title: Alpha Flight

text: During the ensuing fight, Alpha Flight managed to capture Persuasion as she is a component for a cure that would be used against the Unity Process. Alpha Flight, Wolverine, and Taskmaster are then prepared to take Canada back as Master of the World comes out of hiding. Master of the World begins his attack on Parliament Hill with Agent Jeff Brown and Claire Hudson present in his spaceship. He even manages to kill Gary Cody, his purpose served. Guardian continues to fight Vindicator as she orders the rest of Alpha Strike to free Persuasion and destroy the machine connected to her.


title: Alpha Flight

text: Alpha Flight defeats Alpha Strike. Vindicator (still under of Master of the World's mental control) helps Alpha Flight against Master of the World when he attempts to kill Claire. Alpha Flight successfully creates the machine to free the people that Master of the World had under his mental control. They kill Master of the World, but Vindicator flies away with Claire. Afterward, Alpha Flight celebrates after the Unity Party is abolished.


title: Alpha Flight

text: Alpha Flight later aids Red Hulk when the Mayan Gods appear on Earth. The battle results with Aurora, Sasquatch, and Snowbird in a coma, but they recover.


title: Alpha Flight

text: A different version of Alpha Flight debuted as part of the "All-New, All-Different Marvel" event. This version is a space program that becomes Earth's line of defense from extraterrestrial threats and resides in the Alpha Flight Low-Orbit Space Station. Its members include Captain Marvel, Abigail Brand, Aurora, Puck and Sasquatch. The first wing of the Triskelion is where the ground crew of the Alpha Flight space program resides.


title: Alpha Flight

text: Black Panther also sent a group of Alpha Flight explorers to search for the origin of the Mena Ngai. While exploring the Vega System, the explorers' travels took them through a temporal anomaly into the past, where they established over the next two-thousand years the Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda, named after their homeland.


title: Alpha Flight

text: During the "Civil War II" storyline, it is revealed that the Alpha Flight Space Program is overseen by its Board of Governors which consists of representatives of the different nations of Earth and other planets that share the Alpha Flight Space Program's interests. Known members of the Alpha Flight Space Program's Board of Governors are Black Panther of Wakanda, Henry Peter Gyrich of the United States, Philippe Beaulieu of Canada (revealed to be a revived Master of the World in disguise), Mentor of the Shi'ar, Bar-Konn of the Kree, an unnamed Rigellian ambassador, and an unnamed Kronan ambassador.


title: Alpha Flight

text: During the "Secret Empire" crossover, Alpha Flight assisted Captain Marvel with protecting Earth from a Chitauri invasion, but were trapped in space once Captain America activated a force field around Earth.


title: Alpha Flight

text: In order to track down Hulk after he escaped from General Reginald Fortean's custody, a depowered Walter Langkowski started the space program's version of Gamma Flight.


title: Alpha Flight

text: The original lineup of Alpha Flight would be revived as Canada's top superhero team once more in their post-space program years, consisting of Guardian, Aurora, Northstar, Snowbird, Sasquatch, Puck and Marrina.


title: Alpha Flight

text: Alpha Flight has fought many criminals and malevolent entities. Many were unique to them as they were based in Canada. Notable examples include:


title: Alpha Flight

text: In the "Ultimate Marvel" reality, Alpha Flight debuted in "Ultimate X-Men" #94 with Vindicator (formally Col. John Wraith of Weapon X), Shaman, Jubilee, Sunfire, Sasquatch, Snowbird and Aurora. The team ambushes the X-Men in the middle of a friendly baseball game. All of its members appear to use godlike powers; they easily defeat the X-Men and kidnap NorthStar. It is later revealed by Wolverine, who apparently has a history with them, that they used a drug called Banshee to enhance their abilities, making them more powerful than normal mutants. Vindicator claims that Alpha Flight is the first internationally sanctioned mutant team made powerful enough to take on any "considerable" threats such as the Liberators, the Brotherhood, and the Ultimates, as Vindicator sees the latter as loyal only to America and Alpha Flight to the world. They are defeated by Colossus's team of X-Men, who were also being powered by Banshee.


title: Alpha Flight

text: In issue #11 of "Marvel Adventures Iron Man", Tony Stark travels to Nunavut to try to find his father Howard. As he is flying through a series of mountains, he is attacked by Alpha Flight after Northstar and Aurora mistake him for a training robot built by Guardian. After the real drone appears, Sasquatch and Guardian make some hasty apologies before Iron Man continues on his mission. Later in the issue, Alpha Flight aids Iron Man in a battle against the Living Laser.


title: Alpha Flight

text: A zombified version of Alpha Flight (consisting of Guardian, Northstar, Aurora, Sasquatch, Puck, and Snowbird) appeared in the first issue of "", attacking the X-Men at the Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngsters, and killing Professor X in the process. They are later killed by Magneto, who uses his powers to make various metallic objects pierce their brains.


title: Alpha Flight

text: In "Old Man Logan" vol. 2 #17, Logan is shown a vision of the dead Alpha Flight (consisting of Guardian, Northstar, Aurora, Sasquatch, Puck and Snowbird) by a young Jean Grey.


title: Alpha Flight

text: Alpha Flight appeared in the "", consisting of Vindicator, Puck, Snowbird, Shaman, Northstar, Aurora, Sasquatch, and Dr. Heather Hudson.


title: Sigeberht of Wessex

text: Sigeberht succeeded his distant relative Cuthred, but was then accused of acting unjustly. After ruling a year he was accused of unlawful acts and removed from power by the witan, a council of nobles. This council was led by Cynewulf who succeeded Sigeberht. The former Sigeberht was given control of Hampshire. There, he was accused of murder, driven out and ultimately killed. It is possible that this happened under the influence of Æthelbald of Mercia. His brother Cyneheard was also driven out, but returned in 786 to kill Sigeberht's successor Cynewulf.


title: Scott's Tots

text: "Scott's Tots" is the twelfth episode of the sixth season of the American comedy series "The Office" and the show's 112th episode overall. It was written by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, and directed by B. J. Novak, marking his directorial debut on the network series. It aired in the United States on NBC on December 3, 2009. Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg submitted this episode for the 2010 Emmys.


title: Scott's Tots

text: In the episode, it is revealed that ten years earlier, Michael Scott (Steve Carell) heedlessly promised to pay for the college tuition of an entire local third grade class. Now, lacking the personal wealth necessary to fulfill his promise, he and Erin Hannon (Ellie Kemper) must go tell the students, who are now high school seniors, that they will not be receiving the money. Meanwhile, in Michael's absence, Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) convinces Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) to start an employee-of-the-month program with the intention of getting Jim into trouble. The episode received critical acclaim, with many recognizing it as a classic "Office" episode.


title: Scott's Tots

text: Michael Scott (Steve Carell) realizes he cannot keep a promise he made to a group of underprivileged children ten years ago: that he would pay for their college tuition provided they graduate high school. He reluctantly visits their high school with Erin Hannon (Ellie Kemper) to break the bad news. Michael's promise encouraged the students to excel academically, and they greet Michael with standing applause. When Michael addresses them, he congratulates everyone for being able to graduate from high school, before admitting that he does not have the money to pay for college. Everyone is upset, and Michael fruitlessly attempts to calm them by offering them laptop batteries. One of the students follows Michael outside to tell him what he did was “messed up,” and Michael offers to at least pay for his books if he attends college.


title: Scott's Tots

text: In the car on the way back to the office, Michael continues to lament his promise, but Erin comforts him by pointing out that this group of students have a much higher graduation rate, and that, at the very least, will help them significantly. Michael then warms up to Erin, telling her she is doing a good job and asking about her future plans. He then relates to her that Kevin Malone (Brian Baumgartner) was originally going to be hired to work in the warehouse, but Michael saw "something" in him and made him their new accountant instead, which Erin wants to be; the two drive on singing happily.


title: Scott's Tots

text: Meanwhile, on a suggestion from Andy Bernard (Ed Helms), Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) starts an employee of the month program to increase office morale. Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson), however, schemes to get Jim fired. He gives Jim a performance sheet to determine the employee of the month, using complete anonymity to ensure a fair and unbiased assessment. Dwight also collects money from each of the employees as part of a cash prize, even though Jim did not authorize this. At the conclusion of the day, Jim announces the employee of the month, and it is revealed that he apparently picked himself by accident. Everyone starts blaming Jim for using this gimmick as a ploy to take money away from the office. Jim tries to pin part of the failure on Dwight, but since he has taken numerous precautions to protect himself from direct blame, he passively fires back. Jim decides to forgo the award and give it to the next best employee, but things are only made worse when that person is revealed to be his wife Pam (Jenna Fischer). Everyone reaches their breaking point when a cake is delivered to the office with Jim's face on it, and with the words "It Could Only Be You."


title: Scott's Tots

text: With the primary part of his plan a success, having manipulated the assessment and ordered the cake, Dwight initiates the second part of his plan by calling CFO David Wallace (Andy Buckley) multiple times, each time pretending to be a different employee complaining about Jim's failed program. An angry David calls Jim back and chews him out for the mishap. Almost assured that this will get Jim fired, Dwight listens in to the phone conversation from the pen recorder he had left in Jim's office in a previous episode ("The Lover"). But instead of firing Jim, David apologizes to him for losing his temper and praises Jim, adding that David and his wife are "still on" to go out with Jim and Pam. Angry that his plan has not worked, Dwight returns to the drawing board. At the end of the episode, Ryan Howard (B. J. Novak) confronts Dwight with Dwight's "Diabolical Plan" document he found, but expresses his desire to also get Jim fired. The two form an alliance.


title: Scott's Tots

text: "Scott's Tots" first aired on NBC on December 3, 2009. In its original American broadcast, the episode was viewed by an estimated 8.055 million viewers and received a 4.1 rating/11 percent share in the 18–49 demographic. This means that it was seen by 4.1 percent of all 18- to 49-year-olds, and 11 percent of all 18- to 49-year-olds watching television at the time of the broadcast. In addition, the episode ranked first in its half-hour timeslot and was the highest-rated NBC series of the night.


title: Scott's Tots

text: Dan Phillips of IGN gave the episode a 9.4 out of 10 rating, denoting an "amazing" episode. It was also the highest score given to any sixth-season episode by the site. Phillips called the episode "an instant classic and another phenomenal installment of this season, which hit some rough patches but seems to have recovered brilliantly", especially pointing out the scene between Michael and the irate students. Phillips felt that the main scene between Michael and the children was pivotal and that it "might just rank atop "The Office"s long list and rich history of uncomfortable yet hilarious moments".


title: Scott's Tots

text: Joel Keller of "The Huffington Post" wrote that "as the kids from that third-grade class praised Michael and told him how much his gift meant to them, all I could think of was, 'this is so wrong.' [...] The pain on Michael's face was palpable. I had the same expression." He, however, was more critical of the episode's subplot, noting that he was "getting tired of Dwight's diabolical plans". He felt that Jim should have caught onto Dwight's plan, rather than fall for it. Keller ultimately concluded that the episode was "a solid job this week. Not the best of the season, but not bad, either."


title: Scott's Tots

text: Nathan Rabin of "The A.V. Club" called the episode "kick-ass" and awarded it an "A−". Rabin commended the fact that Michael's bad-idea-for-the-right-reason made him likable. Furthermore, he noted that both Michael and the kids engaged in "mutually beneficial self-deception"; the former thought he could save those in need, and the latter had something to look forward to. Rabin also enjoyed the subplot involving Jim and Dwight, noting that it "afforded [actor Rainn Wilson] an opportunity to do surprisingly accurate, unconscionably mean impersonations of Stanley and Toby".


title: Scott's Tots

text: Several critics, on the other hand, felt that the main plot was too mean to be humorous. Gage Henry of "Paste" felt that the episode was weak because "one [of its storylines was] rather flimsy and the other ending up too atrocious to watch." He noted that the formula of "Jim tries to conduct one normal day at the office while Michael is out making an ass of himself somewhere" was "becoming bland". Ultimately, however, he could not decide if the episode "was commendably funny, or if it was as humorous as a child realizing that Santa Claus doesn’t exist." Henry graded the episode a 6 out of 10. Steve Marsi at TVFanatic did not enjoy it and was succinct in his review: "Last night's 'Scott's Tots' was not one of "The Office"s best. [...] it was actually a little depressing. Promising kids college tuition, then yanking it away?"


title: Scott's Tots

text: The episode has become notorious among fans of the show as one of its most awkward and uncomfortable episodes. Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey discussed the episode with B. J. Novak for their "Office Ladies" podcast on April 13, 2022.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: The status of women in the Victorian era was often seen as an illustration of the striking discrepancy between the United Kingdom's national power and wealth and what many, then and now, consider its appalling social conditions. During the era symbolized by the reign of a female monarch, Queen Victoria, women did not have the right to vote, sue, or – if married – own property. At the same time, women participated in the paid workforce in increasing numbers following the Industrial Revolution. Feminist ideas spread among the educated middle classes, discriminatory laws were repealed, and the women's suffrage movement gained momentum in the last years of the Victorian era.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: In the Victorian era, women were seen, by the middle classes at least, as belonging to the domestic sphere, and this stereotype required them to provide their husbands with a clean home, to put food on the table, and to raise their children. Women's rights were extremely limited in this era, losing ownership of their wages, all of their physical property, excluding land property, and all other cash they generated once married. When a Victorian man and woman married, the rights of the woman were legally given over to her spouse. Under the law, the married couple became one entity represented by the husband, placing him in control of all property, earnings, and money. In addition to losing money and material goods to their husbands, Victorian wives became property to their husbands, giving them rights to what their bodies produced: children, sex and domestic labour. Marriage abrogated a woman's right to consent to sexual intercourse with her husband, giving him "ownership" over her body. Their mutual matrimonial consent therefore became a contract to give herself to her husband as he desired according to a modern feminist view.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: The rights and privileges of Victorian women were limited, and both single and married women had to live with hardships and disadvantages. Victorian women were disadvantaged both financially and sexually, enduring inequalities within their marriages and society. There were sharp distinctions between men's and women's rights during this era; men were allotted more stability, financial status, and power over their homes and women. Marriages for Victorian women became contracts which were extremely difficult if not impossible to get out of during the Victorian era. Women's rights groups fought for equality and over time made strides in attaining rights and privileges; however, many Victorian women endured their husband's control and even cruelty, including sexual violence, verbal abuse, and economic deprivation, with no way out. While husbands participated in affairs with other women, wives endured infidelity, as they had no rights to divorce on these grounds, and divorce was considered to be a social taboo.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: By the Victorian era, the concept of "pater familias", meaning the husband as head of the household and moral leader of his family, was firmly entrenched in British culture. A wife's proper role was to love, honour, and obey her husband as her marriage vows stated. A wife's place in the family hierarchy was secondary to her husband but far from being considered unimportant. A wife's duties to tend to her husband and properly raise her children were considered crucial cornerstones of social stability by the Victorians.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Representations of ideal wives were abundant in Victorian culture, providing women with their role models. The Victorian ideal of the tirelessly patient, sacrificing wife is depicted in "The Angel in the House", a popular poem by Coventry Patmore, published in 1854:


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: There are many publications from the Victorian era that give explicit direction for the man's role in the home and his marriage. Advice such as "The burden, or, rather the privilege, of making home happy is not the wife's alone. There is something demanded of the lord and master and if he fails in his part, domestic misery must follow" (published in 1883 in "Our Manners and Social Customs" by Daphne Dale) was common in many publications of the time.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Literary critics of the time suggested that superior feminine qualities of delicacy, sensitivity, sympathy, and sharp observation gave women novelists a superior insight into stories about home, family, and love. This made their work highly attractive to the middle-class women who bought the novels and the serialized versions that appeared in many magazines. However, a few early feminists called for aspirations beyond the home. By the end of the century, the "New Woman" was riding a bicycle, wearing bloomers, signing petitions, supporting worldwide mission activities, and talking about the vote.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Feminists of the 20th century reacted in hostile fashion to the "Angel of the House" theme since they felt the norm was still holding back their aspirations. Virginia Woolf was adamant. In a lecture to the Women's Service League in 1941, she said "killing the Angel in the House was part of the occupation of a woman writer."


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: 'The Household General' is a term coined in 1861 by Isabella Beeton in her influential manual "Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management". Here she explained that the mistress of a household is comparable to the commander of an army or the leader of an enterprise. To run a respectable household and secure the happiness, comfort and well-being of her family she must perform her duties intelligently and thoroughly. For example, she had to organize, delegate and instruct her servants, which was not an easy task as many of them were not reliable. Isabella Beeton's upper-middle-class readers may also have had a large complement of "domestics", a staff requiring supervision by the mistress of the house. Beeton advises her readers to maintain a "housekeeping account book" to track spending. She recommends daily entries and checking the balance monthly. In addition to tracking servants' wages, the mistress of the house was responsible for tracking payments to tradesmen such as butchers and bakers. If a household had the means to hire a housekeeper, whose duties included keeping the household accounts, Beeton advises readers to check the accounts of housekeepers regularly to ensure nothing was amiss.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Beeton provided a table of domestic servant roles and their appropriate annual pay scale ("found in livery" meant that the employer provided meals and a work uniform). The sheer number of Victorian servants and their duties makes it clear why expertise in logistical matters would benefit the mistress of the house. Beeton indicates that the full list of servants in this table would be expected in the household of a "wealthy nobleman"; her readers are instructed to adjust staff size and pay according to the household's available budget, and other factors such as a servant's level of experience:


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: "The Household General" was expected to organise parties and dinners to bring prestige to her husband, also making it possible for them to network. Beeton gives extensively detailed instructions on how to supervise servants in preparation for hosting dinners and balls. The etiquette to be observed in sending and receiving formal invitations is given, as well as the etiquette to be observed at the events themselves. The mistress of the house also had an important role in supervising the education of the youngest children. Beeton makes it clear that a woman's place is in the home, and her domestic duties come first. Social activities as an individual were less important than household management and socialising as her husband's companion. They were to be strictly limited:


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Advice books on housekeeping and the duties of an ideal wife were plentiful during the Victorian era, and sold well among the middle class. In addition to Mrs. Beeton's "Book of Household Management", there were "Infant Nursing and the Management of Young Children" (1866) and "Practical Housekeeping; or, the duties of a home-wife" (1867) by Mrs. Frederick Pedley, and "From Kitchen to Garret" by Jane Ellen Panton, which went through 11 editions in a decade. Shirley Forster Murphy, a doctor and medical writer, wrote the influential "Our Homes, and How to Make them Healthy" (1883), before he served as London's chief medical officer in the 1890s.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Domestic life for a working-class family was far less comfortable. Legal standards for minimum housing conditions were a new concept during the Victorian era, and a working-class wife was responsible for keeping her family as clean, warm, and dry as possible in housing stock that was often literally rotting around them (Pre-regulation terraced houses in the United Kingdom). In London, overcrowding was endemic in the slums inhabited by the working classes. (See Life and Labour of the People in London.) Families living in single rooms were not unusual. The worst areas had examples such as 90 people crammed into a 10-room house, or 12 people living in a single room (7 feet 3 inches by 14 feet). Rents were exorbitant; 85 percent of working-class households in London spent at least one-fifth of their income on rent, with 50 percent paying one-quarter to one-half of their income on rent. The poorer the neighbourhood, the higher the rents. Rents in the Old Nichol area near Hackney, per cubic foot, were five to eleven times higher than rents in the fine streets and squares of the West End of London. The owners of the slum housing included peers, churchmen, and investment trusts for estates of long-deceased members of the upper classes.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Domestic chores for women without servants meant a great deal of washing and cleaning. Coal-dust from stoves (and factories) was the bane of the Victorian woman's housekeeping existence. Carried by wind and fog, it coated windows, clothing, furniture and rugs. Washing clothing and linens would usually be done one day a week, scrubbed by hand in a large zinc or copper tub. Some water would be heated and added to the wash tub, and perhaps a handful of soda to soften the water. Curtains were taken down and washed every fortnight; they were often so blackened by coal smoke that they had to be soaked in salted water before being washed. Scrubbing the front wooden doorstep of the home every morning was also an important chore to maintain respectability.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: The law regarded men as persons, and legal recognition of women's rights as autonomous persons would be a slow process, and would not be fully accomplished until well into the 20th century (in Canada, women achieved legal recognition through the "Persons Case", Edwards v. Canada (Attorney General) in 1929). Women lost the rights to the property they brought into the marriage, even following divorce; a husband had complete legal control over any income earned by his wife; women were not allowed to open banking accounts; and married women were not able to conclude a contract without her husband's legal approval. These property restrictions made it difficult or impossible for a woman to leave a failed marriage, or to exert any control over her finances if her husband was incapable or unwilling to do so on her behalf.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Domestic violence towards wives was given increasing attention by social and legal reformers as the 19th century continued. The first animal-cruelty legislation in Sudan was passed in 1824, however, legal protection from domestic violence was not granted to women the Criminal Procedure Act 1853. Even this law did not outright ban violence by a man against his wife and children; it imposed legal limits on the amount of force that was permitted.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Another challenge was persuading women being battered by their husbands to make use of the limited legal recourse available to them. In 1843, an organisation founded by animal-rights and pro-temperance activists was established to help this social cause. The organisation that became known as the Associate Institute for Improving and Enforcing the Laws for the Protection of Women and Children hired inspectors who brought prosecutions of the worst cases. It focused its efforts on work-class women, since Victorian practise was to deny that middle-class or aristocratic families were in need of such intervention. There were sometimes cracks in the facade of propriety. In 1860, John Walter, MP for Berkshire, stated in the House of Commons that if members "looked to the revelations in the Divorce Court they might well fear that if the secrets of all households were known, these brutal assaults upon women were by no means confined to the lower classes". A strong deterrent to middle-class or aristocratic wives seeking legal recourse, or divorce, was the social stigma and shunning that would follow such revelations in a public trial.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Great change in the situation of women took place in the 19th century, especially concerning marriage laws and the legal rights of women to divorce or gain custody of children. The situation that fathers always received custody of their children, leaving the mother without any rights, slowly started to change. The Custody of Infants Act 1839 gave mothers of unblemished character access to their children in the event of separation or divorce, and the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 gave women limited access to divorce. But while the husband only had to prove his wife's adultery, a woman had to prove her husband had not only committed adultery but also incest, bigamy, cruelty or desertion. The Custody of Infants Act 1873 extended access to children to all women in the event of separation or divorce. In 1878, after an amendment to the Matrimonial Causes Act, women could secure a separation on the grounds of cruelty and claim custody of their children. Magistrates even authorised protection orders to wives whose husbands have been convicted of aggravated assault. An important change was caused by an amendment to the Married Women's Property Act 1884. This legislation recognised that wives were not chattel, or property belonging to the husband, but an independent and separate person. Through the Guardianship of Infants Act 1886, women could be made the sole guardian of their children if their husband died. Women slowly had their rights changed so that they could eventually leave their husbands for good. Some notable dates include:


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: The ideal Victorian woman was pure, chaste, refined, and modest. This ideal was supported by etiquette and manners. The etiquette extended to the pretension of never acknowledging the use of undergarments (in fact, they were sometimes generically referred to as "unmentionables"). The discussion of such a topic, it was feared, would gravitate towards unhealthy attention on anatomical details. As one Victorian lady expressed it: "[those] are not things, my dear, that we speak of; indeed, we try not even to think of them". The pretence of avoiding acknowledgement of anatomical realities met with embarrassing failure on occasion. In 1859, the Hon. Eleanor Stanley wrote about an incident where the Duchess of Manchester moved too quickly while manoeuvring over a stile, tripping over her large hoop skirt:


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: However, despite the fact that Victorians considered the mention of women's undergarments in mixed company unacceptable, men's entertainment made great comedic material out of the topic of ladies' bloomers, including men's magazines and music hall skits.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Equestrian riding was an exerting pastime that became popular as a leisure activity among the growing middle classes. Many etiquette manuals for riding were published for this new market. For women, preserving modesty while riding was crucial. Breeches and riding trousers for women were introduced, for the practical reason of preventing chafing, yet these were worn under the dress. Riding clothes for women were made at the same tailors that made men's riding apparel, rather than at a dressmaker, so female assistants were hired to help with fittings.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: The advent of colonialism and world travel presented new obstacles for women. Travel on horseback (or on donkeys, or even camels) was often impossible to do sidesaddle because the animal had not been "broken" (trained) for sidesaddle riding. Riding costumes for women were introduced that used breeches or zouave trousers beneath long coats in some countries, while jodhpurs breeches used by men in India were adopted by women. These concessions were made so that women could ride astride a horse when necessary, but they were still exceptions to the rule of riding sidesaddle until after World War I. Travel writer Isabella Bird (1831–1904) was instrumental in challenging this taboo. At age 42, she travelled abroad on a doctor's recommendation. In Hawaii, she determined that seeing the islands riding sidesaddle was impractical, and switched to riding astride. She was an ambitious traveller, going to the American West, the Rocky Mountains, Japan, China, Baghdad, Tehran, and the Black Sea. Her written accounts sold briskly.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Women's physical activity was a cause of concern at the highest levels of academic research during the Victorian era. In Canada, physicians debated the appropriateness of women using bicycles:


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Women were expected to have sex with only one man, her husband. However, it was acceptable for men to have multiple partners in their life; some husbands had lengthy affairs with other women while their wives stayed with their husbands because divorce was not an option. If a woman had sexual contact with another man, she was seen as "ruined" or "fallen". Victorian literature and art was full of examples of women paying dearly for straying from moral expectations. Adulteresses met tragic ends in novels, including the ones by great writers such as Tolstoy, Flaubert or Thomas Hardy. While some writers and artists showed sympathy towards women's subjugation to this double standard, some works were didactic and reinforced the cultural norm.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: In the Victorian era, sex was not discussed openly and honestly; public discussion of sexual encounters and matters were met with ignorance, embarrassment and fear. One public opinion of women's sexual desires was that they were not very troubled by sexual urges. Even if women's desires were lurking, sexual experiences came with consequences for women and families. Limiting family sizes resulted in resisting sexual desires, except when a husband had desires which as a wife women were "contracted" to fulfill. Many people in the Victorian era were "factually uninformed and emotionally frigid about sexual matters". To discourage premarital sexual relations the New Poor Law provided that "women bear financial responsibilities for out-of-wedlock pregnancies". In 1834, women were made legally and financially supportive of their illegitimate children. Sexual relations for women could not just be about desire and feelings: this was a luxury reserved for men; the consequences of sexual interactions for women took away the physical desires that women could possess.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: The situation of women perceived as unclean was worsened through the Contagious Diseases Acts, the first of which became law in 1864. Women suspected of being unclean were subjected to an involuntary genital examination. Refusal was punishable by imprisonment; diagnosis with an illness was punishable by involuntary confinement to hospital until perceived as cured.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: The disease prevention law was only applied to women, which became the primary rallying point for activists who argued that the law was both ineffective and inherently unfair to women. Women could be picked up off the streets, suspected of prostitution on little or no evidence, and subjected to an examination. These were inexpertly performed by male police officers, making the exams painful as well as humiliating. After two extensions of the law in 1866 and 1869 the acts were finally repealed in 1896. Josephine Butler was a women's rights crusader who fought to repeal the Acts.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Women were generally expected to marry and perform household and motherly duties rather than seek formal education. Even women who were not successful in finding husbands were generally expected to remain uneducated, and to take a position in childcare (as a governess or as a supporter to other members of her family). The outlook for education-seeking women improved when Queen's College in Harley Street, London was founded in 1848 – the goal of this college was to provide governesses with a marketable education. Later, the Cheltenham Ladies' College and other girls' public schools were founded, increasing educational opportunities for women's education and leading eventually to the development of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies in 1897.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Working-class women often had occupations to make ends meet, and to ensure family income in the event that a husband became sick, injured, or died. There was no workers' compensation until late in the Victorian era, and a husband too ill or injured to work often meant an inability to pay the rent and a stay at the dreaded Victorian workhouse.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Throughout the Victorian era, some women were employed in heavy industry such as coal mines and the steel industry. Although they were employed in fewer numbers as the Victorian era continued and employment laws changed, they could still be found in certain roles. Before the Mines and Collieries Act 1842, women (and children) worked underground as "hurriers" who carted tubs of coal up through the narrow mine shafts. In Wolverhampton, the law did not have much of an impact on women's mining employment, because they mainly worked above-ground at the coal mines, sorting coal, loading canal boats, and other surface tasks. Women also traditionally did "all the chief tasks in agriculture" in all counties of England, as a government inquiry found in 1843. By the late 1860s, agricultural work was not paying well, and women turned to industrial employment.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: In areas with industrial factories, women could find employment on assembly lines for items ranging from locks to canned food. Industrial laundry services employed many women (including inmates of Magdalene asylums who did not receive wages for their work). Women were also commonly employed in the textile mills that sprang up during the industrial revolution in such cities as Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham. Working for a wage was often done from the home in London, although many women worked as "hawkers" or street vendors, who sold such things as watercress, lavender, flowers or herbs that they would collect at the Spitalfields fruit and vegetable market. Many working-class women worked as washerwomen, taking in laundry for a fee. Animal-breeding in slum flats was common, such as dogs, geese, rabbits and birds, to be sold at animal and bird markets. Housing inspectors often found livestock in slum cellars, including cows and donkeys. Spinning and winding wool, silk, and other types of piecework were a common way of earning income by working from home, but wages were very low, and hours were long; often 14 hours per day were needed to earn enough to survive. Furniture-assembling and -finishing were common piecework jobs in working-class households in London that paid relatively well. Women in particular were known as skillful "French polishers" who completed the finish on furniture. The lowest-paying jobs available to working-class London women were matchbox-making, and sorting rags in a rag factory, where flea- and lice-ridden rags were sorted to be pulped for manufacturing paper. Needlework was the single largest paid occupation for women working from home, but the work paid little, and women often had to rent sewing machines that they could not afford to buy. These home manufacturing industries became known as "sweated industries". The Select Committee of the House of Commons defined sweated industries in 1890 as "work carried on for inadequate wages and for excessive hours in unsanitary conditions". By 1906, such workers earned about a penny an hour.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Women could not expect to be paid the same wage as a man for the same work, despite the fact that women were as likely as men to be married and supporting children. In 1906, the government found that the average weekly factory wage for a woman ranged from 11s 3d to 18s 8d, whereas a man's average weekly wage was around 25s 9d. Women were also preferred by many factory owners because they could be "more easily induced to undergo severe bodily fatigue than men". Childminding was another necessary expense for many women working in factories. Pregnant women worked up until the day they gave birth and returned to work as soon as they were physically able. In 1891, a law was passed requiring women to take four weeks away from factory work after giving birth, but many women could not afford this unpaid leave, and the law was unenforceable.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: As education for girls spread literacy to the working-classes during the mid- and late-Victorian era, some ambitious young women were able to find salaried jobs in new fields, such as salesgirls, cashiers, typists and secretaries. Work as a domestic, such as a maid or cook, was common, but there was great competition for employment in the more respectable, and higher-paying, households. Private registries were established to control the employment of the better-qualified domestic servants.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Throughout the Victorian era, respectable employment for women from solidly middle-class families was largely restricted to work as a school teacher or governess. Once telephone use became widespread, work as a telephone operator became a respectable job for middle-class women needing employment.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Three medical professions were opened to women in the 19th century: nursing, midwifery, and doctoring. However, it was only in nursing, the one most subject to the supervision and authority of male doctors, that women were widely accepted. Victorians thought the doctor's profession characteristically belonged only to the male sex and a woman should not intrude upon this area but stay with the conventions the will of God has assigned to her. In conclusion, Englishmen would not have woman surgeons or physicians; they confined them to their role as "nurses".


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) was an important figure in renewing the traditional image of the nurse as the self-sacrificing, ministering angel—the 'Lady with the lamp', spreading comfort as she passed among the wounded. She succeeded in modernising the nursing profession, promoting training for women and teaching them courage, confidence and self-assertion.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Middle-class women's leisure activities included in large part traditional pastimes such as reading, embroidery, music, and traditional handicrafts. Upper-class women donated handicrafts to charity bazaars, which allowed these women to publicly display and sell their handicrafts.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: More modern pursuits were introduced to women's lives during the 19th century. Opportunities for leisure activities increased dramatically as real wages continued to grow and hours of work continued to decline. In urban areas, the nine-hour workday became increasingly the norm; the 1874 Factory Act limited the workweek to 56.5 hours, encouraging the movement toward an eventual eight-hour workday. Helped by the Bank Holiday Act of 1871, which created a number of fixed holidays, a system of routine annual vacations came into play, starting with white-collar workers and moving into the working-class. Some 200 seaside resorts emerged thanks to cheap hotels and inexpensive railway fares, widespread banking holidays and the fading of many religious prohibitions against secular activities on Sundays. Middle-class Victorians used the train services to visit the seaside. Large numbers travelling to quiet fishing villages such as Worthing, Morecambe and Scarborough began turning them into major tourist centres, and entrepreneurs led by Thomas Cook saw tourism and overseas travel as viable business models.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: By the late Victorian era, the leisure industry had emerged in all cities with many women in attendance. It provided scheduled entertainment of suitable length at convenient locales at inexpensive prices. These included sporting events, music halls, and popular theater. Women were now allowed in some sports, such as archery, tennis, badminton and gymnastics.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: In the early part of the nineteenth century, it was believed that physical activity was dangerous and inappropriate for women. Girls were taught to reserve their delicate health for the express purpose of birthing healthy children. Furthermore, the physiological difference between the sexes helped to reinforce the societal inequality. An anonymous female writer was able to contend that women were not intended to fill male roles, because "women are, as a rule, physically smaller and weaker than men; their brain is much lighter; and they are in every way unfitted for the same amount of bodily or mental labour that men are able to undertake." Yet by the end of the century, medical understanding of the benefits of exercise created a significant expansion in physical culture for girls. Thus by 1902, "The Girl's Empire" magazine was able to run a series of articles on "How to Be Strong", proclaiming, "The old-fashioned fallacies regarding health, diet, exercise, dress, &c., have nearly all been exploded, and to-day women are discarding the old ideas and methods, and entering into the new "régime" with a zest and vigour which bodes well for the future."


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Girl's magazines, such as "The Girl's Own Paper" and "The Girl's Empire" frequently featured articles encouraging girls to take up daily exercises or learn how to play a sport. Popular sports for girls included hockey, golf, cycling, tennis, fencing, and swimming. Of course, many of these sports were limited to the middle and upper classes who could afford the necessary materials and free time needed to play. Nonetheless, the inclusion of girls in physical culture created a new space for girls to be visible outside of the home and to partake in activities previously only open to boys. Sports became central to the lives of many middle-class girls, to the point where social commentators worried it would overshadow other cultural concerns. For example, a 1902 "Girl's Own Paper" article on "Athletics for Girls" bewailed, "To hear some modern schoolgirls, and even modern mothers, talk, one would suppose that hockey was the chief end of all education! The tone of the school—the intellectual training—these come in the second place. Tennis, cricket, but above all, hockey!"


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Nevertheless, older cultural conventions connecting girls to maternity and domesticity continued to influence girls' development. Thus, while girls had more freedom than ever before, much of the physical culture for girls was simultaneously justified in terms of motherhood: athletic, healthy girls would have healthier children, better able to improve the British race. For instance, an early article advising girls to exercise stresses the future role of girls as mothers to vindicate her argument: "If, then, the importance of duly training the body in conjunction with the mind is thus recognised in the cause of our boys, surely the future wives and mothers of England—for such is our girls' destiny—may lay claim to a no less share of attention in this respect."


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Victorian women's clothing followed trends that emphasised elaborate dresses, skirts with wide volume created by the use of layered material such as crinolines, hoop skirt frames, and heavy fabrics. Because of the impracticality and health impact of the era's fashions, a reform movement began among women.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: The ideal silhouette of the time demanded a narrow waist, which was accomplished by constricting the abdomen with a laced corset. While the silhouette was striking, and the dresses themselves were often exquisitely detailed creations, the fashions were cumbersome. At best, they restricted women's movements and at worst, they had a harmful effect on women's health. Physicians turned their attention to the use of corsets and determined that they caused several medical problems: compression of the thorax, restricted breathing, organ displacement, poor circulation, and prolapsed uterus.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Articles advocating the reform of women's clothing by the British National Health Society, the Ladies' Dress Association, and the Rational Dress Society were reprinted in "The Canada Lancet", Canada's medical journal. In 1884, Dr. J. Algernon Temple of Toronto even voiced concern that the fashions were having a negative impact on the health of young women from the working classes. He pointed out that a young working-class woman was likely to spend a large part of her earnings on fine hats and shawls, while "her feet are improperly protected, and she wears no flannel petticoat or woollen stockings".


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Florence Pomeroy, Lady Haberton, was president of the Rational Dress movement in Britain. At a National Health Society exhibition held in 1882, Viscountess Haliburton presented her invention of a "divided skirt", which was a long skirt that cleared the ground, with separate halves at the bottom made with material attached to the bottom of the skirt. She hoped that her invention would become popular by supporting women's freedom of physical movement, but the British public was not impressed by the invention, perhaps because of the negative "unwomanly" association of the style with the American Bloomers movement. Amelia Jenks Bloomer had encouraged the wearing of visible bloomers by feminists to assert their right to wear comfortable and practical clothing, but it was no more than a passing fashion itself among radical feminists. The movement to reform women's dress would persist and have longterm success, however; by the 1920s, Coco Chanel was enormously successful at selling a progressive, far less restrictive silhouette that abandoned the corset and raised hemlines. The new silhouette symbolised modernism for trendy young women and became the 20th century standard. Other Paris designers continued reintroducing pants for women and the trend was gradually adopted over the next century.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Fashion trends, in one sense, travelled "full circle" over the course of the Victorian era. The popular women's styles during the Georgian era, and at the very beginning of Victoria's reign, emphasised a simple style influenced by flowing gowns worn by women in Ancient Greece and Rome. The Empire waist silhouette was replaced by a trend towards ornate styles and an artificial silhouette, with the restrictiveness of women's clothing reaching its low point during the mid-century passion for narrow corseted waists and hoop skirts. The iconic wide-brimmed women's hats of the later Victorian era also followed the trend towards ostentatious display. Hats began the Victorian era as simple bonnets. By the 1880s, milliners were tested by the competition among women to top their outfits with the most creative (and extravagant) hats, designed with expensive materials such as silk flowers and exotic plumes such as ostrich and peacock. As the Victorian era drew to a close, however, fashions were showing indications of a popular backlash against excessive styles. Model, actress and socialite Lillie Langtry took London by storm in the 1870s, attracting notice for wearing simple black dresses to social events. Combined with her natural beauty, the style appeared dramatic. Fashions followed her example (as well as Queen Victoria's wearing of mourning black later in her reign). According to Harold Koda, the former Curator-in-chief of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, "The predominantly black palette of mourning dramatizes the evolution of period silhouettes and the increasing absorption of fashion ideals into this most codified of etiquettes," said Koda, "The veiled widow could elicit sympathy as well as predatory male advances. As a woman of sexual experience without marital constraints, she was often imagined as a potential threat to the social order."


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Queen Victoria reigned as the monarch of Britain's colonies and as Empress of India. The influence of British imperialism and British culture was powerful throughout the Victorian era. Women's roles in the colonial countries were determined by the expectations associated with loyalty to the Crown and the cultural standards that it symbolised.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: The upper classes of Canada were almost without exception of British origin during the Victorian era. At the beginning of the Victorian era, British North America included several separate colonies that joined together as a Confederation in 1867 to create Canada. Military and government officials and their families came to British North America from England or Scotland, and less often were of Protestant Irish origin. Most business interests were controlled by Canadians who were of British stock. English-speaking minorities who immigrated to Canada struggled for economic and government influence, including large numbers of Roman Catholic Irish and later Ukrainians, Poles, and other European immigrants. French-Canadians remained largely culturally isolated from English-speaking Canadians (a situation later described in "Two Solitudes" by Hugh MacLennan). Visible minority groups, such as indigenous First Nations and Chinese labourers, were marginalised and suffered profound discrimination. Women's status was thus heavily dependent upon their ethnic identity as well as their place within the dominant British class structure.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: English-speaking Canadian writers became popular, especially Catharine Parr Traill and her sister Susanna Moodie, middle-class English settlers who published memoirs of their demanding lives as pioneers. Traill published "The Backwoods of Canada" (1836) and "Canadian Crusoes" (1852), and Moodie published "Roughing it in the Bush" (1852) and "Life in the Clearings" (1853). Their memoirs recount the harshness of life as women settlers, but were nonetheless popular.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Upper-class Canadian women emulated British culture and imported as much of it as possible across the Atlantic. Books, magazines, popular music, and theatre productions were all imported to meet women's consumer demand.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Upper-class women supported philanthropic causes similar to the educational and nursing charities championed by upper-class women in England. The Victorian Order of Nurses, still in existence, was founded in 1897 as a gift to Queen Victoria to commemorate her Diamond Jubilee. The Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire, founded in 1900, supports educational bursaries and book awards to promote Canadian patriotism, but also to support knowledge of the British Empire. Both organisations had Queen Victoria as their official patron. One of the patrons of Halifax's Victoria School of Art and Design (founded in 1887 and later named the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design) was Anna Leonowens. Women began making headway in their struggle to gain access to higher education: in 1875, the first woman university graduate in Canada was Grace Annie Lockhart (Mount Allison University). In 1880, Emily Stowe became the first woman licensed to practice medicine in Canada.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Women's legal rights made slow progress throughout the 19th century. In 1859, Upper Canada passed a law allowing married women to own property. In 1885, Alberta passed a law allowing unmarried women who owned property gained the right to vote and hold office in school matters.


title: Women in the Victorian era

text: Women's suffrage would not be achieved until the World War I period. Suffrage activism began during the later decades of the Victorian era. In 1883, the Toronto Women's Literary and Social Progress Club met and established the Canadian Women's Suffrage Association.


title: Japanese wordplay

text: Japanese wordplay relies on the nuances of the Japanese language and Japanese script for humorous effect. Double entendres have a rich history in Japanese entertainment (such as in kakekotoba) due to the language's large number of homographs (different meanings for a given spelling) and homophones (different meanings for a given pronunciation).


title: Japanese wordplay

text: or "pivot words" are an early form of Japanese wordplay used in waka poetry, wherein some words represent two homonyms. The presence of multiple meanings within these words allowed poets to impart more meaning into fewer words.


title: Japanese wordplay

text: is an especially common form of Japanese wordplay, wherein homophonous words are associated with a given series of letters, numbers or symbols, in order to associate a new meaning with that series. The new words can be used to express a superstition about certain letters or numbers. More commonly, however, "goroawase" is used as a mnemonic technique, especially in the memorization of numbers such as dates in history, scientific constants and phone numbers.


title: Japanese wordplay

text: Every digit has a set of possible phonetic values, due to the variety of valid Japanese kanji readings ("kun'yomi" and "on'yomi") and English-origin pronunciations for numbers in Japanese. Often, readings are created by taking the standard reading and retaining only the first syllable (for example, "roku" becomes "ro"). Goroawase substitutions are well known as mnemonics, notably in the selection of memorable telephone numbers used by companies and the memorization of numbers such as years in the study of history.


title: Japanese wordplay

text: Mnemonics are formed by selecting a suitable reading for a given number; the tables below list the most common readings, though other readings are also possible. Variants of readings may be produced through consonant voicing (via a dakuten or handakuten) or gemination (via a sokuon), vowel lengthening (via a chōonpu), or the insertion of the nasal mora "n" ().


title: Japanese wordplay

text: 1492, the year of discovery of America, can be read as "i-yo-ku-ni" and appended with "ga mieta" to form the phrase "Alright! I can see land!" (). Additionally, "i-yo-ku-ni" itself could simply be interpreted as "alright, country" (). The alternative reading "i-shi-ku-ni" is not typically associated with a particular meaning, but is used to memorize the year.


title: Japanese wordplay

text: 23564, the length of a sidereal day (23 hours, 56 minutes, 4 seconds), can be read as "ni-san-go-ro-shi", which sounds similar to "nii-san koroshi" () or in English, "killing one's older brother".


title: Japanese wordplay

text: 3.14159265, the first nine digits of pi, can be read as "san-i-shi-i-ko-ku-ni-mu-kou" (), meaning "an obstetrician faces towards a foreign country."


title: Japanese wordplay

text: 42.19, the length of a marathon course in kilometres, can be read as "shi-ni-i-ku" (), meaning "to go to die."


title: Oirats

text: Oirats (, "Oirad", or , Oird; ; ; in the past, also Eleuths) are the westernmost group of the Mongols whose ancestral home is in the Altai region of Siberia, Xinjiang and western Mongolia.


title: Oirats

text: Historically, the Oirats were composed of four major tribes: Dzungar (Choros or Olots), Torghut, Dörbet and Khoshut. The minor tribes include: Khoid, Bayads, Myangad, Zakhchin, Baatud.


title: Oirats

text: The name derives from Mongolic "oi" ("forest, woods") and "ard" < *"harad" ("people"), and they were counted among the "" in the 13th century. Similar to that is the Turkic "aghach ari" ("woodman") that is found as a place name in many locales, including the corrupted name of the town of Aghajari in Iran. A second opinion believes the name derives from Mongolian word "oirt" (or "oirkhon") meaning "close (as in distance)," as in "close/nearer ones."


title: Oirats

text: The name Oirat may derive from a corruption of the group's original name "Dörben Öörd", meaning "The Allied Four". Perhaps inspired by the designation Dörben Öörd, other Mongols at times used the term "Döchin Mongols" for themselves ("Döchin" meaning forty), but there was rarely as great a degree of unity among larger numbers of tribes as among the Oirats.


title: Oirats

text: These views are challenged by Kempf 2010, who from a historical linguist's point of view argues that the name is a plural coming from *"oyiran", and eventually from Turkic *"ōy" 'a word for a colour of a horse's coat' ("oy" + "gir" suffix for colours + "(A)n" collective suffix).


title: Oirats

text: In the 17th century, Zaya Pandita, a Gelug monk of the Khoshut tribe, devised a new writing system called Clear Script for use by Oirats. This system was developed on the basis of the older Mongolian script, but had a more developed system of diacritics to preclude misreading and reflected some lexical and grammatical differences of the Oirat language from Mongolian.


title: Oirats

text: The Clear Script remained in use in Kalmykia until the mid-1920s when it was replaced by a Latin alphabet, and later the Cyrillic script. It can be seen in some public signs in the Kalmyk capital, Elista, and is superficially taught in schools. In Mongolia it was likewise replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet in 1941. Some Oirats in China still use the Clear Script as their primary writing system, as well as Mongolian script.


title: Oirats

text: A monument of Zaya Pandita was unveiled on the 400th anniversary of Zaya Pandita's birth, and on 350th anniversary of his creation of the Clear Script.


title: Oirats

text: The Oirats share some history, geography, culture and language with the Eastern Mongols, and were at various times united under the same leader as a larger Mongol entity, whether that ruler was of Oirat descent or of Chingissids.


title: Oirats

text: Comprising the Khoshut (Mongolian: "хошууд", "hošuud"), Choros or Ölöt ("өөлд", "Ööld"), Torghut ("торгууд", "Torguud"), and Dörbet ("дөрвөд", "Dörvöd") ethnic groups, they were dubbed Kalmyk or Kalmak, which means "remnant" or "to remain", by their western Turkic neighbours. Various sources also list the Bargut, Buzava, Keraites, and Naiman tribes as comprising part of the Dörben Öörd; some tribes may have joined the original four only in later years. This name may however reflect the Kalmyks' "remaining" Buddhist rather than converting to Islam; or the Kalmyks' "remaining" in the Altay region when the Turkic tribes migrated further west.


title: Oirats

text: After the fall of the Yuan dynasty, Oirat and Eastern Mongols had developed separate identities to the point where Oirats called themselves "Four Oirats" while they used the term "Mongols" for those under the Khagans in the east.


title: Oirats

text: One of the earliest mentions of the Oirat people in a historical text can be found in "The Secret History of the Mongols", the 13th century chronicle of Genghis Khan's rise to power. In the Secret History, the Oirats are counted among the "forest people" and are said to live under the rule of a shaman-chief known as "bäki". They lived in Tuva and Mongolian Khövsgöl Province and the Oirats moved to the south in the 14th century.


title: Oirats

text: In one famous passage the Oirat chief, Quduqa Bäki, uses a "yada" or 'thunder stone' to unleash a powerful storm on Genghis' army. The magical ploy backfires however, when an unexpected wind blows the storm back at Quduqa. During early stages of Genghis's rise, Oirats under Quduqa bekhi fought against Genghis and were defeated. Oirats were fully submitted to Mongol rule after their ally Jamukha, Genghis's childhood friend and later rival, was destroyed. Subject to the khan, Oirats would form themselves as a loyal and formidable faction of the Mongol war machine. In 1207, Jochi the eldest son of Genghis, subjugated the forest tribes including the Oirats and the Yenisei Kyrgyz. The Great Khan gave those people to his son, Jochi, and had one of his daughters, Checheygen, marry the Oirat chief Khutug-bekhi or his son. There were notable Oirats in the Mongol Empire such as Arghun Agha and his son Nowruz. In 1256, a body of the Oirats under Bukha-Temür (Mongolian: Буха-Төмөр, Бөхтөмөр) joined Hulagu's expedition to Iran and fought against the Hashshashins, Abbasids in Persia. The Ilkhan Hulagu and his successor Abagha resettled them in Turkey. And they took part in the Second Battle of Homs where the Mongols were defeated. The majority of the Oirats, who were left behind, supported Ariq Böke against Kublai in the Toluid Civil War. Kublai defeated his younger brother and they entered the service of the victor. In 1295, more than 10,000 Oirats under Targhai Khurgen (son-in-law of the Borjigin family) fled Syria, then under the Mamluks, because they were despised by both Muslim Mongols and local Turks. They were well received by the Egyptian Sultan Al-Adil Kitbugha of Oirat origin. Ali Pasha, who was the governor of Baghdad, was head of an Oirat ruling family, and killed Ilkhan Arpa Keun, resulting in the disintegration of Mongol Persia. Because the Oirats were near both the Chagatai Khanate and the Golden Horde, they had strong ties with them and many Mongol khans had Oirat wives.


title: Oirats

text: After the expulsion of the Yuan dynasty from China, the Oirats forgathered as a loose alliance of the four major western Mongolian tribes (Mongolian: Dörben Oyirad, "дөрвөн ойрд", "дөрвөн ойрaд"). The alliance grew, taking power in the remote region of the Altai Mountains, northwest of Hami oasis. Gradually they spread eastwards, annexing territories then under the control of the Eastern Mongols, and hoped to reestablish a unified nomadic rule under their banner of the Four Oirats, composed of the Keraites, Naiman, Barghud, and old Oirats.


title: Oirats

text: The only Borjigid ruling tribe was the Khoshuts, while the others' rulers were not descendants of Genghis. The Ming Chinese had helped the Oirats' rise to power over the Mongols during the Yongle Emperor's reign after 1410 when the Ming defeated the Qubilaid Öljei Temür and the Borjigid power was weakened. The Borjigid Khans were displaced from power by the Oirats with Ming help and only ruled as puppet khans until the alliance between Ming and Oirats ended and the Yongle Emperor launched a campaign against them.


title: Oirats

text: The greatest ruler of the Four Oirats was Esen Tayisi who led the Four Oirats from 1438 to 1454, during which time he unified Mongolia (both Inner and Outer) under his puppet khan Toghtoa Bukha. In 1449 Esen Tayisi and Toghtoa Bukh mobilized their cavalry along the Chinese border and invaded Ming China, defeating and destroying the Ming defences at the Great Wall and reinforcements sent to intercept his cavalry. In the process, the Zhengtong Emperor was captured at Tumu. The following year, Esen returned the emperor after an unsuccessful ransom attempt. After claiming the title of khan, to which only lineal descendants of Genghis Khan could claim, Esen was killed. Shortly afterwards, Oirat power declined.


title: Oirats

text: From the 14th until the middle of the 18th century, the Oirats were often at war with the Eastern Mongols but were reunited with them during the rule of Dayan Khan and Tümen Zasagt Khan.


title: Oirats

text: The Oirats converted to Tibetan Buddhism around 1615, and it was not long before they became involved in the conflict between the Gelug and Karma Kagyu schools. At the request of the Gelug school, in 1637, Güshi Khan, the leader of the Khoshuts in Koko Nor, defeated Choghtu Khong Tayiji, the Khalkha prince who supported the Karma Kagyu school, and conquered Amdo (present-day Qinghai). The unification of Tibet followed in the early 1640s, with Güshi Khan proclaimed Khan of Tibet by the 5th Dalai Lama and the establishment of the Khoshut Khanate. The title "Dalai Lama" itself was bestowed upon the third lama of the Gelug tulku lineage by Altan Khan (not to be confused with the Altan Khans of the Khalkha), and means, in Mongolian, "Ocean of Wisdom".


title: Oirats

text: Amdo, meanwhile, became home to the Khoshuts. In 1717, the Dzungars invaded Tibet and killed Lha-bzang Khan (or Khoshut Khan), a grandson of Güshi Khan and the fourth Khan of Tibet, and conquered the Khoshut Khanate.


title: Oirats

text: The Qing Empire defeated the Dzungars in the 1750s and proclaimed rule over the Oirats through a Manchu-Mongol alliance (a series of systematic arranged marriages between princes and princesses of Manchu with those of Khalkha Mongols and Oirat Mongols, which was set up as a royal policy carried out over 300 years), as well as over Khoshut-controlled Tibet.


title: Oirats

text: In 1723 Lobzang Danjin, another descendant of Güshi Khan, took control of Amdo and tried to assume rule over the Khoshut Khanate. He fought against a Manchu-Qing Dynasty army, and was defeated only in the following year and 80,000 people from his tribe were executed by Manchu army due to his "rebellion attempt". By that period, the Upper Mongolian population reached 200,000 and were mainly under the rule of Khalkha Mongol princes who were in a marital alliance with Manchu royal and noble families. Thus, Amdo fell under Manchu domination.


title: Oirats

text: The 17th century saw the rise of another Oirat empire in the east, known as the Khanate of Dzungaria, which stretched from the Great Wall of China to present-day eastern Kazakhstan, and from present-day northern Kyrgyzstan to southern Siberia. It was the last empire of nomads, and was ruled by Choros noblemen.


title: Oirats

text: The Transition from Ming to Qing dynasties in China occurred in the mid-17th century, and the Qing sought to protect its northern border by continuing the divide-and-rule policy their Ming predecessors had successfully instituted against the Mongols. The Manchu consolidated their rule over the Eastern Mongols of Manchuria. They then persuaded the Eastern Mongols of Inner Mongolia to submit themselves as vassals. Finally, the Eastern Mongols of Outer Mongolia sought the protection of the Manchu against the Dzungars.


title: Oirats

text: In the 17th century, the Dzungar pioneered the local manifestation of the ‘Military Revolution’ in central Eurasia after perfecting a process of manufacturing indigenously created gunpowder weapons. They also created a mixed agro-pastoral economy, as well as complementary mining and manufacturing industries on their lands. Additionally, the Zunghar managed to enact an empire-wide system of laws and policies to boost the use of the Oirat language in the region.


title: Oirats

text: Some scholars estimate that about 80% of the Dzungar population was wiped out by a combination of warfare and disease during the Manchu-Qing conquest of Dzungaria in 1755–1757. The Zunghar population reached 600,000 in 1755.


title: Oirats

text: Most of the Choros, Olot, Khoid, Baatud, and Zakhchin Oirats who battled against the Qing were killed by the Manchu soldiers and after the fall of the Dzungar Khanate they became small ethnic groups.


title: Oirats

text: Kho Orlok, tayishi of the Torghuts, and Dalai Tayishi of Dorbets, led their people (200,000–250,000 people, mainly Torghuts) west to the (Volga River) in 1607 where they established the Kalmyk Khanate. By some accounts this move was precipitated by internal divisions or by the Khoshut tribe; other historians believe it more likely that the migrating clans were seeking pastureland for their herds, scarce in the central Asian highlands. Some of the Khoshut and Ölöt tribes joined the migration almost a century later. The Kalmyk migration had reached as far as the steppes of southeastern Europe by 1630. At the time, that area was inhabited by the Nogai Horde. But under pressure from Kalmyk warriors, the Nogais fled to the Crimea and the Kuban River. Many other nomadic peoples in the Eurasian steppes subsequently became vassals of the Kalmyk Khanate, part of which is in the area of present-day Kalmykia.


title: Oirats

text: The Kalmyks became allies of Russia and a treaty to protect southern Russian borders was signed between the Kalmyk Khanate and Russia. Later they became nominal, then full subjects of the Russian Tsar. In 1724 the Kalmyks came under control of Russia. By the early 18th century, there were approximately 300,000–350,000 Kalmyks and 15,000,000 Russians. Russia gradually reduced the autonomy of the Kalmyk Khanate. Policies encouraged establishment of Russian and German settlements on pastures where the Kalmyks formerly roamed and fed their livestock. The Russian Orthodox church, by contrast, pressed Buddhist Kalmyks to adopt Orthodoxy. In January 1771 the oppression of czarist administration forced a larger part of Kalmyks (33,000 households or approximately 170,000 individuals) to migrate to Dzungaria. 200,000 (170,000) Kalmyks began the migration from their pastures on the left bank of the Volga River to Dzungaria, through the territories of their Bashkir and Kazakh enemies. The last Kalmyk khan Ubashi led the migration to restore the Dzungar Khanate and Mongolian independence. As C. D. Barkman notes, "It is quite clear that the Torghuts had not intended to surrender to the Chinese, but had hoped to lead an independent existence in Dzungaria". Ubashi Khan sent his 30,000 cavalry to the Russo-Turkish War in 1768–1769 to gain weapons before the migration. The Empress Catherine the Great ordered the Russian army, Bashkirs and Kazakhs to exterminate all migrants and Catherine the Great abolished the Kalmyk Khanate. The Kyrgyzs attacked them near Balkhash Lake. About 100,000–150,000 Kalmyks who settled on the west bank of the Volga River could not cross the river because the river did not freeze in the winter of 1771 and Catherine the Great executed their influential nobles. After seven months of travel, only one third (66,073) of the original group reached Dzungaria (Balkhash Lake, western border of the Manchu Qing Empire). The Qing Empire resettled the Kalmyks in five different areas to prevent their revolt and several influential leaders of the Kalmyks died soon afterwards (killed by the Manchus). Following the Russian revolution their settlement was accelerated, Buddhism stamped out and herds collectivised.


title: Oirats

text: Kalmykian nationalists and Pan-Mongolists attempted to migrate from Kalmykia to Mongolia in the 1920s when a serious famine gripped Kalmykia. On January 22, 1922, Mongolia proposed to accept the immigration of the Kalmyks but the Russian government refused. Some 71–72,000 (around half of the population) Kalmyks died during the famine. The Kalmyks revolted against Russia in 1926, 1930 and 1942–1943. In March 1927, Soviets deported 20,000 Kalmyks to Siberia, and Karelia. The Kalmyks founded the sovereign Republic of Oirat-Kalmyk on March 22, 1930. The Oirat state had a small army and 200 Kalmyk soldiers defeated a force of 1,700 Soviet soldiers in Durvud province of Kalmykia, but the Oirat state was destroyed by the Soviet Army in 1930. The Mongolian government suggested to accept the Mongols of the Soviet Union, including Kalmyks, but the Soviets rejected the proposal.


title: Oirats

text: In 1943, the entire population of 120,000 Kalmyks were deported to Siberia by Stalin, accused of supporting invading Axis armies attacking Stalingrad (Volgograd); a fifth of the population is thought to have perished during and immediately after the deportation. Around half (97–98,000) of the Kalmyk people deported to Siberia died before being allowed to return home in 1957. The government of the Soviet Union forbade teaching the Kalmyk language during the deportation. Mongolian leader Khorloogiin Choibalsan attempted to arrange migration of the deportees to Mongolia and he met them in Siberia during his visit to Russia. Under the Law of the Russian Federation of April 26, 1991 "On Rehabilitation of Exiled Peoples" repressions against Kalmyks and other peoples were qualified as an act of genocide, although many Russian historians treat this and similar deportations as an attempt to prevent local Russian populations and the Soviet army from lynching the entire ethnic group, many of whom supported Germany. Today Kalmyks are trying to revive their language and religion, but the shift towards the Russian language continues.


title: Oirats

text: According to the Russian 2010 Census there were 176,800 Kalmyks, of whom only 80,546 could speak the Kalmyk language, a serious decline from the level of the 2002 Census, in which the number of speakers was 153,602 (with a total number of 173,996 people). The Soviet 1989 Census showed 156,386 Kalmyk-speakers with a total number of 173,821 Kalmyks.


title: Oirats

text: The Mongols of Xinjiang form a minority, principally in the northern part of the region, numbering 194,500 in 2010, about 50,000 of which are Dongxiangs. They are primarily descendants of the surviving Torghuts and Khoshuts who returned from Kalmykia, and of the Chakhar stationed there as garrison soldiers in the 18th century. The emperor had sent messages asking the Kalmyks to return, and erected a smaller copy of the Potala in Jehol ("Chengde"), (the country residence of the Manchu Emperors) to mark their arrival. A model copy of that "Little Potala" was made in China for the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin, and was erected at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. It is now in storage in Sweden, where there are plans to re-erect it. Some of the returnees did not come that far and still live, now as Muslims, at the southwestern end of Lake Issyk-kul in present-day Kyrgyzstan.


title: Oirats

text: In addition to exiling Han criminals to Xinjiang to be slaves of the Banner garrisons there, the Qing also practiced reverse exile, exiling Inner Asian (Mongol, Russian and Muslim criminals from Mongolia and Inner Asia) to China proper where they would serve as slaves in Han Banner garrisons in Guangzhou. Russian, Oirats and Muslims (Oros. Ulet. Hoise jergi weilengge niyalma) such as Yakov and Dmitri were exiled to the Han banner garrison in Guangzhou. In the 1780s after the Muslim rebellion in Gansu started by Zhang Wenqing (張文慶) was defeated, Muslims like Ma Jinlu (馬進祿) were exiled to the Han Banner garrison in Guangzhou to become slaves to Han Banner officers. The Qing code regulating Mongols in Mongolia sentenced Mongol criminals to exile and slavery under Han bannermen in Han Banner garrisons in China proper.


title: Oirats

text: A Kazakh chief was skinned with his skin to be used as a religious implement and his heart was cut out of his chest by the Oirat Mongol Ja Lama. Another Kazakh was also skinned. A White Guard soldier's heart was eaten by the Mongol Choijon Lama. Mongol banner bloods were sprinkeled with Russian White Guard and Chinese blood from hearts according to A. V. Burdukov. The Kazakh chief who was skinned alive was named Khaisan. His skin along with another man's skin were found by Cossacks under Captain Bulatov in his ger in Muunjaviin Ulaan on 8 February 1914. Owen Lattimore used the words "a strange, romantic and sometimes savage figure" for the Mongol Sandagdorjiyn Magsarjav (1877-1927). Magsarjav had served under Ungern-Sternberg. In Uriankhai Kazakh bandits who were captured had their hearts cut out and sacrificed by Magsarjav.


title: Oirats

text: The Kazakhs were plundering and robbing on the Tibetan-Kokonor plateau in Qinghai as they came through Gansu and northern Xinjiang. There were over 7,000 of them between 1938-1941. On the Kokonor plateau, Hui (Tungans), Tibetans and Kazakhs continued to battle each other despite the Kazakh nomads being settled in demarcated pasturelands under Ma Bufang's watch in 1941.


title: Oirats

text: Oirat Mongol Buddhists in Qinghai were slaughtered and looted by Kazakhs (Moslem Khyber Khasaks) who invaded Tibet via the Nan Shan mountains in Xinjiang. The Salar and Hui Muslims of Qinghai told Office of Strategic Services agent Leonard Francis Clark that the Kazakhs slaughtered 8,000 Mongols.


title: Oirats

text: The advance of the Communists under Li Bao (Lin Pao) forced the Hui general Ma Dei-bio to leave Qinghai to confront him, therefore some Kazakh bands were still going around stealing and murdering people. The Mongols were slaughtered by the Kazakhs since the Nationalist government of China disarmed the Mongols.


title: Oirats

text: The Tibetan Rong-pa taught agriculture to former nomad Mongols who began using camels to plough their land in Tsaidam. Hui Muslim governor Ma Bufang appointed Hui Muslim colonel Ma Dei-bio as southern Qinghai's Amban. Me Dei-bio slaughtered Ngoloks by throwing them into the Yellow river after wrapping them in leather. 480 Ngolok families were killed in this manner.


title: Oirats

text: As communists triumphed in China's northern and western periphery, Kazakhs stole Mongol horses from Clark's expedition and the Hui Muslim leader was told by a Tibetan scout that the Kazakhs did it.


title: Oirats

text: Well armed Kazakhs over a period of eight years before Clark's expedition had slaughtered and devastated the Oirat Mongols in the Tsaidam Basin of Xinjiang, the thousand Kazakh families (Hussack) came to the Tsaidam via the Nan shan in Xinjiang and then came back to where they came from after eight years of war against the Mongols. Clark noted they dwelled in gers and they spoke Turki and were "fanatic Mohammedans, professional killers". Mongol Hoshun (banner) were divided into Sumon (arrow) and one arrow lost one thousand horses in a single night to the Kazakhs. Northern Qinghai (Amdo) still had twenty-six fragmented Mongol banners after the Kazakh slaughters of Mongols. These banner divisions were created by the Qing dynasty who scattered the Mongols on the western borders.


title: Oirats

text: Some Tibetans in Qinghai claimed descent from the Tanguts of Khara Khoto in Western Xia and claimed that their ancestors fled to Qinghai after a Chinese army expelled them from Khara Khoto. The Oirat Mongol Prince Dorje told Leonard Francis Clark and the Tibetans and the Hui and Salar Muslims Abdul and Solomon Ma on how the Manchus committed the Dzungar genocide against his Oirat people and how they conquered Xinjiang from the Oirat Mongol Torgut West banner and destroying the south wing of the Mongols. They took control of the four Khanates of the Khalkha in Outer Mongolia and the 5th Khanate (the Oirat Torgut horde). He also spoke about those Torgut Oirats who had earlier migrated to Kalmykia in Russia and then fought against the Ottoman Turkish Muslim empire, and then crushed the Swedish king Charles XII, and then how 400,0000 Torguts migrated back to Dzungaria in 1771, fighting against the Cossack armies of Tsarina of Russia Catherine the Great. They lost 300,000 children, women and men to the Cossacks as they returned to Xinjiang. He mentioned how this had made Russia "lose" the support of Mongols. 50,000 Oirats survived after 300,000 Oirat Mongols were slaughtered by Russian Cossacks on Catherine's orders. Prince Dorje then proclaimed that the Oirat Torghut banners were ready for revenge against the "Slavic masses", by fighting against the Soviet Russian red army and asked Clark for America to help the west Mongols against the Slavic Russians. Clark said that the Pentagon and White House would decide and that he could do nothing about it since he was busy with inciting Muslims in Qinghai to jihad against communists and on the Amne Machin mountain to find radioactive material.


title: Oirats

text: The region bordering Gansu and west of the Irgay River is called Alxa or Alaša, Alshaa and Mongols who moved there are called Alasha Mongols.


title: Oirats

text: Törbaih Güshi Khan's fourth son, Ayush, was opposed to the Khan's brother Baibagas. Ayush's eldest son is Batur Erkh Jonon Khoroli. After the battle between Galdan Boshigt Khan and Ochirtu Sechen Khan, Batur Erkh Jonon Khoroli moved to Tsaidam with his 10,000 households. The fifth Dalai Lama wanted land for them from the Qing government, thus in 1686, the Emperor permitted them to reside in Alasha.


title: Oirats

text: In 1697, Alasha Mongols were administered in 'khoshuu' and 'sum' units. A khoshuu with eight sums was created, Batur Erkh Jonon Khoroli was appointed Beil (prince), and Alasha was thus a 'zasag-khoshuu'. Alasha was however like an 'aimag' and never administered under a 'chuulgan'.


title: Oirats

text: In 1707, when Batur Erkh Jonon Khoroli died, his son Abuu succeeded him. He was in Beijing from his youth, served as bodyguard of the Emperor, and a princess (of the Emperor) was given to him, thus making him a 'Khoshoi Tavnan', i.e. Emperor's groom. In 1793, Abuu became Jün Wang. There are several thousand Muslim Alasha Mongols.


title: Oirats

text: Mongols who lived along the Ejin River ("Ruo Shui") descended from Rabjur, a grandson of Torghut Ayuka Khan from the Volga River.


title: Oirats

text: In 1698, Rabjur, with his mother, younger sister and 500 people, went to Tibet to pray. While they were returning via Beijing in 1704, the Qing ruler, the Kangxi Emperor, let them stay there for some years and later organized a 'khoshuu' for them in a place called Sertei, and made Rabjur the governor.


title: Oirats

text: In 1716, the Kangxi Emperor sent him and his people to Hami, near the border of Qing China and the Zunghar Khanate, for intelligence-gathering purposes against the Oirats. When Rabjur died, his eldest son, Denzen, succeeded him. He was afraid of the Zunghar and wanted the Qing government to allow them to move away from the border. They were settled in Dalan Uul–Altan. When Denzen died in 1740, his son Lubsan Darjaa succeeded him and became Beil.


title: Oirats

text: In 1753, they were settled on the banks of the Ejin River and the Ejin River Torghut 'khoshuu' was thus formed.


title: Oirats

text: Haplogroup C2*-Star Cluster which was thought to be carried by likely male-line descendants of Genghis Khan and Niruns (original Mongols and descendants of Alan Gua) appears in only 1.6% of Oirats.


title: Oirats

text: The Y-chromosome in 426 individuals mainly from three major tribes of the Kalmyks (the Torghut, Dörbet and Khoshut):


title: Oirats

text: Sart Kalmyks and Xinjiang Oirats are not Volga Kalmyks or Kalmyks, and the Kalmyks are a subgroup of the Oirats.


title: SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer

text: SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer () was (from 1942 to 1945) the highest commissioned rank in the "Schutzstaffel" (SS), with the exception of "Reichsführer-SS", which became a commissioned rank when held by SS commander Heinrich Himmler. The rank is translated as "highest group leader" and alternatively as "colonel group leader". The rank was correctly spelled "Oberst-Gruppenführer" to avoid confusion with the more junior rank of "Obergruppenführer".


title: SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer

text: "Oberst-Gruppenführer" was considered the equivalent of a colonel general ("Generaloberst") in the German Army, which is generally seen as the equivalent of a four-star general or army general in other armed forces. Under Himmler, the title became the highest possible commissioned rank in the SS hierarchy of the .


title: SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer

text: The rank of "Oberst-Gruppenführer" was first proposed in early 1942 as a possible future rank for Waffen-SS commanders who might be promoted to command Army Groups. The "Heer" leadership immediately opposed the creation of an SS-Colonel General rank, since army commanders felt that no SS general should hold such a large amount of authority and that SS combat commands should be restricted to the Corps and Division level. The idea of SS Armies and Army Groups was something few wished to see develop – two SS Armies would eventually be established, (the 6th and the 11th SS Armies). No SS Army Groups were ever created.


title: SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer

text: In April 1942, on Adolf Hitler's personal authority, the rank of SS-"" was first bestowed. The appointment was to Nazi Party treasurer and RZM chief Franz Xaver Schwarz. On the same day orders were issued for a dual promotion within the "Ordnungspolizei", making Kurt Daluege a "Generaloberst der Polizei" at the same time. Daluege's rank was the only police promotion to this rank.


title: SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer

text: The last two of the four "Oberst-Gruppenführer" promotions were made in 1944, this time to Waffen-SS generals. Dietrich's date of rank was back-dated to 1942, making him the most senior officer of the Waffen-SS. The final seniority list was as follows:


title: SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer

text: Franz Xaver Schwarz, who held "Ehrenführer" (honorary leader), was the only holder of the rank who was not granted equivalent police or Waffen-SS rank. The "Oberst-Gruppenführer" rank was worn on the field-grey Waffen-SS tunic, the grey SS service tunic, or in Daluege's case the German police uniform. There are no photographic records of the insignia ever being worn on the black ceremonial uniform, which had largely fallen into disuse by the time the rank was created.


title: SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer

text: In 1944, Himmler offered to appoint Albert Speer to the honorary rank of "Oberst-Gruppenführer". Speer declined, not wishing to formally be subordinate to Himmler. Himmler's successor, Karl Hanke, never held the rank of "Oberst-Gruppenführer", but was appointed "Reichsführer-SS" from the lower grade of "Obergruppenführer". Hans-Adolf Prützmann claimed to have been promoted to the rank in April 1945 by personal decree of Adolf Hitler; Prützmann's claim is not supported by either documentary or photographic evidence, leading most history texts to list his final rank as "Obergruppenführer".


title: Blue Marvel

text: Blue Marvel (Adam Bernard Brashear) is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The Blue Marvel debuted in "Adam: Legend of the Blue Marvel" #1 (Nov. 2008) and was created by actor/writer Kevin Grevioux, who originally conceived the character as a child.


title: Blue Marvel

text: Adam Brashear debuted in the five issue "Adam: Legend of the Blue Marvel" mini-series created by Kevin Grevioux. A different version later appeared briefly in "What If? Secret Invasion" #1 (Feb. 2010).


title: Blue Marvel

text: In 2013, Blue Marvel appeared as part of Luke Cage's new team of superheroes during the "Infinity" crossover, in the Marvel NOW! relaunch of "Mighty Avengers".


title: Blue Marvel

text: Adam Brashear is a former fullback at Cornell University as well as a veteran of the Korean War, a member of the Marine Corps with two Silver Stars. While in the Marine Corps he met Conner Sims, the friend he would later know as Anti-Man. Brashear later became the project lead on a scientific attempt to harness anti-matter through the creation of a Negative Reactor which created a bridge between the Negative Zone and the positive matter universe. This reactor would be a source of unlimited clean energy by allowing devices to tap the stable event horizon balanced between the two universes. Due to the unexpected explosion of the reactor, both Brashear and Sims were subjected to mutagenic radiation generated by the destabilized event horizon. While Sims' body dissolved into energy, Brashear became a stable "antimatter reactor" with superhuman abilities, which he used to fight crime under the superhero alias Blue Marvel.


title: Blue Marvel

text: In 1962, Adam received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President John F. Kennedy and on that same day the President asked him to retire, since it had been discovered by the public that he was an African American. As the Blue Marvel, Brashear wore a full-face helmet, but when it was damaged in a battle, his identity was revealed. There was massive controversy as the era of 1962 was in the midst of segregation, making them too hesitant to accept a black superhero. Although Kennedy personally approved of Brashear's actions, the President reluctantly decided to ask Brashear to step down, and the Blue Marvel conceded. As his final mission as Blue Marvel, Brashear defeated the herald of an alien invasion armada. After the fight, he left the Medal of Freedom in the Blue Area of the Moon, where he first met Uatu the Watcher. His conversation with the Watcher was interrupted by the late arrival of the alien armada, which he defeated. The United States government used this final mission to fake his death. The government later set up S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Marlene Frazier as Brashear's monitor under the cover name Candace. Frazier eventually became his wife and the mother of their three children: sons Kevin and Max, and daughter Adrienne. Brashear later became a tenured professor of physics at the University of Maryland.


title: Blue Marvel

text: Although retired as the Blue Marvel, Brashear continued to have adventures, in the following decades, operating both alone (under the guise of 'Doc Brashear') or with his eldest son Kevin when the boy grew old enough. One adventure in 1972 saw him team up with the vampire hunter known as Blade and the dark magician Kaluu to battle shapeshifting 'Deathwalkers'.


title: Blue Marvel

text: At some point, Adam Brashear studied a mysterious being called the Infinaut who made various attempts to manifest on Earth. In the Infinaut's second manifestation in 1998, Adam and his son Kevin used an anti-matter powered rig to interrupt it. Adam discovered that if the Infinaut had manifested on Earth at his large size, he would have destroyed it.


title: Blue Marvel

text: Conner Sims, the Anti-Man, was a radical who, partly because of his history with Adam Brashear, violently hated racism (he being Caucasian) and, in his power-fueled insanity, sought to eradicate it. When Anti-Man returned and defeated the Avengers, Tony Stark (Iron Man) tracked down Brashear and with the help of Mister Fantastic they came up with a plan to stop Anti-Man. After a surprise confrontation with Sims on the moon, Brashear was left unconscious. Later an extended fight with Anti-Man resulted in Candace Brashear's death. At the conclusion of their battle, Brashear took Anti-Man up to the edge of the ionosphere and siphoned off his remaining "anti-matter energy", which caused his waveform to permanently decohere and collapse.


title: Blue Marvel

text: Afterward, Brashear returned as a full-time superhero in "Age of Heroes" #3. After a discussion with Uatu the Watcher, he traveled to Uzbekistan to help the Winter Guard subdue the extra-dimensional King Hyperion.


title: Blue Marvel

text: During the "Fear Itself" storyline, Blue Marvel was exploring the Negative Zone when he returned and discovered a submarine lodged in Kadesh, his undersea base. (Blue Marvel was the first person to discover and enter into the Negative Zone). Both the Chinese and American forces blamed the other, and they seemed on the brink of war. Blue Marvel managed to save his anti-matter samples from being exposed to water, and relations between the Chinese and Americans returned to normal. Blue Marvel wondered where the submarine came from, and he soon discovered that the sea dragon guarding the Serpent's undersea prison was responsible for sending the submarine into his base.


title: Blue Marvel

text: During the "Infinity" storyline, Uatu visited Blue Marvel in his Undersea Science Fortress which he had previously modified. Blue Marvel talked with Uatu about his family life and how he could have taken up the opportunity to join the Avengers. After a one-sided conversation, Blue Marvel took up his costume and flew through Shuma-Gorath's head during its fight with Luke Cage's team. He was able to heal Spectrum (who had been incapacitated by Proxima Midnight's spear) and boost her powers temporarily. Subsequently, Blue Marvel was among those Luke Cage declared to be part of his Mighty Avengers.


title: Blue Marvel

text: During the "Last Days" part of the 2015 "Secret Wars" storyline, Blue Marvel was seen with the Mighty Avengers where they fight the Illuminati. After the battle, Blue Marvel tells Mister Fantastic and Black Panther that he is angry they never consulted the other heroes on this, saying they could have prevented all this if they had all worked together.


title: Blue Marvel

text: As part of the 2015 All-New, All-Different Marvel initiative, Blue Marvel appeared as a member of the Ultimates. Blue Marvel's first mission with the Ultimates involved retrieving the incubator that Galactus was brought out of prematurely. Once they put him back into it, he fully emerged as a lifebringer. While in Exo-Space with the Ultimates within their ship the Aboena, Blue Marvel finds that his old enemy Anti-Man has reassembled there. As Blue Marvel wanted to kill Anti-Man where he deemed him too dangerous, he also discovered that his son Kevin was also in Exo-Space who persuaded his father to spare him. Blue Marvel does and has Anti-Man brought onto the Aboena so that he and the Ultimates can fix him.


title: Blue Marvel

text: During the 2016 "Civil War II" storyline, the precognitive Ulysses Cain experiences a vision that warns Blue Marvel about the impending arrival of the inter-dimensional traveler Infinaut on Earth, which will endanger the planet. This warning gives sufficient time for Blue Marvel, Giant-Man, and the Ultimates to devise a Pym Particle accelerator with which they can shrink Infinaut down to human size, at which point Infinaut greets the heroes."


title: Blue Marvel

text: During the "God Butcher" storyline, Blue Marvel and the Mighty Avengers, along with the rest of humanity, have been killed by Loki. Blue Marvel's reanimated corpse appears as part of a legion of undead heroes sent against Old King Thor by the God of Mischief, but are ultimately defeated by The God of Thunder.


title: Blue Marvel

text: Anti-Matter Energy Absorption seems to be the main source of Blue Marvel's power. This source of power is the energy released from anti-matter which derives from the inter-dimensional universe called the Negative Zone.


title: Blue Marvel

text: According to Brashear he is a stable "antimatter reactor", but from his broader explanation what he appears to do is channel exotic particles generated by a stable event horizon caused by the interaction of opposing positive matter and negative matter (Negative Zone) universes. Because Brashear has retained his abilities all this time, it would seem that either the specific generative reaction, that granted him his powers continues at an unseen or subatomic level in the facility where he first gained his abilities, or exotic particles generated by the experiment somehow became quantum entangled with Brashear.