title: Thor

text: Swastikas appear on various Germanic objects stretching from the Migration Period to the Viking Age, such as the 3rd century Fibula (DR EM85;123) from Zealand, Denmark; the Gothic spearhead from Brest-Litovsk, Belarus; numerous Migration Period bracteates; cremation urns from early Anglo-Saxon England; the 8th century sword from , Norway; and the 9th century Snoldelev Stone (DR 248) from , Denmark.


title: Thor

text: Numerous place names in Scandinavia contain the Old Norse name . The identification of these place names as pointing to religious significance is complicated by the aforementioned common usage of as a personal name element. Cultic significance may only be assured in place names containing the elements (signifying the location of a , a type of pagan Germanic shrine), (a structure used for religious purposes, see heathen hofs), and (a holy grove). The place name is recorded with particular frequency in Denmark (and has direct cognates in Norse settlements in Ireland, such as ), whereas appears particularly often in southern Norway. ("Thor's Island") appears on the Swedish west coast. Thor also appears in many place names in Uppland.


title: Thor

text: In English place names, Old English (in contrast with the Old Norse form of the name, later introduced to the Danelaw) left comparatively few traces. Examples include Thundersley, from * and "Thurstable" (Old English "Thunor's pillar"). F. M. Stenton noted that such place names were apparently restricted to Saxon and Jutish territory and not found in Anglian areas.


title: Thor

text: In what is now Germany, locations named after Thor are sparsely recorded, but a number of locations called (German "Donner's mountain") may derive their name from the deity , the southern Germanic form of the god's name.


title: Thor

text: In as late as the 19th century in Iceland, a specific breed of fox was known as ("Thor of the holt"), likely due to the red coat of the breed. In Sweden in the 19th century, smooth, wedge-shaped stones found in the earth were called ("Thor's wedges"), according to a folk belief that they were once hurled at a troll by the god Thor. (Compare Thunderstones.) Similarly, meteorites may be considered memorials to Thor in folk tradition due to their sheer weight. On the Swedish island of Gotland, a species of beetle ("Scarabæus stercorarius") was named after the god; the . When the beetle is found turned upside down and one flips it over, Thor's favor may be gained. In other regions of Sweden the name of the beetle appears to have been demonized with Christianization, where the insect came to be known as or (both meaning "Thor-devil").


title: Thor

text: In the northwest of Spain, there is a river called Torío in the municipality of Cármenes (León) that take name from the god Thor.


title: Thor

text: Thor closely resembles other Indo-European deities associated with the thunder: the Celtic Taranis, the Estonian Taara (or Tharapita), the Baltic , the Slavic Perun, and particularly the Hindu , whose red hair and thunderbolt weapon the are obvious parallels noted already by Max Müller. Scholars have compared Indra's slaying of with Thor's battle with . Although in the past it was suggested that Thor was an indigenous sky god or a Viking Age import into Scandinavia, these Indo-European parallels make him generally accepted today as ultimately derived from a Proto-Indo-European deity.


title: Thor

text: In 's trifunctional hypothesis of Indo-European religion, Thor represents the second function, that of strength. notes that as a result of displacements, he does not lead armies; most of the functions of Indra have been in effect taken over by Odin. Many scholars have noted the association of Thor with fertility, particularly in later folklore and in the reflex of him represented by the Sami ("Good-man Thor"). For , this is the preservation by peasants of only the side-effect of the god's atmospheric battles: the fertilizing rain. Others have emphasized Thor's close connection to humanity, in all its concerns. Scholar Hilda Ellis Davidson summarizes:


title: Thor

text: The cult of Thor was linked with men's habitation and possessions, and with the well-being of the family and community. This included the fruitfulness of the fields, and Thor, although pictured primarily as a storm god in the myths, was also concerned with the fertility and preservation of the seasonal round. In our own times, little stone axes from the distant past have been used as fertility symbols and placed by the farmer in the holes made by the drill to receive the first seed of spring. Thor's marriage with of the golden hair, about which we hear little in the myths, seems to be a memory of the ancient symbol of divine marriage between sky god and earth goddess, when he comes to earth in the thunderstorm and the storm brings the rain which makes the fields fertile. In this way Thor, as well as Odin, may be seen to continue the cult of the sky god which was known in the Bronze Age.


title: Thor

text: In modern times, Thor continues to be referred to in art and fiction. Starting with 's 1776 ode to Thor, , Thor has been the subject of poems in several languages, including 's 1807 epic poem and, by the same author, three more poems (, , and ) collected in his 1819 ; (1859) by ; the 1820 satirical poem by ; (1832) by ; the poem by ; (1836) by ; (1915) by ; 's (published in , 1937); and (1977) by . In English he features for example in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Challenge of Thor" (1863) and in two works by Rudyard Kipling: "Letters of Travel: 1892–1913" and "Cold Iron" in "Rewards and Fairies". L. Sprague de Camp's "Harold Shea" met with Thor, as with other Norse gods, in the first of Shea's many fantasy adventures.


title: Thor

text: Artists have also depicted Thor in painting and sculpture, including Henry Fuseli's 1780 painting "Thor Battering the Midgard Serpent"; 's 1821–1822 statue "Thor"; B. E. Fogelberg's 1844 marble statue "Thor"; Mårten Eskil Winge's 1872 painting "Thor's Fight with the Giants"; K. Ehrenberg's 1883 drawing ; several illustrations by published in 's 1901 ("Thor"; ; ; ; ; ; ); J. C. Dollman's 1909 drawings "Thor and the Mountain" and "Sif and Thor"; G. Poppe's painting "Thor"; 's 1914 drawing ; H. Natter's marble statue "Thor"; and U. Brember's 1977 illustrations to by .


title: Thor

text: In the fields of science and technology, Swedish chemist (1779–1848) discovered a chemical element that he named after Thor – thorium. Thor is also the namesake of the PGM-17 Thor missile.


title: Thor

text: In 1962, American comic book artist Jack Kirby, Marvel Comics editor Stan Lee and his brother Larry Lieber created a feature in the comic book "Journey Into Mystery" a series featuring Thor as a superhero. This version of Thor is portrayed as a clean-shaven blonde, instead of red-haired and bearded. The magazine soon added the backup feature "Tales of Asgard" in which Kirby illustrated stories from Norse mythology; eventually, the magazine was retitled "Thor". Lee and Kirby included Thor as a founding member of their superhero team the Avengers. Thor has been portrayed in the Marvel Cinematic Universe by Australian actor Chris Hemsworth, appearing in "Thor", "The Avengers", "", "", "Doctor Strange", "Team Thor", "", "", "" and "". Thor has also been featured in comic books by other publishers. In the Savage Dragon comics, Thor is portrayed as a villain. In Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" comic, Thor is portrayed as a buffoon who wields a tiny toffee hammer.


title: Thor

text: First described in 2013, Thor's hero shrew ("Scutisorex thori") is a species of shrew native to the Democratic Republic of Congo. It and its sister species, the hero shrew ("Scutisorex somereni"), are the only mammal species known to have interlocking vertebrae. The team named the shrew after Thor due to the god's association with strength.


title: Thor

text: From 2015 to 2017, a fictionalised version of Thor was a supporting character in "Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard", a trilogy of fantasy novels written by American author Rick Riordan and published by Disney-Hyperion, set in the same fictional universe as the "Camp Half-Blood Chronicles", and "The Kane Chronicles" series by the same author. Neil Gaiman's books "American Gods" and "Norse Mythology" also feature Thor.


title: Thor

text: In January 2020, the streaming service Netflix produced "Ragnarok". In the show, a high school student, Magne Seier, receives Thor's powers and abilities to fight the giants that are polluting Norway and murdering people. Netflix released the second season on 27 May 2021. Thor/Magne is portrayed by David Stakston.


title: Thor

text: Thor is also featured in a number of video games. In the 2002 Ensemble Studios game "Age of Mythology", Thor is one of three major gods Norse players can worship. In Santa Monica Studio's 2018 video game "God of War", Thor is mentioned throughout and his sons Magni and Modi are secondary antagonists. Thor makes an appearance at the end of the main storyline if certain difficulty conditions are met by the player. He makes a much more substantial appearance in the game's 2022 sequel "God of War Ragnarök" as a primary antagonist, played by Ryan Hurst. Thor is also mentioned in Ubisoft's 2020 game "Assassin's Creed Valhalla", where items of his such as Mjölnir can be found and used by the player in combat. Thor is also one of the playable gods in the third-person multiplayer online battle arena game "Smite".


title: Heather Graham

text: Heather Joan Graham (born January 29, 1970) is an American actress. After appearing in television commercials, her first starring role in a feature film came with the teen comedy "License to Drive" (1988), followed by the critically acclaimed film "Drugstore Cowboy" (1989). She then played supporting roles on the television series "Twin Peaks" (1991), and in films such as "Six Degrees of Separation" (1993) and "Swingers" (1996). She gained critical praise for her role as "Rollergirl" in the film "Boogie Nights" (1997). This led to major roles in the comedy films "Bowfinger" and "" (both 1999).


title: Heather Graham

text: Graham had leading roles in "Say It Isn't So" (2001) and "From Hell" (2001), and continued to play supporting roles in the films "Mary" (2005), "The Hangover" (2009) and its sequel, "The Hangover Part III" (2013), "At Any Price" (2012), and "Horns" (2013). She has had roles on television series such as "Scrubs" (2004) and "Californication" (2014).


title: Heather Graham

text: Graham is a public advocate for Children International, and supported the climate change campaign Global Cool in 2007.


title: Heather Graham

text: Graham was born on January 29, 1970 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin at St. Michaels Hospital, the oldest of two children. Her family is of "three-quarters Irish" descent, with her father's side from County Cork. Her younger sister Aimee Graham is also an actress and writer. Her mother Joan (née Bransfield) is a teacher and author of children's books, and her father James Graham is a retired FBI agent. She was raised Catholic, but is non-practicing. Her family relocated repeatedly before moving to Agoura Hills, California, when she was nine. She was introduced to acting during a school production of "The Wizard of Oz".


title: Heather Graham

text: After high school, Graham enrolled in extension classes at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she studied English for two years. Against her parents' wishes, Graham withdrew from UCLA to pursue acting full time.


title: Heather Graham

text: Graham's first film appearance was an uncredited cameo in "Mrs. Soffel" (1984). Her first credited film appearance was in the television film "Student Exchange". In 1986, she appeared on a special "Teen Week" episode of the NBC game show "Scrabble". Then she appeared in numerous television commercials, and an episode of the sitcom "Growing Pains" in 1987. Her first high-profile starring role came in the Corey Haim/Corey Feldman vehicle "License to Drive" (1988), as a popular girl named Mercedes Lane, who serves as the love interest of Haim's character. Her efforts won her a Young Artist Award nomination in the Best Young Actress in a Motion Picture Comedy or Fantasy category. Her strict parents forbade her to accept a role in the black comedy "Heathers" (1988), which had an expletive-rich script. The same year, she had an uncredited appearance as Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger's mother in "Twins".


title: Heather Graham

text: In 1989, Graham was featured in Gus Van Sant's "Drugstore Cowboy" as Nadine, a young, drug-addicted accomplice of the two main characters (played by Matt Dillon and Kelly Lynch). Her performance gave her career an initial boost and earned her a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Actress. She rejected a steady role in a soap opera and a three-picture deal with a major studio because she thought it would be too restrictive. After "Drugstore Cowboy", she appeared in Lawrence Kasdan's dark comedy "I Love You to Death" (1990), alongside William Hurt and Keanu Reeves, and the rock-and-roll coming-of-age film "Shout" (1991), for which she received a nomination for the Young Artist Award for Best Actress Starring in a Motion Picture.


title: Heather Graham

text: After Graham co-starred with Benicio del Toro in a Calvin Klein commercial directed by David Lynch, the director cast her as Annie Blackburn in "Twin Peaks", where she appeared in the final six episodes. Following the show's cancellation, Graham reprised the role of Blackburn in the 1992 prequel film "".


title: Heather Graham

text: She featured in "Diggstown" (1992), alongside James Woods; the well-received "Six Degrees of Separation" (1993), alongside Will Smith; and "The Ballad of Little Jo" (1993), alongside Ian McKellen before reteaming with Gus Van Sant for the critically panned film adaptation of "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues", alongside Uma Thurman. The same year she co-starred as Mary Kennedy Taylor in "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle". In 1995, she starred as Jackie in the poorly received "Desert Winds" and guest-starred in an episode of the television series "Fallen Angels". She had a small but important role in "Swingers" (1996), where she played Lorraine, Jon Favreau's love interest. She also played a small role as Maggie Bowen in "" (1996).


title: Heather Graham

text: Graham's popularity significantly increased after playing a young porn star in the critically acclaimed film "Boogie Nights" (1997). The cast received a nomination for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. The same year, she also starred in the Gregg Araki film "Nowhere", and had a cameo in the horror hit "Scream 2". She was subsequently cast in "Two Girls and a Guy" (1998), a film mainly based upon dialogue between the characters, shot in 11 days, which co-starred Robert Downey Jr. and Natasha Gregson; and the sci-fi film "Lost in Space", which was met with mostly negative reviews, and grossed $69,117,629 domestically on a production budget of $80 million. The cast was signed on for sequels that remain unmade.


title: Heather Graham

text: She starred as Felicity Shagwell in the sequel "" (1999), which was a box-office hit. Shagwell is one of her best-known roles and became a fan favorite. Her turn as Shagwell also earned her a nomination for the Saturn Award for Best Actress. She appeared in the music video for Lenny Kravitz's cover of "American Woman". Also in 1999, Graham co-starred as Daisy in the movie "Bowfinger", opposite Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy.


title: Heather Graham

text: The 2000 film "Committed" was her first starring vehicle. She played Joline, a devoted-beyond-reason young wife looking for the husband who left her. While the film itself received mixed reviews, the Rotten Tomatoes summary of critics felt that "Graham shows she can play a central character", but noted "she's not enough to make "Committed" successful". The following year, she co-starred as Annie Matthews, an unhappily married woman, in Edward Burns' "Sidewalks of New York". In 2002, she starred with Joseph Fiennes in Chen Kaige's English-language debut film "Killing Me Softly", which received overwhelmingly negative response from critics and a 0% at Rotten Tomatoes, with the consensus being: "Respected director Chen Kaige's first English-language film is a spectacularly misguided erotic thriller, with ludicrous plot twists and cringe-worthy dialogue". In 2009, the site also rated it No. 12 on the countdown of the worst films over the last ten years.


title: Heather Graham

text: Graham's other appearances in mainstream fare include playing a fictionalized version of the Jack the Ripper murder victim Mary Kelly in the film "From Hell" (2001), starring Johnny Depp; "Anger Management" (2003), starring Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson; the Farrelly Brothers comedy "Say It Isn't So" (2001), opposite Sally Field; "The Guru", co-starring Jimi Mistry, and "Hope Springs" (2003), co-starring Colin Firth.


title: Heather Graham

text: From 2004 to 2008, Graham starred in several independent films "Gray Matters", "Broken", "Adrift in Manhattan" (all 2007), and "Miss Conception" (2008), most of which received generally negative reviews and went largely unnoticed at the box office. Her 2005 film "Mary" holds a 63% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, her first "Fresh" film since "Bowfinger". The film premiered at the 2005 Venice Film Festival where it won the Special Jury Prize, as well as three smaller awards. The film also played at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival, Deauville Film Festival, and San Sebastián International Film Festival, and co-starred Juliette Binoche, Forest Whitaker, Marion Cotillard, and Matthew Modine. In 2006, she co-starred in "Bobby" as Angela; the film's cast was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.


title: Heather Graham

text: Graham also spoke about developing a comedy film titled "The Accidental Virgin", which would have focused on "female sexual confusion", telling the story of a woman who has not had sex in a year. The film has not been made. She also stated she would be interested in directing in the future if it is "something that, its burning in my mind that I need to do".


title: Heather Graham

text: On television, Graham played herself in an episode of the TV series "Sex and the City". She was given special guest-star status on nine episodes of "Scrubs" during its fourth season (2004–2005), and also appeared as George Michael Bluth's ethics teacher in an episode of "Arrested Development" in 2004. She played Emily Sanders in "Emily's Reasons Why Not", but the sitcom was cancelled after airing only one episode.


title: Heather Graham

text: In 2009, Graham played the stripper with a heart of gold, Jade, in "The Hangover", which was released to critical and box-office success. She won the role after Lindsay Lohan turned it down. Though she did not return for the sequel "The Hangover Part II", she reprised her role in the final installment of the trilogy, "The Hangover Part III". In 2010, she starred in "Boogie Woogie", followed by roles in the unsuccessful films "Father of Invention", "5 Days of War", "Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer" (all 2011), and "About Cherry" (2012).


title: Heather Graham

text: She played Meredith Crown in "At Any Price", which stars Dennis Quaid and Zac Efron, and was selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the 69th Venice International Film Festival, and later screened as an official selection at the Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals. Other roles include mob lawyer Annette Stratton-Osborne in "Behaving Badly" and short story writer Mary Bellanova in "My Dead Boyfriend" (both 2014). She wrote a comedy screenplay called "Half Magic", which in 2013 she stated she wanted to direct. She said the story focuses on "these female friends and sexuality and about people having a sense of shame about sexuality and learning how to have a healthier attitude about it [...] It also deals with male/female relationships and sexism". The film was released in 2018.


title: Heather Graham

text: In 2014, she starred in the second adaptation of the V. C. Andrews novel "Flowers in the Attic" on the Lifetime network. She played the character of Corrine Dollanganger, an evil mother who locks her four children in an attic to receive an inheritance from her dying father. Graham also appeared in two TV films sequels based on the V.C. Andrews' series: "Petals on the Wind" and "If There Be Thorns", continuing to play the role of Corrine Dollanganger. She appeared in the final season of "Californication" as the mother of David Duchovny's long-lost son.


title: Heather Graham

text: In 2018, she co-starred in the David Cross dark comedy series "Bliss", which was released by the BritBox streaming service. It starred Stephen Mangan as Andrew, a fraudulent travel writer, who struggles to maintain long-term relationships with two partners, Kim (Graham) and Denise (Jo Hartley), who are not aware of one another.


title: Heather Graham

text: Besides her acting work, Graham is also an activist who serves as a public advocate for the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Children International. She stated that what she likes about Children International is that "you are helping a child have a better life. It's great for that child to know that someone who lives in another country cares about them". Graham works with the Cambodian Children's Fund, also an NGO, which provides supplies and education, and campaigns to stop slavery. "There's a lot of human trafficking in Cambodia," Graham has said. "Women are dying because they don't have $15 to give birth in a hospital. The [Children's Fund] provides free education, clean water and healthcare for communities... We're creating future leaders who will be able to help themselves."


title: Heather Graham

text: In 2007 she supported the climate change campaign Global Cool and appeared in Shekhar Kapur's short film "Global Cool" alongside Sienna Miller.


title: Heather Graham

text: Graham is considered a sex symbol. She was ranked at number 40 in "FHM"'s "100 Sexiest Women in the World" list in 2000, number 95 in 2001 list, number 97 in the 2002 list, number 74 in the 2005 list and at number 98 in 2006 list. In 2001, she was named one of the 50 Most Beautiful People by "People". In 2003, she posed for a photoshoot by photographer Sam Jones during which she was levitated several feet into the air by a magician who later also sawed her in half. Also in 2003, Graham appeared on the cover of "Time" for an article titled "The Science of Meditation". To promote "Emily's Reasons Why Not", she had posed for a "LIFE" cover story, printed weeks in advance of the assumed series schedule, referring to her as "TV's sexiest star", which appeared in the January 27, 2006, issue.


title: Heather Graham

text: Graham is often cast in sexual roles, including those of Felicity Shagwell ("Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me"), porn stars Rollergirl ("Boogie Nights") and Sharonna ("The Guru"), prostitute Mary Kelly ("From Hell"), porn director Margaret ("About Cherry"), and stripper Jade ("The Hangover" and "The Hangover, Part III"). She stated she finds these types of roles and the issue of sexuality fascinating, and believes that "our culture sends out mixed messages to women about sex. Are women supposed to be sexually alive people, or are we supposed to be 'good' mothers who would never do those things?" and that she likes "the fact some of my roles maybe help people open their minds about the way they think about sex".


title: Heather Graham

text: In 2017, Graham recounted a time in the early 2000's when Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein indirectly implied that he would give her a role of her choice if she slept with him. Later, Graham indicated she canceled a planned meeting with Weinstein at a hotel when a friend was unable to accompany her. Graham did not have further contact with Weinstein and she was never cast in any of the movies he produced.


title: Heather Graham

text: Graham has been estranged from her parents in the past. Regarding the media's perception of her relationship with her parents, she stated: "I don't really like to talk about my parents because I just feel that it gets misinterpreted in the press."


title: Heather Graham

text: Graham has been practising transcendental meditation since 1991 after being introduced to it by David Lynch. She has also expressed her dislike of reality television, stating in a 2007 interview: "I think some of it, it seems strange – why do we all want to watch people be so miserable? Other people's pain and misery – it seems kind of sad."


title: Heather Graham

text: In 1992, Graham dated James Woods, her co-star in the film "Diggstown". From 2011 to 2018, she was in a relationship with Israeli screenwriter Yaniv Raz. She also dated Heath Ledger and British rock star Adam Ant.


title: Gadsden flag

text: The Gadsden flag is a historical American flag with a yellow field depicting a timber rattlesnake coiled and ready to strike. Beneath the rattlesnake are the words: " TREAD ON ME". Some modern versions of the flag include an apostrophe.


title: Gadsden flag

text: The flag is named after politician Christopher Gadsden (1724–1805), who designed it in 1775 during the American Revolution. It was used by the Continental Marines as an early motto flag, along with the Moultrie flag. Its design proclaims an assertive warning of vigilance and willingness to act in defense against coercion. This has led it to be associated with the ideas of individualism and liberty. It is often used in the United States as a symbol for right-libertarianism, classical liberalism, and small government; for distrust or defiance against authorities and government; and occasionally co-opted for right-wing populism or far-right ideology.


title: Gadsden flag

text: Many variations of the Gadsden flag exist. The motto sometimes includes an apostrophe in the word "Don't" and sometimes not; the typeface used for the motto is sometimes a serif typeface and other times sans-serif. The rattlesnake sometimes is shown as resting on a green ground; representations dating from 1885 and 1917 do not display anything below the rattlesnake. The rattlesnake usually faces to the left, and the early representations mentioned above face left. However, some versions of the flag show the snake facing to the right.


title: Gadsden flag

text: The timber rattlesnake can be found in the area of the original Thirteen Colonies. Like the bald eagle, part of its significance is that it was unique to the Americas, serving as a means of showing a separate identity from the Old World. Its use as a symbol of the American colonies can be traced back to the publications of Benjamin Franklin. In 1751, he made the first reference to the rattlesnake in a satirical commentary published in his "Pennsylvania Gazette". It had been the policy of Parliament to send convicted criminals to the Americas (primarily the Province of Georgia), so Franklin suggested that they thank them by sending rattlesnakes to Britain.


title: Gadsden flag

text: In 1754, during the French and Indian War, Franklin published "Join, or Die", a woodcut of a snake cut into eight sections. It represented the colonies, with New England joined as the head and South Carolina as the tail, following their order along the coast. This was the first political cartoon published in an American newspaper.


title: Gadsden flag

text: In 1774, Paul Revere added Franklin's iconic cartoon to the nameplate of Isaiah Thomas's paper, the "Massachusetts Spy", depicted there as fighting a British griffin.


title: Gadsden flag

text: In December 1775, Benjamin Franklin published an essay in the "Pennsylvania Journal" under the pseudonym "American Guesser" in which he suggested that the rattlesnake was a good symbol for the American spirit and its valuation for vigilance, assertiveness, individualism, unity, and liberty:[...] there was painted a Rattle-Snake, with this modest motto under it, "Don't tread on me." [...] she has no eye-lids. She may therefore be esteemed an emblem of vigilance. She never begins an attack, nor, when once engaged, ever surrenders [...] The Rattle-Snake is solitary, and associates with her kind only when it is necessary for their preservation [...] 'Tis curious and amazing to observe how distinct and independent of each other the rattles of this animal are, and yet how firmly they are united together, so as never to be separated but by breaking them to pieces. [...] The power of fascination attributed to her, by a generous construction, may be understood to mean, that those who consider the liberty and blessings which America affords, and once come over to her, never afterwards leave her, but spend their lives with her.


title: Gadsden flag

text: The rattlesnake symbol was first officially adopted by the Continental Congress in 1778 when it approved the design for the seal of the War Office. At the top center of the seal is a rattlesnake holding a banner that says, "This we'll defend". This design of the War Office seal was carried forward—with some minor modifications—into the subsequent designs as well as the Department of the Army's seal, emblem and flag. As such, some variation of a rattlesnake symbol has been in continuous official use by the US Army for over 243 years.


title: Gadsden flag

text: Other American flags that use a rattlesnake motif include The United Companies of the Train of Artillery of the Town of Providence, the First Navy Jack, and the Culpeper Minutemen flag, among others.


title: Gadsden flag

text: In the 21st century, the Gadsden Flag has been used by the Tea Party movement and has been sometimes been associated with the Patriot movement.


title: Gadsden flag

text: In the fall of 1775, the Continental Navy was established by General George Washington in his role as Commander in Chief of all Continental Forces, before Esek Hopkins was named Commodore of the Navy.


title: Gadsden flag

text: Those first ships were used to intercept incoming transport ships carrying war supplies to the British in the colonies in order to supply the Continental Army, which was desperately undersupplied in the opening years of the American Revolutionary War. The Second Continental Congress authorized the mustering of five companies of Marines to accompany the Navy on their first mission.


title: Gadsden flag

text: Continental Colonel Christopher Gadsden represented his home state of South Carolina and was one of seven members of the Marine Committee outfitting the first naval mission. The first Marines enlisted in the city of Philadelphia and carried drums painted yellow and depicting a coiled rattlesnake with thirteen rattles along with the motto "Don't Tread on Me." This is the first recorded mention of the future Gadsden flag's symbolism.


title: Gadsden flag

text: Before the departure of that first mission in December 1775, the newly appointed commander-in-chief of the Navy, Commodore Esek Hopkins, received a yellow rattlesnake flag from Gadsden to serve as the distinctive personal standard of his flagship. Hopkins had previously led The United Companies of the Train of Artillery of the Town of Providence, which had a similar flag, before being appointed to lead the Navy. The flag was a warning to Great Britain not to trample the liberties of its subjects. By late 1775 though, especially after the Prohibitory Act, many American colonists did not see themselves as subjects to The Crown but instead as independent individuals possessing the rights of liberty and revolution. These rapidly growing convictions helped fuel the flag's adoption.


title: Gadsden flag

text: Gadsden also presented a copy of this flag to the Congress of South Carolina in Charleston, South Carolina. This was recorded in the South Carolina congressional journals on February 9, 1776:


title: Gadsden flag

text: For historical reasons, the Gadsden flag is still popularly flown in Charleston, South Carolina, the city where Christopher Gadsden first presented the flag and where it was commonly used during the revolution, along with the blue and white crescent flag of pre-Civil War South Carolina.


title: Gadsden flag

text: The Gadsden flag has become a popular specialty license plate in several states. , the following states offer the option of obtaining a Gadsden flag specialty license plate: Alabama, Arizona,


title: Gadsden flag

text: Florida, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.


title: Gadsden flag

text: In the 1970s the Gadsden flag started being used by libertarians, using it as a symbol representing individual rights and limited government. The flag's prominent yellow color is also strongly associated with libertarianism. The libertarian Free State Project uses a modified version of the flag with the snake replaced with a porcupine, a symbol of the movement.


title: Gadsden flag

text: In 2014, the flag was used by Jerad and Amanda Miller, the perpetrators of the 2014 Las Vegas shootings who killed two police officers and a civilian. The Millers reportedly placed the Gadsden Flag on the corpse of one of the officers they killed.


title: Gadsden flag

text: The Gadsden flag was featured prominently in a report related to the January 6, 2021 storming of the United States Capitol. Thirty-four-year-old Rosanne Boyland carried one when she collapsed from an amphetamine overdose and died in the Capitol.


title: Gadsden flag

text: In the mid-1970s, the new left People's Bicentennial Commission used the Gadsden Flag symbolism on buttons and literature.


title: Gadsden flag

text: Beginning in 2009, the Gadsden flag became widely used as a protest symbol by American Tea Party movement protesters. It was also displayed by members of Congress at Tea Party rallies. In some cases, the flag was ruled to be a political, rather than a historic or military, symbol due to the strong Tea Party connection.


title: Gadsden flag

text: In March 2013, the Gadsden flag was raised at a vacant armory building in New Rochelle, New York without permission from city officials. The city ordered its removal and the United Veterans Memorial & Patriotic Association, which had maintained the U.S. flag at the armory, filed suit against the city. A federal judge dismissed the case, rejecting the United Veterans' First Amendment argument and ruling that the flagpole in question was city property and thus did not represent private speech.


title: Gadsden flag

text: In 2014, a US Postal Service employee filed a complaint about a coworker repeatedly wearing a hat with a Gadsden Flag motif at work. Postal service administration dismissed the complaint, but the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reversed the decision and called for a careful investigation. The EEOC issued a statement clarifying that it did not make any decision that the Gadsden flag was a "racist symbol," or that wearing a depiction of it constituted racial discrimination.


title: Gadsden flag

text: Street Patrol, a 1990s queer self defense group affiliated with Queer Nation/San Francisco, used as its logo a coiled snake over a triangle holding a ribbon with the motto "Don't Tread on Me". Some libertarian circles use a version of the flag with the snake and motto placed over a rainbow flag. Following the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, posters containing a rainbow Gadsden flag inscribed with "#ShootBack" were placed around West Hollywood.


title: Gadsden flag

text: Parodies of the Gadsden flag exist; one common design replaces the "Don't tread on me" motto with "No Step on Snek", sometimes paired with a crudely drawn snake.


title: Gadsden flag

text: The Gadsden flag has made numerous appearances in popular culture, particularly in post-apocalyptic stories.


title: Jack Ruby

text: Jack Leon Ruby (born Jacob Leon Rubenstein; April 25, 1911January 3, 1967) was an American nightclub owner and alleged associate of the Chicago Outfit who murdered Lee Harvey Oswald on November 24, 1963, two days after Oswald was accused of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. A Dallas jury found Ruby guilty of murdering Oswald and sentenced him to death. Ruby's conviction was later appealed, and he was to be granted a new trial; however, he became ill in prison and died of a pulmonary embolism from lung cancer on January 3, 1967.


title: Jack Ruby

text: In September 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Ruby acted alone in killing Oswald, shooting him on impulse, and out of grief over Kennedy's assassination. These findings were challenged by various critics who suggest that Ruby was involved with major figures in organized crime and that he was acting as part of an overall plot surrounding the assassination of Kennedy.


title: Jack Ruby

text: Ruby was born Jacob Leon Rubenstein on or around March 25 and April 25, 1911, in the Maxwell Street area of Chicago, the son of Joseph Rubenstein and Fannie Turek Rutkowski (or Rokowsky), both Polish-born Orthodox Jews from Sokołów. Ruby was the fifth of his parents' 10 surviving children. While he was growing up, his parents were often violent towards each other and frequently separated; Ruby's mother was eventually committed to a mental hospital. His troubled childhood and adolescence were marked by juvenile delinquency with time being spent in foster homes. At age 11 in 1922, he was arrested for truancy. Ruby eventually skipped school so often that he had to spend time at the Institute for Juvenile Research. Still a young man, he sold horse-racing tip sheets and various novelties, then acted as a business agent for a local refuse collectors union that later became part of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT).


title: Jack Ruby

text: From his early childhood, Ruby was nicknamed "Sparky" by those who knew him. His sister, Eva Grant, said that he acquired the nickname because he resembled a slow-moving horse named "Spark Plug" or "Sparky" in the contemporary comic strip "Barney Google". ("Spark Plug" debuted as a character in the strip in 1922, when Ruby was 11.) Other accounts say that the name was given because of his quick temper. In either event, Grant stated that Ruby did not like the nickname Sparky, and was quick to fight anyone who called him that.


title: Jack Ruby

text: In the 1940s, Ruby frequented race tracks in Illinois and California. He was drafted in 1943 and served in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II, working as an aircraft mechanic at U.S. bases until 1946. He had an honorable record and was promoted to Private First Class. Upon discharge, in 1946, Ruby returned to Chicago.


title: Jack Ruby

text: In 1947, Ruby moved to Dallas, where he and his brothers soon afterward shortened their surnames from Rubenstein to Ruby. The stated reason for this was that the name "Rubenstein" was too long and that he was "well known" as Jack Ruby. Ruby later went on to manage various nightclubs, strip clubs, and dance halls. He developed close ties to many Dallas Police officers who frequented his nightclubs, where he provided them with free liquor, prostitutes and other favors.


title: Jack Ruby

text: Ruby never married and had no children. At the time of the assassination, Ruby was living with George Senator, who referred to Ruby as "my boyfriend" during the Warren Commission hearing, but denied the two being homosexual lovers. Warren Commission lawyer Burt Griffin later told author Gerald Posner: "I'm not sure if Senator was honest with us about his relationship with Ruby. People did not advertise their homosexuality in 1963".


title: Jack Ruby

text: Some critics have said Ruby was involved in criminal activity, and linked to organized crime. He had been involved in the underworld activities of illegal gambling, narcotics, and prostitution. He belonged to a Mafia, known as the Yiddish Connection. He had moved from Chicago to Dallas in 1947 with other gangsters who had settled there to take over the prostitution business.


title: Jack Ruby

text: A 1956 FBI report stated that their informant, Eileen Curry, had moved to Dallas in January of that year together with her boyfriend, James Breen, after jumping bond on narcotics charges. Breen told her that he had made connections with a large narcotics setup operating between Texas, Mexico, and the East, and that "in some fashion, James got the okay to operate through Jack Ruby of Dallas."


title: Jack Ruby

text: Former Dallas County Sheriff Steve Guthrie told the FBI that he believed Ruby "operated some prostitution activities and other vices in his club" since living in Dallas.


title: Jack Ruby

text: On March 11, 1959, Ruby was approached by FBI agent Charles W. Flynn, of the Dallas Office, to become a federal informant due to his job as a night club operator, since he "might have knowledge of the criminal element in Dallas.” Ruby was willing to become an informant, and was subsequently contacted by the FBI eight times between March 11, 1959, and October 2, 1959, but provided no information to the Bureau, was not paid, and contact ceased.


title: Jack Ruby

text: Dallas disc jockey Kenneth Dowe testified that Ruby was known around the station for "procuring women for different people who came to town."


title: Jack Ruby

text: According to the people interviewed by law enforcement and the Warren Commission, Ruby was desperate to attract attention to himself and to his club. He knew a great number of people in Dallas, but had only a few friends. His business ventures remained unsuccessful, and during the time of the assassination, he was heavily in debt.


title: Jack Ruby

text: The commission received reports of Ruby's penchant for violence. He had a volatile temper, and often resorted to violence with employees who had upset him. Acting as the bouncer of his own club, Ruby beat his customers on at least 25 occasions. The fights would often end with Ruby throwing his victims down the club's stairs.


title: Jack Ruby

text: Government officials also heard stories of Ruby's eccentric and unstable behavior. He sometimes took his shirt or other clothes off in social gatherings, and then either hit his chest like a gorilla or rolled around the floor. During conversations, he could change the topic suddenly in mid-sentence. He sometimes welcomed a guest to his club, but on other nights forbade the same guest from entering without giving an explanation. Ruby was described by those who knew him as "a kook", "totally unpredictable", "a psycho", and "suffering from some form of disturbance".


title: Jack Ruby

text: The Warren Commission attempted to reconstruct Ruby's movements from November 21, 1963, through November 24. The Commission reported that he was attending to his duties as the proprietor of the Carousel Club located at 1312 1/2 Commerce St. in downtown Dallas and the Vegas Club in the city's Oak Lawn district from the afternoon of November 21 to the early hours of November 22.


title: Jack Ruby

text: According to the Warren Commission, Ruby was in the second-floor advertising offices of the "Dallas Morning News", five blocks away from the Texas School Book Depository, placing weekly advertisements for his nightclubs when he learned of the assassination around 12:45 p.m. Ruby then made phone calls to his assistant at the Carousel Club and to his sister. The Commission stated that an employee of the "Dallas Morning News" estimated that Ruby left the newspaper's offices at 1:30 p.m., but indicated that other testimony suggested that he had left earlier.


title: Jack Ruby

text: According to the Warren Commission, Ruby arrived back at the Carousel Club shortly before 1:45 p.m. to notify employees that the club would be closed that evening.


title: Jack Ruby

text: John Newnam, an employee at the newspaper's advertisement department, testified that Ruby became upset over a right-wing anti-Kennedy ad published in the "Morning News" that was signed by "The American Fact-Finding Committee, Bernard Weissman, Chairman". Ruby, who was sensitive to antisemitism, was distressed that an ad attacking the President was signed by a person with a "Jewish name". Early next morning, Ruby, while driving, noticed a political billboard featuring the text "IMPEACH EARL WARREN" in block letters. Ruby's sister Eva testified that Ruby had told her he believed that the anti-Kennedy ad and the anti-Warren sign were connected, and were a plot by a "gentile" to blame the assassination on the Jews.


title: Jack Ruby

text: Ruby was seen in the halls of the Dallas Police Headquarters on several occasions after Oswald's arrest on November 22, 1963, for the murder of Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit. He was present at an arranged press meeting with Oswald. A reporter asked Oswald, "Did you kill the President?" and Oswald answered, his voice breaking, "No, I have not been charged with that. In fact, nobody has said that to me yet. The first thing I heard about it was when the newspaper reporters in the hall asked me that question." A reporter told Oswald that he had been charged and Oswald reacted shocked. Newsreel footage from WFAA-TV (Dallas) and NBC shows that Ruby impersonated a newspaper reporter during a press conference held by District Attorney Henry Wade at Dallas Police Headquarters that night. Wade briefed reporters that Oswald was a member of the anti-Castro Free Cuba Committee. Ruby was one of several people there who spoke up to correct Wade, saying, "Henry, that's the Fair Play for Cuba Committee", a pro-Castro organization. Ruby later told the FBI that he had his loaded snub-nosed Colt Cobra .38 revolver in his right pocket during the press conference.


title: Jack Ruby

text: On November 24, Ruby drove into town with his pet dachshund Sheba (whom he would often jokingly refer to as his "wife") to send an emergency money order at the Western Union on Main Street to one of his employees. The time stamp of completion for the cash transaction on the money order was 11:17 a.m. Ruby then walked one half block to the nearby Dallas police headquarters, where he made his way into the basement via either the Main Street ramp or a stairway accessible from an alleyway next to the Dallas Municipal Building. At 11:21 a.m. CST—while authorities were escorting Oswald through the police basement to an armored car that was to take him to the nearby county jail—Ruby emerged from a crowd of reporters with his .38 Colt Cobra revolver aimed at Oswald's abdomen and shot him at point blank range, mortally wounding him. The bullet entered Oswald's left side in the front part of the abdomen and caused damage to his spleen, stomach, aorta, vena cava, kidney, liver, diaphragm, and eleventh rib before coming to rest on his right side. Oswald made a cry of anguish and his manacled hands clutched at his abdomen as he writhed with pain, and he slumped to the concrete paving, where he moaned several times. Police detective Billy Combest who recognized Ruby exclaimed: "Jack, you son of a bitch!" Ruby was immediately subdued by police as a moaning Oswald was carried back into the basement level jail office. Combest asked Oswald, "Do you have anything you want to tell us now?" Oswald shook his head. He lost consciousness shortly thereafter. Taken by ambulance to Parkland Memorial Hospital—the same hospital where President Kennedy had died two days earlier—Oswald died at 1:07 p.m.


title: Jack Ruby

text: A network television pool camera was broadcasting live to cover the transfer; millions of people watching on NBC witnessed the shooting as it happened and on other networks within minutes afterward. Several photographs were taken of the event just before, as, and after Ruby pulled the trigger. In 1964, Robert H. Jackson of the "Dallas Times Herald" was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Photography for his image of the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby.


title: Jack Ruby

text: After his arrest, Ruby said that he had been distraught over President Kennedy's death and had helped the city of Dallas "redeem" itself in the eyes of the public, and that he was "saving Mrs. Kennedy the discomfiture of coming back to trial". He also claimed he shot Oswald on the spur of the moment when the opportunity presented itself, without considering any reason for doing so. Ruby told the FBI he was "in mourning" Friday and Saturday. He said he cried when he heard the President was shot, "cried a great deal" Saturday afternoon and was depressed Saturday night. He explained that this grief was caused by him being an admirer of President Kennedy and the Kennedy family. The anguish over the assassination, Ruby stated, finally "reached the point of insanity", suddenly compelling him to shoot when Oswald walked in front of him in the basement that Sunday morning. At the time of the shooting, Ruby said he was taking phenmetrazine, a central nervous system stimulant. Ruby asked Dallas attorney Tom Howard to represent him. Howard accepted and asked Ruby if he could think of anything that might damage his defense. Ruby responded that there would be a problem if a man by the name of "Davis" should come up. Ruby told his attorney that he "... had been involved with Davis, who was a gunrunner entangled in anti-Castro efforts".


title: Jack Ruby

text: Later, Ruby replaced attorney Tom Howard with prominent San Francisco defense attorney Melvin Belli, who agreed to represent Ruby "pro bono". Ruby broke into tears at his bond hearing in January 1964, as he talked to reporters regarding the assassination of President Kennedy. His voice breaking, Ruby said that he could not understand "how a great man like that could be lost". On March 14, 1964, Ruby was convicted of murder with malice and was sentenced to death.


title: Jack Ruby

text: Ruby's conviction was overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on the grounds that "an oral confession of premeditation made while in police custody" should have been ruled inadmissible, because it violated a Texas criminal statute. The court also ruled that the venue should have been changed to a Texas county other than the one in which the high-profile crime had been committed.


title: Jack Ruby

text: Ruby died technically unconvicted, because his original conviction was overturned and his retrial was pending at the time of his death.


title: Jack Ruby

text: During the six months following Kennedy's assassination, Ruby repeatedly asked, orally and in writing, to speak to the members of the Warren Commission. The commission initially showed no interest. Only after Ruby's sister Eileen wrote letters to the commission (and her letters became public) did the Warren Commission agree to talk to Ruby. In June 1964, Chief Justice Earl Warren, then-Representative Gerald R. Ford of Michigan, and other commission members went to Dallas to see Ruby. Ruby asked Warren several times to take him to Washington D.C., saying "my life is in danger here" and that he wanted an opportunity to make additional statements. He added: "I want to tell the truth, and I can't tell it here." Warren told Ruby that he would be unable to comply, because many legal barriers would need to be overcome, and public interest in the situation would be too heavy. Warren also told Ruby that the commission would have no way of protecting him, since it had no police powers. Ruby said he wanted to convince President Lyndon Johnson that he was not part of any conspiracy to kill Kennedy.


title: Jack Ruby

text: Eventually, the appellate court agreed with Ruby's lawyers that he should be granted a new trial. On October 5, 1966, the court ruled that his motion for a change of venue before the original trial court should have been granted. Ruby's conviction and death sentence were overturned. Arrangements were underway for a new trial to be held in February 1967 in Wichita Falls, Texas, when on December 9, 1966, Ruby was admitted to Parkland Hospital in Dallas, suffering from pneumonia. A day later, doctors discovered cancer in Ruby's liver, lungs, and brain. His condition rapidly deteriorated. According to an unnamed Associated Press source, Ruby made a final statement from his hospital bed on December 19, 1966, that he alone had been responsible for the murder of Oswald. "There is nothing to hide ... There was no one else," Ruby said.


title: Jack Ruby

text: Ruby died of a pulmonary embolism, secondary to bronchogenic carcinoma, on January 3, 1967, less than a month after his cancer diagnosis, at Parkland Hospital, the same facility where Oswald and Kennedy died. He was buried beside his parents in the Westlawn Cemetery in Norridge, Illinois.


title: Jack Ruby

text: The Warren Commission found no evidence linking Ruby's killing of Oswald with any broader conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy. In 1964, the Warren Commission provided a detailed biography of Ruby's life and activities to help ascertain whether he was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy. The Commission indicated that there was not a "significant link between Ruby and organized crime" and said he acted independently in killing Oswald.


title: Jack Ruby

text: Warren Commission investigator David Belin said that postal inspector Harry Holmes arrived unannounced at the Dallas police station on the morning that Ruby shot Oswald and, upon invitation by the investigators, had questioned Oswald, thus delaying his transfer by half an hour. Belin concluded that, had Ruby been part of a conspiracy, he would have been downtown 30 minutes earlier, when Oswald had been scheduled to be transferred.


title: Jack Ruby

text: In Gerald Posner's book "Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK", Ruby's friends, relatives and associates claimed that he was upset over President Kennedy's death, even crying on occasions and closing his clubs for three days as a mark of respect. They also disputed the conspiracy claims, saying that Ruby's connection with gangsters was minimal at most and that he was not the sort of person who would be entrusted with an important assassination as part of a high-level conspiracy.


title: Jack Ruby

text: Dallas reporter Tony Zoppi, who knew Ruby well, claimed that one "would have to be crazy" to entrust Ruby with anything as important as a high-level plot to kill Kennedy since he "couldn't keep a secret for five minutes ... Jack was one of the most talkative guys you would ever meet. He'd be the worst fellow in the world to be part of a conspiracy, because he just plain talked too much." He and others described Ruby as the sort who enjoyed being at "the center of attention", trying to make friends with people and being more of a nuisance.


title: Jack Ruby

text: Some writers, including former Los Angeles District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi, dismiss Ruby's connections to organized crime as being highly minimal: "It is very noteworthy that without exception, not one of these conspiracy theorists knew or had ever met Jack Ruby. Without our even resorting to his family and roommate, all of whom think the suggestion of Ruby being connected to the mob is ridiculous, those who knew him, unanimously and without exception, think the notion of his being connected to the Mafia, and then killing Oswald for them, is nothing short of laughable."


title: Jack Ruby

text: Bill Alexander, who prosecuted Ruby for Oswald's murder, equally rejected any suggestions that Ruby was involved with organized crime, claiming that conspiracy theorists based it on the claim that "A knew B, and Ruby knew B back in 1950, so he must have known A, and that must be the link to the conspiracy."


title: Jack Ruby

text: Ruby's brother Earl denied allegations that Jack was involved in racketeering Chicago nightclubs, and author Gerald Posner suggested that witnesses may have confused Ruby with Harry Rubenstein, a convicted Chicago felon. Entertainment reporter Tony Zoppi was also dismissive of mob ties. He knew Ruby and described him as a "born loser".


title: Jack Ruby

text: Author Norman Mailer and others have questioned why Ruby would have left his two beloved dogs in his car if his killing of Oswald had been planned.


title: Jack Ruby

text: Many critics have not accepted the conclusions of the Warren Commission and have proposed several other theories. A letter from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover shows Ruby was an FBI informant as early as 1959. Ruby told another FBI informant to "watch the fireworks" shortly before JFK was killed.


title: Jack Ruby

text: White House correspondent Seth Kantor, who was a passenger in President Kennedy's motorcade, testified that after President Kennedy was shot, he had visited Parkland Hospital and that as he entered the hospital, at about 1:30 p.m., he felt a tug on his coat. He turned around to see Jack Ruby, who called him by his first name and shook his hand; he said that he had become acquainted with Ruby while he was a reporter for the "Dallas Times Herald" newspaper. According to Kantor, Ruby asked him if he thought that it would be a good idea for him to close his nightclubs for the next three nights because of the tragedy and Kantor responded without thinking that doing so would be a good idea.


title: Jack Ruby

text: Ruby denied he had been at Parkland Hospital and the Warren Commission dismissed Kantor's testimony, saying that the encounter at Parkland Hospital would have had to take place in a span of a few minutes before and after 1:30 pm, as evidenced by telephone company records of calls made by both people then. The commission also pointed to contradictory witness testimony and to the lack of video confirmation of Ruby at the scene. The Commission concluded that "Kantor probably did not see Ruby at Parkland Hospital" and "may have been mistaken about both the time and the place that he saw Ruby".


title: Jack Ruby

text: In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations reexamined Kantor's testimony and stated, "While the Warren Commission concluded that Kantor was mistaken [about his Parkland encounter with Ruby], the Committee determined he probably was not."


title: Jack Ruby

text: Kantor also reported that Ruby might have tampered with evidence while at Parkland. Goaded by the Warren Commission's dismissal of his testimony, Kantor researched the Ruby case for years. In a later published book "Who Was Jack Ruby?", Kantor wrote:


title: Jack Ruby

text: The mob was Ruby's "friend." And Ruby could well have been paying off an IOU the day he was used to kill Lee Harvey Oswald. Remember: "I have been used for a purpose," the way Ruby expressed it to Chief Justice Warren in their June 7, 1964 session. It would not have been hard for the mob to maneuver Ruby through the ranks of a few negotiable police [to kill Oswald].


title: Jack Ruby

text: ... Ruby's shooting of Oswald was not a spontaneous act, in that it involved at least some premeditation. Similarly, the committee believed it was less likely that Ruby entered the police basement without assistance, even though the assistance may have been provided with no knowledge of Ruby's intentions ... The committee was troubled by the apparently unlocked doors along the stairway route and the removal of security guards from the area of the garage nearest the stairway shortly before the shooting ... There is also evidence that the Dallas Police Department withheld relevant information from the Warren Commission concerning Ruby's entry to the scene of the Oswald transfer.


title: Jack Ruby

text: Lieutenant Billy Grammer, a dispatcher for the Dallas Police Department, said he received an anonymous phone call at 3 a.m. on November 24 from a man who knew his name. The caller told him that he knew of the plan to move Oswald from the basement and warned that unless the plans for Oswald's transfer were changed, "we are going to kill him". After Oswald was shot, Grammer, who knew Ruby, and found the caller's voice familiar, claimed to recognise Ruby as the caller. Grammer believed that Ruby's shooting of Oswald was "a planned event".


title: Jack Ruby

text: Detective Don Archer testified to the Warren Commission that when he said to Ruby, "Jack, I think you killed him." Ruby looked him straight in the eye and said, "Well, I intended to shoot him three times." Kantor believed that Ruby's response to Archer did not suggest a spontaneous reaction, and the word "intended" implied having prior intention.


title: Jack Ruby

text: Ruby's explanation for killing Oswald would be "exposed ... as a fabricated legal ploy", according to the House Select Committee on Assassinations. In a private note to one of his attorneys, Joseph Tonahill, Ruby wrote: "Joe, you should know this. My first lawyer Tom Howard told me to say that I shot Oswald so that Caroline and Mrs. Kennedy wouldn't have to come to Dallas to testify. OK?"


title: Jack Ruby

text: G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations from 1977 to 1979, said: "The most plausible explanation for the murder of Oswald by Jack Ruby was that Ruby had stalked him on behalf of organized crime, trying to reach him on at least three occasions in the forty-eight hours before he silenced him forever."


title: Jack Ruby

text: Russell Moore, an acquaintance of Ruby, testified to the Commission that Ruby expressed no bitterness towards Oswald and called him "a good looking guy" comparing him to Paul Newman.


title: Jack Ruby

text: In his book "Contract on America", David Scheim noted that while some people claimed that Ruby was upset over the weekend of the assassination, others said that he was not. On Friday night, TV newsman Vic Robertson Jr. saw Ruby at police headquarters and said that he "appeared to be anything but under stress or strain. He seemed happy, jovial, was joking and laughing". Announcer Glen Duncan also said that Ruby "was not grieving" and seemed "happy that evidence was piling up against Oswald".


title: Jack Ruby

text: Scheim also suggests that Ruby made a "candid confession" when giving testimony to the Warren Commission. During his testimony, Ruby teared up when talking about a Saturday morning eulogy for President Kennedy, but after composing himself, inexplicably said, "I must be a great actor, I tell you that." Ruby also remarked that "they didn't ask me another question: 'If I loved the President so much, why wasn't I at the parade?'" (referring to the presidential motorcade) and "it's strange that perhaps I didn't vote for President Kennedy, or didn't vote at all, that I should build up such a great affection for him".


title: Jack Ruby

text: Scheim noted that Jada, a stripper at Ruby's club, during an interview with ABC's Paul Good, remarked "I believe [Ruby] disliked Bobby Kennedy".


title: Jack Ruby

text: Schiem also noted several people who knew Ruby, who claimed that the patriotic statements Ruby professed were quite out of character. Harry Hall, Ruby's partner in a gambling operation, told the FBI that "Ruby was the type who was interested in any way to make money" and also said that he "could not conceive of Ruby doing anything out of patriotism". Jack Kelly, who had known Ruby casually since 1943, "scoffed at the idea of a patriotic motive being involved by Ruby in the slaying of Oswald", and "could not see Ruby" killing Oswald "out of patriotism" but "for publicity


title: Jack Ruby

text: or...for money". Ruby's friend, Paul Jones, told the FBI that "he doubted that [Ruby] would have become emotionally upset and killed Oswald on the spur of the moment. He felt Ruby would have done it for money."


title: Jack Ruby

text: Following Ruby's March 1964 conviction for murder with malice, Ruby's lawyers, led by Sam Houston Clinton, appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the highest criminal court in Texas. Ruby's lawyers argued that he could not have received a fair trial in Dallas because of the excessive publicity surrounding the case. A year after his conviction, in March 1965, Ruby conducted a brief televised news conference in which he stated: "Everything pertaining to what's happening has never come to the surface. The world will never know the true facts of what occurred, my motives. The people who had so much to gain, and had such an ulterior motive for putting me in the position I'm in, will never let the true facts come above board to the world." When asked by a reporter, "Are these people in very high positions, Jack?", he responded "Yes."


title: Jack Ruby

text: Kantor speculated in 1978 that the man by the name of "Davis" that Ruby mentioned to his attorney, Tom Howard, may have been Thomas Eli Davis III, a CIA-connected mercenary.


title: Jack Ruby

text: Dallas Deputy Sheriff Al Maddox claimed: "Ruby told me, he said, 'Well, they injected me for a cold.' He said it was cancer cells. That's what he told me, Ruby did. I said you don't believe that bullshit. He said, 'I damn sure do!' [Then] one day when I started to leave, Ruby shook hands with me and I could feel a piece of paper in his palm ... [In this note] he said it was a conspiracy and he said ... if you will keep your eyes open and your mouth shut, you're gonna learn a lot. And that was the last letter I ever got from him." In the note, Ruby claimed he was part of a conspiracy, and that his role was to silence Oswald.


title: Jack Ruby

text: Not long before Ruby died, according to an article in the London "Sunday Times", he told psychiatrist Werner Teuter that the assassination was "an act of overthrowing the government" and that he knew "who had President Kennedy killed". He added: "I am doomed. I do not want to die. But I am not insane. I was framed to kill Oswald."


title: Jack Ruby

text: David Scheim presented evidence that Mafia leaders Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante, Jr., as well as organized labor leader Jimmy Hoffa, ordered the assassination of President Kennedy. Scheim cited in particular a 25-fold increase in the number of out-of-state telephone calls from Jack Ruby to associates of these crime bosses in the months before the assassination. According to author Vincent Bugliosi, both the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations determined all of these calls were related to Ruby seeking help from the American Guild of Variety Artists in a matter concerning two of his competitors. The House Select Committee on Assassinations report stated "... that most of Ruby's phone calls during late 1963 were related to his labor troubles. In the light of the identity of some of the individuals with whom Ruby spoke, however, the possibility of other matters being discussed could not be dismissed."


title: Jack Ruby

text: In his memoir, "Bound by Honor", Bill Bonanno, son of New York Mafia boss Joseph Bonanno, stated that he realized that certain Mafia families were involved in the JFK assassination when Ruby killed Oswald, since Bonanno was aware that Ruby was an associate of Chicago mobster Sam Giancana.


title: Jack Ruby

text: In 1979, fifteen years after the Warren report, the House Select Committee on Assassinations undertook a similar investigation of Ruby and said that he "had a significant number of associations and direct and indirect contacts with underworld figures" and "the Dallas criminal element" but that he was not a "member" of organized crime.


title: Jack Ruby

text: Ruby was known to have been acquainted with both the police and the Mafia. The HSCA said that Ruby had known Chicago mobster Sam Giancana (1908–1975) and Joseph Campisi (1918–1990) since 1947, and had been seen with them on many occasions. After an investigation of Joe Campisi, the HSCA found:


title: Jack Ruby

text: While Campisi's technical characterization in federal law enforcement records as an organized crime member has ranged from definite to suspected to negative, it is clear that he was an associate or friend of many Dallas-based organized crime members, particularly Joseph Civello, during the time he was the head of the Dallas organization. There was no indication that Campisi had engaged in any specific organized crime-related activities.


title: Jack Ruby

text: Similarly, a PBS "Frontline" investigation into the connections between Ruby and Dallas organized crime figures reported the following:


title: Jack Ruby

text: In 1963, Sam and Joe Campisi were leading figures in the Dallas underworld. Jack knew the Campisis and had been seen with them on many occasions. The Campisis were lieutenants of Carlos Marcello, the Mafia boss who had reportedly talked of killing the President.


title: Jack Ruby

text: On the night before Kennedy was assassinated, Ruby and Joe Campisi had dinner together at Campisi's restaurant, the Egyptian Lounge. After Ruby was jailed for killing Lee Oswald, Joe Campisi "regularly visited" Ruby.


title: Jack Ruby

text: Howard P. Willens—the third-highest official in the Department of Justice and assistant counsel to J. Lee Rankin—helped organize the Warren Commission. Willens also outlined the commission's investigative priorities and terminated an investigation of Ruby's Cuban related activities. An FBI report states that Willens's father had been Tony Accardo's next door neighbor going back to 1958. In 1946, Tony Accardo allegedly asked Jack Ruby to go to Texas with Mafia associates Pat Manno and Romie Nappi to make sure that Dallas County Sheriff Steve Gutherie would acquiesce to the Mafia's expansion into Dallas.


title: Jack Ruby

text: Four years before the assassination of President Kennedy, Ruby went to see a man named Lewis McWillie in Cuba. Ruby considered McWillie, who had previously run illegal gambling establishments in Texas, to be one of his closest friends. At the time Ruby visited him, in August 1959, McWillie was supervising gambling activities at Havana's Tropicana Club. Ruby told the Warren Commission that his August trip to Cuba was merely a social visit at the invitation of McWillie. The House Select Committee on Assassinations would later conclude that Ruby "... most likely was serving as a courier for gambling interests". The committee also found "circumstantial," but not conclusive, evidence that "... Ruby met with [Mafia boss] Santo Trafficante in Cuba sometime in 1959."


title: Jack Ruby

text: Robert Blakey, who was the chief counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, wrote: "It is difficult to dispute the underworld pedigree of Jack Ruby, though the Warren Commission did it in 1964. Author Gerald Posner similarly ignores Ruby's ties to Joseph Civello, the organized crime boss in Dallas. His relationship with Joseph Campisi, the No. 2 man in the mob in Dallas, is even more difficult to ignore. In fact, Campisi and Ruby were close friends; they had dinner together at Campisi's restaurant, the Egyptian Lounge, on the night before the assassination. After Ruby was jailed for killing Oswald, Campisi regularly visited him. The select committee thought Campisi's connection to [Carlos] Marcello was telling; he told us, for example, that every year at Christmas he sent 260 pounds of Italian sausage to Marcello, a sort of Mafia tribute. We also learned that he called New Orleans up to 20 times a day."


title: Jack Ruby

text: James E. Beaird, who claimed to be a poker-playing friend of Jack Ruby, told both "The Dallas Morning News" and the FBI that Ruby smuggled guns and ammunition from Galveston Bay, Texas to Fidel Castro's guerrillas in Cuba in the late 1950s. Beaird said that Ruby "was in it for the money. It wouldn't matter which side, just [whichever] one that would pay him the most." Beaird said that the guns were stored in a two-story house near the waterfront, and that he saw Ruby and his associates load "many boxes of new guns, including automatic rifles and handguns" on a 50-foot military-surplus boat. He claimed that "each time that the boat left with guns and ammunition, Jack Ruby was on the boat."


title: Jack Ruby

text: Blaney Mack Johnson, an FBI informant, said Ruby was "active in arranging illegal flights of weapons from Miami" to pro-Castro forces in Cuba in the early 1950s.


title: Ashoka

text: Ashoka (, ; also "Asoka"; 304 – 232 BCE), popularly known as Ashoka the Great, was the 3rd Emperor of the Mauryan Empire to rule over whole of Indian subcontinent during to 232 BCE. The most famous and successful ruler of the dynasty, and the first Indian monarch to rule on the entire subcontinent stretching from present-day Iran in the west to present-day Myanmar in the east, with its capital at Pataliputra, Ashoka is remembered for playing an important role in the spread of Buddhism across ancient Asia.


title: Ashoka

text: Much of the information about Ashoka comes from his Brahmi edicts, which are among the earliest long inscriptions of ancient India, and the Buddhist legends written centuries after his death. Ashoka was son of Emperor Bindusara Maurya, and a grandson of the dynasty's founder Emperor Chandragupta Maurya. During his father's reign, he served as the governor of Ujjain in central India. According to some Buddhist legends, he also suppressed a revolt in Takshashila as a prince, and after his father's death, killed his brothers to ascend the throne.


title: Ashoka

text: Ashoka's edicts state that during his eighth regnal year (c. 260 BCE), he conquered Kalinga after a brutal war, and the destruction caused by the war made him repent violence. This claim is omitted in his inscriptions found in the Kalinga region, possibly because Ashoka considered it politically inappropriate to admit his remorse before the people of Kalinga, or because the claims made in the edicts are not fully accurate and are meant to impress the people of other regions. Ashoka subsequently devoted himself to the propagation of "dhamma" or righteous conduct, the major theme of the edicts.


title: Ashoka

text: Ashoka's edicts suggest that a few years after the Kalinga war, he was gradually drawn towards Buddhism. The Buddhist legends do not mention the Kalinga war at all, and variously state that Ashoka converted to Buddhism after being dissatisfied with the leaders of the other faiths or after witnessing miracles performed by Buddhist leaders. They credit Ashoka with establishing a large number of stupas, patronising the Third Buddhist council, supporting Buddhist missionaries, making generous donations to the sangha, and even persecuting non-Buddhists. The historicity of these legends is debated among modern historians, as they are often inconsistent with the edicts and among themselves, contain mythological elements, and exaggerate Ashoka's wickedness before and his piousness after his conversion to Buddhism. Ashoka's own edicts suggest that he favoured Buddhism, but also patronised the other major contemporary faiths including Brahmanism, Jainism, and Ājīvikaism.


title: Ashoka

text: Ashoka's existence as a historical king had almost been forgotten, but this changed with the decipherment of the Brahmi script in the 19th century. Historians connected the titles Priyadasi and Devanampriya mentioned in his edicts to the Ashoka of Buddhist legends, and established Ashoka's reputation as one of the greatest Indian emperors. The emblem of the modern Republic of India is an adaptation of the Lion Capital of Ashoka.


title: Ashoka

text: Information about Ashoka comes from his inscriptions; other inscriptions that mention him or are possibly from his reign; and ancient literature, especially Buddhist texts. These sources often contradict each other, although various historians have attempted to correlate their testimony. So, for example, while Ashoka is often attributed with building many hospitals during his time, there is no clear evidence that any hospitals existed in ancient India during the 3rd century BC or that Ashoka was responsible for commissioning the construction of any.


title: Ashoka

text: Ashoka's inscriptions are the earliest self-representations of imperial power in the Indian subcontinent. However, these inscriptions are focused mainly on the topic of "dhamma", and provide little information regarding other aspects of the Maurya state and society. Even on the topic of "dhamma", the content of these inscriptions cannot be taken at face value. In the words of American academic John S. Strong, it is sometimes helpful to think of Ashoka's messages as propaganda by a politician whose aim is to present a favourable image of himself and his administration, rather than record historical facts.


title: Ashoka

text: A small number of other inscriptions also provide some information about Ashoka. For example, he finds a mention in the 2nd century Junagadh rock inscription of Rudradaman. An inscription discovered at Sirkap mentions a lost word beginning with "Priy", which is theorised to be Ashoka's title "Priyadarshi", although this is not certain. Some other inscriptions, such as the Sohgaura copper plate inscription, have been tentatively dated to Ashoka's period by a section of scholars, although others contest this.


title: Ashoka

text: Much of the information about Ashoka comes from Buddhist legends, which present him as a great, ideal king. These legends appear in texts that are not contemporary to Ashoka and were composed by Buddhist authors, who used various stories to illustrate the impact of their faith on Ashoka. This makes it necessary to exercise caution while relying on them for historical information. Among modern scholars, opinions range from downright dismissal of these legends as mythological to acceptance of all historical portions that seem plausible.


title: Ashoka

text: The Buddhist legends about Ashoka exist in several languages, including Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, Chinese, Burmese, Sinhala, Thai, Lao, and Khotanese. All these legends can be traced to two primary traditions:


title: Ashoka

text: There are several significant differences between the two traditions. For example, the Sri Lankan tradition emphasizes Ashoka's role in convening the Third Buddhist council, and his dispatch of several missionaries to distant regions, including his son Mahinda to Sri Lanka. However, the North Indian tradition makes no mention of these events. It describes other events not found in the Sri Lankan tradition, such as a story about another son named Kunala.


title: Ashoka

text: Even while narrating the common stories, the two traditions diverge in several ways. For example, both "Ashokavadana" and "Mahavamsa" mention that Ashoka's queen Tishyarakshita had the Bodhi Tree destroyed. In "Ashokavadana", the queen manages to have the tree healed after she realises her mistake. In the "Mahavamsa", she permanently destroys the tree, but only after a branch of the tree has been transplanted in Sri Lanka. In another story, both the texts describe Ashoka's unsuccessful attempts to collect a relic of Gautama Buddha from Ramagrama. In "Ashokavadana", he fails to do so because he cannot match the devotion of the Nagas who hold the relic; however, in the "Mahavamsa", he fails to do so because the Buddha had destined the relic to be enshrined by King Dutthagamani of Sri Lanka. Using such stories, the "Mahavamsa" glorifies Sri Lanka as the new preserve of Buddhism.


title: Ashoka

text: Numismatic, sculptural, and archaeological evidence supplements research on Ashoka. Ashoka's name appears in the lists of Mauryan kings in the various Puranas. However, these texts do not provide further details about him, as their Brahmanical authors were not patronised by the Mauryans. Other texts, such as the "Arthashastra" and "Indica of Megasthenes", which provide general information about the Maurya period, can also be used to make inferences about Ashoka's reign. However, the "Arthashastra" is a normative text that focuses on an ideal rather than a historical state, and its dating to the Mauryan period is a subject of debate. The "Indica" is a lost work, and only parts of it survive in the form of paraphrases in later writings.


title: Ashoka

text: The 12th-century text "Rajatarangini" mentions a Kashmiri king Ashoka of Gonandiya dynasty who built several stupas: some scholars, such as Aurel Stein, have identified this king with the Maurya king Ashoka; others, such as Ananda W. P. Guruge dismiss this identification as inaccurate.


title: Ashoka

text: For some scholars such as Christopher I. Beckwith, Ashoka, whose name only appears in the Minor Rock Edicts, is not the same as king Piyadasi, or "Devanampiya" Piyadasi (i.e. "Beloved of the Gods Piyadasi", "Beloved of the Gods" being a fairly widespread title for "King"), who is named as the author of the Major Pillar Edicts and the Major Rock Edicts.


title: Ashoka

text: Beckwith suggests that Piyadasi was living in the 3rd century BCE, was probably the son of Chandragupta Maurya known to the Greeks as Amitrochates, and only advocated for piety ("Dharma") in his Major Pillar Edicts and Major Rock Edicts, without ever mentioning Buddhism, the Buddha or the Samgha (the single notable exception is the 7th Edict of the Major Pillar Edicts which does mention the Samgha, but is a considered a later fake by Beckwith). Also, the geographical spread of his inscription shows that Piyadasi ruled a vast Empire, contiguous with the Seleucid Empire in the West.


title: Ashoka

text: On the contrary, for Beckwith, Ashoka was a later king of the 1st–2nd century CE, whose name only appears explicitly in the Minor Rock Edicts and allusively in the Minor Pillar Edicts, and who does mention the Buddha and the Samgha, explicitly promoting Buddhism. The name "Priyadarsi" does occur in two of the minor edicts (Gujarra and Bairat), but Beckwith again considers them as later fabrications. The minor inscriptions cover a very different and much smaller geographical area, clustering in Central India. According to Beckwith, the inscriptions of this later Ashoka were typical of the later forms of "normative Buddhism", which are well attested from inscriptions and Gandhari manuscripts dated to the turn of the millennium, and around the time of the Kushan Empire. The quality of the inscriptions of this Ashoka is significantly lower than the quality of the inscriptions of the earlier Piyadasi.


title: Ashoka

text: The name "A-shoka" literally means "without sorrow". According to an "Ashokavadana" legend, his mother gave him this name because his birth removed her sorrows.


title: Ashoka

text: The name Priyadasi is associated with Ashoka in the 3rd–4th century CE "Dipavamsa". The term literally means "he who regards amiably", or "of gracious mien" (Sanskrit: Priya-darshi). It may have been a regnal name adopted by Ashoka. A version of this name is used for Ashoka in Greek-language inscriptions: βασιλεὺς Πιοδασσης ("Basileus Piodassēs").


title: Ashoka

text: Ashoka's inscriptions mention his title "Devanampiya" (Sanskrit: "Devanampriya", "Beloved of the Gods"). The identification of Devanampiya and Ashoka as the same person is established by the Maski and Gujarra inscriptions, which use both these terms for the king. The title was adopted by other kings, including the contemporary king Devanampiya Tissa of Anuradhapura and Ashoka's descendant Dasharatha Maurya.


title: Ashoka

text: The exact date of Ashoka's birth is not certain, as the extant contemporary Indian texts did not record such details. It is known that he lived in the 3rd century BCE, as his inscriptions mention several contemporary rulers whose dates are known with more certainty, such as Antiochus II Theos, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, Antigonus II Gonatas, Magas of Cyrene, and Alexander (of Epirus or Corinth). Thus, Ashoka must have been born sometime in the late 4th century BCE or early 3rd century BCE (),


title: Ashoka

text: Ashoka's own inscriptions are fairly detailed but make no mention of his ancestors. Other sources, such as the Puranas and the "Mahavamsa" state that his father was the Mauryan emperor Bindusara, and his grandfather was Chandragupta – the founder of the Empire. The "Ashokavadana" also names his father as Bindusara, but traces his ancestry to Buddha's contemporary king Bimbisara, through Ajatashatru, Udayin, Munda, Kakavarnin, Sahalin, Tulakuchi, Mahamandala, Prasenajit, and Nanda. The 16th century Tibetan monk Taranatha, whose account is a distorted version of the earlier traditions, describes Ashoka as the illegitimate son of king Nemita of Champarana from the daughter of a merchant.


title: Ashoka

text: "Ashokavadana" states that Ashoka's mother was the daughter of a Brahmin from Champa, and was prophesied to marry a king. Accordingly, her father took her to Pataliputra, where she was inducted into Bindusara's harem, and ultimately, became his chief queen. The "Ashokavadana" does not mention her by name, although other legends provide different names for her. For example, the "Asokavadanamala" calls her Subhadrangi. The "Vamsatthapakasini" or "Mahavamsa-tika", a commentary on "Mahavamsa", calls her "Dharma" ("Dhamma" in Pali), and states that she belonged to the Moriya Kshatriya clan. A "Divyavadana" legend calls her Janapada-kalyani; according to scholar Ananda W. P. Guruge, this is not a name, but an epithet.


title: Ashoka

text: According to the 2nd-century historian Appian, Chandragupta entered into a marital alliance with the Greek ruler Seleucus I Nicator, which has led to speculation that either Chandragupta or his son Bindusara married a Greek princess. However, there is no evidence that Ashoka's mother or grandmother was Greek, and most historians have dismissed the idea.


title: Ashoka

text: Ashoka's own inscriptions do not describe his early life, and much of the information on this topic comes from apocryphal legends written hundreds of years after him. While these legends include obviously fictitious details such as narratives of Ashoka's past lives, they have some plausible historical information about Ashoka's period.


title: Ashoka

text: According to the "Ashokavadana", Bindusara disliked Ashoka because of his rough skin. One day, Bindusara asked the ascetic Pingala-vatsajiva to determine which of his sons was worthy of being his successor. He asked all the princes to assemble at the Garden of the Golden Pavilion on the ascetic's advice. Ashoka was reluctant to go because his father disliked him, but his mother convinced him to do so. When minister Radhagupta saw Ashoka leaving the capital for the Garden, he offered to provide the prince with a royal elephant for the travel. At the Garden, Pingala-vatsajiva examined the princes and realised that Ashoka would be the next king. To avoid annoying Bindusara, the ascetic refused to name the successor. Instead, he said that one who had the best mount, seat, drink, vessel and food would be the next king; each time, Ashoka declared that he met the criterion. Later, he told Ashoka's mother that her son would be the next king, and on her advice, left the kingdom to avoid Bindusara's wrath.


title: Ashoka

text: While legends suggest that Bindusara disliked Ashoka's ugly appearance, they also state that Bindusara gave him important responsibilities, such as suppressing a revolt in Takshashila (according to north Indian tradition) and governing Ujjain (according to Sri Lankan tradition). This suggests that Bindusara was impressed by the other qualities of the prince. Another possibility is that he sent Ashoka to distant regions to keep him away from the imperial capital.


title: Ashoka

text: According to the "Ashokavadana", Bindusara dispatched prince Ashoka to suppress a rebellion in the city of Takshashila (present-day Bhir Mound in Pakistan). This episode is not mentioned in the Sri Lankan tradition, which instead states that Bindusara sent Ashoka to govern Ujjain. Two other Buddhist texts – "Ashoka-sutra" and "Kunala-sutra" – state that Bindusara appointed Ashoka as a viceroy in Gandhara (where Takshashila was located), not Ujjain.


title: Ashoka

text: The "Ashokavadana" states that Bindusara provided Ashoka with a fourfold-army (comprising cavalry, elephants, chariots and infantry) but refused to provide any weapons for this army. Ashoka declared that weapons would appear before him if he was worthy of being a king, and then, the deities emerged from the earth and provided weapons to the army. When Ashoka reached Takshashila, the citizens welcomed him and told him that their rebellion was only against the evil ministers, not the king. Sometime later, Ashoka was similarly welcomed in the Khasa territory and the gods declared that he would go on to conquer the whole earth.


title: Ashoka

text: Takshashila was a prosperous and geopolitically influential city, and historical evidence proves that by Ashoka's time, it was well-connected to the Mauryan capital Pataliputra by the "Uttarapatha" trade route. However, no extant contemporary source mentions the Takshashila rebellion, and none of Ashoka's records states that he ever visited the city. That said, the historicity of the legend about Ashoka's involvement in the Takshashila rebellion may be corroborated by an Aramaic-language inscription discovered at Sirkap near Taxila. The inscription includes a name that begins with the letters "prydr", and most scholars restore it as "Priyadarshi", which was the title of Ashoka. Another evidence of Ashoka's connection to the city may be the name of the Dharmarajika Stupa near Taxila; the name suggests that it was built by Ashoka ("Dharma-raja").


title: Ashoka

text: The story about the deities miraculously bringing weapons to Ashoka may be the text's way of deifying Ashoka; or indicating that Bindusara – who disliked Ashoka – wanted him to fail in Takshashila.


title: Ashoka

text: According to the "Mahavamsa", Bindusara appointed Ashoka as the viceroy of present-day Ujjain (Ujjeni), which was an important administrative and commercial centre in the Avanti province of central India. This tradition is corroborated by the Saru Maru inscription discovered in central India; this inscription states that he visited the place as a prince. Ashoka's own rock edict mentions the presence of a prince viceroy at Ujjain during his reign, which further supports the tradition that he himself served as a viceroy at Ujjain.


title: Ashoka

text: Pataliputra was connected to Ujjain by multiple routes in Ashoka's time, and on the way, Ashoka entourage may have encamped at Rupnath, where his inscription has been found.


title: Ashoka

text: According to the Sri Lankan tradition, Ashoka visited Vidisha, where he fell in love with a beautiful woman on his way to Ujjain. According to the "Dipamvamsa" and "Mahamvamsa", the woman was Devi – the daughter of a merchant. According to the "Mahabodhi-vamsa", she was Vidisha-Mahadevi and belonged to the Shakya clan of Gautama Buddha. The Buddhist chroniclers may have fabricated the Shakya connection to connect Ashoka's family to Buddha. The Buddhist texts allude to her being a Buddhist in her later years but do not describe her conversion to Buddhism. Therefore, it is likely that she was already a Buddhist when she met Ashoka.


title: Ashoka

text: The "Mahavamsa" states that Devi gave birth to Ashoka's son Mahinda in Ujjain, and two years later, to a daughter named Sanghamitta. According to the "Mahavamsa", Ashoka's son Mahinda was ordained at the age of 20 years, during the sixth year of Ashoka's reign. That means Mahinda must have been 14 years old when Ashoka ascended the throne. Even if Mahinda was born when Ashoka was as young as 20 years old, Ashoka must have ascended the throne at 34 years, which means he must have served as a viceroy for several years.


title: Ashoka

text: "Ashokavadana" states that Bindusara's eldest son Susima once slapped a bald minister on his head in jest. The minister worried that after ascending the throne, Susima may jokingly hurt him with a sword. Therefore, he instigated five hundred ministers to support Ashoka's claim to the throne when the time came, noting that Ashoka was predicted to become a "chakravartin" (universal ruler). Sometime later, Takshashila rebelled again, and Bindusara dispatched Susima to curb the rebellion. Shortly after, Bindusara fell ill and was expected to die soon. Susima was still in Takshashila, having been unsuccessful in suppressing the rebellion. Bindusara recalled him to the capital and asked Ashoka to march to Takshashila. However, the ministers told him that Ashoka was ill and suggested that he temporarily install Ashoka on the throne until Susmia's return from Takshashila. When Bindusara refused to do so, Ashoka declared that if the throne were rightfully his, the gods would crown him as the next king. At that instance, the gods did so, Bindusara died, and Ashoka's authority extended to the entire world, including the Yaksha territory located above the earth and the Naga territory located below the earth. When Susima returned to the capital, Ashoka's newly appointed prime minister Radhagupta tricked him into a pit of charcoal. Susima died a painful death, and his general Bhadrayudha became a Buddhist monk.


title: Ashoka

text: The "Mahavamsa" states that when Bindusara fell sick, Ashoka returned to Pataliputra from Ujjain and gained control of the capital. After his father's death, Ashoka had his eldest brother killed and ascended the throne. The text also states that Ashoka killed ninety-nine of his half-brothers, including Sumana. The "Dipavamsa" states that he killed a hundred of his brothers and was crowned four years later. The "Vamsatthapakasini" adds that an Ajivika ascetic had predicted this massacre based on the interpretation of a dream of Ashoka's mother. According to these accounts, only Ashoka's uterine brother Tissa was spared. Other sources name the surviving brother Vitashoka, Vigatashoka, Sudatta (So-ta-to in "A-yi-uang-chuan"), or Sugatra (Siu-ka-tu-lu in "Fen-pie-kung-te-hun").


title: Ashoka

text: The figures such as 99 and 100 are exaggerated and seem to be a way of stating that Ashoka killed several of his brothers. Taranatha states that Ashoka, who was an illegitimate son of his predecessor, killed six legitimate princes to ascend the throne. It is possible that Ashoka was not the rightful heir to the throne and killed a brother (or brothers) to acquire the throne. However, the Buddhist sources have exaggerated the story, which attempts to portray him as evil before his conversion to Buddhism. Ashoka's Rock Edict No. 5 mentions officers whose duties include supervising the welfare of "the families of his brothers, sisters, and other relatives". This suggests that more than one of his brothers survived his ascension. However, some scholars oppose this suggestion, arguing that the inscription talks only about the "families" of his brothers, not the brothers themselves.


title: Ashoka

text: According to the Sri Lankan texts "Mahavamsa" and the "Dipavamsa", Ashoka ascended the throne 218 years after the death of Gautama Buddha and ruled for 37 years. The date of the Buddha's death is itself a matter of debate, and the North Indian tradition states that Ashoka ruled a hundred years after the Buddha's death, which has led to further debates about the date.


title: Ashoka

text: Assuming that the Sri Lankan tradition is correct, and assuming that the Buddha died in 483 BCE – a date proposed by several scholars – Ashoka must have ascended the throne in 265 BCE. The Puranas state that Ashoka's father Bindusara reigned for 25 years, not 28 years as specified in the Sri Lankan tradition. If this is true, Ashoka's ascension can be dated three years earlier, to 268 BCE. Alternatively, if the Sri Lankan tradition is correct, but if we assume that the Buddha died in 486 BCE (a date supported by the Cantonese Dotted Record), Ashoka's ascension can be dated to 268 BCE. The "Mahavamsa" states that Ashoka consecrated himself as the king four years after becoming a sovereign. This interregnum can be explained assuming that he fought a war of succession with other sons of Bindusara during these four years.


title: Ashoka

text: The "Ashokavadana" contains a story about Ashoka's minister Yashas hiding the sun with his hand. Professor P. H. L. Eggermont theorised that this story was a reference to a partial solar eclipse that was seen in northern India on 4 May 249 BCE. According to the "Ashokavadana", Ashoka went on a pilgrimage to various Buddhist sites sometime after this eclipse. Ashoka's Rummindei pillar inscription states that he visited Lumbini during his 21st regnal year. Assuming this visit was a part of the pilgrimage described in the text, and assuming that Ashoka visited Lumbini around 1–2 years after the solar eclipse, the ascension date of 268–269 BCE seems more likely. However, this theory is not universally accepted. For example, according to John S. Strong, the event described in the "Ashokavadana" has nothing to do with chronology, and Eggermont's interpretation grossly ignores the literary and religious context of the legend.


title: Ashoka

text: Both Sri Lankan and North Indian traditions assert that Ashoka was a violent person before Buddhism. Taranatha also states that Ashoka was initially called "Kamashoka" because he spent many years in pleasurable pursuits ("kama"); he was then called "Chandashoka" ("Ashoka the fierce") because he spent some years performing evil deeds; and finally, he came to be known as Dhammashoka ("Ashoka the righteous") after his conversion to Buddhism.


title: Ashoka

text: The 5th-century Chinese traveller Faxian states that Ashoka personally visited the underworld to study torture methods there and then invented his methods. The 7th-century traveller Xuanzang claims to have seen a pillar marking the site of Ashoka's "Hell".


title: Ashoka

text: The "Mahavamsa" also briefly alludes to Ashoka's cruelty, stating that Ashoka was earlier called Chandashoka because of his evil deeds but came to be called Dharmashoka because of his pious acts after his conversion to Buddhism. However, unlike the north Indian tradition, the Sri Lankan texts do not mention any specific evil deeds performed by Ashoka, except his killing of 99 of his brothers.


title: Ashoka

text: Such descriptions of Ashoka as an evil person before his conversion to Buddhism appear to be a fabrication of the Buddhist authors, who attempted to present the change that Buddhism brought to him as a miracle. In an attempt to dramatise this change, such legends exaggerate Ashoka's past wickedness and his piousness after the conversion.


title: Ashoka

text: Ashoka's inscriptions mention that he conquered the Kalinga region during his 8th regnal year: the destruction caused during the war made him repent violence, and in the subsequent years, he was drawn towards Buddhism. Edict 13 of the Edicts of Ashoka Rock Inscriptions expresses the great remorse the king felt after observing the destruction of Kalinga:


title: Ashoka

text: On the other hand, the Sri Lankan tradition suggests that Ashoka was already a devoted Buddhist by his 8th regnal year, converted to Buddhism during his 4th regnal year, and constructed 84,000 viharas during his 5th–7th regnal years. The Buddhist legends make no mention of the Kalinga campaign.