title: Jure Grando

text: Jure Grando Alilović or Giure Grando (1579–1656) was a villager from the region of Istria (in modern-day Croatia) who may have been the first real person described as a vampire in historical records. He was referred to as a "strigoi", "štrigon", or "štrigun", a local word for something resembling a vampire and a warlock.


title: Jure Grando

text: Jure Grando lived in Kringa, a small town in the interior of the Istrian peninsula near Tinjan. He died in 1656 due to illness but according to legend, returned from the grave at night as a vampire ("štrigon") and terrorised his village until his decapitation in 1672. Ana and Nikola Alilović, daughter and son of Jure, fled from Istria to Volterra, Italy at young ages.


title: Jure Grando

text: The word "strigon" in Venetian, which is commonly spoken in Istria, is properly a sorcerer; cf. Italian .


title: Jure Grando

text: The legend tells that, for 16 years after his death, Jure would arise from his grave by night and terrorise the village. The village priest, named Giorgio, who had buried Jure sixteen years previously discovered that at night somebody would knock on the doors around the village, and on whichever door he knocked, someone from that house would die within the next few days.


title: Jure Grando

text: Jure also appeared to his terrified widow in her bedroom, who described the corpse as looking as though he was smiling and gasping for breath, and would then sexually assault her. When Father Giorgio eventually came face to face with the vampire, he held out a cross in front of him and yelled "Behold Jesus Christ, you vampire! Stop tormenting us!"


title: Jure Grando

text: The bravest of the villagers led by the prefect Miho Radetić chased and tried to kill the vampire by piercing his heart with a hawthorn stick, but failed because the stick just bounced off of his chest. One night later, nine people went to the graveyard, carrying lamps, a cross, and a hawthorn stick. They dug up Jure's coffin, and found a perfectly preserved corpse with a smile on its face. Father Giorgio said: "Look, "štrigon", there is Jesus Christ who saved us from hell and died for us. And you, "štrigon", you cannot have peace!" They then tried to pierce his heart again, but the stick could not penetrate its flesh.


title: Jure Grando

text: After some exorcism prayers, Stipan Milašić (one of the villagers), took a saw and sawed the head off the corpse. As soon as the saw tore his skin, the vampire screamed and blood started to flow from the cut. According to folklore, peace finally returned to the region after Jure's decapitation.


title: Jure Grando

text: The Carniolan scientist Johann Weikhard von Valvasor wrote about Jure Grando Alilović's life and afterlife in his extensive work "The Glory of the Duchy of Carniola" when he visited Kringa during his travels. This was the first written document on vampires. Grando was also mentioned in writings by Erasmus Francisci and Johann Joseph von Goerres ("La mystique divine, naturelle, et diabolique", Paris, 1855), whose story was much more elaborate, full of fantastic details to make the story more interesting and sensational. In modern times, Croatian writer Boris Perić has researched the legend and written a book ("The Vampire") on the story.


title: Jure Grando

text: Today, Kringa has embraced the story of Jure Grando Alilović and have opened up a vampire themed bar aimed at attracting tourists to the town. The Juraj Dobrila gymnasium in Pazin created a short film called "Vampire of My Homeland" ("Vampir moga zavičaja") based on the writings of Valvasor.


title: Jure Grando

text: The folklore related to the "štrigun" has recently been documented and examined by numerous scientists at the University of Zagreb.


title: Icebreaker

text: An icebreaker is a special-purpose ship or boat designed to move and navigate through ice-covered waters, and provide safe waterways for other boats and ships. Although the term usually refers to ice-breaking ships, it may also refer to smaller vessels, such as the icebreaking boats that were once used on the canals of the United Kingdom.


title: Icebreaker

text: For a ship to be considered an icebreaker, it requires three traits most normal ships lack: a strengthened hull, an ice-clearing shape, and the power to push through sea ice.


title: Icebreaker

text: Icebreakers clear paths by pushing straight into frozen-over water or pack ice. The bending strength of sea ice is low enough that the ice breaks usually without noticeable change in the vessel's trim. In cases of very thick ice, an icebreaker can drive its bow onto the ice to break it under the weight of the ship. A buildup of broken ice in front of a ship can slow it down much more than the breaking of the ice itself, so icebreakers have a specially designed hull to direct the broken ice around or under the vessel. The external components of the ship's propulsion system (propellers, propeller shafts, etc.) are at greater risk of damage than the vessel's hull, so the ability of an icebreaker to propel itself onto the ice, break it, and clear the debris from its path successfully is essential for its safety.


title: Icebreaker

text: Prior to ocean-going ships, ice breaking technology was developed on inland canals and rivers using laborers with axes and hooks. The first recorded primitive icebreaker ship was a barge used by the Belgium town of Bruges in 1383 to help clear the town moat. The efforts of the ice-breaking barge were successful enough to warrant the town purchasing four such ships.


title: Icebreaker

text: Ice breaking barges continued to see use during the colder winters of the Little Ice Age with growing use in the Low Country where significant amounts of trade, and transport of people and goods took place. In the course of fifteenth century the use of ice breakers in Flanders (Oudenaarde, Kortrijk, Leper, Veurne, Diksmuide and Hulst) was already well established. The use of the ice breaking barges expanded in the 17th century where every town of some importance in the Low Country used some form of icebreaker to keep their waterways clear.


title: Icebreaker

text: Before the 17th century the specifications of icebreakers are unknown. The specifications for ice breaking vessels show that they were dragged by teams of horses and the heavy weight of the ship pushed down on the ice breaking it. They were used in conjunction with teams of men with axes and saws and the technology behind them didn't change much until the industrial revolution.


title: Icebreaker

text: Ice-strengthened ships were used in the earliest days of polar exploration. These were originally wooden and based on existing designs, but reinforced, particularly around the waterline with double planking to the hull and strengthening cross members inside the ship. Bands of iron were wrapped around the outside. Sometimes metal sheeting was placed at the bows, at the stern, and along the keel. Such strengthening was designed to help the ship push through ice and also to protect the ship in case it was "nipped" by the ice. Nipping occurs when ice floes around a ship are pushed against the ship, trapping it as if in a vise and causing damage. This vise-like action is caused by the force of winds and tides on ice formations.


title: Icebreaker

text: The first boats to be used in the polar waters were those of the indigenous Arctic people. Their kayaks are small human-powered boats with a covered deck, and one or more cockpits, each seating one paddler who strokes a single or double-bladed paddle. Such boats have no icebreaking capabilities, but they are light and well fit to carry over the ice.


title: Icebreaker

text: In the 9th and 10th centuries, the Viking expansion reached the North Atlantic, and eventually Greenland and Svalbard in the Arctic. Vikings, however, operated their ships in the waters that were ice-free for most of the year, in the conditions of the Medieval Warm Period.


title: Icebreaker

text: In the 11th century, in North-Russia the coasts of the White Sea, named so for being ice-covered for over half of a year, started being settled. The mixed ethnic group of the Karelians and the Russians in the North-Russia that lived on the shores of the Arctic Ocean became known as Pomors ("seaside settlers"). Gradually they developed a special type of small one- or two-mast wooden sailing ships, used for voyages in the ice conditions of the Arctic seas and later on Siberian rivers. These earliest icebreakers were called kochi. The koch's hull was protected by a belt of ice-floe resistant flush skin-planking along the variable water-line, and had a false keel for on-ice portage. If a koch became squeezed by the ice-fields, its rounded bodylines below the water-line would allow for the ship to be pushed up out of the water and onto the ice with no damage.


title: Icebreaker

text: In the 19th century, similar protective measures were adopted to modern steam-powered icebreakers. Some notable sailing ships in the end of the Age of Sail also featured the egg-shaped form like that of Pomor boats, for example the "Fram", used by Fridtjof Nansen and other great Norwegian Polar explorers. "Fram" was the wooden ship to have sailed farthest north (85°57'N) and farthest south (78°41'S), and one of the strongest wooden ships ever built.


title: Icebreaker

text: An early ship designed to operate in icy conditions was a wooden paddle steamer, "City Ice Boat No. 1", that was built for the city of Philadelphia by Vandusen & Birelyn in 1837. The ship was powered by two steam engines and her wooden paddles were reinforced with iron coverings.


title: Icebreaker

text: With a rounded shape and strong metal hull, the Russian of 1864 was an important predecessor of modern icebreakers with propellers. The ship was built on the orders of merchant and shipbuilder Mikhail Britnev. She had the bow altered to achieve an ice-clearing capability (20° raise from keel line). This allowed "Pilot" to push herself on the top of the ice and consequently break it. Britnev fashioned the bow of his ship after the shape of old Pomor boats, which had been navigating icy waters of the White Sea and Barents Sea for centuries. "Pilot" was used between 1864 and 1890 for navigation in the Gulf of Finland between Kronstadt and Oranienbaum thus extending the summer navigation season by several weeks. Inspired by the success of "Pilot", Mikhail Britnev built a second similar vessel "Boy" ("Breakage" in Russian) in 1875 and a third "Booy" ("Buoy" in Russian) in 1889.


title: Icebreaker

text: The cold winter of 1870–1871 caused the Elbe River and the port of Hamburg to freeze over, causing a prolonged halt to navigation and huge commercial losses. Carl Ferdinand Steinhaus reused the altered bow "Pilot"s design from Britnev to make his own icebreaker, "Eisbrecher I".


title: Icebreaker

text: The first true modern sea-going icebreaker was built at the turn of the 20th century. Icebreaker , was built in 1897 at the Armstrong Whitworth naval yard in England under contract from the Imperial Russian Navy. The ship borrowed the main principles from "Pilot" and applied them to the creation of the first polar icebreaker, which was able to run over and crush pack ice. The ship displaced 5,000 tons, and its steam-reciprocating engines delivered . The ship was decommissioned in 1963 and scrapped in 1964, making it one of the longest serving icebreakers in the world.


title: Icebreaker

text: In Canada, the government needed to provide a way to prevent flooding due to ice jam on the St. Lawrence River. Icebreakers were built in order to maintain the river free of ice jam, east of Montréal. In about the same time, Canada had to fill its obligations in the Canadian Arctic. Large steam icebreakers, like the (1930) and (1952), were built for this dual use (St. Lawrence flood prevention and Arctic replenishment).


title: Icebreaker

text: At the beginning of the 20th century, several other countries began to operate purpose-built icebreakers. Most were coastal icebreakers, but Canada, Russia, and later, the Soviet Union, also built several oceangoing icebreakers up to 11,000 tons in displacement.


title: Icebreaker

text: Before the first diesel-electric icebreakers were built in the 1930s, icebreakers were either coal- or oil-fired steam ships. Reciprocating steam engines were preferred in icebreakers due to their reliability, robustness, good torque characteristics, and ability to reverse the direction of rotation quickly. During the steam era, the most powerful pre-war steam-powered icebreakers had a propulsion power of about .


title: Icebreaker

text: The world's first diesel-electric icebreaker was the 4,330-ton Swedish icebreaker in 1933. At divided between two propellers in the stern and one propeller in the bow, she remained the most powerful Swedish icebreaker until the commissioning of in 1957. "Ymer" was followed by the Finnish , the first diesel-electric icebreaker in Finland, in 1939. Both vessels were decommissioned in the 1970s and replaced by much larger icebreakers in both countries, the 1976-built in Finland and the 1977-built in Sweden.


title: Icebreaker

text: In 1941, the United States started building the . Research in Scandinavia and the Soviet Union led to a design that had a very strongly built short and wide hull, with a cut away forefoot and a rounded bottom. Powerful diesel-electric machinery drove two stern and one auxiliary bow propeller. These features would become the standard for postwar icebreakers until the 1980s.


title: Icebreaker

text: Since the mid-1970s, the most powerful diesel-electric icebreakers have been the formerly Soviet and later Russian icebreakers "Ermak", "Admiral Makarov" and "Krasin" which have nine twelve-cylinder diesel generators producing electricity for three propulsion motors with a combined output of . In the 2020s, they will be surpassed by the new Canadian polar icebreaker, CCGS "John G. Diefenbaker", which will have a combined propulsion power of .


title: Icebreaker

text: In Canada, diesel-electric icebreakers started to be built in 1952, first with HMCS "Labrador" (was transferred later to the Canadian Coast Guard), using the USCG Wind-class design but without the bow propeller. Then in 1960, the next step in the Canadian development of large icebreakers came when was completed at Lauzon, Quebec. A considerably bigger and more powerful ship than "Labrador", "John A.Macdonald" was an ocean-going icebreaker able to meet the most rigorous polar conditions. Her diesel-electric machinery of was arranged in three units transmitting power equally to each of three shafts.


title: Icebreaker

text: Canada's largest and most powerful icebreaker, the , was delivered in 1969. Her original three steam turbine, nine generator, and three electric motor system produces . A multi-year mid-life refit project (1987–1993) saw the ship get a new bow, and a new propulsion system. The new power plant consists of five diesels, three generators, and three electric motors, giving about the same propulsion power.


title: Icebreaker

text: On 22 August 1994 "Louis S. St-Laurent" and became the first North American surface vessels to reach the North Pole. The vessel was originally scheduled to be decommissioned in 2000; however, a refit extended the decommissioning date to 2017. It is now planned to be kept in service through the 2020s pending the introduction of a new class of polar icebreaker for the Coast Guard.


title: Icebreaker

text: Russia currently operates all existing and functioning nuclear-powered icebreakers. The first one, NS , was launched in 1957 and entered operation in 1959, before being officially decommissioned in 1989. It was both the world's first nuclear-powered surface ship and the first nuclear-powered civilian vessel.


title: Icebreaker

text: The second Soviet nuclear icebreaker was NS , the lead ship of the . In service since 1975, she was the first surface ship to reach the North Pole, on August 17, 1977. Several nuclear-powered icebreakers were also built outside the Soviet Union. Two shallow-draft "Taymyr"-class nuclear icebreakers were built in Finland for the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.


title: Icebreaker

text: In May 2007, sea trials were completed for the nuclear-powered Russian icebreaker NS . The vessel was put into service by Murmansk Shipping Company, which manages all eight Russian state-owned nuclear icebreakers. The keel was originally laid in 1989 by Baltic Works of Leningrad, and the ship was launched in 1993 as NS "Ural". This icebreaker is intended to be the sixth and last of the "Arktika" class.


title: Icebreaker

text: Today, most icebreakers are needed to keep trade routes open where there are either seasonal or permanent ice conditions. While the merchant vessels calling ports in these regions are strengthened for navigation in ice, they are usually not powerful enough to manage the ice by themselves. For this reason, in the Baltic Sea, the Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence Seaway, and along the Northern Sea Route, the main function of icebreakers is to escort convoys of one or more ships safely through ice-filled waters. When a ship becomes immobilized by ice, the icebreaker has to free it by breaking the ice surrounding the ship and, if necessary, open a safe passage through the ice field. In difficult ice conditions, the icebreaker can also tow the weakest ships.


title: Icebreaker

text: Some icebreakers are also used to support scientific research in the Arctic and Antarctic. In addition to icebreaking capability, the ships need to have reasonably good open-water characteristics for transit to and from the polar regions, facilities and accommodation for the scientific personnel, and cargo capacity for supplying research stations on the shore. Countries such as Argentina and South Africa, which do not require icebreakers in domestic waters, have research icebreakers for carrying out studies in the polar regions.


title: Icebreaker

text: As offshore drilling moves to the Arctic seas, icebreaking vessels are needed to supply cargo and equipment to the drilling sites and protect the drillships and oil platforms from ice by performing ice management, which includes for example breaking drifting ice into smaller floes and steering icebergs away from the protected object. In the past, such operations were carried out primarily in North America, but today Arctic offshore drilling and oil production is also going on in various parts of the Russian Arctic.


title: Icebreaker

text: The United States Coast Guard uses icebreakers to help conduct search and rescue missions in the icy, polar oceans. United States icebreakers serve to defend economic interests and maintain the nation's presence in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. As the icecaps in the Arctic continue to melt, there are more passageways being discovered. These possible navigation routes cause an increase of interests in the polar hemispheres from nations worldwide. The United States polar icebreakers must continue to support scientific research in the expanding Arctic and Antarctic oceans. Every year, a heavy icebreaker must perform Operation Deep Freeze, clearing a safe path for resupply ships to the National Science Foundation’s facility McMurdo in Antarctica. The most recent multi-month excursion was led by the "Polar Star" which escorted a container and fuel ship through treacherous conditions before maintaining the channel free of ice. Without a heavy icebreaker, America would not be able to continue its polar research in Antarctica as there would be no way to reach the science foundation.


title: Icebreaker

text: Icebreakers are often described as ships that drive their sloping bows onto the ice and break it under the weight of the ship. In reality, this only happens in very thick ice where the icebreaker will proceed at walking pace or may even have to repeatedly back down several ship lengths and ram the ice pack at full power. More commonly the ice, which has a relatively low flexural strength, is easily broken and submerged under the hull without a noticeable change in the icebreaker's trim while the vessel moves forward at a relatively high and constant speed.


title: Icebreaker

text: When an icebreaker is designed, one of the main goals is to minimize the forces resulting from crushing and breaking the ice, and submerging the broken floes under the vessel. The average value of the longitudinal components of these instantaneous forces is called the ship's ice resistance. Naval architects who design icebreakers use the so-called "h"-"v"-curve to determine the icebreaking capability of the vessel. It shows the speed ("v") that the ship is able to achieve as a function of ice thickness ("h"). This is done by calculating the velocity at which the thrust from the propellers equals the combined hydrodynamic and ice resistance of the vessel. An alternative means to determine the icebreaking capability of a vessel in different ice conditions such as pressure ridges is to perform model tests in an ice tank. Regardless of the method, the actual performance of new icebreakers is verified in full scale ice trials once the ship has been built.


title: Icebreaker

text: In order to minimize the icebreaking forces, the hull lines of an icebreaker are usually designed so that the flare at the waterline is as small as possible. As a result, icebreaking ships are characterized by a sloping or rounded stem as well as sloping sides and a short parallel midship to improve maneuverability in ice. However, the spoon-shaped bow and round hull have poor hydrodynamic efficiency and seakeeping characteristics, and make the icebreaker susceptible to slamming, or the impacting of the bottom structure of the ship onto the sea surface. For this reason, the hull of an icebreaker is often a compromise between minimum ice resistance, maneuverability in ice, low hydrodynamic resistance, and adequate open water characteristics.


title: Icebreaker

text: Some icebreakers have a hull that is wider in the bow than in the stern. These so-called "reamers" increase the width of the ice channel and thus reduce frictional resistance in the aftship as well as improve the ship's maneuverability in ice. In addition to low friction paint, some icebreakers utilize an explosion-welded abrasion-resistant stainless steel ice belt that further reduces friction and protects the ship's hull from corrosion. Auxiliary systems such as powerful water deluges and air bubbling systems are used to reduce friction by forming a lubricating layer between the hull and the ice. Pumping water between tanks on both sides of the vessel results in continuous rolling that reduces friction and makes progress through the ice easier. Experimental bow designs such as the flat Thyssen-Waas bow and a cylindrical bow have been tried over the years to further reduce the ice resistance and create an ice-free channel.


title: Icebreaker

text: Icebreakers and other ships operating in ice-filled waters require additional structural strengthening against various loads resulting from the contact between the hull of the vessel and the surrounding ice. As ice pressures vary between different regions of the hull, the most reinforced areas in the hull of an icegoing vessel are the bow, which experiences the highest ice loads, and around the waterline, with additional strengthening both above and below the waterline to form a continuous ice belt around the ship.


title: Icebreaker

text: Short and stubby icebreakers are generally built using transverse framing in which the shell plating is stiffened with frames placed about apart as opposed to longitudinal framing used in longer ships. Near the waterline, the frames running in vertical direction distribute the locally concentrated ice loads on the shell plating to longitudinal girders called stringers, which in turn are supported by web frames and bulkheads that carry the more spread-out hull loads. While the shell plating, which is in direct contact with the ice, can be up to thick in older polar icebreakers, the use of high strength steel with yield strength up to in modern icebreakers results in the same structural strength with smaller material thicknesses and lower steel weight. Regardless of the strength, the steel used in the hull structures of an icebreaker must be capable of resisting brittle fracture in low ambient temperatures and high loading conditions, both of which are typical for operations in ice-filled waters.


title: Icebreaker

text: If built according to the rules set by a classification society such as American Bureau of Shipping, Det Norske Veritas or Lloyd's Register, icebreakers may be assigned an ice class based on the level of ice strengthening in the ship's hull. It is usually determined by the maximum ice thickness where the ship is expected to operate and other requirements such as possible limitations on ramming. While the ice class is generally an indication of the level of ice strengthening, not the actual icebreaking capability of an icebreaker, some classification societies such as the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping have operational capability requirements for certain ice classes. Since the 2000s, International Association of Classification Societies (IACS) has proposed adopting an unified system known as the Polar Class (PC) to replace classification society specific ice class notations.


title: Icebreaker

text: Since the Second World War, most icebreakers have been built with diesel-electric propulsion in which diesel engines coupled to generators produce electricity for propulsion motors that turn the fixed pitch propellers. The first diesel-electric icebreakers were built with direct current (DC) generators and propulsion motors, but over the years the technology advanced first to alternating current (AC) generators and finally to frequency-controlled AC-AC systems. In modern diesel-electric icebreakers, the propulsion system is built according to the power plant principle in which the main generators supply electricity for all onboard consumers and no auxiliary engines are needed.


title: Icebreaker

text: Although the diesel-electric powertrain is the preferred choice for icebreakers due to the good low speed torque characteristics of the electric propulsion motors, icebreakers have also been built with diesel engines mechanically coupled to reduction gearboxes and controllable pitch propellers. The mechanical powertrain has several advantages over diesel-electric propulsion systems, such as lower weight and better fuel efficiency. However, diesel engines are sensitive to sudden changes in propeller revolutions, and to counter this mechanical powertrains are usually fitted with large flywheels or hydrodynamic couplings to absorb the torque variations resulting from propeller-ice interaction.


title: Icebreaker

text: The 1969-built Canadian polar icebreaker CCGS "Louis S. St-Laurent" was one of the few icebreakers fitted with steam boilers and turbogenerators that produced power for three electric propulsion motors. It was later refitted with five diesel engines, which provide better fuel economy than steam turbines. Later Canadian icebreakers were built with diesel-electric powertrain.


title: Icebreaker

text: Two Polar-class icebreakers operated by the United States Coast Guard, have a combined diesel-electric and mechanical propulsion system that consists of six diesel engines and three gas turbines. While the diesel engines are coupled to generators that produce power for three propulsion motors, the gas turbines are directly coupled to the propeller shafts driving controllable pitch propellers. The diesel-electric power plant can produce up to while the gas turbines have a continuous combined rating of .


title: Icebreaker

text: The number, type and location of the propellers depends on the power, draft and intended purpose of the vessel. Smaller icebreakers and icebreaking special purpose ships may be able to do with just one propeller while large polar icebreakers typically need up to three large propellers to absorb all power and deliver enough thrust. Some shallow draught river icebreakers have been built with four propellers in the stern. Nozzles may be used to increase the thrust at lower speeds, but they may become clogged by ice. Until the 1980s, icebreakers operating regularly in ridged ice fields in the Baltic Sea were fitted with first one and later two bow propellers to create a powerful flush along the hull of the vessel. This considerably increased the icebreaking capability of the vessels by reducing the friction between the hull and the ice, and allowed the icebreakers to penetrate thick ice ridges without ramming. However, the bow propellers are not suitable for polar icebreakers operating in the presence of harder multi-year ice and thus have not been used in the Arctic.


title: Icebreaker

text: Azimuth thrusters remove the need of traditional propellers and rudders by having the propellers in steerable gondolas that can rotate 360 degrees around a vertical axis. These thrusters improve propulsion efficiency, icebreaking capability and maneuverability of the vessel. The use of azimuth thrusters also allows a ship to move astern in ice without losing manoeuvrability. This has led to the development of double acting ships, vessels with the stern shaped like an icebreaker's bow and the bow designed for open water performance. In this way, the ship remains economical to operate in open water without compromising its ability to operate in difficult ice conditions. Azimuth thrusters have also made it possible to develop new experimental icebreakers that operate sideways to open a wide channel through ice.


title: Icebreaker

text: The steam-powered icebreakers were resurrected in the late 1950s when the Soviet Union commissioned the first nuclear-powered icebreaker, "Lenin", in 1959. It had a nuclear-turbo-electric powertrain in which the nuclear reactor was used to produce steam for turbogenerators, which in turn produced electricity for propulsion motors. Starting from 1975, the Russians commissioned six "Arktika"-class nuclear icebreakers of which the last, 2007-built "50 Let Pobedy", is the largest and most powerful icebreaker in the world at . Soviets also built a nuclear-powered icebreaking cargo ship, "Sevmorput", which had a single nuclear reactor and a steam turbine directly coupled to the propeller shaft. Russia, which remains the sole operator of nuclear-powered icebreakers, is currently building a new icebreakers to replace the aging "Arktika" class. The first vessel of this type is expected to enter service in 2017.


title: Icebreaker

text: A hovercraft can break ice by the resonance method. This causes the ice and water to oscillate up and down until the ice suffers sufficient mechanical fatigue to cause a fracture.


title: Khaled (musician)

text: Khaled Hadj Ibrahim (, ; born 29 February 1960), better known by his mononym Khaled (), is an Algerian raï singer, musician and songwriter born in Oran. He began recording in his early teens under the name Cheb Khaled (, Arabic for "Young" Khaled, with "Cheb" as a common title for male Raï singers).


title: Khaled (musician)

text: Khaled is one of the most important musicians in the history of Raï music in his native Algeria and is one the world's best-known Arab singers. To date, Khaled has sold over 80.5 million albums (10 diamond, platinum, and gold) worldwide, making him one of the bestselling Arabic-language singers in history. Among his most famous songs are "Aïcha", "Didi", "El Arbi", "Abdel Kader", "La Poupée qui fait non", "Wahran Wahran", "Bakhta", "C'est la vie", and "Alech Taadi".


title: Khaled (musician)

text: His rise to national fame was mainly due to the efforts of Lieutenant-Colonel Hosni Snoussi, director of the state-supported arts and culture Office Riadh el Feth, who took Khaled under his wing and invited him along with other rai stars to perform at the state-sponsored Festival de la Jeunesse pour la Fête Nationale in Algiers in July 1985. In the same year, he was crowned king of rai in the first official festival of rai which was staged in Oran.


title: Khaled (musician)

text: Hosni Snoussi and Martin Meissonnier, who met at the Festival, convinced France's Minister of Culture Jack Lang that the export of rai from Algeria to France was in the French government's interest and together they organized the first rai festival in France at Bobigny in 1986. Cheb Khaled, who had been avoiding his mandatory military service, was able to perform at Bobigny only after Colonel Snoussi intervened with the Algerian military authorities to secure him a passport. Shortly thereafter, Snoussi arranged for Cheb Khaled to record in France, with funding from the Office Riadh el Feth. The album, Kutché, released in 1988, a collaboration between Khaled and the Algerian jazz musician Safy Boutella, expanded his reputation in France, where he soon settled.


title: Khaled (musician)

text: In 1992, having dropped the "Cheb" from his performance name, he recorded "Khaled", which was produced by Don Was. The album's first single Didi, which was a major hit in Europe, the Arab World, and in South and East Asia, made him an international superstar.


title: Khaled (musician)

text: One of the Pioneers of world music, Rai musician Khaled has gone beyond all geo-political boundaries to become one of the world's most popular performers, mixing traditional Algerian music with western rhythms and styles such as soul, rock and reggae to achieve his distinctive sound and voice unlike anyone ever.


title: Khaled (musician)

text: Khaled has been celebrated not only for his music, but for his role as a builder of bridges between cultures. selling more than 80 millions copies around the world makes him a nationwide celebrity and unofficial ambassador for the country's Arab minority.


title: Khaled (musician)

text: Khaled's signature song, the 1993 hit "Didi", became extremely popular in the Arabic-speaking countries and also in several other continents, including Europe, where it entered top charts in France, Belgium and Spain, and in Asia, including India and Pakistan. The song was also used in the Bollywood films "Shreeman Aashiq", "Airlift" and "Highway". Khaled and producer Don Was appeared on "The Tonight Show" on 4 February 1993.


title: Khaled (musician)

text: Khaled returned to the America in December 2004 for a special guest performance at the GRAMMY JAM 2004 in Los Angeles, Ca. He joined a cast of celebrity artists honoring the great musical legends Earth Wind and Fire, performing Brazilian Rhymes into DIDI showing how there music crossed the world, fusing with his North African style.


title: Khaled (musician)

text: In 2012 Khaled's album "C’est la vie" sold more than one million copies in the European market, 1.8 million copies in the Middle East and North Africa, and over 4 million copies worldwide. The album reached number 5 on SNEP, the official French Albums Chart.


title: Khaled (musician)

text: On 3 April 2015, Khaled was convicted for plagiarism of Didi, from "Angui ou Selmi", a musical composition recorded by Cheb Rabah (born Rabah Zerradine) in 1988. But on 13 May 2016, Court of Cassation removed the charges against Khaled, when a 1982 audio tape with the song was shown. This tape was recorded by Khaled and given to a producer located in Oran, 6 years before Cheb Rabah's record. In the end, Rabah had to compensate Khaled for the fees during this case.


title: Khaled (musician)

text: On 12 January 1995, Khaled married Samira Diabi, when she was 27. With Diabi he has four daughters and one son.


title: Khaled (musician)

text: In 1997, his wife filed a complaint against him for domestic violence, before retracting the complaint.


title: Khaled (musician)

text: In 1998, the biography "Khaled: Derrière le sourire" (French for "Khaled: Behind the Smile) was published, which recounted his life.


title: Khaled (musician)

text: Khaled has an illegitimate son with whom he has no contact. Before a court in 2001, he denied being the father of the child, continuing to claim that he had been "deceived". On 7 May 2001, Khaled was sentenced by the Nanterre criminal court to a two-month suspended prison sentence for "family desertion". His move to Luxembourg in 2008, where he's been residing ever since, has reportedly been motivated by these charges.


title: Khaled (musician)

text: He was awarded Moroccan citizenship in August 2013, which he didn't ask for but accepted because he felt he could not refuse.


title: Khaled (musician)

text: This discography does not include a number of albums released on cassette in Algeria early in his career, and several bootleg/unofficial albums.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: This article is about the demographic features of the population of Hungary, including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population. Hungary's population has been slowly declining since 1980.The population composition at the foundation of Hungary (895) depends on the size of the arriving Hungarian population and the size of the Slavic (and remains of Avar-Slavic) population at the time. One source mentions 200 000 Slavs and 400 000 Hungarians, while other sources often don't give estimates for both, making comparison more difficult. The size of the Hungarian population around 895 is often estimated between 120 000 and 600 000, with a number of estimates in the 400-600 000 range. Other sources only mention a fighting force of 25 000 Magyar warriors used in the attack, while declining to estimate the total population including women and children and warriors not participating in the invasion. In the historical demographics the largest earlier shock was the Mongol Invasion of Hungary, several plagues also took a toll on the country's population.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: According to the demographers, about 80 percent of the population was made up of Hungarians before the Battle of Mohács, however the Hungarian ethnic group became a minority in its own country in the 18th century due to the resettlement policies and continuous immigration from neighboring countries. Major territorial changes made Hungary ethnically homogeneous after World War I. Nowadays, more than nine-tenths of the population is ethnically Hungarian and speaks Hungarian as the mother tongue.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: Note: The data refer to the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary, and not that of the present-day republic.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: The total fertility rate is the number of children born per woman. It is based on fairly good data for the entire period in the present-day Hungary. Sources: Our World In Data and Gapminder Foundation.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: The infant mortality rate (IMR) decreased considerably after WW II. In 1949, the IMR was 91.0. The rate decreased to 47.6 in 1960, 35.9 in 1970, 23.2 in 1980, 14.8 in 1990, 9.2 in 2000 and reached an all-time low in 2018: 3.4 per 1000 live born children.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: There are large variations in the birth rates as of 2016: Zala County has the lowest birth rate with 7.5 births per thousand inhabitants, while Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg County has the highest birth rate with 11.2 births per thousand inhabitants.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: The death rates also differ greatly from as low as 11.3 deaths per thousand inhabitants in Pest County to as high as 15.7 deaths per thousand inhabitants in Békés County.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: Hungary lost 64% of its total population in consequence of the Treaty of Trianon, decreasing from 20.9 million to 7.6 million, and 31% (3.3 out of 10.7 million) of its ethnic Hungarians, Hungary lost five of its ten most populous cities.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: According to the census of 1910, the largest ethnic group in the Kingdom of Hungary were Hungarians, who were 54.5% of the population of Kingdom of Hungary, excluding Croatia-Slavonia.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: Although the territories of the former Kingdom of Hungary that were assigned by the treaty to neighbouring states in total had a majority of non-Hungarian population, they also included areas of Hungarian majority and significant Hungarian minorities, numbering 3,318,000 in total.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: The number of Hungarians in the different areas based on census data of 1910. The present day location of each area is given in parenthesis.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: Romanians, Slovaks, Ruthenians, Serbs, Croats and Germans, who represented the majority of the populations of the above-mentioned territories:


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: According to the 1920 census 10.4% of the population spoke one of the minority languages as mother language:


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: The number of bilingual people was much higher, for example 1,398,729 people spoke German (17%), 399,176 people spoke Slovak (5%), 179,928 people spoke Croatian (2.2%) and 88,828 people spoke Romanian (1.1%). Hungarian was spoken by 96% of the total population and was the mother language of 89%. The percentage and the absolute number of all non-Hungarian nationalities decreased in the next decades, although the total population of the country increased.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: Note: 300.000 Hungarian refugees fled to Hungary from the territory of successor states (Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia) after the WW I.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: Hungary expanded its borders with territories from Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia following the First Vienna Award (1938) and Second Vienna Award (1940). The remainder of Carpathian Ruthenia and parts of Yugoslavia were occupied and annexed in 1939 and 1941, respectively.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: Regarding Northern Transylvania, the Romanian census from 1930 counted 38% Hungarians and 49% Romanians, while the Hungarian census from 1941 counted 53.5% Hungarians and 39.1% Romanians.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: The territory of Bácska had 789,705 inhabitants, and 45,4% or 47,2% declared themselves to be Hungarian native speakers or ethnic Hungarians.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: The percentage of Hungarian speakers was 84% in southern Czechoslovakia and 25% in the Sub-Carpathian Rus.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: After World War II, about 200,000 Germans were deported to Germany according to the decree of the Potsdam Conference. Under the forced exchange of population between Czechoslovakia and Hungary, approximately 73,000 Slovaks left Hungary. After these population movements Hungary became an ethnically almost homogeneous country except the rapidly growing number of Romani people in the second half of the 20th century.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: For historical reasons, significant Hungarian minority populations can be found in the surrounding countries, notably in Ukraine (in Transcarpathia), Slovakia, Romania (in Transylvania), and Serbia (in Vojvodina). Austria (in Burgenland), Croatia, and Slovenia (Prekmurje) are also host to a number of ethnic Hungarians.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: When the Hungarians invaded the Carpathian Basin, it was inhabited by Slavic and Avar peoples. Written sources from the 9th century also suggest that some groups of Onogurs and Bulgars occupied the valley of the river Mureș at the time of the Magyars’ invasion. There is a dispute as to whether Romanian population existed in Transylvania during that time.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: The first Romani groups arrived in Hungary in the fifteenth century from Turkey. Nowadays, the real number of Roma in Hungary is a disputed question.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: In the 2001 census only 190 046 (2%) called themselves Roma, but experts and Roma organisations estimate that there are between 450,000 and 1,000,000 Roma living in Hungary. Since then, the size of the Roma population has increased rapidly. Today every fifth or sixth newborn child belongs to the Roma minority. Based on current demographic trends, a 2006 estimate by Central European Management Intelligence claims that the proportion of the Roma population will double by 2050, putting the percentage of its Roma community at around 14-15% of the country's population.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: There are problems related to the Roma minority in Hungary, and the very subject is a heated and disputed topic.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: Three Kabar tribes joined to the Hungarians and participated in the Hungarian conquest of Hungary. They settled mostly in Bihar county.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: The Muslim Böszörménys migrated to the Carpathian Basin in the course of the 10th-12th centuries and they were composed of various ethnic groups. Most of them must have arrived from Volga Bulgaria and Khwarezm.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: Communities of Pechenegs (Besenyő in Hungarian) lived in the Kingdom of Hungary from the 11-12th centuries. They were most numerous in the county of Tolna.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: Smaller groups of Oghuz Turk settlers ('Úzok' or 'Fekete Kunok/Black Cumans' in Hungarian) came to the Carphatian Basin from the middle of the 11th century. They were settled mostly in Barcaság. The city of Ózd got its name after them.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: The Jassic (Jász in Hungarian) people were a nomadic tribe which settled -with the Cumans- in the Kingdom of Hungary during the 13th century. Their name is almost certainly related to that of the Iazyges. Béla IV, king of Hungary granted them asylum and they became a privileged community with the right of self-government. During the centuries they were fully assimilated to the Hungarian population, their language disappeared, but they preserved their Jassic identity and their regional autonomy until 1876. Over a dozen settlements in Central Hungary (e.g. Jászberény, Jászárokszállás, Jászfényszaru) still bear their name.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: During the Russian campaign, the Mongols drove some 200,000 Cumans, a nomadic tribe who had opposed them, west of the Carpathian Mountains. There, the Cumans appealed to King Béla IV of Hungary for protection. In the Kingdom of Hungary, Cumans created two regions named Cumania ("Kunság" in Hungarian): Greater Cumania ("Nagykunság") and Little Cumania ("Kiskunság"), both located the Great Hungarian Plain. Here, the Cumans maintained their autonomy, language and some ethnic customs well into the modern era. According to Pálóczi's estimation originally 70–80,000 Cumans settled in Hungary.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: The oldest extant documents from Transylvania make reference to Vlachs too. Regardless of the subject of Romanian presence/non-presence in Transylvania prior to the Hungarian conquest, the first chronicles to write of Vlachs in the intra-Carpathian regions is the "Gesta Hungarorum", while the first written Hungarian sources about Romanian settlements derive from the 13th century, record was written about "Olahteluk" village in Bihar County from 1283. The 'land of Romanians', "Terram Blacorum" (1222, 1280) showed up in Fogaras and this area was mentioned under different name (Olachi) in 1285. The first appearance of a probably Romanian name 'Ola' in Hungary derives from a charter (1258).


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: They were a significant population in Transylvania, Banat, Maramureș and Partium (Crișana). There are different estimations in connection with number of Romanians in Kingdom of Hungary. According to a research based on place-names made by István Kniezsa, 511 villages of Transylvania and Banat appear in documents at the end of the 13th century, however only 3 of them bore Romanian names, and around 1400 AD, Transylvania and Banat consisted of 1757 villages, though only 76 (4.3%) of them had names of Romanian origin. The number of Romanians started to increase significantly from the Early modern period, and by 1700 the Romanian ethnic group consisted of 40 percent of the Transylvanian population and their number raised even more in the 18th century. Although, in 1574, Pierre Lescalopier, relating his voyage from Venice to Constantinople, claimed that most of the inhabitants of Transylvania were Romanians and according to other estimates, the Romanian inhabitants who were primarily peasants, consisted of more than 60 percent of the population in 1600. Jean W. Sedlar estimates that Vlachs (Romanians) constituted about two-thirds of Transylvania's population in 1241 on the eve of the Mongol invasion, however according to Károly Kocsis and Eszter Kocsisné Hodosi the Hungarian ethnic group in Transylvania was in decent majority before Battle of Mohács and only lost its relative majority by the 17th century. Nevertheless, Grigore Ureche in "Letopisețul Țării Moldovei" (1642 - 1647) noticed that in Transylvania Romanians were more numerous than Hungarians. Official censuses with information on Hungary's ethnic composition have been conducted since the 19th century.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: In 1881, Romanian-majority settlements projected to the present-day territory of Hungary were: Bedő, Csengerújfalu, Kétegyháza, Körösszakál, Magyarcsanád, Méhkerék, Mezőpeterd, Pusztaottlaka and Vekerd.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: Important communities lived in the villages of Battonya, Elek, Körösszegapáti, Létavértes, Nyíradony, Pocsaj, Sarkadkeresztúr, Zsáka and in the town of Gyula.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: The Slovak people lived mainly in Upper Hungary, northern parts of the Kingdom of Hungary. Due to post-Ottoman resettlements, the regions of Vojvodina, Banat and Békés county received bigger Slovak communities in the 18th century, which revitalized many deserted villages and towns, such as Békéscsaba, where Slovaks became the biggest ethnic group, or Nyíregyháza, where they comprised more than a third of the population in 1881. After WWII a major population exchange with Czechoslovakia was carried out: 71,787 or 73,200 Slovaks from Hungary were transferred to Slovakia – the exact number depends on source consulted – were resettled in South Slovakia in exhange for, according to different estimations, 45,000 or 120,000 Hungarians.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: From the 14th century, escaping from the Ottoman threat, a large number of Serbs migrated to the Hungarian Kingdom. After the Battle of Mohács, most of the territory of Hungary got into Ottoman rule. In that time, especially in the 17th century, many Serb, and other Southern Slavic immigrants settled in Hungary. Most of the Ottoman soldiers in the territory of present-day Hungary were South Slavs (the Janissary). After the Turkish withdrawal, Kingdom of Hungary came under Habsburg rule, a new wave of Serb refugees migrated to the area around 1690, as a consequence of the Habsburg-Ottoman war. In the first half of the 18th century, Serbs and South Slavs were ethnic majority in several cities in Hungary.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: Three waves of German migration can be distinguished in Hungary before the 20th century. The first two waves settled in Upper Hungary and in Southern Transylvania (Transylvanian Saxons), with the first being in the 11th century and the second in the 13th century.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: The third, largest wave of German-speaking immigrants into Hungary occurred after the withdrawal of the Ottoman Empire from Hungarian territory, after the Treaty of Karlowitz. Between 1711 and 1780, German-speaking settlers immigrated to the regions of Southern Hungary, mostly region of Bánát, Bács-Bodrog, Baranya and Tolna counties (as well as into present-day Romania and Yugoslavia), which had been depopulated by the Ottoman wars. At the end of the 18th century, the Kingdom of Hungary contained over one million German-speaking residents (collectively known as Danube Swabians). In 2011, 131,951 people declared to be German in Hungary (1,6%).


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: Rusyns had lived mostly in Carpathian Ruthenia, Northeast Hungary, however significant Rusyn population appeared in Vojvodina from the 18th century.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: Croatia was in personal union with Hungary from 1102. Croat communities were spread mostly in the western and southern part of the country and along the Danube, including Budapest.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: The Slovenes ("Vendek" in Hungarian) lived in the western part of the Carpathian basin before the Hungarian conquest. In the 11th and 12th century, the current linguistic and ethnic border between the Hungarian and Slovene people was established. Nowadays, they live in Vendvidék ("Slovenska krajina" in Slovenians) between the Mura and the Rába rivers. In 2001, there were around 5,000 Slovenes in Hungary.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: The first historical document about Jews of Hungary is the letter written about 960 to King Joseph of the Khazars by Hasdai ibn Shaprut, the Jewish statesman of Córdoba, in which he says Jews living in "the country of Hungarin". There are Jewish inscriptions on tombs and monuments in Pannonia (Roman Hungary) dated to the second or third century CE.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: Greeks migrated to Kingdom of Hungary from the 15th and 16th centuries. Mass migrations did not occur until the 17th century, the largest waves being in 1718 and 1760–1770; they were primarily connected to the economic conditions of the period. It is estimated that 10,000 Greeks emigrated to Hungary in the second half of the 18th century. A number of Greeks Communists escaped to Hungary


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: The town of Szentendre and the surrounding villages were inhabited by Bulgarians since the Middle Ages. However, present day Bulgarians are largely descended from gardeners who migrated to Hungary from the 18th century.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: The majority of Hungarians became Christian in the 11th century. Hungary remained predominantly Catholic until the 16th century, when the Reformation took place and, as a result, first Lutheranism, then soon afterwards Calvinism, became the religion of almost the entire population.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: In the second half of the 16th century, however, Jesuits led a successful campaign of counterreformation among the Hungarians, although Protestantism survived as the faith of a significant minority, especially in the far east and northeast of the country. Orthodox Christianity in Hungary has been the religion mainly of some national minorities in the country, notably Romanians, Rusyns, Ukrainians, and Serbs.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: Faith Church, one of Europe's largest Pentecostal churches, is also located in Hungary. Hungary has historically been home to a significant Jewish community.


title: Demographics of Hungary

text: According to 2011 census data, Christianity is the largest religion in Hungary, with around 5.2 million adherents (52.9%), while the largest denomination in Hungary is Catholicism (38.9% — Roman Catholicism 37.1%; Greek Catholicism 1.8%). There is a significant Calvinist minority (11.6% of the population) and smaller Lutheran (2.2%), Orthodox (0.1%) and Jewish (0.1%) minorities. However, these census figures are representative of religious affiliation rather than attendance; around 12% of Hungarians attend religious services more than least once a week and around 50% more than once a year, while 30% of Hungarians do not believe in God at all. The census showed a large drop of religious adherents who wish to answer, from 74.6% to 54.7% in ten years' time, replacing them by people either who do not wish answer or people who are not following a religion.


title: Douala

text: Douala is the largest city in Cameroon and its economic capital. It is also the capital of Cameroon's Littoral Region. Home to Central Africa's largest port and its major international airport, Douala International Airport (DLA), it is the commercial and economic capital of Cameroon and the entire CEMAC region comprising Gabon, Congo, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Central African Republic and Cameroon. Consequently, it handles most of the country's major exports, such as oil, cocoa and coffee, timber, metals and fruits. , the city and its surrounding area had an estimated population of 5,768,400. The city sits on the estuary of Wouri River and its climate is tropical.


title: Douala

text: The first Europeans to visit the area were the Portuguese in about 1472. At the time, the estuary of Wouri River was known as the Rio dos Camarões (Shrimp River). By 1650, it had become the site of a town formed by immigrants, said to have arrived from Congo, who spoke the Duala language. During the 18th century it was the center of the transatlantic slave trade.


title: Douala

text: In 1826 Douala appeared to be made of four different villages located in four specific locations: the village of Deido (Dido), of Akwa, of Njo and Hickory-town (today Bonaberi, located on the other side of Wouri River).


title: Douala

text: The colonial politics focused on commerce and some exploration of the unoccupied territories. In 1885, Alfred Saker organized the first mission of the British Baptist Church. In the same year the city known as Kamerun was renamed Douala and became the capital of the territory until 1902, when the capital was moved to Buéa.


title: Douala

text: After World War I in 1919, the German colonial territories became French and British protectorates. France received a mandate to administer Douala. A treaty was signed with the local chiefs.


title: Douala

text: In 1960, Cameroon gained independence as a federal republic, with its capital in Yaoundé. Douala became the major economic city. In 1972, the federal republic became a unitary state. Douala then had a population of around 500,000.


title: Douala

text: In the 1980s, in Cameroon the struggle for liberalization and multi-party democracy grew. Between May and December 1991, Douala was at the center of the civil disobedience campaign called the ghost town operation ("ville morte") during which economic activities shut down to make the country ungovernable and to force the government to allow multi-partitism and freedom of expression.


title: Douala

text: With the arrival of the Portuguese in the 15th century, the area was known as "Rio dos Camarões". Before coming under German rule in 1884, the town was also known as Cameroons Town; thereafter it became Kamerunstadt ("Cameroon City"), the capital of German Kamerun. It was renamed Douala in 1907 after the name of the natives known as Dua ala Ijaws (Njos), and became part of French Cameroon in 1919. Many of the Ijaw (Njo) natives migrated to the Niger Delta in Nigeria during the Portuguese era.


title: Douala

text: Douala features a tropical monsoon climate (Köppen climate classification "Am"), with relatively consistent temperatures throughout the course of the year, though the city experiences somewhat cooler temperatures in July and August. Douala typically features warm and humid conditions with an average annual temperature of and an average humidity of 83%. Douala sees plentiful rainfall during the course of the year, experiencing on average roughly of precipitation per year. Its driest month is December, when on average of precipitation falls, while its wettest month is August, when on average nearly of rain falls.


title: Douala

text: Cameroon is home to nearly 250 languages or dialects. The local indigenous language is Duala, which shares its name with the city. French and English are official languages, but Douala is primarily francophone.


title: Douala

text: In 2014, 63.7% of Douala inhabitants of over 15 years knew how to read and write French, while 76.4% knew how to speak and understand French.


title: Douala

text: The city of Douala is divided into seven districts (Akwa, Bassa, Bonabéri, Bonapriso, Bonanjo, Deïdo and New Bell) and it has more than 120 neighborhoods.


title: Douala

text: According to Jacques Soulillou, historical images of Douala document the areas of Akwa (Plateau Joss) and the port between 1860 and 1960, while the districts of Bonaberi, Deido and New Bell have almost no images. The archives which provide documentation about the city are based in Paris, Basel, Hamburg, Potsdam, Douala and Yaoundé.


title: Douala

text: In 1896 a first urban plan of the city was developed during the German colonial period. The plan included a hospital, the governor residency, the palace of justice, the police station, administrative buildings and buildings for the port and customs (among those the Old Woermann Linie Bachelors House). The Bonakouamouang Chimney also dates back to this period. In 1904 construction of the Villa Mandessi Bell was begun. In 1905 the palace of the King Manga Ndumbe Bell (also called la Pagode) was built, and in 1906 the general plan of Gross Douala was established. In 1914 the large population living in Bonanjo was moved to the new estate of Neue Bell (New Bell).


title: Douala

text: Between 1925 and 1930, during the French colonial period, the chamber of commerce, the new palace of justice, the new railway station, the vault of the Kings Bell and the catholic cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul were built. Constructions were intensified between 1930 and 1955 and in 1955 the bridge on Wouri River was built. In 1935 the Mausoleum of the Kings Akwa was constructed. In 1947 the Temple of the Centenary was built. In 1959 a new city plan was designed (Plan Dorian); according to Danièle Diwouta-Kotto, this plan is still influencing Douala's urban development. After the independence of 1960 a new development and urban plan were established. In 1998 a research prepared the diagnostic for the 2015 horizon. In 2005 a new development and urban plan was designed and routes and public canalizations were reestablished and created. In the same year the Project Sawa-Beach was launched. Since 1888, terracotta bricks have been produced in Douala.


title: Douala

text: The publication "Suites architecturales" focuses on heritage and reappropriation in the architecture of Douala, and it presents some of the characteristics of the buildings and architecture of Douala after its independence. Among those buildings are the casino, the show-room La Meublerie, the exhibition hall Cami-Toyota, Union Bank of Cameroon, Immeuble Hollando, the Baptist church, Immeuble Victoria, headquarters of CA-SCB, espace doual'art, and Orange Flagship. The Palace Dika Akwa Mukanda was built in 1990.


title: Douala

text: Along the city's main thoroughfare lie some of Cameroon's best restaurants, coffee houses and French-style patisseries; along the waterfront, many bars and bistros may be found, commanding views of the Gulf of Guinea and nearby mangrove swamps. Many of these are frequented by the city's large expatriate population, mainly French or Lebanese, most of whom work in the petroleum industry.


title: Douala

text: The city's population is predominantly Christian and contains houses of worship of numerous denominations : Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Douala (Catholic Church), Evangelical Church of Cameroon (World Communion of Reformed Churches), Presbyterian Church in Cameroon (World Communion of Reformed Churches), Union of Baptist Churches in Cameroon (Baptist World Alliance), Integrity for All (Christian Missionary Fellowship and Associated Churches), Full Gospel Mission Cameroon (Assemblies of God). There are also Muslim mosques.


title: Douala

text: As in most large cities in Cameroon there are several nursery, primary, secondary and high schools in the city. In recent years there has been a surge in the number of private schools. It is interesting to note that there is also a large, informal educational sector that caters to a huge part of the population, mostly individuals with a primary school certificate or those with no education at all. This form of education is common in sectors like cloth manufacturing, bread making, construction, security, and car repairing. Individuals from these informal sectors are by far the most visibly deprived in neighborhoods such as Ndokoti, Bepanda, Village, Logbaba.


title: Douala

text: The city of Douala is home to a number of higher education institutions, including the University of Douala. There are also a number of professional schools, the most prominent one being the Douala Maritime institute. Douala has an aviation school called CAE Oxford Aviation Academy Douala.


title: Douala

text: Douala is linked by rail to Yaoundé, Ngaoundéré, Kumba and Nkongsamba. Douala has a fairly developed road network compared to other cities in Cameroon. However many of the city's roads have decayed due to years of neglect and corruption. Efforts have recently been made to renovate the city's roads, especially in the most deprived neighborhoods. In spite of the numerous domestic and international investments, the roads remain in deplorable state largely due to embezzlement and corruption.


title: Douala

text: The Douala International Airport is located in the eastern part of the city. There are direct flights to several European cities, including Paris, Brussels, and Istanbul. Regional and continental destinations include Abidjan, Brazzaville, Dakar, Johannesburg, Kinshasa, Lagos, Malabo, and Nairobi. The airport is the busiest in the CEMAC area and is the hub for Cameroon's national carrier, Camairco. The airport is in dire need of renovations due to poor circulation and old infrastructure.


title: Douala

text: Douala is a city with a modest oil resource in Africa, but is in excellent agricultural condition, therefore it has one of best economies in Africa. However, it also faces some problems like other underdeveloped countries such as heavy civil service and bad climate (flood, tornado, storm) to business.


title: Douala

text: Even though Douala is the economic center of Cameroon, a large percentage of its inhabitants live below the poverty line. Recent data shows that about thirty percent of the population lives in poverty (Avameg, Inc). While the aforementioned percentage is doubled for rural regions, poverty is a growing problem for Douala due to its steadily increasing population. Unlike the rural populations of Cameroon that can grow their own foods to lessen their expenses, Douala locals are disadvantaged by living in the port city where there are not many opportunities for monetary gain.


title: Ron Palillo

text: Ronald Gabriel Palillo (April 2, 1949 – August 14, 2012) was an American actor and teacher. He was best known for his role as the endearingly dim-witted character Arnold Horshack on the ABC sitcom "Welcome Back, Kotter" (1975–1979).


title: Ron Palillo

text: Ronald Gabriel Paolillo was born in New Haven, Connecticut, to Italian-Americans Gabriel and Carmel Paolillo, and raised in nearby Cheshire. He graduated from Cheshire High School and the University of Connecticut at Storrs, where he would teach in the 1990s. He attended Fairfield University while pursuing a postgraduate degree. He adopted the last name "Palillo" for his acting career.


title: Ron Palillo

text: In 1975, Palillo was cast as Arnold Horshack, one of the misfit "sweathogs" in the high school sitcom "Welcome Back, Kotter", whose antics made him one of the standout characters of the series. In the last season of the series, a backdoor pilot episode for a spin-off series featuring Horshack was produced, but the series was not developed.


title: Ron Palillo

text: Following "Kotter", Palillo appeared in leading and supporting roles in various television series and films. He voiced characters on such animated series as "Laverne & Shirley in the Army", "Darkwing Duck", and "Rubik, the Amazing Cube", in which he played the lead character. In 1996, Palillo played himself in several episodes of the television sitcom "Ellen", playing the love interest of Ellen's friend Audrey. Palillo also spent a year on the daytime show "One Life to Live" and also acted in "" (1986), and the lead in "The Curse of Micah Rood."


title: Ron Palillo

text: He returned to New York in 1991, and played such stage roles as Mozart in "Amadeus" and regionally as George in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", Arthur in "Camelot" and Nathan Detroit in "Guys and Dolls". He appeared on Broadway in 2008 in "Broadway Backwards 4", a charity event benefiting Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center. Among his other New York City credits were a one-person show in 2000 where he portrayed Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann in "The Diary of Adolf Eichmann" off-Broadway. Palillo, in a newspaper interview in 1997, said he lamented his role as Horshack as he was permanently typecast, which he believed had damaged his career.


title: Ron Palillo

text: As a director, Palillo directed successful productions of the musical "Three Guys Naked From The Waist Down" in Los Angeles, "A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline", and a new edition of "Phantom Of The Opera" at the Cuillo Center for the Arts in West Palm Beach, Florida. In 2007, he introduced a clothing line specializing in limited-edition T-shirts produced by Rotter and Friends. Palillo was also an artist, providing artwork for two children's books: "The Red Wings of Christmas" and "A Gift for the Contessa."


title: Ron Palillo

text: In 2005, his first full-length play, "The Lost Boy", the true story of "Peter Pan" author J. M. Barrie, premiered at the Helen Hayes Theatre in Nyack, New York, and later played at the Queens Theatre in the Park in Queens, New York, and at El Dorado Springs High School in El Dorado Springs, Missouri.


title: Ron Palillo

text: He taught freshman drama at G-Star School of the Arts for Motion Pictures and Broadcasting in Palm Springs, Florida.


title: Ron Palillo

text: Palillo and his partner of 41 years, Joseph Gramm, lived in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. On August 14, 2012, Palillo suffered a heart attack at his home and was taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. He died seven months after co-star Robert Hegyes, who also died from a heart attack.


title: Ron Palillo

text: Palillo's funeral service was held in Palm Beach Gardens on August 22, 2012. He is buried at St. Lawrence Cemetery in West Haven, Connecticut. A memorial tribute, directed by Lawrence Leritz and hosted by Tyne Daly, was held to honor and celebrate Palillo's life and career at New York City's Triad Theatre on October 3, 2012.


title: Sarah Miles

text: Sarah Miles (born 31 December 1941) is an English actress. She is known for her roles in films "The Servant" (1963), "Blowup" (1966), "Ryan's Daughter" (1970), "The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing" (1973), "White Mischief" (1987) and "Hope and Glory" (1987). For her performance in "Ryan's Daughter", Miles received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.


title: Sarah Miles

text: Sarah Miles was born in Ingatestone, Essex, in south east England; her brother is film director, producer, and screenwriter Christopher Miles. Miles's parents were Clarice Vera Remnant and John Miles, of a family of engineers; her father's inability to secure a divorce from his first wife meant Miles and her siblings were illegitimate. Through her maternal grandfather Francis Remnant, Miles claims to be the great-granddaughter of Prince Francis of Teck (1870–1910), thus a second cousin once removed of Queen Elizabeth II. Unable to speak until the age of nine because of a stammer and dyslexia, she attended Roedean and three other schools but was expelled from all of them. Miles enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) at the age of 15.


title: Sarah Miles

text: Shortly after finishing at RADA, Miles performed in "Manhunt" an episode of the TV series "Deadline Midnight". Her film debut was as Shirley Taylor, a "husky wide-eyed nymphet" in "Term of Trial" (1962), which featured Laurence Olivier; she was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer.


title: Sarah Miles

text: Miles appeared in "The Rehearsal" (1963) for TV and then played Vera from Manchester in Joseph Losey's "The Servant" (1963), and "thrust sexual appetite into British films" according to David Thomson.


title: Sarah Miles

text: Miles was in a short directed by her brother, "The Six-Sided Triangle" (1963) and a feature film directed by and starring Laurence Harvey, "The Ceremony" (1963). She did "Ring Round the Moon" (1964) for TV.


title: Sarah Miles

text: 16 June 1965 saw the release of Ken Annakin's "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines," a British period comedy film revolving around the craze of early aviation circa 1910. A pompous newspaper magnate (Robert Morley) is convinced, by his daughter (Miles) and her fiancé (James Fox), to organize an air race from London to Paris. A large sum of money is offered to the winner, hence it attracts a variety of characters who participate. The film received positive reviews, described as funny, colourful and clever, capturing the early enthusiasm for aviation.


title: Sarah Miles

text: In 1966, Miles gained another BAFTA nomination, this time as Best Actress. She had a "peripheral" part in Michelangelo Antonioni's "Blowup". At Antonioni's death in 2007, she referred to him as "a rogue and a tyrant and a brilliant man".


title: Sarah Miles

text: After acting in several plays from 1966 to 1969, Miles was cast as Rosy in the leading title role of David Lean's "Ryan's Daughter" (1970). It was critically savaged, which discouraged Lean from making a film for some years, despite Miles's performance gaining her an Oscar nomination and an Oscar win for John Mills, and the film making a substantial profit. In Terence Pettigrew's biography of Trevor Howard, Miles describes the filming of "Ryan's Daughter" in Ireland in 1969. She recalls, "My main memory is of sitting on a hilltop in a caravan at six in the morning in the rain. There was no other actor or member of the crew around me. I would sit there getting mad, waiting for either the rain to stop or someone to arrive. Film-acting is so horrifically belittling."


title: Sarah Miles

text: Miles would marry the film's screenwriter, Robert Bolt. He wrote and directed "Lady Caroline Lamb" (1972) starring Miles in the title role. She then appeared in "The Hireling" (1973).


title: Sarah Miles

text: On 11 February 1973, while filming "The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing", aspiring screenwriter David Whiting, briefly one of her lovers, was found dead in her motel room. She was acquitted of culpability in his death. Miles later commented: "It went on for six months. Murder? Suicide? Murder! Suicide! Murder! Suicide! And, gradually, the truth came out, which I'm not going to speak about, but it certainly wasn't me. I had actually saved the man from three suicide attempts, so why would I want to murder him? I really can't imagine." This led to the end of her first marriage to Bolt.


title: Sarah Miles

text: Miles starred in some TV movies: "Great Expectations" (1974), "Requiem for a Nun" (1975), and "Dynasty" (1976) as well as the Spanish film "Bride to Be" (1975).


title: Sarah Miles

text: Her performance as Anne Osborne in "The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea" (1976) was nominated for a Golden Globe.


title: Sarah Miles

text: Miles appeared in "The Big Sleep" (1978), "Venom" (1981), "Walter and June" (1983), "Ordeal by Innocence" (1984), "Steaming" (1985), "Harem" (1986) and "Queenie" (1987).


title: Sarah Miles

text: She received great acclaim for "Hope and Glory". Interviewer Lynn Barber wrote of Miles' appearances in "Hope and Glory", "White Mischief", and her two earliest films that she "has that Vanessa Redgrave quality of seeming to have one skin fewer than normal people, so that the emotion comes over unmuffled and bare."


title: Sarah Miles

text: Filming "White Mischief" on location in Kenya in 1987, Miles worked for the second and last time with Trevor Howard, who had a supporting role, but was by then seriously ill from alcoholism. The company wanted to fire him, but Miles was determined that Howard's distinguished film career would not end that way. In an interview with Terence Pettigrew for his biography of Howard, she describes how she gave an ultimatum to the executives, threatening to quit the production if they got rid of him. The gamble worked. Howard was kept on. It was his last major film; he died the following January.


title: Sarah Miles

text: She appeared in "A Ghost in Monte Carlo" (1990), "The Touch" (1992), "Dandelion Dead" (1994), "Jurij" (2001) and "The Accidental Detective" (2004).


title: Sarah Miles

text: She most recently (2008) appeared in "Well" at the Trafalgar Studios and the Apollo Theatre opposite Natalie Casey.


title: Sarah Miles

text: Miles was married twice to the British playwright Robert Bolt, 1967–1975 and 1988–1995. He wrote and directed the film "Lady Caroline Lamb", in which Miles played the eponymous heroine, and wrote "Ryan's Daughter", as well. After his stroke, the couple reunited and Miles cared for him. "I would be dead without her", Bolt said in 1987, "When she's away, my life takes a nosedive. When she returns, my life soars." The couple had a son.


title: Sarah Miles

text: In 1995, Miles was one of the readers of Edward Lear poems on a specially made spoken word audio CD bringing together a collection of Lear's nonsense songs.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: A cognitive distortion is an exaggerated or irrational thought pattern involved in the onset or perpetuation of psychopathological states, such as depression and anxiety.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: Cognitive distortions are thoughts that cause individuals to perceive reality inaccurately. According to Aaron Beck's cognitive model, a negative outlook on reality, sometimes called "negative schemas" (or "schemata"), is a factor in symptoms of emotional dysfunction and poorer subjective well-being. Specifically, negative thinking patterns reinforce negative emotions and thoughts. During difficult circumstances, these distorted thoughts can contribute to an overall negative outlook on the world and a depressive or anxious mental state. According to hopelessness theory and Beck's theory, the meaning or interpretation that people give to their experience importantly influences whether they will become depressed and whether they will experience severe, repeated, or long-duration episodes of depression.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: Challenging and changing cognitive distortions is a key element of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).


title: Cognitive distortion

text: Cognitive comes from the Medieval Latin , equivalent to Latin , 'known'. Distortion means the act of twisting or altering something out of its true, natural, or original state.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: In 1957, American psychologist Albert Ellis, though he did not know it yet, would aid cognitive therapy in correcting cognitive distortions and indirectly helping David D. Burns in writing "The Feeling Good Handbook". Ellis created what he called the ABC Technique of rational beliefs. The ABC stands for the activating event, beliefs that are irrational, and the consequences that come from the belief. Ellis wanted to prove that the activating event is not what caused the emotional behavior or the consequences, but the beliefs and how the person irrationally perceive the events that aids the consequences. With this model, Ellis attempted to use rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT) with his patients, in order to help them "reframe" or reinterpret the experience in a more rational manner. In this model Ellis explains it all for his clients, while Beck helps his clients figure this out on their own. Beck first started to notice these automatic distorted thought processes when practicing psychoanalysis, while his patients followed the rule of saying anything that comes to mind. Aaron realized that his patients had irrational fears, thoughts, and perceptions that were automatic. Beck began noticing his automatic thought processes that he knew his patients had but did not report. Most of the time the thoughts were biased against themselves and very erroneous.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: Beck believed that the negative schemas developed and manifested themselves in the perspective and behavior. The distorted thought processes lead to focusing on degrading the self, amplifying minor external setbacks, experiencing other's harmless comments as ill-intended, while simultaneously seeing self as inferior. Inevitably cognitions are reflected in their behavior with a reduced desire to care for oneself, to seek pleasure, and give up. These exaggerated perceptions, due to cognition, feel real and accurate because the schemas, after being reinforced through the behavior, tend to become automatic and do not allow time for reflection. This cycle is also known as Beck's cognitive triad, focused on the theory that the person's negative schema applied to the self, the future, and the environment.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: In 1972, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and cognitive therapy scholar Aaron T. Beck published "Depression: Causes and Treatment." He was dissatisfied with the conventional Freudian treatment of depression, because there was no empirical evidence for the success of Freudian psychoanalysis. Beck's book provided a comprehensive and empirically-supported theoretical model for depression—its potential causes, symptoms, and treatments. In Chapter 2, titled "Symptomatology of Depression", he described "cognitive manifestations" of depression, including low self-evaluation, negative expectations, self-blame and self-criticism, indecisiveness, and distortion of the body image.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: Beck's student David D. Burns continued research on the topic. In his book "", Burns described personal and professional anecdotes related to cognitive distortions and their elimination. When Burns published "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy", it made Beck's approach to distorted thinking widely known and popularized. Burns sold over four million copies of the book in the United States alone. It was a book commonly "prescribed" for patients who have cognitive distortions that have led to depression. Beck approved of the book, saying that it would help others alter their depressed moods by simplifying the extensive study and research that had taken place since shortly after Beck had started as a student and practitioner of psychoanalytic psychiatry. Nine years later, "The Feeling Good Handbook" was published, which was also built on Beck's work and includes a list of ten specific cognitive distortions that will be discussed throughout this article.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: John C. Gibbs and Granville Bud Potter propose four categories for cognitive distortions: "self-centered", "blaming others", "minimizing-mislabeling", and "assuming the worst". The cognitive distortions listed below are categories of automatic thinking, and are to be distinguished from logical fallacies.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: The "all-or-nothing thinking distortion" is also referred to as "splitting", "black-and-white thinking", and "polarized thinking." Someone with the all-or-nothing thinking distortion looks at life in black and white categories. Either they are a success or a failure; either they are good or bad; there is no in-between. According to one article, "Because there is always someone who is willing to criticize, this tends to collapse into a tendency for polarized people to view themselves as a total failure. Polarized thinkers have difficulty with the notion of being 'good enough' or a partial success."


title: Cognitive distortion

text: This example captures the polarized nature of this distortion—the person believes they are totally inadequate if they fall short of perfection.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: In order to combat this distortion, Burns suggests thinking of the world in terms of shades of gray. Rather than viewing herself as a complete failure for eating a spoonful of ice cream, the woman in the example could still recognize her overall effort to diet as at least a partial success.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: Reaching preliminary conclusions (usually negative) with little (if any) evidence. Three specific subtypes are identified:


title: Cognitive distortion

text: Inferring a person's possible or probable (usually negative) thoughts from their behavior and nonverbal communication; taking precautions against the worst suspected case without asking the person.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: Labeling occurs when someone overgeneralizes characteristics of other people. For example, someone might use an unfavorable term to describe a complex person or event.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: In the emotional reasoning distortion, it is assumed that feelings expose the true nature of things and experience reality as a reflection of emotionally linked thoughts; something is believed true solely based on a feeling.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: Making "must" or "should" statements was included by Albert Ellis in his rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT), an early form of CBT; he termed it "musturbation". Michael C. Graham called it "expecting the world to be different than it is". It can be seen as demanding particular achievements or behaviors regardless of the realistic circumstances of the situation.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: A related cognitive distortion, also present in Ellis' REBT, is a tendency to "awfulize"; to say a future scenario will be awful, rather than to realistically appraise the various negative and positive characteristics of that scenario.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: According to Burns, "must" and "should" statements are negative because they cause the person to feel guilty and upset at themselves. Some people also direct this distortion at other people, which can cause feelings of anger and frustration when that other person does not do what they should have done. He also mentions how this type of thinking can lead to rebellious thoughts. In other words, trying to whip oneself into doing something with "shoulds" may cause one to desire just the opposite.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: A gratitude trap is a type of cognitive distortion that typically arises from misunderstandings regarding the nature or practice of gratitude. The term can refer to one of two related but distinct thought patterns:


title: Cognitive distortion

text: Personalization is assigning personal blame disproportionate to the level of control a person realistically has in a given situation.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: Blaming is the opposite of personalization. In the blaming distortion, the disproportionate level of blame is placed upon other people, rather than oneself. In this way, the person avoids taking personal responsibility, making way for a "victim mentality".


title: Cognitive distortion

text: In this cognitive distortion, being wrong is unthinkable. This distortion is characterized by actively trying to prove one's actions or thoughts to be correct, and sometimes prioritizing self-interest over the feelings of another person. In this cognitive distortion, the facts that oneself has about their surroundings are always right while other people's opinions and perspectives are wrongly seen.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: Relying on social control to obtain cooperative actions from another person. The underlying assumption of this thinking style is that one's happiness depends on the actions of others. The fallacy of change also assumes that other people should change to suit one's own interests automatically and/or that it is fair to pressure them to change. It may be present in most abusive relationships in which partners' "visions" of each other are tied into the belief that happiness, love, trust, and perfection would just occur once they or the other person change aspects of their beings.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: Giving proportionally greater weight to a perceived failure, weakness or threat, or lesser weight to a perceived success, strength or opportunity, so that the weight differs from that assigned by others, such as "making a mountain out of a molehill". In depressed clients, often the positive characteristics of "other people" are exaggerated and their negative characteristics are understated.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: A form of overgeneralization; attributing a person's actions to their character instead of to an attribute. Rather than assuming the behaviour to be accidental or otherwise extrinsic, one assigns a label to someone or something that is based on the inferred character of that person or thing.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: Someone who overgeneralizes makes faulty generalizations from insufficient evidence. Such as seeing a "single negative event" as a "never-ending pattern of defeat", and as such drawing a very broad conclusion from a single incident or a single piece of evidence. Even if something bad happens only once, it is expected to happen over and over again.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: One suggestion to combat this distortion is to "examine the evidence" by performing an accurate analysis of one's situation. This aids in avoiding exaggerating one's circumstances.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: Disqualifying the positive refers to rejecting positive experiences by insisting they "don't count" for some reason or other. Negative belief is maintained despite contradiction by everyday experiences. Disqualifying the positive may be the most common fallacy in the cognitive distortion range; it is often analyzed with "always being right", a type of distortion where a person is in an all-or-nothing self-judgment. People in this situation show signs of depression. Examples include:


title: Cognitive distortion

text: Filtering distortions occur when an individual dwells only on the negative details of a situation and filters out the positive aspects.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: "The Feeling Good Handbook" notes that filtering is like a "drop of ink that discolors a beaker of water". One suggestion to combat filtering is a cost–benefit analysis. A person with this distortion may find it helpful to sit down and assess whether filtering out the positive and focusing on the negative is helping or hurting them in the long run.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: In a series of publications, philosopher Paul Franceschi has proposed a unified conceptual framework for cognitive distortions designed to clarify their relationships and define new ones. This conceptual framework is based on three notions: (i) the reference class (a set of phenomena or objects, e.g. events in the patient's life); (ii) dualities (positive/negative, qualitative/quantitative, ...); (iii) the taxon system (degrees allowing to attribute properties according to a given duality to the elements of a reference class). In this model, "dichotomous reasoning", "minimization", "maximization" and "arbitrary focus" constitute general cognitive distortions (applying to any duality), whereas "disqualification of the positive" and "catastrophism" are specific cognitive distortions, applying to the positive/negative duality. This conceptual framework posits two additional cognitive distortion classifications: the "omission of the neutral" and the "requalification in the other pole".


title: Cognitive distortion

text: Cognitive restructuring (CR) is a popular form of therapy used to identify and reject maladaptive cognitive distortions, and is typically used with individuals diagnosed with depression. In CR, the therapist and client first examine a stressful event or situation reported by the client. For example, a depressed male college student who experiences difficulty in dating might believe that his "worthlessness" causes women to reject him. Together, therapist and client might then create a more realistic cognition, e.g., "It is within my control to ask girls on dates. However, even though there are some things I can do to influence their decisions, whether or not they say yes is largely out of my control. Thus, I am not responsible if they decline my invitation." CR therapies are designed to eliminate "automatic thoughts" that include clients' dysfunctional or negative views. According to Beck, doing so reduces feelings of worthlessness, anxiety, and anhedonia that are symptomatic of several forms of mental illness. CR is the main component of Beck's and Burns's CBT.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: Those diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder tend, unrealistically, to view themselves as superior, overemphasizing their strengths and understating their weaknesses. Narcissists use exaggeration and minimization this way to shield themselves against psychological pain.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: In cognitive therapy, decatastrophizing or decatastrophization is a cognitive restructuring technique that may be used to treat cognitive distortions, such as magnification and catastrophizing, commonly seen in psychological disorders like anxiety and psychosis. Major features of these disorders are the subjective report of being overwhelmed by life circumstances and the incapability of affecting them.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: The goal of CR is to help the client change their perceptions to render the felt experience as less significant.


title: Cognitive distortion

text: Common criticisms of the diagnosis of cognitive distortion relate to epistemology and the theoretical basis. If the perceptions of the patient differ from those of the therapist, it may not be because of intellectual malfunctions but because the patient has different experiences. In some cases, depressed subjects appear to be "sadder but wiser".


title: Nico Mannion

text: Niccolò "Nico" Mannion (born March 14, 2001) is an Italian-American professional basketball player for Virtus Bologna of the Italian Lega Basket Serie A (LBA) and the EuroLeague. He played college basketball for the Arizona Wildcats. He attended Pinnacle High School in Phoenix, where he was a consensus five-star recruit and one of the top point guards in the 2019 class. Although he mainly grew up in the United States, Mannion represents his birth country of Italy in international competitions.


title: Nico Mannion

text: Mannion was born in Siena, Tuscany, Italy, to former NBA player Pace Mannion and Gaia Bianchi. There, he spent his early childhood before his family moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, and finally settled in Phoenix.


title: Nico Mannion

text: As a freshman, Mannion began playing basketball for Pinnacle High School in Phoenix under head coach Charlie Wilde. On February 9, 2017, he featured in a "Sports Illustrated" article, "A 15-Year-Old (Sorta-Maybe) Basketball Prodigy". Mannion started in all 28 of his games, averaging 20.2 points, 4.6 rebounds, 4.7 assists, and 2.4 steals per game while leading Pinnacle to a 22–6 record. He was named MaxPreps first team All-American and "Arizona Republic" Class 6A first team All-State. Entering his sophomore season, Mannion was named to the "USA Today" All-USA Arizona preseason team. He missed his first four games with a broken left hand. On February 28, 2018, Mannion scored 21 points in a 76–60 win over Mountain Pointe High School for the Class 6A state championship. He finished the season averaging 23.4 points, 4.7 rebounds, and 5.8 assists per game, leading Pinnacle to a 24–7 record. Mannion received MaxPreps Sophomore All-American third team and Arizona Gatorade Player of the Year distinction.


title: Nico Mannion

text: He took online summer courses to be able to graduate in the following spring. On December 1, Mannion scored 37 points, including the game-winning three-pointer, in an 82–80 victory over Shadow Mountain High School, who had won 73 straight games against Arizona opponents. MaxPreps writer Jordan Divens said that Mannion's performance in the game "will go down in Arizona high school basketball lore." Five days later, Mannion recorded 76 points and 12 assists in a nationally televised game against top recruit Jalen Green and San Joaquin Memorial High School at the Hoophall West Invitational. On December 30, he scored 45 points in an 88–78 loss to Mater Dei High School at the Rancho Mirage Holiday Invitational National Division championship. Mannion, on February 2, 2019, tallied 57 points, including the game-winning shot as time expired, to help defeat Chaparral High School. On February 27, he led Pinnacle to a second Class 6A state title, posting 56 points, eight rebounds, and six assists in an 83–64 win over Chaparral High School. By the end of the season, Mannion was averaging 43.4 points, 6.2 rebounds, and 6.2 assists per game. He reclaimed the Arizona Gatorade Player of the Year award and was recognized as National High School Coaches Association (NHSCA) Senior Athlete of the Year. Mannion also earned "USA Today" All-USA second team and Naismith All-American third team honors. In the spring, he played in the McDonald's All-American Game and Nike Hoop Summit.


title: Nico Mannion

text: Mannion was considered the top player in the 2020 recruiting class by 247Sports, Rivals and ESPN. But he reclassified to the 2019 class. Mannion received his first college basketball offer from Cal State Northridge while in eighth grade. In high school, he picked up offers from several major NCAA Division I programs, including Duke and Villanova. Mannion was a consensus five-star recruit and the best recruit from Arizona in the 2019 class. On September 14, 2018, he committed to Arizona over Marquette.


title: Nico Mannion

text: Mannion earned preseason first-team All-Pac-12 Conference honors and was named to the preseason watch lists for the Wooden Award and Naismith Trophy. In his second collegiate game for Arizona, on November 6, 2019, he recorded 23 points, nine assists and four rebounds in a 90–69 win over Illinois. On November 28, Mannion posted 16 points and 11 assists and made a game-winning layup with four seconds left in a 93–91 victory over Pepperdine in the first round of the Wooden Legacy. In a second round win over Penn, he scored a season-high 24 points. Mannion led his team to the Wooden Legacy title and was named tournament most valuable player (MVP) after averaging 16.3 points and 7.3 assists per game. In the following day, he earned Pac-12 freshman of the week accolades. On February 29, 2020, Mannion had 19 points and six assists in a 69–64 loss to UCLA. At the conclusion of the regular season, Mannion was named to the All-Pac-12 second team and the All-Freshman Team. Mannion averaged 14.0 points and 5.3 assists per game as a freshman. Following the season, he declared for the 2020 NBA draft.