title: Augustan literature

text: All types of literature were spread quickly in all directions. Newspapers began and even multiplied. Furthermore, the newspapers were immediately compromised, as the political factions created their own newspapers, planted stories and bribed journalists. Leading clerics had their sermon collections printed, which were top selling books. Since dissenting, Establishment and Independent divines were in print, the constant movement of these works helped defuse any region's religious homogeneity and fostered emergent latitudinarianism. Periodicals were exceedingly popular, and the art of essay writing was at nearly its apex. Furthermore, the happenings of the Royal Society were published regularly, and they were digested and explained or celebrated in more popular presses. The latest books of scholarship had "keys", "indexes" and "digests" made of them that could popularise, summarise and explain them to a wide audience. The cross-index, now commonplace, was a novelty in the 18th century, and several persons created indexes for older books of learning to allow anyone to find what an author had to say about a given topic at a moment's notice. Books of etiquette, of correspondence and of moral instruction and hygiene multiplied. Economics began as a serious discipline but did so in the form of numerous "projects" for solving England, Ireland and Scotland's ills. Sermon collections, dissertations on religious controversy, and prophecies, both new and old and explained, cropped up in endless variety. In short, readers in the 18th century were overwhelmed by competing voices. Truth and falsehood sat side by side on the shelves, and anyone could be a published author, just as anyone could quickly pretend to be a scholar by using indexes and digests (Clair 45, 158–187).


title: Augustan literature

text: The positive side of the explosion in information was that the 18th century was markedly more generally educated than the centuries before. Education was less confined to the upper classes than it had been in prior centuries so contributions to science, philosophy, economics, and literature came from all parts of the kingdom. It was the first time that literacy and a library were all that stood between a person and education. It was an age of "enlightenment" in the sense that the insistence and drive for reasonable explanations of nature and mankind was a rage. It was an "age of reason" in that it was an age that accepted clear, rational methods as superior to tradition. However, there was a dark side to such literacy as well, which authors of the 18th century felt at every turn, which was that nonsense and insanity were also getting more adherents than ever before. Charlatans and mountebanks were fooling more, just as sages were educating more, and alluring and lurid apocalypses vied with sober philosophy on the shelves. As with the World Wide Web in the 21st century, the democratisation of publishing meant that older systems for determining value and uniformity of view were both in shambles. Thus, it was increasingly difficult to trust books in the 18th century, as books were increasingly easy to make and buy.


title: Augustan literature

text: The Restoration period ended with the exclusion crisis and the Glorious Revolution, where Parliament set up a new rule for succession to the British throne that would always prefer Protestantism over consanguinity. That had brought William III and Mary II to the throne instead of James II, and that was codified in the Act of Settlement 1701. James had fled to France from where his son, James Francis Edward Stuart, launched an attempt to retake the throne in 1715. Another attempt was launched by the latter's son Charles Edward Stuart in 1745. The attempted invasions are often referred to as "the 15" and "the 45". When William died, Anne Stuart came to the throne. Anne's reign saw two wars and great triumphs by John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough. Marlborough's wife, Sarah Churchill, was Anne's best friend, and many supposed that she secretly controlled the Queen in every respect. With the belief that true power rested in the hands of the leading ministers, the two factions of politics stepped up their opposition to each other, and Whig and Tory were at each other's throats. That weakness at the throne would lead quickly to the expansion of the powers of the party leader in Parliament and the establishment in all but name of the prime minister office in the form of Robert Walpole. When Anne died without a surviving issue, George I, Elector of Hanover, came to the throne. George I spoke poor English, and his isolation from the English people was instrumental in keeping his power relatively irrelevant.


title: Augustan literature

text: Increased population also meant that urban discontent was never particularly difficult to find for political opportunists, and London suffered a number of riots, most of them against supposed Roman Catholic provocateurs. When highly potent, inexpensive distilled spirits were introduced, matters worsened and authors and artists protested the innovation of gin (see, e.g. William Hogarth's Gin Lane). From 1710, the government encouraged distilling as a source of revenue and trade goods, and there were no licenses required for the manufacturing or selling of gin. There were documented instances of women drowning their infants to sell the child's clothes for gin, and the facilities created both the fodder for riots and the conditions against which riots would occur (Loughrey and Treadwell, 14). Dissenters (Protestants not conforming to the Church of England) recruited and preached to the poor of the city, and various offshoots of the Puritan and "Independent" (Baptist) movements increased their numbers substantially. One theme of the ministers was the danger of the Roman Catholic Church, which they frequently saw as the Whore of Babylon. While Anne tended to favor the High Church faction, particularly towards the close of her reign, the court of George I was more closely allied with Low Church and latitudinarian elements and was warmer to nonconformists. The convocation was effectively disbanded by George I, who was struggling with the House of Lords, and George II was pleased to keep it in abeyance. Additionally, both Georges were concerned with James Francis Edward Stuart and Charles Edward Stuart, who had considerable support in Scotland and Ireland, and many were suspected of being closet Jacobites. Walpole inflated fears of Stuart sympathisers from any group that did not support him.


title: Augustan literature

text: Consequently, readers of 18th-century literature now need to understand the history of the period more than most readers of other literature do. The authors were writing for an informed audience and only secondarily for posterity. Even the authors, who criticised writing that lived for only a day (like Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope, in The Dedication to Prince Posterity of A Tale of a Tub and The Dunciad, among other pieces) were criticising specific authors, who are unknown to those without historical knowledge of the period. Poetry of all forms was in constant dialogue, and each author was responding and commenting upon the others. Novels were written against other novels (like the battles between Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding, who, along with Eliza Haywood, wrote a novel satirising Richardson's Pamela, and between Laurence Sterne and Tobias Smollett). Plays were written to make fun of plays or to counter the success of plays (like the reaction against and for Cato and, later, Fielding's The Author's Farce). Therefore, history and literature are linked in a way rarely seen at other times. On one hand, the metropolitan and political writing can seem like coterie or salon work, but on the other hand, it was the literature of people deeply committed to sorting out a new type of government, new technologies and newly-vexatious challenges to philosophical and religious certainty.


title: Augustan literature

text: English essayists were aware of Continental models, but they developed their form independently from that tradition, and periodical literature grew between 1692 and 1712. Periodicals were inexpensive to produce, quick to read, and a viable way of influencing public opinion, and consequently there were many broadsheet periodicals headed by a single author and staffed by hirelings (so-called "Grub Street" authors). One periodical outsold and dominated all others, however, and that was The Spectator, written by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele (with occasional contributions from their friends). The Spectator developed a number of pseudonymous characters, including "Mr. Spectator," Roger de Coverley, and "Isaac Bickerstaff", and both Addison and Steele created fictions to surround their narrators. The dispassionate view of the world (the pose of a spectator, rather than participant) was essential for the development of the English essay, as it set out a ground wherein Addison and Steele could comment and meditate upon manners and events. Samuel Johnson's command of words and his practical wisdom gained a following as he published more than 200 essays offering insights into the follies of human nature and moral perseverance. Rather than being philosophers like Montesquieu, the English essayist could be an honest observer and his reader's peer. After the success of The Spectator, more political periodicals of comment appeared. However, the political factions and coalitions of politicians very quickly realized the power of this type of press, and they began funding newspapers to spread rumours. The Tory ministry of Robert Harley reportedly spent over 50,000 pounds sterling on creating and bribing the press (Butt); this figure is known because their successors publicised it, but they (the Walpole government) were suspected of spending even more. Politicians wrote papers, wrote into papers, and supported papers, and it was well known that some of the periodicals, like Mist's Journal, were party mouthpieces.


title: Augustan literature

text: The 18th century was a time of enlightenment progression occurring in all intellectual fields. However, the English language was deteriorating into a tangled mess. A group of London booksellers commissioned well-known essayist Samuel Johnson to compile a set of rules governing the English language. After nine years and the help of six assistants the first edition of A Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755. Johnson's great knowledge of letters, words and literature brought uniqueness to his dictionary. Each word defined in detail, with descriptions of their various uses and numerous literary quotes as illustrations. This was the first dictionary of its kind, containing 40,000 words and nearly 114,000 quotes packed together with Johnson's personal touch. A warm reception greeted Johnson's Dictionary as it was the first dictionary that could be read with pleasure. The definitions full of wit and depth of thought supported by passages from beloved poets and philosophers, which a reader could be content spending an evening poring over its pages. Johnson's choice of structure and format has certainly shaped future English dictionaries and lexicons and the role they play in language development.


title: Augustan literature

text: The Augustan period showed less literature of controversy than the Restoration. There were Puritan authors, however, and one of the names usually associated with the novel is perhaps the most prominent in Puritan writing: Daniel Defoe. After the coronation of Anne, dissenter hopes of reversing the Restoration were at an ebb, and dissenter literature moved from the offensive to the defensive, from revolutionary to conservative. Defoe's infamous volley in the struggle between high and low church came in the form of The Shortest Way with the Dissenters; Or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church. The work is satirical, attacking all of the worries of Establishment figures over the challenges of dissenters. It is, in other words, defensive. Later still, the most majestic work of the era, and the one most quoted and read, was William Law's A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life . The Meditations of Robert Boyle remained popular as well. Both Law and Boyle called for revivalism, and they set the stage for the later development of Methodism and George Whitefield's sermon style. However, their works aimed at the individual, rather than the community. The age of revolutionary divines and militant evangelists in literature was over for a considerable time.


title: Augustan literature

text: Also in contrast to the Restoration, when philosophy in England was fully dominated by John Locke, the 18th century had a vigorous competition among followers of Locke. Bishop Berkeley extended Locke's emphasis on perception to argue that perception entirely solves the Cartesian problem of subjective and objective knowledge by saying "to be is to be perceived". Only those things, Berkeley argued, that are perceived by a consciousness are real. For Berkeley, the persistence of matter rests in the fact that God perceives those things that humans do not, that a living and continually aware, attentive, and involved God is the only rational explanation for the existence of objective matter. In essence, then, Berkeley's scepticism leads to faith. David Hume, on the other hand, took empiricist scepticism to its extremes, and he was the most radically empiricist philosopher of the period. He attacked surmised and unexamined premises wherever he found them, and his scepticism pointed out metaphysics in areas that other empiricists had assumed were material. Hume doggedly refused to enter into questions of his personal faith in the divine, but he assaulted the logic and assumptions of theodicy and cosmogeny, and he concentrated on the provable and empirical in a way that would lead to utilitarianism and naturalism later.


title: Augustan literature

text: Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe was the first major novel of the new century and was published in more editions than any other works besides Gulliver's Travels (Mullan 252). Defoe worked as a journalist during and after its composition, and therefore he encountered the memoirs of Alexander Selkirk, who had been stranded in South America on an island for some years. Defoe took aspects of the actual life and, from that, generated a fictional life, satisfying an essentially journalistic market with his fiction (Hunter 331–338). In the 1720s, Defoe interviewed famed criminals and produced accounts of their lives. In particular, he investigated Jack Sheppard and Jonathan Wild and wrote True Accounts of the former's escapes (and fate) and the latter's life. From his reportage on the prostitutes and criminals, Defoe may have become familiar with the real-life Mary Mollineaux, who may have been the model for Moll in Moll Flanders . In the same year, Defoe produced A Journal of the Plague Year , which summoned up the horrors and tribulations of 1665 for a journalistic market for memoirs, and an attempted tale of a working-class male rise in Colonel Jack . His last novel returned to the theme of fallen women in Roxana . Thematically, Defoe's works are consistently Puritan. They all involve a fall, a degradation of the spirit, a conversion, and an ecstatic elevation. This religious structure necessarily involved a bildungsroman, for each character had to learn a lesson about him or herself and emerge the wiser.


title: Augustan literature

text: Although there were novels in the interim, Samuel Richardson's Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded is the next landmark development in the English novel. Richardson's generic models were quite distinct from those of Defoe. Instead of working from the journalistic biography, Richardson had in mind the books of improvement that were popular at the time. Pamela Andrews enters the employ of a "Mr. B". As a dutiful girl, she writes to her mother constantly, and as a Christian girl, she is always on guard for her "virtue" (i.e. her virginity), for Mr. B lusts after her. The novel ends with her marriage to her employer and her rising to the position of lady. Pamela, like its author, presents a dissenter's and a Whig's view of the rise of the classes. The work drew a nearly instantaneous set of satires, of which Henry Fielding's Shamela, or an Apology for the Life of Miss Shamela Andrews is the most memorable. Fielding continued to bait Richardson with Joseph Andrews , the tale of Shamela's brother, Joseph, who goes through his life trying to protect his own virginity, thus reversing the sexual predation of Richardson and satirizing the idea of sleeping one's way to rank. However, Joseph Andrews is not a parody of Richardson, for Fielding proposed his belief in "good nature", which is a quality of inherent virtue that is independent of class and which can always prevail. Joseph's friend Parson Adams, although not a fool, is a naïf and possessing good nature. His own basic good nature blinds him to the wickedness of the world, and the incidents on the road (for most of the novel is a travel story) allow Fielding to satirize conditions for the clergy, rural poverty (and squires), and the viciousness of businessmen.


title: Augustan literature

text: In 1747 through 1748, Samuel Richardson published Clarissa in serial form. Unlike Pamela, it is not a tale of virtue rewarded. Instead, it is a highly tragic and affecting account of a young girl whose parents try to force her into an uncongenial marriage, thus pushing her into the arms of a scheming rake named Lovelace. In the end, Clarissa dies by her own will. The novel is a masterpiece of psychological realism and emotional effect, and when Richardson was drawing to a close in the serial publication, even Henry Fielding wrote to him, begging him not to kill Clarissa. As with Pamela, Richardson emphasized the individual over the social and the personal over the class. Even as Fielding was reading and enjoying Clarissa, he was also writing a counter to its messages. His Tom Jones of 1749 offers up the other side of the argument from Clarissa. Tom Jones agrees substantially in the power of the individual to be more or less than his or her birth would indicate, but it again emphasizes the place of the individual in society and the social ramifications of individual choices. Fielding answers Richardson by featuring a similar plot device (whether a girl can choose her own mate) but showing how family and village can complicate and expedite matches and felicity.


title: Augustan literature

text: Two other novelists should be mentioned, for they, like Fielding and Richardson, were in dialogue through their works. Laurence Sterne's and Tobias Smollett's works offered up oppositional views of the self in society and the method of the novel. The clergyman Laurence Sterne consciously set out to imitate Jonathan Swift with his Tristram Shandy . Tristram seeks to write his autobiography, but like Swift's narrator in A Tale of a Tub, he worries that nothing in his life can be understood without understanding its context. For example, he tells the reader that at the very moment he was conceived, his mother was saying, "Did you wind the clock?". To clarify how he knows this, he explains that his father took care of winding the clock and "other family business" on one day a month. To explain why the clock had to be wound then, he has to explain his father. In other words, the biography moves backward rather than forward in time, only to then jump forward years, hit another knot, and move backward again. It is a novel of exceptional energy, of multi-layered digressions, of multiple satires, and of frequent parodies. Journalist, translator and historian Tobias Smollett, on the other hand, wrote more seemingly traditional novels. He concentrated on the picaresque novel, where a low-born character would go through a practically endless series of adventures. Sterne thought that Smollett's novels always paid undue attention to the basest and most common elements of life, that they emphasized the dirt. Although this is a superficial complaint, it points to an important difference between the two as authors. Sterne came to the novel from a satirical background, while Smollett approached it from journalism. In the 19th century, novelists would have plots much nearer to Smollett's than either Fielding's or Sterne's or Richardson's, and his sprawling, linear development of action would prove most successful.


title: Augustan literature

text: Many scholars of the era argue that a single name overshadows all others in 18th-century prose satire: Jonathan Swift. Swift wrote poetry as well as prose, and his satires range over all topics. Critically, Swift's satire marked the development of prose parody away from simple satire or burlesque. A burlesque or lampoon in prose would imitate a despised author and quickly move to reductio ad absurdum by having the victim say things coarse or idiotic. On the other hand, other satires would argue against a habit, practice, or policy by making fun of its reach or composition or methods. What Swift did was to combine parody, with its imitation of form and style of another, and satire in prose. Swift's works would pretend to speak in the voice of an opponent and imitate the style of the opponent and have the parodic work itself be the satire. Swift's first major satire was A Tale of a Tub , which introduced an ancients/moderns division that would serve as a distinction between the old and new conception of value. The "moderns" sought trade, empirical science, the individual's reason above the society's, while the "ancients" believed in inherent and immanent value of birth, and the society over the individual's determinations of the good. In Swift's satire, the moderns come out looking insane and proud of their insanity, and dismissive of the value of history. In Swift's most significant satire, Gulliver's Travels , autobiography, allegory, and philosophy mix together in the travels. Thematically, Gulliver's Travels is a critique of human vanity, of pride. Book one, the journey to Liliput, begins with the world as it is. Book two shows that the idealized nation of Brobdingnag with a philosopher king is no home for a contemporary Englishman. Book four depicts the land of the Houyhnhnms, a society of horses ruled by pure reason, where humanity itself is portrayed as a group of "yahoos" covered in filth and dominated by base desires. It shows that, indeed, the very desire for reason may be undesirable, and humans must struggle to be neither Yahoos nor Houyhnhnms, for book three shows what happens when reason is unleashed without any consideration of morality or utility (i.e. madness, ruin, and starvation).


title: Augustan literature

text: Particularly after Swift's success, parodic satire had an attraction for authors throughout the 18th century. A variety of factors created a rise in political writing and political satire, and Robert Walpole's success and domination of House of Commons was a very effective proximal cause for polarized literature and thereby the rise of parodic satire. The parodic satire takes apart the cases and plans of policy without necessarily contrasting a normative or positive set of values. Therefore, it was an ideal method of attack for ironists and conservatives—those who would not be able to enunciate a set of values to change toward but could condemn present changes as ill-considered. Satire was present in all genres during the Augustan period. Perhaps primarily, satire was a part of political and religious debate. Every significant politician and political act had satires to attack it. Few of these were parodic satires, but parodic satires, too, emerged in political and religious debate. So omnipresent and powerful was satire in the Augustan age that more than one literary history has referred to it as the "Age of satire" in literature.


title: Augustan literature

text: In the Augustan era, poets wrote in direct counterpoint and direct expansion of one another, with each poet writing satire when in opposition. There was a great struggle over the nature and role of the pastoral in the early part of the century, reflecting two simultaneous movements: the invention of the subjective self as a worthy topic, with the emergence of a priority on individual psychology, against the insistence on all acts of art being performance and public gesture designed for the benefit of society at large. The development seemingly agreed upon by both sides was a gradual adaptation of all forms of poetry from their older uses. Odes would cease to be encomium, ballads cease to be narratives, elegies cease to be sincere memorials, satires no longer be specific entertainments, parodies no longer be performance pieces without sting, song no longer be pointed, and the lyric would become a celebration of the individual rather than a lover's complaint. These developments can be seen as extensions of Protestantism, as Max Weber argued, for they represent a gradual increase in the implications of Martin Luther's doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, or they can be seen as a growth of the power and assertiveness of the bourgeoisie and an echo of the displacement of the worker from the home in growing industrialization, as Marxists such as E.P. Thompson have argued. It can be argued that the development of the subjective individual against the social individual was a natural reaction to trade over other methods of economic production. Whatever the prime cause, a largely conservative set of voices argued for a social person and largely emergent voices argued for the individual person.


title: Augustan literature

text: There was a great struggle over the nature and role of the pastoral in the early part of the century. After Pope published his Pastorals of the four seasons in 1709, an evaluation in the Guardian praised Ambrose Philips's pastorals above Pope's, and Pope replied with a mock praise of Philips's Pastorals that heaped scorn on them. Pope quoted Philips's worst lines, mocked his execution, and delighted in pointing out his empty lines. Pope later explained that any depictions of shepherds and their mistresses in the pastoral must not be updated shepherds, that they must be icons of the Golden Age: "we are not to describe our shepherds as shepherds at this day really are, but as they may be conceived then to have been, when the best of men followed the employment" (Gordon). Philips's Pastorals were not particularly awful poems, but they did reflect his desire to "update" the pastoral. In 1724, Philips would update poetry again by writing a series of odes dedicated to "all ages and characters, from Walpole, the steerer of the realm, to Miss Pulteney in the nursery." Henry Carey was one of the best at satirizing these poems, and his Namby Pamby became a hugely successful obliteration of Philips and Philips's endeavor. What is notable about Philips against Pope, however, is the fact that both poets were adapting the pastoral and the ode, both altering it. Pope's insistence upon a Golden Age pastoral no less than Philips's desire to update it meant making a political statement. While it is easy to see in Ambrose Philips an effort at modernist triumph, it is no less the case that Pope's artificially restricted pastoral was a statement of what the ideal should be.


title: Augustan literature

text: John Gay and Alexander Pope belong on one side of a line separating the celebrants of the individual and the celebrants of the social. Pope wrote The Rape of the Lock, he said, to settle a disagreement between two great families, to laugh them into peace. Even The Dunciad, which seems to be a serial killing of everyone on Pope's enemies list, sets up these figures as expressions of dangerous and antisocial forces in letters. Theobald and Cibber are marked by vanity and pride, by having no care for morality. The hireling pens Pope attacks mercilessly in the heroic games section of the Dunciad are all embodiments of avarice and lies. Similarly, Gay writes of political society, of social dangers, and of follies that must be addressed to protect the greater whole. Gay's individuals are microcosms of the society at large. On the other side of this line were people who agreed with the politics of Gay and Pope (and Swift), but not in approach. They include, early in the Augustan Age, James Thomson and Edward Young.


title: Augustan literature

text: In the year 1726 two poems were published describing landscape from a personal point of view and taking their feeling and moral lessons from direct observation. One was John Dyer's "Grongar Hill", the other was James Thomson's "Winter", soon to be followed by all the seasons . Both are unlike Pope's notion of the Golden Age pastoral as exemplified in his "Windsor Forest". Mythology is at a minimum and there is no celebration of Britain or the crown. Where the octosyllabic couplets of Dyer's poem celebrate the natural beauty of a mountain view and are quietly meditative, the declamatory blank verse of Thomson's winter meditation is melancholy and soon to establish that emotion as proper for poetic expression. One notable successor in that line was Edward Yonge's Night Thoughts . It was, even more than "Winter", a poem of deep solitude, melancholy and despair. In these poems, there are the stirrings of the lyric as the Romantics would see it: the celebration of the private individual's idiosyncratic, yet paradigmatic, responses to the visions of the world.


title: Augustan literature

text: Joseph Addison also wrote a play, entitled Cato, in 1713, which concerned the Roman statesman Cato the Younger. The year of its première was important, with Queen Anne in serious illness at the time, and both the Tory ministry of the day and the Whig opposition (already being led by Robert Walpole) were concerned about the succession. Both groups were contacting the Old Pretender about bringing the Young Pretender over. Londoners sensed the anxiety, as Anne had no heirs, and all of the natural successors in the Stuart family were Roman Catholic or unavailable. Therefore, the figure of Cato was a transparent symbol of Roman integrity, and the Whigs saw in him a champion of Whig values, and the Tories saw in him an embodiment of Tory sentiments or, like the Tory Examiner, tried to claim that Cato was above political "faction". Both sides cheered the play, but Addison was himself clearly a Whig (Bloom and Bloom 266, 269). John Home's play Douglas would have a similar fate to Cato in the next generation, after the Licensing Act.


title: Augustan literature

text: Playwrights were therefore in straits. On the one hand, the playhouses were doing without plays by turning out hack-written pantomimes. On the other hand, when a satirical play appeared, the Whig ministry would suppress it. The antagonism was picked up by Henry Fielding, who was not afraid to fight Walpole. His Tom Thumb was a satire on all of the tragedies written before him, with quotations from all the worst plays patched together for absurdity, and the plot concerned the eponymous tiny man attempting to run things. It was, in other words, an attack on Robert Walpole and the way that he was referred to as "the Great Man". Here, the Great Man is made obviously deficient by being a midget. Walpole responded, and Fielding's revision of the play was in print only. It was written by "Scribblerus Secundus". Its title page announced it was the Tragedy of Tragedies, which functioned as a clearly Swiftian parodic satire. Anti-Walpolean sentiment also showed in increasingly political plays. A particular play of unknown authorship entitled A Vision of the Golden Rump was cited when Parliament passed the Licensing Act of 1737.


title: Augustan literature

text: The Licensing Act required all plays to go to a censor before staging, and only the plays passed by the censor were allowed to be performed. The first play to be banned by the new Act was Gustavus Vasa by Henry Brooke. Samuel Johnson wrote a Swiftian parodic satire of the licensers entitled A Complete Vindication of the Licensers of the English Stage. The satire was, of course, not a vindication at all, but rather a reductio ad absurdum of the position for censorship. Had the licensers not exercised their authority in a partisan manner, the Act might not have chilled the stage so dramatically, but the public was well aware of the bannings and censorship and so any play that passed the licensers was regarded with suspicion by the public. Therefore, the playhouses had little choice but to present old plays and pantomime and other plays that had no conceivable political content. In other words, William Shakespeare's reputation grew enormously, as his plays saw a quadrupling of performances, and sentimental comedy and melodrama were the only choices.


title: Robert Coates (actor)

text: Coates was the victim of a prank orchestrated by Theodore Hook, who had famously coordinated the Berners Street hoax in 1810, a few years before. The Prince Regent was at the time holding "a fête of surpassing magnificence" at Carlton House, and Coates "in his glory- murdering Shakespeare at the Haymarket"; imitating the Chamberlain's handwriting, Hook produced a ticket "commanding the presence of Signor Romeo" and, dressing himself in fine scarlet livery, delivered this flattering but fake invitation to Coates in person. Hook waited to watch Coates embark for the event in his carriage, "bedizened in all his finery, with a diamond-hilted sword and the air of Louis le Grand". Coates was invited in, but on examination of the ticket he was "politely informed that a mistake had occurred", and turned away. Having sent off his carriage, he was obliged to wait at the Hackney carriage stand. The Prince, unwittingly involved in Hook's prank, regretted that Coates had been turned away, observing him to be an "inoffensive gentleman", and noting that "his presence might have amused many of the guests, and could have done harm to no one." The Prince sent his secretary the next day, inviting Coates to come and look at the "arrangements and ornaments" which were still all in place; Coates duly went. It was observed of Hook that, "to do him justice", he "never told the story without some signs of compunction."


title: Murder of Sophie Lancaster

text: While going home, Lancaster and Maltby were subjected to a "vicious mob attack" from "a large group of people" between 1:10 and 1:20 a.m. on Saturday, 11 August 2007, at the skate park area of Stubbylee Park, Bacup . The couple were walking home and came across a gang of teenagers at the entrance to the park. The group followed them and assaulted Maltby, knocking him unconscious, and then Lancaster, who was shielding her boyfriend. A 15-year-old witness told police: "They were running over and just kicking her in the head and jumping up and down on her head." One witness used a mobile phone to call for emergency services saying: "We need... we need an ambulance at Bacup Park, this mosher has just been banged because he's a mosher." The Guardian reported that afterwards, "The killers celebrated their attack on the goths – or 'moshers' – by telling friends afterwards that they had 'done summat good', and claiming: 'There's two moshers nearly dead up Bacup park – you wanna see them – they're a right mess.'"


title: Murder of Sophie Lancaster

text: The three other defendants were also sentenced for their role in the attack. Brothers Joseph and Danny Hulme, and Daniel Mallett, who had all earlier pleaded guilty to grievous bodily harm with intent on Maltby, were jailed. Mallett was sentenced to four years and four months, and the Hulme brothers for five years and ten months each. On 13 June 2008, it was reported that all the defendants were appealing against the sentences for their convictions. The appeal was heard on 7 October 2008 with an announcement that the result would be released at a later date. On 29 October the results of the appeal were announced. Ryan Herbert had his minimum term reduced from sixteen years and three months to fifteen years and six months, a reduction of nine months after the appeal judges ruled not enough allowance had been made for his guilty plea in the initial trial. Herbert then had his tariff cut to fourteen and a half years on 10 February 2020, as a High Court judge concluded he had made "exceptional progress" in prison. Brendan Harris and the three other defendants had their appeals dismissed.


title: Murder of Sophie Lancaster

text: The attack was widely condemned in Lancashire and Rossendale by Council leaders and the local community. At the alternative electronic music festival Infest in Bradford on 26 August 2007, just after Lancaster's death, Ronan Harris of VNV Nation dedicated the song "Illusion" to her and contacted the family to offer his condolences. There has also been discussion of a plaque in her memory in the park. A song was dedicated to Lancaster in concerts at Bacup's Royal Court Theatre on 6/7 September 2007, and a collection taken. A twelve-hour-long concert in her honour was held on 6 October 2007, in the grounds of Bacup Borough F.C., featuring 10 bands. The club played a game during the concert with all the takings going to the memorial fund; this included a song written in Lancaster's honour. Lancaster's family and friends set up a website in her memory and have decided to use the contributions from wellwishers and these events to set up a special fund to be known as "S.O.P.H.I.E". Standing for "Stamp Out Prejudice Hatred and Intolerance Everywhere", it aims to "provide an appropriate memorial; a lasting legacy to raise awareness of the injustice perpetrated against Sophie Lancaster and to work towards a more tolerant, less violent society". Lancaster's mother said: "it will also help fund group sessions with young people to teach them about alternative cultures and to respect everyone". A special black ribbon was being sold to support the fund available at the many events being held across Rossendale and in local shops. Lancaster's memory was further honoured at the Eccentrik Festival in North Carolina, and it was said that "three more concerts are planned in California, one in Iowa and one in Brisbane, Australia".


title: Murder of Sophie Lancaster

text: The attack was discussed in the media in connection with a wave of youth gang-related violence in the UK over the summer of 2007, including the murder of Liverpool schoolboy Rhys Jones. Then Conservative leader David Cameron mentioned the attack as an example in a "speech criticising youth crime and Britain's 'real and growing' problem with violence". Since then, coverage has mainly been restricted to the local press and the Internet, except for the funeral, which received wider coverage. In February 2008, The Observer compared the limited amount of coverage the Lancaster case received to the large amount of coverage worldwide which the media paid to the case of discrimination faced by a Yorkshire goth couple who were thrown off a bus: "That the story received just a fraction of the coverage garned by the dog-lead goths tells you something about society. The British eccentric has become the circus freak." However, the trial in March 2008 saw extensive coverage in national media. On 13 March 2008, Bizarre magazine launched a "Proud to be Different" campaign in honour of Lancaster.


title: Gavin Becker

text: In 2016, Becker released his second solo single, "Until You Were Gone", on February 3. On February 20, Becker headlined at Webster Hall in NYC. In 2016, Becker signed on to be a spokesperson for Put on the B.R.A.K.E.S. Foundation founded by race car driver Doug Herbert, with the goal of saving lives by training and educating teenage drivers and their parents about the importance of safe and responsible driving. In 2016, along with Daya, Becker was the opener for Jack & Jack at The Fillmore in Silver Spring, Maryland on March 3. On March 4 Becker and Daya opened to a sold-out show for Jack & Jack at the Theatre of Living Arts in Philadelphia. Becker was the headliner at The Saint in Asbury Park, New Jersey on April 6. Becker performed at Summerfest in Milwaukee on July 30. Becker opened for the Heffron Drive Summer Tour in Pittsburgh (August 3), Cleveland (August 4), Detroit (August 5) and Chicago (August 6). Becker was part of Live Nation's TLG Tour in NYC on August 16, Chicago (August 23), Indianapolis (August 25) and Cincinnati (August 26). On September 27, Becker released his third solo single, "Young Desire". Becker was part of the Team Rowland Tour with Hunter Rowland, Brandon Rowland, Ashton Rowland, and Nick Bean in Philadelphia at The Fillmore on December 16.


title: Alliance Atlantis

text: Entertainment One would later acquire Alliance Films on January 9, 2013 and all of their subsidiaries from Goldman Sachs Group, similar to the purchase of Maple Pictures a year prior. eOne subsequently adopted the 2004 Alliance Atlantis fanfare, still in use by Alliance Films, for their own logo. On November 20, 2014, Echo Bridge Entertainment sold Alliance Atlantis' children's programs, including the international distribution rights to the Degrassi franchise, to DHX Media. In 2017, producer Steven Paul announced that he would acquire the non-family assets of Echo Bridge Entertainment, including the international distribution rights to Alliance Atlantis' library (with the exception of its children's programs that are still owned by DHX Media/WildBrain) and later folded it into SP Releasing, in turn licensed most of Alliance Atlantis, Cineplex Odeon Films, Echo Bridge and PM Entertainment libraries to FilmRise for digital distribution and online streaming. eOne in turn was acquired by U.S. toy maker Hasbro in 2019. On August 3, 2023, Hasbro announced that it would sell most of eOne's assets, including the copyrights and Canadian distribution rights to the library of Alliance Atlantis, to Lionsgate . The deal closed on December 27, 2023.


title: A.F.C. Sudbury

text: The financial constraints of owning two grounds led the board not to apply for promotion until the beginning of the 2005–06 season. After finishing third in 2005–06, a season in which they won the Eastern Counties League Cup, and passing the necessary ground inspection Sudbury were invited to take promotion into a resurrected Isthmian League Division One North, following the re-structuring of the National League System. Potential legal action from the Northern Premier League nearly scuppered this move, but Sudbury started 2006–07 in the new division. The management team of Gary Harvey and Michael Cheetham, who took the team up, both resigned before the season could begin, citing work and family commitments, respectively. New manager Mark Morsley was appointed in May 2006, signed from Needham Market. Sudbury's first season at this level saw the club finish in fifth place, qualifying them for the promotion play-offs. After beating Enfield Town in the semi-final, Sudbury lost to Harlow Town in a penalty shootout. Sudbury again qualified for the play-offs in 2007–08, finishing second in the table, but were defeated in the semi-final by eventual winners Canvey Island. In the close-season manager Morsley resigned, and was replaced by his assistant Nicky Smith.


title: A.F.C. Sudbury

text: Sudbury were moved into the Southern League Division One Midlands for 2008–09 following a restructuring of the English football pyramid. After two seasons of mid-table finishes the club was moved back to the Isthmian League Division One North for 2010–11. Smith resigned in September 2011 and was replaced by his assistant Chris Tracey. At the start of the 2013–14, Sudbury appointed Wroxham manager David Batch as their new manager, after Chris Tracey left the club. Sudbury reached the final of the Isthmian League Cup in April 2014, but lost 3–0 away to Maidstone United. Batch left to join St Neots Town at the end of 2014, and was replaced by Jamie Godbold. Godbold led the club to a third-place finish and qualification for the play-offs, where they were defeated by Brentwood Town in the semi-final. The following season Sudbury won the division with three games to spare, earning promotion to the Premier Division. Their stay in the division only lasted one season as they were relegated back to Division One North at the end of the campaign, the club's first-ever relegation. Mark Morsley re-joined as first team manager in early 2017–18.


title: 1993–94 Indiana Pacers season

text: In the Eastern Conference First Round of the playoffs, the Pacers swept the 4th-seeded Orlando Magic in three straight games for their first ever playoff series win since joining the NBA. The Pacers advanced to the Eastern Conference Semi-finals, and upset the top-seeded Atlanta Hawks in six games to reach the Eastern Conference finals. The Pacers were challenging the heavily favored New York Knicks. The Pacers dropped the first two games in New York. Upon arriving in Indiana, the Pacers were able to win the next two games. In Game 5, Miller scored 25 points in the 4th quarter. In the process, Miller mocked Knicks fan and film director Spike Lee. The Pacers returned to Indiana for Game 6 with the opportunity to win the Eastern Conference Title. The Pacers would end up losing Game 6, and were forced to return to Madison Square Garden for Game 7. With the home court advantage, the Knicks would eliminate the Pacers. The Knicks would reach the NBA Finals, but would lose in seven games to the Houston Rockets.


title: Yang Hee-jong

text: During the 2016-17 season, Yang lived up to his reputation for rising to the occasion during big games by leading the team to the playoffs. Anyang KGC met Seoul Samsung Thunders in the playoff finals and team morale was at a low after a fight broke out between his teammate shooting guard Lee Jung-hyun and Thunders player Lee Gwan-hee during Game 2. With top-scorer Lee Jung-hyun failing to score in the double digits and Anyang trailing by 11 points, Yang was forced to step up as their main shooter during the second half; he was a defensive specialist well-known for his poor field goal percentage, to the extent that opponents utilized the strategy of forcing his teammates to pass the ball to him around the perimeter. During Game 3, he scored 13 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists, most of which were recorded during the fourth quarter and while nursing two injured fingers in his dominant hand. He opted against sitting out of Game 6 and scored a personal best record of eight three-pointers as Anyang KGC narrowly won the game and the final series 4–2 to lift the Championship trophy.


title: Shaq Fu

text: Shaq Fu received mixed reviews at the time of its release. GamePro gave the SNES version a positive review, saying that the unusually small size of the sprites is balanced out by the incredibly fast game speed. They also praised the "ultra sharp" controls and impressive digitized graphics. They reviewed the Genesis version as superior to the SNES version due to its additional characters and improved controls, and concluded that the game is "fun once you get used to the small, fast sprites". One Electronic Gaming Monthly reviewer scored the game as a 6/10, while another gave it a 4/10. It received a grade of D from Entertainment Weekly. GamesMaster gave the Genesis and SNES versions 81% and 83% respectively. Mean Machines Sega Magazine gave the Genesis version 79%. Next Generation reviewed the Genesis version of the game, rating it two stars out of five, and stated that "Shaq Fu includes everything a good fighting game needs, with the exception of good fighting". In contrast to their positive reactions to the SNES and Genesis versions, GamePro panned the Game Boy release, saying it dumbs down the gameplay, loses so much graphical detail that the characters are unrecognizable, and makes the music far too pervasive.


title: Boroughs and neighborhoods of Berlin

text: Each borough is made up of several officially recognized subdistricts or neighborhoods (Ortsteile in German, sometimes called quarters in English). The number of neighborhoods that form a borough varies considerably, ranging from two (Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg) to fifteen (Treptow-Köpenick). These neighborhoods typically have a historical identity as former independent cities, villages, or rural municipalities that were united in 1920 as part of the Greater Berlin Act, forming the basis for the present-day city and state. The neighborhoods do not have their own governmental bodies but are recognized by the city and the boroughs for planning and statistical purposes. Berliners often identify more with the neighborhood where they live than with the borough that governs them. The neighborhoods are further subdivided into statistical tracts, which are mainly used for planning and statistical purposes. The statistical tracts correspond roughly but not exactly with neighborhoods recognized by residents.


title: History of Michigan Wolverines football in the Elliott years

text: The 1966 team improved to 6–4 and tied for third place in the conference standings. The team featured the strongest passing attack in Michigan history to that point. Quarterback Dick Vidmer shattered Michigan's single-season records by completing 117 of 225 passes for 1,609 yards and 10 touchdowns. Vidmer's favorite target was Jack Clancy who caught 76 passes for 1,077 yards in 1966. After starting the season with impressive victories over Oregon State (41–0) and No. 7-ranked California (17–7), the Wolverines were ranked No. 9 in the AP Poll. Three straight losses dropped the team out of the national rankings. In the final game of the season, the Wolverines defeated rival Ohio State, 17–3. Dave Fisher led the 1966 team with 672 rushing yards. Two Wolverines were selected as All-Americans in 1966: safety Rick Volk and end Jack Clancy. A record five Michigan players were selected as All-Big Ten players in 1966: Volk, Clancy, right guard Don Bailey, halfback Jim Detwiler, fullback Dave Fisher, and linebacker Frank Nunley.


title: United States and state terrorism

text: Among other scholars, Ruth J. Blakeley says that the United States and its allies sponsored and deployed state terrorism on an "enormous scale" during the Cold War. The justification given for this was to contain Communism, but Blakeley contends it was also a means by which to buttress the interests of U.S. business elites and to promote the expansion of neoliberalism throughout the Global South. Mark Aarons posits that right-wing authoritarian regimes and dictatorships backed by Western powers committed atrocities and mass killings that rival the Communist world, citing examples such as the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66, the "disappearances" in Guatemala during the civil war, and the assassinations and state terrorism associated with Operation Condor throughout South America. In Worse Than War, Daniel Goldhagen argues that during the last two decades of the Cold War, the number of American client states practicing mass murder outnumbered those of the Soviet Union. According to Latin Americanist John Henry Coatsworth, the number of repression victims in Latin America alone far surpassed that of the U.S.S.R. and its East European satellites between 1960 and 1990. J. Patrice McSherry asserts that "hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans were tortured, abducted or killed by right-wing military regimes as part of the US-led anti-communist crusade."


title: United States and state terrorism

text: In 2017, declassified documents from the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta have confirmed that the United States government, from the very beginning, was deeply involved in the campaign of mass killings which followed Suharto's seizure of power. Without the support of the U.S. and its Western allies, the massacres would not have happened. In 2016, an international tribunal in The Hague ruled that the killings constitute crimes against humanity and it also ruled that the United States and other Western governments were complicit in the crimes. Indian historian Vijay Prashad says that the complicity of the United States and its Western allies in the massacres "is beyond doubt," as they "provided the Indonesian armed forces with lists of Communists who were to be assassinated" and "egged on the Army to conduct these massacres." He adds they covered up this "absolute atrocity" and that the US in particular refuses to fully declassify its records for this period. According to Vincent Bevins, the Indonesian mass killings were not an aberration, but the apex of a loose network of US-backed anti-communist mass killing campaigns in the Global South during the Cold War. According to historian Brad Simpson:


title: Private Division

text: Take-Two formed Private Division as a new publishing label to help smaller and independent studios. The label looks to provide funding and publishing for "triple-I" games such as Ninja Theory's Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, those that fell into the middle ground between triple-A games by large studios, and indie games created by relatively new and small indie studios. The formation of Private Division was led by Take-Two's head of corporate development and independent publishing Michael Worosz. Worosz, in evaluating potential games to publish under Take-Two's name, found a number of mid-sized studios founded by developers that had prior triple-A development experience but wanted to create less ambitious games. Worosz learned that these studios struggled with funding, as they did not fit into the types of studios backed by indie game publishers like Devolver Digital, and their projects were too large to be backed through self-funding or crowdfunding. About two and a half years prior to the label's announcement Worosz pitched the idea of Private Division to Take-Two's CEO Strauss Zelnick, who greenlit the creation of the label and they hired Allen Murray in late 2015 to run the production side, begin recruiting developers and build their team and infrastructure. The label aids in the development process and works with the developer to create project timelines and milestones, and will help the publish and distribute the games when completed, but does not seek to own the intellectual property of the developers.


title: History of Bolivia to 1809

text: Despite these conditions, silver production fluctuated dramatically during the colonial period. After an initial fifteen-year surge in production, output began to fall in 1560 as a result of a severe labor shortage caused by the Indian population's inability to resist European diseases. Around the same time, Potosí's rich surface deposits became depleted, which meant that even more labor would be required to extract silver. The labor shortage was addressed by Francisco de Toledo, the energetic viceroy (the king's representative) of Peru, during a visit to Upper Peru in the 1570s. Toledo used the pre-Columbian mita to extract forced labor for the Potosí mines from some sixteen highlands districts designated as supplying mita. Adult males could be required to spend every sixth year working in the mines. Henceforth, Potosí mining depended on the mita and on a labor system in which relatively free men worked alongside those who were coerced. Toledo also regulated the mining laws, established a mint at Potosí, and introduced the mercury amalgam process. Adopting the amalgam process was particularly important because it eliminated Indian control over refining.


title: History of Bolivia to 1809

text: Increasing Indian discontent with colonial rule sparked the great rebellion of Túpac Amaru II. Born José Gabriel Condorcanqui, this educated, Spanish-speaking Indian took the name of his ancestor, Túpac Amaru. During the 1770s, he became embittered over the harsh treatment of the Indians by the corregidores de indios. In November 1780, Túpac Amaru II and his followers seized and executed a particularly cruel corregidor de indios. Although Túpac Amaru II insisted that his movement was reformist and did not seek to overthrow Spanish rule, his demands included an autonomous region for natives. The uprising quickly became a full-scale revolt. Approximately 60,000 Indians in the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes rallied to the cause. After scoring some initial victories, including defeating a Spanish army of 1,200 men, Túpac Amaru II was captured and killed in May 1781; nonetheless, the revolt continued, primarily in Upper Peru. There, a supporter of Túpac Amaru II, the Indian chief Tomás Catari, had led an uprising in Potosí during the early months of 1780. Catari was killed by the Spaniards a month before Túpac Amaru II. Another major revolt was led by Julián Apaza, a sexton who took the names of the two rebel martyrs by calling himself Túpac Catari (also spelled Katari). He besieged La Paz for more than 100 days. Spain failed in putting down all of the revolts until 1783 and then proceeded to execute thousands of Indians.


title: Constitution of 3 May 1791

text: The 1791 Constitution was a response to the increasingly perilous situation in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which had been a major European power only a century earlier and was still the largest state on the continent. In the 1590s, at the peak of the nobles' democracy, King Sigismund III Vasa's court preacher—the Jesuit Piotr Skarga—had condemned the weaknesses of the Commonwealth. In the same period, writers and philosophers such as Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski and Wawrzyniec Grzymała Goślicki, and the egzekucja praw (Execution-of-the-Laws) reform movement led by Jan Zamoyski had advocated political reforms. In 1656, in what came to be known as the Lwów Oath, Sigismund's son King John II Casimir Vasa made a solemn vow on behalf of the entire Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that he would free the Polish peasants "from the unjust burdens and oppression." As he was struggling with the Sejm, in 1661 John Casimir—whose reign saw highly destructive wars and obstructionism by the nobility—correctly predicted that the Commonwealth was in danger of a partition by Russia, Brandenburg and Austria.


title: Constitution of 3 May 1791

text: By the early 18th century, the magnates of Poland and Lithuania controlled the state, ensuring that no reforms that might weaken their privileged status (the "Golden Freedoms") would be enacted. The ineffective monarchs who were elected to the Commonwealth throne in the early 18th century, Augustus II the Strong and Augustus III of Poland of the House of Wettin, did not improve matters. The Wettins, used to the absolute rule practiced in their native Saxony, tried to govern through intimidation and the use of force, which led to a series of conflicts between their supporters and opponents—including another pretender to the Polish throne, King Stanisław Leszczyński. Those conflicts often took the form of confederations—legal rebellions against the king permitted under the Golden Freedoms—including the Warsaw Confederation , Sandomierz Confederation, Tarnogród Confederation, Dzików Confederation and the War of the Polish Succession. Only 8 out of 18 Sejm sessions during the reign of Augustus II passed legislation. For 30 years during the reign of Augustus III, only one session was able to pass legislation. The government was near collapse, giving rise to the term "Polish anarchy", and the country was managed by provincial assemblies and magnates.


title: Constitution of 3 May 1791

text: Russia's Empress Catherine and Prussia's King Frederick II provoked a conflict between members of the Sejm and the King over civil rights for religious minorities, such as Protestants and Greek Orthodox whose positions, which were guaranteed equal with the Catholic majority by the Warsaw Confederation of 1573, had worsened considerably. Catherine and Frederick declared their support for the szlachta and their "liberties", and by October 1767 Russian troops had assembled outside Warsaw in support of the conservative Radom Confederation. The King and his adherents had little choice but to acquiesce to Russian demands. During the Repnin Sejm (named after the unofficially presiding Russian ambassador Nicholas Repnin) the King accepted the five "eternal and invariable principles" which Catherine had vowed to "protect for all time to come in the name of Poland's liberties": the election of kings, the right of liberum veto, the right to renounce allegiance to and raise rebellion against the king (rokosz), the szlachta's exclusive right to hold office and land, and landowners' power over their peasants. Thus all the privileges ("Golden Freedoms") of the nobility that had made the Commonwealth ungovernable were guaranteed as unalterable in the Cardinal Laws. The Cardinal Laws and the rights of "religious dissenters" passed by the Repnin Sejm were personally guaranteed by Empress Catherine. By these acts of legislation, for the first time, Russia formally intervened in the Commonwealth's constitutional affairs.


title: Constitution of 3 May 1791

text: The first of the three successive 18th-century partitions of Commonwealth territory that would eventually remove Poland's sovereignty shocked the Commonwealth's inhabitants and made it clear to progressive minds that the Commonwealth must either reform or perish. In the thirty years before the Constitution, there was a rising interest among progressive thinkers in constitutional reform. Before the First Partition, a Polish noble, Michał Wielhorski was sent to France by the Bar Confederation to ask the philosophes Gabriel Bonnot de Mably and Jean-Jacques Rousseau for their suggestions on a new constitution for a reformed Poland. Mably submitted his recommendations Du gouvernement et des lois en Pologne (The Government and Laws of Poland) in 1770–71, whereas Rousseau finished his Considerations on the Government of Poland in 1772 when the First Partition was already underway. Works advocating the need for reform and presenting specific solutions were published in the Commonwealth by Polish–Lithuanian thinkers: On an Effective Way of Councils or on the Conduct of Ordinary Sejms , by Stanisław Konarski, founder of the Collegium Nobilium; Political Thoughts on Civil Liberties and Patriotic Letters , by Józef Wybicki, author of the lyrics of the Polish National Anthem; (Anonymous Letters to Stanisław Małachowski and The Political Law of the Polish Nation , by Hugo Kołłątaj, head of the Kołłątaj's Forge party; and Remarks on the Life of Jan Zamoyski , by Stanisław Staszic. Ignacy Krasicki's satires of the Great Sejm era were also seen as crucial to giving the constitution moral and political support.


title: Constitution of 3 May 1791

text: The proposed reforms were opposed by the conservatives, including the Hetmans' Party. Threatened with violence by their opponents, the advocates of the draft began the debate on the Government Act two days early, while many opposing deputies were away on Easter recess. The debate and subsequent adoption of the Government Act was executed as a quasi-coup d'état. No recall notices were sent to known opponents of reform, while many pro-reform deputies secretly returned early. The royal guard under the command of the King's nephew Prince Józef Poniatowski were positioned about the Royal Castle, where the Sejm was gathered, to prevent opponents from disrupting the proceedings. On 3 May, the Sejm convened with only 182 members, about half its "dual" number. The bill was read and overwhelmingly adopted, to the enthusiasm of the crowds outside. A protest was submitted the next day by a small group of deputies, but on 5 May the matter was officially concluded and protests were invalidated by the Constitutional Deputation of the Sejm. It was the first time in the 18th century that a constitutional act had been passed in the Commonwealth without the involvement of foreign powers.


title: Constitution of 3 May 1791

text: The Constitution of 3 May 1791 reflected Enlightenment influences, including Rousseau's concept of the social contract and Montesquieu's advocacy of a balance of powers among three branches of government—legislative, executive, and judicial—and of a bicameral legislature. As stated in Article V of the 3 May 1791 Constitution, the government was to ensure that "the integrity of the states, civil liberty, and social order shall always remain in equilibrium." Jacek Jędruch writes that the liberality of the 3 May 1791 Constitution's provisions "fell somewhere below the French Constitution of 1791, above Constitutional Act of 1791, and left the General State Laws for the Prussian States far behind, but did not equal the American Constitution ." King Stanisław August Poniatowski was reported to have said that the 3 May 1791 Constitution was "founded principally on those of England and the United States of America, but avoiding the faults and errors of both, and adapted as much as possible to the local and particular circumstances of the country." However, Polish historians report the Constitution as having been described as "based mainly on the United States Constitution, but minus the latter's flaws, and adapted to Poland's circumstances." George Sanford writes that the Constitution of 3 May 1791 provided "a constitutional monarchy close to the English model of the time."


title: Constitution of 3 May 1791

text: Article I acknowledged the Roman Catholic faith as the "dominant religion" but guaranteed tolerance and freedom to all religions. It was less progressive than the 16th-century Warsaw Confederation, and placed Poland clearly within the Catholic sphere of influence. Article II confirmed many old privileges of the nobility, stressing that all nobles were equal and should enjoy personal security and the right to property. Article III stipulated that the earlier Free Royal Cities Act (Miasta Nasze Królewskie Wolne w Państwach Rzeczypospolitej), of 18 (or 21) April 1791, was integral to the Constitution. Personal security—neminem captivabimus, the Polish version of habeas corpus—was extended to townspeople (including Jews). Townspeople also gained the right to acquire landed property and became eligible for military officers' commissions and public offices, such as reserved seats in the Sejm and seats in the executive commissions of the Treasury, Police, and Judiciary. Membership in the nobility (szlachta) was also made easier for burghers to acquire.


title: Constitution of 3 May 1791

text: Legislative power, as defined in Article VI, rested with the bicameral parliament (an elected Sejm and an appointed Senate) and the king. The Sejm met every two years, and when required by national emergency. Its lower chamber—the Chamber of Deputies (Izba Poselska)—had 204 deputies (2 from each powiat, 68 each from the provinces of Greater Poland, Lesser Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania) and 21 plenipotentiaries from royal cities (7 from each province). The royal chancellery was to inform the sejmiks of the legislation it intended to propose in advance, so deputies could prepare for the discussions. The Sejm's upper chamber—the Chamber of Senators (Izba Senacka)—had between 130 and 132 (sources vary) senators (voivodes, castellans, and bishops, as well as governments ministers without the right to vote). The king presided over the Senate and had one vote, which could be used to break ties. The king and all deputies had legislative initiative, and most matters—known as general laws, and divided into constitutional, civil, criminal, and those for the institution of perpetual taxes—required a simple majority, first from the lower chamber, then the upper. Specialized resolutions, including treaties of alliance, declarations of war and peace, ennoblements and increases in national debt, needed a majority of both chambers voting jointly. The Senate had a suspensive veto over laws that the Sejm passed, valid until the next Sejm session, when it could be overruled.


title: Constitution of 3 May 1791

text: Executive power, according to Article V and Article VII, was in the hands of "the King in his council," a cabinet of ministers that was called the Guardians of the Laws (or Guard of the Laws, Straż Praw). The ministries could not create or interpret laws, and all acts of the foreign ministry were provisional and subject to Sejm approval. The King presided over his council, which comprised the Roman Catholic Primate of Poland—who was also president of the Education Commission—and five ministers appointed by the King: a minister of police, a minister of the seal (internal affairs), a minister of foreign affairs, a minister belli (of war), and a minister of treasury. Council members also included—without a vote—the Crown Prince, the Marshal of the Sejm, and two secretaries. This royal council descended from similar councils that had functioned since King Henry's Articles , and from the recent Permanent Council. Acts of the King required the countersignature of the pertinent minister. A minister was required to countersign a law, unless all other ministers endorsed his objection to that law. In that case, the King could withdraw the law or press the issue by presenting it to parliament. The stipulation that the King, "doing nothing of himself, ... shall be answerable for nothing to the nation," parallels the British constitutional principle that "The King can do no wrong." (In both countries, the pertinent minister was responsible for the King's acts.) The ministers were responsible to the Sejm, which could dismiss them by a two-thirds vote of no confidence of both houses. Ministers could also be held accountable by the Sejm Court, where a simple-majority vote sufficed to impeach a minister. The King was the nation's commander-in-chief; there is no mention of hetmans (the previous highest-ranking military commanders). The King had the right to grant pardons, except in cases of treason. The royal council's decisions were implemented by commissions, whose members were elected by the Sejm.


title: Constitution of 3 May 1791

text: The constitutional formal procedures were performed for little over a year before being stopped by Russian armies allied with conservative Polish nobility in the Polish–Russian War of 1792, also known as the War in Defense of the Constitution. With the wars between Turkey and Russia and Sweden and Russia having ended, Empress Catherine was furious over the adoption of the document, which she believed threatened Russian influence in Poland. Russia had viewed Poland as a de facto protectorate. "The worst possible news have arrived from Warsaw: the Polish king has become almost sovereign" was the reaction of one of Russia's chief foreign policy authors, Alexander Bezborodko, when he learned of the new constitution. The contacts of Polish reformers with the Revolutionary French National Assembly were seen by Poland's neighbors as evidence of a revolutionary conspiracy and a threat to the absolute monarchies. The Prussian statesman Ewald von Hertzberg expressed the fears of European conservatives: "The Poles have given the coup de grâce to the Prussian monarchy by voting a constitution", elaborating that a strong Commonwealth would likely demand return of the lands that Prussia had acquired in the First Partition.


title: Constitution of 3 May 1791

text: Magnates who had opposed the constitution draft from the start, Franciszek Ksawery Branicki, Stanisław Szczęsny Potocki, Seweryn Rzewuski, and Szymon and Józef Kossakowski, asked Tsarina Catherine to intervene and restore their privileges—the Cardinal Laws abolished under the new statute. To that end these magnates formed the Targowica Confederation. The Confederation's proclamation, prepared in St. Petersburg in January 1792, criticized the constitution for contributing to "contagion of democratic ideas" following "the fatal examples set in Paris." It asserted that "The parliament ... has broken all fundamental laws, swept away all liberties of the gentry and on the third of May 1791 turned into a revolution and a conspiracy." The Confederates declared an intention to overcome this revolution. We "can do nothing but turn trustingly to Tsarina Catherine, a distinguished and fair empress, our neighboring friend and ally", who "respects the nation's need for well-being and always offers it a helping hand", they wrote.


title: Constitution of 3 May 1791

text: Russian armies entered Poland and Lithuania, starting the Polish–Russian War of 1792. The Sejm voted to increase the army of the Commonwealth to 100,000 men, but owing to insufficient time and funds this number was never achieved and soon abandoned even as a goal. The Polish King and the reformers could field only a 37,000-man army, many of them untested recruits. This army, under the command of Józef Poniatowski and Tadeusz Kościuszko, defeated or fought to a draw the Russians on several occasions, but in the end, a defeat loomed inevitable. Despite Polish requests, Prussia refused to honor its alliance obligations. Stanisław August's attempts at negotiations with Russia proved futile. As the front lines kept shifting to the west and in July 1792 Warsaw was threatened with siege by the Russians, the King came to believe that victory was impossible against the numerically superior enemy, and that surrender was the only alternative to total defeat. Having received assurances from the Russian ambassador Yakov Bulgakov that no territorial changes will occur, the Guardians of the Laws cabinet voted 8:4 to surrender. On 24 July 1792, King Stanisław August Poniatowski joined the Targowica Confederation, as the Empress had demanded. The Polish Army disintegrated.


title: Constitution of 3 May 1791

text: The Constitution of 3 May 1791 has been both idealized, and criticized for either not going far enough or being too radical. As its provisions remained in force for only 18 months and 3 weeks, its influence was, in any case, limited. However, for generations, the memory of the Constitution—recognized by political scientists as a progressive document for its time—helped keep alive Polish aspirations for an independent and just society, and continued to inform the efforts of its authors' descendants. Bronisław Dembiński, a Polish constitutional scholar, wrote a century later that "The miracle of the Constitution did not save the state but did save the nation." In Poland the Constitution is mythologized and viewed as a national symbol and as the culmination of the Enlightenment in Polish history and culture. In the words of two of its authors, Ignacy Potocki and Hugo Kołłątaj, it was "the last will and testament of the expiring Homeland." Since Poland's recovery of independence in 1918, the 3 May anniversary of the Constitution's adoption has been observed as the country's most important civil holiday.


title: Constitution of 3 May 1791

text: The 3 May Constitution was a milestone in the history of law and in the growth of democracy. The 18th-century Irish statesman Edmund Burke described it as "the noblest benefit received by any nation at any time ... Stanislas II has earned a place among the greatest kings and statesmen in history." The 3 May Constitution was the first to follow the 1788 ratification of the United States Constitution. Poland and the United States, though geographically distant from each other, showed similar approaches to the designing of political systems. The 3 May Constitution has been called the second constitution in world history. Constitutional-law expert Albert Blaustein calls it the "world's second national constitution", and Bill Moyers writes that it was "Europe's first codified national constitution (and the second oldest in the world)." Historian Norman Davies calls it "the first constitution of its type in Europe." The 3 May Constitution and the Great Sejm that adopted it have been the subjects of a large body of works by Polish scholars, starting with the still often cited 19th-century works of Walerian Kalinka and Władysław Smoleński, and continued in the 20th century by Bogusław Leśnodorski.


title: Constitution of 3 May 1791

text: 3 May was declared a Polish holiday (Constitution Day—Święto Konstytucji 3 Maja) on 5 May 1791. The holiday was banned during the partitions of Poland but reinstated in April 1919 under the Second Polish Republic—the first holiday officially introduced in the newly independent country. It was again outlawed during World War II by both the Nazi and Soviet occupiers. It was celebrated in Polish cities in May 1945, although in a mostly spontaneous manner. The 1946 anti-communist demonstrations did not endear it to the Polish communists, and it competed for attention with the communist-endorsed 1 May Labor Day celebrations in the Polish People's Republic; this led to its "rebranding" as Democratic Party Day and removal from the list of national holidays by 1951. Until 1989, 3 May was a frequent occasion for anti-government and anti-communist protests. 3 May was restored as an official Polish holiday in April 1990 after the fall of communism. Polish-American pride has been celebrated on the same date, for instance in Chicago, where since 1982 Poles have marked it with festivities and the annual Polish Constitution Day Parade.


title: 2015 Daytona 500

text: The entry list for the 57th running of the Daytona 500 was released on Thursday, February 12, 2015 at 9:22 a.m. Eastern time. Fifty drivers were entered for the race. Joe Nemechek and his No. 87 team later withdrew before qualifying after the team had problems preparing the car. With the Daytona 500 being the first race of the 2015 season, 13 drivers were entered for the race driving for a different team than they had raced for in the 2014 season. Trevor Bayne made his debut with Roush Fenway Racing after spending the last five seasons driving part-time for Wood Brothers Racing. Alex Bowman, who drove for BK Racing in his 2014 rookie campaign, moved to Tommy Baldwin Racing to drive the No. 7 Chevrolet. Sam Hornish Jr. returned to full time in the Sprint Cup Series – his first since 2010 – to drive in the No. 9 Richard Petty Motorsports Ford. He replaced Marcos Ambrose who returned to his native Australia to race in the V8 Supercar Series. Carl Edwards, who drove the last 11 seasons for Roush Fenway Racing, moved to Joe Gibbs Racing to drive the No. 19 Toyota. Ryan Blaney replaced Trevor Bayne in the No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford on a part-time basis. J. J. Yeley moved to the No. 23 BK Racing Toyota that had been driven by Alex Bowman the previous season. Jeb Burton moved up from the Camping World Truck Series to drive the No. 26 BK Racing Toyota. Justin Marks was entered to make his first Sprint Cup Series start in the No. 29 RAB Racing Toyota. Former Camping World Truck Series champion Ron Hornaday Jr. moved up to attempt to run his first full season in the Sprint Cup Series since 2001 in the No. 30 Chevrolet for The Motorsports Group. The 2000 series champion Bobby Labonte took over the seat of the No. 32 Go FAS Racing Ford for the four restrictor plate races. This was a role previously done by his brother Terry Labonte who made his final career start in October 2014 at Talladega. Cole Whitt, who drove the No. 26 BK Racing Toyota in his 2014 rookie campaign, moved to the No. 35 Front Row Motorsports Ford. Reed Sorenson drove the No. 44 Team XTREME Racing Chevrolet. Michael Annett left Tommy Baldwin Racing after his 2014 rookie campaign and moved to HScott Motorsports to drive the No. 46 Chevrolet. Brian Scott was entered in a one race deal to drive the No. 62 Premium Motorsports Chevrolet.


title: 2015 Daytona 500

text: "I wasn't behind the 44 . He came flying around, come up on the apron, jumps in front of me, then runs over the 51 , stacks us all up and then I run into him. It's idiotic to be out here doing this anyway. There's no sense in being able to try to put on some cute show for whatever the hell this is. Then you have a guy out there doing this in desperation. There's no reason to be out here. These guys have spent six months working on these cars, busting their butts on these cars. But it ain't his fault. It's NASCAR's fault for putting us out in the middle of this crap for nothing. We used to come down here and worry about who would set on the front pole in the biggest race of the year. Now all we do is come down here and worry about how a start‑and‑park like this out of desperation is going to knock us out of the Daytona 500. We've been in meetings for 45 minutes just trying to figure out what in the hell everybody is going to do just so we can make the race. It's stupid. There's no sense in doing this."


title: 2015 Daytona 500

text: In what would be his final Daytona 500 start, Jeff Gordon won the pole with a time of 44.711 and a speed of 201.293 mph (323.950 km/h). Gordon felt that in the new qualifying format, "the driver finally gets to play a role". He also stated that he had "a fast race car" and that the pole position was "one of the most gratifying poles I've had, not just because it's my final Daytona". His teammate Jimmie Johnson started right alongside in second. In the first round of qualifying, Clint Bowyer tried to go under Reed Sorenson when he got hit in the rear by Jeb Burton and turned right into Sorenson. Both cars hit the wall and collected Bobby Labonte and J. J. Yeley. Denny Hamlin also took some damage. The session was red flagged with a minute and 22 seconds left. After the red flag was lifted, no one was able to make it back to the line before time expired. Upon exiting his car, Bowyer vented his frustrations at the Daytona qualifying procedure. Other drivers like Ryan Newman and Kurt Busch also expressed their dislike of the qualifying procedure.


title: 2015 Daytona 500

text: Kyle Busch was the fastest in the third practice session with a time of 44.826 and a speed of 200.776 mph (323.118 km/h). During this session, there was a four car wreck on the backstretch that involved Michael Annett, Jeb Burton, Denny Hamlin and Danica Patrick. It started when Hamlin pulled out of line and Patrick tried to follow him, but made contact with the right-front corner of Hamlin's car when she over-corrected and hit the wall. Michael Annett tried to go high around Patrick on the outside when he got turned by Jeb Burton. Patrick, Annett and Burton all switched to backup cars. After the incident, Patrick stated that her car "sort of just started turning toward the right, the back end was coming around and it swapped ends" and that Hamlin was trying to "make a third lane in the middle and it felt like it must have caught my bumper". Hamlin felt that Patrick had intended to block his path, stating that a driver has "to give a little bit of extra room in practice" and that if he "had to guess, she probably saw in her mirror that I was going down there and tried to stay in front of me".


title: 2015 Daytona 500

text: The race restarted on lap 46 and Joey Logano used the high line to overtake Gordon for the lead on lap 47 with Johnson and Earnhardt Jr. close behind. On lap 53, Gordon took back the lead from Logano. Gordon, Earnhardt., Martin Truex Jr. and Kasey Kahne broke away from the pack single file, remaining that way for the next 15 laps. Thereafter, the field became largely a single-file train running up next to the wall. Nearing the end of the fuel run, the field began to bunch up and two lines of cars formed up behind Gordon. Earnhardt Jr., Kahne and Truex. moved side-by-side behind Gordon, allowing the pack to catch up to the leaders again. Gordon continued to maintain the lead until the next green flag pit-stop sequence that began on lap 85; he surrendered the lead on lap 87 to make his stop and Carl Edwards assumed the lead. Denny Hamlin took the lead after driving past teammate Edwards on pit road the next lap. Johnson was forced to serve a drive-through penalty for his crew being over the wall too soon. Edwards, Bobby Labonte, Kyle Larson, Truex. and Mike Wallace all served drive-through penalties for speeding. After stops were complete, Gordon reassumed the lead on lap 90.


title: Charades

text: Thackeray snarked that charades were enjoyed for "enabling the many ladies amongst us who had beauty to display their charms, and the fewer number who had cleverness, to exhibit their wit". In his Vanity Fair, the height of Rebecca Sharp's social success is brought on by her performances of acting charades before the Prince Regent. The first scene—"first two syllables"—displays a Turkish lord dealing with a slaver and his odalisque before being garroted by the sultan's chief black eunuch; the second—"last two syllables"—finds a Turk, his consort, and his black slave praying at sunrise when an enormous Egyptian head enters and begins singing. The answer—Agamemnon—is then acted out by Becky's husband, while she makes her (first) appearance as Clytemnestra. After refreshments, another round begins, partially in pantomime: the first scene shows a household yawningly finishing a game of cribbage and preparing for bed; the second opens on the household bustling with activity as daybreak prompts bells ringing, arguments over receipts, collection of the chamber pots, calls for carriages, and greetings to new guests; the third closes with a ship's crew and passengers tossed about by a storm with strong winds. The answer—nightingale—is then (somewhat mistakenly) acted out by Becky in the role of a singing French marquise, recalling both Lacoste's 1705 tragic opera Philomèle and an arriviste lover and wife of Louis XIV. Apart from its importance in the book, the scenes were subsequently considered models of the genre.


title: COVID-19 pandemic in Botswana

text: Three more recovered patients were announced on 1 May 2020. On Thursday 7 May 2020 Botswana recorded on more COVID-19 recovery. On Friday 8 May 2020 00:00 GMT+2 Botswana's 35 day lockdown period came to an end, the end of this period marks the beginning of the ease of the COVID-19 restrictions put in place by government for a further three weeks, with the return to work phases starting on 8 May 2020 and ending on 14 May. On Monday 11 May 2020, Botswana recorded 1 more case. As of 12 May 2020 there have been 11,495 tests performed. Five more patients recovered, leaving six active cases. One more patient tested positive on 17 May, raising the number of active cases to 7. On 21 May four more positive tests were announced while two infected patients recovered, bringing the active cases at that time to 9. A day later on Friday 22 May 2020, Botswana recorded one case bringing the total number of new cases reported in the week beginning Sunday 17 May to six. On 24 May there were five additional cases, raising the total number to 35 and the number of active cases to 15.


title: COVID-19 pandemic in Botswana

text: There were 48 new confirmed cases on 3 July, raising the total number of cases to 275. Three days later 39 further cases were reported, raising the total number to 314. This rose by 85 to 399 on 12 July: the highest number of daily confirmed cases so far. There were 123 new cases on 16 July, the highest daily increase so far, raising the total number of confirmed cases to 522. Three days later there were 70 more positive tests, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 592. Four days later, on 23 July, there were 89 cases, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 681. 58 more cases were confirmed on 27 July, raising the total number to 739. The same day the death toll doubled to two. Two days later the number of confirmed cases increased by 65 to 804 (including the transferred out cases). Most of the 577 new cases during the month were repatriated to their home countries (483 persons). Of the remaining 94 new cases, 35 recovered, bringing the total number of patients having recovered in Botswana to 63. There were 75 active cases at the end of the month (an increase by 341% from the end of June).


Animal Science Products v. Hebei Welcome Pharmaceuticals, 585 U.S. ___ , was a case before the Supreme Court of the United States involving the interpretation of foreign law in US domestic courts. The case arose out of a controversy in which Hebei Welcome Pharmaceuticals (Hebei), a company incorporated under Chinese law, and its parent company North China Pharmaceutical Group was accused of price fixing in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act by Animal Science Products (ASP), which filed a class action against Hebei. Before the district court, Hebei claimed that Chinese law required them to price-fix, and this claim was supported by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce in written submissions to the court. The district court rejected this defense because, in the independent opinion of the judge, Chinese law did not actually impose this requirement; a jury subsequently awarded damages to ASP. On appeal, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the district court erred by entering into an independent review of foreign law, and that it should have instead, for reasons of international comity, deferred to China's representation of its own law, provided that this representation was "reasonable". In a unanimous opinion, the Supreme Court reversed the ruling of the Second Circuit, finding that respectful consideration must be granted to a foreign government's statements, but not conclusive effect. The case marked the first occasion that the Chinese government appeared as an amicus curiae in oral argument before the US Supreme Court, and was the third time that any foreign government had done so.


title: Widened Lines

text: With connections to the Great Western Railway (GWR) and GNR under construction and connections to the Midland Railway and the LC&DR planned, the Met obtained permission in 1861 and 1864 for a four-track eastward extension to a new terminus at Moorgate and two additional tracks from King's Cross to Farringdon Street. The Met used two tracks for its own services, while the other two tracks were used mainly by other railway companies; these collectively became known as the City Widened Lines. A pair of single track tunnels at King's Cross connecting the GNR to the Met came into passenger use on 1 October 1863 when the GNR began running trains, those towards Farringdon Street calling at a single-platform station at King's Cross York Road, in the reverse direction at King's Cross Suburban station. A west curve towards Baker Street was built but not used for regular traffic and the track removed in 1865. Having withdrawn from running Metropolitan services on 10 August, the GWR returned on 1 October 1863 with through trains from such places as Windsor.


title: Widened Lines

text: Following Great Britain's declaration of war on Germany on 4 August 1914 until the end of the World War I, the Widened Lines assumed a role of great strategic importance for through railway communications, the more so as the bulk of the naval and military traffic was required to travel between North and South. The route formed a vital link between the English Channel ports and the railways to the north of London for the movement of troops and freight. The number of troop trains dealt with from the outbreak of war to 25 February 1915 was no fewer than 2,738, the chairman of the Met told a company meeting on the latter date, while during the first fortnight of 1915 the number of goods trains taken over the Widened Lines was 2,935 - an average of 210 a day, not including special military trains for troops and stores and the ordinary local passenger services. Overall, from 5 August 1914 to 31 December 1918, 248,072 long tons (252,100 t) of goods and 26,047 through military specials for personnel or material were run over the Widened Lines between the northern and southern railways. This was despite major physical constraints that affected the use of the route and imposed restrictions on the nature and extent of the traffic that could pass over it. The most important were the severe gradients, particularly where the lines crossed each other between King's Cross and Farringdon, and loading gauge restrictions, which prevented ambulance trains and wagons conveying goods of exceptional width and height from using the route.


title: USS Scorpion (SS-278)

text: With a 4 in (100 mm)/50 gun in place of her 3 in (76 mm)/50 gun, Scorpion set out on her second war patrol on 29 May. On 2 June, she refueled at Midway, and on 21 June she arrived off Takara Jima in the Tokara Gunto. For the next week, she searched for targets in that archipelago in an effort to disrupt shipping on the Formosa-Nagasaki routes. On 28 June, she shifted her hunt to the Yellow Sea and, by 30 June, was off the Shantung Peninsula. On 3 July, she sighted a five-freighter convoy with one escort making its way through the eastern waters of that sea. By 09:55, she had sent torpedoes toward the convoy and dived. As the depth charging began, she struck bottom at 150 ft (46 m). Two charges exploded close by. Between 10:02 and 10:06, five more shook her hull. Fearing that she was stirring up a mud trail, the commander ordered her screws stopped and she settled on the bottom at 174 ft (53 m). At 10:08, a chain or cable was dragged over her hull. Four minutes later, her hull was scraped a second time. Immediately underway again, she began evasive course changes and escaped further exploding charges. The hunt continued for over an hour; and at 11:49, Scorpion came to periscope depth; spied the destroyer 7,000 yd (6,400 m) off; and cleared the area. Postwar examination of Japanese records show that Scorpion scored five hits, and sank a 3,890 long tons (3,952 t) freighter – the Anzan Maru – and a 6,112 long tons (6,210 t) passenger-cargo ship – the Kokuryu Maru.


title: USS Scorpion (SS-278)

text: Because of damage received during the depth charging, Scorpion retraced her route through Tokara Gunto; underwent a bomber attack east of Akuseki Jima; and continued on to Midway. On 26 July, she arrived back at Pearl Harbor, underwent repairs, conducted training exercises, and, on 13 October, departed Pearl Harbor for her third war patrol. After touching at Midway on 17 October, she headed for the Mariana Islands, where she reconnoitered Pagan Island and Agrihan Island on 25–26 October, and Farallon de Pajoras on 1–2 November. On the last date, she struck an uncharted pinnacle; but suffering no apparent damage, continued her patrol. On 3 November, she was off Maug; and, two days later, she sighted her first target, a Mogami-class heavy cruiser. Squalls interfered, however, and she abandoned the target after a four-hour chase. On 7 November, she was back off Agrihan; and on 8 November, she closed with a freighter, which turned and gave chase. The freighter was a Q-ship, a warship disguised as a merchantman. Unable to regain the advantage, Scorpion retired.


title: USS Scorpion (SS-278)

text: No Japanese information indicates that the loss of Scorpion was the result of an enemy anti-submarine attack. There were, however, several mine lines across the entrance to the Yellow Sea. The presence of these mine lines and the "restricted area" bounding them was discovered from captured Japanese Notices to Mariners at a much later date. In the meantime, several submarines had made patrols in this area, crossing and recrossing the mine lines without incident, and coming safely home. It is probable that these mine lines were very thin, offering only about a 10% threat to submarines at maximum, and steadily decreasing in effectiveness with the passage of time. Scorpion was lost soon after these mines were laid, at a time when they were the greatest threat. She could have been an operational casualty, but her area consisted of water shallow enough so that it might be expected that some men would have survived. Since there are no known survivors, the most reasonable assumption is that she hit a mine.


title: Senku Ishigami

text: Senku is a prodigy who excels in multiple fields of science, with a special love of astronomy and space exploration. In the series' beginning causes Senku and the entire population to be petrified for thousands of years. After awakening in the "Stone World", he sets to restore civilization by reinventing their lost technology and discovering a "cure" for the petrification. Though somewhat arrogant, he is actually very noble and kind-hearted as he considers science as a means to elevate all people and having unshakeable faith in his friends. Senku and Taiju prepare enough revival fluid to free one person from stone, with Taiju choosing Yuzuriha to be first subject. However, the recently revived Tsukasa reveals to Senku his intention to murder petrified adults to create a world free of corrupt adults, clashing with Senku's ideals of reviving everyone. As Senku relinquishes the recipe to save Yuzuriha and is given the choice of either abandoning science or dying, he recalls how he developed his love of science and became friends with Taiju. Refusing to abandon science, Senku prepares to die at Tsukasa's hands.


title: Senku Ishigami

text: Critical response to Senku's character has been generally positive. Spin Maker website saw Senku as a likable character as he is "like a cross between MacGyver and Jimmy Neutron". Similarly, Manga.Tokyo called Senku as a mix between Dexter from Dexter's Laboratory and Rintaro Okabe from Steins;Gate finding him as a fun lead, and despite acting like a mad scientist, it is easy to notice that Senku cares about others according to the reviewer. Anime UK News found his design impressive, comparing him to Yugi Mutou's hair, and felt that Senku's quest to restore modernity seems possible. Comic Book Resources found Senku to be balanced as despite his intelligence, Senku's strength is often downlplayed for comic relief as he finds it difficult to carry heavy objects. The same website made an entire article centered around Senku, calling him "a hero at heart though, not the reclusive, eccentric Dr. Frankenstein type" with derivations form little pleasure or meaning from deep personal connections.


title: Myron L. Bender

text: Myron Lee Bender was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He obtained his B.S. and his Ph.D. from Purdue University. The latter was under the direction of Henry B. Hass. After postdoctoral research under Paul D. Barlett (Harvard University), and Frank H. Westheimer (University of Chicago), he spent one year as a faculty member at the University of Connecticut. Thereafter, he was a professor of Chemistry at Illinois Institute of Technology in 1951, and then at Northwestern University in 1960. He worked primarily in the study of reaction mechanisms and the biochemistry of enzyme action. Myron L. Bender demonstrated the two-step mechanism of catalysis for serine proteases, nucleophilic catalysis in ester hydrolysis and intramolecular catalysis in water. He also showed that cyclodextrin can be used to investigate catalysis of organic reactions within the scope of host–guest chemistry. Finally, he and others reported on the synthesis of an organic compound as a model of an acylchymotrypsin intermediate.