title: Tennessee Walking Horse

text: The breed has also been featured in television, movies and other performing events. The Lone Ranger's horse "Silver" was at times played by a Tennessee Walker. "Trigger, Jr.", the successor to the original "Trigger" made famous by Roy Rogers, was played by a Tennessee Walker named Allen's Gold Zephyr. The position of Traveler, mascot of the University of Southern California Trojans, was held at various times by a purebred Tennessee Walking Horse, and by a Tennessee Walker/Arabian cross.


title: Tennessee Walking Horse

text: The two basic categories of Tennessee Walking Horse show competition are called "flat-shod" and "performance". Flat-shod horses compete in many different disciplines under both western and English tack. At shows where both divisions are offered, the flat-shod "plantation pleasure" division is judged on brilliance and show presence of the horses while still being well mannered, balanced, and manageable. "Park pleasure" is the most animated of the flat-shod divisions. Flat-shod horses are shown in ordinary horseshoes, and are not allowed to use pads or action devices, though their hooves are sometimes trimmed to a slightly lower angle with more natural toe than seen on stock horse breeds.


title: Tennessee Walking Horse

text: Tennessee Walking Horses are typically shown with a long mane and tail. Artificially set tails are seen in "performance" classes, on full-grown horses in halter classes, and in some harness classes, but generally are not allowed in pleasure or flat-shod competition.


title: Tennessee Walking Horse

text: Performance horses, sometimes called "padded" or "built up", exhibit flashy and animated gaits, lifting their forelegs high off the ground with each step. This exaggerated action is sometimes called the "Big Lick". The customary style for rider attire and tack is saddle seat. Horses are shod in double and triple-nailed pads, which are sometimes called "stacks". In the early 21st century, this form of shoeing is now prohibited at shows governed by the National Walking Horse Association (NWHA), and the United States Equestrian Federation (USEF). Artificially set tails are seen in "performance" classes, on full-grown horses in halter classes, and in some harness classes, but generally are not allowed in pleasure or flat-shod competition.


title: Tennessee Walking Horse

text: Horses in western classes wear equipment similar to that used by other breeds in western pleasure classes, and exhibitors may not mix English and Western-style equipment. Riders must wear a hat or helmet in western classes. Tennessee Walkers are also shown in both pleasure and fine harness driving classes, with grooming similar to the saddle seat horses. In classes where horses are turned out in saddle seat equipment, it is typical for the horse to be shown in a single curb bit with a bit shank under , rather than the double bridle more common to other saddle seat breeds. Riders wear typical saddle seat attire. Hats are not always mandatory, but use of safety helmets is allowed and ranges from strongly encouraged to required in some pleasure division classes.


title: Tennessee Walking Horse

text: The showing, exhibition and sale of Tennessee Walking Horses and some other horse breeds is governed by the Horse Protection Act of 1970 (HPA) due to concerns about the practice of soring. This developed during the 1950s and became widespread in the 1960s, resulting in a public outcry against it. Congress passed the Horse Protection Act in 1970, declaring the practice to be "cruel and inhumane". The Act prohibits anyone from entering a sored horse into a show, sale, auction or exhibition, and prohibits drivers from transporting sored horses to a sale or show.


title: Tennessee Walking Horse

text: Congress delegated statutory responsibility for enforcement to the management of sales and horse shows, but placed administration of the act with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Violations of the HPA may result in criminal charges, fines and prison sentences. The USDA certifies certain Horse Industry Organizations (HIOs) to train and license Designated Qualified Persons (DQPs) to complete inspections. APHIS inspection teams, which include inspectors, investigators, and veterinary medical officers, also conduct unannounced inspections of some horse shows, and have the authority to revoke the license of a DQP who does not follow the standards of the Act.


title: Tennessee Walking Horse

text: "(3)(A) an irritating or blistering agent has been applied, internally or externally, by a person to any limb of a horse, (B) any burn, cut, or laceration has been inflicted by a person on any limb of a horse, (C) any tack, nail, screw, or chemical agent has been injected by a person into or used by a person on any limb of a horse, or (D) any other substance or device has been used by a person on any limb of a horse or a person has engaged in a practice involving a horse, and, as a result of such application, infliction, injection, use, or practice, such horse suffers, or can reasonably be expected to suffer, physical pain or distress, inflammation, or lameness when walking, "Action devices, which remain legal but are often used in conjunction with illegal soring practices, are defined in the Code of Federal Regulations as "any boot, collar, chain, roller, or other device which encircles or is placed upon the lower extremity of the leg of a horse in such a manner that it can either rotate around the leg, or slide up and down the leg so as to cause friction, or which can strike the hoof, coronet band or fetlock joint".


title: Tennessee Walking Horse

text: Between 1978 and 1982, Auburn University conducted research as to the effect of applications of chemical and physical irritants to the legs of Tennessee Walking Horses. The study found that chains of any weight, used in combination with chemical soring, produced lesions and pain in horses. However, chains of 6 ounces or lighter, used on their own, produced no pain, tissue damage or thermographic changes.


title: Tennessee Walking Horse

text: Soring can be detected by observing the horse for lameness, assessing its stance and palpating the lower legs. Some trainers trick inspectors by training horses not to react to the pain that palpation may cause, often by severely punishing the horse for flinching when the sored area is touched. The practice is sometimes called "stewarding", in reference to the horse show steward. Some trainers use topical anesthetics, which are timed to wear off before the horse goes into the show ring. Pressure shoeing is also used, eliminating use of chemicals altogether. Trainers who sore their horses have been observed leaving the show grounds when they find that the more stringent federal inspection teams are present.


title: Tennessee Walking Horse

text: Although illegal under federal law for more than 40 years, soring is still practiced; criminal charges have been filed against people who violate the Act. Enforcement of the HPA is difficult, due to limited inspection budgets and problems with lax enforcement by inspectors who are hired by the shows they were to police. As a result, while in 1999 there were eight certified HIOs, by 2010, only three organizations remained certified as HIOs, all known to be actively working to end soring.


title: Tennessee Walking Horse

text: In 2013, legislation to amend and strengthen the HPA was introduced in Congress. The President and executive committee of the TWHBEA voted to support this legislation, but the full board of directors chose not to. The bi-partisan bill, H.R. 1518, was sponsored by Representative Ed Whitfield (R-KY), and Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN), with 216 co-sponsors. On November 13, 2013 a hearing was held. Supporters included the American Horse Council, the American Veterinary Medical Association, members of the TWHBEA, the International Walking Horse Association, and Friends of Sound Horses. Opponents included members of the Performance Horse Show Association, and the Tennessee Commissioner of Agriculture. The legislation did not pass in the 113th Congress and was reintroduced in 2015 for the 114th Congress. In 2016, the USDA proposed new rules independent of the PAST Act, banning stacks and chains, and providing stricter inspections at training barns, auctions, and shows.


title: Tennessee Walking Horse

text: Controversies over shoeing rules, concerns about soring, and the breed industry's compliance with the Horse Protection Act has resulted in the development of multiple governing organizations. The breed registry is kept by the TWHBEA, which promotes all riding disciplines within the breed, but does not sanction horse shows.


title: Tennessee Walking Horse

text: The USEF does not currently recognize or sanction any Tennessee Walking Horse shows. In 2013 it banned the use of action devices and stacks at any time in any class.


title: Tennessee Walking Horse

text: The Tennessee Walking Horse Heritage Society is a group dedicated to the preservation of the original Tennessee Walker bloodlines, mainly for use as trail and pleasure horses, rather than for showing. Horses listed by the organization descend from the foundation bloodstock registered by the TWHBEA. Pedigrees may not include horses that have been shown with stacks post-1976.


title: Tennessee Walking Horse

text: Two organizations have formed to promote the exhibition of flat-shod horses. The National Walking Horse Association (NWHA) promotes only naturally gaited horses in its sanctioned horse shows, has its own rule book, and is the official USEF affiliate organization for the breed. The NWHA sanctions horse shows and licenses judges, and is an authorized HIO.


title: Tennessee Walking Horse

text: The NWHA was in the process of building its own "tracking registry" to document both pedigree and performance achievements of horses recorded there. These included the Spotted Saddle Horse and Racking Horse breeds as well as the Tennessee Walker. However, the NWHA was sued by the Tennessee Walking Horse Breeders & Exhibitors Association (TWHBEA), which eventually won some concessions regarding the use of the TWHBEA’s copyrighted registry certificates by the NWHA. While the judgment did not prohibit the NWHA from continuing its registry service, this is no longer advertised on the NWHA website.


title: Tennessee Walking Horse

text: Friends of Sound Horses (FOSH) also promotes exhibition of flat-shod and barefoot horses. It licenses judges for both pleasure classes and gaited dressage, promotes use of gaited horses in distance riding and sport horse activities, and is an authorized HIO.


title: Tennessee Walking Horse

text: Two organizations promulgate rules for horse shows in which action devices are allowed: the Walking Horse Owners Association (WHOA) and "S.H.O.W." ("Sound horses, Honest judging, Objective inspections, Winning fairly") which regulates the Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration. The Celebration has been held in Shelbyville, Tennessee, each August since 1939. It is considered the showcase competition for the breed. In the early 21st century, the Celebration has attracted large amounts of attention and controversy due to the concerns about violations of the Horse Protection Act.


title: Hammerskins

text: The Hammerskins (also known as Hammerskin Nation) are a white supremacist group formed in 1988 in Dallas, Texas. Their primary focus is the production and promotion of white power rock music, and many white power bands have been affiliated with the group. The Hammerskins were affiliated with the record label 9% Productions. The Hammerskins host several annual concerts, including Hammerfest, an annual event in both the United States and Europe in honor of deceased Hammerskin Joe Rowan, the lead singer of the band Nordic Thunder.


title: Hammerskins

text: The Hammerskins were one of the most prominent American white power skinhead groups. The Anti-Defamation League describes them as the United States' best-organized neo-Nazi skinhead group, with the Hammerskin Nation website boasting six chapters in the United States and chapters existing in Canada, various European countries, New Zealand, and Australia. The organization is self-described as "leaderless". Individual members have been involved in many violent attacks and hate crimes, mostly in the US (notably the Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting), although these have not been organized by the group.


title: Hammerskins

text: It maintains an active recruitment strategy, and encourages members to enlist in military forces in order to learn combat skills for an upcoming race war. Its website is defunct. It has run Facebook groups under the name Crew 38 (now inactive) and its online forums, and this name is also used for supporters of the group in Australia.


title: Hammerskins

text: The Hammerskins emerged in the late 1980s from the Dallas based Confederate Hammerskins. Their name is based on a scene in the 1982 film "Pink Floyd – The Wall".


title: Hammerskins

text: The first international chapters of the group were formed in Northern Ireland and Switzerland in 1990, and Australian and Canadian chapters followed in 1993. During the following year, the regional groups amalgamated, rebranding as Hammerskin Nation, but in 1999 reverted to the regional system under an international umbrella.


title: Hammerskins

text: Power struggles had split the group into several factions by 2008. The website and online forums went offline in 2001 with little explanation, and not long afterwards, the white supremacist Tom Metzger announced the termination of the group known as Hammerskin Nation. However, another "official" Hammerskin Nation website was launched in 2002, which was still active as of October 2018 but without online forums, but was inactive by April 2020.


title: Hammerskins

text: The organization is self-described as "leaderless". It maintains an active recruitment strategy, and encourages members to enlist in military forces in order to learn combat skills for an upcoming race war.


title: Hammerskins

text: The Hammerskins logo, depicting two claw hammers crossed, is based on a fictitious neo-Nazi organization depicted in the 1982 film "Pink Floyd – The Wall". The portrayal of the fictional group in the film was intended to show Nazism negatively. Their logo and the motto "Hammerskins forever, forever hammerskins" ("H.F.F.H.") often appear in their paraphernalia and tattoos. Crew 38 and Hammerskins members also frequently identify themselves with the slogan "838", meaning "hail [the] crossed hammers" (the initialism H.C.H. translates into the eighth, third and eighth letters of the alphabet).


title: Hammerskins

text: As of October 12, 2018, their website showed six U.S. chapters: West, Northwest, Midland, Confederate, Northern, and Eastern, and chapters in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Luxembourg, and Switzerland.


title: Hammerskins

text: Individual members have been involved in many violent attacks and hate crimes, mostly in the US, although these have not been organized by the group.


title: Hammerskins

text: Many Outlaw Hammerskins members attended the 2002 NordicFest, and the group was planning to provide security for a white pride festival hosted by the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The Outlaw Hammerskins are now defunct.


title: Hammerskins

text: Many of its members have been convicted of harassment, assault and even murder. On August 5, 2012, Hammerskin Wade Michael Page was shot by police and died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head after he killed six people in a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Page had become a "fully patched" member of the Hammerskins in autumn 2011, according to the Anti-Defamation League. He played in at least three Hammerskin-affiliated bands; End Apathy, Definite Hate and 13 Knots. According to media sources and civil rights organizations, End Apathy, Wade's main band, had played at several recent Hammerskin events in the United States prior to the shooting-spree.


title: Hammerskins

text: The Australian group, founded in 1993, is known as the Southern Cross Hammerskins. In 2014 they were reported to be active in Melbourne, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sydney and Adelaide, with a focus on anti-Asian and anti-Muslim sentiment. They target young men, particularly at heavy metal music festivals, and are aligned with skinheads. A support group called Crew 38 was created in 2009, for those who were unable to commit to full membership.


title: Hammerskins

text: In October 2019, the Southern Cross Hammerskins along with Blood & Honour Australia held the annual Ian Stuart Donaldson Memorial Concert in Melbourne. Various human rights, faith, trade union and anti-discrimination groups lobbied the Victorian Government to stop the concert, to no avail, and it went ahead as intended.


The New River Gorge National Park and Preserve is a unit of the United States National Park Service (NPS) designed to protect and maintain the New River Gorge in southern West Virginia in the Appalachian Mountains. Established in 1978 as a national river and redesignated in 2020, the park and preserve stretches for from just downstream of Hinton to Hawks Nest State Park near Ansted.


title: New River Gorge National Park and Preserve

text: The park is rich in cultural and natural history, and offers an abundance of scenic and recreational opportunities. New River Gorge is home to some of the country's best whitewater rafting, mainly from the Cunard put-in to the Fayette Station take-out, and is also one of the most popular climbing areas on the East Coast. The New River itself originates in North Carolina, flowing north through Virginia into the West Virginia mountains to the Kanawha River which continues to the Ohio River.


text: President Jimmy Carter signed legislation establishing New River Gorge National River on November 10, 1978 (). As stated in the legislation, the park was established as a unit of the national park system "for the purpose of conserving and interpreting outstanding natural, scenic, and historic values and objects in and around the New River Gorge, and preserving as a free-flowing stream an important segment of the New River in West Virginia for the benefit and enjoyment of present and future generations."


text: The New River Gorge National Park and Preserve Designation Act was incorporated into the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, and signed into law by President Trump on December 27th, 2020, changing the designation to New River Gorge National Park and Preserve. Less than 10% of the original national river was redesignated as a national park, where hunting is no longer permitted, while the remainder is a national preserve with little change.


text: Flowing water is the creative force shaping the geologic features of the New River Gorge, as the river continues to sculpt the longest and deepest river gorge in the Appalachian Mountains. On display in the gorge, a variety of unique geologic features and processes exemplify the geology of the Appalachian Plateau, including the exposure of over of sandstone and shale, house-sized boulders scattered from rim to river, plant and invertebrate fossils, and steep channel drop-offs. The river has exposed four seams of coal, considered among the best bituminous coal in the world. The smokeless New River coal once fed the boilers of the nation's trains, factories, fleets, and power plants, and its coke fueled the nation's iron furnaces.


text: The waters of the New River system contain a mosaic of hydrologic features and aquatic habitats that support a unique aquatic ecosystem and nourish a riparian zone that supports rare plants, animals, and communities. The waters provide a surprising variety and density of riverine hydrologic features and processes unparalleled in the Eastern United States, including pools, backwaters, glides, runs, shoals, riffles, torrents, cascades, chutes, rapids and waterfalls.


text: The river is a highly productive aquatic ecosystem that includes distinct populations of native fish (many found nowhere else), mussels, crayfish, and a broad array of other aquatic life, including rare amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. The riparian zone is the most biologically diverse part of the park, and contains globally rare communities and essential habitat for several rare species. The New River is a dynamic aquatic ecosystem that supports smallmouth bass and other game fish, invertebrates, and aquatic plants.


text: New River Gorge National Park and Preserve lies at the core of a globally significant forest containing the most diverse flora of any river gorge in central and southern Appalachia; it provides essential habitat for endangered mammals and rare birds and amphibians. The park contains habitats of continuous forest, cliff and rimrock, forest seeps and wetlands, mature bottomland forests, abandoned mine portals (providing a refuge for rare species, including bats, amphibians, and the Allegheny woodrat, a species of special concern in West Virginia and in decline throughout the eastern United States). New River Gorge offers shelter to at least 63 species of mammals including the endangered Virginia big-eared and Indiana bats. The river, stream tributaries, and forest provide habitat for 48 known species of amphibians, including the endangered eastern hellbender, black-bellied salamander, and cave salamander.


text: Diverse populations of birds such as wood warblers, vireos, and thrushes spend part of their lives in the tropics, but depend upon the unfragmented forests of the New River Gorge for breeding. The region is a vital link in the north-south migratory flyway. Each year, thousands of hawks fly across the region during the fall migratory season. The NPS and West Virginia Department of Natural Resources have initiated a multiyear program to restore peregrine falcons to New River Gorge. These majestic birds soar and dive near the cliffs.


text: Forty different plant communities containing at least 1,342 species and 54 rare plants have been identified in the gorge.


text: Within the gorge is a wealth of historically significant abandoned places, some in ruins and some stabilized and rehabilitated, where people worked and lived during the late 18th and 19th centuries, supplying the coal from the New River Coalfield, and lumber that helped fuel American industry. Remnants of the park's past, hidden in the forest, tell the stories of earlier life in the Appalachian Mountains. On display are the tangible remains of historic coal mining structures and coke ovens of unmatched integrity — such as at Nuttallburg Coal Mining Complex and Town Historic District and Kay Moor — and the historic structures and ruins associated with more than 50 company-owned towns.


text: The New River Gorge region was opened up to the outside world in 1873 with the coming of the railroad. In the park, there are old railroad depots, rail yards, rail grades, steel and timber trestle bridges, railroad equipment, archeological sites and associated towns, like Thurmond, that were developed to support the railroad. The history and archeology associated with the lumbering industry can be seen in the ruins of old towns like Hamlet. Also contributing to the area's rich cultural history are surviving examples of subsistence farms, former community sites, homesteads, and other places in the park where the ancestors of families long associated with the New River lived and worked.


text: The Lower Gorge of the New River is a premier whitewater rafting location. The rapids, ranging in difficulty from class III to class V, are imposing and forceful, many of them obstructed by large boulders, which necessitate maneuvering in very powerful currents, crosscurrents, and hydraulics. Commercial outfitters conduct trips down the river from April through October. The upper part of the river offers somewhat less challenging class I to III rapids for whitewater canoeing. The NPS website lists all the licensed outfitters on their Commercial Whitewater Information page.


text: New River Gorge National Park and Preserve is one of the most popular rock-climbing areas in the country. Within the park are over 1,400 established rock climbs. The cliffs at "The New" located just below the rim of the gorge are made up of a very hard Nuttall sandstone. The rock is very featured, with an abundance of crack and face routes, and occasional large roofs. Almost all climbs are one pitch long and range from in height. The majority of the routes in the gorge are for advanced climbers in 5.10-5.12 range of the Yosemite decimal system with about an equal number of traditional and sport climbs.


text: Fishing is one of the most popular activities on the New River. The diversity of fish in its waters makes the New River an excellent warm-water fishery.


text: The over of hiking trails in the park range from easy walks to more challenging hikes. Several trails following old railroad grades are open to bikes. Four primitive camping areas are within the park, all located along the river.


text: An annual event sees hundred of people rappelling, ascending, and BASE jumping at the New River Gorge Bridge.


title: Joris-Karl Huysmans

text: Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans (, ; 5 February 1848 – 12 May 1907) was a French novelist and art critic who published his works as Joris-Karl Huysmans (, variably abbreviated as J. K. or J.-K.). He is most famous for the novel "À rebours" (1884, published in English as "Against the Grain" and as "Against Nature"). He supported himself by way of a 30-year career in the French civil service.


title: Joris-Karl Huysmans

text: Huysmans's work is considered remarkable for its idiosyncratic use of the French language, large vocabulary, descriptions, satirical wit and far-ranging erudition. First considered part of Naturalism, he became associated with the decadent movement with his publication of "À rebours." His work expressed his deep pessimism, which had led him to the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. In later years, his novels reflected his study of Catholicism, religious conversion, and becoming an oblate. He discussed the iconography of Christian architecture at length in "La cathédrale" (1898), set at Chartres and with its cathedral as the focus of the book.


title: Joris-Karl Huysmans

text: "Là-bas" (1891), "En route" (1895) and "La cathédrale" (1898) are a trilogy that feature Durtal, a character on a spiritual journey who eventually converts to Catholicism. In the novel that follows, "L'Oblat" (1903), Durtal becomes an oblate in a monastery, as Huysmans himself was in the Benedictine Abbey at Ligugé, near Poitiers, in 1901. "La cathédrale" was his most commercially successful work. Its profits enabled Huysmans to retire from his civil service job and live on his royalties.


title: Joris-Karl Huysmans

text: Huysmans was born in Paris in 1848. His father Godfried Huysmans was Dutch, and a lithographer by trade. His mother Malvina Badin Huysmans had been a schoolmistress. Huysmans's father died when he was eight years old. After his mother quickly remarried, Huysmans resented his stepfather, Jules Og, a Protestant who was part-owner of a Parisian book-bindery.


title: Joris-Karl Huysmans

text: During childhood, Huysmans turned away from the Roman Catholic Church. He was unhappy at school but completed his coursework and earned a baccalauréat.


title: Joris-Karl Huysmans

text: For 32 years, Huysmans worked as a civil servant for the French Ministry of the Interior, a job he found tedious. The young Huysmans was called up to fight in the Franco-Prussian War, but was invalided out with dysentery. He used this experience in an early story, ""Sac au dos"" (Backpack) (later included in his collection, "Les Soirées de Médan").


title: Joris-Karl Huysmans

text: After his retirement from the Ministry in 1898, made possible by the commercial success of his novel, "La cathédrale", Huysmans planned to leave Paris and move to Ligugé. He intended to set up a community of Catholic artists, including Charles-Marie Dulac (1862-1898). He had praised the young painter in "La cathédrale". Dulac died a few months before Huysmans completed his arrangements for the move to Ligugé, and he decided to stay in Paris.


title: Joris-Karl Huysmans

text: In addition to his novels, Huysmans was known for his art criticism in "L'Art moderne" (1883) and "Certains" (1889). He was a founding member of the Académie Goncourt. An early advocate of Impressionism, he admired such artists as Gustave Moreau and Odilon Redon.


title: Joris-Karl Huysmans

text: In 1905 Huysmans was diagnosed with cancer of the mouth. He died in 1907 and was interred in the cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris.


title: Joris-Karl Huysmans

text: Huysmans never married or had children. He had a long-term, on-and-off relationship with Anna Meunier, a seamstress.


title: Joris-Karl Huysmans

text: He used the name Joris-Karl Huysmans when he published his writing, as a way of honoring his father's ancestry. His first major publication was a collection of prose poems, "Le drageoir aux épices" (1874), which were strongly influenced by Baudelaire. They attracted little attention but revealed flashes of the author's distinctive style.


title: Joris-Karl Huysmans

text: Huysmans followed it with the novel, "Marthe, Histoire d'une fille" (1876). The story of a young prostitute, it was closer to Naturalism and brought him to the attention of Émile Zola. His next works were similar: sombre, realistic and filled with detailed evocations of Paris, a city Huysmans knew intimately. "Les Soeurs Vatard" (1879), dedicated to Zola, deals with the lives of women in a bookbindery. "En ménage" (1881) is an account of a writer's failed marriage. The climax of his early work is the novella "À vau-l'eau" (1882) ("Downstream or With the Flow"), the story of a downtrodden clerk, Monsieur Folantin, and his quest for a decent meal.


title: Joris-Karl Huysmans

text: Huysmans's novel "À rebours" ("Against the Grain" or "Against Nature" or "Wrong Way"; 1884) became his most famous, or notorious. It featured the character of an aesthete, des Esseintes, and decisively broke from Naturalism. It was seen as an example of "decadent" literature. The description of des Esseintes' "alluring liaison" with a "cherry-lipped youth" was believed to have influenced other writers of the decadent movement, including Oscar Wilde.


title: Joris-Karl Huysmans

text: Huysmans began to drift away from the Naturalists and found new friends among the Symbolist and Catholic writers whose work he had praised in "À rebours." They included Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, Villiers de L'Isle Adam and Léon Bloy. Stéphane Mallarmé was so pleased with the publicity his verse had received from the novel that he dedicated one of his most famous poems, "Prose pour des Esseintes", to its hero. Barbey d'Aurevilly told Huysmans that after writing "À rebours," he would have to choose between "the muzzle of a pistol and the foot of the Cross." Huysmans, who had received a secular education and abandoned his Catholic religion in childhood, returned to the Catholic Church eight years later.


title: Joris-Karl Huysmans

text: Huysmans's next novel, "En rade", an unromantic account of a summer spent in the country, did not sell as well as its predecessor.


title: Joris-Karl Huysmans

text: His "Là-bas" (1891) attracted considerable attention for its portrayal of Satanism in France in the late 1880s. He introduced the character Durtal, a thinly disguised self-portrait. The later Durtal novels, "En route" (1895), "La cathédrale" (1898) and "L'oblat" (1903), explore Durtal/Huysmans's conversion to Roman Catholicism. "En route" depicts Durtal's spiritual struggle during his stay at a Trappist monastery. In "La cathédrale" (1898), the protagonist is at Chartres, intensely studying the cathedral and its symbolism. The commercial success of this book enabled Huysmans to retire from the civil service and live on his royalties. In "L'Oblat", Durtal becomes a Benedictine oblate. He finally learns to accept the world's suffering.


title: Joris-Karl Huysmans

text: Huysmans's work was known for his idiosyncratic use of the French language, extensive vocabulary, detailed and sensuous descriptions, and biting, satirical wit. It also displays an encyclopaedic erudition, ranging from the catalogue of decadent Latin authors in "À rebours" to the discussion of the iconography of Christian architecture in "La cathédrale". Huysmans expresses a disgust with modern life and a deep pessimism. This had led him first to the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. Later he returned to the Catholic Church, as noted in his Durtal novels.


title: Joris-Karl Huysmans

text: Huysmans was made a "Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur" in 1892, for his work with the civil service. In 1905, his admirers persuaded the French government to promote him to "Officier de la Légion d'honneur" for his literary achievements.


title: Joris-Karl Huysmans

text: "It takes me two years to 'document' myself for a novel – two years of hard work. That is the trouble with the naturalistic novel – it requires so much documentary care. I never make, like Zola, a plan for a book. I know how it will begin and how it will end – that's all. When I finally get to writing it, it goes along rather fast – "assez vite.""


title: Joris-Karl Huysmans

text: "Barbaric in its profusion, violent in its emphasis, wearying in its splendor, it is – especially in regard to things seen – extraordinarily expressive, with all the shades of a painter's palette. Elaborately and deliberately perverse, it is in its very perversity that Huysmans's work - so fascinating, so repellent, so instinctively artificial - comes to represent, as the work of no other writer can be said to do, the main tendencies, the chief results, of the Decadent movement in literature." (Arthur Symons, "The Decadent Movement in Literature")


title: Joris-Karl Huysmans

text: "...Continually dragging Mother Image by the hair or the feet down the worm-eaten staircase of terrified Syntax." (Léon Bloy, quoted in Robert Baldick, "The Life of J.-K. Huysmans"). Critical reviews by Léon Bloy of "À rebours," "En rade," and "Là-bas" published contemporaneously, in various journals or reviews, as Huysmans's novels came out over the years, in 1884, 1887, 1891, can be found, collected together and published 6 years after Huysmans's death, in book form, in "On Huysmans' Tomb."


title: Joris-Karl Huysmans

text: "It is difficult to find a writer whose vocabulary is so extensive, so constantly surprising, so sharp and yet so exquisitely gamey in flavour, so constantly lucky in its chance finds and in its very inventiveness." (Julien Gracq)


title: Joris-Karl Huysmans

text: Huysmans's novel, "Against the Grain", has more discussions of sound, smell and taste than any other work of literature we know of. For example, one chapter consists entirely of smell hallucinations so vivid that they exhaust the book's central character, Des Esseintes, a bizarre, depraved aristocrat. A student of the perfumer's art, Esseintes has developed several devices for titillating his jaded senses. Besides special instruments for re-creating any conceivable odour, he has constructed a special "mouth organ", designed to stimulate his palate rather than his ears. The organ's regular pipes have been replaced by rows of little barrels, each containing a different liqueur. In Esseintes's mind, the taste of each liqueur corresponded with the sound of a particular instrument.


title: Joris-Karl Huysmans

text: "Dry curaçao, for instance, was like the clarinet with its shrill, velvety note: kümmel like the oboe, whose timbre is sonorous and nasal; crème de menthe and anisette like the flute, at one and the same time sweet and poignant, whining and soft. Then to complete the orchestra, comes kirsch, blowing a wild trumpet blast; gin and whisky, deafening the palate with their harsh outbursts of cornets and trombones:liqueur brandy, blaring with the overwhelming crash of the tubas."


title: Joris-Karl Huysmans

text: By careful and persistent experimentation, Esseintes learned to "execute on his tongue a succession of voiceless melodies; noiseless funeral marches, solemn and stately; could hear in his mouth solos of crème de menthe, duets of vespertro and rum."


title: Joris-Karl Huysmans

text: The protagonist of "Submission" (2015), a controversial novel by Michel Houellebecq, is a literary scholar specializing in Huysmans and his work; Huysmans's relation to Catholicism serves as a foil for the book's treatment of Islam in France.


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: Gas-discharge lamps are a family of artificial light sources that generate light by sending an electric discharge through an ionized gas, a plasma.


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: noble gas (argon, neon, krypton, and xenon) or a mixture of these gases. Some include additional substances, like mercury, sodium, and metal halides, which are vaporized during startup to become part of the gas mixture.


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: Single ended self-starting lamps are insulated with a mica disc and contained in a borosilicate glass gas discharge tube (arc tube) and a metal cap. They include the sodium-vapor lamp that is the gas-discharge lamp in street lighting.


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: In operation, some of the electrons are forced to leave the atoms of the gas near the anode by the electric field applied between the two electrodes, leaving these atoms positively ionized. The free electrons thus released flow onto the anode, while the cations thus formed are accelerated by the electric field and flow towards the cathode.


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: Typically, after traveling a very short distance, the ions collide with neutral gas atoms, which transfer their electrons to the ions. The atoms which lost an electron during the collisions ionize and speed toward the cathode while the ions which gained an electron during the collisions return to a lower energy state while releasing energy in the form of photons. Light of a characteristic frequency is thus emitted. In this way, electrons are relayed through the gas from the cathode to the anode.


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: The color of the light produced depends on the emission spectra of the atoms making up the gas, as well as the pressure of the gas, current density, and other variables. Gas discharge lamps can produce a wide range of colors. Some lamps produce ultraviolet radiation which is converted to visible light by a fluorescent coating on the inside of the lamp's glass surface. The fluorescent lamp is perhaps the best known gas-discharge lamp.


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: Compared to incandescent lamps, gas-discharge lamps offer higher efficiency, but are more complicated to manufacture and most exhibit negative resistance, causing the resistance in the plasma to decrease as the current flow increases. Therefore, they usually require auxiliary electronic equipment such as ballasts to control current flow through the gas, preventing current runaway (arc flash).


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: Some gas-discharge lamps also have a perceivable start-up time to achieve their full light output. Still, due to their greater efficiency, gas-discharge lamps were preferred over incandescent lights in many lighting applications, until recent improvements in LED lamp technology.


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: The history of gas-discharge lamps began in 1675 when French astronomer Jean Picard observed that the empty space in his mercury barometer glowed as the mercury jiggled while he was carrying the barometer. Investigators, including Francis Hauksbee, tried to determine the cause of the phenomenon. Hauksbee first demonstrated a gas-discharge lamp in 1705. He showed that an evacuated or partially evacuated glass globe, in which he placed a small amount of mercury, while charged by static electricity could produce a light bright enough to read by. The phenomenon of electric arc was first described by Vasily V. Petrov in 1802. In 1809, Sir Humphry Davy demonstrated the electric arc at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Since then, discharge light sources have been researched because they create light from electricity considerably more efficiently than incandescent light bulbs.


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: The father of the low-pressure gas discharge tube was German glassblower Heinrich Geissler, who beginning in 1857 constructed colorful artistic cold cathode tubes with different gases in them which glowed with many different colors, called Geissler tubes. It was found that inert gases like the noble gases neon, argon, krypton or xenon, as well as carbon dioxide worked well in tubes. This technology was commercialized by French engineer Georges Claude in 1910 and became neon lighting, used in neon signs.


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: The introduction of the metal vapor lamp, including various metals within the discharge tube, was a later advance. The heat of the gas discharge vaporized some of the metal and the discharge is then produced almost exclusively by the metal vapor. The usual metals are sodium and mercury owing to their visible spectrum emission.


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: One hundred years of research later led to lamps without electrodes which are instead energized by microwave or radio frequency sources. In addition, light sources of much lower output have been created, extending the applications of discharge lighting to home or indoor use.


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: Ruhmkorff lamps were an early form of portable electric lamp, named after Heinrich Daniel Ruhmkorff and first used in the 1860s. The lamp consisted of a Geissler tube that was excited by a battery-powered Ruhmkorff induction coil; an early transformer capable of converting DC currents of low voltage into rapid high-voltage pulses. Initially the lamp generated white light by using a Geissler tube filled with carbon dioxide. However, the carbon dioxide tended to break down. Hence in later lamps, the Geissler tube was filled with nitrogen (which generated red light), and the clear glass was replaced with uranium glass (which fluoresced with a green light).


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: Intended for use in the potentially explosive environment of mining, as well as oxygen-free environments like diving or for a heatless lamp for possible use in surgery, the lamp was actually developed both by Alphonse Dumas, an engineer at the iron mines of Saint-Priest and of Lac, near Privas, in the départment of Ardèche, France, and by Dr. Camille Benoît, a medical doctor in Privas. In 1864, the French Academy of Sciences awarded Dumas and Benoît a prize of 1,000 francs for their invention. The lamps, cutting-edge technology in their time, gained fame after being described in several of Jules Verne's science-fiction novels.


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: Each gas, depending on its atomic structure emits radiation of certain wavelengths, its emission spectrum, which determines the color of the light from the lamp. As a way of evaluating the ability of a light source to reproduce the colors of various objects being lit by the source, the International Commission on Illumination (CIE) introduced the color rendering index (CRI). Some gas-discharge lamps have a relatively low CRI, which means colors they illuminate appear substantially different from how they do under sunlight or other high-CRI illumination.


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: Lamps are divided into families based on the pressure of gas, and whether or not the cathode is heated. Hot cathode lamps have electrodes that operate at a high temperature and are heated by the arc current in the lamp. The heat knocks electrons out of the electrodes by thermionic emission, which helps maintain the arc. In many types the electrodes consist of electrical filaments made of fine wire, which are heated by a separate current at startup, to get the arc started. Cold cathode lamps have electrodes that operate at room temperature. To start conduction in the lamp a high enough voltage (the striking voltage) must be applied to ionize the gas, so these lamps require higher voltage to start.


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: Low-pressure lamps have working pressure much less than atmospheric pressure. For example, common fluorescent lamps operate at a pressure of about 0.3% of atmospheric pressure.


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: Fluorescent lamps, a heated-cathode lamp, the most common lamp in office lighting and many other applications, produces up to 100 lumens per watt


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: Neon lighting, a widely used form of cold-cathode specialty lighting consisting of long tubes filled with various gases at low pressure excited by high voltages, used as advertising in neon signs.


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: Low pressure sodium lamps, the most efficient gas-discharge lamp type, producing up to 200 lumens per watt, but at the expense of very poor color rendering. The almost monochromatic yellow light is only acceptable for street lighting and similar applications.


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: A small discharge lamp containing a bi-metallic switch is used to start a fluorescent lamp. In this case the heat of the discharge is used to actuate the switch; the starter is contained in an opaque enclosure and the small light output is not used.


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: Continuous glow lamps are produced for special applications where the electrodes may be cut in the shape of alphanumeric characters and figural shapes.


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: A flicker light bulb, flicker flame light bulb or flicker glow lamp is a gas-discharge lamp which produces light by ionizing a gas, usually neon mixed with helium and a small amount of nitrogen gas, by an electric current passing through two flame shaped electrode screens coated with partially decomposed barium azide. The ionized gas moves randomly between the two electrodes which produces a flickering effect, often marketed as suggestive of a candle flame (see image).


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: High-pressure lamps have a discharge that takes place in gas under slightly less to greater than atmospheric pressure. For example, a high pressure sodium lamp has an arc tube under 100 to 200 torr pressure, about 14% to 28% of atmospheric pressure; some automotive HID headlamps have up to 50 bar or fifty times atmospheric pressure.


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: Metal halide lamps produce almost white light, and attain 100 lumen per watt light output. Applications include indoor lighting of high buildings, parking lots, shops, sport terrains.


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: High pressure sodium lamps, producing up to 150 lumens per watt produce a broader light spectrum than the low pressure sodium lamps. Also used for street lighting, and for artificial photoassimilation for growing plants


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: High pressure mercury-vapor lamps are the oldest high pressure lamp type and have been replaced in most applications by metal halide and the high pressure sodium lamps. They require a shorter arc length.


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: A high-intensity discharge (HID) lamp is a type of electrical lamp which produces light by means of an electric arc between tungsten electrodes housed inside a translucent or transparent fused quartz or fused alumina arc tube. Compared to other lamp types, relatively high arc power exists for the arc length. Examples of HID lamps include mercury-vapor lamps, metal halide lamps, ceramic discharge metal halide lamps, sodium vapor lamps and xenon arc lamps


title: Gas-discharge lamp

text: The Xenon flash lamp produces a single flash of light in the millisecond-microsecond range and is commonly used in film, photography and theatrical lighting. Particularly robust versions of this lamp, known as strobe lights, can produce long sequences of flashes, allowing for the stroboscopic examination of motion. This has found use in the study of mechanical motion, in medicine and in the lighting of dance halls.


title: Sam Register

text: Samuel Barnard Register (born June 16, 1969) is an American television producer, animator, and businessman. He is the president of Warner Bros. Animation, Cartoon Network Studios, and Hanna-Barbera Studios Europe.


title: Sam Register

text: Formerly Vice President of Cartoon Network, Register was the brain behind CartoonNetwork.com, which was launched in 1998. After creating CartoonNetwork.com, Register came up with the idea of Cartoon Orbit in 2000. He was the creative director of Cartoon Orbit during 2000 and 2001. Register had his head start at directing toy commercials, before he moved over to Cartoon Network.


title: Sam Register

text: He was the creator of "Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi" and "The Looney Tunes Show", and served as executive producer of "Teen Titans" and "Ben 10". He also served as executive producer for "", based on the popular "Transformers" franchise, and "". He then became the executive producer of "Teen Titans Go!", "Mike Tyson Mysteries", and "Unikitty!"


title: Sam Register

text: The fictional character, Dr. Samuel Register (from the "Teen Titans" comics), was named after Sam Register. On August 28, 2020, Register officially became the president of both Warner Bros. Animation and Cartoon Network Studios. Recently, he has been the executive producer of the HBO Max original series, "Looney Tunes Cartoons" and "Jellystone!" as well as the Adult Swim original series, "Primal". He also served as an executive producer for films like "Teen Titans Go! To the Movies" and the 2021 live-action/animated "Tom and Jerry" hybrid movie.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: The Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey is an abbey located within the city and island of Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy, in the department of Manche.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: The abbey is an essential part of the structural composition of the town the feudal society constructed. On top, God, the abbey, and monastery; below this, the Great halls, then stores and housing, and at the bottom (outside the walls), fishermen's and farmers' housing.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: The abbey has been protected as a French "monument historique" since 1862. Since 1979, the site as a whole – i.e., the Mont-Saint-Michel and its bay – has been a UNESCO world heritage site and is managed by the "Centre des monuments nationaux".


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: With more than 1.335 million visitors in 2010, the abbey is among the most visited cultural sites in France.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: The first text about an abbey is the 9th-century Latin text "Revelatio ecclesiae sancti Michaelis in monte Tumba" written by a "chanoine" living at Mont-Saint-Michel or at the "Cathédrale Saint-André d'Avranches". This text was written at a time of power struggle between Brittany and the County of Normandy against Francia as well as during canon law reforms by Roman emperors.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: When Christianity expanded to the area, around the 4th century, Mont Tombe – the original name of Mont-Saint-Michel – was part of the Diocese of Avranches. By the middle of the 6th century, Christianity had a stronger presence in the bay. By this time, Mont Tombe was populated by religious devotees – hermits (probably some Celtic monks) supplied by the "curé" of Astériac, who took care of the site and led a contemplative life around some oratories, but there is no archeological evidence and no serious sources of that. It is said two hermits Saint Pair and Saint Scubilion dedicated one of the oratories to Saint Étienne, midway through the mont, and one to Saint Symphorien, at the foot of the rock.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: In 710, Mont Tombe was renamed "Mont-Saint-Michel au péril de la Mer" ("Mount Saint Michael at the peril of the sea", "Mons Sancti Michaelis in periculo maris") after an oratory was erected to Saint Michael by bishop Saint Aubert of Avranches in 708. According to the legend, Aubert received, during his sleep, three times the order from Saint Michael to erect an oratory on the Mont Tombe. The archangel was reputed to have left his finger mark on Aubert's skull. This skull is displayed at the Saint-Gervais d'Avranches basilica with such a scar on it.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: This sanctuary should be, according to the archangel, a replica of the Gargano Sanctuary in Italy (from the 5th century). Aubert had a local religious artifact removed and instead a circular sanctuary built, made of dry stones. Around 708, Aubert sent two monks to get some artifacts from the Italian sanctuary (a rock with his foot print and a piece of tissue from the altar). During this mission, the March 709 tsunami is supposed to have destroyed the Scissy forest and turned the Mont into an island. On October 16, 709, the bishop dedicated the church and put twelve chanoine there. The Mont-Saint-Michel was born.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: The remains of the oratory were found in the chapel Notre-Dame-Sous-Terre. This sanctuary contained the tomb of Aubert and most likely the artifacts brought from Gargano. The chapel Notre-Dame-Sous-Terre is today under the nave of the abbey-church.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: The first buildings became too small and under the Western Roman Empire multiple buildings were added. Charlemagne chose Saint Michel as a protector of his empire during the 9th century and tried to have the place renamed "Mont-Saint-Michel", but during the Middle Ages it was usually called "Saint-Michel-aux-Deux-Tombes" (Saint Michel with two tombs, in reference to Tombelaine).


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: The Mont-Saint-Michel monks, during the first century of their institution, venerated the archangel Michael. The Mont became a place of prayer and study, but the stability period, known as the "Neustria", during the reign of Charlemagne ended when he died. As the rest of Gaule was fighting invasions, religion and science found some welcoming in the diocese of Avranches and at the Mont-Saint-Michel.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: At first, pilgrims kept coming to the Mont. After the Vikings captured the Mont in 847, the monks departed. But, as an island, it offered some protection for the local population and thus never stayed empty.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: After the signature of the treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, Rollo (Gange-Hrólfr "Rollo" Ragnvaldsson de Normandie) started repairing the damages inflicted to the religious buildings. He generously financed the Mont and called back the monks displaced by the war, returning the Mont to its previous condition.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: The wealth and support that the Mont suddenly obtained from Rollo started to fundamentally affect its inhabitants, taking them away from their solitary, religious life. After William I of Normandy took over his father's title as Duke of Normandy in 927, he expanded his support toward monasteries until his assassination in 942; but his wealth, from which they benefited, further exacerbated their mundane life style. Because of their generous contributions to the Mont, the Dukes of Brittany Conan 1st, who died in 992, and Geoffrey 1st, who died in 1008, were buried in the Mont as benefactors.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: The rapid growth of wealth of the church-abbey Saint-Michel became an obstacle to its function and nature. The religious used their wealth, coming from the piety of the rich surrounding princes, to satisfy their pleasures. Local nobles tried to obtain the favors of the Mont's religious inhabitants to spend it on meals, travels, and hunting in their company, which became their main occupation.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: When Richard 1st, son of William 1st, became duke of Normandy, he tried using his authority to return them to a more monastic life. After failing to do so, and with the approbation of pope John XIII and king Lothair, he decided to replace them with a monastery of the Benedict order, as mentioned in "Introductio monachorum" ("the installation of the monks"), a treaty written around 1080–1095 by a Mont-Saint-Michel monk trying to defend the independence of the monastery toward the state.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: After getting the approval from the local warlords and religious of the Norman abbeys, the monastery of Saint-Wandrille, Saint-Taurin-d’Évreux and Jumièges, Duke Richard I sent an officer and some soldiers to the Mont Saint Michel to announce his order: return to a religious life style and become a member of the Benedict order or leave the Mont. Only one accepted and all the others left, leaving the abbot Maynard 1st, coming from Saint-Wandrille abbey, to establish a Benedict ruling. The installation of the Benedictine monks took place in 966, which is marked as the founding year of the Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey. Those monks added the double-nave, pre-Romanesque church "Notre-Dame-sous-Terre".


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: William de Volpiano, the Italian architect who had built the Abbey of Fécamp in Normandy, was chosen by Richard II of Normandy to build the church of the abbey in 1060. He designed the Romanesque church of the abbey, placing the transept crossing at the top of the mount. Many underground crypts and chapels had to be built to compensate for this weight, forming the basis for the supportive upward structure that can be seen today.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: The Mont-Saint-Michel was at its apex during the 1100s, with the abbot of Torigni, private counsel of the Duke of Normandy, Henry II of England, reinforcing the structure of the buildings, and building the main facade of the church.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: In 1204, France's King Philippe-Auguste started to take over the fiefs of Duke of Normandy John Lackland. His ally, Guy of Thouars, Duke of Brittany, undertook the siege of the Mont-Saint-Michel. After having set fire to the village and massacring the population, he failed to conquer the abbey, due to its stone fortifications. But the fire from the village extended to the abbey and damaged it significantly.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: Horrified by the exaction of his Brittany ally, Philippe-Auguste offered abbot Jourdain a grant for the construction of a new Gothic-style architectural set, which included the addition of the refectory and cloister. The "Merveille", built in medieval Norman style, with a circular capital, some spandrels in Caen stone and some plant motifs, was completed in 1228.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: Charles VI is credited with adding major fortifications to the abbey, building towers and successive courtyards, and strengthening the ramparts.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: When Louis XI of France founded the Order of Saint Michael in 1469, he intended that the abbey church of Mont Saint-Michel become the chapel for the Order, but because of its great distance from Paris, his intention could never be realized.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: Even as some oubliettes have been mentioned since the 11th century, the abbey started to be used more regularly as a jail during the Ancien Régime, becoming a state jail during Louis XI's reign.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: Mont Saint Michel's popularity and prestige as a center of pilgrimage waned with the Reformation, and by the time of the French Revolution there were scarcely any monks in residence. The abbey was closed in 1791 and converted into a prison, initially to hold clerical opponents of the republican regime (up to 300 priests at one point). The abbey was then nicknamed "bastille des mers" (Bastille of the sea).


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: In 1794, an optical telegraph system, designed by Claude Chappe, was installed on top of the dome, making the Mont-Saint-Michel part of the Paris-Brest telegraph line. In 1817, the numerous modifications of the structure by the prison administration led to the collapse of the hostelry built under Robert de Torigni.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: During the reign of Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, some prisoners started a protest that led to the replacement of the prison director, Martin des Landes. Thanks to a corrupt system, the richest prisoners could visit the Mont Saint Michel town, others could borrow books from the monks' "scriptorium".


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: Up to 700 prisoners worked in a workshop set up in the abbey, making straw hats, which started a fire in 1834 and partially damaged it.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: After some higher-profile political prisoners were held there, such as Victor Dubourg de La Cassagne, Desforges, Martin Bernard, Armand Barbès and Auguste Blanqui, some influential figures, including Victor Hugo, launched a campaign to restore what was seen as a national architectural treasure, that led to its closure by Napoleon III in 1863. The 650 prisoners were transferred to other prisons.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: The prison was finally closed in 1863 and the abbey was rented by the bishop of Coutances starting that same year, until it was declared a monument historique in 1874.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: In 1835, Viollet-le-Duc visited the Mont and later his students, Paul Gout and Édouard Corroyer (the famous Mère Poulard was his maid), were commissioned to restore it. Urgent work to consolidate and restore the abbey was conducted by Édouard Corroyer. In 1896, a neogothic spire, rising 170 meters above the sea level, was added.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: The archangel Saint Michel at top of the spire (completed in 1898) was started in 1895 by the sculptor Emmanuel Frémiet at the "ateliers Monduit" that previously did some work for Viollet-le-Duc.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: In 1898, during some excavation under the floor of the church, Paul Gout discovered the Notre-Dame-Sous-Terre. It was completely excavated in 1959, after architect Yves-Marie Froidevaux had a concrete beam installed.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: In World War II, the abbey and its surrounding area came under German occupation starting on June 20, 1940. A cable car facility was installed but the abbey was otherwise kept intact, with the German Armistice Commission recognizing Mont-Saint-Michel's historical significance. During the German retreat after D-Day in 1944, no attempt was made to defend the area, which was clear by July 31.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: Mont Saint Michel as a whole and its bay were added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites in 1979, and it was listed with criteria such as cultural, historical, and architectural significance, as well as human-created and natural beauty.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: In 1966, with the celebration of the abbey's first millennium, a few Benedictine monasteries sent monks to spend the summer there. At the end of the summer a few stayed, led by Bruno de Senneville, from Bec Abbey, with the approval of the state, owner of the place. They slowly started to leave after 1979.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: Since 2001, the Benedictine monks have been replaced by some from the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem, originally from Saint-Gervais' Church in Paris.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: Started during the 10th century, the Benedictine abbey has numerous architectural marvels from West Roman empire, roman and Gothic styles. The Mont-Saint-Michel could, in that sense, be considered a megastructure where the buildings are on top of each other while trying to accommodate Benedictine activities within a tight space.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: The original church-abbey was founded in 966 but later completely covered by the multiple expansions of the abbey and was then forgotten for many centuries. These parts of the abbey were rediscovered near the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It has since been restored and offers a beautiful example of pre-Roman architecture.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: The other church-abbey buildings were erected to the East of the original church, on top of the rock and above the church itself.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: As more pilgrims came to the Mont Saint Michel, it was decided to expand the abbey by building a new abbey church at the site of the monks' quarters, which was moved to the north of Notre-Dame-Sous-Terre.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: The new church-abbey first had three crypts built: the Trente-Cierges chapel (under the North wing), the choir crypt (to the East) and Saint-Martin chapel (under the South wing) (1031–1047). Then Abbot Ranulphe started the construction of the nave in 1060. In 1080, three levels were built to the North of Notre-Dame-Sous-Terre, including the "salle de l’Aquilon", which served as chaplaincy to host pilgrims, the monk promenade and a dormitory. The wine cellar and chaplaincy for the future "Merveille" were also started.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: By then the new buildings fully covered Notre-Dame-Sous-Terre which was still used for religious activities.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: Badly built, three spans on the West side of the nave collapsed in 1103. Abbot Roger II had them rebuilt in 1115–1125. In 1421 the Romanesque choir collapsed. It was rebuilt in Flamboyant-Gothic style from 1446 to 1523 (with a construction break from 1450 to 1499).


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: After a fire in 1776 it was decided to destroy the three western spans of the nave and, in 1780, the current Neo-Classic front was built. The foundations to support it led to the split in two of Notre-Dame-Sous-Terre.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: In March 2016, a helicopter was used to temporarily remove the golden statue of Archangel Michael on the top of the spire, in order to restore its lightning rod device, in a dramatic but successful operation.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: The Mont-Saint-Michel abbey is divided in two parts: the church-abbey and the "Merveille". The "Merveille" was the monk living area. Seen from outside, it has a gothic front, on the North side, has three levels and was built over 25 years.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: The "Merveille" can be subdivided into two parts: the East and the West sides. The East side was built first (from 1211 to 1218) and has three rooms: the chaplaincy, the hosts room and the dining-hall (from bottom to top). The West side was built seven years later and has three rooms: the wine cellar, the Knights room and the cloister.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: From 1154 to 1164 the abbot Robert of Torigni had a set of buildings added to the West and Southwest of the abbey containing lodgings for: the officiality, a new hostelry, an infirmary and the Saint-Étienne chapel. He also modified the access ways to Notre-Dame-Sous-Terre, to prevent too many contacts between monks and pilgrims.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: There is also a treadwheel crane which served as a windlass, installed during the use of the site as a prison, to bring supplies to the prisoners. Some prisoners would walk inside the wheel to rotate it.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: In the remain of the infirmary, that collapsed in 1811, is a mural representation above the door of the three dead kings, showing three noble men caught in a cemetery by three dead, illustrating how short life is.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: The "Merveille", located to the North of the church-abbey, contains a cloister, a dining-hall, a study room and a chaplaincy with an ideal floor plan for going from one to the other.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: The local geography played a major role in the design of the "Merveille". The lower-most level, the wine cellar, was constructed with thick robust walls to support the floors above. The distinctive, regularly spaced abutments on the Merveille's outer walls reach all the way to the top to reinforce the structure against any lateral forces imposed by the great weight of its towering upper levels.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: The chaplaincy was built during abbot Roger II leadership, when Abbot Raoul des iles led the construction of the hosts room (1215–1217), the dining-hall (1217–1220) the cellar, the knights room (1220–1225) and the cloister (1225–1228).


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: Contrary to the tradition, this cloister was not built at the center of the monastery, and thus does not link with all the other buildings. Its function was purely spiritual: to bring the monks to meditate.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: Three arches of the cloister are opened to the sea or to the outside. Those openings were the entryway to the chapter house that was never built. The columns, arranged in quincunx, were originally made of limestone from England but were later restored using puddingstone from Lucerne.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: The cloister has in the middle a medieval garden recreated in 1966 by brother Bruno de Senneville, a Benedictine monk. The center is made of box tree surrounded by 13 Damascus roses. The squares of medicinal plants, aromatic herbs and flowers symbolize the daily needs of middle-age monks. In the middle of the box trees were monsters to remind that in the middle of any marvel evil could still be there.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: The "Belle Chaise" building and the lodging wing hosted the administrative section of the abbey. Abbot Richard Turstin built, on the East side, the Guards room (that became the abbey entrance) and a new officiality, where judicial decisions were made (1257).


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: Around 1393, the two Châtelet towers were built, then the Perrine tower and a "Bailliverie". Later, under abbot Pierre Le Roy, a lodging wing was added, adding at the same time to the abbey fortifications.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: A fortified wall surrounds the city, located on the South and East side of the mont. Two bombards, left by the English during the Hundred Years' War, are visible near one of the fortification door.


title: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

text: During the medieval period, pilgrims visiting the abbey walked from Italy, Germany, and England as well as other parts of France. Such devotees were known as Miquelots. Modern pilgrims can follow the same routes. Ten hiking trails have been created that enable pilgrims from various European countries to retrace the path their ancestors may have taken during a medieval pilgrimage.


title: Latin-script alphabet

text: A Latin-script alphabet (Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet) is an alphabet that uses letters of the Latin script. The 21-letter archaic Latin alphabet and the 23-letter classical Latin alphabet belong to the oldest of this group. The 26-letter modern Latin alphabet is the newest of this group.


title: Latin-script alphabet

text: The 26-letter ISO basic Latin alphabet (adopted from the earlier ASCII) contains the 26 letters of the English alphabet. To handle the many other alphabets also derived from the classical Latin one, ISO and other telecommunications groups "extended" the ISO basic Latin multiple times in the late 20th century. More recent international standards (e.g. Unicode) include those that achieved ISO adoption.


title: Latin-script alphabet

text: Apart from alphabets for modern spoken languages, there exist phonetic alphabets and spelling alphabets in use derived from Latin script letters. Historical languages may also have used (or are now studied using) alphabets that are derived but still distinct from those of classical Latin and their modern forms (if any).


title: Latin-script alphabet

text: The Latin script was typically slightly altered to function as an alphabet for each different language (or other use), although the main letters are largely the same. A few general classes of alteration cover many particular cases:


title: Latin-script alphabet

text: These often were given a place in the alphabet by defining an alphabetical order or collation sequence, which can vary between languages. Some of the results, especially from just adding diacritics, were not considered distinct letters for this purpose; for example, the French é and the German ö are not listed separately in their respective alphabet sequences. With some alphabets, some altered letters are considered distinct while others are not; for instance, in Spanish, ñ (which indicates a unique phoneme) is listed separately, while á, é, í, ó, ú, and ü (which do not; the first five of these indicate a nonstandard stress-accent placement, while the last forces the pronunciation of a normally-silent letter) are not. Digraphs in some languages may be separately included in the collation sequence (e.g. Hungarian CS, Welsh RH). New letters must be separately included unless collation is not practised.


title: Latin-script alphabet

text: Some alphabets regard digraphs as distinct letters, e.g. the old Spanish alphabet had CH and LL sorted apart from C and L. Some Spanish dictionaries still list "ll" separately.


title: Latin-script alphabet

text: Some alphabets sort letters that have diacritics at the end of the alphabet. Examples are the Scandinavian Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish alphabets.


title: Latin-script alphabet

text: Icelandic sorts some additional letters at the end, as well as one letter with diacritic, while others with diacritics are sorted behind the corresponding non-diacritic letter.


title: She's Always a Woman

text: "She's Always a Woman" is a song by Billy Joel from his 1977 album, "The Stranger". It is a love song about a modern woman whom the singer has fallen totally in love with to the extent of falling for her endearing quirks as well as her flaws. The single peaked at No. 17 in the U.S. in Oct. 1978, and at No. 53 in the UK in 1986, when it was released as a double A-side with "Just the Way You Are". It re-entered the UK chart in 2010, reaching No. 29. The song is played in the compound time signature of 6/8.


title: She's Always a Woman

text: The song was released as a single in 1978, following several other hits from "The Stranger" including "Just the Way You Are", "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)" and "Only the Good Die Young". The song entered the "Billboard" Hot 100 chart on August 12, 1978, and peaked at #17 on October 14 of that year. Musically, Joel has said that he was influenced by Gordon Lightfoot and his mellow acoustic guitar ballads. It is a love song that Joel wrote for his then wife, Elizabeth Weber. Elizabeth had taken over management of Joel's career, and was able to put his financial affairs in order after Joel had signed some bad deals and contracts. She was a tough and savvy negotiator who could "wound with her eyes" or "steal like a thief", but would "never give in". Because of her tough-as-nails negotiating style, many business adversaries thought she was "unfeminine," but to Joel, she was always a woman. The two eventually divorced in 1982.


title: She's Always a Woman

text: Joel stated in an interview that he was attempting to replicate the fingerpicking common in folk guitar music. He accomplishes this by playing arpeggiated triads in the right hand. He also notes that the production was purposely minimal to capture the purity of the tune as a folk song.


title: She's Always a Woman

text: Joel claims that the meter of the song is 6/8. This splits each measure into two full triad ascending arpeggios. The song is in the key of Eb major. It begins with singing over the chords each played without the arpeggio in the first verse, each chord lasting a full measure. In the second verse he begins arpeggiating, with each chord again lasting a full measure.


title: She's Always a Woman

text: The choruses are in the relative minor of Eb major, which is C minor. In the second part of each chorus Joel switches to the parallel minor of Eb minor before returning to verse.


title: She's Always a Woman

text: "Billboard Magazine" described "She's Always a Woman" as a "dramatic ballad." "Billboard" particularly praised the "subtle orchestration" and "sophisticated melody," which it found comparable to ballads by Bob Dylan and Paul Simon. "Cash Box" said that "the tune is melodic and flows sweetly; the lyric is precise and has something to say" and praised Joel's singing.


title: She's Always a Woman

text: Of historical note, an instrumental version of the song was heard playing on the plaza of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, just before the collapse of both towers. Captured by a cameraman filming nearby, the playing of the song was viewed as "surreal" against the backdrop of carnage and destruction.


title: She's Always a Woman

text: Fyfe Dangerfield, lead singer of the band Guillemots, recorded a version of this song in 2010 which was used in an advertisement for the British department store John Lewis. Subsequently, the Billy Joel original re-entered the UK Singles Chart at No. 29 on May 1, 2010. On May 1, 2010, a new version of the advert aired; which shows more of the song cover. In the annual ITV poll for 2010 advert of the year; "John Lewis – She's always a Woman" ranked fourth.


title: She's Always a Woman

text: The advert has been viewed on YouTube over 570,000 times (collectively from the top 3 results) since it aired on TV.


title: She's Always a Woman

text: "She's Always a Woman" debuted on the UK Singles Chart on May 2, 2010, at No. 99. On its second week in the chart, the single climbed 85 places to No. 14, marking Dangerfield's most successful single to date. On May 16, 2010, the single climbed seven places to its peak of No. 7 before falling to No. 9 in its second week within the top 10.


title: A Man Who Defies the World of BL

text: A live-action television drama adaptation was released with its first season on March 27, 2021, and the second on March 20, 2022.


title: A Man Who Defies the World of BL

text: The protagonist, a plain-looking college student, discovers that he is living in a world where scenarios seen in boys' love stories are common, culminating in his male acquaintances falling in love. However, the protagonist wants to be nothing more than a background character and avoids getting into one of these situations himself, all while commenting on the events unfolding.


title: A Man Who Defies the World of BL

text: "Zettai BL ni Naru Sekai VS Zettai BL ni Naritakunai Otoko" is written and illustrated by Konkichi. It is serialized digitally on Pixiv Comic and the manga mobile app Manga Jam beginning on November 7, 2018. The chapters were later released in three bound volumes by Shodensha under the Feel Comics FC Jam imprint.


title: A Man Who Defies the World of BL

text: An audio drama CD was released on April 24, 2020, starring Yoshiki Nakajima as the protagonist, as Ayato, and Takuya Eguchi as Tōjō. The CD was packaged with an 8-page exclusive comic drawn by Konkichi and a character song CD with Nakajima performing as his character. It charted at #44 on the Oricon Weekly Album Rankings upon its first week of release. A second drama CD is releasing on May 26, 2021, with Hiro Shimono as Yanagi, Nobuhiko Okamoto, Kōhei Amasaki, Tatsuhisa Suzuki, and Wataru Hatano added as additional cast members. The second drama CD contains a 12-page exclusive comic drawn by Konkichi.


title: A Man Who Defies the World of BL

text: A live-action television series adaptation February 18, 2021. The series will be airing weekly beginning on March 27, 2021 on CS TV Asahi Channel 1 at 9 PM, with simultaneous international broadcasts in South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Macao. It is directed by Kōichirō Miki, with Izumi Kawasaki in charge of the scriptwriting and Erina Koyama composing the music. Atsuhiro Inukai stars as the protagonist. Additional cast members include , Asahi Ito, Akihisa Shiono, Koji Kominami, Ryo Kitamura, , , , , Dish member , Shogo Hama, , , and . members Taiga Nakamoto and Ryono Kusachi were later announced as additional cast members. The show's theme song is "Bubble Love" by Da-ice, with Da-ice member Hayate Wada making a special appearance in the show. The opening theme song is "Ore wa Mob" performed by the main cast of the drama, credited as "Atsuhiro Inukai with LoveBoys." A second season was broadcast on March 20, 2022, with Kenta Izuka replacing Kominami as a series regular.


title: A Man Who Defies the World of BL

text: In 2019, "A Man Who Defies the World of BL" was shortlisted at #11 at the Next Manga Awards in the Web category held by the magazine "Da Vinci". It was ranked at #4 at Pixiv and Nippon Shuppan Hanbai's Web Manga General Election.


title: Melon heads

text: In the American folklore of Ohio, Michigan and Connecticut, Melon Heads are beings generally described as small humanoids with bulbous heads who occasionally emerge from hiding places to attack people. Different variations of the legend attribute different origins to the entities.


title: Melon heads

text: The melon heads of Michigan are said to reside around Felt Mansion, although they have also been reportedly seen in southern forested areas of Ottawa County. According to one story, they were originally children with hydrocephalus who lived at the Junction Insane Asylum near Felt Mansion. The story explains that, after enduring physical and emotional abuse, they became feral and were released into the forests surrounding the asylum. The Allegan County Historical Society asserts that the asylum never existed, although it was at one point a prison; however, the story has been part of the local folklore for several decades. Laketown Township Manager Al Meshkin told the "Holland Sentinel" that he had heard the tales as a teenager, noting that his friends referred to the beings as "wobbleheads". Some versions of the legend say that the children once lived in the mansion itself but later retreated to a system of caverns (or caves in a nearby hill left over from an abandoned zoo). Some versions of this legend say that the children devised a plan to escape and kill the doctor that abused them. It is said that the children had no place to hide the body, so they cut it up in small pieces which they hid around the mansion. Rumors exist that teenagers who had broken into the mansion saw ghosts of the children and claimed to see shadows of the doctor's murder through the light coming from an open door. The legend has spread throughout the region, even becoming the subject of a 2011 film simply titled "The Melonheads," which is based around the West Michigan legend.


title: Melon heads

text: The melon head stories of Ohio are primarily associated with the Cleveland suburb of Kirtland. According to local lore, the melon heads were originally orphans under the watch of a mysterious figure known as Dr. Crow (sometimes spelled Crowe, Krohe or Kroh or known as Dr. Melonhead). Crow is said to have performed unusual experiments on the children, who developed large, hairless heads and malformed bodies. Some accounts claim that the children were already suffering from hydrocephalus and that Crow injected even more fluid into their brains.


title: Melon heads

text: Eventually, the legend continues, the children killed Crow, burned the orphanage, and retreated to the surrounding forests and supposedly feed on babies. Legend holds that the melon heads may be sighted along Wisner Road in Kirtland, and Chardon Township. The melon head legend has been popularized on the Internet, particularly on the websites Creepy Cleveland and DeadOhio, where users offer their own versions of the story. A movie, "Legend of the Melonheads", released in 2010, is based on the Ohio legend and various other legends in the Kirtland area. In the 2018 horror anthology movie "The Field Guide to Evil", featuring eight stories from cultures around the world, the contribution from the USA is a rendition of the Melonheads where a man's son is taken into the woods and turned into a Melonhead.


title: Melon heads

text: Several variations of the Melon Head legend can be found throughout Southwest Connecticut, especially in Southern Litchfield County, central & eastern Fairfield County and western New Haven County, Connecticut. In Fairfield County and Litchfield County, many tales can be found in communities such as Newtown, New Milford, Trumbull, Shelton, Stratford, Monroe, Easton and Weston. In western and central New Haven County tales can be found in towns like Seymour, Oxford, Milford, and Southbury.


title: Melon heads

text: There are several primary Connecticut variations. According to one variation of the myth, Fairfield County was the location of an asylum for the criminally insane that burned down in the fall of 1960, resulting in the death of all of the staff and most of the patients with 10-20 inmates unaccounted for, supposedly having survived and escaped to the woods. The legend states that the melon heads' appearance is the result of them having resorted to cannibalism in order to survive the harsh winters of the region and to inbreeding, which in turn caused them to develop hydrocephalus. Some retellings of this version substitute the asylum or prison with places of business or camp grounds and the inmates/patients with employees, staff or camp-goers. Individual variations will modify what town these individuals were originally from and where they end up.


title: Melon heads

text: According to the second variation, the melon heads are descendants of a Colonial-era family from Shelton-Trumbull who were banished after accusations of witchcraft were made against them causing them to retreat to the woods. As with the first version of this legend, this variation attributes the appearance of the melon heads to inbreeding. Melon Heads allegedly prey upon humans who wander into their territory. Like the first version, individual retellings will modify what town the family was originally from and where they end up.


title: Melon heads

text: A number of Connecticut-based legends of the melon heads have one characteristics in common: the inclusion of a secluded, rustic or single-lane (usually) dirt road running through the melon heads' wooded territory. Many towns in Fairfield County and New Haven County have rural and forested sections, and it is not uncommon for these forests to have rural roads running through them. These roads at times are associated with the local variation of the Melon Head legend and are said to be part of the Melon Heads' territory.


title: Melon heads

text: In a number of towns such as Newtown, New Milford, Shelton, Trumbull and Monroe, several legends place the melon heads' territory around a mysterious and mythical street commonly referred to as Dracula Drive. None of the towns that have a melon head legend have roads designated as Dracula Drive. Depending on what version of the legend is told, one of several existing streets are mistakenly referred to or coincidentally coincide with the Dracula Drive mentioned in the melon head stories. For instance, some legends place the melon heads' territory in and around Saw Mill City Road in Shelton as Dracula Drive. Some other roads mistakenly referred to as Dracula Drive include:


title: Melon heads

text: Characteristics of the legend evolve and parts of various versions of the legend affect other parts/versions of the legend. For example, some legends claim the melon heads would bite or consume whoever entered their territory. Also, the Melon Heads' territory commonly involves a secluded, rustic or dirt road running through it. This is one instance where elements of the legend interact over time and why some actual streets are mistakenly referred to as Dracula Drive by some locals.


title: Melon heads

text: In Connecticut, some of the inspiration for a number of versions of the Melon Heads' legends may be attributed to the local surroundings and landmarks. Central Fairfield County is home to the now defunct Fairfield Hills State Mental Hospital as well as the Garner Correctional Institution, both located in Newtown, as well as the Federal Correctional Institution located in nearby Danbury. Also this area of Fairfield County has been historically a rural area filled with farms and forests. The proximity of several criminal and psychiatric institutions as well as their juxtaposition to rural areas of the county may have contributed elements to the legend of the Melon Heads.


title: Melon heads

text: Stories about deformed country people who keep to themselves are common in legend. While the legend of the Melon Heads is more widely told throughout Southwest Connecticut, one of several other similar legends of deformed or mutated humans can be found in various locations of Fairfield and New Haven County. These legends have been told in overlapping communities where some individuals would tell versions of one legend alongside other individuals who would tell versions of another legend. Over time this overlapping of oral tradition may have allowed the cross-contribution of elements to each other. Some similar legends include:


title: Daniel Breaker

text: Daniel Breaker (born June 2, 1980) is an American actor and comedian. He is best known for playing Donkey in "Shrek The Musical".


title: Daniel Breaker

text: Beginning his career in 2002, immediately after graduating from Juilliard, Breaker has performed in Off-Broadway, London, and U.S. regional theatre productions. He performed in five plays at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington D.C. His first major role was the Youth, protagonist of the Off-Broadway premiere of "Passing Strange", for which he won an Obie Award in 2008. He was then nominated for a Tony Award for the show's Broadway transfer, in which he again played the Youth; he also played this role in Spike Lee's filmed version of the musical.


title: Daniel Breaker

text: One of his most recognizable roles was Donkey in the original Broadway production of "Shrek The Musical", which ran from November 2008 through January 2010. He starred alongside long-time Broadway stars Brian d'Arcy James, Sutton Foster, John Tartaglia, and Christopher Sieber. For his portrayal, Breaker earned a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Actor in a Musical. His voice can be heard on the original cast recording of the show.


title: Daniel Breaker

text: Breaker previously played Mafala Hatimbi in "The Book of Mormon" on Broadway. He also appeared as the King of Navarre in The Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park production of the "Love's Labour's Lost" musical. He played Aaron Burr in "Hamilton" in Chicago and joined the musical's Broadway cast.


title: Upside Down (Diana Ross song)

text: "Upside Down" is a song written and produced by Chic members Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards. It was recorded by American singer Diana Ross and issued from Motown as the lead single from her eleventh studio album, "Diana" (1980). The song hit number one on the "Billboard" Hot 100 chart on September 6, 1980 and stayed there for four weeks. It also hit number one on the "Billboard" Disco and Soul charts. The single was released a full four weeks after the album was released.


title: Upside Down (Diana Ross song)

text: "Upside Down" was also a big hit internationally, topping the singles charts in Australia, Denmark, New Zealand, Sweden, South Africa, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, while peaking at No. 5 in Canada. It also rose to No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart, marking the highest peak performance from Ross as a solo artist since "I'm Still Waiting" in 1971. It also earned her a British Phonographic Industry silver disc award for sales in excess of 250,000 copies. The single earned Ross her ninth career Grammy Award nomination for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, losing to "Never Knew Love Like This Before" by Stephanie Mills at the 1981 Grammy Awards.


title: Upside Down (Diana Ross song)

text: In a 2011 interview, Nile Rodgers said "Diana Ross was the first big star we ever worked with and we took it very seriously." Rodgers and Edwards interviewed her for several days. "This was the first time in her life somebody cared about who she was; what she was — everyone previously had treated her the way we had treated Sister Sledge — they got her in and said 'Sing this'. We (took a more personal approach)."


title: Upside Down (Diana Ross song)

text: As would be widely reported later, their studio liaison with Ross was not a success. She disliked the results of their sessions and gave them specific remixing instructions; they made slight changes and suggested that if she still did not like them, she could get them remixed herself. Ross did so, reworking the whole album with Motown producer Russ Terrana to downplay the funk element and make her voice more prominent.


title: Upside Down (Diana Ross song)

text: Rodgers and Edwards were initially furious, and considered having their production credit removed. They eventually decided to leave the track unedited, as the sound they used for Chic remained heavily influential on the album. The LP became a platinum-selling No. 1 that spent a year on the American chart. Ross left Motown soon afterwards for RCA.


title: Upside Down (Diana Ross song)

text: Ross performed the song live in 1981 during her television special "Diana", with Michael Jackson joining her onstage towards the end of the song. In 1997, Ross performed the song live with English funk and acid jazz band Jamiroquai at the Brit Awards ceremony.


title: Upside Down (Diana Ross song)

text: In 2013, the song was used in a Mercedes-Benz commercial featuring chickens being moved around while their heads remain stationary as an example of the car brand's "magic body control." It was also used by Jaguar Cars in a parody of the Mercedes-Benz commercial.


title: Upside Down (Diana Ross song)

text: Contemporary jazz/fusion group Pieces of a Dream covered the song on their 2001 album "Acquainted with the Night". MC Lyte sampled "Upside Down" on her 1996 hit "Cold Rock a Party (Remix)", featuring Missy Elliott and Puff Daddy. In 2003, Swedish band Alcazar interpolated the melody for their song "This Is the World We Live In", released in 2004.


title: Upside Down (Diana Ross song)

text: In 1999, the music group Risquée covered the song. Their version peaked at No. 25 in France and at No. 76 in Germany.


title: Algarve International Circuit

text: The Algarve International Circuit (), commonly referred to as Portimão Circuit, is a race circuit located in Portimão, Algarve region, Portugal. The development includes a karting track, off-road track, technology park, five-star hotel, sports complex and apartments.


title: Algarve International Circuit

text: The circuit was designed by Ricardo Pina, Arquitectos. The construction was finished in October 2008 and the circuit was homologated by both the FIM on 11 October 2008 and the FIA two days later. The total cost was €195 million (approximately $250 million).


title: Algarve International Circuit

text: The circuit hosted the final round of the World Superbike Championship on 2 November 2008. On 9 June, the track was confirmed to host a round of the 2008-09 A1 Grand Prix season. The race was set for the weekend of 12 April 2009. On 10 October 2008, the Le Mans Series announced a 1000 km night race to be held at Algarve on 2 August 2009. On 5 November 2008, the FIA GT Championship announced and 7th round of the 2009 season will be held at Algarve on 13 September 2009. A Formula One test session, with the McLaren and Honda teams participating, was scheduled for 15–17 December 2008. Ferrari also ran at Algarve. Toyota also tested at the circuit on 20 January 2009 in the first outing of their new TF109 chassis. The circuit will also host the final round of the 2009 GP2 Series season in September 2009. From 2010 it hosted a round of the FIA World Touring Car Championship.


title: Algarve International Circuit

text: On 4 April 2009 Max Mosley stated that based on the quality of the circuit it could integrate the Formula One championship under the guise of the Portuguese Grand Prix, as long as a commercial agreement with the Formula One Management was achieved. Due to changes to the 2020 Formula One season as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Algarve International Circuit has by way of exception hosted the 2020 Portuguese Grand Prix.


title: Algarve International Circuit

text: The circuit resembles old Nürburgring and Spa-Francorchamps, mainly because of its constantly undulating nature. A1 Team Portugal's driver Filipe Albuquerque observed that there are big downhill slopes and right-hand turns after the main straight. He also commented that the track is good for overtaking because of the circuit width. A1 Team New Zealand's driver Earl Bamber observed that there are many special turns with personality. He commented that the new circuit is a little bit dangerous like the old school circuits with a roller coaster ride. A1 Team France's driver Nicolas Prost commented that the asphalt was new and the circuit has little grip.


title: Algarve International Circuit

text: At the 2022 Supersport 300 World Championship, Victor Steeman died causing fatal accident at this circuit while racing in the Race 1 Portimão round.


title: Algarve International Circuit

text: In July 2020 it was announced that the circuit would host the Formula One Portuguese Grand Prix from 23 to 25 October, as part of a revised calendar arising from the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This marked the first time a Portuguese Grand Prix had been held since the 1996 race, which had taken place at the Autódromo do Estoril. The circuit hosted the Portuguese Grand Prix again in 2021 from 30 April to 2 May.


title: Algarve International Circuit

text: In August 2020 it was announced that the circuit would host the MotoGP Portuguese motorcycle Grand Prix from 20 to 22 November, as part of a revised calendar arising from the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. On 10 August 2020, MotoGP announced that the coronavirus-hit season would end with the Portuguese Grand Prix in Portimão. The circuit hosted the Portuguese motor cycle Grand Prix again in 2021 from 16 to 18 April, and hosted a second event named the Algarve Grand Prix from 5 to 7 November.


title: Algarve International Circuit

text: In January 2021 it was announced that the circuit would host the FIA World Endurance Championship 8 Hours of Portimão instead of 1000 Miles of Sebring on 4 April due to the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, on 5 March 2021; the round was postponed into the original date of 2021 24 Hours of Le Mans, 13 June in order to increase the possibility of fans being able to attend the race.