicar-general of Quebec, Abbé Charles-Félix Cazeau, to have Brasseur de Bourbourg assigned to a job in the seminary there. Correspondence began in late 1844, with Abbé Gingras claiming that the seminary should "...move heaven and earth to ensure that such a splendid bird does not escape us and fly to Montreal, where it would be so highly thought of".

A year later after having obtained his ordination, Brasseur de Bourbourg's job in Quebec was approved by the Archbishop, Joseph Signay, and in the autumn of 1845 he left Europe for the British colony of the Province of Canada, stopping briefly in Boston along the way.

Upon his arrival in Quebec City he began work as a professor of ecclesiastical history at the seminary (the Séminaire de Québec, founded in 1663). After only a brief time however, his series of lectures was discontinued, for some unspecified reason.

Perhaps having extra time, Brasseur de Bourbourg began a programme of research of the history of the archdiocese of Quebec, and in particular of its 17th-century founder, François de Laval, the first Roman Catholic Bishop of Quebec (after whom the seminary's later incarnation as a University, the Université Laval, is named). The results of his archival investigations were published in early 1846 as a biography of Laval. The contents of this pamphlet seemed to displease his Canadian colleagues somewhat, for a dispute began which made his position there uncertain, or at least uncomfortable. Also, he apparently disliked the harsh winter climate (to judge by some comments he made in the dedication of his later History of Canada), and may also have been a factor in his departure which was soon to ensue.

He left the seminary later in that year, returning to Boston where he found a job with the diocese of Boston. The then current bishop, John Bernard Fitzpatrick, with whom he was evidently on better terms than with his previous superiors, made him vicar-general of the diocese.

Towards the end of the year Brasseur de Bourbourg returned to Europe, to spend some time conducting research in the archives of Rome and Madrid, in preparation for a new project—travel to Central America.

Travels and expeditions to Central America
From 1848 to 1863 he travelled extensively as a missionary in many parts of Mexico and Central America.

During these journeys he gave great attention to Mesoamerican antiquities and became well-versed in the then-current theories and knowledge about the history of the region and the Pre-Columbian civilisations whose sites and monuments remained, yet were little understood.

Using information he had collected during his time spent travelling there, as well as that compiled by other scholars of his time, he published during 1857–1859 a history of the Aztec civilization, containing what was then known or speculated about the former kingdom, which had been conquered some three hundred years previously by the Spanish conquistadores in alliance with local enemies of the Aztecs.

He also conducted research into the local languages and their transliteration into the Latin alphabet. Between 1861 and 1864 he edited and published a collection of documents in the indigenous languages.

In 1864 he was archaeologist of the French military expedition in Mexico, and his resulting work Monuments anciens du Mexique was published by the French Government in 1866.

Discovery of de Landa's work
In 1862 while searching through archives at the Royal Academy of History in Madrid for New World materials, he came across an abridged copy of a manuscript which had originally been written by the Spanish cleric Diego de Landa sometime around 1566. De Landa had been one of those charged with disseminating the Roman Catholic faith amongst the Maya peoples in Spain's new Central American possessions during the period after the Spanish conquest of Yucatán, and had lived there for several years. His manuscript (Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán) had been written upon his enforced return to Spain, where he was charged with illegally or improperly conducting an Inquisition (he was later absolved, returning to the New World as the appointed Bishop of Yucatán). In the manuscript de Landa had recorded much information about the Maya peoples and customs, based on his own observations and discussions with Mayan informants. Brasseur de Bourbourg's main interest in the document, however, was a section in which de Landa reproduced what he termed "an alphabet" of the as-yet undeciphered Maya hieroglyphics, the writing system of the ancient Maya civilization. In this passage de Landa had annotated the Mayan symbols (or glyphs) which supposedly corresponded to the letters of the Spanish alphabet, as given to him by a Maya informant who he had quizzed. Brasseur de Bourbourg realised that this could prove to be basis of deciphering the Maya script, and he announced this discovery when republishing the manuscript (in a bilingual Spanish-French edition) in late 1863 with the title, Relation des choses de Yucatán de Diego de Landa.

However, upon initial analysis by Brasseur de Bourbourg and others, the so-called "de Landa alphabet" proved to be problematic and inconsistent, and these immediate attempts to use this alphabet as a kind of "Rosetta Stone" to read the glyphs failed. Nevertheless, Brasseur de Bourbourg's uncovering of this document and de Landa's alphabet would much later prove to be vital in the eventual decipherment of the Maya glyphs. Brasseur de Bourbourg's attempts, and those of others which followed, were misled insofar as they interpreted the signs alphabetically. When the signs were recognised to be mainly syllabic, significant progress was made.

Publication of the Popol Vuh
In 1861 he published another significant work: a French translation of the Popol Vuh, a sacred book of the Quiché (Kʼicheʼ) Maya people. He included a grammar of the Kʼicheʼ language and an essay on Central American mythology.

Speculations concerning Atlantis
Brasseur began to write about Atlantis in his publication Grammaire de la langue quichée (1862), in which he expressed his belief that the lost land described by Plato had existed with an advanced degree of civilization before the beginning of civilizations in Europe and Asia. He suggested that the origins of European and Persian words could be traced to indigenous languages of the Americas and that the ancient cultures of the New and Old Worlds had been in constant communication with one another.

In 1866, Monuments anciens du Mexique (Palenque, et autres ruines de l'ancienne civilisation du Mexique) was published with a text by Brasseur de Bourbourg accompanied by lavish illustrations by Jean-Frédéric Waldeck. Although Waldeck's depictions of the ruins at Palenque were based on first-hand knowledge, his artistic reconstructions and embellishments implied a close relationship between Maya art and architecture and that of Classical antiquity Greece and Rome. This was subsequently demonstrated to be spurious, but not before Waldeck's artwork had inspired speculations about contact between New and Old World civilizations, specifically via the lost continent of Atlantis.

These speculations were reinforced by Brasseur de Bourboug's own references to Plato's descriptions of the culture and society of Atlantis, which Brasseur believed was continued by ancient Maya civilization, in his book Quatre Lettres sur le Méxique (1868). In this publication, Brasseur de Bourbourg made extensive parallels between Maya and Egyptian pantheons and cosmologies, implying that they all had a common source on the lost continent of Atlantis. He developed these ideas further in his publication Quatre lettres sur le Mexique (1868), which presents a history of Atlantis based on his interpretation of Maya myths. His writings inspired Augustus Le Plongeon and also Ignatius L. Donnelly, whose book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World contains numerous references to Brasseur de Bourbourg's scholarship. However, an academic wrote in 1875 that not a single contemporary scholar accepted Brasseur de Bourbourg's theories about Atlantis.

The combination of Brasseur de Bourbourg's interests in spiritualism and these speculations about relations between the ancient Maya and Atlantis provided the basis for Mayanism.

Identification of a Maya codex
In 1866, Brasseur de Bourbourg had an opportunity to examine an artefact in Madrid which was in the possession of a Spanish paleography professor named Juan de Tro y Ortolano, who had purchased it some six years earlier. This artefact was an old codex, a book made from paper-bark in the form of a folded screen of continuous pages, several metres in length when extended. The codex contained numerous signs and drawings, which Brasseur de Bourbourg was readily able to identify as being Mayan in origin, having seen and studied many similar markings and glyphs while in Central America.

Tro y Ortolano gave him permission to publish the codex in a reproduction, and Brasseur de Bourbourg gave it the name Troano Codex in his honour. His identification of the codex was significant, as it was the only third such Maya codex to have been uncovered (the second, the Codex Paris, had been discovered by the French scholar Léon de Rosny only a few years before). In particular, Brasseur de Bourbourg recognised its exceeding rarity, since de Landa's Relación, which he had earlier rediscovered, gave an account of how he had ordered the destruction of all such Maya codices he could find, and many volumes had been burned.

During 1869–1870 Brasseur de Bourbourg published his analyses and interpretations of the content of the Troano codex in his work Manuscrit Troano, études sur le système graphique et la langue des Mayas. He proposed some translations for the glyphs recorded in the codex, in part based on the associated pictures and in part on de Landa's alphabet, but his efforts were tentative and largely unsuccessful.

However, his translation would later inspire Augustus Le Plongeon's pseudo-science and speculation about the lost continent of Mu. The name Mu was actually used first by Brasseur de Bourbourg.

A few years later, another Maya codex was found possessed by another collector, which became known as the Codex Cortesianus (in the belief that it had been in the possession of Hernán Cortés). When Léon de Rosny examined it later, he determined that it was actually a part of the Troano codex, the two parts having been separated at some indeterminate time in the past. The two parts were later rejoined and are known collectively as the Codex Madrid or Tro-Cortesianus; they remain displayed in Madrid. In 1871 Brasseur de Bourbourg published his Bibliothèque Mexico-Guatémalienne, a compendium of literature and sources associated with Mesoamerican studies.

His last article, "Chronologie historique des Mexicains" (1872) refers to the Codex Chimalpopoca and identifies four periods of world cataclysms that began about 10,500 BC and were the result of shifts of the Earth's axis (a concept related to pole shift theory).

Death and legacy
He died at Nice at the beginning of 1874, at the age of 59.

His archaeological fieldwork, as well as his diligent collection, discovery and republication of source materials, proved to be very useful for subsequent Mesoamerican researchers and scholars. The interpretations and theories he advanced proved to be mostly inaccurate.

List of publications
A listing of his publications (either original works or reproductions of historical documents), by original publication date. The place of publication is annotated (in brackets), and the shorter or common name of the publication is bolded. The list is not necessarily complete. A collection of travel accounts and reports which Brasseur de Bourbourg sent to the French Minister for Education and Religion from Mexico, Guatemala and Spain is stored at the Archives Nationales (Paris), F17, 2942.
 * 1837 - Le Monde Journal (Paris), various articles and essays;
 * 1839 - Le Sérapéon, épisode de l'histoire du IVe siècle (Paris), a novel;
 * 1839 - La dernière vestale (Paris), a novel;
 * 1843 - Jérusalem, tableau de l'histoire et des vicissitudes de cette ville célèbre depuis son origine la plus reculée jusqu'à nos jours (Lille, France. Published under the pseudonym Étienne de Ravensberg);
 * 1846 - Esquisse biographique sur Mgr de Laval, premier évêque de Québec (Québec);
 * 1851 - (las) Cartas para servir de Introducción á la Historia primitiva de las Naciones civilizadas de la América setentrional... (Mexico), Spanish & French translations;
 * 1852 - Histoire du Canada, de son Église et de ses missions depuis la découverte de l'Amérique jusqu'à nos jours, écrite sur des documents inédits compulsés dans les archives de l'archevêché et de la ville de Québec, etc. (2 vols., Paris);
 * 1853 - Le khalife de Bagdad (Paris), a novel;
 * 1853 - Histoire du Patrimoine de Saint-Pierre depuis les Temps apostoliques jusqu'à nos jours (Plancy, Paris, Arras, Amiens);
 * 1857—59 - Histoire des nations civilisées du Mexique et de l'Amérique Centrale, durant les siècles antérieurs à Christophe Colomb ... (4 vols., Paris);
 * 1861 - Voyage sur l'Isthme de Tehuantepec dans l'état de Chiapas et la République de Guatémala, 1859 et 1860 (Paris);
 * 1861 - Popol Vuh, le Livre sacré des Quichés, &c. (Paris);
 * 1862 - Grammaire Quichée et le drame de Rabinal Achí (Paris);
 * 1862 - Sommaire des voyages scientifiques et des travaux de géographie, d'histoire, d’archéologie et de philologie américaines (Saint-Cloud, France);
 * 1864 - Relation des choses du Yucatán de Diego de Landa (Paris), reproduction and translation of de Landa's work;
 * 1866 - Monuments anciens du Mexique (Palenque, et autres ruines de l'ancienne civilisation du Mexique) (Paris);
 * 1868 - Quatre Lettres sur le Mexique (Paris)
 * 1869—70 - Manuscrit Troano, étude sur le système graphique et la langue des Mayas (2 vols., Paris);
 * 1871 - Bibliothèque Mexico-guatémalienne (Paris)

title: Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg


text:
Red Buttons

Red Buttons (born Aaron Chwatt; February 5, 1919 – July 13, 2006) was an American actor and comedian. He won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his supporting role in the 1957 film Sayonara. He was nominated for awards for his acting work in films such as Harlow (1965), They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), and Pete's Dragon (1977).

From the 1970s he was a familiar face on TV, with his "Never Got a Dinner" comedy monologues.

Early life
Red Buttons was born Aaron Chwatt on February 5, 1919, in Manhattan, New York, to Russo-Polish Jewish immigrants Sophie (née Baker) and Michael Chwatt. At 16 years old, Chwatt got a job as an entertaining bellhop at Ryan's Tavern in City Island, the Bronx, New York. The combination of his red hair and the large, shiny buttons on the bellhop uniforms inspired orchestra leader Charles "Dinty" Moore to call him "Red Buttons", the name under which he would later perform.

Later that same summer, Buttons worked on the Borscht Belt; his straight man was Robert Alda. Buttons was working at the Irvington Hotel in South Fallsburg, New York, when the master of ceremonies became incapacitated, and Buttons asked for the chance to replace him. In 1939, Buttons started working for Minsky's Burlesque; in 1941, José Ferrer chose Buttons to appear in a Broadway show The Admiral Had a Wife, a farce, set in Pearl Harbor at Oahu, Hawaii. It was due to open on December 8, 1941, but never did. It was deemed inappropriate after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In later years, Buttons would joke that the Japanese only attacked Pearl Harbor to keep him off Broadway.

Career
In September 1942, Buttons made his Broadway debut in Vickie with Ferrer and Uta Hagen. Later that year, he appeared in the Minsky's show Wine, Women and Song. This was the last classic burlesque show in New York City history; the Mayor La Guardia administration closed it down. Buttons was on stage when the show was raided.

Drafted into the United States Army Air Forces, Buttons in 1943 appeared in the Army Air Forces' Broadway show Winged Victory, along with several future stars, including Mario Lanza, John Forsythe, Karl Malden, and Lee J. Cobb. A year later, he appeared in Darryl F. Zanuck's movie version of the play, directed by George Cukor. Buttons also entertained troops in the European Theater in the same Jeep Show unit as Mickey Rooney.

After the war, Buttons continued to perform in Broadway shows. He also performed at Broadway movie houses with big bands. He appeared as himself, delivering a comic monologue, in the RKO Radio Pictures movie revue Footlight Varieties (1951).

The Red Buttons Show
In 1952, Buttons received his own television series, The Red Buttons Show, first seen on CBS and later on NBC. It was the number-11 show in prime time in 1952, and the comedian was extremely insistent on using fresh material. During the show's three-year-run, Buttons was notorious for his treatment of the writing staff, and comedy writers came and went regularly. As columnist Dorothy Kilgallen reported, "Three of Red Buttons' writers are ready to pack up and head for the booby hatch. The funnyman's temperament is just too exhausting to take. The trio of script writers have already announced they will not be part of the comedian's pending Hollywood movie assignment." TV Guide, noting the format changes of the show from variety to situation comedy, said his "status as a TV comedian has been going up-and-down like a yo-yo for the past two years... He reacted to the heady wine of success like a small boy locked inside a candy store. He went out and bought a powder-blue Cadillac. He picked up a mink coat for his wife. He moved his family into a terraced apartment on Manhattan's swank Sutton Place. Then he began to fool around with his scripts. 'That,' he says now in what may go down as one of the most remarkable understatements of our time, 'may well have been a mistake.' As a result of these misadventures, Buttons' sponsor General Foods disowned him at the end of his run and CBS let it be known that Red was welcome to look for work someplace else." The magazine article carried a melancholy postscript: "P. S. It was in Hollywood that Red found the writers he got along with so well. They were Harry Clork, Larry Markes, Sumner Long, and Lester Lee. We regret having to use the past tense, but it seems that between the time the foregoing story was written a few weeks ago and the time we went to press, all but Lester Lee went thataway." Buttons admitted to the revolving door of writers: "The critics have kidded a lot about all the writers I've had, and I have had quite a few. I quit counting at 87. Most of them were good writers but they just weren't right for me." TV Guide critic Dan Jenkins offered a jaundiced opinion about the comedian's variable TV fortunes: "Buttons has no comic traits of his own. He is not funny per se. A Jack Benny can be hilarious just standing with his arms folded, staring at an old lady in the front row, Buttons can't. He needs material. Buttons, to this reviewer, has always been a club-date man. He was fleetingly sensational when he first appeared on television, but of all the media, TV is the one that most demands staying power -- a basic talent which can rise above material and carry its own weight on off-weeks. Buttons, thus far this season, has displayed very little of it."

In 1953, during his TV popularity, he recorded and had a two-sided hit with "Strange Things Are Happening"/"The Ho Ho Song", with both sides/songs essentially being the same.

New departure
His role in the film Sayonara (1957) was a dramatic departure from his previous work. In this film, co-starring with Marlon Brando, he played Joe Kelly, an American airman stationed in Kobe, Japan, during the Korean War, who marries Katsumi, a Japanese woman (played by Miyoshi Umeki), but he is barred from taking her back to the US. His moving portrayal of Kelly's calm resolve not to abandon the relationship, and the touching reassurance of Katsumi, impressed audiences and critics alike. Buttons won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and Umeki won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the film.

After his Oscar-winning role, Buttons performed in numerous feature films, including the African adventure Hatari! with John Wayne and the adventure Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962) (where he received top billing). Buttons played the lead role of Private John Steele, the paratrooper hung up on the town steeple clock, in the 1962 international ensemble cast film The Longest Day. He was also prominent in the biopic Harlow, the disaster film The Poseidon Adventure, the dance-marathon drama They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, the family comedy Pete's Dragon, the disaster film When Time Ran Out with Paul Newman, and the age-reversal comedy 18 Again! with George Burns.

In 1966, Buttons again starred in his own TV series, a spy spoof called The Double Life of Henry Phyfe, which ran for one season. Buttons also made guest appearances on several TV programs, including The Eleventh Hour, Little House on the Prairie, It's Garry Shandling's Show, Knots Landing, The Cosby Show, and Roseanne. His last TV role was in ER.

"Never Got a Dinner"
Beginning in the 1970s Red Buttons enjoyed a new popularity with his "Never Got a Dinner" routine, a standard of the Friars Club and The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast for many years. "Never got a dinner!" became a catchphrase, and formed the basis for elaborately eccentric lists of famous people (and their wives and mothers) who had not been honored with celebrity dinner roasts: "Why are we here honoring this man? Why is he getting a dinner? I can think of many famous people who never got a dinner. Mrs. Ponce De Leon, who said to her husband Ponce, 'You're going to Miami without me again this year?'... never got a dinner!"

Another of his catchphrases was "I did not come here to be made sport of," which was later taken up by radio talk-show host Howie Carr.

He made numerous appearances at Chabad telethons, where he was often brought on and off stage to the tune of "Hava Nagila". (He once told an interviewer, "I'm a Jew who is doing comedy, not a 'Jewish comic'." )Buttons received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for television, located at 1651 Vine Street. He was number 71 on Comedy Central's list of the 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time.

Personal life
Buttons married actress Roxanne Arlen in 1947, but the marriage soon ended in divorce. He married Helayne McNorton on December 8, 1949. They divorced in 1963. His last marriage was to Alicia Prats, which lasted from January 27, 1964, until her death in March 2001. With Prats he had two children. He was the advertising spokesman for Century Village, Florida, a retirement community.

Buttons was an early member of the Synagogue for the Performing Arts, and at the time Rabbi Jerome Cutler was the rabbi.

Death
Buttons died of complications from cardiovascular disease on July 13, 2006, at age 87 at his home in Century City, Los Angeles. He had been ill for a while and was with family members when he died. His ashes were given to his family after cremation.

Accolades and honors
Throughout his career, Buttons received several awards and nominations for his work in both film and television.

title: Red Buttons


text:
Gerard of Ridefort

Gérard de Ridefort, also called Gerard de Ridefort (died 4 October 1189), was Grand Master of the Knights Templar from the end of 1184 and until his death in 1189.

Early life
Gerard de Ridefort is thought probably to have been of Flemish origin, although some nineteenth-century writers suggested an Anglo-Norman background, apparently through misreading his designation as "of Bideford". It is uncertain when he arrived in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He appears in the charter record in the service of Baldwin IV of Jerusalem in the late 1170s, and by 22 October 1179 held the rank of Marshal of the kingdom.

It seems that he expected Raymond III of Tripoli to give him the hand of an available heiress. However, when Cécile Dorel inherited her father's coastal fief of Botrun in the County of Tripoli, Raymond married her (before March 1181) to Plivain or Plivano, the nephew of a Pisan merchant, for a bride price of 10,000 bezants. By the mid-thirteenth century, when the Old French Continuation of William of Tyre (the so-called Chronicle of Ernoul) was compiled, the story of the bride of Botrun had evolved into a fanciful legend in which Plivain's uncle put the young lady (there renamed Lucie or Lucia) on the scales, and offered Raymond her weight in gold, to obtain the marriage.

Templar
Gérard fell seriously ill, after which he took vows as a Templar. By June 1183 he held the rank of seneschal of the Order. He was elected Grand Master in late 1184 or early 1185, after the death of Arnold of Torroja in Verona.

Gérard continued to hold a grudge against Raymond of Tripoli, which influenced some of his political manœuvrings. In 1186, when King Baldwin V, successor to the late King Baldwin IV, had died, Gérard quickly took the side of Agnes de Courtenay’s daughter Queen Sibylla and her husband Guy de Lusignan, in the ensuing succession struggle. Raymond and his allies, including the Ibelin family were the leaders of the opposing faction, who supported the claim of Sibylla's younger half-sister Princess Isabella.

In the crisis of 1187, Gérard used the money sent by King Henry II to be deposited with The Templars in Jerusalem to hire additional troops for the arrière ban to defend the Kingdom Of Jerusalem from Saladin. (Henry had sent the funds for his own future crusading plans, in penance for the murder of Thomas Becket; some of it was deposited with the Templars, some with the Knights Hospitalíer, in Jerusalem and Tyre.) Gérard and fewer than 100 Templars, together with some Hospitallers, attacked Saladin's son al-Afdal at the Battle of Cresson in 1187. Al-Afdal, however, had over 5,000 men. The Hospitaller Grand Master Roger de Moulins was killed; Gérard, though wounded, was one of the few survivors. Gérard's report of the battle was the source for a short narrative written by Pope Urban III to Baldwin of Exeter, archbishop of Canterbury.

In July of the same year Gérard led the Templars at the Battle Of Háttin. Saladin had captured Tiberias and Guy was contemplating a march on the city to retake it. Raymond advised him to wait for Saladin to come to them, since they were in a well-defended, well-watered position, and would have to cross a dry open plain to reach Tiberias. Gérard opposed this, and convinced Guy to continue the march. He was supported by Reynald de Châtillon, a fellow enemy of Raymond. The armies of Outremer ended up trapped on the dry plain and were defeated on 4 July. Raymond and several other nobles escaped, but some who were not killed, including Humphrey de Toron IV, Aimery de Lusignan, Reynald, Guy and also Gérard were among those captured by Salah ad-Din. The rest of the Templar prisoners were executed. Gérard remained a prisoner until 1188, during which time his Order was commanded by Brother Thierry (Terricus) from Tyre.

Gérard was given the condition by Saladin that, if he could convince a Templar fortress to surrender peacefully, he would be set free. He succeeded and on his release went to Tortosa, where he ably led the Templars' defence of their castle, which held out after the fall of the town to Saladin’s siege forces. Having taken back control of his order from Thierry, he seems to have seized the remainder of King Henry II’s money which had been left with the Templars in Tyre. This provoked a complaint from the city's defender, Conrad of Montferrat, in letters of 20 September 1188 to Baldwin of Exeter and Frederick Barbarossa, even saying: "...graver still, the Master of the Temple has made off with the King of England's alms".

In 1189, he again joined forces with Guy, taking the Templars to the Siege of Acre. After being taken prisoner once more, he was beheaded by Saladin on 4 October 1189.

In popular culture
Gérard de Ridefort is a character in some contemporary novels, films, and video games. He is often depicted as being a hot-headed, vicious, and stubborn religious fanatic, whose self-righteously arrogant, scheming and selfish actions lead to his undoing.

Literature

 * He appears in Jack Whyte's book Standard of Honor as an adversary of Count Raymond.

 * Gérard appears in Jan Guillou's Crusades trilogy about the fictional character Arn Magnusson, wherein he is depicted as helping to ensure the latter's release from the Templars.

 * In Jerusalem by Cecelia Holland, "Gerard de Ridford" appears as the story's primary antagonist.

Games

 * Gérard is a general of the Kingdom of Jerusalem at the Medieval II: Total War: Kingdoms Crusades Campaign.

Films

 * Gérard was portrayed by Nicholas Boulton in the Swedish 2007 film Arn – The Knight Templar, and its 2008 sequel Arn – The Kingdom at Road's End, each of which depicts him as self-righteous, religiously fanatic, arrogant, and uncompromising.

title: Gerard of Ridefort


text:
Link Trainer

Related article: List of surviving Link Trainers The term Link Trainer, also known as the "Blue box" and "Pilot Trainer" is commonly used to refer to a series of flight simulators produced between the early 1930s and early 1950s by Link Aviation Devices, founded and headed by Ed Link, based on technology he pioneered in 1929 at his family's business in Binghamton, New York. During World War II, they were used as a key pilot training aid by almost every combatant nation.

The original Link Trainer was created in 1929 out of the need for a safe way to teach new pilots how to fly by instruments. Ed Link used his knowledge of pumps, valves and bellows gained at his father's Link Piano and Organ Company to create a flight simulator that responded to the pilot's controls and gave an accurate reading on the included instruments. More than 500,000 US pilots were trained on Link simulators, as were pilots of nations as diverse as Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Israel, Japan, Pakistan, and the USSR. Following WWII, Air Marshall Robert Leckie (wartime RAF Chief of Staff) said "The Luftwaffe met its Waterloo on all the training fields of the free world where there was a battery of Link Trainers".

The Link Flight Trainer has been designated as a Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The Link Company, now the Link Simulation & Training division of CAE USA Defense & Security, continues to make aerospace simulators.

Origins
Edwin Link had developed a passion for flying in his boyhood years, but was not able to afford the high cost of flying lessons. So, upon leaving school in 1927, he started developing a simulator. The project took him 18 months. His first pilot trainer, which debuted in 1929, resembled an overgrown toy airplane from the outside, with short wooden wings and fuselage mounted on a universal joint. Organ bellows from the Link organ factory, the business his family owned and operated in Binghamton, New York, driven by an electric pump, made the trainer pitch and roll as the pilot worked the controls.

Link's first military sales came as a result of the Air Mail scandal, when the Army Air Corps took over carriage of U.S. Air Mail. Twelve pilots were killed in a 78-day period due to their unfamiliarity with Instrument Flying Conditions. The large scale loss of life prompted the Air Corps to look at a number of solutions, including Link's pilot trainer. The Air Corps was given a stark demonstration of the potential of instrument training when, in 1934, Link flew in to a meeting in conditions of fog that the Air Corps evaluation team regarded as unflyable. As a result, the Air Corps ordered the first six pilot trainers on 23 June 1934 for $3,500 each. In 1936, the more advanced Model C was introduced.

American Airlines became the first commercial airline to purchase a Link trainer in 1937. Prior to World War II, Link trainers were also sold to the U.S. Navy, Civil Aeronautics Administration, Germany, Japan, England, Russia, France, and Canada.

World War II
Link and his company had struggled through the Depression years, but after gaining Air Corps interest the business expanded rapidly and during World War II, the AN-T-18 Basic Instrument Trainer, known to tens of thousands of fledgling pilots as the "Blue Box" (although it was painted in different colors in other countries), was standard equipment at every air training school in the United States and Allied nations. During the war years, Link produced over 10,000 Blue Boxes, turning one out every 45 minutes.

During World War II, Link trainers were sometimes run by women.

Link Trainer models
Several models of Link Trainers were sold in a period ranging from 1934 through to the late 1950s. These trainers kept pace with the increased instrumentation and flight dynamics of aircraft of their period, but retained the electrical and pneumatic design fundamentals pioneered in the first Link.

Trainers built from 1934 up to the early 1940s had a color scheme that featured a bright blue fuselage and yellow wings and tail sections. These wings and tail sections had control surfaces that actually moved in response to the pilot's movement of the rudder and stick. However, many trainers built during mid to late World War II did not have these wings and tail sections due to material shortages and critical manufacturing times.

Pilot Maker
The Pilot Maker was Link's first model. It was an evolution of his 1929 prototype and was used in Mr. Link's Link Flying School and later by other flying schools. During the Depression years versions of the Pilot Maker were also sold to amusement parks. In fact, his patent (US1825462 A) for the Pilot Maker was titled Combination Training Device for Student Aviators and Entertainment Apparatus.

AN-T-18
The most prolific version of the Link Trainer was the AN-T-18 (Army Navy Trainer model 18), which was a slightly enhanced version of Link's C3 model. This model was also produced in Canada for both the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Royal Air Force with a somewhat modified instrument panel, where its model designation was D2. It was used by many countries for pilot training before and during the Second World War, especially in the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan.

The AN-T-18 featured rotation through all three axes, effectively simulated all flight instruments, and modeled common conditions such as pre-stall buffet, overspeed of the retractable undercarriage, and spinning. It was fitted with a removable opaque canopy, which could be used to simulate blind flying, and was particularly useful for instrument and navigation training.

AN-T-18 design and construction
The AN-T-18 consists of two main components:

The first major component is the trainer, which consists of a wooden box approximating the shape of a fuselage and cockpit, connected via a universal joint to a base. Inside the cockpit is a single pilot's seat, primary and secondary aircraft controls, and a full suite of flight instruments. The base contains several complicated sets of air-driven bellows to create movement, a vacuum pump that both drives the bellows and provides input to a number of aircraft instruments, a device known as a Telegon oscillator that supplies an 85 VAC 800 Hz sinusoidal reference signal to the remaining pilot and instructor instruments, and a wind drift analog computer.

The second major component is an external instructor's desk, which consists of a large map table; a duplicate display of the pilot's main flight instruments; and the Automatic Recorder, a motorized ink marker also known as "the crab". The crab is driven by the Wind Drift computer and moves across the glass surface of the map table, plotting the pilot's track. The desk includes circuits for the pilot and instructor to communicate with each other via headphones and microphones, and controls for the instructor to alter wind direction and speed.

The AN-T-18 has three main sets of bellows. One set of four bellows (fore and aft and both sides of the cockpit) controls movement about the pitch and roll axes. A very complicated set of bellows at the front of the fuselage controls movement about the yaw axis. This Turning Motor is a complex set of 10 bellows, two crank shafts and various gears and pulleys derived from early player piano motors. The Turning Motor can rotate the entire fuselage through 360-degree circles at variable rates of speed. A set of electrical slip ring contacts in the lower base compartment supplies electrical continuity between the fixed base and the movable fuselage.

The third set of bellows simulates vibration, such as stall buffet. Both the trainer and the instructor's station are powered from standard 110VAC/240VAC power outlets via a transformer, with the bulk of internal wiring being low voltage. Simulator logic is all analog and is based around vacuum tubes.

Variants

 * Pilot Maker
 * First production model. Development of 1929 prototype.

"Blue Box"

 * A
 * Procedural trainer that included only basic instruments.

 * C
 * Known as the C-2 by the United States Army Air Forces. Added 10 advanced instruments, radio communication with an instructor, cockpit lights, and automatic course recording.

 * C-2
 * Commercial version not used by the military.

 * C-3
 * Used by the United States Army Air Forces. Includes automatic wind drift device and radio simulator.

 * C-5
 * Used by the United States Army Air Forces. Includes automatic wind drift device and actual radio equipment.

 * C-8
 * Developed in 1945 from the North American T-6 Texan with more instrumentation than previous versions. Known as the 1-CA-1 by the U.S. Navy and the Model F.

 * D
 * Export version.

 * D-1
 * Used by the British military.

 * D-2
 * Used by the British military. Manufactured in Canada.

 * D4
 * Used by the British military. Built under license in England by Air Trainers Ltd of Aylesbury.

 * E
 * Commercial version not used by the military.

 * E Sp.
 * Slight modification for Army and Navy use. Known as the C-4 by the United States Army Air Forces.

 * E-1
 * Used by the United States Army Air Forces.

 * E-2
 * Used by the United States Army Air Forces.

 * AN-2550-1
 * Developed from the C-3, it added landing gear, propeller pitch and flap controls. Also known as the AN-T-18.

Postwar

 * D4 Mk II
 * Modification of the D4 to represent the BAC Jet Provost.

 * Model 45
 * Advanced version with instruments similar to T-6.

Surviving trainers
, many Link Trainers survive and are exhibited.

title: Link Trainer


text:
Charles Clayton Morrison

Charles Clayton Morrison (1874–1966) was an American Disciples of Christ minister and Christian socialist.

Born in Harrison, Ohio, he attended high school in Jefferson, Iowa, Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and the University of Chicago. He served as minister at the Monroe Street Church in Chicago, which in 1906, adopted "Open Membership," allowing unimmersed Christians to join the church. This view of baptism was developed in his first book The Meaning of Baptism (1914). It was in 1908, when Morrison was still a young minister, that he purchased the foundering Christian Century magazine in Chicago in 1908. At the time of his purchase, the magazine was a Disciples of Christ journal. Within a decade he had broadened the journal's reach by offering a broadly Protestant perspective. As he did this, he added the subtitle "An Undenominational Journal of Religion." With donations and gradually increasing subscribership, the magazine survived and prospered under his editorship until his retirement in 1947.

During Morrison's stewardship in the 1930s and 1940s, the Christian Century was accused of being antisemitic. It published articles opposing American intervention in World War II for the benefit of the Jews persecuted under the Nazis; arguing moral equivalence between an alleged Jewish-nationalist crucifixion of Jesus and the Nazi persecution of Jews; condemning American Jews for maintaining their distinct identity; and criticizing Rabbi Stephen Wise, president of the World Jewish Congress, for allegedly exaggerating the Holocaust. As late as 1944 the magazine published articles such as "A Reply to Screamers" by Fred Eastman which admonished the suggestion that there was a moral obligation for the United States to aid in the plight of European Jews being murdered during the Holocaust. Marty, writing about the 1940s, described the Christian Century at that time as being an "anti-Zionist" publication.

Morrison became a well-known spokesman for liberal Christianity. He supported the ecumenical movement, particularly the establishment of the World Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches.

Notable quotes
References: W. Clark Gilpin, "Morrison, Charles Clyton (1874-1966), in The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Edited by Douglas A. Foster, et al. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, Company, 2004), pp. 545–546.
 * "The Christian church is a society of sinners. It is the only society in the world membership in which is based upon the single qualification that the candidate shall be unworthy of membership."

title: Charles Clayton Morrison