title: Club Deportivo Universidad Católica

text: Mario Lepe holds the record for most Universidad Católica appearances, having played 639 first-team matches (76 matches for Copa Libertadores de América) from 1982 to 2000. Andrés Romero comes second with 484 appearances. José María Buljubasich is Universidad Católica's all-least beaten goalkeeper, with 1352 minutes (4th on IFFHS ranking).


title: Club Deportivo Universidad Católica

text: Universidad Católica's all-time highest goalscorer in official competitions is Rodrigo Barrera with 118 goals, surpassing Raimundo Infante's 113 goals in 2002. Four other players have also scored over 100 goals for Universidad Católica: Alberto Fouillioux (1957-1975), Néstor Isella (1963-1970), Osvaldo Hurtado (1980-1988t) and the previous goalscoring record-holder Raimundo Infante (1941-1956). Infante being Universidad Católica's top goalscorer of all time in La Liga history with 103 goals.


title: Club Deportivo Universidad Católica

text: The IFFHS ranked the team in 8th place in 2012. The club has reached notoriety, both in a national and South American level, as the owner of one of the best infrastructures and training centers in the continent. As such, it is a good source of young talents, which occasionally rise to stardom in the club. Its most recent youth academy produced player known worldwide is Gary Medel, currently playing for Italian side Bologna FC, among other clubs such as Boca Juniors, Sevilla and Internazionale, as well as playing a big role in Chile's 2010 and 2014 World Cup squads.


title: Club Deportivo Universidad Católica

text: Officially, the highest attendance figure for a Universidad Católica match is 77,890, which was for a Primera División match at Estadio Nacional on 11 January 1967. Universad Católica has also set records in Chilean football, most notably the most seasons won in a row  (four, during 2018–2021).


title: Club Deportivo Universidad Católica

text: Universidad Católica is the third club with the largest following in Chile, with approximately 13% of the total Chilean football fans according to research published in 2006 by Fundación Futuro, according by Spanish newspaper agency Marca in 2012 have approximately 9% and according by Adimark in 2018, have a 7% of the total Chilean football fans.


title: Club Deportivo Universidad Católica

text: There is often a rivalry between the two clubs from academic roots, where the game between Universidad Católica and Universidad de Chile is known as "Clásico Universitario". It is the oldest confrontation between two clubs from academic roots, as the first confrontation goes back to the University Classic of 1909. Rivalry, both in sports and in academic issues, made these matches between the universities become more and more important, eventually reaching the national status of "Universities' Derby".


title: Club Deportivo Universidad Católica

text: This "clásico" has been recognized by FIFA as the most traditional of Chile. They met for the first time on 13 June 1937 in matchday three of the first Serie B at the Estadio Militar. These two teams have played twenty championship definitions against each other, Universidad Católica has won fourteen and Universidad de Chile six.


title: Club Deportivo Universidad Católica

text: The Chilean Football Federation rules allow a maximum of seven foreign players per team, but only five can be on the pitch at any one time. Currently, Católica has six foreign players.


title: Club Deportivo Universidad Católica

text: Since the establishment of the club in 1937, 19 players have been club captain of Universidad Católica.


title: Soldier's Girl

text: Soldier's Girl is a 2003 biographical drama film written by Ron Nyswaner and directed by Frank Pierson. It is based on a story of the relationship between Barry Winchell and Calpernia Addams and the events that led up to Barry's murder by a fellow soldier, starring Troy Garity as Winchell and Lee Pace as Addams. The film premiered on Showtime on May 31, 2003.


title: Soldier's Girl

text: "Soldier's Girl" was listed among the ten best Television Programs of the Year (2003) by the American Film Institute.


title: Soldier's Girl

text: Barry is a private with the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army, stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, while Calpernia works as a showgirl at a transgender revue in Nashville, Tennessee. Barry's roommate Justin Fisher brings Barry to the club where Calpernia performs. When Barry and Calpernia start dating, Fisher, out of jealousy, participates in spreading rumors about Barry's alleged affair, which appeared to be a violation of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy that forbids discussion of sexual orientation of military personnel. Barry faces increasing harassment and pressure, which explodes into violence over a Fourth of July weekend after Barry easily beats Calvin Glover in a fight. While Calpernia performs in a pageant in Nashville, Barry is beaten to death in his sleep by Glover with a baseball bat given by Fisher. The film ends with a discussion of the aftermath.


title: Soldier's Girl

text: Carin Gorrell in "Psychology Today" calls "Soldier's Girl" a "gut-wrenching and provacative work" adding that Troy Garity's "performance is so strong that it's nearly impossible to react without sympathy"


title: Soldier's Girl

text: In "Variety" David Rooney wrote: "Both Garity and newcomer Pace give complex, controlled performances, full-bodied and richly empathetic, making the union between this unlikely couple seem entirely plausible and natural".


title: Obsolescence

text: Obsolescence is the state of being which occurs when an object, service, or practice is no longer maintained or required even though it may still be in good working order. It usually happens when something that is more efficient or less risky replaces it.


title: Obsolescence

text: The international standard IEC 62402:2019 Obsolescence Management defines obsolescence as the "transition from available to unavailable from the manufacturer in accordance with the original specification".


title: Obsolescence

text: Obsolete also refers to something that is already disused or discarded, or antiquated. Typically, obsolescence is preceded by a gradual decline in popularity.


title: Obsolescence

text: Driven by rapid technological changes, new components are developed and launched on the market with increasing speed. The result is a dramatic change in production methods of all components and their market availability. A growing industry sector is facing issues where life cycles of products no longer fit together with life cycles of required components. This issue is known as obsolescence, the status given to a part when it is no longer available from its original manufacturer. The problem of obsolescence is most prevalent for electronics technology, wherein the procurement lifetimes for microelectronic parts are often significantly shorter than the manufacturing and support life cycles for the products that use the parts. However, obsolescence extends beyond electronic components to other items, such as materials, textiles, and mechanical parts. In addition, obsolescence has been shown to appear for software, specifications, standards, processes, and soft resources, such as human skills. It is highly important to implement and operate an active management of obsolescence to mitigate and avoid extreme costs.


title: Obsolescence

text: Technical obsolescence usually occurs when a new product or technology supersedes the old one, and it is preferred to use the new technology instead. Historical examples of new technologies superseding old ones include bronze replacing flint in hand-tools, DVDs replacing videocassettes, and the telephone replacing the telegraph. On a smaller scale, a particular product may become obsolete when a newer version replaces it. Many products in the computer industry become obsolete in this manner. For example, central processing units (CPUs) frequently become obsolete in favor of newer, faster units. Singularly, rapid obsolescence of data formats along with their supporting hardware and software can lead to loss of critical information, a process known as digital obsolescence.


title: Obsolescence

text: In many cases, a new technology does not totally replace the old technology because the old technology is still useful in certain applications. For example, transistors replaced vacuum tubes in TV and radio receivers in the 1960s, but vacuum tubes were still used for powerful transmitters because transistors for these power levels were not available. Even today, one has to use multiple transistors for a purpose that used to require just one tube.


title: Obsolescence

text: Products may also become obsolete when supporting technologies are no longer available to produce or even repair a product. For example, many integrated circuits, including CPUs, memory and even some relatively simple logic chips may no longer be produced because the technology has been superseded, their original developer has gone out of business or a competitor has bought them out and effectively killed off their products to remove competition. It is rarely worth redeveloping a product to get around these issues since its overall functionality and price/performance ratio has usually been superseded by that time as well.


title: Obsolescence

text: Some products become technologically obsolete due to changes in complementary products which results in the function of the first product being made unnecessary. For example, buggy whips became obsolete when people started to travel in cars rather than in horse-drawn buggies.


title: Obsolescence

text: Items become functionally obsolete when they can no longer adequately perform the function for which they were created. For example, while one could theoretically adapt an Avro Lancaster to deploy modern JDAM bombs, the situations in which it could actually succeed at doing so against modern air defenses would be so few that it would be essentially useless.


title: Obsolescence

text: Manufacturers and repair companies will typically cease support for products once they become obsolete as keeping production lines in place and parts in storage for a shrinking user base becomes unprofitable. This causes scarcity of spare parts and skilled technicians for repairs and thus escalates maintenance costs for obsolete products. This ultimately leads to prohibitive expense in keeping old technology functioning.


title: Obsolescence

text: The term "obsolescence" was first applied to the built environment in 1910 in an attempt to explain American skyscrapers' sudden loss of value. New York engineer Reginald P. Bolton attributed this phenomenon to "something new and better out-competing the old" and calculated the average architectural lifespan of varying building types in order to formulate a rough estimate for their impending obsolescence. For example, he suggested that hotels' obsolescence will occur faster than banks due to their ever-changing functions and tastes.


title: Obsolescence

text: Sometimes marketers deliberately introduce obsolescence into their product strategy, with the objective of generating long-term sales volume by reducing the time between repeat purchases. One example might be producing an appliance which is deliberately designed to wear out within five years of its purchase, pushing consumers to replace it within five years.


title: Obsolescence

text: Inventory obsolescence occurs when retailers and other vendors hold stocks for anticipated future sales which turn out to be too slow to materialise. Holding excessive levels of stock or over-predicting potential demand increase the risks of products becoming obsolete and have a detrimental effect on the organisation's cash flow. Companies may address this problem alongside a periodic stock count by assessing which of their stock items are slow-moving or not selling at all.


title: Obsolescence

text: When a product is no longer desirable because it has gone out of the popular fashion, its style is obsolete. One example is flared leg jeans; although this article of clothing may still be perfectly functional, it is no longer desirable because style trends have moved away from the flared leg cut.


title: Obsolescence

text: Because of the "fashion cycle", stylistically obsolete products may eventually regain popularity and cease to be obsolete. An example is "acid-wash" jeans, which were popular in the 1980s, became stylistically obsolete in the mid to late 1990s, and returned to popularity in the 2000s.


title: Obsolescence

text: Obsolescence management, also referred to as "Diminishing Manufacturing Sources and Material Shortages" (DMSMS), is defined as to the activities that are undertaken to mitigate the effects of obsolescence. Activities can include last-time buys, lifetime buys, and obsolescence monitoring.


title: Ferris Wheel (1893)

text: The original Ferris Wheel, sometimes also referred to as the Chicago Wheel, was designed and built by George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. as the centerpiece of the Midway at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois.


title: Ferris Wheel (1893)

text: Intended as keystone attraction similar to that of the 1889 Paris Exposition's Eiffel Tower, the Ferris Wheel was the Columbian Exposition's tallest attraction, with a height of .


title: Ferris Wheel (1893)

text: The Ferris Wheel was dismantled then rebuilt in Lincoln Park, Chicago, in 1895, and dismantled and rebuilt a third and final time for the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, Missouri, where it was ultimately demolished in 1906. In 2007, the 45 foot, 70-ton axle was discovered buried near where it was demolished.


title: Ferris Wheel (1893)

text: The Ferris Wheel was designed and constructed by George Washington Gale Ferris Jr., a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He was a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania bridge-builder. He began his career in the railroad industry and then pursued an interest in bridge building. Ferris understood the growing need for structural steel and founded G.W.G. Ferris & Co. in Pittsburgh, a firm that tested and inspected metals for railroads and bridge builders.


title: Ferris Wheel (1893)

text: Dynamite was used to break through three feet of frozen ground, to create a foundation for the wheel, during the construction of the wheel in Jackson Park during the winter of 1892–93. Jets of steam were used by workers to thaw dirt and prevent poured concrete from freezing. Piles of timber were driven thirty-two feet into the ground, on top of which was laid a grillage of steel, filled with concrete.


title: Ferris Wheel (1893)

text: The wheel rotated on a 71-ton, 45.5 foot (13.9 meters) long axle comprising what was at that time the world's largest hollow forging, manufactured in Pittsburgh by the Bethlehem Iron Company and weighing , together with two cast-iron spiders weighing . A miniature wooden replica resides in Pittsburgh at the Senator John Heinz History Center.


title: Ferris Wheel (1893)

text: There were 36 passenger cars, each fitted with 40 revolving chairs and able to accommodate up to 60 people, giving a total capacity of 2,160.


title: Ferris Wheel (1893)

text: On June 9, 1893, the wheel was primed for a test run with great anticipation and a good deal of anxiety. The engine that would activate the wheel was fueled by steam boilers whose underground mains rushed steam to propel the pistons of its thousand-horsepower engines. Upon first seeing the wheel which towered over everything in its vicinity, Julian Hawthorne, son of the author Nathaniel, was amazed that anything of such a size "continues to keep itself erect ... it has no visible means of support – none that appear adequate. The spokes look like cobwebs; they are after the fashion of those on the newest make of bicycles".


title: Ferris Wheel (1893)

text: Both Ferris and his associate W. F. Gronau also recognized the engineering marvel the wheel represented, as a giant wheel that would turn slowly and smoothly without structural failure had never before been attempted.


title: Ferris Wheel (1893)

text: For its inaugural run, no cars had yet been attached. The workmen however, climbed the structure and settled themselves on the spokes to the accompaniment of cheers from an audience of fair employees who had gathered to watch the momentous event. After the wheel had completed its first rotation, Gronau deemed the test a success. "I could have yelled out loud for joy".


title: Ferris Wheel (1893)

text: Ferris himself had not been able to attend the launching of his invention, and that evening received a telegram: "The last coupling and final adjustment was made and steam turned on at six o’clock this evening one complete revolution of the big wheel was made everything working satisfactory twenty minutes time was taken for the revolution – I congratulate you upon its complete success midway is wildly enthusiastic".


title: Ferris Wheel (1893)

text: The Ferris Wheel took 20 minutes to make two revolutions, the first involving six stops to allow passengers to exit and enter and the second a nine-minute non-stop rotation, for which the ticket holder paid 50 cents.


title: Ferris Wheel (1893)

text: The Ferris Wheel first opened to the public as the centerpiece of the World's Columbian Exposition at Midway Plaisance in Chicago on June 21, 1893, and continued to operate there until after the exposition ended in October 1893.


title: Ferris Wheel (1893)

text: The wheel itself closed in April 1894 and was then dismantled and stored until the following year, when it was rebuilt in the Lincoln Park, Chicago, neighborhood. The amusement park was located at 2619 to 2665 N. Clark, which is now the location of a McDonald's and a high-rise residential building. The original plan was to include a beer garden and vaudeville show, but the liquor license was not granted. William D. Boyce, then a local resident, filed a Circuit Court action against the owners of the wheel to have it removed, but without success.


title: Ferris Wheel (1893)

text: In 1896, the Lumiere Brothers, inventors of cinema, shot film (catalogue number 338) of the intersection of Wrightwood and Clark which included the Ferris wheel. It is one of the first films of Chicago.


title: Ferris Wheel (1893)

text: The wheel operated at Clark St. from October 1895 until 1903, when it was purchased at auction by the Chicago House Wrecking Company (CHWC) for $8,150.00.


title: Ferris Wheel (1893)

text: It was then dismantled for a second time and transported by rail to St. Louis for the 1904 World's Fair, where it earned the CHWC about $215,000.


title: Ferris Wheel (1893)

text: After the 1904 World's Fair closed on December 1, 1904, no purchasers were found who would pay for the relocation of the great Ferris Wheel, despite many efforts. It was finally destroyed by controlled demolition using dynamite on May 11, 1906 (18 months after the fair closed), to be sold for scrap. This was necessary because the contract with the city of St. Louis required the "restoration of Forest Park."


title: Ferris Wheel (1893)

text: In 2007, a magnetic survey using a cesium magnetometer indicated that a long, steel or iron object (presumed to be the axle) was buried under a major street roughly from where the wheel was demolished. It has not yet been excavated.


title: Ferris Wheel (1893)

text: Since 2000, other published documents and research into original papers (from the Chicago House Wrecking Company, c.1904-1906) indicate that the axle was taken back to Chicago, where it was eventually cut up for scrap when oxy-acetylene torches improved sufficiently to cut the hardened steel axle up for scrap. These references include Norman Anderson's book "Ferris Wheels: An Illustrated History", several unpublished CHWC letters and documents, an article by Leo Harris (grandson of the CHWC's Treasurer) who wrote that "...the giant axle of the wheel was returned to the yards of the CHWC, where it remained until it was cut up for its steel content at the beginning of World War I", and an article published on February 1, 1907, in the "Clinton" (IL) "Register", indicating, "The last of the Ferris Wheel has been taken away... It was found necessary to blow off the flanges from the axle ... before it could be loaded on a (railroad) car".


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: Mary Sue Hubbard (née Whipp; June 17, 1931 – November 25, 2002) was the third wife of L. Ron Hubbard, from 1952 until his death in 1986. She was a leading figure in Scientology for much of her life. The Hubbards had four children: Diana (born 1952), Quentin (1954–1976), Suzette (born 1955), and Arthur (born 1958).


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: She became involved in Hubbard's Dianetics in 1951, while still a student at the University of Texas at Austin, becoming a Dianetics auditor. She soon became involved in a relationship with Hubbard and married him in March 1952. She accompanied her husband to Phoenix, Arizona, where they established the Hubbard Association of Scientologists – the forerunner of the Church of Scientology, which was itself founded in 1953. She was credited with helping to coin the word "Scientology". She played a leading role in the management of the Church of Scientology, rising to become the head of the Church's Guardian's Office (GO). In August 1978, she was indicted by the United States government on charges of conspiracy relating to illegal covert operations mounted by the Guardian's Office against government agencies. She was convicted in December 1979 and was sentenced to five years' imprisonment and the payment of a $10,000 fine. She was forced to resign her post in 1981 and served a year in prison in 1983, after exhausting her appeals against her conviction.


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: Mary Sue Whipp was born in Rockdale, Texas, to Harry Hughes Whipp (Sept 2, 1893 – Oct 30 1942) and Mary Catherine (née Hill) Whipp. She grew up in Houston, where she attended Rice University for a year before moving on to the University of Texas at Austin, from which she graduated as a Bachelor of Arts. She originally intended to work in petroleum research, but a friend persuaded her to travel with him to Wichita, Kansas, in mid-1951 to take a Dianetics course at the Hubbard Dianetic Foundation. She soon began an affair with Hubbard, who had just been divorced from his second wife Sara, and moved in with him within only a few weeks of arriving in Wichita. She obtained a Hubbard Dianetic Auditor's Certificate and joined the Foundation's staff.


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: She became pregnant in February 1952 and married Hubbard the next month. By this time the Foundation had filed for bankruptcy, and Hubbard's erstwhile backer, Don Purcell, was left to deal with its substantial debts. A bitter dispute broke out between the men over the ownership of the Foundation's remaining assets, with Hubbard resigning to start a rival "Hubbard College" on the other side of Wichita. Mary Sue was given partial responsibility for running the new Dianetics establishment. After six weeks of operation it was replaced in April 1952 by the Hubbard Association of Scientologists, established in Phoenix, Arizona, to promote Hubbard's newly announced "science of certainty".


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: The Hubbards traveled to England in September 1952 when Mary Sue was eight months pregnant. According to the Church of Scientology, the reason for the trip was that "amid the constant violence of the turncoat Don J. Purcell of Wichita and his suits which attempted to seize Scientology, Mary Sue became ill and to save her life, Ron took her to England where several Dianetic groups had asked him to form an organization." Russell Miller gives a different explanation: "Hubbard wanted to go to London to establish his control over the small Dianetics group which had formed there spontaneously and Mary Sue insisted on accompanying him." Three weeks later, on September 24, 1952, she gave birth to her first child, Diana Meredith de Wolfe Hubbard. The Hubbards returned to the United States in November when their visa expired and moved into an apartment in Philadelphia.


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: They went back to London in December on a fresh visa and stayed there until the end of May 1953, before departing for an extended holiday in Spain. In October 1953 they returned to the US where Hubbard gave a series of lectures in Camden, New Jersey and established the first Church of Scientology. By this time, Mary Sue was well advanced with her second pregnancy and remained largely confined to a rented house at Medford Lakes, New Jersey. They traveled to Phoenix for Christmas 1953 and it was there on January 6, 1954, that Mary Sue gave birth to her second child, Geoffrey Quentin McCaully Hubbard.


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: The Hubbards lived at a house on Tatum Boulevard (now 5501 North 44th Street) on the slopes of Camelback Mountain in Phoenix for the remainder of 1954. By this time, Mary Sue had become a key figure within the nascent Scientology movement. Although Hubbard himself was much admired by Scientologists, his wife was said to be much less popular. Russell Miller notes:


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: A family friend, Ray Kemp, later recalled: "their relationship seemed OK, but there never seemed to be a lot of love between them. She was not the affectionate type, she was more efficient than affectionate. They used to have fierce husband and wife domestic arguments." Joan Vidal, a friend of the sculptor Edward Harris, who was commissioned by Hubbard to create a bust of him, described Mary Sue as "a rather drab, mousy, nothing sort of person, quite a bit younger than him." Ken Urquhart, who worked for the Hubbards as their butler in the 1960s, commented that Mary Sue "could be very sweet and loving, but also very cold." Cyril Vosper, one of the Saint Hill staff at the time, noted the differing impressions left by the Hubbards: "I always had great warmth and admiration for Ron – he was a remarkable individual, a constant source of new information and ideas – but I thought Mary Sue was an exceedingly nasty person. She was a bitch."


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: Mary Sue became pregnant again four months after Quentin's birth and on February 13, 1955, in Washington, D.C., she gave birth to her second daughter, Mary Suzette Rochelle Hubbard. Following the birth, the Hubbards moved into a house in Silver Spring, Maryland. A "Founding Church of Scientology" was established in Washington, D.C. and Mary Sue became its first Academy Supervisor.


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: The Hubbards returned again to London at the end of September 1955, where they took over the day-to-day management of the Hubbard Association of Scientologists International. They remained there until 1957, when Hubbard returned to lecture at the Academy of Scientology in Washington, D.C., with Mary Sue and the children following later. By this time Mary Sue was pregnant for a fourth time and gave birth to her final child, Arthur Ronald Conway Hubbard, on June 6, 1958.


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: A change in the visa regime in the UK enabled foreigners to remain indefinitely if they had sufficient means to support themselves. The Hubbards moved back to London in February 1959, settling for a while in Golders Green. Not long afterwards Hubbard bought Saint Hill Manor at Saint Hill Green, near East Grinstead, West Sussex. The manor, a country house formerly owned by Sawai Man Singh II, the Maharajah of Jaipur, became both the new home of the Hubbards and the world headquarters of Scientology.


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: The Hubbards continued to carry out auditing of each other and in February 1960 Mary Sue wrote to a friend to inform her that her husband had discovered that she had been the writer D.H. Lawrence in a past life. She intended to make use of this discovery by writing a book that would be "completely anti-Christ". The protagonist, "a bastard child", would be the son of the three most virile men in the town (a satire of the Holy Trinity). The mother had slept with all three men on the same night but as she did not know which had fathered the child, had "thereupon decided to call him Ali, son of ----, son of ----, and son of ---- which impressed the local inhabitants and created a stir throughout the country."


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: By this time, Mary Sue was working as the chief course supervisor at Saint Hill Manor. The Hubbards' relationship was unconventional, as their butler, Ken Urquhart, later recalled: "Neither Ron nor Mary Sue lived the way one might have expected in a house like that. They spent most of their time working; there was very little socializing. They would go to bed very late, usually in the small hours of the morning, and get up in the early afternoon ... [Mary Sue] had a separate bedroom, but usually had breakfast with him – scrambled eggs, sausages, mushrooms and tomatoes. After breakfast he would go into his office and I would rarely see him again until six-thirty when I had to have the table laid for dinner. At six-twenty-five I would go into his office with a jacket for him to wear to table and after dinner they would spend an hour or so watching television with the children and then he and Mary Sue would return to work in their separate offices."


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: On January 26, 1967, Mary Sue was confirmed as a Scientology "Clear", a somewhat elite rank at that time. Her achievement was commemorated in a special tribute edition of the Scientology newspaper "The Auditor", titled simply: "Mary Sue Hubbard – Clear #208". In it, she thanked her husband "for having given the most precious gifts of freedom and true beingness to me and my fellow man. Without him, none of this would have been possible; and so to Ron goes my everlasting gratitude for having provided for all of us the road to Clear."


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: During the late 1960s, Scientology was faced by an increasingly hostile media and intensifying government scrutiny in a number of countries, notably Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Hubbard decided to take to the high seas in a bid to liberate Scientology from the attentions of hostile governments. On November 22, 1966, the Hubbard Explorational Company Limited was formed with Hubbard and Mary Sue as directors – Hubbard being described as expedition supervisor and Mary Sue as company secretary. Several ships were purchased to serve as the quarters of the newly created "Sea Org". The flagship of the Scientology fleet was the 3,280-ton vessel – accidentally renamed the "Royal Scotman" due to a clerical error, a former cattle ferry on the Irish Sea run.


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: After the vessel had been renovated by Scientologists, Mary Sue and the children moved into the upper-deck accommodation in November 1968. The difference in the quality of living conditions between the Hubbards and the crew was stark:


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: In April 1969, Mary Sue was promoted by Hubbard to serve as the captain of the "Royal Scotman" and ordered to cruise up and down the coast of Spain to train the vessel's inexperienced crew of Scientologists, who had made a string of mistakes that infuriated Hubbard. The trip had the air of a punishment detail and was dubbed the "liability cruise"; conditions on board were reportedly appalling. According to Russell Miller, "The crew worked to the point of exhaustion, the food was meager and no one was allowed to wash or change their clothes. Mary Sue enforced the rules rigidly but shared the privations, and was scrupulously fair and popular." The entire crew was forced to wear gray rags to symbolize their demotion; it was said that even Mary Sue's corgi dog, Vixie, had a gray rag tied around her neck. The "liability cruise" ended in June 1969. The "Royal Scotman" was later renamed the "Apollo".


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: Apart from captaining the "Royal Scotman" for a period, Mary Sue's duties included managing the sprawling empire of the Guardian's Office agency within the Church of Scientology and serving as the chair of an executive group known variously as the Commodore's Staff Aides, the Aides Council, and the International Board of Scientology Organizations. This body was responsible for overseeing each of the seven organizational subdivisions of the Church of Scientology. She played a central role in the financial management of the Church of Scientology's two principal corporations, the Church of Scientology of California and the United Kingdom Church of Scientology. She was a sole signatory to the Church of Scientology's trust accounts and was also a director of the Operation Transport Corporation (OTC), a company established in 1968 that served as a conduit for cash transfers from the Church of Scientology to L. Ron Hubbard personally; it was characterized by US Tax Court as a "sham corporation" whose role was the enrichment of the Hubbards. She personally handled large quantities of cash on Hubbard's behalf. In the summer of 1972, Hubbard ordered that around $2 million in cash be transferred from OTC bank accounts in Switzerland to the "Apollo", where it was stored for the next three years in a locked file cabinet to which Mary Sue Hubbard had the only set of keys. Her salary was relatively modest, amounting to $30,430 ($150,732 in 2007 prices) between 1970 and 1972, though she did also benefit from tens of thousands of dollars a year in living expenses paid for by the Church of Scientology.


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: The Hubbards moved ashore in March 1972 after three years traveling aboard their ship from port to port in the Mediterranean. They set up home in a villa on the outskirts of the Moroccan city of Tangier. Their sojourn in Morocco ended abruptly in December 1972 when it became clear that the Church of Scientology was about to be indicted in France for fraud, and that Hubbard himself was potentially at risk of being extradited to appear in court if the case went to trial. Hubbard returned to the United States, living under a false name in New York City while Mary Sue and the children remained aboard the "Apollo". They were reunited in September 1973, when the possibility of extradition had passed. When it became known in October 1974 that the FBI wished to interview Hubbard, Mary Sue persuaded her husband to avoid going ashore in the United States and the "Apollo" spent the next year sailing from port to port in the Caribbean.


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: The Scientology fleet was finally disbanded in 1975, when Hubbard decided to move ashore and establish a "land base" in Florida. He and Mary Sue moved initially to Daytona Beach, Florida in August 1975. They lived there incognito for a few months before moving into an apartment in Dunedin on the west coast of Florida, a few miles north of the town of Clearwater where a Scientology front company had bought the old Fort Harrison Hotel to serve as Scientology's new headquarters. The presence of the Hubbards was meant to be a secret, but in January 1976 he was recognized by a science fiction fan while on a shopping trip. Fearing arrest, he fled to Washington, D.C. with a handful of aides while Mary Sue was left behind in Florida continuing her day-to-day management activities.


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: In October 1976, Hubbard's eldest son by Mary Sue, Quentin, died by suicide at the age of 22. Mary Sue was grief-stricken, though she later attempted to persuade friends that Quentin had died from encephalitis. Her husband's reaction was one of fury, blaming Quentin for – in his eyes – letting him down.


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: On July 8, 1977, 134 agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation simultaneously stormed the Church of Scientology's offices in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, seizing nearly 50,000 documents and other evidence. The raids were in response to the federal government's discovery that the Church of Scientology had been carrying out a secret and highly illegal "dirty tricks" campaign against government agencies, individuals, and institutions deemed to be enemies of Scientology. A year later, on August 15, 1978, Mary Sue Hubbard was indicted by a grand jury, accused of masterminding a conspiracy against the government in her capacity as head of the Church's Guardian's Office.


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: Mary Sue was appointed by her husband as Guardian (later Controller) of the Guardian's Office (GO) in March 1966. Established in response to the battering that Scientology was receiving at the time from governments and the media, the GO was tasked with tackling any "threat of great importance" to Scientology. This work took a variety of forms, including public relations, legal actions, and the gathering of "intelligence" on perceived enemies. In the UK alone, it issued hundreds of writs against the media for publishing negative reports on Scientology. It carried out an international campaign against psychiatry, Interpol, the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and various other government agencies. Its eventual downfall was to result from the use of illegal methods, ordered and authorized by Mary Sue, to further its campaign.


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: Mary Sue was promoted to the position of Controller "for life" of the Guardian's Office in January 1969, with one of her subordinates, Jane Kember, being appointed to Mary Sue's old post of Guardian. Mary Sue continued to manage the GO from her various residences aboard the "Apollo", and the villa in Tangier. At the order of both of the Hubbards, the GO ran scores of operations against Scientology's enemies. The targets were not just external enemies but dissident Scientologists; in 1969, Mary Sue wrote an order directing the GO to cull information from the confessional folders of Scientologists, breaking a rule of confidence that was supposedly sacrosanct. L. Ron Hubbard was said to have been fully aware of the GO's actions; the US government would later declare him to be an "unindicted co-conspirator" in the GO's illegal activities.


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: One of their primary targets was the IRS, with which Scientology was engaged in a bitter battle over tax exemptions. As part of a wider strategy codenamed Operation Snow White, the GO succeeded in infiltrating a Scientologist into the IRS to steal files about the government's litigation strategy against Scientology. Mary Sue was closely involved in the strategy; a letter written by her, approving the thefts, was later used in evidence against her. In March 1976, she approved an illegal plan to obtain "non-FOI data" from the government, meaning classified documents not available through the Freedom of Information Act. The GO's agent in the IRS, Michael Meisner, was ordered to obtain all files concerning L. Ron and Mary Sue Hubbard from the IRS Office of International Operations, which he succeeded in infiltrating.


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: The espionage continued for another three months before Meisner's luck ran out and he was caught in June 1976. Although he bluffed it out initially, a warrant was issued for his arrest in August. The situation was potentially disastrous for the GO and caused panic among the leadership. Mary Sue conspired with her subordinates to concoct alibis for Meisner and work out how to keep him out of the hands of the authorities, keeping him in hiding under a series of false identities. Meisner became increasingly reluctant to cooperate with his GO handlers and in April 1977 he was forcibly taken by GO staff to a new hiding place. He succeeded in escaping in May and turned himself in to the FBI, making a full confession. The raids of July 1977 were the result.


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: The case eventually came to trial in September 1979, following months of delay occasioned by a fierce rear-guard action by the Church of Scientology's lawyers. On October 8, a deal was struck between the government and the Church that the nine defendants – including Mary Sue – would each plead guilty to one charge of conspiracy if they agreed to sign a written stipulation by the government (essentially a public confession) of what they had done, thus avoiding a lengthy trial. They were formally found guilty on October 26, 1979. Mary Sue and two others received the heaviest penalties, a five-year prison sentence and a $10,000 fine. The other five defendants received lesser sentences and fines. Her husband avoided being indicted but was extremely concerned that Mary Sue would betray him. One of his aides, David Mayo, was dispatched by Hubbard to suggest that Mary Sue might consider a divorce. According to Mayo:


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: Despite her conviction, Mary Sue remained in her post as Controller of the Guardian's Office (GO). There was no shortage of work for her to do; further legal difficulties were anticipated, as there was a New York grand jury investigating Operation Freakout, the GO's campaign against New York author Paulette Cooper, and a Florida grand jury looking into Scientology's activities in Clearwater. Around the end of February 1980, Ron Hubbard went into hiding and remained in seclusion in the small town of Creston, California, for the remaining six years of his life. Mary Sue, who had last met with her husband a few months before his disappearance, never saw or heard from him again.


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: Hubbard nonetheless remained active in the management of Scientology. The criminal conviction of the GO's top executives triggered a lengthy power struggle at the top of the Church of Scientology, which would lead eventually to Mary Sue being forced into retirement. Under his doctrine he believed that "mistakes do not just happen, somebody causes them, always". A disaster on the scale of the GO criminal case was clearly the result of the activities of someone hostile to Scientology – a Suppressive Person – operating within the GO. He issued an internal directive in 1979 asserting that major failures must result from the presence of multiple Suppressives, who would need to be rooted out along with their "connections". The downfall of the GO led Hubbard to distrust it, believing it to be riddled with Suppressives; he severed his communications with it and put his reliance instead on the Commodore's Messenger Organization (CMO), a group he had formed in 1968 and whose purpose was to relay messages to and from church staff as Ron's personal representatives. The Messengers, who were mostly in their teens and early twenties, became Hubbard's sole means of communication with the Church.


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: In 1981, the "All Clear Unit" was established within the CMO, tasked with the purpose of making it "All Clear" for Hubbard to come out of hiding. One of its principal figures was David Miscavige, a 21-year-old Messenger who had worked as a cameraman for Hubbard. In May 1981, he met with Mary Sue to tell her that her position as Controller of the Guardian's Office was untenable. She reacted angrily; in a 1992 trial in Canada, Miscavige told the court that she had called him "some pretty nasty names" and threatened him with a large ashtray held close to his face, but she had eventually agreed to step down. She subsequently changed her mind, believing that she had been tricked, and wrote to her husband to complain but received no response. Numerous other Guardian's Office personnel were purged as well.


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: In July 1981, all remaining GO staff were ordered to join the Sea Org, which would thus secure the CMO's control of the Guardian's Office, and the current Guardian, Jane Kember – who was one of those convicted on conspiracy charges – was to be removed. Mary Sue strongly opposed these changes and reappointed herself Controller, rescinding the CMO's permission to investigate the GO. CMO staff investigating the GO were physically expelled from the Church of Scientology's Los Angeles headquarters, and the Controller's files were guarded day and night. Mary Sue attempted to contact her husband to rescind the CMO's takeover bid but failed, and admitted defeat when the Messengers produced an undated dispatch from Hubbard instructing the GO to be put under the CMO when its senior executives went to prison. She stood down again, being replaced by a South African Scientologist named Gordon Cook, and Jane Kember was replaced by David Gaiman, a British Scientologist.


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: Miscavige provided a first-hand account of these events, in an affidavit submitted in a case heard in 1994 in California, "Church of Scientology International vs. Steven Fishman and Uwe Geertz". He stated:


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: I knew if it was going to be a physical takeover we're going to lose because they had a couple thousand staff and we (the "messengers") had about 50. That is the amazing part about it.


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: According to the Church of Scientology, Hubbard himself did not find out about Mary Sue's resignation until five months later.


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: The convictions of Mary Sue Hubbard and the other GO staff executives were upheld by a federal appeals court in October 1981, and in November seven of those convicted dropped their appeals – but not Mary Sue, who continued to fight the charges. She lost her final appeal in April 1982 and was ordered to begin a prison term in January 1983. The original sentence of five years imprisonment was not carried out, and the court ordered a study of her claimed medical problems, before eventually replacing her sentence with a four-year term of imprisonment, with parole set at 40 months. She was sent to the federal prison in Lexington, Kentucky, to serve her sentence, though in the end, she was released after only a year of imprisonment.


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: After her resignation from the GO, Mary Sue Hubbard ceased to have any involvement in the management of the Church of Scientology. She did, however, resurface on a few occasions during the remaining years of her life. In 1984 she acted as an "intervenor" in the Church of Scientology of California's lawsuit against Gerry Armstrong. He had worked as an archivist for the Church of Scientology, gathering source material for a planned biography of L. Ron Hubbard. He became disillusioned with Scientology and left the Church, taking with him copies of biographical material, including Hubbard's letters to Mary Sue over the years. The Church sued in 1982 and Mary Sue joined the suit, charging that Armstrong had committed an "invasion of privacy". When the case came to trial in May 1984, she told the Superior Court of Los Angeles County that she had been "mentally raped" and "emotionally distressed" knowing that others had seen the documents. She told the court that she had not seen her husband since January 1980, "but I've written him personal letters ... but I don't believe he's getting them" as he had not replied to them. In June 1984, Judge Paul G. Breckenridge ruled against the Church and Mary Sue Hubbard, criticizing her credibility as a witness:


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: A month later, in the English High Court of Justice, Mr Justice Latey declared in a case in which Scientology was a prominent issue that "Mr Hubbard is a charlatan and worse, as are his wife, Mary Sue Hubbard, and the clique at the top privy to the cult's activities."


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: In October 1984, Mary Sue filed a $5 million lawsuit against her husband's first son, Ronald DeWolf, accusing him of "massive fraud" for attempting to have his father declared legally dead or mentally incompetent. L. Ron Hubbard died on January 24, 1986, at his ranch near Creston, California.


title: Mary Sue Hubbard

text: A Scientology spokesman informed the press that she had been left "a very generous provision" in her husband's will, though the details were kept secret. Mary Sue Hubbard continued to be active in Scientology well into the 1990s; in a 1994 Scientology magazine, she was listed as a "Patron" of the International Association of Scientologists, indicating a donation of $40,000. In December 1995, Hubbard had a mastectomy of her left breast. In 1998 she was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in addition to her existing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Mary Sue Hubbard died on November 25, 2002, aged 71, at her home in Los Angeles. Her body was cremated two days later and her ashes were scattered at sea off the California coast, where L. Ron Hubbard's ashes had similarly been scattered in January 1986.


title: Portuguese Americans

text: Portuguese Americans (), also known as Luso-Americans ("luso-americanos"), are citizens and residents of the United States who are connected to the country of Portugal by birth, ancestry, or citizenship.


title: Portuguese Americans

text: Americans and others who are not native Europeans from Portugal but originate from countries that were former colonies of Portugal do not necessarily self-identify as "Portuguese-American", but rather as their post-colonial nationalities, although many refugees (referred to as "retornados") from former Portuguese colonies, as well as many white Brazilians, are ethnically or ancestrally Portuguese. In 2017, an estimated 48,158 Portuguese nationals were living in the United States.


title: Portuguese Americans

text: Some Melungeon communities in rural Appalachia have historically self-identified as Portuguese. Given their complex ancestry, individual Melungeons may descend from Portuguese people, but not all do.


title: Portuguese Americans

text: Bilateral ties date from the earliest years of the United States. Following the American Revolutionary War, Portugal was the first neutral country to recognize the United States.


title: Portuguese Americans

text: Portuguese people have had a very long history in the United States, since 1634. The first documented Portuguese to live in colonial America was Mathias de Sousa, a Sephardic Jew. The oldest synagogue in the country, the Touro Synagogue, is named after one of these early Portuguese Jews, Isaac Touro.


title: Portuguese Americans

text: Some of the earliest European explorers to reach continental North America in the Age of Discovery were Portuguese explorers, such as João Fernandes Lavrador. Navigators, like the Miguel Corte-Real family, may have visited the North American shores at the beginning of the 16th century.


title: Portuguese Americans

text: There is a historic landmark, the Dighton Rock, in southeastern Massachusetts, that a small minority of scholars believe testifies their presence in the area. Portuguese explorer João Rodrigues Cabrilho explored the California coast for the first time.


title: Portuguese Americans

text: During the Colonial period, there was a small Portuguese immigration to the present-day U.S., especially to the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.


title: Portuguese Americans

text: Peter Francisco, the giant soldier in the US Continental Army, is generally thought to have been born Portuguese, from the Azores.


title: Portuguese Americans

text: In the late 19th century, many Portuguese, mainly Azoreans and Madeirans, emigrated to the eastern U.S., establishing communities in New England coastal cities, primarily but not limited to Providence, Bristol, Warwick and Pawtucket in Rhode Island, and Taunton, Brockton, Fall River and New Bedford in Southeastern Massachusetts.


title: Portuguese Americans

text: Another part of Massachusetts that attracted many Portuguese immigrants was Northern Massachusetts, most notably Lowell and Lawrence. In addition, Many Portuguese immigrants also went to nearby Southern New Hampshire. Massachusetts was a key location for Portuguese immigrants due to the availability of low skill jobs. Many migrants came to the United States with little knowledge of the English Language, and textile jobs were frequently available in these areas. Portuguese migrants had to seek out low skill jobs because of education in Portugal and the lack of job availability in the nineteenth century.


title: Portuguese Americans

text: A small number of Portuguese immigrants settled in the city of Boston. These Portuguese immigrants mainly settled in East Boston and North End. In addition, Many Portuguese immigrants also went to Cambridge and Somerville.


title: Portuguese Americans

text: A Portuguese community existed in the vicinity of the Carpenter Street Underpass in Springfield, Illinois, one of the earliest and largest Portuguese settlements in the Midwestern United States. By the early twentieth century, the project area represented the western extension of a neighborhood known as the "Badlands." The Badlands was included in the widespread destruction and violence of the Springfield Race Riot in August 1908, an event that led to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The Carpenter Street archaeological site possesses local and national significance for its potential to contribute to an understanding of the lifestyles of multiple ethnic/racial groups in Springfield during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.


title: Portuguese Americans

text: On the West Coast in California there are Portuguese communities in San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Santa Cruz, as well as in dairy farming areas in the Central Valley, the Los Angeles Basin, and San Diego, in connection to Portuguese fishermen and settlers emigrating to California from the Azores. There are also connections with Portuguese communities in the Pacific Northwest in Astoria, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, and British Columbia, Canada as well. Many of the Portuguese communities on the west coast were farming towns. Portuguese who moved to California often saved money to buy land to start farming. Portuguese farmers in California and along the west coast of the United States often hired other Portuguese migrants as farm hands. Aside from farming Portuguese migrants also were able to secure jobs as fishermen in port cities.


title: Portuguese Americans

text: Portuguese migration to Hawaii occurred often in the late nineteenth century due to the availability of labor contracts on the islands. Labor contracts paid for the migration of entire families. This was enticing for families looking to migrate without the means or the desire to migrate in stages. This led to families having to work off debt before they could move off of the island. Often times Portuguese migrants decided just to remain in Hawaii despite there being little opportunity for improving their lives.


title: Portuguese Americans

text: In the 1840s, whaling ships were the way to get to America, after a slow voyage of two to three years. In the early 1700s, Massachusetts dominated the whaling industry with Nantucket, Cape Cod and New Bedford. By the early 19th century, New Bedford had become the center of whaling in America. When whalers were out at sea, they would frequently stop in the Azores to recruit crew members for help. At the end of their voyage, they docked in New England, where crew members often settled as immigrants. Today, one can visit the Whaling Museum in New Bedford, Massachusetts and encounter authentic Portuguese whaling history.


title: Portuguese Americans

text: After World War II, there was another wave of Portuguese immigration to the country, mainly in the northeastern United States (New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Maryland), and also in California. Many were fleeing the right-wing dictatorship of Antonio Salazar. There are Portuguese clubs, principally in the larger cities of these states, which operate with the intention of promoting sociocultural preservation as venues for community events, athletics, etc.


title: Portuguese Americans

text: Many Portuguese Americans may include descendants of Portuguese settlers born in Africa (like Angola, Cape Verde, and Mozambique) and Asia (mostly Macanese people), as well Oceania (Timor-Leste). There were around 1 million Portuguese Americans in the United States by 2000.


title: Portuguese Americans

text: As with other immigrants that arrived in America, several Portuguese surnames have been changed to align with more American sounding names, for example Rodrigues to Rogers, Oliveira to Oliver, Martins to Martin, Pereira to Perry, Moraes or Morais to Morris, Magalhães to McLean, Souto to Sutton, Moura to Moore, Serrão to Serran, Silva to Silver or Sylvia, Rocha to Rock (or Stone), Madeira or Madeiros to Wood, Pontes to Bridges, Fernandes to Frederick, Costa to Charlie, Emo or Emos to Emma and Santos to Stan.


title: Portuguese Americans

text: A general contribution the Portuguese people have made to American music is the ukulele, which originated in Madeira and was initially popularized in the Kingdom of Hawaii. John Philip Sousa was a famous Portuguese American composer most known for his patriotic compositions.


title: Portuguese Americans

text: A large amount of mingling took place between Chinese and Portuguese in Hawaii. There were very few marriages between European and Chinese people with the majority being between Portuguese and Chinese people. These unions between Chinese men and Portuguese women resulted in children of mixed parentage, called Chinese-Portuguese. For two years to June 30, 1933, 38 of these children were born; they were classified as pure Chinese because their fathers were Chinese. Curiously, these marriages are in marked contrast to the situation in Macau, where very few Han Chinese married Portuguese settlers; instead, the Portuguese mixed with indigenous Tanka people, leading to the Macanese people.


title: Portuguese Americans

text: In 1957–58, the Capelinhos volcano erupted on the Azorean island of Faial, causing massive destruction from lava and smoke. In response, then Senators John F. Kennedy and John Pastore co-sponsored an Azorean Refugee Act. President Dwight Eisenhower signed the legislation in 1958, making 1,500 visas available to the victims of the eruption. An extension was enabled in 1962, providing opportunities for even more immigrants. According to the United States Census from 2000, there were 1,176,615 Portuguese-Americans, the majority being of Azorean descent.


title: Portuguese Americans

text: This led to the passing of the 1965 Immigration Act, which stated if someone has legal or American relatives in the United States, they could serve as a sponsor and, therefore could be a legal alien. This act dramatically increased Portuguese immigration into the 1970s and 1980s.


title: Portuguese Americans

text: There are four anthologies of Portuguese-American literature: "Luso-American Literature: Writings by Portuguese-Speaking Authors in North America" edited by Robert Henry Moser and António Luciano de Andrade Tosta and published in 2011, "The Gávea-Brown Book of Portuguese-American Poetry" edited by Alice R. Clemente and George Monteiro, published in 2013, "Writers of the Portuguese Diaspora in the United States and Canada: An Anthology" edited by Luís Gonçalves and Carlo Matos, published in 2015, and "Behind the Stars, More Stars: The Tagus/Disquiet Collection of New Luso-American Writing" edited by Christopher Larkosh and Oona Patrick, published in 2019 by Tagus Press. The list of accomplished writers is considerable: Katherine Vaz, Frank X. Gaspar, Millicent Borges Accardi, Sam Pereira, Nancy Vieira Couto, Alfred Lewis, Charles Reis Felix, Michael Garcia Spring and John dos Passos. In recent years, the Portuguese in the Americas Series at Tagus Press at UMass Dartmouth has been particularly active in publishing works by Portuguese-American authors, the most recent of these being "The Poems of Renata Ferreira", by Frank X. Gaspar, published in 2020.


title: Portuguese Americans

text: Portuguese-Americans are the fourth largest ethnic group in the state of Hawaii, fifth largest group in Rhode Island and the eighth largest group in Massachusetts.


title: Portuguese Americans

text: Portuguese-American communities in the US according to the 5 Year Estimates of the (2016 American Community Survey):


title: Victor Stone (DC Extended Universe)

text: Victor Stone, also known as Cyborg, is a fictional character in the DC Extended Universe. Based on the character of the same name appearing in publications from DC Comics, he is portrayed by Ray Fisher. Originally appearing as a cameo in "", Stone had a prominent role in the film "Justice League". Cyborg's role in the latter film was subject to controversy as his backstory was heavily trimmed down in the theatrical release, in addition to sparking a conflict between Fisher, Joss Whedon, who had replaced Zack Snyder as director during post-production, and subsequently DC Films. Nonetheless, the character also appeared in Snyder's director's cut of "Justice League" (2021) with his original arc restored.


title: Victor Stone (DC Extended Universe)

text: A later addition to DC Comics' lineup of superhero characters, Cyborg first appeared in 1980 as a founding member of the Teen Titans. He later sees numerous arcs in the comics and is rebooted several times, becoming a founding member of the Justice League in the 2011 continuity relaunch. Cyborg famously appears in numerous adaptations of the Teen Titans, including the 2003–07 animated series and "Teen Titans Go!", and numerous DC Comics animated films and video games. He is voiced by Khary Payton in many of these adaptations.


title: Victor Stone (DC Extended Universe)

text: Theater actor Ray Fisher was cast to play Victor Stone / Cyborg in the DCEU, beginning with the character's appearance in "Batman v Superman". This was Fisher's first film role, as he had been a classically trained actor. Fisher had gained 20 pounds of muscle to portray Muhammad Ali in the play "Fetch Clay, Make Man", after which talent agents sought him for the role of Cyborg. In the films, the effects for Cyborg's cybernetic parts are achieved using CGI and motion capture.


title: Victor Stone (DC Extended Universe)

text: A stand-alone Cyborg film was initially scheduled for a release date of April 3, 2020, but it has since been delayed. Cyborg, played by Ray Fisher, appears in "Zack Snyder's Justice League" (2021). Fisher was among several actors who returned to shoot additional footage for the "Snyder Cut".


title: Victor Stone (DC Extended Universe)

text: When interviewed by "Vanity Fair" after the release of "Zack Snyder's Justice League", screenwriter Chris Terrio, who also wrote "", stated that he had worked extensively with Fisher on the development of the Victor Stone character. Terrio said that both men understood the "responsibility" of developing the first black superhero to appear in any DC film; while other black superheroes, such as Sam Wilson in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, had been seen in film before "Justice League", Victor Stone/Cyborg was to be the first one cast in a starring role for a big-budget film, as this was before the release of "Black Panther". Terrio also revealed that he was so upset with the removal of much of his work on the theatrical cut, including Cyborg's backstory, that he strongly considered having his name taken off the film before realizing it would cause more problems for the film's already troubled production.


title: Victor Stone (DC Extended Universe)

text: Several years after the release of the theatrical version of "Justice League", Fisher opened up about perceived mistreatment by Joss Whedon, who replaced Zack Snyder as director, while filming the reshoots, leading to a dispute with DC Films studio head Walter Hamada and DC Entertainment head Geoff Johns. Fisher specifically accused Whedon of "gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable" behavior, starting a series of Twitter posts about his experiences with the tagline "Accountability > Entertainment" that carried on in the following months. Other DCEU actors such as Aquaman actor Jason Momoa, Wonder Woman actress Gal Gadot, and Iris West actress Kiersey Clemons either offered their support for Fisher or alluded to their own negative experiences with Whedon. While Warner Media agreed to look into the matter and carried out its own investigation, allegedly leading to Whedon leaving production of the HBO series "The Nevers", Fisher stated that he was no longer willing to work at DC Films under Hamada, calling him "the most dangerous kind of enabler" for allegedly tampering with the investigation.


title: Victor Stone (DC Extended Universe)

text: Cyborg was originally reported to appear in "The Flash", but was reportedly written out of the film after Fisher declared he was unwilling to work with Hamada on any future DC Films productions in the aftermath of their conflict. The role is not expected to be recast in that film. In addition, Warner Bros. president Ann Sarnoff defended Hamada and the studio's handling of the investigation. Fisher later wrote: "If the end of my time as Cyborg is the cost for helping to bring awareness and accountability to Walter Hamada's actions—I'll pay it gladly." Fisher opened up about his experiences working at DC Films in greater detail following the release of "Zack Snyder's Justice League". Fisher has since stated that he would return to the role of Cyborg for "The Flash" if Warner Bros. and Hamada released a formal apology to him.


title: Victor Stone (DC Extended Universe)

text: According to Fisher, Cyborg's backstory, as intended by Zack Snyder in his version of "Justice League", was meant to "hit some hearts". Fisher mentions that Cyborg will have lost numerous elements of his personal life, including his original body, mother, ability to play football, and subsequently, his sense of self. Originally a cheerful, athletic, and intelligently gifted young man willing to help others, Victor becomes gloomy and depressed after his accident, no longer feeling fully human after being rebuilt. Despite his disillusionment with the world, Victor retains his selflessness after his accident, assisting a penniless single mother by manipulating her bank account as one of his first actions as Cyborg. After fighting alongside the Justice League for some time, however, Cyborg seems to have warmed a bit to all of his teammates. Having been rebuilt with alien technology by his estranged father, Silas, Victor Stone's arc in the "Snyder Cut" will see the character re-finding himself and his sense of humanity. Fisher also mentioned "There's a ton of allegory with respect to that in being a Black man, and just the journey that Black people have taken in this country." During early promotion of the theatrical cut, Fisher also mentioned that Cyborg's character was meant to represent people with disabilities in the film.


title: Victor Stone (DC Extended Universe)

text: In 2015, Stone is the starting quarterback for the Gotham City University football team, leading the team to a win over Wisconsin with his mother, Elinore, watching, but his father Silas is unable to attend due to his job as the director of S. T. A. R. Labs. Stone and Elinore have a talk about why Silas was unable to make it on their drive home, and as they are distracted, get into an accident that kills Elinore and maims Stone from the chest down. Silas secretly uses one of the Mother Boxes, being studied by S.T.A.R. Labs after it was discovered by the Nazis, to save Stone and build him into a cybernetic being. Though Stone survives, Silas declares him dead and gives him a burial marker next to his mother, hiding Stone in his apartment along with the Mother Box.


title: Victor Stone (DC Extended Universe)

text: The footage of his reconstruction is taken and decrypted from Lex Luthor's servers by Bruce Wayne to Diana Prince along with other information on fellow metahumans. Victor resents his father for being mostly absent in his life and for rebuilding him into a "monster" and blames him for his mother's death.


title: Victor Stone (DC Extended Universe)

text: Silas leaves him a tape that serves as guide on how to discover his newly-gained powers, which include the ability to remotely bypass encryption and manipulate computer systems at will, but Stone destroys the tape when Silas' recording becomes more personal. Silas informs Stone that Steppenwolf's parademons are after the Mother Box, leading to Stone burying it in his supposed grave.


title: Victor Stone (DC Extended Universe)

text: In 2017, Stone is adjusting to his new abilities and secretly listens in on a conversation between Wayne and Prince. He is later discovered at his father's home by Prince, who is attempting to recruit him and several other metahumans to team up against an extraterrestrial invasion by the tyrannical New God warlord Steppenwolf. Stone tells her he has been doing some "tracking" but declines to join her, Bruce and Barry Allen until he later finds his home ransacked and father kidnapped. Revealing that he had hidden the Mother Box Steppenwolf is after, Stone helps the fledgling metahuman team rescue Silas and other scientists from the demon and his parademon army in a S.T.A.R. Labs facility underneath Gotham Harbor, also retrieving the Motherbox.


title: Victor Stone (DC Extended Universe)

text: As the team, which later sees Arthur Curry join, decides to use the Mother Box, which was used to successfully revive Stone as Cyborg, to resurrect Superman, Stone and Allen are sent to exhume Clark Kent's body, bonding with each other while doing so. The team successfully resurrects the Man of Steel with the relic and leftover technology from a Kryptonian scout ship in Metropolis, but Superman, having lost his memories, is triggered to attack the team when Cyborg's cannon accidentally shoots at Superman. The team is ultimately saved from being decimated when Wayne has his butler Alfred Pennyworth bring Kent's girlfriend Lois Lane, which calms Superman down. As Kent leaves with Lois to regain his memories, Steppenwolf steals the Mother Box while the team is distracted, and they resolve to face Steppenwolf in Russia without Superman in a final attempt to thwart his plan to destroy the Earth.


title: Victor Stone (DC Extended Universe)

text: While Batman plans to distract Steppenwolf, Cyborg is assigned to pull apart the three Mother Boxes with Wonder Woman, Flash, and Aquaman flanking him. The plan is unsuccessful until Superman arrives with his memories restored and aids the team in defeating the New God and his minions, who retreat back to Apokolips after Steppenwolf's axe is destroyed. Cyborg remains a part of the team, now named the Justice League, after the battle.


title: Victor Stone (DC Extended Universe)

text: Prince meets with him to try and recruit him to Wayne's metahuman team. While angrily refusing at first, Stone joins Wayne's team after discovering his father's plight. He aids Allen in rescuing and evacuating his father and other hostages as he, Allen, Wayne and Prince are able to drive Steppenwolf away, though Steppenwolf deflects a missile shot by Victor and causes the facility to flood, requiring Curry to save them. Recovering the Mother Box, Stone informs the team on its history and explains how his father was able to temporarily activate the Mother Box without alerting Steppenwolf in the past to revive him, leading the team to realize they can use it to resurrect Superman. However, the team realizes the Mother Box will alert Steppenwolf this time around, but they unanimously decide to use it to revive Superman anyway as he is the only one of them powerful enough to go up against the New God one-on-one.


title: Victor Stone (DC Extended Universe)

text: Stone utilizes his hacking powers to sneak the team and Superman's body into the Kryptonian scout ship within S.T.A.R. Labs' facility. Upon Allen and Stone activating the Mother Box to resurrect Kent, Victor has a premonition of the "Knightmare" timeline which sees Wonder Woman and Aquaman die and Superman fall under Darkseid's control after Lois Lane's death. Stone's cannon subsequently detects the revived but amnesiac Superman as a threat, automatically shooting at him. Following the team's resulting scuffle with Superman, which ends when Lois arrives and calms Kent down, Steppenwolf senses the Mother Box's activation and retrieves it, but not before Silas sacrifices himself to superheat the box, allowing Stone and Wayne to track it to an abandoned city in Russia. Stone assists Bruce with repairing a military aircraft to fly the team to Russia, finally enabling it to fly after finding and fixing a software bug in its firmware. As the team prepares its battle plan, Victor resolves to separate the three Mother Boxes to prevent their "Unity" from destroying Earth, enlisting Allen's charging ability to aid him while Batman destroys Steppenwolf's fortification around the Mother Boxes.


title: Victor Stone (DC Extended Universe)

text: The team fights their way into the nuclear facility, but cannot distract Steppenwolf long enough for Stone to get to the boxes until Superman arrives. Despite Superman's aid, Stone fails to separate the boxes in time and the Unity causes a large explosion, though Allen is able to reverse time by running faster than the speed of light and provide Stone with the needed spark. After a brief moment of temptation, Stone separates and destroys the boxes with Superman's help. Following Steppenwolf's defeat and death, Stone remains part of the team and finally listens to his father's encouragement after repairing the tape, becoming inspired to use his powers for good and accepting his new state while declaring he is "not broken" and not "alone".


title: Victor Stone (DC Extended Universe)

text: Cyborg is present in Wayne's "Knightmare" vision in which he, Batman, Flash, Mera, Deathstroke, and Joker are all being hunted by a Darkseid-controlled Superman.


title: Victor Stone (DC Extended Universe)

text: Although Ray Fisher's performance in the theatrical "Justice League" film received a mixed response, his performance in "Zack Snyder's Justice League" received overwhelmingly positive reviews. Bradon Katz from "The Observer" wrote "Though Flash (Ezra Miller) and Aquaman (Jason Momoa) are also further fleshed out, it is Victor Stone who emerges as the soul of this blockbuster." Josh Wilding from "ComicBookMovie" wrote "The way things ultimately play out between them (and we’re not going to spoil anything here) also works perfectly, and Cyborg is one of the most complex, layered characters we’ve seen in a superhero movie for some time."


title: Victor Stone (DC Extended Universe)

text: Following news of Fisher being supposedly written out of "The Flash", fans flocked to Twitter to voice their support and sympathy for him after he released his statement responding to the news on the social media platform.


title: Victor Stone (DC Extended Universe)

text: The plot description and characterization were adapted from Cyborg and Justice League (film) at the DC Extended Universe Wiki, which are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license.


title: PR Man Singh

text: PR Man Singh (born 24 November 1938) is an Indian former cricket player and administrator. He was the manager of the Indian team that won the 1983 Cricket World Cup, and also managed the Indian team which reached the semi-finals at the 1987 Cricket World Cup. He later served as the secretary of the Hyderabad Cricket Association.


title: PR Man Singh

text: A right-handed batsman and off break bowler, Man Singh played five first-class matches between 1965/66 and 1968/69, representing Hyderabad in the Ranji Trophy and Hyderabad Blues in the Moin-ud-Dowlah Gold Cup Tournament.


title: PR Man Singh

text: Man Singh became an administrator after his playing career. He worked as the assistant team manager for India on its tour to Pakistan in 1978. He was selected as the manager for the 1983 Cricket World Cup, after securing a 15–13 win over Niranjan Shah in a special BCCI general meeting vote for the post. He was part of the six-member selection committee that appointed Kapil Dev as the captain for the tournament; Man Singh and Kapil Dev were then involved in the World Cup squad selection. India went on to lift the World Cup, despite being tipped as massive underdogs at the start of the tournament when bookmakers' odds was at 66-1 for an Indian win.


title: PR Man Singh

text: After India's World Cup victory, Man Singh reportedly wrote a letter to "Wisden Cricket Monthly"'s editor David Frith, who had downplayed India's chances before the tournament and declared that he would "eat his words" if India won the tournament, reminding him of his "promise". The September 1983 edition of the magazine ran a copy of Man Singh's letter along with a photograph of Frith with a piece of paper in his mouth, captioned, "India made me eat my words".


title: PR Man Singh

text: Man Singh went on to manage the Indian team at the 1987 Cricket World Cup in the subcontinent where India reached the semi-finals. Later, he managed Hyderabad Blues in the Moin-ud-Dowlah Tournament and served as the secretary of the Hyderabad Cricket Association.


title: PR Man Singh

text: Man Singh's residence in Karkhana, Secunderabad, named "Pavilion", houses a cricket memorabilia room which was inaugurated by Sachin Tendulkar in 2003. The collection includes hundreds of books, ties and bats which he had assembled since the 1950s.


title: PR Man Singh

text: The 2021 Indian film "83", which is based on India's World Cup win, features Pankaj Tripathi portraying Man Singh's character. In the film the character is seen using Hyderabad dialect to talk


title: Eye of the Beholder (The Twilight Zone, 1959)

text: "Eye of the Beholder" (also titled "The Private World of Darkness" when initially rebroadcast in the summer of 1962) is episode 42 of the American television anthology series "The Twilight Zone". It originally aired on November 11, 1960 on CBS.


text: Janet Tyler has undergone her eleventh treatment (the maximum number legally allowed) in an attempt to look normal. Her head is completely bandaged so that her face is entirely covered, and her face is described as a "pitiful twisted lump of flesh" by the nurses and doctor, lurking in the shadows of the darkened hospital room. The outcome of the procedure cannot be known until the bandages are removed. Unable to bear the bandages any longer, Janet pleads with the doctor and eventually convinces him to remove them early. As he prepares, the nurse says that she still is uneasy about Janet's appearance. The doctor becomes displeased and questions why Janet or anyone must be judged on their outer beauty. The nurse warns him not to continue in that vein, as it is considered treason.


text: The doctor removes the bandages, and announces that the procedure has failed, and her face has undergone no change: Janet appears as a normal looking woman. The doctor, nurses and other people in the hospital are revealed as inhuman-looking, with drooping features, large, thick brows, sunken-in eyes, swollen and twisted lips, and wrinkled noses with extremely large nostrils, like pigs' snouts. Distraught by the failure of the procedure, Janet runs through the hospital as what is considered normal in this alternate society "State" is revealed. Flat-screen televisions throughout the hospital project an image of the State's leader giving a speech calling for greater conformity.


text: Eventually, a human-looking man named Walter Smith arrives to take the crying, despondent Janet Tyler into exile to a village of her "own kind", where her "ugliness" will not trouble the State. Before the two leave, Walter comforts Janet, saying that she will find love and belonging in the village, and that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", meaning that even though the people from the State and their society might find Janet Tyler "ugly", others will find her beautiful.


text: Because of the complex makeup and camera angles, this was one of the most difficult episodes of "The Twilight Zone" to film. The director, Douglas Heyes, wanted the show to feature actors with sympathetic voices. To achieve this, he cast the episode with his back to the performers. Heyes had planned to have Maxine Stuart, who spoke all the lines of the main character Janet Tyler, when her head is entirely covered by bandages, dub the single line spoken by Tyler when she is revealed (as portrayed by the actress Donna Douglas). However, Douglas had been listening to Stuart's voice as she recorded her part, and was able to imitate her so successfully that she was allowed to speak the line on camera.


text: The original title for this episode was "Eye of the Beholder". Stuart Reynolds, a television producer, threatened to sue writer and producer Rod Serling for the use of the name. At the time, Reynolds was selling an educational film of the same name to public schools. Reruns following the initial broadcast featured the title screen "The Private World of Darkness". Because CBS consulted different prints over the years for syndication packages, the closing credits for this episode vary from one title to the other, depending on which television station is using which package. In "The Twilight Zone"s original DVD release the syndicated version was marketed as an "alternate version". Other than the appearance of the title in the closing credits, however, there are no differences between the two "versions".


text: Serling, who wrote the episode, reused the theme for a later teleplay, "The Different Ones", for his series "Night Gallery". "The Different Ones" takes place in a futuristic world where a disfigured hermit teenage boy is sent on a NASA rocket to a planet where the inhabitants are revealed to look like him. During the transfer he meets a conventionally handsome alien youth, who is going to Earth because of his own "disfigurement".


text: This episode was remade for the 2002–03 revival of the series using Serling's original script (but discarding Bernard Herrmann's original score), with Molly Sims as Janet Tyler, Reggie Hayes as Dr. Bernardi and Roger Cross as the Leader. The make-up was changed to make the faces look more melted, ghoulish and decayed with deep ridges. The remake follows the original script more faithfully. The projection screens were changed to plasma screens and more of the dialogue from the Leader's monologue was used.


title: Sanxingdui

text: Sanxingdui () is an archaeological site and a major Bronze Age culture in modern Guanghan, Sichuan, China. Largely discovered in 1986, following a preliminary finding in 1927, archaeologists excavated artifacts that radiocarbon dating placed in the twelfth–eleventh centuries BC. The archaeological site is the type site for the Sanxingdui culture that produced these artifacts, archeologists have identified the locale with the ancient kingdom of Shu. The artifacts are displayed in the Sanxingdui Museum located near the city of Guanghan.


title: Sanxingdui

text: Sanxingdui is on the UNESCO list of tentative world heritage sites, along with the Jinsha site and the tombs of boat-shaped coffins.


title: Sanxingdui

text: Many Chinese archaeologists have identified the Sanxingdui culture to be part of the ancient kingdom of Shu, linking the artifacts found at the site to its early and legendary kings. References to a Shu kingdom that may be dated reliably to such an early period in Chinese historical records are scant. The kingdom is mentioned in "Shiji" and "Shujing" as an ally of the Zhou who defeated the Shang. Accounts of the legendary kings of Shu also may be found in local annals.


title: Sanxingdui

text: According to the "Chronicles of Huayang" that were compiled during the Jin dynasty (266–420), the Shu kingdom was founded by Cancong (). Cancong was described as having protruding eyes, a feature that is found in the figures of Sanxingdui. Other eye-shaped objects were also found that might suggest worship of the eyes. Other rulers mentioned in "Chronicles of Huayang" include Boguan (), Yufu (), and Duyu (). Many of the objects are fish- and bird-shaped, and these have been suggested to be totems of Boguan and Yufu (the name Yufu means fish cormorant), and the clan of Yufu has been suggested as the one most likely to be associated with Sanxingdui.


title: Sanxingdui

text: Later, similar discoveries were made at Jinsha as well, which is located 40 km away and has close link with the Sanxingdui culture. It is thought to be the relocated capital of the Shu Kingdom. It also has been suggested that the Jinsha site may be the hub and capital of the Duyu clan.


title: Sanxingdui

text: The Sanxingdui archaeological site is located about 4 km northeast of Nanxing Township, Guanghan, Deyang, Sichuan Province. Archaeological digs at the site showed evidence of a walled city founded  1,600 BCE. The trapezoidal city has an east wall 2,000 m, south wall 2,000 m, west wall 1,600 m enclosing 3.6 km, similar in scale to the inner city of the Zhengzhou Shang City.


title: Sanxingdui

text: The city was built on the banks of the Yazi River (), and enclosed part of its tributary, Mamu River, within the city walls. The city walls were 40 m at the base and 20 m at the top, varying in height from 8–10 m. There was a smaller set of inner walls.


title: Sanxingdui

text: The walls were surrounded by canals 25–20 m wide and 2–3 m deep. These canals were used for irrigation, inland navigation, defense, and flood control. The city was divided into residential, industrial, and religious districts organized around a dominant central axis. It is along this axis that most of the pit burial have been found on four terraces. The structures were timber framed adobe rectangular halls. The largest was a meeting hall about .


title: Sanxingdui

text: Evidence of an ancient culture in this region was first found in 1927 when a well-to-do farmer unearthed a large stash of jade relics while dredging an irrigation ditch, many of which through the years found their way into the hands of private collectors. In 1931, the discovery was brought to the attention of Vyvyan Donnithorne, an Anglican missionary stationed at the Gospel Church of Guanghan. He recognised the importance of the discovery and contacted a local magistrate as well as Daniel Sheets Dye, a professor of geology at West China Union University (WCUU). The three of them then visited the location and photographed and measured the site. Through the magistrate, a few items were acquired and sent to the museum at WCUU. Then, in 1934, David Crockett Graham, the new director of the museum at WCUU, organised the first archaeological excavation of the site.


title: Sanxingdui

text: In 1986, local workers accidentally found sacrificial pits containing thousands of gold, bronze, jade, and pottery artifacts that had been broken (perhaps ritually disfigured), burned, and carefully buried. Containing approximately 800 objects, the second sacrificial pit was found a little less than a month later, on August 14, 1986, only 20–30 meters from the first one.


title: Sanxingdui

text: Bronze objects found in the second sacrificial pit included sculptures of humans, animal-faced sculptures, bells, decorative animals such as dragons, snakes, chicks, and birds, and axes. Tables, masks, and belts were some of the objects found that were made out of gold, while objects made out of jade included axes, tablets, rings, knives, and tubes. There was also a large number of ivory and clam shells. Researchers were astonished to find an artistic style that was completely unknown in the history of Chinese art.


title: Sanxingdui

text: All the Sanxingdui discoveries aroused scholarly interest, but the bronzes were what excited the world. Task Rosen of the British Museum considered them to be more outstanding than the Terracotta Army in Xi'an. The first exhibits of Sanxingdui bronzes were held in Beijing (1987, 1990) and the Olympic Museum in Lausanne (1993).


title: Sanxingdui

text: Nevertheless, despite the interest in the excavated finds, the site suffered from flooding and pollution. For this reason the site was included in the 1996 World Monuments Watch by the World Monuments Fund. For the preservation of the site, funding was offered by American Express to construct a protective dike. Also, in 1997, the Sanxingdui Museum opened near the original site.


title: Sanxingdui

text: In March 2021, more than 500 cultural relics, including a 3,000-year-old gold mask, were discovered at Sanxingdui at a 4.6-square-mile area outside the provincial capital of Chengdu. The mask is estimated to be made from 84% gold and weighs 280 grams (0.6 pounds). According to the National Cultural Heritage Administration, the items were recovered from six newly discovered “sacrificial pits”. Additional masks, jade tools, and ivory relics were also discovered in the pit. The six pits were discovered at the Sanxingdui site between 2020 and 2022 during a renewed slate of excavations. The artifacts found in these excavations include fragments of a gold mask, traces of silk, bronze ware depicting animals, ivory carvings, and more. A round of excavations is scheduled to conclude in October 2022.


title: Sanxingdui

text: The timeline of the culture of the Sanxingdui site is thought to be divided into several phases. The Sanxingdui culture that corresponds to periods II-III of the site, was a mysterious civilization in southern China. This culture is contemporaneous with the Shang dynasty, however, that culture developed a different method of bronze-making from the Shang. The first phase that corresponds to period I of the site belongs to the Baodun, and the final phase (period IV) the culture was succeeded by the state of Ba and state of Shu. Speculation regarding the end of the Sanxingdui culture includes that it might have been the result of natural disasters (evidence of massive flooding and an earthquake were found), or invasion by another culture.


title: Sanxingdui

text: The culture was governed by a strong central theocracy with trade links to bronze from Yin and ivory from Southeast Asia.


title: Sanxingdui

text: This ancient culture had a well developed bronze casting industry that permitted the manufacture of many impressive articles, such as the world's oldest life-size standing human statue (260 cm high, 180 kg), and a bronze tree with birds, flowers, and ornaments (396 cm), which some have identified as renderings of the fusang tree of Chinese mythology. The Dawn Redwood also may be found relatively near on the eastern fringe of the Sichuan Basin.


title: Sanxingdui

text: The most striking finds were dozens of large bronze masks and heads (at least six heads with gold foil masks originally attached) represented with angular human features, exaggerated almond-shaped eyes, some with protruding pupils, and large upper ears. Many Sanxingdui bronze faces had traces of paint smears: black on the disproportionately large eyes and eyebrows, and vermillion on the lips, nostrils, and ear holes. According to the French sinologist Corinne Debaine-Francfort, these colours provide evidence for ritual practices that were very different from those of the Shang dynasty. Vermillion is interpreted "not be coloring but something ritually offered for the head to taste, smell, and hear (or something that gave it the power to breathe, hear, and speak)". Based upon the design of these heads, archaeologists believe they were mounted on wooden supports or totems, perhaps dressed in clothing. Liu Yang concludes "masked ritual played a vital role in community life of the ancient Sanxingdui inhabitants", and he characterizes these bronze ritual masks as something that may have been worn by a "shi" () "personator, impersonator; ceremonial representative of a dead relative".


title: Sanxingdui

text: The "shi" was generally a close, young relative who wore a costume (possibly including a mask) reproducing the features of the dead person. The "shi" was an impersonator, that is, a person serving as a reminder of the ancestor to whom sacrifice was being offered. During such a ceremony, the impersonator was much more than an actor in a drama. Although the exact meaning may have been different, the group of Sanxingdui masked figures in bronze all have the character of an impersonator. It is likely the masks were used to impersonate and identify with certain supernatural beings in order to effect some communal good.


title: Sanxingdui

text: Another scholar compares these "bulging-eyed, big-eared, bronze heads and masks" with "eye-idols" (effigies with large eyes and open mouths designed to induce hallucinations) in Julian Jaynes's bicameral mentality hypothesis; and proposes, "[i]t is possible that southern Chinese personators wore these hypnotic bronze masks, recursively representing the spirit of a dead ancestor with a mask that represents a face disguised by a mask".


title: Sanxingdui

text: Other bronze artifacts include birds with eagle-like bills, tigers, a large snake, zoomorphic masks, bells, and what appears to be a bronze spoked wheel but is more likely to be decoration from an ancient shield. Apart from bronze, Sanxingdui finds included jade artifacts consistent with earlier neolithic cultures in China, such as cong and zhang.


title: Sanxingdui

text: As far back as Neolithic times, East Asians identified the four quadrants of the sky with animals: Azure Dragon of the East, Vermillion Bird of the South, White Tiger of the West, and Black Tortoise of the North. Each of these Four Symbols (Chinese constellation) was associated with a constellation that was visible in the relevant season: the dragon in the spring, the bird in the summer, etc.


title: Sanxingdui

text: Since these four animals—birds, dragons, snakes, and tigers—predominate the finds at Sanxingdui, the bronzes might represent the universe. It is unclear whether they formed part of ritual events designed to communicate with the spirits of the universe (or ancestral spirits). As no written records remain it is difficult to determine the intended uses of objects found. Some believe that the continued prevalence of depictions of these animals, especially in the later Han period, was an attempt by humans to "fit into" their understanding of their world, their cosmology. (The jades that were found at Sanxingdui also seem to correlate with the six known types of ritual jades of ancient China, again each might be associated with a compass point (N, S, E, W) plus the heavens and earth.)


title: Elijah Allan-Blitz

text: Elijah Allan-Blitz (born February 18, 1987), is an American actor, musician, and Emmy award winning film director. He is known for his direction of the Emmy-nominated virtual reality experience "Take Every Wave: Laird in VR", which won a Lumiere Award.


title: Elijah Allan-Blitz

text: Allan-Blitz was born in Santa Barbara, California. As a musician, his single "Hey Yo" was nominated in the Grand Jury Award for Best Music Video (Best Visual) category at the International Festival of Cinema Awards.


title: Elijah Allan-Blitz

text: He has worked on "The Shield", independent films and short films and the Peter Bogdanovich feature film, "She's Funny That Way".


title: Elijah Allan-Blitz

text: Allan-Blitz, is one of the first virtual reality directors for "Time" magazine, and an Emmy nominee and Lumiere Award winner. His virtual reality experience about the Holocaust was published as a companion piece for the Ken Burns documentary, "".


title: Elijah Allan-Blitz

text: He has also directed virtual reality experiences for PBS, Van Jones, Aloe Blacc, HBO, Laird Hamilton and a VR psychedelic trip for Michael Pollan's book "How To Change Your Mind".


title: Zanj Rebellion

text: The Zanj Rebellion ( ) was a major revolt against the Abbasid Caliphate, which took place from 869 until 883. Begun near the city of Basra in present-day southern Iraq and led by one Ali ibn Muhammad, the insurrection involved enslaved Bantu-speaking people (Zanj) who had originally been captured from the coast of Southeast Africa and transported to the Middle East, principally to drain the region's salt marshes. It grew to involve slaves and freemen, including both Southeastern Africans and Arabs, from several regions of the Caliphate, and claimed tens of thousands of lives before it was finally defeated.


title: Zanj Rebellion

text: Several Muslim historians, such as al-Tabari and al-Mas'udi, consider the Zanj revolt to be one of the "most vicious and brutal uprisings" of the many disturbances that plagued the Abbasid central government. Modern scholars have characterized the conflict as being "one of the bloodiest and most destructive rebellions which the history of Western Asia records," while at the same time praising its coverage as being among the "most fully and extensively described campaign[s] in the whole of early Islamic historical writing." The precise composition of the rebels remains a subject of debate, both as regards their identity and as to the proportion of slaves and free among them – available historical sources being open to various interpretations.


title: Zanj Rebellion

text: The Zanj were Bantu-speaking people who had been forcibly taken from Southeast Africa and were enslaved primarily for agricultural labor as part of the plantation economy of southern Iraq. The demand for servile labor during this period was fueled by wealthy residents of the port city of Basra, who had acquired extensive marshlands in the surrounding region. These lands had been abandoned as a result of peasant migration and repeated flooding over time, but they could be converted back into cultivatable status through intensive labor.


title: Zanj Rebellion

text: Local magnates were able to gain ownership of this land on the condition that they would make it arable. As a result, they acquired large numbers of Zanj and other slaves, who were placed into work camps and tasked with clearing away the nitrous topsoil as part of the reclamation process. Other Zanj were used to work in the salt flats of lower Iraq, especially in the area around Basra.


title: Zanj Rebellion

text: Both the working and living conditions of the Zanj were considered to be extremely miserable. The menial labor they were engaged in was difficult and the slaves appear to have been poorly treated by their masters. Two previous attempts to rebel against these circumstances are known to have occurred in 689–90 and in 694. Both of these revolts had quickly failed and thereafter little is known about their history prior to 869.


title: Zanj Rebellion

text: Beginning in 861, the Abbasid Caliphate was weakened by a period of severe disorder known as the Anarchy at Samarra, during which the central government in Abbasid Samarra was paralyzed by a struggle between the caliphs and the military establishment for control of the state. Throughout the 860s the various factions in the capital were distracted by this conflict, which resulted in the deaths of several caliphs, army commanders and bureaucrats, the outbreak of multiple troop riots, a damaging civil war in 865–866, and the virtual bankruptcy of the government.