title: Uniforms of the German Army (1935–1945)

text: Most recruits previous to 1940 were issued a fatigue uniform ("Drillichanzug") for basic training which they kept for work details, weapons cleaning and other duties likely to soil clothes. This was an unlined, insignia-less uniform made of linen or cotton herringbone twill (HBT) that typically had two buttonless patch pockets on the skirt; enlisted versions had a standing collar while NCO and officer versions had rise-and-fall collars. The fatigue uniform originally was undyed and therefore a colour that ranged from white to oatmeal to cement grey. On 12 February 1940 the colour was ordered changed to a bluish green called "reed-green."


title: Uniforms of the German Army (1935–1945)

text: Since the heavy wool "feldgrau" uniform proved to be oppressively hot in summer weather, especially in southerly latitudes, soldiers took to wearing their lightweight green fatigue uniforms in the heat. In about 1942 the Army regularized the practice: depots began issuing an official hot-weather four-pocket field uniform of "feldbluse" cut but made of the same reed-green HBT material. For the enlisted Heer, these were usually worn with collar insignia and national eagle. NCOs would typically wear the summer uniform ("Sommerfeldanzug") with appropriate rank on their shoulder boards, but the collar braid seen on the wool uniforms was typically absent. Two models were approved for use in the Army, the first that was designed after the M40 "feldbluse" and a later model that removed the front pocket pleats and pocket flap scallops similar to the M43. From 1943 a double-breasted version based on the "Panzerjacke" was made for vehicle and assault gun crews. SS units never had an official unique summer uniform, and while some used the Army versions, most used the earlier dyed work fatigues without insignia. While commissioned officers did have bespoke summer uniforms made, there was no regulation summer field uniform.


title: Uniforms of the German Army (1935–1945)

text: The Germans were first issued disruptively patterned camouflage in 1931. During the war two distinctive patterns were in use: "Splittermuster" (splinter pattern) and its softer-edged variant "Sumpftarnmuster" (swamp pattern), and "Platanenmuster" (plane tree pattern). Splinter Pattern was originally used for tents but was later applied by the "Luftwaffe" to the "knochensack" jump smocks of the "Fallschirmjäger", and fashioned into camouflage smocks for the infantry, while "Platanenmuster" was worn by the Waffen-SS. "Flecktarn", an updated version of the earlier plane tree pattern, is still used by the modern German "Bundeswehr".


title: Uniforms of the German Army (1935–1945)

text: In 1945 a new 6-colour camouflage known as "Leibermuster", which inspired the postwar US ERDL pattern, was introduced. The colors were black, tan, olive, pale green, white, and red-brown.


title: Glockenspiel

text: The glockenspiel ( or , : bells and : set) or bells is a percussion instrument consisting of pitched aluminum or steel bars arranged in a keyboard layout. This makes the glockenspiel a type of metallophone, similar to the vibraphone.


title: Glockenspiel

text: The glockenspiel is played by striking the bars with mallets, often made of a hard material such as metal or plastic. Its clear, high-pitched tone is often heard in orchestras, wind ensembles, marching bands, and in popular music.


title: Glockenspiel

text: In German, a carillon is also called a , and in French, the glockenspiel is sometimes called a . It may also be called a () in French, although this term may sometimes be specifically reserved for the keyboard glockenspiel. In Italian, the term () is used.


title: Glockenspiel

text: The glockenspiel is sometimes erroneously referred to as a xylophone. The Pixiphone, a type of toy glockenspiel, was one such instrument sold as a xylophone.


title: Glockenspiel

text: The glockenspiel is limited to the upper register and usually covers about to 3 octaves, although certain professional models may reach up to octaves. The glockenspiel is a often a transposing instrument and sounds two octaves above the written pitch, although this is sometimes remedied by using an octave clef.


title: Glockenspiel

text: Early glockenspiels were percussion instruments that produced notes via small bronze bells that were tuned with a drumstick. The bells were replaced by metal sound plates in the 17th century. In the 18th century the instrument was played using a keyboard that struck the bottom of each plate with a hammer. The use of mallets evolved during the 19th century, coinciding with Romanticism.


title: Glockenspiel

text: When used in a marching or military band, the bars are sometimes mounted in a portable case and held vertically, sometimes in a lyre-shaped frame. However, the bars may be held horizontally, using a harness similar to that found on a marching snare. In orchestral use, the bars are mounted horizontally.


title: Glockenspiel

text: Larger sets of glockenspiel (i.e. sets three octaves or larger) are often equipped with a sustain pedal, not unlike that of a vibraphone.


title: Glockenspiel

text: From 1918 to 1932, J.C. Deagan, Inc. manufactured bells equipped with a resonator under the name Parsifal bells. Both Adams and Yamaha model their professional-grade glockenspiels on the Deagan design.


title: Glockenspiel

text: The glockenspiel is played with unwrapped mallets made of hard material, such as metal (usually brass or aluminum) or a type of polymer (usually lexan, acrylic, phenolic, or nylon). Non-metal mallets are used for general playing, while metal mallets produce a more brilliant sound. Rubber mallets may be used for a warmer sound, although rubber that is too soft may struggle to excite the metal bars. Playing chords on a glockenspiel can be done with four mallets using a grip such as Stevens technique.


title: Glockenspiel

text: In the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada, a form of glockenspiel is called a bell lyre, bell lyra, or lyra-glockenspiel. The bell lyre is a form of glockenspiel commonly used in marching bands.


title: Glockenspiel

text: One variation is played vertically and has an extendable spike that is held on a strap. The player marches with the strap over one's shoulder and plays the instrument upright with a mallet. Another variation of the bell lyre exists that is supported by a strap around the shoulders and back. This variation is played horizontally with two mallets. Since the middle of the 19th century this form has been used in military and civil bands in Germany, where it is called a "Stahlspiel" or "Militär-Glockenspiel".


title: Glockenspiel

text: The all-percussion drum and lyre corps in the Philippines uses this as a main instrument. This form of glockenspiel is also popular in Colombian marching band music.


title: Glockenspiel

text: Many marching bands stopped using bell lyres with the introduction of the front ensemble. One of the few college marching bands with a glockenspiel section is UC Berkeley's University of California Marching Band, where they are affectionately referred to as "glocks".


title: Gay bathhouse

text: A gay bathhouse, also known as a gay sauna or a gay steambath (uncommonly known as a gay spa), is a commercial space for gay, bisexual, and other men to have sex with men. In gay slang, a bathhouse may be called just "the baths", "the sauna", or "the tubs". In general, a gay bath is used for having sexual activity rather than only bathing.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: Bathhouses offering similar services for women are rare, but some men's bathhouses occasionally have a "lesbian" or "women only" night. Some, such as Hawks PDX, offer so-called "bisexual" nights, where anyone is welcome regardless of gender.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: Bathhouses vary considerably in size and amenities – from small establishments with 10 or 20 rooms and a handful of lockers to multi-story saunas with a variety of room styles or sizes and several steam baths, hot tubs, and sometimes swimming pools. Most have a steam room (or wet sauna), dry sauna, showers, lockers, and small private rooms.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: In some countries, bathhouses are "membership only" (for legal reasons); though membership is generally open to any adult who seeks it, usually after paying a small fee. Unlike brothels, customers pay only for the use of the facilities. Sexual activity, if it occurs, is not provided by staff of the establishment, but is between customers with no money exchanged. Many gay bathhouses, for legal reasons, explicitly prohibit or discourage prostitution and ban known prostitutes.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: Records of men meeting for sex with other men in bathhouses date back to the 15th century. A tradition of public baths dates back to the 6th century BCE, and there are many ancient records of homosexual activity in Greece. In the West, gay men have been using bathhouses for sex since at least the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a time when homosexual acts were illegal in most Western countries and men who were caught engaging in homosexual acts were often arrested and publicly humiliated. Men began frequenting cruising areas such as bathhouses, public parks, alleys, train and bus stations, adult theaters, public lavatories (cottages or tearooms), and gym changing rooms where they could meet other men for sex. Some bathhouse owners tried to prevent sex among patrons while others, mindful of profits or prepared to risk prosecution, overlooked discreet homosexual activity.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: In New York City, the Everard (nicknamed the Everhard) was converted from a church to a bathhouse in 1888 and was patronized by gay men before the 1920s and by the 1930s had a reputation as the "classiest, safest, and best known of the baths". It was damaged by fire on May 25, 1977, when nine men died and several others were seriously injured. The Everard closed in 1986. Also popular in the 1910s were the "Produce Exchange Baths" and the "Lafayette Baths" (403–405 Lafayette Street, which from 1916 was managed by Ira & George Gershwin). American painter Charles Demuth used the Lafayette Baths as his favorite haunt. His 1918 homoerotic self-portrait set in a Turkish bath is likely to have been inspired by it. The Penn Post Baths in a hotel basement (the Penn Post Hotel, 304 West 31st Street) was a popular gay location in the 1920s despite a seedy condition and the lack of private rooms.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: The American composer Charles Griffes (1884–1920) wrote in his diaries about visits to New York City bathhouses and the YMCA. His biography states: "So great was his need to be with boys, that though his home contained two pianos, he chose to practice at an instrument at the Y, and his favourite time was when the players were coming and going from their games."


title: Gay bathhouse

text: In London, the Savoy Turkish Baths at 92 Jermyn Street became a favorite spot (opening in 1910 and remaining open until September 1975). The journalist A.J. Langguth wrote: "...[The baths at Jermyn Street] represented a twilight arena for elderly men who came to sweat poisons from their systems and youths who came to strike beguiling poses in Turkish towels... although they were closely overseen by attendants, they provided a discreet place to inspect a young man before offering a cup of tea at Lyons." Regulars included Rock Hudson.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: In the 1950s, the Bermondsey Turkish Baths were rated by Kenneth Williams as "quite fabulous" in his diaries.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: In the 1950s exclusively gay bathhouses began to open in the United States. Though subject to vice raids, these bathhouses were "oases of homosexual camaraderie" and were, as they remain today, "places where it was safe to be gay", whether or not patrons themselves identified as homosexual. The gay baths offered a much safer alternative to sex in other public places.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: In the late 1960s and 1970s, gay bathhouses—now primarily gay-owned and operated—became fully licensed gay establishments which soon became major gay institutions. These bathhouses served as informal gay meeting places, places where friends could meet and relax. Gay bathhouses frequently threw parties for Pride Day and were usually open, and busy, on public holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, when some gay men, particularly those who had been rejected by their families due to their sexual orientation, had nowhere else to go. The American writer Truman Capote was a regular at New York City baths in the 1970s, in particular the sauna at West 58th Street.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: Another service offered by the baths was voter registration. In the run-up to the 1980 election, the New St. Mark's Baths in New York City, with the assistance of the League of Women Voters, conducted a voter registration drive on its premises.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: In Australia, the first gay steam bath was opened in Sydney in 1967. This was the Bondi Junction Steam Baths at 109 Oxford Street. From 1972 through 1977 the following gay steam baths opened: Ken's Karate Klub (nicknamed "KKK"), later called Ken's at Kensington; No. 253; King Steam; Silhouette American Health Centre; Colt 107 Recreation Centre; Barefoot Boy; and Roman Bath (nicknamed "Roman Ruins"). In Melbourne the first gay bathhouse was Steamworks at 279 La Trobe Street, which opened in 1979 and closed 13 October 2008.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: Gay saunas, as they are more commonly known in Australia and New Zealand, were present in most large cities in those countries by the late 1980s. As homosexuality was legalised in New Zealand and most Australian states during the 1970s and 1980s, there was no criminal conduct occurring on the premises of such "sex on site venues".


title: Gay bathhouse

text: In Britain gay saunas were routinely raided by police up until the end of the 1980s; for example, raids in May 1988 on Brownies in Streatham resulted in the establishment's owner getting a six-month jail sentence and a £5,000 fine, and the Brooklyn House Hotel sauna in Manchester). By the 1990s, with increasing scrutiny of the costs of such operations (charges of gross indecency in a sauna normally needing the expense of undercover officers), a reduced likelihood of successful prosecution, concerns of being perceived as homophobic, and little public interest in victimless crime, gay saunas became free to operate without the risk of being raided by police. Also, police attitudes meant that they were more willing to turn a blind eye because they preferred such activity to take place in a contained environment rather than outdoors even though users were still committing the homosexual sexual offence of gross indecency, until gross indecency was wiped from the statute books following the Sexual Offences Act 2003.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: Gay bathhouses today continue to fill a similar function as they did historically. The community aspect has lessened in some territories, particularly where gay men increasingly tend to come out.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: Some men still use bathhouses as a convenient, safe place to meet other men for sex. In areas where homosexuality is more accepted, safety may no longer be a primary attraction.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: Many bathhouses are open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. There is typically a single customer entrance and exit. After paying at the main entrance, the customer is buzzed through the main door. This system allows establishments to screen potential troublemakers; many bathhouses refuse entry to those who are visibly intoxicated, as well as known prostitutes. In some areas, particularly where homosexuality is illegal, considered immoral, or viewed with hostility, this is a necessary safety precaution.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: Sexual encounters at bathhouses are frequently, but not always, anonymous. Some feel that the anonymity adds to the erotic excitement: that is what, for these patrons, one goes to the bathhouse "for". Bathhouse encounters sometimes lead to relationships, but usually do not. Bathhouses are still used by men who have sex with men and do not identify as gay or bisexual, including those that are closeted or in heterosexual relationships.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: In many bathhouses the customer has a choice between renting a room or a locker, often for fixed periods of up to 12 hours. A room typically consists of a locker and a single bed (though doubles are sometimes available) with a thin vinyl mat supported on a simple wooden box or frame, an arrangement that facilitates easy cleaning between patrons. In many bathhouses (particularly those outside the United States), some or all of the rooms are freely available to all patrons.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: Some bathhouses have areas designed to facilitate impersonal sex. These areasrooms or hallwaysare illuminated only by a (dim) red exit sign. It is possible to have sex, but not to see with whom. Other bathhouses, such as the Continental Baths in New York or the Club Baths in Washington, D.C., have two or more bunkbeds in close proximity, in a public area. This provides a place to have sex for those who could afford only a locker, and facilitated exhibitionism and voyeurism for those so inclined. Baths often have a (porn) TV room or snack bar where patrons can recuperate between orgasms.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: Some men use the baths as a cheaper alternative to hotels, despite the limitations of being potentially crowded public venues with only rudimentary rooms and limited or non-existent pass out privileges.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: Bathhouses are not always identifiable as such from the outside. Some bathhouses are clearly marked and well lit, others have no marking other than a street address on the door. Bathhouses sometimes display the rainbow flag, which is commonly flown by businesses to identify themselves as gay-run or gay-friendly. Bathhouses commonly advertise widely in the gay press and sometimes advertise in mainstream newspapers and other media. In 2003 Australia began airing possibly the world's first television advertisements for a gay bathhouse when advertisements on commercial television in Melbourne promoted "Wet on Wellington", a sauna in Wellington Street, Collingwood.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: In many countries, being identified in such a sauna was still viewed by the press as scandalous. In Ireland in November 1994, the "Incognito" sauna made mainstream press as the gay sauna where a priest had died of a heart attack and two other priests were on hand to help out. Scott Capurro is known for his deliberately provocative comedy material and often refers to gay sexual culture including gay bathhouses.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: On being buzzed in, the customer receives a towel (to wear, around the waist) and the key for his room or locker. The customer undresses, storing his clothing in the locker provided or room, and is then free to wander throughout the bathhouse which typically includes the amenities of a traditional bathhouse or steambath. In contrast with traditional bathhouses for bathing, the common areas of a modern gay bathhouse resemble a gym's locker room or a small lobby.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: Many bathhouses also provide free condoms and lubricant. Some establishments require a piece of identification or an item of value to be left with the front desk on entry. "Homosexualities" emphasized the importance of a towel:


title: Gay bathhouse

text: Bathhouses are often designed with imagery and/or music to create surroundings that are arousing to the visitors.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: Bathhouses are usually dimly lit and play music, although an outdoors, enclosed rooftop or pool area is not uncommon. They are often laid out in a manner that allows or encourages customers to wander throughout the establishment; a space laid out in this way is often referred to as a "maze". Some bathhouses have a space where random, anonymous sex is all that can occur. These spaces—rooms, hallways, or mazes, sometimes with glory holes—have as their only illumination a (dim) red "Exit" sign, so one can have sex but one cannot see with whom. Other clubs, such as the Continental Baths or the Club Baths of Washington, D.C., would have two or more bunk beds placed near each other, in a public area, thus providing a place to have sex for those who can afford only to rent a locker, and also maximizing the chances of being watched, for the exhibitionists so inclined. Rooms are usually grouped together, as are lockers. Bathhouses are frequently decorated with posters of nude or semi-nude men, and sometimes explicit depictions of sex. It is not uncommon to see pornographic movies playing on wall-mounted televisions throughout the bathhouse. The same movies may be shown on smaller screens in the individual rooms, sometimes for an extra fee.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: Most men, beyond footwear, typically just wear the towel provided. According to bathhouse etiquette, it is perfectly acceptable, even friendly, to put one's hand under someone else's towel to feel his penis, which, if well received, is the first step in sexual intimacy. Some bathhouses permit and others not only permit but encourage total nudity. In some bathhouses nudity is forbidden in the common areas of the establishments. Some men may wear underwear or fetish-wear, but it is unusual for customers to remain fully or even partially dressed in street clothes. Bare feet are frequent, though some men prefer to wear flip flops or sandals, sometimes provided by the establishment, for foot protection. The room or locker key is usually suspended from an elastic band which can be worn around the wrist or ankle.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: Some bathhouses require customers to purchase yearly memberships and many offer special entry rates to members, students, military, or other groups. In some countries, bathhouses can restrict entrance to men of certain age ranges (apart from the general requirement of being an adult) or physical types, although in other places this would be considered illegal discrimination. Some bathhouses hold occasional "leather", "underwear", or other theme nights.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: In the 1970s bathhouses began to install "fantasy environments" which simulated erotic situations that would be illegal or dangerous in reality:


title: Gay bathhouse

text: Many bathhouses sell food and drinks, cigarettes, pornography, sex toys, lubricants, and toiletries. Some bathhouses also provide non-sexual services such as massage and reflexology.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: Customers typically divide their time between the showers, saunas, and jacuzzi area and the main areas of the establishment. Customers who have rented rooms have free access to their room.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: Customers who have rooms may leave their room doors open to signal that they are available for sex. An open door can also be an invitation for others to watch or join in sexual activity that is already occurring.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: When a room is occupied only by a single person, some men will position themselves to suggest what they might like from someone joining them in the room: those who would like to be penetrated anally ("bottoms") will sometimes lie face down on the bed with the door open, while those who prefer to penetrate others ("tops") or to receive fellatio might lie face up.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: In the past, the baths served as community spaces for gay men. Even now, some men choose to go to the baths with their friends (even though they may not necessarily have sex with each other). While many men talk to each other at the baths, even forming long-lasting friendships or relationships, many others do not, preferring, for various reasons, anonymity.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: In this highly sexualized environment a look or nod is frequently enough to express interest. In darkened areas of the establishment including the mazes, video rooms, group sex areas, and the saunas or hot tubs (but not generally in the showers, toilets, hallways, gyms, café areas, and lounges), men are usually free to touch other patrons; it is expected, and often welcomed. A shake of the head, or pushing away the other's hand, means that the attention is not welcomed.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: Some establishments allow or encourage sex in specific group sex areas. In some jurisdictions such activity is prohibited, and sex must be confined to private rooms. Some forbid sex in pools for hygiene reasons. In the United Kingdom, the requirement is often set by the local authority's Environmental Health department.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: From the mid-1980s onward there was lobbying against gay bathhouses blaming them for being a focus of infection encouraging the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), in particular HIV, and this forced their closure in some jurisdictions (see Legal issues, below).


title: Gay bathhouse

text: In some countries, fears about the spread of STDs have prompted the closing of bathhouses—with their private rooms—in favor of sex clubs, in which all sexual activity takes place in the open, and can be observed by monitors whose job it is to enforce safe-sex practices. However, proponents of bathhouses point out that closing these facilities does not prevent people from engaging in unsafe sex.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: Neither the claim that bathhouses are responsible for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, nor the claim that they are not, has been conclusively proved, but it is known that STDs are spread via unprotected sex, and as part of their membership agreement, or as a condition of entry, some bathhouses now require customers to affirm in writing that they will only practice safe sex on the premises, and venues frequently provide free condoms, latex gloves, and lubrication (and/or have them available for purchase). In New Zealand and Australia, the New Zealand AIDS Foundation and constituent members of the Australian Federation of AIDS Organizations provide safe sex information for sex on site venue users.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: Some anti-bathhouse activists argue that these measures are not enough, especially given that it is virtually impossible to monitor sexual activity in a bathhouse; however, while they acknowledge that closing gay bathhouses may force some men into unsafe or illegal situations in public parks and lavatories, they point out that they may be less likely to engage in anal or multipartner sex—both of which put participants at risk for contracting STDs—in such situations.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: Others counter these claims by pointing out that bathhouses are a major source of safer sex information—they provide pamphlets and post safer sex posters prominently (often on the walls of each room as well as in the common areas), provide free condoms and lubricants, and often require patrons to affirm that they will only have safer sex on the premises. In cities with larger gay populations, STD and HIV testing and counseling may be offered on-site for no charge.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: In some countries bathhouses are prohibited from selling alcohol. (In Canada, where some bathhouses serve alcohol, a bathhouse holding a liquor license may be required to submit to liquor inspections, which activists claim are often a pretext for regulating gay sexual activity.) Many bathhouses deny entry to those who are visibly intoxicated but do not—or cannot—regulate the consumption of drugs (typically marijuana, poppers, ecstasy, cocaine, and crystal meth) by their patrons. The use of drugs and alcohol may make people more likely to engage in unsafe sex. Sex clubs with no private areas potentially find it easier to regulate consumption of drugs on their premises.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: The use of crystal meth is also known to lead to riskier sexual behaviour, but since gay crystal meth users tend to seek out other users to engage in sexual activity, they often prefer to make such arrangements via the internet.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: In some countries straight and gay bathhouses are used by rent boys to find customers by offering massage services, the "complete service" is often used as a euphemism for sex.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: In California the "Consenting Adult Sex Bill", passed in January 1976, made gay bathhouses and the sex that took place within them legal for the first time. During the 1970s, the two most popular gay bathhouses in San Francisco, both located in the SOMA neighborhood, were the Ritch Street Health Club at 330 Ritch St., the interior of which was designed like a Minoan palace, and The Barracks, a BDSM bathhouse at 72 Hallam near Folsom in which each room was designed to accommodate a different BDSM sexual fantasy. In 1978 a group of police officers raided the Liberty Baths in the Polk Gulch neighborhood of San Francisco and arrested three patrons for "lewd conduct in a public place", but the District Attorney's office soon dropped the charges against them. In 1984, however, fear of AIDS caused the San Francisco Health department, with the support of some gay activists such as Randy Shilts, and against the opposition of other gay activists, to ask the courts to close gay bathhouses in the city. The court, under Judge Roy Wonder, instead issued a court order that limited sexual practices and disallowed renting of private rooms in bathhouses, so that sexual activity could be monitored, as a public health measure. Some of the bathhouses tried to live within the strict rules of this court order, but many of them felt they could not easily do business under the new rules and closed. Eventually, the few remaining actual bathhouses succumbed to either economic pressures or the continuing legal pressures of the city and finally closed. Several sex clubs, which were not officially bathhouses, continued to operate indefinitely and operate to this day, though following strict rules under the court order and city regulations. Bathhouses themselves, however, operate just outside the city, thus outside of their laws, such as in Berkeley and San Jose.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: In 1985, the New York City Health Department ordered that the city's gay bathhouses be closed. As a result, heterosexual sex clubs such as Plato's Retreat had to shut down as well because the city had just passed a gay rights ordinance, and allowing the heterosexual clubs to remain open while closing the gay establishments would have been a violation of that ordinance.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Louisville, Seattle, Berkeley, San Jose, Cleveland, Portland, Reno, Las Vegas, Detroit, Indianapolis, Dallas, Houston, Denver, Miami and Fort Lauderdale are some American cities that have bathhouses in operation.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: On October 8, 2010, ten patrons and one employee were arrested during a police raid at Club Dallas in Texas. The patrons were charged with either public lewdness or indecent exposure while the employee was charged with interfering with the police. The Dallas Police Department's liaison to the gay community stated that their actions were in response to a complaint.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: In March 2008 a series of police raids in gay bathhouses and at gay meeting spots in Beijing have resulted in arrests and bathhouse closures. This included raids on two branches of the Oasis bathhouses, known to be the most popular in Beijing. In 2000, police arrested 37 men in a Guangzhou gay spa on charges of prostitution. Homosexuality was legalised in China in 1997.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: The German-speaking countries have many gay bathhouses () since homosexuality had been legalized in 1969 (and later). The oldest ones are the Hotel Deutsche Eiche (German Oak) in Munich, the Vulcan-Sauna in Hanover and Kaiserbründ in Vienna.


title: Gay bathhouse

text: Singer Bette Midler is well known for getting her start at the famous Continental Baths in New York City in the early 1970s, where she earned the nickname Bathhouse Betty. It was there, accompanied by pianist Barry Manilow (who, like the bathhouse patrons, sometimes wore only a white towel), that she created her stage persona "the Divine Miss M". On getting her start in bathhouses, Midler has remarked:


title: Red junglefowl

text: The red junglefowl (Gallus gallus) is a tropical bird in the family Phasianidae. It ranges across much of Southeast Asia and parts of South Asia. It was formerly known as the Bankiva or Bankiva Fowl. It is the species that gave rise to the chicken ("Gallus gallus domesticus"); the grey junglefowl, Sri Lankan junglefowl and green junglefowl have also contributed genetic material to the gene pool of the chicken.


title: Red junglefowl

text: Evidence from the molecular level derived from whole-genome sequencing revealed that the chicken was domesticated from red junglefowl about 8,000 years ago, with this domestication event involving multiple maternal origins. Since then, their domestic form has spread around the world where they are kept by humans for their meat, eggs, and companionship.


title: Red junglefowl

text: The nominate race of red junglefowl has a mix of feather colours, with orange, brown, red, gold, grey, white, olive and even metallic green plumage. The tail of the male roosters can grow up to , and the whole bird may be as long as . There are 14 tail feathers. A moult in June changes the bird's plumage to an eclipse pattern, which lasts through October. The male eclipse pattern includes a black feather in the middle of the back and small red-orange plumes spread across the body. Female eclipse plumage is generally indistinguishable from the plumage at other seasons, but the moulting schedule is the same as that of males.


title: Red junglefowl

text: Compared to the more familiar domestic chicken, the red junglefowl has a much smaller body mass (around lbs (1 kg) in females and lbs (1.5 kg) in males) and is brighter in coloration. Junglefowl are also behaviourally different from domestic chickens, being naturally very shy of humans compared to the much tamer domesticated subspecies.


title: Red junglefowl

text: Male junglefowl are significantly larger than females and have brightly coloured decorative feathers. The male's tail is composed of long, arching feathers that initially look black, but shimmer with blue, purple, and green in direct light. He also has long, golden hackle feathers on his neck and on his back. The female's plumage is typical of this family of birds in being cryptic and adapted for camouflage. She alone looks after the eggs and chicks. She also has a very small comb and wattles (fleshy ornaments on the head that signal good health to rivals and potential mates) compared to the males.


title: Red junglefowl

text: During their mating season, the male birds announce their presence with the well known "cock-a-doodle-doo" call or crowing. Within flocks, only dominant males crow. Male red junglefowl have a shorter crowing sound than domestic roosters; the call cuts off abruptly at the end. This serves both to attract potential mates and to make other male birds in the area aware of the risk of fighting a breeding competitor. A spur on the lower leg just behind and above the foot serves in such fighting. Their call structure is complex and they have distinctive alarm calls for aerial and ground predators to which others react appropriately.


title: Red junglefowl

text: The range of the wild form stretches from India, Nepal and Bangladesh in the west, and eastwards across southern China, to Indochina; south/southeast into Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Junglefowl/Chickens were one of three main animals (along with domesticated pigs and dogs) carried by early Austronesian peoples from Island Southeast Asia in their voyages to the islands of Oceania in prehistory, starting around 5,000 years BP . Today, their modern descendants are found throughout Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia.


title: Red junglefowl

text: Red junglefowl prefer disturbed habitats and edges, both natural and human-created. Apparently the forage and thick cover in these sorts of areas are attractive to junglefowl, especially nesting females. Junglefowl use both deforested and regenerating forests, and often are found near human settlements or areas of regrowth from slash-and-burn cultivation. Areas burned to promote bamboo growth also attract junglefowl, with edible bamboo seeds more available. In some areas, red junglefowl are absent from silvicultural and rubber plantations; elsewhere, they will occur in both tea plant and palm oil plantations. In the state of Selangor, Malaysia, palm foliage provides suitable cover; palm nut fruit provides adequate food, as well as insects (and their larvae) within, and adjacent to, the trees.  The palms also offer an array of roost sites, from the low perches (~4 m) favored by females with chicks to the higher perches (up to 12 m) used by other adults.


title: Red junglefowl

text: Red junglefowl drink surface water when it is available, but they apparently do not require it.  Birds in North-Central India visit water holes frequently during the dry season, although not all junglefowl on the subcontinent live close enough to water to do so; population densities may thus be lower, where surface water is limited.


title: Red junglefowl

text: Red junglefowl regularly bathe in dust to keep the right balance of oil in their plumage. The dust absorbs extra oil and subsequently falls off.


title: Red junglefowl

text: Flight in these birds is almost purely confined to reaching their roosting areas at sunset in trees or any other high and relatively safe places free from ground predators, and for escape from immediate danger through the day.


title: Red junglefowl

text: Dominant male junglefowl appear to defend a territory against other dominant males, and the size of the territories has been inferred based on the proximity of roosts. Beebe concluded that territories were rather small, especially as compared to some of the pheasants with which he was familiar. This was supported by Collias and Collias, who reported that adjacent roost sites can be as close as . Within flocks, male red junglefowl exhibit dominance hierarchies and dominant males tend to have larger combs than subordinate males. Red junglefowl typically live in flocks of one to a few males and several females. Males are more likely to occur alone than are females.


title: Red junglefowl

text: Males make a food-related display called "tidbitting", performed upon finding food in the presence of a female. The display is composed of coaxing, cluck-like calls, and eye-catching bobbing and twitching motions of the head and neck. During the performance, the male repeatedly picks up and drops the food item with his beak. The display usually ends when the hen takes the food item either from the ground or directly from the male's beak. Eventually, they sometimes mate.


title: Red junglefowl

text: In many areas, red junglefowl breed during the dry portion of the year, typically winter or spring. This is true in parts of India, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos. However, year-round breeding by red junglefowl has been documented in palm-oil plantations in Malaysia and also may occur elsewhere. During the laying period, red junglefowl females lay an egg every day. Eggs take 21 days to develop. Chicks fledge in about 4 to 5 weeks, and at 12 weeks old they are chased out of the group by their mother — at which point they start a new group or join an existing one. Sexual maturity is reached at 5 months, with females taking slightly longer than males to reach maturity.


title: Red junglefowl

text: Dominant males attempt to maintain exclusive reproductive access to females, though females chose to mate with subordinate males about 40% of the time in a free-ranging feral flock in San Diego, California.


title: Red junglefowl

text: Red junglefowl are attracted to areas with ripe fruit or seeds, including fruit plantations, fields of domestic grain, and stands of bamboo. Although junglefowl typically eat fallen fruits and seeds on the ground, they occasionally forage in trees by perching on branches and feeding on hanging fruit. Fruits and seeds of scores of plant species have been identified from junglefowl crops, along with leaves, roots, and tubers. In addition, red junglefowl capture a wide variety of arthropods, other invertebrates, and vertebrates such as small lizards. Even mammalian feces may be consumed. Many of these items are taken opportunistically as the birds forage, although some arthropods, such as termites, are taken in large quantities; about 1,000 individual termites have been found in a single crop. Plant materials constitute a higher proportion of the diet of adult red junglefowl than do arthropods and other animals. In contrast, chicks eat mostly adult and larval insects, earthworms, and only occasional plant material.


title: Red junglefowl

text: Chickens were created when red junglefowl were domesticated for human use around 8,000 years ago as subspecies "Gallus gallus domesticus". They are now a major source of food for humans. However, undomesticated red junglefowl still represent an important source of meat and eggs in their endemic range. The undomesticated form is sometimes used in cock-fighting.


title: Red junglefowl

text: In 2012, a study examined mitochondrial DNA recovered from ancient bones from Europe, Thailand, the Pacific, and Chile, and from Spanish colonial sites in Florida and the Dominican Republic, in directly dated samples originating in Europe at 1,000 BP and in the Pacific at 3,000 BP. Chicken was primarily domesticated from red junglefowl, with subsequent genetic contributions from grey junglefowl, Sri Lankan junglefowl, and green junglefowl. Domestication occurred about 8,000 years ago, as based on molecular evidence from a common ancestor flock in the bird's natural range, and then proceeded in waves both east and west. Zoogeography and evolutionary biology points to the original domestication site of chickens as somewhere in Mainland Southeast Asia and southern China in the Neolithic. Chickens were one of the ancestral domesticated animals of the Austronesian peoples. They were transported to Taiwan and the Philippines around 5,500 to 4,500 years ago. From there, they spread outwards with the Austronesian migrations to the rest of Island Southeast Asia, Micronesia, Island Melanesia, and Polynesia in prehistoric times.


title: Red junglefowl

text: Other archaeological evidence suggests domestication date around 7,400 BP from the Chishan site, in the Hebei province of China. However, the domestication event in China has now been disputed by several studies citing unfavourable weather condition at the time. In the Ganges region of India, wild red junglefowl were being used by humans as early as 7,000 years ago. No domestic chicken remains older than 4,000 years have been identified in the Indus Valley, and the antiquity of chickens recovered from excavations at Mohenjodaro is still debated.


title: Red junglefowl

text: The other three members of the genus — Sri Lanka junglefowl ("G. lafayetii"), grey junglefowl ("G. sonneratii"), and the green junglefowl ("G. varius") — do not usually produce fertile hybrids with the red junglefowl. However, supporting the hypothesis of a hybrid origin, research published in 2008 found that the gene responsible for the yellow skin of the domestic chicken most likely originated in the closely related grey junglefowl and not from the red junglefowl. Similarly, a 2020 study that analysed the whole genomes of Sri Lanka junglefowl, grey junglefowl, and the green junglefowl found strong introgressive hybridisation events in different populations of indigenous village chickens. The study also shows that 71–79% of red junglefowl DNA is shared with the domestic chicken. A culturally significant hybrid between the red junglefowl and the green junglefowl in Indonesia is known as the "bekisar".


title: Red junglefowl

text: Wild-type red junglefowl are thought to be facing threats due to hybridisation at forest edges, where domesticated free-ranging chickens are common. Nevertheless, they are classified by the IUCN as a species of least concern.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: On 12 August 2015, a series of explosions at the Port of Tianjin in Tianjin, northern China, killed 173 people, according to official reports, and injured hundreds of others. The explosions occurred at a container storage station in the Binhai New Area of Tianjin, China. The first two explosions occurred 33 seconds apart. The second explosion was far larger and involved the detonation of about 800 tonnes of ammonium nitrate (approx. 256 tonnes TNT equivalent). Fires caused by the initial explosions continued to burn uncontrolled throughout the weekend, resulting in eight additional explosions on 15 August.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: The cause of the explosions was not immediately known, but an investigation concluded in February 2016 that an overheated container of dry nitrocellulose was the cause of the initial explosion. The official casualty report was 173 deaths, 8 missing, and 798 non-fatal injuries. Of the 173 fatalities, 104 were firefighters.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: Tianjin Dongjiang Port Ruihai International Logistics (), or Ruihai Logistics (), is a privately held logistics company established in 2011. It handles hazardous chemicals within the Port of Tianjin, such as flammable and corrosive substances, oxidizing agents, and toxic chemicals. The company, which employed 70, is designated by the Tianjin Maritime Safety Administration () as an approved agent for handling these hazardous chemicals at the port, and its operating license was renewed two months prior to the explosions. Its site contains multiple warehouses for hazardous goods, a fire pump and a fire pond.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: The warehouse building, owned by Ruihai Logistics, is recorded in a 2014 government document as being a hazardous chemical storage facility for calcium carbide, sodium nitrate, and potassium nitrate. Safety regulations requiring that public buildings and facilities should be at least 1 kilometre away were not followed, and local inhabitants were unaware of the danger. The authorities stated that poor record keeping, damage to the office facilities and "major discrepancies" with customs meant that they were unable to identify the substances stored. State media revealed that Ruihai had only received its authorisation to handle dangerous chemicals less than two months earlier, meaning that it had been operating illegally from October 2014, when its temporary license had expired, to June 2015.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: The first reports of a fire at a warehouse in the Binhai New Area began coming in at around 22:50 local time (14:50 UTC) on 12 August. The first responders were unable to keep the fire from spreading. Firefighters who first arrived on the scene proceeded to douse the fire with water as they were unaware that dangerous chemicals were stored on the site, thereby setting in motion a series of more violent chemical reactions.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: At around 23:30 (15:30 UTC), the first explosion occurred and registered as a magnitude 2.3 earthquake, generating seismic shock-waves energetically equivalent to 2.9 tonnes of TNT. After 30 seconds, a second, much more powerful explosion occurred, causing most of the damage and injuries with shock-waves felt many kilometres away. The second explosion registered as a magnitude 2.9 earthquake and generated seismic shock-waves with energy equivalent to 21.9 tonnes of TNT. The resulting fireballs reached hundreds of meters in height. Around 23:40 (15:40 UTC) on 15 August, a series of eight smaller explosions occurred in the port as fire from the original blasts continued to spread. The total energy release was equivalent to 28 tonnes of TNT, or 100GJ.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: The explosion was large enough to be photographed by Himawari, a geostationary meteorological satellite operated by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). Chinese scientists subsequently estimated that the second more powerful explosion involved the detonation of about 800 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, based on crater size and lethality radius (336 tons TNT equivalent, based on relative effectiveness factor of 0.42).


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: One month after the explosion, official reports listed 173 deaths and 797 injuries. Media reported the area to be densely populated, with around 5,600 families living within radius of the plant, the closest being only away. Neither the developers nor the buyers were aware of the latent dangers of the activities at the nearby site; developers claimed also to be victims. According to the Tianjin government, more than 700 people were injured by the explosion, many with extensive injuries, mostly from burns and explosive blast injuries. Over a thousand firefighters were on scene, and 95 were killed. One surviving firefighter from his team, a 19-year-old named Zhou Ti (), was found on the morning of 14 August. The death toll, which also included 11 police officers, was the worst in a single incident for Chinese front line responders since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: Photographs and videos showed extensive destruction in and around the warehouse compound, with an enormous crater at the blast site. The buildings of seven more surrounding logistics companies were destroyed, and large quantities of intermodal container stacks were toppled and thrown by the forces of the explosions. More than eight thousand new cars from Hyundai, Kia, Volkswagen, Renault, and Toyota, parked in lots located near the blast site, were largely burned as a result of the initial explosions. Multiple buildings surrounding the blast site were declared "structurally unsafe". In total, 304 buildings, 12,428 cars, and 7,533 intermodal containers were damaged. Beyond insurance, the cost to businesses of the break in the supply chain caused by the explosions was estimated at $9 billion, making it the third most expensive supply chain disruption of 2015.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: Apartment blocks from the site sustained shattered glass, loss of roof tiles and damage to ceilings – with 17,000 units being affected. Nearby Donghai Road Station suffered severe damage as a result of the explosions and was closed until 2016, as was the rest of Line 9 of the Tianjin Metro beginning on 13 August. A Japanese department store four kilometres away reported damage to walls and ceilings. The explosions also affected the National Supercomputing Center of Tianjin several kilometres away, knocking out windows and causing some internal ceilings to collapse; the center's supercomputer Tianhe-1A itself was not damaged.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: It is not known what chemicals were being stored at the site. In addition to vast quantities of sodium cyanide and calcium carbide, paperwork was discovered showing that 800 tonnes of ammonium nitrate and 500 tonnes of potassium nitrate were at the blast site. On 17 August, the deputy director of the public security bureau's fire department told CCTV:


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: Ammonium nitrate, which is predominantly used as an agricultural fertilizer, oxidizing agent in explosive compositions, and in manufacturing of other chemicals, has been inculpated in a number of other fatal industrial explosions. A fire department spokesman confirmed that firefighters had used water in combating the initial fire, which may have led to water being sprayed on calcium carbide, releasing the highly flammable gas acetylene. This would have provided the fuel source for reaction with the oxidizer, ammonium nitrate, thus triggering its detonation more readily.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: At least 700 tonnes of highly toxic sodium cyanide was stored at the site – 70 times the legal limit. Sodium cyanide leakage was reported in the sewer. On 13 August, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides, all of which are toxic, were detected within of the origin of the explosion, but the levels conformed with the national standards. Gases were undetectable from the site during initial testing on 14 August.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: When the first rains after the initial explosions arrived on 18 August, white chemical foam covered the streets. Citizens complained of burning sensations and rashes on sensitive skin regions after coming into contact with rain droplets. However, meteorologists and health experts sought to reassure the public that the rain was not directly harmful to health, whilst the Environment Protection Board advised against exposure to the rain due to traces of cyanide dust reacting with water.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: Thousands of dead sticklebacks washed up on the banks 6 km from the explosion site on 20 August, fuelling fears of water contamination. Officials downplayed the fears, saying that there were not high levels of cyanide in the river and that the fish likely died due to oxygen depletion in the water.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: More precipitation throughout August in the Binhai New Area brought more complaints of skin irritations and burns from volunteers and journalists. A bright white foam also manifested yet again on the streets in a similar manner to before. Deng Xiaowen, director of Tianjin's environmental monitoring centre, questionably stated that the foam was apparently; “a normal phenomenon when rain falls, and similar things have occurred before”.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: On Thursday morning, the Chinese leaders ordered officers in the city to make full effort in rescuing the injured, and search for those missing. Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and Li Keqiang, the Premier of the People's Republic of China, also said police should investigate the cause of the incident and punish those responsible for the blast.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: Tianjin officials, concerned at the potential public response, announced initially that 14 people had perished in the explosions, but later raised the death toll to 44 once the scale of the explosions became clear. The "South China Morning Post" (SCMP) cited a Tianjin police source that officers had been instructed to remove bodies from the scene to deliberately understate the official death toll, which angered the Tianjin government.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: The morning following the explosion military personnel began to arrive in Tianjin to help with the search and recovery efforts. Extra equipment, such as bulldozers, were brought in to help with the clean-up operation. Over 200 nuclear and biochemical experts, including a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency, began arriving in Tianjin to assess the health risks from the chemicals being released into the atmosphere. Government personnel set up twelve temporary monitoring stations near the blast site with above-normal levels of pollutants being detected. A nearby drainage outlet was also closed, and water quality tested.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: Firefighting was suspended on the afternoon of 13 August due to the uncertainty of the content and quantity of hazardous materials being stored on site. A team of over 200 chemical specialists was deployed to the site to assess the hazardous materials on site and dangers to the environment, and to determine the best way to put out the remaining fires and proceed with search and rescue and clean-up operations. Later that day, rescue personnel were dispatched in an attempt to remove the 700 tonnes of sodium cyanide believed to be stored at the site, with hydrogen peroxide being prepared to neutralise the chemicals. Daily press conferences were organised. A press conference organised by local officials held on 14 August came to an abrupt end when a journalist began asking questions as to why such dangerous chemicals were stockpiled so close to housing estates.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: Initially, more than 3,500 area residents were staying in temporary shelters, but the number surpassed six thousand within three days. The government issued an evacuation order over concerns of further explosions; not all residents complied.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: On 15 August, local authorities ordered the evacuation of residents within a radius of the blast site, prompted by the threat of "toxic substances", including sodium cyanide.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: The State Council ordered inspections of all businesses using dangerous chemicals and explosives across the country.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: Hong Kong media announced that Li Liang, the major shareholder of Ruihai Logistics – owning 55%, was the nephew of former chairman of the CPPCC National Committee and ex-party chief of Tianjin, Li Ruihuan, and that the company may have been named after his brother and Li Liang's father; the remaining 45% was owned by Shu Zheng. Reports in state media one week after the explosion were contradictory, holding that Ruihai was owned via proxies by Yu Xuewei, the chairman of Ruihai and a former senior executive at Sinochem, and Dong Shexuan, who served as the company's vice-president and who had been arrested by police by the time of the reports. Dong Shexuan is the son of Tianjin port's former police chief Dong Peijun, who was a colleague of Wu Changshun, the former chief of the public security bureau of Tianjin. The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), CPC's anti-corruption body, charged Wu Changshun with bribery in 2014; Dong Peijun was also under investigation for corruption, but died that year.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: After the explosions, the CCDI placed Yang Dongliang, Director of the State Administration of Work Safety and China's highest work-safety official, under investigation on 18 August 2015. Yang had previously served as Tianjin's vice mayor for 11 years. In 2012, Yang Dongliang had issued an order to loosen rules for the handling of hazardous substances, which may have enabled Ruihai to store toxic chemicals such as sodium cyanide.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: On 27 August, Xinhua reported that police had arrested twelve people with suspected connections to the explosions, including Ruihai Logistics' chairman, vice-chairman, and at least three other managers, with the other seven people unnamed.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: On 5 February 2016, the Chinese government issued the investigation report of the explosions. The report concluded the fire started in a container through auto-ignition of nitrocellulose, due to vaporization of the wetting agent during hot weather.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: On 8 November 2016, various courts in China handed jail sentences to 49 government officials and warehouse executives and staff for their roles in circumventing the safety rules that led to the disaster. Yu Xuewei, the Chairman of Ruihai Logistics, was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: Immediately following the blasts the company website was taken down fuelling suspicions that an attempt was being made to shield owners with powerful political connections. For several successive days, local residents seeking compensation for their homes protested in front of the venue of the daily press conference, they were joined by distraught families of missing firefighters, and confronted police angrily.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: The Chinese public security minister threatened severe punishment for those found to be responsible for the explosions. However, the authorities did not release any significant information for several days about the chemicals and circumstances, causing public anger to mount during this time. Marking an official change of tack that suggested top-level endorsement, the official "People's Daily" joined in to criticise local officials' lack of candour and their use of bureaucratic jargon. In addition, the "Global Times" remarked on the inadequacy of emergency response and the reluctance of high-ranking officials to answer the public's questions and address their concerns until four days after the blasts. The "People's Daily" acknowledged that public scepticism of the reported death toll was fuelling rampant rumours; there was also disquiet over the emergency assistance provided and the way the aftermath was being handled. Attempting to defuse widespread anger at the lack of official transparency, mouthpieces of the ruling party declared that investigations would be thorough and transparent. Former deputy mayor, Yang Dongliang, was put under investigation for corruption; mayor Huang Xingguo proclaimed his "unshirkable responsibility for this accident". Authorities also released information about the ownership of Ruihai, as well as a confession by one beneficial owner for the proxy shareholdings.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: Meanwhile, Greenpeace Asia alleged that two Sinochem subsidiaries – Sinochem Tianjin Binhai Logistics Company (with a site) and Tianjin Port Sinochem Hazardous Goods Logistics Company Ltd. – had warehouses in the vicinity in close proximity to a primary and a nursery school, meaning that both were also in similar breach of laws.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: Observers stated that top officials always attempt to show such disasters as isolated instances, have never accepted political accountability nor addressed the underlying governance issues, and have always heavily censored any criticism of the central government. Willy Lam, professor at CUHK and senior fellow at The Jamestown Foundation, noted the highly unusual 4 days it took for Li Keqiang to make an official visit, suggesting that the lack of a top-ranking visitor to a major disaster site within 48 hours despite the proximity to Beijing reflected "division among the leadership on who should be the fall guy."


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: Initially, Tianjin authorities banned editors and reporters from sharing information about the disaster on Weibo and WeChat, and websites were ordered to follow state media.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: Tianjin Television had reported the explosion on their early morning news at 7:00 am, but citizens complained that the station had not reported live nor updated on the event, instead showing soap operas eight hours later.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: A great deal of specific information on the event, including the majority of early stage video, was first released over social media sites, and in particular microblogging platforms like Weibo. Major media has drawn heavily from social media sources, greatly widening the audience. "The Economist" noted, "Social media fills in the blanks left by official narratives of the Tianjin disaster. The most remarkable feature of the aftermath of the explosions in Tianjin, in northern China, has been the extraordinary contrast between the official reaction to the crisis, which has been profoundly flawed, and the online reaction, which has entirely dominated the agenda."


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: Professional and social media reports were censored by Chinese authorities. The censorship rate increased tenfold on the social media site Weibo, with users reporting the deletion of their posts regarding the blasts, with "Tianjin" and "explosion" being the most censored words. An article by "Caijing", which carried an interview with a firefighter who said that no-one on the front line had been informed of the dangerous chemicals on site that would react exothermically when mixed with water, was deleted after it had been reposted 10,000 times; many other posts mentioning the existence of deadly sodium cyanide were also expunged.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: The Cyberspace Administration of China banned all journalists from posting to social media, and insisted on strict adherence to Xinhua's editorial line. On 15 August, it announced that it had shut down 18 websites and suspended 32 more for spreading false information. More than 360 Weibo and public WeChat accounts which had allegedly been spreading such false rumors have been "punished according to laws". Of these accounts, over 160 were shut down permanently.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: Press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) accused the Chinese state media of playing up the heroic efforts of rescue workers and firefighters while downplaying the causes of the explosions and the number of casualties. RSF said that censorship by the Chinese authorities showed "a flagrant indifference to the public's legitimate concerns".


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: A CNN correspondent was interrupted by bystanders and forced to leave during a live report outside TEDA Hospital. A journalist from the Beijing News reported that he and two other reporters were chased by police, caught, searched, and made to delete photographs from their cameras and computers.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: Tianjin officials announced that as at the deadline on 3 September 2015, more than 9,000 households out of some 17,000 affected by the explosions had signed agreements to settle their damages claims. It was reported that some had chosen to sell their damaged apartments to private developers, who offered them around 130% of the original purchase price, while others accepted an offer from the local government promising to fix the damaged apartments. The local government offered an additional of ¥20,000 renminbi ($3,100) to those who agreed to settle their claims by the deadline. "The New York Times" journalists, however, reported that some owners had faced heavy pressure from government officials to settle; similarly, owners who were employees in state-owned enterprises were under threat of dismissal from their bosses for not settling.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: On 10 September 2015 "China Daily" reported that families of the firefighters killed in the explosions would each receive compensation of 2.3 million yuan (US$360,669), citing a report in Beijing News. It was also reported that a monument would be built on the site and that the government planned to compensate residents whose houses were damaged by repurchasing them at 130% of their purchase price.


title: 2015 Tianjin explosions

text: Less than a month after the disaster, the Tianjin government announced a proposal to turn the site into an "ecological park", repurposing the explosion crater as a lake and promising a memorial to the victims to be built on site. The proposal was heavily criticized on Chinese social media, which derided the rushed announcement as an attempt to erase the damage and avoid accountability. The resulting , opened in early 2017, was further criticized for being an extremely rushed and sloppy design. Both the crater lake and the proposed memorial were ultimately discarded; as a result, there is currently no permanent memorial to the disaster.


title: Consummation

text: In many traditions and statutes of civil or religious law, the consummation of a marriage, often called simply "consummation", is the first (or first officially credited) act of sexual intercourse between two people, following their marriage to each other. The definition of consummation usually refers to penile-vaginal sexual penetration, but some religious doctrines hold that there is an additional requirement that no contraception must be used.


title: Consummation

text: The religious, cultural, or legal significance of consummation may arise from theories of marriage as having the purpose of producing legally recognized descendants of the partners, or of providing sanction to their sexual acts together, or both, and its absence may amount to treating a marriage "ceremony" as falling short of "completing" the state of being married, or as creating a marriage which may later be repudiated. Thus in some legal systems a marriage may be annulled if it has not been consummated. Consummation is also relevant in the case of a common law marriage. The importance of consummation has led to the development of various bedding rituals.


title: Consummation

text: In addition to these formal and literal usages, the term also exists in informal and less precise usage to refer to a sexual landmark in relationships of varying intensity and duration.


title: Consummation

text: The relevance of consummation in a civil marriage varies by jurisdiction. For example, under section 12 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, a refusal or inability to consummate a marriage is a ground of annulment in England and Wales, but this only applies to heterosexual marriage because Paragraph 4 of schedule 4 of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 specifically excludes non-consummation as a ground for the annulment of a same-sex marriage. Other common law jurisdictions, such as Australia, have abolished the legal concept of consummation.


title: Consummation

text: In the case of common law marriage, consummation may be a required component in the creation of the marriage itself.


title: Consummation

text: A religious marriage without civil registration may or may not be legally binding. In some (mostly Muslim) countries such as Palestine, Israel, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Libya, Mauritania and Indonesia, religious marriage is the only legally binding marriage.


title: Consummation

text: Consummation is particularly relevant in a Catholic marriage. Within the Catholic Church, if a matrimonial celebration takes place (ratification) but the spouses have not yet engaged in intercourse (consummation), then the marriage is said to be a marriage "ratum sed non consummatum". Such a marriage, regardless of the reason for non-consummation, can be dissolved by the pope. Additionally, an inability or an intentional refusal to consummate the marriage is probable grounds for an annulment. Catholic canon law defines a marriage as consummated when the "spouses have performed between themselves in a human fashion a conjugal act which is suitable in itself for the procreation of offspring, to which marriage is ordered by its nature and by which the spouses become one flesh". Thus some theologians, such as Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J., state that intercourse with contraception does not consummate a marriage.


title: Consummation

text: In many traditions, consummation is an important act because it suggests the bride's virginity; the presence of blood is erroneously taken as definitive confirmation that the woman was a virgin.


title: Consummation

text: In the family law defining civil marriage in some jurisdictions, particularly those where the civil marriage laws remain influenced by religion (albeit they are officially secular), non-consummation of a marriage may be a ground for annulment (an annulment is different from a divorce because it usually acts retrospectively). This stipulation has been in recent years heavily criticized on a wide variety of grounds, ranging from the mixing of religious doctrine into secular law, to being degrading to women given its negative historical connotations of ownership of the wife. It has been argued that the purpose of this ground is not clear: it is neither procreation (the act need not end in pregnancy, and neither is there a need of the "possibility" of it, given the fact the consummation is legally valid even if one or both parties is sterile), neither is it the expectation of sexual satisfaction in marriage (one single act of sexual intercourse is sufficient, even if the spouse following the consummation says they will never again engage in intercourse). Andrew Bainham argues that this law (in England and Wales) is outdated and must be abolished "in a modern society committed to equality and human rights in personal relationships".


title: Consummation

text: In a 2001 report, the Law Society of Ireland’s Law Reform advocated abolishing the concept of a voidable marriage altogether (since divorce had been introduced in 1996) and criticized the consummation ground, writing the following:


title: Consummation

text: Another concern is sexual violence, especially since in most countries the criminalization of marital rape is recent, having occurred from the 1970s onwards; the maintaining in law of the concept of consummation is argued to foster cultural and societal attitudes and understandings of marriage that make it more difficult to acknowledge these violations; and to be a remainder of an oppressive tradition. Commenting on the case of "R v R", which criminalised marital rape in England and Wales, Harris-Short and Miles write:


title: Tollund Man

text: The Tollund Man (died 405–380 BC) is a naturally mummified corpse of a man who lived during the 5th century BC, during the period characterised in Scandinavia as the Pre-Roman Iron Age. He was found in 1950, preserved as a bog body, near Silkeborg on the Jutland peninsula in Denmark. The man's physical features were so well preserved that he was mistaken for a recent murder victim. Twelve years before his discovery, another bog body, Elling Woman, was found in the same bog.


title: Tollund Man

text: The cause of death has been determined as by hanging. Scholars believe the man was a human sacrifice, rather than an executed criminal, because of the arranged position of his body, and his eyes and mouth being closed.


title: Tollund Man

text: On 8 May 1950, peat cutters Viggo and Emil Hojgaard discovered a corpse in the peat layer of the Bjældskovdal peat bog, west of Silkeborg, Denmark, which was so well preserved that they at first believed they had discovered a recent murder victim.


title: Tollund Man

text: The Tollund Man lay away from firm ground, buried under of peat, his body arranged in a fetal position. He wore a pointed skin cap of sheepskin and wool, fastened under his chin by a hide thong, and a smooth hide belt around his waist. Additionally, a noose made of plaited animal hide was drawn tight around his neck and trailed down his back. Other than these, the body was naked. His hair was cropped so short as to be almost entirely hidden by his cap. There was short stubble ( in length) on his chin and upper lip, suggesting that he was usually clean-shaven, but had not shaved on the day of his death. The Tollund Man was approximately 40 years old. The Tollund Man's last meal consisted of a porridge with barley, flax, wild weed seeds, and some fish.


title: Tollund Man

text: Radiocarbon dating of Tollund Man indicated that he died circa 405–380 BC. The preserved tender soft tissues of his body are the consequence of the acid in the peat, along with the lack of oxygen underneath the surface and the cold climate of the Nordic countries. The acid in the peat, needed for the preservation of a human body, is caused by a bryophyte named "Sphagnum". "Sphagnum" fights against degradation due to resistant phenolic compounds contained in their cell walls. Due to the acidity of peat, bones are typically dissolved rather than preserved.


title: Tollund Man

text: Scientists conducted an isotope analysis of the element strontium to measure the quantities down to the minute to get an accurate idea of where he may have traveled before his death. They took samples from his femur and hair to compare. They were only able to measure up to a year because of his hairs being short. The results contained only small differences in strontium isotope proportions, suggesting that he spent his final year in Denmark, and that he may have moved at least in his last six months.


title: Tollund Man

text: Examinations and X-rays showed that the man's head was undamaged, and his heart, lungs and liver were well preserved. The Silkeborg Museum estimated his age as approximately 40 years and height at , a relatively short stature even for the time. It is likely that the body had shrunk in the bog.


title: Tollund Man

text: On the initial autopsy report in 1950, doctors concluded that Tollund Man died by hanging rather than strangulation. The rope left visible furrows in the skin beneath his chin and at the sides of his neck. There was no mark, however, at the back of the neck where the knot of the noose would have been located. After a re-examination in 2002, forensic scientists found further evidence to support these initial findings. Although the cervical vertebrae were undamaged (these vertebrae are often damaged as a result of hanging), radiography showed that the tongue was distended—an indication of death by hanging.


title: Tollund Man

text: The stomach and intestines were examined and tests carried out on their contents. Scientists identified the man's last meal as porridge or gruel made from grains and seeds, both cultivated and wild. Approximately 40 kinds of seeds were identified, but the porridge was primarily composed of four types: barley, flax, false flax ("Camelina sativa"), and knotgrass. From the stage of digestion it was concluded that the man had eaten 12 to 24 hours prior to his death. Porridges were common for people of this time. Because neither meat nor fresh fruit was found in the last meal, it is suggested that the meal was eaten in winter or early spring, when these items were not available.


title: Tollund Man

text: Both feet and the right thumb, being well conserved by the peat, were also preserved in formalin for later examination. In 1976, the Danish police made a fingerprint analysis, making Tollund Man's thumbprint one of the oldest prints on record.


title: Tollund Man

text: The body is displayed at the Silkeborg Museum in Denmark, although only the head is original. Because conservation techniques for organic material were insufficiently advanced in the early 1950s for the entire body to be preserved, the forensic examiners suggested the head be severed and the rest of the body remain unpreserved. Subsequently, the body was desiccated and the tissue disappeared. In 1987, the Silkeborg Museum reconstructed the body using the skeletal remains as a base. As displayed today, the original head is attached to a replica of the body.


title: Tollund Man

text: In Denmark, more than 500 bog bodies and skeletal remains dating to the Iron Age have been recovered. Specimens from Jutland include the relatively well-preserved Borremose bodies, Huldremose Woman, Grauballe Man on display at Moesgaard Museum near Aarhus, and the similarly conserved Haraldskær Woman. Approximately 30 of these bog bodies are housed and/or displayed in Danish museums for continued research.


title: Tollund Man

text: Nobel Prize–winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney wrote a series of poems inspired by P. V. Glob's study of the mummified Iron Age bodies found in Jutland's peat bogs, finding contemporary political relevance in the relics of the ritualistic killings. Heaney's poem "The Tollund Man", published in his "Wintering Out" collection, compares the ritual sacrifice to those who died in the sectarian violence of "the Troubles". Heaney wrote an excerpt from the poem in the Tollund Man exhibit's guest book in 1973.


title: Tollund Man

text: British author Margaret Drabble, in her 1989 novel "A Natural Curiosity", uses her characters' obsession with the Tollund Man to provide a satirical criticism of Margaret Thatcher's modern England.


title: Tollund Man

text: Tollund Man is featured in several songs: "Tollund Man" (1995) by the American folk band The Mountain Goats and "Curse of the Tollund Man" (2004) by the English rock band The Darkness.


title: Tollund Man

text: Tollund Man was mentioned in the episode "Mummy in the Maze" of the American television series "Bones" and was also mentioned in the 2016 movie "Sacrifice" in which a bog body was found in the Shetland Islands.


title: Tollund Man

text: He is also the subject of the modern novel "Meet Me at the Museum", by Anne Youngson. One of the primary characters is a fictional curator at the Silkeborg Museum, who writes letters to an English woman, musing on the life and death of the Tollund Man.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport , usually called Detroit Metro Airport, Metro Airport, or simply DTW, is a major international airport in the United States covering in Romulus, Michigan. It is the primary international airport serving Detroit and is Michigan's busiest airport. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2017–2021 categorized it as a large hub primary commercial service facility.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: The airport is a major hub for Delta Air Lines and is also a base for Spirit Airlines. Detroit serves as Delta's main gateway to Asia for the Eastern United States. The airport has service to 30 international destinations and service to 39 states across the United States. Operated by the Wayne County Airport Authority, the airport has six runways, two terminals, and 129 in-service gates. Detroit Metropolitan Airport has maintenance facilities capable of servicing and repairing aircraft as large as the Boeing 747-400.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: Metro Airport serves the Metropolitan Detroit area; the Toledo, Ohio area about south; the Ann Arbor area to the west; Windsor, Ontario; and Southwestern Ontario in Canada. The airport serves over 140 destinations and was named the best large U.S. airport in customer satisfaction by J.D. Power & Associates in 2010 and 2019.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: Wayne County began to plan an airport in the western townships of the county as early as 1927. The following year the county board of commissioners issued a $2 million bond to fund the purchase of of land at the corner of Middlebelt and Wick roads, the northeastern boundary of today's airport. Construction was completed in 1929, and the first landing was on February 22, 1930; Wayne County Airport was dedicated on September 4, 1930. That year Thompson Aeronautical Corporation, a forerunner of American Airlines, began service from the airport. From 1931 until 1945, the airport hosted Michigan Air National Guard operations gained by the United States Army Air Forces. It was named Romulus Field during the war; it was then all east of Merriman Road and north of Goddard Road. The intersection of the two runways is still visible at .


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: Wayne County expanded the airport to become Detroit's primary airport. It renamed it Detroit-Wayne Major Airport in 1947, and in the next three years expanded threefold as three more runways were built. In 1949 the airport added runways 3L/21R and 9L/27R, followed by runway 4R/22L in 1950. In 1946-47 most airline traffic moved from the cramped Detroit City Airport (now Coleman A. Young International Airport) northeast of downtown Detroit to Willow Run Airport over west of the city, and west of Wayne County Airport.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: Pan-Am (1954) and BOAC (1956) were the first passenger airlines at Detroit-Wayne Major. In the April 1957 Official Airline Guide they were the only passenger airlines: three Pan Am DC-7Cs each week FRA–LHR–SNN–DTW–ORD and back, and one BOAC DC-7C each week LHR–PIK–YUL–DTW–ORD and back (skipping YUL on the return flight).


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: Aerial photographs of DTW from 1949 and 1956 show the airport's expansion. In 1958 the Civil Aviation Administration—now the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)—announced the inclusion of Detroit-Wayne in the first group of American airports to receive new long-range radar equipment, enabling the airport to become the first inland airport in the United States certified for jet airliners. Also, in 1958, airport management completed the Leroy C. Smith (South) Terminal and gave the airport its present name.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: American Airlines moved from Willow Run to Detroit-Wayne in October 1958, followed by Northwest, Allegheny, and Delta in the next few months; the other airlines stayed at Willow Run until 1966.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: Northwest's flights to Minneapolis were DTW's only nonstops west beyond Chicago and Milwaukee until 1966. The first scheduled jets were Delta DC-8s to Miami in late 1959. The North Terminal (later renamed the James M. Davey Terminal) opened in 1966, which was located on the current site of the Evans Terminal. A third terminal, the Michael Berry International Terminal, opened in 1974. The last of its original three parallel runways (3R/21L) was completed in 1976; a new parallel crosswind runway (9R/27L) opened in 1993.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: Republic Airlines began hub operations in 1984, and its merger with Northwest Airlines in 1986 expanded the hub. The Northwest hub operated out of the Davey Terminal throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Transpacific flights began in 1987, with Northwest providing nonstop service to Tokyo–Narita. The last of Metro's six runways (4L/22R) was completed in December 2001 in preparation for the opening of the mile-long, 122-gate, $1.2 billion McNamara Terminal in the airport midfield in 2002. The airport remained a hub for Northwest Airlines until it merged with Delta Air Lines.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: The present Runway 3L/21R has had four identifiers. When it opened in 1949, it was Runway 3/21. With the opening of the new west side Runway 3L/21R in 1950, the original 3/21 became 3R/21L. With the opening of the new east side Runway 3R/21L in 1976, it became 3C/21C. With the opening of Runway 4L/22R in December 2001 and the splitting of the field into two sectors (3/21 on the east and 4/22 on the west), Runway 3C/21C became Runway 3L/21R.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: In 2009, Detroit Metro Airport launched its first social media efforts with participation in Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube networks.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: Detroit was a major hub for Northwest Airlines from 1986 to 2010; Northwest merged with Delta Air Lines, and Detroit became Delta's second-largest hub.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: In April 2011 Lufthansa launched a unique curbside check-in and baggage check service for premium customers from DTW's North Terminal to Frankfurt and beyond. Lufthansa became the only airline allowing international customers departing from DTW to check their bags and receive a boarding pass at the curb, while DTW becomes Lufthansa's first North American gateway with this service.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: Detroit's economy plunged in the Great Recession, causing airlines such as British Airways to drop flights to London–Heathrow and other airlines such as KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and Virgin Atlantic to use codeshare flights through Delta Air Lines. The city has lost population, but Detroit Metropolitan Airport has since re-grown, and airlines are looking to expand or resume service. JetBlue Airways began flights to Boston in February 2014. United Airlines resumed nonstop flights to San Francisco in June 2017 in efforts to boost competition in Detroit. Spirit Airlines has grown at DTW, adding service to more East and West Coast cities. Spirit has increased its market share to over 10%, widening the gap as Metro Airport's second largest carrier.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: Royal Jordanian was the first airline to schedule the Boeing 787 Dreamliner into Detroit, on December 1, 2014.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: One of Delta Connection carriers, Compass Airlines chose to close its operating base in Detroit to move operations to the new Seattle hub in early 2015. Delta has replaced many of the existing Compass flights with mainline Delta flights to allow SkyWest Airlines and GoJet to open Detroit bases.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: Beginning in January 2018 Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation, or SMART Bus, began providing a direct connection from the airport to the Rosa Parks Transit Center in downtown Detroit via route 261, also known as the Michigan Ave FAST bus, with stations at both the McNamara and Evans terminals.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: On June 26, 2015, Spirit Airlines announced the construction of a new maintenance facility, saying it would bring $31.5 million and 82 jobs to the area. Spirit previously had a hangar that closed, forcing the airline to do maintenance at the gate with contract workers. With the new facility, which opened in May 2017, Spirit will retain its operating base at Metro Airport and bring more flights. Spirit was also the first airline to regularly fly the A320neo in the US, the first route was Detroit to Los Angeles as well as add self-tagging luggage kiosks at DTW.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: In 2017, WOW Air announced service to Reykjavik on the Airbus A321. This marked the first ever entrance of a modern European low-cost carrier to DTW. In the summer of 2018, Reykjavik went from the 55th most traveled destination to the fifth due to this flight's popularity. Passengers could connect onwards in Reykjavik, boosting travel to European destinations. In March 2019, the airline ceased operations, leaving Metro Airport with no low-cost nonstop to Europe; the airport looked for replacement service to begin in 2020, but due the COVID pandemic, that effort ceased until 2022, when Icelandair and Delta announced seasonal flights to Reykjavík starting in 2023.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: In October 2021, Turkish Airlines announced the intent to serve Detroit. The airline made the decision to serve Detroit "based on market conditions." Although this was formally announced, no start date has been given for either Detroit or Denver, likely due to the delivery schedule of aircraft that are capable to serve the route.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: DTW has 4 concourses with a total of 129 gates. The McNamara Terminal, also once known as the Northwest WorldGateway, opened February 24, 2002. Designed by SmithGroup and built by Hunt Construction Group, it replaced the aged Davey Terminal. During development, the terminal was known as the Midfield Terminal. The terminal is used exclusively by Delta (which merged with Northwest) and Delta partners Aeromexico and Air France. This terminal has three concourses, A, B, and C, which house 103 gates with shopping and dining in the center of A concourse (known as the Central Link), as well as throughout the concourses. It houses five Delta Sky Clubs located throughout Concourse A, and 1 located in Concourses B and C. At nearly in length, Concourse A in McNamara Terminal is the second-longest airport concourse in the world (the longest is in Terminal 1 of Kansai International Airport in Japan). In addition to moving walkways spaced along the length of each concourse, Concourse A has a people mover, the ExpressTram. It transports passengers between each end of Concourse A in just over three minutes. Trams arrive almost simultaneously at the "Terminal Station", in the midpoint of the concourse and depart in opposite directions to the "North Station" and the "South Station", then return. The McNamara Terminal opened a new baggage sorting facility in October 2008, which has improved the screening of baggage through 14 new explosive detection system devices along a fully automated conveyor system. Northwest Airlines said that it reduced the amount of lost baggage, and it improved the timeliness of bags getting to their correct flight.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: An AAA Four Star Westin hotel is connected to the A concourse. Additionally, overnight guests at the hotel who are not flying can obtain a pass to enter the concourses to visit shops and restaurants. Called the "Airport Access Authorization to Commercial Establishments Beyond the Screen Checkpoint" (AAACE), registered guests must be cleared through the same security background check (Secure Flight) and TSA screening process as travelers to access the terminal area. Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport is the only other airport participating in this program.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: The A concourse houses 62 gates with 12 gates used for international departures and arrivals processing. The A concourse is intended for all aircraft. At the midpoint of the concourse is a large, laminar flow water feature designed by WET. The concourse contains over of moving walkways. The A concourse also includes a pet relief area for passengers traveling with pets and service animals. Signage through the terminal is in English, along with Japanese, due to a large number of business travelers from Japan. Izumi Suzuki, a Sheraton employee, and several colleagues provided the Japanese translations used by the airport. In previous eras many Japanese travelers going through Detroit missed connections due to a lack of English comprehension. Also, messages reminding travelers to configure watches to the Eastern Time Zone regularly broadcast through the public address system are said in English, Japanese, and Mandarin.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: In addition to the ticketing level, there's an additional ticketing and security area for passengers using the parking structures.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: The terminal houses ten international gates that are capable of dual jet bridge loading and unloading. The gates contain two exit configurations depending on the arriving flight. Domestic arrivals follow an upper path directly into the terminal, while international arrivals proceed downstairs to customs and immigration screening. The Customs and Border Protection processing center located in the terminal's lower level is designed to accommodate as many as 3,200 passengers per hour. International arriving passengers connecting to another flight are screened by TSA at a dedicated screening checkpoint within the international arrivals facility. Those passengers then exit directly back into the center of the A concourse. Passengers arriving from international destinations who end their trip in Detroit (or connecting to a flight via Evans Terminal) exit directly into a dedicated International Arrivals Hall on the lower level of the terminal.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: The B and C concourses currently have 41 gates that are used for Delta's regional flights that employ smaller aircraft. All regional flights have jet bridges, eliminating the need for outdoor boarding.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: The B and C concourses are connected to the main terminal building and the A concourse by a pedestrian walkway under the Airport ramp. This walkway, known as the "Light Tunnel", features an elaborate multi-colored light show behind sculpted glass panels extending the entire length of the walkway, as well as several moving walkways. The light patterns are synchronized with an original musical score composed by Victor Alexeeff, which runs for nearly 30 minutes before repeating. This installation, one of the first large-scale uses of color-changing LED lighting in the United States, was produced by Mills James Productions with glasswork by Foxfire Glass Works of Pontiac, Michigan. The display won multiple lighting design awards, including the prestigious Guth Award of Merit. For passengers prone to medical conditions such as seizures, buttons at each end of the tunnel will suspend the light show for five minutes so they can pass through with no adverse effects.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: The terminal has undergone updates that include new electronic terminal directories to assist passengers better. A unique feature of this is that passengers can scan their boarding passes, and the screen will direct them to the gate from which their plane departs. The passenger can also choose to view the information in other languages. Passengers may select a restaurant on the touch screen, and a menu will show what items the restaurant serves. Mini tablet devices and phone/tablet apps have been installed in food court areas, where travelers may order food and have it delivered to their table.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: There are five Delta Sky Clubs located in the McNamara terminal. The largest is located above the central link across from gate A38. Next to that, across from gate A43, houses a smaller Sky Club. There are two satellite Sky Clubs in Concourse A located on the upper level near gates A18 and A68, across from their respective ExpressTram stations. An additional Sky Club is located in Concourse C, at gate level near the entrance to Concourse C. This lounge services Delta Connection flights in concourses B & C.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: The Warren Cleage Evans Terminal, formerly known as the North Terminal, was designed by Gensler and built by Walbridge/Barton Malow Joint Venture, opened September 17, 2008, as the replacement for the aged Berry and Smith terminals, which housed all non-SkyTeam airlines. It used to be known as the North Terminal until it was renamed in 2022. Initially, Wayne County Airport Authority sought bids for the naming rights of the North Terminal. After two years with no successful offers, however, the effort ceased and the "North Terminal" name remained.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: The terminal currently houses all non-SkyTeam airlines serving the airport and is considered D Concourse. (Concourses A, B, and C are housed in the McNamara Terminal) The concourse has 29 gates, two of which opened in the middle of 2009 to accommodate international wide-body aircraft. The two gates were unusable at the building's opening because they were extremely close to Smith Terminal's C concourse, which was demolished after operations moved to the new facility. The terminal features four long segments of moving walkways on the departures level and another moving walkway on the lower level, for international arriving passengers to access the Federal Inspection Services area.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: Airlines that utilize the North Terminal include Air Canada, Alaska, American, American Eagle, Frontier, JetBlue, Lufthansa, Royal Jordanian, Southwest, Spirit, United, United Express, and all non-SkyTeam and non-Delta partner charters.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: The North Terminal houses two six-lane security checkpoints. The terminal also has U.S. Customs & Border Protection inspection facilities located on the lower level for arriving international flights.


title: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

text: This terminal includes a brand new service pet relief area to accommodate passengers traveling with pets.