title: Microsoft Bing

text: Microsoft contended that claims challenging its trademark were without merit because these companies filed for U.S. federal trademark applications only after Microsoft filed for the Bing trademark in March 2009.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced that they had made a ten-year deal in which the Yahoo! search engine would be replaced by Bing, retaining the Yahoo! user interface. Yahoo! got to keep 88% of the revenue from all search ad sales on its site for the first five years of the deal, and have the right to sell advertising on some Microsoft sites. All Yahoo! Search global customers and partners made the transition by early 2012.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: Facebook users have the option to share their searches with their Facebook friends using Facebook Connect.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: On June 10, 2013, Apple announced that it would be dropping Google as its web search engine in favor of Bing. This feature is only integrated with iOS 7 and higher and for users with an iPhone 4S or higher as the feature is only integrated with Siri, Apple's personal assistant.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: Windows 8.1 includes Bing "Smart Search" integration, which processes all queries submitted through the Windows Start Screen.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: Bing Translator is a user facing translation portal provided by Microsoft to translate texts or entire web pages into different languages. All translation pairs are powered by the Microsoft Translator, a statistical machine translation platform and web service, developed by Microsoft Research, as its backend translation software. Two transliteration pairs (between Chinese (Simplified) and Chinese (Traditional)) are provided by Microsoft's Windows International team. As of September 2020, Bing Translator offers translations in 70 different language systems.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: In 2015 Microsoft announced its knowledge and action API to correspond with Google's Knowledge graph with 1 billion instances and 20 billion related facts.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: The idea for a prediction engine was first suggested by Walter Sun, Development Manager for the Core Ranking team at Bing, when he noticed that school districts were more frequently searched before a major weather event in the area was forecasted, because searchers wanted to find out if a closing or delay was caused. He concluded that the time and location of major weather events could accurately be predicted without referring to a weather forecast by observing major increases in search frequency of school districts in the area. This inspired Bing to use its search data to infer outcomes of certain events, such as winners of reality shows. Bing Predicts launched on April 21, 2014. The first reality shows to be featured on Bing Predicts were "The Voice", "American Idol", and "Dancing with the Stars".


title: Microsoft Bing

text: The prediction accuracy for Bing Predicts is 80% for "American Idol", and 85% for "The Voice". Bing Predicts also predicts the outcomes of major political elections in the United States. Bing Predicts had 97% accuracy for the 2014 United States Senate elections, 96% accuracy for the 2014 United States House of Representatives elections, and an 89% accuracy for the 2014 United States gubernatorial elections. Bing Predicts also made predictions for the results of the 2016 United States presidential primaries. It has also done predictions in sports, including a perfect 15 for 15 in the 2014 World Cup, leading to positive press such as a Business Insider story on its successes and a PC World article on how Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella did well in his March Madness bracket entry.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: In 2016, Bing Predicts failed to accurately predict the winner of the 2016 US presidential election, suggesting that Hillary Clinton would win by 81%.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: Bing is available in many languages and has been localized for many countries. Even if the language of the search and of the results are the same, Bing delivers substantially different results for different parts of the world.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: Bing allows webmasters to manage the web crawling status of their own websites through Bing Webmaster Center. Users may also submit contents to Bing via the "Bing Local Listing Center", which allows businesses to add business listings onto Bing Maps and Bing Local.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: Bing Mobile allows users to conduct search queries on their mobile devices, either via the mobile browser or a downloadable mobile application.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: In August 2015 Microsoft announced that Bing News for mobile devices added algorithmic-deduced "smart labels" that essentially act as topic tags, allowing users to click through and explore possible relationships between different news stories. The feature emerged as a result from Microsoft research that found out about 60% of the people consume news by only reading headlines, rather than read the articles. Other labels that have been deployed since then include publisher logos and fact-check tags.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: The Bing Bar, a browser extension toolbar that replaced the MSN Toolbar, provides users with links to Bing and MSN content from within their web browser without needing to navigate away from a web page they are already on. The user can customize the theme and color scheme of the Bing Bar as well as choose which MSN content buttons to present within the user interface. Bing Bar also displays the current local weather forecast and stock market positions.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: The Bing Bar features integration with Microsoft Bing search engine. In addition to the traditional web search functions, Bing Bar also allows search on other Bing services such as Images, Video, News and Maps. When users perform a search on another search engine, the Bing Bar's search box will automatically populate itself, allowing the user to view the results from Bing, should it be desired.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: Microsoft released a beta version of Bing Desktop, a program developed to allow users to search Bing from the desktop, on April 4, 2012. The initial release followed shortly on April 24, 2012, supporting Windows 7 only. With the release of version 1.1 in December 2012 it supported Windows XP and higher.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: Bing Desktop allows users to initiate a web search from the desktop, view news headlines, automatically set their background to the Bing homepage image, or choose a background from the previous nine background images.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: A similar program, the Bing Search gadget, was a Windows Sidebar Gadget that used Bing to fetch the user's search results and render them directly in the gadget. Another gadget, the Bing Maps gadget, displayed real-time traffic conditions using Bing Maps. The gadget provided shortcuts to driving directions, local search and full-screen traffic view of major US and Canadian cities, including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Montreal, New York City, Oklahoma City, Ottawa, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Providence, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, Tampa, Toronto, Vancouver, and Washington, D.C.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: Prior to October 30, 2007, the gadgets were known as "Live Search gadget" and "Live Search Maps gadget"; both gadgets were removed from Windows Live Gallery due to possible security concerns. The Live Search Maps gadget was made available for download again on January 24, 2008 with the security concern addressed. However around the introduction of Bing in June 2009 both gadgets have been removed again for download from Windows Live Gallery.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: Before the launch of Bing, the market share of Microsoft web search pages (MSN and Live search) had been small. By January 2011, Experian Hitwise show that Bing's market share had increased to 12.8% at the expense of Yahoo! and Google. In the same period, comScore's "2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review" report showed that "Bing was the big gainer in year-over-year search activity, picking up 29% more searches in 2010 than it did in 2009". "The Wall Street Journal" notes the 1% jump in share "appeared to come at the expense of rival Google Inc". In February 2011, Bing beat Yahoo! for the first time with 4.37% search share while Yahoo! received 3.93%.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: Counting core searches only, i.e., those where the user has an intent to interact with the search result, Bing had a market share of 14.54% in the second quarter of 2011 in the United States.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: The combined "Bing Powered" U.S. searches declined from 26.5% in 2011 to 25.9% in April 2012. By November 2015, its market share had declined further to 20.9%. As of October 2018, Bing is the third largest search engine in the US, with a query volume of 4.58%, behind Google (77%) and Baidu (14.45%). Yahoo! Search, which Bing largely powers, has 2.63%.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: UK advertising agencies point to a study by Microsoft's Regional Sales Director suggesting the demographic of Bing users is older people (who are less likely to change the default browser of Windows), and that this audience is wealthier and more likely to respond to advertisements.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: To counter EU accusations that it is trying to establish a market monopoly, in September 2021, Google's lawyers claimed that one of the most commonly searched words on Microsoft Bing was Google, which is a strong indication that Google is superior to Bing.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: In July 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo announced a deal in which Bing would power Yahoo! Search. All Yahoo! Search global customers and partners made the transition by early 2012. The deal was altered in 2015, meaning Yahoo! was only required to use Bing for a "majority" of searches.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: Since 2006, Microsoft had conducted a number of tie-ins and promotions for promoting Microsoft's search offerings. These include:


title: Microsoft Bing

text: Bing's debut featured an $80 to $100 million online, TV, print, and radio advertising campaign in the US. The advertisements do not mention other search engine competitors, such as Google and Yahoo!, directly by name; rather, they attempt to convince users to switch to Bing by focusing on Bing's search features and functionality. The ads claim that Bing does a better job countering "search overload".


title: Microsoft Bing

text: Bing has been heavily advertised as a "decision engine", though thought by columnist David Berkowitz to be more closely related to a web portal.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: Bing Rewards was a loyalty program launched by Microsoft in September 2010. It was similar to two earlier services, SearchPerks! and Bing Cashback, which were subsequently discontinued.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: Bing Rewards provided credits to users through regular Bing searches and special promotions. These credits were then redeemed for various products including electronics, gift cards, sweepstakes, and charitable donations. Initially, participants were required to download and use the Bing Bar for Internet Explorer in order to earn credits; but later the service was made to work with all desktop browsers.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: The Bing Rewards program was rebranded as "Microsoft Rewards" in 2016, at which point it was modified to only two levels, Level 1 and Level 2. Level 1 is similar to "Member", and Level 2 is similar to "Gold" of the previous Bing Rewards.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: During the episode of "The Colbert Report" that aired on June 8, 2010, Stephen Colbert stated that Microsoft would donate $2,500 to help clean up the Gulf oil spill each time he mentioned the word "Bing" on air. Colbert mostly mentioned Bing in out-of-context situations, such as Bing Crosby and Bing cherries. By the end of the show, Colbert had said the word 40 times, for a total donation of $100,000. Colbert poked fun at their rivalry with Google, stating "Bing is a great website for doing Internet searches. I know that, because I Googled it."


title: Microsoft Bing

text: Bing was added into the list of search engines available in Opera browser from v10.6, but Google remained the default search engine. Mozilla Firefox made a deal with Microsoft to jointly release "Firefox with Bing", an edition of Firefox where Bing has replaced Google as the default search engine. The standard edition of Firefox has Google as its default search engine, but has included Bing in its list of search providers since Firefox version 4.0.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: In addition, Microsoft paid Verizon Wireless US$550 million to use Bing as the default search provider on Verizon's BlackBerry and have Verizon "turn off" (via BlackBerry service books) the other search providers available. Users could still access other search engines via the mobile browser.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: In 2012, a Bing marketing campaign asked the public which search engine they believed was better when its results were presented without branding, similar to the Pepsi Challenge in the 1970s. This poll was nicknamed "Bing It On". Microsoft presented a study of almost 1,000 people which showed that 57% of participants in such a test preferred Bing's results, with only 30% preferring Google.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: Bing censors results for "adult" search terms for some regions, including India, People's Republic of China, Germany and Arab countries where required by local laws. However, Bing allows users to change their country or region preference to somewhere without restrictions, such as the United States, United Kingdom or Republic of Ireland.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: Microsoft has been criticized for censoring Bing search results to queries made in simplified Chinese characters which are used in mainland China. This is done to comply with the censorship requirements of the government in China. Microsoft has not indicated a willingness to stop censoring search results in simplified Chinese characters in the wake of Google's decision to do so. All simplified Chinese searches in Bing are censored regardless of the user's country. The English-language search results of Bing in China has been skewed to show more content from state-run media like Xinhua News Agency and "China Daily". On 23 January 2019, Bing was blocked in China. According to a source quoted by "The Financial Times", the order was from the Chinese government to block Bing for "illegal content". On 24 January, Bing was accessible again in China.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: Around 4 June 2021, the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, Bing blocked image and video search results for the English term "Tank Man" in the US, UK, France, Germany, Singapore, Switzerland, and other countries. Microsoft responded that "This is due to an accidental human error".


title: Microsoft Bing

text: In December 2021, it was required by a "relevant government agency" to suspend its auto-suggest function in China for 30 days. The search engine became partially unavailable in mainland China from 16 December until its resumption on 18 December 2021. According to the company, a government agency in March 2022 required that it suspend auto-suggest function in China for seven days; Bing did not specify the reason. In May 2022, a report released by the Citizen Lab of the University of Toronto found that Bing's autosuggestion system censored the names of Chinese Communist Party leaders, dissidents, and other persons considered politically sensitive in China in both Chinese and English, not only in China but also in United States and Canada.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: On February 20, 2017, Bing agreed to a voluntary United Kingdom code of practice obligating it to demote links to copyright-infringing content in its search results.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: Bing has been criticized for being slower to index websites than Google. It has also been criticized for not indexing some websites at all.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: Bing has been criticized by competitor Google for utilizing user input via Internet Explorer, the Bing Toolbar, or Suggested Sites, to add results to Bing. After discovering in October 2010 that Bing appeared to be imitating Google's auto-correct results for a misspelling, despite not actually fixing the spelling of the term, Google set up a honeypot, configuring the Google search engine to return specific unrelated results for 100 nonsensical queries such as "hiybbprqag". Over the next couple of weeks, Google engineers entered the search term into Google, while using Microsoft Internet Explorer, with the Bing Toolbar installed and the optional Suggested Sites enabled. In 9 out of the 100 queries, Bing later started returning the same results as Google, despite the only apparent connection between the result and search term being that Google's results connected the two.


title: Microsoft Bing

text: Microsoft's response to this issue, coming from a company spokesperson, was: "We do not copy Google's results." Bing's Vice President, Harry Shum, later reiterated that the search result data Google claimed that Bing copied had in fact come from Bing's very own users. Shum wrote that "we use over 1,000 different signals and features in our ranking algorithm. A small piece of that is clickstream data we get from some of our customers, who opt into sharing anonymous data as they navigate the web in order to help us improve the experience for all users."


title: Microsoft Bing

text: A study released in 2019 of Bing Image search showed that it both freely offered up images that had been tagged as illegal child pornography in national databases, as well as automatically suggesting via its auto-completion feature queries related to child pornography. This easy accessibility was considered particularly surprising since Microsoft pioneered PhotoDNA, the main technology used for tracking images reported as originating from child pornography. Additionally, some arrested child pornographers reported using Bing as their main search engine for new content. Microsoft vowed to fix the problem and assign additional staff to combat the issue after the report was released.


title: Paraguayan War

text: The Paraguayan War, also known as the War of the Triple Alliance, was a South American war that lasted from 1864 to 1870. It was fought between Paraguay and the Triple Alliance of Argentina, the Empire of Brazil, and Uruguay. It was the deadliest and bloodiest inter-state war in Latin American history. Paraguay sustained large casualties, but the approximate numbers are disputed. Paraguay was forced to cede disputed territory to Argentina and Brazil. The war began in late 1864, as a result of a conflict between Paraguay and Brazil caused by the Uruguayan War. Argentina and Uruguay entered the war against Paraguay in 1865, and it then became known as the "War of the Triple Alliance".


title: Paraguayan War

text: After Paraguay was defeated in conventional warfare, it conducted a drawn-out guerrilla resistance, a strategy that resulted in the further destruction of the Paraguayan military and the civilian population. Much of the civilian population lost their lives due to battle, hunger, and disease. The guerrilla war lasted for 14 months until President Francisco Solano López was killed in action by Brazilian forces in the Battle of Cerro Corá on 1 March 1870. Argentine and Brazilian troops occupied Paraguay until 1876.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Since their independence from Portugal and Spain in the early 19th century, the Empire of Brazil and the Spanish-American countries of South America were troubled by territorial disputes. Each nation in this region had boundary conflicts with multiple neighbors. Most had overlapping claims to the same territories, due to unresolved questions which stemmed from their former metropoles. Signed by Portugal and Spain in 1494, the Treaty of Tordesillas proved ineffective in the following centuries, as both colonial powers expanded their frontiers in South America and elsewhere. The outdated boundary lines did not represent the actual occupation of lands by the Portuguese and Spanish.


title: Paraguayan War

text: By the early 1700s, the Treaty of Tordesillas was deemed not useful, and it was clear to both parties that a newer treaty had to be drawn based on feasible boundaries. In 1750, the Treaty of Madrid separated the Portuguese and Spanish areas of South America in lines that mostly corresponded to present-day boundaries. Neither Portugal nor Spain were satisfied with the results, and new treaties were signed in the following decades that either established new territorial lines or repealed them. The final accord signed by both powers, the Treaty of Badajoz (1801), reaffirmed the validity of the previous Treaty of San Ildefonso (1777), which had derived from the older Treaty of Madrid.


title: Paraguayan War

text: The territorial disputes became worse when the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata collapsed in the early 1810s, leading to the rise of Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Uruguay. Historian Pelham Horton Box writes: "Imperial Spain bequeathed to the emancipated Spanish-American nations not only her own frontier disputes with Portuguese Brazil but problems which had not disturbed her, relating to the exact boundaries of her own viceroyalties, captaincies general, audiencias and provinces." Once separated the three countries quarreled over lands that were mostly uncharted or unknown. They were either sparsely populated or settled by indigenous tribes that answered to no parties. In the case of Paraguay and Brazil, the problem was to define whether the Apa or Branco rivers should represent their actual boundary, a persistent issue that had confused Spain and Portugal in the late 18th century. A few indigenous tribes populated the region between the two rivers, and these tribes would attack Brazilian and Paraguayan settlements that were local to them.


title: Paraguayan War

text: There are several theories regarding the origins of the war. The traditional view emphasizes that the policies of Paraguayan President Francisco Solano López used the Uruguayan War as a pretext to gain control of the Platine basin. That caused a response from the regional hegemons, Brazil and Argentina, both of which exercised influence over the much smaller republics of Uruguay and Paraguay. The war has also been attributed to the aftermath of colonialism in South America with border conflicts between the new states, the struggle for power among neighboring nations over the strategic Río de la Plata region, Brazilian and Argentine meddling in internal Uruguayan politics (which had already caused the Platine War), Solano López's efforts to help his allies in Uruguay (which had been defeated by the Brazilians), and his presumed expansionist ambitions.


title: Paraguayan War

text: A strong military was developed because Paraguay's larger neighbors, Argentina and Brazil, had territorial claims against it and wanted to dominate it politically, much as both had already done in Uruguay. Paraguay had recurring boundary disputes and tariff issues with Argentina and Brazil for many years during the rule of Solano Lopez's predecessor and father, Carlos Antonio López.


title: Paraguayan War

text: In the time since Brazil and Argentina had become independent, their struggle for hegemony in the Río de la Plata region had profoundly marked the diplomatic and political relations among the countries of the region.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Brazil was the first country to recognize the independence of Paraguay, in 1844. At this time Argentina still considered it a breakaway province. While Argentina was ruled by Juan Manuel Rosas (1829–1852), a common enemy of both Brazil and Paraguay, Brazil contributed to the improvement of the fortifications and development of the Paraguayan army, sending officials and technical help to Asunción.


title: Paraguayan War

text: As no roads linked the inland province of Mato Grosso to Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian ships needed to travel through Paraguayan territory, going up the Paraguay River to arrive at Cuiabá. However, Brazil had difficulty obtaining permission from the government in Asunción to freely use the Paraguay River for its shipping needs.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Brazil had carried out three political and military interventions in the politically unstable Uruguay:


title: Paraguayan War

text: On 19 April 1863, Uruguayan General Venancio Flores, who was then an officer in the Argentine army as well as the leader of the Colorado Party of Uruguay, invaded his country, starting the "Cruzada Libertadora" with the open support of Argentina, which supplied the rebels with arms, ammunition and 2,000 men. Flores wanted to overthrow the Blanco Party government of President Bernardo Berro, which was allied with Paraguay.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Paraguayan President López sent a note to the Argentine government on 6 September 1863, asking for an explanation, but Buenos Aires denied any involvement in Uruguay. From that moment, mandatory military service was introduced in Paraguay; in February 1864, an additional 64,000 men were drafted into the army.


title: Paraguayan War

text: One year after the beginning of the "Cruzada Libertadora", in April 1864, Brazilian minister José Antônio Saraiva arrived in Uruguayan waters with the Imperial Fleet, to demand payment for damages caused to Rio Grande do Sul farmers in border conflicts with Uruguayan farmers. Uruguayan President Atanasio Aguirre, from the Blanco Party, rejected the Brazilian demands, presented his own demands, and asked Paraguay for help. To settle the growing crisis, Solano López offered himself as a mediator of the Uruguayan crisis, as he was a political and diplomatic ally of the Uruguayan "Blancos", but the offer was turned down by Brazil.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Brazilian soldiers on the northern borders of Uruguay started to provide help to Flores' troops and harassed Uruguayan officers, while the Imperial Fleet pressed hard on Montevideo. During the months of June–August 1864 a Cooperation Treaty was signed between Brazil and Argentina at Buenos Aires, for mutual assistance in the Plate Basin Crisis.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Brazilian Minister Saraiva sent an ultimatum to the Uruguayan government on 4 August 1864: either comply with the Brazilian demands, or the Brazilian army would retaliate. The Paraguayan government was informed of all this and sent to Brazil a message, which stated in part:


title: Paraguayan War

text: The Brazilian government, probably believing that the Paraguayan threat would be only diplomatic, answered on 1 September, stating that "they will never abandon the duty of protecting the lives and interests of Brazilian subjects". But in its answer, two days later, the Paraguayan government insisted that "if Brazil takes the measures protested against in the note of August 30th, 1864, Paraguay will be under the painful necessity of making its protest effective."


title: Paraguayan War

text: On 12 October, despite the Paraguayan notes and ultimatums, Brazilian troops under the command of general João Propício Mena Barreto invaded Uruguay. This was not the start of the Paraguayan war, however, for Paraguay continued to maintain diplomatic relations with Brazil for another month.


title: Paraguayan War

text: On 11 November the Brazilian ship "Marquês de Olinda", on her routine voyage up the River Paraguay to the Brazilian Mato Grosso, and carrying the new governor of that province, docked at Asunción and took on coal. Completing the formalities, she continued on her journey. (According to one source, López hesitated whether to break the peace for a whole day, saying "If we don't have a war now with Brazil, we shall have one at a less convenient time for ourselves".) López then ordered the Paraguayan ship "Tacuarí" to pursue her and compel her return. On 12 November "Tacuarí" caught up with "Marquês de Olinda" in the vicinity of Concepción, fired across her bows, and ordered her to return to Asunción; when she arrived on the 13th, all on board were arrested. On the 12th Paraguay informed the Brazilian minister in Asunción that diplomatic relations had been broken off.


title: Paraguayan War

text: The conflict between Brazil and Uruguay was settled in February 1865. News of the war's end was brought by Pereira Pinto and met with joy in Rio de Janeiro. Brazilian Emperor Pedro II found himself waylaid by a crowd of thousands in the streets amid acclamations. However, public opinion quickly changed for the worse when newspapers began running stories painting the convention of 20 February as harmful to Brazilian interests, for which the cabinet was blamed. The newly raised Viscount of Tamandaré and Mena Barreto (now Baron of São Gabriel) had supported the peace accord. Tamandaré changed his mind soon afterward and played along with the allegations. A member of the opposition party, José Paranhos, Viscount of Rio Branco, was used as a scapegoat by the Emperor and the government and was recalled in disgrace to the imperial capital. The accusation that the convention had failed to meet Brazilian interests proved to be unfounded. Not only had Paranhos managed to settle all Brazilian claims, but by preventing the death of thousands, he gained a willing and grateful Uruguayan ally instead of a dubious and resentful one, which provided Brazil with an important base of operations during the acute clash with Paraguay that shortly ensued.


title: Paraguayan War

text: According to some historians, Paraguay began the war with over 60,000 trained men—38,000 of whom were already under arms—400 cannons, a naval squadron of 23 steamboats ("vapores") and five river-navigating ships (among them the "Tacuarí" gunboat).


title: Paraguayan War

text: Communications in the Río de la Plata basin were maintained solely by the river as very few roads existed. Whoever controlled the rivers would win the war, so Paraguay had built fortifications on the banks of the lower end of the Paraguay River.


title: Paraguayan War

text: However, recent studies suggest many problems. Although the Paraguayan army had between 70,000 and 100,000 men at the beginning of the conflict, they were badly equipped. Most infantry armaments consisted of inaccurate smooth-bore muskets and carbines, slow to reload and short-ranged. The artillery was similarly poor. Military officers had no training or experience, and there was no command system, as all decisions were made personally by López. Food, ammunition, and armaments were scarce, with logistics and hospital care deficient or nonexistent. The nation of about 450,000 people could not stand against the Triple Alliance of 11 million people.


title: Paraguayan War

text: At the beginning of the war, the military forces of Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay were far smaller than Paraguay's. Argentina had approximately 8,500 regular troops and a naval squadron of four "vapores" and one "goleta". Uruguay entered the war with fewer than 2,000 men and no navy. Many of Brazil's 16,000 troops were located in its southern garrisons. The Brazilian advantage, though, was in its navy, comprising 45 ships with 239 cannons and about 4,000 well-trained crew. A great part of the squadron was already in the Rio de la Plata basin, where it had acted under the Marquis of Tamandaré in the intervention against Aguirre government.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Brazil, however, was unprepared to fight a war. Its army was disorganized. The troops it used in Uruguay were mostly armed contingents of gauchos and the National Guard. While some Brazilian accounts of the war described their infantry as volunteers ("Voluntários da Pátria"), other Argentine revisionist and Paraguayan accounts disparaged the Brazilian infantry as mainly recruited from slaves and the landless (largely black) underclass, who were promised free land for enlisting. The cavalry was formed from the National Guard of Rio Grande do Sul.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Ultimately, a total of about 146,000 Brazilians fought in the war from 1864 to 1870, consisting of the 10,025 army soldiers stationed in Uruguayan territory in 1864, 2,047 that were in the province of Mato Grosso, 55,985 Fatherland Volunteers, 60,009 National Guardsmen, 8,570 ex-slaves who had been freed to be sent to war, and 9,177 navy personnel. Another 18,000 National Guard troops stayed behind to defend Brazilian territory.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Paraguay took the initiative during the first phase of the war, launching the Mato Grosso Campaign by invading the Brazilian province of Mato Grosso on 14 December 1864, followed by an invasion of the Rio Grande do Sul province in the south in early 1865 and the Argentine Corrientes Province.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Two separate Paraguayan forces invaded Mato Grosso simultaneously. An expedition of 3,248 troops, commanded by Col. Vicente Barrios, was transported by a naval squadron under the command of "Capitán de Fragata" Pedro Ignacio Meza up the Paraguay River to the town of Concepcion. There they attacked the Nova Coimbra fort on 27 December 1864. The Brazilian garrison of 154 men resisted for three days, under the command of Lt. Col. Hermenegildo Portocarrero (later Baron of Fort Coimbra). When their munitions were exhausted, the defenders abandoned the fort and withdrew up the river towards Corumbá on board the gunship "Anhambaí". After occupying the fort, the Paraguayans advanced further north, taking the cities of Albuquerque, Tage and Corumbá in January 1865.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Solano López then sent a detachment to attack the military frontier post of Dourados. On 29 December 1864, this detachment, led by Maj. Martín Urbieta, encountered tough resistance from Lt. Antônio João Ribeiro and his 16 men, who were all eventually killed. The Paraguayans continued to Nioaque and Miranda, defeating the troops of Col. José Dias da Silva. Coxim was taken in April 1865. The second Paraguayan column, formed from some of the 4,650 men led by Col. Francisco Isidoro Resquín at Concepcion, penetrated into Mato Grosso with 1500 troops.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Despite these victories, the Paraguayan forces did not continue to Cuiabá, the capital of the province, where Augusto Leverger had fortified the camp of Melgaço. Their main objective was the capture of the gold and diamond mines, disrupting the flow of these materials into Brazil until 1869.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Brazil sent an expedition to fight the invaders in Mato Grosso. A column of 2,780 men led by Col. Manuel Pedro Drago left Uberaba in Minas Gerais in April 1865 and arrived at Coxim in December, after a difficult march of more than through four provinces. However, Paraguay had already abandoned Coxim by December. Drago arrived at Miranda in September 1866, and Paraguayans had left once again. Col. Carlos de Morais Camisão assumed command of the column in January 1867—now with only 1,680 men—and decided to invade Paraguayan territory, which he penetrated as far as Laguna where Paraguayan cavalry forced the expedition to retreat.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Despite the efforts of Camisão's troops and the resistance in the region, which succeeded in liberating Corumbá in June 1867, a large portion of Mato Grosso remained under Paraguayan control. The Brazilians withdrew from the area in April 1868, moving their troops to the main theatre of operations, in the south of Paraguay.


title: Paraguayan War

text: When the war first broke out between Paraguay and Brazil, Argentina stayed neutral. Solano López doubted Argentina's neutrality because it gave Brazilian ships permission to navigate in the Argentine rivers of the Plate region, despite Paraguay being at war with Brazil.


title: Paraguayan War

text: The invasion of Corrientes and the Rio Grande do Sul provinces was the second phase of the Paraguayan offensive. In order to support the Uruguayan Blancos, the Paraguayans had to travel across the Argentine territory. In January 1865, Solano López asked Argentina's permission for an army of 20,000 men (led by Gen. Wenceslao Robles) to travel through the province of Corrientes. Argentine President Bartolomé Mitre refused Paraguay's request and a similar one from Brazil.


title: Paraguayan War

text: After this refusal Paraguayan Congress gathered at an emergency meeting on 5 March 1865. After several days of discussions, on 23 March the Congress decided to declare war on Argentina for its policies, hostile to Paraguay and favourable to Brazil, and then they conferred to Francisco Solano López Carrillo the rank of "Field Marshal" of the Republic of Paraguay. The declaration of war was sent on 29 March 1865 to Buenos Aires.


title: Paraguayan War

text: On 13 April 1865, a Paraguayan squadron sailed down the Paraná River and attacked two Argentine ships in the port of Corrientes. Immediately Gen. Robles' troops took the city with 3,000 men, and a cavalry force of 800 arrived the same day. Leaving a force of 1,500 men in the city, Robles advanced southwards along the eastern bank.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Along with Robles' troops, a force of 12,000 soldiers under Col. Antonio de la Cruz Estigarribia crossed the Argentine border south of Encarnación in May 1865, driving for Rio Grande do Sul. They traveled down Uruguay River and took the town of São Borja on 12 June. Uruguaiana, to the south, was taken on 6 August with little resistance.


title: Paraguayan War

text: By invading Corrientes, Solano López had hoped to gain the support of the powerful Argentine "caudillo" Justo José de Urquiza, governor of the provinces of Corrientes and Entre Ríos, who was known to be the chief federalist hostile to Mitre and the central government in Buenos Aires. However, Urquiza gave his full support to an Argentine offensive. The forces advanced approximately south before ultimately ending the offensive in failure.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Following the invasion of the Corrientes Province by Paraguay on 13 April 1865, a great uproar stirred in Buenos Aires as the public learned of Paraguay's declaration of war. President Bartolomé Mitre made a famous speech to the crowds on 4 May 1865:


title: Paraguayan War

text: The same day, Argentina declared war on Paraguay; however, on 1 May 1865, Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay had signed the secret Treaty of the Triple Alliance in Buenos Aires. They named Bartolomé Mitre, president of Argentina, as supreme commander of the allied forces. The signatories of the treaty were Rufino de Elizalde (Argentina), Otaviano de Almeida (Brazil) and Carlos de Castro (Uruguay).


title: Paraguayan War

text: On 11 June 1865, at the naval Battle of Riachuelo, the Brazilian fleet commanded by Admiral Francisco Manoel Barroso da Silva destroyed the Paraguayan navy and prevented the Paraguayans from permanently occupying Argentine territory. For all practical purposes, this battle decided the outcome of the war in favor of the Triple Alliance; from that point onward, it controlled the waters of the Río de la Plata basin up to the entrance to Paraguay.


title: Paraguayan War

text: A separate Paraguayan division of 3,200 men that continued towards Uruguay under the command of Maj. Pedro Duarte, who was then defeated by Allied troops under Venancio Flores in the bloody Battle of Yatay, on the banks of the Uruguay River, near Paso de los Libres.


title: Paraguayan War

text: While Solano López ordered the retreat of the forces that had occupied Corrientes, the Paraguayan troops that invaded São Borja advanced, taking Itaqui and Uruguaiana. The situation in Rio Grande do Sul was chaotic, and the local Brazilian military commanders were incapable of mounting effective resistance to the Paraguayans.


title: Paraguayan War

text: The baron of Porto Alegre set out for Uruguaiana, a small town in the province's west, where the Paraguayan army was besieged by a combined force of Brazilian, Argentine and Uruguayan units. Porto Alegre assumed the command of the Brazilian army in Uruguaiana on 21 August 1865. On 18 September, the Paraguayan garrison surrendered without further bloodshed.


title: Paraguayan War

text: In subsequent months, the Paraguayans were driven out of the cities of Corrientes and San Cosme, the only Argentine territory still in Paraguayan possession.


title: Paraguayan War

text: By the end of 1865, the Triple Alliance was on the offensive. Its armies numbered 42,000 infantry and 15,000 cavalry as they invaded Paraguay in April. The Paraguayans scored small victories against major forces in the Battle of Corrales (also known as battle of Pehuajó or Itati) in the Corrientes Province, but that couldn't stop the invasion.


title: Paraguayan War

text: On 16 April 1866, the Allied Armies invaded Paraguayan mainland by crossing the Paraná River. López launched counter-attacks, but they were repelled by Gen. Manuel Luís Osório, who took victories in the battles of Itapirú and Isla Cabrita. Yet, the Allied advance was checked in the first major battle of the war, at Estero Bellaco, on 2 May 1866.


title: Paraguayan War

text: López, believing that he could deal a fatal blow to the Allies, launched a major offensive with 25,000 men against 35,000 Allied soldiers at the Battle of Tuyutí on 24 May 1866, one of the bloodiest battles in Latin-American history. Despite being very close to victory at Tuyutí, López's plan was shattered by the Allied army's fierce resistance and the decisive action of the Brazilian artillery. Both sides sustained heavy losses: more than 12,000 casualties for Paraguay versus 6,000 for the Allies.


title: Paraguayan War

text: By 18 July, the Paraguayans had recovered, defeating forces commanded by Mitre and Flores in the Battle of Sauce and Boquerón, losing more than 2,000 men against the Allied 6,000 casualties. However, Brazilian Gen. Porto Alegre won the Battle of Curuzú, putting the Paraguayans in a desperate situation.


title: Paraguayan War

text: On 12 September 1866, Solano López, after the defeat in the Battle of Curuzú, invited Mitre and Flores to a conference in Yataytí Corá, which resulted in a "heated argument" among both leaders. López had realized that the war was lost and was ready to sign a peace treaty with the Allies. No agreement was reached, though, since Mitre's conditions for signing the treaty were that every article of the secret Treaty of the Triple Alliance was to be carried out, a condition that Solano López refused. Article 6 of the treaty made truce or peace with López nearly impossible, as it stipulated that the war was to continue until the then government ceased to be, which meant the removal of Solano López.


title: Paraguayan War

text: After the conference, the Allies marched into Paraguayan territory, reaching the defensive line of Curupayty. Trusting in their numerical superiority and the possibility of attacking the flank of the defensive line through the Paraguay River by using the Brazilian ships, the Allies made a frontal assault on the defensive line, supported by the flank fire of the battleships. However, the Paraguayans, commanded by General José E. Díaz, stood strong in their positions and set up for a defensive battle, inflicting tremendous damage on the attacking Allied troops, inflicting over 8,000 casualties on the Brazil-Argentine army against no more than 250 losses of the Paraguayans. The Battle of Curupayty resulted in an almost catastrophic defeat for the Allied forces, ending their offensive for ten months, until July 1867.


title: Paraguayan War

text: The Allied leaders blamed each other for disastrous failure at Curupayty. General Flores left for Uruguay in September 1866 shortly after the battle and was later murdered there in 1867. Porto Alegre and Tamandaré found common ground in their distaste for the Brazilian commander of the 1st Corps, field marshal , Viscount of Santa Teresa. General Jordão was ostracized for supporting Mitre and for being a member of the Conservative Party, while Porto Alegre and Tamandaré were Progressives.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Mitre had a harsh opinion of the Brazilians and said that "Porto Alegre and Tamandaré, who are cousins, and cousins even in lack of judgement have made a family pact to monopolize, in practice, the command of war." He further criticized Porto Alegre: "It is impossible to imagine a greater military nullity than this general, to which it can be added Tamandaré's dominating bad influence over him and the negative spirit of both in relation to the allies, owning to passions and petty interests."


title: Paraguayan War

text: The Brazilian government decided to create a unified command over Brazilian forces operating in Paraguay, and turned to the 63-year-old Caxias as the new leader on the 10 of October 1866. Osório was sent to organize a 5,000-strong third corps of the Brazilian army in Rio Grande do Sul. Caxias arrived in Itapiru on the 17 of November. His first measure was to dismiss the Vice-Admiral Joaquim Marques Lisboa (later the Marquis of Tamandaré and also a member of the Progressive League). The government had appointed his fellow Conservative Vice-Admiral, Joaquim José Inácio—later the Viscount of Inhaúma—to lead the navy.


title: Paraguayan War

text: The Marquess of Caxias assumed command on 19 November. He aimed to end the never-ending squabbling and to increase his autonomy from the Brazilian government. With the departure of President Mitre in February 1867, Caxias assumed overall command of the Allied forces. He found the army practically paralyzed and devastated by disease. During this period Caxias trained his soldiers, re-equipped the army with new guns, improved the quality of the officer corps, and upgraded the health corps and overall hygiene of the troops, putting an end to epidemics. From October 1866 until July 1867, all offensive operations were suspended. Military operations were limited to skirmishes with the Paraguayans and bombarding Curupaity. Solano López took advantage of the disorganization of the enemy to reinforce the Fortress of Humaitá.


title: Paraguayan War

text: As the Brazilian army was ready for combat, Caxias sought to encircle Humaitá and force its capitulation by siege. To aid the war effort, Caxias used observation balloons to gather information of the enemy lines. With the 3rd Corps ready for combat, the Allied army started its flanking march around Humaitá on 22 July. The march to outflank the left-wing of the Paraguayan fortifications constituted the basis of Caxias' tactics. He wanted to bypass the Paraguayan strongholds, cut the connections between Asunción and Humaitá and finally encircle the Paraguayans. The 2nd Corps was stationed in Tuyutí, while the 1st corps and the newly created 3rd Corps were used by Caxias to encircle Humaitá. President Mitre returned from Argentina and re-assumed overall command on 1 August. With the capture on 2  November by Brazilians troops of the Paraguayan position of Tahí, at the shores of the river, Humaitá would become isolated from the rest of the country by land.


title: Paraguayan War

text: The combined Brazilian–Argentine–Uruguayan army continued advancing north through hostile territory to surround Humaitá. The Allied force advanced to San Solano on the 29th and Tayi on 2 November, isolating Humaitá from Asunción. Before dawn on 3 November, Solano López reacted by ordering the attack on the rearguard of the allies in the Second Battle of Tuyutí.


title: Paraguayan War

text: The Paraguayans, commanded by General Bernardino Caballero breached the Argentine lines, causing enormous damage to the Allied camp and successfully capturing weapons and supplies, very needed by López for the war effort. Only thanks to the intervention of Porto Alegre and his troops, the Allied army recovered. During the Second Battle of Tuyutí, Porto Alegre fought with his saber in hand-to-hand combat and lost two horses. In this battle, the Paraguayans lost over 2,500 men, while the allies had just over 500 casualties.


title: Paraguayan War

text: By 1867, Paraguay had lost 60,000 men to battle casualties, injuries, or disease. Due to the growing manpower shortage, López conscripted another 60,000 soldiers from slaves and children. Women were entrusted with all support functions alongside the soldiers. Many Paraguayan soldiers went into battle without shoes or uniforms. López enforced the strictest discipline, executing even his two brothers and two brothers-in-law for alleged defeatism.


title: Paraguayan War

text: By December 1867, there were 45,791 Brazilians, 6,000 Argentines and 500 Uruguayans at the front. After the death of Argentine Vice-President Marcos Paz, Mitre relinquished his position for the second, and final time on 14 January 1868. Allied representatives in Buenos Aires abolished the position of Allied commander-in-chief on 3 October, although the Marquess of Caxias continued to fill the role of Brazilian supreme commander.


title: Paraguayan War

text: On 19 February, Brazilian ironclads successfully made a passage up the Paraguay River under heavy fire, gaining full control of the river and isolating Humaitá from resupply by water. Humaitá fell on 25 July 1868, after a long siege.


title: Paraguayan War

text: The assault on the warships "Lima Barros" and "Cabral" was a naval action that took place in the early hours of 2 March 1868, when Paraguayan canoes, joined two by two, disguised with branches and manned by 50 soldiers each, approached the ironclads "Lima Barros" and "Cabral". The Imperial Fleet, which had already achieved the Passage of Humaitá, was anchored in the Paraguay river, before the Taji stronghold near Humaitá.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Taking advantage of the dense darkness of the night and the camalotes and rafters that descended on the current, a squadron of canoes covered by branches and foliage and tied two by two, crewed by 1,500 Paraguayans armed with machetes, hatchets and approaching swords, went to approach "Cabral" and "Lima Barros". The fighting continued until dawn when the warships "Brasil", "Herval", "Mariz e Barros" and "Silvado" approached and shot the Paraguayans, who gave up the attack, losing 400 men and 14 canoes.


title: Paraguayan War

text: The First Battle of Iasuií took place on 2 May 1868, between Brazilians and Paraguayans, in the Chaco region of Paraguay. On the occasion, Colonel Barros Falcão, the head of a garrison of 2,500 soldiers, repelled a Paraguayan attack, suffering 137 casualties. The attackers lost 105 soldiers.


title: Paraguayan War

text: "En route" to Asunción, the Allied army went north to Palmas, stopping at the Piquissiri River. There Solano López had concentrated 12,000 Paraguayans in a fortified line that exploited the terrain and supported the forts of Angostura and Itá-Ibaté.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Resigned to frontal combat, Caxias ordered the so-called Piquissiri maneuver. While a squadron attacked Angostura, Caxias made the army cross to the west side of the river. He ordered the construction of a road in the swamps of the Gran Chaco along which the troops advanced to the northeast. At Villeta the army crossed the river again, between Asunción and Piquissiri, behind the fortified Paraguayan line.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Instead of advancing to the capital, already evacuated and bombarded, Caxias went south and attacked the Paraguayans from the rear in December 1868, in an offensive which became known as "Dezembrada". Caxias' troops were ambushed while crossing the Itororó during an initial advance, during which the Paraguayans inflicted severe damage on the Brazilian armies. Days later, however, the Allies destroyed a whole Paraguayan division at the Battle of Avay. Weeks later, Caxias won another decisive victory at the Battle of Lomas Valentinas and captured the last stronghold of the Paraguayan Army in Angostura. On 24 December, Caxias sent a note to Solano López asking for surrender, but Solano López refused and fled to Cerro León. Alongside the Paraguayan president was the American Minister-Ambassador, Gen. Martin T. McMahon, who after the war became a fierce defender of López's cause.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Asunción was occupied on 1 January 1869, by Brazilian Gen. João de Souza da Fonseca Costa, father of the future Marshal Hermes da Fonseca. On 5 January, Caxias entered the city with the rest of the army. Most of Caxias army settled in Asunción, where also 4000 Argentine and 200 Uruguayan troops soon arrived together with about 800 soldiers and officers of the Paraguayan Legion. By this time, Caxias was ill and tired. On 17 January, he fainted during a Mass; he relinquished his command the next day, and the day after that left for Montevideo.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Very soon the city hosted about 30,000 Allied soldiers; for the next few months these looted almost every building, including diplomatic missions of European nations.


title: Paraguayan War

text: With Solano López on the run, the country lacked a government. Pedro II sent his Foreign minister José Paranhos to Asunción where he arrived on 20 February 1869 and began consultations with the local politicians. Paranhos had to create a provisional government that could sign a peace accord and recognize the border claimed by Brazil between the two nations. According to historian Francisco Doratioto, Paranhos, "the then-greatest Brazilian specialist on Platine affairs", had a "decisive" role in the installation of the Paraguayan provisional government.


title: Paraguayan War

text: With Paraguay devastated, the power vacuum resulting from Solano López's overthrow was quickly filled by emerging domestic factions which Paranhos had to accommodate. On 31 March, a petition was signed by 335 leading citizens asking Allies for a Provisional government. This was followed by negotiations between the Allied countries, which put aside some of the more controversial points of the Treaty of the Triple Alliance; on 11 June, agreement was reached with Paraguayan opposition figures that a three-man Provisional government would be established. On 22 July, a National Assembly met in the National Theatre and elected "Junta Nacional" of 21 men which then selected a five-man committee to select three men for the Provisional government. They selected Carlos Loizaga, Juan Francisco Decoud, and José Díaz de Bedoya. Decoud was unacceptable to Paranhos, who had him replaced with Cirilo Antonio Rivarola. The government was finally installed on 15 August, but was just a front for the continued Allied occupation. After the death of Lopez, the Provisional Government issued a proclamation on 6 March 1870 in which it promised to support political liberties, to protect commerce and to promote immigration.


title: Paraguayan War

text: The Provisional Government did not last. In May 1870, José Díaz de Bedoya resigned; on 31 August 1870, so did Carlos Loizaga. The remaining member, Antonio Rivarola, was then immediately relieved of his duties by the National Assembly, which established a provisional Presidency, to which it elected Facundo Machaín, who assumed his post that same day. However, the next day, 1 September, he was overthrown in a "coup" that restored Rivarola to power.


title: Paraguayan War

text: The son-in-law of Emperor Pedro II, Gaston, Count of Eu, was nominated in 1869 to direct the final phase of the military operations in Paraguay. At the head of 21,000 men, Eu led the campaign against the Paraguayan resistance, the Campaign of the Hills, which lasted over a year.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Most important were the Battle of Piribebuy and the Battle of Acosta Ñu, in which more than 5,000 Paraguayans died. After a successful beginning which included victories over the remnants of Solano López's army, the Count fell into depression and Paranhos became the unacknowledged, de facto commander-in-chief.


title: Paraguayan War

text: President Solano López organized the resistance in the mountain range northeast of Asunción. At the end of the war, with Paraguay suffering severe shortages of weapons and supplies, Solano López reacted with draconian attempts to keep order, ordering troops to kill any of their colleagues, including officers, who talked of surrender. Paranoia prevailed in the army, and soldiers fought to the bitter end in a resistance movement, resulting in more destruction in the country.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Two detachments were sent in pursuit of Solano López, who was accompanied by 200 men in the forests in the north. On 1 March 1870, the troops of General José Antônio Correia da Câmara surprised the last Paraguayan camp in Cerro Corá. During the ensuing battle, Solano López was wounded and separated from the remainder of his army. Too weak to walk, he was escorted by his aide and a pair of officers, who led him to the banks of the Aquidaban-nigui River. The officers left Solano López and his aide there while they looked for reinforcements.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Before they returned, Câmara arrived with a small number of soldiers. Though he offered to permit Solano López to surrender and guaranteed his life, Solano López refused. Shouting "I die with my homeland!", he tried to attack Câmara with his sword. He was quickly killed by Câmara's men, bringing an end to the long conflict in 1870.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Paraguay suffered massive casualties, and the war's disruption and disease also cost civilian lives. Some historians estimate that the nation lost the majority of its population. The specific numbers are hotly disputed and range widely. A survey of 14 estimates of Paraguay's pre-war population varied between 300,000 and 1,337,000. Later academic work based on demographics produced a wide range of estimates, from a possible low of 21,000 (7% of population) (Reber, 1988) to as high as 69% of the total prewar population (Whigham, Potthast, 1999). Because of the local situation, all casualty figures are a very rough estimate; accurate casualty numbers may never be determined.


title: Paraguayan War

text: After the war, an 1871 census recorded 221,079 inhabitants, of which 106,254 were women, 28,746 were men, and 86,079 were children (with no indication of sex or upper age limit).


title: Paraguayan War

text: The worst reports are that up to 90% of the male population was killed, though this figure is without support. One estimate places total Paraguayan losses—through both war and disease—as high as 1.2 million people, or 90% of its pre-war population, but modern scholarship has shown that this number depends on a population census of 1857 that was a government invention. A different estimate places Paraguayan deaths at approximately 300,000 people out of 500,000 to 525,000 pre-war inhabitants. During the war, many men and boys fled to the countryside and forests.


title: Paraguayan War

text: In the estimation of Vera Blinn Reber, however, "The evidence demonstrates that the Paraguayan population casualties due to the war have been enormously exaggerated".


title: Paraguayan War

text: A 1999 study by Thomas Whigham from the University of Georgia and Barbara Potthast (published in the "Latin American Research Review" under the title "The Paraguayan Rosetta Stone: New Evidence on the Demographics of the Paraguayan War, 1864–1870", and later expanded in the 2002 essay titled "Refining the Numbers: A Response to Reber and Kleinpenning") used a methodology to yield more accurate figures. To establish the population before the war, Whigham used an 1846 census and calculated, based on a population growth rate of 1.7% to 2.5% annually (which was the standard rate at that time), that the immediately pre-war Paraguayan population in 1864 was approximately 420,000–450,000. Based on a census carried out after the war ended, in 1870–1871, Whigham concluded that 150,000–160,000 Paraguayan people had survived, of whom only 28,000 were adult males. In total, 60–70% of the population died as a result of the war, leaving a woman/man ratio of 4 to 1 (as high as 20 to 1, in the most devastated areas). For academic criticism of the Whigham-Potthast methodology and estimates see the main article Paraguayan War casualties.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Steven Pinker wrote that, assuming a death rate of over 60% of the Paraguayan population, this war was proportionally one of the most destructive in modern times for any nation state.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Of approximately 123,000 Brazilians who fought in the Paraguayan War, the best estimates are that around 50,000 men died. Uruguay had about 5,600 men under arms (including some foreigners), of whom about 3,100 died. Argentina lost close to 30,000 men.


title: Paraguayan War

text: The high rates of mortality were not all due to combat. As was common before antibiotics were developed, disease caused more deaths than war wounds. Bad food and poor sanitation contributed to disease among troops and civilians. Among the Brazilians, two-thirds of the dead died either in a hospital or on the march. At the beginning of the conflict, most Brazilian soldiers came from the north and northeast regions; the change from a hot to a colder climate, combined with restricted food rations, may have weakened their resistance. Entire battalions of Brazilians were recorded as dying after drinking water from rivers. Therefore, some historians believe cholera, transmitted in the water, was a leading cause of death during the war.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Paraguayan women played a significant role in the Paraguayan War. During the period just before the war began many Paraguayan women were the heads of their households, meaning they held a position of power and authority. They received such positions by being widows, having children out of wedlock, or their husbands having worked as "peons". When the war began women started to venture out of the home becoming nurses, working with government officials, and establishing themselves into the public sphere. When "The New York Times" reported on the war in 1868, it considered Paraguayan women equal to their male counterparts.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Paraguayan women's support of the war effort can be divided into two stages. The first is from the time the war began in 1864 to the Paraguayan evacuation of Asunción in late 1868. During this period of the war, peasant women became practically the sole producers of agricultural goods. The second stage begins when the war turned to a more guerrilla form; it started when the capital of Paraguay fell and ended with the death of Paraguay's president Francisco Solano López in 1870. At this stage, the number of women becoming victims of war was increasing. The government press, with doubtful veracity, claimed that battalions of women were formed to fight the Allies and exalted the role of Ramona Martínez (who was a woman enslaved by López) as "the American Joan of Arc" for her fighting and rallying of injured troops.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Women helped sustain Paraguayan society during a very unstable period. Though Paraguay did lose the war, the outcome might have been even more disastrous without women performing specific tasks. Women worked as farmers, soldiers, nurses, and government officials. They became a symbol for national unification, and at the end of the war, the traditions women maintained were part of what held the nation together.


title: Paraguayan War

text: A 2012 piece in "The Economist" argued that with the death of most of Paraguay's male population, the Paraguayan War distorted the sex ratio to women greatly outnumbering men and has impacted the sexual culture of Paraguay to this day. Because of the depopulation, men were encouraged after the war to have multiple children with multiple women, even supposedly celibate Catholic priests. A columnist linked this cultural idea to the paternity scandal of former president Fernando Lugo, who fathered multiple children while he was a supposedly celibate priest.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Prior to the war, indigenous people occupied very little space in the minds of the Paraguayan elite. Paraguayan president Carlos Antonio Lopez even modified the country's constitution in 1844 to remove any mention of Paraguay's Hispano-Guarani character. This marginalization was undercut by the fact that Paraguay had long prized its military as its only honorable and national institution and the majority of the Paraguayan military was indigenous and spoke Guarani. However, during the war, the indigenous people of Paraguay came to occupy an even larger role in public life, especially after the Battle of Estero Bellaco. For this battle, Paraguay put its "best" men, who happened to be of Spanish descent, front and center. Paraguay overwhelmingly lost this battle, as well as "the males of all the best families in the country." The now remaining members of the military were "old men who had been left in Humaita, Indians, slaves and boys."


title: Paraguayan War

text: The war also bonded the indigenous people of Paraguay to the project of Paraguayan nation-building. In the immediate lead up to the war, they were confronted with a barrage of nationalist rhetoric (in Spanish and Guarani) and subject to loyalty oaths and exercises. Paraguayan president Francisco Solano Lopez, son of Carlos Antonio Lopez, was well aware that the Guarani speaking people of Paraguay had a group identity independent of the Spanish-speaking Paraguayan elite. He knew he would have to bridge this divide or risk it being exploited by the 'Triple Alliance.' To a certain extent, Lopez succeeded in getting the indigenous people to expand their communal identity to include all of Paraguay. As a result of this, any attack on Paraguay was considered to be an attack on the Paraguayan nation, despite rhetoric from Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina saying otherwise. This sentiment increased after the terms of the Treaty of the Triple Alliance were leaked, especially the clause stating that Paraguay would pay for all the damages incurred by the conflict.


title: Paraguayan War

text: The Brazilian government allowed the creation of black-only units or ""zuavos"" in the military at the outset of the war, following the proposal of Afro-Brazilian Quirino Antônio do Espírito Santo, a veteran of the Brazilian War of Independence. Over the course of the war, the "zuavos" became an increasingly attractive option for many enslaved Afro-Brazilian men, especially given the z"uavos"’ negative opinion toward slavery. Once the "zuavos" had enlisted or forcibly recruited them, it became difficult for their masters to regain possession of them, since the government was desperate for soldiers. By 1867, black-only units were no longer permitted, with the entire military being integrated just as it had been prior to the war. The overarching rationale behind this was that the "country needed recruits for its existing battalions, not more independently organized companies." This did not mean the end of black soldiers in the Brazilian military. On the contrary, "impoverished "gente de cor" constituted the greater part of the soldiers in every Brazilian infantry battalion."


title: Paraguayan War

text: Afro-Brazilian women played a key role in sustaining the Brazilian military as ""vivandeiras"." "Vivandeiras" were poor women who traveled with the soldiers to perform "logistic tasks such as carrying tents, preparing food and doing laundry." For most of these women, the principal reason they became vivandeiras was because their male loved ones had joined as soldiers and they wanted to take care of them. However, the Brazilian government actively worked to minimize the importance of their work by labeling it "service to their male kin, not the nation" and considering it to be "natural" and "habitual." The reality was that the government depended heavily on these women and officially required their presence in the camps. Poor Afro-Brazilian women also served as nurses, with most of them being trained upon entry into the military to assist male doctors in the camps. These women were "seeking gainful employment to compensate for the loss of income from male kin who had been drafted into the war."


title: Paraguayan War

text: Paraguay permanently lost its claim to territories which, before the war, were in dispute between it and Brazil or Argentina, respectively. In total, about were affected. Those disputes had been longstanding and complex.


title: Paraguayan War

text: In colonial times certain lands lying to the north of the River Apa were in dispute between the Portuguese Empire and the Spanish Empire. After independence they continued to be disputed between the Empire of Brazil and the Republic of Paraguay.


title: Paraguayan War

text: After the war Brazil signed a separate Loizaga–Cotegipe Treaty of peace and borders with Paraguay on 9 January 1872, in which it obtained freedom of navigation on the Paraguay River. Brazil also retained the northern regions it had claimed before the war. Those regions are now part of its State of Mato Grosso do Sul.


title: Paraguayan War

text: In colonial times the missionary Jesuits established numerous villages in lands between the rivers Paraná and Uruguay. After the Jesuits were expelled from Spanish territory in 1767, the ecclesiastical authorities of both Asunción and Buenos Aires made claim to religious jurisdiction in these lands and the Spanish government sometimes awarded it to one side, sometimes to the other; sometimes they split the difference.


title: Paraguayan War

text: After independence, the Republic of Paraguay and the Argentine Confederation succeeded to these disputes. On 19 July 1852, the governments of the Argentine Confederation and Paraguay signed a treaty, by which Paraguay relinquished its claim to the Misiones. However, this treaty did not become binding, because it required to be ratified by the Argentine Congress, which refused. Paraguay's claim was still alive on the eve of the war. After the war the disputed lands definitively became the Argentine national territory of Misiones, now Misiones Province.


title: Paraguayan War

text: The Gran Chaco is an area lying to the west of the River Paraguay. Before the war it was "an enormous plain covered by swamps, chaparral and thorn forests ... home to many groups of feared Indians, including the Guaicurú, Toba and Mocoví." There had long been overlapping claims to all or parts of this area by the Argentine Confederation, Bolivia and Paraguay. With some exceptions, these were paper claims, because none of those countries was in effective occupation of the area: essentially they were claims to be the true successor to the Spanish Empire, in an area never effectively occupied by Spain itself, and wherein Spain had no particular motive for prescribing internal boundaries.


title: Paraguayan War

text: The exceptions were as follows. First, to defend itself against Indian incursions, both in colonial times and after, the authorities in Asunción had established some border fortlets on the west bank of the river Paraguay—a coastal strip within the Chaco. By the same treaty of 19 July 1852, between Paraguay and the Argentine Confederation, an undefined area in the Chaco north of the Bermejo River was implicitly conceded to belong to Paraguay. As already stated, the Argentine Congress refused to ratify this treaty; and it was protested by the government of Bolivia as inimical to its own claims. The second exception was that in 1854, the government of Carlos Antonio López established a colony of French immigrants on the right bank of the River Paraguay at Nueva Burdeos; when it failed, it was renamed Villa Occidental.


title: Paraguayan War

text: After 1852, and more especially after the State of Buenos Aires rejoined the Argentine Confederation, Argentina's claim to the Chaco hardened; it claimed territory all the way up to the border with Bolivia. By Article XVI of the Treaty of the Triple Alliance Argentina was to receive this territory in full. However, the Brazilian government disliked what its representative in Buenos Aires had negotiated in this respect, and resolved that Argentina should not receive "a handsbreadth of territory" above the Pilcomayo River. It set out to frustrate Argentina's further claim, with eventual success.


title: Paraguayan War

text: The post-war border between Paraguay and Argentina was resolved through long negotiations, completed 3 February 1876, by signing the Machaín-Irigoyen Treaty. This treaty granted Argentina roughly one third of the area it had originally desired. Argentina became the strongest of the River Plate countries. When the two parties could not reach consensus on the fate of the "Chaco Boreal" area between the Río Verde and the main branch of Río Pilcomayo, the President of the United States, Rutherford B. Hayes, was asked to arbitrate. His award was in Paraguay's favor. The Paraguayan Presidente Hayes Department is named in his honor.


title: Paraguayan War

text: There was destruction of the existing state, loss of neighboring territories and ruin of the Paraguayan economy, so that even decades later, it could not develop in the same way as its neighbors. Paraguay is estimated to have lost up to 69% of its population, most of them due to illness, hunger and physical exhaustion, of whom 90% were male, and also maintained a high debt of war with the allied countries that, not completely paid, ended up being pardoned in 1943 by the Brazilian President Getúlio Vargas. A new pro-Brazil government was installed in Asunción in 1869, while Paraguay remained occupied by Brazilian forces until 1876, when Argentina formally recognized the independence of that country, guaranteeing its sovereignty and leaving it a buffer state between its larger neighbors.


title: Paraguayan War

text: The War helped the Brazilian Empire to reach its peak of political and military influence, becoming the "Great Power" of South America, and also helped to bring about the end of slavery in Brazil, moving the military into a key role in the public sphere. However, the war caused a ruinous increase of public debt, which took decades to pay off, severely limiting the country's growth. The war debt, alongside a long-lasting social crisis after the conflict, are regarded as crucial factors for the fall of the Empire and proclamation of the First Brazilian Republic.


title: Paraguayan War

text: During the war the Brazilian army took complete control of Paraguayan territory and occupied the country for six years after 1870. In part this was to prevent the annexation of even more territory by Argentina, which had wanted to seize the entire Chaco region. During this time, Brazil and Argentina had strong tensions, with the threat of armed conflict between them.


title: Paraguayan War

text: During the wartime sacking of Asunción, Brazilian soldiers carried off war trophies. Among the spoils taken was a large caliber gun called "Cristiano", named because it was cast from church bells of Asunción melted down for the war.


title: Paraguayan War

text: In Brazil the war exposed the fragility of the Empire, and dissociated the monarchy from the army. The Brazilian army became a new and influential force in national life. It developed as a strong national institution that, with the war, gained tradition and internal cohesion. The Army would take a significant role in the later development of the history of the country. The economic depression and the strengthening of the army later played a large role in the deposition of the emperor Pedro II and the republican proclamation in 1889. Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca became the first Brazilian president.


title: Paraguayan War

text: As in other countries, "wartime recruitment of slaves in the Americas rarely implied a complete rejection of slavery and usually acknowledged masters' rights over their property." Brazil compensated owners who freed slaves for the purpose of fighting in the war, on the condition that the freedmen immediately enlist. It also impressed slaves from owners when needing manpower, and paid compensation. In areas near the conflict, slaves took advantage of wartime conditions to escape, and some fugitive slaves volunteered for the army. Together these effects undermined the institution of slavery. But, the military also upheld owners' property rights, as it returned at least 36 fugitive slaves to owners who could satisfy its requirement for legal proof. Significantly, slavery was not officially ended until the 1880s.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Brazil spent close to 614,000 "réis" (the Brazilian currency at the time), which were gained from the following sources:


title: Paraguayan War

text: Due to the war, Brazil ran a deficit between 1870 and 1880, which was finally paid off. At the time foreign loans were not significant sources of funds.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Following the war, Argentina faced many federalist revolts against the national government. Economically it benefited from having sold supplies to the Brazilian army, but the war overall decreased the national treasure. The national action contributed to the consolidation of the centralized government after revolutions were put down, and the growth in influence of Army leadership.


title: Paraguayan War

text: It has been argued the conflict played a key role in the consolidation of Argentina as a nation-state. That country became one of the wealthiest in the world, by the early 20th century. It was the last time that Brazil and Argentina openly took such an interventionist role in Uruguay's internal politics.


title: Paraguayan War

text: By the account of historian Mateo Martinic the war put a temporary hold on Argentine plans to challenge the Chilean occupation of the Strait of Magellan.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Uruguay suffered lesser effects, although nearly 5,000 soldiers were killed. As a consequence of the war, the Colorados gained political control of Uruguay and, despite rebellions, retained it until 1958.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Interpretation of the causes of the war and its aftermath has been a controversial topic in the histories of participating countries, especially in Paraguay. There it has been considered either a fearless struggle for the rights of a smaller nation against the aggression of more powerful neighbors, or a foolish attempt to fight an unwinnable war that almost destroyed the nation.


title: Paraguayan War

text: The "Great Soviet Encyclopedia", considered the official encyclopedic source of the USSR, presented a short view about the Paraguayan War, largely favorable to the Paraguayans, claiming that the conflict was a "war of imperialist aggression" long planned by slave-owners and the bourgeois capitalists, waged by Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay under instigation of Great Britain, France and the United States. The same encyclopedia presents Francisco Solano López as a statesman who became a great military leader and organizer, dying heroically in battle. The Great Russian Encyclopedia, created by official mandate of President Vladimir Putin, continues with the "Russian Tradition" of presenting the Paraguayan War as a military conflict provoked by the "Triple Alliance" with the financial and military support of the British Empire, in a version that remains sympathetic towards Paraguay.


title: Paraguayan War

text: People of Argentina have their own internal disputes over interpretations of the war: many Argentines think the conflict was Mitre's war of conquest, and not a response to aggression. They note that Mitre used the Argentine Navy to deny access to the Río de la Plata to Brazilian ships in early 1865, thus starting the war. People in Argentina note that Solano López, mistakenly believing he would have Mitre's support, had seized the chance to attack Brazil at that time.


title: Paraguayan War

text: In December 1975, after presidents Ernesto Geisel and Alfredo Stroessner signed a treaty of friendship and co-operation in Asunción, the Brazilian government returned some of its spoils of war to Paraguay, but has kept others. In April 2013 Paraguay renewed demands for the return of the "Christian" cannon. Brazil has had this on display at the former military garrison, now used as the National History Museum, and says that it is part of its history as well.


title: Paraguayan War

text: A popular belief among Paraguayans and Argentine revisionists since the 1960s contends that the outbreak of war was due to the machinations of the British government, a theory which historians have noted has little to no basis in historical evidence. In Brazil, some have claimed that the United Kingdom was the primary source of financing for the Triple Alliance during the war, with British aid being given in order to advance Britain's economic interests in the region; something which historians have noted that has little evidence to support it as well; noting that from 1863 to 1865 Brazil and Great Britain were engaged in a diplomatic incident, and five months after the outbreak of the Paraguayan war the two countries temporarily broke off relations. They have also noted that in 1864, a British diplomat wrote a letter to Solano López asking him to avoid initiating hostilities in the region, and there remains no evidence that Britain "forced" the allies to attack Paraguay.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Some left-wing historians of the 1960s and 1970s (most notably Eric Hobsbawm in his work "") claimed that the Paraguayan War broke out as a result of British influence on the continent, claiming that as Britain needed a new source of cotton during the American Civil War (as the blockaded American South had been their main cotton supplier before the war). Right wing and even far-right wing historians, especially from Argentina and Paraguay, have also claimed that British influence was a major reason for the outbreak of war. Noteworthy is the fact that both the Great Soviet Encyclopedia and the Great Russian Encyclopedia, considered as official sources of the USSR and the Russian Federation respectively, also claim that the British Empire had much to do for sustaining the war effort and finances of the "Triple Alliance" against Paraguay.


title: Paraguayan War

text: A document which has been used to support this claim is a letter from Edward Thornton (Minister of Great Britain in the Plate Basin) to British Prime Minister Lord John Russell, which contained the following statement:


title: Paraguayan War

text: Charles Washburn, who was the Minister of the United States to Paraguay and Argentina, claimed that Thornton spoke of Paraguay, months before the outbreak of the conflict, as:


title: Paraguayan War

text: Other historians have also disputed the claims of British influence in the outbreak of war, pointing out that there is no documented evidence for it. They note that, although the British economy and commercial interests benefited from the war, the British government opposed it from the start. In addition, they also noted that the war damaged international commerce (including Britain's), and the British government disapproved of the secret clauses in the Treaty of the Triple Alliance. Britain at the time already was increasing their imports of Egyptian and Indian cotton and as such did not need any from Paraguay.


title: Paraguayan War

text: William Doria (the British Chargé d'Affaires in Paraguay who briefly acted in Thornton's place), joined French and Italian diplomats in condemning Argentina's President Bartolomé Mitre's involvement in Uruguay. But when Thornton returned to the job in December 1863, Doria threw his full backing behind Mitre.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Since colonial times, yerba mate had been a major cash crop for Paraguay. Until the war, it had generated significant revenues for the country. The war caused a sharp drop in harvesting of yerba mate in Paraguay, reportedly by as much as 95% between 1865 and 1867. Soldiers from all sides used yerba mate to diminish hunger pangs and alleviate combat anxiety.


title: Paraguayan War

text: Much of the lost by Paraguay to Argentina and Brazil was rich in yerba mate, so by the end of the 19th century, Brazil became the leading producer of the crop. Foreign entrepreneurs entered the Paraguayan market and took control of its remaining yerba mate production and industry.


title: Nehru–Gandhi family

text: The Nehru–Gandhi family is an Indian political family that has occupied a prominent place in the politics of India. The involvement of the family has traditionally revolved around the Indian National Congress, as various members have traditionally led the party. Three members of the family–Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi–have served as the prime minister of India, while several others have been members of the parliament.


title: Nehru–Gandhi family

text: "The Guardian" wrote in 2007, "The Nehru brand has no peer in the world — a member of the family has been in charge of India for 40 of the 60 years since independence. The allure of India's first family blends the right to rule of British monarchy with the tragic glamour of America's Kennedy clan."


title: Nehru–Gandhi family

text: The Gandhi surname came from Feroze Gandhi, a politician of Gujarati Parsi ancestry, who after joining the independence movement, changed the spelling of his surname from Ghandy to Gandhi, to match that of Mahatma Gandhi despite not being related biologically. Indira Priyadarshini Nehru, daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, married Feroze Gandhi in 1942 and adopted his surname.


title: Turritopsis dohrnii

text: Turritopsis dohrnii, also known as the immortal jellyfish, is a species of small, biologically immortal jellyfish found worldwide in temperate to tropic waters. It is one of the few known cases of animals capable of reverting completely to a sexually immature, colonial stage after having reached sexual maturity as a solitary individual. Others include the jellyfish "Laodicea undulata" and species of the genus "Aurelia".


title: Turritopsis dohrnii

text: Like most other hydrozoans, "T. dohrnii" begin their life as tiny, free-swimming larvae known as planulae. As a planula settles down, it gives rise to a colony of polyps that are attached to the sea floor. All the polyps and jellyfish arising from a single planula are genetically identical clones. The polyps form into an extensively branched form, which is not commonly seen in most jellyfish. Jellyfish, also known as medusae, then bud off these polyps and continue their life in a free-swimming form, eventually becoming sexually mature. When sexually mature, they have been known to prey on other jellyfish species at a rapid pace. If the "T. dohrnii" jellyfish is exposed to environmental stress, physical assault, or is sick or old, it can revert to the polyp stage, forming a new polyp colony. It does this through the cell development process of transdifferentiation, which alters the differentiated state of the cells and transforms them into new types of cells.


title: Turritopsis dohrnii

text: Theoretically, this process can go on indefinitely, effectively rendering the jellyfish biologically immortal, although in practice individuals can still die. In nature, most "Turritopsis" "dohrnii" are likely to succumb to predation or disease in the medusa stage without reverting to the polyp form.


title: Turritopsis dohrnii

text: The capability of biological immortality with no maximum lifespan makes "T. dohrnii" an important target of basic biological, aging and pharmaceutical research.


title: Turritopsis dohrnii

text: The species was formerly considered conspecific with "T. nutricula" before being reclassified as a separate species. It was named in 1883 in honour of Anton Dohrn, the founder of the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn in Naples.


title: Turritopsis dohrnii

text: The medusa of "Turritopsis dohrnii" is bell-shaped, with a maximum diameter of about and is about as tall as it is wide. The mesoglea in the walls of the bell is uniformly thin, except for some thickening at the apex. The relatively large stomach is bright red and has a cruciform shape in cross section. Young specimens 1 mm in diameter have only eight tentacles evenly spaced out along the edge, whereas adult specimens have 80–90 tentacles. The medusa (jellyfish) is free-living in the plankton. Dense nerve net cells are also present in the epidermis in the cap. They form a large ring-like structure above the radial canal commonly presented in cnidarians.


title: Turritopsis dohrnii

text: "Turritopsis dohrnii" also has a bottom-living polyp form, or hydroid, which consists of stolons that run along the substrate and upright branches with feeding polyps that can produce medusa buds. These polyps develop over a few days into tiny 1 mm medusae, which are liberated and swim free from the parent hydroid colony.


title: Turritopsis dohrnii

text: Until a recent genetic study, it was thought that "Turritopsis rubra" and "Turritopsis nutricula" were the same. It is not known whether or not "T. rubra" medusae can also transform back into polyps.


title: Turritopsis dohrnii

text: "Turritopsis" is believed to have originated in the Pacific, but has spread all over the world through trans-Arctic migrations, and has speciated into several populations that are easy to distinguish morphologically, but whose species distinctions have recently been verified by a study and comparison of mitochondrial ribosomal gene sequences. "Turritopsis" are found in temperate to tropical regions in all of the world's oceans. "Turritopsis" is believed to be spreading across the world through ballast water discharge. Unlike other species invasions which caused serious economic and ecological consequences, "T. dohrnii's" invasion around the world was unnoticed due to their tiny size and innocuity. "We are looking at a worldwide silent invasion", said Smithsonian Tropical Marine Institute scientist Dr. Maria Miglietta.


title: Turritopsis dohrnii

text: The eggs develop in gonads of female medusae, which are located in the walls of the manubrium (stomach). Mature eggs are presumably spawned and fertilized in the sea by sperm produced and released by male medusae, as is the case for most hydromedusae. However, the related species "Turritopsis rubra" seems to retain fertilized eggs until the planula stage. Fertilized eggs develop into planula larvae, which settle onto the sea floor (or even the rich marine communities that live on floating docks), and develop into polyp colonies (hydroids). The hydroids bud new jellyfishes, which are released at about one millimetre in size and then grow and feed in the plankton, becoming sexually mature after a few weeks (the exact duration depends on the ocean temperature; at it is 25 to 30 days and at it is 18 to 22 days). Medusae of "T. dohrnii" are able to survive between 14 °C and 25 °C.


title: Turritopsis dohrnii

text: Most jellyfish species have a relatively fixed lifespan, which varies by species from hours to many months (long-lived mature jellyfish spawn every day or night; the time is also fairly fixed and species-specific). The medusa of "Turritopsis dohrnii" is the only form known to have developed the ability to return to a polyp state, by a specific transformation process that requires the presence of certain cell types (tissue from both the jellyfish bell surface and the circulatory canal system).


title: Turritopsis dohrnii

text: Experiments have revealed that all stages of the medusae, from newly released to fully mature individuals, can transform back into polyps under the conditions of starvation, sudden temperature change, reduction of salinity, and artificial damage of the bell with forceps or scissors. The transforming medusa is characterized first by deterioration of the bell, mesoglea, and tentacles. All immature medusa (with 12 tentacles at most) then turned into a cyst-like stage and then transformed into stolons and polyps. However, about 20%-40% of mature medusa went into the stolons and polyps stage without passing the cyst-like stage. Polyps were formed after 2 days since stolons had developed and fed on food. Polyps further multiply by growing additional stolons, branches, and then polyps to form colonial hydroids. In the experiment, they would eventually transform into stolons and polyps and begin their lives once again, even without environmental changes or injury.


title: Turritopsis dohrnii

text: This ability to reverse the biotic cycle (in response to adverse conditions) is unique in the animal kingdom. It allows the jellyfish to bypass death, rendering "Turritopsis dohrnii" potentially biologically immortal. The process has not been observed in their natural habitat, in part because the process is quite rapid and because field observations at the right moment are unlikely. Regardless, most individual medusae are likely to fall victim to the general hazards of life as mesoplankton, including being eaten by predators or succumbing to disease.


title: Turritopsis dohrnii

text: The species' cell development method of transdifferentiation has inspired scientists to find a way to make stem cells using this process for renewing damaged or dead tissue in humans.


title: Turritopsis dohrnii

text: "Turritopsis dohrnii" are a carnivorous species that commonly feed on zooplankton. Their diet mainly consists of plankton, fish eggs and small mollusks. "T. dohrnii" ingests food and excretes waste through the mouth. "T. dohrnii" hunts by using its tentacles as it drifts through the water. Its tentacles, which contain stinging cells called nematocysts, spread and sting its prey. The tentacles can then flex to direct its prey to the mouth. T. dohrnii, like other jellyfish, may use its bell to catch its prey. T. dohrnii's bell will expand, sucking in water, as it propels itself to swim. This expansion of the bell brings potential prey in closer reach of the tentacles.


title: Turritopsis dohrnii

text: Turritopsis dohrnii, like other jellyfish, are preyed on most commonly by other jellyfish. Other predators of T. dohrnii include sea anemones, tuna, sharks, swordfish, sea turtles, and penguins. Many species prey on T. dohrnii and other jellyfish due to their simple composition. They are only approximately 5% matter, and the remaining part is composed of water. They are composed of three layers. An outer layer (the epidermis), a middle layer (mesoglea; a thick, jelly-like substance), and an inner layer (gastrodermis).


title: Turritopsis dohrnii

text: Turritopsis dohrnii was first discovered in the Mediterranean Sea, but has since spread worldwide. T. dohrnii is generally found living in temperate to tropical waters. They can be found in marinas or docks, on vessel hulls, and on the ocean floor. They typically live in a salinity range of polyhaline (18-30 PSU) and euhaline (30-40 PSU).


title: Turritopsis dohrnii

text: Genomic analyses such as sequence analysis on mRNA or mitochondria DNA have been employed to investigate its lifecycle. mRNA analysis of each life stage showed that a stage-specific gene in the medusae stage is expressed tenfold more than in other stages. This gene is relative to a Wnt signal that can induce a regeneration process upon injury.


title: Turritopsis dohrnii

text: Analysis of nucleotide sequence homologs and protein homologs identified "Nemopsis bachei" as the species' closest relative. None of the closely related species display biological immortality.


title: Turritopsis dohrnii

text: In 2022, a study reported the key molecular mechanisms of rejuvenation they found in a comparison of the newly presented genomes of this biologically immortal jellyfish and a similar but non-rejuvenating jellyfish, involving e.g. DNA replication and repair, and stem cell renewal.


title: Turritopsis dohrnii

text: Keeping "T. dohrnii" in captivity is quite difficult. Currently, only one scientist, Shin Kubota from Kyoto University, has managed to sustain a group of these jellyfish for a prolonged period of time. The plankton must be inspected daily to ensure that they have properly digested the Artemia cysts they are being fed.


title: Turritopsis dohrnii

text: Kubota reported that during a two-year period, his colony rebirthed itself 11 times. Kubota regularly appears on Japanese television to talk about his immortal jellyfish and has recorded several songs about them.


title: Murder of Elizabeth Olten

text: Elizabeth Olten was a 9-year-old who was murdered by her neighbor Alyssa Bustamante, who was 15 at the time, in St. Martins, Missouri, on October 21, 2009.


title: Murder of Elizabeth Olten

text: Bustamante lured Olten into the woods and strangled and stabbed her to death. Bustamante murdered Olten simply due to homicidal ideation and to see what it was like to kill someone. She was later indicted and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and armed criminal action and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of conditional release in 2024 for second-degree murder. However, due to her additional conviction of armed criminal action, even if she is granted conditional release in 2024, she will have a consecutive sentence of 30 years in prison. This makes her earliest probable release in 2054, when she will be 60 years old.


title: Murder of Elizabeth Olten

text: Elizabeth Olten, aged nine, lived four houses down from Bustamante. On October 21, 2009, Bustamante convinced her younger sister to bring Olten to the forest by their homes to hang out. Upon Olten's arrival, Bustamante strangled Olten, slit her throat and stabbed her eight times in the chest. Bustamante then buried Olten's body in a grave that she had dug five days before in the woods behind her house and covered the grave with leaves.


title: Murder of Elizabeth Olten

text: Alyssa Dailene Bustamante's grandparents, Gary and Karen Brooke, took legal custody of her and her three younger siblings in 2002, since her mother Michelle had addiction issues and her father Caesar was serving time in prison. Friends started noticing changes in Alyssa around 2007 when she was hospitalized after a suicide attempt. On her YouTube profile, she listed "cutting" under her hobbies. She had also posted a photograph of herself on social media where she held two fingers to her head, pretending to shoot herself.


title: Murder of Elizabeth Olten

text: She then attended a church dance (Bustamante was actively involved in her local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) while police searched for Olten.