title: Yellow fever

text: In Africa, virus eradication programs have mostly relied upon vaccination. These programs have largely been unsuccessful because they were unable to break the sylvatic cycle involving wild primates. With few countries establishing regular vaccination programs, measures to fight yellow fever have been neglected, making the future spread of the virus more likely.


title: Yellow fever

text: In the hamster model of yellow fever, early administration of the antiviral ribavirin is an effective treatment of many pathological features of the disease. Ribavirin treatment during the first five days after virus infection improved survival rates, reduced tissue damage in the liver and spleen, prevented hepatocellular steatosis, and normalised levels of alanine aminotransferase, a liver damage marker. The mechanism of action of ribavirin in reducing liver pathology in "yellow fever virus" infection may be similar to its activity in treatment of hepatitis C, a related virus. Because ribavirin had failed to improve survival in a virulent rhesus model of yellow fever infection, it had been previously discounted as a possible therapy. Infection was reduced in mosquitoes with the wMel strain of "Wolbachia".


title: Vissel Kobe

text: The club was founded in 1966 as the semi-professional "Kawasaki Steel Soccer Club" in Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture. It was first promoted to the Japan Soccer League Division 2 in 1986, and stayed there until the JSL folded in 1992.


title: Vissel Kobe

text: In 1995, the city of Kobe reached an agreement with Kawasaki Steel, the parent company, to move the club to Kobe and compete for a spot in the professional J.League as "Vissel Kobe". "Vissel" is a combination of the words "victory" and "vessel", in recognition of Kobe's history as a port city. (Owing to its importance to the city of Kobe, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, parent company of former team patron Kawasaki Steel, remains a Vissel Kobe sponsor. Kawasaki Steel was eventually sold off to become part of JFE Holdings.)


title: Vissel Kobe

text: Vissel Kobe began play in 1995 in the Japan Football League, a league below J.League, and the supermarket chain Daiei was slated as the club's primary investor. However, the economic downturn following the Great Hanshin earthquake forced Daiei to pull out and the city of Kobe became responsible for operating the club.


title: Vissel Kobe

text: Despite finishing 2nd in the JFL in 1996, Vissel was promoted to the J.League (the champions, Honda FC, refused to abandon their corporate ownership and become a professional club) and began play in the top division of Japanese football in 1997. However, due to mismanagement, including the inability to secure investors and sponsors, Vissel has never been a contender for the league title. In December, 2003, mounting financial losses forced the club to file for bankruptcy protection.


title: Vissel Kobe

text: In January 2004, Vissel was sold to Crimson Group, parent company of online merchant Rakuten, whose president is Kobe native Hiroshi Mikitani. Vissel's first signing under the Mikitani regime, İlhan Mansız, who was acquired partly to capitalize on his popularity during the 2002 FIFA World Cup hosted in Korea and Japan, was a massive failure – the Turkish forward played just three matches before leaving the team because of a knee injury. Mikitani also alienated supporters by changing the team uniform colours from black and white stripes to crimson, after his Crimson Group and the colour of his alma mater, Harvard Business School. The Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, a baseball team also owned by Rakuten but based in Sendai, wear the same colours.


title: Vissel Kobe

text: Vissel finished 11th in the league in 2004, the same position as the previous year, and finished 18th and last place in 2005, resulting in automatic relegation from J.League Division 1, or J1, to J2. During the two-year span, Vissel had five different head coaches. 2006 was Vissel's first season in J2 after nine years in the top division of soccer in Japan. They finished 3rd in the 2006 season and were promoted to J1 after beating Avispa Fukuoka in the promotion/relegation play-offs.


title: Vissel Kobe

text: During the period of 2007 to 2011 Vissel finished in the bottom half of the table each year. In 2012 they finished 16th, third from last, and were again relegated to J2. In 2013, Vissel finished in second place, 4 points behind Gamba Osaka, which secured their return to J1 for the 2014 season.


title: Vissel Kobe

text: In May 2018, Vissel signed 2010 FIFA World Cup winner Andrés Iniesta from FC Barcelona. In December 2018 Vissel Kobe managed to sign David Villa from New York City FC the Spanish striker scored 13 goals in 28 games. Alongside Sergi Samper and Andrés Iniesta, Villa was the third Spaniard in the team in that season in which the Emperor's Cup was won.


title: Vissel Kobe

text: On 1 January 2020, first time finalist Vissel beat Kashima Antlers in the 2019 Emperor's Cup final at the recently opened New National Stadium to win the first title in the club history. The furthest Kobe had been in the Cup was the semi-finals of 2000 and 2017. This was Spanish striker David Villa's last professional match. Vissel also qualified for the 2020 AFC Champions League for the first time. On 8 February 2020, Vissel beat Yokohama F. Marinos to win their first Japanese Super Cup title and respectively their second national title ever. In 2021 they achieved an historic third place in the table, qualifying for the AFC Champions League yet again.


title: Vissel Kobe

text: Total (as of 2014): 16 seasons in the top tier, 11 seasons in the second tier, 2 seasons in the third tier and 8 seasons in the Regional Leagues.


title: WordReference.com

text: WordReference is an online translation dictionary for, among others, the language pairs English–French, English–Italian, English–Spanish, French–Spanish, Spanish–Portuguese and English–Portuguese.


title: WordReference.com

text: WordReference also has Oxford Unabridged and Concise dictionaries available for a subscription. These dictionaries contain more translations than the free ones. , the price was €30 ( USD) per year.


title: WordReference.com

text: As of June 2008, more language pairs have been created: English–German, English–Russian, English–Polish, English–Romanian, English–Czech, English–Greek, English–Turkish, English–Chinese, English–Japanese, English–Korean, English–Arabic. Presently the newer additions are still works-in-progress.


title: WordReference.com

text: The website features publicly accessible forums allowing registered users to ask questions about vocabulary and grammar.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: A cartridge or a round is a type of pre-assembled firearm ammunition packaging a projectile (bullet, shot, or slug), a propellant substance (usually either smokeless powder or black powder) and an ignition device (primer) within a metallic, paper, or plastic case that is precisely made to fit within the barrel chamber of a breechloading gun, for the practical purpose of convenient transportation and handling during shooting. Although in popular usage the term "bullet" is often informally used to refer to a complete cartridge, it is correctly used only to refer to the projectile.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Cartridges can be categorized by the type of their primers – a small charge of an impact- or electric-sensitive chemical mixture that is located: at the center of the case head (centerfire); inside the rim (rimfire); inside the walls on the fold of the case base that is shaped like a cup (cupfire, now obsolete); in a sideways projection that is shaped like a pin (pinfire, now obsolete); or a lip (lipfire, now obsolete); or in a small nipple-like bulge at the case base (teat-fire, now obsolete). Only the centerfire and rimfire survived mainstream usage today.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Military and commercial producers continue to pursue the goal of caseless ammunition. Some artillery ammunition uses the same cartridge concept as found in small arms. In other cases, the artillery shell is separate from the propellant charge.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: A cartridge without a projectile is called a "blank"; one that is completely inert (contains no active primer and no propellant) is called a "dummy"; one that failed to ignite and shoot off the projectile is called a "dud"; and one that ignited but failed to sufficiently push the projectile out of the barrel is called a "squib".


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: The cartridge was invented specifically for breechloading firearms. Prior to its invention, the projectiles and propellant were carried separately and had to be individually loaded via the muzzle into the gun barrel before firing, then have a separate ignitor compound (from a slow match, a small charge of gunpowder in a flash pan, or a percussion cap) to set off the shot. Such loading procedures often necessitate adding paper/cloth wadding and ramming down repeatedly with a rod to optimize the gas seal, and are thus clumsy and inconvenient, severely restricting the practical rate of fire of the weapon, as well as complicating the logistics of ammunition.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: The primary purpose of a cartridge is to offer a handy pre-assembled "all-in-one" package that is convenient to handle and transport, easily inserted into the breech (rear end) of the barrel, as well as preventing potential propellant loss, contamination or degradation from moisture and the elements. In modern self-loading firearms, the round also enables the action mechanism to use part of the propellant energy (carried by the cartridge itself) and cyclically load new rounds of ammunition to allow quick repeated firing.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: To perform a firing, the round is first inserted into a "ready" position within the chamber aligned with the bore axis (i.e. "in "battery""). While in the chamber, the cartridge case obturates all other directions except the bore to the front, reinforced by a breechblock or a locked bolt from behind, designating the forward direction as the path of least resistance. When the trigger is pulled, the sear disengages and releases the hammer/striker, causing the firing pin to impact the primer embedded in the base of the cartridge. The shock-sensitive chemical in the primer then creates a jet of sparks that travels into the case and ignites the main propellant charge within, causing the powders to "deflagrate" (but not "detonate"). This rapid exothermic combustion yields a mixture of highly energetic gases and generates a very high pressure inside the case, often fire-forming it against the chamber wall. When the pressure builds up sufficiently to overcome the fastening friction between the projectile (e.g. bullet) and the case neck, the projectile will detach from the case and, pushed by the expanding high-pressure gases behind it, move down the bore and out the muzzle at extremely high speed. After the bullet exits the barrel, the gases are released to the surroundings as ejectae, and the chamber pressure drops back down to atmospheric level. The case, which had been elastically expanded by high pressure, contracts slightly, which eases its removal from the chamber when pulled by the extractor. The spent cartridge, with its projectile and propellant gone but the case still containing a used-up primer, then gets ejected from the gun to clear room for a subsequent new round.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: A typical modern cartridge consists of four components: the case, the projectile, the propellant, and the primer.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: The main defining component of the cartridge is the case, which gives the cartridge its shape and serves as the integrating housing for other functional components – it acts as a container for the propellant powders and also serves as a protective shell against the elements; it attaches the projectile either at the front end of the cartridge (bullets for pistols, submachine guns, rifles, and machine guns) or inside of the cartridge (wadding/sabot containing either a number of shot or an individual slug for shotguns), and align it with the barrel bore to the front; it holds the primer at the back end, which receives an impact from a firing pin and is responsible for igniting the main propellant charge inside the case.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: While historically paper had been used in the earliest cartridges, almost all modern cartridges use metallic casing. The modern metallic case can either be a "bottleneck" one, whose frontal portion near the end opening (known as the "case "neck"") has a noticeably smaller diameter than the main part of the case ("case "body""), with a noticeably angled slope ("case "shoulder"") in between, or a "straight-walled" one, where there is no narrowed neck and the whole case looks cylindrical. The case shape is meant to match exactly to the chamber of the gun that fires it, and the "neck", "shoulder", and "body" of a bottleneck cartridge have corresponding counterparts in the chamber known as the "chamber neck", "chamber shoulder", and "chamber body". Some cartridges, like the .470 Capstick, have what is known as a "ghost shoulder" which has a very slightly protruding shoulder, and can be viewed as a something between a bottleneck and straight-walled case. A ghost shoulder, rather than a continuous taper on the case wall, helps the cartridge to line up concentrically with the bore axis, contributing to accuracy. The front opening of the case neck, which receives and fastens the bullet via crimping, is known as the "case mouth". The closed-off rear end of the case body, which holds the primer and technically is the case "base", is ironically called the "case head" as it is the most prominent and frequently the widest part of the case. There is a circumferential flange at the case head called a "rim", which provides a lip for the extractor to engage. Depending on whether and how the rim protrudes beyond the maximum case body diameter, the case can be classified as either "rimmed", "semi-rimmed", "rimless", "rebated", or "belted".


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: The shape of a bottleneck cartridge case (e.g. body diameter, shoulder slant angle and position, neck length) also affects the amount of attainable pressure inside the case, which in turn influences the accelerative capacity of the projectile. Wildcat cartridges are often made by reshaping the case of an existing cartridge.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: In addition to case shape, rifle cartridges can also be grouped according to the case dimensions, which in turn dictates the minimal receiver size and operating space (bolt travel) needed by the action, into either "mini-action", "short-action", "long-action" ("standard-action"), or "magnum" categories.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: The most popular material used to make cartridge cases is brass due to its good corrosion resistance. The head of a brass case can be work-hardened to withstand the high pressures, and allow for manipulation via extraction and ejection without rupturing. The neck and body portion of a brass case is easily annealed to make the case ductile enough to allow reshaping so that it can be handloaded many times, and fire forming can help accurize the shooting.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Steel casing is used in some plinking ammunition, as well as in some military ammunition (mainly from the former Soviet Union and China). Steel is less expensive to make than brass, but it is far less corrosion-resistant and not feasible to reuse and reload. Military forces typically consider service small arms cartridge cases to be disposable, single-use devices. However, the mass of the cartridges can affect how much ammunition a soldier can carry, so the lighter steel cases do have a logistic advantage. Conversely, steel is more susceptible to contamination and damage so all such cases are varnished or otherwise sealed against the elements. One downside caused by the increased strength of steel in the neck of these cases (compared to the annealed neck of a brass case) is that propellant gas can blow back past the neck and leak into the chamber. Constituents of these gases condense on the (relatively cold) chamber wall, and this solid propellant residue can make extraction of fired cases difficult. This is less of a problem for small arms of the former Warsaw Pact nations, which were designed with much looser chamber tolerances than NATO weapons.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Aluminum-cased cartridges are available commercially. These are generally not reloaded, as aluminum fatigues easily during firing and resizing. Some calibers also have non-standard primer sizes to discourage reloaders from attempting to reuse these cases.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Plastic cases are commonly used in shotgun shells, and some manufacturers have now started offering polymer-cased centerfire rifle cartridges.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: As firearms are projectile weapons, the projectile is the effector component of the cartridge, and is actually responsible for reaching, impacting, and exerting damage onto a target. The word "projectile" is an umbrella term that describes any type of kinetic object launched into ballistic flight, but due to the ubiquity of rifled firearms shooting bullets, the term has become somewhat a technical synonym for bullets among the handloading crowds. The projectile's motion in flight is known as its external ballistics, and its behavior upon impacting an object is known as its terminal ballistics.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: A bullet can be made of virtually anything (see below), but lead is the traditional material of choice because of its high density, malleability, ductility, and low cost of production. However, at speeds greater than , pure lead will deposit fouling in rifled bores at an ever-increasing rate. Alloying the lead with a small percentage of tin and/or antimony can reduce such fouling, but grows less effective as velocities are increased. A cup made of harder metal (e.g. copper), called a gas check, is often placed at the base of a lead bullet to decrease lead deposits by protecting the rear of the bullet against melting when fired at higher pressures, but this too does not work at higher velocities. A modern solution is to cover bare lead in a protective powder coat, as seen in some rimfire ammunitions. Another solution is to encase a lead core within a thin exterior layer of harder metal (e.g. gilding metal, cupronickel, copper alloys or steel), known as a "jacketing". In modern days, steel, bismuth, tungsten, and other exotic alloys are sometimes used to replace lead and prevent release of toxicity into the environment. In armor-piercing bullets, very hard and high-density materials such as hardened steel, tungsten, tungsten carbide, or even depleted uranium are used for the penetrator core.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Non-lethal projectiles with very limited penetrative and stopping powers are sometimes used in riot control or training situations, where killing or severely wounding a target would be undesirable. Such projectiles are usually made from softer and lower-density materials, such as plastic or rubber bullets. Wax bullets are occasionally used for force-on-force tactical trainings, and pistol dueling with wax bullets used to be a competitive Olympic sport prior to the First World War.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: For smoothbore weapons such as shotguns, small metallic balls known as shot are typically used, which is usually contained inside a semi-flexible, cup-like sabot called "wadding". When fired, the wadding is launched from the gun as a payload-carrying projectile, loosens and opens itself up after exiting the barrel, and then inertially releases the contained shots as a hail of sub-projectiles. Shotgun shots are usually made from bare lead, though copper/zinc–coated steel balls (such as those used by BB guns) can also be used. Lead pollution of wetlands has led to the BASC and other organizations campaigning for the phasing out of traditional lead shot. There are also unconventional projectile fillings such as bundled flechettes, rubber balls, rock salt and magnesium shards, as well as non-lethal specialty projectiles such as rubber slugs and bean bag rounds. Solid projectiles (e.g. slugs, baton rounds, etc.) are also shot while contained within a wadding, as the wadding obturates the bore better and typically slides less frictionally within the barrel.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: The propellant is what actually fuels the main function of any firearm (i.e. shooting out the projectile). When a propellant deflagrates (subsonic combustion), the redox reaction breaks its molecular bonds and releases the chemical energy stored within. At the same time, the combustion yields significant amount of gaseous products, which is highly energetic due to the exothermic nature of the reaction. These combustion gases become highly pressurized when confined in a rigid space – such as the cartridge casing (reinforced by the chamber wall) occluded from the front by the projectile (bullet, or wadding containing shots/slug) and from behind by the primer (supported by the bolt/breechblock). When the pressure builds up high enough to overcome the crimp friction between the projectile and the case, the projectile separates from the case and gets "propelled" down the gun barrel by further expansion of the gases like a piston engine, receiving kinetic energy from the propellant gases and accelerating to a very high muzzle velocity within a short distance (i.e. the barrel length). The projectile motion driven by the propellant inside the gun is known as the internal ballistics.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: The oldest gun propellant was black gunpowder, a low explosive made from a mixture of sulfur, carbon and potassium nitrate, invented in China during the 9th century as one of Four Great Inventions, and still remains in occasional use as a solid propellant (mostly for antique firearms and pyrotechnics). Modern firearm propellants however are smokeless powders based on nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin, first invented during the late 19th century as a cleaner and better-performing replacement for black powder. Modern smokeless powder may be corned into small spherical balls, or extruded into cylinders or strips with many cross-sectional shapes using solvents such as ether, which can be cut into short ("flakes") or long pieces ("cords").


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: The performance characteristics of a propellant are greatly influenced by its grain size and shape, because the specific surface area influences the burn rate, which in turn influences the rate of pressurization. Short-barrel firearms such as handguns necessitate faster-burning propellants to obtain sufficient muzzle energy, while long guns typically use slower-burning propellants.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Due to the relatively short distance a gun barrel can offer, the sealed acceleration time is very limited and only a small proportion of the total energy generated by the propellant combustion will get transferred to the projectile. The residual energy in the propellant gases gets dissipated to the surrounding in the form of heat, vibration/deformation, light (in the form of muzzle flash) and a prominent muzzle blast (which is responsible for the loud sound/concussive shock perceivable to bystanders and most of the recoil felt by the shooter, as well as potentially deflecting the bullet), or as unusable kinetic energy transferred to other ejecta byproducts (e.g. unburnt powders, dislodged foulings).


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Because the main propellant charge are located deep inside the gun barrel and thus impractical to be directly lighted from the outside, an intermediate is needed to relay the ignition. In the earliest black powder muzzleloaders, a fuse was used to direct a small flame through a touch hole into the barrel, which was slow and subjected to disturbance from environmental conditions. The next evolution was to have a small separate charge of finer gunpowder poured into a flash pan, where it could start a "priming" ignition by an external source such as a slow match (matchlock), or a pyrite (wheellock) or a flint striking a steel frizzen (snaplock and flintlock) to create sparks. When the primer powder starts combusting, the flame is transferred through an internal touch hole called a "flash hole" to provide activation energy for the main powder charge in the barrel. The disadvantage was that the flash pan could still be exposed to the outside, making it difficult (or even impossible) to fire the gun in rainy or humid conditions as wet gunpowder burns poorly.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: After Edward Charles Howard discovered fulminates in 1800 and the patent by Reverend Alexander John Forsyth expired in 1807, Joseph Manton invented the precursor percussion cap in 1814, which was further developed in 1822 by the English-born American artist Joshua Shaw, and caplock fowling pieces appeared in Regency era England. These guns used a spring-loaded hammer to strike a percussion cap placed over a conical "nipple", which served as both an "anvil" against the hammer strike and a transfer port for the sparks created by impactfully crushing the cap, and was easier and quicker to load, more resilient to weather conditions, and more reliable than the preceding flintlocks.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Modern primers are basically improved percussion caps with shock-sensitive chemicals (e.g. lead styphnate) enclosed in a small button-shaped capsule. In the early paper cartridges, invented not long after the percussion cap, the primer was located deep inside the cartridge just behind the bullet, requiring a very thin and elongated firing pin to pierce the paper casing. Such guns were known as needle guns, the most famous of which was decisive in the Prussian victory over the Austrians at Königgrätz in 1866. After the metallic cartridge was invented, the primer was relocated backward to the base of the case, either at the center of the case head (centerfire), inside the rim (rimfire), inside a cup-like concavity of the case base (cupfire), in a pin-shaped sideways projection (pinfire), in a lip-like flange (lipfire), or in a small nipple-like bulge at the case base (teat-fire). Today, only the centerfire and rimfire have survived the test of time as the mainstream primer designs, while the pinfire also still exists but only in rare novelty miniature guns and a few very small blank cartridges designed as noisemakers.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: In rimfire ammunitions, the primer compound is moulded integrally into the interior of the protruding case rim, which is crushed between the firing pin and the edge of the barrel breech (serving as the "anvil"). These ammunitions are thus not reloadable, and are usually on the lower end of the power spectrum, although due to the low manufacturing cost some of them (e.g. .22 Long Rifle) are among the most popular and prolific ammunitions currently being used.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Centerfire primers are a separately manufactured component, seated into a central recess at the case base known as the "primer pocket", and have two types: Berdan and Boxer. Berdan primers, patent by American inventor Hiram Berdan in 1866, are a simple capsule, and the corresponding case has two small flash holes with a bulged bar in between, which serves as the "anvil" for the primer. Boxer primers, patented by Royal Artillery colonel Edward Mounier Boxer also in 1866, are more complex and have an internal tripedal "anvil" built into the primer itself, and the corresponding case has only a single large central flash hole. Commercially, Boxer primers dominate the handloader market due to the ease of depriming and the ability to transfer sparks more efficiently.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Due to their small size and charge load, primers lack the power to shoot out the projectile by themselves, but can still put out enough energy to separate the bullet from the casing and push it partway into the barrel – a dangerous condition called a squib load. Firing a fresh cartridge behind a squib load obstructing the barrel will generate dangerously high pressure, leading to a catastrophic failure and potentially causing severe injuries when the gun blows apart in the shooter's hands. Actor Brandon Lee's infamous accidental death in 1993 was believed to be caused by an undetected squib that was dislodged and shot out by a blank.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Initially in the 1860s, cases (e. g. for the Montigny mitrailleuse or the Snider–Enfield rifle) were produced similarly to the paper cartridges, with sides made from thick paper, but with copper (later brass) foil supporting the base of the cartridge and some more details in it holding the primer. In the 1870s brass foil covered all of the cartridge, and the technology to make solid cases, which is described below, was developed, but before the 1880s it was too expensive and the metallurgy was not yet perfected.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: To manufacture cases for cartridges, a sheet of brass is punched into disks. These disks go through a series of drawing dies. The disks are annealed and washed before moving to the next series of dies. The brass needs to be annealed to remove the work-hardening in the material and make the brass malleable again ready for the next series of dies.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Manufacturing bullet jackets is similar to making brass cases: there is a series of drawing steps with annealing and washing.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Critical cartridge specifications include neck size, bullet weight and caliber, maximum pressure, headspace, overall length, case body diameter and taper, shoulder design, rim type, etc. Generally, every characteristic of a specific cartridge type is tightly controlled and few types are interchangeable in any way. Exceptions do exist but generally, these are only where a shorter cylindrical rimmed cartridge can be used in a longer chamber, (e.g., .22 Short in .22 Long Rifle chamber, .32 H&R Magnum in .327 Federal Magnum chamber, and .38 Special in a .357 Magnum chamber). Centerfire primer type (Boxer or Berdan, see below) is interchangeable, although not in the same case. Deviation in any of these specifications can result in firearm damage and, in some instances, injury or death. Similarly, the use of the wrong type of cartridge in any given gun can damage the gun, or cause bodily injury.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Cartridge specifications are determined by several standards organizations, including SAAMI in the United States, and C.I.P. in many European states. NATO also performs its own tests for military cartridges for its member nations; due to differences in testing methods, NATO cartridges (headstamped with the NATO cross) may present an unsafe combination when loaded into a weapon chambered for a cartridge certified by one of the other testing bodies.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Bullet diameter is measured either as a fraction of an inch (usually in 1/100 or in 1/1000) or in millimeters. Cartridge case length can also be designated in inches or millimeters.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Paper cartridges have been in use for centuries, with a number of sources dating their usage as far back as the late 14th and early 15th centuries. Historians note their use by soldiers of Christian I, Elector of Saxony and his son in the late 16th century, while the Dresden Armoury has evidence dating their use to 1591. Capo Bianco wrote in 1597 that paper cartridges had long been in use by Neapolitan soldiers. Their use became widespread by the 17th century. The 1586 round consisted of a charge of powder and a bullet in a paper cartridge. Thick paper is still known as "cartridge paper" from its use in these cartridges. Another source states the cartridge appeared in 1590. King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden had his troops use cartridges in the 1600s. The paper formed a cylinder with twisted ends; the ball was at one end, and the measured powder filled the rest.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: This cartridge was used with muzzle-loading military firearms, probably more often than for sporting shooting, the base of the cartridge being ripped or bitten off by the soldier, the powder poured into the barrel, and the paper and bullet rammed down the barrel. In the Civil War era cartridge, the paper was supposed to be discarded, but soldiers often used it as a wad. To ignite the charge an additional step was required where a finer-grained powder called priming powder was poured into the pan of the gun to be ignited by the firing mechanism.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: The evolving nature of warfare required a firearm that could load and fire more rapidly, resulting in the flintlock musket (and later the Baker rifle), in which the pan was covered by furrowed steel. This was struck by the flint and fired the gun. In the course of loading, a pinch of powder from the cartridge would be placed into the pan as priming, before the rest of the cartridge was rammed down the barrel, providing charge and wadding.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Later developments rendered this method of priming unnecessary, as, in loading, a portion of the charge of powder passed from the barrel through the vent into the pan, where it was held by the cover and hammer.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: The next important advance in the method of ignition was the introduction of the copper percussion cap. This was only generally applied to the British military musket (the Brown Bess) in 1842, a quarter of a century after the invention of percussion powder and after an elaborate government test at Woolwich in 1834. The invention that made the percussion cap possible was patented by the Rev. A. J. Forsyth in 1807 and consisted of priming with a fulminating powder made of potassium chlorate, sulfur, and charcoal, which ignited by concussion. This invention was gradually developed, and used, first in a steel cap, and then in a copper cap, by various gunmakers and private individuals before coming into general military use nearly thirty years later.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: The alteration of the military flint-lock to the percussion musket was easily accomplished by replacing the powder pan with a perforated nipple and by replacing the cock or hammer that held the flint with a smaller hammer that had a hollow to fit on the nipple when released by the trigger. The shooter placed a percussion cap (now made of three parts of potassium chlorate, two of fulminate of mercury and powdered glass) on the nipple. The detonating cap thus invented and adopted brought about the invention of the modern cartridge case, and rendered possible the general adoption of the breech-loading principle for all varieties of rifles, shotguns, and pistols. This greatly streamlined the reloading procedure and paved the way for semi- and full-automatic firearms.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: However, this big leap forward came at a price: it introduced an extra component into each round – the cartridge case – which had to be removed before the gun could be reloaded. While a flintlock, for example, is immediately ready to reload once it has been fired, adopting brass cartridge cases brought in the problems of extraction and ejection. The mechanism of a modern gun must not only load and fire the piece but also provide a method of removing the spent case, which might require just as many added moving parts. Many malfunctions occur during this process, either through a failure to extract a case properly from the chamber or by allowing the extracted case to jam the action. Nineteenth-century inventors were reluctant to accept this added complication and experimented with a variety of caseless or self-consuming cartridges before finally accepting that the advantages of brass cases far outweighed this one drawback.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: The first integrated cartridge was developed in Paris in 1808 by the Swiss gunsmith Jean Samuel Pauly in association with French gunsmith François Prélat. Pauly created the first fully self-contained cartridges: the cartridges incorporated a copper base with integrated mercury fulminate primer powder (the major innovation of Pauly), a round bullet and either brass or paper casing. The cartridge was loaded through the breech and fired with a needle. The needle-activated centerfire breech-loading gun would become a major feature of firearms thereafter. Pauly made an improved version, protected by a patent, on 29 September 1812.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Probably no invention connected with firearms has wrought such changes in the principle of gun construction as those effected by the "expansive cartridge case". This invention has completely revolutionized the art of gun making, has been successfully applied to all descriptions of firearms and has produced a new and important industry: that of cartridge manufacture. Its essential feature is preventing gas from escaping the breech when the gun is fired, by means of an expansive cartridge case containing its own means of ignition. Previous to this invention shotguns and sporting rifles were loaded by means of powder flasks and shot bags or flasks, bullets, wads, and copper caps, all carried separately. One of the earliest efficient modern cartridge cases was the pinfire cartridge, developed by French gunsmith Casimir Lefaucheux in 1836. It consisted of a thin weak shell made of brass and paper that expanded from the force of the explosion. This fit perfectly in the barrel and thus formed an efficient gas check. A small percussion cap was placed in the middle of the base of the cartridge and was ignited by means of a brass pin projecting from the side and struck by the hammer. This pin also afforded the means of extracting the cartridge case. This cartridge was introduced in England by Lang, of Cockspur Street, London, about 1845.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: In the American Civil War (1861–65) a breech-loading rifle, the Sharps, was introduced and produced in large numbers. It could be loaded with either a ball or a paper cartridge. After that war, many were converted to the use of metal cartridges. The development by Smith & Wesson (among many others) of revolver handguns that used metal cartridges helped establish cartridge firearms as the standard in the US by the late 1860s and early 1870s, although many continue to use percussion revolvers well after that.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: The first centerfire metallic cartridge was invented by Jean Samuel Pauly in the first decades of the 19th century. However, although it was the first cartridge to use a form of obturation, a feature integral to a successful breech-loading cartridge, Pauly died before it was converted to percussion cap ignition.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Frenchman Louis-Nicolas Flobert invented the first rimfire metallic cartridge in 1845. His cartridge consisted of a percussion cap with a bullet attached to the top. Flobert then made what he called "parlor guns" for this cartridge, as these rifles and pistols were designed to be shot in indoor shooting parlors in large homes. These 6mm Flobert cartridges do not contain any powder. The only propellant substance contained in the cartridge is the percussion cap. In English-speaking countries, the 6mm Flobert cartridge corresponds to .22 BB Cap and .22 CB Cap ammunition. These cartridges have a relatively low muzzle velocity of around 700 ft/s (210 m/s).


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: French gunsmith Benjamin Houllier improved the Lefaucheux pinfire cardboard cartridge and patented in Paris in 1846, the first fully metallic pinfire cartridge containing powder (and a pinfire), in a metallic cartridge. He also included in his patent claims rim and centerfire primed cartridges using brass or copper casings. Houllier commercialised his weapons in association with the gunsmiths Blanchard or Charles Robert.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: In the United States, in 1857, the Flobert cartridge inspired the .22 Short (another rimfire), specially conceived for the first American revolver using rimfire cartridges, the Smith & Wesson Model 1. A year before, in 1856, the LeMat revolver was the first American (French-designed) breech-loading firearm, but it used pinfire cartridges, not rimfire. Formerly, an employee of the Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company, Rollin White, had been the first in America to conceive the idea of having the revolver cylinder bored through to accept metallic cartridges ( 1852), with the first in the world to use bored-through cylinders probably having been Lefaucheux in 1845, who invented a pepperbox-revolver loaded from the rear using bored-through cylinders. Another possible claimant for the bored-through cylinder is a Frenchman by the name of Perrin, who allegedly produced in 1839 a pepperbox revolver with a bored-through cylinder to order. Other possible claimants include Devisme of France in 1834 or 1842 who claimed to have produced a breech-loading revolver in that period though his claim was later judged as lacking in evidence by French courts and Hertog & Devos and Malherbe & Rissack of Belgium who both filed patents for breech-loading revolvers in 1853. However, Samuel Colt refused this innovation. White left Colt, went to Smith & Wesson to rent a license for his patent, and this is how the S&W Model 1 saw the light of day in 1857. The patent didn't definitely expire until 1870, allowing Smith & Wesson competitors to design and commercialize their own revolving breech-loaders using metallic cartridges. Famous models of that time are the Colts Open Top (1871–1872) and Single Action Army "Peacemaker" (1873). But in rifles, the lever-action mechanism patents were not obstructed by Rollin White's patent infringement because White only held a patent concerning drilled cylinders and revolving mechanisms. Thus, larger caliber rimfire cartridges were soon introduced after 1857, when the Smith & Wesson .22 Short ammunition was introduced for the first time. Some of these rifle cartridges were used in the American Civil War, including the .44 Henry and 56-56 Spencer (both in 1860). However, the large rimfire cartridges were soon replaced by centerfire cartridges, which could safely handle higher pressures.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: In 1867 the British war office adopted the Eley–Boxer metallic centerfire cartridge case in the Pattern 1853 Enfield rifles, which were converted to Snider-Enfield breech-loaders on the Snider principle. This consisted of a block opening on a hinge, thus forming a false breech against which the cartridge rested. The priming cap was in the base of the cartridge and was discharged by a striker passing through the breech block. Other European powers adopted breech-loading military rifles from 1866 to 1868, with paper instead of metallic cartridge cases. The original Eley-Boxer cartridge case was made of thin-coiled brass—occasionally these cartridges could break apart and jam the breech with the unwound remains of the case upon firing. Later the solid-drawn, centerfire cartridge case, made of one entire solid piece of tough hard metal, an alloy of copper, with a solid head of thicker metal, has been generally substituted.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Centerfire cartridges with solid-drawn metallic cases containing their own means of ignition are almost universally used in all modern varieties of military and sporting rifles and pistols.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Around 1870, machined tolerances had improved to the point that the cartridge case was no longer necessary to seal a firing chamber. Precision-faced bolts would seal as well, and could be economically manufactured. However, normal wear and tear proved this system to be generally infeasible.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: The name of any given cartridge does not necessarily reflect any cartridge or gun dimension. The name is merely the standardized and accepted moniker. SAAMI (Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute) and the European counterpart (CIP) and members of those organizations specify correct cartridge names.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: It is incomplete to refer to a cartridge as a certain "caliber" (e.g., "30-06 caliber"), as the word "caliber" only describes the bullet diameter. The correct full name for this round is .30–'06 Springfield. The "-'06" means it was introduced in 1906. In sporting arms, the only consistent definition of "caliber" is bore diameter, and dozens of unique .30-caliber round types exist.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: There is considerable variation in cartridge nomenclature. Names sometimes reflect various characteristics of the cartridge. For example, the .308 Winchester uses a bullet of 308/1000-inch diameter and was standardized by Winchester. Conversely, cartridge names often reflect nothing related to the cartridge in any obvious way. For example, the .218 Bee uses a bullet of 224/1000-inch diameter, fired through a .22-in bore, etc. The 218 and Bee portions of this cartridge name reflect nothing other than the desires of those who standardized that cartridge. Many similar examples exist, for example: .219 Zipper, .221 Fireball, .222 Remington, .256 Winchester, .280 Remington, .307 Winchester, .356 Winchester.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Where two numbers are used in a cartridge name, the second number may reflect a variety of things. Frequently the first number reflects bore diameter (inches or millimeters). The second number reflects case length (in inches or mm). For example, the 7.62×51mm NATO refers to a bore diameter of 7.62 mm and has an overall case length of 51 mm, with a total length of 71.1 mm. The commercial version is the .308 Winchester.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: In older black powder cartridges, the second number typically refers to powder charge, in grains. For example, the .50-90 Sharps has a .50-inch bore and used a nominal charge of of black powder.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Many such cartridges were designated by a three-number system (e.g., 45–120–3 Sharps: 45-caliber bore, 120 grains of (black) powder, 3-inch long case). Other times, a similar three-number system indicated bore (caliber), charge (grains), and bullet weight (grains). The 45-70-500 Government is an example.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Often, the name reflects the company or individual who standardized it, such as the .30 Newton, or some characteristic important to that person.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: The .38 Special actually has a nominal bullet diameter of (jacketed) or (lead) while the case has a nominal diameter of , hence the name. This is historically logical: the hole drilled through the chambers of .36-caliber cap-and-ball revolvers when converting those to work with cartridges was , and the cartridge made to work in those revolvers was logically named the .38 Colt. The original cartridges used a heeled bullet like a .22 rimfire where the bullet was the same diameter as the case. Early Colt Army .38s have a bore diameter that will allow a .357" diameter bullet to slide through the barrel. The cylinder is bored straight through with no step. Later versions used an inside the case lubricated bullet of .357" diameter instead of the original .38" with a reduction in bore diameter. The difference in .38 Special bullet diameter and case diameter reflects the thickness of the case mouth (approximately 11/1000-inch per side). The .357 Magnum evolved from the .38 Special. The .357 was named to reflect bullet diameter (in thousandths inch), not case diameter. "Magnum" was used to indicate its longer case and higher operating pressure.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Cartridges are classified by some major characteristics. One classification is the location of the primer. Early cartridges began with the pinfire, then the rimfire, and finally the centerfire.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Another classification describes how cartridges are located in the chamber (headspace). Rimmed cartridges are located with the rim near the cartridge head; the rim is also used to extract the cartridge from the chamber. Examples are the .22 long rifle and .303 British. In a rimless cartridge, the cartridge head diameter is about the same as or smaller than the body diameter. The head will have a groove so the cartridge can be extracted from the chamber. Locating the cartridge in the chamber is accomplished by other means. Some rimless cartridges are necked down, and they are positioned by the cartridge's shoulder. An example is the .30-06 Springfield. Pistol cartridges may be located by the end of the brass case. An example is the .45 ACP. A belted cartridge has a larger diameter band of thick metal near the head of the cartridge. An example is the .300 Weatherby Magnum. An extreme version of the rimless cartridge is the rebated case; guns employing advanced primer ignition need such a case because the case moves during firing (i.e., it is not located at a fixed position). An example is the 20mm×110RB.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: A centerfire cartridge has a centrally located primer held within a recess in the case head. Most centerfire brass cases used worldwide for sporting ammunition use Boxer primers. It is easy to remove and replace Boxer primers using standard reloading tools, facilitating reuse.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Some European- and Asian-manufactured military and sporting ammunition uses Berdan primers. Removing the spent primer from (decapping) these cases requires the use of a special tool because the primer anvil (on which the primer compound is crushed) is an integral part of the case and the case, therefore, does not have a central hole through which a decapping tool can push the primer out from the inside, as is done with Boxer primers. In Berdan cases, the flash holes are located to the sides of the anvil. With the right tool and components, reloading Berdan-primed cases is perfectly feasible. However, Berdan primers are not readily available in the U.S.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Rimfire priming was a popular solution before centerfire priming was perfected. In a rimfire case, centrifugal force pushes a liquid priming compound into the internal recess of the folded rim as the manufacturer spins the case at a high rate and heats the spinning case to dry the priming compound mixture in place within the hollow cavity formed within the rim fold at the perimeter of the case interior.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: In the mid- to late-1800s, many rimfire cartridge designs existed. Today only a few, mostly for use in small-caliber guns, remain in general and widespread use. These include the .17 Mach II, .17 Hornady Magnum Rimfire (HMR), 5mm Remington Magnum (Rem Mag), .22 (BB, CB, Short, Long, Long Rifle), and .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire (WMR).


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Compared to modern centerfire cases used in the strongest types of modern guns, existing rimfire cartridge designs use loads that generate relatively low pressure because of limitations of feasible gun design – the rim has little or no lateral support from the gun. Such support would require very close tolerances in the design of the chamber, bolt, and firing pin. Because that is not cost-effective, it is necessary to keep rimfire load pressure low enough so that the stress generated by chamber pressure that would push the case rim outward cannot expand the rim significantly. Also, the wall of the folded rim must be thin and ductile enough to easily deform, as necessary to allow the blow from the firing pin to crush and thereby ignite the primer compound, and it must do so without rupturing, If it is too thick, it will be too resistant to deformation. If it is too hard, it will crack rather than deform. These two limitations – that the rim is self-supporting laterally and that the rim is thin and ductile enough to easily crush in response to the firing pin impact – limit rimfire pressures.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Modern centerfire cartridges are often loaded to about maximum chamber pressure. Conversely, no commercialized rimfire has ever been loaded above about maximum chamber pressure. However, with careful gun design and production, no fundamental reason exists that higher pressures could not be used. Despite the relative pressure disadvantage, modern rimfire magnums in .17-caliber/4.5mm, .20-caliber/5mm, and .22-caliber/5.6mm can generate muzzle energies comparable to smaller centerfire cartridges.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Today, .22 LR (Long Rifle) accounts for the vast majority of all rimfire ammunition used. Standard .22 LR rounds use an essentially pure lead bullet plated with a typical 95% copper, 5% zinc combination. These are offered in supersonic and subsonic types, as well as target, plinking, and hunting versions. These cartridges are usually coated with hard wax for fouling control.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: The .22 LR and related rimfire .22 cartridges use a heeled bullet, where the external diameter of the case is the same as the diameter of the forward portion of the bullet and where the rearward portion of the bullet, which extends into the case, is necessarily smaller in diameter than the main body of the bullet.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Most revolver cartridges are rimmed at the base of the case, which seats against the edge of cylinder chamber to provide headspace control (to keep the cartridge from moving too far forward into the chamber) and to facilitate easy extraction.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Nearly every centerfire semi-automatic pistol cartridge is "rimless", where the rim is of the same diameter as the case body but separated by a circumferential groove in between, into which the extractor engages the rim by hooking. A "semi-rimmed" cartridge is essentially a rimless one but the rim diameter is slightly larger than the case body, and a "rebated rimless" cartridge is one with the rim smaller in diameter. All such cartridges' headspace on the case mouth (although some, such as .38 Super, at one time seated on the rim, this was changed for accuracy reasons), which prevents the round from entering too far into the chamber. Some cartridges have a rim that is significantly smaller than the case body diameter. These are known as rebated-rim designs and almost always allow a handgun to fire multiple caliber cartridges with only a barrel and magazine change.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: The Hague Convention of 1899 bans the use of expanding projectiles against the military forces of other nations. Some countries accept this as a blanket ban against the use of expanding projectiles against anyone, while others use JSP and HP against non-military forces such as terrorists and criminals.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Snake shot (AKA: bird shot, rat shot and dust shot) refers to handgun and rifle rounds loaded with small lead shot. Snake shot is generally used for shooting at snakes, rodents, birds, and other pests at very close range.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: The most common snake shot cartridge is .22 Long Rifle loaded with No. 12 shot. From a standard rifle these can produce effective patterns only to a distance of about – but in a smoothbore shotgun this can extend as far as .


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Many governments and companies continue to develop caseless ammunition (where the entire case assembly is either consumed when the round fires or whatever remains is ejected with the bullet). So far, none of these have been successful enough to reach the civilian market and gain commercial success. Even within the military market, use is limited. Around 1848, Sharps introduced a rifle and paper cartridge (containing everything but the primer) system. When new these guns had significant gas leaks at the chamber end, and with use these leaks progressively worsened. This problem plagues caseless cartridges and gun systems to this day.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: The Daisy Heddon VL Single Shot Rifle, which used a caseless round in .22 caliber, was produced by the air gun company, beginning in 1968. Apparently, Daisy never considered the gun an actual firearm. In 1969, the ATF ruled it was in fact a firearm, which Daisy was not licensed to produce. Production of the guns and the ammo was discontinued in 1969. They are still available on the secondary market, mainly as collector items, as most owners report that accuracy is not very good.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: In 1989, Heckler & Koch, a prominent German firearms manufacturer, began advertising the G11 assault rifle, which shot a 4.73×33 square caseless round. The round was mechanically fired, with an integral primer.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: In 1993 Voere of Austria began selling a gun and caseless ammunition. Their system used a primer, electronically fired at 17.5 ± 2 volts. The upper and lower limits prevent fire from either stray currents or static electricity. The direct electrical firing eliminates the mechanical delays associated with a striker, reducing lock time and allowing for easier adjustment of the rifle trigger.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: In both instances, the "case" was molded directly from solid nitrocellulose, which is itself relatively strong and inert. The bullet and primer were glued into the propellant block.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: The "Tround" ("Triangular Round") was a unique type of cartridge designed in 1958 by David Dardick, for use in specially designed Dardick 1100 and Dardick 1500 open-chamber firearms. As their name suggests, Trounds were triangular in cross-section and were made of plastic or aluminum, with the cartridge completely encasing the powder and projectile. The Tround design was also produced as a cartridge adaptor, to allow conventional .38 Special and 22 Long Rifle cartridges to be used with the Dardick firearms.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: They are meant to prevent pollution and are mostly biodegradable (metals being the exception) or fully. They are also meant to be used on older guns.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: A blank is a charged cartridge that does not contain a projectile or alternatively uses a non-metallic (for instance, wooden) projectile that pulverizes when hitting a blank firing adapter. To contain the propellant, the opening where the projectile would normally be located is crimped shut, and/or it is sealed with some material that disperses rapidly upon leaving the barrel.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: This sealing material can still potentially cause harm at extremely close range. Actor Jon-Erik Hexum died when he shot himself in the head with a blank, and actor Brandon Lee was famously killed during the filming of "The Crow" when a blank fired behind a bullet that was stuck in the bore drove that bullet through his abdomen and into his spine. The gun had not been properly deactivated and a primed case with a bullet instead of a dummy had been used previously. Someone pulled the trigger and the primer drove the bullet silently into the bore.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Blanks are used in training, but do not always cause a gun to behave the same as live ammunition does; recoil is always far weaker, and some automatic guns only cycle correctly when the gun is fitted with a blank-firing adaptor to confine gas pressure within the barrel to operate the gas system.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Blanks can also be used to launch a rifle grenade, although later systems used a "bullet trap" design that captures a bullet from a conventional round, speeding deployment. This also negates the risk of mistakenly firing a live bullet into the rifle grenade, causing it to instantly explode instead of propelling it forward.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Blanks are also used as dedicated launchers for propelling a grappling hook, rope line or flare, or for a training lure for training gun dogs.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Drill rounds are inert versions of cartridges used for education and practice during military training. Other than the lack of propellant and primer, these are the same size as normal cartridges and will fit into the mechanism of a gun in the same way as a live cartridge does. Because dry-firing (releasing the firing pin with an empty chamber) a gun can sometimes lead to firing pin (striker) damage, dummy rounds termed snap caps are designed to protect centerfire guns from possible damage during "dry-fire" trigger control practices.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: To distinguish drill rounds and snap-caps from live rounds these are marked distinctively. Several forms of markings are used; e.g. setting colored flutes in the case, drilling holes through the case, coloring the bullet or cartridge, or a combination of these. In the case of centerfire drill rounds, the primer will often be absent, its mounting hole in the base is left open. Because these are mechanically identical to live rounds, which are intended to be loaded once, fired, and then discarded, drill rounds have a tendency to become significantly worn and damaged with repeated passage through magazines and firing mechanisms, and must be frequently inspected to ensure that these are not so degraded as to be unusable. For example, the cases can become torn or misshapen and snag on moving parts, or the bullet can become separated and stay in the breech when the case is ejected.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: The bright-colored Mek-Porek is an inert cartridge base designed to prevent a live round from being unintentionally chambered, to reduce the chances of an accidental discharge from mechanical or operator failure. An L-shaped flag is visible from the outside so that the shooter and other people concerned are instantly aware of the situation of the weapon. The Mek-Porek is usually tethered to its weapon by a short string and can be quickly ejected to make way for a live round if the situation suddenly warrants it. This safety device is standard-issue in the Israel Defense Forces.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: A snap cap is a device that is shaped like a standard cartridge but contains no primer, propellant, or projectile. It is used to ensure that dry firing firearms of certain designs does not cause damage. A small number of rimfire and centerfire firearms of older design should not be test-fired with the chamber empty, as this can lead to weakening or breakage of the firing pin and increased wear to other components in those firearms. In the instance of a rimfire weapon of primitive design, dry firing can also cause deformation of the chamber edge. For this reason, some shooters use a snap cap in an attempt to cushion the weapon's firing pin as it moves forward. Some snap caps contain a spring-dampened fake primer, or one made of plastic, or none at all; the springs or plastic absorb force from the firing pin, allowing the user to safely test the function of the firearm action without damaging its components.


title: Cartridge (firearms)

text: Snap caps and action-proving dummy rounds also work as a training tool to replace live rounds for loading and unloading drills, as well as training for misfires or other malfunctions, as they function identically to a live "dud" round that has not ignited. Usually, one snap-cap is usable for 300 to 400 clicks. After that, due to the hole at the false primer, the firing pin does not reach it.


title: Sea of Azov

text: The Sea of Azov (Crimean Tatar: "Azaq deñizi"; ; ) is a sea in Eastern Europe connected to the Black Sea by the narrow (about ) Strait of Kerch, and is sometimes regarded as a northern extension of the Black Sea. The sea is bounded by Russia on the east, by Ukraine on the northwest and southwest.


title: Sea of Azov

text: The sea is largely affected by the inflow of the Don, Kuban, and other rivers, which bring sand, silt, and shells, which in turn form numerous bays, limans, and narrow spits. Because of these deposits, the sea bottom is relatively smooth and flat with the depth gradually increasing toward the middle. Also, due to the river inflow, water in the sea has low salinity and a high amount of biomass (such as green algae) that affects the water colour. Abundant plankton result in unusually high fish productivity. The sea shores and spits are low; they are rich in vegetation and bird colonies. The Sea of Azov is the shallowest sea in the world, with the depth varying between . There is a constant outflow of water from the Sea of Azov to the Black Sea.


title: Sea of Azov

text: The name is likely to derive from the settlement of an area around Azov, whose name comes from the Kipchak Turkish "asak" or "azaq" 'lowlands'. A Russian pseudo-etymology, however, instead derives it from an eponymous Cuman prince named "Azum" or "Asuf", said to have been killed defending his town in 1067. A formerly common spelling of the name in English was the .


title: Sea of Azov

text: In antiquity, the sea was usually known as the Maeotis Swamp (, "hē Maiōtis límnē"; ) from the marshlands to its northeast. It remains unclear whether it was named for the nearby Maeotians or if that name was applied broadly to various peoples who happened to live beside it. Other names included or Maeotius (' or '); the Maeotian or (' or '); the Cimmerian or (' or '); and the Cimmerian or (' or '). The Maeotians themselves were said by Pliny to call the sea Temarunda (alternative spellings Temarenda and Temerinda), meaning "Mother of Waters".


title: Sea of Azov

text: The medieval Russians knew it as the after the adjacent city now known as Sudak. It was known in Ottoman Turkish as the "Balük-Denis" ("Fish Sea") from its high productivity.


title: Sea of Azov

text: In 1997, William Ryan and Walter Pitman of Columbia University published a theory that a massive flood through the Bosporus occurred in ancient times. They claim that the Black and Caspian Seas were vast freshwater lakes, but in about the Mediterranean spilled over a rocky sill at the Bosporus, creating the current link between the Black and Mediterranean Seas. Subsequent work has been done both to support and to discredit this theory, and archaeologists still debate it. This has led some to associate this catastrophe with prehistoric flood myths.


title: Sea of Azov

text: The Maeotian marshes around the mouth of the Tanais River (the present-day Don) were famous in antiquity, as they served as an important check on the migration of nomadic people from the Eurasian steppelands. The Maeotians themselves lived by fishing and farming, but were avid warriors able to defend themselves against invaders. Misled by its strong currents, ancient geographers had only a vague idea of the extent of the sea, whose fresh water caused them to typically label it a "swamp" or a "lake". Herodotus (5th century BC) judged it as large as the Black Sea, while the Pseudo-Scylax (4th century BC) thought it about half as large.


title: Sea of Azov

text: It was long believed to provide direct communication with the Arctic Ocean. Polybius (2nd century BC) confidently expected that the strait to the Sea of Azov would close in the near future, due to ongoing deposition of sediments from rivers. In the 1st century, Strabo reckoned the distance from the Cimmerian Bosporus (the Strait of Kerch) to the mouth of the Tanais at , a roughly correct figure, but did not know that its width continuously narrows.


title: Sea of Azov

text: Milesian colonization began in the 7th century BC. The Bosporan Kingdom was named for the Cimmerian Bosporus rather than for the more famous Bosporus at the other end of the Black Sea. Briefly annexed by Pontus from the late 2nd century BC, it stretched along both southern shores of the Sea of Azov from the time of Greek colonization to the end of the Roman Empire, serving as a client kingdom which exported wheat, fish, and slaves in exchange for Greek and Roman manufactures and luxuries. Its later history is uncertain but probably the Huns, after defeating the Alans people who had settled in the region from central Asia, overran it in the late 4th century.


title: Sea of Azov

text: The Sea of Azov was frequently the scene of military conflicts between Russia, pursuing naval expansion to the south, and the major power in the region, Turkey. During the Russo-Turkish War (1686–1700), there were two campaigns in 1695–96 to capture the then Turkish fortress of Azov defended by a garrison of 7,000. The campaigns were headed by Peter I and aimed to gain Russian access to the Sea of Azov and Black Sea. The first campaign began in the spring of 1695. The Russian army consisted of 31 thousand men and 170 cannons and included selected trained regiments and Cossacks. It reached Azov on 27–28 June and besieged it by land by 5 July. After two unsuccessful assaults on 5 August and 25 September, the siege was lifted.


title: Sea of Azov

text: The second campaign involved both ground forces and the Azov fleet, which was built in Moscow Oblast, Voronezh, Bryansk and other regions between winter 1695 and spring 1696. In April 1696, the army of 75,000 headed by Aleksei Shein moved to Azov by land and by ship via the Don River to Taganrog. In early May, they were joined by another fleet led by Peter I. On 27 May, the Russian fleet blocked Azov by sea. On 14 June, the Turkish fleet tried to break the blockade but, after losing two ships, retreated to the sea. After intensive bombardment of the fortress from land and sea, on 17 July the Russian army broke the defense lines and occupied parts of the wall. After heavy fighting, the garrison surrendered on 17 July. After the war, the Russian fleet base was moved to Taganrog and Azov, and 215 ships were built there between 1696 and 1711. In 1711, as a result of the Russo-Turkish War (1710–1711) and the Treaty of the Pruth, Azov was returned to Turkey and the Russian Azov fleet was destroyed. The city was recaptured by Russia in 1737 during the Russo-Austrian-Turkish War (1735–1739). However, as a result of the consequent Treaty of Niš, Russia was not allowed to keep the fortress and military fleet.


title: Sea of Azov

text: Another major military campaign on the Sea of Azov took place during the Crimean War of 1853–56. A naval and ground campaign pitting the allied navies of Britain and France against Russia took place between May and November 1855. The British and French forces besieged Taganrog, aiming to disrupt Russian supplies to Crimea. Capturing Taganrog would also result in an attack on Rostov, which was a strategic city for Russian support of their Caucasian operations. On 12 May 1855, the allied forces easily captured Kerch and gained access to the Sea of Azov, and on 22 May they attacked Taganrog. The attack failed and was followed by a siege. Despite the vast superiority of the allied forces (about 16,000 soldiers against fewer than 2,000), the city withstood all attempts to capture it, which ended around August 1855 with the retreat of the allied army. Individual coastal attacks continued without success and ceased in October 1855.


title: Sea of Azov

text: In December 2003, Ukraine and the Russian Federation agreed in a treaty to treat the sea and the Kerch Strait as shared internal waters.


title: Sea of Azov

text: In September 2018, Ukraine announced the intention to add navy ships and further ground forces along the coast of the Sea of Azov, with the ships based at Berdyansk. The military posturing was exacerbated following the construction of the Crimean Bridge, which is too low to allow passage of Panamax ships into Ukraine’s port. Late that September, two Ukrainian vessels departed from the Black Sea port Odessa, passed under the Crimean Bridge, and arrived in Mariupol. Tensions increased further after the Kerch Strait incident in November 2018, when Russia seized three Ukrainian Navy vessels attempting to enter the Sea of Azov.


title: Sea of Azov

text: Control of the western shore of the Sea is vital to the economy of Ukraine but it is also of immense strategic importance to Russia, as a land route to Crimea as well as it is for passage by Russian marine traffic.


title: Sea of Azov

text: On December 10, 2021, the Ukrainian Navy announced that Russia had blocked off nearly 70 percent of the Sea of Azov, issuing navigation warnings, ostensibly to conduct artillery fire exercises on the sea ..."near Mariupol, Berdyansk and Henichesk." It raised apprehension regarding a potential Russian invasion since it had begun amassing tens of thousands of troops near the southeast Ukraine border and had begun a propaganda war against the Kyiv government. The Russians seized three Ukrainian military vessel as the boats were trying to cross the strait, and captured 24 sailors who were finally released after months of negotiations.


title: Sea of Azov

text: On February 24, 2022, Russian forces began shelling Mariupol at the start of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. By May, with the end of the siege of Mariupol, Russia fully captured the city and blocked off Ukraine's access to the sea by controlling the entire north shore.


title: Sea of Azov

text: The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limit of the Sea of Azov in the Kertch Strait as "The limit of the Black Sea", which is itself defined as "A line joining Cape Takil and Cape Panaghia (45°02'N)".


title: Sea of Azov

text: The sea is considered an internal sea of Russia and Ukraine, and its use is governed by an agreement between these countries ratified in 2003.


title: Sea of Azov

text: The sea is long and wide and has an area of ; it is the smallest sea within the countries of the former Soviet Union. The main rivers flowing into it are the Don and Kuban; they ensure that the waters of the sea have comparatively low salinity and are almost fresh in places, and also bring in huge volumes of silt and sand. Accumulation of sand and shells results in a smooth and low coastline, as well as in numerous spits and sandbanks.


title: Sea of Azov

text: The Sea of Azov is the shallowest sea in the world with an average depth of and maximum depth of ; in the bays, where silt has built up, the average depth is about . The sea bottom is also relatively flat with the depth gradually increasing from the coast to the centre. The Sea of Azov is an internal sea with passage to the Atlantic Ocean going through the Black, Marmara, Aegean and Mediterranean seas. It is connected to the Black Sea by the Strait of Kerch, which at its narrowest has a width of and a maximum depth of . The narrowness of the Kerch Strait limits the water exchange with the Black Sea. As a result, the salinity of the Sea of Azov is low; in the open sea it is 10–12 psu, about one third of the salinity of the oceans; it is even lower (2–7 psu) in the Taganrog Bay at the northeast end of the Sea. The long-term variations of salinity are within a few psu and are mostly caused by changes in humidity and precipitation.


title: Sea of Azov

text: Although more than 20 rivers flow into the sea, mostly from the north, two of them, the Don and Kuban rivers, account for more than 90% of water inflow. The contribution of the Don is about twice that of the Kuban. The Kuban delta is located at the southeast, on the east side of the Kerch Strait. It is over 100 km long and covers a vast flooded area with numerous channels. Because of the spread, the delta has low contrast in satellite images, and is hardly visible in the map. The Don flows from the north into the large Taganrog Bay. The depth there varies between 2 and 9 metres, while the maximum depth is observed in the middle of the sea.


title: Sea of Azov

text: Typical values of the annual inflow and outflow of water to the sea, averaged over the period from 1923 to 1985, are as follows: river inflow 38.6 km, precipitation 15.5 km, evaporation 34.6 km, inflow from the Black Sea 36–38 km, outflow 53–55 km. Thus, about 17 km of fresh water is outflowing from the Azov Sea to the Black Sea. The depth of Azov Sea is decreasing, mostly due to the river-induced deposits. Whereas the past hydrological expeditions recorded depths of up to 16 metres, more recent ones could not find places deeper than 13.5–14 metres. This might explain the variation in the maximum depths among different sources. The water level fluctuates by some 20 cm over the year due to the snow melts in spring.


title: Sea of Azov

text: The Taman Peninsula has about 25 mud volcanoes, most of which are active. Their eruptions are usually quiet, spilling out mud, and such gases as methane, carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide, but are sometimes violent and resemble regular volcanic eruptions. Some of those volcanoes are under water, near the shores of the peninsula. A major eruption on 6 September 1799, near stanitsa Golubitskaya, lasted about 2 hours and formed a mud island 100 metres in diameter and 2 metres in height; the island was then washed away by the sea. Similar eruptions occurred in 1862, 1906, 1924, 1950 and 1952.


title: Sea of Azov

text: The current vertical profile of the Sea of Azov exhibits oxygenated surface waters and anoxic bottom waters, with the anoxic waters forming in a layer in thickness. The occurrence of the anoxic layer is attributed to seasonal eutrophication events associated with increased sedimentary input from the Don and Kuban Rivers. This sedimentary input stimulates biotic activity in the surface layers, in which organisms photosynthesise under aerobic conditions. Once the organisms expire, the dead organic matter sinks to the bottom of the sea where bacteria and microorganisms, using all available oxygen, consume the organic matter, leading to anoxic conditions. Studies have shown that in the Sea of Azov, the exact vertical structure is dependent on wind strength and sea surface temperature, but typically a 'stagnation zone' lies between the oxic and anoxic layers.


title: Sea of Azov

text: Many rivers flowing into the Sea of Azov form bays, lagoons and limans. The sand, silt and shells they bring are deposited in the areas of reduced flow, that is the sides of the bays, forming narrow sandbanks called spits. Typical maximum depth in the bays and limans is a few metres. Because of shallow waters and abundant rivers, the spits are remarkably long and numerous in the sea – the Arabat Spit stretches over and is one of the world's longest spits; three other spits, Fedotov Spit, Achuevsk Spit and Obitochna Spit, are longer than 30 km. Most spits stretch from north to south and their shape can significantly change over just several years.


title: Sea of Azov

text: A remarkable feature of the Sea of Azov is the large complex of shallow lagoons called Sivash or "Rotten Sea". Their typical depth is only 0.5–1 metres with a maximum of 3 metres. They cover an area of in the northeastern Crimea which is separated from the sea by the Arabatsk Spit. North of the spit lies the city of Henichesk (population 22,500) and south of it is the Bay of Arabat. Sivash accepts up to 1.5 km of Azov water per year. Because of the lagoons' wide extent and shallowness, the water rapidly evaporates, resulting in the high salinity of 170 on the practical salinity scale (i.e. 170 psu). For this reason Sivash has long had an important salt-producing industry.


title: Sea of Azov

text: North of the Arabat Spit is the Molochnyi Liman with the associated Fedotov Spit (45 km long) which are formed by the Molochna River. Farther north, between the Fedotov Spit and Obytochna Spit (30 km long), lies Obytochny Bay. Further north, between Obytochna Spit and Berdyansk Spit (23 km long), is Berdyansk Bay with two cities, Berdyansk (population 112,000) and Primorsk (population 13,900). Further north again lies Belosaraysk Bay with Belosaraysk Spit, formed by the river Kalmius. The major city in the area is Mariupol (population 491,600). Then, approaching the Taganrog Bay and very close to Taganrog, are the Mius Liman and Krivaya Spit formed by the Mius River.


title: Sea of Azov

text: With an area of about , Taganrog Bay is the largest bay of the Sea of Azov. It is located in the north-eastern part of the Sea and is bounded by the Belosaraysk and Dolgaya Spits. The Don flows into it from the north-east. On its shores stand the two principal cities of the Sea of Azov, Taganrog (population 257,600) and Azov (population 83,200). South-east of the bay is Yeysk Liman. It lies entirely on the continent, entering the Taganrog Bay through the Yeysk and Glafirovsk Spits, and is the mouth of the Yeya River. Yeysk Spit is part of Yeysk city, which has a population of 87,500. It extends into the prominent Yeysk peninsula, which is tipped in the north-west by the Dolgaya Spit. South of it, also enclosed by the continent, lies Beisug Liman, which is restricted by the Yasensk Spit and is fed by the Beysug River. South-west of the liman, the 31 km long Achuevsk Spit runs along the coastline. Between the Achuevsk spit and Beisug Liman stands Primorsko-Akhtarsk with 32,165 inhabitants.


title: Sea of Azov

text: In the south, the Sea of Azov is connected to the Black Sea via the Strait of Kerch, which is bordered to the west by the Kerch peninsula of the Crimea and to the east by the Russian Taman peninsula in Krasnodar Krai. The city of Kerch (population 151,300) is located on the Kerch peninsula, and the Taman peninsula contains the delta of the Kuban, a major Russian river. The strait is 41 kilometres long and 4 to 15 kilometres wide. Its narrowest part lies on the Sea of Azov side, restricted by the Chushka Spit which faces southwards in consequence of the outflow from the Azov to the Black Sea.


title: Sea of Azov

text: The Strait of Kerch is spanned by the Crimean Bridge, which was opened in May 2018. This is a major geopolitical issue since shipping vessels over a certain size can not pass under the span. Since then Russia has been accused of interdicting shipping through the Kerch Strait.


title: Sea of Azov

text: The sea is relatively small and nearly surrounded by land. Therefore, its climate is continental with cold winters and hot and dry summers. In autumn and winter, the weather is affected by the Siberian Anticyclone which brings cold and dry air from Siberia with winds of 4–7 m/s, sometimes up to 15 m/s. Those winds may lower the winter temperatures from the usual −1 to −5 °C to below −30 °C. The mean mid-summer temperatures are 23–25 °C with a maximum of about 40 °C. Winds are weaker in summer, typically 3–5 m/s. Precipitation varies between 312 and 528 mm/year and is 1.5–2 times larger in summer than in winter.


title: Sea of Azov

text: Average water temperatures are 0–1 °C in winter (2–3 °C in the Kerch Strait) and 24–25 °C in summer, with a maximum of about 28 °C on the open sea and above 30 °C near the shores. During the summer, the sea surface is usually slightly warmer than the air. Because of the shallow character of the sea, the temperature usually lowers by only about 1 °C with depth, but in cold winters, the difference can reach 5–7 °C.


title: Sea of Azov

text: The winds cause frequent storms, with the waves reaching 6 metres in the Taganrog Bay, 2–4 metres near the southern shores, and 1 metre in the Kerch Strait. In the open sea, their height is usually 1–2 metres, sometimes up to 3 metres. Winds also induce frequent seiches – standing waves with an amplitude of 20–50 cm and lasting from minutes to hours. Another consequence of the winds is water currents. The prevailing current is a counterclockwise swirl due to the westerly and south-westerly winds. Their speed is typically less than 10 cm/s, but can reach 60–70 cm/s for 15–20 m/s winds. In the bays, the flow is largely controlled by the inflow of the rivers and is directed away from the shore. In the Kerch Strait, the flow is normally toward the Black Sea due to the predominance of northern winds and the water inflow from the rivers; its average speed is 10–20 cm/s, reaching 30–40 cm in the narrowest parts. Although the sea is not subject to tidal variation, there are seasonal changes in the observed sea level of up to , caused by seasonal variations in river outflows.


title: Sea of Azov

text: The shallowness and low salinity of the sea make it vulnerable to freezing during the winter. Fast ice bands ranging from 7 km in the north to 1.5 km in the south can occur temporarily at any time from late December to mid-March. Several ships were trapped in ice in 2012 when it froze over. The ice thickness reaches in most parts of the sea and 60–80 cm in the Taganrog Bay. The ice is often unstable and piles up to the height of several metres. Before the introduction of icebreakers, navigation was halted in the winter.


title: Sea of Azov

text: Historically, the sea has had rich marine life, both in variety, with over 80 fish and 300 invertebrate species identified, and in numbers. Consequently, fishing has long been a major activity in the area. The annual catch of recent years was 300,000 tonnes, about half of which are valuable species (sturgeon, pike-perch, bream, sea-roach, etc.). This was partly due to extremely high biological productivity of the sea, which was stimulated by the strong supply of nutrients from numerous rivers feeding the sea, low water salinity, ample heating due to shallow waters and long vegetation period. However, diversity and numbers have been reduced by artificial reduction of river flow (construction of dams), over-fishing and water-intense large-scale cultivation of cotton, causing increasing levels of pollution. Fish hauls have rapidly decreased and in particular anchovy fisheries have collapsed.


title: Sea of Azov

text: Because of the shallow waters, the development of aquatic life in the Sea of Azov is more characteristic of a lagoon, and the plankton patterns are rather similar in the open sea and near the shores. Despite its shallowness, the water has low transparency, so bottom plants are poorly developed and most algae are of planktonic type. The sea is characterised by high concentrations of organic matter and long blooming periods. Another specific feature of the sea is the variable salinity – low in the large bays and higher in the open sea, especially near the Kerch Strait. Therefore, the plankton species are distributed inhomogeneously in the Sea of Azov. Although many additional species are brought in from the saltier Black Sea, most of them cannot adjust to the variable salinity of the Sea of Azov, except for the euryhaline species. About 600 species of planktonic algae are known in the Sea of Azov. The number of species is dominated by diatoms and green algae; blue-green algae and pyrophites are significant, and euglena and yellow-green algae form only 5% of the species. Green algae are mostly responsible for the colour of the sea in the satellite images (see photos above).


title: Sea of Azov

text: Regarding zooplankton, the fresh waters of the Tanganrog Bay are inhabited by cladocera, copepoda and rotifers, such as "Brachionus plicatilis", "Keratella curdata" and "Asplanchna". Western part of the sea, which is more saline, hosts three forms of "Acartia clausi", as well as "Centropages ponticus", meroplankton and larvae of gastropoda, bivalvia and polychaete.


title: Sea of Azov

text: Benthos species reside mostly at the sea bottom and include worms, crustaceans, bottom protists, coelenterata, and mollusks. Mollusks account for 60–98% of the invertebrate biomass at the Sea of Azov bottom.


title: Sea of Azov

text: There are 183 ichthyofauna species from 112 genera and 55 families in the Sea of Azov region. Among them, there are 50 rare and 19 endangered species, and the sturgeon "Acipenser nudiventris" is probably extinct in the region.


title: Sea of Azov

text: The fauna of the freshwater Taganrog Bay is much poorer – it consists of 55 species from 36 genera and 16 families; among them, three species are rare and 6 are endangered.


title: Sea of Azov

text: The shores of the Sea of Azov contain numerous estuaries and marshes and are dominated by reeds, sedges, "Typha" and "Sparganium". Typical submerged plants are Charales, pond weed, hornworts and water lilies. Also common is sacred lotus. The number of species is large; for example, the Belosaraysk and Berdyansk spits alone contain more than 200 each. Some spits are declared national nature reserves, such as Beglitsk,


title: Sea of Azov

text: Estuaries and spits of the sea are rich in birds, mostly waterfowl, such as wild geese, ducks and seagulls. Colonies of cormorants and pelicans are common. Also frequently observed are swans, herons, sandpipers and many birds of prey. Mammals include foxes, wild cats, hares, hedgehogs, weasels, martens and wild boar. Muskrats were introduced to the area in the early 20th century and are hunted for their fur.


title: Sea of Azov

text: Some ichthyofauna species, such as anchovy, garfish, Black Sea whiting and pickerel, visit the Sea of Azov from the Black Sea for spawning. This was especially frequent in 1975–77 when the salinity of the southern Sea of Azov was unusually high, and additional species were seen such as bluefish, turbot, chuco, spurdog, Black Sea salmon, mackerel and even corkwing wrasse, rock hopper, bullhead and eelpout. Unlike the Black Sea plankton which does not adapt well to the low salinity of the Sea of Azov and concentrates near the Kerch Strait, fishes and invertebrates of the Black Sea adjust well. They are often stronger than the native species, are used to the relatively low temperatures of the Black Sea and survive winter in the Sea of Azov well.


title: Sea of Azov

text: "Balanus improvisus" is the first benthos species which spread from the Black Sea in the early 20th century and settled in the Sea of Azov. Its current density is 7 kg/m. From 1956, "Rapana venosa" is observed in the Sea of Azov, but it could not adjust to low salinity and therefore is limited to the neighborhood of the Kerch Strait. Several Sea of Azov mollusks, such as shipworm ("Teredo navalis"), soft-shell clam ("Mya arernaria"), Mediterranean mussel ("Mytilus galloprovincialis") and "Anadara inaequivalvis", originate from the Black Sea. Another example of invading species is the Dutch crab "Rhithropanopeus harrisii" which is observed both in saline and freshwater parts.


title: Sea of Azov

text: Formerly three types of dolphins, short-beaked common dolphin, common bottlenose dolphin and harbour porpoise, regularly visited the Sea of Azov from the Black Sea although the common dolphin usually avoided the basin and Kerch Strait due to low salinity. One type of harbour porpoise, "Phocoena phocoena relicta", used to live in the Sea of Azov and was therefore called "Azov dolphin" () in the Soviet Union. Nowadays, dolphins are rarely observed in the Sea of Azov. This is attributed to shallowing of the sea, increasing navigation activities, pollution, and reduction in the fish population.


title: Sea of Azov

text: Various species of pinnipeds and belugas were introduced into Black Sea by mankind and later escaped either by accidental or purported causes. Of these, grey seal has been recorded within Kerch Strait and Sea of Azov. Mediterranean monk seals became extinct in the Black Sea in 1997, and the historic presence of large whales such as minke whales in the Black Sea is recorded, although it is unclear whether these mammals historically occurred in the Azov basin.


title: Sea of Azov

text: For centuries, the Sea of Azov has been an important waterway for the transport of goods and passengers. The first modern ironworks in Imperial Russia were located upstream on the Kalmius River at Donetsk, originally named "Hughesovka" (). It was also important for the transportation of iron ores from the mines of the Kerch peninsula to the processing plant of Azovstal in Mariupol (formerly Zhdanov), Ukraine; this activity stopped after the closure of the mines in the 1990s. Navigation increased after the construction in 1952 of the Volga–Don Canal which connected the Sea of Azov with the Volga River – the most important riverine transport route in the central Russia – thus connecting major cities such as Moscow, Volgograd and Astrakhan. Currently, the major ports are in Taganrog, Mariupol, Yeysk and Berdyansk.


title: Sea of Azov

text: Increasing navigation rates have resulted in more pollution and even in ecological disasters. On 11 November 2007, a strong storm resulted in the sinking of four ships in the Strait of Kerch, in the Russian Port of Kavkaz. The ships were the Russian bulk carriers "Volnogorsk", "Nakhichevan", "Kovel" and the Georgian "Haji Izmail" with a Turkish crew. Six other ships were driven from their anchors and stranded and two tankers were damaged (Volgoneft-139 and Volgoneft-123). As a result, about 1300 tons of fuel oil and about 6800 tons of sulfur entered the sea.


title: Sea of Azov

text: Another traditional activity in the sea is fishing. The Sea of Azov used to be the most productive fishing area in the Soviet Union: typical annual fish catches of 300,000 tonnes converted to 80 kg per hectare of surface. (The corresponding numbers are 2 kg in the Black Sea and in the Mediterranean Sea.) The catch has decreased in the 21st century, with more emphasis now on fish farming, especially of sturgeon.


title: Sea of Azov

text: The irrigation system of the Taman Peninsula, supplied by the extended delta of the Kuban River, is favorable for agriculture and the region is famous for its vines. The area of the Sivash lagoons and Arabat Spit was traditionally a centre of a salt-producing industry. The Arabat Spit alone produced about 24,000 tonnes/year in the 19th century.


title: Olivier Martinez

text: is a French actor. He became well known after roles in several French films such as "Un, deux, trois, soleil" (1993), which garnered him the César Award for "Most Promising Actor", "The Horseman on the Roof" (1995), and "The Chambermaid on the Titanic" (1997). He has also appeared in Hollywood-produced features, including the drama "Before Night Falls" (2000), the erotic thriller "Unfaithful" (2002) and playing the role of a French drug lord in the action-crime-thriller "S.W.A.T." (2003).


title: Olivier Martinez

text: Martinez was born in Paris, France, to a working-class family. His father was a Spanish professional boxer and his mother was a French secretary. He studied at the CNSAD and began his acting career in his native France in 1990. Martinez was raised Catholic.


title: Olivier Martinez

text: In 1994, Martinez won a César Award as "Most Promising Actor" for his role in the film "Un, deux, trois, soleil" (1993). This was followed by a leading role in the Jean-Paul Rappeneau period film "The Horseman on the Roof" ("Le Hussard sur le Toit") in 1995 in which he starred alongside Juliette Binoche as an Italian nobleman. The film was hailed as the most expensive French film at that time in history but failed to reach its $35 million budget. In 1996/7 he appeared in Bertrand Blier's romantic comedy "My Man" ("Mon Homme") alongside Anouk Grinberg, Gérard Lanvin, and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi. Later in 1997 he played a leading role in Bigas Luna's drama "The Chambermaid on the Titanic" ("La Femme de chambre du Titanic") alongside Romane Bohringer, set during the time of the "Titanic"s sinking voyage in 1912. Martinez portrays a French foundry worker who wins a strongman contest and the prize of a trip to view the departing maiden voyage of the ill-fated Titanic. The film was well-received; Mick LaSalle of the "San Francisco Chronicle" praised what he felt was a rare honest portrayal of male sexuality by Martinez.


title: Olivier Martinez

text: Martinez first came to mainstream attention in Hollywood films with his performance in Julian Schnabel's "Before Night Falls" (2000) opposite Javier Bardem and Johnny Depp. The screenplay is based on the autobiography of the same name of Reinaldo Arenas, which was published in English in 1993. The film was highly critically acclaimed, although Martinez's performance was overshadowed by that of Bardem in the eyes of critics. He was later noted for his performance opposite Diane Lane in "Unfaithful" (2002). He has since appeared in a television adaptation of "The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone" (2003), "S.W.A.T." (2003) and "Taking Lives" (2004). He also starred as Gabriel in the 2007 movie adaptation of "Blood and Chocolate", a popular book. Martinez plays Mauritius, prefect of Mamertine Prison in "Paul, Apostle of Christ" (2017).


title: Olivier Martinez

text: Martinez began a relationship with Australian singer and actress Kylie Minogue after meeting her at the 2003 Grammy Awards ceremony. They ended their relationship in February 2007.


title: Olivier Martinez

text: Martinez began dating American actress Halle Berry in 2010 after meeting on the set of the action thriller film "Dark Tide" (2012). They confirmed their engagement in March 2012. On 22 November 2012, Martinez was treated at a Los Angeles hospital after being injured in a physical altercation with Canadian model Gabriel Aubry, Berry's former partner and father of her daughter. Aubry and Berry had been involved in a custody battle centered on Berry's desire to move with their daughter and Martinez to his native France, a request denied by a judge less than two weeks prior to the altercation, on the grounds that it would interfere with Berry and Aubry's joint custody arrangement. The custody dispute was resolved at the end of November.


title: Olivier Martinez

text: Berry and Martinez married in a private ceremony in France on 13 July 2013. Their son was born in October 2013 in Los Angeles. They announced their divorce in 2015, and it was reported to have been finalized in December 2016. However, as of November 2020, the case is ongoing.


title: Olivier Martinez

text: Apart from his native French, he is also fluent in Spanish, due to his Valencian and Andalusian heritage, and English.


title: Wotakoi: Love Is Hard for Otaku

text: The main characters are Narumi, an office working woman who hides her fujoshi lifestyle, and Hirotaka, a handsome and capable company man who is a game otaku. The two seem perfect for each other, but love is difficult for otaku.


title: Wotakoi: Love Is Hard for Otaku

text: Initially, Fujita began posting the manga on Pixiv, a Japanese online community for artists, as a rookie author. Ichijinsha then launched a digital manga magazine with Pixiv titled "Comic Pool", and started serializing the manga on a regular basis. The manga was selected for "Comic Pool" because it was the most popular work on Pixiv. On April 30, 2015, Ichijinsha started the publishing of the manga in print.