title: History of Moldova

text: However, opposition was growing to the increasingly exclusionary nationalist policies of the Popular Front, especially in Transnistria, where the Yedinstvo-Unitatea (Unity) Intermovement had been formed in 1988 by Slavic minorities, and in the south, where the organization Gagauz Halkî ("Gagauz People"), formed in November 1989, came to represent the Gagauz, a Turkic-speaking minority there.


title: History of Moldova

text: The first democratic elections to the Moldavian SSR's Supreme Soviet were held on February 25, 1990. Runoff elections were held in March. The Popular Front won a majority of the votes. After the elections, Mircea Snegur, a reformed communist, was elected chairman of the Supreme Soviet; in September he became president of the republic. The reformist government that took over in May 1990 made many changes that did not please the minorities, including changing the republic's name in June from the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldova and declaring it sovereign the following month. At the same time, Romanian tricolor with the Moldavian coat-of-arms was adopted as the state flag, and "Deșteaptă-te române!", the Romanian anthem, became the anthem of the SSRM. During that period a Movement for unification of Romania and the Republic of Moldova became active in each country.


title: History of Moldova

text: In August 1990, following a refusal of the increasingly nationalist republican government, to grant cultural and territorial autonomy to Gagauzia and Transnistria, two regions populated primarily by ethnic minorities. In response, the Gagauz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was declared in the south, in the city of Comrat. In September in Tiraspol, the main city on the east bank of the Dniester River, the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (commonly called the "Dnestr Republic", later Transnistria) followed suit. The parliament of Moldova immediately declared these declarations null and void.


title: History of Moldova

text: In mid-October 1990, approximately 30,000 Moldovan nationalist volunteers were sent to Gagauzia and Transnistria, where an outbreak of violence was averted by the intervention of the Soviet 14th Army. (The Soviet 14th Army, now the Russian 14th Army, had been headquartered in Chișinău since 1956.) However, negotiations in Moscow between the Gagauz and Transnistrian leadership, and the government of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldova failed.


title: History of Moldova

text: In May 1991, the country's official name was changed to the Republic of Moldova (Republica Moldova). The name of the Supreme Soviet also was changed, to the Moldovan Parliament.


title: History of Moldova

text: During the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt in Moscow against Mikhail Gorbachev, commanders of the Soviet Union's Southwestern Theater of Military Operations attempted to impose a state of emergency in Moldova. They were overruled by the Moldovan government, which declared its support for Russian president Boris Yeltsin, who led the counter-coup in Moscow. On 27 August 1991, following the coup's collapse, Moldova declared its independence from the Soviet Union.


title: History of Moldova

text: The December elections of Stepan Topal and Igor Smirnov as presidents of Gagauzia and Transnistria respectively, and the official dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of the year, had further increased tensions in Moldova.


title: History of Moldova

text: Transnistria is the region east of the Dniester River, which includes a large proportion of predominantly Russophone ethnic Russians and Ukrainians (51%, as of 1989, with ethnic Moldovans forming a 40% minority). The headquarters of the Soviet 14th Guards Army was located in the regional capital Tiraspol. There, on September 2, 1990, local authorities proclaimed an independent Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. The motives behind this move were fear of the rise of nationalism in Moldova and the country's expected reunification with Romania upon secession from the USSR. In the winter of 1991–1992 clashes occurred between Transnistrian forces and the Moldovan police. Between March 2 and July 26, 1992, the conflict escalated into a military engagement. Following Russian intervention of the 14th Guards Army into the conflict on the side of the separatists, the war was stopped and the Moscow Agreement on the principles of peace settlement of armed conflict in Trans-Dniester districts of the republic of Moldova was signed on 21 July 1992.


title: History of Moldova

text: As of 2007, the Russian military remains in Transnistria, despite Russia having signed international agreements to withdraw, and against the will of Moldovan government. The government of Moldova continues to offer extensive autonomy to Transnistria, while the government of Transnistria demands independence. "De jure", Transnistria is internationally recognized as part of Moldova, but "de facto", the Moldovan government does not exercise any control over the territory.


title: History of Moldova

text: On 8 December 1991, Mircea Snegur, an ex-communist reformer, ran an unopposed election for the presidency. On March 2, 1992, the country achieved formal recognition as an independent state at the United Nations.


title: History of Moldova

text: In 1992, Moldova became involved in a brief conflict against local insurgents in Transnistria, who were aided by the Russian 14th Guards Army and Russian, Ukrainian and Don Cossack volunteers, which resulted in the failure of Moldova, supported by Romania, to regain control over the breakaway republic.


title: History of Moldova

text: Starting 1993, Moldova began to distance itself from Romania. The 1994 Constitution of Moldova used the term "Moldovan language" instead of "Romanian" and changed the national anthem to "Limba noastră".


title: History of Moldova

text: On January 2, 1992, Moldova introduced a market economy, liberalizing prices, which resulted in huge inflation. From 1992 to 2001, the young country suffered its worst economic crisis, leaving most of the population below the poverty line. In 1993, a national currency, the Moldovan leu, was introduced to replace the Soviet rouble. The end of the planned economy also meant that industrial enterprises would have to buy supplies and sell their goods by themselves, and most of the management was unprepared for such a change. Moldova's industry, especially machine building, became all but defunct, and unemployment skyrocketed. The economic fortunes of Moldova began to change in 2001; since then the country has seen a steady annual growth of between 5% and 10%. In the early 2000s, there was also a considerable growth of emigration of Moldovans looking for work (mostly illegally) in Italy, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Russia and other countries. Remittances from Moldovans abroad account for almost 38% of Moldova's GDP, the second-highest percentage in the world. Officially, Moldova's annual GDP is on the order of $1,000 per capita; however, a significant part of the economy goes unregistered as a result of corruption.


title: History of Moldova

text: The pro-nationalist governments of prime ministers Mircea Druc (May 25, 1990 – May 28, 1991), and Valeriu Muravschi (May 28, 1991 – July 1, 1992), were followed by a more moderate government of Andrei Sangheli, during which there was a decline of the pro-Romanian nationalist sentiment. After the 1994 elections, Moldovan Parliament adopted measures that distanced Moldova from Romania. The new Moldovan Constitution also provided for autonomy for Transnistria and Gagauzia. On December 23, 1994, the Parliament of Moldova adopted a "Law on the Special Legal Status of Gagauzia", and in 1995 it was constituted.


title: History of Moldova

text: After winning the presidential elections of 1996, on January 15, 1997, Petru Lucinschi, the former First Secretary of the Moldavian Communist Party in 1989–91, became the country's second president. After the legislative elections on March 22, 1998, the Alliance for Democracy and Reform was formed by non-Communist parties. However, the term of the new government of Prime Minister Ion Ciubuc (January 24, 1997– February 1, 1999) was marked by chronic political instability, which prevented a coherent reform program. The 1998 financial crisis in Russia, Moldova's main economic partner at the time, produced an economic crisis in the country. The standard of living plunged, with 75% of population living below the poverty line, while the economic disaster caused 600,000 people to emigrate.


title: History of Moldova

text: New governments were formed by Ion Sturza (February 19 – November 9, 1999) and Dumitru Braghiş (December 21, 1999 – April 19, 2001). On July 21, 2000, the Parliament adopted an amendment to the Constitution that transformed Moldova from a presidential to a parliamentary republic, in which the president is elected by three fifths of the votes in the parliament, and no longer directly by the people.


title: History of Moldova

text: Only 3 of the 31 political parties won more than the 6% of the popular vote required to win seats in parliament in the February 25, 2001 elections. Winning 49.9% of the vote, the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova (reinstituted in 1993 after being outlawed in 1991), gained 71 of the 101 parliament seats, and elected Vladimir Voronin as the country's third president on April 4, 2001. A new government was formed on April 19, 2001 by Vasile Tarlev. The country became the first post-Soviet state where a non-reformed communist party returned to power. In March–April 2002, the opposition Christian-Democratic People's Party organized a mass protest in Chișinău against the plans of the government to fulfill its electoral promise and introduce Russian as the second state language along with its compulsory study in schools. The government annulled these plans.


title: History of Moldova

text: The relationship between Moldova and Russia deteriorated in November 2003 over a Russian proposal for the solution of the Transnistria conflict, which Moldovan authorities refused to accept because it stipulated a 20-year Russian military presence in Moldova. The federalization plan for Moldova would have also turned Transnistria and Gagauzia into a blocking minority over all major policy matters of Moldova. As of 2006, approximately 1,200 of the 14th Army personnel remain stationed in Transnistria, guarding a large ammunitions depot at Colbasna. In recent years, negotiations between the Transnistrian and Moldovan leaders have been going on under the mediation of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Russia, and Ukraine; lately observers from the European Union and the United States have become involved, creating a 5+2 format.


title: History of Moldova

text: In the wake of the November 2003 deadlock with Russia, a series of shifts in the external policy of Moldova occurred, targeted at rapprochement with the European Union. In the context of the EU's expansion to the east, Moldova wants to sign the Stability and Association Agreement. It implemented its first three-year action plan within the framework of the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) of the EU.


title: History of Moldova

text: In the March 2005 elections, the Party of the Communists (PCRM) won 46% of the vote, (56 of the 101 seats in the Parliament), the Democratic Moldova Block (BMD) won 28.5% of the vote (34 MPs), and the Christian Democratic People Party (PPCD) won 9.1% (11 MPs). On April 4, 2005, Vladimir Voronin was re-elected as country's president, supported by a part of the opposition, and on April 8, Vasile Tarlev was again appointed head of government. On March 31, 2008, Vasile Tarlev was replaced by Zinaida Greceanîi as head of the government.


title: History of Moldova

text: Following the parliamentary elections on April 5, 2009, the Communist Party won 49.48% of the votes, followed by the Liberal Party with 13.14% of the votes, the Liberal Democratic Party with 12.43% and the Alliance "Moldova Noastră" with 9.77%. The opposition leaders have protested against the outcome calling it fraudulent and demanded a repeated election. A preliminary report by OSCE observers called the vote generally free and fair. However, one member of the OSCE observation team expressed concerns over that conclusion and said that she and a number of other team members feel that there had been some manipulation, but they were unable to find any proof.


title: History of Moldova

text: On April 6, 2009, several NGOs and opposition parties organized a protest in Chișinău, gathering a crowd of about 15,000 with the help of social network sites such as Twitter and Facebook. The protesters accused the Communist government of electoral fraud. Anti-communist and pro-Romanian slogans were widely used. The demonstration had spun out of control on April 7 and escalated into a riot when a part of the crowd attacked the presidential offices and broke into the parliament building, looting and setting its interior on fire. Police had regained control on the night of April 8, arresting and detaining several hundred protesters. Numerous detainees reported beatings by the police when released. The violence on both sides (demonstrators and police) was condemned by the OSCE and other international organizations. Three young people died during the day the protests took place. The opposition blamed police abuse for these deaths, while the government claimed they were either unrelated to the protests, or accidents. Government officials, including President Vladimir Voronin, called the rioting a coup d'état attempt and accused Romania of organizing it. The opposition accused the government of organizing the riots by introducing agents provocateurs among the protesters. The political climate in Moldova remained unstable. The parliament failed to elect a new president. For this reason, the parliament was dissolved and new general elections were held on July 29, 2009, with the Communists losing power to the Alliance for European Integration, a pro-European coalition.


title: History of Moldova

text: An attempt by the new ruling coalition to amend the constitution of Moldova via a referendum in 2010 in order to enable presidential election by popular vote failed due to lack of turnout. The parliamentary election in November 2010 had retained the status quo between the ruling coalition and the communist opposition. On 16 March 2012, parliament elected Nicolae Timofti as president by 62 votes out of 101, with the PCRM boycotting the election, putting an end to a political crisis that had lasted since April 2009. Moldova had no had full-time president, but three acting presidents, since Vladimir Voronin resigned in September 2009. In the November 2014 elections the pro-European parties maintained their majority in parliament.


title: History of Moldova

text: In November 2016, pro-Russia candidate Igor Dodon won the presidential election, defeating his rival Maia Sandu. The 2019 parliamentary election resulted a vote split between pro-Western and pro-Russian forces. The opposition Socialists, who favor closer ties to Moscow, became the largest party with 35 out of 101 seats. The ruling Democratic Party, which wants closer integration with the EU, came second with 30 seats. Opposition bloc called ACUM, campaigning with anti-corruption agenda, was third with 26 seats. In 2019, from 7 June to 15 June, the Moldovan government went through a period of dual power in what is known as the 2019 Moldovan constitutional crisis. In November 2019, Ion Chicu became new Prime Minister, following the fall of the former government led by pro-Western Maja Sandu.


title: History of Moldova

text: In November 2020, opposition candidate Maia Sandu won Moldova's presidential election after a run-off vote against the incumbent Igor Dodon. She became the first female President of Moldova.


title: History of Moldova

text: In July 2021, President Maia Sandu's pro-Western PAS party won a snap election, resulting Parliament confirmed Sandu's nomination of Natalia Gavrilita as the new prime minister.


title: History of Moldova

text: On 24 May 2022, former president of Moldova, Igor Dodon, was arrested. Dodon, leader of Moldova's main pro-Russian opposition, Socialist Party, was accused of taking bribes. Moldovas's pro-Western and pro-Russian factions became increasingly divided since Russia's invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.


title: Pak (creator)

text: Pak, formerly known as Murat Pak, is a digital artist, cryptocurrency investor, and programmer. The identity of Pak is unknown and some speculate that it may be a team. Pak is known for creating the curation platform Archillect, an internet bot which reshares media based on user interactions with content hosted on various social platforms and for launching a platform for burning (permanently removing from circulation) NFTs to receive tokens of the cryptocurrency Ash.


title: Pak (creator)

text: Pak is best known for working with non-fungible tokens. Pak's highest-selling NFT, "Merge", generated $91.8 million in sales in December 2021 and is one of the most expensive non-fungible tokens. Pak's NFTs have been sold on platforms including Sotheby's, Nifty Gateway, MakersPlace, SuperRare, and Async Art. Pak is also credited for having introduced Beeple to NFTs in October 2020. Between February 2020 and April 2022, more than 180,300 NFTs by Pak were sold across the primary and secondary markets, raising $394.9 million.


title: Pak (creator)

text: In 2014, Pak created Archillect (a portmanteau of archive and intellect), an internet bot that acts as a curation platform. It searches through social media and posts images to several social media platforms. Posts are selected in order to be shared as widely as possible, adapting to provide more of the content people are sharing. Archillect has been compared to AI composer Emily Howell as examples of "artistic bots". It has also been described as a mood board. Pak described Archillect as a "digital muse" and refers to it as "she".


title: Pak (creator)

text: The account has been criticized for sharing content without attribution or with poor attribution. A second account was created to post attribution or sources for images when available and Pak has claimed to take down images on request, though this reactive approach has also been criticized.


title: Pak (creator)

text: Pak is known for a style that takes advantage of blockchain technology, specifically its smart contracts, described as an appeal to cryptocurrency fans. The images associated with Pak's NFTs use geometric shapes or programmatically generated images. Pak frequently embeds hidden messages into NFTs, and uses social media platforms in a candid way to promote and discuss them. Pak's use of NFTs has been described as challenging the concepts of value and ownership.


title: Pak (creator)

text: Pak's first NFT, "Cloud Monument Dark", was released on February 3, 2020 on SuperRare, an NFT marketplace. In August 2020, Pak released project "X" on NiftyGateway, an "open edition" sale of NFTs with a scarcity mechanism based on time rather than volume. Thirteen NFTs were offered for sale in multiples for a window of twenty-four hours.


title: Pak (creator)

text: In March 2021, Charles Stewart, CEO of Sotheby's, announced a partnership with Pak to launch the auction house's first NFT sale. This partnership resulted in "The Fungible", an open edition which generated $16.8 million in sales across 6,156 NFTs over two days. The Sotheby's sale and subsequent press raised Pak's public profile, specifically with regards to the role of NFTs in the art world. As part of Pak's partnership with Sotheby's, Pak also auctioned "The Pixel", which sold for $1.36 million, and "The Switch", which sold for $1.4 million.


title: Pak (creator)

text: On October 15, 2021, Sotheby's launched the "Sotheby's Metaverse", a digital art platform for selling and curating NFTs, which offers users a unique personal profile picture generated by Pak.


title: Pak (creator)

text: On December 2, 2021, Pak launched the sale of "Merge" on Nifty Gateway. "Merge" was made available for 48 hours, with buyers able to purchase "mass units" rather than individual copies of an NFT edition. Buyers received a single NFT with its associated image generated based the transaction metadata and the number of "mass units" purchased. In total, 312,686 mass units were sold to 28,983 buyers generating $91.8 million.


title: Pak (creator)

text: In February 2022, "Censored", a series of NFTs, were auctioned as a fundraiser for the legal defense of Julian Assange. One NFT, "The Clock", was sold for 16,593 ETH ($52.8 million) to AssangeDAO, an online community of 10,000 people who pooled cryptocurrency for the bid. A second auction as part of "Censored" raised 671 ether, or $2.1 million, for separate organizations. $1.9 million in cryptocurrency from the Censored sale was donated to the Ukraine government.


title: Higher National Diploma

text: Higher National Diploma (HND), part of the Higher Nationals suite of qualifications, is an academic higher education qualification in the United Kingdom and various other countries. They were first introduced in England and Wales in 1920 alongside the Ordinary National Diploma and the Higher National Certificate. A qualification of the same title is also offered in Argentina, Brunei, India, Malta, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and some other countries with British ties.


title: Higher National Diploma

text: Higher National Diplomas are graded, usually based on a weighted average (with higher weight given to marks in the final year of the course, and often zero weight to those in the first year) of the marks gained in exams and other assessments. Grade boundaries may vary by institution, but usually follow the boundaries given below:


title: Higher National Diploma

text: In England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, the HND is a qualification awarded by many awarding bodies, such as the Confederation of Tourism and Hospitality (CTH Advanced diploma), Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) and BTEC (Vocational programs). In Scotland, a "Higher National" is awarded by the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA). The attainment level is roughly equivalent to the second year of a 3-year English degree or to a Diploma of Higher Education. An HND takes two years of full-time study, or one year full-time following successful completion of a Higher National Certificate; part-time study takes longer.


title: Higher National Diploma

text: In Nigeria, HND is a continuation of a National Diploma (ND-[equivalent to associate degree]) programme, both offered by polytechnics. The ND and HND programmes have a duration of two years each with one-year break after the ND programme for an Industrial Training (IT) attachment in relevant industries. At the completion of an HND programme, the graduate would have spent 4 to 5 years; hence, Higher National Diplomas are sometimes referred to "equivalent" of a University bachelor's degree or four years of a university education. Although, there have existed a long-standing disagreement over the "equivalence" of Polytechnic HND degree to University bachelor's degree; employers of labour (including the government and its policies) have discriminated against HND holders—grading them below their university counterparts and preventing them from attaining managerial or directorate cadres. However, following series of efforts by polytechnic students/lecturers and concerned entities, the federal government has made attempts to remove the dichotomy between Polythecnic HND degree holders and University degree holders in places of employment, and the efforts are paying off as some of the government organisations (especially paramilitary) have started upgrading and employing the HND-holders at par with their University Degree counterparts. Some have even claimed that the HND graduates are better than their university counterparts in the same field, arguing that they write the same entrance exams to seek admission to their course/program of study (the JAMB exams to secure an admission), they both spend the same number of years studying, both completing 120 college credit units with HND holders concentrating more on technicalities, sometimes taking more than 120 credit units and getting more hands on . The HND degree offers limited liberal arts subjects and goes straight into the technicalities of a course using industry standards from year one of OND (one can only gain admission into a HND program after completing two years of OND, an equivalent of an associate degree) and by the final year of HND the student is already equipped to practice in the field.


title: Higher National Diploma

text: In Scotland, an HND is Level 8 on the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework and in England, Wales and Northern Ireland it is Level 5 on the Regulated Qualifications Framework/Credit and Qualifications Framework for Wales. It is quite common for those who have achieved an HND to add to their qualification by progressing to other levels such as professional qualifications, a degree or a "Top-Up" degree. The entry requirements for HND in these countries also differ. One does not require an OND to get into a HND program in England, it is a stand-alone 2-year program making the curriculum and course work different from that in some countries that offer HND degree as a progression of an OND degree.


title: Polyolefin

text: A polyolefin is a type of polymer with the general formula (CHCHR) where R is an alkyl group. They are usually derived from a small set of simple olefins (alkenes). Dominant in a commercial sense are polyethylene and polypropylene. More specialized polyolefins include polyisobutylene and polymethylpentene. They are all colorless or white oils or solids. Many copolymers are known, such as polybutene, which derives from a mixture of different butene isomers. The name of each polyolefin indicates the olefin from which it is prepared; for example, polyethylene is derived from ethylene, and polymethylpentene is derived from 4-methyl-1-pentene. Polyolefins are not olefins themselves because the double bond of each olefin monomer is opened in order to form the polymer. Monomers having more than one double bond such as butadiene and isoprene yield polymers that contain double bonds (polybutadiene and polyisoprene) and are usually not considered polyolefins. Polyolefins are the foundations of many chemical industries.


title: Polyolefin

text: Most polyolefin are made by treating the monomer with metal-containing catalysts. The reaction is highly exothermic.


title: Polyolefin

text: Traditionally, Ziegler-Natta catalysts are used. Named after the Nobelists Karl Ziegler and Giulio Natta, these catalysts are prepared by treating titanium chlorides with organoaluminium compounds, such as triethylaluminium. In some cases, the catalyst is insoluble and is used as a slurry. In the case of polyethylene, chromium-containing Phillips catalysts are used often. Kaminsky catalysts are yet another family of catalysts that are amenable to systematic changes to modify the tacticity of the polymer, especially applicable to polypropylene.


title: Polyolefin

text: Polyolefin properties range from liquidlike to rigid solids, and are primarily determined by their molecular weight and degree of crystallinity. Polyolefin degrees of crystallinity range from 0% (liquidlike) to 60% or higher (rigid plastics). Crystallinity is primarily governed by the lengths of polymer's crystallizable sequences established during polymerization. Examples include adding a small percentage of comonomer like 1-hexene or 1-octene during the polymerization of ethylene, or occasional irregular insertions ("stereo" or "regio" defects) during the polymerization of isotactic propylene. The polymer's ability to crystallize to high degrees decreases with increasing content of defects.


title: Polyolefin

text: Low degrees of crystallinity (0–20%) are associated with liquidlike-to-elastomeric properties. Intermediate degrees of crystallinity (20–50%) are associated with ductile thermoplastics, and degrees of crystallity over 50% are associated with rigid and sometimes brittle plastics.


title: Polyolefin

text: Polyolefin surfaces are not effectively joined together by solvent welding because they have excellent chemical resistance and are unaffected by common solvents. They can be adhesively bonded after surface treatment (they inherently have very low surface energies and don't wet-out well (the process of being covered and filled with resin)), and by some superglues (cyanoacrylates) and reactive (meth)acrylate glues. They are extremely inert chemically but exhibit decreased strength at lower and higher temperatures. As a result of this, thermal welding is a common bonding technique.


title: Polyolefin

text: Practically all polyolefins that are of any practical or commercial importance are poly-"alpha"-olefin (or poly-α-olefin or polyalphaolefin, sometimes abbreviated as PAO), a polymer made by polymerizing an "alpha"-olefin. An "alpha"-olefin (or α-olefin) is an alkene where the carbon-carbon double bond starts at the α-carbon atom, i.e. the double bond is between the #1 and #2 carbons in the molecule. Alpha-olefins such as 1-hexene may be used as co-monomers to give an alkyl branched polymer (see chemical structure below), although 1-decene is most commonly used for lubricant base stocks.


title: Polyolefin

text: Many poly-alpha-olefins have flexible alkyl branching groups on every other carbon of their polymer backbone chain. These alkyl groups, which can shape themselves in numerous conformations, make it very difficult for the polymer molecules to align themselves up side-by-side in an orderly way. This results in lower contact surface area between the molecules and decreases the intermolecular interactions between molecules. Therefore, many poly-alpha-olefins do not crystallize or solidify easily and are able to remain oily, viscous liquids even at lower temperatures. Low molecular weight poly-"alpha"-olefins are useful as synthetic lubricants such as synthetic motor oils for vehicles and can be used over a wide temperature range.


title: Polyolefin

text: Even polyethylenes copolymerized with a small amount of alpha-olefins (such as 1-hexene, 1-octene, or longer) are more flexible than simple straight-chain high-density polyethylene, which has no branching. The methyl branch groups on a polypropylene polymer are not long enough to make typical commercial polypropylene more flexible than polyethylene.


title: Four Policemen

text: The "Four Policemen" was a postwar council with the Big Four that US President Franklin Roosevelt proposed as a guarantor of world peace. Their members were called the Four Powers during World War II and were the four major Allies of World War II: the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China. Roosevelt repeatedly used the term "Four Policemen" starting in 1942.


title: Four Policemen

text: The Four Policemen would be responsible for keeping order within their spheres of influence: Britain in its empire and Western Europe, the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe and the central Eurasian landmass, China in East Asia and the Western Pacific; and the United States in the Western Hemisphere. As a preventive measure against new wars, countries other than the Four Policemen were to be disarmed. Only the Four Policemen would be allowed to possess any weapons more powerful than a rifle.


title: Four Policemen

text: Initially, Roosevelt envisioned the new postwar international organization would be formed several years after the war. Later, he came to view creating the United Nations as the most important goal for the entire war effort. His vision for the organization consisted of three branches: an executive branch with the Big Four, an enforcement branch composed of the same four great powers acting as the Four Policemen or Four Sheriffs, and an international assembly representing other nations.


title: Four Policemen

text: As a compromise with internationalist critics, the Big Four nations became the permanent members of the UN Security Council, with significantly less power than had been envisioned in the Four Policemen proposal. When the United Nations was officially established later in 1945, France was in due course added as the fifth permanent member of the Security Council because of the insistence of Churchill.


title: Four Policemen

text: After World War I, the United States pursued a policy of isolationism and declined to join the League of Nations in 1919. Roosevelt had been a supporter of the League of Nations but, by 1935, he told his foreign policy adviser Sumner Welles: "The League of Nations has become nothing more than a debating society, and a poor one at that!". Roosevelt criticized the League for representing the interests of too many nations. He came to favor an approach to global peace secured through the unified efforts of the world's great powers, rather than through the Wilsonian notions of international consensus and collaboration that guided the League of Nations.


title: Four Policemen

text: The idea that great powers should "police" the world had been discussed by President Roosevelt as early as August 1941, during his first meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. When the Atlantic Charter was issued, Roosevelt had ensured that the charter omitted mentioning any American commitment towards the establishment of a new international body after the war. He was reluctant to publicly announce his plans for creating a postwar international body, aware of the risk that the American people might reject his proposals, and he did not want to repeat Woodrow Wilson's struggle to convince the Senate to approve American membership in the League of Nations.


title: Four Policemen

text: Roosevelt's proposal was to create a new international body led by a "trusteeship" of great powers that would oversee smaller countries. In September 1941, he wrote:


title: Four Policemen

text: Despite a "desultory" first effort, the U.S. State Department's postwar planning had been in abeyance for most of 1940 and 1941. Following the Atlantic Conference, a directive on postwar planning was prepared by the State Department by mid-October, which was delivered to the President in late December.


title: Four Policemen

text: The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 led to a change in Roosevelt's position. He transformed his trusteeship proposal into a proposal for Four Policementhe United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and Chinato enforce the peace after the war for several years while other nations, friend and foe, would be disarmed. Roosevelt made his first references to the Four Policemen proposal in early 1942. This would not preclude the eventual formation of a worldwide organisation of nations "for the purpose of full discussion" provided "management" was left to the Four Policemen.


title: Four Policemen

text: He presented his postwar plans to Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov, who had arrived in Washington on May 29 to discuss the possibility of launching a second front in Europe. The President said to Molotov that "he could not visualize another League of Nations with 100 different signatories; there were simply too many nations to satisfy, hence it was a failure and would be a failure". Roosevelt told Molotov that the Big Four must unite after the war to police the world and disarm aggressor states. When Molotov asked about the role of other countries, Roosevelt answered by opining that too many "policemen" could lead to infighting, but he was open to the idea of allowing other allied countries to participate. A memorandum of the conference summarizes their conversation:


title: Four Policemen

text: Roosevelt and Molotov continued their discussion of the Four Policemen in a second meeting on June 1. Molotov informed the President that Stalin was willing to support Roosevelt's plans for maintaining postwar peace through the Four Policemen and enforced disarmament. Roosevelt also raised the issue of postwar decolonization. He suggested that former colonies should undergo a period of transition under the governance of an international trusteeship prior to their independence.


title: Four Policemen

text: China was brought in as a member of the Big Four and a future member of the Four Policemen. Roosevelt was in favor of recognizing China as a great power because he was certain that the Chinese would side with the Americans against the Soviets. He said to British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, "In any serious conflict of policy with Russia, [China] would undoubtedly line up on our side." As it was before the Chinese Civil War ensued, he did not mean the Communist China, but the Republic of China. The President believed that a pro-American China would be useful for the United States should the Americans, Soviets, and Chinese agree to jointly occupy Japan and Korea after the war. When Molotov voiced concerns about the stability of China, Roosevelt responded by saying that the combined "population of our nations and friends was well over a billion people".


title: Four Policemen

text: Churchill objected to Roosevelt's inclusion of China as one of the Big Four because he feared that the Americans were trying to undermine Britain's colonial holdings in Asia. In October 1942, Churchill told Eden that Republican China represented a "faggot vote on the side of the United States in any attempt to liquidate the British overseas empire." Eden shared this view with Churchill and expressed skepticism that China, which was then in the midst of a civil war, could ever return to a stable nation. Roosevelt responded to Churchill's criticism by telling Eden that "China might become a very useful power in the Far East to help police Japan" and that he was fully supportive of offering more aid to China.


title: Four Policemen

text: On New Year's Day 1942, the representatives of Allied "Big Four", the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China, signed a short document which later came to be known as the Declaration by United Nations and the next day the representatives of twenty-two other nations added their signatures.


title: Four Policemen

text: President Roosevelt initiated post-war plans for the creation of a new and more durable international organization that would replace the former League of Nations. Roosevelt's Four Policemen proposal received criticism from liberal internationalists who wanted power to be more evenly distributed among nations. Internationalists were concerned that the Four Policemen could lead to a new Quadruple Alliance.


title: Four Policemen

text: A new plan for the United Nations was drafted by the State Department in April 1944. It kept the emphasis on great power solidarity that was central to Roosevelt's Four Policemen proposal for the United Nations. The members of the Big Four would serve as permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. Each of the four permanent members would be given a United Nations Security Council veto power, which would override any UN resolution that went against the interests of one of the Big Four. However, the State Department had compromised with the liberal internationalists. Membership eligibility was widened to include all nation states fighting against the Axis powers instead of a select few.


title: Four Policemen

text: Roosevelt had been a supporter of the League of Nations back in 1919–20, but was determined to avoid the mistakes Woodrow Wilson had made. The United Nations was FDR's highest postwar priority. He insisted on full coordination with the Republican leadership. He made sure that leading Republicans were on board, especially Senators Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, and Warren Austin of Vermont. In a broad sense, Roosevelt believed that the UN could solve the minor problems and provide the chief mechanism to resolve any major issues that arose among the great powers, all of whom would have a veto. Roosevelt was especially interested in international protection of human rights, and in this area his wife played a major role as well.


title: Four Policemen

text: The Dumbarton Oaks Conference convened in August 1944 to discuss plans for the postwar United Nations with delegations from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China. US President Franklin D. Roosevelt considered his most important legacy the creation of the United Nations, making a permanent organization out of the wartime Alliance of the same name. He was the chief promoter of the United Nations idea.


title: Four Policemen

text: The Big Four were the only four sponsoring countries of the San Francisco Conference of 1945 and their heads of the delegations took turns as chairman of the plenary meetings. During this conference, the Big Four and their allies signed the Charter of the United Nations.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: The Da Vinci Code, a popular suspense novel by Dan Brown, generated criticism and controversy after its publication in 2003. Many of the complaints centered on the book's speculations and misrepresentations of core aspects of Christianity and the history of the Catholic Church. Additional criticisms were directed toward the book's inaccurate descriptions of European art, history, architecture, and geography.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: Charges of copyright infringement were also leveled by the novelist Lewis Perdue and by the authors of the 1982 book "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail", which puts forward the hypothesis that the historical Jesus married Mary Magdalene, and that their children or their descendants emigrated to what is now southern France, and married into families that became the Merovingian dynasty, whose claim to the throne of France is championed today by the Priory of Sion. Brown was cleared of these copyright infringement charges in a 2006 trial., but the Justice in the trial Peter Smith stated in his Judgement that Dan Brown did not tell the truth in his testimony during the trial.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: Brown prefaces his novel with a page titled "Fact" asserting that certain elements in the novel are true in reality, and a page at his website repeats these ideas and others. In the early publicity for the novel, Dan Brown made repeated assertions that, while the novel is a work of fiction, the historical information in it is all accurate and well-researched. For example:


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: These claims in the book and by the author, combined with the presentation of religious ideas that some Christians regard as offensive, led to a great deal of controversy and debate, which found its way into political discourse in the media. In May 2006, "The Independent" reported that Ruth Kelly, a senior British Government Minister, had been scrutinized about her membership in Opus Dei during her early years as an Education Secretary. In November 2021 Jack Dunn and Jonathan Coad published the book The Da Vinci Fraud, The True Story of Dan Brown and The World's Greatest Literary Crime documenting that Dan Brown used Jack Dunn's originally created historical 'Fictional Facts' in The Vatican Boys and calls them historical 'Facts' in The Da Vinci Code.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: The novel asserts that Mary Magdalene was of the Tribe of Benjamin, but historians dispute this claim, and there is no mention of this in the Bible or in other ancient sources. According to Sandra Miesel and Carl E. Olson, writing in their 2004 book, "The Da Vinci Hoax", state the fact that Magdala was located in northern Israel, whereas the tribe of Benjamin resided in the south, weighs against it.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: In Chapter 58 it is suggested that the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene created a "potent political union with the potential of making a legitimate claim to the throne." Olson and Meisel not only state that this assertion is without any historical basis, but question why Solomon's kingship would have any purpose or meaning today that would motivate a large-scale conspiracy. The authors also question why if Jesus were merely a "mortal prophet", as the novel suggests, a royal goddess would have any interest in him. Olson and Meisel quote Chicago archbishop Francis Cardinal George, who remarked, "Jesus isn't God but Mary Magdalene is a goddess? I mean, what does that mean? If he's not God, why is he married to a goddess?" Olson and Meisel also argued that having Davidic blood in Jesus' time would not have been unique, since all of his stepfather Joseph's relatives, which included twenty generations of kings of Judah, had it as well. The authors also state that the Benjamites were not considered "rightful" heirs to the throne, and that the New Testament does not mention Mary Magdalene's tribal affiliation, and that she was likely not from the tribe of Benjamin, and that her connection with that tribe is traced to the 1982 book "Holy Blood, Holy Grail", which does not substantiate the idea.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: Characters in the book also claim that Mary Magdalene was labeled a prostitute by the Church. While Catholic tradition in the past, in contrast to other Christian traditions, defended these imputations, these claims are now rejected by the majority of biblical scholars, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, according to Carol Ann Morrow of AmericanCatholic.org. Also, Pope Gregory I's teaching about Mary Magdalene, though popular throughout much of the Church's history, was never formally integrated into Catholic dogma; nor was he speaking ex cathedra at the time, so his speech is not seen as infallible. Whatever weight is given to this tradition, however, there is no evidence that it was used to "defame" Mary, who was and still is considered a saint to whose honor churches have been built. She is also respected as a witness to Christ's resurrection as written in the Gospels.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: The story claims the "Holy Grail" is not a chalice but a bloodline sprung from the marital union of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. This idea is not original to Brown; it was previously hypothesized by others, including Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh in "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail". Many textual and historical scholars have characterized this claim as being without evidence.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: Women in the Gospels were usually identified with husbands or male relatives, especially if they shared their names with others. For example, there are many mentions of women called "Mary", all designated differently (any possible identification with each other nonwithstanding). There is Mary "the mother of Jesus", Mary Magdalene, Mary "the mother of James and Joses", Mary "[the mother] of James", "the other" Mary, Mary "the wife of Cl[e]opas" and Mary of Bethany, the sister of Lazarus and Martha. Mary Magdalene stands out from most of the other Marys as she is not directly associated with any man. Mary "Magdalene" means "Mary of Magdala", just as Jesus "the Nazarene" means "Jesus of Nazareth." Some researchers have claimed that, if indeed she was married to Jesus, she would have been designated, following custom, Mary "the wife of Jesus" instead.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: According to "The Da Vinci Hoax", the use of the term "bride of Christ" for the Church in some of the letters of Paul (Ephesians 5:25–27, 2 Corinthians 11:2–3) and the Book of Revelation suggests that Jesus was not married. The authors of that work also speculate that the recorded words of Jesus that "those people who can remain celibate, for the kingdom of heaven's sake should do so" (Matt. 19:12) were made in response to criticisms of his own celibacy.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: In the novel, a line of the Gospel of Philip is quoted where Mary Magdalene is referred to as Jesus's "companion", and a character of "The Da Vinci Code" says that Aramaic scholars know that this means "wife". James M. Robinson, an authority on the Gnostic gospels, has responded to this passage by pointing out that "companion" was not necessarily a sex-related term. In addition, "the Gospel of Philip is in Coptic, translated from Greek, so there is no word in the text for Aramaic scholars to consider. The Gospel of Philip depicts Mary as Jesus's "koinonos", a Greek term indicating a 'close friend', 'companion' or, potentially, a lover. In context of Gnostic beliefs, Gnostic writings use Mary to illustrate a disciple's spiritual relationship with Jesus, making any physical relationship irrelevant."


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: Many art historians dispute that Leonardo's famous "The Last Supper" depicts Mary Magdalene beside Jesus.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: According to Sir Leigh Teabing in Chapter 55 of the novel, the early Church consolidated its power by suppressing ideas about the sacred feminine and elevating the mortal prophet Jesus into a divine being. According to Religion Facts, the questions discussed by the Council were not whether he was divine, as the New Testament authors already believe that he was, but what his precise relationship to God was. In particular, the Council decided upon the question of whether Jesus was "homoousios", "of one substance" with God the Father, or whether instead Jesus was the first created being, inferior to the Father but like him, but still superior to all other beings (see Arianism), or whether he was merely of like substance to the father, or "homoiousios".


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: The novel claims Constantine wanted Christianity to unify the Roman Empire but thought it would appeal to pagans only if it featured a demigod similar to pagan heroes, so he destroyed the Gnostic Gospels that said Jesus was a human prophet and promoted the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which portray Jesus as divine.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: Historically, however, Gnosticism did not portray Jesus as merely human. In fact, the Gnostic Jesus was less human than the Jesus of orthodox Christianity. While orthodox Christianity generally considered Christ both divine and human, many Gnostic sects considered Christ purely divine, his human body being a mere illusion (see Docetism). Many Gnostics saw matter as evil, and believed that a divine spirit would never have taken on a material body. Some varieties of Gnosticism went so far as to hold that the God of the Jews is only a demiurge who has trapped humanity in a fleshly prison; and that Christ is an emanation of the true God, sent to free humanity from that bondage to the flesh. (See Marcionism, Aeon, Archon).


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: Characters in the book claim Christianity has suppressed the sacred feminine, the representation of the earth or mother Goddess's mystic power that's often linked to symbols of fertility and reproduction, such as Venus and Isis.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: Early Christian devotion to female martyrs (such as Perpetua and Felicity) and the apocryphal writings about figures like St. Thecla seem to indicate that women did play a role in the early Church, far more than either Brown or some modern critics of Christianity acknowledge, though historical evidence does not suggest men and women shared "all" roles of office. The Catholic and Orthodox Churches particularly venerate the Virgin Mary, who gave birth to Jesus, but the book deems this a desexualised aspect of femininity that suppresses the sacred feminine. Brown echoes scholars such as Joseph Campbell in saying this image of Mary derives from Isis and her child Horus. Meisel and Olson counters that the "Mother and child" symbol, as a universal part of the general human experience, can be found in other faiths; so Christianity did not copy this element from Egyptian mythology.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: Christian documents and traditions tend to stress the virtues of chaste womanhood in keeping with general Christian encouragement of chastity for both genders. The Gnostics expressed anti-female views, for example, in the Gospel of Thomas's famous ending verse where Jesus says he will make Mary into a male to make her worthy to enter the Kingdom.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: While the character Robert Langdon claims in the book that early Israelites worshipped the goddess Shekinah as Yahweh's equal, this is contradictory to Jewish theology. Judaism is and was a monotheistic religion, and belief in a goddess counterpart to God is both illogical and expressly forbidden. In fact, the term Shekinah (derived from Hebrew for "dwelling") does not appear in early Judaism at all, but later Talmudic Judaism used it to refer to the God's "dwelling" or presence among his people. The term describes a spiritual radiance. Critics argue that this comes from an understanding of Kabbalah, which speaks of God as having "male" and "female" attributes in the Sephirot.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: Carl Olson and Sandra Miesel state that contrary to the book's claims, the Gnostic Gospels (e.g. the Gospels of Thomas, Philip, Mary Magdalene, and the Judas) also do not focus more on Jesus' humanity. The other known Gospels, for the most part, treat Jesus as more otherworldly and lack the humanizing detail of the Biblical accounts. The assertion of "more than eighty gospels" written, with only the familiar four chosen as canonical, greatly exaggerates the number of Gnostic Gospels written.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: The assertions that the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in 1947 (not the 1950s as Brown predicates), contain lost or hidden Gospels is also false. The scrolls contain books of the Hebrew Scriptures, apocryphal and pseudepigraphic books, and manuals used by the Essenes (a "Jewish" community) at Qumran. No definite Christian documents—orthodox, Gnostic, or otherwise—have ever been found at this site.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: The texts of the Nag Hammadi library are not "the most ancient texts in Christianity", but later Gnostic texts (usually dated to the 2nd and 3rd century CE), which were written after the canonical Gospels. Contrarily to Brown's statements, these Gospels do not focus on Jesus's humanity, but depict Jesus as more otherworldly and lack the humanizing detail of the canonical Biblical accounts. The only exception to this is the Gospel of Thomas, which is a collection of sayings ("logia") attributed to Jesus; however, such sayings (most of which are strikingly similar to the ones found in the Canonical Gospels) do not focus on Jesus's life nor on his humanity/divinity, but on his teachings.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: The depiction of Opus Dei as a monastic order which is the Pope's "personal prelature" is inaccurate. In fact, there are no monks in Opus Dei, which has primarily lay membership and whose celibate lay members are called numeraries. But it may be explained by the fact that Silas is referred to as a monk mostly by the protagonists, Langdon and Neveu, who are shown to have little knowledge of Opus Dei. The word "numerary" is used to refer to Silas, by actual Opus Dei members such as the person at Opus Dei centre in London. Moreover, Opus Dei encourages its lay members to avoid practices that are perceived as fundamentalist to the outside world. The term personal prelature does not refer to a special relationship to the Pope; it means an institution in which the jurisdiction of the prelate is not linked to a territory but over "persons", wherever they be.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: Silas, the murderous "Opus Dei monk", uses a cilice and flagellates himself. Some members of Opus Dei do practice voluntary mortification of the flesh, which has been a Christian tradition since at least St. Anthony in the third century, and it has also been practiced by Mother Teresa, Padre Pio, the child visionaries of Our Lady of Fatima, and slain archbishop Óscar Romero. Saint Thomas More and Catherine of Aragon, Queen of England both wore hairshirts in the Tudor era.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: Critics have accused the book of depicting the order as misogynistic, a claim which the order's defenders say has no basis in reality because half of the leadership positions in Opus Dei are held by women.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: Critics have also stated that the novel's allegations of dealings between Pope John Paul II and the order concerning the Institute for the Works of Religion also have no basis in reality. The book states that due to these dealings, Opus Dei's founder was declared a saint just 20 years after his death. In reality, Josemaría Escrivá was canonized 27 years after his death; admittedly faster than some others—but this is attributed to the streamlining of the canonization process and John Paul II's decision to make Escriva's sanctity and message known.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: In the novel, the head of Opus Dei travels alone and makes momentous decisions on his own. In real life, the head of Opus Dei is usually accompanied by two other priests called "custodes" or guardians. Decision making in Opus Dei is "collegial": "i.e.," the head has only one vote.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: The contention that the "Mona Lisa" was painted by Leonardo as an androgynous "whole" humanity that represented both genders is contested by Olson and Meisel's book, in which they state that reputable art historians have explained that it is simply a masterful portrait of a woman. Olson and Meisel also take issue with the idea that Leonardo painted the "Mona Lisa" as a self-portrait, and that this idea is based on the fact that points of congruency are found between Leonardo's face and the "Mona Lisa"s. Olson and Meisel respond that points of congruency can be found among many faces, which is how computer morphing of faces is facilitated.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: The title of the book is not consistent with naming conventions, because "Da Vinci" was not Leonardo's surname. As Tom Chivers of "The Daily Telegraph" comments, "[Leonardo] was from Vinci, or of Vinci. As many critics have pointed out, calling it The Da Vinci Code is like referring to Lawrence of Arabia as Mr. Of Arabia, or asking What Nazareth Do?".


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: The allegation that Pope Clement V burned the Templars to ashes and threw the ashes into the Tiber River in Rome is false. The last leaders of the Knights Templar were killed in France in 1314 by King Philip IV of France, being burned at the stake on a small island in the Seine. Pope Clement's administration was not in Rome as he had moved the papal headquarters to Avignon.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: The legend of the Holy Grail alleged that a sacred relic (in many versions, either the cup used at the Last Supper, or the cup said to have been used by Joseph of Arimathea to collect blood of Christ – or both) existed, which would bring untold blessings to any pure knight who found it. The story appeared around the time of the Crusades and is featured in Thomas Malory's "Le Morte d'Arthur". In Old French, the Holy Grail was written as "San Graal". However "The Da Vinci Code", taking cues from "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail", interprets this as "Sang Réal" and translated this as "royal blood". In early Grail romances, "graal" in fact denotes a large dish for fish, itself a Christian religious symbol, but clearly removed from the traditional cup. The idea of a cup seems to have developed quickly during the late 12th and early 13th centuries, influenced both by non-canonical religious legends, such as that of Joseph of Arimathea, and by pagan stories involving magic containers that, for example, produced endless food.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: Several claims about the Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris are disputed. While there is a brass line running north-south through the church, it is not a part of the Paris Meridian. The line is instead more of a gnomon or sundial/calendar, meant to mark the solstice and equinoxes. Further, there is no evidence that there was ever a temple of Isis on the site. This note has been on display in the church:


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: Contrary to fanciful allegations in a recent best-selling novel, this [the line in the floor] is not a vestige of a pagan temple. No such temple ever existed in this place. It was never called a Rose-Line. It does not coincide with the meridian traced through the middle of the Paris Observatory which serves as a reference for maps where longitudes are measured in degrees East or West of Paris. Please also note that the letters P and S in the small round windows at both ends of the transept refer to Peter and Sulpice, the patron saints of the church, and not an imaginary "Priory of Sion."


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: The reference to Paris having been founded by the Merovingians (Chapter 55) is false; in fact, the city was settled by Gauls by the 3rd century BC. The Romans, who knew it as Lutetia, captured it in 52 BC under Julius Caesar, and left substantial ruins in the city, including an amphitheater and public baths. The Merovingians did not rule in France until the 5th century AD, by which time Paris was at least 800 years old.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: Brown characterized the cycle of Venus as "trac[ing] a perfect pentacle across the ecliptic sky every four years". This was corrected to "eight years" in some later editions, such as the British paperback and the April 2003 printing of the US hardback.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: Steve Olson, author of "Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins", writing in an article in "Nature", says that the notion that a small number of people living today could be the only descendants from any particular person who lived millennia ago, such as Jesus and Mary, is statistically flawed. According to Olson, "If anyone living today is descended from Jesus, so are most of us on the planet."


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: A number of copyright infringement lawsuits have been brought alleging plagiarism in "The Da Vinci Code".


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: On April 11, 2005, novelist Lewis Perdue sued Brown and his publisher Random House for plagiarizing his novels "The Da Vinci Legacy" (1983) and "Daughter of God" (1999), claiming "there are far too many parallels between my books and "The Da Vinci Code" for it to be an accident." On August 4, 2005, District Judge George B. Daniels granted a motion for summary judgment and dismissed the suit, ruling that "a reasonable average lay observer would not conclude that "The Da Vinci Code" is substantially similar to "Daughter of God." Any slightly similar elements are on the level of generalized or otherwise unprotectable ideas." He affirmed that "The Da Vinci Code" does not infringe upon copyrights held by Perdue.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: In February 2006, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, two of the three authors of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail", took the UK publisher of "The Da Vinci Code" to court for breach of copyright, alleging plagiarism. Some sources suggested the lawsuit was a publicity stunt intended to boost sales of "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" (a boost which did in fact occur). However, the projected court costs of over 1 million pounds outweigh or at least substantially reduce the financial benefit of the lawsuit.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: Dan Brown repeatedly said in his defense that history cannot be plagiarized and therefore the accusations of the two authors were false. Leigh stated, "It's not that Dan Brown has lifted certain ideas because a number of people have done that before. It's rather that he's lifted the whole architecture – the whole jigsaw puzzle – and hung it on to the peg of a fictional thriller". Dan Brown has admitted some of the ideas taken from Baigent and Leigh's work were indispensable to the book but stated that there were many other sources also behind it. However, he claimed that neither he nor his wife had read Baigent and Leigh's book when he produced his original "synopsis" of the novel. Among Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh's arguments were that the given name of the character Sir Leigh Teabing's is the same of Richard Leigh's surname, and that "Teabing" is an anagram of "Baigent".


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: On April 7, 2006, High Court judge Sir Peter Smith rejected the copyright-infringement claim by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, and Random House won the court case. However, in the published extracts of his judgement the judge criticised the non-appearance of Blythe Brown and the vagueness of Dan Brown's evidence, saying, "He has presented himself as being a deep and thorough researcher...evidence in this case demonstrates that as regards DVC ["The Da Vinci Code"] that is simply not correct with respect to historical lectures...The reality of his research is that it is superficial."


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: The judge also included a code in his judgment. Throughout the judgment, apparently random letters are italicised and these form the message. The letters in the first paragraphs spell "smithy code" and the rest appear as follows "jaeiextostgpsacgreamqwfkadpmqzv". This was subsequently decoded to read "Smithy Code Jackie Fisher who are you Dreadnought", referring to the British admiral whom Judge Smith admires. As with the book, this secret message made use of Fibonacci numbers for its encoding.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: In 2007 author Jack Dunn filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Dan Brown in Massachusetts, Random House and Sony Pictures claiming that Brown plagiarized his 1997 novel "The Vatican Boys" when writing "The Da Vinci Code." Dunn stated, "Dan Brown took huge elements from my book. Of course everybody can write about Opus Dei and have copyright protection, but in both 'The Vatican Boys' and 'The Da Vinci Code' the head of the Opus Dei hires a mercenary to find them a relic so that he can become the most powerful man in Christendom." Judge Michael Ponsor dismissed the case in 2007, ruling, "No prior case recognizing a theory of copyright infringement based on the sort of thematic or structural similarity posited by the plaintiff has been offered in his memorandum opposing summary judgment, nor has the court found one." In 2017 "Marketwatch" reported that Dunn was preparing to bring a lawsuit against Brown's publisher Penguin Random House in the United Kingdom. Dunn maintains that the Judge in the United States action acted in his own interests by not allowing a Jury Trial because he is now publishing his own novels with an agent and publisher linked to Dan Brown and his publisher Random House. Jack Dunn and Jonathan Coad, his London lawyer published The Da Vinci Fraud, The True Story of Dan Brown and The World's Greatest Literary Crime in November 2021, by Silvertail Books in London, documenting all of the injustice done in the United States with evidence being withheld that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Dan Brown copied The Vatican Boys (1997) to create The Da Vinci Code (2003).


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: At a conference on April 28, 2006 Archbishop Angelo Amato, the secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a Vatican curial department, specifically called for a boycott of the film version of "The Da Vinci Code", characterizing the film as "full of calumnies, offenses, and historical and theological errors." The film was rated as "morally offensive" by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: In India, home to 30 million Christians (3% of the population), the Central Board of Film Certification gave the film an adult rating on condition that disclaimers saying it was a work of fiction were inserted at the beginning and end of the film.


title: Criticism of The Da Vinci Code

text: In contrast, some Catholic groups sought to use interest in this book and film as a means to educate Catholics and non-Catholics on the history of the Christian Church, and what it teaches regarding Jesus Christ. Similarly, other Christians have looked to use the film as a tool for evangelism.


title: The Honeycombs

text: The Honeycombs were an English beat group, founded in 1963 in North London, best known for their chart-topping 1964 hit, the million selling "Have I the Right?"


title: The Honeycombs

text: The band featured Honey Lantree on drums, one of the few female drummers in bands at that time. They were unable to replicate the success of the first single and had disbanded by 1967.


title: The Honeycombs

text: The group was founded in November 1963 as an amateur band founded by Martin Murray. Its members were Murray (a hairdresser), his salon assistant Honey Lantree, her brother John, and two friends. Originally they called themselves the Sheratons.


title: The Honeycombs

text: The group played dates in the West End of London, and at the Mildmay Tavern, a North London pub. Among those attending an appearance of the band in February 1964 were aspiring songwriters Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley. Howard and Blaikley would become a prolific British songwriting team, but in 1964 they had just started their career. They got into conversation with the group, which appeared interested in a few songs the duo had just written. The group had already arranged an audition with indie record producer Joe Meek. The audition resulted in a recording of Howard and Blaikley's "Have I the Right?" Meek himself provided the B-side, "Please Don't Pretend Again".


title: The Honeycombs

text: Meek used his apartment at 304 Holloway Road, Islington, as a recording studio. Three UK No. 1 hits were produced there: "Johnny Remember Me" by John Leyton, "Telstar" by The Tornados and "Have I the Right?"


title: The Honeycombs

text: Conspicuous in "Have I the Right?" is the prominence of the drums, whose effect was enhanced by members of the group stamping their feet on the wooden stairs to the studio. Meek recorded the effect with five microphones he had fixed to the banisters with bicycle clips. For the finishing touch someone beat a tambourine directly onto a microphone. The recording was also somewhat sped up.


title: The Honeycombs

text: "Have I the Right?" was released on 26 June 1964 on the Pye record label. Louis Benjamin, Pye's later chairman, renamed the group as "The Honeycombs", a pun on the drummer's name and her job as a hairdresser's assistant. The sales started slowly, but by the end of July the record started to climb the UK Singles Chart. Honey Lantree's status as a female drummer in a top band was as unusual then as it is now, and some questioned whether she was just a visual novelty, despite her genuine drumming ability. At the end of August the record reached No. 1. "Have I the Right?" was also a big success outside the UK, hitting No. 1 in Australia and Canada, No. 3 in Ireland, No. 5 in the US, and No. 2 in the Netherlands. Overall sales of the record reached a million. The Honeycombs also recorded a German version of the song: "Hab ich das Recht?" Both the English and the German versions reached No 21 in the German charts: the English one in October, the German one in November 1964.


title: The Honeycombs

text: From then on Howard and Blaikley acted as the group's managers and also wrote their next singles, "Is It Because" and "Eyes". These records did not sell well. This also applied to their fourth single, "Something Better Beginning", written by Ray Davies from the Kinks.


title: The Honeycombs

text: Soon after their first record had become a hit, the Honeycombs went on tour to the Far East and Australia, and were not able to promote their new records at home. The tour gained them a long-lasting popularity in Japan, however. Especially for the Japanese market the group produced a live album and a single, "Love in Tokyo". The group also made a lasting impression in Sweden, where they scored two No. 1 singles.


title: The Honeycombs

text: The Honeycombs made many appearances on music television shows such as "Top of the Pops", "Ready Steady Go!" (UK), "Shindig!" (US), and "Beat-Club" (Germany). The group also appeared in the 1965 film "Pop Gear", miming "Have I the Right?" and "Eyes".


title: The Honeycombs

text: In July 1965, British music magazine "NME" reported that it had been agreed in the London High Court that "Have I The Right?" was the work of Howard and Blaikley. Composer Geoff Goddard agreed to drop allegations that he, not they, had written the song.


title: The Honeycombs

text: In August 1965 the group released "That's the Way", with Honey Lantree sharing vocals with D'Ell (when on tour, Viv Prince of The Pretty Things took over the drumming). This record became their fourth British hit and reached No. 12. Its successor, "This Year Next Year", again with Lantree and D'Ell sharing vocals, did not reach the UK chart.


title: The Honeycombs

text: D'Ell sang on all but the last single the group recorded. "Who Is Sylvia?" was an adaptation of Franz Schubert's song "An Sylvia". "It's So Hard" was also recorded by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich as "Hard to Love You".


title: The Honeycombs

text: In 1999 the whole original line up of the Honeycombs (except Martin Murray) reformed to work with cult record producer Russell C. Brennan, who they likened to Joe Meek. He produced a new version of "Live and Let Die" for the band which featured on the Future Legend Records release "Cult Themes From the 70s Vol.2" album. They also did their first live gig together in 30 years at Madame Jo Jo's in London to promote it before disbanding once more. This stands as the original lineup's last recording. Latterly the track was also featured on a special James Bond compilation, "The Themes Bond...James Bond (The Alternative James Bond Themes)".


title: The Honeycombs

text: This line-up released the group's last single, "That Loving Feeling", a group original penned by the new lead singer Colin Boyd. It failed to chart.


title: The Honeycombs

text: Late in the year the Honeycombs toured Japan where a live LP was recorded in Tokyo. The original vinyl LP is hard to locate these days, as is the CD re-issue by Repertiore Records in the 1990s (Rep 4180-WZ). The full tracklist is -


title: The Honeycombs

text: 1. Colour Slide, 2. I'll Go Crazy, 3. She's About A Mover, 4. There's Always Me, 5. Wipe Out, 6. Lucille, 7. If You Should, 8. Have I The Right, 9. Goldfinger, 10. Kansas City, 11. My Prayer, 12. What'd I Say. A few of these tracks have made their way onto video streaming sites, including an extremely rare Japanese-only "Christmas" single recorded during their tour of that country, coupling "Santa Clause Is Back In Town" with "Silent Night".


title: The Honeycombs

text: On 3 February 1967, the Honeycombs record producer Joe Meek committed suicide at his recording studios / flat on the Holloway Road after an altercation with his landlady who also died. After this, the Honeycombs had no more records issued and the band broke up.


title: The Honeycombs

text: In 1972 Peter Pye, using a little alteration of his middlename Frank, started a brief solo career as Peter Franc with a single for Blue Mountain label, both compositions were actually credited to Peter F. Pye. It was followed by two albums and three singles for the Dawn label, the latest being a 1975 single not available on his albums.


title: The Honeycombs

text: In the 1990s founding member Martin Murray toured the cabaret circuit with a group called 'Martin Murray's Honeycombs'. Another line-up including Honey Lantree, Peter Pye and Denis D'Ell also successfully toured from 1991 onwards. John Lantree later rejoined this line-up. In 1999 record producer Russell C. Brennan asked D'Ell, Honey and John Lantree and Pye to record "Live and Let Die", on the Future Legend Records compilation, "Cult Themes from the '70s Vol. 2." This compilation also featured Glenda Collins, another Joe Meek artist.


title: The Honeycombs

text: Singer Dennis D’Ell died on 6 July 2005 at the age of 61 and drummer Honey Lantree died on 23 December 2018, aged 75.


title: Florida's 13th congressional district

text: Florida's 13th congressional district is an electoral district for the U.S. Congress on Florida's Gulf Coast, reassigned in 2012, effective January 2013, to Pinellas County. The district includes St. Petersburg, Largo, and Clearwater.


title: Florida's 13th congressional district

text: From 2003 to 2012, it encompassed all of Sarasota, DeSoto, and Hardee Counties; as well as most of Manatee County, except for a small northern coastal portion that was then located in the neighboring 11th congressional district. It also included a small section of Charlotte County. Most of that district is now the 16th congressional district, while the current 13th covers most of what had been the 10th district from 1993 to 2013.


title: Florida's 13th congressional district

text: The district was most recently represented by Democrat Charlie Crist from January 3, 2017, to August 31, 2022, when he resigned to focus on his campaign in the 2022 Florida gubernatorial election.


title: Florida's 13th congressional district

text: In July 2015 the Florida Supreme Court overturned the boundaries of the state's congressional districts, ruling that "the maps were the product of an unconstitutional political gerrymandering." It expressed its distrust of lawmakers and "provided detailed instructions on how to repair the flawed map in time for the 2016 election."


title: Florida's 13th congressional district

text: With the future of the boundaries of the district undetermined, the Republican Party may abandon it. This was where (under slightly different boundaries) William C. Cramer was elected to Congress, and he helped build the Republican Party in Florida and the South. He held office from 1954 to 1970. Republican C.W. Bill Young essentially represented the district from 1971 to his death in 2013. But demographics have continued to change, and more recently it has been a swing district. Several Democrats may be interested in running for the seat.


title: Florida's 13th congressional district

text: Election officials certified Buchanan as the winner of the race over Jennings by 369 votes. Buchanan was declared the winner after a mandatory recount and analysis of alleged voting machine errors in the race. The primary controversy in this race was that over 18,000 ballots (or roughly one in six) cast in Sarasota County apparently did not register a vote for this race, far higher than in the two previous elections involving Jan Schneider, but lower than the undervote in 2000. Sarasota County voted for Jennings by a six-point margin. Jennings refused to concede the race and pursued administrative and legal challenges to the result, including an appeal for an investigation of the election with the House Administration Committee. Preliminary results from an investigation by Congress's Government Accountability Office concluded that there was no evidence that the voting machines caused the high undervote, but that inadequate testing made it impossible to prove their complete reliability. Sarasota County has since moved to optical scanned paper ballots as a result of a 2006 referendum vote.


title: Florida's 13th congressional district

text: According to a statistical study published in 2008, the missing votes were caused by the ballot screen layout. The authors' best estimate on what the result would have been, had this problem not occurred, gave victory to Jennings at a 99.9% confidence level, and a mean margin of victory for her of 639 votes.


title: Florida's 13th congressional district

text: The district's seat was vacated following the death of Bill Young. A special election was held on March 11, 2014 to replace him. The election was won by Republican David Jolly with 48.52% of the vote over one-time gubernatorial candidate Democrat Alex Sink's 46.64% and Libertarian candidate Lucas Overby's 4.84%.


title: Lockheed CP-140 Aurora

text: The Lockheed CP-140 Aurora is a maritime patrol aircraft operated by the Royal Canadian Air Force. The aircraft is based on the Lockheed P-3 Orion airframe, but mounts the electronics suite of the Lockheed S-3 Viking. "Aurora" refers to the Roman goddess of dawn who flies across the sky each morning ahead of the sun. Aurora also refers to the Aurora Borealis, the "northern lights", that are prominent over northern Canada and the Arctic Ocean.


title: Lockheed CP-140 Aurora

text: The CP-140A Arcturus was a related variant used primarily for pilot training and coastal surface patrol missions.


title: Lockheed CP-140 Aurora

text: The CP-140 Aurora is very similar externally to the Lockheed P-3C Orion (Canadian ESM wingtip pods instead of the American ESM wing pod), but is different internally, using two sets of mission systems that were first installed in yet another Lockheed anti-submarine warfare aircraft, the carrier-based S-3A Viking. The aircraft's sensors are primarily intended for anti-submarine warfare (ASW) work but are also capable of maritime surveillance, counter-drug and search-and-rescue missions. The CP-140 is Canada's only strategic Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft, conducting long range missions over land, water and littoral areas. These missions are flown in support of Canadian Joint Operations Command, the RCMP, and several other federal government departments.


title: Lockheed CP-140 Aurora

text: In 1991, Lockheed shut down its production lines in Burbank, California, for the P-3 Orion, which shares the same airframe with the CP-140. Three surplus airframes on hand were purchased by the Air Command, but delivered without the anti-submarine fit. These three aircraft were designated the CP-140A Arcturus and were used primarily for pilot training and coastal surface patrol missions.


title: Lockheed CP-140 Aurora

text: The Aurora Incremental Modernization Project (AIMP), initiated in 1998 to upgrade electronics of the Aurora fleet was halted by the government on 20 September 2007 to evaluate whether the aging fleet should continue to be upgraded or replaced by more modern aircraft. On 18 December 2007 the Department of National Defence rescinded this work suspension so that the project could continue. Work includes upgrading computer, navigation, communication and radar systems as well as making structural improvements to ten of eighteen aircraft. The intent of the modernization project is to "keep the aircraft safe and operationally viable until 2020.".


title: Lockheed CP-140 Aurora

text: AIMP is currently divided into four "blocks". Block I is complete and concentrated on the replacement of unsupportable systems. Block II brought a glass cockpit with the Navigation and Flight Instruments (NFI) component provided by CMC Electronics, and a complete replacement of the communications suite. Block III is currently in progress, and is a wholesale replacement of the aircraft's sensors and mission computer. Block IV will consist of further upgrades to the tactical compartment and mission systems.


title: Lockheed CP-140 Aurora

text: The Aurora Structural Life Extension Project (ASLEP) is proceeding with 14 of the 18 Auroras scheduled to receive new wings and the replacement of key structural components. The complete ASLEP solution replaces the aircraft's outer wings, centre wing lower section and horizontal stabilizers with new production components. All fatigue-life limiting structures on the aircraft are replaced with enhanced-design components and improved corrosion-resistant materials that will greatly reduce maintenance costs over the aircraft's service life. This program is expected to extend the CP140s' service life by 15,000 flight hours per airframe.


title: Lockheed CP-140 Aurora

text: The Aurora was acquired in the early 1980s to replace the CP-107 Argus and to further support Canada's anti-submarine warfare mission obligations under NATO for the northwest Atlantic sector. Short deployments to Alaska (Adak), Hawaii (Kaneohe Bay), Iceland (Keflavik), the UK (St Mawgan and Kinloss), and Norway (Andoya) were the norm. However, since the end of the Cold War, they have been used primarily in coastal surveillance and sovereignty patrols by providing an all-weather mission surveillance platform. Increasingly, as the CP-140 moves into the 21st century, it is employed for domestic and international surveillance by CANCOM for security, counter-terrorism and smuggling, as well as to monitor foreign fishing fleets off Canada's coasts. CP-140s have also been deployed on operations such as Operation Assistance and Operation Apollo.


title: Lockheed CP-140 Aurora

text: Deployments have included OP SHARPGUARD (Yugoslavia blockade), OP SIRIUS (Mediterranean Patrols), OP APOLLO (Persian Gulf region), and counter-narcotics patrols in the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific. Through all this, patrols of the Canadian Arctic continue to take advantage of the airframe's unique abilities.


title: Lockheed CP-140 Aurora

text: In 2011 and 2012, CP-140 aircraft performed maritime patrol missions in the Libyan waters in order to help in the enforcement of the no-fly zone over Libya under Operation Odyssey Dawn and Operation Unified Protector.


title: Lockheed CP-140 Aurora

text: As of January 2017, two CP-140s were conducting overland surveillance missions against ISIL as part of Operation Impact. However one aircraft was withdrawn in May 2017.


title: Lockheed CP-140 Aurora

text: From October 2018, due to support the implementation of United Nations Security Council sanctions imposed against North Korea, Canadian Armed Forces deploy periodically a Canadian frigate and/or a CP-140 Aurora on Operation Neon. In June 2022 it was reported that Chinese jets had repeatedly intercepted the Aurora in a manner which the Canada military said failed to adhere to international air safety norms. Some of these intercepts forced the Aurora to change its flight path in order to avoid collision with the intercepting aircraft. Canadian government officials said the incidents were happening with increasing frequency and that they had lodged protests on multiple occasions with their Chinese counterparts, although an article by Global News said that China is not believed to have responded to the reprimands as the interceptions had not stopped continuing.


title: Lockheed CP-140 Aurora

text: Lacking the expensive, heavy and sensitive anti-submarine warfare as well as the anti-surface warfare fittings of the CP-140 Aurora, the Arcturus was more fuel efficient and was used for crew training duties (such as "touch-and-go" landing practice), general maritime surface reconnaissance (detecting drug operations, smuggling of illegal immigrants, fisheries protection patrols, pollution monitoring, etc.), search-and-rescue assistance and Arctic sovereignty patrols. The Arcturus did possess a superior AN/APS-507 surface search radar, incorporating modern functions such as track-while-scan that the Aurora's AN/APS-506 radar lacks but the Arcturus did not have an integrated mission computer, or mission systems. It did, however, maintain the same military communications suite as the CP-140 Aurora.


title: Lockheed CP-140 Aurora

text: All three aircraft were based at 14 Wing. Upon retirement from flying operations, one was used for technician training with 404 Long Range Patrol and Training Squadron on base CFB Greenwood, Nova Scotia before being moved to the Greenwood Military Aviation Museum on base. The last two of the CP-140As were retired in 2011 when they were delivered to the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG) in Tucson, Arizona.


title: Lockheed CP-140 Aurora

text: Several options have been suggested for a CP-140M replacement. These include the Boeing P-8 Poseidon and the Raytheon Sentinel, based on the Bombardier Global Express. Plans are to downsize the fleet from 18 to 14 aircraft, with three already being withdrawn and a fourth as a test aircraft to be retired in the near future.


title: Jewish languages

text: Jewish languages are the various languages and dialects that developed in Jewish communities in the diaspora. The original Jewish language is Hebrew, supplanted as the primary vernacular by Aramaic following the Babylonian exile. Jewish languages feature a syncretism of indigenous Hebrew and Judeo-Aramaic with the languages of the local non-Jewish population.


title: Jewish languages

text: Early Northwest Semitic (ENWS) materials are attested through the end of the Bronze Age—2350 to 1200 BCE. At this early state, Biblical Hebrew was not highly differentiated from the other Northwest Semitic languages (Ugaritic and Amarna Canaanite), though noticeable differentiation did occur during the Iron Age (1200–540 BCE). Hebrew as a separate language developed during the latter half of the second millennium BCE between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, an area known as Canaan.


title: Jewish languages

text: The earliest distinctively Hebrew writing yet discovered was found at Khirbet Qeiyafa and dates to the 10th century BCE. The Israelite tribes established a kingdom in Canaan at the beginning of the first millennium BCE, which later split into the Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south after a dispute of succession.


title: Jewish languages

text: The kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians in 722 BCE, and the kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, its higher classes exiled and the first Temple destroyed. Aramaic became the primary language of the Jews deported to Babylonia, with the first attestations of Jewish/Judean Aramaic found in scrolls from the 5th century BCE on the island of Elephantine. Later the Persians made Judah a province and permitted Jewish exiles to return and rebuild the Temple. Aramaic became the common language in the north of Israel, in Galilee and Samaria, though Hebrew remained in use in Judah with Aramaic influence.


title: Jewish languages

text: Alexander the Great conquered Judah in 332 BCE, beginning the period of Hellenistic domination. During the Hellenistic period Judea became independent under the Hasmoneans, but later the Romans ended their independence, making Herod the Great their governor. One Jewish revolt against the Romans led to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, and the second Bar-Kochba revolt in 132–135 CE led to a large departure of the Jewish population of Judea. Biblical Hebrew after the Second Temple period evolved into Mishnaic Hebrew, which ceased being spoken and developed into a literary language around 200 CE. Hebrew remained in widespread use among diasporic communities as the medium of writing and liturgy, forming a vast corpus of literature which includes rabbinic, medieval, and modern literature prior to the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language.


title: Jewish languages

text: Jewish communities were dispersed around the world in the diaspora which followed the Jewish-Roman wars. Some adopted the languages of their neighbors, but many developed new varieties of these languages, collectively termed "Jewish languages". Various reasons led to the development of distinctive Jewish varieties of the languages of their non-Jewish host populations. Jews have often had limited exposure to non-Jewish society for various reasons, including imposed ghettoization (whether self-imposed separation or the forced creation of the ghetto by the host city) and strict endogamy, and as a result, Jewish languages diverged and developed separately from non-Jewish varieties in the territories they settled in. Due to frequent expulsions and migrations, single Jewish communities were often influenced by multiple distinct regional languages via language contact. For example, Yiddish, while based on Middle High German, has elements of Romance and Slavic. Jewish languages belong to a variety of genealogical language families, but these languages have common characteristics, making their study a distinct field of comparative linguistics known as Jewish linguistics. The common feature between the Jewish languages is the presence of Hebrew and Judeo-Aramaic lexical components, stemming from the shared use of these languages in writing and liturgy. Many Jewish languages also display phonological, morphological, and syntactic features distinct from their non-Jewish counterparts. Most written Jewish languages are "Hebraized", meaning they use a modified version of the Hebrew alphabet. These languages, unless they already have an accepted name (i.e. Yiddish, Ladino), are prefixed with "Judeo" (e.g. Judeo-Italian, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Persian, Judeo-Aramaic, Judeo-Marathi, Judeo-Malayalam, etc). Bukharan Jews spoke Bukhori, a dialect of Tajik and Mountain Jews spoke Judeo-Tat.


title: Jewish languages

text: In the early 20th century, secularism among Jews and large population shifts prompted the beginning of a shift from Jewish to non-Jewish languages. Even so, the majority of Jews in Eurasia and Africa, and many immigrants in North America and Palestine, still spoke Jewish languages. However, the Holocaust brought about a significant drop in the use of Jewish languages, especially Yiddish although it has now begun to become more prevalent.


title: Jewish languages

text: Jewish languages are generally defined as the unique linguistic varieties of Jewish communities in the diaspora in their contact with surrounding non-Jewish languages. Languages vary in their distance and divergence from their non-Jewish sister languages. For example, Judeo-Yemeni Arabic is quite similar to some non-Jewish varieties of Yemeni Arabic, while Yiddish, a Germanic language, shows a high degree of dissimilarity to modern German dialects. Due to continued liturgical and literary use of Hebrew and Aramaic, Jewish communities were naturally in a state of diglossia. Along with their vernacular Jewish language, most Jews could read and write in Hebrew, which was necessary to fulfill the religious commandment to learn Torah and teach it. Jews were expected to also have knowledge of Judeo-Aramaic, the language of religious commentary ("targumim") as well as many prayers, including the Kaddish. Hebrew, the "Holy Tongue", was the highest linguistic register in these communities, used for liturgy and study. Hebrew-Aramaic is the only adstratum shared by all Jewish languages.


title: Jewish languages

text: Some Jewish languages have multiple registers; for example, both Yiddish and Judezmo have three linguistic registers: colloquial, written, and scholarly-liturgical.


title: Jewish languages

text: Some Jewish languages show the effects of the history of language shift among the speakers, including Hebrew-Aramaic influence. Yiddish exemplifies such a language. Some Jewish languages may become marked as distinctively Jewish because some shift affected some parts of the language as a whole. For example, what is today known as Baghdad Jewish Arabic (because it is the Arabic variety that was up until recently spoken by Baghdad's Jews) was originally the Arabic dialect of Baghdad itself and was used by all religious groups in Baghdad, but the Muslim residents of Baghdad later adopted Bedouin dialects of Arabic. Similarly, a dialect may be perceived as Jewish because its Jewish speakers brought the dialect of another region with them when they were displaced. In some cases, this may cause a dialect to be perceived as "Jewish" in some regions but not in others.


title: Jewish languages

text: Some Jewish language varieties may not be classified as languages due to mutual intelligibility with their parent language, as with Judeo-Malayalam and Judeo-Spanish. In the case of Judeo-Spanish, also known as Ladino, linguistically it is a dialect of Spanish, mutually intelligible with other Spanish dialects and varieties, albeit with each Spanish dialect having loanwords and influences from different source languages: Nahuatl and Maya loanwords and influences for Mexican Spanish; Quechua and Aymara in Peruvian Spanish; Italian, Quechua and Guaraní in Argentinian Spanish; Maghrebi Arabic and Berber in "Ladino Occidental" (also known as Haketia); Levantine Arabic, Greek, Turkish and South Slavic in "Ladino Oriental".


title: Jewish languages

text: In some cases, as with Ladino, a register may be developed for Biblical translation and exegesis in which Hebrew-Aramaic patterns are frequently calqued, though the number of true Hebrew and/or Aramaic loanwords may be low. Another possibility is that Jews may speak the same language as their non-Jewish neighbors, but occasionally insert Hebrew-Aramaic or other Jewish elements. This is a transitory state in the shift from the use of Jewish to a non-Jewish language, often made in the context of assimilation. This occurred, for example, with many educated German Jews who transitioned from Western Yiddish to German. This variety of German, used between 1760 and the end of the 19th century (the Haskala), was written with the Hebrew alphabet, and contained a small number of Hebrew and Yiddish loans. An example is Moses Mendelsohn's translation of the Hebrew Bible into German written with Hebrew letters.


title: Jewish languages

text: Among the most widely spoken Jewish languages to develop in the diaspora are Yiddish, Ladino, and the Judæo-Arabic group of languages. Yiddish is the Judeo-German language developed by Ashkenazi Jews who lived in Central and Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. Ladino, also called "Judezmo" and "Muestra Spanyol", is the Judeo-Spanish language developed by Sephardic Jews who lived in the Iberian peninsula before the expulsion by the Catholic Monarchs. Judeo-Catalan (also called "Catalanic" or "Qatalanit"), was the Jewish language spoken by the Jewish communities in Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands. Judeo-Provençal and Judeo-Gascon were two Jewish varieties of Occitan language as it was historically spoken by French Jews.


title: Jewish languages

text: Many ancient and distinct Jewish languages, including Judaeo-Georgian, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Berber, Krymchak , Judeo-Italian, Judeo-Malayalam have largely fallen out of use due to the impact of the Holocaust on European Jewry, the Jewish exodus from Arab lands, the assimilation policies of Israel in its early days and other factors.