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2017 commemorates 150 years since Canada became an independent Country in 1867 so "Canada 150" has been the flavour of the year. To celebrate this Canadian Pacific decided to run a train across Canada stopping in major centres where there was themed entertainment, with displays etc, all based on their Royal Canadian Pacific tour train. The special utilised some rebuilt F units that started life with Canadian National and then moved to VIA when it was spun off to the Government. The F-units were then sold to others and were eventually bought back by CP.
The train is in CP maroon inspired by the LMS "Royal Scot" train when it came here in 1933. The oldest car is the consist is No 71 "Killarney", now over 100 years old, having being built in March 1917 by Pullman.
The train (as pictured) is running empty stock from Ottawa to Calgary - a five day trip (August 28 to September 1) and is 18 cars long running under the reporting number 41B. It had to reverse in Smiths Falls as the line to Ottawa joins facing east and it has to depart west to head to Toronto then north to Sudbury before heading along the edge of Lake Superior to Thunder Bay then across the Ontario hinterland to Winnipeg finally across the Prairies to Calgary - about 3600 KM.
Loco details all built by GM London Ontario
1401 - FP9A serial A1401 built 7/58 ex VIA 6541 ex CN 6541
1900 - F9B serial A629 built 1/56 ex VIA 6612 ex CN 6612
4106 - FP9Au serial A1045 built 1/57 ex VIA 6307 formerly VIA 6515 ex CN 6515
4107 - FP9Au serial A1198 built 3/57 ex VIA 6313 formerly VIA 6526 ex VIA 6526
All are Bo-Bo in UK classification and the first 2 provide 1750 HP the second pair are 1800 HP.
Smiths Falls is a railway junction where the main CP line from Toronto to Montreal is crossed by the VIA (passenger) line from Brockville to Ottawa, formerly there were also lines from Smiths Falls to Napanee (ex Canadian Northern and CN) and CP's direct route to Sudbury; both these are closed and torn up. The former CP passenger station is closed but is a community Theater and so the platform is open. VIA built a new station just to the north on their line to Ottawa
© 2017 - Malcolm Peakman / 53A Models of Hull. Digital image made using Canon EOS REBEL T5 camera.
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Centenary Place was designed and constructed for the purpose of commemorating the centenary of European settlement in Queensland (1824 - 1924). Clearing of the land began in 1924 and the park was formed in 1925. It covers an area of 8,748 square metres and is bounded by Wickham Street, Ann Street, and Gotha Street, Fortitude Valley. The park was one of the last civic projects undertaken by the former Brisbane City Council prior to the formation of the Greater Brisbane Council in 1925. The park has been in continual use by the public since its creation and was extensively refurbished in 1999/2000.
Celebrating the centenary of European settlement in Queensland was an important milestone in the state's history, an opportunity to demonstrate how far it had progressed in 100 years. From its beginnings as a penal colony, followed by the arrival of free settlers, separation from New South Wales, Federation, and the First World War, Queensland had experienced many tumultuous events in its first 100 years worthy of commemoration and celebration. The creation of Centenary Place provided the public with a tangible means of doing this.
To advance the centenary celebrations, a Centenary Celebrations Committee was formed as was a Centenary Fund. Many fundraising events were held by the Centenary Celebrations Committee and all proceeds from these events were devoted to the Centenary Fund to go towards the provision of centenary memorials, including Centenary Place. Other commemorative memorials and events included the minting of commemorative medals, a statue of John Oxley, the founding of the John Oxley Library which included the purchase of some 6000 books and numerous tree planting ceremonies across Brisbane.
The Catholic Church took great interest in the development of Centenary Place, sensing an opportunity to promote their vision of a new cathedral and envisaging the site as the forecourt for the proposed Holy Name Cathedral, a massive 'Renaissance basilica' that was to occupy the block bounded by Gotha, Ann, Gipps, and Wickham Streets. Although the park was designed by Henry Moore, the Parks Superintendent for Council, given the layout, which is still intact, includes a central path originally designed to lead to the proposed cathedral entrance, it is possible that Archbishop Duhig and the cathedral architect, John F. Hennessy, contributed to the design.
The Council began clearing existing buildings from the site in 1924 and Centenary Place was formed in 1925. Other features were added at later dates with the drawings for the podium, archway, and tramways office dated 1928. Centenary Place was designed by Moore who was also responsible for designing New Farm Park and Newstead Park. He employed a formal design with defined layouts, planted garden beds, grassed areas, low sandstone retaining walls, and curved paths. The garden includes mature specimens of poinciana (Delonix regia), Canary Island date palms (Phoenix canariensis), Queen palms (Syagrus romanzoffiana), wine palms (Butia capitata), and fig trees including, weeping figs (Ficus benjamina) and white figs (Ficus virens). In 1947 Harry Oakman, the Council Parks & Gardens Director, planned additional garden beds along the walks in the fig and poinciana avenues. These proposals were largely in place by 1950.
The original design of the park specifically allocated space to accommodate a statue of Thomas Joseph Byrnes, former Premier of Queensland and the first Queensland-born premier. The statue, by renowned sculptor, Sir Bertram Mackennal, is believed to be one of Brisbane's earliest and was originally erected at Petrie Bight, at the junction of Wickham and Boundary Streets in 1902. When the park was completed in 1925, it was moved from Petrie Bight to its new location.
A statue of the Scottish bard, Robert Burns, was proposed for Brisbane as early as 1888 when the President of the Burns Club, Alderman Galloway, contacted the President of the Queensland Scottish Association, Sir Thomas McIlwraith, to suggest their organisations combined forces and funds to commission the statue. However, the Scottish community had to wait many years before seeing their dream realised as it was not until 1929 that a statue of Robert Burns was commissioned by the Brisbane Caledonian Society and Burns Club and installed on a pedestal provided by the Council. Traditionally, statues of Robert Burns are placed so that the poet's back is turned on the church. The statue of Burns in the park has been positioned in accordance to this tradition and had the Holy Name Cathedral been built, the poet's back would have been turned on it. The statue of Burns has served as a focal point for gatherings and events, such as the Burns Night, for the Scottish community of Brisbane since its installation in the park.
From 1962 to the mid-1970s, Centenary Place was Brisbane's designated people's forum or speaker's corner. Sunday afternoons became a regular event in Brisbane with hundreds of people turning up to hear speakers holding forth on all manner of issues including speakers campaigning for Aboriginal rights in the 1960s and 1970s. After the people's forum ceased at Centenary Place, the people of Brisbane had to wait until 1990 before a new location was officially made available by the Brisbane City Council at King George Square.
Over the years the park has undergone numerous changes. In 1938, a tram waiting shelter was built onto the Wickham Street side of the archway podium and tramways office. The park also featured two air raid shelters, one each on the Ann and Wickham Street frontages. Similar shelters were constructed at many inner-city sites in the early 1940s as part of Queensland's wartime defences. In 1961, the Council prepared plans to convert the Wickham Street air raid shelter into a toilet block. These were evidently demolished by the time the Council planned the construction of a new toilet block in 1973. This entailed the demolition of the remaining air raid shelter on Ann Street. In 1977 the park was extended towards Wickham Street at the entry podium area and the edge trimmed around Gotha Street. The park underwent extensive refurbishment in 1999 - 2000 carried out by Belt Collins Landscape Architects which restored the original formality of the park.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register.
Commemorates Archibald Butt (military aide to President William Howard Taft) and Francis Davis Millet, his "close friend and housemate" (per Wikipedia): both died on the Titanic in 1912.
"واحتج الآلاف في لندن على مقتل الصحفية شيرين أبو عاقلة "زهرة فلسطين
On Saturday 14 May, thousands assembled in London, both to commemorate the Nakba and also to protest the murder by the Israeli Army of the veteran Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh ("the daughter of Palestine"), while she was covering one of many recent raids by the Israeli occupation forces on Wednesday 11 May, against the West Bank town of Jenin.
SHIREEN ABU AKLEH'S MURDER
"And if they ask you about Palestine, tell them:
In it there is a martyr,
nursed by a martyr,
photographed by a martyr,
sent off by a martyr,
and prayed for by a martyr"
( Mahmoud Darwish)
Initially, Israeli authorities insisted that she had been killed by Palestinian gunmen, but on the ground examination of the video used to support this claim by the leading Israeli human rights NGO B'Tselem, clearly demonstrated that it was taken far from the location where Shireen had been shot dead in the face, despite the fact that she was wearing a flack jacket and helmet, both clearkly marked 'Press.' Other Journalists who were present at the scene also testified that it was Israeli soldiers who fired the lethal shots, and that there was no clash as was first claimed, a claim which was also echoed by the mainstream media in Britain and the United States.
Her murder came just days after the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) and the International Federation of Journalists had filed an official complaint at the Hague against Israel for 'the systematic targeting of Palestinian journalists,' with an estimate of fifty having been killed in the last twenty years according to PJS records.
Palestinian anger mounted on Friday 13 May, when Israeli police attacked the mourners in East Jerusalem with batons as they exited St. Joseph's Hospital with the coffin on the way to a local church. Al Jazeera's live video coverage and the testimony of witnesses all seemed to indicate that the attack was entirely unprovoked, with no evidence of 'stone throwing' as suggested by Israeli authorities.
Even had there been any such incident, the police action was entirely disproportionate, with the Palestine flag ripped from her coffin, which was momentarily dropped as the police attacked even the pallbearers. As the assault was broadcast live around the world, it seemed to be yet further evidence of the complete impunity Israel believes it has, due to the almost unconditional support it receives from the United States, Britain and other Western nations. Diplomatic statements of concern are the most severe sanction the West ever imposes.
In a pathetic response to a question raised in parliament, Amanda Milling, Minister of State for Asia and the Middle East, explained that she had 'publicly expressed my sadness upon hearing the news of the tragic death of veteran Palestinian Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh, and called for a thorough investigation... The safety of journalists across the globe is vital and they must be protected when carrying out their critical work.' It seems Israel will once again escape any meaningful consequence for its actions.
However, it's not just that the United Kingdom turns a blind eye to Israeli violence - it also actively supports it.
Israeli pilots are routinely invited to the UK to train alongside the RAF, while the British and Israeli navies also routinely engage in joint exercises, all at a time when Israel's air force regularly attacks civilian infrastructure in Gaza (including Al Jazeera's offices in May 2021) killing 64 civilians since 2010 and when Israel's navy operates to blockade Gaza, where as a consequence one third of essential drugs are unavailable, 54% of the population are food insecure and 95% of the population have no access to safe drinking water.
www.stopwar.org.uk/article/how-the-uk-military-supports-i...
ukdefencejournal.org.uk/british-warship-docks-in-israel-s...
www.un.org/unispal/humanitarian-situation-in-the-gaza-str....
www.unrwa.org/where-we-work/gaza-strip
Israel's largest arms company, Elbit Systems, also continues to run subsidiaries within the UK, and the UK continues to supply Israel with crucial military equipment, particularly for aircraft and radar systems.
caat.org.uk/data/countries/israel/
declassifieduk.org/why-were-trying-to-shut-down-israels-a...
COMMEMORATION OF THE NAKBA
Palestine solidarity demonstrations to commemorate the Nakba are held annually in London, usually on the Saturday before Nakba Day (15 May), the commemoration of the forced expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes by Israel, which accelerated following the declaration of establishment of the state of Israel on 14 May 1948.
Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion had informed his political and military colleagues that an Israeli state in which Jews made up only 60 per cent of the population was not viable. As Israeli historian Ilan Pappe points out, the obvious implication was that "the fewer Palestinians in a Jewish state the better."
www.versobooks.com/blogs/3809-the-nakba-and-the-ethnic-cl...
The Nakba had already started as early as November 1947 as British forces. which controlled the Palestine mandate, withdrew to the Port of Haifa leaving Jewish paramilitary groups to control the remaining areas. By May 1948 300,000 Arab residents of the areas within Palestine designated to become Israel had already been expelled, including many Arab residents Jaffa, Safad, Beisan, Acre and Western Jerusalem. That amounted to nearly two out of every five Arabs living on what would be Israel's side of the demarcation line. Most of the remainder were forced out of their homes in the subsequent months.
Israel's military ethnically cleansed some 530 Palestinian towns and villages, destroying almost all the mosques and many of the houses and committing appalling crimes against those Palestinians who had chosen to remain despite the threat of violence. It is estimated that some 15,000 Palestinians were murdered.
www.aljazeera.com/features/2017/5/23/the-nakba-did-not-st...
Governor Charlie Baker and Lt. Governor Polito join Attorney General Maura Healey and public safety officials to commemorate the annual Massachusetts Law Enforcement Memorial ceremony at the State House on Oct. 28, 2022. [Joshua Qualls/Governor's Press Office]
The Blue Plaque commemorating Captain George Manby on his former home, now 'Manby House', 86 High Road, Gorleston, Norfolk.
George William Manby, Fellow of the Royal Society, was born in the village of Denver on the edge of the Norfolk Fens. His parents were Captain Matthew Pepper Manby (1735-1774), lord of the manor of Wood Hall in Hilgay, a former soldier and aide-de-camp to Lord Townshend and barrack-master of Limerick at his death and Mary Woodcock (1741-1783).
Manby went to school at Downham Market followed by the Free Grammar School in King's Lynn.
He volunteered to fight in the American War of Independence, aged 17, but was rejected because of his youth and his small size. Instead, he entered the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich. He is listed as one of the Artillery cadets on 31st. March 1784. On 21st. April 1788 he obtained a commission as a Lieutenant in the Cambridgeshire Militia where he gained the rank of Captain. He left the regiment in the Spring of 1793.
He married Jane Preston in December, 1793 the only daughter of Rev. Dr. Preston JP, of Waldingfield and Rougham and inherited his wife's family's estates. He left her in 1801 after being shot by her lover Captain Pogson of the East India Company and moved to Clifton, Bristol. There, he published several books, including The History and Antiquities of St David's (1801), Sketches of the History and Natural Beauties of Clifton (1802), and A Guide from Clifton to the Counties of Monmouth, Glamorgan, etc. (1802). In 1803, his pamphlet An Englishman's Reflexions on the Author of the Present Disturbances, on Napoleon's plans to invade England, came to the attention of the Secretary of War, Robert Hobart, 4th. Earl of Buckinghamshire, who was impressed and recommended Manby to be appointed as Barrack-Master at Great Yarmouth in September, 1803.
On 18th. February 1807, as a helpless onlooker, he witnessed a Royal Navy ship, HMS Snipe carrying French prisoners run aground 50 yards off Gorleston beach during a storm. Several other vessels were wrecked along the Norfolk and Suffolk coast that day and according to some accounts a total of 214 people drowned, including French prisoners of war, women and children. The figure of '67 brave men' for the Snipe was quoted in the House of Commons in June 1808. Following this tragedy, Manby experimented with mortars, and so invented the Manby Mortar, later to be used with the breeches buoy, that fired a thin rope from shore into the rigging of a ship in distress. A strong rope, attached to the thin one, could be pulled aboard the ship. His successful invention supposedly followed an experiment as a youth in 1783, when he shot a mortar carrying a line over Downham church.
Manby carried out a successful demonstration of his apparatus before the Suffolk Humane Society and a very large assemblage of ladies and gentlemen at Lowestoft, on the 26th. August and 10th. September 1807, on the former John Rous, 1st. Earl of Stradbroke, their President was present.
Sergeant, later Lieutenant, John Bell, Royal Artillery had in 1791 successfully demonstrated the use of a mortar to throw a line to shore and use it to float men to the shore, he had also suggested that these be held in ports to throw a line to a ship, he was awarded 50 Guineas by the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. Another earlier, similar design to Manby's invention had been made in the late 18th. century by the French agronomist and inventor Jacques Joseph Ducarne de Blangy. Manby's invention was independently arrived at, and there is no suggestion that he copied de Blangy's idea.
In 1808 the crew of a brig were rescued at Gt. Yarmouth by the use of Manby's device fired from a gun carriage and supervised by Manby.
The following is from page two of the The Ipswich Journal, 27th. February 1808.
"Captain G. Manby's invention of throwing a rope to a ship stranded on a lee shore, for the purpose of saving the crew, proved the certainty of its never-failing success on the Elizabeth of Plymouth, that was wrecked on the beach at Yarmouth in the tremendous gale of the 12th. instant, the master, who is part owner, making so grateful an affidavit before the Mayor of that place, he expressed a desire to see the experiment tried, which took place on Monday last, in the presence of Vice Admiral Douglas, several officers of the navy, the merchants, and many persons from different parts of the coast, the wind was blowing very fresh on shore, and the spot chosen 130 yards from a stranded brig, with all her emblems of distress flying. A galloper carriage, drawn by one horse, brought, with considerable expedition, every requisite for the service, a 5 1/2 inch royal mortar being dismounted, a 1 1/4 inch rope (having a 24 pounder shot appended to it) was staked in its front, about 2 feet from the shot the rope passed through a collar of leather, effectually preventing its burning, being projected by one pound of powder, more than 100 yards over the vessel, part of the rope fell upon the rigging, the persons on board returning a rope by the one sent, hauled off a stout rope, with a smaller one rove through a tailed block, the larger being made fast to the foot of the main top mast, the other end to a long, gun tackle, secured to three iron-shod stakes, driven triangularly in the ground, the tackle being bowsed, kept the rope sufficiently tight, and by persons easing off the fall, as the ship rolled, prevented danger to the rope, or to what it was lashed being carried away; the tailed block was made fast under the large rope, and each end of the small rope to the extremities of a ham-mock, extended by a stretcher of wood, (fitted up like the pole of a tent, for the convenience of a carriage), having gudgeons with forelock pins, through which was rove the great rope. By the assistance of one person from the shore, the hammock travelled to and fro, bringing all the people who were assembled in the main top, one by one, in perfect ease and safety, a service that can always be performed, when it is impossible for any boat to give the least assistance and be done when persons are initiated in the several uses, in a quarter an hour. Every person present testified their highest approbation, and several gave certificates that had a similar system and apparatus been placed at Lowestoft, Yarmouth, Winterton and Happisbro', on the 18th. February 1807 (on which distressing day the idea first suggested itself to the inventor), more than 100 persons would have been saved. It is most earnestly to be hoped it will be generally adopted, being a circumstance of such magnitude to this country, and deeply interesting to the world at large".
Manby was one of those to receive an honorary award at the Annual Festival of the Royal Humane Society in the May following the rescue. In June 1808 Manby received a gold medal from The Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, via the hands of Henry Howard, 13th. Duke of Norfolk, for forming a communication with ships by means of a rope thrown over the vessel from a mortar gun on the shore. In August 1808 Manby received a medallion from the Suffolk Humane Society. Following the awards he later made a demonstration to the armed forces of the use of his apparatus. The following is from page 3 of the Sun (London), 7th. October 1808.
"SHIPWRECKED MARINERS.
On Tuesday last a most interesting and highly important experiment was made at Woolwich, by Captain MANBY, of Yarmouth, on a Vessel at anchor in the Thames, upwards of 100 yards from the shore, before a Committee of General Officers of Artillery, Commissioner CUNNINGHAM, Admiral LOSACK and several Officers of the Royal Navy, for the purpose of effecting a communication with a Ship stranded on a lee shore, and to bring the crew in perfect safety from the wreck. A rope was projected from a Royal Mortar across the Ship supposed to be stranded, by which was hauled on board by the crew a large rope, to be made fast to the mast-head, and kept at a proper degree of tension for a cot to travel on it, by a tackle purchase, that likewise admitted of the vessel's rolling : at the same time was sent to the ship a tailed block, with a small rope rove through it; each end of the small rope was made fast to the ends of the cot, that conveyed it to the Ship, and brought a person in perfect safety to the shore. The whole service was performed in a quarter of an hour, to the utmost gratification and highest approbation of every one present, particularly several eminent naval characters, who were heard to congratulate and express their warmest encomiums to the inventor for his very ingenious and laudable contrivance".
The device was successfully used in rescues by Sea Fencibles from Great Yarmouth and Winterton in 1810.
The Official Copy of a Report from the Committee of Field Officers of Artillery, containing an Account of the Experiments made at Woolwich on the 18th. and 20th. May 1811 alluded to the work of Lieutenant Bell, RA and his successful demonstration of a mortar to shoot a line in 1791.
Manby's invention was officially adopted in 1814, and a series of mortar stations were established around the coast. It was estimated that by the time of his death nearly 1,000 persons had been rescued from stranded ships by means of his apparatus.
Manby also built an 'unsinkable' boat. The first test indeed proved it to be floating when mostly filled with water, however, the seamen (who disliked Manby) rocked the boat back and forth, so that it eventually turned over. The boatmen depended on the cargo left over from shipwrecks, and may have thought Manby's mortar a threat to their livelihood.
The property that Manby owned in Yarmouth Denes was advertised in an auction notice in 1812 as he was leaving Yarmouth.
In February 1813 Manby gave a lecture to the Highland Society of Edinburgh followed by a demonstration on Bruntsfield links, Edinburgh. The gun was fired by use of a chemical to set off the charge, to overcome the problems caused by gunpowder getting damp in the storm conditions, often experienced when carrying out rescues.
In 1813 Manby invented the 'Extincteur', the first portable pressurised fire extinguisher. This consisted of a copper vessel of 3 gallons of pearl ash (potassium carbonate) solution contained within compressed air. He also invented a device intended to save people who had fallen through ice.
In July 1813 Manby's profile was increased when his portrait featured in the European Magazine.
On Friday 30th. August 1816 a committee of the Board of Ordnance and Lords of the Admiralty observed a demonstration of Manby's fire extinguisher and other equipment.
On 10th. March 1818 he married Sophia Gooch, daughter of Sir Thomas Gooch, 4th. Baronet.
In 1821 he sailed to Greenland with William Scoresby, for the purpose of testing a new type of harpoon for whaling, based on the same principles as his mortar. However, his device was sabotaged by the whalers. He published his account in 1822 as 'Journal of a Voyage to Greenland', containing observations on the flora and fauna of the Arctic regions as well as the practice of whale hunting. As a result of that voyage, Manby espoused three ideas: 1 - that there might still be Norse survivors in the so-called ‘Lost Colony’ in East Greenland, 2 - that Britain should claim the area of East Greenland north of the area claimed by Denmark, 3 - and that this area should be developed as a penal colony.
In June 1823 a House of Commons committee of supply voted Manby £2,000 for his lifesaving apparatus.
Manby was present at the London Tavern on 4th. March 1824 for the foundation of the National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck, later to become the RNLI. He was one of the first five persons to receive their gold medal in 1825. Manby is considered by some to be a true founder of the RNLI.
In 1825 the King of Sweden (via the mayor of Gt. Yarmouth) presented Manby with a splendid medallion in token of his Majesty's approbation of the Captain's humane merit, and inventions. In 1828 the King of Denmark (via his consul) presented Manby with a gold medal "accompanied with a letter, communicating His Majesty's gracious approbation of his philanthopic and arduous exertions in saving the crews of shipwrecked vessels."
On 4th. August 1830 he attended court and presented King William IV with a Treatise on the Preservation of Mariners from Stranded Vessels, and the Prevention of Shipwreck, with a Statement of the number of subjects of different nations saved by that plan, by Sir Robert Peel.
Manby was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1831 in recognition of his many accomplishments.
Manby was the first to advocate a national fire brigade. In April 1838 Charles Wood, aged 17, a drummer in the 1st. Battalion Grenadier Guards was killed by a fall caused by a faulty component when carrying out a trial of Manby's apparatus for fire rescues from buildings. Manby received a silver medal from the Society for the Protection of Life from Fire in May 1838.
In March 1842, Manby received a belated Queen Victoria Gold Coronation Medal.
In October 1843 Sophia died. When Manby retired his post as Barrack-master was terminated and he was required to moved out of his accommodation. Manby, obsessed with Nelson, later turned his home 'Pedestal House' into a Nelson museum filled with memorabilia, even having an internal wall knocked down to create a Nelson Gallery, and living in the basement.
A letter to the local paper in 1845 describes Manby as a Freeman of Yarmouth.
Following a meeting chaired by Yarmouth's mayor in 1849, Manby's apparatus was exhibited at the Great Exhibition in 1851 and was awarded a medal.
In 1852 it was reported Manby had donated part of his collection, the 'Nelson Cabinet' to King's Lynn museum.
Queen Victoria presented Manby with the sum of £100 from the Royal Bounty Fund in December 1852.
Ten days short of his eighty-nine birthday, Manby died on 18th. November 1854 at his home in Gorleston and he was buried at All Saints church in Hilgay on the 24th. A plaque in the church reads;
IN THE CHURCHYARD NEAR THIS SPOT REST THE BONES OF GEORGE WILLIAM MANBY CAPTAIN. F.R.S. A NAME TO BE REMEMBERED AS LONG AS THERE CAN BE A STRANDED SHIP. HE DIED NOV'R 18. 1854, AGED 88 years. OUT OF HIS EIGHT BROTHERS AND SISTERS, THE LARGE MARBLE STONE ALSO RECORDED THE DEATHS OF MARY JANE AUGUST 3rd 1772 AGED 10 YEARS. JOHN MAY 20th 1783 AGED 10 YEARS, AND OF TWO INFANTS.
An inscription underneath reads 'The public should have paid this tribute.
The contents of Pedestal House were auctioned on Tuesday 19th. December 1854. Pedestal House and the 'Manby Crest' public house were auctioned on 28th. May 1855 at the Star Inn.
Awards
No.1 - Queen's Gold Coronation Medal "as a mark of the sense she entertains of the usefulness of his inventions in the Preservation of Lives from Shipwreck."
No.2 - A gold medal from Charles X, King of the French, 1828.
No.3 - Gold medal from William, King of the Netherlands, 1830. No.4 - Gold medal from Frederick, King of Denmark.
No.5 - Gold medal from Charles. XIV, King of Sweden and Norway.
No.6 - Gold medal from the Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck, (London), voted 15th Dec. 1830.
No.7 - Gold medal from the Society of Arts, Adelphi, London. No.8 - Gold medal from the Highland Society of Scotland
No.9 - Silver medal from the Royal Humane Society, London. No.10 - Silver medal from the Suffolk Humane Society.
No.11 - Silver medal from the Norfolk Association for saving Lives from Shipwreck, 1824.
No.12 - Silver medal from the Society for the Protection of Life from Fire.
A lifeboat at Boulogne-sur-Mer, France was named the Captain George Manby. The Lifeboat was presented to the Society Humaine by the City of Boulogne.
The Hilgay village sign features a Manby Mortar.
Denver Historical Society had a Blue Plaque erected on the property he was born in, 'Easthall Manor', Sluice Road, Denver.
His former home, now two houses called 'Manby House' (No. 86) and 'Ahoy' (No. 87) High Road, Gorleston are now Grade: II listed buildings.
COMMEMORATING THE MOST IDIOTIC EVENTS IN THE HISTORY OF OLYMPIC GAMES.
waikikihockey.blogspot.sk/2008/08/bizarre-olympic-moment-...
Minute Man National Historical Park commemorates the opening battle in the American Revolutionary War. It also includes the Wayside, home in turn to three noted American authors. The National Historical Park is under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service and protects 970 acres (3.9 km2) in and around the Massachusetts towns of Lexington, Lincoln, and Concord.
Concord's North Bridge, where on April 19, 1775, colonial commanders ordered militia men to fire back at British troops for the first time. British colonial militia and minutemen killed three regular army soldiers and wounded eight at the North Bridge Fight. This was the second battle of the day, after the brief fight at dawn on Lexington Common.
Wikipedia
www.facebook.com/groups/884438252772357/
Commemorating Juneteenth
Narrator: Khalilah Hambleton
Artist: Chioma Namiboo
"I remember hearing the birds first. They rose up from the marshes over to the East; the
wide wings of the cranes flapping as they went overhead. The smaller geese lifted in
the air and red head herrings. It was a beautiful spectacle really. It happened often
enough to not cause a curious head to raise. More riders bringing the wagons that
would load the cotton and behind that the men sitting high up on their mounts looking
menacingly at the Afrikaans and Negro faces. Menace and mean; raw hate.
Combinations that spelled Terror so we didn’t look up at them. Heads stayed bent
working the fields unmindful of the presence. Today was different.
The long parade came into view with a flag flying. I didn’t recognize this flag though
I had seen it’s colors in other flags. The men did sit high as well and their uniform was
a color I had not seen before either. A precious Blue with the gold buttons down the
chest. The head man passed and nodded to the bewildered eyes that looked up from
their obligations. I saw them move on. Some jotting pass hurriedly flanking the field
and making a fence around us. The same Terror rose up in us even though we did not
know why. The faces were not the faces of what we had seen before but the weapons
were the same; big guns and sticks with blades. The men pulled the women and
children in and made a circle of false protection around us. Today we would all die
here together. The men, fathers, husbands and brothers, and the rest of kin's people
would succumb to the dominance of these peoples. We believed that death was
freedom that some had remembered, others had chose to forget and most had never
known.
The elder from among us stood apart and looked at the face that looked down at him.
The soldier with his blue uniform on came down from his horse. He approached as
others along with him dismounted from the horses. Their faces were different and his
words were even and strong. “Today you are ‘emancipated’. Today you are a ‘free’
people. The President Abraham Lincoln signed his name to a paper making all the
Afrikaners and Negros free.”
The evening was full of talk, laughter and celebration; the newness of freedom
surging like the full birth of new life. We recited this date over and over again.
Children’s voices rising in unison the made up songs unrehearsed. Today is June 19,
1865. A celebration of freedom deferred. A celebration of freedom of life.
We had believed that death was freedom that some had remembered, others had chose
to forget and most had never known."
David was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the third king of the United Kingdom of Israel. Historians of the Ancient Near East agree that David probably lived c. 1000 BCE, but little more is known about him as a historical figure.
According to Jewish works such as the Seder Olam Rabbah, Seder Olam Zutta, and Sefer ha-Qabbalah (all written over a thousand years later), David ascended the throne as the king of Judah in 885 BCE. The Tel Dan stele, an Aramaic-inscribed stone erected by a king of Aram-Damascus in the late 9th/early 8th centuries BCE to commemorate a victory over two enemy kings, contains the phrase bytdwd (), which is translated as "House of David" by most scholars. The Mesha stele, erected by King Mesha of Moab in the 9th century BCE, may also refer to the "House of David", although this is disputed. Apart from this, all that is known of David comes from biblical literature, the historicity of which has been extensively challenged, and there is little detail about David that is concrete and undisputed.
In the biblical narrative of the Books of Samuel, David is described as a young shepherd and harpist who gains fame and becomes a hero by killing Goliath. He becomes a favorite of Saul, the first king of Israel, but is forced to go into hiding when Saul suspects that David is trying to take his throne. After Saul and his son Jonathan are killed in battle, David is anointed king by the tribe of Judah and eventually all the tribes of Israel. He conquers Jerusalem, makes it the capital of a united Israel, and brings the Ark of the Covenant to the city. He commits adultery with Bathsheba and arranges the death of her husband, Uriah the Hittite. David's son Absalom later tries to overthrow him, but David returns to Jerusalem after Absalom's death to continue his reign. David desires to build a temple to Yahweh, but he is denied because of the bloodshed in his reign. He dies at age 70 and chooses Solomon, his son with Bathsheba, as his successor instead of his eldest son Adonijah. David is honored as an ideal king and the forefather of the future Hebrew Messiah in Jewish prophetic literature and many psalms are attributed to him.
David is also richly represented in post-biblical Jewish written and oral tradition and referenced in the New Testament. Early Christians interpreted the life of Jesus of Nazareth in light of references to the Hebrew Messiah and to David; Jesus is described as being directly descended from David in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. In the Quran and hadith, David is described as an Israelite king as well as a prophet of Allah. The biblical David has inspired many interpretations in art and literature over the centuries.
Biblical account
The First Book of Samuel and the First Book of Chronicles both identify David as the son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite, the youngest of eight sons. He also had at least two sisters: Zeruiah, whose sons all went on to serve in David's army, and Abigail, whose son Amasa served in Absalom's army, Absalom being one of David's younger sons. While the Bible does not name his mother, the Talmud identifies her as Nitzevet, a daughter of a man named Adael, and the Book of Ruth claims him as the great-grandson of Ruth, the Moabite, by Boaz.
David is described as cementing his relations with various political and national groups through marriage. According to 1 Samuel 17:25, King Saul said that he would make whoever killed Goliath a very wealthy man, give his daughter to him and declare his father's family exempt from taxes in Israel. Saul offered David his oldest daughter, Merab, a marriage David respectfully declined. Saul then gave Merab in marriage to Adriel the Meholathite. Having been told that his younger daughter Michal was in love with David, Saul gave her in marriage to David upon David's payment in Philistine foreskins (ancient Jewish historian Josephus lists the dowry as 100 Philistine heads). Saul became jealous of David and tried to have him killed. David escaped. Then Saul sent Michal to Galim to marry Palti, son of Laish. David then took wives in Hebron, according to 2 Samuel 3; they were Ahinoam the Yizre'elite; Abigail, the widow of Nabal the Carmelite; Maacah, the daughter of Talmay, king of Geshur; Haggith; Abital; and Eglah. Later, David wanted Michal back and Abner, Ish-bosheth's army commander, delivered her to him, causing Palti great grief.
The Book of Chronicles lists his sons with his various wives and concubines. In Hebron, David had six sons: Amnon, by Ahinoam; Daniel, by Abigail; Absalom, by Maachah; Adonijah, by Haggith; Shephatiah, by Abital; and Ithream, by Eglah. By Bathsheba, his sons were Shammua, Shobab, Nathan, and Solomon. David's sons born in Jerusalem of his other wives included Ibhar, Elishua, Eliphelet, Nogah, Nepheg, Japhia, Elishama and Eliada. Jerimoth, who is not mentioned in any of the genealogies, is mentioned as another of his sons in 2 Chronicles 11:18. His daughter Tamar, by Maachah, is raped by her half-brother Amnon. David fails to bring Amnon to justice for his violation of Tamar, because he is his firstborn and he loves him, and so Absalom (her full brother) murders Amnon to avenge Tamar. Despite the great sins they had committed, David showed grief at his sons' deaths, weeping twice for Amnon [2 Samuel 13:31–26] and seven times for Absalom.
Narrative
God is angered when Saul, Israel's king, unlawfully offers a sacrifice and later disobeys a divine command both to kill all of the Amalekites and to destroy their confiscated property. Consequently, God sends the prophet Samuel to anoint a shepherd, David, the youngest son of Jesse of Bethlehem, to be king instead.
After God sends an evil spirit to torment Saul, his servants recommend that he send for a man skilled in playing the lyre. A servant proposes David, whom the servant describes as "skillful in playing, a man of valor, a warrior, prudent in speech, and a man of good presence; and the Lord is with him." David enters Saul's service as one of the royal armour-bearers and plays the lyre to soothe the king.
War comes between Israel and the Philistines, and the giant Goliath challenges the Israelites to send out a champion to face him in single combat. David, sent by his father to bring provisions to his brothers serving in Saul's army, declares that he can defeat Goliath. Refusing the king's offer of the royal armour, he kills Goliath with his sling. Saul inquires the name of the young hero's father.
Saul sets David over his army. All Israel loves David, but his popularity causes Saul to fear him ("What else can he wish but the kingdom?"). Saul plots his death, but Saul's son Jonathan, one of those who loves David, warns him of his father's schemes and David flees. He goes first to Nob, where he is fed by the priest Ahimelech and given Goliath's sword, and then to Gath, the Philistine city of Goliath, intending to seek refuge with King Achish there. Achish's servants or officials question his loyalty, and David sees that he is in danger there. He goes next to the cave of Adullam, where his family joins him. From there he goes to seek refuge with the king of Moab, but the prophet Gad advises him to leave and he goes to the Forest of Hereth, and then to Keilah, where he is involved in a further battle with the Philistines. Saul plans to besiege Keilah so that he can capture David, so David leaves the city in order to protect its inhabitants. From there he takes refuge in the mountainous Wilderness of Ziph.
Jonathan meets with David again and confirms his loyalty to David as the future king. After the people of Ziph notify Saul that David is taking refuge in their territory, Saul seeks confirmation and plans to capture David in the Wilderness of Maon, but his attention is diverted by a renewed Philistine invasion and David is able to secure some respite at Ein Gedi. Returning from battle with the Philistines, Saul heads to Ein Gedi in pursuit of David and enters the cave where, as it happens, David and his supporters are hiding, "to attend to his needs". David realises he has an opportunity to kill Saul, but this is not his intention: he secretly cuts off a corner of Saul's robe, and when Saul has left the cave he comes out to pay homage to Saul as the king and to demonstrate, using the piece of robe, that he holds no malice towards Saul. The two are thus reconciled and Saul recognises David as his successor.
A similar passage occurs in 1 Samuel 26, when David is able to infiltrate Saul's camp on the hill of Hachilah and remove his spear and a jug of water from his side while he and his guards lie asleep. In this account, David is advised by Abishai that this is his opportunity to kill Saul, but David declines, saying he will not "stretch out [his] hand against the Lord's anointed". In the morning, David once again demonstrates to Saul that, despite ample opportunity, he did not deign to harm him. Saul, despite having already reconciled with David, confesses that he has been wrong to pursue David, and blesses him.
In 1 Samuel 27:1–4, David begins to doubt Saul's sincerity, and reasons that the king will eventually make another attempt on his life. David appeals to king Achish of Gath to grant him and his family sanctuary. Achish agrees, and upon hearing that David has fled to Philistia, Saul ceases to pursue him, though no such pursuit seemed to be in progress at the time. Achish permits David to reside in Ziklag, close to the border between Philistia and Judah. To further ingratiate himself to Achish and the Philistines, David and his men raid the Geshurites, the Girzites and the Amalekites, but lead the royal court to believe they are attacking the Israelites, the Jerahmeelites and the Kenites. While Achish comes to believe that David had become a loyal vassal, the princes or lords of Gath remain unconvinced, and at their request, Achish instructs David to remain behind to guard the camp when the Philistines march against Saul. David returns to Ziklag and saves his wives and the citizens from an Amalekite raid. Jonathan and Saul are killed in battle with the Philistines, and after hearing of their deaths, David travels to Hebron, where he is anointed king over Judah. In the north, Saul's son Ish-Bosheth is anointed king of Israel, and war ensues until Ish-Bosheth is murdered.
With the death of Saul's son, the elders of Israel come to Hebron and David is anointed king over all of Israel. He conquers Jerusalem, previously a Jebusite stronghold, and makes it his capital. He brings the Ark of the Covenant to the city, intending to build a temple for God, but the prophet Nathan forbids it, prophesying that the temple would be built by one of David's sons. Nathan also prophesies that God has made a covenant with the house of David stating, "your throne shall be established forever". David wins additional victories over the Philistines, Moabites, Edomites, Amalekites, Ammonites and king Hadadezer of Aram-Zobah, after which they become tributaries. His fame increases as a result, earning the praise of figures like King Toi of Hamath, Hadadezer's rival.
During a siege of the Ammonite capital of Rabbah, David remains in Jerusalem. He spies a woman, Bathsheba, bathing and summons her; she becomes pregnant. The text in the Bible does not explicitly state whether Bathsheba consented to sex. David calls her husband, Uriah the Hittite, back from the battle to rest, hoping that he will go home to his wife and the child will be presumed to be his. Uriah does not visit his wife, however, so David conspires to have him killed in the heat of battle. David then marries the widowed Bathsheba. In response, Nathan, after trapping the king in his guilt with a parable that actually described his sin in analogy, prophesies the punishment that will fall upon him, stating "the sword shall never depart from your house." When David acknowledges that he has sinned, Nathan advises him that his sin is forgiven and he will not die, but the child will. In fulfillment of Nathan's words, the child born of the union between David and Bathsheba dies, and another of David's sons, Absalom, fueled by vengeance and lust for power, rebels. Thanks to Hushai, a friend of David who was ordered to infiltrate Absalom's court to successfully sabotage his plans, Absalom's forces are routed at the battle of the Wood of Ephraim, and he is caught by his long hair in the branches of a tree where, contrary to David's order, he is killed by Joab, the commander of David's army. David laments the death of his favourite son: "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!" until Joab persuades him to recover from "the extravagance of his grief" and to fulfill his duty to his people. David returns to Gilgal and is escorted across the River Jordan and back to Jerusalem by the tribes of Judah and Benjamin.
When David is old and bedridden, Adonijah, his eldest surviving son and natural heir, declares himself king. Bathsheba and Nathan go to David and obtain his agreement to crown Bathsheba's son Solomon as king, according to David's earlier promise, and the revolt of Adonijah is put down. David dies at the age of 70 after reigning for 40 years, and on his deathbed counsels Solomon to walk in the ways of God and to take revenge on his enemies.
Psalms
The Book of Samuel calls David a skillful harp (lyre) player and "the sweet psalmist of Israel."[c] Yet, while almost half of the Psalms are headed "A Psalm of David" (also translated as "to David" or "for David") and tradition identifies several with specific events in David's life (e.g., Psalms 3, 7, 18, 34, 51, 52, 54, 56, 57, 59, 60, 63 and 142), the headings are late additions and no psalm can be attributed to David with certainty.
Psalm 34 is attributed to David on the occasion of his escape from Abimelech (or King Achish) by pretending to be insane. According to the parallel narrative in 1 Samuel 21, instead of killing the man who had exacted so many casualties from him, Abimelech allows David to leave, exclaiming, "Am I so short of madmen that you have to bring this fellow here to carry on like this in front of me? Must this man come into my house?"
Interpretation in Abrahamic tradition
David is an important figure in Rabbinic Judaism, with many legends about him. According to one tradition, David was raised as the son of his father Jesse and spent his early years herding his father's sheep in the wilderness while his brothers were in school.
David's adultery with Bathsheba is interpreted as an opportunity to demonstrate the power of repentance, and the Talmud says it was not adultery at all, citing a Jewish practice of divorce on the eve of battle. Furthermore, according to Talmudic sources, Uriah's death was not murder, because Uriah had committed a capital offense by refusing to obey a direct command from the King. However, in tractate Sanhedrin, David expressed remorse over his transgressions and sought forgiveness. God ultimately forgave David and Bathsheba but would not remove their sins from Scripture.
In Jewish legend, David's sin with Bathsheba is the punishment for David's excessive self-consciousness. He had besought God to lead him into temptation so that he might give proof of his constancy like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who successfully passed the test and whose names later were united with God's, while David failed through the temptation of a woman.
According to midrashim, Adam gave up 70 years of his life for the life of David. Also, according to the Talmud Yerushalmi, David was born and died on the Jewish holiday of Shavuot (Feast of Weeks). His piety was said to be so great that his prayers could bring down things from Heaven.
Christianity
King David in Prayer, by Pieter de Grebber (c. 1640)
Holy Monarch, Prophet, Reformer, Spiritual Poet and Musician, Vicegerent of God, Psalm-Receiver
Venerated inRoman Catholicism
Eastern Orthodoxy
Oriental Orthodoxy
FeastDecember 29, 6 October – Roman Catholicism
AttributesPsalms, Harp, Head of Goliath
The Messiah concept is fundamental in Christianity. Originally an earthly king ruling by divine appointment ("the anointed one", as the title Messiah had it), in the last two centuries BCE the "son of David" became the apocalyptic and heavenly one who would deliver Israel and usher in a new kingdom. This was the background to the concept of Messiahship in early Christianity, which interpreted the career of Jesus "by means of the titles and functions assigned to David in the mysticism of the Zion cult, in which he served as priest-king and in which he was the mediator between God and man".
The early Church believed that "the life of David foreshadowed the life of Christ; Bethlehem is the birthplace of both; the shepherd life of David points out Christ, the Good Shepherd; the five stones chosen to slay Goliath are typical of the five wounds; the betrayal by his trusted counsellor, Ahitophel, and the passage over the Cedron remind us of Christ's Sacred Passion. Many of the Davidic Psalms, as we learn from the New Testament, are clearly typical of the future Messiah." In the Middle Ages, "Charlemagne thought of himself, and was viewed by his court scholars, as a 'new David'. [This was] not in itself a new idea, but [one whose] content and significance were greatly enlarged by him".
Western Rite churches (Lutheran, Roman Catholic) celebrate David's feast day on 29 December or 6 October Eastern-rite on 19 December. The Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches celebrate the feast day of the "Holy Righteous Prophet and King David" on the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers (two Sundays before the Great Feast of the Nativity of the Lord) and on the Sunday of the Holy Fathers (Sunday before the Nativity), when he is commemorated together with other ancestors of Jesus. He is also commemorated on the Sunday after the Nativity, together with Joseph and James, the Brother of the Lord and on 26 December (Synaxis of the Mother of God).
Middle Ages
In European Christian culture of the Middle Ages, David was made a member of the Nine Worthies, a group of heroes encapsulating all the ideal qualities of chivalry. His life was thus proposed as a valuable subject for study by those aspiring to chivalric status. This aspect of David in the Nine Worthies was popularised first through literature, and thereafter adopted as a frequent subject for painters and sculptors.
David was considered a model ruler and a symbol of divinely ordained monarchy throughout medieval Western Europe and Eastern Christendom. He was perceived as the biblical predecessor to Christian Roman and Byzantine emperors and the name "New David" was used as an honorific reference to these rulers. The Georgian Bagratids and the Solomonic dynasty of Ethiopia claimed direct biological descent from him. Likewise, kings of the Frankish Carolingian dynasty frequently connected themselves to David; Charlemagne himself occasionally used "David" his pseudonym.
Islam
David (Arabic: داوود Dā'ūd or Dāwūd) is an important figure in Islam as one of the major prophets God sent to guide the Israelites. He is mentioned several times in the Quran with the Arabic name داود, Dāwūd or Dā'ūd, often with his son Solomon. In the Quran, David killed Goliath (Q2:251), a giant soldier in the Philistine army. When David killed Goliath, God granted him kingship and wisdom and enforced it (Q38:20). David was made God's "vicegerent on earth" (Q38:26) and God further gave David sound judgment (Q21:78; Q37:21–24, Q26) as well as the Psalms, regarded as books of divine wisdom (Q4:163; Q17:55). The birds and mountains united with David in uttering praise to God (Q21:79; Q34:10; Q38:18), while God made iron soft for David (Q34:10), God also instructed David in the art of fashioning chain mail out of iron (Q21:80); this knowledge gave David a major advantage over his bronze and cast iron-armed opponents, not to mention the cultural and economic impact. Together with Solomon, David gave judgment in a case of damage to the fields (Q21:78) and David judged the matter between two disputants in his prayer chamber (Q38:21–23). Since there is no mention in the Quran of the wrong David did to Uriah nor any reference to Bathsheba, Muslims reject this narrative.
Muslim tradition and the hadith stress David's zeal in daily prayer as well as in fasting. Quran commentators, historians and compilers of the numerous Stories of the Prophets elaborate upon David's concise quranic narratives and specifically mention David's gift in singing his Psalms, his beautiful recitation, and his vocal talents. His voice is described as having a captivating power, weaving its influence not only over man but over all beasts and nature, who would unite with him to praise God.
Historicity
Biblical literature and archaeological finds are the only sources that attest to David's life. Some scholars have concluded that this was likely compiled from contemporary records of the 11th and 10th centuries BCE, but that there is no clear historical basis for determining the exact date of compilation. Other scholars believe that the Books of Samuel were substantially composed during the time of King Josiah at the end of the 7th century BCE, extended during the Babylonian exile (6th century BCE), and substantially complete by about 550 BCE. Old Testament scholar Graeme Auld contends that further editing was done even after then—the silver quarter-shekel Saul's servant offers to Samuel in 1 Samuel 9 "almost certainly fixes the date of the story in the Persian or Hellenistic period" because a quarter-shekel was known to exist in Hasmonean times. The authors and editors of Samuel drew on many earlier sources, including, for their history of David, the "history of David's rise" and the "succession narrative". The Book of Chronicles, which tells the story from a different point of view, was probably composed in the period 350–300 BCE, and uses Samuel and Kings as its source.
Biblical evidence indicates that David's Judah was something less than a full-fledged monarchy: it often calls him negid, meaning "prince" or "chief", rather than melek, meaning "king"; the biblical David sets up none of the complex bureaucracy that a kingdom needs (even his army is made up of volunteers), and his followers are largely related to him and from his small home-area around Hebron.
Beyond this, the full range of possible interpretations is available. A number of scholars consider the David story to be a heroic tale similar to King Arthur's legend or Homer's epics, while others find such comparisons questionable. One theme that has been paralleled with other Near Eastern literature is the homoerotic nature of the relationship between David and Jonathan. The instance in the Book of Jashar, excerpted in Samuel 2 (1:26), where David "proclaims that Jonathan's love was sweeter to him than the love of a woman", has been compared to Achilles' comparison of Patroclus to a girl and Gilgamesh's love for Enkidu "as a woman". Others hold that the David story is a political apology—an answer to contemporary charges against him, of his involvement in murders and regicide. The authors and editors of Samuel and Chronicles aimed not to record history but to promote David's reign as inevitable and desirable, and for this reason there is little about David that is concrete and undisputed.
Some other studies of David have been written: Baruch Halpern has pictured him as a brutal tyrant, a murderer and a lifelong vassal of Achish, the Philistine king of Gath; Steven McKenzie argues that David came from a wealthy family, and was an "ambitious and ruthless" tyrant who murdered his opponents, including his own sons. Joel S. Baden has called him "an ambitious, ruthless, flesh-and-blood man who achieved power by any means necessary, including murder, theft, bribery, sex, deceit, and treason". William G. Dever described him as "a serial killer".
Jacob L. Wright has written that the most popular legends about David, including his killing of Goliath, his affair with Bathsheba, and his ruling of a United Kingdom of Israel rather than just Judah, are the creation of those who lived generations after him, in particular those living in the late Persian or Hellenistic periods.
Isaac Kalimi wrote about the 10th century BCE: "Almost all that one can say about King Solomon and his time is unavoidably based on the biblical texts. Nevertheless, here also one cannot always offer conclusive proof that a certain biblical passage reflects the actual historical situation in the tenth century BCE, beyond arguing that it is plausible to this or that degree."
Archaeological findings
The Tel Dan Stele, discovered in 1993, is an inscribed stone erected by Hazael, a king of Damascus in the late 9th/early 8th centuries BCE. It commemorates the king's victory over two enemy kings, and contains the phrase , bytdwd, which most scholars translate as "House of David". Other scholars have challenged this reading, but it is likely that this is a reference to a dynasty of the Kingdom of Judah which traced its ancestry to a founder named David.
Two epigraphers, André Lemaire and Émile Puech, hypothesised in 1994 that the Mesha Stele from Moab, dating from the 9th century, also contain the words "House of David" at the end of Line 31, although this was considered as less certain than the mention in the Tel Dan inscription. In May 2019, Israel Finkelstein, Nadav Na'aman, and Thomas Römer concluded from the new images that the ruler's name contained three consonants and started with a bet, which excludes the reading "House of David" and, in conjunction with the monarch's city of residence "Horonaim" in Moab, makes it likely that the one mentioned is King Balak, a name also known from the Hebrew Bible. Later that year, Michael Langlois used high-resolution photographs of both the inscription itself, and the 19th-century original squeeze of the then still intact stele to reaffirm Lemaire's view that line 31 contains the phrase "House of David". Replying to Langlois, Na'aman argued that the "House of David" reading is unacceptable because the resulting sentence structure is extremely rare in West Semitic royal inscriptions.
Besides the two steles, Bible scholar and Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen suggests that David's name also appears in a relief of Pharaoh Shoshenq, who is usually identified with Shishak in the Bible. The relief claims that Shoshenq raided places in Palestine in 925 BCE, and Kitchen interprets one place as "Heights of David", which was in Southern Judah and the Negev where the Bible says David took refuge from Saul. The relief is damaged and interpretation is uncertain.
Archaeological analysis
Of the evidence in question, John Haralson Hayes and James Maxwell Miller wrote in 2006: "If one is not convinced in advance by the biblical profile, then there is nothing in the archaeological evidence itself to suggest that much of consequence was going on in Palestine during the tenth century BCE, and certainly nothing to suggest that Jerusalem was a great political and cultural center." This echoed the 1995 conclusion of Amélie Kuhrt, who noted that "there are no royal inscriptions from the time of the united monarchy (indeed very little written material altogether), and not a single contemporary reference to either David or Solomon," while noting, "against this must be set the evidence for substantial development and growth at several sites, which is plausibly related to the tenth century."
In 2007, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman stated that the archaeological evidence shows that Judah was sparsely inhabited and Jerusalem no more than a small village. The evidence suggested that David ruled only as a chieftain over an area which cannot be described as a state or as a kingdom, but more as a chiefdom, much smaller and always overshadowed by the older and more powerful kingdom of Israel to the north. They posited that Israel and Judah were not monotheistic at the time and that later 7th-century redactors sought to portray a past golden age of a united, monotheistic monarchy in order to serve contemporary needs. They noted a lack of archeological evidence for David's military campaigns and a relative underdevelopment of Jerusalem, the capital of Judah, compared to a more developed and urbanized Samaria, capital of Israel during the 9th century BCE.
In 2014, Amihai Mazar wrote that the United Monarchy of the 10th century BCE can be described as a "state in development". He compared David to Labaya, a Caananite warlord living during the time of Pharaoh Akhenaten. While Mazar believes that David reigned over Israel during the 11th century BCE, he argues that much of the Biblical text is of "literary-legendary nature". According to William G. Dever, the reigns of Saul, David and Solomon are reasonably well attested, but "most archeologists today would argue that the United Monarchy was not much more than a kind of hill-country chiefdom".
Lester L. Grabbe wrote in 2017: "The main question is what kind of settlement Jerusalem was in Iron IIA: was it a minor settlement, perhaps a large village or possibly a citadel but not a city, or was it the capital of a flourishing—or at least an emerging—state? Assessments differ considerably". Isaac Kalimi wrote in 2018, "No contemporaneous extra-biblical source offers any account of the political situation in Israel and Judah during the tenth century BCE, and as we have seen, the archaeological remains themselves cannot provide any unambiguous evidence of events."
The view of Davidic Jerusalem as a village has been challenged by Eilat Mazar's excavation of the Large Stone Structure and the Stepped Stone Structure in 2005. Mazar proposed that these two structures may have been architecturally linked as one unit and that they date to the time of King David. Mazar supports this dating with a number of artifacts, including pottery, two Phoenician-style ivory inlays, a black-and-red jug, and a radiocarbon-dated bone, estimated to be from the 10th century. Dever, Amihai Mazar, Avraham Faust, and Nadav Na'aman have argued in favour of the 10th-century BCE dating and responded to challenges to it. In 2010, Eilat Mazar announced the discovery of part of the ancient city walls around the City of David, which she believes date to the 10th century BCE. According to Mazar, this would prove that an organized state did exist in the 10th century. In 2006, Kenneth Kitchen came to a similar conclusion, arguing that "the physical archaeology of tenth-century Canaan is consistent with the former existence of a unified state on its terrain."
Scholars such as Israel Finkelstein, Lily Singer-Avitz, Ze'ev Herzog and David Ussishkin do not accept these conclusions. Finkelstein does not accept the dating of these structures to the 10th century BCE, based in part on the fact that later structures on the site penetrated deep into underlying layers, that the entire area had been excavated in the early 20th century and then backfilled, that pottery from later periods was found below earlier strata, and that consequently the finds collected by E. Mazar cannot necessarily be considered as retrieved in situ. Aren Maeir said in 2010 that he has seen no evidence that these structures are from the 10th century BCE and that proof of the existence of a strong, centralized kingdom at that time remains "tenuous."
Excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa by archaeologists Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor found an urbanized settlement radiocarbon dated to the 10th century, which supports the existence of an urbanised kingdom. The Israel Antiquities Authority stated: "The excavations at Khirbat Qeiyafa clearly reveal an urban society that existed in Judah already in the late eleventh century BCE. It can no longer be argued that the Kingdom of Judah developed only in the late eighth century BCE or at some other later date."[160] But other scholars have criticized the techniques and interpretations to reach some conclusions related to Khirbet Qeiyafa, such as Israel Finkelstein and Alexander Fantalkin of Tel Aviv University, who have instead proposed that the city is to be identified as part of a northern Israelite polity.
In 2018, Avraham Faust and Yair Sapir stated that a Canaanite site at Tel Eton, about 30 miles from Jerusalem, was taken over by a Judahite community by peaceful assimilation and transformed from a village into a central town at some point in the late 11th or early 10th century BCE. This transformation used some ashlar blocks in construction, which they argued supports the United Monarchy theory
Jerusalem is an ancient city in West Asia, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the oldest cities in the world, and is considered holy to the three major Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Both Israel and Palestine claim Jerusalem as their capital; Israel maintains its primary governmental institutions there, and the State of Palestine ultimately foresees it as its seat of power. Neither claim, however, is widely recognized internationally.
Throughout its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, and attacked 52 times. The part of Jerusalem called the City of David shows first signs of settlement in the 4th millennium BCE, in the shape of encampments of nomadic shepherds. During the Canaanite period (14th century BCE), Jerusalem was named as Urusalim on ancient Egyptian tablets, probably meaning "City of Shalem" after a Canaanite deity. During the Israelite period, significant construction activity in Jerusalem began in the 10th century BCE (Iron Age II), and by the 9th century BCE, the city had developed into the religious and administrative centre of the Kingdom of Judah. In 1538, the city walls were rebuilt for a last time around Jerusalem under Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire. Today those walls define the Old City, which since the 19th century has been divided into four quarters – the Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim quarters. The Old City became a World Heritage Site in 1981, and is on the List of World Heritage in Danger. Since 1860, Jerusalem has grown far beyond the Old City's boundaries. In 2022, Jerusalem had a population of some 971,800 residents, of which almost 60% were Jews and almost 40% Palestinians. In 2020, the population was 951,100, of which Jews comprised 570,100 (59.9%), Muslims 353,800 (37.2%), Christians 16,300 (1.7%), and 10,800 unclassified (1.1%).
According to the Hebrew Bible, King David conquered the city from the Jebusites and established it as the capital of the United Kingdom of Israel, and his son, King Solomon, commissioned the building of the First Temple. Modern scholars argue that Jews branched out of the Canaanite peoples and culture through the development of a distinct monolatrous—and later monotheistic—religion centred on El/Yahweh. These foundational events, straddling the dawn of the 1st millennium BCE, assumed central symbolic importance for the Jewish people. The sobriquet of holy city (Hebrew: עיר הקודש, romanized: 'Ir ha-Qodesh) was probably attached to Jerusalem in post-exilic times. The holiness of Jerusalem in Christianity, conserved in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, which Christians adopted as their own "Old Testament", was reinforced by the New Testament account of Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection there. In Sunni Islam, Jerusalem is the third-holiest city, after Mecca and Medina. The city was the first qibla, the standard direction for Muslim prayers (salah), and in Islamic tradition, Muhammad made his Night Journey there in 621, ascending to heaven where he speaks to God, according to the Quran. As a result, despite having an area of only 0.9 km2 (3⁄8 sq mi), the Old City is home to many sites of seminal religious importance, among them the Temple Mount with its Western Wall, Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Today, the status of Jerusalem remains one of the core issues in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, West Jerusalem was among the areas captured and later annexed by Israel while East Jerusalem, including the Old City, was captured and later annexed by Jordan. Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War and subsequently effectively annexed it into Jerusalem, together with additional surrounding territory.[note 6] One of Israel's Basic Laws, the 1980 Jerusalem Law, refers to Jerusalem as the country's undivided capital. All branches of the Israeli government are located in Jerusalem, including the Knesset (Israel's parliament), the residences of the Prime Minister (Beit Aghion) and President (Beit HaNassi), and the Supreme Court. The international community rejects the annexation as illegal and regards East Jerusalem as Palestinian territory occupied by Israel.
Etymology
The name "Jerusalem" is variously etymologized to mean "foundation (Semitic yry' 'to found, to lay a cornerstone') of the pagan god Shalem"; the god Shalem was thus the original tutelary deity of the Bronze Age city.
Shalim or Shalem was the name of the god of dusk in the Canaanite religion, whose name is based on the same root S-L-M from which the Hebrew word for "peace" is derived (Shalom in Hebrew, cognate with Arabic Salam). The name thus offered itself to etymologizations such as "The City of Peace", "Abode of Peace", "Dwelling of Peace" ("founded in safety"), or "Vision of Peace" in some Christian authors.
The ending -ayim indicates the dual, thus leading to the suggestion that the name Yerushalayim refers to the fact that the city initially sat on two hills.
Ancient Egyptian sources
The Execration Texts of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt (c. 19th century BCE), which refer to a city called rwšꜣlmm or ꜣwšꜣmm, variously transcribed as Rušalimum, or Urušalimum, may indicate Jerusalem. Alternatively, the Amarna letters of Abdi-Heba (1330s BCE), which reference an Úrušalim, may be the earliest mention of the city.
Hebrew Bible and Jewish sources
The form Yerushalem or Yerushalayim first appears in the Bible, in the Book of Joshua. According to a Midrash, the name is a combination of two names united by God, Yireh ("the abiding place", the name given by Abraham to the place where he planned to sacrifice his son) and Shalem ("Place of Peace", the name given by high priest Shem).
Oldest written mention of Jerusalem
One of the earliest extra-biblical Hebrew writing of the word Jerusalem is dated to the sixth or seventh century BCE and was discovered in Khirbet Beit Lei near Beit Guvrin in 1961. The inscription states: "I am Yahweh thy God, I will accept the cities of Judah and I will redeem Jerusalem", or as other scholars suggest: "Yahweh is the God of the whole earth. The mountains of Judah belong to him, to the God of Jerusalem". An older example on papyrus is known from the previous century.
In extra-biblical inscriptions, the earliest known example of the -ayim ending was discovered on a column about 3 km west of ancient Jerusalem, dated to the first century BCE.
Jebus, Zion, City of David
An ancient settlement of Jerusalem, founded as early as the Bronze Age on the hill above the Gihon Spring, was, according to the Bible, named Jebus. Called the "Fortress of Zion" (metsudat Zion), it was renamed as the "City of David", and was known by this name in antiquity. Another name, "Zion", initially referred to a distinct part of the city, but later came to signify the city as a whole, and afterwards to represent the whole biblical Land of Israel.
Greek, Roman and Byzantine names
In Greek and Latin, the city's name was transliterated Hierosolyma (Greek: Ἱεροσόλυμα; in Greek hieròs, ἱερός, means holy), although the city was renamed Aelia Capitolina for part of the Roman period of its history.
Salem
The Aramaic Apocryphon of Genesis of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1QapGen 22:13) equates Jerusalem with the earlier "Salem" (שלם), said to be the kingdom of Melchizedek in Genesis 14. Other early Hebrew sources, early Christian renderings of the verse and targumim, however, put Salem in Northern Israel near Shechem (Sichem), now Nablus, a city of some importance in early sacred Hebrew writing. Possibly the redactor of the Apocryphon of Genesis wanted to dissociate Melchizedek from the area of Shechem, which at the time was in possession of the Samaritans. However that may be, later Rabbinic sources also equate Salem with Jerusalem, mainly to link Melchizedek to later Temple traditions.
Arabic names
In Arabic, Jerusalem is most commonly known as القُدس, transliterated as al-Quds and meaning "the holy" or "the holy sanctuary", cognate with Hebrew: הקדש, romanized: ha-qodesh. The name is possibly a shortened form of مدينة القُدس Madīnat al-Quds "city of the holy sanctuary" after the Hebrew nickname with the same meaning, Ir ha-Qodesh (עיר הקדש). The ق (Q) is pronounced either with a voiceless uvular plosive (/q/), as in Classical Arabic, or with a glottal stop (ʔ) as in Levantine Arabic. Official Israeli government policy mandates that أُورُشَلِيمَ, transliterated as Ūrušalīm, which is the name frequently used in Christian translations of the Bible into Arabic, be used as the Arabic language name for the city in conjunction with القُدس, giving أُورُشَلِيمَ-القُدس, Ūrušalīm-al-Quds. Palestinian Arab families who hail from this city are often called "Qudsi" (قُدسي) or "Maqdasi" (مقدسي), while Palestinian Muslim Jerusalemites may use these terms as a demonym.
Given the city's central position in both Jewish nationalism (Zionism) and Palestinian nationalism, the selectivity required to summarize some 5,000 years of inhabited history is often influenced by ideological bias or background. Israeli or Jewish nationalists claim a right to the city based on Jewish indigeneity to the land, particularly their origins in and descent from the Israelites, for whom Jerusalem is their capital, and their yearning for return. In contrast, Palestinian nationalists claim the right to the city based on modern Palestinians' longstanding presence and descent from many different peoples who have settled or lived in the region over the centuries. Both sides claim the history of the city has been politicized by the other in order to strengthen their relative claims to the city, and that this is borne out by the different focuses the different writers place on the various events and eras in the city's history.
Prehistory
The first archaeological evidence of human presence in the area comes in the form of flints dated to between 6000 and 7000 years ago, with ceramic remains appearing during the Chalcolithic period, and the first signs of permanent settlement appearing in the Early Bronze Age in 3000–2800 BCE.
Bronze and Iron Ages
The earliest evidence of city fortifications appear in the Mid to Late Bronze Age and could date to around the 18th century BCE. By around 1550–1200 BCE, Jerusalem was the capital of an Egyptian vassal city-state, a modest settlement governing a few outlying villages and pastoral areas, with a small Egyptian garrison and ruled by appointees such as king Abdi-Heba. At the time of Seti I (r. 1290–1279 BCE) and Ramesses II (r. 1279–1213 BCE), major construction took place as prosperity increased. The city's inhabitants at this time were Canaanites, who are believed by scholars to have evolved into the Israelites via the development of a distinct Yahweh-centric monotheistic belief system.
Archaeological remains from the ancient Israelite period include the Siloam Tunnel, an aqueduct built by Judahite king Hezekiah and once containing an ancient Hebrew inscription, known as the Siloam Inscription; the so-called Broad Wall, a defensive fortification built in the 8th century BCE, also by Hezekiah; the Silwan necropolis (9th–7th c. BCE) with the Monolith of Silwan and the Tomb of the Royal Steward, which were decorated with monumental Hebrew inscriptions; and the so-called Israelite Tower, remnants of ancient fortifications, built from large, sturdy rocks with carved cornerstones. A huge water reservoir dating from this period was discovered in 2012 near Robinson's Arch, indicating the existence of a densely built-up quarter across the area west of the Temple Mount during the Kingdom of Judah.
When the Assyrians conquered the Kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE, Jerusalem was strengthened by a great influx of refugees from the northern kingdom. When Hezekiah ruled, Jerusalem had no fewer than 25,000 inhabitants and covered 25 acres (10 hectares).
In 587–586 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian Empire conquered Jerusalem after a prolonged siege, and then systematically destroyed the city, including Solomon's Temple. The Kingdom of Judah was abolished and many were exiled to Babylon. These events mark the end of the First Temple period.
Biblical account
This period, when Canaan formed part of the Egyptian empire, corresponds in biblical accounts to Joshua's invasion, but almost all scholars agree that the Book of Joshua holds little historical value for early Israel.
In the Bible, Jerusalem is defined as lying within territory allocated to the tribe of Benjamin though still inhabited by Jebusites. David is said to have conquered these in the siege of Jebus, and transferred his capital from Hebron to Jerusalem which then became the capital of a United Kingdom of Israel, and one of its several religious centres. The choice was perhaps dictated by the fact that Jerusalem did not form part of Israel's tribal system, and was thus suited to serve as the centre of its confederation. Opinion is divided over whether the so-called Large Stone Structure and the nearby Stepped Stone Structure may be identified with King David's palace, or dates to a later period.
According to the Bible, King David reigned for 40 years and was succeeded by his son Solomon, who built the Holy Temple on Mount Moriah. Solomon's Temple (later known as the First Temple), went on to play a pivotal role in Jewish religion as the repository of the Ark of the Covenant. On Solomon's death, ten of the northern tribes of Israel broke with the United Monarchy to form their own nation, with its kings, prophets, priests, traditions relating to religion, capitals and temples in northern Israel. The southern tribes, together with the Aaronid priesthood, remained in Jerusalem, with the city becoming the capital of the Kingdom of Judah.
Classical antiquity
In 538 BCE, the Achaemenid King Cyrus the Great invited the Jews of Babylon to return to Judah to rebuild the Temple. Construction of the Second Temple was completed in 516 BCE, during the reign of Darius the Great, 70 years after the destruction of the First Temple.
Sometime soon after 485 BCE Jerusalem was besieged, conquered and largely destroyed by a coalition of neighbouring states. In about 445 BCE, King Artaxerxes I of Persia issued a decree allowing the city (including its walls) to be rebuilt. Jerusalem resumed its role as capital of Judah and centre of Jewish worship.
Many Jewish tombs from the Second Temple period have been unearthed in Jerusalem. One example, discovered north of the Old City, contains human remains in a 1st-century CE ossuary decorated with the Aramaic inscription "Simon the Temple Builder". The Tomb of Abba, also located north of the Old City, bears an Aramaic inscription with Paleo-Hebrew letters reading: "I, Abba, son of the priest Eleaz(ar), son of Aaron the high (priest), Abba, the oppressed and the persecuted, who was born in Jerusalem, and went into exile into Babylonia and brought (back to Jerusalem) Mattathi(ah), son of Jud(ah), and buried him in a cave which I bought by deed." The Tomb of Benei Hezir located in Kidron Valley is decorated by monumental Doric columns and Hebrew inscription, identifying it as the burial site of Second Temple priests. The Tombs of the Sanhedrin, an underground complex of 63 rock-cut tombs, is located in a public park in the northern Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sanhedria. These tombs, probably reserved for members of the Sanhedrin and inscribed by ancient Hebrew and Aramaic writings, are dated to between 100 BCE and 100 CE.
When Alexander the Great conquered the Achaemenid Empire, Jerusalem and Judea came under Macedonian control, eventually falling to the Ptolemaic dynasty under Ptolemy I. In 198 BCE, Ptolemy V Epiphanes lost Jerusalem and Judea to the Seleucids under Antiochus III. The Seleucid attempt to recast Jerusalem as a Hellenized city-state came to a head in 168 BCE with the successful Maccabean revolt of Mattathias and his five sons against Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and their establishment of the Hasmonean Kingdom in 152 BCE with Jerusalem as its capital.
In 63 BCE, Pompey the Great intervened in a struggle for the Hasmonean throne and captured Jerusalem, extending the influence of the Roman Republic over Judea. Following a short invasion by Parthians, backing the rival Hasmonean rulers, Judea became a scene of struggle between pro-Roman and pro-Parthian forces, eventually leading to the emergence of an Edomite named Herod. As Rome became stronger, it installed Herod as a client king of the Jews. Herod the Great, as he was known, devoted himself to developing and beautifying the city. He built walls, towers and palaces, and expanded the Temple Mount, buttressing the courtyard with blocks of stone weighing up to 100 tons. Under Herod, the area of the Temple Mount doubled in size. Shortly after Herod's death, in 6 CE Judea came under direct Roman rule as the Iudaea Province, although the Herodian dynasty through Agrippa II remained client kings of neighbouring territories until 96 CE.
Roman rule over Jerusalem and Judea was challenged in the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE), which ended with a Roman victory. Early on, the city was devastated by a brutal civil war between several Jewish factions fighting for control of the city. In 70 CE, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Second Temple. The contemporary Jewish historian Josephus wrote that the city "was so thoroughly razed to the ground by those that demolished it to its foundations, that nothing was left that could ever persuade visitors that it had once been a place of habitation." Of the 600,000 (Tacitus) or 1,000,000 (Josephus) Jews of Jerusalem, all of them either died of starvation, were killed or were sold into slavery. Roman rule was again challenged during the Bar Kokhba revolt, beginning in 132 CE and suppressed by the Romans in 135 CE. More recent research indicates that the Romans had founded Aelia Capitolina before the outbreak of the revolt, and found no evidence for Bar Kokhba ever managing to hold the city.
Jerusalem reached a peak in size and population at the end of the Second Temple Period, when the city covered two km2 (3⁄4 sq mi) and had a population of 200,000.
Late Antiquity
Following the Bar Kokhba revolt, Emperor Hadrian combined Iudaea Province with neighbouring provinces under the new name of Syria Palaestina, replacing the name of Judea. The city was renamed Aelia Capitolina, and rebuilt it in the style of a typical Roman town. Jews were prohibited from entering the city on pain of death, except for one day each year, during the holiday of Tisha B'Av. Taken together, these measures (which also affected Jewish Christians) essentially "secularized" the city. Historical sources and archaeological evidence indicate that the rebuilt city was now inhabited by veterans of the Roman military and immigrants from the western parts of the empire.
The ban against Jews was maintained until the 7th century, though Christians would soon be granted an exemption: during the 4th century, the Roman emperor Constantine I ordered the construction of Christian holy sites in the city, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Burial remains from the Byzantine period are exclusively Christian, suggesting that the population of Jerusalem in Byzantine times probably consisted only of Christians.
Jerusalem.
In the 5th century, the eastern continuation of the Roman Empire, ruled from the recently renamed Constantinople, maintained control of the city. Within the span of a few decades, Jerusalem shifted from Byzantine to Persian rule, then back to Roman-Byzantine dominion. Following Sassanid Khosrau II's early 7th century push through Syria, his generals Shahrbaraz and Shahin attacked Jerusalem (Persian: Dej Houdkh) aided by the Jews of Palaestina Prima, who had risen up against the Byzantines.
In the Siege of Jerusalem of 614, after 21 days of relentless siege warfare, Jerusalem was captured. Byzantine chronicles relate that the Sassanids and Jews slaughtered tens of thousands of Christians in the city, many at the Mamilla Pool, and destroyed their monuments and churches, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This episode has been the subject of much debate between historians. The conquered city would remain in Sassanid hands for some fifteen years until the Byzantine emperor Heraclius reconquered it in 629.
Middle Ages
After the Muslim conquest of the Levant, Byzantine Jerusalem was taken by Umar ibn al-Khattab in 638 CE. Among the first Muslims, it was referred to as Madinat bayt al-Maqdis ("City of the Temple"), a name restricted to the Temple Mount. The rest of the city "was called Iliya, reflecting the Roman name given the city following the destruction of 70 CE: Aelia Capitolina". Later the Temple Mount became known as al-Haram al-Sharif, "The Noble Sanctuary", while the city around it became known as Bayt al-Maqdis, and later still, al-Quds al-Sharif "The Holy, Noble". The Islamization of Jerusalem began in the first year A.H. (623 CE), when Muslims were instructed to face the city while performing their daily prostrations and, according to Muslim religious tradition, Muhammad's night journey and ascension to heaven took place. After 13 years, the direction of prayer was changed to Mecca. In 638 CE the Islamic Caliphate extended its dominion to Jerusalem. With the Muslim conquest, Jews were allowed back into the city. The Rashidun caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab signed a treaty with Christian Patriarch of Jerusalem Sophronius, assuring him that Jerusalem's Christian holy places and population would be protected under Muslim rule. Christian-Arab tradition records that, when led to pray at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, one of the holiest sites for Christians, the caliph Umar refused to pray in the church so that Muslims would not request conversion of the church to a mosque. He prayed outside the church, where the Mosque of Umar (Omar) stands to this day, opposite the entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. According to the Gaullic bishop Arculf, who lived in Jerusalem from 679 to 688, the Mosque of Umar was a rectangular wooden structure built over ruins which could accommodate 3,000 worshipers.
When the Arab armies under Umar went to Bayt Al-Maqdes in 637 CE, they searched for the site of al-masjid al-aqsa, "the farthest place of prayer/mosque", that was mentioned in the Quran and Hadith according to Islamic beliefs. Contemporary Arabic and Hebrew sources say the site was full of rubbish, and that Arabs and Jews cleaned it. The Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik commissioned the construction of a shrine on the Temple Mount, now known as the Dome of the Rock, in the late 7th century. Two of the city's most-distinguished Arab citizens of the 10th-century were Al-Muqaddasi, the geographer, and Al-Tamimi, the physician. Al-Muqaddasi writes that Abd al-Malik built the edifice on the Temple Mount in order to compete in grandeur with Jerusalem's monumental churches.
Over the next four hundred years, Jerusalem's prominence diminished as Arab powers in the region vied for control of the city. Jerusalem was captured in 1073 by the Seljuk Turkish commander Atsız. After Atsız was killed, the Seljuk prince Tutush I granted the city to Artuk Bey, another Seljuk commander. After Artuk's death in 1091 his sons Sökmen and Ilghazi governed in the city up to 1098 when the Fatimids recaptured the city.
A messianic Karaite movement to gather in Jerusalem took place at the turn of the millennium, leading to a "Golden Age" of Karaite scholarship there, which was only terminated by the Crusades.
Crusader/Ayyubid period
In 1099, the Fatimid ruler expelled the native Christian population before Jerusalem was besieged by the soldiers of the First Crusade. After taking the solidly defended city by assault, the Crusaders massacred most of its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants, and made it the capital of their Kingdom of Jerusalem. The city, which had been virtually emptied, was recolonized by a variegated inflow of Greeks, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Georgians, Armenians, Syrians, Egyptians, Nestorians, Maronites, Jacobite Miaphysites, Copts and others, to block the return of the surviving Muslims and Jews. The north-eastern quarter was repopulated with Eastern Christians from the Transjordan. As a result, by 1099 Jerusalem's population had climbed back to some 30,000.
In 1187, the city was wrested from the Crusaders by Saladin who permitted Jews and Muslims to return and settle in the city. Under the terms of surrender, once ransomed, 60,000 Franks were expelled. The Eastern Christian populace was permitted to stay. Under the Ayyubid dynasty of Saladin, a period of huge investment began in the construction of houses, markets, public baths, and pilgrim hostels as well as the establishment of religious endowments. However, for most of the 13th century, Jerusalem declined to the status of a village due to city's fall of strategic value and Ayyubid internecine struggles.
From 1229 to 1244, Jerusalem peacefully reverted to Christian control as a result of a 1229 treaty agreed between the crusading Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and al-Kamil, the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt, that ended the Sixth Crusade. The Ayyubids retained control of the Muslim holy places, and Arab sources suggest that Frederick was not permitted to restore Jerusalem's fortifications.
In 1244, Jerusalem was sacked by the Khwarezmian Tatars, who decimated the city's Christian population and drove out the Jews. The Khwarezmian Tatars were driven out by the Ayyubids in 1247.
Mamluk period
From 1260 to 1516/17, Jerusalem was ruled by the Mamluks. In the wider region and until around 1300, many clashes occurred between the Mamluks on one side, and the crusaders and the Mongols, on the other side. The area also suffered from many earthquakes and black plague. When Nachmanides visited in 1267 he found only two Jewish families, in a population of 2,000, 300 of whom were Christians, in the city. The well-known and far-traveled lexicographer Fairuzabadi (1329–1414) spent ten years in Jerusalem.
The 13th to 15th centuries was a period of frequent building activity in the city, as evidenced by the 90 remaining structures from this time. The city was also a significant site of Mamluk architectural patronage. The types of structures built included madrasas, libraries, hospitals, caravanserais, fountains (or sabils), and public baths. Much of the building activity was concentrated around the edges of the Temple Mount or Haram al-Sharif. Old gates to the Haram lost importance and new gates were built, while significant parts of the northern and western porticoes along the edge of the Temple Mount plaza were built or rebuilt in this period. Tankiz, the Mamluk amir in charge of Syria during the reign of al-Nasir Muhammad, built a new market called Suq al-Qattatin (Cotton Market) in 1336–7, along with the gate known as Bab al-Qattanin (Cotton Gate), which gave access to the Temple Mount from this market. The late Mamluk sultan al-Ashraf Qaytbay also took interest in the city. He commissioned the building of the Madrasa al-Ashrafiyya, completed in 1482, and the nearby Sabil of Qaytbay, built shortly after in 1482; both were located on the Temple Mount. Qaytbay's monuments were the last major Mamluk constructions in the city.
Modern era
In 1517, Jerusalem and its environs fell to the Ottoman Turks, who generally remained in control until 1917.[180] Jerusalem enjoyed a prosperous period of renewal and peace under Suleiman the Magnificent—including the rebuilding of magnificent walls around the Old City. Throughout much of Ottoman rule, Jerusalem remained a provincial, if religiously important centre, and did not straddle the main trade route between Damascus and Cairo. The English reference book Modern history or the present state of all nations, written in 1744, stated that "Jerusalem is still reckoned the capital city of Palestine, though much fallen from its ancient grandeaur".
The Ottomans brought many innovations: modern postal systems run by the various consulates and regular stagecoach and carriage services were among the first signs of modernization in the city. In the mid 19th century, the Ottomans constructed the first paved road from Jaffa to Jerusalem, and by 1892 the railroad had reached the city.
With the annexation of Jerusalem by Muhammad Ali of Egypt in 1831, foreign missions and consulates began to establish a foothold in the city. In 1836, Ibrahim Pasha allowed Jerusalem's Jewish residents to restore four major synagogues, among them the Hurva. In the countrywide Peasants' Revolt, Qasim al-Ahmad led his forces from Nablus and attacked Jerusalem, aided by the Abu Ghosh clan, and entered the city on 31 May 1834. The Christians and Jews of Jerusalem were subjected to attacks. Ibrahim's Egyptian army routed Qasim's forces in Jerusalem the following month.
Ottoman rule was reinstated in 1840, but many Egyptian Muslims remained in Jerusalem and Jews from Algiers and North Africa began to settle in the city in growing numbers. In the 1840s and 1850s, the international powers began a tug-of-war in Palestine as they sought to extend their protection over the region's religious minorities, a struggle carried out mainly through consular representatives in Jerusalem. According to the Prussian consul, the population in 1845 was 16,410, with 7,120 Jews, 5,000 Muslims, 3,390 Christians, 800 Turkish soldiers and 100 Europeans. The volume of Christian pilgrims increased under the Ottomans, doubling the city's population around Easter time.
In the 1860s, new neighbourhoods began to develop outside the Old City walls to house pilgrims and relieve the intense overcrowding and poor
Time for a photo dump! Let's turn back the clock to 15 years ago from the day I'm posting this, to July 1, 2007, to turn the clock back 50 years previously. On July 1st, 2007, the Fox River Trolley Museum would commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of service on the Chicago, Aurora, & Elgin interuban line. The story of the end of the CA&E is a long one, which I will not recount here. I will simply sum up by saying that the CA&E ended service just after Noon on a busy July 3, 1957, trapping passengers trying to return home for the busy Fourth of July holiday.
On July 1, 2007, the Fox River Trolley Museum held their event to commemorate the end of CA&E Service. They wanted to make it as authentic as possible, but little did they know just how authentic it would turn out to be. FRTM owns CA&E Car 20, the oldest operating interurban car in the country, which has the distinction of being the only surviving CA&E car that operated on the first and last days of service on the CA&E. So it was only natural that it operated for this occasion. To replicate what happened on that day 50 years previous, CA&E 20 was to take passengers out to the end of the line, drop everyone off, and return to the museum campus. A diesel train would then be dispatched to pick everyone up, simulating how the Chicago & Northwestern eventually rescued to the stranded CA&E passengers. Warren and Saline River Railroad #73, a Whitcomb 70-tonner conviently painted in CNW colors, would operate then be dispatched to pick everyone up and return the to the museum's station.
The first part of this went according to plan. We were all dropped off at the end of the line, where we would wait. And wait. And wait. The diesel train no-showed, and after maybe 30 minutes or more, if memory serves, a museum volunteer drove out and told everyone what had happened. A sagging electric trolley wire got caught on the locomotive, which tore the cap of the exhaust stack off. So no trains could move until that was cleared up. Stranded could either wait it out, or walk the 1+ mile river trail that parallels the museum's line back to the station. I chose to walk, as it was a nice day and the river trail is very scenic. On my walk back, they Whitcomb got unstuck and picked up the other stranded passengers. I believe they were also able to eventually rectify the downed wire, and electric service was able to resume about an hour later. Unwittingly, the Museum had made the experience of the end of CA&E service much more authentic then they had ever intended or planned.
Here we see Warren & Saline River #73, a 1948 product of Whitcomb Locomotive Works, with a former Northshore car ready to play its role as the rescue train,
Commemorating a driver killed in the 2001 Selby rail crash, 66526 "Driver Steve Dunn (George)" passes through Ashley on 22nd March 2023 with 6F33 09:16 Bredbury to Runcorn Folly Lane.
Commemorates 28 men, died fighting an extreme fire.
Inaugurated in 1897 in the presence of the Governor General of the island Valeriano Weyler.
The highest building of the cemetery.
Commemorating the 150th anniversary of the District line, Metropolitan steam loco No 1 is making ready to lead the 'District Pioneer 1869-2019' heritage train from High Street Kensington to Ealing Broadway on 22/6/19.
Neil F.
A window commemorating the sacrifice of people from Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in the First World War has been installed at Southwell Minster.
The heart of the design shows a group of soldiers lifting a comrade, with his outstretched arms hinting at the crucifixion.
The artist, Nicholas Mynheer, said this represents "an act of compassion and service to others".
The window was dedicated at a service on 10 July 2016.
***Best vied on black***
Just press L on your keyboard.
Trikomo is a town in Cyprus. It is under the de facto control of Northern Cyprus and is the administrative center of the Iskele District of Northern Cyprus, which mainly extends into the Karpas Peninsula , while de jure it belongs to the Famagusta District of the Republic of Cyprus . It gained municipality status in 1998. Before 1974 Trikomo was a mixed village with a Greek Cypriot majority.
In 2011 Trikomo had 1948 inhabitants.
Trikomo is located in the north-eastern part of the Messaria plain , 9 km south of the village of Ardana , about two kilometers from the Bay of Famagusta and four kilometers north-west of the village of Sygkrasi .
In Greek Trikomo means "three houses". In 1975 the Turkish Cypriots renamed it Yeni İskele to commemorate the origins of the town's current inhabitants. In Larnaca before 1974 Turkish Cypriots resided in the neighborhood called Skala ("İskele" in Turkish), so that when they settled in the village they renamed it with the same name (lit. "new İskele", later shortened to İskele ). Yeni means "new", so Yeni İskele literally means "New Scale/İskele".
Before the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus , the population of Trikomo consisted almost entirely of Greek Cypriots , most of whom fled during the conflict while the rest were subsequently deported to the south. Among these, worthy of mention is Georgios Grivas (1898-1974), general of the Greek army , leader of the guerrilla organization EOKA, protagonist of the liberation struggle against the English and of the paramilitary organization EOKA B.
The Turkish Cypriot municipality of Larnaca which had been established in 1958 moved to Trikomo in 1974, soon after the Turkish invasion of the island .
In Trikomo is the Church of the Panagia Theotokos , deconsecrated and home to an icon museum displaying rare examples of medieval iconography in Cyprus. The church is divided into two sections, one Orthodox and one Catholic. The first is the oldest, dating back to the Byzantine era , while the second was built in the 12th century, during the period in which the island was ruled by the Lusignans
Before 1974 Trikomo was a mixed village with a Greek Cypriot majority. In the 1831 Ottoman census, Muslims made up approximately 18.4% of the population. However, by 1891 this percentage dropped significantly to 3.4%. In the first half of the 20th century the population of the village increased steadily, from 1,247 inhabitants in 1901 to 2,195 in 1960.
Most of Trikomo's Greek Cypriots were displaced in August 1974, although some remained in the town after the Turkish army took control. In October 1975 there were still 92 Greek Cypriots in the city, but in 1978 they were moved to the south side of the Green Line . Currently, like the rest of the displaced Greek Cypriots, Trikomo Greek Cypriots are scattered across the south of the island, especially in the cities. The number of Greek Cypriots from Trikomo displaced in 1974-78 was approximately 2,330 (2,323 in the 1960 census).
Today the village is inhabited mainly by displaced Turkish Cypriots from the south of the island, especially from the city of Larnaca and its district . In 1976-77, some families from Turkey, especially from the province of Adana , also settled in the village . Since the 2000s, many wealthy Europeans, Turks and Turkish Cypriots from other areas of the north of the island (including returnees from abroad) have purchased properties, built houses and settled in the vicinity of the city. According to the 2006 Turkish Cypriot census, the population of Trikomo/İskele was 3,657.
The city annually hosts the Iskele Festival , which takes place for ten days in summer, and is the oldest annual festival in Cyprus, having first been held in Larnaca in 1968. In 1974, the event was moved to Trikomo together to the Turkish Cypriot inhabitants of Larnaca who had moved there. The program includes an international folk dance festival, concerts by Turkish Cypriot and mainland Turkish musicians, various sports tournaments, stalls offering food and various competitions, along with other performances and competitions highlighting the city's cultural heritage.
The current mayor of the city is Hasan Sadıkoğlu, who was first elected in 2014 as an independent candidate. It was re-elected in 2018 as the candidate of the right-wing National Unity Party (UBP), winning with 54.6% of the vote. In the 2018 local elections, four members of the UBP, two members of the pro-settler Renaissance Party (YDP), and two members of the left-wing Turkish Republican Party (CTP) were elected to the eight-member city council .
Trikomo is twinned with:
Flag of Türkiye Beykoz, Istanbul
Flag of Türkiye Büyükçekmece, Istanbul
Flag of Türkiye Finike, Antalya , since 2015
Flag of Türkiye Mamak, Ankara
Flag of Türkiye Pendik, Istanbul
Flag of Türkiye Samsung , since 2006
Turkish Cypriot sports club Larnaka Gençler Birliği (also called İskele Gençlerbirliği ) was founded in 1934 in Larnaca, and was playing in the Süper Lig of the Northern Cyprus Football Federation in the 2018–19 season
Northern Cyprus, officially the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), is a de facto state that comprises the northeastern portion of the island of Cyprus. It is recognised only by Turkey, and its territory is considered by all other states to be part of the Republic of Cyprus.
Northern Cyprus extends from the tip of the Karpass Peninsula in the northeast to Morphou Bay, Cape Kormakitis and its westernmost point, the Kokkina exclave in the west. Its southernmost point is the village of Louroujina. A buffer zone under the control of the United Nations stretches between Northern Cyprus and the rest of the island and divides Nicosia, the island's largest city and capital of both sides.
A coup d'état in 1974, performed as part of an attempt to annex the island to Greece, prompted the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. This resulted in the eviction of much of the north's Greek Cypriot population, the flight of Turkish Cypriots from the south, and the partitioning of the island, leading to a unilateral declaration of independence by the north in 1983. Due to its lack of recognition, Northern Cyprus is heavily dependent on Turkey for economic, political and military support.
Attempts to reach a solution to the Cyprus dispute have been unsuccessful. The Turkish Army maintains a large force in Northern Cyprus with the support and approval of the TRNC government, while the Republic of Cyprus, the European Union as a whole, and the international community regard it as an occupation force. This military presence has been denounced in several United Nations Security Council resolutions.
Northern Cyprus is a semi-presidential, democratic republic with a cultural heritage incorporating various influences and an economy that is dominated by the services sector. The economy has seen growth through the 2000s and 2010s, with the GNP per capita more than tripling in the 2000s, but is held back by an international embargo due to the official closure of the ports in Northern Cyprus by the Republic of Cyprus. The official language is Turkish, with a distinct local dialect being spoken. The vast majority of the population consists of Sunni Muslims, while religious attitudes are mostly moderate and secular. Northern Cyprus is an observer state of ECO and OIC under the name "Turkish Cypriot State", PACE under the name "Turkish Cypriot Community", and Organization of Turkic States with its own name.
Several distinct periods of Cypriot intercommunal violence involving the two main ethnic communities, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, marked mid-20th century Cyprus. These included the Cyprus Emergency of 1955–59 during British rule, the post-independence Cyprus crisis of 1963–64, and the Cyprus crisis of 1967. Hostilities culminated in the 1974 de facto division of the island along the Green Line following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The region has been relatively peaceful since then, but the Cyprus dispute has continued, with various attempts to solve it diplomatically having been generally unsuccessful.
Cyprus, an island lying in the eastern Mediterranean, hosted a population of Greeks and Turks (four-fifths and one-fifth, respectively), who lived under British rule in the late nineteenth-century and the first half of the twentieth-century. Christian Orthodox Church of Cyprus played a prominent political role among the Greek Cypriot community, a privilege that it acquired during the Ottoman Empire with the employment of the millet system, which gave the archbishop an unofficial ethnarch status.
The repeated rejections by the British of Greek Cypriot demands for enosis, union with Greece, led to armed resistance, organised by the National Organization of Cypriot Struggle, or EOKA. EOKA, led by the Greek-Cypriot commander George Grivas, systematically targeted British colonial authorities. One of the effects of EOKA's campaign was to alter the Turkish position from demanding full reincorporation into Turkey to a demand for taksim (partition). EOKA's mission and activities caused a "Cretan syndrome" (see Turkish Resistance Organisation) within the Turkish Cypriot community, as its members feared that they would be forced to leave the island in such a case as had been the case with Cretan Turks. As such, they preferred the continuation of British colonial rule and then taksim, the division of the island. Due to the Turkish Cypriots' support for the British, EOKA's leader, Georgios Grivas, declared them to be enemies. The fact that the Turks were a minority was, according to Nihat Erim, to be addressed by the transfer of thousands of Turks from mainland Turkey so that Greek Cypriots would cease to be the majority. When Erim visited Cyprus as the Turkish representative, he was advised by Field Marshal Sir John Harding, the then Governor of Cyprus, that Turkey should send educated Turks to settle in Cyprus.
Turkey actively promoted the idea that on the island of Cyprus two distinctive communities existed, and sidestepped its former claim that "the people of Cyprus were all Turkish subjects". In doing so, Turkey's aim to have self-determination of two to-be equal communities in effect led to de jure partition of the island.[citation needed] This could be justified to the international community against the will of the majority Greek population of the island. Dr. Fazil Küçük in 1954 had already proposed Cyprus be divided in two at the 35° parallel.
Lindley Dan, from Notre Dame University, spotted the roots of intercommunal violence to different visions among the two communities of Cyprus (enosis for Greek Cypriots, taksim for Turkish Cypriots). Also, Lindlay wrote that "the merging of church, schools/education, and politics in divisive and nationalistic ways" had played a crucial role in creation of havoc in Cyprus' history. Attalides Michael also pointed to the opposing nationalisms as the cause of the Cyprus problem.
By the mid-1950's, the "Cyprus is Turkish" party, movement, and slogan gained force in both Cyprus and Turkey. In a 1954 editorial, Turkish Cypriot leader Dr. Fazil Kuchuk expressed the sentiment that the Turkish youth had grown up with the idea that "as soon as Great Britain leaves the island, it will be taken over by the Turks", and that "Turkey cannot tolerate otherwise". This perspective contributed to the willingness of Turkish Cypriots to align themselves with the British, who started recruiting Turkish Cypriots into the police force that patrolled Cyprus to fight EOKA, a Greek Cypriot nationalist organisation that sought to rid the island of British rule.
EOKA targeted colonial authorities, including police, but Georgios Grivas, the leader of EOKA, did not initially wish to open up a new front by fighting Turkish Cypriots and reassured them that EOKA would not harm their people. In 1956, some Turkish Cypriot policemen were killed by EOKA members and this provoked some intercommunal violence in the spring and summer, but these attacks on policemen were not motivated by the fact that they were Turkish Cypriots.
However, in January 1957, Grivas changed his policy as his forces in the mountains became increasingly pressured by the British Crown forces. In order to divert the attention of the Crown forces, EOKA members started to target Turkish Cypriot policemen intentionally in the towns, so that Turkish Cypriots would riot against the Greek Cypriots and the security forces would have to be diverted to the towns to restore order. The killing of a Turkish Cypriot policeman on 19 January, when a power station was bombed, and the injury of three others, provoked three days of intercommunal violence in Nicosia. The two communities targeted each other in reprisals, at least one Greek Cypriot was killed and the British Army was deployed in the streets. Greek Cypriot stores were burned and their neighbourhoods attacked. Following the events, the Greek Cypriot leadership spread the propaganda that the riots had merely been an act of Turkish Cypriot aggression. Such events created chaos and drove the communities apart both in Cyprus and in Turkey.
On 22 October 1957 Sir Hugh Mackintosh Foot replaced Sir John Harding as the British Governor of Cyprus. Foot suggested five to seven years of self-government before any final decision. His plan rejected both enosis and taksim. The Turkish Cypriot response to this plan was a series of anti-British demonstrations in Nicosia on 27 and 28 January 1958 rejecting the proposed plan because the plan did not include partition. The British then withdrew the plan.
In 1957, Black Gang, a Turkish Cypriot pro-taksim paramilitary organisation, was formed to patrol a Turkish Cypriot enclave, the Tahtakale district of Nicosia, against activities of EOKA. The organisation later attempted to grow into a national scale, but failed to gain public support.
By 1958, signs of dissatisfaction with the British increased on both sides, with a group of Turkish Cypriots forming Volkan (later renamed to the Turkish Resistance Organisation) paramilitary group to promote partition and the annexation of Cyprus to Turkey as dictated by the Menderes plan. Volkan initially consisted of roughly 100 members, with the stated aim of raising awareness in Turkey of the Cyprus issue and courting military training and support for Turkish Cypriot fighters from the Turkish government.
In June 1958, the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, was expected to propose a plan to resolve the Cyprus issue. In light of the new development, the Turks rioted in Nicosia to promote the idea that Greek and Turkish Cypriots could not live together and therefore any plan that did not include partition would not be viable. This violence was soon followed by bombing, Greek Cypriot deaths and looting of Greek Cypriot-owned shops and houses. Greek and Turkish Cypriots started to flee mixed population villages where they were a minority in search of safety. This was effectively the beginning of the segregation of the two communities. On 7 June 1958, a bomb exploded at the entrance of the Turkish Embassy in Cyprus. Following the bombing, Turkish Cypriots looted Greek Cypriot properties. On 26 June 1984, the Turkish Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktaş, admitted on British channel ITV that the bomb was placed by the Turks themselves in order to create tension. On 9 January 1995, Rauf Denktaş repeated his claim to the famous Turkish newspaper Milliyet in Turkey.
The crisis reached a climax on 12 June 1958, when eight Greeks, out of an armed group of thirty five arrested by soldiers of the Royal Horse Guards on suspicion of preparing an attack on the Turkish quarter of Skylloura, were killed in a suspected attack by Turkish Cypriot locals, near the village of Geunyeli, having been ordered to walk back to their village of Kondemenos.
After the EOKA campaign had begun, the British government successfully began to turn the Cyprus issue from a British colonial problem into a Greek-Turkish issue. British diplomacy exerted backstage influence on the Adnan Menderes government, with the aim of making Turkey active in Cyprus. For the British, the attempt had a twofold objective. The EOKA campaign would be silenced as quickly as possible, and Turkish Cypriots would not side with Greek Cypriots against the British colonial claims over the island, which would thus remain under the British. The Turkish Cypriot leadership visited Menderes to discuss the Cyprus issue. When asked how the Turkish Cypriots should respond to the Greek Cypriot claim of enosis, Menderes replied: "You should go to the British foreign minister and request the status quo be prolonged, Cyprus to remain as a British colony". When the Turkish Cypriots visited the British Foreign Secretary and requested for Cyprus to remain a colony, he replied: "You should not be asking for colonialism at this day and age, you should be asking for Cyprus be returned to Turkey, its former owner".
As Turkish Cypriots began to look to Turkey for protection, Greek Cypriots soon understood that enosis was extremely unlikely. The Greek Cypriot leader, Archbishop Makarios III, now set independence for the island as his objective.
Britain resolved to solve the dispute by creating an independent Cyprus. In 1959, all involved parties signed the Zurich Agreements: Britain, Turkey, Greece, and the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders, Makarios and Dr. Fazil Kucuk, respectively. The new constitution drew heavily on the ethnic composition of the island. The President would be a Greek Cypriot, and the Vice-President a Turkish Cypriot with an equal veto. The contribution to the public service would be set at a ratio of 70:30, and the Supreme Court would consist of an equal number of judges from both communities as well as an independent judge who was not Greek, Turkish or British. The Zurich Agreements were supplemented by a number of treaties. The Treaty of Guarantee stated that secession or union with any state was forbidden, and that Greece, Turkey and Britain would be given guarantor status to intervene if that was violated. The Treaty of Alliance allowed for two small Greek and Turkish military contingents to be stationed on the island, and the Treaty of Establishment gave Britain sovereignty over two bases in Akrotiri and Dhekelia.
On 15 August 1960, the Colony of Cyprus became fully independent as the Republic of Cyprus. The new republic remained within the Commonwealth of Nations.
The new constitution brought dissatisfaction to Greek Cypriots, who felt it to be highly unjust for them for historical, demographic and contributional reasons. Although 80% of the island's population were Greek Cypriots and these indigenous people had lived on the island for thousands of years and paid 94% of taxes, the new constitution was giving the 17% of the population that was Turkish Cypriots, who paid 6% of taxes, around 30% of government jobs and 40% of national security jobs.
Within three years tensions between the two communities in administrative affairs began to show. In particular disputes over separate municipalities and taxation created a deadlock in government. A constitutional court ruled in 1963 Makarios had failed to uphold article 173 of the constitution which called for the establishment of separate municipalities for Turkish Cypriots. Makarios subsequently declared his intention to ignore the judgement, resulting in the West German judge resigning from his position. Makarios proposed thirteen amendments to the constitution, which would have had the effect of resolving most of the issues in the Greek Cypriot favour. Under the proposals, the President and Vice-President would lose their veto, the separate municipalities as sought after by the Turkish Cypriots would be abandoned, the need for separate majorities by both communities in passing legislation would be discarded and the civil service contribution would be set at actual population ratios (82:18) instead of the slightly higher figure for Turkish Cypriots.
The intention behind the amendments has long been called into question. The Akritas plan, written in the height of the constitutional dispute by the Greek Cypriot interior minister Polycarpos Georkadjis, called for the removal of undesirable elements of the constitution so as to allow power-sharing to work. The plan envisaged a swift retaliatory attack on Turkish Cypriot strongholds should Turkish Cypriots resort to violence to resist the measures, stating "In the event of a planned or staged Turkish attack, it is imperative to overcome it by force in the shortest possible time, because if we succeed in gaining command of the situation (in one or two days), no outside, intervention would be either justified or possible." Whether Makarios's proposals were part of the Akritas plan is unclear, however it remains that sentiment towards enosis had not completely disappeared with independence. Makarios described independence as "a step on the road to enosis".[31] Preparations for conflict were not entirely absent from Turkish Cypriots either, with right wing elements still believing taksim (partition) the best safeguard against enosis.
Greek Cypriots however believe the amendments were a necessity stemming from a perceived attempt by Turkish Cypriots to frustrate the working of government. Turkish Cypriots saw it as a means to reduce their status within the state from one of co-founder to that of minority, seeing it as a first step towards enosis. The security situation deteriorated rapidly.
Main articles: Bloody Christmas (1963) and Battle of Tillyria
An armed conflict was triggered after December 21, 1963, a period remembered by Turkish Cypriots as Bloody Christmas, when a Greek Cypriot policemen that had been called to help deal with a taxi driver refusing officers already on the scene access to check the identification documents of his customers, took out his gun upon arrival and shot and killed the taxi driver and his partner. Eric Solsten summarised the events as follows: "a Greek Cypriot police patrol, ostensibly checking identification documents, stopped a Turkish Cypriot couple on the edge of the Turkish quarter. A hostile crowd gathered, shots were fired, and two Turkish Cypriots were killed."
In the morning after the shooting, crowds gathered in protest in Northern Nicosia, likely encouraged by the TMT, without incident. On the evening of the 22nd, gunfire broke out, communication lines to the Turkish neighbourhoods were cut, and the Greek Cypriot police occupied the nearby airport. On the 23rd, a ceasefire was negotiated, but did not hold. Fighting, including automatic weapons fire, between Greek and Turkish Cypriots and militias increased in Nicosia and Larnaca. A force of Greek Cypriot irregulars led by Nikos Sampson entered the Nicosia suburb of Omorphita and engaged in heavy firing on armed, as well as by some accounts unarmed, Turkish Cypriots. The Omorphita clash has been described by Turkish Cypriots as a massacre, while this view has generally not been acknowledged by Greek Cypriots.
Further ceasefires were arranged between the two sides, but also failed. By Christmas Eve, the 24th, Britain, Greece, and Turkey had joined talks, with all sides calling for a truce. On Christmas day, Turkish fighter jets overflew Nicosia in a show of support. Finally it was agreed to allow a force of 2,700 British soldiers to help enforce a ceasefire. In the next days, a "buffer zone" was created in Nicosia, and a British officer marked a line on a map with green ink, separating the two sides of the city, which was the beginning of the "Green Line". Fighting continued across the island for the next several weeks.
In total 364 Turkish Cypriots and 174 Greek Cypriots were killed during the violence. 25,000 Turkish Cypriots from 103-109 villages fled and were displaced into enclaves and thousands of Turkish Cypriot houses were ransacked or completely destroyed.
Contemporary newspapers also reported on the forceful exodus of the Turkish Cypriots from their homes. According to The Times in 1964, threats, shootings and attempts of arson were committed against the Turkish Cypriots to force them out of their homes. The Daily Express wrote that "25,000 Turks have already been forced to leave their homes". The Guardian reported a massacre of Turks at Limassol on 16 February 1964.
Turkey had by now readied its fleet and its fighter jets appeared over Nicosia. Turkey was dissuaded from direct involvement by the creation of a United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) in 1964. Despite the negotiated ceasefire in Nicosia, attacks on the Turkish Cypriot persisted, particularly in Limassol. Concerned about the possibility of a Turkish invasion, Makarios undertook the creation of a Greek Cypriot conscript-based army called the "National Guard". A general from Greece took charge of the army, whilst a further 20,000 well-equipped officers and men were smuggled from Greece into Cyprus. Turkey threatened to intervene once more, but was prevented by a strongly worded letter from the American President Lyndon B. Johnson, anxious to avoid a conflict between NATO allies Greece and Turkey at the height of the Cold War.
Turkish Cypriots had by now established an important bridgehead at Kokkina, provided with arms, volunteers and materials from Turkey and abroad. Seeing this incursion of foreign weapons and troops as a major threat, the Cypriot government invited George Grivas to return from Greece as commander of the Greek troops on the island and launch a major attack on the bridgehead. Turkey retaliated by dispatching its fighter jets to bomb Greek positions, causing Makarios to threaten an attack on every Turkish Cypriot village on the island if the bombings did not cease. The conflict had now drawn in Greece and Turkey, with both countries amassing troops on their Thracian borders. Efforts at mediation by Dean Acheson, a former U.S. Secretary of State, and UN-appointed mediator Galo Plaza had failed, all the while the division of the two communities becoming more apparent. Greek Cypriot forces were estimated at some 30,000, including the National Guard and the large contingent from Greece. Defending the Turkish Cypriot enclaves was a force of approximately 5,000 irregulars, led by a Turkish colonel, but lacking the equipment and organisation of the Greek forces.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1964, U Thant, reported the damage during the conflicts:
UNFICYP carried out a detailed survey of all damage to properties throughout the island during the disturbances; it shows that in 109 villages, most of them Turkish-Cypriot or mixed villages, 527 houses have been destroyed while 2,000 others have suffered damage from looting.
The situation worsened in 1967, when a military junta overthrew the democratically elected government of Greece, and began applying pressure on Makarios to achieve enosis. Makarios, not wishing to become part of a military dictatorship or trigger a Turkish invasion, began to distance himself from the goal of enosis. This caused tensions with the junta in Greece as well as George Grivas in Cyprus. Grivas's control over the National Guard and Greek contingent was seen as a threat to Makarios's position, who now feared a possible coup.[citation needed] The National Guard and Cyprus Police began patrolling the Turkish Cypriot enclaves of Ayios Theodoros and Kophinou, and on November 15 engaged in heavy fighting with the Turkish Cypriots.
By the time of his withdrawal 26 Turkish Cypriots had been killed. Turkey replied with an ultimatum demanding that Grivas be removed from the island, that the troops smuggled from Greece in excess of the limits of the Treaty of Alliance be removed, and that the economic blockades on the Turkish Cypriot enclaves be lifted. Grivas was recalled by the Athens Junta and the 12,000 Greek troops were withdrawn. Makarios now attempted to consolidate his position by reducing the number of National Guard troops, and by creating a paramilitary force loyal to Cypriot independence. In 1968, acknowledging that enosis was now all but impossible, Makarios stated, "A solution by necessity must be sought within the limits of what is feasible which does not always coincide with the limits of what is desirable."
After 1967 tensions between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots subsided. Instead, the main source of tension on the island came from factions within the Greek Cypriot community. Although Makarios had effectively abandoned enosis in favour of an 'attainable solution', many others continued to believe that the only legitimate political aspiration for Greek Cypriots was union with Greece.
On his arrival, Grivas began by establishing a nationalist paramilitary group known as the National Organization of Cypriot Fighters (Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston B or EOKA-B), drawing comparisons with the EOKA struggle for enosis under the British colonial administration of the 1950s.
The military junta in Athens saw Makarios as an obstacle. Makarios's failure to disband the National Guard, whose officer class was dominated by mainland Greeks, had meant the junta had practical control over the Cypriot military establishment, leaving Makarios isolated and a vulnerable target.
During the first Turkish invasion, Turkish troops invaded Cyprus territory on 20 July 1974, invoking its rights under the Treaty of Guarantee. This expansion of Turkish-occupied zone violated International Law as well as the Charter of the United Nations. Turkish troops managed to capture 3% of the island which was accompanied by the burning of the Turkish Cypriot quarter, as well as the raping and killing of women and children. A temporary cease-fire followed which was mitigated by the UN Security Council. Subsequently, the Greek military Junta collapsed on July 23, 1974, and peace talks commenced in which a democratic government was installed. The Resolution 353 was broken after Turkey attacked a second time and managed to get a hold of 37% of Cyprus territory. The Island of Cyprus was appointed a Buffer Zone by the United Nations, which divided the island into two zones through the 'Green Line' and put an end to the Turkish invasion. Although Turkey announced that the occupied areas of Cyprus to be called the Federated Turkish State in 1975, it is not legitimised on a worldwide political scale. The United Nations called for the international recognition of independence for the Republic of Cyprus in the Security Council Resolution 367.
In the years after the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus one can observe a history of failed talks between the two parties. The 1983 declaration of the independent Turkish Republic of Cyprus resulted in a rise of inter-communal tensions and made it increasingly hard to find mutual understanding. With Cyprus' interest of a possible EU membership and a new UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 1997 new hopes arose for a fresh start. International involvement from sides of the US and UK, wanting a solution to the Cyprus dispute prior to the EU accession led to political pressures for new talks. The believe that an accession without a solution would threaten Greek-Turkish relations and acknowledge the partition of the island would direct the coming negotiations.
Over the course of two years a concrete plan, the Annan plan was formulated. In 2004 the fifth version agreed upon from both sides and with the endorsement of Turkey, US, UK and EU then was presented to the public and was given a referendum in both Cypriot communities to assure the legitimisation of the resolution. The Turkish Cypriots voted with 65% for the plan, however the Greek Cypriots voted with a 76% majority against. The Annan plan contained multiple important topics. Firstly it established a confederation of two separate states called the United Cyprus Republic. Both communities would have autonomous states combined under one unified government. The members of parliament would be chosen according to the percentage in population numbers to ensure a just involvement from both communities. The paper proposed a demilitarisation of the island over the next years. Furthermore it agreed upon a number of 45000 Turkish settlers that could remain on the island. These settlers became a very important issue concerning peace talks. Originally the Turkish government encouraged Turks to settle in Cyprus providing transfer and property, to establish a counterpart to the Greek Cypriot population due to their 1 to 5 minority. With the economic situation many Turkish-Cypriot decided to leave the island, however their departure is made up by incoming Turkish settlers leaving the population ratio between Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots stable. However all these points where criticised and as seen in the vote rejected mainly by the Greek Cypriots. These name the dissolution of the „Republic of Cyprus", economic consequences of a reunion and the remaining Turkish settlers as reason. Many claim that the plan was indeed drawing more from Turkish-Cypriot demands then Greek-Cypriot interests. Taking in consideration that the US wanted to keep Turkey as a strategic partner in future Middle Eastern conflicts.
A week after the failed referendum the Republic of Cyprus joined the EU. In multiple instances the EU tried to promote trade with Northern Cyprus but without internationally recognised ports this spiked a grand debate. Both side endure their intention of negotiations, however without the prospect of any new compromises or agreements the UN is unwilling to start the process again. Since 2004 negotiations took place in numbers but without any results, both sides are strongly holding on to their position without an agreeable solution in sight that would suit both parties.
The Louisiana Purchase Historic State Park, located in eastern Arkansas, commemorates the initial point from which the lands acquired through the Louisiana Purchase were subsequently surveyed. The park encompasses 37.5 acres of forested wetlands (specifically a headland swamp), a landform which is regionally in decline due to agricultural development practices that include draining such areas. On the survey point is a 6-foot marker erected in 1926 by the L'Anguille Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1993. The survey marker is situated on what is today the border of Monroe, Lee, and Phillips counties.
On April 30, 1803, negotiators for the United States and the First French Empire, signed the Louisiana Purchase agreement, by which the United States acquired 830,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River, doubling its size.
President James Monroe ordered a survey of the territory in 1815, in order to permit the orderly award of land in the territory to military veterans of the War of 1812. Prospect K. Robbins and Joseph C. Brown were commissioned to identify a starting point for the survey work in what is now eastern Arkansas. The team led by Robbins traveled north from the mouth of the Arkansas River, while that of Brown traveled west from the mouth of the Saint Francis River. On October 27, 1815, Robbins' party crossed the east-west line laid down by Brown's party at this point, formally establishing the Fifth Principal Meridian. The 55 miles of land Robbins traversed is even today some of the most difficult terrain in the state to negotiate. Brown's party traversed 26 miles of land alternately described as "good for farming" and containing "briers and thickets in abundance." Brown's party eventually surveyed as far west as present-day Little Rock, while Robbins continued north to the Missouri River. Two trees near the site were blazed to mark the meeting point of the two survey lines.
Although survey work based on this point continued in subsequent years, covering most of Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, and North and South Dakota, the initial point was forgotten. It was rediscovered in 1921 by surveyors working the line between Phillips and Lee counties, who found the blazed trees. The Marianna, Arkansas chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution began a campaign to memorialize the spot, culminating in the placement of the stone marker and a dedication ceremony on October 27, 1926, the 111th anniversary of the point's establishment.
Information from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Purchase_Historic_State_Park
Commemorating the Council of Constance that took place there between 1414 and 1418, the concrete statue is 9 metres high, weighs 18 tonnes, and stands on a pedestal that rotates around its axis once every four minutes.
Wow, here come some magnificently beautiful horses!
Ruth's Quiz 1, Question 2 of 6 – The Oktoberfest commemorates:
a. a wedding celebration
b. a big beer bash at the Hofbräuhaus
c. the state polka championship
Pferde sind auf der Wiesn immer ein Grund zum Staunen, während der Wiesn sind sie zur Freude der Besucher meist in der Zeit zwischen 11 und 16 Uhr auf dem Festgelände zu bewundern
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Ruth's Quiz 1 Introduction:
I put 1.7% of my 1388 captures into 4 mini-theme quiz albums. I hope you respond to them and to my Octoberfest Quizzes!
Award to each Quiz Question first right answer!
The Octoberfest is the largest party in the world, a mixture of folklore, festivities, and frivolity. Munich, one of the 10 best towns to party in, attracts more than 70 million visitors a year. [If you plan to go to the Octoberfest next year, bring plenty of cash: public transportation, pretzel, dinner + 2 beers cost ± $60, and accommodations around Munich are at a premium, too.]
Octoberfest! What does that mean to you? German food and beer? Singing? Dancing? Festivities? Yes! All this and more...
At what kind of celebrations do you find such fun as this? How about weddings! By participating on this page you help continue the celebration of a wedding that took place about 200 years ago in Munich, new capital of the kingdom of Bavaria. At that time there was not yet a country of Germany but there was already a German language, Deutsch.
German is a sister language to English and our words and grammar are related. By the way – ask a German – Americans don’t speak English, we speak American. Anyone in England can confirm that quickly. Who can trace a language to a single person? It is impossible for most languages but not German.
Dr. Martin Luther, Father of the German language, translated the Bible, the Old Testament from the original Hebrew and also the Greek New Testament, into his native vernacular. Luther’s was not the first German Bible, but he wrote it down how the people of his day talked, putting beautifully the way people said and understood things; it was readable as well, worded it so superbly, people pretty much talk the same way 500 years later, the standard German adhered to today.
Before Luther, there were just dialects. A person from one village or city could understand someone from the next one, but with increasingly difficulty understand people from places further away. At time of Luther (1483-1546), when Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492, you didn’t just get in your car and drive to your next destination, or hop a flight over across the country. You walked, or rode by horse and wagon or something like that. Maybe you just never even left at all.
Luther came on the scene the same time as Gutenberg and his double invention of printing and movable type dynamically changed the world. As far north and south and east and west as people could read Luther’s Bible, people of that area speak German today. In a nutshell, that’s how German came to be spoken some 300 years later, when Bavarian church steeple and clock (Glocke) tower bells rang out calling one and all then to attend a royal marriage ceremony celebration in a Munich meadow.
The citizenry was invited to the sovereign celebration finishing with a horse race on the village green just outside the city, a meadow (Wiese) named in honor of Princess Therese, married October 12th, 1810 to the crown prince of Bavaria, who later became Louis I. The grandiose entertainment was so much fun and such a winner that the decision to expand this enormously popular attraction the next year gave rise to the Octoberfest tradition we see continued in the biggest way today, without people even having the slightest idea what the celebration was all about. Hey, some folks treat Christmas the same way...
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Munich, Germany – 2019SEP22 Octoberfest Costume Parade:
A million people and I went to the Munich Octoberfest today! If that number isn't exact, it's close! My friends Andrea and Paul with their dog Paulo, & I, all decked out in traditional attire, parked ourselves amongst the crowd enthusiastically waving at 9,000 participants of the world's largest costume parade, arriving well before it started (instead of taking an arrival nap, instead I went straight out). Indeed, most of the crew went to the Octoberfest – world's most crowded piece of real estate – and all had a good time. Yes, this surely was a marvelous trip! Hope you enjoy my quizzes! I invite you to check out what you know about the Oktoberfest, Munich, Bavaria, & Germany!
Republica Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina
"This spomenik at Tjentište commemorates the fighters and fallen soldiers of the Battle of the Sutjeska, which took place from May 15th to June 16th, 1943. In this battle, 22,000 Yugoslav Partisans fought back an offensive against 127,000 Axis Italian-German-Bulgarian soldiers in the valley of the Sutjeska River (in what is now Sutjeska National Park), near the small village of Tjentište. The Axis objective was to box-in Yugoslavian forces in the Sutjeska, while disabling and capturing their leadership. During the battle, over 7,000 Partisan soldiers were killed, however, despite these great losses, Partisans were victorious in repelling the offensive and escaping. This victory is considered a significant pivotal moment is the Partisan Liberation Struggle against the German-Italian Axis occupiers. Furthermore, the legacy of this victory became a key component in the formation of the Yugoslavian post-war identity and mythology, as it was a demonstration of how the 'righteous cause' and 'moral firmness' of the Partisan's patriotic dedication, even in the face of overwhelming odds, were enough to challenge and subvert any opposing forces."
www.facebook.com/groups/884438252772357/
Commemorating Juneteenth
Narrator: Khalilah Hambleton
Artist: Chioma Namiboo
"I remember hearing the birds first. They rose up from the marshes over to the East; the
wide wings of the cranes flapping as they went overhead. The smaller geese lifted in
the air and red head herrings. It was a beautiful spectacle really. It happened often
enough to not cause a curious head to raise. More riders bringing the wagons that
would load the cotton and behind that the men sitting high up on their mounts looking
menacingly at the Afrikaans and Negro faces. Menace and mean; raw hate.
Combinations that spelled Terror so we didn’t look up at them. Heads stayed bent
working the fields unmindful of the presence. Today was different.
The long parade came into view with a flag flying. I didn’t recognize this flag though
I had seen it’s colors in other flags. The men did sit high as well and their uniform was
a color I had not seen before either. A precious Blue with the gold buttons down the
chest. The head man passed and nodded to the bewildered eyes that looked up from
their obligations. I saw them move on. Some jotting pass hurriedly flanking the field
and making a fence around us. The same Terror rose up in us even though we did not
know why. The faces were not the faces of what we had seen before but the weapons
were the same; big guns and sticks with blades. The men pulled the women and
children in and made a circle of false protection around us. Today we would all die
here together. The men, fathers, husbands and brothers, and the rest of kin's people
would succumb to the dominance of these peoples. We believed that death was
freedom that some had remembered, others had chose to forget and most had never
known.
The elder from among us stood apart and looked at the face that looked down at him.
The soldier with his blue uniform on came down from his horse. He approached as
others along with him dismounted from the horses. Their faces were different and his
words were even and strong. “Today you are ‘emancipated’. Today you are a ‘free’
people. The President Abraham Lincoln signed his name to a paper making all the
Afrikaners and Negros free.”
The evening was full of talk, laughter and celebration; the newness of freedom
surging like the full birth of new life. We recited this date over and over again.
Children’s voices rising in unison the made up songs unrehearsed. Today is June 19,
1865. A celebration of freedom deferred. A celebration of freedom of life.
We had believed that death was freedom that some had remembered, others had chose
to forget and most had never known."
Commemorating the opening battle in the American Revolutionary War.
"By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world."
Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882
The Abu Simbel temples are two massive rock temples at Abu Simbel (أبو سمبل in Arabic), a village in Nubia, southern Egypt, near the border with Sudan. They are situated on the western bank of Lake Nasser, about 230 km southwest of Aswan (about 300 km by road). The complex is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site known as the "Nubian Monuments," which run from Abu Simbel downriver to Philae (near Aswan). The twin temples were originally carved out of the mountainside during the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses II in the 13th century BC, as a lasting monument to himself and his queen Nefertari, to commemorate his victory at the Battle of Kadesh. Their huge external rock relief figures have become iconic.
The complex was relocated in its entirety in 1968, on an artificial hill made from a domed structure, high above the Aswan High Dam reservoir. The relocation of the temples was necessary to prevent them from being submerged during the creation of Lake Nasser, the massive artificial water reservoir formed after the building of the Aswan High Dam on the Nile River.
I found reading the story of Sadako and also the thousands of children who have died in conflicts since the second world war very moving. It is so sad that so many innocent people are still dying.
As this week commemorates the 40-year anniversary of the Apollo 13 drama, several interesting mementos from the astronauts’ personal collections came up for auction.
This is one of the goodies that I just won, in this case from the personal collection of Fred Haise, the Apollo 13 Lunar Module Pilot (LMP).
It is the control display that flew around the moon and back on Lunar Module Aquarius, with annotations in red by Fred Haise and signed and inscribed by LMP Haise and Commander James Lovell.
In an accompanying letter, Haise writes:
“I made about a dozen notations in red ink to provide a quick glance reference of details on the LM systems. For instance, I numbered which exact batteries the 'Feed Tie' circuit breakers were tied to – 'Bats 3,4,6' on panel 11 and 'Bats 1,2,5' on panel 16 plus the 'AH' (Amp Hours) available from the Descent Stage and Ascent Stage batteries. These and the other notes turned out to be very useful during our emergency situation during the Apollo 13 flight since all power was being supplied by the Lunar Module after the explosion.”
Not only was power control essential, the LM flight controls had to be used in an entirely new manner. Since the explosion took out the main oxygen tanks, they improvised and used the Lunar Module Descent Engine (LMDE) DPS engine — the engine from the lunar lander, designed to slow the LM’s decent to the moon — to instead push the crippled Command Module and essential Earth reentry capsule in an untested manner, like a rear-engine locomotive.
This 28”-wide page was the only single full-sheet diagram of the Apollo 13 Lunar Module's display and control devices carried on the mission, with over 100 switches, knobs, and meters illustrated.
On approach to the moon, debate ensued on what type of burn to use to get the Apollo 13 lifeboat to loop around the moon and back to Earth. To preserve options and later course corrections, they decided to start with a partial burn to orient the craft in the general direction of an Earth-return path.
“Finally, at 2:43 in the morning [40 years ago, today], Lovell pushed the ignition button and the DPS engine ran at low throttle for thirty seconds, putting the spacecraft into a trajectory that, even without a second burn, would bring it down in the Indian Ocean not quite four days later. Lovell was relieved. He wasn’t completely confident that the burn provided them with a survivable entry [angle], but at least the spacecraft would intercept the Earth’s atmosphere. In his mind, this was much better than the alternative that had just been avoided — orbiting the Earth indefinitely, in a lonely revolution with an apogee of 240,000 miles and a perigee of 3,000 miles, a ‘perpetual monument to the space program.’” (Apollo, p.410)
To commemorate the two thousandth anniversary of the death of the Emperor Augustus, the Grand Palais, Paris brings to life his greatest achievements and the artistic ferment of his reign.
Images of the emperor can be found all over Rome and through out the provinces.
A selection of statues , sculpted reliefs, frescoes, pieces of furniture and silverware, along with a reconstruction of a villa from the slopes of Vesuvius and tombs uncovered in Gaul reveal the changes in the social environment of the Romans.
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All the photos on this gallery are protected by the international laws of copyright and they are not for being used on any site, blog or forum, transmitted or manipulated without the explicit written permission of the author. Thank you in advance
Please view my most interesting photos on flickriver stream: www.flickriver.com/photos/ioan_bacivarov/
Many thanks for yours visits and comments.
This year the Veteran Car Run commemorated 120 years of the event which first took place on the 14th November 1896. It celebrated the passing into law of the Locomotives on the Highways Act which raised the speed limit for 'light locomotives' from 4 to 14 mph and abolished the requirement for these vehicles to be preceded by a man on foot.
The exoctic building in the background of the image is Brighton or Royal Pavilion. It was built as a seaside retreat for George, Prince of Wales, who became Prince Regent in 1811. Work on the building was in three stages, starting in 1787 and completing in 1823. After the last royal visit of Queen Victoria in 1845, the Government planned to sell the building and grounds but were successfully petitioned by the Brighton Commissioners and the Brighton Vestry to sell the Pavilion to the town for £53,000 in 1850.
The white marquee that stands between the pavilion and the road is home to the pavilions Christmas Ice Rink which first came to the town in 2010. It is quite beautiful at night when the pavilion is lit in an ever changing array of colours from blue to mauve to pink which lights up and reflects on the ice rink. Unfortunately the veteran cars only come through in daylight so I couldn't show the pavilion lit up.
Hyde Park, Sydney, Australia
A statue commemorates Governor Lachlan Macquarie's part in founding and shaping Sydney.
Lachlan Macquarie was a British military officer and colonial administrator. He served as the last autocratic Governor of New South Wales, Australia from 1810 to 1821 and had a leading role in the social, economic and architectural development of the colony.
He is considered by some historians to have had a crucial influence on the transition of New South Wales from a penal colony to a free settlement and therefore to have played a major role in the shaping of Australian society in the early nineteenth century. An inscription on his tomb in Scotland describes him as "The Father of Australia".
This Statue Was Commissioned By The N.S.W. Government And Unveiled By Her Excellency Professor Marie Bashir AC CVO Governor Of N.S.W., on 31 January 2013
Macquarie, on 11 February 1810, formally reserved Hyde Park as open space, the first public park set aside in Australia.
119 pictures in 2019/86 Rise and shine
commemorating the Paris rebellion of 1848. Holdouts were pushed back against a wall and shot..the faces represent real people who were killed.
EXPLORED
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To commemorate Ferrari's victory in the Formula 1 Constructor's World Championship 2008, Ferrari unveiled Scuderia Spider 16M at World Finals in Mugello. It is a convertible version of the 430 Scuderia.
Engine is rated 510 PS (503 hp/375 kW) at 8500 rpm and 470 N·m (347 lb·ft) torque at 5250 rpm. The car has 1,340 kg (2,954 lb) dry weight (80kg lighter than F430 Spider) and 1,440 kg (3,175 lb) kerb weight. It accelerates from 0-100 km/h (62 mph) in 3.7 seconds, with top speed of 315 km/h (196 mph).
499 vehicles are to be released beginning early 2009.
Commemorating the raising of the survivors' pole, Pigeon Park, Hastings St., Downtown Eastside, Vancouver, BC
Eduard van der Nüll: The Vienna State Opera commemorates the 200th birthday of its architect. Once he was driven to death.
Carmen is stabbed, Tosca jumps to her death and the Bajazzo murders his wife and rival. Much worse - because really true - is the fate of the two men who have built Vienna's State Opera, in which these masterpieces are performed: Eduard van der Nüll hanged himself after the building on the Ring Road had been fiercly criticized, and his partner, August Sicard of Sicardsburg a few weeks later died of a heart attack. The two architects literally perished in the construction of the Vienna Opera House.
The opera was still under construction, as the Viennese already mocked in rhyming form the various architectural epochs summarized here: Sicardsburg and van der Nüll, both have no style, Greek, Gothic, Renaissance, that's all the same to them!
In newspaper reports, the opera was referred to as "Königgrätz of the architecture", which was then, a few years after the most momentous military defeat of the monarchy, a special humiliation. The architects were even more annoyed by the commentary of Emperor Franz Joseph, who called the Hofoper a "sunken box".
Bad planning
In fact, the level of the track of the Opera Ring was one meter higher than the archways of the still unfinished structure. However, Sicardsburg and van der Nüll were not able to do anything. Instead, a misplaced planning by the Hofbauamt (Vienna Court Building Department) meant that the carriageway was laid higher than planned. However, it was clear to the public that the architects of the opera were responsible for the structural catastrophe. The 56-year-old van der Nüll was able to withstand the hostility towards him from all parts of society. He hanged himself on 4 April 1868 in his apartment in Windmühl alley (6th district of Vienna). Two months later, after a heart failure, Sicardsburg collapsed dead over his drawing table. He could not get over the suicide of his friend.
The two architects have been inseparable since their studies at the Vienna Academy of Arts, they had a joint studio and were also closely associated privately. In Internet forums they are referred to as a gay couple, there are guides through the "Gay Vienna", which point to the buildings of Sicardsburg and van der Nülls.
Pregnant
However, van der Nüll had married a year before his death, which gives the suicide another dramatic touch: his wife Maria was in the eighth month pregnant when she found the body of her husband in her apartment. In the Vienna City and State Archives is the estate of van der Nülls, whose letters bear witness to deep love to his wife. "For your loving affection, may God reward you, I can find no words for the recognition that is preserved in my heart," he wrote shortly before his death to her.
Whether the hostility against him and his partner was the sole cause of the tragedy is unclear. It is clear that both were ill: If van der Nüll's suicide in the forensic expert's report with "mental confusion" is explained, this is probably due to the fact that him should be made possible a church funeral. However, the death certificate also shows pulmonary edema. All in all, the illness, the strain of opera building and the public attacks could have led to suicide. And Sicardsburg had been suffering from a long-term illness.
Eduard van der Nüll was - despite the Dutch-sounding name - a genuine Vienna man. Born the illegitimate son of an officer, he grew up modest after the early death of his parents after his guardian had misappropriated most of his family fortune.
Founder time
Just as he and Sicardsburg had completed their study of architecture, Vienna's urban expansion was decided upon, which resulted in an unprecedented building activity. The soon-to-be-prominent architectural duo received numerous contracts in the early days, before he was entrusted with the planning of the six million gulden (= around € 70 million today) expensive Court opera. It was to be the highlight of their work. And became a deadly burden.
On May 25, 1869, about a year after van der Nüll and Sicardsburg's death, the opera was opened in the presence of Emperor Franz Joseph with a festive performance of Mozart's "Don Giovanni". Meanwhile, the level of the roadway had been adapted to the building and the Viennese were enthusiastic about the new magnificent building on the ring road. No one could understand why polemic against the late architects was once so violent.
Least of all Emperor Franz Joseph, who was so shaken by the tragic events surrounding the construction of the opera that he avoided ever again publicly announcing his personal opinion. The now used by him, made famous as meaningless as uncritical phrase "It was very beautiful, I was very happy," is the direct result of the drama to the two architects.
Symbol
Today, the Staatsoper is the landmark and most important symbol of the music metropolis Vienna. Opera director Dominique Meyer appreciates the contribution made by the two creators of the house: on January 9, Eduard van der Nüll's 200th birthday, he lays down a wreath at the architect's honorary grave at Vienna's Central Cemetery
The architects: They built Vienna's opera
Eduard van der Nüll. Born on January 9, 1812 in Vienna as the illegitimate son of Field Marshal von Welden. While studying architecture at the Vienna Art Academy, he met his future partner, August Sicard von Sicardsburg, with whom he founded an architectural office after a three-year joint study tour through Europe. Eduard van der Nüll took his life on April 4, 1868.
August von Sicardsburg. Born on December 6, 1813 in Budapest. Coined the architecture of Viennese Historicism of the Wilhelminian era with van der Nüll. Common buildings: Sophienbad (bath), Carltheater, Arsenal, Haas house on Saint Stephen's square, several noble palais and the Vienna Opera. Sicardsburg died on June 11, 1868 in Weidling near Vienna, only two months after the suicide of his partner.
Eduard van der Nüll: Die Wiener Staatsoper gedenkt des 200. Geburtstags ihres Architekten. Einst wurde er in den Tod getrieben.
Carmen wird erstochen, Tosca springt in den Tod und der Bajazzo ermordet seine Frau samt Nebenbuhler. Viel schlimmer noch – weil wirklich wahr – ist das Schicksal der beiden Männer, die Wiens Staatsoper, in der diese Meisterwerke aufgeführt werden, gebaut haben: Eduard van der Nüll erhängte sich, nachdem man den Prunkbau an der Ringstraße heftig kritisiert hatte, und sein Partner August Sicard von Sicardsburg erlag wenige Wochen danach einem Herzschlag. Die beiden Architekten sind an der Errichtung des Wiener Opernhauses buchstäblich zugrunde gegangen.
Die Oper stand noch im Rohbau, da spotteten die Wiener bereits in Reimform über die verschiedenen hier zusammengefassten Architektur-Epochen: Sicardsburg und van der Nüll, die haben beide keinen Styl, griechisch, gotisch, Renaissance, das is denen alles ans!
In Zeitungsberichten wurde die Oper als „Königgrätz der Baukunst“ bezeichnet, was damals, wenige Jahre nach der folgenschwersten militärischen Niederlage der Monarchie, eine besondere Demütigung war. Als noch ärger empfanden die Architekten den Kommentar Kaiser Franz Josephs, der die Hofoper eine „versunkene Kiste“ nannte.
Fehlplanung
Tatsächlich war das Niveau der Fahrbahn des Opernrings um einen Meter höher als die Torbögen des noch unfertigen Bauwerks. Doch dafür konnten Sicardsburg und van der Nüll nichts, vielmehr hatte eine Fehlplanung des Hofbauamtes dazu geführt, dass die Fahrbahn höher als vorgesehen angelegt wurde. Für die Öffentlichkeit stand aber fest, dass die Architekten der Oper die bauliche Katastrophe zu verantworten hätten. Der 56-jährige van der Nüll war den gegen ihn aus allen Kreisen der Gesellschaft gerichteten Anfeindungen nicht gewachsen. Er erhängte sich am 4. April 1868 in seiner Wohnung in der Windmühlgasse. Zwei Monate später brach Sicardsburg nach einem Herzschlag über seinem Zeichentisch tot zusammen. Er konnte den Selbstmord des Freundes nicht verwinden.
Die beiden Architekten waren seit ihrer Studienzeit an der Wiener Kunstakademie unzertrennlich, sie hatten ein gemeinsames Atelier und waren auch privat eng verbunden. In Internetforen werden sie als homosexuelles Paar bezeichnet, es gibt Reiseführer durch das „Schwule Wien“, die auf die Bauten Sicardsburgs und van der Nülls hinweisen.
Schwanger
Allerdings hatte van der Nüll ein Jahr vor seinem Tod geheiratet, was dem Selbstmord eine weitere dramatische Note verleiht: Seine Frau Maria war, als sie die Leiche ihres Mannes in ihrer Wohnung fand, im achten Monat schwanger. Im Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv liegt der Nachlass van der Nülls, dessen Briefe an seine Frau von tiefer Liebe zeugen. „Für Deine liebende Zuneigung möge Gott Dich belohnen, ich finde keine Worte für die Anerkennung, die in meinem Herzen dafür bewahrt ist“, schrieb er ihr noch kurz vor seinem Tod.
Ob die Anfeindungen gegen ihn und seinen Kompagnon der alleinige Grund für die Tragödie waren, ist unklar. Fest steht, dass beide krank waren: Wenn van der Nülls Selbstmord im gerichtsmedizinischen Gutachten mit „geistiger Verwirrung“ erklärt wird, ist das wohl darauf zurückzuführen, dass ihm ein kirchliches Begräbnis ermöglicht werden sollte. Allerdings zeigt das Totenbeschauprotokoll auch ein Lungenödem auf. Alles in allem könnten die Krankheit, die Belastung durch den Opernbau und die Angriffe in der Öffentlichkeit zum Freitod geführt haben. Und Sicardsburg war seit längerem herzleidend.
Eduard van der Nüll war – trotz des holländisch klingenden Namens – ein waschechter Wiener. Als unehelicher Sohn eines Offiziers zur Welt gekommen, wuchs er nach dem frühen Tod der Eltern in bescheidenen Verhältnissen auf, nachdem sein Vormund den Großteil des Familienvermögens veruntreut hatte.
Gründerzeit
Gerade als er und Sicardsburg ihr Architekturstudium beendet hatten, wurde Wiens Stadterweiterung beschlossen, die eine nie dagewesene Bautätigkeit zur Folge hatte. Das bald prominente Architektenduo erhielt in der Gründerzeit zahlreiche Aufträge, ehe ihm die Planung der sechs Millionen Gulden (= heute rund 70 Millionen €) teuren Hofoper anvertraut wurde. Sie sollte zum Höhepunkt ihres Schaffens werden. Und wurde zur tödlichen Belastung.
Am 25. Mai 1869, rund ein Jahr nach van der Nülls und Sicardsburgs Tod, wurde die Oper in Anwesenheit Kaiser Franz Josephs mit einer Festvorstellung von Mozarts „Don Giovanni“ eröffnet. Mittlerweile war das Niveau der Fahrbahn dem Gebäude angeglichen worden und die Wiener waren von dem neuen Prunkbau an der Ringstraße hellauf begeistert. Niemand konnte verstehen, warum gegen die verstorbenen Architekten einst so heftig polemisiert wurde.
Am allerwenigsten Kaiser Franz Joseph, den die tragischen Ereignisse um den Bau der Oper dermaßen erschütterten, dass er es vermied, je wieder öffentlich seine persönliche Meinung kundzutun. Die von ihm ab jetzt verwendete, berühmt gewordene, ebenso nichtssagende wie kritiklose Floskel „Es war sehr schön, es hat mich sehr gefreut“, ist die direkte Folge des Dramas um die beiden Architekten.
Symbol
Heute ist die Staatsoper Wahrzeichen und wichtigstes Symbol der Musikmetropole Wien. Operndirektor Dominique Meyer weiß den Anteil der beiden Schöpfer des Hauses zu schätzen: Er lässt am 9. Jänner, Eduard van der Nülls 200. Geburtstag, am Ehrengrab des Architekten am Wiener Zentralfriedhof einen Kranz niederlege
Die Architekten: Sie bauten Wiens Oper
Eduard van der Nüll Geboren am 9. Jänner 1812 in Wien als unehelicher Sohn des Feldmarschalls von Welden. Lernte während des Architekturstudiums an der Wiener Kunstakademie seinen späteren Partner August Sicard von Sicardsburg kennen, mit dem er nach einer dreijährigen gemeinsamen Studienreise durch Europa ein Architekturbüro gründete. Eduard van der Nüll nahm sich am 4. April 1868 das Leben.
August von Sicardsburg Geboren am 6. Dezember 1813 in Budapest. Prägte mit van der Nüll die Baukunst des Wiener Historismus der Gründerzeit. Gemeinsame Bauten: Sophienbad, Carltheater, Arsenal, Haashaus am Stephansplatz, mehrere Adelspalais und die Wiener Oper. Sicardsburg starb am 11. Juni 1868 in Weidling bei Wien, nur zwei Monate nach dem Selbstmord seines Partners.
In 1911, to commemorate the Coronation of King George V and Queen Mary, the Central London Railway issued a lavish publication showing 'Views of London' that were associated with stations on the line that had originally opened in 1900. The text is in gold ink and there are many watercolour sketches, of stations or adjacent sights, mostly signed by Savile Lumley.
The line extended from Bank (the extension to Liverpool Street finally nearing completion for opening in 1912) westwards under The City and Oxford Street to its original terminus at Shepherd's Bush as well as the short extension, mostly over the original depot link lines, to Wood Lane station for the Exhibition Grounds there. The line was, for many years, known as the 'Tu'penny Tube' thanks to a flat fare of 2d and ran on what was to be non-standard third rail electrification. The original locomotive hauled cars had long since been replaced thanks to their unsatisfactory performance with regards to vibration, and the stock amended to form multiple units.
The CLR was generally well patronised thanks to connections through The City and the burgeoning retail centres of the West End and Oxford Street. In 1912 it was acquired by the increasingly dominant Underground Electric Railways of London Group that also acquired the independent City & South London Railway that year to join the Underground Group's three tube lines (the Bakerloo, Piccadilly and Charing Cross lines) and the London General Omnibus Company. The CLR went on to become the core of the Central line with major extensions planned in the 1930s and delivered in the following decade.
Shepherd's Bush station was, until 1908, the terminus of the line and it was a major interchange with the electric tramways of the London United system whose cars can be seen here. This formed an early example of integrated transport with through tram-train tickets issued for many years thus allowing the extensive tram network that ran to this point to act as a feeder for large areas of west London with connections to the West End and City by tube. The single storey structure was typical of those on the line and had been designed by architect Harry Bell Measures. This building survived for over a century until it was demolished and replaced by a new ticket hall as part of the adjacent Westfield scheme.
In 1911, to commemorate the Coronation of King George V and Queen Mary, the Central London Railway issued a lavish publication showing 'Views of London' that were associated with stations on the line that had originally opened in 1900. The text is in gold ink and there are many watercolour sketches, of stations or adjacent sights, mostly signed by Savile Lumley.
The line extended from Bank (the extension to Liverpool Street finally nearing completion for opening in 1912) westwards under The City and Oxford Street to its original terminus at Shepherd's Bush as well as the short extension, mostly over the original depot link lines, to Wood Lane station for the Exhibition Grounds there. The line was, for many years, known as the 'Tu'penny Tube' thanks to a flat fare of 2d and ran on what was to be non-standard third rail electrification. The original locomotive hauled cars had long since been replaced thanks to their unsatisfactory performance with regards to vibration, and the stock amended to form multiple units.
The CLR was generally well patronised thanks to connections through The City and the burgeoning retail centres of the West End and Oxford Street. In 1912 it was acquired by the increasingly dominant Underground Electric Railways of London Group that also acquired the independent City & South London Railway that year to join the Underground Group's three tube lines (the Bakerloo, Piccadilly and Charing Cross lines) and the London General Omnibus Company. The CLR went on to become the core of the Central line with major extensions planned in the 1930s and delivered in the following decade.
A fine view of the White City Exhibition Grounds here; the Central London was extended a short distance west in 1908 with the tube tunnels riisng to a surface station at Wood Lane to serve this grand scheme. As well as the Grounds the Exhibition Centre's buildings themselves ran south to Shepherd's Bush station - all was razed and subsumed into the massive Westfield scheme that saw the reconstruction of the Central line's Depot here. As the text notes the White City had seen a series of themed exhibitions such as the 1909 Imperial International Exhibition that was followed by the 1910 British-Japanese Exhibition. In 1911 it was a 'Coronation' theme. In time the Grounds hosted various uses such as the White City Stadium and much of the area latterly formed part of the site of the old BBC TV Centre.
Christmas is an annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people around the world. A feast central to the Christian liturgical year, it is preceded by the season of Advent or the Nativity Fast and initiates the season of Christmastide, which historically in the West lasts twelve days and culminates on Twelfth Night. Christmas Day is a public holiday in many countries, is celebrated religiously by a majority of Christians, as well as culturally by many non-Christians, and forms an integral part of the holiday season organized around it.
The traditional Christmas narrative recounted in the New Testament, known as the Nativity of Jesus, says that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, in accordance with messianic prophecies. When Joseph and Mary arrived in the city, the inn had no room and so they were offered a stable where the Christ Child was soon born, with angels proclaiming this news to shepherds who then spread the word.
There are different hypotheses regarding the date of Jesus' birth and in the early fourth century, the church fixed the date as December 25. This corresponds to the traditional date of the winter solstice on the Roman calendar. It is exactly nine months after Annunciation on March 25, also the date of the spring equinox. Most Christians celebrate on December 25 in the Gregorian calendar, which has been adopted almost universally in the civil calendars used in countries throughout the world. However, part of the Eastern Christian Churches celebrate Christmas on December 25 of the older Julian calendar, which currently corresponds to January 7 in the Gregorian calendar. For Christians, believing that God came into the world in the form of man to atone for the sins of humanity, rather than knowing Jesus' exact birth date, is considered to be the primary purpose in celebrating Christmas.
The celebratory customs associated in various countries with Christmas have a mix of pre-Christian, Christian, and secular themes and origins. Popular modern customs of the holiday include gift giving; completing an Advent calendar or Advent wreath; Christmas music and caroling; viewing a Nativity play; an exchange of Christmas cards; church services; a special meal; and the display of various Christmas decorations, including Christmas trees, Christmas lights, nativity scenes, garlands, wreaths, mistletoe, and holly. In addition, several closely related and often interchangeable figures, known as Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas, and Christkind, are associated with bringing gifts to children during the Christmas season and have their own body of traditions and lore.Because gift-giving and many other aspects of the Christmas festival involve heightened economic activity, the holiday has become a significant event and a key sales period for retailers and businesses. Over the past few centuries, Christmas has had a steadily growing economic effect in many regions of the world.
"The memorial commemorates the sacrifices of the 5.8 million Americans who served in the U.S. armed services during the three-year period of the Korean War. The War was one of the most hard fought in our history. During its relatively short duration from June 25, 1950 to July 27, 1953, 36,574 Americans died in hostile actions in the Korean War theater. Of these, 8,200 are listed as missing in action or lost or buried at sea. In addition, 103,284 were wounded during the conflict."
"The 19 stainless steel statues were sculpted by Frank Gaylord of Barre, VT and cast by Tallix Foundries of Beacon, NY. They are approximately seven feet tall and represent an ethnic cross section of America. The advance party has 14 Army, 3 Marine, 1 Navy and 1 Air Force members. The statues stand in patches of Juniper bushes and are separated by polished granite strips, which give a semblance of order and symbolize the rice paddies of Korea. The troops wear ponchos covering their weapons and equipment. The ponchos seem to blow in the cold winds of Korea." koreanwarvetsmemorial.org
"Officially established in 1965, National Mall and Memorial Parks contains some of the oldest protected park lands in the National Park Service. The areas within National Mall & Memorial Parks provides visitors with ample opportunities to commemorate presidential legacies; honor the courage and sacrifice of war veterans; celebrate the United States commitment to freedom and equality."
"This historic expanse is the linear area between the Potomac River and Capitol Reflecting Pool. In addition to the memorial core, the park includes Ford's Theatre, The House where Lincoln died, Potomac Park, Hains Point and Pennsylvania Avenue.
Commemorating Constantine the Great's 10 year reign (306 - 337) and victory at the Battle of Milvian Bridge in AD 312.
The Buxton Memorial Fountain is a memorial and drinking fountain in London, the United Kingdom, that commemorates the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire in 1834, and in particular, the role of British parliamentarians in the abolition campaign.
It was commissioned by Charles Buxton MP, and was dedicated to his father Thomas Fowell Buxton along with William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Henry Brougham and Stephen Lushington, all of whom were involved in the abolition. It was designed by Charles Buxton, who was himself an amateur architect, in collaboration with the neo-Gothic architect Samuel Sanders Teulon (1812–1873) in 1865. It coincided with the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which effectively ended slavery in the United States. The memorial was completed in February 1866.
It was originally constructed in Parliament Square, erected at a cost of £1,200. As part of the postwar redesign of the square it was removed in 1949 and not reinstated in its present position in Victoria Tower Gardens until 1957. There were eight decorative figures of British rulers on it, but four were stolen in 1960 and four in 1971. They were replaced by fibreglass figures in 1980. By 2005 these were missing, and the fountain was no longer working. Between autumn 2006 and February 2007 restoration works were carried out. The restored fountain was unveiled on 27 March 2007 as part of the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the act to abolish the slave trade.
A memorial plaque commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Anti-Slavery Society was added in 1989.
Description
The base is octagonal, about twelve feet in diameter, having open arches on the eight sides, supported on clustered shafts of polished Devonshire marble around a large central shaft, with four massive granite basins. Surmounting the pinnacles at the angles of the octagon are eight figures of bronze, representing the different rulers of England; the Britons represented by Caractacus, the Romans by Constantine, the Danes by Canute, the Saxons by Alfred, the Normans by William the Conqueror, and so on, ending with Queen Victoria. The fountain bears an inscription to the effect that it is "intended as a memorial of those members of Parliament who, with Mr. Wilberforce, advocated the abolition of the British slave-trade, achieved in 1807; and of those members of Parliament who, with Sir T. Fowell Buxton, advocated the emancipation of the slaves throughout the British dominions, achieved in 1834. It was designed and built by Mr. Charles Buxton, M.P., in 1865, the year of the final extinction of the slave-trade and of the abolition of slavery in the United States."
Charles Buxton (18 November 1822 – 10 August 1871) was an English brewer, philanthropist, writer and member of Parliament.
Personal life and architectural legacy
Buxton was born on 18 November 1822 in Cromer, Norfolk, the third son of Sir Thomas Buxton, 1st Baronet, a notable brewer, MP and social reformer, and followed in his father's footsteps, becoming a partner in the brewery of Truman, Hanbury, Buxton, & Co in Brick Lane, Spitalfields, London, and then an MP. He served as Liberal MP for Newport, Isle of Wight (1857–1859), Maidstone (1859–1865) and East Surrey (1865–1871). His son Sydney Buxton was also an MP and governor of South Africa.
On 7 February 1850, he married Emily Mary Holland, the eldest daughter of physician Henry Holland (physician to Queen Victoria and later president of the Royal Institution).
Around 1850, he commissioned construction of a small detached, but ornate, house, Foxholm (Grade II-listed architecturally) on Redhill Road, then in Wisley but now in Cobham, for the Chaplain to Queen Victoria.
On 4 May 1860 he was commissioned Lieutenant in the part-time 3rd (Truman, Hanbury, Buxton) Tower Hamlets Rifle Volunteer Corps raised by his nephew Sir Fowell Buxton, 3rd Baronet from employees of the family brewery. The unit became part of the 1st Administrative Battalion, Tower Hamlets Rifle Volunteer Corps in which Charles Buxton became Major and then Lieutenant-Colonel on 1 June 1861. He left the unit in the later 1860s but was appointed Honorary Colonel of the 1st (Poplar) Tower Hamlets Artillery Volunteer Corps on 15 August 1870.
In 1860 he had his own house, Foxwarren Park, built on the neighbouring estate between a golf course and the Site of Special Scientific Interest which is Ockham and Wisley Commons. It is a Grade II* listed building. The building is stark Neo-Gothic: polychrome brickwork, red with blue diapering, and terracotta dressings, renewed plain-tiled roofs with crow-stepped gables.
He died on 10 August 1871. His probate was sworn in 1871 in a broad bracket of "under £250,000 (equivalent to about £24,800,000 in 2021)".
His younger son was first and last Earl Buxton: Sydney Buxton, 1st Earl Buxton.
Anti-slavery parliamentary campaigners' memorial fountain
Following his father's death, Buxton commissioned architect Samuel Sanders Teulon to design the Buxton Memorial Fountain to commemorate his father's role, with others, in the abolition of slavery. The fountain was initially erected in Parliament Square but was later moved to its current position in Victoria Tower Gardens, Westminster. It carries the dedication:
Erected in 1865 by Charles Buxton MP in commemoration of the emancipation of slaves 1834 and in memory of his father, Sir T Fowell Buxton, and those associated with him: Wilberforce, Clarkson, Macaulay, Brougham, Dr Lushington and others.
Published works
He produced Memoirs of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, Baronet, with Selections from his Correspondence, first published in 1848. He later wrote a history, Slavery and Freedom in the British West Indies, published in 1860.
Samuel Sanders Teulon (2 March 1812 – 2 May 1873) was an English Gothic Revival architect, noted for his use of polychrome brickwork and the complex planning of his buildings.
Family
Teulon was born in 1812 in Greenwich, Kent, the son of a cabinet-maker from a French Huguenot family. His younger brother William Milford Teulon (1823–1900) also became an architect.
Career
He was articled to George Legg, and later worked as an assistant to the Bermondsey-based architect George Porter. He also studied in the drawing schools of the Royal Academy. He set up his own independent practice in 1838, and in 1840 won the competition to design some almshouses for the Dyers' Company at Ball's Pond, Islington. After this his practice expanded rapidly. During the next few years his works mainly consisted of parish schools, parsonages and similar buildings, mostly in the Home Counties.
He was a friend of George Gilbert Scott and became a member of the Council of the Royal Institute of British Architects on 6 January 1835. Between 1841 and 1842 he undertook a long study tour of continental Europe with Ewan Christian who remained a lifelong friend and became his executor. Also in company during the tour was Horace Jones who was later knighted and became architect to the Corporation of the City of London and Hayter Lewis, later Professor of Architecture at University College, London.
He built his first church, the Early English-style St Paul, Bermondsey, in 1846. Soon after this he designed St Stephen, Southwark, a building adapted to its square site by being planned in the form of a Greek cross, with the recessed angles filled in by the tower, vestry, chancel aisles.[2] Teulon's religious views were Low Church, and his patrons were predominantly members of established aristocratic families who shared his outlook. In 1848 he received a commission from the 7th Duke of Bedford to design cottages for the Thorney estate, and the next year he built Tortworth Court, Gloucestershire, a substantial mansion in a kind of Neo-Tudor style, with a large central tower, for the Earl of Ducie. Other clients included John Sumner, archbishop of Canterbury, who commissioned Christ Church in Croydon; the Duke of Marlborough, for whom he refitted the chapel at Blenheim Palace in 1857-9; the 10th Duke of St Albans and Prince Albert.
His work included the remodelling of several unfashionable 18th-century churches to suit contemporary tastes. Archibald Tait, the Bishop of London, praised his alterations at St. Mary's, Ealing, as "the transformation of a Georgian monstrosity into the semblance of a Byzantine Basilica".
As well as Gothic Revival churches, he designed several country houses and even complete villages, as he did at Hunstanworth in County Durham in 1863.
Style
Despite his classical training, Teulon's early designs were mostly in imitation of Tudor and Elizabethan styles, and he soon became an enthusiastic follower of the latest developments of the Gothic Revival He was an enthusiastic user of Polychrome brickwork. His planning was often elaborate: Henry-Russell Hitchcock called his mansion at Elvetham Park in Hampshire "so complex in its composition and so varied in its detailing that it quite defies description". Some of his later work was, however, more restrained: for instance at St Stephen's Church, Rosslyn Hill, Hampstead, (1869–76) the exterior is of purple-brown brick, of subtly varied tones with light stone trimming. The massing of the building is also simpler than in his earlier designs.
Death
For the last 20 years of his life until his death on 2 May 1873, Teulon lived in one of four Georgian mansions on Hampstead Green which were demolished at the start of the twentieth century to make way for Hampstead General Hospital, which was itself demolished in the 1970s and replaced by The Royal Free Hospital. Opposite his home he designed St Stephen's Church, Rosslyn Hill. He is buried on the west side of Highgate Cemetery, not far from the family vault of his former neighbour on Hampstead Green, Rowland Hill.
His great great great nephew, Alan Teulon, published a book on S.S. Teulon in 2009. He was survived by four sons and four daughters.
Works
St James's Vicarage, Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire; additional wing 1844 (now demolished)
St Mary's Rectory, North Creake, Norfolk; 1845
Holkham Hall, Norfolk, porch 1847
St Paul's Parish Church, Bermondsey; 1848 (demolished 1961)
All Saints' Parish Church, Icklesham, East Sussex; restoration 1848–49
Church of the Holy Spirit, Rye Harbour, East Sussex; 1848–49
Owlpen House, Owlpen, Gloucestershire; 1848 (demolished 1955-6, apart from the stables and lodge)
Thorney Model Village, Cambridgeshire; from 1848
St Mary's Parish Church, Pakenham, Suffolk; alterations 1849
Queen's Terrace, Windsor, Berkshire; 1849
St Paul's Church, Sandgate, Kent; 1849
St Peter's Church, Great Birch, Essex; 1849–50
Tortworth Court, Tortworth, Gloucestershire; 1849–52
St John's Parish Church, Rushford, Norfolk; restoration c.1850
St Mary's Parish Church, Benwick, Cambridgeshire; 1850 (now demolished)
St Mary's Parsonage, Grendon, Northamptonshire; 1850
St Mary's Church, Riseholme, Lincolnshire 1851
St John's Parish Church, Kingscote, Gloucestershire; restoration 1851
Christ Church, Croydon, Surrey; 1851–1852 (largely destroyed 1985)
Holy Trinity Parish Church, Hastings, East Sussex; rebuilding 1851–59
St Andrew's Parish Church, Brettenham, Norfolk; restorations and remodelling 1852
St James' Church, Edgbaston, Birmingham; 1852
St Margaret's Parish Church, Angmering, West Sussex; restoration 1852–53
St John's Church, Ladywood, Birmingham; 1852–54
Estate cottages, Windsor, Berkshire; 1853
St Andrew's Church, Watford; 1853-57
School in Oxford Road, Woodstock, Oxfordshire; 1854
A cottage, Tortworth, Gloucestershire; 1854
Sandringham House, Norfolk, porch and conservatory 1854
Cholmondeley Castle, Cheshire; alterations 1854
Schoolmaster's house and chapel, Curridge, Berkshire; 1854–55
Christ Church Parish Church, Fosbury, Wiltshire; 1854–56
St Andrew's Parish Church, Lambeth, London; 1855
St Mary's Vicarage, Steeple Barton, Oxfordshire; 1856
St John the Baptist's Parish Church, Burringham, Lincolnshire; 1856–57
Gisborough Hall, Guisborough, North Yorkshire; 1857 (also attributed to William Milford Teulon)
Church of St Mary the Virgin, Sunbury-on-Thames, Surrey; internal alterations 1857
St Thomas's Church, Pearman Street, Lambeth; 1857 (demolished)
Shadwell Court, Rushford, Norfolk; extensions & remodelling 1857–60
All Saints' Parish Church, Wordwell, Suffolk; restoration 1857 and 1866
St Giles's Parish Church, Uley, Gloucestershire; rebuilding 1857–58
St Mary's Parish Church, Alderbury, Wiltshire; 1857–58
Holy Trinity Parish Church, Oare, Wiltshire; 1857–58 - Pevsner considered it "the ugliest church in Wiltshire".
All Saints' Parish Church, Middleton Stoney, Oxfordshire; rebuilding 1858
St Bartholomew's Parish Church, Newington Bagpath, Gloucestershire; rebuilt chancel 1858
Browne's Charity Almshouses and Chapel, South Weald, Essex 1858
St James's Parish Church, Leckhampstead, Berkshire; 1858–60
Prince Albert's Workshops, Windsor Great Park, Berkshire; 1858–61
St Stephen's Parish Church, Manciple Street, Southwark; 1859 (demolished 1965)
St John the Baptist's Parish Church, Netherfield, East Sussex; 1859
Christ Church, Wimbledon, London; 1859–60
Elvetham Hall, Elvetham, Hampshire; 1859–60
Hawkleyhurst House, Hawkley, Hampshire; 1860
St Mary's Vicarage, Gainford, County Durham; 1860
St Silas' Church, Penton Street, Islington; 1860, completed 1863 by E.P. Loftus Brock
Queen Victoria’s Teahouse, Frogmore; c.1860
St Bartholomew's Parish Church, Nympsfield, Gloucestershire; rebuilt church 1861–63
St Mark's Parish Church, Silvertown, London; 1861–62(now the Brick Lane Music Hall)
Huntley Manor, Huntley, Gloucestershire; 1862
Bestwood Lodge, Bestwood, Nottinghamshire; 1862–65
St John the Baptist's Parish Church, Huntley, Gloucestershire; 1863
Village of Hunstanworth, County Durham; 1863
St Thomas's Parish Church, Agar Town, London; 1863 (now demolished)
All Saints Church, Benhilton, Sutton, London; 1863
St Mary's Parish Church, Woodchester, Gloucestershire; 1863–64
Royal Chapel of All Saints, Windsor Great Park, Berkshire; 1863–66
St Peter and St Paul's Parish Church, Hawkley, Hampshire; 1865
St Mary's Parish Church, Horsham, Sussex; south aisle 1865
Wrotham Park, Hertfordshire; alterations 1865
St George's Parish Church, Hanworth, Middlesex; spire 1865
Buxton Memorial Fountain in Victoria Tower Gardens, London; 1865
Tyndale Monument, North Nibley, Gloucestershire; 1866
St Paul's Parish Church, Greenwich; 1866
St Margaret's Parish Church, Hopton-on-Sea, Norfolk; 1866-7
St Mary's Parish Church, Ealing, London; 1866–73
St Andrew's and St John's School, Roupell Street, Lambeth; c.1868
Lychgate to Church of St. Peter, South Weald, Essex 1868
Church of St. Peter, South Weald, Essex 1868
St Stephen's Parish Church, Rosslyn Hill, Hampstead, London; 1869-71
The Court House, St Andrew Holborn, London; 1870
St John the Baptist's Parish Church, Windsor, Berkshire; alterations 1869–73
Woodlands Vale, Ryde, Isle of Wight; 1870–71
St Frideswide's Parish Church, New Osney, Oxford; 1870–71
Holy Trinity Parish Church, Leicester; remodelling 1871
St Andrew's Parish Church, Eastern Green, Coventry; 1875
Embrook House, Sandgate, Kent; 1852 (demolished)
Riseholme Hall, Stable block (perhaps) Riseholme, Lincolnshire 1840–45
This magnificent tomb commemorates Maron Mure, who died in 1612, Margaret Maclellan, who died in the 1620s aged 31, and Christen Macadam, Lady Cardyne, who died in 1628 aged 33. The tomb has three inscription panels. This panel on the north reads:
'WALKING WITH GOD IN PVRITIE OF LIFE/IN CHRIST I DIED AND ENDIT AL MY STRYFE/FOR IN MY SAVLE CHRIST HEIR DID DWEL BY GRACE/NOW DWELIS MY SAVLE IN HIS FACE/THAIRFOIR MY BODIE SAL NOT HEIR REMAINE/BOT TO FVL GLORIE SAL SVRLIE RYSE AGAINE/MARIVNE MVRE GOOD WIFE OF/CVLLINDACH DEPAIRTED THIS LIFE/ANNO 1612'.
The wonderful Old Kirk was also used in several scenes of the cult horror film ‘The Wicker Man.’
Commemorates the martyrdom of Protestant clergy - including Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer - during the reign of Queen (Bloody) Mary in the 1550's. They were burned alive in nearby Broad St where another memorial marks the actual location of the stake and pyre.
The Cruickshank Botanic Gardens in Aberdeen, Scotland, were built on land bequested by Miss Anne Cruickshank to commemorate her brother Dr. Alexander Cruickshank. The 11 acre (45,000 m²) garden is located in a low-lying and fairly sheltered area of Aberdeen, less than 1-mile (1.6 km) from the North Sea.
The Cruickshank Botanic Garden is partly owned and financed by the University of Aberdeen and partly by the Cruickshank Botanic Gardens Trust. The Friends of the Cruickshank Botanic Garden actively promote and support the garden. The Keeper of the Botanic Gardens is currently Professor David Burslem.
The Gardens are maintained on a daily basis by Head Gardener, Richard Walker, and Assistant Gardeners George McKay and Audrey Bews. Each summer vacation the Friends provide a bursary to allow an undergraduate student interested in botany to gain work experience in the gardens.
Although open to the public, the gardens are extensively used for both teaching and research purposes. The Natural History Centre regularly guides school parties round the Garden, and the School of Biological Sciences of the University of Aberdeen holds a reception for graduands and their guests here each July.
This monument in Grunwaldzki Square commemorates the army comprised of Polish diaspora volunteers from the USA, Canada, France and other nations that was formed in France and transported to Poland in April 1919 under the command of General Józef Haller. The army played a decisive role in the Polish-Ukrainian war and also took part in the Polish-Soviet war prior to being organisationally incorporated into the Polish Army.
The monument is a gift from the Polish Army Veterans Association in the United States and was designed and cast in the USA. The plinth, however, was made in Poland. The author of the monument is Baltazar Brukalski, while the sculpture itself is the work of Andrzej Pityński.