title: Exploration

text: During the 2nd century BC, the Han dynasty explored much of the Eastern Northern Hemisphere. Starting in 139 BC, the Han diplomat Zhang Qian traveled west in an unsuccessful attempt to secure an alliance with the Da Yuezhi against the Xiongnu (the Yuezhi had been evicted from Gansu by the Xiongnu in 177 BC); however, Zhang's travels discovered entire countries which the Chinese were unaware of, including the remnants of the conquests of Alexander the Great (r. 336–323 BC). When Zhang returned to China in 125 BC, he reported on his visits to Dayuan (Fergana), Kangju (Sogdia), and Daxia (Bactria, formerly the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom which had just been subjugated by the Da Yuezhi). Zhang described Dayuan and Daxia as agricultural and urban countries like China, and although he did not venture there, described Shendu (the Indus River valley of Northwestern India) and Anxi (Parthian territories) further west.


title: Exploration

text: From about 800 AD to 1040 AD, the Vikings explored Iceland and much of the Western Northern Hemisphere via rivers and oceans. For example, it is known that the Norwegian Viking explorer, Erik the Red (950–1003), sailed to and settled in Greenland after being expelled from Iceland, while his son, the Icelandic explorer Leif Erikson (980–1020), reached Newfoundland and the nearby North American coast, and is believed to be the first European to land in North America.


title: Exploration

text: Polynesians were a maritime people, who populated and explored the central and south Pacific for around 5,000 years, up to about 1280 when they discovered New Zealand. The key invention to their exploration was the outrigger canoe, which provided a swift and stable platform for carrying goods and people. Based on limited evidence, it is thought that the voyage to New Zealand was deliberate. It is unknown if one or more boats went to New Zealand, or the type of boat, or the names of those who migrated. 2011 studies at Wairau Bar in New Zealand show a high probability that one origin was Ruahine Island in the Society Islands. Polynesians may have used the prevailing north easterly trade winds to reach New Zealand in about three weeks. The Cook Islands are in direct line along the migration path and may have been an intermediate stopping point. There are cultural and language similarities between Cook Islanders and New Zealand Māori. Early Māori had different legends of their origins, but the stories were misunderstood and reinterpreted in confused written accounts by early European historians in New Zealand trying to present a coherent pattern of Māori settlement in New Zealand.


title: Exploration

text: Mathematical modelling based on DNA genome studies, using state of the art techniques, have shown that a large number of Polynesian migrants (100–200), including women, arrived in New Zealand around the same time, in about 1280. Otago University studies have tried to link distinctive DNA teeth patterns, which show special dietary influence, with places in or nearby the Society Islands.


title: Exploration

text: The Chinese explorer, Wang Dayuan (fl. 1311–1350) made two major trips by ship to the Indian Ocean. During 1328–1333, he sailed along the South China Sea and visited many places in Southeast Asia and reached as far as South Asia, landing in Sri Lanka and India, and he even went to Australia. Then in 1334–1339, he visited North Africa and East Africa. Later, the Chinese admiral Zheng He (1371–1433) made seven voyages to Arabia, East Africa, India, Indonesia and Thailand.


title: Exploration

text: The Age of Discovery, also known as the Age of Exploration, is one of the most important periods of geographical exploration in human history. It started in the early 15th century and lasted until the 17th century. In that period, Europeans discovered and/or explored vast areas of the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. Portugal and Spain dominated the first stages of exploration, while other European nations followed, such as England, France, and the Netherlands.


title: Exploration

text: Important explorations during this period went to a number of continents and regions around the globe. In Africa, important explorers of this period include Diogo Cão (1452–1486), who discovered and ascended the Congo River and reached the coasts of present-day Angola and Namibia; and Bartolomeu Dias (1450–1500), the first European to reach the Cape of Good Hope and other parts of the South African coast.


title: Exploration

text: Explorers of routes from Europe towards Asia, the Indian Ocean, and the Pacific Ocean, include Vasco da Gama (1460–1524), a navigator who made the first trip from Europe to India and back by the Cape of Good Hope, discovering the ocean route to the East; Pedro Álvares Cabral (c. 1467/1468 – c. 1520), who, following the path of Vasco da Gama, claimed Brazil and led the first expedition that linked Europe, Africa, America, and Asia; Diogo Dias, who discovered the eastern coast of Madagascar and rounded the corner of Africa; explorers such as Diogo Fernandes Pereira and Pedro Mascarenhas (1470–1555), among others, who discovered and mapped the Mascarene Islands and other archipelagos.


title: Exploration

text: António de Abreu (1480–1514) and Francisco Serrão (14??–1521) led the first direct European fleet into the Pacific Ocean (on its western edges) and through the Sunda Islands, reaching the Moluccas. Andrés de Urdaneta (1498–1568) discovered the maritime route from Asia to the Americas.


title: Exploration

text: In the Pacific Ocean, Jorge de Menezes (1498–1537) reached New Guinea while García Jofre de Loaísa (1490–1526) reached the Marshall Islands.


title: Exploration

text: Explorations of the Americas began with the initial discovery of America by Christopher Columbus (1451–1506), who led a Castilian (Spanish) expedition across the Atlantic, discovering America. After the discovery of America by Columbus, a number of important expeditions were sent out to explore the Western Hemisphere. This included Juan Ponce de León (1474–1521), who discovered and mapped the coast of Florida; Vasco Núñez de Balboa (c. 1475–1519), who was the first European to view the Pacific Ocean from American shores (after crossing the Isthmus of Panama) confirming that America was a separate continent from Asia; Aleixo Garcia (14?–1527), who explored the territories of present-day southern Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia, crossing the Chaco and reaching the Andes (near Sucre).


title: Exploration

text: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (1490–1558) discovered the Mississippi River and was the first European to sail the Gulf of Mexico and cross Texas. Jacques Cartier (1491–1557) drew the first maps of part of central and maritime Canada; Francisco Vázquez de Coronado (1510–1554) discovered the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River; Francisco de Orellana (1511–1546) was the first European to navigate the length of the Amazon River.


title: Exploration

text: Ferdinand Magellan (1480–1521), was the first navigator to cross the Pacific Ocean, discovering the Strait of Magellan, the Tuamotus and Mariana Islands, and achieving a nearly complete circumnavigation of the Earth, in multiple voyages, for the first time. Juan Sebastián Elcano (1476–1526), completed the first global circumnavigation.


title: Exploration

text: In the second half of the 16th century and the 17th century exploration of Asia and the Pacific Ocean continued with explorers such as Andrés de Urdaneta (1498–1568), who discovered the maritime route from Asia to the Americas; Pedro Fernandes de Queirós (1565–1614), who discovered the Pitcairn Islands and the Vanuatu archipelago; Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira (1542–1595), who discovered the Tuvalu archipelago, the Marquesas, the Solomon Islands and Wake Island.


title: Exploration

text: Explorers of Australia included Willem Janszoon (1570–1630), who made the first recorded European landing in Australia; Yñigo Ortiz de Retez, who discovered and reached eastern and northern New Guinea; Luis Váez de Torres (1565–1613), who discovered the Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea; Abel Tasman (1603–1659), who explored North Australia, discovered Tasmania, New Zealand and Tongatapu.


title: Exploration

text: In North America, major explorers included Henry Hudson (1565–1611), who explored the Hudson Bay in Canada; Samuel de Champlain (1574–1635), who explored St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes (in Canada and northern United States); and René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (1643–1687), who explored the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada, and the entire length of the Mississippi River.


title: Exploration

text: Long after the Age of Discovery, other explorers "completed" the world map, such as various Russians explorers, reaching the Siberian Pacific coast and the Bering Strait, at the extreme edge of Asia and Alaska (North America); Vitus Bering (1681–1741) who in the service of the Russian Navy, explored the Bering Strait, the Bering Sea, the North American coast of Alaska, and some other northern areas of the Pacific Ocean; and James Cook, who explored the east coast of Australia, the Hawaiian Islands, and circumnavigated Antarctica.


title: Exploration

text: There were still significant explorations which occurred well into the modern age. This includes the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806), an overland expedition dispatched by President Thomas Jefferson to explore the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase and to find an interior aquatic route to the Pacific Ocean, along with other objectives to examine the flora and fauna of the continent. In 1818, the British researcher Sir John Ross was the first to find that the deep sea is inhabited by life when catching jellyfish and worms in about depth with a special device. The United States Exploring Expedition (1838–1842) was an expedition sent by President Andrew Jackson, in order to survey the Pacific Ocean and surrounding lands.


title: Exploration

text: The extreme conditions in the deep sea require elaborate methods and technologies to endure them. In the 20th century, deep-sea exploration advanced considerably through a series of technological inventions, ranging from the sonar system, which can detect the presence of objects underwater through the use of sound, to manned deep-diving submersibles. In 1960, Jacques Piccard and United States Navy Lieutenant Donald Walsh descended in the bathyscaphe "Trieste" into the deepest part of the world's oceans, the Mariana Trench. In 2018, , piloted by Victor Vescovo, completed the first mission to the deepest point of the Atlantic Ocean, diving below the ocean surface to the base of the Puerto Rico Trench. With the advent of satellite imagery and aviation, exploration of the surface of Earth has largely ceased, however the culture of many disconnected tribes still remain undocumented and left to be explored. Urban exploration is the exploration of manmade structures, usually abandoned ruins or hidden components of the manmade environment.


title: Exploration

text: Space exploration started in the 20th century with the invention of exo-atmospheric rockets. This has given humans the opportunity to travel to the Moon, and to send robotic explorers to other planets and far beyond.


title: Exploration

text: Both of the Voyager probes have left the Solar System, bearing imprinted gold discs with multiple data types.


title: Tony Costa

text: Antone Charles "Tony" Costa (August 2, 1944 – May 12, 1974) was an American serial killer and carpenter who achieved notoriety for committing serial murders in and around the Massachusetts town of Truro in 1969.


title: Tony Costa

text: Costa started committing violent crimes at a relatively early age, when in November 1961, at age 17, he was arrested and charged with burglary and assault after breaking into a house and attacking a teenage girl. He was sentenced to three years of probation and a one-year suspended sentence for the crime.


title: Tony Costa

text: In 1966, Costa picked up two women and promised to take them to Pennsylvania on his way to California. The women, Bonnie Williams and Diane Federoff, disappeared shortly after their encounter with Costa, and he told investigators that he had dropped them off in California. Costa was additionally thought to have murdered his girlfriend Barbara Spaulding in 1967 while he was living in California. However, Federoff, Williams and Spaulding were later found alive.


title: Tony Costa

text: The case gained international attention when district attorney Edmund Dinis, in comments to the media, claimed "The hearts of each girl had been removed from the bodies and were not in the graves…Each body was cut into as many parts as there are joints." Dinis also claimed that there were teeth marks found on the bodies. These claims produced a stream of national and international media outlets into local Provincetown, Massachusetts.


title: Tony Costa

text: The media attention was so great that Kurt Vonnegut (whose daughter Edith had met Costa) compared him to Jack the Ripper in an article in the July 25, 1969 issue of "Life Magazine", which was included in his collection of essays "Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons". Vonnegut maintained a correspondence with Costa. The author said, "The message of his letters to me was that a person as intent on being virtuous as he could not possibly have hurt a fly. He believed it."


title: Tony Costa

text: Costa was suspected of killing eight women: Diane Federoff, Bonnie Williams, Barbara Spaulding, Sydney Monson, Susan Perry, Christine Gallant, Patricia Walsh, and Mary Anne Wysocki but convicted of killing only two: Walsh and Wysocki. Although suspected of killing Federoff, Williams and Spaulding, those women were later found alive. On February 8, 1969, while looking for the bodies of Patricia Walsh and Mary Anne Wysocki, police discovered Susan Perry. Perry had been missing since the previous Labor Day.


title: Tony Costa

text: Perry's body had been cut into eight pieces. When Wysocki's body was found about a month later, her torso and head had been buried separately. Not long after, Walsh and the rest of Wysocki's body were found in a forest clearing that Costa had used for growing marijuana. This "garden" of marijuana plants and the greater case inspired the true crime book "In His Garden", by Leo Damore.


title: Tony Costa

text: Costa described the murders of Walsh and Wysocki in his unpublished novel, "Resurrection", written while he was in prison. In his account, Costa and a friend named "Cory" were out with the two women consuming LSD and Dilaudid. Cory then shot Walsh and Wysocki. Costa claimed he was able to subdue his friend and upon realizing that Mary Anne Wysocki was still alive used a knife to end her suffering. According to Costa, he and Cory buried the bodies.


title: Tony Costa

text: The novel also describes the deaths of Susan Perry and Sydney Monzon as due to drug overdoses. Costa claims it was "Carl", his alter-ego, who dismembered and buried their bodies and that he had no knowledge until after their deaths.


title: Tony Costa

text: On June 12, 1969, Costa was arraigned on charges of murder for three of the deaths. In May 1970, he was convicted of the murders of Mary Anne Wysocki and Patricia Walsh and sentenced to life in prison at Massachusetts' Walpole Correctional Institution. Four years after his incarceration, Costa committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell. In later years, his suicide was questioned as a possible murder.


title: Tony Costa

text: The case was covered by the popular true-crime show "Born to Kill?" in season six. The episode aired on television in 2014.


title: Tony Costa

text: In 2021, Liza Rodman wrote a book about her encounter with Costa during her childhood. He was her babysitter during summer break before the murders.


title: DxDiag

text: DxDiag ("DirectX Diagnostic Tool") is a diagnostics tool used to test DirectX functionality and troubleshoot video- or sound-related hardware problems. DirectX Diagnostic can save text files with the scan results. These files are often posted in tech forums or attached to support emails in order to give support personnel a better idea of the PC the requester is using in case the error is due to a hardware failure or incompatibility.


title: DxDiag

text: DxDiag is located in . Starting from Windows Vista, DxDiag only shows information; it is no longer possible to test the hardware and the various DirectX components.


title: DxDiag

text: The System tab displays the current DirectX version, the computer's hostname, the operating system's version, information on the system BIOS, and other data. The DirectX Files tab displays information about the versions of specific DirectX system files, which are portable executables or dynamic-link libraries (DLLs).


title: DxDiag

text: DxDiag displays information about the current display settings and the video hardware on the Display tab. If the computer has more than one monitor, then DxDiag will display a separate tab for each monitor. This tab can disable DirectDraw, Direct3D, and/or AGP Texture Acceleration for troubleshooting purposes. If the installed display driver has passed Windows Hardware Quality Labs testing, DxDiag will display this result on the right side of the window.


title: DxDiag

text: The Music tab displays information about the computer's MIDI settings, and lists different music-related software and hardware on your computer. The Input tab, displays information about input devices installed in the computer such as keyboards and mice. It will also attempt to detect problems with these devices. DxDiag also displays information about the installed DirectPlay Service Provider.


title: DxDiag

text: It is possible to create chat rooms with DxDiag that can be accessed by other computers, as long as anyone attempting to join knows the IP address of the host computer.


title: DxDiag

text: In Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows Vista x64 edition, Windows 7 x64 edition, Windows 8 x64 edition and Windows 10 x64 edition, two versions of DxDiag are included, a native 64-bit version and a 32-bit version. In Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows Vista x64 edition and Windows 7 x64 edition, the 32-bit version of DxDiag is run by default.


title: Red Rum

text: Red Rum (3 May 1965 – 18 October 1995) was a champion Thoroughbred steeplechaser. He achieved an unmatched historic treble when he won the Grand National in 1973, 1974 and 1977, and also came second in the two intervening years, 1975 and 1976. The Grand National is a notoriously difficult race that has been described as "the ultimate test of a horse’s courage". He was also renowned for his jumping ability, having not fallen in 100 races.


title: Red Rum

text: The 1973 race in which Red Rum secured his comeback victory from 30 lengths behind is often considered one of the greatest Grand Nationals in history. In a 2002 UK poll, Red Rum's historic third triumph in the Grand National was voted the 24th greatest sporting moment of all time.


title: Red Rum

text: Red Rum was bred at Rossenarra stud in Kells, County Kilkenny, Ireland, by Martyn McEnery. His sire was Quorum (1954–1971), and his dam Mared (1958–1976). Mared was a granddaughter of the broodmare Batika, whose other descendants have included the Irish 2000 Guineas winner Turtle Island. McEnery gave Red Rum his name by taking the last three letters of the names of his dam and sire, respectively. Bred to win one-mile races, Red Rum won his National titles over the longest distance, four miles and four furlongs. He started his career running in low-value races as a sprinter and dead-heated in his first race, a five-furlong flat race at Aintree Racecourse. He ran another seven times as a two-year-old, winning over 7f at Warwick, and over the same distance at Doncaster in the first of his two races as a three-year-old. In his early career, he was twice ridden by Lester Piggott. The comedian Lee Mack, then a stable boy, had his first riding lesson on Red Rum.


title: Red Rum

text: After being passed from training yard to training yard, he found his footing when Southport car dealer Ginger McCain bought him for his client Noel le Mare and famously trained the horse on the sands at Southport, England. Galloping through sea water may have proved highly beneficial to Red Rum’s hooves. McCain reportedly took Red Rum for a therapeutic swim in the sea off Southport before his first National appearances to help treat the horse's pedal osteitis, a debilitating, incurable bone disease in his hoof. McCain also won the Grand National in 2004 with Amberleigh House, 31 years after his first victory with Red Rum.


title: Red Rum

text: At the 1973 Grand National, Red Rum beat the Australian chaser Crisp, which was carrying 23 pounds more, in a new record time of nine minutes, 1.9 seconds. Crisp led the field virtually all the way in that year's National in which he was 30 lengths clear, and at the last fence was 15 lengths clear of Red Rum, his nearest pursuer. Red Rum and jockey Brian Fletcher, however, made up the ground on the final stretch and, two strides from the finishing post, pipped the tiring Crisp to win by three-quarters of a length in what is often considered one of the greatest Grand Nationals in history. Crisp's jockey Richard Pitman later stated: "I still dream about that race, of Crisp running so strongly and jumping so fearlessly, and then the sound of Red Rum's hooves as he got closer and closer at the end." He added: "I felt as though I was tied to a railway line with an express train thundering up and being unable to jump out of the way." A year later, Red Rum retained his title at the 1974 National, carrying 12 stone. (He followed that with victory in the Scottish Grand National, and remains the only horse to win both in the same season.)


title: Red Rum

text: Red Rum came second in 1975 and 1976; Tommy Stack replaced Fletcher as jockey in the last race after Fletcher angered trainer Ginger McCain by telling the press the horse no longer felt right after a defeat in a race away from Aintree. Again, Red Rum saved his best for Aintree but was held off by Rag Trade. The following year, Stack rode the 12-year-old Red Rum to his record third Grand National triumph, in what is regarded as one of the greatest moments in horse racing history.


title: Red Rum

text: Red Rum was prepared for a sixth attempt at the Grand National the season following his 1977 win, but suffered a hairline fracture in the lead up to the 1978 race. Following a canter at Aintree Racecourse the day before the 1978 Grand National he was retired. The news of Red Rum's retirement was the lead story on that night's 9 O'Clock News on BBC1 and was also front page news of the following morning's newspapers.


title: Red Rum

text: Red Rum had become a national celebrity, opening supermarkets and annually leading the Grand National parade for many further years. His likeness graced playing cards, mugs, posters, models, paintings, plates and jigsaw puzzles. Several books have been written about Red Rum by his trainer, sculptor, jockeys and author Ivor Herbert; a children's story about his life was also written by Christine Pemberton. The horse helped open the "Steeplechase" rollercoaster at Blackpool Pleasure Beach in 1977. He also switched on the Blackpool Illuminations that year. In 1975, a song entitled "Red Rum" was issued as a tribute to him by a group named Chaser, on Polydor 2058 564. It was written by Steve Jolley, Richard Palmer and Tony Swain. In 2010 the name of the racecourse bar, formerly called "The Sefton", was changed to "The Red Rum".


title: Red Rum

text: In 1977 Red Rum appeared as a studio guest at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards ceremony. Viewers were delighted when the horse seemed to recognise the voice of his jockey Tommy Stack, who was appearing by video link from another location.


title: Red Rum

text: Red Rum died on 18 October 1995, aged 30. His death was one of the lead items in television news bulletins and also made the front pages of national newspapers the next day.


title: Red Rum

text: He was buried at the winning post of the Aintree Racecourse, which is still a destination for his fans. The epitaph reads "Respect this place / this hallowed ground / a legend here / his rest has found / his feet would fly / our spirits soar / he earned our love for evermore".


title: Red Rum

text: Eleven years after his death, a survey found he remained the best-known racehorse in the UK. When asked to name an equine animal, Red Rum was named by 45% of Britons, with Black Beauty (from Anna Sewell's novel) in second with 33%. In 2002 the UK public voted Red Rum's third Grand National win #24 in the list of the 100 Greatest Sporting Moments.


title: Red Rum

text: In the early 1970s, the future running of the Grand National was uncertain. The emergence of Red Rum and his historic triumphs captivated the nation, and ensured huge public support for the fund to buy Aintree and put it in the hands of the Jockey Club.


title: Check kiting

text: Check kiting or cheque kiting (see spelling differences) is a form of check fraud, involving taking advantage of the float to make use of non-existent funds in a checking or other bank account. In this way, instead of being used as a negotiable instrument, checks are misused as a form of unauthorized credit.


title: Check kiting

text: Kiting is commonly defined as intentionally writing a check for a value greater than the account balance from an account in one bank, then writing a check from another account in another bank, also with non-sufficient funds, with the second check serving to cover the non-existent funds from the first account. The purpose of check kiting is to falsely inflate the balance of a checking account in order to allow written checks to clear that would otherwise bounce. If the account is "not" planned to be replenished, then the fraud is colloquially known as "paper hanging". If writing a check with insufficient funds is done with the expectation they will be covered by payday it is called playing the float.


title: Check kiting

text: Some forms of check fraud involve the use of a second bank or a third party, often a place of retail, in order to delay the absence of funds in a transactional account on the day the check is due to clear at the bank. Such acts are frequently committed by bankrupt or temporarily unemployed individuals or small businesses seeking emergency loans, by start-up businesses or other struggling businesses seeking interest-free financing while intending to make good on their balances, or by pathological gamblers who have the expectation of depositing funds upon winning. It has also been used by those who have some genuine funds in interest-bearing accounts, but who artificially inflate their balances to increase the interest paid by their banks. Criminals have taken advantage of the check float to pass fraudulent checks through solicited users of online auctions.


title: Check kiting

text: The term "check kiting" first came into use in the 1920s. It stemmed from a 19th-century practice of issuing IOUs and bonds with zero collateral. That practice became known as flying a kite, as there was nothing to support the loan besides air.


title: Check kiting

text: "Circular kiting" describes forms of kiting in which one or more additional banks serve as the location of float, and involve the use of multiple accounts at different banks. In its simplest form, the kiter, who has two or more accounts at different banks, writes a check on day one to themselves from Bank A to Bank B (this check is referred to as the "kite"), so funds become available that day at Bank B sufficient for all checks due to clear. On the following business day, the kiter writes a check on their Bank B account to themselves and deposits it into his account at Bank A to provide artificial funds allowing the check they wrote a day earlier to clear. This cycle repeats until the offender is caught, or until the offender deposits genuine funds, thereby eliminating the need to kite, and usually going unnoticed.


title: Check kiting

text: Complex versions of this scheme have occurred involving two separate people, each with an account at a different bank, constantly writing checks to one another, or a group of individuals writing checks circularly, thereby making detection more difficult. Some kiting rings involve offenders posing as large businesses, thereby masking their activity as normal business transactions and making banks inclined to waive the limit of funds made available.


title: Check kiting

text: Retail-based kiting involves the use of a party other than a bank to unknowingly provide temporary funds to an account holder lacking funds needed for check to clear. In these cases, the kiter writes check(s) to one or more places of retail (usually supermarket(s)) that offer cash back in addition to the amount of a purchase as a courtesy to their patrons. Following the transaction, the kiter deposits the cash received back into his/her bank on the same day in order to provide sufficient funds for other check to clear, while the check written that day will clear one or more business days later. This action is repeated as necessary until legitimate funds can be deposited into the account.


title: Check kiting

text: For example, suppose an individual has $10 in a bank account and no cash, but wishes to purchase an item costing $100. Here is how the fraud could be accomplished:


title: Check kiting

text: The principle basis of retail kiting is that by giving "cash" (which is "immediately" available, and whose deposits clear faster than checks do) in exchange for a check, the retail establishment is providing check-cashing services and taking credit risk on the check – it may be dishonored.


title: Check kiting

text: Another version of this scheme involves purchasing an item from a place of retail with a check, and returning it promptly for a cash refund, followed by depositing that cash into the transactional account. This is more difficult these days, as more places of retail will delay a refund on purchases made by check.


title: Check kiting

text: Retail kiting is more common in suburban areas, where multiple supermarket chains exist within proximity. While it is more difficult to detect and prosecute, it involves lesser amounts of cash than circular kiting, and therefore is a lower threat.


title: Check kiting

text: Corporate kiting involves the use of a large kiting scheme involving perhaps millions of dollars to secretly borrow money or earn interest. While limits are often placed on an individual as to how much money can be deposited without a temporary hold, corporations may be granted immediate access to funds, which can make the scheme go unnoticed. This was the case with E. F. Hutton & Co. in the early 1980s.


title: Check kiting

text: Check kiting is illegal in many countries. However, most countries do not have a float system and checks are not paid until they are cleared, so check kiting is impossible.


title: Check kiting

text: According to the United States Department of Justice, check kiting can be prosecuted under several existing laws including those against bank fraud (), misapplication (), or required entries (). It can draw a fine of up to $1,000,000.00, imprisonment for up to 30 years, or both, and many first-time offenders with no criminal background have received stiff sentences. In addition to the federal penalties, state law often provides for alternate civil and criminal consequences.


title: Check kiting

text: Although the United States prosecutes some paper hangers under federal law, most issuance of bad checks in the United States is prosecuted as a state offense.


title: Check kiting

text: Laws vary from state to state, but one example is Ohio Revised Code 2913.11(2)(B), which states: "No person, with purpose to defraud, shall issue or transfer or cause to be issued or transferred a check or other negotiable instrument, knowing that it will be dishonored or knowing that a person has ordered or will order stop payment on the check or other negotiable instrument". Ordinarily, passing a bad check in Ohio is a misdemeanor, but large checks or multiple checks within a six-month period aggregating to large amounts make it a 5th-, 4th-, or 3rd-degree felony, depending on the amounts involved.


title: Check kiting

text: Some states protect the careless by making the intent to defraud an element of the crime, or exempting from punishment those that pay the check later. For example, Indiana's check deception statute states that it is a defense if the person issuing the check "pays the payee or holder the amount due, together with protest fees and any service fee or charge, ... within ten (10) days after the date of mailing by the payee or holder of notice to the person that the check, draft, or order has not been paid by the credit institution." Furthermore, it is not a crime if "the payee or holder knows that the person has insufficient funds to ensure payment or that the check, draft, or order is postdated", or "insufficiency of funds or credit results from an adjustment to the person's account by the credit institution without notice to the person."


title: Momo (novel)

text: Momo, also known as The Grey Gentlemen or The Men in Grey, is a fantasy novel by Michael Ende, published in 1973. It is about the concept of time and how it is used by humans in modern societies. The full title in German ("Momo oder Die seltsame Geschichte von den Zeit-Dieben und von dem Kind, das den Menschen die gestohlene Zeit zurückbrachte") translates to "Momo, or the strange story of the time-thieves and the child who brought the stolen time back to the people". The book won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1974.


title: Momo (novel)

text: In the ruins of an amphitheatre just outside an unnamed city lives Momo, a little girl of mysterious origin. She came to the ruin, parentless and wearing a long, used coat. She is illiterate and cannot count, and she doesn't know how old she is. When asked, she replies, "As far as I remember, I've always been around." She is remarkable in the neighbourhood because she has the extraordinary ability to listen—really listen. By simply being with people and listening to them, she can help them find answers to their problems, make up with each other, and think of fun games. The advice given to people "go and see Momo!" has become a household phrase and Momo makes many friends, especially an honest, silent street-cleaner, Beppo, and a poetic, extroverted tour guide, Gigi (Guido in some translations).


title: Momo (novel)

text: This pleasant atmosphere is spoiled by the arrival of the Men in Grey, eventually revealed as a species of paranormal parasites stealing the time of humans. Appearing in the form of grey-clad, grey-skinned, bald men, these strange individuals present themselves as representing the Timesavings Bank and promote the idea of "timesaving" among the population: supposedly, time can be deposited in the Bank and returned to the client later with interest. After encountering the Men in Grey, people are made to forget all about them, but not about the resolution to save as much time as possible for later use. Gradually, the sinister influence of the Men in Grey affects the whole city: life becomes sterile, devoid of all things considered time-wasting, like social activities, recreation, art, imagination, or sleeping. Buildings and clothing are made exactly the same for everyone, and the rhythms of life become hectic. In reality, the more time people save, the less they have; the time they save is actually lost to them. Instead, it is consumed by the Men in Grey in the form of cigars made from the dried petals of the hour-lilies that represent time. Without these cigars, the Men in Grey cannot exist.


title: Momo (novel)

text: Momo, however, is a wrench in the plans of the Men in Grey and the Timesavings Bank, thanks to her special personality. The Men in Grey try various plans to deal with her, to derail her from stopping their scheme, but they all fail. When even her closest friends fall under the influence of the Men in Grey in one way or another, Momo's only hope to save the time of mankind are the administrator of Time, Master Secundus Minutus Hora, and Cassiopeia, a tortoise who can communicate through writing on her shell and can see thirty minutes into the future. Momo's adventure takes her from the depths of her heart, which her own time flows from in the form of hour-lilies, to the lair of the Men in Grey themselves, where the time that people believe they are saving is hoarded.


title: Momo (novel)

text: After Master Hora stops time, but gives Momo a one hour-lily to carry with her, she has exactly one hour to defeat the Men in Grey in a frozen world where only they and she are still moving. She surreptitiously follows them to their underground lair and observes as they decimate their own number in order to stretch their supply of time as far as possible. With the advice of Cassiopeia and by using the hour-lily, Momo is able to shut the door to their vault. Facing extinction as soon as their cigars are consumed, the few remaining Men in Grey pursue Momo, perishing one by one. The last Man in Grey finally begs her to give him the hour-lily, and when she refuses, he too vanishes remarking that "it is good it is over".


title: Momo (novel)

text: Using the last minute she has before her hour-lily crumbles, Momo opens the vault again, releasing the millions of hour-lilies stored within. The stolen time returns to its proper owners and goes back to their hearts, causing time to start again (without people knowing it had ever halted). Momo is reunited with her friends, and elsewhere Master Hora rejoices together with Cassiopeia.


title: Momo (novel)

text: The main theme of "Momo" can be seen as a criticism of consumerism and stress. It describes the personal and social losses produced by unnecessary consumption, and the danger to be driven by a hidden interest group with enough power to induce people into this life style. Michael Ende has also stated to have had the concept of currency demurrage in mind when writing "Momo".


title: Momo (novel)

text: Childhood is also an important subject in many of Ende's books. In "Momo" it is used to offer contrast with the adult society. As children have "all the time in the world", they are a difficult target for the Men in Grey: children can't be convinced that their games are time-wasting. The author uses a mockery of Barbie dolls and other expensive toys as symbols to show how anyone can be persuaded, even indirectly, into consumerism.


title: Momo (novel)

text: Robert N. Peck described that "Momo" has five principle elements: taking time, listening, imagining, persons and music.


title: Momo (novel)

text: An article by philosopher David Loy and literature professor Linda Goodhew called "Momo" "one of the most remarkable novels of the late twentieth century". They further state that: "One of the most amazing things about "Momo" is that it was published in 1973. Since then, the temporal nightmare it depicts has become our reality."


title: Momo (novel)

text: Ende himself has said that ""Momo" is a tribute of gratitude to Italy and also a declaration of love," indicating that the author idealized the Italian way of life. Loy and Goodhew suggested that Ende's perspective on time coincided with his interest in Buddhism and that for example the deliberately slow character of Beppo might be regarded as a Zen master, even though Ende wrote the book long before his visits to Japan.


title: Momo (novel)

text: When the book was published in the U.S. in 1985, Natalie Babbit from the "Washington Post" commented: "Is it a children's book? Not here in America." "Momo" was republished by Puffin Press on January 19, 2009.


title: Momo (novel)

text: Then Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland, in his New Year Address to the nation on January 1, 1997, referenced Ende's book and its plot: "People are persuaded to save time by eliminating everything not useful. One of the people so influenced cuts out his girlfriend, sells his pet, stops singing, reading and visiting friends. In this way he will supposedly become an efficient man getting something out of life. What is strange is that he is in a greater hurry than ever. The saved-up time disappears - and he never sees it again." Prime Minister Jagland went on to say that to many people, "time" has become the scarcest resource of all, contrary to their attempt at saving as much of it as possible.


title: Momo (novel)

text: Momo has been translated into various languages including Arabic, Asturian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, Galician, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Mongolian, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Thai, Vietnamese and Sinhalese.


title: Momo (novel)

text: The original English translation "The Grey Gentlemen" by Frances Lobb was published in 1974. A new English translation, "Momo", was published in 1984. A newly translated, newly illustrated U.S. edition was released by McSweeney's in August 2013, in celebration of the book's fortieth anniversary. The McSweeney edition was scheduled for a new release in January 2017. However, some illustrations (created by Marcel Dzama) in the McSweeney release, such as Momo's appearance, do not conform to the text in the book.


title: Momo (novel)

text: The Spanish translation "Momo, o la extraña historia de los ladrones del tiempo y la niña que devolvió el tiempo a los hombres" was made by Susana Constante in 1978 for Ediciones Alfaguara: it was a great success in Spain and Latin America, having dozens of reprints since.


title: Momo (novel)

text: The Persian translation was published several times (first time in 1988) by Zarrin Publishers in Tehran. At the time of publication, it enjoyed great popularity in Iran, but due to the absence of any new printings since 1992, it is now inaccessible to the Iranian children. This, along with a stop in publishing other children's books by German and other European writers, is part of an ongoing trend in publishing American and English children's fiction in Iran.


title: Save Ralph

text: Save Ralph is a stop motion mockumentary animated short film written and directed by Spencer Susser. It stars Taika Waititi, Ricky Gervais, Zac Efron, Olivia Munn, Pom Klementieff, Tricia Helfer, and Rodrigo Santoro. The plot follows an interview with Ralph (Waititi), a rabbit who details his life as he is used for animal testing and the damages it has caused to his body. Produced by Jeff Vespa, the 4-minute short film was released by Humane Society International on April 6, 2021, to critical acclaim.


title: Save Ralph

text: Ralph is a rabbit. Speaking with Humane Society International for a documentary, he talks about his life as a "tester" for cosmetic products. Ralph tells the production crew how he is blind in one eye and partially deaf. While preparing for work, Ralph explains with a sad tone how he does not necessarily care about his life, as he feels sacrificing his body to help humans is worth it. At a laboratory, Ralph's rabbit friends beg for the production crew to free them from their trials as Ralph is injected with an unknown chemical into his only working eye. Now completely blind and visibly in pain, Ralph says his final remarks; without animal testing, he would be out in a field "like a normal rabbit". As the video ends, Ralph gives a worried thumbs-up towards the camera, claiming "It's all good".


title: Save Ralph

text: In the Spanish and French dubs, George Lopez and Pom Klementieff lend their voices as Ralph respectively. Additionally, Santoro, Wilmer Valderrama, Denis Villeneuve, and Rosario Dawson also appear in the Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Vietnamese iterations.


title: Save Ralph

text: The animated project "Save Ralph" was announced on March 24, 2021, "conceived as part of the #SaveRalph campaign", in an effort from Humane Society International to ban animal testing around the world. That same day, a teaser video for the short film was released, with actor Taika Waititi sharing the official promotional poster for the film and writing on Twitter that the project was "a cool thing that is coming soon. If you don't watch it and love it then you hate animals and we can't be friends anymore. #SaveRalph".


title: Save Ralph

text: The models of each character were hand-made and created by puppet maker Andy Gent from Arch Model Studio, who said that the process of creating Ralph took over four months and covering him in fur took five weeks. On producing the short film, Jeff Vespa said he wanted to create a project where people would want to watch and learn about the dangers of animal testing, deciding an animated film would be the best approach. In casting an actor to portray Ralph, Spencer said the first person he contacted was Waititi, who quickly agreed to star. Filming for the short took place over 50 days, with each day accounting for the making of approximately four seconds of the film.


title: Save Ralph

text: Upon its release, "Save Ralph" was met with critical acclaim. From "/Film", Ben Pearson praised the high level of detail in the short and compared the characters designs to those in the 2009 film "Fantastic Mr. Fox", writing that the film was "disturbing and heartbreaking and manipulative and powerful, all at the same time." Josh Weiss, writing for "Syfy Wire", gave positive remarks to the voice acting and humor, stating that "Waititi once again proves that he is among the most prolific entertainers working today". For "Animation Magazine", Mercedes Milligan complimented the story's main message and referred to the short itself as "powerful".


title: Hayabusa

text: "Hayabusa", formerly known as MUSES-C for Mu Space Engineering Spacecraft C, was launched on 9 May 2003 and rendezvoused with Itokawa in mid-September 2005. After arriving at Itokawa, "Hayabusa" studied the asteroid's shape, spin, topography, color, composition, density, and history. In November 2005, it landed on the asteroid and collected samples in the form of tiny grains of asteroidal material, which were returned to Earth aboard the spacecraft on 13 June 2010.


title: Hayabusa

text: Other spacecraft, notably "Galileo" and "NEAR Shoemaker" (both launched by NASA), had visited asteroids before, but the "Hayabusa" mission was the first attempt to return an asteroid sample to Earth for analysis.


title: Hayabusa

text: In addition, "Hayabusa" was the first spacecraft designed to deliberately land on an asteroid and then take off again ("NEAR Shoemaker" made a controlled descent to the surface of 433 Eros in 2000, but it was not designed as a lander and was eventually deactivated after it arrived). Technically, "Hayabusa" was not designed to "land"; it simply touches the surface with its sample capturing device and then moves away. However, it was the first craft designed from the outset to make physical contact with the surface of an asteroid. Junichiro Kawaguchi of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science was appointed to be the leader of the mission.


title: Hayabusa

text: Despite its designer's intention of a momentary contact, "Hayabusa" did land and sit on the asteroid surface for about 30 minutes (see timeline below).


title: Hayabusa

text: The "Hayabusa" spacecraft was launched on 9 May 2003 at 04:29:25 UTC on an M-V rocket from the Uchinoura Space Center (still called Kagoshima Space Center at that time). Following launch, the spacecraft's name was changed from the original MUSES-C to "Hayabusa", the Japanese word for falcon. The spacecraft's xenon ion engines (four separate units), operating near-continuously for two years, slowly moved "Hayabusa" toward a September 2005 rendezvous with Itokawa. As it arrived, the spacecraft did not go into orbit around the asteroid, but remained in a station-keeping heliocentric orbit close by.


title: Hayabusa

text: "Hayabusa" surveyed the asteroid surface from a distance of about 20 km (13.7 mi), (the "gate position"). After this the spacecraft moved closer to the surface (the "home position"), and then approached the asteroid for a series of soft landings and for the collection of samples at a safe site. Autonomous optical navigation was employed extensively during this period because the long communication delay prohibits Earth-based real-time commanding. At the second "Hayabusa" touched down with its deployable collection horn, the spacecraft was programmed to fire tiny projectiles at the surface and then collect the resulting spray. Some tiny specks were collected by the spacecraft for analysis back on Earth.


title: Hayabusa

text: After a few months in proximity to the asteroid, the spacecraft was scheduled to fire its engines to begin its cruise back to Earth. This maneuver was delayed due to problems with attitude control (orientation) and the thrusters of the craft. Once it was on its return trajectory, the re-entry capsule was released from the main spacecraft three hours before reentry, and the capsule coasted on a ballistic trajectory, re-entering the Earth's atmosphere at 13:51, 13 June 2010 UTC. It is estimated that the capsule experienced peak deceleration of about 25 G and heating rates approximately 30 times those experienced by the Apollo spacecraft. It landed via parachute near Woomera, Australia.


title: Hayabusa

text: In relation to the mission profile, JAXA defined the following success criteria and corresponding scores for major milestones in the mission prior to the launch of the "Hayabusa" spacecraft. As it shows, the "Hayabusa" spacecraft is a platform for testing new technology and the primary objective of the "Hayabusa" project is the world's first implementation of microwave discharge ion engines. Hence 'operation of ion engines for more than 1000 hours' is an achievement that gives a full score of 100 points, and the rest of the milestones are a series of world's first-time experiments built on it.


title: Hayabusa

text: "Hayabusa" carried a tiny mini-lander (weighing only , and approximately tall by in diameter) named ""MINERVA"" (short for "MI"cro-"N"ano "E"xperimental "R"obot "V"ehicle for the "A"steroid). An error during deployment resulted in the craft's failure.


title: Hayabusa

text: This solar-powered vehicle was designed to take advantage of Itokawa's very low gravity by using an internal flywheel assembly to hop across the surface of the asteroid, relaying images from its cameras to "Hayabusa" whenever the two spacecraft were in sight of one another.


title: Hayabusa

text: MINERVA was deployed on 12 November 2005. The lander release command was sent from Earth, but before the command could arrive, "Hayabusa"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s altimeter measured its distance from Itokawa to be and thus started an automatic altitude keeping sequence. As a result, when the MINERVA release command arrived, MINERVA was released while the probe was ascending and at a higher altitude than intended, so that it escaped Itokawa's gravitational pull and tumbled into space.


title: Hayabusa

text: Had it been successful, MINERVA would have been the first hopping space rover. The Soviet mission "Phobos 2" also encountered a malfunction while attempting to deploy a hopping rover.


title: Hayabusa

text: Scientists' current understanding of asteroids depends greatly on meteorite samples, but it is very difficult to match up meteorite samples with the exact asteroids from which they came. "Hayabusa" will help solve this problem by bringing back pristine samples from a specific, well-characterized asteroid. "Hayabusa" bridged the gap between ground observation data of asteroids and laboratory analysis of meteorite and cosmic dust collections. Also comparing the data from the onboard instruments of the "Hayabusa" with the data from the "NEAR Shoemaker" mission will put the knowledge on a wider level.


title: Hayabusa

text: The "Hayabusa" mission has a very deep engineering importance for JAXA, too. It allowed JAXA to further test its technologies in the fields of ion engines, autonomous and optical navigation, deep space communication, and close movement on objects with low gravity among others. Second, since it was the first-ever preplanned soft contact with the surface of an asteroid (the "NEAR Shoemaker" landing on 433 Eros was not preplanned) it has enormous influence on further asteroid missions.


title: Hayabusa

text: The asteroid exploration mission by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) originated in 1986–1987 when the scientists investigated the feasibility of a sample return mission to Anteros and concluded that the technology was not yet developed. Between 1987 and 1994, joint ISAS / NASA group studied several missions: an asteroid rendezvous mission later became NEAR, and a comet sample return mission later became Stardust.


title: Hayabusa

text: In 1995, ISAS selected asteroid sample return as an engineering demonstration mission, MUSES-C, and the MUSES-C project started in fiscal year 1996. Asteroid Nereus was the first choice of target, 1989 ML was the secondary choice. In early development phase, Nereus was considered out of reach and 1989 ML became the primary target. A launch failure of M-V in July 2000 forced MUSES-C's launch to be delayed from July 2002 to November/December, putting both Nereus and 1989 ML out of reach. As a result, the target asteroid was changed to . In 2002, launch was postponed from December 2002 to May 2003 to recheck O-rings of reaction control system since one of it was found using different material than specified. On 9 May 2003 04:29:25 UTC, MUSES-C was launched by a M-V rocket, and the probe was named ""Hayabusa"".


title: Hayabusa

text: Asteroids are named by their discoverer. ISAS asked LINEAR, the discoverer of , to offer the name after Hideo Itokawa, and on 6 August, Minor Planet Circular reported that the target asteroid was named "Itokawa".


title: Hayabusa

text: On 31 March 2004, ion thruster operation was stopped to prepare for the Earth swing-by. Last maneuver operation before swing-by on 12 May. On 19 May, "Hayabusa" performed Earth swing-by. On 27 May, ion thruster operation was started again.


title: Hayabusa

text: On 18 February 2005, "Hayabusa" passed aphelion at 1.7 AU. On 31 July, the X-axis reaction wheel failed. On 14 August, "Hayabusa"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s first image of Itokawa was released. The picture was taken by the star tracker and shows a point of light, believed to be the asteroid, moving across the starfield. Other images were taken from 22 to 24 August. On 28 August, "Hayabusa" was switched over from the ion engines to the bi-propellant thrusters for orbital maneuvering. From 4 September, "Hayabusa"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s cameras were able to confirm Itokawa's elongated shape. From 11 September, individual hills were discerned on the asteroid. On 12 September, "Hayabusa" was from Itokawa and JAXA scientists announced that "Hayabusa" had officially "arrived".


title: Hayabusa

text: On 15 September 2005, a 'color' image of the asteroid was released (which is, however, grey in coloring). On 4 October, JAXA announced that the spacecraft had successfully moved to its 'Home Position' 7 km from Itokawa. Closeup pictures were released. It was also announced that the spacecraft's second reaction wheel, governing the Y-axis, had failed, and that the craft was now being pointed by its rotation thrusters. On 3 November, "Hayabusa" took station 3.0 km from Itokawa. It then began its descent, planned to include delivery of a target marker, and release of the Minerva minilander. The descent went well initially, and navigation images with wide-angle cameras were obtained. However, at 01:50 UTC ( JST) on 4 November, it was announced that due to a detection of an anomalous signal at the Go/NoGo decision, the descent, including release of Minerva and the target marker had been canceled. The project manager, Junichiro Kawaguchi, explained that the optical navigation system was not tracking the asteroid very well, probably caused by the complex shape of Itokawa. A delay of a few days was required to evaluate the situation and reschedule.


title: Hayabusa

text: On 7 November, "Hayabusa" was 7.5 km from Itokawa. On 9 November, "Hayabusa" performed a descent to to test the landing navigation and the laser altimeter. After that, "Hayabusa" backed off to a higher position, then descended again to and released one of the target markers into space to test the craft's ability to track it (this was confirmed). From analysis of the closeup images, the Woomera Desert site (Point B) was found to be too rocky to be suitable for landing. The Muses Sea site (Point A) was selected as the landing site, for both first and, if possible, second landings.


title: Hayabusa

text: On 12 November, "Hayabusa" closed in to from the asteroid's surface. MINERVA was released but due to an error failed to reach the surface. On 19 November, "Hayabusa" landed on the asteroid. There was considerable confusion during and after the maneuver about precisely what had happened, because the high-gain antenna of the probe could not be used during final phase of touch-down, as well as the blackout during handover of ground station antenna from DSN to Usuda station. It was initially reported that "Hayabusa" had stopped at approximately 10 meters from the surface, hovering for 30 minutes for unknown reasons. Ground control sent a command to abort and ascend, and by the time the communication was regained, the probe had moved 100 km away from the asteroid. The probe had entered into a safe mode, slowly spinning to stabilize attitude control. However, after regaining control and communication with the probe, the data from the landing attempt were downloaded and analyzed, and on 23 November, JAXA announced that the probe had indeed landed on the asteroid's surface. Unfortunately, the sampling sequence was not triggered since a sensor detected an obstacle during descent; the probe tried to abort the landing, but since its orientation was not appropriate for ascent, it chose instead a safe descent mode. This mode did not permit a sample to be taken, but there is a high probability that some dust may have whirled up into the sampling horn when it touched the asteroid, so the sample canister currently attached to the sampling horn was sealed.


title: Hayabusa

text: On 25 November, a second touchdown attempt was performed. It was initially thought that this time, the sampling device was activated; however, later analysis decided that this was probably another failure and that no pellets were fired. Due to a leak in the thruster system, the probe was put in a "safe hold mode".


title: Hayabusa

text: On 27 November, the probe experienced a power outage when trying to reorient the spacecraft, probably due to a fuel leakage. On 30 November, JAXA announced that control and communication with "Hayabusa" had been restored, but a problem remained with the craft's reaction control system, perhaps involving a frozen pipe. Mission control was working to resolve the problem before the craft's upcoming launch window for return to Earth. On 2 December, an attitude (orientation) correction was attempted, but the thruster did not generate enough force. On 3 December, the probe's Z-axis was found to be 20 to 30 degrees from the Sun direction and increasing. On 4 December, as an emergency measure, xenon propellant from the ion engines was blown to correct the spin, and it was confirmed successful. On 5 December, attitude control was corrected enough to regain communication through the medium gain antenna. Telemetry was obtained and analyzed. As the result of telemetry analysis, it was found that there was a strong possibility that the sampler projectile had not penetrated when it landed on 25 November. Due to the power outage, the telemetry log data was faulty. On 6 December, "Hayabusa" was 550 km from Itokawa. JAXA held a press conference about the situation so far.


title: Hayabusa

text: On 8 December, a sudden orientation change was observed, and communication with "Hayabusa" was lost. It was thought likely that the turbulence was caused by evaporation of 8 or 10cc of leaked fuel. This forced a wait of a month or two for "Hayabusa" to stabilize by conversion of precession to pure rotation, after which the rotation axis needed to be directed toward the Sun and Earth within a specific angular range. The probability of achieving this was estimated at 60% by December 2006, 70% by spring 2007.


title: Hayabusa

text: On 7 March 2006, JAXA announced that communication with "Hayabusa" had been recovered in the following stages: On 23 January, the beacon signal from the probe was detected. On 26 January, the probe responded to commands from ground control by changing the beacon signal. On 6 February, an ejection of xenon propellant was commanded for attitude control to improve communication. The spin axis change rate was about two degrees per day. On 25 February, telemetry data was obtained through the low-gain antenna. On 4 March, telemetry data was obtained through the medium-gain antenna. On 6 March, "Hayabusa"'s position was established at about 13,000 km ahead of Itokawa in its orbit with a relative speed of per second.


title: Hayabusa

text: On 1 June, "Hayabusa" project manager Junichiro Kawaguchi reported that they confirmed two out of four ion engines were working normally, which would have been sufficient for the return journey. On 30 January 2007, JAXA reported that 7 out of 11 batteries were working and the return capsule was sealed. On 25 April, JAXA reported that "Hayabusa" started the return journey. On 29 August, it was announced that Ion Engine C onboard Hayabusa, in addition to B and D, had been successfully re-ignited. On 29 October, JAXA reported that the first phase of trajectory maneuver operation had finished and the spacecraft was now put in a spin-stabilized state. On 4 February 2009, JAXA reported success in reignition of the ion engines and starting the second phase of the trajectory correction maneuver to return to Earth. On 4 November 2009, the ion engine D automatically stopped working due to an anomaly from degradation.


title: Hayabusa

text: On 19 November 2009, JAXA announced that they managed to combine the ion generator of ion engine B and the neutralizer of ion engine A. It was suboptimal but expected to be sufficient to generate the necessary delta-v. Out of delta-v necessary to return to the Earth, about had been performed already, and about were still necessary. On 5 March 2010, "Hayabusa" was on a trajectory that would have passed within the lunar orbit. Ion engine operation was suspended to measure the precise trajectory in preparation to perform Trajectory Correction Maneuver 1 to the Earth-rim trajectory. On 27 March, 06:17 UTC, "Hayabusa" was on a trajectory which would pass 20,000 km from Earth center, completing the orbit transfer operation from Itokawa to Earth. By 6 April, the first stage of Trajectory Correction Maneuver (TCM-0) which led to a rough Earth rim trajectory was completed. It was planned to be 60 days until reentry. By 4 May, the probe completed its TCM-1 maneuver to align precisely to the Earth rim trajectory. On 22 May, TCM-2 started, continued for about 92.5 hours, and finished on 26 May. It was followed by TCM-3 from 3 through 5 June to change the trajectory from the Earth rim to Woomera, South Australia, TCM-4 was performed on 9 June for about 2.5 hours for a precision descent to Woomera Prohibited Area.


title: Hayabusa

text: The reentry capsule and the spacecraft reentered Earth's atmosphere on 13 June 2010 at 13:51 UTC (23:21 local). The heat-shielded capsule made a parachute landing in the South Australian outback while the spacecraft broke up and incinerated in a large fireball.


title: Hayabusa

text: An international team of scientists observed the 12.2 km/s entry of the capsule from 11.9 km (39,000 ft) on board NASA's DC-8 airborne laboratory, using a wide array of imaging and spectrographic cameras to measure the physical conditions during atmospheric reentry in a mission led by NASA's Ames Research Center, with Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute as the project scientist.


title: Hayabusa

text: Since the reaction control system no longer functioned, the space probe re-entered the Earth's atmosphere similar to the approach of an asteroid along with the sample re-entry capsule, and, as mission scientists expected, the majority of the spacecraft disintegrated upon entry.


title: Hayabusa

text: The return capsule was predicted to land in a by area in the Woomera Prohibited Area, South Australia. Four ground teams surrounded this area and located the re-entry capsule by optical observation and a radio beacon. Then a team on board a helicopter was dispatched. They located the capsule and recorded its position with GPS. The capsule was successfully retrieved at 07:08 UTC (16:38 local) of 14 June 2010. The two parts of the heat shield, which were jettisoned during the descent, were also found.


title: Hayabusa

text: After confirming that the explosive devices used for parachute deployment were safe, the capsule was packed inside a double layer of plastic bags filled with pure nitrogen gas to reduce the risk of contamination. The soil at the landing site was also sampled for reference in case of contamination. Then the capsule was put inside a cargo container which had air suspension to keep the capsule below 1.5 G shock during transportation. The capsule and its heat shield parts were transported to Japan by a chartered plane and arrived at the curation facility at the JAXA/ISAS Sagamihara Campus on 18 June.


title: Hayabusa

text: A Tokyo Metropolitan Government adviser and former lieutenant general, Toshiyuki Shikata, claimed that part of the rationale for the reentry and landing part of the mission was to demonstrate "that Japan's ballistic missile capability is credible."


title: Hayabusa

text: Before the capsule was extracted from the protecting plastic bag, it was inspected using X-ray CT to determine its condition. Then the sample canister was extracted from the reentry capsule. The surface of the canister was cleaned using pure nitrogen gas and carbon dioxide; it was then placed in the canister opening device. The internal pressure of the canister was determined by a slight deformation of the canister as the pressure of the environment nitrogen gas in the clean chamber was varied. The nitrogen gas pressure was then adjusted to match the internal canister pressure to prevent the escape of any gas from the sample upon the opening of the canister.


title: Hayabusa

text: On 16 November 2010, JAXA confirmed that most of the particles found in one of two compartments inside the "Hayabusa" sample return capsule came from Itokawa. Analysis with a scanning electron microscope identified about 1,500 grains of rocky particles, according to the JAXA press release. After further studying the analysis results and comparison of mineral compositions, most of them were judged to be of extraterrestrial origin, and definitely from the asteroid Itokawa.


title: Hayabusa

text: According to Japanese scientists, the composition of "Hayabusa"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s samples was more similar to meteorites than known rocks from Earth. Their size is mostly less than 10 micrometers. The material matches chemical maps of Itokawa from "Hayabusa"'s remote sensing instruments. The researchers found concentrations of olivine and pyroxene in the "Hayabusa" samples.


title: Hayabusa

text: Further study of the samples had to wait until 2011 because researchers were still developing special handling procedures to avoid contaminating the particles during the next phase of research.


title: Hayabusa

text: In 2013 JAXA announced that 1500 extraterrestrial grains had been recovered, comprising the minerals olivine, pyroxene, plagioclase and iron sulfide. The grains were about 10 micrometers in size. JAXA performed detailed analyses of the samples by splitting particles and examining their crystal structure at SPring-8.


title: Hayabusa

text: The 26 August 2011 issue of "Science" devoted six articles to findings based on dust collected by "Hayabusa". Scientists' analysis of the dust from Itokawa suggested that it had probably originally been part of a larger asteroid. Dust collected from the asteroid surface was believed to have been exposed there for about eight million years.


title: Hayabusa

text: Dust from Itokawa was found to be "identical to material that makes up meteorites." Itokawa is an S-type asteroid whose composition matches that of an LL chondrite.


title: Hayabusa

text: In Japan, rival film companies announced the production of three different feature length theatrical films based on the story of "Hayabusa", one of which, "" (2012), starred Ken Watanabe.


title: Hayabusa

text: Many references to "Hayabusa" appear in the Japanese series "Kamen Rider Fourze", a space-themed tokusatsu series.


title: Hayabusa

text: A music video titled "Hayabusa", named after the unmanned spacecraft was made using the Vocaloid Hatsune Miku. The music and lyrics were composed by SHO (Xenon-P). Another Miku song named after the probe was composed by gotorin (Haru-P).


title: Hayabusa

text: Following the sample return in 2010, Hayabusa-tan (はやぶさたん), an anthropomorphised figure in anime style, was released by the company Aoshima.


title: Sogdian language

text: The Sogdian language was an Eastern Iranian language spoken mainly in the Central Asian region of Sogdia (capital: Samarkand; other chief cities: Panjakent, Fergana, Khujand, and Bukhara), located in modern-day Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan; it was also spoken by some Sogdian immigrant communities in ancient China. Sogdian is one of the most important Middle Iranian languages, along with Bactrian, Khotanese Saka, Middle Persian, and Parthian. It possesses a large literary corpus.


title: Sogdian language

text: The Sogdian language is usually assigned to a Northeastern group of the Iranian languages. No direct evidence of an earlier version of the language ("Old Sogdian") has been found, although mention of the area in the Old Persian inscriptions means that a separate and recognisable Sogdia existed at least since the Achaemenid Empire (559–323 BCE).


title: Sogdian language

text: Like Khotanese, Sogdian may have possessed a more conservative grammar and morphology than Middle Persian. The modern Eastern Iranian language Yaghnobi is the descendant of a dialect of Sogdian spoken around the 8th century in Osrushana, a region to the south of Sogdia.


title: Sogdian language

text: During the period of the Chinese Tang dynasty (ca. 7th century CE), Sogdian was the "lingua franca" in Central Asia of the Silk Road, along which it amassed a rich vocabulary of loanwords such as "tym" ("hotel") from the Middle Chinese /tem/ ().


title: Sogdian language

text: The economic and political importance of Sogdian guaranteed its survival in the first few centuries after the Muslim conquest of Sogdia in the early eighth century. A dialect of Sogdian spoken around the 8th century in Osrushana (capital: Bunjikat, near present-day Istaravshan, Tajikistan), a region to the south of Sogdia, developed into the Yaghnobi language and has survived into the 21st century. It is spoken by the Yaghnobi people.


title: Sogdian language

text: The finding of manuscript fragments of the Sogdian language in China's Xinjiang region sparked the study of the Sogdian language. Robert Gauthiot, (the first Buddhist Sogdian scholar) and Paul Pelliot, (who while exploring in Dunhuang, retrieved Sogdian material) began investigating the Sogdian material that Pelliot had discovered in 1908. Gauthiot published many articles based on his work with Pelliot's material, but died during the First World War. One of Gauthiot's most impressive articles was a glossary to the Sogdian text, which he was in the process of completing when he died. This work was continued by Émile Benveniste after Gauthiot's death.


title: Sogdian language

text: Various Sogdian pieces have been found in the Turfan text corpus by the German Turfan expeditions. These expeditions were controlled by the Ethnological Museum of Berlin. These pieces consist almost entirely of religious works by Manichaean and Christian writers, including translations of the Bible. Most of the Sogdian religious works are from the 9th and 10th centuries.


title: Sogdian language

text: Dunhuang and Turfan were the two most plentiful sites of Manichean, Buddhist, and Christian Sogdian texts. Sogdiana itself actually contained a much smaller collection of texts. These texts were business related, belonging to a minor Sogdian king, Divashtich. These business texts dated back to the time of the Muslim conquest, about 700.


title: Sogdian language

text: Like all the writing systems employed for Middle Iranian languages, the Sogdian alphabet ultimately derives from the Aramaic alphabet. Like its close relatives, the Pahlavi scripts, written Sogdian contains many logograms or ideograms, which were Aramaic words written to represent native spoken ones. The Sogdian script is the direct ancestor of the Old Uyghur alphabet, itself the forerunner of the Traditional Mongolian alphabet.


title: Sogdian language

text: As in other writing systems descended from the Proto-Sinaitic script, there are no special signs for vowels. As in the parent Aramaic system, the consonantal signs ’ y w can be used as matres lectionis for the long vowels [a: i: u:] respectively. However, unlike it, these consonant signs would also sometimes serve to express the short vowels (which could also sometimes be left unexpressed, as they "always" are in the parent systems). To distinguish long vowels from short ones, an additional aleph could be written before the sign denoting the long vowel.


title: Sogdian language

text: In transcribing Sogdian script into Roman letters, Aramaic ideograms are often noted by means of capitals.


title: Roxanne Perez

text: Carla Gonzalez (born November 5, 2001) is an American professional wrestler signed to WWE on the NXT brand under the ring name Roxanne Perez, where she is the current NXT Women's Champion in her first reign. She is a former NXT Women's Tag Team Champion. She is also known for her time with Ring of Honor where she was the inaugural ROH Women's World Champion under the ring name Rok-C.


title: Roxanne Perez

text: Gonzalez began training at age 13, and later trained under Booker T starting at age 16. She made her pro wrestling debut in December 2018 under the ring name Rok-C as she began wrestling for Booker T's promotion Reality of Wrestling. Her ring name derives from The Rock – as she was a fan of his, she "kind of switched up the letters a little bit, and then I use the dash… The C stands for my name, Carla." Rok-C spent the majority of her rookie years wrestling for promotions across her home state of Texas, most notably for ROW where she won the women's title, the ROW Diamonds Division Championship.


title: Roxanne Perez

text: In April 2021, Gonzalez began appearing for Ring of Honor under her Rok-C ring name. She made her debut teaming with Max the Impaler in a time limit draw against Laynie Luck and Hyan. Rok-C then competed in the ROH Women's World Championship tournament, where she defeated the likes of Angelina Love, Sumie Sakai and Quinn McKay. In the finals at Death Before Dishonor XVIII, she defeated Miranda Alize to become the inaugural ROH Women's World Champion and youngest female champion in company history at 19. Her first title defense came on the November 26 episode of "Ring of Honor Wrestling", where she defeated Gia Scott. On October 27, 2021, Rok-C along with all other ROH personnel were released from their contracts as the company would go on hiatus after December's Final Battle. At Final Battle, Rok-C successfully retained her championship against Willow Nightengale in what was ROH's last pay-per-view event before going on hiatus. Post match, she was confronted by former Impact Knockouts Champion and reigning AAA Reina de Reinas Champion Deonna Purrazzo who proposed a winner take all match at a future Impact Wrestling event. The match took place on the January 13 episode of "Impact!", where she lost the ROH Women's World Championship against Purrazzo, who also put the AAA Reina de Reinas Champion on the line.


title: Roxanne Perez

text: In March 2022, it was confirmed that Gonzalez had signed a contract with WWE's developmental brand NXT and changed her ring name to Roxanne Perez. Perez made her WWE debut on the April 15 episode of "NXT Level Up" where she defeated Sloane Jacobs. She made her first "NXT" appearance on April 19; defeating Jacy Jayne. On the May 10 episode of "NXT", Perez teamed with Wendy Choo and challenged NXT Women's Tag Team Champions Toxic Attraction (Gigi Dolin and Jacy Jayne) for the titles in a losing effort. In May and June, Perez participated in the NXT Women's Breakout Tournament, she won the tournament by defeating Tiffany Stratton in the finals and earned a contract for a championship opportunity for a title of her choosing. At , Perez and Cora Jade defeated Dolin and Jayne to become NXT Women's Tag Team Champions. The next week, Perez cashed in her guaranteed title shot on Mandy Rose for the NXT Women's Championship in a title match, but Jade turned on her and cost Perez's championship opportunity. The following episode, Jade threw her championship belt in the garbage; as a result, WWE then recognized Perez as continuing to hold the titles by herself. The following week, Perez relinquished the titles to Alundra Blayze to determine the new NXT Women's Tag Team Champions in the future. This led into a match between Jade and Perez on August 16 at Heatwave where Jade was victorious, after distracting Perez during the match. On the October 4 episode of "NXT", a Weapons Wild match was set between Jade and Perez on Halloween Havoc. The two also agreed on pick your poison matches, where both could choose any opponent in WWE for each other. Perez made her first main roster appearance on the October 14 episode of "SmackDown", where she picked Raquel González as Jade's opponent. The two would later teamed with Shotzi in a losing effort against Damage CTRL (Bayley, and the WWE Women's Tag Team Champions Dakota Kai and Iyo Sky). On the October 18 episode of "NXT", Perez lost to Rhea Ripley, who Jade chose to face against Perez in the pick your poison match. Four days later, at Halloween Havoc, Perez defeated Jade in a Weapons Wild match. At Deadline, Perez won the inaugural Iron Survivor Challenge and 3 days later, defeated Mandy Rose to win the NXT Women's Championship.


title: Josh Gottheimer

text: Joshua S. Gottheimer ( ; born March 8, 1975) is an American attorney, writer, and public policy adviser who has served as the U.S. representative for since 2017. The district stretches along the northern border of the state from New York City's densely populated metropolitan suburbs in Bergen County northwest through exurban and rural territory in northern Passaic and Sussex Counties.


title: Josh Gottheimer

text: A member of the Democratic Party, Gottheimer was a speechwriter for Bill Clinton and served as an adviser to the presidential campaigns of Wesley Clark, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton. He has also worked for Burson Cohn & Wolfe, the Federal Communications Commission, Ford Motor Company, and Microsoft.


title: Josh Gottheimer

text: Gottheimer was born in Livingston, New Jersey, on March 8, 1975. At the age of 16, Gottheimer served as a U.S. Senate page for Frank Lautenberg, a senator from New Jersey. Through high school and college, Gottheimer held internships with C-SPAN, the U.S. Senate secretary, and Tom Foley, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.


title: Josh Gottheimer

text: Gottheimer graduated from West Essex High School, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard Law School. He was a member of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. While in college, he served on the "rapid response team" for Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign. After Clinton's reelection, Gottheimer attended Pembroke College, Oxford on a Thouron Award, studying toward a DPhil in modern history.


title: Josh Gottheimer

text: Gottheimer joined the Clinton administration as a speechwriter in 1998, at age 23, working in the administration until its end in 2001. While attending law school, he worked as an adviser for Wesley Clark's 2004 presidential campaign, John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, and Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. After the 2004 election, Gottheimer worked for the Ford Motor Company, then became an executive vice president at Burson Cohn & Wolfe. From 2010 to 2012, he worked for the Federal Communications Commission, where he led an initiative related to broadband internet. He subsequently became a strategist at Microsoft.


title: Josh Gottheimer

text: In the 2016 elections, Gottheimer ran for the House of Representatives in , a seat held by Republican Scott Garrett. Cory Booker joined him when he officially announced his candidacy.


title: Josh Gottheimer

text: Gottheimer attracted more attention than previous challengers to Garrett due to his fundraising ability and ties to the Clintons. "The New York Times" ran a prominent article about his Clinton ties, describing him as a protégé of the Clintons and noting that Bill and Chelsea Clinton had appeared at a recent Manhattan fundraiser for Gottheimer at which Chelsea introduced him as "something of a family member." His campaign's 2015 financial filings, in which Gottheimer reported raising around $1 million through the end of September, showed that "about one dollar in six came directly from fellow alumni of the Clinton White House and campaigns...or from major donors and employees of consulting firms tied closely to the Clintons." Among those who donated were three former Clinton press secretaries and two former Clinton chiefs of staff.


title: Josh Gottheimer

text: The 5th had historically been one of the more Republican districts in New Jersey, but redistricting after the 2010 census had made it slightly more Democratic by pushing it further into Bergen County. During the campaign, Garrett criticized Gottheimer "for taking a donation from Ibrahim Al-Rashid, the son of a Saudi multimillionaire who pleaded guilty in 2014 to simple assault of his estranged wife." Gottheimer and national Democrats attacked Garrett for his social conservatism, particularly comments he made about openly gay Republican candidates, arguing that these views showed Garrett was too conservative for the district.


title: Josh Gottheimer

text: Gottheimer defeated Garrett, primarily on the strength of a strong showing in the district's share of Bergen County, home to over three-fourths of the district's voters. He won Bergen by over 33,800 votes, more than double his overall margin of almost 14,900 votes. It was the most expensive House race in New Jersey history. He was sworn in on January 3, 2017– the first Democrat to represent this district since 1981, when it was numbered the 7th District (it has been the 5th since 1983).


title: Josh Gottheimer

text: Gottheimer was reelected in 2018, defeating Republican nominee John McCann with 56% of the vote. While he lost three of the district's four counties, Gottheimer won a second term on the strength of carrying the district's share of Bergen County by over 51,000 votes, more than his overall margin of 41,300 votes.


title: Josh Gottheimer

text: Gottheimer won a third term in 2020, defeating Republican nominee Frank Pallotta with 53% of the vote. As in his previous campaigns, he lost three of the district's four counties, but swamped Pallotta in the district's share of Bergen County, this time by 52,600 votes, more than his overall margin of 32,800 votes. He was also helped by Joe Biden carrying the district with 52% of the vote.


title: Josh Gottheimer

text: In May 2022, Gottheimer became involved in the Republican primary contest that would decide his eventual general election opponent. He sent mail to Republican voters that compared Pallotta, a repeat candidate whom Gottheimer had already beaten in the previous House election, to former Republican president Donald Trump.


title: Josh Gottheimer

text: Pallotta won the primary, defeating front-runner and US Marine Corps combat veteran Nick De Gregorio by 1,475 votes, setting up a general election that Gottheimer was heavily favored to win.


title: Josh Gottheimer

text: In the first session of the 115th United States Congress, Gottheimer was ranked the eighth most bipartisan member of the House by the Bipartisan Index, a metric published by The Lugar Center and Georgetown's McCourt School of Public Policy. In January 2018, Gottheimer was one of six House Democrats who voted with Republicans for a short-term spending bill in an attempt to stave off a federal government shutdown.


title: Josh Gottheimer

text: Gottheimer voted to impeach Trump a second time following the January 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol.


title: Josh Gottheimer

text: Gottheimer emerged as a leader of the "Unbreakable Nine", who in August 2021 pushed to decouple the bipartisan infrastructure bill from the Build Back Better Act. The two bills were voted on separately, and only the bipartisan infrastructure bill became law (because conservative senators refused to support BBB).


title: Josh Gottheimer

text: Some consider Gottheimer a conservative Democrat, with GovTrack rating him the most conservative Democrat in the House as of February 2021, as well as more conservative than 32 House Republicans. But Conservative Review gave him a 4% Liberty Score, which is lower than Bernie Sanders's. and his second impeachment.


title: Josh Gottheimer

text: Gottheimer was one of eight Democrats to vote against a resolution that would curtail Trump's war powers following the assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in January 2020.


title: Josh Gottheimer

text: In 2019, Gottheimer stated his opposition to the legalization of recreational marijuana. The statement came after he voted for a bill that would end the federal penalization of banks that serve the cannabis industry.


title: Josh Gottheimer

text: Gottheimer supports Representative Abigail Spanberger's Transparent Representation Upholding Service and Trust (TRUST) in Congress Act, which has 50 co-sponsors.


title: Josh Gottheimer

text: Gottheimer and Representative Brian Fitzpatrick introduced House legislation to support Senator Joe Manchin's initiative to close American ports to Russian oil, natural gas, and coal products.


title: Josh Gottheimer

text: He is the editor of "Ripples of Hope" (2003), a collection of American civil-rights speeches. The text of one of the speeches included in the book, which was delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma on January 25, 1965, was previously unpublished. Gottheimer acquired the text from an Alabama police consultant who had transcribed it from FBI surveillance tapes.


title: Josh Gottheimer

text: He is also co-author, with Mary Frances Berry, of "Power of Words" (2011), a book about Barack Obama's speeches.


title: Josh Gottheimer

text: Gottheimer is a native of North Caldwell, and he currently resides in Wyckoff. He is Jewish and a member of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. He married Marla Tusk in 2006. Together, they have two children.


title: Capital of the Netherlands

text: Amsterdam is the capital of the Netherlands according to the Constitution of the Netherlands, although the States General and the Executive Branch have been situated in The Hague since 1588, along with the Supreme Court and the Council of State. Since the 1983 revision of the Constitution of the Netherlands, Article 32 mentions that "the King shall be sworn in and inaugurated as soon as possible in the capital city, Amsterdam". It is the only reference in the document stating that Amsterdam is the capital. In contrast, The Hague is customarily called the "residentie" (‘residence’).


title: Capital of the Netherlands

text: Only once during its history was Amsterdam both "capital" and seat of government. Between 1808 and 1810, during the Kingdom of Holland, King Louis Napoleon resided in Amsterdam and declared the city capital of his kingdom and seat of government. To accommodate the king, the grand seventeenth-century Town Hall of Amsterdam, a prime example of the republican values that were prevalent for so long in the Netherlands, was converted into a Royal Palace.


title: Capital of the Netherlands

text: In 1810, the Netherlands was annexed by the French Empire and King Louis Napoleon was replaced by a French governor, who took up residence in the Royal Palace in Amsterdam. From 1810 to 1813, Amsterdam kept its position of capital city somewhat, as Emperor Napoleon declared the city to be the third city of the Empire (after Paris and Rome) and an imperial residence. In December 1813, after the fall of Napoleon and the accession of Prince William VI of Orange as Sovereign of the Netherlands, The Hague was restored as the seat of government.


title: Capital of the Netherlands

text: Although the proper legal status of Amsterdam as capital of the Netherlands is of recent date, the city has been recognized as the capital since 1814. In that year Willem Frederik, Prince of Orange and Nassau, was proclaimed Sovereign Prince of the United Netherlands and invested as such on 30 March 1814 in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam. This is partly because it is a "Royal City", used not only for the inauguration of kings, but also for royal weddings (note though that royal burials take place in Delft), and also because of its dominant position in Dutch history. From the end of the 16th century, the city grew rapidly to become the largest and most powerful city in the Netherlands and the main centre of trade, commerce, finance and culture.


title: Capital of the Netherlands

text: The origins of the split between Amsterdam as capital city and The Hague as seat of government lay in the peculiar Dutch constitutional history. From the middle-ages to the sixteenth century, The Hague had been the seat of government of the County of Holland and residence of the Counts of Holland. Amsterdam in the meantime was growing to be a more important city. After the establishment of the Republic of the United Netherlands in 1572/1581, Dordrecht briefly became the seat of government of the United Provinces, residence of the States General, the Council of State and the Prince of Orange as Prince Stadtholder. In 1588, these central governmental institutions were moved to The Hague, which, from that point onwards, kept the position of seat of government for the whole republic. Amsterdam remained loyal to the Spanish/Burgundian empire until relatively late in the Eighty Years War, which allowed the city a lot of trade opportunities, but made it unsuitable for the seat of government of the emerging 'rebel' state.


title: Capital of the Netherlands

text: Before the institution of the Batavian Republic of 1795, the Netherlands was not a unitary state, but more of a confederation in which the independent provinces and the larger cities and towns were very much politically autonomous. During the seventeenth century, the Prince Stadtholder as official of the States of Holland clashed several times with the city government of Amsterdam about policy, up to the point that the city was beleaguered by the army. Up to 1795 there remained a strong animosity between the Orange faction and the republican faction in Dutch politics. The former supported the idea of hereditary political leadership vested in the princes of Orange as Stadtholders, and had its powerbase in The Hague and the rural areas. The latter supported civic independence and found its support mainly in the cities and towns of Holland, with Amsterdam as its progenitor and most outspoken representative.


title: Capital of the Netherlands

text: When in 1814 the new kingdom was formed, the appointment of Amsterdam, still the most prominent city in the kingdom, as capital city was also very much a conciliatory gesture of the Orange faction towards the town, and a recognition of the strong civic and republican basis of the new kingdom.


title: Common frog

text: The common frog or grass frog (Rana temporaria), also known as the European common frog, European common brown frog, European grass frog, European Holarctic true frog, European pond frog or European brown frog, is a semi-aquatic amphibian of the family Ranidae, found throughout much of Europe as far north as Scandinavia and as far east as the Urals, except for most of Iberia, Southern Italy, and the southern Balkans. The farthest west it can be found is Ireland. It is also found in Asia, and eastward to Japan. The nominative, and most common, subspecies Rana temporaria temporaria is a largely terrestrial frog native to Europe. It is distributed throughout northern Europe and can be found in Ireland, the Isle of Lewis and as far east as Japan.


title: Common frog

text: Common frogs metamorphose through three distinct developmental life stages — aquatic larva, terrestrial juvenile, and adult. They have corpulent bodies with a rounded snout, webbed feet and long hind legs adapted for swimming in water and hopping on land. Common frogs are often confused with the common toad ("Bufo bufo"), but frogs can easily be distinguished as they have longer legs, hop, and have a moist skin, whereas toads crawl and have a dry 'warty' skin. The spawn of the two species also differs in that frogspawn is laid in clumps and toadspawn is laid in long strings.


title: Common frog

text: There are 3 subspecies of the common frog, "R. t. temporaria", "R. t. honnorati" and "R. t. palvipalmata". "R. t. temporaria" is the most common subspecies of this frog.


title: Common frog

text: The adult common frog has a body length of . In addition, its back and flanks vary in colour from olive green to grey-brown, brown, olive brown, grey, yellowish and rufous. However, it can lighten and darken its skin to match its surroundings. Some individuals have more unusual colouration—both black and red individuals have been found in Scotland, and albino frogs have been found with yellow skin and red eyes. During the mating season the male common frog tends to turn greyish-blue (see video below). The average mass is ; the female is usually slightly larger than the male.


title: Common frog

text: The flanks, limbs and backs are covered with irregular dark blotches and they usually sport a chevron-shaped spot on the back of their neck and a dark spot behind the eye. Unlike other amphibians, common frogs generally lack a mid-dorsal band but, when they have one, it is comparatively faint. In many countries moor frogs have a light dorsal band which easily distinguishes them from common frogs. The underbelly is white or yellow (occasionally more orange in females) and can be speckled with brown or orange. The eyes are brown with transparent horizontal pupils, and they have transparent inner eyelids to protect the eyes while underwater, as well as a 'mask' which covers the eyes and eardrums. Although the common frog has long hind legs compared to the common toad, they are shorter than those of the agile frog with which it shares some of its range. The longer hind legs and fainter colouration of the agile frog are the main features that distinguish the two species.


title: Common frog

text: Males are distinguishable from females as they are smaller and have hard swellings, known as nuptial pads, on the first digits of the forelegs, used for gripping females during mating. During the mating season males' throats often turn white, and their overall colour is generally light and greyish, whereas the female is browner, or even red.


title: Common frog

text: These smooth-skinned frogs can grow to an average weight of 22.7 grams and length of seven to ten centimeters (2.8-3.9 in) with colors varying from gray to green, brown, yellow, or red and may be covered in blotches. The underbelly is white or yellow often with speckles.


title: Common frog

text: Outside the breeding season, common frogs live a solitary life in damp places near ponds or marshes or in long grass. They are normally active for much of the year, only hibernating in the coldest months. In the most northern extremities of their range they may be trapped under ice for up to nine months of the year, but recent studies have shown that in these conditions they may be relatively active at temperatures close to freezing. In the British Isles, common frogs typically hibernate from late October to January. They will re-emerge as early as February if conditions are favourable, and migrate to bodies of water such as garden ponds to spawn. Where conditions are harsher, such as in the Alps, they emerge as late as early June. Common frogs hibernate in running waters, muddy burrows, or in layers of decaying leaves and mud at the bottom of ponds or lakes primarily with a current. The oxygen uptake through the skin suffices to sustain the needs of the cold and motionless frogs during hibernation.


title: Common frog

text: Common frogs are found throughout much of Europe as far north as northern Scandinavia inside the Arctic Circle and as far east as the Urals, except for most of Iberia, Southern Italy, and the southern Balkans. Other areas where the common frog has been introduced include the Isle of Lewis, Shetland, Orkney and the Faroe Islands. It is also found in Asia, and eastward to Japan.


title: Common frog

text: The common frog has long been thought to be an entirely introduced species in Ireland, however, genetic analyses suggest that particular populations in the south west of Ireland are indeed indigenous to the country. The authors propose that the Irish frog population is a mixed group that includes native frogs that survived the last glacial period in ice free refugia, natural post-glacial colonizers and recent artificial introductions from Western Europe.


title: Common frog

text: The common frog is a very widely distributed species, being common all throughout Europe and northwest Asia. The more peripheral subpopulations of common frogs are significantly less in number, as well as less genetically variable. There is a steep genetic decline when approaching the periphery of the common frog’s distribution range. Additionally, genetic differentiation of common frog subpopulations tends to decrease in relation to increasing latitude. The colder climates create a strong selective pressure favoring common frog populations able to behaviorally thermoregulate at a high degree.