title: White Guard (Finland)

text: After the war the Finnish Defence Forces and a regular police service were founded. From 1919–1934 White Guards were considered a voluntary part of the army, and separate Guard formations served in the reserve, but in 1934 all defence was consolidated into the regular army and the Guard became a voluntary defence-training organization only. Politically it was neutral, although unofficially it was anti-leftist, clearly anti-Communist, conservative, largely rejected by the labour movement and by the political left. Units of it formed the main forces of the Lapua Movement's abortive coup d'état (the Mäntsälä Rebellion) in 1932, however only a small fraction of the Guard participated and the majority of it stayed loyal to the government. White Guardsmen served in the regular army during the Second World War. The White Guard was disbanded according to the terms of the 1947 Finno-Soviet peace treaty after the Second World War.


title: White Guard (Finland)

text: Similar militias operated in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, lands that, like Finland, came under Russian sovereignty until the collapse of Tsarist Russia in 1917. These militias remained in existence until World War II, evolving somewhat into home-guard militias. The phenomenon should be distinguished from the Freikorps established in Germany after its defeat in World War I, although some similarities exist.


title: White Guard (Finland)

text: During the first years of the 20th century, Russia had been working on the abolition of Finland's autonomous status. As a result, there was strong discontent in Finnish society. In 1905 Russia lost the Russo-Japanese War. This stunning and unexpected defeat led to the Russian Revolution of 1905. In Finland the unrest was expressed in the Finnish general strike of 1905. During the strike Finnish police forces were effectively disbanded, as they had been closely associated with the occupying Russian authorities. Municipal, mostly unarmed, security guards were spontaneously organised by individuals associated with the constitutional and Social Democratic parties. At first all political groups were able to work together, but towards 1906 the civil guards of large towns had become divided along party lines. The first violent clash between Red and White Guards occurred in July 1906 in Helsinki, but after the return of Finnish autonomy the moderate Social Democrats and the whole constitutional party withdrew from military activities. However, the radicalized Red Guard of Helsinki did not disband, despite an order from the Social Democratic leadership to do so, and took part in the mutiny at Viapori fortress alongside revolutionary, anti-imperial Russian soldiers. In the ensuing fighting Czarist Russian troops destroyed the Red Guard as an organisation.


title: White Guard (Finland)

text: The February Revolution in Russia in 1917 caused the collapse of Russian political and military power in Finland. Again, the Russian-associated Finnish police were effectively disbanded, while the largely undisciplined Russian troops engaged in violence, mostly towards their own officers. During the summer of 1917 paramilitary groups were formed for protection and to preserve order. Although the founding of these "fire brigades" was often done in a non-partisan manner, they often split into two opposing factions during the autumn of 1917. The initially unarmed Red and White Guards strove to obtain weapons. The Red Guards usually were able to get arms from revolutionary Russian military units, while the White Guards got theirs from Swedish and German supporters abroad. At the same time, political tensions between socialists and non-socialists escalated. Inside the Social Democratic party, the official leadership was derailed while the executive committee of the Red Guards and the labour unions gained more power.


title: White Guard (Finland)

text: The Senate, led by Pehr Evind Svinhufvud, proposed a Declaration of Independence, which the Parliament adopted on December 6, 1917. Declaring independence was one thing, but exercising control over the territory was another. Svinhufvud's "White Senate" had nothing but the White Guards to rely on as yet. There were 42,500 Russian soldiers in Finland. Although the Imperial Russian Army was slowly disintegrating and had already started to withdraw its units from Finland, the demoralized, poorly trained and undisciplined Russian military forces in the country posed a substantial challenge to Finnish authority.


title: White Guard (Finland)

text: In parliament the question on forming a new security force was hotly debated. On January 13, 1918, the non-socialist majority gave authorization to the Senate (Finnish cabinet) to organize a police force of the White Guard. Soon the Senate asked General Mannerheim to form a new Finnish army on the basis on the White Guard militia. In southern Karelia the White and Red Guards clashed in small-scale engagements as both sides attempted to secure the railway to St. Petersburg. During the night of January 27–28, 1918, the White Guards started to disarm and arrest the Russian garrisons in Ostrobothnia. During the night the executive committee of the Red Guards declared the Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic in Helsinki. The Civil War of Finland had begun.


title: White Guard (Finland)

text: Neither the Red nor the White Guard were trained for combat. Structures had to be built in extreme haste by both parties. The White Army had a better foundation for this, as it received the Finnish Jaeger troops, some 1,900 men trained by Germany since 1915. These soldiers were able to act as instructors and officers, forming the officer and NCO corps of the new conscript army. In addition, the White side had 1,200 volunteers from Sweden (many of whom were officers), and a significant number of Finnish officers who had previously served in the imperial Russian Army but returned home after the revolution.


title: White Guard (Finland)

text: Although in the beginning of the war the White Guard formed the bulk of the White army, the conscript units very soon matched the White Guard units in number. These troops, which were much better disciplined and trained than the volunteer Guards, proved to be crucial for the outcome of the war. The Red side never accomplished conscription, which was one of the reasons for its demise.


title: White Guard (Finland)

text: After four months of bitter fighting, the Red Guards were defeated and the White Guards were recognized as one of the key agents in the victory, downplaying for political reasons the role of the German intervention units and the German-trained 2,000 Jaegers. The Civil War was portrayed as a liberation from Russian control after a 20-year-long Russification programme, with the Whites stressing the links of the Reds to the Russian Bolshevik regime. However the White victory was achieved with assistance from the Germans. German influence after the war was so strong that the independence of Finland was greatly in question until the end of World War I.


title: White Guard (Finland)

text: There were reparations in the aftermath of the Civil War. As the Reds had murdered some 1,100 people in their zone of control (the so-called "Red terror"), the Whites retaliated ruthlessly, executing some 7,370 people after the recapture of the Red areas (the so-called "White terror"). Approximately 4,000 Whites and 4,500 Reds were killed in action. The famine of 1918 claimed another 20,000 lives. Of those who perished, some 13,000 died in the prison camps. Because of their ruthlessness and eagerness to retaliate, the White Guards earned the title "Lahtarikaarti" (Butcher Guard) among the Reds.


title: White Guard (Finland)

text: After the Civil War the function of the White Guards was unclear. In some municipalities the local White Guard was understood to be a part of the municipal administration. In others, the organisation was considered to have a primarily political role in safeguarding the result of the war. The organisation was given a legal basis on August 2, 1918 by a decree of the Finnish Council of State. Changes to the decree were made later, refining the organisation's structure. From the beginning, the White Guard was considered to be a voluntary part of the Finnish military.


title: White Guard (Finland)

text: The local White Guards' function in the following 20 years—up to the Winter War—was a mixture of Veteran Corps and Home Guards. After 1921 the White Guard organisation consisted of the General Staff, White Guard districts and local White Guard chapters. Every municipality had at least a single chapter, which in part acted as an NGO (non-governmental organization) but in military affairs was part of the national chain of command. In an economical sense, each chapter was responsible for its own funding, although it received a minor grant from the state budget. The White Guard was active in numerous areas of Finnish life. It organised sports activities, especially cross-country skiing, shooting, orienteering and Finnish baseball. For fundraising, the chapters organised numerous informal events and lotteries. It is estimated that about one-fifth of all get-togethers in Finland were organised by the White Guard. To this end, the White Guard chapters had several hundred choirs, orchestras and theatre groups.


title: White Guard (Finland)

text: The Chief of the White Guard and the district chiefs were selected by the President of Finland. From 1921 until the organisation's demise, this post was occupied by General Lauri Malmberg who took command in the aftermath of the White Guard Affair. Usually, the district chiefs and most officers in the district headquarters were from the regular army.


title: White Guard (Finland)

text: Only able-bodied males between 17 and 40 years of age could be full members of the White Guard. Every member was required to attend a specified amount of training on pain of losing membership. The members were required to buy their own equipment and rifle, but the local chapters helped their members if the chapters had funds for it. Until 1934 the White Guard would have formed a division in the full-scale mobilisation.


title: White Guard (Finland)

text: In 1934 the Finnish mobilisation system was changed. The new system was based on military districts acting as the local mobilization centers. In practice, the military districts coincided with the White Guard districts. In case of mobilisation these two would be unified to act as a single home front district. After the change, the White Guard members formed the cadre of all wartime units, but no specific guard units were planned for mobilisation. On the other hand, the separate wartime White Guard units were removed from the mobilisation plans. The aim of the White Guard was no longer to provide ready fighting units but to act as a voluntary training organisation for reservists. Only the Guard chapters immediately adjacent to the eastern border had responsibility for starting the initial defence against invasion. This effectively ended the role of the White Guard as a separate, political armed force.


title: White Guard (Finland)

text: During the war the Guard membership mostly served at the front. In the home area the Guard districts formed the local headquarters for the military districts and the oldest and youngest Guard members served in guard and anti-aircraft duties. There were some small anti-desant actions on the home front, e.g. in Hollola in 1941. After the Continuation War, the Finnish White Guards were disbanded in 1944, as demanded by the Soviet Union. However, the military district system as the basis for mobilisation was retained, now fully as an army structure. In the Winter War the White Guard was responsible for the carrying out of the mobilisation. A quarter of the manpower of the field army consisted of Guard members. This contribution proved important, as Guard members were the best trained and equipped personnel in an army which lacked even basic supplies.


title: White Guard (Finland)

text: The frosty relations between White Guards and Socialists started to ease during the 1930s. During the 1920s Socialists had demanded the White Guards be demobilised, but as the Guard leadership and the overwhelming majority of the members remained loyal to the government during Mäntsälä rebellion, the demands were changed to making the Guards an official part of the army.


title: White Guard (Finland)

text: The political rift between the White Guard and the labour movement was ultimately healed during the Winter War, when leadership of the Guard and the Social Democratic Party issued a joint statement February 15, 1940, in which the Guard leadership recommended local Guards to recruit Socialists and the Party leadership recommended to its members that they join the Guards. At the same time, the employers' associations conceded to collective-bargaining agreements with the trade unions.


title: White Guard (Finland)

text: The White Guards' relations towards non-socialist parties were mostly warm. The Guard did not distinguish between any non-socialist political views and received the support of all non-socialist parties. Only during the Mäntsälä rebellion did these relations deteriorate, as some more radical parts of the Guard were linked with the extreme right-wing.


title: White Guard (Finland)

text: One of the chapters of the Treaty of Paris (1947) was disbandment of all "fascist-like organizations". The Soviet Union considered that the White Guard and Lotta Svärd were fascist organizations, and they were disbanded.


title: White Guard (Finland)

text: The disbanding of the White Guard effectively ended all Finnish voluntary military training for the next several decades. The sports activities of the Guard were taken over by ordinary civilian sports associations, while the psychological work of instilling a national defence spirit was continued by the reservists' associations. However, the Guard itself is a contentious issue, which still divides the people along political lines.


title: White Guard (Finland)

text: After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Finland unilaterally renounced the military articles of the Paris Peace Treaty of 1947. Following this, the NGOs working in fields with connections to total defence formed the National Defence Training Association of Finland (), which started to organise supplemental voluntary training primarily for Finnish Defence Forces reservists in conjunction with the Defence Forces. The legal basis for the activities was given by changing the Act on Defence Forces in 1994. More accurate basis was given by the Act on Voluntary Defence Work of 2007, which will make the Association a nominally independent public organization under political state control. As the heritage of the White Guard in Finland is very mixed, the National Defence Training Association does not consider itself to be the successor of the White Guard.


title: White Guard (Finland)

text: In 2007 formation of Territorial Forces was started, a volunteer military organization composed of reservists. Some political groups have criticized formation of these units, saying that they are too close to White Guards that were abolished as fascist organization in 1944. However, unlike the White Guard, local defense troops are not a separate organization, but fully in the control of the Finnish Defence Forces.


title: White Guard (Finland)

text: The first "ad hoc" symbols were a white armband and a small, three-branched shoot from a spruce branch, placed into the hat. The basic insignia was an embroidered badge with a white "S" topped by three single shoots of spruce branches. The badge and the "S" were embroidered with a gold-colored border. The symbol worn by General C.G.E. Mannerheim had a blue field, but in the provinces, the field was divided (party per sinister), with two or three colors representing each province. The white armband also bore the name of the municipality. Each chapter had its own flag, but generally it was a symmetric variant of the modern State Flag of Finland where the cross was extended with small swastika arms, the "S" symbol in the canton and local symbols instead of the coat of arms.


title: White Guard (Finland)

text: The rank insignia was rather different from modern Finnish insignia. In principle, the enlisted did not have a rank system, and there was only one officer rank ("suojeluskuntaupseeri"), marked by a single metal spruce branch worn on the collar. However, task-specific insignia was used instead. Underofficers wore a chevron pointed downwards, and chiefs of local chapters wore 1–4 horizontal bars, the number depending on the size of the chapter. It must be kept in mind that "Suojeluskunnat" were a civilian organization and many members did not have formal military training. Those members who had served in the military held a separate rank in reserve.


title: Destruction of Warsaw

text: The destruction of Warsaw was Nazi Germany's substantially effected razing of the city in late 1944, after the 1944 Warsaw Uprising of the Polish resistance. The uprising infuriated German leaders, who decided to destroy the city as retaliation.


title: Destruction of Warsaw

text: The German razing of the city had long been planned. Warsaw had been selected for destruction and major reconstruction as part of the Nazis' planned Germanization of Central Europe, under the Nazi Generalplan Ost. However, by late 1944, with the war clearly lost, the Germans had abandoned their plans of colonizing the East. Thus, the destruction of Warsaw did not serve any military or colonial purpose; it was carried out solely as an act of reprisal.


title: Destruction of Warsaw

text: German forces dedicated an unprecedented effort to razing the city, destroying 80–90% of Warsaw's buildings, including the vast majority of museums, art galleries, theaters, churches, parks, and historical buildings such as castles and palaces. They deliberately demolished, burned, or stole an immense part of Warsaw's cultural heritage. After the war, extensive work was put into rebuilding the city according to pre-war plans and historical documents.


title: Destruction of Warsaw

text: On June 20, 1939, while Adolf Hitler was visiting an architectural bureau in Würzburg am Main, he noticed a project of a future German town – "Neue deutsche Stadt Warschau". According to the Pabst Plan, Warsaw was to be turned into a provincial German city of 130,000. Third Reich planners drafted precise drawings outlining a historic "Germanic" core where a select few landmarks would be saved such as the Royal Castle which would serve as Hitler's state residence. The Plan, which was composed of 15 drawings and a miniature architectural model, was named after German army architect Friedrich Pabst who refined the concept of destroying a nation's morale and culture by destroying its physical and architectural manifestations. The design of the actual new German city over the site of Warsaw was devised by Hubert Gross. The aftermath of the failure of the Warsaw Uprising presented an opportunity for Hitler to begin to realize his pre-war conception.


title: Destruction of Warsaw

text: The Warsaw Uprising was launched by the Polish Home Army on August 1, 1944, as part of Operation Tempest. In response, under orders from Heinrich Himmler, Warsaw was kept under ceaseless barrage by Nazi artillery and air power for sixty-three days and nights by Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski.


title: Destruction of Warsaw

text: In 1944, a large transit camp ("Durchgangslager") was constructed in Pruszków's Train Repair Shops (Zakłady Naprawcze Taboru Kolejowego) to house the evacuees expelled from Warsaw. In the course of the Warsaw Uprising and its suppression, the Germans deported approximately 550,000 of the city's residents and approximately 100,000 civilians from its outskirts, sending them to . The security police and the SS segregated the deportees and decided their fate. Approximately 650,000 people passed through the Pruszków camp in August, September, and October. Approximately 55,000 were sent to concentration camps, including 13,000 to Auschwitz. They included people from a variety of social classes, occupations, physical conditions, and ages. Evacuees ranged from infants only a few weeks old to the extremely elderly. In a few cases, these were also people of different ethnic backgrounds, including Jews living on "Aryan papers".


title: Destruction of Warsaw

text: After the remaining population had been expelled, the Germans began the destruction of the remnants of the city. Special groups of German combat engineers were dispatched throughout the city in order to burn ("Brandkommandos") and demolish ("Sprengkommandos") the remaining buildings. According to German plans, after the war Warsaw was to be turned into nothing more than a military transit station.


title: Destruction of Warsaw

text: By January 1945, between 85% and 90% of the buildings had been completely destroyed; this includes up to 10% as a result of the September 1939 campaign and following combat, up to 15% during the earlier Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 25% during the Uprising, and 40% due to systematic German demolition of city after the uprising.


title: Destruction of Warsaw

text: Material losses were estimated at 10,455 buildings, 923 historical buildings (94%), 25 churches, 14 libraries including the National Library, 81 primary schools, 64 high schools, the University of Warsaw, the Warsaw University of Technology, and most of the city's historical monuments. Almost a million inhabitants lost all of their possessions. The exact losses of private and public property, including pieces of art, other cultural artifacts and scientific artifacts, is unknown but must be considered substantial since Warsaw and her inhabitants were the richest and wealthiest Poles in pre-war Poland. In 2004, the President of Warsaw, Lech Kaczyński (later President of Poland), established a historical commission to estimate losses to public property alone that were inflicted on the city by German authorities. The commission estimated the losses to be at least $31.5 billion. Those estimates were later raised to $45 billion and in 2005, to $54.6 billion (all equated to 2004 dollars). The official estimates don't include immense losses of private property, which are of unknown value since almost all of the pre-war documents (such as insurance values of private collections) have also been destroyed, but are considered between double and triple the official estimates (which are based on documented losses only while for example, the National Library's list of pre-war property lost estimated to be 1% of its collection since Germans destroyed all archives too).


title: Destruction of Warsaw

text: During the German suppression of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, around 70 to 80% of libraries were carefully burned by the "Brandkommandos" (burning detachments), whose mission was to burn Warsaw. In October 1944 the Załuski Library, the oldest public library in Poland and one of the oldest and most important libraries in Europe (established in 1747), was burned down. Out of about 400,000 printed items, maps and manuscripts, only some 1,800 manuscripts and 30,000 printed materials survived.


title: Destruction of Warsaw

text: In the last phase of the Warsaw Uprising and after its collapse, in September and October 1944, the three major private libraries in Warsaw (Krasiński Library, Przeździecki Library and the Libraty of Zamoyski Family Entail), including collections of priceless value to Polish culture, ceased to exist. Those libraries had already suffered in September 1939, when they were bombed and burned.


title: Destruction of Warsaw

text: An important collection of books belonging to the Krasiński Library, created in 1844, was largely destroyed in 1944. The collection originally consisted of 250,000 items. During the Uprising, on September 5, 1944, the library's warehouses were shelled by German artillery and burned almost completely. Some of the books were preserved, thrown through windows by the library's staff. The surviving collection was later deliberately burned by the Germans in October 1944 after collapse of the Uprising. About 26,000 manuscripts, 2,500 incunables, 80,000 early printed books, 100,000 drawings and prints, 50,000 note and theater manuscripts, and a large collection of maps and atlases were lost. The Przeździecki Estate Library in 6 Foksal Street included 60,000 volumes and 500 manuscripts, a rich archive containing 800 parchment and paper documents, and a cartographic collection consisting of 350 maps, atlases and plans. In addition to 10,000 prints and drawings, there was an extensive art gallery ("Portrait of Casimir Jagiellon" from the 15th century, "Portrait of John III Sobieski" from the Schleissheim Palace, the "House altar of Sophia Jagiellon", 1456), valuable collection of miniatures and decorative art: textiles, porcelain, faience, glass, gold objects, military, etc. It burned down on September 25, 1939 as a result of severe aerial bombardment by the Germans (incendiary bombing). The surviving items sheltered in the neighbouring tenement house at Szczygla Street were burned in October 1944. The last of above mentioned libraries, the Library of the Zamoyski Family Entail, acquired collections of 70,000 works (97,000 volumes), more than 2,000 manuscripts, 624 parchment diplomas, several thousand manuscripts, a collection of engravings, coins and 315 maps and atlases. Library collections also gathered numerous collections of art: a rich collection of militaria, miniatures, porcelain, faience and glass, natural collections, research tools etc., gathered mostly during the existence of the Zamoyski Academy. In 1939, about 50,000 items (about 30%) were destroyed in bombing. On September 8, 1944, the Germans set fire to both the Zamoyski Palace (Blue Palace) and the library building.


title: Destruction of Warsaw

text: The Central Military Library, containing 350,000 books on the history of Poland, was destroyed, including the Library of Polish Museum in Rapperswil deposited there for safekeeping. The collection of the Rapperswil Library was transported to Poland in 1927. The library and the museum were founded in Rapperswil, Switzerland, in 1870 as "a refuge for [Poland's] historic memorabilia dishonored and plundered in the [occupied Polish] homeland" and for the promotion of Polish interests. The greater part of library's collections, originally 20,000 engravings, 92,000 books and 27,000 manuscripts, were deliberately destroyed by the Germans in 1944.


title: Destruction of Warsaw

text: Unlike earlier Nazi book burnings where specific books were deliberately targeted, the burning of those libraries was part of the general burning of a large part of the city of Warsaw. This resulted in the disappearance of many valuable old books and scrolls among about sixteen million volumes from National Library, museums and palaces burnt indiscriminately by Germans in Poland during World War II.


title: Destruction of Warsaw

text: Warsaw was rebuilt by the Polish people between the 1950s and 1970s. The Palace of Culture and Science (completed in 1955) was a "gift" from the Soviet Union. Some landmarks were reconstructed as late as the 1980s. While the Old Town has been thoroughly reconstructed, the New Town has been only partially restored to its former state.


title: Henry Royce

text: Sir Frederick Henry Royce, 1st Baronet, (27 March 1863 – 22 April 1933) was an English engineer famous for his designs of car and aeroplane engines with a reputation for reliability and longevity. With Charles Rolls (1877–1910) and Claude Johnson (1864–1926), he founded Rolls-Royce.


title: Henry Royce

text: Rolls-Royce initially focused on large 40-50 horsepower motor cars, the Silver Ghost and its successors. Royce produced his first aero engine shortly after the outbreak of the First World War and aircraft engines became Rolls-Royce's principal product.


title: Henry Royce

text: Royce's health broke down in 1911 and he was persuaded to leave his factory in the Midlands at Derby and, taking a team of designers, move to the south of England spending winters in the south of France. He died at his home in Sussex in the spring of 1933.


title: Henry Royce

text: Royce was born in Alwalton, Huntingdonshire, near Peterborough in 1863 to James and Mary Royce (née King). He was the youngest of their five children. His father ran a flour mill which he leased from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners but the business failed and the family moved to London. His father died in 1872 and Royce had to go out to work selling newspapers and delivering telegrams after only one year of formal schooling.


title: Henry Royce

text: In 1878 he started an apprenticeship with the Great Northern Railway company at its works in Peterborough thanks to the financial help of an aunt. After three years the money ran out. After a short time with a tool-making company in Leeds he returned to London and joined the Electric Light and Power Company. He moved to their Liverpool office in 1882 working on street and theatre lighting.


title: Henry Royce

text: In 1884, with £20 of savings, he entered a partnership with Ernest Claremont, a friend who contributed £50, and they started a business making domestic electric fittings in a workshop in Cooke Street, Hulme, Manchester, called F. H. Royce and Company. In 1894 they started making dynamos and electric cranes and F. H. Royce & Company was registered as a limited liability company. The company was re-registered in 1899 as Royce Ltd with a public share flotation and a further factory opened in Trafford Park, Manchester.


title: Henry Royce

text: Following a decline in trade after the Second Boer War, and the arrival of increasing competition by cranes and dynamos from Germany and the United States, Royce began considering the motor car as a potential new product for the company. With his fascination for all things mechanical he became increasingly focused on motor cars and bought first, in 1901, a small De Dion and in 1902 or 1903 a 1901 model two cylinder Decauville. This did not meet his high standards and so he first improved it and then decided to manufacture a car of his own which he did in a corner of the workshop in 1904.


title: Henry Royce

text: Two more cars were made. Of the three, which were called Royce and had two cylinder engines, one was given to Ernest Claremont and the other sold to one of the other directors, Henry Edmunds. Edmunds was a friend of Charles Rolls who had a car showroom in London selling imported models and showed him his car and arranged the historic meeting between Rolls and Royce at the Midland Hotel, Manchester, on 4 May 1904. In spite of his preference for three or four cylinder cars, Rolls was impressed with the two-cylinder Royce 10 and in a subsequent agreement of 23 December 1904 agreed to take all the cars Royce could make. These would be of two, three, four and six cylinders and would be badged as Rolls-Royce.


title: Henry Royce

text: The first Rolls-Royce car, the Rolls-Royce 10 hp, was unveiled at the Paris Salon in December 1904. In 1906 Rolls and Royce formalised their partnership by creating Rolls-Royce Limited, with Royce appointed chief engineer and works director on a salary of £1,250 per annum plus 4% of the profits in excess of £10,000. Royce thus provided the technical expertise to complement Rolls' financial backing and business acumen. By 1907 the company was winning awards for the engineering reliability of its cars.


title: Henry Royce

text: The Rolls-Royce Eagle was the first aircraft engine to be developed by Rolls-Royce Limited. It was introduced in 1915 to meet British military requirements during the First World War and proved to be one of only two aero engines made by the Allies that was neither a production nor a technical failure.


title: Henry Royce

text: Royce & Company remained in business as a separate company making cranes until 1932 when it was bought by Herbert Morris of Loughborough. The last Royce-designed crane was built in 1964.


title: Henry Royce

text: Royce had always worked hard and was renowned for never eating proper meals which resulted in his being taken ill first in 1902 and again in 1911. Ill health had forced his move away from Derby in 1912. In the same year, he had a major operation in London and was given only a few months to live by the doctors. In spite of this he returned to work but was prevented from visiting the factory, which had moved to larger premises, fitted out to detailed plans by Royce, in Derby in 1908. He insisted on checking all new designs and engineers and draughtsmen had to take the drawings to be personally checked by him, a daunting prospect with his well-known perfectionism. He had a villa built at Le Canadel in the south of France and a further home at Crowborough, East Sussex. In 1917, Royce moved to the village of West Wittering, West Sussex.


title: Henry Royce

text: In October 1928, he began design of the "R" engine while walking with some of his leading engineers on the beach at West Wittering, sketching ideas in the sand. Less than a year later, the "R” engine, designed in his studio in the village, set a new world air speed record of 357.7 miles per hour and won the Schneider Trophy of 1929. When the Ramsay MacDonald government decided not to finance the next attempt in 1931, Lucy, Lady Houston, felt that Britain must not be left out of this contest and sent a telegram to the Prime Minister stating that she would guarantee £100,000, if necessary, towards the cost leading the Government to reverse their previous decision. The result was that Royce found that the "R" could be made to produce more power and the Supermarine S.6B seaplane won the Trophy at on 13 September 1931. Later that month on 29 September, the same aircraft with an improved engine flew at , becoming the first craft to fly at over and breaking the world's speed record.


title: Henry Royce

text: In 1931, Rolls-Royce Ltd. bought out their rival firm of W. O. Bentley. A "20/25" engine was put into a chassis and a Bentley radiator fitted. An open four-seater body completed the picture. The engine was "hotted-up" and the car was taken down to West Wittering to get Royce's approval. They were somewhat apprehensive of what he would say, but he gave it his blessing. He told them that such a fast car should have a means of varying the stiffness of the springing.


title: Henry Royce

text: The night before he died he sat up in bed and drew a sketch on the back of an envelope which he gave to Miss Aubin (his nurse and housekeeper) telling her to see that the "boys" in the factory got it safely. He died before it reached Derby. This was the adjustable shock-absorber. Thus, in 1933 the first Bentley made by Rolls-Royce Ltd made its appearance and another famous name carried on.


title: Henry Royce

text: Following the success of the "R” engine, it was clear that they had an engine that would be of use to the Royal Air Force. As no Government assistance was forthcoming at first, in the national interest they went ahead with development of what was called the "PV-12" engine (standing for Private Venture, 12-cylinder). The idea was to produce an engine of about the same performance as the "R”, albeit with a much longer life. Rolls-Royce launched the PV-12 in October 1933 and the engine completed its first test in 1934, the year after Royce died. The PV-12 became the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine.


title: Henry Royce

text: Henry Royce married Minnie Punt in 1893 and they set up home together in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, and were joined by his mother, who lived nearby until her death in 1904, and Minnie's niece, Violet. The Royces moved to a newly built house in Knutsford, Cheshire in 1898. The couple separated in 1912.


title: Henry Royce

text: Royce, who lived by the motto "Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble", was appointed OBE in 1918, and was created a baronet, of Seaton in the County of Rutland, in 1930 for his services to British Aviation. He had no children and the baronetcy became extinct on his death.


title: Henry Royce

text: After he fell ill, Royce was looked after by a nurse, Miss Ethel Aubin for twenty years (after his death she married G.H.R. Tildesley, Royce's solicitor). He died at his house Elmstead in West Wittering on 22 April 1933. His cremated remains were initially buried under his statue at the Rolls-Royce works in Derby, but in 1937 his urn was removed to the parish church of Alwalton, his birthplace.


title: Henry Royce

text: In 1962, a memorial window dedicated to his memory was unveiled in Westminster Abbey. The window is one of a series designed by Ninian Comper dedicated to the memory of eminent engineers. He is also commemorated in Royce Hall, student accommodation at Loughborough University, and until 2011 at one of Peterborough's Queensgate shopping centre car parks. The Sir Henry Royce Suite, a business suite, is named after him at the Peterborough Marriott Hotel in the Alwalton business park.


title: 2018 Wimbledon Championships – Men's singles

text: Novak Djokovic defeated Kevin Anderson in the final, 6–2, 6–2, 7–6 to win the gentlemen's singles tennis title at the 2018 Wimbledon Championships. It was his fourth Wimbledon title and 13th major title overall, passing Roy Emerson to outright fourth place on the all time men's singles major wins list. The win was also Djokovic's first title in over 12 months, his previous win having been at Eastbourne on July 1, 2017, and returned him to the top 10 in rankings. The Men's Singles competition was contested by all but one of the top 20 male players in the ATP as of 25 June 2018.


text: Roger Federer was the defending champion and top seed, but lost in the quarterfinals to Anderson despite leading by two sets to love and having a match point in the third set. Rafael Nadal and Federer were in contention for the world No. 1 ranking; Nadal retained the top ranking by reaching the fourth round.


text: Stan Wawrinka was attempting to complete the career Grand Slam but lost to qualifier Thomas Fabbiano in the second round.


text: Roger Federer was the defending champion and top seed. Federer and Rafael Nadal were in contention for the ATP No. 1 ranking at the start of the tournament. Former champion and local favourite Andy Murray announced on the day before the tournament began that he was pulling out because he was not fully recovered from hip surgery. His place was taken by "lucky loser" Jason Jung.


text: 2017 finalist and no. 3 seed Marin Čilić went out in the second round of the tournament, defeated by Guido Pella of Argentina. Čilić had been two sets up when rain stopped play, but had difficulty coping with the conditions after play was resumed, and complained to the umpire about the state of the grass. The following morning, when they returned to continue the match, Pella won in five sets.


text: Feliciano López made his 66th consecutive Grand Slam main draw appearance, surpassing the previous record of 65 consecutive appearances he jointly held with Federer. López was defeated in the second round by no 5 seed Juan Martín del Potro.


text: Nadal retained his top ranking by reaching the semifinal. Federer lost in the quarterfinals to Kevin Anderson despite leading by two sets to love and having a match point in the third set. The semifinal match between Anderson and John Isner, lasting 6 hours 36 minutes, was the second longest men's singles match at Wimbledon and the third longest men's singles match in tennis history. Isner has thus played in the two longest matches in Wimbledon history (the other one being the record-holding 2010 match against Nicolas Mahut). The 2018 semifinals were the longest two semifinals in Wimbledon history.


text: Anderson became the first man representing South Africa to reach the Wimbledon men's singles final since Brian Norton in 1921 (South African-born Kevin Curren represented the United States when he was a finalist in 1985). Anderson held a total of five set points in the third set of the championship match, but was unable to force a fourth set.


title: Barnaby Clay

text: Clay graduated London International Film School in 1996, directing the school's entry to the Fuji Film Scholarship Awards – the short film "Justice in Mind", took home the top award of Best Film. Soon after leaving film school he moved into directing music videos and commercials. He has directed music videos for bands including Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, TV on the Radio, Gnarls Barkley, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Dave Gahan.


title: Barnaby Clay

text: In 2003 Clay traveled to Russia with the gypsy punk band Menlo Park to make his first documentary for Britain's Channel 4


title: Barnaby Clay

text: entitled "Greetings From Beartown". In 2005 he wrote and directed a short film for Ritz Fine Jewellery titled "Carousel", starring Chloe Sevigny.


title: Barnaby Clay

text: In 2007 his fantasy horror short, "Finkle's Odyssey", won the Méliès d'Argent at Fantsporto Film Festival, also collecting awards at Brooklyn International Film Festival, Marvais Genre, IFCT, 24 FPS Film Festival.


title: Barnaby Clay

text: In 2011, Clay re-worked Mick Rock's music video for David Bowie's "Life On Mars". The installation was a part of Vice Media and Intel's Creators Project series, traveling globally under the name 'Life On Mars Revisited'.


title: Barnaby Clay

text: Clay directed the Vice Films full-length feature documentary entitled "Shot! The Psycho-Spiritual Mantra of Rock" (2017).


title: Barnaby Clay

text: In 2007, Clay moved to New York City, where he met Karen O, lead singer of the band Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The two were married in December 2011. Their son Django was born in August 2015.


title: Barnaby Clay

text: Clay continues to collaborate with his wife, including directing a music video for her first solo record, "Crush Songs".


title: Megarachne

text: Megarachne is a genus of eurypterid, an extinct group of aquatic arthropods. Fossils of "Megarachne" have been discovered in deposits of Late Carboniferous age, from the Gzhelian stage, in San Luis, Argentina. The fossils of the single and type species "M. servinei" have been recovered from deposits that had once been a freshwater environment. The generic name, composed of the Ancient Greek μέγας ("megas") meaning "great" and Ancient Greek ἀράχνη ("arachne") meaning "spider", translates to "great spider", because the fossil was misidentified as a large prehistoric spider.


title: Megarachne

text: With a body length of , "Megarachne" was a medium-sized eurypterid. If the original identification as a spider had been correct, "Megarachne" would have been the largest known spider to have ever lived. Eurypterids such as "Megarachne" are often called "sea scorpions", but the strata in which "Megarachne" has been found indicates that it dwelled in freshwater and not in marine environments.


title: Megarachne

text: "Megarachne" was similar to other eurypterids within the Mycteropoidea, a rare group known primarily from South Africa and Scotland. The mycteropoids had evolved a specialized method of feeding referred to as sweep-feeding. This involved raking through the substrate of riverbeds in order to capture and eat smaller invertebrates. Despite only two specimens having been recovered, "Megarachne" represents the most complete eurypterid discovered in Carboniferous deposits in South America so far. Due to their fragmentary fossil record and similarities between the genera, some researchers have hypothesized that "Megarachne" and two other members of its family, "Mycterops" and "Woodwardopterus", represent different developmental stages of a single genus.


title: Megarachne

text: Known fossils of "Megarachne" indicate a body length of . While large for an arthropod, "Megarachne" was dwarfed by other eurypterids, even relatively close relatives such as "Hibbertopterus" which could reach lengths exceeding . Though originally described as a giant spider, a multitude of features support the classification of "Megarachne" as a eurypterid. Among them, the raised lunules (the vaguely moon-shaped ornamentation, similar to scales) and the cuticular sculpture of the mucrones (a dividing ridge continuing uninterrupted throughout the carapace, the part of the exoskeleton which covers the head) are especially important since these features are characteristic of eurypterids.


title: Megarachne

text: "Megarachne" possessed blade-like structures on its appendages (limbs) which would have allowed it to engage in a feeding method known as sweep-feeding, raking through the soft sediment of aquatic environments in swamps and rivers with its frontal appendage blades to capture and feed on small invertebrates. "Megarachne" also possessed a large and circular second opisthosomal tergite (the second dorsal segment of the abdomen), the function of which remains unknown.


title: Megarachne

text: "Megarachne" was very similar to other mycteroptid eurypterids in appearance, a group distinguished from other mycteropoids by the parabolic shape of their prosoma (the head plate), hastate telsons (the hindmost part of the body being shaped like a "gladius", a Roman sword) with paired keel-shaped projections on the underside, and heads with small compound eyes that were roughly trapezoidal in shape.


title: Megarachne

text: "Megarachne servinei" was originally described in 1980 by the Argentinean paleontologist Mario Hünicken. The generic name, composed of the Ancient Greek μέγας ("megas") meaning "great" and Latin "arachne" meaning "spider", translates to "great spider". The holotype (now stored at the Museum of Paleontology at the National University of Córdoba) was recovered from the Pallero Member of the Bajo de Véliz Formation of Argentina, which has been dated to the Gzhelian age, to million years ago. The specimen preserves the carapace, the first two tergites, three partial appendages and what is possibly a coxa (the proximalmost limb segment).


title: Megarachne

text: Hünicken wrongly identified the specimen as a mygalomorph spider (the group that includes tarantulae) based on the shape of the carapace, the wide circular eye tubercle (round outgrowth) located in the center of the head between the two eyes and a circular structure behind the first body segment which he identified as the "moderately hairy" abdomen. Hünicken's identification relied heavily on X-ray microtomography of the holotype. Additional hidden structures – such as a sternum and labium, coxae and cheliceral fangs – were also extrapolated from the X-radiographs.


title: Megarachne

text: With an estimated length of based on the assumption that the fossil was of a spider, and a legspan estimated to be , "Megarachne servinei" would have been the largest spider to have ever existed, exceeding the goliath birdeater ("Theraphosa blondi") which has a maximum legspan of around . Because of its status as the "largest spider to have ever lived", "Megarachne" quickly became popular. Based on Hünicken's detailed description of the fossil specimen and various other illustrations and reconstructions made by him, reconstructions of "Megarachne" as a giant spider were set up in museums around the world.


title: Megarachne

text: The identification of the specimen as a spider was doubted by some arachnologists, such as Shear and colleagues (1989), who stated that while "Megarachne" had been assigned to the Araneae, it "may represent an unnamed order or a ricinuleid". Even Hünicken himself acknowledged discrepancies in the morphology of the fossil that could not be accommodated with an arachnid identity. These discrepancies included an unusual cuticular ornamentation, the carapace being divided into frontal and rear parts by a suture and spatulate (having a broad, rounded end) chelicerae (already noted by Hünicken as a strange feature as no known spider possesses spatulate chelicerae), all features unknown in other spiders. However, the holotype was by then deposited in a bank vault so other paleontologists only had access to plaster casts.


title: Megarachne

text: In 2005, a second, more complete specimen consisting of a part and counterpart (the matching halves of a compression fossil) was recovered, preserving parts of the front section of the body, as well as coxae possibly from the fourth pair of appendages, was recovered from the same locality and horizon. A research team led by the British paleontologist and arachnologist Paul A. Selden and also consisting of Hünicken and Argentinean arachnologist José A. Corronca reexamined the holotype in light of the new discovery. They concluded that "Megarachne servinei" was a large eurypterid (a group also known as "sea scorpions"), not a spider. Although Hünicken had misidentified "Megarachne", his identification as an arachnid was not entirely absurd as the two groups are closely related. A morphological comparison with other eurypterids indicated that "Megarachne" most closely resembled another large Permo-Carboniferous eurypterid, the mycteroptid "Woodwardopterus scabrosus" which is known only from a single specimen. Selden and colleagues (2005) concluded that despite only being represented by two known specimens, "Megarachne" is the most complete eurypterid discovered in Carboniferous deposits in South America so far.


title: Megarachne

text: "Megarachne" was part of the stylonurine suborder, a relatively rare clade of eurypterids. Within the stylonurines, "Megarachne" is a member of the superfamily Mycteropoidea and its constituent family Mycteropidae, which includes the close relatives "Woodwardopterus" and "Mycterops".


title: Megarachne

text: Fossilized remains of the second tergite of the mycteroptid "Woodwardopterus" were compared to the fossil remains of "Megarachne" by Selden and colleagues (2005), which revealed that they were virtually identical, including features previously not noted in "Woodwardopterus", such as radiating lines covering the tergite. It was concluded that "Megarachne" and "Woodwardopterus" were part of the same family by Selden and colleagues (2005), with two primary differences; the tergites and the mucrones on the carapace are more sparsely packed in "Megarachne" and the protrusion of the anteroedian (i.e. before the middle) carapace, seen prominently in "Megarachne", does not occur in "Woodwardopterus".


title: Megarachne

text: It has been suggested that three of the four genera that constitute the Mycteroptidae, "Mycterops", "Woodwardopterus" and "Megarachne", might represent different ontogenetic stages (different developmental stages of the animal during its life) of each other based on their morphology and the size of the specimens. Should this interpretation be correct, the sparse mucrones of "Megarachne" might be because of its age, as "Megarachne" is significantly larger than "Woodwardopterus". The smallest genus, "Mycterops", has even more densely packed ornaments on its carapace and tergite and might thus be the youngest ontogenetic stage of the animal. Should "Mycterops", "Megarachne" and "Woodwardopterus" represent the same animal, the name taking priority would be "Mycterops" as it was named first, in 1886.


title: Megarachne

text: The cladogram below is adapted from Lamsdell and colleagues (2010) and shows the relationship of "Megarachne" within the suborder Stylonurina.


title: Megarachne

text: Both known specimens of "Megarachne" have been recovered from the Bajo de Véliz Formation of Argentina, dated to the Gzhelian stage of the Late Carboniferous. The environment of the Bajo de Véliz formation was, unlike the typical living environments of eurypterids (especially the swimming eurypterids of the suborder Eurypterina), a freshwater environment in a floodplain. Similar Late Carboniferous floodplains with fossilized remnants discovered in modern-day Australia suggest a flora dominated by different types of pteridosperms with pockets of isoetoid lycopsids.


title: Megarachne

text: During "Megarachne" time, Argentina and the rest of South America was part of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana which was beginning to fuse with the northern continents of Euramerica, North China, Siberia and Kazakhstania to form Pangaea. In addition to "Megarachne", the Bajo de Véliz Formation preserves a wide array of fossilized flying insects, such as "Rigattoptera" (classified in the order Protorthoptera), but as a freshwater predator, "Megarachne" would probably not have fed on them. Instead, the blades on the frontal appendages of "Megarachne" would have allowed it to sweep-feed, raking through the soft sediment of the rivers it inhabited in order to capture and feed on small invertebrates. This feeding strategy was common to other mycteropoids.


title: Megarachne

text: In comparison to the comparatively warm climate of the earlier parts of the Carboniferous, the Late Carboniferous was relatively cold globally. This climate change likely occurred during the Middle Carboniferous due to falling levels in the atmosphere and high oxygen levels. The Southern Hemisphere, where Argentina was and still is located, may even have experienced glaciation with large continental ice sheets similar to the modern glacial ice sheets of the Arctic and Antarctica, or smaller glaciers in dispersed centers. The spread of the ice sheets also affected sea levels, which would rise and fall throughout the period. Late Carboniferous flora was low in diversity but also developed uniformly throughout Gondwana. The plant life consisted of pteridosperm trees such as "Nothorhacopteris", "Triphyllopteris" and "Botrychiopsis", and lycopsid trees "Malanzania", "Lepidodendropsis" and "Bumbudendron". The plant fossils present also suggest that it was subject to monsoons during certain time intervals.


title: Megarachne

text: During the production of the 2005 British documentary "Walking with Monsters", "Megarachne" was slated to appear as a giant tarantula-like spider hunting the cat-sized reptile "Petrolacosaurus" in the segment detailing the Carboniferous, with the reconstruction closely following what was thought to be known of the genus at the time the series began production. The actual identity of the genus, as a eurypterid, was only discovered well into production and by then it was far too late to update the reconstructions. The scenes were left in, but the giant spider was renamed as an unspecified species belonging to the primitive spider suborder Mesothelae, a suborder that actually exists but with genera much smaller than, and looking considerably different from, the spider featured in the program.


title: HO scale

text: HO or H0 is a rail transport modelling scale using a 1:87 scale (3.5 mm to 1 foot). It is the most popular scale of model railway in the world. The rails are spaced apart for modelling standard gauge tracks and trains in HO.


title: HO scale

text: The name H0 comes from 1:87 scale being "half" that of 0 scale, which was originally the smallest of the series of older and larger 0, 1, 2 and 3 gauges introduced by Märklin around 1900. Rather than referring to the scale as "half-zero" or "H-zero", English-speakers have consistently pronounced it and have generally written it with the letters HO. In other languages it also remains written with the letter H and number 0 (zero); in German it is thus pronounced as .


title: HO scale

text: After the First World War there were several attempts to introduce a model railway about half the size of 0 scale that would be more suitable for smaller home layouts and cheaper to manufacture. H0 was created to meet these aims. For this new scale, a track width of 16.5 mm was designed to represent prototypical standard gauge track, and a model scale of 1:87 was chosen. By as early as 1922 the firm Bing in Nuremberg, Germany, had been marketing a "tabletop railway" for several years. This came on a raised, quasi-ballasted track with a gauge of 16.5 mm, which was described at that time either as 00 or H0. The trains initially had a clockwork drive, but from 1924 were driven electrically. Accessory manufacturers, such as Kibri, marketed buildings in the corresponding scale.


title: HO scale

text: At the 1935 Leipzig Spring Fair, an electric tabletop railway, Trix Express, was displayed to a gauge described as "half nought gauge", which was then abbreviated as gauge 00 ("nought-nought"). Märklin, another German firm, followed suit with its 00 gauge railway for the 1935 Leipzig Autumn Fair. The Märklin 00 gauge track that appeared more than ten years after Bing's tabletop railway had a very similar appearance to the previous Bing track. On the Märklin version, however, the rails were fixed to the tin 'ballast' as in the prototype, whilst the Bing tracks were simply stamped into the ballast, so that track and ballast were made of a single sheet of metal.


title: HO scale

text: HO scale trains elsewhere were developed in response to the economic pressures of the Great Depression. The trains first appeared in the United Kingdom, originally as an alternative to 00 gauge, but could not make commercial headway against the established 00 gauge. However, it became very popular in the United States, where it took off in the late 1950s after interest in model railroads as toys began to decline and more emphasis began to be placed on realism in response to hobbyist demand. While HO scale is by nature more delicate than 0 scale, its smaller size allows modelers to fit more details and more scale track distance into a comparable area.


title: HO scale

text: In the 1950s HO began to challenge the market dominance of 0 gauge and, in the 1960s, as it began to overtake 0 scale in popularity, even the stalwarts of other sizes, including Marx and Lionel Corporation began manufacturing HO trains.


title: HO scale

text: Today, HO locomotives, rolling stock (cars or carriages), buildings, and scenery are available from a large number of manufacturers in a variety of price brackets.


title: HO scale

text: HO is the most popular model railroad scale in both continental Europe and North America, whereas OO scale (4 mm:foot or 1:76.2 with 16.5 mm track) is still dominant in the United Kingdom. There are some modellers in the United Kingdom who model in HO scale and the British 1:87 Scale Society was formed in 1994.


title: HO scale

text: In Continental Europe, H0 scale is defined in the "" (NEM) standard "NEM 010" published by MOROP as exactly 1:87. In North America, the National Model Railroad Association (NMRA) standard "S-1.2 General Standard Scales" defines HO scale as representing a ratio of , usually rounded to 1:87.1. The precise definition of HO scale thus varies slightly by country and manufacturer.


title: HO scale

text: In other hobbies, the term HO is often used more loosely than in railroad modeling. In slot car racing, HO does not denote a precise scale of car, but a general size of track on which the cars can range from 1:87 to approximately 1:64 scale. Small plastic model soldiers are often popularly referred to as HO size if they are close to high, though the actual scale is usually 1:76 or 1:72.


title: HO scale

text: Even in model railroading, the term HO can be stretched. Some British producers have marketed railway accessories such as detail items and figures, as "HO/OO" in an attempt to make them attractive to modelers in both scales. Sometimes the actual scale is OO, and sometimes the difference is split (about 1:82). These items may be marketed as HO, especially in the US. In addition, some manufacturers or importers tend to label any small-scale model, regardless of exact scale, as HO scale in order to increase sales to railroad modelers. The sizes of "HO" automobiles, for example, can vary greatly between different manufacturers.


title: HO scale

text: Model locomotives are fitted with small motors that are wired to pick up power from the rails. As with other scales, HO trains can be controlled in either analog or digital fashions. With analog control, two-rail track is powered by direct current (varying the voltage applied to the rails to control speed, and polarity to control direction). With digital control, such as Digital Command Control (DCC) or proprietary systems such as the one developed by Märklin, digital commands are encoded at the controller and received by any decoders receiving power from the track. Digital control allows independent control of each locomotive's speed and direction as well as functions not easily achieved with analog control such as reactive sound and lighting effects, integration of auxiliary decoders and automation.


title: HO scale

text: The basic power and control system consists of a power pack of a transformer and rectifier (DC), a rheostat. On large model layouts, the power system may consist of several signal boosters, control interfaces, switch panels and more. Trackage may be divided into electrically isolated sections called blocks and toggle or rotary switches (sometimes relays) are used to select which tracks are energized. Blocking trackage also allows the detection of locomotives within the block through the measurement of current draw.


title: HO scale

text: The "gauge" of a rail system is the distance between the inside edges of the railheads. It is distinct from the concept of "scale", though the terms are often used interchangeably in rail modelling. "Scale" describes the size of a modeled object relative to its prototype. Prototype rail systems use a variety of track gauges, so several different gauges can be modeled at the same scale.


title: HO scale

text: The gauges used in HO scale are a selection of standard and narrow gauges. The standards for these gauges are defined by the NMRA (in North America) and the NEM (in Continental Europe). While the standards are in practice interchangeable, there are minor differences.


title: HO scale

text: The earliest "pre-gauged" track available in the 1940s had steel rails clipped to a fiber tie base. This was called flexible track as it could be "flexed" around any curve in a continuous fashion. The sections were sold in lengths of , and the rail ends were connected with a sheet metal track connector that was soldered to the base of the rail.


title: HO scale

text: As brass became more readily available, the steel rail was phased out, along with its corrosion problems. Brass flex-track continued to be available long after sectional track was introduced, as the three-foot lengths of rail reduced the number of joints. The biggest disadvantage of flex-track was that it had to be fastened to a roadbed.


title: HO scale

text: In the late 1940s, Tru-Scale made milled wood roadbed sections, simulating ballast, tie plates and milled ties with a gauged, grooved slot with simulated tie plates. Bulk HO code 100 rail was spiked in place with HO spikes. This was available in straight lengths and curves, from radius.


title: HO scale

text: It was up to the user to stain the wood for the tie colors prior to laying the brass track, and then adding scale ballast between the ties.


title: HO scale

text: Tru-Scale made preformed wood roadbed sections, simulating ballast, that the flextrack would be fastened with tiny steel spikes. These spikes were shaped much like real railroad spikes, and were fitted through holes pre-drilled in the fiber flextrack ties base. An improvement was made when "sectional track" became available in a variety of standardized lengths, such as the ubiquitous straight and curved tracks of , , and radii. These are representative of curves as tight as , which in the real world would only be found on some industrial spurs and light rail systems.


title: HO scale

text: Sectional track was an improvement in setting up track on a living room floor because the rail was attached to a rigid plastic tie base, and could withstand rough handling from children and pets without suffering much damage. With flex track, which can be bent to any desired shape (within reason), it became possible to create railroads with broader curves, and with them more accurate models. Individual rails are available for those that wish to spike their own rails to ties. Individual ties can be glued to a sound base, or pre-formed tie and ballast sections milled from wood can be used for a more durable, if somewhat artificially uniform, look is preferred.


title: HO scale

text: There are a variety of preassembled track sections made by Märklin using their three-rail system (where the third rail are actually studs protruding from the center of the rail tie). This trackwork is a little bulkier looking than true to scale, but it is considered quite trouble-free, and is preferred by many that are interested in reducing much of the operational problems that come with HO scale railroading. As with other preformed track, it is also available in several radius configurations. Generally speaking, very-sharp-radius curves are only suitable for single-unit operation, such as trolley cars, or for short-coupled cars and locos such as found around industrial works. Longer wheelbase trucks (bogies) and longer car and loco overhangs require the use of broader radius curves. Today many six-axle diesels and full-length passenger cars will not run on curves less than in radius.


title: HO scale

text: HO scale track was originally manufactured with steel rails on fiber ties, then brass rail on fiber ties, then brass rail on plastic tie. Over time, track made of nickel silver (an alloy of nickel and brass) became more common due to its superior resistance to corrosion. Today, almost all HO scale track is of nickel silver, although Bachmann, Life-Like and Model Power continue to manufacture steel track.


title: HO scale

text: In America, Atlas gained an early lead in track manufacturing, and their sectional, flex, and turnout track dominates the US market. In the UK, Peco's line of flex track and "Electrofrog" (powered frog) and "Insulfrog" (insulated frog) turnouts are more common. Atlas, Bachmann, and Life-Like all manufacture inexpensive, snap-together track with integral roadbed. Kato also manufactures a full line of "HO Unitrack"; however, it has not yet caught on as their N scale Unitrack has.


title: HO scale

text: Rail height is measured in thousandths of an inch; "code 83" track has a rail which is high. As HO's commonly available rail sizes, especially the popular "code 100", are somewhat large (representative of extremely heavily trafficked lines), many modelers opt for hand-laid finescale track with individually laid wooden sleepers and crossties and rails secured by very small railroad spikes.


title: HO scale

text: In Australia, many club-owned layouts employ code 100 track so that club members can also run OO-scale models and older rolling stock with coarse (deep) wheel flanges.


title: HO scale

text: A hook-and-loop coupler originally developed by Märklin became an NEM standard and is still widely used. More recently, manufacturers, including Fleischmann and Märklin, developed close couplers that on straight track have the buffers almost touching, more like the prototype. On curves a sliding mechanism allows the couplers to move away from the buffer frame providing the additional clearance necessary.


title: HO scale

text: Most couplers provide pre-uncoupling, whereby a train may reverse over a raised uncoupler and some time later change direction leaving the train (or selected cars) behind.


title: HO scale

text: Another NEM standard is the coupler pocket, which the individual coupler slots into. The majority of models provide this pocket, meaning that it is very simple to exchange one coupler type for another, or to replace damaged couplers.


title: HO scale

text: In North America, all train sets/kits used to come with the "X2F" or "Horn Hook" coupler until Kadee came out with the No. 5 coupler. After Kadee's patent ran out, other manufacturers made duplicates of the KD No. 5 until KD brought out the scale-accurate No. 58 coupler, and everyone else followed suit.


title: HO scale

text: Because of the scale's popularity, a huge array of models, kits and supplies are manufactured. The annual HO scale catalog by Wm. K. Walthers, North America's largest model railroad supplier, lists more than 1,000 pages of products in that scale alone. Models are generally available in three varieties:


title: HO scale

text: In addition to these kits, numerous manufacturers sell individual supplies for super detailing, scratch building, and kitbashing.


title: HO scale

text: Quality varies extremely. Toylike, ready-to-run trains using plastic molds which are well over 50 years old are still sold; at the other are highly detailed limited-edition locomotive models made of brass by companies based in Japan and South Korea. A popular locomotive such as the F7/F9 may be available in thirty different versions with prices ranging from twenty to several thousand dollars or euros.


title: HO scale

text: HO scale's popularity lies somewhat in its middle-of-the-road status. It is large enough to accommodate a great deal of detail in finer models, more so than the smaller N and Z scales, and can also be easily handled by children. Models are usually less expensive than the smaller scales because of more exacting manufacturing process in N and Z, and also less expensive than S, O and G scales because of the smaller amount of material; the larger market and the resultant economy of scale also drives HO prices down. The size lends itself to elaborate track plans in a reasonable amount of room space, not as much as N but considerably more than S or 0. In short, HO scale provides the balance between the detail of larger scales and the lower space requirements of smaller scales.


title: HO scale

text: Currently active significant manufacturers and marketers of HO railroad equipment as of 2009, include, but are not limited to:


title: HO scale

text: Significant historical manufacturers and marketers of HO equipment that are no longer active in HO, include


title: Jody Hice

text: Jody Brownlow Hice (born April 22, 1960) is an American politician, radio show host, and political activist serving as the U.S. representative for Georgia's 10th congressional district since 2015. He is a member of the Republican Party.


title: Jody Hice

text: Hice was a candidate in the 2022 Georgia Secretary of State election, running against incumbent Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican. Raffensperger refused to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia after former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies, including Hice, made baseless claims of fraud. After Hice announced his candidacy, Trump endorsed him. On May 24, 2022, he lost the primary to Raffensperger.


title: Jody Hice

text: Hice is a native of Atlanta and received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky, a Master of Divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, and a Doctor of Ministry degree from Luther Rice Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia.


title: Jody Hice

text: Until April 2010, Hice was senior pastor of Bethlehem First Baptist Church in Bethlehem, Georgia. In addition, he was first vice president of the Georgia Baptist Convention (2004–05) and Professor of Preaching at Luther Rice Seminary. Hice was senior pastor at The Summit Church, a Southern Baptist church, in Loganville, Georgia, from 2011 until December 2013, when he stepped down to run for office.


title: Jody Hice

text: Hice started "Let Freedom Ring", a talk radio show originally heard on WIMO 1300 AM, Bethlehem, Georgia.


title: Jody Hice

text: Hice unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for the U.S. House of Representatives in Georgia's 7th congressional district in 2010, losing the runoff to former Congressional aide Rob Woodall.


title: Jody Hice

text: Georgia's 10th congressional district became an open seat when the sitting representative, Paul Broun, announced his bid for U.S. Senate in 2014. Hice was the second to formally enter the race on April 15, 2013, citing government spending as his foremost concern. He was soon joined by five other candidates, leading to a seven-way primary campaign. Hice finished first in the May 20 primary with 34% of the vote, followed closely by trucking company owner Mike Collins with 33%.


title: Jody Hice

text: Since no candidate won 50% of the vote, a primary runoff election between Hice and Collins ensued. The race quickly grew heated amid accusations of campaign sign theft from both sides and reports of supporters being harassed at debates. Hice won the runoff with 54% of the vote.


title: Jody Hice

text: After winning the Republican primary with 78% of the vote, Hice faced Democratic nominee Tabitha A. Johnson-Green.


title: Jody Hice

text: During an October 2018 campaign event in which he appeared with Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, Hice decried former President Barack Obama as having "pushed his own socialist agenda" during his two terms in office. Hice urged the small crowd to oppose the resurgence of Democratic candidates in the 2018 midterm elections, saying, "it's time for this so-called blue wave to be body-slammed!" He defeated Johnson-Green in the general election.


title: Jody Hice

text: After winning the Republican primary, Hice once again faced Democratic nominee Johnson-Green. He won the general election.


title: Jody Hice

text: In January 2021, Hice made an unsuccessful objection to the counting of Georgia's electoral votes. Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler had planned on objecting to Georgia's electors, but withdrew her objection after the 2021 United States Capitol attack earlier in the day. Hice was one of the 139 Republican representatives who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Congress that day.


title: Jody Hice

text: On March 22, 2021, Hice announced that he would run against incumbent Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, in 2022. Raffensperger refused to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia after Trump and his Republican allies, including Hice, made false claims of fraud. After Hice announced his run, Trump endorsed him. During his campaign, Hice continued to make numerous false claims about the 2020 election. On May24, 2022, Hice lost the primary to Raffensperger, who garnered enough votes to avoid a runoff.


title: Jody Hice

text: Hice calls himself a "constitutional conservative." He has a history of repeatedly sharing quotes falsely attributed to the Founding Fathers. He has been described as a staunch Trump loyalist and an America First Republican.


title: Jody Hice

text: Hice supports auditing the Federal Reserve and its activities around mortgages. He co-sponsored the Federal Reserve Transparency Act.


title: Jody Hice

text: Along with all other Senate and House Republicans, Hice voted against the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.


title: Jody Hice

text: Hice opposes abortion. He has said that supporters of abortion rights are worse than Adolf Hitler. Hice believes that life begins at fertilization or cloning. He opposes family planning assistance that includes abortion.


title: Jody Hice

text: In June 2021, Hice was one of 21 House Republicans to vote against a resolution to give the Congressional Gold Medal to police officers who defended the U.S. Capitol on January 6.


title: Jody Hice

text: In 2021, during a House vote on a measure condemning the Myanmar coup d'état that overwhelmingly passed, Hice was one of 14 Republican representatives to vote against it, for reasons reported to be unclear.


title: Jody Hice

text: In July 2021, Hice voted against the bipartisan ALLIES Act, which would increase by 8,000 the number of special immigrant visas for Afghan allies of the U.S. military during its invasion of Afghanistan, while also reducing some application requirements that caused long application backlogs; the bill passed in the House 407–16.


title: Jody Hice

text: Hice was one of 19 House Republicans to vote against the final passage of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act.


title: Jody Hice

text: In February 2022, Hice co-sponsored the Secure America's Borders First Act, which would prohibit the expenditure or obligation of military and security assistance to Kyiv over the U.S. border with Mexico.


title: Jody Hice

text: Hice has a "D" rating from pro-marijuana legalization group NORML for his voting history regarding cannabis-related issues.


title: Jody Hice

text: Hice opposes same-sex marriage. According to Right Wing Watch, he compared homosexuality to alcoholism and opposed a ban on conversion therapy. In a 2012 book, Hice wrote that gay people were plotting to recruit and sodomize children, citing as proof an essay by gay writer Michael Swift that he took out of context. In 2015, Hice cosponsored a resolution to amend the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Hice condemned the Supreme Court decision in "Obergefell v. Hodges", which held that same-sex marriage bans violated the constitution. He has compared gay relationships to incest and bestiality.


title: Jody Hice

text: Hice was a leading supporter of the public display of the Ten Commandments in government buildings; he founded Ten Commandments Georgia, Inc., a group advocating for the display of the Ten Commandments in every Georgia county courthouse. Hice began the initiative as a pastor, waging a fight against the American Civil Liberties Union over a display in the Barrow County Courthouse, and later supported similar efforts in the Morgan County Superior Courthouse.


title: Jody Hice

text: In September 2008, Hice was one of 33 pastors across America to participate in "Pulpit Freedom Sunday" in opposition to the Johnson Amendment, a provision of the tax code that prohibits tax-exempt organizations (such as churches) from endorsing or opposing political candidates. In the sermon, Hice endorsed Senator John McCain for President.


title: Jody Hice

text: Hice has argued that Christians have been "tricked" into a "false belief" in separation of church and state. He asserted that church-state separation leads to government corruption.


title: Jody Hice

text: In his 2012 book "A Call to Reclaim America", Hice wrote, "Although Islam has a religious component, it is much more than a simple religious ideology. It is a complete geo-political structure and, as such, does not deserve First Amendment protection." In his book "It's Now or Never", Hice quoted former U.S. general William G. Boykin as stating that there is a Muslim Brotherhood plot to take over the United States.


title: Jody Hice

text: In December 2020, Hice was one of 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives to sign an amicus brief in support of "Texas v. Pennsylvania", a lawsuit filed at the United States Supreme Court contesting the results of the 2020 presidential election, in which Joe Biden defeated Trump. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case on the basis that Texas lacked standing under Article III of the Constitution to challenge the results of an election held by another state.


title: Jody Hice

text: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement that called signing the amicus brief an act of "election subversion." She also reprimanded Hice and the other House members who supported the lawsuit: "The 126 Republican Members that signed onto this lawsuit brought dishonor to the House. Instead of upholding their oath to support and defend the Constitution, they chose to subvert the Constitution and undermine public trust in our sacred democratic institutions."


title: Jody Hice

text: In March 2021, in a statement on the House floor, Hice argued against statehood for the District of Columbia and HR 51 by claiming that D.C. would be the only state "without an airport, without a car dealership." Hice was criticized for his statements because airports and car dealerships are not prerequisites for statehood and because D.C. does have car dealerships. Representative Jamie Raskin called his argument "frivolous" and accused Republicans of attempting to "gin up whatever arguments they can think of" to oppose D.C. statehood.


title: Jody Hice

text: Hice voted against the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2020, which authorizes DHS to nearly double the available H-2B visas for the remainder of FY 2020.


title: Jody Hice

text: Hice voted against the Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 1158), which effectively prohibits ICE from cooperating with Health and Human Services to detain or remove undocumented immigrant sponsors of unaccompanied alien children (UACs).


title: UFC 194

text: UFC 194: Aldo vs. McGregor was a mixed martial arts event held by the Ultimate Fighting Championship on December 12, 2015 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.


title: UFC 194

text: The event was originally scheduled to take place on December 5. However, the MGM Grand Garden Arena had already been booked for an Andrea Bocelli concert, prompting the UFC to look at alternative venues such as the Mandalay Bay Events Center. The AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas was the most relevant venue under consideration, which would likely have made the event the highest attended in the promotion's history. Subsequently, on August 10, UFC president Dana White confirmed the event would take place at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, albeit one week later on December 12.


title: UFC 194

text: This event marked the first time the UFC has ever scheduled three events in consecutive days, with all of them taking place in Las Vegas. Instead of the MGM Grand Garden Arena, the other two events were held at The Chelsea at The Cosmopolitan.


title: UFC 194

text: The event was headlined by a UFC Featherweight Championship unification bout between then champion José Aldo and then interim champion Conor McGregor. The bout was originally expected to take place at UFC 189. However, Aldo pulled out of the bout due to a rib injury and the event was instead headlined by an interim title bout between McGregor and Chad Mendes.


title: UFC 194

text: The co-main event featured a UFC Middleweight Championship bout between then undefeated champion Chris Weidman and former Strikeforce Middleweight champion Luke Rockhold.


title: UFC 194

text: A middleweight bout between Ronaldo Souza and Yoel Romero was originally booked for UFC 184 and later "". However, the bout was cancelled both times due to Souza being struck with pneumonia and Romero pulling out due to a ligament and meniscus tear in his knee, respectively. The fight was later rescheduled for this event.


title: UFC 194

text: Michelle Waterson was expected to face Tecia Torres at the event. However, Waterson pulled out of the bout on November 24 citing an injury. She was replaced by


title: UFC 194

text: On January 13, Romero was informed of a potential doping violation stemming from an out of competition test conducted by USADA. On February 8, Romero and his manager explained that he took a supplement after his fight and that supplement turned out to be contaminated. His team and USADA both sent out the supplement for testing and it came back that it contained a banned substance. That substance was not listed on the label, his manager said. They did not want to reveal the name of the supplement or the substance, because USADA was investigating the issue. On March 23, it was announced that Romero would appeal his suspension. His team and USADA discussed a deal for a nine-month suspension for the fighter, but Romero preferred to go to arbitration. The typical USADA anti-doping violation suspension is two years. Eventually on April 4, both parts reached an agreement for a six-month suspension. USADA revealed that Romero tested positive for ibutamoren, a growth hormone release stimulator. The supplement was tested and the banned substance did indeed come up, even though it was not listed on the label. Romero announced that he'll pursue legal action against the supplement company within the next few weeks. The result of the fight was not disqualified or overturned.


title: UFC 194

text: Before the opening of the first round, they refused to touch gloves and went immediately into combat. As the fight started, McGregor took control of the center of the octagon. When Aldo got within his range, McGregor threw a straight left hand to keep Aldo away. The punch did not hit its target. McGregor then followed with a leg kick that connected. As Aldo charged forward to connect with a right-left punch combination, McGregor moved backwards and connected with a left hook that landed on Aldo's chin and rendered him unconscious. Both punches connected, but McGregor's left punch landed first. As Aldo fell to the ground, McGregor connected with two hammer fists until the referee (Big John McCarthy) stepped in to stop the fight. When the fight was over, McGregor leaped atop the fence and celebrated his victory. Within a minute, Aldo regained consciousness and was on his feet. The bout lasted 13 seconds. The knockout was the fastest finish in UFC title fight history. “Again, nobody can take that left-hand shot,” said McGregor in the post-fight interview. “[Aldo's] powerful and he's fast. But precision beats power, and timing beats speed. And that’s what you saw there.”


title: UFC 194

text: The following is the reported payout to the fighters as reported to the Nevada State Athletic Commission. It does not include sponsor money and also does not include the UFC's traditional "fight night" bonuses.


title: Pip (package manager)

text: Pip is a package-management system written in Python and is used to install and manage software packages. The Python Software Foundation recommends using pip for installing Python applications and its dependencies during deployment. Pip connects to an online repository of public packages, called the Python Package Index. Pip can be configured to connect to other package repositories (local or remote), provided that they comply to Python Enhancement Proposal 503.


title: Pip (package manager)

text: Most distributions of Python come with pip preinstalled. Python 2.7.9 and later (on the python2 series), and Python 3.4 and later include pip (pip3 for Python 3) by default.


title: Pip (package manager)

text: First introduced as pyinstall in 2008 by Ian Bicking (the creator of the virtualenv package) as an alternative to easy install, pip was chosen as the new name from one of several suggestions that the creator received on his blog post. According to Bicking himself, the name is a recursive acronym for "Pip Installs Packages". In 2011, the Python Packaging Authority (PyPA) was created to take over the maintenance of pip and virtualenv from Bicking, led by Carl Meyer, Brian Rosner, and Jannis Leidel.


title: Pip (package manager)

text: With the release of pip version 6.0 (2014-12-22), the version naming process was changed to have version in X.Y format and drop the preceding 1 from the version label.


title: Pip (package manager)

text: Pip has a feature to manage full lists of packages and corresponding version numbers, possible through a "requirements" file. This permits the efficient re-creation of an entire group of packages in a separate environment (e.g. another computer) or virtual environment. This can be achieved with a properly formatted file and the following command, where codice_1 is the name of the file:


title: Pip (package manager)

text: To install some package for a specific python version, pip provides the following command, where codice_2 is replaced by 2, 3, 3.4, etc.:


title: Pip (package manager)

text: Pip provides a way to install user-defined projects locally with the use of file. This method requires the python project to have the following file structure:


title: Pip (package manager)

text: Within this structure, user can add to the root of the project (i.e. for above structure) with the following content:


title: Pip (package manager)

text: After this, pip can install this custom project by running the following command, from the project root directory:


title: Pip (package manager)

text: Besides the default PyPI repository, Pip supports custom repositories as well. Such repositories can be located on an HTTP(s) URL or on a file system location.


title: Peer-to-peer lending

text: Peer-to-peer lending, also abbreviated as P2P lending, is the practice of lending money to individuals or businesses through online services that match lenders with borrowers. Peer-to-peer lending companies often offer their services online, and attempt to operate with lower overhead and provide their services more cheaply than traditional financial institutions. As a result, lenders can earn higher returns compared to savings and investment products offered by banks, while borrowers can borrow money at lower interest rates, even after the P2P lending company has taken a fee for providing the match-making platform and credit checking the borrower. There is the risk of the borrower defaulting on the loans taken out from peer-lending websites.


title: Peer-to-peer lending

text: Peer-to-peer fundraising encourages supporters of a charity or non-profit organisation to individually raise money. It's a bit subcategory of crowdfunding. Instead of having one main crowdfunding page where everybody donates, people can have multiple individual fundraising pages with peer-to-peer fundraising, which the individual people will share with their own networks.


title: Peer-to-peer lending

text: Also known as "crowdlending", many peer-to-peer loans are unsecured personal loans, though some of the largest amounts are lent to businesses. Secured loans are sometimes offered by using luxury assets such as jewelry, watches, vintage cars, fine art, buildings, aircraft, and other business assets as collateral. They are made to an individual, company or charity. Other forms of peer-to-peer lending include student loans, commercial and real estate loans, payday loans, as well as secured business loans, leasing, and factoring.


title: Peer-to-peer lending

text: The interest rates can be set by lenders who compete for the lowest rate on the reverse auction model or fixed by the intermediary company on the basis of an analysis of the borrower's credit. The lender's investment in the loan is not normally protected by any government guarantee. On some services, lenders mitigate the risk of bad debt by choosing which borrowers to lend to, and mitigate total risk by diversifying their investments among different borrowers.


title: Peer-to-peer lending

text: The lending intermediaries are for-profit businesses; they generate revenue by collecting a one-time fee on funded loans from borrowers and by assessing a loan servicing fee to investors (tax-disadvantaged in the UK vs charging borrowers) or borrowers (either a fixed amount annually or a percentage of the loan amount). Compared to stock markets, peer-to-peer lending tends to have both less volatility and less liquidity.


title: Peer-to-peer lending

text: Peer-to-peer lending does not fit cleanly into any of the three traditional types of financial institutionsdeposit takers, investors, insurersand is sometimes categorized as an alternative financial service.


title: Peer-to-peer lending

text: Early peer-to-peer lending was also characterized by disintermediation and reliance on social networks but these features have started to disappear. While it is still true that the emergence of internet and e-commerce makes it possible to do away with traditional financial intermediaries and that people may be less likely to default to the members of their own social communities, the emergence of new intermediaries has proven to be time and cost saving. Extending crowdsourcing to unfamiliar lenders and borrowers opens up new opportunities.


title: Peer-to-peer lending

text: Zopa, founded in February 2005, was the first peer-to-peer lending company in the United Kingdom. Funding Circle, launched in August 2010, became the first significant peer-to-business lender and offering small businesses loans from investors via the platform. Funding Circle has originated over £6.3 billion in loans.


title: Peer-to-peer lending

text: In 2011, Quakle, a UK peer-to-peer lender founded in 2010, closed down with a near 100% default rate after attempting to measure a borrower's creditworthiness according to a group score, similar to the feedback scores on eBay; the model failed to encourage repayment.


title: Peer-to-peer lending

text: In 2012, the UK government invested £20 million into British businesses via peer to peer lenders. A second investment of £40 million was announced in 2014. The intention was to bypass the high street banks, which were reluctant to lend to smaller companies. This action was criticised for creating unfair competition in the UK, by concentrating financial support in the largest platforms.


title: Peer-to-peer lending

text: Investments have qualified for tax advantages through the Innovative Finance Individual Savings Account (IFISA) since April 2016. In 2016, £80bn was invested in ISAs, creating a significant opportunity for P2P platforms. By January 2017, 17 P2P providers were approved to offer the product.


title: Peer-to-peer lending

text: At one stage there were over 100 individual platforms applying for FCA authorisation, although many withdrew their applications as of 2015.


title: Peer-to-peer lending

text: Since April 2014, the peer-to-peer lending industry has been regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority to increase accountability with standard reporting and facilitate the growth of the sector. Peer-to-peer investments do not qualify for protection from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), which provides security up to £85,000 per bank, for each saver, but regulations mandate the companies to implement arrangements to ensure the servicing of the loans even if the platform goes bust.


title: Peer-to-peer lending

text: According to the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (Entrenching Innovation Report), £3.55B was attributed to Peer to Peer alternative finance models, the largest growth area being property showing a rise of 88% from 2015 to 2016.


title: Peer-to-peer lending

text: The peer-to-peer lending industry in the US started in February 2006 with the launch of Prosper Marketplace, followed by LendingClub. Both Prosper and LendingClub are headquartered in San Francisco, California. Early peer-to-peer platforms had few restrictions on borrower eligibility, which resulted in adverse selection problems and high borrower default rates. In addition, some investors viewed the lack of liquidity for these loans, most of which have a minimum three-year term, as undesirable.


title: Peer-to-peer lending

text: In 2008, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) required that peer-to-peer companies register their offerings as securities, pursuant to the Securities Act of 1933. The registration process was an arduous one; Prosper and LendingClub had to temporarily suspend offering new loans, while others, such as the U.K.-based Zopa Ltd., exited the U.S. market entirely. Both LendingClub and Prosper gained approval from the SEC to offer investors notes backed by payments received on the loans. Prosper amended its filing to allow banks to sell previously funded loans on the Prosper platform. Both LendingClub and Prosper formed partnerships with FOLIOfn to create a secondary market for their notes, providing liquidity to investors. LendingClub had a voluntary registration at this time, whereas Prosper had mandatory registration for all members.


title: Peer-to-peer lending

text: This addressed the liquidity problem and, in contrast to traditional securitization markets, resulted in making the loan requests of peer-to-peer companies more transparent for the lenders and secondary buyers who can access the detailed information concerning each individual loan (without knowing the actual identities of borrowers) before deciding which loans to fund. The peer-to-peer companies are also required to detail their offerings in a regularly updated prospectus. The SEC makes the reports available to the public via EDGAR (Electronic Data-Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval).


title: Peer-to-peer lending

text: More people turned to peer-to-peer companies for borrowing following the financial crisis of 2007–2008 because banks refused to increase their loan portfolios. The peer-to-peer market also faced increased investor scrutiny because borrowers' defaults became more frequent and investors were unwilling to take on unnecessary risk.


title: Peer-to-peer lending

text: In 2013, LendingClub was the largest peer-to-peer lender in US based upon issued loan volume and revenue, followed by Prosper. LendingClub was also the largest peer-to-peer lending platform worldwide. The interest rates ranged from 5.6–35.8%, depending on the loan term and borrower rating. The default rates varied from about 1.5% to 10% for the more risky borrowers. Executives from traditional financial institutions are joining the peer-to-peer companies as board members, lenders and investors, indicating that the new financing model is establishing itself in the mainstream. LendingClub abandoned the peer-to-peer lending model in the fall of 2020.


title: Peer-to-peer lending

text: Many micro loan companies have emerged to serve the 40 million SMEs, many of which receive inadequate financing from state-owned banks, creating an entire industry that runs alongside big banks.


title: Peer-to-peer lending

text: As the Internet and e-commerce grew in the 2000s, many P2P lenders were founded with various target customers and business models.


title: Peer-to-peer lending

text: The first P2PL in Hong Kong was WeLab, which has backing from American venture capital firm Sequoia Capital and Li Ka-Shing's TOM Group.


title: Peer-to-peer lending

text: Ezubao, a website launched by Yucheng Group in July 2014 purporting to offer P2P services, was shut down in February 2016 by authorities who described it as a Ponzi scheme. Ezubao took in 50 billion renminbi from 900,000 investors.


title: Peer-to-peer lending

text: In China, in 2016 there were more than 4,000 P2P lending platforms, but 2,000 of them had already suspended operations. As of August 2016, cash flow on all P2P lending platform have already exceeded 191 billion Chinese Yuan (US$29 billion) in the month. Lender's return rate across all P2P lending platform in China is about 10% per annum on average, with a few of them offering more than 24% return rate. A colloquial term for P2P lending in Chinese translates as "grey market", but is not to be confused with grey markets for goods or an underground economy.


title: Peer-to-peer lending

text: In June and July 2018, scores of Chinese online P2P lending platforms fell into financial or legal troubles because of tightened regulation and liquidity. According to WDZJ.com, a P2P industry information provider, 23 P2P platforms were reported to be in financial distress or under investigation in the first 10 days of July. That follows 63 such cases in June, a higher number than in any month in the previous year.