text: The FBI's original tests on the bullet that killed King and the .30-06 hunting rifle were inconclusive. In 1997, tests were run comparing 12 test bullets from the alleged murder rifle, and the bullet that killed MLK. Ballistics expert Robert Hathaway testified that the killing bullet lacked reference points found on the fired test bullets. The unique barrel markings could not be found on the killing bullet.


title: Martin Luther King Jr. assassination conspiracy theories

text: King had long found enemies among the nation's top body of law enforcement, the FBI. J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the FBI, pronounced him, "the most notorious liar in the country". King had been under FBI surveillance since the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1956. They began wiretapping his phones in 1963. King expressed his anger towards the FBI in 1964, declaring that it was "completely ineffectual in resolving the continued mayhem and brutality inflicted upon the Negro in the deep South". After King's death, the FBI led the investigation into the assassination. On November 1, 1971, former head of FBI Intelligence Operations William C. Sullivan testified before the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. He stated that in the "war" against King "no holds were barred". An internal FBI document expressed concern that this might raise the suspicion of FBI involvement in the assassination.


text: The FBI tried to paint King as a Communist. In 1962, Hoover told then Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy that King was "a secret member of the Communist Party", which led Kennedy to approve wiretaps. Other FBI documents claimed, "King has been described within the Communist Party USA as a true, genuine Marxist-Leninist 'from the top of his head to the tips of his toes". As late as three weeks before King's killing, internal FBI documents attacked King for his "whole hearted" Communism and his "Marxist-Leninist line". After repeated claims of King's and the Civil Rights Movement's links to Communism, King declared that he was "sick and tired of people saying this movement has been infiltrated by Communists ... There are as many Communists in this freedom movement as there are Eskimos in Florida."


text: The FBI had long attempted to discredit King's personal life. In a memo, Hoover said that King was "a tom cat with obsessive degenerate sexual urges". FBI documents claimed, regarding an attendant at one of King's conferences, "One Negro minister in attendance later expressed his disgust with the behind-the scene drinking, fornication, and homosexuality." The document also alleged: "Several Negro and white prostitute[s] were brought in from the Miami area. An all-night sex orgy was held with these prostitutes and some of the delegates." On one occasion, the FBI mailed alleged sex-tapes of King's adultery and a letter to Coretta Scott King in an attempt to destroy their marriage. But Coretta later remarked that, "I couldn't make much out of it, it was just a lot of mumbo jumbo." The letter accused King of being "sexually psychotic," and a "colossal fraud". The letter warned King that "your end is approaching" and that he was "done".


text: Upset over King's march, the City of Memphis filed a formal complaint against King and the SCLC. When Dr. King returned to Memphis on April 3, 1968, he was put under surveillance by the MPD. He was followed at the airport by two Black plain-clothes cops, one of which was Detective Edward E. Redditt. At the same time, the Memphis police also assigned four men to protect King. King's entourage told the police that they had not requested their help. When the police asked where King was staying, Reverend James Lawson replied, "We have not fully made up our minds." The Police still followed King to the Lorraine Motel. The police protection remained near King until they were recalled to the police station at 5:05. One of the four men, Inspector Tines, later stated that this call-back was not planned and that he did not know why it happened. The MPD Chief Macdonald claimed to have no memory of this police protection or of any “call-back”. At the nearby Fire Station No. 2, the two Black detectives continued their surveillance of King. Shortly after midday, Detective Redditt received a threatening phone-call from a woman, telling him that "he was doing the Black people wrong". Redditt and his associate were then told to return to the police station. Redditt was told that threats had been made on his life and that his family must stay at a local motel under an assumed name. As a police car arrived on the radio, he heard of King's assassination. Within the next few days, Redditt heard no more about the alleged threats. Two Black firemen there were also given the day off. According to the FBI, this station had an "excellent vantage point" of the Lorraine Motel. The MPD also infiltrated the Invaders, a local Black militant group which often provided protection for King. The single informant began surveilling in February 1968, just two months before King's assassination. The informant was present in the motel courtyard when King was assassinated. Besides its own infiltration, the MPD was itself infiltrated by the FBI. The FBI had five paid informants within the Memphis Police Department.


text: The King family has long been outspoken about their belief in a conspiracy and Ray's innocence. King's youngest son, Dexter, met with Ray in prison in 1997 where he said to Ray, "Well, as awkward as this may seem, I want you to know that I believe you and my family believes you, and we are going to do everything in our power to try and make sure that justice will prevail. And while it's at the 11th hour, I've always been a spiritual person and I believe in Providence." King's daughter Bernice King has said, "It pains my heart that James Earl Ray had to spend his life in prison paying for things he didn't do." She has also said, "I'm certainly clear that there has been a conspiracy, from the government down to the mafia." King's wife, Coretta Scott King told a press conference in 1999: "There is abundant evidence of a major high-level conspiracy ... The Mafia, local, state and federal government agencies, were deeply involved in the assassination of my husband ... Mr Ray was set up to take the blame."


text: Many who worked with King also believe in the likelihood of a conspiracy. "I think there was a major conspiracy to remove Doctor King from the American scene," said the Democratic Representative John Lewis, "I don't know what happened, but the truth of what happened to Dr. King should be made available for history's sake." Andrew Young, the former U.N. ambassador and Atlanta mayor who was at the Lorraine Motel with King when he was assassinated, shares that sentiment: "I would not accept the fact that James Earl Ray pulled the trigger, and that's all that matters." James Lawson was a pastor in Memphis and one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s mentors. He began visiting Ray in prison in 1969. "There were things in Memphis that were suspicious and raised questions in my mind," he said regarding the assassination. "I never saw those questions answered. I'm satisfied beyond a shadow of a doubt that James Earl Ray neither pulled the trigger nor plotted to kill Martin Luther King."


text: The United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) was established in 1976 to investigate the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and King. In 1979, their final report concluded that "After examining Ray's behaviour, his character and his racial attitudes... The committee found it could not concur with any of the accepted explanations for Ray as a lone assassin," the “predominant motive lay in an expectation of monetary gain” and that "The committee concluded that there was a likelihood of conspiracy in the assassination of Dr King." They asserted that it was most likely a conspiracy by southern white supremacist groups, and that Ray was only acting due to a bounty on King's head. They also noted that “No federal, state or local government agency was involved in the assassination of Dr King.” The HSCA's Chief Counsel, Robert Blakey, stated that if the CIA or FBI had been involved, all incriminating documents were likely destroyed long before 1979. This same committee also found that there was a "high probability that at least two gunmen fired at the President," while reviewing the assassination of Kennedy.


text: In 1993, Loyd Jowers appeared on the ABC News program "Prime Time Live". He claimed that he was paid $100,000 by alleged local mobster Frank Liberto to help organize King's assassination. Jowers ran a coffee shop on the first floor of the rooming house from which King was allegedly shot by Ray. The backdoor of his shop led to the bushes which were removed by the MPD. Jowers had remained silent for twenty-five years after King's assassination, but he only produced his confession after Ray's HBO mock trial. He claimed that he was part of a larger conspiracy to assassinate King and frame Ray as a patsy. He claimed that "Raul", Memphis Police Officers, and the mafia had been involved. Jowers named Memphis Police Lieutenant Earl Clark as the shooter instead.


text: In 1999, a civil suit brought by Coretta Scott King alleged that Jowers and others had conspired to assassinate King. The King Family turned to William Pepper, who had defended Ray in his HBO mock trial, to represent them in the wrongful death lawsuit, "King family vs. Loyd Jowers and other unknown co-conspirators". During the four-week trial, Pepper brought forward over 70 witnesses and thousands of documents. Jowers testified that Ray was only a scapegoat and that Memphis police officer Earl Clark actually fired the fatal shots.


text: The mixed-race jury that heard the case took only one hour of deliberations to reach a unanimous verdict: that King was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. They found Jowers responsible, and also found that "governmental agencies" were among the conspirators. The King family was granted the $100 they requested in damages. The King family saw it as vindication. King's son, Dexter, said "This is the period at the end of the sentence. So please, after today, we don't want questions like, 'Do you believe James Earl Ray killed your father?' I've been hearing that all my life. No, I don't, and this is the end of it." Dexter further emphasized that "the shooter was the Memphis Police Department Officer, Lt. Earl Clark". His wife Coretta King said after the verdict, "There is abundant evidence of a major, high-level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband." The jury found that the mafia and various government agencies "were deeply involved in the assassination. ... Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame."


text: In 2000, Attorney General Janet Reno announced that, after re-examining the assassination, no evidence of a conspiracy could be found. The Department of Justice found numerous inconsistencies in Jowers' statements. It also concluded there was no proof Frank Liberto belonged to the mafia and that, in its opinion, the witnesses that supported Jowers were not credible or contradictory. Furthermore, it expressed the belief that Jowers fabricated his story for financial reward.


text: Gerald Posner, an investigative journalist who wrote the book "Killing the Dream" in which he makes the case that Ray was the killer, said after the verdict: "It distresses me greatly that the legal system was used in such a callous and farcical manner in Memphis. If the King family wanted a rubber stamp of their own view of the facts, they got it." Robert Blakey also criticized Pepper's theories on the case.


title: UFC on ESPN: Błachowicz vs. Rakić

text: UFC on ESPN: Błachowicz vs. Rakić (also known as UFC on ESPN 36 and UFC Vegas 54) was a mixed martial arts event produced by the Ultimate Fighting Championship that took place on May 14, 2022, at the UFC Apex facility in Enterprise, Nevada, part of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Area, United States.


title: UFC on ESPN: Błachowicz vs. Rakić

text: A light heavyweight bout between former KSW and UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Jan Błachowicz and Aleksandar Rakić served as the event headliner. They were previously scheduled to headline , but Błachowicz withdrew due to an injury and the bout was cancelled.


title: UFC on ESPN: Błachowicz vs. Rakić

text: A women's flyweight bout between former Strikeforce and UFC Women's Bantamweight Champion Miesha Tate and former Invicta FC Bantamweight Champion (also former UFC Women's Flyweight Championship challenger) Lauren Murphy was expected to take place at this event. However, the bout was moved to UFC 276 due to unknown reasons.


title: UFC on ESPN: Błachowicz vs. Rakić

text: Ryan Spann and Ion Cuțelaba met in a light heavyweight bout at the event. The pair was previously scheduled to fight at , but Spann was pulled due to injury.


title: UFC on ESPN: Błachowicz vs. Rakić

text: A flyweight bout between Jake Hadley and Allan Nascimento took place at the event. The pair was previously scheduled to meet at , but the bout was cancelled due to Hadley's injury.


title: UFC on ESPN: Błachowicz vs. Rakić

text: Louis Smolka and Davey Grant were expected to meet in a bantamweight bout at in March 2020, but the event was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They eventually met at this event.


title: UFC on ESPN: Błachowicz vs. Rakić

text: A lightweight bout between Michael Johnson and Alan Patrick was originally scheduled to take place one week prior at UFC 274, but it was pushed back to this event due to unknown reasons.


title: UFC on ESPN: Błachowicz vs. Rakić

text: Daniel Pineda and Jamall Emmers were expected to meet in a featherweight bout. However, the bout was scrapped in late April due to unknown reasons.


title: UFC on ESPN: Błachowicz vs. Rakić

text: A flyweight bout between Tatsuro Taira and Carlos Candelario was expected to take place two weeks earlier at . However, it was scratched just hours before taking place due to Candelario suffering from an illness. They were then rescheduled for this event.


title: Mother's Day (United States)

text: Mother's Day is an annual holiday celebrated in the United States on the second Sunday in May. Mother's Day recognizes mothers, motherhood and maternal bonds in general, as well as the positive contributions that they make to their families and society. It was established by Anna Jarvis, with the first official Mother's Day celebrated through a service of worship at St. Andrew's Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia, on May 10, 1908. Popular observances include holiday card and gift giving, churchgoing often accompanied by the distribution of carnations, and family dinners. In the United States, Mother's Day complements similar celebrations honoring family members, such as Father's Day, Siblings Day and Grandparents Day.


title: Mother's Day (United States)

text: Internationally, there are a large variety of Mother's Day celebrations with different origins and traditions, some now also having been influenced by this more recent American tradition. For the international celebration, see Mother's Day.


title: Mother's Day (United States)

text: During the 19th century, women's peace groups in the United States tried to establish holidays and regular activities in favor of peace and against war. A common early activity was the meeting of groups of mothers whose sons had fought or died on opposite sides of the American Civil War.


title: Mother's Day (United States)

text: In 1868, Ann Jarvis, Anna Jarvis's mother, organised a committee to establish a "Mother's Friendship Day", the purpose of which was "to reunite families that had been divided during the Civil War." Ann Jarvis, who had previously organized Mother's Day Work Clubs to improve sanitation and health for both Union and Confederate encampments undergoing a typhoid outbreak, wanted to expand these into an annual memorial for mothers, but she died in 1905 before the annual celebration was established. Her daughter, who became almost obsessed with her, would continue her mother's efforts.


title: Mother's Day (United States)

text: There were several limited observances in the 1870s and the 1880s but none achieved resonance beyond the local level. At the time, Protestant schools in the United States already held many celebrations and observations such as Children's Day, Temperance Sunday, Roll Call Day, Decision Day, Missionary Day and others. In New York City, Julia Ward Howe led a "Mother's Day for Peace" anti-war observance on June 2, 1872, which was accompanied by a "Appeal to womanhood throughout the world" (nowadays known as Mother's Day Proclamation). The observance continued in Boston for about 10 years under Howe's personal sponsorship, then died out. In these celebrations, mothers all around the world would work towards world peace.


title: Mother's Day (United States)

text: Several years later a Mother's Day observance on May 13, 1877 was held in Albion, Michigan over a dispute related to the temperance movement. According to local legend, Albion pioneer Juliet Calhoun Blakeley stepped up to complete the sermon of the Rev. Myron Daughterty who was distraught because an anti-temperance group had forced his son and two other temperance advocates at gunpoint to spend the night in a saloon and become publicly drunk. From the pulpit Blakeley called on other mothers to join her. Blakeley's two sons, both traveling salesmen, were so moved that they vowed to return each year to pay tribute to her and embarked on a campaign to urge their business contacts to do likewise. At their urging, in the early 1880s, the Methodist Episcopal Church in Albion set aside the second Sunday in May to recognize the special contributions of mothers.


title: Mother's Day (United States)

text: Frank E. Hering, alumnus and administrator at the University of Notre Dame and President of the Fraternal Order of Eagles, made a plea for "setting aside one day in the year as a nationwide memorial to the memories of Mothers and motherhood" in 1904. After observing a class of Notre Dame students sending home penny postcards to their mothers, Hering went on to be a vocal advocate for a national Mother's Day for the next decade. As Hering stated in a 1941 issue of "Scholastic": "Throughout history the great men of the world have given their credit for their achievements to their mothers. [The] Holy Church recognizes this, as does Notre Dame especially, and Our Lady who watches over our great institution."


title: Mother's Day (United States)

text: In its present form, Mother's Day was established by Anna Jarvis with the help of Philadelphia merchant John Wanamaker following the death of her mother, Ann Jarvis, on May 9, 1905. Jarvis never mentioned Howe or Mothering Sunday, and she never mentioned any connection to the Protestant school celebrations, always claiming that the creation of Mother's Day was hers alone.


title: Mother's Day (United States)

text: A small service was held on May 12, 1907 in the Andrew's Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia, where Anna's mother had been teaching Sunday school. The first "official" service of worship was on May 10, 1908, in the same church, accompanied by a larger ceremony in the Wanamaker Auditorium in the Wanamaker's store in Philadelphia. The next year the day was reported to be widely celebrated in New York.


title: Mother's Day (United States)

text: Jarvis then campaigned to establish Mother's Day first as a U.S. national holiday and then later as an international holiday. The holiday was declared officially by the state of West Virginia in 1910, and the rest of the states followed quickly.


title: Mother's Day (United States)

text: On May 10, 1913, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution calling on all federal government officials (from the president down) to wear a white carnation the following day in observance of Mother's Day. On May 8, 1914, the U.S. Congress passed a law designating the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day and requesting a proclamation. The next day, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation declaring the first national Mother's Day as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war. In 1934, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved a stamp commemorating the holiday.


title: Mother's Day (United States)

text: In May 2008, the U.S. House of Representatives voted twice on a resolution commemorating Mother's Day, the first one being passed without a dissenting vote (21 members not voting). The Saint Andrews Methodist Church, where the first celebration was held, is now the International Mother's Day Shrine and is a National Historic Landmark.


title: Mother's Day (United States)

text: In 1912 Anna Jarvis trademarked the phrases "Second Sunday in May" and "Mother's Day", and created the Mother's Day International Association. She specifically noted that "Mother's" should "be a singular possessive, for each family to honor its own mother, not a plural possessive commemorating all mothers in the world." This is also the spelling used by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in his 1914 presidential proclamation, by the U.S. Congress in relevant bills, and by various U.S. presidents in their proclamations concerning Mother's Day.


title: Mother's Day (United States)

text: Traditions on Mother's Day include churchgoing, the distribution of carnations, and family dinners. Mother’s Day is the third largest holiday in the United States for sending cards. According to the greeting card industry, it is estimated that more than 50 percent of American households send greeting cards on this holiday. The holiday has been heavily commercialized by advertisers and retailers, and has been criticized by some as a Hallmark Holiday.


title: Mother's Day (United States)

text: Carnations have come to represent Mother's Day since Anna Jarvis delivered 500 of them at the first celebration in 1908. Many religious services held later adopted the custom of giving away carnations. This also started the custom of wearing a carnation on Mother's Day. The founder, Anna Jarvis, chose the carnation because it was the favorite flower of her mother. In part due to the shortage of white carnations, and in part due to the efforts to expand the sales of more types of flowers in Mother's Day, florists invented the idea of wearing a pink carnation if your mother was living, or a white one if she was dead; this was tirelessly promoted until it made its way into the popular observations at churches. Other less traditional flower options may include roses, a live blooming plant, flower leis, or a bouquet of a variety of different flowers.


title: Mother's Day (United States)

text: The commercialization of U.S. holidays began very early, and only nine years after the first official Mother's Day it had become so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become, spending all her inheritance and the rest of her life fighting what she saw as an abuse of the celebration. She decried the practice of purchasing greeting cards, which she saw as a sign of being too lazy to write a personal letter. She was arrested in 1948 for disturbing the peace while protesting against the commercialization of Mother's Day, and she finally said that she "...wished she would have never started the day because it became so out of control ..." She died later that year.


title: Mother's Day (United States)

text: Mother's Day is now one of the most commercially successful American occasions, having become the most popular day of the year to dine out at a restaurant in the United States and generating a significant portion of the U.S. jewelry industry's annual revenue, from custom gifts like mother's rings. Americans spend approximately $2.6 billion on flowers, $1.53 billion on pampering gifts—like spa treatments—and another $68 million on greeting cards.


title: Mother's Day (United States)

text: It has been suggested that commercialization has ensured that the holiday has continued, while other holidays from the same time, such as Children's Day and Temperance Sunday, are no longer celebrated.


title: Mother's Day (United States)

text: From 2005 to 2013, the Southern 500 auto race at Darlington Raceway was held on Saturday of Mother's Day weekend. From 2014 to 2019, the NASCAR Cup Series hosted the Digital Ally 400 at Kansas Speedway on Saturday of Mother's Day weekend. In 2020, the Blue-Emu Maximum Pain Relief 500 at Martinsville Speedway was scheduled to take place on the Saturday of Mother's Day weekend (although that race was postponed until June). In 2021, the Goodyear 400 auto race at Darlington Raceway will take place on Mother's Day and will serve as NASCAR's throwback race. Also, the IndyCar Grand Prix has been held on Saturday of Mother's Day weekend since 2014.


title: Mother's Day (United States)

text: From 2007–2018, The Players Championship men's golf tournament was held on Mother's Day weekend, except in 2011 and 2014 when May 1 fell on a Sunday. In those cases, it was held the next weekend. Previously, the Kingsmill Championship women's golf tournament was played on Mother's Day weekend from 2004 to 2009.


title: Tsarist autocracy

text: Tsarist autocracy (, transcr. "tsarskoye samoderzhaviye"), also called Tsarism, was a form of autocracy (later absolute monarchy) specific to the Grand Duchy of Moscow and its successor states the Tsardom of Russia and Russian Empire. In it, the Tsar possessed in principle authority and wealth, with more power than constitutional monarchs counterbalanced by a legislative authority, as well as more religious authority than Western monarchs. The institution originated during the time of Ivan III (1462−1505), and was abolished after the Russian Revolution of 1917.


title: Tsarist autocracy

text: Imperial autocracy, Russian autocracy, Muscovite autocracy, tsarist absolutism, imperial absolutism, Russian absolutism, Muscovite absolutism, Muscovite despotism, Russian despotism, tsarist despotism or imperial despotism.


title: Tsarist autocracy

text: Ivan III (reigned 1462-1505) built upon Byzantine traditions and laid foundations for the tsarist autocracy which with some variations would govern Russia for centuries. Absolutism in Russia gradually developed during the 17th and 18th centuries, replacing the despotism of the Grand Duchy of Moscow.


title: Tsarist autocracy

text: After chaotic Time of Troubles (1598-1613), the first monarch of the Romanov dynasty, Michael of Russia (reigned 1613-1645), was elected to the throne by a Zemsky Sobor ("assembly of the land"). During Michael's reign, when the Romanov dynasty was still weak, such assemblies were summoned annually. The Romanov dynasty consolidated absolute power in Russia during the reign of Peter the Great (reigned 1682-1725), who reduced the power of the nobility and strengthened the central power of the tsar, establishing a bureaucratic civil service based on the Table of Ranks but theoretically open to all classes of the society, in place of the nobility-only mestnichestvo which Feodor III had abolished in 1682 at the request of the highest boyars. Peter I also strengthened state control over the Russian Orthodox Church.


title: Tsarist autocracy

text: Peter's reforms provoked a series of palace coups seeking to restore the power of the nobility. To end them, Catherine the Great, whose reign (1762-1796) is often regarded as the high point of absolutism in Russia, in 1785 issued the Charter to the Gentry, legally affirming the rights and privileges they had acquired in preceding years, and the Charter of the Towns, establishing municipal self-government. This placated the powerful classes of society, but left real power in the hands of the state bureaucracy. Building on this, Alexander I (reigned 1801-1825) established the State council as an advisory legislative body. Alexander II (1855-1881) established a system of elected local self-government (Zemstvo) and an independent judicial system, but Russia did not have a national-level representative assembly (Duma) or a constitution until the 1905 Revolution.


title: Tsarist autocracy

text: The tsar himself, the embodiment of sovereign authority, stood at the center of the tsarist autocracy, with full power over the state and its people. The autocrat delegated power to persons and institutions acting on his orders, and within the limits of his laws, for the common good of all Russia. The tsar was metaphorically a father, and all of his subjects were his children; this metaphor even appeared in Orthodox primers, and is remembered in the common Russian expression "царь-батюшка" "tsar-batyushka" ("tsar-dear father").


title: Tsarist autocracy

text: Furthermore, contrary to the movement for separation of church and state in West European monarchies, the Russian Empire combined monarchy with the supreme authority on religious issues (see Church reform of Peter I and caesaropapism for details).


title: Tsarist autocracy

text: Another key feature related to patrimonialism. In Russia the tsar owned a much higher proportion of the state (lands, enterprises, etc.) than did Western monarchs.


title: Tsarist autocracy

text: The tsarist autocracy had many supporters within Russia. Major Russian advocates and theorists of the autocracy included writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Mikhail Katkov, Konstantin Aksakov, Nikolay Karamzin, Konstantin Pobedonostsev and Pyotr Semyonov. They all argued that a strong and prosperous Russia needed a strong tsar, and that philosophies of republicanism and liberal democracy were alien to it.<section end=tsarist autocracy />


title: Tsarist autocracy

text: Some historians see the traditions of tsarist autocracy as partially responsible for laying groundworks for the totalitarianism in the Soviet Union. They see the traditions of autocracy and patrimonialism as dominating Russia's political culture for centuries; for example, Stephen White is described as "the most consistent" defender of the position that the uniqueness of Russian political heritage is inseparable from its ethnic identity. In White's opinion, autocracy is the defining factor in the history of Russian politics. He wrote that Russian political culture is "rooted in the historical experience of centuries of absolutism." Those views had been challenged by other historians, for example, Nicolai N. Petro and Martin Malia (as cited by Hoffmann). Richard Pipes is another influential historian among non-specialists who holds the position about the distinctness of Russian history and political system, describing the absolutism of the Muscovite political system as "patrimonial", and saw the stability of the Soviet Union in the fact that Russians accepted the legitimacy of this patrimonial organization.


title: Tsarist autocracy

text: Some historians have pointed to a racial element in the concept. For example, American Cold War analysts, including George Kennan, linked the Soviet government's autocratic rule to Tatar influences during its history, and biographies of Russian leaders often stressed their possible Asiatic ancestries. They maintained that Asiatic influences rendered the Russians, along with the Chinese, untrustworthy.


title: Tsarist autocracy

text: Historians of different backgrounds have criticised the concept of tsarist autocracy in its various forms. Their complaints range from the different names of the model being too vague, to its chronological implications (it is impossible to consider Russia in different centuries the same) as well as to its content (the question how Russian or "tsarist" autocracy differs from "regular" autocracy or from European absolutism for that matter).


title: Tsarist autocracy

text: Regarding the substance of the autocracy model, its equation with despotism and its supposed origins in Mongol rule, as well as its supposed rise in medieval Muscovy, have been heavily debated. For one, Marxist Soviet scholars were concerned with prerevolutionary absolutism and identified the boyar elites and the bureaucracy as its pillars. For example, Sergey M. Troitskii claimed that the Russian monarchs held sway of the nobility which was reduced to state service. According to Troitskii, absolutism in Russia was the same as everywhere else. This led to a difficult position within Marxism, because absolutism revolves around institutions and laws, which were fundamentally less important than the socioeconomic base of society. This raises the question how absolutism could be the same when socioeconomic circumstances in Russia were not the same as elsewhere.


title: Tsarist autocracy

text: In order to reconcile the non-socioeconomic nature of absolutism with Marxist theory, Soviet scholar Alexander N. Chistozvonov proposed to group the Russian monarchy with the Prussian and Austrian ones, forming a distinct mix of Western European absolutism and "oriental despotism". In the eyes of Chistozvonov, whatever absolutist or autocratic elements were indeed present in Russia, they were not unique and do not warrant Russia’s exclusive categorization.


title: Tsarist autocracy

text: Similarly struggling with Marxist conceptions, Soviet historians Petr A. Zaionchkovskii and his student Larisa G. Zakharova focused on the importance of political convictions of Russian officials and bureaucrats to explain nineteenth-century political decision-making. By showing that the state was not a unified and powerful whole (commanded by the economically dominant class), they likewise tackled common (Marxist) conceptions of Russian autocracy. While like Troitskii, they studied the nobility and bureaucracy (in a later period), Zaionchkovskii and Zakharova painted a different picture of the tsar's position. Coinciding with Western scholars like Robert Crummey, they lay bare the interdependence of monarch and nobility in the practice of rule.


title: Tsarist autocracy

text: Outside Russia and the Soviet Union, Hans-Joachim Torke among others tried to counter the notion of an all-powerful autocratic state by pointing at the mutual dependency of service elites and the state (coining the term "state-conditioned society"). Torke acknowledges that the tsars were not reined in by any form of constitution, but he emphasizes for example the limitations of Christian morality and court customs. The so-called "American school" of the 1980s and 1990s argued for the important role of elite networks and their power at court. Edward Keenan went even further in his well-known piece on Muscovite political culture, claiming that the tsar was merely a puppet in the hands of boyars who wielded the actual power behind the scenes.


title: Tsarist autocracy

text: For others, like David Ransel and Paul Bushkovitch, it goes too far to portray relations between tsar and nobility like Keenan does, because it does not appreciate their complexity. Bushkovitch argues that the theoretic lack of limitations on the power of the tsar is irrelevant and instead claims that the "crucial question" is where real power lay. In his view, this can only be shown by the political narrative of events. Bushkovitch placed the balance of power between the tsar, the individual boyars and the tsar’s favourites at the centre of political decision-making. In so doing, Bushkovitch found that on the one hand, the tsar's relative power fluctuated per monarch, and on the other hand, that the nobility was all but unified; the balance of power changed with each tsar as well as the rise of boyars and in the case of Peter I even shifted multiple times.


title: Tsarist autocracy

text: Charles J. Halperin cautioned against views that too easily claim tsar and state dominance in politics or society. While acknowledging the institutional differences between Muscovy and Western European monarchies, Halperin nevertheless stresses that these differences should not be considered absolute. In his view, the practice of rule, a matter of human interactions, is more important than theory and abstractions.


title: Tsarist autocracy

text: b The existing literature pairs the words "Russian, tsarist, Muscovite" and "imperial" with "despotism, absolutism" and "autocracy" in all possible combinations, rarely giving clear definitions. "Tsarist" can be indeed applicable to the entire period (see also historical usage of the term "tsar"), but "Muscovite" is applicable only to the period of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, which was replaced by tsardom of Russia, a period for which the words "imperial" and "Russian" are applicable. Further, we can look at "Muscovite despotism" as a precursor for the "tsarist absolutism", however, the very use of the word despotism has problems (see following note). Finally, care should be taken with the term autocracy: today, autocrat is usually seen as synonymous with despot, tyrant and/or dictator, though each of these terms originally had a separate and distinct meaning. Overall, out of the available terms, "tsarist autocracy" is the one which seems most correct for the entire period discussed, but it is worth keeping in mind that there are no ideal types, and that the Russian political system evolved through time.


title: Tsarist autocracy

text: The terms "oriental despotism" and its development, the "Muscovite" or "Russian despotism", have been criticized as misleading, since Muscovy, and Russia, never had characteristics of pure despotism, such as the ruler being identified with a god).


title: Chapman Stick

text: The Chapman Stick is an electric musical instrument devised by Emmett Chapman in the early 1970s. A member of the guitar family, the Chapman Stick usually has ten or twelve individually tuned strings and is used to play bass lines, melody lines, chords, or textures. Designed as a fully polyphonic chordal instrument, it can also cover several of these musical parts simultaneously.


title: Chapman Stick

text: The Stick is available with passive or active pickup modules that are plugged into a separate instrument amplifier. With a special synthesizer pickup, it can be used to trigger synthesizers and send MIDI messages to electronic instruments.


title: Chapman Stick

text: A Stick looks like a wide version of the fretboard of an electric guitar, but with 8, 10, or 12 strings. It is, however, considerably longer and wider than a guitar fretboard. Unlike the electric guitar, it is usually played by tapping or fretting the strings, rather than plucking them. Instead of one hand fretting and the other hand plucking, both hands sound notes by striking the strings against the fingerboard "behind" (in guitar parlance, this means a short distance towards the tuning machines) on the appropriate frets for the desired notes.


title: Chapman Stick

text: For this reason, it can sound many more notes at once than some other stringed instruments, making it more comparable to a keyboard instrument than to other stringed instruments. This arrangement lends itself to playing many lines at once, and many Stick players have mastered performing bass, chords, and melody lines simultaneously.


title: Chapman Stick

text: Typically, the Chapman Stick is held via a belt-hook and a shoulder strap. The player hooks the instrument onto the belt and places the head and dominant arm through the shoulder strap. The instrument then settles into a position approximately 30 to 40 degrees from vertical, which allows both of the player's hands to naturally and comfortably address the fretboard. The player then hammers onto the strings with the fingertips in the same way that one would strike a piano key. The technique is very similar to that of the piano inasmuch as the player covers both bass and melody notes together with both hands, and each note is struck with one finger of one hand. Typically, one hand plays the melody on the treble strings and the other plays rhythm on the bass strings.


title: Chapman Stick

text: A seated playing position (which keeps the Stick in a similar playing position relative to the player as the standing position) is also popular, wherein a cross-member is laid upon the knees of the seated player and the stick's belthook rests upon the crossmember.


title: Chapman Stick

text: In 1969, jazz guitarist Emmett Chapman developed the two-handed tapping technique (in which both hands play parallel to the frets) and applied it to his playing. At the time, Chapman was playing a 9-string long-scale guitar, but decided to develop a new instrument for use with "free hands" to use the method's full potential. The Chapman Stick took five years to develop, during which Chapman also opted to set up a business to sell it. The first production model of the Stick was launched in 1974. On October 10 of the same year, Chapman brought his instrument to public attention by demonstrating it on the game show "What's My Line?"


title: Chapman Stick

text: Former Weather Report bassist Alphonso Johnson was among the first musicians to introduce the Chapman Stick to the public. Session player Tony Levin was also an early user and was playing the instrument from the mid-1970s: he would bring it to sessions and tours with Peter Gabriel, and featured it in his work as a member of King Crimson from 1981 onwards. He would also use it with Liquid Tension Experiment and in sessions for bands including Pink Floyd and Yes. Levin formed the band Stick Men, consisting of one drummer and two Stick players.


title: Chapman Stick

text: Recordings that have been influential on Stick players, because of the prominent role the Stick plays, include the 1981 King Crimson album "Discipline" (played by Tony Levin) and Emmett Chapman's own album "Parallel Galaxy". Amy Grant's hit single "Angels" also featured a Stick solo (played by Andy Widders-Ellis).


title: Chapman Stick

text: The Stick made a disguised appearance in David Lynch's film "Dune" as Gurney Halleck's baliset, although the scene where Halleck (played by Patrick Stewart) plays the instrument was removed from the theatrical version and can only be seen in the extended versions. The piece being played in the scene is from Emmett Chapman's recording of his original song "Back Yard" from a cassette recording.


title: Chapman Stick

text: Wayne Lytle, creator of Animusic, commented that on his piece "Stick Figures", his inspiration for the semi-anthropomorphic bass guitar was the Chapman Stick.


title: Chapman Stick

text: Chapman Sticks have been made from many materials. The first were made from hardwoods, most from ironwood, but some from ebony and other exotic woods, until the early 1980s. The next group was made from an injection-molded polycarbonate resin through 1989. These were followed by one-piece hardwood structures with an adjustable truss rod, and for a time from 2001 to the mid-to-late 2000s (although not currently available), the "Stick XG" (Extended Graphite) was made of structural graphite, continuous strand carbon fiber. Today, they are made from laminated hardwoods (including padauk, Indian rosewood, tarara, maple, wenge, and mahogany), and laminated bamboo, as well as graphite.


title: Chapman Stick

text: In contrast to the guitar or bass, the Stick is set up with very little relief in the fretboard. It is very flat compared to a guitar, which has a slight bow. Combined with a long scale length, stainless steel pyramidal fret rails, very low string action, and very sensitive pickups, this setup is advantageous to the tapping style of play. The rear surface of the instrument is not curved like a guitar neck, but has deep-beveled edges (also a design trademark of the Stick).


title: Chapman Stick

text: The original (now called "Classic") tuning consists of five bass strings (six on the Grand Sticks), tuned upwards in all-fifths tuning, with the low string in the middle of the fretboard, and five melody strings (6 on Grand Stick), tuned upwards (this means from lowest-pitched string to highest-pitched string) in all-fourths tuning, again with the low string in the middle of the fretboard.


title: Chapman Stick

text: The hardware is fully adjustable to accommodate any gauge string at any position. On the 36"-scale instrument, notes can range from low C (above B on a 5-string bass) to high D (a whole step below the high E string on guitar). On the two guitar-scale models (Alto Stick and Stick Guitar), the notes range from F below guitar low E to F# above guitar high E.


title: Chapman Stick

text: Tuning configurations may change depending on the player's style: a player playing as a lead instrument will choose an overall higher pitch tuning, with more separation or overlap between the melody and bass courses.


title: Chapman Stick

text: The stringing/tuning configuration of the Chapman Stick is advantageous to the player who wishes to play large, fully voiced chords with close inner-note relationships. In contrast to a standard guitar, where one tends to "run out of options" within a particular fingering, the Stick tuning results in up to four or even five octaves of note choices under each hand's fretting position.


title: Chapman Stick

text: The classic tuning shows another advantage as well: The regular tunings in fourths and fifths remain consistent in each of the two parts of the instrument; regular tunings facilitate learning by beginners, as well as transposition and improvisation by advanced players. Also, the bass/melody division allows microtonal tunings.


title: Chapman Stick

text: The Stick is available with passive or active pickup modules. Customized Roland GK-3 pickups are available for the treble or bass side of the instrument, allowing the instrument to trigger or control one or two guitar synthesizers such as the Roland GR-20 or Axon AX-100, and also to drive other MIDI instruments or sequencers chained to the guitar synthesizer. The hammer-on style of playing produces a rising waveform transient that is easily tracked by this type of device.


title: Chapman Stick

text: Standard output is two-channel, through a TRS 1/4" phone connector, with bass and melody courses output separately. There are separate volume controls for bass and melody. The ACTV-2 and PASV-4 pickup modules also have mono operation modes.


title: Chapman Stick

text: The Stick can be plugged into any standard guitar amp or bass amplifier, to good effect. However, because of the very high impedance of the passive pickups, an instrument preamp is often employed, especially for full-range amplification systems (PA system, keyboard amps, etc.).


title: Chapman Stick

text: British musician Nick Beggs uses a Grand Stick, fully MIDI-capable of triggering from both bass and melody strings. He has named this modified instrument the "Virtual Stick".


title: Chapman Stick

text: Currently, there are eight models of the Chapman Stick. Some string configurations are mentioned below, but current production models offer any tuning within physical limitations of stringing:


title: Chapman Stick

text: Currently, the Stick, Grand Stick, and Stick Bass are 36"-scale, but the older production models were 34" scale.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: In computer programming, a variable is an abstract storage location paired with an associated symbolic name, which contains some known or unknown quantity of information referred to as a "value"; or in simpler terms, a variable is a named container for a particular set of bits or (like integer, float, string etc...). A variable can eventually be associated with or identified by a memory address. The variable name is the usual way to reference the stored value, in addition to referring to the variable itself, depending on the context. This separation of name and content allows the name to be used independently of the exact information it represents. The identifier in computer source code can be bound to a value during run time, and the value of the variable may thus change during the course of program execution.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: Variables in programming may not directly correspond to the concept of variables in mathematics. The latter is abstract, having no reference to a physical object such as storage location. The value of a computing variable is not necessarily part of an equation or formula as in mathematics. Variables in computer programming are frequently given long names to make them relatively descriptive of their use, whereas variables in mathematics often have terse, one- or two-character names for brevity in transcription and manipulation.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: A variable's storage location may be referenced by several different identifiers, a situation known as aliasing. Assigning a value to the variable using one of the identifiers will change the value that can be accessed through the other identifiers.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: Compilers have to replace variables' symbolic names with the actual locations of the data. While a variable's name, type, and location often remain fixed, the data stored in the location may be changed during program execution.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: In imperative programming languages, values can generally be accessed or changed at any time. In pure functional and logic languages, variables are bound to expressions and keep a single value during their entire lifetime due to the requirements of referential transparency. In imperative languages, the same behavior is exhibited by (named) constants (symbolic constants), which are typically contrasted with (normal) variables.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: Depending on the type system of a programming language, variables may only be able to store a specified data type (e.g. integer or string). Alternatively, a datatype may be associated only with the current value, allowing a single variable to store anything supported by the programming language.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: An identifier referencing a variable can be used to access the variable in order to read out the value, or alter the value, or edit other attributes of the variable, such as access permission, locks, semaphores, etc.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: For instance, a variable might be referenced by the identifier "" and the variable can contain the number 1956. If the same variable is referenced by the identifier "" as well, and if using this identifier "", the value of the variable is altered to 2009, then reading the value using the identifier "" will yield a result of 2009 and not 1956.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: If a variable is only referenced by a single identifier, that identifier can simply be called "the name of the variable"; otherwise we can speak of it as "one of the names of the variable". For instance, in the previous example the identifier "" is a name of the variable in question, and "" is another name of the same variable.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: The "scope" of a variable describes where in a program's text the variable may be used, while the "extent" (also called "lifetime") of a variable describes when in a program's execution the variable has a (meaningful) value. The scope of a variable affects its extent. The scope of a variable is actually a property of the name of the variable, and the extent is a property of the storage location of the variable. These should not be confused with "context" (also called "environment"), which is a property of the program, and varies by point in the program's text or execution—see scope: an overview. Further, object lifetime may coincide with variable lifetime, but in many cases is not tied to it.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: "Scope" is an important part of the name resolution of a variable. Most languages define a specific "scope" for each variable (as well as any other named entity), which may differ within a given program. The scope of a variable is the portion of the program's text for which the variable's name has meaning and for which the variable is said to be "visible". Entrance into that scope typically begins a variable's lifetime (as it comes into context) and exit from that scope typically ends its lifetime (as it goes out of context). For instance, a variable with "lexical scope" is meaningful only within a certain function/subroutine, or more finely within a block of expressions/statements (accordingly with function scope or block scope); this is static resolution, performable at parse-time or compile-time. Alternatively, a variable with dynamic scope is resolved at run-time, based on a global binding stack that depends on the specific control flow. Variables only accessible within a certain functions are termed "local variables". A "global variable", or one with indefinite scope, may be referred to anywhere in the program.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: "Extent", on the other hand, is a runtime (dynamic) aspect of a variable. Each binding of a variable to a value can have its own "extent" at runtime. The extent of the binding is the portion of the program's execution time during which the variable continues to refer to the same value or memory location. A running program may enter and leave a given extent many times, as in the case of a closure.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: Unless the programming language features garbage collection, a variable whose extent permanently outlasts its scope can result in a memory leak, whereby the memory allocated for the variable can never be freed since the variable which would be used to reference it for deallocation purposes is no longer accessible. However, it can be permissible for a variable binding to extend beyond its scope, as occurs in Lisp closures and C static local variables; when execution passes back into the variable's scope, the variable may once again be used. A variable whose scope begins before its extent does is said to be "uninitialized" and often has an undefined, arbitrary value if accessed (see wild pointer), since it has yet to be explicitly given a particular value. A variable whose extent ends before its scope may become a dangling pointer and deemed uninitialized once more since its value has been destroyed. Variables described by the previous two cases may be said to be "out of extent" or "unbound". In many languages, it is an error to try to use the value of a variable when it is out of extent. In other languages, doing so may yield unpredictable results. Such a variable may, however, be assigned a new value, which gives it a new extent.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: For space efficiency, a memory space needed for a variable may be allocated only when the variable is first used and freed when it is no longer needed. A variable is only needed when it is in scope, thus beginning each variable's lifetime when it enters scope may give space to unused variables. To avoid wasting such space, compilers often warn programmers if a variable is declared but not used.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: It is considered good programming practice to make the scope of variables as narrow as feasible so that different parts of a program do not accidentally interact with each other by modifying each other's variables. Doing so also prevents action at a distance. Common techniques for doing so are to have different sections of a program use different name spaces, or to make individual variables "private" through either dynamic variable scoping or lexical variable scoping.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: Many programming languages employ a reserved value (often named "null" or "nil") to indicate an invalid or uninitialized variable.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: In statically typed languages such as Go or ML, a variable also has a "type", meaning that only certain kinds of values can be stored in it. For example, a variable of type "integer" is prohibited from storing text values.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: In dynamically typed languages such as Python, a variable's type is inferred by its value, and can change according to its value. In Common Lisp, both situations exist simultaneously: A variable is given a type (if undeclared, it is assumed to be , the universal supertype) which exists at compile time. Values also have types, which can be checked and queried at runtime.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: Typing of variables also allows polymorphisms to be resolved at compile time. However, this is different from the polymorphism used in object-oriented function calls (referred to as "virtual functions" in C++) which resolves the call based on the value type as opposed to the supertypes the variable is allowed to have.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: Variables often store simple data, like integers and literal strings, but some programming languages allow a variable to store values of other datatypes as well. Such languages may also enable functions to be parametric polymorphic. These functions operate like variables to represent data of multiple types. For example, a function named may determine the length of a list. Such a function may be parametric polymorphic by including a type variable in its type signature, since the number of elements in the list is independent of the elements' types.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: The "formal parameters" (or "formal arguments") of functions are also referred to as variables. For instance, in this Python code segment,


title: Variable (computer science)

text: the variable named is a "parameter" because it is given a value when the function is called. The integer 5 is the "argument" which gives its value. In most languages, function parameters have local scope. This specific variable named can only be referred to within the function (though of course other functions can also have variables called ).


title: Variable (computer science)

text: The specifics of variable allocation and the representation of their values vary widely, both among programming languages and among implementations of a given language. Many language implementations allocate space for "local variables", whose extent lasts for a single function call on the "call stack", and whose memory is automatically reclaimed when the function returns. More generally, in "name binding", the name of a variable is bound to the address of some particular block (contiguous sequence) of bytes in memory, and operations on the variable manipulate that block. Referencing is more common for variables whose values have large or unknown sizes when the code is compiled. Such variables reference the location of the value instead of storing the value itself, which is allocated from a pool of memory called the "heap".


title: Variable (computer science)

text: Bound variables have values. A value, however, is an abstraction, an idea; in implementation, a value is represented by some "data object", which is stored somewhere in computer memory. The program, or the runtime environment, must set aside memory for each data object and, since memory is finite, ensure that this memory is yielded for reuse when the object is no longer needed to represent some variable's value.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: Objects allocated from the heap must be reclaimed—especially when the objects are no longer needed. In a garbage-collected language (such as C#, Java, Python, Golang and Lisp), the runtime environment automatically reclaims objects when extant variables can no longer refer to them. In non-garbage-collected languages, such as C, the program (and the programmer) must explicitly allocate memory, and then later free it, to reclaim its memory. Failure to do so leads to memory leaks, in which the heap is depleted as the program runs, risks eventual failure from exhausting available memory.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: When a variable refers to a data structure created dynamically, some of its components may be only indirectly accessed through the variable. In such circumstances, garbage collectors (or analogous program features in languages that lack garbage collectors) must deal with a case where only a portion of the memory reachable from the variable needs to be reclaimed.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: Unlike their mathematical counterparts, programming variables and constants commonly take multiple-character names, e.g. or . Single-character names are most commonly used only for auxiliary variables; for instance, , , for array index variables.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: Some naming conventions are enforced at the language level as part of the language syntax which involves the format of valid identifiers. In almost all languages, variable names cannot start with a digit (0–9) and cannot contain whitespace characters. Whether or not punctuation marks are permitted in variable names varies from language to language; many languages only permit the underscore ("_") in variable names and forbid all other punctuation. In some programming languages, sigils (symbols or punctuation) are affixed to variable identifiers to indicate the variable's datatype or scope.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: Case-sensitivity of variable names also varies between languages and some languages require the use of a certain case in naming certain entities; Most modern languages are case-sensitive; some older languages are not. Some languages reserve certain forms of variable names for their own internal use; in many languages, names beginning with two underscores ("__") often fall under this category.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: However, beyond the basic restrictions imposed by a language, the naming of variables is largely a matter of style. At the machine code level, variable names are not used, so the exact names chosen do not matter to the computer. Thus names of variables identify them, for the rest they are just a tool for programmers to make programs easier to write and understand. Using poorly chosen variable names can make code more difficult to review than non-descriptive names, so names that are clear are often encouraged.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: Programmers often create and adhere to code style guidelines that offer guidance on naming variables or impose a precise naming scheme. Shorter names are faster to type but are less descriptive; longer names often make programs easier to read and the purpose of variables easier to understand. However, extreme verbosity in variable names can also lead to less comprehensible code.


title: Variable (computer science)

text: We can classify variables based on their lifetime. The different types of variables are static, stack-dynamic, explicit heap-dynamic, and implicit heap-dynamic. A static variable is also known as global variable, it is bound to a memory cell before execution begins and remains to the same memory cell until termination. A typical example is the static variables in C and C++. A Stack-dynamic variable is known as local variable, which is bound when the declaration statement is executed, and it is deallocated when the procedure returns. The main examples are local variables in C subprograms and Java methods. Explicit Heap-Dynamic variables are nameless (abstract) memory cells that are allocated and deallocated by explicit run-time instructions specified by the programmer. The main examples are dynamic objects in C++ (via new and delete) and all objects in Java. Implicit Heap-Dynamic variables are bound to heap storage only when they are assigned values. Allocation and release occur when values are reassigned to variables. As a result, Implicit heap-dynamic variables have the highest degree of flexibility. The main examples are some variables in JavaScript, PHP and all variables in APL.


title: Williams-Sonoma, Inc.

text: Williams-Sonoma, Inc. is an American publicly traded consumer retail company that sells kitchenware and home furnishings. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States. The company has 625 brick and mortar stores and distributes to more than 60 countries, with brands including Williams Sonoma, Williams Sonoma Home, Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, PBteen, West Elm, Mark and Graham, and Rejuvenation. Williams-Sonoma, Inc. also operates through eight corresponding websites and a gift registry.


title: Williams-Sonoma, Inc.

text: The company is one of the largest e-commerce retailers in the U.S., and one of the biggest multi-channel specialty retailers in the world. In 2019, Williams-Sonoma, Inc. was named as a Fortune 500 company for the first time in its history.


title: Williams-Sonoma, Inc.

text: Williams-Sonoma, Inc. had its initial public offering in July 1983. One million shares were offered on the OTC Market at $23 a share. At the end of 1985, the company was generating over $51 million in sales. In September 1986, Williams-Sonoma, Inc. acquired Pottery Barn from Gap. The acquisition included Pottery Barn's 27 housewares stores located in California, Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York for $6 million. The company's expansion led to the opening of its first distribution center in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1984. Williams-Sonoma, Inc. was one of the largest proprietary distributors in the Memphis area with 3.5 million square feet of distribution space.


title: Williams-Sonoma, Inc.

text: From 1986 to 1989, Williams-Sonoma, Inc. grew by an average of 12 stores per year, bringing the total locations to over 100 stores in the U.S. It was listed on the New York Stock Exchange starting in 1998, while sales reached $1 billion for the first time.


title: Williams-Sonoma, Inc.

text: The following year, Williams-Sonoma, Inc. launched its e-commerce websites. The company also launched Pottery Barn Kids, a spin-off of Pottery Barn that specializes in home furnishings for children.


title: Williams-Sonoma, Inc.

text: The Pottery Barn brand further expanded with the launch of PBteen in early 2003. Pottery Barn extended its merchandising with the introduction of the Pottery Barn Bed & Bath and Pottery Barn Kids in Manhattan.


title: Williams-Sonoma, Inc.

text: By 2009, Williams-Sonoma, Inc. was operating 610 stores with an annual revenue of over $3 billion. In May 2010, Lester retired, and Laura Alber was named CEO of the umbrella organization. Alber joined the company in 1995. She was active in building the Pottery Barn catalog and the development and launch of Pottery Barn Kids and PBteen. In November 2011, the company acquired Portland, Oregon-based Rejuvenation, a manufacturer and direct marketer of light fixtures and hardware with stores in Portland, Seattle, and Los Angeles. The company launched a lifestyle brand offering personalized products, Mark and Graham, in November 2012.


title: Williams-Sonoma, Inc.

text: Williams Sonoma's e-commerce sales were approximately 52 percent of its parent company's revenue of the first quarter of 2015.


title: Williams-Sonoma, Inc.

text: The West Elm brand was launched in 2002 with the release of a catalog; the following year, the brand opened its first store. Through the West Elm brand, the company launched West Elm Hotels. The joint venture with DDK hospitality management and development company has locations in Detroit, Michigan, Indianapolis, Indiana, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Oakland, California and Savannah, Georgia.


title: Williams-Sonoma, Inc.

text: The West Elm brand is active with the Clinton Global Initiative and in 2013 agreed to invest $35 million on hand made goods from U.S. and abroad to sell in its stores over the course of two years. The collaborations were aimed to positively impact over 4,000 artisan workers. Former President Bill Clinton visited a West Elm showroom after the company spent nearly that amount in the first year of the agreement. In 2015, the company made a pledge at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting to expand its Fair Trade Certified product offerings.


title: Williams-Sonoma, Inc.

text: In October 2001, the company opened its first international stores in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Williams-Sonoma and Pottery Barn stores in Yorkville occupied a combined 37,000 square feet of space at the retail podium of the 100 Bloor Street West condominium; these stores closed in 2017 after the landlord substantially raised rents in 2014.


title: Williams-Sonoma, Inc.

text: In 2008, the company opened Pottery Barn and West Elm stores at Plaza Las Americas in Hato Rey, Puerto Rico, a district of the capital San Juan.


title: Williams-Sonoma, Inc.

text: In 2010, Williams-Sonoma, Inc. partnered with M.H. Alshaya Co. to launch Pottery Barn and Pottery Barn Kids franchise operations in the Middle East. The first Williams-Sonoma brand store outside of North America opened in Kuwait in 2012, along with West Elm at The Avenues Mall, the largest shopping center in Kuwait. The company also opened four stores (Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, and West Elm) in Australia as the first retail locations outside of North America owned and operated by Williams-Sonoma, Inc.


title: Williams-Sonoma, Inc.

text: The company opened its first store in the United Kingdom in 2014 with the launch of its West Elm location in London. Williams-Sonoma, Inc. signed a franchise agreement in 2014 to begin opening stores and operating its e-commerce sites for six of its brands in Mexico. In the same year, the company also opened Pottery Barn and Pottery Barn Kids stores with a franchise partner in the Philippines.


title: Williams-Sonoma, Inc.

text: In March 2020, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a settlement with Williams-Sonoma, Inc. over false advertising claims where Goldtouch Bakeware products, Rejuvenation-branded products, and Pottery Barn Teen and Pottery Barn Kids-branded upholstered furniture products were falsely advertised as being made in the USA. As part of the settlement with the FTC, Williams-Sonoma, Inc. agreed to stop making false, misleading or unsubstantiated "Made in USA" claims and is required to pay $1 million to the FTC.


title: Saina (film)

text: Saina is a 2021 Indian Hindi-language biographical sports film directed by Amole Gupte and produced by Bhushan Kumar, Krishan Kumar, Sujay Jairaj and Rashesh Shah under the banner of T-Series and Front Foot Pictures. Based on the life of badminton player Saina Nehwal, the film stars Parineeti Chopra as Nehwal. The film was initially set to release in September 2020, but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic in India. It was theatrically released on 26 March 2021.


title: Saina (film)

text: The film traces Saina's journey from her training at Lal Bahadur Shastri Stadium, Hyderabad, her struggles, her parents sacrifices for her dreams, her passion for badminton, her relationship with Kashyap and her coach Rajan to her becoming World's No.1.


title: Saina (film)

text: Saina Nehwal revealing the details of the film, on her Twitter account announced the film on 26 April 2017. Earlier, Shraddha Kapoor was signed to play Nehwal's role, and she even started filming in September 2018 after training, but later she opted out of the film due to health issues. On 15 March 2019, it was confirmed by T-Series head honcho Bhushan Kumar that Shraddha Kapoor will not be playing the role of Nehwal. In a statement they said, "Due to circumstances beyond her control, the actress kept giving other films priority over the national badminton champion’s biopic, so the makers have decided to go ahead with Chopra."


title: Saina (film)

text: From mid June, Chopra was training herself in playing badminton and practicing the stances of Nehwal. As many as 12 courts were recreated to represent international venues where Saina Nehwal has played.


title: Saina (film)

text: Saina received mixed to positive reviews from critics with praises towards Chopra's performance. Yogesh Mishra of 'Bollywood Town' says "Movie beautifully talks about the success saga of a middle-class girl from Haryana". Shubhra Gupta of The Indian Express gave 3 out of 5 stars and noted that Parineeti "serves, drops and smashes as [the] badminton champ", writing "[Chopra] gives us a good, solid Saina Nehwal. When she raises her racket after a hard-fought win, you cheer."


title: Saina (film)

text: Film critic Anna M. M. Vetticad applauded Chopra for rising to the challenge of playing the sports icon, writing "The actor plays down her naturally vivacious personality and sparkling eyes for the not-so-showy character she plays here. Most impressively, she gets the body language of a sportsperson right and actually looks the part on court." She gave the film 2.75 star out of 5 and pointed out that the film erases Gopichand and skirts inconvenient truths.


title: Saina (film)

text: Renuka Vyavahare of Times Of India gave the film 3.5 stars out of 5 and wrote, "Saina is a simple ode to eternal optimism". For Chopra's performance she said, "Parineeti push herself in this physically demanding role".


title: Saina (film)

text: The soundtrack is composed by Amaal Mallik, produced, arranged & co-written by Meghdeep Bose with lyrics by Manoj Muntashir and Kunaal Vermaa.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: Stockholm Palace or the Royal Palace ( or ) is the official residence and major royal palace of the Swedish monarch (King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia use Drottningholm Palace as their usual residence). Stockholm Palace is on Stadsholmen, in Gamla stan in the capital, Stockholm. It neighbours the Riksdag building. The offices of the King, the other members of the Swedish royal family, and the Royal Court of Sweden are here. The palace is used for representative purposes by the King whilst performing his duties as the head of state.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: This royal residence has been in the same location by Norrström in the northern part of Gamla stan in Stockholm since the middle of the 13th century when the Tre Kronor Castle was built. In modern times the name relates to the building called "Kungliga Slottet". The palace was designed by Nicodemus Tessin the Younger and erected on the same place as the medieval Tre Kronor Castle which was destroyed in a fire on 7 May 1697. Due to the costly Great Northern War which started in 1700, construction of the palace was halted in 1709, and not recommenced until 1727—six years after the end of the war. When Tessin the Younger died in 1728, the palace was completed by Carl Hårleman who also designed a large part of its Rococo interior. The palace was not ready to use until 1754, when King Adolf Frederick and Queen Louisa Ulrika moved in, but some interior work proceeded until the 1770s. No major conversions have been done in the palace since its completion, only some adjustments, new interiors, modernization and redecorating for different regents and their families, coloration of the facades and addition of the palace museums. The palace is surrounded by the Lejonbacken and the Norrbro to the north, the "Logården" (known as the Shot Yard in English) and Skeppsbron in the east, the Slottsbacken and the Storkyrkan in the south, and the outer courtyard and Högvaktsterrassen in the northwest.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: The Royal Palace is owned by the Swedish State through the National Property Board of Sweden which is responsible for running and maintaining the palace, while the "Ståthållarämbetet" (the Office of the Governor of the Royal Palaces) manages the royal right of disposition of the palace. The palace belongs to the Crown palaces in Sweden which are at the disposition of the King and the Royal court of Sweden.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: The first building on this site was a fortress with a core tower built in the 13th century by Birger Jarl to defend Lake Mälaren. The fortress grew to a castle, eventually named Tre Kronor for the core tower's spire top decorated with three crowns.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: At the beginning of the 17th century, King Gustavus Adolphus made plans for a new royal palace. The plans came to naught, but in 1651, his daughter Queen Christina appointed Jean de la Vallée to architect for the royal castles, and among his commissions was to make suggestions for how to improve and update the Tre Kronor Castle. Contemporaneous copperplates from 1654 shows de la Vallée's idea of a more visible castle on a raised plateau with a connecting bridge over the Norrström. Queen Christina remodelled and embellished the existing castle extensively, but no new castle was built during her reign.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: From 1650 to 1660, Jean de la Vallée made suggestions for large conversions of the castle, but it was not until 1661, when Nicodemus Tessin became City Architect and Architect for the Royal castles, that more substantial plans for a new castle were made. In 1661, he presented the first draft for a conversion of the northern row which his son, Nicodemus Tessin , would later rework and realise in 1692 to 1696.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: A map of the Stadsholmen from the 1650s, illustrates de la Vallées suggestion for the conversion of the old castle. The project also brought about an adjustment of the Slottsbacken, making it partially enclosed by buildings. Of interest are Tessin 's additions in pencil on that map, probably made at the end of the 17th century. There is an early sketch for the northern facade's west wing and the two curved wings enclosing the outer courtyard (both executed). Tessin also made plans for the city area west of the palace with large stairs in false perspective where the Axel Oxenstierna palace, among other buildings, are and joining the Västerlånggatan in addition to a wide street to the present Mynttorget, straight though the city block with the present Brantingtorget (not executed). He had envisioned a line of sight from the center of the palace, westwards to the Riddarholmen.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: The northern row of the present palace was built in 1692, in just five months as a part of the old Tre Kronor castle. The new row had the same austere Baroque style that still remain, contrasting with the rest of the Renaissance castle.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: At an early stage of the conversion in the 1690s, a number of elderly Swedish artists such as David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl and Johan Sylvius, were still alive and they contributed with artistic work to the completion of the northern row, in particular to the Royal Chapel. Ehrenstrahl made the large religious paintings and Sylvius painted the plafond.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: A model for the austere Roman baroque style, including a relatively strict regularity and symmetry, was the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, where the architect in charge of the conversion, Nicodemus Tessin the Younger, went to study buildings in 1688.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: The walls surrounding the storages, stables and workshops of the Tre Kronor castle are now behind the Lejonbacken and in the basement of the northern row. Thus, Lejonbacken conceals the old windowless wall behind it. Older walls can also be found higher up in large parts of the northern row's facade walls. The walls from the former northeast and northwest square corner-towers for example, are thicker in this part of the palace's ground floor, since Tessin re-used the remaining walls and incorporated them in the new palace. About half of the old walls were used in that manner, since the ever frugal Charles XI had only reluctantly agreed to the conversion which started in 1690. Thrift and recycling were guiding principles at the building of the northern row. Hence, the construction proceeded rather quickly and after five months the new row was topped out and roofed. The new walls became higher than the old ones, except for the towers which were completely enclosed in the new walls. The Charles XI's Gallery is one more feature remaining since before the fire, all according to Tessin's plan.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: A new Royal Chapel in the northern row was inaugurated at Christmas in 1696, and a new Hall of State was also planned there. The chapel was to replace the old castle chapel that had been erected by John III in the same location by the old storages and stables at the Tre Kronor castle.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: Building the new chapel with the same proportions as the old one and making it fit within the walls of the old chapel, with a retained high ceiling inside the walls of the former northeast tower (now the northeast corner of the palace), proved difficult for Tessin if he was to be able to adhere to the austere Baroque style where all the windows ought to be the same size, and placed in precise rows despite what rooms were behind them. To achieve this, Tessin added a mezzanine floor with smaller square windows just above the lower row of windows. These smaller windows now encircle the whole building, a remnant of the first castle chapel. After the fire, when Tessin could make more substantial alterations, the Royal Chapel and the Hall of State were placed in the southern row instead, and the furniture and inventories, such as benches, household silver and decorations are to some extent preserved in the present-day Royal Chapel.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: According to a plan from before the fire, the palace was to be in a square shape without any wings in austere Roman Baroque style, essentially with the rest of the rows looking like the northern row. This suggestion is not preserved, historian Boo von Malmborg suggests that this was probably because Tessin did not dare to present his comprehensive plans to the economical Charles XI.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: The new building is depicted in five engravings in the Suecia Antiqua et Hodierna printed in 1695 to 1702: the new northern facade of the castle including the Lejonbacken and the square courtyard, the new chapel's interior, the chapel's exterior, view of the Hedvig Eleonora Church and view from the Kungsträdgården. Lejonbacken, which was to lead up to the north gate from the east as well as from the west, was never completed before the fire and is only mentioned in the drawings.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: On 7 May 1697, a great castle fire occurred, prompting the building of the present Stockholm Palace. The fire ruined most of the earlier fortress, the Tre Kronor Castle, except for the sturdy, recently constructed walls of the northern row, most of which are still standing. Unlike the rest of the castle, the walls of the northern row could be repaired.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: After the fire, the Regency Council of King Charles XII under the direction of the Queen dowager Hedvig Eleonora of Holstein-Gottorp at the Karlberg Palace that a new castle should be built on the walls of the burnt castle. Nicodemus Tessin the Younger was the architect appointed to draw and build the new Stockholm Palace. At the same time that Tessin's plans were approved, he was appointed head of the construction of the palace as part of his new position: "Överintendent över de Kungliga Slotten" (Superintendent of the Royal Castles), a kind of castle architect. Göran Josuæ Törnquist (later ennobled Adelcrantz) became the Assisting intendent and his deputy, an important position at the construction site, and Hans Conradt Buchegger became general contractor for the palace construction. In 1697, Abraham Winantz Svanssköld, Tessin's half-brother, was appointed deputy castle and court architect. Together with Tessin he was active at the palace construction, and they were helped by several German journeymen. Important sculptors and craftsmen during the first years of the construction were, among others, René Chauveau, Bernard Foucquet and his son Jacques Foucquet.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: Tessin presented the first finished plans for the new palace within the year of the fire. First, the remnants of the old castle were razed, practically everything was demolished save for parts of the northern row with its strict Baroque, that were still standing. The demolishing was performed by approximately 300 men from mid-May 1697 to mid-spring in 1700, when the remains of the old keep Tre Kronor were re-used as filling for the Lejonbacken. Consequently, most of the material for the new palace was new.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: When Tessin got the commission to design the new palace, he abandoned parts of his earlier plan about building a square palace and added the lower wings flanking the palace in the east and west.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: This was made to give the palace a more monumental look and this could be executed since there was now more open land in which to expand the palace such as the western area where King Gustav I's moat and cannon mounds had previously been.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: The southwest wing had to be made shorter since the Storkyrkan was in the way. This asymmetry, created by the different lengths of the wings, was compensated by adding the two detached, semicircular wings for the Royal guards and the Commanders, west of the main building. These wings encircle the courtyard. Tessin's plans and commissions to artists still characterizes the facades, walls and stone pilasters as well as walls, floors, pillars and pilasters inside the palace, such as in the Hall of State, the Royal Chapel and the stairwells.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: The building of the palace went on with great intensity during the reign of Charles XII, but the costly campaigns during the Great Northern War were impedimental. Charles XII lost at the Battle of Poltava in 1709, and that year the building of the palace came to a complete halt. At that time, the courtyard had been leveled and the courtyard walls were erected to the height of one floor in the south and east part and half a floor in the west part. The palace remained in that semi-finished state until 1727, when the Riksdag granted funds to continue the work. This was one year before Tessin died.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: Some embellishments in Tessin's plans were never made. For example, he wanted to place an equestrian statue of King Charles XI in the inner courtyard in the French fashion at that time, but King Charles XII disliked that and rejected the idea since it would "totally obscure the beautiful prospect". Neither did Tessin's suggestion to embellish the roof balustrade with sculptures. Tessin's vision for this can be seen on an made by Jean Eric Rehn about 1770.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: The largest group of artists came from France. Between the years 1693 and 1699, sixteen French masons, painters and foundrymen arrived at Stockholm. At Tessin's initiative, the craftsmen had received an invitation through the Swedish diplomatic envoy in Paris, Daniel Cronström, to come and work for the Swedish king. They were offered yearly wages and accommodations. The sculptor René Chauveau started out with a salary of 1,000 riksdaler (approximately equal to US$49,550 in 2014) per year; he was among the highest paid in the group. Some artists had brought their families with them and they formed a French artists' colony. The family members often participated in the construction work. The whole group is referred to as "de fransöske hantwerkarne" (the French craftsmen). Most of them had received their education at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in Paris and had worked at King Louis XIV's large palace construction at Versailles. Most of the craftsmen were Catholic, and they lived and worked in a very tight-knit community close to the French embassy in Stockholm. They could practice their Catholic faith within the colony, but this was strictly forbidden in the rest of Sweden at that time. When to building of the palace came to a halt in 1709, the colony was dissolved. Some craftsmen, such as René Chauveau and his family, returned to France, but most of them remained in Sweden until they died during the first part of the 18th century.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: Alterations of the land-use plan for the area surrounding the Stockholm Palace had been proposed during the beginning of the 1700s, by the superintendent Nicodemus Tessin . Tessin's plans for the city was finished in 1713, and in those the area surrounding the palace were given a new shape. A new Norrbro with rows of sculptures, a great royal cathedral and new Riddarholm Church resembling the St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Facing the Stockholms ström in an extension of the Kungsträdgården, Tessin envisioned a long "victory hall" with arcades and columns in a doric order, featuring two corner towers and exhibition halls with headroom. There would be displayed cannons taken as booty, flags and other trophies of war. At the Helgeandsholmen he planned a horse racing stadium for equestrian games and other forms of entertainments, a bear-garden was also to be built. The ideas were not approved by King Charles XII who wanted the Helgeandsholmen for himself.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: Ramps were to be built on the Slottsbacken leading up to a narrowing area in front of the Storkyrkan, which was to be redressed in a new baroque facade. The Stortorget was also to be rebuilt and a new city hall and stock exchange was planned. Tessin was convinced that his plans would one day be realized, but building the new palace kept him fully occupied and demanded great financial resources. The time of the Swedish Empire was coming to an end and all the great plans remained unfulfilled.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: Nicodemus Tessin died in 1728, before the palace was finished. The responsibility for the construction was taken over by Carl Hårleman, even though Tessin's position as superintendent was formally passed on to his son Carl Gustaf Tessin.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: Hårleman formed large parts of the palace's interior in a newer style, more to the taste of that time, the Rococo. At Hårleman's initiative, the color of the facade was changed from the earlier brick red to light yellow (see Coloration below). When the building was reassumed in 1727, there was anew a need for qualified workers. The second group of French artists and craftsmen arrived in Stockholm in the summer of 1732, as a result of Hårleman's negotiations in Paris the previous winter. The group consisted of six persons: two Masters, Antoine Bellette and Michel Le Lievre and four journeymen. Other noted sculptors and craftsmen during the second phase of the construction were Charles Guillaume Cousin, Jacques-Philippe Bouchardon, Pierre Hubert L'Archevêque, Johan Tobias Sergel and Adrien Masreliez. Giovanni Battista Tiepolo turned down Tessin's offer of a commission.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: Carl Hårleman died in 1753, and his work was continued by Carl Johan Cronstedt and Carl Gustaf Tessin who finished the palace together. Some parts of the palace where the royal family would live, the northern row and what is presently the State Apartments, were also completed that year. The Stockholm Palace was ready to be used in 1754. The royal family who had lived in the Wrangel Palace on Riddarholmen since the fire in the old castle, moved to their new residence on the First Advent that same year. Instead of living in the State Apartment, the royal family choose to stay in the part now known as the Bernadotte Apartments. The work on the interior continued even after the royal family had settled in. Priority was given to the interior rather than the completion of the Slottsbacken and Lejonbacken.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: Lejonbacken and the Chancery Wing were finished by architect Carl Fredrik Adelcrantz, who also was put in charge for the work on the interior after Hårleman's death. 1771 is considered the year when the palace was officially declared finished. The wall of the eastern quay was completed that year, but during a number of years many of the statues and sculptures in the facade's niches were still lacking, such as the eight statues on the southern facade depicting noted Swedish men and the "Enleveringsgruppen" (the Abduction group) on the same facade.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: After the completion of the new palace, no major conversions has been made to the complex save for a number of adaptions, new interiors, modernizations and redecorations for different regents and their families. Museums have also been added to the palace.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: Artists like Jean Eric Rehn and Fredrik Wilhelm Scholander were important to the palace's grand interior during the end of the 18th and 19th century, when pilasters, columns, wall decorations, etc. were added. Among those sculptors, painters and craftsmen who also contributed during the later renovations were Louis Masreliez (interior work in Classicism and Neoclassicism), Jean Baptiste Masreliez (interior work), Axel Magnus Fahlcrantz (the Logården Wall and the wrought iron fence at Logården), Johan Niclas Byström (sculptures), Sven Scholander (restorations), Johan Axel Wetterlund (facade sculptures of noted men and four allegorical groups on the Logården Wall), Julius Kronberg (ceiling paintings) and Kaspar Schröder (facade sculptures; lion masks at the courtyard facade).


title: Stockholm Palace

text: A larger change in the facade was made during the reign of King Charles XIV John resulting in Hårleman's light yellow facade coloring being painted over and at the beginning of the 20th century during the reign of King Oscar II when a decision to go back to Tessin's original brick red color was made. it is the color of the facade. (see Coloration below)


title: Stockholm Palace

text: During the reign of King Oscar I, there was a renewed interest for older styles and when the "Vita Havet" (the White Sea Ballroom) was created from the designs of Per Axel Nyström in 1844–1850, a compromise between old and new was made. Fredrik Wilhelm Scholander was the royal curator of King Charles XV and shared his taste in interior design, this resulted in rooms like the "Victoriasalongen" (the Victoria Drawing room) in a lush, revived Rococo style.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: King Oscar II performed a number of additions, improvements and modernizations to the palace. Most of the empty facade niches were filled with sculptures during his reign. He had the palace's technical installations updated, such as installing a water pipe system in 1873, installing electricity in 1883, telephone in 1884 and waterborne central heating around 1900. the property is connected to long-distance heating. The king's interest also extended to the decoration of the stairwells, and he commissioned Julius Kronberg to paint plafonds in the ceiling of the West Stairwell. Author Georg Svensson, wrote about King Oscar II that "his goal was to complete the construction of the palace as intended in Tessin's plans in a manner worthy of this monument".


title: Stockholm Palace

text: During 1922 to 1930, the Logården was rebuilt from the former English park to a more open area with pools of water on either side of the walkway leading from the East Arch to the Skeppsbron.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: In 1956 to 1958, Gustav III's Museum of Antiquities was restored. Architect and Chief Intendant Ivar Tengbom was appointed for the work. The Treasury was opened in 1970 and the Tre Kronor Museum in 1999. In 2018 600 solar panels were installed on the roof of the palace and are expected to generate an annual output of 170 MWh or at least twelve percent of the palace's annual electricity consumption.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: The palace is made of brick and sandstone. The roofs are covered with copper and are slanting inward towards the inner courtyard. On the main building they are encircled by a balustrade made of stone. The building consists of four rows, commonly named after the four cardinal directions.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: The facades of the palace were each given their own design and not the same as the original northern row. A triumphal arch in splendid Baroque style framed the entrance and the stairwell in the middle of the southern facade, and niches for statues were placed at every second window ledge. The middle parts of the east and west facades were adorned with Baroque pilasters, herms and statues. The palace has a total of 28 statues, 717 balusters, 242 volutes, 972 windows, 31,600 window panes and approximately 7,500 windows, doors and gates. The facade is covered with circa of dimension stone and of plaster. The main building, without the wings, is and encloses the "Inre borggården" (the Inner Courtyard).


title: Stockholm Palace

text: Projecting from the corners of the main building are four wings facing the east and the west. Between the two eastern wings is the Logården, and between the two western wings is the Outer Courtyard. All the wings are wide and long except for the southwest wing which is long because of the position of the Storkyrkan. The asymmetry is concealed by the two detached, semicircular wings the "Högvaktsflygeln" (The Royal Guards Wing) and the "Kommendantsflygeln" (the Commanders Wing).


title: Stockholm Palace

text: The palace has two courtyards. Outside the western row is the Outer Courtyard which is the main area for the changing of the guards. A statue of Christina Gyllenstierna stands in the Outer Courtyard, erected at an initiative from the "Föreningen för Stockholms fasta försvar" (the Society for the Permanent Defence of Stockholm) in 1912. The Outer Courtyard is enclosed by two curved wings. The northern is used by the Royal Guards and the southern mainly by the Royal Gift Shop.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: The Inner Courtyard is surrounded by the four rows of the palace and is accessed by portals in the middle of the four rows: the south, west, north, and east portals (or arches). The Inner Courtyard is long in the east–west direction and wide in the north–south direction. Tessin had planned to put an equestrian statue depicting Charles XI in the middle of the courtyard, but this plan was never realized.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: The design of the large Inner Courtyard with its access to the Logården and the Norrbro is inspired by the courtyard at the Louvre according to the general ideas of the Baroque.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: The western row, or the western facade, represents "The Male Qualities" and the King. From the western row projects the Chancery Wing towards northwest. The row also abuts the Outer Courtyard and the two curved wings, "Högvaktsflygeln" in the north and the "Kommendantsflygeln" in the south. On the facade are nine medallions depicting nine Swedish regents and ten caryatids. The central window above the portal is where the King and the royal family usually appears on the Kings birthday.


title: Stockholm Palace

text: In the frontispiece of the western facade between the windows there are ten female characters called caryatids. The caryatids of the palace are Rococo inspired pilasters in the shape of women, made by the French artist Charles Guillaume Cousin of Gotlandic sandstone in 1744. Each figure is approx. high. Some of them have weathering damages and since there is a risk of small pieces falling from them, a net has been placed over the figures.