title: Dhandayuthapani Temple

text: Besides regular services, days sacred to the god Subrahmanyan are celebrated with pomp and splendour every year, and are attended by throngs of devotees from all over the world. Some of these festivals are the "Thai-Poosam", the "Panguni-Uthiram", the "Vaikhashi-Vishakham" and the "Sura-Samharam". Thai-Poosam, which is considered, by far, the most important festival at Palani, is celebrated on the full moon day of the Tamil Month of "Thai" (15 January-15 February). Vaiyaapuri nattu Pattakkarar Muthukaali Tharagan gothram pangaalis of Sengunthar Kaikola Mudaliyar have rights to give festival flag for this temple. Because these people are Genealogy of Navaveerargal who helped lord Murugan in surasamharam battle. Pilgrims after first having taken a strict vow of abstinence, come barefoot, by walk, from distant towns and villages. Many pilgrims also bring a litter of wood, called a "Kāvadi", borne on their shoulders, in commemoration of the act of the demon Hidumba who is credited by legend with bringing the two hills of Palani to their present location, slung upon his shoulders in a similar fashion. Others bring pots of sanctified water, known as "theertha-kāvadi", for the priests to conduct the "abhishekam" on the holy day. Traditionally, the most honoured of the pilgrims, whose arrival is awaited with anticipation by all and sundry, are the people of Karaikudi, who bring with them the diamond-encrusted "vél" or javelin, of the Lord from His temple at Karaikudi.


title: Dhandayuthapani Temple

text: The temple is open from 6.00 a.m. to 8.00 p.m. On festival days the temple opens at 4.30 a.m. There are six poojas performed in the temple, namely, the "Vilaa" pooja at 6.30 a.m., Siru Kall pooja at 8.00 a.m., Kaala Santhi at 9.00 a.m., Utchikkala Pooja at 12.00 noon, Raja Alankaram at 5.30 p.m., Iraakkaala pooja at 8.00 p.m. The Golden Car can be viewed at 6.30 p.m.


title: Dhandayuthapani Temple

text: Temple Golden chariot was first introduced in This temple. Palani Murugan Golden Chariot was donated by V.V.C.R.Murugesa Mudaliar of Sengunthar Kaikola Mudaliyar(Pullikkarar Gothram) from Erode on 17.8.1947. This chariot was made using 4.73 kg of gold 63 kg of silver and diamonds.


title: Dhandayuthapani Temple

text: The original idol of the presiding deity is believed to have been made by Bogar Siddhar using nine highly toxic herbs(navapasanam), which could kill people with its very presence (or close contact). Over the years, some believe that the idol has been wearing away or dissolving, by virtue of its repeated anointment and ritual bathing. However, long-time devotees and priests of the temple maintain that they perceive no visible change. Since Hinduism forbids the worship of an imperfect idol, suggestions have been made, at various points of time, to replace it, cover it, or stop some of the rituals, which could have resulted in its erosion. A new 100 kg idol was consecrated on 27 January 2004, but coming under severe criticism from orthodox believers, was displaced and worship of the existing idol restored, shortly thereafter. During the regime of M.G. Ramachandran, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu during 1984, attempts were made to replace the idol and also during the first tenure of J. Jayalalithaa during 1994. Both the attempts were withdrawn along with the latest attempt during 2002. The ablution and anointment has been limited to festive days on account of the cracks in the idol of the presiding deity.


title: Dhandayuthapani Temple

text: In 2003 the temple officials decided to make an idol weighing 200 kg, and chief sculptor Muthiah was roped in. They ended up making a 221 kg idol. Besides, while several kilos of gold were collected to make the idol, this was not found in it when the idol wing police tested it with the help of a team from IIT Madras. The Idol Wing – CID police, which had inquired into irregularities behind making a metal idol in 2004, confirmed on 07/07/2019 that the new idol had been made with the larger ploy of smuggling the 5,000-year-old presiding deity out of the country.


title: Dhandayuthapani Temple

text: Arunagirinathar was a 15th-century Tamil poet born in Tiruvannamalai. He spent his early years as a rioter and womanizer. After ruining his health and reputation, he tried to commit suicide by throwing himself from the northern tower of Annamalaiyar Temple, but was saved by the grace of god Murugan. He became a staunch devotee and composed Tamil hymns glorifying Murugan, the most notable being "Thirupugazh". Arunagirinathar visited various Murugan temples and on his way back to Tiruvannamalai, visited Palani and sung praises about Murugan of this temple. He sung the highest number of Thiruppugazh dedicated to this temple. Palani temple is one of the Six Abodes of Murugan and considered the most prominent abodes of Muruga.


title: President of Nepal

text: The president of Nepal () is the head of state of Nepal and the commander-in-chief of the Nepalese Armed Forces.


title: President of Nepal

text: The president is indirectly elected by an electoral college comprising the Federal Parliament of Nepal and the provincial assemblies of each of Nepal's seven provinces, who themselves are all directly elected.


title: President of Nepal

text: The office was created in May 2008 after the country was declared a republic. The first president of Nepal was Ram Baran Yadav. The current president is Bidhya Devi Bhandari, who was first elected in October 2015. She is the first female head of state of Nepal. The president is formally addressed as "The Right Honourable" ().


title: President of Nepal

text: Under the interim constitution adopted in January 2007, all powers of governance were removed from the King of Nepal, and the Nepalese Constituent Assembly elected in the 2008 Constituent Assembly election was to decide in its first meeting whether to continue the monarchy or to declare a republic. During the suspension of the monarchy, Girija Prasad Koirala, then Prime Minister of Nepal, acted as the Head of State. On 28 May 2008, the Assembly voted to abolish the monarchy. Ram Baran Yadav was elected by a historic vote in the Constituent Assembly, and was sworn in as the nation's first president, ending a 247-year-old monarchy.


title: President of Nepal

text: Part 6, Article 64 of the Constitution of Nepal 2015 sets the following qualifications for holding the presidency:


title: President of Nepal

text: The election process of the president of Nepal as per Part 6, Article 62 of the constitution is as follows:


title: President of Nepal

text: Part 6, Article 70 states that the election of president and vice president should be conducted in a manner so as to represent different gender and/or communities. This allows for representation of female and minority communities at the nation's two highest offices.


title: President of Nepal

text: The presidential term is five years. A president cannot be elected more than twice in succession. However, a president whose term has expired can remain in office on an interim basis until his or her successor is elected and sworn in.


title: President of Nepal

text: The circumstances under which the President ceases to hold office as per Part 6, Article 64 of the constitution is as follows:


title: President of Nepal

text: The president's powers are almost entirely ceremonial. In some parliamentary republics, the president is vested with executive powers on paper, but is bound by convention to act on the advice of the prime minister and the government. In Nepal, however, the president is not even the "nominal" chief executive, as Section 75 of the Constitution explicitly vests executive power in the Council of Ministers


title: President of Nepal

text: Part 6, Article 61, Section 4 of the constitution states that the president is the guardian of the constitution; and compliance and protection of the constitution shall be the main duties of the President. The basic functions, duties and powers of the President are outlined by Part 6, Article 66 of the constitution:


title: President of Nepal

text: The president uses the state carrier, Nepal Airlines' Airbus A330-200 for international travel, whereas a Nepal Army's VIP AgustaWestland AW139 helicopter for travel within the country.


title: President of Nepal

text: The following is a list of the heads of state of Nepal, from the unification of the country and the establishment of the Kingdom of Nepal in 1768 to the present day.


title: President of Nepal

text: The King of Nepal was the country's head of state from the unification and the establishment of the kingdom in 1768 to 2008. Since 2008, the head of state has been the President of Nepal after the abolition of monarchy and the establishment of a republic.


title: President of Nepal

text: Under the interim constitution adopted in January 2007, all powers of governance were removed from the king, and the Constituent Assembly elected in 2008 was to decide in its first meeting whether to continue the monarchy or to declare a republic. During the suspension of the monarchy, Girija Prasad Koirala, then Prime Minister of Nepal, acted as the Head of State. On 28 May 2008, the Assembly voted to abolish the monarchy. Ram Baran Yadav was elected by the Constituent Assembly, and was sworn in as the nation's first president on 23 July 2008.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: Carrollton is a city in Dallas, Denton, and Collin counties in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 census, its population was 133,434, making it the 23rd-most populous city in Texas.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: The area was first settled by Jared Ford in 1842 by William and Mary Larner on a site within the Peters Colony grant. In 1844, the A. W. Perry family claimed land in the area around Trinity Mills where, in partnership with Wade H. Witt, a mill was established.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: The English colony, a group of families in the northeastern area of settlement which crossed into Denton County, was home to large landowners including the Furneaux, Jackson, Morgan, and Rowe families. It is most likely that Carrollton was named for Carrollton, Illinois, the original home of many of these settlers.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: Early on, Carrollton's livelihood was exclusively agricultural, but following the construction of the Dallas-Wichita Railroad through Trinity Mills in 1878, the community began to grow in its industrial significance. Carrollton's significance was further strengthened when the railroad was extended to Denton in 1880 by Jay Gould, who sold the line to the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad (the Katy) in 1881. By 1885, Carrollton had flour mills, cotton gins, two churches, a school, and a population of 150. The St. Louis Southwestern Railway (the "Cotton Belt") crossed the Katy in 1888, and the town became a shipping center for livestock, cotton, cotton seed, and grain, helping the town surpass Trinity Mills to the north.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: In 1913 Carrollton was officially incorporated, and W.F. Vinson was elected mayor. A gravel industry that began in Carrollton in 1912 transformed the city, by the late 1940s, to a "grain and gravel" town. The city also supported a brick plant and a dairy industry, and National Metal Products established itself in the city in 1946.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: After World War II the city grew rapidly. In 1950 its population stood at 1,610, and it grew to 4,242 in 1960 and 13,855 in 1970. At this point, significant suburban growth began spilling out of north Dallas, and the city grew tremendously between 1970 and 1980, with a documented growth of 193% to 40,595 inhabitants. By 1983, the population was 52,000, by 1990, it had reached 82,169, and by 2010 the population had grown to 119,097.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: As a suburb of Dallas, in 2006 named to America's "Top 100 Places to Live" by Relocate America. Also in 2006, it was selected as the 19th best place to live in the United States by "Money" magazine. In 2008 it was named by "Money" magazine the 15th best place to live among small cities.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: In 1996 there was a successful recall of Mayor Gary Blanscet and council members Linda Caldwell, Bernis Francis, Stan Hampton, Bob Novinsky, Bert Colter & Stan Sewell. All were removed from office and replaced in a special election.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: According to the United States Census Bureau, Carrollton has a total area of , of which is land and , or 2.19%, is water. Carrollton is located in portions of three counties: Dallas, Denton, and Collin.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: On average, the warmest month is July. The highest recorded temperature was 112 °F in 1980. The average coolest month is January. The lowest recorded temperature was 1 °F in 1989. The most precipitation on average occurs in May. Carrollton is considered to have a humid subtropical climate.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: In 1920, Carrollton had a population of 573; since then, its population has experienced positive growth as a suburb of the city of Dallas. In 2010, its population was 119,097, becoming the 23rd-most populous city in Texas. Retaining its position as the 23rd-most populous Texas city at the publication of the 2020 census and 2020 American Community Survey, 133,434 people, 49,675 households, and 34,141 families resided in the city.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: With a 2010 population density of 3,209.8 people per square mile (1,239.3/km), the city had a median age of 37.8 in 2020 and for every 100 females there were 94.6 males. Among its population in 2020, 5.2% were under 5 years of age, 21.2% under 18 years of age, and 78.8% aged 18 and older; approximately 11.6% of the population were aged 65 and older per the American Community Survey's 5-year estimates.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: At the 2010 census, the median income for a household in the city was $70,960 and the median income for a family was $68,672. The per capita income for the city was $26,746. About 4.1% of families and 5.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 7.4% of those under age 18 and 6.3% of those age 65 or over. By 2020, the median household income increased to $82,345; families had a median income of $95,235; married-couple families $105,361; and non-family households $58,811. An estimated 6.5% of the population lived at or below the poverty line from 2015 to 2020, and 77% of the population are employed by private companies.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: Like much of the continually diversifying United States, Carrollton was once a predominantly non-Hispanic white community. With continued immigration and birth rates among traditional minorities, Carrollton's population became more racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse; according to the 2010 census, the racial makeup of the city was 63.6% White, 8.4% Black or African American, 0.6% American Indian and Alaska Native, 13.4% Asian, 0.03% Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, 10.8% some other race, and 3.1% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino Americans of any race were 30.0% of the population. Since the 2020 census, non-Hispanic whites have made up 37.42% of the population, with Hispanic or Latino Americans increasing to 31.68% of the population. Black or African Americans were 9.84% of the population, and Asian Americans grew to 16.76% of the population. Pacific Islanders and people of other races made up a constituent minority of 0.07% and 0.4% each, and multiracial Americans increased to 3.53% of the population.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: As a suburb of Dallas, the city of Carrollton has sustained its own economic identity with the growing metropolitan area within North Texas. Most notably, Carrollton has become the headquarters for FASTSIGNS International, Inc., Halliburton's Easywell in Carrollton, Heelys, Inc., Jokari, Motel 6 (G6 Hospitality), SECURUS Technologies, and Woot Inc. (Subsidiary of Amazon).


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: Carrollton is home to the largest Korean community in Texas and the southern United States. Koreatown Carrollton, located at the intersection of Old Denton Road and President George Bush Turnpike, is home to a large number of Asian restaurants and businesses further stimulating the local and regional economies.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: According to the city's 2018 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the city's various funds had $150,984,518 in revenue, $151,204,878 in expenditures, $529,903,760 in total assets, $265,901,182 in total liabilities, and $177,408,987 in cash and investments.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: Carrollton is a voluntary member of the North Central Texas Council of Governments association, the purpose of which is to coordinate individual and collective local governments and facilitate regional solutions, eliminate unnecessary duplication, and enable joint decisions.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: Carrollton has a city council that consists of seven members and a mayor. The current mayor is Steve Babick. The city council is responsible for establishing city policies, considering city resolutions and ordinances, appointing citizens to various city boards and commissions, adopting the city's Comprehensive Plan and annual budget, and approving or rejecting zoning changes; it meets on the first and third Tuesday of every month.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: Most of Carrollton is a part of the Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District which is within Dallas and Denton counties. Dallas Independent School District also serves a small portion of Carrollton in the southeast and Coppell Independent School District covers a portion to the southwest, both in Dallas County. The Lewisville Independent School District covers the northern sections of the city.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: CFBISD operates three high schools in Carrollton: Newman Smith High School, R.L. Turner High School, and Creekview High School. Lewisville ISD operates Hebron High School.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: The DISD portion is served partially by Jerry R. Junkins Elementary School in Carrollton, Ewell D. Walker Middle School in Dallas, and W. T. White High School in Dallas. Private schools in the area include The Saint Anthony School, Carrollton Christian Academy. At one time Coram Deo Academy had a campus in Carrollton.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: There are three major charter schools in Carrollton. Carrollton Classical Academy, grades K–9, which holds classes at the recently purchased First Baptist Carrollton Josey Campus, Harmony School of Innovation, grades K–8, and Trivium Academy, grades K–8, which holds classes on the campus of First Methodist Carrollton. The 13,000-capacity Tommy Standridge Stadium is located in Carrollton; it is mostly used for high school football and soccer.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: Areas in Dallas County and in CFBISD (which is partially in Denton County) are in the zone for Dallas College (formerly Dallas County Community College or DCCCD). Areas in Collin County are in the zone for Collin College. Areas in most of Denton County (including the Lewisville School District) are in the North Central Texas College district.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: The Japanese School of Dallas, a supplementary Japanese school, conducts its classes at Ted Polk Middle School in Carrollton. The school has its main offices in Farmers Branch.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: Carrollton is connected to the Metroplex's highway network by Interstate 35E and the President George Bush Turnpike, as well as the Sam Rayburn Tollway at the far north end of the city.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport is five miles southwest of Carrollton, and Dallas Love Field is eight miles south.


title: Carrollton, Texas

text: The Green Line of Dallas Area Rapid Transit's DART Rail system terminates at North Carrollton/Frankford Station and has additional stops within the city limits at Trinity Mills and Downtown Carrollton. Trinity Mills is also the southern terminus of Denton County's A-train, which provides service to Lewisville and Denton. Downtown Carrollton is a planned stop on DART's Silver Line, which is under construction and expected to open in 2023.


title: 1967 in film

text: The year 1967 in film involved some significant events. It is widely considered one of the most ground-breaking years in American cinema, with "revolutionary" films highlighting the shift towards forward thinking European standards at the time, including: "Bonnie and Clyde", "The Graduate", "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", "Cool Hand Luke", "The Dirty Dozen", "In Cold Blood", "In the Heat of the Night", "The Jungle Book" and "You Only Live Twice".


title: Indian 20-rupee note

text: The Indian 20-rupee banknote (20) is a common denomination of the Indian rupee. The current 20 banknote in circulation is a part of the Mahatma Gandhi Series. The Reserve Bank introduced the 20 note in the Mahatma Gandhi Series in August 2001. Making it one of the last denominations of the series to be introduced in the series; other than the 5, which was introduced in November 2001.


title: Indian 20-rupee note

text: It was first introduced by the Reserve Bank of India in 1972 to contain the cost of production of banknotes in circulation. With the introduction of this banknote, the Reserve Bank started a major redesign of the motif of the Lion Capital Series banknotes.


title: Indian 20-rupee note

text: On 10 November 2016, the then Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das announced a new 20 banknote would be released in the Mahatma Gandhi New Series in the coming months.


title: Indian 20-rupee note

text: The Reserve Bank of India has announced on 26 April 2019 that it would shortly issue a new 20 note. The new denomination has a motif of Ellora Caves on the back, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Aurangabad district, Maharashtra, India on the reverse, depicting the country's cultural heritage continuing with the theme in Mahatma Gandhi New Series banknotes. Size of the bank note will be 129 mm × 63 mm. This is used alongside to the new Indian 20-rupee coin.


title: Indian 20-rupee note

text: The obverse side featured the Lion Capital. The reverse side featured the chariot wheel of the Konark Sun Temple.


title: Indian 20-rupee note

text: The 20 banknote of the Mahatma Gandhi Series is 129 × 63 mm green-yellow coloured, with the obverse side featuring a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi with a signature of the governor of Reserve Bank of India. It has the Braille feature to assist the visually challenged in identifying the currency. The reverse side features the famous Mount Harriet in Andaman and Nicobar Islands.


title: Indian 20-rupee note

text: As of 2012, the new sign has been incorporated into banknote of 20. In January 2014 RBI announced that it would be withdrawing from circulation all banknotes printed prior to 2005 by 31 March 2014. The deadline was later extended to 1 January 2015. Now further dead line was extended to 30 June 2016.


title: Indian 20-rupee note

text: As like the other Indian rupee banknotes, the 20 banknote has its amount written in 17 languages. On the obverse, the denomination is written in English and Hindi. On the reverse is a language panel which displays the denomination of the note in 15 of the 22 official languages of India. The languages are displayed in alphabetical order. Languages included on the panel are Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.


title: At sixes and sevens

text: It is not known for certain, but the most likely origin of the phrase is the dice game "hazard", a more complicated version of the modern game of craps.


title: At sixes and sevens

text: Michael Quinion, a British etymologist, writing on his website on linguistics, says, "It is thought that the expression was originally "to set on cinque and sice" (from the French numerals for five and six). These were apparently the most risky numbers to shoot for ('to set on') and anyone who tried for them was considered careless or confused."


title: At sixes and sevens

text: A similar phrase, "to set the world on six and seven", is used by Geoffrey Chaucer in his "Troilus and Criseyde". It dates from the mid-1380s and seems from its context to mean "to hazard the world" or "to risk one's life". William Shakespeare uses a similar phrase in "Richard II" (around 1595), "But time will not permit: all is uneven, And every thing is left at six and seven".


title: At sixes and sevens

text: The phrase is also used in Gilbert & Sullivan's comic opera "H.M.S. Pinafore" (1878), where Captain Corcoran, the ship's Commander, is confused as to what choices to make in his life, and exclaims in the opening song of Act II, "Fair moon, to thee I sing, bright regent of the heavens, say, why is everything either at sixes or at sevens?"


title: At sixes and sevens

text: In H.G. Wells' preface to his The Outline of History (1919), entitled "The Story and Aim of the Outline of History," he writes: "All the people who were interested in these league of nations projects were at sixes and sevens among themselves because they had the most vague, heterogenous and untidy assumptions about what the world of men was, what it had been, and therefore of what it could be."


title: At sixes and sevens

text: In chapter three of the 1926 "Clouds of Witness" by Dorothy Sayers the maid, Ellen, says "Anyhow, it was all at sixes and sevens for a day or two, and then her ladyship shuts herself up in her room and won't let me go into her wardrobe."


title: At sixes and sevens

text: Quinion notes a false but "widely believed" story on "where the phrase at sixes and sevens came from, and what it really means". It is sometimes said to derive from a dispute between two City of London trade guilds or livery companies–The Merchant Taylors Company and the Skinners Company. The two argued over sixth place in the order of precedence. In 1484, the Lord Mayor of London Sir Robert Billesden decided that the companies would swap between sixth and seventh place on an annual basis. This story is disproved as a source, according to Quinion, by the "brute force of the evidence" that the phrase was in use and that it occurred in Chaucer a century before the trade guild dispute was decided.


title: At sixes and sevens

text: The phrase appears in a few songs, including "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" from the musical "Evita;" "Happy Endings" from the 1977 film "New York, New York"; "Raoul and the Kings of Spain" from Tears for Fears; and "Playing With Fire" by Stereo MCs. The eleventh studio album from Strange Music front man Tech N9ne was entitled "All 6's and 7's". The song "Sixes and Sevens" was cowritten and sung by Robert Plant. It also appears in the Rolling Stones' song "Tumbling Dice".


title: At sixes and sevens

text: The phrase is also used in the 1978 movie "The Wiz", when Miss One gives Dorothy the silver slippers and comments, "Oh, don't be all sixes and sevens, honey" to Dorothy as Dorothy is in a state of confusion after killing the Wicked Witch of the East. It is also found in the 1993 film "The Remains of the Day". It is also mentioned in the 2002 film "Goldmember" by Mike Myers' character Austin Powers to his dad, who at the time were speaking "English English": "oh, the one who was all sixes and sevens?" During the second episode of season five of the HBO series "Six Feet Under", George uses the phrase to describe his wife's attitude towards him.


title: At sixes and sevens

text: The phrase occurs in Sabina's opening monologue from Thornton Wilder's 1942 Pulitzer Prize winning play "The Skin of Our Teeth:" "The whole world's at sixes and sevens, and why the house hasn't fallen down about our ears long ago is a miracle to me."


title: Sex manual

text: Sex manuals are books which explain how to perform sexual practices; they also commonly feature advice on birth control, and sometimes on safe sex and sexual relationships.


title: Sex manual

text: Philaenis of Samos, possibly a hetaira (courtesan) of the Hellenistic period (3rd–1st century BC). Preserved by a series of fragmentary papyruses which attest its popularity, it served as a source of inspiration for Ovid's "Ars Amatoria", written around 3 BC, which is partially a sex manual, and partially a burlesque on the art of love.


title: Sex manual

text: The "Kama Sutra" of Vatsyayana, believed to have been written in the 1st to 6th centuries, has a notorious reputation as a sex manual, although only a small part of its text is devoted to sex. It was compiled by the Indian sage Vatsyayana sometime between the second and fourth centuries CE. His work was based on earlier Kamashastras or "Rules of Love" going back to at least the seventh century BCE, and is a compendium of the social norms and love-customs of patriarchal Northern India around the time he lived. Vatsyayana's "Kama Sutra" is valuable today for his psychological insights into the interactions and scenarios of love, and for his structured approach to the many diverse situations he describes. He defines different types of men and women, matching what he terms "equal" unions, and gives detailed descriptions of many love-postures.


title: Sex manual

text: The "Kama Sutra" was written for the wealthy male city-dweller. It is not, and was never intended to be, a lover's guide for the masses, nor is it a "Tantric love-manual". About three hundred years after the "Kama Sutra" became popular, some of the love-making positions described in it were reinterpreted in a Tantric way. Since Tantra is an all-encompassing sensual science, love-making positions are relevant to spiritual practice.


title: Sex manual

text: The earliest East Asian sex manual is the "Su Nü Jing". Probably written during the Chinese Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD), the work was long lost in China itself, but preserved in Japan as part of the medical anthology "Ishinpō" (984). It is a Daoist text purporting to describe how one might achieve long life and immortality by manipulating the yin and yang forces of the body through sexual techniques, which are described in some detail.


title: Sex manual

text: Medieval sex manuals include the lost works of Elephantis, by Constantine the African; "Ananga Ranga", a 12th-century collection of Hindu erotic works;Ratirahasya,a medieval indian sex manual written by Koka and "The Perfumed Garden for the Soul's Recreation", a 16th-century Arabic work by Sheikh Nefzaoui. The fifteenth-century "Speculum al foderi" (The Mirror of Coitus) is the first medieval European work to discuss sexual positions. Constantine the African also penned a medical treatise on sexuality, known as "Liber de coitu". The medieval Jewish physician and writer Maimonides is author of a "Treatise on Cohabitation."


title: Sex manual

text: Despite the existence of ancient sex manuals in other cultures, sex manuals were banned in Western culture for many years. What sexual information was available was generally only available in the form of illicit pornography or medical books, which generally discussed either sexual physiology or sexual disorders. The authors of medical works went so far as to write the most sexually explicit parts of their texts in Latin, so as to make them inaccessible to the general public (see Krafft-Ebing's "Psychopathia Sexualis" as an example).


title: Sex manual

text: In the late 19th Century, Ida Craddock wrote many serious instructional tracts on human sexuality and appropriate, respectful sexual relations between married couples. Among her works were "The Wedding Night" and "Right Marital Living". In 1918 Marie Stopes published "Married Love", considered groundbreaking despite its limitations in details used to discuss sex acts.


title: Sex manual

text: Theodoor Hendrik van de Velde's book "Het volkomen huwelijk" "(The Perfect Marriage)", published in 1926, was well known in Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and Estonia. In Germany, "Die vollkommene Ehe" reached its 42nd printing in 1932 despite its being placed on the list of forbidden books, the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, by the Roman Catholic Church. In Sweden, "Det fulländade äktenskapet" was widely known although regarded as pornographic and unsuitable for young readers long into the 1960s. In English, has 42 printings in its original 1930 edition, and was republished in new editions in 1965 and 2000.


title: Sex manual

text: David Reuben, M. D.'s book "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)", published in 1969, was one of the first sex manuals that entered mainstream culture in the 1960s. Although it did not feature explicit images of sex acts, its descriptions of sex acts were detailed, addressing common questions and misunderstandings Reuben had heard from his own patients. Most notably, Reuben dismissed popular medical-psychiatric notions of "vaginal" vs. "clitoral" orgasm, explaining exactly how female physiology works.


title: Sex manual

text: "The Joy of Sex" by Dr. Alex Comfort was the first visually explicit sex manual to be published by a mainstream publisher. It was followed by "The Joy of Gay Sex" and "The Joy of Lesbian Sex". Its appearance in public bookstores in the 1970s opened the way to the widespread publication of sex manuals in the West. As a result, hundreds of sex manuals are now available in print.


title: Sex manual

text: Sex manuals and works of the sort became so popular during the sexual revolution of the 1970s that even religious groups developed their own manuals. Most notably, the book "The Act of Marriage" by Christian Baptist authors Tim and Beverly LaHaye has sold over 2.5 million copies. While they began with the prerequisite of a heterosexual, complementarian relationship, the behavior they suggested went far beyond standard Christian teaching at that time. They suggested role play, experimentation with sex devices, masturbation to ensure climax and many other practices that were considered taboo up until the 1970s in protestant bedrooms. Other manuals such as Marabel Morgan's The Total Woman emphasized the importance of the female orgasm. While they all required marriage, heterosexuality and complementarianism, they did push the bounds of accepted practice within their respective spheres of influence. Today, Christian authors continue to produce similar manuals and guides to their constituents in search of appropriate, fulfilling behavior. Books such as Mark and Grace Driscoll's Real Marriage encourage Christians to experiment in the bedrooms with their spouses, even encouraging acts that have long been rejected by protestant tradition such as anal sex.


title: Sex manual

text: One of the currently most well known in America is "The Guide to Getting it On!" by Paul Joannides. Now in its tenth edition, it has won several prestigious awards and been translated into 12 foreign languages since appearing in 1996.


title: Oregon State Beavers football

text: The Oregon State Beavers football team represents Oregon State University in NCAA Division I FBS college football. The team first fielded an organized football team in 1893 and is a member of the Pac-12 Conference. Jonathan Smith has been the head coach since November 29, 2017. Their home games are played at Reser Stadium in Corvallis, Oregon.


title: Oregon State Beavers football

text: Football at Oregon State University started in 1893 shortly after athletics were initially authorized at the college. Athletics were banned prior to May 1892, but when the strict school president, Benjamin Arnold, died, President John Bloss reversed the ban. Bloss' son, William, started the first team, on which he served as both coach and quarterback. The team's first game was an easy 64–0 victory on November 11, 1893, over visiting Albany College.


title: Oregon State Beavers football

text: The university has been in several athletic conferences. Prior to joining the Pac-12 Conference (then called the Pacific-8 Conference), OSU intermittently played as an independent school.


title: Oregon State Beavers football

text: Oregon State has won seven conference titles, done through four different conferences, although two of them have links to the current Pac-12 Conference, as the conference claims the history of the PCC as their own, and the Athletic Association of Western Universities was the first name for the conference that later became the Pac-12 Conference.


title: Oregon State Beavers football

text: The 1897 Oregon Agricultural Aggies football team compiled a perfect 5–0 record, shut out four of five opponents, and outscored their opponents by a combined total of 164 to 8. the team claimed their 2nd league Championship (OIFA)


title: Oregon State Beavers football

text: The 1907 Oregon Agricultural Aggies football team represented Oregon Agricultural College (now known as Oregon State University) as an independent during the 1907 college football season.


title: Oregon State Beavers football

text: In their second season under head coach Fred Norcross, the Aggies compiled a perfect 6–0 record, did not allow any of their opponents to score, and outscored their opponents by a combined total of 137 to 0. The Aggies' victories included games against Oregon (4–0), Pacific University (49–0), and Willamette (42–0).


title: Oregon State Beavers football

text: Oregon State's victory at Loyola, then known as the St. Vincent's College Saints, was a big deal out West, a Thanksgiving Day matchup of the "Champions of the Northwest" and the "Champions of the California", with the winner taking home the "Championship" of the entire West Coast.


title: Oregon State Beavers football

text: This is still the only perfect season in Oregon State history, and moreover, they did not allow a single point this season.


title: Oregon State Beavers football

text: Oregon State University has played in 19 postseason bowl games. The Beavers have also played in the Mirage Bowl, but this was a regular season game and a "bowl" in name only, not a post-season invitational bowl game. The 19 bowl game total does not include an invitation to play in the Gotham Bowl in 1960, when no opponent could be found for Oregon State. The Beavers are 12–7 in bowl game appearances.


title: Oregon State Beavers football

text: The Beavers play their home games at Reser Stadium in Corvallis, Oregon. It was originally called Parker Stadium when it was constructed in 1953, and had a capacity of 25,000. Parker Stadium was renamed Reser Stadium in June 1999. Major renovations from 2005 to 2016 increased the stadium's capacity to 43,363, where it stood through the 2021 season. Another renovation project, called "Completing Reser", was announced on Feb. 4, 2021. The stadium featured a temporary capacity of 26,000 during the 2022 season and is projected to seat 38,000 at the completion of the construction project for the 2023 season.


title: Oregon State Beavers football

text: Oregon State University's primary rival is the University of Oregon. The two schools enjoy a fierce and long-standing rivalry due to the proximity of the two campuses. The University of Oregon is in Eugene, Oregon, about south of Corvallis. The teams first matched up on the gridiron in 1894 and have been playing each other almost every year since. The rivalry game between the two schools is traditionally the last game of each season. They have played each other 125 times which makes it the seventh-oldest college football rivalry game. Though not officially recognized by the universities, the Platypus Trophy is awarded annually to the winning alumni association.


title: Oregon State Beavers football

text: Oregon State wins the so-called Northwest Championship by sweeping Washington, Washington State, and Oregon. The four Pacific Northwest rivals began playing in a round-robin format in the 1903 season.


title: Oregon State Beavers football

text: Although not a retired number Oregon State has "AL" displayed opposite Terry Baker's number "11" in Reser Stadium for long time donor/philanthropist/contributor Al Reser.


title: Oregon State Beavers football

text: Oregon State has had 45 first team All-Americans in the history of the program as of the end of the 2022 season.


title: 2010 Wimbledon Championships – Men's singles

text: Rafael Nadal defeated Tomáš Berdych in the final, 6–3, 7–5, 6–4, to win the gentlemen's singles tennis title at the 2010 Wimbledon Championships. It was his second Wimbledon title and his eighth major title overall. It was also Nadal's fourth non-consecutive Wimbledon final (he skipped the 2009 tournament because of injuries).


text: Roger Federer was the defending champion, but lost in the quarterfinals to Berdych. This marked the first time since 2002 that Federer did not make the Wimbledon men's singles final, and the second successive Grand Slam tournament that Federer was defeated at the quarterfinal stage, having previously been on a record run of 23 successive Grand Slam semifinals. Federer's loss, along with those of Lleyton Hewitt and Andy Roddick, both in the fourth round, ensured that there would be a first time Wimbledon finalist from the top half of the draw.


text: Berdych became the first Czech man to reach the final since Ivan Lendl in 1987. For the first time ever there were no English players in the Wimbledon men's singles competition, though Great Britain was represented by two players from Scotland: fourth seed Andy Murray and wildcard Jamie Baker.


text: The first round match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut set a new record for the longest tennis match in history (in both time and total of games), as well as many other records due to its length. Isner won the match, taking the final set 70–68 after a total of 11 hours and 5 minutes play across three days. The two faced each other again in the first round the following year, with Isner taking that match 7–6, 6–2, 7–6.


text: Ernests Gulbis withdrew due to a muscle tear in his right thigh. He was replaced in the draw by the highest-ranked non-seeded player Philipp Petzschner, who became the #33 seed.


title: John McCririck

text: John Michael McCririck (17 April 1940 – 5 July 2019) was an English horse racing pundit, television personality and journalist.


title: John McCririck

text: McCririck began his career at "The Sporting Life", where he twice won at the British Press Awards for his campaigning journalism, but his role was terminated in 1984. In 1981, he joined ITV Sport's horse racing coverage which moved, during 1984 and 1985, to Channel 4 as "Channel 4 Racing". In October 2012, the channel announced that he would be dropped from its team, which McCririck blamed on ageism; he took the matter to an employment tribunal, but lost the case.


title: John McCririck

text: From the 1980s, McCririck appeared as a contestant on numerous television shows, including "Bullseye", "You Bet!", "Celebrity Big Brother", "Weakest Link", "Wife Swap and Celebrity Poker Club". He also appeared on the current affairs discussion programme "After Dark".


title: John McCririck

text: Born in Surbiton, Surrey, McCririck was educated at Elizabeth College, Guernsey, Victoria College, Jersey, and Harrow School, where his fellow pupils included Julian Wilson, later a fellow racing journalist. He left with three O-Levels, having also run the book on cross country races.


title: John McCririck

text: After failing to get into the diplomatic service, McCririck was briefly a waiter at The Dorchester hotel. During the era when off-course betting was illegal in the UK, he worked for an illegal bookmaker, before becoming a bookmaker himself, at which he admitted to having failed. He then became a tic-tac man.


title: John McCririck

text: He began his career in journalism at "The Sporting Life", where he twice won at the British Press Awards for his campaigning journalism; he was sacked in 1984. He joined the "Daily Star", but was later sacked by the newspaper after allegations emerged that he was in debt to his bookmaker; he later successfully sued the paper at an employment tribunal.


title: John McCririck

text: Having previously become a results sub-editor on the BBC's "Grandstand", from 1981 he joined ITV Sport's horse racing coverage; he had previously appeared in a debate about fox hunting on the ITV children's programme "Saturday Banana" in 1978. During 1984 and 1985, horse racing moved from ITV to Channel 4 as "Channel 4 Racing", where his role was expanded and he reported from the betting ring. His signature flamboyant attire of a large deerstalker hat, sideburns, and brightly coloured matching suits and trousers, coupled with huge cigars, became a recognisable personal style.


title: John McCririck

text: In 1988, on the evening after the Grand National, he made an extended appearance on the "After Dark" topical discussion programme on Channel 4, alongside Barney Curley and the Duchess of Argyll, in an episode entitled "Horse Racing, Sport Of Kings?"


title: John McCririck

text: In October 2012 Channel 4 announced that McCririck would not be included in the team presenting racing from January 2013, which McCririck blamed on ageism, taking Channel 4 to an employment tribunal. On 13 November the tribunal ruled against McCririck saying, "All the evidence is that Mr McCririck's pantomime persona, as demonstrated on the celebrity television appearances, and his persona when appearing on "Channel 4 Racing," together with his self-described bigoted and male chauvinist views were clearly unpalatable to a wider audience." The panel was told by witnesses from the television station and IMG (the production company) that he was dropped because he was "offensive" and "disgusting".


title: John McCririck

text: McCririck appeared on the 1991 "Bullseye" Christmas Special, winning the top prize for his chosen charity, the Sue Ryder Foundation. He also appeared in the "Celebrity Poker Club" television series, reaching the Grand Finale of series one, won by Sir Clive Sinclair. McCririck also appeared during ITV's snooker coverage in a betting capacity.


title: John McCririck

text: In 1997, McCririck was tricked by two separate episodes of spoof TV show "Brass Eye", once in an item about artificial insemination and another in an item, appearing as himself, about Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe starring in a musical while on day-release from prison.


title: John McCririck

text: In January 2005, he was a contestant in the third series of "Celebrity Big Brother". He competed on "Weakest Link." In April 2005, McCririck appeared on an episode of "Hell's Kitchen" (season 3, episode 8) in which Head Chef Marco Pierre White refused to serve him after McCririck told him that his consommé was 'greasy', in spite of being informed that it contained "foie gras" and truffle oil. White commented after the sequence, "I know John. He's awkward, he's got no taste. All you have to do is look at how he dresses."


title: John McCririck

text: In 2006, he appeared in the episode "Drama" on the show "Still Game", playing himself on Channel 4 Racing telling Winston Ingram which horse to back. McCririck was a housemate in "Ultimate Big Brother" in August 2010.


title: John McCririck

text: In 2011, he was featured in the fourth episode of the British version of "Celebrity Ghost Stories" recounting his experiences of a haunted passageway at Harrow School.


title: John McCririck

text: On 26 June 2015, on the sixteenth series of "Big Brother", it was announced that McCririck would be returning to Big Brother, taking part in Big Brother's Hotel from Hell the following week, where he would be staying in the house and other ex-housemates would join him on Monday 29 June.


title: John McCririck

text: McCririck married Jennifer Barnes in 1970 and referred to her as "The Booby". He was accused of frequent misogyny. In 2006, the couple took part in "Wife Swap" alongside Edwina Currie and her husband. McCririck was also a well-known supporter of Newcastle United F.C.


title: John McCririck

text: In early 2018, McCririck contracted influenza which resulted in a chest infection. The illness caused him to suffer dramatic weight loss.


title: John McCririck

text: McCririck died at The Princess Grace Hospital, London, on 5 July 2019, after a short illness with lung cancer; he was 79.


title: John McCririck

text: Writing in "The Guardian" on the day McCririck died, racing correspondent Chris Cook said: "He was outrageous, in both speech and appearance, because what he wanted most of all was a reaction and so he enlivened many a broadcast or social occasion that might otherwise have fallen rather flat... While McCririck thrived on the attention his persona brought him, the buffoon act sold him short. He was a skilled journalist whose investigations uncovered a couple of betting-related scandals in the 70s. The producers of Channel 4 Racing almost invariably turned to McCririck when there was a serious interview to be done." On 12 July 2019 McCririck was featured in the BBC Radio 4 obituary programme "Last Word."


title: Capelin

text: The capelin or caplin (Mallotus villosus) is a small forage fish of the smelt family found in the North Atlantic, North Pacific and Arctic oceans. In summer, it grazes on dense swarms of plankton at the edge of the ice shelf. Larger capelin also eat a great deal of krill and other crustaceans. Among others, whales, seals, Atlantic cod, Atlantic mackerel, squid and seabirds prey on capelin, in particular during the spawning season while the capelin migrate south. Capelin spawn on sand and gravel bottoms or sandy beaches at the age of two to six years. When spawning on beaches, capelin have an extremely high post-spawning mortality rate which, for males, is close to 100%.


title: Capelin

text: Males reach in length, while females are up to long. They are olive-coloured dorsally, shading to silver on sides. Males have a translucent ridge on both sides of their bodies. The ventral aspects of the males iridesce reddish at the time of spawn.


title: Capelin

text: Capelin populations in the Barents Sea and around Iceland perform extensive seasonal migrations. Barents Sea capelin migrate during winter and early spring to the coast of northern Norway (Finnmark) and the Kola Peninsula (Russia) for spawning. During summer and autumn, capelin migrate north- and north-eastward for feeding.


title: Capelin

text: Icelandic capelin move inshore in large schools to spawn and migrate in spring and summer to feed in the plankton-rich oceanic area between Iceland, Greenland, and Jan Mayen. Capelin distribution and migration is linked with ocean currents and water masses. Around Iceland, maturing capelin usually undertake extensive northward feeding migrations in spring and summer, and the return migration takes place in September to November. The spawning migration starts from north of Iceland in December to January. In a paper published in 2009, researchers from Iceland recounted their application of an interacting particle model to the capelin stock around Iceland, successfully predicting the spawning migration route for 2008.


title: Capelin

text: As an r-selected species, capelin have a high reproductive potential and an intrinsic population growth rate. They reproduce by spawning and their main spawning season occurs in spring but can extend into the summer. The majority of capelin are three or four years old when they spawn. The males migrate directly to the shallow water of fjords, where spawning will take place, while the females remain in deeper water until they are completely mature. Once the females are mature, they migrate to the spawning grounds and spawn. This process usually takes place at night. In the North European Atlantic spawning typically occurs over sand or gravel at depths of , but in the North Pacific and waters off Newfoundland most spawn on beaches, jumping as far up land as possible, with some managing to strand themselves in the process. Although some other fish species leave their eggs in locations that dry out (a few, such as plainfin midshipman, may even remain on land with the eggs during low tide) or on plants above the water (splash tetras), jumping onto land "en masse" to spawn is unique to the capelin, grunions, and grass puffer. After the female capelins have spawned, they immediately leave the spawning grounds and can spawn again in the following years if they survive. The males do not leave the spawning grounds and potentially spawn more than once throughout the season. Male capelin are considered to be semelparous because they die soon after the spawning season is over.


title: Capelin

text: Capelin is an important forage fish, and is essential as the key food of the Atlantic cod. The northeast Atlantic cod and capelin fisheries, therefore, are managed by a multispecies approach developed by the main resource owners Norway and Russia.


title: Capelin

text: In some years with large quantities of Atlantic herring in the Barents Sea, capelin seem to be heavily affected. Probably both food competition and herring feeding on capelin larvae lead to collapses in the capelin stock. In some years, though good recruitment of capelin despite a high herring biomass suggests that herring are only one factor influencing capelin dynamics.


title: Capelin

text: In the provinces of Quebec (particularly in the Gaspé peninsula) and Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada, it is a regular summertime practice for locals to go to the beach and scoop the capelin up in nets or whatever is available, as the capelin "roll in" in the millions each year at the end of May or in early June.


title: Capelin

text: Commercially, capelin is used for fish meal and oil industry products, but is also appreciated as food. The flesh is agreeable in flavour, resembling herring. Capelin roe ("masago") is considered a high-value product in Japan. It is also sometimes mixed with wasabi or green food colouring and wasabi flavour and sold as "wasabi caviar". Often," masago" is commercialised as "ebiko" and used as a substitute for "tobiko", flying fish roe, owing to its similar appearance and taste, although the mouthfeel is different due to the individual eggs being smaller and less crunchy than tobiko.


title: Proctalgia fugax

text: Proctalgia fugax, a variant of levator ani syndrome, is a severe, episodic pain in the regions of the rectum and anus. It can be caused by cramping of the levator ani muscle, particularly in the pubococcygeal part.


title: Proctalgia fugax

text: It most often occurs in the middle of the night and lasts from seconds to minutes; pain and aching lasting twenty minutes or longer would likely be diagnosed instead as levator ani syndrome. In a study published in 2007 involving 1809 patients, the attacks occurred in the daytime (33 percent) as well as at night (33 percent) and the average number of attacks was 13. Onset can be in childhood; however, in multiple studies the average age of onset was 45. Many studies showed that women are affected more commonly than men, but this can be at least partly explained by men's reluctance to seek medical advice concerning rectal pain. Data on the number of people affected vary, but prevalence may be as high as 8–18%. It is thought that only 17–20% of patients consult a physician, so obtaining accurate data on occurrence presents a challenge.


title: Proctalgia fugax

text: During an episode, the patient feels spasm-like, sometimes excruciating, pain in the rectum or anus, often misinterpreted as a need to defecate. To be diagnosed as proctalgia fugax, the pain must arise "de novo" (meaning the absence of clear cause). As such, pain associated with constipation (either chronic, or acute), penetrative anal intercourse, trauma (such as tears or fissures of the rectal sphincter or anal canal), side-effects of some medications (particularly opiates), or rectal foreign body insertion preclude this diagnosis. The pain episode subsides by itself as the spasm disappears on its own, but may reoccur.


title: Proctalgia fugax

text: Because of the high incidence of internal anal sphincter thickening with the disorder, it is thought to be a disorder of that muscle or that it is a neuralgia of pudendal nerves. It is not known to be linked to any disease process.


title: Proctalgia fugax

text: High-voltage pulsed galvanic stimulation (HGVS) has been shown to be of prophylactic benefit, to reduce the incidence of attacks. The patient is usually placed in the left lateral decubitus position and a sterile probe is inserted into the anus. The negative electrode is used and the stimulator is set with a pulse frequency of 80 to 120 cycles per second. The voltage (intensity) is started at 0, progressively raised to a threshold of patient discomfort, and then is decreased to a level that the patient finds comfortable. As the patient's tolerance increases, the voltage can be gradually increased to 250 to 350 Volts. Each treatment session usually lasts between 15 and 60 minutes. Several studies have reported short-term success rates that ranged from 65 to 91%.


title: Proctalgia fugax

text: Low dose diazepam of around 2 mg or less, or similar muscle-relaxant, taken orally at bedtime has been suggested as preventative, but its benefits are limited.


title: Proctalgia fugax

text: There is no known cure. The most common approach for mild cases is simply reassurance and topical treatment with calcium-channel blocker (diltiazem, nifedipine) ointment, salbutamol inhalation and topical nitroglycerine. For persistent cases, local anesthetic blocks, clonidine or botulinum toxin injections can be considered. Supportive treatments directed at aggravating factors include high-fiber diet, withdrawal of drugs which have gut effects (e.g., drugs that provoke or worsen constipation including narcotics and oral calcium channel blockers; drugs that provoke or worsen diarrhea including quinidine, theophylline, and antibiotics), warm baths, rectal massage, perineal strengthening exercises, anticholinergic agents, non-narcotic analgesics, sedatives or muscle relaxants such as diazepam. In patients who have frequent, severe, prolonged attacks, inhaled salbutamol has been shown in some studies to reduce their duration.


title: Proctalgia fugax

text: Traditional remedies have ranged from warm baths (if the pain lasts long enough), warm to hot enemas, and relaxation techniques.


title: Customs union

text: A customs union is generally defined as a type of trade bloc which is composed of a free trade area with a common external tariff.


title: Customs union

text: Customs unions are established through trade pacts where the participant countries set up common external trade policy (in some cases they use different import quotas). Common competition policy is also helpful to avoid "competition deficiency".


title: Customs union

text: Purposes for establishing a customs union normally include increasing economic efficiency and establishing closer political and cultural ties between the member countries. It is the third stage of economic integration.


title: Customs union

text: Every economic union, customs and monetary union and economic and monetary union includes a customs union.


title: Customs union

text: The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, part of the World Trade Organization framework defines a customs union in the following way:


title: Customs union

text: The German Customs Union, the Zollverein, which was established in 1834, and gradually developed and expanded, was a customs union organization that appeared earlier and played a role in promoting German economic development and political unification at that time. Before the establishment of the unified German Empire in the 1870s, there were checkpoints between and within the German states, which hindered the development of industry and commerce. In 1818, Prussia took the lead in abolishing the customs duties in the mainland; it was followed by the establishment of the North German Customs Union in 1826. Two years later, two customs unions were established in the states of South Germany.


title: Customs union

text: In 1834, 18 states joined together to form the German Customs Union with Prussia as the main leader. Thereafter, this alliance was further expanded to all German-speaking regions and became the All-German Customs Union. The contents of the alliance convention included: abolishing internal tariffs, unifying external tariffs, raising import tax rates, and allocating tariff income to all states in the alliance in proportion. In addition, there is a customs union between France and Monaco, which was established in 1865.


title: Customs union

text: A customs union was established by Switzerland and Liechtenstein in 1924, by Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg in 1948, by the countries of the European Economic Community in 1958, and by the Economic Community of Central African States in 1964. At that time, the European Free Trade Association was different from the European Economic Community Customs Union. Free trade within the former was limited to industrial products, and no uniform tariffs were imposed on countries outside the Union.


title: Customs union

text: The main feature of the Customs Union is that the member countries have not only eliminated trade barriers and implemented free trade, but also established a common external tariff. In other words, in addition to agreeing to eliminate each other 's trade barriers, members of the Customs Union also adopt common external tariff and trade policies. GATT stipulates that if the customs union is not established immediately, but is gradually completed over a period of time, it should be completed within a reasonable period, which generally does not exceed 10 years.


title: Customs union

text: Economic effects of customs unions can generally be grouped into "static effects" and "dynamic effects".


title: Customs union

text: There are trade creation effects and trade diversion effects. The trade creation effect refers to the benefits generated by products from domestic production with higher production costs to the production of customs union countries with lower costs. The trade diversion effect refers to the loss incurred when a product is imported from a non-member country with lower production costs to a member country with a higher cost. This is the price of joining the customs union. When the trade creation effect is greater than the transfer effect, the combined effect of joining the Customs Union on the member countries is net profit, which means an increase in the economic welfare level of the member countries; otherwise, it is a net loss and a decline in the economic welfare level.


title: Customs union

text: The trade creation effect is usually regarded as a positive effect. This is because the domestic production cost of country A is higher than the production cost of country A 's imports from country B. The Customs Union made Country A give up the domestic production of some commodities and change it to Country B to produce these commodities. From a worldwide perspective, this kind of production conversion improves the efficiency of resource allocation.


title: Customs union

text: The customs union will not only bring static effects to member states, but also bring some dynamic effects to them. Sometimes, this dynamic effect is more important than its static effect, which has an important impact on the economic growth of member countries.


title: Customs union

text: Additionally, the autonomous and dependent territories such as some of the EU member state special territories are sometimes treated as separate customs territories from their mainland states or have varying arrangements of formal or de facto customs union, common market and currency union (or combinations thereof) with the mainland and in regards to third countries through the trade pacts signed by the mainland state.


title: The Indian Doctor

text: The Indian Doctor is a British television comedy drama, set in the 1960s. Produced by Rondo Media and Avatar Productions, it was first broadcast on BBC One in 2010. The most recent series began on 4 November 2013 on BBC One daytime and concluded on 8 November. It is a period comedy drama starring Sanjeev Bhaskar as an Indian doctor who finds work in a South Wales mining village.


title: The Indian Doctor

text: The first five-part series was broadcast from Monday 15 November to Friday 19 November 2010. Sanjeev Bhaskar stars as Dr. Prem Sharma, the Indian doctor of the title who moves with his wife Kamini Sharma (Ayesha Dharker) to the small Welsh mining village of Trefelin.


title: The Indian Doctor

text: The series is based on a true story of culture clash. On a BBC blog site, Sanjeev Bhaskar describes preparing for the role by talking with relatives who lived during the 1960s, but also by having discussions with a doctor, Prem Subberwal, who emigrated from India with his wife Kamini to work as an NHS doctor in a Welsh village. Subberwal explained that one of the major difficulties he had was in understanding and being understood, not because of any difficulty with the English language, but due to the Welsh accent and various colloquialisms that the people used which he, having learned a more formally structured version of English, could not follow.


title: The Indian Doctor

text: The principal storyline, set in 1963, revolves around the outwardly jolly colliery manager Richard Sharpe and his dark secret: to further his own career, he has deliberately ignored a key mine safety issue to increase coal production. Evidence of this is documented in the previous doctor's diary, and the new Indian doctor gradually becomes determined to reveal the truth.


title: The Indian Doctor

text: Subsidiary storylines revolve around the doctor's relationship with Megan Evans, the blossoming love affair between Tom Evans and Gina Nicolli, the theft of charitable funds by miner leader Owen Griffiths, and the truancy (and associated troubles) of Owen's son Dan Griffiths.


title: The Indian Doctor

text: Now, a year after his arrival, Prem faces a new adversary, evangelist preacher Herbert Todd. When an outbreak of smallpox threatens to bring catastrophe to the village, Prem finds himself fighting prejudice and incompetence and locked in a confrontation with the intransigent Todd for the hearts and minds of the villagers. Also, Prem and his wife Kamini nervously await the arrival of his dreaded mother-in-law, Pushpa. With India gripped by the chaos of a smallpox epidemic, Pushpa is taking the opportunity for a long-overdue inspection of her daughter's new life – and the son-in-law of whom she doesn't approve.


title: The Indian Doctor

text: It is now 1966, three years after Prem and Kamini's arrival, and they have become very much a part of the Trefelin community. But their lives and those of everyone in the village are about to change when its high-flying 'prodigal sons' return to bring a first real taste of the swinging '60s.


title: The Indian Doctor

text: A shiny American sports car zooms into the sleepy Valleys village of Trefelin, carrying with it Basil and Robert Thomas, sons of the old local mine owner. The high-achieving brothers are greeted with joy by everyone from Sian the shopkeeper to the miners in the pub. But for others, like the Indian doctor Prem Sharma, his wife Kamini and newlyweds Emlyn and Megan, the brothers' return spells confusion and frustration as their dreams are dashed and they face the prospect of becoming outcasts once again.


title: The Indian Doctor

text: Liam Keelan, Controller of BBC Daytime, announced on 25 March 2011 (via the BBC TV blog) that "The Indian Doctor" had been re-commissioned for a second series. Keelan gave no specifics, but stated that many of the viewers' favourite characters would be returning. Series two was broadcast early in 2012. Series 2 began at 2:15pm on 27 February 2012.


title: The Indian Doctor

text: BBC One commissioned a third series, which was transmitted in the autumn of 2013. This series featured 5x45 min episodes that aired during BBC Daytime and 3x60 min episodes for BBC Wales.


title: William Masters

text: William Howell Masters (December 27, 1915 – February 16, 2001) was an American gynecologist, best known as the senior member of the Masters and Johnson sexuality research team. Along with his partner Virginia E. Johnson, he pioneered research into the nature of human sexual response and the diagnosis and treatment of sexual dysfunctions and disorders from 1957 until the 1990s.


title: William Masters

text: Born in Cleveland, Ohio, William Masters was the older son of Francis Wynn Masters and Estabrooks Taylor Masters. His younger brother was named Frank. Growing up, Masters had a particularly rough childhood at the hands of his father, a difficult man who liked to be in control and had a very bad temper. All household decisions had to be cleared through the father, and in fits of anger he beat young Bill with a belt, sometimes until Bill bled. Nevertheless, Bill was a bright child and excelled at school. After his Aunt Sally decided to pay his tuition, Masters attended the Lawrenceville School, a preparatory school in New Jersey, then for boys only. Once Bill began his education, his father considered him an adult and gave him little to no financial or family support, and so he rarely visited home. With the completion of his early education Masters then attended and graduated from Hamilton College in upstate New York. Afterward, he enrolled at the University of Rochester Medical School, from which he received his medical degree. He was a member of Alpha Delta Phi, and became a faculty member at Washington University in St. Louis. In 1942, he married his first wife, Elizabeth Ellis, who was known as Libby or Betty. The couple had two children.


title: William Masters

text: Masters met Virginia E. Johnson in 1957 when he hired her as a research assistant to undertake a comprehensive study of human sexuality. Masters divorced his first wife, Elizabeth Ellis Masters, to marry Johnson in 1971. Masters and Johnson eventually divorced over two decades later but continued their professional collaboration.


title: William Masters

text: William Masters suffered complications from Parkinson's disease and died in Tucson, Arizona, on February 16, 2001. Masters's second wife, Virginia Johnson, died in July 2013. Dr. Masters was survived by two children from his marriage to Elizabeth Ellis: Sarah Masters Paul, and William Howell Masters III. He was a church-going Episcopalian and a registered Republican.


title: William Masters

text: The American cable network Showtime debuted "Masters of Sex", a dramatic television series loosely based on the 2009 biography of the same name, on September 29, 2013. The series stars Michael Sheen as Masters and Lizzy Caplan as Virginia Johnson.


title: William Masters

text: Sheen has stated in an interview that he does not know what the real Bill Masters was like and he was doing his own interpretation in his portrayal of him.


title: Kōbō Abe

text: , pen name of , was a Japanese writer, playwright, musician, photographer, and inventor. He is best known for his 1962 novel "The Woman in the Dunes" that was made into an award-winning film by Hiroshi Teshigahara in 1964. Abe has often been compared to Franz Kafka for his modernist sensibilities and his surreal, often nightmarish explorations of individuals in contemporary society.


title: Kōbō Abe

text: Abe was born on March 7, 1924 in Kita, Tokyo, Japan and grew up in Mukden (now Shenyang) in Manchuria. Abe's family was in Tokyo at the time due to his father's year of medical research in Tokyo. His mother had been raised in Hokkaido, while he experienced childhood in Manchuria. This triplicate assignment of origin was influential to Abe, who told Nancy Shields in a 1978 interview, "I am essentially a man without a hometown. This may be what lies behind the 'hometown phobia' that runs in the depth of my feelings. All things that are valued for their stability offend me." As a child, Abe was interested in insect-collecting, mathematics, and reading. His favorite authors were Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Franz Kafka, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Edgar Allan Poe.


title: Kōbō Abe

text: Abe returned to Tokyo briefly in April 1940 to study at Seijo High School, but a lung condition forced his return to Mukden, where he read Jaspers, Heidegger, Dostoyevsky, and Edmund Husserl. Abe began to study medicine at Tokyo Imperial University in 1943, partially out of respect for his father, but also because "[t]hose students who specialized in medicine were exempted from becoming soldiers. My friends who chose the humanities were killed in the war." He returned to Manchuria around the end of World War II. Specifically, Abe left the Tokyo University Medical School in October 1944, returning to his father's clinic in Mukden. That winter, his father died of eruptive typhus. Returning to Tokyo with his father's ashes, Abe reentered the medical school. Abe started writing novellas and short stories during his last year in university. He graduated in 1948 with a medical degree, joking once that he was allowed to graduate only on the condition that he would not practice.


title: Kōbō Abe

text: In 1945 Abe married Machi Yamada, an artist and stage director, and the couple saw successes within their fields in similar time frames. Initially, they lived in an old barracks within a bombed-out area of the city center. Abe sold pickles and charcoal on the street to pay their bills. The couple joined a number of artistic study groups, such as Yoru no Kai (Group of the Night or The Night Society) and "Nihon Bungaku Gakko" (Japanese Literary School). Their daughter, Abe Neri, was born in 1954.


title: Kōbō Abe

text: As the postwar period progressed, Abe's stance as an intellectual pacifist led to his joining the Japanese Communist Party, with which he worked to organize laborers in poor parts of Tokyo. Soon after receiving the Akutagawa Prize in 1951, Abe began to feel the constraints of the Communist Party's rules and regulations alongside doubts about what meaningful artistic works could be created in the genre of "socialist realism." By 1956, Abe began writing in solidarity with the Polish workers who were protesting against their Communist government, drawing the Communist Party's ire. The criticism reaffirmed his stance: "The Communist Party put pressure on me to change the content of the article and apologize. But I refused. I said I would never change my opinion on the matter. This was my first break with the Party." The next year, Abe traveled to Eastern Europe for the 20th Convention of the Soviet Communist Party. He saw little of interest there, but the arts gave him some solace. He visited Kafka's house in Prague, read Rilke and Karel Čapek, reflected on his idol Lu Xun, and was moved by a Mayakovsky play in Brno.


title: Kōbō Abe

text: The Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 disgusted Abe. He attempted to leave the Communist Party, but resignations from the party were not accepted at the time. In 1960, he participated in the Anpo Protests against revision of the US-Japan Security Treaty as part of the pan-ideological Young Japan Society. He later wrote a play about the protests, "The Day the Stones Speak", which was staged several times in Japan and China in 1960 and 1961. In the summer of 1961, Abe joined a group of other authors in criticizing the cultural policies of the Communist Party. He was forcibly expelled from the party the following year. His political activity came to an end in 1967 in the form of a statement published by himself, Yukio Mishima, Yasunari Kawabata, and Jun Ishikawa, protesting the treatment of writers, artists, and intellectuals in Communist China. According to translator John Nathan, this statement led to the falling-out between Abe and fellow writer Kenzaburō Ōe.


title: Kōbō Abe

text: His experiences in Manchuria were also deeply influential on his writing, imprinting terrors and fever dreams that became surrealist hallmarks of his works. In his recollections of Mukden, these markers are evident: "The fact is, it may not have been trash in the center of the marsh at all; it may have been crows. I do have a memory of thousands of crows flying up from the swamp at dusk, as if the surface of the swamp were being lifted up into the air." The trash of the marsh was a truth of life, as were the crows, yet Abe's recollections of them tie them distinctively. Further experiences with the swamp centered around its use as a staking ground for condemned criminals with "[their] heads—now food for crows—appearing suddenly out of the darkness and disappearing again, terrified and attracted to us." These ideas are present in much of Abe's work.


title: Kōbō Abe

text: Abe was first published as a poet in 1947 with "Mumei-shishū" (""Poems of an unknown poet""), which he paid for himself, and as a novelist the following year with "Owarishi michi no shirube ni" (""The Road Sign at the End of the Street""), which established his reputation. When he received the Akutagawa Prize in 1951, his ability to continue publishing was confirmed. Though he did much work as an avant-garde novelist and playwright, it was not until the publication of "The Woman in the Dunes" in 1962 that Abe won widespread international acclaim.


title: Kōbō Abe

text: In the 1960s, he collaborated with Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara on the film adaptations of "The Pitfall," "Woman in the Dunes," "The Face of Another," and "The Man Without a Map". "Woman in the Dunes" received widespread critical acclaim and was released only four months after Abe was expelled from the Japanese Communist Party.


title: Kōbō Abe

text: In 1971, he founded the Abe Studio, an acting studio in Tokyo. Until the end of the decade, he trained performers and directed plays. The decision to found the studio came two years after he first directed his own work in 1969, a production of "The Man Who Turned Into A Stick". The production's sets were designed by Abe's wife, and Hisashi Igawa starred. Abe had become dissatisfied with ability of the theatre to materialize the abstract, reducing it to a passive medium. Until 1979, he wrote, directed, and produced 14 plays at the Abe Studio. He also published two novels, "Box Man" (1973) and "Secret Rendezvous" (1977), alongside a series of essays, musical scores, and photographic exhibits. The Seibu Theater, an avant-garde theater in the new department store Parco, was allegedly established in 1973 specifically for Abe, though many other artists were given the chance to use it. The Abe Studio production of "The Glasses of Love Are Rose Colored" (1973) opened there. Later, the entirety of the Seibu Museum was used to present one of Abe's photographic works, "An Exhibition of Images: I".


title: Kōbō Abe

text: The Abe Studio provided a foil for much of the contemporary scene in Japanese theater, contrasting with the Haiyuza's conventional productions, opting to focus on dramatic, as opposed to physical, expression. It was a safe space for young performers, whom Abe would often recruit from the Toho Gakuen College in Chofu City, on the outskirts of Tokyo, where he taught. The average age of the performers in the studio was about 27 throughout the decade, as members left and fresh faces were brought in. Abe "deftly" handled issues arising from difference in stage experience.


title: Kōbō Abe

text: Among the honors Abe received were the Akutagawa Prize in 1951 for "The Crime of S. Karuma," the Yomiuri Prize in 1962 for "The Woman in the Dunes," and the Tanizaki Prize in 1967 for the play "Friends." Kenzaburō Ōe credited Abe and other modern Japanese authors for "[creating] the way to the Nobel Prize", which he himself won. Abe was mentioned multiple times as a possible recipient, but his early death precluded that possibility.


title: Californios

text: Californio (plural Californios) is a term used to designate a Hispanic Californian, especially those descended from Spanish and Mexican settlers of the 17th through 19th centuries. California's Spanish-speaking community has resided there since 1683 and is made up of varying Spanish and Mexican origins, including criollos, Mestizos, Indigenous Californian peoples, and small numbers of Mulatos. Alongside the Tejanos of Texas and Neomexicanos of New Mexico and Colorado, Californios are part of the larger Spanish-American/Mexican-American/Hispano community of the United States, which has inhabited the American Southwest and the West Coast since the 16th century. Some may also identify as Chicanos, a term that came about in the 1960’s.


title: Californios

text: The term "Californio" (historical, regional Spanish for 'Californian') was originally applied by and to the Spanish-speaking residents of "Las Californias" during the periods of Spanish California and Mexican California, between 1683 and 1848. The first Californios were the children of the early Spanish military expeditions into northern reaches of the Californias. They established the presidios and subsequently enabled the foundation of the California mission system.


title: Californios

text: Later, the primary cultural focus of the Californio population became the "Vaquero" tradition practiced by the landed gentry, who received large land grants and created the Rancho system. In the 1820s-40s, American and European settlers increasingly migrated to Mexican California. Many married Californio women and became Mexican citizens, learning Spanish and often converting to Catholicism, the state religion. They are often also considered Californios, for their adherence to Californio language and culture.


title: Californios

text: In 2017 there were 11.9 million Hispanic/Mexican American/Hispanos in California (30% of California's population). They make up the largest group of the 15.2 million California Hispanics, who total 40% of California's population. 2004 studies estimated that between 300,000 and 500,000 have ancestry descended from the Spanish and Mexican eras of California.


title: Californios

text: The term "Californio" has different meanings depending on the author or source. According to the Real Academia Española, a Californio is a person native to California. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a Californio as both a native or resident of this state and a specific ethnic group: the Spanish settlers and their descendants in California.


title: Californios

text: Authors such as Douglas Monroy, Damian Bacich or Covadonga Lamar Prieto, among others, define Californios as exclusively applying to Alta California residents and their descendants.


title: Californios

text: Historians Hunt Janin and Ursula Carlson consider a Californio to be any settler who migrated to Alta California and their descendants; and also non-Hispanic immigrants who intermarried with Hispanics and integrated into the Californio culture during the Mexican era, and their descendants.


title: Californios

text: Calisphere and author Ferol Egan restrict the meaning of Californio to the Californian elite who acquired land during the Spanish and Mexican periods and their descendants. Enciclopedia.com also notes that the Californios were the elite of Alta California (regardless of their origins) but does not include their modern descendants as Californios. But Enciclopedia.com also notes that, "technically", the term would refer to any Spanish-speaking person who had lived in Alta California.


title: Californios

text: Leonard Pitt considers a Californio to be any Spanish-speaking person born in California. Writer Jose Antonio Burciaga considers Californios to be any Hispanic living in California, even if they have lived there temporarily. Burciaga, in a 1995 "Los Angeles Times" article, points to such examples as Cesar Chavez, Luisa Moreno and Bert Corona.


title: Californios

text: Although sources differ on some elements of classification, they have consensus that Californio includes at a minimum, Hispanic people with origins in Alta California.


title: Californios

text: In 1769, Gaspar de Portolá and less than two hundred men, on expedition founded the Presidio of San Diego (military post). On July 16, Franciscan friars Junípero Serra, Juan Viscaino and Fernando Parron raised and 'blessed a cross', establishing the first mission in upper Las Californias, Mission San Diego de Alcalá. Colonists began arriving in 1774.


title: Californios

text: Monterey, California was established in 1770 by Father Junípero Serra and Gaspar de Portolà (first governor of Las Californias province (1767–1770), explorer and founder of San Diego and Monterey). Monterey was settled with two friars and about 40 men and served as the capital of California from 1777 to 1849. The nearby Carmel Mission, in Carmel, California was moved there after a year in Monterey to keep the mission and its Mission Indians away from the Monterey Presidio soldiers. It was the headquarters of the original Alta California province missions headed by Father-President Junípero Serra from 1770 until his death in 1784—he is buried there. Monterey was originally the only port of entry for all taxable goods in California. All ships were supposed to clear through Monterey and pay the roughly 42% tariff (customs duties on imported goods before trading anywhere else in Alta California). The oldest governmental building in the state is the Monterey Custom House and California's Historic Landmark Number One. The "Californian", California's oldest newspaper, was first published in Monterey on August 15, 1846, after the city's occupation by the U.S. Navy's Pacific Squadron on July 7, 1846.


title: Californios

text: Late in 1775, Colonel Juan Bautista de Anza led an overland expedition over the Gila River trail he had discovered in 1774 to bring colonists from Sonora New Spain (Mexico) to California to settle two missions, one presidio, and one pueblo (town). Anza led 240 friars, soldiers and colonists with their families. They started out with 695 horses and mules and 385 Texas Longhorn bulls and cows—starting the cattle and horse industry in California. About 600 horses and mules and 300 cattle survived the trip. In 1776 about 200 leather-jacketed soldiers, Friars, and colonists with their families moved to what was called Yerba Buena (now San Francisco) to start building a mission and a presidio there. The leather jackets the soldiers wore consisted of several layers of hardened leather and were strong enough body armor to usually stop an Indian arrow. In California the cattle and horses had few enemies and plentiful grass in all but drought years and essentially grew and multiplied as feral animals—doubling roughly every two years. They partially displaced the Tule Elk and pronghorn antelope who had lived there in large herds previously.


title: Californios

text: Anza selected the sites of the Presidio of San Francisco and Mission San Francisco de Asís in what is now San Francisco; on his way back to Monterey, he sited Mission Santa Clara de Asís and the pueblo San Jose in the Santa Clara Valley but did not initially leave settlers to settle them. Mission San Francisco de Asís (or Mission Dolores), the sixth Spanish mission, was founded on June 29, 1776, by Lieutenant José Joaquin Moraga and Father Francisco Palóu (a companion of Junípero Serra).


title: Californios

text: On November 29, 1777, El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe (The Town of Saint Joseph of Guadalupe now called simply San Jose) was founded by José Joaquín Moraga on the first "pueblo"-town not associated with a mission or a military post ("presidio") in Alta California. The original San Jose settlers were part of the original group of 200 settlers and soldiers that had originally settled in Yerba Buena (San Francisco). Mission Santa Clara, founded in 1777, was the eighth mission founded and closest mission to San Jose. Mission Santa Clara was from the original San Jose pueblo site in neighboring Santa Clara. Mission San José was not founded until 1797, about north of San Jose in what is now Fremont.


title: Californios

text: The Los Angeles Pobladores ("villagers") is the name given to the 44 original Sonorans—22 adults and 22 children—who settled the Pueblo of Los Angeles in 1781. The "pobladores" were agricultural families from Sonora, Mexico. They were the last settlers to use the Anza trail as the Quechans (Yumas) closed the trail for the next 40 years shortly after they had passed over it. Almost none of the settlers was "españoles" (Spanish); the rest had "casta" (caste) designations such as "mestizo", "indio", and "negro". Some classifications were changed in the California Census of 1790, as often happened in colonial Spanish America.


title: Californios

text: The settlers and escort soldiers who founded the towns of San José de Guadalupe, Yerba Buena (San Francisco), Monterey, San Diego and La Reina de Los Ángeles were primarily mestizo and of mixed Negro and Native American ancestry from the province of Sonora y Sinaloa in Mexico. Recruiters in Mexico of the Fernando Rivera y Moncada expedition and other expeditions later, who were charged with founding an agricultural community in Alta California, had a difficult time persuading people to emigrate to such an isolated outpost with no agriculture, no towns, no stores or developments of almost any kind. The majority of settlers were recruited from the northwestern parts of Mexico. The only tentative link with Mexico was via ship after the Quechans (Yumas) closed the Colorado River's Yuma Crossing in 1781. For the next 40 years, an average of only 2.5 ships per year visited California with 13 years showing no recorded ships arriving.


title: Californios

text: In Californio society, "casta" (caste) designations carried more weight than they did in older communities of central Mexico. One similar concept was the "gente de razón", a term literally meaning "people of reason". It designated peoples who were culturally Hispanic (that is, they were not living in traditional Native American communities) and had adopted Christianity. This served to distinguish the Mexican "Indio" settlers and converted Californian "Indios" from the "barbaro" (barbarian) Californian Native Americans, who had not converted or become part of the Hispanic towns. California's Governor Pío Pico was criticized for his alleged descent from mestizo and "mulato" (mulatto) settlers.


title: Californios

text: In the 1830s the newly formed Mexican government was experiencing difficulties, having gone through several revolts, wars, and internal conflicts and a seemingly never-ending string of Mexican Presidents. One of the problems in Mexico was the large amount of land controlled by the Catholic Church (estimated then at about one-third of all settled property), which was continually granted property by many landowners when they died and controlled property supposedly held in trust for the Native Americans. This land, as it gradually accumulated, was seldom sold, as it cost nothing to keep, but could be rented out to gain additional income for the Catholic Church to pay its priests, friars, bishops, and other expenses. The Catholic Church was the largest and richest landowner in Mexico and its provinces. In California the situation was even more pronounced, as the Franciscan friars held over 90% of all settled property, supposedly in trust for the mission Indians.


title: Californios

text: In 1834, secularization laws that voided the mission control of lands in the northern settlements under Mexican rule were enacted. The missions directed thousands of Indians in herding livestock, growing crops and orchards, weaving cloth, etc. for the missions, presidios, and pueblo (town) dwellers. The mission lands and herds formerly controlled by the missions were usually distributed to the settlers around each mission. Since most had almost no money, the land was distributed or granted free or at very little cost to friends and families of the government officials (or those who paid the highest bribes).


title: Californios

text: The Californio Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, for example, was reputed to be the richest man in California before the California Gold Rush. Vallejo oversaw the secularization of Mission San Francisco Solano and the distributions of its roughly . He founded the towns of Sonoma and Petaluma, California, owned Mare Island and the future town site of Benicia, California, and was granted the Rancho Petaluma, the Rancho Suscol and other properties by Governor José Figueroa in 1834 and later. Vallejo's younger brother, Jose Manuel Salvador Vallejo (1813–1876), was granted the Rancho Napa and other additional grants known as Salvador's Ranch. Over the hills of Mariano Vallejo's estate of Petaluma roamed ten thousand cattle, four to six thousand horses, and many thousands of sheep. He occupied a home on the plaza at Sonoma, where he entertained all who came with hospitality; few travelers of note came to California without visiting him. At Petaluma he had a great ranch house called La Hacienda. About 1849 on his home farm called Lachryma Montis (Tear of the Mountain), he built a modern frame house where he spent the later years of his life.


title: Californios

text: Vallejo tried to get the California State Capital moved permanently to Benicia, California on land he sold to the state government in December, 1851. It was named Benicia for the General's wife, Francisca Benicia Carillo de Vallejo. The General intended that the prospective city be named "Francisca" after his wife, but this name was dropped when the city of Yerba Buena changed its name to "San Francisco" on January 30, 1847. Benicia was the third site selected to serve as the California state capital, and its newly constructed city hall was California's capitol from February 11, 1853, to February 25, 1854. Vallejo gave the Rancho Suscol to his oldest daughter, Epifania Guadalupe Vallejo, on April 3, 1851, as a wedding present when she married U.S. Army General John H. Frisbie. It is unknown what he gave as a wedding present when his two daughters Natalia and Jovita married the brothers, Attila Haraszthy and Agoston Haraszthy, on the same day—June 1, 1863.


title: Californios

text: In some cases particular mission land and livestock were split into parcels and then distributed by drawing lots. In nearly all cases the Indians got very little of the mission land or livestock. Whether any of the proceeds of these sales made their way back to Mexico City is unknown. These lands had been worked by settlers and the much larger settlements of local Native American Kumeyaay peoples on the missions for several generations in some cases. When the missions were secularized or dismantled and the Indians did not have to live under continued friar and military control, they were left essentially to survive on their own. Many of the Native Americans reverted to their former tribal existence and left the missions, while others found they could get room and board and some clothing by working for the large ranches that took over the former mission lands and livestock. Many natives who had learned to ride horses and knew a smattering of Spanish were recruited to become vaqueros (cowboys or cattle herders) that worked the cattle and horses on the large ranchos and did other work. Some of these rancho owners and their hired hands would make up the bulk of the few hundred Californios fighting in the brief Mexican–American War conflicts in California. Some of the Californios and California Native Americans fought on the side of the U.S. settlers during the conflict, with some joining John Frémont's California Battalion.


title: Californios

text: Prior to the Mexican–American War of 1846–1848, the Californios forced the Mexican appointed governor, Manuel Micheltorena, to flee back to Mexico with most of his troops. Pío Pico, a Californio, was the governor of California during the conflict.


title: Californios

text: The Pacific Squadron, the United States Naval force stationed in the Pacific was instrumental in the capture of Alta California after war was declared on April 24, 1846. The American navy with its force of 350–400 U.S. Marines and "bluejacket" sailors on board several U.S. Naval ships near California were essentially the only significant United States military force on the Pacific Coast in the early months of the Mexican–American War. The British navy Pacific Station ships in the Pacific had more men and were more heavily armed than the U.S. Navy's Pacific Squadron, but did not have orders to help or hinder the occupation of California. New orders would have taken almost two years to get back to the British ships. The Marines were stationed aboard each ship to assist in ship-to-ship combat, as snipers in the rigging, and to defend against boarders. They could also be detached for use as armed infantry. In addition, there were some "bluejacket" sailors on each ship that could be detached for shore duty as artillery crews and infantry, leaving the ship functional though short handed. The artillery used were often small naval cannon converted to land use. The Pacific Squadron had orders, in the event of war with Mexico, to seize the ports in Mexican California and elsewhere along the Pacific Coast.


title: Californios

text: The only other United States military force in California at the time was a small exploratory expedition led by Lieutenant Colonel John C. Frémont, made up of 30 topographical, surveying, etc. army troops and about 25 men hired as guides and hunters. The Frémont expedition had been dispatched to California, in 1845, from the United States Army Corps of Topographical Engineers.


title: Californios

text: Rumors that the Californio government in California was planning to arrest and deport many of the new residents as they had in 1844 led to a degree of uncertainty. On June 14, 1846, thirty-three settlers in Sonoma Valley took preemptive action and captured the small Californio garrison of Sonoma, California without firing a shot and raised a homemade flag with a bear and star (the "Bear Flag") to symbolize their taking control. The words "California Republic" appeared on the flag but were never officially adopted by the insurgents. The present Flag of California is based on the original "Bear Flag".


title: Californios

text: Their capture of the small garrison in Sonoma was later called the "Bear Flag Revolt". The Republic's only commander-in-chief was William B. Ide, whose command lasted 25 days. On June 23, 1846, Frémont arrived from the future state of Oregon's border with about 30 soldiers and 30 scouts and hunters and took command of the "Republic" in the name of the United States. Frémont began to recruit a militia from among the new settlers living around Sutters Fort to join with his forces. Many of these settlers had just arrived over the California Trail and many more would continue to arrive after July 1846 when they got to California. The Donner Party were the last travelers on the trail in late 1846 when they were caught by early snow while they were trying to get across the Sierras.