title: William Penn

text: Penn faced serious problems in the colonies due to his sloppy business practices. Apparently, he could not be bothered with administrative details, and his business manager, fellow Quaker Philip Ford, embezzled substantial sums from Penn's estates. Ford capitalized on Penn's habit of signing papers without reading them. One such paper turned out to be a deed transferring ownership of Pennsylvania to Ford who then demanded a rent beyond Penn's ability to pay.


title: William Penn

text: After agreeing to let Ford keep all his Irish rents in exchange for keeping quiet about Ford's legal title to Pennsylvania, Penn felt his situation sufficiently improved to return to Pennsylvania with the intention of staying. Accompanied by his wife Hannah, daughter Letitia and secretary James Logan, Penn sailed from the Isle of Wight on the "Canterbury", reaching Philadelphia in December 1699.


title: William Penn

text: Penn received a hearty welcome upon his arrival and found his province much changed in the intervening 18 years. Pennsylvania was growing rapidly and now had nearly 18,100 inhabitants and Philadelphia over 3,000. His tree plantings were providing the green urban spaces he had envisioned. Shops were full of imported merchandise, satisfying the wealthier citizens and proving America to be a viable market for English goods. Most importantly, religious diversity was succeeding. Despite the protests of fundamentalists and farmers, Penn's insistence that Quaker grammar schools be open to all citizens was producing a relatively educated workforce. High literacy and open intellectual discourse led to Philadelphia becoming a leader in science and medicine. Quakers were especially modern in their treatment of mental illness, decriminalizing insanity and turning away from punishment and confinement.


title: William Penn

text: Ironically, the tolerant Penn transformed himself almost into a Puritan, in an attempt to control the fractiousness that had developed in his absence, tightening up some laws. Another change was found in Penn's writings, which had mostly lost their boldness and vision. In those years, he did put forward a plan to make a federation of all English colonies in America. There have been claims that he also fought slavery, but that seems unlikely, as he owned and even traded slaves himself and his writings do not support that idea. However, he did promote good treatment for slaves, including marriage among slaves (though rejected by the council). Other Pennsylvania Quakers were more outspoken and proactive, being among the earliest fighters against slavery in America, led by Daniel Pastorius, founder of Germantown, Pennsylvania. Many Quakers pledged to release their slaves upon their death, including Penn, and some sold their slaves to non-Quakers.


title: William Penn

text: The Penns lived comfortably at Pennsbury Manor and had all intentions of living out their lives there. They also had a residence in Philadelphia. Their only American child, John, had been born and was thriving. Penn was commuting to Philadelphia on a six-man barge, which he admitted he prized above "all dead things".


title: William Penn

text: James Logan, his secretary, kept him acquainted with all the news. Penn had plenty of time to spend with his family and still attend to affairs of state, though delegations and official visitors were frequent. His wife, however, did not enjoy life as a governor's wife and hostess and preferred the simple life she led in England. When new threats by France again put Penn's charter in jeopardy, Penn decided to return to England with his family, in 1701.


title: William Penn

text: Penn returned to England and immediately became embroiled in financial and family troubles. His eldest son William, Jr. was leading a dissolute life, neglecting his wife and two children, and running up gambling debts. Penn had hoped to have William succeed him in America. Now he could not even pay his son's debts. His own finances were in turmoil. He had sunk over £30,000 in America and received little back except for some bartered goods. He had made many generous loans which he failed to press.


title: William Penn

text: Making matters worse from Penn's perspective, Philip Ford, his financial advisor, had cheated Penn out of thousands of pounds by concealing and diverting rents from Penn's Irish lands, claiming losses, then extracting loans from Penn to cover the shortfall. When Ford died in 1702, his widow Bridget threatened to sell Pennsylvania, to which she claimed title. Penn sent William to America to manage affairs, but he proved just as unreliable as he had been in England. There were considerable discussions about scrapping his constitution. In desperation, Penn tried to sell Pennsylvania to the Crown before Bridget Ford got wind of his plan, but by insisting that the Crown uphold the civil liberties that had been achieved, he could not strike a deal. Mrs. Ford took her case to court. At age 62, Penn landed in debtors' prison; however, a rush of sympathy reduced Penn's punishment to house arrest, and Bridget Ford was finally denied her claim to Pennsylvania. A group of Quakers arranged for Ford to receive payment for back rents and Penn was released.


title: William Penn

text: In 1712 Berkeley Codd, Esq. of Sussex County, Delaware disputed some of the rights of Penn's grant from the Duke of York. Some of William Penn's agents hired lawyer Andrew Hamilton to represent the Penn family in this replevin case. Hamilton's success led to an established relationship of goodwill between the Penn family and Andrew Hamilton. Penn had grown weary of the politicking back in Pennsylvania and the restlessness with his governance, but Logan implored him not to forsake his colony, for fear that Pennsylvania might fall into the hands of an opportunist who would undo all the good that had been accomplished. During his second attempt to sell Pennsylvania back to the Crown in 1712, Penn suffered a stroke. A second stroke several months later left him unable to speak or take care of himself. He slowly lost his memory.


title: William Penn

text: William Penn died penniless in 1718, at his home in Ruscombe, near Twyford in Berkshire, and is buried in a grave next to his first wife in the cemetery of the Jordans Quaker meeting house near Chalfont St Giles in Buckinghamshire. His wife, as sole executor, became the de facto proprietor until she died in 1726.


title: William Penn

text: Penn first married Gulielma Maria Posthuma Springett (1644–1694), daughter of William S. Springett (the "Posthuma" in her name indicating that her father had died prior to her birth) and Lady Mary Proude Penington. They had three sons and five daughters:


title: William Penn

text: Two years after Gulielma's death he married Hannah Margaret Callowhill (1671–1726), daughter of Thomas Callowhill and Anna (Hannah) Hollister. William Penn married Hannah when she was 25 and he was 52. They had nine children in twelve years:


title: William Penn

text: After Penn's death, Pennsylvania slowly drifted away from a colony founded by religion to a secular state dominated by commerce. Many of Penn's legal and political innovations took root, however, as did the Quaker school in Philadelphia for which Penn issued two charters (1689 and 1701). Sometime later, the institution was renamed the William Penn Charter School. "Penn Charter", a well-known secondary day school, is now the oldest Quaker school in the world. Voltaire praised Pennsylvania as the only government in the world that responds to the people and is respectful of minority rights. Penn's "Frame of Government" and his other ideas were later studied by Benjamin Franklin as well as the pamphleteer of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine, whose father was a Quaker. Among Penn's legacies was the unwillingness to force a Quaker majority upon Pennsylvania, allowing his state to develop into a successful "melting pot". In addition, Thomas Jefferson and the founding Fathers adapted Penn's theory of an amendable constitution and his vision that "all Persons are equal under God" informing the federal government following the American Revolution. In addition to Penn's extensive political and religious treatises, he wrote nearly 1,000 maxims, full of wise observations about human nature and morality.


title: William Penn

text: Penn's family retained ownership of the colony of Pennsylvania until the American Revolution. However, William's son and successor, Thomas Penn, and his brother John, renounced their father's faith, and fought to restrict religious freedom (particularly for Catholics and later Quakers as well). Thomas weakened or eliminated the elected assembly's power, and ran the colony instead through his appointed governors. He was a bitter opponent of Benjamin Franklin and Franklin's push for greater democracy in the years leading up to the revolution. Through the infamous Walking Purchase of 1737, the Penns cheated the Lenape out of their lands in the Lehigh Valley.


title: William Penn

text: On 28 November 1984 Ronald Reagan, by Presidential Proclamation 5284 (authorized by an Act of Congress), declared William Penn and his second wife, Hannah Callowhill Penn, each to be an Honorary Citizen of the United States.


title: William Penn

text: A bronze statue of William Penn by Alexander Milne Calder stands atop Philadelphia's City Hall. When installed in 1894, the statue represented the highest point in the city, as City Hall was then the tallest building in Philadelphia. Urban designer Edmund Bacon was known to have said that no gentleman would build taller than the "brim of Billy Penn's hat". This agreement existed for almost 100 years until the city decided to allow taller skyscrapers to be built. In March 1987, the completion of One Liberty Place was the first building to do that. This resulted in a "curse" which lasted from that year on until 2008 when a small statue of William Penn was put on top of the newly built Comcast Center. The Philadelphia Phillies went on to win the 2008 World Series that year.


title: William Penn

text: A lesser-known statue of Penn is located at Penn Treaty Park, on the site where Penn entered into his treaty with the Lenape, which is famously commemorated in the painting Penn's Treaty with the Indians. In 1893, Hajoca Corporation, the nation's largest privately held wholesale distributor of plumbing, heating, and industrial supplies, adopted the statue as its trademark symbol.


title: William Penn

text: The Quaker Oats cereal brand standing "Quaker man" logo, dating back to 1877, was identified in their advertising after 1909 as William Penn, and referred to him as "standard bearer of the Quakers and of Quaker Oats".


title: William Penn

text: In 1946 the logo was changed into a head-and-shoulders portrait of the smiling Quaker Man. The Quaker Oats Company's website currently claims their logo is not a depiction of William Penn.


title: William Penn

text: Bil Keane created the comic Silly Philly for the Philadelphia Bulletin, a juvenile version of Penn, that ran from 1947 to 1961.


title: William Penn

text: The William Penn High School for Girls was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.


title: William Penn

text: The William Penn House – a Quaker hostel and seminar center – was named in honor of William Penn when it opened in 1966 to house Quakers visiting Washington, D.C. to partake in the many protests, events and social movements of the era.


title: William Penn

text: Chigwell School, the school he attended, has named one of their four houses after him and now owns several letters and documents in his handwriting.


title: William Penn

text: The former William Penn Primary School, and the successor Penn Wood Primary and Nursery School, in Manor Park, Slough, near to Stoke Park, is named after William Penn.


title: William Penn

text: A pub in Rickmansworth, where Penn lived for a time, is named the Pennsylvanian in his honour, and a picture of him is used as the pub sign.


title: William Penn

text: The William Penn Society of Whittier College has existed since 1934 as a society on the college campus of Whittier College and continues to this day.


title: William Penn

text: William Penn University in Oskaloosa, Iowa, which was founded by Quaker settlers in 1873, was named in his honor. Penn Mutual, a life insurance company established in 1847, also bears his name.


title: William Penn

text: Streets that have been named after William Penn include Penn Avenue which is a major arterial street in Pittsburgh and Wilkinsburg, PA, as well as Penn Avenue in Scranton, PA and Penn Street in Bristol, PA.


title: Edward Teller

text: Edward Teller (; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" (see the Teller–Ulam design), although he did not care for the title, considering it to be in poor taste. Throughout his life, Teller was known both for his scientific ability and for his difficult interpersonal relations and volatile personality.


title: Edward Teller

text: Born in Hungary in 1908, Teller emigrated to the United States in the 1930s, one of the many so-called "Martians", a group of prominent Hungarian scientist émigrés. He made numerous contributions to nuclear and molecular physics, spectroscopy (in particular the Jahn–Teller and Renner–Teller effects), and surface physics. His extension of Enrico Fermi's theory of beta decay, in the form of Gamow–Teller transitions, provided an important stepping stone in its application, while the Jahn–Teller effect and the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) theory have retained their original formulation and are still mainstays in physics and chemistry.


title: Edward Teller

text: Teller also made contributions to Thomas–Fermi theory, the precursor of density functional theory, a standard modern tool in the quantum mechanical treatment of complex molecules. In 1953, along with Nicholas Metropolis, Arianna Rosenbluth, Marshall Rosenbluth, and his wife Augusta Teller, Teller co-authored a paper that is a standard starting point for the applications of the Monte Carlo method to statistical mechanics and the Markov chain Monte Carlo literature in Bayesian statistics. Teller was an early member of the Manhattan Project, charged with developing the first atomic bomb. He made a serious push to develop the first fusion-based weapons as well, but these were deferred until after World War II. He co-founded the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and was both its director and associate director for many years. After his controversial negative testimony in the Oppenheimer security hearing convened against his former Los Alamos Laboratory superior, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Teller was ostracized by much of the scientific community.


title: Edward Teller

text: Teller continued to find support from the U.S. government and military research establishment, particularly for his advocacy for nuclear energy development, a strong nuclear arsenal, and a vigorous nuclear testing program. In his later years, he became especially known for his advocacy of controversial technological solutions to both military and civilian problems, including a plan to excavate an artificial harbor in Alaska using thermonuclear explosive in what was called Project Chariot, and Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. Teller was a recipient of numerous awards, including the Enrico Fermi Award and Albert Einstein Award. He died on September 9, 2003, in Stanford, California, at 95.


title: Edward Teller

text: Ede Teller was born on January 15, 1908, in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, into a Jewish family. His parents were Ilona (née Deutsch), a pianist, and Max Teller, an attorney. He attended the Fasori Lutheran Gymnasium, then in the Lutheran Minta (Model) Gymnasium in Budapest. Of Jewish origin, later in life Teller became an agnostic Jew. "Religion was not an issue in my family", he later wrote, "indeed, it was never discussed. My only religious training came because the Minta required that all students take classes in their respective religions. My family celebrated one holiday, the Day of Atonement, when we all fasted. Yet my father said prayers for his parents on Saturdays and on all the Jewish holidays. The idea of God that I absorbed was that it would be wonderful if He existed: We needed Him desperately but had not seen Him in many thousands of years." Teller was a late talker and developed the ability to speak later than most children, but became very interested in numbers, and would calculate large numbers in his head for fun.


title: Edward Teller

text: Teller left Hungary for Germany in 1926, partly due to the discriminatory "numerus clausus" rule under Miklós Horthy's regime. The political climate and revolutions in Hungary during his youth instilled a lingering animosity for both Communism and Fascism in Teller.


title: Edward Teller

text: From 1926 to 1928, Teller studied mathematics and chemistry at the University of Karlsruhe, where he graduated with a bachelor of science in chemical engineering. He once stated that the person who was responsible for his becoming a physicist was Herman Mark, who was a visiting professor, after hearing lectures on molecular spectroscopy where Mark made it clear to him that it was new ideas in physics that were radically changing the frontier of chemistry. Mark was an expert in polymer chemistry, a field which is essential to understanding biochemistry, and Mark taught him about the leading breakthroughs in quantum physics made by Louis de Broglie, among others. It was this exposure which he had gotten from Mark's lectures which motivated Teller to switch to physics. After informing his father of his intent to switch, his father was so concerned that he traveled to visit him and speak with his professors at the school. While a degree in chemical engineering was a sure path to a well-paying job at chemical companies, there was not such a clear-cut route for a career with a degree in physics. He was not privy to the discussions his father had with his professors, but the result was that he got his father's permission to become a physicist.


title: Edward Teller

text: Teller then attended the University of Munich where he studied physics under Arnold Sommerfeld. On July 14, 1928, while still a young student in Munich, he was taking a streetcar to catch a train for a hike in the nearby Alps and decided to jump off while it was still moving. He fell, and the wheel severed most of his right foot. For the rest of his life, he walked with a permanent limp, and on occasion he wore a prosthetic foot. The painkillers he was taking were interfering with his thinking, so he decided to stop taking them, instead using his willpower to deal with the pain, including use of the placebo effect where he would convince himself that he had taken painkillers while drinking only water. Werner Heisenberg said that it was the hardiness of Teller's spirit, rather than stoicism, that allowed him to cope so well with the accident.


title: Edward Teller

text: In 1929, Teller transferred to the University of Leipzig where in 1930, he received his PhD in physics under Heisenberg. Teller's dissertation dealt with one of the first accurate quantum mechanical treatments of the hydrogen molecular ion. That year, he befriended Russian physicists George Gamow and Lev Landau. Teller's lifelong friendship with a Czech physicist, George Placzek, was also very important for his scientific and philosophical development. It was Placzek who arranged a summer stay in Rome with Enrico Fermi in 1932, thus orienting Teller's scientific career in nuclear physics. Also in 1930, Teller moved to the University of Göttingen, then one of the world's great centers of physics due to the presence of Max Born and James Franck, but after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, Germany became unsafe for Jewish people, and he left through the aid of the International Rescue Committee. He went briefly to England, and moved for a year to Copenhagen, where he worked under Niels Bohr. In February 1934 he married his long-time girlfriend Augusta Maria "Mici" (pronounced "Mitzi") Harkanyi, who was the sister of a friend. Since Mici was a Calvinist Christian, Edward and her were married in a Calvinist church. He returned to England in September 1934.


title: Edward Teller

text: Mici had been a student in Pittsburgh, and wanted to return to the United States. Her chance came in 1935, when, thanks to George Gamow, Teller was invited to the United States to become a professor of physics at George Washington University, where he worked with Gamow until 1941. At George Washington University in 1937, Teller predicted the Jahn–Teller effect, which distorts molecules in certain situations; this affects the chemical reactions of metals, and in particular the coloration of certain metallic dyes. Teller and Hermann Arthur Jahn analyzed it as a piece of purely mathematical physics. In collaboration with Stephen Brunauer and Paul Hugh Emmett, Teller also made an important contribution to surface physics and chemistry: the so-called Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) isotherm. Teller and Mici became naturalized citizens of the United States on March 6, 1941.


title: Edward Teller

text: When World War II began, Teller wanted to contribute to the war effort. On the advice of the well-known Caltech aerodynamicist and fellow Hungarian émigré Theodore von Kármán, Teller collaborated with his friend Hans Bethe in developing a theory of shock-wave propagation. In later years, their explanation of the behavior of the gas behind such a wave proved valuable to scientists who were studying missile re-entry.


title: Edward Teller

text: In 1942, Teller was invited to be part of Robert Oppenheimer's summer planning seminar, at the University of California, Berkeley for the origins of the Manhattan Project, the Allied effort to develop the first nuclear weapons. A few weeks earlier, Teller had been meeting with his friend and colleague Enrico Fermi about the prospects of atomic warfare, and Fermi had nonchalantly suggested that perhaps a weapon based on nuclear fission could be used to set off an even larger nuclear fusion reaction. Even though he initially explained to Fermi why he thought the idea would not work, Teller was fascinated by the possibility and was quickly bored with the idea of "just" an atomic bomb even though this was not yet anywhere near completion. At the Berkeley session, Teller diverted discussion from the fission weapon to the possibility of a fusion weapon—what he called the "Super", an early concept of what was later to be known as a hydrogen bomb.


title: Edward Teller

text: Arthur Compton, the chairman of the University of Chicago physics department, coordinated the uranium research of Columbia University, Princeton University, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, Berkeley. To remove disagreement and duplication, Compton transferred the scientists to the Metallurgical Laboratory at Chicago. Teller was left behind at first, because while he and Mici were now American citizens, they still had relatives in enemy countries. In early 1943, the Los Alamos Laboratory was established in Los Alamos, New Mexico to design an atomic bomb, with Oppenheimer as its director. Teller moved there in March 1943. Apparently, Teller managed to annoy his neighbors there by playing the piano late in the night.


title: Edward Teller

text: Teller became part of the Theoretical (T) Division. He was given a secret identity of Ed Tilden. He was irked at being passed over as its head; the job was instead given to Hans Bethe. Oppenheimer had him investigate unusual approaches to building fission weapons, such as autocatalysis, in which the efficiency of the bomb would increase as the nuclear chain reaction progressed, but proved to be impractical. He also investigated using uranium hydride instead of uranium metal, but its efficiency turned out to be "negligible or less". He continued to push his ideas for a fusion weapon even though it had been put on a low priority during the war (as the creation of a fission weapon proved to be difficult enough). On a visit to New York, he asked Maria Goeppert-Mayer to carry out calculations on the Super for him. She confirmed Teller's own results: the Super was not going to work.


title: Edward Teller

text: A special group was established under Teller in March 1944 to investigate the mathematics of an implosion-type nuclear weapon. It too ran into difficulties. Because of his interest in the Super, Teller did not work as hard on the implosion calculations as Bethe wanted. These too were originally low-priority tasks, but the discovery of spontaneous fission in plutonium by Emilio Segrè's group gave the implosion bomb increased importance. In June 1944, at Bethe's request, Oppenheimer moved Teller out of T Division, and placed him in charge of a special group responsible for the Super, reporting directly to Oppenheimer. He was replaced by Rudolf Peierls from the British Mission, who in turn brought in Klaus Fuchs, who was later revealed to be a Soviet spy. Teller's Super group became part of Fermi's F Division when he joined the Los Alamos Laboratory in September 1944. It included Stanislaw Ulam, Jane Roberg, Geoffrey Chew, Harold and Mary Argo, and Maria Goeppert-Mayer.


title: Edward Teller

text: Teller made valuable contributions to bomb research, especially in the elucidation of the implosion mechanism. He was the first to propose the solid pit design that was eventually successful. This design became known as a "Christy pit", after the physicist Robert F. Christy who made the pit a reality. Teller was one of the few scientists to actually watch (with eye protection) the Trinity nuclear test in July 1945, rather than follow orders to lie on the ground with backs turned. He later said that the atomic flash "was as if I had pulled open the curtain in a dark room and broad daylight streamed in".


title: Edward Teller

text: In the days before and after the first demonstration of a nuclear weapon, the Trinity test in July 1945, his fellow Hungarian Leo Szilard circulated the Szilard petition, which argued that a demonstration to the Japanese of the new weapon should occur prior to actual use on Japan, and with that hopefully the weapons would never be used on people. In response to Szilard's petition, Teller consulted his friend Robert Oppenheimer. Teller believed that Oppenheimer was a natural leader and could help him with such a formidable political problem. Oppenheimer reassured Teller that the nation's fate should be left to the sensible politicians in Washington. Bolstered by Oppenheimer's influence, he decided to not sign the petition.


title: Edward Teller

text: Unknown to Teller at the time, four of his colleagues were solicited by the then secret May to June 1945 Interim Committee. It is this organization which ultimately decided on how the new weapons should initially be used. The committee's four-member "Scientific Panel" was led by Oppenheimer, and concluded immediate military use on Japan was the best option:


title: Edward Teller

text: Teller later learned of Oppenheimer's solicitation and his role in the Interim Committee's decision to drop the bombs, having secretly endorsed an immediate military use of the new weapons. This was contrary to the impression that Teller had received when he had personally asked Oppenheimer about the Szilard petition: that the nation's fate should be left to the sensible politicians in Washington. Following Teller's discovery of this, his relationship with his advisor began to deteriorate.


title: Edward Teller

text: In 1990, the historian Barton Bernstein argued that it is an "unconvincing claim" by Teller that he was a "covert dissenter" to the use of the bomb. In his 2001 "Memoirs", Teller claims that he did lobby Oppenheimer, but that Oppenheimer had convinced him that he should take no action and that the scientists should leave military questions in the hands of the military; Teller claims he was not aware that Oppenheimer and other scientists were being consulted as to the actual use of the weapon and implies that Oppenheimer was being hypocritical.


title: Edward Teller

text: Despite an offer from Norris Bradbury, who had replaced Oppenheimer as the director of Los Alamos in November 1945, to become the head of the Theoretical (T) Division, Teller left Los Alamos on February 1, 1946, to return to the University of Chicago as a professor and close associate of Fermi and Goeppert-Mayer. Mayer's work on the internal structure of the elements would earn her the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963.


title: Edward Teller

text: On April 18–20, 1946, Teller participated in a conference at Los Alamos to review the wartime work on the Super. The properties of thermonuclear fuels such as deuterium and the possible design of a hydrogen bomb were discussed. It was concluded that Teller's assessment of a hydrogen bomb had been too favourable, and that both the quantity of deuterium needed, as well as the radiation losses during deuterium burning, would shed doubt on its workability. Addition of expensive tritium to the thermonuclear mixture would likely lower its ignition temperature, but even so, nobody knew at that time how much tritium would be needed, and whether even tritium addition would encourage heat propagation.


title: Edward Teller

text: At the end of the conference, in spite of opposition by some members such as Robert Serber, Teller submitted an optimistic report in which he said that a hydrogen bomb was feasible, and that further work should be encouraged on its development. Fuchs also participated in this conference, and transmitted this information to Moscow. With John von Neumann, he contributed an idea of using implosion to ignite the Super. The model of Teller's "classical Super" was so uncertain that Oppenheimer would later say that he wished the Russians were building their own hydrogen bomb based on that design, so that it would almost certainly retard their progress on it.


title: Edward Teller

text: By 1949, Soviet-backed governments had already begun seizing control throughout Eastern Europe, forming such puppet states as the Hungarian People's Republic in Teller's homeland of Hungary, where much of his family still lived, on August 20, 1949. Following the Soviet Union's first test detonation of an atomic bomb on August 29, 1949, President Harry Truman announced a crash development program for a hydrogen bomb.


title: Edward Teller

text: Teller returned to Los Alamos in 1950 to work on the project. He insisted on involving more theorists, but many of Teller's prominent colleagues, like Fermi and Oppenheimer, were sure that the project of the H-bomb was technically infeasible and politically undesirable. None of the available designs were yet workable. However Soviet scientists who had worked on their own hydrogen bomb have claimed that they developed it independently.


title: Edward Teller

text: In 1950, calculations by the Polish mathematician Stanislaw Ulam and his collaborator Cornelius Everett, along with confirmations by Fermi, had shown that not only was Teller's earlier estimate of the quantity of tritium needed for the H-bomb a low one, but that even with higher amounts of tritium, the energy loss in the fusion process would be too great to enable the fusion reaction to propagate. However, in 1951 Teller and Ulam made a breakthrough, and invented a new design, proposed in a classified March 1951 paper, "On Heterocatalytic Detonations I: Hydrodynamic Lenses and Radiation Mirrors", for a practical megaton-range H-bomb. The exact contribution provided respectively from Ulam and Teller to what became known as the Teller–Ulam design is not definitively known in the public domain, and the exact contributions of each and how the final idea was arrived upon has been a point of dispute in both public and classified discussions since the early 1950s.


title: Edward Teller

text: The issue is controversial. Bethe considered Teller's contribution to the invention of the H-bomb a true innovation as early as 1952, and referred to his work as a "stroke of genius" in 1954. In both cases, however, Bethe emphasized Teller's role as a way of stressing that the development of the H-bomb could not have been hastened by additional support or funding, and Teller greatly disagreed with Bethe's assessment. Other scientists (antagonistic to Teller, such as J. Carson Mark) have claimed that Teller would have never gotten any closer without the assistance of Ulam and others. Ulam himself claimed that Teller only produced a "more generalized" version of Ulam's original design.


title: Edward Teller

text: The breakthrough—the details of which are still classified—was apparently the separation of the fission and fusion components of the weapons, and to use the X-rays produced by the fission bomb to first compress the fusion fuel (by process known as "radiation implosion") before igniting it. Ulam's idea seems to have been to use mechanical shock from the primary to encourage fusion in the secondary, while Teller quickly realized that X-rays from the primary would do the job much more symmetrically. Some members of the laboratory (J. Carson Mark in particular) later expressed the opinion that the idea to use the X-rays would have eventually occurred to anyone working on the physical processes involved, and that the obvious reason why Teller thought of it right away was because he was already working on the "Greenhouse" tests for the spring of 1951, in which the effect of X-rays from a fission bomb on a mixture of deuterium and tritium was going to be investigated.


title: Edward Teller

text: Whatever the actual components of the so-called Teller–Ulam design and the respective contributions of those who worked on it, after it was proposed it was immediately seen by the scientists working on the project as the answer which had been so long sought. Those who previously had doubted whether a fission-fusion bomb would be feasible at all were converted into believing that it was only a matter of time before both the US and the USSR had developed multi-megaton weapons. Even Oppenheimer, who was originally opposed to the project, called the idea "technically sweet".


title: Edward Teller

text: Though he had helped to come up with the design and had been a long-time proponent of the concept, Teller was not chosen to head the development project (his reputation of a thorny personality likely played a role in this). In 1952 he left Los Alamos and joined the newly established Livermore branch of the University of California Radiation Laboratory, which had been created largely through his urging. After the detonation of Ivy Mike, the first thermonuclear weapon to utilize the Teller–Ulam configuration, on November 1, 1952, Teller became known in the press as the "father of the hydrogen bomb". Teller himself refrained from attending the test—he claimed not to feel welcome at the Pacific Proving Grounds—and instead saw its results on a seismograph in the basement of a hall in Berkeley.


title: Edward Teller

text: There was an opinion that by analyzing the fallout from this test, the Soviets (led in their H-bomb work by Andrei Sakharov) could have deciphered the new American design. However, this was later denied by the Soviet bomb researchers. Because of official secrecy, little information about the bomb's development was released by the government, and press reports often attributed the entire weapon's design and development to Teller and his new Livermore Laboratory (when it was actually developed by Los Alamos).


title: Edward Teller

text: Many of Teller's colleagues were irritated that he seemed to enjoy taking full credit for something he had only a part in, and in response, with encouragement from Enrico Fermi, Teller authored an article titled "The Work of Many People", which appeared in "Science" magazine in February 1955, emphasizing that he was not alone in the weapon's development. He would later write in his memoirs that he had told a "white lie" in the 1955 article in order to "soothe ruffled feelings", and claimed full credit for the invention.


title: Edward Teller

text: Teller was known for getting engrossed in projects which were theoretically interesting but practically unfeasible (the classic "Super" was one such project.) About his work on the hydrogen bomb, Bethe said:


title: Edward Teller

text: During the Manhattan Project, Teller advocated the development of a bomb using uranium hydride, which many of his fellow theorists said would be unlikely to work. At Livermore, Teller continued work on the hydride bomb, and the result was a dud. Ulam once wrote to a colleague about an idea he had shared with Teller: "Edward is full of enthusiasm about these possibilities; this is perhaps an indication they will not work." Fermi once said that Teller was the only monomaniac he knew who had several manias.


title: Edward Teller

text: Carey Sublette of Nuclear Weapon Archive argues that Ulam came up with the radiation implosion compression design of thermonuclear weapons, but that on the other hand Teller has gotten little credit for being the first to propose fusion boosting in 1945, which is essential for miniaturization and reliability and is used in all of today's nuclear weapons.


title: Edward Teller

text: Teller became controversial in 1954 when he testified against Oppenheimer at Oppenheimer's security clearance hearing. Teller had clashed with Oppenheimer many times at Los Alamos over issues relating both to fission and fusion research, and during Oppenheimer's trial he was the only member of the scientific community to state that Oppenheimer should not be granted security clearance.


title: Edward Teller

text: Asked at the hearing by Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) attorney Roger Robb whether he was planning "to suggest that Dr. Oppenheimer is disloyal to the United States", Teller replied that:I do not want to suggest anything of the kind. I know Oppenheimer as an intellectually most alert and a very complicated person, and I think it would be presumptuous and wrong on my part if I would try in any way to analyze his motives. But I have always assumed, and I now assume that he is loyal to the United States. I believe this, and I shall believe it until I see very conclusive proof to the opposite.He was immediately asked whether he believed that Oppenheimer was a "security risk", to which he testified:


title: Edward Teller

text: Teller also testified that Oppenheimer's opinion about the thermonuclear program seemed to be based more on the scientific feasibility of the weapon than anything else. He additionally testified that Oppenheimer's direction of Los Alamos was "a very outstanding achievement" both as a scientist and an administrator, lauding his "very quick mind" and that he made "just a most wonderful and excellent director".


title: Edward Teller

text: After this, however, he detailed ways in which he felt that Oppenheimer had hindered his efforts towards an active thermonuclear development program, and at length criticized Oppenheimer's decisions not to invest more work onto the question at different points in his career, saying: "If it is a question of wisdom and judgment, as demonstrated by actions since 1945, then I would say one would be wiser not to grant clearance."


title: Edward Teller

text: By recasting a difference of judgment over the merits of the early work on the hydrogen bomb project into a matter of a security risk, Teller effectively damned Oppenheimer in a field where security was necessarily of paramount concern. Teller's testimony thereby rendered Oppenheimer vulnerable to charges by a Congressional aide that he was a Soviet spy, which resulted in the destruction of Oppenheimer's career.


title: Edward Teller

text: Oppenheimer's security clearance was revoked after the hearings. Most of Teller's former colleagues disapproved of his testimony and he was ostracized by much of the scientific community. After the fact, Teller consistently denied that he was intending to damn Oppenheimer, and even claimed that he was attempting to exonerate him. However, documentary evidence has suggested that this was likely not the case. Six days before the testimony, Teller met with an AEC liaison officer and suggested "deepening the charges" in his testimony.


title: Edward Teller

text: Teller always insisted that his testimony had not significantly harmed Oppenheimer. In 2002, Teller contended that Oppenheimer was "not destroyed" by the security hearing but "no longer asked to assist in policy matters". He claimed his words were an overreaction, because he had only just learned of Oppenheimer's failure to immediately report an approach by Haakon Chevalier, who had approached Oppenheimer to help the Russians. Teller said that, in hindsight, he would have responded differently.


title: Edward Teller

text: Historian Richard Rhodes said that in his opinion it was already a foregone conclusion that Oppenheimer would have his security clearance revoked by then AEC chairman Lewis Strauss, regardless of Teller's testimony. However, as Teller's testimony was the most damning, he was singled out and blamed for the hearing's ruling, losing friends due to it, such as Robert Christy, who refused to shake his hand in one infamous incident. This was emblematic of his later treatment which resulted in him being forced into the role of an outcast of the physics community, thus leaving him little choice but to align himself with industrialists.


title: Edward Teller

text: After the Oppenheimer controversy, Teller became ostracized by much of the scientific community, but was still quite welcome in the government and military science circles. Along with his traditional advocacy for nuclear energy development, a strong nuclear arsenal, and a vigorous nuclear testing program, he had helped to develop nuclear reactor safety standards as the chair of the Reactor Safeguard Committee of the AEC in the late 1940s, and in the late 1950s headed an effort at General Atomics which designed research reactors in which a nuclear meltdown would be impossible. The TRIGA ("Training, Research, Isotopes, General Atomic") has been built and used in hundreds of hospitals and universities worldwide for medical isotope production and research.


title: Edward Teller

text: Teller promoted increased defense spending to counter the perceived Soviet missile threat. He was a signatory to the 1958 report by the military sub-panel of the Rockefeller Brothers funded Special Studies Project, which called for a $3 billion annual increase in America's military budget.


title: Edward Teller

text: In 1956 he attended the Project Nobska anti-submarine warfare conference, where discussion ranged from oceanography to nuclear weapons. In the course of discussing a small nuclear warhead for the Mark 45 torpedo, he started a discussion on the possibility of developing a physically small one-megaton nuclear warhead for the Polaris missile. His counterpart in the discussion, J. Carson Mark from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, at first insisted it could not be done. However, Dr. Mark eventually stated that a half-megaton warhead of small enough size could be developed. This yield, roughly thirty times that of the Hiroshima bomb, was enough for Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Arleigh Burke, who was present in person, and Navy strategic missile development shifted from Jupiter to Polaris by the end of the year.


title: Edward Teller

text: He was Director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which he helped to found with Ernest O. Lawrence, from 1958 to 1960, and after that he continued as an Associate Director. He chaired the committee that founded the Space Sciences Laboratory at Berkeley. He also served concurrently as a Professor of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a tireless advocate of a strong nuclear program and argued for continued testing and development—in fact, he stepped down from the directorship of Livermore so that he could better lobby against the proposed test ban. He testified against the test ban both before Congress as well as on television.


title: Edward Teller

text: Teller established the Department of Applied Science at the University of California, Davis and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1963, which holds the Edward Teller endowed professorship in his honor. In 1975 he retired from both the lab and Berkeley, and was named Director Emeritus of the Livermore Laboratory and appointed Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution. After the end of communism in Hungary in 1989, he made several visits to his country of origin, and paid careful attention to the political changes there.


title: Edward Teller

text: Teller was one of the first prominent people to raise the danger of climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels. At an address to the membership of the American Chemical Society in December 1957, Teller warned that the large amount of carbon-based fuel that had been burnt since the mid-19th century was increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which would "act in the same way as a greenhouse and will raise the temperature at the surface", and that he had calculated that if the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased by 10% "an appreciable part of the polar ice might melt".


title: Edward Teller

text: In 1959, at a symposium organised by the American Petroleum Institute and the Columbia Graduate School of Business for the centennial of the American oil industry, Edward Teller warned that:


title: Edward Teller

text: Teller was one of the strongest and best-known advocates for investigating non-military uses of nuclear explosives, which the United States explored under Operation Plowshare. One of the most controversial projects he proposed was a plan to use a multi-megaton hydrogen bomb to dig a deep-water harbor more than a mile long and half a mile wide to use for shipment of resources from coal and oil fields through Point Hope, Alaska. The Atomic Energy Commission accepted Teller's proposal in 1958 and it was designated Project Chariot. While the AEC was scouting out the Alaskan site, and having withdrawn the land from the public domain, Teller publicly advocated the economic benefits of the plan, but was unable to convince local government leaders that the plan was financially viable.


title: Edward Teller

text: Other scientists criticized the project as being potentially unsafe for the local wildlife and the Inupiat people living near the designated area, who were not officially told of the plan until March 1960. Additionally, it turned out that the harbor would be ice-bound for nine months out of the year. In the end, due to the financial infeasibility of the project and the concerns over radiation-related health issues, the project was abandoned in 1962.


title: Edward Teller

text: A related experiment which also had Teller's endorsement was a plan to extract oil from the tar sands in northern Alberta with nuclear explosions, titled Project Oilsands. The plan actually received the endorsement of the Alberta government, but was rejected by the Government of Canada under Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, who was opposed to having any nuclear weapons in Canada. After Diefenbaker was out of office, Canada went on to have nuclear weapons, from a US nuclear sharing agreement, from 1963 to 1984.


title: Edward Teller

text: Teller also proposed the use of nuclear bombs to prevent damage from powerful hurricanes. He argued that when conditions in the Atlantic Ocean are right for the formation of hurricanes, the heat generated by well-placed nuclear explosions could trigger several small hurricanes, rather than waiting for nature to build one large one.


title: Edward Teller

text: For some twenty years, Teller advised Israel on nuclear matters in general, and on the building of a hydrogen bomb in particular. In 1952, Teller and Oppenheimer had a long meeting with David Ben-Gurion in Tel Aviv, telling him that the best way to accumulate plutonium was to burn natural uranium in a nuclear reactor. Starting in 1964, a connection between Teller and Israel was made by the physicist Yuval Ne'eman, who had similar political views. Between 1964 and 1967, Teller visited Israel six times, lecturing at Tel Aviv University, and advising the chiefs of Israel's scientific-security circle as well as prime ministers and cabinet members.


title: Edward Teller

text: In 1967 when the Israeli nuclear program was nearing completion, Teller informed Neeman that he was going to tell the CIA that Israel had built nuclear weapons, and explain that it was justified by the background of the Six-Day War. After Neeman cleared it with Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, Teller briefed the head of the CIA's Office of Science and Technology, Carl Duckett. It took a year for Teller to convince the CIA that Israel had obtained nuclear capability; the information then went through CIA Director Richard Helms to the president at that time, Lyndon B. Johnson. Teller also persuaded them to end the American attempts to inspect the Negev Nuclear Research Center in Dimona. In 1976 Duckett testified in Congress before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, that after receiving information from an "American scientist", he drafted a National Intelligence Estimate on Israel's nuclear capability.


title: Edward Teller

text: In the 1980s, Teller again visited Israel to advise the Israeli government on building a nuclear reactor. Three decades later, Teller confirmed that it was during his visits that he concluded that Israel was in possession of nuclear weapons. After conveying the matter to the U.S. government, Teller reportedly said: "They [Israel] have it, and they were clever enough to trust their research and not to test, they know that to test would get them into trouble."


title: Edward Teller

text: Teller suffered a heart attack in 1979, and blamed it on Jane Fonda, who had starred in "The China Syndrome", which depicted a fictional reactor accident and was released less than two weeks before the Three Mile Island accident. She spoke out against nuclear power while promoting the film. After the accident, Teller acted quickly to lobby in defence of nuclear energy, testifying to its safety and reliability, and soon after one flurry of activity suffered the attack. He signed a two-page-spread ad in the July 31, 1979, issue of "The Washington Post" with the headline "I was the only victim of Three-Mile Island". It opened with:


title: Edward Teller

text: In the 1980s, Teller began a strong campaign for what was later called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derided by critics as "Star Wars", the concept of using ground and satellite-based lasers, particle beams and missiles to destroy incoming Soviet ICBMs. Teller lobbied with government agencies—and got the approval of President Ronald Reagan—for a plan to develop a system using elaborate satellites which used atomic weapons to fire X-ray lasers at incoming missiles—as part of a broader scientific research program into defenses against nuclear weapons.


title: Edward Teller

text: Scandal erupted when Teller (and his associate Lowell Wood) were accused of deliberately overselling the program and perhaps encouraging the dismissal of a laboratory director (Roy Woodruff) who had attempted to correct the error. His claims led to a joke which circulated in the scientific community, that a new unit of unfounded optimism was designated as the teller; one teller was so large that most events had to be measured in nanotellers or picotellers.


title: Edward Teller

text: Many prominent scientists argued that the system was futile. Hans Bethe, along with IBM physicist Richard Garwin and Cornell University colleague Kurt Gottfried, wrote an article in "Scientific American" which analyzed the system and concluded that any putative enemy could disable such a system by the use of suitable decoys that would cost a very small fraction of the SDI program.


title: Edward Teller

text: In 1987 Teller published a book entitled "Better a Shield than a Sword", which supported civil defense and active protection systems. His views on the role of lasers in SDI were published, and are available, in two 1986–87 laser conference proceedings.


title: Edward Teller

text: Following the 1994 Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet impacts with Jupiter, Teller proposed to a collective of U.S. and Russian ex-Cold War weapons designers in a 1995 planetary defense workshop at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, that they collaborate to design a 1 gigaton nuclear explosive device, which would be equivalent to the kinetic energy of a 1 km diameter asteroid. In order to safeguard the earth, the theoretical 1 Gt device would weigh about 25–30 tons—light enough to be lifted on the Russian Energia rocket—and could be used to instantaneously vaporize a 1 km asteroid, or divert the paths of extinction event class asteroids (greater than 10 km in diameter) with a few months' notice; with 1-year notice, at an interception location no closer than Jupiter, it would also be capable of dealing with the even rarer short period comets which can come out of the Kuiper belt and transit past Earth orbit within 2 years. For comets of this class, with a maximum estimated 100 km diameter, Charon served as the hypothetical threat.


title: Edward Teller

text: Teller died in Stanford, California, on September 9, 2003, at the age of 95. He had suffered a stroke two days before and had long been suffering from a number of conditions related to his advanced age.


title: Edward Teller

text: Teller's vigorous advocacy for strength through nuclear weapons, especially when so many of his wartime colleagues later expressed regret about the arms race, made him an easy target for the "mad scientist" stereotype. In 1991 he was awarded one of the first Ig Nobel Prizes for Peace in recognition of his "lifelong efforts to change the meaning of peace as we know it". He was also rumored to be one of the inspirations for the character of Dr. Strangelove in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 satirical film of the same name. In the aforementioned "Scientific American" interview from 1999, he was reported as having bristled at the question: "My name is not Strangelove. I don't know about Strangelove. I'm not interested in Strangelove. What else can I say? ... Look. Say it three times more, and I throw you out of this office."


title: Edward Teller

text: Nobel Prize winning physicist Isidor I. Rabi once suggested that "It would have been a better world without Teller."


title: Edward Teller

text: In 1981, Teller became a founding member of the World Cultural Council. A wish for his 100th birthday, made around the time of his 90th, was for Lawrence Livermore's scientists to give him "excellent predictions—calculations and experiments—about the interiors of the planets".


title: Edward Teller

text: In 1986, he was awarded the United States Military Academy's Sylvanus Thayer Award. He was elected a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1948. He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Nuclear Society, and the American Physical Society. Among the honors he received were the Albert Einstein Award in 1958, the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1961, the Enrico Fermi Award in 1962, the Eringen Medal in 1980, the Harvey Prize in 1975, the National Medal of Science in 1983, the Presidential Citizens Medal in 1989, and the in 2001. He was also named as part of the group of "U.S. Scientists" who were "Time" magazine's People of the Year in 1960, and an asteroid, 5006 Teller, is named after him. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush in 2003, less than two months before his death.


title: Edward Teller

text: His final paper, published posthumously, advocated the construction of a prototype liquid fluoride thorium reactor. The genesis and impetus for this last paper was recounted by the co-author Ralph Moir in 2007.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Chinese cuisine encompasses the numerous cuisines originating from China, as well as overseas cuisines created by the Chinese diaspora. Because of the Chinese diaspora and historical power of the country, Chinese cuisine has influenced many other cuisines in Asia and beyond, with modifications made to cater to local palates. Chinese food staples such as rice, soy sauce, noodles, tea, chili oil, and tofu, and utensils such as chopsticks and the wok, can now be found worldwide.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: The preferences for seasoning and cooking techniques of Chinese provinces depend on differences in historical background and ethnic groups. Geographic features including mountains, rivers, forests, and deserts also have a strong effect on the local available ingredients, considering that the climate of China varies from tropical in the south to subarctic in the northeast. Imperial royal and noble preference also plays a role in the change of Chinese cuisine. Because of imperial expansion and trading, ingredients and cooking techniques from other cultures have been integrated into Chinese cuisines over time.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: There are numerous regional, religious, and ethnic styles of Chinese cuisine found within China and abroad. Chinese cuisine is highly diverse and most frequently categorised into provincial divisions, although these province-level classifications consist of many more styles within themselves. The most praised Four Great Traditions in Chinese cuisine are Chuan, Lu, Yue, and Huaiyang, representing cuisines of West, North, South, and East China, respectively. The modern Eight Cuisines of China are Anhui (), Guangdong (), Fujian (), Hunan (), Jiangsu (), Shandong (), Sichuan (), and Zhejiang () cuisines.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Color, scent and taste are the three traditional aspects used to describe Chinese food, as well as the meaning, appearance, and nutrition of the food. Cooking should be appraised with respect to the ingredients used, knifework, cooking time, and seasoning.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Chinese society greatly valued gastronomy, and developed an extensive study of the subject based on its traditional medical beliefs. Chinese culture initially centered around the North China Plain. The first domesticated crops seem to have been the foxtail and broomcorn varieties of millet, while rice was cultivated in the south. By 2000 BC, wheat had arrived from western Asia. These grains were typically served as warm noodle soups instead of baked into bread as in Europe. Nobles hunted various wild game and consumed mutton, pork and dog as these animals were domesticated. Grain was stored against famine and flood and meat was preserved with salt, vinegar, curing, and fermenting. The flavor of the meat was enhanced by cooking it in animal fats though this practice was mostly restricted to the wealthy.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: By the time of Confucius in the late Zhou, gastronomy had become a high art. Confucius discussed the principles of dining: "The rice would never be too white, the meat would never be too finely cut... When it was not cooked right, man would not eat. When it was cooked bad, man would not eat. When the meat was not cut properly, man would not eat. When the food was not prepared with the right sauce, man would not eat. Although there are plenty of meats, they should not be cooked more than staple food. There is no limit for alcohol, before a man gets drunk." The Lüshi chunqiu notes: "Only if one is chosen as the Son of Heaven will the tastiest delicacies be prepared [for him]."


title: Chinese cuisine

text: The Zhaohun (4-3rd c. BC) gives some examples: turtle ragout, honey cakes and beer (chilled with ice).


title: Chinese cuisine

text: During Shi Huangdi's Qin dynasty, the empire expanded into the south. By the time of the Han dynasty, the different regions and cuisines of China's people were linked by major canals and leading to greater complexity in the different regional cuisines. Not only is food seen as giving "qi", energy, but the food is also about maintaining yin and yang. The philosophy behind it was rooted in the "I Ching" and Chinese traditional medicine: food was judged for color, aroma, taste, and texture and a good meal was expected to balance the Four Natures ('hot', warm, cool, and 'cold') and the Five Tastes (pungent, sweet, sour, bitter, and salty). Salt was used as a preservative from early times, but in cooking was added in the form of soy sauce, and not at the table.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: By the Later Han period (2nd century), writers frequently complained of lazy aristocrats who did nothing but sit around all day eating smoked meats and roasts.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: During the Han dynasty, the Chinese developed methods of food preservation for military rations during campaigns such as drying meat into jerky and cooking, roasting, and drying grain.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Chinese legends claim that the roasted, flat bread shaobing was brought back from the "Xiyu" (the Western Regions, a name for Central Asia) by the Han dynasty General Ban Chao, and that it was originally known as hubing (, lit. "barbarian bread"). The shaobing is believed to be descended from the hubing. Shaobing is believed to be related to the Persian "nan" and Central Asian "nan", as well as the Middle Eastern pita. Foreign westerners made and sold sesame cakes in China during the Tang dynasty.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: During the Southern and Northern dynasties non-Han people like the Xianbei of Northern Wei introduced their cuisine to northern China, and these influences continued up to the Tang dynasty, popularizing meat like mutton and dairy products like goat milk, yogurts, and Kumis among even Han people. It was during the Song dynasty that Han Chinese developed an aversion to dairy products and abandoned the dairy foods introduced earlier.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: The Han Chinese rebel Wang Su who received asylum in the Xianbei Northern Wei after fleeing from Southern Qi, at first could not stand eating dairy products like goat's milk and meat like mutton and had to consume tea and fish instead, but after a few years he was able to eat yogurt and lamb, and the Xianbei Emperor asked him which of the foods of China (Zhongguo) he preferred, fish vs mutton and tea vs yogurt.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: The great migration of Chinese people south during the invasions preceding and during the Song dynasty increased the relative importance of southern Chinese staples such as rice and congee. Su Dongpo has improved the red braised pork as Dongpo pork. The dietary and culinary habits also changed greatly during this period, with many ingredients such as soy sauce and Central Asian influenced foods becoming widespread and the creation of important cookbooks such as the "Shanjia Qinggong" () and the "Wushi Zhongkuilu" () showing the respective esoteric foods and common household cuisine of the time.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: The Yuan and Qing dynasties introduced Mongolian and Manchu cuisine, warm northern dishes that popularized hot pot cooking. During the Yuan dynasty many Muslim communities emerged in China, who practiced a porkless cuisine now preserved by Hui restaurants throughout the country. Yunnan cuisine is unique in China for its cheeses like Rubing and Rushan cheese made by the Bai people, and its yogurt, the yogurt may have been due to a combination of Mongolian influence during the Yuan dynasty, the Central Asian settlement in Yunnan, and the proximity and influence of India and Tibet on Yunnan.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: As part of the last leg of the Columbian Exchange, Spanish and Portuguese traders began introducing foods from the New World to China through the port cities of Canton and Macau. Mexican chili peppers became essential ingredients in Sichuan cuisine and calorically dense potatoes and corn became staple foods across the northern plains.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: During the Qing dynasty, Chinese gastronomes such as Yuan Mei focused upon the primary goal of extracting the maximum flavour of each ingredient. As noted in his culinary work the "Suiyuan shidan", however, the fashions of cuisine at the time were quite varied and in some cases were flamboyantly ostentatious, especially when the display served also a formal ceremonial purpose, as in the case of the Manchu Han Imperial Feast.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: As the pace of life increases in modern China, fast food like fried noodles, fried rice and "gaifan" (dish over rice) become more and more popular.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: There are a variety of styles of cooking in China, but most Chinese chefs classified eight regional cuisines according to their distinct tastes and local characteristics. A number of different styles contribute to Chinese cuisine but perhaps the best known and most influential are Cantonese cuisine, Shandong cuisine, Jiangsu cuisine (specifically Huaiyang cuisine) and Sichuan cuisine. These styles are distinctive from one another due to factors such as availability of resources, climate, geography, history, cooking techniques and lifestyle. One style may favour the use of garlic and shallots over chili and spices, while another may favour preparing seafood over other meats and fowl. Jiangsu cuisine favours cooking techniques such as braising and stewing, while Sichuan cuisine employs baking. Zhejiang cuisine focuses more on serving fresh food and shares some traits in common with Japanese food. Fujian cuisine is famous for its delicious seafood and soups and the use of spices. Hunan cuisine is famous for its hot and sour taste. Anhui cuisine incorporates wild food for an unusual taste and is wilder than Fujian cuisine.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Based on the raw materials and ingredients used, the method of preparation and cultural differences, a variety of foods with different flavors and textures are prepared in different regions of the country. Many traditional regional cuisines rely on basic methods of preservation such as drying, salting, pickling and fermentation.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: In addition, the "rice theory" attempts to describe cultural differences between north and south China; in the north, noodles are more consumed due to wheat being widely grown whereas in the south, rice is more preferred as it has historically been more cultivated there.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Chinese ancestors successfully planted millet, rice, and other grains about 8,000 to 9,000 years ago. As for wheat, another staple, it took another three or four thousand years. For the first time, grains provided people with a steady supply of food. Because of the lack of various foods, Chinese people had to adapt to new eating habits. The meat was scarce at that time, that's why people cooked with small amounts of meat and rice or noodles.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Rice is a primary staple food for people from rice farming areas in southern China. Steamed rice, usually white rice, is the most commonly eaten form. People in South China also like to use rice to make congee as breakfast. Rice is also used to produce beer, baijiu and vinegar. Glutinous rice ("sticky rice") is a variety of rice used in special dishes such as lotus leaf rice and glutinous rice balls.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: In wheat-farming areas in Northern China, people largely rely on flour-based food, such as noodles, "bing" (bread), "jiaozi" (a kind of Chinese dumplings), and "mantou" (a type of steamed buns). Wheat likely "appeared in the lower Yellow River around 2600 Before Common Era (BCE), followed by Gansu and Xinjiang around 1900 BCE and finally occurred in the middle Yellow River and Tibet regions by 1600 BCE".


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Chinese noodles come dry or fresh in a variety of sizes, shapes and textures and are often served in soups or fried as toppings. Some varieties, such as Shou Mian (寿面, literally noodles of longevity), is an avatar of long life and good health according to Chinese traditions. Noodles can be served hot or cold with different toppings, with broth, and occasionally dry (as is the case with mi-fen). Noodles are commonly made with rice flour or wheat flour, but other flours such as soybean are also used in minor groups. The names given to the noodle is unique in their own way, such as the method used to make the noodle as in hand-pulled noodle.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Tofu is made of soybeans and is another popular food product that supplies protein. The production process of tofu varies from region to region, resulting in different kinds of tofu with a wide range of texture and taste. Other products such as soy milk, soy paste, soy oil, and fermented soy sauce are also important in Chinese cooking.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: There are many kinds of soybean products, including tofu skin, smoked tofu, dried tofu, and fried tofu.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Stinky tofu is fermented tofu. Like blue cheese or durian, it has a very distinct, potent and strong smell, and is an acquired taste. Hard stinky tofu is often deep-fried and paired with soy sauce or salty spice. Soft stinky tofu is usually used as a spread on steamed buns.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Doufuru is another type of fermented tofu that has a salty taste. Doufuru can be pickled together with soy beans, red yeast rice or chili to create different color and flavor. This is more of a pickled type of tofu and is not as strongly scented as stinky tofu. Doufuru has the consistency of slightly soft blue cheese, and a taste similar to Japanese miso paste, but less salty. Doufuru can be used as a spread on steamed buns, or paired with rice congee.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Sufu is one other type of fermented tofu that goes through ageing process. The color (red, white, green) and flavor profile can determine the type of sufu it is. This kind of tofu is usually eaten alongside breakfast rice.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Soybean milk is soybean-based milk. It is a morning beverage, and it has many benefits to human health.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Apart from vegetables that can be commonly seen, some unique vegetables used in Chinese cuisine include baby corn, bok choy, snow peas, Chinese eggplant, Chinese broccoli, and straw mushrooms. Other vegetables including bean sprouts, pea vine tips, watercress, lotus roots, chestnuts, water chestnuts, and bamboo shoots are also used in different cuisines of China.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Because of different climate and soil conditions, cultivars of green beans, peas, and mushrooms can be found in rich variety.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: A variety of dried or pickled vegetables are also processed, especially in drier or colder regions where fresh vegetables were hard to get out of season.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Seasonings such as fresh ginger root, garlic, scallion, cilantro and sesame are widely used in many regional cuisines. Sichuan peppercorns, star anise, cinnamon, fennel, cloves and white peppers are also used in different regions.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: To add extra flavor to the dishes, many Chinese cuisines also contain dried Chinese mushrooms, dried baby shrimp, dried tangerine peel, and dried Sichuan chillies.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: When it comes to sauces, China is home to soy sauce, which is made from fermented soybeans and wheat. A number of sauces are also based on fermented soybeans, including hoisin sauce, ground bean sauce and yellow bean sauce. There are also different sauces preferred by regional cuisines, oyster sauce, fish sauce and furu (fermented tofu) are also widely used. Vinegar also has a variety with different flavors: clear rice vinegar, Chinkiang black rice vinegar, Shanxi vinegar, Henghe vinegar etc.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Dim sum (点心), originally means a small portion of food, can refer to dessert, or pastries. Later to avoid disambiguation, tian dian (甜点) and gao dian (糕点) are used to describe desserts and pastries.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Traditionally, Chinese desserts are sweet foods and dishes that are served with tea, usually during the meal, or at the end of meals in Chinese cuisine.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Besides being served as dim sum along with tea, pastries are used for celebration of traditional festivals. The most famous one is moon cake, used to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: A wide variety of Chinese desserts are available, mainly including steamed and boiled sweet snacks. Bing is an umbrella term for all breads in Chinese, also including pastries and sweets. These are baked wheat-flour-based confections, with different stuffings including red bean paste, jujube, and a variety of others. Su (酥) is another kind of pastry made with more amount of oil, making the confection more friable. Chinese candies and sweets, called "táng" (糖) are usually made with cane sugar, malt sugar, honey, nuts, and fruit. Gao or Guo are rice-based snacks that are typically steamed and may be made from glutinous or normal rice.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Another cold dessert is called "baobing", which is shaved ice with sweet syrup. Chinese jellies are known collectively in the language as "ices". Many jelly desserts are traditionally set with agar and are flavoured with fruits, known as guodong (果冻), though gelatine based jellies are also common in contemporary desserts.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: European pastries are also seen in China, like mille-feuille, crème brûlée, and cheesecake, but they are generally not as popular because the Chinese preference of dessert is mildly sweet and less oily.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Many types of street foods, which vary from region to region, can be eaten as snacks or light dinner. Prawn crackers are an often-consumed snack in Southeast China.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Chinese in earlier dynasties evidently drank milk and ate dairy products, although not necessarily from cows, but perhaps "kumis" (fermented mare's milk) or goat's milk.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Historically, many Chinese chefs tried not to use milk, because of the high rate of lactose intolerance among the Chinese population. However, today, dairy products are increasingly used in Chinese cuisine, such as the "double skin milk" dessert in Guangdong Province, the Rubing (milk cake) cheese in Yunnan, and yoghurt in Qinghai and Xinjiang. China has a wide variety of dairy desserts that are very popular.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Cold dishes are usually served before the main meal. Besides salad and pickles as appetizers, they can range from jelly, beancurd, noodle salad, cooked meat and sausages, to jellyfish or cold soups.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Chinese sausages vary from region to region. The most common sausage is made of pork and pork fat. The flavor is generally salty-sweet in Southern China. In other parts of China, sausages are salted to be preserved. Chinese sausage is prepared in many different ways, including oven-roasting, stir-frying, and steaming.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: In some part of South China, soups are served between the cold dishes and the main dishes. In other parts of China, soups are served between the main dish and staple foods, before desserts or fruit salad. There are many traditional Chinese soups, such as wonton soup, herbal chicken soup, hot and sour soup, winter melon soup, and so on.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Tea plays an important role in Chinese dining culture. In China, there are two main types of tea, one is made from dried tea leaves, the other one is made by extracts from tea leaves. Baijiu and huangjiu as strong alcoholic beverages are preferred by many people as well. Wine is not so popular as other drinks in China that are consumed whilst dining, although they are usually available in the menu.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: As well as with dim sum, many Chinese drink their tea with snacks such as nuts, plums, dried fruit (in particular jujube), small sweets, melon seeds, and waxberry. China was the earliest country to cultivate and drink tea, which is enjoyed by people from all social classes. Tea processing began after the Qin and Han dynasties.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: The different types of Chinese tea include black, white, green, yellow, oolong, and dark tea. Chinese tea is often classified into several different categories according to the species of plant from which it is sourced, the region in which it is grown, and the method of production used. Some of these types are green tea, oolong tea, black tea, scented tea, white tea, and compressed tea. There are four major tea plantation regions: Jiangbei, Jiangnan, Huanan and the southwestern region. Well known types of green tea include Longjing, Huangshan, Mao Feng, Bilochun, Putuofeng Cha, and Liu'an Guapian. China is the world's largest exporter of green tea.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: One of the most ubiquitous accessories in modern China, after a wallet or purse and an umbrella, is a double-walled insulated glass thermos with tea leaves in the top behind a strainer.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: The importance of "baijiu" ( "white liquor") in China (99.5% of its alcoholic market) makes it the most-consumed alcoholic spirit in the world. It dates back to the introduction of distilling during the Song dynasty; can be made from wheat, corn, or rice; and is usually around 120 proof (60% ABV). The most ubiquitous brand is the cheap Er guo tou, but Mao Tai is the premium "baijiu". Other popular brands include Kang, Lu Zhou Te Qu, and Wu Liang Ye.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: "Huangjiu" ( "yellow liquor") is not distilled and is a strong rice wine (10–15% ABV). Popular brands include Shaoxing Lao Jiu, Shaoxing Hua Diao, and Te Jia Fan.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: While fermented grain beverages have been brewed in China for over 9,000 years, it has been long overshadowed by stronger alcohol like Baijiu and Huangjiu.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Chinese herb tea, also known as "medicinal herbal tea", is a kind of tea made from Chinese medicinal herbs.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Soy milk, almond milk, walnut milk and coconut milk are also drunk during the meal in different regions. In some parts of China, hawthorn and jujube juice are preferred. A small shot of fruit vinegar is served as an appetizer in Shanxi.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Where there are historical immigrant Chinese populations, the style of food has evolved and been adapted to local tastes and ingredients, and modified by the local cuisine, to greater or lesser extents. This has resulted in a deep Chinese influence on other national cuisines such as Cambodian cuisine, Filipino cuisine, Thai cuisine and Vietnamese cuisine. There are also a large number of forms of fusion cuisine, often popular in the country in question. Some, such as ramen (Japanese Chinese cuisine) have become popular internationally.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Deep-fried meat combined with sweet and sour sauce as a cooking style receives an enormous preference outside of China. Therefore, many similar international Chinese cuisines are invented based on sweet and sour sauce, including Sweet and sour chicken (Europe and North America), Manchurian chicken (India) or "tangsuyuk" (South Korea). The Hawaiian pizza was inspired by Chinese sweet and sour flavors.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Apart from the host country, the dishes developed in overseas Chinese cuisines are heavily dependent on the cuisines derived from the origin of the Chinese immigrants. In Korean Chinese cuisine, the dishes derive primarily from Shandong cuisine while Filipino Chinese cuisine is strongly influenced by Fujian cuisine. American Chinese cuisine has distinctive dishes (such as chop suey) originally based on Cantonese cuisine, which are more popular among non-Chinese Americans than with Chinese Americans themselves.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: According to the report released by China's largest on-demand service platform in 2018, there are over 600,000 Chinese restaurants overseas. The report also pointed out that hotpot is the most popular food in the foreign market. Sichuan cuisine and some Chinese snacks and fast food followed in second and third place, respectively.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Youths should not begin eating before their elders do. When eating from a bowl, one should not hold it with its bottom part, because it resembles the act of begging. Chopsticks are the main eating utensils for Chinese food, which can be used to cut and pick up food. When someone is taking a break from eating at the table, they should not put the chopstick into the rice vertically, because it resembles the Chinese traditional funeral tribute, which involves putting chopsticks inside a bowl of rice vertically. It is considered inappropriate to use knives on the dining table. Chopsticks should not be waved around in the air or played with. Food should first be taken from the plate in front. It is considered impolite to stare at a plate. Watching TV, using mobile phones or doing other activities while eating is considered in poor taste. If an older person puts food in a younger person's bowl, the younger person should thank them.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Food plays various roles in social and cultural life. In Chinese folk religion, ancestor veneration is conducted by offering food to ancestors and Chinese festivals involve the consumption and preparation of specific foods which have symbolic meanings attached to them. Specific religions in China have their own cuisines such as the Taoist diet, Buddhist cuisine and Chinese Islamic Cuisine. The Kaifeng Jews in Henan province once had their own Chinese Jewish cuisine but the community has largely died out in the modern era and not much is known about the specifics of their cuisine but they did influence foods eaten in their region and some of their dishes remain.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Food also plays a role in daily life. The formality of the meal setting can signify what kind of relationship people have with one another, and the type of food can indicate ones' social status and their country of origin. In a formal setting, up to sixteen of any combination of hot and cold dishes would be served to respect the guests. On the other hand, in a casual setting, people would eat inexpensive meals such as at food stalls or homemade food. The typical disparity in food in the Chinese society between the wealthy and everyone below that group lies in the rarity and cost of the food or ingredient, such as shark fins and bear paws. Depending on whether one goes for rice or anything that is made of wheat flour such as noodle or bread as their main source of food, people within similar culture or of different background can assume other's country of origin from the south or north of China. Different foods have different symbolic meanings. Mooncakes and dumplings are symbolic of the Mid-autumn festival and the Spring Festival, respectively. Pear symbolizes bad luck due to its similarity in pronunciation of 'away' in the native language and noodle means living a long life for its length.


title: Chinese cuisine

text: In Chinese philosophy, food frequently conveys a message. A Chinese philosophy "I Ching" says, “Gentlemen use eating as a way to attain happiness. They should be aware of what they say, and refrain from eating too much."


title: Chinese cuisine

text: Chinese culture has guidelines in how and when food are eaten. Chinese people typically eat three meals a day. Breakfast is served around 6-9am, lunch is served around 12-2pm, and dinner is served around 6-9pm. Within the Chinese culture, families do follow different traditions. In some families, the elderly members and youngsters get their meal first, then the mother and father, and then the children and teenagers. Other families have the male and female eat separately at different seating area. Whatever tradition the family decided to follow, it is all to show respect to members of the family.


title: Alexa Ray Joel

text: Alexa Ray Joel (born December 29, 1985) is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. Her parents are singer-songwriter Billy Joel and model Christie Brinkley. Joel released an EP "Sketches" (2006) and several singles on independent record labels. She has performed at numerous charity events and New York City fashion events.


title: Alexa Ray Joel

text: Joel was born on December 29, 1985, in Manhattan, New York. She is the daughter of singer-songwriter Billy Joel and his second wife, model Christie Brinkley. Her middle name, Ray, honors the musician Ray Charles with whom her father recorded the song "Baby Grand". She has a half-brother, Jack Paris Brinkley ( Taubman, born June 2, 1995) and a half-sister, Sailor Brinkley Cook (born July 1, 1998). Both are children of her mother, Christie Brinkley. She also has two half-sisters on her father's side named Della Rose (born August 12, 2015), and Remy Anne (born October 22, 2017) born to Joel's fourth wife, Alexis.


title: Alexa Ray Joel

text: Her father, Billy Joel, wrote his 1993 song "Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)" for her. It is her self-proclaimed favorite song that he has written. His 1989 song "The Downeaster Alexa" bears the title of a boat he named after her, but is about the struggles of Long Island fishermen. Joel is also referenced in her father's 1989 song "Leningrad" (with lyrics: "...He made my daughter laugh, then we embraced..."), in which "He" refers to a Russian man who became a circus clown after being in the Red Army.


title: Alexa Ray Joel

text: Joel is known for her melodic song writing, and has noted that her musical upbringing gave her a "unique inside-peek into the songwriting process," and that "It's no wonder I write music in the same way (my father) does: melody first, and lyrics second." Joel said that by the age of 15, she was finishing complete songs with piano accompaniment, and writing poetry.


title: Alexa Ray Joel

text: In 2005, at age 19, Joel assembled a band and performed her first live show at Maxwell's in Hoboken, New Jersey, In 2006, Joel played nearly 100 shows, including a Hard Rock Cafe tour completed in May 2006.


title: Alexa Ray Joel

text: Joel self-released and independently distributed the six-song EP "Sketches" in August 2006. Joel explained "It’s called ‘Sketches’ because it’s like raw sketches... About three of the songs, actually, were done in one take." Joel designed and illustrated the CD cover, packaging, and inserts that included her handwritten lyrics. "Sketches" also included a pop/rock cover of Neil Young's "Don't Let It Bring You Down."


title: Alexa Ray Joel

text: Joel performed at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (April 2007), the 2007 Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival (June 2007), and the Albany Riverfront Jazz Festival (September 2007).


title: Alexa Ray Joel

text: Joel performed onstage with her father during the 2008 Rainforest Foundation Fund Benefit Concert at Carnegie Hall on May 8, 2008. Other charity events at which Joel has performed include the "Save Sag Harbor" benefit concert (2008), the "Stage For The Cure" benefit for pediatric cancer (New York City, 2008), a benefit for "The Art of Elysium" (artists for seriously ill children; The Hamptons, 2009), a benefit for Habitat for Humanity (Long Beach, New York, 2010), the "Right To Play Day" benefit (Sag Harbor, New York, 2010), and the Eric Trump Foundation benefit for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital (New York City, 2010). She has also supported animal rights, including the Animal Haven's Speakeasy Bash (New York City, 2012).


title: Alexa Ray Joel

text: Joel and her father performed the song "Baby Grand" at a Barack Obama election fundraiser at the Hammerstein Ballroom on October 16, 2008.


title: Alexa Ray Joel

text: Joel debuted her single "Invisible" on "The Wendy Williams Show" in October 2009, the song being described as a "piano-driven ballad... about a bad breakup."


title: Alexa Ray Joel

text: Alexa Joel's single, "Notice Me", released on May 24, 2010, was listed as a "Hit-Bound song" on the Sirius XM Hits 1 satellite radio channel in August 2010. "Newsday" described the single as having a "carefree braininess" and "bouncy guitar riffs and an instantly hummable chorus" that made Joel's work "sound like Regina Spektor crossed with Katy Perry." "Notice Me" is Joel's first collaboration with producer Tommy Byrnes and her first since signing with Long Beach, New York management company OCD Music Group/The Hang Productions. Joel described the "Notice Me" video as using fashion to show both a modern look and a vintage throwback look.


title: Alexa Ray Joel

text: Joel did residencies in New York City, including the Oak Room of the Plaza Hotel (late 2010-2011, said to add a "contemporary vibe" to the "storied venue,") and the Café Carlyle at the Carlyle Hotel (April 2014).


title: Alexa Ray Joel

text: Joel is active in New York fashion events. She performed at Manhattan's "Fashion's Night Out" in 2009 (Elie Tahari), 2010 (Bloomingdale's), and 2011 (Bloomingdale's).


title: Alexa Ray Joel

text: Joel interviewed celebrities and designers as a host for social networking website Julib.com during New York Fashion Week in September 2012 and February 2013,


title: Alexa Ray Joel

text: and she performed at the launch of Bobbi Brown's book "Pretty Powerful: Beauty Stories to Inspire Confidence," also appearing with Brown on "Today." In 2017, Joel posed for the "Sports Illustrated" swimsuit issue along with her mother, Christie Brinkley, and her half-sister, Sailor Brinkley Cook.


title: Alexa Ray Joel

text: In February 2010, Joel was chosen the new spokeswoman for Ultimark Products' Prell brand of shampoo, with Joel's songs to serve as background for commercials. "New York Post" sources said that Joel was persuaded to accept the commercial endorsement contract because of the opportunity to promote her music. Additionally, Joel was said to have liked the idea of succeeding her mother Christie Brinkley, who was the face of Prell in 1986.


title: Alexa Ray Joel

text: In September 2013, Joel became part of The Gap's "Back to Blue" television ad campaign, performing an interpretation of her father's 1977 song "Just the Way You Are."


title: Alexa Ray Joel

text: On December 5, 2009, Joel ingested a large quantity of Traumeel, a homeopathic alternative to ibuprofen. Joel was reported to have taken "several pills"; an NYU Medical Center toxicologist said the drug has "no active ingredient" and indicated that it was essentially impossible to overdose ("basically you'd be taking more of nothing"). Interviewed six months later by ABC News, Joel described herself as having been "distraught and in so much pain" after the end of a four-year romantic relationship but not wanting to bother anyone since it was the holiday season. "I wasn't trying to kill myself. I was panicked. I was not thinking clearly at all. I was in so much pain and I just wanted to numb it." "The intent was to calm me down because I was having a panic attack."


title: Alexa Ray Joel

text: Joel told "People" magazine that her April 2010 nose job came after five years of consideration, and was to correct a deviated septum and to feel better about herself, Joel having been "self-conscious of pictures taken from the side." Joel explained that her surgery waited until she "was in a better place" than at the time of her Traumeel incident four months earlier, further stating that she is "done with plastic surgery".


title: Alexa Ray Joel

text: In a July 2010 interview with "20/20", Joel talked about "moving out of (the) shadows" of her "two megastar parents" and about recovery from her December 2009 crisis with depression.<ref name="ABC-20/20-20106018">Cuomo, Christopher (interviewer), "Alexa Ray Joel Sings an Upbeat Song" abcnews.com online video of ABC News 20/20 television broadcast (archive), June 18, 2010, which was linked from the "Press" tab (archive of 2010-08-19) of Joel's website.</ref> While she acknowledged that it had been "scary" to be "compared to a rock and roll legend", her confidence was said to be "helped along by a wider acceptance" by others. Stating that "I'm not a blond girl with blue eyes and that's fine", she added that Ultimark Products approaching her to be the face of Prell shampoo was a "big confidence booster". Describing overcoming the relationship dependence that triggered her December 2009 Traumeel incident, she said: "I've got to get a new band, whole new songs, whole new career plan. Everything changed after that incident."


title: Alexa Ray Joel

text: In 2013, Joel began dating restaurateur Ryan Gleason. They became engaged on January 1, 2018. As of 2021, the wedding was postponed due to the pandemic.


title: Dara Khosrowshahi

text: Dara Khosrowshahi (, ; born May 28, 1969) is an Iranian-American businessman and the chief executive officer of Uber. Khosrowshahi was previously CEO of Expedia Group, a company that owns several travel fare aggregators. He is also a member of the board of directors of BET.com and Hotels.com, and previously served on the board of The New York Times Company.


title: Dara Khosrowshahi

text: Khosrowshahi was born in 1969 in Iran into a wealthy Muslim family and grew up in a mansion on the family compound. He is the youngest of the three children of Lili and Asghar (Gary) Khosrowshahi. His family founded the Alborz Investment Company, a diversified conglomerate involved in pharmaceuticals, chemicals, food, distribution, packaging, trading, and services.


title: Dara Khosrowshahi

text: In 1978, just before the Iranian Revolution, his family was targeted for its wealth and his mother decided to leave everything behind and flee the country. Their company was later nationalized. His family first fled to southern France. They were planning to come back to Iran if the revolution failed, but when that didn't happen, they immigrated to the United States, eventually moving in with one of his uncles in Tarrytown, New York. In 1982, when Khosrowshahi was 13 years old, his father went to Iran to care for his grandfather. His father was not allowed to leave Iran for 6 years and therefore Khosrowshahi spent his teenage years without seeing his father.


title: Dara Khosrowshahi

text: In 1987, he graduated from the Hackley School, a private university-preparatory school in Tarrytown. In 1991, he graduated with a B.S. in electrical and electronics engineering from Brown University, where he was a member of the social fraternity Sigma Chi.


title: Dara Khosrowshahi

text: In 1991, Khosrowshahi joined Allen & Company, an investment bank, as an analyst. In 1998, he left Allen & Company to work for one of his former clients at the bank, Barry Diller, first at Diller's USA Networks, where he held the positions of senior vice president for strategic planning and then president, and later as chief financial officer of IAC, another company controlled by Diller.


title: Dara Khosrowshahi

text: In 2001, IAC purchased Expedia, and in August 2005, Khosrowshahi became CEO of Expedia. Ten years later, in 2015, Expedia gave him $90 million in stock options as part of a long-term employment agreement, conditioned on him staying with the company until 2020.


title: Dara Khosrowshahi

text: In 2016, he was one of the highest paid CEOs in the United States. During his tenure as CEO of Expedia, "the gross value of its hotel and other travel bookings more than quadrupled and its pre-tax earnings more than doubled." Under Khosrowshahi, Expedia extended its presence to more than 60 countries and acquired Travelocity, Orbitz, and HomeAway.


title: Dara Khosrowshahi

text: In August 2017, Khosrowshahi became the CEO of Uber, succeeding founder Travis Kalanick. He was initially viewed as a "dark horse" candidate in case the initial frontrunners, General Electric's Jeff Immelt and Hewlett Packard Enterprise's Meg Whitman, fell through. However, when Immelt flubbed his presentation, Immelt's initial supporters threw their backing to Khosrowshahi. This included Kalanick, even though Khosrowshahi had made clear that under his watch, Kalanick would have no role in Uber's daily operations; as he put it in one of his slides, "there cannot be two CEOs." After several deadlocked votes, Benchmark, a venture capital firm that had helped lead the effort to push out Kalanick, promised to drop a lawsuit against Kalanick if it named Whitman as CEO. Several of the directors read the announcement as blackmail. One of Whitman's supporters switched his vote to Khosrowshahi, breaking the deadlock and making him Uber's second full-time CEO.


title: Dara Khosrowshahi

text: He forfeited his un-vested stock options of Expedia, then worth $184 million, but Uber reportedly paid him over $200 million to take the CEO position. He also serves on Uber's board of directors.


title: Dara Khosrowshahi

text: Khosrowshahi's main task was to clean up the image of a company that had become one of the most despised in the country, in part due to revelations about Uber's corporate culture. He replaced Kalanick's once-inviolable 14 values, which contained such items as "super pumped" and "always be hustlin'," with eight values focusing on "customer obsession". At all of his public appearances after taking over, Khosrowshahi stressed the message, "We do the right thing. Period."


title: Dara Khosrowshahi

text: In May 2019, Khosrowshahi led Uber in its initial public offering, which he addressed with employees in a company-wide letter.


title: Dara Khosrowshahi

text: Khosrowshahi is on the list of "Prominent Iranian-Americans" published by the U.S. Virtual Embassy Iran.


title: Dara Khosrowshahi

text: Khosrowshahi is an outspoken critic of the immigration policy of Donald Trump. In 2016, he donated to the Hillary Victory Fund, Washington Democratic Senator Patty Murray, and the Democratic National Committee. He also donated to Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee, a supporter of libertarianism.


title: Dara Khosrowshahi

text: In November 2019, Khosrowshahi caused controversy in an interview with Axios on HBO, when he compared the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi to the death of Elaine Herzberg by an Uber self-driving car in 2018. He called them both "mistakes" that can "be forgiven". The Saudi government is an investor in Uber and has representation on its board of directors.


title: Dara Khosrowshahi

text: Khosrowshahi has two children from a first marriage; a son, Alex and a daughter, Chloe. On December 12, 2012, Khosrowshahi married Sydney Shapiro, a former preschool teacher and actress. He praised his wife for wearing a Slayer t-shirt to the wedding, which was held in Las Vegas. The couple has twin sons, Hayes Epic and Hugo Gubrit.