title: Elasmosaurus

text: In a 1918 review of the geographic distribution and evolution of "Elasmosaurus", Pravoslavlev provisionally assigned three other previously named species to "Elasmosaurus"; his taxonomic opinions have not been widely followed. One of these was "E.chilensis", based on the Chilean "Plesiosaurus chilensis" named from a single tail vertebra by Claude Gay in 1848. Wilhelm Deecke moved "chilensis" to "Pliosaurus" in 1895, a classification which was acknowledged by Pravoslavlev. Edwin Colbert later assigned the type vertebra in 1949 to a pliosauroid, and also assigned other assigned remains to indeterminate elasmosauroids; the type vertebra was recognized as potentially belonging to "Aristonectes parvidens" by José O'Gorman and colleagues in 2013. Another was "E.haasti", originally "Mauisaurus haasti", named by James Hector in 1874 based on remains found in New Zealand. Although its validity was supported for a considerable time, "M.haasti" is regarded as a "nomen dubium" as of 2017. Pravoslavlev recognized another species from New Zealand, "E.hoodii", named by Owen in 1870 as "Plesiosaurus hoodii" based on a neck vertebra. Welles recognized it as a "nomen dubium" in 1962; Joan Wiffen and William Moisley concurred in a 1986 review of New Zealand plesiosaurs.


title: Elasmosaurus

text: In 1949 Welles named a new species of "Elasmosaurus", "E.morgani". It was named from a well-preserved skeleton found in Dallas County, Texas. However, part of the specimen was accidentally thrown out during the relocation of the Southern Methodist University's paleontological collections. Welles recognized "E.morgani"s similarity to "E.platyurus" in its shoulder girdle, but maintained it as a separate species due to its shorter neck and more robust rear neck vertebrae. In 1997 Carpenter reconsidered the differences between the two species, and found them sufficient to place "E.morgani" in its own genus, which he named "Libonectes". Despite its reassignment and the loss of its material, "L.morgani" is often considered an archetypal elasmosaurid. Data based on these lost elements were unquestionably accepted in subsequent phylogenetic analyses, until a redescription of the surviving elements was published by Sachs and Benjamin Kear in 2015.


title: Elasmosaurus

text: Persson assigned another species to "Elasmosaurus" alongside his 1959 description of ""E."helmerseni" remains from Sweden, namely "E.(?)gigas". It was based on Schröder's "Pliosaurus(?) gigas", named in 1885 from two dorsals; one was found in Prussia, the other in Scania. While they were incomplete, Persson recognized that their proportions and the shape of their articular ends differed greatly from pliosauroids, and instead agreed well with elasmosaurids. Given that, at the time of Persson's writing, "there [was] nothing to contradict that they are nearest akin to "Elasmosaurus"", he assigned them to "Elasmosaurus" "with hesitation". Theodor Wagner had previously assigned "gigas" to "Plesiosaurus" in 1914. As of 2013, this questionable attribution remains unchanged. Another species from Russia, "E.antiquus", was named by Dubeikovskii and Ochev in 1967 from the Kamsko-Vyatsky phosphorite quarry, but Pervushov and colleagues in 1999, followed by Storrs and colleagues in 2000, reinterpreted it as an indeterminate elasmosaurid.


title: Elasmosaurus

text: Though Cope had originally recognized "Elasmosaurus" as a plesiosaur, in an 1869 paper he placed it, with "Cimoliasaurus" and "Crymocetus", in a new order of sauropterygian reptiles. He named the group Streptosauria, or "reversed lizards", due to the orientation of their individual vertebrae supposedly being reversed compared to what is seen in other vertebrate animals. He subsequently abandoned this idea in his 1869 description of "Elasmosaurus", where he stated he had based it on Leidy's erroneous interpretation of "Cimoliasaurus". In this paper, he also named the new family Elasmosauridae, containing "Elasmosaurus" and "Cimoliasaurus", without comment. Within this family, he considered the former to be distinguished by a longer neck with compressed vertebrae, and the latter by a shorter neck with square, depressed vertebrae.


title: Elasmosaurus

text: In subsequent years, Elasmosauridae came to be one of three groups in which plesiosaurs were classified, the others being the Pliosauridae and Plesiosauridae (sometimes merged into one group). Charles Andrews elaborated on differences between elasmosaurids and pliosaurids in 1910 and 1913. He characterized elasmosaurids by their long necks and small heads, as well as by their rigid and well-developed scapulae (but atrophied or absent clavicles and interclavicles) for forelimb-driven locomotion. Meanwhile, pliosaurids had short necks but large heads, and used hindlimb-driven locomotion. Although the placement of "Elasmosaurus" in the Elasmosauridae remained uncontroversial, opinions on the relationships of the family became variable over subsequent decades. Williston created a revised taxonomy of plesiosaurs in 1925.


title: Elasmosaurus

text: In 1940 Theodore White published a hypothesis on the interrelationships between different plesiosaurian families. He considered Elasmosauridae to be closest to the Pliosauridae, noting their relatively narrow coracoids as well as their lack of interclavicles or clavicles. His diagnosis of the Elasmosauridae also noted the moderate length of the skull (i.e., a mesocephalic skull); the neck ribs having one or two heads; the scapula and coracoid contacting at the midline; the blunted rear outer angle of the coracoid; and the pair of openings (fenestrae) in the scapula–coracoid complex being separated by a narrower bar of bone compared to pliosaurids. The cited variability in the number of heads on the neck ribs arises from his inclusion of "Simolestes" to the Elasmosauridae, since the characteristics of "both the skull and shoulder girdle compare more favorably with "Elasmosaurus" than with "Pliosaurus" or "Peloneustes"." He considered "Simolestes" a possible ancestor of "Elasmosaurus". Oskar Kuhn adopted a similar classification in 1961.


title: Elasmosaurus

text: Welles took issue with White's classification in his 1943 revision of plesiosaurs, noting that White's characteristics are influenced by both preservation and ontogeny. He divided plesiosaurs into two superfamilies, the Plesiosauroidea and Pliosauroidea, based on neck length, head size, ischium length, and the slenderness of the humerus and femur (the propodialia). Each superfamily was further subdivided by the number of heads on the ribs, and the proportions of the epipodialia. Thus, elasmosaurids had long necks, small heads, short ischia, stocky propodialia, single-headed ribs, and short epipodialia. Pierre deSaint-Seine in 1955 and Alfred Romer in 1956 both adopted Welles' classification. In 1962 Welles further subdivided elasmosaurids based on whether they possessed pelvic bars formed from the fusion of the ischia, with "Elasmosaurus" and "Brancasaurus" being united in the subfamily Elasmosaurinae by their sharing of completely closed pelvic bars.


title: Elasmosaurus

text: Carpenter's 1997 phylogenetic analysis of plesiosaurs challenged the traditional subdivision of plesiosaurs based on neck length. While polycotylids had previously been part of the Pliosauroidea, Carpenter moved polycotylids to become the sister group of the elasmosaurids based on similarities, thus implying that polycotylids and pliosauroids evolved their short necks independently. The content of Elasmosauridae also received greater scrutiny. Since its initial assignment to the Elasmosauridae, the relationships of "Brancasaurus" had been considered well supported, and an elasmosaurid position was recovered by O'Keefe's 2004 analysis and Franziska Großmann's 2007 analysis. However, Ketchum and Benson's analysis instead included it in the Leptocleidia, and its inclusion in that group has remained consistent in subsequent analyses. Their analysis also moved "Muraenosaurus" to the Cryptoclididae, and "Microcleidus" and "Occitanosaurus" to the Plesiosauridae; Benson and Druckenmiller isolated the latter two in the group Microcleididae in 2014, and considered "Occitanosaurus" a species of "Microcleidus". These genera had all previously been considered to be elasmosaurids by Carpenter, Großmann, and other researchers.


title: Elasmosaurus

text: Within the Elasmosauridae, "Elasmosaurus" itself has been considered a "wildcard taxon" with highly variable relationships. Carpenter's 1999 analysis suggested that "Elasmosaurus" was more basal (i.e. less specialized) than other elasmosaurids with the exception of "Libonectes". In 2005 Sachs suggested that "Elasmosaurus" was closely related to "Styxosaurus", and in 2008 Druckenmiller and Russell placed it as part of a polytomy with two groups, one containing "Libonectes" and "Terminonatator", the other containing "Callawayasaurus" and "Hydrotherosaurus". Ketchum and Benson's 2010 analysis included "Elasmosaurus" in the former group. Benson and Druckenmiller's 2013 analysis (below, left) further removed "Terminonatator" from this group and placed it as one step more derived. In Rodrigo Otero's 2016 analysis based on a modification of the same dataset (below, right), "Elamosaurus" was the closest relative of "Albertonectes", forming the Styxosaurinae with "Styxosaurus" and "Terminonatator". Danielle Serratos, Druckenmiller, and Benson could not resolve the position of "Elasmosaurus" in 2017, but they noted that Styxosaurinae would be a synonym of Elasmosaurinae if "Elasmosaurus" did fall within the group. In 2020, O'Gorman formally synonymized Styxosaurinae with Elasmosaurinae based on the inclusion of "Elasmosaurus" within the group, and also provided a list of diagnostic characteristics for the clade.


title: Elasmosaurus

text: Elasmosaurids were fully adapted to life in the ocean, with streamlined bodies and long paddles that indicate they were active swimmers. The unusual body structure of elasmosaurids would have limited the speed at which they could swim, and their paddles may have moved in a manner similar to the movement of oars rowing, and due to this, could not twist and were thus held rigidly. Plesiosaurs were even believed to have been able to maintain a constant and high body temperature (homeothermy), allowing for sustained swimming.


title: Elasmosaurus

text: A 2015 study concluded that locomotion was mostly done by the fore-flippers while the hind-flippers functioned in maneuverability and stability; a 2017 study concluded that the hind-flippers of plesiosaurs produced 60% more thrust and had 40% more efficiency when moving in harmony with the fore-flippers. The paddles of plesiosaurs were so rigid and specialized for swimming that they could not have come on land to lay eggs like sea turtles. Therefore, they probably gave live-birth (viviparity) to their young like some species of sea snakes. Evidence for live-birth in plesiosaurs is provided by the fossil of an adult "Polycotylus" with a single fetus inside.


title: Elasmosaurus

text: Cope, in 1869, compared the build and habits of "Elasmosaurus" with those of a snake. Although he suggested that the vertebral column of the trunk did not allow for much vertical movement due to the elongated neural spines which nearly form a continuous line with little space between adjacent vertebrae, he envisaged the neck and tail to have been much more flexible: "The snake-like head was raised high in the air, or depressed at the will of the animal, now arched swan-like preparatory to a plunge after a fish, now stretched in repose on the water or deflexed in exploring the depths below".


title: Elasmosaurus

text: Although followed by many common media depictions, more recent research showed that "Elasmosaurus" was incapable of raising anything more than its head above the water. The weight of its long neck placed the center of gravity behind the front flippers. Thus, "Elasmosaurus" could have raised its head and neck above the water only when in shallow water, where it could rest its body on the bottom. Also, the weight of the neck, the limited musculature, and the limited movement between the vertebrae would have prevented "Elasmosaurus" from raising its head and neck very high. The head and shoulders of the "Elasmosaurus" probably acted as a rudder. If the animal moved the anterior part of the body in a certain direction, it would cause the rest of the body to move in that direction. Thus, "Elasmosaurus" would have been unable to swim in one direction while moving its head and neck either horizontally or vertically in a different direction.


title: Elasmosaurus

text: One study found that the necks of elasmosaurids were capable of 75–177˚ of ventral movement, 87–155° of dorsal movement, and 94–176° of lateral movement, depending on the amount of tissue between the vertebrae, which probably increased in rigidness towards the back of the neck. The researchers concluded that lateral and vertical arches and shallow S-shaped curves were feasible in contrast to the "swan-like" S-shape neck postures that required more than 360° of vertical flexion.


title: Elasmosaurus

text: The exact function of the neck of elasmosaurids is unknown, though it may have been important for hunting. It has also been suggested that the long necks of plesiosaurs served as a snorkel and allowed them to breathe air while the body remained underwater. This is disputed as there would be large hydrostatic pressure differences, particularly for the extremely long-necked elasmosaurids. The neck anatomy of elasmosaurids was capable of making a gentle slope to allow them to breathe at the surface but would have required them to engage in energy-expensive swimming at the sub-surface. In addition, the longer neck would also have increased dead space, and the animals may have required larger lungs. The neck could have had other vulnerabilities, for example being a target for predators.


title: Elasmosaurus

text: Simulation of water flow on 3D models showed that more elongated necks, such as those of elasmosaurids, did not increase drag force while swimming compared to shorter necked plesiosaurs. On the other hand, bending the neck sideways did increase drag force, more so in forms with very long necks. Another study found the long necks of elasmosaurs would normally increase drag during forward swimming but this was cancelled out by their large torsos, and hence large body sizes may have facilitated the evolution of longer necks.


title: Elasmosaurus

text: In 1869 Cope noted that scales and teeth of six species of fish had been discovered directly beneath the vertebrae of the "Elasmosaurus" holotype, and theorized that these fish would have had formed the diet of the animal. From these remains, Cope named a new species of barracuda, "Sphyraena carinata".


title: Elasmosaurus

text: The flexion ranges of "Elasmosaurus" necks would have allowed the animal to employ a number of hunting methods including "benthic grazing", which would have involved swimming close to the bottom and using the head and neck to dig for prey on the sea floor. Elasmosaurids may also have been active hunters in the pelagic zone, retracting their necks to launch a strike or using side-swipe motions to stun or kill prey with their laterally projected teeth (like sawsharks).


title: Elasmosaurus

text: It is possible that "Elasmosaurus" and its kin stalked schools of fish, concealing themselves below and moving the head slowly up as they approached. The eyes of the animal were at the top of the head and allowed them to see directly upward. This stereoscopic vision would have helped it to find small prey. Hunting from below would also have been possible, with prey silhouetted in the sunlight while concealed in the dark waters below. Elasmosaurids probably ate small bony fish and marine invertebrates, as their small, non-kinetic skulls would have limited the size of the prey they could eat. Also, with their long, slender teeth adapted for seizing prey and not tearing, elasmosaurids most certainly swallowed their prey whole.


title: Elasmosaurus

text: Although elasmosaurids are commonly found with several gastroliths, "Elamosaurus" has only been found uncontroversially with a pebble lodged in the neural arch of one of its hindmost tail-vertebrae. A specimen of the closely related "Styxosaurus" contained fragmented fish bones and stones in the abdominal region behind the pectoral girdle. The fish remains were identified as "Enchodus" and other clupeomorph fish. The stones match rock from away from where the specimen was found. Several different functions have been proposed for gastroliths, including aiding in digestion, mixing food content, mineral supplementation, and storage and buoyancy control.


title: Elasmosaurus

text: Elasmosaurid remains provide some evidence they were preyed upon. A humerus of an unidentified subadult elasmosaurid was found with bite marks matching the teeth of the shark "Cretoxyrhina", while a crushed "Woolungasaurus" skull has tooth-marks matched to the pliosaur "Kronosaurus".


title: Elasmosaurus

text: "Elasmosaurus" is known from the Sharon Springs Member of the Campanian-age Upper Cretaceous Pierre Shale formation of western Kansas, which dates to about 80.5million years ago. The Pierre Shale represents a period of marine deposition from the Western Interior Seaway, a shallow continental sea that submerged much of central North America during the Cretaceous. At its largest, the Western Interior Seaway stretched from the Rockies east to the Appalachians, some wide. At its deepest, it may have been only deep. Two great continental watersheds drained into it from east and west, diluting its waters and bringing resources in eroded silt that formed shifting river delta systems along its low-lying coasts. There was little sedimentation on the eastern margin of the Seaway; the western margin accumulated a thick pile of sediments eroded from the western land mass. The western shore was thus highly variable, depending on variations in sea level and sediment supply.


title: Elasmosaurus

text: The soft, muddy sea floor probably received very little sunlight, but it teemed with life due to steady rains of organic debris from plankton and other organisms farther up the water column. The bottom was dominated by large "Inoceramus" clams, which were covered with oysters; there was little biodiversity. Clam shells would have accumulated over the centuries in layers under the sea floor's surface, and would have provided shelter for small fish. Other invertebrates known to have lived in this sea include various species of rudists, crinoids and cephalopods (including squids and ammonites).


title: Elasmosaurus

text: Large fish known to have inhabited the sea include the bony fishes "Pachyrhizodus", "Enchodus", "Cimolichthys", "Saurocephalus", "Saurodon", "Gillicus", "Ichthyodectes", "Xiphactinus", "Protosphyraena" and "Martinichthys"; and the sharks "Cretoxyrhina", "Cretolamna", "Scapanorhynchus", "Pseudocorax" and "Squalicorax". In addition to "Elasmosaurus", other marine reptiles present include fellow plesiosaurs "Libonectes", "Styxosaurus", "Thalassomedon", "Terminonatator", "Polycotylus", "Brachauchenius", "Dolichorhynchops" and "Trinacromerum"; the mosasaurs "Mosasaurus", "Halisaurus", "Prognathodon", "Tylosaurus", "Ectenosaurus", "Globidens", "Clidastes", "Platecarpus" and "Plioplatecarpus"; and the sea turtles "Archelon", "Protostega", "Porthochelys" and "Toxochelys". The flightless aquatic bird "Hesperornis" also made its home there. The pterosaurs "Pteranodon" and "Nyctosaurus", and the bird "Ichthyornis", are also known far from land.


title: Squarepusher

text: Tom Jenkinson (born 17 January 1975), known professionally as Squarepusher, is an English electronic musician, record producer, bassist, multi-instrumentalist and DJ. His music spans several genres including drum and bass, IDM, acid house, acid techno, jazz fusion, and electroacoustic music. His recordings are often typified by a combination of complex drum programming, live instrumental playing, and digital signal processing. Since 1995, he has recorded for Warp Records as well as smaller labels, including Rephlex Records. He is the older brother of Ceephax Acid Crew (Andy Jenkinson).


title: Squarepusher

text: Tom Jenkinson grew up in Chelmsford, Essex. The first school he attended was affiliated with Chelmsford Cathedral, exposing him to organ music. He took an interest in this, as well as music reproduction equipment. In 1986, Jenkinson went to the King Edward VI Grammar School in Chelmsford. One of his formative musical experiences came from seeing guitarist Guthrie Govan playing in the school's inter-house music competition. He developed a lasting friendship with Govan. Jenkinson joined his first band at 12, a Metallica-influenced thrash metal group consisting of several other pupils from the school. Over subsequent years Jenkinson played bass guitar in various local bands, playing numerous gigs around East Anglia and London, and took part in some studio recordings.


title: Squarepusher

text: In August 1993, Jenkinson recorded a piece named "O'Brien"; with his friend Hardy Finn he raised enough money to release it with additional material on a vinyl 12". Jenkinson and his friends took the copies of the record to various local record shops but found reactions disappointing. By 1995 he was playing live sets, including a performance at Eurobeat 2000 at Turnmills in 1995, and "O'Brien" was part of his setlist.


title: Squarepusher

text: In late 1994, Jenkinson began to pursue his fascination for integrating breakbeats into electronic music. The first recordings using Jenkinson's new setup were released on the Spymania label. The first EP was called "Conumber", the second "Alroy Road Tracks", under the pseudonym "The Duke of Harringay". Jenkinson began receiving invitations from clubs to play regular sets, including The Sir George Robey in Finsbury Park. He then placed two songs on Worm Interface releases, "Dragon Disk 2" and the "Bubble and Squeak" EPs.


title: Squarepusher

text: At this time, Jenkinson was becoming obsessed with bringing a "dark psychedelia" to drum and bass (which would eventually reach its zenith with "Go Plastic" from 2001). During this period Jenkinson also made a remix for Ninja Tune's DJ Food, which featured on the EP "Refried Food". The remix led Ninja Tune to offer Jenkinson a record contract, which along with an offer from Belgium's R&S records he declined in favor of a contract offered by Warp Records, which was partially instigated by Richard D. James. Correspondence between James and Jenkinson sprung up after meeting at The George Robey. The resulting meeting led to Jenkinson's first hearing of the "Hangable Auto Bulb" EP which Richard had brought with him. But the meeting also facilitated James' initial selection of Jenkinson's tracks that went on to form the "Feed Me Weird Things" album, released on Rephlex Records in 1996.


title: Squarepusher

text: Jenkinson accepted a five-album record contract with Warp Records in December 1995. This led him to defer his studies at Chelsea Art College. Early in 1996, James completed the compilation process for "Feed Me Weird Things", which was made from over 50 tracks that Jenkinson had given him on DAT, which were recorded from late 1994 to 1995. Around the same time James and Jenkinson recorded two tracks together, one of which was subsequently edited by Jenkinson and released as "Freeman Hardy & Willis Acid" on the "We Are Reasonable People" compilation album in 1998. Jenkinson's contribution to the other track was reinterpreted and released as "Happy Little Wilberforce" on the "Alt. Frequencies" compilation released on Worm Interface in 1996. 1996 saw Jenkinson starting to be offered gigs both in the UK and in continental Europe.


title: Squarepusher

text: Early that year Jenkinson made the acquaintance of Talvin Singh who offered him a slot at his club night "Anokha" held at the Blue Note Club in Hoxton Square, London. Jenkinson and Singh went on to play together on several occasions during this period, including improvised sessions at the end of the night at Anokha, one of which featured guitarist Guthrie Govan, and also at the first Big Chill Festival in 1996.


title: Squarepusher

text: Shortly after the release of "Feed Me Weird Things" came "Port Rhombus" which was Jenkinson's (by now known as Squarepusher) first release on Warp Records. The title track actually started life as a remix of a track by Ken Ishii, commissioned by R&S Records in Belgium. However, the remix was rejected on the basis of it having insufficient similarity to Ishii's piece. "Significant Others" used the DR660 drum machine running through a spring reverb, that Squarepusher found at a jumble sale.


title: Squarepusher

text: Using the same equipment from the sessions that produced the majority of "Feed Me Weird Things", Squarepusher now set about working on the material for his first album for Warp. His broad conception for this record was "to push away from the jazz influence that was being felt at the time to a more soundtrack-type of sound". According to Squarepusher, he was listening to—amongst other things—early Lalo Schifrin and the "Deathwish" soundtrack by Herbie Hancock around this time. That said, the album also contains some abrupt diversions into quite different musical territory, evidenced in what Squarepusher calls the "Industrial Psychedelia" of "Chin Hippy" and "Rustic Raver".


title: Squarepusher

text: Squarepusher's electric bass work becomes apparent on this record. He states that he was "still battling with the influence of (Jaco) Pastorius." He wanted to "make the styles interrogate each other, such that one track would question the premises of another and vice versa. As such I suppose it might indicate tentativeness, but in my mind at the time I liked the idea of bringing musical assumptions into question by smashing stylistically divergent elements into each other". In this he follows a precedent set by Frank Zappa, whom Squarepusher claimed is "always hovering in the background" for him.


title: Squarepusher

text: The sleeve artwork was generated from a set of images taken by Squarepusher wandering about Chelmsford town centre. The front cover image is based on a view of the gasometers situated at Wharf Road, near where he lived as a teenager. The 8-bit graphics reflected Squarepusher's resurgence of interest in old video consoles and home computers at that time. This location was subsequently used in some of the press shots in the "Hello Everything" promotional campaign.


title: Squarepusher

text: In January 1997, Squarepusher moved to a flat on Albion Road in Stoke Newington, London. This particular residence was shown in the Jockey Slut "All Back to Mine" article from that year, and it was also where Squarepusher's appearance in the "xxx" documentary was filmed.


title: Squarepusher

text: "Journey To Reedham" brings the 8-bit computer influence right into the foreground. The piece was the first to be recorded of the set and was originally commissioned to be used in a computer game, but Squarepusher decided it was too important to hand over to somebody else's project. The track immediately became a favourite at gigs and was still making appearances as an encore in Tom's run of live shows in 2013. "The Body Builder" was Tom's favourite of the set. This exemplifies a more abstract take on the 8-bit aesthetic, with sounds constructed to deliberately resemble computer game sound effects. "Come on My Selector" has become one of Squarepusher's most well-known tracks, partly due to it having a video by director Chris Cunningham. Doing the video led Squarepusher to develop a friendship with Chris Cunningham.


title: Squarepusher

text: This period also saw the release of the "Burning'n Tree" album, which was a compilation of Tom's Spymania releases. The set includes three pieces that were recorded in late 1995 during the "Feed Me Weird Things" sessions that were not originally released on Spymania.


title: Squarepusher

text: Squarepusher started considering new ideas about how to put music together. At this time James introduced Squarepusher to the music of Tod Dockstader, an American composer who had worked extensively in the 1960s, principally realising his compositions by tape editing. Alongside this Squarepusher was becoming interested in the work of 20th Century composers such as Stockhausen and Ligeti, specifically their electronic and electroacoustic works.


title: Squarepusher

text: After "Budakhan Mindphone" was completed in May 1998, Squarepusher went to South East Asia for two months, and on this trip acquired a selection of Gamelan instruments. He stated that he was keen to carry on with the method of making music he had developed making the "abstract jazz" elements of "Music Is Rotted One Note". Given that the "abstract jazz/musique concrète" idea had in Tom's view been proven by "Music Is Rotted One Note". He decided to switch focus slightly and approach the following phase with a less rigorous aesthetic in mind.


title: Squarepusher

text: This is the first record where Squarepusher started using effects processors in such a way that values for the available parameters would all vary as the piece progressed.


title: Squarepusher

text: Squarepusher relates that "Iambic 5 Poetry" is "apparently one of Björk's favourite songs". This period also produced the "Maximum Priest" EP. "Our Underwater Torch" was partially inspired by a developing obsession he had for the sounds of water. He stated that this piece was obliquely inspired by the films "Solaris" and "Stalker" by the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. The organ in this piece is triggered directly from an electric bass. "Decathlon Oxide" carried on the ideas initiated in "Fly Street" and "Varkatope" from "Budakhan Mindphone" and features a Gamelan gong. The record also contains remixes by Luke Vibert, Autechre and Matthew Yee King.


title: Squarepusher

text: Very few live shows happened around this time, although Squarepusher claims he did in fact do quite a few gigs unannounced:


title: Squarepusher

text: He did organise two shows for an ephemeral organisation known as the "Squarepusher Ensemble" which amongst others featured Jamie Lidell on vocals, Mick Beck on saxophone and Squarepusher on bass. The idea of the group was to try to approximate some of the aesthetic of "Music Is Rotted One Note" and "Budakhan Mindphone". The improvisation took place with no guidelines.


title: Squarepusher

text: In March 1999, with the "Budakhan Mindphone" and "Maximum Priest" sessions wrapped up, he found himself in quite changed circumstances. He had made new friends in Sheffield and found himself a regular DJ and punter at various club nights around Sheffield. At this point he became quite skilled at tape editing. Another element that he was keen to bring back was the usage of sampled breakbeats. At this time, Squarepusher was frequenting a Manchester-based club night called "Schizm". It was run by friends of Sean Booth and Rob Brown from Autechre who themselves had played there on occasion.


title: Squarepusher

text: Early 2000 saw Squarepusher consider "radical tactics". He states it became clear that it was high time return to sequencers and leave behind the live-playing approach, which he had adopted since late 1997. Around this time, he started seeing more of Chris Cunningham.


title: Squarepusher

text: He was also revisiting a lot of the mid-1990s drum and bass that had so inspired his early releases. He describes the set-up for "Go Plastic" as follows: "It was the next stage in the "liquid effects processing" idea. "To me it was all about trying to make it sound totally liquid and psychedelic, like liquid LSD. Not evil though, "evil" music just sounds daft and theatrical to me. I've always had a Frankenstein-thing going on, ever since I was kid when I was playing around with electronics. I love the idea of the set-up having such a complex level of internal activity that it begins to resemble a living being." "My Red Hot Car" is his most well known piece. That and "Boneville Occident" were two of the earliest pieces from these sessions. The piece "Tommib" was so named after Squarepusher recalls that: "Aphex [Twin] was helping me edit a track for Vic Acid and he named the project 'Tommib' and I always remembered that for some reason." Squarepusher claims that "My Fucking Sound" was written specifically with Chris Cunningham in mind: "We had talked a lot in that period about working together, loads of ideas were flying around. That track was intended for Chris to use, and that project was called "Spectral Musicians." He recalls that "Aphex [Twin] rang up when I was finishing off the track. He asked what I was up to and I said something like "I've got 31 bars left to write on this track I'm doing." He just started laughing and said he never thought of music like that. I suppose it does sound a bit strange and clinical."


title: Squarepusher

text: After the sessions were completed in December 2000, he rang Steve Beckett to play him the record: "We hadn't talked since he left Sheffield more than a year before. I told him to come round and it totally blew his head off." Squarepusher started playing live again at this point: "I played all of this new stuff supporting Tortoise at the Shepherd's Bush Empire. I did a gig at The 100 Club and I had Chris [Cunningham] supporting me doing a DJ set."


title: Squarepusher

text: He played his first shows in America at this point, one of which was at the Coachella Festival. The plans to collaborate with Chris Cunningham were duly interrupted as well.


title: Squarepusher

text: In the Summer of 2001, Warp cut a one-sided promo of the track "Do You Know Squarepusher". After taking some time off during the latter part of 2001, he set up the studio at his new residence. It was around this time that he started to work with computer-based synthesis and signal processing.


title: Squarepusher

text: The cover version of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" has a particular story to it: "It was around this time that Rob Mitchell at Warp died. I was really fond of Rob. The last evening I spent with him was in Sheffield and he had been playing me some music by Joy Division. I decided to record that song as a memorial to him, but at the same time I really didn't want to try and divert attention from the tragedy of his death to my record, that would have been repulsive. So I kept the story to myself'. Also included in this set is an edited recording of Tom's appearance at Fuji Rock Festival in Japan in Summer 2001. He spent the remainder of 2002 working on software patches and recorded many pieces in that period that were to feature in his show at Warp's 20th anniversary party in Sheffield in 2009.


title: Squarepusher

text: 2003 saw two of Squarepusher's pieces being performed by the London Sinfonietta as part of the South Bank's Ether Festival: "It was an interesting idea. They chose "Port Rhombus" and "The Tide".


title: Squarepusher

text: He claims the idea that had been initiated with "Mutilation Colony", namely to combine the DSP algorithmic approach with the live instrumentation based approach of "Music Is Rotted One Note" was now at the forefront of his mind. His studio set-up at that time incorporated all of the equipment he had amassed so far.


title: Squarepusher

text: Parts of certain tracks on "Ultravisitor" and four entire pieces were recorded at shows in the UK and the US in summer of 2003. As such, Squarepusher says "The start of "Ultravisitor" features ambient sound from the very same piece being played at a show in L.A. and the outro features ambient sound from a gig at the Leadmill in Sheffield. "Menelec" features an introduction from a show in Nottingham and the outro comes from Toronto I think. The start of "Steinbolt" was recorded in L.A. and the lots of Tetra-Sync including the live electric bass was recorded at the Bowery Ballroom in New York, apart from the intro which comes from Montreal."


title: Squarepusher

text: He states that ""Ultravisitor" seems like a big argument to me. In fact I've always liked that idea, that the way you structure albums and songs is that one element raises questions about other elements. That feels interesting to me, but Ultravisitor seems to do that to the extent that it risks being completely incoherent. But that is also the fun of it. I am fond of it."


title: Squarepusher

text: The sleeve artwork, the first to contain a portrait of Squarepusher. He toured with the London Sinfonietta, performing the piece "Tundra 4" live. After the Sinfonietta tour, he toured America and Japan.


title: Squarepusher

text: He states that at this point he had no immediate plans to make a record and that it seemed entirely possible that he would not make another. Nevertheless, some pieces were made in this period. A series of acid tracks were made, some of which were used in Tom's appearance at Warp's 20th anniversary in Sheffield 2009. "Welcome To Europe" and "The Modern Bass Guitar" were also made in this period using the same software system that Squarepusher had designed when he made "Ultravisitor". The synth bassline in "The Modern Bass Guitar" was triggered from an electric bass using the midi bass system.


title: Squarepusher

text: January 2005 saw the re-establishment of the studio at Tom's residence in Essex. The pieces "Theme From Sprite", "Bubble Life", "Vacuum Garden", "Circlewave 2" and "Orient Orange" were all made in early 2005.


title: Squarepusher

text: All of these tracks are based on live drumming tracks, which Squarepusher had planned out quite meticulously beforehand, in contrast to similarly realised tracks on "Music Is Rotted One Note".


title: Squarepusher

text: "Hello Meow", "Planetarium", "Rotate Electrolyte" and "Plotinus" were made over the Summer and Autumn of 2005. The track "Hello Meow" was filmed at Koko in November 2005 and was edited into a promotional video for "Hello Everything" in 2006. "Planetarium" samples a particular variant of the Amen breakbeat which came from "a dodgy bootleg 12" from 1991 called "Rave Masters Volume One".


title: Squarepusher

text: Regarding the overall process of making "Hello Everything", he states "There never really were any "Hello Everything" sessions, unlike a lot of the things I'd done before".


title: Squarepusher

text: Squarepusher appeared at Glastonbury and Glade Festival in the summer of 2005. Then in November 2005 he toured the UK with Luke Vibert and Cassette Boy featuring dates in London, Norwich, Falmouth, Birmingham, Newcastle, Leeds and Glasgow amongst others. This tour marked the first occasion when he had appeared in concert using live visuals.


title: Squarepusher

text: At the time of the release of "Hello Everything", Squarepusher appeared on the BBC's Culture Show and was interviewed by Lauren Laverne, and also performed a short version of what was to become one of the pieces on "Solo Electric Bass". It also became apparent that one of the reasons for him being requested to appear was that Andre 3000, who was also appearing on the show, had expressed such admiration for Tom's work that he would like to work with him. He also appeared at the John Peel tribute event at the Electric Ballroom in Camden around the time of the release of the record. Late 2006 saw him generate the material that was eventually to be issued in 2009 as "Numbers Lucent".


title: Squarepusher

text: After the material that went to comprise "Numbers Lucent" was finished at the end of 2006, Tom exhausted his interest in making electronic music: "At that point, I'd been working on electronic music in some shape or form for around fifteen years and without hardly any breaks. As I've said, one of my problems is that once I've established that an idea is in some way valid, that's generally enough for me. I'm just acutely aware of how limited time is and I think I'd rather spend it doing what I do best which is taking risks and making experiments."


title: Squarepusher

text: "I was interested to see if I could develop a way of making music that was less destructive, because I was aware of how much I had brutalised myself living such an insane life over the last twelve years or so, how little I'd slept and so on. I started thinking again about doing more playing, more bass stuff again. It's always been hard to give my bass playing any kind of priority when all of the mayhem is happening in the studio." So Tom chose to switch all of his attention to bass and to shut down the studio.


title: Squarepusher

text: "Glenn Max, curator at the South Bank, was really encouraging and offered me a nice gig in the Queen Elizabeth Hall to showcase it." Tom went on to spend every day playing the solo pieces, re-writing them and practising them: "It became a lifestyle in the end and that was what I wanted. Tom also says that "I've never been entirely comfortable with the whole virtuoso thing. They are so many dangers associated with it. It's odd because it's so effortless for me to play that I end up falling into that virtuoso camp by default. But if that's where I am, I'm going to make some trouble in there. So I started to play around with the pieces in a way, playing them too fast. Sort of trying to make it a bit more punk and messy rather than like a spotless article of refinement."


title: Squarepusher

text: The solo bass recording from Cité de la Musique is presented unedited as it was played on the night. The recording was released in 2009.


title: Squarepusher

text: Tom went on to sell out the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Cité de la Musique in Paris with his Solo Electric Bass shows. Both were recorded and featured the saxophonist Evan Parker.


title: Squarepusher

text: At the end of 2007, Squarepusher found himself at the close of the solo bass project. "I was still playing all the time every day. So it seemed logical to get recording again, but make it live playing-centred." He claims he was fed up with the unprocessed sound of the bass that was tied up in the concept of the solo bass material, so he started experimenting with new DSP algorithms specifically for the bass. Also he had become a fan of the band Lightning Bolt over the last few years and was inspired to develop an electric bass sound with "absolutely face-ripping distortion."


title: Squarepusher

text: When Squarepusher came to tour this album, he decided he would need a drummer: "I called Glenn [Max] at the South Bank and asked him if he knew any good drummers. He suggested Alex Thomas. I checked him out and he was amazing so we went for it." Squarepusher and Thomas went on to tour in November and December 2008, and then from April 2009 through the summer playing various festivals. This tour also saw Squarepusher develop the LED aspect to his show to the extent that on stage he had a massive screen behind Alex's drum kit showing visual content triggered by his electric bass.


title: Squarepusher

text: Regarding this album being an abrupt stylistic departure from earlier releases Toms says that: "On an instinctive level, I just can't resist seeing what happens when you press certain buttons, and especially the ones that the grown-ups tell you not to press. And as I've said, to me it's all about the experiments."


title: Squarepusher

text: In April 2011, Squarepusher played at a benefit gig for the Japanese Red Cross in the wake of the tsunami which devastated Japan on 11 March 2011.


title: Squarepusher

text: Of the general direction, he says: "I've reached guitar overload. I've started thinking about pure electronic music again. Something very melodic, very aggressive." He used a custom LED mask as part of the live presentation of this material. At the time, he made several appearances in festivals across the world including his first show in Brazil and during the Sónar Festival in Barcelona in June.


title: Squarepusher

text: On 13 February 2014, an EP entitled "Music for Robots" was announced, a collaborative project composed by him and performed by the three robots that comprise the Z-Machines. Squarepusher first started working with the team of Japanese roboticists behind the Z-Machines in 2013, who had commissioned him to write music for robots that were capable of playing beyond the capabilities of the most advanced musicians. Following the success of the first piece of music, entitled "Sad Robot Goes Funny", Squarepusher went on to compose four more pieces for the robots, which comprise the EP "Music for Robots", released on April 7th (8 April in North America) 2014.


title: Squarepusher

text: On 20 April 2015, a new LP entitled "Damogen Furies" was released. Reviewers commented that it is "less funky but more clearly structured" than past work. All the recordings on ‘Damogen Furies’ were done in one take and were born out of Squarepusher's development of his own software, which was designed for a spontaneous, streamlined, efficient way of performing live and, in turn, making the record. All this makes for Damogen Furies being an ideal work to hear in concert, as genuinely live electronic music, with the capacity for change a primary objective. The release of this saw him performing at his largest-ever London show at the Troxy, and headlining The White stage at Fuji Rocks Festival, Japan.


title: Squarepusher

text: In 2016, Squarepusher once again took his Shobaleader One band on the road, and is continuing to tour the project. He also wrote a suite of short organ pieces which were performed by James McVinnie as part of 2016 national tour "The Secret Life of Organs" celebrating the county's great organs as the first ‘synthesisers’ invented centuries before their electronic counterparts.


title: Squarepusher

text: In 2018, he provided the ambient soundtrack for CBeebies hour long wind-down programme "Daydreams", narrated by Olivia Colman.


title: Squarepusher

text: In 2020, Squarepusher returned to his acidic drum and bass roots with his album "Be Up a Hello", released on 31 January 2020. "Vortrack", "Vortrack" (Fracture Remix), and "Nervelevers" were released in the weeks leading up to the album's release.


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: Zaphod Beeblebrox () is a fictional character in the various versions of the comic science fiction series "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams.


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: He is from a planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, and is a "semi-half-cousin" of Ford Prefect, with whom he "shares three of the same mothers". Because of "an accident with a contraceptive and a time machine", his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather are actually his direct descendants (see Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth).


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: This character is described across all versions as having two heads and three arms, though explanations of how he came to receive the extra appendages differs between versions. The original radio version never explained the second head, but did explain that Zaphod "grew" the third arm in the six months between meeting the character of Trillian on Earth, and the start of the series. The third radio series implies that he had a third arm when growing upthe fifth has him offer to Trillian that "I'd grow my third arm back for you, baby", when they first meet. In the novel, he said the third arm was "recently ... fitted just beneath his right one to help improve his ski-boxing." According to the original "Hitchhiker's" radio series script book, an ad libbed comment by Mark Wing-Davey in the eighth radio episode ("Put it there, and there, and there, and there! Whoa!") would suggest that Zaphod had grown a fourth arm. In the television series, Ford Prefect simply remarks to Zaphod that "the extra arm suits you." Eoin Colfer wrote and published an official 6th book for the Hitchhiker's series, in which it is implied Zaphod's third arm may have originally been grown so that he would have one hand for each of Eccentrica Galumbits's breasts.


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: In the Infocom game version of the story, Zaphod blends in on Earth by hiding his second head in a covered bird cage (an alternate Trillian also refers to this in "Mostly Harmless"). In the novel "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe", the ghost of Zaphod's great-grandfather also has two heads. This and other information presented in the narrative prose seem to indicate that having two heads is a common – possibly even universal – trait of Zaphod's species.


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: For the 2005 movie, it's hinted that Zaphod "created" the second head himself when shutting off the parts of his mind that contain portions of his personality that "are not presidential," but he wanted to keep these traits, so he hid his second head under his neck and wears a large collar or scarf to keep it hidden. As such, the movie is also the only version that explains the second head. In this filmed version, the second head appears underneath the first, roughly between his chin and the top of his chest, popping up when the first head is flipped backwards. The third arm is hidden underneath Zaphod's clothing, appears to be controlled by the second head, and only appears a few times, such as for tormenting Arthur Dent, piloting the spaceship "Heart of Gold", or preparing a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. The second head was sawed off by Humma Kavula during the film.


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: In "And Another Thing...", Colfer's addition to the book series, a photo is mentioned which shows Zaphod with the second head replaced by that of a woman. It is implied that Zaphod may have surgically attached this woman's head to himself, before realising he liked the idea of a second head better than he liked her, and swapping her for a reproduction of his original head.


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: "And Another Thing" is also the only book in the series in which Zaphod has only one head. His left head is said to have been removed so that 'Left Brain' (or 'LB') can function as the new computer of the "Heart of Gold."


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: Zaphod wears unique clothing that contains a mixture of bright and contrasting colours to make him stand out and be the centre of attention wherever he goes. In the television series, he wears the same outfit throughout each of the episodes, but in the movie his clothes, their style and their colour scheme change several times.


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: Zaphod invented the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. He was voted "Worst Dressed Sentient Being in the Known Universe" seven consecutive times. He's been described as "the best Bang since the Big One" by Eccentrica Gallumbits, and as "one hoopy frood" by others. In the seventh episode of the original radio series, the narrator describes Beeblebrox as being the "owner of the hippest place in the universe" (his own left cranium), as voted on in a poll of the readers of the fictional magazine "Playbeing".


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: He was briefly the President of the Galaxy (a role that involves no power whatsoever, and merely requires the incumbent to attract attention so no one wonders who's "really" in charge, a role for which Zaphod was perfectly suited). He is the only man to have survived the Total Perspective Vortex, though it was established (in the books and first two radio series) that he survived only because he was in an Electronically Synthesised Universe created especially for him, thus making him the most important being in that universe and thus uniquely equipped to survive its version of the Vortex. His brain-care specialist, Gag Halfrunt, also said, "Vell, Zaphod's just zis guy, you know?" He used his position as President of the Galaxy to steal the "Heart of Gold", a spaceship taking advantage of Infinite Improbability Drive, at its unveiling.


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: Early in Zaphod's career (whilst heading "The Beeblebrox Salvage and Really Wild Stuff Corporation") he joined forces with the "Safety and Civil Reassurance Administration" to investigate the loss of the "Starship Billion Year Bunker", on which were stored compounds so powerful a teaspoonful could blow up/infect/irradiate a whole planet, and by-products of The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation synthetic personalities programme.


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: As a character, Zaphod is hedonistic and irresponsible, self-centered almost to the point of solipsism, and often extremely insensitive to the feelings of those around him. In the books and radio series, he is nevertheless quite charismatic which causes many characters to ignore his other flaws. Douglas Adams claimed that he based Zaphod on an old friend of his from Cambridge called Johnny Simpson, who "had that nervous sort of hyperenergetic way of trying to appear relaxed."


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: In (at least) the books, he is, according to screening tests that he ran on himself in the "Heart of Gold"s medical bay, "clever, imaginative, irresponsible, untrustworthy, extrovert, nothing you couldn't have guessed" ("Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide", page 98). In the movie, however, he is not very bright, and perhaps even more boorish than his previous portrayals. He is portrayed as a vacuous California surfer-type, and Sam Rockwell, the actor who played him in the film, cited Bill Clinton, Elvis Presley and George W. Bush as influences. Zaphod in the film is very much immature (in contrast to the books where he was immature, but had a lot of power and was smart and devious), acting very eager about everything, eating messily with his hands, throwing temper tantrums, and doing things without reason, such as pressing the Improbability Drive button just because it was large and shiny.


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: Throughout the book and radio versions of the story, Zaphod is busy carrying out some grand scheme, has no clue as to what it is and is unable to do anything but follow the path that he laid out for himself. Zaphod's grand schemes have included, over time, a second-hand ballpoint pen business (which may or may not have been established with the help of Veet Voojagig). He was forced to section off portions of both brains that stored the plan so that scans of his mind, which would be necessary for him to become president, would not reveal his plan, which included his being President of the Galaxy and subsequently stealing the prototype Infinite Improbability Drive starship. However, in his altered state of mind he follows the path he left only reluctantly and very much wishes to go off and lie on beaches rather than see the scheme through. In the second radio series and the book version of "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe", we learn (and so does Zaphod) that the object of his plan was to find the man who "actually" ruled the universe – who turns out to be a man living in a shack with his cat who does not believe anything is real or certain except that which he is seeing and hearing at that moment.


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: In the 1986 prequel story "Young Zaphod Plays It Safe," Zaphod is working as a salvage ship operator, hired by a bureaucratic organization to retrieve the sunken wreck of a starship that had been carrying extremely dangerous materials intended for disposal in a black hole. Since this story is set at a time before his decision to run for President of the Galaxy, he displays a noticeably different personality, exhibiting concern over the hazards posed by the cargo to himself, the crew, and living creatures in general.


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: In both the radio and television versions of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" Zaphod was played by Mark Wing-Davey. The jokes about Zaphod having two heads and more than two arms were written for the original radio version, where the details could be filled in by the listener's imagination. In the television version Wing-Davey wore a false arm (when the arm was required to gesture it was replaced by the arm of Mike Kelt, designer of the animatronic head, standing behind Wing-Davey), and a radio-controlled second head with an eye-patch. Unfortunately, the second head's mechanics seldom worked properly and so for most of the time it just sat on Zaphod's shoulder looking inanimate, although in one scene it manages to have a brief conversation with Wing-Davey's real head, before being told to "go back to sleep". Wing-Davey also suggested to the TV series' costume designer that Zaphod's costume should be made to indicate that the character has two penises. Special padding was thus arranged, though the first attempt was deemed to be "too long" and was "cut back" for the final version. This was referenced in the film version when Arthur Dent says to Trillian "So, two heads is what does it for a girl?...Anything else he's got two of?"


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: Zaphod is played by Sam Rockwell in the film version of the story that was released in April 2005. In that version, his second head occasionally pops out to express the parts of his personality that are (as the main head puts it) "less than Presidential." Rockwell's interpretation of the character, which includes a vaguely Texan drawl and a vacuous, superficially charming manner, was cited by some critics as a thinly veiled parody of George W. Bush. Rockwell himself described the character as starting with "a Bill Clinton impersonation but that didn't really work. [...] Zaphod has to be more aggressive and so we went rock star, Freddie Mercury, Elvis, a little Brad Pitt."


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: When Mark Wing-Davey's academic commitments prevented him resuming the role of Zaphod for the 2013 tour of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Live Radio Show", comedian, songwriter and author Mitch Benn was cast in the part.


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: To coincide with the April 2005 release of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" film, a "campaign music video" was released on the Internet. The music, "Beeblebrox for President" by Joby Talbot, comes from the film's soundtrack, though it is not heard in the film itself.


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: Zaphod is the inventor of the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster, a fictional cocktail based on Janx Spirit. The series describes the drink as "the alcoholic equivalent of a mugging – expensive and bad for the head" and states that the effect of one "is like having your brain smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick". In the television series, two Gargle Blaster drinkers collapse in open-eyed unconsciousness after drinking while the spilled drink burns a hole in the floor; in the film, after the Guide is done explaining what the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster is and its effects, Ford and Zaphod yell in pain. "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" gives the recipe as follows:


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: The Guide also implies that there are multiple voluntary organisations available to rehabilitate those who would try the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster. Real versions of the drink have been made available at some stage shows of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", as well as bars such as Zaphod Beeblebrox in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. In an interview, Douglas Adams stated that there are a number of environmental and weapons treaties, as well as laws of physics, which prevent the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster from being mixed on Earth.


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: There are many references to the character in video games and other media, some of the more notable examples are:


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: In the Mac game "Escape Velocity", there is a planet called Beeblebrox in the Zaphod system. On landing the planet has the description "Beeblebrox is a wild world, a world of wild parties and wild people. If you have two heads, three arms, and an ego problem, don't travel to Beeblebrox; you will be laughed at and considered boring and unoriginal."


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: A multi-monitor setup featuring a dual head X multiseat configuration is referred to as "Zaphod mode".


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: A nightclub named Zaphod Beeblebrox existed in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, billed as "the nightclub at the edge of the universe." Opened in the early 1990s, it hosted an assortment of artists including Jewel, The Sheepdogs and Alanis Morissette, who previewed "Jagged Little Pill" with a concert there. The Rolling Stones shot part of their video for the song "Streets of Love" in the club in 2005. The venue closed on 14 May 2017.


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: Species named after Zaphod are the viviparous brotula "Bidenichthys beeblebroxi" (described in 1995) and the fungus moth "Erechthias beeblebroxi" (named in 1993). They both have a remarkable color pattern resembling a second head, which presumably helps to confuse would-be predators.


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: Mathematician Andrew Granville published a paper titled "Zaphod Beeblebrox's Brain and the Fifty-ninth Row of Pascal's Triangle" in The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 99, (1992), pp. 318–331.


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: In 2016 during season 4 of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012 TV series) the group travels to a Cantina in outer space belonging to someone named Zaphod.


title: Zaphod Beeblebrox

text: Sun Microsystems manuals published in the 1980s named the computers in their network diagrams Zaphod, Beeble and Brox.


title: Crozet Islands

text: The Crozet Islands (; or, officially, "Archipel Crozet") are a sub-Antarctic archipelago of small islands in the southern Indian Ocean. They form one of the five administrative districts of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands.


title: Crozet Islands

text: The Crozet Islands were discovered on 24 January 1772, by the expedition of French explorer Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne, aboard "Le Mascarin". His second-in-command Jules (Julien-Marie) Crozet landed on Île de la Possession, claiming the archipelago for France. The expedition continued east and landed in New Zealand, where Captain Marion and much of his crew were killed and cannibalized by Maori. Crozet survived the disaster, and successfully led the survivors back to their base in Mauritius. In 1776, Crozet met James Cook at Cape Town, at the start of Cook's third voyage. Crozet shared the charts of his ill-fated expedition, and as Cook sailed eastward, he stopped at the islands, naming the western group "Marion" and the eastern group "Crozet". In the following years, sealers visiting the islands referred to both the eastern and western groups as the Crozet Islands, and Marion Island became the name of the larger of the two Prince Edward Islands, which had been discovered by Captain Marion on the same expedition.


title: Crozet Islands

text: In the early 19th century, the islands were often visited by sealers, and the seals had been nearly exterminated by 1835. Between 1804 and 1911, 153 vessels visited the island for seals, seven of which wrecked on the coast. Subsequently, whaling was the main activity around the islands, especially by the whalers from Massachusetts. In 1841, there were a dozen whaleships around the islands. Within a couple of years, this had increased to twenty from the United States alone. Such exploitation was short-lived, and the islands were rarely visited for the rest of the century.


title: Crozet Islands

text: There were many shipwrecks on the Crozet Islands. The British sealer, "Princess of Wales", sank in 1821, and the survivors spent two years on the islands. A castaway wrote 'The land affords no shelter whatever, there being neither tree nor shrub, and the weather is at most times extremely wet, and snow frequently on the ground'. The "Strathmore" was wrecked in 1875. In 1887, the French "Tamaris" was wrecked and her crew stranded on Île des Cochons. They tied a note to the leg of an albatross, which was found seven months later in Fremantle, but the crew was never recovered. For some time, the Royal Navy dispatched a ship every few years to look for stranded survivors. The steamship "Australasian" also checked for survivors en route to Australia.


title: Crozet Islands

text: Between 1924 and 1955, France administered the islands as a dependency of Madagascar. In 1938, the Crozet Islands were declared a nature reserve. The Crozet Islands became part of the French Southern Territories in 1955. In 1961, a first research station was set up, but it was not until 1963 that the permanent station Alfred Faure opened at Port Alfred on Île de la Possession (both named after the first leader of the station). The station is staffed by 18 to 30 people (varying by season). They perform meteorological, biological, and geological research, and maintain a seismograph and a geomagnetic observatory (IAGA code: CZT). The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization has listening equipment on the island and it was disclosed that two of its stations, the other being on Ascension Island, detected what is believed to be an underwater, non-nuclear explosion off the coast of Argentina and believed to be the fatal accident of the submarine in 2017.


title: Crozet Islands

text: The islands lie on the Antarctic Plate, roughly between the Kerguelen hotspot and Madagascar and southern Africa. The oldest island, Île de l'Est, formed roughly 9 million years ago from a hotspot, which has continued forming islands to the west until, ostensibly, the present. Despite this apparently young age, no volcanic activity has been observed to date on any of the islands.


title: Crozet Islands

text: Not including minor islets or rock reefs etc., the Crozet group consists of six islands. From west to east:


title: Crozet Islands

text: The Crozet Islands are uninhabited except for the research station Alfred Faure (Port Alfred) on the east side of Île de la Possession, which has been continuously staffed since 1963. Previous scientific stations included La Grande Manchotière and La Petite Manchotière.


title: Crozet Islands

text: The Crozet Islands have a maritime-influenced tundra climate (Köppen climate classification, ET). Monthly temperatures average around and in winter and summer, respectively. Precipitation is high, with over per year. It rains on average 300 days a year, and winds exceeding occur on 100 days a year. The temperatures may rise to in summer and rarely go below , even in winter.


title: Crozet Islands

text: The islands are part of the Southern Indian Ocean Islands tundra ecoregion that includes several subantarctic islands. In this cold climate, plant life is mainly limited to grasses, mosses and lichens, while the main animals are insects along with large populations of seabirds, seals and penguins.


title: Crozet Islands

text: The Crozet Islands are home to four species of penguins. Most abundant are the macaroni penguin, of which some 2 million pairs breed on the islands, and the king penguin, home to 700,000 breeding pairs; half the world's population. The eastern rockhopper penguin also can be found, and there is a small colony of gentoo penguins. There is also an endemic subspecies of the duck Eaton's pintail. Other birds include black-faced sheathbills, petrels, and albatross, including the wandering albatross.


title: Crozet Islands

text: Mammals living on the Crozet Islands include fur seals and southern elephant seals. Killer whales have been observed preying upon the seals. The transient killer whales of the Crozet Islands are famous for intentionally beaching (and later un-stranding) themselves while actively hunting the islands' breeding seal population. This is a very rare behaviour, most often seen in the Patagonia region of Argentina, and is thought to be a learned skill passed down through generations of individual orca families. These killer whales also seem to stay around the Crozet Islands year-round, feeding on mostly seals during the summer, and then feeding on penguins for the winter.


title: Crozet Islands

text: The Crozet Islands have been a nature reserve since 1938. Introduction of foreign species (mice, rats, and subsequently cats for pest control) has caused severe damage to the original ecosystem. The pigs that had been introduced on Île des Cochons and the goats brought to Île de la Possession—both as a food resource—have been exterminated.


title: Crozet Islands

text: Another on-going concern is overfishing of the Patagonian toothfish, as well as the albatross population, which is being monitored. The waters of the Crozet Islands are patrolled by the French government.


title: Crozet Islands

text: A 2012 French film, "Les Saveurs du Palais", begins and ends with scenes in the Crozet Islands. The film's protagonist, a grandmotherly chef from the Périgord region of France who signed on as cook for the research station, had once been the personal chef to President François Mitterrand.


title: Crozet Islands

text: In the 1978 novel "Desolation Island", the fifth book in Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey–Maturin series, the fictional naval vessel HMS "Leopard" is severely damaged by a collision with an iceberg in the southwestern Indian Ocean. The crew attempts to make landfall for repairs on one of the Crozet Islands, but they miss the island and continue to drift towards the east, unable to reverse direction.


title: Crozet Islands

text: In Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick", the Pequod sails near the ‘distant Crozetts’, ’a good cruising ground for Right Whalemen’ in Chapter 52, ‘The Albatross’. See also chapter 58, ’Brit’.


title: Crozet Islands

text: "Biggles Cuts it Fine" by Captain W. E. Johns is set mainly in the Crozet Islands, where a fictional Russian base is discovered on, what is called in the book, “Hog Island”.


title: Roaring Forties

text: The Roaring Forties are strong westerly winds found in the Southern Hemisphere, generally between the latitudes of 40°S and 50°S. The strong west-to-east air currents are caused by the combination of air being displaced from the Equator towards the South Pole, the Earth's rotation, and the scarcity of landmasses to serve as windbreaks at those latitudes.


title: Roaring Forties

text: The Roaring Forties were a major aid to ships sailing the Brouwer Route from Europe to the East Indies or Australasia during the Age of Sail, and in modern times are favoured by yachtsmen on round-the-world voyages and competitions. The boundaries of the Roaring Forties are not consistent: The wind-stream shifts north or south depending on the season. The strong and continuous winds in the Roaring Forties make this zone highly prospective for wind power such as in New Zealand and Tasmania.


title: Roaring Forties

text: Similar but even stronger conditions that occur at more southerly latitudes are called the Furious Fifties and the Shrieking or Screaming Sixties.


title: Roaring Forties

text: Hot air rises at the Equator and is pushed towards the poles by cooler air travelling towards the Equator (an atmospheric circulation feature known as the Hadley Cell). At about 30°S, the outward-travelling air sinks to lower altitudes, and continues toward the poles closer to the ground (the Ferrel Cell), then rises up again from about 60°S as the air joins the Polar vortex. This travel in the 30°–60°S zone combines with the rotation of the earth to move the air currents from west to east, creating westerly winds.


title: Roaring Forties

text: Unlike in the northern hemisphere, which features huge landmasses (North America, Europe, and Asia) thereby obstructing air currents, the large tracts of open ocean south of 40°S are interrupted only by Tasmania, New Zealand, and the southern part of South America. These relatively small obstructions, which are themselves bordered by large tracts of open water along their southern shores, allow high wind speeds to develop – much higher than near 40°N, where two large continents (Eurasia and North America) impede the flow of circum-planetary westerly winds. Similar but stronger wind conditions prevalent closer to the South Pole are referred to as the "Furious Fifties" (50°S to 60°S), and the "Shrieking" or "Screaming Sixties" (below 60°S).


title: Roaring Forties

text: The latitude ranges for the "Roaring Forties" and similar winds are not consistent: All shift towards the South Pole in the southern summer, and towards the Equator in the southern winter. Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, is known as "Windy Welly" because it is one of the few cities situated in these gusty latitudes.


title: Roaring Forties

text: During the Age of Sail, ships travelling from Europe to the East Indies or Australasia would sail down the west coast of Africa and round the Cape of Good Hope to use the Roaring Forties to speed their passage across the Indian Ocean, then on the return leg, continue eastwards across the Pacific Ocean and south of Cape Horn before sailing up the east coast of the Americas to home.


title: Roaring Forties

text: It was first used by Dutch explorer Hendrik Brouwer in his Brouwer Route, discovered in 1611, which effectively halved the duration of the trip from Europe to Java. "To run the easting down" was the phrase used to describe the fast passages achieved in the Roaring Forties. The story "Easting Down" by "Shalimar" describes the events that befall a steamship unwisely venturing into these latitudes to achieve a faster passage.


title: Roaring Forties

text: Modern round-the-world sailors also take advantage of the Roaring Forties to speed travel times, in particular those involved in record attempts or races. An old sailor's expression goes, "below 40 degrees south, there is no law; below 50 degrees, there is no God."


title: Roaring Forties

text: The peak band of winds has moved approximately 2.5 degrees south in the late 20th century, from a combination of human-induced ozone depletion and greenhouse gas emissions. This has caused faster warming in Antarctica and less rainfall in Australia, especially Western Australia.


title: Roaring Forties

text: In 1982, French filmmaker Christian de Chalonge directed "The Roaring Forties", a drama movie inspired by the death of Donald Crowhurst, a British sailor who perished in the 1969 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race.


title: Jogendra Nath Mandal

text: Jogendranath Mandal (যোগেন্দ্রনাথ মন্ডল) (29 January 1904 – 5 October 1968), was one of the founding fathers of modern state of Pakistan, and legislator serving as country's first minister of law and labour, and also was second minister of Commonwealth and Kashmir affairs. In the cabinet of Interim Government of India, He got the law portfolio before. As a leader of the "Scheduled Castes" (Dalits), Jogendranath Mandal campaigned against the division of Bengal in 1947, believing that the divided Bengal would mean that Dalits would be at the mercy of the Muslim majority in East Bengal (Pakistan), and at the thraldom of majority caste-Hindus in West Bengal (India). In the end, he decided to maintain his base in East Pakistan, hoping that the Dalits would be benefited from it and joined the first cabinet in Pakistan as the Minister of Law and Labour. He migrated to India a few years after partition after submitting his resignation to Liaquat Ali Khan, the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, citing the anti-Dalits bias of Pakistani administration.


title: Jogendra Nath Mandal

text: Jogendra Nath Mandal was born in the Barisal district of what was then Bengal Presidency, British India (later East Bengal and East Pakistan, presently Bangladesh) on 29 January 1904. He belonged to the Namasudra Community. Jogendra Nath Mandal was a diligent student since his nascent years, and with his resilient assiduousness to study, he passed his initial education in the First Class; then after graduating in 1929, took admission in law. But after completion of his law degree in 1934, Jogendra Nath Mandal decided not to take up law practice or a job. Instead, he commenced his vociferous retaliation against the unjust and oppressive societal structure which had hitherto humiliated his community, and decided to dedicate his whole life for the betterment of the oppresseds and society as a whole.


title: Jogendra Nath Mandal

text: Mandal began his political career as an independent candidate in the Indian provincial assembly elections of 1937. He contested Bakharganj North East Rural constituency for a seat in the Bengal legislative assembly and defeated Saral Kumar Dutta, the president of the district committee of the Indian National Congress (INC) and nephew of the Swadeshi leader, Ashwini Kumar Dutta.


title: Jogendra Nath Mandal

text: Mandal was considerably influenced around this time by both Subhas Chandra Bose and Sarat Chandra Bose. When the former was expelled from the INC in 1940, Mandal became involved with the Muslim League (ML), which was the only other significant national party, and became a minister in the cabinet of the ML chief minister, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy.


title: Jogendra Nath Mandal

text: Mandal was a follower of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, the father of the Indian Constitution. It was also around this time that Mandal and B. R. Ambedkar established the Bengal branch of the Scheduled Castes Federation, which itself aspired to political power. Mandal played a vital role for Ambedkar’s election to the Constituent Assembly from Bengal, when Ambedkar failed to secure a seat from Bombay in 1946. Mandal played a significant part in the framing of Constitution of India as well as Ambedkar consulted and sought his advice through letters on matters pertaining to the framing of the Constitution.


title: Jogendra Nath Mandal

text: While the Namasudra community was being courted by the Hindu Mahasabha, and politics in the province was dominated by the oppressed Dalit and Muslim people, Mandal saw a distinction between communal affairs and political disputes involving the INC and ML. When rioting broke out in 1946, he traveled around East Bengal to urge Dalit people not to participate in violence against Muslims, as Muslims were perceived to have been as oppressed by the upper caste Hindus as the Dalits were. He argued that the Dalits would be better off with the Muslims than with the high caste Hindus; thus, he supported ML.


title: Jogendra Nath Mandal

text: When the Muslim League joined the Interim Government of India in October 1946, Jinnah nominated Mandal as one of the League's five representatives. King George VI duly appointed Mandal to the body, where he took over the law portfolio.


title: Jogendra Nath Mandal

text: Mandal was one of the 96 founding fathers of Pakistan, as he supported the ML. At their inaugural session, days before the 15 August 1947 partition of India, they elected him their temporary chairman. When Jinnah was to be sworn in as the first Governor General of Pakistan, he is said to have asked Mandal to preside over the session. He held immense faith in Mandal for his vision and righteousness. He was appointed Pakistan's first Minister for Law and Labour. But Mandal’s status did not last long because of continuous suppression under a Muslim-majority bureaucracy. The situation further worsened after Jinnah’s death in September 1948. When Muslim rioters with the support of the police committed atrocities against his constituents, the Dalits, he protested. That caused strife between him and the Pakistani prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan.


title: Jogendra Nath Mandal

text: In 1950, Mandal had to return to India due to an arrest warrant against him in Pakistan, submitting his resignation to Liaquat Ali Khan, the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, citing inaction of the Pakistani administration against the rioters who committed atrocities against his people. He mentioned incidents related to social injustice and biased attitude towards non-Muslim minorities in his resignation letter. However he became a political untouchable after returning to India; still he continued his work to rehabilitate Hindu refugees from Bangladesh who were fast filling up West Bengal. He died on 5 October 1968 in Bongaon, North 24 Parganas.


title: Affion Crockett

text: Crockett appeared in HBO's "Def Comedy Jam" in 1996, demonstrating his impressions and physical comedy. He was a cast member of the game show "Wild 'n Out", starring Nick Cannon. He has appeared on "Curb Your Enthusiasm", "Blackish", co-starred in the films "A Haunted House 1" & "2" with Marlon Wayans, "Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins" with Martin Lawrence, "Soul Men" with Samuel L. Jackson and Bernie Mac, "The Wedding Ringer" with Kevin Hart and Josh Gad, and "Pixels" with Adam Sandler. In 2016, Affion was a contestant playing for charity, on Season 3, episode 18 of the game show idiotest


title: Affion Crockett

text: Crockett starred in and produced his own sketch comedy show for Fox titled "In the Flow with Affion Crockett", which was executive produced by Jamie Foxx. He wrote, produced, and rapped on his debut comedy album, "Watch the Clone".


title: Affion Crockett

text: He hosted a reunion special for the TV series "Martin" titled "Martin: The Reunion" that aired June 16, 2022 on BET+.


title: Military history of India

text: The predecessors to the contemporary Army of India were many: the sepoy regiments, native cavalry, irregular horse and Indian sapper and miner companies raised by the three British presidencies. The Army of India was raised under the British Raj in the 19th century by taking the erstwhile presidency armies, merging them, and bringing them under the Crown. The British Indian Army fought in both World Wars.


title: Military history of India

text: The armed forces succeeded the following India's independence in 1947. After World War II, many of the wartime troops were discharged and units disbanded. The reduced armed forces were partitioned between India and Pakistan. The Indian armed forces fought in all fours wars against Pakistan and two wars against People's Republic of China in 1962 and 1967. India also fought in the Kargil War with Pakistan in 1999, the highest altitude mountain warfare in history. The Indian Armed Forces have participated in several United Nations peacekeeping operations and are presently the second largest contributor of troops to the peacekeeping force.


title: Military history of India

text: Fortified towns have been excavated from Indus Valley civilisation with thick and tall walls. Banawali is among the earliest sites in the world where moats have been discovered. These forts also feature square and round bastion and contain a citadel constructed at an elevated height. Sites such as Mohenjo Daro and Dholavira exhibit some outstanding examples of Bronze Age Indian fortifications with their thick tall walls, with the walls made of burned bricks at some places solid mud-brick embankment have been discovered which run for twenty five feet (7.5 meters) without reaching the bottom. Sites such as Desalpar, Dholavira's have yielded massive stone fortifications and the acropolis is extensively fortified with tall standing walls and furnished with ramparts and gateways.


title: Military history of India

text: An excavation at Sinauli's necropolis has yielded copper swords, helmets and chariots, dating from 2000 to 1800 BC, which suggests the presence of a warrior class of people in the region during the Copper-Bronze Age (3300 BC–1200 BC).


title: Military history of India

text: An Indus seal depicting a soldier firing a composite bow was unearthed in Shortugai, Afghanistan, which indicates that Indus people were already familiar with it long before they were depicted in ancient Indian reliefs. Another copper seal from Mohenjo Daro shows a horned hunter holding a composite bow.


title: Military history of India

text: The Rigvedic tribes of Indo-Aryans were led by their kings ("raja") and engaged in wars with each other and other tribes. They used bronze weapons and horse-drawn spoke-wheeled chariots described prominently in the Rigveda. The main share from the booty obtained during cattle raids and battles went to the chief of the tribe. The warriors belonged to the Kshatriya varna. The earliest of such battles is noted in Rigveda as the Battle of the Ten Kings.


title: Military history of India

text: The Vedas and other associated texts dating to the post-Rigvedic (Iron Age) Vedic period (ca. 1100–500 BC) contain the earliest written references to armies in India. The earliest known application of war elephants dates to this period; the animals are mentioned in several Vedic Sanskrit hymns.


title: Military history of India

text: The two great epics of Hinduism, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, center on conflicts between the emerging Mahajanapadas and refer to military formations, theories of warfare and esoteric weaponry. They discuss standing armies that used in war chariots, war elephants and even mythical flying machines. The Ramayana describes in great detail the fortifications of Ayodhya. The Mahabharata describes various military techniques such as Chakravyuha used in the Kurukshetra War.


title: Military history of India

text: The expansionist King Bimbisara conquered Anga in what is now West Bengal and strengthened the military of Magadh's capital, Rajagriha. Ajatashatru built a new fort at Pataliputra, Magadh's new capital, to launch an attack on Licchavis across the Ganges River. Jain texts tell that he used two new weapons; catapults and a covered chariot with swinging mace that has been compared to modern tanks.


title: Military history of India

text: The Nanda dynasty originated from the region of Magadha in ancient India during the 4th century BC. At its greatest extent, the empire ruled by the Nanda dynasty extended from Bengal in the east, to Punjab in the west and as far south as the Vindhya Range.


title: Military history of India

text: In 327 BC Alexander the Great began his foray into Punjab. King Ambhi, ruler of Taxila, surrendered the city to Alexander. Alexander fought an epic battle against the Indian king Porus in the Battle of Hydaspes (326). Despite winning, Alexander decided to turn back and end his campaign due to pressure from his generals and troops who were tired and fatigued because of constant battle.


title: Military history of India

text: According to Megasthenes, who served as an ambassador from the Seleucid Empire, Chandragupta Maurya built an army consisting of 30,000 cavalry, 9,000 war elephants, and 600,000 infantry. Chandragupta conquered much of Indian subcontinent, establishing an empire from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal. He then defeated the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire under Seleucus I Nicator to conquer the regions to the west of the Indus River. He then turned south, taking over much of what is now Central India. His military was administered by six chairs, one for each of the four arms of the army (infantry, cavalry, elephants, and chariots), one chair for the navy, and one for logistics and supply.


title: Military history of India

text: Infantry at this time was most commonly armed with a longbow made of bamboo and a single- or double-handed broadsword probably similar to the khanda. Other foot soldiers could be armed with a large animal hide tower shield and a spear or javelins. Cavalry carried spears. Elephants were mounted, sometimes allegedly with howdahs, which may be an Indian invention by archers or javelin throwers, with a mahout around the animal's neck. Chariots by this time were in definite decline, but remained in the army due to their prestige.


title: Military history of India

text: In 185 BCE, the last Mauryan ruler was assassinated by Pushyamitra Shunga, the Commander-in-Chief of the Mauryan armed forces.


title: Military history of India

text: War and conflict characterized the Shunga period. They are known to have warred with the Kalingas, Satavahanas, the Indo-Greeks, and possibly the Panchalas and Mathuras.


title: Military history of India

text: Extent of the Shunga Empire's wars with the Indo-Greek Kingdom figure greatly in the history of this period. From around 180 BCE the Indo-Greek ruler Demetrius I of Bactria conquered the Kabul Valley and is theorized to have advanced into the trans-Indus. The Indo-Greek Menander I is credited with either joining or leading a campaign to Pataliputra with other Indian rulers; however, very little is known about the exact nature and success of the campaign. The net result of these wars remains uncertain.


title: Military history of India

text: Pushyamitra is recorded to have performed two Ashvamedha Yagnas and Shunga imperial inscriptions have extended as far as Jalandhar. Scriptures such as the Divyavadhana note that his rule extended even farther to Sialkot, in the Punjab. Moreover, if it was lost, Mathura was regained by the Shungas around 100 BCE (or by other indigenous rulers: the Arjunayanas (area of Mathura) and Yaudheyas mention military victories on their coins ("Victory of the Arjunayanas", "Victory of the Yaudheyas"), and during the 1st century BCE, the Trigartas, Audumbaras and finally the Kunindas also started to mint their own coins). Accounts of battles between the Greeks and the Shunga in Northwestern India are also found in the Mālavikāgnimitram, a play by Kālidāsa which describes a battle between Greek cavalrymen and Vasumitra, the grandson of Pushyamitra, on the Indus river, in which the Indians defeated the Greeks and Pushyamitra successfully completed the Ashvamedha Yagna.


title: Military history of India

text: The Indo-Greeks and the Shungas seem to have reconciled and exchanged diplomatic missions around 110 BCE, as indicated by the Heliodorus pillar, which records the dispatch of a Greek ambassador named Heliodorus, from the court of the Indo-Greek king Antialcidas, to the court of the Shunga emperor Bhagabhadra at the site of Vidisha in central India.


title: Military history of India

text: Classical Indian texts on archery in particular and martial arts in general are known as Dhanurveda. Several classics of the genre date from this period.


title: Military history of India

text: According to some interpretations of the Puranas, the Satavahana family belonged to the Andhra-jati ("tribe") and was the first Deccanese dynasty to build an empire in daksinapatha (southern region). The Satavahanas (also called Andhra and Shalivahan) rose to power in modern Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra around 200 BCE and remained in power for about 400 years. Almost the whole of present-day Telangana, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Goa, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh came under Satavahana rule. Their first capital was Koti Lingala, as well as Paithan, then called Pratishthan.


title: Military history of India

text: Simuka, the dynasty's founder, conquered Maharashtra, Malwa and part of Madhya Pradesh. His successor and brother Kanha (or Krishna) further extended his kingdom to the west and the south. He was succeeded by Satakarni I, who defeated the Shunga dynasty of North India. His successor, Gautamiputra Satakarni, defeated the invading Indo-Scythians, Indo-Parthians and Indo-Greeks. His empire extended up to Banavasi in the south, and included Maharashtra, Konkan, Saurashtra, Malwa, west Rajasthan and Vidharbha. Later, Satavahana rulers lost some of these territories. Satavahana power revived briefly under Yajna Sri Satakarni but declined after his death.


title: Military history of India

text: The Mahameghavahana dynasty was an ancient ruling dynasty of Kalinga after the decline of the Mauryan Empire. The third ruler of the dynasty, Khārabēḷa, conquered much of India in a series of campaigns at the beginning of the common era. Kaḷingan military might was reinstated by Khārabēḷa. Under Khārabēḷa's generalship, the Kaḷinga state had a formidable maritime reach with trade routes linking it to the then-Simhala (Sri Lanka), Burma (Myanmar), Siam (Thailand), Vietnam, Kamboja (Cambodia), Borneo, Bali, Samudra (Sumatra) and Yawadvipa (Java). Khārabēḷa led many successful campaigns against states of Magadha, Anga, Satavahanas and the South Indian regions of Pandyan Empire and expanded Kaḷinga as far as the Ganges and the Kaveri.


title: Military history of India

text: The Kharavelan state had a formidable maritime empire with trading routes linking it to Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Borneo, Bali, Sumatra and Java. Colonists from Kalinga settled in Sri Lanka, Burma, as well as the Maldives and Maritime Southeast Asia. Even today Indians are referred to as Keling in Malaysia because of this.


title: Military history of India

text: The main source of information about Khārabeḷa is his famous seventeen line rock-cut Hātigumphā inscription in a cave in the Udayagiri hills near Bhubaneswar, Odisha. According to the inscription, he attacked Rajagriha in Magadha, thus defeating the Indo-Greek king Demetrius I of Bactria to retreat to Mathura.


title: Military history of India

text: "Siva-Dhanur-veda" discusses the military of the Gupta Empire. The Guptas relied less on armoured war elephants compared to previous south Asian empires. The use of chariots had declined heavily by the time of the Guptas, as they had not proved very useful against the Greeks, Scythians, and other invaders. Guptas utilised famously used cavalry archers, and it became the prestige arm of the military as evidenced by coinage. heavy cavalry clad in mail armour and equipped with maces and lances, who would have used shock action to break the enemy line.


title: Military history of India

text: They also employed infantry similar to previous periods: Archers with a longbow composed of bamboo or metal and fired a long bamboo cane arrow with a metal head; iron shafts were used against armoured elephants. They also sometimes used fire arrows. Archers were frequently protected by infantry equipped with shields, javelins, and longswords. The Guptas also maintained a navy, allowing them to control regional waters.


title: Military history of India

text: Samudragupta seized the kingdoms of Ahichchhatra and Padmavati early in his reign. Later, he took the Kota kingdom and attacked the tribes in Malvas, the Yaudheyas, the Arjunayanas, the Maduras and the Abhiras. He also subjugated the remnants of the Kushan Empire. By his death in 380, he had conquered over twenty kingdoms.


title: Military history of India

text: 4th century CE Sanskrit poet Kalidasa, credits Chandragupta II with having conquered about twenty one kingdoms, both in and outside India. After finishing his campaign in the East and West India, he proceeded northwards, subjugated the Parasikas, then the Hunas and the Kambojas tribes located in the west and east Oxus valleys respectively. of the Indian subcontinent; the Gupta empire was the most powerful empire in the world during his reign, at a time when the Roman Empire in the west was in decline.


title: Military history of India

text: Skandagupta faced with invading Indo-Hephthalites or White Huns, from the northwest. Skandagupta had warred against the Huns during the reign of his father, and was celebrated throughout the empire as a great warrior. He crushed the Huns invasion in 455, and managed to keep them at bay; however, the expense of the wars drained the empire's resources and contributed to its decline


title: Military history of India

text: Emperor Harsha (606–647) ruled the Empire of Harsha covering northern India for over forty years. His father, a king of Thaneswar, had gained prominence by successful wars against the Huns. Harsha had plans to conquer the whole of India, and carried on wars for thirty years with considerable success. By 612 he had built up a vast army with which he conquered nearly all North India up to the Narmada river. In 620 he invaded the Deccan Plateau but was repelled by Pulakeshin II.


title: Military history of India

text: In South India, the Chalukyas and the Pallavas gained prominence. The Chalukya ruler Pulakeshin II's expansionism started with minor campaigns against the Alupas, Gangas and others. He defeated the Pallava king Mahendravarman and conquered the Cheras and the Pandyas. His greatest military success, the defeat of Harshavardhana (also known as Harsha), depleted his treasury, forcing him to end his expansionist campaigns.


title: Military history of India

text: The Pallava king Narasimhavarman vowed to avenge Mahendravarman's defeat by Pulakeshin II. He invaded Vatapi with an army headed by his general Paranjothi. He defeated the Chalukyas, killing Pulakeshin II in 642. Clashes between the Chalukyas and the Pallavas continued for a century, until the Chalukya king Vikramaditya II won a decisive victory against the Pallavas in 740. The Rashtrakutas overthrew the Chalukya empire in 750. During the 970s, Tailapa II overthrew the Rashtrakutas and recovered most of the Chalukya Empire, except for Gujarat. The Chalukyas of this period are known as the Kalyani Chalukyas, as Kalyani was their capital. They clashed intermittently with the Cholas.


title: Military history of India

text: The Cholas were the first rulers of the Indian subcontinent to maintain a navy and use it to expand their dominion overseas. Vijayalaya Chola defeated the Pallavas and captured Thanjavur. In the early 10th century the Chola king Parantaka I defeated the Pandyan king Maravarman Rajasimha II and invaded Sri Lanka. The Rashtrakuta ruler Krishna III defeated and killed Parantaka I's son Rajaditya in about 949.


title: Military history of India

text: Uttama Chola reigned 970–85. Inscriptions tell that at least from his time, Chola warriors wore waist coats of armour. Hence, one regiment was called "Niyayam-Uttama-Chola-tterinda-andalakattalar". Paluvettaraiyar Maravan Kandanar served as a general under Uttama and his predecessor, Sundara.


title: Military history of India

text: Rajaraja Chola began his military career with the conquest of the Cheras in the Kandalur War. He captured the Pandya ruler Amara Bhujanga, the town of Vizhinjam, and a part of Sri Lanka. In the 14th year of his reign (998–999) he conquered the Gangas of Mysore, the Nolambas of Bellary and Eastern Mysore, Tadigaipadi, Vengi, Coorg, the Pandyas and the Chalukyas of the Deccan. During the next three years, he subdued Quilon and the northern kingdom of Kalinga with the help of his son Rajendra Chola I. Rajendra later completed the conquest of Sri Lanka, crossed the Ganges, and marched across Kalinga to Bengal. He sent out a great naval expedition that occupied parts of Java, Malaya, and Sumatra. The Cholas were brought down by the Hoysalas from the west and Pandyas from the south.


title: Military history of India

text: The Arab scholar Sulaiman described the emperor of the Rashtrakuta dynasty as one of the four great kings of the world in the 9th century. In middle of 9th century, the Palas under Devapala attacked the Gurjara-Pratiharas. Led by Mihir Bhoja, the Pratiharas and their allies defeated Narayan Pala.


title: Military history of India

text: There were many battles between the Gurjar Pratiharas under Bhoj and the Rashtrakutas under Krishna II with mixed results. When the Rashtrakuta king Indra III attacked Kanauj, Mahipala I, Mihir Bhoj's successor, fled; he later returned.