title: Royal Rumble (2017)

text: SmackDown's tag team division was absent from the Royal Rumble event, but on the following "SmackDown", SmackDown Tag Team Champions American Alpha made an open challenge for the titles. Five other teams came out and a brawl ensued. A championship tag team turmoil match was scheduled for Elimination Chamber.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: Louis Buller Gohmert Jr. (; born August 18, 1953) is an American attorney, politician, and former jurist serving as the U.S. representative from Texas's 1st congressional district since 2005. Gohmert is a Republican and was part of the Tea Party movement. In January 2015, he unsuccessfully challenged John Boehner for Speaker of the House of Representatives. In November 2021, he announced his candidacy in the 2022 Texas Attorney General election. He failed to advance to the Republican primary runoff, getting 17% of the vote.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: Gohmert was born in Pittsburg, Texas, the son of German Texan architect Louis Buller Gohmert and his first wife Erma Sue (née Brooks). He was raised in Mount Pleasant, Texas, where he graduated from Mount Pleasant High School in 1971.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: Gohmert enrolled in Texas A&M University, receiving a U.S. Army scholarship and earning a B.A. in history in 1975. He commanded a cadet brigade in the Corps of Cadets and served as class president. He was also a student leader for the MSC Student Conference on National Affairs alongside future U.S. Representative Chet Edwards, and a member of the Ross Volunteer Company.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: Gohmert attended The JAG School at the University of Virginia and entered U.S. Army JAG Corps. He served in the JAG Corps at Fort Benning, Georgia, from 1978 to 1982. Most of his legal service in the U.S. Army was as a defense attorney.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: Gohmert was elected as a state district judge for Texas's 7th Judicial District, serving Smith County (Tyler, Texas) from 1992 to 2002. He was elected to three terms. He first saw national recognition for a 1996 probation requirement where he ordered an HIV-positive man, who was convicted on motor vehicle theft charges, to seek the written consent from all future sexual partners on a court-provided form notifying them of his HIV status. The order angered LGBT activists and civil libertarians.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: In 2002, Texas Governor Rick Perry appointed Gohmert to fill a vacancy as Chief Justice on Texas's 12th Court of Appeals, where he served a six-month term that ended in 2003.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: A mid-decade redistricting made the 1st District significantly more conservative than its predecessor. Tyler, which had long anchored the 4th District, was shifted to the 1st District. In the 2004 Republican primary, Gohmert defeated State Representative Wayne Christian of Center, Texas. He defeated Democratic incumbent 1st District Congressman Max Sandlin with 61% of the vote. He has never again faced another contest that close, and been reelected seven times, never with less than 68% of the vote. He only faced an independent in 2008, and a Libertarian in 2010.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: Gohmert won his seventh term in 2016 with 192,434 votes (73.9%) to Democratic nominee Shirley J. McKellar's 62,847 (24.1%). Libertarian Phil Gray polled 5,062 votes (1.9%).


title: Louie Gohmert

text: On July 29, 2009, Gohmert signed on as a co-sponsor of the defeated H.R. 1503. This bill would have amended "the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to require the principal campaign committee of a candidate for election to the office of president to include with the committee's statement of organization a copy of the candidate's birth certificate, together with such other documentation as may be necessary to establish that the candidate meets the qualifications for eligibility to the office of president under the Constitution".


title: Louie Gohmert

text: On May 15, 2013, Gohmert said in a House Judiciary Hearing that he believed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) did not act with due diligence concerning alleged bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev. His contention was that the FBI was more interested in Christian groups such as those led by Billy and Franklin Graham than in groups that might be considered less politically correct to target. Attorney General Eric Holder responded to his claims: "The only observation I was going to make is that you state as a matter of fact what the FBI did and did not do. Unless somebody has done something inappropriate, you don't have access to the FBI files ... I know what the FBI did. You cannot know what I know. That's all". Gohmert objected to this on the grounds that Holder had "challenge[d]" his character and made several unsuccessful attempts to inject his viewpoint as a point of personal privilege.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: On January 3, 2013, Gohmert broke ranks with the House leadership to nominate Representative Allen West for Speaker of the House, although West narrowly lost his bid for reelection in 2012 and was no longer a member of Congress.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: Although Gohmert had previously ruled out the possibility of a bid for the U.S. Senate, in 2013 he was boosted by at least one "tea party" group (Grassroots America We the People) as a primary challenger to Senator John Cornyn.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: A vocal critic of Speaker John Boehner, Gohmert challenged his reelection to the speakership for the 114th Congress when Congress convened on January 6, 2015. Boehner was reelected, even though 25 Freedom Caucus Republicans chose not to vote for him. Gohmert received three of those votes.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: In 2017, Gohmert expressed fear that he might become the target of gun violence similar to that experienced by former Representative Gabby Giffords and refused to hold public town hall meetings.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: In April 2018, Gohmert testified at a hearing supporting Derrick Miller, a former US Army National Guardsman Sergeant who was sentenced to life in prison with the chance of parole for the premeditated murder of an Afghan civilian during a battlefield interrogation.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: In December 2020, Gohmert signed an amicus brief before the United States Supreme Court in "Texas v. Pennsylvania", et al., which sought to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election results. Later that month, he and several other plaintiffs filed a lawsuit in federal district court against Vice President Mike Pence, seeking to overturn parts of the federal Electoral Count Act and prevent electoral votes for Joe Biden from being counted in Congress.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: Gohmert was one of the 147 members of Congress to vote against certifying the results of the 2020 Electoral College in Congress on January 7, 2021, the day after the storming of the US Capitol.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: In June 2022, Gohmert said, "if you're a Republican, you can't even lie to Congress or lie to an FBI agent or they're coming after you", in response to the indictment of Trump adviser Peter Navarro for non-compliance with the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. In contrast, Gohmert claimed, "If you're a Democrat, then you can lie. You can cheat", referencing the acquittal of lawyer Michael Sussmann.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: Gohmert signed the Americans for Tax Reform's Taxpayer Protection Pledge. He offered an alternative plan to kick-start the economy with his tax holiday bill, which would allow taxpayers to be exempt for two months from having federal income tax taken out of their paychecks.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: He was one of a number of Republicans who voted against the Budget Control Act of 2011 on grounds it did not do enough to deal with the government's growing debt.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: Gohmert was one of four Republicans who joined 161 Democrats to vote against a balanced budget Constitutional amendment in November 2011.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: Gohmert strongly supported the Baseline Reform Act of 2013 (H.R. 1871; 113th Congress), a bill that would change the way in which discretionary appropriations for individual accounts are projected in the Congressional Budget Office's baseline. Under H.R. 1871, projections of such spending would still be based on the current year's appropriations, but would not be adjusted for inflation. Gohmert said, "conservatives have advocated for years that there should be no automatic spending increases in any federal department's budget ... that has been a trap so when we simply slow the rate of increase, we are accused of making draconian cuts." He argued the legislation would make clearer "what is an increase and what is a cut", put the government in the same situation as American families, and help with the task of getting the debt under control.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: Gohmert rejects the scientific consensus on climate change and has asserted that data supporting it is fraudulent. He opposes cap-and-trade legislation, such as the one that passed the U.S. House when it had a Democratic majority, and supports expanding drilling and exploration in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).


title: Louie Gohmert

text: In a July 8, 2015, interview on the C-SPAN program "Washington Journal", after Pope Francis issued his second encyclical "Laudato si'", Gohmert said Francis was incorrect to identify climate change as a serious problem. He supported the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: In a 2012 meeting of the House Natural Resources Committee, Gohmert stated his strong support of a trans-Alaskan pipeline as a means for caribou to have more sex. According to Gohmert, "When [the caribou] want to go on a date, they invite each other to head over to the pipeline. So [my] real concern now [is] ... if oil stops running through the pipeline ... do we need a study to see how adversely the caribou would be affected if that warm oil ever quit flowing?" Gohmert's comments were not favorably received by the rest of the committee.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: During a June 2021 House Natural Resources Committee hearing, Gohmert asked, "is there anything that the National Forest Service or BLM (Bureau of Land Management) can do to change the course of the moon’s orbit or the Earth’s orbit around the sun?" to mitigate climate change. Though some assumed he was being ironic, after receiving laughter and scorn for his comments online, Gohmert mistakenly believed that the scorn directed at him was due to the acronym "BLM" (as if people were confusing it with Black Lives Matter), and replied, "Exceedingly devious how you hid the context with an ellipses in your tweet. The hearing was about the BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT & climate change. BLM stands for the BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT", failing to realize people were laughing at him for asking his question seriously.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: Gohmert opposes abortion. He has said that he believes that life begins at conception. Gohmert sponsored the Sanctity of Human Life Act and voted for the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, a bill that prohibits the transportation of a minor across state lines for the purposes of an abortion without their parents' consent. He has a 100% pro-life voting record rating from the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC).


title: Louie Gohmert

text: At a congressional hearing on May 23, 2013, on an abortion bill that would ban the procedure after 20 weeks of pregnancy, Gohmert told the story of a couple he knew who decided to go through with their pregnancy despite learning of fetal anomalies. He told Zink, a witness, that she should have gone through with her pregnancy despite a doctor's opinion that the brain function was impaired, and then have a better assessment of the baby's health once it was born. Gohmert said, "Ms. Zink, having my great sympathy and empathy both, I still come back wondering, shouldn't we wait, like that couple did, and see if the child can survive before we decide to rip him apart? ... So these are ethical issues, they're moral issues, they're difficult issues, and the parents should certainly be consulted. But it just seems like it's a more educated decision if the child is in front of you to make those decisions".


title: Louie Gohmert

text: Gohmert opposes LGBT rights. In 2009, he voted against the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a bill that expanded federal hate crime law to cover crimes biased by the victim's sexual orientation or gender identity. In 2010, Gohmert opposed allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the U.S. military and voted against the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act. In 2015, Gohmert cosponsored a resolution to amend the US constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Gohmert also cosponsored a resolution disagreeing with the Supreme Court ruling in "Obergefell v. Hodges", which held that same-sex marriage bans are unconstitutional. In 2019, he expressed strong opposition to the Equality Act, a bill that would protect LGBT people against discrimination.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: On December 16, 2012, two days after the Sandy Hook shootings, Gohmert appeared on "Fox News Sunday" and suggested that the tragedy would have never happened had the teachers been armed. He told host Chris Wallace: "I wish to God that she [principal Dawn L. Hochsprung] had an M4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out... and takes him out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids." He claimed that the 20 victims who had been killed with a Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle had "defensive wounds".


title: Louie Gohmert

text: After the 2022 Uvalde school massacre, Gohmert said, "Maybe if we heard more prayers from leaders of this country instead of taking God's name in vain, we wouldn't have the mass killings like we didn't have before prayer was eliminated from schools."


title: Louie Gohmert

text: On March 22, 2016, Gohmert was one of four representatives to vote against H.R. 4742 (383 voted for it), a bill to authorize the National Science Foundation to support entrepreneurial programs for women. He said the following in defense of his position: he acknowledged the bill was "well-intentioned" but said "this program is designed to discriminate against that young, poverty-stricken boy and to encourage the girl. Forget the boy. Encourage the girl."


title: Louie Gohmert

text: On February 26, 2020, Gohmert voted against making lynching a federal hate crime. He said the 10-year sentence for lynching in the act was "ridiculous" and that crimes such as lynching should be prosecuted through state murder statutes, which is punishable up to death in Texas. Gohmert opposes federal hate crime legislation, saying that some hate crime legislation is unnecessary because assault and murder are already crimes.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: Although there is no evidence of its effectiveness, Gohmert strongly supports the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19, as he told Sean Hannity of Fox News in July 2020. He urged the Food and Drug Administration in April 2020 to approve the drug as an official treatment. In April 2020, Gohmert was criticized after falsely claiming that Germany had invented a "mist" that killed the coronavirus.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: Gohmert tested positive for COVID-19 on July 29, 2020, a day after he attended a House Judiciary Committee hearing without wearing a mask, a practice he had largely maintained for some time. In an interview, he suggested that he might have contracted the disease from wearing a mask. An anonymous Gohmert aide emailed "Politico" with complaints, thanking "Politico" for letting the office know Gohmert tested positive; that "Louie requires full staff to be in the office, including three interns, so that 'we could be an example to America on how to open up safely'"; and that "people were often berated for wearing a mask". Gohmert said he planned to take hydroxychloroquine as part of his treatment. On September 19, he was reported to be "glad to be on the other side" and to have donated his blood plasma (presumably for use in convalescent plasma therapy).


title: Louie Gohmert

text: In September 2021, Gohmert was among 75 House Republicans to vote against the National Defense Authorization Act of 2022, which contains a provision that would require women to be drafted.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: Gohmert was among 19 House Republicans to vote against the final passage of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: In November 2007, Gohmert introduced private relief bill, H.R. 4070, which would have stalled the deportation of an Albanian restaurateur from Gohmert's district who had fled to the United States in January 2001 after his brother witnessed the murder of a leading member of the Democratic Party of Albania.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: Gohmert voted against the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019 which would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to eliminate the per-country numerical limitation for employment-based immigrants, to increase the per-country numerical limitation for family-sponsored immigrants, and for other purposes.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: Gohmert voted against the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2020 which authorizes DHS to nearly double the available H-2B visas for the remainder of FY 2020.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: Gohmert voted against Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 1158) which effectively prohibits ICE from cooperating with Health and Human Services to detain or remove illegal alien sponsors of unaccompanied alien children (UACs).


title: Louie Gohmert

text: In December 2018, with the possibility of a government shutdown looming, the House passed a bill funding the government through February and providing $5.7 billion for the border wall between the United States and Mexico favored by President Trump hours after he told House Republican leaders that he would not sign a package passed in the Senate because it did not provide money for the barrier. After the shutdown commenced, Griff Jenkins asked Gohmert how long Trump should keep the government closed. Gohmert said that only a fourth of the government was shut down as Congress had already approved other portions of the funding through September 2019 and answered that Trump should keep it closed "till hell freezes over" as Congress owed Americans border security. He added that the most compassionate thing the US could do for Mexico and Central America was to not give either country "money that ends up in the hands of drug cartels." In a later statement, Gohmert said, "It is simply outrageous that people who live behind walls, gated communities, have armed body guards and lead the Democrat Party, like millionaire Speaker Pelosi, would deny the American public the simple right to be safe from dangerous criminal elements included in the groups pouring illegally into our country."


title: Louie Gohmert

text: In a speech about national security on the House floor in June 2010, Gohmert claimed that a retired FBI agent had told him that one of the things the FBI had been looking at were terrorist cells overseas sending young women to become pregnant so they would deliver the baby in the United States, and then take the baby with them back to be raised as a terrorist. When adult, this operative—a U.S. citizen by birth—could be easily infiltrated in the U.S. to carry out terrorist actions. On August 12, 2010, Gohmert appeared on "Anderson Cooper 360°" to defend comments he had recently made on the House floor about "terror babies".


title: Louie Gohmert

text: On "Fox Business News", Gohmert later claimed that an airline passenger with a relative in Hamas had a grandchild who was to be intentionally born in the United States. In the interview, he said that pregnant women from the Middle East were traveling to the U.S. on tourist visas, planning to deliver children there.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution states that children born on U.S. soil are U.S. citizens at birth. Gohmert asserted that the children would then be returned to the mothers' home countries and undergo terrorist training. When repeatedly asked by the host for evidence of this, Gohmert did not provide substantiation for either the ex-FBI agent story or the airline passenger story, but he did refer to a "Washington Post" article that said Chinese tourists sometimes travel to the U.S. to give birth in the U.S. Gohmert said this practice takes advantage of a "gaping hole in the security of our country".


title: Louie Gohmert

text: On June 13, 2012, Gohmert was one of five Republican United States representatives (with Michele Bachmann, Trent Franks, Tom Rooney, and Lynn Westmoreland) to send letters to the Inspectors General of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and the Department of State outlining their "serious national security concerns" and asking for "answers to questions regarding the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical groups' access to top Obama administration officials." In the letter, the lawmakers wrote about information they claimed "raises serious questions about Department of State policies and activities that appear to be a result of influence operations conducted by individuals and organizations associated with the Muslim Brotherhood."


title: Louie Gohmert

text: A letter to Ambassador Harold W. Geisel, the Deputy Inspector General of the United States Department of State, mentioned the Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, as an example of the undue influence. The letter said that Abedin, wife of former U.S. representative Anthony Weiner, who had access to sensitive national security and policy information, "has three family members—her late father, her mother and her brother—connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations", as backed up by a study by the Center for Security Policy.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: The letter and the Center for Security Policy's accusation were widely denounced as a smear, and achieved "near-universal condemnation", including from several prominent Republicans such as John McCain, John Boehner, Scott Brown, and Marco Rubio.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: Newt Gingrich praised Gohmert and his colleagues as the "National Security Five" in a "Politico" editorial. Gingrich wrote that he favored investigating the Muslim Brotherhood, and made clear his support for Gohmert and the other four representatives for raising concerns that improve national security. Conservative columnist Cal Thomas replied, to accusations of "McCarthyism", that the real possibility of infiltration by Islamic extremists deserves to be investigated.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: In a 2010 speech before the House, Gohmert read into the record parts of an op-ed by conservative columnist Thomas Sowell that compared President Obama to Adolf Hitler. Gohmert quoted a portion of Sowell's op-ed that stated that Hitler "deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics". Gohmert introduced his reading by saying, "I didn’t vote for Barack Obama in 2008, but I sure would have voted for Thomas Sowell".


title: Louie Gohmert

text: Gohmert was one of three Republicans who called for the resignation of Robert Mueller, the prosecutor investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, on the grounds that they believed Mueller could not conduct his investigation fairly "because of his relationship with James Comey, his successor at the bureau". As of March 2016, "[s]ix people connected to President Trump have been charged by the special counsel with an array of crimes, including financial fraud and lying to Congress and investigators. Five have been convicted or pleaded guilty. Twenty-eight others, including 26 Russians, also face charges." Mueller did not exonerate Trump on the issue of obstruction, a fact he reiterated during the House Judiciary Committee hearing. In a June 2019 interview with Politico, Gohmert called Mueller an "anal opening."


title: Louie Gohmert

text: In early 2018, Gohmert announced that he had introduced a resolution (H. Res. 791) to change the name of Cesar Chavez Day to Border Control Day, saying, "Chavez spent his life addressing the harmful effects that illegal migration might have on this country and advocating for a legal immigration process." The proposition was criticized by Arizona House Minority Leader Rebecca Rios and members of the Hispanic-American community, who felt it was disrespectful of Chavez's legacy.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: In December 2018, Gohmert was a guest on "Varney & Co.", on Fox Business discussing Google's work in China, when he digressed to say that it reminded him that "George Soros is supposed to be Jewish, but you wouldn't know it from the damage he's inflicted on Israel, and the fact that he turned on fellow Jews and helped take the property that they owned. This same kind of thing—Google coming from a free country and helping oppress." The allegation was criticized by NBC News for allegedly denigrating Soros's surviving the Holocaust.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: Within an hour, host Stuart Varney said on air, "In the last hour, one of our guests, Congressman Louie Gohmert, for some reason went out of his way to bring up George Soros, and made unsubstantiated and false allegations against him. I want to make clear those views are not shared by me, this program or anyone at Fox Business." Gohmert later responded that his words had not been anti-Jewish and were actually a "pro-Jewish statement on my part."


title: Louie Gohmert

text: In an open impeachment hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, Gohmert spoke the name of a man widely thought to be the whistleblower whose complaint sparked the first impeachment of Donald Trump.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: In December 2020, Gohmert was one of 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives to sign an amicus brief in support of "Texas v. Pennsylvania", a lawsuit filed at the United States Supreme Court contesting the results of the 2020 presidential election, in which Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case on the basis that Texas lacked standing under Article III of the Constitution to challenge the results of an election held by another state.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: On December 27, 2020, Gohmert filed a federal lawsuit against Vice President Mike Pence in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, authored by attorney Lawrence J. Joseph, in an attempt to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election. Gohmert's lawsuit alleged that the Electoral Count Act of 1887 was unconstitutional, seeking to grant the Vice President the power to reject state-certified presidential electors in favor of "competing slates of electors". Gohmert was joined in his lawsuit by 11 Arizona Republicans who would have become presidential electors had Trump actually won Arizona. The United States Department of Justice represented Pence in the case and argued for its dismissal.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: On January 1, 2021, Gohmert's lawsuit was dismissed by federal judge Jeremy Kernodle, a Trump appointee in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, because the plaintiffs lacked standing. Kernodle ruled that Gohmert lacked standing due to precedent set by the Supreme Court in 1997: alleging an "institutional injury to the House of Representatives" does not grant Gohmert standing to sue. Additionally, Kernodle ruled that the injury Gohmert was alleging depended on so many hypothetical and not yet realized events that it was "far too uncertain to support standing". Gohmert failed to make a case for how he was injured "as an individual", Kernodle said. As for the other plaintiffs, Kernodle ruled that they lacked standing because the injury they alleged was "not fairly traceable" to Pence.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: Gohmert appealed the district court's ruling that day. He also reacted to the dismissal by declaring that with "no remedy" provided, "in effect the ruling would be that you gotta go to the streets and be as violent as Antifa and BLM."


title: Louie Gohmert

text: On January 2, a three-judge panel on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit speedily and tersely rejected Gohmert's appeal; they "affirm the judgment" of the district court, "essentially for the reasons stated by the district court". The judges who presided over the appeal were Andy Oldham (appointed by Trump), Patrick Higginbotham and Jerry Edwin Smith (both appointed by Ronald Reagan).


title: Louie Gohmert

text: Gohmert then appealed to the Supreme Court, which on January 7 also tersely rejected his petition as "denied".


title: Louie Gohmert

text: In May 2021, Gohmert made a rambling speech in which he touched on several issues, including claiming he had very high SAT scores, and added, "I’m sure that shocks people that think I’m the dumbest guy in Congress", and then blamed the United States Department of Education for the trend of lower SAT scores. The speech itself was mocked for inaccurate statements. Lincoln Project founder Steve Schmidt had previously called Gohmert "America's craziest and dumbest congressman."


title: Louie Gohmert

text: In June 2021, during a House hearing, Gohmert asked a senior official with the United States Forest Service whether their agency or the Bureau of Land Management was capable of altering the orbit of the earth's moon, or the earth's orbit around the sun, as part of efforts to reduce the impacts of climate change. "Scientific American" pointed out the practical and theoretical problems involved in Gohmert's proposal.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: According to a U.S. Capitol Police intelligence assessment, during a Newsmax interview on January 1, 2021, "Gohmert claimed that letting the will of the voters stand would 'mean the end of our republic, the end of the experiment in self-government'" and "then seemed to encourage violence as a means to this end." The assessment quoted Gohmert saying, in part, "you gotta go to the streets and be as violent as Antifa and BLM." Gohmert denied he had advocated violence.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: In January 2021, before the end of Trump's term in office, Gohmert asked for a pardon for his actions in trying to help Trump overturn the 2020 election results.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: In June 2021, Gohmert was one of 21 House Republicans to vote against a resolution to give the Congressional Gold Medal to police officers who defended the U.S. Capitol during the January 6 United States Capitol attack.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: In July 2021, Gohmert suggested the January 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol was a conspiracy possibly set up by Democrats. In September 2022, upon the release of convicted January 6 participant Simone Gold from federal prison, he gave Gold an American flag that had flown on the Capitol.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: In June 2021, Gohmert's campaign was criticized for allegedly donating $5,500 to Faithful Word Baptist Church pastor Steven Anderson, who denies the Holocaust, promotes the death penalty for homosexuality, and publicly praised the Pulse nightclub shooting. Gohmert's chief of staff claimed this was a mistake and that the campaign actually paid a Christian singer with a similar name to perform at an event, and a staffer mistakenly listed the pastor’s name on the FEC disclosure form.


title: Louie Gohmert

text: Gohmert attends Green Acres Baptist Church in Tyler, where he has served as a deacon and teaches Sunday school. He is a Southern Baptist. He and his wife Kathy have three daughters.


title: Louis Conradt

text: Louis William "Bill" Conradt Jr. (January 30, 1950 – November 5, 2006) was an assistant district attorney from Texas. He was linked to "Dateline NBC's" "To Catch a Predator", a TV series that conducted sting operations against suspected sexual predators who targeted children online. Local law enforcement conducted a sting operation that identified Conradt as a suspect attempting to solicit sex from a person he believed was a 13-year-old boy, and "Dateline" cameras recorded the events that followed. Conradt shot and killed himself upon encountering police officers that were serving an arrest warrant at his home for his attempt to solicit a minor in sexual acts.


title: Louis Conradt

text: Louis Conradt was born in Terrell, Texas. Conradt graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and received his J.D. degree at Texas Tech University School of Law. He was the Kaufman County, Texas, district attorney for more than two decades before giving up his seat to make a failed run in 2002 to be the 86th State District Judge, losing to Republican Howard Tygrett. Afterward, he became Rockwall County's chief felony assistant district attorney. Conradt lived in Terrell, about an hour southeast of Murphy, where Perverted-Justice, working in conjunction with "Dateline", had set up shop to conduct its predator stings. Records show that Conradt was single and lived alone (when, in reality, he was married).


title: Louis Conradt

text: According to Perverted-Justice's logs, Conradt, posing as a 19-year-old university student, engaged in sexually charged online chats with a person using the alias of a fictional 13-year-old named Luke. Conradt solicited pictures of "Luke's" penis and sent him photos purporting to be of himself.


title: Louis Conradt

text: According to Perverted-Justice members, content from Conradt's MySpace page began to disappear, leading them to believe that Conradt was covering up his tracks. This played a part in the decision of the authorities to pursue a warrant for Conradt's arrest. Chris Hansen mentioned the disappearing page on his blog and on air. "Esquire" writer Luke Dittrich implies that the disappearing page pushed the participants to make an imminent move as, under Texas law, individuals may be charged with committing a crime if they participate in sexually explicit chats with persons identifying themselves as children. Later investigation by "Esquire" revealed that Conradt's page had not been touched for months before the sting. Perverted-Justice members claimed that Conradt had other MySpace pages, but never produced the evidence to prove the allegation. Hansen later admitted to "Esquire" that he did not remember actually seeing the page.


title: Louis Conradt

text: The official participants in the sting included Murphy police and the Terrell Police Department, including Terrell's SWAT team.


title: Louis Conradt

text: Also in that footage is Frag, a member of Perverted-Justice, who is seen advising police on what to do next. Chris Hansen denied that Perverted-Justice was present, but recanted when "Esquire" was able to describe what Frag looked like.


title: Louis Conradt

text: The warrants were signed shortly after 2 p.m. By this time, police and "Dateline" had been on the scene for hours. In fact, "Dateline" had shown up as long as five hours earlier, and later records showed that neighbors had phoned in suspicious persons reports.


title: Louis Conradt

text: According to the "Esquire" account (again, contested by "Dateline") "Dateline" crewmembers notified police that they observed that a Sunday newspaper on Conradt's doorstep had disappeared, indicating that Conradt was actually home.


title: Louis Conradt

text: Using the tip given to them by "Dateline", the police made a decision to call in a SWAT team and perform a tactical entry. They feared that Conradt was aware of their presence and was now destroying evidence. The police broke the door's lock and swept through the house. They encountered Conradt in a hallway. According to the officers' account, Conradt said a variation of "I'm not going to hurt anyone," before shooting himself with a Browning .380 handgun.


title: Louis Conradt

text: Three laptops, a cell phone and several computer disks found in the home also “all contained pornographic material (and) some included child pornography,” according to the state’s investigation.


title: Louis Conradt

text: In most cases, "To Catch a Predator" lured suspected sex offenders with an actor or actress pretending to be a child, into a home that was wired with cameras and surrounded by police. Conradt's death led to a surge of criticism of the show, which had already been the subject of critical scrutiny by media ethicists who objected to the deception used in the production's sting operations, as well as NBC's close relationship with local law enforcement agencies in the various localities in which they took place. A year after the incident, "Rolling Stone" and "Esquire" published articles denouncing "To Catch a Predator". "Esquire" obtained raw footage of the incident that contradicted "Dateline"'s and host Chris Hansen's previous denials of the show's collusion with law enforcement officials.


title: Louis Conradt

text: Perverted-Justice founder Xavier von Erck called the "Esquire" article fiction. He did not respond to the "Esquire" story's allegation or supporting evidence that "Dateline" and Perverted-Justice directed police actions in the Conradt case; rather, he reiterated his disgust for Conradt's behavior. In an email response to "The Houston Chronicle", he wrote:


title: Louis Conradt

text: "The idea that anything led to the suicide of Conradt other than his want to avoid potential penalties for soliciting a 13-year-old boy sexually is outlandish. We encourage all interested to read the Conradt chat-logs and verification call recordings. Once you do that, you then immediately know why Conradt shot himself rather than face the criminal justice system."


title: Louis Conradt

text: Evidence derived from the aired February 20, 2007, episode of "To Catch a Predator" was used as part of a $100 million lawsuit by Conradt's sister, Patricia Conradt, against NBC Universal. In March 2008, Judge Chin agreed to allow her infliction of emotional distress and civil rights claims to be heard by a jury.


title: Louis Conradt

text: ABC News later conducted an investigation of the incident for its own news program, "20/20" (see "To Catch a Predator" for more information).


title: Louis Conradt

text: On June 24, 2008, the lawsuit brought against NBC Universal by Patricia Conradt was "amicably resolved" out of court.


title: Tartu

text: Tartu is the second largest city in Estonia after the Northern European country's political and financial capital, Tallinn. Tartu has a population of 91,407 (as of 2021). It is southeast of Tallinn and 245 kilometres (152 miles) northeast of Riga, Latvia. Tartu lies on the Emajõgi river, which connects the two largest lakes in Estonia, Lake Võrtsjärv and Lake Peipus. From the 13th century until the end of the 19th century, Tartu was known in most of the world by variants of its historical name Dorpat.


title: Tartu

text: Tartu, the largest urban centre of southern Estonia, is often considered the "intellectual capital city" of the country, especially as it is home to the nation's oldest and most renowned university, the University of Tartu (founded in 1632). Tartu also houses the Supreme Court of Estonia, the Ministry of Education and Research, the Estonian National Museum, and the oldest Estonian-language theatre, Vanemuine. It is also the birthplace of the Estonian Song Festivals.


title: Tartu

text: Since Estonia became an independent country in 1918, the Estonian-language "Tartu" (), alternative South Estonian spelling: "Tarto") has been the only name in official use but throughout its history there have also been various names for it in other languages. Most of them derive ultimately from the earliest attested form, the Estonian "Tarbatu". In German, Swedish and Polish the town has been known, and up until the 20th century was sometimes referred to, as , a variant of "Tarbatu". In Russian the city has been known as ("Yur′yev", after Yuri, the baptismal name of grand prince Yaroslav I the Wise) and as ("Derpt", from the Low German variant of "Dorpat"). Similarly the city has been known as "Tērbata" in Latvian, and Finnish speakers use the toponym "Tartto".


title: Tartu

text: Tartu lies on the Emajõgi river whose name "ema jõgi" translates to modern Estonian as ‘mother river’.


title: Tartu

text: Archaeological evidence of the first permanent settlement on the site of modern Tartu dates to as early as the 5th century AD. By the 7th century, local inhabitants had built a wooden fortification on the east side of Toome Hill ("Toomemägi"). Over the next centuries the settlement grew, and around 9th–10th centuries became an inland trading center.


title: Tartu

text: The first documented records of the area were made by later mediaeval chroniclers who described the events of the early 11th century Kievan Rus. Yaroslav I the Wise, Grand Prince of Kiev, invaded the region of Tartu in ca 1030, and after a victorious battle with the local tribe of Ungannians built his own fort there, and named it "Yuryev". Tartu may have remained under Kievan Rus' control until 1061, when, according to chronicles, the "Yuryev" fort was burned down by "Sosols" (probably Oeselians, Sackalians, or another Estonian tribe). Soon afterwards the fort was rebuilt. In the 12th century, local Ungannians on one side and troops from the neighbouring Novgorod Republic on the other side repeatedly raided each other. In those campaigns, the invaders were reportedly able to capture Tartu in 1133 or 1134, and in the winter of 1191–1192, however these temporary captures are not known to have brought any lasting territorial changes.


title: Tartu

text: During the period of Northern Crusades in the beginning of the 13th century the fort of "Tarbatu" (or "Tharbata", Tartu) was captured by the crusading Teutonic knights — also known as the Brothers of the Sword — and recaptured by Estonians on several occasions. In 1224, after the princes of Novgorod and Pskov had sent additional troops led by prince Vyachko of Kukenois to aid the Estonian defenders of the fort, it was besieged and conquered for one last time by the Teutonic crusaders. Subsequently, known as Dorpat (Latin: "Tarbatum"), Tartu became a commercial centre of considerable importance during the later Middle Ages and the capital of the semi-independent Bishopric of Dorpat.


title: Tartu

text: In 1262 the army of prince Dmitri of Pereslavl launched an assault on Dorpat, capturing and destroying the town. His troops did not manage to capture the bishop's fortress on Toome Hill. The event was recorded both in subsequent German and Old East Slavic chronicles, which also provided the first record of a settlement of German merchants and artisans which had arisen alongside the bishop's fortress.


title: Tartu

text: In medieval times, after the Livonian Order was subsumed into the Teutonic Knights in 1236, the town became an important trading city. In the 1280s Dorpat joined the Hanseatic League.


title: Tartu

text: In 1558, tsar Ivan the Terrible invaded Tartu beginning the Livonian War. Forces under the command of Pyotr Shuiski encircled the town and began the heavy bombardment. In light of this and without any prospect of external help the town surrendered. The local bishop was imprisoned in Moscow, which effectively ended the period of local self-government. In the effect of the Truce of Jam Zapolski of 1582, the city along with southern regions of Livonian Confederation became part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1598 it became the capital of the Dorpat Voivodeship of the Duchy of Livonia. A Jesuit grammar school "Gymnasium Dorpatense" was established in 1583. In addition, a translators' seminary was organized in Tartu and the city received its red and white flag from the Polish king Stephen Báthory.


title: Tartu

text: The activities of both the grammar school and the seminary were stopped by the Polish–Swedish War. Already in late 1600 the forces of Charles IX of Sweden besieged the city defended by three banners of reiters and the city's burghers. Despite repeated assaults, the Swedes could not enter the city. Finally in 1601 Capt. Hermann Wrangel switched sides, assaulted the castellan and opened the gates for the Swedish forces. The town was retaken by Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth on 13 April 1603 following a brief siege led by hetman Jan Karol Chodkiewicz; roughly 1000 Swedish soldiers surrendered and were escorted to Tallinn.


title: Tartu

text: In the effect of yet another Polish-Swedish War, in 1625 Tartu was once again captured by Sweden, this time for good. In the effect of the 1629 Truce of Altmark the city became part of the Dominions of Sweden, which led to the foundation of the University of Tartu in 1632 by king Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden.


title: Tartu

text: In 1704 the town was taken by the Russian army in the presence of tsar Peter the Great himself. As a result, around a quarter of the town and much of the fortifications were damaged. In 1708 the remainder of the fortifications and houses, including the remains of bishops castle, were blown up, all movable property was looted and all citizens deported to Russia. With the Treaty of Nystad in 1721, the city became part of the Russian Empire and was known as "Derpt". Fires in the 18th century destroyed much of the medieval architecture, the Great Fire of Tartu in 1775 removed most of the buildings in the centre. The city was rebuilt along Late Baroque and Neoclassical lines including the Tartu Town Hall which was built between 1782 and 1789. In 1783 the city became the centre of Derpt uyezd within the Governorate of Livonia.


title: Tartu

text: During the second half of the 19th century, Tartu was the cultural centre for Estonians in the era of Romantic nationalism. The city hosted Estonia's first song festival in 1869. "Vanemuine", the first national theatre, was established in 1870. Tartu was also the setting for the foundation of the Society of Estonian Writers in 1872.


title: Tartu

text: Tartu railway station was opened in 1876 when Tapa–Tartu route was built. The station building was opened in 1877. In the history of tuberculosis, in 1891 The Veterinary College at Dorpat produced seminal research using the Tuberculin test on 1,000 cattle.


title: Tartu

text: In 1893, the city was officially retitled to the ancient Russian name "Yuryev". The university was subsequently russified from 1895 on with the introduction of compulsory Russian in teaching. Much of the university property was relocated to Voronezh in 1918 and during the German occupation, the University worked under the name Landesuniversität Dorpat. During the Estonian War of Independence the university of Tartu was re-opened as an Estonian language university on 1 December 1919.


title: Tartu

text: With Estonian independence after World War I, the city officially became known by the Estonian name "Tartu". At the end of the 1918–1920 Estonian War of Independence following World War I, a peace treaty between the Bolshevik Russia and Estonia was signed on 2 February 1920 in Tartu (Treaty of Tartu). With the treaty, Soviet Russia renounced territorial claims to Estonia "for all time".


title: Tartu

text: During the interwar period Tähtvere neighbourhood was built, former Raadi Manor buildings started to house Estonian National Museum (destroyed during Tartu Offensive in 1944) and art school Pallas was opened.


title: Tartu

text: During World War II, the Stalinist Soviet Union invaded and occupied Estonia and Tartu in June 1940. Large parts of the city as well as the historical "Kivisild" ("Stone bridge", built in 1776–1778) over the Emajõgi river were destroyed by the retreating Soviet Army, partly in 1941 and almost completely in 1944 by then retreating German Army. Already heavily damaged, Tartu was repeatedly bombed by the Soviet air forces on 27 January 1943, on 26 February 1944, on 7–8 March 1944, and on 25–26 March 1944. After the war ended, much of the city's historic centre was left in ruins. Even the less damaged buildings in entire city blocks were demolished by the Soviet occupation authorities and large swathes of previously residential areas were turned into parks and parking lots.


title: Tartu

text: After the war, the Soviet authorities declared Tartu a "closed town for foreigners", as an airbase for bombers was constructed on Raadi Airfield, in the northeast outskirts of the city. It was one of the largest military airbases in the former Eastern Bloc and housed strategic bombers carrying nuclear bombs. On one end of an older strip of the runway, the new building of Estonian National Museum was built.


title: Tartu

text: Tartu Airport was opened in the south of the city in 1946. Besides the airport Estonian Aviation Academy was established in 1993. Privately owned Estonian Aviation Museum, which is 5 km to the East from the airport (7 km by car), was opened to the public in 2002.


title: Tartu

text: During the 1944–1991 Soviet occupation the population of Tartu almost doubled from 57,000 to above 100,000 — due to mass immigration from Russia and other areas of the former Soviet Union, in large part because of the military airbase.


title: Tartu

text: Since Estonia regained its independence in 1991, the old town centre has been renovated. Notably, St. John's Church, in ruins since World War II, has been restored. Many new commercial and business buildings have been erected ("Tartu Kaubamaja", "Tasku", "Emajõe kaubanduskeskus", "Lõunakeskus", "Kvartal", etc.). The highest residential building and local landmark "Tigutorn" was opened in 2008.


title: Tartu

text: The AHHAA science centre relocated to a new building in 2011 and the Estonian National Museum's new main building opened in 2016.


title: Tartu

text: Tartu lies within the temperate humid continental climate zone (Dfb). The climate is rather mild considering the high latitude, largely due to the proximity of the Baltic Sea and warm airflows from the Atlantic. Nevertheless, continental influence can be felt on hot summer days and cold spells in winter, when the temperature can occasionally (but rarely) drop below . Generally, summers are warm and winters are cold.


title: Tartu

text: The Tartu weather station is located in Tõravere village, which is about 20 kilometers from the city, so the actual temperature in the city may be slightly warmer than the official average temperatures.


title: Tartu

text: Mostly known as a university town, Tartu is also a site of heavy industry. The food industry has traditionally been important for the town's economy and some bigger companies in the field include A. Le Coq, Tartu Mill and Salvest. Kroonpress is one of the leading printing press companies in the Baltics.


title: Tartu

text: At the beginning of the 21st century, many ICT enterprises and other high-tech companies have taken a foothold in Tartu. Notable examples include Playtech Estonia, Nortal (formerly Webmedia Group), ZeroTurnaround, Tarkon, Reach-U and Raintree Estonia. Skype has an office in Tartu. The university is one of the largest employers, which explains the large proportion of highly skilled professionals – researchers, professors, doctors, and Tartu University Clinic has been considered the largest employer of Tartu.


title: Tartu

text: The city is served by Tartu Airport. The distance to Estonia's "summer holiday capital", Pärnu (in the western Estonia) is and the fastest route there by road is through Viljandi and Kilingi-Nõmme. Tartu is connected to Riga, Tallinn, and other Estonian towns by many bus and train routes.


title: Tartu

text: Tartu's historic population is presented in the following table, based on data from official censuses since 1881 and Estonian Statistical Office. Note that the data up to 2011 is not directly comparable to the most recent numbers, as the methodology of compiling population statistics has changed.


title: Tartu

text: Tartu is officially divided into 17 neighbourhoods, which carry no administrative purposes. Their names and borders are defined.


title: Tartu

text: The city is best known for being home to the University of Tartu (formerly known as the University of Dorpat; ), founded under King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden in 1632. Mainly for this reason, Tartu is also – tongue-in-cheek – known as "Athens of the Emajõgi" or as "Heidelberg of the North".


title: Tartu

text: Tartu is also the seat of the Estonian University of Life Sciences, the Baltic Defence College, Estonian Aviation Academy (formerly known as Tartu Aviation College), and the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research. Other notable institutions include the Supreme Court of Estonia (re-established in Tartu in autumn 1993), the Estonian Historical Archives, Estonian National Museum, Estonian Sports and Olympic Museum as well as the oldest and renowned theatre in the country, Vanemuine, where they have a well-respected ballet company as well as theatre, opera and musical productions.


title: Tartu

text: Most of the sculptures in Tartu are dedicated to historical figures. Among them the most famous are the Barclay de Tolly monument on the Barclay Square in downtown, the Kissing Students monument on the town hall square and Gustav II Adolf´s monument on the Kuningaplats.


title: Tartu

text: Tartu has been an intellectual centre of both Estonia and the Baltic countries for several centuries. Scholars hailing from Tartu include the pioneer of embryology Karl Ernst von Baer, a pioneer of animal behaviour studies Jakob von Uexküll, and a cultural theorist and semiotician Juri Lotman. Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz, a Baltic German physician, naturalist, and entomologist, was born in Tartu. He was one of the earliest scientific explorers of the Pacific region, making significant collections of flora and fauna in Alaska, California, and Hawaii. Nobel Chemistry Prize laureate Wilhelm Ostwald studied and worked in Tartu. The Tartu School is one of the leading scientific schools in semiotics.


title: Tartu

text: The architecture and city planning of historical Tartu mainly go back to the pre-independence period, with Germans forming the upper and middle classes of society, and therefore contributing many architects, professors and local politicians.


title: Tartu

text: Most notable are the old Lutheran St. John's Church (, ), the 18th-century town hall, the university building, ruins of the 13th-century cathedral, the botanical gardens, the main shopping street, many buildings around the town hall square and Barclay Square.


title: Tartu

text: The historical slum area called Supilinn ("Soup Town") is located on the bank of river Emajõgi, near the town centre and is regarded as one of the few surviving "poor" neighbourhoods of 19th-century Europe. At the moment Supilinn is being rapidly renovated, undergoing a slow transformation from the historic slum into a prestigious high-class neighborhood. The active community embodied by the Supilinn Society is committed to preserving the heritage.


title: Tartu

text: The Second World War destroyed large parts of the city centre and during the Soviet occupation, many new buildings were erected – notably the new Vanemuine Theater. The effects of the war are still witnessed by the relative abundance of parks and greenery in the historic centre. Typical Soviet-style neighbourhoods of blocks of high-rise flats were built between World War II and the restoration of Estonian independence in 1991, the largest such district being Annelinn.


title: Tartu

text: Presently, Tartu is also known for several modern buildings of the "steel, concrete and glass" variation, but has managed to retain a mix of old and new buildings in the centre of town. Notable examples include the Tigutorn Tower and the Emajõe Centre, both built during the current period of independence; Tartu's tallest and second tallest towers, respectively. Tartu's large student population means that it has a comparatively thriving nightlife, with many nightclubs, bars, and restaurants, including the world's highest-ceiling pub, in the historic Gunpowder Cellar of Tartu.


title: Tartu

text: Annually, in the summer, Tartu hosts the Hanseatic Days festival () to celebrate its Hanseatic heritage. The festival includes events such as handicraft markets, historic workshops and jousting tournaments.


title: Tartu

text: Tartu is the home for basketball club Tartu Ülikool/Rock, which participates in the Korvpalli Meistriliiga and the Latvian-Estonian Basketball League.


title: Tartu

text: Football club JK Tammeka Tartu, one of the Meistriliiga clubs, is located in Tartu. Their home stadium is the Tamme Staadion, which has a capacity of 1600. The city is also home to the Tartu JK Welco and FC Santos Tartu clubs, which play in the Esiliiga, the second division.


title: Tartu

text: Tartu has a professional volleyball club, Bigbank Tartu, as well as the handball team, the Tartu Ülikool/Glassdrive, which plays in the second division of Estonian handball.


title: Tartu

text: Tartu is also the hometown of Clement "Puppey" Ivanov, captain of Team Secret, a professional Dota 2 team. He won the first International, and was runner-up two years in a row with Natus Vincere.


title: Bay of Fundy

text: The Bay of Fundy () is a bay between the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with a small portion touching the U.S. state of Maine. It is an arm of the Gulf of Maine. Its extremely high tidal range is the highest in the world. The name is likely a corruption of the French word , meaning 'split'.


title: Bay of Fundy

text: The tidal range in the Bay of Fundy is about ; the average tidal range worldwide is only . Some tides are higher than others, depending on the position of the moon, the sun, and atmospheric conditions. Tides are semidiurnal, meaning they have two highs and two lows each day, with about six hours and 13 minutes between each high and low tide.


title: Bay of Fundy

text: Because of tidal resonance in the funnel-shaped bay, the tides that flow through the channel are very powerful. In one 12-hour tidal cycle, about 100 billion tons (110 billion short tons) of water flows in and out of the bay, which is twice as much as the combined total flow of all the rivers of the world over the same period. The Annapolis Royal Generating Station, a 20 MW tidal power station on the Annapolis River upstream of Annapolis Royal, was one of the few tidal generating stations in the world, and the only one in North America.


title: Bay of Fundy

text: Most of the rivers have a tidal bore, a wave front of the incoming tide that "bores" its way up a river against its normal flow. Notable ones include those on the Petticodiac, Maccan, St. Croix, and Kennetcook rivers. Before the construction of a causeway in 1968 and subsequent siltation of the river, the Petitcodiac River had one of the world's largest tidal bores, up to high. Since the opening of the causeway gates in 2010, the bore has been coming back, and in 2013 surfers rode it a record-breaking .


title: Bay of Fundy

text: Other phenomena include the Reversing Falls near the mouth of the Saint John River, a rip tide at Cape Enrage, and the Old Sow whirlpool at Passamaquoddy Bay.


title: Bay of Fundy

text: The story of the Fundy Basin begins about 200 million years ago in the early Jurassic, when all land on earth was part of a supercontinent called Pangaea. At that time what is now the Maritimes was situated near the equator and had a warm tropical climate and lush vegetation. As continental drift reshaped the world, rift valleys formed, including the Cobequid–Chedabucto fault system.


title: Bay of Fundy

text: During the continental breakup, magma erupted as basaltic lavas and left igneous rock formations such as the columnar jointing which can be seen on Brier and Grand Manan islands, among other places around the bay. These flows often are the sites of rarer mineral deposits including agate, amethyst, and stilbite, the latter being the provincial mineral of Nova Scotia.


title: Bay of Fundy

text: These rifts filled with sediment which became sedimentary rock. Many fossils have been found along the Fundy shoreline. The oldest dinosaur fossil in Canada was found at Burntcoat Head. Very early reptiles have been discovered in Carboniferous tree trunks at Joggins. Wasson Bluff has a rich trove of Jurassic fossils.


title: Bay of Fundy

text: The bay is a member of the Global Geoparks Network, a UNESCO initiative to promote and conserve the planet's geological heritage.


title: Bay of Fundy

text: Although some land areas are protected, there is no formal marine protection zone in the bay. The Conservation Council of New Brunswick works to protect the ecosystem of the bay. A result of shipping traffic has been the potential for increased collisions between ships and the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. In 2003, the Canadian Coast Guard adjusted shipping lanes crossing prime whale feeding areas at the entrance to the Bay of Fundy to lessen the risk of collision. Many other marine mammals are found in the bay including fin whales, humpback whales, minke whales, Atlantic white-sided dolphin and the harbour porpoise.


title: Bay of Fundy

text: The Bay of Fundy mudflats are a rare and unique intertidal habitat. Major mudflats are found on around the Maringouin Peninsula which lies between Shepody Bay and the Cumberland Basin and at the northern end of Chignecto Bay. On the Nova Scotia side, mudflats are found on the southern side of the Minas Basin and in Cobequid Bay. In the Minas Basin, the size of the mudflats from low to high water marks is as much as . Due to tidal turbulence, the water in these area contains very high amounts of fine sediment, source from tidal erosion of Carboniferous and Triassic sedimentary rock. Primary producers include hollow green weed, phytoplankton, algae, and sea lettuce.


title: Bay of Fundy

text: The Miꞌkmaq fished in the Bay of Fundy and lived in communities around the bay for centuries before the first Europeans arrived. According to Miꞌkmaq legend, the tide was created when Glooscap wanted to take a bath.


title: Bay of Fundy

text: The first European to visit the bay may have been Portuguese explorer João Álvares Fagundes in about 1520, although the bay does not appear on Portuguese maps until 1558. The first European settlement was French, founded at Saint Croix Island in Maine, and then Port Royal, founded by Pierre Dugua and Samuel de Champlain in 1605. Champlain named it "Labaye Francoise" (The French Bay). Champlain describes finding an old rotted cross in the bay which may have been left by the Portuguese.


title: Bay of Fundy

text: The village was the first permanent European settlement north of the Spanish St. Augustine, Florida, and predated by two years the first permanent British settlement in Jamestown, Virginia. About 75 years later, Acadians spread out along the bay, founding Grand-Pré, Beaubassin, Cobequid, and Pisiguit.


title: Bay of Fundy

text: There was much military action and many attacks on the settlements around the bay, first as the French and British fought for control of the area, leading to the expulsion of the Acadians, and later by Americans during the American Revolution and the War of 1812.


title: Bay of Fundy

text: In the 19th century, the bay was the site of much shipping, and shipbuilders flourished, including James Moran of St. Martins, New Brunswick, Joseph Salter, of Moncton, and William D. Lawrence of Maitland, Nova Scotia. Fundy ports produced the fastest ship in the world, ; the largest wooden ship ever built in Canada, ; and the first female sea captain in the western world, Molly Kool. The mystery ship was also built there.


title: Bay of Fundy

text: The highest water level ever recorded, , occurred in October 1869. It caused extensive destruction to ports and communities, much of which was attributed to a two-metre storm surge created by the Saxby Gale, a tropical cyclone, which coincided with a perigean spring tide. Waves breached dykes protecting low-lying farmland in the Minas Basin and the Tantramar Marshes, sending ocean waters surging far inland.


title: Bay of Fundy

text: The largest population centre on the bay is Saint John, New Brunswick, a major port and the first incorporated city in what is now Canada. Other settlements include, in New Brunswick, St. Andrews, Blacks Harbour, Grand Manan, Campobello, St. Martins, Alma, Riverside-Albert, Hopewell Cape, and Sackville, and in Nova Scotia, Amherst, Advocate Harbour, Parrsboro, Truro, Maitland, Cheverie, Windsor, Wolfville, Canning, Annapolis Royal, and Digby.


title: Bay of Fundy

text: The port of Saint John gives access to the pulp and paper industry and the Irving oil refinery. Hantsport, Nova Scotia, also has a pulp and paper mill and ships gypsum to the United States.


title: Noblesse (manhwa)

text: Noblesse () is a South Korean manhwa released as a webtoon written by Son Je-ho and illustrated by Lee Kwangsu. "Noblesse" was first posted on Naver Corporation's webtoon platform Naver Webtoon in December 2007, and was concluded in January 2019; it was among the first webtoons to receive an official English translation at the launch of Line Webtoon in July 2014. It has been adapted into an aeni in 2015 and an original net animation (ONA) in 2016, and an anime television series by Production I.G aired from October to December 2020 on Crunchyroll.


title: Noblesse (manhwa)

text: A powerful noble, Cadis Etrama Di Raizel (referred to as Rai), has been asleep for 820 years with no knowledge of mankind's advancement and scientific successes. At the start of the webtoon, Rai wakes up in an abandoned building in South Korea, and starts to get used to the modern world. He goes to a school, where he reunites with his loyal servant Frankenstein. With Frankenstein's help, Rai enrolls into high school and inadvertently befriends athletic teenager Shinwoo, computer geek Ikhan, and Shinwoo's crush Yuna, and a few others. "Noblesse" follows the group's often dangerous adventures against a secret organization while uncovering Rai's past.


title: Noblesse (manhwa)

text: An ancient and powerful race that possess great strength, speed and telepathy as well as various blood related abilities, such as the talent to grant similar powers to others via contracts "of blood and soul." They reside on an island nation, known as Lukedonia, that cannot be detected by human senses. They have guarded humans against predators and the forces of nature as long as they have existed, due to a genetic inability to ignore the slaughter of the weak, helpless humans. Thousands of years ago, they were worshipped as gods by various cultures around the world.


title: Noblesse (manhwa)

text: The first animated version of "Noblesse" was revealed at the 17th Bucheon International Animation Festival. Its screening time was 37 minutes. It was produced by Studio Animal, a South Korean animation studio, and the animation was first released as a DVD by Woongjin Thinkbig Funnism on December 4, 2015, while its VOD service started later on February 4, 2016.


title: Noblesse (manhwa)

text: On December 4, 2015, "Noblesse: Beginning of Destruction" (Kor. 노블레스: 파멸의 시작: Pamyeol-ui Sijak) was created by Korean animation studio as the first full-length animated version of "Noblesse". It was an OVA revealed at the 17th Bucheon International Animation Festival in DVD form, from Woongjin Thinkbig Funnism.


title: Noblesse (manhwa)

text: On February 4, 2016, a 31-minute original net animation (ONA), titled "Noblesse: Awakening", was released on Crunchyroll and YouTube. Animated by Production I.G, the anime covers the first volume of the manhwa in a heavily abridged format with several minor changes to the story.


title: Noblesse (manhwa)

text: On August 2, 2019 at Comic Con Seoul, it was announced that an anime television series adaptation was currently in production. Production I.G animated the series, and Crunchyroll streamed it internationally outside Asian regions as a co-production. The series is licensed by Muse Communication in Southeast Asia. In an interview, Jeho Son said during an interview for the series "We recently completed Noblesse, which is a very special project to us. As of this year, it has taken us 11 long years to complete this project. When Lee Kwang Soo and I began work on Noblesse, we thought of the many dreams we wanted to accomplish together. One of the dreams was to have one of our works showcased as a TV animation, which came true. This was all thanks to our viewers, who showed love for Noblesse. I would like to thank Naver, Webtoon, and Production I.G for doing an amazing job on the animation. I hope the viewers find Noblesse exciting and enjoy watching it." The series was directed by Yasutaka Yamamoto, with Sayaka Harada handling series composition, and Akiharu Ishii handling character designs. Yoshihiro Ike and Shun Narita composed the series' music.


title: Noblesse (manhwa)

text: It aired from October 7 to December 30, 2020 on Crunchyroll. In Japan, the series was televised an hour after its Crunchyroll launch, on Tokyo MX and two hours and thirty minutes after, on BS11. Kim Jae-joong performed the series' opening theme song "BREAKING DAWN", while Oh My Girl performed the series' ending theme song "Etoile." On November 11, 2020, Crunchyroll announced dubs for the series in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and German, which premiered on November 18, 2020.


title: Noblesse (manhwa)

text: The Noblesse anime series takes place directly after the events of the "Noblesse: Awakening" ONA, and begins from the second volume of the manhwa.


title: Noblesse (manhwa)

text: On November 7, 2016, Air Seoul announced that it had collaborated with Naver Webtoon to produce a safety video. Some of the works shown here include Denma, The Sound of Heart, and Noblesse.


title: Noblesse (manhwa)

text: In March 2016, four characters from "Noblesse" were added as player characters in Nexon's 2015 mobile game "Fantasy War Tactics". For the duration of the month, various special "Noblesse"-related items were added, such as a "Noblesse Coin" and "Noblesse Black Coocoo" equipment.


title: Noblesse (manhwa)

text: The first episode of "Alpha" is about the Union, the modified human, and the experimenter. At the end, there is a logo called JHS studio, which reveals that Alpha, and this work are in the same world. Because the representative of JHS studio is Son Je-ho, who was the author of this work.


title: Elaine Cassidy

text: Elaine Cassidy (born 31 December 1979) is an Irish actress. She is best known for playing DC Dinah Kowalska in "No Offence", Abby Mills in the American television series "Harper's Island" for CBS, Felicia in "Felicia's Journey", Runt in "Disco Pigs", Lydia in "The Others", Amy Harris in "The Ghost Squad" and Katherine Glendenning in "The Paradise".


title: Elaine Cassidy

text: Cassidy was born in Raheny, and moved with her family to Kilcoole when she was three years old. Her first role was as the title character in a school production of "Pinocchio" when she was five.


title: Elaine Cassidy

text: In 1996, Cassidy was nominated for the Most Promising Actress at the Geneva Film Festival for her role in "The Sun, the Moon and the Stars". She played the starring role in "Felicia's Journey", for which she was nominated Best Actress at the 20th Genie Awards. She has won 2 Irish Film and Television Awards (IFTA) for Best Actress in a Lead Role in Film in 2003 for her role as Runt in "Disco Pigs", and in 2010 for Best Actress in a Lead Role in Television for her role as Abby Mills in the American CBS TV series "Harper's Island". She was also nominated for an IFTA in 2005 as Best Actress in a Lead Role in Television for her role as "Maud Lilly" in the BBC BAFTA nominated drama "Fingersmith", in 2007 as Best Actress in a Supporting Role in Film for her role as Sandra in "And When Did You Last See Your Father?", and in 2009 as Best Actress in a Lead Role in Television for her role as Annie Mulcahy in "Little White Lie".


title: Elaine Cassidy

text: She is also a stage actress, appearing in "The Lieutenant of Inishmore" (2002) and "The Crucible" (2006) with the Royal Shakespeare Company and in "There Came A Gypsy Riding" at the Almeida Theatre in 2007. She appeared in the music video for Coldplay's "The Scientist". She plays DC Dinah Kowalska in "No Offence" and Sarah Manning in "Acceptable Risk".


title: Elaine Cassidy

text: She also plays Maureen in the one-off ITV drama special of the book "Just Henry", which was made into film in August 2011 and screened on ITV on 18 December 2011.


title: Elaine Cassidy

text: Cassidy married English actor Stephen Lord, whom she met on the set of "The Truth", on 31 December 2007. They live in Greenwich, London, with their daughter Kila (born 16 September 2009) and son Lynott Lord Cassidy (born 23 January 2013).


title: Religious text

text: Religious texts, including scripture, are texts which various religions consider to be of central importance to their religious tradition. They differ from literature by being a compilation or discussion of beliefs, mythologies, ritual practices, commandments or laws, ethical conduct, spiritual aspirations, and for creating or fostering a religious community. The relative authority of religious texts develops over time and is derived from the ratification, enforcement, and its use across generations. Some religious texts are accepted or categorized as , some non-canonical, and others extracanonical, semi-canonical, deutero-canonical, pre-canonical or post-canonical.


title: Religious text

text: "Scripture" (or "scriptures") is a subset of religious texts considered to be "especially authoritative", revered and "holy writ", "sacred, canonical", or of "supreme authority, special status" to a religious community. The terms "sacred text" and "religious text" are not necessarily interchangeable in that some religious texts are believed to be sacred because of the belief in some theistic religions such as the Abrahamic religions that the text is divinely or supernaturally revealed or divinely inspired, or in non-theistic religions such as some Indian religions they are considered to be the central tenets of their eternal "Dharma". Many religious texts, in contrast, are simply narratives or discussions pertaining to the general themes, interpretations, practices, or important figures of the specific religion. In others (Christianity), the canonical texts include a particular text (Bible) but is "an unsettled question", according to Eugene Nida. In yet others (Hinduism, Buddhism), there "has never been a definitive canon". While the term "scripture" is derived from the Latin "scriptura", meaning "writing", most sacred scriptures of the world's major religions were originally a part of their oral tradition, and were "passed down through memorization from generation to generation until they were finally committed to writing", according to the "Encyclopaedia Britannica".


title: Religious text

text: Religious texts also serve a ceremonial and liturgical role, particularly in relation to sacred time, the liturgical year, the divine efficacy and subsequent holy service; in a more general sense, its performance.


title: Religious text

text: According to Peter Beal, the term "scripture" – derived from ""scriptura"" (Latin) – meant "writings [manuscripts] in general" prior to the medieval era, then became "reserved to denote the texts of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible". Beyond Christianity, according to the "Oxford World Encyclopedia", the term "scripture" has referred to a text accepted to contain the "sacred writings of a religion", while "The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions" states it refers to a text "having [religious] authority and often collected into an accepted canon". In modern times, this equation of the written word with religious texts is particular to the English language, and is not retained in most other languages, which usually add an adjective like "sacred" to denote religious texts.


title: Religious text

text: Some religious texts are categorized as canonical, some non-canonical, and others extracanonical, semi-canonical, deutero-canonical, pre-canonical or post-canonical. The term "canon" is derived from the Greek word ""κανών"", "a cane used as a measuring instrument". It connotes the sense of "measure, standard, norm, rule". In the modern usage, a religious canon refers to a "catalogue of sacred scriptures" that is broadly accepted to "contain and agree with the rule or canon of a particular faith", states Juan Widow. The related terms such as "non-canonical", "extracanonical", "deuterocanonical" and others presume and are derived from "canon". These derived terms differentiate a corpus of religious texts from the "canonical" literature. At its root, this differentiation reflects the sects and conflicts that developed and branched off over time, the competitive "acceptance" of a common minimum over time and the "rejection" of interpretations, beliefs, rules or practices by one group of another related socio-religious group. The earliest reference to the term "canon" in the context of "a collection of sacred Scripture" is traceable to the 4th-century CE. The early references, such as the Synod of Laodicea, mention both the terms "canonical" and "non-canonical" in the context of religious texts.


title: Religious text

text: One of the oldest known religious texts is the Kesh Temple Hymn of ancient Sumer, a set of inscribed clay tablets which scholars typically date around 2600 BCE. The Epic of Gilgamesh from Sumer, although only considered by some scholars as a religious text, has origins as early as 2150 BCE, and stands as one of the earliest literary works that includes various mythological figures and themes of interaction with the divine. The Rigveda, a scripture of Hinduism, is dated 1500 BCE. It is one of the oldest known complete religious texts that has survived into the modern age.


title: Religious text

text: There are many possible dates given to the first writings which can be connected to Talmudic and Biblical traditions, the earliest of which is found in scribal documentation of the 8th century BCE, followed by administrative documentation from temples of the 5th and 6th centuries BCE, with another common date being the 2nd century BCE. Although a significant text in the history of religious text because of its widespread use among religious denominations and its continued use throughout history, the texts of the Abrahamic traditions are a good example of the lack of certainty surrounding dates and definitions of religious texts.


title: Religious text

text: High rates of mass production and distribution of religious texts did not begin until the invention of the printing press in 1440, before which all religious texts were hand written copies, of which there were relatively limited quantities in circulation.


title: Firaxis Games

text: Firaxis Games, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Sparks, Maryland. The company was founded in May 1996 by Sid Meier, Jeff Briggs and Brian Reynolds following their departure from MicroProse, Meier's earlier venture. They were acquired by Take-Two Interactive in August 2005, and subsequently became part of the publisher's 2K label. Firaxis Games is best known for developing the "Civilization" and "XCOM" series, as well as many other games bearing Meier's name.


title: Firaxis Games

text: Firaxis Software was founded on May 1, 1996, by Sid Meier, Brian Reynolds and Jeff Briggs, three video game designers formerly employed by MicroProse, a video game venture founded by Meier and partner Bill Stealey in 1982. The name "Firaxis", a portmanteau of "fiery" and "axis", was derived from the name of a piece of music created by Briggs. Briggs explained that they decided to stay in the Baltimore area, rather than moving to Silicon Valley, because it was "just a great place to be". Unlike MicroProse, Firaxis Software aimed at being a "design house", leaving manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of their games to outside contractors. As such, the company talked to six potential video game publishers for their games, and finally signed an agreement with Electronic Arts, through which their games would be distributed under Electronic Arts' Origin Systems label. The studio's opening was announced on June 24, 1996. Firaxis Software was originally located in a 2,500-square-foot office on Gilroy Road in Hunt Valley, Maryland, temporarily sharing office space. To accommodate their growth, in February 1997, they announced that they were moving their corporate headquarters to a 7,200-square-foot office suite in Executive Plaza III, an office building on 11350 McCormick Road and part of the Hunt Valley Business Community. The deal, assisted by broker William W. Whitty Jr. of MacKenzie/O'Conor, Piper & Flynn Commercial Real Estate Services, was expected to be completed by March that year. The company had 13 employees at the time.


title: Firaxis Games

text: Firaxis Software announced their first title, "Sid Meier's Gettysburg!", in June 1997. Interimly, on July 24, 1997, the company was legally renamed Firaxis Games. Electronic Arts announced to have acquired a minority interest in Firaxis Games, to undisclosed terms, in August 1997. By September 1997, Firaxis Games signed life insurances for its three founders. "Gettysburg!" was released in October 1997 to critical and commercial success, scoring near-perfect reviews from critics, and selling 200,000 copies by August 1999. Starting with "Gettysburg!", Firaxis Games prefixed all games designed by Meier with ""Sid Meier's"", a trend the three founders carried over from MicroProse, as they believed that Meier's name added more recognizability to their games. For his works on many MicroProse games, as well as "Gettysburg!" and Firaxis Games' second title, "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri", Meier became the second-ever person in the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences's Hall of Fame, following Shigeru Miyamoto. Co-founder Reynolds left Firaxis Games to pursue his personal interests in February 2000. To compensate his departure, the company started hiring various industry veterans by March 2000. For his executive engagement at Firaxis Games, co-founder and chief executive officer Briggs was named "CEO of the Year" by "Smart CEO Magazine" in October 2004. Briggs later left the company in November 2006, and was succeeded by Steve Martin. Also for his executive work at Firaxis Games, Martin was awarded the "Maryland International Business Leadership Award" by the World Trade Center Institute in March 2011.


title: Firaxis Games

text: In November 2004, Infogrames, at the time owner of the "Civilization" franchise and parent to the series' publisher, sold all intellectual property (IP) to an undisclosed buyer for . The buyer was announced to be Take-Two Interactive on January 26, 2005. The publisher announced that the franchise would be managed by their 2K label, which was founded the day before, and that Firaxis Games would stay in charge of the series' development. In March 2005, NDL announced a partnership with Firaxis Games, wherein their Gamebryo engine would be used for the development of "Civilization IV", which was to be released later that year. On November 7, 2005, Take-Two Interactive announced that they had acquired Firaxis Games. Through the deal, Firaxis Games became part of 2K, although its present management and development plans would stay intact. Meier and Briggs both expressed that the acquisition saw a great opportunity for Firaxis Games in terms of creative development and marketing capabilities, and were fortunate to have re-gained full control over the "Civilization" franchise. In April 2007, Soren Johnson, lead designer on "Civilization IV", left the company to move to Maxis and work on "Spore". Similarly, "Civilization V" lead designer Jon Shafer departed following the game's release, in December 2010.


title: Firaxis Games

text: In August 2014, Firaxis Games announced Firaxicon, a convention dedicated to Firaxis games. The event was held from September 27 to 28, 2014, at a hotel in Hunt Valley, and included meet and greets with the company's staff, a presentation titled "An Evening with Sid Meier", and early playtests of "". A tour of Firaxis Games' offices was also held at the event. The event was renewed for a second edition in July 2015, and held on October 3, 2015, at the Baltimore Convention Center. Events were similar to that of the 2014 event, with "XCOM 2" and "" up for early testing.


title: Firaxis Games

text: By December 2015, Firaxis Games expanded their Sparks headquarters, which they moved to in 2009, to , and employed 40 new staff, totaling to 180 employees present at the company. In June 2016, at the Games for Change festival, Firaxis Games announced that they had partnered with GlassLab to develop "CivilizationEDU", an educational derivative of "Civilization V" optimized for classrooms. On July 23, 2018, David Ismailer of 2K confirmed that Firaxis Games was working on a new IP.


title: Magnetic monopole

text: In particle physics, a magnetic monopole is a hypothetical elementary particle that is an isolated magnet with only one magnetic pole (a north pole without a south pole or vice versa). A magnetic monopole would have a net north or south "magnetic charge". Modern interest in the concept stems from particle theories, notably the grand unified and superstring theories, which predict their existence. The known elementary particles that have electric charge are electric monopoles.


title: Magnetic monopole

text: Magnetism in bar magnets and electromagnets is not caused by magnetic monopoles, and indeed, there is no known experimental or observational evidence that magnetic monopoles exist.


title: Magnetic monopole

text: Some condensed matter systems contain effective (non-isolated) magnetic monopole quasi-particles, or contain phenomena that are mathematically analogous to magnetic monopoles.


title: Magnetic monopole

text: Many early scientists attributed the magnetism of lodestones to two different "magnetic fluids" ("effluvia"), a north-pole fluid at one end and a south-pole fluid at the other, which attracted and repelled each other in analogy to positive and negative electric charge. However, an improved understanding of electromagnetism in the nineteenth century showed that the magnetism of lodestones was properly explained not by magnetic monopole fluids, but rather by a combination of electric currents, the electron magnetic moment, and the magnetic moments of other particles. Gauss's law for magnetism, one of Maxwell's equations, is the mathematical statement that magnetic monopoles do not exist. Nevertheless, Pierre Curie pointed out in 1894 that magnetic monopoles "could" conceivably exist, despite not having been seen so far.


title: Magnetic monopole

text: The "quantum" theory of magnetic charge started with a paper by the physicist Paul Dirac in 1931. In this paper, Dirac showed that if "any" magnetic monopoles exist in the universe, then all electric charge in the universe must be quantized (Dirac quantization condition). The electric charge "is", in fact, quantized, which is consistent with (but does not prove) the existence of monopoles.


title: Magnetic monopole

text: Since Dirac's paper, several systematic monopole searches have been performed. Experiments in 1975 and 1982 produced candidate events that were initially interpreted as monopoles, but are now regarded as inconclusive. Therefore, it remains an open question whether monopoles exist.


title: Magnetic monopole

text: Further advances in theoretical particle physics, particularly developments in grand unified theories and quantum gravity, have led to more compelling arguments (detailed below) that monopoles do exist. Joseph Polchinski, a string-theorist, described the existence of monopoles as "one of the safest bets that one can make about physics not yet seen". These theories are not necessarily inconsistent with the experimental evidence. In some theoretical models, magnetic monopoles are unlikely to be observed, because they are too massive to create in particle accelerators (see below), and also too rare in the Universe to enter a particle detector with much probability.


title: Magnetic monopole

text: Some condensed matter systems propose a structure superficially similar to a magnetic monopole, known as a flux tube. The ends of a flux tube form a magnetic dipole, but since they move independently, they can be treated for many purposes as independent magnetic monopole quasiparticles. Since 2009, numerous news reports from the popular media have incorrectly described these systems as the long-awaited discovery of the magnetic monopoles, but the two phenomena are only superficially related to one another. These condensed-matter systems remain an area of active research. (See below.)


title: Magnetic monopole

text: All matter isolated to date, including every atom on the periodic table and every particle in the Standard Model, has zero magnetic monopole charge. Therefore, the ordinary phenomena of magnetism and magnets do not derive from magnetic monopoles.


title: Magnetic monopole

text: Instead, magnetism in ordinary matter is due to two sources. First, electric currents create magnetic fields according to Ampère's law. Second, many elementary particles have an "intrinsic" magnetic moment, the most important of which is the electron magnetic dipole moment, which is related to its quantum-mechanical spin.


title: Magnetic monopole

text: Mathematically, the magnetic field of an object is often described in terms of a multipole expansion. This is an expression of the field as the sum of component fields with specific mathematical forms. The first term in the expansion is called the "monopole" term, the second is called "dipole", then "quadrupole", then "octupole", and so on. Any of these terms can be present in the multipole expansion of an electric field, for example. However, in the multipole expansion of a "magnetic" field, the "monopole" term is always exactly zero (for ordinary matter). A magnetic monopole, if it exists, would have the defining property of producing a magnetic field whose "monopole" term is non-zero.


title: Magnetic monopole

text: A magnetic dipole is something whose magnetic field is predominantly or exactly described by the magnetic dipole term of the multipole expansion. The term "dipole" means "two poles", corresponding to the fact that a dipole magnet typically contains a "north pole" on one side and a "south pole" on the other side. This is analogous to an electric dipole, which has positive charge on one side and negative charge on the other. However, an electric dipole and magnetic dipole are fundamentally quite different. In an electric dipole made of ordinary matter, the positive charge is made of protons and the negative charge is made of electrons, but a magnetic dipole does "not" have different types of matter creating the north pole and south pole. Instead, the two magnetic poles arise simultaneously from the aggregate effect of all the currents and intrinsic moments throughout the magnet. Because of this, the two poles of a magnetic dipole must always have equal and opposite strength, and the two poles cannot be separated from each other.


title: Magnetic monopole

text: Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism relate the electric and magnetic fields to each other and to the motions of electric charges. The standard equations provide for electric charges, but they posit no magnetic charge or current. Except for this difference, the equations are symmetric under the interchange of the electric and magnetic fields. Maxwell's equations are symmetric when the charge and electric current density are zero everywhere, which is the case in vacuum.


title: Magnetic monopole

text: Fully symmetric Maxwell's equations can also be written if one allows for the possibility of "magnetic charges" analogous to electric charges. With the inclusion of a variable for the density of these magnetic charges, say , there is also a "magnetic current density" variable in the equations, .


title: Magnetic monopole

text: If magnetic charges do not exist – or if they do exist but are not present in a region of space – then the new terms in Maxwell's equations are all zero, and the extended equations reduce to the conventional equations of electromagnetism such as (where is divergence and is the magnetic field).


title: Magnetic monopole

text: In these equations is the "magnetic charge density", is the "magnetic current density", and is the "magnetic charge" of a test particle, all defined analogously to the related quantities of electric charge and current; is the particle's velocity and is the speed of light. For all other definitions and details, see Maxwell's equations. For the equations in nondimensionalized form, remove the factors of .


title: Magnetic monopole

text: In SI units, there are two conventions for defining magnetic charge , each with different units: weber (Wb) and ampere-meter (A⋅m). The conversion between them is , since the units are (H is the henry – the SI unit of inductance).


title: Canada–United States relations

text: Relations between Canada and the United States have historically been extensive, given the two countries' shared origins and border, which is the longest in the world. Starting with the American Revolution, when Loyalists fled to Canada, a vocal element in Canada has warned against American dominance or annexation. The War of 1812 saw invasions across the border in both directions, but the war ended with unchanged borders. The border was demilitarized, as was the Great Lakes region. The British ceased aiding Native American attacks on the United States, and the United States never again attempted to invade Canada. Apart from minor unsuccessful raids, it has remained peaceful.


title: Canada–United States relations

text: As Britain decided to disengage, fears of an American takeover played a role in the Canadian Confederation (1867), and Canada's rejection of free trade (1911). Military collaboration was close during World War II and continued throughout the Cold War, bilaterally through NORAD and multilaterally through NATO. A high volume of trade and migration continues between the two nations, as well as a heavy overlapping of popular and elite culture; a dynamic which has generated closer ties, especially after the signing of the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement in 1988.


title: Canada–United States relations

text: The two nations have the world's longest shared border (), and also have significant military interoperability. Recent difficulties have included repeated trade disputes, environmental concerns, Canadian concern for the future of oil exports, the issue of illegal immigration and the threat of terrorism. Trade has continued to expand, especially following the 1988 FTA, the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the 2020 United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA), which has progressively merged the two economies.


title: Canada–United States relations

text: Co-operation on many fronts, such as the ease of the flow of goods, services, and people across borders are to be even more extended, as well as the establishment of joint border inspection agencies, relocation of U.S. food inspectors agents to Canadian plants and vice versa, greater sharing of intelligence, and harmonizing regulations on everything from food to manufactured goods, thus further increasing the American-Canadian assemblage.


title: Canada–United States relations

text: The foreign policies of the countries have been closely aligned, yet ultimately independent, since the Cold War. For example, Canada maintains full relations with Cuba and declined to participate in the Vietnam War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. There is also diplomatic debate on whether the Northwest Passage is in international waters or under Canadian sovereignty.


title: Canada–United States relations

text: Before the British conquest of French Canada in 1760, there had been a series of wars between the British and the French which were fought out in the colonies as well as in Europe and the high seas. In general, the British heavily relied on American colonial militia units, while the French heavily relied on their First Nation allies. The Iroquois Nation were important allies of the British. Much of the fighting involved ambushes and small-scale warfare in the villages along the border between New England and Quebec. The New England colonies had a much larger population than Quebec, so major invasions came from south to north. The First Nation allies, only loosely controlled by the French, repeatedly raided New England villages to kidnap women and children, and torture and kill the men. Those who survived were brought up as Francophone Catholics. The tension along the border was exacerbated by religion, the French Catholics and English Protestants had a deep mutual distrust. There was a naval dimension as well, involving privateers attacking enemy merchant ships.


title: Canada–United States relations

text: England seized Quebec from 1629 to 1632, and Acadia in 1613 and again from 1654 to 1670; These territories were returned to France by the peace treaties. The major wars were (to use American names), King William's War (1689–1697); Queen Anne's War (1702–1713); King George's War (1744–1748), and the French and Indian War (1755–1763). In Canada, as in Europe, this era is known as the Seven Years' War.


title: Canada–United States relations

text: New England soldiers and sailors were critical to the successful British campaign to capture the French fortress of Louisbourg in 1745, and (after it had been returned by treaty) to capture it again in 1758.


title: Canada–United States relations

text: At the outset of the American Revolutionary War, the American revolutionaries hoped the French Canadians in Quebec and the Colonists in Nova Scotia would join their rebellion and they were pre-approved for joining the United States in the Articles of Confederation.