title: Autocephaly

text: In Eastern Orthodoxy, the right to grant autocephaly is nowadays a contested issue, the main opponents in the dispute being the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which claims this right as its prerogative, and the Russian Orthodox Church (the Moscow Patriarchate), which insists that one autocephalous jurisdiction has the right to grant independence to one of its components. Thus, the Orthodox Church in America was granted autocephaly in 1970 by the Moscow Patriarchate, but this new status was not recognized by most patriarchates. In the modern era, the issue of autocephaly has been closely linked to the issue of self-determination and political independence of a nation; self-proclamation of autocephaly was normally followed by a long period of non-recognition and schism with the mother church.


title: Autocephaly

text: Following the establishment of an independent Greece in 1832, the Greek government in 1833 unilaterally proclaimed the Orthodox church in the kingdom (until then within the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate) to be autocephalous. But it was not until June 1850 that the Mother Church, under the Patriarch Anthimus IV, recognized this status.


title: Autocephaly

text: In May 1872, the Bulgarian Exarchate, set up by the Ottoman government two years prior, broke away from the Ecumenical Patriarchate, following the start of the people's struggle for national self-determination. The Bulgarian Church was recognized in 1945 as an autocephalous patriarchate, following the end of World War II and after decades of schism. By that time, Bulgaria was ruled by the Communist party and was behind the "Iron Curtain" of the Soviet Union.


title: Autocephaly

text: Following the Congress of Berlin (1878), which established Serbia's political independence, full ecclesiastical independence for the Metropolitanate of Belgrade was negotiated and recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1879. Additionally, in the course of the 1848 revolution, following the proclamation of the Serbian Vojvodina ("Serbian Duchy") within the Austrian Empire in May 1848, the autocephalous Patriarchate of Karlovci was instituted by the Austrian government. It was abolished in 1920, shortly after the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918 following the Great War. Vojvodina was then incorporated into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The Patriarchate of Karlovci was merged into the newly united Serbian Orthodox Church under Patriarch Dimitrije residing in Belgrade, the capital of the new country that comprised all the Serb-populated lands.


title: Autocephaly

text: The autocephalous status of the Romanian Church, legally mandated by the local authorities in 1865, was recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1885, following the international recognition of the independence of the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia (later Kingdom of Romania) in 1878.


title: Autocephaly

text: In late March 1917, following the abdication of the Russian tsar Nicholas II earlier that month and the establishment of the Special Transcaucasian Committee, the bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church in Georgia, then within the Russian Empire, unilaterally proclaimed independence of the Georgian Orthodox Church. This was not recognized by the Moscow Patriarchate until 1943, nor by the Ecumenical Patriarchate until 1990.


title: Autocephaly

text: In September 1922, Albanian Orthodox clergy and laymen proclaimed autocephaly of the Church of Albania at the Great Congress in Berat. The church was recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in 1937.


title: Autocephaly

text: The independent Kyiv Patriarchate was proclaimed in 1992, shortly after the proclamation of independence of Ukraine and the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. The Moscow Patriarchate has condemned it as schismatic, as it claims jurisdiction over Ukraine. Some Orthodox churches have not yet recognized Ukraine as autocephalous. In 2018, the problem of autocephaly in Ukraine became a fiercely contested issue and a part of the overall geopolitical confrontation between Russia and Ukraine, as well as between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.


title: Autocephaly

text: Historically, within the Patriarchate of Constantinople, adjective "autocephalous" was sometimes also used as an honorary designation, without connotations to real autocephaly. Such uses occurred in very specific situations. If a diocesan bishop was exempt from jurisdiction of his metropolitan, and also transferred to the direct jurisdiction of the patriarchal throne, such bishop would be styled as an ""autocephalous archbishop"" (self-headed, just in terms of not having a metropolitan).


title: Autocephaly

text: Such honorary uses of the adjective "autocephalous" were recorded in various "Notitiae Episcopatuum" and other sources, mainly from the early medieval period. For example, until the end of the 8th century, bishop of Amorium was under the jurisdiction of metropolitan of Pessinus, but was later exempt and placed under direct patriarchal jurisdiction. On that occasion, he was given an honorary title of an "autocephalous archbishop", but with no jurisdiction over other bishops, and thus no real autocephaly. Sometime later (), metropolitan province of Amorium was created, and local archbishop gained regional jurisdiction as a metropolitan, still having no autocephaly since his province was under supreme jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.


title: VA-111 Shkval

text: The VA-111 "Shkval" (from , "squall") torpedo and its descendants are supercavitating torpedoes originally developed by the Soviet Union. They are capable of speeds in excess of 200 knots (370 km/h or 230 miles/h).


title: VA-111 Shkval

text: Design began in the 1960s when the NII-24 research institute was ordered to produce a new weapon capable of engaging nuclear submarines. The merger of the institute and GSKB-47 created the Research Institute of Applied Hydromechanics, who continued with the design and production of the Shkval.


title: VA-111 Shkval

text: Previously operational as early as 1977, the torpedo was announced as being deployed in the 1990s. The "Shkval" is intended as a countermeasure against torpedoes launched by undetected enemy submarines.


title: VA-111 Shkval

text: The VA-111 is launched from torpedo tubes at . A solid-fuel rocket accelerates it to cavitation speed, with a combined-cycle gas turbine in the nose creating the required gas bubble. Once accelerated, speed is maintained by an underwater ramjet fueled by hydroreactive metals using seawater as both reactant and the source of oxidizer; the torpedo travels at around . Published information about this type of hydro-ramjet shows a dedicated steam circuit for the supercavitation generating head.


title: VA-111 Shkval

text: Some reports indicate that the VA-111 possibly exceeds speeds of , and that work on a version was underway.


title: VA-111 Shkval

text: The high speed is made possible by supercavitation, whereby a gas bubble surrounding the torpedo is created by outward deflection of water by its specially-shaped nose cone and the expansion of gases from its engine and the gas generator in the nose. This minimizes water contact with the torpedo, significantly reducing drag.


title: VA-111 Shkval

text: Early designs may have relied solely on an inertial guidance system. The initial design was intended for nuclear warhead delivery. Later designs reportedly include terminal guidance and conventional warheads.


title: VA-111 Shkval

text: The torpedo steers using four fins that skim the inner surface of the supercavitation gas bubble. To change direction, the fin(s) on the inside of the desired turn are extended, and the opposing fins are retracted.


title: VA-111 Shkval

text: The torpedo is manufactured in Kyrgyzstan by a state-owned factory. In 2012 the Russian government asked for a 75% ownership of the factory in exchange for writing off massive Kyrgyz debt to Russia.


title: VA-111 Shkval

text: In 2000, former U.S. Naval intelligence officer and an alleged Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) spy Edmond Pope (Captain, USN, retired) was held, tried, and convicted in Russia of espionage related to information he obtained about the Shkval weapon system. Russian President Vladimir Putin pardoned Pope in December 2000 on humanitarian grounds because he had bone cancer.


title: VA-111 Shkval

text: All current versions are believed to be fitted only with conventional explosive warheads, although the original design used a nuclear warhead.


title: Death anniversary

text: A death anniversary (or deathday) is the anniversary of the death of a person. It is the opposite of birthday. It is a custom in several Asian cultures, including Azerbaijan, Armenia, Cambodia, China, Georgia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Myanmar, Iran, Israel, Japan, Bangladesh, Korea, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam, as well as in other places with significant overseas Chinese, Japanese, Jewish, Korean, and Vietnamese populations, to observe the anniversary on which a family member or other significant individual died. There are also similar memorial services that are held at different intervals, such as every week.


title: Death anniversary

text: Although primarily a manifestation of ancestor worship, the tradition has also been associated with Confucianism and Buddhism (in East Asian cultural civilizations) or Hinduism and Buddhism (South Asia but mainly in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia). In Judaism (the majority religion of Israel), such a commemoration is called a "yahrtzeit" (among other terms). Celebration of mass in memory of a loved one on or near the anniversary of their death is also a part of Roman Catholic Christian tradition.


title: Death anniversary

text: In China, a death anniversary is called or . This type of ceremony dates back thousands of years in China (at least to the Shang dynasty) and historically involved making sacrifices to the spirits of one's ancestors.


title: Death anniversary

text: In India (and Nepal), a death anniversary is known as "shraadh" (Shraaddha "श्राद्ध" in Nepali). The first death anniversary is called a "barsy", from the word "baras", meaning year in Hindi.


title: Death anniversary

text: "Shraadh" means to give with devotion or to offer one's respect. "Shraadh" is a ritual for expressing one's respectful feelings for the ancestors. According to Nepali and Indian texts, a soul has to wander about in the various worlds after death and has to suffer a lot due to past karmas. "Shraadh" is a means of alleviating this suffering.


title: Death anniversary

text: "Shraddhyaa Kriyate Yaa Saa"श्रद्धया क्रियते या सा : "Shraadh" is the ritual accomplished to satiate one's ancestors. "Shraadh" is a private ceremony performed by the family members of the departed soul. Though not mandated spiritually, it is typically performed by the eldest son and other siblings join in offering prayers together.


title: Death anniversary

text: In Japan, a death anniversary is called , , or . Monthly observances of a death are known as , while annual anniversaries are known as .


title: Death anniversary

text: Observant Jews commemorate the "yahrtzeit" () of the death of parents, siblings, spouses, or children according to the Hebrew calendar. The main observance involves recitation of "kaddish" prayer, and a widely practiced custom is to light a special candle that burns for 24 hours, called a yahrtzeit candle.


title: Death anniversary

text: In Korea, ancestor worship ceremonies are referred to by the generic term "jerye" (). Notable examples of "jerye" include "Munmyo jerye" and "Jongmyo jerye", which are performed periodically each year for venerated Confucian scholars and kings of ancient times, respectively.


title: Death anniversary

text: The ceremony held on the anniversary of a family member's death is called "gije" (), and is celebrated by families as a private ceremony. For such occasions, the women of the family traditionally prepare an elaborate set of dishes, including "tteok", "jeon", "jeok", and so forth.


title: Death anniversary

text: In the Philippines, the funeral is only one part of an elaborate mourning tradition. For nine days after the funeral has taken place, novena prayers are offered in a practice called "pasiyam" (although some start the practice the night after the death). It is also customary for another service to be given on the fortieth day after the death, as it is traditionally believed that the souls of the dead wander the Earth for forty days.


title: Death anniversary

text: One year after the death, the first year death anniversary (, literally "lowering of mourning") is commemorated with the final service. After the "babang luksa", the spouse of the deceased can remarry, and the family can once again hold birthday celebrations and attend parties. The miscellaneous non-valuable belongings of the deceased will also be symbolically burned to represent the mourners being able to move on with their lives. "Babang luksa" is normally commemorated with a meal and prayers (""padasal"") for the deceased. For one year after a death, mourners dress all in black or wear a black pin as a remembrance during their daily lives. After "babang luksa", the mourners may once again return to their normal dress, although depending on circumstances, some may opt to wear their mourning attire for longer periods.


title: Death anniversary

text: Although only the first anniversary of the death is specifically commemorated, Filipinos further commemorate the deaths of all of their ancestors at their grave sites on All Saints' Day (November 1) and All Souls' Day (November 2).


title: Death anniversary

text: In Vietnam, a death anniversary is called (𠰍), (𣈗𠰍, literally " day"), (酖𠰍, literally " ceremony"), or (把𠰍, literally " meal"). It is a festive occasion, at which members of an extended family gather together. Female family members traditionally spend the entire day cooking an elaborate banquet in honor of the deceased individual, which will then be enjoyed by all the family members. In addition, sticks of incense are burned in honor and commemoration of the deceased person. It is not unusual for a family to celebrate several per year, so the ceremony serves as a time for families to reunite, much like the Vietnamese new year, Tết. The rituals are the responsibility of whoever inherits the ancestral estates, typically the deceased's most senior patrilineal descendant.


title: Death anniversary

text: Although a is usually a private ceremony attended only by family members (and occasionally also close friends), some are commemorated by large segments of the population. The commemoration of the Hùng Kings - who were instrumental in founding the first Vietnamese kingdom in Vietnam's remote past, and of the Trưng Sisters are widely participated. In March 2007 Giỗ tổ Hùng Vương became a public holiday in Vietnam. As in all traditional commemorations, the Vietnamese calendar is used, except Vietnamese Catholics who commemorate the dead anniversary in Gregorian calendar.


title: Death anniversary

text: In Vietnamese culture, certain special, traditional dishes (particularly desserts) are only prepared for death anniversary banquets. In addition, favorite foods of the deceased person being honored are also prepared. Chicken, a particularly prized meat in Vietnam, is often cooked as well. In Central Vietnam, small stuffed glutinous rice flour balls wrapped in leaves called are such a dish. Because the preparation of so many complex dishes is time-consuming, some families purchase or hire caterers to prepare certain dishes. It is also common that a soft-boiled egg be prepared and then given to the oldest grandson.


title: Death anniversary

text: In Sri Lanka, people commonly commemorate death anniversaries after 7 days, 3 months, and 1 year after their passing.


title: Toyota Aqua

text: The is a full hybrid electric subcompact/supermini hatchback (B-segment) manufactured and marketed by Toyota since 2011. The nameplate is exclusive to the Japanese domestic market, as the vehicle was exported to overseas markets as the Prius c, leveraging the popularity of the Prius hybrid car nameplate and marketed as the smaller alternative to the Prius liftback.


title: Toyota Aqua

text: The Aqua is considered the most successful nameplate launch in Japan in the last 20 years. , the Aqua/Prius c is the second highest-selling Toyota hybrid model after the regular Prius, with 1,380,100 units sold worldwide. Japan as Aqua's market leader has sold 1,154,500 units of the model through January 2017. The Aqua was the best-selling (non-kei) car in Japan for three years in a row, from 2013 to 2015.


title: Toyota Aqua

text: The name "Aqua" means 'water' in Latin. The name was meant to associate the car with an "image of clean transparency" and "something that is universally cherished".


title: Toyota Aqua

text: The production version of the first-generation Aqua was unveiled at the 2011 Tokyo Motor Show. Its design was previously previewed by the Prius c concept car which was unveiled at the January 2011 North American International Auto Show. The first facelift was announced in December 2014, along with a crossover-inspired variant called the X-URBAN. A second facelift was introduced in June 2017, with the crossover-inspired variant redesigned and renamed as the Aqua Crossover.


title: Toyota Aqua

text: The second-generation Aqua was unveiled on 19 July 2021 and went on sale on the same day. Built on the GA-B platform shared with the XP210 series Yaris, the wheelbase has been extended by compared to the previous generation. It retained the width, allowing it to remain in the "compact car" category of Japanese government dimension regulations. It was initially offered in four grade levels: B, X, G and Z. The GR Sport grade was added later in late November 2022.


title: Toyota Aqua

text: According to Toyota, the second-generation Aqua is the world's first vehicle to use a high-output bipolar nickel–hydrogen battery as its electric drive battery, offering twice the output of the standard nickel-metal hydride battery equipped to the outgoing Aqua. The battery also delivers improved accelerator responsiveness and enables linear and smooth acceleration from low speeds, according to the carmaker. The speed range at which the vehicle can operate solely on electrical power has also been increased. This battery is used on the X, G, Z and GR Sport grades, while the B grade used the lithium-ion unit.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: Adam Bernard Mickiewicz (; 24 December 179826 November 1855) was a Polish poet, dramatist, essayist, publicist, translator and political activist. He is regarded as national poet in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. A principal figure in Polish Romanticism, he is one of Poland's "Three Bards" () and is widely regarded as Poland's greatest poet. He is also considered one of the greatest Slavic and European poets and has been dubbed a "Slavic bard". A leading Romantic dramatist, he has been compared in Poland and Europe to Byron and Goethe.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: He is known chiefly for the poetic drama "Dziady" ("Forefathers' Eve") and the national epic poem "Pan Tadeusz". His other influential works include "Konrad Wallenrod" and "Grażyna". All these served as inspiration for uprisings against the three imperial powers that had partitioned the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth out of existence.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: Mickiewicz was born in the Russian-partitioned territories of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which had been part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and was active in the struggle to win independence for his home region. After, as a consequence, spending five years exiled to central Russia, in 1829 he succeeded in leaving the Russian Empire and, like many of his compatriots, lived out the rest of his life abroad. He settled first in Rome, then in Paris, where for a little over three years he lectured on Slavic literature at the Collège de France. He died, probably of cholera, at Istanbul in the Ottoman Empire, where he had gone to help organize Polish forces to fight Russia in the Crimean War.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: In 1890, his remains were repatriated from Montmorency, Val-d'Oise, in France, to Wawel Cathedral in Kraków, Poland.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: Adam Mickiewicz was born on 24 December 1798, either at his paternal uncle's estate in Zaosie (now Zavosse) near Navahrudak (in Polish, "Nowogródek") or in Navahrudak itself in what was then part of the Russian Empire and is now Belarus. The region was on the periphery of Lithuania proper and had been part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania until the Third Partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1795). Its upper class, including Mickiewicz's family, were either Polish or Polonized. The poet's father, Mikołaj Mickiewicz, a lawyer, was a member of the Polish nobility ("szlachta") and bore the hereditary Poraj coat-of-arms; Adam's mother was Barbara Mickiewicz, "née" Majewska. Adam was the second-born son in the family.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: Mickiewicz spent his childhood in Navahrudak, initially taught by his mother and private tutors. From 1807 to 1815 he attended a Dominican school following a curriculum that had been designed by the now-defunct Polish Commission for National Education, which had been the world's first ministry of education. He was a mediocre student, although active in games, theatricals, and the like.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: In September 1815, Mickiewicz enrolled at the Imperial University of Vilnius, studying to be a teacher. After graduating, under the terms of his government scholarship, he taught secondary school at Kaunas from 1819 to 1823.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: In 1818, in the Polish-language "" (Wilno Weekly), he published his first poem, ""Zima miejska"" ("City Winter"). The next few years would see a maturing of his style from sentimentalism/neoclassicism to romanticism, first in his poetry anthologies published in Vilnius in 1822 and 1823; these anthologies included the poem ""Grażyna"" and the first-published parts (II and IV) of his major work, "Dziady" ("Forefathers' Eve"). By 1820 he had already finished another major romantic poem, ""Oda do młodości"" ("Ode to Youth"), but it was considered to be too patriotic and revolutionary for publication and would not appear officially for many years.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: About the summer of 1820, Mickiewicz met the love of his life, . They were unable to marry due to his family's poverty and relatively low social status; in addition, she was already engaged to Count , whom she would marry in 1821.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: In 1817, while still a student, Mickiewicz, Tomasz Zan and other friends had created a secret organization, the Philomaths. The group focused on self-education but had ties to a more radical, clearly pro-Polish-independence student group, the Filaret Association. An investigation of secret student organizations by Nikolay Novosiltsev, begun in early 1823, led to the arrests of a number of students and ex-student activists including Mickiewicz, who was taken into custody and imprisoned at Vilnius' Basilian Monastery in late 1823 or early 1824 (sources disagree as to the date). After investigation into his political activities, specifically his membership in the Philomaths, in 1824 Mickiewicz was banished to central Russia. Within a few hours of receiving the decree on 22 October 1824, he penned a poem into an album belonging to Salomea Bécu, the mother of Juliusz Słowacki. (In 1975 this poem was set to music in Polish and Russian by Soviet composer David Tukhmanov.) Mickiewicz crossed the border into Russia about 11 November 1824, arriving in Saint Petersburg later that month. He would spend most of the next five years in Saint Petersburg and Moscow, except for a notable 1824 to 1825 excursion to Odessa, then on to Crimea. That visit, from February to November 1825, inspired a notable collection of sonnets (some love sonnets, and a series known as "Crimean Sonnets", published a year later).


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: Mickiewicz was welcomed into the leading literary circles of Saint Petersburg and Moscow, where he became a great favourite for his agreeable manners and an extraordinary talent for poetic improvisation. The year 1828 saw the publication of his poem "Konrad Wallenrod". Novosiltsev, who recognized its patriotic and subversive message, which had been missed by the Moscow censors, unsuccessfully attempted to sabotage its publication and to damage Mickiewicz's reputation.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: In Moscow, Mickiewicz met the Polish journalist and novelist Henryk Rzewuski and the Polish composer and piano virtuoso Maria Szymanowska, whose daughter, Celina Szymanowska, Mickiewicz would later marry in Paris, France. He also befriended the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin and Decembrist leaders including Kondraty Ryleyev. It was thanks to his friendships with many influential individuals that he was eventually able to obtain a passport and permission to leave Russia for Western Europe.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: After serving five years of exile to Russia, Mickiewicz received permission to go abroad in 1829. On 1 June that year, he arrived in Weimar. By 6 June he was in Berlin, where he attended lectures by the philosopher Hegel. In February 1830 he visited Prague, later returning to Weimar, where he received a cordial reception from the writer, scientist and politician Goethe.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: He then continued on through Germany all the way to Italy, which he entered via the Alps' Splügen Pass. Accompanied by an old friend, the poet Antoni Edward Odyniec, he visited Milan, Venice, Florence and Rome. In August that same year (1830) he went to Geneva, where he met fellow Polish Bard Zygmunt Krasiński. During these travels he had a brief romance with , but class differences again prevented his marrying his new love.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: Finally about October 1830 he took up residence in Rome, which he declared "the most amiable of foreign cities." Soon after, he learned about the outbreak of the November 1830 Uprising in Poland, but he would not leave Rome until the spring of 1831.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: On 19 April 1831 Mickiewicz departed Rome, traveling to Geneva and Paris and later, on a false passport, to Germany, via Dresden and Leipzig arriving about 13 August in Poznań (German name: Posen), then part of the Kingdom of Prussia. It is possible that during these travels he carried communications from the Italian Carbonari to the French underground, and delivered documents or money for the Polish insurgents from the Polish community in Paris, but reliable information on his activities at the time is scarce. Ultimately he never crossed into Russian Poland, where the Uprising was mainly happening; he stayed in German Poland (historically known to Poles as "Wielkopolska", or Greater Poland), where he was well received by members of the local Polish nobility. He had a brief liaison with Konstancja Łubieńska at her family estate in Śmiełów. Starting in March 1832, Mickiewicz stayed several months in Dresden, in Saxony, where he wrote the third part of his poem "Dziady".


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: On 31 July 1832 he arrived in Paris, accompanied by a close friend and fellow ex-Philomath, the future geologist and Chilean educator Ignacy Domeyko. In Paris, Mickiewicz became active in many Polish émigré groups and published articles in "" (The Polish Pilgrim). The fall of 1832 saw the publication, in Paris, of the third part of his "Dziady" (smuggled into partitioned Poland), as well as of "", which Mickiewicz self-published. In 1834 he published another masterpiece, his epic poem "Pan Tadeusz".


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: "Pan Tadeusz", his longest poetic work, marked the end of his most productive literary period. Mickiewicz would create further notable works, such as "", 1839–40) and "Zdania i uwagi" (Thoughts and Remarks, 1834–40), but neither would achieve the fame of his earlier works. His relative literary silence, beginning in the mid-1830s, has been variously interpreted: he may have lost his talent; he may have chosen to focus on teaching and on political writing and organizing.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: On 22 July 1834, in Paris, he married Celina Szymanowska, daughter of composer and concert pianist Maria Agata Szymanowska. They would have six children (two daughters, Maria and Helena; and four sons, Władysław, Aleksander, Jan and Józef). Celina later became mentally ill, possibly with a major depressive disorder. In December 1838, marital problems caused Mickiewicz to attempt suicide. Celina would die on 5 March 1855.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: Mickiewicz and his family lived in relative poverty, their major source of income being occasional publication of his work – not a very profitable endeavor. They received support from friends and patrons, but not enough to substantially change their situation. Despite spending most of his remaining years in France, Mickiewicz would never receive French citizenship, nor any support from the French government. By the late 1830s he was less active as a writer, and also less visible on the Polish émigré political scene.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: In 1838 Mickiewicz became professor of Latin literature at the Lausanne Academy, in Switzerland. His lectures were well received, and in 1840 he was appointed to the newly established chair of Slavic languages and literatures at the Collège de France. Leaving Lausanne, he was made an honorary Lausanne Academy professor.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: Mickiewicz would, however, hold the Collège de France post for little more than three years, his last lecture being delivered on 28 May 1844. His lectures were popular, drawing many listeners in addition to enrolled students, and receiving reviews in the press. Some would be remembered much later; his sixteenth lecture, on Slavic theater, "was to become a kind of gospel for Polish theater directors of the twentieth century."


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: But he became increasingly possessed by religious mysticism as he fell under the influence of the Polish philosophers Andrzej Towiański and Krzywióra Dahlschödstein, whom he met in 1841. His lectures became a medley of religion and politics, punctuated by controversial attacks on the Catholic Church, and thus brought him under censure by the French government. The messianic element conflicted with Roman Catholic teachings, and some of his works were placed on the Church's list of prohibited books, though both Mickiewicz and Towiański regularly attended Catholic mass and encouraged their followers to do so.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: In 1846 Mickiewicz severed his ties with Towiański, following the rise of revolutionary sentiment in Europe, manifested in events such as the Kraków Uprising of February 1846. Mickiewicz criticized Towiański's passivity and returned to the traditional Catholic Church. In 1847 Mickiewicz befriended American journalist, critic and women's-rights advocate Margaret Fuller. In March 1848 he was part of a Polish delegation received in audience by Pope Pius IX, whom he asked to support the enslaved nations and the French Revolution of 1848. Soon after, in April 1848, he organized a military unit, the Mickiewicz Legion, to support the insurgents, hoping to liberate the Polish and other Slavic lands. The unit never became large enough to be more than symbolic, and in the fall of 1848 Mickiewicz returned to Paris and became more active again on the political scene.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: In December 1848 he was offered a post at the Jagiellonian University in Austrian-ruled Kraków, but the offer was soon withdrawn after pressure from Austrian authorities. In the winter of 1848–49, Polish composer Frédéric Chopin, in the final months of his own life, visited his ailing compatriot and soothed the poet's nerves with his piano music. Over a dozen years earlier, Chopin had set two of Mickiewicz's poems to music (see Polish songs by Frédéric Chopin).


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: In the winter of 1849 Mickiewicz founded a French-language newspaper, "La Tribune des Peuples" ("The Peoples' Tribune"), supported by a wealthy Polish émigré activist, . Mickiewicz wrote over 70 articles for the "Tribune" during its short existence: it came out between 15 March and 10 November 1849, when the authorities shut it down. His articles supported democracy and socialism and many ideals of the French Revolution and of the Napoleonic era, though he held few illusions regarding the idealism of the House of Bonaparte. He supported the restoration of the French Empire in 1851. In April 1852 he lost his post at the Collège de France, which he had been allowed to keep (though without the right to lecture). On 31 October 1852 he was hired as a librarian at the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal. There he was visited by another Polish poet, Cyprian Norwid, who wrote of the meeting in his poem, ""Czarne kwiaty"" ("Black Blossoms"); and there Mickiewicz's wife Celina died.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: Mickiewicz welcomed the Crimean War of 1853–1856, which he hoped would lead to a new European order including a restored independent Poland. His last composition, a Latin ode "Ad Napolionem III Caesarem Augustum Ode in Bomersundum captum", honored Napoleon III and celebrated the British-French victory over Russia at the Battle of Bomarsund in Åland in August 1854. Polish émigrés associated with the Hôtel Lambert persuaded him to become active again in politics. Soon after the Crimean War broke out (October 1853), the French government entrusted him with a diplomatic mission. He left Paris on 11 September 1855, arriving in Constantinople, in the Ottoman Empire, on 22 September. There, working with Michał Czajkowski (Sadyk Pasha), he began organizing Polish forces to fight under Ottoman command against Russia. With his friend Armand Lévy he also set about organizing a Jewish legion. He returned ill from a trip to a military camp to his apartment on Yenişehir Street in the Pera (now Beyoğlu) district of Constantinople and died on 26 November 1855. Though Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński and others have speculated that political enemies might have poisoned Mickiewicz, there is no proof of this, and he probably contracted cholera, which claimed other lives there at the time.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: Mickiewicz's remains were transported to France, boarding ship on 31 December 1855, and were buried at Montmorency, Val-d'Oise, on 21 January 1861. In 1890 they were disinterred, moved to Austrian Poland, and on 4 July entombed in the crypts of Kraków's Wawel Cathedral, a place of final repose for a number of persons important to Poland's political and cultural history.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: Mickiewicz's childhood environment exerted a major influence on his literary work. His early years were shaped by immersion in folklore and by vivid memories, which he later reworked in his poems, of the ruins of Navahrudak Castle and of the triumphant entry and disastrous retreat of Polish and Napoleonic troops during Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia, when Mickiewicz was just a teenager. The year 1812 also marked his father's death. Later, the poet's personality and subsequent works were greatly influenced by his four years of living and studying in Vilnius.His first poems, such as the 1818 ""Zima miejska"" ("City Winter") and the 1819 ""Kartofla"" ("Potato"), were classical in style, influenced by Voltaire. His "Ballads and Romances" and poetry anthologies published in 1822 (including the opening poem ""Romantyczność"", "Romanticism") and 1823 mark the start of romanticism in Poland. Mickiewicz's influence popularized the use of folklore, folk literary forms, and historism in Polish romantic literature. His exile to Moscow exposed him to a cosmopolitan environment, more international than provincial Vilnius and Kaunas in Lithuania. This period saw a further evolution in his writing style, with "Sonety" (Sonnets, 1826) and "Konrad Wallenrod" (1828), both published in Russia. The "Sonety", mainly comprising his "Crimean Sonnets", highlight the poet's ability and desire to write, and his longing for his homeland.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: One of his major works, "Dziady" (Forefathers' Eve), comprises several parts written over an extended period of time. It began with publication of parts II and IV in 1823. Miłosz remarks that it was "Mickiewicz's major theatrical achievement", a work which Mickiewicz saw as ongoing and to be continued in further parts. Its title refers to the pagan ancestor commemoration that had been practiced by Slavic and Baltic peoples on All Souls' Day. The year 1832 saw the publication of part III: much superior to the earlier parts, a "laboratory of innovative genres, styles and forms". Part III was largely written over a few days; the "Great Improvisation" section, a "masterpiece of Polish poetry", is said to have been created during a single inspired night. A long descriptive poem, ""Ustęp"" (Digression), accompanying part III and written sometime before it, sums up Mickiewicz's experiences in, and views on, Russia, portrays it as a huge prison, pities the oppressed Russian people, and wonders about their future. Miłosz describes it as a "summation of Polish attitudes towards Russia in the nineteenth century" and notes that it inspired responses from Pushkin ("The Bronze Horseman") and Joseph Conrad ("Under Western Eyes"). The drama was first staged by Stanisław Wyspiański in 1901, becoming, in Miłosz's words, "a kind of national sacred play, occasionally forbidden by censorship because of its emotional impact upon the audience." The Polish government's 1968 closing down of a production of the play sparked the 1968 Polish political crisis.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: Mickiewicz's "Konrad Wallenrod" (1828), a narrative poem describing battles of the Christian order of Teutonic Knights against the pagans of Lithuania, is a thinly veiled allusion to the long feud between Russia and Poland. The plot involves the use of subterfuge against a stronger enemy, and the poem analyzes moral dilemmas faced by the Polish insurgents who would soon launch the November 1830 Uprising. Controversial to an older generation of readers, "Konrad Wallenrod" was seen by the young as a call to arms and was praised as such by an Uprising leader, poet . Miłosz describes "Konrad Wallenrod" (named for its protagonist) as "the most committed politically of all Mickiewczi's poems." The point of the poem, though obvious to many, escaped the Russian censors, and the poem was allowed to be published, complete with its telling motto drawn from Machiavelli: ""Dovete adunque sapere come sono due generazioni di combattere – bisogna essere volpe e leone."" ("Ye shall know that there are two ways of fighting – you must be a fox and a lion.") On a purely literary level, the poem was notable for incorporating traditional folk elements alongside stylistic innovations.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: Similarly noteworthy is Mickiewicz's earlier and longer 1823 poem, "Grażyna", depicting the exploits of a Lithuanian chieftainess against the Teutonic Knights. Miłosz writes that "Grażyna" "combines a metallic beat of lines and syntactical rigor with a plot and motifs dear to the Romantics." It is said by Christien Ostrowski to have inspired Emilia Plater, a military heroine of the November 1830 Uprising. A similar message informs Mickiewicz's ""Oda do młodości"" ("Ode to Youth").


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: Mickiewicz's "Crimean Sonnets" (1825–26) and poems that he would later write in Rome and Lausanne, Miłosz notes, have been "justly ranked among the highest achievements in Polish [lyric poetry]." His 1830 travels in Italy likely inspired him to consider religious matters, and produced some of his best religiously themed works, such as ""Arcymistrz"" ("The Master") and ""Do Marceliny Łempickiej"" ("To Marcelina Łempicka"). He was an authority to the young insurgents of 1830–31, who expected him to participate in the fighting (the poet wrote a dedicated poem urging him to do so). Yet it is likely that Mickiewicz was no longer as idealistic and supportive of military action as he had been a few years earlier, and his new works such as ""Do matki Polki"" ("To a Polish Mother", 1830), while still patriotic, also began to reflect on the tragedy of resistance. His meetings with refugees and escaping insurgents around 1831 resulted in works such as ""Reduta Ordona"" ("Ordon's Redoubt"), ""Nocleg"" ("Night Bivouac") and ""Śmierć pułkownika"" ("Death of the Colonel"). Wyka notes the irony that some of the most important literary works about the 1830 Uprising were written by Mickiewicz, who never took part in a battle or even saw a battlefield.His "Księgi narodu polskiego i pielgrzymstwa polskiego" (Books of the Polish Nation and the Polish Pilgrimage, 1832) opens with a historical-philosophical discussion of the history of humankind in which Mickiewicz argues that history is the history of now-unrealized freedom that awaits many oppressed nations in the future. It is followed by a longer "moral catechism" aimed at Polish émigrés. The book sets out a messianist metaphor of Poland as the "Christ of nations". Described by Wyka as a propaganda piece, it was relatively simple, using biblical metaphors and the like to reach less-discriminating readers. It became popular not only among Poles but, in translations, among some other peoples, primarily those which lacked their own sovereign states. The "Books" were influential in framing Mickiewicz's image among many not as that of a poet and author but as that of ideologue of freedom.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: "Pan Tadeusz" (published 1834), another of his masterpieces, is an epic poem that draws a picture of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania on the eve of Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia. It is written entirely in thirteen-syllable couplets. Originally intended as an apolitical idyll, it became, as Miłosz writes, "something unique in world literature, and the problem of how to classify it has remained the crux of a constant quarrel among scholars"; it "has been called 'the last epos' in world literature". "Pan Tadeusz" was not highly regarded by contemporaries, nor by Mickiewicz himself, but in time it won acclaim as "the highest achievement in all Polish literature."


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: The occasional poems that Mickiewicz wrote in his final decades have been described as "exquisite, gnomic, extremely short and concise". His "", (1839–40) are, writes Miłosz, "untranslatable masterpieces of metaphysical meditation. In Polish literature, they are examples of that pure poetry that verges on silence."


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: In the 1830s (as early as 1830; as late as 1837) he worked on a futurist or science-fiction work, "A History of the Future". It predicted inventions similar to radio and television, and interplanetary communication using balloons. Written in French, it was never completed and was partly destroyed by the author. Other French-language works by Mickiewicz include the dramas "Les Confédérés de Bar" (The Bar Confederates) and "Jacques Jasiński, ous les deux Polognes" (Jacques Jasiński, or the Two Polands). These would not achieve much recognition, and would not be published till 1866.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: Adam Mickiewicz did not write any poems in Lithuanian. However, it is known that Mickiewicz did have some understanding of the Lithuanian language, although some Polish commentators describe it as limited.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: In the poem "Grażyna", Mickiewicz quoted one sentence from Kristijonas Donelaitis' Lithuanian-language poem "Metai". In "Pan Tadeusz", there is a un-Polonized Lithuanian name Baublys. Furthermore, due to Mickiewicz's position as lecturer on Lithuanian folklore and mythology in Collège de France, it can be inferred that he must have known the language sufficiently to lecture about it. It is known that Adam Mickiewicz often sang Lithuanian folk songs with the Samogitian Ludmilew Korylski. For example, in the early 1850s when in Paris, Mickiewicz interrupted a Lithuanian folk song sung by Ludmilew Korylski, commenting that he was singing it wrong and hence wrote down on a piece of paper how to sing the song correctly. On the piece of paper, there are fragments of three different Lithuanian folk songs ("Ejk Tatuszeli i bytiu darża", "Atjo żałnieros par łauka", "Ej warneli, jod warneli isz"), which are the sole, as of now, known Lithuanian writings by Adam Mickiewicz. The folk songs are known to have been sung in Darbėnai.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: A prime figure of the Polish Romantic period, Mickiewicz is counted as one of Poland's's Three Bards (the others being Zygmunt Krasiński and Juliusz Słowacki) and the greatest poet in all Polish literature. Mickiewicz has long been regarded as Poland's national poet and is a revered figure in Lithuania. He is also considered one of the greatest Slavic and European poets. He has been described as a "Slavic bard". He was a leading Romantic dramatist and has been compared in Poland and in Europe with Byron and Goethe.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: Mickiewicz's importance extends beyond literature to the broader spheres of culture and politics; Wyka writes that he was a "singer and epic poet of the Polish people and a pilgrim for the freedom of nations." Scholars have used the expression "cult of Mickiewicz" to describe the reverence in which he is held as a "national prophet." On hearing of Mickiewicz's death, his fellow bard Krasiński wrote: For men of my generation, he was milk and honey, gall and life's blood: we all descend from him. He carried us off on the surging billow of his inspiration and cast us into the world. Edward Henry Lewinski Corwin described Mickiewicz's works as Promethean, as "reaching more Polish hearts" than the other Polish Bards, and affirmed Danish critic Georg Brandes' assessment of Mickiewicz's works as "healthier" than those of Byron, Shakespeare, Homer, and Goethe. Koropeckyi writes that Mickiewicz has "informed the foundations of [many] parties and ideologies" in Poland from the 19th century to this day, "down to the rappers in Poland's post-socialist blocks, who can somehow still declare that 'if Mickiewicz was alive today, he'd be a good rapper.'" While Mickiewicz's popularity has endured two centuries in Poland, he is less well known abroad, but in the 19th century he had won substantial international fame among "people that dared resist the brutal might of reactionary empires."


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: Mickiewicz has been written about or had works dedicated to him by many authors in Poland (Asnyk, Gałczyński, Iwaszkiewicz, Jastrun, Kasprowicz, Lechoń, Konopnicka, Teofil Lenartowicz, Norwid, Przyboś, Różewicz, Słonimski, Słowacki, Staff, Tetmajer, Tuwim, Ujejski, Wierzyński, Zaleski and others) and by authors outside Poland (Bryusov, Goethe, Pushkin, Uhland, Vrchlický and others). He has been a character in works of fiction, including a large body of dramatized biographies, e.g., in 1900, Stanisław Wyspiański's "Legion". He has also been a subject of many paintings, by Eugène Delacroix, Józef Oleszkiewicz, Aleksander Orłowski, Wojciech Stattler and Walenty Wańkowicz. Monuments and other tributes (streets and schools named for him) abound in Poland and Lithuania, and in other former territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth: Ukraine and Belarus. He has also been the subject of many statues and busts by Antoine Bourdelle, David d'Angers, , Władysław Oleszczyński, , Teodor Rygier, Wacław Szymanowski and Jakub Tatarkiewicz. In 1898, the 100th anniversary of his birth, a towering statue by Cyprian Godebski was erected in Warsaw. Its base carries the inscription, "To the Poet from the People". In 1955, the 100th anniversary of his death, the University of Poznań adopted him as its official patron.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: Much has been written about Mickiewicz, though the vast majority of this scholarly and popular literature is available only in Polish. Works devoted to him, according to Koropeckyi, author of a 2008 English biography, "could fill a good shelf or two". Koropeckyi notes that, apart from some specialist literature, only five book-length biographies of Mickiewicz have been published in English. He also writes that, though many of Mickiewicz's works have been reprinted numerous times, no language has a "definitive critical edition of his works."


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: Adam Mickiewicz is known as a Polish poet, Polish-Lithuanian, Lithuanian, or Belarusian. "The Cambridge History of Russia" describes him as Polish but sees his ethnic origins as "Lithuanian-Belarusian (and perhaps Jewish)."


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: Some sources assert that Mickiewicz's mother was descended from a converted, Frankist Jewish family. Others view this as improbable. Polish historian Kazimierz Wyka, in his biographic entry in "Polski Słownik Biograficzny" (1975) writes that this hypothesis, based on the fact that his mother's maiden name, Majewska, was popular among Frankist Jews, has not been proven. Wyka states that the poet's mother was the daughter of a noble ("szlachta") family of Starykoń coat of arms, living on an estate at Czombrów in Nowogródek Voivodeship (Navahrudak Voivodeship). According to the Belarusian historian Rybczonek, Mickiewicz's mother had Tatar (Lipka Tatars) roots.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: Virgil Krapauskas noted that "Lithuanians like to prove that Adam Mickiewicz was Lithuanian" while Tomas Venclova described this attitude as "the story of Mickiewicz’s appropriation by Lithuanian culture". For example, the Lithuanian scholar of literature writes that Mickiewicz's family was descended from an old Lithuanian noble family (Rimvydas) with origins predating Lithuania's Christianization, but the Lithuanian nobility in Mickiewicz's time was heavily Polonized and spoke Polish. Mickiewicz had been brought up in the culture of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, a multicultural state that had encompassed most of what today are the separate countries of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. To Mickiewicz, a splitting of that multicultural state into separate entities – due to trends such as Lithuanian National Revival – was undesirable, if not outright unthinkable. According to Romanucci-Ross, while Mickiewicz called himself a " Litvin" ("Lithuanian"), in his time the idea of a separate "Lithuanian identity", apart from a "Polish" one, did not exist. This multicultural aspect is evident in his works: his most famous poetic work, "Pan Tadeusz", begins with the Polish-language invocation, "Oh Lithuania, my homeland, thou art like health ..." (""Litwo! Ojczyzno moja! ty jesteś jak zdrowie ...""). It is generally accepted, however, that Mickiewicz, when referring to Lithuania, meant a historical region rather than a linguistic and cultural entity, and he often applied the term "Lithuanian" to the Slavic inhabitants of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.


title: Adam Mickiewicz

text: a Czesław Miłosz and Kazimierz Wyka each note that Adam Mickiewicz's exact birthplace cannot be ascertained due to conflicting records and missing documentation.


title: Princess Patricia of Connaught

text: Lady Victoria Patricia Helena Elizabeth Ramsay, (born Princess Patricia of Connaught; 17 March 1886 – 12 January 1974) was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Upon her marriage to Alexander Ramsay, she relinquished her title of a British princess and the style of "Royal Highness".


title: Princess Patricia of Connaught

text: Princess Patricia – "Patsy" to family and friends – was born on 17 March 1886, St Patrick's Day, at Buckingham Palace in London. Her father was Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, the third son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Her mother was Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia. She had two elder siblings, Prince Arthur of Connaught and Princess Margaret of Connaught, later Crown Princess Margareta of Sweden.


title: Princess Patricia of Connaught

text: She was baptized "Victoria Patricia Helena Elizabeth" at St Anne's Church in Bagshot on 1 May 1886. Her godparents were Queen Victoria (her paternal grandmother); the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (her paternal granduncle, who was represented by her paternal uncle Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein); the Hereditary Grand Duchess of Oldenburg (her maternal aunt); Prince Wilhelm of Prussia (her first cousin, for whom the German Ambassador, Count Hatzfeldt, stood proxy); Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein (her paternal aunt); and Prince Albert of Prussia (her mother's first cousin once removed, for whom her maternal uncle the Hereditary Grand Duke of Oldenburg stood proxy). She was named Victoria after Queen Victoria; Patricia, after St Patrick, the saint of her birthday; and Helena, in honour of her father's sister Princess Helena of the United Kingdom.


title: Princess Patricia of Connaught

text: She grew up as a member of the Royal Family. She was a bridesmaid at the wedding of her cousins the Duke and Duchess of York (future King George V and Queen Mary) on 6 July 1893.


title: Princess Patricia of Connaught

text: Princess Patricia travelled extensively in her early years. Her father, the Duke of Connaught, was posted to India with the army, and the young Princess spent two years living there. Connaught Place, the central business locus of New Delhi, is named for the Duke. In 1911, the Duke was appointed Governor General of Canada. Princess Patricia accompanied her parents to Canada, and she became popular there. Her portrait appears on the one-dollar note of the Dominion of Canada with the issue date 17 March 1917.


title: Princess Patricia of Connaught

text: She was named Colonel-in-Chief of Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry on 22 February 1918 and held that appointment until her death. The regiment named for her was privately raised by Andrew Hamilton Gault, of Montreal, at his own expense; it was the last privately raised regiment in the British Empire. Princess Patricia personally designed the badge and colours for the regiment to take overseas to France, and at her wedding in 1919, the regiment attended and played their march specially. As the regiment's Colonel-in-Chief, she played an active role until her death.


title: Princess Patricia of Connaught

text: A memorial plaque in St. Bartholomew's Anglican Church in Ottawa is dedicated "To the memory of The Lady Patricia Ramsey, VA, CI, CD late Colonel-in-Chief Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry who as H.R.H. the Princess Patricia of Connaught worshipped here while resident at Government House 1911–1916."


title: Princess Patricia of Connaught

text: She was succeeded in 1974 by her cousin and goddaughter Patricia (the Rt. Hon. Lady Brabourne), who became the Countess Mountbatten of Burma, who asked that the men and women of her regiment discount her titles and refer to her in honour of her predecessor as Lady Patricia.


title: Princess Patricia of Connaught

text: The question of Patricia's marriage was the subject of much speculation in the Edwardian era, as she was considered one of the most beautiful and eligible royal princesses of her generation. She was matched with various foreign royalties, including the King of Spain, the Prince Royal of Portugal, the future Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and Grand Duke Michael of Russia, younger brother of Tsar Nicholas II.


title: Princess Patricia of Connaught

text: In the end, Patricia chose a commoner and married naval Commander (later Admiral) Alexander Ramsay (29 May 1881 – 8 October 1972), one of her father's aides-de-camp and third son of the 13th Earl of Dalhousie, at Westminster Abbey on 27 February 1919. Her bridesmaids and page boys were:


title: Princess Patricia of Connaught

text: On the occasion of her marriage, Princess Patricia of Connaught was permitted by Royal Warrant to relinquish the style of Royal Highness and the title of Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. She was granted by Royal Warrant of 25 February 1919 the style of Lady Victoria Patricia Helena Elizabeth Ramsay, with special precedence immediately before the Marchionesses of England.


title: Princess Patricia of Connaught

text: Despite relinquishing her royal title, Lady Patricia remained a member of the British Royal Family, remained in the line of succession, and attended all major royal events, including weddings, funerals, and the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth and of Queen Elizabeth II in 1937 and 1953, respectively. She rode in the carriage processions with other members of the Royal Family at the funerals of George V in 1936 and of King George VI. At the coronations, she proceeded in state from Buckingham Palace with other members of the Royal Family and took part in the procession of princes and princesses of the blood royal, attended by a train-bearer and an officer to carry her coronet. She also attended royal garden parties and participated in state visits, her attendance being recorded in the Court Circular together with other members of the Royal Family.


title: Princess Patricia of Connaught

text: Lady Patricia was an accomplished artist specializing in watercolours. She was made an honorary member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours. Much of her work was inspired by her travel in tropical countries. Her style was influenced by Gauguin and Van Gogh, because she had studied under Archibald Standish Hartrick who had known the artists.


title: Princess Patricia of Connaught

text: Lady Patricia died at Ribsden Holt, Windlesham, Surrey, on 12 January 1974, eight weeks before her 88th birthday and fifteen months after her husband. Probate of her estate was granted in London on 17 April 1974 and it was valued at £917,199 (equivalent to £7 million in 2022).


title: Princess Patricia of Connaught

text: Lady Patricia and Admiral Alexander Ramsay are buried at the Royal Burial Ground, Frogmore, directly behind the Royal Mausoleum of her grandparents Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, in Windsor Great Park.


title: Princess Patricia of Connaught

text: A Canadian Army infantry regiment, the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, was named in her honour. Patricia Lake in Alberta also carries her name, as does the Patricia Bay Highway in Saanich, British Columbia. There is also a Thamesdown bus named after her in Swindon, Wiltshire.


title: Princess Patricia of Connaught

text: The second of Canadian Pacific's British Columbia Coast Steamship's two 365 foot-long, 56 foot-wide, 5,911 / 6,062 ton (1963 refit) Fairfield Shipyards, Scotland-built steam turbo-electric passenger ships, the TEV "Princess Patricia" (Princess Patricia II), was named in 1948 for Princess Patricia of Connaught and launched by her as Lady Patricia Ramsay at Govan in that year. The first ship for Princess Cruises via a winter Mexican Riviera charter from CPL in 1965, the ship was retired from Alaskan cruising services in 1981 and served as a floating hotel in Vancouver, British Columbia for their 1986 World's Fair before being finally scrapped in 1989. Her sister ship was the TEV "Princess Marguerite" (II).


title: Princess Patricia of Connaught

text: The Regina Patricia Hockey Club was named in honour of Princess Patricia, now known as the Regina Pats. Founded in 1917, it is the oldest continuously operating major junior hockey franchise in the world, currently playing as part of the Western Hockey League.


title: Princess Patricia of Connaught

text: The Patricia Theatre in Powell River, British Columbia, was named in honour of Princess Patricia in 1913. It is currently the oldest operating theatre in Western Canada.


title: Princess Patricia of Connaught

text: Two hamlets in Alberta, 10 kilometres apart, are named Princess and Patricia in honour of Princess Patricia. The hamlets were established and named in 1914.


title: Princess Patricia of Connaught

text: Upon her marriage in 1919, Lady Patricia was granted arms as a male-line grandchild of a British monarch. Her arms are those of the Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom with a label for difference, blazoned thus:


title: Princess Patricia of Connaught

text: The whole differenced by a Label of five points Argent, first and fifth with a "cross gules", the others "fleurs-de-lys azure"."


title: Limelight

text: Limelight (also known as Drummond light or calcium light) is a type of stage lighting once used in theatres and music halls. An intense illumination is created when a flame fed by oxygen and hydrogen is directed at a cylinder of quicklime (calcium oxide), which can be heated to before melting. The light is produced by a combination of incandescence and candoluminescence. Although it has long since been replaced by electric lighting, the term has nonetheless survived, as someone in the public eye is still said to be "in the limelight". The actual lamps are called "limes", a term which has been transferred to electrical equivalents.


title: Limelight

text: The limelight effect was discovered in the 1820s by Goldsworthy Gurney, based on his work with the "oxy-hydrogen blowpipe", credit for which is normally given to Robert Hare. In 1825, a Scottish engineer, Thomas Drummond (1797–1840), saw a demonstration of the effect by Michael Faraday and realized that the light would be useful for surveying. Drummond built a working version in 1826, and the device is sometimes called the "Drummond light" after him.


title: Limelight

text: The earliest known use of limelight at a public performance was outdoors, over Herne Bay Pier, Kent, on the night of 3 October 1836 to illuminate a juggling performance by magician Ching Lau Lauro. This performance was part of the celebrations following the laying of the foundation stone of the Clock Tower. The advertising leaflet called it "koniaphostic" light and announced that "the whole pier is overwhelmed with a flood of beautiful white light". Limelight was first used for indoor stage illumination in the Covent Garden Theatre in London in 1837 and enjoyed widespread use in theatres around the world in the 1860s and 1870s.


title: Limelight

text: During the American Civil War in July and August 1863 calcium lights were used during the siege of Fort Wagner, allowing Union forces to illuminate their artillery target at night while simultaneously blinding Confederate gunners and riflemen. Calcium lights were also installed on Union Navy ships.


title: National Crime Agency

text: The National Crime Agency (NCA) is a national law enforcement agency in the United Kingdom. It is the UK's lead agency against organised crime; human, weapon and drug trafficking; cybercrime; and economic crime that goes across regional and international borders; but it can be tasked to investigate any crime. The NCA has a strategic role as part of which it looks at serious crime in aggregate across the UK, especially analysing how organised criminals are operating and how they can be disrupted. To do this, it works closely with regional organised crime units (ROCUs), local police forces, and other government departments and agencies.


title: National Crime Agency

text: It is the UK's point of contact for foreign agencies such as Interpol, Europol and other international law enforcement agencies. On a day-to-day basis, the NCA assists police forces and other law enforcement agencies (and vice versa) under voluntary assistance arrangements. In extremis, the NCA Director General has the power to direct a chief officer of a police force to give directed assistance with NCA tasks where necessary (but only with consent of the relevant Secretary of State), making this one of the most senior law enforcement positions in the country. The NCA itself can also be directed by the Secretary of State to give directed assistance to a police force or other law enforcement agency.


title: National Crime Agency

text: It was established in 2013 as a non-ministerial government department, replacing the Serious Organised Crime Agency and absorbed the previously separate Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) as one of its commands. It also assumed a number of responsibilities from other law enforcement agencies.


title: National Crime Agency

text: The NCA has also assumed a range of functions from the National Policing Improvement Agency, which has been scrapped as part of the government's changes to policing. These include a specialist database relating to injuries and unusual weapons, expert research on potential serial killers, and the National Missing Persons Bureau. The agencies going into the NCA had a combined budget of £812m, yet the new agency only had £464m in its first year—a decrease of 43%. Some of the responsibilities of the former UK Border Agency (now Immigration Enforcement and Border Force) relating to border policing also became part of the NCA. Like its predecessor SOCA, the NCA has been dubbed the "British FBI" by the media.


title: National Crime Agency

text: The proposed agency was first publicly announced in a statement to the House of Commons by Theresa May, the then Home Secretary, on 26 July 2010. On 8 June 2011, she declared that the NCA would comprise a number of distinct operational commands: Organised Crime, Border Policing, Economic Crime and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, and that it would house the National Cyber Crime Unit. She added that capabilities, expertise, assets and intelligence would be shared across the new agency; that each command would operate as part of one single organisation; and that the NCA would be a powerful body of operational crime fighters, led by a senior chief constable and accountable to the Home Secretary. In her statement to the House of Commons, May stated that the new agency would have the authority to "undertake tasking and coordination, ensuring appropriate action is taken to put a stop to the activities of organised crime groups".


title: National Crime Agency

text: In June 2011, the coalition government announced that SOCA's operations (serious drug trafficking investigative and intelligence sections) would be merged into a larger "National Crime Agency" to launch in 2013.


title: National Crime Agency

text: On 23 September 2011, the Home Affairs Select Committee called for the Metropolitan Police's counterterrorism role to be given to the NCA when it became operational, saying that the terrorist threat was a "national problem" and that there would be "advantages" in transferring responsibility. The Metropolitan Police raised concerns around the cost of such a move.


title: National Crime Agency

text: The Home Affairs Select Committee met again on 9 May 2014 to discuss counterterrorism. As a part of the report, the committee reconsidered the question of moving counterterrorism responsibilities to the NCA. The committee came to the conclusion that:


title: National Crime Agency

text: However, the report acknowledged that the NCA was still a new agency and that at the time it was not fully operational in Northern Ireland. Questions have been raised as to how effective this model would be and, with a limited budget, whether other responsibilities would suffer and not be resourced as properly as they should be. If the whole of Counter Terrorism Command were to transfer from the Metropolitan police to the NCA, the NCA would receive a further 1,500 officers or more if other counterterrorism units transferred in as well. It raised the question of what other national police units could be absorbed into the NCA, such as the National Wildlife Crime Unit, National Domestic Extremism and Disorder Intelligence Unit, National Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service and other units with a national remit from ACPO, the Metropolitan Police and other forces. Plans are being discussed for the second time of moving the Serious Fraud Office into the NCA.


title: National Crime Agency

text: The process of looking at moving counterterrorism into the NCA was put on hold on 9 October 2014 by Home Secretary Theresa May due to an increase in the terror threat level.


title: National Crime Agency

text: In October 2011, it was announced that Keith Bristow, the then Chief Constable of Warwickshire Police, would head the organisation.


title: National Crime Agency

text: The NCA came into existence under provisions granted by the Crime and Courts Act 2013, which received Royal Assent on 25 April 2013.


title: National Crime Agency

text: Until 20 May 2015, the agency was only able to carry out border and customs functions in Northern Ireland. This was due to the fact that under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that led to a political settlement and power-sharing in Northern Ireland, policing was subjected to a far higher degree of community oversight and monitoring than in other parts of the UK. The chief constable and officers are responsible to the Policing Board.


title: National Crime Agency

text: The NCA operates across the UK, respecting the devolution of policing in Scotland and Northern Ireland.


title: National Crime Agency

text: A large number of NCA officers, including Investigators, can be designated with the powers and privileges of a police constable, immigration officer, or customs officer and general customs officer (or any combination of the three sets of powers) under the Courts and Crime Act 2013. When NCA officers are designated with all three sets of powers it is known as being triple warranted, or "tri-warranted".


title: National Crime Agency

text: Although NCA officers can be designated with the above powers, they do not hold the office of constable and are civil servants. This is a different legal position to police officers who serve in the various police forces of the UK. The NCA is not a police force but an operationally independent non-ministerial government department.


title: National Crime Agency

text: In Scotland, the NCA's operations and powers are limited to those inherited from its predecessor, the Serious Organised Crime Agency, and the powers to operate in Scotland are conditional on authorisation from the Lord Advocate and through co-operation with Police Scotland. Previously co-operation was with the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency (a police force which was responsible for similar matters in Scotland).


title: National Crime Agency

text: In Northern Ireland, the NCA is "fully operational", through the passage of "The Crime and Courts Act 2013 (National Crime Agency and Proceeds of Crime) (Northern Ireland) Order 2015" which extended provisions of the Crime and Courts Act 2013 to Northern Ireland. A general authorisation was signed by Minister of Justice for Northern Ireland and the Director General granted trained and qualified NCA officers the powers of a constable in Northern Ireland. However, the NCA requires authorisation from the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland for the use of covert techniques.


title: National Crime Agency

text: The NCA faces several challenges over the next few years. The first of these is the scale of the growing problem facing them. At the end of 2014 UK law enforcement estimated there were 5,800 organised crime groups – comprising some 40,600 individuals. This is an increase of three hundred organised crime groups and 3,500 people on the year before.The National Crime Agency (NCA) estimates that there are as many as 50,000 people in the UK involved in the downloading and viewing of indecent images online. The Director General of the NCA has suggested that the British public cannot expect every person viewing indecent images to enter the criminal justice system – not least because of the sheer scale of the problem. The NCA received 12,505 referrals from the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children in its first 12 months, compared to 9,855 in 2012, an increase of almost 27 per cent. Tackling modern slavery is another area that the Home Secretary has identified as requiring more effort. The Home Office's Chief Scientific Adviser estimates that there may have been as many as 13,000 potential victims of modern slavery in the UK in 2013. This figure was increased in August 2017 to "tens of thousands of victims". Most will rely on the services of organised criminal groups at some point in their journey to the UK.


title: National Crime Agency

text: In addition to this the NCA has been tasked with the Rotherham investigation into child sex exploitation. According to the NCA there are 3,300 lines of enquiry, around 1,400 victims and 300 suspects.


title: National Crime Agency

text: The second challenge, of funding and resources, links with the first challenge. Although the NCA budget is half a billion pounds, in proportion to the scale of the problem it is small. The combined budget of previous agencies and units that make up the NCA was almost a billion pounds, so the agency has had an almost 50% cut before its creation. The NCA has 5000 staff only around 1250 of which are investigators, again small when faced with the problem. For the Rotherham investigation the NCA has had to bring in agency staff who are ex-police to assist with the scale of the investigation.


title: National Crime Agency

text: Thirdly there is the challenge of the "failure" of its predecessor agencies, SOCA and the National Crime squad and the fact that its success needs to be judged over years and not months due to the nature of the threat. SOCA was criticised for poor management and that some staff had poor investigation skills due to not working in law enforcement before. It is suggested that around 300 police detectives left SOCA due to this. With the NCA having the same staff this could be an issue. The NCA has already been criticised for not seizing enough assets (even though they seized more than SOCA in their last year of operation as well as using a search warrant that was judged to be illegal after staff at the agency were "deliberately trying to stretch the boundaries imposed upon such investigation agencies by the statutory scheme under which they operate". The judge Mr Justice Hickinbottom stated though "This case smacks of incompetence, not bad faith."


title: National Crime Agency

text: The NCA is organised into eight operational branches, overseen by seven directors, who are in turn overseen by a Director General, assisted by a Deputy Director General. The commands are as follows:


title: National Crime Agency

text: The Assets Recovery Agency became part of the Serious Organised Crime Agency from April 2008. This then became the Proceeds of Crime Centre in the NCA. The power to launch civil recovery proceedings has also been extended to the three main prosecutors in England and Wales: the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office (RCPO) and the Serious Fraud Office (SFO). It will also be extended to the Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service in Scotland.


title: National Crime Agency

text: The Missing Persons Bureau (MPB) transferred to SOCA in April 2012 along with SCAS. It had previously been based at New Scotland Yard until April 2008 when it was moved to the NPIA and based in Bramshill.


title: National Crime Agency

text: The bureau acts as the centre for the exchange of information connected with the search for missing persons nationally and internationally. It is responsible for cross-matching missing persons with unidentified persons or bodies, as well as maintaining an index of dental records of missing persons and unidentified bodies.


title: National Crime Agency

text: The MPB also manages a missing persons and Child Rescue Alert website, and analyses data to identify trends and patterns in disappearances.


title: National Crime Agency

text: The National Injuries Database also transferred from the NPIA. It provides additional support to police forces by providing analysis of weapons and wounds, and seeking to identify similarities to aid investigators in determining which weapon may have been used. The database holds over 4,000 cases of suspicious deaths, murders and clinical cases, and contains over 20,000 images.


title: National Crime Agency

text: SOCA via the UK Financial Intelligence Unit took over responsibility for dealing with suspicious activity reports (SARs), previously made to the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) under the money laundering legislation. This function is now part of NCA.


title: National Crime Agency

text: NCIS received just under 200,000 SARs in 2005 and throughout its life was heavily critical of the banking and financial services sector, and the Financial Services Authority, for not being more transparent or forthcoming in reporting their customers' suspicious activity.


title: National Crime Agency

text: Despite criticism from professional representative bodies that the disclosure rules are too broad, SOCA said that up to one in three SARs lead to or add substantially to terrorism investigations; that HMRC estimates that around one in five SARs identifies new subjects of interest, and one in four SARs lead to direct tax enquiries; and many arrests and confiscations of criminal assets.


title: National Crime Agency

text: The Serious Crime Analysis Section moved to SOCA from the National Policing Improvement Agency on 1 April 2012 in advance of the planned establishment of the National Crime Agency in 2013. SCAS is based at Foxley Hall in the grounds of the Police Staff College, Bramshill in Hampshire. It was originally formed by the Home Office in 1998 to identify the potential emergence of serial killers and serial rapists at the earliest stage of their offending. This scope has since broadened to include the analysis by specialist staff of rapes, serious sexual assaults and motiveless or sexually motivated murders.


title: National Crime Agency

text: Criminal case files are received by SCAS from all police forces in the UK at an early stage in the investigations. The information is coded and placed on a single database, ViCLAS (Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System). The system was developed in Canada by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.


title: National Crime Agency

text: The investigating officer receives a report from a crime analyst with a number of key elements designed to assist the investigation. It will identify if there are grounds to believe that the offender has previously been identified. It will also provide a breakdown of the behaviour exhibited in the offence, often with a statistical description of some of the elements involved. This can alert an investigator to the importance of some aspects of the offence not immediately apparent. SCAS are also responsible for identifying good practice, or "what works", so the analyst's report may contain "investigative suggestions" that might guide the officer to a specific line of enquiry not yet considered. The report may also suggest possible suspects that the unit has identified from a number of databases. When a prime suspect has been identified and charged with an offence, senior analysts are able to provide specialist evidence in court, to assist with the prosecution of offenders.


title: National Crime Agency

text: The NCA is the UK single point of contact for Interpol, Europol and the Schengen Information System, and also the point of contact for international enquiries from all UK police and law enforcement agencies. It has 24/7 capacity for Interpol and Europol with direct connections to their databases, provides international Liaison Officers, and co-ordinates all inbound and outbound Cross Border Surveillance requests with Schengen partners. It also has a dedicated Fugitives Unit that acts as the UK Central Authority for all extraditions.


title: National Crime Agency

text: In 2010, nine regional organised crime units (ROCUs) were created across England and Wales outside of London to investigate organised crime in their region and to support the NCA. Each ROCU is supported by a regional intelligence unit which is staffed by police officers and staff from each ROCU's constituent forces.


title: National Crime Agency

text: The Police Service of Northern Ireland, Police Scotland, the City of London Police, and the Metropolitan Police Service each have individual organised crime units which also support the NCA.


title: National Crime Agency

text: Regional organised crime units bring together a number of specialised teams and functions under the one structure:


title: National Crime Agency

text: On 22 May 2014 at around 22:50, NCA officers were involved in a shootout in Tottenham. Several shots were fired, including from NCA officers. Two men were arrested at the scene by the NCA for attempted murder and possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life. The Metropolitan Police arrived and arrested a third man for possession of a firearm. This is believed to be the first incident in which NCA officers fired shots.


title: National Crime Agency

text: On 25 May 2014 at 00:00 hrs, a second NCA operation was carried out in Tottenham, along with officers from the Metropolitan Police, after the NCA received intelligence about the earlier shoot out. Two more men were arrested, one for attempted murder and possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life and the other for assisting an offender, after their car was stopped by armed officers. One shot was fired by a Metropolitan Police officer during the operation.


title: National Crime Agency

text: In May 2014 the NCA conducted a major operation that resulted in the seizing of more than 100 kg of cocaine from a Greek bulk freighter in Scotland. The ship had been returning from Colombia; the operation resulted in the arrest of three men.


title: National Crime Agency

text: In July 2014 the NCA with partners jointly disrupted the "Shylock" banking trojan believed to have infected at least 30,000 computers.


title: National Crime Agency

text: Also in July 2014 the NCA co-ordinated the arrest of 660 suspected paedophiles. 39 of those arrested were registered sex offenders, but the majority had not previously come to the attention of law enforcement. 400 children are believed to have been protected by this operation, which included apprehending several individuals who had unsupervised access to children such as doctors, teachers and care workers.


title: National Crime Agency

text: In November 2016, the NCA began a campaign, including releasing a video, to educate the public on sextortion, providing advice on protecting oneself from being subject to sextortion and how to respond to a case of online blackmail.


title: National Crime Agency

text: On 2 July 2020, the NCA reported it had co-ordinated the largest law enforcement operation of its kind in the UK when it announced the results of Operation Venetic. Working with all the police forces of the UK and other law enforcement bodies, officers made 746 arrests and seized £54 million of drug money, 77 firearms, 1,800 rounds of ammunition, 4 hand grenades, 55 high value (possibly stolen) cars and 2 tonnes of illegal drugs. The operation was possible after an international law enforcement team cracked the encryption of a mobile phone instant messaging service from EncroChat. Law enforcement in France and the Netherlands also carried out related operations with the assistance of Europol. Home Secretary Priti Patel said: "This operation demonstrates that criminals will not get away with using encrypted devices to plot vile crimes under the radar. The NCA's relentless targeting of these gangs has helped to keep us all safe. I congratulate them and law enforcement partners on this significant achievement".


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: The Dam Busters is a 1955 British epic war film starring Richard Todd and Michael Redgrave. It was directed by Michael Anderson. The film recreates the true story of Operation Chastise when in 1943 the RAF's 617 Squadron attacked the Möhne, Eder, and Sorpe dams in Nazi Germany with Barnes Wallis's "bouncing bomb".


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: The film was based on the books "The Dam Busters" (1951) by Paul Brickhill and "Enemy Coast Ahead" (1946) by Guy Gibson. The film's reflective last minutes convey the poignant mix of emotions felt by the characters – triumph over striking a successful blow against the enemy's industrial base is tempered by the sobering knowledge that many died in the process of delivering it.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: The film was widely praised and became the most popular motion picture at British cinemas in 1955. In 1999, the British Film Institute voted "The Dam Busters" the 68th greatest British film of the 20th century. Its depiction of the raid, along with a similar sequence in the film "633 Squadron", provided the inspiration for the Death Star trench run in "Star Wars".


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: In early 1942, aeronautical engineer Barnes Wallis is struggling to develop a means of attacking Germany's dams in the hope of crippling German heavy industry. Working for the Ministry of Aircraft Production, as well as his own job at Vickers, he works feverishly to make practical his theory of a bouncing bomb which would skip over the water to avoid protective torpedo nets. When it hit the dam, backspin would make it sink whilst retaining contact with the wall, making the explosion far more destructive. Wallis calculates that the aircraft will have to fly extremely low () to enable the bombs to skip over the water correctly, but when he takes his conclusions to the Ministry, he is told that lack of production capacity means they cannot go ahead with his proposals.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: Angry and frustrated, Wallis secures an interview with Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris (played by Basil Sydney), the head of RAF Bomber Command, who at first is reluctant to take the idea seriously. Eventually, however, he is convinced and takes the idea to the Prime Minister, who authorises the project.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: Bomber Command forms a special squadron of Lancaster bombers, 617 Squadron, to be commanded by Wing Commander Guy Gibson, and tasked to fly the mission. He recruits experienced crews, especially those with low-altitude flight experience. While they train for the mission, Wallis continues his development of the bomb but has problems, such as the bomb breaking apart upon hitting the water. This requires the drop altitude to be reduced to . With only a few weeks to go, he succeeds in fixing the problems and the mission can go ahead.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: The bombers attack the dams. Eight Lancasters and their crews are lost, but two dams are breached and the overall mission succeeds. Wallis later encounters Gibson, clearly affected by the loss of the crewmen, but Gibson stresses the squadron knew what they were facing but they went in regardless of the odds. Before they part Wallis asks if Gibson will finally get some sleep. Gibson says he cannot; he has to write letters to the dead airmen's next of kin.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: Following the success of the book "The Dam Busters" (a RAF-approved history of 617 Squadron), Robert Clark the head of production at Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC) approached its author Paul Brickhill about acquiring the film rights as a vehicle for Richard Todd. The company's production manager was, however, of the opinion that, due to its numerous personnel and raids, it would not be able to film the book in its entirety. As a result, Clark requested that Brickhill provide a film treatment which described his vision for the film. Brickhill agreed to do it without payment in the hope of selling the film rights. To assist him, Clark teamed him up with Walter Mycroft who was the company's director of production. Brickhill decided to concentrate the film treatment on Operation Chastise and ignore the later raids.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: After the Air Ministry agreed to make available four Lancaster bombers at a cheap price which helped make the production viable, Associated British decided to proceed with the film and agreed with Brickhill on the film rights in December 1952 for what is believed to have been £5,000. After considering C.S. Forester, Terence Rattigan, as well as Emlyn Williams and Leslie Arliss, R. C. Sherriff was selected as the screenwriter with planned August delivery of the screenplay. Sherriff agreed with Brickhill's opinion that the film needed to concentrate on Operation Chastise and exclude the later operations covered in the book.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: In preparation for writing the script, Sherriff met with Barnes Wallis at his home, later returning accompanied by Brickhill, Walter Mycroft and production supervisor W.A. "Bill" Whittaker on 22 March 1952 to witness Wallis demonstrating his original home experiment. To Wallis's embarrassment he couldn't get it to work, no matter how many times he tried.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: Just prior to the film's scheduled release, Guy Gibson's widow Eve took legal action to prevent it, and Brickhill and Clark were mired in months of wrangling with her until references to her husband's book "Enemy Coast Ahead" were included.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: The flight sequences of the film were shot using real Avro Lancaster bombers supplied by the RAF. The aircraft, four of the final production B.VIIs, had to be taken out of storage and specially modified by removing the mid-upper gun turrets to mimic 617 Squadron's special aircraft, and cost £130 per hour to run, which amounted to a tenth of the film's costs. A number of Avro Lincoln bombers were also used as "set dressing". (An American cut was made more dramatic by depicting an aircraft flying into a hill and exploding. This version used stock footage from Warner Brothers of a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, not a Lancaster.)


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: The Upper Derwent Valley in Derbyshire (the test area for the real raids) doubled as the Ruhr valley for the film. The scene where the Dutch coast is crossed was filmed between Boston, Lincolnshire, and King's Lynn, Norfolk, and other coastal scenes near Skegness. Additional aerial footage was shot above Windermere, in the Lake District.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: While RAF Scampton, where the real raid launched, was used for some scenes, the principal airfield used for ground location shooting was RAF Hemswell, a few miles north and still an operational RAF station at the time of filming. Guy Gibson had been based at Hemswell in his final posting and the airfield had been an operational Avro Lancaster base during the war. At the time filming took place it was then home to No. 109 Squadron and No. 139 Squadron RAF, which were both operating English Electric Canberras on electronic countermeasures and nuclear air sampling missions over hydrogen bomb test sites in the Pacific and Australia. However, part of the RAF's fleet of ageing Avro Lincolns had been mothballed at Hemswell prior to being broken up and several of these static aircraft appeared in background shots during filming, doubling for additional No 617 Squadron Lancasters. The station headquarters building still stands on what is now an industrial estate and is named Gibson House. The four wartime hangars also still stand, little changed in external appearance since the war.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: Serving RAF pilots from both squadrons based at Hemswell took turns flying the Lancasters during filming and found the close formation and low level flying around Derwentwater and Windermere exhilarating and a welcome change from their normal high level solo Canberra sorties.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: Three of the four Lancaster bombers used in the film had also appeared in the Dirk Bogarde film "Appointment in London" two years earlier.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: The theatre scene showing the spotlights was filmed at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith. The dance troupe was "The Television Toppers", on loan for one day filming, under contract from the BBC. The singer was June Powell, she sings the 1942 song "Sing Everybody Sing" by John P Long.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: The film featured several actors who would go on to be stars of cinema and TV. Robert Shaw was featured as Gibson's engineer Flt Sgt Pulford while George Baker played Flt Lt Maltby. Patrick McGoohan had a bit part as a security guard, standing guard outside the briefing room. He delivered the line—"Sorry, old boy, it's secret—you can't go in. Now, c'mon, hop it!", which was cut from some prints of the film. Richard Thorp played Sqn Ldr Maudslay.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: "The Dam Busters March", by Eric Coates, is for many synonymous with the film, as well as with the exploit itself, and remains a favourite military band item at flypasts and in the concert hall.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: Other than the introduction and trio section theme, the majority of the march as performed is not featured in the film soundtrack. Coates himself avoided writing music for the cinema, remembering the experiences of his fellow composer Arthur Bliss. Coates only agreed to provide an overture for the film after he was persuaded by the film's producers it was of "national importance" and pressure was put on him via his publisher, Chappell. A march he had recently completed was found to fit well with the heroic subject and was thus submitted. The majority of the soundtrack including the theme played during the raid sequence in the film was composed by Leighton Lucas.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: Philip Lane, who reconstructed parts of Leighton Lucas's orchestral score (which had been lost) notes that Lucas created his own main theme "which seems to play hide and seek with Coates’s throughout the film, both vying for supremacy."


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: Gibson had a dog called Nigger, a black Labrador which was the mascot of No. 617 Squadron. Gibson owned the dog when he was previously a member of 106 Squadron. Nigger often accompanied Gibson on training flights and was a great favourite of the members of both 106 and 617 Squadrons. He was noted for his liking of beer, which he drank from his own bowl in the Officers' Mess.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: Nigger died on 16 May 1943, the day of the "Dam Busters" raid, when he was hit by a car. He was buried at midnight as Gibson was leading the raid. The dog's name was used as a single codeword whose transmission conveyed that the Möhne Dam had been breached. In the film, the dog was portrayed in several scenes; his name and the codeword were mentioned several times. Some of these scenes were sampled in the film "Pink Floyd – The Wall" (1982).


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: In 1999, British television network ITV broadcast a censored version of the film, removing all utterances of "Nigger". ITV blamed regional broadcaster London Weekend Television, which in turn alleged that a junior staff member had been responsible for the unauthorised cuts. When ITV again showed a censored version in June 2001, it was condemned by the "Index on Censorship" as "unnecessary and ridiculous" and because the edits introduced continuity errors. The British Channel 4 screened the censored American version in July 2007, in which the dialogue was dubbed so as to call the dog "Trigger", this screening took place just after the planned remake was announced. In September 2007, as part of the BBC Summer of British Film series, "The Dam Busters" was shown at selected cinemas across the UK in its uncut format. The original, uncensored, version was also shown on 1 and 5 January 2013, by Channel 5. It was the version, distributed by StudioCanal, containing shots of the bomber flying into a hill.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: In 2020, Film 4 broadcast an edited version, possibly re-dubbed in a few places, where the dog's name is removed, addressed as "old boy" or referred to as "my dog".


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: The film is largely historically accurate, with only a small number of changes made for reasons of dramatic licence. Some errors derive from Paul Brickhill's book, which was written when much detail about the raid was not yet in the public domain.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: "The Dambusters" received a Royal world premiere at the Empire, Leicester Square on 16 May 1955, the twelfth anniversary of the raid. Princess Margaret attended along with Eve Gibson, Guy Gibson's widow and his father. Richard Todd, Barnes Wallis and the surviving members of 617 Squadron who had taken part in the mission were all guests of honour. The premiere helped to raise money and awareness for various RAF charities.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: Reviews upon its release were positive. "Variety" described the film as having great attention to detail.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: Over time, the film's reputation has grown and is now regarded as a beloved classic of British cinema. The British Film Institute placed "The Dam Busters" as the 68th greatest British film. In 2004, the magazine "Total Film" named "The Dam Busters" the 43rd greatest British film of all time. In a 2015 review, "The Guardian" stated that "The Dam Busters" remains very well made and entertaining. The film holds a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: Richard Todd considered the film as one of his favourites of all those that he appeared in, and went on to appear at many Dambusters themed events.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Special Effects, and was also nominated for BAFTA awards for Best British Film, Best Screenplay and Best Film From Any Source.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: The film was the most successful film at the British box office in 1955 but performed poorly at the US box office, like most British war movies of this era.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: On 16 May 2008, a commemoration of the 65th anniversary was held at Derwent Reservoir, including a flypast by a Lancaster, Spitfire, and Hurricane. The event was attended by actor Richard Todd, representing the film crew and Les Munro, the last surviving pilot from the original raid, as well as Mary Stopes-Roe, the elder daughter of Sir Barnes Wallis.


title: The Dam Busters (film)

text: On 17 May 2018, a commemoration of the 75th anniversary was held, in which a restored version of the film was broadcast live from the Royal Albert Hall, and hosted by Dan Snow. The film was simulcast into over 300 cinemas nationwide.