title: Billy Martin

text: Pennington believed that Martin was very much a person of his times: "In the age of several round-the-clock ESPN channels, the ceaseless chatter of sports talk radio, and omnipresent smartphone cameras, Billy could not exist. At least not as an employed baseball manager." Pennington suggested, though, that had Martin been born 20 years later, his friends would have confronted him about his drinking problem; in Martin's day, such things were more often ignored. Pennington believes Martin's reputation for brawling and drinking has kept him out of the Hall of Fame; even if other managers who are in the Hall, such as Weaver and Leo Durocher, got into fights and drank sometimes to excess, they did not acquire the same reputation for those things as did Martin. Golenbock suggested that Martin's alcoholism, together with his pride in being a Yankee kept him in a relationship with Steinbrenner that kept him willing to try to manage the team again and again, despite the difficult relationship with the owner.


title: Billy Martin

text: Martin was married four times and had two children, a daughter named Kelly Ann and a son named Billy Joe. His first marriage was to Lois Berndt, who was the mother of Kelly Ann. She divorced him in 1955, after he had contested the action for more than a year on the grounds that he was Catholic. He married Gretchen Winkler in 1961. Billy Joe was born of that marriage; his parents divorced in 1979. He was married a third time, to Heather Ervolino, while he was managing in Oakland, but was never faithful to her. He married his mistress, freelance photographer Jillian Guiver, in January 1988.


title: Billy Martin

text: Heather Ervolio sued Martin in 1986 for $500,000, aimed at halting her eviction from the luxury home they had shared for five years. She alleged that Martin began seeing her when she was 16 and was still married to his second wife, Gretchen Winkler, and then abruptly abandoned her. She alleged this was a pattern of behavior for Martin, that he had abandoned his previous wife Jill at a bar to marry Heather in 1982.


title: Billy Martin

text: After his death the feud between Martin's children and his widow Jill became a prominent story in the New York newspapers. Billy's children and other relatives alleged that Jill was hiding their inheritance and in protest several family members refused to attend his funeral.


title: Billy Martin

text: Martin and Steinbrenner appeared together in the series of "Tastes Great!...Less Filling!" commercials for Miller Lite beer. In one, filmed in 1978, during the final days of Martin's first stint with the Yankees, Steinbrenner fires Martin, who says, "Oh, not again". Within weeks, Martin was forced to resign over the "one's a born liar, and the other's convicted" statement. The commercial aired again in June 1979, following Martin's return to manage the Yankees a second time, but with Steinbrenner saying "You're hired."


title: Billy Martin

text: In 1978, Martin played himself in the CBS TV movie "". Martin was a guest ring announcer at the inaugural WrestleMania in March 1985. On May 24, 1986, on the season finale of "Saturday Night Live", co-host Martin was "fired" by executive producer Lorne Michaels for being "drunk" in a skit, slurring his lines. In retaliation, Martin set the dressing room on fire, a staged scene set as a cliffhanger for the following season.


title: Billy Martin

text: In 1978, Martin and sports agent Doug Newton opened Billy Martin's, a western wear boutique in New York City. Newton bought out Martin in 1982; the store remained open until 2010.


title: Billy Martin

text: Pennington, writing over 20 years after Martin's death, explained, "Billy was beloved because he represented a traditional American dream: freedom. He lived independent from rules. He bucked the system ... He told his boss to shove it. Often." The biographer complained that Martin, in the era of video clips and ESPN, has been reduced to a caricature: the man who kicked dirt on umpires, battled with Reggie Jackson in a dugout and who was forever being hired and fired, something that ignores a record of achievement both as player and manager. Appel noted, "There was never a more prideful Yankee. Or a more complicated one."


title: Billy Martin

text: James wrote, "I suppose one could say the same about Billy Martin or about Richard Nixon ... had he not been so insecure, he could have resisted the self-destructive excesses which gradually destroyed him". Pennington, who covered the Yankees as a newspaper reporter from 1985 to 1989, described Martin as "without question one of the most magnetic, entertaining, sensitive, humane, brilliant, generous, insecure, paranoid, dangerous, irrational, and unhinged people I had ever met". Golenbock, who co-wrote Martin's autobiography, said of him, "but because Billy was an alcoholic who drank and fought publicly, and because the man for whom he worked destroyed his reputation through constant public denigrations and firings, he may never join the hallowed hall where he should rightfully be placed next to his mentor, Casey Stengel."


title: Billy Martin

text: Mike Lupica of the "Daily News" wrote that "Yankee fans never seemed to see him drunk, or nasty, or as Steinbrenner's toady, the way others did. They looked the other way, again and again and again. They always saw him as Billy the Kid." Pennington noted that the new owners of Martin's farm sometimes find fans wanting to see where he died, or makeshift memorials by the roadside where the accident occurred. Martin's grave has remained well-visited by Yankee fans, sometimes before driving to the Bronx to take in a home game. Andrew Nagle, who oversaw the cemetery, stated "people want to leave some acknowledgement of what he meant to them ... we don't let go of the people that touched us ... It's the same with Billy Martin. People won't let him go. They won't forget him."


title: Larry Sanger

text: Lawrence Mark Sanger (; born July 16, 1968) is an American Internet project developer and philosopher who co-founded the online encyclopedia Wikipedia along with Jimmy Wales. Sanger coined the name and wrote much of Wikipedia's original governing policy, such as "Neutral point of view". Sanger has worked on other online projects, including Nupedia, "Encyclopedia of Earth", Citizendium, WatchKnowLearn, Reading Bear, Infobitt, Everipedia, the Knowledge Standards Foundation and the encyclosphere. He also advised blockchain company Phunware and the nonprofit online American political encyclopedia Ballotpedia.


title: Larry Sanger

text: While studying at college, Sanger developed an interest in using the Internet for educational purposes and joined the online encyclopedia Nupedia as editor-in-chief in 2000. Disappointed with the slow progress of Nupedia, Sanger proposed using a wiki to solicit and receive articles to put through Nupedia's peer-review process; this change led to the development and launch of Wikipedia in 2001. Sanger served as Wikipedia's community leader and was the only editorial employee of Wikipedia in its early stages but was laid off and left the project in 2002. Sanger's status as a co-founder of Wikipedia has been questioned by fellow co-founder Jimmy Wales but is generally accepted.


title: Larry Sanger

text: Since Sanger's departure from Wikipedia, he has been critical of the project, describing it in 2007 as being "broken beyond repair". He has argued that despite its merits, Wikipedia lacks credibility and accuracy due to a lack of respect for expertise and authority. Since 2020, he has criticized Wikipedia for what he perceives as a left-wing and liberal ideological bias in its articles.


title: Larry Sanger

text: In 2006, he founded Citizendium to compete with Wikipedia. In 2010, he stepped down as editor-in-chief. In 2020, he left Citizendium entirely. In 2017, he joined Everipedia as chief information officer (CTO). He resigned in 2019, to establish the Knowledge Standards Foundation and the encyclosphere. Sanger currently serves as the President and Executive Director of the Knowledge Standards Foundation.


title: Larry Sanger

text: Sanger's other interests include a focus on philosophy—in particular epistemology, early modern philosophy, and ethics. He taught philosophy at his "alma mater" Ohio State University.


title: Larry Sanger

text: Lawrence Mark Sanger was born in Bellevue, Washington, on July 16, 1968. His father Gerry was a marine biologist who studied seabirds and his mother raised the children. When he was seven years old, his family moved to Anchorage, Alaska, where he grew up. He was interested in philosophical topics at an early age and decided "to study philosophy and make it my life's work" at the age of 16.


title: Larry Sanger

text: In high school, he participated in debate, which Sanger says influenced his views on neutrality due to these debates exposing him to different issues and arguments from both sides":


title: Larry Sanger

text: Sanger graduated from high school in 1986 and attended Reed College, majoring in philosophy. In college he became interested in the Internet and its potential as a publishing outlet. Sanger set up a listserver as a medium for students and tutors to meet for tutoring and "to act as a forum for discussion of tutorials, tutorial methods, and the possibility and merits of a voluntary, free network of individual tutors and students finding each other via the Internet for education outside the traditional university setting". He started and moderated a libertarian philosophy discussion list, the Association for Systematic Philosophy. In 1994, Sanger wrote a manifesto for the discussion group:


title: Larry Sanger

text: Around 1994, Sanger met Jimmy Wales after subscribing to Wales' mailing list titled Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy (MDOP).


title: Larry Sanger

text: Sanger received a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy from Reed in 1991, a Master of Arts from Ohio State University in 1995, and a Doctor of Philosophy from Ohio State University in 2000. Beginning in 1998, he and a friend ran a website called "Sanger and Shannon's Review of Y2K News Reports", a resource for people such as managers of computer systems who were concerned about the year 2000 problem.


title: Larry Sanger

text: Nupedia was a web-based encyclopedia whose articles were written by volunteer contributors possessing relevant subject matter expertise and reviewed by editors prior to publication, and were licensed as free content. It was conceived by Jimmy Wales and underwritten by his company Bomis. Wales had interacted with Sanger on mailing lists. In January 2000, Sanger had e-mailed Wales and others about a potential "cultural news blog" project that would cover social and political issues that he had in mind after January 1, 2000, had passed and rendered his Y2K site obsolete. Wales replied with "Instead of doing that, why don't you come and work on this idea that I've had?", presented the idea of Nupedia to Sanger, and invited him to join the project. Sanger was hired as Nupedia's editor-in-chief. He began to oversee Nupedia in February 2000, developing a review process for articles and recruiting editors. Through working on Nupedia, Sanger "found that it was a fascinating problem to organize people online to create encyclopedias." Articles were reviewed through Nupedia's e-mail system before being posted on the site.


title: Larry Sanger

text: Nupedia made very slow progress and was at a standstill at the end of 2000, causing consternation to Sanger and Wales, with Sanger saying that "by the summer of 2000, it had become clear that the process we tested out [for making articles on Nupedia] was very slow." In January 2001, Sanger proposed the creation of a wiki to speed article development, which resulted in the launch of Wikipedia on January 15, 2001. Wikipedia was initially intended as a collaborative wiki for which the public would write entries that would then be fed into Nupedia's review process. However, the majority of Nupedia's experts and the Nupedia advisory board wanted little to do with the project, with members of the Nupedia advisory board mailing list dismissing the idea of Wikipedia as being ridiculous.


title: Larry Sanger

text: The idea of using a wiki came when Sanger met up with his friend Ben Kovitz for dinner on January 2, 2001, when Sanger was first introduced to wiki software. Kovitz, whom Sanger had known from philosophy mailing lists, was a computer programmer who had come across Ward Cunningham's Wiki. Sanger was impressed with the possibilities offered by wikis and called Wales, who agreed to try it. Sanger originated the name "Wikipedia", chosen from "a long list of names", which he later said was "a silly name for what was at first a very silly project".


title: Larry Sanger

text: Sanger created Wikipedia's first introductory pages and home pages, and invited the first few people to make contributions to the website, which was then called the Nupedia Wiki. Within a few days of its launch, Wikipedia had outgrown Nupedia and a small community of editors had gathered. Sanger served as Wikipedia's "chief organizer", running the project and formulating much of the original policy, including "Ignore all rules", "", "", and "". He embraced Wikipedia's encouragement of boldness among its editors, telling users to "not worry about messing up". Sanger created the concept of "Brilliant prose", which evolved into as a way to showcase Wikipedia's highest-quality articles.


title: Larry Sanger

text: Sanger later grew disillusioned with Wikipedia, saying by mid-2001 its community was being "overrun" by "trolls" and "anarchist-types", who were "opposed to the idea that anyone should have any kind of authority that others do not". While such issues were not important to Sanger when Wikipedia was a source of articles for Nupedia, as it grew into an independent project he started to become more concerned about the community. Sanger became increasingly disillusioned and frustrated by a Wikipedia user known as "The Cunctator", who would troll Sanger. Sanger responded to these trends by proposing a stronger emphasis on expert editors and individuals with the authority to resolve disputes and enforce the rules. He also asked to be given more respect and deference by Wikipedians, which backfired and led to an increase in friction between him and the community.


title: Larry Sanger

text: Sanger was the only editorial employee of Wikipedia. In early 2002, Bomis, which had intended to make Wikipedia profitable from the outset, announced the possibility of placing advertisements on Wikipedia, in part to pay for Sanger's employment, but the project was opposed to any commercialization and the market for Internet advertising was small. Bomis made the decision to stop funding Sanger's job and he was laid off in February 2002 after the company lost a grant in the Dot-com crash and he resigned as editor-in-chief of Nupedia and chief organizer of Wikipedia on March 1. Sanger said he ended his participation in Wikipedia and Nupedia as a volunteer because he could not do justice to the tasks as a part-timer; he was also frustrated by sustained content battles and felt he lacked support from Wales. In a post to the Wikipedia community, Sanger said that his departure from Wikipedia might not be permanent if Bomis could monetize Wikipedia.


title: Larry Sanger

text: Sanger attempted to revive Nupedia throughout 2002 as its activity petered out. He tried to find an organization that would take control of it because it appeared Bomis would be unable to manage it and Wales seemed uninterested in it. Sanger later attempted to purchase the domain and other proprietary materials of Nupedia from Bomis. He said Nupedia was allowed to die a slow death and that its demise was not entirely due to the inherent inefficiencies in its review process. Nupedia's server crashed in September 2003 and the site was never relaunched.


title: Larry Sanger

text: Sanger's role in founding Wikipedia was the subject of edits by Wales to Wikipedia in 2005, which was followed by discussions within the community. Sanger accused Wales of "rewriting history" by disregarding his involvement; Wales told "Wired" he only clarified details about Sanger's contribution to the project and removed factual errors, and said he should not have done so. Wales later stated he had initially heard of the wiki concept from Bomis employee Jeremy Rosenfeld rather than Sanger.


title: Larry Sanger

text: On his personal website, Sanger posted several links that appear to support his role as a co-founder. As early as January 17, 2001, Sanger was cited as "Instigator of Nupedia's wiki" by its chief copyeditor Ruth Ifcher, and he was identified as a co-founder of Wikipedia by September 2001. Sanger has said he organized Wikipedia while Wales was mostly focused on Bomis.com.


title: Larry Sanger

text: Wales devised the idea of an open-source, collaborative encyclopedia that accepted contributions from anyone and invested in it while Sanger was in charge of organizing such an encyclopedia.


title: Larry Sanger

text: Since 2002, Sanger has been critical of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation. In 2015, "Vice" referred to Sanger as "Wikipedia's Most Outspoken Critic".


title: Larry Sanger

text: In December 2004, writing for the Kuro5hin website, Sanger commented that Wikipedia is not considered credible by librarians, teachers, and academics because it lacks a formal review process and that the presence of trolls and "difficult people" discourages accredited specialists and people who are knowledgeable from contributing to Wikipedia. He also argued that Wikipedia's "root problem" is a "lack of respect for expertise".


title: Larry Sanger

text: In April 2007, Sanger stated Wikipedia was "still quite useful and an amazing phenomenon" but he had "come to the view that it is also broken beyond repair" with a range of problems "from serious management problems, to an often dysfunctional community, to frequently unreliable content, and to a whole series of scandals".


title: Larry Sanger

text: In September 2009, Sanger said from early on the activities of trolls on the website "was a real problem, and Jimmy Wales absolutely refused to do anything about it". Sanger described Wales as a being a "fraud" and "liar" over the issue of who created Wikipedia. Wales responded to a query about the feud between the two men, stating: "I think very highly of Larry Sanger, and think that it is unfortunate that this silly debate has tended to overshadow his work."


title: Larry Sanger

text: In a November 2015 interview with Zachary Schwartz for "Vice", Sanger expanded on his experiences with trolls on Wikipedia during the site's initial growth: "It was kind of stressful. I think it stressed out my wife more than me. The idea that there were people who were abusing me online just bothered her greatly." Sanger equated the trolls with modern-day social justice warriors (SJWs). When asked by Schwartz what he would do differently if he started over with Wikipedia, Sanger said: "One thing that I would have done, could have done, and should have done right away would be to create a process whereby articles were approved by experts." When asked what his thoughts were on Wikipedia in 2015, Sanger said: "I guess I'm moderately proud. I always sort of felt like we just got lucky with the right idea at the right time."


title: Larry Sanger

text: In a November 2016 interview with Alexandre Gilbert for "The Times of Israel", Sanger said that Wikipedia has "a problem with fairness and sound governance".


title: Larry Sanger

text: In a July 2010 interview with Kathryn Schulz from "Slate", Sanger said: "If you're talking about political biases, I actually think that that's one of Wikipedia's least-worst problems. It's really not as bad as the people at, say, Conservapedia seem to think. I do think that there is a liberal bias on most topics where such a bias is possible." Those individuals, according to Sanger, "who work the most on Wikipedia tend to be really comfortable with the most radically egalitarian views. And those people tend to be either liberals or libertarians." Sanger also argued that "I think the kind of biases that are in some ways more interesting and more pervasive have to do with individual biases not on political issues but on a host of very specific academic issues. An article can reflect the bias of a few people who just happen to be most motivated to work on it. This is a general problem with Wikipedia".


title: Larry Sanger

text: In March 2014, Sanger stated that "In some fields and some topics, there are groups who 'squat' on articles and insist on making them reflect their own specific biases. There is no credible mechanism to approve versions of articles."


title: Larry Sanger

text: In December 2015, Sanger said that "Wikipedia itself might be thought to be committed to such a completely international neutrality, and in places, its policies have seemed to hold it to that utopian ambition. But of course it cannot be and it is not. The English Wikipedia's articles about science most clearly betray its Western and especially Anglo-American provenance, and articles about, for example, philosophy are mostly about Western philosophy. I see nothing really wrong with that." Sanger also said that "My teenage ire at shamefully biased writers and editors found expression in Nupedia's neutrality policy, which in turn became Wikipedia's.", calling himself "a zealot for neutrality."


title: Larry Sanger

text: In a May 2019 interview with Sophie Foggin of "150Sec", regarding the website's neutrality, Sanger said: "Wikipedia has long since decided to turn the other cheek when influential editors make articles speak with one point of view, when they dismiss unpopular views, or when they utterly fail to do justice to alternative approaches to a topic." Sanger also stated that Wikipedia "never did come up with a good solution" for "how to rein in the bad actors so that they did not ruin the project for everyone else" and that "Wikipedia is a broken system as a result".


title: Larry Sanger

text: In a blog post in May 2020, Sanger described Wikipedia as "badly biased" and as favoring left-wing and liberal politics. In his opinion, portions of the Donald Trump Wikipedia article are "unrelentingly negative", while the Barack Obama article "completely fails to mention many well-known scandals". He listed other topics he argued are presented with a liberal and left-wing bias, including the topics on Hillary Clinton, abortion, drug legalization, religion, and LGBT adoption. In particular, Sanger said that Wikipedia, in describing many of Trump's statements as "false", established the website's biases. Sanger commented in the blog post: "It is time for Wikipedia to come clean and admit that it has abandoned NPOV (i.e., neutrality as a policy)." Regarding Wikipedia's current neutrality policy, Sanger said that "it endorses the utterly bankrupt canard of journalistic 'false balance', which is directly contradictory to the original neutrality policy. As a result, even as journalists turn to opinion and activism, Wikipedia now touts controversial points of view on politics, religion, and science".


title: Larry Sanger

text: In a February 2021 interview with Fox News, Sanger stated that Wikipedia's "ideological and religious bias is real and troubling, particularly in a resource that continues to be treated by many as an unbiased reference work". In a February 2021 interview with Carrie Sheffield on Pluto TV, Sanger criticized Wikipedia's coverage of socialism, saying that "when schoolkids go, and they look up answers to questions about the meaning of 'socialism' ... they're going to find an explanation that completely ignores any conservative, libertarian, or critical treatment of the subject", "And that's really problematic. That's not education. That's propaganda." He claimed that Wikipedia was originally "committed to neutrality" until "about 10 years ago" when "liberals or leftists made their march through the institutions ... and basically took [Wikipedia] over", adding that "They started getting rid of citations from conservative sources, even conservative sources that were cited in order to explain the conservative point of view. At least in some cases, that was the case, and more and more, certain points of view were castigated and labeled". When asked about Wikipedia's reaction to his criticism, Sanger said that "They ignore me" and that "They don't care what I say, and the feeling is mutual."


title: Larry Sanger

text: In a July 2021 interview with Freddie Sayers of LockdownTV, Sanger claimed that Wikipedia is not trustworthy and that its contributors have a left-leaning bias. According to Sanger, Wikipedia's coverage of U.S. President Joe Biden contained "very little by way of the concerns that Republicans have had about him" or the Ukraine allegations. He further adds that since Wikipedia encourages the use of secondary sources instead of primary sources, Wikipedia's content is heavily influenced by coverage from center-left-wing media outlets, saying that "You can't cite the "Daily Mail" at all. You can't cite Fox News on socio-political issues either. It's banned. So what does that mean? It means that if a controversy does not appear in the mainstream center-Left media, then it's not going to appear on Wikipedia." Despite having a neutrality policy, he says that the viewpoint of Wikipedia articles represent the consensus viewpoints and that users are prohibited from adding counter-arguments to established views, which would help create more neutral articles. He claimed that Wikipedia can give a "reliably establishment point of view on pretty much everything" and that "if only one version of the facts is allowed then that gives a huge incentive to wealthy and powerful people to seize control of things like Wikipedia in order to shore up their power. And they do that."


title: Larry Sanger

text: In a July 22, 2021, interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News, Sanger said that Wikipedia allowing anonymous contributors had resulted in the website being taken over by criminal bodies, as well as by corporations and governments. Sanger also said that "I don't know that there is a way to fix Wikipedia within Wikipedia. It's an institutionally conservative place".


title: Larry Sanger

text: In an August 2021 interview with "The Sunday Times" of London, Sanger objected to Wikipedia's description of alternative medicines, such as homeopathy, as "pseudoscience". He believed such a definition lacked true neutrality. Sanger also claimed that "If you don't kowtow to the right people, you won't even be allowed to participate." Of Wikipedia as a whole, he said: "I advise against using it, even to conscientious students." Of Jimmy Wales' role in Wikipedia, Sanger said that: "[There was] this kind of idealism that Jimmy Wales had ... that if you just open up the encyclopaedia to anybody, then because people are generally good, they will do the right thing. I think perhaps he still has that view. But frankly, that really wasn't ever my view. I was always a bit worried about what might happen if ideologues took over as naturally they would want to if it was at all successful. I think that actually is what happened." According to "The Sunday Times", Wikipedia denied accusations from Sanger of having a particular political bias, with a spokesperson for the encyclopedia saying that third-party studies have shown that its editors come from a variety of ideological viewpoints and that "As more people engage in the editing process on Wikipedia, the more neutral articles tend to become".


title: Larry Sanger

text: In a March 2022 interview with Fox Nation, Sanger once more said that Wikipedia had abandoned its neutrality policy and that "the kinds of people that are allowed to have any influence on Wikipedia have been narrowed down greatly to essentially people who agree with the establishment left." In his opinion: "The left, frankly, is relentless when it comes to stating their point of view and using the organs of mass media—and Wikipedia is part of their mass media I think—to shape the world", "And so it became another one of the institutions that they had to capture." Sanger also claimed that Wikipedia originally had a strong commitment to neutrality, saying: "We promulgated a policy, the neutrality policy. And it was very clear in the beginning. And I think I really hammered it a lot. In the two years that I was with the organization, I really drove that neutrality policy. And I articulated a defense."


title: Larry Sanger

text: In April 2010, Sanger sent a letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) about his concern that Wikimedia Commons was hosting child pornography and later clarified the object of his concern was "obscene visual representations of the abuse of children" and not photographs. Sanger said he felt it was his "civic duty" to report the images. Critics accused Sanger of having an ulterior motive for reporting the images, noting he was still in charge of the faltering Citizendium project and said that publicizing the accusations was unnecessary. In 2012, Sanger told Fox News that he worked with NetSpark to get them to donate or heavily discount its pornographic image filtering technology for use on Wikipedia. NetSpark attempted to contact the Wikimedia Foundation in 2012 but received no response.


title: Larry Sanger

text: In a June 2012 interview with TechCrunch TV, Sanger criticized Wikipedia for containing too much pornography that children could access and said that he did not regret leaving Wikipedia.


title: Larry Sanger

text: At the Wizards of OS conference in September 2006, Sanger announced the launch of a new wiki-based encyclopedia called Citizendium—short for "citizens' compendium"—as a fork of Wikipedia. The objective of the fork was to address perceived flaws in the way Wikipedia functions; anonymous editing was disallowed, all users were required to use their real names, and there was a layer of experts who had extra authority. It was an attempt by Sanger to establish a credible online encyclopedia based on scholarship, aiming to bring more accountability and academic rigor to articles. The site attempted to implement an expert review process and experts tried to reach a decision in disputes that could not be resolved by consensus.


title: Larry Sanger

text: Sanger predicted a rapid increase in Citizendium's traffic at its first anniversary in 2007. After a burst of initial work, however, the site went into decline and most of the experts were not retained. In 2011, "Ars Technica" reporter Timothy B. Lee said Citizendium was "dead in the water". Lee noted that Citizendium's late start was a disadvantage and that its growth was hindered by an "unwieldy editing model". In 2014, the number of Citizendium contributors was under 100 and the number of edits per day was about "a dozen or so" according to Winthrop University's Dean of Library Services. By August 2016, Citizendium had about 17,000 articles, 160 of which had undergone expert review.


title: Larry Sanger

text: Sanger, who in early 2007 announced he did not intend to head Citizendium indefinitely, effectively ceased to edit it in early 2009, although an announcement confirming this was not made until July 30, 2009, on the Citizendium-l mailing list. He stepped down as editor-in-chief of Citizendium on September 22, 2010, but said he would continue to support the project.


title: Larry Sanger

text: On July 2, 2020, Sanger wrote that he had transferred legal ownership of the Citizendium domain name to Pat Palmer, saying that Citizendium had "stopped being 'my' project a long time ago. But until this morning, I still owned the domain name."


title: Larry Sanger

text: On Citizendium, Sanger refused to recognize women's studies as a top-level category, calling it too "politically correct." Sanger later said that "it wasn't about women's studies in particular", but about "too much overlap with existing groups."


title: Larry Sanger

text: Larry Sanger has been involved with several other online encyclopedia projects. In 2005, he joined the Digital Universe Foundation as Director of Distributed Content Programs. He was a key organizer of the Digital Universe Encyclopedia web project that was launched in early 2006. The Digital Universe encyclopedia recruited recognized experts to write articles and to check user-submitted articles for accuracy. The first part of the project was the expert-written-and-edited "Encyclopedia of Earth". Sanger later felt the pace of content production at the Foundation was too slow for him; he proposed open content to help speed development but the proposal was rejected.


title: Larry Sanger

text: Sanger has worked at the WatchKnowLearn project, a non-profit organization that focuses on educating young children using videos and other media on the web. It is funded by grants, philanthropists, and the Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi. Sanger headed the development of WatchKnowLearn from 2008 to 2010. It consists of a repository of educational videos for kindergarten to the 12th grade. In February 2013, it ranked as the top search result among educational videos on Google's search engine and attracted over six million page views each month. In 2010 and 2011, he continued developing a web-based reading-tutorial application for beginning readers, which was launched as Reading Bear in 2012. It uses the principles of phonics and multimedia presentations such as videos, PowerPoint presentations, and ebooks to teach pronunciation to children. It also aims to teach the meaning and context of each word.


title: Larry Sanger

text: In February 2013, Sanger announced a project a crowdsourced news portal called Infobitt; saying on Twitter, "My new project will show the world how to crowdsource high-quality content—a problem I've long wanted to solve. Not a wiki." The site, which aimed to be a crowdsourced news aggregator, went online in December 2014 but ran out of money in July 2015.


title: Larry Sanger

text: In December 2017, it was announced that Sanger had become the chief information officer of Everipedia, an open encyclopedia that uses blockchain technology. That month, Sanger told "Inverse" that Everipedia is "going to change the world in a dramatic way, more than Wikipedia did". That same month, Sanger told "TechRepublic" that "Everipedia is the encyclopedia of everything, where topics are unrestricted, unlike on Wikipedia."


title: Larry Sanger

text: On July 1, 2019, Sanger advocated for a social-media strike to take place on July 4 and 5 to demand the decentralization of social media platforms to their user bases from their top-level management so their users can assert control over their data and privacy.


title: Larry Sanger

text: On October 18, 2019, Sanger announced that he had resigned from his position at Everipedia and returned his stock holdings in the company without compensation to establish the Knowledge Standards Foundation and develop the website encyclosphere.org. He said of the venture, "We need to do for encyclopedias what blogging standards did for blogs: there needs to be an 'Encyclosphere'. We should build a totally decentralized network, like the Blogosphere—or like email, IRC, blockchains, and the World Wide Web itself." The Knowledge Standards Foundation was founded in September 2019 by Sanger and others.


title: Larry Sanger

text: Larry Sanger has a doctorate in Philosophy from Ohio State University. His professional interests are epistemology, early modern philosophy, and ethics. Most of Sanger's philosophical work focuses on epistemology. In 2008, he visited Balliol College of the University of Oxford to debate the proposal "the Internet is the future of knowledge", arguing wikis and blogs are changing the way knowledge is created and distributed. Sanger has frequently written and spoken about collaborative content.


title: Larry Sanger

text: In January 2002, Sanger returned to Columbus, Ohio to teach philosophy at Ohio State University, where he taught the subject until June 2005.


title: Larry Sanger

text: In December 2010, Sanger said he considered WikiLeaks to be "enemies of the U.S.—not just the government, but the people".


title: Larry Sanger

text: In September 2021, in response to U.S. President Joe Biden announcing a COVID-19 vaccine mandate, Sanger tweeted "Nor I.#IWillNotComply" in agreement with political commentator Tim Pool. In an earlier tweet, Sanger falsely claimed that COVID-19 vaccines are "not a vaccine".


title: Larry Sanger

text: In March 2022, Sanger said that "Decentralization is a necessary but not sufficient condition of internet freedom", arguing that both federated and peer-to-peer decentralized networks "can still be captured and controlled in various ways and rendered un-free."


title: Larry Sanger

text: Sanger has argued that liberal and left-leaning views dominate in academia, science, the media and tech companies such as Facebook and Twitter.


title: Larry Sanger

text: In February 2000, when Sanger was hired by Wales to develop Nupedia, he moved to San Diego. He was married in Las Vegas in December 2001. In 2005, he and his wife moved to Santa Cruz, California, to work for Digital Universe. As of 2015, Sanger lives in the outskirts of Columbus, Ohio. As of 2021, he lives with his wife and two sons, who are both homeschooled.


title: Larry Sanger

text: Sanger was raised as a Lutheran and went to a Sunday school, but became an agnostic when he was 16 after his family stopped regularly going to church. Ethnically, Sanger described himself in 2016 as "a typical American cross-breed (lots of English, German, and French)".


title: Larry Sanger

text: Sanger supports the concept of "baby reading". He started teaching his son to read before his second birthday and posted videos online to demonstrate this. Sanger is known for his love of Irish traditional music.


title: Archean

text: The Archean Eon ( , also spelled Archaean or Archæan) is the second of four geologic eons of Earth's history, representing the time from . The Archean was preceded by the Hadean Eon and followed by the Proterozoic.


title: Archean

text: The Earth during the Archean was mostly a water world: there was continental crust, but much of it was under an ocean deeper than today's ocean. Except for some trace minerals, today's oldest continental crust dates back to the Archean. Much of the geological detail of the Archean has been destroyed by subsequent activity. The earliest known life started in the Archean. Life was simple throughout the Archean, mostly represented by shallow-water microbial mats called stromatolites, and the atmosphere lacked free oxygen.


title: Archean

text: The word "Archean" comes from the Greek word (), meaning 'beginning, origin'. It was first used in 1872, when it meant 'of the earliest geological age'. Before the Hadean Eon was recognized, the Archean spanned Earth's early history from its formation about 4,540 million years ago until 2,500 million years ago.


title: Archean

text: Instead of being based on stratigraphy, the beginning and end of the Archean Eon are defined chronometrically. The eon's lower boundary or starting point of 4 billion years ago is officially recognized by the International Commission on Stratigraphy.


title: Archean

text: When the Archean began, the Earth's heat flow was nearly three times as high as it is today, and it was still twice the current level at the transition from the Archean to the Proterozoic (2,500 ). The extra heat was the result of a mix of remnant heat from planetary accretion, from the formation of the metallic core, and from the decay of radioactive elements. As a result, the Earth's mantle was significantly hotter than today.


title: Archean

text: Although a few mineral grains are known to be Hadean, the oldest rock formations exposed on the surface of the Earth are Archean. Archean rocks are found in Greenland, Siberia, the Canadian Shield, Montana and Wyoming (exposed parts of the Wyoming Craton), the Baltic Shield, the Rhodope Massif, Scotland, India, Brazil, western Australia, and southern Africa. Granitic rocks predominate throughout the crystalline remnants of the surviving Archean crust. Examples include great melt sheets and voluminous plutonic masses of granite, diorite, layered intrusions, anorthosites and monzonites known as sanukitoids. Archean rocks are often heavily metamorphized deep-water sediments, such as graywackes, mudstones, volcanic sediments, and banded iron formations. Volcanic activity was considerably higher than today, with numerous lava eruptions, including unusual types such as komatiite. Carbonate rocks are rare, indicating that the oceans were more acidic due to dissolved carbon dioxide than during the Proterozoic. Greenstone belts are typical Archean formations, consisting of alternating units of metamorphosed mafic igneous and sedimentary rocks, including Archean felsic volcanic rocks. The metamorphosed igneous rocks were derived from volcanic island arcs, while the metamorphosed sediments represent deep-sea sediments eroded from the neighboring island arcs and deposited in a forearc basin. Greenstone belts, being both types of metamorphosed rock, represent sutures between the protocontinents.


title: Archean

text: Plate tectonics likely started vigorously in the Hadean, but slowed down in the Archean. The slowing of plate tectonics was probably due to an increase in the viscosity of the mantle due to outgassing of its water. Plate tectonics likely produced large amounts of continental crust, but the deep oceans of the Archean probably covered the continents entirely. Only at the end of the Archean did the continents likely emerge from the ocean.


title: Archean

text: Due to recycling and metamorphosis of the Archean crust, there is a lack of extensive geological evidence for specific continents. One hypothesis is that rocks that are now in India, western Australia, and southern Africa formed a continent called Ur as of 3,100 Ma. A differing conflicting hypothesis is that rocks from western Australia and southern Africa were assembled in a continent called Vaalbara as far back as 3,600 Ma. Archean rock makes up only about 8% of Earth's present-day continental crust; the rest of the Archean continents have been recycled.


title: Archean

text: By the Neoarchean, plate tectonic activity may have been similar to that of the modern Earth, although there was a significantly greater occurrence of slab detachment resulting from a hotter mantle, rheologically weaker plates, and increased tensile stresses on subducting plates due to their crustal material metamorphosing from basalt into eclogite as they sank. There are well-preserved sedimentary basins, and evidence of volcanic arcs, intracontinental rifts, continent-continent collisions and widespread globe-spanning orogenic events suggesting the assembly and destruction of one and perhaps several supercontinents. Evidence from banded iron formations, chert beds, chemical sediments and pillow basalts demonstrates that liquid water was prevalent and deep oceanic basins already existed.


title: Archean

text: Asteroid impacts were frequent in the early Archean. Evidence from spherule layers suggests that impacts continued into the later Archean, at an average rate of about one impactor with a diameter greater than every 15 million years. This is about the size of the Chicxulub impactor. These impacts would have been an important oxygen sink and would have caused drastic fluctuations of atmospheric oxygen levels.


title: Archean

text: The Archean atmosphere is thought to have nearly lacked free oxygen; oxygen levels were less than 0.001% of their present atmospheric level, with some analyses suggesting they were as low as 0.00001% of modern levels. However, transient episodes of heightened oxygen concentrations are known from this eon around 2,980-2,960 Ma and around 2,501 Ma. The ocean was broadly reducing and lacked any persistent redoxcline, a water layer between oxygenated and anoxic layers characterised by a strong redox gradient, that would become a feature in later, more oxic oceans. Despite the lack of free oxygen, the rate of organic carbon burial appears to have been roughly the same as in the present.


title: Archean

text: Astronomers think that the Sun had about 75–80 percent of the present luminosity, yet temperatures on Earth appear to have been near modern levels only 500 million years after Earth's formation (the faint young Sun paradox). The presence of liquid water is evidenced by certain highly deformed gneisses produced by metamorphism of sedimentary protoliths. The moderate temperatures may reflect the presence of greater amounts of greenhouse gases than later in the Earth's history. Alternatively, Earth's albedo may have been lower at the time, due to less land area and cloud cover.


title: Archean

text: The processes that gave rise to life on Earth are not completely understood, but there is substantial evidence that life came into existence either near the end of the Hadean Eon or early in the Archean Eon.


title: Archean

text: The earliest evidence for life on Earth is graphite of biogenic origin found in 3.7 billion–year-old metasedimentary rocks discovered in Western Greenland.


title: Archean

text: The earliest identifiable fossils consist of stromatolites, which are microbial mats formed in shallow water by cyanobacteria. The earliest stromatolites are found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone discovered in Western Australia. Stromatolites are found throughout the Archean and become common late in the Archean. Cyanobacteria were instrumental in creating free oxygen in the atmosphere.


title: Archean

text: Further evidence for early life is found in 3.47 billion-year-old baryte, in the Warrawoona Group of Western Australia. This mineral shows sulfur fractionation of as much as 21.1%, which is evidence of sulfate-reducing bacteria that metabolize sulfur-32 more readily than sulfur-34.


title: Archean

text: Evidence of life in the Late Hadean is more controversial. In 2015, biogenic carbon was detected in zircons dated to 4.1 billion years ago, but this evidence is preliminary and needs validation.


title: Archean

text: Earth was very hostile to life before 4.2–4.3 Ga and the conclusion is that before the Archean Eon, life as we know it would have been challenged by these environmental conditions. While life could have arisen before the Archean, the conditions necessary to sustain life could not have occurred until the Archean Eon.


title: Archean

text: Life in the Archean was limited to simple single-celled organisms (lacking nuclei), called prokaryotes. In addition to the domain Bacteria, microfossils of the domain Archaea have also been identified. There are no known eukaryotic fossils from the earliest Archean, though they might have evolved during the Archean without leaving any. Fossil steranes, indicative of eukaryotes, have been reported from Archean strata but were shown to derive from contamination with younger organic matter. No fossil evidence has been discovered for ultramicroscopic intracellular replicators such as viruses.


title: Archean

text: Fossilized microbes from terrestrial microbial mats show that life was already established on land 3.22 billion years ago.


title: The Ring Two

text: The Ring Two is a 2005 American supernatural psychological horror film and a sequel to the 2002 film "The Ring", which was a remake of the 1998 Japanese film "Ring". Hideo Nakata, director of the original Japanese film "Ring", on which the American versions are based, directed this film in place of Gore Verbinski. Noam Murro was attached before Nakata, but left due to creative differences.


title: The Ring Two

text: The film was shot in Astoria, Oregon and Los Angeles, California. It was released on March 18, 2005, and although it was met by generally negative critical reception, it opened in the United States with a strong US$35 million its first weekend, more than doubling the opening weekend of "The Ring". Its final $76 million domestic gross was less than the original's $129 million, but it took $87 million internationally, for a total gross of $163 million.


title: The Ring Two

text: Six months after the events of the first film and immediately following the events of the short film "Rings", Samara Morgan's cursed videotape has been circulating among teenagers in Astoria, Oregon. Jake Pierce is on his seventh day as per the tape's rules, and asks his friend, Emily, to watch the tape. He briefly steps into his kitchen, while Emily supposedly watches the tape. Jake receives a phone call, and initially thinks it is Samara, but is relieved to realize it is only his friend, with whom he had planned to trick Emily into watching the tape. Suddenly, Jake notices dark liquid pouring from under the kitchen door, and runs outside to the living room, only to discover Emily got scared, and closed her eyes while watching the tape. Jake is then promptly murdered by Samara.


title: The Ring Two

text: Rachel and Aidan have moved to Astoria from Seattle after sending the tape off into the ether. Rachel works at "The Daily Astorian" for the editor, Max Rourke. Rachel learns of Jake's death, inspecting his body, only for Samara to appear, declaring that she has been looking for her. Rachel breaks into Jake's house, obtains the videotape, and burns it. Aidan experiences a nightmare, where Samara drags him into a television. He soon starts developing hypothermia and bruises on his arms. At a county fair, Aidan wanders into a restroom, and takes photographs of his reflection, where Samara appears. Rachel takes him home, but they are attacked by multiple wild deer on the way, wrecking the car. After the stampede, Rachel returns home with Aiden, and worries about his health. It is during this time that Rachel realizes that Aidan may be possessed by Samara.


title: The Ring Two

text: Deciding to not be alone in their home, they rush to the Daily Astorian, surprising her co-workers, including Max. Rachel then asks for his help, claiming to have lost power, so Max takes them in. While Rachel is attempting to give Aidan a bath, he develops an irrational fear of water. Samara causes the water to recede from the bath, replacing Aidan with herself, and terrorizing Rachel so that she tries to drown Samara. Max enters, seeing her drowning Aidan instead, and forces her to take him to the hospital. Whilst Aidan is sleeping, he telepathically sends Rachel a vision from Samara consisting of many different images. Rachel is left with many questions about Samara's origins.


title: The Ring Two

text: Based on Aidan's bruises and his health, CPS is called. Psychiatrist Emma Temple shows up, and concludes that Rachel is abusing Aidan. Rachel doesn't want to talk, but Emma reveals her knowledge of Rachel's bout with postpartum depression. Thinking that Rachel was the one harming Aidan, Emma bans Rachel from seeing him until they can speak about it in depth.


title: The Ring Two

text: Looking for answers, Rachel tries to find out who Samara's birth parents were from an adoption agency, but this just directs her back to the Morgans. Rachel returns to the Morgan ranch on Moesko Island. She is all set to break in, until she learns that a real estate agent, Martin, is holding an open house, and she arrives early. Martin lies about what happened to the Morgans, but reveals that any furniture they left behind was sent down to the basement. She heads down there, and finds the mirror from the tape, many deer antlers, Samara's old toy merry-go-round, and a suitcase with a small flower on it. Inside the case is evidence of Samara's biological mother.


title: The Ring Two

text: While Rachel looks for answers, Samara takes control of Aidan's body, waking him up from sleep. The nurses call Emma in to speak with him, and while they talk, Samara telepathically forces Emma to commit suicide.


title: The Ring Two

text: Rachel heads to a church, and learns that Samara's biological mother was named Evelyn, who showed up with no father in sight. It is also recorded that she tried to drown Samara as an infant, and was subsequently committed to a psychiatric hospital. When Rachel goes to visit, Evelyn is expecting her, and she is allowed immediate entry to the facility. Evelyn advises her cryptically that: "dreams are safe", that "my baby told me to kill her", and that Rachel "let the dead get in". As Rachel leaves, she asks what to do, and Evelyn replies, "listen to your baby".


title: The Ring Two

text: Unbeknownst to Rachel, Aidan has left the hospital, and returned to Max's house. Max arrives, and, suspecting foul play, tries to secretly take photos of Aidan. When Rachel returns, an affectionate Aidan greets her, his behaviour seeming out-of-character. She steps out, and finds Max's corpse in his pickup truck. When Rachel falls asleep, she dreams of Aidan, who tells her that she will have to exorcise Samara. When she wakes up, Rachel drugs Aidan/Samara with sleeping pills, and puts Aidan's possessed body in the bath, temporarily drowning Aidan in order to exorcise her. Samara leaves Aidan's body, but appears in the television. Rachel allows herself to be dragged into Samara's monochromatic world, while Aidan pleads with her not to go.


title: The Ring Two

text: Finding herself in the bottom of the well Samara died in, Rachel discovers the lid is partially open. Rachel scales the well's walls, pursued by Samara, who contorts her body to follow her. Rachel escapes by climbing out, and pushing the lid shut on Samara, permanently locking Samara out of her and Aidan's lives. Rachel wanders through the woods, and begins to hear Aidan's voice. Eventually she comes to the cliff where Anna committed suicide. Rachel cries before closing her eyes, still hearing Aidan's voice. She looks down into the water, then closes her eyes, and jumps. In this way, she is able to return to the real world, and reunites with Aidan, and believes that their ordeal is finally over.


title: The Ring Two

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 20% based on 189 reviews, with an average rating of 4.44/10. The site's critical consensus states: ""Ring Two" serves up horror cliches, and not even Hideo Nakata, the director of the movies from which this one is based, can save the movie from a dull screenplay full of absurdities". Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 44 out of 100 based on 37 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: The Ring Two

text: Roger Ebert considered it better than the first film, giving it 2½ stars: "The charm of "The Ring Two", while limited, is real enough; it is based on the film's ability to make absolutely no sense, while nevertheless generating a real enough feeling of tension a good deal of the time".


title: The Ring Two

text: In the unrated edition DVD release, a few extra scenes were included that were not in the theatrical release. These scenes included conversations with Rachel's new neighbor (and neighborhood gossip), numerous additions in which Max shows a romantic interest in Rachel, more scenes with Samara prior to her possession of Aidan (including one in which she is shown to enter him in the restroom at the local fair), and the short film "Rings" (2005) (which was also included on a special edition of "The Ring" released just before "The Ring Two" arrived in theaters). A scene in the theatrical cut in which Aidan first encounters a deer while wandering the local fair (prior to the deer attack) has also been removed from this version. Also, some musical cues were changed such as when Samara leaps out of the well in the opening scene. The opening scene was also longer. The scene when the power went out was changed with a scene of the lights in Aidan's room going on and off, as well as the oven downstairs catching fire.


title: The Ring Two

text: A Blu-ray version of the film has yet to be released in the United States. The film officially debuted on Blu-ray in October 26, 2012, in Japan, containing all the extras from the DVD and including the Unrated Cut.


title: Ruthenia

text: Ruthenia is an exonym, originally used in Medieval Latin as one of several terms for Kievan Rus', the Kingdom of Galicia-Volhynia and, after their collapse, for East Slavic and Eastern Orthodox regions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, corresponding to what is now Ukraine and Belarus.


title: Ruthenia

text: During the early modern period, the term "Ruthenia" started to be mostly associated with the Ruthenian lands of the Polish Crown and the Cossack Hetmanate. Bohdan Khmelnytsky declared himself the ruler of "the Ruthenian state" to the Polish representative Adam Kysil in February 1649. Grand Principality of Ruthenia was the project name of the Cossack Hetmanate integrated into the Polish–Lithuanian–Ruthenian Commonwealth.


title: Ruthenia

text: Lands inhabited by Ukrainians (Ruthenians) of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria (1772–1918), corresponding to parts of Western Ukraine, were referred to as Ruthenia by the Austrian officials. As of now, with Ukrainian national identity dominating over most parts of the former Ruthenia, the Slavic term ("Rusyns") is mostly used among a minority of peoples on the territory Carpathian Mountains in parts of Ukraine, Poland, and Slovakia; and those of the Carpathian Basin in Serbia, and Croatia.


title: Ruthenia

text: The word "Ruthenia" originated as a Latin designation of the region whose people originally called themselves the "Rus"'. During the Middle Ages, writers in English and other Western European languages applied the term to lands inhabited by Eastern Slavs.


title: Ruthenia

text: ""Rusia" or "Ruthenia"" appears in the 1520 Latin treatise "Mores, leges et ritus omnium gentium, per Ioannem Boëmum, Aubanum, Teutonicum ex multis clarissimis rerum scriptoribus collecti" by Johann Boemus. In the chapter "De Rusia sive Ruthenia, et recentibus Rusianorum moribus" ("About Rus', or Ruthenia, and modern customs of the Rus'"), Boemus tells of a country extending from the Baltic Sea to the Caspian Sea and from the Don River to the northern ocean. It is a source of beeswax, its forests harbor many animals with valuable fur, and the capital city Moscow ("Moscovia"), named after the Moskva River ("Moscum amnem"), is 14 miles in circumference.


title: Ruthenia

text: Danish diplomat Jacob Ulfeldt, who traveled to Russia in 1578 to meet with Tsar Ivan IV, titled his posthumously (1608) published memoir "Hodoeporicon Ruthenicum"


title: Ruthenia

text: European manuscripts dating from the 11th century used the name "Ruthenia" to describe Rus', the wider area occupied by the early Rus' (commonly referred to as "Kievan Rus"). This term was also used to refer to the Slavs of the island of Rügen or to other Baltic Slavs, whom 12th-century chroniclers portrayed as fierce pirate pagans—even though Kievan Rus' had converted to Christianity by the 10th century: Eupraxia, the daughter of "Rutenorum rex" Vsevolod I of Kiev, had married the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV in 1089. After the devastating Mongolian occupation of the main part of Ruthenia which began in the 13th century, western Ruthenian principalities became incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, after which the state became called the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Ruthenia. The Polish Kingdom also took the title King of Ruthenia when it annexed Galicia. These titles were merged when the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was formed. A small part of Rus' (Transcarpathia, now mainly a part of Zakarpattia Oblast in present-day Ukraine), became subordinated to the Kingdom of Hungary in the 11th century. The Kings of Hungary continued using the title "King of Galicia and Lodomeria" until 1918.


title: Ruthenia

text: By the 15th century, the Moscow principality (or "Muscovy", "Moscovian Rus") had established its sovereignty over a large portion of Ruthenian territory and began to fight with Lithuania over the remaining Ruthenian lands. In 1547, the Moscow principality adopted the title of The Great Principat of Moscow and Tsardom of the Whole Rus and claimed sovereignty over "all the Rus'" — acts not recognized by its neighbour Poland. The Muscovy population was Eastern Orthodox and preferred to use the Greek transliteration "Rossia" (Ῥωσία) rather than the Latin "Ruthenia".


title: Ruthenia

text: In the 14th century, the southern territories of Rus', including the principalities of Galicia–Volhynia and Kiev, became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which in 1384 united with Catholic Poland in a union which became the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569. Due to their usage of the Latin script rather than the Cyrillic script, they were usually denoted by the Latin name "Ruthenia". Other spellings were also used in Latin, English, and other languages during this period. Contemporaneously, the Ruthenian Voivodeship was established in the territory of Galicia-Volhynia and existed until the 18th century.


title: Ruthenia

text: The Russian Tsardom was officially called "Velikoye Knyazhestvo Moskovskoye (Великое Княжество Московское)," the Grand Duchy of Moscow, until 1547, although Ivan III (1440–1505, ) had earlier borne the title "Great Tsar of All Russia".


title: Ruthenia

text: The use of the term "Rus/Russia" in the lands of Rus' survived longer as a name used by Ukrainians for Ukraine. When the Austrian monarchy made the vassal state of Galicia–Lodomeria into a province in 1772, Habsburg officials realized that the local East Slavic people were distinct from both Poles and Russians and still called themselves "Rus." This was true until the empire fell in 1918 (See Vernadsky, George. "A History of Russia" (1943–69). Pp. xix, 413. New Haven: Yale University…[permanent dead link];


title: Ruthenia

text: (1936) "Political and Diplomatic History of Russia"; (1943–69) "A History of Russia" (Yale Press) ISBN 0-300-00247-5; and (1948, republished 1973) "Kievan Russia").


title: Ruthenia

text: In the 1880s through the first decade of the 20th century, the popularity of the ethnonym "Ukrainian" spread, and the term "Ukraine" became a substitute for "Malaya Rus"' among the Ukrainian population of the empire. In the course of time, the term "Rus" became restricted to western parts of present-day Ukraine (Galicia/Halych, Carpathian Ruthenia), an area where Ukrainian nationalism competed with Galician Russophilia. By the early 20th century, the term "Ukraine" had mostly replaced "Malorussia" in those lands, and by the mid-1920s in the Ukrainian diaspora in North America as well.


title: Ruthenia

text: "Rusyn" (the Ruthenian) has been an official self-identification of the Rus' population in Poland (and also in Czechoslovakia). Until 1939, for many Ruthenians and Poles, the word "Ukrainiec" (Ukrainian) meant a person involved in or friendly to a nationalist movement.


title: Ruthenia

text: After 1918, the name "Ruthenia" became narrowed to the area south of the Carpathian Mountains in the Kingdom of Hungary, also called as Carpathian Ruthenia (, including the cities of Mukachevo, Uzhhorod, and Prešov) and populated by Carpatho-Ruthenians, a group of East Slavic highlanders. While Galician Ruthenians considered themselves Ukrainians, the Carpatho-Ruthenians were the last East Slavic people who kept the historical name ("Ruthen" is a Latin form of the Slavic "rusyn"). Today, the term "Rusyn" is used to describe the ethnicity and language of Ruthenians, who are not compelled to adopt the Ukrainian national identity.


title: Ruthenia

text: Carpathian Ruthenia (, ) became part of the newly founded Hungarian Kingdom in 1000. In May 1919, it was incorporated with nominal autonomy into the provisional Czechoslovak state as "Subcarpathian Rus"'. Since then, Ruthenian people have been divided into three orientations: Russophiles, who saw Ruthenians as part of the Russian nation; Ukrainophiles, who like their Galician counterparts across the Carpathian Mountains considered Ruthenians part of the Ukrainian nation; and Ruthenophiles, who claimed that Carpatho-Ruthenians were a separate nation and who wanted to develop a native Rusyn language and culture.


title: Ruthenia

text: In what in 1938 the French and Spanish press identified as "troublemaking" by the National Socialist government of Germany, there were calls in the German press for the independence of a greater Ukraine, which would include Ruthenia, parts of Hungary, the Polish Southeast including Lvov, the Crimea, and Ukraine, including Kyiv and Kharkiv.


title: Ruthenia

text: On 15 March 1939, the Ukrainophile president of Carpatho-Ruthenia, Avhustyn Voloshyn, declared its independence as Carpatho-Ukraine. On the same day, regular troops of the Royal Hungarian Army occupied and annexed the region. In 1944 the Soviet Army occupied the territory, and in 1945 it was annexed to the Ukrainian SSR. Rusyns were not an officially recognized ethnic group in the USSR, as the Soviet government considered them to be Ukrainian.


title: Ruthenia

text: Today, the Ukrainian government and some modern Ukrainian politicians claim that Rusyns are part of the Ukrainian nation. Some of the population in the Zakarpattia Oblast of Ukraine consider themselves Rusyns (Ruthenians), yet they are still a part of the Ukrainian national identity.


title: Ruthenia

text: A Rusyn minority remained after World War II in eastern Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia). According to critics, the Ruthenians rapidly became Slovakized. In 1995 the Ruthenian written language became standardized.


title: Ruthenia

text: The Baltic German naturalist and chemist Karl Ernst Claus, member of the Russian Academy of Science, was born in 1796 in Dorpat (Tartu), then in the Governorate of Livonia of the Russian Empire, now in Estonia. In 1844, he isolated the element ruthenium from platinum ore found in the Ural Mountains and named it after "Ruthenia", which was meant to be the Latin name for Russia.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are highly carcinogenic chemical compounds, formerly used in industrial and consumer products, whose production was banned in the United States by the Toxic Substances Control Act in 1979 and internationally by the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants in 2001. They are organic chlorine compounds with the formula CHCl; they were once widely used in the manufacture of carbonless copy paper, as heat transfer fluids, and as dielectric and coolant fluids for electrical equipment.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: Because of their longevity, PCBs are still widely in use, even though their manufacture has declined drastically since the 1960s, when a host of problems were identified. With the discovery of PCBs' environmental toxicity, and classification as persistent organic pollutants, their production was banned by United States federal law in 1978, and by the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants in 2001.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) rendered PCBs as definite carcinogens in humans. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), PCBs cause cancer in animals and are probable human carcinogens. Many rivers and buildings, including schools, parks, and other sites, are contaminated with PCBs and there has been contamination of food supplies with the substances. Moreover, because of their use as a coolant in electric transformers, PCBs still persist in built environments.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: Some PCBs share a structural similarity and toxic mode of action with dioxins. Other toxic effects such as endocrine disruption (notably blocking of thyroid system functioning) and neurotoxicity are known. The bromine analogues of PCBs are polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs), which have analogous applications and environmental concerns.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: An estimated 1.2 million tons have been produced globally. Though the federal ban was enforced by the EPA as of 1979, PCBs continued to create health problems in later years through their continued presence in soil and sediment, and from products which were made before 1979. In 1988, Tanabe estimated 370,000 tons were in the environment globally and 780,000 tons were present in products, landfills and dumps or kept in storage.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: The compounds are pale-yellow viscous liquids. They are hydrophobic, with low water solubilities: 0.0027–0.42 ng/L for Aroclors brand, but they have high solubilities in most organic solvents, oils, and fats. They have low vapor pressures at room temperature. They have dielectric constants of 2.5–2.7, very high thermal conductivity, and high flash points (from 170 to 380 °C).


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: The density varies from 1.182 to 1.566 g/cm. Other physical and chemical properties vary widely across the class. As the degree of chlorination increases, melting point and lipophilicity increase, and vapour pressure and water solubility decrease.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: PCBs do not easily break down or degrade, which made them attractive for industries. PCB mixtures are resistant to acids, bases, oxidation, hydrolysis, and temperature change. They can generate extremely toxic dibenzodioxins and dibenzofurans through partial oxidation. Intentional degradation as a treatment of unwanted PCBs generally requires high heat or catalysis (see Methods of destruction below).


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: PCBs readily penetrate skin, PVC (polyvinyl chloride), and latex (natural rubber). PCB-resistant materials include Viton, polyethylene, polyvinyl acetate (PVA), polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), butyl rubber, nitrile rubber, and Neoprene.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: PCBs are derived from biphenyl, which has the formula CH, sometimes written (CH). In PCBs, some of the hydrogen atoms in biphenyl are replaced by chlorine atoms. There are 209 different chemical compounds in which one to ten chlorine atoms can replace hydrogen atoms. PCBs are typically used as mixtures of compounds and are given the single identifying CAS number . About 130 different individual PCBs are found in commercial PCB products.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: Toxic effects vary depending on the specific PCB. In terms of their structure and toxicity, PCBs fall into two distinct categories, referred to as coplanar or non-"ortho"-substituted arene substitution patterns and noncoplanar or "ortho"-substituted congeners.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: Di-"ortho"-substituted, non-coplanar PCBs interfere with intracellular signal transduction dependent on calcium which may lead to neurotoxicity. "ortho"-PCBs can disrupt thyroid hormone transport by binding to transthyretin.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: The only North American producer, Monsanto Company, marketed PCBs under the trade name Aroclor from 1930 to 1977. These were sold under trade names followed by a four-digit number. In general, the first two digits refer to the product series as designated by Monsanto (e.g. 1200 or 1100 series); the second two numbers indicate the percentage of chlorine by mass in the mixture. Thus, Aroclor 1260 is a 1200 series product and contains 60% chlorine by mass. It is a myth that the first two digits referred to the number of carbon atoms; the number of carbon atoms do not change in PCBs. The 1100 series was a crude PCB material which was distilled to create the 1200 series PCB product.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: The exception to the naming system is Aroclor 1016 which was produced by distilling 1242 to remove the highly chlorinated congeners to make a more biodegradable product. "1016" was given to this product during Monsanto's research stage for tracking purposes but the name stuck after it was commercialized.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: Different Aroclors were used at different times and for different applications. In electrical equipment manufacturing in the US, Aroclor 1260 and Aroclor 1254 were the main mixtures used before 1950; Aroclor 1242 was the main mixture used in the 1950s and 1960s until it was phased out in 1971 and replaced by Aroclor 1016.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: One estimate (2006) suggested that 1 million tonnes of PCBs had been produced. 40% of this material was thought to remain in use. Another estimate put the total global production of PCBs on the order of 1.5 million tonnes. The United States was the single largest producer with over 600,000 tonnes produced between 1930 and 1977. The European region follows with nearly 450,000 tonnes through 1984. It is unlikely that a full inventory of global PCB production will ever be accurately tallied, as there were factories in Poland, East Germany, and Austria that produced unknown amounts of PCBs. There are still 21,500 tons of PCBs stored in the easternmost regions of Slovakia.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: The utility of PCBs is based largely on their chemical stability, including low flammability and high dielectric constant. In an electric arc, PCBs generate incombustible gases.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: Use of PCBs is commonly divided into closed and open applications. Examples of closed applications include coolants and insulating fluids (transformer oil) for transformers and capacitors, such as those used in old fluorescent light ballasts, hydraulic fluids, lubricating and cutting oils, and the like. In contrast, the major open application of PCBs was in carbonless copy ("NCR") paper, which even presently results in paper contamination.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: Other open applications were as plasticizers in paints and cements, stabilizing additives in flexible PVC coatings of electrical cables and electronic components, pesticide extenders, reactive flame retardants and sealants for caulking, adhesives, wood floor finishes, such as "Fabulon" and other products of Halowax in the U.S., de-dusting agents, waterproofing compounds, casting agents. It was also used as a plasticizer in paints and especially "coal tars" that were used widely to coat water tanks, bridges and other infrastructure pieces.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: Modern sources include pigments, which may be used in inks for paper or plastic products. PCBs are also still found in old equipment like capacitors, ballasts, X-ray machine, and other e-waste.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: PCBs have entered the environment through both use and disposal. The environmental fate of PCBs is complex and global in scale.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: Because of their low vapour pressure, PCBs accumulate primarily in the hydrosphere, despite their hydrophobicity, in the organic fraction of soil, and in organisms including the human body. The hydrosphere is the main reservoir. The immense volume of water in the oceans is still capable of dissolving a significant quantity of PCBs.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: As the pressure of ocean water increases with depth, PCBs become heavier than water and sink to the deepest ocean trenches where they are concentrated.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: A small volume of PCBs has been detected throughout the earth's atmosphere. The atmosphere serves as the primary route for global transport of PCBs, particularly for those congeners with one to four chlorine atoms.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: In the atmosphere, PCBs may be degraded by hydroxyl radicals, or directly by photolysis of carbon–chlorine bonds (even if this is a less important process).


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: Atmospheric concentrations of PCBs tend to be lowest in rural areas, where they are typically in the picogram per cubic meter range, higher in suburban and urban areas, and highest in city centres, where they can reach 1 ng/m or more. In Milwaukee, an atmospheric concentration of 1.9 ng/m has been measured, and this source alone was estimated to account for 120 kg/year of PCBs entering Lake Michigan. In 2008, concentrations as high as 35 ng/m, 10 times higher than the EPA guideline limit of 3.4 ng/m, have been documented inside some houses in the U.S.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: Volatilization of PCBs in soil was thought to be the primary source of PCBs in the atmosphere, but research suggests ventilation of PCB-contaminated indoor air from buildings is the primary source of PCB contamination in the atmosphere.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: In the biosphere, PCBs can be degraded by the sun, bacteria or eukaryotes, but the speed of the reaction depends on both the number and the disposition of chlorine atoms in the molecule: less substituted, "meta"- or "para"-substituted PCBs undergo biodegradation faster than more substituted congeners.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: In bacteria, PCBs may be dechlorinated through reductive dechlorination, or oxidized by dioxygenase enzyme. In eukaryotes, PCBs may be oxidized by the cytochrome P450 enzyme.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: Like many lipophilic toxins, PCBs undergo biomagnification and bioaccumulation primarily due to the fact that they are easily retained within organisms.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: Plastic pollution, specifically microplastics, are a major contributor of PCBs into the biosphere and especially into marine environments. PCBs concentrate in marine environments because freshwater systems, like rivers, act as a bridge for plastic pollution to be transported from terrestrial environments into marine environments. It has been estimated that 88-95% of marine plastic is exported into the ocean by just 10 major rivers.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: An organism can accumulate PCBs by consuming other organisms that have previously ingested PCBs from terrestrial, freshwater, or marine environments. The concentration of PCBs within an organism will increase over their lifetime; this process is called bioaccumulation. PCB concentrations within an organism also change depending upon which trophic level they occupy. When an organism occupies a high trophic level, like orcas or humans, they will accumulate more PCBs than an organism that occupies a low trophic level, like phytoplankton. If enough organisms with a trophic level are killed due to the accumulation of toxins, like PCB, a trophic cascade can occur.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: PCBs can cause harm to human health or even death when eaten. PCBs can be transported by birds from aquatic sources onto land via feces and carcasses.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: PCBs undergo xenobiotic biotransformation, a mechanism used to make lipophilic toxins more polar and more easily excreted from the body. The biotransformation is dependent on the number of chlorine atoms present, along with their position on the rings. Phase I reactions occur by adding an oxygen to either of the benzene rings by Cytochrome P450. The type of P450 present also determines where the oxygen will be added; phenobarbital (PB)-induced P450s catalyze oxygenation to the meta-para positions of PCBs while 3-methylcholanthrene (3MC)-induced P450s add oxygens to the "ortho"–"meta" positions. PCBs containing "ortho"–"meta" and "meta"–"para" protons can be metabolized by either enzyme, making them the most likely to leave the organism. However, some metabolites of PCBs containing "ortho"–"meta" protons have increased steric hindrance from the oxygen, causing increased stability and an increased chance of accumulation.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: Metabolism is also dependent on the species of organism; different organisms have slightly different P450 enzymes that metabolize certain PCBs better than others. Looking at the PCB metabolism in the liver of four sea turtle species (green, olive ridley, loggerhead and hawksbill), green and hawksbill sea turtles have noticeably higher hydroxylation rates of PCB 52 than olive ridley or loggerhead sea turtles. This is because the green and hawksbill sea turtles have higher P450 2-like protein expression. This protein adds three hydroxyl groups to PCB 52, making it more polar and water-soluble. P450 3-like protein expression that is thought to be linked to PCB 77 metabolism, something that was not measured in this study.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: Temperature plays a key role in the ecology, physiology and metabolism of aquatic species. The rate of PCB metabolism was temperature dependent in yellow perch ("Perca flavescens"). In fall and winter, only 11 out of 72 introduced PCB congeners were excreted and had halflives of more than 1,000 days. During spring and summer when the average daily water temperature was above 20 °C, persistent PCBs had halflives of 67 days. The main excretion processes were fecal egestion, growth dilution and loss across respiratory surfaces. The excretion rate of PCBs matched with the perch's natural bioenergetics, where most of their consumption, respiration and growth rates occur during the late spring and summer. Since the perch is performing more functions in the warmer months, it naturally has a faster metabolism and has less PCB accumulation. However, multiple cold-water periods mixed with toxic PCBs with coplanar chlorine molecules can be detrimental to perch health.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: Enantiomers of chiral compounds have similar chemical and physical properties, but can be metabolized by the body differently. This was looked at in bowhead whales ("Balaena mysticetus") for two main reasons: they are large animals with slow metabolisms (meaning PCBs will accumulate in fatty tissue) and few studies have measured chiral PCBs in cetaceans. They found that the average PCB concentrations in the blubber were approximately four times higher than the liver; however, this result is most likely age- and sex-dependent. As reproductively active females transferred PCBs and other poisonous substances to the fetus, the PCB concentrations in the blubber were significantly lower than males of the same body length (less than 13 meters).


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: The toxicity of PCBs varies considerably among congeners. The coplanar PCBs, known as nonortho PCBs because they are not substituted at the ring positions "ortho" to (next to) the other ring, (such as PCBs 77, 126 and 169), tend to have dioxin-like properties, and generally are among the most toxic congeners. Because PCBs are almost invariably found in complex mixtures, the concept of toxic equivalency factors (TEFs) has been developed to facilitate risk assessment and regulation, where more toxic PCB congeners are assigned higher TEF values on a scale from 0 to 1. One of the most toxic compounds known, 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo[p]dioxin, a PCDD, is assigned a TEF of 1. In June 2020, State Impact of Pennsylvania stated that "In 1979, the EPA banned the use of PCBs, but they still exist in some products produced before 1979. They persist in the environment because they bind to sediments and soils. High exposure to PCBs can cause birth defects, developmental delays, and liver changes."


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: In general, people are exposed to PCBs overwhelmingly through food, much less so by breathing contaminated air, and least by skin contact. Once exposed, some PCBs may change to other chemicals inside the body. These chemicals or unchanged PCBs can be excreted in feces or may remain in a person's body for years, with half lives estimated at 10–15 years. PCBs collect in body fat and milk fat. PCBs biomagnify up the food web and are present in fish and waterfowl of contaminated aquifers. Human infants are exposed to PCBs through breast milk or by intrauterine exposure through transplacental transfer of PCBs and are at the top of the food chain.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: The most commonly observed health effects in people exposed to extremely high levels of PCBs are skin conditions, such as chloracne and rashes, but these were known to be symptoms of acute systemic poisoning dating back to 1922. Studies in workers exposed to PCBs have shown changes in blood and urine that may indicate liver damage. In Japan in 1968, 280 kg of PCB-contaminated rice bran oil was used as chicken feed, resulting in a mass poisoning, known as Yushō disease, in over 1800 people. Common symptoms included dermal and ocular lesions, irregular menstrual cycles and lowered immune responses. Other symptoms included fatigue, headaches, coughs, and unusual skin sores. Additionally, in children, there were reports of poor cognitive development. Women exposed to PCBs before or during pregnancy can give birth to children with lowered cognitive ability, immune compromise, and motor control problems.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: There is evidence that crash dieters that have been exposed to PCBs have an elevated risk of health complications. Stored PCBs in the adipose tissue become mobilized into the blood when individuals begin to crash diet.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: PCBs have shown toxic and mutagenic effects by interfering with hormones in the body. PCBs, depending on the specific congener, have been shown to both inhibit and imitate estradiol, the main sex hormone in females. Imitation of the estrogen compound can feed estrogen-dependent breast cancer cells, and possibly cause other cancers, such as uterine or cervical. Inhibition of estradiol can lead to serious developmental problems for both males and females, including sexual, skeletal, and mental development issues. In a cross-sectional study, PCBs were found to be negatively associated with testosterone levels in adolescent boys.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: High PCB levels in adults have been shown to result in reduced levels of the thyroid hormone triiodothyronine, which affects almost every physiological process in the body, including growth and development, metabolism, body temperature, and heart rate. It also resulted in reduced immunity and increased thyroid disorders.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: Animals that eat PCB-contaminated food, even for short periods of time, suffer liver damage and may die. In 1968 in Japan, 400,000 birds died after eating poultry feed that was contaminated with PCBs. Animals that ingest smaller amounts of PCBs in food over several weeks or months develop various health effects, including anemia; acne-like skin conditions (chloracne); liver, stomach, and thyroid gland injuries (including hepatocarcinoma), and thymocyte apoptosis. Other effects of PCBs in animals include changes in the immune system, behavioral alterations, and impaired reproduction. PCBs that have dioxin-like activity are known to cause a variety of teratogenic effects in animals. Exposure to PCBs causes hearing loss and symptoms similar to hypothyroidism in rats.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: In 2013, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified dioxin-like PCBs as human carcinogens.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: According to the U.S. EPA, PCBs have been shown to cause cancer in animals and evidence supports a cancer-causing effect in humans. Per the EPA, studies have found increases in malignant melanoma and rare liver cancers in PCB workers.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: In 2013, the IARC determined that the evidence for PCBs causing non-Hodgkin lymphoma is "limited" and "not consistent". In contrast an association between elevated blood levels of PCBs and non-Hodgkin lymphoma had been previously accepted. PCBs may play a role in the development of cancers of the immune system because some tests of laboratory animals subjected to very high doses of PCBs have shown effects on the animals' immune system, and some studies of human populations have reported an association between environmental levels of PCBs and immune response.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: In the early 1990s, Monsanto faced several lawsuits over harm caused by PCBs from workers at companies such as Westinghouse that bought PCBs from Monsanto and used them to build electrical equipment. Monsanto and its customers, such as Westinghouse and GE, also faced litigation from third parties, such as workers at scrap yards that bought used electrical equipment and broke them down to reclaim valuable metals. Monsanto settled some of these cases and won the others, on the grounds that it had clearly told its customers that PCBs were dangerous chemicals and that protective procedures needed to be implemented.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: In 2003, Monsanto and Solutia Inc., a Monsanto corporate spin-off, reached a $700 million settlement with the residents of West Anniston, Alabama, who had been affected by the manufacturing and dumping of PCBs. In a trial lasting six weeks, the jury found that "Monsanto had engaged in outrageous behavior, and held the corporations and its corporate successors liable on all six counts it considered – including negligence, nuisance, wantonness and suppression of the truth."


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: In 2014, the Los Angeles Superior Court found that Monsanto was not liable for cancers claimed to be from PCBs permeating the food supply of three plaintiffs who had developed non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. After a four-week trial, the jury found that Monsanto's production and sale of PCBs between 1935 and 1977 were not substantial causes of the cancer.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: In 2015, the cities of Spokane, San Diego, and San Jose initiated lawsuits against Monsanto to recover cleanup costs for PCB contaminated sites, alleging that Monsanto continued to sell PCBs without adequate warnings after they knew of their toxicity. Monsanto issued a media statement concerning the San Diego case, claiming that improper use or disposal by third-parties, of a lawfully sold product, was not the company's responsibility.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: In July 2015, a St Louis county court in Missouri found that Monsanto, Solutia, Pharmacia and Pfizer were not liable for a series of deaths and injuries caused by PCBs manufactured by Monsanto Chemical Company until 1977. The trial took nearly a month and the jury took a day of deliberations to return a verdict against the plaintiffs from throughout the USA. Similar cases are ongoing. "The evidence simply doesn't support the assertion that the historic use of PCB products was the cause of the plaintiffs' harms. We are confident that the jury will conclude, as two other juries have found in similar cases, that the former Monsanto Company is not responsible for the alleged injuries," a Monsanto statement said.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: In May 2016, a Missouri state jury ordered Monsanto to pay $46.5 million to three plaintiffs whose exposure to PCB caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: In December 2016, the state of Washington filed suit in King County. The state sought damages and clean up costs related to PCBs. In March 2018 Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine also filed a lawsuit against Monsanto over health issues posed by PCBs.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: On November 21, 2019, a federal judge denied a bid by Monsanto to dismiss a lawsuit filed by LA County calling the company to clean up cancer-causing PCBs from Los Angeles County waterways and storm sewer pipelines. The lawsuit calls for Monsanto to pay for cleanup of PCBs from dozens of waterways, including the LA River, San Gabriel River and the Dominguez Watershed.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: In June 2020, Bayer agreed to pay $650 million to settle local lawsuits related to Monsanto's pollution of public waters in various areas of the United States with PCBs.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: In 1865, the first "PCB-like" chemical was discovered, and was found to be a byproduct of coal tar. Years later in 1876, German chemist Oscar Döbner (Doebner) synthesized the first PCB in a laboratory. Since then, large amounts of PCBs were released into the environment, to the extent that there are even measurable amounts of PCBs in feathers of birds currently held in museums before the production of PCBs peaked.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: In 1935, Monsanto Chemical Company (now Solutia Inc) took over commercial production of PCBs from Swann Chemical Company which had begun in 1929. PCBs, originally termed "chlorinated diphenyls", were commercially produced as mixtures of isomers at different degrees of chlorination. The electric industry used PCBs as a non-flammable replacement for mineral oil to cool and insulate industrial transformers and capacitors. PCBs were also commonly used as heat stabilizer in cables and electronic components to enhance the heat and fire resistance of PVC.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: In the 1930s, the toxicity associated with PCBs and other chlorinated hydrocarbons, including polychlorinated naphthalenes, was recognized because of a variety of industrial incidents. Between 1936 and 1937, there were several medical cases and papers released on the possible link between PCBs and its detrimental health effects. In 1936 a U.S. Public health Service official described the wife and child of a worker from the Monsanto Industrial Chemical Company who exhibited blackheads and pustules on their skin. The official attributed these symptoms to contact with the worker's clothing after he returned from work. In 1937, a conference about the hazards was organized at Harvard School of Public Health, and a number of publications referring to the toxicity of various chlorinated hydrocarbons were published before 1940.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: In 1947, Robert Brown reminded chemists that Arochlors were "objectionably toxic": "Thus the maximum permissible concentration for an 8-hr. day is 1 mg. per cu.m. [] of air. They also produce a serious and disfiguring dermatitis".


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: In 1954, Kanegafuchi Chemical Co. Ltd. (Kaneka Corporation) first produced PCBs, and continued until 1972.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: Through the 1960s Monsanto Chemical Company knew increasingly more about PCBs' harmful effects on humans and the environment, per internal leaked documents released in 2002, yet PCB manufacture and use continued with few restraints until the 1970s.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: In 1966, PCBs were determined by Swedish chemist Sören Jensen to be an environmental contaminant. Jensen, according to a 1994 article in "Sierra", named chemicals PCBs, which previously, had simply been called "phenols" or referred to by various trade names, such as Aroclor, Kanechlor, Pyrenol, Chlorinol and others. In 1972, PCB production plants existed in Austria, West Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Japan, Spain, the USSR and the US.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: In the early 1970s, Ward B. Stone of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) first published his findings that PCBs were leaking from transformers and had contaminated the soil at the bottom of utility poles.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: There have been allegations that Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories engaged in data falsification in testing relating to PCBs. In 2003, Monsanto and Solutia Inc., a Monsanto corporate spinoff, reached a US$700 million settlement with the residents of West Anniston, Alabama who had been affected by the manufacturing and dumping of PCBs. In a trial lasting six weeks, the jury found that "Monsanto had engaged in outrageous behavior, and held the corporations and its corporate successors liable on all six counts it considered – including negligence, nuisance, wantonness and suppression of the truth."


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: Existing products containing PCBs which are "totally enclosed uses" such as insulating fluids in transformers and capacitors, vacuum pump fluids, and hydraulic fluid, are allowed to remain in use in the US. The public, legal, and scientific concerns about PCBs arose from research indicating they are likely carcinogens having the potential to adversely impact the environment and, therefore, undesirable as commercial products. Despite active research spanning five decades, extensive regulatory actions, and an effective ban on their production since the 1970s, PCBs still persist in the environment and remain a focus of attention.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: In 1999, the Dioxin Affair occurred when 50 kg of PCB transformer oils were added to a stock of recycled fat used for the production of 500 tonnes of animal feed, eventually affecting around 2,500 farms in several countries. The name "Dioxin Affair" was coined from early misdiagnosis of dioxins as the primary contaminants, when in fact they turned out to be a relatively small part of the contamination caused by thermal reactions of PCBs. The PCB congener pattern suggested the contamination was from a mixture of Aroclor 1260 and 1254. Over 9 million chickens, and 60,000 pigs were destroyed because of the contamination. The extent of human health effects has been debated, in part because of the use of differing risk assessment methods. One group predicted increased cancer rates, and increased rates of neurological problems in those exposed as neonates. A second study suggested carcinogenic effects were unlikely and that the primary risk would be associated with developmental effects due to exposure in pregnancy and neonates. Two businessmen who knowingly sold the contaminated feed ingredient received two-year suspended sentences for their role in the crisis.


title: Polychlorinated biphenyl

text: The Italian company Caffaro, located in Brescia, specialized in producing PCBs from 1938 to 1984, following the acquisition of the exclusive rights to use the patent in Italy from Monsanto. The pollution resulting from this factory and the case of Anniston, in the US, are the largest known cases in the world of PCB contamination in water and soil, in terms of the amount of toxic substance dispersed, size of the area contaminated, number of people involved and duration of production.