title: Jewish hat

text: Additional rules were imposed by local rulers at various times. The council decision was confirmed by the Council of Vienne of 1311–12. In 1267 the hat was made compulsory in Vienna. A doctor was given a temporary dispensation from wearing it in Venice in 1528, at the request of various distinguished patients (at the time in Venice each profession had special clothing rules). Pope Paul IV ordered in 1555 that in the Papal States it must be a yellow, peaked hat, and from 1567 for twenty years it was compulsory in Lithuania, but by this period it is rarely seen in most of Europe.


title: Jewish hat

text: As an outcome of the Jewish Emancipation its use was formally discontinued, although it had been declining long before that, and is not often seen after 1500; the various forms of the yellow badge were far more long-lasting. This was an alternative form of distinguishing mark, not found in Europe before 1215, and later reintroduced by the Nazis. It was probably more widely required by local laws, for example English legislation concentrated on the badge, which took the form of the two Tablets of the Law. In some pictures from all parts of the Middle Ages, rabbis or other Jewish leaders wear the Jewish hat when other Jews do not, which may reflect reality.


title: Jewish hat

text: Such examples of this hat-wearing can be seen nearly 350 years after the Fourth Lateran Council. Regions divided into many states, such as Renaissance Italy and Germany, had local laws in this as in other fields, leading to difficulties for travellers who might not be aware of the local regulations. For example, in Italy a Leone Segele was arrested in Lodi for wearing a black hat, as was acceptable in his home city of Genoa, instead of a yellow one, required in Lodi. These dress codes became a normal part of what it meant to be a Jew living inside Catholic dominated European societies.


title: Jewish hat

text: In a late addition to local rulings, the very strict and locally unpopular Counter Reformation Pope Paul IV ordered in 1555 that all Jews in Rome were required to wear the yellow hat "under the severest penalties." When he died, his statue, erected before the Campidoglio just months before, had a yellow hat placed on it (similar to the yellow hat Paul IV had forced Jews to wear in public). After a mock trial, the statue was decapitated. It was then thrown into the Tiber.


title: Jewish hat

text: The Jewish hat is frequently used in medieval art to denote Jews of the Biblical period. Often the Jews so shown are those shown in an unfavourable light by the story being depicted, such as the money-changers expelled by Jesus from the Temple (Matthew 21:12–17), but this is by no means always the case. The husband of Mary, Saint Joseph, is often shown wearing a Jewish hat, and Jesus himself may be shown wearing one, especially in depictions of the "Meeting at Emmaus", where his disciples do not recognise him at first (Luke.24.13-32). Sometimes it is used to distinguish Jews from other peoples such as Egyptians or Philistines. It is often depicted in art from times and places where the hat does not seem to have actually been commonly worn by Jews, "as an external and largely arbitrary sign devised by Christian iconographers", one of a number of useful visual ways of identifying types of persons in medieval art. In notable contrast to forms of Jewish badge, the Jewish hat is often seen in Hebrew manuscript illuminations such as Haggadot made in medieval Europe ("picture above"). In the Birds' Head Haggadah (Germany, c. 1300), the figures wear the hat when sitting to eat the Passover Seder.


title: Jewish hat

text: However, in Christian art the wearing of the hat can be sometimes be seen to express an attitude to those wearing it. In one extreme example in a manuscript of the "Bible moralisée", an illustration shows the rod of Aaron, which has turned into a serpent, turning on the Pharaoh's magicians (Exodus, 7:10-12); Moses and Aaron do not wear the hat but the Egyptian magicians do, signifying not that they are Jews, but that they are "like" Jews, i.e. on the wrong side of the dispute. The paired roundel below shows two tonsured clerics confronting a group of hat-wearing Jews, and has a Latin caption explaining "Moses and Aaron signify good prelates who, in explaining the words of the Gospel, devour the false words of the Jews". In another scene showing the conversion of Jews and other non-Christians at the end of the world, a series of figures show different stages of removing their hats to signify the stages they have reached in their conversion, so that "the hat does not just identify Jews; it functions independently of its placement to signify infidelity and recalcitrant Jewishness". Other scenes in Christian art where some characters often wear it include the Circumcision of Christ and "Saint Helena Finding the True Cross", where the medieval legend specified a Jewish character. The Jewish hat worn in reality was probably less pointy than is usually shown in art.


title: Jewish hat

text: William III the Brave (1425–1482) of Meissen, minted a silver groschen known as the Judenkopf Groschen. Its obverse portrait shows a man with a pointed beard wearing a Judenhut, which the populace took as depicting a typical Jew.


title: Jewish hat

text: When the plague broke out in 1349, Jews were expelled from much of German-speaking Europe. The pointed hat which had formerly been used to depict Jews, now was also used for other outcasts. Naomi Lubrich claims that the pointed hat was transferred in iconography to criminals, pagans, and other non-Christian outsiders, in particular sorcerers and dwarfs. Among the examples are laws, for example in Hungary in 1421, according to which people convicted of sorcery were forced to put on a Jewish hat for public shaming.


title: Jewish hat

text: For dhimmis to be clearly distinguishable from Muslims in public, Muslim rulers often prohibited dhimmis from wearing certain types of clothing, while forcing them to put on highly distinctive garments, usually of a bright colour. These included headgear, though this was not usually the primary element. At some times the regulated dress of Christians and Jews differed, at others it did not. As in Europe, the degree to which the recorded regulations were enforced is hard to assess, and probably varied greatly.


title: Jewish hat

text: Islamic scholars cited the Pact of Umar in which Christians supposedly took an obligation to "always dress in the same way wherever we may be, and… bind the zunar [wide belt] round our waists". Al-Nawawi required dhimmis to wear a piece of yellow cloth and a belt, as well as a metallic ring, inside public baths.


title: Jewish hat

text: Regulations on dhimmi clothing varied frequently to please the whims of the ruler. Although the initiation of such regulations is usually attributed to Umar I, historical evidence suggests that it was the Abbasid caliphs who pioneered this practice. In 850 the caliph al‑Mutawakkil ordered Christians and Jews to wear both a sash called a "zunnar" and a distinctive kind of shawl or headscarf called a "taylasin" (the Christians had already been required to wear the sash). He also required them to wear small bells in public baths. In the eleventh century, the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim, whose various extreme decrees and actions are usually attributed to mental illness, ordered Christians to put on half-meter wooden crosses and Jews to wear wooden calves around their necks. In the late twelfth century, Almohad ruler Abu Yusuf ordered the Jews of the Maghreb to wear dark blue garments with long sleeves and saddle-like caps. His grandson Abdallah al-Adil made a concession after appeals from the Jews, relaxing the required clothing to yellow garments and turbans. In the sixteenth century, Jews of the Maghreb could only wear sandals made of rushes and black turbans or caps with an extra red piece of cloth.


title: Jewish hat

text: Ottoman sultans continued to regulate the clothing of their non-Muslim subjects. In 1577, Murad III issued a firman forbidding Jews and Christians from wearing dresses, turbans, and sandals. In 1580, he changed his mind, restricting the previous prohibition to turbans and requiring dhimmis to wear black shoes; Jews and Christians also had to wear red and black hats, respectively. Observing in 1730 that some Muslims took to the habit of wearing caps similar to those of the Jews, Mahmud I ordered the hanging of the perpetrators. Mustafa III personally helped to enforce his decrees regarding clothes. In 1758, he was walking incognito in Istanbul and ordered the beheading of a Jew and an Armenian seen dressed in forbidden attire. The last Ottoman decree affirming the distinctive clothing for dhimmis was issued in 1837 by Mahmud II. Discriminatory clothing was not enforced in those Ottoman provinces where Christians were the majority, such as Greece and the Balkans.


title: Wireless mesh network

text: A wireless mesh network (WMN) is a communications network made up of radio nodes organized in a mesh topology. It can also be a form of wireless ad hoc network.


title: Wireless mesh network

text: A mesh refers to rich interconnection among devices or nodes. Wireless mesh networks often consist of mesh clients, mesh routers and gateways. Mobility of nodes is less frequent. If nodes constantly or frequently move, the mesh spends more time updating routes than delivering data. In a wireless mesh network, topology tends to be more static, so that routes


title: Wireless mesh network

text: computation can converge and delivery of data to their destinations can occur. Hence, this is a low-mobility centralized form of wireless ad hoc network. Also, because it sometimes relies on static nodes to act as gateways, it is not a truly all-wireless ad hoc network.


title: Wireless mesh network

text: Mesh clients are often laptops, cell phones, and other wireless devices. Mesh routers forward traffic to and from the gateways, which may or may not be connected to the Internet. The coverage area of all radio nodes working as a single network is sometimes called a mesh cloud. Access to this mesh cloud depends on the radio nodes working together to create a radio network. A mesh network is reliable and offers redundancy. When one node can no longer operate, the rest of the nodes can still communicate with each other, directly or through one or more intermediate nodes. Wireless mesh networks can self form and self heal. Wireless mesh networks work with different wireless technologies including 802.11, 802.15, 802.16, cellular technologies and need not be restricted to any one technology or protocol.


title: Wireless mesh network

text: Wireless mesh radio networks were originally developed for military applications, such that every node could dynamically serve as a router for every other node. In that way, even in the event of a failure of some nodes, the remaining nodes could continue to communicate with each other, and, if necessary, serve as uplinks for the other nodes.


title: Wireless mesh network

text: Early wireless mesh network nodes had a single half-duplex radio that, at any one instant, could either transmit or receive, but not both at the same time. This was accompanied by the development of shared mesh networks. This was subsequently superseded by more complex radio hardware that could receive packets from an upstream node and transmit packets to a downstream node simultaneously (on a different frequency or a different CDMA channel). This allowed the development of switched mesh networks. As the size, cost, and power requirements of radios declined further, nodes could be cost-effectively equipped with multiple radios. This, in turn, permitted each radio to handle a different function, for instance, one radio for client access, and another for backhaul services.


title: Wireless mesh network

text: Work in this field has been aided by the use of game theory methods to analyze strategies for the allocation of resources and routing of packets.


title: Wireless mesh network

text: Wireless mesh architecture is a first step towards providing cost effective and low mobility over a specific coverage area. Wireless mesh infrastructure is, in effect, a network of routers minus the cabling between nodes. It is built of peer radio devices that do not have to be cabled to a wired port like traditional WLAN access points (AP) do. Mesh infrastructure carries data over large distances by splitting the distance into a series of short hops. Intermediate nodes not only boost the signal, but cooperatively pass data from point A to point B by making forwarding decisions based on their knowledge of the network, i.e. perform routing by first deriving the topology of the network.


title: Wireless mesh network

text: Wireless mesh networks is a relatively "stable-topology" network except for the occasional failure of nodes or addition of new nodes. The path of traffic, being aggregated from a large number of end users, changes infrequently. Practically all the traffic in an infrastructure mesh network is either forwarded to or from a gateway, while in wireless ad hoc networks or client mesh networks the traffic flows between arbitrary pairs of nodes.


title: Wireless mesh network

text: If rate of mobility among nodes are high, i.e., link breaks happen frequently, wireless mesh networks start to break down and have low communication performance.


title: Wireless mesh network

text: This type of infrastructure can be decentralized (with no central server) or centrally managed (with a central server). Both are relatively inexpensive, and can be very reliable and resilient, as each node needs only transmit as far as the next node. Nodes act as routers to transmit data from nearby nodes to peers that are too far away to reach in a single hop, resulting in a network that can span larger distances. The topology of a mesh network must be relatively stable, i.e., not too much mobility. If one node drops out of the network, due to hardware failure or any other reason, its neighbors can quickly find another route using a routing protocol.


title: Wireless mesh network

text: Mesh networks may involve either fixed or mobile devices. The solutions are as diverse as communication needs, for example in difficult environments such as emergency situations, tunnels, oil rigs, battlefield surveillance, high-speed mobile-video applications on board public transport, real-time racing-car telemetry, or self-organizing Internet access for communities. An important possible application for wireless mesh networks is VoIP. By using a quality of service scheme, the wireless mesh may support routing local telephone calls through the mesh. Most applications in wireless mesh networks are similar to those in wireless ad hoc networks.


title: Wireless mesh network

text: The principle is similar to the way packets travel around the wired Internet—data hops from one device to another until it eventually reaches its destination. Dynamic routing algorithms implemented in each device allow this to happen. To implement such dynamic routing protocols, each device needs to communicate routing information to other devices in the network. Each device then determines what to do with the data it receives – either pass it on to the next device or keep it, depending on the protocol. The routing algorithm used should attempt to always ensure that the data takes the most appropriate (fastest) route to its destination.


title: Wireless mesh network

text: Multi-radio mesh refers to having different radios operating at different frequencies to interconnect nodes in a mesh. This means there is a unique frequency used for each wireless


title: Wireless mesh network

text: One of the more often cited papers on Wireless Mesh Networks identified the following areas as open research problems in 2005


title: Wireless mesh network

text: There are more than 70 competing schemes for routing packets across mesh networks. Some of these include:


title: Wireless mesh network

text: Standard autoconfiguration protocols, such as DHCP or IPv6 stateless autoconfiguration may be used over mesh networks.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: The Colt–Browning M1895, nicknamed "potato digger" because of its unusual operating mechanism, is an air-cooled, belt-fed, gas-operated machine gun that fires from a closed bolt with a cyclic rate of 450 rounds per minute. Based on an 1889 design by John Browning and his brother Matthew S. Browning, it was the first successful gas-operated machine gun to enter service.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: Filed for patent in 1892, the M1895's operating mechanism is one of John and Matthew S. Browning's early patents for automatic rifles; they had previously been working on lever-action rifles for Winchester such as the Winchester 1886.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: In a typical lever-action design, the operating lever lies under the rear of the gun, typically below the stock, and is hinged near the breech area. It is operated by rotating the lever down and forward, which causes the breechblock to slide rearward away from the barrel and eject the spent round. The potato digger mechanism, in effect, bears some similarities to the basic lever action design; it uses a lever that is powered by the expanding gases that are propelling the bullet down the barrel, rather than the operator's hands.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: The M1895 uses a tilting bolt to lock into position when firing, the first example of such in a machine gun design. The bolt slides forward and rearward within a slot in the receiver area, held forward by a spring inside the tube that also holds the operator's grip handle. As it moves forward the bolt eventually meets the barrel. At that point a cam below the bolt dropped into a hole which allowed the rear of the bolt to tilt downward, seating it against the rear of the breech and locking it in position. The bolt remains locked when the round is fired.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: As the bullet travels down the barrel after firing, it eventually passes a hole drilled in the bottom of the barrel known as a "port". The hot gasses behind the bullet flow into the port and push down on a plug, marked "p" in the diagrams. This causes the plug to pop out of the hole with some velocity. The plug is attached to one end of a short lever, "l", the other end of the lever is connected to a hinge below the barrel. The motion of the plug causes the entire lever to rotate down and to the rear, around the hinge point. This action is essentially front-to-back version of the typical back-to-front motion of a lever action rifle. The end point of this motion can be seen in the lower diagram, with the lever having traveled through an arc of about 160 degrees. A spring located at the hinge is compressed by this motion, and eventually causes the lever to rotate forward again, forcing the plug back into the port and holding it there when it is not in motion.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: Connected to the midpoint of the rotating lever is a long metal arm. The motion of the lever causes this arm to be forced rearward, pushing the entire breech mechanism with it. The rear end of this mechanism presses on the cam, forcing the bolt upward and unlocking it. Continued motion slides the bolt rearward against the spring, while also operating the mechanism that feeds the ammunition belt and readies the next round. When it reaches the end of its motion the spring pushes everything forward again, carrying the new bullet with it and seating it in the barrel before locking again.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: The earliest prototype developed by Browning in fall 1889 was a .44 caliber black powder cartridge rifle, weighing under 12 pounds (5.4 kg). This version placed the operating lever at the front of the barrel, and was acted on directly by the muzzle blast. An improved design was offered to Colt in 1892. The lever was moved rearward, and power was supplied by a gas port about six inches (15 cm) back from the muzzle.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: To minimize heating during rapid fire, the gun used a very heavy straight contour barrel, bringing its weight up to 35 pounds (15.8 kg). Later versions added prominent finning to aid air cooling. The standard tripod mount with seat for the gunner added another 56 pounds (25.4 kg). Despite the heavy barrel, the closed bolt mechanism would cook off shots if a round was left chambered in a hot barrel. This required that the gun be unloaded immediately after an extended burst of firing. During testing of the gun, it was found to be capable of firing extended bursts of over 1,000 rounds before the barrel overheated and bullets began to tumble out of control; upon stopping, the red-hot barrel cooked off four or five additional shots before cooling down.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: The gun was originally chambered in 6mm Lee Navy and later, after the adoption of the Krag–Jørgensen rifle, in .30-40 Krag, 7×57mm Mauser caliber (the same cartridge used in the Spanish Model 1893 Mauser), and .30-06 Springfield in 1914. The 1914 version also included a lower tripod for firing prone; this is likely what led to the gun's nickname of "potato digger", as the operating lever would dig into the ground if it were fired from too low a position.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: The M1895 was made for export as well; the Russians ordered several thousand M1895 machine guns in 1914 in 7.62×54mmR caliber for use in World War I. In .303 British caliber, the M1895/14 saw service in England and France. The M1895 was also sold in 7×57mm Mauser caliber for use by various countries in South America.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: The Colt's unusual method of operation had both advantages and disadvantages compared to competing machine gun designs of the day. The lever-operated repeating action gave the weapon a relatively low rate of fire (less than 400 rounds a minute). However, the low rate of fire combined with a heavy barrel also allowed the gun to be air-cooled, resulting in a simpler, lighter, and more portable machine gun compared to water-cooled designs. Though combat reports of action stoppages were not uncommon, most of these could be overcome by manually cycling the action. As gunners gained experience with operating an air-cooled machine gun, it became apparent that avoiding long continuous periods of fire materially added to the weapon's reliability and barrel life.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: The M1895 was the first machine gun adopted by the United States military, and it saw service with the Army (who never formally adopted it), and the US Navy/US Marines, and was adapted to use in many roles. It was mounted on tripods, horse-drawn carriages, boats, aircraft, and even armored cars. The US Navy was the first to begin testing, as early as 1893, with a version chambered in the Navy's 6mm cartridge.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: In 6mm Lee Navy caliber, the M1895 saw service with the United States Marines during the Spanish–American War, including the 1898 invasion of Guantanamo Bay, where a Marine battalion deployed four Colt guns (two of them borrowed from the USS "Texas"'s armory). The M1895 proved to be a significant advance in firepower for the Marines, who employed them in the first known use of machine guns by the American military to provide tactical support of infantry forces during an assault. In contrast, Army regular forces in the campaign were still burdened with heavy, manually operated Gatling guns that required heavy artillery carriages pulled by mule transport. Lt. Colonel Roosevelt's Rough Riders, a dismounted volunteer cavalry regiment that fought in Cuba, also deployed two M1895 Colt machine guns in 7×57mm Mauser caliber (built for export, both guns were privately purchased for the Rough Riders by family members of the troops), but although they did cause some Spanish casualties were reportedly somewhat unreliable. As Lt. Col. Roosevelt noted, "These Colt automatic guns were not, on the whole, very successful...they proved more delicate than the Gatlings, and very readily got out of order." The two M1895 guns were transferred to Lt. John Parker's Gatling Gun Detachment, who used them in the siege of Santiago.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: The M1895 in 6mm Lee was also utilized by American Naval and Marine forces during the Philippine–American War, and the Boxer Rebellion, where it proved to be accurate and reliable. Around 1904 the Mexican government purchased 150 of these guns in 7mm Mauser caliber, and these guns were employed throughout the protracted Mexican Revolution. Use of the 7mm M1895 in the Mexican Revolution has been photographically documented, including the use of the gun by what appears to be a Villista. The US Navy also deployed some 6mm Lee M1895 guns from ship armories during the 1914 Vera Cruz fighting and occupation.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: The US Army, while never formally adopting the M1895, purchased two guns in 1902, followed by an additional purchase of 140 guns in 1904. These guns, along with small quantities of Maxim and Vickers guns, were issued to various units for evaluation purposes. These saw intermittent use by Army and National Guard Units at least until 1921. The first formally adopted machine gun by the US Army was the M1909 Benét–Mercié (Hotchkiss) machine-rifle, a bipod-mounted, strip-feed machine gun.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: Further south, the M1895 was also used by the Uruguayan Army against rebels during a late flare-up of the Uruguayan Civil War in 1904.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: Canadian mounted troops successfully used .303 M1895 guns in the Second Boer War (1899–1902). In one spectacular rear guard action at the Battle of Leliefontein on 7 November 1900, Sergeant Edward James Gibson Holland of The Royal Canadian Dragoons used a Colt gun mounted on a Dundonald galloping carriage to stop a rare mounted Boer charge, resulting in his being awarded the Victoria Cross, one of three awarded to Canadians in that action. Winston Churchill, then a young Lieutenant in the South African Light Horse and a war correspondent, was impressed by the effect of the fire of a whole battery of these guns. The Canadian success with the M1895 led to the further use of the gun by the Canadian Army in World War I.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: The M1895 was also used by various U.S. state militia and guard units, including the Colorado National Guard. A few of these guns fell into the hands of private militias staffed by mine company guards after the state discontinued funding of most of the guard units assigned to maintain order during the prolonged miners' strike that became the Colorado Coalfield War. In 1914, an emplaced "digger" of one of these private militias fired extensively into a miner camp in Ludlow, Colorado, an event later termed the Ludlow Massacre. A privately purchased M1895 also provided the main armament of an armored car of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency used to terrorize miners' camps during the strike, which the miners called the "Death Special".


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: The M1895/14 Colt–Browning saw use in France by some Canadian infantry formations. The First Newfoundland Regiment purchased a Colt-Browning for training purposes in 1914. Deploying to France in 1915, the 21st Canadian Light Infantry Battalion used .303-caliber M1895/14 machine guns in combat. These guns saw significant combat but were soon replaced by Vickers machine guns. They were not taken out of combat however, but were instead given to equip formations of the Belgian Exile Army. The French also tested the Colt and some were used in early aircraft for testing. Additional Colt guns were sent to the Russians, who used them extensively.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: While the United States used the M1895 for training, it was considered obsolete by the time the United States entered the war, and saw no service. Colt ceased production of the M1895 and variants in 1916, selling the machinery and rights to manufacture to Marlin Rockwell, who took over the still active Russian military and Italian Navy contracts, in order to concentrate on increased Vickers production.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: After Marlin started making the Colt 1914s, it developed an improved version of the M1895. In 1917 this was adopted by the US Army as a training weapon and approximately 2,500 were purchased. Besides its designation of Colt–Browning M1895/14, it was also called the "Marlin Gun" and "Model 1917". The primary improvement was the use of a detachable barrel, a more generous side plate cut-out and a sliding door on the right side plate opening (also made larger) for easier access. Despite these improvements, the Marlin was limited to 500 rounds of continuous fire due to a tendency to overheat. The Navy also purchased a version of the Marlin gun with a gas piston in lieu of the lever mechanism, although very few if any guns saw service aboard ship.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: A second, much more radical version of the M1895 was introduced in 1917 for tank and aircraft use, later designated the Marlin M1917 and M1918, with a Swedish armaments designer named Carl Gustave Swebilius responsible for the improvements. Like the Navy Marlins, these variants used a linear gas piston in place of the 'potato digger' arm and bore little outward physical resemblance to the basic "digger" design. The new reciprocating piston was located parallel to the barrel and below it, allowing the gun to be mounted lower to the ground. Another improvement was the addition of a breech-to-muzzle aluminum heat sink, with lengthwise fins and covering some 270° of the gun barrel's outer circumference's upper areas, to dissipate heat. Most Marlin M1917 and M1918 guns saw use in aircraft as defensive armament—however, as they retained the original M1895 "potato digger" ordnance's closed bolt firing cycle, these Marlin guns, weighing only some 25 pounds (11.34 kg) apiece, versus the standard Vickers gun's 33 pound (15 kg) figure for aviation use, could readily be used for forward-firing offensive armament with fighter aircraft, when used with synchronization gear for safely firing forward through a spinning propeller—the non-synchronizable, open bolt-firing cycle Lewis gun was still slightly heavier than the Marlin, at about 28 pounds (12.7 kg). By the last months of World War I, almost 50% of the SPAD XIII fighter aircraft used by the United States Army Air Service in France had their Vickers guns replaced with Marlins. Had the war lasted into 1919, the Marlin would have been the primary U.S. tank and aircraft gun. The M1917/1918 also equipped Thomas Morse Scout aircraft used for advanced training at stateside bases.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: A number of Colt and Marlin-made machine guns was also provided to Italian forces during World War I to replace similar weapons lost in the retreat that followed the massive Austrian-German breakthrough at the Battle of Caporetto. Besides being chambered for the standard 6.5×52mm Mannlicher–Carcano Italian rifle cartridge, they were converted to liquid cooling with the installation of a narrow brass sleeve around the barrel; M1895/14 machine guns receiving this modification were designated "6.5/80" and employed by the Regia Marina (Royal Italian Navy) as a field weapon for Marine infantrymen defending the mouth of the Piave river. They also appeared on Navy vessels, with as many as four equipping each Italian MAS (torpedo boat), on "Class F" submarines and on some destroyers. The MAS used by Gabriele D'Annunzio in the famous "Beffa di Buccari" and displayed at his former residence ("Vittoriale degli italiani") still mounts a Colt M1895.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: The Marlin gun saw postwar use on the machine gun version of US Army's M1917 Tank, an American version of the French Renault FT. However, the Marlin guns quickly disappeared from U.S. military service after the great success of the .30 Browning machine guns and variants subsequently adopted for air, ground, and shipboard use, with the debut of the M1919 Browning machine gun air-cooled ordnance.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: After World War I, some Colt–Browning guns (possibly including the M1917/18 Marlin variants) saw use in the Russian Civil war. Its most spectacular use came during the Czech Legion's exodus from Russia, where the guns (either Colt–Browning M1914 or Marlin M1917 models) were photographed in sandbagged stations on the top of trains being used to transport the Legion as it withdrew from Soviet Russia. Many of these guns were also used in the Polish–Soviet War of 1920. At the outset of World War II, M1917 and M1918 Marlins were also sent to Britain for use by the Home Guard, but were never used in combat.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: The last documented use of the type was by the US National Guard against striking miners in the Battle of Blair Mountain, West Virginia, U.S., in 1921. A contemporary photo illustrates a Colt–Browning gun with one of the aforementioned finned aluminum heat-sink outfitted barrel from the Marlin-Rockwell firm, in the hands of a guardsman supporting sheriff's deputies. The presence of the breech-to-muzzle finned aluminum heat sink indicates the gun was most likely a Marlin-Rockwell M1917/18 machine gun purchased by the Army in 1917–18 for training and familiarization purposes, as the U.S. military never purchased the Colt M1895/1914 variant.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: Due to their previous use in the Spanish Army the machine gun was used extensively on both sides of the Spanish Civil War. It was notably used to great effect at the battle of Jarama by the British battalion however it often jammed and so was ill thought of by the troops.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: The Belgian army acquired a large number of 7mm Mauser M1895/14 versions towards the end of World War I, which were kept in storage after the conflict and allocated to certain reserve infantry regiments before the outbreak of World War II. The guns were widely used in action during the German invasion of Belgium between 10 May and 28 May 1940.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: Colt–Browning guns placed in storage by the US military after the First World War were purchased for the British Home Guard in the summer of 1940. There were mostly later "Marlin" variants, and few appear to have reached troops.


title: M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun

text: Italy also kept M1895s in its inventory for a very long time. Well into the Second World War they were still being issued to second-line units, namely to MVSN branches such as DICAT (in charge of Flak guns) and MILMART (coastal artillery) for the antiaircraft defense of Italy proper as late as 1943.


title: Nissan Cube

text: The Nissan Cube is a mini MPV produced by carmaker Nissan between 1998 to 2019. Initially sold only in Japan, the Cube was sold in North American markets from 2009 to 2014, and in European markets from 2009 to 2011. In Japan, it was exclusive to "Nissan Red Stage" dealerships. It is a slightly larger load-carrying alternative to the Nissan Micra hatchback. While production for the North American market ended in 2014, the Japanese-market Cube lasted until December 2019.


title: Nissan Cube

text: The first-generation Cube was introduced in 1998. It shared the same platform as the Nissan Micra (known as the March in Japan and Southeast Asia), as well as the same 1.3 L inline-four engine. A continuously variable transmission and four-wheel drive were optional. The Cube covered the gap in the Nissan lineup between the March and the Sunny.


title: Nissan Cube

text: The second-generation Cube was released in 2002 with a larger interior than the previous model. The combination of angled and curved surfaces was based on the third-generation Micra/March, powered by a 1.4 L I4 engine. The model included the "e4WD" system as an option, which transfers power to the rear wheels when the front wheels spin via a small electric motor on the rear underside of the floor. The electrically powered system allows for reduced drivetrain drag in FWD mode. A slightly longer three row model, the Cube Cubic (stylized as Cube³) went on sale in September 2003.


title: Nissan Cube

text: When equipped with a CVT, the steering wheel button controls and the sport wheel button on the dash panel are located next to the hazard flasher switch. In mid-2005, the cube had an optional upgrade with the new HR-series 1.5 L engine from the Nissan Tiida.


title: Nissan Cube

text: All Cube models have optional extras including an Ion filter (Air Ioniser) for cleaning the air and Nissan's 'smart key' which allows the driver to enter the car without having to use a key. Other options include a sunroof, 12 different styles of front grille and satellite navigation. Other specific models also have different styles of bodykits and fender flares. They come with optional 14 or 15 inch wheels and the Autech versions (Rider, Cube3 and GT models) with chrome styling and special seat covering.


title: Nissan Cube

text: The second-generation Cube was imported and sold in Malaysia by Mitsuoka as the M-Box and later the MPV. This model was different from other Mitsuoka models in that it had no major differences to the original car, and simply had a different grille and a couple of other exterior parts. The M-Box and MPV were exclusive to Malaysia.


title: Nissan Cube

text: The third-generation Cube was revealed for the first time at the Los Angeles Auto Show, on November 19, 2008. It was the first generation of the Cube to be officially exported beyond Japan, including to the European and North American markets. The Cube went on sale in Japan on November 19, 2008 and the U.S. on May 5, 2009.


title: Nissan Cube

text: The updated model has more rounded and curved styling in the rear bumper area, in the asymmetrical rear window which wraps around to the passenger side, and in the driver and front-passenger windows. The tailgate is side-hinged to swing open like a door, rather than upward like a hatch. The hatch hinge is on the right side for countries with left-hand traffic such as Japan and the UK; on the left side for right-hand traffic markets such as North America.


title: Nissan Cube

text: Seating capacity remains at five. According to Nissan designers, the interior is inspired by the 'enveloping curves of a jacuzzi to promote a comfortable and social atmosphere.' Design cues include a water-ripple motif that appears in the headliner and is repeated in details like the speaker covers and cup holders. Nissan has developed an extended line of accessories for Cube to encourage personalization. These include multicolor appliqués that can be placed around air vents and window switches, utility hooks and elastic bands in different colors, variable color LED accent lighting for the footwell and cup holders, and a sculptured piece of color-coordinated shag carpet that sits in a shallow well on the top of the dash.


title: Nissan Cube

text: The third-generation Cube is built on the Renault-Nissan Alliance's front-wheel-drive B platform and powered by a 1.5 L HR engine, 16-valve engine with . For North America, it uses the 1.8 L four-cylinder engine of the MR family, it produces and of torque. Europe uses the


title: Nissan Cube

text: HR 1.6 petrol and 1.5 dCi Diesel. All are also used for the Nissan Note and Tiida/Versa. Depending on the engine, it is available with a 5- or 6-speed manual transmission or Nissan's automatic Continuously Variable Transmission. The Cube is capable of averaging in Japan and doing city, and highway with its Xtronic CVT transmission. The e-4WD trim contains an electric rear wheel drive motor to assist the gasoline engine powered front wheels.


title: Nissan Cube

text: As a result of power shortages in Japan caused by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, the 2012 Cube made a delayed appearance in the United States in January 2012. The 2012 model had no mechanical or styling changes, but Nissan did introduce a special-edition version, the S Indigo with a navigation system, rear-view monitor, upgraded audio system, intelligent key and upgraded wheels. New paint colors were available: Pearl White, Brilliant Silver, Gun Metallic, Cayenne Red, and Bali Blue. New equipment features were added to certain trim levels. Pricing of the base model went up $240.


title: Nissan Cube

text: In early 2011, Nissan announced the Z12 Cube was to be withdrawn from sale in the UK and the rest of Europe, following its disappointing sales performance. Nissan cited a poor exchange rate as one of the reasons why the model failed to be competitive.


title: Nissan Cube

text: The Cube was discontinued in the North American market at the end of the 2014 model year, due to poor sales. Production for the Japanese market continued until at least December 2019.


title: Nissan Cube

text: Nissan claimed the production version would be introduced in 2010 would have a unique bodystyle and is not based on any existing Nissan model, which became the Nissan Leaf.


title: Nissan Cube

text: Nissan provided visitors at the 2008 LA Auto Show with a brochure featuring the car using augmented reality technology by Total Immersion. The brochure is held up to a webcam of which various 3D models of the vehicle will pop out offering views of the car's exterior and interior in real-time interaction with the brochure.


title: Nissan Cube

text: To promote the first Cube model to arrive in Canada, Nissan Canada ran a contest in early and mid-2009 to give away 50 Nissan Cubes to "creative Canadians". The marketing campaign, called 'hypercube', picked 500 Canadians to compete for 50 Cubes by showing their creative talents. The winners received their Cubes at events held in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal.


title: Nissan Cube

text: A recall was announced in the United States by Nissan on July 21, 2010, that affected 46,000 MY 2009 and 2010 Cube vehicles for failing to comply with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) 301, "Fuel System Integrity", due to excessive fuel leakage after a rear-end collision.


title: Take This Waltz (film)

text: Take This Waltz is a 2011 romantic comedy-drama film written, produced, and directed by Sarah Polley. The film centres on Margot, a 28-year-old freelance writer who lives in a charming house on a leafy street in Toronto's Little Portugal neighbourhood, as she struggles with and examines her feelings for Lou, her husband of five years, while exploring a new relationship with Daniel, an artist and rickshaw driver who lives across the street.


title: Take This Waltz (film)

text: While touring the historic town of Louisburg in Nova Scotia, Canada on an assignment, freelance writer Margot has a couple of chance encounters with Daniel, an artist and rickshaw operator. They run into each other again on the airplane from Halifax to Montreal, and then to Toronto. When the pair return home, they agree to split a cab, and an attraction between the two becomes obvious. Margot learns that Daniel actually lives across the street from her. Before she departs the cab, she tells him, “I’m married."


title: Take This Waltz (film)

text: Margot has been married to Lou for almost five years. The couple has settled into a comfortable but unexciting routine, though their love for each other seems genuine. Lou is intensely focused on his efforts to write a cookbook. The couple is also extremely close with Lou's family, with Margot's best friend being Lou's sister Geraldine, a recovering alcoholic.


title: Take This Waltz (film)

text: Meanwhile, Margot and Daniel continue spending time with each other, with Margot confiding to Daniel about her fears and her writing. At one point when the pair are out day drinking, Margot jokes to Daniel that she will kiss him in 30 years in the year 2040 at the Louisburg lighthouse, because after 35 years of faithful marriage, she will have earned a kiss from him. Daniel is regretful that Margot is married, but does not get physically intimate with her.


title: Take This Waltz (film)

text: On the night of Margot and Lou’s anniversary, Daniel offers to take the couple to their anniversary date at a movie theater on his rickshaw. Though Margot declines, Lou—unaware of the relationship between his wife and Daniel—happily accepts, and the couple is taken to their destination by Daniel. Margot and Daniel grow increasingly closer, sharing a wordless moment in a swimming pool and eventually spending an entire day together on a romantic picnic and at one of Margot’s favorite places, an amusement park ride. At the end of the night, Margot enters Daniel's house and sits on his bed, but she breaks down crying over the possibility of hurting Lou and leaves before anything physical happens.


title: Take This Waltz (film)

text: Lou invites Daniel to a party at his place to celebrate Geraldine’s sobriety. Daniel declines at first but relents after Lou’s insistence. When Daniel sees Margot and Lou dancing together, he becomes despondent and saunters off. When Margot confronts him, Daniel expresses his frustration with Margot’s mixed signals and says he doesn’t want to be the third person in a love triangle. Realizing that his continued relationship with Margot will only lead to unhappiness, he suddenly moves out of his house, leaving behind a Louisburg postcard for Margot that references their inside joke about meeting in the year 2040. That night, Margot dreams of sharing a passionate kiss with Daniel. When she wakes up, she tells Lou that she wants a divorce.


title: Take This Waltz (film)

text: Margot then finds Daniel and the two embrace and consummate their feelings. Lou, for his part, has managed to publish his cookbook. Margot gets a call informing her Geraldine has relapsed and gone missing, and that her daughter is asking for Margot. Margot returns to Lou’s home to comfort Geraldine's daughter. When a drunken Geraldine returns and sees Margot, she angrily admonishes her. Geraldine admits that she has a problem, but what Margot did is comparatively worse because she betrayed everybody for illusory happiness. After Geraldine surrenders to the police for driving under the influence, Lou and Margot share one last bittersweet conversation before she leaves.


title: Take This Waltz (film)

text: After some time passes, Daniel and Margot have now settled into their own routine that is somewhat similar to the one she had with Lou. Though Daniel still seems to love Margot, the passion they shared earlier appears to have dissipated. The film ends with Margot on the ride at the amusement park alone.


title: Take This Waltz (film)

text: Pre-production, filming and post-production took place from 2010 to 2011 at locations in and around Toronto, Ontario, including Pinewood Toronto Studios, Pearson International Airport, the Royal Cinema and in Louisbourg, Nova Scotia.


title: Take This Waltz (film)

text: A communal shower scene featuring actresses Michelle Williams, Jennifer Podemski and Sarah Silverman gained press attention, as it was Silverman's first time appearing fully nude on screen. During press interviews, Silverman stated that she was comfortable performing in the scene, because it was a non-sexual portrayal of a common, everyday occurrence of women being nude together.


title: Take This Waltz (film)

text: "Take This Waltz" had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2011. The film then played at the 31st annual Atlantic Film Festival and the 59th annual San Sebastián International Film Festival. At the end of September, "Take This Waltz" was shown at the 25th Edmonton International Film Festival and the Vancouver International Film Festivals. The film closed the Calgary International Film Festival and the Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival. In April 2012, "Take This Waltz" was shown at the Tribeca Film Festival. A month later it played at the Seattle International Film Festival.


title: Take This Waltz (film)

text: On October 17, 2011, it was announced that Magnolia Pictures had acquired the US rights to "Take This Waltz". They released the film through their Ultra VOD program on May 25, 2012, before releasing it to theatres on June 29, 2012. The film also opened to Canadian theatres on June 29. "Take This Waltz" was released on June 14, 2012, in Australia. In the United Kingdom, it was released by StudioCanal on August 17, 2012.


title: Take This Waltz (film)

text: "Take This Waltz" earned $203,127 upon its opening weekend in Canada. The film opened to 27 theatres and landed at number one in the box office top five. In the US, "Take This Waltz" earned $137,019 during its opening weekend across 30 theatres. The film has grossed $1,239,692 in the US.


title: Take This Waltz (film)

text: The film has received generally positive reviews from critics. Film review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes classified the film as "fresh" with a 79% approval rating among 141 critics, with a rating average of 7 out of 10. Metacritic, which assigns a score of 1–100 to individual film reviews, gave "Take This Waltz" an average rating of 68 based on 34 reviews. Joshua Rothkopf from "Time Out New York" chose "Take This Waltz" as one of the publication's "Top Ten Tribeca Film Festival 2012 picks". Rothkopf stated Polley's "equally ambitious latest marks [her] as a serious explorer of broken relationships. Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen (more exposed than he's ever allowed himself to be) are married Torontonians who have settled into a too-comfortable domesticity. The simmering friction, caused in part by charming neighbour Luke Kirby, takes the film in surprising directions." Stephen Holden of "The New York Times" commented "The temptations and perils of 'the grass is always greener' syndrome aren't as gripping a subject as Alzheimer's, the topic of Ms. Polley's first film, "Away From Her", but the movie radiates a melancholy glow."


title: Take This Waltz (film)

text: Stella Papamichael, writing for "Digital Spy", gave the film three out of five stars. She praised Polley's approach to the film calling it "different, fresh and exciting", but not as "well-balanced" as "Away From Her". Papamichael added "Margot is an emotionally gritty role for Williams and she plays it brilliantly close to the edge, but she can seem at odds with a scenario that has more in common with a Mills & Boon fantasy than the real world." "The Guardian's" John Patterson proclaimed ""Take This Waltz's" practical wisdom about entropy in relationships and sense of resigned acceptance are leavened by an uncharacteristically active and talkative – and often very witty – performance from Williams." Justin Chang from "Variety" said, "Given how quickly movie characters tend to fall into bed with one another, it's especially rewarding to see writer-director Sarah Polley wring maximum tension, humor and emotional complexity from a young wife's crisis of conscience in "Take This Waltz". Despite a few tonal and structural missteps, this intelligent, perceptive drama proves as intimately and gratifyingly femme-focused as Polley's 2006 debut, "Away From Her"." Chang believed the film was "flat-out sexy enough" to appeal to audiences of either gender and praised Williams and Rogen's performances.


title: Take This Waltz (film)

text: CBC News' film reviewer, Eli Glasner, gave "Take This Waltz" three out of five stars and stated, "Although the film loses its footing near the end, adventurous movie fans should enjoy taking Polley's passion project for a spin." "The Daily Telegraph's" Robbie Collin commented "Polley's ideas and images are never subtle (see: pulsating fairground sequences, a wheeling time-lapse shot backed by the titular Leonard Cohen dirge), but that's part of the charm. Her film is flush with beauty and truth, and is unerringly, unnervingly accurate on love, desire and friendship." "Empire's" David Hughes awarded the film four out of five stars and said "Sarah Polley's second film is a masterfully painted portrait of an ordinary marriage under threat, dominated by a central performance of exquisite subtlety and observation." In December 2012, Andrew O'Hehir from "Salon" revealed that Williams was his first choice for Best Actress at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: The British motoring-themed television programme "Top Gear" was often the focus of criticism. The criticism has ranged from minor viewer complaints to serious complaints where broadcasting watchdogs such as Ofcom have been involved.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: The show is frequently criticised for showing disdain to the environment and for promoting dangerous driving to the public.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: One of the programme's presenters, Jeremy Clarkson, has been critical of the BBC regarding the handling of the programme. In the February 2006 issue of "Top Gear Magazine", Clarkson revealed that he thought that the BBC did not take "Top Gear" seriously, making the length of the series far too long, and often replacing the show with live snooker coverage, despite "Top Gear" having considerably higher viewing figures.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: In July 2006, the BBC rejected a variety of complaints regarding the criticism, claiming the producers and presenters choose the way they are covered, and that the BBC do not have any control over it. They argued that the presenters' provocative comments are "an integral part of the programme and are not intended to be taken seriously." Regarding offensive remarks traded between presenters and members of the audience, the BBC said "this is part of the appeal of the show, and we trust most viewers are familiar enough with the style and tone of the show not to take offence." The BBC pointed out that they would act if such statements and actions were carried out with any degree of seriousness or if the programme breached legal and safety requirements.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: "Top Gear" was in negotiations with the BBC to move to Enstone in north Oxfordshire which was closer to Clarkson's home in Chipping Norton. However, the producers were unable to negotiate a deal, after their initial application was blocked due to opposition by local residents, who feared that "Top Gear" would create pollution and noise issues.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: In December 2006, the BBC upheld complaints from four viewers after comments made by Jeremy Clarkson were considered to be homophobic references, had the potential to offend and should not have been broadcast. The complaints regarded comments made by Clarkson in the sixth episode of series eight, in which Clarkson agreed with an audience member who described the Daihatsu Copen as "a bit gay". He later described the vehicle as "ginger beer", taken to be rhyming slang for the term "queer". The BBC said there was "no editorial purpose" for the remarks and the ""Top Gear" team had been reminded of the importance of avoiding such comments about sexual orientation."


title: Top Gear controversies

text: In December 2009, it was reported that a gay couple had been allegedly denied tickets to see the show being filmed. The context of the situation is unclear. A BBC spokesperson said, "We do not – absolutely do not – discriminate against same sex couples... the whole implication that "Top Gear" is in any way homophobic is completely wrong."


title: Top Gear controversies

text: The singer George Michael branded Clarkson "pig-ugly" and "homophobic" after in a review of the Jaguar XKR-S he said it "will get its tail out more readily than George Michael".


title: Top Gear controversies

text: During the show's India special, there were multiple gags such as building a toilet in the back of a Jaguar as every visiting tourist gets diarrhoea. This led to a complaint by the Indian High Commission which criticised the show's "toilet humour".


title: Top Gear controversies

text: The show received backlash when Clarkson suggested that everybody should test drive their cars in Wales because "no-one wants to live there" in the second episode of season one.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: The show frequently mocks American culture, cars and people on the show. During the as part of a challenge they painted slogans on their cars such as "NASCAR sucks", "Hilary for president" and "Man love rules OK" while driving through Alabama. During a fuel stop they were confronted by "rednecks", who were offended by the slogans causing the crew and presenters to flee, concerned for their safety.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: During the first episode of series seven, a news segment featuring BMW's Mini concept from the Tokyo Motor Show showcased a car that Hammond quoted as supposedly being "quintessentially British", the only added feature being an integrated tea set. Clarkson responded by mocking the car and saying that they should retaliate by building a car that was "quintessentially German". He suggested adding trafficators that displayed Hitler salutes, "a sat-nav that only goes to Poland", and "ein fanbelt that will last a thousand years", a reference to Adolf Hitler's propaganda slogan of "the thousand-year Reich". These statements gained negative attention from the German government, and led to viewers' complaints reaching the BBC Board of Governors.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: In July 2006, the BBC Governors’ Programme Complaints Committee rejected the protests: "the Committee did not believe that, when looking at the audience as a whole, they would have felt that the comments were anything more than Jeremy Clarkson using outrageous behaviour to amuse his audience, and that the remarks would not have led to anyone entertaining new or different feelings or concerns about Germans or Germany".


title: Top Gear controversies

text: During the opening episode of series 14, the presenters were seen taking the Aston Martin DBS Volante, Ferrari California and Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4 Spyder on a road trip to Romania. While driving through the Romanian countryside, Clarkson commented on Romania as being ""Borat" country, with gypsies and Russian playboys", referring to the 2006 mockumentary starring Sacha Baron Cohen about the fictional journalist from Kazakhstan, which had filmed a few scenes in Romania. The film had already stirred controversy in the country, with a number of local Roma who were involved in the film attempting to sue 20th Century Fox and Cohen. Romanian newspapers claimed that the comments were "offensive" and "bad publicity for their country".


title: Top Gear controversies

text: The "Romanian Times" also reported that Clarkson called Romania a "gypsy land". Complaints were also rife regarding Clarkson's actions to don a pork pie hat which he called a "gypsy" hat, while commenting: "I'm wearing this hat so the gypsies think I am [another gypsy]." The Romanian ambassador later sent a letter to the producers of "Top Gear", in which he showed his appreciation for the show, highlighted the press's freedom of expression, the non-discriminatory spirit, and the fact that 89.5% of the country's population is Romanian, 6.5% is ethnic Hungarians, 2.5% are ethnic Roma and 1.5% are other ethnic groups. He also asked for the show to be re-edited for future showings to exclude the offensive material.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: The "Daily Telegraph" was hacked by a group of Romanians, who stated, "We are sick of being mis-represented as Gypsies, and thanks to "Top Gear", have been publicly insulted". The group took over two pages of the website, covering them in Romanian flags and playing "Lonely Shepherd" by Gheorghe Zamfir (featured on the soundtrack from the film "Kill Bill").


title: Top Gear controversies

text: During the second episode of series 16, the presenters mocked the Mexican Mastretta MXT sports car on account of it being designed in Mexico. James May introduced the car as "The Tortilla", then remarked that he did not remember what it was called. Hammond then stated: "Cars reflect national characteristics [...] a Mexican car's just going to be a lazy, feckless, flatulent oaf with a moustache, leaning against a fence asleep, looking at a cactus with a blanket with a hole in the middle on as a coat". This was followed up by James May suggesting that all Mexican food resembles "refried sick" and "sick with cheese on it", Richard Hammond remarking, "I'm sorry, but just imagine waking up and remembering you're Mexican" and Jeremy Clarkson adding, "It'd be brilliant because you could just go straight back to sleep again!" Clarkson ended the segment by suggesting that the Mexican ambassador to Britain would be too lazy to make any kind of complaint. This prompted the Mexican ambassador, Eduardo Medina Mora, to write to the BBC: "The presenters of the program resorted to outrageous, vulgar and inexcusable insults to stir bigoted feelings against the Mexican people, their culture as well as their official representative in the United Kingdom. These offensive, xenophobic and humiliating remarks only serve to reinforce negative stereotypes and perpetuate prejudice against Mexico and its people".


title: Top Gear controversies

text: BBC issued a letter defending the jokes, stating that national stereotyping was a part of British humour, but apologizing to the Mexican ambassador for the remarks made about him personally. The episode had the Mexican comments cut from its broadcast in the United States.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: Comedian Steve Coogan, who has appeared on the show three times, criticised the programme for its pitiful apology, suggesting that the usual defence of "a bit of a laugh", or "harmless fun" was no longer appropriate, that the insults had gone too far, and described the comments as "as funny as a cold sweat followed by shooting pains down the left arm".<ref name="http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-a..."></ref> He also criticised the show for what he described as lazy, adolescent humour and "casual racism" in reference specifically to this episode. Yahoo editor, Richard Evans, described the programme's conduct as another "Sachsgate waiting to happen".


title: Top Gear controversies

text: However, Mastretta appeared to brush off the insults, with general director Carlos Mastretta clarifying that the car was simply used as a pretext for the jokes, and that the controversy has increased interest in the MXT.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: The presenters made repeated reference to the incident in the following episodes of the series: The set of the 41st series of "Have I Got News for You", which depicts various recent news stories, includes a mocked-up image of Clarkson dressed like a Mexican in reference to the controversy. Further reference to the incident was made in the India special, where Hammond "accidentally" painted a Mexican flag on his car after he intended to paint an Indian one. The incident was made reference to yet again in the second episode of series 19, in which the presenters had to race three high-performance cars from Los Angeles to the Mexican border, where the last person to arrive would have to do a review of the MXT in an upcoming episode, which aired as part of the fourth episode of series 19.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: However the UK broadcast regulator Ofcom cleared the programme due to its "comedic intent and the context":


title: Top Gear controversies

text: In this case, Ofcom took into account that "Top Gear" is well known for its irreverent style and sometimes outspoken humour, as well as the regular format of the studio banter between the three presenters. We considered that viewers of "Top Gear" were likely to be aware that the programme frequently uses national stereotypes as a comedic trope and that there were few, if any, nationalities that had not at some point been the subject of the presenters' mockery throughout the history of this long running programme. For example, this same episode featured a competition between the UK’s "Top Gear" presenters and their Australian counterparts, throughout which the Australians were ridiculed for various national traits.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: In this instance, therefore, Ofcom considered that the majority of the audience would be familiar with the presenters' approach to mocking, playground-style humour, and would have considered that applying that approach to national stereotypes was in keeping with the programme’s usual content, and the presenters' typical style. Ofcom was of the view that the majority of the audience would therefore be likely to have understood that the comments were being made for comic effect.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: In September and October 2014, the three presenters and a crew of 29 people were recording the "Patagonia Special" in Argentina, featuring three cars—a Porsche 928 GT, a Lotus Esprit and a Ford Mustang Mach I. They had started in Bariloche on 19 September and travelled southward on the trans-Patagonian Route 40, about . On 2 October they had arrived in Ushuaia, at the southern end of Tierra del Fuego. The plan was to film for three more days, and then to continue in Chile.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: During filming, Twitter comments began to appear alleging the number plate "H982 FKL" on the Porsche was a reference to the 1982 Falklands War. Andy Wilman, executive producer for the show, said on 2 October: ""Top Gear" production purchased three cars for a forthcoming programme; to suggest that this car was either chosen for its number plate, or that an alternative number plate was substituted for the original is completely untrue"; Clarkson tweeted: "For once, we did nothing wrong". "H982 FKL" has been registered to the Porsche since its manufacture in May 1991.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: In the evening, veterans and other Argentinians entered the hotel lobby to confront the team. Clarkson later wrote he "had to hide under a bed for a mob howling for his blood". Local police then told the team they could not and would not give them any assistance, and in the hostile atmosphere the team decided to leave Argentina. Believing that the presenters were the main targets of the controversy, the crew decided to send Clarkson, May, Hammond and the women from the crew to Buenos Aires, while the rest would drive the cars and their equipment to the border into Chile. May later stated that, prior to flying back to Britain, he and the other presenters had assisted in planning possible airlifts if the journey to the border became too dangerous. The main Route 3 by which they had arrived in Rio Grande a day earlier, was closed to them because the ringway was filled with people, with "the mayor in front". They drove to the border at Radman by tertiary roads, about . In Tolhuin, after , the convoy was stopped by an intimidating crowd, who threw eggs, rocks, and sticks. The team decided to abandon the three show cars, and reached the border with Chile later that night. At 2 a.m., they had to find a tractor to ford the camera cars through the river border. Pictures show that the abandoned cars had been attacked and damaged with stones. The Porsche now with the number plate "H1 VAE". However, over the years various humorous number plate changes had been made, for example referring to James May's age. Also alternative number plates with the letters BE11 END for 'Bell End' were reportedly also discovered in the abandoned Porsche by the Argentinian authorities. Additionally the original dealer has stated that the production team were aware of the registration plate history before purchase.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: On 31 October 2014, it was announced that the Argentine ambassador Alicia Castro met BBC Director of Television Danny Cohen to demand a formal apology, but the BBC refused to do so, making it clear that they intended to broadcast the special as a fair representation of the events that occurred. The Christmas Special, split into two parts, aired on 27 and 28 December 2014.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: During episode seven of series 12, Clarkson presented a segment featuring the Tesla Roadster, including a test drive. The segment showed the car's provided batteries running flat after , with Clarkson claiming that the recharge would take 16 hours. Following this, he claimed that the car then broke down. A Tesla Motors spokesperson stated that the cars provided never reached less than 20% charge, none needed to be pushed off the track at any point, the recharge time was 3.5 hours, and the brake failure shown in the segment was actually a blown fuse. The BBC responded to these claims with a statement saying, "The tested Tesla was filmed being pushed into the shed in order to show what would happen if the Roadster had run out of charge. "Top Gear" stands by the findings in this film and is content that it offers a fair representation of the Tesla's performance on the day it was tested", without addressing the other concerns.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: The comments were made following Clarkson showing a limp windmill, and complaining that it would take countless hours to recharge the car, using such a source of electricity. A BBC spokeswoman said several times in an interview that "Top Gear" was "an entertainment programme, and should not be taken seriously." After several weeks, Clarkson wrote a blog for "The Times", acknowledging that "the film we had shot was a bit of a mess", but defending the film's claims. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, wrote in a blog on 13 February 2013 that while delivering the vehicle the Tesla team found on a table a prepared script for the segment, demonstrating this was never a fair test. In March 2011 Tesla Motors filed a suit accusing the BBC of libel.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: In court Tesla Motors lost a major part of its high court libel claim on 19 October 2011. Justice Tugendhat said that no "Top Gear" viewer would have reasonably compared the car's performance on the show's airfield track to its likely performance on a public road. On 28 October 2011 the carmaker looked set to lose the remaining malicious falsehood claim, Justice Tugendhat saying "I shall strike out the claim in this action unless the plea of damage is amended by agreement between the parties, or with the permission of the court." Tesla's court action was dismissed by the Court of Appeal in 2013.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: In March 2015, the BBC announced Jeremy Clarkson had been suspended for allegedly punching a producer over a confrontation regarding cold food and long filming hours, and that the remaining episodes of the series would not be broadcast. In response to this, over 1,000,000 people signed an online petition to try to get the BBC to reinstate Clarkson. Perry McCarthy, a former Stig, criticised the BBC's decision to pull the next episode from the schedule. On 25 March, the BBC announced that they would not renew Clarkson's contract which finished at the end of March 2015. Following the official decision, James May and Richard Hammond presented their resignation to the BBC in solidarity with their partner and in order to pursue further ventures together. This would lead to the formation of The Grand Tour.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: The show received widespread criticism after Jeremy Clarkson's contract was not renewed, addressing the importance of the confrontation but remarking the severity of the decision. Subsequently, after the new Series 23 was released and hosted by Chris Evans, the presenter was widely deemed sub-standard.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: After a segment on the 1953 24 Hours of Le Mans, the programme received criticism for damaging a historic Jaguar C-Type valued at £1 million. "Top Gear" responded that they had permission to "drive the car hard" but Adrian Hamilton, the car's owner, and "Top Gear's" test driver had different ideas on what that meant.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: During the fifth episode of series three, Clarkson crashed a Toyota Hilux into a tree, during a segment in which he attempted to prove the sturdiness and reliability of the truck. The tree belonged to the Churchill Parish in Somerset. The villagers presumed that the damage had been accidental, or that someone had vandalised the tree, until the "Top Gear" episode was broadcast. After the BBC was contacted, the director of "Top Gear" admitted guilt and the broadcaster paid compensation.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: The show was criticised by the Mountaineering Council for Scotland when Clarkson drove a Land Rover Discovery to the summit of Cnoc an Fhreiceadain, damaging the terrain as he did so.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: A segment of the van challenge depicted a producer pretending to be an asylum seeker in the back of a van.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: During the news segment of episode 7, Clarkson states the show received 150 complaints over a caravan being set alight for a publicity stunt.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: The BBC apologised to a number of "Top Gear" viewers following comments made during the first episode of series nine. Clarkson asked Hammond following his 370 km/h (230 mph) crash, "Are you now a mental?", which was followed by James May offering Richard Hammond a tissue "in case he dribbled". The BBC claimed the comments were meant as a joke, but also claimed they saw how the comments could cause offence to mentally disabled and brain-damaged viewers.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: During the show's American Special, the show received 91 complaints regarding a dead cow being tied to the roof of Jeremy Clarkson's Camaro. It was later revealed by the BBC that the cow had died several days previously and Clarkson had caused no harm or injury to it.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: Episode five of series nine was criticised for Jeremy Clarkson's reconstruction of a train crash that occurred in Hibaldstow, North Lincolnshire, near Scunthorpe. The incident was mainly criticised due to its insensitivity regarding the Cumbria train crash that occurred only two days earlier. The reconstruction, which was organised by Network Rail as part of its "Don't Run The Risk" campaign, was criticised by Anthony Smith, chief executive of the rail watchdog Passenger Focus, who said: "We need to raise awareness of the issue, but now is not the right time." It was reported that the item had already been delayed several times, due to an earlier fatal level-crossing crash. The BBC defended their decision to broadcast the episode, claiming that "with only one programme remaining in the series, and the frequency of level-crossing accidents, it may have been considered that there was no "appropriate" time to show the film without it "offending" somebody. A repeat of the episode was due to be aired on 1 March 2007, but due to the earlier complaints, and another death on a level crossing earlier that morning, was replaced with a new edition of "The Best of Top Gear".


title: Top Gear controversies

text: During the show's Polar special at the end of series nine, Jeremy Clarkson was shown drinking gin and tonic while driving through an ice field in the Arctic. Despite the producers' and Clarkson's claims that they were in international waters at the time, the BBC Trust found that the scene could 'glamorise the misuse of alcohol', and that the scene "was not editorially justified in the context of a family show pre-watershed".


title: Top Gear controversies

text: During the show's Botswana special, a spokesperson for the Environmental Investigation Agency criticised the BBC for leaving tracks in Botswana's Makgadikgadi salt pan. The BBC denied that they had gone near any conservation areas, and asserted that they had followed the advice of environmental experts.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: Anti-smoking campaigners criticised the show after Clarkson and May smoked Porsche-branded tobacco pipes inside of the studio.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: Following the first episode of series 12, Jeremy Clarkson was criticised for making a joke regarding lorry drivers killing prostitutes, thought to be alluding to the Ipswich 2006 serial murders, although it is more likely that Clarkson was referring to the Yorkshire Ripper. Ofcom received over 500 complaints, but say that the remark was not in breach of the broadcasting code. Afterwards, Labour MP Chris Mole wrote a "strongly worded" letter to the BBC, saying that Clarkson should be sacked regarding the remarks. In response to the complaints on the show, Clarkson announced he would apologise, but later revealed that he was, in fact, apologising for not posting the lap time of a car that was shown on the previous episode. The incident was referenced when Stephen Fry appeared as the Star in a Reasonably Priced Car in July 2009. Clarkson introduced the interview by stating that Fry had "begun his career with a Lorry (Laurie), so the one thing we can be certain he hasn't done is killed a prostitute".


title: Top Gear controversies

text: During the final episode of series 13, Clarkson and May were assigned to produce a spoof advert for the new Volkswagen Scirocco. However, one of their spoof ads saw crowds of people leaving Warsaw in terror on buses and trains, because of the imminent German invasion of Poland. At the end of the advert, Clarkson announced "Volkswagen Scirocco TDI: Berlin to Warsaw in one tank". The advert was uploaded to YouTube minutes after its broadcast, spurring angry comments from Polish viewers. A spokeswoman for the show said that the BBC had only received a handful of complaints, but complaints submitted to national broadcast watchdog Ofcom were expected to be higher. Complaints were also received for three other incidents in the programme: a remake of a VW advertisement, in which a suicide is shown on-screen; Clarkson mocking people who have autism, and the use of the word "pikey", which Clarkson claims to be someone who sells "pegs and heather" to describe drivers of the Vauxhall VXR8.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: During a warm-up for filming one of the season's episodes, Clarkson reportedly called then Prime Minister Gordon Brown a "silly cunt". He had previously apologised for calling him a "one-eyed Scottish idiot" during a Q&A in 2009, which angered Scottish politicians and disability groups.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: In a conversation about women distracting the presenters while driving, Clarkson said he recently saw a woman wearing a burka who "tripped over the pavement" and revealed a "red g-string and stockings". Hammond said that this "did not happen", but Clarkson maintained that it was true. A Mediawatch spokesperson said Clarkson "should learn to keep quiet". However, one reporter defended Clarkson.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: Clarkson's comment about the Ferrari F430 Speciale being "speciale needs" was ruled offensive by Ofcom.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: Clarkson angered gay rights campaigners after he said off air during a segment that he deserved the right "to not be bummed". It was revealed by guest Alistair Campbell on Twitter.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: The BBC received 600 complaints following the third episode of series 16, in which the presenters 'murdered' a fat Albanian and attempted to find out which of three car boots he would fit into the best. The episode was also criticised for its stereotypical views on Albania, claiming it is a nest for Albanian mafia car thieves.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: In the show's Middle East special, the depiction of a baby Stig as Jesus and the use of niqabs by the trio to disguise themselves were criticised by Catholics and Muslims.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: Ofcom received 19 complaints after the show had the presenters undertake a drive-by shooting on a cardboard cut-out of the Stig during the East Coast Road Trip.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: This episode showed Clarkson and May parking their electric cars in disabled parking spaces. Later the BBC defended its stars, stating that they had permission from the owners to park in the disabled spaces. A later scene showed people pushing the electric Nissan Leaf up a street while Clarkson made jokes about it having run out of charge. Nissan later discovered from onboard data logging that before the "test drive" its charge had been run down to only 40% capacity. Since then "Top Gear" has received criticism from electric car enthusiasts, newspapers, celebrities, and Nissan in response to their view on electric cars.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: Jeremy Clarkson was found to have breached BBC guidelines after comparing a modified Toyota Prius to the Elephant Man.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: In an unaired version of Jeremy Clarkson reviewing the Toyota GT86 and the similar Subaru BRZ, he uses eeny meeny miny moe to pick between the two cars, which has historically included the word "nigger". He mumbles through that part of the rhyme, and the "Daily Mirror" accused him of mumbling "nigger". In the aired version of the review, he says the word 'teacher' instead of the racial epithet.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: After denying the incident, once video evidence surfaced, Clarkson issued the following apology, though maintaining that he did not use the word.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: "Ordinarily I don't respond to newspaper allegations but on this occasion I feel I must make an exception. A couple of years ago I recorded an item for Top Gear in which I quote the rhyme "eeny, meeny, miny, moe". Of course, I was well aware that in the best-known version of this rhyme there is a racist expression that I was extremely keen to avoid. The full rushes show that I did three takes. In two, I mumbled where the offensive word would normally occur and in the third I replaced it altogether with the word teacher. Now when I viewed this footage several weeks later I realised that in one of the mumbled versions if you listen very carefully with the sound turned right up it did appear that I'd actually used the word I was trying to obscure. I was mortified by this, horrified. It is a word I loathe and I did everything in my power to make sure that that version did not appear in the programme that was transmitted."


title: Top Gear controversies

text: "I have here the note that was sent at the time to the production office and it says: "I didn't use the N-word here but I've just listened through my headphones and it sounds like I did. Is there another take that we could use?"


title: Top Gear controversies

text: "Please be assured I did everything in my power to not use that word, as I'm sitting here begging your forgiveness for the fact my efforts obviously weren't quite good enough, thank you."


title: Top Gear controversies

text: Though this incident happened before the 'slope' comment in the Burma special, it did not surface until afterwards and the combined complaints caused many public figures to call for Clarkson to be fired and ultimately resulted in a 'final warning' from the BBC regarding racist remarks.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: The show was criticised by Māori peoples for the filming of a car driving on Ninety Mile Beach, which although it is a public road is considered sacred by Māori tribes.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: The show was investigated by Ofcom after the words "Pikey Peak" was depicted on a placard on the show.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: The "Top Gear" presenters go across Burma and Thailand in lorries with the goal of building a bridge over the river Kwai. After building a bridge over the Kok River, Clarkson is quoted as saying "That is a proud moment, but there's a slope on it." as a native crosses the bridge, 'slope' being a pejorative for Asians.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: When we used the word slope in the recent Top Gear Burma Special it was a light-hearted word play joke referencing both the build quality of the bridge and the local Asian man who was crossing it. We were not aware at the time, and it has subsequently been brought to our attention, that the word slope is considered by some to be offensive and although it might not be widely recognised in the UK, we appreciate that it can be considered offensive to some here and overseas, for example in Australia and the USA. If we had known that at the time we would not have broadcast the word in this context and regret any offence caused.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: The show was criticised for staging a crash with two Peugeots near to where a woman died in a head-on collision in 2010, who was also driving a Peugeot.


title: Top Gear controversies

text: During the first series after Clarkson, May and Hammond's departure, the BBC came under criticism for filming Ken Block speeding and performing doughnuts near the London Cenotaph but defended the decision to film there by saying "The filming took place a respectful distance away from the Cenotaph and it was all agreed with Westminster council in advance."


title: Kro (character)

text: Kro (sometimes referred to as the Warlord Kro) is a fictional supervillain appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics.


title: Kro (character)

text: In the Marvel Universe, Kro is a military leader and sometimes acts as the leader of the Deviant race, an evolutionary offshoot of the human race created by the Celestials. He is one of the first Earth Deviants created. Besides being a shapeshifter, he is immortal. He hides this from his fellow Deviants by pretending to be a long line of fathers/sons. Also hidden from the Deviants is his long-standing (100,000 years) on-off relationship with Thena, leader of the Eternals and mother of their twin children, Donald & Deborah Ritter. This relationship unravels during the course of the story.


title: Kro (character)

text: In the past, Kro has disguised himself as the Devil in order to try to influence or frighten humans. His control over his own molecules renders him immune to the genetic manipulations of Ghaur.


title: Kro (character)

text: In the advent of the Heroic age, Kro attacked New York, trying to incite fear in the human population of the incoming Celestial judgement. He battled the Eternals and agreed a truce with his old lover Thena, showing themselves to the modern world. He tried to reconcile with Thena, bringing her to the City of Toads of Lemuria. She was treated as royalty, but she became horrified with many of the Deviants practices, like the purge of the very monstrous deviants, and the Gladiator's fights to the death. She took the Deviant gladiators Ramsak and Karkas, and fled Lemuria, leaving Kro angry. He battled the Asgardian God Thor, when he went to the Deviant city under New York, to rescue some of the Eternals. Kro was left behind by Brother Tode, who escaped in a flying pod. Kro also took part in the ill-advised assault in Olympia. The Deviant's aristocracy, led by Brother Tode, kidnapped the Eternals and intended to disintegrate them. Kro tried to save Thena, but she rejected him again. The hero Iron Man (James Rhodes) rescued the Eternals and helped them defeat the deviant invasion. Then the Eternals transformed the deviant's aristocracy into a synthetic cube, killing them. Thena saved Kro, and he was the only survivor of the failed attack.


title: Kro (character)

text: After the death of Brother Tode, Kro returned to Lemuria and became a figurehead monarch for the Deviants. He had a power struggle with Priestlord Ghaur, who now decided to take the power "de facto". Kro attacked the Eternals once more with his giant armada. However, Ikaris and Makkari defeated the Deviants. Kro was betrayed by some agents of Ghaur and escaped. He joined Thena and both were running away from the Deviants and the Eternals. Finally, Ikaris found them and replaced Thena as Prime Eternal after a ceremony. Ghaur tried to take the power of the Dreaming Celestial, and was stopped by the Avengers and Eternals. After the disintegration of Ghaur, Kro remained as the unique leader of the Deviants. He had another dispute with Thena, when he revealed that he was influencing her with a new type of brain mine. Kro also agreed to a truce with Ikaris. He was acting as monarch when Quasar came to Lemuria, and he was organizing gladiator matches. Some time later, Kro became depressed by the loss of Thena, and abdicated the throne to search for her again. He located her and their twin children, Donald & Deborah Ritter, conceived long before his attack in New York. Together, they ended the tyranny of Brother Visara in Lemuria, and joined as a family. Kro was also the founder of the Deviant team Delta Network, including some heroic Deviants like Ramsak, Karkas and his own children. He led them in an attempt to rescue the Avengers from a resurrected Ghaur. Kro and Thena searched for their children when they were captured by the villain Maelstrom. When the mad priest Ghaur tried to form an "Anti-Mind", in his plan to battle the Celestials, and captured the Ritters and Thena, Kro led his deviant faction to rescue his children and his lover. However, he was outmatched by Ghaur's power, and kept up the fight against Ghaur as his family escaped.


title: Kro (character)

text: Kro and Ghaur formed bickering factions and kept the struggle for power in Deviant Lemuria. The external world did not know who was in charge. Kro was still recognized as the formal monarch in the UN and opposed the attack of the Black Panther and Wakanda against his nation. When the Avengers defeated some Deviants tribesman, they transferred them to Kro's control, as he was the Deviant King at the time.


title: Kro (character)

text: Much later, a plague devastated Lemuria, the Deviants males were rendered sterile and a power struggle between Ereshkigal and Ghaur happened. Ghaur won when he promised the deviants the return of the fertility with the help of the kidnapped eternal Phastos. Kro was acting in the sidelines as general and he was who attacked the unprotected Olympia, bringing the Eternal resurrecting machine and Phastos to Lemuria. The Asgardian god Thor rescued Phastos and battled Ghaur. Kro kept the intrigue against Ghaur, and approached Ereshkigal. He activated the Asgardian Unbiding stone that she had stolen, but it got out of control, threatening all reality. When Thor destroyed the stone, Ghaur and Ereshkigal disappeared and Kro was left leading the Deviants. He regretted the incident and said to Thor that he had abandoned his ambitions.


title: Kro (character)

text: Despite his Deviant heritage, Kro possesses a number of superhuman traits that are characteristic of an Eternal. Kro maintains a virtually unbreakable mental control over the processes and structure of his body even when he is asleep or unconscious. As a result, Kro has a lifespan that has already lasted over 100,000 years and is immune to disease and aging. His mental control over his body enables him to maintain a youthful, vigorous physical condition. However, Kro is not so nearly indestructible as the Eternals. (For example, Ikaris nearly killed Kro once by strangulation.) But while sufficient force can kill Kro, he can use his mental control over his body to heal himself after being injured.


title: Kro (character)

text: Kro also possesses the power of physical malleability, which is atypical for a Deviant. At will he can cause most of the tissue of his body to become pliant, enabling him to shape it mentally like putty into different configurations. Once the tissue is set in an altered form, Kro has only to stop concentrating and his body will retain that shape until such time as he concentrates upon changing it again. This ability enables him to disguise himself and take the appearance of others (with cosmetic help for skin color, body hair, and so forth). One of Kro's favorite ploys is to pass himself off among ordinary humanity as a demon by fashioning horns on his head.


title: Kro (character)

text: Kro's shape-changing powers are limited. He cannot alter the shape of his skeleton in more than minor ways. Moreover, he cannot eliminate any of his mass while transforming; he can only redistribute his 320 pounds of weight. Hence, he usually only uses his shape-changing power to alter his facial features. He can mentally mold the shape of his skull somewhat.


title: Kro (character)

text: Kro has about three times the physical endurance of an ordinary human athlete. His heart is not located in the same place as an ordinary human being's; its true location is unrevealed.


title: Irish dance

text: Irish dance refers to a group of traditional dance forms that originate in Ireland, encompassing dancing both solo and in groups, and dancing for social, competitive, and performance purposes. Irish dance in its current form developed from various influences such as earlier native Irish dance, English country dancing and later possibly French quadrilles, as it became popular in Britain and Ireland during the 19th century. Dance was taught by "travelling dance masters" across Ireland in the 17th and 18th centuries, and separate dance forms developed according to regional practice and differing purposes. Irish dance became a significant part of Irish culture, particularly for Irish nationalist movements. From the early 20th century, a number of organisations promoted and codified the various forms of dance, creating competitive structures and standardised styles. Irish dancers who compete for competitive reasons dance in a dance style that is more modern than traditional Irish dance. It is mainly done solo, but there is some team dancing in groups of 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 16 and even numbers onwards.


title: Irish dance

text: Solo Irish dance includes the most well-known form of Irish dance, Irish stepdance, which was popularised from 1994 onwards by shows such as "Riverdance", and which is practised competitively across not only the Irish diaspora but to many more people who have disparate cultural backgrounds. Stepdance is characterised by the rigid upper body and intricate footwork of its performers. Other forms of solo Irish dance include sean-nós dance, a relaxed and social dance style involving improvised steps, and festival Irish dance, a style which separated from step dance in the mid-20th century.


title: Irish dance

text: Irish dancing in groups is made up of a number of styles and traditions, which developed from French and English dances and formations. Ceili dance, practised both competitively and socially, is performed by groups of two to sixteen people, and often uses traditional or codified dances and formations. Its footwork is simple, and emphasis is placed on the figures and formations of the dances. Set dance is primarily a social tradition, for groups of four dancers, and includes elements of the intricate footwork found in step dance.


title: Irish dance

text: There is very little documentary evidence of dance being practised in Ireland prior to the 7th century; this could be due to the destruction of written records in Ireland during Viking raids. Scholars have hypothesised this is from non-literate nature of the Irish cultural tradition. Indeed, the modern Irish words for "dance", "rince" and "damhsa" did not develop until the 16th century. The scant evidence available is primarily that of visitors to Ireland, such as a fourteenth-century song written in the South of England, where the poet invites his listeners to "come ant daunce wyt me in Irlaunde". The first native Irish documentary evidence of dancing is an account of a Mayor of Waterford's visit to Baltimore, County Cork in 1413, where the attendees "took to the floor" to celebrate Christmas Eve. However, the Norman invasion of Ireland in the twelfth century may have brought with it the round dance tradition, as it was contemporaneously performed in British camps while every now and then being seen in a Norman stronghold.


title: Irish dance

text: Accounts of dancing in the 17th century suggest that dancing was by that time extremely widespread throughout Ireland. In 1674 Richard Head wrote in reference to Ireland, 'In every field a fiddle, and the lasses footing till they all of a foam,' suggesting some type of Irish step dancing or dance with heavy foot movement. There is ample evidence of Irish jigs or Irish step dancing in the 16th century, in 1569 Sir Henry Sydney sent a letter to Queen Elizabeth in which he expresses his enthusiasm for the Irish jigs of Galway. A report from 1600 mentions that some forms of Irish dances were similar in form to English country dances, and later references mention the ""rinnce fada"", also known as the "long dance" or "fading". This dance, performed to a jig tune though not to any particular piece of music, became the customary conclusion to balls held in Ireland towards the end of the seventeenth century. At this time, dancing was commonly accompanied by musicians playing bagpipes or the Jew's harp.


title: Irish dance

text: By the 1760s, the distinctive hornpipe rhythm of the Irish dance tradition had developed, and with the introduction of the fiddle to Ireland from the European continent, a new class of "dancing master" began to emerge.


title: Irish dance

text: The dancing traditions of Ireland probably grew in association with traditional Irish music. Although its origins are unclear, it was possibly later influenced by dance forms from the Continent, such as the "Quadrille". Travelling dancing masters taught across Ireland as late as the 18th and early 19th centuries. Because local venues were usually small, dances were often demonstrated on tabletops, or even the tops of barrels. As a result, these early styles are characterized by the arms held rigidly at the sides, and a lack of lateral movement. As larger dance venues became available, styles grew to include more movement of the body and around the dance area.


title: Irish dance

text: A variety of forms of solo Irish Dance have developed which are described as stepdance. These include the well-known "modern" stepdance performed competitively; old-style stepdance, which is closer in style to the dance practised by 19th-century travelling dance masters; and festival dance, which separated from modern stepdance over stylistic and administrative disputes in the mid-20th century.