title: Neuroscience

text: Nanoparticles in medicine are versatile in treating neurological disorders showing promising results in mediating drug transport across the blood brain barrier.<ref name="10.1016/j.lfs.2017.06.001"></ref> Implementing nanoparticles in antiepileptic drugs enhances their medical efficacy by increasing bioavailability in the bloodstream, as well as offering a measure of control in release time concentration. Although nanoparticles can assist therapeutic drugs by adjusting physical properties to achieve desirable effects, inadvertent increases in toxicity often occur in preliminary drug trials. Furthermore, production of nanomedicine for drug trials is economically consuming, hindering progress in their implementation. Computational models in nanoneuroscience provide alternatives to study the efficacy of nanotechnology-based medicines in neurological disorders while mitigating potential side effects and development costs.


title: Neuroscience

text: Nanomaterials often operate at length scales between classical and quantum regimes. Due to the associated uncertainties at the length scales that nanomaterials operate, it is difficult to predict their behavior prior to in vivo studies. Classically, the physical processes which occur throughout neurons are analogous to electrical circuits. Designers focus on such analogies and model brain activity as a neural circuit. Success in computational modeling of neurons have led to the development of stereochemical models that accurately predict acetylcholine receptor-based synapses operating at microsecond time scales.


title: Neuroscience

text: Ultrafine nanoneedles for cellular manipulations are thinner than the smallest single walled carbon nanotubes. Computational quantum chemistry is used to design ultrafine nanomaterials with highly symmetrical structures to optimize geometry, reactivity and stability.


title: Neuroscience

text: Behavior of nanomaterials are dominated by long ranged non-bonding interactions. Electrochemical processes that occur throughout the brain generate an electric field which can inadvertently affect the behavior of some nanomaterials. Molecular dynamics simulations can mitigate the development phase of nanomaterials as well as prevent neural toxicity of nanomaterials following in vivo clinical trials. Testing nanomaterials using molecular dynamics optimizes nano characteristics for therapeutic purposes by testing different environment conditions, nanomaterial shape fabrications, nanomaterial surface properties, etc. without the need for in vivo experimentation. Flexibility in molecular dynamic simulations allows medical practitioners to personalize treatment. Nanoparticle related data from translational nanoinformatics links neurological patient specific data to predict treatment response.


title: Neuroscience

text: Neurology, psychiatry, neurosurgery, psychosurgery, anesthesiology and pain medicine, neuropathology, neuroradiology, ophthalmology, otolaryngology, clinical neurophysiology, addiction medicine, and sleep medicine are some medical specialties that specifically address the diseases of the nervous system. These terms also refer to clinical disciplines involving diagnosis and treatment of these diseases.


title: Neuroscience

text: Neurology works with diseases of the central and peripheral nervous systems, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and stroke, and their medical treatment. Psychiatry focuses on affective, behavioral, cognitive, and perceptual disorders. Anesthesiology focuses on perception of pain, and pharmacologic alteration of consciousness. Neuropathology focuses upon the classification and underlying pathogenic mechanisms of central and peripheral nervous system and muscle diseases, with an emphasis on morphologic, microscopic, and chemically observable alterations. Neurosurgery and psychosurgery work primarily with surgical treatment of diseases of the central and peripheral nervous systems.


title: Neuroscience

text: Recently, the boundaries between various specialties have blurred, as they are all influenced by basic research in neuroscience. For example, brain imaging enables objective biological insight into mental illnesses, which can lead to faster diagnosis, more accurate prognosis, and improved monitoring of patient progress over time.


title: Neuroscience

text: Integrative neuroscience describes the effort to combine models and information from multiple levels of research to develop a coherent model of the nervous system. For example, brain imaging coupled with physiological numerical models and theories of fundamental mechanisms may shed light on psychiatric disorders.


title: Neuroscience

text: Another important area of translational research is brain–computer interfaces, or machines that are able to communicate and influence the brain. Brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) are currently being researched for their potential to repair neural systems and restore certain cognitive functions. However, some ethical considerations have to be dealt with before they are accepted.


title: Neuroscience

text: Modern neuroscience education and research activities can be very roughly categorized into the following major branches, based on the subject and scale of the system in examination as well as distinct experimental or curricular approaches. Individual neuroscientists, however, often work on questions that span several distinct subfields.


title: Neuroscience

text: The largest professional neuroscience organization is the Society for Neuroscience (SFN), which is based in the United States but includes many members from other countries. Since its founding in 1969 the SFN has grown steadily: as of 2010 it recorded 40,290 members from 83 countries. Annual meetings, held each year in a different American city, draw attendance from researchers, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and undergraduates, as well as educational institutions, funding agencies, publishers, and hundreds of businesses that supply products used in research.


title: Neuroscience

text: Other major organizations devoted to neuroscience include the International Brain Research Organization (IBRO), which holds its meetings in a country from a different part of the world each year, and the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS), which holds a meeting in a different European city every two years. FENS comprises a set of 32 national-level organizations, including the British Neuroscience Association, the German Neuroscience Society ("Neurowissenschaftliche Gesellschaft"), and the French "Société des Neurosciences". The first National Honor Society in Neuroscience, Nu Rho Psi, was founded in 2006. Numerous youth neuroscience societies which support undergraduates, graduates and early career researchers also exist, such as Simply Neuroscience and Project Encephalon.


title: Neuroscience

text: In 2013, the BRAIN Initiative was announced in the US. The International Brain Initiative was created in 2017, currently integrated by more than seven national-level brain research initiatives (US, Europe, Allen Institute, Japan, China, Australia, Canada, Korea, and Israel) spanning four continents.


title: Neuroscience

text: In addition to conducting traditional research in laboratory settings, neuroscientists have also been involved in the promotion of awareness and knowledge about the nervous system among the general public and government officials. Such promotions have been done by both individual neuroscientists and large organizations. For example, individual neuroscientists have promoted neuroscience education among young students by organizing the International Brain Bee, which is an academic competition for high school or secondary school students worldwide. In the United States, large organizations such as the Society for Neuroscience have promoted neuroscience education by developing a primer called Brain Facts, collaborating with public school teachers to develop Neuroscience Core Concepts for K-12 teachers and students, and cosponsoring a campaign with the Dana Foundation called Brain Awareness Week to increase public awareness about the progress and benefits of brain research. In Canada, the CIHR Canadian National Brain Bee is held annually at McMaster University.


title: Neuroscience

text: Neuroscience educators formed Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience (FUN) in 1992 to share best practices and provide travel awards for undergraduates presenting at Society for Neuroscience meetings.


title: Neuroscience

text: Neuroscientists have also collaborated with other education experts to study and refine educational techniques to optimize learning among students, an emerging field called educational neuroscience. Federal agencies in the United States, such as the National Institute of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF), have also funded research that pertains to best practices in teaching and learning of neuroscience concepts.


title: Neuroscience

text: Neuromorphic engineering is a branch of neuroscience that deals with creating functional physical models of neurons for the purposes of useful computation. The emergent computational properties of neuromorphic computers are fundamentally different from conventional computers in the sense that they are a complex system, and that the computational components are interrelated with no central processor.


title: Neuroscience

text: Sensors can also be made smart with neuromorphic technology. An example of this is the Event Camera's BrainScaleS (brain-inspired Multiscale Computation in Neuromorphic Hybrid Systems), a hybrid analog neuromorphic supercomputer located at Heidelberg University in Germany. It was developed as part of the Human Brain Project's neuromorphic computing platform and is the complement to the SpiNNaker supercomputer, which is based on digital technology. The architecture used in BrainScaleS mimics biological neurons and their connections on a physical level; additionally, since the components are made of silicon, these model neurons operate on average 864 times (24 hours of real time is 100 seconds in the machine simulation) that of their biological counterparts.


title: Neuroscience

text: Recent advances in neuromorphic microchip technology have led a group of scientists to create an artificial neuron that can replace real neurons in diseases.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Ludwig II (Ludwig Otto Friedrich Wilhelm; 25 August 1845 – 13 June 1886) was King of Bavaria from 1864 until his death in 1886. He is sometimes called the Swan King or ('the Fairy Tale King'). He also held the titles of Count Palatine of the Rhine, Duke of Bavaria, Duke of Franconia, and Duke in Swabia.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Ludwig ascended to the throne in 1864 at the age of 18. Two years later, Bavaria and Austria fought a war against Prussia lasting only a matter of weeks, which they lost. However, in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, Bavaria sided with Prussia in their successful war against France. Despite Ludwig's reluctance to support the Unification of Germany, Bavaria and 21 other monarchies became part of the new German Empire in 1871 (), with Wilhelm I, the King of Prussia and Ludwig's cousin, as the German Emperor (). Bavaria retained a large degree of autonomy within the Empire under the new Imperial Constitution.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Ludwig increasingly withdrew from day-to-day affairs of state in favour of extravagant artistic and architectural projects. He commissioned the construction of lavish palaces: Neuschwanstein Castle, Linderhof Palace and Herrenchiemsee. He was also a devoted patron of the composer Richard Wagner. Ludwig spent all his own private royal revenues (although not state funds as is commonly thought) on these projects, borrowed extensively, and defied all attempts by his ministers to restrain him. This extravagance was used against him to declare him insane, an accusation that has since come under scrutiny. Ludwig was taken into custody and effectively deposed on 12 June 1886, and he and his doctor were found dead on the following day. His death was ruled to be a suicide but this too has been disputed. Today, his architectural and artistic legacy includes many of Bavaria's most important tourist attractions.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Born at Nymphenburg Palace (located in what is today part of central Munich), he was the elder son of Maximilian II of Bavaria and Marie of Prussia, Crown Prince and Princess of Bavaria, who became King and Queen in 1848 after the abdication of the former's father, Ludwig I, during the German Revolution. His parents intended to name him Otto, but his grandfather insisted that his grandson be named after him, since their common birthday, 25 August, is the feast day of Saint Louis IX of France, patron saint of Bavaria (with "Ludwig" being the German form of "Louis"). His full name was ; English: Louis Otto Frederick William. His younger brother, born three years later, was named Otto.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Like many young heirs in an age when kings governed most of Europe, Ludwig was continually reminded of his royal status. King Maximilian wanted to instruct both of his sons in the burdens of royal duty from an early age. Ludwig was both extremely indulged and severely controlled by his tutors and subjected to a strict regimen of study and exercise. Some point to these stresses of growing up in a royal family as the causes for much of his odd behavior as an adult.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Ludwig was not close to either of his parents. King Maximilian's advisers had suggested that on his daily walks he might like, at times, to be accompanied by his future successor. The King replied, "But what am I to say to him? After all, my son takes no interest in what other people tell him." Later, Ludwig would refer to his mother as "my predecessor's consort". He was far closer to his grandfather, the deposed and notorious King Ludwig I.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Ludwig's childhood years did have happy moments. He lived for much of the time at Castle Hohenschwangau, a fantasy castle his father had built near the ('Alp Lake') near Füssen. It was decorated in the Gothic Revival style with many frescoes depicting heroic German sagas, most notably images of Lohengrin, the Knight of the Swans. The family also visited Lake Starnberg (Then called lake Würm.) As an adolescent, Ludwig became close friends with his aide de camp, Prince Paul, a member of the wealthy Bavarian Thurn und Taxis family. The two young men rode together, read poetry aloud, and staged scenes from the Romantic operas of Richard Wagner. The friendship ended when Paul became engaged in 1866 with a commoner. During his youth, Ludwig also initiated a lifelong friendship with his cousin Duchess Elisabeth in Bavaria, later Empress of Austria.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Crown Prince Ludwig was in his 19th year when his father died after a three-day illness, and he ascended the Bavarian throne. Although he was not prepared for high office, his youth and brooding good looks made him popular in Bavaria and elsewhere. He continued the state policies of his father and retained his ministers.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: His real interests were in art, music, and architecture. One of the first acts of his reign, a few months after his accession, was to summon Wagner to his court. Also in 1864, he laid the foundation stone of a new Court Theatre, now the ("'Gärtnerplatz"-Theater').


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Ludwig was notably eccentric in ways that made serving as Bavaria's head of state problematic. He disliked large public functions and avoided formal social events whenever possible, preferring a life of seclusion that he pursued with various creative projects. He last inspected a military parade on 22 August 1875 and last gave a court banquet on 10 February 1876. His mother had foreseen difficulties for Ludwig when she recorded her concern for her extremely introverted and creative son who spent much time day-dreaming. These idiosyncrasies, combined with the fact that Ludwig avoided Munich and participating in the government there at all costs, caused considerable tension with the king's government ministers, but did not cost him popularity among the citizens of Bavaria. The king enjoyed traveling in the Bavarian countryside and chatting with farmers and labourers he met along the way. He also delighted in rewarding those who were hospitable to him during his travels with lavish gifts. He is still remembered in Bavaria as ('our cherished king' in the Bavarian dialect).


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Unification with Prussia took center stage from 1866. In the Austro-Prussian War, which began in August, Ludwig supported Austria against Prussia. Austria and Bavaria were defeated, and Bavaria was forced to sign a mutual defense treaty with Prussia. When the Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870, Bavaria was required to fight alongside Prussia. After the Prussian victory over France, Bismarck moved to complete the Unification of Germany.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: In November 1870, Bavaria joined the North German Confederation, thus losing its status as an independent kingdom. However, the Bavarian delegation under Minister-President Count Otto von Bray-Steinburg secured privilleged status for Bavaria within the empire (). Bavaria retained its own diplomatic corps and its own army, which would come under Prussian command only in times of war.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: In December 1870, Bismarck used financial concessions to induce Ludwig with the support of the king's equerry Maximilian Count von Holnstein to write the so-called , a letter endorsing the creation of the German Empire with King Wilhelm I of Prussia as Emperor. Nevertheless, Ludwig regretted Bavaria's loss of independence and refused to attend Wilhelm's 18 January proclamation as German Emperor in the Palace of Versailles. Ludwig's brother Prince Otto and his uncle Luitpold went, instead. Otto criticized the celebration as ostentatious and heartless in a letter to his brother.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: In the new Imperial Constitution, the Kingdom of Bavaria was able to secure for itself extensive rights, in particular regarding military sovereignty. Not only did the Royal Bavarian army retain, like the kingdoms of Saxony and Württemberg, its own troops, War Ministry and military justice system, but it was also excluded from the Empire-wide regimental re-numbering of the army regiments and would only come under Imperial control in times of war. Bavaria also kept its light-blue infantry uniforms, the (until 1886), the Light Cavalry and some other peculiarities. The officers and men of the Bavarian Army continued to swear their oaths to the King of Bavaria and not the German Emperor. Nevertheless, the uniform cut, equipment and training was standardised to the Prussian model. When field-grey uniforms were introduced, only the cockade and a blue-and-white lozenge edging to the collar distinguished Bavarian units.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: The greatest stress of Ludwig's early reign was pressure to produce an heir. This issue came to the forefront in 1867. Ludwig became engaged to Duchess Sophie in Bavaria, his cousin and the youngest sister of his dear friend, Empress Elisabeth of Austria. They shared a deep interest in the works of Wagner. The engagement was announced on 22 January 1867; a few days earlier, Ludwig had written Sophie, "The main substance of our relationship has always been … Richard Wagner's remarkable and deeply moving destiny." Ludwig repeatedly postponed the wedding date, and finally cancelled the engagement in October. After the engagement was broken off, Ludwig wrote to his former fiancée, "My beloved Elsa! Your cruel father has torn us apart. Eternally yours, Heinrich." (The names Elsa and Heinrich came from characters in Wagner's opera "Lohengrin".) Sophie later married Prince Ferdinand, Duke of Alençon, grandson of French King Louis Philippe I, at Possenhofen Castle at which Ludwig II unexpectedly attended the reception.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Ludwig never married nor had any known mistresses. His diary, private letters, and other documents reveal his strong homosexual desires, which he struggled to suppress to remain true to the teachings of the Catholic Church. Homosexuality had not been punishable in Bavaria since 1813, but the unification of Germany under Prussian hegemony in 1871 instated Paragraph 175, which criminalized homosexual acts between males.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Throughout his reign, Ludwig had a succession of close friendships with men, including his aide-de-camp the Bavarian prince Paul von Thurn und Taxis, his chief equerry and master of the horse, Richard Hornig, the Hungarian theater actor Josef Kainz, and courtier Alfons Weber. Letters from Ludwig reveal that the quartermaster of the royal stables, Karl Hesselschwerdt, acted as his male procurer. Ludwig's original diaries from 1869 onward were lost during World War II, and all that remain today are copies of entries made during the 1886 plot to depose him. Some earlier diaries have survived in the ('secret archives') in Munich, and extracts starting in 1858 were published by Evers in 1986.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: After 1871, Ludwig largely withdrew from politics, and devoted himself to his personal creative projects, most famously his castles, for which he personally approved every detail of the architecture, decoration, and furnishing.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Ludwig was intensely interested in the operas of Richard Wagner. This interest began when Ludwig first saw "Lohengrin" at the impressionable age of 15, followed by "Tannhäuser" ten months later. Wagner's operas appealed to the king's fantasy-filled imagination.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Wagner had a notorious reputation as a political radical and philanderer, and was constantly on the run from creditors. However, on 4 May 1864, the 51-year-old Wagner was given an unprecedented 1¾ hour audience with Ludwig in the Royal Palace in Munich; later, the composer wrote of his first meeting with Ludwig: "Alas, he is so handsome and wise, soulful and lovely, that I fear that his life must melt away in this vulgar world like a fleeting dream of the gods." Ludwig was probably the savior of Wagner's career. Without Ludwig, Wagner's later operas are unlikely to have been composed, much less premiered at the prestigious Munich Royal Court Theatre (now the Bavarian State Opera).


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: A year after meeting the King, Wagner presented his latest work, "Tristan und Isolde", in Munich to great acclaim. However, the composer's perceived extravagant and scandalous behaviour in the capital was unsettling for the conservative people of Bavaria, and the King was forced to ask Wagner to leave the city six months later, in December 1865. Ludwig considered abdicating to follow Wagner, but Wagner persuaded him to stay.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Ludwig provided the Tribschen residence for Wagner in Switzerland. Wagner completed "Die Meistersinger" there; it was premiered in Munich in 1868. When Wagner returned to his "Ring Cycle", Ludwig demanded "special previews" of the first two works ("Das Rheingold" and "Die Walküre") at Munich in 1869 and 1870.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Wagner, however, was now planning his great personal opera house at Bayreuth. Ludwig initially refused to support the grandiose project. However, when Wagner exhausted all other sources, he appealed to Ludwig, who loaned him 100,000 thalers to complete the work. Ludwig also paid for the Wahnfried villa for Wagner and his family to reside in, constructed 1872–74. In 1876, Ludwig attended the dress rehearsal and third public performance of the complete Ring Cycle at the Festspielhaus.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Ludwig's interest in theater was by no means confined to Wagner. In 1867, he appointed Karl von Perfall as director of his new court theater. Ludwig wished to introduce Munich theater-goers to the best of European drama. Perfall, under Ludwig's supervision, introduced them to Shakespeare, Calderón, Mozart, Gluck, Ibsen, Weber, and many others. He also raised the standard of interpretation of Schiller, Molière, and Corneille.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Between 1872 and 1885, the King had 209 ('private performances') given for himself alone or with a guest, in the two court theaters, comprising 44 operas (28 performances of Wagner's operas including eight of "Parsifal"), 11 ballets, and 154 plays (the principal theme being Bourbon France) at a cost of 97,300 marks. This was not due so much to misanthropy, but as the King complained to the theatre actor-manager Ernst Possart: "I can get no sense of illusion in the theatre so long as people keep staring at me, and follow my every expression through their opera-glasses. I want to look myself, not to be a spectacle for the masses."


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Ludwig used his personal fortune (supplemented annually from 1873 by 270,000 marks from the ) to fund the construction of a series of elaborate castles. In 1867, he visited Eugène Viollet-le-Duc's work at Pierrefonds, and the Palace of Versailles in France, as well as the Wartburg near Eisenach in Thuringia, which largely influenced the style of his construction. In his letters, Ludwig marvelled at how the French had magnificently built up and glorified their culture (e.g., architecture, art, and music) and how miserably lacking Bavaria was in comparison. His dream became to accomplish the same for Bavaria. These projects provided employment for many hundreds of local laborers and artisans and brought a considerable flow of money to the relatively poor regions where his castles were built. Figures for the total costs between 1869 and 1886 for the building and equipping of each castle were published in 1968: Schloß Neuschwanstein 6,180,047 marks; Schloß Linderhof 8,460,937 marks (a large portion being expended on the Venus Grotto); Schloß Herrenchiemsee (from 1873) 16,579,674 marks In order to give an equivalent for the era, the British Pound sterling, being the monetary hegemon of the time, had a fixed exchange rate (based on the gold standard) at £1 = 20.43 Goldmarks.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: In 1868, Ludwig commissioned the first drawings for his buildings, starting with Neuschwanstein and Herrenchiemsee, though work on the latter did not commence until 1878.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: ('New Swanstone Castle') is a dramatic Romanesque fortress with soaring fairy-tale towers. It is situated on an Alpine crag above Ludwig's childhood home, Castle ('Upper Swan County Palace'). Hohenschwangau was a medieval knights' castle that his parents had purchased. Ludwig reputedly had seen the location and conceived of building a castle there while still a boy.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: In 1869, Ludwig oversaw the laying of the cornerstone for Schloss Neuschwanstein on a breathtaking mountaintop site. The walls of Neuschwanstein are decorated with frescoes depicting scenes from the legends used in Wagner's operas, including "Tannhäuser", "Tristan und Isolde", "Lohengrin", "Parsifal", and the somewhat less than mystic "Die Meistersinger".


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: In 1878, construction was completed on Ludwig's Schloss Linderhof, an ornate palace in neo-French Rococo style, with handsome formal gardens. The grounds contained a Venus grotto lit by electricity, where Ludwig was rowed in a boat shaped like a shell. After seeing the Bayreuth performances, Ludwig built ('Hunding's Hut', based on the stage set of the first act of Wagner's "Die Walküre") in the forest near Linderhof, complete with an artificial tree and a sword embedded in it. (In "Die Walküre", Siegmund pulls the sword from the tree.) Hunding's Hut was destroyed in 1945, but a replica was constructed at Linderhof in 1990. In 1877, Ludwig had "Einsiedlei des Gurnemanz" (a small hermitage, as seen in the third act of "Parsifal") erected near Hunding's Hut, with a meadow of spring flowers. The king would retire to read. (A replica made in 2000 can now be seen in the park at Linderhof.) Nearby a Moroccan House, purchased at the Paris World Fair in 1878, was erected alongside the mountain road. Sold in 1891 and taken to Oberammergau, it was purchased by the government in 1980 and re-erected in the park at Linderhof after extensive restoration. Inside the palace, iconography reflected Ludwig's fascination with the absolutist government of France. Ludwig saw himself as the "Moon King", a romantic shadow of the earlier "Sun King", Louis XIV of France. From Linderhof, Ludwig enjoyed moonlit sleigh rides in an elaborate 18th-century sleigh, complete with footmen in 18th-century livery.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: In 1878, construction began on Herrenchiemsee, a partial replica of the palace at Versailles, sited on the Herreninsel in the Chiemsee. It was built as Ludwig's tribute to Louis XIV of France, the magnificent "Sun King". Only the central portion of the palace was built; all construction halted on Ludwig's death. What exists of Herrenchiemsee comprises , a "copy in miniature" compared with Versailles' 551,112 ft².


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: The following year, Ludwig finished the construction of the royal apartment in the Residenz Palace in Munich, to which he had added an opulent conservatory or winter garden on the palace roof. It was started in 1867 as quite a small structure, but after extensions in 1868 and 1871, the dimensions reached 69.5 x 17.2 x 9.5 m. It featured an ornamental lake complete with skiff, a painted panorama of the Himalayas as a backdrop, an Indian fisher-hut of bamboo, a Moorish kiosk, and an exotic tent. The roof was a technically advanced metal and glass construction. The winter garden was closed in June 1886, partly dismantled the following year, and demolished in 1897.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: He planned the construction of a new castle on ('Falcon Rock') near Pfronten in the Allgäu (a place he knew well: a diary entry for 16 October 1867 reads "Falkenstein wild, romantic"). The first design was a sketch by Christian Jank in 1883 "very much like the Townhall of Liège". Subsequent designs showed a modest villa with a square tower and a small Gothic castle. By 1885, a road and water supply had been provided at Falkenstein but the old ruins remained untouched.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Ludwig also proposed a Byzantine palace in the Graswangtal, and a Chinese summer palace by the Plansee in Tyrol. These projects never got beyond initial plans.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: For Berg Castle, Ludwig had a fifth tower constructed for it called "Isolde" and used the castle frequently as his summer residence. When Empress Maria Alexandrovna of Russia visited Berg in 1868, he had the castle magnificently decorated for the duration of her stay there; the castle otherwise, by his standards, was modestly furnished.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Although the king had paid for his pet projects out of his own funds and not the state coffers, that did not necessarily spare Bavaria from financial fallout. By 1885, the king was 14 million marks in debt, had borrowed heavily from his family, and rather than economizing, as his financial ministers advised him, he planned further opulent designs without pause. He demanded that loans be sought from all of Europe's royalty, and remained aloof from matters of state. Feeling harassed and irritated by his ministers, he considered dismissing the entire cabinet and replacing them with fresh faces. The cabinet decided to act first.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Seeking a cause to depose Ludwig by constitutional means, the rebelling ministers decided on the rationale that he was mentally ill, and unable to rule. They asked Ludwig's uncle, Prince Luitpold, to step into the royal vacancy once Ludwig was deposed. Luitpold agreed, on condition the conspirators produced reliable proof that the king was, in fact, helplessly insane.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Between January and March 1886, the conspirators assembled the 'Medical Report', on Ludwig's fitness to rule. Most of the details in the report were compiled by Maximilian Count von Holnstein, who was disillusioned with Ludwig and actively sought his downfall. Holnstein used bribery and his high rank to extract a long list of complaints, accounts, and gossip about Ludwig from among the king's servants. The litany of supposed bizarre behavior included his pathological shyness, his avoidance of state business, his complex and expensive flights of fancy, dining outdoors in cold weather and wearing heavy overcoats in summer, sloppy and childish table manners, dispatching servants on lengthy and expensive voyages to research architectural details in foreign lands; and abusive, violent threats to his servants.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: The degree to which these accusations were accurate may never be known. The conspirators approached Bismarck, who doubted the report's veracity, calling it "rakings from the King's wastepaper-basket and cupboards". Bismarck commented after reading the report that "the Ministers wish to sacrifice the King, otherwise they have no chance of saving themselves". He suggested that the matter be brought before the Bavarian Diet and discussed there, but did not stop the ministers from carrying out their plan.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: In early June, the report was finalized and signed by a panel of four psychiatrists: Dr. Bernhard von Gudden, chief of the Munich Asylum; Dr. Hubert von Grashey (who was Gudden's son-in-law); and their colleagues, Dr. Friedrich Wilhelm Hagen and Dr. Max Hubrich. The report declared in its final sentences that the king suffered from paranoia, and concluded, "Suffering from such a disorder, freedom of action can no longer be allowed and Your Majesty is declared incapable of ruling, which incapacity will be not only for a year's duration, but for the length of Your Majesty's life". The men had never met the king, except for Gudden, only once, 12 years earlier, and none had ever examined him. Questions about the lack of medical diagnosis make the legality of the deposition controversial. Adding to the controversy are the mysterious circumstances under which King Ludwig died. (Today, the claim of paranoia is not considered correct; Ludwig's behavior is rather interpreted as a schizotypal personality disorder and he may also have suffered from Pick's disease during his last years, an assumption supported by a frontotemporal lobar degeneration mentioned in the autopsy report.)


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Ludwig's only younger brother and successor, Otto, was considered insane, providing a convenient basis for the claim of hereditary insanity.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: At 4 am on 10 June 1886, a government commission including Holnstein and Gudden arrived at Neuschwanstein to deliver the document of deposition to the King formally and to place him in custody. Tipped off an hour or two earlier by a faithful servant, his coachman Fritz Osterholzer, Ludwig ordered the local police to protect him, and the commissioners were turned back from the castle gate at gunpoint. In an infamous sideshow, the commissioners were attacked by the 47-year-old baroness Spera von Truchseß, out of loyalty to the king, who flailed at the men with her umbrella and then rushed to the king's apartments to identify the conspirators. Ludwig then had the commissioners arrested, but after holding them captive for several hours, released them. Prince Ludwig Ferdinand was the only member of the Bavarian royal family who always remained on friendly terms with his cousin (with the exception of Elisabeth, Empress of Austria), so Ludwig II wrote him a telegram; the latter immediately intended to follow this call, but was prevented from leaving Nymphenburg Palace by his uncle Luitpold, who was about to take over government as the ruling Prince Regent.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: That same day, the government under Minister-President Johann von Lutz publicly proclaimed Luitpold as Prince Regent. The king's friends and allies urged him to flee, or to show himself in Munich, and thus regain the support of the people. Ludwig hesitated, instead issuing a statement, allegedly drafted by his aide-de-camp Count Alfred Dürckheim, which was published by a Bamberg newspaper on 11 June:


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: The government succeeded in suppressing the statement by seizing most copies of the newspaper and handbills. Anton Sailer's pictorial biography of the King contains a photograph of this rare document. The authenticity of the Royal Proclamation is doubted, however, as it is dated 9 June, before the commission arrived, it uses "I" instead of the royal "We" and orthographic errors are included. As the king dithered, his support waned. Peasants who rallied to his cause were dispersed, and the police who guarded his castle were replaced by a police detachment of 36 men who sealed off all entrances to the castle.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Eventually, the king decided he would try to escape, but he was too late. In the early hours of 12 June, a second commission arrived. The King was seized just after midnight and at 4 am was taken to a waiting carriage. He asked Dr. Gudden, "How can you declare me insane? After all, you have never seen or examined me before," only to be told that "it was unnecessary; the documentary evidence [the servants' reports] is very copious and completely substantiated. It is overwhelming." Ludwig was transported to Berg Castle on the shores of Lake Starnberg, south of Munich.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: On the afternoon of the next day, 13 June 1886, Dr. Gudden accompanied Ludwig on a stroll in the grounds of Berg Castle. They were escorted by two attendants. On their return, Gudden expressed optimism to other doctors concerning the treatment of his royal patient. Following dinner, at around 6 pm, Ludwig asked Gudden to accompany him on a further walk, this time through the Schloß Berg parkland along the shore of Lake Starnberg. Gudden agreed; the walk may even have been his suggestion, and he told the aides not to join them. His words were ambiguous (, "No attendant may come with [us]") and whether they were meant to follow at a discreet distance is not clear. The two men were last seen at about 6:30 pm; they were due back at 8 pm, but never returned. After searches were made for more than two hours by the entire castle staff in a gale with heavy rain, at 10:30 pm that night, the bodies of both the King and von Gudden were found, head and shoulders above the shallow water near the shore. The King's watch had stopped at 6:54. Gendarmes patrolling the park had neither seen nor heard anything unusual.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Ludwig's death was officially ruled a suicide by drowning, but the official autopsy report indicated that no water was found in his lungs. Ludwig was a very strong swimmer in his youth, the water was approximately waist deep where his body was found, and he had not expressed suicidal feelings during the crisis. Gudden's body showed blows to the head and neck and signs of strangulation, leading to the suspicion that he was strangled, although no other evidence was found to prove this.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Speculation exists that Ludwig was murdered by his enemies while attempting to escape from Berg. One account suggests that the king was shot. The King's personal fisherman, Jakob Lidl (1864–1933), stated, "Three years after the king's death I was made to swear an oath that I would never say certain things – not to my wife, not on my deathbed, and not to any priest … The state has undertaken to look after my family if anything should happen to me in either peacetime or war." Lidl kept his oath, at least orally, but left behind notes that were found after his death. According to Lidl, he had hidden behind bushes with his boat, waiting to meet the king, to row him out into the lake, where loyalists were waiting to help him escape. "As the king stepped up to his boat and put one foot in it, a shot rang out from the bank, apparently killing him on the spot, for the king fell across the bow of the boat." However, the autopsy report indicates no scars or wounds were found on the body of the dead king; on the other hand, many years later, Countess Josephine von Wrbna-Kaunitz would show her afternoon tea guests a grey Loden coat with two bullet holes in the back, asserting it was the one Ludwig was wearing. Another theory suggests that Ludwig died of natural causes (such as a heart attack or stroke) brought on by the cool water (12 °C) of the lake during an escape attempt.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Ludwig's remains were dressed in the regalia of the Order of Saint Hubert, and lay in state in the royal chapel at the Munich Residence Palace. In his right hand, he held a posy of white jasmine picked for him by his cousin the Empress Elisabeth of Austria. After an elaborate funeral on 19 June 1886, Ludwig's remains were interred in the crypt of the Michaelskirche in Munich. His heart, however, does not lie with the rest of his body. Bavarian tradition called for the heart of the king to be placed in a silver urn and sent to the Chapel of Grace in Altötting, where it was placed beside those of his father and grandfather.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Three years after his death, a small memorial chapel was built overlooking the site and a cross was erected in the lake. A remembrance ceremony is held there each year on 13 June.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: The King was succeeded by his brother Otto, but since Otto was considered incapacitated by mental illness due to a diagnosis by Dr. Gudden and had been under medical supervision since 1883, the king's uncle Luitpold remained regent. Luitpold maintained the regency until his own death in 1912 at the age of 91. He was succeeded as regent by his eldest son, also named Ludwig. The regency lasted for 13 more months until November 1913, when Regent Ludwig deposed the still-living, but still-institutionalized King Otto, and declared himself King Ludwig III of Bavaria. His reign lasted until the end of World War I, when monarchy in all of Germany came to an end.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Though many considered Ludwig peculiar, the question of clinical insanity remains unresolved. The prominent German brain researcher Heinz Häfner has disagreed with the contention that clear evidence existed for Ludwig's insanity. Others believe he may have suffered from the effects of chloroform used in an effort to control chronic toothache rather than any psychological disorder. His cousin and friend, Empress Elisabeth, held that, "The King was not mad; he was just an eccentric living in a world of dreams. They might have treated him more gently, and thus perhaps spared him so terrible an end."


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: One of Ludwig's most quoted sayings was, "I wish to remain an eternal enigma to myself and to others."


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Today visitors pay tribute to King Ludwig by visiting his grave as well as his castles. Ironically, the very castles which were causing the king's financial ruin have today become extremely profitable tourist attractions for the Bavarian state. The palaces, given to Bavaria by Ludwig III's son Crown Prince Rupprecht in 1923, have paid for themselves many times over and attract millions of tourists from all over the world to Germany each year.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Unsurprisingly, Ludwig II had a great interest in architecture. His paternal grandfather, King Ludwig I, had largely rebuilt Munich. It was known as the 'Athens on the Isar'. His father, King Maximilian II, had also continued with more construction in Munich, as well as the construction of Hohenschwangau Castle, the childhood home of Ludwig II, near the future Neuschwanstein Castle of Ludwig II. Ludwig II had planned to build a large opera house on the banks of the Isar River in Munich. This plan was vetoed by the Bavarian government. Using similar plans, a festival theatre was built later in his reign from Ludwig's personal finances at Bayreuth.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Ludwig II left behind a large collection of plans and designs for other castles that were never built, as well as plans for further rooms in his completed buildings. Many of these designs are housed today in the King Ludwig II Museum at Herrenchiemsee Castle. These building designs date from the latter part of the King's reign, beginning around 1883. As money was starting to run out, the artists knew that their designs would never be executed. The designs became more extravagant and numerous as the artists realized that there was no need to concern themselves with economy or practicality.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: It has been said that Richard Wagner's late career is part of Ludwig's legacy, since he almost certainly would have been unable to complete his opera cycle "Der Ring des Nibelungen" or to write his final opera, "Parsifal", without the king's support.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Ludwig also sponsored the premieres of "Tristan und Isolde", "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg", and, through his financial support of the Bayreuth Festival, those of "Der Ring des Nibelungen" and "Parsifal".


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Ludwig provided Munich with its opera house, Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz, establishing a lasting tradition of comic and romantic musical theatre known as as well as operettas produced for the Bavarian public.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: The so-called "Swan King" is also said to have inspired the story behind the classical ballet "Swan Lake" by Russian composer Tchaikovsky. This could be referenced to the days of his childhood when he spent much of his youth in a castle named ('high region of the swan') in the Bavarian Alps. Ludwig grew up there among swan images and icons, and the nearby ('Swan Lake').


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: Portrayals of Ludwig II include Italian director Luchino Visconti's 1973 motion picture first named for him, called "Ludwig".


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: A popular 2014 board game, "Castles of Mad King Ludwig", is named for Ludwig II and inspired by his penchant for elaborate and whimsical castles; Neuschwanstein Castle is pictured on the box. The 2022 collector’s edition of the game features a “Towers” expansion that incorporates new tiles and miniatures based on eight of the king’s castles.


title: Ludwig II of Bavaria

text: The 2010 thriller "The Secret Crown" by Chris Kuzneski is based on the antics of Ludwig II, weaving fiction with known facts about the monarch.


title: Boric acid

text: Boric acid, more specifically orthoboric acid, is a compound of boron, oxygen, and hydrogen with formula . It may also be called hydrogen borate or boracic acid. It is usually encountered as colorless crystals or a white powder, that dissolves in water, and occurs in nature as the mineral sassolite. It is a weak acid that yields various borate anions and salts, and can react with alcohols to form borate esters.


title: Boric acid

text: Boric acid is often used as an antiseptic, insecticide, flame retardant, neutron absorber, or precursor to other boron compounds.


title: Boric acid

text: The term "boric acid" is also used generically for any oxoacid of boron, such as metaboric acid and tetraboric acid .


title: Boric acid

text: Orthoboric acid was first prepared by Wilhelm Homberg (1652–1715) from borax, by the action of mineral acids, and was given the name ("sedative salt of Homberg"). However boric acid and borates have been used since the time of the ancient Greeks for cleaning, preserving food, and other activities.


title: Boric acid

text: The three oxygen atoms form a trigonal planar geometry around the boron. The B-O bond length is 136 pm and the O-H is 97 pm. The molecular point group is "C".


title: Boric acid

text: Two crystalline forms of orthoboric acid are known: triclinic and hexagonal. The former is the most common; the second, which is a bit more stable thermodynamically, can be obtained with a special preparation method.


title: Boric acid

text: The triclinic form of boric acid consists of layers of molecules held together by hydrogen bonds of length 272 pm. The distance between two adjacent layers is 318 pm.


title: Boric acid

text: Boric acid may be prepared by reacting borax (sodium tetraborate decahydrate) with a mineral acid, such as hydrochloric acid:


title: Boric acid

text: When heated, orthoboric acid undergoes a three step dehydration. The reported transition temperatures vary substantially from source to source.


title: Boric acid

text: Heating metaboric acid above about 180 °C eliminates another water molecule forming tetraboric acid, also called pyroboric acid ():


title: Boric acid

text: However, Raman spectroscopy of strongly alkaline solutions has shown the presence of ions, leading some to conclude that the acidity is exclusively due to the abstraction of from water:


title: Boric acid

text: This reaction may be characterized as Lewis acidity of boron toward , rather than as Brønsted acidity. However, some of its behaviour towards some chemical reactions suggest it to be tribasic acid in the Brønsted sense as well.


title: Boric acid

text: Boric acid, mixed with borax (more properly ) in the weight ratio of 4:5, is highly soluble in water, though they are not so soluble separately.


title: Boric acid

text: Boric acid reacts with alcohols to form borate esters, where R is alkyl or aryl. The reaction is typically driven by a dehydrating agent, such as concentrated sulfuric acid:


title: Boric acid

text: The acidity of boric acid solutions is greatly increased in the presence of cis-vicinal diols (organic compounds containing similarly oriented hydroxyl groups in adjacent carbon atoms, ) such as glycerol and mannitol.


title: Boric acid

text: The tetrahydroxyborate anion formed in the dissolution spontaneously reacts with these diols to form relatively stable anion esters containing one or two five-member rings. For example, the reaction with mannitol , whose two middle hydroxyls are in "cis" orientation, can be written as


title: Boric acid

text: The stability of these mannitoborate ester anions shifts the equilibrium of the right and thus increases the acidity of the solution by 5 orders of magnitude compared to that of pure boric oxide, lowering the p"K" from 9 to below 4 for sufficient concentration of mannitol. The resulting solution has been called mannitoboric acid.


title: Boric acid

text: The addition of mannitol to an initially neutral solution containing boric acid or simple borates lowers its pH enough for it to be titrated by a strong base as NaOH, including with an automated a potentiometric titrator. This property is used in analytical chemistry to determine the borate content of aqueous solutions, for example to monitor the depletion of boric acid by neutrons in the water of the primary circuit of light-water reactor when the compound is added as a neutron poison during refueling operations.


title: Boric acid

text: Based on mammalian median lethal dose (LD) rating of 2,660 mg/kg body mass, boric acid is only poisonous if taken internally or inhaled in large quantities. The Fourteenth Edition of the "Merck Index" indicates that the LD of boric acid is 5.14 g/kg for oral dosages given to rats, and that 5 to 20 g/kg has produced death in adult humans. For a 70 kg adult, at the lower 5g limit, 350g could produce death in humans. For comparison's sake, the LD of salt is reported to be 3.75 g/kg in rats according to the "Merck Index". According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, "The minimal lethal dose of ingested boron (as boric acid) was reported to be 2–3 g in infants, 5–6 g in children, and 15–20 g in adults. [...] However, a review of 784 human poisonings with boric acid (10–88 g) reported no fatalities, with 88% of cases being asymptomatic."


title: Boric acid

text: Long-term exposure to boric acid may be of more concern, causing kidney damage and eventually kidney failure (see links below). Although it does not appear to be carcinogenic, studies in dogs have reported testicular atrophy after exposure to 32 mg/kg bw/day for 90 days. This level, were it applicable to humans at like dose, would equate to a cumulative dose of 202g over 90 days for a 70 kg adult, not far lower than the above LD.


title: Boric acid

text: According to the CLH report for boric acid published by the Bureau for Chemical Substances Lodz, Poland, boric acid in high doses shows significant developmental toxicity and teratogenicity in rabbit, rat, and mouse fetuses as well as cardiovascular defects, skeletal variations, and mild kidney lesions. As a consequence in the 30th ATP to EU directive 67/548/EEC of August 2008, the European Commission decided to amend its classification as reprotoxic category 2, and to apply the risk phrases R60 (may impair fertility) and R61 (may cause harm to the unborn child).


title: Boric acid

text: At a 2010 European Diagnostics Manufacturing Association (EDMA) Meeting, several new additions to the Substance of Very High Concern (SVHC) candidate list in relation to the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals Regulations 2007 (REACH) were discussed. Following the registration and review completed as part of REACH, the classification of Boric Acid CAS 10043-35-3 / 11113-50-1 is listed from 1 December 2010 is "H360FD (May damage fertility. May damage the unborn child.)"


title: Boric acid

text: The primary industrial use of boric acid is in the manufacture of monofilament fiberglass usually referred to as textile fiberglass. Textile fiberglass is used to reinforce plastics in applications that range from boats, to industrial piping to computer circuit boards.


title: Boric acid

text: In the jewelry industry, boric acid is often used in combination with denatured alcohol to reduce surface oxidation and thus formation of firescale on metals during annealing and soldering operations.


title: Boric acid

text: In electroplating, boric acid is used as part of some proprietary formulas. One such known formula calls for about a 1 to 10 ratio of to , a very small portion of sodium lauryl sulfate and a small portion of .


title: Boric acid

text: The solution of orthoboric acid and borax in 4:5 ratio is used as a fire retarding agent of wood by impregnation.


title: Boric acid

text: It is also used in the manufacturing of ramming mass, a fine silica-containing powder used for producing induction furnace linings and ceramics.


title: Boric acid

text: Boric acid, in combination with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) or silicone oil, is used to manufacture Silly Putty.


title: Boric acid

text: Boric acid is also present in the list of chemical additives used for hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania. Indeed, it is often used in conjonction with guar gum as cross-linking and gelling agent for controlling the viscosity and the rheology of the fracking fluid injected at high pressure in the well. Indeed, it is important to control the fluid viscosity for keeping in suspension on long transport distances the grains of the propping agents aimed at maintaining the cracks in the shales sufficiently open to facilitate the gas extraction after the hydraulic pressure is relieved. The rheological properties of borate cross-linked guar gum hydrogel mainly depend on the pH value.


title: Boric acid

text: Boric acid is used in high-voltage/high-current expulsion-type electrical fuses as a de-ionization/extinguishing agent. During an electrical fault in an expulsion-type fuse, a plasma arc is generated by the disintegration and rapid spring-loaded separation of the fusible element, which is typically a specialized metal rod that passes through a compressed mass of boric acid within the fuse assembly. The high-temperature plasma causes the boric acid to rapidly decompose into water vapor and boric anhydride, and in-turn, the vaporization products de-ionize the plasma, helping to interrupt the electrical fault.


title: Boric acid

text: Boric acid can be used as an antiseptic for minor burns or cuts and is sometimes used in salves and dressings, such as boracic lint. Boric acid is applied in a very dilute solution as an eye wash. Dilute boric acid can be used as a vaginal douche to treat bacterial vaginosis due to excessive alkalinity, as well as candidiasis due to non-albicans candida. Boric acid largely spares lactobacilli within the vagina. As TOL-463, it is under development as an intravaginal medication for the treatment of bacterial vaginosis and vulvovaginal candidiasis. As an antibacterial compound, boric acid can also be used as an acne treatment. It is also used as prevention of athlete's foot, by inserting powder in the socks or stockings. Various preparations can be used to treat some kinds of (ear infection) in both humans and animals. The preservative in urine sample bottles in the UK is boric acid.


title: Boric acid

text: Boric acid solutions used as an eye wash or on abraded skin are known to be toxic, particularly to infants, especially after repeated use; this is because of its slow elimination rate.


title: Boric acid

text: Boric acid is one of the most commonly used substances that can counteract the harmful effects of reactive hydrofluoric acid (HF) after an accidental contact with the skin. It works by forcing the free anions into the inert tetrafluoroborate anion. This process defeats the extreme toxicity of hydrofluoric acid, particularly its ability to sequester ionic calcium from blood serum which can lead to cardiac arrest and bone decomposition; such an event can occur from just minor skin contact with HF.


title: Boric acid

text: Boric acid was first registered in the US as an insecticide in 1948 for control of cockroaches, termites, fire ants, fleas, silverfish, and many other insects. The product is generally considered to be safe to use in household kitchens to control cockroaches and ants. It acts as a stomach poison affecting the insects' metabolism, and the dry powder is abrasive to the insects' exoskeletons. Boric acid also has the reputation as "the gift that keeps on killing" in that cockroaches that cross over lightly dusted areas do not die immediately, but that the effect is like shards of glass cutting them apart. This often allows a roach to go back to the nest where it soon dies. Cockroaches, being cannibalistic, eat others killed by contact or consumption of boric acid, consuming the powder trapped in the dead roach and killing them, too.


title: Boric acid

text: In combination with its use as an insecticide, boric acid also prevents and destroys existing wet and dry rot in timbers. It can be used in combination with an ethylene glycol carrier to treat external wood against fungal and insect attack. It is possible to buy borate-impregnated rods for insertion into wood via drill holes where dampness and moisture is known to collect and sit. It is available in a gel form and injectable paste form for treating rot affected wood without the need to replace the timber. Concentrates of borate-based treatments can be used to prevent slime, mycelium, and algae growth, even in marine environments.


title: Boric acid

text: Boric acid is added to salt in the curing of cattle hides, calfskins, and sheepskins. This helps to control bacterial development, and helps to control insects.


title: Boric acid

text: Boric acid in equilibrium with its conjugate base the borate ion is widely used (in the concentration range 50 - 100 ppm boron equivalents) as a primary or adjunct pH buffer system in swimming pools. Boric acid is a weak acid, with p"K" (the pH at which buffering is strongest because the free acid and borate ion are in equal concentrations) of 9.24 in pure water at 25 °C. But apparent p"K" is substantially lower in swimming pool or ocean waters because of interactions with various other molecules in solution. It will be around 9.0 in a salt-water pool. No matter which form of soluble boron is added, within the acceptable range of pH and boron concentration for swimming pools, boric acid is the predominant form in aqueous solution, as shown in the accompanying figure. The boric acid - borate system can be useful as a primary buffer system (substituting for the bicarbonate system with p"K" = 6.0 and p"K" = 9.4 under typical salt-water pool conditions) in pools with salt-water chlorine generators that tend to show upward drift in pH from a working range of pH 7.5 - 8.2. Buffer capacity is greater against rising pH (towards the pKa around 9.0), as illustrated in the accompanying graph. The use of boric acid in this concentration range does not allow any reduction in free HOCl concentration needed for pool sanitation, but it may add marginally to the photo-protective effects of cyanuric acid and confer other benefits through anti-corrosive activity or perceived water softness, depending on overall pool solute composition.


title: Boric acid

text: Colloidal suspensions of nanoparticles of boric acid dissolved in petroleum or vegetable oil can form a remarkable lubricant on ceramic or metal surfaces with a coefficient of sliding friction that decreases with increasing pressure to a value ranging from 0.10 to 0.02. Self-lubricating films result from a spontaneous chemical reaction between water molecules and coatings in a humid environment. In bulk-scale, an inverse relationship exists between friction coefficient and Hertzian contact pressure induced by applied load.


title: Boric acid

text: Boric acid is used in some nuclear power plants as a neutron poison. The boron in boric acid reduces the probability of thermal fission by absorbing some thermal neutrons. Fission chain reactions are generally driven by the probability that free neutrons will result in fission and is determined by the material and geometric properties of the reactor. Natural boron consists of approximately 20% boron-10 and 80% boron-11 isotopes. Boron-10 has a high cross-section for absorption of low energy (thermal) neutrons. By increasing boric acid concentration in the reactor coolant, the probability that a neutron will cause fission is reduced. Changes in boric acid concentration can effectively regulate the rate of fission taking place in the reactor. Boric acid is used only in pressurized water reactors (PWRs) whereas boiling water reactors (BWRs) employ control rod pattern and coolant flow for power control. BWRs use an aqueous solution of boric acid and borax or sodium pentaborate for an emergency shut down system. Boric acid may be dissolved in spent fuel pools used to store spent fuel elements. The concentration is high enough to keep neutron multiplication at a minimum. Boric acid was dumped over Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant after its meltdown to prevent another reaction from occurring.


title: Boric acid

text: Boron is used in pyrotechnics to prevent the amide-forming reaction between aluminium and nitrates. A small amount of boric acid is added to the composition to neutralize alkaline amides that can react with the aluminum.


title: Boric acid

text: Boric acid can be used as a colorant to make fire green. For example, when dissolved in methanol it is popularly used by fire jugglers and fire spinners to create a deep green flame much stronger than copper sulfate.


title: Boric acid

text: Boric acid is used to treat or prevent boron deficiencies in plants. It is also used in preservation of grains such as rice and wheat.


title: Congo Crisis

text: The Congo Crisis () was a period of political upheaval and conflict between 1960 and 1965 in the Republic of the Congo (today the Democratic Republic of the Congo). The crisis began almost immediately after the Congo became independent from Belgium and ended, unofficially, with the entire country under the rule of Joseph-Désiré Mobutu. Constituting a series of civil wars, the Congo Crisis was also a proxy conflict in the Cold War, in which the Soviet Union and the United States supported opposing factions. Around 100,000 people are believed to have been killed during the crisis.


title: Congo Crisis

text: A nationalist movement in the Belgian Congo demanded the end of colonial rule: this led to the country's independence on 30 June 1960. Minimal preparations had been made and many issues, such as federalism, tribalism, and ethnic nationalism, remained unresolved. In the first week of July, a mutiny broke out in the army and violence erupted between black and white civilians. Belgium sent troops to protect fleeing white citizens. Katanga and South Kasai seceded with Belgian support. Amid continuing unrest and violence, the United Nations deployed peacekeepers, but UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld refused to use these troops to help the central government in Léopoldville fight the secessionists. Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, the charismatic leader of the largest nationalist faction, reacted by calling for assistance from the Soviet Union, which promptly sent military advisers and other support.


title: Congo Crisis

text: The involvement of the Soviets split the Congolese government and led to an impasse between Lumumba and President Joseph Kasa-Vubu. Mobutu, in command of the army, broke this deadlock with a "coup d'état", expelled the Soviet advisors and established a new government effectively under his own control. Lumumba was taken captive and subsequently executed in 1961. A rival government of the "Free Republic of the Congo" was founded in the eastern city of Stanleyville by Lumumba supporters led by Antoine Gizenga. It gained Soviet support but was crushed in early 1962. Meanwhile, the UN took a more aggressive stance towards the secessionists after Hammarskjöld was killed in a plane crash in late 1961. Supported by UN troops, Léopoldville defeated secessionist movements in Katanga and South Kasai by the start of 1963.


title: Congo Crisis

text: With Katanga and South Kasai back under the government's control, a reconciliatory compromise constitution was adopted and the exiled Katangese leader, Moïse Tshombe, was recalled to head an interim administration while fresh elections were organised. Before these could be held, however, Maoist-inspired militants calling themselves the "Simbas" rose up in the east of the country. The Simbas took control of a significant amount of territory and proclaimed a communist "People's Republic of the Congo" in Stanleyville. Government forces gradually retook territory and, in November 1964, Belgium and the United States intervened militarily in Stanleyville to recover hostages from Simba captivity. The Simbas were defeated and collapsed soon after. Following the elections in March 1965, a new political stalemate developed between Tshombe and Kasa-Vubu, forcing the government into near-paralysis. Mobutu mounted a second coup d'état in November 1965, taking personal control of the country. Under Mobutu's rule, the Congo (renamed Zaire in 1971) was transformed into a dictatorship which would endure until his deposition in 1997.


title: Congo Crisis

text: Colonial rule in the Congo began in the late 19th century. King Leopold II of Belgium, frustrated by Belgium's lack of international power and prestige, attempted to persuade the Belgian government to support colonial expansion around the then-largely unexplored Congo Basin. The Belgian government's ambivalence about the idea led Leopold to eventually create the colony on his own account. With support from a number of Western countries, who viewed Leopold as a useful buffer between rival colonial powers, Leopold achieved international recognition for a personal colony, the Congo Free State, in 1885. By the turn of the century, however, the violence of Free State officials against indigenous Congolese and the ruthless system of economic extraction had led to intense diplomatic pressure on Belgium to take official control of the country, which it did in 1908, creating the Belgian Congo.


title: Congo Crisis

text: Belgian rule in the Congo was based around the "colonial trinity" ("trinité coloniale") of state, missionary and private company interests. The privileging of Belgian commercial interests meant that capital sometimes flowed back into the Congo and that individual regions became specialised. On many occasions, the interests of the government and private enterprise became closely tied and the state helped companies with strikebreaking and countering other efforts by the indigenous population to better their lot. The country was split into nesting, hierarchically organised administrative subdivisions, and run uniformly according to a set "native policy" ("politique indigène")—in contrast to the British and the French, who generally favoured the system of indirect rule whereby traditional leaders were retained in positions of authority under colonial oversight. There was also a high degree of racial segregation. Large numbers of white immigrants who moved to the Congo after the end of World War II came from across the social spectrum, but were nonetheless always treated as superior to black people.


title: Congo Crisis

text: During the 1940s and 1950s, the Congo experienced an unprecedented level of urbanisation and the colonial administration began various development programmes aimed at making the territory into a "model colony". One of the results of the measures was the development of a new middle class of Europeanised African ""évolués"" in the cities. By the 1950s the Congo had a wage labour force twice as large as that in any other African colony. The Congo's rich natural resources, including uranium—much of the uranium used by the U.S. nuclear programme during World War II was Congolese—led to substantial interest in the region from both the Soviet Union and the United States as the Cold War developed.


title: Congo Crisis

text: An African nationalist movement developed in the Belgian Congo during the 1950s, primarily among the "évolués". The movement was divided into a number of parties and groups which were broadly divided on ethnic and geographical lines and opposed to one another. The largest, the "Mouvement National Congolais" (MNC), was a united front organisation dedicated to achieving independence "within a reasonable" time. It was created around a charter which was signed by, among others, Patrice Lumumba, Cyrille Adoula and Joseph Iléo, but others accused the party of being too moderate. Lumumba became a leading figure within the MNC, and by the end of 1959, the party claimed to have 58,000 members.


title: Congo Crisis

text: The MNC's main rival was the "Alliance des Bakongo" (ABAKO), led by Joseph Kasa-Vubu, who advocated a more radical ideology than the MNC, based around calls for immediate independence and the promotion of regional identity. ABAKO's stance was more ethnic nationalist than the MNC's; it argued that an independent Congo should be run by the Bakongo as inheritors of the pre-colonial Kingdom of the Kongo. The "Confédération des Associations Tribales du Katanga" (CONAKAT), a localist party led by Moïse Tshombe, was the third major organisation; it advocated federalism and primarily represented the southern province of Katanga. These were joined by a number of smaller parties which emerged as the nationalist movement developed, including the radical "Parti Solidaire Africain" (PSA), and factions representing the interests of minor ethnic groups like the "Alliance des Bayanzi" (ABAZI).


title: Congo Crisis

text: Although it was the largest of the African nationalist parties, the MNC had many different factions within it that took differing stances on a number of issues. It was increasingly polarised between moderate "évolués" and the more radical mass membership. A radical faction headed by Iléo and Albert Kalonji split away in July 1959, but failed to induce mass defections by other MNC members. The dissident faction became known as the MNC-Kalonji (MNC-K), while the majority group became the MNC-Lumumba (MNC-L). The split divided the party's support base into those who remained with Lumumba, chiefly in the Stanleyville region in the north-east, and those who backed the MNC-K, which became most popular around the southern city of Élisabethville and among the Luba ethnic group.


title: Congo Crisis

text: Major riots broke out in Léopoldville, the Congolese capital, on 4 January 1959 after a political demonstration turned violent. The "Force Publique", the colonial gendarmerie, used force against the rioters—at least 49 people were killed, and total casualties may have been as high as 500. The nationalist parties' influence expanded outside the major cities for the first time, and nationalist demonstrations and riots became a regular occurrence over the next year, bringing large numbers of black people from outside the "évolué" class into the independence movement. Many blacks began to test the boundaries of the colonial system by refusing to pay taxes or abide by minor colonial regulations. The bulk of the ABAKO leadership was arrested, leaving the MNC in an advantageous position.


title: Congo Crisis

text: These developments led to the white community also becoming increasing radicalised. Some whites planned to attempt a "coup d'état" if a black majority government took power. As law and order began to break down, white civilians formed militia groups known as "Corps de Voluntaires Européens" ("European Volunteer Corps") to police their neighbourhoods. These militias frequently attacked the black population.


title: Congo Crisis

text: In the fallout from the Léopoldville riots, the report of a Belgian parliamentary working group on the future of the Congo was published in which a strong demand for "internal autonomy" was noted. August de Schryver, the Minister of the Colonies, launched a high-profile Round Table Conference in Brussels in January 1960, with the leaders of all the major Congolese parties in attendance. Lumumba, who had been arrested following riots in Stanleyville, was released in the run-up to the conference and headed the MNC-L delegation. The Belgian government had hoped for a period of at least 30 years before independence, but Congolese pressure at the conference led to 30 June 1960 being set as the date. Issues including federalism, ethnicity and the future role of Belgium in Congolese affairs were left unresolved after the delegates failed to reach agreement.


title: Congo Crisis

text: Belgians began campaigning against Lumumba, whom they wanted to marginalise; they accused him of being a communist and, hoping to fragment the nationalist movement, supported rival, ethnic-based parties like CONAKAT. Many Belgians hoped that an independent Congo would form part of a federation, like the French Community or British Commonwealth of Nations, and that close economic and political association with Belgium would continue. As independence approached, the Belgian government organised Congolese elections in May 1960. These resulted in an MNC relative majority.


title: Congo Crisis

text: The proclamation of the independent Republic of the Congo, and the end of colonial rule, occurred as planned on 30 June 1960. In a ceremony at the "Palais de la Nation" in Léopoldville, King Baudouin gave a speech in which he presented the end of colonial rule in the Congo as the culmination of the Belgian "civilising mission" begun by Leopold II. After the King's address, Lumumba gave an unscheduled speech in which he angrily attacked colonialism and described independence as the crowning success of the nationalist movement. Although Lumumba's address was acclaimed by figures such as Malcolm X, it nearly provoked a diplomatic incident with Belgium; even some Congolese politicians perceived it as unnecessarily provocative. Nevertheless, independence was celebrated across the Congo.


title: Congo Crisis

text: Politically, the new state had a semi-presidential constitution, known as the "Loi Fondamentale", in which executive power was shared between President and Prime Minister in a system known as "bicephalisme". Kasa-Vubu was proclaimed President, and Lumumba Prime Minister, of the Republic of the Congo. Despite the objections of CONAKAT and others, the constitution was largely centralist, concentrating power in the central government in Léopoldville, and did not devolve significant powers to provincial level.


title: Congo Crisis

text: Despite the proclamation of independence, neither the Belgian nor the Congolese government intended the colonial social order to end immediately. The Belgian government hoped that whites might keep their position indefinitely. The Republic of the Congo was still reliant on colonial institutions like the "Force Publique" to function from day to day, and white technical experts, installed by the Belgians, were retained in the broad absence of suitably qualified black Congolese replacements (partly the result of colonial restrictions regarding higher education). Many Congolese people had assumed that independence would produce tangible and immediate social change, so the retention of whites in positions of importance was widely resented.


title: Congo Crisis

text: Lieutenant-General Émile Janssens, the Belgian commander of the "Force Publique", refused to see Congolese independence as marking a change in the nature of command. The day after the independence festivities, he gathered the black non-commissioned officers of his Léopoldville garrison and told them that things under his command would stay the same, summarising the point by writing "Before Independence = After Independence" on a blackboard. This message was hugely unpopular among the rank and file—many of the men had expected rapid promotions and increases in pay to accompany independence. On 5 July 1960, several units mutinied against their white officers at Camp Hardy near Thysville. The insurrection spread to Léopoldville the next day and later to garrisons across the country.


title: Congo Crisis

text: Rather than deploying Belgian troops against the mutineers as Janssens had wished, Lumumba dismissed him and renamed the "Force Publique" the "Armée Nationale Congolaise" (ANC). All black soldiers were promoted by at least one rank. Victor Lundula was promoted directly from sergeant-major to major-general and head of the army, replacing Janssens. At the same time, Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, an ex-sergeant-major and close personal aide of Lumumba, became Lundula's deputy as army chief of staff. The government attempted to stop the revolt—Lumumba and Kasa-Vubu intervened personally at Léopoldville and Thysville and persuaded the mutineers to lay down their arms—but in most of the country the mutiny intensified. White officers and civilians were attacked, white-owned properties were looted and white women were raped. The Belgian government became deeply concerned by the situation, particularly when white civilians began entering neighbouring countries as refugees. The international press expressed shock at the apparent sudden collapse of order in the Congo, as the world view of the Congolese situation prior to independence—due largely to Belgian propaganda—was one of peace, stability, and strong control by the authorities.


title: Congo Crisis

text: Lumumba's stance appeared to many Belgians to justify their prior concerns about his radicalism. On 9 July, Belgium deployed paratroopers, without the Congolese state's permission, in Kabalo and elsewhere to protect fleeing white civilians. The Belgian intervention divided Lumumba and Kasa-Vubu; while Kasa-Vubu accepted the Belgian operation, Lumumba denounced it and called for "all Congolese to defend our republic against those who menace it." At Lumumba's request, white civilians from the port city of Matadi were evacuated by the Belgian Navy on 11 July. Belgian ships then bombarded the city; at least 19 civilians were killed. This action prompted renewed attacks on whites across the country, while Belgian forces entered other towns and cities, including Léopoldville, and clashed with Congolese troops. The Belgian government subsequently announced that it would provide for Belgian bureaucrats back in the metropole, triggering an exodus of most of the Congo's 10,000 European civil servants and leaving the administration in disarray. Engulfed by the disorder spreading throughout the country, most of the government ministries were unable to function.


title: Congo Crisis

text: On 11 July 1960, Moïse Tshombe, the leader of CONAKAT, declared the Congo's southern province of Katanga independent as the State of Katanga, with Élisabethville as its capital and himself as president. The mineral-rich Katanga region had traditionally shared closer economic ties with the Copperbelt of neighbouring Northern Rhodesia (then part of the Central African Federation) than with the rest of the Congo, and because of its economic importance it had been administered separately from the rest of the country under the Belgians. CONAKAT furthermore contended that Katangese people were ethnically distinct from other Congolese. The secession was partly motivated by the Katangese separatists' desire to keep more of the wealth generated by the province's mining operations and to avoid sharing it with the rest of the Congo. Another major factor was what CONAKAT held to be the disintegration of law and order in the central and north-eastern Congo. Announcing Katanga's breakaway, Tshombe said "We are seceding from chaos."


title: Congo Crisis

text: The major mining company in Katanga, the (UMHK), had begun supporting CONAKAT during the latter days of Belgian rule amid worries that the MNC might seek to nationalise the company's assets after independence. UMHK was largely owned by the , a prominent holding company based in Brussels that had close ties to the Belgian government. Encouraged by the UMHK, the Belgian government provided military support to Katanga and ordered its civil servants in the region to remain in their posts. Tshombe also recruited mercenaries, mainly whites from South Africa and the Rhodesias, to supplement and command Katangese troops. Although supported by the Belgians, Katanga never received formal diplomatic recognition from any country. The Katangese secession highlighted the "fundamental weakness" of the central government in Léopoldville, which had been the chief advocate of a unified state.


title: Congo Crisis

text: Less than a month after the Katangese secession, on 8 August, a section of Kasai Province situated slightly to the north of Katanga also declared its autonomy from the central government as the Mining State of South Kasai () based around the city of Bakwanga. South Kasai was much smaller than Katanga, but was also a mining region. It was largely populated by the Luba ethnic group, and its president, Albert Kalonji, claimed that the secession was largely sparked by persecution of the Baluba in the rest of the Congo. The South Kasai government was supported by , another Belgian mining company, which received concessions from the new state in return for financial support. Without control over Katanga and South Kasai, the central government was deprived of approximately 40 percent of its revenues.


title: Congo Crisis

text: Disquiet about Belgium's support for the secessionist states led to calls within the United Nations (UN) to remove all Belgian troops from the country. The Secretary General of the UN, Dag Hammarskjöld, believed that the crisis would provide the organisation with a chance to demonstrate its potential as a major peacekeeping force and encouraged the sending of a multinational contingent of peacekeepers to the Congo under UN command. On 14 July, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 143, calling for total Belgian withdrawal from the Congo and their replacement with a UN-commanded force.


title: Congo Crisis

text: The arrival of the United Nations Operation in the Congo (ONUC) was initially welcomed by Lumumba and the central government who believed the UN would help suppress the secessionist states. ONUC's initial mandate, however, only covered the maintenance of law and order. Viewing the secessions as an internal political matter, Hammarskjöld refused to use UN troops to assist the central Congolese government against them; he argued that doing so would represent a loss of impartiality and breach Congolese sovereignty. Lumumba also sought the assistance of the United States government of Dwight D. Eisenhower, which refused to provide unilateral military support. Frustrated, he turned to the Soviet Union, which agreed to provide weapons, logistical and material support. Around 1,000 Soviet military advisors soon landed in the Congo. Lumumba's actions distanced him from the rest of the government, especially Kasa-Vubu, who feared the implications of Soviet intervention. The Americans also feared that a Soviet-aligned Congo could form the basis of a major expansion of communism into central Africa.


title: Congo Crisis

text: With Soviet support, 2,000 ANC troops launched a major offensive against South Kasai. The attack was extremely successful, but during the course of the offensive, the ANC became involved in infighting between the Baluba and Bena Lulua ethnic groups. and perpetrated a number of large massacres of Luba civilians. Around 3,000 were killed. The violence of the advance caused an exodus of thousands of Baluba civilians who fled their homes to escape the fighting.


title: Congo Crisis

text: The involvement of the Soviet Union alarmed the United States. The American government under Eisenhower, in line with Belgian criticism, had long believed that Lumumba was a communist and that the Congo could be on track to become a strategically placed Soviet client state. In August 1960, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents in the region reported to their agency that "Congo [is] experiencing [a] classic communist ... takeover" and warned that the Congo might follow the same path as Cuba.


title: Congo Crisis

text: Lumumba's appeal for Soviet support split the government and led to mounting pressure from Western countries to remove him from power. In addition, both Tshombe and Kalonji appealed to Kasa-Vubu, whom they believed to be both a moderate and federalist, to move against Lumumba's centralism and resolve the secession issue. Meanwhile, Mobutu took effective control of the army, routing foreign aid and promotions to specific units and officers to secure their allegiance.


title: Congo Crisis

text: On 5 September 1960, Kasa-Vubu announced on national radio that he had unilaterally dismissed Lumumba, using the massacres in South Kasai as a pretext and with the promise of American backing. Andrew Cordier, the American UN representative in the Congo, used his position to block communications by Lumumba's faction and to prevent a coordinated MNC-L reaction to the news. Both chambers of Parliament, however, supported Lumumba and denounced Kasa-Vubu's action. Lumumba attempted to dismiss Kasa-Vubu from his position, but could not get support for this, precipitating a constitutional crisis. Ostensibly in order to resolve the deadlock, Joseph-Désiré Mobutu launched a bloodless coup and replaced both Kasa-Vubu and Lumumba with a College of Commissionaires-General ("Collège des Commissaires-généraux") consisting of a panel of university graduates, led by Justin Bomboko. Soviet military advisors were ordered to leave. Allegedly, the coup was intended to force the politicians to take a cooling-off period before they could resume control. In practice, however, Mobutu sided with Kasa-Vubu against Lumumba, who was placed under house arrest, guarded by Ghanaian UN troops and an outer ring of ANC soldiers. Kasa-Vubu was re-appointed President by Mobutu in February 1961. From the coup onwards, Mobutu was able to exert considerable power in Congolese politics behind the scenes.


title: Congo Crisis

text: Following Kasa-Vubu's reinstatement, there was an attempted rapprochement between the Congolese factions. Tshombe began negotiations for the end of the secession and the formation of a confederal Congo. Although a compromise agreement was reached, it was prevented from taking effect as negotiations broke down amid personal animosity between Kasa-Vubu and Tshombe. An attempted reconciliation in July 1961 led to the formation of a new government, led by Cyrille Adoula, which brought together deputies from both Lumumbist and South Kasai factions but failed to bring a reconciliation with Katanga.


title: Congo Crisis

text: Members of the MNC-L fled to Stanleyville where, led by Antoine Gizenga, they formed a rebel government in November 1960 in opposition to the central government in Léopoldville. The Gizenga government was recognised by some states, including the Soviet Union and China, as the official government of the Congo and could call on an approximate 5,500 troops compared to the central government's 7,000. Faced with UN pressure, the Gizenga government however collapsed in January 1962 after Gizenga was arrested.


title: Congo Crisis

text: Lumumba escaped house arrest and fled eastwards towards Stanleyville where he believed he could rally support. Pursued by troops loyal to Mobutu, he was captured at Lodi on 1 December 1960 and flown back to Léopoldville with his hands bound. Despite UN appeals to Kasa-Vubu for due legal process, the Soviet Union denounced the UN as responsible for the arrest and demanded his release. A meeting of the UN Security Council was called on 7 December 1960 to consider Soviet demands that the UN seek Lumumba's immediate release, his restoration to the head of the Congolese government and the disarming of Mobutu's forces. The pro-Lumumba resolution was defeated on 14 December 1960 by a vote of 8–2. Still in captivity, Lumumba was tortured and transported to Thysville and later to Katanga, where he was handed over to forces loyal to Tshombe. On 17 January 1961, Lumumba was executed by Katangese troops near Élisabethville.


title: Congo Crisis

text: News of the execution, released on 13 February, provoked international outrage. The Belgian Embassy in Yugoslavia was attacked by protesters in Belgrade, and violent demonstrations occurred in London and New York. Shortly thereafter seven Lumumbists, including the first President of Orientale Province, Jean-Pierre Finant, were executed in South Kasai for "crimes against the Baluba nation". Gizenga's soldiers then shot 15 political prisoners in retaliation, including Lumumba's dissident Minister of Communications, Alphonse Songolo.


title: Congo Crisis

text: Since its initial resolution of July 1960, the UN had issued further resolutions calling for the total withdrawal of Belgian and mercenary forces from Katanga in progressively stronger terms. By 1961, ONUC comprised nearly 20,000 men. Although their mandate prevented them from taking sides, ONUC had a mandate to arrest foreign mercenaries wherever they encountered them. In September 1961, an attempt to detain a group of Katangese mercenaries without violence during Operation Morthor went wrong and turned into a fire-fight. ONUC's claim to impartiality was undermined in mid-September when a company of Irish UN troops were captured by numerically superior Katangese forces following a six-day siege in Jadotville. Katanga proceeded to hold the Irishmen as prisoners of war, a development that deeply embarrassed the UN mission and its proponents.


title: Congo Crisis

text: On 18 September 1961, Hammarskjöld flew to Ndola, just across the border in Northern Rhodesia, to attempt to broker a cease-fire between UN and Katangese forces. His aircraft crashed before landing at Ndola Airport, killing him and everybody else on board. In stark contrast to Hammarskjöld's attempts to pursue a moderate policy in the Congo, his successor U Thant supported a more radical policy of direct involvement in the conflict. Katanga released the captured Irish soldiers in mid-October as part of a cease-fire deal in which ONUC agreed to pull its troops back—a propaganda coup for Tshombe. Restated American support for the UN mission, and the murder of ten Italian UN pilots in Port-Émpain in November 1961, strengthened international demands to resolve the situation. In April 1962, UN troops occupied South Kasai. On the night of 29/30 September 1962, South Kasai military commanders launched a coup d'état in Bakwanga against the Kalonjist regime. On 5 October 1962, central government troops again arrived in Bakwanga to support the mutineers and help suppress the last Kalonjist loyalists, marking the end of South Kasai's secession.


title: Congo Crisis

text: Resolution 169, issued in November 1961, called for ONUC to respond to the deteriorating human rights situation and prevent the outbreak of full-scale civil war. The resolution "completely rejected" Katanga's claim to statehood and authorised ONUC troops to use all necessary force to "assist the Central Government of the Congo in the restoration and maintenance of law and order". The Katangese made further provocations and, in response, ONUC launched Operation Unokat to dismantle Katangese roadblocks and seize strategic positions around Élisabethville. Faced with international pressure, Tshombe signed the Kitona Declaration in December 1961 in which he agreed in principle to accept the authority of the central government and state constitution and to abandon any claim to Katangese independence. Following the declaration, however, talks between Tshombe and Adoula reached a deadlock, while Katangese forces continued to harass UN troops. Diminishing support and Belgium's increasing reluctance to support Katanga demonstrated that the state could not survive indefinitely. On 11 December 1962, Belgian Foreign Minister Paul-Henri Spaak declared that the Belgian government would support the UN or the central Congolese government should they attempt to end the Katangese secession through force.


title: Congo Crisis

text: On 24 December 1962, UN troops and the Katangese Gendarmerie clashed near Élisabethville and fighting broke out. After attempts to reach a ceasefire failed, UN troops launched Operation Grandslam and occupied Élisabethville, prompting Tshombe to leave the country. A ceasefire was agreed upon soon thereafter. Indian UN troops, exceeding their orders, then occupied Jadotville, preventing Katangese loyalists from regrouping. Gradually, the UN overran the rest of the Katanga and, on 17 January 1963, Tshombe surrendered his final stronghold of Kolwezi, effectively ending the Katangese secession.


title: Congo Crisis

text: Following the end of the Katanga secession, political negotiations began to reconcile the disparate political factions. The negotiations coincided with the formation of an émigré political group, the "Conseil National de Libération" (CNL), by dissident Lumumbists and others in neighbouring Congo-Brazzaville. The negotiations culminated in the creation of a new, revised constitution, known as the Luluabourg Constitution, after the city in which it was written, to create a compromise balance of power. The new constitution increased the power of the presidency, ending the system of joint consultation between President and Prime Minister, and appeased federalists by increasing the number of provinces from six to 21 while increasing their autonomy. The constitution also changed the name of the state from the Republic of the Congo to Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was ratified in a constitutional referendum in June 1964 and Parliament was dissolved to await new elections. Kasa-Vubu appointed Tshombe, the exiled Katangese leader, as interim Prime Minister. Although personally capable, and supported as an anti-communist by Western powers, Tshombe was denounced by other African leaders such as King Hassan II of Morocco as an imperialist puppet for his role in the Katangese secession.


title: Congo Crisis

text: Under Tshombe's interim government, fresh elections were scheduled for 30 March and the rebellion broke out in the central and eastern parts of the Congo.


title: Congo Crisis

text: The period of political crisis had led to widespread disenchantment with the central government brought in by independence. Demands for a "second independence" from kleptocracy and political infighting in the capital grew. The "second independence" slogan was taken up by Maoist-inspired Congolese revolutionaries, including Pierre Mulele who had served in the Lumumba government. The political instability of the Congo helped to channel wider discontentment into outright revolt.


title: Congo Crisis

text: Disruption in the rural Congo begun with agitation by Lumumbists, led by Mulele, among the Pende and Mbundu peoples. By the end of 1963, there was unrest in regions of the central and eastern Congo. The Kwilu Rebellion broke out on 16 January 1964 in the cities of Idiofa and Gungu in Kwilu Province. Further disruption and uprisings then spread to Kivu in the east and later to Albertville, sparking further insurrection elsewhere in the Congo and the outbreak of the larger Simba Rebellion. The rebels began to expand their territory and rapidly advance northwards, capturing Port-Émpain, Stanleyville, Paulis and Lisala between July and August.


title: Congo Crisis

text: The rebels, who called themselves "Simbas" (from the Kiswahili word for "lion"), had a populist but vague ideology, loosely based on communism, which prioritised equality and aimed to increase overall wealth. Most of the active revolutionaries were young men who hoped that the rebellion would provide them with opportunities which the government had not. The Simbas used magic to initiate members and believed that, by following a moral code, they could become invulnerable to bullets. Magic was also very important to the rebels who also made extensive use of witchcraft to protect themselves and also demoralise their ANC opponents. As they advanced, the rebels perpetrated numerous massacres in the territory they captured in order to remove political opposition and terrorise the population. About 1,000 to 2,000 Westernized Congolese were murdered in Stanleyville alone, while the rebels initially left Whites and foreigners mostly alone. ONUC was in the process of withdrawing when the rebellions started and had only 5,500 personnel, most whom were deployed in the eastern part of the country and stranded by the conflict. Straggling Western missionaries retreated to their respective embassies, which in turn requested UN assistance. A small force of peacekeepers was assembled and subsequently dispatched to the Kwilu region to retrieve fleeing missionaries. Rescue operations continued throughout March and April and resulted in the successful recovery of over 100 missionaries.