title: Persian literature

text: After the 15th century, the Indian style of Persian poetry (sometimes also called "Isfahani" or "Safavi" styles) took over. This style has its roots in the Timurid era and produced the likes of Amir Khosrow Dehlavi, and Bhai Nand Lal Goya.


title: Persian literature

text: The most significant prose writings of this era are Nizami Arudhi Samarqandi's ""Chahār Maqāleh"" as well as Zahiriddin Nasr Muhammad Aufi's anecdote compendium "Jawami ul-Hikayat".


title: Persian literature

text: Shams al-Mo'ali Abol-hasan Ghaboos ibn Wushmgir's famous work, the "Qabus nama" ("A Mirror for Princes"), is a highly esteemed Belles-lettres work of Persian literature. Also highly regarded is "Siyasatnama", by Nizam al-Mulk, a famous Persian vizier. "Kelileh va Demneh", translated from Indian folk tales, can also be mentioned in this category. It is seen as a collection of adages in Persian literary studies and thus does not convey folkloric notions.


title: Persian literature

text: Among the major historical and biographical works in classical Persian, one can mention Abolfazl Beyhaghi's famous "Tarikh-i Beyhaqi", "Lubab ul-Albab" of Zahiriddin Nasr Muhammad Aufi (which has been regarded as a reliable chronological source by many experts), as well as Ata-Malik Juvayni's famous "Tarikh-i Jahangushay-i Juvaini" (which spans the Mongolid and Ilkhanid era of Iran). Attar's "Tazkerat-ol-Owliya" ("Biographies of the Saints") is also a detailed account of Sufi mystics, which is referenced by many subsequent authors and considered a significant work in mystical hagiography.


title: Persian literature

text: The oldest surviving work of Persian literary criticism after the Islamic conquest of Persia is "Muqaddame-ye Shahname-ye Abu Mansuri", which was written during the Samanid period. The work deals with the myths and legends of "Shahnameh" and is considered the oldest surviving example of Persian prose. It also shows an attempt by the authors to evaluate literary works critically.


title: Persian literature

text: "One Thousand and One Nights" () is a medieval folk tale collection which tells the story of Scheherazade ( "Šahrzād"), a Sassanid queen who must relate a series of stories to her malevolent husband, King Shahryar ( "Šahryār"), to delay her execution. The stories are told over a period of one thousand and one nights, and every night she ends the story with a suspenseful situation, forcing the King to keep her alive for another day. The individual stories were created over several centuries, by many people from a number of different lands.


title: Persian literature

text: The nucleus of the collection is formed by a Pahlavi Sassanid Persian book called "Hazār Afsānah" (, "Thousand Myths"), a collection of ancient Indian and Persian folk tales.


title: Persian literature

text: During the reign of the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid in the 8th century, Baghdad had become an important cosmopolitan city. Merchants from Persia, China, India, Africa, and Europe were all found in Baghdad. During this time, many of the stories that were originally folk stories are thought to have been collected orally over many years and later compiled into a single book. The compiler and 9th-century translator into Arabic is reputedly the storyteller "Abu Abd-Allah Muhammad el-Gahshigar". The frame story of Shahrzad seems to have been added in the 14th century.


title: Persian literature

text: Ali-Akbar Dehkhoda. It is the largest comprehensive Persian dictionary ever published, comprising 16 volumes (more than 27,000 pages). It is published by the Tehran University Press (UTP) under the supervision of the Dehkhoda Dictionary Institute and was first published in 1931. It traces the historical development of the Persian language, providing a comprehensive resource to scholars and academic researchers, as well as describing usage in its many variations throughout the world.


title: Persian literature

text: He names 200 Persian lexicographical works in his dictionary, the earliest, "Farhang-i Oim" () and "Farhang-i Menakhtay" (), from the late Sassanid era of the 3rd-7th century.


title: Persian literature

text: The most widely used Persian lexicons in the Middle Ages were those of Abu Hafs Sughdi () and Asadi Tusi (), written in 1092.


title: Persian literature

text: The production of Persian dictionaries declined in Iran after the 14th century, while it simultaneously grew in the Indian subcontinent and Ottoman Turkey, regions that were increasingly becoming Persianized. Only 4 dictionaries of Persian were compiled in Iran between the 10th and 19th centuries, while more than 66 were produced in India. Significant dictionaries from India include the "Farhang-e Ghavvas," "Sharafnama-ye Ebrahimi", "Farhang-i Jahangiri", and "Burhan-i Qati". Unlike the Persian dictionaries of India, most dictionaries from Ottoman Turkey are bilingual (Persian-Turkish). Some significant dictionaries of the era are "Oqnum-e Ajam", "Loghat-e Ne'matallah", and "Lesan al-Ajam."


title: Persian literature

text: Also highly regarded in the contemporary Persian literature lexical corpus are the works of Dr. Mohammad Moin. The first volume of Moin Dictionary was published in 1963.


title: Persian literature

text: In 1645, Christian Ravius completed a Persian-Latin dictionary, printed at Leiden. This was followed by John Richardson's two-volume Oxford edition (1777) and Gladwin-Malda's (1770) Persian-English Dictionaries, Scharif and S. Peters' Persian-Russian Dictionary (1869), and 30 other Persian lexicographical translations through the 1950s.


title: Persian literature

text: Currently, English-Persian dictionaries of Manouchehr Aryanpour and Soleiman Haim are widely used in Iran.


title: Persian literature

text: Some of Persia's best-beloved medieval poets were Sufis, and their poetry was, and is, widely read by Sufis from Morocco to Indonesia. Rumi, in particular, is renowned both as a poet and as the founder of a widespread Sufi order. Hafez, too, is hugely admired in both East and West, and he was inspired by Sufism if he was not actually a Sufi himself. The themes and styles of this kind of devotional poetry have been widely imitated by many Sufi and non-Sufi poets. See also the article on Sufi poetry.


title: Persian literature

text: Many notable texts in Persian mystic literature are not poems, yet highly read and regarded. Among those are "Kimiya-yi sa'ādat", "Asrar al-Tawhid" and "Kashf ul Mahjoob".


title: Persian literature

text: Beginning in the early 16th century, Persian traditions had a large impact on the Georgian ruling elites, which in turn resulted in Persian influence on Georgian art, architecture, and literature. This cultural influence lasted until the arrival of the Russians.


title: Persian literature

text: Jamshid Sh. Giunashvili remarks on the connection of Georgian culture with that of the Persian literary work "Shahnameh":


title: Persian literature

text: Despite that Asia Minor (or Anatolia) had been ruled various times prior to the Middle Ages by various Persian-speaking dynasties originating in Iran, the language lost its traditional foothold there with the demise of the Sassanian Empire. Centuries later however, the practise and usage in the region would be strongly revived. A branch of the Seljuks, the Sultanate of Rum, took Persian language, art and letters to Anatolia. They adopted Persian language as the official language of the empire. The Ottomans, which can "roughly" be seen as their eventual successors, took this tradition over. Persian was the official court language of the empire, and for some time, the official language of the empire. The educated and noble class of the Ottoman Empire all spoke Persian, such as sultan Selim I, despite being Safavid Iran's archrival and a staunch opposer of Shia Islam. It was a major literary language in the empire. Some of the noted earlier Persian literature works during the Ottoman rule are Idris Bidlisi's "Hasht Bihisht", which begun in 1502 and covered the reign of the first eight Ottoman rulers, and the "Salim-Namah", a glorification of Selim I. After a period of several centuries, Ottoman Turkish (which was highly Persianised itself) had developed towards a fully accepted language of literature, which was even able to satisfy the demands of a scientific presentation. However, the number of Persian and Arabic loanwords contained in those works increased at times up to 88%. The Ottomans produced thousands of Persian literary works throughout their century long lifespan.


title: Persian literature

text: With the emergence of the Ghaznavids and their successors such as the Ghurids, Timurids and Mughal Empire, Persian culture and its literature gradually moved into South Asia too. In general, from its earliest days, Persian literature and language was imported into the subcontinent by culturally Persianised Turkic and Afghan dynasties. Persian became the language of the nobility, literary circles, and the royal Mughal courts for hundreds of years. In the early 19th century, Hindustani replaced it.


title: Persian literature

text: Under the Mughal Empire during the 16th century, the official language of the Indian subcontinent became Persian. Only in 1832 did the British army force the South Asia to begin conducting business in English. Persian poetry in fact flourished in these regions while post-Safavid Iranian literature stagnated. Dehkhoda and other scholars of the 20th century, for example, largely based their works on the detailed lexicography produced in India, using compilations such as Ghazi khan Badr Muhammad Dehlavi's "Adat al-Fudhala" (), Ibrahim Ghavamuddin Farughi's "Farhang-i Ibrahimi" (), and particularly Muhammad Padshah's "Farhang-i Anandraj" ().


title: Persian literature

text: Persian literature was little known in the West before the 18-19th century. It became much better known following the publication of several translations from the works of late medieval Persian poets, and it inspired works by various Western poets and writers.


title: Persian literature

text: Perhaps the most popular Persian poet of the 19th and early 20th centuries was Omar Khayyam (1048–1123), whose "Rubaiyat" was freely translated by Edward Fitzgerald in 1859. Khayyam is esteemed more as a scientist than a poet in his native Persia, but in Fitzgerald's rendering, he became one of the most quoted poets in English. Khayyam's line, "A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou", is known to many who could not say who wrote it, or where:


title: Persian literature

text: The Persian poet and mystic Rumi (1207–1273) (known as Molana in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan, and as Mevlana in Turkey), has attracted a large following in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Popularizing translations by Coleman Barks have presented Rumi as a New Age sage. There are also a number of more literary translations by scholars such as A. J. Arberry.


title: Persian literature

text: The classical poets (Hafiz, Saadi, Khayyam, Rumi, Nizami and Ferdowsi) are now widely known in English and can be read in various translations. Other works of Persian literature are untranslated and little known.


title: Persian literature

text: During the last century, numerous works of classical Persian literature have been translated into Swedish by baron Eric Hermelin. He translated works by, among others, Farid al-Din Attar, Rumi, Ferdowsi, Omar Khayyam, Saadi and Sanai. Influenced by the writings of the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, he was especially attracted to the religious or Sufi aspects of classical Persian poetry. His translations have had a great impact on numerous modern Swedish writers, among them Karl Wennberg, Willy Kyrklund and Gunnar Ekelöf. More recently classical authors such as Hafez, Rumi, Araqi and Nizami Aruzi have been rendered into Swedish by the Iranist Ashk Dahlén, who has published several essays on the development of Persian literature. Excerpts from Ferdowsi's "Shahnameh" has also been translated into Swedish prose by Namdar Nasser and Anja Malmberg.


title: Persian literature

text: During the last century, numerous works of classical and modern Persian literature have been translated into Italian by Alessandro Bausani (Nizami, Rumi, Iqbal, Khayyam), Carlo Saccone ('Attar, Sana'i, Hafiz, Nasir-i Khusraw, Nizami, Ahmad Ghazali, Ansari of Herat, Sa'di, Ayené), Angelo Piemontese (Amir Khusraw Dihlavi), Pio Filippani-Ronconi (Nasir-i Khusraw, Sa'di), Riccardo Zipoli (Kay Ka'us, Bidil), Maurizio Pistoso (Nizam al-Mulk), Giorgio Vercellin (Nizami 'Aruzi), Giovanni Maria D'Erme ('Ubayd Zakani, Hafiz), Sergio Foti (Suhrawardi, Rumi, Jami), Rita Bargigli (Sa'di, Farrukhi, Manuchehri, 'Unsuri), Nahid Norozi (Sohrab Sepehri, Khwaju of Kerman, Ahmad Shamlu), Faezeh Mardani (Forugh Farrokhzad, Abbas Kiarostami). A complete translation of Firdawsi's "Shah-nama" was made by Italo Pizzi in the 19th century.


title: Persian literature

text: In the 19th century, Persian literature experienced dramatic change and entered a new era. The beginning of this change was exemplified by an incident in the mid-19th century at the court of Nasereddin Shah, when the reform-minded prime minister, Amir Kabir, chastised the poet Habibollah Qa'ani for "lying" in a panegyric qasida written in Kabir's honor. Kabir saw poetry in general and the type of poetry that had developed during the Qajar period as detrimental to "progress" and "modernization" in Iranian society, which he believed was in dire need of change. Such concerns were also expressed by others such as Fath-'Ali Akhundzadeh, Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani, and Mirza Malkom Khan. Khan also addressed a need for a change in Persian poetry in literary terms as well, always linking it to social concerns.


title: Persian literature

text: The new Persian literary movement cannot be understood without an understanding of the intellectual movements among Iranian philosophical circles. Given the social and political climate of Persia (Iran) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which led to the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906–1911, the idea that change in poetry was necessary became widespread. Many argued that Persian poetry should reflect the realities of a country in transition. This idea was propagated by notable literary figures such as Ali-Akbar Dehkhoda and Abolqasem Aref, who challenged the traditional system of Persian poetry in terms of introducing new content and experimentation with rhetoric, lexico-semantics, and structure. Dehkhoda, for instance, used a lesser-known traditional form, the mosammat, to elegize the execution of a revolutionary journalist. 'Aref employed the ghazal, "the most central genre within the lyrical tradition" (p.  88), to write his "Payam-e Azadi" (Message of Freedom).


title: Persian literature

text: Some researchers argue that the notion of "sociopolitical ramifications of esthaetic changes" led to the idea of poets "as social leaders trying the limits and possibilities of social change".


title: Persian literature

text: An important movement in modern Persian literature centered on the question of modernization and Westernization and whether these terms are synonymous when describing the evolution of Iranian society. It can be argued that almost all advocates of modernism in Persian literature, from Akhundzadeh, Kermani, and Malkom Khan to Dehkhoda, Aref, Bahar, and Taqi Rafat, were inspired by developments and changes that had occurred in Western, particularly European, literatures. Such inspirations did not mean blindly copying Western models but, rather, adapting aspects of Western literature and changing them to fit the needs of Iranian culture.


title: Persian literature

text: Following the pioneering works of Ahmad Kasravi, Sadeq Hedayat, Moshfeq Kazemi and many others, the Iranian wave of comparative literature and literary criticism reached a symbolic crest with the emergence of Abdolhossein Zarrinkoub, Shahrokh Meskoob, Houshang Golshiri and Ebrahim Golestan.


title: Persian literature

text: Persian literature in Afghanistan has also experienced a dramatic change during the last century. At the beginning of the 20th century, Afghanistan was confronted with economic and social change, which sparked a new approach to literature. In 1911, Mahmud Tarzi, who came back to Afghanistan after years of exile in Turkey and was influential in government circles, started a fortnightly publication named "Saraj’ul Akhbar". "Saraj" was not the first such publication in the country, but in the field of journalism and literature it launched a new period of change and modernization. "Saraj" not only played an important role in journalism, it also gave new life to literature as a whole and opened the way for poetry to explore new avenues of expression through which personal thoughts took on a more social colour.


title: Persian literature

text: In 1930 (1309 AH), after months of cultural stagnation, a group of writers founded the Herat Literary Circle. A year later, another group calling itself the Kabul Literary Circle was founded in the capital. Both groups published regular magazines dedicated to culture and Persian literature. Both, especially the Kabul publication, had little success in becoming venues for modern Persian poetry and writing. In time, the Kabul publication turned into a stronghold for traditional writers and poets, and modernism in Dari literature was pushed to the fringes of social and cultural life.


title: Persian literature

text: Two of the most prominent classical poets in Afghanistan at the time were Abdul Haq Betab and Khalil Ullah Khalili. Betab received the honorary title "Malek ul Shoara" (King of Poets). Khalili was drawn toward the "Khorasan style" of poetry instead of the usual "Hendi style". He was also interested in modern poetry and wrote a few poems in a more modern style with new aspects of thought and meaning. In 1318 (AH), after two poems by Nima Youshij titled "Gharab" and "Ghoghnus" were published, Khalili wrote a poem under the name "Sorude Kuhestan" or "The Song of the Mountain" in the same rhyming pattern as Nima and sent it to the Kabul Literary Circle. The traditionalists in Kabul refused to publish it because it was not written in the traditional rhyme. They criticized Khalili for modernizing his style.


title: Persian literature

text: Very gradually new styles found their way into literature and literary circles despite the efforts of traditionalists. The first book of new poems was published in the year 1957 (1336 AH), and in 1962 (1341 AH), a collection of modern Persian (Dari) poetry was published in Kabul. The first group to write poems in the new style consisted of Mahmud Farani, Baregh Shafi’i, Solayman Layeq, Sohail, Ayeneh and a few others. Later, Vasef Bakhtari, Asadullah Habib and Latif Nazemi, and others joined the group. Each had his own share in modernizing Persian poetry in Afghanistan. Other notable figures include Leila Sarahat Roshani, Sayed Elan Bahar, Parwin Pazwak, and Qahar Asi. Poets like Mayakovsky, Yase Nien and Lahouti (an Iranian poet living in exile in Russia) exerted a special influence on the Persian poets in Afghanistan. The influence of Iranians (e.g. Farrokhi Yazdi and Ahmad Shamlou) on the newly established Afghan prose and poetry, especially in the second half of the 20th century, must also be taken into consideration.


title: Persian literature

text: Prominent novelists and short story writers from Afghanistan include Akram Osman, known especially for "Real Men Keep Their Word" (مرداره قول اس), written in part in Kabuli dialect, and Rahnaward Zaryab. Some prominent writers from Afghanistan like Asef Soltanzadeh, Reza Ebrahimi, Ameneh Mohammadi, and Abbas Jafari grew up in Iran and were influenced by Iranian writers and teachers.


title: Persian literature

text: The new poetry in Tajikistan is mostly concerned with the way of life of people and is revolutionary. From the 1950s until the advent of new poetry in France, Asia and Latin America, the impact of the modernization drive was strong. In the 1960s, modern Iranian poetry and that of Mohammad Iqbal Lahouri made a profound impression in Tajik poetry. This period is probably the richest and most prolific period for the development of themes and forms in Persian poetry in Tajikistan. Some Tajik poets were mere imitators, and one can easily see the traits of foreign poets in their work. Only two or three poets were able to digest the foreign poetry and compose original poetry. In Tajikistan, the format and pictorial aspects of short stories and novels were taken from Russian and other European literature. Some of Tajikistan's prominent names in Persian literature are Golrokhsar Safi Eva, Mo'men Ghena'at, Farzaneh Khojandi, Bozor Sobir, and Layeq Shir-Ali.


title: Persian literature

text: Pioneers of Persian literary criticism in 19th century include Mirza Fath `Ali Akhundzade, Mirza Malkom Khan, Mirza `Abd al-Rahim Talebof and Zeyn al-`Abedin Maraghe`i.


title: Persian literature

text: Saeed Nafisi analyzed and edited several critical works. He is well known for his works on Rudaki and Sufi literature. Parviz Natel-Khanlari and Gholamhossein Yousefi, who belong to Nafisi's generation, were also involved in modern literature and critical writings. Natel-Khanlari is distinguished by the simplicity of his style. He did not follow the traditionalists, nor did he advocate the new. Instead, his approach accommodated the entire spectrum of creativity and expression in Persian literature. Another critic, Ahmad Kasravi, an experienced authority on literature, attacked the writers and poets whose works served despotism.


title: Persian literature

text: Contemporary Persian literary criticism reached its maturity after Sadeq Hedayat, Ebrahim Golestan, Houshang Golshiri, Abdolhossein Zarrinkoub and Shahrokh Meskoob. Among these figures, Zarrinkoub held academic positions and had a reputation not only among the intelligentsia but also in academia. Besides his significant contribution to the maturity of Persian language and literature, Zarrinkoub boosted comparative literature and Persian literary criticism. Zarrinkoub's "Serr e Ney" is a critical and comparative analysis of Rumi's "Masnavi". In turn, Shahrokh Meskoob worked on Ferdowsi's "Shahnameh", using the principles of modern literary criticism.


title: Persian literature

text: Mohammad Taghi Bahar's main contribution to this field is his book called "Sabk Shenasi" (Stylistics). It is a pioneering work on the practice of Persian literary historiography and the emergence and development of Persian literature as a distinct institution in the early part of the 20th century. It contends that the exemplary status of Sabk-shinasi rests on the recognition of its disciplinary or institutional achievements. It further contends that, rather than a text on Persian ‘stylistics’, Sabk-shinasi is a vast history of Persian literary prose, and, as such, is a significant intervention in Persian literary historiography.


title: Persian literature

text: Jalal Homaei, Badiozzaman Forouzanfar and his student, Mohammad Reza Shafiei-Kadkani, are other notable figures who have edited a number of prominent literary works.


title: Persian literature

text: Critical analysis of Jami's works has been carried out by Ala Khan Afsahzad. His classic book won the prestigious award of Iran's Year Best book in the year 2000.


title: Persian literature

text: Historically, the modern Persian short story has undergone three stages of development: a formative period, a period of consolidation and growth, and a period of diversity.


title: Persian literature

text: In this period, the influence of the western literature on the Iranian writers and authors is obvious. The new and modern approaches to writing is introduced and several genres have developed specially in the field of short story. The most popular trends are toward post-modern methods and speculative fiction.


title: Persian literature

text: Notable Persian poets, modern and classical, include Mehdi Akhavan-Sales, Simin Behbahani, Forough Farrokhzad, Mohammad Zohari, Bijan Jalali, Mina Assadi, Siavash Kasraie, Fereydoon Moshiri, Nader Naderpour, Sohrab Sepehri, Mohammad-Reza Shafiei-Kadkani, Ahmad Shamlou, Nima Yushij, Houshang Ebtehaj, Mirzadeh Eshghi (classical), Mohammad Taghi Bahar (classical), Aref Ghazvini (classical), Ahmad NikTalab (new classic), Parvin Etesami (classical), Shahriar (classical) and, Ali Abdolrezaei (Post Modernism and New Post Modernism), Babak NikTalab (Children's poetry).


title: Persian literature

text: A few notable classical poets have arisen since the 19th century, among whom Mohammad Taghi Bahar and Parvin Etesami have been most celebrated. Mohammad Taghi Bahar had the title "king of poets" and had a significant role in the emergence and development of Persian literature as a distinct institution in the early part of the 20th century. The theme of his poems was the social and political situation of Iran.


title: Persian literature

text: Parvin Etesami may be called the greatest Persian woman poet writing in the classical style. One of her remarkable series, called "Mast va Hoshyar" (The Drunk and the Sober), won admiration from many of those involved in romantic poetry.


title: Persian literature

text: Nima Yushij is considered the father of modern Persian poetry, introducing many techniques and forms to differentiate the modern from the old. Nevertheless, the credit for popularizing this new literary form within a country and culture solidly based on a thousand years of classical poetry goes to his few disciples such as Ahmad Shamlou, who adopted Nima's methods and tried new techniques of modern poetry.


title: Persian literature

text: The transformation brought about by Nima Youshij, who freed Persian poetry from the fetters of prosodic measures, was a turning point in a long literary tradition. It broadened the perception and thinking of the poets that came after him. Nima offered a different understanding of the principles of classical poetry. His artistry was not confined to removing the need for a fixed-length hemistich and dispensing with the tradition of rhyming but focused on a broader structure and function based on a contemporary understanding of human and social existence. His aim in renovating poetry was to commit it to a "natural identity" and to achieve a modern discipline in the mind and linguistic performance of the poet.


title: Persian literature

text: Nima held that the formal technique dominating classical poetry interfered with its vitality, vigor and progress. Although he accepted some of its aesthetic properties and extended them in his poetry, he never ceased to widen his poetic experience by emphasizing the "natural order" of this art. What Nima Youshij founded in contemporary poetry, his successor Ahmad Shamlou continued.


title: Persian literature

text: The Sepid poem (which translates to white poem), which draws its sources from this poet, avoided the compulsory rules which had entered the Nimai’ school of poetry and adopted a freer structure. This allowed a more direct relationship between the poet and his or her emotional roots. In previous poetry, the qualities of the poet’s vision as well as the span of the subject could only be expressed in general terms and were subsumed by the formal limitations imposed on poetic expression.


title: Persian literature

text: Nima’s poetry transgressed these limitations. It relied on the natural function inherent within poetry itself to portray the poet’s solidarity with life and the wide world surrounding him or her in specific and unambiguous details and scenes. Sepid poetry continues the poetic vision as Nima expressed it and avoids the contrived rules imposed on its creation. However, its most distinct difference with Nimai’ poetry is to move away from the rhythms it employed. Nima Youshij paid attention to an overall harmonious rhyming and created many experimental examples to achieve this end.


title: Persian literature

text: Ahmad Shamlu discovered the inner characteristics of poetry and its manifestation in the literary creations of classical masters as well as the Nimai’ experience. He offered an individual approach. By distancing himself from the obligations imposed by older poetry and some of the limitations that had entered the Nimai’ poem, he recognized the role of prose and music hidden in the language. In the structure of Sepid poetry, in contrast to the prosodic and Nimai’ rules, the poem is written in more "natural" words and incorporates a prose-like process without losing its poetic distinction.


title: Persian literature

text: Sepid poetry is a developing branch of Nimai’ poetry built upon Nima Youshij's innovations. Nima thought that any change in the construction and the tools of a poet’s expression is conditional on his/her knowledge of the world and a revolutionized outlook. Sepid poetry could not take root outside this teaching and its application.


title: Persian literature

text: According to Simin Behbahani, Sepid poetry did not receive general acceptance before Bijan Jalali's works. He is considered the founder of Sepid poetry according to Behbahani.


title: Persian literature

text: Behbahani herself used the "Char Pareh" style of Nima, and subsequently turned to ghazal, a free-flowing poetry style similar to the Western sonnet. Simin Behbahani contributed to a historic development in the form of the ghazal, as she added theatrical subjects, and daily events and conversations into her poetry. She has expanded the range of traditional Persian verse forms and produced some of the most significant works of Persian literature in the 20th century.


title: Persian literature

text: A reluctant follower of Nima Yushij, Mehdi Akhavan-Sales published his "Organ" (1951) to support contentions against Nima Yushij's groundbreaking endeavors. In Persian poetry, Mehdi Akhavan Sales has established a bridge between the "Khorassani" and "Nima" Schools. The critics consider Mehdi Akhavan Sales as one of the best contemporary Persian poets. He is one of the pioneers of free verse (new style poetry) in Persian literature, particularly of modern style epics. It was his ambition, for a long time, to introduce a fresh style to Persian poetry.


title: Persian literature

text: Forough Farrokhzad is important in the literary history of Iran for three reasons. First, she was among the first generation to embrace the new style of poetry, pioneered by Nima Yushij during the 1920s, which demanded that poets experiment with rhyme, imagery, and the individual voice. Second, she was the first modern Iranian woman to graphically articulate private sexual landscapes from a woman's perspective. Finally, she transcended her own literary role and experimented with acting, painting, and documentary film-making.


title: Persian literature

text: Fereydoon Moshiri is best known as conciliator of classical Persian poetry with the New Poetry initiated by Nima Yooshij. One of the major contributions of Moshiri's poetry, according to some observers, is the broadening of the social and geographical scope of modern Persian literature.


title: Persian literature

text: A poet of the last generation before the Islamic Revolution worthy of mention is Mohammad-Reza Shafiei-Kadkani (M. Sereshk). Though he is from Khorassan and sways between allegiance to Nima Youshij and Akhavan Saless, in his poetry he shows the influences of Hafiz and Mowlavi. He uses simple, lyrical language and is mostly inspired by the political atmosphere. He is the most successful of those poets who in the past four decades have tried hard to find a synthesis between the two models of Ahmad Shamloo and Nima Youshij.


title: Persian literature

text: In the twenty-first century, a new generation of Iranian poets continues to work in the New Poetry style and now attracts an international audience thanks to efforts to translate their works. Éditions Bruno Doucey published a selection of forty-eight poems by Garus Abdolmalekian entitled "Our Fists under the Table" (2012), translated into French by Farideh Rava. Other notable names are poet and publisher Babak Abazari (1984–2015), who died under mysterious circumstances in January 2015, and emerging young poet Milad Khanmirzaei.


title: Persian literature

text: In 1990s a progressive evolution called Postmodern Ghazal begun in the Persian poetry leading to the modern poetry that changed the balancing principle of rhythm and rhyme of the traditional Persian poetry, as did in the Free Verse poetry following the rhythm of natural speech. Now, the center of the attention was language alone, and not only rhythm was absent but the charm of language leads it to be the main axle pushing the Persian poetry forward. The three most talked about poets of the Post Modern Poetry in Iran are Reza Barahani, Ali Abdolrezaei and Ali Babachahi. Among them Ali Abdolrezaei enjoyed a wider admissibility due to the new language he expressed which prevailed in that period. Of these poets Reza Barahani’s “Butterflies” (or Addressed to Butterflies), Ali Abdolrezaei’s “Paris in Renault”, “So Sermon of Society”, “Shinema” and “Mothurt”, and Ali Babachahi’s “The Soft Rain is Me” belong to this genre.


title: Persian literature

text: In the contemporary period, the growth and manifestation of children's poetry in Persian language and literature increased and in this period we see the emergence of prominent poets such as Mahmoud Kianoosh and Abbas Yamini Sharif in young poetry and Babak Niktalab in adolescent poetry.


title: Potassium ferrocyanide

text: Potassium ferrocyanide is the inorganic compound with formula K[Fe(CN)]·3HO. It is the potassium salt of the coordination complex [Fe(CN)]. This salt forms lemon-yellow monoclinic crystals.


title: Potassium ferrocyanide

text: In 1752, the French chemist Pierre Joseph Macquer (1718–1784) first reported the preparation of potassium ferrocyanide, which he achieved by reacting Prussian blue (iron(III) ferrocyanide) with potassium hydroxide.


title: Potassium ferrocyanide

text: Potassium ferrocyanide is produced industrially from hydrogen cyanide, ferrous chloride, and calcium hydroxide, the combination of which affords Ca[Fe(CN)]·11HO. This solution is then treated with potassium salts to precipitate the mixed calcium-potassium salt CaK[Fe(CN)], which in turn is treated with potassium carbonate to give the tetrapotassium salt.


title: Potassium ferrocyanide

text: Historically, the compound was manufactured from organic compounds containing nitrogen, iron filings, and potassium carbonate. Common nitrogen and carbon sources were torrified horn, leather scrap, offal, or dried blood. It was also obtained commercially from gasworks spent oxide (purification of city gas from hydrogen cyanide).


title: Potassium ferrocyanide

text: Treatment of potassium ferrocyanide with nitric acid gives H[Fe(NO)(CN)]. After neutralization of this intermediate with sodium carbonate, red crystals of sodium nitroprusside can be selectively crystallized.


title: Potassium ferrocyanide

text: A famous reaction involves treatment with ferric salts to give Prussian blue. With the composition Fe[Fe(CN)], this insoluble but deeply coloured material is the blue of blueprinting.


title: Potassium ferrocyanide

text: Potassium ferrocyanide finds many niche applications in industry. It and the related sodium salt are widely used as anticaking agents for both road salt and table salt. The potassium and sodium ferrocyanides are also used in the purification of tin and the separation of copper from molybdenum ores. Potassium ferrocyanide is used in the production of wine and citric acid.


title: Potassium ferrocyanide

text: In the EU, ferrocyanides (E 535–538) were, as of 2017, solely authorised in two food categories as salt additives. The kidneys are the organ for ferrocyanide toxicity.


title: Potassium ferrocyanide

text: In the laboratory, potassium ferrocyanide is used to determine the concentration of potassium permanganate, a compound often used in titrations based on redox reactions. Potassium ferrocyanide is used in a mixture with potassium ferricyanide and phosphate buffered solution to provide a buffer for beta-galactosidase, which is used to cleave X-Gal, giving a bright blue visualization where an antibody (or other molecule), conjugated to Beta-gal, has bonded to its target. On reacting with Fe(3) it gives a Prussian blue colour. Thus it is used as an identifying reagent for iron in labs.


title: Potassium ferrocyanide

text: Prior to 1900, before the invention of the Castner process, potassium ferrocyanide was the most important source of alkali metal cyanides. In this historical process, potassium cyanide was produced by decomposing potassium ferrocyanide:


title: Potassium ferrocyanide

text: Like other metal cyanides, solid potassium ferrocyanide, both as the hydrate and anhydrous salts, has a complicated polymeric structure. The polymer consists of octahedral [Fe(CN)] centers crosslinked with K ions that are bound to the CN ligands. The K---NC linkages break when the solid is dissolved in water.


title: Potassium ferrocyanide

text: Potassium ferrocyanide is nontoxic, and is not decomposed to cyanide in the body. The toxicity in rats is low, with lethal dose (LD) at 6400 mg/kg.


title: Polytope

text: In elementary geometry, a polytope is a geometric object with flat sides ("faces"). Polytopes are the generalization of three-dimensional polyhedra to any number of dimensions. Polytopes may exist in any general number of dimensions as an -dimensional polytope or -polytope. For example, a two-dimensional polygon is a 2-polytope and a three-dimensional polyhedron is a 3-polytope. In this context, "flat sides" means that the sides of a -polytope consist of -polytopes that may have -polytopes in common.


title: Polytope

text: Some theories further generalize the idea to include such objects as unbounded apeirotopes and tessellations, decompositions or tilings of curved manifolds including spherical polyhedra, and set-theoretic abstract polytopes.


title: Polytope

text: Polytopes of more than three dimensions were first discovered by Ludwig Schläfli before 1853, who called such a figure a polyschem. The German term "polytop" was coined by the mathematician Reinhold Hoppe, and was introduced to English mathematicians as "polytope" by Alicia Boole Stott.


title: Polytope

text: Nowadays, the term "polytope" is a broad term that covers a wide class of objects, and various definitions appear in the mathematical literature. Many of these definitions are not equivalent to each other, resulting in different overlapping sets of objects being called "polytopes". They represent different approaches to generalizing the convex polytopes to include other objects with similar properties.


title: Polytope

text: The original approach broadly followed by Ludwig Schläfli, Thorold Gosset and others begins with the extension by analogy into four or more dimensions, of the idea of a polygon and polyhedron respectively in two and three dimensions.


title: Polytope

text: Attempts to generalise the Euler characteristic of polyhedra to higher-dimensional polytopes led to the development of topology and the treatment of a decomposition or CW-complex as analogous to a polytope. In this approach, a polytope may be regarded as a tessellation or decomposition of some given manifold. An example of this approach defines a polytope as a set of points that admits a simplicial decomposition. In this definition, a polytope is the union of finitely many simplices, with the additional property that, for any two simplices that have a nonempty intersection, their intersection is a vertex, edge, or higher dimensional face of the two. However this definition does not allow star polytopes with interior structures, and so is restricted to certain areas of mathematics.


title: Polytope

text: The discovery of star polyhedra and other unusual constructions led to the idea of a polyhedron as a bounding surface, ignoring its interior. In this light convex polytopes in "p"-space are equivalent to tilings of the ("p"−1)-sphere, while others may be tilings of other elliptic, flat or toroidal ("p"−1)-surfaces – see elliptic tiling and toroidal polyhedron. A polyhedron is understood as a surface whose faces are polygons, a 4-polytope as a hypersurface whose facets (cells) are polyhedra, and so forth.


title: Polytope

text: The idea of constructing a higher polytope from those of lower dimension is also sometimes extended downwards in dimension, with an (edge) seen as a 1-polytope bounded by a point pair, and a point or vertex as a 0-polytope. This approach is used for example in the theory of abstract polytopes.


title: Polytope

text: In certain fields of mathematics, the terms "polytope" and "polyhedron" are used in a different sense: a "polyhedron" is the generic object in any dimension (referred to as "polytope" in this article) and "polytope" means a bounded polyhedron. This terminology is typically confined to polytopes and polyhedra that are convex. With this terminology, a convex polyhedron is the intersection of a finite number of halfspaces and is defined by its sides while a convex polytope is the convex hull of a finite number of points and is defined by its vertices.


title: Polytope

text: A polytope comprises elements of different dimensionality such as vertices, edges, faces, cells and so on. Terminology for these is not fully consistent across different authors. For example, some authors use "face" to refer to an ("n" − 1)-dimensional element while others use "face" to denote a 2-face specifically. Authors may use "j"-face or "j"-facet to indicate an element of "j" dimensions. Some use "edge" to refer to a ridge, while H. S. M. Coxeter uses "cell" to denote an ("n" − 1)-dimensional element.


title: Polytope

text: An "n"-dimensional polytope is bounded by a number of ("n" − 1)-dimensional "facets". These facets are themselves polytopes, whose facets are ("n" − 2)-dimensional "ridges" of the original polytope. Every ridge arises as the intersection of two facets (but the intersection of two facets need not be a ridge). Ridges are once again polytopes whose facets give rise to ("n" − 3)-dimensional boundaries of the original polytope, and so on. These bounding sub-polytopes may be referred to as faces, or specifically "j"-dimensional faces or "j"-faces. A 0-dimensional face is called a "vertex", and consists of a single point. A 1-dimensional face is called an "edge", and consists of a line segment. A 2-dimensional face consists of a polygon, and a 3-dimensional face, sometimes called a "cell", consists of a polyhedron.


title: Polytope

text: A polytope may be "convex". The convex polytopes are the simplest kind of polytopes, and form the basis for several different generalizations of the concept of polytopes. A convex polytope is sometimes defined as the intersection of a set of half-spaces. This definition allows a polytope to be neither bounded nor finite. Polytopes are defined in this way, e.g., in linear programming. A polytope is "bounded" if there is a ball of finite radius that contains it. A polytope is said to be "pointed" if it contains at least one vertex. Every bounded nonempty polytope is pointed. An example of a non-pointed polytope is the set formula_1. A polytope is "finite" if it is defined in terms of a finite number of objects, e.g., as an intersection of a finite number of half-planes.


title: Polytope

text: A certain class of convex polytopes are "reflexive" polytopes. An integral formula_2 is reflexive if for some integral matrix formula_3, formula_4, where formula_5 denotes a vector of all ones, and the inequality is component-wise. It follows from this definition that formula_2 is reflexive if and only if formula_7 for all formula_8. In other words, a of formula_2 differs, in terms of integer lattice points, from a of formula_2 only by lattice points gained on the boundary. Equivalently, formula_2 is reflexive if and only if its dual polytope formula_12 is an integral polytope.


title: Polytope

text: Regular polytopes have the highest degree of symmetry of all polytopes. The symmetry group of a regular polytope acts transitively on its flags; hence, the dual polytope of a regular polytope is also regular.


title: Polytope

text: Dimensions two, three and four include regular figures which have fivefold symmetries and some of which are non-convex stars, and in two dimensions there are infinitely many regular polygons of "n"-fold symmetry, both convex and (for "n" ≥ 5) star. But in higher dimensions there are no other regular polytopes.


title: Polytope

text: In three dimensions the convex Platonic solids include the fivefold-symmetric dodecahedron and icosahedron, and there are also four star Kepler-Poinsot polyhedra with fivefold symmetry, bringing the total to nine regular polyhedra.


title: Polytope

text: In four dimensions the regular 4-polytopes include one additional convex solid with fourfold symmetry and two with fivefold symmetry. There are ten star Schläfli-Hess 4-polytopes, all with fivefold symmetry, giving in all sixteen regular 4-polytopes.


title: Polytope

text: A non-convex polytope may be self-intersecting; this class of polytopes include the star polytopes. Some regular polytopes are stars.


title: Polytope

text: Since a (filled) convex polytope "P" in formula_13 dimensions is contractible to a point, the Euler characteristic formula_14 of its boundary ∂P is given by the alternating sum:


title: Polytope

text: The Gram–Euler theorem similarly generalizes the alternating sum of internal angles formula_18 for convex polyhedra to higher-dimensional polytopes:


title: Polytope

text: Not all manifolds are finite. Where a polytope is understood as a tiling or decomposition of a manifold, this idea may be extended to infinite manifolds. plane tilings, space-filling (honeycombs) and hyperbolic tilings are in this sense polytopes, and are sometimes called apeirotopes because they have infinitely many cells.


title: Polytope

text: Among these, there are regular forms including the regular skew polyhedra and the infinite series of tilings represented by the regular apeirogon, square tiling, cubic honeycomb, and so on.


title: Polytope

text: The theory of abstract polytopes attempts to detach polytopes from the space containing them, considering their purely combinatorial properties. This allows the definition of the term to be extended to include objects for which it is difficult to define an intuitive underlying space, such as the 11-cell.


title: Polytope

text: An abstract polytope is a partially ordered set of elements or members, which obeys certain rules. It is a purely algebraic structure, and the theory was developed in order to avoid some of the issues which make it difficult to reconcile the various geometric classes within a consistent mathematical framework. A geometric polytope is said to be a realization in some real space of the associated abstract polytope.


title: Polytope

text: Structures analogous to polytopes exist in complex Hilbert spaces formula_20 where "n" real dimensions are accompanied by "n" imaginary ones. Regular complex polytopes are more appropriately treated as configurations.


title: Polytope

text: Every "n"-polytope has a dual structure, obtained by interchanging its vertices for facets, edges for ridges, and so on generally interchanging its ("j" − 1)-dimensional elements for ("n" − "j")-dimensional elements (for "j" = 1 to "n" − 1), while retaining the connectivity or incidence between elements.


title: Polytope

text: For an abstract polytope, this simply reverses the ordering of the set. This reversal is seen in the Schläfli symbols for regular polytopes, where the symbol for the dual polytope is simply the reverse of the original. For example, {4, 3, 3} is dual to {3, 3, 4}.


title: Polytope

text: In the case of a geometric polytope, some geometric rule for dualising is necessary, see for example the rules described for dual polyhedra. Depending on circumstance, the dual figure may or may not be another geometric polytope.


title: Polytope

text: If the dual is reversed, then the original polytope is recovered. Thus, polytopes exist in dual pairs.


title: Polytope

text: If a polytope has the same number of vertices as facets, of edges as ridges, and so forth, and the same connectivities, then the dual figure will be similar to the original and the polytope is self-dual.


title: Polytope

text: An early hint of higher dimensions came in 1827 when August Ferdinand Möbius discovered that two mirror-image solids can be superimposed by rotating one of them through a fourth mathematical dimension. By the 1850s, a handful of other mathematicians such as Arthur Cayley and Hermann Grassmann had also considered higher dimensions.


title: Polytope

text: Ludwig Schläfli was the first to consider analogues of polygons and polyhedra in these higher spaces. He described the six convex regular 4-polytopes in 1852 but his work was not published until 1901, six years after his death. By 1854, Bernhard Riemann's "Habilitationsschrift" had firmly established the geometry of higher dimensions, and thus the concept of "n"-dimensional polytopes was made acceptable. Schläfli's polytopes were rediscovered many times in the following decades, even during his lifetime.


title: Polytope

text: In 1882 Reinhold Hoppe, writing in German, coined the word "" to refer to this more general concept of polygons and polyhedra. In due course Alicia Boole Stott, daughter of logician George Boole, introduced the anglicised "polytope" into the English language.


title: Polytope

text: In 1895, Thorold Gosset not only rediscovered Schläfli's regular polytopes but also investigated the ideas of semiregular polytopes and space-filling tessellations in higher dimensions. Polytopes also began to be studied in non-Euclidean spaces such as hyperbolic space.


title: Polytope

text: An important milestone was reached in 1948 with H. S. M. Coxeter's book "Regular Polytopes", summarizing work to date and adding new findings of his own.


title: Polytope

text: Meanwhile, the French mathematician Henri Poincaré had developed the topological idea of a polytope as the piecewise decomposition (e.g. CW-complex) of a manifold. Branko Grünbaum published his influential work on "Convex Polytopes" in 1967.


title: Polytope

text: In 1952 Geoffrey Colin Shephard generalised the idea as complex polytopes in complex space, where each real dimension has an imaginary one associated with it. Coxeter developed the theory further.


title: Polytope

text: The conceptual issues raised by complex polytopes, non-convexity, duality and other phenomena led Grünbaum and others to the more general study of abstract combinatorial properties relating vertices, edges, faces and so on. A related idea was that of incidence complexes, which studied the incidence or connection of the various elements with one another. These developments led eventually to the theory of abstract polytopes as partially ordered sets, or posets, of such elements. Peter McMullen and Egon Schulte published their book "Abstract Regular Polytopes" in 2002.


title: Polytope

text: Enumerating the uniform polytopes, convex and nonconvex, in four or more dimensions remains an outstanding problem. The convex uniform 4-polytopes were fully enumerated by John Conway and Michael Guy using a computer in 1965; in higher dimensions this problem was still open as of 1997. The full enumeration for nonconvex uniform polytopes is not known in dimensions four and higher as of 2008.


title: Polytope

text: In modern times, polytopes and related concepts have found many important applications in fields as diverse as computer graphics, optimization, search engines, cosmology, quantum mechanics and numerous other fields. In 2013 the amplituhedron was discovered as a simplifying construct in certain calculations of theoretical physics.


title: Polytope

text: In the field of optimization, linear programming studies the maxima and minima of linear functions; these maxima and minima occur on the boundary of an "n"-dimensional polytope. In linear programming, polytopes occur in the use of generalized barycentric coordinates and slack variables.


title: Polytope

text: In twistor theory, a branch of theoretical physics, a polytope called the amplituhedron is used in to calculate the scattering amplitudes of subatomic particles when they collide. The construct is purely theoretical with no known physical manifestation, but is said to greatly simplify certain calculations.


title: Afsluitdijk

text: The Afsluitdijk (; ; ; ) is a major dam and causeway in the Netherlands. It was constructed between 1927 and 1932 and runs from Den Oever in North Holland province to the village of Zurich in Friesland province, over a length of and a width of , at an initial height of above sea level.


title: Afsluitdijk

text: The "Afsluitdijk" is a fundamental part of the larger Zuiderzee Works, damming off the Zuiderzee, a salt water inlet of the North Sea, and turning it into the fresh water lake of the IJsselmeer. It is a major landwinning project and a quicker road-connection between the North and West of the Netherlands.


title: Afsluitdijk

text: The motorway on the "Afsluitdijk" was the initial demonstration site for a speed limit in the Netherlands.


title: Afsluitdijk

text: The Afsluitdijk (literally translated: shut-off-dyke) was completed in 1932, thereby shutting off the Zuiderzee (lit: Southern Sea) from the North Sea. Until then, the Zuiderzee had been a large bay south of the North Sea which gave maritime access to five provinces of The Netherlands, and particularly during the Dutch Golden Age provided a protected entrance and exit for the harbour of Amsterdam and several other important Dutch sea harbours. Furthermore, the Zuiderzee provided relatively shallow and calm fishing grounds for the many towns bordering the bay. However, the opening of the North Sea Canal (Noordzeekanaal) in 1876 gave a much shorter direct entrance to the Amsterdam harbour, and overfishing had depleted the shallow bay. In the second half of the 19th century, the Dutch population was exploding, and there was an increasing need for land for agriculture and animal husbandry. The Dutch already had centuries of experience of building dykes around lakes, emptying them and converting them to fertile polderland.


title: Afsluitdijk

text: The next large project was to convert the Zuiderzee into polder. In 1886, a few notables established the Zuiderzee Society to investigate whether reclamation was feasible. One of the most prominent members of the society was Cornelis Lely, a civil engineer, prominent member and later chairman of the society. In 1891 he designed the first plan for the closure and reclamation of the Zuiderzee.


title: Afsluitdijk

text: In 1913, Lely was Minister of Water Management, and land reclamation was included in the government program. His plan was initially opposed, particularly for its huge costs and also by the fishing industry. But after the flood of 1916 and the famine of 1918, opinions were ready for this mega project and the parliament agreed, but it took another 9 years, until 1927, before the works actually began.


title: Afsluitdijk

text: Wieringen was connected to the mainland with the short Amsteldiepdijk in 1925; the "" would be in length. The inland side is heavy stone; the seaward side is boulder clay with brushwood mattresses above, weighed down by basalt boulders and old concrete. Previous experience had showed that boulder clay was superior to just sand or clay for a structure like the "Afsluitdijk", with the added benefit that till was in plentiful supply in the area; it could be retrieved in large quantities by simply dredging it from the bottom of the Zuiderzee. Work started at four points: on both sides of the mainland and on two specially made construction-islands (Kornwerderzand and Breezanddijk) along the line of the future dyke.


title: Afsluitdijk

text: From these points, the dyke slowly grew by ships depositing till into the open sea until it breached the surface. The nascent dyke was then strengthened from land by basalt rocks and mats of willow switch at its base. The dyke could then be finished off by raising it further with sand and finally clay for the surface of the dyke, on which grass was planted.


title: Afsluitdijk

text: As the dyke grew, physicist Hendrik Antoon Lorentz calculated the force of the tide as the smaller gap made it stronger. Ten thousand workers, 27 large dredges, 13 floating cranes, 132 barges, and 88 tugs worked on the project at the end, timed to close the dyke at low tide; it was finished on 28 May 1932. Construction progressed better than expected; at three points along the line of the dyke there were deeper underwater trenches where the tidal current was much stronger than elsewhere. These had been considered to be major obstacles to completing the dyke, but all of them proved to be relatively straightforward. Two years earlier than initially thought, the Zuiderzee ceased to be, as the last tidal trench, the "Vlieter", was closed by a final bucket of till. The IJsselmeer was born, even though it was still salty at the time.


title: Afsluitdijk

text: The dyke itself however was not finished yet as it still needed to be brought up to its required height and a road linking Friesland and North Holland (the current A7/E22 motorway) also remained to be built. On 25 September 1933, the "Afsluitdijk" was officially opened, with a monument designed by architect Dudok marking the spot where the dyke had been closed. The amount of material used is estimated at of sand and of till and over the years an average of around four to five thousand workers were involved with the construction every day, relieving some of the unemployment following the Great Depression.


title: Afsluitdijk

text: Beside the dyke itself, there was also the necessary construction of two complexes of shipping locks and discharge sluices at both ends of the dyke. The complex at Den Oever includes the "Stevin" lock (named after mathematician and engineer Simon Stevin) and three series of five sluices for discharging the IJsselmeer into the Wadden Sea; the other complex at Kornwerderzand is composed of the "Lorentz" locks (named after the physicist) and two series of five sluices, making a total of 25 discharge sluices. It is necessary to routinely discharge water from the lake since it is continually fed by rivers and streams (most notably the IJssel river that gives its name to the lake) and polders draining their water into the IJsselmeer.


title: Afsluitdijk

text: On 23 September 1954, on the centenary of Cornelis Lely, a statue, made by Mari Andriessen, was unveiled by Queen Juliana on the North Holland side of the Afsluitdijk. On May 9, 2007, the statue was relocated near to the Vlieter Monument. The official unveiling, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the dyke, was performed on 24 May 2007 by Prince Willem-Alexander.


title: Afsluitdijk

text: In 2012, the State Secretary for Infrastructure and the Environment, Joop Atsma, issued a statement detailing the factors influencing the decision to replace the locks at Kornwerderzand. A naviduct would have a high construction cost compared with standard locks and bridges, but would benefit the economy by reducing delays. After the cost–benefit analysis of all potential solutions was considered, a decision was made to strengthen the existing locks. However, it is quite possible that a naviduct will be built to replace the locks when they reach the end of their useful life in 2050. The work started in April 2020 and is planned to take three years; during the work, the highway remains in operation, however the bicycle path is closed.


title: Afsluitdijk

text: Provision for a railway line linking North Holland and Friesland (between Anna Paulowna and Harlingen) had been included on the "Afsluitdijk", in the form of a linear reservation, along with extra drawbridge abutments at the locks. However, construction of the line was never undertaken by the Dutch track operator (ProRail), for reasons of cost and relative lack of benefits. The reservation and abutments for the rail line were utilized instead for a second carriageway for the dyke's two-lane highway in the 1970s, transforming the latter into today's four-lane A7 motorway.


title: Afsluitdijk

text: Rijkswaterstaat will strengthen the Afsluitdijk in the coming years to safeguard its future and to continue to protect the Netherlands against the force of water. Its renovation began in 2018. The government has taken this opportunity to give room to more initiatives. As part of the renovation programme, Roosegaarde's Icoon Afsluitdijk enhances the iconic status of the Afsluitdijk with a second layer of light and interaction. The three designs of light and interaction developed by Daan Roosegaarde and his team are entitled Gates of Light, Windvogel and Glowing Nature. Development Partners for this project are: Kitepower, Wageningen University and Research, TTB, Eurocarbon, Versalume.


title: Afsluitdijk

text: Gates of Light is a futuristic entrance at both sides of the dyke. Inspired by retroreflective wings of butterflies, Daan Roosegaarde brings a new light on the 60 monumental floodgates which were designed by Dirk Roosenburg in 1932, the grandfather of the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. They have been restored with a retroreflective layer which is illuminated by the passing cars' headlamps.


title: Afsluitdijk

text: Windvogel is a tribute to the Dutch astronaut Wubbo Ockels. Ockels had the dream to realise smart kites which generate power by having them stay aloft for long periods of time. He was one of the pioneers in the field of kite power generation and professor of the research group at Delft University of Technology from which the startup Kitepower arose. Each of the Windvogel kites generates from 20 to 100 kW which can supply energy for up to 200 households.


title: Afsluitdijk

text: Glowing Nature shows the beauty of nature on the Afsluitdijk by means of an encounter between man, biology and technology. The exhibition, located in one of the historical bunkers, provides an interactive experience with live algae, one of the oldest microorganisms in the world. Only when you perfectly maintain and take care of these algae do they give natural light for an extended period of time.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: Robert Allen Labonte (born May 8, 1964) is an American semi-retired professional stock car racing driver and current analyst for "NASCAR on Fox". He also currently competes full-time in the Superstar Racing Experience, driving the No. 18 car. Labonte is the 2000 NASCAR Cup Series champion. He and his older brother, Terry Labonte, are one of only two pairs of brothers to have both won the Cup championships (along with Kurt Busch and Kyle Busch). He is also the uncle of former Xfinity Series race winner Justin Labonte.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: Labonte is the first driver to have won both the Winston Cup championship (2000) and the Busch Series championship (1991) in both series current touring form. (Ned Jarrett previously won both under the old points championship format). Bobby also won the IROC title in 2001. Labonte is also the first driver to complete the NASCAR Triple Threat at the same track, by winning races at Martinsville in each of NASCAR's top three racing series.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: Labonte was born on May 8, 1964, in Corpus Christi, Texas. He began racing in 1969 in quarter midgets in his home state of Texas, winning his first feature race one year later. From then until 1977, he drove in quarter-midgets throughout the United States, winning many races. In 1978, he advanced to the go-kart ranks but moved to North Carolina with his family following older brother Terry's advancement to the Winston Cup Series. In 1980, Bobby made his NASCAR International Sedan Series debut in Atlanta, finishing third. Bobby made his Busch Series debut in 1982 at Martinsville Speedway, finishing 30th. Following his graduation from Trinity High School, he worked as a fabricator on Terry's cars at Hagan Racing. Labonte returned to the Busch Series in 1985, running two races in a car he owned himself at Martinsville. In his first race, he finished 30th, bringing home only $220. In his next race, though, he finished in 17th, his best finish so far.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: The next season, Bobby prepared his car, which Terry drove, and Terry won his first Busch pole position and finished second at Road Atlanta.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: Labonte's main success came driving late-model stock cars. In 1987, Labonte won 12 races at Caraway Speedway, clinching the track championship, in addition to working for Jay Hedgecock. The following season, he competed at Concord Motorsports Park, winning six times, and ran six more Busch races, finishing 16th at Darlington Raceway. The next season, he ran seven more Busch Series races and had his first top-five finish at North Carolina Speedway. He had two more top-10s that year.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: By 1990, Labonte had finally earned enough money to race in the Busch Series full-time. He founded his team and drove the No. 44 Oldsmobile. He was successful, winning two poles (both at Bristol Motor Speedway), scoring six top-5s, and 17 top-10s. He ended up finishing fourth in the standings and was also voted the Busch Series' "Most Popular Driver."


title: Bobby Labonte

text: Next season, he continued his second-division success by winning the NASCAR Busch Series championship with two wins, 10 top-five, and 21 top-10 finishes. He also won his first Busch Series race, at Bristol, then won again at O'Reilly Raceway Park in August.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: In addition to his Busch Series schedule, he made two Winston Cup starts in a Bobby Labonte Racing car at Dover International Speedway and Michigan International Speedway, finishing 34th and 38th, respectively. He won his first Busch Series title.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: His 1992 season was a successful one, and he ended up winning three races (at Lanier, Hickory, and Martinsville respectively), but lost the championship title to Joe Nemechek by three points. That championship finish is, to date, the second-closest finish in the history of NASCAR's top three series (behind the tiebreaker between Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards in the Sprint Cup Series in 2011).


title: Bobby Labonte

text: In 1993, Labonte was called up by Bill Davis Racing to drive in the Winston Cup Series. He signed a contract to drive the No. 22 Ford Thunderbird. In his rookie season, he won his first pole at Richmond International Raceway, collected six top-10s, and finished 19th in points. He was also second place behind Jeff Gordon for Rookie of the Year honors. He also competed in two Busch Series races, winning a pole and finishing second and 24th respectively. Also, Labonte continued to operate his main Busch Series team, hiring David Green to drive for him. Green finished third in points for Bobby Labonte Racing.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: The next season, 1994, Labonte achieved his second major success as a car owner when his Busch Series driver, David Green, won the championship. It was the second championship, and fifth top-five points finish in five years for Bobby Labonte Racing. He also ran in the Busch Series himself, making 12 starts and earning a victory at Michigan in August. In addition to his Busch Series exploits, Bobby continued running full-time in the Winston Cup series for Bill Davis Racing. He collected one top-5 and two top-10s and finished 21st in the standings, just missing out on the top 20 because of Todd Bodine's two-position points standings gain in the final race of the season.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: In 2007, Labonte won the Busch Series race at Talladega Speedway in April 2007, edging Tony Stewart to the line in a thrilling finish. This was his first Busch Series win since 1998. In the offseason following the 2007 season, Labonte agreed to a 15-race contract to drive the No. 21 Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing in the now-Nationwide Series for the 2008 season. RCR's No. 21 team earned six victories in 2007 with driver Kevin Harvick and has earned two of the organization's four series championships.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: In 2016, Labonte returned to Joe Gibbs Racing to compete in the Xfinity Series opener at Daytona, driving the No. 18 Camry.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: At the end of the 1994 season, Labonte departed to replace Dale Jarrett as the driver of the No.18 Interstate Batteries-sponsored Chevrolet for Joe Gibbs Racing. Labonte would pick up his first career win in the Coca-Cola 600 in 1995, a win he would call in 2018 the favorite of his career. He would also go on to sweep the races at Michigan and finish 10th in the standings.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: In 1996, Labonte won the season-ending race at Atlanta, the same race where his brother Terry won the championship. The two took a victory lap together in what Labonte said was one of the "most emotional and memorable moments of [his] life". That year, he finished 11th in the points standings.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: In 1997, Gibbs switched car makes to a Pontiac Grand Prix. Labonte would go on to win the season-ending race at Atlanta for the second year in a row. He ended up seventh in the standings, his best finish at that point in his career.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: In 1998, Labonte won at both Atlanta and Talladega, as well as pole positions for both Daytona races, finishing second to Dale Earnhardt in the 500. He finished the year in sixth in final points, improving by a position.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: In 1999, Labonte won five Winston Cup races, the most he has ever won in a single season. He won at Dover in the spring, swept both Pocono races (he was the third to accomplish this particular sweep, after Bobby Allison in 1982 and Tim Richmond in 1986; since 1999, Jimmie Johnson in 2004, Denny Hamlin in 2006, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. in 2014 have also done this), the second Michigan race, and the season finale at Atlanta. However, during the season, he suffered a broken shoulder in an accident while qualifying for a Busch Series race at Darlington Raceway, but raced in the Cup event two days later. Labonte started the race, but at the 1st caution was relieved by Matt Kenseth. He finished second in the points to Dale Jarrett, losing the championship by 201 points.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: In 2000, Labonte won four races, the early-season race at Rockingham, the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis, the Southern 500 at Darlington, and the fall race at Charlotte. He led the point standings for 25 weeks straight after taking over at California, and never relinquished it on the way to winning the Winston Cup championship, finishing ahead of Earnhardt by 265 points, completing all but nine of the 10,167 laps that season, with 4 wins, 19 top-five finishes, 24 top ten finishes, 3 poles, an average finish of 7.4, and had zero DNF's. Labonte would become the second driver in NASCAR history to win the championship and NOT score a single DNF. Cale Yarborough became the very first driver to accomplish that feat in 1977. As of 2022, they are the only 2 drivers in history to do so.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: Labonte began the 2001 season with a seventh-place finish in the Bud Shootout. At the Daytona 500, he and his teammate Tony Stewart were two of the 18 drivers involved in a crash on lap 173. Labonte's hood broke off and got attached to Stewart's car, which flipped over twice. After getting out of his, Labonte was seen checking on Stewart to make sure he was okay. The accident was overshadowed by Dale Earnhardt's fatal crash on the last lap of the same race.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: The following week at Rockingham, Labonte was narrowly beaten to the finish line by Steve Park in the rain-delayed Dura Lube 400. He did not have another Top 10 finish until the Virginia 500 at Martinsville, where he finished in eighth. This was followed by a fifth-place finish in the Talladega 500. His next Top 10 was another fifth-place finish in the Coca-Cola 600. After less successful finishes at Dover and Michigan, Labonte had a second eighth-place finish at Pocono and a seventh-place finish at Sonoma, and a third fifth-place finish in the Pepsi 400. At the end of July, Labonte won his first points race of the year in the Pennsylvania 500 at Pocono.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: After the win, Labonte's next Top 10 was a ninth-place finish at Watkins Glen, then eighth and third-place finishes at Bristol and Darlington, and a sixth-place finish at Richmond. He did not have back-to-back Top 10's again until the autumn races at Charlotte and Martinsville, where he finished 10th and fourth respectively.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: In the fall at Talladega, Labonte started 34th. He managed to work his way up the field and took the lead on lap 107. He led for 23 laps before falling back in the pack. He retook the lead on lap 184 but was involved in a frightening last-lap crash. After leading three laps, Labonte was leading at the white flag on the outside lane. Going into turn 1, Dale Earnhardt Jr. overtook him in the lower groove, bringing Tony Stewart and Jeff Burton with him. Labonte moved up the track, trying to block Bobby Hamilton, but coming onto the back straightaway, Hamilton tapped him from behind. Labonte made contact with Johnny Benson Jr. — sending that driver into the outside wall — and then spun, flipping over, and skidding partway down the track on his roof. This crash also collected Jason Leffler, Sterling Marlin, Robby Gordon, Mike Wallace, Ricky Craven, Terry Labonte, Buckshot Jones, Ricky Rudd, Ward Burton, and more.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: Labonte's next Top 10 was another ninth-place finish at Rockingham. After winning at Atlanta and a third-place finish at the postponed New Hampshire 300, he finished sixth in the final points standings.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: During 2001, Labonte won the IROC XXV title, becoming the 13th consecutive NASCAR driver to win the IROC championship.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: In 2002, Labonte only had one win, which was at Martinsville in the spring. He also drove a 9/11 Tribute car in 2002 with the phrase "Let's Roll" on the hood. It was his first career short-track win at Martinsville. He went on to finish 16th in the final points standings and failed to finish in the Top 10 for the first time since 1996, while his teammate Stewart went on to win the championship.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: In 2003, Labonte rebounded and finished eighth in the standings after winning two races (Atlanta and Homestead [leading only the final lap]). Also, Labonte went on a tear during the spring with three straight second-place finishes.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: In 2004, Labonte did not win a race for the first time since 1994 (ten years later) and finished 12th in the standings.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: 2005 saw much of the same. Labonte fell out of the Top 20 in points, and only had four Top 5s, one of which was a dramatic second at Lowe's Motor Speedway in the Coca-Cola 600. He also went on to race some Truck Series events, which included a win at Martinsville. His win there made him join an elite group of drivers that have won in all three divisions at one track. In fact, with his win, he became the first driver to do so.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: He also ran the 24 Hours of Daytona road race, sharing a car with his brother Terry, Jan Magnussen and Bryan Herta. After the disappointing 2005 season, Labonte asked and was granted to be released from Joe Gibbs Racing, having spent the last eleven seasons there. Labonte joined Petty Enterprises to drive the famous No. 43.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: In his inaugural season in the famous No. 43 car, Labonte collected three Top 5's and eight Top 10's. His Top 5's included an impressive run at the Martinsville Speedway, where he finished third after being in contention for the win much of the day. He ended up finishing 21st in the points standings, three spots better than he did two years before.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: Labonte began the 2007 season with a 21st-place finish in the Daytona 500, after avoiding the many accidents the race had. Labonte would end the year with no Top 5's and only three Top 10's. However, due to a more consistent season, he finished 18th in the standings, a three-position improvement over 2006. In November, Labonte formed a full-service marketing agency, Breaking Limits, which is based in Huntersville, North Carolina.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: In 2008, Labonte continued his contract with Petty Enterprises, but experienced a largely unsuccessful season, gathering only three Top 10's and no Top 5's on his way to finishing 21st in the Sprint Cup point standings. In December of that year, Labonte was released from Petty Enterprises while the team was negotiating a deal with a private equity firm that fell through, and Petty partnered with Gillett Evernham Motorsports.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: On January 13, 2009, Labonte was confirmed to be the driver of the No. 96 Ford Fusion for Hall of Fame Racing, now in a partnership with Yates Racing. In the 2009 Spring Las Vegas race, the Shelby 427, Labonte recorded his first Top 5 with Hall of Fame Racing and his best finish since he finished third in the Fall Martinsville race in 2006. However, that was his only Top 5 run for the year. With eleven races remaining in the 2009 season, Labonte was replaced for Erik Darnell for 7 of the final eleven races due to sponsorship problems with the No. 96. Labonte found a ride with TRG Motorsports and it's 71 for the 7 races he was out of the 96. In his first race at Atlanta, Labonte ran inside the Top 20 all night and scored an 18th-place finish. Two races later Labonte gave TRG its best qualifying effort with an eighth-place start, Labonte came home 22nd. At Talladega, Labonte finished 10th after, at one point, running second in that race to Dale Earnhardt Jr.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: From February 2010 – June 2010, Labonte drove for TRG Motorsports and its No. 71. Even though TRG's 2009 owner points were not enough to make the field guaranteed for the first five races of 2010, Labonte's past championship provisional gave the team that to fall back on, in the case that Labonte's qualifying runs are not fast. For 2010, Labonte was also reunited with Doug Randolph as his crew chief. Randolph finished the 2007 season with Labonte in the No. 43 for Petty Enterprises, posting two of three of Labonte's Top 10 runs. TRG also announced an alliance with Richard Childress Racing for 2010. RCR shared technology and equipment with TRG for the season. They also allied with Stewart Haas Racing, as Tony Stewart will provide a pit crew to the team.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: In his first race in the TRG, Labonte finished 21st in the Daytona 500 after he started 42nd with a champions provisional. For much of the race, Labonte was in the Top 25. He would end up fading back over the next few races, as he and the team would struggle for consistency. On the May 16th Dover race, due to lack of sponsorship, Labonte and the 71 team parked the car after 66 laps. Arguably, some people might say that this season is the worst of his full-time career, as he only had two top 20 finishes in 2010 one at the Daytona 500 and one at the Infineon Raceway road course event.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: On June 22, 2010, it was announced that Labonte would be leaving the No. 71 due to the team being unable to secure sponsorship. On June 23, Labonte was hired to drive car No. 7 for Robby Gordon Motorsports at New Hampshire in a one-race deal.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: C&J Energy Services entered into a partnership with Phoenix Racing which allowed Labonte to be hired to take over the No. 09 car beginning at Daytona and Labonte split the rest of the 2010 season between Phoenix Racing and TRG Motorsports. On October 11, Stavola-Labonte Racing hired Labonte to drive its No. 10 car at Charlotte and Texas in a two-race deal. The team is co-owned by Bobby's older brother Terry. Despite bouncing around, Labonte competed in every race for the 2010 season.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: Labonte replaced Marcos Ambrose as the full-time driver of the No. 47 JTG Daugherty Racing Toyota Camry, with support from Michael Waltrip Racing. He finished 4th in the Daytona 500, earning Labonte his 200th career top 10 finish in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. Earning only one more top 10 finish so far in the season. JTG Daugherty Racing and Michael Waltrip Racing received a penalty for violating sections 12-1, 12-4-J, and 20-3.2.1A. Crew Chief Frankie Kerr was fined $50,000 and was suspended from 4 NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship events, and suspended from NASCAR until November, 23. The same penalty was for Michael Waltrip Racing and the car chief for each team. The owners of the numbers 47 (Tad Geschickter); 56 (Michael Waltrip); and 00 (Rob Kauffman); were penalized 25 owner points. The drivers were also penalized 25 driver points.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: For the 2012 season, Labonte returned to the No. 47 car with most of the sponsors returning also. JTG Daugherty Racing also announced they will no longer operate out of the Michael Waltrip Racing shop. Todd Berrier took over the role as the crew chief. The crew chief at the time, Frank Kerr, moved to the position of shop foreman.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: Labonte ran in the 47 for the entire season until the 2013 Quicken Loans 400 at Michigan International Speedway, in which he ran the No. 51 for Phoenix Racing. Labonte ran at Sonoma Raceway in the 47, but was subsequently replaced by A. J. Allmendinger in the 47 for selected races starting at the 2013 Quaker State 400 at Kentucky Speedway, ending Labonte's streak of consecutive starts at 704. The streak was second only to Jeff Gordon's. Later in the year Labonte suffered broken ribs in a cycling accident, forcing him to miss three races, starting with the AdvoCare 500 at Atlanta.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: His last race with JTG Daughtery was at Phoenix International Raceway in November 2013; released afterwards, in December 2013 he announced that he would be running part-time in the 2014 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series in a second car for HScott Motorsports. During practice for the 2014 Daytona 500 Labonte blew an engine, and although he qualified for his 22nd consecutive 500, he was relegated to the back of the starting grid. Labonte finished the race in 15th.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: A deal to run for James Finch in additional races fell through, thus Labonte did not make another start for the first half of the season. Instead, he tested cars for Richard Childress Racing. At the summer Daytona race, he drove the No. 33 RCR Chevrolet that Brian Scott had driven to the pole at Talladega, running under the Circle Sport banner. Labonte qualified 4th and contended for the lead at the beginning of the race, but was caught up in the Big One, finishing 26th. Tommy Baldwin Racing would field the No. 37 car with Accell Construction as the sponsor for Labonte at Indianapolis.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: In December 2014, Labonte announced that he would drive for Go FAS Racing on the restrictor-plate tracks in 2015, taking over for his brother Terry who retired after the 2014 GEICO 500. He finished 24th at the 2015 Daytona 500. In the spring Talladega race, Labonte finished 27th. The 2015 Coke Zero 400 did not go well for Labonte, as he was caught up in an early crash caused by David Gilliland and finished 43rd. For the Fall Talladega race, he finished 23rd, his best finish of the season. In 2016, Labonte received the sponsorship of Bombardier Recreational Products and Cyclops Gear allowing him to run the four restrictor-plate races for Go FAS Racing. For the Daytona 500, Labonte would finish 31st. For Talladega, Labonte would finish 19th. Coming back to Daytona, Labonte would finish 24th. Coming back to Talladega, Labonte would finish 31st. Following the 2016 season, it was announced that Labonte would not return to Go FAS.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: In June 2017, Labonte competed in the NASCAR Whelen Euro Series race weekend at Brands Hatch, driving the No. 1 Ford for Alex Caffi Motorsport. He became the first Cup Series champion to race in the Euro Series. He started 22nd in both of the weekend's two races, and finished 10th and 14th.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: Labonte began competing on the SMART Modified Tour in 2021. He won two features in 2021 but couldn't run full-time because of conflicts with him racing in the Superstar Racing Experience (SRX). In 2022, the two series do not have conflicting dates and he is competing full-time on the SMART Tour.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: In February 2014, it was announced that Labonte would appear as a racing analyst for the new program "NASCAR America" on NBCSN. He made his TV debut early in the 2014 season.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: Labonte currently resides in High Point, North Carolina with his wife Kristin. He has two children from his previous marriage to Donna Slate, Robert Tyler, and Madison, and is an avid outdoorsman. Tyler recently graduated from Texas A&M and is now in law school at Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina. Tyler has worked on political campaigns for Thom Tillis and served in 2014 as an intern for Interstate Batteries, which sponsored Bobby's 2000 championship season. Madison began school at Appalachian State University in the spring of 2017.


title: Bobby Labonte

text: Labonte also owns Breaking Limits, a marketing, public relations, events and sponsorship agency, working out of High Point, North Carolina. Labonte continues to own a Red Mango yogurt shop on the campus of Duke University. The Bobby Labonte Foundation continues to provide grants to non-profit organizations located in the Triad of North Carolina whose work supports building stronger foundations for children and their families. Labonte also founded Longhorn Chassis with his brother Terry in 2010. Longhorn Chassis builds dirt late model race cars.


title: Garbage

text: Garbage, trash, rubbish, or refuse is waste material that is discarded by humans, usually due to a perceived lack of utility. The term generally does not encompass bodily waste products, purely liquid or gaseous wastes, or toxic waste products. Garbage is commonly sorted and classified into kinds of material suitable for specific kinds of disposal.


title: Garbage

text: The word "garbage" originally meant chicken giblets and other entrails, as can be seen in the 15th century Boke of Kokery, which has a recipe for "Garbage".


title: Garbage

text: What constitutes garbage is highly subjective, with some individuals or societies tending to discard things that others find useful or restorable. The words garbage, refuse, rubbish, trash, and waste are generally treated as interchangeable when used to describe "substances or objects which the holder discards or intends or is required to discard". Some of these terms have historic distinctions that are no longer present. In the 1880s, material to be disposed of was divided into four general categories: ashes (derived from the burning of coal or wood), garbage, rubbish, and street-sweepings. This scheme of categorization reduced some of these terms to more specific concepts:


title: Garbage

text: The distinction between terms used to describe wet and dry discarded material "was important in the days when cities slopped garbage to pigs, and needed to have the wet material separated from the dry", but has since dissipated.


title: Garbage

text: In urban areas, garbage of all kinds is collected and treated as municipal solid waste; garbage that is discarded in ways that cause it to end up in the environment, rather than in containers or facilities designed to receive garbage, is considered litter. Litter is a form of garbage that has been improperly disposed of, and which therefore enters the environment. Notably, however, only a small fraction of garbage that is generated becomes litter, with the vast majority being disposed of in ways intended to secure it from entering the environment.


title: Garbage

text: Humans have been creating garbage throughout history, beginning with bone fragments left over from using animal parts and stone fragments discarded from toolmaking. The degree to which groups of early humans began engaging in agriculture can be estimated by examining the type and quality of animal bones in their garbage. Garbage from prehistoric or pre-civilization humans was often collected into mounds called middens, which might contain things such as "a mix of discarded food, charcoal, shell tools, and broken pottery".


title: Johnny Cueto

text: Johnny Cueto Ortiz (; born February 15, 1986) is a Dominican professional baseball pitcher who is a free agent. He has played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Cincinnati Reds, Kansas City Royals, San Francisco Giants and Chicago White Sox.


title: Johnny Cueto

text: Cueto made his MLB debut in 2008. By 2011 he emerged as the ace of the Reds pitching staff and one of the top pitchers in the National League. He won 19 games and posted a 2.78 ERA in 2012, finishing fourth in the voting for the National League Cy Young Award and helping lead the Reds to the NL Central title. In 2014, he won 20 games with a 2.25 ERA and tied for the NL lead in strikeouts with 242, finishing as the runner-up for the Cy Young. In 2016, he won 18 games with the San Francisco Giants while posting a 2.79 ERA, helping lead them to the postseason, where they lost in the NLDS, and he achieved another top-10 finish in the Cy Young voting. He was an MLB All-Star in 2014 and 2016, and was chosen as the starting pitcher for the 2016 MLB All-Star Game. From 2011 to 2017, Cueto accumulated the second-lowest ERA of all pitchers with at least 750 innings pitched (behind Clayton Kershaw), managing a 2.94 ERA alongside a 90–51 (.638) record in innings. He underwent Tommy John surgery in 2018.


title: Johnny Cueto

text: Cueto signed with the Reds in 2004 as an undrafted amateur free agent for a $35,000 signing bonus. He was in the minor leagues for three seasons, and excelled at many levels, but really turned heads during the 2007 season.


title: Johnny Cueto

text: Cueto started his career for the Gulf Coast Reds of the Rookie Gulf Coast League, posting a 5.02 earned run average (ERA), before being promoted to the High-A Sarasota Reds of the Florida State League, where he finished his 2005 season. He has had progressively better seasons since.


title: Johnny Cueto

text: In 2006, Cueto was assigned to the Low A Dayton Dragons, and posted a 2.61 ERA, and a 0.88 walks plus hits per inning pitched (WHIP) ratio. While with Dayton, on May 13, 2006, he threw a rain-shortened no-hitter against Wisconsin. He was later promoted back to Sarasota, where he finished his season for the second consecutive year.


title: Johnny Cueto

text: In 2007, Cueto was placed once again in Sarasota. He pitched 14 games for the team, before going on a hot streak and advancing through three levels in one season. He played for the AA Chattanooga Lookouts and AAA Louisville Bats throughout the rest of his 2007 campaign. He was named the Reds' Minor League Pitcher of the Year for the second consecutive season.


title: Johnny Cueto

text: Cueto made his MLB debut on April 3, 2008, for the Reds at home against the Arizona Diamondbacks, where he carried a perfect game through five innings before surrendering a home run to Justin Upton in the top of the sixth inning. The home run was the only baserunner he allowed, striking out 10 in 7 innings. Cueto was credited with the win in his debut, as the Reds hung on to win 3–2. Cueto was the first Red since 1900 to throw ten strikeouts in his MLB debut. He was also the first MLB pitcher to have 10 strikeouts and 0 walks in his debut. He was the third in MLB history to have 10 strikeouts and give up only 1 hit. For the game, Cueto's ERA was 1.29 on 92 pitches. Despite his impressive debut, Cueto was inconsistent for the most part on the season. In his first two starts of the season, Cueto was 1–0 with a 2.02 ERA in innings with 18 strikeouts, while he went 1–5 in innings with a 6.65 ERA across his next eight. Cueto struck out several batters in his starts, but found himself unable to pitch himself deep into games rather frequently due to high pitch counts and giving up many home runs. At the end of the 2008 campaign, he finished with a 9–14 record with an ERA of 4.81 in 31 starts (14 quality starts). While he pitched only 174 innings, Cueto struck 158 batters (the most of all NL rookies), good for a K/9 ratio of 8.17, the eighth best in the National League.


title: Johnny Cueto

text: Cueto started 2009 as the Reds #4 starter. Cueto gave up four earned runs in six innings in his season debut in a 10–2 loss to the Pirates, despite striking out nine. Over his next three starts, however, Cueto posted a sub 1.00 ERA, allowing just two earned runs in 18 innings. Cueto pitched a career high eight shutout innings on May 3, allowing four hits and a walk while striking out in a 5–0 win over the Pirates. Between April 22 and May 29, Cueto had a nine start span where he pitched at least seven innings and allowed three earned runs or fewer in all but one of those starts. Cueto's ERA continued to be one of the strongest in the National League through the first three months of the season. On June 14, he took the lead for the lowest NL ERA, with a mark of 2.17 in 87 innings. His BB/9 lowered as the 2009 season progressed. Two weeks before the All-Star game, Cueto was 8–4 with a 2.69 ERA, a major improvement from the previous season. On July 6, 2009, Cueto suffered the worst defeat in his young career. Taking the mound against the Phillies, he allowed nine earned runs on five hits, walking three. To top it off, all this happened in the first inning, and Cueto was taken out of the game after only recording two outs. The Phillies scored 10 runs that inning. Cueto struggled following that defeat, turning in a 5.91 ERA over his final 13 starts while only managing a 3–6 record, although the final six starts (3–1 with a 3.63 ERA) were more promising. Cueto finished the season with a record of 11–11, and an ERA of 4.41 in 30 starts. In innings, Cueto struck out 132 batters and walked 61 batters, which despite a lower BB/9 ratio (3.20 versus 3.52) resulted in a lower K/BB ratio than his rookie season (2.32 versus 2.16) due to a decrease in strikeouts per nine innings (6.93 versus 8.17).


title: Johnny Cueto

text: Cueto started the 2010 season as the Reds' third starter. On May 11, Cueto pitched a one-hit shutout against the Pittsburgh Pirates. He struck out eight, walked none and hit one batter, leading the Reds to a 9–0 victory. In his 11 starts following his shutout before the All-Star break, Cueto went 6–1 with a 3.01 ERA, which included a streak of six consecutive decisions being wins, a new career high.


title: Johnny Cueto

text: On August 12, Cueto was suspended seven games for what Major League Baseball described as his "violent and aggressive actions" in a bench-clearing brawl in the first inning of the Reds' August 10 game against the St. Louis Cardinals. While pinned to the backstop, Cueto began to kick wildly at various Cardinals, injuring Chris Carpenter and Jason LaRue. LaRue suffered a severe concussion in the brawl, and was forced to retire after the season.


title: Johnny Cueto

text: Cueto finished the 2010 season with a 12–7 record and a 3.64 ERA in 31 starts, pitching innings, striking out 138 batters, but giving up only 56 walks, 19 home runs and 181 hits. In Game 3 of the NLDS, he allowed 2 runs (1 earned) in 5 innings and took the loss as Cole Hamels pitched a shutout. Following the 2010 season, the Reds and Cueto agreed to a four-year, $27 million contract.


title: Johnny Cueto

text: Cueto began the season on the disabled list due to irritation in his right triceps suffered towards the end of spring training. He returned on May 8, pitching six scoreless innings against the Chicago Cubs. Because he missed several starts while on the disabled list, Cueto didn't become eligible for the ERA race until his start against the San Francisco Giants on July 31, where he pitched a three-hit, complete game shutout. He then took the Major League Baseball lead with a 1.72 ERA. He lost eligibility, twice, due to lack of innings since, but retook the National League lead in ERA after throwing seven innings of shutout ball against the Colorado Rockies on August 11. As the season progressed, Cueto began incorporating more and more of a turn to his windup. At the start of the season, his windup featured a conventional step, keeping his body pointed at third base before delivering to the plate. However, by late July, Cueto's torso was facing second base and he was pausing for a brief moment. Many people have compared this turn to Boston Red Sox great Luis Tiant's famous turn. As of August 25, he was tied with Jered Weaver for the best ERA in all of Major League Baseball at 2.03. On August 28, Cueto struck out a career-high 11 batters against the Washington Nationals, receiving a no-decision as he threw seven innings of two-run ball.


title: Johnny Cueto

text: Cueto's bid for the ERA title and season came to an end after he strained a muscle in his back on September 15, while pitching vs the Cubs. On September 20, the team decided to shut down Cueto for the year without risking further injury. Cueto finished the season with a 9–5 record and a 2.31 ERA in 156 innings across 24 starts – six innings short of qualifying for the ERA title. Cueto struck out 104 batters, and gave up just 123 hits, 47 walks and eight home runs. He also pitched 3 complete games, 1 of which was a shutout.