text: One perspective is given by Rear Admiral Frank Edmund Beatty Jr., who at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack was an aide to the Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox and was very close to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's inner circle, remarked that:


title: Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge conspiracy theory

text: Another "eyewitness viewpoint" akin to Beatty's is provided by Roosevelt's administrative assistant at the time of Pearl Harbor, Jonathan Daniels; it is a telling comment about FDR's reaction to the attack – "The blow was heavier than he had hoped it would necessarily be. ... But the risks paid off; even the loss was worth the price. ..."


text: "Ten days before the attack on Pearl Harbor", Henry L. Stimson, United States Secretary of War at the time "entered in his diary the famous and much-argued statement – that he had met with President Roosevelt to discuss the evidence of impending hostilities with Japan, and the question was 'how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.'" However Stimson, in reviewing his diary after the war, recalled that the commanders at Pearl Harbor had been warned of the possibility of attack, and that the poor state of readiness that the attack had revealed was a surprise to him:[Yet] General Short had been told the two essential facts: 1) a war with Japan is threatening, 2) hostile action by Japan is possible at any moment. Given these two facts, both of which were stated without equivocation in the message of Nov. 27, the outpost commander should be on the alert to make his fight ...


text: To cluster his airplanes in such groups and positions that in an emergency they could not take the air for several hours, and to keep his antiaircraft ammunition so stored that it could not be promptly and immediately available, and to use his best reconnaissance system, radar, only for a very small fraction of the day and night, in my opinion betrayed a misconception of his real duty which was almost beyond belief. ...


text: Robert Stinnett's "Day of Deceit" suggests a memorandum prepared by Commander McCollum was central to U.S. policy in the immediate pre-war period. Stinnett claims the memo suggests only a direct attack on U.S. interests would sway the American public (or Congress) to favor direct involvement in the European war, specifically in support of the British. An attack "by Japan" would not, could not, aid Britain. Although the memo was passed to Captains Walter Anderson and Dudley Knox, two of Roosevelt's military advisors, on October 7, 1940, there is no evidence to suggest Roosevelt ever saw it, while Stinnett's claims of evidence he did is nonexistent. Moreover, although Anderson and Knox offered eight specific plans to aggrieve the Japanese Empire and added, "If by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better," of the eight "plans" (actions to be taken) offered in the memo, many if not all were implemented, but there is considerable doubt the McCollum memo was the inspiration. Nonetheless, in "Day of Deceit" Stinnett claims all action items were implemented. Yet there were numerous instances of members of the Roosevelt Administration insisting on not provoking Japan. Mark Parillo, in his essay "The United States in the Pacific", wrote, "[t]hese theories tend to founder on the logic of the situation. Had Roosevelt and other members of his administration known of the attack in advance, they would have been foolish to sacrifice one of the major instruments needed to win the war just to get the United States into it." Furthermore, on 5 November 1941, in a joint memo, Stark, CNO, and Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, warned, "if Japan be defeated and Germany remain undefeated, decision will still not have been reached... War between the United States and Japan should be avoided..." Additionally, in a 21 November 1941 memo, Brigadier Leonard T. Gerow, head of Army War Plans, stated, "one of our present major objectives [is] the avoidance of war with Japan...[and to] insure continuance of material assistance to the British." He concluded, "[I]t is of grave importance to our war effort in Europe..." Furthermore, Churchill himself, in a 15 May 1940 telegram, said he hoped a U.S. commitment to aid Britain would "quiet" Japan, following with a 4 October message requesting a USN courtesy visit to Singapore aimed at "preventing the spreading of the war" And Stark's own Plan Dog expressly stated, "Any strength that we might send to the Far East would...reduce the force of our blows against Germany..." Roosevelt could scarcely have been ignorant of Stark's views, and war with Japan was clearly contrary to Roosevelt's express wish to aid Britain.


text: Oliver Lyttelton, the British Minister of War Production, said, "... Japan was provoked into attacking the Americans at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty of history ever to say that America was forced into the war. Everyone knows where American sympathies were. It is incorrect to say that America was truly neutral even before America came into the war on an all-out basis." How this demonstrates anything with regard to Japan is unclear. Rather, it refers to other aid to Britain. Lend-Lease, enacted in March 1941, informally declared the end of American neutrality in favor of the Allies by agreeing to supply Allied nations with war materials. In addition, Roosevelt authorized a so-called Neutrality Patrol, which would protect the merchantmen of one nation, namely Britain, from attack by another, Germany. This made shipping legitimate target of attack by submarine. Furthermore, Roosevelt ordered U.S. destroyers to report U-boats, then later authorized them to "shoot on sight". This made the U.S. a "de facto" belligerent. None was the act of a disinterested neutral, while all are unquestionably of assistance to Britain.


text: When considering information like this as a point for or against, the reader must keep in mind questions such as: was this official privy to information about the U.S. government? Did he have communications with high-level administration figures such as President Roosevelt or Ambassador Joseph Grew? Is this just a strongly held personal opinion? Or were there measures justifying this view? If Britain, did, indeed know and chose to conceal, "withholding this vital intelligence only ran the risk of losing American trust", and with it any further American aid, which would be reduced after the attack in any event.


text: There is also a claim, first asserted in Toland's "Infamy", that ONI knew about Japanese carrier movements. Toland cited entries from the diary of Rear Admiral J. E. Meijer Ranneft of the Dutch Navy for 2 December and 6 December. Ranneft attended briefings at ONI on these dates. According to Toland, Ranneft wrote that he was told by ONI that two Japanese carriers were northwest of Honolulu. However, the diary uses the Dutch abbreviation "beW", meaning "westerly", contradicting Toland's claim. Nor did any other persons present at the briefings report hearing Toland's version. In their reviews of "Infamy", David Kahn and John C. Zimmerman suggested Ranneft's reference was to carriers near the Marshall Islands. Toland has made other conflicting and incorrect claims about the diary during lectures at the Holocaust denial organization the Institute for Historical Review.


text: The diary states at 02:00 (6-12-41) Turner fears a sudden Japanese attack on Manila. At 14:00 the diary states "Everyone present on O.N.I. I speak to Director Admiral Wilkinson, Captain MacCollum, Lt. Cdr. Kramer ... They show me – on my request – the place of the 2 carriers (see 2–12–41) West of Honolulu. I ask what the idea is of these carriers on that place. The answer was: 'perhaps in connection with Japanese rapports [sic] on eventual American actions'. There is not one of ours who speaks about a possible air attack on Honolulu. I myself did not think of it because I believed everyone on Honolulu to be 100% on the alert, as everyone here on O.N.I. There prevails a tense state of mind at O.N.I." These diary entries are provided (in Dutch) in the photo section in George Victor's "The Pearl Harbor Myth: Rethinking the Unthinkable".


text: CBS correspondent Edward R. Murrow had a dinner appointment at the White House on 7 December. Because of the attack he and his wife only ate with Mrs. Roosevelt, but the president asked Murrow to stay afterwards. As he waited outside the Oval Office, Murrow observed government and military officials entering and leaving. He wrote after the war:


text: One historian has written, however, that when Murrow met Roosevelt with William J. Donovan of the OSS that night, while the magnitude of the destruction at Pearl Harbor horrified the president, Roosevelt seemed slightly less surprised by the attack than the other men. According to Murrow, the president told him, "Maybe you think [the attack] didn't surprise us!" He said later, "I believed him", and thought that he might have been asked to stay as a witness. When allegations of Roosevelt's foreknowledge appeared after the war, John Gunther asked Murrow about the meeting. Murrow reportedly responded the full story would pay for his son's college education and "if you think I'm going to give it to you, you're out of your mind". Murrow did not write the story, however, before his death.


text: On October 7, 1940, Lieutenant Commander Arthur H. McCollum of the Office of Naval Intelligence submitted a memo to Navy Captains Walter S. Anderson and Dudley Knox, which details eight actions which might have the effect of provoking Japan into attacking the United States. The memo remained classified until 1994 and contains the notable line, "If by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better."


text: Sections 9 and 10 of the memo are said by Gore Vidal to be the "smoking gun" revealed in Stinnett's book, suggesting it was central to the high level plan to lure the Japanese into an attack. Evidence the memo or derivative works actually reached President Roosevelt, senior administration officials, or the highest levels of U.S. Navy command, is circumstantial, at best.


text: Theorists challenging the traditional view that Pearl Harbor was a surprise repeatedly note that Roosevelt wanted the U.S. to intervene in the war against Germany, though he did not say so officially. A basic understanding of the political situation of 1941 precludes any possibility the public wanted war. Thomas Fleming argued President Roosevelt wished for Germany or Japan to strike the first blow, but did not expect the United States to be hit as severely as it was in the attack on Pearl Harbor.


text: An attack by Japan on the U.S. could not guarantee the U.S. would declare war on Germany. After such an attack, American public anger would be directed at Japan, not Germany, just as happened. The Tripartite Pact (Germany, Italy, Japan) called for each to aid another in defense; Japan could not reasonably claim America had attacked Japan if she struck first. For instance, Germany had been at war with the UK since 1939, and with the USSR since June 1941, without Japanese assistance. There had been a serious, if low-level, naval war going on in the Atlantic between Germany and the U.S. since summer of 1941, as well. On October 17 a U-boat torpedoed a U.S. destroyer, "USS Kearny", inflicting severe damage and killing eleven crewmen. Two weeks after the attack on the Kearny, a submarine sank an American destroyer, "USS Reuben James", killing 115 sailors. Nevertheless, it was only Hitler's declaration of war on 11 December, unforced by treaty, that brought the U.S. into the European war.


text: Clausen and Lee's "Pearl Harbor: Final Judgement" reproduces a Purple message, dated 29 November 1941, from the Japanese Ambassador in Berlin to Tokyo. A closing paragraph reads, "... He (Ribbentrop) also said that if Japan were to go to war with America, Germany would, of course, join in immediately, and Hitler's intention was that there should be absolutely no question of Germany making a separate peace with England. ..."


text: While theorists who challenge the conventional view that the attack was a surprise treat this as a guarantee to join after Japan's attack, it can as easily be taken as a guarantee to come to Japan's aid, as Germany had done for Italy in Libya.


text: U.S. signals intelligence in 1941 was both impressively advanced and uneven. In 1929, the U.S. MI-8 cryptographic operation in New York City was shut down by Henry Stimson (Hoover's newly appointed Secretary of State), citing "ethical considerations", which inspired its now broke former director, Herbert Yardley, to write a 1931 book, "The American Black Chamber", about its successes in breaking other nations' crypto traffic. Most countries responded promptly by changing (and generally improving) their ciphers and codes, forcing other nations to start over in reading their signals. The Japanese were no exception.


text: Nevertheless, U.S. cryptanalytic work continued after Stimson's action in two separate efforts: the Army's Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) and the Navy's Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) crypto group, OP-20-G. Cryptanalytic work was kept secret to such an extent, however, that major commands such as the 14th Naval District at Pearl Harbor were prohibited from working on codebreaking by Admiral Kelly Turner.


text: By late 1941, those organizations had broken several Japanese ciphers, such as J19 and PA-K2, called "Tsu" and "Oite" respectively by the Japanese. The highest security diplomatic code, dubbed Purple by the U.S., had been broken, but American cryptanalysts had made little progress against the IJN's current "Kaigun Ango Sho D" (Naval Code D, called AN-1 by the U.S.; JN-25 after March 1942).


text: In addition, there was a perennial shortage of manpower, thanks to penury on one hand and the perception of intelligence as a low-value career path on the other. Translators were over-worked, cryptanalysts were in short supply, and staffs were generally stressed. In 1942, "Not every cryptogram was decoded. Japanese traffic was too heavy for the undermanned Combat Intelligence Unit." Furthermore, there were difficulties retaining good intelligence officers and trained linguists; most did not remain on the job for the extended periods necessary to become truly professional. For career reasons, nearly all wanted to return to more standard assignments. However, concerning the manning levels, "... just prior to World War II, [the US] had some 700 people engaged in the effort and [was], in fact, obviously having some successes." Of these, 85% were tasked to decryption and 50% to translation efforts against IJN codes. The nature and degree of these successes has led to great confusion among non-specialists. Furthermore, OP-20-GY "analysts relied as much on summary reports as on the actual intercepted messages."


text: The U.S. was also given decrypted messages by Dutch (NEI) intelligence, who like the others in the British–Dutch–U.S. agreement to share the cryptographic load, shared information with allies. However, the U.S. refused to do likewise. This was, at least in part, due to fears of compromise; sharing even between the US Navy and Army was restricted (e.g see Central Bureau). The eventual flow of intercepted and decrypted information was tightly and capriciously controlled. At times, even President Roosevelt did not receive all information from code-breaking activities. There were fears of compromise as a result of poor security after a memo dealing with Magic was found in the desk of Brigadier General Edwin M. (Pa) Watson, the President's military aide.


text: The Japanese code dubbed "Purple", which was used by the Japanese Foreign Office and only for diplomatic (but not for military) messages, was broken by Army cryptographers in 1940. A 14-part message using this code, sent from Japan to its embassy in Washington, was decoded in Washington on 6 and 7 December. The message, which made plain the Japanese intention to break off diplomatic relations with the United States, was to be delivered by the Japanese ambassador at 1 p.m. Washington time (dawn in the Pacific). The SIS decoded the first 13 parts of the message, but did not decode the 14th part of the message until it was too late. Colonel Rufus S. Bratton, then serving as Chief of the Far Eastern Section of G-2 (intelligence), was responsible for receiving and distributing Magic intercepts to senior military and government officials. In Bratton's view, the 14-part message by itself merely signaled a break in diplomatic relations, which appeared to be inevitable anyway. Others saw it differently: Roosevelt, upon reviewing just the first 13-parts (and without part 14 or the 1 p.m. delivery requirement) declared "this means war", and when Marshall was given the intercept on the morning of December 7, ordered a warning message sent to American bases in the area, including Hawaii. Due to atmospheric transmission conditions the message was sent out via Western Union over its undersea cable rather than over the military radio channels; the message was not received until the attack was already underway.


text: The claim no pre-attack IJN message expressly mentioned Pearl Harbor is perhaps true. The claims that no Purple traffic pointed to Pearl Harbor may also be true, as the Japanese Foreign Office was not well thought of by the military and during this period was routinely excluded from sensitive or secret material, including war planning. It is also possible any such intercepts were not translated until after the attack, or indeed, after the war ended; some messages were not. In both instances, all traffic from these pre-attack intercepts has not yet been declassified and released to the public domain. Hence, any such claims are now indeterminate, pending a fuller accounting.


text: Additionally, no decrypts have come to light of JN-25B traffic with any intelligence value prior to Pearl Harbor, and certainly no such has been identified. Such breaks as recorded by authors W. J. Holmes and Clay Blair Jr., were into the additive tables, which was a required second step of three (see above). The first 100 JN-25 decrypts from all sources in date/time order of translation have been released, and are available in the National Archives. The first JN-25B decrypt was in fact by (Hawaii) on 8 January 1942 (numbered #1 up JN-25B RG38 CNSG Library, Box 22, 3222/82 NA CP). The first 25 decrypts were very short messages or partial decrypts of marginal intelligence value. As Whitlock stated, "The reason that not one single JN-25 decrypt made prior to Pearl Harbor has ever been found or declassified is not due to any insidious cover-up... it is due quite simply to the fact that no such decrypt ever existed. It simply was not within the realm of our combined cryptologic capability to produce a usable decrypt at that particular juncture."


text: The JN-25 superencrypted code, and its cryptanalysis by the US, is one of the most debated portions of Pearl Harbor lore. JN-25 is the U.S. Navy's last of several names for the cryptosystem of the Imperial Japanese Navy, sometimes referred to as Naval Code D. Other names used for it include five-numeral, 5Num, five-digit, five-figure, AN (JN-25 Able), and AN-1 (JN-25 Baker), and so on.


text: Superenciphered codes of this sort were widely used and were the state of the art in practical cryptography at the time. JN-25 was very similar in principle to the British "Naval Cypher No. 3", known to have been broken by Germany during World War II.


text: Once it was realized what sort of cryptosystem JN-25 was, how to attempt breaking into it was known. Stinnett notes the existence of a USN handbook for attacks on such a system, produced by OP-20-G. Even so, breaking any such code was not easy in actual practice. It took much effort and time, not least in accumulating sufficient 'cryptanalytic depth' in intercepted messages prior to the outbreak of hostilities when IJN radio traffic increased abruptly and substantially; prior to 7 December 1941, IJN radio traffic was limited, since the IJN played only a minor role in the war against China and therefore was only rarely required to send radio messages whatever the highest level crypto system might have been. (As well, interception of IJN traffic off China would have been at best spotty.) Rather oddly however, the official history of GYP-1 shows nearly 45,000 IJN messages intercepted during the period from 1 June 1941 until 4 December 1941. Thus, most Japanese encrypted broadcast military radio traffic was Army traffic associated with the land operations in China, none of which used IJN cryptography.


text: Breaking a superencrypted cipher like JN-25 was a three-step process: (a) determining the "indicator" method to establish the starting point within the additive cipher, (b) stripping away the superencryption to expose the bare code, and then (c) breaking the code itself. When JN-25 was first detected and recognized, such intercepted messages as were interceptable were collected (at assorted intercept stations around the Pacific by the Navy) in an attempt to accumulate sufficient depth to attempt to strip away the superencryption. Success at doing so was termed by the cryptographers a 'break' into the system. Such a break did not always produce a cleartext version of the intercepted message; only a break in the third phase could do so. Only after breaking the underlying code (another difficult process) would the message be available, and even then its meaning—in an intelligence sense—might be less than fully clear.


text: When a new edition was released, the cryptographers were forced to start again. The original JN-25A system replaced the 'Blue' code (as Americans called it), and used five-digit numbers, each divisible by three (and so usable as a quick, and somewhat reliable, error check, as well as something of a 'crib' to cryptanalysts), giving a total of 33,334 legal code values. To make it harder to crack a code value, meaningless additives (from a large table or book of five-digit numbers) were added arithmetically to each five-digit cipher element. JN-25B superseded the first release of JN-25 at the start of December 1940. JN-25B had 55,000 valid words, and while it initially used the same additive list, this was soon changed and the cryptanalysts found themselves entirely locked out again.


text: Over the years, various claims have been made as to the progress made decrypting this system, and arguments made over when it was readable (in whole or part). Lt. "Honest John" Leitwiler, Commander of Station CAST, the Philippines, stated in November 1941 that his staff could "walk right across" the number columns of the coded messages. He is frequently quoted in support of claims JN-25 was then mostly readable. This comment, however, refers not to the message itself but to the superenciphering additives and referred to the ease of attacking the code using a new method for discovery of additive values.


text: The 16 November 1941 letter to L.W. Parks (OP-20-GY) sent by Leitwiler states, "We have stopped work on the period 1 February to 31 July as we have all we can do to keep up with the current period. We are reading enough current traffic to keep two translators very busy." Another document, Exhibit No. 151 (Memoranda from Captain L. F. Safford) from the Hewitt Inquiry has a copy of the U.S. Navy message OPNAV-242239 'Evaluation of Messages of 26 November 1941' which has in part: '1. Reference (a) advised that Com 16 intercepts were considered most reliable and requested Com 16 to evaluate reports on Japanese naval movements and send dispatch to OPNAV, info CINCPAC. Com 16's estimates were more reliable than Com 14's, not only because of better radio interception, but because Com 16 was currently reading messages in the Japanese Fleet Cryptographic System ("5-number code" or "JN25") and was exchanging technical information and Japanese-to-English translations with the British unit (the Far East Combined Bureau) then at Singapore. Lt. Cdr. Arthur H. McCollum was aware of this, and it may have been part of his thinking when he drafted the McCollum memo. Duane L. Whitlock, traffic analyst at , was not aware before the attack IJN movement traffic code was being read. "Reading" in this context means being able to see the underlying code groups, not breaking out the messages into usable plaintext. The Hewitt Inquiry document also states, "The "5 numeral system" (JN-25B) yielded no information which would arouse even a suspicion of the Pearl Harbor raid, either before or afterward."


text: Detailed month by month progress reports have shown no reason to believe any JN-25B messages were fully decrypted before the start of the war. Tallied results for September, October, and November reveal roughly 3,800 code groups (out of 55,000, about 7%) had been recovered by the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor. In all, the U.S. intercepted 26,581 messages in naval or related systems, not counting , between September and December 1941 alone.


text: So convinced were U.S. Navy planners Japan could only stage a single operation at a time, after intercepts indicated a Japanese buildup for operations in the Dutch East Indies, for more than two weeks (between 1 November and 17 November), no JN-25 message not relating to that expected operation was even examined for intelligence value.


text: Japanese espionage against Pearl Harbor involved at least two "Abwehr" agents. One of them, Otto Kuhn, was a sleeper agent living in Hawaii with his family. Kuhn was incompetent and there is no evidence he provided information of value. The other, Yugoslavian businessman Duško Popov, was a double agent, working for the XX Committee of MI5. In August 1941, he was sent by the "Abwehr" to the U.S., with an assignment list that included specific questions about military facilities in Oahu, including Pearl Harbor. Although British Security Coordination introduced Popov to the FBI, the Americans seem to have paid little attention. It is possible that previous propaganda and forged or unreliable intelligence contributed to J. Edgar Hoover's dismissing Popov's interest in Pearl Harbor as unimportant. There is nothing to show his assignment list was passed on to military intelligence, nor was he allowed to visit Hawaii. Popov later asserted his list was a clear warning of the attack, ignored by the bungling FBI. The questions in his list were rambling and general, and in no way pointed to air attack on Pearl Harbor. Prange considered Popov's claim overblown, and argued the notorious questionnaire was a product of "Abwehr" thoroughness.


text: Furthermore, the Japanese did not need "Abwehr" assistance, having a consulate in Hawaii which had on its staff an undercover IJN intelligence officer, Takeo Yoshikawa. The consulate had reported to IJN Intelligence for years, and Yoshikawa increased the rate of reports after his arrival. (Sometimes called a "master spy", he was in fact quite young, and his reports not infrequently contained errors.) Pearl Harbor base security was so lax Yoshikawa had no difficulty obtaining access, even taking the Navy's own harbor tourboat. (Even had he not, hills overlooking the Harbor were perfect for observation or photography, and were freely accessible.) Some of his information, and presumably other material from the Consulate, was hand-delivered to IJN intelligence officers aboard Japanese commercial vessels calling at Hawaii prior to the War; at least one is known to have been deliberately routed to Hawaii for this purpose during the summer. Most, however, seem to have been transmitted to Tokyo, almost certainly "via" cable (the usual communication method with Tokyo). Many of those messages were intercepted and decrypted by the U.S.; most were evaluated as routine intelligence gathering all nations do about potential opponents, rather than evidence of an active attack plan. None of those currently known, including those decrypted after the attack when there was finally time to return to those remaining undecrypted, explicitly stated anything about an attack on Pearl Harbor.


text: In November 1941, advertisements for a new board game called "The Deadly Double" appeared in American magazines. These ads later drew suspicion for possibly containing coded messages, for unknown agents, giving advance notice of the Pearl Harbor attack. The ads were headlined "Achtung, Warning, Alerte!" and showed an air raid shelter and a pair of white and black dice which, despite being six-sided, carried the figures 12, 24, and XX, and 5, 7, and 0, respectively. It was suggested that these could possibly be interpreted as giving warning of an air raid on day "7" of month "12" at approximate latitude coordinate "20" (Roman numeral "XX"). The board game was an actual product with sets sold during this time.


text: There are claims that, as the "Kido Butai" (the Striking Force) steamed toward Hawaii, radio signals were detected that alerted U.S. intelligence to the imminent attack. For instance, the Matson liner , heading from San Francisco to Hawaii on its regular route, is said to have heard and plotted, via "relative bearings", unusual radio traffic in a telegraphic code very different from International Morse which persisted for several days, and came from signal source(s) moving in an easterly direction, not from shore stations—possibly the approaching Japanese fleet. There are numerous Morse Code standards including those for Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, and Greek. To the experienced radio operator, each has a unique and identifiable pattern. For example, "kana", International Morse, and "Continental" Morse all have a specific rhythmic sound to the "dit" and "dah" combinations. This is how "Lurline"s radiomen, Leslie Grogan, a U.S. Navy reserve officer in naval communications, and with decades of maritime service in the Pacific identified the mooted signal source as Japanese and not, say, Russian.


text: There are several problems with this analysis. Surviving officers from the Japanese ships state there was no radio traffic to have been overheard by anyone: their radio operators had been left in Japan to send fake traffic, and all radio transmitters aboard the ships (even those in the airplanes) were physically disabled to prevent any inadvertent or unauthorized broadcast.


text: The "Kido Butai" was constantly receiving intelligence and diplomatic updates. Regardless of whether the "Kido Butai" broke radio silence and transmitted, there was a great deal of radio traffic picked up by its antennas. In that time period, it was known for a radio signal to reflect from the ionosphere (an atmospheric layer); ionospheric skip could result in its reception hundreds or even thousands of miles away. Receiving antennas were sometimes detected passively 'rebroadcasting' signals that reached them (at much lower amplitudes, sufficiently low that the phenomenon was not of practical importance, nor even of much significance. Some have argued that, since the "Kido Butai" contained a large number of possible receiving antennas, it is conceivable the task force did not break radio silence but was detected anyway.


text: Such detection would not have helped the Americans track the Japanese fleet. A radio direction finder (DF or RDF) from that time period reported compass direction without reference to distance. (Moreover, it was common for the receiving stations to report erroneous reciprocal bearings.) To locate the source, a plotter needed two such detections taken from two separate stations to triangulate and find the target. If the target was moving, the detections must be close to one another in time. To plot the task force's course with certainty, at least four such detections must have been made in proper time-pairs, and the information analyzed in light of further information received by other means. This complex set of requirements did not occur; if the "Kido Butai" was detected, it was not tracked.


text: The original records of "Lurline" surrendered to Lt. Cmdr. George W. Pease, 14th Naval District in Honolulu, have disappeared. Neither "Lurline"s log, nor the reports to the Navy or Coast Guard by Grogan in Hawaii have been found. Thus no contemporaneously written evidence of what was recorded aboard "Lurline" is now available. Grogan commented on a signal source "moving" eastward in the North Pacific over several days as shown via "relative bearings" which then "bunched up" and stopped moving. However, the directions given by Grogan in a recreation of the logbook for the Matson Line were 18 and 44° off from known strike force positions and instead pointed towards Japan. According to author Jacobsen, Japanese commercial shipping vessels are the likely source. A re-discovered personal report written by Grogan after the radio log had been passed to the 13th Naval District, dated 10 December 1941 and titled "Record for Posterity", also does not support claims of "Kido Butai" broadcasting.


text: The contention that "low-powered" radio (such as VHF or what the U.S. Navy called TBS, or talk between ships), might have been used, and detected, is contradicted as impossible due to the tremendous distances involved and when contact was lost, it was routinely presumed it was because low-powered radio and land line were being used. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for specific RDF reports remain wanting. "A more critical analysis of the source documentation shows that not one single radio direction finder bearing, much less any locating "fix," was obtained on any Kido Butai unit or command during its transit from Saeki Bay, Kyushu to Hitokappu Bay and thence on to Hawaii. By removing this fallacious lynchpin propping up such claims of Kido Butai radio transmissions, the attendant suspected conspiracy tumbles down like a house of cards."


text: One suggested example of a "Kido Butai" transmission is the November 30, 1941, COMSUM14 report in which Rochefort mentioned a "tactical" circuit heard calling ""maru"s". (a term often used for commercial vessels or non-combat units). Further, the perspective of U.S. naval intelligence at the time was, "... The significance of the term, 'tactical circuit' is that the vessel itself, that is "Akagi", was using its own radio to call up the other vessels directly rather than work them through shore stations via the broadcast method which was the common practice in Japanese communications. The working of the "Akagi" with the Marus, indicated that she was making arrangements for fuel or some administrative function, since a carrier would rarely address a maru."


text: According to a 1942 Japanese after action report, "In order to keep strict radio silence, steps such as taking off fuses in the circuit, and holding and sealing the keys were taken. During the operation, the strict radio silence was perfectly carried out... The "Kido Butai" used the radio instruments for the first time on the day of the attack since they had been fixed at the base approximately twenty days before and proved they worked well. Paper flaps had been inserted between key points of some transmitters on board to keep the strictest radio silence..." Commander Genda, who helped plan the attack, stated, "We kept absolute radio silence." For two weeks before the attack, the ships of "Kido Butai" used flag and light signals (semaphore and blinker), which were sufficient since task force members remained in line of sight for the entire transit time. Kazuyoshi Kochi, the communications officer for , dismantled vital transmitter parts and kept them in a box that he used as a pillow to prevent "Hiei" from making any radio transmissions until the attack commenced. Lieutenant Commander Chuichi Yoshioka, communications officer of the flagship, "Akagi", said he did not recall any ship sending a radio message before the attack. Furthermore, Captain Kijiro, in charge of the "Kido Butai"s three screening submarines, stated nothing of interest happened on the way to Hawaii, presumably including signals received from the supposedly radio silent Kido Butai. Vice Admiral Ryūnosuke Kusaka stated, "It is needless to say that the strictest radio silence was ordered to be maintained in every ship of the Task Force. To keep radio silence was easy to say, but not so easy to maintain." There is nothing in the Japanese logs or after action report indicating that radio silence was broken until after the attack. Kusaka worried about this when it was briefly broken on the way home.


text: The appendix to the war-initiating operational order is also often debated. The message of 25 November 1941 from CinC Combined Fleet (Yamamoto) to All Flagships stated, "Ships of the Combined Fleet will observe radio communications procedure as follows: 1. Except in extreme emergency the Main Force and its attached force will cease communicating. 2. Other forces are at the discretion of their respective commanders. 3. Supply ships, repair ships, hospital ships, etc., will report directly to parties concerned." Furthermore, "In accordance with this Imperial Operational Order, the CinC of the Combined Fleet issued his operational order ... The Task Force "then drew up its own operational order", which was given for the first time to the whole force at Hitokappu Bay... In paragraph four of the appendix to that document, the especially secret Strike Force was specifically directed to 'maintain strict radio silence from the time of their departure from the Inland Sea. Their communications will be handled entirely on the general broadcast communications net.'" In addition, Genda recalled, in a 1947 interview, "Kido Butai"s communications officer issuing this order, with the task force to rely (as might be expected) on flag and blinker.


text: The Japanese practiced radio deception. Susumu Ishiguru, intelligence and communications officer for Carrier Division Two, stated, "Every day false communications emanated from Kyushu at the same time and same wavelength as during the training period." Because of this, Commander Joseph Rochefort of Hawaii Signals Intelligence concluded that the First Air Fleet remained in home waters for routine training. The ships left their own regular wireless operators behind to carry on "routine" radio traffic. Captain Sadatoshi Tomioka stated, "The main force in the Inland Sea and the land-based air units carried out deceptive communications to indicate the carriers were training in the Kyushu area." The main Japanese naval bases (Yokosuka, Kure, and Sasebo) all engaged in considerable radio deception. Analysis of the bearings from Navy DF stations account for claimed breaks of radio silence, and when plotted, the bearings point to Japanese naval bases, not where the "Kido Butai" actually was. On 26 November, reported all Japan's aircraft carriers were at their home bases.


text: Rochefort, with Huckins and Williams, states there were no dummy messages used at any time throughout 1941 and no effort by the Japanese to use serious deception.


text: When asked after the attack just how he knew where "Akagi" was, Rochefort (who commanded at the time) said he recognized her "same ham-fisted" radio operators. (The Japanese contend that radio operators were left behind as part of the deception operation.) The critical DF-tracked radio transmissions show bearings that could have not come from the strike force. Emissions monitored from , or 's report "Akagi" was off Okinawa on 8 December 1941, are examples, though some transmissions continue to be debated.


text: To deceive radio eavesdroppers, "IJN Settsu" commanded by Captain Chiaki Matsuda sailed from Taiwan to the Philippines simulating radio traffic for all six fleet carriers of the 1st Air Fleet and two other light carriers.


text: Additionally, Japanese submarines were sighted and attacked (by the destroyer ) outside the harbor entrance a few hours before the attack commenced, and at least one was sunk—all before the planes began launching. This might have provided enough notice to disperse aircraft and fly off reconnaissance, except, yet again, reactions of the duty officers were tardy. It has been argued that failure to follow up on DF bearings saved . If she had been correctly directed, she might have run into the six-carrier Japanese strike force.


text: After the attack, the search for the attack force was concentrated south of Pearl Harbor, continuing the confusion and ineffectiveness of the American response.


text: Locally, Naval Intelligence in Hawaii had been tapping telephones at the Japanese Consulate before the 7th. Among much routine traffic was overheard a most peculiar discussion of flowers in a call to Tokyo (the significance of which is still publicly opaque and which was discounted in Hawaii at the time), but the Navy's tap was discovered and removed in the first week of December. The local FBI field office was informed of neither the tap nor its removal; the local FBI Agent in charge later claimed he would have had installed one of his own had he known the Navy's had been disconnected.


text: Throughout 1941, the U.S., Britain, and the Netherlands collected considerable evidence suggesting Japan was planning some new military adventure. The Japanese attack on the U.S. in December was essentially a side operation to the main Japanese thrust to the South against Malaya and the Philippines—many more resources, especially Imperial Army resources, were devoted to these attacks as compared to Pearl Harbor. Many in the Japanese military (both Army and Navy) had disagreed with Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's idea of attacking the U.S. Fleet at Pearl Harbor when it was first proposed in early 1941, and remained reluctant after the Navy approved planning and training for an attack beginning in spring 1941, and through the highest level Imperial Conferences in September and November which first approved it as policy (allocation of resources, preparation for execution), and then authorized the attack. The Japanese focus on Southeast Asia was quite accurately reflected in U.S. intelligence assessments; there were warnings of attacks against Thailand (the Kra Peninsula), Malaya, French Indochina, the Dutch East Indies (Davao-Weigo Line), the Philippines, even Russia. Pearl Harbor was not mentioned. In fact, when the final part of the "14-Part Message" (also called the "one o'clock message") crossed Kramer's desk, he cross-referenced the time ("per" usual practice, not the brainwave often portrayed) and tried to connect the timing to a Japanese convoy (the Thai invasion force) recently detected by Admiral Hart in the Philippines.


text: The U.S. Navy was aware of the traditional planning of the Imperial Japanese Navy for war with the U.S., as maintained throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s. The Japanese made no secret of it, and in the 1930s American radio intelligence gave U.S. war planners considerable insight in Japanese naval exercises. These plans presumed there would be a large "decisive battle" between Japanese and U.S. battleships, but this would be fought near Japan, after the numerical superiority of the U.S. Pacific Fleet (assured by the Washington Naval Treaty, and still taken as given) was whittled down by primarily night attacks by light forces, such as destroyers and submarines. This strategy expected the Japanese fleet to take a defensive posture, awaiting U.S. attack, and it was confirmed by the Japanese Navy staff only three weeks before Pearl Harbor. In the 1920s, the decisive battle was supposed to happen near the Ryukyu islands; in 1940 it was expected to occur in the central Pacific, near the Marshall islands. War Plan Orange reflected this in its own planning for an advance across the Pacific. Yamamoto's decision to shift the focus of the confrontation with the U.S. as far east as Pearl Harbor, and to use his aircraft carriers to cripple the American battleships, was a radical enough departure from previous doctrine to leave analysts in the dark.


text: There had been a specific claim of a plan for an attack on Pearl Harbor from the Peruvian Ambassador to Japan in early 1941. (The source of this intelligence was traced to the Ambassador's Japanese cook. It was treated with skepticism, and properly so, given the nascent state of planning for the attack at the time and the unreliability of the source.) Since Yamamoto had not yet decided to even argue for an attack on Pearl Harbor, discounting Ambassador Grew's report to Washington in early 1941 was quite sensible. Later reports from a Korean labor organization also seem to have been regarded as unlikely, though they may have had better grounding in actual IJN actions. In August 1941, British Intelligence, MI6, dispatched its agent Duško Popov, code name Tricycle, to Washington to alert the FBI about German requests for detailed intelligence about defenses at Pearl Harbor, indicating that the request had come from Japan. Popov further revealed that the Japanese had requested detailed information about the British attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto. For whatever reason, the FBI took no action.


text: Several authors have controversially claimed that Winston Churchill had significant advance knowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbor but intentionally chose not to share this information with the Americans in order to secure their participation in the war. These authors allege that Churchill knew that the Japanese were planning an imminent attack against the United States by mid-November 1941. They furthermore claim that Churchill knew that the Japanese fleet was leaving port on November 26, 1941 to an unknown destination. Finally, they claim that on December 2, British intelligence intercepted Admiral Yamamoto's signal indicating December 7 as the day of an attack.


text: One story from author Constantine Fitzgibbon claimed that a letter received from Victor Cavendish-Bentinck stated that Britain's JIC met and discussed at length the impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. From a Joint Intelligence Sub-Committee session of 5 December 1941 it was stated "We knew that they changed course. I remember presiding over a J.I.C. meeting and being told that a Japanese fleet was sailing in the direction of Hawaii, asking 'Have we informed our transatlantic brethren?' and receiving an affirmative reply." However the author was incorrect. There was no session on 5 December nor was Pearl Harbor discussed when they did meet on 3 December.


text: In late November 1941, both the U.S. Navy and Army sent explicit warnings of war with Japan to all Pacific commands. On November 27 Washington sent a final alert to Pacific American military commanders, such as the message sent to Admiral Kimmel at Pearl Harbor, which read in part: "This dispatch is to be considered a war warning...an aggression move by Japan is expected within the next days." Although these plainly stated the high probability of imminent war with Japan, and instructed recipients to be accordingly on alert for war, they did not mention the likelihood of an attack on Pearl Harbor itself, instead focusing on the Far East. Washington forwarded none of the raw intelligence it had, and little of its intelligence estimates (after analysis), to Hawaiian commanders, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and General Walter C. Short. Washington did not solicit their views about likelihood of war or Hawaiian special concerns. Washington's war warning messages have also been criticised by some (e.g., the U.S. Army Pearl Harbor Board – "Do/Don't Messages") as containing "conflicting and imprecise" language.


text: Since the Army was officially responsible for the security of the Pearl Harbor facilities and Hawaiian defense generally, and so of the Navy's ships while in port, Army actions are of particular interest. Short reported to Washington he had increased his alert level (but his earlier change in meaning for those levels was not understood in Washington and led to misunderstanding there about what he was really doing). In addition, Short's main concern was sabotage from fifth columnists (expected to precede the outbreak of war for decades preceding the attack), which accounts for his orders that Army Air Corps planes be parked close together near the center of the airfields. There seems to have been no increased Army urgency about getting its existing radar equipment properly integrated with the local command and control in the year it had been available and operational in Hawaii before the attack. Leisurely radar training continued and the recently organized early warning center was left minimally staffed. Anti-aircraft guns remained in a state of low readiness, with ammunition in secured lockers. Neither Army long-range bombers nor Navy PBYs were used effectively, remaining on a peacetime maintenance and use schedule. Short evidently failed to understand he had the responsibility to defend the fleet. In Short's defense, it should be noted he had training responsibilities to meet, and the best patrol aircraft, B-17s and B-24s, were in demand in the Philippines and Britain, both of which had higher priority (he wanted "at least 180 heavy bombers", but already had 35 B-17s, and was getting 12 more).


text: Little was done to prepare for air attack. Inter-service rivalries between Kimmel and Short did not improve the situation. Particularly, most intelligence information was sent to Kimmel, assuming he would relay it to Short, and "vice versa"; this assumption was honored mostly in the breach. Hawaii did not have a Purple cipher machine (although, by agreement at the highest levels between U.S. and UK cryptographic establishments, four had been delivered to the British by October 1941), so Hawaii remained dependent on Washington for intelligence from that (militarily limited) source. However, since Short had no liaison with Kimmel's intelligence staff, he was usually left out of the loop. Henry Clausen reported the war warnings could not be more precise because Washington could not risk Japan guessing the U.S. was reading important parts of their traffic (most importantly Purple), as well as because neither was cleared to receive Purple.


text: Clausen does not answer why Washington could not have said "an exceptionally reliable source" was involved, with very strong instructions to pay attention. Additionally, Clausen claims military men of Kimmel and Short's seniority and background should have understood the significance of the warnings, and should have been more vigilant than they were, as for instance in scouting plane flights from Hawaii, which were partial at best in the period just before the attack. All other Pacific commands took appropriate measures for their situations.


text: Like most commentators, Clausen ignores what the "war warnings" (and their context) explicitly warn, though indistinctly, against. Washington, with more complete intelligence than any field command, expected an attack anywhere on a list of possible locations (Pearl Harbor not among them), and since the Japanese were already committed to Thailand, it seems to have been expected another major operation by them was impossible. Clausen, like most, also ignores what actions Kimmel, Short, and Admiral Claude C. Bloch (Commander, Fourteenth Naval District, responsible for naval facilities in Hawaii) actually took. They took precautions against sabotage, widely expected as a precursor to war, and reported their preparations. The Hawaii commanders did not anticipate an air attack; no one did so explicitly. Indeed, the prevailing view at the time was Japan could not execute two major naval operations at once, so with the Thailand invasion convoy known to be at sea, the Hawaii commanders had good reason to feel safe.


text: One major point often omitted from the debate (though Costello covers it thoroughly) is the Philippines, where MacArthur, unlike Kimmel or Short, had complete access to all decrypted Purple and JN-25 traffic could provide (indeed, Stinnet quotes Whitlock to that effect), and was nonetheless caught unprepared and with all planes on the ground nevertheless, nine hours after the Pearl Harbor attack. Caidin and Blair also raise the issue.


text: Although it has been argued that there was sufficient intelligence at the time to give commanders at Pearl Harbor a greater level of alert, some factors may take on unambiguous meaning not clear at the time, lost in what Roberta Wohlstetter in her masterful examination of the situation called "noise", "scattered amid the dross of many thousands of other intelligence bits, some of which just as convincingly pointed to a Japanese attack on the Panama Canal."


text: None of the three U.S. Pacific Fleet aircraft carriers were in Pearl Harbor when the attack came. This has been alleged by some to be evidence of advance knowledge of the attack by those in charge of their disposition; the carriers were supposedly away so as to save them (the most valuable ships) from attack.


text: In fact, the two carriers then operating with the Pacific Fleet, "Enterprise" and "Lexington", were on missions to deliver fighters to Wake and Midway Islands, which were intended in part to protect the route used by planes (including B-17s) bound for the Philippines (the third, "Saratoga", was in routine refit in Puget Sound, at the Bremerton shipyard). At the time of the attack, "Enterprise" was about west of Pearl Harbor, heading back. In fact, "Enterprise" had been scheduled to be back on December 6, but was delayed by weather. A new arrival estimate put her arrival at Pearl around 07:00, almost an hour before the attack, but she was also unable to make that schedule.


text: Furthermore, at the time, aircraft carriers were classified as fleet scouting elements, and hence relatively expendable. They were not capital ships. The most important vessels in naval planning even as late as Pearl Harbor were battleships ("per" the Mahan doctrine followed by both the U.S. and Japanese navies at the time). Carriers became the Navy's most important ships only following the attack.


text: At the time, naval establishments all over the world regarded battleships, not carriers, as the most powerful and significant elements of naval power. Had the U.S. wanted to preserve its key assets from attack, it would almost certainly have focused on protecting battleships. It was the attack on Pearl Harbor itself that first helped vault the carrier ahead of the battleship in importance. The attack demonstrated the carrier's unprecedented ability to attack the enemy at a great distance, with great force and surprise. The U.S. would turn this ability against Japan. Elimination of battleships from the Pacific Fleet forced the Americans to rely on carriers for offensive operations.


text: Another issue in the debate is the fact neither Admiral Kimmel nor General Short ever faced court martial. It is alleged this was to avoid disclosing information showing the U.S. had advanced knowledge of the attack. When asked, "Will historians know more later?", Kimmel replied, "' ... I'll tell you what I believe. I think that most of the incriminating records have been destroyed. ... I doubt if the truth will ever emerge.' ..." From Vice Admiral Libby, "I will go to my grave convinced that FDR ordered Pearl Harbor to let happen.


text: He must have known." It is equally likely this was done to avoid disclosing the fact that Japanese codes were being read, given that there was a war on.


text: Part of the controversy of the debate centers on the state of documents pertaining to the attack. There are some related to Pearl Harbor which have not yet been made public. Some may no longer exist, as many documents were destroyed early during the war due to fears of an impending Japanese invasion of Hawaii. Still others are partial and mutilated.


text: Information that is still currently classified includes key reports in Churchill's records, including the PREM 3 file in the UK's Public Records Office, which contains Churchill's most secret wartime intelligence briefs. In it, the 252 group dealing with the Japanese situation in 1941 is open, save for the omission of Section 5, dealing with events from November 1941 through March 1942, and is marked with official finality as "closed for 75 years." Unlike the Magic intelligence files released by the United States, none of the Ultra intelligence files pertaining to Japan have been released by the British government.


text: Conflicting stories regarding FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests for the source materials used, e.g., Sheet Number 94644, or materials available at the National Archives are also common among the debate. However, much information has been said to have been automatically destroyed under a destruction of classified information policy during the war itself. Various authors have nevertheless continued to bring classified Pearl Harbor materials to light via FOIA.


text: For instance, Sheet No. 94644 derives from its reference in the FOIA-released Japanese Navy Movement Reports of Station H in November 1941. Entries for 28 November 1941 have several more items of interest, each being a "movement code" message (indicating ship movements or movement orders), with specific details given by associated Sheet Numbers. Examples are: Sheet No. 94069 has information on "KASUGA MARU" – this being hand-written ("Kasuga Maru" was later converted to CVE "Taiyo"); Sheet No. 94630 is associated with IJN oiler "Shiriya" (detailed to the Midway Neutralization Force, with destroyers "Ushio" and "Sazanami", not the "Kido Butai"); and finally for Sheet No. 94644 there is another hand-written remark "FAF using Akagi xtmr" (First Air Fleet using "Akagi"'s transmitter). It is known that the movement reports were largely readable at the time.


text: These three documents (Sheet Numbers 94069, 94630, and 94644) are examples of materials which yet, even after decades and numerous specific FOIA requests, have not been declassified fully and made available to the public. Sheet Number 94644, for example, noted as coming from "Akagi"'s transmitter and as being a "movement code" report, would have likely contained a reported position.


text: A purported transcript of a conversation between Roosevelt and Churchill in late November 1941 was analyzed and determined to be fake. There are claims about these conversations; much of this is based on fictional documents, often cited as "Roll T-175" at the National Archives. There is no Roll T-175; NARA does not use that terminology.


title: Benadryl challenge

text: The Benadryl challenge is an Internet challenge which emerged in 2020, and revolves around the deliberate consumption, excessive use and overdose of the antihistamine medicine diphenhydramine (commonly sold in the United States under the brand name Benadryl), which acts as a deliriant in high doses. The challenge, which spread via the social media platform TikTok, instructs participants to film themselves consuming large doses of Benadryl and documenting the effect of tripping or hallucinating.


title: Benadryl challenge

text: Numerous authorities have advised against the challenge, as deliberate overconsumption of diphenhydramine can lead to adverse effects, including confusion, delirium, psychosis, organ damage, hyperthermia, convulsions, coma, and death. On September 24, 2020, the FDA formally released a statement advising parents and medical practitioners to be aware of the challenge's prevalence and its risks.


title: Benadryl challenge

text: The recreational use of diphenhydramine and addiction is well-reported in medical literature, and overdoses are treatable with correct intervention. Its psychoactive effects at high dosages, which are a symptom of anticholinergic poisoning, are also well documented. In severe cases, the overdose of diphenhydramine and other anticholinergic medicines can lead to a phenomenon referred to as an anticholinergic toxidrome, which can affect organ systems throughout the body, including the nervous system and cardiovascular system.


title: Benadryl challenge

text: Several participants have been hospitalized as a result of the challenge, including three teenagers admitted to the Cook Children's Medical Center after consuming at least 14 diphenhydramine tablets, and 15-year-old Chloe Marie Phillips, an Oklahoma teen who died from an overdose after attempting to take part.


title: Coprolite

text: A coprolite (also known as a coprolith) is fossilized feces. Coprolites are classified as trace fossils as opposed to body fossils, as they give evidence for the animal's behaviour (in this case, diet) rather than morphology. The name is derived from the Greek words κόπρος ("kopros", meaning "dung") and λίθος ("lithos", meaning "stone"). They were first described by William Buckland in 1829. Before this, they were known as "fossil fir cones" and "bezoar stones". They serve a valuable purpose in paleontology because they provide direct evidence of the predation and diet of extinct organisms. Coprolites may range in size from a few millimetres to over 60 centimetres.


title: Coprolite

text: Coprolites, distinct from "paleofeces", are fossilized animal dung. Like other fossils, coprolites have had much of their original composition replaced by mineral deposits such as silicates and calcium carbonates. Paleofeces, on the other hand, retain much of their original organic composition and can be reconstituted to determine their original chemical properties, though in practice the term coprolite is also used for ancient human faecal material in archaeological contexts.


title: Coprolite

text: British fossil hunter Mary Anning noticed as early as 1824 that "bezoar stones" were often found in the abdominal region of ichthyosaur skeletons found in the Lias formation at Lyme Regis. She also noted that if such stones were broken open they often contained fossilized fish bones and scales as well as sometimes bones from smaller ichthyosaurs. These observations by Anning led the geologist William Buckland to propose in 1829 that the stones were fossilized feces and name them coprolites. Buckland also suspected that the spiral markings on the fossils indicated that ichthyosaurs had spiral ridges in their intestines similar to those of modern sharks and that some of these coprolites were black with ink from swallowed belemnites.


title: Coprolite

text: By examining coprolites, paleontologists are able to find information about the diet of the animal (if bones or other food remains are present), such as whether it was a herbivore or a carnivore, and the taphonomy of the coprolites, although the producer is rarely identified unambiguously, especially with more ancient examples. In some instances, knowledge about the anatomy of animals' digestive tracts can be helpful in assigning a coprolite to the animal that produced it, one example being the finding that the Triassic dinosauriform "Silesaurus" may have been an insectivore, a suggestion which was based on the beak-like jaws of the animal and the high density of beetle remains found in associated coprolites. Further, coprolites can be analyzed for certain minerals that are known to exist in trace amounts in certain species of plant that can still be detected millions of years later. In rare cases, coprolites have even been found to contain well-preserved insect remains.


title: Coprolite

text: The recognition of coprolites is aided by their structural patterns, such as spiral or annular markings, content, undigested food fragments, and associated fossil remains. The smallest coprolites are often difficult to distinguish from inorganic pellets or from eggs. Most coprolites are composed chiefly of calcium phosphate, along with minor quantities of organic matter. By analyzing coprolites, it is possible to infer the diet of the animal which produced them.


title: Coprolite

text: Coprolites have been recorded in deposits ranging in age from the Cambrian period to recent times and are found worldwide. Some of them are useful as index fossils, such as "Favreina" from the Jurassic period of Haute-Savoie in France.


title: Coprolite

text: Some marine deposits contain a high proportion of fecal remains. However, animal excrement is easily fragmented and destroyed, so usually has little chance of becoming fossilized.


title: Coprolite

text: In 1842 the Rev John Stevens Henslow, a professor of Botany at St John's College, Cambridge, discovered coprolites just outside Felixstowe in Suffolk in the villages of Trimley St Martin, Falkenham and Kirton and investigated their composition. Realising their potential as a source of available phosphate once they had been treated with sulphuric acid, he patented an extraction process and set about finding new sources.


title: Coprolite

text: Very soon, coprolites were being mined on an industrial scale for use as fertiliser due to their high phosphate content. The major area of extraction occurred over the east of England, centred on Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely with its refining being carried out in Ipswich by the Fison Company. There is a Coprolite Street near Ipswich docks where the Fisons works once stood.


title: Coprolite

text: The industry declined in the 1880s but was revived briefly during the First World War to provide phosphates for munitions. A renewed interest in coprolite mining in the First World War extended the area of interest into parts of Buckinghamshire as far west as Woburn Sands.


title: Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana

text: Adol is on a passenger ship called the Lombardia that is headed from to the continent of Eresia, but the ship is attacked in the archipelagos of the Gaete Sea by a giant creature and is sunk, and when Adol wakes up, he realizes he landed on the shore of a cursed island known as the Isle of Seiren. On his search for other survivors, he teams up with the noblewoman Laxia von Roswell and fisherman Sahad Nautilus to help his fellow castaways to survive and find a way to get off the island. At the same time, he wants to find out what lies behind his dreams about Dana Iclucia, a mysterious girl from a prehistoric era who seemingly has a connection to the Isle of Seiren and Adol's fate.


title: Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana

text: Adol's party is soon expanded to include Hummel Trabaldo, a transporter who was a passenger on the Lombardia, and Ricotta Beldine, a resident of the Isle of Seiren. While exploring the island for additional castaways, Laxia notes the creatures on the island are unlike anything known to the outside world. Citing her father's academic research, she concludes that the monsters are an extinct group of animals known as Primordials. Further exploration in the north of the island leads the group to the ruins of an ancient civilization known as Eternia, whose residents possessed a power known as Essence. It is here where the party discovers Dana, waking from a deep slumber, telling the group she is the last of the Eternians but does not know why, nor why she is alive in the current era, as she is suffering from amnesia.


title: Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana

text: The castaways begin to build a ship to escape the island; Adol's party continues to explore the island from clues on what sank the Lombardia. After research into the matter, it is discovered that a Primordial known as the Oceanus was responsible for the sinking of their ship, as it has historically attacked ships since before Dana's era. The castaways band together and defeat the Oceanus, allowing for safe travel in the surrounding sea. However, questions surrounding the Primordials and Dana's situation lead the group to continue to explore the island. By doing this, Dana begins to slowly regain her memories. She discovers that multiple meteorites crashed into Eternia long ago, killing many people and triggering events akin to a nuclear winter which led to the extinction of Eternians. This event was brought forth by a process called the Lacrimosa, which triggers an extinction event after the primary species on earth has run its course. During each Lacrimosa, one member of the species is chosen to survive and become an immortal Warden of Evolution, one who watches over the Lacrimosa and ensures the process is successfully carried out. Dana was chosen to be the protector representing Eternians; she resisted and put herself into a deep sleep until the next Lacrimosa would occur. Dana awoke in the present because the current Lacrimosa was beginning: the extinction of humans, to be accomplished through the revival of Primordials as the primary species. Consequently, Adol is selected to be the next Warden of Evolution, representing the human species.


title: Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana

text: With Dana's help, Adol's crew becomes the first group to resist the Lacrimosa, ending the process and ensuring the continued survival of the human race. Stopping the Lacrimosa does not go as planned, and the world begins to collapse. Dana uses her essence to disrupt the end of the world, but dies in the process. Shortly thereafter, while mourning the loss of Dana, the goddess of the world, Maia, makes an appearance, telling the group that Dana's sacrifice has led her to become the Goddess of Evolution, tasked with watching over the world. Dana and the other protectors appear; Dana wishes goodbye to Adol's group, while the other Protectors inform Adol the Lacrimosa may still need to be used in the future to prevent the world from collapsing. After the Protectors and Goddess' disappear, the castaways finish construction of their ship and sail home, parting ways and returning to their normal lives.


title: Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana

text: "Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana" is an action role-playing game played from a third-person perspective. It builds on the gameplay foundation of "Ys Seven" and "," where players control multiple main characters that can be switched between on-the-fly, each with their own play styles and unique skills. The player collects a variety of materials by defeating local wildlife and opening chests. These materials can be crafted into items that the player can use on their journey, such as healing items and stronger weapons. Various fellow shipwrecked passengers can be rescued and brought to the village where they will provide valuable services.


title: Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana

text: There are three damage types, determined by a character's weapon: Slash, Strike, and Pierce. Enemies will take more damage from a damage type they are vulnerable against. Skills can be assigned to a corresponding button and using skills requires SP, which can be refilled mainly by landing a fully-charged attack against an enemy. Each character has a powerful move called an EXTRA Skill that can only be used when the EXTRA Gauge is filled.


title: Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana

text: Furthermore, players can attempt to parry attacks or evade them shortly before the attack lands. Successfully parrying an attack will activate Flash Guard for a very short period of time, where all damage from enemies is nullified and all your attacks will deliver critical damage. Similarly, successfully evading an attack by performing a dodge roll will activate Flash Move for a very short period of time, where everything but the player will move in slow motion.


title: Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana

text: As the story progresses, the game continuously switches perspectives between its two protagonists—Adol and Dana. Adol's exploration of the Isle of Seiren can be affected by Dana's actions in her world, such as opening a new path or altering the landscape. An experimental co-op multiplayer feature was added to the PC version in January 2020.


title: Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana

text: "Ys VIII" was announced in August 2014 for PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 4. It was released in Japan on July 21, 2016. It is the first game in the "Ys" series to release for PlayStation 4 as well as the first time that Falcom worked on a PlayStation 4 game. First-print copies and pre-orders for the game included an art book.


title: Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana

text: Initially to be released in 2017, NIS America delayed the Windows version to a later date to improve its performance and localization, where it was released on April 16, 2018. The game was released for the Nintendo Switch worldwide in June 2018. A version for Amazon Luna was released on October 20, 2020. It came in both standard edition and a limited edition with several collectibles. A PlayStation 5 version was released in North America on November 15, 2022, in Europe on November 18, and Oceania on November 25.


title: Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana

text: The game's animated opening was produced by Studio 3Hz, and was directed by Masayuki Sakoi. The CGI in the opening was produced by animation studio Orange. A port for Android and iOS, developed by Linekong Entertainment, was announced in April 2019 with a release date originally set for 2020 before being delayed into 2022. Known as "Ys VIII Mobile", it will feature a new party member named Rucol and reimagined locations.


title: Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana

text: "Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana" received "generally favorable" reviews for most platforms, according to review aggregator Metacritic; the Windows version received "mixed or average" reviews. "Famitsu" scored the game a 34/40. They stated the story is better than predecessors, and liked the pace of battle.


title: Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana

text: The game's original English localization was met with criticism for its quality. In October 2017, Takuro Yamashita, the president and CEO of NIS America, issued a statement personally apologizing for it and announced intentions to fix it. An update addressing these concerns, including rerecorded dialogue, was released in January 2018. The game's release on Windows was also met with criticism due to its poor technical performance. A patch addressing the issues was released in January 2020.


title: Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana

text: The game won the award for "Best Action Combat System" at "Game Informer" 2017 RPG of the Year Awards.


title: Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana

text: On its first week of release in Japan, the PlayStation Vita version of "Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana" reached second place in game sales charts with 43,753 units sold. The PlayStation 4 version sold 27,741 units in its first week, surpassing "Mario Kart 8 Deluxe". Falcom president and game producer Toshihiro Kondo stated that the Nintendo Switch version met sales expectations outside of Japan. By October 2018, sales of the game surpassed over 500,000 copies worldwide.


title: Geoff Pierson

text: Geoff Pierson is an American actor known for his starring television roles on "Dexter", "Unhappily Ever After", "Grace Under Fire", "24", "Ryan's Hope", and "Designated Survivor". He has guest-starred in dozens of other TV shows.


title: Geoff Pierson

text: Pierson appeared with George C. Scott on Broadway in "Tricks Of The Trade", before continuing on to do several New York soap operas and many regional theater plays. Some notable theatrical roles include Angelo in "Measure For Measure" at the Yale Rep, Stanley in "A Streetcar Named Desire" at the Penn Ctr. Stage, Bobby in "Speed The Plough" at the Philadelphia Theatre Company, and Ricky in "Glengarry Glen Ross" and Teach in "American Buffalo" at the Virginia Stage Company. His most prominent daytime role was as Frank Ryan on "Ryan's Hope", a role he played from February 1983 through September 1985.


title: Geoff Pierson

text: Pierson's first high-profile prime-time television role was as Jack Malloy, the head of a dysfunctional family, in The WB sitcom "Unhappily Ever After", which was created by Ron Leavitt, one of the creators of FOX's "Married... with Children". Other TV roles include a leading role as R.T. Howard on "That 80's Show", and recurring roles on Grace Under Fire, "In Plain Sight" (USA) and "The Firm" (NBC). He also had a recurring role as Rodney's long lost dad on the ABC comedy "Rodney".


title: Geoff Pierson

text: In 2005 and 2006 he appeared in two episodes of "Veronica Mars" as Stewart Manning, the father of Meg Manning. In 2006, he guest-starred in "Criminal Minds", playing Max Ryan, a former FBI agent-turned-author and Jason Gideon's mentor who comes out of his retirement to capture a serial killer known as the Keystone Killer in the episode, "Unfinished Business". From 2006 to 2013, he portrayed Miami-Dade Police Captain Tom Matthews on the Showtime series "Dexter".


title: Geoff Pierson

text: He appeared in the 2008 Clint Eastwood-directed film "Changeling" as the flamboyant defense attorney Sammy "S.S." Hahn. In 2011 he portrayed Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer in Eastwood's "J. Edgar". He appeared in "Touched by an Angel", Season 9, Episode 16.


title: Geoff Pierson

text: Beginning in 2010, he had a recurring role in "Boardwalk Empire" as Senator Walter Edge. In 2011, Pierson played Midas Mulligan in "Atlas Shrugged", based on Ayn Rand's novel of the same name. He played Russell Dunbar's wealthy father in "Rules of Engagement" and he had a recurring role as the mysterious Mr. Smith on "Castle". In 2014 he appeared in an episode of "Suburgatory".


title: Geoff Pierson

text: In 2015 he co-starred as Defense Secretary Pierce Grey on HBO's "The Brink". Recently, he stars in the former ABC and now, Netflix political thriller "Designated Survivor", where he portrays Former President of the United States and Secretary of State Cornelius Moss alongside Kiefer Sutherland.


title: Geoff Pierson

text: Television filmography listed below only includes shows that Pierson appeared in three or more episodes.


title: Peter Piper

text: "Peter Piper" is an English-language nursery rhyme and well-known alliteration tongue-twister. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19745.


title: Peter Piper

text: The traditional version, as published in John Harris' "Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation" in 1813, is:


title: Peter Piper

text: The earliest version of this tongue-twister was published in "Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation" by John Harris (1756–1846) in London in 1813, which includes a one-name tongue-twister for each letter of the alphabet in the same style. However, the rhyme was apparently known at least a generation earlier. Some authors have identified the subject of the rhyme as Pierre Poivre, an eighteenthcentury French horticulturalist and government administrator of Mauritius, who once investigated the Seychelles' potential for spice cultivation.


title: Peter Piper

text: The Peter Piper Principle is a cognitive error that people make, where they tend to confuse two words that resemble each other; in particular, when the first letter(s) are the same. Studies have shown that this applies when people confuse the names of other people (although other tendencies also apply).


title: Peter Piper

text: Novelists are well aware of the peril of giving two characters names that start with the same letter, because readers have a tendency to get them confused.


title: Undercover Billionaire

text: Undercover Billionaire is an American reality television series that is broadcast on the Discovery Channel. The show premiered on August 6, 2019 and the final episode of the first season aired September 24, 2019. The show follows billionaire Glenn Stearns, founder of Stearns Lending, as he attempts to start a million-dollar business in Erie, Pennsylvania over the course of 90 days, starting with only $100, a car and a tank of gas.


title: Undercover Billionaire

text: The series follows Stearns as he identifies his target business, puts a crew together to help him, builds his initial $100 stake sufficiently to fund a startup company, and opens a barbecue restaurant named "Underdog BBQ". The presence of a Discovery Channel film crew was explained by saying that they were trailing him for a documentary about building a small business from scratch.


title: Undercover Billionaire

text: A second season premiered on January 6, 2021. Season 2 features three self-styled successful entrepreneurs (Grant Cardone, Monique Idlett-Mosley and Elaine Culotti) who go undercover in three different cities and attempt to start a business with a "valuation of $1 million dollars" in 90 days- the same challenge that Glenn Stearns competed. A continuation of Glenn Stearns' work in Erie, called "Undercover Billionaire: Comeback City" also aired in alongside Season 2 and debuted in its entirety on Discovery Plus


title: University of Leicester

text: The University of Leicester ( ) is a public research university based in Leicester, England. The main campus is south of the city centre, adjacent to Victoria Park. The university's predecessor, University College, Leicester, gained university status in 1957.


title: University of Leicester

text: The university had an income of £323.1 million in 2019/20, of which £57 million was from research grants.


title: University of Leicester

text: The university is known for the invention of genetic fingerprinting, and for the discovery and identification of the remains of King Richard III.


title: University of Leicester

text: The first serious suggestions for a university in Leicester began with the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society (founded at a time when "philosophical" broadly meant what "scientific" means today). With the success of Owen's College in Manchester, and the establishment of the University of Birmingham in 1900, and then of Nottingham University College, it was thought that Leicester ought to have a university college too. From the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century university colleges could not award degrees and had to be associated with universities that had degree-giving powers. Most students at university colleges took examinations set by the University of London.


title: University of Leicester

text: In the late 19th century the co-presidents of the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society, the Revered James Went, headmaster of the Wyggeston Boys' School, and J. D. Paul, regularly called for the establishment of a university college However, no private donations were forthcoming, and the Corporation of Leicester was busy funding the School of Art and the Technical School. The matter was brought up again by Dr Astley V. Clarke (1870–1945) in 1912. Born in Leicester in 1870, he had been educated at Wyggeston Grammar School and the University of Cambridge before receiving medical training at Guy's Hospital. He was the new president of the Literary and Philosophy society. Reaction was mixed, with some saying that Leicester's relatively small population would mean a lack of demand. With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, talk of a university college subsided. In 1917 the "Leicester Daily Post" urged in an editorial that something of more practical utility than memorials ought to be created to commemorate the war dead. With the ending of the war both the "Post" and its rival the "Leicester Mail" encouraged donations to form the university college. Some suggested that Leicester should join forces with Nottingham, Sutton Bonington and Loughborough to create a federal university college of the East Midlands, but nothing came of this proposal.


title: University of Leicester

text: The old asylum building had often been suggested as a site for the new university, and after it was due to be finished being used as a hospital for the wounded, Astley Clarke was keen to urge the citizens and local authorities to buy it. Fortunately, Clarke quickly learned the building had already been bought by Thomas Fielding Johnson, a wealthy philanthropist who owned a worsted manufacturing business. He had bought 37 acres of land for £40,000 and intended not only to house the college, but also the boys' and girls' grammar schools. Further donations soon topped £100,000: many were given in memory of loved ones lost during the war, while others were for those who had taken part and survived. King George V gave his blessing to the scheme after a visit to the town in 1919.


title: University of Leicester

text: Talk turned to the curriculum with many arguing that it should focus on Leicester's chief industries hosiery, boots and shoes. Others had higher hopes than just technical training. The education acts of 1902 and 1918, which brought education to the masses was also thought to have increased the need for a college, not least to train the new teachers that were needed. Talk of a federal university soured and the decision was for Leicester to become a stand-alone college. In 1920, the college appointed its first official. W. G. Gibbs, a long-standing supporter of the college while editor of the "Leicester Daily Post", was nominated as secretary. On 9 May 1921, Dr R. F. Rattray (1886–1967) was appointed principal, aged 35. Rattray was an impressive academic. Having gained a first class English degree at Glasgow, he studied at Manchester College, Oxford. He then studied in Germany, and secured his PhD at Harvard. After that, he worked as a Unitarian minister. Rattray was to teach Latin and English. He recruited others including Miss Measham to teach botany, Miss Sarson to teach geography, and Miss Chapuzet to teach French. In all, 14 people started at the university when it opened its doors in October 1921: the principal, the secretary, three lecturers and nine students (eight women and one man). Two types of students were expected, around 100–150 teachers in training, and undergraduates hoping to sit the external degrees of London University. A students union was formed in 1923–24 with a Miss Bonsor as its first president.


title: University of Leicester

text: In 1927, after it became University College, Leicester, students sat for the examinations for external degrees of the University of London. Two years later, it merged with the Vaughan Working Men's College, which had been providing adult education in Leicester since 1862. In 1931, Dr Rattray resigned as principal. He was replaced in 1932 by Frederick Attenborough, who was the father of David and Richard Attenborough. He was succeeded by Charles Wilson in 1952.


title: University of Leicester

text: In 1957, the University College was granted its royal charter, and has since then had the status of a university with the right to award its own degrees. The Percy Gee Student Union building was opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 9 May 1958.


title: University of Leicester

text: Leicester University won the first ever series of "University Challenge", in 1963. The university's motto "Ut Vitam Habeant" –"so that they may have life", is a reflection of the war memorial origins of its formation. It is believed to have been Rattray's suggestion.


title: University of Leicester

text: In 1994, the University of Leicester celebrated winning the Queen's Anniversary Prize for its work in Physics & Astronomy. The prize citation reads: "World-class teaching, research and consultancy programme in astronomy and space and planetary science fields. Practical results from advanced thinking".


title: University of Leicester

text: In 2011, the university was selected as one of four sites for national high performance computing (HPC) facilities for theoretical astrophysics and particle physics. An investment of £12.32 million, from the Government's Large Facilities Capital Fund, together with investment from the Science and Technology Facilities Council and from universities contribute to a national supercomputer.


title: University of Leicester

text: In September 2012, a ULAS team exhumed the body of King Richard III, discovering it in the former Greyfriars Friary Church in the city of Leicester. As a result of that success Prof King was asked to investigate whether a skeleton found in Jamestown was that of George Yeardley, the 1st colonial governor of Virginia and founder of the Virginia General Assembly.


title: University of Leicester

text: In January 2017, Physics students from the University of Leicester made national news when they revealed their predictions on how long it would take a zombie apocalypse to wipe out humanity. They calculated that it would take just 100 days for zombies to completely take over earth. At the end of the 100 days, the students predicted that just 300 humans would remain alive and without infection.


title: University of Leicester

text: In January 2021, around 200 UCU members at the university passed a no-confidence motion in Vice Chancellor Nishan Canagarajah because of proposed cuts putting 145 staff members at risk of redundancy. There was anger at his claim that redundancies are needed to "continue to deliver excellence". In April, the UCU urged academics to boycott the university due to the planned redundancies, including encouraging people to not apply for jobs at Leicester or collaborate on new research projects.


title: University of Leicester

text: The main campus is a mile south of the city centre, adjacent to Victoria Park and Wyggeston and Queen Elizabeth I College. The skyline of the university is punctuated by three distinctive, towering, buildings from the 1960s: the Department of Engineering, the Attenborough Tower and the Charles Wilson Building.


title: University of Leicester

text: The Fielding Johnson Building was designed by William Parsons in a late Georgian provincial style as the Leicestershire and Rutland County Asylum. From 1921 the building was home to most of the university departments until purpose-built accommodation was created, and it was renamed the Fielding Johnson Building in 1964. It now houses the university's administration offices, the Faculty of Law, faculty of criminology and a lecture theatre.


title: University of Leicester

text: The 18-storey Attenborough Tower is home to the College of Social Sciences and has undergone extensive renovation.


title: University of Leicester

text: The Engineering Building was the first major building by British architects James Stirling and James Gowan. This Grade II* listed building comprises workshops and laboratories at ground level, and a tower containing offices and lecture theatres.


title: University of Leicester

text: Opposite the Fielding Johnson Building are the Astley Clarke Building, home to the School of Media, Communication and Sociology, and the Danielle Brown Sports Centre.


title: University of Leicester

text: The Ken Edwards Building, built in 1995, lies adjacent to the Fielding Johnson Building and is home to the School of Management.


title: University of Leicester

text: Built in 1957, the Percy Gee Building is home to Leicester University's Students' Union. Percy Gee was one of the first treasurers of the University College.


title: University of Leicester

text: The David Wilson Library was opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 4 December 2008, following an extensive refurbishment with a budget of £32 million.


title: University of Leicester

text: The Bennett Building, Physics and Astronomy Building, the Chemistry Building and the Adrian Building lie beyond the Charles Wilson Building. Across University Road, linked by pedestrian bridges, lie the Maurice Shock and Hodgkin Buildings. Further along University Road is the George Davies Centre building (built 2016), home to Leicester's Medical School.


title: University of Leicester

text: The Adrian Building was built in 1967 and designed by Courtald Technical Services which became W.F Johnson & Partners. It was named after Edgar Adrian the first chancellor of the university (1957–1971).


title: University of Leicester

text: Along London road is the Brookfield campus home to the school of business and the post-graduate centre. It was sympathetically renovated, with the original building being built in 1870 and was home to Thomas Fielding Johnson, the founder of the University of Leicester.


title: University of Leicester

text: Further along University Road and on Salisbury Road and Regents Road are the Department of Education and the Fraser Noble Building.


title: University of Leicester

text: Leicester's halls of residence are noteworthy: many of the halls (nearly all located in Oadby) date from the early 1900s and were the homes of Leicester's wealthy industrialists.


title: University of Leicester

text: In recent years, the university has disposed of some of its poorer quality property in order to invest in new facilities, and is currently undergoing a £300+ million redevelopment. The new John Foster Hall of Residence opened in October 2006. The David Wilson Library, twice the size of the previous University Library, opened on 1 April 2008 and a new biomedical research building (the Henry Wellcome Building) has already been constructed. A complete revamp of the Percy Gee Student Union building was completed in September 2010, and another is underway, due for completion in spring 2020. Nixon Court was extended and refurbished in 2011.


title: University of Leicester

text: The university's academic schools and departments are organised into colleges. In August 2015, the colleges were further restructured with the merging of "Social Sciences" and "Arts, Humanities and Law" to give the following structure:


title: University of Leicester

text: The university is home to a large medical school, Leicester Medical School, which opened in 1971. The school was formerly in partnership with the University of Warwick, and the Leicester-Warwick medical school proved to be a success in helping Leicester expand, and Warwick establish. The partnership ran the end of its course towards the end of 2006 and the medical schools became autonomous institutions within their respective universities.


title: University of Leicester

text: There are also interdisciplinary research centres for Space Research, Climate Change Research, Mathematical/Computational Modelling and Advanced Microscopy.


title: University of Leicester

text: The department offers MEng and BEng degrees in Aerospace Engineering, Embedded Systems Engineering, Communications and Electronic Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and General Engineering. Each course is accredited by the relevant professional institutions. The department also offers MSc courses.


title: University of Leicester

text: The department has around 350 undergraduate students, following either BSc (three-year) or MPhys (four-year) degree courses, and over 70 postgraduate students registered for a higher degree.


title: University of Leicester

text: The main Physics building accommodates several research groups—Radio and Space Plasma Physics (RSPP), X-ray and Observational Astronomy (XROA), and Theoretical Astrophysics (TA)—as well as centres for supercomputing, microscopy, Gamma and X-ray astronomy, and radar sounding, and the Swift UK Data Centre. A purpose built Space Research Centre houses the Space Science and Instrumentation (SSI) group and provides laboratories, clean rooms and other facilities for instrumentation research, Earth Observation Science (EOS) and the Bio-imaging Unit. The department also runs the University of Leicester Observatory in Manor Road, Oadby, with a 20-inch telescope it is one of the UK's largest and most advanced astronomical teaching facilities. The department has close involvement with the National Space Centre also located in Leicester.


title: University of Leicester

text: The department is home to the university's ALICE 3400+ core supercomputer and is a member of the UK's DiRAC (DiStributed Research utilising Advanced Computing) consortium. DiRAC is the integrated supercomputing facility for theoretical modelling and HPC-based research in particle physics, astronomy and cosmology.


title: University of Leicester

text: The "School of Archaeology and Ancient History" was formed in 1990 from the then Departments of Archaeology and Classics, under the headship of Graeme Barker. The academic staff currently (as of January 2017) include 21 archaeologists and 8 ancient historians, though several staff teach and research in both disciplines.


title: University of Leicester

text: The School has particular strengths in Mediterranean archaeology, ancient Greek and Roman history, and the archaeology of recent periods; and is also home to the "University of Leicester Archaeological Services" (ULAS).


title: University of Leicester

text: The "School of Business" was founded in 2016, bringing together the expertise of the School of Management and the Department of Economics. The new school now has approximately 150 academic staff, 50 from Economics and 100 from Management. In 2010 the former School of Management was ranked 2nd after Oxford University by the "Guardian".


title: University of Leicester

text: The School of Business provides postgraduate and undergraduate programmes in Management, Accounting and Economics. The School of Business, is one of the approximately 270 Schools/Universities in the world accredited by AMBA.


title: University of Leicester

text: The "School of English" teaches English at degree level. The school offers English studies from contemporary writing to Old English and language studies. It contains the "Victorian Studies Centre", the first of its kind in the UK. . Malcolm Bradbury is one of the department's most famous alumni: he graduated with a First in English in 1953.


title: University of Leicester

text: The "School of Historical Studies" is one of the largest of any university in the country. It has made considerable scholarly achievements in many areas of history, notably urban history, English local history, American studies and Holocaust studies. The school houses both the East Midlands Oral History Archive (EMOHA) and the Media Archive for Central England.


title: University of Leicester

text: The "School of Law" is one of the biggest departments in the university. According to the Times Online Good University Guide 2009, the Faculty of Law was ranked 8th, out of 87 institutions, making it one of the top law schools in the country.


title: University of Leicester

text: New students entering the university in 2015 had the 42nd highest UCAS Points in the UK at 374 points (the equivalent of BBC at A Level and BC at AS Level). According to the 2017 "Times" and "Sunday Times" Good University Guide, approximately 2% of Leicester's undergraduates come from independent schools.


title: University of Leicester

text: The university is held in high regard for the quality of its teaching. 19 subject areas have been graded as "Excellent" by the Quality Assurance Agency – including 14 successive scores of 22 points or above stretching back to 1998, six of which were maximum scores.


title: University of Leicester

text: Leicester was ranked joint first in the 2005, 2006, and 2007 National Student Survey for overall student satisfaction among mainstream universities in England. It was second only to Cambridge in 2008 and again joint first in 2009.