title: Swedish Army Medical Corps

text: Quite late, actual physicians were employed in Sweden by the armed forces, because even in Gustav Vasa's time there were no scientifically trained physicians in the country. The only medical care available at that time was provided by so-called bardskärare (barbers), and in 1556 Gustav I prescribed that barbers should be appointed in the fähnlein's (200–500 men). By the regulations of 1571, the barbers was obliged to provide the army and navy with the required number of feldshers in the event of mobilization and wars. But since no special regulations on any kind of qualification existed, this also explains why the Swedish Army's medical care for such a long time and to such an extent was handled by registered or immigrated more or less unskilled German feldshers. Probably anyone who was somewhat knowledgeable in the profession of bandage and dressing could gain employment as a regimental or company barber. It was not until 1669 that it was decided that they would be examined like other surgeons before admission. That this examination, however, left much to be desired, appears from a letters patent from 1685, in which it is stated:


title: Swedish Army Medical Corps

text: The following year, the barber's office under the name Societas chirurgica received its first royal regulations with the obligation to train feldshers to the needs of the country. During Charles XII's wars, however, it proved impossible for the surgical society to provide the army with the required number of feldshers, why even the resort was resorted to sending students directly to undergo their lessons in the school of war and graduate before a collegium chirurgicum castrense, whose first president became the king's physician Samuel Skragge. But despite this, the supply remained insufficient. Even in qualitative terms, the military medical service continued to be very deficient despite all the repeated tightening of regulations. The reasons were many, not least of an economic and social nature. Wages were small, and in his subordination relations, for example, the company barber was equated with the community, whose uniform he wore. Throughout the 18th century, conditions remained largely unchanged. Sweden's military history from this time carefully shows the unfortunate consequences of the neglected health care in the army and navy. The military companies were often paralyzed by the great morbidity, and the casualties by the enemy's weapons during the Finnish wars in the 18th century constituted a vanishing insignificance against the casualties by diseases. And little or nothing was done to help the shortage of capable military surgeons. It is true that one or more scientifically trained surgeon were sometimes employed at the field hospitals, but since these usually left the military service after the end of the war, the improvements they made were of a temporary nature.


title: Swedish Army Medical Corps

text: By letters patent of 6 August 1806, however, the Swedish military medical service underwent one of the most important and radical changes, when it was stipulated that all surgeons employed in the army in peace and war would constitute a special establishment, militarily organized and subordinate under its own, only before the king responsible chief; he would be a member of both the War College and the Collegium medicum (National Swedish Board of Health). The more detailed regulatory provisions with stricter requirements for education and more were issued in 1808 during the ongoing Finnish-Russian war, which the new organization unfortunately did not have time to implement. At that time, however, no army in Europe owned a sanitation organization. For a long time, however, this organization did not become permanent. Under the fresh impression of the said war, proposals were made at the Riksdag in 1810 for strong measures to counteract the noted errors in the field administration. The consequences were, among other things, the establishment of Karolinska Institute as an educational institution for the formation of military surgeons, the construction of the General Garrison Hospital (Allmänna garnisonssjukhuset) in Stockholm and the Swedish Army Medical Corps' placement under Collegium medicum. New regulations were issued in 1812, which abolished the military organization of the corps, and its members were placed without their own chief both under the said college and under the authority of the relevant military commander. The military surgeons thus found themselves in a strange position. If one excludes those serving in the same troop unit, they became without any connection with each other. Admittedly, they belonged to the name of a corps, which, in the absence of a chief, was really just a collective term for the surgeons employed by the army.


title: Swedish Army Medical Corps

text: In 1908, in addition to the chief army surgeon (with the rank of major general), the Swedish Army Medical Corps consisted of 203 members in active service, namely: 1 surgeon (with the rank of lieutenant colonel), rapporteur for sanitary affairs in the Medical Board, 52 regimental surgeons, 90 battalion surgeons and 60 field surgeon students (fältläkarstipendiater); the Army Medical Corps also included 6 assistant surgeons at the General Garrison Hospital in Stockholm. The regimental surgeons (with the rank of major), generally one in each regiment and corps, were responsible for the health care there. Within each army division, a regimental surgeon was appointed to, as a division surgeon (with the rank of lieutenant colonel) before the army division commander, be the rapporteur on matters concerning the medical and veterinary services within the division, to carry out inspections, etc. Battalion surgeons, 2 classes with higher and lower salaries and the rank of captain and lieutenant, generally performed the daily duty (medical care, etc.). A battalion surgeon with the salary of an older battalion surgeons served as an assistant in the National Board of Health. Field surgeon students, 2 classes with different salaries and the rank of lieutenant and underlöjtnant, were commanded for duty, when the need arose. The Army Medical Corps reserve consisted partly of military surgeons who, after reaching retirement age, retired from service with a pension, partly of military surgeons who before reaching retirement age retired from service, and partly of Bachelor of Medical Sciences degree conscripts and Licentiate of Medicine degree conscripts who had completed conscription recruitment school; the staff was obliged to serve even in peacetime. The regular military surgeons were appointed by the king according to a proposal made by the National Swedish Board of Health and the Army Medical Board; students and assistant surgeons were appointed by the latter authorities.


title: Swedish Army Medical Corps

text: In 1806 a dark blue tunic with turned up tails and two rows of buttons on the chest. In 1845 a tunic of dark blue broadcloth, single breasted with eight buttons, open and slanted Prussian collar with a red flap on each side, red piping in the front from the collar and all the way down, around the cuffs and on the pocket flaps. Epaulettes of earlier model were worn. The trousers were of dark blue broadcloth with a red piping along the outer seam. For summer use, trousers of linen or other white fabric were used. In 1886 military surgeons got tunic m/1886 with black lining, collar and cuffs of black velvet and with three blind button holes on each cuff. Red piping along the front edge of the tunic, on the Prussian collar and around the cuffs. Epaulette straps were of golden braid and lined with red cloth. Alternativly a dark blue coat m/1888, double breasted with five buttons in each row, no cuffs and with pleated gilded shoulder straps or surtout m/1829–1854, double breasted with eight buttons in each row could be worn. Trousers m/1872 had red piping in the outer seams. Greatcoat m/1886 was of grey broadcloth. Later greatcout m/04 of greybrown-green broadcloth and with grey lining might be worn. Cap m/1865–1899 with cockade and cap button m/1865 could at parade be furnished with pom-pom and a drooping plume m/1865 of black horse hair.


title: History of the New York Giants

text: The Giants were founded in 1925 by original owner Tim Mara with an investment of $500. Legally named "New York Football Giants" (which they still are to this day) to distinguish themselves from the baseball team of the same name, they became one of the first teams in the then five-year-old National Football League. In 1919, Charles Stoneham, the owner of the New York Giants baseball team, had organized and promoted a professional football team to be called the New York Giants. The team folded before its first game, a casualty of a dispute over the city's blue laws. This early Giants football team would eventually make it to play as the Brooklyn Giants in 1921, playing two games in the NFL before dropping out, and eventually folded in 1923 after two years as an independent. When the NFL sought to return to New York City, it approached one of the Brooklyn Giants' owners, promoter Billy Gibson, about reviving the team; he instead referred the league to Mara, who paid a $500 franchise fee and accepted a place in the NFL, keeping the Giants name.


title: History of the New York Giants

text: In the 1934 NFL Championship Game, the Giants defeated previously unbeaten Chicago 30–13 at the Polo Grounds on an icy field with temperatures peaking at 25 degrees. Before the game, team treasurer John Mara talked with Owen and team captain Flaherty about the field conditions. Flaherty suggested the Giants wear sneakers on the frozen field, as he had played in a game under similar circumstances at Gonzaga, and the sneakers proved to be effective. Mara dispatched equipment manager Abe Cohen to get as many sneakers as he could get. Due to traffic and the inability to find any athletic goods stores open on Sunday, Cohen was unable to return before the game started, and the Giants, wearing conventional footwear, trailed 10–3 at the end of the first half. Realizing time was short, Cohen went to Manhattan College — where he had a key to the equipment and locker rooms — and returned to the Polo Grounds at halftime with nine pairs of basketball sneakers, saying that "nine pairs was all I could get." Players donned the sneakers and New York, after allowing Chicago another field goal late in the 3rd quarter, responded with 27 unanswered points in the 4th quarter to win their first NFL Championship game. The game would come to be known as "The Sneakers Game", and the 27 points the Giants scored in the 4th quarter set a single–quarter championship game scoring record that stood for decades. After the game, offensive tackle Len Grant expressed his sincere gratitude by stating "God bless Abe Cohen."


title: History of the New York Giants

text: The Giants made the championship game again the next year, but lost in a rematch to the Packers, 27-0 They also advanced to the championship game in 1941, losing to the Bears, 37–9. Both games were close early before their respective opponents went on an offensive surge to break the game open late. In 1944, the Giants reached the championship game, where they faced the Green Bay Packers for the third time in ten seasons. This 1944 Giants team is considered to have been the best defensive team in NFL history in terms of points per game allowed, "...a truly awesome unit". They gave up only 7.5 points per game (a record that still stands) and shut out five of their ten opponents. Nonetheless, they lost again in the championship game, this time 14–7 as Ted Fritsch scored two touchdowns. The Packers defense held on to the lead despite a fourth-quarter touchdown by the Giants. Giants quarterback Arnie Herber (who previously had played for the Packers) threw no less than four interceptions in the game. The 1944 Giants were a mere No. 5 in scoring offense in the 10-team NFL. By 1946, Mara had given over complete control of the team to his two sons. Jack controlled the business aspects, while Wellington controlled the on-field operations. In 1946, the Giants again reached the Championship game, for the eighth time in 14 seasons. However, they were beaten by the Sid Luckman-led Bears, 24–14.


title: History of the New York Giants

text: The seasons of 1964 through 1980 in team history have often been referred to as "the wilderness years" for several reasons: 1) The franchise lost its status as an elite NFL team by posting only two winning seasons, against twelve losing and three .500 seasons during this span; 2) The Giants became a "team of nomads," calling four different stadiums home in the 1970s ; 3) New York tried several head coach and quarterback combinations during this period, but with almost no success . The team rebounded with a 7–7 record in 1965, (mostly due to the acquisition of quarterback Earl Morrall during the offseason) before compiling a league-worst 1–12–1 record and allowing over 500 points on defense in 1966. This season also included a 72–41 loss to the rival Washington Redskins at D.C. Stadium in the highest-scoring game in league history. Interest in the team was waning, especially with the rapid rise of the New York Jets, with their wide-open style of play and charismatic quarterback Joe Namath.


title: History of the New York Giants

text: As the complex was being built, and their current home at Yankee Stadium was being renovated, they would be without a home for three years, and dubbed "the orphans of the NFL." Their final full season at Yankee Stadium was 1972. After playing their first two games there in 1973, the Giants played the rest of their home games in 1973, as well as all of their home games in 1974, at the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut. This was done out of a desire to have their own home field, as opposed to having to share Shea Stadium with the Jets. However, between access problems, neighborhood issues, the fact that the Yale Bowl was not ideally suited for pro football (the stadium, then as now, did not have permanent lights), the age of the stadium , and the lack of modern amenities (the stadium lacks locker rooms, forcing teams to walk 200 yards between Smilow Field Center to the stadium), the Giants reconsidered their decision and agreed to share Shea Stadium with the Jets in 1975. New York left the Yale Bowl after losing all seven home games played there in 1974 and compiling a home record of 1–11 over that two-year stretch.


title: History of the New York Giants

text: Despite their new home and heightened fan interest, New York still played subpar football in 1976 and 1977. In 1978, the Giants started the year 5–6 and on November 19, 1978, played the Philadelphia Eagles at home with a chance to solidify their playoff prospects. However, the season imploded in one of the most improbable finishes in NFL history. The Giants led 17–12 and had possession of the ball with only 30 seconds left. They had to just kneel the ball to end the game, as the Eagles had no time outs. However, instead of kneeling the ball, offensive coordinator Bob Gibson ordered New York quarterback Joe Pisarcik to hand the ball off to fullback Larry Csonka. Csonka was unprepared to receive the handoff, and the ball rolled off his hip and bounced free. Eagles safety Herman Edwards picked up the loose ball and ran, untouched, for a score, giving the Eagles an improbable 19–17 victory. This play is referred to as "The Miracle in the Meadowlands" among Eagles fans, and "The Fumble" among Giants fans.


title: History of the New York Giants

text: Young hired San Diego Chargers assistant Ray Perkins as head coach and drafted unknown quarterback Phil Simms from Morehead State to the surprise of many. New York continued to struggle, finishing 6–10 in 1979 and 4–12 in 1980. With the 2nd overall pick in the 1981 draft, the Giants selected linebacker Lawrence Taylor. The impact that Taylor had on the Giants' defense was immediate. He was named the NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year and NFL Defensive Player of the Year, becoming, to date, the only rookie to ever win the NFL Defensive Player of the Year award. His arrival raised the Giants linebacking corps — which already included future Hall of Famer Harry Carson and Pro Bowler Brad Van Pelt — into one of the NFL's best. It also predicated New York's transformation from allowing 425 points in 1980 to 257 in 1981. Another bright spot was the rushing game; keyed by the acquisition (via trade from the Houston Oilers) of running back Rob Carpenter in early October. Carpenter rushed for 748 yards and scored five touchdowns thru the balance of the season and the Giants went 9–7. They defeated the Eagles in the first round of the playoffs, 27–21, then lost to the eventual Super Bowl champion San Francisco 49ers 38–24 in the divisional playoffs.


title: History of the New York Giants

text: New York entered the 1986 season as one of the favorites to win the Super Bowl. They had their first test in a Monday Night game against the defending NFC East champion Dallas Cowboys. They lost at Texas Stadium, 31–28. However, they won their next five in a row and 14 of their last 15, to finish the season with a 14–2 record. One of the signature plays of the season occurred during a Monday Night game in December. Here is a description of the play taken from a Monday Night Football broadcast in 2005: "On December 1st, 1986...with the Giants trailing, (Mark) Bavaro catches an innocent pass from Phil Simms over the middle. It takes nearly seven 49ers defenders to finally drag him down, some of which are carried for almost 20 yards, including future Hall of Famer Ronnie Lott. Bavaro's inspiring play jump starts the Giants, who win the game and eventually the Super Bowl." New York's defense allowed 236 points during the season, second fewest in the NFL, and Taylor set a team record with 20.5 sacks. He won a record third Defensive Player of the Year Award, and was named league MVP.


title: History of the New York Giants

text: In 1993, Reeves' impact was immediate. As Parcells had done in 1984, Reeves named Simms his starting quarterback. The defense returned to form, and allowed more than 20 points once all season. With two regular season games left, the Giants were 11–3 and appeared poised for a first-round playoff bye. They were upset by a Phoenix Cardinals team, who came into the game with just five wins, 17–6, in the next-to-last week of the season, setting up a winner–take–all contest against the Dallas Cowboys in the final regular season game. Though the Giants played well, it was Emmitt Smith's memorable performance with a separated shoulder that led the Cowboys to a 16–13 overtime win, giving the Cowboys a sweep of the season series and home-field advantage throughout the NFC Playoffs. Despite the loss, the Giants made the playoffs as a Wild Card and won their first-round game, 17–10 over the Minnesota Vikings. However, they were defeated by the San Francisco 49ers 44–3 in the divisional playoffs. Simms played in all 16 games, completing nearly 62% of his passes, and threw for over 3,000 yards and 15 touchdowns. Simms, Hampton, offensive linemen Jumbo Elliot and center Bart Oates made the 1994 Pro Bowl, and Reeves was named Coach of the Year by the Associated Press. After the season, Lawrence Taylor and Phil Simms, the two biggest figures of the late 1980s and early 1990s Giants teams, retired.


title: History of the New York Giants

text: After a brief search, Ernie Accorsi hired former Jacksonville Jaguars coach Tom Coughlin to be the Giants' head coach. Coughlin was considered a disciplinarian, in contrast to the departed Fassel, whose lenient style was criticized in his final years with the club. Accorsi coveted quarterback Eli Manning, brother of Peyton and son of Archie, in the 2004 NFL draft. Manning had indicated before the draft that he did not want to play for the San Diego Chargers, who held the top pick. The Chargers drafted him nonetheless, and then traded him to the Giants for their first round picks in 2004 and 2005. The Giants released Kerry Collins, who was unhappy with a backup role, and signed veteran quarterback Kurt Warner. The plan was for Warner to be the starter, while the team groomed Manning to ultimately take over the job. After losing to the Philadelphia Eagles in the 2004 season opener, the Giants, with Warner at quarterback, won five of their next six games, making them 5–2. After losing two close games, to the Chicago Bears and Arizona Cardinals, to drop to 5–4, Coughlin announced that Manning would start the rest of the season. Manning struggled, and the Giants did not score more than 14 points in their next four games. He performed better later in the season, but the Giants finished the season 6–10. Barber established a career-high in rushing with 1,518 yards. He also had 52 catches and a total of 15 touchdowns.


title: History of the New York Giants

text: The Giants started 4–2 in 2005. Then, on October 25, patriarch Wellington Mara died after a brief illness at the age of 89. Mara had been involved with the Giants since he was nine years old, when he worked for them as a ball boy. Except a tour of duty in the military during World War II, Mara spent his entire adult life with the team. He was beloved by many of the players, and was noted for making an effort to get to know each of them. The Giants dedicated their next game to Mara, and defeated the Washington Redskins 36–0. Just twenty days after Mara's death, on November 15, the other Giants Executive Officer, Bob Tisch, died at the age of 79. The Giants honored Tisch by defeating the Philadelphia Eagles 27–17 in their next game. Barber set a new team single-game rushing record with 220 yards, and the team's single-season record with 1,860 yards in a victory over the Kansas City Chiefs. The Giants finished 11–5 and hosted the Carolina Panthers in the wild card playoffs, but lost 23–0.


title: History of the New York Giants

text: In 2007, the Giants made the playoffs for the third consecutive season. In a September game against the Philadelphia Eagles, they tied the NFL record for most sacks in a game by sacking Philadelphia quarterback Donovan McNabb 12 times, with Osi Umenyiora recording six of those sacks. They became the third NFL franchise to win 600 games when they defeated the Atlanta Falcons 31–10 in October. That same month, they also played in the NFL's first regular season game outside of North America, in London's Wembley Stadium, where they beat the Miami Dolphins 13–10. They ended the regular season 10–6 and defeated the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 24–14 in the first round of the playoffs, earning Manning and Coughlin their first playoff victories with the Giants. The next week, the Giants won their ninth consecutive road game by beating the top-seeded Dallas Cowboys 21–17. In the NFC Championship Game, Lawrence Tynes kicked an overtime field goal to give them a 23–20 road victory over the Green Bay Packers.


title: History of the New York Giants

text: During the 2011 preseason, the Giants lost tight end Kevin Boss, wide receiver Steve Smith, guard Rich Seubert, linebacker Keith Bulluck, wide receiver Derek Hagan, and Pro Bowl center Shaun O'Hara to free agency. However, the 2011 season also saw the emerging of second-year wide receiver Victor Cruz and second-year tight end Jake Ballard. The Giants opened the season against the Washington Redskins on the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, with both New York City and Washington being a target of the attacks. The Redskins beat the Giants 28–14, but the Giants won their next three games, against the St. Louis Rams, Philadelphia Eagles, and Arizona Cardinals. After a loss against the Seattle Seahawks, they went on another three-game winning streak. A key victory was an upset of the New England Patriots 24–20 at Gillette Stadium. The victory ended the Patriots' NFL record home-game winning streak, after a touchdown pass from Manning to Ballard with 15 seconds left. However, the Giants lost their next three games, before regaining their position atop the NFC East with a tightly contested 37–34 win over the Dallas Cowboys on December 11. After splitting their next two games against the Redskins and New York Jets, a victory over the Cowboys in the last game of the regular season clinched a postseason appearance for the Giants.


title: History of the New York Giants

text: 2020 was the first year since 2003 that Eli Manning wasn't on the roster, as he retired following the 2019 season. For the 2020 season, the Giants hired former Patriots special teams coordinator Joe Judge to be their new head coach. The Giants, however, lost their first five games, three of which were decided by one score. Their first win came at the hands of the Washington Football Team, as the Giants held off a late rally by Washington to win 20–19. They would lose their next two games against the Eagles and the Buccaneers by one and two points, respectively. They would then win four straight games, including a 17–12 upset over the Seattle Seahawks, and sat at 5–7, tied with the Washington Football Team for best with the division, but the Giants owned the tiebreaker due to a head-to-head sweep. The Giants proceeded to lose their next three games by two or more scores. A 23-19 Week 17 victory over the Dallas Cowboys put the Giants at 6-10 and in contention for the NFC East title. All they needed to happen was for the 6-9 Washington Football Team to lose to the 4-10-1 Philadelphia Eagles that night, and the Giants would be in. However, the Eagles would end up being criticized for tanking, allowing Washington to get away with a 20–14 victory, eliminating the Giants from the playoffs and from contention of claiming the worst record in NFL history for a team that qualified for the playoffs .


title: Human rights in Ireland

text: In 2018, Ireland was downgraded, in the United States' Trafficking of Persons Report 2018, from Tier 1 to Tier 2; Tier 2 including countries that fall below US standards in combatting human trafficking. The report found that, regarding the efforts of the Irish government, "The government has not obtained a trafficking conviction since the law was amended, in 2013; it initiated only three prosecutions in 2017 and had chronic deficiencies in victim-identification and referral." The number of newly identified cases in 2017 numbered 115, an increase on the 90 cases identified in 2015. According to the report, this increase can be accounted for by the Irish governments, "decreased," law enforcement efforts. Whilst the report did note that Ireland's, Garda Síochána, (police force), runs a dedicated email service involved with reporting trafficking, action was taken on a mere 31 emails, a number disproportionate when compared with the number of cases published by the report. The report further found that the Irish government provided, "no legally mandated psychological assistance to victims," and had dedicated little effort to, "reduce the demand for sex trafficking or forced labour."


title: Yaw Ntow Ababio

text: On the ticket of the New Patriotic Party, Ababio first became a member of parliament for Dormaa East constituency in the Brong Ahafo Region of Ghana after his election in the 2004 Ghanaian general elections. He thus represented the constituency for the first time in the 4th parliament of the 4th republic of Ghana. He was elected with 11,533votes out of 19480 total valid votes cast. This was equivalent to 58.1% of all total valid votes cast. He was elected over Nicholas K. Adjei-Kyeremeh of the National Democratic Congress, Alexander Asante Oppong of the Convention People's Party and Lovea Amponsah of the Democratic People's Party. These obtained 38.00%, 2.90% and 1.00% respectively of all total valid votes cast. In the same elections, the New Partriotic Party won a majority total of 123parliamentary seat representation out of the 230 total seats for the 4th parliament of the 4th republic. The Dormaa East constituency formed part of 14 out of a total 24 parliamentary seats won by the party in the Brong Ahafo region. Ababio as a member of parliament in the 4th parliament also served as a Vice Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Roads and Transports.


title: Guy Bignell

text: The fifth son of R. Bignell, he was born in British India at Mozufferpore in October 1886. Bignell was educated in England at Haileybury, where he played for the college cricket team. In the summer following his final year at Haileybury, Bignell made two appearances in first-class cricket for Hampshire in the 1904 County Championship against Warwickshire and Somerset during the Bournemouth Cricket Week. From Haileybury, he proceeded to the Royal Military College (RMC) in December 1904. The following summer, he made five appearances for Hampshire in the County Championship, scoring what would be his only first-class century against Kent at Portsmouth. In 1905, he also played for the Gentlemen of the South, captained by W. G. Grace, against the Players of the South. Bignell graduated from the RMC in January 1906, as a second lieutenant onto the unattached list of the British Indian Army. He became attached to the British Indian Army with the 29th Punjabis in March 1907, with promotion to lieutenant following in April 1908. He returned to England in 1908, where he made eleven first-class appearances for Hampshire. He also played for a Hambledon XII in 1908, in a commemorative first-class match against an England XI at Broadhalfpenny Down. His next appearances in first-class cricket for Hampshire followed in 1912, with him making 21 appearances, in which he scored 428 runs at an average of 17.12.


title: Guy Bignell

text: He returned to play four matches for Hampshire in the 1925 County Championship, bringing his total number of first-class appearances for the county to 55. In these, he scored 1,582 runs at an average of 20.54; alongside his lone century, he also made eight half centuries. With his right-arm medium pace bowling, he took 17 wickets at a bowling average of 42.47, with best figures of 3 for 67. Outside of the first-class game, he was a notable club cricketer for the Hampshire Hogs, Free Foresters, and the Marylebone Cricket Club. Bignell continued to serve with the British Indian Army, being appointed second-in-command of the 10th battalion, 15th Punjab Regiment in October 1930. In December 1931, Bignell was promoted to lieutenant colonel and commandant of the 10th battalion, 15th Punjab Regiment. He held this post until he retired from active service in December 1935. During the Second World War, he was first involved with the Civil Defence Corps from 1940 to 1942 and then was employed with the Ministry of Fuel and Power in 1942. Bignell died at Lausanne in Switzerland on 10 June 1965. His brother, Hugh, was also a first-class cricketer.


title: Tompkins County, New York

text: Tompkins County was once a reliably Republican county. From 1856 to 1980, the only Democratic candidates to carry it in a presidential election were Woodrow Wilson in 1912 and Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. However, Democrats have won Tompkins County in every presidential election since 1984, helped by the dominant presence of Cornell University in Ithaca. In 2008, Tompkins County was the only county in New York State in which Senator Barack Obama beat Senator Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. In the 2008 United States presidential election, Obama won the county by a 41% margin over John McCain, with Obama winning by 25.5% statewide. It was his highest percentage by county in upstate New York. In 2016 the county strongly supported Clinton over Trump (67.7% to 24.3%). It swung even further to Joe Biden in 2020, who took 73.5% to 24.3% for Trump, the highest voteshare it has given any candidate since 1956 when incumbent president Dwight D. Eisenhower won the county with 78.3% of the vote.


title: Soul World

text: Soul World is featured most often in the Marvel Comics cosmic-based tales Jim Starlin helped revitalize in the 1970s with the re-purposing of the 1960s Stan Lee created character, Him, which Starlin renamed as Adam Warlock. In the early storylines, Warlock was given an enchanted gemstone (the Soul Gem) by the protagonist, the High Evolutionary, which granted Warlock the ability to steal the souls of his enemies. Allusions were made to the captured souls as "residing" within the gem, but it was not until the 1980s death and resurrection of Warlock story-arch when it was revealed that an actual world existed within the gem, inhabited by those captured souls. Starlin illustrated Soul World as a pastoral alien landscape, featuring rolling hills and spiring mountains. The Soul Gem was later retconned to be among the six Infinity Gems comprising the totemic Infinity Gauntlet, though Warlock maintained an intrinsic link to the gem and the world within, the latter of which he often utilized as a place of imprisonment for his enemies, as well as a place of refuge and self-exile for himself and his friends. It was later discovered that while Adam Warlock is considered the god of Soul World, this pocket dimension is actually overseen by an ancient eldritch soul-eating creature known as Devondra, a being with the ability to create new universes from its silk and whose lower half resembles a spider, possess long arms, four digits on each hand, many tentacles on face, multiple eyes and fangs. It was Devondra that caused Soul World to transform from a paradise to a hellish wasteland and was theorized that once Devondra has eaten enough souls, she will spin threads within the Soul Stone in order to birth a new reality. Basically, once the creature is sated the Stone enables its wielder to alter reality, or worse yet, remake it.


title: Proto-Afroasiatic homeland

text: There is no consensus as to when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken. The absolute latest date for when Proto-Afroasiatic could have been extant is c. 4000 BC, after which Egyptian and the Semitic languages are firmly attested. However, in all likelihood these languages began to diverge well before this hard boundary. The estimations offered by scholars as to when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken vary widely, ranging from 18,000 BC to 8,000 BC. According to Igor M. Diakonoff , proto-Afroasiatic was spoken c. 10,000 BC. According to Christopher Ehret , proto-Afroasiatic was spoken c. 11,000 BC at the latest, and possibly as early as c. 16,000 BC. These dates are older than dates associated with most other proto-languages. An estimate at the youngest end of this range still makes Afroasiatic the oldest proven language family. Contrasting proposals of an early emergence, Tom Güldemann has argued that less time may have been required for the divergence than is usually assumed, as it is possible for a language to rapidly restructure due to areal contact, with the evolution of Chadic (and likely also Omotic) serving as pertinent examples.


title: Proto-Afroasiatic homeland

text: No consensus exists as to where proto-Afroasiatic originated. Scholars have proposed locations for the Afroasiatic homeland across Africa and western Asia. A complicating factor is the lack of agreement on the subgroupings of Afroasiatic (see Further subdivisions) – this makes associating archaeological evidence with the spread of Afroasiatic particularly difficult. Nevertheless, there is a long-accepted link between the speakers of Proto-Southern Cushitic languages and the East African Savanna Pastoral Neolithic , and archaeological evidence associates the Proto-Cushitic speakers with economic transformations in the Sahara dating c. 8,500 years ago, as well as the speakers of the Proto-Zenati variety of the Berber languages with an expansion across the Maghreb in the 5th century AD. More hypothetical links associate the proto-Afroasiatic-speakers with the Kebaran and the Mushabian culture, while others argue for a possible affiliation between proto-Afroasiatic and the Natufian culture.


title: Proto-Afroasiatic homeland

text: Supporters of a western Asian origin for Afroasiatic are particularly common among those with a background in Semitic or Egyptological studies, and amongst archaeological proponents of the "farming/language dispersal hypothesis" according to which major language groups dispersed with early farming technology in the Neolithic. The leading linguistic proponent of this idea in recent times is Alexander Militarev, who argues that Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken by early agriculturalists in the Levant and subsequently spread to Africa. Militarev associates the speakers of Proto-Afroasiatic with the Levantine Post-Natufian Culture, arguing that the reconstructed lexicon of flora and fauna, as well as farming and pastoralist vocabulary indicates that Proto-AA must have been spoken in this area. Scholar Jared Diamond and archaeologist Peter Bellwood have taken up Militarev's arguments as part of their general argument that the spread of linguistic macrofamilies (such as Afroasiatic, Bantu, and Austroasiatic) can be associated with the development of agriculture; they argue that there is clear archaeological support for farming spreading from the Levant into Africa via the Nile valley.


title: Proto-Afroasiatic homeland

text: According to an autosomal DNA research in 2014 on ancient and modern populations, the Afroasiatic languages likely spread across Africa and the Near East by an ancestral population(s) carrying a newly identified "non-African" (Western Eurasian) genetic component, which the researchers dub the "Ethio-Somali" component. This genetic component is most closely related to the "Maghrebi" component and is believed to have diverged from other "non-African" (Western Eurasian) ancestries at least 23,000 years ago. The "Ethio-Somali" genetic component is prevalent among modern Afroasiatic-speaking populations, and found at its highest levels among Cushitic peoples in the Horn of Africa. On this basis, the researchers suggest that the original Ethio-Somali carrying population(s) probably arrived in the pre-agricultural period (12–23 ka) from the Near East, having crossed over into northeast Africa via the Sinai Peninsula and then split into two, with one branch continuing west across North Africa and the other heading south into the Horn of Africa. They suggest that a descendant population migrated back to the Levant prior to 4000 BC and developed the Semitic branch of Afroasiatic. Later migration from Arabia into the HOA beginning around 3 ka would explain the origin of the Ethio-Semitic languages at this time. A similar view has already been proposed earlier, suggesting that the ancestors of Afroasiatic speakers could have been a population originating in the Near East that migrated to Northeast Africa during the Late Palaeolithic with a subset later moving back to the Near East.


title: Proto-Afroasiatic homeland

text: Genetic studies on a specimen of the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic excavated at the Luxmanda site in Tanzania, which has been associated with migrations of Cushitic-speaking peoples and the spread of pastoralism, found that the specimen carried a large proportion of ancestry related to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic culture of the Levant (Natufian), similar to that borne by modern Afroasiatic-speaking populations inhabiting the Horn of Africa. It is suggested that a population related to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic culture of the Levant contributed significantly to historical Eastern African populations represented by the c. 5,000 year old Luxmanda specimen, while modern Cushitic-speaking populations have additional contributions from Dinka-related and "Neolithic Iranian-related" sources. This type of ancestry was later partially replaced by following migration events associated with the Bantu expansion, with Bantu-speaking Eastern Africans having only little ancestry associated with the Pre-Pottery Neolithic culture of the Levant.


title: Proto-Afroasiatic homeland

text: Keita examined a published Y-chromosome dataset on Afro-Asiatic populations and found that a key lineage E-M35/E-M78, sub-clade of haplogroup E, was shared between the populations in the locale of Egyptian and Libyan speakers and modern Cushitic speakers from the Horn. These lineages are present in Egyptians, Berbers, Cushitic speakers from the Horn of Africa, and Semitic speakers in the Near-East. He noted that variants are also found in the Aegean and Balkans, but the origin of the M35 subclade was in Egypt or Libya, and its clades were dominant in a core portion of Afro-Asiatic speaking populations which included Cushitic, Egyptian and Berber groups, in contrast Semitic speakers showed a decline in frequency going west to east in the Levantine-Syria region. Keita identified high frequencies of M35 (>50%) among Omotic populations, but stated that this derived from a small, published sample of 12. Keita also wrote that the PN2 mutation was shared by M35 and M2 lineages and this paternal clade originated from East Africa. He concluded that "the genetic data give population profiles that clearly indicate males of African origin, as opposed to being of Asian or European descent" but acknowledged that the biodiversity does not indicate any specific set of skin colors or facial features as populations were subject to microevolutionary pressures.


title: With Love From

text: With Love From explores Americana, folk music, and indie pop with influences from country music. Regarding this stylistic choice, AJ Michalka said "I think being that Aly and I come from pop songwriting, that will always be an underbelly to our writing. But I do think opening up into an Americana kind of folk fits Aly and I really well. It's something that we wanted to pursue when we were younger. We also grew up listening to a lot of music that fell into that category. But in a way, when you're a strong songwriter and you're really confident in your work and you're open to working with other people and you're open to diverse ideas, when it comes to kind of floating between genres, I think that's when you can shine because you're not boxing yourself into a genre." The album was recorded shortly after the release of A Touch of the Beat Gets You Up on Your Feet Gets You Out and Then Into the Sun and enlisted many of the same collaborators. The duo recorded the song live-to-tape when possible, which gives the record "a less glossy, more lived-in feel with lots of raggedly distorted guitars and spacey echo high in the mix". In a review for Paste, Anna Govert wrote "More than anything, Aly & AJ have proven once again that they are so much more than the music they made when they were teenagers. Aly & AJ are releasing career-defining music (and have been for the past six years), and With Love From might top A Touch of the Beat as their best album to date."


title: Battle of Bondo

text: Major General Silas Mayunga, commander of the Task Force, ordered Brigadier Ahmed Kitete's Minziro Brigade to secure the road to Arua. The brigade's soldiers pressed their officers for a quick advance, as they were eager to finish the war. The Tanzanians felt that the only potential obstacle along the road was the Uganda Army base near Bondo. Positioned 20 kilometres south of Arua, Bondo Camp was one of the largest military installations in the country, serving as the home base for the Kifaru Mechanised Specialist Reconnaissance Regiment. On 27 May 1979 Kitete ordered his brigade to halt five kilometres away from Bondo Camp and rest until the next day, but his battalion commanders urged him to proceed with an attack on the base. Kitete assented, and instructed lunch to be prepared before the operation. The Tanzanian officers quickly drew up plans for the attack while they ate. Since they believed Bondo Camp was probably abandoned, they did not prepare for the employment of their artillery.


title: Battle of Bondo

text: The Tanzanian tanks responded with heavy cannon and machine-gun fire, while the infantry sprayed the bush with submachine guns. Kitete could not get a view of the fighting as darkness fell and, considering that artillery had landed near his post and hearing heavy firing, believed that his men had been ambushed. Unable to reach his frontline commanders via radio, he ordered his artillery to bombard the hills immediately behind Bondo Camp. Meanwhile, Tanzanian soldiers at the front of the column charged forward. They secured the abandoned recoilless rifle and Katyusha rocket launcher and spotted about 50 Ugandan soldiers retreating down the Arua road. The Tanzanians pursued them up into the hills when their own artillery began to strike. The first shell dismembered two Tanzanian soldiers, killing them. The pursuit quickly ended as Tanzanian soldiers dived to the ground to take cover. They were unable to reach their artillery battery via radio, and the bombardment continued. Journalists Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey were accompanying the TPDF during the battle and were also forced to take cover.


title: List of Somerset County Cricket Club grounds

text: Somerset's first home first-class match was against Hampshire in 1882 at the County Ground, Taunton. This ground is the headquarters of the county club, and has hosted more Somerset matches than any other ground. It was originally known as the Taunton Athletic Ground, and featured a cycling/running track around the outside of the playing area which was later removed. Prior to the cessation of cricket during the First World War, Somerset only played at three other grounds; two in Bath, and Clarence Park in Weston-super-Mare. The Recreation Ground in Bath, the home ground of Bath Rugby, has been a regular setting for Somerset, hosting over 300 county matches. It is also Somerset's only venue other than the County Ground to have hosted a Twenty20 match. Clarence Park also frequently hosted Somerset matches until 1996, and has featured over 200 Somerset games. The next most frequently used ground is Morlands Athletic Ground in Glastonbury, where Somerset played 24 times between 1952 and 1978.


title: Rebecca Parrish

text: Within two months she started seeing patients in a small free dispensary in December 1906. When it first opened, the dispensary had only "a few drugs, an enameled bowl, a pitcher with most of the enamel peeled off, and chair with one leg awry." The dispensary was located inside of the Harris Memorial Training School (now known as Memorial College) in Santa Cruz, a neighborhood in the northern part of Manila. The church had commissioned the school three years earlier to train young Filipina girls in Manila as deaconesses. She called her clinic the Dispensaria Betania or Bethany Dispensary and quickly acquired a small stock of drugs and medical tools. She operated under the rule that no patient was ever turned away. The clinic received so many patients that it was soon converted into a small hospital with the acquisition of ten cots. The Training School opened up a Nurses' Training School to accommodate her needs. Three students from the Harris Memorial Training School became her first student nurses, and the following year she was assisted by several American nurses as well. She made many house calls during her time at the clinic as an opportunity to follow up with her patients, as well as to tell them about Christianity. She started to develop sympathy for her patients, writing, "It is nonsense to say 'East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet', for 'In Christ there is no East or West, in Him no North or South.'". Death rates among children dropped as she provided medicine, treatment and milk to hundreds of mothers. Her work increased as more and more people traveled by foot, by horse and even by boat to visit the clinic. Her work was made easier in 1911 when the first class of 6 Filipina women graduated from nurse's training. She became devoted to her role as both a physician and a missionary, even writing an article asking for donations in the Michigan Christian Advocate. In it she described her trip to a village across Manila Bay during which she witnessed a communion service in which there was no place to kneel because the dirt floors had turned to mud from a rainstorm.


title: Rebecca Parrish

text: In 1908 it became clear that the Dispensaria Betania was not sufficient to meet the needs of the community. The local Filipinos in Manila raised between $5,000 and $10,000 to expand the clinic, but the efforts were greatly aided by the assistance of Daniel B.R. Johnston, an American real estate broker. Johnston was seeking to build a memorial to his recently deceased wife Mary, who had been active in promoting missionary work. The Women's Foreign Missionary Society, hearing this, sought him out told him about Parrish's work in Manila, asked him to build a hospital there as a memorial. He donated $12,500 to build the hospital, with the request that it be named after his wife. Parrish decided to build the hospital in Tondo, an impoverished district in western Manila. In 1908 the Mary Johnston Hospital for Women in Children, a two-story building with a fifty-five patient capacity was opened. The hospital included departments for medicine, surgery, obstetrics, pre-natal care, pediatrics, orthopedics and public health.


title: Rebecca Parrish

text: Parrish left the clinic to work at the new hospital, which specialized in maternity and child care and stood as the only Protestant hospital in the region. It still operated under the original principle that no patient ever be turned away, often meaning that Parrish worked 20-hour days. She maintained high medical standards for the hospital and required all workers to be involved in the hospital's evangelistic program. She held daily Bible lessons at the clinic and nightly prayer services at the hospital. Despite donations, the hospital still struggled financially. It got by on local and overseas donations, many brought in by Parrish who was frequently invited to speak about her work at gatherings and events. Some donors like the Masonic Lodge donated outright gifts, like an entire ward to house crippled children. Her work became more than a hospital, but rather a fixture in the community, so much so that new generation of children came to be known as "Dr. Parrish's children". She was known to inspire former patients to return and volunteers to devote their lives to medical missionary work.


title: Rebecca Parrish

text: Parrish was always regarded as the leading figure guiding the Mary Johnston Hospital, combining its medical duties with her religious mission. A Born Missionary Recounts "…she saw to it that the hospital and its environs maintained a high moral standard in a district not noted for propriety. No money raised through bridge-teas, dancing, or theatricals was accepted as a contribution to the hospital. She lectured on ethics, morals and religion in local high schools and universities; taught sociology for ten years; wrote a health page and health articles for newspapers. Often she found herself being interviews by young people for advice, even marital counseling." She was also noted for her activism, campaigning against the practice of white slavery and the mistreatment of lepers. She devoted herself to women's issues in Manila as well, she recounts encountering sexism upon her initial arrival "They asked me point blank, "Can a woman know enough to be a doctor?" and I, as frankly, answered "yes". All were curious. But, thro 27 years, I was to prove it…and DID a million times." This determination led her to establish the Philippines' first Woman's Club, which later expanded to 800 clubs and was incorporated into the General Federation of Women's Clubs.


title: Acute coronary syndrome

text: If the ECG confirms changes suggestive of myocardial infarction (ST elevation in specific leads, a new left bundle branch block or a true posterior MI pattern), thrombolytics may be administered or percutaneous coronary intervention may be performed. In the former, medication is injected that stimulates fibrinolysis, destroying blood clots obstructing the coronary arteries. In the latter, a flexible catheter is passed via the femoral or radial artery and advanced to the heart to identify blockages in the coronary arteries. When occlusions are found, they can be intervened upon mechanically with angioplasty and usually stent deployment if a lesion, termed the culprit lesion, is thought to be causing myocardial damage. Data suggest that rapid triage, transfer and treatment is essential. The time frame for door-to-needle thrombolytic administration according to American College of Cardiology (ACC) guidelines should be within 30 minutes, whereas the door-to-balloon percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) time should be less than 90 minutes. It was found that thrombolysis is more likely to be delivered within the established ACC guidelines among patients with STEMI as compared to PCI according to a 2009 case control study.


title: Everyday Robots (song)

text: The focus was to represent Damon Albarn as an individual: as a person and an artist, in the most direct way possible, showing the very tangible layers to his work, which merges authenticity and complexity with instant simplicity and a unique balance between nature and technology. The video is a metaphor of Albarn's work being the result of many elements informing the final product. Like an anatomical study, the result of the eventual piece is a direct result of everything that informs it, everything it represents. Throup commented, "I spent a lot of time with Damon in the studio, and I really wanted to capture his intentions and messages while proposing a unique way to convey them visually. There are specific lyrics that strike me, and particularly his analysis of how we are at times like robots, everyday on our phones 'looking like standing stones'. I was really interested in the idea of how the challenge of living with technology has turned us into repeats of the same. It's a sort of individual statement on the loss of individuality through technology, done in a way that at the same time not only embraces it, but is dependent on it.'


title: Welsh regional rugby

text: While average attendances at regional matches are generally higher than those at any one club had been before regionalisation, the total numbers attending top-flight Rugby in Wales have remained relatively stable, or even declined since 2003 due to the smaller number of teams and matches. While average attendances at all the Welsh regions have steadily grown since 2003 and are generally higher than the Scottish and Italian teams with whom they share the Pro14, they are far behind those at the Irish teams and are generally lower than in the English Premiership and French Top 14. This may be due to a failure of the regional sides to properly embrace the regional concept, with some being perceived as little more than extensions of former club sides unlikely to gain support among followers of former rivals. Supporters of Pontypridd RFC for example may find it difficult to get behind their regional side Cardiff Blues, who share colours, name and a stadium with traditional rivals Cardiff RFC. This has led to occasional calls either for the establishment of new regions to better represent those sides who feel unrepresented under the current system, or for the scrapping of the regions and a return to a club-based system.


title: Welsh regional rugby

text: North Wales was nominally part of the Scarlets' region at the introduction of regional rugby. Despite containing a significant part of the Welsh population, rugby has traditionally been less well established in the north. As a means to develop rugby in the area, the WRU established RGC 1404 in 2008 as a north Wales representative development side, based in Colwyn Bay. RGC 1404 currently play in the Welsh Premiership. Promotion and relegation is not possible between the top northern league, WRU Division One North, and the rest of the Welsh Rugby Union pyramid, and Rugby clubs in the north act as 'feeder' clubs to RGC 1404 in much the same way as the professional regions have their own feeder clubs among the semi-professional Welsh sides. Thus, although not a full-time professional side, RGC 1404 operate as a de facto fifth region: unlike the other teams at their level they are not themselves a feeder club to any of the professional regions. RGC 1404 have their own academy and have contributed players to the national U-20 side.


title: 2013 Tippeligaen

text: For the first time since the 2005 season, the championship was determined in the decisive match of the season. Strømsgodset were leading the league one point ahead of Rosenborg, and could secure the championship in the home-match against bronze-winners Haugesund. At the same time, six teams were not safe from relegation with one match left to play; the three teams Sarpsborg 08, Tromsø and Hønefoss were fighting to avoid the two direct relegation spots, while Vålerenga, Sogndal and Sandnes Ulf could still be forced to play a relegation play-off against a 1. divisjon side if they finished 14th in the league. Rosenborg was leading 2–0 at half-time against Lillestrøm, and Strømsgodset needed to score a goal in their match against Haugesund to secure the title. Ola Kamara sent Strømsgodset up in a 1–0 lead, and after Stefan Johansen and Øyvind Storflor scored one goal each and Ola Kamara scored his second goal in the game, Strømsgodset won the match 4–0 and secured their first championship since the 1970 season. Tromsø had to win the match away against Brann, who had nothing to play for in the last round, to avoid relegation but Tromsø had not won a single match away from home during the season, and also lost the last match 4–1, and were relegated to the 1. divisjon after an 11-year-long spell in the top flight. Hønefoss also had to win their last match to avoid relegation, and were leading the match against Odd, but Frode Johnsen scored the match-winning goal and Odd won 3–2. Sarpborg 08 lost the last match 2–1 against Viking, despite leading when the stoppage time began, and finished 14th in the league, and a met the 1. divisjon side Ranheim in the relegation play-off They won 1–0 at home and 2–0 in the awaygame and play in the next seasons Tippeligaen.


title: Zacharias Ursinus

text: At age fifteen he enrolled at the University of Wittenberg, boarding for the next seven years with Philipp Melanchthon, the erudite successor of Martin Luther. Like many young scholars of that era he gave himself a Latin name, in his case one that was based on his German name, Baer, stemming from Latin ursus, meaning bear. Melanchthon admired young Ursinus for his intellectual gifts and his spiritual maturity, commending him to mentors throughout Europe. He was a lifelong protégé of the prominent imperial physician Johannes Crato von Krafftheim, who likewise hailed from Wrocław. Subsequently, Ursinus studied under Reformation scholars at Strasbourg, Basel, Lausanne, and Geneva. Sojourns in Lyon and Orléans gave him expertise in Hebrew, as well as studying under Jean Mercier in Paris. Returning to Wrocław he published a pamphlet on the sacraments, which aroused the ire of Lutherans who charged him with being more Reformed than Lutheran. The Wrocław opponents' vitriolic reaction succeeded in driving him out of the city to Zürich, where he became friends with Zwingli's successor Heinrich Bullinger and the Italian Reformer Peter Martyr Vermigli.


title: Protestantism in Russia

text: From the information of Christian History Institute, the number of Baptists in Russia significantly grew after World War I. Some Russian prisoners were converted by German missionaries and returned home to preach to others. The 1920s saw new opportunities for missionary work as the Bolshevik regime initially seemed to offer an olive branch to those identified as 'sectarians'. In the 1930s, Stalinist repression decimated church life, with many arrests and church closures, but this was not the end of the story. The Second World War saw a relaxation of church-state relations in the Soviet Union and the Protestant community benefited alongside their Russian Orthodox counterparts. The immediate post-war period saw the growth of Baptist and Pentecostal congregations and there was a religious revival in these years. Statistics provided by the leaders of the registered church suggest 250,000 baptised members in 1946 rising to 540,000 by 1958. In fact the influence of the Protestantism was much wider than these figures suggest: in addition to the existence of unregistered Baptist and Pentecostal groups, there were also thousands who attended worship without taking baptism. Many Baptist and Pentecostal congregations were in Ukraine. Women were almost as many as men in these congregations, though the pastors were male.


title: Protestantism in Russia

text: The Strigolniki were followers of a Russian religious sect in the middle of the 14th and first half of the 15th century, they had Iconoclastic tendencies and some proto-Protestant characteristics. According to Karetnikova, the Strigolniki were a response to changes in the Orthodox church, the Strigolniki wanted to return from ritualism to the simplicity of New Testament Christianity, emphasizing the spiritual meaning of the sacraments and basing their views on scripture. The Strigolniki opposed the Orthodox church, refusing to recognize its bishops and priests. Active participants of the sect were tradespeople and low-ranking clergy. They renounced all ecclesiastic hierarchy and monasticism, sacraments done by Orthodox clergy: priesthood, communion, penance, and baptism, which had been accompanied by large fees ("extortions", in their view) to the benefit of the clergy. Criticizing and exposing the venality, vices, and ignorance of the priests, the Strigolniki demanded the right to a religious sermon for laymen. Their sermons were full of social motifs: they reproached the rich for enslaving the free and the poor.


title: Avengers: Age of Ultron

text: Thomas Kretschmann and Henry Goodman reprise their roles as Baron Wolfgang von Strucker and Dr. List, Hydra leaders who specialize in human experimentation, advanced robotics, and artificial intelligence from Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Claudia Kim portrays Helen Cho, a world-renowned geneticist who helps the Avengers from her office in Seoul; Andy Serkis portrays Ulysses Klaue, a South-African black-market arms dealer, smuggler and gangster who is a former acquaintance from Stark's weapons-dealing days; and Julie Delpy appears as Madame B., who mentored Black Widow into becoming an assassin. Kerry Condon voices the artificial intelligence F.R.I.D.A.Y., a replacement for J.A.R.V.I.S., while Spader also voices Stark's Iron Legion droids. Josh Brolin makes an uncredited appearance during the mid-credits scene as Thanos, reprising his role from Guardians of the Galaxy . Avengers co-creator Stan Lee makes a cameo appearance in the film as a military veteran who attends the Avengers' victory party. Tom Hiddleston was to reprise his role of Loki, but his scenes did not make the theatrical cut of the film.


title: Avengers: Age of Ultron

text: Feige revealed that Captain Marvel, who starred in her own MCU film in 2019, appeared in an early draft of the screenplay, but was removed since the character had not yet been cast, saying, "It didn't feel like the time. We didn't want to introduce her fully formed flying in a costume before you knew who she was or how she came to be." Whedon went so far as to shoot visual effects plates for Captain Marvel to fly into Avengers Headquarters at the end of the film; those shots were reused; however, for Scarlet Witch instead. Feige also revealed that an early draft of the script had Hulk's Quinjet detected near Saturn at the end of the film, but it was finally decided to keep it Earth-based and leave his fate ambiguous in order to dispel rumors that a film based on the "Planet Hulk" comic storyline was in development, which Marvel Studios had no plans to adapt at the time. Marvel would later decide to adapt "Planet Hulk" for the film Thor: Ragnarok , in which the Hulk is retroactively revealed to have left Earth after the events of Age of Ultron.


title: Avengers: Age of Ultron

text: By April 2013, filming was scheduled to begin in early 2014 at Shepperton Studios in England. At the Hollywood, Los Angeles, premiere of Iron Man 3, Whedon said that he had completed a draft of the script, started the storyboard process, and met with actors. Whedon also mentioned that he wrote with Downey in mind and included a "brother/sister act" from the comic books, later confirming that he was referring to Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. Whedon explained his rationale for including the characters in the film that "their powers are very visually interesting", with problems which Whedon "had on the first one" for strong powers; those powers are superspeed, and spells and telekinesis, respectively, which "they can do that will help sort of keep it fresh", though cautioned he was not throwing in more characters for the sake of doing that. Whedon stated that the twins allowed him to add more conflict, which do not like the United States and the Avengers, and "the Avengers are like a world power, and not everybody's on board with the Avengers coming in and starting fights, even in the name of justice." Because Marvel Studios shared the film rights to Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch with 20th Century Fox and had to avoid conflict with Fox's X-Men films, Whedon introduced two important characters into the Marvel Cinematic Universe completely on his terms for the first time, which allowed him to connect their origin stories to the universe that they created and avoid the concept of mutants. Whedon relished at the storytelling opportunities by introducing a character with telepathic powers, explaining, "it meant we could spend a little time inside the Avengers' heads—either their past or their impressions of what's going on, or their fears, or all of the above." By May, Downey had entered negotiations to extend his contract with Marvel Studios and reprise his role as Iron Man in the film. A month later, Downey signed on to return for the then-untitled Avengers sequel, as well as a third Avengers film.


title: Avengers: Age of Ultron

text: Casting continued into August 2013, with the announcement that James Spader would play Ultron. In November, Marvel confirmed that Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson would play the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, respectively. Taylor-Johnson had been in negotiations since as early as June, while Olsen's potential involvement was first reported in August. By the end of the year, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Samuel L. Jackson, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, and Cobie Smulders were confirmed to be returning to their roles from the first film, and Don Cheadle, who portrayed James Rhodes in the Iron Man films, had committed to a part in the film. In the early months of 2014, Thomas Kretschmann was cast as Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, Claudia Kim was cast in an unspecified role, and Paul Bettany, who voiced J.A.R.V.I.S. in previous MCU films, was cast as the Vision. Whedon said "juggling" all the characters in the film was "a nightmare"; he explained: "They're very disparate characters. The joy of the Avengers is they really don't belong in the same room. It's not like the X-Men, who are all tortured by the same thing and have similar costumes. These guys are just all over the place. And so it's tough. Honestly, this is as tough as anything I've ever done."


title: Avengers: Age of Ultron

text: Filming began on Tuesday, February 11, 2014, in Johannesburg, South Africa, having been postponed that Monday. Second unit crews shot action sequences without the main cast, to be used as background plates for scenes featuring the Hulk, in the Central Business District of Johannesburg for a period of two weeks. By mid-March, principal photography had begun at Shepperton Studios near London and was scheduled to film there for at least four months, under the working title After Party. Filming at Shepperton as well as other locations in England allowed Whedon to get a "number of different looks and textures and moods" to give the film a different palette and fresh aesthetic from its predecessor. Production designer Charles Wood built an enormous, new Avengers Tower set, one of the largest sets ever built for a Marvel film. The set featured multiple connected environments and levels. On March 22, production moved to Fort Bard, Italy and continued in the Aosta Valley region through March 28. The region doubled as the fictional Eastern European nation of Sokovia, with crews replacing local storefronts with Cyrillic script. Filming in South Korea began on March 30 on the Mapo Bridge, and continued through April 14 at various locations in Seoul, such as Cheongdam Bridge, Digital Media City, Gangnam Boulevard and road near Kaywon University of Art and Design in Uiwang. While in Seoul, the production was able to attach cameras to drones and race cars to get unique camera angles and footage. An artificial island on the Han River known as the Saebit Dungdungseom served as the headquarters of an IT institute featured in the film. Scenes involving Ultron's attack on parts of the city were shot in the Gangnam District.


title: Avengers: Age of Ultron

text: In April, shooting began in Hawley Woods in Hampshire, England, and Hayley Atwell, who played Peggy Carter in previous MCU films, filmed scenes inside the Rivoli Ballroom in London while extras performed the Lindy Hop. That June, scenes were shot at the University of East Anglia in Norwich and at Dover Castle in Kent, with Dover Castle used for interior shots of Strucker's Hydra base in Sokovia. The next month, filming took place at a training facility for London's Metropolitan Police Service, which doubled as a city in Sokovia. Additional filming took place in Chittagong, Bangladesh, including the Chittagong Ship Breaking Yard, and in the state of New York. On August 6, Whedon announced on Twitter that he had completed principal photography on Avengers: Age of Ultron. Disney spent $330.6 million on Avengers: Age of Ultron from February 2013 to November 2014, but $50.7 million of this was offset by payments from the UK tax authority. A report on actual production costs for films from FilmL.A. Inc., indicated a gross budget of $444 million, with a net of $365 million for Avengers: Age of Ultron. This makes the film one of the most expensive films ever made.


title: Avengers: Age of Ultron

text: Cinematographer Ben Davis, who also worked with Marvel on Guardians of the Galaxy, shot the film with a main unit of three Arri Alexa cameras. Davis said, "Although the Alexa was Marvel's preferred camera, we weren't locked into that choice from the start. What wasn't negotiable was the fact that we were shooting digital: that's how Marvel shoots all of its films." Davis also used Blackmagic Design's Pocket Cinema Cameras to meet the needs of the second unit kit explaining, "The second unit typically needs a fleet of smaller cameras that are less expensive and are rugged enough to handle the various trials by fire, as it were, that we throw at them." About the camera system, Whedon stated that this film was shot very differently from the first one; using many long lenses, and that he aimed to shoot the film almost like a documentary. To create the scenes depicting how Quicksilver views the world, scenes were shot with an ultra-high-speed camera and later combined with shots of Taylor-Johnson moving through the same scene at normal speed.


title: Avengers: Age of Ultron

text: In June 2014, the IMAX Corporation announced that the IMAX release of the film would be converted to IMAX 3D. Following the completion of principal photography several more cast members were revealed including Stellan Skarsgård, Anthony Mackie, Idris Elba, and Tom Hiddleston, reprising their roles from previous MCU films. However, Hiddleston's scenes did not make the theatrical cut of the film, with Whedon saying what was shot "didn't play" and he did not want the film to feel "overstuffed". According to Hiddleston, "In test screenings, audiences had overemphasized Loki's role, so they thought that because I was in it, I was controlling Ultron, and it was actually imbalancing people's expectations." Whedon later explained that Elba and Atwell appear in the film because of exploring the psyches of the Avengers from Scarlet Witch's power. In December 2014, Kim's role was revealed as Dr. Helen Cho. Additional scenes were scheduled to be filmed in January 2015 at Pinewood Studios. In February 2015, Marvel confirmed through promotional material that Serkis portrays Ulysses Klaue in the film. In early April 2015, Linda Cardellini and Julie Delpy were confirmed to be part of the film's cast. At the same time, Whedon stated that the film would not contain a post-credits scene, which had become customary for MCU films. Whedon tried to come up with a post-credit scene but felt that he could not top the "Shawarma scene" in The Avengers, explaining, "It didn't seem to lend itself in the same way, and we wanted to be true to what felt right. The first rule of making a sequel is take the best moments and do something else. Don't do the Indiana Jones gun trick again differently. Just go somewhere else. Don't try to hit the same highs, because people will sense it." However, Feige clarified, "There will be a tag . But there's not a post–post–credit scene."


title: Avengers: Age of Ultron

text: The film contains 3,000 visual effects shots, completed by ten different visual effects studios, including Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Trixter, Double Negative, Animal Logic, Framestore, Lola VFX, Territory, Perception, Method Studios, Luma Pictures, and The Third Floor. ILM opened a facility in London, citing Avengers: Age of Ultron as a catalyst for the expansion, and developed a new motion capture system for the film called Muse, which can better capture an actor's performance and combine different takes. About the motion capture process, Ruffalo called it "more of a collaboration" since the technology is advancing, with "the face capture and the motion capture can now put together, you get a lot more latitude as a performer you're no longer constricted by the attributes that you have as a person: your age, or weight, or size. None of that matters anymore. And so there's this whole exciting place to go that is kind of unknown." Visual effects supervisor Christopher Townsend said that the visual effects team considered depicting the Hulk when manipulated by Wanda Maximoff as being grey skinned with red eyes, but eventually decided against it, as they did not want to confuse audiences who might associate it with "Joe Fixit", the grey Hulk from the comics.


title: Avengers: Age of Ultron

text: Method Studios created the interior of the new Avengers training facility by digitally designing the training facility, extracting the characters from the original set and placing them into the new CG environment. Method also contributed to Iron Man's new Mark 45 suit and played a key role in creating Scarlet Witch's CG mind control effect. Following the trend in recent years, most of the computer screens in Stark's lab, Dr. Cho's laboratory, the Quinjet and other locations in the film were not added in post-production but were actually working screens on set, adding to the realism of the film and saving some on the post-production budget. London-based Territory Studio delivered the screen visuals filled with unique imagery and animations that matched the character using them. Perception worked on the main-on-end and main titles for the film. Before settling on the marble monument depiction for the main-on-end titles, Perception created three other versions, which were based on Ultron's hive mind ability from the film, "renderings of power and pure energy" inspired by classic comic panels, and classic moments for each character. The final design was inspired by war monuments such as the Iwo Jima memorial. For the main titles, Marvel wanted the typeface to be a direct continuation of the first film. Perception made the typeface a marble texture to mimic the main-on-end titles and changed the title's rotation (away from the camera instead of towards the camera in The Avengers), before "Age of Ultron" overtakes "Avengers" in a vibranium texture.


title: Avengers: Age of Ultron

text: At the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con, Whedon introduced a teaser trailer for the film, which included a look at an Ultron helmet and a title treatment. Footage of the teaser, as well as a brief interview with Whedon, was made available as part of Iron Man 3's second screen companion app for its Blu-ray release on September 24, 2013. On March 18, 2014, ABC aired a one-hour television special titled, Marvel Studios: Assembling a Universe, which included a sneak peek of Avengers: Age of Ultron. The special debuted concept art for Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, as well as art of the Hulk fighting the "Hulkbuster" Iron Man suit. Harley-Davidson partnered with Marvel to provide their first electric motorcycle, Project LiveWire, for use by Black Widow in the film. As with previous films, Audi provided several vehicles for Age of Ultron and commercials promoting these vehicles. At the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, the cast was introduced to promote the film, along with screening footage from the film. Avengers: Age of Ultron received the second most social media mentions at the convention, following Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice , but had a higher intend-to-see response.


title: Avengers: Age of Ultron

text: The first trailer was scheduled to premiere during the airing of an episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on October 28, 2014. However, on October 22, the trailer leaked online, and within a few hours Marvel officially released the trailer on YouTube. Entertainment Weekly and The Hollywood Reporter noted the effective use of the song "I've Got No Strings" from Pinocchio in the trailer. Scott Mendelson of Forbes felt the trailer was "such a textbook 'dark sequel' trailer that it borders on parody" but said, "it's a pretty spectacular piece of marketing, one that elevates itself both by the music choices and by James Spader's vocals as the title villain". The trailer received 34.3 million global views in 24 hours, 26.2 million from Marvel's YouTube channel, which broke the previous record held by Iron Man 3 with 23.14 million views. In comparison, the original Avengers teaser received 20.4 million views in 24 hours after its debut. In response, Marvel agreed to air footage from Age of Ultron during the episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. that was originally scheduled to premiere the trailer. At the end of October, Marvel Comic's Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso stated there were comic tie-in plans for the film.


title: Avengers: Age of Ultron

text: On February 3, 2015, Marvel "stealth released" a one-shot digital-only tie-in comic, Avengers: Age of Ultron Prelude—This Scepter'd Isle. Written by Will Corona Pilgrim and illustrated by Wellinton Alves, it reveals how Strucker came into possession of Loki's scepter and the origin of the Maximoff twins' abilities. At the end of the month, the film's official poster was revealed. Graeme McMillan of The Hollywood Reporter criticized it for its lack of originality, calling it "pretty much the poster for the first Avengers movie, except with added flying robots in the background" and the fact that it incorporated many of the same tropes the other MCU Phase Two film posters did. These included the hero(es) staring off camera; destruction in the background as well as something occurring in the sky; and poor Photoshop on the poster, highlighting the fact that each of the actors were obviously photographed separately and were later composited together into the poster. Mendelson agreed with many of McMillan's observations, and called the poster "hilariously photoshopped".


title: Avengers: Age of Ultron

text: The final trailer was "unlocked" by fans on March 4, 2015, via the use of hashtags on Twitter, ahead of its broadcast debut during the series premiere of American Crime on March 5. Mendelson felt "this a fine final trailer, teasing what we already know, hinting at the scale and a few new action beats without telling us much we don't already know" adding, "Here we have the fourth and final Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer and we don't know all that much about what transpires in a moment-to-moment sense in the finished 150-minute feature. I have expressed my concern dating back to October that Marvel and Disney would release too many trailers and would by default give away too much plot and character information between October and May. But if this really is the final Avengers 2 trailer, then at least on the trailer front they have kept the film relatively unspoiled." A week after the final trailer debuted, Marvel revealed that the trailer had "smashed records" with over 35 million views.


title: Avengers: Age of Ultron

text: In January 2015, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and Traveller's Tales announced a Lego video game adaptation of the first film and Age of Ultron for release in late 2015 on a variety of video game consoles. In March 2015, Disney said it planned to broaden its merchandising strategy with Avengers: Age of Ultron by expanding the target demographics to women and to fans of the individual superheroes that make up the Avengers. Paul Gitter, senior vice president of Marvel licensing for Disney Consumer Products, said, "For the first film, we primarily focused on the Avengers property and the group shots Now we're broadening the line and scope to create skews that focus on the team and the individuals characters, as well." Disney Consumer Products partnered with Hasbro, Lego, Hot Wheels, and Funko for action figures, playsets, and other toys, and with Under Armour for apparel. Disney established new partnerships in the food and packaged-goods categories, including with Sage Fruit, ConAgra, Crunchpak, and Chobani. Walt Disney India's consumer products partnered with 50 brands to promote the film in India, considered the highest ever for any film—Hollywood or Bollywood—released in India (the previous record held by Ra.One had 25 partners). Some of the brands include Amazon India, toy retailer Hamleys India, online fashion store Myntra, Hero Cycles, Mountain Dew, Liberty Shoes, Tupperware, and Subway restaurants, among others. A virtual pinball table based on the film was released in April 2015 by Zen Studios.


title: Avengers: Age of Ultron

text: Avengers: Age of Ultron grossed $459 million in the United States and Canada, and $943.8 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $1.403 billion, becoming the fifth-highest-grossing film at the time and the fourth-highest-grossing film of 2015. Avengers: Age of Ultron's worldwide opening of $392.5 million was the seventh-largest ever. The film set a worldwide IMAX opening-weekend record with $25.2 million (previously held by The Dark Knight Rises ) and also broke the record for the fastest movie to make over $40 million in IMAX theaters, doing so in 12 days. According to some analysts, the opening weekend box office gross was lower than expected because of the weekend's featured boxing match between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. Deadline Hollywood calculated the film's net profit as $382.32 million, accounting for production budgets, marketing, talent participations, and other costs; box office grosses and home media revenues placed it fourth on their list of 2015's "Most Valuable Blockbusters".


title: Avengers: Age of Ultron

text: Avengers: Age of Ultron earned $84.46 million on its opening day, marking the biggest opening day for a superhero film and the second-biggest opening and second-biggest single-day gross, behind Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 ($91.7 million). The film's Friday gross included $27.6 million from Thursday night, which began at 7 p.m., and was the sixth-highest ever for Thursday preview earnings and the highest among Marvel films. The film totaled $191.3 million in its opening weekend, the third-highest gross behind Jurassic World ($208.8 million) and The Avengers ($207.4 million). It also saw the second-highest IMAX opening weekend total with $18 million (behind The Dark Knight Rises), a record $13.5 million from premium large format theaters and the highest share for the first weekend in May, accounting for 85% of the top twelve box office total earnings (previously held by Spider-Man 3 ). Of those in attendance the first weekend, 59% were male, 41% were female and 59% were over the age of 25.


title: Avengers: Age of Ultron

text: In the United Kingdom, where Age of Ultron was filmed, it earned $5.4 million on its opening day and $27.3 million during the weekend, setting an opening-weekend record for a superhero film, Marvel's biggest opening in Britain, the biggest April opening, and the eighth-biggest debut. It also set the best single-day earning for a Disney and superhero film with its $9.4 million haul on Saturday. In South Korea, also where part of the film was shot, the film earned $4.9 million on its opening day and $28.2 through the weekend. It held the record for advance-ticket sales rate, accounting for 96% of tickets reserved, breaking Transformers: Dark of the Moon's record of 94.6% in 2011, the widest release ever, across 1,826 screens, also breaking Dark of the Moon's 1,420 screens, and the fastest imported film to surpass one million admissions, doing so in two days; it topped the box office for three consecutive weekends, and became the biggest Disney/Marvel release as well as the second-biggest Western film in the country. The Chinese opening scored the biggest weekday opening day, as well as the biggest Disney/Marvel opening, with $33.9 million, and the second-biggest six-day start with $156.3 million (behind Furious 7 ) of which $17.5 million came from IMAX theaters—the biggest ever. Age of Ultron also opened at number one in Japan in early July 2015 with $6.5 million, the highest opening weekend for an MCU release. As of March 10, 2019, it is the ninth-highest-grossing film, and the fourth-highest-grossing film of 2015. Its largest markets were China ($240.1 million), the United Kingdom ($75.5 million), and South Korea ($72.3 million).


title: Avengers: Age of Ultron

text: Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter said, "Avengers: Age of Ultron succeeds in the top priority of creating a worthy opponent for its superheroes and giving the latter a few new things to do, but this time the action scenes don't always measure up." Scott Foundas of Variety wrote, "If this is what the apotheosis of branded, big-studio entertainment has come to look like in 2015, we could be doing much worse. Unlike its title character, Age of Ultron most definitely has soul." Writing for the Chicago Sun-Times and giving the film three-and-a-half out of four stars, Richard Roeper said, "Some day, an Avengers film might collapse under the weight of its own awesomeness. I mean, how many times can they save the world? But this is not that day." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote, "Age of Ultron is a whole summer of fireworks packed into one movie. It doesn't just go to 11, it starts there. takes a few wrong turns, creating a jumble when the action gets too thick. But he recovers like a pro, devising a spectacle that's epic in every sense of the word." Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com gave the film three out of four stars, stating that despite being "bigger, louder, and more disjointed" than its predecessor, "it's also got more personality—specifically Whedon's—than any other film in the now seven-year-old franchise." Helen O'Hara of Empire praised the interactions between the characters, the action set-pieces and Whedon's ability as a director in her review, stating that the film "redefines the scale we can expect from our superheroes."


title: Avengers: Age of Ultron

text: Conversely, Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times said, "Although this movie is effective moment to moment, very little of it lingers in the mind afterward. The ideal vehicle for our age of immediate sensation and instant gratification, it disappears without a trace almost as soon as it's consumed." Scott Mendelson of Forbes said, "Avengers: Age of Ultron plays like an obligation, a box to be checked off on a list before all parties move onto the things they really want to do." Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote, "This Avengers doesn't always pop the way that the first one sometimes did, partly because its villain isn't as memorable, despite Mr. Spader's silky threat." Camilla Long of The Sunday Times remarked, "Two hours of boredom and boobs add up to a sorry basis for the new Avengers." Much like the release of Guardians of the Galaxy, the film received mixed reviews upon release in China, due to poor translations. The translations, which were said to be too literal, were thought "to have been done by Google Translate."


title: Young Americans (song)

text: According to biographer Nicholas Pegg, "Young Americans" presents a rapid lyric "sketching an Englishman's impressionist portrait of 20th century America". Production team the Matrix noted "America" as "a bit like a teenager: brimming with energy and imagination, occasionally overstepping the mark, but always with a great sense of possibility". The title itself does not appear in the song, only "the young American", who runs through various myths to the point that by the end, he does not know which ones to believe or follow. Author Peter Doggett interprets the song, in one way, as "the portrait of a fantasy: the global dream of how it would feel to have life laid out before you in the land of plenty". The opening verse describes a frigid sexual encounter, which "took him minutes, took her nowhere". Perone says the story informs listeners that issues related to sex and "emotional impotence" exist both outside and in mainstream society, while additional verses reveal the discriminations between race and social classes that exist in American society.


title: Young Americans (song)

text: Unlike the fractured imagery of Bowie's previous album Diamond Dogs , "Young Americans" is observational and lyrically influenced by the works of Bruce Springsteen; biographer Chris O'Leary compares the song's clutter of characters to Springsteen's The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle . Throughout the song, allusions are made to the Watergate scandal – US President Richard Nixon having resigned only three days prior to its recording – the McCarthy witch hunts ("now you have been the un-American") and civil rights struggles ("sit on your hands on a bus of survivors"). Additional references are made to charms of American society, including "Afro-sheen" – a hair-care product regularly advertised on Soul Train – "Ford Mustang", "Barbie doll", "Cadi" and "Chrysler", and lyrics that provoke images of violence and anguish ("would you carry a razor in case, just in case of depression?" and "ain't there a woman I can sock on the jaw?") Pegg argues the lyrics "cut as deep as 'I'm Afraid of Americans' twenty years later".


title: Young Americans (song)

text: "Young Americans" was met with positive reviews from music critics on release, with most praising the music. Reviewing the single, a writer for Cash Box said that Bowie "places his voice against a very R&B oriented track and with such a rock solid foundation for his wall of sound he feels secure hurling his socially conscious lyrics around like so much graffiti". Record Mirror's Sue Byrom referred to it as one of his "most commercial" sounding records to date, highlighting the "funky" saxophone and "lavish" backing vocals. Upon its release on the Young Americans album, Billboard named the song one of the best tracks. Critic Robert Christgau, who called the album an almost total failure in his Record Guide, gave sole praise to "Young Americans", in which "pain stimulates compassion". In a review for Rolling Stone, Jon Landau praised the song as "one of his handful of classics, a bizarre mixture of social comment, run-on lyric style, English pop and American soul". In Canada, Bill Man of The Gazette praised "Young Americans" as one of the best songs Bowie has ever written. In its year-end list, NME ranked "Young Americans" the seventh best single of 1975.


title: Young Americans (song)

text: In subsequent decades, "Young Americans" has attracted acclaim. Deemed a masterpiece by AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield hailed the song as one of Bowie's finest, with "the rhythm inspiring his most passionate (and compassionate) love letter to his fans". Doggett praises Bowie's vocal performance and overall commitment to the song. Terry Staunton of NME called it his best single ever in 1991. Several critics commended Bowie for a successful transition to soul music and his full commandeering of the style. Perone opines that Bowie effectively established a "new hybrid style" rather than being a white singer merely attempting to sing soul music. The Guardian's Alexis Petridis commented, "A white British rock star adopting the breezy, sumptuous sound of Philly soul shouldn't have worked at all, but it did, to life-affirming effect." The "ain't there one damn song..." vocal break was later selected by Mojo magazine as the most impressive passage in Bowie's entire catalogue, and by a Rolling Stone writer as his "royal peak".


title: Liu Youqiu

text: Liu Youqiu was born in 655, during the reign of Emperor Gaozong. His family was from Ji Prefecture (冀州, roughly modern Hengshui, Hebei). During the Shengli era (697–701) of Emperor Gaozong's wife Wu Zetian, Liu passed the imperial examinations and made the sheriff of Langzhong County (閬中, in modern Bazhong, Sichuan). The prefect of the prefecture Langzhong was in, however, did not respect him, and he, in frustration, left his post. Some time later, he was made the sheriff of Chaoyi County (朝邑, in modern Weinan, Shaanxi), a post that he was serving at as of 705, when Wu Zetian was overthrown in a coup and her son, Li Xian the Crown Prince, a former emperor, was restored to the throne (as Emperor Zhongzong). For some time, the key officials in power were the coup leaders Zhang Jianzhi, Cui Xuanwei, Huan Yanfan, Jing Hui, and Yuan Shuji. Liu tried to warn Huan and Jing that Wu Zetian's nephew Wu Sansi the Prince of Liang posed a threat to the coup leaders and should be killed, but they did not listen to him. Soon thereafter, Wu Sansi, who carried on an affair with Emperor Zhongzong's powerful wife Empress Wei, became a trusted advisor to Emperor Zhongzong, and the coup leaders were exiled and eventually died or killed in exile.


title: Liu Youqiu

text: In 710, Emperor Zhongzong died suddenly—a death that traditional historians believed to be a poisoning carried out by Empress Wei and her daughter Li Guo'er the Princess Anle, so that Empress Wei could become "emperor" like Wu Zetian and Li Guo'er could become crown princess. For the time being, Emperor Zhongzong's son by a concubine, Li Chongmao the Prince of Wen, was made emperor (as Emperor Shang), and Empress Wei retained power as empress dowager and regent. She viewed Emperor Zhongzong's brother Li Dan the Prince of Xiang and sister Princess Taiping as threats, and considered killing them. Meanwhile, Princess Taiping and Li Dan's son Li Longji the Prince of Linzi heard news of this, and therefore considered acting first. They, along with Princess Taiping's son Xue Chongjian (薛崇簡), Zhong Shaojing, Wang Chongye (王崇曄), Liu, and Ma Sizong (麻嗣宗), planned a coup, and soon launched it, with support from imperial guard soldiers disgruntled at harsh treatment by their commanders Wei Bo (韋播) and Gao Song (高嵩), Empress Wei's nephews whom she had put in charge. During the coup, Liu was responsible for writing some 100 declarations for Li Longji, as he attended to Li Longji throughout the night of the coup. The coup was successful, and Empress Wei and Li Guo'er were killed. Li Dan was made regent, and for his contributions in the coup, Liu was made Zhongshu Sheren (中書舍人), a mid-level official at the legislative bureau (中書省, Zhongshu Sheng), and given the designation Canzhi Jiwu (參知機務), making him a chancellor de facto. He was also created the Baron of Zhongshan. Two of his sons were given honors, and his grandfather and father were posthumously honored.


title: Liu Youqiu

text: Several days after the coup, Li Dan, at the urging of Princess Taiping, Li Longji, and Li Longji's brother Li Chengqi the Prince of Song, retook the throne (as Emperor Ruizong), displacing Emperor Shang. (During the ceremony where Emperor Shang yielded the throne, Liu Youqiu took the ceremonial role of kneeling down and giving justification for Emperor Shang to yield the throne to Emperor Ruizong. Further, it was said that it was at the urging of Liu that Li Longji and Li Chengqi persuaded Emperor Ruizong to take the throne.) Once Emperor Ruizong took the throne, Liu received further promotions and honors—he was given the honorific title Yinqing Guanglu Daifu (銀青光祿大夫); made Shangshu You Cheng (尚書右丞), a secretary general at the executive bureau (尚書省, Shangshu Sheng); and created the Duke of Xu. He continued to serve as chancellor, and was given awards of silk, servants, a mansion, land, horses, and other assorted treasures. As Li Chengqi was older than Li Longji and was born of Emperor Ruizong's deceased wife Empress Liu, but Li Longji had the great achievement during the coup, Emperor Ruizong initially hesitated at deciding whom to make crown prince. It was based on Li Chengqi's repeated offers to yield and Liu's urging, pointing out that Li Longji was brave and able, that Emperor Ruizong decided to create Li Longji crown prince. But factions soon formed in the court seeking to gain more power, with Princess Taiping and Li Longji at the head of the factions, trying to influence the decisions of Emperor Roirong and solve his affairs.