title: Tornado

text: In Canada, a similar network of volunteer weather watchers, called Canwarn, helps spot severe weather, with more than 1,000 volunteers. In Europe, several nations are organizing spotter networks under the auspices of Skywarn Europe and the Tornado and Storm Research Organisation (TORRO) has maintained a network of spotters in the United Kingdom since 1974.


title: Tornado

text: Storm spotters are required because radar systems such as NEXRAD detect signatures that suggest the presence of tornadoes, rather than tornadoes as such. Radar may give a warning before there is any visual evidence of a tornado or an imminent one, but ground truth from an observer can give definitive information. The spotter's ability to see what radar cannot is especially important as distance from the radar site increases, because the radar beam becomes progressively higher in altitude further away from the radar, chiefly due to curvature of Earth, and the beam also spreads out.


title: Tornado

text: Storm spotters are trained to discern whether or not a storm seen from a distance is a supercell. They typically look to its rear, the main region of updraft and inflow. Under that updraft is a rain-free base, and the next step of tornadogenesis is the formation of a rotating wall cloud. The vast majority of intense tornadoes occur with a wall cloud on the backside of a supercell.


title: Tornado

text: Evidence of a supercell is based on the storm's shape and structure, and cloud tower features such as a hard and vigorous updraft tower, a persistent, large overshooting top, a hard anvil (especially when backsheared against strong upper level winds), and a corkscrew look or striations. Under the storm and closer to where most tornadoes are found, evidence of a supercell and the likelihood of a tornado includes inflow bands (particularly when curved) such as a "beaver tail", and other clues such as strength of inflow, warmth and moistness of inflow air, how outflow- or inflow-dominant a storm appears, and how far is the front flank precipitation core from the wall cloud. Tornadogenesis is most likely at the interface of the updraft and rear flank downdraft, and requires a balance between the outflow and inflow.


title: Tornado

text: Only wall clouds that rotate spawn tornadoes, and they usually precede the tornado between five and thirty minutes. Rotating wall clouds may be a visual manifestation of a low-level mesocyclone. Barring a low-level boundary, tornadogenesis is highly unlikely unless a rear flank downdraft occurs, which is usually visibly evidenced by evaporation of cloud adjacent to a corner of a wall cloud. A tornado often occurs as this happens or shortly afterwards; first, a funnel cloud dips and in nearly all cases by the time it reaches halfway down, a surface swirl has already developed, signifying a tornado is on the ground before condensation connects the surface circulation to the storm. Tornadoes may also develop without wall clouds, under flanking lines and on the leading edge. Spotters watch all areas of a storm, and the cloud base and surface.


title: Tornado

text: The tornado which holds most records in history was the Tri-State Tornado, which roared through parts of Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana on March 18, 1925. It was likely an F5, though tornadoes were not ranked on any scale in that era. It holds records for longest path length (), longest duration (about 3.5 hours), and fastest forward speed for a significant tornado () anywhere on Earth. In addition, it is the deadliest single tornado in United States history (695 dead). The tornado was also the costliest tornado in history at the time (unadjusted for inflation), but in the years since has been surpassed by several others if population changes over time are not considered. When costs are normalized for wealth and inflation, it ranks third today.


title: Tornado

text: The deadliest tornado in world history was the Daultipur-Salturia Tornado in Bangladesh on April 26, 1989, which killed approximately 1,300 people.


title: Tornado

text: One of the most extensive tornado outbreaks on record was the 1974 Super Outbreak, which affected a large area of the central United States and extreme southern Ontario on April 3 and 4, 1974. The outbreak featured 148 tornadoes in 18 hours, many of which were violent; six were of F5 intensity, and twenty-four peaked at F4 strength. Sixteen tornadoes were on the ground at the same time during its peak. More than 300 people, possibly as many as 330, were killed.


title: Tornado

text: While direct measurement of the most violent tornado wind speeds is nearly impossible, since conventional anemometers would be destroyed by the intense winds and flying debris, some tornadoes have been scanned by mobile Doppler radar units, which can provide a good estimate of the tornado's winds. The highest wind speed ever measured in a tornado, which is also the highest wind speed ever recorded on the planet, is 301 ± 20 mph (484 ± 32 km/h) in the F5 Bridge Creek-Moore, Oklahoma, tornado which killed 36 people. The reading was taken about above the ground.


title: Tornado

text: Storms that produce tornadoes can feature intense updrafts, sometimes exceeding . Debris from a tornado can be lofted into the parent storm and carried a very long distance. A tornado which affected Great Bend, Kansas, in November 1915, was an extreme case, where a "rain of debris" occurred from the town, a sack of flour was found away, and a cancelled check from the Great Bend bank was found in a field outside of Palmyra, Nebraska, to the northeast. Waterspouts and tornadoes have been advanced as an explanation for instances of raining fish and other animals.


title: Tornado

text: Though tornadoes can strike in an instant, there are precautions and preventative measures that can be taken to increase the chances of survival. Authorities such as the Storm Prediction Center in the United States advise having a pre-determined plan should a tornado warning be issued. When a warning is issued, going to a basement or an interior first-floor room of a sturdy building greatly increases chances of survival. In tornado-prone areas, many buildings have underground storm cellars, which have saved thousands of lives.


title: Tornado

text: Some countries have meteorological agencies which distribute tornado forecasts and increase levels of alert of a possible tornado (such as tornado watches and warnings in the United States and Canada). Weather radios provide an alarm when a severe weather advisory is issued for the local area, mainly available only in the United States. Unless the tornado is far away and highly visible, meteorologists advise that drivers park their vehicles far to the side of the road (so as not to block emergency traffic), and find a sturdy shelter. If no sturdy shelter is nearby, getting low in a ditch is the next best option. Highway overpasses are one of the worst places to take shelter during tornadoes, as the constricted space can be subject to increased wind speed and funneling of debris underneath the overpass.


title: Tornado

text: Folklore often identifies a green sky with tornadoes, and though the phenomenon may be associated with severe weather, there is no evidence linking it specifically with tornadoes. It is often thought that opening windows will lessen the damage caused by the tornado. While there is a large drop in atmospheric pressure inside a strong tornado, the pressure difference is unlikely to cause significant damage. Opening windows may instead increase the severity of the tornado's damage. A violent tornado can destroy a house whether its windows are open or closed.


title: Tornado

text: Another commonly held misconception is that highway overpasses provide adequate shelter from tornadoes. This belief is partly inspired by widely circulated video captured during the 1991 tornado outbreak near Andover, Kansas, where a news crew and several other people took shelter under an overpass on the Kansas Turnpike and safely rode out a tornado as it passed by. However, a highway overpass is a dangerous place during a tornado, and the subjects of the video remained safe due to an unlikely combination of events: the storm in question was a weak tornado, the tornado did not directly strike the overpass, and the overpass itself was of a unique design. Due to the Venturi effect, tornadic winds are accelerated in the confined space of an overpass. Indeed, in the 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak of May 3, 1999, three highway overpasses were directly struck by tornadoes, and at each of the three locations there was a fatality, along with many life-threatening injuries. By comparison, during the same tornado outbreak, more than 2,000 homes were completely destroyed and another 7,000 damaged, and yet only a few dozen people died in their homes.


title: Tornado

text: An old belief is that the southwest corner of a basement provides the most protection during a tornado. The safest place is the side or corner of an underground room opposite the tornado's direction of approach (usually the northeast corner), or the central-most room on the lowest floor. Taking shelter in a basement, under a staircase, or under a sturdy piece of furniture such as a workbench further increases the chances of survival.


title: Tornado

text: There are areas which people believe to be protected from tornadoes, whether by being in a city, near a major river, hill, or mountain, or even protected by supernatural forces. Tornadoes have been known to cross major rivers, climb mountains, affect valleys, and have damaged several city centers. As a general rule, no area is safe from tornadoes, though some areas are more susceptible than others.


title: Tornado

text: Meteorology is a relatively young science and the study of tornadoes is newer still. Although researched for about 140 years and intensively for around 60 years, there are still aspects of tornadoes which remain a mystery. Meteorologists have a fairly good understanding of the development of thunderstorms and mesocyclones, and the meteorological conditions conducive to their formation. However, the step from supercell, or other respective formative processes, to tornadogenesis and the prediction of tornadic vs. non-tornadic mesocyclones is not yet well known and is the focus of much research.


title: Tornado

text: Also under study are the low-level mesocyclone and the stretching of low-level vorticity which tightens into a tornado, in particular, what are the processes and what is the relationship of the environment and the convective storm. Intense tornadoes have been observed forming simultaneously with a mesocyclone aloft (rather than succeeding mesocyclogenesis) and some intense tornadoes have occurred without a mid-level mesocyclone.


title: Tornado

text: In particular, the role of downdrafts, particularly the rear-flank downdraft, and the role of baroclinic boundaries, are intense areas of study.


title: Tornado

text: Reliably predicting tornado intensity and longevity remains a problem, as do details affecting characteristics of a tornado during its life cycle and tornadolysis. Other rich areas of research are tornadoes associated with mesovortices within linear thunderstorm structures and within tropical cyclones.


title: Tornado

text: Meteorologists still do not know the exact mechanisms by which most tornadoes form, and occasional tornadoes still strike without a tornado warning being issued. Analysis of observations including both stationary and mobile (surface and aerial) in-situ and remote sensing (passive and active) instruments generates new ideas and refines existing notions. Numerical modeling also provides new insights as observations and new discoveries are integrated into our physical understanding and then tested in computer simulations which validate new notions as well as produce entirely new theoretical findings, many of which are otherwise unattainable. Importantly, development of new observation technologies and installation of finer spatial and temporal resolution observation networks have aided increased understanding and better predictions.


title: Tornado

text: Research programs, including field projects such as the VORTEX projects (Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment), deployment of TOTO (the TOtable Tornado Observatory), Doppler on Wheels (DOW), and dozens of other programs, hope to solve many questions that still plague meteorologists. Universities, government agencies such as the National Severe Storms Laboratory, private-sector meteorologists, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research are some of the organizations very active in research; with various sources of funding, both private and public, a chief entity being the National Science Foundation. The pace of research is partly constrained by the number of observations that can be taken; gaps in information about the wind, pressure, and moisture content throughout the local atmosphere; and the computing power available for simulation.


title: Tornado

text: Solar storms similar to tornadoes have been recorded, but it is unknown how closely related they are to their terrestrial counterparts.


title: Pareto principle

text: The Pareto principle states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes (the "vital few"). Other names for this principle are the 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity.


title: Pareto principle

text: Management consultant Joseph M. Juran developed the concept in the context of quality control and improvement after reading the works of Italian sociologist and economist Vilfredo Pareto, who wrote about the 80/20 connection while teaching at the University of Lausanne. In his first work, "Cours d'économie politique", Pareto showed that approximately 80% of the land in the Kingdom of Italy was owned by 20% of the population. The Pareto principle is only tangentially related to the Pareto efficiency.


title: Pareto principle

text: Mathematically, the 80/20 rule is roughly described by a power law distribution (also known as a Pareto distribution) for a particular set of parameters. Many natural phenomena distribute according to power law statistics. It is an adage of business management that "80% of sales come from 20% of clients".


title: Pareto principle

text: Pareto's observation was in connection with population and wealth. Pareto noticed that approximately 80% of Italy's land was owned by 20% of the population. He then carried out surveys on a variety of other countries and found to his surprise that a similar distribution applied. (See Concentration of land ownership)


title: Pareto principle

text: A chart that gave the effect a very visible and comprehensible form, the so-called "champagne glass" effect, was contained in the 1992 United Nations Development Program Report, which showed that distribution of global income is very uneven, with the richest 20% of the world's population receiving 82.7% of the world's income. However, among nations, the Gini index shows that wealth distributions vary substantially around this norm.


title: Pareto principle

text: The principle also holds within the tails of the distribution. The physicist Victor Yakovenko of the University of Maryland, College Park and AC Silva analyzed income data from the US Internal Revenue Service from 1983 to 2001, and found that the income distribution of the richest 1–3% of the population also follows Pareto's principle.


title: Pareto principle

text: In computer science the Pareto principle can be applied to optimization efforts. For example, Microsoft noted that by fixing the top 20% of the most-reported bugs, 80% of the related errors and crashes in a given system would be eliminated. Lowell Arthur expressed that "20% of the code has 80% of the errors. Find them, fix them!" It was also discovered that, in general, 80% of a piece of software can be written in 20% of the total allocated time. Conversely, the hardest 20% of the code takes 80% of the time. This factor is usually a part of COCOMO estimating for software coding.


title: Pareto principle

text: Occupational health and safety professionals use the Pareto principle to underline the importance of hazard prioritization. Assuming 20% of the hazards account for 80% of the injuries, and by categorizing hazards, safety professionals can target those 20% of the hazards that cause 80% of the injuries or accidents. Alternatively, if hazards are addressed in random order, a safety professional is more likely to fix one of the 80% of hazards that account only for some fraction of the remaining 20% of injuries.


title: Pareto principle

text: Aside from ensuring efficient accident prevention practices, the Pareto principle also ensures hazards are addressed in an economical order, because the technique ensures the utilized resources are best used to prevent the most accidents.


title: Pareto principle

text: The Pareto principle is sometimes used in quality control where it was first created. It is the basis for the Pareto chart, one of the key tools used in total quality control and Six Sigma techniques. The Pareto principle serves as a baseline for ABC-analysis and XYZ-analysis, widely used in logistics and procurement for the purpose of optimizing stock of goods, as well as costs of keeping and replenishing that stock. In engineering control theory, such as for electromechanical energy converters, the 80/20 principle applies to optimization efforts.


title: Pareto principle

text: In the systems science discipline, Joshua M. Epstein and Robert Axtell created an agent-based simulation model called Sugarscape, from a decentralized modeling approach, based on individual behavior rules defined for each agent in the economy. Wealth distribution and Pareto's 80/20 principle emerged in their results, which suggests the principle is a collective consequence of these individual rules.


title: Pareto principle

text: In 2009, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality said 20 percent patients incurred 80 percent of health-care expenses due to chronic conditions. A 2021 analysis showed unequal distribution of healthcare costs, with older patients and those with poorer health incurring more costs. A New Zealand Dunedin Study that by the age of 38, 22% of children in the study accounted for 81% of criminal convictions, 78% of pharmaceutical prescriptions, and 66% of welfare benefits within the group. This statistic has been used to support both stop-and-frisk policies and broken windows policing, as catching those criminals committing minor crimes will supposedly net many criminals wanted for (or who would normally commit) larger ones.


title: Pareto principle

text: The "20/80 rule" has been proposed as a rule of thumb for the infection distribution in superspreading events, however, the degree of infectiousness has been found to be distributed continuously in the population. In epidemics with super-spreading, the majority of individuals infect relatively few secondary contacts.


title: Pareto principle

text: The Pareto principle is often referred to in distribution operations, normally called the 80/20 rule. In distribution operations it is common to observe that 80% of the production volume constitute 20% of the SKUs (Stock Keeping Units). During facility design, this rule often governs the storage area and processing area configurations.


title: Pareto principle

text: In 1988, many video rental shops reported that 80% of revenue came from 20% of videotapes. A video-chain executive discussed the ""Gone with the Wind" syndrome", however, in which every store had to offer classics like "Gone with the Wind", "Casablanca", or "The African Queen" to appear to have a large inventory, even if customers very rarely rented them.


title: Pareto principle

text: Valid application of the rule requires demonstrating not that one can explain most of the variance or that some small set of observations are explained by a small proportion of process variables, but rather that a large proportion of process variation is associated with a small proportion of the process variables.


title: Pareto principle

text: This is a special case of the wider phenomenon of Pareto distributions. If the Pareto index α, which is one of the parameters characterizing a Pareto distribution, is chosen as α = log5 ≈ 1.16, then one has 80% of effects coming from 20% of causes.


title: Pareto principle

text: It follows that one also has 80% of that top 80% of effects coming from 20% of that top 20% of causes, and so on. Eighty percent of 80% is 64%; 20% of 20% is 4%, so this implies a "64/4" law; and similarly implies a "51.2/0.8" law. Similarly for the bottom 80% of causes and bottom 20% of effects, the bottom 80% of the bottom 80% only cause 20% of the remaining 20%. This is broadly in line with the world population/wealth table above, where the bottom 60% of the people own 5.5% of the wealth, approximating to a 64/4 connection.


title: Pareto principle

text: The 64/4 correlation also implies a 32% 'fair' area between the 4% and 64%, where the lower 80% of the top 20% (16%) and upper 20% of the bottom 80% (also 16%) relates to the corresponding lower top and upper bottom of effects (32%). This is also broadly in line with the world population table above, where the second 20% control 12% of the wealth, and the bottom of the top 20% (presumably) control 16% of the wealth.


title: Pareto principle

text: The term 80/20 is only a shorthand for the general principle at work. In individual cases, the distribution could just as well be, say, nearer to 90/10 or 70/30. There is no need for the two numbers to add up to the number 100, as they are measures of different things, (e.g., 'number of customers' vs 'amount spent'). However, each case in which they do not add up to 100%, is equivalent to one in which they do. For example, as noted above, the "64/4 law" (in which the two numbers do not add up to 100%) is equivalent to the "80/20 law" (in which they do add up to 100%). Thus, specifying two percentages independently does not lead to a broader class of distributions than what one gets by specifying the larger one and letting the smaller one be its complement relative to 100%. Thus, there is only one degree of freedom in the choice of that parameter.


title: Pareto principle

text: Adding up to 100 leads to a nice symmetry. For example, if 80% of effects come from the top 20% of sources, then the remaining 20% of effects come from the lower 80% of sources. This is called the "joint ratio", and can be used to measure the degree of imbalance: a joint ratio of 96:4 is extremely imbalanced, 80:20 is highly imbalanced (Gini index: 76%), 70:30 is moderately imbalanced (Gini index: 28%), and 55:45 is just slightly imbalanced (Gini index 14%).


title: Pareto principle

text: The Pareto principle is an illustration of a "power law" relationship, which also occurs in phenomena such as bush fires and earthquakes.


title: Pareto principle

text: Because it is self-similar over a wide range of magnitudes, it produces outcomes completely different from Normal or Gaussian distribution phenomena. This fact explains the frequent breakdowns of sophisticated financial instruments, which are modeled on the assumption that a Gaussian relationship is appropriate to something like stock price movements.


title: Pareto principle

text: Using the ""A" : "B"" notation (for example, 0.8:0.2) and with "A" + "B" = 1, inequality measures like the Gini index (G) "and" the Hoover index (H) can be computed. In this case both are the same.


title: Frenkie de Jong

text: Frenkie de Jong (born 12 May 1997) is a Dutch professional footballer who plays as a midfielder for La Liga club Barcelona and the Netherlands national team. A versatile midfielder, he is known for his vision, passing, dribbling, technique, along with strong defensive abilities and attacking prowess. De Jong has frequently been ranked among the best midfielders in world football.


title: Frenkie de Jong

text: De Jong began his professional career at Willem II in 2015. He transferred to Ajax for a fee worth €1 a year later. The fee was symbolic and offset by a sell-on clause. At Ajax he established himself as one of the best young midfielders in Europe, after winning a domestic double and reaching the Champions League semi-finals. De Jong won the Eredivisie and KNVB Cup, was Eredivisie player of the season, and was an instrumental part of Ajax's first UEFA Champions League semi-final appearance in 22 years, in a breakthrough 2018–19 season.


title: Frenkie de Jong

text: During his breakthrough season, De Jong agreed to sign for Barcelona in January 2019, leading him to be signed for the club in July, for a fee worth €75 million. De Jong was selected to the 2019 FIFA FIFPro World11 and was one of three Dutch players to feature in it for the first time in five years.


title: Frenkie de Jong

text: De Jong made his senior international debut for the Netherlands in September 2018. He became a starter in the inaugural UEFA Nations League, in which Netherlands finished runners-up. He also represented the side at UEFA Euro 2020 and the 2022 FIFA World Cup.


title: Frenkie de Jong

text: A product of Willem II, de Jong played through the entire youth system at the club. On 10 May 2015, De Jong made his Eredivisie debut against ADO Den Haag, two days before his eighteenth birthday. He was substituted in the 68th minute for Terell Ondaan in a (1–0) home win.


title: Frenkie de Jong

text: At the beginning of the season, on 22 August 2015, Ajax purchased De Jong. He signed a four-year contract, for a symbolic €1 fee which included a 10% sell-on bonus. On 23 August 2015, he was loaned back to Willem II until 31 December 2015. During this time he made one substitute appearance in an Eredivisie match against PEC Zwolle.


title: Frenkie de Jong

text: For the first two years at Ajax, De Jong was in and out of the first team squad. After returning to the club in January 2016, de Jong made 15 appearances in the 2015—16 Eerste Divisie for Ajax II. He primarily played in the centre of a three-man midfield and scored two goals. The following year, he was awarded the 2016–17 Eerste Divisie's Talent of the season award for his performances with Ajax II for whom, he made 31 first team appearances and played as a central, and defensive, midfielder.


title: Frenkie de Jong

text: He made his senior debut against Sparta Rotterdam coming on, in the 88th minute, for Lasse Schöne. In total, he made four senior appearances for Ajax, and scored one goal against Go Ahead Eagles, in the 2016—17 season. He started one game, came off the bench thrice, and was an unused substitute in 13 games. He also made his European debut and made four substitute, and three bench, appearances, in the 2016–17 Europa League. He came off the bench in the 82nd minute against Manchester United in the final. It was Ajax's first European final in 21 years.


title: Frenkie de Jong

text: Aged 20, he made 26 appearances for the first team. Primarily he featured as a center-back, in a back four, alongside national teammate Matthijs de Ligt due to the departure of Davinson Sanchez. He also played in a three-man center-midfield. He recorded eight assists in 22 league appearances and received two yellow cards. Towards the end of the season he was injured—tendonitis, syndesmotic ligament tear, hairline crack in calf bone—and missed three months. De Jong made two substitute appearances in the 2017–18 Champions League qualification, as Ajax lost on away goals against Nice (3–3) in the third qualifying round.


title: Frenkie de Jong

text: In the 2018–19 season, he primarily played in the middle of a three-man midfield. De Jong was the Eredivisie player of the month in December (2018) and February (2019)—in which he completed 354 of 390 passes and made 53 ball recoveries. Later that month he received praise from Rafael Van Der Vaart, who said De Jong was among the best players in Europe with the ball at his feet. It is unclear whether during or prior to the beginning of the campaign he rejected an offer from Tottenham Hotspur, saying the "moment wasn't right," and wanted to play a full season in his preferred position at Ajax.


title: Frenkie de Jong

text: De Jong achieved success, and widespread recognition, during the 2018–19 season and led Ajax to their first domestic double (league and cup) since the 2001–02 season. Ajax wrestled with PSV Eindhoven all season for the league, and finished the last five weeks at the top of the table. He made 51 total appearances and starred in Ajax's first leg (0–1) win over Tottenham Hotspur in the 2018–19 UEFA Champions League semi-final at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium—in which De Jong had the most touches by any player on the pitch (87) and an 86.2 percent pass completion rate. It was the first time Ajax made the tournament semi-final since 1997. The team eliminated Juventus (3–2 on agg.) in the quarterfinals and Real Madrid (5–3 on agg.) In the second leg of the semi-final, Ajax lost 2–3 at home and were knocked out on away goals to English club Tottenham Hotspur. De Jong was selected to the 2018–19 UEFA Champions League squad of the season and voted the tournament's midfielder of the season.


title: Frenkie de Jong

text: On 23 January 2019, La Liga club Barcelona announced the signing of de Jong on a five-year contract, effective from 1 July 2019, for an initial fee worth €75 million. De Jong had transfer discussions with Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City and Manchester United before ultimately opting for Barcelona. He made his competitive debut on 16 August 2019, in a 0–1 opening day defeat to Athletic Bilbao.


title: Frenkie de Jong

text: He played a crucial role in the 2021 Copa del Rey final, a 4–0 win over Athletic Bilbao, scoring in the 63rd minute and assisting two further goals.


title: Frenkie de Jong

text: De Jong made eight appearances for the Netherlands under-19 team, with his debut coming against Russia on 7 July 2015. He made six appearances and scored one goal for the Netherlands at under-21 level. On 6 September 2018, de Jong replaced Georginio Wijnaldum at half-time to make his senior international debut in a friendly (2–1) win against Peru. Fifteen minutes into his debut, he assisted a goal for Memphis Depay by retrieving possession high-up the pitch and setting up the forward. He later on scored the winner, and had a 100 percent pass completion rate (21 passes) in the opposition half. He soon became a regular starter for the Netherlands in the 2018–19 UEFA Nations League and the UEFA Euro 2020 qualifiers. He was included in the UEFA Euro 2020 and 2022 FIFA World Cup. In the latter, he scored his first goal in the competition, netting in a 2–0 against Qatar.


title: Frenkie de Jong

text: Frenkie has described himself as a player "who likes to have the ball a lot, and play possession." A versatile player, De Jong can function as a regista, defensive midfielder, central midfielder, holding midfielder, box-to-box midfielder and centre back. He has been lauded for his combination of defensive stability and playmaking ability. He often partnered Matthijs de Ligt at centre-back, at Ajax. As a centre back, he abstained from committing fouls, showed great positional sense, and won possession frequently. In this more defensive role, his performances led to comparison with former German sweeper Franz Beckenbauer and likened his tendency to progress forward in possession, and ability to play-make, from defense to the German legend.De Jong's vision has been praised alongside his ability to dribble in narrow spaces, control over possession, and decisive passing. A natural dribbler, De Jong has the highest dribbling success of all players to participate in all competitions, during his last season with Ajax. An extraordinary game-reader, he often makes offensive runs through the middle.


title: Frenkie de Jong

text: His other attributes include a penchant for long cross-field passes, creating space, and absorbing attacking pressure. His close control, accuracy, work rate, and movement has drawn comparisons with Andrés Iniesta and Johan Cruyff. At Barcelona, he has primarily played on either side of a three-man central midfield. This has led experts and former players to regard him as a player with "Barça DNA" who was "born to play for Barcelona."


title: Frenkie de Jong

text: De Jong was born in Gorinchem and grew up in Arkel, a town in the province of South Holland, where he started playing football at a young age. Since he started playing professionally, De Jong has chosen 21 on his shirt as a tribute to his grandfather who was born on 21 April.


title: Frenkie de Jong

text: He met his fiancée Mikky Kiemeney in high school and they have been dating since 2014. The couple became engaged in July 2022.


title: Scorpion

text: Scorpions are predatory arachnids of the order Scorpiones. They have eight legs, and are easily recognized by a pair of grasping pincers and a narrow, segmented tail, often carried in a characteristic forward curve over the back and always ending with a stinger. The evolutionary history of scorpions goes back 435 million years. They mainly live in deserts but have adapted to a wide range of environmental conditions, and can be found on all continents except Antarctica. There are over 2,500 described species, with 22 extant (living) families recognized to date. Their taxonomy is being revised to account for 21st-century genomic studies.


title: Scorpion

text: Scorpions primarily prey on insects and other invertebrates, but some species hunt vertebrates. They use their pincers to restrain and kill prey, or to prevent their own predation. The venomous sting is used for offense and defense. During courtship, the male and female grasp each other's pincers and dance while he tries to move her onto his sperm packet. All known species give live birth and the female cares for the young as their exoskeletons harden, transporting them on her back. The exoskeleton contains fluorescent chemicals and glows under ultraviolet light.


title: Scorpion

text: The vast majority of species do not seriously threaten humans, and healthy adults usually do not need medical treatment after a sting. About 25 species (fewer than one percent) have venom capable of killing a human, which happens frequently in the parts of the world where they live, primarily where access to medical treatment is unlikely.


title: Scorpion

text: Scorpions appear in art, folklore, mythology, and commercial brands. Scorpion motifs are woven into kilim carpets for protection from their sting. Scorpius is the name of a constellation; the corresponding astrological sign is Scorpio. A classical myth about Scorpius tells how the giant scorpion and its enemy Orion became constellations on opposite sides of the sky.


title: Scorpion

text: The word "scorpion" originated in Middle English between 1175 and 1225 AD from Old French ', or from Italian ', both derived from the Latin ', equivalent to ', which is the romanization of the Greek  – "", ultimately from Proto-Indo-European root "*(s)ker-" meaning "to cut", cf. "shear".


title: Scorpion

text: Scorpion fossils have been found in many strata, including marine Silurian and estuarine Devonian deposits, coal deposits from the Carboniferous Period and in amber. Whether the early scorpions were marine or terrestrial has been debated, though they had book lungs like modern terrestrial species. Over 100 fossil species of scorpion have been described. The oldest found as of 2021 is "Dolichophonus loudonensis", which lived during the Silurian, in present-day Scotland. "Gondwanascorpio" from the Devonian is among the earliest-known terrestrial animals on the Gondwana supercontinent. Some Palaeozoic scorpions possessed compound eyes similar to those of eurypterids. The Triassic fossils "Protochactas" and "Protobuthus" belong to the modern clades Chactoidea and Buthoidea respectively, indicating that the crown group of modern scorpions had emerged by this time.


title: Scorpion

text: The Scorpiones are a clade within the pulmonate Arachnida (those with book lungs). Arachnida is placed within the Chelicerata, a subphylum of Arthropoda that contains sea spiders and horseshoe crabs, alongside terrestrial animals without book lungs such as ticks and harvestmen. The extinct Eurypterida, sometimes called sea scorpions, though they were not all marine, are not scorpions; their grasping pincers were chelicerae, not homologous with the pincers (second appendages) of scorpions. Scorpiones is sister to the Tetrapulmonata, a terrestrial group of pulmonates containing the spiders and whip scorpions. This 2019 cladogram summarizes:


title: Scorpion

text: Recent studies place pseudoscorpions as the sister group of scorpions in the clade Panscorpiones, which together with Tetrapulmonata makes up the clade Arachnopulmonata.


title: Scorpion

text: The internal phylogeny of the scorpions has been debated, but genomic analysis consistently places the Bothriuridae as sister to a clade consisting of Scorpionoidea and Chactoidea. The scorpions diversified between the Devonian and the early Carboniferous. The main division is into the clades Buthida and Iurida. The Bothriuridae diverged starting before temperate Gondwana broke up into separate land masses, completed by the Jurassic. The Iuroidea and Chactoidea are both seen not to be single clades, and are shown as "paraphyletic" (with quotation marks) in this 2018 cladogram.


title: Scorpion

text: Carl Linnaeus described six species of scorpion in his genus "Scorpio" in 1758 and 1767; three of these are now considered valid and are called "Scorpio maurus", "Androctonus australis", and "Euscorpius carpathicus"; the other three are dubious names. He placed the scorpions among his "Insecta aptera" (wingless insects), a group that included Crustacea, Arachnida and Myriapoda. In 1801, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck divided up the "Insecta aptera", creating the taxon Arachnides for spiders, scorpions, and acari (mites and ticks), though it also contained the Thysanura (thrips), Myriapoda and parasites such as lice. German arachnologist Carl Ludwig Koch created the order Scorpiones in 1837. He divided it into four families, the six-eyed scorpions "Scorpionides", the eight-eyed scorpions "Buthides", the ten-eyed scorpions "Centrurides", and the twelve-eyed scorpions "Androctonides".


title: Scorpion

text: More recently, some twenty-two families containing over 2,500 species of scorpions have been described, with many additions and much reorganization of taxa in the 21st century. There are over 100 described taxa of fossil scorpions. This classification is based on Soleglad and Fet (2003), which replaced Stockwell's older, unpublished classification. Further taxonomic changes are from papers by Soleglad et al. (2005).


title: Scorpion

text: Scorpions are found on all continents except Antarctica. The diversity of scorpions is greatest in subtropical areas; it decreases toward the poles and equator, though scorpions are found in the tropics. Scorpions did not occur naturally in Great Britain but were accidentally introduced by humans, and have now established a population. New Zealand, and some of the islands in Oceania, have in the past had small populations of introduced scorpions, but they were exterminated. Five colonies of "Euscorpius flavicaudis" have established themselves since the late 19th century in Sheerness in England at 51°N, while "Paruroctonus boreus" lives as far north as Red Deer, Alberta, at 52°N. A few species are on the IUCN Red List; "Lychas braueri" is classed as critically endangered (2014), "Isometrus deharvengi" as endangered (2016) and "Chiromachus ochropus" as vulnerable (2014).


title: Scorpion

text: Scorpions are xerocoles, meaning they primarily live in deserts, but they can be found in virtually every terrestrial habitat including high-elevation mountains, caves, and intertidal zones. They are largely absent from boreal ecosystems such as the tundra, high-altitude taiga, and mountain tops. The highest altitude reached by a scorpion is in the Andes, for "Orobothriurus crassimanus".


title: Scorpion

text: As regards microhabitats, scorpions may be ground-dwelling, tree-loving, rock-loving or sand-loving. Some species, such as "Vaejovis janssi", are versatile and are found in all habitats on Socorro Island, Baja California, while others such as "Euscorpius carpathicus", endemic to the littoral zone of rivers in Romania, occupy specialized niches.


title: Scorpion

text: Scorpions range in size from the "Typhlochactas mitchelli" of Typhlochactidae, to the "Heterometrus swammerdami" of Scorpionidae. The body of a scorpion is divided into two parts or tagmata: the cephalothorax or prosoma, and the abdomen or opisthosoma. The opisthosoma is subdivided into a broad anterior portion, the mesosoma or pre-abdomen, and a narrow tail-like posterior, the metasoma or post-abdomen. External differences between the sexes are not obvious in most species. In some, the metasoma is more elongated in males than females.


title: Scorpion

text: The cephalothorax comprises the carapace, eyes, chelicerae (mouth parts), pedipalps (which have chelae, commonly called claws or pincers) and four pairs of walking legs. Scorpions have two eyes on the top of the cephalothorax, and usually two to five pairs of eyes along the front corners of the cephalothorax. While unable to form sharp images, their central eyes are amongst the most light sensitive in the animal kingdom, especially in dim light, and makes it possible for nocturnal species to use starlight to navigate at night. The chelicerae are at the front and underneath the carapace. They are pincer-like and have three segments and sharp "teeth". The brain of a scorpion is in the back of the cephalothorax, just above the esophagus. As in other arachnids, the nervous system is highly concentrated in the cephalothorax, but has a long ventral nerve cord with segmented ganglia which may be a primitive trait.


title: Scorpion

text: The pedipalp is a segmented, clawed appendage used for prey immobilization, defense and sensory purposes. The segments of the pedipalp (from closest to the body outward) are coxa, trochanter, femur, patella, tibia (including the fixed claw and the manus) and tarsus (moveable claw). A scorpion has darkened or granular raised linear ridges, called "keels" or "carinae" on the pedipalp segments and on other parts of the body; these are useful as taxonomic characters. Unlike those of some other arachnids, the legs have not been modified for other purposes, though they may occasionally be used for digging, and females may use them to catch emerging young. The legs are covered in proprioceptors, bristles and sensory setae. Depending on the species, the legs may have spines and spurs.


title: Scorpion

text: The mesosoma or preabdomen is the broad part of the opisthosoma. In the early stages of embryonic development the mesosoma consist of eight segments, but the first segment disappear before birth, so the mesosoma in scorpions actually consist of segments 2-8. These anterior seven somites (segments) of the opisthosoma are each covered dorsally by a sclerotized plate called the tergite. Ventrally, somites 3 to 7 are armored with matching plates called sternites. The ventral side of somite 1 has a pair of genital opercula covering the gonopore. Sternite 2 forms the basal plate bearing the pectines, which function as sensory organs.


title: Scorpion

text: The next four somites, 3 to 6, all bear pairs of spiracles. They serve as openings for the scorpion's respiratory organs, known as book lungs. The spiracle openings may be slits, circular, elliptical or oval according to the species. There are thus four pairs of book lungs; each consists of some 140 to 150 thin lamellae filled with air inside a pulmonary chamber, connected on the ventral side to an atrial chamber which opens into a spiracle. Bristles hold the lamellae apart. A muscle opens the spiracle and widens the atrial chamber; dorsoventral muscles contract to compress the pulmonary chamber, forcing air out, and relax to allow the chamber to refill. The 7th and last somite does not bear appendages or any other significant external structures.


title: Scorpion

text: The mesosoma contains the heart or "dorsal vessel" which is the center of the scorpion's open circulatory system. The heart is continuous with a deep arterial system which spreads throughout the body. Sinuses return deoxygenated blood (hemolymph) to the heart; the blood is re-oxygenated by cardiac pores. The mesosoma also contains the reproductive system. The female gonads are made of three or four tubes that run parallel to each other and are connected by two to four transverse anastomoses. These tubes are the sites for both oocyte formation and embryonic development. They connect to two oviducts which connect to a single atrium leading to the genital orifice. Males have two gonads made of two cylindrical tubes with a ladder-like configuration; they contain cysts which produce spermatozoa. Both tubes end in a spermiduct, one on each side of the mesosoma. They connect to glandular symmetrical structures called paraxial organs, which end at the genital orifice. These secrete chitin-based structures which come together to form the spermatophore.


title: Scorpion

text: The "tail" or metasoma consists of five segments and the telson, which is not strictly a segment. The five segments are merely body rings; they lack apparent sterna or terga, and become larger distally. These segments have keels, setae and bristles which may be used for taxonomic classification. The anus is at the distal and ventral end of the last segment, and is encircled by four anal papillae and the anal arch. The tails of some species contain light receptors.


title: Scorpion

text: The telson includes the vesicle, which contains a symmetrical pair of venom glands. Externally it bears the curved stinger, the hypodermic aculeus, equipped with sensory hairs. Each of the venom glands has its own duct to convey its secretion along the aculeus from the bulb of the gland to immediately near of the tip, where each of the paired ducts has its own venom pore. An extrinsic muscle system in the tail moves it forward and propels and penetrates with the aculeus, while an intrinsic muscle system attached to the glands pumps venom through the stinger into the intended victim. The stinger contains metalloproteins with zinc, hardening the tip. The optimal stinging angle is around 30 degrees relative to the tip.


title: Scorpion

text: Most scorpion species are nocturnal or crepuscular, finding shelter during the day in burrows, cracks in rocks and tree bark. Many species dig a shelter underneath stones a few centimeters long. Some may use burrows made by other animals including spiders, reptiles and small mammals. Other species dig their own burrows which vary in complexity and depth. "Hadrurus" species dig burrows as over deep. Digging is done using the mouth parts, claws and legs. In several species, particularly of the family Buthidae, individuals may gather in the same shelter; bark scorpions may aggregate up to 30 individuals. In some species, families of females and young sometimes aggregate.


title: Scorpion

text: Scorpions prefer areas where the temperature remains in the range of , but may survive temperatures from well below freezing to desert heat. Scorpions can withstand intense heat: "Leiurus quinquestriatus", "Scorpio maurus" and "Hadrurus arizonensis" can live in temperatures of if they are sufficiently hydrated. Desert species must deal with the extreme changes in temperature from day to night or between seasons; "Pectinibuthus birulai" lives in a temperature range of . Scorpions that live outside deserts prefer lower temperatures. The ability to resist cold may be related to the increase in the sugar trehalose when the temperature drops. Some species hibernate. Scorpions appear to have resistance to ionizing radiation. This was discovered in the early 1960s when scorpions were found to be among the few animals to survive nuclear tests at Reggane, Algeria.


title: Scorpion

text: Desert scorpions have several adaptations for water conservation. They excrete insoluble compounds such as xanthine, guanine, and uric acid, not requiring water for their removal from the body. Guanine is the main component and maximizes the amount of nitrogen excreted. A scorpion's cuticle holds in moisture via lipids and waxes from epidermal glands, and protects against ultraviolet radiation. Even when dehydrated, a scorpion can tolerate high osmotic pressure in its blood. Desert scorpions get most of their moisture from the food they eat but some can absorb water from the humid soil. Species that live in denser vegetation and in more moderate temperatures will drink water on plants and in puddles.


title: Scorpion

text: A scorpion uses its stinger both for killing prey and defense. Some species make direct, quick strikes with their tails while others make slower, more circular strikes which can more easily return the stinger to a position where it can strike again. "Leiurus quinquestriatus" can whip its tail at a speed of up to in a defensive strike.


title: Scorpion

text: Scorpions may be attacked by other arthropods like ants, spiders, solifugids and centipedes. Major predators include frogs, lizards, snakes, birds, and mammals. Meerkats are somewhat specialized in preying on scorpions, biting off their stingers and being immune to their venom. Other predators adapted for hunting scorpions include the grasshopper mouse and desert long-eared bat, which are also immune to their venom. In one study, 70% of the latter's droppings contained scorpion fragments. Scorpions host parasites including mites, scuttle flies, nematodes and some bacteria. The immune system of scorpions gives them resistance to infection by many types of bacteria.


title: Scorpion

text: When threatened, a scorpion raises its claws and tail in a defensive posture. Some species stridulate to warn off predators by rubbing certain hairs, the stinger or the claws. Certain species have a preference for using either the claws or stinger as defense, depending on the size of the appendages. A few scorpions, such as "Parabuthus", "Centruroides margaritatus", and "Hadrurus arizonensis", squirt venom in a narrow jet as far as to warn off potential predators, possibly injuring them in the eyes. Some "Ananteris" species can shed parts of their tail to escape predators. The parts do not grow back, leaving them unable to sting and defecate, but they can still catch small prey and reproduce for at least eight months afterward.


title: Scorpion

text: Scorpions generally prey on insects, particularly grasshoppers, crickets, termites, beetles and wasps. Other prey include spiders, solifugids, woodlice and even small vertebrates including lizards, snakes and mammals. Species with large claws may prey on earthworms and mollusks. The majority of species are opportunistic and consume a variety of prey though some may be highly specialized; "Isometroides vescus" specializes on burrowing spiders. Prey size depends on the size of the species. Several scorpion species are sit-and-wait predators, which involves them waiting for prey at or near the entrance to their burrow. Others actively seek them out. Scorpions detect their prey with mechanoreceptive and chemoreceptive hairs on their bodies and capture them with their claws. Small animals are merely killed with the claws, particularly by large-clawed species. Larger and more aggressive prey is given a sting.


title: Scorpion

text: Scorpions, like other arachnids, digest their food externally. The chelicerae, which are very sharp, are used to pull small amounts of food off the prey item into a pre-oral cavity below the chelicerae and carapace. The digestive juices from the gut are egested onto the food, and the digested food is then sucked into the gut in liquid form. Any solid indigestible matter (such as exoskeleton fragments) is trapped by setae in the pre-oral cavity and ejected. The sucked-in food is pumped into the midgut by the pharynx, where it is further digested. The waste passes through the hindgut and out of the anus. Scorpions can consume large amounts of food during one meal. They have an efficient food storage organ and a very low metabolic rate, and a relatively inactive lifestyle. This enables some to survive six to twelve months of starvation.


title: Scorpion

text: Most scorpions reproduce sexually, with male and female individuals; species in some genera, such as "Hottentotta" and "Tityus", and the species "Centruroides gracilis", "Liocheles australasiae", and "Ananteris coineaui" have been reported, not necessarily reliably, to reproduce through parthenogenesis, in which unfertilized eggs develop into living embryos. Receptive females produce pheromones which are picked up by wandering males using their pectines to comb the substrate. Males begin courtship by moving their bodies back and forth, without moving the legs, a behavior known as juddering. This appears to produce ground vibrations that are picked up by the female.


title: Scorpion

text: The pair then make contact using their pedipalps, and perform a dance called the "promenade à deux" (French for "a walk for two"). In this dance, the male and female move back and forth while facing each other, as the male searches for a suitable place to deposit his spermatophore. The courtship ritual can involve several other behaviors such as a cheliceral kiss, in which the male and female grasp each other's mouth-parts, "arbre droit" ("upright tree") where the partners elevate their posteriors and rub their tails together, and sexual stinging, in which the male stings the female in the chelae or mesosoma to subdue her. The dance can last from a few minutes to several hours.


title: Scorpion

text: When the male has located a suitably stable substrate, such as hard ground, agglomerated sand, rock, or tree bark, he deposits the spermatophore and guides the female over it. This allows the spermatophore to enter her genital opercula, which triggers release of the sperm, thus fertilizing the female. A mating plug then forms in the female to prevent her from mating again before the young are born. The male and female then abruptly separate. Sexual cannibalism after mating has only been reported anecdotally in scorpions.


title: Scorpion

text: Gestation in scorpions can last for over a year in some species. They have two types of embryonic development; apoikogenic and katoikogenic. In the apoikogenic system, which is mainly found in the Buthidae, embryos develop in yolk-rich eggs inside follicles. The katoikogenic system is documented in Hemiscorpiidae, Scorpionidae and Diplocentridae, and involves the embryos developing in a diverticulum which has a teat-like structure for them to feed though. Unlike the majority of arachnids, which are oviparous, hatching from eggs, scorpions seem to be universally viviparous, with live births. They are unusual among terrestrial arthropods in the amount of care a female gives to her offspring. The size of a brood varies by species, from 3 to over 100. The body size of scorpions is not correlated either with brood size or with life cycle length.


title: Scorpion

text: Before giving birth, the female elevates the front of her body and positions her pedipalps and front legs under her to catch the young ("birth basket"). The young emerge one by one from the genital opercula, expel the embryonic membrane, if any, and are placed on the mother's back where they remain until they have gone through at least one molt. The period before the first molt is called the pro-juvenile stage; the young are unable to feed or sting, but have suckers on their tarsi, used to hold on to their mother. This period lasts 5 to 25 days, depending on the species. The brood molt for the first time simultaneously in a process that lasts 6 to 8 hours, marking the beginning of the juvenile stage.


title: Scorpion

text: Juvenile stages or instars generally resemble smaller versions of adults, with fully developed pincers, hairs and stingers. They are still soft and lack pigments, and thus continue to ride on their mother's back for protection. They become harder and more pigmented over the next couple of days. They may leave their mother temporarily, returning when they sense potential danger. Once the exoskeleton is fully hardened, the young can hunt prey on their own and may soon leave their mother. A scorpion may molt six times on average before reaching maturity, which may not occur until it is 6 to 83 months old, depending on the species. Some species may live up to 25 years.


title: Scorpion

text: Scorpions glow a vibrant blue-green when exposed to certain wavelengths ranges of ultraviolet light such as that produced by a black light, due to fluorescent chemicals such as beta-carboline in the cuticle. Accordingly, a hand-held ultraviolet lamp has long been a standard tool for nocturnal field surveys of these animals. Fluorescence occurs as a result of sclerotization and increases in intensity with each successive instar. This fluorescence may have an active role in the scorpion's ability to detect light.


title: Scorpion

text: Scorpion venom serves to kill or paralyze prey rapidly. The stings of many species are uncomfortable, but only 25 species have venom that is deadly to humans. Those species belong to the family Buthidae, including "Leiurus quinquestriatus", "Hottentotta" spp., "Centruroides" spp., and "Androctonus" spp. People with allergies are especially at risk; otherwise, first aid is symptomatic, with analgesia. Cases of very high blood pressure are treated with medications that relieve anxiety and relax the blood vessels. Scorpion envenomation with high morbidity and mortality is usually due to either excessive autonomic activity and cardiovascular toxic effects, or neuromuscular toxic effects. Antivenom is the specific treatment for scorpion envenomation combined with supportive measures including vasodilators in patients with cardiovascular toxic effects, and benzodiazepines when there is neuromuscular involvement. Although rare, severe hypersensitivity reactions including anaphylaxis to scorpion antivenin are possible.<ref name="10.4103/0972-5229.164807"></ref>


title: Scorpion

text: Scorpion stings are a public health problem, particularly in the tropical and subtropical regions of the Americas, North Africa, the Middle East and India. Around 1.5 million scorpion envenomations occur each year with around 2,600 deaths. Mexico is one of the most affected countries, with the highest biodiversity of scorpions in the world, some 200,000 envenomations per year and at least 300 deaths.


title: Scorpion

text: Efforts are made to prevent envenomation and to control scorpion populations. Prevention encompasses personal activities such as checking shoes and clothes before putting them on, not walking in bare feet or sandals, and filling in holes and cracks where scorpions might nest. Street lighting reduces scorpion activity. Control may involve the use of insecticides such as pyrethroids, or gathering scorpions manually with the help of ultraviolet lights. Domestic predators of scorpions, such as chickens and turkeys, can help to reduce the risk to a household.


title: Scorpion

text: Scorpion venom is a mixture of neurotoxins; most of these are peptides, chains of amino acids. Many of them interfere with membrane channels that transport sodium, potassium, calcium, or chloride ions. These channels are essential for nerve conduction, muscle contraction and many other biological processes. Some of these molecules may be useful in medical research and might lead to the development of new disease treatments. Among their potential therapeutic uses are as analgesic, anti-cancer, antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, antiparasitic, bradykinin-potentiating, and immunosuppressive drugs. As of 2020, no scorpion toxin-based drug is on sale, though chlorotoxin is being trialled for use against glioma, a brain cancer.


title: Scorpion

text: Scorpions are eaten by people in West Africa, Myanmar and East Asia. Fried scorpion is traditionally eaten in Shandong, China. There, scorpions can be cooked and eaten in a variety of ways, including roasting, frying, grilling, raw, or alive. The stingers are typically not removed, since direct and sustained heat negates the harmful effects of the venom. In Thailand, scorpions are not eaten as often as other arthropods, such as grasshoppers, but they are sometimes fried as street food. They are used in Vietnam to make snake wine (scorpion wine).


title: Scorpion

text: Scorpions are often kept as pets. They are relatively simple to keep, the main requirements being a secure enclosure such as a glass terrarium with a lockable lid and the appropriate temperature and humidity for the chosen species, which typically means installing a heating mat and spraying regularly with a little water. The substrate needs to resemble that of the species' natural environment, such as peat for forest species, or lateritic sand for burrowing desert species. Scorpions in the genera "Pandinus" and "Heterometrus" are docile enough to handle. A large "Pandinus" may consume up to three crickets each week. Cannibalism is more common in captivity than in the wild and can be minimized by providing many small shelters within the enclosure and ensuring there is plenty of prey. The pet trade has threatened wild populations of some scorpion species, particularly "Androctonus australis" and "Pandinus imperator".


title: Scorpion

text: The scorpion is a culturally significant animal, appearing as a motif in art, especially in Islamic art in the Middle East.


title: Scorpion

text: A scorpion motif is often woven into Turkish kilim flatweave carpets, for protection from their sting. The scorpion is perceived both as an embodiment of evil and as a protective force such as a dervish's powers to combat evil. In Muslim folklore, the scorpion portrays human sexuality. Scorpions are used in folk medicine in South Asia, especially in antidotes for scorpion stings.


title: Scorpion

text: One of the earliest occurrences of the scorpion in culture is its inclusion, as "Scorpio", in the 12 signs of the Zodiac by Babylonian astronomers during the Chaldean period. This was then taken up by western astrology; in astronomy the corresponding constellation is named Scorpius.


title: Scorpion

text: In ancient Greece, a warrior's shield sometimes carried a scorpion device, as seen in red-figure pottery from the 5th century BC. In Greek mythology, Artemis or Gaia sent a giant scorpion to kill the hunter Orion, who had said he would kill all the world's animals. Orion and the scorpion both became constellations; as enemies they were placed on opposite sides of the world, so when one rises in the sky, the other sets. Scorpions are mentioned in the Bible and the Talmud as symbols of danger and maliciousness.


title: Scorpion

text: The fable of "The Scorpion and the Frog" has been interpreted as showing that vicious people cannot resist hurting others, even when it is not in their interests. More recently, the action in John Steinbeck's 1947 novella "The Pearl" centers on a poor pearl fisherman's attempts to save his infant son from a scorpion sting, only to lose him to human violence. Scorpions have equally appeared in western artforms including film and poetry: the surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel made symbolic use of scorpions in his 1930 classic "L'Age d'or" ("The Golden Age"), while Stevie Smith's last collection of poems was entitled "Scorpion and other Poems". A variety of martial arts films and video games have been entitled "Scorpion King".


title: Scorpion

text: Since classical times, the scorpion with its powerful stinger has been used to provide a name for weapons. In the Roman army, the scorpio was a torsion siege engine used to shoot a projectile. The British Army's FV101 Scorpion was an armored reconnaissance vehicle or light tank in service from 1972 to 1994. A version of the Matilda II tank, fitted with a flail to clear mines, was named the Matilda Scorpion.


title: Scorpion

text: Several ships of the Royal Navy and of the US Navy have been named "Scorpion" including an 18-gun sloop in 1803, a turret ship in 1863, a patrol yacht in 1898, a destroyer in 1910, and a nuclear submarine in 1960.


title: Scorpion

text: The scorpion has served as the name or symbol of products and brands including Italy's Abarth racing cars and a Montesa scrambler motorcycle.


title: Scorpion

text: A hand- or forearm-balancing asana in modern yoga as exercise with the back arched and one or both legs pointing forward over the head in the manner of the scorpion's tail is called Scorpion pose.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: US Airways Flight 1549 was a regularly scheduled US Airways flight from New York City (LaGuardia Airport), to Charlotte and Seattle, in the United States. On January 15, 2009, the Airbus A320 serving the flight struck a flock of birds shortly after take-off from LaGuardia, losing all engine power. Unable to reach any airport for an emergency landing due to their low altitude, pilots Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger and Jeffrey Skiles glided the plane to a ditching in the Hudson River off Midtown Manhattan. All 155 people on board were rescued by nearby boats, with only a few serious injuries.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: The media quickly dubbed this water landing of a powerless jetliner with no deaths "the Miracle on the Hudson" and a National Transportation Safety Board official described it as "the most successful ditching in aviation history". The Board rejected the notion that the ditching could have been avoided by returning to LaGuardia or diverting to nearby Teterboro Airport.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: The pilots and flight attendants were awarded the Master's Medal of the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators in recognition of their "heroic and unique aviation achievement". The incident was dramatized in the 2016 film "Sully", starring Tom Hanks as Sullenberger.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: On January 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 with call sign 'Cactus 1549' was scheduled to fly from New York City's LaGuardia Airport (LGA) to Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) in Charlotte, North Carolina, with direct onward service to Seattle–Tacoma International Airport.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: The captain and pilot in command was 57-year-old Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger, a former fighter pilot who had been an airline pilot since leaving the United States Air Force in 1980. At the time, he had logged 19,663 total flight hours, including 4,765 in an A320; he was also a glider pilot and expert on aviation safety. First officer Jeffrey Skiles, aged 49, had accrued 20,727 career flight hours with 37 in an A320, but this was his first A320 assignment as pilot flying. There were 150 passengers and three flight attendants on board.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: The flight was cleared for takeoff to the northeast from LaGuardia's Runway 4 at 3:24:56 pm Eastern Standard Time (20:24:56 UTC). With Skiles in control, the crew made its first report after becoming airborne at 3:25:51 as being at and climbing.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: The weather at 2:51 p.m. was visibility with broken clouds at , wind from 290°; an hour later it was few clouds at , wind from 310°. At 3:26:37 Sullenberger remarked to Skiles: "What a view of the Hudson today."


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: At 3:27:11 during climbout, the plane struck a flock of Canada geese at an altitude of about north-northwest of LaGuardia. The pilots' view was filled with the large birds; passengers and crew heard very loud bangs and saw flames from the engines, followed by silence and an odor of fuel.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: Realizing that both engines had shut down, Sullenberger took control while Skiles worked the checklist for engine restart. The aircraft slowed but continued to climb for a further 19 seconds, reaching about at an airspeed of about , then began a glide descent, accelerating to at 3:28:10 as it descended through .


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: At 3:27:33, Sullenberger radioed a mayday call to New York Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON): "... this is Cactus fifteen thirty nine ["siccorrect call sign was Cactus 1549"], hit birds. We've lost thrust on both engines. We're turning back towards LaGuardia". Air traffic controller Patrick Harten told LaGuardia's tower to hold all departures, and directed Sullenberger back to Runway 31. Sullenberger responded, "Unable".


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: Sullenberger asked controllers for landing options in New Jersey, mentioning Teterboro Airport. Permission was given for Teterboro's Runway 1, Sullenberger initially responded "Yes", but then: "We can't do it ... We're gonna be in the Hudson". The aircraft passed less than above the George Washington Bridge. Sullenberger commanded over the cabin address system to "brace for impact" and the flight attendants relayed the command to passengers. Meanwhile, air traffic controllers asked the Coast Guard to caution vessels in the Hudson and ask them to prepare to assist with rescue.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: About ninety seconds later, at 3:31 pm, the plane made an unpowered ditching, descending southwards at about into the middle of the North River section of the Hudson tidal estuary, at on the New York side of the state line, roughly opposite West 50th Street (near the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum) in Manhattan and Port Imperial in Weehawken, New Jersey. Flight attendants compared the ditching to a "hard landing" with "one impact, no bounce, then a gradual deceleration". The ebb tide then began to take the plane southward.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: Sullenberger opened the cockpit door and gave the order to evacuate. The crew began evacuating the passengers through the four overwing window exits and into an inflatable slide/raft deployed from the front right passenger door (the front left slide failed to operate, so the manual inflation handle was pulled). The evacuation was made more difficult by the fact that someone opened the rear left door, allowing more water to enter the plane; whether this was a flight attendant or a passenger is disputed. Water was also entering through a hole in the fuselage and through cargo doors that had come open, so as the water rose the attendant urged passengers to move forward by climbing over seats. One passenger was in a wheelchair. Finally, Sullenberger walked the cabin twice to confirm it was empty.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: The air and water temperatures were about and , respectively. Some evacuees waited for rescue knee-deep in water on the partially submerged slides, some wearing life vests. Others stood on the wings or, fearing an explosion, swam away from the plane. One passenger, after helping with the evacuation, found the wing so crowded that he jumped into the river and swam to a boat.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: Sullenberger had deliberately ditched the airliner near boats in order to facilitate rescue. Two NY Waterway ferries arrived within minutes and began taking people aboard using a Jason's cradle; numerous other boats, including from the US Coast Guard, were quickly on scene as well. Sullenberger advised the ferry crews to rescue those on the wings first, as they were in more jeopardy than those on the slides, which detached to become life rafts. The last person was taken from the plane at 3:55 pm.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: About 140 New York City firefighters responded to nearby docks, as did police, helicopters, and various vessels and divers. Other agencies provided medical help on the Weehawken side of the river, where most passengers were taken.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: Passengers and crew sustained 95 minor and five serious injuries, including a deep laceration in the leg of one of the flight attendants. 78 people received medical treatment, mostly for minor injuries and hypothermia; 24 passengers and two rescuers were treated at hospitals, with two passengers kept overnight. Eye damage from jet fuel caused one passenger to need glasses. No pets were being carried on the flight.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: Each passenger later received a letter of apology, $5,000 in compensation for lost baggage (and $5,000 more if they could demonstrate larger losses), and refund of their ticket price. In May 2009, they received any belongings that had been recovered. Passengers also reported offers of $10,000 each in return for agreeing not to sue US Airways.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: Many passengers and rescuers later experienced post-traumatic stress symptoms such as sleeplessness, flashbacks, and panic attacks; some began an email support group. Patrick Harten, the controller who had worked the flight, said that "the hardest, most traumatic part of the entire event was when it was over", and that he was "gripped by raw moments of shock and grief".


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: In an effort to prevent similar accidents, officials captured and gassed 1,235 Canada geese at 17 locations across New York City in mid-2009 and coated 1,739 goose eggs with oil to smother the developing goslings.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: As of 2017, 70,000 birds have been intentionally killed in New York City as a result of the ditching.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: N106US, the accident aircraft, was purchased by the Carolinas Aviation Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, where it (and the plane's engines) were put on display.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: The partially submerged plane was towed downstream and moored to a pier near the World Financial Center in Lower Manhattan, roughly from the ditching location. On January 17 the aircraft was taken by barge to New Jersey. The left engine, which had been detached from the aircraft by the ditching, was recovered from the riverbed on January 23.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: The initial National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) evaluation that the plane had lost thrust after a bird strike was confirmed by analysis of the cockpit voice and flight data recorders.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: It was found in the investigation that two days prior to the accident the aircraft had experienced a compressor stall on the right engine, but the engine had restarted and the flight completed. A faulty temperature sensor was found to be the cause of the compressor stall. This sensor had been replaced and the inspection also verified the engine had not been damaged in that incident.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: On January 21, the NTSB found evidence of damage from a soft-body impact in the right engine along with organic debris including a feather. The left engine also evidenced soft body impact, with "dents on both the spinner and inlet lip of the engine cowling. Five booster inlet guide vanes are fractured and eight outlet guide vanes are missing." Both engines, missing large portions of their housings, were sent to the manufacturer for examination. On January 31, the plane was moved to Kearny, New Jersey. The bird remains were later identified by DNA testing to be Canada geese, which typically weigh more than engines are designed to withstand ingesting.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: Since the plane had been assembled in France, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA; the European counterpart of the FAA) and the Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA; the French counterpart of the NTSB) joined the investigation, with technical assistance from Airbus and GE Aviation/Snecma, respectively the manufacturers of the airframe and the engines.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: The NTSB used flight simulators to test the possibility that the flight could have returned safely to LaGuardia or diverted to Teterboro; only seven of the thirteen simulated returns to La Guardia succeeded, and only one of the two to Teterboro. Furthermore, the NTSB report called these simulations unrealistic: "The immediate turn made by the pilots during the simulations did not reflect or account for real-world considerations, such as the time delay required to recognize the bird strike and decide on a course of action." A further simulation, in which a 35-second delay was inserted to allow for those, crashed. In testimony before the NTSB, Sullenberger maintained that there had been no time to bring the plane to any airport and that attempting to do so would likely have killed those onboard and more on the ground.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: The Board ultimately ruled that Sullenberger had made the correct decision, reasoning that the checklist for dual-engine failure is designed for higher altitudes when pilots have more time to deal with the situation, and that while simulations showed that the plane might have just barely made it back to LaGuardia, those scenarios assumed an instant decision to do so, with no time allowed for assessing the situation.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: On May 4, 2010, the NTSB issued its final report, which identified the probable cause as "the ingestion of large birds into each engine, which resulted in an almost total loss of thrust in both engines". The final report credited the outcome to four factors: good decision-making and teamwork by the cockpit crew (including decisions to immediately turn on the APU and to ditch in the Hudson); that the A320 is certified for extended overwater operation (and hence carried life vests and additional raft/slides) even though not required for that route; the performance of the flight crew during the evacuation; and the proximity of working vessels to the ditching site. Contributing factors were good visibility and fast response times from the ferry operators and emergency responders. The report made 34 recommendations, including that engines be tested for resistance to bird strikes at low speeds; development of checklists for dual-engine failures at low altitude, and changes to checklist design in general "to minimize the risk of flight crewmembers becoming stuck in an inappropriate checklist or portion of a checklist"; improved pilot training for water landings; provision of life vests on all flights regardless of route, and changes to the locations of vests and other emergency equipment; research into improved wildlife management, and technical innovations on aircraft, to reduce bird strikes; research into possible changes in passenger brace positions; and research into "methods of overcoming passengers' inattention" during preflight safety briefings.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: Author and pilot William Langewiesche asserted that insufficient credit was given to the A320's fly-by-wire design, by which the pilot uses a side-stick to make control inputs to the flight control computers. The computers then impose adjustments and limits of their own to keep the plane stable, which the pilot cannot override even in an emergency. This design allowed the pilots of Flight 1549 to concentrate on engine restart and deciding the course, without the burden of manually adjusting the glidepath to reduce the plane's rate of descent. However, Sullenberger said that these computer-imposed limits also prevented him from achieving the optimal landing flare for the ditching, which would have softened the impact.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: An NTSB board member called the ditching "the most successful... in aviation history. These people knew what they were supposed to do and they did it and as a result, no lives were lost."


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: New York State Governor David Paterson called the incident "a Miracle on the Hudson". U.S. President George W. Bush said he was "inspired by the skill and heroism of the flight crew," and praised the emergency responders and volunteers. President-elect Barack Obama said that everyone was proud of Sullenberger's "heroic and graceful job in landing the damaged aircraft". He thanked the crew, whom he invited to his inauguration five days later.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: The Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators awarded the crew the rarely bestowed Master's Medal on January 22, 2009, for outstanding aviation achievement, at the discretion of the Master of the Guild. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg presented the crew with the Keys to the City, and Sullenberger with a replacement copy of a library book lost on the flight, Sidney Dekker's "Just Culture: Balancing Safety and Accountability". Rescuers received Certificates of Honor.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: The crew received a standing ovation at the Super Bowl XLIII on February 1, 2009, and Sullenberger threw the ceremonial first pitch of the 2009 Major League Baseball season for the San Francisco Giants. His Giants jersey was inscribed with the name "Sully" and the number 155the count of people aboard the plane.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: On July 28, passengers Dave Sanderson and Barry Leonard organized a thank-you luncheon for emergency responders from Hudson County, New Jersey, on the shores of Palisades Medical Center in North Bergen, New Jersey, where 57 passengers had been brought following their rescue. Present were members of the U.S. Coast Guard, North Hudson Regional Fire and Rescue, NY Waterway Ferries, the American Red Cross, Weehawken Volunteer First Aid, the Weehawken Police Department, West New York E.M.S., North Bergen E.M.S., the Hudson County Office of Emergency Management, the New Jersey E.M.S. Task Force, the Guttenberg Police Department, McCabe Ambulance, the Harrison Police Department, and doctors and nurses who treated survivors.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: Sullenberger was named Grand Marshal for the 2010 Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: In August 2010, aeronautical chart publisher Jeppesen issued a humorous approach plate titled "Hudson Miracle APCH," dedicated to the five crew of Flight 1549 and annotated "Presented with Pride and Gratitude from your friends at Jeppesen".


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: Sullenberger retired on March 3, 2010, after thirty years with US Airways and its predecessor, Pacific Southwest Airlines. At the end of his final flight he was reunited with Skiles and a number of the passengers from Flight 1549.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: In 2013, the entire crew was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame at the San Diego Air & Space Museum.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: Sullenberger's 2009 memoir, "", was adapted into the feature film "Sully", directed by Clint Eastwood. It starred Tom Hanks as Sullenberger and Aaron Eckhart as co-pilot Jeff Skiles. It was released by Warner Bros. on September 9, 2016.


title: US Airways Flight 1549

text: It was featured in an episode of the TV show "Mayday" with the title "Hudson River Runway"; the episode is from season 10, episode 5.


title: Tea

text: Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by pouring hot or boiling water over cured or fresh leaves of "Camellia sinensis", an evergreen shrub native to East Asia which probably originated in the borderlands of southwestern China and northern Myanmar. Tea is also rarely made from the leaves of "Camellia taliensis". After plain water, tea is the most widely consumed drink in the world. There are many different types of tea; some have a cooling, slightly bitter, and astringent flavour, while others have vastly different profiles that include sweet, nutty, floral, or grassy notes. Tea has a stimulating effect in humans primarily due to its caffeine content.


title: Tea

text: An early credible record of tea drinking dates to the third century AD, in a medical text written by Chinese physician Hua Tuo. It was popularised as a recreational drink during the Chinese Tang dynasty, and tea drinking subsequently spread to other East Asian countries. Portuguese priests and merchants introduced it to Europe during the 16th century. During the 17th century, drinking tea became fashionable among the English, who started to plant tea on a large scale in British India.


title: Tea

text: The term "herbal tea" refers to drinks not made from "Camellia sinensis". They are the infusions of fruit, leaves, or other plant parts, such as steeps of rosehip, chamomile, or rooibos. These may be called "tisanes" or "herbal infusions" to prevent confusion with tea made from the tea plant.


title: Tea

text: The etymology of the various words for "tea" reflects the history of transmission of tea drinking culture and trade from China to countries around the world. Nearly all of the words for tea worldwide fall into three broad groups: "te", "cha" and "chai", present in English as "tea", "cha" or "char", and "chai". The earliest of the three to enter English is "cha", which came in the 1590s via the Portuguese, who traded in Macao and picked up the Cantonese pronunciation of the word. The more common "tea" form arrived in the 17th century via the Dutch, who acquired it either indirectly from the Malay "teh", or directly from the "tê" pronunciation in Min Chinese. The third form "chai" (meaning "spiced tea") originated from a northern Chinese pronunciation of "cha", which travelled overland to Central Asia and Persia where it picked up a Persian ending "yi".


title: Tea

text: Tea plants are native to East Asia and probably originated in the borderlands of southwestern China and northern Myanmar.


title: Tea

text: Chinese (small-leaf) type tea ("C. sinensis" var. "sinensis") may have originated in southern China possibly with hybridization of unknown wild tea relatives. However, since there are no known wild populations of this tea, its origin is speculative.


title: Tea

text: Given their genetic differences forming distinct clades, Chinese Assam-type tea ("C. sinensis" var. "assamica") may have two different parentages – one being found in southern Yunnan (Xishuangbanna, Pu'er City) and the other in western Yunnan (Lincang, Baoshan). Many types of Southern Yunnan Assam tea have been hybridized with the closely related species "Camellia taliensis". Unlike Southern Yunnan Assam tea, Western Yunnan Assam tea shares many genetic similarities with Indian Assam-type tea (also "C. sinensis" var. "assamica"). Thus, Western Yunnan Assam tea and Indian Assam tea both may have originated from the same parent plant in the area where southwestern China, Indo-Burma, and Tibet meet. However, as the Indian Assam tea shares no haplotypes with Western Yunnan Assam tea, Indian Assam tea is likely to have originated from an independent domestication. Some Indian Assam tea appears to have hybridized with the species "Camellia pubicosta".


title: Tea

text: Assuming a generation of 12 years, Chinese small-leaf tea is estimated to have diverged from Assam tea around 22,000 years ago, while Chinese Assam tea and Indian Assam tea diverged 2,800 years ago. The divergence of Chinese small-leaf tea and Assam tea would correspond to the last glacial maximum.


title: Tea

text: People in ancient East Asia ate tea for centuries, perhaps even millennia, before ever consuming it as a beverage. They would nibble on the leaves raw, add them to soups or greens, or ferment them and chew it like how betel is chewed.


title: Tea

text: Tea drinking may have begun in the region of Yunnan, where it was used for medicinal purposes. It is also believed that in Sichuan, "people began to boil tea leaves for consumption into a concentrated liquid without the addition of other leaves or herbs, thereby using tea as a bitter yet stimulating drink, rather than as a medicinal concoction."


title: Tea

text: Chinese legends attribute the invention of tea to the mythical Shennong (in central and northern China) in 2737 BC, although evidence suggests that tea drinking may have been introduced from the southwest of China (Sichuan/Yunnan area). The earliest written records of tea come from China. The word "tú" appears in the "Shijing" and other ancient texts to signify a kind of "bitter vegetable" (), and it is possible that it referred to many different plants such as sow thistle, chicory, or smartweed, as well as tea. In the "Chronicles of Huayang", it was recorded that the Ba people in Sichuan presented "tu" to the Zhou king. The Qin later conquered the state of Ba and its neighbour Shu, and according to the 17th century scholar Gu Yanwu who wrote in "Ri Zhi Lu" (): "It was after the Qin had taken Shu that they learned how to drink tea." Another possible early reference to tea is found in a letter written by the Qin dynasty general Liu Kun who requested that some "real tea" to be sent to him.


title: Tea

text: The earliest known physical evidence of tea was discovered in 2016 in the mausoleum of Emperor Jing of Han in Xi'an, indicating that tea from the genus "Camellia" was drunk by Han dynasty emperors as early as the second century BC. The Han dynasty work, "The Contract for a Youth", written by Wang Bao in 59 BC, contains the first known reference to boiling tea. Among the tasks listed to be undertaken by the youth, the contract states that "he shall boil tea and fill the utensils" and "he shall buy tea at Wuyang". The first record of tea cultivation is also dated to this period, during which tea was cultivated on Meng Mountain () near Chengdu. Another early credible record of tea drinking dates to the 3rd century AD, in a medical text by Hua Tuo, who stated, "to drink bitter t'u constantly makes one think better." However, before the mid-8th century Tang dynasty, tea-drinking was primarily a southern Chinese practice. Tea was disdained by the Northern dynasties aristocrats, who describe it as a "slaves' drink", inferior to yogurt. It became widely popular during the Tang dynasty, when it was spread to Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. "The Classic of Tea", a treatise on tea and its preparations, was written by the 8th century Chinese writer, Lu Yu. He was known to have influenced tea drinking on a large part in China.


title: Tea

text: Through the centuries, a variety of techniques for processing tea, and a number of different forms of tea, were developed. During the Tang dynasty, tea was steamed, then pounded and shaped into cake form, while in the Song dynasty, loose-leaf tea was developed and became popular. During the Yuan and Ming dynasties, unoxidized tea leaves were first stirred in a hot dry pan, then rolled and air-dried, a process that stops the oxidation process that would have turned the leaves dark, thereby allowing tea to remain green. In the 15th century, oolong tea, in which the leaves are allowed to partially oxidize before being heated in the pan, was developed. Western tastes, however, favoured the fully oxidized black tea, and the leaves were allowed to oxidize further. Yellow tea was an accidental discovery in the production of green tea during the Ming dynasty, when apparently careless practices allowed the leaves to turn yellow, which yielded a different flavour.


title: Tea

text: Tea was first introduced to Western priests and merchants in China during the 16th century, at which time it was termed "chá". The earliest European reference to tea, written as "chiai", came from "Delle navigationi e viaggi" written by Venetian Giambattista Ramusio in 1545. The first recorded shipment of tea by a European nation was in 1607 when the Dutch East India Company moved a cargo of tea from Macao to Java, then two years later, the Dutch bought the first assignment of tea which was from Hirado in Japan to be shipped to Europe. Tea became a fashionable drink in The Hague in the Netherlands, and the Dutch introduced the drink to Germany, France, and across the Atlantic to New Amsterdam (New York).


title: Tea

text: In 1567, Russian people came in contact with tea when the Cossack Atamans Petrov and Yalyshev visited China. The Mongolian Khan donated to Tsar Michael I four poods (65–70 kg) of tea in 1638. According to Jeremiah Curtin, it was possibly in 1636 that Vassili Starkov was sent as envoy to the Altyn Khan. He was given 250 pounds of tea as a gift to the tsar. Starkov at first refused, seeing no use for a load of dead leaves, but the Khan insisted. Thus was tea introduced to Russia. In 1679, Russia concluded a treaty on regular tea supplies from China via camel caravan in exchange for furs. It is today considered the "de facto" national beverage.


title: Tea

text: The first record of tea in English came from a letter written by Richard Wickham, who ran an East India Company office in Japan, writing to a merchant in Macao requesting "the best sort of chaw" in 1615. Peter Mundy, a traveller and merchant who came across tea in Fujian in 1637, wrote, ""chaa" – only water with a kind of herb boyled in it". Tea was sold in a coffee house in London in 1657, Samuel Pepys tasted tea in 1660, and Catherine of Braganza took the tea-drinking habit to the English court when she married Charles II in 1662. Tea, however, was not widely consumed in the British Isles until the 18th century and remained expensive until the latter part of that period. English drinkers preferred to add sugar and milk to black tea, and black tea overtook green tea in popularity in the 1720s. Tea smuggling during the 18th century led to the general public being able to afford and consume tea. The British government removed the tax on tea, thereby eliminating the smuggling trade, by 1785. In Britain and Ireland, tea was initially consumed as a luxury item on special occasions, such as religious festivals, wakes, and domestic work gatherings. The price of tea in Europe fell steadily during the 19th century, especially after Indian tea began to arrive in large quantities; by the late 19th century tea had become an everyday beverage for all levels of society. The popularity of tea played a role in historical events – the Tea Act of 1773 provoked the Boston Tea Party that escalated into the American Revolution. The need to address the issue of British trade deficit because of the trade in tea resulted in the Opium Wars. The Qing Kangxi Emperor had banned foreign products from being sold in China, decreeing in 1685 that all goods bought from China must be paid for in silver coin or bullion. Traders from other nations then sought to find another product, in this case opium, to sell to China to earn back the silver they were required to pay for tea and other commodities. The subsequent attempts by the Chinese Government to curtail the trade in opium led to war.


title: Tea

text: Chinese small-leaf-type tea was introduced into India in 1836 by the British in an attempt to break the Chinese monopoly on tea. In 1841, Archibald Campbell brought seeds of Chinese tea from the Kumaun region and experimented with planting tea in Darjeeling. The Alubari tea garden was opened in 1856, and Darjeeling tea began to be produced. In 1848, Robert Fortune was sent by the Honourable East India Company on a mission to China to bring the tea plant back to Great Britain. He began his journey in high secrecy as his mission occurred in the lull between the First Opium War and the Second Opium War. The Chinese tea plants he brought back were introduced to the Himalayas, though most did not survive. The British had discovered that a different variety of tea was endemic to Assam and the northeast region of India, which was then hybridized with Chinese small-leaf-type tea. Using Chinese planting and cultivation techniques, the British colonial government established a tea industry by offering land in Assam to any European who agreed to cultivate it for export. Tea was originally consumed only by Anglo-Indians; however, it became widely popular in India in the 1950s because of a successful advertising campaign by the India Tea Board. The British introduced tea industry to Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) in 1867.


title: Tea

text: Physically speaking, tea has properties of both a solution and a suspension. It is a solution of all the water-soluble compounds that have been extracted from the tea leaves, such as the polyphenols and amino acids, but is a suspension when all of the insoluble components are considered, such as the cellulose in the tea leaves. Tea infusions are among most consumed beverages globally.


title: Tea

text: Caffeine constitutes about 3% of tea's dry weight, translating to between 30 and 90 milligrams per cup depending on the type, brand, and brewing method. A study found that the caffeine content of one gram of black tea ranged from 22 to 28 mg, while the caffeine content of one gram of green tea ranged from 11 to 20 mg, reflecting a significant difference. Tea also contains small amounts of theobromine and theophylline, which are stimulants, and xanthines similar to caffeine.


title: Tea

text: The astringency in tea can be attributed to the presence of polyphenols. These are the most abundant compounds in tea leaves, making up 30–40% of their composition. Polyphenols include flavonoids, epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), and other catechins. Although there has been preliminary clinical research on whether green or black teas may protect against various human diseases, there is no evidence that tea polyphenols have any effect on health or lowering disease risk.


title: Tea

text: Although health benefits have been assumed throughout the history of "Camellia sinensis"'s consumption, there is no high-quality evidence showing that tea consumption gives significant benefits other than possibly increasing alertness, an effect caused by caffeine in the tea leaves. In clinical research conducted in the early 21st century, it was found there is no scientific evidence to indicate that consuming tea affects any disease or improves health.


title: Tea

text: Black and green teas contain no essential nutrients in significant amounts, with the exception of the dietary mineral manganese, at 0.5 mg per cup or 26% of the Reference Daily Intake (RDI). Fluoride is sometimes present in tea; certain types of "brick tea", made from old leaves and stems, have the highest levels, enough to pose a health risk if much tea is drunk, which has been attributed to high levels of fluoride in soils, acidic soils, and long brewing.


title: Tea

text: "Camellia sinensis" is an evergreen plant that grows mainly in tropical and subtropical climates. Some varieties can also tolerate marine climates and are cultivated as far north as Cornwall in England, Perthshire in Scotland, Washington in the United States, and Vancouver Island in Canada. In the Southern Hemisphere, tea is grown as far south as Hobart in Tasmania and Waikato in New Zealand.