title: Yorkshire County Cricket Club

text: As with all county cricket clubs, Yorkshire represents the historic county and not any modern or current administrative unit. In Yorkshire's case, this means the three ridings and the City of York, although the club played some home matches outside the historic borders at Sheffield's Abbeydale Park, which was historically part of Derbyshire, from 1974 to 1996.


title: Yorkshire County Cricket Club

text: The club was founded on 8 January 1863 in the Adelphi Hotel, Sheffield and was initially based at Bramall Lane. Yorkshire first played at North Marine Road, Scarborough in the 1878 season. This remains the venue for the annual Scarborough Festival matches. Headingley was first established in 1888 and Test cricket was first played there in 1899, eight years later than it hosted its inaugural first-class match when Yorkshire played Kent in 1891, the year in which the club's headquarters moved there. The "out grounds" in Hull, Sheffield, Bradford, Middlesbrough and Harrogate were used with great success until the 1970s.


title: Yorkshire County Cricket Club

text: On 31 December 2005, Yorkshire purchased the Headingley cricket ground for £12 million from the "Leeds Cricket, Football and Athletic Company", parent company of the Leeds rugby league club, with the help of a £9 million loan from Leeds City Council. This purchase ensures that Test cricket continues at the venue with a 15-year staging agreement. On 11 January 2006, the stadium was officially renamed the Headingley Carnegie Stadium as a result of sponsorship from Leeds Metropolitan University and the club announced plans on 11 January 2006 to rebuild the stand next to the rugby ground with 3,000 extra seats, taking capacity to 20,000. The club also announced plans to redevelop the Winter shed (North) stand on 25 August 2006 providing a £12.5 million pavilion complex.


title: Yorkshire County Cricket Club

text: The club was founded in 1863 to be owned by its members who have elected various officials including the club's general committee, which existed until 2002 when it was replaced by a board of management headed by a chief executive. The office of club President still exists (see list below) and (in 2017) there are seven board members including the chief executive and the director of cricket. In addition to the board members, there are a director of finance and a human resources manager who is also personal assistant (PA) to both the board and chief executive. Among other roles are coaching, groundstaff, physiotherapy, operations, marketing, retail and community development. The once-influential post of club Secretary effectively ceased in 2002 although the club did have a company secretary for three years. That function has now disappeared under the broader structure and the present secretary as such is the finance director. Like all county clubs, Yorkshire relies heavily on sponsorship and numerous companies have formed deals with the club over many years. Current partners and sponsors can be found on the club website.


title: Yorkshire County Cricket Club

text: Four Yorkshire players – Stanley Jackson, Len Hutton, Ray Illingworth and Michael Vaughan – have captained England to success in The Ashes yet none of them was club captain at the time (Ray Illingworth had just left Yorkshire for Leicestershire when he became captain of England; he later returned to Yorkshire).


title: Yorkshire County Cricket Club

text: From 1883 to 1959 inclusive, Yorkshire always had an amateur club captain. The extent of leadership given by these gentlemen has long been a subject of discussion. Hawke and Sellers are generally held to have been autocratic and decisive, but in fact both relied heavily on sound professional advice. At the other extreme, Wilfred Rhodes is supposed to have been the "de facto" captain from 1920 to 1930, but it was Major Arthur Lupton who restored discipline to the side when a row erupted between Yorkshire and Middlesex in 1924.


title: Yorkshire County Cricket Club

text: Lord Hawke famously said at the Yorkshire Annual General Meeting in 1925: "Pray God, no professional shall ever captain England. I love and admire them all, but we have always had an amateur skipper and when the day comes when we shall have no more amateurs captaining England it will be a thousand pities." In view of this, it is perhaps surprising that, when Arthur Lupton retired at the end of the 1927 season, Hawke was one of the sponsors of the suggestion that Herbert Sutcliffe should become Yorkshire captain. In the event, there was sufficient opposition to the idea amongst the Yorkshire committee and players (some of the latter felt that Wilfred Rhodes, as senior professional, had a prior claim), that the proposal was dropped.


title: Yorkshire County Cricket Club

text: In 1960, Vic Wilson became Yorkshire's first professional captain since Tom Emmett when he succeeded Ronnie Burnet. Brian Close, who took over in 1963, has been Yorkshire's most successful professional captain with four County Championships.


title: Fremulon

text: Fremulon is an American television production company founded by television producer and writer Michael Schur. It is known for producing the long-running series "Parks and Recreation", "Brooklyn Nine-Nine", "Master of None", and "The Good Place".


title: Fremulon

text: Fremulon was founded in April 2008 by producer and writer Michael Schur. The name "Fremulon" comes from the fake insurance company that Schur's pseudonym, Ken Tremendous, worked at when he was writing for the sports blog Fire Joe Morgan. The production logo displayed at the end of Fremulon produced shows is accompanied by the word "Fremulon" spoken by actor Nick Offerman.


title: Football at the 2020 Summer Olympics – Women's tournament

text: The women's football tournament at the 2020 Summer Olympics was held from 21 July to 6 August 2021. Originally, it was to be held from 22 July to 7 August 2020, but the Summer Olympics were postponed to the following year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the official name of the games remains the 2020 Summer Olympics. It was the seventh edition of the women's Olympic football tournament. Together with the men's competition, the 2020 Summer Olympics football tournament was held at six stadiums in six cities in Japan. The final was hosted at the International Stadium in Yokohama. There were no player age restrictions for teams participating in the competition.


text: Germany, the winners of the previous tournament, failed to qualify for the tournament after being eliminated in the quarter-finals of the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup.


text: Canada won their first gold medal by defeating Sweden 3–2 in the penalty shoot-out after both teams drew 1–1 after extra time in the final. The United States won bronze, defeating Australia 4–3 in the bronze medal game.


text: In addition to host nation Japan, eleven women's national teams qualified from six separate continental confederations. The Organising Committee for FIFA Competitions ratified the distribution of spots at their meeting on 14 September 2017.


text: For the first time, per the agreement between the four British football associations (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales) for the women's team, Great Britain attempted to qualify for the Olympics through England's performance in the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup (a procedure already successfully employed by Team GB in field hockey and rugby sevens). The team's only previous appearance was in the 2012 tournament in which they qualified automatically as hosts. Great Britain succeeded in qualifying as England were among the three best European teams. Scotland also qualified for the World Cup but under the agreement whereby the highest ranked home nation was nominated to compete for the purposes of Olympic qualification, their performance was not taken into account (Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish players are eligible to be part of the Great Britain team at the Olympics).


text: The gold medal match was originally scheduled to be played at the National Stadium in Tokyo. Both finalists requested a later kick-off time due to concerns about excessive heat; as the National Stadium was already booked for athletics events in the evening, the game was moved to the International Stadium Yokohama in Yokohama. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan, most matches were played behind closed doors without any spectators. However, Miyagi Stadium allowed a limited audience to attend matches and Kashima Stadium permitted local schoolchildren as part of the school program but Olympic spectators were still not allowed.


text: The tournament was a full international tournament with no restrictions on age. Traditionally the roster rules required each team to submit a squad of 18 players, two of whom must be goalkeepers. Each team also named a list of four alternate players who could replace any player in the squad in case of injury during the tournament. In late June 2021, the International Olympic Committee and FIFA announced that all 22 players of each team would be available for selection before each match. Prior to each match, the teams chose from their total of 22 players, a roster of 18 players to be available for play in that match. The IOC also confirmed that a player must appear on at least one 18-player matchday roster to be considered an Olympian and to receive a medal. The rule change was made in regards to the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.


text: In June 2020, FIFA approved the use of the video assistant referee (VAR) system for the tournament. The match officials were announced on 23 April 2021.


text: The draw for the tournament was held on 21 April 2021, 10:00 CEST (), at the FIFA headquarters in Zürich, Switzerland. It was conducted by Sarai Bareman, FIFA chief women's football officer, while Samantha Johnson presented the ceremony. Lindsay Tarpley and Ryan Nelsen acted as the draw assistants.


text: The 12 teams were drawn into three groups of four teams. The hosts Japan were automatically seeded into Pot 1 and assigned to position E1 while the remaining teams were seeded into their respective pots based on the FIFA Women's World Rankings released on 16 April 2021 (shown in parentheses below). As Great Britain are not a FIFA member and therefore do not have a ranking, they were seeded based on the FIFA ranking of England who qualified on behalf of Great Britain. However, all Great Britain matches were oficially recognized by FIFA. No group could contain more than one team from each confederation.


text: The competing countries were divided into three groups of four teams, denoted as groups E, F and G to avoid confusion with the groups of the men's tournament (which use designations A to D). Teams in each group played one another in a round-robin basis, with the top two teams of each group and the two best third-placed teams advancing to the quarter-finals.


text: In the knockout stage, if a match was level at the end of normal playing time, extra time was played (two periods of 15 minutes each) and followed, if necessary, by a penalty shoot-out to determine the winner.


title: Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines

text: Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines; Or, How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours and 11 Minutes is a 1965 British period comedy film that satirizes the early years of aviation. Directed and co-written by Ken Annakin, the film stars an international ensemble cast, including Stuart Whitman, Sarah Miles, Robert Morley, Terry-Thomas, James Fox, Red Skelton, Benny Hill, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Gert Fröbe and Alberto Sordi.


text: Based on a screenplay entitled "Flying Crazy", the fictional account is set in 1910, when English press magnate Lord Rawnsley offers £10,000 () to the winner of the "Daily Post" air race from London to Paris to prove that Britain is "number one in the air".


text: A brief narration outlines man's first attempts to fly since the Stone Age inspired by a bird's flight, seen with footage from the silent film era, and man being represented by a "test pilot" (Red Skelton) encountering periodic misfortune in his attempts.


text: In 1910, just seven years after the first heavier-than-air flight, aircraft are fragile and unreliable contraptions, piloted by "intrepid birdmen". Pompous British newspaper magnate Lord Rawnsley (Robert Morley) forbids his would-be aviatrix daughter, ardent suffragette Patricia (Sarah Miles), to fly. Aviator Richard Mays (James Fox), a young army officer and (at least in his own eyes) Patricia's fiancé, conceives the idea of an air race from London to Paris to advance the cause of British aviation and his career. With Patricia's support, he persuades Lord Rawnsley to sponsor the race as a publicity stunt for his newspaper.


text: Rawnsley, who takes full credit for the idea, announces the event to the press, and invitations are sent to leading aviators all over the world. Dozens of participants arrive at the airfield at the "Brookley" Motor Racing Track, where the fliers make practice runs in the days prior to the race. During this time, a wildly mixed international assembly of aviators begins rubbing shoulders with each other, most of them conforming to national stereotypes: The by-the-book Prussian officer Colonel Manfred von Holstein (Gert Fröbe), who becomes the victim of Frenchman Pierre Dubois' (Jean-Pierre Cassel) various pranks; the impetuous Italian Count Emilio Ponticelli (Alberto Sordi), who buys various aircraft from designer Harry Popperwell (Tony Hancock) and wrecks them in test flights; the unscrupulous British baronet Sir Percy Ware-Armitage (Terry-Thomas), aided by his bullied servant, Courtney (Eric Sykes); and the rugged American cowboy Orvil Newton (Stuart Whitman) who falls for Patricia, forming a love triangle with her and Mays.


text: As the teams test their aircraft in the days before the race, Newton gets caught in the rigging of Sir Percy's plane, which crashes in the nearby sewage farm. Newton later stops the German's aircraft after its tail breaks off and runs out of control. This leads to Patricia falling for him even more and Mays to become more jealous. At a celebration in Brighton, Mays confronts Newton, sparking a fierce rivalry between them for Patricia's hand, just before Japan's official contestant, naval officer Yamamoto, arrives at the airfield.


text: As Yamamoto is officially greeted, Patricia convinces Newton to take her flying and they race back to the airfield, followed by Mays and her father, who are intent on stopping them. Not long after taking off, one of the struts on Newton's plane breaks, and Patricia has to fly the plane while Newton repairs it with his belt. When Newton lands, Lord Rawnsley throws him out of the race. Patricia apologizes to Newton, and Rawnsley gives in after she threatens to start an international incident. Meanwhile, Holstein, insulted by the French team's mockery, challenges Dubois to a duel. Dubois agrees, and opts for gas balloons and blunderbusses as his weapons of choice. Both balloons and their pilots end up in the filthy waters of the adjacent sewage farm.


text: At the party the night before the race, Sir Percy sabotages Yamamoto and Newton's planes, and Rumpelstoss, the German pilot, is incapacitated by a laxative meant for Yamamoto. As the competitors take off the next day, with Holstein standing in for Rumpelstoss, Yamamoto's aircraft crashes and he remains pinned in the wreck for some time, as spectators are unwilling to give him a knife to cut himself free due to fears that he will commit seppuku. Fuel blockages and other technical mishaps additionally hamper the fliers, until most of them safely arrive at Dover, their checkpoint before the final flight across the English Channel.


text: That night, Sir Percy cheats by having his aircraft taken across by boat, but is delayed by excited locals when he arrives. Most other contestants, including Holstein, crash-land in the Channel. Sir Percy gets his comeuppance when he becomes disoriented by the smoke from a locomotive between Calais and Paris, causing him to jam his landing gear between two of the train cars. As he runs along the top trying to get the driver's attention, the train passes through a tunnel, wrecking his aircraft.


text: Coming into Paris, Ponticelli's plane catches fire, and Newton slows down to rescue him as Mays is landing, winning for Britain. Mays recognises Newton's heroism and shares the glory and the prize with him, while Ponticelli agrees to give up flying for his family. The only other successful aviator is Dubois, completing his race for France. Patricia finally chooses Newton, breaking the love triangle. Their kiss is interrupted by a strange noise: they and the others at the field look up to see a flyover by six English Electric Lightning jet fighters, as the time period leaps forward to the "present" (1965).


text: Outlined are the still-persisting hazards of modern flying despite today's advanced technology, as a night-time civilian flight across the English Channel is cancelled owing to heavy fog. One of the delayed passengers (Skelton) gets the idea of learning to fly under his own power, perpetuating man's pioneering spirit.


text: Director Ken Annakin had been interested in aviation from his early years when pioneering aviator, Sir Alan Cobham took him up in a flight in a biplane. Later in the Second World War, Annakin had served in the RAF when he had begun his career in film documentaries. In 1963, with co-writer Jack Davies, Annakin had been working on an adventure film about transatlantic flights when the producer's bankruptcy aborted the production. Fresh from his role as director of the British exterior segments in "The Longest Day" (1962), Annakin suggested an event from early aviation to Darryl F. Zanuck, his producer on "The Longest Day".


text: Zanuck financed an epic faithful to the era, with a £100,000 stake, deciding on the name, "Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines" after Elmo Williams, managing director of 20th Century Fox in Europe, told him his wife Lorraine Williams had written an opening for a song that Annakin complained would "seal the fate of the movie":Those magnificent men in their flying machines,They go up, Tiddley up, up,They go down, Tiddley down, down. After being put to music by Ron Goodwin, the "Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines" song was released as a single in 1965 on the Stateside label (SS 422), together with an accompanying soundtrack album (SL 10136).


text: An international cast plays the array of contestants with the film opening with a brief, comic prologue on the history of flight, narrated by James Robertson Justice and featuring American comedian Red Skelton. In a series of silent blackout vignettes that incorporate stock footage of unsuccessful attempts at early aircraft, Skelton depicted a recurring character whose adventures span the centuries. The early aviation history sequence that begins the film is followed by a whimsical animated opening credit sequence drawn by caricaturist Ronald Searle, accompanied by the title song.


text: "Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines ..." concludes with an epilogue in a fogbound 1960s London airport when cancellation of flights to Paris is announced. The narrator remarks that today a jet makes the trip in seven minutes, but "it "can" take longer". One frustrated passenger (Skelton, again) starts wing-flapping motions with his arms, and the scene morphs into the animation from the title sequence for the closing credits. This was Skelton's final feature film appearance; he was in Europe filming the 1964–65 season of his television series, "The Red Skelton Show".


text: One of the features of the film was British and international character actors who enlivened the foibles of each contestant's nationality. The entertainment comes from the dialogue and characterisations and the aerial stunts, with heroism and gentlemanly conduct. British comedy actors of the day, Benny Hill, Eric Sykes, Terry-Thomas and Tony Hancock, among others, provided madcap misadventures. While Terry-Thomas had a substantial leading role as a "bounder", Hill, Sykes and Hancock played lesser cameos. Although Hancock had broken his leg off-set, two days into filming, Annakin wrote his infirmity into the story, and his leg bound in a cast figured in a number of scenes.


text: In a recurring gag suggested by Zanuck, Irina Demick plays a series of flirts who are all pursued by the French pilot. First, she is Brigitte (French), then Ingrid (Swedish), Marlene (German), Françoise (Belgian), Yvette (Bulgarian), and finally, Betty (British).


text: Another aspect was the fluid writing and directing with Annakin and Davies feeding off each other. They had worked together on "Very Important Person" (1961), "The Fast Lady" (1962) and "Crooks Anonymous" (1962). Annakin and Davies continued to develop the script with zany interpretations. When the German character played by Gert Fröbe contemplates piloting his country's entry, he climbs into the cockpit and retrieves a manual. Annakin and Davies devised a quip on the spot, having him read out: "No. 1. Sit down." Although a comedy, elements of Annakin's documentary background were evident with authentic sets, props and costumes. More than 2,000 extras out in authentic costumes were in the climactic race launch which was combined with entrants in the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run being invited on set as part of their 1964 annual run, an unexpected coup in gaining numerous period vehicles to dress the set.


text: A troublesome on-set distraction occurred when the two lead actors, Stuart Whitman and Sarah Miles, fell out early in the production. Director Ken Annakin commented that it began with an ill-timed pass by Whitman. (Whitman was married at the time, although he would divorce in 1966.) Miles "hated his guts" and rarely deigned to speak to him afterward unless the interaction was required by the script. Annakin employed a variety of manipulations to ensure the production still proceeded smoothly. The stars made peace with each other after on-set filming concluded; their interactions were civil during final re-takes of scenes and voice-overs.


text: The film played in cinemas as the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union hit a new gear. For its first audiences the film's depiction of an international flight competition taking place in an earlier, lower-tech era offered a fun-house mirror reflection of contemporary adventures by Space Age pioneers.


text: Stuart Whitman, the American lead, was selected over the first choice, Dick Van Dyke, whose agents never contacted him about the offer. Irina Demick was rumored to be romantically involved with Darryl F. Zanuck, who had campaigned for her casting.


text: Character actor Michael Trubshawe and David Niven served together in the Highland Light Infantry during the Second World War; they made it a point to refer to uncredited characters in their films as "Trubshawe" or "Niven" as an inside joke.


text: The film used period accurate, life-size working aeroplane models and replicas to create an early 20th century airfield, the 'Brookley Motor Racing Track' (fashioned after Brooklands where early automotive racing and aviators shared the facilities for testing). All Brookley's associated trappings of structures, aircraft and vehicles (including a rare 1907 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, subsequently estimated to be worth 50 million dollars) were part of the exterior set at Booker Airfield, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England.


text: The completed set featured a windmill as a lookout tower as well as serving as a restaurant (the "Old Mill Cafe"). A circular, banked track was also built and featured in a runaway motorcycle sequence in the film. In addition, the field adjacent to the windmill was used as the location for a number of aerial close-up shots of the pilots. Hangars were constructed in rows, bearing the names of real and fictional manufacturers: A.V. Roe & Co., Bristol: The British and Colonial Aeroplane Company, Humber, three Sopwith hangars, Vickers and Ware-Armitage Manufacturing Co (a British in-joke, as Armitage Ware was the UK's largest manufacturer of toilets and urinals). A grandstand was added for spectators.


text: When the production was unable to obtain rights to film main sequences over Paris, models of the aircraft and a miniature Parisian set played a prominent role in sequences depicting Paris. A mock-up of Calais was also constructed. Interior and studio sets at Pinewood Studios were used for bluescreen and special effects while exterior and interior footage of Rawnsley's Manor House were shot at Pinewood Studios in Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire. Other principal photography used location shooting in Kent at Dover Castle, along with The White Cliffs of Dover and Dover beach. In the scene where the aircraft start near Dover to pursue the race, modern ferries were visible in one harbour.


text: The location where Sir Percy's aircraft lands on a train is the now closed line from Bedford to Hitchin. The tunnel into which they fly is the Old Warden Tunnel near the village of the same name in Bedfordshire; the tunnel had only recently been closed, and in the panning shot through the railway cutting, the cooling towers of the now-demolished Goldington power station can be seen. The locomotive is former Highland Railway Jones Goods Class No 103. About 1910, French Railways built duplicates of a Highland Railway Class "The Castles" which were a passenger version of the Jones Goods.


text: The Royal Air Force base at the village of Henlow, RAF Henlow, was another Bedfordshire location used for filming.


text: The opening shot of the film is of The Long Walk leading to Windsor Castle filmed in Windsor, Berkshire, England.


text: The film was photographed in 65 mm Todd-AO (which produces a 70 mm print once the sound tracks are added) by Christopher Challis. The head technical consultant during planning was Air Commodore Allen H. Wheeler from the Royal Air Force. Wheeler had previously restored a 1910-era Blériot with his son, and provided invaluable assistance in the restoration and recreation of period aircraft for the film.


text: The camera platforms included a modified Citroën sedan, camera trucks, helicopters and a flying rig constructed by Dick Parker. Parker had built it for model sequences in "Strategic Air Command" (1955). The rig consisted of two construction cranes and a hydraulically operated device to tilt and position a model, along with 200 ft (61 m) of cables. Parker's rig allowed actors to sit inside full-scale models suspended 50 ft (15 m) above the ground, yet provide safety and realism for staged flying sequences, with the sky realistically in the background. A further hydraulic platform did away with matte shots of aircraft in flight. The platform was large enough to mount an aircraft and Parker or stunt pilots could manipulate its controls for realistic bluescreen sequences. Composite photography was used when scenes called for difficult shots; these were completed at Pinewood Studios. Some shots were created with rudimentary cockpits and noses grafted to an Alouette helicopter. One scene over Paris was staged with small models when Paris refused an overflight. However, for the majority of flying scenes, full-scale flying aircraft were employed.


text: The film includes reproductions of 1910-era aircraft, including a triplane, monoplanes, biplanes and also Horatio Phillips's 20-winged multiplane from 1904. Wheeler insisted on authentic materials but allowed the use of modern engines and modifications necessary to ensure safety. Of 20 types built in 1964 at £5,000 each, six could fly, flown by six stunt pilots and maintained by 14 mechanics. The race take-off scene where seven aircraft are in the air at once included a composite addition of one aircraft. Flying conditions were monitored carefully, with aerial scenes filmed before 10 am or in early evening when the air was least turbulent, as the replicas, true to the originals, were flimsy, and control, especially in the lateral plane, tended to be marginal. When weather conditions were poor, interiors or other incidental sequences were shot instead. Wheeler eventually served not only as the technical adviser but also as the aerial supervisor throughout the production, and, later wrote a comprehensive background account of the film and the replicas that were constructed to portray period aircraft.


text: While each aircraft was an accurate reproduction, some "impersonated" other types. For instance, "The Phoenix Flyer" was a Bristol Boxkite built by F.G. Miles Engineering Co. at Ford, Sussex, representing a Curtiss biplane of 1910 vintage. Annakin had apparently expressed a desire to have a Wright Flyer in the film. The Bristol (a British derivative of the French 1909 Farman biplane) was chosen instead, because it shared a common general layout with a Wright or Curtiss pusher biplane of the era, and had an excellent reputation for tractability. For the impersonation, the replica had "The Phoenix Flyer" painted on its outer rudder surfaces and was also called a "Gruber-Newton Flyer" adding the name of its primary backer to the nomenclature; although the American pilot character, Orvil Newton inaccurately describes his aircraft to Patricia Rawnsley as a "Curtiss with an Anzani engine."


text: F. G. Miles, chiefly responsible for its design and manufacture, built the replica Bristol Boxkite with the original standard twin rudder installation and powered the replica with a Rolls-Royce-manufactured version of the 65 hp Continental A65. In the course of testing, Wheeler had a third rudder inserted between the other two (some original Boxkites also had this fitting) to improve directional control, and substituted a more powerful 90 hp Rolls-Royce C90 that still barely delivered the power of the original 50 hp Gnome rotary at the power settings used for the Boxkite. The replica achieved a 45 mph top speed. The Boxkite was tractable, however, and the scene in the film when the aircraft loses a pair of main wheels just after take off but lands smoothly, was repeated 20 times for the cameras. In the penultimate flying scene, a stuntman was carried in the Boxkite's undercarriage and carried out a fall and roll (the stunt had to be repeated to match the principal actor's roll and revival). Slapstick stunts on the ground and in the air were a major element and often the directors requested repeated stunts; the stuntmen were more than accommodating; it meant more pay.


text: The Eardley Billing Tractor Biplane replica flown by David Watson appeared in two guises, in more or less authentic form, impersonating an early German tractor biplane, and also as the Japanese pilot's mount, modified with boxkite-like side curtains over the interplane struts, a covered fuselage, and colourful "oriental" decorations.


text: In addition to the flying aircraft, several unsuccessful aircraft of the period were represented by non-flying replicasincluding contraptions such as an ornithopter (the Passat Ornithopter) flown by the Italian contender, the Walton Edwards Rhomboidal, Picat Dubreuil, Philips Multiplane and the Little Fiddler (a canard, or tail-first design). Several of the "non-flying" types flew with the help of "movie magic". The Lee Richards Annular Biplane with circular wings (built by Denton Partners on Woodley Aerodrome, near Reading) was "flown on wires" during the filming.


text: The flying replicas were specifically chosen to be different enough that an ordinary audience member could distinguish them. They were all types reputed to have flown well, in or about 1910. In most cases this worked well, but there were a few surprises, adding to an accurate historical reassessment of the aircraft concerned. For example, in its early form, the replica of the Santos-Dumont Demoiselle, a forerunner of today's ultralight aircraft, was unable to leave the ground except in short hops. Extending the wingspan and fitting a more powerful Ardem 50 hp engine produced only marginal improvement. When Doug Bianchi and the Personal Planes production staff who constructed the replica consulted with Allen Wheeler, he recalled that the Demoiselle's designer and first pilot, Alberto Santos-Dumont was a very short, slightly built man. A suitably small pilot, Joan Hughes, a wartime member of the Air Transport Auxiliary who was the Airways Flying Club chief instructor, was hired. With the reduced payload, the diminutive Demoiselle flew very well, and Hughes proved a consummate stunt flyer, able to undertake exacting manoeuvres.


text: In 1960, Bianchi had created a one-off Vickers 22 (Blériot type) Monoplane, using Vickers Company drawings intended for the Vickers Flying Club in 1910. 20th Century Fox purchased the completed replica although it required a new engine and modifications including replacing the wooden fuselage structure with welded steel tubing as well as incorporating ailerons instead of wing-warping. The Vickers 22 became the final type used by the Italian contestant. Sometime after the film wrapped, the Vickers was sold to a buyer in New Zealand. It is believed to have flown once, at Wellington Airport in the hands of Keith Trillo, a test pilot involved in a number of aircraft certification programmes, and is now at the Southward Car Museum, Otaihanga, New Zealand.


text: Peter Hillwood of Hampshire Aero Club constructed an Avro Triplane Mk IV, using drawings provided by Geoffrey Verdon Roe, son of A.V. Roe, the designer. The construction of the triplane followed A.V. Roe's specifications and was the only replica that utilised wing-warping successfully. With a more powerful 90 hp Cirrus II replacing the 35 hp Green engine that was in the original design, the Avro Triplane proved to be a lively performer even with a stuntman dangling from the fuselage.


text: The Antoinette IV film model closely replicated the slim, graceful monoplane that was very nearly the first aircraft to fly the English Channel, in the hands of Hubert Latham, and won several prizes in early competitions. When the Hants and Sussex Aviation Company from Portsmouth Aerodrome undertook its construction, the company followed the original structural specifications carefully, although an out-of-period de Havilland Gypsy I engine was used. The Antoinette's wing structure proved, however, to be dangerously flexible, and lateral control was very poor, even after the wing bracing was reinforced with extra wires, and the original wing-warping was replaced with ailerons (hinged on the rear spar rather than from the trailing edge, as in the original Antoinette). Nonetheless, even in its final configuration the Antoinette was marginal in terms of stability and lateral control and great care had to be taken during its flying sequences, most flights being straight "hops".


text: The realism and the attention to detail in the replicas of vintage machines are a major contributor to the enjoyment of the film, and although a few of the "flying" stunts were achieved through the use of models and cleverly disguised wires, most aerial scenes featured actual flying aircraft. The few genuine vintage aircraft used included a Deperdussin used as set dressing, and the flyable 1912 Blackburn Monoplane "D" (the oldest genuine British aircraft still flying), belonged to the Shuttleworth Trust based at Old Warden, Bedfordshire. When the filming was completed, the "1910 Bristol Boxkite" and the "1911 Roe IV Triplane" were retained in the Shuttleworth Collection, Both replicas are still in flyable condition, albeit flying with different engines. For his role in promoting the film, the non-flying "Passat Ornithopter" was given to aircraft restorer and preservationist, Cole Palen who displayed it at his Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome, New York, where it is still on display.


text: Despite the reliance on flying stunts and their inherent danger, the one near-tragedy occurred on the ground when a stunt went wrong. Stuntman Ken Buckle inadvertently turned the throttle to full on a runaway motorbike and sidecar, launching himself through the retaining wall on the sloped Brookley racing track and crashing into the adjoining cesspool, off-camera. Thinking quickly, the special effects man on the other side of the wall saw the motorbike hurtling towards him and set off the accompanying explosion, creating a realistic waterspout. Lucky to escape with only facial bruises and a dislocated collarbone, as he struggled to his feet, Buckle apologised for having messed up, but the shot "was in the can".


text: During the promotional junkets accompanying the film in 1965, a number of the vintage aircraft and film replicas used in the production were flown in both the United Kingdom and the United States. The pilots who had been part of the aerial team readily agreed to accompany the promotional tour to have a chance to fly these aircraft again.


text: "Those Magnificent Men In their Flying Machines ..." had its Royal World Premiere on 3 June 1965 at the Astoria Theatre in the West End of London in the presence of H.R.H. The Duke of Edinburgh. Contemporary reviews judged "Those Magnificent Men In their Flying Machines ..." as "good fun." In "The New York Times", Bosley Crowther thought it "a funny picture, highly colorful, and it does move". "Variety" felt similarly: "As fanciful and nostalgic a piece of clever picture-making as has hit the screen in recent years, this backward look into the pioneer days of aviation, when most planes were built with spit and bailing wire, is a warming entertainment experience." When the film turned up on television for the first time in 1969, "TV Guide" summed up most critical reviews: "Good, clean fun, with fast and furious action, good cinematography, crisp dialogue, wonderful planes, and a host of some of the funniest people in movies in the cast."


text: At 85 characters, "Those Magnificent Men ..." was the longest-titled film to be nominated for an Academy Award until the 2021 nominations of "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan".


text: At over two hours, "Those Magnificent Men In their Flying Machines ..." (most cinemas abbreviated the full title, and it was eventually re-released with the shorter title) was treated as a major production, one of three full-length 70 mm Todd-AO Fox releases in 1965 with an intermission and musical interlude part of the original screenings. The film was initially an exclusive roadshow presentation where customers needed reserved seats purchased ahead of time. It was an immediate box-office success, out-grossing the similar car-race comedy "The Great Race" (1965). It stood up well against the slightly earlier "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" (1963).


text: According to Fox records, the film needed to earn $15,300,000 in worldwide rentals to break even and made $29,950,000. In the United States, the film earned $14,000,000 in rentals, becoming the fourth highest-grossing film of 1965. By September 1970, it had earned Fox an estimated profit of $10,683,000.


text: The success of the film prompted Annakin to write (again with Jack Davies) and direct another race film, "Monte Carlo or Bust!" (1969), this time involving vintage cars, with the story set around the Monte Carlo Rally. Ron Goodwin composed the music for both films.


title: Gaj's Latin alphabet

text: Gaj's Latin alphabet (, ), also known as ' (, ) or ' (, ), is the form of the Latin script used for writing Serbo-Croatian and all of its standard varieties: Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian.


title: Gaj's Latin alphabet

text: The alphabet was initially devised by Croatian linguist Ljudevit Gaj in 1835 during the Illyrian movement in ethnically Croatian parts of Austrian Empire. It was largely based on Jan Hus's Czech alphabet and was meant to serve as a unified orthography for three Croat-populated kingdoms within the Austrian Empire at the time, namely Croatia, Dalmatia and Slavonia, and their three dialect groups, Kajkavian, Chakavian and Shtokavian, which historically utilized different spelling rules.


title: Gaj's Latin alphabet

text: A slightly modified version of it was later adopted as the formal Latin writing system for the unified Serbo-Croatian standard language per the Vienna Literary Agreement. It served as one of the official scripts in the unified South Slavic state of Yugoslavia alongside Vuk's Cyrillic alphabet.


title: Gaj's Latin alphabet

text: A slightly reduced version is used as the alphabet for Slovene, and a slightly expanded version is used as the alphabet for modern standard Montenegrin. A modified version is used for the romanization of Macedonian. It further influenced alphabets of Romani languages that are spoken in Southeast Europe, namely Vlax and Balkan Romani.


title: Gaj's Latin alphabet

text: Gaj's original alphabet contained the digraph , which Serbian linguist Đuro Daničić later replaced with the letter .


title: Gaj's Latin alphabet

text: The letters do not have names, and consonants are normally pronounced as such when spelling is necessary (or followed by a short schwa, e.g. ). When clarity is needed, they are pronounced similar to the German alphabet: "a, be, ce, če, će, de, dže, đe, e, ef, ge, ha, i, je, ka, el, elj, em, en, enj, o, pe, er, es, eš, te, u, ve, ze, že". These rules for pronunciation of individual letters are common as far as the 22 letters that match the ISO basic Latin alphabet are concerned. The use of others is mostly limited to the context of linguistics, while in mathematics, is commonly pronounced "jot", as in the German of Germany. The missing four letters are pronounced as follows: as "ku" or "kju", as "dublve", "duplo v" or "duplo ve", as "iks", as "ipsilon".


title: Gaj's Latin alphabet

text: The Serbo-Croatian Latin alphabet was mostly designed by Ljudevit Gaj, who modelled it after Czech (č, ž, š) and Polish (ć), and invented , and , according to similar solutions in Hungarian (ly, ny and dzs, although dž combinations exist also in Czech and Polish). In 1830 in Buda, he published the book "Kratka osnova horvatsko-slavenskog pravopisanja" ("Brief basics of the Croatian-Slavonic orthography"), which was the first common Croatian orthography book. It was not the first ever Croatian orthography work, as it was preceded by works of Rajmund Đamanjić (1639), Ignjat Đurđević and Pavao Ritter Vitezović. Croats had previously used the Latin script, but some of the specific sounds were not uniformly represented. Versions of the Hungarian alphabet were most commonly used, but others were too, in an often confused, inconsistent fashion.


title: Gaj's Latin alphabet

text: Gaj followed the example of Pavao Ritter Vitezović and the Czech orthography, making one letter of the Latin script for each sound in the language. Following Vuk Karadžić's reform of Cyrillic in the early nineteenth century, in the 1830s Ljudevit Gaj did the same for "latinica", using the Czech system and producing a one-to-one grapheme-phoneme correlation between the Cyrillic and Latin orthographies, resulting in a parallel system.


title: Gaj's Latin alphabet

text: Đuro Daničić suggested in his "Rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika" ("Dictionary of Croatian or Serbian language") published in 1880 that Gaj's digraphs , , and should be replaced by single letters : , , and respectively. The original Gaj alphabet was eventually revised, but only the digraph has been replaced with Daničić's , while , and have been kept.


title: Gaj's Latin alphabet

text: The following table provides the upper and lower case forms of the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet, along with the equivalent forms in the Serbian Latin alphabet and the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) value for each letter. The letters do not have names, and consonants are normally pronounced as such when spelling is necessary (or followed by a short schwa, e.g. /fə/).:<br>


title: Gaj's Latin alphabet

text: In the 1990s, there was a general confusion about the proper character encoding to use to write text in Latin Croatian on computers.


title: Gaj's Latin alphabet

text: The preferred character encoding for Croatian today is either the ISO 8859-2, or the Unicode encoding UTF-8 (with two bytes or 16 bits necessary to use the letters with diacritics). However, , one can still find programs as well as databases that use CP1250, CP852 or even CROSCII.


title: Gaj's Latin alphabet

text: Digraphs , and in their upper case, title case and lower case forms have dedicated Unicode code points as shown in the table below, However, these are included chiefly for backwards compatibility with legacy encodings which kept a one-to-one correspondence with Cyrillic; modern texts use a sequence of characters.


title: Gaj's Latin alphabet

text: Since the early 1840s, Gaj's alphabet was increasingly used for Slovene. In the beginning, it was most commonly used by Slovene authors who treated Slovene as a variant of Serbo-Croatian (such as Stanko Vraz), but it was later accepted by a large spectrum of Slovene-writing authors. The breakthrough came in 1845, when the Slovene conservative leader Janez Bleiweis started using Gaj's script in his journal "Kmetijske in rokodelske novice" ("Agricultural and Artisan News"), which was read by a wide public in the countryside. By 1850, Gaj's alphabet (known as "gajica" in Slovene) became the only official Slovene alphabet, replacing three other writing systems that had circulated in the Slovene Lands since the 1830s: the traditional "bohoričica", named after Adam Bohorič, who codified it; the "dajnčica", named after Peter Dajnko; and the "metelčica", named after Franc Serafin Metelko.


title: Gaj's Latin alphabet

text: As in Serbo-Croatian, Slovene orthography does not make use of diacritics to mark accent in words in regular writing, but headwords in dictionaries are given with them to account for homographs. For instance, letter can be pronounced in four ways (, , and ), and letter in two ( and , though the difference is not phonemic). Also, it does not reflect consonant voicing assimilation: compare e.g. Slovene and Serbo-Croatian ('junkyard', 'waste').


title: Gaj's Latin alphabet

text: Romanization of Macedonian is done according to Gaj's Latin alphabet but is slightly modified. Gaj's "ć" and "đ" are not used at all, with "ḱ" and "ǵ" introduced instead. The rest of the letters of the alphabet are used to represent the equivalent Cyrillic letters. Also, Macedonian uses the letter "dz", which is not part of the Serbo-Croatian phonemic inventory. However, the backs of record sleeves published in the former Yugoslavia, by non-Macedonian publishers, (such as Mizar's debut album) used "ć" and "đ", like other places.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, sometimes more simply referred to as the Battle of Spotsylvania (or the 19th-century spelling Spottsylvania), was the second major battle in Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Maj. Gen. George G. Meade's 1864 Overland Campaign of the American Civil War. Following the bloody but inconclusive Battle of the Wilderness, Grant's army disengaged from Confederate General Robert E. Lee's army and moved to the southeast, attempting to lure Lee into battle under more favorable conditions. Elements of Lee's army beat the Union army to the critical crossroads of the Spotsylvania Court House in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, and began entrenching. Fighting occurred on and off from May 8 through May 21, 1864, as Grant tried various schemes to break the Confederate line. In the end, the battle was tactically inconclusive, but both sides declared victory. The Confederacy declared victory because they were able to hold their defenses. The United States declared victory because the Federal offensive continued and Lee's army suffered losses that could not be replaced. With almost 32,000 casualties on both sides, Spotsylvania was the costliest battle of the campaign.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: On May 8, Union Maj. Gens. Gouverneur K. Warren and John Sedgwick unsuccessfully attempted to dislodge the Confederates under Maj. Gen. Richard H. Anderson from Laurel Hill, a position that was blocking them from Spotsylvania Court House. On May 10, Grant ordered attacks across the Confederate line of earthworks, which by now extended over , including a prominent salient known as the Mule Shoe. Although the Union troops failed again at Laurel Hill, an innovative assault attempt by Col. Emory Upton against the Mule Shoe showed promise.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Grant used Upton's assault technique on a much larger scale on May 12 when he ordered the 15,000 men of Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock's corps to assault the Mule Shoe. Hancock was initially successful, but the Confederate leadership rallied and repulsed his incursion. Attacks by Maj. Gen. Horatio Wright on the western edge of the Mule Shoe, which became known as the "Bloody Angle", involved almost 24 hours of desperate hand-to-hand fighting, some of the most intense of the Civil War. Supporting attacks by Warren and by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside were unsuccessful.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Grant repositioned his lines in another attempt to engage Lee under more favorable conditions and launched a final attack by Hancock on May 18, which made no progress. A reconnaissance in force by Confederate Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell at Harris farm on May 19 was a costly and pointless failure. On May 21, Grant disengaged from the Confederate Army and started southeast on another maneuver to turn Lee's right flank, as the Overland Campaign continued and led to the Battle of North Anna.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: In March 1864, Grant was summoned from the Western Theater, promoted to lieutenant general, and given command of all Union armies. He chose to make his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac, although Maj. Gen. George G. Meade remained the actual commander of that army. He left Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman in command of most of the western armies. Grant and President Abraham Lincoln devised a coordinated strategy that would strike at the heart of the Confederacy from multiple directions, including attacks against Lee near Richmond, Virginia, and in the Shenandoah Valley, West Virginia, Georgia, and Mobile, Alabama. This was the first time the Union armies would have a coordinated offensive strategy across a number of theaters.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Grant's campaign objective was not the Confederate capital of Richmond, but the destruction of Lee's army. Lincoln had long advocated this strategy for his generals, recognizing that the city would certainly fall after the loss of its principal defensive army. Grant ordered Meade, "Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also." Although he hoped for a quick, decisive battle, Grant was prepared to fight a war of attrition. Both Union and Confederate casualties could be high, but the Union had far greater resources to replace lost soldiers and equipment.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: On May 5, after Grant's army crossed the Rapidan and entered the Wilderness of Spotsylvania, it was attacked by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Although Lee was outnumbered, about 60,000 to 100,000, his men fought fiercely and the dense foliage provided a terrain advantage. After two days of fighting and almost 29,000 casualties, the results were inconclusive and neither army was able to obtain an advantage.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Lee had stopped Grant, but had not turned him back, and Grant had not destroyed Lee's army. Under similar circumstances, previous Union commanders had chosen to withdraw behind the Rappahannock, but Grant instead ordered Meade to move around Lee's right flank and seize the important crossroads at Spotsylvania Court House to the southeast, hoping that by interposing his army between Lee and Richmond, he could lure the Confederates into another battle on a more favorable field.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: As of May 7, Grant's Union forces totaled approximately 100,000 men. They consisted of the Army of the Potomac, under Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, and the IX Corps (until May 24 formally part of the Army of the Ohio, reporting directly to Grant, not Meade). The five corps were:


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia comprised about 52,000 men and was organized into four corps:


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Grant's orders to Meade were to march the night of May 7–8 over two routes, reaching Spotsylvania Court House, to the southeast, with at least one corps the morning of May 8. Warren's V Corps would take the Brock Road, followed by Hancock's II Corps. Sedgwick's VI Corps would head toward Chancellorsville on the Orange Plank Road, and then turn south, followed by Burnside's IX Corps.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Meade began by ordering Sheridan's Cavalry Corps to clear the Brock Road for the infantry, but the troopers soon bogged down. The brigade of Col. J. Irvin Gregg (David Gregg's division), was stopped at Corbin's Bridge on the Catharpin Road by cavalrymen under Wade Hampton and Rooney Lee. Gregg's men withdrew to a field west of Todd's Tavern, constructed rudimentary earthworks, and repulsed a series of Confederate attacks.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Wesley Merritt's Union division encountered Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry behind barricades on the Brock Road about a mile south of Todd's Tavern. Sharp fighting resulted in the late afternoon, and by nightfall, Sheridan decided against continuing in the dark and ordered his men to bivouac at Todd's Tavern. The first Union infantry began moving at 8 p.m. and their advance was plagued by traffic jams. When Meade reached Todd's Tavern after midnight he was infuriated to see Sheridan's sleeping cavalrymen and ordered them to resume their road clearing operation.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Lee was unsure of Grant's plan. Reconnaissance told him that the river crossing equipment had been removed from Germanna Ford, so Grant would not be withdrawing as his predecessors had. The Union Army could either be heading east to Fredericksburg or moving south. In either event, the crossroads at Spotsylvania Court House would play an important role, so Lee ordered his artillery chief, Brig. Gen. William N. Pendleton, to begin constructing a road through the woods from the Confederate position at the Wilderness due south to the Catharpin Road. He also ordered Maj. Gen. Richard H. Anderson, who had replaced Lt. Gen. James Longstreet in command of the First Corps following that officer's wounding on May 6, to move out along that road. Lee did not indicate any need for haste, but Anderson and his men desired to leave the stench of burning forest and dead bodies in the Wilderness, so they began marching about 10 p.m.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: At dawn on May 8, Wesley Merritt's cavalrymen attacked Fitzhugh Lee's barricades on the Brock Road again, but were repulsed. Meade ordered Warren's V Corps to break through with infantry and the division of Brig. Gen. John C. Robinson led the way in overwhelming the cavalry obstacle. Fitzhugh Lee's horse artillery made a gallant stand around the Alsop farm and delayed the Union advance while the cavalrymen staked out a defensive line on a low ridge just south of the Spindle farm clearing, which they dubbed "Laurel Hill." Lee sent for help to Anderson's infantry, which by now had reached the Block House Bridge on the Po River and were eating breakfast. Anderson immediately dispatched two infantry brigades and an artillery battalion, which arrived at Laurel Hill just as Warren's men pulled up within 100 yards to the north.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Assuming that only cavalry blocked his path, Warren ordered an immediate attack against Laurel Hill. Multiple attacks by the divisions of the V Corps were repulsed with heavy casualties, and by noon the Union troops began building earthworks on the northern end of the Spindle clearing. Meanwhile, the Union cavalry division under James H. Wilson had reached and occupied the town of Spotsylvania Court House at 8 a.m. Wilson sent a brigade under Col. John B. McIntosh up the Brock Road with the intention of striking the Confederate position at Laurel Hill from the rear. J.E.B. Stuart had only a single cavalry regiment available to send out against McIntosh, but Anderson's infantry division under Joseph B. Kershaw was marching in that direction. With orders from Sheridan to withdraw and with Confederate infantry in hot pursuit, Wilson withdrew up the Fredericksburg Road.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Generals Meade and Sheridan had quarreled about the cavalry's performance throughout the campaign and this incident with Wilson, compounding the frustration of the uncleared Brock Road, brought Meade's notorious temper to a boil. After a heated exchange laced with expletives on both sides, Sheridan told Meade that he could "whip Stuart" if Meade let him. Meade reported the conversation to Grant, who replied, "Well, he generally knows what he is talking about. Let him start right out and do it." Meade deferred to Grant's judgment and issued orders to Sheridan to "proceed against the enemy's cavalry." Sheridan's entire command of 10,000 cavalrymen departed the following day. They engaged with (and mortally wounded) Stuart at the Battle of Yellow Tavern on May 11, threatened the outskirts of Richmond, refitted near the James River, and did not return to the army until May 24. Grant and Meade were left without cavalry resources during the critical days of the battle to come.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: While Warren was unsuccessfully attacking Laurel Hill the morning of May 8, Hancock's II Corps had reached Todd's Tavern and erected defenses to the west on the Catharpin Road, protecting the rear of the army. Jubal Early, who had just replaced A.P. Hill as Third Corps commander because of his illness, decided to test the defenses and sent the division of William Mahone and some cavalry. After a short fight, Hancock's division under Francis C. Barlow withdrew back to Todd's Tavern and Early decided not to pursue.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: In the afternoon, Sedgwick's VI Corps arrived near Laurel Hill and extended Warren's line to the east. By 7 p.m., both corps began a coordinated assault, but were repulsed by heavy fire. They attempted to move around Anderson's right flank, but were surprised to find that divisions from Ewell's Second Corps had arrived in that sector to repulse them again. Meade had not had a good day. He lost the race to Spotsylvania, he was dissatisfied with his cavalry, he judged Sedgwick to be "constitutionally slow," and he was most disappointed that Warren had been unsuccessful at Laurel Hill, telling him that he had "lost his nerve."


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Over the night of May 8–9, the Confederates were busy erecting a series of earthworks, more than long, starting at the Po River, encompassing the Laurel Hill line, crossing the Brock Road, jutting out in a horseshoe shape and then extending south past the courthouse intersection. The earthworks were reinforced with timber and guarded by artillery placed to allow enfilade fire on any attacking force. There was only one potential weakness in Lee's line—the exposed salient known as the "Mule Shoe" extending more than a mile (1.6 km) in front of the main trench line. Although Lee's engineers were aware of this problem, they extended the line to incorporate some minor high ground to Anderson's right, knowing that they would be at a disadvantage if the Union occupied it.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: The Union soldiers were also busy building their own entrenchments. At about 9 a.m., Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick was inspecting his VI Corps line when he was shot through the head by a Confederate sharpshooter's bullet, dying instantly, having just made the celebrated remark "they couldn't hit an elephant at this distance". Sedgwick was one of the most beloved generals in the Union Army and his death was a hard blow to his men and colleagues. Meade ordered Maj. Gen. Horatio G. Wright, the senior division commander, to replace Sedgwick.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: On the Union left, Burnside's IX Corps approached on the Fredericksburg Road from Alrich, led by Brig. Gen. Orlando B. Willcox's division, but they were delayed by Fitzhugh Lee's cavalrymen. When they reached close enough to observe that the Confederates were at Spotsylvania Court House, Burnside became concerned that he was too far in advance of Meade's force and ordered his men to begin entrenching. At this same time, Hancock was reporting from the right flank that Early's men had pulled back from his front. Grant absorbed these two observations and concluded that the Confederates were shifting their men from west to east, opening an opportunity for an attack. He ordered Hancock to cross the Po and attack the Confederates' left flank, driving them back toward Burnside's position near the Ni River, while the rest of his command, in the center, watched for an opening to attack there as well.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Hancock's II Corps advanced across the Po, but he became nervous that the Confederates had the Block House Bridge heavily defended and decided to delay his attack until the morning. This error was fatal to Grant's plan. That night, Lee moved two divisions of Jubal Early's corps from Spotsylvania Court House into position against Hancock. Mahone's division was placed directly in Hancock's path of advance while Henry Heth's division swung around to approach Hancock's right flank.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: As morning dawned, Grant realized his assumptions about Lee's dispositions were wrong and that Hancock was facing a significant threat on his front. However, this opened a new opportunity. He guessed (incorrectly) that the troops facing Hancock had been withdrawn from Laurel Hill. He ordered Hancock to withdraw north of the Po, leaving a single division in place to occupy the Confederates in that sector, while the rest of his army was to attack at 5 p.m. across the entire Confederate line, which would identify and exploit any potential weak spot. Hancock left Francis C. Barlow's division behind hasty earthworks along Shady Grove Church Road and withdrew the remainder of his men north of the Po.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: At 2 p.m., Jubal Early decided to attack Barlow with Henry Heth's division. Barlow's men were soon in a difficult position as Confederate artillery lobbed in shells that set the surrounding woods on fire. They were able to retreat through a mile-long corridor and crossed the Po without being captured, destroying the bridges behind them. Grant's tactics were criticized for this so-called "Battle of the Po." Since he had ordered Hancock to move late in the day on May 9, he allowed Robert E. Lee time to react and nullify the movement on May 10.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Hancock was needed in the Po sector to help Barlow's withdrawal, which meant that Warren was left in charge of the Laurel Hill sector. Immediately upon Hancock's departure, Warren requested permission from Meade to attack Laurel Hill immediately, uncoordinated with the rest of Grant's attack, scheduled for 5 p.m. Warren was embarrassed by his performance the previous day and wanted to restore his reputation for aggressiveness. For reasons unexplained, Meade acceded to the request. At 4:00 PM, elements of the II and V Corps assaulted the Confederate trenches at Laurel Hill, which required them to move through a grove of gnarled, splintered dead pine trees. The attacks were beaten off with severe losses. Grant was thus forced to postpone his 5 p.m. coordinated assault until Warren could get his troops reformed.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: At around 6 p.m., the VI Corps began its attack with an unusual formation. Col. Emory Upton led a group of 12 hand-picked regiments, about 5,000 men in four battle lines, against an identified weak point on the west side of the Mule Shoe called Doles's Salient (named after Brig. Gen. George P. Doles's Georgian troops who were manning that sector of the line). The plan was for Upton's men to rush across the open field without pausing to fire and reload, reaching the earthworks before the Confederates could fire more than a couple of shots.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Once an initial breakthrough was made by the leading element, the following lines would widen the breach and spread out on each side. Gershom Mott's division was designated to support the breakthrough as well. Mott's division (4th Division, II Corps) was the weakest in the army. Once Joe Hooker's command, it had been transferred from the defunct III Corps two months earlier. The morale of the enlisted men suffered from this, and several of its regiments' enlistment terms were about to expire in a few weeks, making the men extremely gun-shy. They had been badly shot up and routed in the Wilderness, and as they headed towards the Confederate entrenchments, a burst of artillery fire caused the men to panic and flee from the field, never getting closer than a quarter of a mile to the enemy position.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Three days later, Mott's division was dissolved and Mott himself demoted to command of a brigade comprising most of the remaining troops from the division. Upton's men encountered stiff Confederate resistance, but drove all the way to the parapets, where after some brief, fierce hand-to-hand action, their superior numbers carried the day and soon the Confederate defenders were driven from their trenches.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Generals Lee and Ewell were quick to organize a vigorous counterattack with brigades from all sectors of the Mule Shoe, and no Union supporting units arrived. Mott had already been repulsed, unbeknownst to Upton, and units from Warren's V Corps were too spent from their earlier attacks on Laurel Hill to help. Upton's men were driven out of the Confederate works and he reluctantly ordered them to retreat. British military historian Charles Francis Atkinson wrote in 1908 that Upton's charge was "one of the classic infantry attacks of military history." Grant promoted Upton to brigadier general for his performance.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Also at 6 p.m., on the Union left flank, Burnside advanced along the Fredericksburg Road. Both he and Grant were unaware that when Lee had moved units to the Po, he had left only Cadmus Wilcox's Confederate division to defend that avenue of approach and that there was a large gap between Wilcox and Ewell. (This lack of information was a tangible consequence of the decision to send all of Sheridan's cavalry away from the battlefield.) As Burnside began to get resistance from Wilcox, he timidly stopped and entrenched. That evening Grant decided that Burnside was too isolated from the rest of the line and ordered him to pull back behind the Ni and move to join his lines with Wright's. Grant wrote about this significant lost opportunity in his "Personal Memoirs":


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Despite his reverses on May 10, Grant had reason for optimism. The one bright spot in the day had been the partial success of Emory Upton's innovative assault. He recognized the failure stemming from the lack of support and reasoned that using the same tactics with an entire corps might be successful. Grant was then visited by General Wright, the new commander of the VI Corps, who suggested that the May 10 assaults had failed due to poor support, particularly from Mott's division. Wright told General Meade, "General, I don't want Mott's troops on my left; they are not a support. I would rather have no troops there."


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: He assigned Hancock's II Corps to the assault on the Mule Shoe, while Burnside's IX Corps attacked the eastern end of the salient and Warren's V Corps and Wright's VI Corps applied pressure to Laurel Hill. On the morning of May 11, Grant sent a famous message to the Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton: "The result to this time is much in our favor. Our losses have been heavy as well as those of the enemy. ... "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer"."


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Although no major combat action occurred on May 11, small-scale skirmishing and artillery fire continued most of the day.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: On the Confederate side, Lee received some intelligence reports that made him believe Grant was planning to withdraw toward Fredericksburg. If this came to pass, he wanted to follow up with an immediate attack. Concerned about the mobility of his artillery to support the potential attack, he ordered that the guns be withdrawn from Allegheny Johnson's division in the Mule Shoe to be ready for a movement to the right. He was completely unaware, of course, that this was exactly the place Grant intended to attack.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Hancock's men began assembling near the Brown farm that evening, about 1200 yards north of the Mule Shoe, in a torrential rainstorm. The men and junior officers were poorly prepared for the assault, lacking basic information about the nature of the ground to be covered, the obstacles to expect, or how the Confederate line was configured. Confederates could hear their preparations through the storm, but could not decide whether an attack was imminent or the Union Army was preparing to withdraw. Allegheny Johnson became suspicious and requested to Ewell that his artillery be returned. Ewell agreed, but somehow the order did not reach the artillery units until 3:30 a.m. on May 12, 30 minutes before Hancock's assault was planned to start.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Hancock's assault was scheduled to commence at 4 a.m., but it was still pitch black and he delayed until 4:35, when the rain stopped and was replaced by a thick mist. The attack crashed through the Confederate works, virtually destroying Jones's Brigade, now commanded by Col. William Witcher. As Barlow's division swung around to the eastern tip of the Mule Shoe, it overran the brigade commanded by Brig. Gen. George "Maryland" Steuart, capturing both Steuart and his division commander, Allegheny Johnson. On Barlow's right, Brig. Gen. David B. Birney's division met stronger resistance from the brigades of Col. William Monaghan and Brig. Gen. James A. Walker (the Stonewall Brigade).


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: The recent rain had ruined much of the Confederates' gunpowder, but they fought fiercely hand to hand. The Union troops continued to spread south along the western edge of the Mule Shoe. Despite the initial success at obliterating much of the Mule Shoe salient, there was a flaw in the Union plan—no one had considered how to capitalize on the breakthrough. The 15,000 infantrymen of Hancock's II Corps had crowded into a narrow front about a half mile wide and soon lost all unit cohesion, becoming little more than an armed mob.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Following the initial shock, the Confederate leadership at all levels began to react well to the Union onslaught. John B. Gordon sent Brig. Gen. Robert D. Johnston's brigade of North Carolinians racing toward the gap where Steuart's men had collapsed. Although Johnston was wounded, his brigade halted the breakthrough in that sector. Gordon then sent forward the brigade of Col. John S. Hoffman and three regiments from Col. Clement A. Evans's brigade.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: General Lee was at the scene to witness these men moving forward and, similar to his action at the Widow Tapp farm in the Battle of the Wilderness, he attempted to move forward with the men, only to be stopped by Gordon and chants from the men, "Lee to the rear!" These brigades were able to secure most of the eastern leg of the Mule Shoe after about 30 minutes of fierce fighting. On the western leg, Maj. Gen. Robert E. Rodes coordinated the defense and the brigade of Brig. Gen. Stephen D. Ramseur suffered heavy casualties as they fought their way to regain the entrenchments lost by the Stonewall Brigade.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Grant sent in reinforcements at about 6:30 a.m., ordering both Wright and Warren to move forward. The VI Corps division of Brig. Gen. Thomas H. Neill headed for the western leg of the Mule Shoe, at the point where it turned to the south. This sector of the line, where the heaviest fighting of the day would occur, became known as the "Bloody Angle." As Union brigade after brigade slammed into the line, William Mahone brought two of his brigades—under Brig. Gens. Abner M. Perrin and Nathaniel H. Harris—hurrying back from the extreme left flank to come to Ramseur's aid. Perrin was killed. By 8 a.m, heavy rain began to fall and both sides fought on the earthworks slippery with both water and blood. The South Carolinians of Brig. Gen. Samuel McGowan's brigade joined the defense at the critical point. At 9:30 a.m., the VI Corps division under Brig. Gen. David A. Russell joined the attack. A section of Union artillery was able to advance close to the Confederate lines and cause numerous casualties. But Confederate artillery also had a severe effect on the advance of Russell's men.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Warren's attack at Laurel Hill began on a small scale around 8:15 a.m. For some of his men, this was their fourth or fifth attack against the same objective and few fought with enthusiasm. After thirty minutes the attack petered out and Warren told Meade that he was not able to advance "at present." The irascible Meade ordered Warren to attack "at once at all hazards with your whole force, if necessary." Warren relayed the order to his division commanders: "Do it. Don't mind the consequences." The attack was yet another failure, adding to the high toll of casualties as the Union corps was held up by the fire of a single Confederate division.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Not only was the V Corps unable to take its objective, it had also failed to draw Confederate troops from elsewhere in the line, as Grant had intended. Both Meade and Grant were upset with Warren's performance and Grant authorized Meade to relieve Warren, replacing him with Meade's chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Andrew A. Humphreys. Humphreys diplomatically coordinated the withdrawal of the V Corps units without relieving Warren, but Meade began to order Warren's subordinates to reinforce Wright, and no further attacks against Laurel Hill would be planned.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Ambrose Burnside was also part of the grand assault, advancing against the eastern leg of the Mule Shoe before dawn. The attack by his division under Brig. Gen. Robert B. Potter against the sector just below Steuart's Brigade materially aided Hancock's breakthrough. The North Carolina brigade of Brig. Gen. James H. Lane fought back, reinforced by a Georgia brigade under Brig. Gen. Edward L. Thomas and the North Carolina brigade of Brig. Gen. Alfred M. Scales. The two sides became stalemated. At 2 p.m., Grant and Lee coincidentally ordered simultaneous attacks. Grant considered this sector to be lightly defended and hoped for a new breakthrough while Lee wanted to take out an artillery position that the IX Corps was using to harass his line. The advance by Union Brig. Gen. Orlando B. Willcox's division against a minor salient in the line was stopped as Lane's brigade moved forward and hit them in the flank.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Throughout the afternoon, Confederate engineers scrambled to create a new defensive line 500 yards further south at the base of the Mule Shoe, while fighting at the Bloody Angle continued day and night with neither side achieving an advantage, until around 12:00 AM on May 13, the fighting finally stopped. At 4 A.M., the exhausted Confederate infantrymen were notified that the new line was ready and they withdrew from the original earthworks unit by unit.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: The combat they had endured for almost 24 hours was characterized by an intensity of firepower never previously seen in Civil War battles, as the entire landscape was flattened, all the foliage destroyed. An example of this can be found in the Smithsonian Museum of American History: a 22-inch stump of an oak tree at the Bloody Angle that was completely severed by rifle fire. There was a frenzy to the carnage on both sides. Fighting back and forth over the same corpse-strewn trenches for hours on end, using single shot muskets, the contending troops were periodically reduced to hand-to-hand combat reminiscent of battles fought during ancient times. Bodies piled up four and five high, and soldiers were forced to pause from time to time and throw corpses over the parapet since they formed an obstacle in the way of the fighting. Dead and wounded men were shot so many times that many of them simply fell apart into unrecognizable heaps of flesh.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Surviving participants attempted to describe in letters, diaries, and memoirs the hellish intensity of that day, many noting that it was beyond words. Or, as one put it: "Nothing can describe the confusion, the savage, blood-curdling yells, the murderous faces, the awful curses, and the grisly horror of the melee." Some men claimed to have fired as many as 400 rounds that day. May 12 was the most intensive day of fighting during the battle, with Union casualties of about 9,000, Confederate 8,000; the Confederate loss includes about 3,000 prisoners captured in the Mule Shoe.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Despite the significant casualties of May 12, Grant was undeterred. He telegraphed to the Army's chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, "The enemy are obstinate and seemed to have found the last ditch." He planned to reorient his lines and shift the center of potential action to the east of Spotsylvania, where he could renew the battle. He ordered the V and VI Corps to move behind the II Corps and take positions past the left flank of the IX Corps.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: On the night of May 13–14, the corps began a difficult march in heavy rain over treacherously muddy roads. Early on May 14, elements of the VI Corps occupied Myers Hill, which overlooked most of the Confederate line. Col. Emory Upton's brigade skirmished most of the day to retain possession of the high ground. Grant's command was too scattered and exhausted to undertake an assault against Spotsylvania Court House on May 14, despite Lee having left it practically undefended for most of the day. When he realized what Grant was up to, Lee shifted some units from Anderson's First Corps to that area. Grant notified Washington that, having endured five days of almost continuous rain, his army could not resume offensive operations until they had 24 hours of dry weather.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: The weather finally cleared on May 17. Grant made an assumption that led him to his next attack plan: since Lee had observed Grant's buildup along the Fredericksburg Road, it was likely that he had countered the Union moves by shifting his forces away from the former Mule Shoe positions. He ordered the II Corps and the VI Corps to attack there at sunrise, May 18. They retraced their steps to the vicinity of the Landrum house the night of May 17. Hancock's II Corps would make the primary assault with support from Wright on their right and Burnside on their left.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Unfortunately for the Union plan, the former Confederate works were still occupied by Ewell's Second Corps and they had used the intervening time to improve the earthworks and the obstacles laid out in front of them. And, unlike May 12, they were not caught by surprise, nor had they sent their artillery away. As Hancock's men advanced, they were caught up in an abatis and subjected to artillery fire so devastating that infantry rifle fire was not necessary to repulse the attack. Wright and Burnside had no better luck.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Grant reacted to this final repulse by deciding to abandon this general area as a battlefield. He ordered Hancock's II Corps to march to the railroad line between Fredericksburg and Richmond, and then turn south. With luck, Lee might take the bait and follow, seeking to overwhelm and destroy the isolated corps. In that case, Grant would chase Lee with his remaining corps and strike him before the Confederates could entrench again.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Lee was engaged in his own planning, however. Before Hancock began to move, Lee ordered Ewell to conduct a reconnaissance in force to locate the northern flank of the Union army. Ewell took the majority of his Second Corps divisions under Rodes and Gordon up the Brock Road, and swung widely to the north and east to the Harris farm. There they encountered several units of Union heavy artillery soldiers who had recently been converted to infantry duty.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Fighting commenced against these relatively green troops, who were soon reinforced by the 1st Maryland Regiment and then David Birney's infantry division. The fighting lasted until about 9 p.m. and Lee, concerned that Ewell was risking a general engagement while separated from the main army, recalled his men. A number of them lost their way in the dark and were captured. The Confederates had lost over 900 men on a pointless skirmish that could have been assigned to a small cavalry detachment.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Grant's intended advance of Hancock's corps was delayed by the Harris farm engagement, so the troops did not begin their movement south until the night of May 20–21. Lee did not fall into Grant's trap of attacking Hancock, but traveled on a parallel path to the North Anna River. The Overland Campaign continued as Grant attempted several more times to engage Lee, found himself stymied by strong defensive positions, and moved again around Lee's flank in the direction of Richmond. Major engagements occurred at the Battle of North Anna and the Battle of Cold Harbor, after which Grant crossed the James River to attack Petersburg. The armies then faced each other for nine months in the Siege of Petersburg.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: With almost 32,000 total casualties, Spotsylvania Court House was the costliest battle of the Overland Campaign and one of the top five battles of the Civil War. As at the Battle of the Wilderness, Lee's tactics had inflicted severe casualties on Grant's army. This time, the toll was over 18,000 men, of whom close to 3,000 were killed. In two weeks of fighting since the start of the Wilderness, Grant had lost about 36,000 men, and another 20,000 went home when their enlistments ended. Grant on May 19 had only 56,124 effectives. Lee did not come out of these battles unscathed. At Spotsylvania, he lost another 10–13,000 men, about 23% of his army (versus 18% of Grant's). While the Union had many men available to reinforce Grant, the Confederates were forced to pull men away from other fronts to reinforce Lee. Making matters worse, the army was taking heavy losses among its veteran units and its best officers.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Estimates vary as to the casualties at Spotsylvania Court House. The following table summarizes a variety of sources:


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Five general officers were killed or mortally wounded during the battle: Union Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick and Brig. Gens. James C. Rice and Thomas G. Stevenson; and Confederate Brig. Gen. Junius Daniel and Abner M. Perrin. Sedgwick's death is notable in that he was the highest-ranking officer by seniority to die in the war. He also famously said the ironic words "They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance" shortly before his death. Among the wounded and captured were Confederate Maj. Gen. Edward Johnson and Brig. Gens. John R. Cooke, Harry T. Hays, Samuel McGowan, Stephen D. Ramseur, Cullen A. Battle, James A. Walker, Robert D. Johnston, George H. Steuart and Henry H. Walker.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Forty-three men received the Medal of Honor during the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, including Frederick Alber, George W. Harris, John C. Robinson, Archibald Freeman, and Charles H. Tracy.


title: Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

text: Portions of the Spotsylvania Court House battlefield are now preserved as part of Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. In addition, the Civil War Trust (a division of the American Battlefield Trust) and its partners have acquired and preserved of the battlefield.


The Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus (MRNC; also known as the United Republics of the North Caucasus, Mountain Republic or the Republic of the Mountaineers) was a country in the North Caucasus formed by the unification of Circassians, Chechens, Ingush, Ossetians and Dagestanis proclaimed at the congress of the North Caucasian peoples on 6 March 1917. It existed from 1917 until 1922.


title: Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus

text: MRNC included most of the territory of the former Terek Oblast and Dagestan Oblast of the Russian Empire, which now form the republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia, North Ossetia–Alania, Kabardino-Balkaria, Dagestan, Abkhazia and part of Stavropol Krai of the Russian Federation. The total land area was about , with a population of about 11 million. Its capital was initially at Vladikavkaz, then Nazran, and finally Temir-Khan-Shura.


text: It broke away from the Russian Empire during the February Revolution, shortly before the start of the Russian Civil War. The state was captured by Soviet Russian forces in 1921, who transformed it into the Mountain Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.


text: The Union included seven "states" allocated on a national basis and united according to a confederative principle in the territories: Dagestan, Ingushetia, Chechnya, Ossetia, Circassia (Including West Circassia but the union only had control over East Circassia), Karachay-Balkaria, the Nogai steppes and also claims in Abkhazia.


text: The Cabinet of Ministers of the Mountain Republic included representatives from almost all regions of the North Caucasus.


text: The Union of the Peoples of the Northern Caucasus was created in March 1917, and an Executive Committee of the Union was elected. The Chairman of the Executive Committee was one of the leaders of the National‐Liberation movement of the Peoples of the Northern Caucasus, Tapa Tchermoeff. The 1847 constitution of Imam Shamil was re-adopted on 5 August 1917 by the Central Committee of the Northern Caucasus.


text: The independent republic was officially proclaimed on 11 May 1918, after the collapse of the Russian Tsarist empire in the Russian revolution of 1917. The government of the new republic was established. Prime Minister Tapa Tchermoeff, Rashid-khan Kaplanov and Haidar Bammate. The Republic's capital was Vladikavkaz, later moved to Temir-Khan-Shura. The republic was supported by Said Shamil (grandson of Imam Shamil). The Mountainous Republic was "de jure" recognized by the Ottoman Empire, Germany, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, Armenia, the Democratic Republic of Georgia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Belarus, Latvia, Estonia, France, Finland, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the United States, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Poland, the Don Republic, Japan, and the Kuban People's Republic.


text: Early in March 1919, General Tapa Tchermoeff and Ibrahim Bey Gaydarov headed a delegation to Paris in an attempt to take part in the Treaty of Versailles. The object of the delegation was to secure the recognition of the independence of the Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus.


text: The 1st and 2nd Dagestan cavalry regiments from the Caucasian Native Cavalry Division declared loyalty to the Mountainous Republic and Ottoman Pashas of Circassian origin came with their armies to support the new founded state. Therefore, an army with experienced soldiers and commanders was established. North Caucasian soldiers engaged in fierce clashes against the invading White troops of General Anton Denikin's Volunteer Army. The Caucasus was completely taken from Soviet Russia with the support of the North Caucasus Army under the command of Yusuf Izzet Pasha.


text: In connection with the defeat of Germany and Turkey in the First World War and the withdrawal of Turkish troops from Transcaucasia and Dagestan, the Mountain government was reorganized, and at the end of 1918 the Mountain Congress in Temir-Khan-Shura approved Pshemaho Kotsev as the head of the coalition cabinet. The fighting ended in January 1920, when Denikin's army was completely defeated by the 11th Red Army. In January 1921, the MRNC was completely occupied by the Red Army of Bolshevik Russia and the government of the republic was forced to leave the Caucasus. In January 1921, the Soviet Mountain Republic of the Russian SFSR was established.


title: Florent Pagny

text: Florent Pagny (born 6 November 1961) is a French singer-songwriter, musician and actor. He records his work in French, as well as in Italian, Spanish and English. His greatest hits include "N'importe quoi", "Savoir aimer" and "Ma Liberté de penser"—all three were number one in France. As of 2018, he has sold more than 6 million singles and 10 million albums, becoming the 17th best-selling artist of all time in France.


title: Florent Pagny

text: Florent Pagny began his artistic career as an actor in popular films and television dramas. He appeared in "La Balance", "L'As des as", and "A Captain's Honor" or "Fort Saganne".


title: Florent Pagny

text: In 1987, he wrote his first song titled "N'importe quoi". Pagny's first album, "Merci", was released in 1990. The album's songs, mainly written by himself, began to attract controversy, with the press eventually boycotting some of them. This led to a decline in sales, culminating in personal problems. His follow-up album, "Réaliste", was also not as successful.


title: Florent Pagny

text: Jean-Jacques Goldman wrote three songs for Pagny under the pseudonym Sam Brewski, and presented to him a new staff. The album "Rester vrai" marked the beginning of his career as a performer only. "Bienvenue chez moi", a semi-compilation released in 1995, was a smash success. Pagny also covered "Caruso", the hit originally performed by Lucio Dalla.


title: Florent Pagny

text: He decided to move to Argentinian Patagonia to flee the French tax authorities and to start a new life with his wife, Azucena, and their children. Recently, Pagny said he had enrolled his children in Miami because he didn't want them to speak Arabic while returning from school. His next album, "Savoir aimer", was released in 1997. It was composed by a number of writers, including Jean-Jacques Goldman, Erick Benzi, Jacques Veneruso, Zazie and, Pascal Obispo, who also produced the album. "Savoir aimer" turned out to be an immediate success.


title: Florent Pagny

text: In 1999, Pagny released an album of cover versions of his old song, "Recréation". From "Môme Julie" to "Antisocial", he mixed musical styles and dabbled with techno arrangements.


title: Florent Pagny

text: Pagny then alternated studios and cover albums (at least in part) and regularly changed his look. In 2000, he released the album "Châtelet Les Halles", whose title song was produced by Calogero. He followed that with "2", an album composed of duets released in 2001. In 2003, he returned with "Ailleurs land", whose first single, "Ma Liberté de penser", was composed by Pascal Obispo and Lionel Florence and deals with Pagny's problems with the French treasury. Finally, in 2004, Pagny released "Baryton", an album composed of opera songs.


title: Florent Pagny

text: In 2007, Pagny released an album of covers of songs originally composed and performed by Jacques Brel entitled "Pagny chante Brel".


title: North American Plate

text: The North American Plate is a tectonic plate covering most of North America, Cuba, the Bahamas, extreme northeastern Asia, and parts of Iceland and the Azores. With an area of , it is the Earth's second largest tectonic plate, behind the Pacific Plate (which borders the plate to the west).


title: North American Plate

text: It extends eastward to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and westward to the Chersky Range in eastern Siberia. The plate includes both continental and oceanic crust. The interior of the main continental landmass includes an extensive granitic core called a craton. Along most of the edges of this craton are fragments of crustal material called terranes, which are accreted to the craton by tectonic actions over a long span of time. It is thought that much of North America west of the Rocky Mountains is composed of such terranes.


title: North American Plate

text: The southern boundary with the Cocos Plate to the west and the Caribbean Plate to the east is a transform fault, represented by the Swan Islands Transform Fault under the Caribbean Sea and the Motagua Fault through Guatemala. The parallel Septentrional and Enriquillo–Plantain Garden faults, which run through the island of Hispaniola and bound the Gonâve Microplate, are also a part of the boundary. The rest of the southerly margin which extends east to the Mid Atlantic Ridge and marks the boundary between the North American Plate and the South American Plate is vague but located near the Fifteen-Twenty Fracture Zone around 16°n.


title: North American Plate

text: On the northerly boundary is a continuation of the Mid-Atlantic ridge called the Gakkel Ridge. The rest of the boundary in the far northwestern part of the plate extends into Siberia. This boundary continues from the end of the Gakkel Ridge as the Laptev Sea Rift, on to a transitional deformation zone in the Chersky Range, then the Ulakhan Fault between it and the Okhotsk Plate, and finally the Aleutian Trench to the end of the Queen Charlotte Fault system.


title: North American Plate

text: The westerly boundary is the Queen Charlotte Fault running offshore along the coast of Alaska and the Cascadia subduction zone to the north, the San Andreas Fault through California, the East Pacific Rise in the Gulf of California, and the Middle America Trench to the south.


title: North American Plate

text: On its western edge, the Farallon Plate has been subducting under the North American Plate since the Jurassic Period. The Farallon Plate has almost completely subducted beneath the western portion of the North American Plate, leaving that part of the North American Plate in contact with the Pacific Plate as the San Andreas Fault. The Juan de Fuca, Explorer, Gorda, Rivera, Cocos and Nazca plates are remnants of the Farallon Plate.


title: North American Plate

text: The boundary along the Gulf of California is complex. The Gulf is underlain by the Gulf of California Rift Zone, a series of rift basins and transform fault segments from the northern end of the East Pacific Rise in the mouth of the gulf to the San Andreas Fault system in the vicinity of the Salton Trough rift/Brawley seismic zone.


title: North American Plate

text: It is generally accepted that a piece of the North American Plate was broken off and transported north as the East Pacific Rise propagated northward, creating the Gulf of California. However, it is as yet unclear whether the oceanic crust between the Rise and the mainland coast of Mexico is actually a new plate beginning to converge with the North American Plate, consistent with the standard model of rift zone spreading centers generally.


title: North American Plate

text: A few hotspots are thought to exist below the North American Plate. The most notable hotspots are the Yellowstone (Wyoming), Jemez Lineament (New Mexico), and Anahim (British Columbia) hotspots. These are thought to be caused by a narrow stream of hot mantle convecting up from the Earth's core–mantle boundary called a mantle plume, although some geologists think that upper mantle convection is a more likely cause. The Yellowstone and Anahim hotspots are thought to have first arrived during the Miocene period and are still geologically active, creating earthquakes and volcanoes. The Yellowstone hotspot is most notable for the Yellowstone Caldera and the many calderas that lie in the Snake River Plain while the Anahim hotspot is most notable for the Anahim Volcanic Belt, currently found in the Nazko Cone area.


title: North American Plate

text: For the most part, the North American Plate moves in roughly a southwest direction away from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge at a rate of about 2.3 centimeters (~1 inch) per year. At the same time, the Pacific Plate is moving to the northwest at a speed of between 7 and 11 centimeters (~3-4 inches) a year.


title: North American Plate

text: The motion of the plate cannot be driven by subduction as no part of the North American Plate is being subducted, except for a small section comprising part of the Puerto Rico Trench; thus other mechanisms continue to be investigated.


title: Latte macchiato

text: Latte macchiato () is a coffee beverage. The name means stained or marked milk, which refers to the espresso stain on the milk used. It is a play on "Espresso macchiato". an espresso with a dollop or two of milk or cream.


title: Latte macchiato

text: Latte macchiato differs from caffè latte in several ways. First, in a latte macchiato, espresso is added to milk, rather than milk to espresso as in a caffè latte. Second, a latte macchiato features more foam rather than simply hot milk. A latte macchiato often uses only half an espresso shot or less. Finally, a latte macchiato is often a 'layered' drink, rather than being mixed as in a caffè latte.


title: Latte macchiato

text: In a caffè latte, the emphasis is on the coffee, while in a latte macchiato, the emphasis is on the milk.