title: Brothers Grimm

text: Less well known in the English-speaking world is the Grimms' pioneering scholarly work on a German dictionary, the , which they began in 1838. Not until 1852 did they begin publishing the dictionary in installments. The work on the dictionary was not finished in their lifetimes, because in it they gave a history and analysis of each word.


title: Brothers Grimm

text: was not an immediate bestseller, but its popularity grew with each edition. The early editions attracted lukewarm critical reviews, generally on the basis that the stories were unappealing to children. The brothers responded with modifications and rewrites to increase the book's market appeal to that demographic. By the 1870s the tales had increased greatly in popularity to the point that they were added to the teaching curriculum in Prussia. In the 20th century the work maintained status as second only to the Bible as the most popular book in Germany. Its sales generated a mini-industry of criticism, which analyzed the tales' folkloric content in the context of literary history, socialism, and psychological elements often along Freudian and Jungian lines.


title: Brothers Grimm

text: In their research, the brothers made a science of the study of folklore (see folkloristics), generating a model of research that "launched general fieldwork in most European countries", and setting standards for research and analysis of stories and legends that made them pioneers in the field of folklore in the 19th century.


title: Brothers Grimm

text: In Nazi Germany the Grimms' stories were used to foster nationalism as well as to promote antisemitic sentiments in an increasingly hostile time for Jewish people. Some examples of notable antisemitic works in the Grimms' bibliography are "The Girl Who Was Killed by Jews", "The Jews' Stone", "The Jew Among Thorns" and "The Good Bargain". “The Girl Who Was Killed by Jews” and “The Jews’ Stone” tell stories of blood libel by Jews against innocent children. In both stories the children are violently killed and mutilated. The myth of blood libel was widely propagated during the Middle Ages and is still used to vilify Jews today. The children in these two stories are also acquired in exchange for large sums of money. Jewish wealth and greed are also common antisemitic tropes. These tropes appear in “The Jew Among Thorns” and “The Good Bargain”. In both stories a Jewish man is depicted as deceitful for the sake of money. In the former the man admits to stealing money and is executed instead of the protagonist. In the latter, the Jewish man is found to be deceitful in order to be rewarded a sum of money. The specific deceit is irrelevant and here too the protagonist triumphs over the Jew. All of these stories paint Jews as antagonists whether through murderous rites, deceit, or greed. Antisemitism in folklore has contributed to the popularization of antisemitic tropes and misconceptions about the Jewish faith, but the Nazi Party was particularly devoted to the Grimms' collected stories. According to author Elizabeth Dalton, "Nazi ideologues enshrined the Kinder-und Hausmarchen as virtually a sacred text…" The Nazi Party decreed that every household should own a copy of ; later, officials of Allied-occupied Germany banned the book for a period.


title: Brothers Grimm

text: In the United States the 1937 release of Walt Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" shows the triumph of good over evil, innocence over oppression, according to Zipes. The Grimms' tales have provided much of the early foundation on which Disney built an empire. In film, the Cinderella motif, the story of a poor girl finding love and success, has been repeated in movies such as "Pretty Woman", "Ever After", "Maid in Manhattan", and "Ella Enchanted".


title: Brothers Grimm

text: 20th-century educators debated the value and influence of teaching stories that include brutality and violence, and some of the more gruesome details were sanitized. Dégh writes that some educators, in the belief that children should be shielded from cruelty of any form, believe that stories with a happy ending are fine to teach, whereas those that are darker, particularly the legends, might pose more harm. On the other hand, some educators and psychologists believe that children easily discern the difference between what is a story and what is not and that the tales continue to have value for children. The publication of Bruno Bettelheim's 1976 "The Uses of Enchantment" brought a new wave of interest in the stories as children's literature, with an emphasis on the "therapeutic value for children". More popular stories, such as "Hansel and Gretel" and "Little Red Riding Hood", have become staples of modern childhood, presented in coloring books, puppet shows, and cartoons. Other stories, however, have been considered too gruesome and have not made a popular transition.


title: Brothers Grimm

text: Regardless of the debate, the Grimms' stories have continued to be resilient and popular around the world, although a recent study in England appears to suggest that parents consider the stories to be overly violent and inappropriate for young children, writes Libby Copeland for "Slate".


title: Brothers Grimm

text: Nevertheless, children remain enamored of the Grimms' fairy tales with the brothers themselves embraced as the creators of the stories and even as part of the stories themselves. The film "Brothers Grimm" imagines them as con-artists exploiting superstitious German peasants until they are asked to confront a genuine fairy-tale curse that calls them to finally be heroes. The movie "Ever After" shows the Grimms in their role as collectors of fairy tales, though they learn to their surprise that at least one of their stories (Cinderella) is actually true. "Grimm" follows a detective who discovers that he is a Grimm, the latest in a line of guardians who are sworn to keep the balance between humanity and mythological creatures. "Ever After High" imagines the Grimms (here called Milton and Giles) as the headmasters of the Ever After High boarding school, where they train the children of the previous generation of fairy tales to follow in their parents' footsteps. The "10th Kingdom" miniseries states that the brothers were trapped in the fairy tale world for years where they witnessed the events of their stories before finally making it back to the real world. "The Sisters Grimm" book series follows their descendants, Sabrina and Daphne, as they adapt to life in Ferryport Landing, a town in upstate New York populated by the fairy-tale people. Separate from the previous series are "The Land of Stories" and its "Sisters Grimm", a self-described coven determined to track down and document creatures from the fairy-tale world that cross over to the real world. Their ancestors were, in fact, chosen by Mother Goose and others to tell fairy tales so that they might give hope to the human race.


title: Brothers Grimm

text: The university library at the Humboldt University of Berlin is housed in the Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Center (); among its collections is a large portion of the Grimms' private library.


title: Joey Lawrence

text: Joseph Lawrence Mignogna Jr. (born April 20, 1976) is an American actor, musician, singer-songwriter, record producer, and game show host. He got his start as a child star in the early 1980s and is best known for his role as Joey Russo in "Blossom" and Joe Longo in "Melissa & Joey". Lawrence also starred in "Gimme a Break!" (1983–1987), and the series "Brotherly Love" with his real-life brothers Matthew and Andrew, and for his film roles in "Summer Rental" (1985) and "Oliver & Company" (1988).


title: Joey Lawrence

text: Lawrence was born in Abington, Pennsylvania and raised in Philadelphia, the son of Donna Lynn ("née" Shaw), a personnel manager and former elementary school teacher and Joseph Lawrence Mignogna Sr., an insurance broker. He is of Italian, English, and Scottish descent. His family's surname was changed to "Lawrence" during his childhood. He has two younger brothers, Matt and Andy, who are also actors.


title: Joey Lawrence

text: He graduated from Abington Friends School in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania in 1994 and later attended the University of Southern California.


title: Joey Lawrence

text: Lawrence's first acting role was in a Cracker Jack commercial. At the age of five, he appeared on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson", where he performed the song "Give My Regards to Broadway".


title: Joey Lawrence

text: After appearing in guest spots on "Diff'rent Strokes" and "Silver Spoons", Lawrence won the role of Joey Donovan on the hit NBC sitcom "Gimme a Break!" in 1983. He continued in that role until the series ended in 1987. 1985 marked Lawrence's theatrical debut with the release of "Summer Rental". Lawrence provided the voice of Oliver, the protagonist in the 1988 Disney film "Oliver & Company" at the age of 12. From 1991 to 1995, at the age of 15, Lawrence co-starred in the hit TV series "Blossom" on NBC, playing Joey Russo.


title: Joey Lawrence

text: Lawrence has also starred in the series "Brotherly Love" (which featured his real life brothers, Matthew and Andrew Lawrence) and "Run of the House" and has guest starred on such programs as "American Dreams" and "". One of Lawrence's film credits is "" (2000).


title: Joey Lawrence

text: In 2006, Lawrence appeared on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars". Paired with professional dancer Edyta Śliwińska, he placed third in the competition.


title: Joey Lawrence

text: In May 2007, he starred in the Broadway hit "Chicago" as Billy Flynn. He next hosted a dance competition show on The Learning Channel, "Master of Dance", which premiered June 9, 2008.


title: Joey Lawrence

text: In 2009, Lawrence starred in the television film "My Fake Fiancé" with Melissa Joan Hart, which premiered on ABC Family to 3.6 million viewers, becoming the most-watched television film of the ratings season, sweeping top rank in its time-period in key demos. In August 2010, Lawrence returned to television in the ABC Family sitcom "Melissa & Joey", again opposite Hart. Hart plays a woman who hires Lawrence as a nanny to help care for her incarcerated sister's kids. Lawrence's character is a former figure in the financial industry whose company came under investigation for wrongdoing and caused his professional life to be put on hold. Lawrence's brothers have guest starred on the show. Matthew Lawrence played Tony Longo in season 1 episode 25 and Andrew Lawrence appeared in season 1 episode 26 as Ryder Scanlon's teacher, Evan McKay. The series was renewed for its fourth season and ended in 2015.


title: Joey Lawrence

text: In 2012, he was contracted to be a Chippendales dancer for a special engagement in June at the Rio All Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. On March 19, 2013, Lawrence began appearing in the ABC reality show "Splash", co-hosting alongside Charissa Thompson.


title: Joey Lawrence

text: In 2022, Lawrence competed in season eight of "The Masked Singer" as "Walrus". He was eliminated on "90s Night" alongside Le'Veon Bell as "Milkshake".


title: Joey Lawrence

text: Lawrence has said that music was always his passion, and at the height of his success began a recording career. Lawrence was 16 when his debut album "Joey Lawrence" was released in February 1993. Produced by Steve Barri, Tony Peluso, Terry Lupton and Ian Prince. Lawrence co-wrote some material, including the international hit single "Nothin' My Love Can't Fix" (#6 Billboard Hot 100 Airplay, No. 10 Billboard Top 40 Mainstream, No. 19 "Billboard" Hot 100, No. 13 United Kingdom, No. 68 Australia). The song was used as the end-title theme from the film "Cop and a Half"; its music video received heavy airplay on MTV and MuchMusic, and Lawrence was invited to perform live on MTV's Spring Break, "The Arsenio Hall Show", and the UK's "Top of the Pops" in 1993.


title: Joey Lawrence

text: In June 2011, he released a single, "Rolled", which was available as a free download for one week on ABC Family's website. In July, Joey released a second single, "Give It To Ya (Acoustic)" via Pledge Music. In 2017 Joey started a band with Matt and Andy called Still 3. They released their debut single "Lose Myself".


title: Joey Lawrence

text: He met his second wife, Chandie Yawn-Nelson, earlier while on vacation in Disney World when the two were teenagers; they wed there in July 2005. Reports had surfaced in March 2018 that Lawrence and Yawn-Nelson had filed for bankruptcy in July 2017. On April 6, 2018, the Chapter 7 bankruptcy case was reportedly settled. Lawrence filed for divorce in July 2020. The couple has two children.


title: Joey Lawrence

text: In August 2021, Lawrence announced his engagement to actress Samantha Cope whom he met on the set of a Lifetime movie directed by his brother Andrew and co-starring his daughter Charleston. On May 1, 2022, Lawrence and Cope were married in California. On September 9, 2022, they announced that they are expecting their first child together.


title: Kirk Cameron

text: Kirk Thomas Cameron (born October 12, 1970) is an American actor and evangelist. He played Mike Seaver on the ABC sitcom "Growing Pains" (1985–1992), a role for which he was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards.


title: Kirk Cameron

text: As a child actor, Cameron made several other television and film appearances through the 1980s and 1990s, including the films "Like Father Like Son" (1987) and "Listen to Me" (1989). In the 2000s, he portrayed Cameron "Buck" Williams in the "Left Behind" film series and Caleb Holt in the drama film "Fireproof" (2008). His 2014 film, "Saving Christmas", was panned by critics and made the IMDb Bottom 100 List within one month of its theatrical release.


title: Kirk Cameron

text: Cameron is an Evangelical Christian who partners with Ray Comfort in the evangelical ministry The Way of the Master and co-founded The Firefly Foundation with his wife, actress Chelsea Noble.


title: Kirk Cameron

text: Cameron was born in Panorama City, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. His parents are Barbara (née Bausmith) and Robert Cameron, a retired schoolteacher. He has three sisters: Bridgette, Melissa, and actress Candace Cameron Bure, who is most notable for her role as D.J. Tanner on the television sitcom "Full House". He went to school on the set of "Growing Pains", as opposed to a "normal" public or private school with many other students. However, he went to some classes during production breaks and graduated with the class of 1988 at Chatsworth High School with honors.


title: Kirk Cameron

text: Cameron began acting at age nine, and his first job was in an advertisement for a breakfast cereal. His first starring role was at age 13, in the television series "Two Marriages". At this age, he appeared in several television shows and films. He became famous in 1985 after being cast as Mike Seaver in the ABC television sitcom "Growing Pains". In the series, Mike would eventually have a girlfriend named Kate MacDonald, played by Chelsea Noble, Cameron's future wife. Cameron subsequently became a teen heartthrob in the late 1980s, while appearing on the covers of several teen magazines, including "Tiger Beat", "Teen Beat", "16" and others. At the time, he was making $50,000 a week. He was also in a 60-second Pepsi commercial during Super Bowl XXIV.


title: Kirk Cameron

text: Cameron also guest-starred in the 1988 "Full House" episode "Just One of the Guys", in which he played the cousin of D.J. Tanner, the role played by Cameron's sister, Candace.


title: Kirk Cameron

text: Cameron went on to star in many films, including 1987's "Like Father Like Son" (a body-switch comedy with Dudley Moore), which was a box office success. His next theatrical film, 1989's "Listen to Me", performed poorly at the box office. When "Growing Pains" ended in 1992, Cameron went on to star in The WB sitcom "Kirk" which premiered in 1995 and ended two years later. In "Kirk", Cameron played Kirk Hartman, a 24-year-old who has to raise his siblings. Cameron and Noble also worked together on "Kirk".


title: Kirk Cameron

text: Cameron mostly left mainstream film and television, though a decade after "Growing Pains" ended, he starred in a television reunion film, "The Growing Pains Movie", in 2000, and another one, "", in 2004. Cameron reunited with the cast of "Growing Pains" for a CNN "Larry King Live" interview which aired on February 7, 2006, in conjunction with the Warner Bros. release of the complete first season of "Growing Pains" on DVD. Aside from this, Cameron has often worked in Christian-themed productions, among them the post-Rapture films "", "", and "", in which he plays Cameron "Buck" Williams. Cameron's wife Noble also starred in the film series, playing Hattie Durham. Cameron has worked with Cloud Ten Pictures, a company which produces Christian-themed films, and has starred in several of their films, including "The Miracle of the Cards".


title: Kirk Cameron

text: He also appeared in the 2008 drama film, "Fireproof", which was produced by Sherwood Pictures. The film was created on a budget of $500,000, with Cameron as the lead actor, portraying Captain Caleb Holt. Though it was a low-budget film, the film grossed $33,415,129 and was a box office success. It was the highest grossing independent film of 2008.


title: Kirk Cameron

text: In 2012, Cameron was the narrator and host of the documentary film "". On its opening day, March 27, 2012, "Monumental" grossed $28,340. The film stayed in theaters until May 20, 2012, grossing a total of $1.23 million.


title: Kirk Cameron

text: In 2013, Cameron announced he would be the host of the film "Unstoppable" slated to premiere September 24, 2013. A trailer for the film was blocked on Facebook, with Cameron speculating that it was due to the film's religious content. Facebook subsequently removed the block, stating it was the result of a mistake by an automated system and a spam site previously registered at the same web address.


title: Kirk Cameron

text: Cameron starred in and produced the 2014 family film "Mercy Rule", in which he plays a father who tries to save his small business from lobbyists, while supporting his son, who dreams of being a pitcher, in Little League Baseball. Cameron's real-life wife plays his wife in the film, which was released direct-to-video and via digital download.


title: Kirk Cameron

text: Also in 2014, Cameron starred in the Christian-themed comedy film "Saving Christmas". The film was panned by critics, winning the 2014 Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Picture and Worst Screenplay. Cameron also won the award for Worst Actor and Worst Screen Combo, which he won with "his ego".


title: Kirk Cameron

text: Cameron starred in "Extraordinary", a 2017 film made by Liberty University students that was the first such film to be released nationally (for one night in September 2017). The film follows the dream of a marathon running Liberty professor whose cross-country trek strains his body and marriage.


title: Kirk Cameron

text: In the 2018 documentary film "Connect", Cameron helps parents with navigating the dangers of technology, including social media, for their children.


title: Kirk Cameron

text: Cameron was an atheist in his early teens. When he was 17, during the height of his career on "Growing Pains", he became a born-again Christian.


title: Kirk Cameron

text: After converting to Protestant Christianity, he began to insist that storylines be edited to remove anything he thought too adult or inappropriate in "Growing Pains".


title: Kirk Cameron

text: After the series was cancelled, Cameron did not maintain contact with his former co-stars, and did not speak to Tracey Gold for eight years. Cameron has stated that this was not due to any animosity on his part toward any of his former cast-members, but an outgrowth of his desire to start a new life away from the entertainment industry, and the life he had been in for the previous seven years.


title: Kirk Cameron

text: Prior to the premiere of "The Growing Pains Movie" in 2000, for which the entire main cast reunited, Cameron described his regrets over how his relationship with his castmates changed after his religious conversion during production of the series, saying, "I definitely kind of made an about-face, going toward another aspect of my life. I shifted my focus from 100% on the show, to 100% on [my new life], and left 0% on the show—and even the friendships that were a part of that show. If I could go back, I think I could make decisions that were less inadvertently hurtful to the cast—like talking and explaining to them why I just wanted to have my family at my wedding."


title: Kirk Cameron

text: Cameron partnered with fellow evangelist Ray Comfort to teach evangelism methods through the ministry they founded, The Way of the Master, and the television show of the same name that Cameron co-hosts. It won the National Religious Broadcasters' Best Program Award for two consecutive years. It also formerly featured a radio show known as "The Way of the Master Radio" with talk show host Todd Friel. The radio show was later canceled, and replaced with "Wretched Radio", hosted by Friel. Cameron, along with his wife, founded "The Firefly Foundation", which runs "Camp Firefly", a summer camp that gives terminally ill children and their families a free week's vacation.


title: Kirk Cameron

text: Cameron and Comfort participated in a televised debate with atheists Brian Sapient and Kelly O'Conner of the Rational Response Squad, at Calvary Baptist Church, in Manhattan, on May 5, 2007. It was moderated by ABC's Martin Bashir and parts of it were aired on "Nightline". At issue was the existence of God, which Comfort stated he could prove scientifically, without relying on faith or the Bible. The audience was composed of both theists and atheists. Points of discussion included atheism and evolution. While Sapient contended during his arguments that Comfort violated the rules by talking about the Ten Commandments, Cameron later stated on "The Way of the Master" radio show that the rules of the debate did not say that the Bible could never be referenced, but rather that Comfort simply had to come up with one argument that did not reference the Bible or faith. During the debate, Cameron referred to the absence of a crocoduck to dispute the theory of evolution, which then became a meme to highlight misconceptions about the theory.


title: Kirk Cameron

text: In November 2009, Cameron and others distributed free copies of an altered version of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" on college campuses in the United States. The book consisted of Darwin's text with chapters of the book removed, and with an added introduction by Ray Comfort reiterating common creationist assertions about Darwin and evolution. The book was criticized by scientists and Darwin biographers who criticized the omission of key chapters of the book, and who stated that its introduction contains misinformation about Darwin, and long-refuted creationist arguments about the science of evolution, such as the linking of Nazi racial theories to Darwinist ideas. Comfort later said that the four chapters were chosen at random to be omitted in order to make the book small enough to be affordable as a giveaway, with the absent chapters available for download, but that the missing chapters were included in the second edition, which had a smaller text size that made printing the entire book as a giveaway affordable. The second edition still lacks Darwin's preface and glossary of terms. The National Center for Science Education arranged a campaign to distribute an analysis of the Comfort introduction and a banana bookmark at colleges across the U.S., a reference to Comfort's presentation of the banana as evidence for the existence of God.


title: Kirk Cameron

text: On March 2, 2012, Cameron stated on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight", when asked about homosexuality, that it is "unnatural, it's detrimental and ultimately destructive to so many of the foundations of civilization". Cameron's comments received criticism from GLAAD, and provoked a backlash from gay rights activists and Hollywood celebrities, including Roseanne Barr, Craig Ferguson, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, as well as "Growing Pains" co-stars Tracey Gold and Alan Thicke. Piers Morgan stated that Cameron was brave for expressing his opinion, "however antiquated his beliefs may be". He, however, received "thousands of emails and comments" from supporters. Rosie O'Donnell invited him to discuss his views on her talk show, but he declined and suggested a private dinner to discuss this topic personally.


title: Kirk Cameron

text: On April 11, 2012, Cameron was honored by Indiana Wesleyan University, and inducted into their Society of World Changers during a ceremony in which he spoke on IWU's campus.


title: Kirk Cameron

text: Cameron is an outspoken social conservative. He supported Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, saying, "There are clearly enemies of Christian principles and Christianity [and] I don't think Trump is one of them."


title: Kirk Cameron

text: In 2020, Cameron questioned the origins of COVID-19, saying, "Something doesn't seem quite right about all of this. There's something else going on [more than] just there's a really bad virus out there. I don't know who all the players are and how all of that works." He also opposed public health restrictions implemented to slow the spread of COVID-19 pandemic, saying, "Socialism and communism are knocking on our doors...disguised in the costumes of public health and social justice."


title: Kirk Cameron

text: As record breaking levels of COVID-19 infections in late December 2020 overwhelmed hospitals, Cameron organized at least two gatherings of dozens of people for maskless Christmas caroling protests against enhanced restrictions to combat the second wave of the pandemic. The events were held outside, in venues such as a mall parking lot in Ventura County, part of the Southern California Region, a group of counties under a state-mandated stay-home order triggered by low ICU capacity. Barbara Ferrer, Los Angeles County Public Health Director, denounced Cameron's decision to hold large gatherings as "very irresponsible and very dangerous."


title: Kirk Cameron

text: Cameron also held an outdoor maskless New Year's Eve song/prayer event in Malibu, despite a request by state senator Henry Stern that he stay home.


title: Kirk Cameron

text: Cameron and his wife, fellow "Growing Pains" star Chelsea Noble, were married on July 21, 1991. They have six children, four of whom were adopted: Jack (born 1996), Isabella (born 1997), Anna (born 1998), and Luke (born 2000); and two biological: Olivia (born 2001) and James (born 2003).


title: Hieronymus Bosch

text: Hieronymus Bosch (, ; born Jheronimus van Aken ;  – 9 August 1516) was a Dutch/Netherlandish painter from Brabant. He is one of the most notable representatives of the Early Netherlandish painting school. His work, generally oil on oak wood, mainly contains fantastic illustrations of religious concepts and narratives. Within his lifetime his work was collected in the Netherlands, Austria, and Spain, and widely copied, especially his macabre and nightmarish depictions of hell.


title: Hieronymus Bosch

text: Little is known of Bosch's life, though there are some records. He spent most of it in the town of 's-Hertogenbosch, where he was born in his grandfather's house. The roots of his forefathers are in Nijmegen and Aachen (which is visible in his surname: Van Aken). His pessimistic fantastical style cast a wide influence on northern art of the 16th century, with Pieter Bruegel the Elder being his best-known follower. Today, Bosch is seen as a hugely individualistic painter with deep insight into humanity's desires and deepest fears. Attribution has been especially difficult; today only about 25 paintings are confidently given to his hand along with eight drawings. About another half-dozen paintings are confidently attributed to his workshop. His most acclaimed works consist of a few triptych altarpieces, including "The Garden of Earthly Delights".


title: Hieronymus Bosch

text: Hieronymus Bosch was born Jheronimus (or Joen, respectively the Latin and Middle Dutch form of the name "Jerome") van Aken (meaning "from Aachen"). He signed a number of his paintings as "Jheronimus Bosch". His surname derives from his birthplace, ('Duke's forest'), which is commonly called "Den Bosch" ('the forest').


title: Hieronymus Bosch

text: Little is known of Bosch's life or training. He left behind no letters or diaries, and what has been identified has been taken from brief references to him in the municipal records of , and in the account books of the local order of the Illustrious Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady. Nothing is known of his personality or his thoughts on the meaning of his art. Bosch's date of birth has not been determined with certainty. It is estimated at on the basis of a hand-drawn portrait (which may be a self-portrait) made shortly before his death in 1516. The drawing shows the artist at an advanced age, probably in his late sixties.


title: Hieronymus Bosch

text: Bosch lived all his life in and near , which was located in the Duchy of Brabant. His grandfather Jan van Aken (died 1454) was a painter and is first mentioned in the records in 1430. Jan had five sons, four of whom were also painters. Bosch's father, Anthonius van Aken (died 1478), acted as artistic adviser to the Illustrious Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady. It is generally assumed that either Bosch's father or one of his uncles taught the artist to paint, but none of their works survive. Bosch first appears in the municipal record on 5 April 1474, when he is named along with two brothers and a sister.


title: Hieronymus Bosch

text: 's-Hertogenbosch was a flourishing city in 15th-century Brabant, in the south of the present-day Netherlands, at the time part of the Burgundian Netherlands, and during its lifetime passing through marriage to the Habsburgs. In 1463, four thousand houses in the town were destroyed by a catastrophic fire, which the then (approximately) thirteen-year-old Bosch presumably witnessed. He became a popular painter in his lifetime and often received commissions from abroad. In 1486/7 he joined the highly respected Brotherhood of Our Lady, a devotional confraternity of some forty influential citizens of , and seven thousand 'outer-members' from around Europe.


title: Hieronymus Bosch

text: Sometime between 1479 and 1481, Bosch married Aleyt Goyaerts van den Meerveen, who was a few years his senior. The couple moved to the nearby town of Oirschot, where his wife had inherited a house and land from her wealthy family. An entry in the accounts of the Brotherhood of Our Lady records Bosch's death in 1516. A funeral mass served in his memory was held in the church of Saint John on 9 August of that year.


title: Hieronymus Bosch

text: Bosch produced at least sixteen triptychs: of them, eight survive fully intact with another five surviving in fragments. Bosch's works are generally organised into three periods of his life dealing with the early works (c. 1470–1485), the middle period (c. 1485–1500), and the late period (c. 1500 until his death). According to Stefan Fischer, thirteen of Bosch's surviving paintings were completed in the late period, with seven attributed to his middle period. Bosch's early period is studied in terms of his workshop activity and possibly some of his drawings. Indeed, he taught pupils in the workshop, who were influenced by him. The recent dendrochronological investigation of the oak panels by the scientists at the Bosch Research and Conservation Project led to a more precise dating of the majority of Bosch's paintings.


title: Hieronymus Bosch

text: Bosch sometimes painted in a comparatively sketchy manner, contrasting with the traditional Flemish style of painting in which the smooth surface—achieved by the application of multiple transparent glazes—conceals the brushwork. Bosch's paintings with their rough surfaces, so called "impasto" painting, differed from the tradition of the great Netherlandish painters of the end of the 15th, and beginning of the 16th centuries, who wished to hide the work done and so suggest their paintings as more nearly divine creations.


title: Hieronymus Bosch

text: Bosch did not date his paintings, but—unusual for the time—he seems to have signed several of them, although some signatures purporting to be his are certainly not. About twenty-five paintings remain today that can be attributed to him. In the late 16th century, Philip II of Spain acquired many of Bosch's paintings. As a result, the Prado Museum in Madrid now owns "The Adoration of the Magi", "The Garden of Earthly Delights", the tabletop painting of "The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things" and "The Haywain Triptych".


title: Hieronymus Bosch

text: Bosch painted his works mostly on oak panels using oil as a medium. Bosch's palette was rather limited and contained the usual pigments of his time. He mostly used azurite for blue skies and distant landscapes, green copper-based glazes and paints consisting of malachite or verdigris for foliage and foreground landscapes, and lead-tin-yellow, ochres and red lake (carmine or madder lake) for his figures.


title: Hieronymus Bosch

text: Bosch's most famous triptych is "The Garden of Earthly Delights" (c. 1495–1505) whose outer panels are intended to bracket the main central panel between the Garden of Eden depicted on the left panel and the Last Judgment depicted on the right panel. It is attributed by Fischer as a transition painting rendered by Bosch from between his middle period and his late period. In the left hand panel God presents Eve to Adam; innovatively God is given a youthful appearance. The figures are set in a landscape populated by exotic animals and unusual semi-organic hut-shaped forms. The central panel is a broad panorama teeming with nude figures engaged in innocent, self-absorbed joy, as well as fantastical compound animals, oversized fruit, and hybrid stone formations.


title: Hieronymus Bosch

text: The right panel presents a hellscape; a world in which humankind has succumbed to the temptations of evil and is reaping eternal damnation. Set at night, the panel features cold colours, tortured figures and frozen waterways. The nakedness of the human figures has lost any eroticism suggested in the central panel, as large explosions in the background throw light through the city gate and spill onto the water in the panel's midground.


title: Hieronymus Bosch

text: In the 20th century, when changing artistic tastes made artists like Bosch more palatable to the European imagination, it was sometimes argued that Bosch's art was inspired by heretical points of view (e.g., the ideas of the Cathars and/or putative Adamites or Brethren of the Free Spirit) as well as by obscure hermetic practices. Again, since Erasmus had been educated at one of the houses of the Brethren of the Common Life in 's-Hertogenbosch, and the town was religiously progressive, some writers have found it unsurprising that strong parallels exist between the caustic writing of Erasmus and the often bold painting of Bosch.


title: Hieronymus Bosch

text: Others, following a strain of Bosch-interpretation datable already to the 16th century, continued to think his work was created merely to titillate and amuse, much like the "grotteschi" of the Italian Renaissance. While the art of the older masters was based in the physical world of everyday experience, Bosch confronts his viewer with, in the words of the art historian Walter Gibson, "a world of dreams [and] nightmares in which forms seem to flicker and change before our eyes". In one of the first known accounts of Bosch's paintings, in 1560 the Spaniard Felipe de Guevara wrote that Bosch was regarded merely as "the inventor of monsters and chimeras". In the early 17th century, the artist-biographer Karel van Mander described Bosch's work as comprising "wondrous and strange fantasies"; however, he concluded that the paintings are "often less pleasant than gruesome to look at".


title: Hieronymus Bosch

text: In recent decades, scholars have come to view Bosch's vision as less fantastic, and accepted that his art reflects the orthodox religious belief systems of his age. His depictions of sinful humanity and his conceptions of Heaven and Hell are now seen as consistent with those of late medieval didactic literature and sermons. Most writers attach a more profound significance to his paintings than had previously been supposed, and attempt to interpret them in terms of a late medieval morality. It is generally accepted that Bosch's art was created to teach specific moral and spiritual truths in the manner of other Northern Renaissance figures, such as the poet Robert Henryson, and that the images rendered have precise and premeditated significance. According to Dirk Bax, Bosch's paintings often represent visual translations of verbal metaphors and puns drawn from both biblical and folkloric sources. However, the conflict of interpretations that his works still elicit raises profound questions about the nature of "ambiguity" in art of his period.


title: Hieronymus Bosch

text: Latterly art historians have added a further dimension to the subject of ambiguity in Bosch's work, emphasising ironic tendencies, for example in "The Garden of Earthly Delights", both in the central panel (delights), and the right panel (hell). They theorise that the irony offers the option of detachment, both from the real world and from the painted fantasy world, thus appealing to both conservative and progressive viewers. According to Joseph Koerner, some of the cryptic qualities of the artist's work are due to his special focus on social, political, and spiritual enemies, whose symbolism is, by nature, obscure because it is intended to conceal or to harm.


title: Hieronymus Bosch

text: A 2012 study on Bosch's paintings alleges that they actually conceal a strong nationalist consciousness, censuring the foreign imperial government of the Burgundian Netherlands, especially Maximilian Habsburg. By systematically superimposing images and concepts, the study asserts that Bosch also made his expiatory self-punishment, for he was accepting well-paid commissions from the Habsburgs and their deputies, and therefore betraying the memory of Charles the Bold.


title: Hieronymus Bosch

text: The exact number of Bosch's surviving works has been a subject of considerable debate. His signature can be seen on only seven of his surviving paintings, and there is uncertainty whether all the paintings once ascribed to him were actually from his hand. It is known that from the early 16th century onwards numerous copies and variations of his paintings began to circulate. In addition, his style was highly influential, and was widely imitated by his numerous followers.


title: Hieronymus Bosch

text: Over the years, scholars have attributed to him fewer and fewer of the works once thought to be his. This is partly a result of technological advances such as infrared reflectography, which enable researchers to examine a painting's underdrawing. Art historians of the early and mid-20th century, such as Tolnay and Baldass, identified between thirty and fifty paintings that they believed to be by Bosch's hand. A later monograph by Gerd Unverfehrt (1980) attributed twenty-five paintings and 14 drawings to him.


title: Hieronymus Bosch

text: In early 2016, "The Temptation of St. Anthony", a small panel in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, long attributed to the workshop of Hieronymus Bosch, was credited to the painter himself after intensive forensic study by the Bosch Research and Conservation Project. The BRCP has also questioned whether two well-known paintings traditionally accepted to be by Bosch, "The Seven Deadly Sins" in the Prado and "Christ Carrying the Cross" in the Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent should instead be credited to the artist's workshop rather than to the painter's own hand.


title: Hummingbird

text: Hummingbirds are birds native to the Americas and comprise the biological family Trochilidae. With about 361 species and 113 genera, they occur from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, but the vast majority of the species are found in the tropics around the equator. They are small birds, with most species measuring in length. The smallest extant hummingbird species is the bee hummingbird, which weighs less than . The largest hummingbird species is the giant hummingbird, weighing . They are specialized for feeding on flower nectar, but all species also consume flying insects or spiders.


title: Hummingbird

text: Hummingbirds split from their sister group, the swifts and treeswifts, around 42 million years ago. The common ancestor of extant hummingbirds is estimated to have lived 22 million years ago in South America. They are known as hummingbirds because of the humming sound created by their beating wings, which flap at high frequencies audible to humans. They hover in mid-air at rapid wing-flapping rates, which vary from around 12 beats per second in the largest species to around 80 per second in small hummingbirds. Of those species that have been measured during flying in wind tunnels, their top speeds exceed . During courtship, some male species dive from of height above a female at speeds around .


title: Hummingbird

text: Hummingbirds have the highest mass-specific metabolic rate of any homeothermic animal. To conserve energy when food is scarce and at night when not foraging, they can enter torpor, a state similar to hibernation, and slow their metabolic rate to 1/15 of its normal rate.


title: Hummingbird

text: The family Trochilidae was introduced in 1825 by Irish zoologist Nicholas Aylward Vigors with "Trochilus" as the type genus. Molecular phylogenetic studies of the hummingbirds have shown that the family is composed of nine major clades. When Edward Dickinson and James Van Remsen Jr. updated the "Howard and Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World" for the 4th edition in 2013, they divided the hummingbirds into six subfamilies.


title: Hummingbird

text: Molecular phylogenetic studies determined the relationships between the major groups of hummingbirds. In the cladogram below, the English names are those introduced in 1997. The Latin names are those introduced in 2013.


title: Hummingbird

text: In traditional taxonomy, hummingbirds are placed in the order Apodiformes, which also contains the swifts, but some taxonomists have separated them into their own order, the Trochiliformes. Hummingbirds' wing bones are hollow and fragile, making fossilization difficult and leaving their evolutionary history poorly documented. Though scientists theorize that hummingbirds originated in South America, where species diversity is greatest, possible ancestors of extant hummingbirds may have lived in parts of Europe and what is southern Russia today.


title: Hummingbird

text: Around 360 hummingbirds have been described. They have been traditionally divided into two subfamilies: the hermits (subfamily Phaethornithinae) and the typical hummingbirds (subfamily Trochilinae, all the others). Molecular phylogenetic studies have shown, though, that the hermits are sister to the topazes, making the former definition of the Trochilinae not monophyletic. The hummingbirds form nine major clades: the topazes and jacobins, the hermits, the mangoes, the coquettes, the brilliants, the giant hummingbird ("Patagona gigas"), the mountaingems, the bees, and the emeralds. The topazes and jacobins combined have the oldest split with the rest of the hummingbirds. The hummingbird family has the third-greatest number of species of any bird family (after the tyrant flycatchers and the tanagers).


title: Hummingbird

text: Fossil hummingbirds are known from the Pleistocene of Brazil and the Bahamas, but neither has yet been scientifically described, and fossils and subfossils of a few extant species are known. Until recently, older fossils had not been securely identifiable as those of hummingbirds.


title: Hummingbird

text: In 2004, Gerald Mayr identified two 30-million-year-old hummingbird fossils. The fossils of this primitive hummingbird species, named "Eurotrochilus inexpectatus" ("unexpected European hummingbird"), had been sitting in a museum drawer in Stuttgart; they had been unearthed in a clay pit at Wiesloch–Frauenweiler, south of Heidelberg, Germany, and, because hummingbirds were assumed to have never occurred outside the Americas, were not recognized to be hummingbirds until Mayr took a closer look at them.


title: Hummingbird

text: Fossils of birds not clearly assignable to either hummingbirds or a related extinct family, the Jungornithidae, have been found at the Messel pit and in the Caucasus, dating from 35 to 40 million years ago; this indicates that the split between these two lineages indeed occurred around that time. The areas where these early fossils have been found had a climate quite similar to that of the northern Caribbean or southernmost China during that time. The biggest remaining mystery at present is what happened to hummingbirds in the roughly 25 million years between the primitive "Eurotrochilus" and the modern fossils. The astounding morphological adaptations, the decrease in size, and the dispersal to the Americas and extinction in Eurasia all occurred during this timespan. DNA–DNA hybridization results suggest that the main radiation of South American hummingbirds took place at least partly in the Miocene, some 12 to 13 million years ago, during the uplifting of the northern Andes.


title: Hummingbird

text: In 2013, a 50-million-year-old bird fossil unearthed in Wyoming was found to be a predecessor to both hummingbirds and swifts before the groups diverged.


title: Hummingbird

text: Hummingbirds are thought to have split from other members of Apodiformes, the insectivorous swifts (family Apodidae) and treeswifts (family Hemiprocnidae), about 42 million years ago, probably in Eurasia. Despite their current New World distribution, the earliest known species of hummingbird are known from the early Oligocene (Rupelian ~34–28 million years ago) of Europe, belonging to the genus "Eurotrochilus," which is very similar in its morphology to modern hummingbirds. A phylogenetic tree unequivocally indicates that modern hummingbirds originated in South America, with the last common ancestor of all living hummingbirds living around 22 million years ago.


title: Hummingbird

text: A map of the hummingbird family treereconstructed from analysis of 284 of the world's 338 known speciesshows rapid diversification from 22 million years ago. Hummingbirds fall into nine main clades – the topazes, hermits, mangoes, brilliants, coquettes, the giant hummingbird, mountaingems, bees, and emeralds – defining their relationship to nectar-bearing flowering plants and the birds' continued spread into new geographic areas.


title: Hummingbird

text: While all hummingbirds depend on flower nectar to fuel their high metabolisms and hovering flight, coordinated changes in flower and bill shape stimulated the formation of new species of hummingbirds and plants. Due to this exceptional evolutionary pattern, as many as 140 hummingbird species can coexist in a specific region, such as the Andes range.


title: Hummingbird

text: The hummingbird evolutionary tree shows one key evolutionary factor appears to have been an altered taste receptor that enabled hummingbirds to seek nectar.


title: Hummingbird

text: The Andes Mountains appear to be a particularly rich environment for hummingbird evolution because diversification occurred simultaneously with mountain uplift over the past 10 million years. Hummingbirds remain in dynamic diversification inhabiting ecological regions across South America, North America, and the Caribbean, indicating an enlarging evolutionary radiation.


title: Hummingbird

text: Within the same geographic region, hummingbird clades co-evolved with nectar-bearing plant clades, affecting mechanisms of pollination. The same is true for the sword-billed hummingbird ("Ensifera ensifera"), one of the morphologically most extreme species, and one of its main food plant clades ("Passiflora" section "Tacsonia").


title: Hummingbird

text: Hummingbirds exhibit sexual size dimorphism according to Rensch's rule, in which males are smaller than females in small-bodied species, and males are larger than females in large-bodied species. The extent of this sexual size difference varies among clades of hummingbirds. For example, the Mellisugini clade (bees) exhibits a large size dimorphism, with females being larger than males. Conversely, the Lesbiini clade (coquettes) displays very little size dimorphism; males and females are similar in size.


title: Hummingbird

text: Sexual dimorphisms in bill size and shape are also present between male and female hummingbirds, where in many clades, females have longer, more curved bills favored for accessing nectar from tall flowers. For males and females of the same size, females tend to have larger bills.


title: Hummingbird

text: Sexual size and bill differences likely evolved due to constraints imposed by courtship, because mating displays of male hummingbirds require complex aerial maneuvers. Males tend to be smaller than females, allowing conservation of energy to forage competitively and participate more frequently in courtship. Thus, sexual selection favors smaller male hummingbirds.


title: Hummingbird

text: Female hummingbirds tend to be larger, requiring more energy, with longer beaks that allow for more effective reach into crevices of tall flowers for nectar. Thus, females are better at foraging, acquiring flower nectar, and supporting the energy demands of their larger body size. Directional selection thus favors the larger hummingbirds in terms of acquiring food.


title: Hummingbird

text: Another evolutionary cause of this sexual bill dimorphism is that the selective forces from competition for nectar between the sexes of each species drives sexual dimorphism. Depending on which sex holds territory in the species, the other sex having a longer bill and being able to feed on a wide variety of flowers is advantageous, decreasing intraspecific competition. For example, in species of hummingbirds where males have longer bills, males do not hold a specific territory and have a lek mating system. In species where males have shorter bills than females, males defend their resources, so females benefit from a longer bill to feed from a broader range of flowers.


title: Hummingbird

text: Hummingbirds are specialized nectarivores and are tied to the ornithophilous flowers upon which they feed. This coevolution implies that morphological traits of hummingbirds, such as bill length, bill curvature, and body mass are correlated with morphological traits of plants, for example corolla length, curvature, and volume. Some species, especially those with unusual bill shapes, such as the sword-billed hummingbird and the sicklebills, are co-evolved with a small number of flower species. Even in the most specialized hummingbird–plant mutualisms, though, the number of food plant lineages of the individual hummingbird species increases with time. The bee hummingbird ("Mellisuga helenae") – the world's smallest bird – evolved to dwarfism likely because it had to compete with long-billed hummingbirds having an advantage for nectar foraging from specialized flowers, consequently leading the bee hummingbird to more successfully compete for flower foraging against insects.


title: Hummingbird

text: Many plants pollinated by hummingbirds produce flowers in shades of red, orange, and bright pink, though the birds take nectar from flowers of other colors as well. Hummingbirds can see wavelengths into the near-ultraviolet, but hummingbird-pollinated flowers do not reflect these wavelengths as many insect-pollinated flowers do. This narrow color spectrum may render hummingbird-pollinated flowers relatively inconspicuous to most insects, thereby reducing nectar robbing. Hummingbird-pollinated flowers also produce relatively weak nectar (averaging 25% sugars w/w) containing a high proportion of sucrose, whereas insect-pollinated flowers typically produce more concentrated nectars dominated by fructose and glucose.


title: Hummingbird

text: Hummingbirds and the plants they visit for nectar have a tight co-evolutionary association, generally called a plant–bird mutualistic network. These birds show high specialization and modularity, especially in communities with high species richness. These associations are also observed when closely related hummingbirds, for example two species of the same genus, visit distinct sets of flowering species.


title: Hummingbird

text: Upon maturity, males of a particular species, "Phaethornis longirostris," the long-billed hermit, appear to be evolving a dagger-like weapon on the beak tip as a secondary sexual trait to defend mating areas.


title: Hummingbird

text: Hummingbirds are named for the prominent humming sound their wingbeats make while flying and hovering to feed or interact with other hummingbirds. Humming serves communication purposes by alerting other birds of the arrival of a fellow forager or potential mate. The humming sound derives from aerodynamic forces generated by both the downstrokes and upstrokes of the rapid wingbeats, causing oscillations and harmonics that evoke an acoustic quality likened to that of a musical instrument. The humming sound of hummingbirds is unique among flying animals, compared to the whine of mosquitoes, buzz of bees, and "whoosh" of larger birds.


title: Hummingbird

text: The wingbeats causing the hum of hummingbirds during hovering are achieved by elastic recoil of wing strokes produced by the main flight muscles: the pectoralis major (the main downstroke muscle) and supracoracoideus (the main upstroke muscle).


title: Hummingbird

text: The highest recorded wingbeats for wild hummingbirds during hovering is 88 per second, as measured for the purple-throated woodstar ("Calliphlox mitchellii") weighing 3.2 g. The number of beats per second increases above "normal" while hovering during courtship displays (up to 90 per second for the calliope hummingbird, "Selasphorus calliope"), a wingbeat rate 40% higher than its typical hovering rate.


title: Hummingbird

text: During turbulent airflow conditions created experimentally in a wind tunnel, hummingbirds exhibit stable head positions and orientation when they hover at a feeder. When wind gusts from the side, hummingbirds compensate by increasing wing-stroke amplitude and stroke plane angle and by varying these parameters asymmetrically between the wings and from one stroke to the next. They also vary the orientation and enlarge the collective surface area of their tail feathers into the shape of a fan. While hovering, the visual system of a hummingbird is able to separate apparent motion caused by the movement of the hummingbird itself from motions caused by external sources, such as an approaching predator. In natural settings full of highly complex background motion, hummingbirds are able to precisely hover in place by rapid coordination of vision with body position.


title: Hummingbird

text: Although hummingbird eyes are small in diameter (5–6 mm), they are accommodated in the skull by reduced skull ossification, and occupy a relatively larger proportion of the skull compared to other birds and animals. Further, hummingbird eyes have relatively large corneas, which comprise about 50% of the total transverse eye diameter, combined with an extraordinary density of retinal ganglion cells responsible for visual processing, containing some 45,000 neurons per mm. The enlarged cornea relative to total eye diameter serves to increase the amount of light perception by the eye when the pupil is dilated maximally, enabling nocturnal flight.


title: Hummingbird

text: During evolution, hummingbirds adapted to the navigational needs of visual processing while in rapid flight or hovering by development of the exceptionally dense array of retinal neurons, allowing for increased spatial resolution in the lateral and frontal visual fields. Morphological studies of the hummingbird brain showed that neuronal hypertrophy relatively the largest in any bird exists in a region called the pretectal nucleus lentiformis mesencephali (called the "nucleus of the optic tract" in mammals) responsible for refining dynamic visual processing while hovering and during rapid flight.


title: Hummingbird

text: The enlargement of the brain region responsible for visual processing indicates an enhanced ability for perception and processing of fast-moving visual stimuli which hummingbirds encounter during rapid forward flight, insect foraging, competitive interactions, and high-speed courtship. A study of broad-tailed hummingbirds indicated that hummingbirds have a fourth color-sensitive visual cone (humans have three) that detects ultraviolet light and enables discrimination of non-spectral colors, possibly having a role in courtship displays, territorial defense, and predator evasion. The fourth color cone would extend the range of visible colors for hummingbirds to perceive ultraviolet light and color combinations of feathers and gorgets, colorful plants, and other objects in their environment, enabling detection of as many as five non-spectral colors, including purple, ultraviolet-red, ultraviolet-green, ultraviolet-yellow, and ultraviolet-purple.


title: Hummingbird

text: Hummingbirds are highly sensitive to stimuli in their visual fields, responding to even minimal motion in any direction by reorienting themselves in midflight. Their visual sensitivity allows them to precisely hover in place while in complex and dynamic natural environments, functions enabled by the lentiform nucleus which is tuned to fast-pattern velocities, enabling highly-tuned control and collision avoidance during forward flight.


title: Hummingbird

text: With the exception of insects, hummingbirds while in flight have the highest metabolism of all animals – a necessity to support the rapid beating of their wings during hovering and fast forward flight. Their heart rate can reach as high as 1,260 beats per minute (bpm), a rate once measured in a blue-throated hummingbird, with a breathing rate of 250 bpm, even at rest. During flight, oxygen consumption per gram of muscle tissue in a hummingbird is about 10 times higher than that measured in elite human athletes.


title: Hummingbird

text: Hummingbirds are rare among vertebrates in their ability to rapidly make use of ingested sugars to fuel energetically expensive hovering flight, powering up to 100% of their metabolic needs with the sugars they drink (in comparison, human athletes maximize around 30%). Hummingbirds can use newly ingested sugars to fuel hovering flight within 30–45 minutes of consumption. These data suggest that hummingbirds are able to oxidize sugar in flight muscles at rates high enough to satisfy their extreme metabolic demands. A 2017 review indicated that hummingbirds have in their flight muscles a mechanism for "direct oxidation" of sugars into maximal ATP yield to support their high metabolic rate for hovering, foraging at altitude, and migrating.


title: Hummingbird

text: By relying on newly ingested sugars to fuel flight, hummingbirds can reserve their limited fat stores to sustain their overnight fasting or to power migratory flights. Studies of hummingbird metabolism address how a migrating ruby-throated hummingbird can cross of the Gulf of Mexico on a nonstop flight. This hummingbird, like other long-distance migrating birds, stores fat as a fuel reserve augmenting its weight by as much as 100%, then enabling metabolic fuel for flying over open water.


title: Hummingbird

text: Dozens of hummingbird species live year-round in tropical mountain habitats at high altitudes, such as in the Andes over ranges of to where the oxygen content of air is reduced, a condition of hypoxic challenge for the high metabolic demands of hummingbirds. In Andean hummingbirds living at high elevations, researchers found that the oxygen-carrying protein in blood hemoglobin had increased oxygen-binding affinity, and that this adaptive effect likely resulted from evolutionary mutations within the hemoglobin molecule via specific amino acid changes due to natural selection.


title: Hummingbird

text: The high metabolic rate of hummingbirds – especially during rapid forward flight and hovering – produces increased body heat that requires specialized mechanisms of thermoregulation for heat dissipation, which becomes an even greater challenge in hot, humid climates. Hummingbirds dissipate heat partially by evaporation through exhaled air, and from body structures with thin or no feather covering, such as around the eyes, shoulders, under the wings (patagia), and feet.


title: Hummingbird

text: While hovering, hummingbirds do not benefit from the heat loss by air convection during forward flight, except for air movement generated by their rapid wing-beat, possibly aiding convective heat loss from the extended feet. Smaller hummingbird species, such as the calliope, appear to adapt their relatively higher surface-to-volume ratio to improve convective cooling from air movement by the wings. When air temperatures rise above , thermal gradients driving heat passively by convective dissipation from around the eyes, shoulders, and feet are reduced or eliminated, requiring heat dissipation mainly by evaporation and exhalation. In cold climates, hummingbirds retract their feet into breast feathers to eliminate skin exposure and minimize heat dissipation.


title: Hummingbird

text: The dynamic range of metabolic rates in hummingbirds requires a parallel dynamic range in kidney function. During a day of nectar consumption with a corresponding high water intake that may total five times the body weight per day, hummingbird kidneys process water via glomerular filtration rates (GFR) in amounts proportional to water consumption, thereby avoiding overhydration. During brief periods of water deprivation, however, such as in nighttime torpor, GFR drops to zero, preserving body water.


title: Hummingbird

text: Hummingbird kidneys also have a unique ability to control the levels of electrolytes after consuming nectars with high amounts of sodium and chloride or none, indicating that kidney and glomerular structures must be highly specialized for variations in nectar mineral quality. Morphological studies on Anna's hummingbird kidneys showed adaptations of high capillary density in close proximity to nephrons, allowing for precise regulation of water and electrolytes.


title: Hummingbird

text: Consisting of chirps, squeaks, whistles and buzzes, hummingbird songs originate from at least seven specialized nuclei in the forebrain. A genetic expression study showed that these nuclei enable vocal learning (ability to acquire vocalizations through imitation), a rare trait known to occur in only two other groups of birds (parrots and songbirds) and a few groups of mammals (including humans, whales and dolphins, and bats). Within the past 66 million years, only hummingbirds, parrots, and songbirds out of 23 bird orders may have independently evolved seven similar forebrain structures for singing and vocal learning, indicating that evolution of these structures is under strong epigenetic constraints possibly derived from a common ancestor.


title: Hummingbird

text: The blue-throated hummingbird's song differs from typical oscine songs in its wide frequency range, extending from 1.8 kHz to about 30 kHz. It also produces ultrasonic vocalizations which do not function in communication. As blue-throated hummingbirds often alternate singing with catching small flying insects, it is possible the ultrasonic clicks produced during singing disrupt insect flight patterns, making insects more vulnerable to predation.


title: Hummingbird

text: The avian vocal organ, the syrinx, plays an important role in understanding hummingbird song production. What makes the hummingbird's syrinx different from that of other birds in the Apodiformes order is the presence of internal muscle structure, accessory cartilages, and a large tympanum that serves as an attachment point for external muscles, all of which are adaptations thought to be responsible for the hummingbird's increased ability in pitch control and large frequency range.


title: Hummingbird

text: The metabolism of hummingbirds can slow at night or at any time when food is not readily available; the birds enter a hibernatory, deep-sleep state (known as torpor) to prevent energy reserves from falling to a critical level. One study of broad-tailed hummingbirds found that body weight decreased linearly throughout torpor at a rate of 0.04 g per hour.


title: Hummingbird

text: During nighttime torpor, body temperature in a Caribbean hummingbird was shown to fall from 40 to 18 °C, with heart and breathing rates both slowed dramatically (heart rate of roughly 50 to 180 bpm from its daytime rate of higher than 1000 bpm). Recordings from a "Metallura phoebe" hummingbird in noctural torpor at around in the Andes mountains showed that body temperature fell to 3.3 °C (38 °F), the lowest known level for a bird or non-hibernating mammal. During cold nights at altitude, hummingbirds were in torpor for 2-13 hours depending on species, with cooling occurring at the rate of 0.6 °C per minute and rewarming at 1-1.5 °C per minute. High-altitude Andean hummingbirds also lost body weight in negative proportion to how long the birds were in torpor, losing about 6% of weight each night.


title: Hummingbird

text: During torpor, to prevent dehydration, the kidney function declines, preserving needed compounds, such as glucose, water, and nutrients. The circulating hormone, corticosterone, is one signal that arouses a hummingbird from torpor.


title: Hummingbird

text: Use and duration of torpor vary among hummingbird species and are affected by whether a dominant bird defends territory, with nonterritorial subordinate birds having longer periods of torpor. A hummingbird with a higher fat percentage will be less likely to enter a state of torpor compared to one with less fat, as a bird can use the energy from its fat stores. Torpor in hummingbirds appears to be unrelated to nighttime temperature, as it occurs across a wide temperature range, with energy savings of such deep sleep being more related to the photoperiod and duration of torpor.


title: Hummingbird

text: Hummingbirds have unusually long lifespans for organisms with such rapid metabolisms. Though many die during their first year of life, especially in the vulnerable period between hatching and fledging, those that survive may occasionally live a decade or more. Among the better-known North American species, the typical lifespan is probably 3 to 5 years. For comparison, the smaller shrews, among the smallest of all mammals, seldom live longer than 2 years. The longest recorded lifespan in the wild relates to a female broad-tailed hummingbird that was banded (ringed) as an adult at least one year old, then recaptured 11 years later, making her at least 12 years old. Other longevity records for banded hummingbirds include an estimated minimum age of 10 years 1 month for a female black-chinned hummingbird similar in size to the broad-tailed hummingbird, and at least 11 years 2 months for a much larger buff-bellied hummingbird.


title: Hummingbird

text: Praying mantises have been observed as predators of hummingbirds. Other predators include dragonflies, frogs, orb-weaver spiders, and other birds, such as the roadrunner.


title: Hummingbird

text: Male hummingbirds do not take part in nesting. Most species build a cup-shaped nest on the branch of a tree or shrub. The nest varies in size relative to the particular species – from smaller than half a walnut shell to several centimeters in diameter.


title: Hummingbird

text: Many hummingbird species use spider silk and lichen to bind the nest material together and secure the structure. The unique properties of the silk allow the nest to expand as the young hummingbirds grow. Two white eggs are laid, which despite being the smallest of all bird eggs are large relative to the adult hummingbird's size. Incubation lasts 14 to 23 days, depending on the species, ambient temperature, and female attentiveness to the nest. The mother feeds her nestlings on small arthropods and nectar by inserting her bill into the open mouth of a nestling, and then regurgitating the food into its crop. Hummingbirds stay in the nest for 18–22 days, after which they leave the nest to forage on their own, although the mother bird may continue feeding them for another 25 days.


title: Hummingbird

text: To serve courtship and territorial competition, many male hummingbirds have plumage with bright, varied coloration resulting both from pigmentation in the feathers and from prismal cells within the top layers of feathers of the head, gorget, breast, back and wings. When sunlight hits these cells, it is split into wavelengths that reflect to the observer in varying degrees of intensity, with the feather structure acting as a diffraction grating. Iridescent hummingbird colors result from a combination of refraction and pigmentation, since the diffraction structures themselves are made of melanin, a pigment, and may also be colored by carotenoid pigmentation and more subdued black, brown or gray colors dependent on melanin.


title: Hummingbird

text: By merely shifting position, feather regions of a muted-looking bird can instantly become fiery red or vivid green. In courtship displays for one example, males of the colorful Anna's hummingbird orient their bodies and feathers toward the sun to enhance the display value of iridescent plumage toward a female of interest.


title: Hummingbird

text: One study of Anna's hummingbirds found that dietary protein was an influential factor in feather color, as birds receiving more protein grew significantly more colorful crown feathers than those fed a low-protein diet. Additionally, birds on a high-protein diet grew yellower (higher hue) green tail feathers than birds on a low-protein diet.


title: Hummingbird

text: Hummingbird flight has been studied intensively from an aerodynamic perspective using wind tunnels and high-speed video cameras.


title: Hummingbird

text: Two studies of rufous or Anna's hummingbirds in a wind tunnel used particle image velocimetry techniques to investigate the lift generated on the bird's upstroke and downstroke. The birds produced 75% of their weight support during the downstroke and 25% during the upstroke, with the wings making a "figure 8" motion.


title: Hummingbird

text: Many earlier studies had assumed that lift was generated equally during the two phases of the wingbeat cycle, as is the case of insects of a similar size. This finding shows that hummingbird hovering is similar to, but distinct from, that of hovering insects such as the hawk moth. Further studies using electromyography in hovering rufous hummingbirds showed that muscle strain in the pectoralis major (principal downstroke muscle) was the lowest yet recorded in a flying bird, and the primary upstroke muscle (supracoracoideus) is proportionately larger than in other bird species. Presumably due to rapid wingbeats for flight and hovering, hummingbird wings have adapted to perform without an alula.


title: Hummingbird

text: The giant hummingbird's wings beat as few as 12 per second, and the wings of typical hummingbirds beat up to 80 times per second. As air density decreases, for example, at higher altitudes, the amount of power a hummingbird must use to hover increases. Hummingbird species adapted for life at higher altitudes, therefore, have larger wings to help offset these negative effects of low air density on lift generation.


title: Hummingbird

text: A slow-motion video has shown how the hummingbirds deal with rain when they are flying. To remove the water from their heads, they shake their heads and bodies, similar to a dog shaking, to shed water. Further, when raindrops collectively may weigh as much as 38% of the bird's body weight, hummingbirds shift their bodies and tails horizontally, beat their wings faster, and reduce their wings' angle of motion when flying in heavy rain.


title: Hummingbird

text: When courting, the male Anna's hummingbird ascends some above a female, before diving at a speed of , equal to 385 body lengths/sec – producing a high-pitched sound near the female at the nadir of the dive. This downward acceleration during a dive is the highest reported for any vertebrate undergoing a voluntary aerial maneuver; in addition to acceleration, the speed, relative to body length, is the highest known for any vertebrate. For instance, it is about twice the diving speed of peregrine falcons in pursuit of prey. At maximum descent speed, about 10 g of gravitational force occur in the courting hummingbird during a dive (Note: G-force is generated as the bird pulls out of the dive). By comparison to humans, this is a G-force acceleration well beyond the threshold of causing near loss of consciousness in fighter pilots (occurring at about +5 Gz) during flight of fixed-wing aircraft in a high-speed banked turn.


title: Hummingbird

text: The outer tail feathers of male Anna's ("Calypte anna") and "Selasphorus" hummingbirds (e.g., Allen's, calliope) vibrate during courtship display dives and produce an audible chirp caused by aeroelastic flutter. Hummingbirds cannot make the courtship dive sound when missing their outer tail feathers, and those same feathers could produce the dive sound in a wind tunnel. The bird can sing at the same frequency as the tail-feather chirp, but its small syrinx is not capable of the same volume. The sound is caused by the aerodynamics of rapid air flow past tail feathers, causing them to flutter in a vibration, which produces the high-pitched sound of a courtship dive.


title: Hummingbird

text: Many other species of hummingbirds also produce sounds with their wings or tails while flying, hovering, or diving, including the wings of the calliope hummingbird, broad-tailed hummingbird, rufous hummingbird, Allen's hummingbird, and the streamertail species, as well as the tail of the Costa's hummingbird and the black-chinned hummingbird, and a number of related species. The harmonics of sounds during courtship dives vary across species of hummingbirds.


title: Hummingbird

text: Male rufous and broad-tailed hummingbirds (genus "Selasphorus") have a distinctive wing feature during normal flight that sounds like jingling or a buzzing shrill whistle. The trill arises from air rushing through slots created by the tapered tips of the ninth and tenth primary wing feathers, creating a sound loud enough to be detected by female or competitive male hummingbirds and researchers up to 100 m away.


title: Hummingbird

text: Hummingbirds are restricted to the Americas from south central Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, including the Caribbean. The majority of species occur in tropical and subtropical Central and South America, but several species also breed in temperate climates and some hillstars occur even in alpine Andean highlands at altitudes up to .


title: Hummingbird

text: The greatest species richness is in humid tropical and subtropical forests of the northern Andes and adjacent foothills, but the number of species found in the Atlantic Forest, Central America or southern Mexico also far exceeds the number found in southern South America, the Caribbean islands, the United States, and Canada. While fewer than 25 different species of hummingbirds have been recorded from the United States and fewer than 10 from Canada and Chile each, Colombia alone has more than 160 and the comparably small Ecuador has about 130 species.


title: Hummingbird

text: The migratory ruby-throated hummingbird breeds in a range from the Southeastern United States to Ontario, while the black-chinned hummingbird, its close relative and another migrant, is the most widespread and common species in the southwestern United States. The rufous hummingbird is the most widespread species in western North America, and the only hummingbird to be recorded outside of the Americas, having occurred in the Chukchi Peninsula of Russia.


title: Hummingbird

text: Most North American hummingbirds migrate southward in fall to spend winter in Mexico, the Caribbean Islands, or Central America. A few southern South American species also move north to the tropics during the southern winter. A few species are year-round residents of Florida, California, and the far southwestern desert regions of the US. Among these are Anna's hummingbird, a common resident from southern Arizona and inland California, and the buff-bellied hummingbird, a winter resident from Florida across the Gulf Coast to South Texas. Ruby-throated hummingbirds are common along the Atlantic flyway, and migrate in summer from as far north as Atlantic Canada, returning to Mexico, South America, southern Texas, and Florida to winter. During winter in southern Louisiana, black-chinned, buff-bellied, calliope, Allen's, Anna's, ruby-throated, rufous, broad-tailed, and broad-billed hummingbirds are present.


title: Hummingbird

text: The rufous hummingbird breeds farther north than any other species of hummingbird, often breeding in large numbers in temperate North America and wintering in increasing numbers along the coasts of the subtropical Gulf of Mexico and Florida, rather than in western or central Mexico. By migrating in spring as far north as the Yukon or southern Alaska, the rufous hummingbird migrates more extensively and nests farther north than any other hummingbird species, and must tolerate occasional temperatures below freezing in its breeding territory. This cold hardiness enables it to survive temperatures below freezing, provided that adequate shelter and food are available.


title: Hummingbird

text: As calculated by displacement of body size, the rufous hummingbird makes perhaps the longest migratory journey of any bird in the world. At just over 3 in long, rufous hummingbirds travel 3,900 miles one-way from Alaska to Mexico in late summer, a distance equal to 78,470,000 body lengths. By comparison, the 13-inch-long Arctic tern makes a one-way flight of about 11,185 miles, or 51,430,000 body lengths, just 65% of the body displacement during migration by rufous hummingbirds.


title: Hummingbird

text: The northward migration of rufous hummingbirds occurs along the Pacific flyway and may be time-coordinated with flower and tree-leaf emergence in spring in early March, and also with availability of insects as food. Arrival at breeding grounds before nectar availability from mature flowers may jeopardize breeding opportunities.


title: Hummingbird

text: For nutrition, hummingbirds eat a variety of insects, including mosquitoes, fruit flies, gnats in flight, or aphids on leaves and spiders in their webs. The lower beak of hummingbirds is flexible and can bend as much as 25 degrees when it widens at the base, making a larger surface for catching insects. Hummingbirds hover within insect swarms in a method called "hover-hawking" to facilitate feeding.


title: Hummingbird

text: To supply energy needs, hummingbirds drink nectar, a sweet liquid inside certain flowers. Like bees, they are able to assess the amount of sugar in the nectar they drink; they normally reject flower types that produce nectar that is less than 10% sugar and prefer those whose sugar content is higher. Nectar is a mixture of glucose, fructose, and sucrose, and is a poor source of other nutrients, requiring hummingbirds to meet their nutritional needs by consuming insects.


title: Hummingbird

text: Hummingbirds do not spend all day flying, as the energy cost would be prohibitive; the majority of their activity consists simply of sitting or perching. Hummingbirds eat many small meals and consume around half their weight in nectar (twice their weight in nectar, if the nectar is 25% sugar) each day. Hummingbirds digest their food rapidly due to their small size and high metabolism; a mean retention time less than an hour has been reported. Hummingbirds spend an average of 10–15% of their time feeding and 75–80% sitting and digesting.


title: Hummingbird

text: Because their high metabolism makes them vulnerable to starvation, hummingbirds are highly attuned to food sources. Some species, including many found in North America, are territorial and try to guard food sources (such as a feeder) against other hummingbirds, attempting to ensure a future food supply for itself. Additionally, hummingbirds have an enlarged hippocampus, a brain region facilitating spatial memory used to map flowers previously visited during nectar foraging.


title: Hummingbird

text: Hummingbird beaks are flexible and their shapes vary dramatically as an adaptation for specialized feeding. Some species, such as hermits ("Phaethornis" spp.) have long bills that allow them to probe deep into flowers with long corollae. Thornbills have short, sharp bills adapted for feeding from flowers with short corollae and piercing the bases of longer ones. The sicklebills' extremely decurved bills are adapted to extracting nectar from the curved corollae of flowers in the family Gesneriaceae. The bill of the fiery-tailed awlbill has an upturned tip, as in the avocets. The male tooth-billed hummingbird has barracuda-like spikes at the tip of its long, straight bill.


title: Hummingbird

text: The two halves of a hummingbird's bill have a pronounced overlap, with the lower half (mandible) fitting tightly inside the upper half (maxilla). When a hummingbird feeds on nectar, the bill is usually opened only slightly, allowing the tongue to dart out and into the interior of flowers. Hummingbird bill sizes range from about 5 mm to as long as 100 mm (about 4 in). When catching insects in flight, a hummingbird's jaw flexes downward to widen the gape for successful capture.


title: Hummingbird

text: Perception of sweetness in nectar evolved in hummingbirds during their genetic divergence from insectivorous swifts, their closest bird relatives. Although the only known sweet sensory receptor, called T1R2, is absent in birds, receptor expression studies showed that hummingbirds adapted a carbohydrate receptor from the T1R1-T1R3 receptor, identical to the one perceived as umami in humans, essentially repurposing it to function as a nectar sweetness receptor. This adaptation for taste enabled hummingbirds to detect and exploit sweet nectar as an energy source, facilitating their distribution across geographical regions where nectar-bearing flowers are available.


title: Hummingbird

text: Hummingbirds drink with their long tongues by rapidly lapping nectar. Their tongues have semicircular tubes which run down their lengths to facilitate nectar consumption via rapid pumping in and out of the nectar. While capillary action was believed to be what drew nectar into these tubes, high-speed photography revealed that the tubes open down their sides as the tongue goes into the nectar, and then close around the nectar, trapping it so it can be pulled back into the beak over a period of 14 milliseconds per lick at a rate of up to 20 licks per second. The tongue, which is forked, is compressed until it reaches nectar, then the tongue springs open, the rapid action traps the nectar and the nectar moves up the grooves, like a pump action, with capillary action not involved. Consequently, tongue flexibility enables accessing, transporting and unloading nectar via pump action, not by a capillary syphon as once believed.


title: Hummingbird

text: In the wild, hummingbirds visit flowers for food, extracting nectar, which is 55% sucrose, 24% glucose, and 21% fructose on a dry-matter basis. Hummingbirds also take sugar-water from bird feeders, which allow people to observe and enjoy hummingbirds up close while providing the birds with a reliable source of energy, especially when flower blossoms are less abundant. A negative aspect of artificial feeders, however, is that the birds may seek less flower nectar for food, and so may reduce the amount of pollination their feeding naturally provides.


title: Hummingbird

text: White granulated sugar is used in hummingbird feeders in a 20% concentration as a common recipe, although hummingbirds will defend feeders more aggressively when sugar content is at 35%, indicating preference for nectar with higher sugar content. Organic and "raw" sugars contain iron, which can be harmful, and brown sugar, agave syrup, molasses, and artificial sweeteners also should not be used. Honey is made by bees from the nectar of flowers, but it is not good to use in feeders because when it is diluted with water, microorganisms easily grow in it, causing it to spoil rapidly.


title: Hummingbird

text: Red food dye was once thought to be a favorable ingredient for the nectar in home feeders, but it is unnecessary. Commercial products sold as "instant nectar" or "hummingbird food" may also contain preservatives or artificial flavors, as well as dyes, which are unnecessary and potentially harmful. Although some commercial products contain small amounts of nutritional additives, hummingbirds obtain all necessary nutrients from the insects they eat, rendering added nutrients unnecessary.


title: Hummingbird

text: Hummingbirds have exceptional visual acuity providing them with discrimination of food sources while foraging. Although hummingbirds are thought to be attracted to color while seeking food, such as red flowers or artificial feeders, experiments indicate that location and flower nectar quality are the most important "beacons" for foraging. Hummingbirds depend little on visual cues of flower color to beacon to nectar-rich locations, but rather they used surrounding landmarks to find the nectar reward.


title: Hummingbird

text: In at least one hummingbird species – the green-backed firecrown ("Sephanoides sephaniodes") – flower colors preferred are in the red-green wavelength for the bird's visual system, providing a higher contrast than for other flower colors. Further, the crown plumage of firecrown males is highly iridescent in the red wavelength range (peak at 650 nanometers), possibly providing a competitive advantage of dominance when foraging among other hummingbird species with less colorful plumage. The ability to discriminate colors of flowers and plumage is enabled by a visual system having four single cone cells and a double cone screened by photoreceptor oil droplets which enhance color discrimination.


title: Hummingbird

text: While hummingbirds rely primarily on vision and hearing to assess competition from bird and insect foragers near food sources, they may also be able to detect by smell the presence in nectar of insect defensive chemicals (such as formic acid) and aggregation pheromones of foraging ants, which discourage feeding.


title: Hummingbird

text: Some species of sunbirds of Africa, southern and southeastern Asia, and Australia resemble hummingbirds in appearance and behavior, as do perhaps also the honeyeaters of Australia and Pacific islands. These two groups, however, are not related to hummingbirds, as their resemblance is due to convergent evolution.


title: Kepler's Supernova

text: SN 1604, also known as Kepler's Supernova, Kepler's Nova or Kepler's Star, was a Type Ia supernova that occurred in the Milky Way, in the constellation Ophiuchus. Appearing in 1604, it is the most recent supernova in the Milky Way galaxy to have been unquestionably observed by the naked eye, occurring no farther than 6 kiloparsecs (20,000 light-years) from Earth. Before the adoption of the current naming system for supernovae, it was named for Johannes Kepler, the German astronomer who described it in "De Stella Nova".


title: Kepler's Supernova

text: Visible to the naked eye, Kepler's Star was brighter at its peak than any other star in the night sky, with an apparent magnitude of −2.5. It was visible during the day for over three weeks. Records of its sighting exist in European, Chinese, Korean, and Arabic sources.


title: Kepler's Supernova

text: It was the second supernova to be observed in a generation (after SN 1572 seen by Tycho Brahe in Cassiopeia). No further supernovae have since been observed with certainty in the Milky Way, though many others outside the galaxy have been seen since S Andromedae in 1885. SN 1987A in the Large Magellanic Cloud was visible to the naked eye.


title: Kepler's Supernova

text: Evidence exists for two Milky Way supernovae whose signals would have reached Earth 1680 and 1870 – Cassiopeia A, and G1.9+0.3 respectively. There is no historical record of either having been detected in those years probably as absorption by interstellar dust made them fainter.


title: Kepler's Supernova

text: The remnant of Kepler's supernova is considered to be one of the prototypical objects of its kind and is still an object of much study in astronomy.


title: Kepler's Supernova

text: Astronomers of the time (including Kepler) were concerned with observing the conjunction of Mars and Jupiter, which they saw in terms of an auspicious conjunction linked in their minds to the Star of Bethlehem. However, cloudy weather prevented Kepler from making any celestial observations. Nevertheless, his fellow astronomers Wilhelm Fabry, Michael Maestlin, and Helisaeus Roeslin were able to make observations on 9 October but did not record the supernova. The first recorded observation in Europe was by Lodovico delle Colombe in northern Italy on 9 October 1604. Kepler was only able to begin his observations on 17 October while working at the imperial court in Prague for Emperor Rudolf II. The supernova was subsequently named after him, even though he was not its first observer, as his observations tracked the object for an entire year. These observations were described in his book "De Stella nova in pede Serpentarii" ("On the new star in Ophiuchus's foot", Prague 1606).


title: Kepler's Supernova

text: In 1606, Delle Colombe published "Discourse of Lodovico delle Colombe" in which he shows that the "Star Newly Appeared in October 1604 is neither a Comet nor a New Star" and where he defended an Aristotelian view of cosmology after Galileo Galilei had used the occasion of the supernova to challenge the Aristotelian system. The description of Galileo's claims is as follows:


title: Kepler's Supernova

text: Galileo explained the meaning and relevance of parallax, reported that the nova displayed none, and concluded, as a certainty, that it lay beyond the moon. Here he might have stopped, having dispatched his single arrow. Instead he sketched a theory that ruined the Aristotelian cosmos: the nova very probably consisted of a large quantity of airy material that issued from the earth and shone by reflected sunlight, like Aristotelian comets. Unlike them, however, it could rise beyond the moon. It not only brought change to the heavens, but did so provocatively by importing corruptible earthy elements into the pure quintessence. That raised heaven-shattering possibilities. The interstellar space might be filled with something similar to our atmosphere, as in the physics of the Stoics, to which Tycho had referred in his lengthy account of the nova of 1572. And if the material of the firmament resembled that of bodies here below, a theory of motion built on experience with objects within our reach might apply also to the celestial regions. "But I am not so bold as to think that things cannot take place differently from the way I have specified."


title: Kepler's Supernova

text: In Kepler's "De Stella Nova" (1606), he criticized Roeslin concerning this supernova. Kepler argued that in his astrological prognostications, Roeslin had picked out just the two comets, the Great Comet of 1556 and 1580. Roeslin responded in 1609 that this was indeed what he had done. When Kepler replied later that year, he simply observed that by including a broader range of data Roeslin could have made a better argument.


title: Kepler's Supernova

text: The supernova remnant of SN 1604, Kepler’s Star, was discovered in 1941 at the Mount Wilson Observatory as a dim nebula with a brightness of 19 mag. Only filaments can be seen in visible light, but it is a strong radio and X-ray source. Its diameter is 4 arc min. Its distance is not well determined but is between 3 and more than 7 kiloparsecs (10,000 to 23,000 lightyears).


title: Omar Sharif

text: Omar Sharif ( ; born Michel Yusef Dimitri Chalhoub , 10 April 193210 July 2015) was an Egyptian actor, generally regarded as one of his country's greatest male film stars. He began his career in his native country in the 1950s, but is best known for his appearances in British, American, French, and Italian productions. His career encompassed over 100 films spanning 50 years, and brought him many accolades including three Golden Globe Awards and a César Award for Best Actor.


title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif played opposite Peter O'Toole as Sherif Ali in the David Lean epic "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962), which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and portrayed the title role in Lean's "Doctor Zhivago" (1965), earning him the Golden Globe for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama. He continued to play romantic leads, in films like "Funny Girl" (1968) and "The Tamarind Seed" (1974), and historical figures like the eponymous characters in "Genghis Khan" (1965) and "Che!" (1969). His acting career continued well into old age, with a well-received turn as a Muslim Turkish immigrant in the French film "Monsieur Ibrahim" (2003). He made his final film appearance in 2015, the year of his death.


title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif spoke five languages: Arabic, English, French, Italian and Spanish. He bridled at travel restrictions imposed by the government of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, leading to self-exile in Europe. He was a lifelong horse racing enthusiast, and at one time ranked among the world's top contract bridge players. He was the recipient of high civil honors from multiple countries, including the Egyptian Order of Merit and the French Legion of Honour. He was one of only 25 grantees of UNESCO's Sergei Eisenstein Medal, in recognition of his significant contributions to world film and cultural diversity.


title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif, whose adopted surname means "noble" or "nobleman" in Arabic, after converting to Islam, was born Michel Yusef Dimitri Chalhoub ( ) in Alexandria, Kingdom of Egypt (now Arab Republic of Egypt), to a Melkite Catholic family of Lebanese descent, making him and his family members of the Antiochian Greek Christian minority (also known as "Rūm").


title: Omar Sharif

text: His father, Yusef Chalhoub, a precious-woods merchant, moved to the port city of Alexandria with his mother in the early 20th century from Zahle. Sharif was later born in Alexandria. His family moved to Cairo when he was four. His mother, Claire Saada, was a noted society hostess, in whose house Egypt's King Farouk was a regular visitor prior to his deposition in 1952.


title: Omar Sharif

text: In his youth, Sharif studied at Victoria College, Alexandria, where he showed a talent for languages. He later graduated from Cairo University with a degree in mathematics and physics. He worked for a while in his father's precious wood business before beginning his acting career in Egypt. In 1955, he adopted the stage name "Omar Sharif". He married fellow Egyptian actress Faten Hamama.


title: Omar Sharif

text: It has been widely reported that Sharif studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, but the academy told "Al Jazeera" that this was not true.


title: Omar Sharif

text: In 1954, Sharif began his acting career in Egypt with a role in "Struggle in the Valley" (1954) ("Seraa' Fi el-Wadi"). He was also in "Shaytan el-Sahra" (1954) ("Devil of the Desert").


title: Omar Sharif

text: He quickly rose to stardom, appearing in "Our Beautiful Days" (1955), "The Lebanese Mission" (1956) (a French film), "Struggle in the Pier" (1956), "Sleepless" (1957) ("La Anam"), "Land of Peace" (1957), "Goha" (1958) (a Tunisian film that marked the debut of Claudia Cardinale), "Struggle on the Nile" (1958), "Sayyidat al-Qasr" (1958), "A Beginning and an End" (1960), "A Rumor of Love" (1960), the "Anna Karenina" adaptation "The River of Love" ("Nahr El-Hob") of Ezz El-Dine Zulficar (1960). He and his wife co-starred in several movies as romantic leads. Sharif achieved success through other movies like "Struggle on the Nile" (1959), "A Rumor of Love" (1960), and "There is a man in our House" (1961), which made him a huge competitor to Salah Zulfikar, Shoukry Sarhan and Rushdy Abaza, the Egyptian cinema giants at the time.


title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif's first English-language role was that of (the fictitious) Sherif Ali in David Lean's historical epic "Lawrence of Arabia" in 1962. Sharif was given the role when Dilip Kumar turned it down, Horst Buchholz proved unavailable and Maurice Ronet could not use the contact lenses necessary to hide his eyes.


title: Omar Sharif

text: Casting Sharif in what is now considered one of the "most demanding supporting roles in Hollywood history" was both complex and risky as he was virtually unknown at the time outside Egypt. However, as historian Steven Charles Caton notes, Lean insisted on using ethnic actors when possible to make the film authentic. Sharif would later use his ambiguous ethnicity in other films: "I spoke French, Greek, Italian, Spanish and even Arabic", he said. As Sharif noted, his accent enabled him to "play the role of a foreigner without anyone knowing exactly where I came from", which he stated proved highly successful throughout his career.


title: Omar Sharif

text: "Lawrence" was a box office and critical sensation. Sharif's performance earned him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor nomination and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture, as well as a shared Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actor.


title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif went on to star in another Hollywood film, Anthony Mann's "The Fall of the Roman Empire" (1964) where he played the support role of Sohaemus of Armenia.