title: Round Table

text: The Round Table first appeared in Wace's "Roman de Brut", a Norman language adaptation of Geoffrey's "Historia" finished in 1155. Wace says Arthur created the Round Table to prevent quarrels among his barons, none of whom would accept a lower place than the others. Layamon added to the story when he adapted Wace's work into the Middle English "Brut" in the early 13th century, saying that the quarrel between Arthur's vassals led to violence at a Yuletide feast. In response, a Cornish carpenter built an enormous but easily transportable Round Table to prevent further dispute. Wace claims he was not the source of the Round Table; both he and Layamon credited it instead to the Bretons. Some scholars have doubted this claim, while others believe it may be true. There is some similarity between the chroniclers' description of the Round Table and a custom recorded in Celtic stories, in which warriors sit in a circle around the king or lead warrior, in some cases feuding over the order of precedence as in Layamon. There is a possibility that Wace, contrary to his own claims, derived Arthur's round table not from any Breton source, but rather from medieval biographies of Charlemagne—notably Einhard's "Vita Caroli" and Notker the Stammerer's "De Carolo Magno"—in which the king is said to have possessed a round table decorated with a map of Rome.


title: Round Table

text: The Round Table takes on new dimensions in the romances of the late 12th and early 13th century, where it becomes a symbol of the famed order of chivalry which flourishes under Arthur. In Robert de Boron's "Merlin", written around 1200, the magician Merlin creates the Round Table in imitation of the table of the Last Supper and of Joseph of Arimathea's Grail Table. Made of silver, the Grail Table was used by the followers of Arimathea after he created it as directed by a vision of Christ, and was taken by him to Avalon (later identified with Glastonbury Tor, but this connection was not mentioned by Robert). This version of the Round Table, here made for Arthur's father Uther Pendragon rather than Arthur himself, has twelve seats and one empty place to mark the betrayal of Judas; this seat, must remain empty until the coming of the knight who will achieve the Grail. The Didot "Perceval", a prose continuation of Robert's work, takes up the story, and the knight Percival sits in the seat and initiates the Grail quest.


title: Round Table

text: The prose cycles of the 13th century, the Lancelot-Grail (Vulgate) Cycle and the Post-Vulgate Cycle, further adapt the chivalric attributes of the Round Table but make it and its fellowship much larger, with many more seats and usually dozens of members at any given time. Here it is the perfect knight Galahad, rather than Percival, who assumes the empty seat, now called the Siege Perilous. Galahad's arrival marks the start of the Grail quest as well as the end of the Arthurian era. In these works the Round Table is kept by King Leodegrance of Cameliard after Uther's death; Arthur inherits it when he marries Leodegrance's daughter Guinevere. Other versions treat the Round Table differently, for instance Arthurian works from Italy like "La Tavola Ritonda" ("The Round Table") often distinguish between the knights of the "Old Table" of Uther's time and those of Arthur's "New Table". In the Post-Vulgate, the Table is eventually destroyed by King Mark during his invasion of Logres after the deaths of Arthur and almost all of the Knights, many of whom in fact had killed each other, especially in internal conflicts at the end of the cycle.


title: Round Table

text: During the Middle Ages, festivals called Round Tables were celebrated throughout Europe in imitation of Arthur's court. These events featured jousting, dancing, and feasting, and in some cases attending knights assumed the identities of Arthur's entourage.


title: Round Table

text: The Winchester Round Table is a large tabletop hanging in Winchester Castle and bearing the names of various knights of Arthur's court, was probably created for a Round Table tournament. The table is in diameter and weighs . The current paintwork is late; it was done by order of King Henry VIII of England. The table itself is considerably older; dendrochronology calculates the date of construction to 1250–1280—during the reign of Edward I of England—using timbers that were felled over a period of years. Edward was an Arthurian enthusiast who attended at least five Round Tables and hosted one himself in 1299, which may have been the occasion for the creation of the Winchester Round Table. Martin Biddle, from an examination of Edward's financial accounts, links it instead with a tournament King Edward held near Winchester on 20 April 1290, to mark the betrothal of one of his daughters.


title: AOL Mail

text: AOL Mail (stylized as Aol Mail.) is a free web-based email service provided by AOL, a division of Yahoo.


title: AOL Mail

text: If an AOL Mail account is inactive for 90 days, it may become deactivated, at which point any emails sent to it may not be delivered and may be returned to sender. After 180 days of inactivity, the account may be deleted.


title: AOL Mail

text: In 1993, both America Online (AOL) and Delphi started connecting their proprietary e-mail services to the Internet.


title: AOL Mail

text: As of October 1997, AOL Mail was the world's largest e-mail provider, with around 9 million subscribers (identical with the number of AOL subscribers).


title: AOL Mail

text: In 1997, AOL launched NetMail, a web-based version of its e-mail service. It was initially criticized for only working on Internet Explorer, but a later Java-written version ensured compatibility with Netscape Navigator. The service was renamed AOL Mail on the Web in December 1999.


title: AOL Mail

text: In 2004, AOL tested a new free webmail service for the public, without the need of customers subscribing to AOL. This was done in an effort to compete better against MSN Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and Gmail. The service launched in May 2005 under the name AIM Mail, with 2 gigabytes of mail storage and tightly integrated with AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). It is based on technology from MailBlocks, which AOL acquired in 2004.


title: AOL Mail

text: From August 2006, AOL became entirely free of charge for broadband users. The same month, Netscape Mail was migrated to AIM Mail.


title: AOL Mail

text: In November 2010, AOL released Project Phoenix, an email application program that features a Quick Bar where emails, text messages, and AOL Instant Messenger messages can be sent from one area. It also lets people add up to five accounts into it. In 2012, AOL released the Alto Mail software.


title: AOL Mail

text: As of July 2012, there were 24 million AOL Mail users. By 2021, the number of paying users had dropped to 1.5 million.


title: AOL Mail

text: On March 16, 2017, Verizon, which had acquired AOL in 2015, announced that it would discontinue its in-house email services for internet subscribers, and migrate all customers to AOL Mail.


title: 000 (emergency telephone number)

text: 000 Emergency, also known as Triple Zero or Triple 0, and sometimes stylised Triple Zero (000), is the primary national emergency telephone number in Australia. The Emergency Call Service is operated by Telstra, and overseen by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), and is intended only for use in life-threatening or time-critical emergencies.


title: 000 (emergency telephone number)

text: Other emergency telephone numbers in Australia are 112 for GSM mobile and satellite phones, which is answered by a Triple Zero (000) operator, and 106 for telecommunications device for the deaf (TDD) textphones. Calls to the emergency telephone number can be made even if a mobile phone is locked, no SIM card is required, and calls must be forwarded by network service providers even if the subscriber is barred from making calls due to billing issues.


title: 000 (emergency telephone number)

text: It is important to note that whilst dialling international emergency telephone number 112 from a mobile will connect to the Triple Zero operator, dialling 112 from a landline will "not" access the Triple Zero operator; 000 must be used from landlines. Furthermore, the 911 emergency telephone number as used in North America will also "not" gain access to the Triple Zero operator, either from mobile or landline telephone.


title: 000 (emergency telephone number)

text: For calls to the State Emergency Service (SES) about non–life-threatening situations, the Australia-wide telephone number 132 500 can be used. For non-emergency calls to the police in Australia, 131 444 should be used.


title: 000 (emergency telephone number)

text: 000 was also the emergency telephone number in Denmark and Finland until the introduction of the 112 number in 1993, and in Norway until 1986, when the emergency telephone numbers diverted to 001 for fire brigade, 002 for police and 003 for ambulance. Those Norwegian emergency telephone numbers changed in 1994 to 110, 112 and 113 respectively.


title: 000 (emergency telephone number)

text: Before 1969, Australia did not have a national telephone number for emergency services; the police, fire and ambulance services had many telephone numbers, one for each local unit. In 1961, the office of the Postmaster General (PMG) starting introducing the 000 telephone number in major population centres, and during the 1960s, extended its coverage to nationwide. The number 000 was chosen for several reasons: technically, it suited the dialling system for the most remote automatic exchanges, particularly outback Queensland. These communities used the digit 0 to select an automatic trunk line to a centre. In the most remote communities, two 0s had to be used to reach a main centre; thus dialling 0+0, plus another 0 would call (at least) an operator. Zero is also the closest to the finger stall on rotary dial phones making it easy to dial at night or in smoke. It is now well established nationally throughout Australia that persons requiring emergency assistance dial 000.


title: 000 (emergency telephone number)

text: Within Australia, 000 is a free call from most telephones. Dialling 000 (or 112) on most Australian GSM mobile phones will override any keypad lock, and if the caller's home network is out of range, the phone will attempt to use other carriers' networks to relay the call. A SIM card is not required to connect a mobile phone to the emergency numbers. Interpreter services may be available once connected to emergency services.


title: 000 (emergency telephone number)

text: Due to special configuration in their firmware, some 3G or GSM mobile phones sold in Australia will redirect other emergency telephone numbers, such as 911 and 999, to 000. These calls are sent out by the handset as an emergency flag to the network, and as such, are treated in the same way as a call to 000.


title: 000 (emergency telephone number)

text: Calling 000 greets the caller with a recorded message stating "You have dialled emergency Triple Zero, your call is being connected", then connects the caller to a Telstra operator who will then connect the caller to the emergency service organisation call taker. Telstra operators will ask the caller which specific emergency service they require by saying: "Emergency. Police, fire, or ambulance?", along with asking for their location if not calling from a phone with fixed location (landline). The caller is then connected to the emergency service requested by the caller.


title: 000 (emergency telephone number)

text: As soon as the emergency service call taker answers the call, any available caller location information, ascertained by automatically accessing a special database from the calling line identification (CLI) data that is provided with all emergency calls, is transferred to the emergency service; however, the emergency service call taker will still question the caller to obtain correct location details to dispatch the correct response.


title: 000 (emergency telephone number)

text: The caller's address is usually available to Telstra operators for fixed services in Australia even if the number is "private". However, emergency service organisation call takers will always ask for the address of the emergency to be stated whenever possible to ensure an accurate location is provided – this is especially relevant in the case of "third-party" callers who are not personally on the scene of the incident (e.g. relatives, or alarm monitoring corporations). When calling from a telephone not at a fixed location (mobile), it is necessary for the caller to specify the location.


title: 000 (emergency telephone number)

text: In the state of Victoria, emergency service dispatch and call taking for Victoria Police, Ambulance Victoria, the Country Fire Authority, and the Fire Rescue Victoria, is handled by the Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority (ESTA). ESTA operates three State Emergency Communications Centres, located in Williams Landing, East Burwood, and Ballarat.


title: 000 (emergency telephone number)

text: When a person calls 000 for emergency response within Victoria, the call will be answered by Telstra who determine the service required. The call is then directed to the relevant ESTA facility where it will be answered by the next available trained call taker, who will collect information from the caller, and enter this into the Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system. Using this information, a dispatcher will identify and dispatch the appropriate emergency services or resources. Emergency crews are often already being notified by the relevant services' dispatchers while the call taker is still obtaining further information or giving advice, such as guiding the caller through cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), obtaining details of a possible offender, or receiving further details about the exact location or situation - an initial response may be made to details as vague as a town or suburb, while the call taker continues to get more specific location information.


title: 000 (emergency telephone number)

text: ESTA is also responsible for Victorian State Emergency Service (SES) call-taking and dispatch, although this service cannot be contacted by dialling 000, as SES calls are not considered to be life-threatening. The number for SES calls is 132 500, but police or another service dialled inappropriately will notify SES.


title: 000 (emergency telephone number)

text: Many ESTA practices and protocols are standardised across all emergency services agencies, and all agencies use the same computer network. The result is complete and instantaneous information sharing between emergency services.


title: 000 (emergency telephone number)

text: On 3 December 2003, floods and storms in Melbourne, Victoria, caused "an extremely high number of calls to the 000 emergency call service", which prevented some calls from being answered immediately. This delay was compounded by a software upgrade on the emergency call handling system used by the Victorian emergency service organisations (ESOs), meaning that Telstra (the national 000 call operator) encountered severe delays in handing over emergency calls to the relevant ESO. This caused some users interviewed by authorities to believe that they may have accidentally dialled the wrong number. A subsequent investigation recommended that a temporary recorded announcement be implemented during extreme events to assure callers that their calls were being connected and a delay may occur. This is not to be confused with the standard "You have dialled Emergency Triple Zero, your call is being connected" recorded voice announcement (RVA), which was introduced in 2008.


title: 000 (emergency telephone number)

text: On 7 February 2009, catastrophic bushfires occurred in Victoria, otherwise known as Black Saturday bushfires. Over 18,000 calls to the Triple Zero Emergency Service on that day were left unanswered, and the majority of calls took much longer to be answered than usual. Owing to the unprecedented numbers of calls coming through, Telstra decided to isolate all Victorian emergency calls which were answered by the Melbourne emergency call centre, with all the remaining calls answered by the Sydney emergency call centre. Telstra also activated the generic extreme event recorded voice announcement "You have dialled Emergency Triple Zero. If you require police, fire or ambulance, please stay on the line. If you require your local State Emergency Service please hang up and dial 1223 – that's 1223 – as this service cannot be connected through Triple Zero", which temporarily replaced their front end announcement. While Telstra records show 95 emergency call centre employees rostered during the 24-hour period on 7 February 2009, call pick up delays were evident due to lengthy delays at the SECC level, being ESTA. Telstra agents were left tied up on phone calls with callers, waiting for emergency services to answer, thus calls in the 000 queue were unable to be answered. Callers in a queue waiting for a Telstra agent to answer the phone were played an RVA every 30 seconds in the following terms, "You have dialled the Emergency Triple Zero number. Due to an unprecedented high volume of calls being received by Triple Zero, we are experiencing short delays in answering. Please stay on the line and you will be answered by the next available operator". This reassures callers that an extreme emergency was occurring, and their call would be answered.


title: 000 (emergency telephone number)

text: Emergency services and Australia's communications regulator prefer the phrase "triple zero" over "triple oh" because of potential confusion and misunderstanding over keying the number when using alpha-numeric keypads, on which the "letter" 'O' is typically located on the same key as the "number" '6'.


title: 000 (emergency telephone number)

text: One major obstacle in earlier 2009 is that operators of triple-0 could not use global positioning system (GPS) data within GSM or CDMA telephone systems to accurately locate distressed or injured persons using mobile phones visibly away from roads. Instead, emergency operators must ask the caller exactly where they are. The answer to this may need to correspond to an existing road name (which may be practically impossible for distressed person(s) some kilometres away from a road), until the emergency service organisation operator can dispatch an emergency service vehicle. In 2010, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) began researching options that may provide improved location information for mobile services when dialling 000.


title: 000 (emergency telephone number)

text: In 2013, an emergency service smartphone app was produced and developed by Fire and Rescue NSW and the Triple Zero Awareness Working Group. Australians in remote locations are encouraged to use this app to contact emergency services, as it uses phones GPS data to display the caller's location on the screen. This allows the caller to read their location aloud to the operator, so they can be found by emergency services when they are far from roads.


title: 000 (emergency telephone number)

text: In 2017–2018, ACMA stated in their annual report that both Industry and Government had begun to make considerable investment to communications infrastructure. This includes a privacy report for implementing the Advanced Mobile Location (AML) standard for Triple Zero calls. The system will automatically provide location data (including GPS, Wi-Fi positioning system, and mobile phone tracking) from the caller's device, to the Triple Zero operator automatically. These new arrangements were due to be implemented and operating by May 2020.


title: 000 (emergency telephone number)

text: The New South Wales State Labor Government has admitted to failings regarding the death of David Iredale, a high school student who died of dehydration in the bush near Katoomba, New South Wales, in late 2006. Iredale called 000 several times for help before he died. Emergency services, specifically the NSW Ambulance Service Triple Zero call centre, were accused of inappropriately handling Iredale's calls; he was not given any medical advice, and operators were accused of being "preoccupied" with obtaining a street address to send help to, although Iredale was in the bush. An inquest set up to investigate failings in the 000 system as a result of his death identified serious issues in the practices used by 000 operators.


title: 000 (emergency telephone number)

text: Another case of 000 operator failure was reported in "The Daily Telegraph" in 2011. Joanna Wicking had called for police assistance, but the 000 operator chose to believe her killer, who had assured the operator everything was fine, despite repeated calls by Joanna. In another incident six months later, when 000 staff were insistent about needing a street address for a remote country farm, the man needing help died.


title: 000 (emergency telephone number)

text: In April 2014, telecommunications company TPG was fined 400,000 for withholding access to emergency numbers where customers had failed to pay their bills. Federal Court Justice Mordecai Bromberg found that TPG failed to provide access on over 190 occasions between March and September 2011, and the company did not ensure that almost 6000 lines had emergency access.


title: Juicero

text: Juicero was an American company that designed and manufactured the Juicero Press, a fruit and vegetable juicer. The Juicero Press was a Wi-Fi connected juicer that used proprietary, single-serving packets of pre-chopped fruits and vegetables that were sold exclusively by the company by subscription. From 2014 to 2017, the San Francisco-based firm received $120 million in startup venture capital from investors.


title: Juicero

text: The company attracted significant negative media attention when consumers and journalists discovered that its juice packets could be squeezed just as easily by hand as by the company's expensive machine. On September 1, 2017, the company announced that it was suspending sales of the juicer and the packets, repurchasing the juicer from its customers and searching for a buyer for the company and its intellectual property. After its collapse, the company was described in the press as a symbol of a dysfunctional Silicon Valley culture. "The Guardian" wrote that Juicero was an example of "the absurd Silicon Valley startup industry that raises huge sums of money for solutions to non-problems."


title: Juicero

text: Juicero was founded in 2013 by Doug Evans, who served as CEO until October 2016, when former president of Coca-Cola North America Jeff Dunn took over the position. The company's juicing press was originally priced at $699 when launched in March 2016, but was reduced to $399 in January 2017, 12 to 18 months ahead of schedule, in response to slow sales of the device.


title: Juicero

text: Juicero filed a complaint in federal court in April 2017 against a competing cold-press juicing device, the Froothie Juisir, for allegedly infringing its patent and copying Juicero's trade dress.


title: Juicero

text: Produce packs for the press, containing blends of pulped fruits and vegetables, cost between $5 and $7 and had a limited lifespan of about eight days. Each pack had a QR code which was scanned and verified by the Internet-connected machine before it could be used. CEO Jeff Dunn claimed this was a safety feature to prevent packs from being used past their expiration date, and to facilitate food safety recalls, though critics felt that the feature was a form of digital rights management as it would prevent operation of the press with any produce pack not made by the company. Industrial design for the press was completed by Yves Behar's studio Fuseproject, based in San Francisco.


title: Juicero

text: On September 1, 2017, the company announced that it was suspending sales of the juicer and the packets, repurchasing the juicer from its customers and searching for a buyer for the company and its intellectual property.


title: Juicero

text: In 2017, Juicero was the target of widespread criticism when Bloomberg News published a story showing that the company's produce packs could be squeezed by hand easily and effectively, and that hand-squeezing produced juice that was nearly indistinguishable in quantity and quality from the output of the company's expensive Press device. The company defended its product and its process, claiming that squeezing packs by hand created undue mess and promoted a poor user experience, and later offered full refunds to any customers dissatisfied with their Press device.


title: Juicero

text: After taking apart the device, venture capitalist Ben Einstein considered the press to be "an incredibly complicated piece of engineering", but that the complexity was unnecessary and likely arose from a lack of cost constraints during the design process. A simpler and cheaper implementation, suggested Einstein, would likely have produced much the same quality of juice at a price several hundred US dollars cheaper.


title: Laplace distribution

text: In probability theory and statistics, the Laplace distribution is a continuous probability distribution named after Pierre-Simon Laplace. It is also sometimes called the double exponential distribution, because it can be thought of as two exponential distributions (with an additional location parameter) spliced together along the abscissa, although the term is also sometimes used to refer to the Gumbel distribution. The difference between two independent identically distributed exponential random variables is governed by a Laplace distribution, as is a Brownian motion evaluated at an exponentially distributed random time. Increments of Laplace motion or a variance gamma process evaluated over the time scale also have a Laplace distribution.


title: Laplace distribution

text: Here, formula_3 is a location parameter and formula_4, which is sometimes referred to as the "diversity", is a scale parameter. If formula_5 and formula_6, the positive half-line is exactly an exponential distribution scaled by 1/2.


title: Laplace distribution

text: The probability density function of the Laplace distribution is also reminiscent of the normal distribution; however, whereas the normal distribution is expressed in terms of the squared difference from the mean formula_3, the Laplace density is expressed in terms of the absolute difference from the mean. Consequently, the Laplace distribution has fatter tails than the normal distribution.


title: Laplace distribution

text: The Laplace distribution is easy to integrate (if one distinguishes two symmetric cases) due to the use of the absolute value function. Its cumulative distribution function is as follows:


title: Laplace distribution

text: A Laplace random variable can be represented as the difference of two independent and identically distributed (iid) exponential random variables. One way to show this is by using the characteristic function approach. For any set of independent continuous random variables, for any linear combination of those variables, its characteristic function (which uniquely determines the distribution) can be acquired by multiplying the corresponding characteristic functions.


title: Laplace distribution

text: respectively. On multiplying these characteristic functions (equivalent to the characteristic function of the sum of the random variables formula_59), the result is


title: Laplace distribution

text: Sargan distributions are a system of distributions of which the Laplace distribution is a core member. A formula_63th order Sargan distribution has density


title: Laplace distribution

text: Given formula_67 independent and identically distributed samples formula_68, the maximum likelihood (MLE) estimator of formula_3 is the sample median,


title: Laplace distribution

text: The Laplacian distribution has been used in speech recognition to model priors on DFT coefficients and in JPEG image compression to model AC coefficients generated by a DCT.


title: Laplace distribution

text: Given a random variable formula_74 drawn from the uniform distribution in the interval formula_75, the random variable


title: Laplace distribution

text: has a Laplace distribution with parameters formula_3 and formula_71. This follows from the inverse cumulative distribution function given above.


title: Laplace distribution

text: A formula_79 variate can also be generated as the difference of two i.i.d. formula_80 random variables. Equivalently, formula_81 can also be generated as the logarithm of the ratio of two i.i.d. uniform random variables.


title: Laplace distribution

text: This distribution is often referred to as "Laplace's first law of errors". He published it in 1774, modeling the frequency of an error as an exponential function of its magnitude once its sign was disregarded. Laplace would later replace this model with his "second law of errors", based on the normal distribution, after the discovery of the central limit theorem,


title: Laplace distribution

text: Keynes published a paper in 1911 based on his earlier thesis wherein he showed that the Laplace distribution minimised the absolute deviation from the median.


title: Simon Reeve (British TV presenter)

text: Simon Alan Reeve (born 21 July 1972) is a British author, journalist, adventurer, documentary filmmaker and television presenter. Reeve divides his home time between London and Devon. He makes global travel and environmental documentaries, and has written books on international terrorism, modern history, and his adventures. Amongst his many television programmes and series for the BBC, Reeve has presented "Holidays in the Danger Zone: Places That Don't Exist", "Tropic of Cancer", "Equator" and "Tropic of Capricorn".


title: Simon Reeve (British TV presenter)

text: Reeve is the "New York Times" best-selling author of "The New Jackals" (1998), "One Day in September" (2005) and "Tropic of Capricorn" (2007). He has received a One World Broadcasting Trust Award and the 2012 Ness Award from the Royal Geographical Society (RGS).


title: Simon Reeve (British TV presenter)

text: Reeve was born and raised in Acton, West London, by his parents, Alan Reeve, who was a teacher, and Cindy Reeve, who was an occupational therapist and worked in restaurants. He has a younger brother called James. He attended the Twyford Church of England High School.


title: Simon Reeve (British TV presenter)

text: Reeve had a ‘tense and sometimes violent relationship’ with his father when he was growing up. He said that in his house ‘there was endless shouting, lots of crashing and banging, and a few times it was so violent we or our neighbours called the police to come and break us up’.


title: Simon Reeve (British TV presenter)

text: From the age of 14, he required counselling due to behavioural problems, such as starting fires, vandalism, and setting off an explosive at the Ealing Broadway Centre. He ended up carrying a knife by the time he was 12 or 13.


title: Simon Reeve (British TV presenter)

text: He described his final months at school being "a bit of a blur". He left school with one GCSE, living on benefits, and with mental health problems. At the age of 17, Reeve stated he was even a "whisker away" from suicide. He found himself standing on the edge of a bridge, unable to "face existence", but something made him climb back.


title: Simon Reeve (British TV presenter)

text: After leaving school, he took a series of jobs, including working in a supermarket, a jewellery shop and a charity shop. Eventually, aged 18, he ended up as a post boy at the British newspaper "The Sunday Times".


title: Simon Reeve (British TV presenter)

text: After starting at "The Sunday Times" as a post boy, he then worked at the cuttings library, before helping a team of investigative journalists, and by night he was working on investigations into nuclear and weapons smuggling, and terrorism. One of his formative roles at 18 was to follow a weapons dealer from Gatwick Airport.


title: Simon Reeve (British TV presenter)

text: At the age of 21, citing his "fearlessness of youth", Reeve was investigating the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He authored a book "The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the Future of Terrorism"; eventually published in 1998, it was the first book on Osama bin Laden, Ramzi Yousef, and al-Qaeda; this became a "New York Times" bestseller. Classified documents obtained by the author, with uninhibited access from the likes of the FBI and the CIA, detailed the existence, development, and aims of al-Qaeda, yet his book warning of an apocalyptic act by terrorists went unnoticed.


title: Simon Reeve (British TV presenter)

text: After the attacks of 11 September 2001 in the United States of America, Reeve became a media expert on terrorism on the basis of his book. The BBC initially wanted him to make a programme involving infiltrating al-Qaeda. He eventually began making travel documentaries. Tom Hall, travel editor for Lonely Planet publications, has described Reeve's travel documentaries as "the best travel television programmes of the past five years".


title: Simon Reeve (British TV presenter)

text: 6 September 2018 saw the release of Reeve's autobiography called "Step by Step: The Life in My Journeys"; covering his humble beginnings to successful author and television presenter.


title: Simon Reeve (British TV presenter)

text: After catching malaria on a journey around the Equator, Reeve became an ambassador for the Malaria Awareness Campaign. Along with Sir David Attenborough and other conservation specialists, Reeve is a member of the Council of Ambassadors for WWF, one of the world's leading environmental organisations.


title: Simon Reeve (British TV presenter)

text: In 2020, Reeve was commissioned to present his first UK based travel show "Cornwall With Simon Reeve", which was ordered by BBC Two alongside "Incredible Journeys With Simon Reeve". The latter show is due to be a 'look back' programme similar to "Joanna Lumley's Unseen Adventures" or "Michael Palin: Travels of a Lifetime" (a show which featured both Reeve and Lumley talking about the ex-Monty Python actor's travels). In 2020 it was announced that Reeve would serve as Executive Producer for "The Balkans" (2020), an internet television series distributed by Amazon Prime.


title: Simon Reeve (British TV presenter)

text: Reeve is married to Anya Reeve (née Courts), a television camerawoman and campaigner who has stood as a Green Party candidate. The couple have a son called Jake.


title: Frogman

text: A frogman is someone who is trained in scuba diving or swimming underwater in a tactical capacity that includes military, and in some European countries, police work. Such personnel are also known by the more formal names of combat diver, combatant diver, or combat swimmer. The word "frogman" first arose in the stage name "The Fearless Frogman" of Paul Boyton in the 1870s and later was claimed by John Spence, an enlisted member of the U.S. Navy and member of the OSS Maritime Unit, to have been applied to him while he was training in a green waterproof suit.


title: Frogman

text: The term "frogman" is occasionally used to refer to a civilian scuba diver. Some sport diving clubs include the word "Frogmen" in their names. The preferred term by scuba users is "diver", but the "frogman" epithet persists in informal usage by non-divers, especially in the media and often referring to professional scuba divers, such as in a police diving role.


title: Frogman

text: In the U.S. military and intelligence community, divers trained in scuba or CCUBA who deploy for tactical assault missions are called "combat divers". This term is used to commonly refer to Navy UDTs, Navy SEALs, Navy SARC, and the Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) units. Navy SWCC have frogmen heritage of combat swimming rather than diving, one of the few and most elite units trained in this element. Other Frogmen units include Marine Raiders Marine Recon, elements of US Army Special Forces (aka Green Berets) Combat Divers, Army Ranger Regimental Reconnaissance Company, Air Force Pararescue, Air Force Combat Controllers, and Air Force Special Reconnaissance, as well as operatives of the CIA's Special Activities Center.


title: Frogman

text: Some countries' tactical diver organizations include a translation of the word "frogman" in their official names, e.g., Denmark's "Frømandskorpset"; others call themselves "combat divers" or similar. Others call themselves by indefinite names such as "special group 13" and "special operations unit".


title: Frogman

text: Tactical diving is a branch of professional diving carried out by armed forces and tactical units. They may be divided into:


title: Frogman

text: These groups may overlap, and the same men may serve as assault divers and work divers, such as the Australian Clearance Diving Branch (RAN).


title: Frogman

text: Typically, a diver with closed circuit oxygen rebreathing equipment will stay within a depth limit of with limited deeper excursions to a maximum of because of the risk of seizure due to acute oxygen toxicity. The use of nitrox or mixed gas rebreathers can extend this depth range considerably, but this may be beyond the scope of operations, depending on the unit.


title: Frogman

text: Anti-frogman techniques are security methods developed to protect watercraft, ports and installations, and other sensitive resources both in or nearby vulnerable waterways from potential threats or intrusions by frogmen.


title: Frogman

text: Frogmen on clandestine operations use rebreathers, as the bubbles released by open-circuit scuba would reveal them to surface lookouts and make a noise which hydrophones could easily detect.


title: Frogman

text: In ancient Roman and Greek times, there were instances of men swimming or diving for combat, sometimes using a hollow plant stem or a long bone as a snorkel. Diving with snorkel is mentioned by Aristotle (4th century BC). The earliest descriptions of frogmen in war are found in Thucydides' "History of the Peloponnesian War". The first instance was in 425 BC, when the Athenian fleet besieged the Spartans on the small island of Sphacteria. The Spartans managed to get supplies from the mainland by underwater swimmers towing submerged sacks of supplies. In another incident of the same war, in 415 BC, the Athenians used combat divers in the port of Syracuse, Sicily. The Syracuseans had planted vertical wooden poles in the bottom around their port, to prevent the Athenian triremes from entering. The poles were submerged, not visible above the sea level. The Athenians used various means to cut these obstacles, including divers with saws. It is believed that the underwater sawing required snorkels for breathing and diving weights to keep the divers stable.


title: Frogman

text: Also, in the writings of Al-Maqrizi, it is also claimed that the naval forces of the Fatimid Caliphate, in an engagement with Byzantine forces off the coast of Messina henceforth referred to as the Battle of the Straits, employed a novel strategy with strong similarities to modern-day frogmen tactics. In the writings of Heinz Halm, who studied and translated the writings of Al-Maqrizi and other contemporary Islamic historians, it is described: "They would dive from their own ship and swim over to the enemy ship; they would fasten ropes to its rudder, along which earthenware pots containing Greek fire were then made to slide over to the enemy ship, and shattered on the sternpost." Apparently, This tactic succeeded in destroying many Byzantine vessels, and the battle ended in a major Fatimid victory; according to the Arab historians, a thousand prisoners were taken, including the Byzantine admiral, Niketas, with many of his officers, as well as a heavy Indian sword which bore an inscription indicating that it had once belonged to Muhammad.


title: Frogman

text: The Hungarian Chronicon Pictum claims that Henry III's 1052 invasion of Hungary was defeated by a skillful diver who sabotaged Henry's supply fleet. The unexpected sinking of the ships is confirmed by German chronicles.


title: Frogman

text: On 4 November 1918, during World War I, Italian frogmen sunk the Austro-Hungarian ship "Viribus Unitis".


title: Frogman

text: Italy started World War II with a commando frogman force already trained. Britain, Germany, the United States, and the Soviet Union started commando frogman forces during World War II.


title: Frogman

text: The word "frogman" appeared first in the stage name "The Fearless Frogman" of Paul Boyton, who since the 1870s broke records in long distance swimming to demonstrate a newly invented rubber immersion suit, with an inflated hood.


title: Frogman

text: The first modern frogmen were the World War II Italian commando frogmen of "Decima Flottiglia MAS" (now "ComSubIn": Comando Raggruppamento Subacquei e Incursori Teseo Tesei) which formed in 1938 and was first in action in 1940. Originally these divers were called ""Uomini Gamma"" because they were members of the top secret special unit called ""Gruppo Gamma"", which originated from the kind of Pirelli rubber skin-suit nicknamed "muta gamma" used by these divers. Later they were nicknamed ""Uomini Rana"," Italian for "frog men", because of an underwater swimming frog kick style, similar to that of frogs, or because their fins looked like frog's feet.


title: Frogman

text: This special corps used an early oxygen rebreather scuba set, the "Auto Respiratore ad Ossigeno" (A.R.O), a development of the Dräger oxygen self-contained breathing apparatus designed for the mining industry and of the Davis Submerged Escape Apparatus made by Siebe, Gorman & Co and by Bergomi, designed for escaping from sunken submarines. This was used from about 1920 for spearfishing by Italian sport divers, modified and adapted by the Italian navy engineers for safe underwater use and built by Pirelli and SALVAS from about 1933, and so became a precursor of the modern diving rebreather.


title: Frogman

text: For this new way of underwater diving, the Italian frogmen trained in La Spezia, Liguria, using the newly available Genoese free diving spearfishing equipment; diving mask, snorkel, swimfins, and rubber dry suit, the first specially made diving watch (the luminescent Panerai), and the new A.R.O. scuba unit. This was a revolutionary alternative way to dive, and the start of the transition from the usual heavy underwater diving equipment of the hard hat divers which had been in general use since the 18th century, to self-contained divers, free of being tethered by an air line and rope connection.


title: Frogman

text: After , the "Decima Flottiglia MAS" ("Xª MAS") attempted several frogmen attacks on British naval bases in the Mediterranean between June 1940 and July 1941, but none were successful, because of equipment failure or early detection by British forces. On September 10, 1941, eight "Xª MAS" frogmen were inserted by submarine close to the British harbour at Gibraltar, where using human torpedoes to penetrate the defences, sank three merchant ships before escaping through neutral Spain. An even more successful attack, the Raid on Alexandria, was mounted on 19 December on the harbour at Alexandria, again using human torpedoes. The raid resulted in disabling the battleships and together with a destroyer and an oil tanker, but all six frogmen were captured. Frogmen were deployed by stealth in Algeciras, Spain, from where they launched a number of limpet-mine attacks on Allied shipping at anchor off Gibraltar. Some time later they refitted the interned Italian tanker "Olterra" as a mothership for human torpedoes, carrying out three assaults on ships at Gibraltar between late 1942 and early 1943, sinking six of them.


title: Frogman

text: Nazi Germany raised a number of frogmen units under the auspices of both the "Kriegsmarine" and the "Abwehr", often relying on Italian expertise and equipment. In June 1944, a "K-Verband" frogman unit failed to destroy the bridge at Bénouville, now known as Pegasus Bridge, during the Battle of Normandy. In March 1945, a frogman squad from the Brandenburgers was deployed from their base in Venice to destroy the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine which had been captured by the US Army in the Battle of Remagen. Seven frogmen swam downriver to the bridge carrying explosives, but were spotted by Canal Defence Lights. Four died, two from hypothermia, and the rest were captured.


title: Frogman

text: The British Royal Navy had captured an Italian human torpedo during a failed attack on Malta; they developed a copy called the Chariot and formed a unit called the Experimental Submarine Flotilla, which later merged with the Special Boat Service. A number of Chariot operations were attempted, most notably Operation Title in October 1942, an attack on the German battleship "Tirpitz", which had to be abandoned when a storm hit the fishing boat which was towing the Chariots into position. The last and most successful British operation resulted in sinking two liners in Phuket harbour in Thailand in October 1944. Royal Navy divers did not use fins until December 1942.


title: Frogman

text: In 1933 Italian companies were already producing underwater oxygen rebreathers, but the first diving set known as SCUBA was invented in 1939 by Christian Lambertsen, who originally called it the Lambertsen Amphibious Respirator Unit (LARU) and patented it in 1940. He later renamed it the Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus, which, contracted to SCUBA, eventually became the generic term for both open circuit and rebreather autonomous underwater breathing equipment.


title: Frogman

text: Lambertsen demonstrated it to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) (after already being rejected by the U.S. Navy) in a pool at a hotel in Washington D.C. OSS not only bought into the concept, they hired Lambertsen to lead the program and build up the dive element of their maritime unit. The OSS was the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency; the maritime element still exists inside the CIA's Special Activities Division.


title: Frogman

text: In April 1956, Commander Lionel Crabb, a wartime pioneer of Royal Navy combat diving, disappeared during a covert inspection of the hull of the Soviet Navy , , while she was moored in Portsmouth Harbour.


title: Frogman

text: The Shayetet 13 commandos of the Israeli Navy have carried out a number of underwater raids on harbors. They were initially trained by veterans of "Xª MAS" and used Italian equipment. As part of Operation Raviv in 1969, eight frogmen used two human torpedoes to enter Ras Sadat naval base near Suez, where they destroyed two motor torpedo boats with mines.


title: Frogman

text: During the 1982 Falklands War, the Argentinian Naval Intelligence Service planned an attack on British warships at Gibraltar. Code named Operation Algeciras, three frogmen, recruited from a former anti-government insurgent group, were to plant mines on the ships' hulls. The operation was abandoned when the divers were arrested by Spanish police and deported.


title: Frogman

text: In 1985, the French nuclear weapons tests at Moruroa in the Pacific Ocean was being contested by environmental protesters led by the Greenpeace campaign ship, . The Action Division of the French Directorate-General for External Security devised a plan to sink the "Rainbow Warrior" while it was berthed in harbor at Auckland in New Zealand. Two divers from the Division posed as tourists and attached two limpet mines to the ship's hull; the resulting explosion sank the ship and killed a Netherlands citizen on board. Two agents from the team, but not the divers, were arrested by the New Zealand Police and later convicted of manslaughter. The French government finally admitted responsibility two months later.


title: Frogman

text: In the U.S. Navy, frogmen were officially phased out in 1983 and all active duty frogmen were transferred to SEAL units. In 1989, during the U.S. invasion of Panama, a team of four U.S. Navy SEALs using rebreathers conducted a combat swimmer attack on the "Presidente Porras", a gunboat and yacht belonging to Manuel Noriega. The commandos attached explosives to the vessel as it was tied to a pier in the Panama Canal, escaping only after being attacked with grenades. Three years later during Operation Restore Hope, members of SEAL Team One swam to shore in Somalia to measure beach composition, water depth, and shore gradient ahead of a Marine landing. The mission resulted in several of the SEALs becoming ill as Somalia's waters were contaminated with raw sewage.


title: McDonald's All-American Game

text: The McDonald's All-American Game is the all-star basketball game played each year for American and Canadian boys' and girls' high school basketball graduates. Consisting of the top players, each team plays a single exhibition game after the conclusion of the high-school basketball season, in an East vs. West format. As part of the annual event, boys and girls compete in a slam dunk contest and a three-point shooting competition, and compete alongside All-American Game alumni in a timed team shootout. The last of these competitions replaced separate overall timed skills competitions for boys and girls. It is rare for girls to compete in the slam dunk contest. They have, however, won it three times—in 2004 by Candace Parker, in 2019 by Fran Belibi, and most recently in 2022 by Ashlyn Watkins. The boys' game has been contested annually since 1978, and the girls game has been played each year since it was added in 2002.


title: McDonald's All-American Game

text: The McDonald's All-American designation began in 1977 with the selection of the inaugural team. That year, the All-Americans played in an all-star game against a group of high school stars from the Washington, D.C. area. The following year, the McDonald's game format of East vs. West was begun with a boys contest. In 2002, with the addition of a girls contest, the current girl-game / boy-game doubleheader format began.


title: McDonald's All-American Game

text: The McDonald's All-American Team is the best-known of the American high-school basketball All-American teams. Designation as a McDonald's All-American instantly brands a player as one of the top high-school players in the United States or Canada. Selected athletes often go on to compete in college basketball. All but three of the teams to win the NCAA men's championship since 1978 has had at least one McDonald's All-American on its roster. The exceptions are the 2002 Maryland Terrapins, the 2014 Connecticut Huskies, and the 2021 Baylor Bears.


title: McDonald's All-American Game

text: The teams are sponsored by the fast-food chain McDonald's. Proceeds from the annual games go to local Ronald McDonald House Charities (RMHC) and their Ronald McDonald House programs.


title: McDonald's All-American Game

text: On January 31, 2012, McDonald's All-American Games unveiled its list of 35 of the Greatest McDonald's All-Americans, released in celebration of the 35th Anniversary of the McDonald's All-American High School Boys Basketball Game. In 2017, five players were added to the list in celebration of the 40th Anniversary. Another five players were added in 2022 to celebrate the 45th Anniversary of the game.


title: McDonald's All-American Game

text: The Greatest Boys McDonald's All-Americans list includes some of the top names in men's basketball history, and features past and present Olympics, NBA and NCAA stars. The players were selected by members of the McDonald's All-American Games Selection Committee. In determining the list, all past McDonald's All-Americans were considered based on their high school careers and performances in the McDonald's All-American Games, success at the collegiate and professional level, and post-career accomplishments. The full list of players includes:


title: McDonald's All-American Game

text: An MVP/MOP award is presented each year to the most outstanding boy and girl players. The award is officially called the John R. Wooden Most Valuable Player Award.


title: McDonald's All-American Game

text: Prior to each game since 1997 (Boys)/2002 (Girls), a national player of the year has been chosen from the field of McDonald's All-Americans based on activity in the community, classroom and on the court. The award is named in honor of high school coach Morgan Wootten, one of the founders of the McDonald's game.


title: McDonald's All-American Game

text: The slam dunk contest was first held as an unofficial event in 1985, and became an official part of the festivities in 1987.


title: McDonald's All-American Game

text: The three-point contest was first held for boys in 1989, with a girls' competition added alongside the inaugural girls' game in 2002.


title: McDonald's All-American Game

text: The skills contest was added for both boys and girls in 2002, with separate events held for both sexes through 2015.


title: McDonald's All-American Game

text: In 2016, the skills contest was discontinued and replaced with a "Legends & Stars Shootout", involving teams consisting of one boy, one girl, and one All-American Game alumnus of either sex. Within each individual entry of Legends & Stars Shootout winners, the teams are listed in the aforementioned order. The Shootout is a timed competition in which each team must make a layup, free throw, three-pointer, and halfcourt shot in that order.


title: Ilaix Moriba

text: Moriba Kourouma Kourouma (born 19 January 2003), known as Ilaix Moriba (), is a Guinean professional footballer who plays as a central midfielder for La Liga club Valencia, on loan from Bundesliga club RB Leipzig, and the Guinea national team.


title: Ilaix Moriba

text: Moriba was born in Conakry, Guinea, to a Guinean mother and a Liberian Krahn father. He holds both Spanish and Guinean citizenship.


title: Ilaix Moriba

text: Moriba arrived at Barcelona from Espanyol in 2010. He has been considered one of the best players of his generation, and he has very often played in categories of players far older than him. Moriba really stood out at age 15 when he scored a hat-trick against the Real Madrid U19. The most remarkable feat was his last goal, where he scored from the middle of the pitch at the start of the second half.


title: Ilaix Moriba

text: In January 2019, as his youth contract was about to expire, clubs such as Manchester City tried to sign him.


title: Ilaix Moriba

text: The following season he became a regular for Barça B. He scored his first goal on 8 March 2020, the winner in a 3–2 victory against Llagostera.


title: Ilaix Moriba

text: During the 2020–21 season, Moriba was included in the first team squad for the first time for a La Liga match against Granada. He was an unused substitute in a 4–0 away win. Moriba would later make his first team debut – and as a starter – on 21 January against Cornellà in the round of 32 of the Copa del Rey. He was replaced by Sergio Busquets in the 74th minute of a 2–0 win. On 13 February 2021, he made his La Liga debut in a 5–1 win over Alavés, in which he also provided an assist for Francisco Trincão. He scored his first La Liga goal in a 2–0 away win against Osasuna on 6 March 2021, to become the fifth youngest scorer in club's history, topped only by Ansu Fati, Bojan Krkić, Lionel Messi and Pedri.


title: Ilaix Moriba

text: On 10 March 2021, Moriba made his UEFA Champions League debut in a 1–1 draw against Paris Saint-Germain in the round of 16, coming on as a substitute for Sergio Busquets in the 79th minute.


title: Ilaix Moriba

text: On 31 August 2021, Moriba joined Bundesliga side RB Leipzig for a fee of €16 million and €6 million additional in variables. Barcelona also reserved the right to 10% of any future sale.


title: Ilaix Moriba

text: On 28 January 2022, Valencia announced the signing of Moriba, on a loan until the end of the season. Moriba returned for a second loan for the 2022–23 season.


title: Ilaix Moriba

text: Moriba is a former youth international with Spain, but he is also eligible for both Guinea and Liberia. It appeared the youngster eventually chose to play for the Guinea national team, being set to make his debut on the international stage in June 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic froze the 2020 football season.


title: Ilaix Moriba

text: On 21 August 2021, Moriba officially chose to change international allegiances from Spain and chose to play with the Guinea national football team. On 27 December 2021, he was included in Guinea's extended 2021 Africa Cup of Nations squad. He debuted with the Guinea national team in a 3–0 friendly loss to Rwanda on 3 January 2022.


title: Ilaix Moriba

text: Due to his physicality and creativity, Moriba has been compared to French footballer Paul Pogba, whose parents and elder brothers are also from Guinea.


title: Ham (chimpanzee)

text: Ham (July 1957 – January 19, 1983), a chimpanzee also known as Ham the Chimp and Ham the Astrochimp, was the first Great Ape launched into space. On January 31, 1961, Ham flew a suborbital flight on the Mercury-Redstone 2 mission, part of the U.S. space program's Project Mercury.


title: Ham (chimpanzee)

text: Ham's name is an acronym for the laboratory that prepared him for his historic mission—the Holloman Aerospace Medical Center, located at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, southwest of Alamogordo. His name was also in honor of the commander of Holloman Aeromedical Laboratory, Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton "Ham" Blackshear.


title: Ham (chimpanzee)

text: Ham was born in July 1957 in French Cameroon (now Cameroon), captured by animal trappers and sent to the Rare Bird Farm in Miami, Florida. He was purchased by the United States Air Force and brought to Holloman Air Force Base in July 1959.


title: Ham (chimpanzee)

text: There were originally 40 chimpanzee flight candidates at Holloman. After evaluation, the number of candidates was reduced to 18, then to six, including Ham. Officially, Ham was known as No. 65 before his flight, and only renamed "Ham" upon his successful return to Earth. This was reportedly because officials did not want the bad press that would come from the death of a "named" chimpanzee if the mission were a failure. Among his handlers, No. 65 had been known as "Chop Chop Chang".


title: Ham (chimpanzee)

text: Beginning in July 1959, the two-year-old chimpanzee was trained under the direction of neuroscientist Joseph V. Brady at Holloman Air Force Base Aero-Medical Field Laboratory to do simple, timed tasks in response to electric lights and sounds. During his pre-flight training, Ham was taught to push a lever within five seconds of seeing a flashing blue light; failure to do so resulted in an application of a light electric shock to the soles of his feet, while a correct response earned him a banana pellet.


title: Ham (chimpanzee)

text: On January 31, 1961, Ham was secured in a Project Mercury mission designated MR-2 and launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a suborbital flight.


title: Ham (chimpanzee)

text: Ham's vital signs and tasks were monitored by sensors and computers on Earth. The capsule suffered a partial loss of pressure during the flight, but Ham's space suit prevented him from suffering any harm. Ham's lever-pushing performance in space was only a fraction of a second slower than on Earth, demonstrating that tasks could be performed in space. Ham's capsule splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean and was recovered by the USS "Donner" later that day. His only physical injury was a bruised nose. His flight was 16 minutes and 39 seconds long.


title: Ham (chimpanzee)

text: The results from his test flight led directly to the mission Alan Shepard made on May 5, 1961, aboard "Freedom 7".


title: Ham (chimpanzee)

text: On April 5, 1963, Ham was transferred to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. where he lived for 17 years before joining a small group of chimps at North Carolina Zoo on September 25, 1980.


title: Ham (chimpanzee)

text: After his death on January 19, 1983, Ham's body was given to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology for necropsy. Following the necropsy, the plan was to have him stuffed and placed on display at the Smithsonian Institution, following Soviet precedent with pioneering space dogs Belka, and Strelka. However, this plan was abandoned after a negative public reaction. Ham's skeleton is held in the collection of the National Museum of Health and Medicine, Silver Spring, Maryland, and the rest of Ham's remains were buried at the International Space Hall of Fame in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Colonel John Stapp gave the eulogy at the memorial service.


title: Ham (chimpanzee)

text: Ham's backup, Minnie, was the only female chimpanzee trained for the Mercury program. After her role in the Mercury program ended, Minnie became part of an Air Force chimpanzee breeding program, producing nine offspring and helping to raise the offspring of several other members of the chimpanzee colony. She was the last surviving Astro-chimpanzee and died at age 41 on March 14, 1998.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: The Via Dolorosa (Latin, 'Sorrowful Way', often translated 'Way of Suffering'; ; Hebrew: ויה דולורוזה) is a processional route in the Old City of Jerusalem. It represents the path that Jesus would have taken, forced by the Roman soldiers, on the way to his crucifixion. The winding route from the former Antonia Fortress to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre — a distance of about 600 metres (2,000 feet) — is a celebrated place of Christian pilgrimage. The current route has been established since the 18th century, replacing various earlier versions. It is today marked by fourteen Stations of the Cross, nine of which are outside, in the streets, with the remaining five stations being currently inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: The Via Dolorosa is not one street, but a route consisting of segments of several streets. One of the main segments is the modern remnant of one of the two main east-west routes ("Decumanus Maximus") through the Roman city of Aelia Capitolina, as built by Hadrian. Standard Roman city design places the main east-west road through the middle of the city, but the presence of the Temple Mount along much of the eastern side of the city required Hadrian's planners to add an extra east-west road at its north. In addition to the usual central north-south road ("Cardo Maximus"), which in Jerusalem headed straight up the western hill, a second major north-south road was added down the line of the Tyropoeon Valley; these two cardines converge near the Damascus Gate, close to the Via Dolorosa. If the Via Dolorosa had continued west in a straight line across the two routes, it would have formed a triangular block too narrow to construct standard buildings; the decumanus (now the Via Dolorosa) west of the Cardo was constructed south of its eastern portion, creating the discontinuity in the road still present today.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: The first reports of a pilgrimage route corresponding to the Biblical events dates from the Byzantine era; during that time, a Holy Thursday procession started from the top of the Mount of Olives, stopped in Gethsemane, entered the Old City at the Lions' Gate, and followed approximately the current route to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; however, there were no actual stops during the route along the Via Dolorosa itself. By the 8th century, however, the route went via the western hill instead; starting at Gethsemane, it continued to the alleged House of Caiaphas on Mount Zion, then to Hagia Sophia (viewed as the site of the Praetorium), and finally to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: During the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholics of Jerusalem split into two factions, one controlling the churches on the western hill, the other the churches on the eastern hill; they each supported the route which took pilgrims past the churches the faction in question controlled, one arguing that the Roman governor's mansion ("Praetorium") was on Mount Zion (where they had churches), the other that it was near the Antonia Fortress (where they had churches).


title: Via Dolorosa

text: What the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem called Jehoshaphat Street () was where present-day Via Dolorosa partly is. (Today's Via Dolorosa extends westward from the western portion of that street.) Near the ruined Antonia Fortress and north of the Templum Domini precinct, Jehoshaphat Street led eastward to the Jehoshaphat Gate (near or at Lions' Gate on ), with the Valley of Jehoshaphat (near or in the Kidron Valley) beyond the gate.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: In the 14th century, Pope Clement VI achieved some consistency in route with the bull "Nuper Carissimae", establishing the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land, and charging the friars with "the guidance, instruction, and care of Latin pilgrims as well as with the guardianship, maintenance, defense and rituals of the Catholic shrines of the Holy Land". Beginning around 1350, Franciscan friars conducted official tours of the Via Dolorosa, from the Holy Sepulchre to the House of Pilate—opposite the direction travelled by Christ in the Bible. The route was not reversed until c. 1517, when the Franciscans began to follow the events of Christ's Passion chronologically — setting out from the House of Pilate and ending with the crucifixion at Golgotha.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: From the onset of Franciscan administration, the development of the Via Dolorosa was intimately linked to devotional practices in Europe. The Friars Minor were ardent proponents of devotional meditation as a means to access and understand the Passion. The hours and guides they produced, such as "Meditaciones vite Christi" ("MVC"), were widely circulated in Europe.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: Necessarily, such devotional literature expanded on the terse accounts of the Via Dolorosa in the Bible; the period of time between just after Christ’s condemnation by Pilate and just before his crucifixion receives no more than a few verses in the four Gospels. Throughout the fourteenth century, a number of events, marked by stations on the Via Dolorosa, emerged in devotional literature and on the physical site in Jerusalem.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: The first stations to appear in pilgrimage accounts were the Encounter with Simon of Cyrene and the Daughters of Jerusalem. These were followed by a host of other, more or less ephemeral, stations, such as the House of Veronica, the House of Simon the Pharisee, the House of the Evil Rich Man Who Would Not Give Alms to the Poor, and the House of Herod. In his book, "The Stations of the Cross", Herbert Thurston notes: "... Whether we look to the sites which, according to the testimony of travelers, were held in honor in Jerusalem itself, or whether we look to the imitation pilgrimages which were carved in stone or set down in books for the devotion of the faithful at home, we must recognize that there was a complete want of any sort of uniformity in the enumeration of the Stations."


title: Via Dolorosa

text: This negotiation of stations, between the European imagination and the physical site would continue for the next six centuries. Only in the 19th century was there general accord on the position of the first, fourth, fifth, and eighth stations. Ironically, archaeological discoveries in the 20th century now indicate that the early route of the Via Dolorosa on the Western hill was actually a more realistic path.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: The equation of the present Via Dolorosa with the biblical route is based on the assumption that the Praetorium was adjacent to the Antonia Fortress. However, like Philo, the late-first-century writer Josephus testifies that the Roman governors of Roman Judaea, who governed from Caesarea Maritima on the coast, stayed in Herod's Palace while they were in Jerusalem, carried out their judgements on the pavement immediately outside it, and had those found guilty flogged there; Josephus indicates that Herod's Palace is on the western hill, and it has recently (2001) been rediscovered under a corner of the Jaffa Gate citadel. Furthermore, it is now confirmed by archaeology that prior to Hadrian's 2nd-century alterations (see Aelia Capitolina), the area adjacent to the Antonia Fortress was a large open-air pool of water.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: In 2009, Israeli archaeologist Shimon Gibson found the remains of a large paved courtyard south of the Jaffa Gate between two fortification walls, with an outer gate and an inner one leading to a barracks. The courtyard contained a raised platform of around . A survey of the ruins of the Praetorium, long thought to be the Roman barracks, indicated that it was no more than a watchtower. These findings together "correspond perfectly" with the route as described in the Gospels and match details found in other ancient writings.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: The route traced by Gibson begins in a parking lot in the Armenian Quarter, then passes the Ottoman walls of the Old City next to the Tower of David near the Jaffa Gate before turning towards the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The new research also indicates that the crucifixion site is around from the traditionally accepted site.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: The traditional route starts about 200 metres inside (west of) the Lions' Gate (St. Stephen's Gate) in the Muslim Quarter, at the Umariya Elementary School, near the location of the former Antonia Fortress. Continuing from , the route makes its way westward through the Old City to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Christian Quarter. The current enumeration is partly based on a circular devotional walk, organised by the Franciscans in the 14th century; their devotional route, heading east along the Via Dolorosa (the opposite direction to the usual westward pilgrimage), began and ended at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also passing through both Gethsemane and Mount Zion during its course.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: Whereas the names of many roads in Jerusalem are translated into English, Hebrew, and Arabic for their signs, the name used in Hebrew is "Via Dolorosa", transliterated. The Arabic name is the translation of 'way of pain' ( ).


title: Via Dolorosa

text: (2) Jesus is made to bear his cross (Church of the Flagellation / Church of the Imposition of the Cross and Church of Ecce Homo);


title: Via Dolorosa

text: The first and second stations commemorate the events of Jesus' encounter with Pontius Pilate, the former in memorial of the biblical account of the trial and Jesus' subsequent scourging, and the latter in memorial of the "Ecce homo" speech, attributed by the Gospel of John to Pilate. Biblical scholars propose that Pilate likely carried out his judgements at the now destroyed Antonia Palace, at the southwest side of the city, in what is now the Umariya Elementary School. Adjacent to it, there are two Roman Catholic compounds taking their names from these events: a Franciscan monastery including the Church of the Condemnation and Imposition of the Cross and the Church of the Flagellation, and the Convent of the Sisters of Zion, including the Church of Ecce Homo; a large area of Roman paving, beneath these structures, was traditionally regarded as Gabbatha, or 'the pavement' described in the Bible as the location of Pilate's judgment of Jesus.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: Archaeological studies have confirmed that an arch at these two traditional stations was built by Hadrian as the triple-arched gateway of the eastern of two forums. Prior to Hadrian's construction, the area had been a large open-air pool of water, the Struthion Pool mentioned by Josephus. When later building works narrowed the Via Dolorosa, the two arches on either side of the central arch became incorporated into a succession of buildings; the Church of Ecce Homo now preserves the northern arch.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: The three northern churches were gradually built after the site was partially acquired in 1857 by Marie-Alphonse Ratisbonne, a Jesuit who intended to use it as a base for proselytizing the Jews. The most recent church of the three—the Church of the Flagellation—was built during the 1920s; above the high altar, under the central dome, is a mosaic on a golden ground showing "The Crown of Thorns Pierced by Stars", and the church also contains modern stained-glass windows depicting "Christ Scourged at the Pillar", "Pilate Washing his Hands", and the "Freeing of Barabbas". The Convent, which includes the Church of Ecce Homo, was the first part of the complex to be built, and contains the most extensive archaeological remains. Prior to Ratisbonne's purchase, the site had lain in ruins for many centuries; the Crusaders had previously constructed a set of buildings here, but they were later abandoned.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: Christian tradition holds that Jesus stumbled three times during his walk along the route; this belief is currently manifested in the identification of the three stations at which these falls occurred. Tradition holds that Mary, the mother of Jesus, set up stone markers at her home outside Jerusalem to retrace the steps of her son’s Passion, but the origin of the devotion in its present form is not clear.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: The first fall is represented by the current third station, located at the west end of the eastern fraction of the Via Dolorosa, adjacent to the 19th-century "Polish Catholic Chapel"; this chapel was constructed by the Armenian Catholics. The 1947–48 renovations, to the 19th-century chapel, were carried out with the aid of a large financial grant from the Polish army. The site was previously one of the city's Turkish baths.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: The second fall is represented by the current seventh station, located at a major crossroad junction, adjacent to a Franciscan chapel, built in 1875. In Hadrian's era, this was the junction of the main cardo (north-south road), with the decumanus (east-west road) which became the Via Dolorosa; the remains of a tetrapylon, which marked this Roman junction, can be seen in the lower level of the Franciscan chapel. Prior to the 16th century, this location was the 8th and last station.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: The third fall is represented by the current ninth station, which is not actually located on the Via Dolorosa, instead being located at the entrance to the Ethiopian Orthodox Monastery and the Coptic Orthodox "Monastery of Saint Anthony", which together form the roof structure of the subterranean "Chapel of Saint Helena" in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; the Coptic and Ethiopian Orthodox churches split in 1959, and prior to that time the monastic buildings were considered a single Monastery. However, in the early 16th century, the third fall was located at the entrance courtyard to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and an engraved stone cross signifying this remains "in situ". Prior to the 15th century, the final station was located before this point would have been reached.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: Christian tradition holds that Mary approached her son during his way of the cross. The fourth station, the location of the Armenian Catholic Church of Our Lady of Sorrows, commemorates these events; a lunette, over the entrance to the chapel, references these events by means of a bas-relief carved by the Polish artist Zieliensky. The oratory, named "Our Lady of the Spasm", was built in 1881, but its crypt preserves some archaeological remains from former Byzantine buildings on the site, including a mosaic floor.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: The fifth station refers to the biblical episode in which Simon of Cyrene takes Jesus' cross, and carries it for him. This narrative is included in the three Synoptic Gospels. The current traditional site for the station is located at the east end of the western fraction of the Via Dolorosa, adjacent to the Chapel of Simon of Cyrene, a Franciscan construction built in 1895. An inscription, in the architrave of one of the Chapel doors, references the Synoptic events.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: Prior to the 15th century, this location was instead considered to be the "House of the Poor Man", and honoured as the fifth station for that reason; the name refers to the Lukan tale of Lazarus and Dives, this Lazarus being a beggar, and "Dives" being the Latin word for "[one who is] Rich". Adjacent to the alleged "House of the Poor Man" is an arch over the road; the house on the arch was thought to be the corresponding "House of the Rich Man". The houses in question, however, only date to the Middle Ages, and the narrative of Lazarus and Dives is now widely held to be a parable.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: A medieval Roman Catholic legend viewed a specific piece of cloth, known as the "Veil of Veronica", as having been supernaturally imprinted with Jesus' image, by physical contact with Jesus' face. By metathesis of the Latin words "vera icon" (meaning "true image") into "Veronica", it came to be said that the "Veil of Veronica" had gained its image when a "Saint Veronica" encountered Jesus, and wiped the sweat from his face with the cloth; no element of this legend is present in the Bible, although the similar "Image of Edessa" is mentioned in "The Epistles of Jesus Christ and Abgarus King of Edessa", a late piece of New Testament apocrypha. The "Veil of Veronica" relates to a pre-Crucifixion image, and is distinct from the post-Crucifixion Holy Face image, often related to the Shroud of Turin.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: The current sixth station of the Via Dolorosa commemorates this moment when a woman is said to have wiped the sweat from Jesus' face with a cloth. The location was identified as the site of the encounter in the 19th century; in 1883, Greek Roman Catholics purchased the 12th-century ruins at the location, and built the Church of the Holy Face and Saint Veronica on them, claiming that Veronica had encountered Jesus outside her own house, and that the house had formerly been positioned at this spot. The church includes some of the remains of the 12th-century buildings which had formerly been on the site, including arches from the Crusader-built Monastery of Saint Cosmas. The present building is administered by the Little Sisters of Jesus, and is not generally open to the public.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: The Eighth station commemorates an episode described by the Gospel of Luke, alone among the canonical gospels, in which Jesus encounters "pious women" on his journey, and is able to stop and speak to them. However, prior to the 15th century the final station in Jesus' walk was believed to occur at a point earlier on the Via Dolorosa, before this location would have been reached. The present eighth station is adjacent to the Greek Orthodox "Monastery of Saint Charalampus"; it is marked by the letters "IC XC / Nika" carved into the wall, and an embossed cross.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: Each Friday, a Roman Catholic procession walks the Via Dolorosa route, starting out at the monastic complex by the first station; the procession is organized by the Franciscans of this monastery, who also lead the procession. Acted re-enactments also regularly take place on the route, ranging from amateur productions with, for example, soldiers wearing plastic helmets and vivid red polyester wraps, to more professional drama with historically accurate clothing and props.


title: Via Dolorosa

text: The seat of the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem is located on the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. At the entrance of the Patriarchate is a column with a cross on it, marking the 9th Station of the Via Dolorosa. In 1980 Pope Shenouda III of Alexandria (3 August 1923 – 17 March 2012) had forbidden Coptic faithful from traveling to Jerusalem on pilgrimage until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was resolved. However, despite the ban, dozens of Coptic pilgrims travel to Jerusalem every year, especially during the Easter holidays.


title: 11 (number)

text: 11 (eleven) is the natural number following 10 and preceding 12. It is the first repdigit. In English, it is the smallest positive integer whose name has three syllables.


title: 11 (number)

text: "Eleven" derives from the Old English ', which is first attested in Bede's late 9th-century "Ecclesiastical History of the English People". It has cognates in every Germanic language (for example, German ), whose Proto-Germanic ancestor has been reconstructed as , from the prefix (adjectival "one") and suffix , of uncertain meaning. It is sometimes compared with the Lithuanian ', though "" is used as the suffix for all numbers from 11 to 19 (analogously to "-teen").


title: 11 (number)

text: The Old English form has closer cognates in Old Frisian, Saxon, and Norse, whose ancestor has been reconstructed as . This was formerly thought to be derived from Proto-Germanic ("ten"); it is now sometimes connected with or ("left; remaining"), with the implicit meaning that "one is left" after counting to ten.


title: 11 (number)

text: While 11 has its own name in Germanic languages such as English, German, or Swedish, and some Latin-based languages such as Spanish, Portuguese, and French, it is the first compound number in many other languages: Italian , Chinese , Korean or .


title: 11 (number)

text: 11 is the fifth prime number, and the first two-digit numeric palindrome. The next prime number is 13, with which it comprises a twin prime. 11 is the first repunit prime, the first strong prime, the second unique prime, the second good prime, the third super-prime, and the fourth Lucas prime.


title: 11 (number)

text: 11 is the first prime number that is not an exponent for a Mersenne prime, as 2 − 1 = 2047, which is composite.


title: 11 (number)

text: 11 is a Heegner number, meaning that the ring of integers of the field formula_1 has the property of unique factorization. As a consequence, there exists at most one point on the elliptic curve "x" = "y" + 11 that has positive-integer coordinates. In this case, this unique point is (15, 58).


title: 11 (number)

text: There are 11 orthogonal curvilinear coordinate systems (to within a conformal symmetry) in which the 3-variable Helmholtz equation can be solved using the separation of variables technique.


title: 11 (number)

text: 11 of 35 hexominoes can fold in a net to form a cube, while 11 of 66 octiamonds can fold into a regular octahedron.


title: 11 (number)

text: An 11-sided polygon is called a hendecagon or undecagon. The complete graph "K" has a total of 55 edges, which collectively represent the diagonals and sides of a hendecagon.


title: 11 (number)

text: The 11-cell is a self-dual abstract 4-polytope with 11 vertices, 55 edges, 55 triangular faces, and 11 hemi-icosahedral cells. It is "universal" in the sense that it is the only abstract polytope with hemi-icosahedral facets and hemi-dodecahedral vertex figures. The 11-cell contains the same number of vertices and edges as the complete graph "K" and the 10-simplex, a regular polytope in 10 dimensions.


title: 11 (number)

text: Mathieu group M is the smallest sporadic group, defined as the sharply 4-transitive permutation group on 11 objects. It has order 7920 = 23511 = 891011, with 11 as its largest prime factor, and a minimal faithful complex representation in 10 dimensions. Its group action is the automorphism group of Steiner system S(4,5,11), with an induced action on unordered pairs of points that gives a rank 3 action on 55 points. Mathieu group M, on the other hand, is formed from the permutations of projective special linear group PSL(11) with those of (2,10)(3,4)(5,9)(6,7). It is the second-smallest sporadic group, and holds M as a maximal subgroup and point stabilizer, with an order equal to 95040 = 23511 = 89101112, where 11 is also its largest prime factor, like M. M also centralizes an element of order 11 in the friendly giant, and has an irreducible faithful complex representation in 11 dimensions.


title: 11 (number)

text: Within safe and Sophie Germain primes of the form 2"p" + 1, 11 is the third safe prime, from a "p" of 5, and the fourth Sophie Germain prime, which yields 23.


title: 11 (number)

text: 11 is the smallest two-digit prime number. On the seven-segment display of a calculator, it is both a strobogrammatic prime and a dihedral prime.


title: 11 (number)

text: Multiples of 11 by one-digit numbers yield palindromic numbers with matching double digits: 00, 11, 22, 33, 44, etc.


title: 11 (number)

text: The sum of the first 11 non-zero positive integers, equivalently the 11th triangular number, is 66. On the other hand, the sum of the first 11 integers, from zero to ten, is 55.


title: 11 (number)

text: 11 is the 11th index or member in the sequence of palindromic numbers, and 121, equal to 11 x 11, is the 22nd.


title: 11 (number)

text: The factorial of 11, 11! = 39916800, has about a 0.2% difference to the round number 4 x 10, or 40 million. Among the first 100 factorials, the next closest to a round number is 96! ~ 9.91678 x 10, which is about 0.8% less than 10.


title: 11 (number)

text: If a number is divisible by 11, reversing its digits will result in another multiple of 11. As long as no two adjacent digits of a number added together exceed 9, then multiplying the number by 11, reversing the digits of the product, and dividing that new number by 11 will yield a number that is the reverse of the original number; as in:


title: 11 (number)

text: A simple test to determine whether an integer is divisible by 11 is to take every digit of the number in an odd position and add them, then take the remaining digits and add them. If the difference between the two sums is a multiple of 11, including 0, then the number is divisible by 11. For instance, with the number 65,637:


title: 11 (number)

text: This technique also works with groups of digits rather than individual digits, so long as the number of digits in each group is odd, although not all groups have to have the same number of digits. If one uses three digits in each group, one gets from 65,637 the calculation,


title: 11 (number)

text: Another test for divisibility is to separate a number into groups of two consecutive digits (adding a leading zero if there is an odd number of digits), and then add the numbers so formed; if the result is divisible by 11, the number is divisible by 11:


title: 11 (number)

text: This also works by adding a trailing zero instead of a leading one, and with larger groups of digits, provided that each group has an even number of digits (not all groups have to have the same number of digits):


title: 11 (number)

text: In base 13 and higher bases (such as hexadecimal), 11 is represented as B, where ten is A. In duodecimal, 11 is sometimes represented as E or ↋, and ten as T, X, or ↊.


title: 11 (number)

text: After Judas Iscariot was disgraced, Jesus's remaining apostles were sometimes called "the Eleven" (; and ), even after Matthias was added to bring the number back to 12, as in Acts 2:14: "Peter stood up with the eleven" (New International Version). The New Living Translation says "Peter stepped forward with the eleven other apostles", making clear that the number of apostles was now 12.


title: 11 (number)

text: Saint Ursula is said to have been martyred in the 3rd or 4th century in Cologne with a number of companions, whose reported number "varies from five to eleven". A legend that Ursula died with 11,000 virgin companions has been thought to appear from misreading "XI. M. V." (Latin abbreviation for "Eleven martyr virgins") as "Eleven thousand virgins".


title: 11 (number)

text: The number 11 (alongside its multiples 22 and 33) are master numbers in numerology, especially in New Age. In astrology, Aquarius is the 11th astrological sign of the Zodiac.


title: Neckbeard (slang)

text: "Neckbeard" is a pejorative term and stereotype for an adult or teenage male who exhibits characteristics such as social awkwardness, underachievement, or pretentiousness. The term is associated with the currently (2010–present) unfashionable facial hair style known as a neck beard, and by extension, to a stereotype of overweight, unkempt internet users, and overlaps with the nerd, gamer, and geek subcultures. The term has also been associated with anti-feminist internet users.


title: Casting

text: Casting is a manufacturing process in which a liquid material is usually poured into a mold, which contains a hollow cavity of the desired shape, and then allowed to solidify. The solidified part is also known as a "casting", which is ejected or broken out of the mold to complete the process. Casting materials are usually metals or various "time setting" materials that cure after mixing two or more components together; examples are epoxy, concrete, plaster and clay. Casting is most often used for making complex shapes that would be otherwise difficult or uneconomical to make by other methods. Heavy equipment like machine tool beds, ships' propellers, etc. can be cast easily in the required size, rather than fabricating by joining several small pieces.


title: Casting

text: Throughout history, metal casting has been used to make tools, weapons, and religious objects. Metal casting history and development can be traced back to Southern Asia (China, India, Pakistan, etc). Southern Asia traditions and religions relied heavily on statue and relic castings. These items were frequently made from a copper alloy laced with lead. Since the beginning of metallurgy the majority of castings were simple one to two piece molds fashioned from either stone or ceramics. However, there is evidence of lost wax castings in numerous ancient civilizations.


title: Casting

text: The lost wax process originated in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest known record of lost-wax casting is a clay tablet written in cuneiform in the ancient city of Sparta, Babylon, which specifically records how much wax is needed to cast a key. The earliest-known castings in the global archaeological record were made in open stone molds. There are two types of lost wax methods, direct lost wax method and indirect lost wax method. The direct molding method is to make the wax material into the same wax mold as the casting by hand or other tools; the indirect molding method is to make the wax mold through the mold. The direct molding method requires craftsmen to have a high technical level, otherwise the quality of castings cannot be guaranteed. However, the limitation of manual direct molding is that its efficiency is too low to achieve mass production. In this regard, indirect moulding has advantages. In indirect moulding, artisans usually make moulds from stone, wood, clay or other plastic materials.


title: Casting

text: Early civilizations discovered lead aided in the fluidity of molten copper, allowing them to cast more intricate designs. For example, the dancing girl of Mohenjo-daro is a copper alloy casting that most likely utilizes the lost wax technique. Lost wax casting can be dated back to 4000 BC or the Chalcolithic period. One of the oldest studied examples of this technique is a 6,000-year old amulet from Indus valley civilization.


title: Casting

text: India is attributed as one of the first civilizations to use casting methods to mass produce coins. Around the middle of the first millennium BC (1000 BC - 1 BC), coins used were made from silver but as the millennium progressed the coins shifted to a cast copper alloy. New technology was developed to mass produce the new copper coins. Introduced was a multi piece stackable coin template mold. Multiple molds were placed on top of one another into a clay cylinder so molten metal could be poured down the center, filling and solidifying in the open spaces. This process allowed one hundred coins to be produced simultaneously.


title: Casting

text: In the Middle East and West Africa the lost wax technique was used very early in their metallurgy traditions while China adopted it much later. In Western Europe lost wax techniques are considered to have been hardly used especially in comparison to that of the Indus valley civilization. There were no pieces of lost wax found in the capital of Anyang during the Shane dynasty (1600-1040 BC) while a large amount (100,000 pieces) of piece-mould fragments were found. This led to the conclusion that lost wax was not performed in the capital during this dynasty. However, the discovery of a mask made using the investment moulding dated at around 1300 BC indicated that the lost wax technique may have influenced other regions in China.


title: Casting

text: Historians debate the origin of the development of the cannon but most evidence points to Turkey and Central Asia in the 18th and 19th century. The casting process of a cannon is a bit more complex with the use of a clay core, a template which has clay moulded around it and then broken out followed by an assembly in a casting pit that involves binding the casting with iron bands.


title: Casting

text: In metalworking, metal is heated until it becomes liquid and is then poured into a mold. The mold is a hollow cavity that includes the desired shape, but the mold also includes runners and risers that enable the metal to fill the mold. The mold and the metal are then cooled until the metal solidifies. The solidified part (the casting) is then recovered from the mold. Subsequent operations remove excess material caused by the casting process (such as the runners and risers).


title: Casting

text: Plaster and other chemical curing materials such as concrete and plastic resin may be cast using single-use "waste" molds as noted above, multiple-use 'piece' molds, or molds made of small rigid pieces or of flexible material such as latex rubber (which is in turn supported by an exterior mold). When casting plaster or concrete, the material surface is flat and lacks transparency. Often topical treatments are applied to the surface. For example, painting and etching can be used in a way that give the appearance of metal or stone. Alternatively, the material is altered in its initial casting process and may contain colored sand so as to give an appearance of stone. By casting concrete, rather than plaster, it is possible to create sculptures, fountains, or seating for outdoor use. A simulation of high-quality marble may be made using certain chemically-set plastic resins (for example epoxy or polyester which are thermosetting polymers) with powdered stone added for coloration, often with multiple colors worked in. The latter is a common means of making washstands, washstand tops and shower stalls, with the skilled working of multiple colors resulting in simulated staining patterns as is often found in natural marble or travertine.


title: Casting

text: Raw castings often contain irregularities caused by seams and imperfections in the molds, as well as access ports for pouring material into the molds. The process of cutting, grinding, shaving or sanding away these unwanted bits is called "fettling". In modern times robotic processes have been developed to perform some of the more repetitive parts of the fettling process, but historically fettlers carried out this arduous work manually, and often in conditions dangerous to their health.


title: Casting

text: Fettling can add significantly to the cost of the resulting product, and designers of molds seek to minimize it through the shape of the mold, the material being cast, and sometimes by including decorative elements.


title: Casting

text: Casting process simulation uses numerical methods to calculate cast component quality considering mold filling, solidification and cooling, and provides a quantitative prediction of casting mechanical properties, thermal stresses and distortion. Simulation accurately describes a cast component's quality up-front before production starts. The casting rigging can be designed with respect to the required component properties. This has benefits beyond a reduction in pre-production sampling, as the precise layout of the complete casting system also leads to energy, material, and tooling savings.


title: Casting

text: The software supports the user in component design, the determination of melting practice and casting methoding through to pattern and mold making, heat treatment, and finishing. This saves costs along the entire casting manufacturing route.


title: Casting

text: Casting process simulation was initially developed at universities starting from the early '70s, mainly in Europe and in the U.S., and is regarded as the most important innovation in casting technology over the last 50 years. Since the late '80s, commercial programs (such as AutoCAST and MAGMA) are available which make it possible for foundries to gain new insight into what is happening inside the mold or die during the casting process.


title: Pilatus PC-7

text: The Pilatus PC-7 Turbo Trainer is a low-wing tandem-seat training aircraft designed and manufactured by Pilatus Aircraft of Switzerland. The aircraft is capable of all basic training functions including aerobatics, instrument, tactical and night flying.


title: Pilatus PC-7

text: The PC-7 was developed from the preceding Pilatus P-3, largely differing by the adoption of a turboprop engine, a bubble canopy, and a new one-piece wing. Introduced during the 1970s, it has since developed a sizable presence of the global trainer market. The type has been adopted by in excess of 20 air forces as their ab initio trainer, as well as multiple civilian operators. Over one million hours have reportedly been flown by PC-7s worldwide. In addition to training operations, some aircraft are armed and have been used for combat missions by several customers, including Chad, Iran, and Mexico, often in violation of the relevant export agreement between the customer and the Swiss government.


title: Pilatus PC-7

text: An improved model of the aircraft, the "PC-7 Mk II", was developed during the 1990s by combining the newer PC-9's airframe and avionics with the PC-7's smaller turbine engine. Reportedly, in excess of 500 PC-7s have been sold to various operators, the majority of which still being in service. In Pilatus' line-up, the PC-7 has been succeeded by the newer PC-9 and PC-21 trainers.


title: Pilatus PC-7

text: Work on what would become the PC-7 commenced during the 1960s. It was based on the earlier piston-powered Pilatus P-3, the initial prototype being produced from the existing prototype P-3, principally differing by the substitution of its Lycoming O-435 engine with a Pratt & Whitney PT6A-20 turboprop powerplant. On 12 April 1966, the modified prototype performed its maiden flight. However, the PC-7 programme was abruptly shelved following an accident involving the aircraft. The termination of work was reportedly driven by a lack of market interest.