title: Peng Dehuai

text: In Peng's letter, Peng compared himself to the courageous but tactless Han dynasty general Zhang Fei. Because of Mao's appreciation of Zhang's enemy, Cao Cao, Mao interpreted this as implying a confrontational relationship. Peng criticized the poor allocation of labour across China, especially the inefficient, country-wide practice of forcing farmers to work in backyard furnaces. He criticized the nationwide famine and severe shortage of cotton, and stated that the Chinese people were justified in demanding change from the present conditions. Peng blamed the problems of the Great Leap on what he called "problems in our way of thinking and style of work", especially the tendency for Party administrators to submit exaggerated production reports, and for Party bureaucrats to accept these figures uncritically. Peng blamed the mistakes of the Party on a culture of "petty bourgeois fanaticism", a tendency to believe in achieving change through blindly encouraging mass movements, and claimed that the acceptance of this culture had led to the Party leadership forgetting "the mass-line and the style of seeking truth from facts", which Peng believed had led to the Communist victories over the Japanese and Kuomintang. Peng criticized Mao's policy of "putting politics in command", substituting economic principles and productive work for political objectives.


title: Peng Dehuai

text: Mao's decision to have Peng's letter widely circulated completely changed the direction of the conference. On July 21, Zhang Wentian gave an independent, supplementary speech attacking Mao's policies, and the same day a majority of delegates expressed their approval of Peng's letter, making it an official conference document. Mao interpreted the letter as a personal attack, and began to defend himself on July 23, attacking Peng and those who disagreed with his policies. Mao defended his commune system by claiming that "until now, not a single commune has collapsed". He attacked Peng and those who shared his political opinions as "imperialists" "bourgeoisie", and "rightists", and associated their positions with other Communist leaders who had led failed oppositions to Mao's leadership, including Li Lisan, Wang Ming, Gao Gang, and Rao Shushi. Mao brought up an ultimatum, stating that, if the delegates of the conference sided with Peng, Mao would split the Communist Party, retreating into the countryside and leading the peasants to "overthrow the government". The other senior leaders of the Communist Party, including Zhou Enlai and Liu Shaoqi, were unwilling to risk splitting the Party, and sided with Mao in opposing Peng's position.


title: Peng Dehuai

text: From August 2, the conference debated whether Peng should be disciplined, what punishment Peng should receive, and for what reasons. On August 16 the conference passed two resolutions. The first resolution condemned Peng as the leader of an "anti-Party clique", and called for Peng's removal from the positions of Defense Minister and Vice-Chairman of the Military Commission. The resolution did not eject Peng from the Communist Party, and it allowed Peng to retain his position in the Politburo, but he was excluded from Politburo meetings for years. The second resolution recognized Mao's dominance within the Party and subtly called for an end to the policies of the Great Leap Forward. After Mao had rallied the rest of the Party against him, Peng's options were limited to stubbornly standing his ground, engaging in a humiliating self-criticism, or suicide. After private discussion with other senior leaders, Peng considered the prestige of Mao and the unity of the Party and agreed to make a self-criticism, which was publicly reviewed at the conference, in which he admitted that he had made "severe mistakes" associated with his "rightist viewpoint", that he had been a follower of Li Lisan and Wang Ming, and in which he openly implicated his supporters in his "mistakes". After the conference, Peng said privately to Zhou Enlai regarding his self-criticism: "For the first time in my life, I have spoken out against my very heart!" Mao purged most of Peng's supporters from important offices following the conference, almost completely isolating Peng politically for the rest of his life. Peng later reflected that he was confused that Mao could have interpreted his private letter as a political attack, and wondered why, after thirty years of working together, Mao could not have discussed the matter privately with him, if Peng had indeed made the mistakes Mao claimed he did.


title: Peng Dehuai

text: In September 1959 Mao replaced Peng as Defense Minister with Lin Biao, which effectively ended Peng's military career. Peng was relocated to a suburb of Beijing and forfeited his marshal's uniform and military decorations. Lin reversed Peng's reforms, abolished all signs and privileges of rank, purged officers considered sympathetic to the Soviets, directed soldiers to part-time work as industrial and agricultural labourers, and indoctrinated the armed forces in Mao Zedong Thought. Lin's system of indoctrination made it clear that the party was clearly in command of China's armed forces, and Lin ensured that the army's political commissars enjoyed great power and status to see that his directives were followed. Lin implemented those reforms to please Mao but privately feared that they would weaken the PLA. Lin used his position as Minister of Defense to flatter Mao by using the army to promote Mao's personality cult throughout China by devising and running a number of national Maoist propaganda campaigns based on the PLA. The most successful of Lin's efforts to promote Mao's personality cult was the "learn from Lei Feng" campaign, which Lin began in 1963.


title: Peng Dehuai

text: After his forced retirement, Peng lived alone, under constant surveillance from the Central Guard Unit of the PLA and was accompanied by a secretary and a bodyguard. His wife remained in Beijing, and her work as the party secretary of Beijing Normal University allowed her to visit only infrequently. Peng's guards prevented curious local farmers from visiting Peng until he threatened to complain to Mao. Peng's niece, Peng Meikui, visited frequently, and they became close. Peng spent most of his free time in renovating his home, gardening, and studying Marxist theory, agriculture, and economics. Peng was not completely purged since even though he could no longer participate in government meetings or decision-making bodies, he still received and read all documents distributed to the members of the Politburo and State Council of which he was technically still a member. In 1960, Peng attended the funeral of Lin Boqu.


title: Peng Dehuai

text: In 1960 to 1961, the effects of Mao's economic policies continued to produce widespread economic collapse. That improved Peng's reputation among party leaders who secretly believed that Mao's policies were a mistake and desired to reverse them. Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi led Party efforts to revive the Chinese economy and cultivated Peng's friendship as part of a wider effort to gain widespread support for their activities. In November to December 1961, Peng received permission to leave his residence for the first time since 1959 to conduct an inspection tour of Hunan. Peng found the conditions there even worse than in 1959 and, in a January 1962 conference of 7,000 party leaders to determine party economic policies, repeated most of the criticisms that he had made at Lushan. On June 16, 1962, Peng submitted a document, his "Letter of 80,000 Words," to Mao and the Politburo, which gave a full account of his life, admitted to several "mistakes," defended himself against most of the accusations made against him at the Lushan Conference, requested to be readmitted to decision-making government bodies, and sharply criticized the economic policies of the Great Leap Forward. In his letter, Peng first wrote one of his most famous quotes: "I want to be a Hai Rui!" The efforts of Liu and Deng to rehabilitate Peng further were not initially successful. Peng was not allowed to attend the Tenth Plenum of the Eighth CCP Central Committee, held in September 1962, and the efforts to reverse the verdict on Peng made at the Lushan Conference failed. From 1962 to 1965, Peng continued to live in relative obscurity but was no longer under house arrest.


title: Peng Dehuai

text: After Mao had purged Peng in 1959, he appointed Marshal He Long to the head of an office to investigate Peng's past to find more reasons to criticize Peng. He accepted the position but was sympathetic to Peng, and He stalled for over a year before he submitted his report. Mao's prestige weakened when it became widely known that the Great Leap Forward had been a disaster, and He eventually presented a positive report that attempted to vindicate Peng.


title: Peng Dehuai

text: In September 1965, Mao agreed to rehabilitate Peng by promoting him to a position managing the industrial development of Southwestern China, a project known as the Third Front. Peng initially refused the position and so Mao called him personally and convinced him to accept it by suggesting that the condemnation of Peng at the Lushan Conference may have been a mistake. Peng was then appointed "Deputy Commander of the Great Third Line of Construction in Southwest China" and "Third Secretary of the Control Commission of the CPC's Southwest Bureau." In practice, Peng's responsibilities were to oversee the industrial development of Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, and Tibet with a focus on developing military industries and logistical networks. Those positions were far below Peng's position before 1959 but signaled his return to national politics. Peng worked energetically until August 1966, when the beginning of the Cultural Revolution had him recalled to Chengdu, and the first Red Guards began patrolling the streets and violently attacking their perceived enemies. Peng's bodyguards warned him to avoid contact with the Red Guards, but Peng disregarded their advice: "a CPC member does not have to be afraid of the masses." Peng's disregard for personal danger and his confidence in the party made him one of the Cultural Revolution's first victims.


title: Peng Dehuai

text: Peng was one of the first public figures singled out for persecution in 1966 by the Cultural Revolution Group. The Secretariat of the Party, attempted to shield Peng, but Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, took a personal interest in persecuting Peng and directed Red Guards in Sichuan to find Peng in Chengdu, arrest him, and deliver him to Beijing to be persecuted. Local Red Guards in Chengdu were not enthusiastic to follow the orders. They visited Peng's house on December 22, 1966 and attempted to intimidate him by informing him of the recent arrests of some of his friends and comrades and the imminent arrests of Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. Because of local Red Guards' lack of enthusiasm to carry out Jiang Qing's orders, a more radical Red Guard leader, Wang Dabin, arrived in Chengdu on December 24 and denounced his local comrades as "rightists" and "traitors" for delaying Peng's arrest. The Red Guards then abducted Peng in the early morning of December 25, put him in chains, and ransacked his house. Peng's bodyguards arrived to save Peng at around 4:00 a.m. but were already too late.


title: Peng Dehuai

text: Prime Minister Zhou Enlai made an effort to save Peng by placing him under PLA surveillance. On December 25, Zhou's office ordered the Red Guards who had abducted Peng to accompany members of the PLA from Chengdu, deliver Peng to Beijing by train (instead of by plane since the airports in Sichuan had been taken over by Red Guards), and deliver Peng to the Beijing PLA garrison. After the party arrived in Beijing, Wang Dabin successfully directed Red Guards under his command to delay the PLA unit scheduled to take possession of Peng and succeeded in keeping Peng from being saved.


title: Peng Dehuai

text: In January 1967, Peng was taken to his first "struggle session" in which he was paraded in chains before several thousand jeering Red Guards, wearing a large paper dunce cap and with a wooden board hung from his neck on which his "crimes" were written. In the fall, Peng was held at a PLA military prison outside Beijing and was allowed to receive extra clothing. In July, Mao and Lin Biao, co-operating with Jiang Qing's faction, ordered the PLA to form an "investigation group" to determine Peng's "crimes" so that Peng could be more thoroughly humiliated in future struggle sessions. Peng's jailers attempted to force Peng to confess that he was a "great warlord," a "great ambitionist," and a "great conspirator" who had "crept into the Party and the Army." Peng refused to confess to those accusations or to "surrender to the masses" and so his jailers strapped Peng to the floor of an unlit cell and did not allow him to stand or sit up, drink water, rise to go to the toilet, or move in his sleep for several days. After Peng still refused to "confess," his jailers began routinely beating him and broke several ribs, injured his back, and damaged his internal organs, especially his lungs. Peng's violent "interrogations" lasted over ten hours a day, but his interrogators were replaced every two hours to keep them from developing any sympathy for Peng, a practice pioneered by the Stalinist secret police in the 1930s. Peng was "interrogated" that way over 130 times. During interrogations he shouted denials to the Red Guards who beat him, and it is reputed that he pounded the table so hard that the cell walls shook.


title: Peng Dehuai

text: In late July 1967, following the failed Wuhan Uprising, party leaders decided that Peng should be used as an example by publicly humiliating him by name at a national level. On July 31, an article appeared that was distributed nationally and directed the nation to take part in vilifying him. In the article, Peng was called a "capitalist," a "great ambitionist," and a "great conspirator" who had "always opposed Chairman Mao" and who was "the representative of the greatest capitalist-roader [Liu Shaoqi] in the army." The article accused Peng of conspiring with foreign countries; allying with "imperialists, revisionists, and counter-revolutionaries;" and waging "a wild attack against the Party." The campaign of national vilification against Peng lasted several months until late 1967. On August 16, another article stated that Peng "was never a Marxist" but that he had instead been a "capitalist great warlord" who had "crept into the Party and into the army... we have to struggle against him until he falls, until he breaks down, until he stinks." CCP propagandists made an effort to discredit Peng's military career by portraying it as a long string of failures except for the battles that were supposedly directed closely by Mao and to convince the Chinese people that Peng was a subhuman villain who should be destroyed without compassion or mercy.


title: Peng Dehuai

text: In August 1967, Peng was taken to a "struggle meeting," which was held in a stadium attended by 40,000 PLA soldiers. At the meeting, Peng was led in chains to a stage, where he was forced to kneel for several hours while he listened to soldiers repeatedly denouncing him for his "crimes." At the end of the meeting, Lin Biao personally appeared to the soldiers, where he addressed the assembled soldiers and Peng, who was still kneeling. Lin gave a speech in which he denounced Peng as a villainous element who must be purged and that it was "in the interest of the whole Party, the whole army, and the whole people of the whole country" to persecute him so severely. Lin then addressed Peng directly: "If you reform yourself, all right, if not, it is all right too. But of course we hope you reform yourself." It is not known whether Peng eventually broke down and "confessed" at the rally.


title: Peng Dehuai

text: Peng was imprisoned for the rest of his life. In 1969, the party formed a "special investigation group" to reach a verdict in his case. Peng's jailers then forced him to write a full biography of his life many times, but they did not believe that he ever fully confessed his "crimes." Peng was then subjected to constant violent "interrogations" throughout most of 1970 until a special military tribune sentenced Peng to life imprisonment. The sentence was immediately approved by Lin Biao's General Chief of Staff, Huang Yongsheng.


title: Peng Dehuai

text: After the 1971 Lin Biao incident, the military attempted to improve Peng's living conditions, but the years of deprivation and torture from 1967–1970 had seriously weakened his physical health, and from late 1972 to his death, Peng was seriously ill probably from tuberculosis, thrombosis, or both. Peng was briefly hospitalized in 1973 before he was returned to prison, the first time that he had been outside of prison since 1967. Peng's niece, Peng Meikui, visited Peng in the hospital and convinced his jailers to allow an operation, but the nature and the results of this operation are unknown. Peng's medical condition deteriorated further in 1974. According to Jurgen Domes, there is "some scattered evidence" that he received no substantial medical aid because of Mao's direct order. On the other hand, David Shambaugh states that he was instead denied medical aid by the directive of Mao's wife, Jiang Qing. Peng died at 3:35 p.m. on November 29, 1974. His last wish was to see Zhu De on his deathbed. The request was denied and when Zhu learnt of Peng's wish, after his death, he reportedly burst into tears.


title: Peng Dehuai

text: Peng Meikui was allowed to view her uncle's body for twenty minutes but was then removed. Peng's body was quickly cremated, and his ashes were sent to Chengdu, identified only by a note that read, "No. 327 – Wang Chuan, from Chengdu."


title: Peng Dehuai

text: The leadership of the CCP successfully concealed Peng's death for several years and successfully convinced the only civilian witness, Peng Meikui, not to tell anyone of Peng's death. Peng's former bodyguards did not learn of his death until 1976. His wife, Pu Anxiu, had also been arrested by Red Guards and "sentenced" to a "labour reform camp," where she remained until 1975, when she was released to settle as a farmer in Northern China. She did not find out about Peng's death until she was allowed to return to Beijing in 1978, when the news was first publicly disclosed.


title: Peng Dehuai

text: Mao died in 1976. Following a brief power struggle, Peng's former ally, Deng Xiaoping, emerged as the paramount leader of China. One of Deng's first political goals was to rehabilitate party members who had been condemned and persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. By 1978, many people, led by General Huang Kecheng, who had been a comrade of Peng's since Peng rebelled against the Kuomintang in 1928, were agitating for Peng's posthumous rehabilitation. The Chinese government formally reversed the "erroneous" verdict of Peng during the Third Plenum of the Eleventh CCP Central Committee, held from December 18 to 22, 1978. Deng gave a speech announcing Peng's rehabilitation:


title: Peng Dehuai

text: He was courageous in battle, open and straightforward, incorruptible and impeccable, and strict towards himself. He cared about the masses, and was never concerned about his own advantage. He was never afraid of difficulties, neither of carrying heavy loads. In his revolutionary work, he was diligent, honest, and he had an utmost sense of responsibility.


title: Peng Dehuai

text: Deng's speech also stated that Mao's decision in 1959, which vilified Peng as the leader of an "anti-Party clique," had been "entirely wrong" and that it had "undermined intra-Party democracy." From January 1979, the party encouraged historians and those who had known Peng to produce many memoirs, historical stories, and articles praising and remembering him. In 1980, the Intermediate Court of Justice in Wuhan sentenced Wang Dabin, the Red Guard who had directed Peng's arrest in 1966, to nine years in prison for "the persecution and torture of Comrade Peng Dehuai." In 1986, an "autobiography", "Memoirs of a Chinese Marshal", was compiled from various documents that Peng had written about his life. Much of the material for "Memoirs" was drawn from the "confessions" that Peng had written during the Cultural Revolution, and the book focused on Peng's early life, before the Sino-Japanese War. In 1988, China released a set of stamps to commemorate the 90th anniversary of Peng's birth. In modern China, Peng is considered one of the greatest military leaders of the twentieth century.


title: Lawnchair Larry flight

text: On July 2, 1982, Larry Walters (April 19, 1949 – October 6, 1993) made a 45-minute flight in a homemade airship made of an ordinary patio chair and 45 helium-filled weather balloons. The aircraft rose to an altitude of about , drifted from the point of liftoff in San Pedro, California, and entered controlled airspace near Long Beach Airport. During the landing, the aircraft became entangled in power lines, but Walters was able to climb down safely. The flight attracted worldwide media attention and inspired a movie and imitators.


title: Lawnchair Larry flight

text: Al Mingalone, an American photographer for Paramount News had in 1937 previously used 32 weather balloons for a feature photography assignment at Old Orchard Beach in Maine. While he hung suspended from the balloons by a parachute harness in order to take aerial film footage, Mingalone's mooring rope broke and he was lifted approximately into the air. A clergyman, Father James J. Mullen, spotted the incident, and after a chase of some , used a 22-caliber rifle to shoot out two of the balloons, thus allowing the photographer to return safely to the ground.


title: Lawnchair Larry flight

text: Lawrence Richard "Larry" Walters had often dreamed of flying, but was unable to become a pilot in the United States Air Force because of his poor eyesight. He first thought of using weather balloons to fly at age 13, after seeing them hanging from the ceiling of a military surplus store. He had a career as a truck driver.


title: Lawnchair Larry flight

text: In 1982, he decided to try his flying idea. His intention was to float over the Mojave Desert and then use a pellet gun to burst some of the balloons in order to land.


title: Lawnchair Larry flight

text: In mid-1982, Walters and his girlfriend at the time, Carol Van Deusen, purchased 45 weather balloons and obtained helium tanks from California Toy Time Balloons. They used a forged requisition from his employer, FilmFair Studios, saying the balloons were for a television commercial.


title: Lawnchair Larry flight

text: On July 2, 1982, Walters attached 43 of the balloons to his lawn chair, filled them with helium, put on a parachute, and strapped himself into the chair in the backyard of a home at 1633 West 7th Street in San Pedro. He took his pellet gun, a CB radio, sandwiches, beer, and a camera. When his friends cut the cord that tied his lawn chair to his Jeep, Walters's lawn chair rose rapidly to a height of about and was spotted from two commercial airliners. He slowly drifted over Long Beach and crossed the primary approach corridor of Long Beach Airport.


title: Lawnchair Larry flight

text: He was in contact with REACT, a citizens band radio monitoring organization, who recorded their conversation:


title: Lawnchair Larry flight

text: After 45 minutes in the sky, Walters shot several balloons, taking care not to unbalance the load. He then accidentally dropped his pellet gun overboard. He descended slowly, until the balloons' dangling cables got caught in a power line at 423 E 44th Way in Long Beach. The power line broke, causing a 20-minute electricity blackout. He landed unharmed on the ground.


title: Lawnchair Larry flight

text: Walters was immediately arrested by waiting members of the Long Beach Police Department. Regional safety inspector Neal Savoy was reported to have said, "We know he broke some part of the Federal Aviation Act, and as soon as we decide which part it is, some type of charge will be filed. If he had a pilot's license, we'd suspend that, but he doesn't." Walters initially was fined $4,000 for violations under U.S. Federal Aviation Regulations, including operating an aircraft within an airport traffic area "without establishing and maintaining two-way communications with the control tower." Walters appealed, and the fine was reduced to $1,500. A charge of operating a "civil aircraft for which there is not currently in effect an airworthiness certificate" was dropped, as it was not applicable to his class of aircraft.


title: Lawnchair Larry flight

text: The aircraft was dubbed "Inspiration I". Lawn Chair Larry was awarded the title of "At-Risk Survivor" in the 1993 Darwin Awards.


title: Lawnchair Larry flight

text: Ten days after his flight, Walters appeared on "Late Night with David Letterman". He was briefly in demand as a motivational speaker, and quit his job as a truck driver. He was featured in a Timex print ad in the early 1990s, but never made much money from his fame.


title: Lawnchair Larry flight

text: The lawn chair used in the flight was reportedly given to an admiring boy named Jerry, though Walters regretted doing so when the Smithsonian Institution asked him to donate it to its museum. Twenty years later, Jerry sent an email to Mark Barry, a pilot who had documented Walters's story and dedicated a website to it, and identified himself. The chair was still sitting in his garage, attached to some of the original tethers and water jugs used as ballast. The chair was placed on loan to the San Diego Air and Space Museum, where it was exhibited in 2014. It was later donated to the Smithsonian and is on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia.


title: Lawnchair Larry flight

text: Later in his life, Walters hiked the San Gabriel Mountains and did volunteer work for the United States Forest Service. He later broke up with his girlfriend of 15 years and could only find work sporadically as a security guard. On October 6, 1993, at the age of 44, Walters died by suicide after shooting himself in the heart in Angeles National Forest.


title: Lawnchair Larry flight

text: His story will be discovered in an upcoming documentary, "The Lawnchair Pilot", directed by Nirvan Mullick.


title: Corrupted Blood incident

text: The Corrupted Blood incident (also known as the World of Warcraft pandemic) took place between September 13 and October 8, 2005, in "World of Warcraft", a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by Blizzard Entertainment. When participating in a boss battle at the end of a raid, player characters would become infected with a debuff that was transmitted between characters in close proximity. While developers intended to keep the effects of the debuff in the boss's game region, a programming oversight soon led to an in-game pandemic throughout the fictional world of Azeroth.


title: Corrupted Blood incident

text: "World of Warcraft" introduced the game region of Zul'Gurub on September 13. The boss of the region, Hakkar the Soulflayer, cast Corrupted Blood on raid participants; the debuff's effects expired when players defeated Hakkar. Corrupted Blood soon spread beyond Zul'Gurub as players reacted to the infection with panic, either fast traveling to heavily-populated game regions or deactivating their animal companions. When those companions were reactivated, they still carried the debuff, becoming disease vectors, while non-player characters became asymptomatic carriers. Player reactions to the Corrupted blood pandemic varied: some provided aid by healing players or warning them of outbreak zones, while griefers intentionally contracted the debuff to spread it across "World of Warcraft". After several failed hotfixes, Blizzard ended the pandemic by performing a hard reset, and a later patch prevented companions from contracting Corrupted Blood entirely.


title: Corrupted Blood incident

text: Although it was the result of a software bug, the Corrupted Blood incident gained attention from "World of Warcraft" players and disease researchers. Blizzard developed intentional in-game pandemics in two expansion sets: "" in 2008 and "" in 2020. Epidemiologists, meanwhile, took interest in how MMORPGs, unlike mathematical models, could capture individual human responses to disease outbreaks rather than generating assumptions about behavior.


title: Corrupted Blood incident

text: Blizzard Entertainment released "World of Warcraft", a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), on November 23, 2004, in North America and Australia, and a European release followed in February 2005. As a role-playing game, players create their player characters by choosing among various fantasy races, character classes, and allegiance to one of the game's in-universe factions. After creating their character, the player begins a quest in the fantasy world of Azeroth, where they may fight monsters either alone or together with other players in parties. For larger dungeon crawls, players may create a raid group of up to 40 characters. Player characters gain experience levels through the completion of quests and the defeat of non-player characters (NPCs) such as monsters or dragons. Gaining experience levels, higher-level armor, and improved weaponry then allows player characters to participate in more difficult dungeon crawls.


title: Corrupted Blood incident

text: "World of Warcraft" was immediately popular upon its release, with over 240,000 subscribers within 24 hours of its North American launch. By March 2005, its subscriber base had reached 1.5 million individuals. By the time of the Corrupted Blood incident, "World of Warcraft" had over four million subscribers, corresponding to a $700 million annual revenue stream. It was significantly more popular than other MMORPGs of the time: "EverQuest II" had approximately 500,000 subscribers in September 2005, while "The Matrix Online" struggled to acquire 50,000 subscribers within three months of its release. To retain their subscribers after players finished all the content that was available upon "World of Warcraft"s release, Blizzard maintained a team of developers to regularly add new content such as raids.


title: Corrupted Blood incident

text: Blizzard released the first "World of Warcraft" raid on September 13, 2005, when the jungle region of Zul'Gurub was added to the game's open world. The boss of this region was Hakkar the Soulflayer, who would cast a debuff on players called "Corrupted Blood". After Hakkar cast Corrupted Blood on one player in a raid group, the debuff would be transmitted to other player characters in close proximity. The effects of Corrupted Blood were intended to last for 10 seconds, or until the players defeated Hakkar, whichever came first. One of Hakkar's healing mechanisms was to temporarily stun a raid party and drain their blood. Blizzard developers intended for players to defeat Hakkar by first weakening him with attacks and then exposing themselves to Corrupted Blood. When Hakkar attempted to heal himself, he would become exposed to the debuff and die from the effects of Corrupted Blood.


title: Corrupted Blood incident

text: Developers had intended to limit the effects of the debuff to the Zul'Gurub region, but several factors led to its spread throughout the in-game universe. First, "World of Warcraft" enabled fast travel, which allowed player characters to quickly move to large population centers from more remote regions like Zul'Gurub, sometimes while still under the effects of Corrupted Blood. Some players, unaware that the effects of the debuff would expire upon defeating Hakkar, reacted to their character's infection with panic and would fast travel out of the dungeon while still carrying the contagious debuff.


title: Corrupted Blood incident

text: A programming oversight further contributed to the spread of the in-game pandemic. Players with animal companions could protect their pets during boss battles by placing them into a type of suspended animation mid-fight. Pet companions could contract Corrupted Blood, and after noticing that their pet had become infected, many players would place the animal into its suspended state to protect them from death. These pets were subsequently re-activated after the completion of the boss battle, but developers had forgotten to include an "off-switch" that would recognize the conclusion of the raid and remove the debuff from companions. Players who defeated Hakkar would subsequently fast travel to markets in urban centers in order to repair their damaged armor and weaponry. They then re-activated their infected pets, who became disease vectors, allowing Corrupted Blood to spread beyond players involved in the raid. Other NPCs could become infected with the disease, but they were incapable of dying, and instead became asymptomatic carriers for player characters.


title: Corrupted Blood incident

text: Once it spread beyond the Zul'Gurub region, Corrupted Blood quickly became pandemic in Azeroth. The index case was never identified, but an early epicenter for the pandemic was in the Archimonde server, where a player summoned their infected pet in one of Azeroth's capital cities. Another outbreak soon occurred in Ogrimmar, the capital city of the Orcs, and in the dwarf city of Ironforge. There was no in-game cure for Corrupted Blood, which inflicted between 263 and 317 hit points of damage every two seconds. This level of damage would kill a character of average experience level between 60 and 90 seconds. While "World of Warcraft" player characters are resurrected after death, the items that the characters had acquired would become damaged upon each revival, making character death inconvenient for players.


title: Corrupted Blood incident

text: The sudden arrival and spread of the Corrupted Blood pandemic created widespread panic among "World of Warcraft"s user base. One player told "The Washington Post" that the "world chat would explode any time a city fell. We kept a close eye not only on our guild chat but on world chat as well to see where not to go. We didn't want to catch it." Casual "World of Warcraft" players who had read about the incident on the news would log into their accounts to better understand the pandemic, promptly infecting their characters. The in-game environment soon filled with the skeletons and corpses of player characters who had succumbed to the infection, and internet forums described seeing "hundreds" of these bodies throughout Azeroth's population centers. One player described Azeroth as "filled to the brim with corpses", the "streets literally white with the bones of the dead". Another posted that "[s]ome servers have gotten so bad that you can't go into the major cities without getting the plague. And anyone less than like Level 50 nearly immediately dies." Some players incorrectly speculated that the Corrupted Blood incident had been intentional, with developers intending for the Hakkar boss battle to lead directly into a pandemic-based game event.


title: Corrupted Blood incident

text: Once players realized the scope of the pandemic, individual reactions to the infection varied. Some players whose characters possessed healing abilities headed to major cities as impromptu first responders, but these characters often contracted and died from the disease as well. Healing measures were largely ineffective, as only one character class, Paladins, were capable of removing debuffs of Corrupted Blood's nature, and players risked reinfection almost immediately upon healing. More often, rather than removing the Corrupted Blood infection, healing characters merely kept characters alive and contagious, thereby prolonging the spread of the infection. Less powerful player characters, meanwhile, would stand at the edges of infected towns, warning other player characters not to enter. Players transmitted information from afar by using the game's farthest-reaching chat function, "yell". At least one player became an unofficial town crier, making announcements about new pandemic developments in the open world's public spaces. Other players enacted self-quarantine methods, remaining in less-populated wilderness areas of Azeroth rather than entering towns or cities where they risked infection. Although the pandemic did not extend to the real world, epidemiologist Nina Fefferman noted that "players seemed to really feel they were at risk and took the threat of infection seriously".


title: Corrupted Blood incident

text: Griefers, players who engage in bad faith multiplayer game tactics, took advantage of the Corrupted Blood incident to target and inconvenience other players. These players would purposely contract Corrupted Blood and travel to densely populated areas to further its spread. One griefer whose guild engaged in this practice told "Wired" that he did so because he was amused by the reactions of other players, saying, "It's just funny to watch people run away screaming". Fefferman compared these players to Typhoid Mary, an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid fever who resisted warnings and quarantines to infect others with the disease. Other players, attempting to inform other players of pandemic developments through forums and Internet chats, accidentally spread misinformation that increased the spread of Corrupted Blood.


title: Corrupted Blood incident

text: At approximately 1:15 p.m. (EST) on the afternoon of September 16, a Blizzard staff member reported that the team was "aware of the issue and working on it". While the company quickly became aware that Corrupted Blood had spread beyond its intended reach, identifying and fixing the issue that led to the pandemic proved difficult. One of the first steps that Blizzard took to attempt containment of the virus was to institute quarantine zones, placing barriers around heavily infected areas. The effect that this quarantine had was limited, as some players managed to bypass Blizzard's containment measures. Developers, meanwhile, faced difficulties in isolating and removing the virus from the pet companions that were driving its spread. Their two options for healing pet companions were to manually check every animal in the game universe for Corrupted Blood infection or developing "really hacky code" that would automatically check for infection every time a companion was summoned.


title: Corrupted Blood incident

text: Blizzard attempted to put a stop to the pandemic with hotfixes, including restarting each game server on a rolling basis, but Corrupted Blood outbreaks soon re-emerged in restarted areas. These outbreaks also came on a rolling basis: the plague would dissipate after running through a particular game region, only to re-emerge once players, believing that the danger had passed, repopulated the area. After one week without finding a suitable remedy, Blizzard performed hard resets on the "World of Warcraft" servers, resetting Azeroth to its state from just before the introduction of Corrupted Blood. On October 8, Blizzard released a patch for "World of Warcraft" that made pet companions immune to contracting Corrupted Blood.


title: Corrupted Blood incident

text: While Blizzard had not intended to create a pandemic event with the Corrupted Blood incident, the company noted the popularity that the pandemic had received. In 2008, Blizzard released an intentional plague in "World of Warcraft" to echo the success of the Corrupted Blood pandemic. On October 22, shortly before the release of a "World of Warcraft" expansion set titled "", several mysterious crates appeared in one Azeroth town. Player characters who inspected these crates became infected with an unknown disease, and if they did not find a cure within 10 minutes, they would be transformed into zombies. Unlike Corrupted Blood, it was possible to cure the zombie infection through healing spells or NPC aid. As the number of infected characters grew, however, the time frame for healing became shorter and the virus became resistant to cleansing. Blizzard put a stop to the Lich King plague on October 28 after receiving complaints from players that the zombie infection was detracting from other parts of the game.


title: Corrupted Blood incident

text: Another zombie pandemic known as the Scourge invasion was featured in 2020's "" expansion. To limit griefing attacks, the 2020 Scourge invasion was designed to make opting into the event more of a conscious choice by players who wanted to fight against the zombie hordes. The Scourge invasion received criticism, however, for its handling of new players. "Shadowlands" created a new starting area for players, Exile's Reach, in which new characters were separated from the rest of the game until they reached level 10. While this alternative starting area was isolated from the zombie pandemic, players whose characters began in other starting areas remained susceptible to infection and death.


title: Corrupted Blood incident

text: In 2012, "", a MMORPG by BioWare, released an online disease resembling the Corrupted Blood plague. Characters infected with the Rakghoul Plague would develop a signature cough that became progressively louder before they transformed into a zombie-like creature. Because the plague was transmitted more easily in heavily populated centers, player characters conducted business in more remote business areas to avoid infection. Unlike the Corrupted Blood incident, BioWare intentionally released the Rakghoul Plague, and player characters who succumbed to the disease received special items. Lead designer Daniel Erickson told reporters that the Rakghoul Plague was inspired by the Corrupted Blood incident, but that developers wanted to steer players away from griefing and towards positive interactions with the pandemic.


title: Corrupted Blood incident

text: Blizzard closed the Zul'Gurub raid in 2010 as part of a larger update which transformed the region into a five-person dungeon with new bosses. The region was added to "World of Warcraft Classic" in 2020. Because "Classic" was derived from a code created after the Corrupted Blood patch, pets were immune to Corrupted Blood, preventing another pandemic.


title: Corrupted Blood incident

text: The impact that the Corrupted Blood pandemic had on "World of Warcraft" players gained the attention of epidemiologists. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) contacted Blizzard after the incident, asking if they could use data from what they perceived as a planned disease simulation to inform their disease modeling research. Blizzard informed the facility that the Corrupted Blood outbreak was the unintentional result of a software bug and they thus had no usable data. Despite its accidental nature, the Corrupted Blood incident bore several resemblances to real-world pandemics, leading researchers to explore the event as a disease model. In an article for the journal "Epidemiology", Ran Balicer of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev compared the role that pet companions played in the spread of Corrupted Blood to avian influenza, which spread through asymptomatic ducks. The use of fast travel to quickly spread the disease between distant locations was also compared to the role that air travel played in the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak.


title: Corrupted Blood incident

text: Of particular interest to researchers in the use of MMORPGs for epidemiology is that character responses to a virtual pandemic are the result of individual player reactions, adding "a level of authenticity that doesn't exist in other simulations". Disease researchers typically study disease spread and control through the use of three general models, all of which make significant assumptions about human behavior. As behavior is difficult to predict, the effectiveness of these models is limited. The use of MMORPG environments like "World of Warcraft" introduces human behavior into disease models: while player characters are virtual, players are attached to the health and success of their characters and others, creating an immersive social environment. Video game models necessarily include player behaviors that would not be included in a general model. For instance, characters may purposely enter infected areas in the hope that a healing character would protect them, just as individuals may expose themselves to infection under the belief that a vaccine may be in the region.


title: Corrupted Blood incident

text: Some researchers have responded skeptically to the notion that games like "World of Warcraft" may accurately model real-world infectious disease patterns. Although Gary Smith, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, admitted that mathematical disease models fail to take into account the spectrum of human behavior, he questioned the ability of a video game to remedy this error, saying that "the study is just as 'observational' as disease outbreak studies in the real world". Dmitri Williams, an associate professor at the University of Southern California and a "World of Warcraft" player, questioned whether a player's behavior in a game "where you are encouraged to behave in a way that you would never behave offline" would be applicable to the real world. Neil Ferguson, director of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, noted that because characters could regenerate, there was not as much risk in becoming infected with a virtual disease, limiting the applicability of player behavior to the real world.


title: Corrupted Blood incident

text: While the Corrupted Blood incident created a focus on video games as tools of disease research, there were some specific aspects of the debuff that limited its applicability to other pandemics. For instance, the basic reproduction number of Corrupted Blood was significantly higher than any observed real-world pathogen, which in turn affected the rate of spread and player reactions. Additionally, players who had been infected with Corrupted Blood did not gain immunity to the debuff, which kept the infection circulating in perpetuity.


title: Corrupted Blood incident

text: Outside of disease research, some have speculated that the griefing attacks that took place during the Corrupted Blood pandemic may provide a model for bioterrorism research. Charles Blair of the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies told "Wired" that, just as the human behavior in "World of Warcraft" supplemented general disease models, the behavior of griefers could augment the computer-modeled tactical decision-making enacted by terrorist researchers.


title: Corrupted Blood incident

text: The sudden impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 led several researchers to turn to the Corrupted Blood incident as a potential model for understanding the virus's sociological impact. The Elysium Project, an independent fan-led organization maintaining early versions of "World of Warcraft", ran an experiment titled "Pandemic In Azeroth" which mimicked both the Corrupted Blood incident and the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic infected 88 percent of active players, but by implementing sanitation and isolation measures, this number soon dropped to 42.2 percent.


title: Corrupted Blood incident

text: Other researchers noted the similarities between the game and the real-world pandemics. Both had an immediate impact on dense urban areas, which limited the effectiveness of containment procedures in stopping the spread of disease, while air travel, like fast travel, allowed infections to spread across large parts of the world with ease. Lofgren compared the in-game "first responders", many of whom contracted Corrupted Blood when they attempted to heal others, to healthcare workers that were overrun with COVID-19 patients and became infected themselves. While a direct analogue was not made to griefers, meanwhile, Lofgren also acknowledged individuals who contracted the COVID-19 virus but chose not to quarantine, thus infecting others through negligence if not malice.


title: Tessa Dahl

text: Chantal Sophia "Tessa" Dahl (born 11 April 1957) is an English author and former actress. She is the daughter of British author Roald Dahl and American actress Patricia Neal.


title: Tessa Dahl

text: Dahl was born in Oxford, the second daughter of British author Roald Dahl and American actress Patricia Neal; her elder sister Olivia died from measles in 1962. She grew up in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, and attended Roedean and Downe House schools, the Elizabeth Russell Cookery School and the Herbert Bergof Acting Studio.


title: Tessa Dahl

text: Dahl has worked as an actress, modelled, worked at an antique shop, worked at an employment agency and written articles for "Tatler" before publishing her first novel, the semi-autobiographical "Working For Love", in 1988. Dahl became an author of children's fiction. Her book "Gwenda and the Animals" won the Friends of the Earth Best Children's Book of the Year. In addition, she has written extensively for the "London Times", "Sunday Times", "The Daily Telegraph", "The Sunday Telegraph", the "Daily Mail", "The Mail on Sunday", "Vogue", "House and Garden" (US) and "YOU Magazine". For many years, she was a contributing editor to the magazine "Tatler".


title: Tessa Dahl

text: Dahl's relationship with actor Julian Holloway produced one daughter, model and author Sophie Dahl; the couple separated shortly afterwards. She subsequently married businessman James Kelly and had two children, Clover and Luke. She then married businessman Patrick Donovan (deceased on 7 February 2021), son of Ambassador Francis Patrick Donovan, and had a son, Ned, a journalist. In 2019, the Jordanian royal court announced Ned's engagement to Princess Raiyah bint Hussein.


title: Tessa Dahl

text: Tessa Dahl has also had relationships with Peter Sellers, David Hemmings, Bryan Ferry, Brian de Palma and Dai Llewellyn.


title: Tessa Dahl

text: Apprenticed at the Barter Theatre, Abingdon, Va. (1972). "The Deep Man" by Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1979) Royal Exchange, Manchester.


title: Thomas Markle

text: Thomas Wayne Markle (born July 18, 1944) is an American retired television lighting director and director of photography.


title: Thomas Markle

text: He received a Chicago/Midwest Emmy Award for work on the television program "Made in Chicago" in 1975 and was a co-recipient of two Daytime Emmy Awards for work on the television soap opera "General Hospital" in 1982 and 2011. His youngest child is Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.


title: Thomas Markle

text: Thomas Wayne Markle Sr. was born on July 18, 1944 and raised in Newport, Pennsylvania, the son of Doris May Rita ("née" Sanders; 1920–2011) and Gordon Arnold Markle (1918–1979). His mother's family was from New Hampshire. The Markle (formerly spelled Merckel) family on his father's side claims 18th-century origins from Alsatian town of Lampertsloch, Hanau-Lichtenberg, now part of Bas-Rhin, France. He has two brothers, Michael (1939–2021) and Frederick (also known as Dismas F. Markle; born 1942). He was raised in an Anglican Christian denomination.


title: Thomas Markle

text: Among Markle's distant ancestors are his paternal great-great-grandmother, New Hampshire landowner Mary Hussey Smith (died 1908), who was a descendant of Christopher Hussey. He also descends from Sir Philip Wentworth and Mary Clifford, a daughter of John Clifford, 7th Baron Clifford and Lady Elizabeth Percy, a descendant of Edward III.


title: Thomas Markle

text: Markle worked as a lighting director at WTTW-TV Channel 11 in the 1970s. In 1975, he received a Chicago / Midwest Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement for Individual Excellence: Non Performers for his lighting design work on the channel's "Made in Chicago" program. He worked on the television series "General Hospital" and "Married... with Children". He also oversaw the lighting for the 1984 Summer Olympics.


title: Thomas Markle

text: In 1982, Markle was one of the 14 named co-recipients of a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Design Excellence for a Daytime Drama Series for work on "General Hospital", and in 2011, he shared a Daytime Emmy Award with Vincent Steib for Outstanding Achievement in Lighting Direction for a Drama Series for work on "General Hospital". He was also nominated (with various co-nominees) for Daytime Emmy Awards for work on "General Hospital" on seven other occasions.


title: Thomas Markle

text: Markle was nominated, along with two other co-nominees, for a Primetime Emmy Award in 1986 for Outstanding Lighting Direction (Electronic) for a Miniseries or a Special for the lighting design for the 58th Academy Awards.


title: Thomas Markle

text: Markle married student and secretary Roslyn Loveless in 1964; they had met the year before at a campus party at the University of Chicago. They had two children, Yvonne Marie Markle (who later changed her name to Samantha) in 1964 and Thomas Wayne Markle Jr. in 1966, before divorcing in 1975.


title: Thomas Markle

text: He married Doria Ragland at the Self-Realization Fellowship Temple of Paramahansa Yogananda in Hollywood, Los Angeles, on December 23, 1979, officiated by Brother Bhaktananda. Their daughter Rachel Meghan Markle (known by her middle name), who later became the Duchess of Sussex, was born on August 4, 1981. The couple split when their daughter was two years old. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1987. Both parents contributed to raising Meghan until the age of 9, when Markle was left in charge of caring for their daughter as Ragland pursued a career, and he paid for Meghan's entire private education from preschool at Hollywood Little Red Schoolhouse to Northwestern University as well as other living expenses. In addition to his regular job, Markle spent time helping with lighting for plays and musicals at Immaculate Heart High School, which Meghan attended.


title: Thomas Markle

text: In 2016, Markle filed for bankruptcy for a second time over a debt of $30,000. He lives in Rosarito, Mexico.


title: Thomas Markle

text: In May 2018, Markle underwent a heart surgery days before his daughter Meghan's wedding to Prince Harry. In May 2022, he was hospitalized after suffering a stroke.


title: Thomas Markle

text: In 2018, Markle was the subject of considerable media speculation as to whether he would attend his daughter Meghan's wedding to Prince Harry, at Windsor Castle in the United Kingdom. He did not attend as he was recovering from heart surgery after being discharged from the hospital two days before the wedding. He later claimed that he was never sent a formal invitation.


title: Thomas Markle

text: In May 2018, a few days before the wedding, Markle became a subject of controversy after it was revealed that he had staged photographs for a paparazzi photographer in return for money. His elder daughter, Samantha, later claimed that it was her idea, and that her father's motivation was not financial but "to show the world that [he's] getting in shape and doing great healthy things." Markle admitted that he initially had lied to Harry about the staged photos and later regretted his decision. Later it was claimed that the photographer who took the pictures previously worked for Meghan and had been hired by her after she moved back to the United States. In November 2021, Markle sued the photo agency Coleman-Rayner in Los Angeles County Superior Court and sought $1 million in damages, alleging that the staged paparazzi photos were published without his approval and he was not given his 30% share of sales from images in accordance with their initial contract.


title: Thomas Markle

text: In June 2018, he appeared on "Good Morning Britain" in which he discussed his personal relationship with Meghan and his son-in-law. In another interview with "The Mail on Sunday" in July 2018, Markle said that his daughter "[would] be nothing without me. I made her the Duchess she is today." His continual paid interviews with the press reportedly damaged his relationship with his daughter, with whom he indicated he had not been in contact since the royal wedding.


title: Thomas Markle

text: In February 2019, he published excerpts of a letter sent to him by his daughter shortly after her wedding in direct response to a "People" article involving five of Meghan's friends referencing the letter and negatively commenting on his character, in which she stated that he had broken her heart "into a million pieces" with his actions. Markle described the letter as a "a dagger to the heart" rather than an "olive branch".


title: Thomas Markle

text: In January 2020, it was revealed that "The Mail on Sunday" could possibly use evidence provided by Markle against his own daughter in an ongoing legal battle between the paper and the Duchess. The "Daily Mail" also named him as a potential witness who could testify against Meghan in court. In the same month, he said in an interview that Meghan is "tossing away every young girl's dream of becoming a princess, for money", and that she and Harry are "destroying and cheapening" the royal institution, and that they are "lost souls". He also stated that he does not expect to see Meghan ever again but still hopes for reconciliation one day.


title: Thomas Markle

text: In July 2021, Markle stated that he would be petitioning California courts for rights to see his grandchildren Archie and Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor.


title: Thomas Markle

text: In 2022, he began publishing videos on the YouTube channel "Remarkable Friendship" together with photographer Karl Larsen although he claims to have severed their relationship after recording their last video.


title: Public utility

text: A public utility company (usually just utility) is an organization that maintains the infrastructure for a public service (often also providing a service using that infrastructure). Public utilities are subject to forms of public control and regulation ranging from local community-based groups to statewide government monopolies.


title: Public utility

text: Public utilities are meant to supply goods/services that are considered essential; water, gas, electricity, telephone, and other communication systems represent much of the public utility market. The transmission lines used in the transportation of electricity, or natural gas pipelines, have natural monopoly characteristics. If the infrastructure already exists in a given area, minimal benefit is gained through competing. In other words, these industries are characterized by "economies of scale" in production.


title: Public utility

text: There are many different types of public utilities. Some, especially large companies, offer multiple products, such as electricity and natural gas. Other companies specialize in one specific product, such as water. Modern public utilities may also be partially (or completely) sourced from clean and renewable energy in order to produce sustainable electricity. Of these, wind turbines and solar panels are those used most frequently.


title: Public utility

text: Public utilities have historically been considered to be a natural monopoly. This school of thought holds that the most cost-efficient way of doing business is through a single firm because these are capital-intensive businesses with unusually large economies of scale and high fixed costs associated with building and operating the infrastructure, e.g. power plants, telephone lines and water treatment facilities. However, over the past several decades, traditional public utilities' monopoly position has eroded. For instance, wholesale electricity generation markets, electric transmission networks, electricity retailing and customer choice, telecommunication, some types of public transit and postal services have become competitive in some countries and the trend towards liberalization, deregulation and privatization of public utilities is growing. However, the infrastructure used to distribute most utility products and services has remained largely monopolistic.


title: Public utility

text: Public utilities must pursue the following objective given the social responsibility their services attribute to them:


title: Public utility

text: The management of public utilities continues to be important for local and general governments. By creating, expanding, and improving upon public utilities, a governmental body may attempt to improve its image or attract investment. Traditionally, public services have been provided by public legal entities, which operate much like corporations, but differ in that profit is not necessary for a functional business. A significant factor in government ownership has been to reduce the risk that an activity, if left to private initiative, may be considered not sufficiently profitable and neglected. Many utilities are essential for human life, national defense, or commerce, and the risk of public harm with mismanagement is considerably greater than with other goods. The principle of universality of utilities maintains that these services are best owned by, and operating for, the public. The government and the society itself would like to see these services being economically accessible to all or most of the population. Furthermore, other economic reasons based the idea: public services need huge investments in infrastructures, crucial for competitiveness but with a slow return of capital; last, technical difficulties can occur in the management of plurality of networks, example in the city subsoil.


title: Public utility

text: Public pressure for renewable energy as a replacement for legacy fossil fuel power has steadily increased since the 1980s. As the technology needed to source the necessary amount of energy from renewable sources is still under study, public energy policy has been focused on short term alternatives such as natural gas (which still produces substantial carbon dioxide) or Nuclear power. In 2021 a power and utilities industry outlook report by Deloitte identified a number of trends for the utilities industry:


title: Public utility

text: Utility stocks are considered stable investments because they typically provide regular dividends to shareholders and have low volatility. Even in periods of economic downturns characterized by low interest rates, such stocks are attractive because dividend yields are usually greater than those of other stocks, so the utility sector is often part of a long-term buy-and-hold strategy.


title: Public utility

text: Utilities require expensive critical infrastructure which needs regular maintenance and replacement. Consequently, the industry is capital intensive, requiring regular access to the capital markets for external financing. A utility's capital structure may have a significant debt component, which exposes the company to interest rate risk. Should rates rise, the company must offer higher yields to attract bond investors, driving up the utility's interest expenses. If the company's debt load and interest expense becomes too large, its credit rating will deteriorate, further increasing the cost of capital and potentially limiting access to the capital markets.


title: Public utility

text: In the United Kingdom and Ireland, the state, private firms, and charities ran the traditional public utilities. For instance, the Sanitary Districts were established in England and Wales in 1875 and in Ireland in 1878.


title: Public utility

text: The term can refer to the set of services provided by various organizations that are used in everyday life by the public, such as: electricity generation, electricity retailing, electricity supplies, natural gas supplies, water supplies, sewage works, sewage systems and broadband internet services. They are regulated by Ofgem, Ofwat and Ofcom. Disabled community transport services may occasionally be included within the definition. They were mostly privatised in the UK during the 1980s.


title: Public utility

text: The first public utility in the United States was a grist mill erected on Mother Brook in Dedham, Massachusetts in 1640.


title: Public utility

text: In the U.S., public utilities provide services at the consumer level, be it residential, commercial, or industrial consumer. Utilities, merchant power producers and very large consumers buy and sell bulk electricity at the wholesale level through a network of regional transmission organizations (RTO) and independent system operators (ISO) within one of three grids, the Eastern Interconnection, the Texas Interconnection, which is a single ISO, and the Western Interconnection.


title: Public utility

text: U.S. utilities historically operated with a high degree of financial leverage and low interest coverage ratios compared to industrial companies. Investors accepted these credit characteristics because of the regulation of the industry and the belief that there was minimal bankruptcy risk because of the essential services they provide. In recent decades several high-profile utility company bankruptcies have challenged this perception.


title: Public utility

text: Public utilities were historically regarded as natural monopolies because the infrastructure required to produce and deliver a product such as electricity or water is very expensive to build and maintain. Once assets such as power plants or transmission lines are in place, the cost of adding another customer is small, and duplication of facilities would be wasteful. As a result, utilities were either government monopolies, or if investor-owned, regulated by a public utilities commission.


title: Public utility

text: In the electric utility industry, the monopoly approach began to change in the 1990s. In 1996, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued its Order No. 888, which mandated that electric utilities open access to their transmission systems to enhance competition and "functionally unbundle" their transmission service from their other operations. The order also promoted the role of an independent system operator to manage power flow on the electric grid. Later, FERC Order No. 889 established an electronic information system called OASIS (open access same-time information system) which would give new users of transmission lines access to the same information available to the owner of the network. The result of these and other regulatory rulings was the eventual restructuring of the traditional monopoly-regulated regime to one in which all bulk power sellers could compete. A further step in industry restructuring, "customer choice", followed in some 19 states, giving retail electric customers the option to be served by non-utility retail power marketers.


title: Public utility

text: Public utilities can be privately owned or publicly owned. Publicly owned utilities include cooperative and municipal utilities. Municipal utilities may actually include territories outside of city limits or may not even serve the entire city. Cooperative utilities are owned by the customers they serve. They are usually found in rural areas. Publicly owned utilities are non-profit. Private utilities, also called investor-owned utilities, are owned by investors, and operate for profit, often referred to as a rate of return.


title: Public utility

text: A public utilities commission is a governmental agency in a particular jurisdiction that regulates the commercial activities related to associated electric, natural gas, telecommunications, water, railroad, rail transit, and/or passenger transportation companies. For example, the California Public Utilities Commission (or CPUC) and the Public Utility Commission of Texas regulate the utility companies in California and Texas, respectively, on behalf of their citizens and ratepayers (customers). These public utility commissions (PUCs) are typically composed of commissioners, who are appointed by their respective governors, and dedicated staff that implement and enforce rules and regulations, approve or deny rate increases, and monitor/report on relevant activities.


title: Public utility

text: Ratemaking practice in the U.S. holds that rates paid by a utility's customers should be set at a level which assures that the utility can provide reliable service at reasonable cost.


title: Public utility

text: Over the years, various changes have dramatically re-shaped the mission and focus of many public utility commissions. Their focus has typically shifted from the up-front regulation of rates and services to the oversight of competitive marketplaces and enforcement of regulatory compliance.


title: Catullus 16

text: Catullus 16 or Carmen 16 is a poem by Gaius Valerius Catullus (c. 84 BC – c. 54 BC). The poem, written in a hendecasyllabic (11-syllable) meter, was considered to be so sexually explicit following its rediscovery in the following centuries that a full English translation was not published until the 20th century. The first line, Pēdīcābo ego vōs et irrumābō ("I will sodomize and face-fuck you"), sometimes used as a title, has been called "one of the filthiest expressions ever written in Latin—or in any other language".


title: Catullus 16

text: "Carmen 16" is significant in literary history as an artistic work censored for its obscenity, but also because the poem raises questions about the proper relation of the poet, or his life, to the work.


title: Catullus 16

text: Subsequent Latin poets referenced the poem not for its invective, but as a work exemplary of freedom of speech and obscene subject matter that challenged the culturally prevalent decorum or moral orthodoxy of the period. Ovid, Pliny the Younger, Martial, and Apuleius all invoked the authority of Catullus in asserting that while the poet himself should be a respectable person, his poetry should not be constrained.


title: Catullus 16

text: Several editions of Catullus' works omit the more explicit parts of the poem. A noteworthy example is the 1924 Loeb edition: this omits lines 1 and 2 from the English translation, but includes them in the Latin; lines 7–14 are omitted from both Latin and English; a later Loeb edition gives the complete text in both languages. Other editions have been published with the explicit words blanked out.


title: Catullus 16

text: NPR bleep censored the first line of Catullus 16, both in Latin and English translation in the radiophonic exchange between Guy Raz and Mary Beard in 2009. C. H. Sisson writes "the obscenity of Catullus has long been a stumbling block". He follows Loeb, omitting poem lines as "non-sequitur":


title: Catullus 16

text: Thomas Nelson Winter notes: "In the sense that this is the normal language of those to whom he directs the poem, it is not obscene. Obscenity, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder".


title: Catullus 16

text: The poem raises questions about the proper relation of the poet, or his life, to the work. Catullus addresses the poem to two men, Furius and Aurelius. Furius refers to Marcus Furius Bibaculus, a first-century BC poet who had an affair with Juventius, Catullus' lover. Aurelius refers to Marcus Aurelius Cotta Maximus Messalinus, a first-century BC consul, or senator, during the Julio-Claudian dynasty.


title: Catullus 16

text: Those two men either together or singly also appear in so called "Catullus' Furius and Aurelius "cycle"", in poems 11, 15, 21, 23, 24 and 26. The cycle considers sexual themes and with the exception of Catullus 11 uses an abusive language toward the two. The two are described elsewhere as fellow members of Catullus' cohort of friends: "comites Catulli". According to Catullus 16, Furius and Aurelius find Catullus's verses to be "molliculi" ("tender" or "delicate"), implicating that the author is an effeminate poet. According to T. P. Wiseman, Catullus speaks about himself in feminine terms even in his love poetry. Catullus's gentle attitude left him vulnerable in the cynical and cruel environment of Roman high society. The criticism of Furius and Aurelius was directed at Catullus 5, apparently from "many thousands of kisses" at line 12. Kenneth Quinn observes:


title: Catullus 16

text: Catullus maligns the two and threatens them with rape. According to T. P. Wiseman, Catullus used the obscenity to get his message that "soft" poetry could be more arousing than explicit description to ""sensibilities so much cruder than his own"". According to Thomas Nelson Winter, Catullus could still claim that he has a pure life (79.16), despite the self evidence of pederasty (poems 14, 109) and his love of a married woman (poem 83 mentions Lesbia's husband).


title: Catullus 16

text: Craig Arthur Williams says Catullus 16 demonstrates that in Roman ideology of masculine "vir", a man is not compromised by his penetration of other males, in fact his manhood status is bolstered. Mary Beard finds the poem's message to be ironic:


title: Catullus 16

text: Latin is an exact language for obscene acts, such as pedicabo and "irrumabo", which appear in the first and last lines of the poem. The term "pedicare" is a transitive verb, meaning to "insert one's penis into another person's anus". The term "pathicus" in line 2 refers to the "bottom" person in that act, i.e., the one being penetrated. The term "irrumare" is likewise a transitive verb, meaning to "insert one's penis into another person's mouth for suckling", and derives from the Latin word, "rūma" meaning "udder" (as in: "to give something to suck on"). A male who suckles a penis is denoted as a "fellator" or, equivalently, a "pathicus" (line 2).


title: Catullus 16

text: Catullus neither confirms nor denies the claim of Aurelius and Furius that he is ""not a man"", since sexual slang ""irrumare"" and ""pedicare"" while having sexual slang meaning of homosexuality, could also mean as little as ""go to hell"".


title: Catullus 16

text: Paul Allen Miller, Professor of Comparative Literature and Classics at the University of South Carolina, suggests Catullus 16 contains information regarding:


title: Neuropsychology

text: Neuropsychology is a branch of psychology concerned with how a person's cognition and behavior are related to the brain and the rest of the nervous system. Professionals in this branch of psychology often focus on how injuries or illnesses of the brain affect cognitive and behavioral functions.


title: Neuropsychology

text: It is both an experimental and clinical field of psychology, thus aiming to understand how behavior and cognition are influenced by brain function and concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of behavioral and cognitive effects of neurological disorders. Whereas classical neurology focuses on the pathology of the nervous system and classical psychology is largely divorced from it, neuropsychology seeks to discover how the brain correlates with the mind through the study of neurological patients. It thus shares concepts and concerns with neuropsychiatry and with behavioral neurology in general. The term "neuropsychology" has been applied to lesion studies in humans and animals. It has also been applied in efforts to record electrical activity from individual cells (or groups of cells) in higher primates (including some studies of human patients).


title: Neuropsychology

text: In practice, neuropsychologists tend to work in research settings (universities, laboratories, or research institutions), clinical settings (medical hospitals or rehabilitation settings, often involved in assessing or treating patients with neuropsychological problems), or forensic settings or industry (often as clinical-trial consultants where CNS function is a concern).


title: Neuropsychology

text: Neuropsychology is a relatively new discipline within the field of psychology. The first textbook defining the field, "Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology", was initially published by Kolb and Whishaw in 1980. However, the history of its development can be traced back to the Third Dynasty in ancient Egypt, perhaps even earlier. There is much debate as to when societies started considering the functions of different organs. For many centuries, the brain was thought useless and was often discarded during burial processes and autopsies. As the field of medicine developed its understanding of human anatomy and physiology, different theories were developed as to why the body functioned the way it did. Many times, bodily functions were approached from a religious point of view, and abnormalities were blamed on bad spirits and the gods. The brain has not always been considered the center of the functioning body. It has taken hundreds of years to develop our understanding of the brain and how it affects our behaviors.


title: Neuropsychology

text: In ancient Egypt, writings on medicine date from the time of the priest Imhotep. They took a more scientific approach to medicine and disease, describing the brain, trauma, abnormalities, and remedies for reference for future physicians. Despite this, Egyptians saw the heart, not the brain, as the seat of the soul.


title: Neuropsychology

text: Aristotle reinforced this focus on the heart which originated in Egypt. He believed the heart to be in control of mental processes, and looked on the brain, due to its inert nature, as a mechanism for cooling the heat generated by the heart. He drew his conclusions based on the empirical study of animals. He found that while their brains were cold to the touch and that such contact did not trigger any movements, the heart was warm and active, accelerating and slowing dependent on mood. Such beliefs were upheld by many for years to come, persisting through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance period until they began to falter in the 17th century due to further research. The influence of Aristotle in the development of neuropsychology is evident within language used in modern day, since we "follow our hearts" and "learn by the heart."


title: Neuropsychology

text: Hippocrates viewed the brain as the seat of the soul. He drew a connection between the brain and behaviors of the body, writing: "The brain exercises the greatest power in the man." Apart from moving the focus from the heart as the "seat of the soul" to the brain, Hippocrates did not go into much detail about its actual functioning. However, by switching the attention of the medical community to the brain, his theory led to more scientific discovery of the organ responsible for our behaviors. For years to come, scientists were inspired to explore the functions of the body and to find concrete explanations for both normal and abnormal behaviors. Scientific discovery led them to believe that there were natural and organically occurring reasons to explain various functions of the body, and it could all be traced back to the brain. Hippocrates introduced the concept of the mind – which was widely seen as a separate function apart from the actual brain organ.


title: Neuropsychology

text: Philosopher René Descartes expanded upon this idea and is most widely known for his work on the mind-body problem. Often Descartes's ideas were looked upon as overly philosophical and lacking in sufficient scientific foundation. Descartes focused much of his anatomical experimentation on the brain, paying special attention to the pineal gland – which he argued was the actual "seat of the soul." Still deeply rooted in a spiritual outlook towards the scientific world, the body was said to be mortal, and the soul immortal. The pineal gland was then thought to be the very place at which the mind would interact with the mortal and machine-like body. At the time, Descartes was convinced the mind had control over the behaviors of the body (controlling the person) – but also that the body could have influence over the mind, which is referred to as dualism. This idea that the mind essentially had control over the body, but the body could resist or even influence other behaviors, was a major turning point in the way many physiologists would look at the brain. The capabilities of the mind were observed to do much more than simply react, but also to be rational and function in organized, thoughtful ways – much more complex than he thought the animal world to be. These ideas, although disregarded by many and cast aside for years led the medical community to expand their own ideas of the brain and begin to understand in new ways just how intricate the workings of the brain really were, and the complete effects it had on daily life, as well as which treatments would be the most beneficial to helping those people living with a dysfunctional mind. The mind-body problem, spurred by René Descartes, continues to this day with many philosophical arguments both for and against his ideas. However controversial they were and remain today, the fresh and well-thought-out perspective Descartes presented has had long-lasting effects on the various disciplines of medicine, psychology, and much more, especially in putting an emphasis on separating the mind from the body in order to explain observable behaviors.


title: Neuropsychology

text: It was in the mid-17th century that another major contributor to the field of neuropsychology emerged. Thomas Willis studied at Oxford University and took a physiological approach to the brain and behavior. It was Willis who coined the words 'hemisphere' and 'lobe' when referring to the brain. He was one of the earliest to use the words 'neurology' and 'psychology'. Rejecting the idea that humans were the only beings capable of rational thought, Willis looked at specialized structures of the brain. He theorized that higher structures accounted for complex functions, whereas lower structures were responsible for functions similar to those seen in other animals, consisting mostly of reactions and automatic responses. He was particularly interested in people with manic disorders and hysteria. His research constituted some of the first times that psychiatry and neurology came together to study individuals. Through his in-depth study of the brain and behavior, Willis concluded that automated responses such as breathing, heartbeats, and other various motor activities were carried out within the lower region of the brain. Although much of his work has been made obsolete, his ideas presented the brain as more complex than previously imagined, and led the way for future pioneers to understand and build upon his theories, especially when it came to looking at disorders and dysfunctions in the brain.


title: Neuropsychology

text: Neuroanatomist and physiologist Franz Joseph Gall made major progress in understanding the brain. He theorized that personality was directly related to features and structures within the brain. However, Gall's major contribution within the field of neuroscience is his invention of phrenology. This new discipline looked at the brain as an organ of the mind, where the shape of the skull could ultimately determine one's intelligence and personality. This theory was like many circulating at the time, as many scientists were taking into account physical features of the face and body, head size, anatomical structure, and levels of intelligence; only Gall looked primarily at the brain. There was much debate over the validity of Gall's claims however, because he was often found to be wrong in his predictions. He was once sent a cast of René Descartes' skull, and through his method of phrenology claimed the subject must have had a limited capacity for reasoning and higher cognition. As controversial and false as many of Gall's claims were, his contributions to understanding cortical regions of the brain and localized activity continued to advance understanding of the brain, personality, and behavior. His work is considered crucial to having laid a firm foundation in the field of neuropsychology, which would flourish over the next few decades.


title: Neuropsychology

text: Towards the late 19th century, the belief that the size of ones skull could determine their level of intelligence was discarded as science and medicine moved forward. A physician by the name of Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud expanded upon the ideas of Gall and took a closer look at the idea of distinct cortical regions of the brain each having their own independent function. Bouillaud was specifically interested in speech and wrote many publications on the anterior region of the brain being responsible for carrying out the act of ones speech, a discovery that had stemmed from the research of Gall. He was also one of the first to use larger samples for research although it took many years for that method to be accepted. By looking at over a hundred different case studies, Bouillaud came to discover that it was through different areas of the brain that speech is completed and understood. By observing people with brain damage, his theory was made more concrete. Bouillaud, along with many other pioneers of the time made great advances within the field of neurology, especially when it came to localization of function. There are many arguable debates as to who deserves the most credit for such discoveries, and often, people remain unmentioned, but Paul Broca is perhaps one of the most famous and well known contributors to neuropsychology – often referred to as "the father" of the discipline.


title: Neuropsychology

text: Inspired by the advances being made in the area of localized function within the brain, Paul Broca committed much of his study to the phenomena of how speech is understood and produced. Through his study, it was discovered and expanded upon that we articulate via the left hemisphere. Broca's observations and methods are widely considered to be where neuropsychology really takes form as a recognizable and respected discipline. Armed with the understanding that specific, independent areas of the brain are responsible for articulation and understanding of speech, the brains abilities were finally being acknowledged as the complex and highly intricate organ that it is. Broca was essentially the first to fully break away from the ideas of phrenology and delve deeper into a more scientific and psychological view of the brain.


title: Neuropsychology

text: Carl Wernicke was an influential nineteenth century neuropsychiatrist specifically interested in understanding how abnormalities could be localized to specific brain regions. Previously held theories attributed brain function as one singular process but Wernicke was one of the first to attribute brain function to different regions of the brain based on sensory and motor function. In 1873, Wernicke observed a patient presenting with poor language comprehension despite maintaining intact speech and hearing following a severe stroke. Post-morbid analysis revealed a lesion near the auditory region of the brain in the parietal-temporal region of the left hemisphere. Originally named sensory aphasia, this region later became known as Wernicke's area. Individuals with damage to this area present with fluent but receptive aphasia characterized by the inability to comprehend or express written or spoken language while maintaining intact speech and auditory processes. Along with Paul Broca, Wernicke's contributions greatly expanded the present knowledge of language development and localization of left hemispheric function.


title: Neuropsychology

text: Lashley's works and theories that follow are summarized in his book Brain Mechanisms and Intelligence. Lashley's theory of the Engram was the driving force for much of his research. An engram was believed to be a part of the brain where a specific memory was stored. He continued to use the training/ablation method that Franz had taught him. He would train a rat to learn a maze and then use systematic lesions and removed sections of cortical tissue to see if the rat forgot what it had learned.


title: Neuropsychology

text: Through his research with the rats, he learned that forgetting was dependent on the amount of tissue removed and not where it was removed from. He called this "mass action" and he believed that it was a general rule that governed how brain tissue would respond, independent of the type of learning. But we know now that mass action was a misinterpretation of his empirical results, because in order to run a maze the rats required multiple cortical areas. Cutting into small individual parts alone will not impair the rats' brains much, but taking large sections removes multiple cortical areas at one time, affecting various functions such as sight, motor coordination, and memory, making the animal unable to run a maze properly.


title: Neuropsychology

text: Lashley also proposed that a portion of a functional area could carry out the role of the entire area, even when the rest of the area has been removed. He called this phenomenon "equipotentiality". We know now that he was seeing evidence of plasticity in the brain: within certain constraints the brain has the ability for certain areas to take over the functions of other areas if those areas should fail or be removed - although not to the extent initially argued by Lashley.


title: Neuropsychology

text: Experimental neuropsychology is an approach that uses methods from experimental psychology to uncover the relationship between the nervous system and cognitive function. The majority of work involves studying healthy humans in a laboratory setting, although a minority of researchers may conduct animal experiments. Human work in this area often takes advantage of specific features of our nervous system (for example that visual information presented to a specific visual field is preferentially processed by the cortical hemisphere on the opposite side) to make links between neuroanatomy and psychological function.


title: Neuropsychology

text: Clinical neuropsychology is the application of neuropsychological knowledge to the assessment (see neuropsychological test and neuropsychological assessment), management, and rehabilitation of people who have experienced illness or injury (particularly to the brain) which has caused neurocognitive problems. In particular they bring a psychological viewpoint to treatment, to understand how such illness and injury may affect and be affected by psychological factors. They also can offer an opinion as to whether a person is demonstrating difficulties due to brain pathology or as a consequence of an emotional or another (potentially) reversible cause or both. For example, a test might show that both patients X and Y are unable to name items that they have been previously exposed to within the past 20 minutes (indicating possible dementia). If patient Y can name some of them with further prompting (e.g. given a categorical clue such as being told that the item they could not name is a fruit), this allows a more specific diagnosis than simply dementia (Y appears to have the vascular type which is due to brain pathology but is usually at least somewhat reversible). Clinical neuropsychologists often work in hospital settings in an interdisciplinary medical team; others work in private practice and may provide expert input into medico-legal proceedings.


title: Neuropsychology

text: Cognitive neuropsychology is a relatively new development and has emerged as a distillation of the complementary approaches of both experimental and clinical neuropsychology. It seeks to understand the mind and brain by studying people with brain injuries or neurological illnesses. One model of neuropsychological functioning is known as functional localization. This is based on the principle that if a specific cognitive problem can be found after an injury to a specific area of the brain, it is possible that this part of the brain is in some way involved. However, there may be reason to believe that the link between mental functions and neural regions is not so simple. An alternative model of the link between mind and brain, such as parallel processing, may have more explanatory power for the workings and dysfunction of the human brain. Yet another approach investigates how the pattern of errors produced by brain-damaged individuals can constrain our understanding of mental representations and processes without reference to the underlying neural structure. A more recent but related approach is cognitive neuropsychiatry which seeks to understand the normal function of mind and brain by studying psychiatric or mental illness.


title: Neuropsychology

text: Connectionism is the use of artificial neural networks to model specific cognitive processes using what are considered to be simplified but plausible models of how neurons operate. Once trained to perform a specific cognitive task these networks are often damaged or 'lesioned' to simulate brain injury or impairment in an attempt to understand and compare the results to the effects of brain injury in humans.


title: Neuropsychology

text: Functional neuroimaging uses specific neuroimaging technologies to take readings from the brain, usually when a person is doing a particular task, in an attempt to understand how the activation of particular brain areas is related to the task. In particular, the growth of methodologies to employ cognitive testing within established functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques to study brain-behavior relations is having a notable influence on neuropsychological research.


title: Neuropsychology

text: In practice these approaches are not mutually exclusive and most neuropsychologists select the best approach or approaches for the task to be completed.


title: Dadasaheb Phalke

text: Dhundiraj Govind Phalke (Pronunciation: ]), popularly known as Dadasaheb Phalke () (30 April 1870 – 16 February 1944), was an Indian producer-director-screenwriter, known as "the Father of Indian cinema". His debut film, "Raja Harishchandra", was the first Indian movie released in 1913, and is now known as India's first full-length feature film. He made 95 feature-length films and 27 short films in his career, spanning 19 years, until 1937, including his most noted works: "Mohini Bhasmasur" (1913), "Satyavan Savitri" (1914), "Lanka Dahan" (1917), "Shri Krishna Janma" (1918) and "Kaliya Mardan" (1919).


title: Dadasaheb Phalke

text: The Dadasaheb Phalke Award, awarded for lifetime contribution to cinema by the Government of India, is named in his honour.


title: Dadasaheb Phalke

text: Dhundiraj Phalke was born on 30 April 1870 at Trimbak, Bombay Presidency into a Marathi-speaking Chitpavan Brahmin family. His father, Govind Sadashiv Phalke alias Dajishastri, was a Sanskrit scholar and worked as a Hindu priest conducting religious ceremonies and his mother, Dwarkabai, was a housewife. The couple had seven children, three sons and four daughters. Shivrampant, the eldest, was twelve years elder than Phalke and worked in Baroda. He briefly worked as the "Dewan" (Chief Administrator) of the princely state of Jawhar and died in 1921, at the age of 63. Phalke's second brother, Raghunathrao, also worked as a priest and died at a young age of 21. Dajishastri taught Phalke to conduct religious rituals like yajna and dispensing of medicines. When he was appointed as a professor of Sanskrit in the Wilson College, Bombay, the family shifted its base to Bombay. Phalke completed his primary education in Trimbakeshwar and matriculation was done in Bombay.


title: Dadasaheb Phalke

text: Phalke joined the Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay in 1885 and completed a one-year course in drawing. At the beginning of 1886, he accompanied his elder brother, Shivrampant, to Baroda where he married a girl from Marathe family. Later, he joined Kala Bhavan, the Faculty of Fine Arts, at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda and completed a course in Oil painting and Watercolor painting in 1890. He also achieved proficiency in architecture and modelling. In the same year, Phalke bought a film camera and started experimenting with photography, processing, and printing. He was awarded a gold medal for creating a model of an ideal theatre at the 1892 Industrial Exhibition of Ahmedabad. While his work was much appreciated, one of his fans presented him a "costly" camera, used for still photography. In 1891, Phalke did a six-months course to learn the techniques of preparing half-tone blocks, photo-lithio, and three-colour ceramic photography. Principal Gajjar of Kala Bhavan sent Phalke to Ratlam to learn three-colour blockmaking, photolitho transfers, colotype and darkroom printing techniques under the guidance of Babulal Varuvalkar.


title: Dadasaheb Phalke

text: In 1893, Gajjar allowed Phalke to use the photo studio and laboratory of Kala Bhavan where he started his work under the name of "Shri Phalke's Engraving and Photo Printing". Despite his proficiency in various skills, he did not have a stable family life and had difficulties in making a living. Thus, in 1895, he decided to become a professional photographer and relocated to Godhra for doing business.He was given free studio space to start his still photo studio by the prominent Desai family for whom he also shot their family photo albums. He lost his wife and a child in the 1900 plague epidemic and decided to move


title: Dadasaheb Phalke

text: to a different city. Phalke returned to Baroda and started photography business. It did not run well because of the myth spread across the city that the camera sucks up the energy from a person's body which leads to their death. He faced similar resistance from the Prince of Baroda who refused to take photographs with the assumptions that it would shorten his life. Though, the Prince was later convinced by Phalke who went on to advocate the benefits of photography in his court, it did not help Phalke's business. He started the business of painting the stage curtains for the drama companies. This got him some basic training in drama production and fetched him a few minor roles in the plays.


title: Dadasaheb Phalke

text: Phalke learned magic tricks from a German magician who was on a tour in Baroda that time. This helped him use trick photography in his filmmaking. At the end of 1901, Phalke began to hold the public performances of magic using professional name of Professor Kelpha with letters of his last name in reverse order. In 1902, Phalke remarried to Girija Karandikar, niece of proprietor of Kirloskar Natak Mandali. Girija was renamed as Saraswati after the marriage. In 1903, he got a job as a photographer and draftsman at the Archaeological Survey of India. However, not satisfied with the job, Phalke resigned in 1906 and set up a printing press at Lonavla under the name of "Phalke Engraving and Printing Works" with R. G. Bhandarkar as a partner.