title: News agency

text: Only a few large newspapers could afford bureaus outside their home city; they relied instead on news agencies, especially Havas (founded 1835) in France—now known as Agence France-Presse (AFP)—and the Associated Press (founded 1846) in the United States. Former Havas employees founded Reuters in 1851 in Britain and Wolff in 1849 in Germany. For international news, the agencies pooled their resources, so that Havas, for example, covered the French Empire, South America and the Balkans and shared the news with the other national agencies. In France the typical contract with Havas provided a provincial newspaper with 1800 lines of telegraphed text daily, for an annual subscription rate of 10,000 francs. Other agencies provided features and fiction for their subscribers.


title: News agency

text: In the 1830s, France had several specialized agencies. Agence Havas was founded in 1835 by a Parisian translator and advertising agent, Charles-Louis Havas, to supply news about France to foreign customers. In the 1840s, Havas gradually incorporated other French agencies into his agency. Agence Havas evolved into Agence France-Presse (AFP). Two of his employees, Bernhard Wolff and Paul Julius Reuter, later set up rival news agencies, Wolffs Telegraphisches Bureau in 1849 in Berlin and Reuters in 1851 in London. Guglielmo Stefani founded the Agenzia Stefani, which became the most important press agency in Italy from the mid-19th century to World War II, in Turin in 1853.


title: News agency

text: The development of the telegraph in the 1850s led to the creation of strong national agencies in England, Germany, Austria and the United States. But despite the efforts of governments, through telegraph laws such as in 1878 in France, inspired by the British Telegraph Act of 1869 which paved the way for the nationalisation of telegraph companies and their operations, the cost of telegraphy remained high.


title: News agency

text: In the United States, the judgment in "Inter Ocean Publishing v. Associated Press" facilitated competition by requiring agencies to accept all newspapers wishing to join. As a result of the increasing newspapers, the Associated Press was now challenged by the creation of United Press Associations in 1907 and International News Service by newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst in 1909.


title: News agency

text: Driven by the huge U.S. domestic market, boosted by the runaway success of radio, all three major agencies required the dismantling of the "cartel agencies" through the Agreement of 26 August 1927. They were concerned about the success of U.S. agencies from other European countries which sought to create national agencies after the First World War. Reuters had been weakened by war censorship, which promoted the creation of newspaper cooperatives in the Commonwealth and national agencies in Asia, two of its strong areas.


title: News agency

text: After the Second World War, the movement for the creation of national agencies accelerated, when accessing the independence of former colonies, the national agencies were operated by the state. Reuters, became cooperative, managed a breakthrough in finance, and helped to reduce the number of U.S. agencies from three to one, along with the internationalization of the Spanish EFE and the globalization of Agence France-Presse.


title: News agency

text: The German Press Agency (dpa) in Germany was founded as a co-operative in Goslar on 18 August 1949 and became a limited liability company in 1951. Fritz Sänger was the first editor-in-chief. He served as managing director until 1955 and as managing editor until 1959. The first transmission occurred at 6 a.m. on 1 September 1949.


title: News agency

text: In 1924, Benito Mussolini placed Agenzia Stefani under the direction of Manlio Morgagni, who expanded the agency's reach significantly both within Italy and abroad. Agenzia Stefani was dissolved in 1945, and its technical structure and organization were transferred to the new Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (ANSA). Wolffs was taken over by the Nazi regime in 1934, and Reuters continues to operate as a major international news agency today. In 1865, Reuter and Wolff signed agreements with Havas's sons, forming a cartel designating exclusive reporting zones for each of their agencies within Europe.


title: News agency

text: Since the 1960s, the major agencies were provided with new opportunities in television and magazine, and news agencies delivered specialized production of images and photos, the demand for which is constantly increasing. In France, for example, they account for over two-thirds of national market.


title: News agency

text: By the 1980s, the four main news agencies, AFP, AP, UPI and Reuters, provided over 90% of foreign news printed by newspapers around the world.


title: News agency

text: News agencies can be corporations that sell news (e.g., PA Media, Thomson Reuters, dpa and United Press International). Other agencies work cooperatively with large media companies, generating their news centrally and sharing local news stories the major news agencies may choose to pick up and redistribute (e.g., Associated Press (AP), Agence France-Presse (AFP) or the Indian news agency PTI).


title: News agency

text: Governments may also control news agencies: China (Xinhua), Russia (TASS), and several other countries have government-funded news agencies which also use information from other agencies as well.


title: News agency

text: Commercial newswire services charge businesses to distribute their news (e.g., Business Wire, GlobeNewswire, PR Newswire, PR Web, and Cision).


title: News agency

text: The major news agencies generally prepare hard news stories and feature articles that can be used by other news organizations with little or no modification, and then sell them to other news organizations. They provide these articles in bulk electronically through wire services (originally they used telegraphy; today they frequently use the Internet). Corporations, individuals, analysts, and intelligence agencies may also subscribe.


title: News agency

text: News sources, collectively, described as alternative media provide reporting which emphasizes a self-defined "non-corporate view" as a contrast to the points of view expressed in corporate media and government-generated news releases. Internet-based alternative news agencies form one component of these sources.


title: News agency

text: There are several different associations of news agencies. EANA is the European Alliance of Press Agencies, while the OANA is an association of news agencies of the Asia-Pacific region. MINDS is a global network of leading news agencies collaborating in new media business.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: St. John's University is a private Roman Catholic university in Queens, New York City. It was founded in 1870 by the Congregation of the Mission (C.M., the Vincentian Fathers) with a mission to provide the youth of New York with a Catholic university education. Originally located in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, the flagship campus was moved to its current location in the Queens borough during the 1950s. St. John's has additional New York City campuses in Staten Island and Manhattan, as well as the Long Island Graduate Center in Hauppauge, New York. Additionally, the university has international campuses located in Rome, Italy, Paris, France, and Limerick, Ireland. The university is under the patronage of Saint John the Baptist.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: St. John's is organized into five undergraduate schools and six graduate schools offering more than 100 bachelor, master, and doctoral degree programs as well as professional certificates. In 2019, the university had 17,088 undergraduate and 4,633 graduate students. The student body represents 46 states, District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, and 119 countries. As of 2020, St. John's alumni total more than 190,000 worldwide.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: St. John's University was founded in 1870, by the Vincentian Fathers of the Roman Catholic Church in response to an invitation by the first Bishop of Brooklyn, John Loughlin, to provide the youth of the city with a Catholic intellectual and moral education. Originally established as the College of St. John the Baptist, the first campus was located at 75 Lewis Avenue, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Ground was broken for St. John's College Hall, the university's first building, on May 28, 1868. The cornerstone was laid on July 25, 1869. and opened for educational purposes on September 5, 1870.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: St. John's Vincentian values stem from the ideals and works of St Vincent de Paul (1581–1660), who is the patron saint of Christian charity. Following the Vincentian tradition, the university seeks to provide an education that encourages greater involvement in social justice, charity, and service. The Vincentian Center for Church and Society, located on the university's Queens campus serves as "a clearinghouse for and developer of Vincentian information, poverty research, social justice resources, and as an academic/cultural programming Center."


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: The St. John's University Seal bears one phrase in Latin and one in Greek. The Latin phrases "Sigillum Universitatis Sti Joannis Neo Eboraci" translates in English to "St. John's University, New York". The Greek phrase translates to "A lamp, burning, and shining", a reference to the way Jesus describes St. John the Baptist in John 5:35. The University Crest bears the Latin phrase "Educatio Christiana Animae Perfectio", which translates to "A Christian education perfects the soul".


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: Beginning with the law school in 1925, St. John's began establishing other graduate and undergraduate schools, and became a university in 1933. In April 1936, St. John's bought the Hillcrest Golf Club's of land for about $500,000, with the intention of eventually moving the school to the new site. Under the terms of the sale, the golf club continued to operate on the site for a few years. On February 11, 1954, St. John's officially broke ground on a new campus in Hillcrest, Queens, on the former site of the Hillcrest Golf Club. During the official groundbreaking ceremony, the shovel used was the same shovel that had broken ground on the original campus in 1868. The following year, the original school of the university, St. John's College, moved from Bedford-Stuyvesant to the new campus. The high school, now St. John's Prep, took over its former buildings and later moved to its present location in the Hillcrest-Jamaica sections in Queens.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: Over approximately the next two decades, the other schools of the university, which were located at a separate campus at 96 Schermerhorn Street in Downtown Brooklyn, moved out to the new campus in Queens. The last of the schools to relocate to Queens moved there in 1972, bringing an end to the Downtown Brooklyn campus of the university. In 1959, the university established a Freedom Institute to provide lectures and programs that would, in the words of university president Rev. John A. Flynn, focus "attention on the dangers of communism threatening free institutions here and abroad," with Arpad F. Kovacs of the St. John's history department as its director. (A volume of lectures given at the Freedom Institute was edited by Kovacs and published in 1961 as "Let Freedom Ring".) The university also hired the noted historian Paul Kwan-Tsien Sih to establish an Institute of Asian Studies in that same year, and similarly set up a Center for African Studies under the directorship of the economic geographer Hugh C. Brooks.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: The university received praise from "Time Magazine" in 1962 for being a Catholic university that accepted Jews with low household income. "Time" also ranked St. John's as "good−small" on a list of the nation's Catholic universities in 1962.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: On January 27, 1971, the New York State Board of Regents approved the consolidation of the university with the former Notre Dame College (New York), a private women's college, and the Staten Island campus of St. John's University became a reality. Classes began in the fall of 1971, combining the original Notre Dame College with the former Brooklyn campus of St. John's, offering undergraduate degrees in liberal arts, business and education.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: Circa 1989, according to Steve Fishman of "New York Magazine", "St. John's was essentially a commuter school" but that changed after Father Donald Harrington became the president of the university that year, replacing Father Joseph Cahill. Under Harrington the school increased its infrastructure and international profile. By 1990 the tuition and fees at St. John's was less than half of that at schools like NYU and Columbia. Moreover, in 1999, the university completed the first residence halls on the main Queens campus, making it easier for out-of-state and international students to attend the flagship campus. The University is now entering a new chapter under the leadership of Father Brian Shanley. Fr. Shanley is the former president of Providence College and is credited in bringing much growth to the college.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: Beginning in 1995, the university began a series of acquisitions lasting for the following 22 years and establishing new locations throughout New York and the world.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: The St. John's University strike of 1966-1967 was a protest by faculty at the university which began on January 4, 1966, and ended in June 1967. The strike began after 31 faculty members were dismissed in the fall of 1965 without due process, dismissals which some felt were a violation of the professors' academic freedom. The strike ended without any reinstatements, but led to the widespread unionization of public college faculty in the New York City area. In 1970 arbitrators ruled that the university had not acted improperly.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: In 2010 federal prosecutors arrested Dr. Cecilia Chang, dean of the school's Institute of Asian Studies, and charged her with embezzling money from the university, bribing students with scholarships in exchange for forced labor, tax evasion, and false statements to federal agents. Chang, a graduate-school alumna from Taiwan who naturalized in 1989, began directing the Asian Center and acted as a fundraiser in 1977. On Monday, November 5, 2012, she testified in her own trial and committed suicide at age 59 the next day. Anne Hendershot of "Crisis Magazine" wrote that the information revealed that described Chang giving material benefits to other members of the administration was "even more damaging to the reputation of St. John's University."


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: St. John's University is a Roman Catholic non-profit organization controlled by privately appointed board of trustees which is chosen by the Vincentian order. The Very Rev. Brian J. Shanley, O.P., is the 18th and current president of the university, and the Very Rev. Aidan R. Rooney, C.M., is the executive vice president.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: Per the university's statutes, presidents must be priests from the Congregation of the Mission (Vincentians). The trustees waived this requirement due to the limited number of candidates. In 2014, Conrado Gempesaw, became the first ever lay person to be appointed President of St. John's University and in 2021, Brian Shanley became the first non-Vincentian Catholic priest appointed President. Shanley is a member of the Dominican Order.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: St. John's is a large doctoral/research university. The school is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and has 13 specialized accreditations.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: "Size": In fall 2019, St. John's student body numbered 21,721 students (17,088 undergraduates and 4,633 graduate students). In 2019, there were 3,135 new undergraduates—the largest freshman class at any US Catholic college or university. Students came from 46 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and 119 countries. The freshman retention rate was 84 percent. In 2016, the university conferred more than 4,000 undergraduate and graduate degrees.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: "Admission": In 2019, St. John's received 27,000 applications for freshman admission, with an anticipated enrollment of more than 3,000 students. With an admission rate of 72%, St. John's is considered 'more selective' by U.S. News & World Report. Half the applicants admitted had SAT scores between 1080 and 1300.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: "Diversity": St. John's University is considered one of the most diverse colleges in the United States. 27% of the students are minorities; there is a scholarship fund promoting diversity of over $1.6 million. St. John's operates an Equity & Inclusion Council, the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the Academic Center for Equity and Inclusion, Inclusivity Resource Center, Academic Center for Equity and Inclusion, Respond and Partner to Engage our Community Team (RESPECT), as well as providing a resource division for LGBTQ+ students. The school actively promotes homeless student enrollment and in general has an emphasis on enrolling students from less favorable financial circumstances. Committed to its mission of providing affordable education, in 2019 St. John's offered 100% of incoming students scholarships averaging $23,546 per student.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: St. John's employs 1,471 full-time and part-time faculty members, more than 92 percent of whom possess a doctorate or other terminal degree in their field. The student-to-faculty ratio is 17:1; five University faculty members were featured in "The Princeton Review’s" “Best 300 Professors.” Although the majority of the faculty and staff of St. John's are non-clergy academics, the school does have a significant number of priests, religious brothers and sisters who are professors/academics in various fields. Although a Catholic institution, the university also employs a number of non-Catholic faculty.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: In the 2021 "U.S. News & World Report" ranking of "National Universities", St. John's undergraduate program was ranked tied for 170th overall in the nation, tied for 39th out of 389 in "Top Performers on Social Mobility", tied for 124th out of 142 in "Best Colleges for Veterans", and 142nd out of 180 in "Best Value Schools".


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: The School of Law was ranked tied for 74th but for 2023 is ranked 84th. The School of Education ranked tied for 105th in the U.S. by "U.S. News & World Report" for 2021.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: "Forbes" ranked St. John's 407th on its "America's Top Colleges" list in 2019 out of the 650 best private and public colleges, universities and service academies. In order to be considered for the rankings, the school had to qualify as one of the top 15% of the 4,300 degree-granting postsecondary institutions in the US.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: Though a Roman Catholic institution, the students are of all faiths. St. John's offers and funds, through the Student Government, more than 180 academic, professional, and recreational student organizations, as well as the St. John's Bread and Life program which is dedicated to serving the poor by providing food, services, and support resources. Mass is held on the Queens Campus three times daily and the sacrament of confession is available daily. There are many devotions held at the University as well, such as Adoration, the Rosary and Miraculous Medal Novena. The Student Government also works to host many notable guest speakers throughout the academic year.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: Although no rail station directly serves the campus, numerous stations offer one-bus connections via MTA. For the subway, these stations include Kew Gardens/Union Turnpike as well as 169th Street and Main Street Flushing. The LIRR's Jamaica station also provides direct bus service to campus. The St. John's Campus Shuttle runs non-stop from Jamaica Station to the Queens Campus, Monday through Friday.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: St. John's doesn't allow fraternity and sorority residences like most schools, rather offering them as clubs.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: The Cathedral Seminary in Douglaston, Queens, currently serves as the Catholic minor seminary for the Archdiocese of New York, Diocese of Brooklyn, and Diocese of Rockville Centre. The seminary is partnered with St. John's University, offering an undergraduate degree in philosophy that the minor seminarians must complete before moving on to major seminary to prepare for the Priesthood. The undergraduate seminarians attend classes at St. John's and are active in student life, while living at the Cathedral Seminary. Those who enter the seminary after already having completed an undergraduate degree, study in a two-year pre-theology program that is administered at the seminary in partnership with St. John's.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: In October 2022, the three dioceses announced that, starting in Fall 2023, undergraduate seminarians will attend out-of-state seminaries instead of studying at St. John's and living at Douglaston. The Cathedral House of Formation will also shut down its seminary program before Fall 2023.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: Founded in 1994, the Dr. M.T. Geoffrey Yeh Art Gallery is the university's art exhibition space. The Yeh Art Gallery partners with international contemporary artists to create exhibitions and learning opportunities for the university community and public. Dr. Owen Duffy is the gallery's director. Recent exhibitions include "Fevzi Yazici: DARK WHITE", the first art exhibition by the imprisoned Turkish journalist, which was featured in "The Washington Post."


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: Hillcrest, Queens – The main campus of St. John's University is located in the residential Hillcrest section of the borough of Queens of New York City. This campus houses several academic buildings, 8 residence halls, athletic facilities, and the St. Augustine Library. The Queens campus features stone buildings and student residence halls. Facilities include laboratory and classroom buildings, the main collections of its 1.7 million-volume library; and athletic facilities for students and St. John's Division I athletic teams. The University Center is the 127,000 square foot, five story D'Angelo Center, which features banquet space, classrooms, club space, a food court, game rooms, lecture halls, and a first floor lounge.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: In 2008, St. John's University broke ground for the new University Center/Academic Building, one of the largest and most comprehensive construction projects in St. John's recent history. Located between Sullivan Hall and the Taffner Field House on the site that currently serves as stadium seating for lacrosse and track and field events, the 110,000 square feet (10,000 m) complex has been designed to significantly enhance student life on campus. Now completed, the building, rises dramatically over the upper campus, contains 14 technologically sophisticated, state-of-the-art classrooms with approximately 800 seats. In addition, it includes a café, lounge, recreation and entertainment spaces, student organization offices and conference and meeting rooms devoted exclusively to student use. The building is named "The D'Angelo Center" after board of trustees member Peter D'Angelo '78 MBA, and his wife Peg D'Angelo '70 Ed.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: In 2005, St. John's constructed Taffner Field house, and dramatically renovated Carnesecca Arena (formerly Alumni Hall) and the University Center. Renovations to Carnesecca Hall included a . Health Center, for use by Student Life and athletics, including weight training equipment, aerobic and dance studios, and a student lounge. The University Center renovations consisted of reconfigured office and meeting space for Student Life and academic clubs, and the addition of audio/visual rooms for all varsity athletic teams. Taffner Athletic Field House was $23 million initiative. The two-story, . structure adjacent to Carnesecca Hall includes four basketball courts, academic classrooms and locker rooms.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: The 2004–2005 academic years saw $35 million in capital projects, including the completion of St. Thomas More church, the DaSilva building, Carnesecca Hall Fitness Center, and Belson Stadium. In 2005, the science labs and student life facilities were the target of an additional $60 million in capital enhancements. In regards to its expansion plans, the university has had a contentious relationship with the surrounding community in the past. In 2007, however, it was discovered that the university was planning to lease a building under construction by a separate company for an off-campus dormitory. Residents argue that such a plan goes against the school's pledge of being a "good neighbor" towards the community.The university, however, contends that it did not break the pledge for it was only leasing the structure not building it. Nevertheless, opponents, including state Senator Frank Padavan, argue that such an explanation is "disingenuous". St. Vincent Hall was also converted from a Vincentian and clergy residence to student dormitories. The Vincentian fathers and other clergy moved to the Father John Murray Hall built for them on campus were they now live.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: The university has seen much growth on its campuses in order to attract students from outside the New York area. In 1999, the first dormitory was completed on the Queens campus. As of 2008, the campus now contains seven dorms and a townhouse complex.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: In 2018 Bent Hall home of the Tobin College of Business underwent extensive renovations. Originally Bent Hall was home to Tobin College and Collins College of Professional Studies. After the renovations Collins College was relocated to the second floor of St. Augustine Hall which was also renovated for the College. In 2021 Father Shanley announced that the College of Pharmacy will be relocated to a new Health Sciences Center that is slated to be built on the location of the former St. Vincent's Hall. The new center will be named the St. Vincent Health Sciences Center.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: St. John's University fields 16 NCAA Division I teams in various sports, while also providing intramural and club sports. The Division 1 sports include;


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: St. John's sports teams are called the Red Storm. Though not official, the moniker "Johnnies" is also commonly used by fans. Prior to 1994, St. John's went by the nickname "Redmen", which referenced the red uniforms worn by the university in competition. However, the name was interpreted as a Native American reference in the 1960s, and was changed to the Red Storm after mounting pressure on colleges and universities to adopt names more sensitive to Native American culture. The Redmen name still remains popular among fans.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: St. John's NCAA Division I teams compete in the Big East Conference, with the exception of the fencing team, which competes in the ECAC.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: From 1979 to 2013, St. John's was a charter member of the Original Big East Conference. In 2013 the Big East Conference split into two different conferences. St. John's and the other six non-FBS schools in the original Big East broke away to form the current Big East, while the remaining FBS schools formed the American Athletic Conference.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: The men's basketball team has reached the NCAA tournament twenty-eight (28) times, boasts two John R. Wooden Award winners, 11 consensus All-Americans, 6 members of the College Basketball Hall of Fame, and has sent 59 players to the NBA. The school is also the 9th winningest team in all of college basketball.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: Even though the program has yet to win the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship, the school boasts many other accolades, including the 1911 Helms Athletic Foundation National Championship and the 1943 and 1944 NIT National Championships (primary championship of the era) It also was runner-up in the 1952 National Championship game (prior to tournament structure). With its 28 NCAA Tournament appearances, St. John's has made appearances in 2 Final Fours and 7 Sweet Sixteens.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: The Red Storm play most of their home games at Madison Square Garden, "The World's Most Famous Arena", while their early non-conference games are held at Carnesecca Arena on the St. John's campus in Queens. St. John's University holds the second best winning percentage for a New York City school in the NCAA basketball tournament (second to City College of New York – which won one NCAA Div 1 Championships as the CCNY Beavers men's basketball) St. John's has the most NIT appearances with 27, the most championship wins with 6, although they were stripped of one due to an NCAA infraction. In 2008, St. John's celebrated its 100th year of college basketball.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: The St. John's men's soccer program has appeared in 15 consecutive NCAA tournaments, advancing to the Sweet 16 in each of the last ten seasons, and the Final Four on 3 occasions. They have captured 11 Big East Championships, including the 2006 season title as well as the 2009 season title, and in 1996, St. John's won the NCAA National Championship. Their home games are hosted at Belson Stadium, a state-of-the-art 2,300-seat stadium on the university campus. In 2006, the men's soccer team became the first American soccer team to be invited to play in Vietnam. The team played against several Vietnam Football Federation squads as well as participating in community service.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: The St. John's baseball team has been to the College World Series six times, recorded 26 NCAA appearances and 6 Big East Championships, and sent more than 70 players on to professional baseball careers, most recently 2014 World Series Champion Joe Panik of the San Francisco Giants.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: The 3,500-seat "Ballpark at St. John's" was renamed "Jack Kaiser Stadium" in 2007 after the Hall of Fame Coach and former St. John's Athletic Director. The stadium is one of the largest college baseball stadiums in the northeast, and is a featured venue on the EA Sports MVP NCAA Baseball video game. The stadium had been conceived out of a deal between the university and the Giuliani Administration, wherein the latter wanted to find a location for a single-A team that would be affiliated with the New York Mets. Expressing concern about quality of life issues and the spending of public money for a private religious institution, surrounding neighborhood civic groups and local politicians protested the plan. In order to placate their concerns, the Mets offered to open it up to the communities for local high school games and youth programs, and the stadium was built amid many large-scale protests by community residents and by State Senator Frank Padavan, while also using city financing. The Red Storm played the first-ever game at the Mets' new ballpark, Citi Field, on March 29, 2009.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: The St. John's fencing program, coached for nearly three decades by Yury Gelman, has also attained national prominence including Olympians Keeth Smart and Ivan Lee. In 2001, St. John's won the NCAA fencing championship. The men's team has ranked in the top five each of the last 10 years, and finished 2nd in the NCAA during 1995, 2000, 2002, 2007, and 2010 seasons. In addition to team accolades, St. John's has won 22 NCAA Individual National Championship titles. On April 12, 2016, St. John's alumnus Daryl Homer and alumna Dagmara Wozniak were both named to the 2016 U.S. Olympic fencing team, the second time that each was selected.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: The women's programs at St. John's University have also enjoyed a tremendous amount of success. The women's volleyball, soccer, tennis, basketball & softball teams have combined to win 9 Big East Championships and appear in 17 NCAA Tournaments since the 1980s.


title: St. John's University (New York City)

text: St. John's has over 170,000 alumni, 82% of whom reside in the Greater New York Metropolitan Area. Some of the most-recognized alumni are New York Governors Hugh L. Carey and Mario M. Cuomo, California Governor George Deukmejian, New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, United States Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, and Grammy Award-winning artist and producer J. Cole. Many other alumni have held notable positions in public service, business, and the Catholic Church.


title: Djembe

text: A djembe or jembe ( ; from Malinke "jembe" , N'Ko: ) is a rope-tuned skin-covered goblet drum played with bare hands, originally from West Africa.


title: Djembe

text: According to the Bambara people in Mali, the name of the djembe comes from the saying "Anke djé, anke bé" which translates to "everyone gather together in peace" and defines the drum's purpose. In the Bambara language, "djé" is the verb for "gather" and "bé" translates as "peace."


title: Djembe

text: The djembe has a body (or shell) carved of hardwood and a drumhead made of untreated (not limed) rawhide, most commonly made from goatskin. Excluding rings, djembes have an exterior diameter of 30–38 cm (12–15 in) and a height of 58–63 cm (23–25 in). The majority have a diameter in the 13 to 14 inch range. The weight of a djembe ranges from 5 kg to 13 kg (11–29 lb) and depends on size and shell material. A medium-size djembe carved from one of the traditional woods (including skin, rings, and rope) weighs around 9 kg (20 lb).


title: Djembe

text: The djembe can produce a wide variety of sounds, making it an extremely versatile drum. The drum is very loud, allowing it to be heard clearly as a solo instrument over a large percussion ensemble. The Malinké people say that a skilled drummer is one who "can make the djembe talk", meaning that the player can tell an emotional story (the Malinké never used the djembe as a signaling drum).


title: Djembe

text: Traditionally, the djembe is played only by men, as are the "dunun" that always accompany the djembe. Conversely, other percussion instruments that are commonly played as part of an ensemble, such as the "shekere" (a hollowed-out gourd covered with a net of beads), "karignan" (a tubular bell), and "kese kese" (a woven basket rattle), are usually played by women. Even today, it is rare to see women play djembe or dunun in West Africa, and African women express astonishment when they do see a female djembe player.


title: Djembe

text: There is general agreement that the origin of the djembe is associated with the Mandinka caste of blacksmiths, known as "Numu". The wide dispersion of the djembe drum throughout West Africa may be due to Numu migrations during the first millennium AD. Despite the association of the djembe with the Numu, there are no hereditary restrictions on who may become a "djembefola" (literally, "one who plays the djembe"). This is in contrast to instruments whose use is reserved for members of the "griot" caste, such as the "balafon", "kora", and "ngoni". (The djembe is not a griot instrument.) Anyone who plays djembe is a djembefola—the term does not imply a particular level of skill.


title: Djembe

text: Geographically, the traditional distribution of the djembe is associated with the Mali Empire, which dates back to 1230 AD and included parts of the modern-day countries of Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Gambia, and Senegal. However, due to the lack of written records in West African countries, it is unclear whether the djembe predates or postdates the Mali Empire. It seems likely that the history of the djembe reaches back for at least several centuries and possibly more than a millennium.


title: Djembe

text: The goblet shape of the djembe suggests that it originally may have been created from a mortar. (Mortars are widely used throughout West Africa for food preparation.)


title: Djembe

text: Prior to the 1950s and the decolonization of West Africa, due to the very limited travel of native Africans outside their own ethnic group, the djembe was known only in its original area.


title: Djembe

text: The djembe first came to the attention of audiences outside West Africa with the efforts of Fodéba Keïta, who, in 1952, founded Les Ballets Africains. The ballet toured extensively in Europe and was declared Guinea's first national ballet by Guinea's first president, Sékou Touré, after Guinea gained independence in 1958, to be followed by two more national ballets, the Ballet d'Armee in 1961 and Ballet Djoliba in 1964.


title: Djembe

text: Touré's policies alienated Guinea from the West and he followed the Eastern Bloc model of using the country's culture and music for promotional means. He and Fodéba Keïta, who had become a close friend of Touré, saw the ballets as a way to secularize traditional customs and rites of different ethnic groups in Guinea. The ballets combined rhythms and dances from widely different spiritual backgrounds in a single performance, which suited the aim of Touré's demystification program of "doing away with 'fetishist' ritual practices".


title: Djembe

text: Touré generously supported the ballets (to the point of building a special rehearsal and performance space in his palace for Ballet Djoliba) and, until his death in 1984, financed extensive world-wide performance tours, which brought the djembe to the attention of Western audiences. Other countries followed Touré's example and founded national ballets in the 1960s, including Ivory Coast (Ballet Koteba), Mali (Les Ballets Malien), and Senegal (Le Ballet National du Senegal), each with its own attached political agenda.


title: Djembe

text: In the United States, Ladji Camara, a member of Ballets Africains in the 1950s, started teaching djembe in the 1960s and continued to teach into the 1990s. Camara performed extensively with Babatunde Olatunji during the 1970s, greatly raising awareness of the instrument in the US.


title: Djembe

text: After the death of Sekou Touré in 1984, funding for the ballets dried up and a number of djembefolas (who were never paid well by the ballets) emigrated and made regular teaching and performance appearances in the west, including Mamady Keïta (Belgium, US), Famoudou Konaté (Germany), and Epizo Bangoura (France, US, and Australia). A number of other djembefolas—M'bemba Bangoura, Abdoulaye Diakité, Bolokada Conde, Mohamed "Bangouraké" Bangoura, and Babara Bangoura, among others—followed their example, establishing a sizeable population of expatriate performers and teachers in many Western countries.


title: Djembe

text: The 1991 documentary "Djembefola" by Laurent Chevallier depicts Mamady Keïta's return to the village of his birth after a 26-year absence. Upon release, the movie won the Wisselzak Trophy and Special Jury Award at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, and the Audience Award at the Marseille Festival of Documentary Film, and brought the djembe to the attention of a wide audience.


title: Djembe

text: A 1998 follow-up documentary, "Mögöbalu" (also by Chevallier), contains concert footage uniting four master drummers (Soungalo Coulibaly, Mamady Keita, Famoudou Konaté, and Doudou N'Diaye Rose) on stage.


title: Djembe

text: The Oscar-nominated 2007 drama "The Visitor" ensured that the djembe was noticed internationally by mainstream viewers.


title: Djembe

text: The djembe has been used by many modern artists, including Paul Simon, Cirque du Soleil, and Tool, raising awareness of the instrument with western audiences.


title: Djembe

text: Recordings of the djembe far surpass the number of recordings of any other African drum. Beginning in the late 1980s, a slew of djembe-centric recordings was released, a trend that, as of 2014, shows no sign of abating. This is significant because these recordings are driven by the demand of western audiences: there are almost no djembe recordings within African markets.


title: Djembe

text: Among the earliest educational resources available to a student of the djembe were an educational VHS tape by Babatunde Olatunji released in 1993, as well as books by Serge Blanc, Famoudou Konaté, and Mamady Keïta. In 1998, these were supplemented by a three-volume VHS set by Keïta and, in 2000, by a VHS tape by Epizo Bangoura. Since then, the market for educational materials has grown significantly. As of 2014, dozens of educational books, CDs, and videos are available to an aspiring player.


title: Djembe

text: Starting in the 1980s, a number of Guinean djembefolas (Epizo Bangoura, Famoudou Konaté, Mamady Keïta) started hosting study tours to Guinea, allowing djembe students to experience Guinean culture first-hand. Many other djembefolas followed suit; as of 2014, a potential visitor can select from tens of djembe tours each year. Djembe tourism created a market for djembefolas in Guinea that previously did not exist. Young djembefolas try to emulate the success of their predecessors and cater to the needs of the tourists, leading to change and commodification of the original djembe culture.


title: Djembe

text: Most djembes from Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Senegal are still hand carved from traditional species of wood, using traditional tools and methods. In the 1990s, djembes started being produced elsewhere, such as in Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, and Indonesia, often using modern machinery and substitute species of wood, such as tweneboa ("Cordia platythyrsa") or mahogany ("Swietenia mahagoni" or "Toona sureni"). However, these woods, being softer and less dense, are not as suitable as the traditional woods. A number of western percussion instrument manufacturers also produce djembe-like instruments, often with fibreglass bodies, synthetic skins, and a key tuning system.


title: Djembe

text: For its size, the djembe is an unusually loud drum. The volume of the drum rises with increasing skin tension. On a djembe tuned to solo pitch, skilled players can achieve sound pressure of more than 105 dB, about the same volume as a jackhammer.


title: Djembe

text: Djembe players use three basic sounds: "bass", "tone", and "slap", which have low, medium, and high pitch, respectively. These sounds are achieved by varying the striking technique and position. Other sounds are possible (masters achieve as many as twenty-five distinctly different sounds), but these additional sounds are used rarely, mainly for special effects during a solo performance ("djembe kan", literally, "the sound of the djembe"). A skilled player can use the sounds to create very complex rhythmic patterns; the combination of rhythm and the differently pitched sounds often leads an inexpert listener to believe that more than one drum is being played.


title: Djembe

text: The bass sound is produced by striking the drum with the palm and flat fingers near the center of the skin. Tone and slap are produced by striking the drum closer to the edge; the contact area of the fingers determines whether the sound is a tone or a slap. For a tone, most of the area of the fingers and the edge of the palm contact the skin whereas, for a slap, the contact area is limited to the edge of the palm and the fingertips. The basic sounds are played "open", meaning that the hands rebound immediately after a strike, so the contact time with the skin is as short as possible.


title: Djembe

text: Acoustically, a djembe is a Helmholtz resonator: the frequency of the bass is determined by the size and shape of the shell and independent of the amount of tension on the skin. In contrast, the pitch of tones and slaps rises as the tension of the skin is increased. The bass has a frequency of 65–80 Hz. Depending on the size of the drum and the amount of tension on the skin, tone frequency varies from 300 Hz to 420 Hz and slap frequency from 700 Hz to 1000 Hz, with audible overtones reaching beyond 4 kHz.


title: Djembe

text: The difference in pitch of the sounds arises because the different striking techniques selectively emphasize specific vibrational modes of the drum head. A tone emphasizes the (0,1) mode while suppressing the bass (Helmholtz resonance) and higher-order modes as much as possible. A slap emphasizes the (2,1), (0,2), (3,1), (1,2), and (0,3) modes (as well as higher-order modes) while suppressing the Helmholtz resonance and the (0,1) and (1,1) modes. Skilled players can also produce a medium-pitched sound (between a tone and slap) that is variously called "third slap", "tonpalo", or "lé"; this sound emphasizes the (1,1) mode while suppressing all other modes as much as possible.


title: Djembe

text: By slightly varying striking and finger position, skilled players can selectively emphasize different slap harmonics and create melodies of differently pitched slaps.


title: Djembe

text: Traditionally, the djembe forms an ensemble with a number of other djembes and one or more dunun. Except for the "lead" (or "solo") djembe, all instruments play a recurring rhythmic figure that is known as an "accompaniment pattern" or "accompaniment part". The figure repeats after a certain number of beats, known as a "cycle". The most common cycle length is four beats, but cycles often have other lengths, such as two, three, six, eight or more beats. (Some rhythms in the dundunba family from the Hamana region in Guinea have cycle lengths of 16, 24, 28, or 32 beats, among others.) Cycles longer than eight beats are rare for djembe accompaniments—longer cycles are normally played only by the "dununba" or "sangban".


title: Djembe

text: Each instrument plays a different rhythmic figure, and the cycle lengths of the different instruments need not necessarily be the same. This interplay results in complex rhythmic patterns ("polyrhythms"). The different accompaniment parts are played on djembes that are tuned to different pitches; this emphasizes the polyrhythm and creates a composite overall melody.


title: Djembe

text: The number of instruments in the ensemble varies with the region and occasion. In Mali, a traditional ensemble often consists of one dunun (called "konkoni") and one djembe. The konkoni and djembe are in a rhythmic dialog, with each drum taking turns playing accompaniment while the other instrument plays improvised solos. If a second dunun player is available, he supplements the ensemble with a "khassonka dunun", which is a bass drum similar in build to a konkoni, but larger.


title: Djembe

text: In Guinea, a typical ensemble uses three djembes and three dunun, called "sangban" (medium pitch), "dundunba" (bass pitch), and "kenkeni" (high pitch, also called "kensedeni"). If an ensemble includes more than one djembe, the highest pitched (and therefore loudest) djembe plays solo phrases and the other djembes and dunun play accompaniment.


title: Djembe

text: An ensemble may have only two dunun, depending on whether a village has enough dunun players and is wealthy enough to afford three dunun.


title: Djembe

text: A djembe and dunun ensemble traditionally does not play music for people to simply sit back and listen to. Instead, the ensemble creates rhythm for people to dance, sing, clap, or work to. The western distinction between musicians and audience is inappropriate in a traditional context. A rhythm is rarely played as a performance, but is participatory: musicians, dancers, singers, and onlookers are all part of the ensemble and frequently change roles while the music is in progress.


title: Djembe

text: Musicians and participants often form a circle, with the centre of the circle reserved for dancers. Depending on the particular rhythm being played, dances may be performed by groups of men and/or women with choreographed steps, or single dancers may take turns at performing short solos. The lead djembe's role is to play solo phrases that accentuate the movements of the dancers. Often, the aim is to "mark the dancers' feet", that is, to play rhythmic patterns that are synchronized with the dancers' steps. Individual solo dances are not choreographed, with the dancer freely moving in whatever way feels appropriate at that moment. Marking a solo dancer's feet requires the lead djembefola to have strong rapport with the dancer, and it takes many years of experience for a djembefola to acquire the necessary rhythmic repertoire.


title: Djembe

text: The lead djembefola also improvises to a rhythm at times when no-one is dancing. While there is considerable freedom in such improvisation, the solo phrases are not random. Instead, individual rhythms have specific key patterns (signature phrases) that the soloist is expected to know and integrate into his improvisation. A skilled soloist will also play phrases that harmonize with the background rhythm ("groove") that is created by the other instruments.


title: Djembe

text: Traditionally crafted djembes are carved from a single log of hardwood. A number of different wood species are used, all of which are hard and dense. Hardness and density are important factors for the sound and projection of the djembe. The most prized djembe wood is "lenke" ("Afzelia africana"), not because it necessarily sounds better than other woods, but because the Malinké believe that its spiritual qualities are superior. (Malinké traditional wisdom states that a spiritual energy, or "nyama", runs through all things, living or dead.) Besides lenke, traditional woods include "djalla" ("Khaya senegalensis"), "dugura" ("Cordyla africana"), "gueni" ("Pterocarpus erinaceus"), "gele" ("Prosopis africana"), and "iroko" ("Milicia excelsa").


title: Djembe

text: Shells are carved soon after the tree is felled while the wood still retains some moisture and is softer. This makes the wood easier to carve and avoids radial splits that tend to develop in logs that are allowed to dry naturally. Carvers use simple hand tools, such as axes, adzes, spoke shaves, and rasps to shape the shell. A well-carved djembe does not have a smooth interior but a texture of scallops or shallow grooves that influence the sound of the instrument. (Djembes with smooth interiors have tones and slaps with too much sustain.) Often, interior grooves form a spiral pattern, which indicates a carver taking pride in his work.


title: Djembe

text: The djembe is headed with a rawhide skin, most commonly goatskin. Other skins, such as antelope, cow, kangaroo, or horse can be used as well. Thicker skins, such as cow, have a warmer sound with more overtones in the slaps; thinner skins have a sharper sound with fewer overtones in the slaps and are louder. Thick skins make it easier to play full tones but more difficult to play sharp slaps; for thin skins, the opposite applies. Thin skins are louder than thick ones. Thick skins, such as cow, are particularly hard on the hands of the player and cause more callousing than goatskins.


title: Djembe

text: Skins from dry and hot-climate areas and poorly fed goats are preferred for djembes because of their low fat content. Skins from cold-climate goats with high-value nutrition have more than double the fat content; they tend to sound dull and lifeless in comparison. Even though the fat content of male goats is lower than that of female goats, many players prefer female skins because they do not smell as strongly and are reputed to be softer.


title: Djembe

text: The skin is mounted with the spine running through the centre of the drum head, with the line of the spine pointing at the player, so the hands strike either side of the spine. Animal skins are thicker at the spine than the sides; mounting the skin with the spine centered ensures that the left and right hand play symmetric areas of equal size and thickness. In turn, this helps to minimize differences in pitch of the notes played by the left and right hand. Normally, the head end of the spine points at the player, so the hands strike the area of the skin that used to be the shoulders of the goat. With thicker skins, such as from a cow or horse, the skin round is usually taken from the side of the hide so it does not include the spine, which is too thick for use on a djembe.


title: Djembe

text: Skins may be shaved prior to mounting or afterwards, or may be de-haired by liming. Liming weakens skins; some djembefolas also claim that limed skins are harder on their hands and do not sound as good as untreated skins.


title: Djembe

text: Modern djembes exclusively use synthetic rope, most commonly of kernmantle construction, 4–5 mm in diameter. Low-stretch (static) rope is preferred. Most djembe ropes have a polyester core with a 16‑ or 32‑plait mantle and around 5% stretch. Very low-stretch (<1%) rope materials, such as Vectran and Spectra, are used only rarely due to their much higher cost.


title: Djembe

text: Originally, the skin was attached by wooden pegs that were driven through holes in the skin and the shell near the playing edge. Four to five people would stretch the wet skin over the drum to apply tension while the pegs were driven into the bowl. The shrinkage of the skin while it dried then applied sufficient additional tension for the skin to resonate. A similar mounting technique is still used by the Landouma (a subgroup of the Baga people) for a djembe-like drum known as a "gumbe". This mounting technique most likely goes back hundreds of years; the exact period is unknown.


title: Djembe

text: Up until the 1980s, the most common mounting system used twisted strips of cowhide as rope. The skin was attached with rings made of cowhide; one ring was sewn into the perimeter of the skin and a second ring placed below it, with loops holding the skin in place and securing the two rings together. A long strip of cowhide was used to lace up the drum, applying tension between the top ring and a third ring placed around the stem. To apply further tension, the vertical sections of the rope were woven into a diamond pattern that shortens the verticals. Wooden pegs wedged between the shell and the lacing could be used to increase tension still further.


title: Djembe

text: The pitch of these traditional djembes was much lower than it is today because the natural materials imposed a limit on the amount of tension that could be applied. Prior to playing, djembefolas heated the skin near the flames of an open fire, which drives moisture out of the skin and causes it to shrink and increase the pitch of the drum. This process had to be repeated frequently, every 15–30 minutes.


title: Djembe

text: The modern mounting system arose in the early seventies, when touring ballets came into contact with synthetic rope used by the military. Initially, the synthetic rope was used to replace the twisted cowhide strips. However, the rope could now be tightened to the point where it tore through the skin; in response, drum makers started using steel rings instead of twisted cowhide to hold the skin in place. Despite objections from many djembefolas, the modern mounting system gradually displaced the traditional one and, by 1991 had completely replaced it.


title: Djembe

text: The skin is held in place by being trapped between the top ring, called the "crown ring", and the ring below it, called the "flesh ring". A third ring (the "bottom ring") is placed around the stem. The rings are commonly made from 6–8 mm (¼–⅓ in) rebar. A series of cow hitches on the crown ring and bottom ring form loops. Through these loops, a length of rope connects the crown ring and the bottom ring; tightening this rope applies tension. As the vertical rope is tensioned, the cow hitches on the crown ring press the skin against the flesh ring below; this attaches the skin to the flesh ring very securely and stretches the skin over the bearing edge of the drum.


title: Djembe

text: A variation of this technique, introduced in the early 2000s, uses three rings instead of two. The idea of this technique is to increase the number of friction points trapping the skin to make it less likely for the skin to slip between the rings as tension is applied. There is no firm consensus in the djembe community as to whether the benefits of this mounting are worth the extra weight and added complexity.


title: Djembe

text: To prevent damage to the rope from rust flakes, as well as for aesthetic reasons, the rings are often wrapped with strips of colored cloth.


title: Djembe

text: Factory-made djembes (often from synthetic materials, such as fiberglass), use a similar system. However, instead of by vertical ropes, the top ring is pulled against the flesh ring by mechanical lugs that are tightened with a wrench.


title: Djembe

text: After initial tightening of the verticals, a djembe is tuned by creating twists in the verticals to shorten them ("Mali weave"). With more than one completed row of twists, the vertical rope forms diamond shapes that can be quite decorative. Well-applied Mali weave keeps the rope that runs across the verticals horizontal, without gradually climbing up in a spiral pattern.


title: Djembe

text: The amount of tension that can be applied this way is considerable. A djembe tuned to solo pitch has a tone frequency of around 400 Hz. For a drum with a 31 cm (12.2 in) playing surface, this equates to an overall pull force of around 455 kg (1,000 lb), or 15,000 newton per meter (N/m) of tension.


title: Djembe

text: Instead of trimming the skin off above the crown ring, the drum maker can fold the skin over so it covers the crown ring. This is done for aesthetic purposes; the fold-over does not serve to hold the skin in place.


title: Djembe

text: Djembefolas frequently attach one to four metal rattles to their drum, known as "sege sege" (Malinké) or "sesse" (Susu), also called "ksink ksink". The rattles serve as decoration as well as to create a richer sound. Sege sege are not a status symbol or indicative of playing skill. Anyone can attach sege sege to their djembe, regardless of their ability or whom they are playing with, without causing offence or breaking etiquette.


title: Djembe

text: Ropes of different color can be wrapped around the bowl of the drum as decoration. (To tune the drum, the rope wrap must be removed.) Djembes may also be decorated with cowrie shells, coloured paint, decorative tacks, or other metalwork.


title: Djembe

text: Traditionally, carvings on djembes (if any) are limited to the foot. Depending on the country of origin, different patterns are used; traditional carving styles are usually quite plain and restrained. In the 2000s, western demand and competition among carvers resulted in more and more elaborate carvings that can cover all of the foot and, in some cases, include the bowl of the drum.


title: Djembe

text: Particularly in Guinea, drum makers often fit motorcycle tires to the foot of a djembe, both for decoration and to prevent the drum from slipping when playing seated on a slippery floor. This trend started in the late 1990s and evolved from the practice of attaching timing belts to the foot of djembes as a decoration.


title: Djembe

text: Traditionally, as today, in Africa an individual needs to spend many years accompanying his master in ceremonies and other festivities before becoming a real djembefola (djembe player). Today in the communities of western civilization learning to play the djembe generally involves finding a master drummer and having private lessons or lessons for small groups of people.


title: Djembe

text: Players generally need to learn the basic sounds and traditional rhythm samples (4/4 and 12/8) to be able to follow classes. Many years of playing and learning are needed to be able to produce a sound that is comparable in its quality to that of a master drummer.


title: Djembe

text: Written transcriptions of rhythms tend to be imprecise. Usually only the basic idea of the rhythm is transcribed but the real feeling that it carries can't be easily put down on paper. This is due to the nature of the West African music—the different types of swing (at least four of them) that are not easily expressible with western notation. For this reason, written material for advanced players is still scarce if not unavailable, while general and informational literature are can be easily obtained.


title: Djembe

text: With the advent of musical software such as Percussion Studio, transcribing and reproducing rhythms has become easier. Musical software can be useful for people who don't have a group to practice with, as individual tracks can be isolated or tempo changed to assist with playing along and learning/practising. A competent user is able to reproduce material learnt in a workshop for later use. Notwithstanding its utility as a basic transcription tool, Percussion Studio cannot reproduce the intonation and microtiming of a skilled player and has limited value, therefore, for transcribing solo. The drum machine software Hydrogen (software) contains Djembe, dunun and bell sound files that can be used to study as described above.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: Royal intermarriage is the practice of members of ruling dynasties marrying into other reigning families. It was more commonly done in the past as part of strategic diplomacy for national interest. Although sometimes enforced by legal requirement on persons of royal birth, more often it has been a matter of political policy or tradition in monarchies.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: In Europe, the practice was most prevalent from the medieval era until the outbreak of World War I, but evidence of intermarriage between royal dynasties in other parts of the world can be found as far back as the Late Bronze Age. Monarchs were often in pursuit of national and international aggrandisement on behalf of themselves and their dynasties, thus bonds of kinship tended to promote or restrain aggression. Marriage between dynasties could serve to initiate, reinforce or guarantee peace between nations. Alternatively, kinship by marriage could secure an alliance between two dynasties which sought to reduce the sense of threat from or to initiate aggression against the realm of a third dynasty. It could also enhance the prospect of territorial acquisition for a dynasty by procuring legal claim to a foreign throne, or portions of its realm (e.g., colonies), through inheritance from an heiress whenever a monarch failed to leave an undisputed male heir.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: In parts of Europe, royalty continued to regularly marry into the families of their greatest vassals as late as the 16th century. More recently, they have tended to marry internationally. In other parts of the world royal intermarriage was less prevalent and the number of instances varied over time, depending on the culture and foreign policy of the era.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: While the contemporary Western ideal sees marriage as a unique bond between two people who are in love, families in which heredity is central to power or inheritance (such as royal families) have often seen marriage in a different light. There are often political or other non-romantic functions that must be served and the relative wealth and power of the potential spouses may be considered. Marriage for political, economic, or diplomatic reasons, the marriage of state, was a pattern seen for centuries among European rulers.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: In West Africa, the sons and daughters of Yoruba kings were traditionally given in marriage to their fellow royals as a matter of dynastic policy. Sometimes these marriages would involve members of other tribes. Erinwinde of Benin, for example, was taken as a wife by the "Oba" Oranyan of Oyo during his time as governor of Benin. Their son Eweka went on to found the dynasty that rules the Kingdom of Benin.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: Marriages between the Swazi, Zulu and Thembu royal houses of southern Africa are common. For example, the daughter of South African president and Thembu royal Nelson Mandela, Zenani Mandela, married Prince Thumbumuzi Dlamini, a brother of Mswati III, King of Eswatini. Elsewhere in the region, Princess Semane Khama of the Bamangwato tribe of Botswana married "Kgosi" Lebone Edward Molotlegi of the Bafokeng tribe of South Africa.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: Other examples of historical, mythical and contemporary royal intermarriages throughout Africa include:


title: Royal intermarriage

text: Several Egyptian pharaohs married the daughters of neighbouring kings to secure peace and form alliances. The Egyptian-Hittite peace treaty, the earliest known surviving peace treaty in the world, was sealed by a marriage between the pharaoh Ramesses II and a Hittite princess. Pharaoh Amasis II married a Greek princess named Ladice daughter of King Battus III of Cyrene.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: The Chakri dynasty of Thailand has included marriages between royal relatives, but marriages between dynasties and foreigners, including foreign royals, are rare. This is in part due to Section 11 of 1924 Palace Law of Succession which excludes members of the royal family from the line of succession if they marry a non-Thai national.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: The late king Bhumibol Adulyadej was a first-cousin once removed of his wife, Sirikit, the two being, respectively, a grandson and a great-granddaughter of Chulalongkorn. Chulalongkorn married a number of his half-sisters, including Savang Vadhana and Sunandha Kumariratana; all shared the same father, Mongkut. He also married Dara Rasmi, a princess of a vassal state.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: The Lý dynasty which ruled Dai Viet (Vietnam) married its princesses off to regional rivals to establish alliances with them. One of these marriages was between a Lý empress regnant (Lý Chiêu Hoàng) and a member of fishermen-turned-warlords Trần clan (Trần Thái Tông) from Nam Định, which enabled the Trần to then topple the Lý and established their own Trần dynasty.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: A Lý princess also married into the Hồ clan faction, which later usurped power and established the Hồ dynasty after having a Tran princess marry their leader, Hồ Quý Ly.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: The Cambodian King Chey Chettha II married the Vietnamese Nguyễn lord Princess Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Vạn, a daughter of Lord Nguyễn Phúc Nguyên, in 1618. In return, the king granted the Vietnamese the right to establish settlements in Mô Xoài (now Bà Rịa), in the region of Prey Nokor—which they colloquially referred to as "Sài Gòn", and which later became Ho Chi Minh City.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: In the Chola Dynasty in southern India, Madhurantaki the daughter of Emperor Rajendra II married Kulottunga I the son the son of Eastern Chalukya ruler Rajaraja Narendra. This was to improve the relationship between the two royal houses and to straighten Chola influence in Vengai. Kulottunga and Madhurantaki were first cousins as Kulottunga's mother Amangai Devi was the sister of Rajendra II making them both the grandchildren of Emperor Rajendra I.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: Marriage policy in imperial China differed from dynasty to dynasty. Several dynasties practiced Heqin, which involved marrying off princesses to other royal families.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: The Xiongnu practiced marriage alliances with Han dynasty officers and officials who defected to their side. The older sister of the Chanyu (the Xiongnu ruler) was married to the Xiongnu General Zhao Xin, the Marquis of Xi who was serving the Han dynasty. The daughter of the Chanyu was married to the Han Chinese General Li Ling after he surrendered and defected. The Yenisei Kirghiz Khagans claimed descent from Li Ling. Another Han Chinese General who defected to the Xiongnu was Li Guangli who also married a daughter of the Chanyu.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: The Xianbei Tuoba royal family of Northern Wei started to arrange for Han Chinese elites to marry daughters of the royal family in the 480s. Some Han Chinese exiled royalty fled from southern China and defected to the Xianbei. Several daughters of the Xianbei Emperor Xiaowen of Northern Wei were married to Han Chinese elites, the Han Chinese Liu Song royal Liu Hui 劉輝, married Princess Lanling 蘭陵公主 of the Northern Wei, Princess Huayang 華陽公主 to Sima Fei 司馬朏, a descendant of Jin dynasty (266–420) royalty, Princess Jinan 濟南公主 to Lu Daoqian 盧道虔, Princess Nanyang 南陽長公主 to Xiao Baoyin 蕭寶夤, a member of Southern Qi royalty. Emperor Xiaozhuang of Northern Wei's sister the Shouyang Princess was wedded to The Liang dynasty ruler Emperor Wu of Liang's son Xiao Zong 蕭綜.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: When the Eastern Jin dynasty ended Northern Wei received the Jin prince Sima Chuzhi 司馬楚之 as a refugee. A Northern Wei Princess married Sima Chuzhi, giving birth to Sima Jinlong. Northern Liang King Juqu Mujian's daughter married Sima Jinlong.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: The Rouran Khaganate arranged for one of their princesses, Khagan Yujiulü Anagui's daughter Princess Ruru 蠕蠕公主 to be married to the Han Chinese ruler Gao Huan of the Eastern Wei.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: The Kingdom of Gaochang was made out of Han Chinese colonists and ruled by the Han Chinese Qu family which originated from Gansu. Jincheng commandery 金城 (Lanzhou), district of Yuzhong 榆中 was the home of the Qu Jia. The Qu family was linked by marriage alliances to the Turks, with a Turk being the grandmother of King Qu Boya.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: Tang dynasty (618–907) emperors exchanged and the rulers of the Uyghur Khaganate exchanged princesses in marriage to consolidate the special trade and military relationship that developed after the Khaganate supported the Chinese during the An Lushan Rebellion. The Uyghur Khaganate exchanged princesses in marriage with Tang dynasty China in 756 to seal the alliance against An Lushan. The Uyghur Khagan Bayanchur Khan had his daughter Uyghur Princess Pijia (毗伽公主) married to Tang dynasty Chinese Prince Li Chengcai (李承采), Prince of Dunhuang (敦煌王), son of Li Shouli, Prince of Bin, while the Tang dynasty Chinese princess Ninguo married Uyghur Khagan Bayanchur. At least three Tang imperial princesses are known to have married khagans between 758 and 821. These unions temporarily stopped in 788, which is believed in part to be because stability within the Chinese empire meant that they were politically unnecessary; however, threats from Tibet in the west, and a renewed need for Uyghur support, precipitated the marriage of Princess Taihe to Bilge Khagan.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: The ethnically Chinese Cao family ruling Guiyi Circuit established marriage alliances with the Uighurs of the Ganzhou Kingdom, with both the Cao rulers marrying Uighur princesses and with Cao princesses marrying Uighur rulers. The Ganzhou Uighur Khagan's daughter was married to Cao Yijin in 916.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: The Chinese Cao family ruling Guiyi Circuit established marriage alliances with the Saka Kingdom of Khotan, with both the Cao rulers marrying Khotanese princesses and with Cao princesses marrying Khotanese rulers. A Khotanese princess who was the daughter of the King of Khotan married Cao Yanlu.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: The Khitan Liao dynasty arranged for women from the Khitan royal consort Xiao clan to marry members of the Han Chinese Han 韓 clan, which originated in Jizhou 冀州 before being abducted by the Khitan and becoming part of the Han Chinese elite of the Liao.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: Han Chinese Geng family intermarried with the Khitan and the Han 韓 clan provided two of their women as wives to Geng Yanyi and the second one was the mother of Geng Zhixin. Empress Rende's sister, a member of the Xiao clan, was the mother of Han Chinese General Geng Yanyi.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: Han Durang (Yelu Longyun) was the father of Queen dowager of State Chen, who was the wife of General Geng Yanyi and buried with him in his tomb in Zhaoyang in Liaoning. His wife was also known as "Madame Han". The Geng's tomb is located in Liaoning at Guyingzi in Chaoying.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: Emperors of the proceeding Song dynasty (960–1279) tended to marry from within their own borders. Tang emperors, mainly took their wives from high-ranking bureaucratic families, but the Song dynasty did not consider rank important when it came to selecting their consorts. It has been estimated that only a quarter of Song consorts were from such families, with the rest being from lower status backgrounds. For example, Liu, consort of Emperor Zhenzong, had been a street performer and consort Miao, wife of Emperor Renzong was the daughter of his own wet nurse.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: During the Qing dynasty (1644–1912), emperors chose their consorts primarily from one of the eight Banner families, administrative divisions that divide all native Manchu families. To maintain the ethnic purity of the ruling dynasty, after the Kangxi Period (1662–1722), emperors and princes were forbidden to marry non-Manchu and non-Mongol wives. Imperial daughters however were not covered by this ban, and as with their preceding dynasties, were often married to Mongol princes to gain political or military support, especially in the early years of the Qing dynasty; three of the nine daughters of Emperor Nurhaci and twelve of Emperor Hongtaiji's daughters were married to Mongol Princes.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: The Manchu Imperial Aisin Gioro clan practiced marriage alliances with Han Chinese Ming Generals and Mongol princes. Aisin Gioro women were married to Han Chinese Generals who defected to the Manchu side during the Manchu conquest of China. The Manchu leader Nurhaci married one of his granddaughters to the Ming General Li Yongfang 李永芳 after he surrendered Fushun in Liaoning to the Manchu in 1618 and a mass marriage of Han Chinese officers and officials to Manchu women numbering 1,000 couples was arranged by Prince Yoto 岳托 (Prince Keqin) and Hongtaiji in 1632 to promote harmony between the two ethnic groups. Aisin Gioro women were married to the sons of the Han Chinese Generals Sun Sike (Sun Ssu-k'o) 孫思克, Geng Jimao (Keng Chi-mao), Shang Kexi (Shang K'o-hsi), and Wu Sangui (Wu San-kuei).


title: Royal intermarriage

text: Nurhaci's son Abatai's daughter was married to Li Yongfang. The offspring of Li received the "Third Class Viscount" () title. Li Yongfang was the great great great grandfather of Li Shiyao 李侍堯.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: The "efu" 額駙 rank was given to husbands of Qing princesses. Geng Zhongming, a Han bannerman, was awarded the title of Prince Jingnan, and his son Geng Jingmao managed to have both his sons Geng Jingzhong and Geng Zhaozhong 耿昭忠 become court attendants under the Shunzhi Emperor and married Aisin Gioro women, with Prince Abatai's granddaughter marrying Geng Zhaozhong 耿昭忠 and Haoge's (a son of Hong Taiji) daughter marrying Geng Jingzhong. A daughter 和硕柔嘉公主 of the Manchu Aisin Gioro Prince Yolo 岳樂 (Prince An) was wedded to Geng Juzhong 耿聚忠 who was another son of Geng Jingmao.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: The fourteenth daughter of Kangxi (和硕悫靖公主) was wedded to Sun Chengen, the son (孫承恩) of Sun Sike (Sun Ssu-k'o) 孫思克, a Han bannerman.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: The Silla Kingdom had a practice that limited the succession to the throne to members of the "seonggol", or "sacred bone", rank. To maintain their "sacred bone" rank, members of this caste often intermarried with one another in the same fashion that European royals intermarried to maintain a "pure" royal pedigree.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: The Goryeo Dynasty had a history of incestuous marriage within the royal family in its early years, starting from Gwangjong, the fourth king, who married his half-sister Queen Daemok. To avoid scandals, the female members of the dynasty would be ceremonially adopted by their maternal families after birth. This practice of dynastic incest ended with the overthrow of Queen Heonae, the mother of Mokjong, the seventh king, after she attempted to seize the throne for herself and her illegitimate sons by placing these sons as Mokjong's heir, only to be foiled by a coup masterminded by the Goryeo general Gang Jo.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: After the Second Manchu invasion of Korea, Joseon Korea was forced to give several of their royal princesses as concubines to the Qing Manchu regent Prince Dorgon. In 1650, Dorgon married the Korean Princess Uisun (義順). She was a collateral branch of the Korean royal family, and daughter of Yi Gae-yun (李愷胤). Dorgon married two Korean princesses at Lianshan.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: The Japanese may not have seen intermarriage between them and the royal dynasties of the Korean Empire damaging to their prestige either. According to the Shoku Nihongi, an imperially commissioned record of Japanese history completed in 797, Emperor Kanmu who ruled from 781 to 806 was the son of a Korean concubine, Takano no Niigasa, who was descended from King Muryeong of Baekje, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: In 1920, Crown Prince Yi Un of Korea married Princess Masako of Nashimoto and, in May 1931, Yi Geon, grandson of Gojong of Korea, was married to Matsudaira Yosiko, a cousin of Princess Masako. The Japanese saw these marriages as a way to secure their colonial rule of Korea and introduce Japanese blood in to the Korean royal House of Yi.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: Careful selection of a spouse was important to maintain the royal status of a family: depending on the law of the land in question, if a prince or king was to marry a commoner who had no royal blood, even if the first-born was acknowledged as a son of a sovereign, he might not be able to claim any of the royal status of his father.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: Traditionally, many factors were important in arranging royal marriages. One such factor was the amount of territory that the other royal family governed or controlled. Another, related factor was the stability of the control exerted over that territory: when there was territorial instability in a royal family, other royalty would be less inclined to marry into that family. Another factor was political alliance: marriage was an important way to bind together royal families and their countries during peace and war and could justify many important political decisions.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: The increase in royal intermarriage often meant that lands passed into the hands of foreign houses, when the nearest heir was the son of a native dynasty and a foreign royal. Given the success of the Habsburgs' territorial acquisition-via-inheritance, a motto came to be associated with their dynasty: "Bella gerant alii, tu, felix Austria, nube!" ("Let others wage war. You, happy Austria, marry!")


title: Royal intermarriage

text: Monarchs sometimes went to great lengths to prevent this. On her marriage to Louis XIV of France, Maria Theresa, daughter of Philip IV of Spain, was forced to renounce her claim to the Spanish throne. When monarchs or heirs apparent wed other monarchs or heirs, special agreements, sometimes in the form of treaties, were negotiated to determine inheritance rights. The marriage contract of Philip II of Spain and Mary I of England, for example, stipulated that the maternal possessions, as well as Burgundy and the Low Countries, were to pass to any future children of the couple, whereas the remaining paternal possessions (including Spain, Naples, Sicily, Milan) would first of all go to Philip's son Don Carlos, from his previous marriage to Maria Manuela of Portugal. If Carlos were to die without any descendants, only then would they pass to the children of his second marriage. On the other hand, the Franco-Scottish treaty that arranged the 1558 marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots and Francis, the son and heir of Henry II of France, had it that if the queen died without descendants, Kingdom of Scotland would fall to the throne of Kingdom of France.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: Religion has always been closely tied to European political affairs, and as such it played an important role during marriage negotiations. The 1572 wedding in Paris of the French princess Margaret of Valois to the leader of France's Huguenots, Henry III of Navarre, was ostensibly arranged to effect a "rapprochement" between the nation's Catholics and Protestants, but proved a ruse for the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. After the English Reformation, matches between English monarchs and Roman Catholic princesses were often unpopular, especially so when the prospective queen consort was unwilling to convert, or at least practice her faith discreetly. Passage of the Act of Settlement 1701 disinherited any heir to the throne who married a Catholic. Other ruling houses, such as the Romanovs and Habsburgs, have at times also insisted on dynastic marriages only being contracted with people of a certain faith or those willing to convert. When in 1926 Astrid of Sweden married Leopold III of Belgium, it was agreed that her children would be raised as Catholics but she was not required to give up Lutheranism, although she chose to convert in 1930. Some potential matches were abandoned due to irreconcilable religious differences. For example, plans for the marriage of the Catholic Władysław IV Vasa and the Lutheran Elisabeth of Bohemia, Princess Palatine proved unpopular with Poland's largely Catholic nobility and were quietly dropped.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: Marriages among ruling dynasties and their subjects have at times been common, with such alliances as that of Edward the Confessor, King of England with Edith of Wessex and Władysław II Jagiełło, King of Poland with Elizabeth Granowska being far from unheard of in medieval Europe. However, as dynasties approached absolutism and sought to preserve loyalty among competing members of the nobility, most eventually distanced themselves from kinship ties to local nobles by marrying abroad. Marriages with subjects brought the king back down to the level of those he ruled, often stimulating the ambition of his consort's family and evoking jealousy—or disdain—from the nobility. The notion that monarchs should marry into the dynasties of other monarchs to end or prevent war was, at first, a policy driven by pragmatism. During the era of absolutism, this practice contributed to the notion that it was socially, as well as politically, disadvantageous for members of ruling families to intermarry with their subjects and pass over the opportunity for marriage into a foreign dynasty.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: While Roman emperors almost always married wives who were also Roman citizens, the ruling families of the empire's client kingdoms in the Near East and North Africa often contracted marriages with other royal houses to consolidate their position. These marriages were often contracted with the approval, or even at the behest, of the Roman emperors themselves. Rome thought that such marriages promoted stability among their client states and prevented petty local wars that would disturb the Pax Romana. Glaphyra of Cappadocia was known to have contracted three such royal intermarriages: with Juba II&I, King of Numidia and Mauretania, Alexander of Judea and Herod Archelaus, Ethnarch of Samaria.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: Though some emperors, such as Justin I and Justinian I, took low-born wives, dynastic intermarriages in imperial families were not unusual in the Byzantine Empire. Following the fall of Constantinople in 1204, the ruling families, the Laskarides and then the Palaiologoi, thought it prudent to marry into foreign dynasties. One early example is the marriage of John Doukas Vatatzes with Constance, the daughter of Emperor Frederick II of the Holy Roman Empire to seal their alliance. After establishing an alliance with the Mongols in 1263, Michael VIII Palaiologos married two of his daughters to Mongol khans to cement their agreement: his daughter Euphrosyne Palaiologina was married to Nogai Khan of the Golden Horde, and his daughter Maria Palaiologina, was married to Abaqa Khan of the Ilkhanate. Later in the century, Andronikos II Palaiologos agreed marital alliances with Ghazan of the Ilkhanate and Toqta and Uzbeg of the Golden Horde, which were quickly followed by weddings with his daughters.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: The Grand Komnenoi of the Empire of Trebizond were famed for marrying their daughters to their neighbours as acts of diplomacy. Theodora Megale Komnene, daughter of John IV, was married to Uzun Hassan, lord of the Aq Qoyunlu, to seal an alliance between the Empire and the so-called White Sheep. Although the alliance failed to save Trebizond from its eventual defeat, and despite being a devout Christian in a Muslim state, Theodora did manage to exercise a pervasive influence both in the domestic and foreign actions of her husband. Their grandson Ismail I was the founder of the Safavid dynasty of Iran


title: Royal intermarriage

text: Though usually made to strengthen the position of the empire, there are examples of interdynastic marriages destabilising the emperor's authority. When Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos married his second wife, Eirene of Montferrat, in 1284 she caused a division in the Empire over her demand that her own sons share in imperial territory with, Michael, his son from his first marriage. She resorted to leaving Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, and setting up her own court in the second city of the Empire, Thessalonica.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: In modern times, among European royalty at least, marriages between royal dynasties have become much rarer than they once were. This happens to avoid inbreeding, since many royal families share common ancestors, and therefore share much of the genetic pool. Members of Europe's dynasties increasingly married members of titled noble families, including George VI of the United Kingdom, Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood, Prince Michael of Kent, Charles III of the United Kingdom, Baudouin of Belgium, Albert II of Belgium, Prince Amedeo of Belgium, Franz Joseph II, Prince of Liechtenstein, Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein, Prince Constantin of Liechtenstein, Princess Nora of Liechtenstein (the Liechtensteins, originally an Austrian noble family, always married nobles much more often than royals), Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden, Princess Désirée, Baroness Silfverschiöld, Infanta Pilar, Duchess of Badajoz, Infanta Elena, Duchess of Lugo, Princess Marie Adelaide of Luxembourg, Princess Marie Gabrielle of Luxembourg, Guillaume, Hereditary Grand Duke of Luxembourg, and Princess Charlotte, Duchess of Valentinois or untitled nobility as Philippe of Belgium and Beatrix of the Netherlands, and very often commoners, as Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden, Harald V of Norway, Haakon, Crown Prince of Norway, Henri of Luxembourg, Felipe VI of Spain, Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, Margrethe II of Denmark, Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark, William, Prince of Wales and Albert II of Monaco have done.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: Among Europe's current kings, queens and heirs apparent, only Alois, Hereditary Prince of Liechtenstein married a member of a foreign dynasty, as did the abdicated Juan Carlos I of Spain.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: As a result of dynastic intra-marriage all of Europe's 10 currently reigning hereditary monarchs since 1939 descend from a common ancestor, John William Friso, Prince of Orange. This remained true until 2022 when Louis IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt became the new most recent common ancestor when Charles III became King of the United Kingdom.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: From the time of the Umayyad conquest of Hispania and throughout the Reconquista, marriage between Spanish and Umayyad royals was not uncommon. Early marriages, such as that of Abd al-Aziz ibn Musa and Egilona at the turn of the 8th century, was thought to help establish the legitimacy of Muslim rule on the Iberian Peninsula. Later instances of intermarriage were often made to seal trade treaties between Christian kings and Muslim caliphs.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: The marriages of Ottoman sultans and their sons in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries tended to be with members of the ruling dynasties of neighbouring powers. With little regard for religion, the sultans contracted marriages with both Christians and Muslims; the purpose of these royal intermarriages were purely tactical. Christian consorts of Ottoman sultans include Theodora Kantakouzene of Byzantium, Kera Tamara of Bulgaria and Olivera Despina of Serbia. These Christian states along with Muslim beyliks of Germiyan, Saruhan, Karaman and Dulkadir were all potential enemies, and marriage was seen as a way of securing alliances with them. Marriage with foreign dynasties seems to have ceased in 1504, with the last marriage of a sultan to a foreign princess being that of Murad II and Mara Branković, daughter of the Serbian ruler Đurađ Branković, in 1435. By this time, the Ottomans had consolidated their power in the area and absorbed or subjugated many of their former rivals, and so marriage alliances were no longer seen as important to their foreign policy.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: The Islamic principle of "kafa'a" discourages the marriages of women to men of differing religion or of inferior status. Neighbouring Muslim powers did not start to give their daughters in marriage to Ottoman princes until the fifteenth century, when they were seen to have grown in importance. This same principle meant that, while Ottoman men were free to marry Christian women, Muslim princesses were prevented from marrying Christian princes.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: the royal families and former royal families of Islamic states (i.e., Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, the constituent states of the United Arab Emirates, etc.).


title: Royal intermarriage

text: There are also numerous cases of intramarriage between cadet branches within the ruling families from the Arabian Peninsula, including the House of Saud, the House of Sabah, the House of Khalifa, the House of Thani, and the House of Busaid. Other such examples include Prince Hamzah bin Hussein and Princess Noor bint Asem (2003), Hussein of Jordan and Dina bint Abdul-Hamid (1955), Talal of Jordan and Zein Al-Sharaf Talal (1934), and Ghazi of Iraq and Aliya bint Ali (1934), all from the Hashemite dynasty.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: Royal incest was extremely common in the Kingdom of Hawaii and its predecessors, despite being rare in other Polynesian societies. Among the "aliʻi", the ruling class, marriage between blood relatives of the first degree was believed to produce children with the highest rank under the "kapu" system, equal to that of the gods. A marriage between brother and sister was considered "the most perfect and revered union". It was believed that the "mana" of a particular "aliʻi" could be increased by incestuous unions. According to O. A. Bushnell, "in several accounts about Hawaiians, an ali’i who was the issue of an incestuous marriage [...] was noted for a splendid body and a superior intelligence". Writers have suggested that this preference for brother–sister incest came about as a way to protect the royal bloodline. Notable instances of incestuous relationships among Hawaiian royalty were those between King Kamehameha II and his half-sister Kamāmalu, which was a fully fledged marriage, and between Kamehameha III and his full sister Nahienaena. In the latter case, the siblings had hoped to marry but their union was opposed by Christian missionaries.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: The Sapa Inca of Peru frequently married their sisters, such between as the children Huayna Capac: Huascar married Chuqui Huipa, Atawallpa married Coya Asarpay, and Manco Inca married Cura Ocllo.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: During and after the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, dynastic marriages began to occur between Inca princesses and Spanish conquistadors. The aforementioned Cura Ocllo married Gonzalo Pizarro following the death of her brother-husband, and her sister Quispe Sisa married Francisco Pizarro.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: At one time, some dynasties adhered strictly to the concept of royal intermarriage. The Habsburgs, Sicilian and Spanish Bourbons and Romanovs, among others, introduced house laws which governed dynastic marriages; it was considered important that dynasts marry social equals (i.e., other royalty), thereby ruling out even the highest-born non-royal nobles. Those dynasts who contracted undesirable marriages often did so morganatically. Generally, this is a marriage between a man of high birth and a woman of lesser status (such as a daughter of a low-ranked noble family or a commoner). Usually, neither the bride nor any children of the marriage has a claim on the bridegroom's succession rights, titles, precedence, or entailed property. The children are considered legitimate for all other purposes and the prohibition against bigamy applies.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: Over time, because of the relatively limited number of potential consorts, the gene pool of many ruling families grew progressively smaller, until all European royalty was related. This also resulted in many being descended from a certain person through many lines of descent, such as the numerous European royalty descended from Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom or King Christian IX of Denmark. The House of Habsburg was infamous for inbreeding, with the Habsburg lip cited as an ill effect, although no genetic evidence has proved the allegation. The closely related houses of Habsburg, Bourbon, Braganza and Wittelsbach also engaged in first-cousin unions frequently and in double-cousin and uncle-niece marriages occasionally.


title: Royal intermarriage

text: When Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor married Maria Theresa of Naples and Sicily in 1790, they were double first cousins having the same set of grandparents. Francis became the first Emperor of Austria in 1804 and dissolved the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. All later Emperors of Austria and heads of the House of Habsburg were descendants of this union.


title: Arnica

text: Arnica is a genus of perennial, herbaceous plants in the sunflower family (Asteraceae). The genus name "Arnica" may be derived from the Greek "arni", "lamb", in reference to the plants' soft, hairy leaves. "Arnica" is also known by the names mountain tobacco and confusingly, leopard's bane and wolfsbane—two names that it shares with the entirely unrelated genus "Aconitum".


title: Arnica

text: This circumboreal and montane (subalpine) genus occurs mostly in the temperate regions of western North America, with a few species native to the Arctic regions of northern Eurasia and North America.


title: Arnica

text: "Arnica" species are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species, including "Bucculatrix arnicella".


title: Arnica

text: "Arnica" was previously classified in the tribe Senecioneae because it has a flower or pappus of fine bristles.


title: Arnica

text: "Arnica" plants have a deep-rooted, erect stem that is usually unbranched. Their downy opposite leaves are borne towards the apex of the stem. The ovoid, leathery basal leaves are arranged in a rosette.


title: Arnica

text: They show large yellow or orange flowers, wide with long ray florets and numerous disc florets. The phyllaries (a bract under the flowerhead) has long spreading hairs. Each phyllary is associated with a ray floret. Species of "Arnica", with an involucre (a circle of bracts arranged surrounding the flower head) arranged in two rows, have only their outer phyllaries associated with ray florets. The flowers have a slight aromatic smell.


title: Arnica

text: The seedlike fruit has a pappus of plumose, white or pale tan bristles. The entire plant has a strong and distinct pine-sage odor when the leaves of mature plants are rubbed or bruised.


title: Arnica

text: The species "Arnica montana", native to Europe, has long been used medicinally, but the effectiveness of this use has not been substantiated.


title: Arnica

text: "Arnica montana" contains the toxin helenalin, which can be poisonous if large amounts of the plant are eaten, and contact with the plant can also cause skin irritation.


title: Jessica Springsteen

text: Jessica Rae Springsteen (born December 30, 1991) is an American equestrian. The daughter of musicians Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa, she is a show jumping champion rider who has represented the United States Equestrian Team in international competition and won a silver medal in the Team jumping at the 2020 Summer Olympics held in 2021 in Tokyo.


title: Jessica Springsteen

text: Jessica Rae Springsteen was born on December 30, 1991, the second child and only daughter of musicians Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa. She has one older brother, Evan James Springsteen (born 1990), and one younger brother, Samuel Ryan Springsteen (born 1994). When she and her brothers reached school-going age in the early 1990s, their parents left Los Angeles with them specifically to raise a family in a non-paparazzi environment. The family owned and lived on a horse farm in Colts Neck Township, New Jersey. They also owned homes in Los Angeles, as well as in Wellington, Florida, and Rumson, New Jersey.