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Curse of 1940

The Curse of 1940, also called Dutton's Curse, was a superstitious explanation for why the National Hockey League (NHL)'s New York Rangers did not win the league's championship trophy, the Stanley Cup, from 1940 through 1994.

Popular theories
The Rangers began play in the season and won a division title in their first season of existence and a Stanley Cup against the Montreal Maroons in their second. They would win two more Cups in and, defeating the Toronto Maple Leafs both times.

During the season, the mortgage on the Rangers' home arena, the third Madison Square Garden (built in 1925), was paid off. Hence, the management of the Madison Square Garden Corporation symbolically burned the mortgage in the bowl of the Cup. This led some hockey fans to believe that the Cup, which is regarded almost as a sacred object, had been "desecrated", leading the "hockey gods" to place a curse on the Rangers.

Another theory is that the supposed curse came from Red Dutton, the coach and general manager of the New York Americans, for whom he had once played. The Amerks were actually the first NHL team to play in New York City, beginning play as soon as the Garden opened for the season. However, their original owner, bootlegger Bill Dwyer, found the going difficult with the end of Prohibition, and the NHL took over ownership of the team in 1937. They made five playoff appearances, including a quarterfinal loss to the Rangers in and a quarterfinal win over the Rangers in. However, after beating the Rangers, the Americans fell to the eventual Stanley Cup champion Chicago Black Hawks in the 1938 semifinals, the closest they ever came to winning the Cup.

Following the season, many NHL players entered the armed forces to fight in World War II. This hurt the Americans more than the other teams, and so Dutton announced his team would suspend operations for the duration of the war. He was named NHL President upon the death of Frank Calder in 1943, a post he held until 1946, when he resigned and was replaced by Clarence Campbell.

Dutton had resigned the league presidency with the intention of reviving the Americans. However, the league, with the encouragement of Garden management, reneged on a longstanding promise to allow the Americans to return. A bitter Dutton declared that the Rangers would never win the Cup for as long as he lived. He died in 1987 at 88. At that time, the Rangers were in their 47th season without having won the Cup.

The Curse of 1940 "worked" in several ways, some of them odd. The Madison Square Garden Corporation found it could make more money when Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus came to town in the spring. This forced the Rangers, and later the National Basketball Association (NBA)'s New York Knicks, to use different arenas at the worst possible time—during their respective leagues' playoffs. At the time, it was impossible to configure arenas in a way that would allow a circus and a hockey or basketball game to take place on the same day. Hence, the Rangers used Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto as their "home ice" in the 1950 Stanley Cup Finals, a move that potentially cost the Rangers that year's Stanley Cup. After the Blueshirts took a 3–2 series lead on the Detroit Red Wings, the NHL cited an obscure rule stating that the deciding game in a Stanley Cup Finals cannot be played on neutral ice. Maple Leaf Gardens was labelled "neutral" because its tenants proper were the Leafs, and Madison Square Garden was still occupied by the circus at the time. The Detroit Olympia was thus the venue for the sixth and seventh games, both won by Detroit.

Also, while Dutton was the league president, he oversaw a 1943–44 Rangers team that inherited the title the Americans left behind upon their folding of hardest-hit NHL team by World War II. The Rangers asked the NHL for permission to fold until the end of the war because of their best players' service in the armed forces overseas, but the league refused the Rangers' request, and so they finished well back of the other five teams that year. Notably, career minor-league goaltender Ken McAuley gave up 310 goals in the team's 50 games, a league record for worst goals-against-average (6.2 goals/game) that has stood since. (The closest any goalie since has come to equalling this record is Greg Millen, who allowed 282 goals in 60 games for the Hartford Whalers forty seasons later).

League corruption and favoritism through the entire Original Six era was also a factor in the Rangers' futility. James E. Norris, the owner of the Detroit Red Wings, at one point also owned controlling stakes in both the Rangers and the Chicago Blackhawks, allowing him to stack the best players onto the Red Wings. This continued after the elder Norris' death, as his two sons, James D. and Bruce Norris, continued to control the three teams. Also during this time, the NHL still held territorial drafts, in which teams would get first rights to players who played junior hockey within a 50-mile radius of the home stadium; this gave Toronto, Detroit and Montreal significant recruiting advantages, since the areas around those cities were far more developed in their junior hockey programs than those further from the Canada–US border, including the Rangers.

New York Islanders
The Rangers struggled for several years after World War II; after their 1950 Finals appearance they only made the playoffs six times in 17 seasons. In 1972, they reached the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time in 22 years but lost to the Boston Bruins, who were led by Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito. The next season saw the founding of an expansion team playing on Long Island, the New York Islanders. In 1975, the Islanders qualified for the playoffs for the first time and met the Rangers in the best-of-three Preliminary Round. They shockingly defeated the Rangers two games to one, with J. P. Parisé scoring the series-winning goal in overtime in Game 3. The two teams squared off in the postseason again in the 1979 semifinals, a season in which the rapidly-improving Islanders finished with the best record in the league. However, in a stunning upset of their own, the Rangers downed the Islanders in six games to advance to the Stanley Cup Finals. They would lose in the Finals in five games to the Montreal Canadiens, who won their fourth Stanley Cup championship in a row.

The Islanders won the Stanley Cup for the first time in, beginning their own streak of four consecutive championships. Their title, won in the team's 11th season of existence, gave them one more championship than the Rangers had won in their entire 57-year history to that point. During the Islanders' second Cup run, in, they swept the Rangers in the second round. During that series, Islanders fans taunted the Rangers by chanting "1940!" Fans in other NHL cities soon picked up the chant. Moreover, in 1982, the Colorado Rockies moved to suburban East Rutherford, New Jersey and became the New Jersey Devils, giving the Rangers a second rival in the New York metropolitan area. It was also in the 1980s that the idea of a "Curse of 1940" began to take hold, with Red Dutton's death in 1987 and the occasional publication of the photograph of the Garden mortgage being burned in the Cup's bowl (the third Garden was demolished after the Rangers and Knicks moved into the current Garden in 1968).

In, the Rangers finished with the best overall record in the NHL, earning them their first of three Presidents' Trophies, but they lost to the defending Cup champion (and eventual repeat champion) Pittsburgh Penguins in the Patrick Division Finals. Although the Penguins were defending champions, and their victory was hardly a shocking one, an odd moment came during the third period of Game 4 when, with the Rangers leading 4-2, Pittsburgh forward Ron Francis took a shot from the blue line that beat Rangers goaltender Mike Richter. Francis' goal shifted the momentum to the Penguins, who eventually tied the game and won it in overtime. The next season, with hopes high, the Rangers finished last in the Patrick Division, largely because of an injury to their star defenseman Brian Leetch. In the kind of incident many fans ascribe to curses, Leetch arrived at the Garden in a taxi, stepped out, and broke his ankle when he slipped on a patch of ice, a most ironic injury for a hockey player.

End of the Curse
By the 1994 season, the Rangers had not won the Stanley Cup in 53 years. In that time, championships had been won in the New York area by the Islanders (4), the New York Yankees (14), the New York Mets (2), the New York Giants baseball team (1 prior to the franchise's move to San Francisco in 1958), the Brooklyn Dodgers (1 prior to the franchise's move to Los Angeles in 1958), the New York Giants football team (4), the New York Jets (1), the New York Knicks (two NBA titles) and the New Jersey Nets (2 ABA titles, playing as the New York Nets). In addition, all five of the other Original Six teams had won Stanley Cups since 1940 (the Canadiens 20 times, the Maple Leafs 10 times, the Red Wings five times, the Bruins three times, and the Black Hawks once), as had four other post-1967 expansion teams besides the Islanders (the Edmonton Oilers five times, the Penguins and Philadelphia Flyers twice, and the Calgary Flames once).

The Rangers stormed through the 1993–94 regular season, scoring 112 points en route to clinching their second Presidents' Trophy in three years. They swept aside the Islanders in the first round of the playoffs and defeated the Washington Capitals in five games in the second round before meeting the Devils (whom they had beaten in the 1992 Patrick Division Semifinals) in the Eastern Conference Finals. Devils fans had picked up the "1940!" chant and the curse myth from Islander fans, and curiously, the hockey seating capacity of the Devils' home arena, the Brendan Byrne Arena (later renamed the Continental Airlines Arena and then Izod Center), was 19,040. With the Rangers trailing the series three games to two and facing elimination, it looked as though the curse was at work again. However, Rangers captain Mark Messier challenged the New York media by "guaranteeing" his team would win Game 6: "We know we're going in there to win Game 6 and bringing it back for Game 7. We feel we can win it and we feel we are going to win it." The New York Post and New York Daily News both carried back pages offering Messier's guarantee: "We'll Win Tonight." Ranger coach Mike Keenan said of the guarantee: "Mark was sending a message to his teammates that he believed together we could win. He put on an amazing performance to make sure it happened."

The Rangers fell behind 2–0, but trailing 2–1 in the third period, Messier scored a natural hat trick (three straight goals) to make good on his guarantee and force a deciding seventh game. The curse threatened again in Game 7 as the Rangers led 1–0 and looked as though they were about to advance to the Cup Finals when New Jersey's Valeri Zelepukin scored with 7.7 seconds remaining in regulation to tie the game, but in the second overtime, Stéphane Matteau scored to give the Rangers the game and the series.

The Rangers moved on to the Stanley Cup Finals against the Vancouver Canucks and took a 3–2 lead late in the third period of the deciding seventh game. They shot the puck down the length of the ice with seven seconds left. Thinking the game was over, the Rangers poured onto the ice in celebration. However, the Canucks touched the puck to stop play with 1.1 seconds left in regulation. The officials reset the clock to 1.6 seconds and ordered a faceoff in the Rangers' zone. Messier and Craig MacTavish conferred and came up with a gambit to ensure the Rangers' win. Both of them, deciding that the officials wouldn't call a penalty at such a dramatic moment, committed infractions on the final drop of the puck as first MacTavish, then Messier whacked and cross-checked Vancouver's star forward Pavel Bure. As the team celebrated on the ice before the presentation of the Stanley Cup, Ranger fans in the Garden chanted "1940!" as a symbolic end to the curse, only to begin Canada's longest Finals absence; the Canucks were the last Canadian team to play for the Stanley Cup until the Calgary Flames, which lost to the Tampa Bay Lightning, also in seven games.

title: Curse of 1940


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Edmund Burke Wood

Edmund Burke Wood (February 13, 1820 – October 7, 1882) was a Member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario for Brant South, and served as the first provincial treasurer of Ontario from 1867 to 1871 under Premier John Sandfield Macdonald. He also served as a federal Member of Parliament representing the electoral districts of Brant South and Durham West from 1867–1874 under Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald.

He later became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Manitoba from 1874 to 1882. He died as Chief Justice in 1882.

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

title: Edmund Burke Wood


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Music of Your Life

Music of Your Life is an American syndicated music radio format featuring adult standards music. First created by recording executive Al Ham in 1978, the format achieved popularity in the 1980s among AM radio stations in the United States and Canada, which were then facing declines in listenership in a transition period of most popular music to the FM band.

The format's peak was before the 1987 repeal of the FCC's Fairness Doctrine began the transition of many of the stations on the AM band towards mostly conservative talk radio and sports radio, a process that accelerated after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 relaxed ownership restrictions and made large radio chains with a de facto national talk schedule with little local deviation possible. The consolidation of the radio industry, the launch of Internet radio and music streaming services allowing broader personal access to music anytime, and the overall aging out of the network's audience from prime advertising demographics brought the Music of Your Life format into a decline where only twelve stations used the format in 2008, when it was purchased by its current owner, Marc Angell.

History
Al Ham, a veteran CBS Records executive, decided to change careers in 1978 and started Music of Your Life, a format featuring pre-rock popular music on station WDJZ in Bridgeport, Connecticut. After that station was sold, the format was then installed at two other stations in the region: WHLI in Hempstead, New York, and WMAS in Springfield, Massachusetts, which was the first syndication customer. Both stations saw immediate and major gains in ratings, particularly among older listeners. Ham credited its success to the disenfranchisement of listeners aged 35–64 by most music stations. By 1981, more than 60 stations had adopted the live and automated versions of Music of Your Life, and their ranks had swelled to 130 by 1982. It was particularly credited with providing ratings improvement for AM stations whose listeners had deserted to FM outlets and was a good fit for AM as most older songs were not recorded in stereo; at the time, AM stereo was not in use. In contrast to "beautiful music" stations that mostly programmed instrumentals, the Music of Your Life format emphasized vocals; 20 percent of the music mix consisted of big band selections. Ham promoted listener involvement by starting "Music of Your Life Clubs", an idea that caught on.

A number of heritage contemporary hit radio stations on the AM band converted to Music of Your Life during the decade. WOKY in Milwaukee became a Music of Your Life station in January 1982, a switch that made the front page of Radio & Records. CKLW in Windsor, Ontario, also serving Detroit, changed in December 1984 and saw ratings immediately improve from a 0.8 in the fall 1984 Arbitron survey to 4.0 in the spring 1985 book; it was one of 10 Canadian stations using the format, though CKLW tinkered with it slightly to provide a contemporary enough sound to support its overall programming. WNJY serving Palm Beach County, Florida, co-owned with WMAS, was the first FM affiliate, signing on in 1983; advertising rates doubled after the format was installed. In 1985, a Music of Your Life television special hosted by Toni Tennille was produced as a pilot for a possible series. However, automated music formats on tape began to fall out of favor in the mid-1980s, and interest in Music of Your Life waned.

In 1989, Unistar Radio Networks entered into a joint venture with Fairwest Satellite Programming to distribute Music of Your Life. However, the satellite service was unsuccessful. Unistar terminated satellite delivery in 1991, with about 50 clients, finding Music of Your Life "not economically viable for satellite delivery", though it would continue to distribute it on tapes. After Unistar's decision to cease satellite delivery, Al Ham bought back all assets related to Music of Your Life in March 1991. He continued the tape business while offering the use of the brand and jingles to stations carrying competing satellite-delivered standards formats such as Unistar's AM Only and Stardust from Satellite Music Networks.

On January 1, 1996, the format was relaunched by Ham along with original partners Jim West and Gary Fink as a satellite-delivered service, with Gary Owens hosting mornings. By 1999, Jones Radio Network, which handled syndication duties, boasted it had 174 stations signed up and such talent as Owens, Patti Page, and Wink Martindale. The satellite delivery allowed Music of Your Life to compete with similar offerings from competitors, such as AM Only from Westwood One and Stardust from ABC Radio Networks; the service also gradually introduced newer music. Interest slowly waned, and there were just twelve stations remaining in 2008, by which time Marc Angell had become CEO.

title: Music of Your Life


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Acquackanonk Township, New Jersey

Acquackanonk Township was a township that existed in New Jersey, United States, from 1693 until 1917, first in Essex County and then in Passaic County.

Patent
The land on which the town was situated was at one time owned by the Surveyor General of New Netherland Jacques Cortelyou, some "12,000 morgens at Aquackanonk on the Passaic, purchased by himself and associates of the Indians." and known as the Acquackanonk Patent. It was first settled in 1678 by Dutch traders, who in 1693 formed the Acquackanonk congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church,  variantly named as late as 1697 as the Achquegnonck congregation.

The township was first formed on October 31, 1693, by the proprietors of the Province of East Jersey together with New Barbadoes Township, and was located in what was then the northern part of Essex County on the Passaic River. The English formed the Province of New Jersey and appointed a royal governor in 1702. New Barbadoes Township became part of Bergen County in 1710, with Acquackanonk still part of Essex County.

On February 21, 1798, Acquackanonk was incorporated as one of the initial group of 104 townships in the State of New Jersey. On February 7, 1837, Passaic County was created, incorporating the township and other portions of both Bergen County and Essex County. Over the years portions of the township were taken to create (or add to the territory of) Caldwell Township (February 16, 1798; now Fairfield Township), Paterson Township (April 11, 1831), Little Falls (April 2, 1868), Passaic village (created within the township on March 10, 1869, and independent from the township as of March 21, 1871), Paterson (1869) and Montclair (1907). The township became defunct on April 26, 1917, with the creation of Clifton.

Acquackanonk tribe
The Acquackanonk were a Lenape group who spoke the same Algonquian language dialect and shared the same totem (turtle) as the neighboring Hackensack and Tappan. They were so called by the exonym by the New Netherlanders, who commonly referred to the people by the indigenous word for their territory. The name may mean a place in a rapid stream where fishing is done with a net. Alternatively, at the lamprey stream from  contemporary axkwaakahnung (spellings include  Achquakanonk, Acquackanonk) Lastly it may mean where gum blocks were made for pounding corn. Ackquekenon was the spelling used by European explorer Jasper Danckaerts in 1679 describe his visit there.

Passaic River crossing
A bridge crossing of the Passaic River at Acquackanonk was first created in the colonial era, and was burned during Washington's 1776 great retreat from Fort Lee. Today's Gregory Avenue Bridge was built on a slightly different alignment.

title: Acquackanonk Township, New Jersey


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Sula Islands Regency

The Sula Islands Regency (Kabupaten Kepulauan Sula) is one of the regencies in North Maluku province of Indonesia. It was originally formed on 25 February 2003, when it encompassed the three large islands comprising the Sula Archipelago, together with minor adjacent islands. However, the largest and most westerly of the three, Taliabu, was split off from the Sula Islands Regency on 14 December 2012 to form a separate regency.

The remaining two islands which now comprise the Regency are Sulabesi (formerly Sanama) and Mangoli (formerly Mangole). The residual regency covers a land area of 5,213.55 km2 and had a population of 85,215 at the 2010 Census and 104,082 at the 2020 Census; the official estimate as at mid 2023 was 105,095 (comprising 52,697 males and 52,398 females). The administrative capital is at the town of Sanana on the north part of the east coast of Sulabesi Island.

History
The Dutch built a fort on Sanana in 1652. Wallace visited the islands during an ornithological expedition in 1862.

Pre-Indonesian Independence saw the Sula Islands also known as the Xulla Islands, with Taliabo as Xulla Taliabo, Sulabesi (originally Sanana Island) as Xulla Bessi, and Mangoli as Xulla Mangola.

Administration
Sula Islands Regency comprises twelve districts (kecamatan), tabulated below with their areas and populations at the 2010 Census and the 2020 Census, together with the official estimates as at mid 2023. The table also includes the locations of the district administrative centres, the number of administrative villages (all classed as rural desa) in each district, and its post code.

Note: (a) including offshore islands of Pulau Dodoku and Pulau Mancaril.

Economy
According to government data, Sula Islands Regency's food crops include vegetables, groundnuts, cassava, sweet potatoes, durian, mangosteen and mango. the area of agriculturally active land was 24743.56 hectares with production amounting to 33,608.62 tons per year. Taliabu-Sanana District is the main producer of cloves, nutmeg, cocoa, copra and other coconut products. Fishery production is very diverse with and estimated sustainable potential of 40,273.91 tonnes per year of which only 22.8 percent is currently exploited. Forestry is considered a potential industry with the natural forest-based Classification Map TGHK RTRWP suggesting a forest area of 471,951.53 hectares, but much of this is protected or hard to access, due to steep slopes and transportation logistics, and the islands' main plywood company, PT Barito Pacific Timber Group (in Falabisahaya, West Mangoli) has closed. Industrial activity is very limited. There is a gold mine in East Mangoli District (at Waitina and Kawata) and coal mines are located in the peninsula of West Sulabesi District, East Taliabu and Sub Sanana (Wai Village Ipa). Reserves of coal are estimated around 10.4 million tonnes.

Tourism
The Indonesian Ministry of Tourism (Kemenpar) is ready to support the promotion of tourism destination potential on Sula Islands. Demographically located between the crossroads of Wakatobi and Raja Ampat tourist areas, it is ideally developed as marine tourism and special interest tourism for diving enthusiasts.

One of the support is Maksaira Festival at Wai Ipa Beach to Bajo Village Beach. On 2018 the festival as a cultural and marine tourism attraction event has entered the third year and will be listed as MURI record breaking for the largest grouper fishing participant targeted by 3000 participants in 2018, where year 2017 followed by 1700 participants.

Fauna
The following species are native to the Sula Islands:
 * Buru babirusa Babyrousa babyrussa
 * Banggai cuscus Strigocuscus pelengensis
 * Sula rat Rattus elaphinus
 * Sulawesi flying fox Acerodon celebensis
 * Lesser short-nosed fruit bat Cynopterus brachyotis
 * Greenish naked-backed fruit bat Dobsonia viridis
 * Long-tongued nectar bat Macroglossus minimus
 * Pallas's tube-nosed bat Nyctimene cephalotes
 * Ashy-headed flying fox Pteropus caniceps
 * Sulawesi rousette Rousettus celebensis
 * Swift fruit bat Thoopterus nigrescens
 * Small Asian sheath-tailed bat Emballonura alecto
 * Fawn leaf-nosed bat Hipposideros cervinus
 * Small bent-winged bat Miniopterus pusillus
 * Sula megapode Megapodius bernsteinii (Gosong Sula), status vulnerable

Introduced species include:
 * Asian house shrew
 * Wild boar (Sus scrofa)
 * Polynesian rat (Rattus exulans)

title: Sula Islands Regency


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User:SteveMueller/sandbox

Wiki Sandbox Page
For trying out and/or keeping temp copies of Wiki text.

title: User:SteveMueller/sandbox


text:
Instantiation principle

The instantiation principle or principle of instantiation or principle of exemplification is the concept in metaphysics and logic (first put forward by David Malet Armstrong) that there can be no uninstantiated or unexemplified properties (or universals). In other words, it is impossible for a property to exist which is not had by some object.

Consider a chair. Presumably chairs did not exist 150,000 years ago. Thus, according to the principle of instantiation, the property of being a chair did not exist 150,000 years ago either. Similarly, if all red objects were to suddenly go out of existence, then the property of being red would likewise go out of existence.

To make the principle more plausible in the light of these examples, the existence of properties or universals is not tied to their actual existence now, but to their existence in space-time considered as a whole. Thus, any property which is, has been, or will be instantiated exists. The property of being red would exist even if all red things were to be destroyed, because it has been instantiated. This broadens the range of properties which exist if the principle is true.

Those who endorse the principle of instantiation are known as in re (in thing or in reality) realists or 'immanent realists'.

Difficulties for the instantiation principle arise from the existence of truths about the uninstantiated, for example about higher infinities, or about an uninstantiated shade of blue (if such a shade exists). Those truths appear to be about something, but what can their truthmaker be if they do not in some sense exist?

title: Instantiation principle


text: User talk:69.81.120.54

title: User talk:69.81.120.54


text:
User:SteveMueller

Steve Mueller
I'm Steve Mueller, and I work on next generation telecommunications networks for SBC Labs in Austin, TX.

Background
My background is in telecom and software. I have designed and implemented software for class 5 phone switches, SS7, AIN, and VoIP. I have been involved in the Parlay and JAIN initiatives.

Current Interests

 * Next generation network service technology for both wired (POTS, VoIP, cable, etc) and wireless (GSM, WiFi, WiMax,etc) networks
 * Parlay and Parlay X
 * Formal methods for software design, specification, and verification

/sandbox

title: User:SteveMueller


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Mattafix

Mattafix were an English electronic music duo, consisting of vocalist Marlon Roudette and producer and keyboardist Preetesh Hirji. Their sound was a fusion of hip hop, R&B, reggae, dancehall, blues, jazz, soul and world. Known for their 2005 hit single "Big City Life", they won the Sopot International Song Festival in 2006.

Biography
Marlon Rosegold McVey-Roudette was born in London and is the son of Cameron McVey, a British music producer, and Vonnie Roudette, a designer and artist from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. As a young child, he moved with his mother and sister to St. Vincent, where he began his music career before returning to London when he was 18. Preetesh Hirji was born in London of dual-Indian parentage and grew up in the heart of West London, where he started at Eastcote Studios on Kensal Road.

Signs of a Struggle (2005–2006)
Mattafix released their first single, "11.30 (Dirtiest Trick in Town)", as a limited edition on Buddhist Punk Records on 13 January 2005. However, the song never charted.

Their second single, "Big City Life", was released by EMI on 8 August 2005. It was a considerable hit, managing number 15 in their native United Kingdom and number 1 in Germany, Poland, Austria, Italy, Switzerland and New Zealand. It also had considerable success in other countries, including top-20 positions in France, Australia, and Belgium. It can also be heard on the soundtrack to the hit video game 2006 FIFA World Cup Germany, designed by EA Sports. "Big City Life" also received multiple popular remixes over the ensuing decades, including notable remixes by LEEX, Luude, and Sam Jonsson; the Luude remix, released in 2022, has amassed 15.8 million streams on Spotify alone (compared to 118.4 million Spotify streams for the original) as of August 2022.

Signs of a Struggle received positive reviews and had success in Europe where the band toured extensively throughout 2006–08. Signs of a Struggle was a Triple J feature album in April 2006.

The duo toured with the likes of Jem and Joss Stone on their UK tours to promote the album, and have also opened for Sting, in Milan, before a crowd of more than 100,000 people.

Their fourth single, "To & Fro", was released on 13 March 2006. The single was released as a download only in the United Kingdom.

Rhythm & Hymns (2007–2009)
On 7 September 2007, Mattafix released "Living Darfur", the first single taken from their second album Rhythm & Hymns. It was available as a download only. The single was released physically on 22 October 2007. The video features Matt Damon in the intro. The track was featured as part of the Save Darfur Campaign. Working alongside humanitarian agencies operating in the region, the band filmed a video for the song in the refugee camps in the region. The video became extremely popular on YouTube and to date is the only music video by an international group to be filmed in a war zone.

Speaking in June 2008 to English R&B writer Pete Lewis of Blues & Soul, Roudette explained the musical background to Rhythms & Hymns: "With this album I wanted to bring through more aspects of the live show, which is something maybe the first album lacked. You know, we do go out with a seven or eight-piece band, and that has become a big part of the Mattafix sound. So, in addition to keeping the hardcore element and programmed beats from last time round, with Rhythms & Hymns we've also used a lot of live drums. Also, we've added quite a lot of influences that we got from the road. Particularly in places like Johannesburg, where we played a couple of great shows."

The album was released on 23 November 2007 in most European countries. In Australia, it was released on 17 November 2007.

Mattafix remixed Lady Gaga's song "Eh Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)". Their remix appears on her iTunes Remix EP; however, it is not on the UK version.

Separation and Roudette solo career (2010–present)
In April 2010, Marlon Roudette made a video appearance where he spoke about recording and making the record in his home-based studio. However, via Facebook, it was announced that Roudette and Hirji had gone separate ways due to their different new ideas for future projects. He is yet to come up with his new artist name; whether to stay with the name Mattafix, or choose a new stage name; perhaps his own. "Mattafix presents...Marlon..." was a quote from a late 2010 YouTube video, as an updated possibility for his album title and/or stage name. Marlon Roudette has confirmed that the new album is "not a radical shift but definitely different. More instrumentation and more in depth musical compositions." Marlon Roudette has stated that the album is pretty much completed, but the album is still being "fine tuned". His first solo album Matter Fixed was released on 2 September 2011. His sophomore effort, Electric Soul, was released on 8 August 2014.

Awards and nominations
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" ! scope="col" | Award ! scope="col" | Year ! scope="col" | Nominee(s) ! scope="col" | Category ! scope="col" | Result ! scope="col" class="unsortable"| Ref. ! scope="row"|Eska Music Awards !scope="row" rowspan=2|Hungarian Music Awards
 * 2006
 * "Big City Life"
 * Best International Hit
 * Won
 * 2006
 * rowspan=2|Signs of a Struggle
 * Best Foreign Rap or Hip-Hop Album
 * Nominated
 * 2007
 * Best Foreign Dance Album
 * Nominated
 * Best Foreign Dance Album
 * Nominated

title: Mattafix


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Twenty-five (card game)

Twenty-five is the Irish national card game, which also underlies the Canadian game of Forty-fives. Charles Cotton describes its ancestor in 1674 as "Five Cards", and gives the nickname five fingers to the Five of Trumps extracted from the fact that the Irish word cúig means both 'five' and 'trick'. It is supposed to be of great antiquity, and widely believed to have originated in Ireland, although "its venerable ancestor", Maw, of which James I of England was very fond, is a Scottish game.

Family
The game is a 19th century member of the Maw family of games that also includes the round game of Spoil Five (also called Spoil-Five, or Spoilt Five), the older games of Five Cards and Five and Ten and the extension of Twenty-Five called Forty-Five.

History
Twenty-five is descended from the old Scottish game of Maw, which dates to at least 1548 and is mentioned frequently up to about 1650. Maw was fashionable during the reign of James I and became the chief game of the English court. However, it died out during the time of the English Commonwealth (1649–1660) only to appear in Charles Cotton's The Compleat Gamester of 1674 as Five Cards, in which the trump 5, known as five fingers is the highest card, followed by the ace of hearts, trump ace and trump knave, an earlier order different from later members of the family.

Thereafter the game disappears again from the literature until the early 19th century where it resurfaces under the names of various descendants including Five and Ten, Spoil Five and Forty-five.

Twenty-five itself, also called five-and-twenty, emerged alongside these other variants and is mentioned as early as 1833 in the Dublin Penny Journal in an article against gambling: "...rustic gambling is conducted on the plan of a lottery. The woman of the house has generally one or more of such articles [a turkey, goose, herrings or mutton] as those above mentioned, which are purchased by the party to play at a price far above their intrinsic value; each purchase is paid for in equal shares, and the winner of one or more games, at five and twenty, or first fifteen... carries off the prize..." It is probably much older for, in 1858, an Irish periodical describes Twenty-Five and Forty-Five as "our own old games" in which the five of trumps, called five fingers, was the best card, followed by the Ace of Hearts.

However, the first detailed rules do not appear until 1876, when H.E. Heather describes it as a variant of Forty-Five. Any number could play and the cards ranked as described below with the five fingers (trump 5) as the commanding card and, unlike modern rules, the only one that could renege in the sense of being withheld when trumps were led, even if its holder had no other trump. Players cut for first deal (highest or lowest winning it as agreed); the cards were shuffled and cut before being dealt in threes and twos so that each player had five. The next was turned for trump. A player with the trump ace could rob the trump upcard. Whist rules of play were followed i.e. players had to follow suit if able (with the exception of the privilege associated with the five fingers); only if void in the led suit could they trump – this is unlike modern rules in which, as in all fours, players may trump even if they can follow. Each trick was worth five and twenty-five was game. Unlike Heather's rules for Forty-five, there was no jinking (winning the game on taking all five tricks) and no score of 5 for best trump.

Twenty-five eventually emerged to become the national card game of Ireland.

Overview
Twenty-five may be played by 2–8 persons, five being the best number. A standard pack is used and each player receives five cards, or six or nine, and another is turned up to fix the trump suit. The object of the play is to win one trick, or at least three of five. The object is to win at least 3 of the 5 tricks. When three play at this game, it is still necessary that one of them should win the three tricks in order to make a Five, as the stakes must remain for the next game if two of the players get two tricks each, and the other one. If the party consists of four, they play in two partnerships, which are determined by cutting the cards, the two lowest playing against the two highest, or by agreement among the parties. When six people play, it is usual to play in three partnerships, and when eight people play, in four.

Preliminaries
A full pack of 52 cards is used and each player receives five cards, dealt in pairs and triplets, being the next card on the top of the pack turned up for trump. Each player starts with a prearranged amount, which may be of 20 chips or counters, and puts up one chip upon the table to form a pool. The pool is usually limited to a certain maximum, which once reached there is no further subscription, though each dealer is required to "tit-up" the pool.

The turn to deal and play always passes to the left, and after the first hand, each player deals in rotation. Where the game is strictly played, the person who misdeals, or who departs from the order with which the game began, of dealing either the three or the two cards first, forfeits his stake. Stack the rest face down, turning the topmost card for trump.

Robbing
If the turn-up is an ace, the dealer may "rob the trump" by putting out, face downwards, any card from his hand and take in the ace, but the trump suit remains unaltered. Similarly, a player who holds the ace of trumps may himself rob the trump at any time before playing to the first trick, putting out any card and taking in the turn-up, but need not disclose the fact until it is his turn to play. If the holder of the trump ace does not wish to rob, and does not announce the fact that he holds it before playing to the first trick, then, whenever he does play it, it counts as the lowest trump. A player who fails to rob cannot go out that hand. The card put out may not be seen. Robbing must take place before the first player on the dealer's left leads. Some players make "robbing" optional.

Ranking of cards

 * Trump diamonds || ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||
 * Trump hearts || ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||
 * Off-suit diamonds || ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||
 * Off-suit hearts || ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||
 * Trump clubs || ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||
 * Trump spades || ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||
 * Off-suit clubs || ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||
 * Off-suit spades || ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||
 * }
 * Trump spades || ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||
 * Off-suit clubs || ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||
 * Off-suit spades || ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||
 * }
 * Off-suit spades || ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||
 * }
 * }

So it will be seen that when diamonds are not trump, the is the worst card in the pack; when diamonds are trump it is the fourth best card in the game. When hearts are trumps, there is no second ace in the trump ranking, and whether trumps or not, the or  is better than all plain cards in their respective suit.

The play
The player on the dealer's left leads first. Players must follow suit whenever possible, and the highest card of the suit led or, if a trump is played, the highest trump wins the trick. You must lead with a trump if there are 5 or more players. Each player must follow suit when trump is led, under the penalty of forfeiting his stake, except in the case of the three best trump cards, the 5 and J of trumps and the, each of which is privileged to renege. If a player takes three tricks he wins the game. If no one succeeds there is a spoil, and a fresh stake, smaller than the original one as a rule, is put into the pool for the next round.

Reneging
When trumps are led, the 5 and J of trumps, and the, need not be played. This is called reneging (colloquially, "rejigging"). The 5 may always renege: if it is led, no card can renege. The J may renege if the 5 is played, not led. Only the 5 can renege to the J led. The can renege to any inferior card. If hearts are not trumps and the is led, a trump must be played if possible; if not, it is not necessary to play a heart.

Jinking
At Spoil Five a player winning the first three tricks straight off may claim the pool without further play. If however, he leads to the fourth trick (described as "jinking"), he thereby is obliged to win all five. If he elects to jink and fails, he cannot score during that hand. A player who jinks, if jinking is agreed upon, receives an extra stake all around.

Pay-off
If no one wins the three tricks, or if a player jinked and failed to win all five, the game is said to have been "spoiled". Everyone then adds another chip to the pool, which is carried forward to the next deal. Otherwise, whoever took three tricks wins the pool, with an additional chip from each opponent if he took all five.

Strategy
If the elder hand has a certain five, that is to say, if he holds three cards which will each take a trick, he ought to play them, as there is a great probability, if his two remaining cards are tolerable, that he may get the whole five, and thus win a double stake. But if he holds only indifferent cards, the best method is to throw the lead into his opponent's hand by playing an inferior card, in the hope of regaining it at the third trick, which is the critical stage of the game; and as three tricks constitute a five equally as four, it is reckoned better play to reserve the best cards till the third trick, than to risk the game by eagerness to secure the first two.

Variants
Twenty-five and Forty-five are varieties of Spoil-five and they are played for either of these numbers. The main feature between these two varieties and the game of Spoil Five is that there is no Spoil. Each trick counts five to the maker and the trick made by the highest trump out scores ten. If a player gets out before that trump is played, he wins the game all the same. The winning of all five tricks is called a jink and the player who jinks wins the game whether played for twenty-five or forty-five points.

Literature

 * Brownsmith, Telemachus [pseud.] (1869). "Spoil Five" in The Westminster Chess Club Papers. Vols. 1–3. London: W. Kent; Edinburgh: J. Menzies; Dublin: McGlashan. pp. 108–110.
 * Brownsmith, Telemachus [pseud.] (1869). "Five and Ten" in The Westminster Chess Club Papers. Vols. 1–3. London: W. Kent; Edinburgh: J. Menzies; Dublin: McGlashan. p. 109.
 * "Trumps" [William Brisbane Dick] (1864). The American Hoyle. NY: Dick & Fitzgerald.
 * Heather, H.E. (1876). Cards and Card Tricks. London: The Bazaar Office.
 * Lover, Samuel (1837). Rory O'More. London: Bentley.
 * Maxwell, William hamilton (1837). The Bivouac, Or, Stories of the Peninsular War. London, New York: George Routledge.
 * Trebor, Eidrah (pseud. Robert Hardie) (1860). "Five and Ten" in Hoyle’s Games made Familiar. London: Ward & Lock. pp. 66–67.
 * "W." (1833). "Andrew Murray, or the Effects of Gambling" in The Dublin Penny Journal, 5 October 1833. Dublin: P.D. Hardy.

title: Twenty-five (card game)


text: Wikipedia:WikiProject Illinois/to do

title: Wikipedia:WikiProject Illinois/to do


text:
Arshad al-Umari

Arshad Pasha al-Umari (أرشد العمري; 8 April 1888 – 5 August 1978) was an Iraqi statesman, engineer, diplomate, and cabinet official who held several political roles during the monarchy era of Iraq. Born in Mosul to the ancient and well-known al-Umari family clan, he served as Prime Minister of Iraq twice in 1946 and 1954 respectively. In 1945, as Foreign Affairs Minister, he led the Iraqi delegation to the San Francisco UN Conference.

Among al-Umari's achievements was his work to establish the Iraqi Red Crescent Society in 1932 which was a welcoming development by the Iraqi educated elite at the time, the construction of various main roads, dams, including the Kut Barrage, and oil pipes, and sending Iraqi troops to help in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. However, al-Umari was criticized for his lack of interest in archaeological sites and monuments. Most notoriously, he allowed the demolishment of the Murjan Mosque's walls in favor of road expansion. His first ministry also saw the Gavurbağı incident which damaged his reputation.

Early life and education
Arshad al-Umari was born in Mosul, Iraq on 8 April 1888 when his father was Mayor of Mosul. He obtained his high school degree in 1904 when he was 16 years old. After finishing high school at Mosul he left for Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to complete his studies. He did the trip by horse via Aleppo to the port of Alexandretta on the Mediterranean Sea. Such a trip in those days took about 40 days. From Alexandretta, he took the steamer to Istanbul where he was admitted to the Architectural Division of the Royal Engineering College. The teaching staff of the college were professors from Germany, Belgium and Austria.

He graduated as an architect in 1908, when he was 21 years old, and was appointed to the Architectural Division of the Municipality of Istanbul. When World War I broke out in 1914 he was conscripted as an engineer in the Ministry of Defense and when the war was over in 1918 he returned to the Municipality of Istanbul as Chief Engineer when Cemil Topuzlu was Lord Mayor of Istanbul. He married Rafi'a Khanim, the younger sister of Jamil Pasha the Lord Mayor of Istanbul. Jamil Pasha and Rafi'a Khanim's father was Dhia Pasha who occupied several prominent positions in the Ottoman Empire, the most important of which was the personal supervision of the renovation of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, ordered by the Sultan Abdul Hamid II. He lived with his family for several years in Jerusalem to carry out this job.

After World War I when the Arab countries including Iraq were separated from the Ottoman Empire, al-Umari returned from Istanbul to Mosul, in 1919, with his wife, where he was appointed chief engineer of the Municipality of Mosul and continued until 1924. During this period his four children, Suad, Frozan (Suzy), Issam, and Imad were born in Mosul.

Earlier political roles
In 1924, he was elected a member of the first Parliament of Iraq after the formation of the national government of Iraq under King Faisal I. From 1925 through 1931 he was Director General of Post and Telegraph.

In 1933, he was Director General of Irrigation, and from 1934 to 1935 he was Minister of Public Works. During his Ministership, the opening of the famous oil pipeline from the oilfields at Kirkuk to the Mediterranean over 1000 km was celebrated. In 1935, he was Director General of Municipalities.

Iraqi Red Crescent Society
On the formation of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society, he was elected President of the society and continued holding that position until 1958, more than 25 years.

Mayor of Baghdad
From 1931 to 1933, al-Umari became Lord Mayor of Baghdad for the first time.

From 1936 to 1944, he was Lord Mayor of Baghdad for a second time. The city planning and the general layout of the present modern Baghdad were believed to be one of Iraq's greatest achievements of that period.

Minister of Foreign Affairs
From 4 June 1944 to 25 August 1945, he was Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Minister of Defense and Supply. During his Ministership of Foreign Affairs, diplomatic relations were established with the USSR and letters were exchanged between him and Vyacheslav Molotov on 11 September 1944. Also during his Ministership, the Arab League was formed and he headed the Iraqi delegations to Cairo, Egypt, and signed the Charter of the Arab League on 22 March 1945.

Al-Umari headed the Iraqi delegation to sign the United Nations charter at San Francisco, California. On the arrival of the Iraqi delegation to New York, President Franklin D. Roosevelt died on 12 April 1945. al-Umari headed the Iraqi delegation at the funeral on 14 April 1945.

On 26 April, the San Francisco Conference consisting of 50 nations met to discuss the draft of the United Nations Organization. Al-Umari, the head of the Iraqi delegation, in protest against the apparent intention of the great powers to partition the British Mandate of Palestine into a Jewish State and an Arab State, refused to sign the charter and left the conference returning to Iraq on June 13, 1945. On June 26 the Charter was signed with Dr. Muhammad Fadhel al-Jamali signing it on behalf of Iraq.

After his return to Iraq, al-Umari resigned from the cabinet as Minister of Foreign Affairs on 25 August 1945.

Serving as Prime Minister of Iraq twice
From the first of June to mid-December 1946, he was Prime Minister of Iraq for the first time. During this time, Turkoman workers were demanding their labor rights. On July 7, 1946, the Iraqi Minister of Economy, Baba Ali Sheikh Mahmud, went to the Ministry of al-Umari in Kirkuk, pressuring him to put an end to the protests, one way or another. However, al-Umari could not persuade them to stop protesting and began using threats and intimidation, which did not work either. Protesting workers responded by gathering in Gavurbağı Park, and then Iraqi police arrived and began shooting at the workers. 16 workers were killed and 30 were injured in the attack. The event caused a general uproar which caused al-Umari to embark on a repressive policy, which allowed arrests to take place, and the closure of newspapers. In response, further strikes by printing and railway workers took place which led al-Umari to declare martial law.

During this period, the Iraqi Kurdish Democratic Party held its founding congress in Baghdad in 1946, bringing together general Mustafa Barzani and many of his ethno-nationalist allies and groups under Barzani's rule. Al-Umari welcomed the group since Barzani wasn't willing to provoke any radical changes in the country. Regent Abd al-Ilah started to lose confidence in al-Umari. Particularly, the declaration of martial law, especially before the 1946 Iraqi parliamentary election. As well as railway and printing workers who went on strike due to al-Umari's repression. This led to the resignation of al-Umari from the Prime Minister's office in November of that year.

In April 1954, he became Prime Minister of Iraq for the second time after al-Jamali resigned from his role as prime minister. He was hired by Regent Abd al-Ilah after disappointed hopes in reform. He was ensigned to form a new government and hold elections despite fears of a repeat of al-Umari's 1946 repressions. The June 1954 Iraqi parliamentary election proved to be the most free Iraqi elections up to this point, at least in the urban areas. The elections gave representation on various fronts. Parties opposed to al-Umari's role as Prime Minister denounced him due to his history of repression of opinions and his lack of belief in democracy. Believing opposition forces will now be harder to contain, al-Umari resigned the premiership in June.

Other roles
From 29 January to 23 June 1948, he was Minister of Defense. In 1952 he was selected to be the Executive Vice-President of the Development Board. The Development Board was formed to undertake the study and execution of major construction schemes such as the Darbandikhan Dam on the Diyala River, the Dukan Dam on the Little Zab, the Bekhme Dam on the Great Zab, the Samarra Dam on the Tigris and the Lake Tharthar flood protection scheme connected with it, the Mosul Dam on the Tigris, the network of modern highways connecting major cities in Iraq, a great number of hospitals, schools and other public institutions.

Later life and death
In 1958, at the age of 70, he retired to the city of Istanbul. He returned to Iraq in 1968 and spent the rest of his life at the Baghdad residence of his elder son, Issam al-Umari. He died in Baghdad on 5 August 1978 at the age of 90 and was buried at a family cemetery in Mosul.

title: Arshad al-Umari