title: Comstock laws

text: Twenty-four States (and the District of Columbia, Alaska and Hawaii) have obscenity laws, under which, because of the Federal precedent, contraceptive knowledge may be suppressed as obscene, although it is not specifically mentioned. Obscenity has never been defined in law. This produces a mass of conflicting, inconsistent judicial decision, which would be humorous, if it were not such a mortifying revelation of the limitations and perversions of the human mind.


title: Comstock laws

text: Twenty-three States make it a crime to publish or advertise contraceptive information. They are as follows:


title: Comstock laws

text: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania,


title: Comstock laws

text: Twenty-two States include in their prohibition drugs and instruments for the prevention of conception. "There are far fewer in this category per Ruppenthal," They are as follows: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Washington, Wyoming and Puerto Rico.


title: Comstock laws

text: Eleven States make it a crime to have in one's possession any instruction for contraception. These are: Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wyoming.


title: Comstock laws

text: Fourteen States make it a crime to tell anyone where or how contraceptive knowledge may be acquired. These are :


title: Comstock laws

text: Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New


title: Comstock laws

text: Six States prohibit the offer to assist in any method whatever which would lead to knowledge by which contraception might be accomplished. These are: Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma and Puerto Rico.


title: Comstock laws

text: Eight States prohibit depositing in the Post Office any contraceptive information. These are: Colorado, Indiana,


title: Comstock laws

text: Four States have laws authorizing the search for and seizure of contraceptive instructions, and these are: Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma. In all these States but Idaho, the laws authorize the destruction of the things seized.


title: Comstock laws

text: Seventeen States prohibit any information which corrupts morals, 12 of them, as starred in the following list, particularly mentioning the morals of the young. This is an interesting point of view of the frequently offered objection to freedom of access to contraceptive knowledge, that it will demoralize the young. These States are: Colorado, Delaware,* Florida,* Iowa,* Maine,* Massachusetts,* Michigan,* Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas,* Vermont,* Virginia,* West Virginia,* Wisconsin * and Hawaii.


title: Comstock laws

text: Two States have no obscenity statutes, but police power in these States can suppress contraceptive knowledge as an "Obscenity" or "public nuisance," by virtue of the Federal precedent. These States are: North Carolina and New Mexico.


title: Comstock laws

text: The Comstock laws targeted pornography, contraceptive equipment, and such educational materials as descriptions of contraceptive methods and other reproductive health-related materials. Of particular note were advertisements for abortifacients found in penny papers, which offered pills to women as treatment for "obstruction of their monthly periods."


title: Comstock laws

text: Comstock's ideas of what is "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" were quite broad. During his time of greatest power, some anatomy textbooks were prohibited from being sent to medical students by the United States Postal Service.


title: Comstock laws

text: However, it is claimed that Comstock had "no intention of penalizing "normal" birth control information" (with "normal" likely meaning within marriage). Yet the laws engendered by him did significantly penalize birth control information for all uses. Comstock (and others) thought that contraceptives (and information about them) would be used (or misused) by young people for premarital sex (then considered to be wrong and immoral by some people). Thus, Comstock's reasoning seems to have been that if one banned all contraceptive information, etc., the morals of youth were less likely to be corrupted.


title: Comstock laws

text: Major parts of the Comstock Acts hinge on definitions, particularly of obscenity. Though the courts originally adopted the British Hicklin test, in 1957 an American test was put into place in "Roth v. United States", in which it was determined that obscenity was material whose "dominant theme taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest" to the "average person, applying contemporary community standards," and was, "utterly without redeeming social importance."


title: Comstock laws

text: According to Paul R. Abramson, the widespread availability of pornography during the American Civil War (1861–1865) gave rise to an anti-pornography movement, culminating in the passage of the Comstock Act in 1873, but which also dealt with birth control and abortion issues. A major supporter and active persecutor for the moral purposes of the Comstock laws was the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, led by Comstock.


title: Comstock laws

text: In February 1866, the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) of New York's executive committee privately distributed a report that was written by Cephas Brainerd and Robert McBurney entitled, "A Memorandum Respecting New-York as a Field for Moral and Christian Effort Among Young Men." This memorandum linked the main message of the YMCA to facts and figures that were drawn from the census, tax data, and licensing reports. All of this data was used to support the idea that many of the younger, more unsupervised members of the society had more than enough free time in the evenings to spend in billiard saloons, gambling halls, porter houses, and houses of prostitution and assignation.


title: Comstock laws

text: The 1866 memorandum supported a plan to construct a centrally located building to better serve the younger men of New York. Not only was the building to support the spiritual, mental, and social well-being of the young men, it was also suggested to benefit their physical condition. However, the memorandum was also used as a "call to action" to investigate whether or not a law was in place to reprimand and confiscate "obscene" literature. After conferring with a district attorney, a committee was organized to write up a bill to be pushed through the New York State legislature. In 1868, the bill was passed; however, it was not as strong as the association would have liked it to be. After the passing of the bill, the YMCA appointed a committee to oversee the enforcement of the law. This law included the important power of search and seizure which authorized magistrates to issue warrants that allowed police officers "to search for, seize and take possession of such obscene and indecent books, papers, articles and things" and hand them over to the district attorney. If the indicted party ended up being found guilty, the materials that were confiscated in the raid were destroyed.


title: Comstock laws

text: Anthony Comstock stated that he was determined to act the part of a good citizen, meaning that he had every intention of upholding the law. He started off by beginning a campaign against the saloons in his New York neighborhood of Brooklyn.


title: Comstock laws

text: The biggest contributor to igniting Comstock's mission to rid of any and all obscene material was when one of his dear friends died. Comstock blamed his death on him being "led astray and corrupted and diseased". As for a person to blame, Comstock laid all of it on Charles Conroy, who had sold his friend "erotic materials" from a basement on Warren Street. After this incident, he continued the crusade throughout his neighborhood and while doing so, kept a ledger that had a record of every arrest he had made.


title: Comstock laws

text: Comstock became linked with the YMCA shortly after writing a financial request for funding of his efforts. When YMCA President Morris Jesup became aware of the request he visited Comstock and granted the requested funds. in addition to providing the money to support his work, Jesup paid Comstock a bonus. Comstock was invited to speak before the YMCA's Committee on Obscene Literature (later renamed the Committee for Suppression of Vice) to present how he used the funds the organization had provided. Comstock was eventually hired by the association to help fight for the suppression of vice.


title: Comstock laws

text: The motivation for Comstock's support of Federal legislation was "The Beecher-Tilton Scandal Case" and the publicity for the case provided by Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin; writers for "Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly". After Woodhull's acquittal, Comstock began to see weaknesses in the 1872 law. The federal statute did not include newspapers, nor did it specify that birth control information and appliances were "obscene". Comstock made it a goal to include better language in a new law (later known as the Comstock Law).


title: Comstock laws

text: To do this, Comstock drafted a new federal bill and with the sponsorship of Representative Clinton L. Merriam, he met with members of the House and illustrated his concern by showing them obscene materials, obtained via the gaps in the existing legislation. Comstock used a connection with Justice William Strong to pass the bill on to William Windom, a senator from Minnesota, with the request that he take the bill to the floor of the Senate. While the bill was being revised, a provision with similar effect of the bill was attached in a federal appropriations bill and was authorized by Congress. The legislation enabled a new special agent in the United States Post Office. This agent held the power to confiscate immoral materials sent in the mail and arrest those sending it.


title: Comstock laws

text: Although Comstock was awarded the position of special agent, the Committee for the Suppression of Vice requested that he not be given a government salary. In the spring of 1873, the committee became separate from the YMCA, as New York gave them a charter as the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. While the Comstock Law originally authorized police assistance to the group in censoring materials and gave half of the fines collected under this law, the rewards were removed a month later. By preventing Comstock from receiving a federal salary, as well as any monetary rewards from the state, the organization's directors attempted to prevent claims of self-interested motives. They also tried to ensure that Comstock was dependent on their donations.


title: Comstock laws

text: Comstock derived his full-time salary from the vice society. At the same time, he was able to hold a federal commission that allowed him to secure warrants for arrests and take and destroy publications and other materials. Therefore, New York, as well as the federal government, gave him most of the responsibility to implement moral censorship. They entrusted that responsibility to Comstock for forty-two years until his death in 1915. Over that period of time, he filled the two positions, one in the Post Office and the other in the New York vice society.


title: Comstock laws

text: Extended works of Comstock along the lines of the Comstock laws include a petition from the Committee for the Suppression of Vice to include obscene written works that were enclosed in a sealed envelope, an item that was not covered in the renditions of the Comstock Laws, as an item to convict for a punishable offence. Other works that he tried to enclose under the range of the laws that used his namesake include international art pieces that depicted scantily-clad women, textbooks for medical students, and other items that seem to steer away from the original theme of the laws. These misguided efforts left some of his original supporters to doubt his intentions. Comstock's excision of authoritative power as a special agent Postal Inspector included over 3,600 people prosecuted and the destruction of over 160 tons () of literature found to be obscene.


title: Comstock laws

text: Until the mid-20th Century, Christian leaders generally have been opposed to contraception. The first recorded show of the Christian faith being against contraceptives can be found in the "Didache", an early Christian treatise written around 70 AD which condemns the use of contraception along with abortion, infanticide, adultery, and other practices. This theme of Christian culture continued through the centuries until some churches accepted the use of contraceptives, limited at first to married couples, beginning with the of the Anglican Church. Previously, the only contraception in use for followers of Christianity was the calendar or rhythm method, which is the tracking of fertility in a woman's body as to avoid having sexual relations within time frames where the woman would be fertile, but instead when she may be considered the least fertile of her menstrual cycle.


title: Comstock laws

text: In 1957, Samuel Roth, who ran a literary business in New York City, was charged with distributing "obscene, lewd, lascivious or filthy" materials through the mail, advertising and selling a publication called "American Aphrodite" ("A Quarterly for the Fancy-Free"). The publication contained literary erotica and nude photography.


title: Comstock laws

text: The Comstock Law was terminated in 1957, just before the "Roth v. United States" court case, but it defined obscenity laws as anything that appealed to the prurient interest of the consumer. In a similar case, "Alberts v. California", David Alberts ran a mail-order business from Los Angeles and was convicted under a Californian statute for publishing pictures of "nude and scantily-clad women". The Supreme Court confirmed the conviction and affirmed the Roth test.


title: Comstock laws

text: Under the Comstock laws, postal inspectors can bar "obscene" content from the mails at any time, thus having a huge impact on publishers of magazines. In "One, Inc. v. Olesen" (1958), as a follow-on to "Roth", the Supreme Court granted free press rights around homosexuality.


title: Comstock laws

text: The Comstock laws banned distribution of sex education information, based on the premise that it was obscene and led to promiscuous behavior Mary Ware Dennett was fined $300 in 1928, for distributing a pamphlet containing sex education material. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), led by Morris Ernst, appealed her conviction and won a reversal, in which judge Learned Hand ruled that the pamphlet's main purpose was to "promote understanding".


title: Comstock laws

text: In 1915, architect William Sanger was charged under the New York law against disseminating contraceptive information. His wife Margaret Sanger was similarly charged in 1915 for her work "The Woman Rebel". Sanger circulated this work through the U.S. postal service, effectively violating the Comstock Law. On appeal, her conviction was reversed on the grounds that contraceptive devices could legally be promoted for the cure and prevention of disease.


title: Comstock laws

text: The prohibition of devices advertised for the explicit purpose of birth control was not overturned for another eighteen years. During World War I, U.S. servicemen were the only members of the Allied forces sent overseas without condoms.


title: Comstock laws

text: In 1932, Sanger arranged for a shipment of diaphragms to be mailed from Japan to a sympathetic doctor in New York City. When U.S. customs confiscated the package as illegal contraceptive devices, Sanger helped file a lawsuit. In 1936, a federal appeals court ruled in "United States v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries" that the federal government could not interfere with doctors providing contraception to their patients.


title: Comstock laws

text: "Griswold v. Connecticut" (1965) struck down one of the remaining contraception Comstock laws in Connecticut and Massachusetts. However, "Griswold" only applied to marital relationships. "Eisenstadt v. Baird" (1972) extended its holding to unmarried persons as well.


title: Comstock laws

text: As the chief proponent of the law, many of Comstock's justifications revolved around the effects that all of the obscene literature would have on children. He argued that the corruption in the schools and in the home were because of all of the obscene literature that the youth had easy access to. He also argued that the vast amounts of "obscenity" would cause for the sanctity of marriage to be corrupted along with the power of the church. Comstock mainly focused on voicing his concerns to families of privilege; this is how he gained a majority of his support.


title: Comstock laws

text: Clinton L. Merrian, who introduced the bill to the House of Representatives, played on the idea that obscenity was a direct threat to manhood and that in order to protect the children, obscene materials needed to be confiscated.


title: Comstock laws

text: The Comstock laws, in an alleged "haphazard and capricious" manner, restricted contraception. It was argued that this would help prevent "illicit" sexual relations between unmarried persons since without contraception, the unmarried would be deterred from having sex due to the possibility of undesired pregnancy. When the Birth Control Movement in the mid-1920s was attempting to get Congress to eliminate birth control restrictions from the federal Comstock laws, Mary Dennett (the author of "Birth Control Laws ..." 1926) interviewed a (non-typical) congressman who strongly supported retention of the birth control restrictions in the Comstock laws. He put it this way (avoiding any use of the words "sex" or "pregnancy"): "Think how it would be that night, when the young girl goes out with the boy, and she can’t help thinking, what difference will it make if nothing ever shows? And then she will forget all about character, and will let herself go, whereas if she was afraid of the practical results, she wouldn’t. Yes, there are thousands of girls that are held back just that way."


title: Comstock laws

text: To this, Mary Dennet asked if he did not know that there was such a lot of contraceptive knowledge in circulation—and that most of it was bad knowledge too—that the number of girls that could be protected by their ignorance was diminishing every hour, and that there was absolutely no effort at enforcement of the laws? He said people argued that way about enforcing the prohibition laws, but he thought it (Comstock laws re contraception) ought to be enforced and could be.


title: Comstock laws

text: Regarding older, never-married women having sex with contraception, the same congressman talking about a group of women clerks, whose housing was visible through his office window: "a lot of them are confirmed old maids too, but I wouldn’t trust what would happen to them, if they all knew they could do what they pleased and no one would be the wiser." He was thus implying that the Comstock laws were good because they not only deterred young girls from having premarital sex but also deterred "old maids" (derogatory term for older, never-married women) from sexual relations.


title: Comstock laws

text: Father Charles Coughlin, a famous "radio priest", argued before a congressional committee in 1934 that even use of contraception by a married couple was wrong. He characterized such non-productive sex as "legalized prostitution." There was heckling from the audience, and one woman called out to Coughlin, "You're ridiculous."


title: Comstock laws

text: Three years after the enactment of the federal law, a petition was circulated by the National Liberal League for its repeal in 1876, garnering between 40,000 and 70,000 signatures. Although the press of the country favored repeal, their efforts were impeded when Comstock showed samples of pornographic material to congressmen who were serving on the same committee which the repeal act had been referred to. Comstock claimed that the pamphlets he had shared, a "collection of smutty circulars describing sex depravity", had been distributed by mail to youths and other persons.


title: Comstock laws

text: In March 1879, the National Defense Association submitted a letter of affidavits to Samuel Sullivan Cox, a Democratic New York State Representative, for review with the Committee on Post Office and Post Roads. The National Defense Association had been established shortly after the Comstock Laws were enacted in order to combat the resulting loss of civil liberties and restrictions on freedom of the press, and to preserve access to works of art or literature which were deemed obscene under the Comstock Act.


title: Comstock laws

text: The letter of affidavits had been sent in support of the petition from the National Liberal League. Comstock dismissed the petition, alleging that the list was made up of forged signatures and false names. He also complained that "the public press throughout the country" had supported the petitioners and their movement.


title: Comstock laws

text: After this failure to repeal, there was no concerted effort to change the laws until the start of the birth control movement in the United States in 1914 led by Margaret Sanger. Between 1917 and 1925 Bills were introduced in California (1917), New York (1917, 1921,3,4,5), Connecticut (1923, 1925), and New Jersey (1925) to make the anti-birth control parts of the state laws less restrictive. In both California and Connecticut, the anti-birth control part of the law would be simply eliminated which in Connecticut would mean that its outlawing of contraception would be revoked. All these state attempts at change failed to come to a vote so no change happened.


title: Comstock laws

text: There were also failed attempts to eliminate the restrictions on birth control from the federal laws, the first starting in 1919 where the bill's supposed sponsor failed to introduce the bill. In 1923 a bill was sent to the Judiciary Committee (of Congress). While it was thought that the majority of this committee favored the bill, they evaded voting on it. There were also more attempts at change in the 1920s.


title: Comstock laws

text: In response to the argument that facilitating contraception would encourage promiscuity, a rebuttal was that if such persons used contraception, there would tend to be fewer people like them since fewer people would inherit inclinations towards promiscuity.


title: Comstock laws

text: The Free Love Movement was one group that made sustained attempts to repeal the Comstock Laws and discredit anything related to the anti-vice movement. This movement despised the law because they believed it embodied the sexual oppression of women. The free-lovers argued that neither the church nor the state had the right to regulate an individual's sexual relations and that women were sexually enslaved by the institution of marriage. This made the free-lovers the number one target of Comstock and his crusade against obscenity.


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: <nowiki>;</nowiki> 13 January 1918 – 25 February 1985) was a South Korean Christian minister and founder of the Church of God Jesus Witnesses. In 1948, after receiving the baptism of the Seventh-day Adventist priest, he began to call for the restoration of the truth of the New Testament and the last religious reformation. In 1964, he officially established the Church of God Jesus Witnesses in Busan. Ahn Sahng-hong believed that Catholic and Protestant Sundays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and wearing the cross should not be observed because they are not biblical doctrines, and he advocated the observance of Sabbath and the seven festivals including and Passover, Pentecost and Sukkot.


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: On 15 April 1984, the last Passover Assembly was held in Gangdong District, Seoul; on 10 January 1985, the Provisional General Assembly was established in Seoul and a special conference was held. Shortly after his death in 1985, a schism took place, dividing the Church of God Jesus Witnesses into two sects, the , The other faction is the "Witnesses of Ahn Sahng-hong Church of God" established by Zahng Gil-jah, and what is today known as the World Mission Society Church of God. Both organizations claim him as their founder: the New Covenant Passover Church of God sees Ahn as a teacher; the World Mission Society Church of God sees Ahn as God.


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: Ahn was born to Buddhist parents on 13 January 1918 in the small, rural village of Myeongdeok-ri in the North Jeolla Province at a time when Korea was under Japanese rule. The family migrated to Busan, where Ahn grew up in the Haeundae District, the city in which he would later found his church.


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: From 1937, during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II, Ahn and his mother lived in Japan over a nine-year period. He returned to Korea in 1946, after the war, and began attending the local congregation of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Incheon in 1947. Ahn reported getting revelations in 1953, renounced his Buddhist faith, and was baptized in 1954.


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: Ahn grew critical to teachings in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and the church disfellowshipped him in March 1962 over disputes about the cross as a religious symbol.Twenty-three people followed Ahn and left the church, and two years later on 28 April 1964, Ahn established his church Church of God Jesus Witnesses. Church of God Jesus Witnesses expanded to 13 congregations in South Korea before Ahn's death in 1985.


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: Major dogmata are outlined in "Doctrine Manual of the Church of God Jesus Witnesses" (1972), and detailed in the more than two dozen books Ahn wrote. His original publications as well as scans of his notes and extant sermons have been made available online. Ahn argued that the practice of the apostolic early church had been distorted and his restorational doctrines and practices included:


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: Ahn, who like most Christians believed in the Second Coming of Jesus, had predicted a Second Coming "within 10 years" in 1956. Ahn Sahng-hong mentioned in ""The Mystery of God and the Spring of the Water of Life"" that therefore by studying the work of Moses, we can clearly find out the true situation about the relationship between Jesus and us, all the work that Christ will do in the future, and even about the appointed date of Jesus' second coming. Ahn Sahng-hong also said that many false Christ would say "I am the Christ" now, just as Jesus predicted that false Christs would appear in the last day, however, salvation is found in no other name than Jesus, not only at His first coming but even in the last days.


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: Chapter 36 "Elijah will be sent" is one of the chapters deleted by the WMSCOG, which mainly describes Elijah's mission. The main point is that the last prophet Elijah was the one to convey the last truth of preparing the way for the Second Coming of Jesus and transform and ascend along with the live 144,000 saints.


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: In the tradition of Seventh-day Adventist eschatology, which had been suppressed by Kuniaki Koiso during his wartime rule of Korea, Ahn further believed that he was living in the end times and that the Second Coming was imminent. As Korean Protestants earlier in the 20th century had perceived Japanese occupation by identifying symbolically with the history of Israel, Ahn, through biblical exegesis in his book "The Mystery of God and the Spring of the Water of Life" (1980) Chapter 1: Restoration of Jerusalem and the Prophecy of 40 Years, interprets the and write:


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: It was suggest that the world could come to an end in 1988, 40 years after the independence of the modern state of Israel. Ahn's original "The Mystery of God and the Spring of the Water of Life" is made available online; World Mission Society Church of God in their later editions of the book have deleted information pertaining to the failed prediction. Not only that, but "The Bridegroom Was a Long Time in Coming, and They All Became Drowsy and Fell Asleep", which further explained that 1988 was the end of the world:


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: This means that Ahn Sahng-hong in his book ""The Bridegroom Was a Long Time in Coming, and They All Became Drowsy and Fell Asleep"" said that 1988 was correct, but it may be very slow. In addition, in a discussion based on scriptural typology, presented his conclusion that the world would come to an end in 2012:


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: Although Ahn Sahng-hong's "The Mystery of God and the Spring of the Water of Life" mentioned, in the last days, the entities of Adam and Eve, namely the Holy Spirit and the bride, appeared to lead all the animals. The Holy Spirit and the bride are interpreted as the second coming Christ and the mother God. But Ahn Sahng-hong explained in "Guests Who came From the World of Angels" that Adam represents Jesus who was in the world of angels before the creation, and Eve represents the angels whom Jesus loved. Ahn Sahng-hong came to the conclusion, Jesus is the last Adam, and the saints who are redeemed can be called the last Eve.


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: Ahn Sahng-hong's "Walk with God" sermon notes have the following content: "Jesus keeps the Sabbath, so I keep the Sabbath; Jesus keeps the Passover, so I also keep the Passover; Jesus keeps the Feast of Tabernacles, so I also keep the shed Festival; Jesus was baptized, so I followed him to be baptized. Elisha followed Elijah; Joshua followed Moses; Peter followed Jesus; I followed mother". This is the WMSCOG believes that Ahn Sahng-hong taught Evidence of Mother God. The NCPCOG said that mother means Sarah, which represents the New Testament.


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: By 1978 a group of people centered around a female member, one Um Sooin (born 1941), within the Church of God Jesus Witnesses, claimed through a chain of scriptural eisegesis that they published in writing, that Um variously was "the only bride", "the Heavenly Jerusalem", "the New Jerusalem" on earth, "the comforter sent by God", and they asserted that she was "our mother who has come down from Heaven", and that Ahn was Christ. Um and the group around her claiming she was the spiritual mother were expelled from the church, and Ahn dedicated a book entitled "Problems with the New Jerusalem, the Bride and Women's Veils" (1980, reprinted 1983) to the controversy, in which he writes:


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: Ahn Sahng-hong's book "uncover seven thunder" published in 1955 describes: "this discourse is not my private speech, nor is it learned from anyone. But when our Lord Jesus Christ shone on me and gave me this light, the whole world looked like a dark night. When he shines his light on all sides of the earth, no one can receive it. Finally, it struck me and another person, who was still a child. This man is the one I will come to in the future. When the time comes, he will appear." According to the WMSCOG, in 1955, because Zahng Gil-jah was only 12 years old, she was described as a child and would appear after Ahn Sahng-hong. However, Ahn Sahng-hong wrote in a notebook: "the beautiful deer fell to the ground. A man in white accepted the deer and gave it to me, and it became a child. The child came to me and left. I followed the child in the clouds of heaven. When a son of man gave out a light to illuminate the earth, the light was shining in all directions. But darkness is still everywhere, and no one can reflect that light. At last the light turned to where I was, illuminating the child and me." The NCPCOG explained that the beautiful deer represents a true Church of God. Like a child, it has accepted the truth of the seven thunder. It is a clean beast in the Bible, not Zahng Gil-jah. Because Zahng Gil-jah was baptized in 1969 as a Church of God Jesus Witnesses, it can even be said that Ahn Sahng-hong did not know Zahng Gil-jah at that time.


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: The WMSCOG said that during the last Passover Assembly on 15 April 1984, Ahn Sahng-hong witnessed God the Mother at the wedding hall and asked Zahng Gil-jah to pray at the pulpit. The NCOCOG believes that this is because the church in Seoul is growing fast and the church gathers 300 people, so Ahn Sahng-hong celebrates the Passover in the wedding hall. Previously, in the late 1970s, many people also celebrated Passover at the Busan Sea Hotel, so it was normal to celebrate Passover outside the church. The NCOCOG also said that although women were forbidden to preach at that time, anyone could pray for their brothers and sisters, so this was not evidence of mother. It is said that the WMSCOG helped Ahn Sahng-hong and Zahng Gil-jah take a wedding photo at the Jiangdong Wedding Hall on 18 May 1984, but there were no guests or witnesses at the wedding scene, so the photo has been controversial. Minutes provided by New Covenant Passover Church of God for the 10 January 1985 meeting state that Zahng Gil-jah was appointed as the director of social dedication and Kim Joo-cheol was the director of mission. On 19 April 1985, Kim Joo-cheol wrote to the Busan General Assembly that the missionary Zahng Gil-jah herself was not willing to idolize herself, so we cannot idolize her.


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: Following a heart attack during lunch on 24 February 1985, Ahn had a stroke en route to hospital, and died the next day, 25 February 1985 in the Catholic Maryknoll Hospital in Jung District, Busan. Ahn Sahng-hong was 67 years old. He was survived by his wife and three children.


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: Ahn was buried in a public grave located in Seokgye Cemetery north of Busan. From the time of his burial in 1985, a single tombstone stood beside the grave, the epitaph reading: "The grave of the prophet Elijah Ahn Sahng-hong." After the death of his wife Hwang Won-sun 23 years later on 4 September 2008, she was buried in the plot beside Ahn, and a new tombstone carrying both their names (as well as their children's on the back) replaced the 1985 stone, repeating the epitaph.


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: The unexpected death of Ahn gave rise to a power struggle within Church of God Jesus Witnesses: some people in the church wanted to continue along the lines laid out by Ahn, others wanted to re-introduce the concept of a "spiritual mother" embodied in the then 41-year-old woman named Zahng Gil-jah (born 1943). After an extraordinary general meeting in Church of God Jesus Witnesses on 4 March 1985 failed to reconcile the opposing factions, a schism divided the church into two sects


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: One group of people in Church of God Jesus Witnesses stayed on the premises in Busan. Among them were Ahn's wife and their three children. According to the minutes they provided on 10 January 1985, the church was renamed as New Covenant Passover Church of God. Ahn's son Ahn Kwang-sup (born 1954) is an elder in the church and continues to expound on his father's work. They opposed the doctrine of God the mother of the "Witnesses of Ahn Sahng-hong Church of God". They claimed that they had 25 truth books published by Ahn Sahng-hong, 37 books about his growth and 10 handwritten notes. At present, there are seven churches in total, including Songpa Church in Seoul. The church observes the Sabbath and seven feasts, including Passover. Due to the calculation of feasts, Church of God Jesus Witnesses in Gwangan-ri, Busan was to be independent from the New Covenant Passover Church of God in 2016 and also oppose God the mother doctrine.


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: Another group of people in Church of God Jesus Witnesses including the man Kim Joo-cheol and the woman Zahng Gil-jah wanted to re-introduce the concept of a "spiritual mother", and on 22 March 1985 moved from Busan to Seoul. On a meeting in Seoul on 2 June 1985, they discussed how to call Zahng Gil-jah, and established a church called Witnesses of Ahn Sahng-hong Church of God. Two major new doctrines were codified


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: A change in religious practice, as reflected in the change of name from "Jesus Witnesses" to "Witnesses of Ahn Sahng-hong", was, that prayers were no longer conducted in the name of Jesus Christ but in the name of "Christ Ahn Sahng-hong".


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: The deification of Ahn Sahng-hong and Zahng Gil-jah has been "harshly criticized," and has led to the church being officially condemned by The National Council of Churches in Korea as an interdenominationally combatted, blasphemous, heretical cult.


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: Around 1997, Witnesses of Ahn Sahng-hong Church of God had established a non-profit organization titled the World Mission Society Church of God for the purpose of registering and managing the organization's assets.


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: The NCPCOG said that Ahn Sahng-hong has fulfilled the mission of stamping angels and the prophecy of the eagle of the East, questions about Elijah's mission, the news of the third angel, the prophecy of an angel with great authority, about the descendants of women, the prophecy of King David, and the reasons for the coming of Jesus Christ.


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: Witnesses of Ahn Sahng-hong Church of God announced that "1988 is the end of the world" citing as Ahn had done in his 1980 book "The Mystery of God and the Spring of the Water of Life". A few thousand members of Witnesses of Ahn Sahng-hong Church of God gathered on a mountain in , Yeongi County, South Chungcheong Province awaiting the coming of Christ Ahn Sahng-hong, preparing for the rapture and the salvation of 144,000 souls. When Ahn failed to appear and nothing happened the church updated their apocalyptic forecast and scheduled it to the opening of the 1988 Olympics in Seoul later that year where the members gathered and preached the end of the world would come by the end of 1988 and that Ahn Sahng Hong would come again. WMSCOG later claimed it was a fulfillment of the preaching of Jonah.


title: Ahn Sahng-hong

text: As a central argument to the claim that Ahn Sahng-hong should be the Second Coming of Jesus, and in turn an argument for his suggested promotion of Zahng Gil-jah to the Bride of the Lamb, is the proposition that he fulfilled a Davidic prophecy by preaching 37 years from his baptism 16 December 1948 to his death on 25 February 1985, a period which in reality was only 36 years, 2 months, and 9 days. It is said that Ahn Sahng-hong once wrote that he was baptized in 1948, however, the source for the baptismal date of 16 December 1948 performed by a Pastor Lee Myeong-deok in Incheon is however obscure, and no written record exists. In 2011 a protocol from the Seventh-day Adventist Church was discovered, stating Ahn was baptised when he was 36 years old on 9 October 1954 by a Pastor Gim Seo-gyeong. The investigation by International Korean Christian Coalition Against Heresy showed, that while Pastor Gim could be confirmed, no Pastor Lee Myeong-deok was with the church in 1948, reducing the length of the ministry of Ahn from 36 years to 30 years and 4 months.


title: Panchayat samiti

text: Panchayat samiti is a rural local government (panchayat) body at the intermediate tehsil (taluka/mandal) level in India. It works for the villages of the tehsil that together are called a development block. It has been said to be the "panchayat of panchayats".


title: Panchayat samiti

text: The panchayat samiti is the link between the gram panchayat (village council) and the zila parishad (district board). The name varies across states: "mandal parishad" in Andhra Pradesh, "taluka panchayat" in Gujarat, and "mandal panchayat" in Karnataka.


title: Panchayat samiti

text: Typically, a taluka panchayat is composed of elected members of the area: the block development officer, members of the state's legislative assembly, members of parliament belonging to that area, otherwise unrepresented groups (Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and women), associate members (such as a farmer, a representative of the cooperative societies and one from the agricultural marketing services sector) and the elected members of that panchayat block (tehsil) on the zila parishad (district board).


title: Panchayat samiti

text: The samiti is elected for five years and is headed by a chairman and deputy chairman elected by the members of the panchayat samiti. One sarpanch samiti supervises the other grampanchayats. It acts as a co-ordinating body between district panchayat and grampanchayat.


title: Panchayat samiti

text: A coterminous mandal parishad is constituted for each revenue mandal. A mandal parishad is composed of:


title: Panchayat samiti

text: Mandal parishad territorial constituency (MPTC) members are directly elected by the voters, whereas the mandal president is elected by the MPTC members. The members are elected for a term of five years. The election to MPTCs is done on a party basis. The elections are conducted by the state election commission.


title: Panchayat samiti

text: Each department in a panchayat samiti has its own officer. Most often these are state government employees acting as extension officers, but occasionally in more revenue-rich panchayat samiti, they may be local employees. A government-appointed block development officer (BDO) is the supervisor of the extension officers and executive officer to the panchayat samiti and becomes, in effect, its administrative chief.


title: Panchayat samiti

text: The panchayat samiti collects all the prospective plans prepared at Gram Panchayat level and process them for funding and implementation by evaluating them from the angles of financial constraints, social welfare, and area development. It also identifies and prioritizes the issues that should be addressed at the block level.


title: Panchayat samiti

text: For many panchayat samiti, the main source of income is state aid. For others, the traditional taxing function provides the bulk of revenues. Tax revenues are often shared between the gram panchayats and the panchayat samiti.


title: Voat

text: Voat Inc was an American alt-tech news aggregator and social networking service where registered community members could submit content such as text posts and direct links. Registered users could then vote on these submissions. Content entries were organized by areas of interest called "subverses". The website was widely described as a Reddit clone and a hub for the alt-right. The site shut down on December 25, 2020.


title: Voat

text: Voat was a site which hosted aggregated content and discussion forums. According to "Wired", Voat was "aesthetically and functionally similar to Reddit." Like Reddit, Voat was a collection of entries submitted by its registered users to themed categories (called "subverses" on Voat) similar to a bulletin board system. Unlike Reddit, Voat emphasized looser content restrictions and an ad-revenue sharing program. Voat was written in the C# programming language, while Reddit is written in Python.


title: Voat

text: Voat was described by media outlets including "Quartz", "The New York Times", "New York", and the US and UK editions of "Wired", as a hub for the alt-right. The site was also widely described as a clone of Reddit, or sometimes dubbed "the alt-right Reddit". In a January 2017 "New Yorker" article, Voat was described as a descendant of 2chan, 4chan, and 8chan, where users compete for shock value. "The Verge" described the site as ""Imzy"s dark twin", in that both were indirect products of the Gamergate culture war. The site has also been described by "The Verge" as a model for other "censorship-free" alt-tech services, including Gab, Parler, and Hatreon.


title: Voat

text: The name "Voat" is a play on the words 'goat' and 'vote'. The site's mascot is a goat. The website used the Colombian top level domain, .co, and was registered in November 2014.


title: Voat

text: Founded in April 2014 as WhoaVerse, the website was a hobby project of Atif Colo (known on Voat as @Atko), then a college student. He was later joined by Justin Chastain (known as @PuttItOut on Voat). The website has been labelled as an alternative to Reddit with a focus on freedom of expression. In December 2014, WhoaVerse changed its name to Voat for ease of use.


title: Voat

text: Although Voat was based in Switzerland, Voat became incorporated in the United States in August 2015. Colo explained in a post announcing the incorporation that this was because "Switzerland seemed like a great option in the beginning, but when it comes to freedom of speech, the main idea behind Voat, U.S. law by far beats every other candidate country we’ve researched." Following a large influx of users from Reddit in July 2015, Voat's operators were approached by investors interested in funding the project, though they said they "hadn't had the time to talk" about the offers.


title: Voat

text: In January 2017, Colo resigned as CEO of Voat, citing a lack of time available to devote to the site. Colo was replaced as CEO by Chastain.


title: Voat

text: In May 2017, Chastain ran a fundraising campaign, announcing that Voat might have to shut down due to lack of money. However, after forming a partnership with an investor, Voat stayed online.


title: Voat

text: On December 22, 2020, Voat again announced that it would be shut down due to a lack of funding. Co-founder and CEO Chastain said that he had been funding the site himself after a key investor defaulted on their contract in March, but had run out of money by December. On December 25, 2020, Voat shut down.


title: Voat

text: Over Voat's six years of operation, accusations of censorship against Reddit and its moderation decisions, including the banning of various subreddits, caused several influxes of Reddit users to Voat. In early June 2015, after Reddit banned five subreddits for harassment—the largest of which, r/fatpeoplehate, had around 150,000 subscribers—many users of Reddit began to create accounts on Voat. The influx of new participants temporarily overloaded the site, causing downtime. In early July 2015, following the dismissal of a popular administrator on Reddit, another influx of Reddit members registered with Voat, leading to traffic levels which again caused Voat to experience downtime. In November 2016, more users relocated to Voat after Reddit banned the Pizzagate conspiracy theory subreddit, r/pizzagate, due to doxing and harassment concerns. In November 2017, some of Reddit's incel community moved to Voat after an incel community, r/incels, was banned on Reddit. On September 12, 2018, Reddit banned several subreddits dedicated to discussing the QAnon conspiracy theory, stating that they had violated its rules prohibiting "inciting violence, harassment, and the dissemination of personal information." This caused many of the QAnon posters to migrate to Voat.


title: Voat

text: In April 2019, Voat's CEO announced in a post that he had been contacted by a "US agency" about threats that were being posted on the website. In the post, he wrote that Voat would work with law enforcement and take down any "gray area" posts if requested. According to "Vice", "Voat users took offense to the perceived curtailing of their ability to post racial slurs and endorse violence. The first comment on Chastain's post opened with an anti-Semitic slur and call to exterminate Jews."


title: Voat

text: Voat's web hosting service, Host Europe (a precursor to Webfusion), refused service to Voat in June 2015, alleging that the service "was publicizing incitement of the people, as well as abusive, insulting and youth-endangering content" and "illegal right-wing extremist content." Host Europe is based in Germany, and is subject to stronger hate speech laws than those of the United States. Voat's founder attributed the shutdown to political correctness. PayPal froze payment processing services to Voat the same month due to "sexually oriented materials or services." Voat shut down four of its own subverses in response, two of which hosted sexualized images of minors ("jailbait"). The website continued to accept cryptocurrency donations, and was able to continue functioning as it had moved to a different hosting provider. The website continued to experience downtime due to an ongoing distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, rendering the 700,000 unique visitors unable to access the site.


title: Voat

text: Also in July, Voat, alongside WikiLeaks, was subject to a Bitcoin "dust" attack and more DDoS attacks. The Bitcoin attack slowed payment processing to the websites. The DDoS attack, launched July 12, was unsuccessful due to Cloudflare DDoS protection services, although it had the side effect of rendering third-party Voat apps incapable of functioning.


title: Turner Construction

text: Turner Construction is an American construction company with presence in 20 countries. It is a subsidiary of the German company Hochtief. It is the largest domestic contractor in the United States as of 2020, with a revenue of $14.41 billion in 2020.


title: Turner Construction

text: Turner Construction was founded in New York City in 1902 by Henry Chandlee Turner. Its first project was a $690 concrete vault in Brooklyn, followed by concrete staircases for the New York City Subway. By the late 1920s, Turner was constructing buildings for large businesses in the United States. Turner's stock began trading on the American Stock Exchange in 1972. Turner's projects have included large buildings and numerous sports stadiums. Then, in 1999, Hochtief purchased Turner.


title: Turner Construction

text: In 2010s, the company was involved in a multi-year bid rigging scheme related to interior work at Bloomberg L.P. resulting in its then vice president Ronald Olson to plead guilty to federal charge of tax evasion on accepting $1.5 million in bribes from subcontractors and then project superintendent Vito Nigro to plead guilty to grand larceny. They were both also convicted of federal tax crime from this matter.


title: Turner Construction

text: In 1902, Henry Chandlee Turner (1871-1954) founded Turner Construction Company with $25,000 in start-up capital, at 11 Broadway, in New York City. Turner's first job was a $690 project to build a concrete vault for Thrift Bank in the borough of Brooklyn. In 1904, a Scottish industrialist named Robert Gair hired Turner Construction to build several concrete buildings in Brooklyn, including a plant that was recognized as the largest reinforced concrete building in the United States at the time. Around the same time the company was developing plans for the Gair building, Turner began building concrete staircases for the New York City Subway. The original design showed the stairs were to be made of steel, but Turner persuaded Gair to use concrete as an alternative. His proposal was applauded and led to contracts for staircases and platforms for the Interborough Rapid Transit Company's first subway line. The company established branch offices in Philadelphia in 1907, followed by Buffalo in 1908, and Boston in 1916. Within the first 15 years, Turner Construction Company constructed buildings for some of the country's largest businesses, including a building for Western Electric and for Standard Oil.


title: Turner Construction

text: From World War I to the Great Depression, the company's billings grew to nearly $44 million. Like most industries, construction suffered during the economic collapse and Turner's volume fell to $2.5 million by 1933. The company recovered and revenues increased to $12 million by 1937. The company suspended commercial construction during the war years, focusing instead on the construction of military camps, factories, and government buildings. In 1941, Henry Turner stepped down as president to serve as chairman and make room for his brother, Archie Turner, as president.


title: Turner Construction

text: In October 1946, Henry Turner retired as chairman, handing the post to his ailing brother. For his replacement, Archie Turner selected Admiral Ben Moreell, the individual responsible for forming the Seabees. One month after Moreell's appointment, Archie Turner died of a heart attack.


title: Turner Construction

text: Turner, together with three other main contractors Fuller, Slattery, Walsh built the United Nations Secretariat Building in New York, which was completed in 1952. Also in same city, Turner built the One Chase Manhattan Plaza in 1956. During the 1960s, notable projects included the Lincoln Center and Madison Square Garden in 1967. From the early 1950s to the late 1960s, the company opened offices in Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Cleveland, and San Francisco. In 1969, Turner issued over-the-counter stock and in 1972, the company's stock began trading on the American Stock Exchange. Throughout the 1970s, the company added offices in locations such as Atlanta, Seattle, and Portland. Notable projects included the Vanderbilt University Medical Center Hospital in 1974 and the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library in 1977.


title: Turner Construction

text: Howard Sinclair Turner became president in 1965, and was chairman from 1970 to 1977, when he was succeeded by Walter B. Shaw. In 1984, Shaw appointed Herbert Conant as president.


title: Turner Construction

text: Turner Construction Company erected several professional sports stadiums during the 1990s. Sports construction was not new to the company: Turner's first sports contract was construction of the promenade at Harvard Stadium in 1910, followed by Pitt Stadium for the University of Pittsburgh in 1925. In 1995, the company completed construction of the Rose Garden in Portland, Oregon. In 1996, they built Charlotte, North Carolina's Bank of America Stadium, followed by completion of Sports Authority Field at Mile High in 2001.


title: Turner Construction

text: In August 1999, Hochtief of Germany purchased The Turner Corporation for $370 million. By extension, Turner Construction Company gained access to Hochtief's operations in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the heavy construction field. In 2002, Turner Construction expanded its presence in the Washington, D.C. area by acquiring J.A. Jones-Tompkins Builders, Inc., the former subsidiary of J.A. Jones Construction Company. Tompkins Builders, Inc., a new entity, is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Turner Construction. By 2016, Turner had 45 office locations around the world.


title: Turner Construction

text: In August 2017, Turner Construction flouted permit regulations and unlawfully closed two lanes in middle of downtown Portland, Oregon. In response, the city withheld inspection until the fine was paid off and the behavior prompted city transportation commissioner Dan Saltzman to issue the following statements:"Amidst one of the busiest summer construction seasons in recent memory, I’m disappointed at the blatant disregard for the public,"


title: Turner Construction

text: "For a private construction company to block a lane during rush hour, delaying thousands of people and undermining our efforts to reduce traffic congestion is unacceptable," Saltzman said in the statement. "We will hold them accountable."


title: Turner Construction

text: In February 2018, investigators with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office started looking into Turner Construction and Bloomberg LP over suspected construction fraud by employees in each company and 22 subcontractors. There was conspiracy, bribery and kickbacks involved which occurred between 2010 and 2017.


title: Turner Construction

text: In the multi-year bribery and bid rigging scheme involving Turner, a former Turner vice president, Ronald Olson, pleaded guilty to bribery in July 2020. Olson pleaded guilty to tax evasion for US$1.5 million he received in connection with Bloomberg jobs while he was working for Turner. He received bribes from subcontractors in exchanging for awarding them contracts for Bloomberg L.P. projects. He was one of 14 individuals facing charges over this scandal.


title: Turner Construction

text: Turner has 46 offices in the U.S., is active in 20 countries around the world, and averages 1,500 projects per year. Turner services include construction management, general contracting, consulting, construction procurement, insurance, and risk management. According to "Engineering News-Record's" 2014 Top 400 Contractors Sourcebook, Turner is the largest "Green contractor" in the United States.


title: Turner Construction

text: One worker was killed and four were injured in a partial collapse on November 25, 2019, in the 14-story luxury apartment at 4th & Race under construction in Cincinnati that is being built by Turner for Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) and Flaherty & Collins. Concrete was being poured onto the seventh floor which was being supported from below on a temporary structure called "shoring" placed on the sixth floor. Workers were inspecting for seepage from the sixth floor when the floor above collapsed from the weight of the concrete. A worker who had gone missing in the collapse was found dead more than a day later in the rubble.


title: Children of Lir

text: The Children of Lir () is a legend from Irish mythology. It is a tale from the post-Christianisation period that mixes magical elements such as druidic wands and spells with a Christian message of Christian faith bringing freedom from suffering.


title: Children of Lir

text: Named in Irish as "Oidheadh Chlainne Lir", the tale is today often known simply as "The Children of Lir" but the title has also been rendered as "The Tragic Story of the Children of Lir" or "The Fate of the Children of Lir", or, from the earlier title "Aided Chlainne Lir", as "The Violent Death of the Children of Lir".The English translation should properly be "The Children of Lear", Lir being a genitive, but the mistranslation has become culturally embedded.


title: Children of Lir

text: In post 18th-century scholarship, the tale has often been grouped with the "Oidheadh chloinne Uisnigh" ("The Fate of the Children of Uisnigh") and "Oidheadh chloinne Tuireann" ("The Fate of the Children of Tuireann") as the "Trí truagha na sgéalaigheachta", i.e. "The three sorrows of storytelling," also known as "The Three Sorrowful Tales of Erin." Scholar and folklorist Robin Flower has suggested that all three tales may have had a common author sometime in the 14th century, by someone in the circle of the Mac Fhirbhisighs in north-west Connacht. These three tales have been collated and translated from the Irish language into English.


title: Children of Lir

text: Manuscripts containing early versions of the tales include MS 72.1.38 and MS 72.2.6 at the National Library of Scotland, MS Egerton 164 at the British Library, and MS 24 A 13, and MS E vi 4 at the library of the Royal Irish Academy.


title: Children of Lir

text: The legendary historical setting of the story is the end of the dominion of the Tuatha Dé Danann in Ireland, and the corresponding rise of the Milesians.


title: Children of Lir

text: [2-9] Bodb Derg was elected king of the Tuatha Dé Danann, to the annoyance of Lir, who felt that he himself should have been chosen; Lir did not swear obedience to the new King, to the annoyance of those who had elected him, causing strife, though Bodb sought to appease them. After some time Lir's wife died — to appease Lir, Bodb gave one of his daughters, Aoibh, to him in marriage. Lir agreed that he would yield the lordship, and form an alliance — ending the strife.


title: Children of Lir

text: [10-13] Aoibh bore Lir four children: one girl, Fionnghuala, and three sons, Aodh and twins, Fiachra and Conn. After the birth of the twins, Aoibh died, causing great grief to Lir, though he was bolstered by his love for the four children. Bodb then sent another of his daughters, Aoife, to marry Lir, which he accepted happily. The children were a joy both to Lir and to Bodb.


title: Children of Lir

text: [14-18] After a short while, Aoife became jealous of the affection given to the four stepchildren, and she feigned illness for around a year. One day, she set out in her chariot with the four children, with design to kill them, and called her entourage to slay them, stating that because of them she had lost Lir's love, and promising them rich rewards. However, they would not help, so she drew a sword, but was not able to follow through with the act. Next she took them to Loch Dairbhreach and made them bathe, but once in the water, she cast a spell of metamorphosis in order to transform them into four white swans.


title: Children of Lir

text: [19-23] Fionnghuala rebuked her, stating that her magic power was not as great as that of their friends to undo the spell, and warned her of the revenge she would face — she asked her to set a limit on the time of the spell. She set a period of three hundred years as a swan on "Loch Dairbhreach"; three hundred more on "Sruth na Maoilé"; and three hundred at "Iorrus Domnann" and "Inis Gluairé". She also foretold that by expiration of the period of the spell, Lairgenn (the great-grandson of the King of Connacht), and Deoch (the great-granddaughter of the King of Munster) would be wed. Aoife relented a little and allowed the children to retain the power of speech, stating they would sing plaintive songs without equal, and that they would not be distressed by being in the forms of birds. Aoife then returned to Bodb's court — when he asked why the children were not with her, she claimed that Lir did not trust him with them, but Bodb was suspicious and sent messengers to Lir.


title: Children of Lir

text: [24-32] On receiving the messenger, Lir became sad, realising that Aoifé had done some harmful act. He then set out, and at the shores of "Loch Dairbhreach", he encountered the swans singing with human voices. They told him of Aoife's evil act, and Lir and his people lamented, though that night they stayed and listened to the swans' song. Lir reached Bodb, and told him of Aoifé's treachery. Bodb cursed her, saying her suffering would be greater than the children's, and asked what the worst form of being was that she could imagine — Aoifé stated a Demon of the air was the worst, and on this Bodh struck her with a druid's wand, metamorphosing her into such a demon, so she flew off and remained that way.


title: Children of Lir

text: [33-45] Bodb and the people of the De Danann went to Loch Dairbhreach and listened to the swans' singing. Milesians came too, and the music calmed and delighted all who heard it. After three hundred years the time came for the swans to go north to the cold Sruth na Maoilé. At this time it was proclaimed that no swan should be killed in Erin. At the Maoilé a cruel storm separated them, and though they eventually reunited their time there was wretched, with extremes of cold and weather to contend with, but they could not leave, as it was their lot to stay in the waters there.


title: Children of Lir

text: [46-52] Eventually the swans came across a company of the De Danann and of the Milesians who had been seeking them, led by Aodh and Fergus sons of Bodb - near the mouth of the Banna. The swans enquired and received good news about the De Danann, Lir, and Bodb. After the allotted time the swans then left for Iorrus Domhnann. There they encountered a young man who took an account of their adventures.


title: Children of Lir

text: [53-55] One night at Iorrus, the cold and weather became so intense that the waters froze, and the swans' feet froze to the ice. Because of their suffering they pleaded to the "King of Heaven" to ease the plight of birds, and having and professing faith in a "true God, perfect, truly intelligent" their pleading was heard, and from then they were protected from storms and bad weather. Eventually the time allotted to Iorrus Domhnann passed and they decided to go to "Sioth Fionnachaidh", where Lir lived.


title: Children of Lir

text: [56-61] However once there, they found it deserted, derelict, and overgrown. The next day they set off for "Inis Gluairé" — there many birds congregated around them at the lake. Eventually Saint Patrick and Christianity came to Ireland, and one day the holy man "Mochaomhóg" arrived at "Inis Gluairé" — the swans heard him ringing a bell calling matins, and became frightened at the sound. However Fionnghuala declared the sound of the bell would liberate them from the curse of the spell, and so they listened to it. When it finished they sang a song. The holy man heard their song, and discovered that it was swans that sang it. Speaking to them he asked if they were the Children of Lir, stating that he had travelled to that place for their sake.


title: Children of Lir

text: [62-66] The swans put their trust in the holy man, and allowed him to bind them with silver chains. The birds felt no fatigue or distress in their situation in the company of the monk. Eventually the account of the swans reached Deoch, the wife of Lairgnen, the King of Connacht — she asked him to get the swans for her. He sent messengers immediately but the monk Mochaomhóg refused, making Lairgnen angry. He went to Mochaimhóg himself, and attempted to grasp the swans, but on his touch the swans' feathers fell off revealing three very old men, and an old woman, all lean, and very bony. On this Lairgnen left.


title: Children of Lir

text: [67-70] Fionnghuala asked the monk to baptise them and to bury each, stating she sensed they were close to death. They were baptised, then died, and were buried. Mochaomhóg was sad for them. That was the fate of the children of Lir.


title: Wood gas generator

text: A wood gas generator is a gasification unit which converts timber or charcoal into wood gas, a producer gas consisting of atmospheric nitrogen, carbon monoxide, hydrogen, traces of methane, and other gases, which – after cooling and filtering – can then be used to power an internal combustion engine or for other purposes. Historically wood gas generators were often mounted on vehicles, but present studies and developments concentrate mostly on stationary plants.


title: Wood gas generator

text: Gasification was an important and common technology during the 19th and early 20th century. Town gas produced from coal was widely used, mainly for lighting purposes. When stationary internal combustion engines based on the Otto cycle became available in the 1870s, they began displacing steam engines as prime movers in many works requiring stationary motive power. Adoption accelerated after the Otto engine's patent expired in 1886. The potential and practical applicability of gasification to internal combustion engines were well understood from the earliest days of their development.


title: Wood gas generator

text: In 1873, Thaddeus S. C. Lowe developed and patented the water gas process by which large amounts of hydrogen gas could be generated for residential and commercial use in heating and lighting. Unlike the common coal gas, or coke gas which was used in municipal service, this gas provided a more efficient heating fuel.


title: Wood gas generator

text: During the late 19th century internal combustion engines were commonly fueled by town gas, and during the early 20th century many stationary engines switched to using producer gas created from coke which was substantially cheaper than town gas which was based on the distillation (pyrolysis) of more expensive coal.


title: Wood gas generator

text: During World War II, gasoline was rationed and in short supply. Due to the lack of gasoline from petroleum, older people recalled how to build gasifiers for both wood and coal, and how to convert internal combustion engines to run on gaseous fuel, and wood gas generators were in active production. In Great Britain, France, the United States and Germany, large numbers of such generators were constructed or improvised to convert wood and coal into fuel for vehicles. Commercial generators were in production before and after the war for use in special circumstances or in distressed economies. Some World War II era wood gas generators were of the "Imbert" downdraft type, designed around 1920 by French inventor Georges Imbert.


title: Wood gas generator

text: Germany produced Gazogene units for vehicles including cars, trucks, artillery tractors and even tanks, to preserve the limited supplies of fuel. Even in non-combatant countries, such as Sweden or Brazil, gasogene was popular, as oil became hard to obtain. In Brazil, a racer named Chico Landi won at São Paulo's Interlagos circuit in 1944, driving a wood gas-powered Alfa Romeo.


title: Wood gas generator

text: Coal-based town gas production was generally displaced by petroleum-based gas and natural gas. However, Great Britain continued her use of coal-based town gas until the North Sea natural gas discoveries in the 1960s and 1970s.


title: Wood gas generator

text: When oil prices rose there was renewed interest in wood gas generators. The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) published a book in March 1989 describing how to build a gas generator in an emergency when oil was not available. It described a design called the "stratified downdraft gasifier" which solves several drawbacks of earlier types.


title: Wood gas generator

text: The European Union sponsored a wood gas project in Güssing, Austria, starting in 2005. This project was an electric power plant with a wood gas generator and a gas engine to convert the wood gas into 2 MW electric power and 4.5 MW heat. There was also an experimental device to use the Fischer–Tropsch process to convert wood gas to a diesel-like fuel. By October 2005, it was possible to convert 5 kg of wood into 1 litre of fuel.


title: Wood gas generator

text: The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) is also known to have trucks that run off of wood gas generators. The trucks are common outside of Pyongyang and are in rural villages and smaller towns. These trucks are utilized due to sanctions placed on North Korea regarding imports of oil and gas.


title: Wood gas generator

text: There is a rich literature on gas-works, town-gas, gas-generation, wood-gas, and producer gas, that is now in the public domain due to its age.


title: Wood gas generator

text: Most successful wood gas generators in use in Europe and the United States are some variation of the earlier Imbert design. Wood gas generators often use wood; however, charcoal can also be used as a fuel. It is denser and produces a cleaner gas without the tarry volatiles and excessive water content of wood.


title: Wood gas generator

text: The FEMA wood gas generator is (by definition of the FEMA manual) an emergency gasifier. It is designed to be rapidly assembled in a true fuel crisis. This simplified design has distinct benefits over the earlier European units such as easier refueling and construction but is less popular than the earlier Imbert design because of significant new problems, which include a lack of a fixed oxidization zone and allows the oxidization zone to creep to a larger area, causing a drop in temperature; a lower operating temperature leads to tar production and it lacks a true reduction zone further increasing this design's propensity to produce tar. Tar in the wood gas stream is considered a dirty gas and tar will gum up a motor quickly, possibly leading to stuck valves and rings.


title: Wood gas generator

text: A new design known as the Keith gasifier improves on the FEMA unit, incorporating extensive heat recovery and eliminating the tar problem. Testing at Auburn University has shown it to be 37% more efficient than running gasoline. This system set the world speed record for biomass powered vehicles and has made several cross country tours.


title: Wood gas generator

text: The United Nations produced the FOA 72 document with details about their wood gas generator design and construction, as does World Bank technical paper 296.


title: Wood gas generator

text: When not carefully designed and used, there exists considerable potential for injury or death due to wood gas containing a large percentage of poisonous carbon monoxide (CO) gas. Wood gasifiers of proven design and thoroughly tested construction are considered safe to use outdoors, or in a partially enclosed space, for example, under a shelter open to the air on two sides; they may also be considered relatively safe to use in an extremely well ventilated (e.g. negative pressure) indoor area not connected to any indoor area used for sleeping, equipped with redundant (more than 1), completely independent, battery-powered, regularly tested carbon-monoxide gas detectors. However, prudence must dictate that any sort of experimental wood gasifier design or new construction be thoroughly tested outdoors, and only outdoors, with a "buddy" at all times, and with constant vigilance for any sign of headache, drowsiness, or nausea, as these are the first symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning.


title: Wood gas generator

text: In addition, mixtures of excessive quantities of air and gas should be avoided as this could lead to the deflagration (explosion) of the gas in question if a combustion source is present. Long-term storage of wood-gas, except through the use of a gasholder-type water-displacement apparatus, should not be attempted, due to the volatile elements present in the gas, which, if allowed to excessively precipitate, will condense in the storage vessel. Under no circumstances should wood-gas ever be compressed to more than above ambient, as this may induce condensation of volatiles, as well as lead to the likelihood of severe injury or death due to carbon monoxide or deflagration if the vessel leaks or fails.


title: Wood gas generator

text: In 2008, an example of designing and constructing a working wood gas generator powered truck was shown on the National Geographic Channel's "Planet Mechanics" in the eighth episode, "Tree Powered Car".


title: Wood gas generator

text: In 2009, another example of designing and constructing a working wood gas powered generator engine was in the TV series "The Colony" in the second episode of the first season "Power Struggle". Also used in the tenth episode "Exodus" to power an escape vehicle.


title: Wood gas generator

text: A 2010, Mother Earth News article discussed and showed pictures of a wood gas powered engine installed in a pickup truck.


title: Wood gas generator

text: As part of the BBC science series "Bang Goes The Theory", a Volkswagen Scirocco was converted to a design by Martin Bacon to run on used coffee grounds, and after its build in 2010 was driven solely on coffee from London to Manchester successfully. Part of the team are now working on a more advanced design leaning towards top speed as opposed to range.


title: Wood gas generator

text: On September 14, 2011, at the Bonneville Salt Flats a truck modified with a wood gas powered engine set a new world speed record for vehicles powered by wood gas with a speed of 73 mph.


title: Wood gas generator

text: On the popular US radio program "Car Talk", a caller in episode 1201 (which aired on January 7, 2012, and was subsequently named "20 Miles Per Woodchip"), described a wood gas generating vehicle he rode in as a boy during World War II in Germany. The hosts were not familiar with the technology, likely because it was never widely adopted in the US.


title: Wood gas generator

text: On March 12, 2012, on a season 2 episode of Doomsday Preppers, a wood gas generator is shown running a Ford truck and a house electric generator by prepper Scott Hunt on his multi-acre woodland property in South Carolina.


title: Wood gas generator

text: Serbian TV sitcom "Truckdrivers 2" (="Kamiondzije II") from 1983. talks, as a part of plot, about a gas generator affixed to a chassis of a lorry.


title: Wood gas generator

text: An article appeared in Mother Earth News in April 2012 featuring the Keith gasifier, showing pictures and talking with inventor Wayne Keith.


title: Wood gas generator

text: In the BBC documentary Wartime Farm, Episode 5 (aired October 2012) they built a coal gas powered ambulance according to the specifications of a 1943 gas powered vehicle.


title: Wood gas generator

text: In Season 3 Of Mountain Men On The History Channel, Eustice Conway is shown operating a wood gasified Toyota pickup for hauling goods


title: Wood gas generator

text: The Finnish prime minister Juha Sipilä has received some media attention also for the wood gas powered car he built as a hobby prior to his political career.


title: Wood gas generator

text: The "El Kamina", model year 1987 Chevrolet El Camino, is the fastest wood-gas powered car, 140 km/h, 87 mph.


title: Wood gas generator

text: There are only a few companies that produce wood gasifier systems commercially. A list can be found here below. Since wood gas systems have the tendency of being rather large, most focus on stationary applications (electricity production). Some may be suitable for building into vehicles though.


title: Ryan Moloney

text: Ryan Moloney (born 24 November 1979) is an Australian actor, known for his portrayal of the fictional character Jarrod "Toadfish" Rebecchi in the Australian soap opera "Neighbours" since 1995.


title: Ryan Moloney

text: Moloney's first acting experience was with the Merilyn Brend Children's Teenagers and Adults Theatre Company in outer-eastern Melbourne when he was ten years old. He starred in their youth repertory production of "The Purple Pumpernickel". His first role in a feature film was playing a thug in "Say a Little Prayer" (1993), based on the Robin Klein novel "Came Back to Show You I Could Fly".


title: Ryan Moloney

text: Moloney initially auditioned for the role of Brett Stark in "Neighbours". He did not get the role but later appeared as a one-off character named Cyborg in 1994. He was later recalled to play Jarrod "Toadfish" Rebecchi, brother of established character Kevin "Stonefish" Rebecchi. This was a one-scene role, which aired on January 23, 1995. This became a recurring guest role and as the character proved popular it became a regular role in 1996. In April 2004 he was nominated for a Golden Rose of Montreux award for Best Actor in a Soap for his work in "Neighbours".


title: Ryan Moloney

text: In 2012, Moloney made an appearance on "Big Brother's Bit on the Side". That same year, he appeared with his former "Neighbours" co-star, Mark Little, in an episode of "Celebrity Wedding Planner" broadcast on 3 September 2012.


title: Ryan Moloney

text: In 2013 Moloney appeared on "Celebrity Big Brother" broadcast on Channel 5. He finished in third place. Ryan stated in an interview with Lorraine KellyShortly into it, I watched some footage that they had shot and edited in a particular way and I realised that I couldn't actually be myself in there because they can edit it however they want. And the fact that I got to protect the Neighbours brand. But in terms of an experience, it was a crazy experience. It was a one-in-a-lifetime experience.


title: Ryan Moloney

text: Moloney subsequently took up the roles of Jack in "Dick Whittington" at Dunstable's Grove Theatre in 2013 and Buttons in "Cinderella" at the Stag Theatre in Sevenoaks in 2014. He appeared in a documentary special celebrating "Neighbours" 30th anniversary titled "", which aired in Australia and the UK in March 2015.


title: Ryan Moloney

text: Moloney has filmed a part in the upcoming film titled ""Residence"", playing Cyril the King. Following the cancellation of "Neighbours" in 2022, Moloney featured in "The Masked Singer".


title: Ryan Moloney

text: Moloney is married to Alison Hayward and the couple have two children, Erin Moloney and Jack Moloney.


title: Ryan Moloney

text: Moloney is an active patron of the Down Syndrome Association of Victoria, and has been involved with the Victorian Police Department's Films For Schools Youth project. He also participates in the Forgotten Children Rescue Foundation charity.


title: Ryan Moloney

text: In 2010, Moloney became a spokesman for weight loss company Lite and Easy, successfully losing 17 kg in 13 weeks. He also competed in the St. George Melbourne Marathon, completing the race in the official time of 03:46:32.


title: Ryan Moloney

text: In early 2011, Moloney revealed that he was training to be a pilot. He took on the hobby in between filming for "Neighbours" and aims to fly commercial planes in the future.


title: Ryan Moloney

text: Moloney was best known in the early days of his Neighbours career for sporting loud shirts, a mullet hairstyle and later a curly ponytail.


title: Grape Street Watts Crips

text: The Grape Street Watts Crips is a Crip subset based in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. The gang's rivalry with the Bounty Hunter Bloods has been described as being "the most violent and long lasting feud between two gangs that are in the Watts area."


title: Grape Street Watts Crips

text: Brandon "BL" Bullard, a veteran of the Grape Street Watts Crips, was murdered by the East Coast Crips in 2008. The murder of Bullard sparked a war that resulted in 26 wounded and 9 dead in the six weeks that followed.


title: Tenko (TV series)

text: Tenko is a television drama series co-produced by the BBC and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), which was broadcast between 1981 and 1985.


title: Tenko (TV series)

text: The series dealt with the experiences of British, Australian and Dutch women who were captured after the Fall of Singapore in February 1942, after the Japanese invasion, and held in a fictional Japanese internment camp on a Japanese-occupied island between Singapore and Australia. Having been separated from their husbands, herded into makeshift holding camps and largely forgotten by the British War Office, the women had to learn to cope with appalling living conditions, malnutrition, disease, violence and death.


title: Tenko (TV series)

text: "Tenko" was created by Lavinia Warner after she had conducted research into the internment of nursing corps officer Margot Turner (1910–1993) for an edition of "This Is Your Life" and was convinced of the dramatic potential of the stories of women prisoners of the Japanese. Aside from the first two episodes, set in Singapore, which were written by Paul Wheeler, the series was written by Jill Hyem and Anne Valery. War hero and prisoner of war Margaret Thomson was consulted about the series but she did not like to talk about her experiences and never watched the programmes.


title: Tenko (TV series)

text: Owing to high production costs, only the first two episodes of the first series were filmed on location in Singapore, together with the post series reunion extended episode. For the majority of series 1 and 2, set in the camp, the programme was filmed in a specially constructed set in Dorset. Hankley Common was also used.


title: Tenko (TV series)

text: The series takes its name from the Japanese word "tenko" (点呼/てんこ) which means "roll-call". POWs and internees in Japanese-run camps had regular roll-calls, where they had to line up and number off or were counted in Japanese.


title: Tenko (TV series)

text: A total of thirty episodes were produced over three series between 1981 and 1984, followed by a one-off special (which was twice the length of the other episodes), "Tenko Reunion", in 1985. Only Ann Bell, Stephanie Cole and Claire Oberman appeared in all thirty episodes plus the reunion.


title: Tenko (TV series)

text: The first series depicts the fall of Singapore to the invading Japanese forces in 1942, and the abortive evacuation of civilians from the city. A group of British and Dutch women find themselves forced to cope with captivity in a Japanese internment camp. They also must find a way to live together as a community, breaking down the barriers of class and race between them, if they are to survive.


title: Tenko (TV series)

text: Marion Jefferson is enlisted as the leader of the women due to her husband being a colonel. Sylvia Ashburton learns to see past race when she begins to bond with Christina Campbell. Dorothy Bennet suffers the loss of her infant daughter, Violet, due to malnutrition. A pregnant Sally Markham suffers the tragedy of stillbirth. Sally then grows close to nurse Nellie Keane, and rumours begin to circulate about their intimacy.


title: Tenko (TV series)

text: In the last episode of the series, the women celebrate Christmas before being marched through the jungle to another camp.


title: Tenko (TV series)

text: The second series continues with the women marching through the jungle and being split up before they arrive at a new camp, an old mission school, on New Year's Day 1943. Tensions arise as the internees are forced to adhere to the new regime implemented by the strict and fierce official interpreter, Miss Hasan.


title: Tenko (TV series)

text: After a joyous reunion with old friend, Lillian, Marion is forced to take a backseat as the women's official leader in favour of the overbearing wolf in sheep's clothing, Verna Johnson. Sally sinks into depression following the death of her husband and vows to take her own life. Dorothy continues to trade favours with the guards, teaching English to Shinya in exchange for cigarettes and later discovers that she is pregnant. Sister Ulrica vows to not speak in order to repent for her feelings of hate towards the Japanese. Blanche returns later in the series, as does Yamauchi, as he is promoted to Major and becomes the new commander. Rose escapes to meet Bernard but they are caught when one of the women informs Yamauchi.


title: Tenko (TV series)

text: As conditions in the camp worsen, the women take a stand against Verna and Mrs. Hasan but they are prevented from exposing them when an allied plane bombs the camp.


title: Tenko (TV series)

text: The third series is set during 1945. The Second World War is over as the Japanese have surrendered. The survivors of the camps are liberated by Allied troops and travel to Singapore. Billeted at Raffles, the women are free. However, peacetime only brings further dilemmas for the women as they struggle to forge new futures in an uncertain new world.


title: Tenko (TV series)

text: Marion struggles as she assumes the role of the "colonel's wife" which causes friction between Clifford and herself. Joss strikes up a relationship with Stephen. Maggie and Dorothy become embroiled in a love triangle with the handsome rogue, Jake.


title: Tenko (TV series)

text: Set in 1950, Marion organises for the women to reunite in Singapore five years after their liberation from the camp. After an evening at Raffles, the women plan to continue their celebrations the following day at the residence of 'Metro Goldwyn' van Meyer but they are interrupted by the infiltration from mercenaries in search of weapons and ammunition, leading to a shocking revelation about one of the women.


title: Tenko (TV series)

text: All three series plus the Reunion Special were released in one DVD box-set in 2011 through Acorn Media UK.


title: Tenko (TV series)

text: Three paperback books were published in the 1980s. One covering the first series, titled Tenko, while a second called Last Tenko, covered the second and final series. The third book, written by Anne Valery, covered the Reunion.


title: Tenko (TV series)

text: A book about the making of Tenko called "Remembering Tenko" by Andy Priestner was published in October 2012.


title: New York Cosmos (1970–1985)

text: The New York Cosmos (simply the Cosmos in 1977–1978) were an American professional soccer club based in New York City and its suburbs. The team played home games in three stadiums around New York, including Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, before moving in 1977 to Giants Stadium in nearby East Rutherford, New Jersey, where it remained for the rest of its history.


title: New York Cosmos (1970–1985)

text: Founded in December 1970, the team competed in the North American Soccer League (NASL) until 1984 and was the strongest franchise in that league, both competitively and financially – based largely around its backing by Warner Communications President Steve Ross, which enabled it to sign internationally famous stars such as the Brazilian forward Pelé, Italian striker Giorgio Chinaglia and the West German sweeper Franz Beckenbauer. The acquisition of these foreign players, particularly Pelé, made the Cosmos into what journalist Gavin Newsham called "the most glamorous team in world football", and contributed to the development of soccer across the United States, a country where it had previously been largely ignored.


title: New York Cosmos (1970–1985)

text: As the Cosmos declined following Pelé's retirement, so did the NASL. Attendances fell, the league's television deal was lost, and it finally folded in 1985 after playing its last season in 1984. The Cosmos attempted to continue operations in the Major Indoor Soccer League, but attendances were so low that the club withdrew without completing a season. The team attempted an independent schedule in 1985, but also canceled that because of low attendance. The Cosmos folded, though the team's youth camps continued to operate under the Cosmos name and label, run by the franchise's former general manager, G. Peppe Pinton.


title: New York Cosmos (1970–1985)

text: The Cosmos name remained very well known, even after it stopped competing. Numerous attempts were made to revive it during the 1990s and 2000s, most notably as a Major League Soccer (MLS) club. Seeking to retain the Cosmos' heritage, Pinton refused to sell the name and image rights, believing that MLS would not honor them. Following a change of attitude by MLS towards the NASL's legacy and the revival of several former NASL names, Pinton sold the rights to an international, English-based consortium in August 2009. A new Cosmos team started playing in the second-tier North American Soccer League during the fall 2013 season.


title: New York Cosmos (1970–1985)

text: The club was founded in December 1970 by Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun, renowned executives at Atlantic Records, whose parent company Warner Communications acquired the Cosmos in April 1972. The team's first recruit was the Englishman Clive Toye, a former sportswriter who had moved to the United States in 1967 to become general manager of the short-lived Baltimore Bays; he was given the same post in New York. Toye sought to convey the new team's ambitions within its name, and reasoned that he could outdo the "Metropolitans" label referenced by the then-nine-year-old New York Mets baseball team by calling his team the "Cosmos", shortened from "Cosmopolitans". However, the owners preferred other possible names: the Erteguns wished to use the name originally suggested by Nesuhi, the "New York Blues"; and another part of the ownership group wanted to adopt the name "New York Lovers". Toye then staged a rigged "name the team" contest, receiving 3,000 entries and selecting one that just happened to match his pre-determined winner. Two NYC teachers, Meyer Diller and Al Capelli, from Martin Van Buren High School in Queens, entered the contest and submitted the name "Cosmos". The two physical education teachers had independently used Toye's method of deriving it from "cosmopolitan". The two men were awarded a trip to Europe as a prize. The team name was officially unveiled on February 4, 1971.


title: New York Cosmos (1970–1985)

text: The New York Cosmos entered the 1968-founded North American Soccer League (NASL) in 1970 and made their field debut in the league's fourth season in 1971. The first roster signing of the club was Gordon Bradley, an English professional who had moved to North America in 1963 and played for the New York Generals in 1968. He was made player-coach, a position he would hold until 1975. Bradley's team finished second in its division in its first year, playing at Yankee Stadium, home of the New York Yankees baseball team and the New York Giants football team. Randy Horton, from Bermuda, was named the league's Rookie of the Year after scoring 16 goals and 37 points, the most by any New York player. In 1972, the team moved to Hofstra Stadium where they won their first league title with a 2–1 victory over the St. Louis Stars. Horton was the league's top scorer and Most Valuable Player, with 9 goals and 22 points from the 14 regular-season games and two post-season matches. The Cosmos reached the play-offs once more in 1973, but were knocked out at the semi-final stage. Bradley coached the United States national team for six games during 1973—picking himself in one, despite not being an American citizen—but lost them all. Before the 1974 season, the Cosmos moved again, settling at Downing Stadium. In their first year at their new base, they finished bottom of their division. Horton top scored for the Cosmos in every season before he was traded in 1975 to the Washington Diplomats.


title: New York Cosmos (1970–1985)

text: It was during the 1975 season that the Cosmos acquired the Brazilian star Pelé, whom they had been attempting to sign since the team was created. Ross had apparently not heard of him before getting involved in soccer, but agreed to finance the transfer when Toye compared the Brazilian's popularity to that of the Pope. Pelé joined the Cosmos on June 10, 1975 on a salary of $1.4 million per year, an enormous wage for an athlete at that time. A number of contracts—only one of which mentioned soccer—were set up for Pelé to ensure that he paid the lowest amount of tax possible, including one as a "recording artist" with Warner subsidiary Atlantic Records. "We owned him lock, stock and barrel," Toye retrospectively boasted. They also signed Mike Dillon in 1975.


title: New York Cosmos (1970–1985)

text: The Pelé deal was later described by Gavin Newsham, an English writer, as "the transfer coup of the century". His arrival turned the Cosmos from a motley crew of foreigners, semi-professionals and students into a huge commercial presence. The club's groundsman, on hearing that the Brazilian's début for New York was to be broadcast on CBS, spray-painted the pitch green to disguise how little grass was on it: the match, against the Dallas Tornado, was broadcast to 22 countries and covered by more than 300 journalists from all over the world.


title: New York Cosmos (1970–1985)

text: Although New York finished third at season end, it was still too low a placing to reach the post-season. Bradley was replaced for the 1976 season by another Englishman, Ken Furphy, who paired Pelé up front with Italian international forward Giorgio Chinaglia, a new arrival from S.S. Lazio. He had been so popular at Lazio that when his move to New York was announced, supporters "threatened to throw themselves beneath the wheels of the plane". By contrast to most of the overseas stars bought by NASL teams, Chinaglia was signed in his prime. He played for the Cosmos for the rest of their history, scoring a record number of goals and points not only for the Cosmos, but for the entire league. He shared an unusual personal bond with the club's ultimate controller, Ross, and was therefore treated differently from the other players, including Pelé.


title: New York Cosmos (1970–1985)

text: Crowds rose with the arrival of these and other European and South American international players, resulting in a move back to Yankee Stadium for the 1976 season. With numerous foreign stars arriving at the Cosmos, the team's competitive performance improved, as New York reached the play-offs at the end of the season, but lost in the divisional championship match to the Tampa Bay Rowdies. The Cosmos relocated again before the 1977 season, to the newly constructed Giants Stadium in New Jersey, and at the same time dropped the prefix "New York" and played simply as "the Cosmos", without a geographical name. The city name was restored in 1979.


title: New York Cosmos (1970–1985)

text: Bradley returned as coach for the 1977 season in place of the dismissed Furphy, but was removed after half of the season to become the club's vice-president of player personnel. South African-born former Italy international Eddie Firmani took his place. Pelé played his last professional match on October 1, 1977, in front of a capacity crowd at Giants Stadium: in an exhibition match between New York and his former club Santos, Pelé appeared for both sides, playing one half for each. The Cosmos won the game 2–1. Pelé's compatriot, former Brazil captain Carlos Alberto was signed in 1977, at the same time as Franz Beckenbauer, who had captained the 1974 FIFA World Cup-winning West German national team. On the field, New York won three out of four championships, in 1977, 1978 and 1980. A playoff game against the Fort Lauderdale Strikers in 1977 drew a crowd of 77,691, a record for American club soccer. The team's average attendances, regularly over 40,000 during the late 1970s, were the biggest in the league; this helped it to become regarded as the league's "marquee club", both commercially and competitively. Firmani was fired in 1979; he claimed, after falling out with Chinaglia. His assistant, Ray Klivecka, replaced him, becoming the team's first American-born coach. He lasted a season before himself being replaced by Júlio Mazzei.


title: New York Cosmos (1970–1985)

text: On Pelé's farewell tour in 1977, the Cosmos made history by becoming the first Western professional soccer team to play in China. They drew their opening match with the Chinese national team 1-1, and lost the second game 2-1 despite Pelé scoring a free kick.


title: New York Cosmos (1970–1985)

text: After the retirement of Pelé in 1977, much of the progress that American soccer had made during his stay was lost; there was no star at the same level to replace him as the NASL's headline act. After enduring briefly during the late 1970s, attendances dropped after 1980. The sport's popularity fell and the media lost interest. The deal with broadcaster ABC to broadcast NASL matches was also lost in 1980, and the 1981 Soccer Bowl was only shown on tape delay. All of the franchises quickly became unprofitable, and a salary cap enforced before the 1984 season only delayed the inevitable. The league folded at the end of 1984, following the loss of most of its franchises.