title: Caernarfon

text: Oriel Pendeitsh is a ground-floor exhibition space adjoining the Tourist Information Centre opposite Caernarfon Castle. The gallery has a varied and changing programme of exhibitions throughout the year.


title: Caernarfon

text: The Caernarfon Food Festival takes place in the town's streets including The Slate Quay (Cei Llechi) and Castle Square (the Maes), which is pedestrianised for the event. Stalls are also located along the promenade next to the Menai Strait towards the marina and Doc Fictoria.


title: Caernarfon

text: The festival was formed in 2015 as a result of public consultation within the town. The first festival was held in 2016. It is organised by Caernarfon Food Festival Group which is made up of local volunteers who hold regular meetings to plan each festival. The festival has a number of supporting groups, including: a content group, sponsorship group, technical group, communication group and volunteer group. These groups feed into the main group's monthly meetings. The festival logo was inspired by contributions from pupils at Ysgol Syr Hugh Owen and designed by Iestyn Lloyd of Cwmni Da. The festival has been supported by Welsh Government through the Food Festival Grant Scheme and was highly commended by Food Awards Wales in 2019. Car parking is provided at the Slate Quay (Cei Llechi) and at other car parks around the town while the Welsh Highland Railway provides transport from Porthmadog. Cycle access is by the cycle tracks along the disused railway lines which include Lôn Las Eifion, which runs from Porthmadog, by-passing Penygroes and on to Caernarfon, Lôn Las Menai from Y Felinheli to Caernarfon and Lôn Las Peris from Llanberis to Caernarfon.


title: People's Court (Germany)

text: The People's Court (, acronymed to "VGH") was a "" ("special court") of Nazi Germany, set up outside the operations of the constitutional frame of law. Its headquarters were originally located in the former Prussian House of Lords in Berlin, later moved to the former "" at Bellevuestrasse 15 in Potsdamer Platz (the location now occupied by the Sony Center; a marker is located on the sidewalk nearby).


title: People's Court (Germany)

text: The court was established in 1934 by order of Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler, in response to his dissatisfaction at the outcome of the Reichstag fire trial in front of the Reich Court of Justice ("Reichsgericht") in which all but one of the defendants were acquitted. The court had jurisdiction over a rather broad array of "political offenses", which included crimes like black marketeering, work slowdowns, defeatism, and treason against Nazi Germany. These crimes were viewed by the court as "Wehrkraftzersetzung" ("the disintegration of defensive capability") and were accordingly punished severely; the death penalty was meted out in numerous cases.


title: People's Court (Germany)

text: The court handed down an enormous number of death sentences under Judge-President Roland Freisler, including those that followed the plot to kill Hitler on 20 July 1944. Many of those found guilty by the court were executed in Plötzensee Prison in Berlin. The proceedings of the court were often even less than show trials in that some cases, such as that of Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans Scholl and fellow White Rose activists, trials were concluded in less than an hour without evidence being presented or arguments made by either side. The president of the court often acted as prosecutor, denouncing defendants, then pronouncing his verdict and sentence without objection from defense counsel, who usually remained silent throughout. The court almost always sided with the prosecution, to the point that, from 1943 on, being brought before it was tantamount to a death sentence. While Nazi Germany was not a rule of law state, the People's Court frequently dispensed with even the nominal laws and procedures of regular German trials and is therefore characterized as a kangaroo court.


title: People's Court (Germany)

text: There was no presumption of innocence nor could the defendants adequately represent themselves or consult counsel. A proceeding at the People's Court would follow an initial indictment in which a state or city prosecutor would forward the names of the accused to the "Volksgerichtshof" for charges of a political nature. Defendants were hardly ever allowed to speak to their attorneys beforehand and when they did the defense lawyer would usually simply answer questions about how the trial would proceed and refrain from any legal advice. In at least one documented case (the trial of the "White Rose" conspirators), the defense lawyer assigned to Sophie Scholl chastised her the day before the trial, stating that she would pay for her crimes.


title: People's Court (Germany)

text: The People's Court proceedings began when the accused were led to a prisoner's dock under armed police escort. The presiding judge would read the charges and then call the accused forward for "examination". Although the court had a prosecutor, it was usually the judge who asked the questions. Defendants were often berated during the examination and never allowed to respond with any sort of lengthy reply. After a barrage of insults and condemnation, the accused would be ordered back to the dock with the order "examination concluded".


title: People's Court (Germany)

text: After examination, the defense attorney would be asked if they had any statements or questions. Defense lawyers were present simply as a formality and hardly ever rose to speak. The judge would then ask the defendants for a statement during which time more insults and berating comments would be shouted at the accused. The verdict, which was almost always "guilty", would then be announced and the sentence handed down at the same time. In all, an appearance before the People's Court could take as little as fifteen minutes.


title: People's Court (Germany)

text: From 1934 to 1945, the court sentenced 10,980 people to prison and imposed the death penalty on 5,179 more who were convicted of high treason. About 1,000 were acquitted. Prior to the Battle of Stalingrad, there was a higher percentage of cases in which not guilty verdicts were handed down on indictments. In some cases, this was due to defense lawyers presenting the accused as naive or the defendant adequately explaining the nature of the political charges against them. However, in nearly two-thirds of such cases, the defendants would be re-arrested by the Gestapo following the trial and sent to a concentration camp. After the defeat at Stalingrad, and with a growing fear in the German government regarding defeatism amongst the population, the People's Court became far more ruthless and hardly anyone brought before the tribunal escaped a guilty verdict.


title: People's Court (Germany)

text: The best-known trials in the People's Court began on 7 August 1944, in the aftermath of the 20 July plot that year. The first eight men accused were Erwin von Witzleben, Erich Hoepner, Paul von Hase, Peter Yorck von Wartenburg, Helmuth Stieff, Robert Bernardis, Friedrich Klausing, and Albrecht von Hagen. The trials were held in the imposing Great Hall of the Berlin Chamber Court on Elßholzstrasse, which was bedecked with swastikas for the occasion. There were around 300 spectators, including Ernst Kaltenbrunner and selected civil servants, party functionaries, military officers and journalists. A film camera ran behind the red-robed Roland Freisler so that Hitler could view the proceedings, and to provide footage for newsreels and a documentary entitled "Traitors Before the People's Court". Intended to be used in "The German Weekly Review", it was not shown at the time and turned out to be the last documentary made for the newsreel.


title: People's Court (Germany)

text: The accused were forced to wear shabby clothes, denied neckties and belts or suspenders for their pants, and were marched into the courtroom handcuffed to policemen. The proceedings began with Freisler announcing he would rule on "...the most horrific charges ever brought in the history of the German people." Freisler was an admirer of Andrey Vyshinsky, the chief prosecutor of the Soviet purge trials, and copied Vyshinsky's practice of heaping loud and violent abuse on defendants.


title: People's Court (Germany)

text: The 62-year-old Field Marshal von Witzleben was the first to stand before Freisler and he was immediately castigated for giving a brief Nazi salute. He faced further humiliating insults while holding onto his trouser waistband. Next, former Colonel-General Erich Hoepner, dressed in a cardigan, faced Freisler, who addressed him as ""Schweinehund"". When he said that he was not a "Schweinehund", Freisler asked him what zoological category he thought he fitted into.


title: People's Court (Germany)

text: The accused were unable to consult their lawyers, who were not seated near them. None of them was allowed to address the court at length, and Freisler interrupted any attempts to do so. However, Major General Helmuth Stieff attempted to raise the issue of his motives before being shouted down, and Witzleben managed to call out "You may hand us over to the executioner, but in three months, the disgusted and harried people will bring you to book and drag you alive through the dirt in the streets!" All were condemned to death by hanging, and the sentences were carried out shortly afterwards in Plötzensee Prison.


title: People's Court (Germany)

text: Another trial of plotters was held on 10 August. On that occasion the accused were Erich Fellgiebel, Alfred Kranzfelder, Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg, Georg Hansen, and Berthold Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg.


title: People's Court (Germany)

text: On 15 August, Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorf, Egbert Hayessen, Hans Bernd von Haeften, and Adam von Trott zu Solz were condemned to death by Freisler.


title: People's Court (Germany)

text: On 21 August, the accused were Fritz Thiele, Friedrich Gustav Jaeger, and Ulrich Wilhelm Graf Schwerin von Schwanenfeld who was able to mention the "...many murders committed at home and abroad" as a motivation for his actions.


title: People's Court (Germany)

text: On 30 August, Colonel-General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, who had blinded himself in a suicide attempt, was led into the court and condemned to death along with Caesar von Hofacker, Hans Otfried von Linstow, and Eberhard Finckh.


title: People's Court (Germany)

text: In the aftermath of the 20 July Plot to assassinate Hitler, senior intelligence analyst Lieutenant Colonel Alexis von Roenne was arrested on account of his links with many of the conspirators. Although not directly involved in the plot, he was nonetheless tried, found guilty by the show trial, and hanged on a meat hook at Plötzensee Prison on 12 October 1944.


title: People's Court (Germany)

text: Field Marshal von Witzleben's prediction of Roland Freisler's fate proved slightly incorrect, as he died in a bombing raid in February 1945, approximately half a year later.


title: People's Court (Germany)

text: On 3 February 1945, Freisler was conducting a Saturday session of the People's Court, when USAAF Eighth Air Force bombers attacked Berlin. Government and Nazi Party buildings were hit, including the Reich Chancellery, the Gestapo headquarters, the Party Chancellery and the People's Court. According to one report, Freisler hastily adjourned court and had ordered that day's prisoners to be taken to a shelter, but paused to gather that day's files. Freisler was killed when an almost direct hit on the building caused him to be struck down by a beam in his own courtroom. His body was reportedly found crushed beneath a fallen masonry column, clutching the files that he had tried to retrieve. Among those files was that of Fabian von Schlabrendorff, a 20 July Plot member who was on trial that day and was facing execution. According to a different report, Freisler "was killed by a bomb fragment while trying to escape from his law court to the air-raid shelter", and he "bled to death on the pavement outside the People's Court at Bellevuestrasse 15 in Berlin". Fabian von Schlabrendorff was "standing near his judge when the latter met his end." Freisler's death saved Schlabrendorff – he was later re-tried and, in a rare instance for the court's last nine months in existence, possibly motivated by fear of later reprisals, acquitted by its new acting president, Wilhelm Crohne. After the war Schlabrendorff became a judge of the Federal Constitutional Court of West Germany.


title: People's Court (Germany)

text: Yet another version of Freisler's death states that he was killed by a British bomb that came through the ceiling of his courtroom as he was trying two women, who survived the explosion.


title: People's Court (Germany)

text: A foreign correspondent reported, "Apparently nobody regretted his death." Luise Jodl, the wife of General Alfred Jodl, recounted more than 25 years later that she had been working at the Lützow Hospital when Freisler's body was brought in, and that a worker commented, "It is God's verdict." According to Luise Jodl, "Not one person said a word in reply."


title: People's Court (Germany)

text: Freisler is interred in the plot of his wife's family at the Waldfriedhof Dahlem cemetery in Berlin. His name is not shown on the gravestone.


title: People's Court (Germany)

text: In 1956 the German Federal High Court of Justice ("Bundesgerichtshof") granted the so-called "Judges' Privilege" to those that had been part of the People's Court. This prevented the prosecution of the former People's Court members on the basis that their actions had been legal under laws in effect at the time.


title: People's Court (Germany)

text: The only member of the People's Court ever to be held liable for his actions was Chief Public Prosecutor , who in 1947 was sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment by a US Military Tribunal, during the Judges' Trial, one of the "subsequent Nuremberg proceedings". Lautz was released after serving less than four years of his sentence and was granted a government pension by West Germany. One People's Judge of Bremen Heino von Heimburg died 1945 a prisoner-of-war in the Soviet Union.


title: People's Court (Germany)

text: Of the other approximately 570 judges and prosecutors, none were held responsible for their actions related to the People's Court. In fact, many had careers in the West-German post-war legal system:


title: Berlin Philharmonic

text: The Berlin Philharmonic () is a German orchestra based in Berlin. It is one of the most popular, acclaimed and well-respected orchestras in the world.


title: Berlin Philharmonic

text: The Berlin Philharmonic was founded in Berlin in 1882 by 54 musicians under the name Frühere Bilsesche Kapelle (literally, "Former Bilse's Band"); the group broke away from their previous conductor Benjamin Bilse after he announced his intention of taking the band on a fourth-class train to Warsaw for a concert. The orchestra was renamed and reorganized under the financial management of Hermann Wolff in 1882. Their new conductor was Ludwig von Brenner; in 1887 Hans von Bülow, the conductor of the Meiningen Court Orchestra and one of the most famous piano virtuosos of the time, took over the post. This helped to establish the orchestra's international reputation, and guests Hans Richter, Felix von Weingartner, Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, Johannes Brahms and Edvard Grieg conducted the orchestra over the next few years. In 1887, the pianist and composer Mary Wurm became the first woman to conduct the orchestra. Programmes of this period show that the orchestra possessed only 46 strings, much less than the Wagnerian ideal of 64.


title: Berlin Philharmonic

text: In 1895, Arthur Nikisch became chief conductor, and was succeeded in 1923 by Wilhelm Furtwängler. Despite several changes in leadership, the orchestra continued to perform throughout World War II. On 20 April 1942, Furtwängler conducted an infamous performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic for Hitler's birthday. Following the end of the performance, Joseph Goebbels approached the podium to shake Furtwängler's hand. This concert led to intense criticism of Furtwängler after the war. After Furtwängler (who was personally opposed to the Nazi regime ) fled to Switzerland to escape arrest by the Gestapo in January 1945, Leo Borchard became chief conductor. The final wartime concert was on 12 April 1945, just before the commencement of the Battle of Berlin. The program included Brünnhilde's Immolation Scene and the finale from Wagner's "Götterdämmerung" ("Twilight of the Gods"). Hitler Youth are reported to have distributed cyanide pills to the audience for those who wished, by death, to escape the imminent arrival of the Red Army. The battle forced the orchestra to close for two months, but it was quickly reopened by the Soviet occupation authorities under the East Berlin commandant General Nikolai Berzarin on May 26, 1945.


title: Berlin Philharmonic

text: Borchard was accidentally shot and killed later in 1945 by the U.S. Army forces occupying West Berlin. Sergiu Celibidache then took over as chief conductor for seven years, from 1945 to 1952. Furtwängler returned as chief conductor in 1952 and held the post until his death in 1954.


title: Berlin Philharmonic

text: The orchestra elected Herbert von Karajan as its next chief conductor. Karajan served in the post from 1955 until his resignation in April 1989, only months before his death. Under him, the orchestra made a vast number of recordings and toured widely, growing and gaining fame. The orchestra hired its first female musician, violinist Madeleine Carruzzo, in 1982. However, Karajan's hiring in September 1982 of Sabine Meyer, the first female wind player to the orchestra, led to controversy when the orchestra voted 73 to 4 not to admit her to the orchestra. Meyer subsequently left the orchestra. After Karajan stood down from the orchestra in 1989, the orchestra offered the chief conductorship to Carlos Kleiber, who declined.


title: Berlin Philharmonic

text: In 1989, the orchestra elected Claudio Abbado as its next principal conductor. It was the first time the Philharmonic resorted to democratic voting after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Abbado expanded the orchestra's repertoire beyond the core classical and romantic works into more modern 20th-century works. Abbado stepped down from the chief conductorship of the orchestra in 2002. During the post-unification period, the orchestra encountered financial problems resulting from budgetary stress in the city of Berlin. In 2006, the Orchestra Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic established the Claudio Abbado Composition Prize in Abbado's honour.


title: Berlin Philharmonic

text: In June 1999, the musicians elected Sir Simon Rattle as their next chief conductor. Rattle made it a condition of his signing with the Berlin Philharmonic that it be turned into a self-governing public foundation, with the power to make its own artistic and financial decisions. This required a change to state law, which was approved in 2001, allowing him to join the organization in 2002. In his first season, he initiated community projects, such as a performance of Stravinsky's "Le Sacre du printemps" danced by 250 children public schools, documented in "Rhythm Is It!". Rattle's contract with the orchestra was initially through 2012. In April 2008, the BPO musicians voted in favour of retaining Rattle as their chief conductor through 2018. From 2006 to 2010, the general manager of the orchestra was Pamela Rosenberg. In September 2010, Martin Hoffmann became the orchestra's new "Intendant". Hoffmann stood down as its "Intendant" after the close of the 2016/2017 season. Andrea Zietzschmann became "Intendantin" of the orchestra as of the 2017-2018 season. In December 2020, the orchestra announced the extension of Zietzschmann's contract as "Intendantin" through 31 August 2025.


title: Berlin Philharmonic

text: In 2006, the orchestra announced it would investigate its role during the Nazi regime. In 2007, Misha Aster published "The Reich's Orchestra", his study of the relationship of the Berlin Philharmonic to the rulers of the Third Reich. Also in 2007, the documentary film "The Reichsorchester" by Enrique Sánchez Lansch was released.


title: Berlin Philharmonic

text: UNICEF appointed the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and Rattle as Goodwill Ambassadors in November 2007. On 10 January 2013, the orchestra announced the scheduled end of Rattle's tenure as artistic director and chief conductor in 2018. In 2014, the orchestra founded its own label, Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings.


title: Berlin Philharmonic

text: After an abortive first attempt on 11 May 2015, the orchestra on 21 June 2015 elected Kirill Petrenko as its next artistic director and chief conductor. In October 2015, the orchestra announced that Petrenko was to formally commence his contract as chief conductor with the 2019/20 season. A year after this news, in October 2016, the orchestra specified more precisely the start of Petrenko's tenure as 19 August 2019.


title: Berlin Philharmonic

text: The orchestra's first concert hall, the Philharmonie situated on the Bernburger Straße in Berlin Kreuzberg, was inaugurated in 1882 in a building previously used as a skating rink and converted by the architect Franz Schwechten. In 1899, a smaller concert hall, the Beethovensaal on Köthener Straße, was also inaugurated for chamber music and chamber ensembles. The first Philharmonie was used until British bombers destroyed it on 30 January 1944, the anniversary of Hitler becoming chancellor. The orchestra played until the end of the war in the Staatsoper, Unter den Linden. The Staatsoper was also destroyed on 3 February 1945. In need of a venue, the Berlin Philharmonic played during the years following the war in the Titania-Palast, an old movie theater converted in a concert hall, and still used the Beethovensaal for smaller concerts. During the 1950s the orchestra moved its concerts at the Musikhochschule (today part of the Berlin University of the Arts), in the Joseph-Joachim-Konzertsaal. However, most of the recordings were done at the Jesus-Christus-Kirche in Berlin Dahlem, celebrated for its acoustics.


title: Berlin Philharmonic

text: The need for a new Philharmonie was expressed since 1949, when the "Gesellschaft der Freunde der Berliner Philharmonie e.V. "(Friends of the Berliner Philharmonie Society) was created to gather funds. The building of the new Philharmonie started in 1961, following the design of architect Hans Scharoun, and it was inaugurated on 15 October 1963, with a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, conducted by Herbert von Karajan. Its location made it part of the Kulturforum, and the great hall (2,440 seats) was then complemented by a chamber-music hall, the Kammermusiksaal (1,180 seats), built in 1987, following the design of architect Edgar Wisniewski, after a project by Hans Scharoun.


title: Berlin Philharmonic

text: The Berliner Philharmonie has since been the home of the Berlin Philharmonic, and its symbol. The orchestra's logo is based on the pentagon-shape of the concert hall.


title: Berlin Philharmonic

text: On 20 May 2008, a fire broke out at the Philharmonie. One-quarter of the roof underwent considerable damage as firefighters cut openings to reach the flames beneath the roof. The hall interior also sustained water damage, but was otherwise "generally unharmed". The firefighters limited damage by the use of foam. The orchestra was restricted from use of the hall for concerts until June 2008.


title: Berlin Philharmonic

text: On 18 December 2008, the orchestra announced the official creation of a Digital Concert Hall. This hitherto unique internet platform of the BPO enables persons with computer access all over the world to see and hear the Philharmonic's concerts, live or on demand, not only under recent conductors, but even previous concerts conducted, e.g., by Claudio Abbado. Since July 2014, the Digital Concert Hall additionally offers livestreams produced from HD movies of concerts by Herbert von Karajan in the 1960s and early 1970s. Since 2010, selected concerts of the Berlin Philharmonic have been transmitted live to cinemas in Germany and Europe.


title: Berlin Philharmonic

text: The orchestra conferred honorary membership to the conductors Daniel Barenboim (he is also the first and only honorary conductor), Bernard Haitink, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Seiji Ozawa, Mariss Jansons, and Zubin Mehta.


title: Chlorophyll a

text: Chlorophyll "a" is a specific form of chlorophyll used in oxygenic photosynthesis. It absorbs most energy from wavelengths of violet-blue and orange-red light, and it is a poor absorber of green and near-green portions of the spectrum. Chlorophyll does not reflect light but chlorophyll-containing tissues appear green because green light, diffusively reflected by structures like cell walls, becomes enriched in the reflected light. This photosynthetic pigment is essential for photosynthesis in eukaryotes, cyanobacteria and prochlorophytes because of its role as primary electron donor in the electron transport chain. Chlorophyll "a" also transfers resonance energy in the antenna complex, ending in the reaction center where specific chlorophylls P680 and P700 are located.


title: Chlorophyll a

text: Chlorophyll "a" is essential for most photosynthetic organisms to release chemical energy but is not the only pigment that can be used for photosynthesis. All oxygenic photosynthetic organisms use chlorophyll "a", but differ in accessory pigments like chlorophyll "b". Chlorophyll "a" can also be found in very small quantities in the green sulfur bacteria, an anaerobic photoautotroph. These organisms use bacteriochlorophyll and some chlorophyll "a" but do not produce oxygen. Anoxygenic photosynthesis is the term applied to this process, unlike oxygenic photosynthesis where oxygen is produced during the light reactions of photosynthesis.


title: Chlorophyll a

text: The molecular structure of chlorophyll "a" consists of a chlorin ring, whose four nitrogen atoms surround a central magnesium atom, and has several other attached side chains and a hydrocarbon tail formed by a phytol ester.


title: Chlorophyll a

text: Chlorophyll "a" contains a magnesium ion encased in a large ring structure known as a chlorin. The chlorin ring is a heterocyclic compound derived from pyrrole. Four nitrogen atoms from the chlorin surround and bind the magnesium atom. The magnesium center uniquely defines the structure as a chlorophyll molecule. The porphyrin ring of bacteriochlorophyll is saturated, and lacking alternation of double and single bonds causing variation in absorption of light.


title: Chlorophyll a

text: Side chains are attached to the chlorin ring of the various chlorophyll molecules. Different side chains characterize each type of chlorophyll molecule, and alters the absorption spectrum of light.


title: Chlorophyll a

text: The phytol ester of chlorophyll "a" (R in the diagram) is a long hydrophobic tail which anchors the molecule to other hydrophobic proteins in the thylakoid membrane of the chloroplast. Once detached from the porphyrin ring, phytol becomes the precursor of two biomarkers, pristane and phytane, which are important in the study of geochemistry and the determination of petroleum sources.


title: Chlorophyll a

text: The Chlorophyll "a" biosynthetic pathway utilizes a variety of enzymes. In most plants, chlorophyll is derived from glutamate and is synthesised along a branched pathway that is shared with heme and siroheme.


title: Chlorophyll a

text: The initial steps incorporate glutamic acid into 5-aminolevulinic acid (ALA); two molecules of ALA are then reduced to porphobilinogen (PBG), and four molecules of PBG are coupled, forming protoporphyrin IX.


title: Chlorophyll a

text: Chlorophyll synthase is the enzyme that completes the biosynthesis of chlorophyll "a" by catalysing the reaction


title: Chlorophyll a

text: This forms an ester of the carboxylic acid group in chlorophyllide "a" with the 20-carbon diterpene alcohol phytol.


title: Chlorophyll a

text: Chlorophyll "a" absorbs light within the violet, blue and red wavelengths. Accessory photosynthetic pigments broaden the spectrum of light absorbed, increasing the range of wavelengths that can be used in photosynthesis. The addition of chlorophyll "b" next to chlorophyll "a" extends the absorption spectrum. In low light conditions, plants produce a greater ratio of chlorophyll "b" to chlorophyll "a" molecules, increasing photosynthetic yield.


title: Chlorophyll a

text: Absorption of light by photosynthetic pigments converts photons into chemical energy. Light energy radiating onto the chloroplast strikes the pigments in the thylakoid membrane and excites their electrons. Since the chlorophyll "a" molecules only capture certain wavelengths, organisms may use accessory pigments to capture a wider range of light energy shown as the yellow circles. It then transfers captured light from one pigment to the next as resonance energy, passing energy one pigment to the other until reaching the special chlorophyll "a" molecules in the reaction center. These special chlorophyll "a" molecules are located in both photosystem II and photosystem I. They are known as P680 for Photosystem II and P700 for Photosystem I. P680 and P700 are the primary electron donors to the electron transport chain. These two systems are different in their redox potentials for one-electron oxidation. The E for P700 is approximately 500mV, while the E for P680 is approximately 1,100-1,200 mV.


title: Chlorophyll a

text: Chlorophyll "a" is very important in the energy phase of photosynthesis. Two electrons need to be passed to an electron acceptor for the process of photosynthesis to proceed. Within the reaction centers of both photosystems there are a pair of chlorophyll "a" molecules that pass electrons on to the transport chain through redox reactions.


title: Interstate 94

text: Interstate 94 (I-94) is an east–west Interstate Highway connecting the Great Lakes and northern Great Plains regions of the United States. Its western terminus is just east of Billings, Montana, at a junction with I-90; its eastern terminus is in Port Huron, Michigan, where it meets with I-69 and crosses the Blue Water Bridge into Sarnia, Ontario, Canada, where the route becomes Ontario Highway 402. It thus lies along the primary overland route from Seattle (via I-90) to Toronto (via Ontario Highway 401) and is the only east–west Interstate Highway to have a direct connection to Canada.


title: Interstate 94

text: I-94 intersects with I-90 several times: at its western terminus; Tomah to Madison in Wisconsin; in Chicago, Illinois; and in Lake Station, Indiana. Major cities that I-94 connects to are Billings, Bismarck, Fargo, Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago, and Detroit.


title: Interstate 94

text: I-94 begins at Billings and travels northeastward toward Glendive before exiting the state to the east. I-94 links seven counties, which are Yellowstone, Treasure, Rosebud, Custer, Prairie, Dawson, and Wibaux counties and passes near or through Miles City and Glendive while connecting with I-90 in Billings. The highway is notable for following the Yellowstone River from Billings through Glendive. Beyond the western terminus of I-94, I-90 connects westbound I-94 travelers to points west such as Butte; Missoula; Coeur d'Alene, Idaho; Spokane, Washington; and Seattle, Washington.


title: Interstate 94

text: The route enters at Beach and passes through the Badlands near Medora (near the Theodore Roosevelt National Park South Unit). A public rest area about east of Medora provides an awe-inspiring view, especially at sunset, and an opportunity to hike through some of the scenery on the Painted Canyon Trail. Further east, I-94 provides access to the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, then passes through the cities of Dickinson, Mandan, Bismarck, Jamestown, and Valley City on the way to West Fargo and Fargo, where it leaves the state and crosses into Minnesota. Throughout the state, the route generally travels relatively straight east and west following both the railroad route and the former route of US Route 10 (US 10, called "The Old Red Trail") where its western terminus is at exit 343 in West Fargo.


title: Interstate 94

text: The highway intersects with the Enchanted Highway east of Dickinson at exit 72. At New Salem, it passes Salem Sue, a sculpture of a Holstein cow and is clearly visible from I-94 on the south side of the road. A drive up the road to Sue will take visitors to a vantage point where they can see a panoramic landscape for many miles. Between Mandan and Bismarck, I-94 crosses the Missouri River with a view of the Northern Pacific/BNSF Railway Bridge on the south side of the road. At Steele, it passes the world's largest sculpture of a sandhill crane (named Sandy), which is tall and visible from I-94 on the south side of the road, just to the east of exit 200. At Jamestown, it passes the world's largest sculpture of the buffalo (actually bison) named "Dakota Thunder", which is tall and is visible from I-94 on the north side of the road. US 52 is concurrent with I-94 from Jamestown to the Minnesota state line. approximately milemarker 275 on the westbound lanes between Jamestown and Valley City, there is a small green sign marking the Laurentian Divide, which marks a continental divide where rivers south of the divide drain into the Gulf of Mexico, while the rivers north flow into the Arctic Ocean. The highway reaches Fargo, before the Red River.


title: Interstate 94

text: Leaving Fargo and entering Moorhead, Minnesota, I-94/US 52 crosses the Red River. East of Moorhead Municipal Airport, the Interstate travels in a northwest–southeast trajectory past Fergus Falls, Alexandria, and St. Cloud on the way to the Twin Cities and eastward out of the state.


title: Interstate 94

text: The road crosses the Mississippi River in Minneapolis between the Prospect Park and Seward neighborhoods. As it crosses over the only true gorge along the Mississippi's entire length, where steep bluffs extend to the waterline. The highway joins Minneapolis and Saint Paul together where it meets Minnesota State Highway 280 (MN 280). US 52 leaves I-94 after running concurrently with I-94 from the North Dakota state line and heads southbound toward Rochester. In the Twin Cities, the routing of the highway is politically charged, primarily through many historic working-class and Black neighborhoods. In Saint Paul, the routing of I-94 is set through and displaces the historic Rondo Neighborhood, which prior to the highway construction was the largest Black community in Saint Paul.


title: Interstate 94

text: East of Saint Paul, I-94 leaves Minnesota between Lakeland, Minnesota, and Hudson, Wisconsin, while crossing the St. Croix River.


title: Interstate 94

text: I-94 enters Wisconsin east of the Twin Cities at Hudson. It traverses the hilly terrain of northwest Wisconsin, crossing the Red Cedar River near Menomonie. East of Menomonie, I-94 junctions with WIS 29, a major East–West expressway connecting I-94 with Wausau, and Green Bay. It then passes Eau Claire before turning southeastward and joining with I-90 in Tomah. Southeast of Tomah, the highway passes the major tourist area of Wisconsin Dells. Here, vacationers can find a multitude of water parks, camping, amusement parks, zoos, river excursions, as well as lodging and shopping. Further southeast, I-94 joins up with I-39 in Portage at the base of Cascade Mountain, a popular ski area. Just south of Cascade Mountain, I-94 crosses over the Wisconsin River. I-94 leaves I-90 and I-39 east of the state capitol of Madison and resumes its easterly path toward Milwaukee. I-94 weaves its way into Downtown Milwaukee before turning south and heading to Chicago, entering Illinois at Pleasant Prairie.


title: Interstate 94

text: In the state of Illinois, I-94 runs south from Wisconsin to Indiana via downtown Chicago. It is tolled on the Tri-State Tollway to the I-94/I-294 split; it then runs east to the Edens Expressway, where it soon joins again with I-90 on the Kennedy Expressway and turns south through the city of Chicago. I-90 leaves south of downtown Chicago to the Chicago Skyway. At I-80, I-94 runs east to Indiana on the Kingery Expressway.


title: Interstate 94

text: In the state of Indiana, I-94 runs east from Illinois concurrently with I-80. It crosses I-90 (Indiana Toll Road), where I-80 joins I-90 east toward Ohio. I-94 continues northeasterly, paralleling the Lake Michigan shoreline into Michigan. The speed limit used to continue east of exit 26; now it ends east of I-80/I-90, where the speed limit goes up to on eastbound I-94. Between milemarkers 0.0 and 15.5, the highway is also posted along with I-80. Between milemarkers 15.6 and 19.0, I-94 is posted alone.


title: Interstate 94

text: I-94 runs north along Lake Michigan to St. Joseph and Benton Harbor before heading east toward Detroit. It turns northeast to Port Huron where it meets I-69 and ends at the Blue Water Bridge, where it becomes Ontario Highway 402 in Point Edward, Ontario.


title: Interstate 94

text: The first section of I-94 completed with Interstate funds (under the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956) was a section between Jamestown and Valley City, North Dakota, in 1958.


title: Interstate 94

text: North of Chicago, I-94 has been widened from six to eight lanes from Illinois Route 22 (IL 22, Half Day Road) to just south of the Wisconsin state line at IL 173 and 95th Street to 159th Street. Construction began in 2009 to completely rebuild I-94, including expansion to eight lanes, from the Wisconsin–Illinois border through the Mitchell Interchange in Milwaukee. This construction is expected to be completed in 2021.


title: Interstate 94

text: In 2005, the I-94 bridge over the Crow River near St. Michael, Minnesota, about northwest of Minneapolis, was rebuilt. In 2006, a project to widen I-94 east of Downtown Saint Paul between MN 120 and McKnight Road from four to six lanes was completed. The interchange at 95th Avenue North in Maple Grove, Minnesota, was rebuilt with a new, wider bridge that replaced the two-lane bridge there, which was demolished in July 2006.


title: Interstate 94

text: The expanded Marquette Interchange in Downtown Milwaukee was completed in August 2008 at a cost of $810 million (equivalent to $ in ).


title: Interstate 94

text: In Detroit, I-94 was routed over the existing Edsel Ford Freeway and remained signed as such until the late 1980s when Michigan deemphasized proper names on Interstate guide signs. Its interchange with the Lodge Freeway, built in 1953, is significant as the first full-speed freeway-to-freeway interchange built in the US.


title: Interstate 94

text: From September 2007 to October 2008, the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) added a temporary extra lane to I-94 between northbound I-35W and Minnesota State Highway 280 in the Twin Cities to help relieve traffic congestion caused by the collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River bridge. As a result, this portion of I-94 was not up to Interstate Highway standards during this time period.


title: Gertrude (Hamlet)

text: In William Shakespeare's play "Hamlet", Gertrude is Hamlet's mother and Queen of Denmark. Her relationship with Hamlet is somewhat turbulent, since he resents her marrying her husband's brother Claudius after he murdered the king (young Hamlet's father, King Hamlet). Gertrude reveals no guilt in her marriage with Claudius after the recent murder of her husband, and Hamlet begins to show signs of jealousy towards Claudius. According to Hamlet, she scarcely mourned her husband's death before marrying Claudius.


title: Gertrude (Hamlet)

text: Gertrude is first seen in Act 1 Scene 2 as she tries to cheer Hamlet over the loss of his father, begging him to stay at home rather than going back to school in Wittenberg. Her worry over him continues into the second act, as she sides with King Claudius in sending Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to raise the spirits of her son. Also, rather than ascribing Hamlet's sudden madness to Ophelia's rejection (as thought by Polonius), she believes the cause to be his father, King Hamlet's death and her quick, subsequent marriage to Claudius: "I doubt it is no other but the main; His father's death and our o'erhasty marriage." In Act three, she eagerly listens to the report of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern on their attempt to cheer him, and supports the King and Polonius' plan to watch Hamlet from a hidden vantage point as he speaks with Ophelia, with the hope that her presence will heal him.


title: Gertrude (Hamlet)

text: In the next act, Gertrude tells Claudius of Polonius' murder, convinced that Hamlet is truly mad. She also shows genuine compassion and affection as she watches along with others as Ophelia sings and acts in absolute madness. At Ophelia's burial, she expresses her former hope that the young woman might have married her son: "I hoped thou shouldest have been my Hamlet's wife." When Hamlet appears and grapples with Laertes, she asks him to stop and for someone to hold him back—saying that he may be in a fit of madness now, but that will alleviate soon. At the beginning of the play, Gertrude lies more with her husband than her son; however, after the closet scene the whole situation is switched.


title: Gertrude (Hamlet)

text: In the final scene, Gertrude notices Hamlet is tired during the fight with Laertes, and offers to wipe his brow. She drinks a cup of poison intended for Hamlet by the King, against the King's wishes, and dies, shouting in agony as she falls:


title: Gertrude (Hamlet)

text: Other characters' views of the Queen are largely negative. When the Ghost of her former husband appears to Hamlet, he describes her as a "seeming virtuous queen", but orders Hamlet not to confront her about it and leave her judgement to heaven. However, his love for her while living was benevolent, as Hamlet states that his father would have held back the elements if they "visited her face too roughly".


title: Gertrude (Hamlet)

text: Hamlet sees her as an example of the weakness of women (which affects his relationship with Ophelia) and constantly hurt in his reflections of how quickly (less than a month) she remarried.


title: Gertrude (Hamlet)

text: There have been numerous attempts to account for Gertrude's state of mind during the play. It could be argued that as she does not confess to any sins before she dies, she did not participate in her husband's murder. However, other considerations do point to Gertrude's complicity. After repeated erratic threats towards his mother to no response, Hamlet threatens to discover the true nature of Gertrude's character by setting up a mirror, at which point she projects a killer:


title: Gertrude (Hamlet)

text: In the 1919 essay "Hamlet and his problems" T. S. Eliot suggests that the main cause of Hamlet's internal dilemma is Gertrude's sinful behaviour. He states, "Shakespeare's Hamlet... is a play dealing with the effect of a mother's guilt upon her son."


title: Gertrude (Hamlet)

text: In 1924, the social reformer Lillie Buffum Chace Wyman published a study, "Gertrude of Denmark: An Interpretive Romance", an early attempt to give Gertrude's own perspective on her life and the events of the play. Wyman explicitly "interrogates the nineteenth-century cult of the self-sacrificing mother", critiquing the influence it had on interpretations of the play by both male critics and actresses playing Gertrude.


title: Gertrude (Hamlet)

text: In the 1940s, Ernest Jones—a psychoanalyst and Freud's biographer—developed Freud's ideas into a series of essays that culminated in his book "Hamlet and Oedipus" (1949). Influenced by Jones's psychoanalytic approach, several productions have portrayed the "closet scene", where Hamlet confronts his mother in her private quarters, in a sexual light. In this reading, Hamlet is disgusted by his mother's "incestuous" relationship with Claudius while simultaneously fearful of killing him, as this would clear Hamlet's path to his mother's bed.


title: Gertrude (Hamlet)

text: Carolyn Heilbrun's 1957 essay "Hamlet's Mother" defends Gertrude, arguing that the text never hints that Gertrude knew of Claudius poisoning King Hamlet. This analysis has been championed by many feminist critics. Heilbrun argued that men have for centuries completely misinterpreted Gertrude, believing what Hamlet said about her rather than the actual text of the play. By this account, no clear evidence suggests that Gertrude is an adulteress: she is merely adapting to the circumstances of her husband's death for the good of the kingdom.


title: Gertrude (Hamlet)

text: Women were almost exclusively banned from appearing as actresses on the stage until approximately 1660 and in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, troupes appeared that were composed entirely of boy players. Indeed, they are famously mentioned in "Hamlet", in which a group of travelling actors has left the city due to rivalry with a troupe of "little eyases" (unfledged hawks).


title: Gertrude (Hamlet)

text: Julie Christie appeared as Gertrude in Kenneth Branagh's 1996 "Hamlet". Despite her classical training as an actor, it was her first venture into Shakespeare.


title: Gertrude (Hamlet)

text: In Michael Almereyda's 2000 "Hamlet", Ethan Hawke plays Hamlet as a film student, while Diane Venora plays Gertrude, wife to the former and present CEOs of "Denmark Corporation".


title: Gertrude (Hamlet)

text: "Gertrude and Claudius", a John Updike novel, serves as a prequel to the events of the play. It follows Gertrude from her wedding to King Hamlet, through an affair with Claudius, and its murderous results, until the very beginning of the play. Gertrude also appears as a character in Howard Barker's "Gertrude—The Cry", which uses some of the characters from "Hamlet".


title: Gertrude (Hamlet)

text: "Hamlet" has played "a relatively small role" in the appropriation of Shakespeare's plays by women writers. Margaret Atwood's ""Gertrude Talks Back"", in her 1992 collection of short stories "Good Bones", sees the title character setting her son straight about Old Hamlet's murder: "It wasn't Claudius, darling, it was me!"


title: Gertrude (Hamlet)

text: The character of Gemma Teller Morrow on the FX show "Sons of Anarchy", which incorporates plot elements from Hamlet, is influenced by and shares many traits with Queen Gertrude.


title: Fear and Desire

text: Fear and Desire is a 1952 American anti-war film directed, produced, and edited by Stanley Kubrick, and written by Howard Sackler. With a production team of only fifteen people, the film was Kubrick's feature directorial debut. Though the film is not about any specific war, it was produced and released during the height of the Korean War.


title: Fear and Desire

text: The story is set during a war between two unidentified countries. An airplane carrying four soldiers from one country has crashed six miles behind enemy lines. The soldiers come upon a river and build a raft, hoping they can use the waterway to reach their battalion. As they are building their raft, they are approached by a young peasant girl who does not speak their language. The soldiers apprehend the girl and bind her to a tree with their belts. The youngest of them, Sidney, is left behind to guard the girl. He starts to talk to her, but as she doesn't understand him, he descends into a state of delirium. When he unbelts her, believing she will embrace him, she tries to escape and Sidney shoots her dead. Mac, another of the four soldiers, finds the dead girl and watches as Sidney runs off towards the river. Mac persuades the commander, Lt. Corby, and his friend Fletcher to let him take the raft for a solo voyage, in connection with a plan to kill an enemy general at a nearby base. Mac distracts the general's guards by shooting at them while on the raft and is wounded. While this is happening, Fletcher and Corby successfully infiltrate the base, and the enemy general is killed. After killing the general, they use an enemy plane to escape to their home base. After landing, they talk and eat with their own general, and return to the river to await Mac. Sitting there, they philosophize about war and how no man is made for it, before finding the raft floating downriver, with a dying Mac and a delirious Sidney.


title: Fear and Desire

text: Prior to shooting "Fear and Desire", Kubrick was a "Look" photographer who had directed two short documentaries in 1951, "Day of the Fight" and "Flying Padre". Both films were acquired for theatrical release by RKO Radio Pictures. From his experiences in creating short films, Kubrick felt he was ready to make a narrative feature film. Kubrick quit his full-time job with "Look" and set forth to create "Fear and Desire".


title: Fear and Desire

text: The screenplay was written by Howard Sackler, a classmate of Kubrick's at William Howard Taft High School in the Bronx, New York; Sackler later won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1968 drama "The Great White Hope". Virginia Leith, who played The Girl in this film, would go on to play Jan in the 1962 cult classic "The Brain That Wouldn't Die". Paul Mazursky, who would later receive recognition as the director of such films as "Harry and Tonto" and "An Unmarried Woman", was cast as the soldier who kills the captive peasant.


title: Fear and Desire

text: Funds for "Fear and Desire" were raised from Kubrick's family and friends, with most of it coming from Martin Perveler, Kubrick's uncle and the owner of a profitable pharmacy. The film's original budget has been estimated at $10,000.


title: Fear and Desire

text: The production team consisted of 15 people: the director, five actors (Paul Mazursky, Frank Silvera, Kenneth Harp, Steve Coit, and Virginia Leith), five crew members (including Kubrick's first wife, Toba Metz) and three Mexican laborers who transported the film equipment around California's San Gabriel Mountains, where the film was shot. Due to budget limitations, Kubrick improvised in the use of his equipment. To create fog, Kubrick used a crop sprayer, but the cast and crew was nearly asphyxiated because the machinery still contained the insecticide used for its agricultural work. For tracking shots, Paul Mazursky recalled how Kubrick came up with a novel substitute: "There was no dolly track, just a baby carriage to move the camera", he told an interviewer.


title: Fear and Desire

text: To reduce production costs, Kubrick had intended to make it a silent picture, but in the end the adding of sounds, effects and music brought the production over budget to around $53,000, and had to be bailed out by producer Richard de Rochemont, on condition that he help in de Rochemont's production of a five-part program about Abraham Lincoln for the educational TV series "Omnibus", filmed on location in Hodgenville, Kentucky. Kubrick also ran into difficulty in editing a key scene where one of the soldiers throws a plate of beans to the floor and enters the frame from the wrong side. Kubrick's blocking of the crucial scene was faulty, and his actors accidentally crossed the so-called "stage line"; this required the negative to be flipped in the printing process to preserve continuity, which was another expense.


title: Fear and Desire

text: The film was first shown at the Venice Film Festival in August 1952 under the title "Shape of Fear". It was later picked up for U.S. theatrical release by Joseph Burstyn, a distributor and war veteran who specialized in the presentation of European art house titles. The film was renamed "Fear and Desire" and was distributed with the tagline "Trapped ... 4 Desperate Men and a Strange Half-Animal Girl!" In an uncredited review following the New York premiere, "The New York Times" noted: "If "Fear and Desire" is uneven and sometimes reveals an experimental rather than a polished exterior, its overall effect is entirely worthy of the sincere effort put into it."


title: Fear and Desire

text: Kubrick received praise for "Fear and Desire" from film critic and screenwriter James Agee, who reportedly took Kubrick out for a drink and told him, "There are too many good things ... to call ["Fear and Desire"] arty." Columbia University professor Mark Van Doren sent Kubrick a letter that stated: "The incident of the girl bound to the tree will make movie history once it is seen ... Stanley Kubrick is worth watching for those who want to discover high talent at the moment it appears."


title: Fear and Desire

text: "Fear and Desire" was not a box office success, and Kubrick had to take a for-hire job directing the promotional short "The Seafarers" on behalf of the Seafarers International Union in order to raise funds for his next planned feature, "Killer's Kiss" (1955), which would be co-written by Kubrick and Howard Sackler and star Frank Silvera, one of the "Fear and Desire" actors.


title: Fear and Desire

text: In the years following its release, "Fear and Desire" seemed to have disappeared. Distributor Joseph Burstyn died in November 1953 on a trans-Atlantic flight, and his company went out of business. Legend has it that Kubrick destroyed the film's original negative and sought to do the same to any leftover prints after the failed film fell out of circulation following Burstyn's death. However, some prints of the film remained in private collections.


title: Fear and Desire

text: "Fear and Desire" had its first retrospective screening at the 1993 Telluride Film Festival. In January 1994, the Film Forum, a nonprofit art and revival theater in lower Manhattan, announced plans to show "Fear and Desire" on a double bill with "Killer's Kiss". Although the film's copyright lapsed and the property was in the public domain, thus allowing it to be shown without fear of legal actions, Kubrick tried to discourage it from gaining an audience. Through Warner Brothers, Kubrick issued a statement that severely downplayed the film's value, and he called "Fear and Desire" "a bumbling amateur film exercise".


title: Fear and Desire

text: There have been very few public screenings of "Fear and Desire"; the only commercially available print belongs to the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. Among the rare presentations were a 1993 screening at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., a 2003 one-time screening at the Two Boots Den of Cin in New York City and an August 2008 presentation at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. Also, some clips from the film can be seen in the 2001 documentary "".


title: Fear and Desire

text: In 2013, British company Eureka Entertainment released the film as part of its Masters of Cinema line.


title: Fear and Desire

text: The film is now (2022) easily found on streaming services (Amazon Prime, FreeVee) and often plays at art houses and 2nd run theatres.


title: Geographical midpoint of Europe

text: The location of the geographical centre of Europe depends on the definition of the borders of Europe, mainly whether remote islands are included to define the extreme points of Europe, and on the method of calculating the final result. Thus, several places claim to host this hypothetical centre.


title: Geographical midpoint of Europe

text: The first official declaration of the Centre of Europe was made in 1775 by the Polish royal astronomer and cartographer Szymon Antoni Sobiekrajski, who calculated it to be in the town of Suchowola near Białystok in modern north-eastern Poland. The method used was that of calculating equal distances from the extreme points of Europe: the westernmost point in Portugal; the easternmost point in the Central Urals; the northernmost point in Norway; and the southernmost point in Greece (islands were not taken into consideration). There is a monument commemorating that definition in Suchowola .


title: Geographical midpoint of Europe

text: In about 1815 there was a declaration that the centre of Europe was located near the mining town of Kremnica, on a hill that forms the water division between the basins of the Baltic Sea and Black Sea, near St. John Baptist Church. The method used for calculating is unknown, but from the description given on the commemorative plaque located near the church , it seems that it has been the centre of the smallest circle circumscribed on Europe (yet the limits of Europe taken into consideration are not known). The title of the "Centre of Europe" is also claimed by the neighbouring village Krahule (ancient Blaufuß), which used to belong to the same parish, now a famous centre for winter sports, with a hotel and recreation centre called "Stred Európy" ("Centre of Europe").


title: Geographical midpoint of Europe

text: In 1887, geographers from the Austro-Hungarian Empire set up a historical marker and a large stone in what is today a part of Ukraine, believed to mark the geographic centre of Europe. The interpretation of the worn Latin inscription on the monument is debated, with some claiming that the marker is merely one of a number of fixed triangulation points for surveying purposes established around the territory of the former empire. The external borders of Europe taken into account during the calculations are not known. According to the description, the methodology used for the calculation is that of the geometrical middle point of the extreme latitudes and longitudes of Europe, so the stone was located at . However, the actual location of the monument seems rather and not the coordinates to which they relate. This is near the village of Dilove located on the Tisza river, close to the Romanian border, in the county of Rakhiv in the Transcarpathian region.


title: Geographical midpoint of Europe

text: Measurements done after World War II by Soviet scientists reconfirmed the Austria-Hungarian claim that Rakhiv and Dilove to be the geographical centre of Europe. The old marker in the small town was renewed, and a major campaign to convince everyone of its validity was undertaken.


title: Geographical midpoint of Europe

text: Austrian geographers also marked the 939-metre-high Tillenberg (Dyleň) near the Bohemian city of Eger/Cheb with a copper plate as the centre of Europe. As the border to Germany/Bavaria runs 100 m west of the mountaintop, the German village of Bad Neualbenreuth uses this for promotional purposes. Bayerischer Rundfunk journalists asked the Institut für Geographie of the University of Munich to verify the claims. The institute concluded that the centre lies further to the south, in Hildweinsreuth near Flossenbürg.


title: Geographical midpoint of Europe

text: In 1988 using Spherical trigonometry with the three corners of Europe as Cabo de São Vincente in the west, Spitsbergen in the north and Astrakan in the east, Arne Wennberg calculated Landskrona as the midpoint of Europe. A monument is built on the town square in the form of a pen stuck in stone.


title: Geographical midpoint of Europe

text: After a re-estimation of the boundaries of the continent of Europe in 1989, Jean-George Affholder, a scientist at the Institut Géographique National (French National Geographic Institute) determined that the geographic centre of Europe is located at . The method used for calculating this point was that of the centre of gravity of the geometrical figure of Europe.


title: Geographical midpoint of Europe

text: This point is located in Lithuania, near the village of Girija. A monument, composed by the sculptor Gediminas Jokūbonis and consisting of a column of white granite surmounted by a crown of stars, was erected at the location in 2004. An area of woods and fields surrounding the geographic centre point and including Lake Girija, Bernotai Hill, and an old burial ground, was set aside as a reserve in 1992. The State Tourism Department at the Ministry of Economy of Lithuania has classified the Geographic Centre monument and its reserve as a tourist attraction. 17 km away lies Europos Parkas, "Open Air Museum of the Centre of Europe", a sculpture park containing the world's largest sculpture made of TV sets.


title: Geographical midpoint of Europe

text: It is claimed that a 1992 survey found that the geometric centre of Europe is in the village of Tállya, Hungary . In 2000, a sculpture was erected in the village, with a table on it declaring the place the "Geometric Centre of Europe".


title: Geographical midpoint of Europe

text: In 2000 Belarusian scientists Alexey Solomonov and Valery Anoshko published a report that stated the geographic centre of Europe was located near Lake Sho (; ) in Vitsebsk Voblast.


title: Geographical midpoint of Europe

text: The scientists used a special computer program that takes Europe in a single entity – the White Sea and the Baltic Sea, Britain and Ireland were included in the program as continental zone objects. It is assumed that in the calculations to determine the center of Europe, one must take into account the inland waters of Europe and the Ural Mountains, the eastern border of Europe.


title: Geographical midpoint of Europe

text: Scientists from the Russian Central Research Institute of Geodesy, Aerial Survey and Cartography () confirmed the calculations of Belarusian geodesists that the geographical centre of Europe is located in Polotsk . A small monument to the Geographical Centre of Europe was set up in Polotsk on 31 May 2008.


title: Geographical midpoint of Europe

text: It is claimed that if all the islands of Europe – from the Azores to Franz Joseph Land and from Crete to Iceland – are taken into consideration then the centre of Europe lies at in the village of Mõnnuste, on Saaremaa island in western Estonia. Again, no author and no method of calculation have been disclosed. The local Kärla Parish is seeking to verify the location and to turn it into a tourist location.


title: Geographical midpoint of Europe

text: The French Institut Géographique National (IGN) has been calculating the changing location of what it estimates to be the geographical centre of the European Union (EU) since at least 1987. Its calculations exclude such extra-European territories of the EU as French Polynesia. As the European Union (or formerly – European Community) has grown in the last 50 years, the geographical centre has shifted with each expansion.


title: Geographical midpoint of Europe

text: 12 members: In 1987 the centre of the European Community of the 12 members was declared to be in the middle of France, in the village of Saint-André-le-Coq, département of Puy-de-Dôme, région of Auvergne.


title: Geographical midpoint of Europe

text: 12 members after the reunification of Germany. In 1990, the centre shifted some 25 km north-eastward, to the place called Noireterre in the village of Saint-Clément, département of Allier, the same région of Auvergne. A small monument commemorating the latter discovery still exists in Saint Clément.


title: Geographical midpoint of Europe

text: 15 members: Using the same techniques, the IGN has identified the geographic centre of the 15-member Union (1995–2004) to be in Viroinval, Belgium, at coordinates , and a monument there records that finding.


title: Geographical midpoint of Europe

text: 25 members: The 25-member Union (2004–2007), had a centre calculated by the IGN to be situated at , in the village of Kleinmaischeid, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.


title: Geographical midpoint of Europe

text: 27 members: On 1 January 2007, with the inclusion of Romania and Bulgaria in the European Union, the geographic centre of the European Union changed to a wheat field outside of the German town Gelnhausen, in the state of Hesse, 115 km east of the previous marker, at .


title: Geographical midpoint of Europe

text: 28 members: On 1 July 2013, with the accession of Croatia, the geographic centre entered North-West Bavaria in the place Westerngrund at the river Schulzengrundbach at . When the French overseas department Mayotte (Indian Ocean island group between Southeast African mainland and Madagascar) joined the EU on 10 May 2014 (as part of France), the geographic center shifted by 500 m to , still at Westerngrund, beside a path. It is 40 km east of Frankfurt, Germany, which is headquarters to the European Central Bank.


title: Geographical midpoint of Europe

text: 27 members after Brexit: On 31 January 2020, with the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the EU, the geographical mid-point moved to Gadheim near Würzburg, Bavaria, at .


title: Geographical midpoint of Europe

text: The geographical midpoint of the European Union is not free from disputes, either. If some different extreme points of the European Union, like some Atlantic Ocean islands, are taken into consideration this point is calculated in different locations.


title: Geographical midpoint of Europe

text: The original centre of the Eurozone is located in France. This location has changed with the accession of new countries into the Eurozone (e.g. Slovakia 2009).


title: Geographical midpoint of Europe

text: A 2004 Polish-German documentary, "Środek Europy" ("Die Mitte", "The Center"), written and directed by Stanisław Mucha, shows over a dozen different locations.


title: NASCAR engine

text: NASCAR, the highest governing body and top level division for stock car racing, has used a range of different types of engine configurations and displacements over its 72-year history; since its inaugural season in 1949. The engines are currently used in the Cup Series, Xfinity Series, Camping World Truck Series, and the Whelen Modified Tour.


title: NASCAR engine

text: The 1949 Oldsmobile Rocket V-8, with a displacement of , is widely recognized as the first postwar modern overhead valve (OHV) engine to become available to the public. The Oldsmobile was an immediate success in 1949 and 1950, and all the automobile manufacturers could not help noticing the higher sales of the Oldsmobile 88 to the buying public. The motto of the day became "win on Sunday, sell on Monday."


title: NASCAR engine

text: At the time, it typically took three years for a new engine design to end up in production and be available for NASCAR racing. Most cars sold to the public did not have a wide variety of engine choices, and the majority of the buying public at the time was not interested in the large displacement special edition engine options that would soon become popular. However, the end of the Korean War in 1953 started an economic boom, and then car buyers immediately began demanding more powerful engines.


title: NASCAR engine

text: During the early days of stock car racing, more horsepower ultimately meant more wins. The sleek and aerodynamic Hudson Hornet managed to win in 1951, 1952, and 1953, using a flat-head inline six-cylinder engine.


title: NASCAR engine

text: In 1955, Chrysler produced the C-300 with its Chrysler FirePower engine OHV engine, which easily won in 1955 and 1956.


title: NASCAR engine

text: In 1957, Chevrolet sold enough of their new fuel injected engines to the public in order to make them available for racing (and Ford began selling superchargers as an option), but Bill France immediately banned fuel injection and superchargers from NASCAR before they could race. However, even without official factory support or the use of fuel injection, Buck Baker won in 1957 driving a small-block V-8 Chevrolet Bel Air.


title: NASCAR engine

text: In 1961, Ford introduced the F1 390 in a low drag Galaxie "Starliner", but 1960 and '61 championships were won by drivers in 409-powered Chevrolet Impalas.


title: NASCAR engine

text: Pontiac introduced their "Super Duty" 421 in Catalinas that made use of many aluminum body parts to save weight, and the Pontiacs easily won in 1962.


title: NASCAR engine

text: It became apparent that manufacturers were willing to produce increasingly larger engines to remain competitive (Ford had developed a 483 they hoped to race). For the 1963 season NASCAR engines were restricted to using a maximum displacement of , and using only two valves per cylinder.


title: NASCAR engine

text: Then, in 1964 the new Chrysler 426 Hemi engine so dominated the series in a Plymouth Belvedere "Sport Fury", the homologation rules were changed so that 1,000 of any engine and car had to be sold to the public to qualify as a stock part, instead of just 500. This made the 426 Hemi unavailable for the 1965 season.


title: NASCAR engine

text: In 1965 Ford adapted two single-overhead-cams to their FE 427 V8 to allow it to run at a higher RPM (called the Ford 427 Cammer). Ford started to sell "cammers" to the public to homologate it (mostly to dealer-sponsored privateer drag racers), but NASCAR changed the rules to specify that all NASCAR engines must use a single cam-in-block. But even without the cammer, the Ford FE 427 won in 1965. This engine powered the early-to-mid-1960s Ford Galaxie, and produced @ 7000 rpm, and at 3800 rpm, using a standard single four-barrel carburetor, and over using a double four-barrel carburetor.


title: NASCAR engine

text: In the 1980's, NASCAR Xfinity Series competitors began looking at alternatives from the 5-litre based ( engines, as in short track racing there was a push for six-cylinder engines in short track racing to save on costs, with some series allowing weight breaks. One popular idea was to use six-cylinder engines; instead of Cup Series' V-8s.


title: NASCAR engine

text: In 1989, NASCAR changed rules requiring cars to use current body styles, similar to the Cup cars. However, the cars still used V6 engines. The cars gradually became similar to Cup cars.


title: NASCAR engine

text: 1994 was the final year that V6 engines were used in the Busch Series, as many short track series had abandoned six-cylinder engines.


title: NASCAR engine

text: In 1995, changes were made. The series switched to V-8 power, with a compression ratio of 9:1 (as opposed to 14:1 for Cup at the time). The introduction of V-8s, made the two series' cars increasingly similar.


title: NASCAR engine

text: The cars are currently powered by EFI V8 engines, since 2012, after 62 years using carburetion as engine fuel feed with compacted graphite iron blocks and pushrod valvetrains actuating two-valves per cylinder, and are limited to a 358 cubic inch (5.9-liter) displacement. The 2011 Sprint Cup season was the last complete Cup season with carbureted engines; at the end of the 2011 season, NASCAR announced that it would change to an electronic fuel injection system for the 2012 racing season. NXS cars do, however, continue to use carburetors. However, modern technology has allowed power outputs near in unrestricted form while retaining the conventional basic engine design. In fact, before NASCAR instituted the gear rule, Cup engines were capable of operating more than 10,000 rpm, and producing near . A NASCAR Cup Series engine with the maximum bore of and stroke of at 9,000 rpm has a mean piston speed of 80.44 fps (24.75 m/s). Contemporary Cup engines run 9,800 rpm, 87.59 fps (26.95 m/s), at the road course events, on Pocono Raceway's long front stretch, and at Martinsville Speedway (a .526-mile short-track). At the backbone 1.5- to 2.0-mile tri-oval tracks of NASCAR, the engines produce over 850 hp running 9,200-9,400 rpm for 500 miles, 600 mi for the Coca-Cola 600 Charlotte race. The current NASCAR Cup engines curb weight is roughly at .


title: NASCAR engine

text: For the 2015 NASCAR Cup Series, power output of the competing cars ranged from 750 to 800 hp (560 to 600 kW).


title: NASCAR engine

text: The engines used in the final iteration of the Generation 6 cars were limited to on tracks 1 mile or below; on tracks greater than one mile (2019–21)


title: NASCAR engine

text: Modern contemporary NASCAR engines are capable of producing well over 2 hp/cu. in. (up to 2.5 hp/cu. in.).


title: NASCAR engine

text: Currently, Next Gen NASCAR engines are even less powerful. They are rated at for restrictor plate racing, and for all other tracks; including road courses, short tracks, and intermediate ovals.


title: NASCAR engine

text: NASCAR will test a hybrid powertrain at the 2023 24 Heures du Mans in the Next Gen car with a smaller engine, per request of the Automobile Club de l'Ouest with a potential of a formula change in 2024.


title: NASCAR engine

text: NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour series stock cars are powered by small-block V-8 engines, usually of of displacement, although larger or smaller engines can be used. Engine components are largely similar to those used in the Cup Series, but Whelen Modified Tour engines use a small four-barrel carburetor (rated at per minute, about half the airflow of previous modified carburetors), which limits their output to . On large tracks such as New Hampshire Motor Speedway, the engines must have a restrictor plate between the carburetor and intake manifold, reducing engine power and car speed for safety reasons.


title: NASCAR engine

text: As a safety measure to reduce speeds at the two high-banked superspeedways (Daytona and Talladega), restrictor plates are used. There are some tracks, however, where restrictor plates are not mandated and therefore see faster speeds—specifically Atlanta Motor Speedway and Texas Motor Speedway. While Atlanta is generally considered the fastest track, restrictor plates are not mandated there. In 2004 and 2005, higher qualifying speeds were posted at Texas, earning it the title of the circuit's fastest track. Unrestricted, Sprint Cup cars produce over 750 horsepower (560 kW) and can run at speeds in excess of 200 mph. Rusty Wallace completed a 2004 test for NASCAR at Talladega in which he used an unrestricted motor to complete average lap speeds of and top speeds near . The 2010 width is 63/64-inch. This is the largest carburetor restrictor plate opening since the one-inch mandate in 1988, the first year the horsepower-reducing plates were used in the Cup Series at Daytona.


title: NASCAR engine

text: Unfortunately, the restrictor plates have an unintended effect on the race. Because of the reduced horsepower of the cars, the cars form large packs. During a race, it is not uncommon to see thirty or more lead changes during a race. This also is the source of the Big One. When a driver crashes, usually, they take that pack with them. During the 2010 Coke Zero 400, 21 of the 43 cars crashed. This is a safety concern that has puzzled NASCAR. However, an unexpected consequence of the introduction of the Car of Tomorrow and re-paving of Daytona and Talladega track surfaces has been the separation of the pack into two-car pairs.


title: NASCAR engine

text: Since the 2012 season, NASCAR Cup cars now have fuel injection instead of carburetors, but restrictor plates are still being used.


title: NASCAR engine

text: Beginning in 1971, NASCAR rewrote the rules to effectively force the Ford and Chrysler specialty cars out of the competition by limiting them to 305c.i. (5.0L). The cars affected by this rule include the Ford Talladega, Mercury Spoiler II, Dodge Charger 500, Dodge Charger Daytona and the Plymouth Superbird. This rule was so effective in limiting performance that only one car that season ever attempted to run in this configuration.


title: NASCAR engine

text: In 1971, NASCAR handicapped the larger engines with a restrictor plate. By 1972, NASCAR phased in a rule to lower the maximum engine displacement from 429 cubic inches (7.0 liters) to its present 358 cubic inches (5.8 liters). The transition was not complete until 1974 and coincided with American manufacturers ending factory support of racing and the 1973 oil crisis.


title: NASCAR engine

text: After a series of flips and dangerous crashes in the 1980s, NASCAR began requiring all cars to run a restrictor plate at Daytona and Talladega. The restrictor plate limits air into the engine, reducing horsepower and speed at these tracks from 230-240 mph to 195-200 mph. At these races, in addition to the restrictor plate, there are a variety of other technical rules and regulations to keep the cars stable and on the track. In addition to these technical rules, restrictor-plate races and road courses are the only races where NASCAR enforces track limits. At the high-speed superspeedways, track limits are marked by a double yellow line separating the apron from the racing surface. Exceeding track limits to advance one's position is subject to a drive-through penalty, or if the foul occurs on the last lap that car will be relegated to the last car on the lead lap in official race results. The superspeedway track limits (often referred as the "yellow line rule") have been part of considerable criticism and controversies, such as when Regan Smith was stripped of second-place finish at the 2008 AMP Energy 500 following a last-lap pass attempt that went below the line and controversies surrounding the finish of the 2020 YellaWood 500, with former drivers turned television coverage pundits Dale Jarrett and Dale Earnhardt Jr. (the latter being involved in a track limits controversy at the 2003 Aaron's 499) calling for the repeal of the rule. If track limits are violated on road courses (such as not making a chicane, enforced at Watkins Glen, Daytona, and Charlotte road courses), drivers must stop at an assigned point of the circuit or face a drive-through penalty.


title: NASCAR engine

text: The NASCAR Cup Series and Xfinity Series mandated the use of restrictor plates at Daytona International Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway from 1988 to 2019. The plates were put into use in 1988 as a result of a wreck in the 1987 Winston 500 at Talladega that involved the car of Bobby Allison crashing into the front stretch catch fence at a high enough speed to destroy almost 100 feet of the fence and put the race under a red flag condition for two hours. The following race at Talladega that year would be run with a smaller carburetor, however, NASCAR mandated the use of the restrictor plate at the end of the season.


title: NASCAR engine

text: The restrictions are in the interest of driver and fan safety because speeds higher than the 190 mph range used for Daytona and Talladega risk cars turning over through sheer aerodynamic forces alone. The severity of crashes at higher speeds is also much greater, shown by telemetry readings of wrecks such as Elliott Sadler at Pocono Raceway and Michael McDowell at Texas Motor Speedway that were far higher than registered on restrictor-plate tracks. Drivers such as Rusty Wallace have cited data showing that the roof flaps used on the cars cannot keep them on the ground above 204 MPH.


title: NASCAR engine

text: The drawback to the use of the restrictor plates has been the increased size of packs of cars caused by the decreased power coupled with the drag the vehicles naturally produce. At Daytona and Talladega, most races are marred by at least one wreck, usually referred to as "the Big One", as cars rarely become separated. Talladega has been considered the more likely track for these instances to occur as the track is incredibly wide, enough to have three to four distinct lines of cars running side by side. With the new pavement at Daytona, three-wide racing became far easier, and multi-car wrecks became more common. The 2011 Daytona 500 saw a record number of cautions including an early 17-car pile-up. These wrecks tend to be singled out for criticism despite multicar crashes at other tracks and the generally greater severity of impact on non-restricted tracks. In addition, the packs were far smaller in 1988 through 1990 until more teams mastered the nuances of this kind of racing and improved their cars (and drivers) accordingly.


title: NASCAR engine

text: The 2011 Sprint Cup season was the last complete Cup season with carbureted engines; at the end of the 2011 season, NASCAR announced that it would change to an electronic fuel injection system for the 2012 racing season. The injection system used by NASCAR is a different system from that used in IndyCar Racing and other motorsports series; the EFI system that NASCAR put into use was compatible with the old restrictor plates, allowing NASCAR to continue to use them to keep the speeds lower at the superspeedways and save costs for race teams. The restrictor plates were bolted beneath a throttle body that sits in the same place as the former carburetors.


title: NASCAR engine

text: Tapered spacers have been used in NASCAR's Cup Series since 2015, when a 1.170-inch aluminum block reduced horsepower from about to approximately at several tracks.


title: NASCAR engine

text: The 2019 rules package mandates those same-sized spacers at all tracks less than 1.33 miles. A 0.922-inch spacer will be used at all oval tracks 1.33 miles and above, which will decrease engine horsepower to about 550.


title: NASCAR engine

text: The last race with the original restrictor plates was the 2019 Daytona 500; after that race, the cars moved to a variable-sized tapered spacer already used at all other tracks, with the exception that the spacer would have smaller holes than the ones used at the smaller tracks, to ensure speeds stay under 200 MPH. The shape of the spacer helps a car funnel more air smoothly into the manifold, increasing fuel performance, while ensuring airflow is still restricted. With that change, NASCAR also mandated the use of larger rear spoilers, larger front splitters, and specially-placed front-end aero ducts. The combination of those features increased drag on the cars, counteracting the increased horsepower, keeping the cars close to the speeds they were running prior to the switch to the tapered spacer. While the racing quality noticeably improved, and passing was made easier with larger horsepower and bigger runs, speeds also noticeably increased past 200 MPH, and even into 205 MPH ranges.


title: NASCAR engine

text: The first use came in 1970 as part of a transition from the seven-liter era (427 cubic-inch) to the six-liter era (358 cubic-inch) engine. Following testing and input from drivers such as David Pearson, Bobby Isaac, and Bobby Allison, NASCAR mandated the use of a restrictor plate for the big-block seven-liter engines. Small-block engines, in the 358 cubic inch range, were exempt from the plates; the first car to race with a small-block engine was Dick Brooks at the 1971 Daytona 500, where he ran a 1969 Dodge Daytona with a 305 CID engine. The transition period lasted until 1974, when the current 358 cubic-inch (5870cc) limit was imposed and NASCAR eliminated the 427 cubic-inch (7000cc) engine. As the early 1970s use of restrictor plates was considered a transitional process, and as not every car used restrictor plates, this is not what most fans call "restrictor plate racing".


title: NASCAR engine

text: The second use came following the crash of Bobby Allison at the 1987 Winston 500 at Talladega Superspeedway. Allison's Buick LeSabre blew a tire going into the tri-oval at , spun around and became airborne, flying tail-first into the catch fencing. While the car did not enter the grandstands it tore down nearly 100 feet of fencing and flying debris injured several spectators. After a summer where the two subsequent superspeedway races were run with smaller carburetors (390 cubic feet per minute (cfm) instead of 830 cfm) proved to be inadequate to sufficiently slow the cars, NASCAR imposed restrictor plates again, this time at the two fastest circuits, both superspeedways: Daytona for all NASCAR-sanctioned races and Talladega for Cup races. The Automobile Racing Club of America also enforced restrictor plates at their events at the two tracks. In 1992, when the Busch Grand National series began racing at Talladega, the plates were implemented, in keeping with their use at Daytona.


title: NASCAR engine

text: NASCAR's concerns with speeds because of power-to-weight ratios result in restrictor plates at other tracks. The Goody's Dash Series (known now as the ISCARS series with its new ownership) used restrictor plates at Bristol during at least the last years of the series' existence when the cars were using six-cylinder engines (compared to the traditional four-cylinder engines), in addition to their Daytona races.


title: NASCAR engine

text: However, restrictor plates were not initially used for Camping World Truck Series trucks. Rather, aerodynamic air intake reduction through the use of a 390 cfm carburetor, and eventually a tapered carburetor spacer was implemented for those races. Combined with the aerodynamic disadvantage of the trucks, this allowed NASCAR to avoid the use of such equipment for the trucks until 2008. In 2008, the Nationwide Series (now known as Xfinity Series) and Truck Series began implementation of tapered spacers in the engines to restrict power compared to Sprint Cup cars at all 35 (NNS) and 25 (NCTS) races. Both these NASCAR series now use a restrictor plate and tapered spacer at the two tracks.


title: NASCAR engine

text: The third use came in 2000. Following fatal crashes of Adam Petty and Kenny Irwin Jr. at the New Hampshire International Speedway during the May Busch Series and July Winston Cup Series races, respectively, NASCAR adopted a one-inch (2.54 cm) restrictor plate to slow the cars headed towards the tight turns as part of a series of reforms to alleviate stuck throttle problems which were alleged to have caused both fatal crashes. For the Winston Cup race, it was used just once at the 2000 Dura Lube 300. Jeff Burton led all 300 laps in the ensuing race, despite a 23-car two-abreast battle in the first ten laps, a dramatic charge past 22 cars in 100 laps by John Andretti (who finished seventh), and two charges by Bobby Labonte in the final 50 laps where he took the lead but Burton beat him back to the stripe. The use of restrictor plates, intended as an emergency measure pending a more permanent replacement, in any event, was discontinued at New Hampshire for the following race for Cup only. However, the Modifieds still use a restrictor plate because the speeds are too great for that class of racecar without them. The track has since been changed with SAFER Barriers to improve racing safety. Restrictor plates remain a permanent fixture on the Modifieds and the racing has often broken 20 official lead changes for 100–125 laps of competition.


title: NASCAR engine

text: Rusty Wallace tested a car at Talladega Superspeedway without a restrictor plate in 2004, reaching a top speed of in the backstretch and a one-lap average of . While admitting excitement at the achievement, Wallace also conceded, "There's no way we could be out there racing at those speeds... it would be insane to think we could have a pack of cars out there doing that."


title: NASCAR engine

text: In 2016, following a series of uncompetitive races at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, NASCAR began a series of tests for the Xfinity Series using a smaller restrictor plate than used at Daytona and Talladega and aerodynamic aids. After the tests were successful, the rules package was imposed for the 2017 race at Indianapolis. For 2018, the package is being used at Indianapolis, Michigan, and Pocono for the Xfinity Series and in the All-Star Race in the Cup Series.


title: NASCAR engine

text: A frequent criticism of restrictor plates is the enormous size of packs in the racing, with "Big One" wrecks as noted above singled out for condemnation despite the greater violence of "smaller" crashes on unrestricted tracks. In restrictor plate racing the packs have brought about an often-enormous increase in positional passing; at Talladega Superspeedway the Sprint Cup cars have broken 40 official lead changes sixteen times from 1988 onward, including both 2010 Sprint Cup races at Talladega, which had 87 official lead changes in the regulation 188 laps. (The 2010 Aaron's 499 had 88 lead changes, but the 88th – the race-winning pass by Kevin Harvick – was on the last lap of the third attempt at a green-white-checkered finish). Daytona International Speedway has generally been less competitive because the age of the asphalt (the track was repaved in 1978 and again in 2010) has reduced grip for the cars and thus handling has impeded passing ability to a significant extent. The 2000 New Hampshire race was condemned because Jeff Burton led wire to wire; the plates were singled out as impeding the ability to pass, a criticism contradicted by the use of restrictor plates in a Busch North support race the day before where the lead changed seven times in 100 laps and by the highly competitive nature of restrictor plated Modified races; as noted above the 300 also saw a 23-car battle for third in the first ten laps and a burst by 22 cars from John Andretti.


title: NASCAR engine

text: The criticism stems from the reduction in throttle response brought by the restriction. The reduction in throttle response, however, has never been shown to have impeded the ability to pass; the criticism was shot down in the first "modern" plate race, the 1988 Daytona 500, as the lead changed 25 times officially and saw several bursts where the lead changed several times a lap and also several bursts of sustained side-by-side racing, notably in the final 50 laps between Bobby Allison, Darrell Waltrip, Neil Bonnett, and Buddy Baker.


title: NASCAR engine

text: Said Waltrip before the race, "I feel, as a driver, now I can do more than I could before (the plates). Now, instead of a car just blasting by me with a burst of speed and a lot of horsepower, he's got to think his way, he got to "drive" his way around me."


title: NASCAR engine

text: In the transitional years (1971–74) where the seven-liter engines (427 cu in) had restrictor plates, Daytona and Talladega broke 40 official lead changes six times, while Michigan International Speedway broke 35 official lead changes in both of its 1971 races.


title: Fighter pilot

text: A fighter pilot is a military aviator trained to engage in air-to-air combat, air-to-ground combat and sometimes electronic warfare while in the cockpit of a fighter aircraft. Fighter pilots undergo specialized training in aerial warfare and dogfighting (close range aerial combat). A fighter pilot with at least five air-to-air kills becomes known as an ace.


title: Fighter pilot

text: Fighter pilots are one of the most highly regarded and desirable positions of any air force. Selection processes only accept the elite out of all the potential candidates. An individual who possesses an exceptional academic record, physical fitness, healthy well-being, and a strong mental drive will have a higher chance of being selected for pilot training. Candidates are also expected to exhibit strong leadership and teamwork abilities. As such, in nearly all air forces, fighter pilots, as are pilots of most other aircraft, are commissioned officers.


title: Fighter pilot

text: Fighter pilots must be in optimal health to handle the physical demands of modern aerial warfare. Excellent heart condition is required, as the increased "G's" a pilot experiences in a turn can cause stress on the cardiovascular system. One "G" is equal to the force of gravity experienced under normal conditions, two "G"s would be twice the force of normal gravity. Some fighter aircraft can accelerate to up to 9 G’s. Fighter pilots also require strong muscle tissue along the extremities and abdomen, for performing an anti-G straining maneuver (AGSM, see below) when performing tight turns and other highly accelerated maneuvers. Better-than-average visual acuity is also a highly desirable and valuable trait.


title: Fighter pilot

text: Modern medium and long range active radar homing and semi-active radar homing missiles can be fired at targets outside or beyond visual range. However, when a pilot is dogfighting at short-range, his position relative to the opponent is decidedly important. Outperformance of another pilot and that pilot's aircraft is critical to maintain the upper-hand. A common saying for dogfighting is "lose sight, lose fight".


title: Fighter pilot

text: If one pilot had a greater missile range than the other, he would choose to fire his missile first, before being in range of the enemy's missile. Normally, the facts of an enemy's weapon payload is unknown, and are revealed as the fight progresses.


title: Fighter pilot

text: Pilots are trained to employ specific tactics and maneuvers when they are under attack. Attacks from missiles are usually countered with electronic countermeasures, Flares and chaff. Missiles like the AIM-120 AMRAAM, however, can actively home in on jamming signals.


title: Fighter pilot

text: Dogfighting at is considered "close". Pilots perform stressful maneuvers to gain advantage in the dogfight. Pilots need to be in good shape in order to handle the high G-forces caused by aerial combat. Pilots flex their legs and torso to keep blood from draining out of the head. This is known as the AGSM or the M1 or, sometimes, as the "grunt".


title: Fighter pilot

text: Many early air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles had very simple infrared homing ("heat seeking") guidance systems with a narrow field of view. These missiles could be avoided by simply turning sharply, which essentially caused the missile to lose sight of the target aircraft. Another tactic was to exploit a missile's limited range by performing evasive maneuvers until the missiles had run out of fuel.


title: Fighter pilot

text: Modern infrared missiles, like the AIM-9 Sidewinder, have a more advanced guidance system. Supercooled infrared detectors help the missile find a possible exhaust source, and software assists the missile in flying towards its target. Pilots normally drop flares to confuse or decoy these missiles by creating more multiple heat signatures hotter than that of the aircraft for the missile to lock onto and guide away from the defending aircraft.


title: Fighter pilot

text: Radar homing missiles could sometimes be confused by surface objects or geographical features causing clutter for the guidance system of either the missile or ground station guiding it. Chaff is another option in the case that the aircraft is too high up to use geographical obstructions. Pilots have to be aware of the potential threats and learn to distinguish between the two where possible. They use the RWR (radar warning receiver) to discern the types of signals hitting their aircraft.


title: Fighter pilot

text: When maneuvering fiercely during engagements, pilots are subjected to high G-force. G-forces express the magnitude of gravity, with 1G being equivalent to Earth's normal pull of gravity. Because modern jet aircraft are highly agile and have the capacity to make very sharp turns, the pilot's body is often pushed to the limit.


title: Fighter pilot

text: When executing a "positive G" maneuver like turning upwards the force pushes the pilot down. The most serious consequence of this is that the blood in the pilot's body is also pulled down and into their extremities. If the forces are great enough and over a sufficient period of time this can lead to blackouts (called "G-induced loss of consciousness" or G-LOC), because not enough blood is reaching the pilot's brain. To counteract this effect pilots are trained to tense their legs and abdominal muscles to restrict the "downward" flow of blood. This is known as the "grunt" or the "Hick maneuver". Both names allude to the sounds the pilot makes, and is the primary method of resisting G-LOCs. Modern flight suits, called G-suits, are worn by pilots to contract around the extremities exerting pressure, providing about 1G of extra tolerance.


title: Fighter pilot

text: Some notable fighter pilots, including some for being flying aces and others who went on to non-fighter pilot notoriety (record breaking test pilots, astronauts and cosmonauts, politicians, business leaders, etc.):


title: Fighter pilot

text: Until the early 1990s, women were disqualified from becoming fighter pilots in most of the air forces throughout the world. The exceptions being Turkey where Sabiha Gökçen became the first female fighter pilot in history in 1936 and went on to fly fast jets well into the 1950s, and the USSR during the Second World War 1942–1945 where many women were trained as fighter pilots in the 586th Fighter Aviation Regiment including Lilya Litvyak who became the top scoring woman ace of all time with 12 kills and Katya Budanova a close second with 11 kills, although both were killed in combat. During the 1990s, a number of air forces removed the bar on women becoming fighter pilots:


title: Hasekura Tsunenaga

text: In the years 1613 through 1620, Hasekura headed the Keichō Embassy (), a diplomatic mission to Pope Paul V. He visited New Spain and various other ports-of-call in Europe on the way. On the return trip, Hasekura and his companions re-traced their route across New Spain in 1619, sailing from Acapulco for Manila, and then sailing north to Japan in 1620. He is considered the first Japanese ambassador in the Americas and in Spain, despite other less well-known and less well-documented missions preceding his mission.


title: Hasekura Tsunenaga

text: Although Hasekura's embassy was cordially received in Spain and Rome, it happened at a time when Japan was moving toward the suppression of Christianity. European monarchs refused the trade agreements Hasekura had been seeking. He returned to Japan in 1620 and died of illness a year later, his embassy seemingly ending with few results in an increasingly isolationist Japan.


title: Hasekura Tsunenaga

text: Japan's next embassy to Europe would not occur until more than 200 years later, following two centuries of isolation, with the "First Japanese Embassy to Europe" in 1862.


title: Hasekura Tsunenaga

text: Hasekura Tsunenaga was born in year 2 of the Genki era (1571) in Ushū, Okitama-no-kōri, Nagai-sō, Tateishi-mura (now part of modern day Yonezawa in Yamagata Prefecture. He was the son of (), who had ancestral ties with Emperor Kanmu. He was a mid-level noble samurai in the Sendai Domain in northern Japan who had the opportunity to directly serve the daimyō, Date Masamune, and received an annual stipend of 1200 koku. He spent his young adulthood at Kamitate Castle () that was constructed by his grandfather Hasekura Tsunemasa (). The place of origin of the family name "Hasekura" was Hasekura Village (), now Hasekura Ward () in Kawasaki City.


title: Hasekura Tsunenaga

text: Hasekura and Date Masamune were of roughly the same age, and it is recorded that several important missions were given to Tsunenaga as his representative. It is also recorded that Hasekura served as a samurai during the Japanese invasion of Korea under the Taikō Toyotomi Hideyoshi, for six months in 1597.


title: Hasekura Tsunenaga

text: In 1612, Hasekura's father, Hasekura Tsunenari (), was indicted for corruption, and he was put to death in 1613. His fief was confiscated, and his son should normally have been executed as well. Date, however, gave him the opportunity to redeem his honour by placing him in charge of the Embassy to Europe, and soon gave him back his territories as well.