title: Baldwin Locomotive Works

text: In May 1954 Baldwin built a steam turbine-electric locomotive for freight service on the Norfolk and Western Railway (N&W), nicknamed the "Jawn Henry" after the legend of John Henry, a steel-driver on a track crew who famously raced against a steam drill and won, only to die immediately afterwards. The unit was similar in appearance to the C&O turbines but very different mechanically; it had a C+C-C+C wheel arrangement, and an improved watertube boiler which was fitted with automatic controls. Unfortunately the boiler controls were sometimes problematic, and, as with the C&O turbines, coal dust and water got into the motors. "Jawn Henry" was retired from the N&W roster on January 4, 1958.


title: Baldwin Locomotive Works

text: Though fairly successful in the marketplace, Baldwin diesels did not do so well as others. Thanks to their robust Westinghouse electrical gear, they were excellent haulers, but the diesel prime movers were less reliable than comparable EMD and Alco products. The company remained fond of steam power and was slow to make the jump to building reliable diesel road locomotives. By the late 1940s, Baldwin's main diesel competitors – Alco, EMD and Fairbanks-Morse – had each settled on four or five standard locomotive models, which were suitable for assembly-line construction. Baldwin, meanwhile, was the sole manufacturer to continue the steam-era practice of offering bespoke locomotive designs at the request of individual railroads. This resulted in a large number of diesel models, most of which had a small number of units (aside from switchers, only a few models had more than 50 examples). This put Baldwin at a competitive disadvantage since it was unable to benefit from economies of scale, consistent quality control, or the evolution of each model, which its competitors enjoyed. Even the construction could vary between units of the same model, especially if they were not built in sequence. The last Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton diesels were delivered in 1956.


title: Baldwin Locomotive Works

text: In April 1950, Baldwin and Westinghouse completed an experimental gas turbine locomotive, numbered 4000, known as the "Blue Goose", with a B-B-B-B wheel arrangement. The locomotive used two turbine engines fueled by Bunker C fuel oil, was equipped for passenger train heating with a steam generator that utilized the waste exhaust heat of the right hand turbine, and was geared for While it was demonstrated successfully in both freight and passenger service on the PRR, MKT, and CNW, no production orders followed, and it was scrapped in 1953.


title: ISO/IEC 11801

text: International standard ISO/IEC 11801 "Information technology — Generic cabling for customer premises" specifies general-purpose telecommunication cabling systems (structured cabling) that are suitable for a wide range of applications (analog and ISDN telephony, various data communication standards, building control systems, factory automation). It is published by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25/WG 3 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). It covers both balanced copper cabling and optical fibre cabling.


title: ISO/IEC 11801

text: The standard was designed for use within commercial premises that may consist of either a single building or of multiple buildings on a campus. It was optimized for premises that span up to 3 km, up to 1 km office space, with between 50 and 50,000 persons, but can also be applied for installations outside this range.


title: ISO/IEC 11801

text: A major revision was released in November 2017, unifying requirements for commercial, home and industrial networks.


title: ISO/IEC 11801

text: The standard defines several link/channel classes and cabling categories of twisted-pair copper interconnects, which differ in the maximum frequency for which a certain channel performance is required:


title: ISO/IEC 11801

text: The standard link impedance is 100 Ω (The older 1995 version of the standard also permitted 120 Ω and 150 Ω in Classes A−C, but this was removed from the 2002 edition).


title: ISO/IEC 11801

text: OM5 fiber is designed for wideband applications using SWDM multiplexing of 4–16 carriers (40G=4λ×10G, 100G=4λ×25G, 400G=4×4λ×25G) in the 850–953 nm range.


title: ISO/IEC 11801

text: Class F channel and Category 7 cable are backward compatible with Class D/Category 5e and Class E/Category 6. Class F features even stricter specifications for crosstalk and system noise than Class E. To achieve this, shielding was added for individual wire pairs and the cable as a whole. Unshielded cables rely on the quality of the twists to protect from EMI. This involves a tight twist and carefully controlled design. Cables with individual shielding per pair such as category 7 rely mostly on the shield and therefore have pairs with longer twists.


title: ISO/IEC 11801

text: The Category 7 cable standard was ratified in 2002, and primarily introduced to support 10 gigabit Ethernet over 100 m of copper cabling. It contains four twisted copper wire pairs, just like the earlier standards, terminated either with GG45 electrical connectors or with TERA connectors rated for transmission frequencies of up to 600 MHz.


title: ISO/IEC 11801

text: However, in 2006, Category 6 was ratified for Ethernet to allow 10 Gbit/s while still using the traditional 8P8C connector (often erroneously referred to as RJ-45, a visually similar connector). Care is required to avoid signal degradation by mixing cable and connectors not designed for that use, however similar. Most manufacturers of active equipment and network cards have chosen to support the 8P8C for their 10 gigabit Ethernet products on copper and not the GG45, ARJ45, or TERA. Therefore, the Category 6 specification was revised to Category to permit this use; products therefore require a Class E channel (ie, Cat 6).


title: ISO/IEC 11801

text: As of 2019 some equipment has been introduced which has connectors supporting the Class F (Category 7) channel.


title: ISO/IEC 11801

text: Class F (Class F Augmented) channels and Category 7 cables, introduced by ISO 11801 Edition 2 Amendment 2 (2010), are defined at frequencies up to 1000 MHz, suitable for multiple applications including CATV (862 MHz).


title: ISO/IEC 11801

text: The intent of the Class F was to possibly support the future 40 gigabit Ethernet: 40Gbase-T. Simulation results have shown that 40 gigabit Ethernet may be possible at 50 meters and 100 gigabit Ethernet at 15 meters. In 2007, researchers at Pennsylvania State University predicted that either 32 nm or 22 nm circuits would allow for 100 gigabit Ethernet at 100 meters.


title: ISO/IEC 11801

text: However, in 2016, the IEEE 802.3bq working group ratified the amendment 3 which defines 25Gbase-T and 40gbase-T on Category 8 cabling specified to 2000 MHz. The Class F therefore does not support 40G Ethernet.


title: ISO/IEC 11801

text: Category 8 was ratified by the TR43 working group under ANSI/TIA 568-C.2-1. It is defined up to 2000 MHz and only for distances up to 30 m or 36 m, depending on the patch cords used.


title: ISO/IEC 11801

text: ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25/WG 3 developed the equivalent standard ISO/IEC 11801-1:2017/COR 1:2018, with two options:


title: ISO/IEC 11801

text: Category 8 cabling was designed primarily for data centers where distances between switches and servers are short and is not intended for general office cabling.


title: ISO/IEC 11801

text: Annex E, "Acronyms for balanced cables", provides a system to specify the exact construction for both unshielded and shielded balanced twisted pair cables. It uses three letters - U for unshielded, S for braided shielding, and F for foil shielding - to form a two-part abbreviation in the form of xx/xTP, where the first part specifies the type of overall cable shielding, and the second part specifies shielding for individual cable elements.


title: ISO/IEC 11801

text: Common cable types include U/UTP (unshielded cable); U/FTP (individual pair shielding without the overall screen); F/UTP, S/UTP, or SF/UTP (overall screen without individual shielding); and F/FTP, S/FTP, or SF/FTP (overall screen with individual foil shielding).


title: ISO/IEC 11801

text: In November 2017, a new edition was released by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25 "Interconnection of information technology equipment". It is a major revision of the standard which has unified several prior standards for commercial, home, and industrial networks, as well as data centers, and defines requirements for generic cabling and distributed building networks.


title: FTI Consulting

text: FTI Consulting is a business advisory firm headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States. FTI is one of the largest financial consulting firms in the world and consistently ranks as one of the top global management consulting firms. The company specializes in the fields of corporate finance and restructuring, economic consulting, forensic and litigation consulting, strategic communications and technology. Founded as Forensic Technologies International Ltd in 1982, FTI Consulting employs more than 6,200 staff in 28 countries.


title: FTI Consulting

text: The firm was involved in the Lehman Brothers and General Motors bankruptcies, the investigation into the Bernard Madoff fraud, "Bush v. Gore", and the Major League Baseball steroid investigation. As of January 2020, FTI Consulting had the largest restructuring business in the US.


title: FTI Consulting

text: Forensic Technologies International was founded in 1982 by two engineers, Joseph Reynolds and Daniel Luczak, to provide expert witnesses for litigation and provide visual presentations to demonstrate complex technical issues for juries. Luczak later served as FTI's chairman from 1992 to 1998. The company went public in May 1996, raising $11.1 million and debuting at $8.50 a share. It was one of the first litigation support companies to be publicly traded.


title: FTI Consulting

text: Forensic Technologies International rebranded itself as FTI Consulting in 1998, and in 1999 began trading on the New York Stock Exchange as FCN. After 1998, FTI's business focused increasingly on "financial surgery on troubled companies, either through bankruptcy proceedings or in workout situations with creditors."


title: FTI Consulting

text: The company added over 1,000 employees to its Forensic and Litigation Consulting ("FLC") division since the passing of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which excluded auditors from providing consulting work to their public clients. FTI Consulting purchased PricewaterhouseCoopers' U.S. Business Recovery Services Division ("BRS") for $250 million in 2002, which at the time was the largest provider of bankruptcy, turnaround and business restructuring services in the United States. The company purchased KPMG's Dispute Advisory Services in 2003. The company purchased Chicago-based Compass Lexecon in 2003, maintaining the name as a subsidiary.


title: FTI Consulting

text: FTI acquired Ringtail Solutions Group in 2005. Ringtail's signature product, the Ringtail Discovery Software Suite, provides e-discovery and document management tools to assist corporations and law firms during litigation engagements. FTI acquired Attenex Corporation in 2008 and merged Attenex Patterns with Ringtail Discovery Software Suite to form Ringtail 8 E-discovery Software.


title: FTI Consulting

text: In 2006 the company acquired the London-based communications consultancy Financial Dynamics ("FD"). FD is now referred to as the Strategic Communications Division of FTI. In 2007, FTI expanded into Latin America and reported US$1 billion in annual revenue for the first time.


title: FTI Consulting

text: In 2008, FTI purchased the Schonbraun McCann Group, a real estate consulting firm based in New York, and Forensic Accounting, a forensic accounting practice based in the UK.


title: FTI Consulting

text: In 2010, FS Asia Advisory Limited was acquired in Hong Kong, expanding FTI's activities in Asia. In January 2014, FTI Consulting acquired London-based TLG Partners, which produced a series of annual thought leader indexes. In the same month, Steven H. Gunby was named the firm's new president and chief executive officer.


title: FTI Consulting

text: In 2015, "The Deal" named FTI Consulting the world's top restructuring adviser to distressed companies.


title: FTI Consulting

text: In 2016, the company led the list of the "International Who's Who of Commercial Arbitration" for the sixth consecutive year.


title: FTI Consulting

text: FTI Consulting is organized into five business segments. The first, Corporate Finance and Restructuring, provides business turnaround services, including support for restructuring, litigation, insolvency, and interim management. The second, Economic & Financial Consulting, provides economic analysis and expert testimony for law firms, corporations and government agencies. The third, Forensic and Litigation Consulting, provides investigative data analysis and forensic accounting services, as well as construction solutions services. The fourth, Strategic Communications, offers public relations services for "clients managing financial, regulatory and reputational challenges." The fifth, Technology, provides specialized software to manage the risks involved in e-discovery.


title: FTI Consulting

text: FTI's employees include specialists in banking, forensic accounting, real estate, intellectual property, crisis communication, and construction.


title: FTI Consulting

text: FTI Consulting has established partnerships with companies and organizations in several fields. It is a member of the World Economic Forum. Some of the company's senior and regional leaders participate in the Forum's meetings, participating in several projects related to anti-corruption, energy and professional services principles.


title: Huelva

text: Huelva (, ) is a city in southwestern Spain, the capital of the province of Huelva in the autonomous community of Andalusia. It is between two short rias though has an outlying spur including nature reserve on the Gulf of Cádiz coast. The rias are of the Odiel and Tinto rivers and are good natural harbors. According to the 2010 census, the city had a population of 149,410. Huelva is home to Recreativo de Huelva, the oldest football club in Spain.


title: Huelva

text: While the existence of a pre-Phoenician settlement within the current urban limits since circa 1250 BC has been tentatively defended by scholars, Phoenicians established a stable colony roughly by the 9th century BC.


title: Huelva

text: At least up to the 1980s and 1990s, the mainstream view was that Huelva at first was an autochthonous Tartessian settlement (even the very same Tartessos mentioned in Greek sources) yet some later views tended to rather stress a pluri-ethnic enclave mixing natives with peoples with a mainly Phoenician and later Greek extraction. However, following the (unsystematic) finding of Phoenician archaeological materials in the Méndez Núñez-Las Monjas site, the chronology as to the Phoenician presence was reassessed. The evidence favours viewing Huelva-Onoba as a very early Phoenician colony, a development which was parallel to a certain "dismantling" of the idea of Tartessos as a mainly autochthonous archaeological culture, even though the tentative identification of Huelva with Tartessos was not discarded, but the contrary. It has been also identified with the biblical Tarshish.


title: Huelva

text: First contacts in terms of local Phoenician presence have been hypothesised to have taken place as early as 1015 to 975 BCE. However remains such as those found in the Méndez Núñez-Las Monjas go so far as to likely prove a Phoenician settlement of the 9th century BCE, especially to resemble a founding date of a Tyrian settlement from the reign of Ithobaal I between 875 and 850, although the Méndez Núñez-Las Monjas' items have been also brought forward to consider a 10th-century BCE chronology in the era of Hiram I (c. 975–950). The outpost was presumably primarily populated by continental Phoenicians, with some possible addition of the likes of Eteocypriots, Cypriot Phoenicians and Sardinian Phoenicians.


title: Huelva

text: As a Phoenician outpost, it facilitated local exports such as silver, copper, purple dye and salted fish, while it also served as node in the trade routes connecting the Northern Atlantic, the Southern Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Population notably increased from the mid-8th century BCE onward, possibly connected to the arrival of refugees fleeing from Tiglath-Pileser III and overall from the economic crisis and social unrest induced by the Assyrian subjugation of the Levant.


title: Huelva

text: It was called "ʿunʿu baʿl" ("Baal's fort") by the Phoenicians, which in most Greek texts corrupted to ("Onoba"). The Tartessian world entered a crisis in the 6th century BCE. The transition from the Tartessian period to the ensuing Turdetani period was presumably slow and not traumatic, degenerating from an economy based on mining to a new one rather focused on the trade of agricultural and fishing products. It was in the hands of the Turdetani at the time of conquest by Rome, and before the conquest it issued silver coins with Iberian legends.


title: Huelva

text: The place was called both "Onoba Æstuaria" or "Onuba" (used on coinage) during Roman times, or, simply, "Onoba". It was put in the Roman province of Hispania Bætica. According to the Antonine Itinerary: it was a maritime town between the Anas, (modern Guadiana) and Bætis (modern Guadalquivir); it was on the estuary of the Luxia (modern Odiel), and on the road from the mouth of the Anas to Augusta Emerita (modern Mérida). There are still some Roman remains. Huelva hosted a mint; and many coins have been found there bearing the name of the town as Onuba.


title: Huelva

text: Soon after the beginning of the Umayyad invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in 711, "Onuba" was seized by the troops of Musa ibn Nusayr by April 712. Within a few decades, to both the broader Islamic world and the conquered locals, the town's name had corrupted to ولبة ("Walba").


title: Huelva

text: During the fitna of al-Andalus a weak and ephemeral taifa emerged following the demise of local Umayyad control: the bakrid taifa of Saltés and Huelva, from 1012 to 1051. In the latter year it was annexed by the more powerful Taifa of Seville, to be later occupied by the Almoravids in 1091. By 1262, Huelva—then part of the Taifa of Niebla—was taken by Alfonso X of Castile. From 1265 onward, Huelva enjoyed an exemption from the "portazgo" tribute, portage tax (a customs duty).


title: Huelva

text: Following the Christian conquest, the town became a "realengo" ('royal demesne') for a brief spell until it was ceded in Lordship to Admiral in 1293 by Sancho IV of Castile. After a spell during which Huelva was probably controlled by Seville, the tenency of the lordship was passed to several lords, including Alonso Meléndez de Guzmán—brother of Eleanor de Guzmán—(in 1338) and Juan Alfonso de la Cerda (). Huelva, again a "realengo" for a short time during the reign of Peter I, saw its privileges confirmed and was granted the right to choose the "alcalde" and the "alguacil" in 1351. The lordship was soon given to King's Mistress María de Padilla.


title: Huelva

text: Huelva became a leading fishing town in Andalusia in the 16th century (thriving in the sardine and tuna markets). The town became a provincial capital in 1833.


title: Huelva

text: Mines in the countryside send copper and pyrite to the Huelva's port for export. From about 1873, the greatest locally was Rio Tinto, the British mining firm, catered to technological breakthroughs on both sides of the Atlantic using copper of high quality such as for electrics and alloys.


title: Huelva

text: The ore smelting caused severe sulfur dioxide pollution and were frequently accompanied by protests of local farmers, peasants and miners, allied under the anarchist syndicalist leader Maximiliano Tornet. On 4 February 1888, the Pavi Regiment of the Spanish Army opened fire on demonstrators at the village plaza of Rio Tinto. Historians estimate the number of deaths between 100 and 200. Environmentalists from and defending the nearby Nerva village referred to 1888 as the "year of shots" a hundred years later in their protests against the province government's plans to site a large waste dump in a disused mine in the 1990s.


title: Huelva

text: The local football club, Recreativo de Huelva was founded in 1889 by workers of Rio Tinto Group. Nicknamed the "Decano" (dean, widower, or the feminine loan word "doyenne" being the main translation in other contexts) of Spanish football, it is the longest (active) football club in the country.


title: Huelva

text: The 17–18 July 1936 military coup d'état that started the Spanish Civil War failed in the city and much of the province. However, on 27 July 500 "guardias civiles" rose in arms against the Republic in the city, with the authorities escaping and later being shot down. Two days later, on 29 July, a rebel column from Seville on behalf of Gonzalo Queipo de Llano took control of the city. For the rest of the conflict it remained to the rear of the zone controlled by the Rebel faction. The ensuing Francoist repression took a heavy toll, with an estimated total of deaths all over the province for the rearguard and post-war repression.


title: Huelva

text: During World War II, the city was a hub of espionage activities led by members of the large British and German communities. German activity centered on reporting British shipping moving in and out of the Atlantic. Most famously, the outskirts was where Operation Mincemeat allowed a body carrying false information to wash ashore.


title: Huelva

text: 25 years after the city was declared a "Polo de Desarrollo Industrial" ("Pole of Industrial Development") in 1964, the population had nearly doubled.


title: Huelva

text: Huelva is in the Southwest of the Iberian Peninsula, in the Gulf of Cádiz, facing the Atlantic Ocean. The coastline straddling along the Gulf of Cádiz is known as Costa de la Luz. The city lies next to the estuary formed by the confluence of the Odiel and Tinto, sandwiched in between both rivers.


title: Huelva

text: A rather wide estuary in ancient times, the estuary of Huelva progressively silted up to a large extent.


title: Huelva

text: Huelva is home to Grupo Damas, a provincial bus company. Huelva's train station is now a shadow of its former self, and exists on a spur line. There are no trains to Portugal. The Port of Huelva hosts Naviera Armas' ferry "Volcan del Teide", on which one can travel weekly to Arrecife and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.


title: Huelva

text: Huelva does not have an airport. The closest airports to the city are Faro Airport (93 km as the crow flies) and Seville Airport (95 km).


title: Huelva

text: Huelva had a population of 149,410 in 2010. The city experienced a population boom in the nineteenth century, due to the exploitation of mineral resources in the area, and another with the construction of the Polo de Desarrollo in the 1960s. It had a population of 5,377 inhabitants in 1787, which had risen to only 8,519 by 1857. From 1887, the city experienced rapid growth, reaching 21,539 residents in 1900, 56,427 in 1940, and 96,689 in 1970. Rapid expansion occurred in the following decades and the population reached 141,479 by 1991.


title: Huelva

text: In the last ten years, immigration both from abroad and from the surrounding area have sustained population growth. In 2007, the city reached the 145,000 mark, while the metropolitan area had nearly 232,000 inhabitants, encompassing the surrounding areas of Aljaraque, Moguer, San Juan del Puerto, Punta Umbría, Gibraleón, and Palos de la Frontera. The 2006 census recorded a foreign population of almost 5,000 people in the urban centre, the majority of whom were of Moroccan origin.


title: Huelva

text: Huelva and its metropolitan area have a Mediterranean climate (Köppen: "Csa"), characterized by mild and wet winters and long warm to hot and dry summers. The average annual temperature is during the day and at night. The average annual precipitation is per year, there are about 52 rainy days per year. Extreme temperatures have been recorded on 25 July 2004 and recorded on 28 January 2005 at Ronda Este. Huelva is warmer than places on the immediate coastline, with cooler maritime air warming up in summer over the river delta.


title: Huelva

text: The most well-known artists in Huelva have been: the poet and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Juan Ramón Jiménez, the sculptor Antonio León Ortega, the writer Nicolas Tenorio Cerero and the painter Daniel Vázquez Díaz.


title: Huelva

text: Other outstanding artists from Huelva include the painters José Caballero, Pedro Gómez y Gómez, Antonio Brunt, Mateo Orduña Castellano, Pablo Martínez Coto, Manuel Moreno Díaz, Juan Manuel Seisdedos Romero, Francisco Doménech, Esperanza Abot, José María Labrador, Sebastián García Vázquez, Pilar Barroso, Juan Carlos Castro Crespo, Lola Martín, Antonio Gómez Feu, Rafael Aguilera, and Florencio Aguilera Correa. Miguel Báez y Espuny , called "el Litri", is a retired bullfighter very famous from Huelva, his son, named Miguel Báez , was also a very renowned bullfighter retired in 1999.


title: Huelva

text: Near Huelva lay "Herculis Insula", mentioned by Strabo (iii. p. 170), called by Steph. B. ("s. v."), now "Isla Saltés" ("Saltes Island").


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: The Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi (; ) is the mother church of the Roman Catholic Order of Friars Minor Conventual in Assisi, a town in the Umbria region in central Italy, where Saint Francis was born and died. It is a Papal minor basilica and one of the most important places of Christian pilgrimage in Italy. With its accompanying friary, Sacro Convento, the basilica is a distinctive landmark to those approaching Assisi. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: The basilica, which was begun in 1228, is built into the side of a hill and comprises two churches (known as the Upper Church and the Lower Church) and a crypt, where the remains of the saint are interred. The interior of the Upper Church is an important early example of the Gothic style in Italy. The Upper and Lower Churches are decorated with frescoes by numerous late medieval painters from the Roman and Tuscan schools, and include works by Cimabue, Giotto, Simone Martini, Pietro Lorenzetti and possibly Pietro Cavallini. The range and quality of the works give the basilica a unique importance in demonstrating the outstanding development of Italian art of this period, especially if compared with the rest of Christian Europe.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: The Franciscan friary (Sacro Convento) and the Lower and Upper Basilicas () of Francis of Assisi were begun in honor of this local saint, immediately after his canonization in 1228. Simone di Pucciarello donated the land for the church, a hill at the west side of Assisi, known as "Hill of Hell" () where previously criminals were put to death. Today, this hill is called "Hill of Paradise".


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: On 16 July 1228, Francis was canonized by Pope Gregory IX in Assisi, and he laid the foundation stone of the new church the following day, although construction may already have been begun. The construction having been begun at his order, the Pope declared the church to be the property of the papacy. The church was designed by Maestro Jacopo Tedesco, who was in those days the most famous architect. The construction was supervised by Brother Elias of Cortona, one of the first followers of Saint Francis and the former Vicar General of the Order under Saint Francis. The Lower Basilica was finished in 1230. On Pentecost 25 May 1230, the remains of Saint Francis were brought in a solemn procession to the Lower Basilica from its temporary burial place in the church of San Giorgio (St. George), now the Basilica of Saint Clare of Assisi. The burial place was concealed for fear that St Francis' remains might be stolen and dispersed. The construction of the Upper Basilica was begun after 1239 and was completed in 1253. Both churches were consecrated by Pope Innocent IV in 1253.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: Pope Nicholas IV, a former Minister-General of the Order of Franciscans, raised the church to the status of Papal Church in 1288. The Piazza del Loge, the square leading to the church, is surrounded by colonnades constructed in 1474. They housed the numerous pilgrims flocking to this church. In 1818, the remains of Saint Francis were rediscovered beneath the floor of the Lower Basilica. In the reign of Pope Pius VII the crypt was built so that the faithful might visit the burial place of the saint.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: On 27 October 1986 and January 2002, Pope John Paul II gathered in Assisi with more than 120 representatives of different religions and Christian denominations for a World Day of Prayer for Peace.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: On the morning of September 26, 1997, two earthquakes hit the region around Assisi in rapid succession, registering 5.7 and 6.0 magnitude respectively. There was widespread devastation and many ancient buildings were destroyed or damaged. While a group of specialists and friars were inspecting the damage to the Basilica of Saint Francis, an aftershock shook the building, causing the collapse of the vault. Two Franciscan friars who were among the group and two of the specialists were killed. Much of the cycle of frescoes of the life of Saint Francis by Giotto in the Upper Church of the Basilica were slightly damaged whereas those of the sections of the vault which collapsed were almost entirely destroyed. The church was closed for two years for restoration. The collapse was captured on tape.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: The church was designed by Maestro Jacopo Tedesco on two levels, each of which is consecrated as a church. They are known as the "Basilica superiore" (The Upper Basilica), generally called "The Upper Church" and the "Basilica inferiore" (The Lower Basilica), generally called "The Lower Church". The Lower Church was structurally a large crypt supporting the upper one. In the 19th century a lower crypt was constructed beneath the basilica. Architecturally, the exterior of the basilica appears united with the Friary of St. Francis, since the lofty arcades of the latter support and buttress the church in its apparently precarious position on the hillside.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: The architecture is a synthesis of the Romanesque and Gothic styles, and established many of the typical characteristics of Italian Gothic architecture. As originally built, both upper and lower churches had a simple cruciform plan with an aisle-less nave of four square bays, a square crossing, a transept that projected by half a bay on each side, and an apse, the lower being semicircular and the upper polygonal. To the left of the church stands a free-standing bell tower of Romanesque design.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: The Lower Church was built entirely in the Romanesque style, having low semi-circular ribbed cross-vaults over the nave and barrel vaults over the transept arms. However, the space has been greatly extended with a number of lateral and transept chapels added between 1350 and 1400. The main entrance to the nave is through an ornate Gothic doorway built between 1280 and 1300, and later enclosed with a simple Renaissance style porch of 1487 by Francesco di Bartolomeo da Pietrasanta (d. 1494). Set in the tympanum of the Gothic doorway is an ornate rose window which has been called "the eye of the most beautiful church in the world"


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: The Upper Church has a façade of white-washed brick divided into two horizontal zones of about equal height, and with a simple gable of height equal to the lower zones. There is a single large doorway in the Gothic style, divided by a column and with a rose window set in the tympanum above the two cusped arches. Above the door, in the second zone is a large and ornate rose window in which most of the decorative details are Romanesque in style. Surrounding it are carved the symbols of the Four Evangelists, combining with the window to create a square composition. Above it in the gable is an ocular window. To the left of the façade and visible from both the forecourts of the Upper Church and the Lower Church is the Benediction Loggia in the Baroque style which was built in 1754, when the church was raised to the status of basilica.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: Internally, the Upper Church maintains Brother Elias' original simple aisleless cruciform plan. Like the Lower Church, there is a nave of four bays with ribbed cross-vaulting. Unlike that of the Lower Church, it is only the diagonal ribs which are of semi-circular form. The transverse ribs are pointed in the Gothic manner, and thus rise to the full height of the wider diagonal ribs. Each group of ribs springs from a group of clustered columns. Externally the columns and vault are supported by stout buttresses of semi-circular plan. Unlike the Lower Church, the transepts also have ribbed vaulting.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: There are tall Gothic windows with Geometric tracery in each bay of the nave and in the polygonal apse of the chancel. The windows of the apse are believed to have been created by German craftsmen active around Assisi at the end of the 13th century. The windows on the left hand side of the nave were made by a French workshop (1270), while those on the right hand side are attributed to the workshop of Maestro di San Francesco. These stained glass windows are among the best examples of 13th-century Italian glasswork.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: As is characteristic of Italian church architecture, the main decorative feature, and the main medium used for conveying the Church's message is fresco, rather than stained glass. The earliest frescoes are some of those in the Lower Church. The work proceeded with a number of different projects and appears to have involved numerous artists, some of whom are as renowned as Cimabue and Giotto, but many of whom are no longer known by name.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: This bright and spacious basilica consists of a single four-bay nave with cross-vaulted ceiling bordered with patterns of crosses and leaves, a transept and a polygonal apse. The four ribbed vaults are decorated alternately with golden stars on a blue background and paintings. The second vault is decorated with roundels with busts of "Christ" facing "Saint Francis" and the "Virgin" facing "Saint John the Baptist". The entrance vault gives us the "Four Latin Doctors of the Church": St Gregory facing St. Jerome and Saint Ambrose facing St. Augustine. These are ascribed to the Isaac Master.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: The choir has 102 wooden stalls with carvings and marquetry by Domenico Indovini (1501). In their centre, on a raised platform, stands the papal cathedra.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: The west end of the transept and the apse have been decorated with many frescoes by Cimabue and his workshop (starting in c. 1280). The magnificent "Crucifixion", with Saint Francis on his knees at the foot of the Cross, stresses again the veneration of the Passion of Christ by Saint Francis. The frescoes of Cimabue soon suffered from damp and decay. Due to the use of lead oxide in his colours and to the fact that the colours were applied when the plaster was no longer fresh, they have deteriorated and have been reduced to photographic negatives.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: Prior to him there had been some decorations in the upper right hand section of the transept by an (anonymous) Northern Master, probably an English artist (1267–1270). He realized the two lunettes and the roundels on the west wall with paintings of the "Angel" and the "Apostles". Another (anonymous) master, the Roman Master, painted the "Isaiah" and the "David" and the remainder of the wall under the eastern lunette.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: The upper part on both sides of the nave, badly damaged by the earthquake of 1997, was decorated in two rows with in total 32 scenes from the Old Testament (starting with "Creation of the World" and ending with "Joseph forgives his brothers") and the New Testament (from the "Annunciation" to "The Women at the Tomb"), while the upper register of the entrance wall is covered with two frescoes "Pentecost" and "Ascension of Jesus". Since it took about six months to paint one bay of the nave, different Roman and Tuscan masters, followers of Cimabue, have performed this series of scenes such as Giacomo, Jacopo Torriti and Pietro Cavallini.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: The two frescoes of the life of Isaac ("Isaac blesses Jacob" and "Esau in front of Isaac") in the middle register of the third bay, are traditionally ascribed to the young Giotto (1290–1295) (previously wrongly ascribed to Cimabue by Vasari). But even this has been controversial. Many critics esteem these the work of the anonymous Isaac Master and his workshop. Deducing from stylistic details, attesting to his Roman background, some think that the Isaac Master may have been Pietro Cavallini or a follower. Pietro Cavallini had painted around 1290 a similar fresco "Isaac blessing Jacob" in the convent of the church Santa Cecilia in Trastevere in Rome. The position of the resting Isaac looks like the same position of the Virgin in Cavallini's mosaic "Birth of the Virgin" in the apse of the church Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome. The Isaac Master is considered one of the first practitioners of the true fresco ("buon fresco") technique, which revolutionized mural painting for the subsequent centuries.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: But the most important decorations are the series of 28 frescoes ascribed to the young Giotto along the lower part of the nave. Each bay contains three frescoes above the dado on each side of the nave, two frescoes in the east galleries beside the entrance, and two more on the entrance wall. Giotto used the "Legenda Maior", the biography of Saint Francis by Saint Bonaventure (1266) to reconstruct the major events in the life of Saint Francis. The prototype for this cycle may have been the (now lost) Saint Francis cycle by Pietro Cavallini in the church San Francesco a Ripa in Rome. The paintings are as vivid as if Giotto had been a witness to these events. According to Vasari, they were executed in the period between 1296 and 1304.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: However the authorship of Giotto is disputed, due to the ambiguous attributions given in early descriptions of this work. Many Italian critics continue to support the authorship of Giotto and his workshop. But because of small differences in style with the frescoes of Isaac, it is thought that several or even all of these frescoes were painted by at least three separate painters, using the original concept of Giotto : the Master of Legend of Saint Francis (the principal painter and probable supervisor of the cycle), the Master of the Obsequies of Saint Francis and the Cecilia Master.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: The first span of the ceiling is decorated with frescoes of the "Four Doctors of the Church“ ( Jerome, Augustine, Gregory and Ambrose), attributed either to a young Giotto or to one of his followers. The third span presents four heart-shaped medallions of the Christ, Mary, John the Baptist and Francis, painted by Jacopo Torriti.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: The cuspidate façade of the upper basilica has a portal in Gothic style with twin doors and a beautiful rose window.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: Brother Elias had designed the lower basilica as an enormous crypt with ribbed vaults. He had acquired his experience by building huge sepulchres out of hard rock in Syria.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: The doors are surmounted by a large rose window, flanked by two smaller ones, called "the eye of the most beautiful church in the world" The decorations on the left wooden door were executed by Ugolinuccio da Gubbio (circa 1550) and those on the right door by an anonymous Umbrian artist (1573). They portray stories from the lives of Saint Francis, Saint Clare, Saint Louis and Saint Anthony. On the left wall of the porch stands the bust of Pope Benedict XIV who granted this church the title of Patriarchal Basilica and Cappella Papale. Pope Benedict XVI’s theological act in 2006 of renouncing the title of "Patriarch of the West" has had the consequence of the basilica changing its name to that of the Papal Basilica of St. Francis.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: Entering the lower basilica, one sees at the other side of the vestibule the chapel of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, erected about 1270. It was enlarged by Gattapone da Gubbio and decorated at the expense of Cardinal Egidio Albornoz, papal legate in charge of the Papal States (from 1350 to 1367). He was initially buried here but his body was later transferred to Toledo, Spain. The frescoes with the eight episodes from the life of Saint Catherine were painted in 1368–1369 by ‘Andreas pictor de Bononia’. This painter, called Andrea, is most probably Andrea de’ Bartoli (c. 1349–1369), the court artist of Albornoz (and not Andrea da Bologna, as usually, but wrongly, attributed). The saints in this chapel were painted by Pace di Bartolo d'Assisi (1344–1368). The stained glass windows are the work of Giovanni di Bonino of Assisi (mid-14th century).


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: On the left side of the entrance is the small Chapel of St. Sebastian with a canvas by Giorgetti and episodes of the life of the saint on the walls painted c. 1646 by G. Martelli (Irene taking care of St. Sebastian; St. Sebastian before Domitian). The left wall of this chapel is decorated by some paintings by Ottaviano Nelli (15th century) and a painting of Saint Christopher (Umbrian School, 14th century).


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: On the right side of the entrance there are two monuments by anonymous artists: in the first span, the mausoleum of Giovanni de' Cerchi, surmounted by an early 14th-century porphyry vase (a gift of a queen of Cyprus) and the mausoleum of John of Brienne, king of Jerusalem and emperor-regent of Constantinople. Above this last burial monument stands a statue of the Blessed Virgin and on its left the figure of a crowned woman seated on a lion, made by Cosmatesco (1290).


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: The badly deteriorating frescoes on the walls and the vaults of the third section of this entrance are the work of Cesare Sermei and G. Martelli (1645). The chapel on the right side of the third section is dedicated to St. Anthony the Abbot. The niches in the wall contain the burial monuments of the Governor of Spoleto (by then part of the Papal States) Blasco Fernandez and his son Garcia, both assassinated in 1367 (anonymous local artist, 14th century).


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: The lower basilica consists of a central nave with several side chapels with semi-circular arches. The nave is decorated with the oldest frescoes in the church by an unknown artist, called Maestro di San Francesco. They feature five scenes from the "Passion of Christ" on the right side, while on the left side equally five scenes from the "Life of St. Francis". By this juxtaposition, the Franciscans wanted to contribute to the idea of their founder as a second Christ.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: They are connected by a low blue-painted ceiling decorated with golden stars. Most images on the lower walls have decayed to leave almost no trace, except on the right wall fragments of "Virgin and Child with an Angel" by Cimabue.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: These frescoes, executed in tempera on dry plaster, were completed about 1260–1263. They are considered by many as the best examples of Tuscan wall paintings prior to Cimabue. As the popularity of this church increased, side chapels for noble families were added between 1270 and 1350, destroying the frescoes on the opened walls.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: The first chapel on the left is the San Martino Chapel, dedicated to Saint Martin of Tours. It was built by the Franciscan Cardinal Gentile Portino da Montefiore and was decorated between 1317 and 1319 with ten frescoes depicting the saint's life by Simone Martini. This dedication most likely referred to the Cardinal's position as Cardinal-Priest of the Basilica of St. Martin "ai Monti" in Rome, and was intended to be his burial place. It was probably incomplete at the time of Montefiore's death (October 1312), thus he was interred in the neighboring Chapel of St. Louis. Martini also painted a triptych depicting the "Madonna and Child with Two Hungarian Royal Saints" with a row of five attendant saints in the St. Elizabeth Chapel (southern arm of the transept). These are among the greatest Martini's works and the finest examples of 14th-century painting. Over time, however, his use of lead paint has led to the darkening of several sections of these works.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: The nave ends in a richly decorated semicircular apse, preceded with a transept with barrel vaulting.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: The frescoes in the right transept depict the childhood of Christ, partly by Giotto and his workshop and the "Nativity" by the anonymous Maestro di San Nicola. The lowest level shows three frescoes representing St. Francis posthumously intervening in favour of two children. These frescoes by Giotto were revolutionary in their time, showing real people with emotions, set in a realistic landscape.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: On the transept wall Cimabue painted an image of "Our Lady enthroned and Saint Francis" (1280). This is probably the nearest likeness existing, showing the actual appearance of Saint Francis. This static painting in Gothic style is in stark contrast with the lively frescoes of Giotto.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: This Chapel of Saint Nicholas of Bari, at the northern end of the transept, was commissioned by the papal legate Cardinal Napoleone Orsini and it contains the tomb of the cardinal's brother, Giovanni Orsini, who died between 1292 and 1294. The funerary monument is set in a niche above the altar, with the recumbent effigy of a young man placed inside a mortuary chamber and flanked by two angels. The reliefs were carved by an Umbrian sculptor, probably of local origin. Between the tomb and the stained glass window appears a frescoed triptych attributed to Giotto's school, representing the Madonna and Child with Saint Francis and Nicholas. The cycle decorating the walls of the chapel, completed by 1307, comprises twelve scenes painted on the ceiling and on the walls illustrating the life and miracles of St Nicholas A scene of the chapel's dedication is painted above the arch of the entrance on the southern wall: the Redeemer receives the homage of Giovanni Orsini, presented by St. Nicholas, and of Napoleone Orsini, presented by Saint Francis. The stained glass windows show Cardinal Napoleone presented to Christ in the summit and his brother presented to Saint Nicholas in the zone below. At the southern end of the transept cardinal Orsini commissioned another chapel, dedicated to St John the Baptist, which was probably originally built for the tomb of Napoleone Orsini himself, but the cardinal was never buried there and the tomb remained empty. The parallel architectural arrangement of both Orsini chapels suggests that they were conceived together. However, the decorations of the chapel dedicated to Saint John the Baptist were never finished. Pietro Lorenzetti (or his workshop) executed a frescoed triptych with a Madonna and Child with Saints John the Baptist and Francis.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: The left transept was decorated by the Sienese painter Pietro Lorenzetti and his workshop between 1315 and 1330 (attributed by Vasari to Pietro Lorenzetti and also (wrongly) to Giotto and Puccio Capanna). This cycle of tempera frescoes are his masterworks. They depict six scenes from the "Passion of Christ". The fresco of "Deposition of the Cross" is especially emotional. There were about 330 work-stages needed to complete this cycle. Beneath the monumental "Crucifixion" scene, Pietro Lorenzetti has executed a fresco of the Madonna and Child, accompanied by Saints John the Evangelist and Saint Francis (the so-called "Madonna dei Tramonti"). The fresco is accompanied by a frescoed niche containing the liturgical implements and a fictive bench.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: The juxtaposition of the "Childhood" and the "Passion" frescoes emphasizes the parallel between the "passion" of Christ and the "compassion" of St. Francis.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: The papal altar in the apse was made out of one block of stone from Como in 1230. Around the altar are a series of ornamented Gothic arches, supported by columns in different styles. The fine Gothic walnut choir stalls were completed in 1471 by Apollonio Petrocchi da Ripatransone, with the help of Tommaso di Antonio Fiorentino and Andrea da Montefalco.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: Once featuring frescoes depicting an allegory of the Crucifixion by Stefano Fiorentino (destroyed in 1622), the walls of the apse are now covered with a "Last Judgment" by Cesare Sermei di Orvieto (1609–1668).


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: The paintings in the lunettes of the vaults (1315–20) depict the "Triumph of St Francis" and three allegories of "Obedience", "Poverty" and "Chastity" by the so-called Maestro delle Vele (Master of the Assisi vaults), a pupil of Giotto (about 1330).


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: The stained glass windows in this lower basilica are attributed to Giovanni di Bonino and his workshop.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: Halfway down the nave one can descend into the crypt via a double stairway. This burial place of Saint Francis was found in 1818. His remains had been hidden by Brother Elias to prevent the spread of his relics in medieval Europe, a story told by Jon M. Sweeney in "The Enthusiast". By order of Pope Pius VII a crypt was built under the lower basilica. It was designed by Pasquale Belli with precious marble in neo-classical style. But it was redesigned in bare stone in neo-Romanesque style by Ugo Tarchi between 1925 and 1932.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: The ancient stone coffin with iron ties is enshrined in an open space above the altar. In 1934 his most faithful brothers were entombed in the corners of the wall around the altar: Brother Rufino, Brother Angelo, Brother Masseo and Brother Leo.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: At the entrance of the crypt, an urn with the remains of Jacopa dei Settesoli was added to the crypt. This woman of Roman nobility, affectionately referred to as "Brother Jacoba", was the most faithful friend and benefactress of Saint Francis. She was at his side in the Porziuncola at the hour of his death.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: Next to the basilica stands the friary Sacro Convento with its imposing walls with 53 Romanesque arches and powerful buttresses supporting the whole complex. It towers over the valley below, giving the impression of a fortress. It was built with pink and white stone from Mount Subasio. It was already inhabited by the friars in 1230. But construction took a long time, with as result different styles intermingling : Romanesque with Gothic style. A major part was built under the reign of Pope Sixtus IV, a Franciscan, between 1474 and 1476.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: The friary now houses a vast library (with medieval codices and incunables), a museum with works of art donated by pilgrims through the centuries and also the 57 works of art (mainly of Florentine and Sienese schools) of the Perkins collection.


title: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

text: Bokody, Péter. "Mural Painting as a Medium: Technique, Representation and Liturgy." In "Image and Christianity: Visual Media in the Middle Ages", ed. Péter Bokody (Pannonhalma: Pannonhalma Abbey, 2014), 136–151. https://www.academia.edu/8526688/Mural_Painting_as_a_Medium_Technique_Representation_and_Liturgy


title: Lady Mary Grey

text: Lady Mary Keyes (née Grey; April 20, 1545 – 20 April 1578) was the youngest daughter of Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk, and Frances Brandon, and through her mother had a claim on the crown of England.


title: Lady Mary Grey

text: Mary Grey, born about April 20, 1545, was the third and youngest daughter of Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk, and Lady Frances Brandon, daughter of Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, and Mary Tudor, the younger of the two daughters of King Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. Mary had two sisters, Lady Jane Grey and Lady Katherine Grey.


title: Lady Mary Grey

text: As great-grandchildren of Henry VII, Mary and her sisters were potential heirs to the crown. When King Edward VI died on 6 July 1553, he left a Will (approved by John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland) naming Mary's eldest sister, Jane, recently married to Northumberland's son Guildford Dudley, to succeed to the throne. Some weeks before, on 25 May 1553, Mary Grey, still a young child, had been betrothed to her distant cousin Arthur Grey, 14th Baron Grey de Wilton, whose father was an ally of Northumberland. The attempt to secure a Protestant succession failed, and although King Edward was briefly succeeded by Jane Grey, the Privy Council of England changed sides and proclaimed his half sister, Mary. Northumberland was executed on 22 August 1553. Queen Mary spared Jane's life and the lives of Jane's husband and father, but after the suppression of the Wyatt rebellion in early 1554, all three were executed, Jane and her husband on 12 February 1554, and Jane's father shortly thereafter, on 23 February. After Queen Mary's accession Mary Grey's betrothal to Arthur Grey was dissolved.


title: Lady Mary Grey

text: On 1 March 1555, Mary's mother, Frances Brandon, took a second husband, Adrian Stokes. When Frances died on November 20, 1559, she left a life estate in most of her property to Stokes, while Mary received only a small inheritance yielding a modest income of £20 a year. However, Queen Elizabeth, who had acceded to the throne in November 1558, appointed Mary Grey as one of her Maids of Honour and granted her a pension of £80.


title: Lady Mary Grey

text: Since Queen Elizabeth was childless, the two surviving Grey sisters were next in the line of succession under King Henry VIII's will, and were not permitted to marry without the Queen's permission. In December 1560, however, Katherine Grey secretly married Edward Seymour, the eldest son of the Protector Somerset, incurring the Queen's unrelenting displeasure. As the ceremony had been performed by a priest who was never subsequently identified, and the only witness was Seymour's sister, Lady Jane Seymour, who died shortly after the marriage, the Queen was able to treat the marriage as though it had never taken place, and on 12 March 1563, she obtained a declaration that the marriage was invalid and that Edward Seymour, Viscount Beauchamp, Katherine's eldest son by Seymour, was illegitimate. Both Katherine and her husband were confined to the Tower, and they were later held under house arrest.


title: Lady Mary Grey

text: Despite the disastrous consequences of her sister Katherine's secret marriage, Mary also now married without the Queen's permission. On 16 July 1565, while the Queen was absent attending the marriage of her kinsman, Sir Henry Knollys (d. 21 December 1582), and Margaret Cave, the daughter of Sir Ambrose Cave, Mary secretly married the Queen's sergeant porter, Thomas Keyes, son of Richard Keyes, esquire, of East Greenwich, Kent, by Agnes Saunders, the daughter of Henry Saunders of Ewell, Surrey. Having learned from her sister's experience, Mary took the precaution of having three of her cousins attend as witnesses, her childhood friend, Mary Willoughby, now the wife of Sir Matthew Arundell, and two of the daughters of Lady Stafford. The marriage was an unsuitable one for many reasons. Keyes was from a minor gentry family in Kent, was more than twice Mary's age, and was a widower with six or seven children. Moreover, Mary was described by the Spanish ambassador as 'little, crook-backed and very ugly', while Keyes stood 6 feet 8 inches tall. Sir William Cecil wrote to Sir Thomas Smith that 'The Sergeant Porter, being the biggest gentleman of this court, has married secretly the Lady Mary Grey, the least of all the court ... The offence is very great'.


title: Lady Mary Grey

text: Mary and her husband never saw each other again. The Queen confined Mary to house arrest with William Hawtrey (d. 1597) at Chequers in Buckinghamshire, where she remained for two years, while Keyes was committed to the Fleet. In August 1567, Mary, still under house arrest, was sent to live with her step-grandmother Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk, whom Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, had married after the death of Mary's grandmother Mary Tudor. The Duchess wrote to Cecil expressing shock at the few pitiful household effects with which Mary arrived at her house in the Minories. Mary remained in the Duchess's household for almost two years, and is said to have been close to the Duchess's two children, Peregrine and Susan Bertie.


title: Lady Mary Grey

text: On 27 January 1568, at the age of twenty-seven, after suffering years of imprisonment, house arrest, and separation from her husband and two young sons, Katherine Grey died at Cockfield Hall, the house of Sir Owen Hopton in Yoxford, Suffolk. According to De Lisle, it is possible that she had starved herself to death. With Katherine Grey's death, Mary was brought to relative prominence as the next heir to Elizabeth under the will of Henry VIII; since Katherine Grey's two sons had been declared illegitimate, even the Queen had to take seriously Mary's claim to the English throne. In June 1569, Mary was therefore sent to live with Sir Thomas Gresham at his house in Bishopsgate and later at his country house at Osterley. Her stay with the Greshams was an unhappy one, however, as Sir Thomas was now half blind and in constant physical pain, and his wife, Anne, bitterly resented Mary's presence in the household.


title: Lady Mary Grey

text: After enduring years in the Fleet, Mary's husband Thomas Keyes was released in 1569, and permitted to return to Kent. However, his health had been broken by the conditions of his imprisonment, and he died shortly before 3 September 1571. Mary begged Elizabeth for permission to bring up her husband's orphaned children from his first marriage, but her request was denied, and it was not until May 1572, after Mary had been under strict house arrest for seven years, that the Queen relented sufficiently to allow her to live where she pleased. However, for the time being, Mary had no friends to take her in, and insufficient income to live independently. She continued to reside as an unwelcome guest with the Greshams until Sir Thomas suggested that she be sent to live at Beaumanor in Leicestershire with her late mother's second husband, Adrian Stokes, who had recently married Anne Carew, the widow of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton. In 1573 Mary left the Gresham household for good, 'with all her books and rubbish', as Sir Thomas put it.


title: Lady Mary Grey

text: Mary did not stay long at Beaumanor. By February 1573, she was established in a house of her own in London in St Botolph's Without Aldgate, and by the end of 1577, she had been rehabilitated to the extent that she was appointed one of the Queen's Maids of Honour.


title: Lady Mary Grey

text: In April 1578, while plague was raging in London, Mary became ill and drew up her will. She left her mother's jewels to her step-grandmother, the Duchess of Suffolk, gifts of plate to Lady Arundell and to Adrian Stokes's wife, and money to her godchild, Mary Merrick, a granddaughter of her late husband, Thomas Keyes. She died three days later on 20 April 1578, aged 33. The Queen granted her an imposing funeral in Westminster Abbey, with the Duchess of Suffolk's daughter Susan Bertie, now Countess of Kent, as chief mourner. She was buried in her mother's tomb in the Abbey, where her grave is still unmarked.


title: Lady Mary Grey

text: In spite of the intrigues involving her sisters, it does not appear that Mary Grey ever made a serious claim to the throne. After her death, according to the terms of Henry VIII's will, the chief claimant became Margaret Stanley, Countess of Derby, the only surviving child of Eleanor Brandon, second daughter of Henry VIII's younger sister, Mary Tudor.


title: Lady Mary Grey

text: Mary is the main character of Philippa Gregory's "The Last Tudor" (2016), the final instalment in "The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels".


title: Halebidu

text: Halebidu (IAST: Haḷēbīḍ, literally "old capital, city, encampment" or "ruined city") is a town located in Hassan District, Karnataka, India. Historically known as Dorasamudra (also Dwarasamudra), Halebidu became the regal capital of the Hoysala Empire in the 11th century CE. In the modern era literature it is sometimes referred to as Halebeedu or Halebid as the phonetic equivalent, a local name after it was damaged and deserted after being ransacked and looted twice by the forces of the Delhi Sultanate in the 14th century.


title: Halebidu

text: Halebidu is home to some of the best examples of Hindu and Jain temples with Hoysala architecture. These show the breadth of Hindu artwork traditions – Shiva, Vishnu, Devi and Vedic deities – fused into the same temple complex, depicted with a diversity of regional heritages, along with inscriptions in scripts from South and North India. The Hindu temples include Jaina reliefs in its panel. Similarly, the Jaina artwork includes the different Tirthankara as well as a Saraswati within its mantapa. Most notable among the Halebidu monuments are the ornate Hoysalesvara temple, Kedareshwara temple, Jaina Basadi temples, as well as the Hulikere step well ("kalyani"). These sites are within a kilometer of each other. The Hoysaleshwara Temple remains the only surviving monument in Halebidu.


title: Halebidu

text: Halebidu is connected by road and rail to Hassan (30 km), Mysore (150 km) and Mangalore (184 km). It is about 15 kilometers from Belur, another site known for its intricately carved Hoysala era temples.


title: Halebidu

text: Halebidu is in the midst of a valley east of the Western Ghats. It is surrounded by low-lying mountains, boulders and seasonal rivers. This valley is well connected to northern Karnataka, western Andhra Pradesh and northern Tamil Nadu. Around this region, between the 10th and 14th-century, the Hoysaḷa dynasty came to power, whose history is unclear. By their own 11th and 12th-century inscriptions, they were descendants of the Krishna-Baladeva-roots and the Yadavas of Maharashtra. They married into the Kalyana Chalukya Hindu dynasty, known for its temple and art tradition. The reliability of these inscriptions have been questioned as potential mythistory by some historians, who propose that the Hoysalas were a local Hindu family – a hill chief from the Western Ghats remembered for having killed a tiger or a lion, and they seized and over time expanded their power starting in the 10th-century.


title: Halebidu

text: Halebidu was built anew near a large reservoir by the early Hoysala kings, with support from their governors, merchants, and artisans. They greatly excavated and expanded the Dorasamudra reservoir. Major and spectacularly carved Hindu and Jain temples were already complete by the 12th-century. Around the city were fort walls, generally tracing a rounded square-like area with an average span of 2.25 kilometers. Inside were four major water reservoirs and many smaller public water tanks. The city life, it major temples and the roads were centered near the Dorasamudra water reservoir. The city several dozen temples, of which only a small set has survived. Three set of temples – Hoysaleswara (twin temple), Jain Basadi (three temples) and Kedareshvara (one temple) – were the largest, more sophisticated in their architecture and artwork, while the rest were simpler.


title: Halebidu

text: To the immediate west of the major Hindu and Jain temples was the Hoysala Palace. This palace stretched south up to the "Benne Gudda" ("lit.", butter hill). The palace is completely ruined and gone, with section lost in mounds and fragments found near the Benne Gudda. To the west of the palace was another group of Hindu and Jain temples – the Nagaresvara site, also destroyed whose ruins have been found in mounds. To the north of the original Hoysala city was a Saraswati temple and a Krishna temple, both also ruined and mostly lost. Towards the center and south of the old city were Hucesvara temple and a Rudresvara temple, evidenced by inscriptions and ruins that have been discovered. Four temples in northeastern section have survived – Gudlesvara, Virabhadra, Kumbalesvara and Ranganatha. The western part of the fortified section and beyond the fort were the historic farms that fed the population of the Dorasamudra capital. Roads connected the Hoysala capital to other major towns and pilgrimage sites such as Belur and Pushpagiri. Numerous inscriptions dating between mid 10th-century to early 13th-century attest to the importance of Dorasamudra to various Hoysala kings.


title: Halebidu

text: After the first invasion and destruction of Dorasamudra in the 14th-century, inscriptions suggest that there were attempts to repair the temples, palace and infrastructure in Dorasamudra. As a condition to an end to the invasion, Malik Kafur of Delhi Sultanate demanded king Ballala to accept suzerainty of Khalji, pay tribute and provide logistical support to the Sultanate forces seeking to raid and loot the fabled wealth in the Pandya capital of Madurai in Tamil Nadu. Additional waves of wars of destruction and loot from the Sultanates ended the Hoysala kingdom and Dorasamudra's prosperity as a capital city. For nearly 300 years, Dorasamudra saw no new inscriptions or evidence of political or economic prosperity. A mid 17th-century Nayaka era inscription in Belur thereafter becomes the first to mention "Halebidu". Meanwhile the surviving Hindu and Jain communities continued to support and repair the temples, with evidence of living temples in what is now the northern part of Halibidu.


title: Pink diamond

text: Pink diamond is a type of diamond that has pink color. The source of their pink color is greatly debated in the gemological world but it is most commonly attributed to plastic deformation that these diamonds undergo during their formation.


title: Pink diamond

text: Pink diamonds belong to a subcategory of diamonds called color diamonds, the generic name for all diamonds that exhibit any sort of color. Pink diamonds range from flawless to included, as do white diamonds.


title: Pink diamond

text: Numerous theories have been posited as to how the pink is formed in pink diamonds. The prevailing theory is that the pink is caused when the diamond is subjected to shear pressure during its formation. A similar theory is being tested on pink diamonds that originated in the Argyle Mine in Kimberley, Western Australia. This theory posits that a seismic shock propelled colorless diamonds to the surface and altered their molecular structure, causing them to appear pink.


title: Pink diamond

text: The same four basic parameters that govern the grading of all gemstones are used to grade pink diamonds–the four Cs of connoisseurship: "color", "clarity," "cut" and "carat weight". Color is considered the most important criterion in grading a pink diamond and determining its value. However, size is an important consideration as well. The larger a pink diamond, and the better its color, the more valuable it will be.


title: Pink diamond

text: One of the most famous pink diamonds is the Pink Star — at 59.60-carats, this type IIa diamond is the largest vivid pink diamond in the world. In 2014, the auction buyer was unable to pay the promised sum and was subsequently forced to default on its purchase. Among famous pink diamonds; the Daria-i-Noor is the largest pink diamond in the world, estimated to weigh 182 carats; together with the Noor-ul-Ain, it is the oldest known pink diamond, both belonging to the Iranian crown jewels.


title: Pink diamond

text: As with the color in all fancy color diamonds, the color in pink diamonds is assessed according to its "hue", "saturation" and "tone". The hue refers to the primary and secondary colors, the saturation refers to the intensity of color, and the tone refers to the darkness of the color. Pink diamonds can occur in hues ranging from brown-pink to purple-pink, although pink can also be a modifying color in other diamond colors. Brown, orange and purple are the only occurring secondary hues in pink diamonds although a pink diamond can exhibit both brown and orange overtones at the same time, making it a "brownish orangey pink" diamond. The ideal pink diamonds are generally considered to be those which exhibit pure pink color although purple-pink diamonds are generally very highly regarded as well. Generally speaking, a vivid pink diamond will be more valuable than a larger lighter pink diamond, although it is not always the case according to the Diamond Investment & Intelligence Center.


title: Pink diamond

text: Pink diamonds can occur in eight intensities, faint pink, very light pink, light pink, fancy light pink, fancy pink, fancy intense pink, fancy vivid pink, fancy deep/dark pink. Just like in all fancy color diamonds, the more vivid intensity pink diamonds are far rarer than the less vivid, which is in part why they demand a higher price. The same cause in nature which is the course of the pink in pink diamonds can be more or less concentrated depending on the specimen. That is why it is so rare to find the most concentrated diamonds in each color. There is no perfect consensus as to what defines each color intensity grade, even though the GIA keeps a master catalog of each diamond color. Therefore, each color intensity also has a subscale of 1-10. Within the industry, a diamond trader may call a diamond "fancy vivid" or "fancy intense" but will often also call the diamond "a 7" or whichever number is most apropos to the diamond's appearance, which enables the most thorough representation of the diamond's color intensity.


title: Pink diamond

text: Pink diamonds fall under the category of Type I or Type IIa diamonds. tend to have an irregular shape.


title: Pink diamond

text: The Argyle Mine, the world's current main source for pink diamonds, has developed their own pink diamond color classification system separate from that of the GIA. Instead of intensity, the color is divided into a scale from 1–9, 9 being the lightest and 1 being the darkest. However, some Argyle pink diamonds also receive GIA certificates.


title: Pink diamond

text: Most gem-quality diamonds are examined under a loupe to determine their clarity. This 10x magnification determines whether or not the diamond exhibits inclusions either on its surface or inside. Like all diamonds, pink diamond clarity is measured on a scale from Flawless to Included. Only 7% of pink diamonds are either Flawless or Internally Flawless (IF), and majority are Slightly Included (SI). Like most of the colors of fancy color diamonds, the clarity has little effect on a pink diamond's value. Since pink diamonds are formed by a deformation on their lattice structure, their probability of a low clarity grade is higher, making high clarity pink diamonds extremely rare (<7%).


title: Pink diamond

text: A 'lab-grown' diamond is chemically the same as a mined diamond but it is manufactured by humans rather than crystallising naturally. Pink diamonds can be crystallised using either the chemical vapor deposition method (CVD) or the high-pressure, high-temperature method. The Pink colour is often the result of post-growth treatment such as irradiation and annealing.


title: Pink diamond

text: Pink diamonds have been found in all of the major diamond-producing nations, notably Australia, Brazil, Russia, South Africa and Tanzania. Pink diamonds were first discovered in India, in the Kollur mine in the Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh (which at the time was part of the Golconda kingdom), one of two of the earliest known diamonds are thought to have originated. Concurrently, and throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, pink diamonds were being discovered in the Minas Gerais region of Brazil. Pink diamonds are still occasionally found in the Golconda mine and in Brazil but approximately 80% of the world's pink diamonds originated from the Argyle mine in Kimberley, Western Australia while the mine was in operation (the Argyle mine closed in 2020). Out of the mine's 20 million carat annual output, only 0.1% were classified as pink diamonds. After the diamonds are polished, the total carats of pink diamonds becomes smaller still.


title: Pink diamond

text: The earliest known pink diamonds are the Daria-i-noor and the Noor-ul-ain diamonds which are both part of the Iranian crown jewels.


title: Pink diamond

text: A pink diamond called "Pink Panther", the largest in the world, is the MacGuffin of the 1963 film of the same name.


title: Pink diamond

text: In 2002, when Ben Affleck proposed to Jennifer Lopez with a 6.1-carat pink diamond engagement ring, it catapulted pink diamonds into the popular mindset, triggering an immense surge in pink diamond prices that still exists today.


title: Pink diamond

text: An enormous pink diamond was one of the central focuses in the 2006 film "Blood Diamond", surrounded by the depictions of conflict diamonds mined and sold to fund civil wars and diamond companies.


title: Pink diamond

text: The popularity of pink diamonds rose in November 2013, when the 59.6-carat Pink Star diamond was bid on at auction in Geneva for $83 million by New York diamond cutter Isaac Wolf, then renamed the Pink Dream. Wolf ultimately defaulted, forcing auctioneer Sotheby's to pay the owners the promised sum.


title: Pink diamond

text: Pink Diamond was introduced in NBA 2K MyTeam with "NBA 2K17", where it represents player cards with 99 rating (also applicable in "NBA 2K18"). In "NBA 2K19" and "NBA 2K20", it represents player cards with 96-98 rating, while in "NBA 2K21", it represents player cards with 95 or 96 rating.


title: Pink diamond

text: On 3 April 2017, Sotheby's again auctioned the Pink Star, in Hong Kong, which sold to Chow Tai Fook Enterprises for a record US$71.2 million (553 million Hong Kong dollars, including fees).


title: Pink diamond

text: Prior to Sotheby's Pink Star diamond sale, the record price paid for a pink diamond was held by the 16.08 carat Sweet Josephine Diamond, which had sold to Hong Kong billionaire Joseph Lau, in 2015, for $28.5 million. (One day later, he also purchased the 12.03 carat Blue Moon of Josephine Diamond for $48.5 million. Both diamonds were bought as gifts for his daughter, Josephine, born in 2008, as was the 7.03-carat Blue Moon diamond, which he renamed the Star of Josephine diamond, purchased in 2009 for $9.5 million.)


title: Pink diamond

text: An anthropomorphic diamond known as Pink Diamond is a member of the Great Diamond Authority in "Steven Universe", which depicts the fallout of her death and the mystery behind it.


title: Pink diamond

text: In November 2020, an extremely rare purple-pink Russian 14.8-carat diamond, called "The Spirit of The Rose", sold at an auction in Switzerland for $26.6 million. It was the largest diamond ever auctioned because 99% of all pink diamonds are under 10 carats.


title: Pink diamond

text: In February 2021, American rapper Lil Uzi Vert revealed that he had a 10-11 carat pink diamond implanted in his forehead. In June 2021, he removed the diamond from his forehead.


title: Pink diamond

text: In July 2022, a mine in Angola yielded a pink diamond that is believed to be the largest discovered since 300 years recording to the Australian miner Lucapa Diamond Company. The stone, weighing 170 carat, has been named "Lulo Rose" after the Lulo alluvial diamond mine, where it was found.


title: Taliesin West

text: Taliesin West was architect Frank Lloyd Wright's winter home and studio in the desert from 1937 until his death in 1959 at the age of 91. Today it is the headquarters of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.


title: Taliesin West

text: Open to the public for tours, Taliesin West is located on Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard in Scottsdale, Arizona. The complex drew its name from Wright's home, Taliesin, in Spring Green, Wisconsin.


title: Taliesin West

text: Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship began to "migrate" to Arizona each winter in 1935 to escape the harsh Wisconsin winters for Wright's health on his doctor's advice. In 1937 Wright purchased the plot of desert land that would soon become Taliesin West. He paid "$3.50 an acre on a southern slope of the McDowell Range overlooking Paradise Valley outside Scottsdale."


title: Taliesin West

text: Wright believed this to be the perfect spot for such a building: a place of residence, a place of business and a place to learn. Wright described it like this, "Finally I learned of a site twenty-six miles from Phoenix, across the desert of the vast Paradise Valley. On up to a great mesa in the mountains. On the mesa just below McDowell Peak we stopped, turned, and looked around. The top of the world."


title: Taliesin West

text: An investment of over $10,000 was needed to dig a well deep enough to provide sufficient water for the campus. In the initial winters Wright and his students lived in tents while they built the first structures, mainly by hand using as much local material as possible (rocks, stone and sand). The design of the buildings complemented the natural Sonoran Desert landscape of the site.


title: Taliesin West

text: When Wright and his family arrived they found Native American petroglyphs among the rocks. One, seen today at the beginning of the guided tour, shows what may be hands clasping. Wright stylized the figures into interconnected lines, which became the symbol of Taliesin West.


title: Taliesin West

text: The structure's walls are made of local desert rocks, stacked within wood forms, filled with concrete - colloquially referred to as "desert masonry". Wright always favored using the materials readily available rather than those that must be transported to the site. In Wright's own words: "There were simple characteristic silhouettes to go by, tremendous drifts and heaps of sunburned desert rocks were nearby to be used. We got it all together with the landscape…" The flat surfaces of the rocks were placed outward facing and large boulders filled the interior space so concrete could be conserved.


title: Taliesin West

text: Natural light also played a major part in the design. In the drafting room, Wright used translucent canvas to act as a roof (later replaced by plastic because of the intense wear from the Arizona sun). In the south-facing dining room, Wright did not take the masonry walls from floor to ceiling, and designed the roof to hang past the walls preventing unwanted sun rays from penetrating but allowing for horizontal light to pass through the room. Wright believed natural light aided the work environment he had his apprentices in, keeping the inside of his building in touch with the natural surroundings.


title: Taliesin West

text: Every part of Taliesin West bears Frank Lloyd Wright's personal touch. Upon every return after a summer in Wisconsin Wright would grab a hammer and immediately make his way through the complex. He would walk through each room making changes or shouting orders to apprentices closely following with wheelbarrows and tools. He constantly changed and improved on his design fixing arising problems and addressing new situations. Throughout the years he enlarged the dining room, as well as added the cabaret theatre, music pavilion and numerous other rooms. All of the furniture and decorations were designed by Wright and the majority built by apprentices. A brilliant aspect of Wright's design is the cabaret theatre. Built with six sides, out of the standard rock-concrete mixture, in an irregularly hexagonal shape, the theatre provides its occupants with what someone has called "95% acoustic perfection". Someone sitting in the back row can hear the lightest whisper from a speaker on stage.


title: Taliesin West

text: The view at Taliesin West was critical to its success. In the 1940s, Wright waged a battle against overhead power lines on aesthetic grounds. In the late 1940s when power lines appeared within the view of Taliesin West, Wright wrote President Harry S. Truman, demanding they be buried; it was a losing battle. So after briefly considering rebuilding in Tucson, he "turned his back on the valley," moving the entrance to the rear of the main building.


title: Taliesin West

text: After his death in Phoenix on April 9, 1959, Wright was buried, in accordance with his wishes, next to the Unity Chapel in the Lloyd-Jones cemetery, near Taliesin in Wisconsin. His third wife Olgivanna's dying wish was that Wright, she, and her daughter by her first marriage all be cremated and interred together in a memorial garden being built at Taliesin West. Although Olgivanna had taken no legal steps to move Wright's remains and against the wishes of other family members, as well as the Wisconsin legislature, in 1985, Wright's remains were removed from his grave by members of the Taliesin Fellowship, cremated, and sent to Scottsdale, where they were later interred in the memorial garden. The original grave site in Wisconsin, now empty, is still marked with Wright's name.


title: Taliesin West

text: During his lifetime, Wright continually altered and added to the complex of buildings, all of which were constructed by students.


title: Taliesin West

text: Many of Wright's most famous buildings were designed in the drafting room at Taliesin West, including the Guggenheim Museum in New York City and Grady Gammage Auditorium at Arizona State University in Tempe.


title: Taliesin West

text: Taliesin West continues as the headquarters of The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and its several programs.


title: Taliesin West

text: The structure was added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 12, 1974, and was designated as a National Historic Landmark on May 20, 1982.


title: Taliesin West

text: In 2008, the U.S. National Park Service submitted Taliesin West along with nine other Frank Lloyd Wright properties to a tentative list for World Heritage Status. The 10 sites have been submitted as one single site. The January 22, 2008, press release from the National Park Service website announcing the nominations states that, "The preparation of a Tentative List is a necessary first step in the process of nominating a site to the World Heritage List." After revised proposals, Taliesin West and seven other properties were inscribed on the World Heritage List under the title "The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright" in July 2019.


title: Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma

text: Sree Padmanabhadasa Sree Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma , popularly known as Sree Chithira Thirunal, was the last ruling Maharaja of the Princely State of Travancore, in southern India until 1949 and later the Titular Maharajah of Travancore until 1991. Sree Chithira Thirunal was the eldest son of Junior Maharani of Travancore, H.H. Sree Padmanabhasevini Vanchidharmavardhini Rajarajeshwari Maharani Moolam Thirunal Sethu Parvathi Bayi, and Sri Pooram Nal Ravi Varma Koyi Thampuran of the Royal House of Kilimanoor. He was privately educated, and became the Maharajah of Travancore, at the age of 12, upon the death of his maternal great uncle, the then Maharajah of Travancore Sree Moolam Thirunal, on 7 August 1924.


title: Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma

text: In 1936, established the University of Travancore (now the University of Kerala) in 1937. The Women Studies Journal "Samyukta" reports that, 40% of the Travancore's revenue was set apart for education, during the reign of Sree Chithira Thirunal. Thiruvananthapuram International Airport, Travancore Public Transport Department renamed Kerala State Road Transport Corporation, Pallivasal Hydro-electric Project, Fertilisers and Chemicals Travancore (FACT) etc. were established by him. Historians like A. Sreedhara Menon credit him for the industrialization of Travancore as well.


title: Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma

text: He also established The Avittom Thirunal Hospital for women and child in Thiruvananthapuram first of its kind in country with all latest available medical facilities at that time, which later turned the events to the establishment of kerala's first ever medical college in Trivandrum.Today SAT hospital is leading institution for Obstetrics and Gynaecology as well as Paediatrics producing hundreds of well qualified doctors for nation.


title: Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma

text: Trivandrum medical college itself hold around 3400 beds in MCH alone making it one of the largest in south India along with Calicut and Madras medical college.Medical College sees enormous patient inflow being the best referral institute in kerala.


title: Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma

text: According to researchers, the Punnapra-Vayalar uprising in 1946 which led to the death of hundreds of Communist Party workers, the declaration of an independent Travancore in 1947, and allowing too much power to his Prime Minister, Sir C. P. Ramaswamy Iyer, would represent the negative aspects of Sree Chithira Thirunal's reign.


title: Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma

text: Upon India's independence from the British on 15 August 1947, Sree Chithira Thirunal initially chose to keep his domain an independent country. As this was unacceptable to the Govt. Of India, several rounds of negotiations were held between the Maharaja and the Indian representatives. Finally an agreement was reached in 1949 and Sree Chithira Thirunal agreed to merge Travancore officially as a part of the Union of India. In 1949, Travancore was united with Cochin, and Sree Chithira Thirunal served as the first and only "Rajpramukh" (Governor equivalent) of the Travancore-Cochin Union from 1 July 1949 until 31 October 1956. On 1 November 1956, the state of Kerala was created by uniting the Malayalam-speaking areas of the Travancore-Cochin Union with Malabar, and Sree Chithira Thirunal's office of "Rajpramukh" came to an end.


title: Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma

text: Sree Chithira Thirunal was an Hon. Major General with the British Indian Army and the Colonel-in-Chief and the Supreme Commander of the Travancore Military and of the Travancore-Cochin State Forces, for the period 1924–56. He became an Hon. Colonel in the Indian Army since 1949, as the Travancore Military was integrated by him into the former, as the 9th (1st Travancore) and the 16th Battalion of the Madras Regiment (2nd Travancore). After the Constitutional Amendment of 1971, he was stripped of his political powers and emoluments from the privy purse by the Indira Gandhi government. At the age of 78, after suffering a stroke, he fell into a coma for nine days and died on 20 July 1991. Along with the Sree Chitra Thirunal Institute of Medical Sciences and Technology, many other charitable trusts were established using the funds, land and buildings provided by him. Sree Chithira Thirunal also sponsored the higher education of a young K. R. Narayanan who went on to become the 10th President of India.


title: Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma

text: Sree Chithira Thirunal was the eldest son of Sethu Parvathi Bayi, popularly known as "Amma Maharani", the Queen Mother and Junior Maharani of Travancore, by her consort, Ravi Varma Kochu Koyi Thampuran of Royal House of Kilimanoor, a Sanskrit scholar and the great-nephew of the celebrated painter Raja Ravi Varma. He was born on Deepavali day on 7 November 1912, as the "Heir Apparent" to the throne of Travancore. His siblings were Karthika Thirunal Lakshmi Bayi and Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma. Sree Chithira Thirunal's mother, Sethu Parvathi Bayi, was distantly related, by birth, to the royal house of Travancore in the direct female line. In 1900, following the absence of heirs in the Travancore Royal Family, she had been adopted by her maternal great-aunt. According to the matrilineal traditions of the Travancore Royal Family, Sree Chithira Thirunal, at the time of his birth, was proclaimed the Heir Apparent of Travancore with the title of : "Sree Padmanabhadasa Maharajkumar Sree Balarama Varma II, Elaya Rajah (Crown Prince) of Travancore".


title: Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma

text: At the age of 6, Sree Chithira Thirunal began his education under tutors specially chosen by his uncle, Maharajah Sree Moolam Thirunal, in subjects like Malayalam, Sanskrit, Tamil, English, Mathematics, History, Geography, General Literature, Art and Culture. His early education in Malayalam and Sanskrit was imparted by the eminent scholar of the time, Sri Attoor Krishna Pisharody and in English by Mr. Dowel I.C.S (Indian Civil Service) and T. Raman Nambeeshan. Later he had his higher education under Captain G. T. B. Harvey, and Mr. Dutt I.C.S (Indian Civil Service). At the age of 16, also began his training in State Craft and Administration, for two years, in Bangalore. Sree Chithira Thirunal lived in Bangalore till 1 July 1931 and also acquired knowledge in practical administration for 15 months, under the guidance of Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV, the Maharajah of Mysore. The head tutor of Sree Chithira Thirunal, Captain. Harvey, quoted in his report to the Travancore government that : "His Highness is an intelligent and willing pupil and his educational progress has been quite satisfactory. His mental equipment and the present standard of his knowledge in English, Malayalam and other subjects like Mathematics, History and Geography are higher than those laid down by the Committee ruling 'Minor Ruler's Education and Training in Administration'. His Highness continued to make very satisfactory progress in his studies and that mental progress and expansion of personality have been marked and rapid. The establishment of a separate household, has resulted in much greater self-reliance, initiative and power of decision. Opportunities for studying the laws and institutions of a progressive State have greatly broadened His Highness' experience and enlarged His Highness' sympathies and interests." By the time he reached the majority age of eighteen, Sree Chithira Thirunal, had finished his administrative training in Mysore and returned to Travancore.


title: Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma

text: Even after turning eighteen, Sree Chithira Thirunal's investiture ceremony wasn't done and his accession to full power looked unlikely, as rumours were spread about him that he was not mentally stable and hence not qualified to occupy the throne. His mother, Maharani Sethu Parvathi Bayi, contacted Sir C. P. Ramaswamy Aiyar, a family friend, who then presented Sree Chithira Thirunal's case to the then Viceroy of India, Lord Wellington, and arranged a meeting between the two. After meeting the young Monarch, the Viceroy was highly impressed and found the rumours baseless, and thus all the obstacles, in Sree Chithira Thirunal's accession to power, were removed. As Sree Chithira Thirunal was quite young, and because of the amount of controversy that had been swirling around him, Viceroy Lord Wellington insisted that Sir C.P. must become the Legal and Constitutional Adviser to the young Monarch. Sree Chithira Thirunal attained full ruling powers on 6 November 1931, with the title : "Major General His Highness Sree Padmanabhadasa Vanchipala Sree Chithira Thirunal Sir Balarama Varma II, Manney Sultan Maharajah Raja Ramaraja Bahadur, Shamsher Jang, Maharajah of Travancore, Knight Grand Commander of the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India, Knight Grand Commander of the Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire". As was customary, he took the regnal name "Sree Chithira Thirunal" as he was born under the "Chithira nakshatram" or star. ln his speech, after assuming full power as the "Maharajah of Travancore", he declared : "It is my hope that I shall be enabled by God’s grace to earn the affection and esteem of all communities and classes amongst my people whose advancement in every department of life will be my perpetual pre-occupation and my sole aim."


title: Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma

text: All Travancore Maharajahs including Sree Moolam Thirunal conducted "Hiranyagarbham" ceremony. Sree Chithira Thirunal is the only Maharajah of Travancore not to have conducted "Hiranyagarbham" or "Tulaapurushadaanam" as he considered these as extremely costly ceremonies thereby making himself a Nair and not a Samantha Kshatriya. Sree Chithira Thirunal was able to secure the services of eminent statesman, Sir C.P.Ramaswami Aiyar, who initially served as his Legal and Constitutional Adviser and later as his Prime minister, for several years. Sree Chithira Thirunal went abroad, on a foreign tour, commencing on 8 April 1933 and visited England, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Italy etc. He had met with King George V in London and Pope Pius XI at the Vatican. Sree Chithira Thirunal also had a beautiful palace built for him named "Kowdiar Palace", finished in 1934 prior to the wedding of his sister Maharani Karthika Thirunal Lakshmi Bayi with Lt. Col. G. V. Raja. It was previously an old "Nalukettu", given by Maharajah Sree Moolam Thirunal to Sree Chithira Thirunal's mother Sethu Parvathi Bayi in 1915.


title: Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma

text: In 1932, Sree Chithira Thirunal conducted a Constitutional Reform by forming the first Bicameral Legislature there by reducing some of his political powers. The Legislative Council of Travancore and Sree Moolam Popular Assembly were replaced with a formal bicameral system consisting of an Upper House—"the Travancore Sree Chitra State Council", and a Lower House—"the Sree Moolam Assembly". It was specified that not less than 55% of the members should be elected and no more than one third should be officials. In the case of the Assembly, not less than 48 members were required to be elected. Of not more than 24 nominated members, 12 should be officials. The Assembly had 72 members while the "Sri Chitra State Council" had 37 members. This bicameral system continued to function till September 1947, until it gave way to a constituent assembly that later led to the merger of Cochin state and the eventual joining into the Indian Union. The new bodies started functioning from 1 January 1933. The Assembly could vote on the budgetary demands for grants with powers to reduce and omit items. For the first time, a Public Accounts Committee was created making the executive increasingly accountable to the legislature. The Prime Minister (Dewan) was the President of both the Houses. The Assembly elected its own Deputy President and the term was four years. But Ezhavas, Christians and Muslims feared that the new reforms would secure for them only a few number of seats in the enlarged legislature than the Nairs. They demanded dividing the seats on the basis of population and they decided to abstain from voting and thus Abstention movement began in Travancore. The government finally acceded to protesters demand and introduced Communal Reservation on appointments in the Travancore Government Service.


title: Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma

text: In 1932, Sree Chithira Thirunal passed "The Travancore Kshatriya Regulation" (excluding Travancore Royal Family), for the first time, to define and amend laws related to succession, marriage & or its dissolution, property management and maintenance. The same year, the "Travancore Muslim Succession Regulation" was also passed to amend and define rules of succession among Muslim community. Another important bill passed in 1932 was "The Jenmi-Kudiyaan Regulation". This bill proclaimed that the landlord (jenmi) will not have any right, claim or interest in the land holding except the right to receive land dues (jenmi karam). The right to review or enhance the jenmikaram rested with the government. This bill gave complete freedom for tenants (kudiyaan) over the tenant land, for the first time in history, without the interference of the landlords (janmi). It also stated that the tenant should pay the land dues to the government, in order to prevent exploitation and the government will then remit the dues to the land lords. Sree Chithira Thirunal also concentrated on improving the condition of women and children. In Travancore, women were held in high respect due to the matrilineal law of inheritance, and widow remarriage was prevalent in majority of the communities. But widow remarriage was prohibited among certain communities like Vellalas, Nambuthiris, Potties, and many Brahmin communities in Travancore also. For Brahmin communities, other than Nambuthirs and potties, pre-pubescent marriage was also compulsory. So in order to stop the sufferings of widows and to prevent child marriages and other similar social evils and for the betterment of women, several new Bills were passed were passed by the King: "The Travancore Hindu Widows Remarriage Regulation (1938), The Travancore Child Marriage Restraint Act & The Travancore Suppression Of Immoral Traffic Act (1941), The Travancore Maternity Benefit Act (1943)" etc. aimed at the betterment of women and children.