+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The outbreak of the war in Europe in September 1939 did not immediately affect the status of the Armée de l'Air in French Indochina because it had the task of defending a wide area of Southeast Asia, including the future Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. And yet its array of airplanes seemed inadequate to perform any kind of real defense against any incursion by an enemy, because there were less than 100 airplanes available to it, all obsolescent or obsolete. In September 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria. This was an area of northeast China, which encompassed the provinces of Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang. Nearly six whole years later, in July 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War had begun. As yet, the French colonial authorities were hoping that the Japanese would not be brazen enough to take on the might of a European power. However, it became increasingly likely after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, since Japan was part of the Axis alliance and thus Germany's ally.

 

On September 26, 1940, Japanese troops landed in Haiphong, violating a cease-fire which had been signed only the previous day. From the middle of the following month, the French became heavily involved in repelling Japanese army assaults. Following the Fall of France in 1940, Thais perceived a chance to regain the territories they had lost years earlier. The collapse of Metropolitan France made the French hold on Indochina tenuous. After the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in September 1940, the French were forced to allow the Japanese to set up military bases. This seemingly subservient behavior convinced the Thai regime that Vichy France would not seriously resist a confrontation with Thailand.

 

During the French-Thai War, the Thai Air Force achieved several air-to-air-victories in dogfights against the Vichy Armée de l'Air. During World War II, the Thai Air Force supported the Royal Thai Army in its occupation of the Shan States of Burma as somewhat reluctant allies of the Japanese and took part in the defense of Bangkok against allied air raids in the latter part of the war, achieving some successes against state-of-the-art aircraft like the P-51 Mustang and the B-29 Superfortress. During these times, the RTAF was actively supplied by the Japanese with Imperial Japanese Army Air Force aircraft such as the Ki-43 "Oscar," and the Ki-27 "Nate." Other RTAF personnel took an active part the anti-Japanese resistance movement.

 

French forces in Indochina consisted of an army of approximately fifty thousand men, The most obvious deficiency of the French army lay in its shortage of armor; however, the Armée de l'Air had in its inventory approximately a hundred aircraft, of which around sixty could be considered first line. These consisted of thirty Potez 25 TOEs, four Farman 221s, eight Loire 130 flying boats, six Potez 542s, nine Morane M.S.406s.

 

The M.S.406 was a French fighter aircraft developed and manufactured by Morane-Saulnier starting in 1938. In response to a requirement for a fighter issued by the French Air Force in 1934, Morane-Saulnier built a prototype, designated MS.405, of mixed materials. This had the distinction of being the company's first low-wing monoplane, as well as the first to feature an enclosed cockpit, and the first design with a retracting undercarriage. The entry to service of the M.S.406 to the French Air Force in early 1939 represented the first modern fighter aircraft to be adopted by the service, and the type was also used in the French overseas colonies. The M.S.406 was France's most numerous fighter during the Second World War and one of only two French designs to exceed 1,000 in number. At the beginning of the war, it was one of only two French-built aircraft capable of 400 km/h (250 mph) – the other being the Potez 630.

 

Although a sturdy and highly manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, the M.S.406 was considered underpowered and weakly armed when compared to its contemporaries, esp. over continental Europe. Most critically, the M.S.406 was outperformed by the Messerschmitt Bf 109E during the Battle of France and no serious threat to the German fighter. In less advanced theatres like Indochina, though, the M.S. 406 was a respectable contender, but its numbers were low.

 

When the French-Thai War broke out in Indochina, the Thai Army was a relatively well-equipped force, consisting of some sixty thousand men, with artillery and tanks. The Royal Thai Navy — consisting of several vessels, including two coastal defence ships, twelve torpedo boats and four submarines — was inferior to the French naval forces, though, but the Royal Thai Air Force held both a quantitative and qualitative edge over l'Armee de l'Air. Among the 140 aircraft that composed the air force's initial first-line strength were twenty-four Mitsubishi Ki-30 light bombers, nine Mitsubishi Ki-21 and six Martin B-10 twin-engine bombers, seventy Vought Corsair dive bombers, and twenty-five Curtiss Hawk 75 fighters.

 

While nationalistic demonstrations and anti-French rallies were held in Bangkok, border skirmishes erupted along the Mekong frontier. The superior Royal Thai Air Force conducted daytime bombing runs over Vientiane, Sisophon, and Battambang with impunity. The French retaliated with their own planes, but the damage caused was less than equal. The activities of the Thai air force, particularly in the field of dive-bombing, was such that Admiral Jean Decoux, the governor of French Indochina, grudgingly remarked that the Thai planes seemed to have been flown by men with plenty of war experience.

 

In early January 1941, the Thai Burapha and Isan Armies launched their offensive on Laos and Cambodia. French resistance was instantaneous, but many units were simply swept along by the better-equipped Thai forces, with some French equipment – including some aircraft – being captured and immediately pressed into Thai army service. The Thais swiftly took Laos, but Cambodia proved a much harder nut to crack.

 

On January 16, 1941 the French launched a large counterattack on the Thai-held villages of Yang Dang Khum and Phum Preav, initiating the fiercest battle of the war. Because of over-complicated orders and nonexistent intelligence, the French counterattacks were cut to pieces and fighting ended with a French withdrawal from the area. The Thais were unable to pursue the retreating French, as their forward tanks were kept in check by the gunnery of French Foreign Legion artillerists.

 

On January 24, the final air battle took place when Thai bombers raided the French airfield at Angkor near Siem Reap, which quickly fell. The last Thai mission commenced at 0710 hours on January 28, when the Martins of the 50th Bomber Squadron set out on a raid on Sisophon, escorted by three Hawk 75Ns of the 60th Fighter Squadron.

 

Although the French won an important naval victory over the Thais, Japan forced the French to accept Japanese mediation of a peace treaty that returned the disputed territory to Thai control. A general armistice was arranged by Japan to go into effect on January 28. On May 9 a peace treaty was signed in Tokyo, with the French being coerced by the Japanese into relinquishing their hold on the disputed territories. However, the French (now part of the Axis Forces’ Vichy regime) were left in place to administer the rump colony of Indochina until 9 March 1945, when the Japanese staged a coup d'état in French Indochina and took control, establishing their own colony, the Empire of Vietnam, as a puppet state controlled by Tokyo.

 

Until then, Japanese authorities heavily influenced the diminishing Vichy French presence in the region and handed over a lot of leftover military hardware to its own allies, primarily the Thai forces. However, there was not much left to be distributed: about 30% of the French aircraft were rendered unserviceable by the end of the French-Thai War in early 1941, some as a result of minor damage sustained in air raids that remained unrepaired. The Armée de l'Air admitted the loss of only one Farman F221 and two Morane M.S.406s destroyed on the ground, but, in reality, its losses were greater and the influence of Japan on the leftover stock was fogged in order to save face. However, even in 1944, single former Vichy French aircraft and tanks were still active in the region, primarily under Thai flag.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 8.17 m (26 ft 10 in)

Wingspan: 10.61 m (34 ft 10 in)

Height: 3.25 m (10 ft 8 in)

Wing area: 16 m2 (170 sq ft)

Empty weight: 1,895 kg (4,178 lb)

Gross weight: 2,540 kg (5,600 lb)

 

Powerplant:

1 × Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 V-12 liquid-cooled piston engine with

619 kW (830 hp) for take-off at 2,520 rpm at sea level,

driving a 3-bladed variable-pitch propeller, 3 m (9 ft 10 in) diameter

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 490 km/h (304 mph; 265 kn) at 4,500 m (14,764 ft)

Stall speed: 160 km/h (99 mph, 86 kn) without flaps

135 km/h (84 mph; 73 kn) with flaps

Range: 1,100 km (680 mi, 590 nmi) at 66% power

Combat range: 720 km (450 mi, 390 nmi)

Endurance: 2 hours 20 minutes 30 seconds (average combat mission)

Service ceiling: 9,400 m (30,800 ft)

Time to altitude: 2,000 m (6,562 ft) in 2 minutes 32 seconds

9,000 m (29,528 ft) in 21 minutes 37 seconds

Wing loading: 154 kg/m2 (32 lb/sq ft)

Power/mass: 2.95 kg/kW (4.85 lb/hp)

Take-off run to 8 m (26 ft): 270 m (886 ft)

Landing run from 8 m (26 ft): 340 m (1,115 ft)

 

Armament:

1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon, firing through the propeller hub

2× 7.5 mm (0.295 in) MAC 1934 machine guns in the outer wings

  

The kit and its assembly:

This quick build was created in the wake of the “Captured” group build at whatifmodellers.com and actually is a personal interpretation of someone else’s idea, namely of fellow modeler NARSES who came up with the idea of a captured French M.S. 406 in Indochina under a new Thai flag. I found the idea so weird, yet realistic, that I decided to build one, too.

 

The model is the very simple but quite acceptable M.S. 406 from Hobby Boss. Externally the model is nice, with recessed panel lines and a basic landing gear. Internally, it is rather bleak, even though it has a full cockpit with a floor, integrally molded seat and even some details behind the pilot’s armor bulkhead. The canopy is a single piece and very clear, but it comes with massive locator bars, so that I decided to keep the canopy closed and added a pilot figure to cover the minimal interior. I was lucky to find a Japanese (though pretty “flat”) WWII pilot in the donor bank, left over from a Hasegawa model. I also gave the figure some seat belts (made from adhesive tape), but the rest remained unchanged – even the original metal axis for the propeller was used. I just replaced the machine gun barrels with hollow steel needles and added a pitot on the wing, which is probably part of the kit but not indicated in the instructions. The same is true for the foldable ventral antenna.

 

The build was finished quickly, in the course of just a single evening, including the pilot and some overall PSR.

  

Painting and markings:

My interpretation of a French aircraft in Thai service after the French-Thai War stuck closely to the real world Vichy livery, which was the standard French camouflage in grey/green/brown with light blue-grey undersides (all from ModelMaster’s Authentic Color range), together with a yellow-and-red-striped cowling (a base with Humbrol 69 and red decal stripes added later) and a white cheatline long the fuselage. The tail of French aircraft in Indochina was painted all-red from early 1941 onwards upon Japanese command, because of friendly fire incidents. This was adopted for the model (with a mix of Humbrol 19 and some 73), which is supposed to belong into the 1942 time frame.

 

As a captured aircraft, the original French roundels were replaced/overpainted with red disks/hinomaru, and then Thai elephant markings added on top. That’s a personal idea, ordnance directly supplied to the Thai forces from Japan had the simple, square “elephant flag” emblem directly applied to the wings and the fin (but no fuselage roundel). The all-red tail was taken over, but I painted the rudder in a dark IJA green, since it would formerly carry a French fin flash. The same green was used to overpaint a serial number on the fin and a former squadron emblem under the cockpit.

The hinomaru come from a PrintScale Ki-46 sheet, and these markings are intentionally a bit oversized, so that they cover well the former French markings and are highly visible. The elephant markings some from a PrintScale Ki-27 sheet, so that the red tone on both sources are very close to each other. The Ki-27 sheet also provided the Thai ciphers “3” and “4”, combined into a “34”.

 

The interior was painted in medium grey, and the model externally received some signs of wear and tear in the form of dry-brushed leading edges and around the cockpit as well as some soot stains behind the exhaust stubs and the machine guns. Finally, the model was sealed with a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).

  

A quick build, and the easy-build Hobby Boss M.S. 406 is certainly not as crisp as a “real” model, but in this case the story behind the weird livery was more in the focus than the canvas underneath. However, an interesting result, and the hybrid paint scheme with heritage from three different operators make the aircraft an unusual, if not exotic sight.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The outbreak of the war in Europe in September 1939 did not immediately affect the status of the Armée de l'Air in French Indochina because it had the task of defending a wide area of Southeast Asia, including the future Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. And yet its array of airplanes seemed inadequate to perform any kind of real defense against any incursion by an enemy, because there were less than 100 airplanes available to it, all obsolescent or obsolete. In September 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria. This was an area of northeast China, which encompassed the provinces of Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang. Nearly six whole years later, in July 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War had begun. As yet, the French colonial authorities were hoping that the Japanese would not be brazen enough to take on the might of a European power. However, it became increasingly likely after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, since Japan was part of the Axis alliance and thus Germany's ally.

 

On September 26, 1940, Japanese troops landed in Haiphong, violating a cease-fire which had been signed only the previous day. From the middle of the following month, the French became heavily involved in repelling Japanese army assaults. Following the Fall of France in 1940, Thais perceived a chance to regain the territories they had lost years earlier. The collapse of Metropolitan France made the French hold on Indochina tenuous. After the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in September 1940, the French were forced to allow the Japanese to set up military bases. This seemingly subservient behavior convinced the Thai regime that Vichy France would not seriously resist a confrontation with Thailand.

 

During the French-Thai War, the Thai Air Force achieved several air-to-air-victories in dogfights against the Vichy Armée de l'Air. During World War II, the Thai Air Force supported the Royal Thai Army in its occupation of the Shan States of Burma as somewhat reluctant allies of the Japanese and took part in the defense of Bangkok against allied air raids in the latter part of the war, achieving some successes against state-of-the-art aircraft like the P-51 Mustang and the B-29 Superfortress. During these times, the RTAF was actively supplied by the Japanese with Imperial Japanese Army Air Force aircraft such as the Ki-43 "Oscar," and the Ki-27 "Nate." Other RTAF personnel took an active part the anti-Japanese resistance movement.

 

French forces in Indochina consisted of an army of approximately fifty thousand men, The most obvious deficiency of the French army lay in its shortage of armor; however, the Armée de l'Air had in its inventory approximately a hundred aircraft, of which around sixty could be considered first line. These consisted of thirty Potez 25 TOEs, four Farman 221s, eight Loire 130 flying boats, six Potez 542s, nine Morane M.S.406s.

 

The M.S.406 was a French fighter aircraft developed and manufactured by Morane-Saulnier starting in 1938. In response to a requirement for a fighter issued by the French Air Force in 1934, Morane-Saulnier built a prototype, designated MS.405, of mixed materials. This had the distinction of being the company's first low-wing monoplane, as well as the first to feature an enclosed cockpit, and the first design with a retracting undercarriage. The entry to service of the M.S.406 to the French Air Force in early 1939 represented the first modern fighter aircraft to be adopted by the service, and the type was also used in the French overseas colonies. The M.S.406 was France's most numerous fighter during the Second World War and one of only two French designs to exceed 1,000 in number. At the beginning of the war, it was one of only two French-built aircraft capable of 400 km/h (250 mph) – the other being the Potez 630.

 

Although a sturdy and highly manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, the M.S.406 was considered underpowered and weakly armed when compared to its contemporaries, esp. over continental Europe. Most critically, the M.S.406 was outperformed by the Messerschmitt Bf 109E during the Battle of France and no serious threat to the German fighter. In less advanced theatres like Indochina, though, the M.S. 406 was a respectable contender, but its numbers were low.

 

When the French-Thai War broke out in Indochina, the Thai Army was a relatively well-equipped force, consisting of some sixty thousand men, with artillery and tanks. The Royal Thai Navy — consisting of several vessels, including two coastal defence ships, twelve torpedo boats and four submarines — was inferior to the French naval forces, though, but the Royal Thai Air Force held both a quantitative and qualitative edge over l'Armee de l'Air. Among the 140 aircraft that composed the air force's initial first-line strength were twenty-four Mitsubishi Ki-30 light bombers, nine Mitsubishi Ki-21 and six Martin B-10 twin-engine bombers, seventy Vought Corsair dive bombers, and twenty-five Curtiss Hawk 75 fighters.

 

While nationalistic demonstrations and anti-French rallies were held in Bangkok, border skirmishes erupted along the Mekong frontier. The superior Royal Thai Air Force conducted daytime bombing runs over Vientiane, Sisophon, and Battambang with impunity. The French retaliated with their own planes, but the damage caused was less than equal. The activities of the Thai air force, particularly in the field of dive-bombing, was such that Admiral Jean Decoux, the governor of French Indochina, grudgingly remarked that the Thai planes seemed to have been flown by men with plenty of war experience.

 

In early January 1941, the Thai Burapha and Isan Armies launched their offensive on Laos and Cambodia. French resistance was instantaneous, but many units were simply swept along by the better-equipped Thai forces, with some French equipment – including some aircraft – being captured and immediately pressed into Thai army service. The Thais swiftly took Laos, but Cambodia proved a much harder nut to crack.

 

On January 16, 1941 the French launched a large counterattack on the Thai-held villages of Yang Dang Khum and Phum Preav, initiating the fiercest battle of the war. Because of over-complicated orders and nonexistent intelligence, the French counterattacks were cut to pieces and fighting ended with a French withdrawal from the area. The Thais were unable to pursue the retreating French, as their forward tanks were kept in check by the gunnery of French Foreign Legion artillerists.

 

On January 24, the final air battle took place when Thai bombers raided the French airfield at Angkor near Siem Reap, which quickly fell. The last Thai mission commenced at 0710 hours on January 28, when the Martins of the 50th Bomber Squadron set out on a raid on Sisophon, escorted by three Hawk 75Ns of the 60th Fighter Squadron.

 

Although the French won an important naval victory over the Thais, Japan forced the French to accept Japanese mediation of a peace treaty that returned the disputed territory to Thai control. A general armistice was arranged by Japan to go into effect on January 28. On May 9 a peace treaty was signed in Tokyo, with the French being coerced by the Japanese into relinquishing their hold on the disputed territories. However, the French (now part of the Axis Forces’ Vichy regime) were left in place to administer the rump colony of Indochina until 9 March 1945, when the Japanese staged a coup d'état in French Indochina and took control, establishing their own colony, the Empire of Vietnam, as a puppet state controlled by Tokyo.

 

Until then, Japanese authorities heavily influenced the diminishing Vichy French presence in the region and handed over a lot of leftover military hardware to its own allies, primarily the Thai forces. However, there was not much left to be distributed: about 30% of the French aircraft were rendered unserviceable by the end of the French-Thai War in early 1941, some as a result of minor damage sustained in air raids that remained unrepaired. The Armée de l'Air admitted the loss of only one Farman F221 and two Morane M.S.406s destroyed on the ground, but, in reality, its losses were greater and the influence of Japan on the leftover stock was fogged in order to save face. However, even in 1944, single former Vichy French aircraft and tanks were still active in the region, primarily under Thai flag.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 8.17 m (26 ft 10 in)

Wingspan: 10.61 m (34 ft 10 in)

Height: 3.25 m (10 ft 8 in)

Wing area: 16 m2 (170 sq ft)

Empty weight: 1,895 kg (4,178 lb)

Gross weight: 2,540 kg (5,600 lb)

 

Powerplant:

1 × Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 V-12 liquid-cooled piston engine with

619 kW (830 hp) for take-off at 2,520 rpm at sea level,

driving a 3-bladed variable-pitch propeller, 3 m (9 ft 10 in) diameter

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 490 km/h (304 mph; 265 kn) at 4,500 m (14,764 ft)

Stall speed: 160 km/h (99 mph, 86 kn) without flaps

135 km/h (84 mph; 73 kn) with flaps

Range: 1,100 km (680 mi, 590 nmi) at 66% power

Combat range: 720 km (450 mi, 390 nmi)

Endurance: 2 hours 20 minutes 30 seconds (average combat mission)

Service ceiling: 9,400 m (30,800 ft)

Time to altitude: 2,000 m (6,562 ft) in 2 minutes 32 seconds

9,000 m (29,528 ft) in 21 minutes 37 seconds

Wing loading: 154 kg/m2 (32 lb/sq ft)

Power/mass: 2.95 kg/kW (4.85 lb/hp)

Take-off run to 8 m (26 ft): 270 m (886 ft)

Landing run from 8 m (26 ft): 340 m (1,115 ft)

 

Armament:

1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon, firing through the propeller hub

2× 7.5 mm (0.295 in) MAC 1934 machine guns in the outer wings

  

The kit and its assembly:

This quick build was created in the wake of the “Captured” group build at whatifmodellers.com and actually is a personal interpretation of someone else’s idea, namely of fellow modeler NARSES who came up with the idea of a captured French M.S. 406 in Indochina under a new Thai flag. I found the idea so weird, yet realistic, that I decided to build one, too.

 

The model is the very simple but quite acceptable M.S. 406 from Hobby Boss. Externally the model is nice, with recessed panel lines and a basic landing gear. Internally, it is rather bleak, even though it has a full cockpit with a floor, integrally molded seat and even some details behind the pilot’s armor bulkhead. The canopy is a single piece and very clear, but it comes with massive locator bars, so that I decided to keep the canopy closed and added a pilot figure to cover the minimal interior. I was lucky to find a Japanese (though pretty “flat”) WWII pilot in the donor bank, left over from a Hasegawa model. I also gave the figure some seat belts (made from adhesive tape), but the rest remained unchanged – even the original metal axis for the propeller was used. I just replaced the machine gun barrels with hollow steel needles and added a pitot on the wing, which is probably part of the kit but not indicated in the instructions. The same is true for the foldable ventral antenna.

 

The build was finished quickly, in the course of just a single evening, including the pilot and some overall PSR.

  

Painting and markings:

My interpretation of a French aircraft in Thai service after the French-Thai War stuck closely to the real world Vichy livery, which was the standard French camouflage in grey/green/brown with light blue-grey undersides (all from ModelMaster’s Authentic Color range), together with a yellow-and-red-striped cowling (a base with Humbrol 69 and red decal stripes added later) and a white cheatline long the fuselage. The tail of French aircraft in Indochina was painted all-red from early 1941 onwards upon Japanese command, because of friendly fire incidents. This was adopted for the model (with a mix of Humbrol 19 and some 73), which is supposed to belong into the 1942 time frame.

 

As a captured aircraft, the original French roundels were replaced/overpainted with red disks/hinomaru, and then Thai elephant markings added on top. That’s a personal idea, ordnance directly supplied to the Thai forces from Japan had the simple, square “elephant flag” emblem directly applied to the wings and the fin (but no fuselage roundel). The all-red tail was taken over, but I painted the rudder in a dark IJA green, since it would formerly carry a French fin flash. The same green was used to overpaint a serial number on the fin and a former squadron emblem under the cockpit.

The hinomaru come from a PrintScale Ki-46 sheet, and these markings are intentionally a bit oversized, so that they cover well the former French markings and are highly visible. The elephant markings some from a PrintScale Ki-27 sheet, so that the red tone on both sources are very close to each other. The Ki-27 sheet also provided the Thai ciphers “3” and “4”, combined into a “34”.

 

The interior was painted in medium grey, and the model externally received some signs of wear and tear in the form of dry-brushed leading edges and around the cockpit as well as some soot stains behind the exhaust stubs and the machine guns. Finally, the model was sealed with a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).

  

A quick build, and the easy-build Hobby Boss M.S. 406 is certainly not as crisp as a “real” model, but in this case the story behind the weird livery was more in the focus than the canvas underneath. However, an interesting result, and the hybrid paint scheme with heritage from three different operators make the aircraft an unusual, if not exotic sight.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The outbreak of the war in Europe in September 1939 did not immediately affect the status of the Armée de l'Air in French Indochina because it had the task of defending a wide area of Southeast Asia, including the future Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. And yet its array of airplanes seemed inadequate to perform any kind of real defense against any incursion by an enemy, because there were less than 100 airplanes available to it, all obsolescent or obsolete. In September 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria. This was an area of northeast China, which encompassed the provinces of Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang. Nearly six whole years later, in July 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War had begun. As yet, the French colonial authorities were hoping that the Japanese would not be brazen enough to take on the might of a European power. However, it became increasingly likely after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, since Japan was part of the Axis alliance and thus Germany's ally.

 

On September 26, 1940, Japanese troops landed in Haiphong, violating a cease-fire which had been signed only the previous day. From the middle of the following month, the French became heavily involved in repelling Japanese army assaults. Following the Fall of France in 1940, Thais perceived a chance to regain the territories they had lost years earlier. The collapse of Metropolitan France made the French hold on Indochina tenuous. After the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in September 1940, the French were forced to allow the Japanese to set up military bases. This seemingly subservient behavior convinced the Thai regime that Vichy France would not seriously resist a confrontation with Thailand.

 

During the French-Thai War, the Thai Air Force achieved several air-to-air-victories in dogfights against the Vichy Armée de l'Air. During World War II, the Thai Air Force supported the Royal Thai Army in its occupation of the Shan States of Burma as somewhat reluctant allies of the Japanese and took part in the defense of Bangkok against allied air raids in the latter part of the war, achieving some successes against state-of-the-art aircraft like the P-51 Mustang and the B-29 Superfortress. During these times, the RTAF was actively supplied by the Japanese with Imperial Japanese Army Air Force aircraft such as the Ki-43 "Oscar," and the Ki-27 "Nate." Other RTAF personnel took an active part the anti-Japanese resistance movement.

 

French forces in Indochina consisted of an army of approximately fifty thousand men, The most obvious deficiency of the French army lay in its shortage of armor; however, the Armée de l'Air had in its inventory approximately a hundred aircraft, of which around sixty could be considered first line. These consisted of thirty Potez 25 TOEs, four Farman 221s, eight Loire 130 flying boats, six Potez 542s, nine Morane M.S.406s.

 

The M.S.406 was a French fighter aircraft developed and manufactured by Morane-Saulnier starting in 1938. In response to a requirement for a fighter issued by the French Air Force in 1934, Morane-Saulnier built a prototype, designated MS.405, of mixed materials. This had the distinction of being the company's first low-wing monoplane, as well as the first to feature an enclosed cockpit, and the first design with a retracting undercarriage. The entry to service of the M.S.406 to the French Air Force in early 1939 represented the first modern fighter aircraft to be adopted by the service, and the type was also used in the French overseas colonies. The M.S.406 was France's most numerous fighter during the Second World War and one of only two French designs to exceed 1,000 in number. At the beginning of the war, it was one of only two French-built aircraft capable of 400 km/h (250 mph) – the other being the Potez 630.

 

Although a sturdy and highly manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, the M.S.406 was considered underpowered and weakly armed when compared to its contemporaries, esp. over continental Europe. Most critically, the M.S.406 was outperformed by the Messerschmitt Bf 109E during the Battle of France and no serious threat to the German fighter. In less advanced theatres like Indochina, though, the M.S. 406 was a respectable contender, but its numbers were low.

 

When the French-Thai War broke out in Indochina, the Thai Army was a relatively well-equipped force, consisting of some sixty thousand men, with artillery and tanks. The Royal Thai Navy — consisting of several vessels, including two coastal defence ships, twelve torpedo boats and four submarines — was inferior to the French naval forces, though, but the Royal Thai Air Force held both a quantitative and qualitative edge over l'Armee de l'Air. Among the 140 aircraft that composed the air force's initial first-line strength were twenty-four Mitsubishi Ki-30 light bombers, nine Mitsubishi Ki-21 and six Martin B-10 twin-engine bombers, seventy Vought Corsair dive bombers, and twenty-five Curtiss Hawk 75 fighters.

 

While nationalistic demonstrations and anti-French rallies were held in Bangkok, border skirmishes erupted along the Mekong frontier. The superior Royal Thai Air Force conducted daytime bombing runs over Vientiane, Sisophon, and Battambang with impunity. The French retaliated with their own planes, but the damage caused was less than equal. The activities of the Thai air force, particularly in the field of dive-bombing, was such that Admiral Jean Decoux, the governor of French Indochina, grudgingly remarked that the Thai planes seemed to have been flown by men with plenty of war experience.

 

In early January 1941, the Thai Burapha and Isan Armies launched their offensive on Laos and Cambodia. French resistance was instantaneous, but many units were simply swept along by the better-equipped Thai forces, with some French equipment – including some aircraft – being captured and immediately pressed into Thai army service. The Thais swiftly took Laos, but Cambodia proved a much harder nut to crack.

 

On January 16, 1941 the French launched a large counterattack on the Thai-held villages of Yang Dang Khum and Phum Preav, initiating the fiercest battle of the war. Because of over-complicated orders and nonexistent intelligence, the French counterattacks were cut to pieces and fighting ended with a French withdrawal from the area. The Thais were unable to pursue the retreating French, as their forward tanks were kept in check by the gunnery of French Foreign Legion artillerists.

 

On January 24, the final air battle took place when Thai bombers raided the French airfield at Angkor near Siem Reap, which quickly fell. The last Thai mission commenced at 0710 hours on January 28, when the Martins of the 50th Bomber Squadron set out on a raid on Sisophon, escorted by three Hawk 75Ns of the 60th Fighter Squadron.

 

Although the French won an important naval victory over the Thais, Japan forced the French to accept Japanese mediation of a peace treaty that returned the disputed territory to Thai control. A general armistice was arranged by Japan to go into effect on January 28. On May 9 a peace treaty was signed in Tokyo, with the French being coerced by the Japanese into relinquishing their hold on the disputed territories. However, the French (now part of the Axis Forces’ Vichy regime) were left in place to administer the rump colony of Indochina until 9 March 1945, when the Japanese staged a coup d'état in French Indochina and took control, establishing their own colony, the Empire of Vietnam, as a puppet state controlled by Tokyo.

 

Until then, Japanese authorities heavily influenced the diminishing Vichy French presence in the region and handed over a lot of leftover military hardware to its own allies, primarily the Thai forces. However, there was not much left to be distributed: about 30% of the French aircraft were rendered unserviceable by the end of the French-Thai War in early 1941, some as a result of minor damage sustained in air raids that remained unrepaired. The Armée de l'Air admitted the loss of only one Farman F221 and two Morane M.S.406s destroyed on the ground, but, in reality, its losses were greater and the influence of Japan on the leftover stock was fogged in order to save face. However, even in 1944, single former Vichy French aircraft and tanks were still active in the region, primarily under Thai flag.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 8.17 m (26 ft 10 in)

Wingspan: 10.61 m (34 ft 10 in)

Height: 3.25 m (10 ft 8 in)

Wing area: 16 m2 (170 sq ft)

Empty weight: 1,895 kg (4,178 lb)

Gross weight: 2,540 kg (5,600 lb)

 

Powerplant:

1 × Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 V-12 liquid-cooled piston engine with

619 kW (830 hp) for take-off at 2,520 rpm at sea level,

driving a 3-bladed variable-pitch propeller, 3 m (9 ft 10 in) diameter

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 490 km/h (304 mph; 265 kn) at 4,500 m (14,764 ft)

Stall speed: 160 km/h (99 mph, 86 kn) without flaps

135 km/h (84 mph; 73 kn) with flaps

Range: 1,100 km (680 mi, 590 nmi) at 66% power

Combat range: 720 km (450 mi, 390 nmi)

Endurance: 2 hours 20 minutes 30 seconds (average combat mission)

Service ceiling: 9,400 m (30,800 ft)

Time to altitude: 2,000 m (6,562 ft) in 2 minutes 32 seconds

9,000 m (29,528 ft) in 21 minutes 37 seconds

Wing loading: 154 kg/m2 (32 lb/sq ft)

Power/mass: 2.95 kg/kW (4.85 lb/hp)

Take-off run to 8 m (26 ft): 270 m (886 ft)

Landing run from 8 m (26 ft): 340 m (1,115 ft)

 

Armament:

1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon, firing through the propeller hub

2× 7.5 mm (0.295 in) MAC 1934 machine guns in the outer wings

  

The kit and its assembly:

This quick build was created in the wake of the “Captured” group build at whatifmodellers.com and actually is a personal interpretation of someone else’s idea, namely of fellow modeler NARSES who came up with the idea of a captured French M.S. 406 in Indochina under a new Thai flag. I found the idea so weird, yet realistic, that I decided to build one, too.

 

The model is the very simple but quite acceptable M.S. 406 from Hobby Boss. Externally the model is nice, with recessed panel lines and a basic landing gear. Internally, it is rather bleak, even though it has a full cockpit with a floor, integrally molded seat and even some details behind the pilot’s armor bulkhead. The canopy is a single piece and very clear, but it comes with massive locator bars, so that I decided to keep the canopy closed and added a pilot figure to cover the minimal interior. I was lucky to find a Japanese (though pretty “flat”) WWII pilot in the donor bank, left over from a Hasegawa model. I also gave the figure some seat belts (made from adhesive tape), but the rest remained unchanged – even the original metal axis for the propeller was used. I just replaced the machine gun barrels with hollow steel needles and added a pitot on the wing, which is probably part of the kit but not indicated in the instructions. The same is true for the foldable ventral antenna.

 

The build was finished quickly, in the course of just a single evening, including the pilot and some overall PSR.

  

Painting and markings:

My interpretation of a French aircraft in Thai service after the French-Thai War stuck closely to the real world Vichy livery, which was the standard French camouflage in grey/green/brown with light blue-grey undersides (all from ModelMaster’s Authentic Color range), together with a yellow-and-red-striped cowling (a base with Humbrol 69 and red decal stripes added later) and a white cheatline long the fuselage. The tail of French aircraft in Indochina was painted all-red from early 1941 onwards upon Japanese command, because of friendly fire incidents. This was adopted for the model (with a mix of Humbrol 19 and some 73), which is supposed to belong into the 1942 time frame.

 

As a captured aircraft, the original French roundels were replaced/overpainted with red disks/hinomaru, and then Thai elephant markings added on top. That’s a personal idea, ordnance directly supplied to the Thai forces from Japan had the simple, square “elephant flag” emblem directly applied to the wings and the fin (but no fuselage roundel). The all-red tail was taken over, but I painted the rudder in a dark IJA green, since it would formerly carry a French fin flash. The same green was used to overpaint a serial number on the fin and a former squadron emblem under the cockpit.

The hinomaru come from a PrintScale Ki-46 sheet, and these markings are intentionally a bit oversized, so that they cover well the former French markings and are highly visible. The elephant markings some from a PrintScale Ki-27 sheet, so that the red tone on both sources are very close to each other. The Ki-27 sheet also provided the Thai ciphers “3” and “4”, combined into a “34”.

 

The interior was painted in medium grey, and the model externally received some signs of wear and tear in the form of dry-brushed leading edges and around the cockpit as well as some soot stains behind the exhaust stubs and the machine guns. Finally, the model was sealed with a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).

  

A quick build, and the easy-build Hobby Boss M.S. 406 is certainly not as crisp as a “real” model, but in this case the story behind the weird livery was more in the focus than the canvas underneath. However, an interesting result, and the hybrid paint scheme with heritage from three different operators make the aircraft an unusual, if not exotic sight.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The outbreak of the war in Europe in September 1939 did not immediately affect the status of the Armée de l'Air in French Indochina because it had the task of defending a wide area of Southeast Asia, including the future Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. And yet its array of airplanes seemed inadequate to perform any kind of real defense against any incursion by an enemy, because there were less than 100 airplanes available to it, all obsolescent or obsolete. In September 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria. This was an area of northeast China, which encompassed the provinces of Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang. Nearly six whole years later, in July 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War had begun. As yet, the French colonial authorities were hoping that the Japanese would not be brazen enough to take on the might of a European power. However, it became increasingly likely after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, since Japan was part of the Axis alliance and thus Germany's ally.

 

On September 26, 1940, Japanese troops landed in Haiphong, violating a cease-fire which had been signed only the previous day. From the middle of the following month, the French became heavily involved in repelling Japanese army assaults. Following the Fall of France in 1940, Thais perceived a chance to regain the territories they had lost years earlier. The collapse of Metropolitan France made the French hold on Indochina tenuous. After the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in September 1940, the French were forced to allow the Japanese to set up military bases. This seemingly subservient behavior convinced the Thai regime that Vichy France would not seriously resist a confrontation with Thailand.

 

During the French-Thai War, the Thai Air Force achieved several air-to-air-victories in dogfights against the Vichy Armée de l'Air. During World War II, the Thai Air Force supported the Royal Thai Army in its occupation of the Shan States of Burma as somewhat reluctant allies of the Japanese and took part in the defense of Bangkok against allied air raids in the latter part of the war, achieving some successes against state-of-the-art aircraft like the P-51 Mustang and the B-29 Superfortress. During these times, the RTAF was actively supplied by the Japanese with Imperial Japanese Army Air Force aircraft such as the Ki-43 "Oscar," and the Ki-27 "Nate." Other RTAF personnel took an active part the anti-Japanese resistance movement.

 

French forces in Indochina consisted of an army of approximately fifty thousand men, The most obvious deficiency of the French army lay in its shortage of armor; however, the Armée de l'Air had in its inventory approximately a hundred aircraft, of which around sixty could be considered first line. These consisted of thirty Potez 25 TOEs, four Farman 221s, eight Loire 130 flying boats, six Potez 542s, nine Morane M.S.406s.

 

The M.S.406 was a French fighter aircraft developed and manufactured by Morane-Saulnier starting in 1938. In response to a requirement for a fighter issued by the French Air Force in 1934, Morane-Saulnier built a prototype, designated MS.405, of mixed materials. This had the distinction of being the company's first low-wing monoplane, as well as the first to feature an enclosed cockpit, and the first design with a retracting undercarriage. The entry to service of the M.S.406 to the French Air Force in early 1939 represented the first modern fighter aircraft to be adopted by the service, and the type was also used in the French overseas colonies. The M.S.406 was France's most numerous fighter during the Second World War and one of only two French designs to exceed 1,000 in number. At the beginning of the war, it was one of only two French-built aircraft capable of 400 km/h (250 mph) – the other being the Potez 630.

 

Although a sturdy and highly manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, the M.S.406 was considered underpowered and weakly armed when compared to its contemporaries, esp. over continental Europe. Most critically, the M.S.406 was outperformed by the Messerschmitt Bf 109E during the Battle of France and no serious threat to the German fighter. In less advanced theatres like Indochina, though, the M.S. 406 was a respectable contender, but its numbers were low.

 

When the French-Thai War broke out in Indochina, the Thai Army was a relatively well-equipped force, consisting of some sixty thousand men, with artillery and tanks. The Royal Thai Navy — consisting of several vessels, including two coastal defence ships, twelve torpedo boats and four submarines — was inferior to the French naval forces, though, but the Royal Thai Air Force held both a quantitative and qualitative edge over l'Armee de l'Air. Among the 140 aircraft that composed the air force's initial first-line strength were twenty-four Mitsubishi Ki-30 light bombers, nine Mitsubishi Ki-21 and six Martin B-10 twin-engine bombers, seventy Vought Corsair dive bombers, and twenty-five Curtiss Hawk 75 fighters.

 

While nationalistic demonstrations and anti-French rallies were held in Bangkok, border skirmishes erupted along the Mekong frontier. The superior Royal Thai Air Force conducted daytime bombing runs over Vientiane, Sisophon, and Battambang with impunity. The French retaliated with their own planes, but the damage caused was less than equal. The activities of the Thai air force, particularly in the field of dive-bombing, was such that Admiral Jean Decoux, the governor of French Indochina, grudgingly remarked that the Thai planes seemed to have been flown by men with plenty of war experience.

 

In early January 1941, the Thai Burapha and Isan Armies launched their offensive on Laos and Cambodia. French resistance was instantaneous, but many units were simply swept along by the better-equipped Thai forces, with some French equipment – including some aircraft – being captured and immediately pressed into Thai army service. The Thais swiftly took Laos, but Cambodia proved a much harder nut to crack.

 

On January 16, 1941 the French launched a large counterattack on the Thai-held villages of Yang Dang Khum and Phum Preav, initiating the fiercest battle of the war. Because of over-complicated orders and nonexistent intelligence, the French counterattacks were cut to pieces and fighting ended with a French withdrawal from the area. The Thais were unable to pursue the retreating French, as their forward tanks were kept in check by the gunnery of French Foreign Legion artillerists.

 

On January 24, the final air battle took place when Thai bombers raided the French airfield at Angkor near Siem Reap, which quickly fell. The last Thai mission commenced at 0710 hours on January 28, when the Martins of the 50th Bomber Squadron set out on a raid on Sisophon, escorted by three Hawk 75Ns of the 60th Fighter Squadron.

 

Although the French won an important naval victory over the Thais, Japan forced the French to accept Japanese mediation of a peace treaty that returned the disputed territory to Thai control. A general armistice was arranged by Japan to go into effect on January 28. On May 9 a peace treaty was signed in Tokyo, with the French being coerced by the Japanese into relinquishing their hold on the disputed territories. However, the French (now part of the Axis Forces’ Vichy regime) were left in place to administer the rump colony of Indochina until 9 March 1945, when the Japanese staged a coup d'état in French Indochina and took control, establishing their own colony, the Empire of Vietnam, as a puppet state controlled by Tokyo.

 

Until then, Japanese authorities heavily influenced the diminishing Vichy French presence in the region and handed over a lot of leftover military hardware to its own allies, primarily the Thai forces. However, there was not much left to be distributed: about 30% of the French aircraft were rendered unserviceable by the end of the French-Thai War in early 1941, some as a result of minor damage sustained in air raids that remained unrepaired. The Armée de l'Air admitted the loss of only one Farman F221 and two Morane M.S.406s destroyed on the ground, but, in reality, its losses were greater and the influence of Japan on the leftover stock was fogged in order to save face. However, even in 1944, single former Vichy French aircraft and tanks were still active in the region, primarily under Thai flag.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 8.17 m (26 ft 10 in)

Wingspan: 10.61 m (34 ft 10 in)

Height: 3.25 m (10 ft 8 in)

Wing area: 16 m2 (170 sq ft)

Empty weight: 1,895 kg (4,178 lb)

Gross weight: 2,540 kg (5,600 lb)

 

Powerplant:

1 × Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 V-12 liquid-cooled piston engine with

619 kW (830 hp) for take-off at 2,520 rpm at sea level,

driving a 3-bladed variable-pitch propeller, 3 m (9 ft 10 in) diameter

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 490 km/h (304 mph; 265 kn) at 4,500 m (14,764 ft)

Stall speed: 160 km/h (99 mph, 86 kn) without flaps

135 km/h (84 mph; 73 kn) with flaps

Range: 1,100 km (680 mi, 590 nmi) at 66% power

Combat range: 720 km (450 mi, 390 nmi)

Endurance: 2 hours 20 minutes 30 seconds (average combat mission)

Service ceiling: 9,400 m (30,800 ft)

Time to altitude: 2,000 m (6,562 ft) in 2 minutes 32 seconds

9,000 m (29,528 ft) in 21 minutes 37 seconds

Wing loading: 154 kg/m2 (32 lb/sq ft)

Power/mass: 2.95 kg/kW (4.85 lb/hp)

Take-off run to 8 m (26 ft): 270 m (886 ft)

Landing run from 8 m (26 ft): 340 m (1,115 ft)

 

Armament:

1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon, firing through the propeller hub

2× 7.5 mm (0.295 in) MAC 1934 machine guns in the outer wings

  

The kit and its assembly:

This quick build was created in the wake of the “Captured” group build at whatifmodellers.com and actually is a personal interpretation of someone else’s idea, namely of fellow modeler NARSES who came up with the idea of a captured French M.S. 406 in Indochina under a new Thai flag. I found the idea so weird, yet realistic, that I decided to build one, too.

 

The model is the very simple but quite acceptable M.S. 406 from Hobby Boss. Externally the model is nice, with recessed panel lines and a basic landing gear. Internally, it is rather bleak, even though it has a full cockpit with a floor, integrally molded seat and even some details behind the pilot’s armor bulkhead. The canopy is a single piece and very clear, but it comes with massive locator bars, so that I decided to keep the canopy closed and added a pilot figure to cover the minimal interior. I was lucky to find a Japanese (though pretty “flat”) WWII pilot in the donor bank, left over from a Hasegawa model. I also gave the figure some seat belts (made from adhesive tape), but the rest remained unchanged – even the original metal axis for the propeller was used. I just replaced the machine gun barrels with hollow steel needles and added a pitot on the wing, which is probably part of the kit but not indicated in the instructions. The same is true for the foldable ventral antenna.

 

The build was finished quickly, in the course of just a single evening, including the pilot and some overall PSR.

  

Painting and markings:

My interpretation of a French aircraft in Thai service after the French-Thai War stuck closely to the real world Vichy livery, which was the standard French camouflage in grey/green/brown with light blue-grey undersides (all from ModelMaster’s Authentic Color range), together with a yellow-and-red-striped cowling (a base with Humbrol 69 and red decal stripes added later) and a white cheatline long the fuselage. The tail of French aircraft in Indochina was painted all-red from early 1941 onwards upon Japanese command, because of friendly fire incidents. This was adopted for the model (with a mix of Humbrol 19 and some 73), which is supposed to belong into the 1942 time frame.

 

As a captured aircraft, the original French roundels were replaced/overpainted with red disks/hinomaru, and then Thai elephant markings added on top. That’s a personal idea, ordnance directly supplied to the Thai forces from Japan had the simple, square “elephant flag” emblem directly applied to the wings and the fin (but no fuselage roundel). The all-red tail was taken over, but I painted the rudder in a dark IJA green, since it would formerly carry a French fin flash. The same green was used to overpaint a serial number on the fin and a former squadron emblem under the cockpit.

The hinomaru come from a PrintScale Ki-46 sheet, and these markings are intentionally a bit oversized, so that they cover well the former French markings and are highly visible. The elephant markings some from a PrintScale Ki-27 sheet, so that the red tone on both sources are very close to each other. The Ki-27 sheet also provided the Thai ciphers “3” and “4”, combined into a “34”.

 

The interior was painted in medium grey, and the model externally received some signs of wear and tear in the form of dry-brushed leading edges and around the cockpit as well as some soot stains behind the exhaust stubs and the machine guns. Finally, the model was sealed with a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).

  

A quick build, and the easy-build Hobby Boss M.S. 406 is certainly not as crisp as a “real” model, but in this case the story behind the weird livery was more in the focus than the canvas underneath. However, an interesting result, and the hybrid paint scheme with heritage from three different operators make the aircraft an unusual, if not exotic sight.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The outbreak of the war in Europe in September 1939 did not immediately affect the status of the Armée de l'Air in French Indochina because it had the task of defending a wide area of Southeast Asia, including the future Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. And yet its array of airplanes seemed inadequate to perform any kind of real defense against any incursion by an enemy, because there were less than 100 airplanes available to it, all obsolescent or obsolete. In September 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria. This was an area of northeast China, which encompassed the provinces of Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang. Nearly six whole years later, in July 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War had begun. As yet, the French colonial authorities were hoping that the Japanese would not be brazen enough to take on the might of a European power. However, it became increasingly likely after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, since Japan was part of the Axis alliance and thus Germany's ally.

 

On September 26, 1940, Japanese troops landed in Haiphong, violating a cease-fire which had been signed only the previous day. From the middle of the following month, the French became heavily involved in repelling Japanese army assaults. Following the Fall of France in 1940, Thais perceived a chance to regain the territories they had lost years earlier. The collapse of Metropolitan France made the French hold on Indochina tenuous. After the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in September 1940, the French were forced to allow the Japanese to set up military bases. This seemingly subservient behavior convinced the Thai regime that Vichy France would not seriously resist a confrontation with Thailand.

 

During the French-Thai War, the Thai Air Force achieved several air-to-air-victories in dogfights against the Vichy Armée de l'Air. During World War II, the Thai Air Force supported the Royal Thai Army in its occupation of the Shan States of Burma as somewhat reluctant allies of the Japanese and took part in the defense of Bangkok against allied air raids in the latter part of the war, achieving some successes against state-of-the-art aircraft like the P-51 Mustang and the B-29 Superfortress. During these times, the RTAF was actively supplied by the Japanese with Imperial Japanese Army Air Force aircraft such as the Ki-43 "Oscar," and the Ki-27 "Nate." Other RTAF personnel took an active part the anti-Japanese resistance movement.

 

French forces in Indochina consisted of an army of approximately fifty thousand men, The most obvious deficiency of the French army lay in its shortage of armor; however, the Armée de l'Air had in its inventory approximately a hundred aircraft, of which around sixty could be considered first line. These consisted of thirty Potez 25 TOEs, four Farman 221s, eight Loire 130 flying boats, six Potez 542s, nine Morane M.S.406s.

 

The M.S.406 was a French fighter aircraft developed and manufactured by Morane-Saulnier starting in 1938. In response to a requirement for a fighter issued by the French Air Force in 1934, Morane-Saulnier built a prototype, designated MS.405, of mixed materials. This had the distinction of being the company's first low-wing monoplane, as well as the first to feature an enclosed cockpit, and the first design with a retracting undercarriage. The entry to service of the M.S.406 to the French Air Force in early 1939 represented the first modern fighter aircraft to be adopted by the service, and the type was also used in the French overseas colonies. The M.S.406 was France's most numerous fighter during the Second World War and one of only two French designs to exceed 1,000 in number. At the beginning of the war, it was one of only two French-built aircraft capable of 400 km/h (250 mph) – the other being the Potez 630.

 

Although a sturdy and highly manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, the M.S.406 was considered underpowered and weakly armed when compared to its contemporaries, esp. over continental Europe. Most critically, the M.S.406 was outperformed by the Messerschmitt Bf 109E during the Battle of France and no serious threat to the German fighter. In less advanced theatres like Indochina, though, the M.S. 406 was a respectable contender, but its numbers were low.

 

When the French-Thai War broke out in Indochina, the Thai Army was a relatively well-equipped force, consisting of some sixty thousand men, with artillery and tanks. The Royal Thai Navy — consisting of several vessels, including two coastal defence ships, twelve torpedo boats and four submarines — was inferior to the French naval forces, though, but the Royal Thai Air Force held both a quantitative and qualitative edge over l'Armee de l'Air. Among the 140 aircraft that composed the air force's initial first-line strength were twenty-four Mitsubishi Ki-30 light bombers, nine Mitsubishi Ki-21 and six Martin B-10 twin-engine bombers, seventy Vought Corsair dive bombers, and twenty-five Curtiss Hawk 75 fighters.

 

While nationalistic demonstrations and anti-French rallies were held in Bangkok, border skirmishes erupted along the Mekong frontier. The superior Royal Thai Air Force conducted daytime bombing runs over Vientiane, Sisophon, and Battambang with impunity. The French retaliated with their own planes, but the damage caused was less than equal. The activities of the Thai air force, particularly in the field of dive-bombing, was such that Admiral Jean Decoux, the governor of French Indochina, grudgingly remarked that the Thai planes seemed to have been flown by men with plenty of war experience.

 

In early January 1941, the Thai Burapha and Isan Armies launched their offensive on Laos and Cambodia. French resistance was instantaneous, but many units were simply swept along by the better-equipped Thai forces, with some French equipment – including some aircraft – being captured and immediately pressed into Thai army service. The Thais swiftly took Laos, but Cambodia proved a much harder nut to crack.

 

On January 16, 1941 the French launched a large counterattack on the Thai-held villages of Yang Dang Khum and Phum Preav, initiating the fiercest battle of the war. Because of over-complicated orders and nonexistent intelligence, the French counterattacks were cut to pieces and fighting ended with a French withdrawal from the area. The Thais were unable to pursue the retreating French, as their forward tanks were kept in check by the gunnery of French Foreign Legion artillerists.

 

On January 24, the final air battle took place when Thai bombers raided the French airfield at Angkor near Siem Reap, which quickly fell. The last Thai mission commenced at 0710 hours on January 28, when the Martins of the 50th Bomber Squadron set out on a raid on Sisophon, escorted by three Hawk 75Ns of the 60th Fighter Squadron.

 

Although the French won an important naval victory over the Thais, Japan forced the French to accept Japanese mediation of a peace treaty that returned the disputed territory to Thai control. A general armistice was arranged by Japan to go into effect on January 28. On May 9 a peace treaty was signed in Tokyo, with the French being coerced by the Japanese into relinquishing their hold on the disputed territories. However, the French (now part of the Axis Forces’ Vichy regime) were left in place to administer the rump colony of Indochina until 9 March 1945, when the Japanese staged a coup d'état in French Indochina and took control, establishing their own colony, the Empire of Vietnam, as a puppet state controlled by Tokyo.

 

Until then, Japanese authorities heavily influenced the diminishing Vichy French presence in the region and handed over a lot of leftover military hardware to its own allies, primarily the Thai forces. However, there was not much left to be distributed: about 30% of the French aircraft were rendered unserviceable by the end of the French-Thai War in early 1941, some as a result of minor damage sustained in air raids that remained unrepaired. The Armée de l'Air admitted the loss of only one Farman F221 and two Morane M.S.406s destroyed on the ground, but, in reality, its losses were greater and the influence of Japan on the leftover stock was fogged in order to save face. However, even in 1944, single former Vichy French aircraft and tanks were still active in the region, primarily under Thai flag.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 8.17 m (26 ft 10 in)

Wingspan: 10.61 m (34 ft 10 in)

Height: 3.25 m (10 ft 8 in)

Wing area: 16 m2 (170 sq ft)

Empty weight: 1,895 kg (4,178 lb)

Gross weight: 2,540 kg (5,600 lb)

 

Powerplant:

1 × Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 V-12 liquid-cooled piston engine with

619 kW (830 hp) for take-off at 2,520 rpm at sea level,

driving a 3-bladed variable-pitch propeller, 3 m (9 ft 10 in) diameter

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 490 km/h (304 mph; 265 kn) at 4,500 m (14,764 ft)

Stall speed: 160 km/h (99 mph, 86 kn) without flaps

135 km/h (84 mph; 73 kn) with flaps

Range: 1,100 km (680 mi, 590 nmi) at 66% power

Combat range: 720 km (450 mi, 390 nmi)

Endurance: 2 hours 20 minutes 30 seconds (average combat mission)

Service ceiling: 9,400 m (30,800 ft)

Time to altitude: 2,000 m (6,562 ft) in 2 minutes 32 seconds

9,000 m (29,528 ft) in 21 minutes 37 seconds

Wing loading: 154 kg/m2 (32 lb/sq ft)

Power/mass: 2.95 kg/kW (4.85 lb/hp)

Take-off run to 8 m (26 ft): 270 m (886 ft)

Landing run from 8 m (26 ft): 340 m (1,115 ft)

 

Armament:

1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon, firing through the propeller hub

2× 7.5 mm (0.295 in) MAC 1934 machine guns in the outer wings

  

The kit and its assembly:

This quick build was created in the wake of the “Captured” group build at whatifmodellers.com and actually is a personal interpretation of someone else’s idea, namely of fellow modeler NARSES who came up with the idea of a captured French M.S. 406 in Indochina under a new Thai flag. I found the idea so weird, yet realistic, that I decided to build one, too.

 

The model is the very simple but quite acceptable M.S. 406 from Hobby Boss. Externally the model is nice, with recessed panel lines and a basic landing gear. Internally, it is rather bleak, even though it has a full cockpit with a floor, integrally molded seat and even some details behind the pilot’s armor bulkhead. The canopy is a single piece and very clear, but it comes with massive locator bars, so that I decided to keep the canopy closed and added a pilot figure to cover the minimal interior. I was lucky to find a Japanese (though pretty “flat”) WWII pilot in the donor bank, left over from a Hasegawa model. I also gave the figure some seat belts (made from adhesive tape), but the rest remained unchanged – even the original metal axis for the propeller was used. I just replaced the machine gun barrels with hollow steel needles and added a pitot on the wing, which is probably part of the kit but not indicated in the instructions. The same is true for the foldable ventral antenna.

 

The build was finished quickly, in the course of just a single evening, including the pilot and some overall PSR.

  

Painting and markings:

My interpretation of a French aircraft in Thai service after the French-Thai War stuck closely to the real world Vichy livery, which was the standard French camouflage in grey/green/brown with light blue-grey undersides (all from ModelMaster’s Authentic Color range), together with a yellow-and-red-striped cowling (a base with Humbrol 69 and red decal stripes added later) and a white cheatline long the fuselage. The tail of French aircraft in Indochina was painted all-red from early 1941 onwards upon Japanese command, because of friendly fire incidents. This was adopted for the model (with a mix of Humbrol 19 and some 73), which is supposed to belong into the 1942 time frame.

 

As a captured aircraft, the original French roundels were replaced/overpainted with red disks/hinomaru, and then Thai elephant markings added on top. That’s a personal idea, ordnance directly supplied to the Thai forces from Japan had the simple, square “elephant flag” emblem directly applied to the wings and the fin (but no fuselage roundel). The all-red tail was taken over, but I painted the rudder in a dark IJA green, since it would formerly carry a French fin flash. The same green was used to overpaint a serial number on the fin and a former squadron emblem under the cockpit.

The hinomaru come from a PrintScale Ki-46 sheet, and these markings are intentionally a bit oversized, so that they cover well the former French markings and are highly visible. The elephant markings some from a PrintScale Ki-27 sheet, so that the red tone on both sources are very close to each other. The Ki-27 sheet also provided the Thai ciphers “3” and “4”, combined into a “34”.

 

The interior was painted in medium grey, and the model externally received some signs of wear and tear in the form of dry-brushed leading edges and around the cockpit as well as some soot stains behind the exhaust stubs and the machine guns. Finally, the model was sealed with a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).

  

A quick build, and the easy-build Hobby Boss M.S. 406 is certainly not as crisp as a “real” model, but in this case the story behind the weird livery was more in the focus than the canvas underneath. However, an interesting result, and the hybrid paint scheme with heritage from three different operators make the aircraft an unusual, if not exotic sight.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The outbreak of the war in Europe in September 1939 did not immediately affect the status of the Armée de l'Air in French Indochina because it had the task of defending a wide area of Southeast Asia, including the future Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. And yet its array of airplanes seemed inadequate to perform any kind of real defense against any incursion by an enemy, because there were less than 100 airplanes available to it, all obsolescent or obsolete. In September 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria. This was an area of northeast China, which encompassed the provinces of Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang. Nearly six whole years later, in July 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War had begun. As yet, the French colonial authorities were hoping that the Japanese would not be brazen enough to take on the might of a European power. However, it became increasingly likely after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, since Japan was part of the Axis alliance and thus Germany's ally.

 

On September 26, 1940, Japanese troops landed in Haiphong, violating a cease-fire which had been signed only the previous day. From the middle of the following month, the French became heavily involved in repelling Japanese army assaults. Following the Fall of France in 1940, Thais perceived a chance to regain the territories they had lost years earlier. The collapse of Metropolitan France made the French hold on Indochina tenuous. After the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in September 1940, the French were forced to allow the Japanese to set up military bases. This seemingly subservient behavior convinced the Thai regime that Vichy France would not seriously resist a confrontation with Thailand.

 

During the French-Thai War, the Thai Air Force achieved several air-to-air-victories in dogfights against the Vichy Armée de l'Air. During World War II, the Thai Air Force supported the Royal Thai Army in its occupation of the Shan States of Burma as somewhat reluctant allies of the Japanese and took part in the defense of Bangkok against allied air raids in the latter part of the war, achieving some successes against state-of-the-art aircraft like the P-51 Mustang and the B-29 Superfortress. During these times, the RTAF was actively supplied by the Japanese with Imperial Japanese Army Air Force aircraft such as the Ki-43 "Oscar," and the Ki-27 "Nate." Other RTAF personnel took an active part the anti-Japanese resistance movement.

 

French forces in Indochina consisted of an army of approximately fifty thousand men, The most obvious deficiency of the French army lay in its shortage of armor; however, the Armée de l'Air had in its inventory approximately a hundred aircraft, of which around sixty could be considered first line. These consisted of thirty Potez 25 TOEs, four Farman 221s, eight Loire 130 flying boats, six Potez 542s, nine Morane M.S.406s.

 

The M.S.406 was a French fighter aircraft developed and manufactured by Morane-Saulnier starting in 1938. In response to a requirement for a fighter issued by the French Air Force in 1934, Morane-Saulnier built a prototype, designated MS.405, of mixed materials. This had the distinction of being the company's first low-wing monoplane, as well as the first to feature an enclosed cockpit, and the first design with a retracting undercarriage. The entry to service of the M.S.406 to the French Air Force in early 1939 represented the first modern fighter aircraft to be adopted by the service, and the type was also used in the French overseas colonies. The M.S.406 was France's most numerous fighter during the Second World War and one of only two French designs to exceed 1,000 in number. At the beginning of the war, it was one of only two French-built aircraft capable of 400 km/h (250 mph) – the other being the Potez 630.

 

Although a sturdy and highly manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, the M.S.406 was considered underpowered and weakly armed when compared to its contemporaries, esp. over continental Europe. Most critically, the M.S.406 was outperformed by the Messerschmitt Bf 109E during the Battle of France and no serious threat to the German fighter. In less advanced theatres like Indochina, though, the M.S. 406 was a respectable contender, but its numbers were low.

 

When the French-Thai War broke out in Indochina, the Thai Army was a relatively well-equipped force, consisting of some sixty thousand men, with artillery and tanks. The Royal Thai Navy — consisting of several vessels, including two coastal defence ships, twelve torpedo boats and four submarines — was inferior to the French naval forces, though, but the Royal Thai Air Force held both a quantitative and qualitative edge over l'Armee de l'Air. Among the 140 aircraft that composed the air force's initial first-line strength were twenty-four Mitsubishi Ki-30 light bombers, nine Mitsubishi Ki-21 and six Martin B-10 twin-engine bombers, seventy Vought Corsair dive bombers, and twenty-five Curtiss Hawk 75 fighters.

 

While nationalistic demonstrations and anti-French rallies were held in Bangkok, border skirmishes erupted along the Mekong frontier. The superior Royal Thai Air Force conducted daytime bombing runs over Vientiane, Sisophon, and Battambang with impunity. The French retaliated with their own planes, but the damage caused was less than equal. The activities of the Thai air force, particularly in the field of dive-bombing, was such that Admiral Jean Decoux, the governor of French Indochina, grudgingly remarked that the Thai planes seemed to have been flown by men with plenty of war experience.

 

In early January 1941, the Thai Burapha and Isan Armies launched their offensive on Laos and Cambodia. French resistance was instantaneous, but many units were simply swept along by the better-equipped Thai forces, with some French equipment – including some aircraft – being captured and immediately pressed into Thai army service. The Thais swiftly took Laos, but Cambodia proved a much harder nut to crack.

 

On January 16, 1941 the French launched a large counterattack on the Thai-held villages of Yang Dang Khum and Phum Preav, initiating the fiercest battle of the war. Because of over-complicated orders and nonexistent intelligence, the French counterattacks were cut to pieces and fighting ended with a French withdrawal from the area. The Thais were unable to pursue the retreating French, as their forward tanks were kept in check by the gunnery of French Foreign Legion artillerists.

 

On January 24, the final air battle took place when Thai bombers raided the French airfield at Angkor near Siem Reap, which quickly fell. The last Thai mission commenced at 0710 hours on January 28, when the Martins of the 50th Bomber Squadron set out on a raid on Sisophon, escorted by three Hawk 75Ns of the 60th Fighter Squadron.

 

Although the French won an important naval victory over the Thais, Japan forced the French to accept Japanese mediation of a peace treaty that returned the disputed territory to Thai control. A general armistice was arranged by Japan to go into effect on January 28. On May 9 a peace treaty was signed in Tokyo, with the French being coerced by the Japanese into relinquishing their hold on the disputed territories. However, the French (now part of the Axis Forces’ Vichy regime) were left in place to administer the rump colony of Indochina until 9 March 1945, when the Japanese staged a coup d'état in French Indochina and took control, establishing their own colony, the Empire of Vietnam, as a puppet state controlled by Tokyo.

 

Until then, Japanese authorities heavily influenced the diminishing Vichy French presence in the region and handed over a lot of leftover military hardware to its own allies, primarily the Thai forces. However, there was not much left to be distributed: about 30% of the French aircraft were rendered unserviceable by the end of the French-Thai War in early 1941, some as a result of minor damage sustained in air raids that remained unrepaired. The Armée de l'Air admitted the loss of only one Farman F221 and two Morane M.S.406s destroyed on the ground, but, in reality, its losses were greater and the influence of Japan on the leftover stock was fogged in order to save face. However, even in 1944, single former Vichy French aircraft and tanks were still active in the region, primarily under Thai flag.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 8.17 m (26 ft 10 in)

Wingspan: 10.61 m (34 ft 10 in)

Height: 3.25 m (10 ft 8 in)

Wing area: 16 m2 (170 sq ft)

Empty weight: 1,895 kg (4,178 lb)

Gross weight: 2,540 kg (5,600 lb)

 

Powerplant:

1 × Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 V-12 liquid-cooled piston engine with

619 kW (830 hp) for take-off at 2,520 rpm at sea level,

driving a 3-bladed variable-pitch propeller, 3 m (9 ft 10 in) diameter

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 490 km/h (304 mph; 265 kn) at 4,500 m (14,764 ft)

Stall speed: 160 km/h (99 mph, 86 kn) without flaps

135 km/h (84 mph; 73 kn) with flaps

Range: 1,100 km (680 mi, 590 nmi) at 66% power

Combat range: 720 km (450 mi, 390 nmi)

Endurance: 2 hours 20 minutes 30 seconds (average combat mission)

Service ceiling: 9,400 m (30,800 ft)

Time to altitude: 2,000 m (6,562 ft) in 2 minutes 32 seconds

9,000 m (29,528 ft) in 21 minutes 37 seconds

Wing loading: 154 kg/m2 (32 lb/sq ft)

Power/mass: 2.95 kg/kW (4.85 lb/hp)

Take-off run to 8 m (26 ft): 270 m (886 ft)

Landing run from 8 m (26 ft): 340 m (1,115 ft)

 

Armament:

1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon, firing through the propeller hub

2× 7.5 mm (0.295 in) MAC 1934 machine guns in the outer wings

  

The kit and its assembly:

This quick build was created in the wake of the “Captured” group build at whatifmodellers.com and actually is a personal interpretation of someone else’s idea, namely of fellow modeler NARSES who came up with the idea of a captured French M.S. 406 in Indochina under a new Thai flag. I found the idea so weird, yet realistic, that I decided to build one, too.

 

The model is the very simple but quite acceptable M.S. 406 from Hobby Boss. Externally the model is nice, with recessed panel lines and a basic landing gear. Internally, it is rather bleak, even though it has a full cockpit with a floor, integrally molded seat and even some details behind the pilot’s armor bulkhead. The canopy is a single piece and very clear, but it comes with massive locator bars, so that I decided to keep the canopy closed and added a pilot figure to cover the minimal interior. I was lucky to find a Japanese (though pretty “flat”) WWII pilot in the donor bank, left over from a Hasegawa model. I also gave the figure some seat belts (made from adhesive tape), but the rest remained unchanged – even the original metal axis for the propeller was used. I just replaced the machine gun barrels with hollow steel needles and added a pitot on the wing, which is probably part of the kit but not indicated in the instructions. The same is true for the foldable ventral antenna.

 

The build was finished quickly, in the course of just a single evening, including the pilot and some overall PSR.

  

Painting and markings:

My interpretation of a French aircraft in Thai service after the French-Thai War stuck closely to the real world Vichy livery, which was the standard French camouflage in grey/green/brown with light blue-grey undersides (all from ModelMaster’s Authentic Color range), together with a yellow-and-red-striped cowling (a base with Humbrol 69 and red decal stripes added later) and a white cheatline long the fuselage. The tail of French aircraft in Indochina was painted all-red from early 1941 onwards upon Japanese command, because of friendly fire incidents. This was adopted for the model (with a mix of Humbrol 19 and some 73), which is supposed to belong into the 1942 time frame.

 

As a captured aircraft, the original French roundels were replaced/overpainted with red disks/hinomaru, and then Thai elephant markings added on top. That’s a personal idea, ordnance directly supplied to the Thai forces from Japan had the simple, square “elephant flag” emblem directly applied to the wings and the fin (but no fuselage roundel). The all-red tail was taken over, but I painted the rudder in a dark IJA green, since it would formerly carry a French fin flash. The same green was used to overpaint a serial number on the fin and a former squadron emblem under the cockpit.

The hinomaru come from a PrintScale Ki-46 sheet, and these markings are intentionally a bit oversized, so that they cover well the former French markings and are highly visible. The elephant markings some from a PrintScale Ki-27 sheet, so that the red tone on both sources are very close to each other. The Ki-27 sheet also provided the Thai ciphers “3” and “4”, combined into a “34”.

 

The interior was painted in medium grey, and the model externally received some signs of wear and tear in the form of dry-brushed leading edges and around the cockpit as well as some soot stains behind the exhaust stubs and the machine guns. Finally, the model was sealed with a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).

  

A quick build, and the easy-build Hobby Boss M.S. 406 is certainly not as crisp as a “real” model, but in this case the story behind the weird livery was more in the focus than the canvas underneath. However, an interesting result, and the hybrid paint scheme with heritage from three different operators make the aircraft an unusual, if not exotic sight.

Abandone Benelux -

 

The field of industrial archaeology incorporates a range of disciplines including archaeology, architecture, construction, engineering, historic preservation, museology, technology, urban planning and other specialties, in order to piece together the history of past industrial activities. The scientific interpretation of material evidence is often necessary, as the written record of many industrial techniques is often incomplete or nonexistent. Industrial archaeology includes both the examination of standing structures and sites that must be studied by an excavation.

The Kentucky & Indiana Terminal Bridge is a railroad bridge connecting the Louisville, Kentucky, area to New Albany, Indiana. Constructed from 1881 to 1885 by the Kentucky and Indiana Bridge Company, it opened in 1886. Originally, it included a single standard gauge track and two wagon ways, allowing wagons and other animal powered vehicles to cross the Ohio River by a method other than ferry for the first time. At the time motorized vehicles were virtually nonexistent. The K&I Bridge company also owned a ferry boat operation during both the 1st and 2nd bridge, eventually that operation was sold as the bridge's success largely outmoded boat usage.

joe mangrum

washington square park

 

© branko

www.a2b1.com

youtube channel: www.youtube.com/a2b1

 

NY Times, Dec. 4 2011

Colin Huggins was there with his baby grand, the one he wheels into Washington Square Park for his al fresco concerts. So were Tic and Tac, a street-performing duo, who held court in the fountain — dry for the winter. And Joe Mangrum was pouring his elaborate sand paintings on the ground near the Washington Arch.

 

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Connect with @NYTMetro on Twitter for New York breaking news and headlines.

Enlarge This Image

 

Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Kareem Barnes of Tic and Tac collected donations on Sunday.

Enlarge This Image

 

Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Joe Mangrum showed his sand paintings on Sunday.

In other words, it was a typical Sunday afternoon in the Greenwich Village park, where generations of visitors have mingled with musicians, artists, activists, poets and buskers.

 

Yet this fall, that urban harmony has grown dissonant as the city’s parks department has slapped summonses on the four men and other performers who put out hats or buckets, for vending in an unauthorized location — specifically, within 50 feet of a monument.

 

The department’s rule, one of many put in place a year ago, was intended to control commerce in the busiest parks. Under the city’s definition, vending covers not only those peddling photographs and ankle bracelets, but also performers who solicit donations.

 

The rule attracted little notice at first. But the enforcement in Washington Square Park in the past two months has generated summonses ranging from $250 to $1,000. And it has started a debate about the rights of parkgoers seeking refuge from the bustle of the streets versus those looking for entertainment.

 

At a news conference in the park on Sunday organized by NYC Park Advocates, the artists waved fistfuls of pink summonses while their advocates, including civil rights lawyers, called on the city to stop what they called harassment of the performers.

 

“This is a heavy-handed solution to a nonexistent problem,” said Ronald L. Kuby, one of the lawyers.

 

The rule is especially problematic in Washington Square Park, performers say, because there are few locations across its 10 acres that are beyond 50 feet from a memorial or fountain — whether the bust of Alexander Lyman Holley, who introduced the Bessemer steel process to this country, or the statue of the Italian liberator Giuseppe Garibaldi.

 

Then there is the park’s international reputation as a gathering place for folk music pioneers and the Beats.

 

“Washington Square is the live-music park of New York City, and it would be close to impossible for any one of us to follow these regulations,” said Mr. Huggins, who has received nine summonses with fines totaling $2,250.

 

But Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner, argues that there is ample room for performers away from the monuments. And, he added, a musician who is not putting out a tin cup is welcome to sit on the edge of the fountain or under a monument.

 

“It’s the whole issue of the ‘tragedy of the commons,’ ” he said. “If you allow all the performers and all the vendors to do whatever they want to do, pretty soon there’s no park left for people who want to use them for quiet enjoyment. This is a way of having some control and not 18 hours of carnival-like atmosphere.”

 

Gary Behrens, an amateur photographer visiting from New Jersey, applauded the city’s efforts to rein in the performers. “I’m O.K. with the guitar, but the loud instruments have taken over the park,” he said.

 

The lawyers and advocates, however, challenged the idea that street performers were selling a product as a vendor does. And threatening a lawsuit, they faulted the city for creating what they called “First Amendment zones” through the rules.

 

“Is this place zany?” asked Norman Siegel, the former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “You bet. Public parks are quintessential public forums. Zaniness is something we should cherish and protect.”

 

Park visitation has soared along with the rise of tourism in the last 15 years, and with it vendors and artists interested in a lucrative market.

 

Mr. Benepe insisted that the rules would not scare off future music legends.

 

“If Bob Dylan wanted to come play there tomorrow, he could,” he said, “although he might have to move away from the fountain.”

 

Oddly, the dispute coincided with the 50th anniversary of the so-called Folk Riot in Washington Square Park, when the parks commissioner tried to squelch Sunday folk performances. Hundreds of musicians gathered in protest, the police were called in and a melee ensued.

 

In April, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg wrote a letter commemorating the Folk Riot, saying he applauded “the folk performers who changed music, our city and our world beginning half a century ago.”

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The outbreak of the war in Europe in September 1939 did not immediately affect the status of the Armée de l'Air in French Indochina because it had the task of defending a wide area of Southeast Asia, including the future Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. And yet its array of airplanes seemed inadequate to perform any kind of real defense against any incursion by an enemy, because there were less than 100 airplanes available to it, all obsolescent or obsolete. In September 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria. This was an area of northeast China, which encompassed the provinces of Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang. Nearly six whole years later, in July 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War had begun. As yet, the French colonial authorities were hoping that the Japanese would not be brazen enough to take on the might of a European power. However, it became increasingly likely after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, since Japan was part of the Axis alliance and thus Germany's ally.

 

On September 26, 1940, Japanese troops landed in Haiphong, violating a cease-fire which had been signed only the previous day. From the middle of the following month, the French became heavily involved in repelling Japanese army assaults. Following the Fall of France in 1940, Thais perceived a chance to regain the territories they had lost years earlier. The collapse of Metropolitan France made the French hold on Indochina tenuous. After the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in September 1940, the French were forced to allow the Japanese to set up military bases. This seemingly subservient behavior convinced the Thai regime that Vichy France would not seriously resist a confrontation with Thailand.

 

During the French-Thai War, the Thai Air Force achieved several air-to-air-victories in dogfights against the Vichy Armée de l'Air. During World War II, the Thai Air Force supported the Royal Thai Army in its occupation of the Shan States of Burma as somewhat reluctant allies of the Japanese and took part in the defense of Bangkok against allied air raids in the latter part of the war, achieving some successes against state-of-the-art aircraft like the P-51 Mustang and the B-29 Superfortress. During these times, the RTAF was actively supplied by the Japanese with Imperial Japanese Army Air Force aircraft such as the Ki-43 "Oscar," and the Ki-27 "Nate." Other RTAF personnel took an active part the anti-Japanese resistance movement.

 

French forces in Indochina consisted of an army of approximately fifty thousand men, The most obvious deficiency of the French army lay in its shortage of armor; however, the Armée de l'Air had in its inventory approximately a hundred aircraft, of which around sixty could be considered first line. These consisted of thirty Potez 25 TOEs, four Farman 221s, eight Loire 130 flying boats, six Potez 542s, nine Morane M.S.406s.

 

The M.S.406 was a French fighter aircraft developed and manufactured by Morane-Saulnier starting in 1938. In response to a requirement for a fighter issued by the French Air Force in 1934, Morane-Saulnier built a prototype, designated MS.405, of mixed materials. This had the distinction of being the company's first low-wing monoplane, as well as the first to feature an enclosed cockpit, and the first design with a retracting undercarriage. The entry to service of the M.S.406 to the French Air Force in early 1939 represented the first modern fighter aircraft to be adopted by the service, and the type was also used in the French overseas colonies. The M.S.406 was France's most numerous fighter during the Second World War and one of only two French designs to exceed 1,000 in number. At the beginning of the war, it was one of only two French-built aircraft capable of 400 km/h (250 mph) – the other being the Potez 630.

 

Although a sturdy and highly manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, the M.S.406 was considered underpowered and weakly armed when compared to its contemporaries, esp. over continental Europe. Most critically, the M.S.406 was outperformed by the Messerschmitt Bf 109E during the Battle of France and no serious threat to the German fighter. In less advanced theatres like Indochina, though, the M.S. 406 was a respectable contender, but its numbers were low.

 

When the French-Thai War broke out in Indochina, the Thai Army was a relatively well-equipped force, consisting of some sixty thousand men, with artillery and tanks. The Royal Thai Navy — consisting of several vessels, including two coastal defence ships, twelve torpedo boats and four submarines — was inferior to the French naval forces, though, but the Royal Thai Air Force held both a quantitative and qualitative edge over l'Armee de l'Air. Among the 140 aircraft that composed the air force's initial first-line strength were twenty-four Mitsubishi Ki-30 light bombers, nine Mitsubishi Ki-21 and six Martin B-10 twin-engine bombers, seventy Vought Corsair dive bombers, and twenty-five Curtiss Hawk 75 fighters.

 

While nationalistic demonstrations and anti-French rallies were held in Bangkok, border skirmishes erupted along the Mekong frontier. The superior Royal Thai Air Force conducted daytime bombing runs over Vientiane, Sisophon, and Battambang with impunity. The French retaliated with their own planes, but the damage caused was less than equal. The activities of the Thai air force, particularly in the field of dive-bombing, was such that Admiral Jean Decoux, the governor of French Indochina, grudgingly remarked that the Thai planes seemed to have been flown by men with plenty of war experience.

 

In early January 1941, the Thai Burapha and Isan Armies launched their offensive on Laos and Cambodia. French resistance was instantaneous, but many units were simply swept along by the better-equipped Thai forces, with some French equipment – including some aircraft – being captured and immediately pressed into Thai army service. The Thais swiftly took Laos, but Cambodia proved a much harder nut to crack.

 

On January 16, 1941 the French launched a large counterattack on the Thai-held villages of Yang Dang Khum and Phum Preav, initiating the fiercest battle of the war. Because of over-complicated orders and nonexistent intelligence, the French counterattacks were cut to pieces and fighting ended with a French withdrawal from the area. The Thais were unable to pursue the retreating French, as their forward tanks were kept in check by the gunnery of French Foreign Legion artillerists.

 

On January 24, the final air battle took place when Thai bombers raided the French airfield at Angkor near Siem Reap, which quickly fell. The last Thai mission commenced at 0710 hours on January 28, when the Martins of the 50th Bomber Squadron set out on a raid on Sisophon, escorted by three Hawk 75Ns of the 60th Fighter Squadron.

 

Although the French won an important naval victory over the Thais, Japan forced the French to accept Japanese mediation of a peace treaty that returned the disputed territory to Thai control. A general armistice was arranged by Japan to go into effect on January 28. On May 9 a peace treaty was signed in Tokyo, with the French being coerced by the Japanese into relinquishing their hold on the disputed territories. However, the French (now part of the Axis Forces’ Vichy regime) were left in place to administer the rump colony of Indochina until 9 March 1945, when the Japanese staged a coup d'état in French Indochina and took control, establishing their own colony, the Empire of Vietnam, as a puppet state controlled by Tokyo.

 

Until then, Japanese authorities heavily influenced the diminishing Vichy French presence in the region and handed over a lot of leftover military hardware to its own allies, primarily the Thai forces. However, there was not much left to be distributed: about 30% of the French aircraft were rendered unserviceable by the end of the French-Thai War in early 1941, some as a result of minor damage sustained in air raids that remained unrepaired. The Armée de l'Air admitted the loss of only one Farman F221 and two Morane M.S.406s destroyed on the ground, but, in reality, its losses were greater and the influence of Japan on the leftover stock was fogged in order to save face. However, even in 1944, single former Vichy French aircraft and tanks were still active in the region, primarily under Thai flag.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 8.17 m (26 ft 10 in)

Wingspan: 10.61 m (34 ft 10 in)

Height: 3.25 m (10 ft 8 in)

Wing area: 16 m2 (170 sq ft)

Empty weight: 1,895 kg (4,178 lb)

Gross weight: 2,540 kg (5,600 lb)

 

Powerplant:

1 × Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 V-12 liquid-cooled piston engine with

619 kW (830 hp) for take-off at 2,520 rpm at sea level,

driving a 3-bladed variable-pitch propeller, 3 m (9 ft 10 in) diameter

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 490 km/h (304 mph; 265 kn) at 4,500 m (14,764 ft)

Stall speed: 160 km/h (99 mph, 86 kn) without flaps

135 km/h (84 mph; 73 kn) with flaps

Range: 1,100 km (680 mi, 590 nmi) at 66% power

Combat range: 720 km (450 mi, 390 nmi)

Endurance: 2 hours 20 minutes 30 seconds (average combat mission)

Service ceiling: 9,400 m (30,800 ft)

Time to altitude: 2,000 m (6,562 ft) in 2 minutes 32 seconds

9,000 m (29,528 ft) in 21 minutes 37 seconds

Wing loading: 154 kg/m2 (32 lb/sq ft)

Power/mass: 2.95 kg/kW (4.85 lb/hp)

Take-off run to 8 m (26 ft): 270 m (886 ft)

Landing run from 8 m (26 ft): 340 m (1,115 ft)

 

Armament:

1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon, firing through the propeller hub

2× 7.5 mm (0.295 in) MAC 1934 machine guns in the outer wings

  

The kit and its assembly:

This quick build was created in the wake of the “Captured” group build at whatifmodellers.com and actually is a personal interpretation of someone else’s idea, namely of fellow modeler NARSES who came up with the idea of a captured French M.S. 406 in Indochina under a new Thai flag. I found the idea so weird, yet realistic, that I decided to build one, too.

 

The model is the very simple but quite acceptable M.S. 406 from Hobby Boss. Externally the model is nice, with recessed panel lines and a basic landing gear. Internally, it is rather bleak, even though it has a full cockpit with a floor, integrally molded seat and even some details behind the pilot’s armor bulkhead. The canopy is a single piece and very clear, but it comes with massive locator bars, so that I decided to keep the canopy closed and added a pilot figure to cover the minimal interior. I was lucky to find a Japanese (though pretty “flat”) WWII pilot in the donor bank, left over from a Hasegawa model. I also gave the figure some seat belts (made from adhesive tape), but the rest remained unchanged – even the original metal axis for the propeller was used. I just replaced the machine gun barrels with hollow steel needles and added a pitot on the wing, which is probably part of the kit but not indicated in the instructions. The same is true for the foldable ventral antenna.

 

The build was finished quickly, in the course of just a single evening, including the pilot and some overall PSR.

  

Painting and markings:

My interpretation of a French aircraft in Thai service after the French-Thai War stuck closely to the real world Vichy livery, which was the standard French camouflage in grey/green/brown with light blue-grey undersides (all from ModelMaster’s Authentic Color range), together with a yellow-and-red-striped cowling (a base with Humbrol 69 and red decal stripes added later) and a white cheatline long the fuselage. The tail of French aircraft in Indochina was painted all-red from early 1941 onwards upon Japanese command, because of friendly fire incidents. This was adopted for the model (with a mix of Humbrol 19 and some 73), which is supposed to belong into the 1942 time frame.

 

As a captured aircraft, the original French roundels were replaced/overpainted with red disks/hinomaru, and then Thai elephant markings added on top. That’s a personal idea, ordnance directly supplied to the Thai forces from Japan had the simple, square “elephant flag” emblem directly applied to the wings and the fin (but no fuselage roundel). The all-red tail was taken over, but I painted the rudder in a dark IJA green, since it would formerly carry a French fin flash. The same green was used to overpaint a serial number on the fin and a former squadron emblem under the cockpit.

The hinomaru come from a PrintScale Ki-46 sheet, and these markings are intentionally a bit oversized, so that they cover well the former French markings and are highly visible. The elephant markings some from a PrintScale Ki-27 sheet, so that the red tone on both sources are very close to each other. The Ki-27 sheet also provided the Thai ciphers “3” and “4”, combined into a “34”.

 

The interior was painted in medium grey, and the model externally received some signs of wear and tear in the form of dry-brushed leading edges and around the cockpit as well as some soot stains behind the exhaust stubs and the machine guns. Finally, the model was sealed with a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).

  

A quick build, and the easy-build Hobby Boss M.S. 406 is certainly not as crisp as a “real” model, but in this case the story behind the weird livery was more in the focus than the canvas underneath. However, an interesting result, and the hybrid paint scheme with heritage from three different operators make the aircraft an unusual, if not exotic sight.

San Francisco. California. USA

 

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Novoslobodskaya (Russian: Новослобо́дская) is a Moscow Metro station in the Tverskoy District of the Central Administrative Okrug, Moscow. It is on the Koltsevaya Line, between Belorusskaya and Prospekt Mira stations. Novoslobodskaya was opened on 30 January 1952. From 21 November 2020 to 4 March 2022, the entrance of the station was closed for reconstruction.

 

Architecture and art

Alexey Dushkin, the station's architect, has long wished to utilise stained glass in decoration of a metro station, and the first drawings date to pre–World War II times. In 1948, with the aid of a young architect Alexander Strelkov, Dushkin came across the artist Pavel Korin, who agreed to compose the artworks for the panels. The rest of the station was designed around the glass panels.

 

It is best known for its 32 stained glass panels, which are the work of Latvian artists E. Veylandan, E. Krests, and M. Ryskin. Each panel, surrounded by an elaborate brass border, is set into one of the station's pylons and illuminated from within. Both the pylons and the pointed arches between them are faced with pinkish Ural marble and edged with brass molding. At the end of the platform is a mosaic by Pavel Korin entitled "Peace Throughout the World."

 

Transfers

From this station it is possible to transfer to Mendeleyevskaya station on the Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya Line.

 

The Moscow Metro is a metro system serving the Russian capital of Moscow as well as the neighbouring cities of Krasnogorsk, Reutov, Lyubertsy and Kotelniki in Moscow Oblast. Opened in 1935 with one 11-kilometre (6.8 mi) line and 13 stations, it was the first underground railway system in the Soviet Union.

 

As of 2023, the Moscow Metro, excluding the Moscow Central Circle, the Moscow Central Diameters and the Moscow Monorail, had 294 stations and 514.5 km (319.7 mi) of route length, excluding light rail Monorail, making it the 8th-longest in the world and the longest outside China. It is the third metro system in the world (after Madrid and Beijing), which has two ring lines. The system is mostly underground, with the deepest section 84 metres (276 ft) underground at the Park Pobedy station, one of the world's deepest underground stations. It is the busiest metro system in Europe, the busiest in the world outside Asia, and is considered a tourist attraction in itself.

 

The Moscow Metro is a world leader in the frequency of train traffic—intervals during peak hours do not exceed 90 seconds. In February 2023, Moscow was the first in the world to reduce the intervals of metro trains to 80 seconds.

 

Name

The full legal name of the metro has been "Moscow Order of Lenin and Order of the Red Banner of Labor V.I. Lenin Metro" (Московский ордена Ленина и ордена Трудового Красного Знамени метрополитен имени В.И. Ленина) since 1955. This is usually shortened to V.I. Lenin Metro (Метрополитен им. В.И. Ленина). This shorter official name appears on many stations. Although there were proposals to remove Lenin from the official name, it still stands. During the 1990s and 2000s, Lenin's name was excluded from the signage on newly built and reconstructed stations. In 2016, the authorities promised to return the official name of the metro to all the stations' signage.

 

The first official name of the metro was L. M. Kaganovich Metro (Метрополитен им. Л.М. Кагановича) after Lazar Kaganovich. (see History section). However, when the Metro was awarded the Order of Lenin, it was officially renamed "Moscow Order of Lenin L. M. Kaganovich Metro" (Московский ордена Ленина Метрополитен им. Л. М. Кагановича) in 1947. And when the metro was renamed in 1955, Kaganovich was "given a consolation prize" by renaming the Okhotny Ryad station to "Imeni Kaganovicha". Yet in a matter of only two years, the original Okhotny Ryad name of the station was reinstated.

 

Logo

The first line of the Moscow Metro was launched in 1935, complete with the first logo, the capital M paired with the text "МЕТРО". There is no accurate information about the author of the logo, so it is often attributed to the architects of the first stations – Samuil Kravets, Ivan Taranov and Nadezhda Bykova. At the opening in 1935, the M letter on the logo had no definite shape.

 

Today, with at least ten different variations of the shape in use, Moscow Metro still does not have clear brand or logo guidelines. An attempt was made in October 2013 to launch a nationwide brand image competition, only to be closed several hours after its announcement. A similar contest, held independently later that year by the design crowdsourcing company DesignContest, yielded better results, though none were officially accepted by the Metro officials.

 

Operations

The Moscow Metro, a state-owned enterprise, is 449 km (279 mi) long and consists of 15 lines and 263 stations organized in a spoke-hub distribution paradigm, with the majority of rail lines running radially from the centre of Moscow to the outlying areas. The Koltsevaya Line (line 5) forms a 20-kilometre (12 mi) long circle which enables passenger travel between these diameters, and the new Moscow Central Circle (line 14) and even newer Bolshaya Koltsevaya line (line 11) form a 54-kilometre (34 mi) and 57-kilometre (35 mi) long circles respectively that serve a similar purpose on middle periphery. Most stations and lines are underground, but some lines have at-grade and elevated sections; the Filyovskaya Line, Butovskaya Line and the Central Circle Line are the three lines that are at grade or mostly at grade.

 

The Moscow Metro uses 1,520 mm (4 ft 11+27⁄32 in) Russian gauge, like other Russian railways, and an underrunning third rail with a supply of 825 Volts DC, except lines 13 and 14, the former being a monorail, and the latter being directly connected to the mainlines with 3000V DC overhead lines, as is typical. The average distance between stations is 1.7 kilometres (1.1 mi); the shortest (502 metres (1,647 ft) long) section is between Vystavochnaya and Mezhdunarodnaya, and the longest (6.62 kilometres (4.11 mi) long) is between Krylatskoye and Strogino. Long distances between stations have the positive effect of a high cruising speed of 41.7 kilometres per hour (25.9 mph).

 

The Moscow Metro opens at 05:25 and closes at 01:00. The exact opening time varies at different stations according to the arrival of the first train, but all stations simultaneously close their entrances at 01:00 for maintenance, and so do transfer corridors. The minimum interval between trains is 90 seconds during the morning and evening rush hours.

 

As of 2017, the system had an average daily ridership of 6.99 million passengers. Peak daily ridership of 9.71 million was recorded on 26 December 2014.

 

Free Wi-Fi has been available on all lines of the Moscow Metro since 2 December 2014.

 

Lines

A Moscow Metro train passes through Sokolnicheskaya and Koltsevaya lines. View from the driver's cabin

Each line is identified by a name, an alphanumeric index (usually consisting of just a number, and sometimes a letter suffix), and a colour. The colour assigned to each line for display on maps and signs is its colloquial identifier, except for the nondescript greens and blues assigned to the Bolshaya Koltsevaya, the Zamoskvoretskaya, the Lyublinsko-Dmitrovskaya, and Butovskaya lines (lines, 11, 2, 10, and 12, respectively).[citation needed] The upcoming station is announced by a male voice on inbound trains to the city center (on the Circle line, the clockwise trains), and by a female voice on outbound trains (anti-clockwise trains on the Circle line).

 

The metro has a connection to the Moscow Monorail, a 4.7-kilometre (2.9 mi), six-station monorail line between Timiryazevskaya and VDNKh which opened in January 2008. Prior to the official opening, the monorail had operated in "excursion mode" since 2004.

 

Also, from 11 August 1969 to 26 October 2019, the Moscow Metro included Kakhovskaya line 3.3 km long with 3 stations, which closed for a long reconstruction. On 7 December 2021, Kakhovskaya is reopened after reconstruction as part of the Bolshaya Koltsevaya line. The renewed Varshavskaya and Kashirskaya stations reopened as part of the Bolshaya Koltsevaya line, which became fully functional on 1 March 2023. Its new stations included Pechatniki, Nagatinsky Zaton and Klenovy Bulvar.

 

Renamed lines

Sokolnicheskaya line was previously named Kirovsko-Fruzenskaya

Zamoskvoretskaya line was previously named Gorkovsko-Zamoskvoretskaya.

Filyovskaya line was previously named Arbatsko-Filyovskaya.

Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya line was previously named Zhdanovsko-Krasnopresnenskaya

 

History

The first plans for a metro system in Moscow date back to the Russian Empire but were postponed by World War I, the October Revolution and the Russian Civil War. In 1923, the Moscow City Council formed the Underground Railway Design Office at the Moscow Board of Urban Railways. It carried out preliminary studies, and by 1928 had developed a project for the first route from Sokolniki to the city centre. At the same time, an offer was made to the German company Siemens Bauunion to submit its own project for the same route. In June 1931, the decision to begin construction of the Moscow Metro was made by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In January 1932 the plan for the first lines was approved, and on 21 March 1933 the Soviet government approved a plan for 10 lines with a total route length of 80 km (50 mi).

 

The first lines were built using the Moscow general plan designed by Lazar Kaganovich, along with his project managers (notably Ivan M. Kuznetsov and, later, Isaac Y. Segal) in the 1930s–1950s, and the Metro was named after him until 1955 (Metropoliten im. L.M. Kaganovicha). The Moscow Metro construction engineers consulted with their counterparts from the London Underground, the world's oldest metro system, in 1936: British architect Charles Holden and administrator Frank Pick had been working on the station developments of the Piccadilly Line extension, and Soviet delegates to London were impressed by Holden's thoroughly modern redeployment of classical elements and use of high-quality materials for the circular ticket hall of Piccadilly Circus, and so engaged Pick and Holden as advisors to Moscow's metro system. Partly because of this connection, the design of Gants Hill tube station, which was completed in 1947, is reminiscent of a Moscow Metro station. Indeed, Holden's homage to Moscow has been described as a gesture of gratitude for the USSR's helpful role in The Second World War.

 

Soviet workers did the labour and the art work, but the main engineering designs, routes, and construction plans were handled by specialists recruited from London Underground. The British called for tunnelling instead of the "cut-and-cover" technique, the use of escalators instead of lifts, the routes and the design of the rolling stock. The paranoia of the NKVD was evident when the secret police arrested numerous British engineers for espionage because they gained an in-depth knowledge of the city's physical layout. Engineers for the Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company (Metrovick) were given a show trial and deported in 1933, ending the role of British business in the USSR.

 

First four stages of construction

The first line was opened to the public on 15 May 1935 at 07:00 am. It was 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) long and included 13 stations. The day was celebrated as a technological and ideological victory for socialism (and, by extension, Stalinism). An estimated 285,000 people rode the Metro at its debut, and its design was greeted with pride; street celebrations included parades, plays and concerts. The Bolshoi Theatre presented a choral performance by 2,200 Metro workers; 55,000 colored posters (lauding the Metro as the busiest and fastest in the world) and 25,000 copies of "Songs of the Joyous Metro Conquerors" were distributed. The Moscow Metro averaged 47 km/h (29 mph) and had a top speed of 80 km/h (50 mph). In comparison, New York City Subway trains averaged a slower 25 miles per hour (40 km/h) and had a top speed of 45 miles per hour (72 km/h). While the celebration was an expression of popular joy it was also an effective propaganda display, legitimizing the Metro and declaring it a success.

 

The initial line connected Sokolniki to Okhotny Ryad then branching to Park Kultury and Smolenskaya. The latter branch was extended westwards to a new station (Kiyevskaya) in March 1937, the first Metro line crossing the Moskva River over the Smolensky Metro Bridge.

 

The second stage was completed before the war. In March 1938, the Arbatskaya branch was split and extended to the Kurskaya station (now the dark-blue Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line). In September 1938, the Gorkovskaya Line opened between Sokol and Teatralnaya. Here the architecture was based on that of the most popular stations in existence (Krasniye Vorota, Okhotnyi Ryad and Kropotkinskaya); while following the popular art-deco style, it was merged with socialist themes. The first deep-level column station Mayakovskaya was built at the same time.

 

Building work on the third stage was delayed (but not interrupted) during World War II, and two Metro sections were put into service; Teatralnaya–Avtozavodskaya (three stations, crossing the Moskva River through a deep tunnel) and Kurskaya–Partizanskaya (four stations) were inaugurated in 1943 and 1944 respectively. War motifs replaced socialist visions in the architectural design of these stations. During the Siege of Moscow in the fall and winter of 1941, Metro stations were used as air-raid shelters; the Council of Ministers moved its offices to the Mayakovskaya platforms, where Stalin made public speeches on several occasions. The Chistiye Prudy station was also walled off, and the headquarters of the Air Defence established there.

 

After the war ended in 1945, construction began on the fourth stage of the Metro, which included the Koltsevaya Line, a deep part of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line from Ploshchad Revolyutsii to Kievskaya and a surface extension to Pervomaiskaya during the early 1950s. The decoration and design characteristic of the Moscow Metro is considered to have reached its zenith in these stations. The Koltsevaya Line was first planned as a line running under the Garden Ring, a wide avenue encircling the borders of Moscow's city centre. The first part of the line – from Park Kultury to Kurskaya (1950) – follows this avenue. Plans were later changed and the northern part of the ring line runs 1–1.5 kilometres (0.62–0.93 mi) outside the Sadovoye Koltso, thus providing service for seven (out of nine) rail terminals. The next part of the Koltsevaya Line opened in 1952 (Kurskaya–Belorusskaya), and in 1954 the ring line was completed.

 

Stalinist ideals in Metro's history

When the Metro opened in 1935, it immediately became the centrepiece of the transportation system (as opposed to horse-carried barrows still widely used in 1930s Moscow). It also became the prototype, the vision for future Soviet large-scale technologies. The artwork of the 13 original stations became nationally and internationally famous. For example, the Sverdlov Square subway station featured porcelain bas-reliefs depicting the daily life of the Soviet peoples, and the bas-reliefs at the Dynamo Stadium sports complex glorified sports and physical prowess on the powerful new "Homo Sovieticus" (Soviet man). The metro was touted as the symbol of the new social order – a sort of Communist cathedral of engineering modernity.

 

The Metro was also iconic for showcasing Socialist Realism in public art. The method was influenced by Nikolay Chernyshevsky, Lenin's favorite 19th-century nihilist, who stated that "art is no useful unless it serves politics". This maxim sums up the reasons why the stations combined aesthetics, technology and ideology: any plan which did not incorporate all three areas cohesively was rejected.

 

Kaganovich was in charge; he designed the subway so that citizens would absorb the values and ethos of Stalinist civilization as they rode. Without this cohesion, the Metro would not reflect Socialist Realism. If the Metro did not utilize Socialist Realism, it would fail to illustrate Stalinist values and transform Soviet citizens into socialists. Anything less than Socialist Realism's grand artistic complexity would fail to inspire a long-lasting, nationalistic attachment to Stalin's new society.

Socialist Realism was in fact a method, not exactly a style.[31]

Bright future and literal brightness in the Metro of Moscow

The Moscow Metro was one of the USSR's most ambitious architectural projects. The metro's artists and architects worked to design a structure that embodied svet (literally "light", figuratively "radiance" or "brilliance") and svetloe budushchee (a well-lit/radiant/bright future). With their reflective marble walls, high ceilings and grand chandeliers, many Moscow Metro stations have been likened to an "artificial underground sun".

 

This palatial underground environment reminded Metro users their taxes were spent on materializing bright future; also, the design was useful for demonstrating the extra structural strength of the underground works (as in Metro doubling as bunkers, bomb shelters).

 

The chief lighting engineer was Abram Damsky, a graduate of the Higher State Art-Technical Institute in Moscow. By 1930 he was a chief designer in Moscow's Elektrosvet Factory, and during World War II was sent to the Metrostroi (Metro Construction) Factory as head of the lighting shop.[33] Damsky recognized the importance of efficiency, as well as the potential for light as an expressive form. His team experimented with different materials (most often cast bronze, aluminum, sheet brass, steel, and milk glass) and methods to optimize the technology. Damsky's discourse on "Lamps and Architecture 1930–1950" describes in detail the epic chandeliers installed in the Taganskaya Station and the Kaluzhskaia station (Oktyabrskaya nowadays, not to be confused with contemporary "Kaluzhskaya" station on line 6). The work of Abram Damsky further publicized these ideas hoping people would associate the party with the idea of bright future.

 

The Kaluzhskaya Station was designed by the architect [Leonid] Poliakov. Poliakov's decision to base his design on a reinterpretation of Russian classical architecture clearly influenced the concept of the lamps, some of which I planned in collaboration with the architect himself. The shape of the lamps was a torch – the torch of victory, as Polyakov put it... The artistic quality and stylistic unity of all the lamps throughout the station's interior made them perhaps the most successful element of the architectural composition. All were made of cast aluminum decorated in a black and gold anodized coating, a technique which the Metrostroi factory had only just mastered.

 

The Taganskaia Metro Station on the Ring Line was designed in...quite another style by the architects K.S. Ryzhkov and A. Medvedev... Their subject matter dealt with images of war and victory...The overall effect was one of ceremony ... In the platform halls the blue ceramic bodies of the chandeliers played a more modest role, but still emphasised the overall expressiveness of the lamp.

 

— Abram Damsky, Lamps and Architecture 1930–1950

Industrialization

 

Stalin's first five-year plan (1928–1932) facilitated rapid industrialization to build a socialist motherland. The plan was ambitious, seeking to reorient an agrarian society towards industrialism. It was Stalin's fanatical energy, large-scale planning, and resource distribution that kept up the pace of industrialization. The first five-year plan was instrumental in the completion of the Moscow Metro; without industrialization, the Soviet Union would not have had the raw materials necessary for the project. For example, steel was a main component of many subway stations. Before industrialization, it would have been impossible for the Soviet Union to produce enough steel to incorporate it into the metro's design; in addition, a steel shortage would have limited the size of the subway system and its technological advancement.

 

The Moscow Metro furthered the construction of a socialist Soviet Union because the project accorded with Stalin's second five-year plan. The Second Plan focused on urbanization and the development of social services. The Moscow Metro was necessary to cope with the influx of peasants who migrated to the city during the 1930s; Moscow's population had grown from 2.16 million in 1928 to 3.6 million in 1933. The Metro also bolstered Moscow's shaky infrastructure and its communal services, which hitherto were nearly nonexistent.

 

Mobilization

The Communist Party had the power to mobilize; because the party was a single source of control, it could focus its resources. The most notable example of mobilization in the Soviet Union occurred during World War II. The country also mobilized in order to complete the Moscow Metro with unprecedented speed. One of the main motivation factors of the mobilization was to overtake the West and prove that a socialist metro could surpass capitalist designs. It was especially important to the Soviet Union that socialism succeed industrially, technologically, and artistically in the 1930s, since capitalism was at a low ebb during the Great Depression.

 

The person in charge of Metro mobilization was Lazar Kaganovich. A prominent Party member, he assumed control of the project as chief overseer. Kaganovich was nicknamed the "Iron Commissar"; he shared Stalin's fanatical energy, dramatic oratory flare, and ability to keep workers building quickly with threats and punishment. He was determined to realise the Moscow Metro, regardless of cost. Without Kaganovich's managerial ability, the Moscow Metro might have met the same fate as the Palace of the Soviets: failure.

 

This was a comprehensive mobilization; the project drew resources and workers from the entire Soviet Union. In his article, archeologist Mike O'Mahoney describes the scope of the Metro mobilization:

 

A specialist workforce had been drawn from many different regions, including miners from the Ukrainian and Siberian coalfields and construction workers from the iron and steel mills of Magnitogorsk, the Dniepr hydroelectric power station, and the Turkestan-Siberian railway... materials used in the construction of the metro included iron from Siberian Kuznetsk, timber from northern Russia, cement from the Volga region and the northern Caucasus, bitumen from Baku, and marble and granite from quarries in Karelia, the Crimea, the Caucasus, the Urals, and the Soviet Far East

 

— Mike O'Mahoney, Archeological Fantasies: Constructing History on the Moscow Metro

Skilled engineers were scarce, and unskilled workers were instrumental to the realization of the metro. The Metrostroi (the organization responsible for the Metro's construction) conducted massive recruitment campaigns. It printed 15,000 copies of Udarnik metrostroia (Metrostroi Shock Worker, its daily newspaper) and 700 other newsletters (some in different languages) to attract unskilled laborers. Kaganovich was closely involved in the recruitment campaign, targeting the Komsomol generation because of its strength and youth.

 

Later Soviet stations

"Fifth stage" set of stations

The beginning of the Cold War led to the construction of a deep section of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line. The stations on this line were planned as shelters in the event of nuclear war. After finishing the line in 1953 the upper tracks between Ploshchad Revolyutsii and Kiyevskaya were closed, and later reopened in 1958 as a part of the Filyovskaya Line. The stations, too, were supplied with tight gates and life-sustenance systems to function as proper nuclear shelters.

 

In the further development of the Metro the term "stages" was not used any more, although sometimes the stations opened in 1957–1959 are referred to as the "fifth stage".

 

During the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, the architectural extravagance of new Metro stations was decisively rejected on the orders of Nikita Khrushchev. He had a preference for a utilitarian "minimalism"-like approach to design, similar to Brutalism style. The idea behind the rejection was similar to one used to create Khrushchyovkas: cheap yet easily mass-produced buildings. Stations of his era, as well as most 1970s stations, were simple in design and style, with walls covered with identical square ceramic tiles. Even decorations at the Metro stations almost finished at the time of the ban (such as VDNKh and Alexeyevskaya) got their final decors simplified: VDNKh's arcs/portals, for example, got plain green paint to contrast with well-detailed decorations and pannos around them.

 

A typical layout of the cheap shallow-dug metro station (which quickly became known as Sorokonozhka – "centipede", from early designs with 40 concrete columns in two rows) was developed for all new stations, and the stations were built to look almost identical, differing from each other only in colours of the marble and ceramic tiles. Most stations were built with simpler, cheap technology; this resulted in utilitarian design being flawed in some ways. Some stations such as adjacent Rechnoi Vokzal and Vodny Stadion or sequiential Leninsky Prospect, Akadmicheskaya, Profsoyuznaya and Novye Cheryomushki would have a similar look due to the extensive use of same-sized white or off-white ceramic tiles with hard-to-feel differences.

 

Walls with cheap ceramic tiles were susceptible to train-related vibration: some tiles would eventually fall off and break. It was not always possible to replace the missing tiles with the ones of the exact color and tone, which eventually led to variegated parts of the walls.

 

Metro stations of late USSR

The contrasting style gap between the powerfully decorated stations of Moscow's center and the spartan-looking stations of the 1960s was eventually filled. In the mid-1970s the architectural extravagance was partially restored. However, the newer design of shallow "centipede" stations (now with 26 columns, more widely spaced) continued to dominate. For example, Kaluzhskaya "centipede" station from 1974 (adjacent to Novye Cheryomushki station) features non-flat tiles (with 3D effect utilized), and Medvedkovo from 1978 features complex decorations.

 

1971 station Kitay-Gorod ("Ploshchad Nogina" at the time) features cross-platform interchange (Line 6 and line 7). Although built without "centipede" design or cheap ceramic tiles, the station utilizes near-grayscale selection of colors. It is to note the "southbound" and "northbound" halls of the station have identical look.

 

Babushkinskaya station from 1978 is a no-column station (similar to Biblioteka Imeni Lenina from 1935). 1983 Chertanovskaya station has resemblance to Kropotkinskaya (from 1935). Some stations, such as the deep-dug Shabolovskaya (1980), have the near-tunnel walls decorated with metal sheets, not tiles. Tyoply Stan features a theme related to the name and the location of the station ("Tyoply Stan" used to literally mean warm area): its walls are covered in brick-colored ribbed panes, which look like radiators).

 

Downtown area got such stations as Borovitskaya (1986), with uncovered red bricks and gray, concrete-like colors accompanying a single gold-plated decorative pane known as "Tree of peoples' of USSR" or additional station hall for Tretyakovskaya to house cross-platform interchange system between line 6 and line 8. To this day, Tretyakovskaya metro station consists of two contrasting halls: brutalism-like 1971 hall and custom design hall reminiscent of Tretyakovskaya Galereya from 1986.

 

Post-USSR stations of the modern Russian Federation

Metro stations of the 1990s and 2000s vary in style, but some of the stations seem to have their own themes:

 

Ulitsa Akademika Yangelya station used to feature thick orange neon lamp-like sodium lights instead of regular white lights.

Park Pobedy, the deepest station of the Moscow Metro, was built in 2003; it features extensive use of dark orange polished granite.

Slavyansky Bulvar station utilizes a plant-inspired theme (similar to "bionic style").

The sleek variant of aforementioned bionic style is somewhat represented in various Line 10 stations.

Sretensky Bulvar station of line 10 is decorated with paintings of nearby memorials and locations.

Strogino station has a theme of huge eye-shaped boundaries for lights; with "eyes" occupying the station's ceiling.

Troparyovo (2014) features trees made of polished metal. The trees hold the station's diamond-shaped lights. The station, however, is noticeably dim-lit.

Delovoy Tsentr (2016, MCC, overground station) has green tint.

Lomonosovsky Prospekt (Line 8A) is decorated with various equations.

Olkhovaya (2019) uses other plant-inspired themes (ольха noun means alder) with autumn/winter inspired colours.

Kosino (2019) uses high-tech style with the addition of thin LED lights.

Some bleak, bland-looking "centipedes" like Akademicheskaya and Yugo-Zapadnaya have undergone renovations in the 21st century (new blue-striped white walls on Akademicheskaya, aqualine glassy, shiny walls on Yugo-Zapadnaya).

 

Moscow Central Circle urban railway (Line 14)

A new circle metro line in Moscow was relatively quickly made in the 2010s. The Moscow Central Circle line (Line 14) was opened for use in September 2016 by re-purposing and upgrading the Maloe ZheleznoDorozhnoe Kol'tso. A proposal to convert that freight line into a metropolitan railway with frequent passenger service was announced in 2012. The original tracks had been built in pre-revolutionary Moscow decades before the creation of Moscow Metro; the tracks remained in place in one piece as a non-electrified line until the 21st century. Yet the circle route was never abandoned or cut. New track (along the existing one) was laid and all-new stations were built between 2014 and 2016. MCC's stations got such amenities as vending machines and free water closets.

 

Line 14 is operated by Russian Railways and uses full-sized trains (an idea, somewhat similar to S-Train). The extra resemblance to an S-Train line is, the 1908 line now connects modern northern residential districts to western and southern downtown area, with a station adjacent to Moscow International Business Center.

 

There is a noticeable relief of congestion, decrease in usage of formerly overcrowded Koltsevaya line since the introduction of MCC. To make line 14 attractive to frequent Koltsevaya line interchanges users, upgrades over regular comfort of Moscow Metro were made. Use of small laptops/portable video playing devices and food consumption from tupperwares and tubs was also improved for Line 14: the trains have small folding tables in the back of nearly every seat, while the seats are facing one direction like in planes or intercity buses - unlike side-against-side sofas typical for Metro.

 

Unlike MCD lines (D1, D2 etc.) MCC line accepts "unified" tickets and "Troika" cards just like Moscow Metro and buses of Moscow do. Free transfers are permitted between the MCC and the Moscow Metro if the trip before the transfer is less than 90 minutes. It's made possible by using same "Ediny", literally "unified" tickets instead of printing "paper tickets" used at railroads.

 

To interchange to line 14 for free, passenger must keep their freshly used ticket after entering Moscow Metro to apply it upon entering any line 14 station (and vice versa, keep their "fresh" ticket to enter underground Metro line after leaving Line 14 for an interchange).

 

MCD (D lines)

In 2019, new lines of Russian Railways got included in the map of Metro as "line D1" and "line D2". Unlike Line 14, the MCD lines actually form S-Train lines, bypassing the "vokzals", terminus stations of respective intercity railways. Line D3 is planned to be launched in August 2023, while D4 will be launched in September of that year. The schedule for the development of the infrastructure of the Central Transport Hub in 2023 was signed by the Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and the head of Russian Railways Oleg Belozerov in December 2022.

 

As for the fees, MCD accepts Moscow's "Troika" cards. Also, every MCD station has printers which print "station X – station Y" tickets on paper. Users of the D lines must keep their tickets until exiting their destination stations: their exit terminals require a valid "... to station Y" ticket's barcode.

 

Big Circle Line (line 11)

After upgrading the railway from 1908 to a proper Metro line, the development of another circle route was re-launched, now adjusted for the pear-shaped circle route of line #14.

 

Throughout the late 2010s, Line 11 was extended from short, tiny Kakhovskaya line to a half-circle (from Kakhovskaya to Savyolovskaya). In early 2023, the circle was finished.

 

Similarly made Shelepikha, Khoroshovskaya, CSKA and Petrovsky Park stations have lots of polished granite and shiny surfaces, in contrast to Soviet "centipedes". Throughout 2018–2021, these stations were connected to line 8A.

Narodnoye Opolcheniye (2021) features lots of straight edges and linear decorations (such as uninterrupted "three stripes" style of the ceiling lights and rectangular columns).

As for the spring of 2023, the whole circle route line is up and running, forming a circle stretching to the southern near-MKAD residential parts of the city (Prospekt Vernadskogo, Tekstilshchiki) as opposed to the MCC's stretching towards the northern districts of Moscow. In other words, it "mirrors" Line 14 rather than forming a perfect circle around the city centre. While being 70 km long, the line is now the longest subway line in the world, 13 kilometres ahead of the previous record holder - the line 10 of Beijing Subway.

 

Expansions

GIF-animated scheme of Moscow Metro growth (1935-2019)

Since the turn of the 2nd millennium several projects have been completed, and more are underway. The first was the Annino-Butovo extension, which extended the Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya Line from Prazhskaya to Ulitsa Akademika Yangelya in 2000, Annino in 2001 and Bulvar Dmitriya Donskogo in 2002. Its continuation, an elevated Butovskaya Line, was inaugurated in 2003. Vorobyovy Gory station, which initially opened in 1959 and was forced to close in 1983 after the concrete used to build the bridge was found to be defective, was rebuilt and reopened after many years in 2002. Another recent project included building a branch off the Filyovskaya Line to the Moscow International Business Center. This included Vystavochnaya (opened in 2005) and Mezhdunarodnaya (opened in 2006).

 

The Strogino–Mitino extension began with Park Pobedy in 2003. Its first stations (an expanded Kuntsevskaya and Strogino) opened in January 2008, and Slavyansky Bulvar followed in September. Myakinino, Volokolamskaya and Mitino opened in December 2009. Myakinino station was built by a state-private financial partnership, unique in Moscow Metro history. A new terminus, Pyatnitskoye Shosse, was completed in December 2012.

 

After many years of construction, the long-awaited Lyublinskaya Line extension was inaugurated with Trubnaya in August 2007 and Sretensky Bulvar in December of that year. In June 2010, it was extended northwards with the Dostoyevskaya and Maryina Roscha stations. In December 2011, the Lyublinskaya Line was expanded southwards by three stations and connected to the Zamoskvoretskaya Line, with the Alma-Atinskaya station opening on the latter in December 2012. The Kalininskaya Line was extended past the Moscow Ring Road in August 2012 with Novokosino station.

 

In 2011, works began on the Third Interchange Contour that is set to take the pressure off the Koltsevaya Line. Eventually the new line will attain a shape of the second ring with connections to all lines (except Koltsevaya and Butovskaya).

 

In 2013, the Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya Line was extended after several delays to the south-eastern districts of Moscow outside the Ring Road with the opening of Zhulebino and Lermontovsky Prospekt stations. Originally scheduled for 2013, a new segment of the Kalininskaya Line between Park Pobedy and Delovoy Tsentr (separate from the main part) was opened in January 2014, while the underground extension of Butovskaya Line northwards to offer a transfer to the Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya Line was completed in February. Spartak, a station on the Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya Line that remained unfinished for forty years, was finally opened in August 2014. The first stage of the southern extension of the Sokolnicheskaya Line, the Troparyovo station, opened in December 2014.

 

Current plans

In addition to major metro expansion the Moscow Government and Russian Railways plans to upgrade more commuter railways to a metro-style service, similar to the MCC. New tracks and stations are planned to be built in order to achieve this.

 

Stations

The deep stations comprise 55 triple-vaulted pylon stations, 19 triple-vaulted column stations, and one single-vault station. The shallow stations comprise 79 spanned column stations (a large portion of them following the "centipede" design), 33 single-vaulted stations (Kharkov technology), and four single-spanned stations. In addition, there are 12 ground-level stations, four elevated stations, and one station (Vorobyovy Gory) on a bridge. Two stations have three tracks, and one has double halls. Seven of the stations have side platforms (only one of which is subterranean). In addition, there were two temporary stations within rail yards.

 

The stations being constructed under Stalin's regime, in the style of socialist classicism, were meant as underground "palaces of the people". Stations such as Komsomolskaya, Kiyevskaya or Mayakovskaya and others built after 1935 in the second phase of the evolution of the network are tourist landmarks: their photogenic architecture, large chandeliers and detailed decoration are unusual for an urban transport system of the twentieth century.

 

The stations opened in the 21st century are influenced by an international and more neutral style with improved technical quality.

 

Rolling stock

Since the beginning, platforms have been at least 155 metres (509 ft) long to accommodate eight-car trains. The only exceptions are on the Filyovskaya Line: Vystavochnaya, Mezhdunarodnaya, Studencheskaya, Kutuzovskaya, Fili, Bagrationovskaya, Filyovsky Park and Pionerskaya, which only allows six-car trains (note that this list includes all ground-level stations on the line, except Kuntsevskaya, which allows normal length trains).

 

Trains on the Zamoskvoretskaya, Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya, Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya, Kalininskaya, Solntsevskaya, Bolshaya Koltsevaya, Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya, Lyublinsko-Dmitrovskaya and Nekrasovskaya lines have eight cars, on the Sokolnicheskaya line seven or eight cars, on the original Koltsevaya line seven cars, and on the Filyovskaya line six cars. The Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line also once ran seven-car 81-717 size trains, but now use five-car trains of another type. Butovskaya line uses three-car trains of another type.

 

Dimensions have varied subtly, but for the most cars fit into the ranges of 19–20 metres (62 ft 4 in – 65 ft 7 in) long and 2.65–2.7 metres (8 ft 8+3⁄8 in – 8 ft 10+1⁄4 in) wide with 4 doors per side. The 81-740/741 Rusich deviates greatly from this, with a 3-car Rusich being roughly 4 normal cars and a 5-car Rusich being 7 normal cars.

 

Trains in operation

Currently, the Metro only operates 81-style trains.

 

Rolling stock on several lines was replaced with articulated 81-740/741 Rusich trains, which were originally designed for light rail subway lines. The Butovskaya Line was designed by different standards, and has shorter (96-metre (315 ft) long) platforms. It employs articulated 81-740/741 trains, which consist of three cars (although the line can also use traditional four-car trains).

 

On the Moscow Monorail, Intamin P30 trains are used, consisting of six short cars. On the Moscow Central Circle, which is a route on the conventional railway line, ES2G Lastochka trains are used, consisting of five cars.

 

Ticketing

Moscow Metro underground has neither "point A – point B" tariffs nor "zone" tariffs. Instead, it has a fee for a "ride", e.g. for a single-time entry without time or range limit. The exceptions "only confirm the rule": the "diameters" (Dx lines) and the Moscow Central Circle (Line 14) are Russian Railways' lines hence the shared yet not unified tariff system.

 

As for October 2021, one ride costs 60 rubles (approx. 1 US dollar). Discounts (up to 33%) for individual rides are available upon buying rides "in bulk" (buying multiple-trip tickets (such as twenty-trip or sixty-trip ones)), and children under age seven can travel free (with their parents). Troika "wallet" (a card, similar to Japanese Suica card) also offers some discounts for using the card instead of queueing a line for a ticket. "Rides" on the tickets available for a fixed number of trips, regardless of distance traveled or number of transfers.

 

An exception in case of MCC e.g. Line 14: for a free interchange, one should interchange to it/from it within 90 minutes after entering the Metro. However, one can ride it for hours and use its amenities without leaving it.

There are tickets without "rides" as well: – a 24-hour "unified" ticket (265 rub in 2022), a 72-hour ticket, a month-long ticket, and a year-long ticket.

 

Fare enforcement takes place at the points of entry. Once a passenger has entered the Metro system, there are no further ticket checks – one can ride to any number of stations and make transfers within the system freely. Transfers to other public-transport systems (such as bus, tram, trolleybus/"electrobus") are not covered by the very ride used to enter Metro. Transfer to monorail and MCC is a free addition to the ride (available up to 90 minutes after entering a metro station).

 

In modern Metro, turnstiles accept designated plastic cards ("Troika", "social cards") or disposable-in-design RFID chip cardboard cards. Unlimited cards are also available for students at reduced price (as of 2017, 415 rubles—or about $US6—for a calendar month of unlimited usage) for a one-time cost of 70 rubles. Transport Cards impose a delay for each consecutive use; i.e. the card can not be used for 7 minutes after the user has passed a turnstile.

 

History of smart ticketing

Soviet era turnstiles simply accepted N kopeck coins.

 

In the early years of Russian Federation (and with the start of a hyperinflation) plastic tokens were used. Disposable magnetic stripe cards were introduced in 1993 on a trial basis, and used as unlimited monthly tickets between 1996 and 1998. The sale of tokens ended on 1 January 1999, and they stopped being accepted in February 1999; from that time, magnetic cards were used as tickets with a fixed number of rides.

 

On 1 September 1998, the Moscow Metro became the first metro system in Europe to fully implement "contactless" smart cards, known as Transport Cards. Transport Cards were the card to have unlimited amount of trips for 30, 90 or 365 days, its active lifetime was projected as 3½ years. Defective cards were to be exchanged at no extra cost.

 

In August 2004, the city government launched the Muscovite's Social Card program. Social Cards are free smart cards issued for the elderly and other groups of citizens officially registered as residents of Moscow or the Moscow region; they offer discounts in shops and pharmacies, and double as credit cards issued by the Bank of Moscow. Social Cards can be used for unlimited free access to the city's public-transport system, including the Moscow Metro; while they do not feature the time delay, they include a photograph and are non-transferable.

Since 2006, several banks have issued credit cards which double as Ultralight cards and are accepted at turnstiles. The fare is passed to the bank and the payment is withdrawn from the owner's bank account at the end of the calendar month, using a discount rate based on the number of trips that month (for up to 70 trips, the cost of each trip is prorated from current Ultralight rates; each additional trip costs 24.14 rubles). Partner banks include the Bank of Moscow, CitiBank, Rosbank, Alfa-Bank and Avangard Bank.

In January 2007, Moscow Metro began replacing limited magnetic cards with contactless disposable tickets based on NXP's MIFARE Ultralight technology. Ultralight tickets are available for a fixed number of trips in 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 and 60-trip denominations (valid for 5 or 90 days from the day of purchase) and as a monthly ticket, only valid for a selected calendar month and limited to 70 trips. The sale of magnetic cards ended on 16 January 2008 and magnetic cards ceased to be accepted in late 2008, making the Moscow metro the world's first major public-transport system to run exclusively on a contactless automatic fare-collection system.

 

On 2 April 2013, Moscow Transport Department introduced a smartcard-based transport electronic wallet, named Troika. Three more smart cards have been launched:

 

Ediniy's RFID-chip card, a "disposable"-design cardboard card for all city-owned public transport operated by Mosgortrans and Moscow Metro;

90 minutes card, an unlimited "90-minute" card

and TAT card for surface public transport operated by Mosgortrans.

One can "record" N-ride Ediniy ticket on Troika card as well in order to avoid carrying the easily frayed cardboard card of Ediniy for weeks (e.g. to use Troika's advanced chip). The turnstiles of Moscow Metro have monochrome screens which show such data as "money left" (if Troika is used as a "wallet"), "valid till DD.MM.YYYY" (if a social card is used) or "rides left" (if Ediniy tariff ticket is used).

 

Along with the tickets, new vending machines were built to sell tickets (1 or 2 rides) and put payments on Troika cards. At that time, the machines were not accepting contactless pay. The same machines now have tiny terminals with keypads for contactless payments (allowing quick payment for Troika card).

 

In 2013, as a way to promote both the "Olympic Games in Sochi and active lifestyles, Moscow Metro installed a vending machine that gives commuters a free ticket in exchange for doing 30 squats."

 

Since the first quarter of 2015, all ticket windows (not turnstiles) at stations accept bank cards for fare payment. Passengers are also able to pay for tickets via contactless payment systems, such as PayPass technology. Since 2015, fare gates at stations accept mobile ticketing via a system which the Metro calls Mobilny Bilet (Мобильный билет) which requires NFC-handling smartphone (and a proper SIM-card). The pricing is the same as Troika's. Customers are able to use Mobile Ticket on Moscow's surface transport. The Moscow Metro originally announced plans to launch the mobile ticketing service with Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) in 2010.

 

In October 2021, the Moscow Metro became the first metro system in the world to offer Face-Pay to their customers. In order to use this system, passengers will need to connect their photo, bank card and metro card to the service through the metro’s mobile app. For this purpose, the metro authorities plan to equip over 900 turnstiles in over 240 stations with biometric scanners. This enables passengers to pay for their ride without taking out their phone, metro or bank card and therefore increasing passenger flow at the station entrances. In 2022, Face-Pay was used over 32 million times over the course of the year.

 

Notable incidents

1977 bombing

On 8 January 1977, a bomb was reported to have killed 7 and seriously injured 33. It went off in a crowded train between Izmaylovskaya and Pervomayskaya stations. Three Armenians were later arrested, charged and executed in connection with the incident.

 

1981 station fires

In June 1981, seven bodies were seen being removed from the Oktyabrskaya station during a fire there. A fire was also reported at Prospekt Mira station about that time.

 

1982 escalator accident

Escalator accident in 1982

A fatal accident occurred on 17 February 1982 due to an escalator collapse at the Aviamotornaya station on the Kalininskaya Line. Eight people were killed and 30 injured due to a pileup caused by faulty emergency brakes.

 

1996 murder

In 1996, an American-Russian businessman Paul Tatum was murdered at the Kiyevskaya Metro station. He was shot dead by a man carrying a concealed Kalashnikov gun.

 

2000 bombings

On 8 August 2000, a strong blast in a Metro underpass at Pushkinskaya metro station in the center of Moscow claimed the lives of 12, with 150 injured. A homemade bomb equivalent to 800 grams of TNT had been left in a bag near a kiosk.

 

2004 bombings

August 2004 Moscow Metro bombing

On 6 February 2004, an explosion wrecked a train between the Avtozavodskaya and Paveletskaya stations on the Zamoskvoretskaya Line, killing 41 and wounding over 100. Chechen terrorists were blamed. A later investigation concluded that a Karachay-Cherkessian resident had carried out a suicide bombing. The same group organized another attack on 31 August 2004, killing 10 and injuring more than 50 others.

 

2005 Moscow blackout

On 25 May 2005, a citywide blackout halted operation on some lines. The following lines, however, continued operations: Sokolnicheskaya, Zamoskvoretskaya from Avtozavodskaya to Rechnoy Vokzal, Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya, Filyovskaya, Koltsevaya, Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya from Bitsevskiy Park to Oktyabrskaya-Radialnaya and from Prospekt Mira-Radialnaya to Medvedkovo, Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya, Kalininskaya, Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya from Serpukhovskaya to Altufyevo and Lyublinskaya from Chkalovskaya to Dubrovka. There was no service on the Kakhovskaya and Butovskaya lines. The blackout severely affected the Zamoskvoretskaya and Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya lines, where initially all service was disrupted because of trains halted in tunnels in the southern part of city (most affected by the blackout). Later, limited service resumed and passengers stranded in tunnels were evacuated. Some lines were only slightly impacted by the blackout, which mainly affected southern Moscow; the north, east and western parts of the city experienced little or no disruption.

 

2006 billboard incident

On 19 March 2006, a construction pile from an unauthorized billboard installation was driven through a tunnel roof, hitting a train between the Sokol and Voikovskaya stations on the Zamoskvoretskaya Line. No injuries were reported.

 

2010 bombing

On 29 March 2010, two bombs exploded on the Sokolnicheskaya Line, killing 40 and injuring 102 others. The first bomb went off at the Lubyanka station on the Sokolnicheskaya Line at 7:56, during the morning rush hour. At least 26 were killed in the first explosion, of which 14 were in the rail car where it took place. A second explosion occurred at the Park Kultury station at 8:38, roughly forty minutes after the first one. Fourteen people were killed in that blast. The Caucasus Emirate later claimed responsibility for the bombings.

 

2014 pile incident

On 25 January 2014, at 15:37 a construction pile from a Moscow Central Circle construction site was driven through a tunnel roof between Avtozavodskaya and Kolomenskaya stations on the Zamoskvoretskaya Line. The train operator applied emergency brakes, and the train did not crash into the pile. Passengers were evacuated from the tunnel, with no injures reported. The normal line operation resumed the same day at 19:50.

 

2014 derailment

On 15 July 2014, a train derailed between Park Pobedy and Slavyansky Bulvar on the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line, killing 24 people and injuring dozens more.

 

Metro-2

Main article: Metro-2

Conspiracy theorists have claimed that a second and deeper metro system code-named "D-6", designed for emergency evacuation of key city personnel in case of nuclear attack during the Cold War, exists under military jurisdiction. It is believed that it consists of a single track connecting the Kremlin, chief HQ (General Staff –Genshtab), Lubyanka (FSB Headquarters), the Ministry of Defense and several other secret installations. There are alleged to be entrances to the system from several civilian buildings, such as the Russian State Library, Moscow State University (MSU) and at least two stations of the regular Metro. It is speculated that these would allow for the evacuation of a small number of randomly chosen civilians, in addition to most of the elite military personnel. A suspected junction between the secret system and the regular Metro is supposedly behind the Sportivnaya station on the Sokolnicheskaya Line. The final section of this system was supposedly completed in 1997.

 

In popular culture

The Moscow Metro is the central location and namesake for the Metro series, where during a nuclear war, Moscow's inhabitants are driven down into the Moscow Metro, which has been designed as a fallout shelter, with the various stations being turned into makeshift settlements.

 

In 2012, an art film was released about a catastrophe in the Moscow underground.

nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/03/covid-excess-mortality.html

 

What a Single Metric Tells Us About the Pandemic

 

Live long enough in a pandemic and you will see the entire narrative landscape shift, even flip, sometimes more than once.

 

As recently as a month ago, Americans of a certain cast of mind could have still looked to China — and indeed all of East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania — with some plausible pandemic envy. Those early lockdowns in Wuhan were brutal, yes; some of the surveillance testing, contact tracing, and quarantine measures imposed in places like South Korea and Singapore were very restrictive, true; closed borders and reentry policies in Australia and New Zealand went further than those of any country in Europe or the Americas; and while the Sinovac vaccines weren’t as effective as those made by Moderna or Pfizer, the success of true “zero COVID” policies through the region meant that in many places, shots got into arms without anything like a major COVID surge ever having taken place.

 

All of that seemed like an unimaginable triumph. Now, after a brutal Omicron wave punishing its largely unvaccinated elderly, Hong Kong has a cumulative death toll approaching Canada’s. (In February, it was 25 times lower.) Omicron spikes elsewhere in the region — in South Korea, in Singapore — have proved less threatening, given higher rates of vaccination among the elderly. But panicked lockdowns imposed again in China suggest that the country’s leadership, at least, believes an enormous amount of pandemic vulnerability remains — enough to justify a total shutdown of Shenzhen, a city of almost 20 million and such a critical economic and manufacturing hub that American observers immediately started raising their expectations for inflation.

 

Narrative turnabouts are not new with Omicron. Some are familiar: The disease wasn’t spread through the air, then it was; masks weren’t worth it, early on, then became not just essential but badges of personal vigilance, then only useful if they were KN95s. Some narrative shifts were more obscure: Omicron was said to be “mild,” though it is roughly as severe as the original strain in immunologically naïve populations. Others have been somewhat memory-holed, as when much of the public-health Establishment spent the fall of 2020 suggesting that herd immunity would be reached when 60 or 70 percent of the country was infected or vaccinated, a threshold we have now long since surpassed with nothing like herd immunity in sight; or when it spent the summer of 2021 insisting that breakthrough cases were exceedingly rare and breakthrough deaths essentially nonexistent, when in fact probably a quarter of all American deaths since Delta have been among the vaccinated. Some reversals were technical, as when rapid tests were first considered imprecise, became indispensable during Omicron, then had their efficacy in preventing transmission called into question. Some had to do with policy: School closures were once part of a first-response wave of restrictions, but a growing understanding of the relatively low risk to kids and real costs of keeping them home has meant schools are now broadly viewed as among the most important places to remain open. And some had to do with personal behavior, as when many of the same people who spent 2020 yelling at Thanksgiving travelers and arguing that responsibility to protect others should dominate one’s personal behavior spent 2021 reasoning that vaccines had absolved us all of that responsibility. Many of those who once reacted in horror to “Let it rip” proponents began wondering if anything at all could have stopped the early spread in its tracks.

 

Our experience of the pandemic has been littered with bad-faith argumentation and instigation, but most of these narrative reversals are not that, or even signs of what Harvard’s William Hanage has called the “motivated reasoning” of the pandemic. One narrative replacing another is one description of the scientific method, and among the many astonishing features of this pandemic is how quickly science was able to process and respond — perhaps without adequate speed, but at least fast enough for vaccines to be designed within two days, manufactured within two months, and rolled out to the vast majority of the world within two years. But the unsteady narratives of COVID-19 are reminders that, as sure as we might have been about how to interpret our experience of it, the stories we told ourselves about what we were dealing with and what we should be doing to protect ourselves were often incomplete, clouded by much more uncertainty and ignorance, wishful thinking and reflexive panic, than we were ever comfortable acknowledging.

 

There is one data point that might serve as an exceptional interpretative tool, one that blinks bright through all that narrative fog: excess mortality. The idea is simple: You look at the recent past to find an average for how many people die in a given country in a typical year, count the number of people who died during the pandemic years, and subtract one from the other. The basic math yields some striking results, as shown by a recent paper in The Lancet finding that 18.2 million people may have died globally from COVID, three times the official total. As skeptical epidemiologists were quick to point out, the paper employed some strange methodology — modeling excess deaths even for countries that offered actual excess-death data and often distorting what we knew to be true as a result. A remarkable excess-mortality database maintained by The Economist does not have this problem, and, like the Lancet paper, the Economist database estimates global excess mortality; it puts the figure above 20 million.

 

As a measure of pandemic brutality, excess mortality has its limitations — but probably fewer than the conventional data we’ve used for the last two years. That’s because it isn’t biased by testing levels — in places like the U.S. and the U.K., a much higher percentage of COVID deaths were identified as such than in places like Belarus or Djibouti, making our pandemics appear considerably worse by comparison. By measuring against a baseline of expected death, excess mortality helps account for huge differences in the age structures of different countries, some of which may have many times more mortality risk than others because their populations are much older. And to the extent that the ultimate impact of the pandemic isn’t just a story about COVID-19 but also one about our responses to it — lockdowns and unemployment, suspended medical care and higher rates of alcoholism and automobile accidents — excess mortality accounts for all that, too. In some places, like the U.S., excess-mortality figures are close to the official COVID data — among other things, a tribute to our medical surveillance systems. In other places, the numbers are so different that accounting for them entirely changes the picture of not just the experience of individual nations but the whole world, scrambling everything we think we know about who did best and who did worst, which countries were hit hardest and which managed to evade catastrophe. If you had to pick a single metric by which to measure the ultimate impact of the pandemic, excess mortality is as good as we’re probably going to get.

 

So what does it say? A year ago, it seemed easy enough to divide pandemic outcomes into three groups — with Europe and the Americas performing far worse than East Asia, which appeared to have outmaneuvered the virus through public-health measures, and much of the Global South, especially sub-Saharan Africa, which looked to have been spared mostly by its relatively young population. Today, a crude count of official deaths, not excess mortality, suggests the same grouping: North America and Europe have almost identical death counts with official per capita totals eight times as high as Asia, as a whole, and 12 times as high as Africa. South America’s death toll is higher still — ten times as high as Asia and 15 times as high as Africa.

 

The excess-mortality data tells a different story. There is still a clear continent-by-continent pattern, but the gaps between them are much smaller, making the experiences of different parts of the world much less distinct and telling a more universal story about the devastation wrought by this once-in-a-century contagion. According to The Economist, Europe, Latin America, and North America have all registered excess deaths ranging from 270 to 370 per 100,000 inhabitants; excess mortality in Asia is estimated between 130 to 330; in Africa, the range is 79 to 220. These numbers are not identical, but, all things considered, they are remarkably close together. The highest of the low-end estimates is barely three times the lowest; the highest of the high-end estimates is not even twice as high as the lowest.

 

If you adjust for age, as the Economist database does separately, the differences among continents grow more dramatic — suggesting a reversal of outcomes, rather than a convergence. Outside of Oceania, Europe and North America were among the best in the world at preventing deaths among the old, and they were several times better at protecting their elderly, of whom they had many more, than Africa and South Asia. East Asia performed better, but only slightly: Canada is in line with China, Germany just marginally worse than South Korea, Iceland in the range of Japan. By almost any metric, Oceania remains an outlier: The Economist estimates zero excess deaths among the elderly in New Zealand, for instance, and gives the whole region an excess-mortality range of negative 31 to positive 37 per 100,000 residents, meaning it’s possible fewer people died there than would’ve had we never even heard of SARS-CoV-2.

 

In the country-by-country data, the divergences grow even bigger. Perhaps most striking, given both self-flagellating American narratives about the pandemic and current events elsewhere on the globe, is that the worst-hit large country in the world was not the U.S., which registered the most official deaths of any country but ranks 47th in per capita excess mortality, or Britain, which ranks 85th, or even India, which ranks 36th. It is Russia, which has lost, The Economist estimates, between 1.2 million and 1.3 million citizens over the course of the pandemic, a mortality rate more than twice as high as the American one.

 

Russia is not an outlier. While we have heard again and again in the U.S. about the experience of the pandemic in western Europe — sometimes in admiration, sometimes to mock — it has been eastern Europe that, of any region in the world, has the ugliest excess-mortality data. This, then, is where the pandemic hit hardest — in the countries of the old Warsaw Pact and formerly of the Soviet bloc. In fact, of the ten worst-performing countries, only one is outside eastern Europe. The world’s worst pandemic, according to the data, has been in Bulgaria, followed by Serbia, North Macedonia, and Russia, then Lithuania, Bosnia, Belarus, Georgia, Romania, and Sudan. (Have you read much about pandemic policy in any of these countries?) Peru, which had what is often described as the most brutal pandemic in the world, ranks 11th — with the smallest gap, among those countries with the most devastating pandemics, between the official COVID data and the estimated excess mortality. (You probably haven’t read much about Peru, either, but its lockdowns were severe — for months, only one member of each household was allowed out once a week. At one point, an exemption was extended allowing for children under the age of 14 to leave their homes for 30 minutes of exercise per day, so long as it was conducted less than 500 meters away.)

 

Because The Economist allows you to explore how excess mortality evolved over time, country by country, the data also clearly showcases the pandemic as a tale of two years — a mitigation year, 2020, and a vaccination year, 2021. Early in the vaccine-distribution phase, with the U.K. and U.S. moving most quickly, it was striking how so few of the countries that had done well in preventing spread in 2020 were doing well in providing vaccines quickly. Over the course of 2021, many of those gaps disappeared, with countries across East Asia and Oceania eventually accelerating their vaccine distribution and parts of Europe that were slow at the outset starting to catch up too. But the U.S. took the opposite course. In 2020, the U.S. had done a bit worse than average among its OECD peers. In 2021, when pandemic outcomes were often determined by the relative uptake of American-made vaccines, the U.S. did much, much worse than that. In country after country in Europe, the pandemic killed a fraction as many last year as it had the year before. In the U.S., it killed more. A year ago, it was possible to defend the American record as merely below average — worse than it should have been but not, judging globally, cataclysmically bad. Today, it is cataclysmically bad, which is both outrageous and ironic, given that it is largely American vaccine innovation that has changed the pandemic landscape for the rest of the world — the rest of the rich world, at least.

 

On February 1, 2021, just after the inauguration of Joe Biden, the U.S. had registered, according to The Economist, 178 excess deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, quite close to Britain’s 166, Belgium’s 162, and Portugal’s 201. Fast-forward a year and those gaps have exploded. The U.S. has now registered 330 excess deaths per 100,000 — meaning our total has roughly doubled. In Britain, the excess mortality grew only 30 percent; in Portugal, it was 17 percent.

 

The gaps between deaths in the U.S. and countries that had done better in the first year of the pandemic, like Germany or Iceland, have gotten even bigger. If the U.S. had the same cumulative excess mortality of Germany, it would have had 600,000 fewer deaths. If it had the excess mortality of Iceland, it would have had a million fewer deaths — and would have only lost about 100,000 Americans in total.

 

How did this happen? The answer is screamingly obvious, if also, in its way, confusing: The U.S. drove an unprecedented vaccine-innovation campaign in 2020, which empowered much of the world to turn the page on the pandemic’s deadliest phases, then, in 2021, utterly failed to take advantage of its power itself. But what is perhaps even more striking is that American vaccination coverage isn’t just bad, by the standards of its peers, but getting worse. About two-thirds of Americans have received two shots of vaccine, a level that is in line with Israel and not far off from the U.K., though below many other wealthy countries. (And even in the U.K., vaccination was more effectively directed toward the old.) But over the last six months, the country has had an opportunity to make up that gap with boosters and has simply not taken it. Only 29 percent of Americans have had a booster shot of vaccine, which puts us behind Slovenia, Slovakia, and Poland and means that less than half of those people happy to be vaccinated a year ago have chosen to get a third shot through Delta and Omicron. Booster campaigns seem like an obvious opportunity for easy public-health gains, yet remarkably few Americans seem to think it’s worth the trouble. Why? For everything we think we know about the pandemic and how people have responded to it, that one remains a maddening mystery.

  

www.newsday.com/news/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-boost...

 

COVID rates are rising again. Who's most at risk?

 

As the percentage of people testing positive for COVID-19 continues to rise on Long Island, experts say those who didn’t contract the coronavirus in the past few months are most at risk, but if they’re vaccinated, their vulnerability drops.

 

The spread of the highly contagious omicron subvariant BA.2 and a decline in mask-wearing are causing the rise in rates after they declined sharply following the omicron surge earlier this winter, said Dr. Leonard Krilov, an infectious disease expert and chief of pediatrics at NYU Langone Hospital-Long Island in Mineola.

 

The positivity rate likely will continue to rise somewhat, but he didn’t expect a major new wave of infections.

 

“The immunity levels in the population are pretty good” because of vaccination and the large number of people infected with the coronavirus in recent months, he said. “I’m guardedly optimistic we won’t see major blips.”

 

WHAT TO KNOW

 

■ The percentage of people testing positive for COVID-19 continued to rise on Friday, to 2.31%. It had been 1.99% on Tuesday.

■ Experts don’t believe there will be another major surge, because there is relatively strong immunity from the vaccines and from infections during the winter omicron spike.

■ A second booster shot may be advisable in the near future, especially for older adults and those with certain medical conditions, experts say.

 

After the Long Island positivity rate reached nearly 27% in early January, it fell to 1.52% by March 9. But it’s been steadily rising since then, with the increase accelerating in recent days, going from 1.99% on Tuesday to 2.31% on Friday.

 

Dr. Bruce Farber, chief of public health and epidemiology for Northwell Health, said people who both contracted the virus in recent months and are vaccinated, and especially those who also received booster shots, are most protected against new infection. But immunity gradually wanes over time, he said.

 

"Every month that goes by and we’re further away from January, when most of those people got infected, the number of vulnerable people is going to grow," he said.

 

Farber said that, to limit the spread of the virus, “the things we can do are give another booster or change our lifestyles again." But, he said, "there’s no appetite in our country" for reinstituting restrictions such as mask mandates.

 

"The only remaining option is really boosters," he said.

Considering a 2nd booster shot

 

It’s unclear when a second booster shot is advisable, Farber said. Earlier this month, Pfizer and BioNTech asked for Food and Drug Administration authorization for a second booster for those 65 and older, and Moderna asked for authorization for additional boosters for all adults.

 

The Biden administration is planning to allow everyone 50 and older to receive a second booster of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine, although it would only be an option, not a recommendation, according to multiple news outlets. The proposal was first reported late Friday in The New York Times. The FDA could authorize a second booster in the next several days, the reports said.

 

Krilov said focusing on older age groups first is logical.

 

“The argument for it, and it makes some sense, is that after 50, 60, you don’t respond as well, your immune system isn’t quite as robust,” he said. “To boost that population does make some sense. … Everybody’s felt that we’re going to at some point need additional boosting. It’s figuring out the timing of it.”

 

Data out of Israel, which for months has allowed second boosters for people 60 and older and other vulnerable groups, is promising, Farber said. But the results are from two months after the booster was given, and “normally we don’t make decisions based on two-month follow-ups,” he said. It’s unclear how quickly protection wanes after two months, he said.

 

Farber worried that if the FDA gives older adults an option for a second booster, but not a full recommendation, it could be confusing and lead “to very mixed messages among the public.”

 

Farber said people 60 or 65 and older probably should get a second booster, if authorized. For people in their 50s, it would depend on how much time they spend in crowded indoor spaces and whether they have health conditions making them more vulnerable, he said.

 

“A healthy 50-year-old may want to pass on a booster right now, but a 50-year-old with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart failure, that’s a whole different picture,” he said.

56% of eligible NYers boosted

 

In New York, 56% of those eligible for a booster have received one, and 76.1% of the population has received at least two vaccine doses, or one of the Johnson & Johnson, according to state data.

 

Unvaccinated people 12 and older are more than three times as likely to test positive for the coronavirus than boosted people, and 21 times more likely to die of COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

 

The timing of a second booster would be a judgment call, Krilov said. With the positivity rate still relatively low, it may make more sense for many people to wait until just before the fall, when the risk likely will be higher.

 

“On the other hand, if I have multiple risk factors, I’d probably say get it as soon as it’s approved,” he said.

 

The number of COVID-19 hospitalizations rose on Long Island, from 119 on Thursday to 123 on Friday, state data shows. But that was after a large drop, from 143 patients on Wednesday. More than 58% were admitted for a reason other than COVID-19.

I went back out to find more interesting stuff, and ran back into the micropanther (Atomosia puella) from earlier, with a bonus. I found him on the back fence when I went to check on my passionflower vines, and got into position. As I tried to get some resolution, I realized he had his lunch with him still! I tried to snag a single shot with his entire body and the prey in focus, but my focal plane at this magnification is practically nonexistent. Small movements from me rendered focus stacking impossible, so here's the best capture I got. Overall, it may not be my best shot, but I absolutely LOVE getting photos of nature in action. Captured with my Vivitar (Komine) 90mm f2.8 Macro in 1:1, attached to 26mm of extension tubes, for around 1.3:1 magnification.

George Lucas was born and raised in Modesto, California, a dusty transportation center in the agricultural Sacramento Valley. As a teenager, Lucas developed an interest in racing, then in vogue as part of the "Cruising" trend of the early 1960s, as kids built up and worked on their cars, picked up girls, and participated in street racing. However a nearly fatal car accident in 1962 turned Lucas over to film making.

 

In 1971, after the failure of THX1138, Lucas decided to turn back to a nostalgic view of Cruising. American Graffiti was set in 1962 Modesto and is loosely autobiographical. However, Modesto was not as accommodating, with a zealous urban-renewal program that demolished most of the old downtown by the 1970s and replaced it with what remains a pretty sterile cityscape. Lucas ended up filming American Graffiti in San Rafael and Petaluma. Released in 1973, the film became a critical and commercial success, and Lucas went on to create the blockbuster Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises.

 

Modesto did not really give much of a thought to the whole thing, besides banning cruising in 1993. In 1997, it decided to recognize its famed son by erecting this statue of a cruising couple on a 1957 Chevy (or at least a part of it) by Betty Saletta. There was a storm of controversy, as locals opposed the use of funds for the artwork. However the statue was finally erected at what is called Five Points, now George Lucas Plaza. It has nothing to do with the old cruising sites, which were closer to Downtown and now mostly nonexistent.

 

Recently, the city began embracing its history, with a marker-based tour route and a popular American Graffiti Car Show held on the first week of June. Last year, George Lucas, now retired, showed up as the Grand Marshal of the parade to enthusiastic crowds.

Modesto, California

Kafka.

  

Si, ho sé, es quelcom estranya aquesta lletra/fotografia. Però kafka va dir: "By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired."

  

Sóc somiadora, i m'encanta imaginar-me mil aventures. Algunes les faig realitat. Com la de fer les illes balears amb la meva vespa del '82. He cregut que ho podia fer, i ho hem fet possible. Ha estat un viatge màgic, ple de sensacions que em fan saltar la llàgrima. Hem creat un record marevellós, hem seguit els nostres desitjos, i hem convertit somnis en realitat.

A sculpture of a swan that I made from LEGO bricks. This is actually a combination of two different species of swans. I grabbed various characteristics from the two of them, making a probably nonexistent species. It took maybe 40 hours to design and build.

 

The head and feet are recycled parts from my old bird old bird, made a 1.5 years before this one. The old one fell off of a shelf, and I didn't want to repair it, so I made a better version.

 

The wings of this sculpture ended up being too heavy to sustain their own weight (although they are pretty durable), but the cross support holds them firmly in place.

The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, sometimes referred to as the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, was erected in Fort Greene Park in 1908. Designed by Stanford White, the monument consists of a 100-foot-wide-granite staircase and a 149-foot high central Doric column. The monument, actually the third on the site, marks the site of the crypt for more than 11,500 men, women and children, known as the prison ship martyrs.

 

During the American Revolutionary War, the British imprisoned scores of soldiers, sailors, and private citizens--many simply because they would not swear allegiance to the Crown of England. When they ran out of jail space, they began using decommissioned ships anchored in Wallabout Bay as floating prisons. Life was unbearable on the prison ships. Disease was rampant, food and water were scarce or nonexistent, and the living conditions were overcrowded and wretched. Their bodies were thrown overboard or buried in shallow graves in the sandy marshes along the shore. In 1808 the remains of the prison ship martyrs were buried in a tomb on Jackson Street (now Hudson Avenue), near the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

 

In 1776, the construction of Fort Putnam on the high ground that now makes up Fort Greene Park was supervised by American Major General Nathanael Greene. During the Battle of Long Island, the Continental Army surrendered the fort and retreated to Manhattan. The fort was renamed for General Greene and rebuilt for the War of 1812. In 1845, the City of Brooklyn designated the site as a public park behind the support of Walt Whitman, then editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. In 1867, landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux were engaged to redesign the park, and incorporate a new crypt for the remains of the prison ship martyrs.

 

The remains were moved to the park in 1873 into the newly created 25 by 11 foot brick vault. Twenty-two boxes, containing a mere fraction of total volume of remains, were interred. Towards the end of the 19th century, a diverse group of interests including the federal government, municipal and state governments, private societies, and donors, began a campaign for a permanent monument to the prison ship martyrs. In 1905 the renowned architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White was hired to design a new entrance to the crypt and a wide granite stairway leading to a plaza on top of the hill. From its center rose a freestanding Doric column crowned by a bronze lantern. President-elect William Howard Taft attended the monument’s dedication in 1908.

 

Sculptor Adolph Alexander Weinman (1870–1952) created the monument’s bronze pieces -- the large urn or decorative lantern (never functioning) as well as four eagles that were once mounted to the corner granite posts. The eagles were removed to storage after being repeatedly vandalized; two of them are on public display at the Arsenal, the Parks administrative headquarters on Fifth Avenue at 64th Street in Manhattan. A tablet over the entrance to tomb, also in storage now, was donated by the Tammany Society, and was originally the cornerstone of the Navy Yard vault. An elevator and stairs for the interior were installed in 1937; both were removed in 1948 after the monument was renovated by Parks. In 1970 the elevator pit was filled in.

 

Presently plans are being considered for the renovation of the monument, landscaping of the apex of the park and the re-installation of the conserved eagles and plaque.

 

The Fort Green Historic District was designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1978.

 

Fort Greene Historic District National Register #83001691

Karesansui 枯山水 (dry landscape gardens, also known as rock gardens and waterless stream gardens) are typically associated with Zen Buddhism, and often found in the front or rear gardens at the residences (houjou 方丈) of Zen abbots. The main elements of karesansui are rocks and sand, with the sea symbolized not by water but by sand raked in patterns that suggest rippling water. Representative examples are the gardens of Ryoanji Temple and Daitokuji Temple, both in Kyoto. Plants are much less important (and sometimes nonexistent) in many karesansui gardens. Karesansui gardens are often, but not always, meant to be viewed from a single, seated perspective, and the rocks are often associated with and named after various Chinese mountains. The first-ever Zen landscape garden in Japan is credited to Kenchoji Temple in Kamakura. Founded in 1251, this temple was the chief monastery for the five great Zen monasteries that thrived during the Kamakura era (1185-1333). It became the center of Zen Buddhism thanks to strong state patronage.

The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, sometimes referred to as the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, was erected in Fort Greene Park in 1908. Designed by Stanford White, the monument consists of a 100-foot-wide-granite staircase and a 149-foot high central Doric column. The monument, actually the third on the site, marks the site of the crypt for more than 11,500 men, women and children, known as the prison ship martyrs.

 

During the American Revolutionary War, the British imprisoned scores of soldiers, sailors, and private citizens--many simply because they would not swear allegiance to the Crown of England. When they ran out of jail space, they began using decommissioned ships anchored in Wallabout Bay as floating prisons. Life was unbearable on the prison ships. Disease was rampant, food and water were scarce or nonexistent, and the living conditions were overcrowded and wretched. Their bodies were thrown overboard or buried in shallow graves in the sandy marshes along the shore. In 1808 the remains of the prison ship martyrs were buried in a tomb on Jackson Street (now Hudson Avenue), near the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

 

In 1776, the construction of Fort Putnam on the high ground that now makes up Fort Greene Park was supervised by American Major General Nathanael Greene. During the Battle of Long Island, the Continental Army surrendered the fort and retreated to Manhattan. The fort was renamed for General Greene and rebuilt for the War of 1812. In 1845, the City of Brooklyn designated the site as a public park behind the support of Walt Whitman, then editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. In 1867, landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux were engaged to redesign the park, and incorporate a new crypt for the remains of the prison ship martyrs.

 

The remains were moved to the park in 1873 into the newly created 25 by 11 foot brick vault. Twenty-two boxes, containing a mere fraction of total volume of remains, were interred. Towards the end of the 19th century, a diverse group of interests including the federal government, municipal and state governments, private societies, and donors, began a campaign for a permanent monument to the prison ship martyrs. In 1905 the renowned architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White was hired to design a new entrance to the crypt and a wide granite stairway leading to a plaza on top of the hill. From its center rose a freestanding Doric column crowned by a bronze lantern. President-elect William Howard Taft attended the monument’s dedication in 1908.

 

Sculptor Adolph Alexander Weinman (1870–1952) created the monument’s bronze pieces -- the large urn or decorative lantern (never functioning) as well as four eagles that were once mounted to the corner granite posts. The eagles were removed to storage after being repeatedly vandalized; two of them are on public display at the Arsenal, the Parks administrative headquarters on Fifth Avenue at 64th Street in Manhattan. A tablet over the entrance to tomb, also in storage now, was donated by the Tammany Society, and was originally the cornerstone of the Navy Yard vault. An elevator and stairs for the interior were installed in 1937; both were removed in 1948 after the monument was renovated by Parks. In 1970 the elevator pit was filled in.

 

Presently plans are being considered for the renovation of the monument, landscaping of the apex of the park and the re-installation of the conserved eagles and plaque.

 

The Fort Green Historic District was designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1978.

 

Fort Greene Historic District National Register #83001691

Whale meat and puffins (Lundi) on the menu at Hereford Steikhus, ReykjavÃ-k, Iceland © Linda Dawn Hammond / IndyFoto.com March 13, 2014

I boycotted ALL restaurants which served whale, shark or puffin (aka Lundi) while visiting Iceland. According to Elding, a great Icelandic eco whale watching tour, only 5% of the whales killed in Iceland are consumed by locals and 40% by tourists looking for a kick. Some of whom had just stepped off the whale watching tour- very hypocritical. Since a campaign by IFAW to stop this opportunistic experimentation, tourist consumption has dropped to 20%. Now the one company still killing fin and minke whales, Hvalur, managed by Kristján Loftsso (Kristjan Loftsson), is selling byproducts of its cruel product to a local beer company, Steðja Brewery. I'm adding them to my boycott list. I later learned that the picturesque Icelandic horses we see offered for rides to tourists are also bred for meat. © Linda Dawn Hammond / IndyFoto.com Feb 21, 2014

 

Hunting Minke whales is not an Icelandic tradition- in fact, quite the opposite. According to Wikepedia, "prior to 1914 Icelanders did not hunt minke whales. Superstition held that minke whales were sent by God as protectors" More here- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_Iceland

 

www.ifaw.org/united-states/our-work/whales/meet-us-don%E2...

Meet Us Don't Eat Us: Campaign to take whale meat off the menu for tourists

 

Tourists who visit Iceland during the summer may be greeted by a high-profile campaign from IFAW and Ice Whale (Icelandic Whale Watching Association), encouraging them to enjoy responsible whale watching but to avoid sampling whale meat.

 

The campaign, Meet Us Don't Eat Us is aimed at dispelling the myth some tourists believe that whale meat is a popular dish enjoyed by most Icelanders. However, according to a 2010 Gallup poll survey, only about 5% of Icelanders say they eat it regularly.

Similarly, many people believe Iceland's commercial whaling is a centuries-old tradition, but in reality it started in 1948 and stopped in 1989, with a few boats resuming minke whaling in 2003, initially for so-called scientific research.

IFAW believes an estimated 40% of tourists are persuaded to eat whale meat while in Iceland, mainly out of curiosity. The result is that whales are killed every year just to be sampled by tourists.

The Meet Us Don't Eat Us campaign urges visitors to think carefully about the menu choices they make in the country's excellent restaurants to ensure they don't go home with a bad taste in their mouths.

The campaign, which runs from June to September, is being promoted around Reykjavik by volunteers dressed in whale tail costumes. The volunteers will be talking to tourists in downtown Reykjavik and asking them to sign postcards promising to avoid whale meat and asking Iceland to stop whaling.

The campaign, which ran for the first time in 2011, has ruffled some feathers in Iceland. Despite IFAW signing and paying a four-month contract to place adverts in Keflavik Airport last year, the airport's general manager ordered IFAW to remove them shortly after they went on display following complaints from whalers. The campaign then sparked a major media debate in the country on the issue of free speech and IFAW was delighted to see many Icelanders, including politicians, speak out in defence of the campaign.

In early May, 2012 Kristjan Loftsson, the lone Icelandic whaler responsible for killing 280 endangered fin whales in Icelandic waters over the past six years, told Icelandic media that because of economic issues, including difficulties in trading the meat with Japan following its tsunami tragedy, he would not be fin whaling in 2012. This is the second year in a row that Loftsson has cancelled the hunt, having laid off 30 staff last year. IFAW welcomed this decision and sees it as a positive sign that Loftsson recognises that fin whaling is uneconomic. Icelanders traditionally do not eat fin whale meat and these whales have been killed with a view to selling the meat to Japan, which has so far met with little success.

 

However, commercial hunting of minke whales in Iceland continues. In total, 58 minke whales were killed last season, by two companies. This was from a self-allocated catch limit of 216. IFAW urges Iceland to end all whaling now to protect whales for future generations and to safeguard its successful whale watching industry.

IFAW ran the first workshop looking into the feasibility of whale watching in Iceland more than 20 years ago and has worked closely with Icelandic whale watch operators for several years to promote whale watching as a humane and profitable alternative to the cruelty of whaling.

www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/01/iceland...

Iceland's Newest Beer Ingredient: Whale

One brewery is experimenting with a whale of an ale or technically, an ale of a whale.

SVATI KIRSTEN NARULA

JAN 9 2014, 12:46 PM ET

 

Iceland doesn't treat cetaceans the way most of the world wants them to be treated. Like Japan and Norway, Iceland has continued to hunt fin and minke whales in defiance of an international moratorium on the practice. It's not a challenge to find a restaurant serving whale meat in the capital city of ReykjavÃ-k. With all this in mind, is it really surprising that Iceland's whaling business has recently teamed up with a brewery to produce "whale beer"?

 

Steðja Brewery

Hvalur, the company managed by "the Icelandic Ahab" Kristján Loftsson, is providing whale mealâa byproduct of processing the animal's meat and oilâto Steðja Brewery to create a limited edition product tied to Iceland's annual mid-winter festival Thorrablot. The beer, marketed as a drink for "true vikings," will only be available from January 24 through February 22. It's 5.2 percent alcohol and is supposedly "healthy" by virtue of containing whale, which is, according to the brewery, high in protein and low in fat.

Dagbjartur Ariliusson, the brewery's owner, told reporters that whale beer makes sense in the context of Thorrablot and the country's history. For many centuries, he said, they have celebrated this festival by eating "cured food, including whale fat, and now we have the beer to drink with this food." Pickled whale blubber is a traditional Thorrablot menu item.

Like so much else Iceland does with whales, the development is drawing impassioned ire from conservationists and anti-whaling activists. The Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC) society's campaign managers have called the beer launch an attempt "to diversify whale products in the face of almost nonexistent local consumer demand" and "about as immoral and outrageous as you can get." WDC has also gone after Hvalur for "perversely" powering its whale-hunting ships with whale oil.

The outcry probably won't stop tourists from rushing to sample whale steaks and sashimi at ReykjavÃ-k restaurants. Even if whale beer doesn't taste very good because, let's be honest, putting meat of any kind in beer is uncommon and gross it could, one day, be yet another item on a traveler's bucket list.

 

www.ifaw.org/united-states/news/september-drew-end-so-did...

As September drew to an end, so did whaling in Iceland, but for how long?

By: Robbie Marsland

Posted: Mon, 10/14/2013

2013 was a grim year, with a decrease in minke whales killed offset by a vast increase in the number of fin whales killed.

There are two types of whaling in Iceland.

 

These days, minke whaling is carried out primarily by one vessel, Hrafnreyður KÃ-100.

The number of whales killed each season for the small Icelandic whale meat market has dropped from 58 in 2011, to 52 in 2012 and 35 this year.

Less than 5% of Icelanders regularly eat whale meat and thanks to IFAW's Meet Us Don't Eat Us and Whale Friendly Restaurants initiatives in the country, the percentage of tourists eating whale meat has dropped from around 40% to around 20%.

SEE ALSO: "Whale friendly" is the way forward for Icelandic tourism

Not only are sales down for the minke whalers, but it looks like their costs are up. Facing an extended whale watching sanctuary and the displeasure of the Icelandic tourism community, this year the minke whalers kept out of the enormous Faxafloi bay outside Reykjavik, the capital.

They motored around Iceland's western fjords and started to worry the whale watchers in the north of Iceland between Akureyri and Husavik the northern home of Icelandic whale watching. Not surprisingly, their presence there was also hotly contested by whale watching companies.

So as the winter storms start hitting Iceland, we will have to wait and see if the whalers decide it is worth enduring further international and national criticism to go out and cruelly kill minke whales for a steadily declining market that must yield little or no financial return¦

Fin whales are the second species hunted and cruelly killed in Iceland.

In recent years fin whales have only been hunted by one operator. He is Kristjan Loftsson, the son of a whaler who made a fortune from whaling in the 60s, 70s and 80s - before the vast majority of the world (including Iceland) saw sense and stopped killing whales.

Mr Loftsson started killing fin whales again in 2009. No-one was really sure why he started again because fin whale meat is not eaten in Iceland, and the only other place international trade laws allow him to sell the meat is Japan, and they don't seem overly keen to buy fin whale meat from him.

So it wasn't a surprise when Mr Loftsson didn't go fin whaling in 2011 and 2012. But it was a surprise when he sent his ships out to kill the second largest whale in the world again last June.

As of the end of September his two 1940s steam-driven whaling boats had dragged 134 fin whales back to his whaling station just outside Reykjavik.

But it's not been plain sailing for Mr Loftsson this season.

He was used to the idea of there being celebrations when he brought in the first fin whale of the season. Instead of showing a proud Mr Loftsson flensing (cutting up) his first whale, the newspapers chose to cover the small crowd of demonstrators on the hill above the station holding the banner: What's the point in Icelandic whaling?

Later in the season one of his minority shareholders was quoted in the national newspapers as being very concerned that the fin whaling was losing money and depreciating the value of the company shares.

Loftsson's worst moment came in July when a consignment of his fin whale meat was rejected by the port of Rotterdam which wanted nothing to do with his cruel and controversial trade.

Not only that but he had to see photos plastered all over the TV and newspapers of a whale watching boat greeting the returning whale meat with enormous pointing hands and, once again, the message What's the point in Icelandic whaling?

Rotterdam was closed to his trade and so his export options seem to be dwindling.

2013 was a grim year for us with a decrease in minke whales killed offset by a vast increase in the number of fin whales killed.

However, there does seem to have been a sea change in Icelandic attitudes towards this so-called industry and more and more people are asking themselves and in public, what is the point of Icelandic whaling?

--RM

IFAW will continue to work closely with the whale watching and tourism sector and supportive MPs over the winter months. Stay tuned!

HORSE SLAUGHTER of foals in Iceland

 

www.pferd-und-fleisch.de/Horsemeat/iceland.htm

 

ICELANDIC SLAUGHTERHOUSE ADVERTISES FOR HORSES TO FEED OVERSEAS DINERS

MAY 5, 2012 VIVIAN GRANT FARRELL

 

tuesdayshorse.wordpress.com/2012/05/05/icelandic-slaughte...

Chuck E. Cheese's #557 (11,654 square feet)

3631 Soldano Boulevard, Consumer Square West, Columbus, OH

Opened November 24th, 1992

 

This Columbus location has one of the oddest layouts I've seen in a CEC. First off, kid check was moved from its' original location directly beside this entryway and is now across from the ordering counter, more than likely due to low staffing so whoever's working can man both stations easier. I've seen other locations do this, but here it's problematic: now the front window booths are behind the stand, so if that's where you choose to sit then you potentially have to deal with a line of people next to you on a busier day, which seems like it'd be annoying. Secondly, the showroom/show area is pretty much nonexistent. From the ordering counter you have a straight path to the stage with no obstacles in-between. And third, bathrooms are accessed from behind the salad bar instead of having their own separate hallway. Fortunately, the gameroom floor is much larger and varied compared to some locations (like Chesapeake Sams Circle), which is great for the kids that go here.

Now I knew my Nubian doe, Melody, was going to have more than one kid, but I wasn’t prepared for the carnival ride that happened!

I put Melody in the kennel the day before because she was pawing the ground and showing signs of imminent labor. About 9:00pm Wednesday night I checked on her then went to bed as I had worked that day and had been up since the wee hours of the morning. Around 4:00am I woke up and went out to check on Melody and there was one BIG buckling on his feet. A quick survey told me that the kid had been born probably several hours before and Melody was still in labor. Not good. That meant that a kid was probably in the wrong position and not coming out. Melody was exhausted and in obvious distress.

Let me tell you now the description “goat veterinarian” is somewhat of an anachronism in this area and a vet who will come out to the boondocks in the wee hours for a goat in labor is nonexistent so the “call your vet” option just ain’t there.

So I go back in the house and wake up Vic who groggily comes out. Vic’s hand is too big to reach into Melody’s nether regions, so I got the pleasure. Upon reaching in, I found the kid twisted around in breach position. I had to rotate him inside to be able to get him in position to pull. Now I’m 4’11” and 90 pounds in soggy clothing. Being small has its drawbacks, but having spindly arms helped in this situation! So I finally got the head turned around one-handed and was able to pull him out. He was alive but very weak. Melody did some preliminary cleaning but was too tired to continue. Vic went back to bed as he was figuring he had to work that day.

I toweled the kid off to dry and stimulate him. He was awake but too weak to even hold his head up.

But Melody didn’t look like she was through and to compound matters, the first kid knocked one of her hips completely out of joint. It was starting to get light, so I jumped in the truck and drove over to the neighbor’s house. Now Jeannie and her daughter Lisa are experienced goat folks –Melody came from them. They proceeded to throw on some coats and boots and came right up.

After getting a pile of towels, I proceeded to reach in again –Lisa said “Melody is deep!” and she wasn’t kidding! No pun intended…

I found another kid, and rotated it and managed to pull it out. Alive! The sack hadn’t burst! Melody was too exhausted to push and couldn’t stand, so I went in again and suspicions confirmed there was yet another kid, so I brought it out with Melody down on her side and myself down in the straw saturated with birth goo. All the while, Jeannie and Lisa are toweling kids and clearing their mouths and comforting Melody and giving me a lot of help and support!

After all was done, Jeannie and Lisa left with the intent to come back later and put Melody’s hip back in. She was too exhausted to mess with at the moment. I went and got some colostrum heated up (I keep frozen cubes) to get the kids going so they all got a warm meal before settling in as well as their Bo-Se (selenium) and A&D shots.

I had to milk Melody down and bottle feed the kids because she was too weak to stand for long. Jeannie and Lisa came back to tend to Melody’s hip. Jeannie stood behind Melody and started gently manipulating her leg, there was a “scrunch” and back in it went! It was amazing!

So I have been busy for a few days! This was the condensed version! Jean

 

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NY Times, Dec. 4 2011

Colin Huggins was there with his baby grand, the one he wheels into Washington Square Park for his al fresco concerts. So were Tic and Tac, a street-performing duo, who held court in the fountain — dry for the winter. And Joe Mangrum was pouring his elaborate sand paintings on the ground near the Washington Arch.

 

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Enlarge This Image

 

Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Kareem Barnes of Tic and Tac collected donations on Sunday.

Enlarge This Image

 

Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Joe Mangrum showed his sand paintings on Sunday.

In other words, it was a typical Sunday afternoon in the Greenwich Village park, where generations of visitors have mingled with musicians, artists, activists, poets and buskers.

 

Yet this fall, that urban harmony has grown dissonant as the city’s parks department has slapped summonses on the four men and other performers who put out hats or buckets, for vending in an unauthorized location — specifically, within 50 feet of a monument.

 

The department’s rule, one of many put in place a year ago, was intended to control commerce in the busiest parks. Under the city’s definition, vending covers not only those peddling photographs and ankle bracelets, but also performers who solicit donations.

 

The rule attracted little notice at first. But the enforcement in Washington Square Park in the past two months has generated summonses ranging from $250 to $1,000. And it has started a debate about the rights of parkgoers seeking refuge from the bustle of the streets versus those looking for entertainment.

 

At a news conference in the park on Sunday organized by NYC Park Advocates, the artists waved fistfuls of pink summonses while their advocates, including civil rights lawyers, called on the city to stop what they called harassment of the performers.

 

“This is a heavy-handed solution to a nonexistent problem,” said Ronald L. Kuby, one of the lawyers.

 

The rule is especially problematic in Washington Square Park, performers say, because there are few locations across its 10 acres that are beyond 50 feet from a memorial or fountain — whether the bust of Alexander Lyman Holley, who introduced the Bessemer steel process to this country, or the statue of the Italian liberator Giuseppe Garibaldi.

 

Then there is the park’s international reputation as a gathering place for folk music pioneers and the Beats.

 

“Washington Square is the live-music park of New York City, and it would be close to impossible for any one of us to follow these regulations,” said Mr. Huggins, who has received nine summonses with fines totaling $2,250.

 

But Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner, argues that there is ample room for performers away from the monuments. And, he added, a musician who is not putting out a tin cup is welcome to sit on the edge of the fountain or under a monument.

 

“It’s the whole issue of the ‘tragedy of the commons,’ ” he said. “If you allow all the performers and all the vendors to do whatever they want to do, pretty soon there’s no park left for people who want to use them for quiet enjoyment. This is a way of having some control and not 18 hours of carnival-like atmosphere.”

 

Gary Behrens, an amateur photographer visiting from New Jersey, applauded the city’s efforts to rein in the performers. “I’m O.K. with the guitar, but the loud instruments have taken over the park,” he said.

 

The lawyers and advocates, however, challenged the idea that street performers were selling a product as a vendor does. And threatening a lawsuit, they faulted the city for creating what they called “First Amendment zones” through the rules.

 

“Is this place zany?” asked Norman Siegel, the former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “You bet. Public parks are quintessential public forums. Zaniness is something we should cherish and protect.”

 

Park visitation has soared along with the rise of tourism in the last 15 years, and with it vendors and artists interested in a lucrative market.

 

Mr. Benepe insisted that the rules would not scare off future music legends.

 

“If Bob Dylan wanted to come play there tomorrow, he could,” he said, “although he might have to move away from the fountain.”

 

Oddly, the dispute coincided with the 50th anniversary of the so-called Folk Riot in Washington Square Park, when the parks commissioner tried to squelch Sunday folk performances. Hundreds of musicians gathered in protest, the police were called in and a melee ensued.

 

In April, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg wrote a letter commemorating the Folk Riot, saying he applauded “the folk performers who changed music, our city and our world beginning half a century ago.”

Influenza

 

What Is Influenza?

 

Influenza, or the flu, is a viral infection. There are many types of influenza viruses. Common symptoms may include fever, chills, sore throat, body aches, headache, and fatigue. Some forms of the flu virus infect the gastro-intestinal tract causing nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. A flu infection may worsen any chronic illness such as emphysema, asthma, or bronchitis. It has also been known to cause complications in people with coronary heart disease and congestive heart failure. Those who smoke are at an increased risk of mortality from influenza.

 

Who Does Influenza Affect?

 

Influenza primarily affects humans; however, certain types of the flu virus can affect animals (most commonly birds and pigs).

 

What Causes Influenza Infection?

 

Anyone with a weakened immune system is more susceptible to an influenza infection. Coming into contact with the flu virus, increases your risk of developing the flu. Contact includes saliva, nasal secretions, feces and blood. Most commonly influenza is spread through coughing and sneezing.

   

Examination Procedures for the Diagnosis of Influenza

 

Although there are specific laboratory test for diagnosing influenza, diagnosis is usually based on symptoms.

 

Common Chiropractic & Other Conservative Treatments

 

Treatment for influenza is usually geared towards prevention. By keeping the immune system strong and healthy you can prevent yourself from getting the flu in the first place

 

Conservative Chiropractic treatment can consist of:

 

· Posture rehabilitation: Due to the stresses of poor posture having an overall ”ill” effect on health, maintaining good posture is key to maintaining good health.

 

· Joint Manipulations: Studies show that chiropractic manipulations boost the immune system

 

· Vitamins and Supplements: certain vitamins and supplements, such as Vitamin D, C, and E, are known to boost the immune system and may help prevent the flu. You should always check with your chiropractor before taking any vitamin, supplement, or herbal formula.

 

· Chinese Medicine: Chinese medicine can help with prevention and also help with symptoms, naturally. You should always check with your chiropractor before taking any vitamin, supplement, or herbal formula.

 

· Recommendations of: adequate rest, reduced stress levels, and increased fluid intake are all essential to maintain a healthy immune system.

 

Medical Interventions: Studies Fail to Demonstrate Safety or Effectiveness of Influenza Vaccine in Children and Adults

 

Because the flu is a virus, there is no medication to cure the flu. Rest and fluids are most often prescribed by medical practioners. There are several over the counter medications that can lessen the symptoms of the flu, but because these medication have their own inherent risks, caution is advised.

 

The flu vaccine is used to try to prevent one from catching the flu, but because the flu virus is continually mutating and changing, doctors are guessing as to what strain is going to be present. Therefore; the flu vaccination is a “shot in the dark” with no guarantees of prevention or immunity. Due to the inherent risks of vaccinations, caution is advised with any vaccination.

 

In fact, recently, in an independent analysis of the available flu vaccine studies, the Cochrane Collaboration1, concluded that there is little scientific proof that the influenza vaccine is safe and/or effective for children and adults. Additionally, the National Vaccine Information Center is asking the Center for Disease Control (CDC) to stop recommending annual flu shots for all infants and children until methodologically sound studies are conducted.

 

The risks of the flu vaccine may in fact outweigh any possible benefits. Dozens of convulsions and other adverse events, including brain injury experienced by children after receiving the flu vaccination, have been reported. Additionally some subjects exposed to the flu vaccine developed Guillain Barre Syndrome.1-5

 

Even in the Elderly (the most at risk group of people), the benefits of the flu shot is “greatly exaggerated”; according to a 2007 study in the premier medical journal The Lancet.4 The researchers stated that the public policy for the elderly getting flu shots is based on flimsy, even nonexistent, evidence.

 

A Potentially Bigger Problem: if the above information was not enough, it has been identified that the majority of influenza vaccines distributed in the United States contain Thimerosal and that while highly controversial, this methyl mercury based preservative has been claimed to be linked to autism, Alzheimer’s, and ADD.

 

Chiropractic Care May Have a Positive Influence on Influenza

 

Historically, Chiropractic treatment for flu patients has shown clinical benefits dating back to the flu pandemic in the early 19th century. There is limited data from that era regarding publications but severely ill patients with flu symptoms would line up to receive their daily Chiropractic adjustments. In fact, many Chiropractors set up treatment areas in Churches and Orphanages to adjust the ill. Reports from that era suggest that patients receiving Chiropractic care fared better than those whom did not and than those receiving standard medical care of the times.6

 

By today’s standards, the above reports don’t equate to legitimate data; however, there is emerging evidence that Chiropractic type adjustments can enhance the immune system of a patient and speed recovery of the ill. For example, in Geriatric Patients with pneumonia receiving both conventional medicine and ‘osteopathic manipulation’, it was found that the spinal manipulation group had reduced antibiotic use and decreased length of hospital stay!7,8

 

If nothing else, take the advice of the National Vaccine Information Center:9

 

1. If you have the flu, stay home until you are well

 

2. If you know a person sick with the flu, avoid contact until they are well

 

3. Wash your hands frequently

 

4. Drink plenty of fluids, especially water

 

5. Get adequate rest

 

6. Eat a wholesome diet rich in vitamins and minerals, especially foods containing vitamin D (such as cod liver oil)

 

7. Spend a few minutes a day in sunlight to help your body make and store vitamin D.

 

8. Consider chiropractic adjustments, homeopathic remedies and other natural options for healing and maintaining health.

 

9. Exercise regularly when you are well.

 

10. Lower stress through meditation and other healthy lifestyle changes

   

References

 

British Medical Journal 2006; Oct. 28.

Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) 2006; Oct. 25.

The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) (www.nvic.org ).

Simonsen L, Taylor R, Viboud C, Miller M, Jackson L. Mortality benefits of influenza vaccination in elderly people: an ongoing controversy. Lancet Infect Dis 2007; 7:658–66 Sept 24, www.michigan.gov/documents/mdch/Simonsen_etal_210415_7.pdf

Geier M, Geier D, Zahalsky A. Influenza vaccination and Guillain Barre syndrome. Clinical Immunology 107 (2003) 116–121.

Rhodes, Walter R. The official history of chiropractic in Texas. 1978;:1-4.

Noll DR. J Am Osteo Assoc 1999:99(3):143-146.

Noll DR. J Am Osteo Assoc 1998;98(7):389

www.nvic.org/Default.htm

  

 

ALL DAY GIRLS FILL AND EMPTY HEAVY BASKETS OF ROCK IN ORISSA, INDIA

ROMANO/Stolen Childhoods

 

Gravel Quarries are a common sight in Orissa and other states in India. The children that work here are exploited 12-16 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Their world consists only of these piles of rocks, dust and back breaking work. At night many sleep in the open or in makeshift shelters where sanitary conditions are nonexistent. There are no schools here, and for many there is no family. Some of the children working here have been trafficked from other areas where their parents have been forced to either sell themselves or their children into debt bondage (Slavery) or, if they are lucky enough not to be bonded, are dependent on the meager wages that these children can provide.

The work is extremely brutal, hazardous, abusive sometimes lethal. Working all day in the hot sun where temperatures regularly climb above 100F (37C), they carry well over a ton of rock a day, to stand on line exposed to the rock dust from the grinder. The pay, If there is any, is minimal, and conditions fall well below minimum levels required by law and are illegal for children . Nonetheless the kids work, Driven by necessity , often unaware of what they are getting into and sometimes tricked or virtually kidnapped by unscrupulous agents and middlemen. For many, their debt actually increases over time due to dishonest accounting.

The poor pay and hard work are just the beginning. These children tend to be chronically tired from the long hours, increasing the probability of accidents, injuries and deformity. Disease, malnutrition and permanent skeletal injury and silicosis are the common lot. Many die before they reach 30.

Medical treatment is primitive or non-existent

Unable to receive the education to which they are entitled by law, they are powerless to act, and trapped in a continual cycle of grinding poverty.

Catalog Number: 2017.005.0001

 

Date (Years): 1891-1900

 

Description:

 

Receipt on billhead from Chattanooga Plow Company for goods sold to A. B. Hamm, Ramer, Tenn., October 12, 1895. Business graphic at header features cotton bolls, a plow, and in the center, surrounded by an oval, a drawing of Lookout Mountain with factories along the Tennessee River and steamboats in the river. It notes Newell Sanders, President, and C. D. Mitchell, Secretary and Treasurer. It promotes its chilled plows, plow repairs, cane mills, evaporators & furnaces. There are also notices of indemnity.

 

The Chattanooga Plow Company was once the largest factory in Chattanooga and an international leader in plow design and production. The company dates to the business activities of Newell Sanders, who arrived in Chattanooga in 1877 from Bloomington, Indiana, where he had owned and operated a bookstore for students of Indiana University. Sanders arrived with a letter of introduction to John T. Wilder, fellow Indianan, industrialist, and former Union Civil War officer. Sanders was intent on starting a manufacturing business and, after touring the city and discussing his options with Wilder, Sanders decided to begin with the manufacture of plows. At that time, the majority of plows used in the South came from the Midwest. To gain some knowledge of the plow business, Sanders returned to Indiana and spent a year working in a plow factory and studying plow design. Sanders returned to Chattanooga in 1878 and began the Newell Sanders Plow Works-advertised as Newell Sanders & Company. From its inception, Sanders advertised his plows as the plow designed for southern soils and for use expressly in the South.

 

Newell Sanders & Company operated out of an eight-hundred-square-foot building manufacturing plows with castings purchased from Wheland Foundry. By 1881, Sanders and his agents were selling plows in Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama. Two years later, Sanders, Charles D. Mitchell, George W. Wheland, C. C. Bloomfield, and Judson Buchanan increased the company’s capitalization, moved and expanded the works, built a dedicated foundry, and renamed the organization the Chattanooga Plow Company. Newell Sanders was the first president of the company, and C. D. Mitchell was the secretary and treasurer.

 

Chattanooga Plow Company utilized the same designs as those of Newell Sanders & Company. The factory at Carter and Montgomery (now Main) Streets employed approximately three hundred people and covered six acres by 1895. They focused on a “southern plow,” the one- or two-horse plow most commonly used by southern farmers. As the company expanded into new markets, they held expositions and field schools to prove the ability of the plow and to teach the proper ways to use the plows.

 

The aggressive sales increased the business to the point where the Chattanooga Chilled Plow became a style of its own, known simply as the “Chattanooga plow.” The company added variations of its one-horse, single-foot plow to appeal to farmers in different regions of the United States. It expanded sales into Texas, the Midwest, the Territories, and Mexico. Chattanooga Plow also added a line of cane mills, evaporators, and furnaces for processing sugar cane and making syrups. The line of cane mills, evaporators, and furnaces gained the company substantial business in the Caribbean, particularly Jamaica where Sanders sold over five thousand cane mills. These new international sales were in addition to the company’s sales in Europe, Mexico, Cuba, South America, and Central America.

 

A disagreement with other stockholders in 1901 led C. D. Mitchell and his supporters to vote out Newell Sanders and elect Mitchell as the second president of Chattanooga Plow Company. Several months later, in 1902, Sanders opened the Newell Sanders Plow Company. This separate company manufactured only disc plows for tractor use and sought markets in California, Oregon, Nebraska, Kansas, Wyoming, and South Africa, all regions where Chattanooga Plow’s business was minimal or nonexistent. Sanders operated Newell Sanders Plow Company until 1927, when he sold that business to the Rock Island Plow Company in Dallas, Texas.

 

After taking control of Chattanooga Plow in 1901, C. D. Mitchell along with G. W. Wheland, the secretary, and treasurer, continued business in much the same fashion as Sanders. In response to a substantial growth of sales in the United States as well as an expansion into Asian markets, the company in 1903 expanded into the largest factory in Chattanooga and one of the largest plow companies in the world.

 

Mitchell and Wheland’s control of Chattanooga Plow ended in 1915 when Newell Sanders purchased Wheland’s shares while Sanders’s ally John C. Miller gained control of Mitchell’s stock. With the support of his nephew and long-time superintendent of the factory, Judson Buchanan, Sanders gained a three-fifths majority in the company and was reelected as president in May 1915. Four years later, Sanders and his partner sold Chattanooga Plow to International Harvester for an estimated one million dollars.

 

The Chattanooga works would continue making chilled plows, cane mills, evaporators, and furnaces for International Harvester until 1944, when the company built a new factory in Memphis, Tennessee. The Harriman manufacturing company of Harriman, Tennessee, bought the Chattanooga works and continued to produce the Chattanooga plow until 1972. Today, Chattanooga’s Finley Stadium occupies the former site of the Chattanooga Plow Company.

 

Source: tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=1578

I saw my first-of-year Bluebird just 9 days ago, but didn’t get any decent photos. Today however, I found at least 4 birds and got within photo range more than once. With this nearly nonexistent winter, I have to keep reminding myself that it’s still February and not April. Hennepin County, MN 02/21/24

Taken and originally posted in 2012.

 

Badminton without a net. A guy prepares to hit a shuttlecock over a nonexistent net on Lighthouse Beach in Chatham on Cape Cod.

1/100 Elyn Kshatriya

1/100 Elyn Gatling Guns x 4

Custom decals laid out by Dade W. Bell and printed by Samuel.

Custom mixed paint scheme with 12 layers of paint for both candy purple colors.

Paints are Gaia, Gunze, Vallejo, and Citadel.

 

This project took FOREVER and I frankly stopped keeping track of the hours once I hit 150. This is mainly due to all of the paint layers required to give the proper shading and depth I was after. Plus the fact that I'm a slow builder. lol Note that I also went with my concept of painting the frame in a lighter color than the armor. We often see MS frames painted in dark and/ or metallic colors, but I thought it would look much more interesting if the frame was a light color contrasted with the darker "candy purple" armor (kinda like my Ple Qubeley). Also note how I went farther with the idea of making the finish matte. I think this adds an interesting appearance to the candy surface and is actually more realistic and less toy-like than the usual gloss finish seen on candy colors (contrast with my Ple Qubeley...).

 

The pictures truly don't do the real thing justice and I'll try to take better photos (and a video) with my D5100 outside when it cools down in the fall... Until then, I think these pics will suffice.

 

With this project done, I'm done building Kshatriyas. Too much of my life has been taken up with these things and it's time to move on. Still, I'm the "Ple Guy" so I had to at least make this one. ;-) (Wink) As for how Ple could end up piloting the Kshatriya, below is the story file I created to go on the base when I have a custom label printed later...

 

An Alternate Timeline...

In the original events of ZZ Gundam, Elpeo Ple sacrificed herself to protect Judau Ashta from the Psycho Gundam Mk-II piloted by her clone, Ple Two. However, in this alternate timeline, Glemy Toto’s attempts to clone Ple failed... and as a result, Ple didn’t die at the hands of her now-nonexistent clone. Thus, the “butterfly effect” of the changed timeline allowed Ple to survive the First Neo-Zeon War.

With the First Neo Zeon War over, Ple headed to Jupiter with Judau and Roux, but eventually grew bored with her relatively peaceful life (not to mention her “third-wheel” status with her friends), and decided to return to the Earth Sphere. During the long voyage home, she was disappointed to find that she missed the events of the Second Neo-Zeon War (Char’s Counterattack), and vowed to never miss out on any further action.

So when Ple heard about Full Frontal’s group of Neo-Zeon remnants, The Sleeves, she joined them without hesitation (and received the customized purple Kshatriya for her personal MS). This was because of a longing for excitement more than any kind of belief in Neo-Zeon ideology, and the battlefield was once again filled with the giddy shout of, “Purupurupurupuru!”. However, she quickly switched sides when she discovered that Frontal was merely using her as a “test” against the Unicorn Gundam’s NT-D system (her ability to defeat her own NT-D-controlled funnels and fight the Unicorn to a standstill is a significant departure from the original timeline).

Being a natural Newtype and not subject to the side-effects of the Cyber-Newtype process (complicated by the horrible events of childhood), Ple was able to avoid most of the unfortunate, and ultimately fatal, events that befell her clone, Marida Cruz (Ple Twelve), in the original timeline. As a result, she and the Kshatriya were able to survive the Third Neo-Zeon war relatively unharmed... a feat for which she rewarded herself with a nice, long bubble bath.

I know it looks a bit hokey, but it is actually a lot of fun!

I apologize to the author for the re-formatting to make it fit. ... and hope she doesn't mind this liberty. :)

 

There had been something loose on the station dock all morning, skulking in amongst the gantries and the lines and the canisters which were waiting to be moved, lurking wher-ever shadows fell among the rampway accesses of the many ships at dock at Meetpoint. It was pale, naked, starved-looking in what fleeting glimpse anyone on The Pride of Chanur had had of it. Evidently no one had reported it to station au-thorities, nor did The Pride. Involving oneself in others' concerns at Meetpoint Station, where several species came to trade and provision, was ill-advised—at least until one was personally bothered. Whatever it was, it was bipedal, brachi-ate, and quick at making itself unseen. It had surely gotten away from someone, and likeliest were the kif, who had a thieving finger in everything, and who were not above kid-napping. Or it might be some large, bizarre animal; the ma-hendo'sat were inclined to the keeping and trade of strange pets, and Station had been displeased with them in that re-spect on more than one occasion. So far it had done nothing. Stolen nothing. No one wanted to get involved in question and answer between original owners and station authorities; and so far no official statement had come down from those station authorities and no notice of its loss had been posted by any ship, which itself argued that a wise person should not ask questions. The crew reported it only to the captain and chased it, twice, from The Pride's loading area. Then the crew got to work on necessary duties, having settled the an-noyance to their satisfaction.

It was the last matter on the mind of the noble, the distin-guished captain Pyanfar Chanur, who was setting out down her own rampway for the docks. She was hani, this captain, splendidly maned and bearded in red-gold, which reached hi silken curls to the middle of her bare, sleek-pelted chest, and she was dressed as befitted a hani of captain's rank, blousing

scarlet breeches tucked up at her waist with a broad gold belt, with silk cords of every shade of red and orange wrap-ping that about, each knotted cord with a pendant jewel on its dangling end. Gold finished the breeches at her knees. Gold filigree was her armlet. And a row of fine gold rings and a large pendant pearl decorated the tufted sweep of her left ear. She strode down her own rampway in the security of ownership—still high-blooded from a quarrel with her niece—and yelled and bared claws as the intruder came bear-ing down on her.

She landed one raking, startled blow which would have held a hani in the encounter, but the hairless skin tore and it hurtled past her, taller than she was. It skidded around the bending of the curved ramp tube and bounded right into the ship, trailing blood all the way and leaving a bloody hand-print on the rampway's white plastic wall.

Pyanfar gaped in outrage and pelted after, claws scrabbling for traction on the flooring plates. "Hilfy!" she shouted ahead; her niece had been in the lower corridor. Pyanfar made it into the airlock, hit the bar of the com panel there and punched all-ship. "Alert! Hilfy! Call the crew in! Some-thing's gotten aboard. Seal yourself into the nearest compart-ment and call the crew." She flung open the locker next to the com unit, grabbed a pistol and scrambled in pursuit of the intruder. No trouble at all tracking it, with the dotted red trail on the white decking. The track led left at the first cross-corridor, which was deserted—the intruder must have gone left again, starting to box the square round the lift shafts. Pyanfar ran, heard a shout from that intersecting cor-ridor and scrambled for it: Hilfy! She rounded the corner at a slide and came up short on a tableau, the intruder's hair-less, red-running back and young Hilfy Chanur holding the corridor beyond with nothing but bared claws and adolescent bluster.

"Idiot!" Pyanfar spat at Hilfy, and the intruder turned on her suddenly, much closer. It brought up short in a staggered crouch, seeing the gun aimed two-handed at itself. It might have sense not to rush a weapon; might . . . but that would turn it right back at Hilfy, who stood unarmed behind. Pyan-far braced to fire at the least movement.

It stood rigidly still in its crouch, panting from its running and its wound. "Get out of there," Pyanfar said to Hilfy. "Get back." The intruder knew about hani claws now, and

guns, but it might do anything, and Hilfy, an indistinction in her vision which was focused wholly on the intruder, stayed stubbornly still. "Move!" Pyanfar shouted.

The intruder shouted too, a snarl which almost got it shot, and drew itself upright and gestured to the center of its chest, twice, defiant. Go on and shoot, it seemed to invite her.

That intrigued Pyanfar. The intruder was not attractive. It had a bedraggled gold mane and beard, and its chest fur, al-most invisible, narrowed in a line down its heaving belly to vanish into what was, legitimately, clothing, a rag almost nonexistent in its tatters and obscured by the dirt which matched the rest of its hairless hide. Its smell was rank. But a straight carriage and a wild-eyed invitation to its enemies . . . that deserved a second thought. It knew guns; it wore at least a token of clothing; it drew its line and meant to hold its territory. Male, maybe. It had that over-the-brink look in its eyes.

"Who are you?" Pyanfar asked slowly, in several languages one after the other, including kif. The intruder gave no sign of understanding any of them. "Who?" she repeated.

It crouched slowly, with a sullen scowl, all the way to the deck, and extended a blunt-nailed finger and wrote in its own blood which was liberally puddled about its bare feet. It made a precise row of symbols, ten of them, and a second row which began with the first symbol prefaced by the second, second with second, second with third . . . patiently, with increasing concentration despite the growing tremors of its hand, dipping its finger and writing, mad fixation on its task.

"What's it doing?" asked Hilfy, who could not see from her side.

"A writing system, probably numerical notation. It's no animal, niece."

At the exchange, the intruder looked up—stood up, an abrupt move which proved injudicious after its loss of blood. A glassy, desperate look came into its eyes, and it sprawled in the puddle and the writing, slipping in its own blood in trying to get up again.

"Call the crew," Pyanfar said levelly, and this time Hilfy scurried off in great haste. Pyanfar stood where she was, pistol in hand, until Hilfy was out of sight down another corridor, then, assured that there was no one to see her lapse of dignity, she squatted down with the gun in both hands held …

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chanur_novels

Minke Whale meat on the menu at The Sea Baron Restaurant, Sægreifinn © Linda Dawn Hammond / IndyFoto.com March 13, 2014

 

Whale meat and puffins (Lundi) is also found on the menu at Hereford Steikhus, ReykjavÃ-k, Iceland

I boycotted ALL restaurants which served whale, shark or puffin (aka Lundi) while visiting Iceland. According to Elding, a great Icelandic eco whale watching tour, only 5% of the whales killed in Iceland are consumed by locals and 40% by tourists looking for a kick. Some of whom had just stepped off the whale watching tour- very hypocritical. Since a campaign by IFAW to stop this opportunistic experimentation, tourist consumption has dropped to 20%. Now the one company still killing fin and minke whales, Hvalur, managed by Kristján Loftsso (Kristjan Loftsson), is selling byproducts of its cruel product to a local beer company, Steðja Brewery. I'm adding them to my boycott list. I later learned that the picturesque Icelandic horses we see offered for rides to tourists are also bred for meat. © Linda Dawn Hammond / IndyFoto.com Feb 21, 2014

 

Hunting Minke whales is not an Icelandic tradition- in fact, quite the opposite. According to Wikepedia, "prior to 1914 Icelanders did not hunt minke whales. Superstition held that minke whales were sent by God as protectors" More here- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_Iceland

 

www.ifaw.org/united-states/our-work/whales/meet-us-don%E2...

Meet Us Don't Eat Us: Campaign to take whale meat off the menu for tourists

 

Tourists who visit Iceland during the summer may be greeted by a high-profile campaign from IFAW and Ice Whale (Icelandic Whale Watching Association), encouraging them to enjoy responsible whale watching but to avoid sampling whale meat.

 

The campaign, Meet Us Don't Eat Us is aimed at dispelling the myth some tourists believe that whale meat is a popular dish enjoyed by most Icelanders. However, according to a 2010 Gallup poll survey, only about 5% of Icelanders say they eat it regularly.

Similarly, many people believe Iceland's commercial whaling is a centuries-old tradition, but in reality it started in 1948 and stopped in 1989, with a few boats resuming minke whaling in 2003, initially for so-called scientific research.

IFAW believes an estimated 40% of tourists are persuaded to eat whale meat while in Iceland, mainly out of curiosity. The result is that whales are killed every year just to be sampled by tourists.

The Meet Us Don't Eat Us campaign urges visitors to think carefully about the menu choices they make in the country's excellent restaurants to ensure they don't go home with a bad taste in their mouths.

The campaign, which runs from June to September, is being promoted around Reykjavik by volunteers dressed in whale tail costumes. The volunteers will be talking to tourists in downtown Reykjavik and asking them to sign postcards promising to avoid whale meat and asking Iceland to stop whaling.

The campaign, which ran for the first time in 2011, has ruffled some feathers in Iceland. Despite IFAW signing and paying a four-month contract to place adverts in Keflavik Airport last year, the airport's general manager ordered IFAW to remove them shortly after they went on display following complaints from whalers. The campaign then sparked a major media debate in the country on the issue of free speech and IFAW was delighted to see many Icelanders, including politicians, speak out in defence of the campaign.

In early May, 2012 Kristjan Loftsson, the lone Icelandic whaler responsible for killing 280 endangered fin whales in Icelandic waters over the past six years, told Icelandic media that because of economic issues, including difficulties in trading the meat with Japan following its tsunami tragedy, he would not be fin whaling in 2012. This is the second year in a row that Loftsson has cancelled the hunt, having laid off 30 staff last year. IFAW welcomed this decision and sees it as a positive sign that Loftsson recognises that fin whaling is uneconomic. Icelanders traditionally do not eat fin whale meat and these whales have been killed with a view to selling the meat to Japan, which has so far met with little success.

 

However, commercial hunting of minke whales in Iceland continues. In total, 58 minke whales were killed last season, by two companies. This was from a self-allocated catch limit of 216. IFAW urges Iceland to end all whaling now to protect whales for future generations and to safeguard its successful whale watching industry.

IFAW ran the first workshop looking into the feasibility of whale watching in Iceland more than 20 years ago and has worked closely with Icelandic whale watch operators for several years to promote whale watching as a humane and profitable alternative to the cruelty of whaling.

www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/01/iceland...

Iceland's Newest Beer Ingredient: Whale

One brewery is experimenting with a whale of an ale or technically, an ale of a whale.

SVATI KIRSTEN NARULA

JAN 9 2014, 12:46 PM ET

 

Iceland doesn't treat cetaceans the way most of the world wants them to be treated. Like Japan and Norway, Iceland has continued to hunt fin and minke whales in defiance of an international moratorium on the practice. It's not a challenge to find a restaurant serving whale meat in the capital city of ReykjavÃ-k. With all this in mind, is it really surprising that Iceland's whaling business has recently teamed up with a brewery to produce "whale beer"?

 

Steðja Brewery

Hvalur, the company managed by "the Icelandic Ahab" Kristján Loftsson, is providing whale mealâa byproduct of processing the animal's meat and oilâto Steðja Brewery to create a limited edition product tied to Iceland's annual mid-winter festival Thorrablot. The beer, marketed as a drink for "true vikings," will only be available from January 24 through February 22. It's 5.2 percent alcohol and is supposedly "healthy" by virtue of containing whale, which is, according to the brewery, high in protein and low in fat.

Dagbjartur Ariliusson, the brewery's owner, told reporters that whale beer makes sense in the context of Thorrablot and the country's history. For many centuries, he said, they have celebrated this festival by eating "cured food, including whale fat, and now we have the beer to drink with this food." Pickled whale blubber is a traditional Thorrablot menu item.

Like so much else Iceland does with whales, the development is drawing impassioned ire from conservationists and anti-whaling activists. The Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC) society's campaign managers have called the beer launch an attempt "to diversify whale products in the face of almost nonexistent local consumer demand" and "about as immoral and outrageous as you can get." WDC has also gone after Hvalur for "perversely" powering its whale-hunting ships with whale oil.

The outcry probably won't stop tourists from rushing to sample whale steaks and sashimi at ReykjavÃ-k restaurants. Even if whale beer doesn't taste very good because, let's be honest, putting meat of any kind in beer is uncommon and gross it could, one day, be yet another item on a traveler's bucket list.

 

www.ifaw.org/united-states/news/september-drew-end-so-did...

As September drew to an end, so did whaling in Iceland, but for how long?

By: Robbie Marsland

Posted: Mon, 10/14/2013

2013 was a grim year, with a decrease in minke whales killed offset by a vast increase in the number of fin whales killed.

There are two types of whaling in Iceland.

 

These days, minke whaling is carried out primarily by one vessel, Hrafnreyður KÃ-100.

The number of whales killed each season for the small Icelandic whale meat market has dropped from 58 in 2011, to 52 in 2012 and 35 this year.

Less than 5% of Icelanders regularly eat whale meat and thanks to IFAW's Meet Us Don't Eat Us and Whale Friendly Restaurants initiatives in the country, the percentage of tourists eating whale meat has dropped from around 40% to around 20%.

SEE ALSO: "Whale friendly" is the way forward for Icelandic tourism

Not only are sales down for the minke whalers, but it looks like their costs are up. Facing an extended whale watching sanctuary and the displeasure of the Icelandic tourism community, this year the minke whalers kept out of the enormous Faxafloi bay outside Reykjavik, the capital.

They motored around Iceland's western fjords and started to worry the whale watchers in the north of Iceland between Akureyri and Husavik the northern home of Icelandic whale watching. Not surprisingly, their presence there was also hotly contested by whale watching companies.

So as the winter storms start hitting Iceland, we will have to wait and see if the whalers decide it is worth enduring further international and national criticism to go out and cruelly kill minke whales for a steadily declining market that must yield little or no financial return¦

Fin whales are the second species hunted and cruelly killed in Iceland.

In recent years fin whales have only been hunted by one operator. He is Kristjan Loftsson, the son of a whaler who made a fortune from whaling in the 60s, 70s and 80s - before the vast majority of the world (including Iceland) saw sense and stopped killing whales.

Mr Loftsson started killing fin whales again in 2009. No-one was really sure why he started again because fin whale meat is not eaten in Iceland, and the only other place international trade laws allow him to sell the meat is Japan, and they don't seem overly keen to buy fin whale meat from him.

So it wasn't a surprise when Mr Loftsson didn't go fin whaling in 2011 and 2012. But it was a surprise when he sent his ships out to kill the second largest whale in the world again last June.

As of the end of September his two 1940s steam-driven whaling boats had dragged 134 fin whales back to his whaling station just outside Reykjavik.

But it's not been plain sailing for Mr Loftsson this season.

He was used to the idea of there being celebrations when he brought in the first fin whale of the season. Instead of showing a proud Mr Loftsson flensing (cutting up) his first whale, the newspapers chose to cover the small crowd of demonstrators on the hill above the station holding the banner: What's the point in Icelandic whaling?

Later in the season one of his minority shareholders was quoted in the national newspapers as being very concerned that the fin whaling was losing money and depreciating the value of the company shares.

Loftsson's worst moment came in July when a consignment of his fin whale meat was rejected by the port of Rotterdam which wanted nothing to do with his cruel and controversial trade.

Not only that but he had to see photos plastered all over the TV and newspapers of a whale watching boat greeting the returning whale meat with enormous pointing hands and, once again, the message What's the point in Icelandic whaling?

Rotterdam was closed to his trade and so his export options seem to be dwindling.

2013 was a grim year for us with a decrease in minke whales killed offset by a vast increase in the number of fin whales killed.

However, there does seem to have been a sea change in Icelandic attitudes towards this so-called industry and more and more people are asking themselves and in public, what is the point of Icelandic whaling?

--RM

IFAW will continue to work closely with the whale watching and tourism sector and supportive MPs over the winter months. Stay tuned!

HORSE SLAUGHTER of foals in Iceland

 

www.pferd-und-fleisch.de/Horsemeat/iceland.htm

 

ICELANDIC SLAUGHTERHOUSE ADVERTISES FOR HORSES TO FEED OVERSEAS DINERS

MAY 5, 2012 VIVIAN GRANT FARRELL

 

tuesdayshorse.wordpress.com/2012/05/05/icelandic-slaughte...

The rows of holes above were actually toilets. YES TOILETS. Doesn’t look that appealing ey for a toilet? These communal latrines were extremely basic and primitive. Just trenches which was not that deep and had a concrete lid with 58 openings in it. There was no running water for washing and apart from that, they were given a limited amount of time to do their business – twice a day, one in the morning and in the evening for just a couple of minutes. Prisoners had to clean the latrines when it was full. Hygiene was definitely nonexistent. Even while in the toilet you were bound to get killed by the typhus bacteria. It was just a matter of time for prisoners to get infected. Only 4 of such barracks existed for the whole camp. Some say children hid in this hideous stinky trenches to avoid being gassed.

 

Bathing took place in a bath house which was located in a different building and section. The prisoners had to undress in their own barrack and walk naked to the bath house regardless of gender and weather.

   

Single RAW file

Shot @16mm, aperture of f/2.8 with 1/6 exposure with ISO value of 200

Initial tweaks in ACR

Post processing and Adjustments in Photoshop CS4

 

The second stop on the way home from my college visit was in Richmond!

 

The Richmond Kmart appears to be a former Grants (and thus reminded me of the Erie Kmart that I visited last summer). It is very noticeably bigger than Anderson; it is also very nice; it has a Kmart Express gas station and it has a former Kmart Cafe (that still has the counter/displays, the full menu board and even the register! Looks like a more recent KCafe closure from what I've seen; if anybody else here has any more information I would like to know more about it!). This store appears to be doing fairly well for one of the last remaining stores in/near the Miami Valley.

 

Of course, I had to check out the Kmart Express after my main store rounds were complete, so I headed over there and looked around. This is the second Kmart Express I've seen, but the first one I have actually visited, as the other one (at the now nonexistent Brooklyn Super Kmart) had already closed. I didn't buy anything at this KExpress though, as I had spent my money in the main store. Hopefully next time I can buy some coffee or donuts from Kmart Express while going to/from Anderson (if I plan another college visit to Anderson U, which is likely)!

 

Hopefully the Richmond Kmart will still be able to remain "normal" for a good time longer...I like this store! :D

 

Kmart #7246 - 3150 National Road West - Richmond, Indiana

A quick pic of this snow white wig (almost) full body shot.

Spaceship Earth, the iconic and symbolic structure of Epcot, opened with the park in Future World in 1982. The 18-storym 180-foot tall geosphere, whose design was conceived by Wallace Floyd Design Group and completed by Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Inc., is derived from the Class 2 geodesic polyhedron. Each face of the polyhedron is divided into three isosceles triangles to form each point—with, in theory, 11,520 triangles forming 3,840 points (some are nonexistent due to supports and doors). The 15,520,000 pound sphere, with a circumference of 518.1 feet and a diameter of 165 feet, is raised 18-feet off the ground by three pylons sunk more than 120-feet into the ground.

 

Inside the sphere, guests take a 15-minute dark Omnimover ride in a "time machine" to learn how advancements in communication have helped create the future. Narrators have included Lawrence Dobkin, Walter Cronkite, Jeremy Irons and now Dame Judi Dench.

My husband call this harp my nemesis. It lives in a library in a nearby college, and once I got a nice shot of it with the sunlight hitting the strings, causing them to glow. I almost used it for my 365 project, but didn't, convinced I could return and get a better focused picture another day. What I didn't realize is that the window is next to a courtyard and the sun has to be above a building to get into the window. So the time the light is perfect, how it was the first time, is brief and actually nonexistent a few days before and after the solstice. I must have returned six times to try to get the lighting right without any luck. I had a good feeling about it today, the sun was bright, the time of day was correct but when I got to the library the harp had been physically moved a few feet. The planets were aligned in my favor but the librarians were not. So after a halfhearted attempt to nudge it back into place I accepted that there would be no light on these strings. I wanted to post the a shot anyway, to try to get it out of my system.

 

a la "philippe halsman"

 

colinhuggins.bandcamp.com/track/brahms-hungarian-dance-4

 

NY Times, Dec. 4 2011

Colin Huggins was there with his baby grand, the one he wheels into Washington Square Park for his al fresco concerts. So were Tic and Tac, a street-performing duo, who held court in the fountain — dry for the winter. And Joe Mangrum was pouring his elaborate sand paintings on the ground near the Washington Arch.

 

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Enlarge This Image

 

Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Kareem Barnes of Tic and Tac collected donations on Sunday.

Enlarge This Image

 

Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Joe Mangrum showed his sand paintings on Sunday.

In other words, it was a typical Sunday afternoon in the Greenwich Village park, where generations of visitors have mingled with musicians, artists, activists, poets and buskers.

 

Yet this fall, that urban harmony has grown dissonant as the city’s parks department has slapped summonses on the four men and other performers who put out hats or buckets, for vending in an unauthorized location — specifically, within 50 feet of a monument.

 

The department’s rule, one of many put in place a year ago, was intended to control commerce in the busiest parks. Under the city’s definition, vending covers not only those peddling photographs and ankle bracelets, but also performers who solicit donations.

 

The rule attracted little notice at first. But the enforcement in Washington Square Park in the past two months has generated summonses ranging from $250 to $1,000. And it has started a debate about the rights of parkgoers seeking refuge from the bustle of the streets versus those looking for entertainment.

 

At a news conference in the park on Sunday organized by NYC Park Advocates, the artists waved fistfuls of pink summonses while their advocates, including civil rights lawyers, called on the city to stop what they called harassment of the performers.

 

“This is a heavy-handed solution to a nonexistent problem,” said Ronald L. Kuby, one of the lawyers.

 

The rule is especially problematic in Washington Square Park, performers say, because there are few locations across its 10 acres that are beyond 50 feet from a memorial or fountain — whether the bust of Alexander Lyman Holley, who introduced the Bessemer steel process to this country, or the statue of the Italian liberator Giuseppe Garibaldi.

 

Then there is the park’s international reputation as a gathering place for folk music pioneers and the Beats.

 

“Washington Square is the live-music park of New York City, and it would be close to impossible for any one of us to follow these regulations,” said Mr. Huggins, who has received nine summonses with fines totaling $2,250.

 

But Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner, argues that there is ample room for performers away from the monuments. And, he added, a musician who is not putting out a tin cup is welcome to sit on the edge of the fountain or under a monument.

 

“It’s the whole issue of the ‘tragedy of the commons,’ ” he said. “If you allow all the performers and all the vendors to do whatever they want to do, pretty soon there’s no park left for people who want to use them for quiet enjoyment. This is a way of having some control and not 18 hours of carnival-like atmosphere.”

 

Gary Behrens, an amateur photographer visiting from New Jersey, applauded the city’s efforts to rein in the performers. “I’m O.K. with the guitar, but the loud instruments have taken over the park,” he said.

 

The lawyers and advocates, however, challenged the idea that street performers were selling a product as a vendor does. And threatening a lawsuit, they faulted the city for creating what they called “First Amendment zones” through the rules.

 

“Is this place zany?” asked Norman Siegel, the former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “You bet. Public parks are quintessential public forums. Zaniness is something we should cherish and protect.”

 

Park visitation has soared along with the rise of tourism in the last 15 years, and with it vendors and artists interested in a lucrative market.

 

Mr. Benepe insisted that the rules would not scare off future music legends.

 

“If Bob Dylan wanted to come play there tomorrow, he could,” he said, “although he might have to move away from the fountain.”

 

Oddly, the dispute coincided with the 50th anniversary of the so-called Folk Riot in Washington Square Park, when the parks commissioner tried to squelch Sunday folk performances. Hundreds of musicians gathered in protest, the police were called in and a melee ensued.

 

In April, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg wrote a letter commemorating the Folk Riot, saying he applauded “the folk performers who changed music, our city and our world beginning half a century ago.”

Île Saint-Louis (French: [il sɛ̃ lwi]), eleven hectares (27 acres) in size, is one of two natural islands in the Seine river, in Paris, France (the other natural island is the Île de la Cité, where Notre-Dame de Paris is located). Île Saint-Louis is connected to the rest of Paris by four bridges to both banks of the river and to the Île de la Cité by the Pont Saint-Louis.

 

The island is located within the 4th arrondissement of Paris and has a population of 4,453.

 

History

 

The island was first known as the Île Notre-Dame, and was used mostly for grazing cattle, fishing, drying laundry, and occasionally for fighting duels. In 1360 it was cut in half by a canal, at about the current Rue Poulettiere, in order to bring it into the protection of the new wall around the city built by King Charles V, The slightly smaller eastern portion was named the Ile des Vaches (Island of Cows) (not to be confused with another island of the same name farther downstream). That portion was used for storing wood and building boats.

 

It was originally owned by the chapter of Notre-Dame cathedral. The island was destined for real estate development under King Henry IV, but the king's assassination in 1610 delayed the project. It was revived 1616 by the developers Christophe Marie, Poulettiere Le Regrettier. The canal dividing the island was filled, plots laid out and imposing residences built. The urbanisation of the island was rapid; within fifty years it was entirely occupied. The Pont Marie, which connects the island with the right bank, is named for Christophe Marie, one of the real estate developers of the island. Beginning in 1614, he was chief builder for Marie de' Medici, the widow of Henry IV and regent of the young King, Louis XIII. She instructed him to fill in the canal which divided the two parts of the island, and to build solid stone banks entirely around the island. The first part of the project was a new bridge, the Pont Louis XIII; the first stone was laid by the young king himself, then age 13. Various problems delayed the work on the bridge, which was not finished until 1635. The bridge has five arches, each of different sizes. Niches were built for statues between the arches, but, due to the difficulties of the regime, no statues were ever put in place.

 

Marie de' Medici promised a long series of benefits, including tennis courts and laundry boats for washing clothing and linen, to those who purchased lots and built houses on the island. She succeeded in attracting magistrates and financiers, but few aristocrats, who preferred the Marais quarter, which had larger plots of land and places for gardens. She also met resistance from the Chapter of Notre Dame, which owned considerable property on the island. Their resistance eventually drove the developer Christophe Marie into bankruptcy. In the end, the houses of the wealthy occupied waterside properties, while the interior was occupied by merchants and artisans.

 

The island did not take the name of Saint-Louis until 1725. Louis IX, who was made a saint only thirty years after his death in 1270, was believed to have sometimes held court and rendered justice on the island.

 

During the French Revolution, the island was briefly renamed "Ile de la Fraternité".

 

Description

 

Quai d'Anjou

 

The Quai d'Anjou on the north side of the island, was named for Gaston, Duke of Orléans, the brother of Louis XIII. It was developed by Christophe Marie beginning in 1614. One prominent building is the house of Louis Le Vau, chief architect of the King (3 quai d'Anjou). Another prominent resident of the Quai was Abel-Francois Poisson (5 quai D'Anjou) the Marquis of Marigny and brother of Madame de Pompadour, superintendent of royal buildings for Louis XV. Later residents of the quai included the painter Honoré Daumier, (9 quai d'Anjou) who had a lithography workshop on the top floor. The poet Charles Baudelaire occupied a small apartment on the top floor in the courtyard at 17 Quai d'Anjou from 1843 to 1846.

 

Quai de Bourbon

 

The Quai de Bourbon was named for the royal family and has a series of very elegant townhouses constructed in the early 17th century. It was briefly the Quai de la Republique after the Revolution, but took back its original name in 1814. The house at 1 quai de Bourbon was occupied by Philippe de Champagne, a favorite artist of Cardinal Richelieu. The sculptor Camille Claudel lived at number 19 between 1899 and 1923, and had her workshop overlooking the courtyard, and remained here until she was sent to an insane asylum for thirty years.

 

The Pont Saint-Louis is the only bridge connecting the two islands, and is 60 metres (200 ft) long. The first bridge, of wood, was built in 1634. The current bridge, the ninth, was opened in 1970.

 

Quai de Bethune

 

The Quai de Bethune runs along the southeast side of the island. It was built shortly after the assassination of Henry IV, and is named for the late king's prime minister, Maximilien de Bethune, the Duke of Sully. The Pont de Sully bridge at the southeast end of the island also carries his name.

 

The quai was originally informally called the "Quai des Balcons" because the architect, Louis LeVau, promoted the idea that all of the buildings should have balconies, taking advantage of the southern exposure of the buildings. Residents of this quai over the years included the American cosmetics manufacturer Helena Rubenstein (24 quai de Bethune), who constructed the very few modern buildings on the island at 24 Quai de Bethune between 1934 and 1938. The carved masks of lions on the wooden door is the only vestige of the 17th-century house. French president Georges Pompidou had his personal residence at 24 Quai de Bethune, in addition to his official residence. The French comedian Louis de Funès lived for a short time at the same address. Other celebrated residents of the quai included the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Marie Curie, who lived at number 36 from 1912 until her death in 1934.

 

Quai d'Orleans

 

The Quai d'Orleans continues the Quai de Bethune to the west. Like the Quai d'Anjou, it is named for Gaston d'Orleans, the younger brother of Louis XIII. During the French Revolution, it was renamed the Quai d'Egalite until 1806. It joins the Quai de Bourbon at the Saint-Louis bridge, close to the western point of the island. Its notable buildings include the Polish Library (number 6 quai d'Orleans), originally built for Antoine Moreau, the secretary of Louis XIII. It became the Polish Library in 1838. This part of the island had other notable Polish connections; the Polish prince Czartoryski lived nearby on the side of Quai Anjou, and entertained Chopin, while Marie Curie lived nearby on the Quai Bethune. A notable fictional resident was Charles Swann, protagonist of the novel of Marcel Proust Remembrance of Things Past.

 

The responsibility for the development of the Île Saint-Louis in the 17th century was given to Christophe Marie, general builder for Public Works. In exchange for his pro bono work, he was granted a license to build elegant residences. Along with the nobles, aristocrats, wealthy businessmen and politicians came here to live away from the noise of the inner city. Marie went into partnership with two builders, Lugles Poulletier and François Le Regrattier, and chose Louis Le Vau as architect. In 1614 the ditch between the two islets was filled in; and townhouses were constructed between 1620 and 1650. The island project, an architectural revolution, used a carefully drafted urban plan for the first time in Paris. The urban planning was revolutionary, especially for Paris; it was only under Napoleon III, over 200 years later, that urban planning was implemented citywide. The option to build by just following the topography of the land was no longer available. The new streets were built straight and perpendicular to a central axis. So that the risk of fires was reduced, stone and slate replaced wood, plaster and thatched roofs.

 

For the first time, dwellings were orientated towards the outside, rather than towards an inner courtyard, with windows and balconies looking out to river views. Courtyards were narrow, with the usual gardens almost nonexistent. The majority of the façades were rather sober, providing charm to the neighborhood. Only a few façades were decorated with heads or faces (mascrons). Only a few of the balconies were adorned with ornate ironwork. The few monumental doors that horse-drawn coaches rushed through hinted at the wealth of the owners. Along with Faubourg Saint-Germain and Le Marais, Île Saint-Louis was one of the most affluent neighborhoods in 17th and 18th century Paris. The Pont Saint-Louis entertainers (i.e., jazz bands, jugglers and mimes) perform on a small bridge that connects Île Saint-Louis with Île de la Cité.

 

Rue Saint-Louis-en-l'Île and the Hôtel Lambert

 

The Rue Saint-Louis-en-l'Île is the main commercial street of the island. It is located in the center of the island, going east to west from one end to the other. Despite its commercial character, it still retains many early residential buildings, the most notable of which is Hôtel Lambert, located at the Quai Anjou on the eastern end of the island. This large town house, with a rotunda overlooking the Seine, was constructed beginning in 1640 by the royal architect, Louis Le Vau.

 

Due to the proximity of the site to the river it was not possible to follow the traditional model of a courtyard in the front and a garden in the back, so Le Vau built the garden and courtyard side by side, with the garden raised to the level of the first floor, or noble floor. The first interior painted decoration was done by Eustache Le Sueur; some of his original panels are now on display in the Louvre. The Hercules Gallery was designed by Charles Le Brun, whose future work for Louis XIV included the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles.

 

Over the years the house had a remarkable series of occupants. In the 18th century, it was purchased by the Marquis de Chatelet, whose wife, Émilie de Breteuil, was for fifteen years the mistress of Voltaire. It became the home of the Polish Prince and patriot Adam Czartoryski in 1843, and welcomed famous writers and musicians, including Balzac, George Sand, Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin. In the 20th century, it was the home of actress Michèle Morgan, then, in 1975, the art collector Baron Guy de Rothschild, and after his death in 2007, Abdallah Al Thani, brother of the Emir of Qatar. It was seriously damaged by a fire in 2013 but restored.

 

Church of Saint-Louis-en-l'Île

 

The Church of Saint-Louis-en-l'Île, at 19 bis rue Saint-Louis-en-l'Ile, is the only church on the island. It was designed by the architect François Le Vau younger brother of the better-known royal architect Louis Le Vau. It was the only building he designed. The first stone was placed on 1 October 1664 by the Archbishop of Paris, but work was delayed by a shortage of funds and it was not completed until 14 July 1726.

 

The church lacks the traditional west front which had featured in the plans. Due to the delay in the construction, houses were built next to the church, taking the space. The original bell tower was destroyed by a storm in 1740, and was replaced by a new openwork tower. An unusual feature of the tower is the clock, which hangs over the street like a shop sign.

 

The interior is a good example of French Baroque architecture, with a central dome or cupola and an abundance of gold and white, a style borrowed from Italy. Pope Pius VII celebrated mass in the building in 1805, during his trip to Paris for the Coronation of Napoleon Bonaparte. The church interior was badly damaged during the French Revolution, but the damage was largely hidden in 1805 by hanging tapestries over the damaged walls. The church has a particularly fine organ, installed in 2005, and the church is frequently used as a venue for concerts.

 

Square Barye

 

Square Barye, on the southeast point of the island, is shaped like a prow of a ship pointing into the Seine. It was originally the site of a convent. It occupies 3,000 square metres (32,000 sq ft), and is a popular park and garden. It takes its name from the 19th-century French sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye, who specialized in sculpture of animals. His work is prominently displayed in the square in front of the Musée d'Orsay.

 

The most prominent art work in the square is a sculpture of Barye depicting the combat between a mythological centaur and a lapith, made in 1894, and placed on a disproportionally large pedestal. The statue was removed and melted down for its bronze during World War II, but was replaced in 2011 with a copy financed by a Taiwanese donor.

 

Bridges that connect to the Île

 

Pont Saint-Louis from the Île de la Cité;

Pont de la Tournelle from the Rive Gauche;

Pont Louis-Philippe from the Rive Droite;

Pont Marie from the Rive Droite;

Pont Sully from the Rive Droite and the Rive Gauche.

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Die Île Saint-Louis [il sɛ̃ lwi] ist neben der Île de la Cité die kleinere der beiden mitten in Paris gelegenen Binneninseln der Seine. Die Insel gehört zum 4. Arrondissement und bildet zusammen mit dem Ostteil der Île de la Cité das Quartier Notre-Dame.

 

Geschichte

 

Nicolas Raguenet: „Die Ostspitze der Île Saint-Louis“ (um 1757)

Während die Île de la Cité bereits früh besiedelt wurde, blieb ihre Nachbarinsel bis zum Anfang des 17. Jahrhunderts unbebaut. Genau genommen bestand sie aus zwei benachbarten, durch einen Seine-Arm voneinander getrennten Inselchen, die man „Île aux Vaches“ und „Île Notre Dame“ nannte. Beide gehörten der Kirche und wurden als Viehweiden genutzt. Trotz akuten Platzmangels auf der Île de la Cité und großen Interesses, die Nachbarinseln urbar zu machen, widersetzte sich die Kirche lange der Bebauung.

 

Im Jahre 1614 beauftragte schließlich Ludwig XIII. den Bauunternehmer Christophe Marie mit der Erschließung des Geländes. Die beiden kleinen Inseln wurden mit einer Kaimauer umfasst, der sie trennende Seinearm zugeschüttet und Brücken zu den Flussufern errichtet. Die Brücke, die die Insel mit dem Marais verbindet, trägt bis heute den Namen ihres Bauherrn: Pont Marie. Sie wurde 1635 fertiggestellt und war ursprünglich (wie damals üblich) mit Häusern bebaut.

 

Das neu gewonnene Stadtgebiet wurde ab etwa 1618 zunächst mit Häusern für Handwerker und Kaufleute bebaut. Erst ab 1638, als sich ein Ende des Rechtsstreits mit dem Klerus abzeichnete, begann auch der Adel, luxuriöse Stadtpaläste errichten zu lassen. Die Bebauung erfolgte nach einem festen Grundplan mit geraden Straßen, der noch heute erkennbar ist.

 

1726 erhielt die Insel ihren heutigen Namen nach Ludwig IX., der von Papst Bonifatius VIII. 1297 heiliggesprochen worden war. Während der Revolution wurde ihr Name kurzzeitig in „Île de la Fraternité“ geändert.

 

Bis heute ist die Île Saint-Louis einer der begehrtesten und teuersten Wohnorte von Paris.

 

Brücken zur Insel

 

Der Pont Saint-Louis, der zur Île de la Cité führt;

Der Pont de la Tournelle von der Rive Gauche;

Der Pont Louis-Philippe von der Rive Droite;

Der Pont Marie von der Rive Droite;

Der Pont Sully von beiden Seineufern aus.

 

Sehenswürdigkeiten

 

Sehenswert sind:

 

die Kirche Saint-Louis-en-l’Île, erbaut vom Architekten François Le Vau;

 

das Hôtel Lambert (1 Quai d’Anjou/2 rue Saint-Louis en l’Île), errichtet in den Jahren 1640 bis 1644 von Louis Le Vau;

 

das Hôtel de Lauzun (17 Quai d’Anjou), errichtet in den Jahren 1656 bis 1657 durch Louis Le Vau, ehemaliges Eigentum der Familie Richelieu. Im 19. Jahrhundert wohnten hier Théophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire und der Maler Ferdinand Boissard, in dessen Wohnung der „Club des hachichins“ gegründet wurde, in dem sich die drei Freunde mit zahlreichen Wissenschaftlern, Literaten und Künstlern zum gemeinsamen Haschischgenuss trafen. Zu dem Kreis gehörten der Psychiater Jacques-Joseph Moreau, Honoré de Balzac, Eugène Delacroix, Alexandre Dumas und Gérard de Nerval.

 

das Hôtel Le Vau (3 Quai d’Anjou), erbaut von Louis Le Vau;

 

das Petit Hôtel de Marigny (5 Quai d’Anjou), erbaut um 1640

 

das Hôtel Jassaud (19 Quai de Bourbon), erbaut in den Jahren 1666 bis 1670.

 

das Hôtel Chenizot;

 

das Denkmal zu Ehren des Bildhauers Antoine-Louis Barye, erschaffen 1894 von Laurent Marqueste; Square de Barye an der Ostspitze der Insel, unterhalb des Pont de Sully.

 

Persönlichkeiten

 

Bekannte Bewohner der Île Saint-Louis waren oder sind, in chronologischer Reihenfolge ihrer Geburtsjahre:

 

Philippe de Champaigne (1602–1674), Maler; vermutlich 15 Quai Bourbon

Abraham Bosse (um 1604–1676), Kupferstecher

Louis Le Vau (1612–1670), Architekt; Hôtel Le Vau von 1642 bis 1650

Nicolas Lambert de Thorigny († 1680), Präsident der königlichen Rechnungskammer (Chambre des comptes); Hôtel Lambert

Jean de La Fontaine (1621–1695); Hôtel Lauzun

Molière (1622–1673), Bühnenautor, Schauspieler und Theaterdirektor; Hôtel Lauzun

Antonin Nompar de Caumont, duc de Lauzun (1633–1723), Höfling, Kapitän der Leibgarde des Königs; Hôtel Lauzun 1682 bis 1685

Jean Racine (1639–1699), Autor; Hôtel Lauzun

Voltaire (1694–1778), Philosoph; Hôtel Lambert

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), Philosoph; Hôtel Lambert

Quatremère de Quincy (1755–1849), Archäologe und Kunsthistoriker; 19 Quai de Bourbon 1827

Adam Jerzy Czartoryski (1770–1861), russischer Außenminister, Regierungschef der polnischen Revolutionsregierung von 1830; Hôtel Lambert

Honoré Daumier (1808–1879), Bildhauer, Maler, Grafiker und Karikaturist; 9 Quai d’Anjou von 1846 bis 1863

Théophile Gautier (1811–1872), Schriftsteller; Hôtel de Lauzun (Hôtel Pimodan) 1845

Ferdinand Boissard (1813–1866), Maler; Hôtel de Lauzun (Hôtel Pimodan) um 1844

Ernest Meissonier (1815–1891), Maler; 15 Quai Bourbon um 1840

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867), Dichter; Quai de Béthune 1842 und Hôtel de Lauzun (Hôtel de Pimodan) von 1843–1845

Stuart Merrill (1863–1915), Dichter amerikanischer Herkunft; 53 Quai Bourbon

Camille Claudel (1864–1943), Bildhauerin; 19 Quai de Bourbon von 1899 bis 1913

Marie Skłodowska Curie (1867–1934), Chemikerin und Physikerin; 36 Quai de Béthune

Emile Bernard (1868–1941), Maler und Dichter; 15 Quai Bourbon

Helena Rubinstein (1870–1965), Kosmetikunternehmerin; 24 Quai de Béthune

Léon Blum (1872–1950), Politiker; 25 Quai de Bourbon

Charles-Louis Philippe (1874–1909), Autor; 31 Quai de Bourbon von 1905 bis 1907 und 45/47 Quai de Bourbon von 1907 bis 1909

Francis Carco (1886–1958), Schriftsteller; 18 Quai de Béthune

Georges Pompidou (1911–1974), französischer Staatspräsident und seine Gattin Claude (1912–2007); 24 Quai de Béthune

Louis de Funès (1914–1983), Schauspieler; 24 Quai de Béthune

Henri Dutilleux (1916–2013), Komponist

Roland Dumas (1922–2024), Politiker

Claude Sarraute (* 1927), Journalistin

Jean-Claude Brialy (1933–2007), Schauspieler und Regisseur

Georges Moustaki (1934–2013), Chansonnier

Guy Bedos (1934–2020), Humorist

Bryan Adams (* 1959), Sänger, Komponist und Fotograf

Claudia Cardinale (1938–2025), Schauspielerin

Agnès Jaoui (* 1964), Schauspielerin, Regisseurin, Sängerin

 

(Wikipedia)

Snakes are elongated, limbless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes Like all other squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads (cranial kinesis). To accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes' paired organs (such as kidneys) appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most have only one functional lung. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of vestigial claws on either side of the cloaca. Lizards have independently evolved elongate bodies without limbs or with greatly reduced limbs at least twenty-five times via convergent evolution, leading to many lineages of legless lizards. These resemble snakes, but several common groups of legless lizards have eyelids and external ears, which snakes lack, although this rule is not universal (see Amphisbaenia, Dibamidae, and Pygopodidae).

 

Living snakes are found on every continent except Antarctica, and on most smaller land masses; exceptions include some large islands, such as Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, the Hawaiian archipelago, and the islands of New Zealand, as well as many small islands of the Atlantic and central Pacific oceans. Additionally, sea snakes are widespread throughout the Indian and Pacific oceans. Around thirty families are currently recognized, comprising about 520 genera and about 3,900 species. They range in size from the tiny, 10.4 cm-long (4.1 in) Barbados threadsnake to the reticulated python of 6.95 meters (22.8 ft) in length. The fossil species Titanoboa cerrejonensis was 12.8 meters (42 ft) long. Snakes are thought to have evolved from either burrowing or aquatic lizards, perhaps during the Jurassic period, with the earliest known fossils dating to between 143 and 167 Ma ago. The diversity of modern snakes appeared during the Paleocene epoch (c. 66 to 56 Ma ago, after the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event). The oldest preserved descriptions of snakes can be found in the Brooklyn Papyrus.

 

Most species of snake are nonvenomous and those that have venom use it primarily to kill and subdue prey rather than for self-defense. Some possess venom that is potent enough to cause painful injury or death to humans. Nonvenomous snakes either swallow prey alive or kill by constriction.

 

Etymology

The English word snake comes from Old English snaca, itself from Proto-Germanic *snak-an- (cf. Germanic Schnake 'ring snake', Swedish snok 'grass snake'), from Proto-Indo-European root *(s)nēg-o- 'to crawl to creep', which also gave sneak as well as Sanskrit nāgá 'snake'. The word ousted adder, as adder went on to narrow in meaning, though in Old English næddre was the general word for snake. The other term, serpent, is from French, ultimately from Indo-European *serp- 'to creep', which also gave Ancient Greek ἕρπω (hérpō) 'I crawl' and Sanskrit sarpá ‘snake’.

 

The fossil record of snakes is relatively poor because snake skeletons are typically small and fragile making fossilization uncommon. Fossils readily identifiable as snakes (though often retaining hind limbs) first appear in the fossil record during the Cretaceous period. The earliest known true snake fossils (members of the crown group Serpentes) come from the marine simoliophiids, the oldest of which is the Late Cretaceous (Cenomanian age) Haasiophis terrasanctus from the West Bank, dated to between 112 and 94 million years old.

 

Based on comparative anatomy, there is consensus that snakes descended from lizards. Pythons and boas—primitive groups among modern snakes—have vestigial hind limbs: tiny, clawed digits known as anal spurs, which are used to grasp during mating The families Leptotyphlopidae and Typhlopidae also possess remnants of the pelvic girdle, appearing as horny projections when visible.

 

Front limbs are nonexistent in all known snakes. This is caused by the evolution of their Hox genes, controlling limb morphogenesis. The axial skeleton of the snakes' common ancestor, like most other tetrapods, had regional specializations consisting of cervical (neck), thoracic (chest), lumbar (lower back), sacral (pelvic), and caudal (tail) vertebrae. Early in snake evolution, the Hox gene expression in the axial skeleton responsible for the development of the thorax became dominant. As a result, the vertebrae anterior to the hindlimb buds (when present) all have the same thoracic-like identity (except from the atlas, axis, and 1–3 neck vertebrae). In other words, most of a snake's skeleton is an extremely extended thorax. Ribs are found exclusively on the thoracic vertebrae. Neck, lumbar and pelvic vertebrae are very reduced in number (only 2–10 lumbar and pelvic vertebrae are present), while only a short tail remains of the caudal vertebrae. However, the tail is still long enough to be of important use in many species, and is modified in some aquatic and tree-dwelling species.

 

Many modern snake groups originated during the Paleocene, alongside the adaptive radiation of mammals following the extinction of (non-avian) dinosaurs. The expansion of grasslands in North America also led to an explosive radiation among snakes. Previously, snakes were a minor component of the North American fauna, but during the Miocene, the number of species and their prevalence increased dramatically with the first appearances of vipers and elapids in North America and the significant diversification of Colubridae (including the origin of many modern genera such as Nerodia, Lampropeltis, Pituophis, and Pantherophis).

 

Fossils

There is fossil evidence to suggest that snakes may have evolved from burrowing lizards, during the Cretaceous Period. An early fossil snake relative, Najash rionegrina, was a two-legged burrowing animal with a sacrum, and was fully terrestrial. One extant analog of these putative ancestors is the earless monitor Lanthanotus of Borneo (though it also is semiaquatic). Subterranean species evolved bodies streamlined for burrowing, and eventually lost their limbs. According to this hypothesis, features such as the transparent, fused eyelids (brille) and loss of external ears evolved to cope with fossorial difficulties, such as scratched corneas and dirt in the ears. Some primitive snakes are known to have possessed hindlimbs, but their pelvic bones lacked a direct connection to the vertebrae. These include fossil species like Haasiophis, Pachyrhachis and Eupodophis, which are slightly older than Najash.

 

This hypothesis was strengthened in 2015 by the discovery of a 113-million-year-old fossil of a four-legged snake in Brazil that has been named Tetrapodophis amplectus. It has many snake-like features, is adapted for burrowing and its stomach indicates that it was preying on other animals. It is currently uncertain if Tetrapodophis is a snake or another species, in the squamate order, as a snake-like body has independently evolved at least 26 times. Tetrapodophis does not have distinctive snake features in its spine and skull. A study in 2021 places the animal in a group of extinct marine lizards from the Cretaceous period known as dolichosaurs and not directly related to snakes.

 

An alternative hypothesis, based on morphology, suggests the ancestors of snakes were related to mosasaurs—extinct aquatic reptiles from the Cretaceous—forming the clade Pythonomorpha. According to this hypothesis, the fused, transparent eyelids of snakes are thought to have evolved to combat marine conditions (corneal water loss through osmosis), and the external ears were lost through disuse in an aquatic environment. This ultimately led to an animal similar to today's sea snakes. In the Late Cretaceous, snakes recolonized land, and continued to diversify into today's snakes. Fossilized snake remains are known from early Late Cretaceous marine sediments, which is consistent with this hypothesis; particularly so, as they are older than the terrestrial Najash rionegrina. Similar skull structure, reduced or absent limbs, and other anatomical features found in both mosasaurs and snakes lead to a positive cladistical correlation, although some of these features are shared with varanids.

 

Genetic studies in recent years have indicated snakes are not as closely related to monitor lizards as was once believed—and therefore not to mosasaurs, the proposed ancestor in the aquatic scenario of their evolution. However, more evidence links mosasaurs to snakes than to varanids. Fragmented remains found from the Jurassic and Early Cretaceous indicate deeper fossil records for these groups, which may potentially refute either hypothesis.

 

Genetic basis of snake evolution

Main article: Limb development

Both fossils and phylogenetic studies demonstrate that snakes evolved from lizards, hence the question became which genetic changes led to limb loss in the snake ancestor. Limb loss is actually very common in extant reptiles and has happened dozens of times within skinks, anguids, and other lizards.

 

In 2016, two studies reported that limb loss in snakes is associated with DNA mutations in the Zone of Polarizing Activity Regulatory Sequence (ZRS), a regulatory region of the sonic hedgehog gene which is critically required for limb development. More advanced snakes have no remnants of limbs, but basal snakes such as pythons and boas do have traces of highly reduced, vestigial hind limbs. Python embryos even have fully developed hind limb buds, but their later development is stopped by the DNA mutations in the ZRS.

 

Distribution

There are about 3,900 species of snakes, ranging as far northward as the Arctic Circle in Scandinavia and southward through Australia. Snakes can be found on every continent except Antarctica, as well as in the sea, and as high as 16,000 feet (4,900 m) in the Himalayan Mountains of Asia. There are numerous islands from which snakes are absent, such as Ireland, Iceland, and New Zealand (although New Zealand's northern waters are infrequently visited by the yellow-bellied sea snake and the banded sea krait).

 

Taxonomy

All modern snakes are grouped within the suborder Serpentes in Linnean taxonomy, part of the order Squamata, though their precise placement within squamates remains controversial.

 

The two infraorders of Serpentes are Alethinophidia and Scolecophidia. This separation is based on morphological characteristics and mitochondrial DNA sequence similarity. Alethinophidia is sometimes split into Henophidia and Caenophidia, with the latter consisting of "colubroid" snakes (colubrids, vipers, elapids, hydrophiids, and atractaspids) and acrochordids, while the other alethinophidian families comprise Henophidia. While not extant today, the Madtsoiidae, a family of giant, primitive, python-like snakes, was around until 50,000 years ago in Australia, represented by genera such as Wonambi.

 

There are numerous debates in the systematics within the group. For instance, many sources classify Boidae and Pythonidae as one family, while some keep the Elapidae and Hydrophiidae (sea snakes) separate for practical reasons despite their extremely close relation.

 

Recent molecular studies support the monophyly of the clades of modern snakes, scolecophidians, typhlopids + anomalepidids, alethinophidians, core alethinophidians, uropeltids (Cylindrophis, Anomochilus, uropeltines), macrostomatans, booids, boids, pythonids and caenophidians.

 

Legless lizards

Main article: Legless lizard

While snakes are limbless reptiles, evolved from (and grouped with) lizards, there are many other species of lizards that have lost their limbs independently but which superficially look similar to snakes. These include the slowworm and glass snake.

 

Other serpentine tetrapods that are unrelated to snakes include caecilians (amphibians), amphisbaenians (near-lizard squamates), and the extinct aistopods (amphibians).

 

Biology

The now extinct Titanoboa cerrejonensis was 12.8 m (42 ft) in length. By comparison, the largest extant snakes are the reticulated python, measuring about 6.95 m (22.8 ft) long, and the green anaconda, which measures about 5.21 m (17.1 ft) long and is considered the heaviest snake on Earth at 97.5 kg (215 lb).

 

At the other end of the scale, the smallest extant snake is Leptotyphlops carlae, with a length of about 10.4 cm (4.1 in). Most snakes are fairly small animals, approximately 1 m (3.3 ft) in length.

 

Perception

Pit vipers, pythons, and some boas have infrared-sensitive receptors in deep grooves on the snout, allowing them to "see" the radiated heat of warm-blooded prey. In pit vipers, the grooves are located between the nostril and the eye in a large "pit" on each side of the head. Other infrared-sensitive snakes have multiple, smaller labial pits lining the upper lip, just below the nostrils.

 

A snake tracks its prey using smell, collecting airborne particles with its forked tongue, then passing them to the vomeronasal organ or Jacobson's organ in the mouth for examination. The fork in the tongue provides a sort of directional sense of smell and taste simultaneously. The snake's tongue is constantly in motion, sampling particles from the air, ground, and water, analyzing the chemicals found, and determining the presence of prey or predators in the local environment. In water-dwelling snakes, such as the anaconda, the tongue functions efficiently underwater.

 

The underside of a snake is very sensitive to vibration, allowing the snake to detect approaching animals by sensing faint vibrations in the ground. Despite the lack of outer ears, they are also able to detect airborne sounds.

 

Snake vision varies greatly between species. Some have keen eyesight and others are only able to distinguish light from dark, but the important trend is that a snake's visual perception is adequate enough to track movements. Generally, vision is best in tree-dwelling snakes and weakest in burrowing snakes. Some have binocular vision, where both eyes are capable of focusing on the same point, an example of this being the Asian vine snake. Most snakes focus by moving the lens back and forth in relation to the retina. Diurnal snakes have round pupils and many nocturnal snakes have slit pupils. Most species possess three visual pigments and are probably able to see two primary colors in daylight. The annulated sea snake and the genus Helicops appears to have regained much of their color vision as an adaption to the marine environment they live in. It has been concluded that the last common ancestors of all snakes had UV-sensitive vision, but most snakes that depend on their eyesight to hunt in daylight have evolved lenses that act like sunglasses for filtering out the UV-light, which probably also sharpens their vision by improving the contrast.

 

Skin

The skin of a snake is covered in scales. Contrary to the popular notion of snakes being slimy (because of possible confusion of snakes with worms), snakeskin has a smooth, dry texture. Most snakes use specialized belly scales to travel, allowing them to grip surfaces. The body scales may be smooth, keeled, or granular. The eyelids of a snake are transparent "spectacle" scales, also known as brille, which remain permanently closed.

 

The shedding of scales is called ecdysis (or in normal usage, molting or sloughing). Snakes shed the complete outer layer of skin in one piece. Snake scales are not discrete, but extensions of the epidermis—hence they are not shed separately but as a complete outer layer during each molt, akin to a sock being turned inside out.

 

Snakes have a wide diversity of skin coloration patterns which are often related to behavior, such as the tendency to have to flee from predators. Snakes that are at a high risk of predation tend to be plain, or have longitudinal stripes, providing few reference points to predators, thus allowing the snake to escape without being noticed. Plain snakes usually adopt active hunting strategies, as their pattern allows them to send little information to prey about motion. Blotched snakes usually use ambush-based strategies, likely because it helps them blend into an environment with irregularly shaped objects, like sticks or rocks. Spotted patterning can similarly help snakes to blend into their environment.

 

The shape and number of scales on the head, back, and belly are often characteristic and used for taxonomic purposes. Scales are named mainly according to their positions on the body. In "advanced" (Caenophidian) snakes, the broad belly scales and rows of dorsal scales correspond to the vertebrae, allowing these to be counted without the need for dissection.

 

Molting

Molting (or "ecdysis") serves a number of purposes. It allows old, worn skin to be replaced and it can remove parasites such as mites and ticks that live in the skin. It has also been observed in snakes that molting can be synced to mating cycles. Shedding skin can release pheromones and revitalize color and patterns of the skin to increase attraction of mates. Renewal of the skin by molting supposedly allows growth in some animals such as insects, but this has been disputed in the case of snakes.

 

Molting occurs periodically throughout the life of a snake. Before each molt, the snake stops eating and often hides or moves to a safe place. Just before shedding, the skin becomes dull and dry looking and the snake's eyes turn cloudy or blue-colored. The inner surface of the old skin liquefies, causing it to separate from the new skin beneath it. After a few days, the eyes become clear and the snake "crawls" out of its old skin, which splits close to the snake's mouth. The snake rubs its body against rough surfaces to aid in the shedding of its old skin. In many cases, the cast skin peels backward over the body from head to tail in one piece, like pulling a sock off inside-out, revealing a new, larger, brighter layer of skin which has formed underneath.

 

A young snake that is still growing may shed its skin up to four times a year, but an older snake may shed only once or twice a year. The discarded skin carries a perfect imprint of the scale pattern, so it is usually possible to identify the snake from the cast skin if it is reasonably intact. This periodic renewal has led to the snake being a symbol of healing and medicine, as pictured in the Rod of Asclepius.

 

Scale counts can sometimes be used to identify the sex of a snake when the species is not distinctly sexually dimorphic. A probe is fully inserted into the cloaca, marked at the point where it stops, then removed and measured against the subcaudal scales. The scalation count determines whether the snake is a male or female, as the hemipenes of a male will probe to a different depth (usually longer) than the cloaca of a female.

 

Skeleton

The skeletons of snakes are radically different from those of most other reptiles (as compared with the turtle here, for example), consisting almost entirely of an extended ribcage.

The skeleton of most snakes consists solely of the skull, hyoid, vertebral column, and ribs, though henophidian snakes retain vestiges of the pelvis and rear limbs.

 

The skull consists of a solid and complete neurocranium, to which many of the other bones are only loosely attached, particularly the highly mobile jaw bones, which facilitate manipulation and ingestion of large prey items. The left and right sides of the lower jaw are joined only by a flexible ligament at the anterior tips, allowing them to separate widely, and the posterior end of the lower jaw bones articulate with a quadrate bone, allowing further mobility. The mandible and quadrate bones can pick up ground-borne vibrations; because the sides of the lower jaw can move independently of one another, a snake resting its jaw on a surface has sensitive stereo auditory perception, used for detecting the position of prey. The jaw–quadrate–stapes pathway is capable of detecting vibrations on the angstrom scale, despite the absence of an outer ear and the lack of an impedance matching mechanism—provided by the ossicles in other vertebrates—for receiving vibrations from the air.

 

The hyoid is a small bone located posterior and ventral to the skull, in the 'neck' region, which serves as an attachment for the muscles of the snake's tongue, as it does in all other tetrapods.

 

The vertebral column consists of between 200 and 400 vertebrae, or sometimes more. The body vertebrae each have two ribs articulating with them. The tail vertebrae are comparatively few in number (often less than 20% of the total) and lack ribs. The vertebrae have projections that allow for strong muscle attachment, enabling locomotion without limbs.

 

Caudal autotomy (self-amputation of the tail), a feature found in some lizards, is absent in most snakes. In the rare cases where it does exist in snakes, caudal autotomy is intervertebral (meaning the separation of adjacent vertebrae), unlike that in lizards, which is intravertebral, i.e. the break happens along a predefined fracture plane present on a vertebra.

 

In some snakes, most notably boas and pythons, there are vestiges of the hindlimbs in the form of a pair of pelvic spurs. These small, claw-like protrusions on each side of the cloaca are the external portion of the vestigial hindlimb skeleton, which includes the remains of an ilium and femur.

 

Snakes are polyphyodonts with teeth that are continuously replaced

 

Snakes and other non-archosaur (crocodilians, dinosaurs + birds and allies) reptiles have a three-chambered heart that controls the circulatory system via the left and right atrium, and one ventricle. Internally, the ventricle is divided into three interconnected cavities: the cavum arteriosum, the cavum pulmonale, and the cavum venosum. The cavum venosum receives deoxygenated blood from the right atrium and the cavum arteriosum receives oxygenated blood from the left atrium. Located beneath the cavum venosum is the cavum pulmonale, which pumps blood to the pulmonary trunk.

 

The snake's heart is encased in a sac, called the pericardium, located at the bifurcation of the bronchi. The heart is able to move around, owing to the lack of a diaphragm; this adjustment protects the heart from potential damage when large ingested prey is passed through the esophagus. The spleen is attached to the gall bladder and pancreas and filters the blood. The thymus, located in fatty tissue above the heart, is responsible for the generation of immune cells in the blood. The cardiovascular system of snakes is unique for the presence of a renal portal system in which the blood from the snake's tail passes through the kidneys before returning to the heart.

 

The vestigial left lung is often small or sometimes even absent, as snakes' tubular bodies require all of their organs to be long and thin.[71] In the majority of species, only one lung is functional. This lung contains a vascularized anterior portion and a posterior portion that does not function in gas exchange. This 'saccular lung' is used for hydrostatic purposes to adjust buoyancy in some aquatic snakes and its function remains unknown in terrestrial species. Many organs that are paired, such as kidneys or reproductive organs, are staggered within the body, one located ahead of the other.

 

Snakes have no lymph nodes.

 

Venom

Cobras, vipers, and closely related species use venom to immobilize, injure, or kill their prey. The venom is modified saliva, delivered through fangs. The fangs of 'advanced' venomous snakes like viperids and elapids are hollow, allowing venom to be injected more effectively, and the fangs of rear-fanged snakes such as the boomslang simply have a groove on the posterior edge to channel venom into the wound. Snake venoms are often prey-specific, and their role in self-defense is secondary.

 

Venom, like all salivary secretions, is a predigestant that initiates the breakdown of food into soluble compounds, facilitating proper digestion. Even nonvenomous snakebites (like any animal bite) cause tissue damage.

 

Certain birds, mammals, and other snakes (such as kingsnakes) that prey on venomous snakes have developed resistance and even immunity to certain venoms.Venomous snakes include three families of snakes, and do not constitute a formal taxonomic classification group.

 

The colloquial term "poisonous snake" is generally an incorrect label for snakes. A poison is inhaled or ingested, whereas venom produced by snakes is injected into its victim via fangs. There are, however, two exceptions: Rhabdophis sequesters toxins from the toads it eats, then secretes them from nuchal glands to ward off predators; and a small unusual population of garter snakes in the US state of Oregon retains enough toxins in their livers from ingested newts to be effectively poisonous to small local predators (such as crows and foxes).

 

Snake venoms are complex mixtures of proteins, and are stored in venom glands at the back of the head. In all venomous snakes, these glands open through ducts into grooved or hollow teeth in the upper jaw. The proteins can potentially be a mix of neurotoxins (which attack the nervous system), hemotoxins (which attack the circulatory system), cytotoxins (which attack the cells directly), bungarotoxins (related to neurotoxins, but also directly affect muscle tissue), and many other toxins that affect the body in different ways. Almost all snake venom contains hyaluronidase, an enzyme that ensures rapid diffusion of the venom.

 

Venomous snakes that use hemotoxins usually have fangs in the front of their mouths, making it easier for them to inject the venom into their victims. Some snakes that use neurotoxins (such as the mangrove snake) have fangs in the back of their mouths, with the fangs curled backwards. This makes it difficult both for the snake to use its venom and for scientists to milk them. Elapids, however, such as cobras and kraits are proteroglyphous—they possess hollow fangs that cannot be erected toward the front of their mouths, and cannot "stab" like a viper. They must actually bite the victim.

 

It has been suggested that all snakes may be venomous to a certain degree, with harmless snakes having weak venom and no fangs. According to this theory, most snakes that are labelled "nonvenomous" would be considered harmless because they either lack a venom delivery method or are incapable of delivering enough to endanger a human. The theory postulates that snakes may have evolved from a common lizard ancestor that was venomous, and also that venomous lizards like the gila monster, beaded lizard, monitor lizards, and the now-extinct mosasaurs, may have derived from this same common ancestor. They share this "venom clade" with various other saurian species.

 

Venomous snakes are classified in two taxonomic families:

Elapids – cobras including king cobras, kraits, mambas, Australian copperheads, sea snakes, and coral snakes.

Viperids – vipers, rattlesnakes, copperheads/cottonmouths, and bushmasters.

There is a third family containing the opistoglyphous (rear-fanged) snakes (as well as the majority of other snake species):

 

Colubrids – boomslangs, tree snakes, vine snakes, cat snakes, although not all colubrids are venomous.

 

Reproduction

Although a wide range of reproductive modes are used by snakes, all employ internal fertilization. This is accomplished by means of paired, forked hemipenes, which are stored, inverted, in the male's tail. The hemipenes are often grooved, hooked, or spined—designed to grip the walls of the female's cloaca. The clitoris of the female snake consists of two structures located between the cloaca and the scent glands.

 

Most species of snakes lay eggs which they abandon shortly after laying. However, a few species (such as the king cobra) construct nests and stay in the vicinity of the hatchlings after incubation. Most pythons coil around their egg-clutches and remain with them until they hatch. A female python will not leave the eggs, except to occasionally bask in the sun or drink water. She will even "shiver" to generate heat to incubate the eggs.

 

Some species of snake are ovoviviparous and retain the eggs within their bodies until they are almost ready to hatch. Several species of snake, such as the boa constrictor and green anaconda, are fully viviparous, nourishing their young through a placenta as well as a yolk sac; this is highly unusual among reptiles, and normally found in requiem sharks or placental mammals. Retention of eggs and live birth are most often associated with colder environments.

 

Sexual selection in snakes is demonstrated by the 3,000 species that each use different tactics in acquiring mates. Ritual combat between males for the females they want to mate with includes topping, a behavior exhibited by most viperids in which one male will twist around the vertically elevated fore body of its opponent and force it downward. It is common for neck-biting to occur while the snakes are entwined.

 

Facultative parthenogenesis

Parthenogenesis is a natural form of reproduction in which growth and development of embryos occur without fertilization. Agkistrodon contortrix (copperhead) and Agkistrodon piscivorus (cottonmouth) can reproduce by facultative parthenogenesis, meaning that they are capable of switching from a sexual mode of reproduction to an asexual mode. The most likely type of parthenogenesis to occur is automixis with terminal fusion, a process in which two terminal products from the same meiosis fuse to form a diploid zygote. This process leads to genome-wide homozygosity, expression of deleterious recessive alleles, and often to developmental abnormalities. Both captive-born and wild-born copperheads and cottonmouths appear to be capable of this form of parthenogenesis.

 

Reproduction in squamate reptiles is almost exclusively sexual. Males ordinarily have a ZZ pair of sex-determining chromosomes, and females a ZW pair. However, the Colombian Rainbow boa (Epicrates maurus) can also reproduce by facultative parthenogenesis, resulting in production of WW female progeny. The WW females are likely produced by terminal automixis.

 

Embryonic Development

Snake embryonic development initially follows similar steps as any vertebrate embryo. The snake embryo begins as a zygote, undergoes rapid cell division, forms a germinal disc, also called a blastodisc, then undergoes gastrulation, neurulation, and organogenesis. Cell division and proliferation continues until an early snake embryo develops and the typical body shape of a snake can be observed. Multiple features differentiate the embryologic development of snakes from other vertebrates, two significant factors being the elongation of the body and the lack of limb development.

 

The elongation in snake body is accompanied by a significant increase in vertebra count (mice have 60 vertebrae, whereas snakes may have over 300). This increase in vertebrae is due to an increase in somites during embryogenesis, leading to an increased number of vertebrae which develop. Somites are formed at the presomitic mesoderm due to a set of oscillatory genes that direct the somitogenesis clock. The snake somitogenesis clock operates at a frequency 4 times that of a mouse (after correction for developmental time), creating more somites, and therefore creating more vertebrae. This difference in clock speed is believed to be caused by differences in Lunatic fringe gene expression, a gene involved in the somitogenesis clock.

 

There is ample literature focusing on the limb development/lack of development in snake embryos and the gene expression associated with the different stages. In basal snakes, such as the python, embryos in early development exhibit a hind limb bud that develops with some cartilage and a cartilaginous pelvic element, however this degenerates before hatching. This presence of vestigial development suggests that some snakes are still undergoing hind limb reduction before they are eliminated. There is no evidence in basal snakes of forelimb rudiments and no examples of snake forelimb bud initiation in embryo, so little is known regarding the loss of this trait. Recent studies suggests that hind limb reduction could be due to mutations in enhancers for the SSH gene, however other studies suggested that mutations within the Hox Genes or their enhancers could contribute to snake limblessness. Since multiple studies have found evidence suggesting different genes played a role in the loss of limbs in snakes, it is likely that multiple gene mutations had an additive effect leading to limb loss in snakes.

 

Behavior

Snake coiled on a stick in Oklahoma. It was brumating in a large pile of wood chips, found by this landscaper after he bulldozed the pile in late autumn 2018.

In regions where winters are too cold for snakes to tolerate while remaining active, local species will enter a period of brumation. Unlike hibernation, in which the dormant mammals are actually asleep, brumating reptiles are awake but inactive. Individual snakes may brumate in burrows, under rock piles, or inside fallen trees, or large numbers of snakes may clump together in hibernacula.

 

Feeding and diet

All snakes are strictly carnivorous, preying on small animals including lizards, frogs, other snakes, small mammals, birds, eggs, fish, snails, worms, and insects. Snakes cannot bite or tear their food to pieces so must swallow their prey whole. The eating habits of a snake are largely influenced by body size; smaller snakes eat smaller prey. Juvenile pythons might start out feeding on lizards or mice and graduate to small deer or antelope as an adult, for example.

 

The snake's jaw is a complex structure. Contrary to the popular belief that snakes can dislocate their jaws, they have an extremely flexible lower jaw, the two halves of which are not rigidly attached, and numerous other joints in the skull, which allow the snake to open its mouth wide enough to swallow prey whole, even if it is larger in diameter than the snake itself. For example, the African egg-eating snake has flexible jaws adapted for eating eggs much larger than the diameter of its head.  This snake has no teeth, but does have bony protrusions on the inside edge of its spine, which it uses to break the shell when eating eggs.

 

The majority of snakes eat a variety of prey animals, but there is some specialization in certain species. King cobras and the Australian bandy-bandy consume other snakes. Species of the family Pareidae have more teeth on the right side of their mouths than on the left, as they mostly prey on snails and the shells usually spiral clockwise.

 

Some snakes have a venomous bite, which they use to kill their prey before eating it. Other snakes kill their prey by constriction, while some swallow their prey when it is still alive.

 

After eating, snakes become dormant to allow the process of digestion to take place; this is an intense activity, especially after consumption of large prey. In species that feed only sporadically, the entire intestine enters a reduced state between meals to conserve energy. The digestive system is then 'up-regulated' to full capacity within 48 hours of prey consumption. Being ectothermic ("cold-blooded"), the surrounding temperature plays an important role in the digestion process. The ideal temperature for snakes to digest food is 30 °C (86 °F). There is a huge amount of metabolic energy involved in a snake's digestion, for example the surface body temperature of the South American rattlesnake (Crotalus durissus) increases by as much as 1.2 °C (2.2 °F) during the digestive process. If a snake is disturbed after having eaten recently, it will often regurgitate its prey to be able to escape the perceived threat. When undisturbed, the digestive process is highly efficient; the snake's digestive enzymes dissolve and absorb everything but the prey's hair (or feathers) and claws, which are excreted along with waste.

 

Hooding and spitting

Hooding (expansion of the neck area) is a visual deterrent, mostly seen in cobras (elapids), and is primarily controlled by rib muscles.[98] Hooding can be accompanied by spitting venom towards the threatening object,[99] and producing a specialized sound; hissing. Studies on captive cobras showed that 13 to 22% of the body length is raised during hooding.

 

Locomotion

The lack of limbs does not impede the movement of snakes. They have developed several different modes of locomotion to deal with particular environments. Unlike the gaits of limbed animals, which form a continuum, each mode of snake locomotion is discrete and distinct from the others; transitions between modes are abrupt.

 

Lateral undulation

Lateral undulation is the sole mode of aquatic locomotion, and the most common mode of terrestrial locomotion In this mode, the body of the snake alternately flexes to the left and right, resulting in a series of rearward-moving "waves". While this movement appears rapid, snakes have rarely been documented moving faster than two body-lengths per second, often much less. This mode of movement has the same net cost of transport (calories burned per meter moved) as running in lizards of the same mass.

 

Terrestrial lateral undulation is the most common mode of terrestrial locomotion for most snake species. In this mode, the posteriorly moving waves push against contact points in the environment, such as rocks, twigs, irregularities in the soil, etc. Each of these environmental objects, in turn, generates a reaction force directed forward and towards the midline of the snake, resulting in forward thrust while the lateral components cancel out. The speed of this movement depends upon the density of push-points in the environment, with a medium density of about 8[clarification needed] along the snake's length being ideal. The wave speed is precisely the same as the snake speed, and as a result, every point on the snake's body follows the path of the point ahead of it, allowing snakes to move through very dense vegetation and small openings.

 

When swimming, the waves become larger as they move down the snake's body, and the wave travels backwards faster than the snake moves forwards. Thrust is generated by pushing their body against the water, resulting in the observed slip. In spite of overall similarities, studies show that the pattern of muscle activation is different in aquatic versus terrestrial lateral undulation, which justifies calling them separate modes. All snakes can laterally undulate forward (with backward-moving waves), but only sea snakes have been observed reversing the motion (moving backwards with forward-moving waves).

 

Sidewinding

Most often employed by colubroid snakes (colubrids, elapids, and vipers) when the snake must move in an environment that lacks irregularities to push against (rendering lateral undulation impossible), such as a slick mud flat, or a sand dune, sidewinding is a modified form of lateral undulation in which all of the body segments oriented in one direction remain in contact with the ground, while the other segments are lifted up, resulting in a peculiar "rolling" motion. This mode of locomotion overcomes the slippery nature of sand or mud by pushing off with only static portions on the body, thereby minimizing slipping. The static nature of the contact points can be shown from the tracks of a sidewinding snake, which show each belly scale imprint, without any smearing. This mode of locomotion has very low caloric cost, less than 1⁄3 of the cost for a lizard to move the same distance. Contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence that sidewinding is associated with the sand being hot.

 

Concertina

When push-points are absent, but there is not enough space to use sidewinding because of lateral constraints, such as in tunnels, snakes rely on concertina locomotion. In this mode, the snake braces the posterior portion of its body against the tunnel wall while the front of the snake extends and straightens. The front portion then flexes and forms an anchor point, and the posterior is straightened and pulled forwards. This mode of locomotion is slow and very demanding, up to seven times the cost of laterally undulating over the same distance. This high cost is due to the repeated stops and starts of portions of the body as well as the necessity of using active muscular effort to brace against the tunnel walls.

 

Arboreal

The movement of snakes in arboreal habitats has only recently been studied. While on tree branches, snakes use several modes of locomotion depending on species and bark texture. In general, snakes will use a modified form of concertina locomotion on smooth branches, but will laterally undulate if contact points are available. Snakes move faster on small branches and when contact points are present, in contrast to limbed animals, which do better on large branches with little 'clutter'.

 

Gliding snakes (Chrysopelea) of Southeast Asia launch themselves from branch tips, spreading their ribs and laterally undulating as they glide between trees. These snakes can perform a controlled glide for hundreds of feet depending upon launch altitude and can even turn in midair.

 

Rectilinear

The slowest mode of snake locomotion is rectilinear locomotion, which is also the only one where the snake does not need to bend its body laterally, though it may do so when turning. In this mode, the belly scales are lifted and pulled forward before being placed down and the body pulled over them. Waves of movement and stasis pass posteriorly, resulting in a series of ripples in the skin. The ribs of the snake do not move in this mode of locomotion and this method is most often used by large pythons, boas, and vipers when stalking prey across open ground as the snake's movements are subtle and harder to detect by their prey in this manner.

 

Interactions with humans

Snakes do not ordinarily prey on humans. Unless startled or injured, most snakes prefer to avoid contact and will not attack humans. With the exception of large constrictors, nonvenomous snakes are not a threat to humans. The bite of a nonvenomous snake is usually harmless; their teeth are not adapted for tearing or inflicting a deep puncture wound, but rather grabbing and holding. Although the possibility of infection and tissue damage is present in the bite of a nonvenomous snake, venomous snakes present far greater hazard to humans.  The World Health Organization (WHO) lists snakebite under the "other neglected conditions" category.

 

Documented deaths resulting from snake bites are uncommon. Nonfatal bites from venomous snakes may result in the need for amputation of a limb or part thereof. Of the roughly 725 species of venomous snakes worldwide, only 250 are able to kill a human with one bite. Australia averages only one fatal snake bite per year. In India, 250,000 snakebites are recorded in a single year, with as many as 50,000 recorded initial deaths. The WHO estimates that on the order of 100,000 people die each year as a result of snake bites, and around three times as many amputations and other permanent disabilities are caused by snakebites annually.

 

The treatment for a snakebite is as variable as the bite itself. The most common and effective method is through antivenom (or antivenin), a serum made from the venom of the snake. Some antivenom is species-specific (monovalent) while some is made for use with multiple species in mind (polyvalent). In the United States for example, all species of venomous snakes are pit vipers, with the exception of the coral snake. To produce antivenom, a mixture of the venoms of the different species of rattlesnakes, copperheads, and cottonmouths is injected into the body of a horse in ever-increasing dosages until the horse is immunized. Blood is then extracted from the immunized horse. The serum is separated and further purified and freeze-dried. It is reconstituted with sterile water and becomes antivenom. For this reason, people who are allergic to horses are more likely to have an allergic reaction to antivenom. Antivenom for the more dangerous species (such as mambas, taipans, and cobras) is made in a similar manner in South Africa, Australia , and India, although these antivenoms are species-specific.

 

Snake charmers

In some parts of the world, especially in India, snake charming is a roadside show performed by a charmer. In such a show, the snake charmer carries a basket containing a snake that he seemingly charms by playing tunes with his flutelike musical instrument, to which the snake responds. The snake is in fact responding to the movement of the flute, not the sound it makes, as snakes lack external ears (though they do have internal ears).

 

The Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 in India technically prohibits snake charming on the grounds of reducing animal cruelty. Other types of snake charmers use a snake and mongoose show, where the two animals have a mock fight; however, this is not very common, as the animals may be seriously injured or killed. Snake charming as a profession is dying out in India because of competition from modern forms of entertainment and environment laws proscribing the practice. Many Indians have never seen snake charming and it is becoming a folktale of the past.

 

Trapping

The Irulas tribe of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu in India have been hunter-gatherers in the hot, dry plains forests, and have practiced the art of snake catching for generations. They have a vast knowledge of snakes in the field. They generally catch the snakes with the help of a simple stick. Earlier, the Irulas caught thousands of snakes for the snake-skin industry. After the complete ban of the snake-skin industry in India and protection of all snakes under the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972, they formed the Irula Snake Catcher's Cooperative and switched to catching snakes for removal of venom, releasing them in the wild after four extractions. The venom so collected is used for producing life-saving antivenom, biomedical research and for other medicinal products. The Irulas are also known to eat some of the snakes they catch and are very useful in rat extermination in the villages.

 

Despite the existence of snake charmers, there have also been professional snake catchers or wranglers. Modern-day snake trapping involves a herpetologist using a long stick with a V-shaped end. Some television show hosts, like Bill Haast, Austin Stevens, Steve Irwin, and Jeff Corwin, prefer to catch them using bare hands.

 

Consumption

Although snakes are not commonly thought of as food, their consumption is acceptable in some cultures and may even be considered a delicacy. Snake soup is popular in Cantonese cuisine, consumed by locals in the autumn to warm their bodies. Western cultures document the consumption of snakes only under extreme circumstances of hunger, with the exception of cooked rattlesnake meat, which is commonly consumed in Texas and parts of the Midwestern United States.

 

In Asian countries such as China, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Cambodia, drinking the blood of a snake—particularly the cobra—is believed to increase sexual virility. When possible, the blood is drained while the cobra is still alive, and it is usually mixed with some form of liquor to improve the taste.

 

The use of snakes in alcohol is accepted in some Asian countries. In such cases, one or more snakes are left to steep in a jar or container of liquor, as this is claimed to make the liquor stronger (as well as more expensive). One example of this is the Habu snake, which is sometimes placed in the Okinawan liqueur Habushu (ハブ酒), also known as "Habu Sake".

 

Snake wine (蛇酒) is an alcoholic beverage produced by infusing whole snakes in rice wine or grain alcohol. First recorded as being consumed in China during the Western Zhou dynasty, this drink is considered an important curative and is believed to reinvigorate a person according to traditional Chinese medicine

 

Pets

In the Western world, some snakes are kept as pets, especially docile species such as the ball python and corn snake. To meet the demand, a captive breeding industry has developed. Snakes bred in captivity are considered preferable to specimens caught in the wild and tend to make better pets. Compared with more traditional types of companion animal, snakes can be very low-maintenance pets; they require minimal space, as most common species do not exceed 5 feet (1.5 m) in length, and can be fed relatively infrequently—usually once every five to 14 days. Certain snakes have a lifespan of more than 40 years if given proper care.

 

Symbolism

In ancient Mesopotamia, Nirah, the messenger god of Ištaran, was represented as a serpent on kudurrus, or boundary stones. Representations of two intertwined serpents are common in Sumerian art and Neo-Sumerian artwork and still appear sporadically on cylinder seals and amulets until as late as the thirteenth century BC. The horned viper (Cerastes cerastes) appears in Kassite and Neo-Assyrian kudurrus and is invoked in Assyrian texts as a magical protective entity. A dragon-like creature with horns, the body and neck of a snake, the forelegs of a lion, and the hind-legs of a bird appears in Mesopotamian art from the Akkadian Period until the Hellenistic Period (323 BC–31 BC). This creature, known in Akkadian as the mušḫuššu, meaning "furious serpent", was used as a symbol for particular deities and also as a general protective emblem. It seems to have originally been the attendant of the Underworld god Ninazu, but later became the attendant to the Hurrian storm-god Tishpak, as well as, later, Ninazu's son Ningishzida, the Babylonian national god Marduk, the scribal god Nabu, and the Assyrian national god Ashur.

 

In Egyptian history, the snake occupies a primary role with the Nile cobra adorning the crown of the pharaoh in ancient times. It was worshipped as one of the gods and was also used for sinister purposes: murder of an adversary and ritual suicide (Cleopatra). The ouroboros was a well-known ancient Egyptian symbol of a serpent swallowing its own tail. The precursor to the ouroboros was the "Many-Faced", a serpent with five heads, who, according to the Amduat, the oldest surviving Book of the Afterlife, was said to coil around the corpse of the sun god Ra protectively. The earliest surviving depiction of a "true" ouroboros comes from the gilded shrines in the tomb of Tutankhamun. In the early centuries AD, the ouroboros was adopted as a symbol by Gnostic Christians and chapter 136 of the Pistis Sophia, an early Gnostic text, describes "a great dragon whose tail is in its mouth". In medieval alchemy, the ouroboros became a typical western dragon with wings, legs, and a tail.

 

In the Bible, King Nahash of Ammon, whose name means "Snake", is depicted very negatively, as a particularly cruel and despicable enemy of the ancient Hebrews.

 

The ancient Greeks used the Gorgoneion, a depiction of a hideous face with serpents for hair, as an apotropaic symbol to ward off evil. In a Greek myth described by Pseudo-Apollodorus in his Bibliotheca, Medusa was a Gorgon with serpents for hair whose gaze turned all those who looked at her to stone and was slain by the hero Perseus. In the Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses, Medusa is said to have once been a beautiful priestess of Athena, whom Athena turned into a serpent-haired monster after she was raped by the god Poseidon in Athena's temple. In another myth referenced by the Boeotian poet Hesiod and described in detail by Pseudo-Apollodorus, the hero Heracles is said to have slain the Lernaean Hydra, a multiple-headed serpent which dwelt in the swamps of Lerna.

 

The legendary account of the foundation of Thebes mentioned a monster snake guarding the spring from which the new settlement was to draw its water. In fighting and killing the snake, the companions of the founder Cadmus all perished – leading to the term "Cadmean victory" (i.e. a victory involving one's own ruin).

 

Three medical symbols involving snakes that are still used today are Bowl of Hygieia, symbolizing pharmacy, and the Caduceus and Rod of Asclepius, which are symbols denoting medicine in general.

 

One of the etymologies proposed for the common female first name Linda is that it might derive from Old German Lindi or Linda, meaning a serpent.

 

India is often called the land of snakes and is steeped in tradition regarding snakes. Snakes are worshipped as gods even today with many women pouring milk on snake pits (despite snakes' aversion for milk). The cobra is seen on the neck of Shiva and Vishnu is depicted often as sleeping on a seven-headed snake or within the coils of a serpent. There are also several temples in India solely for cobras sometimes called Nagraj (King of Snakes) and it is believed that snakes are symbols of fertility. There is a Hindu festival called Nag Panchami each year on which day snakes are venerated and prayed to. See also Nāga.

 

In India there is another mythology about snakes. Commonly known in Hindi as "Ichchhadhari" snakes. Such snakes can take the form of any living creature, but prefer human form. These mythical snakes possess a valuable gem called "Mani", which is more brilliant than diamond. There are many stories in India about greedy people trying to possess this gem and ending up getting killed.

 

The snake is one of the 12 celestial animals of Chinese zodiac, in the Chinese calendar.

 

Many ancient Peruvian cultures worshipped nature. They emphasized animals and often depicted snakes in their art.

 

Religion

Snakes are used in Hinduism as a part of ritual worship. In the annual Nag Panchami festival, participants worship either live cobras or images of Nāgas. Lord Shiva is depicted in most images with a snake coiled around his neck. Puranic literature includes various stories associated with snakes, for example Shesha is said to hold all the planets of the Universe on his hoods and to constantly sing the glories of Vishnu from all his mouths. Other notable snakes in Hinduism are Vasuki, Takshaka, Karkotaka, and Pingala. The term Nāga is used to refer to entities that take the form of large snakes in Hinduism and Buddhism.

 

Snakes have been widely revered in many cultures, such as in ancient Greece where the serpent was seen as a healer.[148] Asclepius carried a serpent wound around his wand, a symbol seen today on many ambulances. In Judaism, the snake of brass is also a symbol of healing, of one's life being saved from imminent death.

 

In religious terms, the snake and jaguar were arguably the most important animals in ancient Mesoamerica. "In states of ecstasy, lords dance a serpent dance; great descending snakes adorn and support buildings from Chichen Itza to Tenochtitlan, and the Nahuatl word coatl meaning serpent or twin, forms part of primary deities such as Mixcoatl, Quetzalcoatl, and Coatlicue." In the Maya and Aztec calendars, the fifth day of the week was known as Snake Day.

 

In some parts of Christianity, the redemptive work of Jesus Christ is compared to saving one's life through beholding the Nehushtan (serpent of brass). Snake handlers use snakes as an integral part of church worship, to demonstrate their faith in divine protection. However, more commonly in Christianity, the serpent has been depicted as a representative of evil and sly plotting, as seen in the description in Genesis of a snake tempting Eve in the Garden of Eden. Saint Patrick is purported to have expelled all snakes from Ireland while converting the country to Christianity in the 5th century, thus explaining the absence of snakes there.

 

In Christianity and Judaism, the snake makes its infamous appearance in the first book of the Bible when a serpent appears before Adam and Eve and tempts them with the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. The snake returns in the Book of Exodus when Moses turns his staff into a snake as a sign of God's power, and later when he makes the Nehushtan, a bronze snake on a pole that when looked at cured the people of bites from the snakes that plagued them in the desert. The serpent makes its final appearance symbolizing Satan in the Book of Revelation: "And he laid hold on the dragon the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years."

 

In Neo-Paganism and Wicca, the snake is seen as a symbol of wisdom and knowledge. Additionally, snakes are sometimes associated with Hecate, the Greek goddess of witchcraft.

 

Medicine

Several compounds from snake venoms are being researched as potential treatments or preventatives for pain, cancers, arthritis, stroke, heart disease, hemophilia, and hypertension, and to control bleeding (e.g. during surgery).

Snipe Hunting:

Pumpkin Spice and Mint Julep thought it was so funny they told the little ones all about snipe hunting and took them out then came back to the fire pit and laughed and laughed at leaving them in the dark!!!

When I was little this was a right of passage that my dad and grandfather thought was super funny to take us kids out in the desert to look for the mysterious nonexistent Snipes and we all fell for it hook line and sinker - It's actually funny hearing the stories repeated over and over at some of the funny things the kids did - Have you ever been Snipe hunting??? You need to go :D

The One Room Log School House

The structure before you depict a one room log schoolhouse of 1834. If you were between the ages of 5 & 21 in rural Indiana in the 1830s you would have attended a one room school very much like this one. Yes, you would have sat on a split log bench or puncheon through the entire school day.

Schools of this period were referred to as "Subscription School". The cost of attendance was approximately $1.50 to $3.00 per student for a period of three months. The fee was generally paid to the Schoolmarm or Schoolmaster in kind. Since actual money was scarce quite often the payment was made in the form of farm produce, animal skins or hand-crafted items. After the Canal was completed to Delphi in 1840, markets opened as far away as the East coast & the Gulf of Mexico, thus generating higher incomes in this region. This new mode of transportation also brought the newsiest in fashion as well as books, paper, & educational supplies.

Conventional school supplies were scarce or nonexistent. Books for recitation were whatever was available at a student's homestead. It was not until 1835 that McGuffey's 1st Eclectic reader was published. This afforded reader, designed specifically for children, was produced in progressive editions from the alphabet to the classics. As the students progressed through the readers, they were called upon to help teach the younger students.

 

Selecting a Teacher

Schoolmasters were chosen locally from the most learned members of the community. Sometimes lawyers were chosen. It was not unusual to choose soldiers because of their ability to keep discipline among the rough pioneer boys. A problem boy got five strokes with a hickory stick, a girl got three. It wasn't until the 1850 that trained teachers from the East, mostly women, became available.

In addition to the daily lesson, students were expected to help cut wood, pump water, & clean the room. Paper was scarce so most students used a slate & chalk to complete their daily lessons. Later, as paper mills began operating, lessons were carried out using a quill pen made from a buzzard or goose feather & ink made from wild berries or the husks of walnuts.

 

*"In the early 1900s, one half of all American children attended the 212,000 one-room schools scattered across the land"

Raymond Bial

One Room School

 

Kingda Ka is a roller coaster located at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey, USA. It is the world's tallest roller coaster, and was the world's fastest until Formula Rossa opened in November 2010. The train is launched by a hydraulic launch mechanism to 128 miles per hour (206 km/h) in 3.5 seconds. At the end of the launch track, the train climbs the main top hat tower, reaching a height of 456 feet (139 m). Kingda Ka is 3,118 feet (950 m) long.

 

History

 

Kingda Ka was officially introduced on September 29, 2004, at an event held for the media and enthusiasts. It was revealed that the ride would become "the tallest and fastest roller coaster on earth", reaching 640 feet (200 m) and accelerating up to 128 miles per hour (206 km/h) in 3.5 seconds. Upon completion, Kingda Ka took both the "tallest" and "fastest" world records from the two-year-old Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point in Sandusky, OH. Since Intamin designed both Top Thrill Dragster and Kingda Ka, both rides share a nearly identical design and layout, differing only in theme and Kingda Ka's post-tower "camel hump" hill. On January 13, 2005, Kingda Ka was topped off at its 456-foot (139 m) height, finishing construction. Kingda Ka opened to the public on May 21, 2005, with a media day two days before.

 

During a test run with no passengers on June 6, 2005, a bolt failure caused damage to the launch cable, resulting in closure of the ride until August 2005, and the reconfiguration of the line area. The ride was also struck by lightning in early May 2009; the strike caused the ride to be unreliable and necessitated complicated repairs. The ride was operational from May 31, 2009, to June 24, 2009, but remained closed for maintenance until August 21, 2009.

 

Season 2, episode 28 of the documentary series MegaStructures follows the construction of the roller coaster in detail.

 

Major malfunctions

 

2005: Problems with launch cable, engine, and brake fins

On June 6, 2005, less than a month after its grand opening, a bolt failure caused the liner inside the trough through which the launch cable travels to come loose and create friction against the cable. The friction caused the train not to accelerate to the correct speed. The rubbing of the cable against the inside of the metal trough caused sparks and shards of metal to fly out from the bottom of the train. The engine, as it is designed, attempted to compensate by applying more force to the cable to attain the 128 miles per hour (206 km/h) launch speed.

 

The magnetic brake fins located within the launch section of the track, designed to slow the train on its return to the launch area should it not have enough speed to make it over the top hat element, rise up into the braking position in a sequential pattern after the train passes over them in the lowered position. The fins are mounted in steel supports that are connected to actuators that raise and lower the fins into the desired position.

  

Kingda Ka's tower

The fins actually caught up to the launching train as the timing pattern of the rising fins was faster than the accelerating train. The magnetic brakes began to slow the train in the launch area, and the engine tried to compensate even more and dragged the train through the brake zones. The catch car released, but the train was still in the brake zone and came to a complete stop at the bottom of the hill.

 

This malfunction occurred when no passengers were aboard during a test run. Damage occurred to the launch cable (frayed and needed to be replaced), engine (minor routine damage to seals), and brake fins (many needed to be replaced). The brake fins in the launch section are mounted in such a way to keep fast-moving trains from moving backward into the station, but a fast-moving train being pulled forward caused an unexpected stress on a number of fins that bent them forward. Not all of the fins needed to be replaced, but there were more damaged brake fins than Six Flags had replacements for, and extra brake fins had to be specially ordered from Intamin. In addition, Kingda Ka had to be re-inspected. Kingda Ka resumed testing on May 21, 2005. It reopened on August 4, 2005, with the line modified so that it no longer ran under the launch track. It had been the dark blue train that was launched when the malfunction occurred. It was used for the rest of the season, but major problems requiring replacement parts were discovered when the train was inspected during the off-season. Consequently, this train remained disassembled throughout the 2006 season.

 

Before 2005's major malfunction, Kingda Ka's queue area was much larger. It started at the main entrance arch, went under the launch track, traveled through two large switchback areas, and split into separate lines for each side of the station. Most of the entire line used to be set in the ride's infield. The current main entrance to the station was previously the "Flash pass" entrance.

 

2009: Late spring lightning strike

 

On the overnight of May 6–7, Kingda Ka was struck by lightning and suffered serious damage and downtime following the strike. The ride operated on May 9 and May 10 off and on with downtime more often than operating time. The park attempted to open the ride on May 16 but was unable to get it running properly. The park then announced that Kingda Ka was temporarily closed for maintenance. By May 20, it was announced that the ride would be down for an extended period of time. Six Flags Great Adventure ordered new parts for the ride from Intamin, but the damage required complicated repairs to Kingda Ka. A Screamscape post mentioned that, due to the nature of the needed repairs, Kingda Ka's launch would require a full test and adjust period, causing the ride to be closed to riders until late spring/early summer. It was up and running as of May 31, 2009, but with more frequent breakdowns than usual.

 

As of late June 2009 the ride was shut down for an extended period, stemming from complications from the year's issues, along with claims of a blown fuse and serious engine troubles as they waited for replacement parts once again.

 

It was up and running as of August 21, 2009. It had been announced that Kingda Ka would be fully operational and running smoothly again for the 2010 season, which occurred on the same day as Six Flags, Inc.'s announcement of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy restructuring plan.

 

However, on July 21, 2010, problems arose with the launch cable. The train was getting ready to launch when the launch cable failed, and the train stayed near the station for over 10 minutes.

 

Ride experience

 

Theme

 

Kingda Ka is themed as a mythical tiger, and is named after the 500 lb (230 kg) Golden Tabby Bengal tiger that lives in a pen next to the ride. The ride's sign and station all have mythical Indian-style theming. The ride's queue line is surrounded by bamboo, which adds on to the jungle theming. Jungle music is played during the wait, as well as throughout the entire Golden Kingdom section of the park, which was built for the ride. As of summer 2010, one of the park's male tigers is named after the ride.

 

Main Ride

 

After the train has been locked and checked, it slowly advances out of the station to the launch area. The train goes through a switch track which allows 4 trains on two tracks to load simultaneously. Once the train is in position, the hydraulic launch mechanism accelerates the train from 0 to 128 miles per hour (0 to 206 km/h) in 3.5 seconds, pulling about 1.67 G. At the end of the launch track, the train climbs the main tower, or top hat, twisting 90 degrees to the left before reaching a height of 456 feet (139 m). The train then descends 418 feet (127 m) straight down through a 270-degree right-hand spiral. Finally, the train climbs the second hill of 129 feet (39 m), producing a moment of weightlessness before being smoothly brought to a stop by the magnetic brakes. The train then makes a U-turn and enters the station. The ride lasts 28 seconds from the start of the launch to the end of the brake run, but has an official ride time of 59 seconds.

 

The hydraulic launch motor is capable of producing 20,800 horsepower (15.5 MW) peak. Because of the high speed and open nature of the trains, the ride will not operate in light rain, as rider contact with rain drops can cause discomfort.

 

Layout

 

Kingda Ka's layout is almost completely identical to Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point, but while Top Thrill Dragster hits the brakes after coming down from the top hat and leveling out, Kingda Ka goes over a 129-foot (39 m)-tall camelback hill into the brake run.

 

Rollbacks, Short-Shots, Stalls, and launch

 

Sometimes, it is possible for a train to roll back—to fail to go over the top of the tower and descend on the other side. The train instead reaches as high on the tower as it can go (in most cases to the very top) and rolls back. Kingda Ka includes retractable magnetic brakes on its launch track that will bring to a stop a train rolling backward down the tower. Rollbacks are more common in breezy weather or just after wet weather. Many riders look forward to a rollback, as they are treated to another launch. Rollbacks are frequent during safety tests to ensure all brakes on the runway are in working condition. One other issue that is even more rare than a rollback is for the train to "stall" or stop at the top of the lift. This is extremely rare because the train must be perfectly balanced for this to happen. In the event this happens, there is an elevator so workers can get up the support tower and push the train (usually down the descent side).

 

It is hard to know exactly when Kingda Ka's launch will occur. When the signal to launch is given, the train rolls back slightly to engage the catch car, then the brakes on the launch track retract. Occasionally there will be a voice that says "arms down, head back, and hold on." The launch will occur five seconds after the hissing sound of the brake fins retracting or the warning voice. Previously, Kingda Ka's horn sounded before every launch, but it has been turned off because of noise complaints from nearby residents. The horn now sounds only when Kingda Ka first launches after being idle for a certain period of time. Kingda Ka's launch mechanism is capable of launching a train every 45 seconds, resulting in a capacity of 1400 guests per hour.

 

Station

 

Kingda Ka's station has two parallel tracks with switch tracks at the entrance and exit. Each of the station's tracks accommodates two trains, so that each of the four trains has its own station. Each train only loads and unloads at its own station; it does not go to any others. During operation, the trains on one side are loaded while the trains on the other side are launched. This system works extremely efficiently as long as all four trains are running and there are no significant delays in loading and checking the trains. This system was not used at all in 2006 because only two trains were working that year. It also results in a very fast-moving line before the station, but a long wait inside the station, especially if waiting for the front row. An employee directs riders in line to go to a particular side of the station, but riders will then be able to choose the front or rear of the train. Two operators load, check and dispatch each train, and one launches the trains. Kingda Ka's music is by Safri Duo; almost their entire Episode II album is played in the queue and station. The other is the remix version of "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor. Both of these music can be heard during the queue and station.

 

Trains

 

Kingda Ka's four trains are color-coded for easy identification: green, dark blue, teal, and orange. These four colors are also used on the seats and restraints. Kingda Ka's trains seat 18 people, with two per row. The rear car has one row, while the rest have two. The rear row of each car is positioned higher than its front row for better visibility. The trains do not have official names, only numbers.

 

The dark blue train was being launched when 2005's major malfunction (see above) occurred, and problems stemming from this malfunction were discovered in the train's off-season rehab, putting this train out of service throughout the 2006 season. As a result, Kingda Ka only ran two trains for the whole year. The teal and green trains ran from the start of the season until late July, and the teal and orange trains ran for the rest of the season, with the teal train being the only train used for the whole season. Kingda Ka opened for the 2007 season with all four trains running.

 

Each of Kingda Ka's trains has a panel behind the last row of seats that covers an extra row of seat mounts. These panels could be removed for the installation of additional seats at some future time. This modification would increase the capacity of each train from 18 to 20 guests and the hourly capacity of the coaster from 1400 to 1600 guests per hour. Kingda Ka's station is already set up for this modification; it has the entrance gates for the currently nonexistent row of seats.

 

While this modification has not yet been done, the trains were slightly modified for the 2006 season - the nose of each train got a new coat of paint, after which the large "Kingda Ka" logo and the train number decals were not put back on the trains. The non-padded portions of the restraints are now bare metal rather than painted orange.

 

Seat restraints

 

Kingda Ka's seats with the restraints down

Kingda Ka's over-the-shoulder restraint system consists of a thick, rigid lap bar and two thin, flexible over-the-shoulder restraints. Because the over-the-shoulder portions of the restraint are not rigid, the hand grips are mounted to the lap bar. But later on the flexible over-the-shoulder restraints were replaced by non-flexible shoulder restraints.

 

These restraints use a locking system (rather than a ratchet) which allows them to be pulled down to any position; when locked, they can move down to any position but not up. In contrast, a ratchet-based restraint only locks at each notch, and will often be too loose or uncomfortably tight. Kingda Ka's restraints are also held down by a belt in case the main locking system fails. In order to speed up loading, riders are asked to secure their own restraints if they are able to.

 

Ride Experience

 

The rollercoaster has a very simple layout. First the two trains at the station advance forward. The first train then waits about 30–40 seconds as a catch car rolls down the launch track and attaches to the train. After the brake fins lining the launch train lower a train is then launched at up to 128 miles per hour (206 km/h) towards the 456 ft (139 m) tower. The train then gradually raises up the ride tower 90 degrees up and then twists to the left 90 degress. Once the train reaches the tower summit of 456 feet (139 m) the train then drops at a 90 degree right angle down the tower. The train pulls out of the spiral and down the tower at a near 120 miles per hour (190 km/h) into a hill 129 ft (39 m) high. At the peak of the 129 ft (39 m) hill the train begins to hit the brakes. After a final brake stop the train then turns left back into the station. The average time of the ride experience is only 28 seconds. The official ride time is 56 seconds.

 

Family trip to Six Flags Great Adventure 6-19-11

This ship is my favorite out of my physical collection. Its just the rights size for play while still having enough detail for display and has an interior. Said interior is based of the cross section book for the force awakens. There is a single bed and nothing else. I wish that the bed could be moved over though, as it is taking up quite a bit a space.

 

Problems:

the rear door is invisible

the rear wings are not all the way at the end of the ship

there are no front wings

the cockpit is nonexistent

Outside of Price and Helper there is a very small seasonal waterfall; sometimes it is a trickle, other times totally nonexistent. On the way by it in November 2017 we noticed it was not a pretty decent frozen waterfall. We made an immediate stop and pulled over to check it out - very nice. Unfortunately the lighting never seems to be in our favor. One day we will luck out!

This was my first time actually plane watching at Miami International Airport (MIA). I checked some spotter websites to find some good locations. They recommended The Holes as being an "official" site so we checked it out. I was pretty disappointed; there was a lot of construction going on and parking was nonexistent. My wife dropped me off. The area is totally exposed. Even though it was December it was pretty hot - no shade, no place to sit, no other people around. The holes are actually pretty small so it's hard to get a lens through the hole. Arrivals were almost impossible to shoot but you could see planes taxiing by for takeoff. After an hour I was cooking so we bagged it. We then went to the area close to the El Dorado furniture store. Much better. There were a bunch of spotters from around the world there. It was a great atmosphere. Nicely shaded, safe, close to some stores and a lot of good traffic to watch. I saw a bunch of planes from airlines I had not seen before, including some airlines I had not heard of. Some of the planes didn't show up on Flight Radar 24 so they were very pleasant surprises. All in all a very good day and I'd love to go back there!

 

I took these photos in December 2019.

Welcome to Newham. Even if you miss the sign, you can tell you're here because half the streetlamps are at crooked angles.

 

On the face of things the majority of London's urban sprawl, be it composed of older inner-city areas cobbled together or suburban developments that run into one another, is fairly subtle in it's contiguousness. Boroughs run into one another on the turn of a street corner or the crossing of a railway bridge, but little really changes from one to the another by simply crossing a border - the street lighting may look different, the bins a different colour, victorian houses may gradually give way to semis and 1930s council estates may give way to 1960s examples, a welcome sign may give it away on a main road, but it is rarely abrupt. Most of London's boroughs contain the contrasts within themselves - compare the Brent of Queens Park and Harlesden to that of North Wembley and Sudbury, and the proximate pockets of wealth and deprivation in each.

 

Newham, in this respect as well as many others, is of a different order to most other areas of London - it is more or less it's own island, and a relatively consistent one, cut off from surrounding areas by the Thames to the south, the lower Lea valley to the west, the River Roding and elevated North Circular to the east and the bottom reaches of Epping Forest to the north. Cross-border passages over many of these are scarce (four road crossings towards Central London to the west, three to the east) to nonexistent (no road crossings at all over the Thames, save for the Woolwich Ferry). Most approaches to Newham, either by rail or road, mean crossing some sort of uninhabited industrial landscape, green expanse or tunnel before hitting the dense mass of estates and terraces that make up the borough, invariably with a bit of a bump - if ducking under the North Circular from Ilford to Manor Park is to make a jump from suburbia to scruffy pseudo-outer-inner London purgatory, the approach from Poplar to Canning Town is at best a marginal improvement, but somehow a bleaker introduction. Here, where Leytonstone Road crosses the border with Waltham Forest, is one of the few upholders of the general rule in the Newham exception, as part of the 3/4-mile wide strip of Victorian terraces that link up southern Leyton and South Leytonstone to Stratford and Forest Gate. They're quite similar environments.

 

Historically, Newham has proven uniformly and stubbornly resistant to gentrification. In the 1990s, on old-money measures it leapfrogged with Hackney as the most deprived borough in the country - now, out of 354 it is 6th from the bottom, beaten in London only by Hackney and Tower Hamlets. The speculation around Stratford in the run up to 2012 is one issue to be considered, but the regeneration getting under way in Canning Town and Custom House is, even though less discussed, almost as substantial in itself and constitutes a lot more residential demolition and rebuilding than the infill and industrial site clearances around Stratford - huge swathes of the area are disappearing already. The changes to the social fabric that will result there are less predictable, but ones that I'll watch with interest.

An Italian Czech, a Belgian American, and an American Italian.....

 

At the top is a Tanfoglio BTA-90, a copy of the Czech CZ-75 that was made in Italy during the Cold War days when we weren't buying a lot of Czech stuff over here; at left is a Browning 1910, designed by the American John M. Browning and manufactured by Fabrique Nationale in Belgium; and at the bottom is a Beretta 950, made in Maryland after a US law made it illegal to import little pistols like this but they were OK as long as they were made in the USA (go figure).

This ship is from fallen order though it has a custom paint job. It has a semi-full interior as the rear engine-room has been combined with the room in front of it.

 

This was done because I don't have the pieces to make it both strong and have that rear room. I still was able to get the two decks in the back and the couch though. it is a pretty strong build till you get to the round rotating section. That needs tightened every time it is moved. The wing and lower thruster can be rotated a full 360 degrees around which was a pain to take pictures of.

 

The wing itself I think is illegal as I'm using Technic half beams to make it double sided (plus it was the only way I could think of attaching the wing securely). The landing gear telescopes into itself in the game which is pretty much impossible at this scale. I originally had the gear fold up inside the body, but it looked ugly when it was down due to the holes needed for retraction.

 

They also had to have the landing pads removed anyway, so i just made the whole rear gear removable. It looks better and is stronger.

 

problems:

unable to build full interior.

rear gear is not retractable.

cockpit is nonexistent.

rotating parts need tightening after every movement.

 

more pics here: bricksafe.com/pages/TheRealBeef1213/star-wars/stinger-mantis