title: Theobroma cacao

text: The first European knowledge about chocolate came in the form of a beverage which was first introduced to the Spanish at their meeting with Moctezuma in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan in 1519. Cortés and others noted the vast quantities of this beverage the Aztec emperor consumed, and how it was carefully whipped by his attendants beforehand. Examples of cacao beans, along with other agricultural products, were brought back to Spain at that time, but it seems the beverage made from cacao was introduced to the Spanish court in 1544 by Kekchi Maya nobles brought from the New World to Spain by Dominican friars to meet Prince Philip. Within a century, chocolate had spread to France, England and elsewhere in Western Europe. Demand for this beverage led the French to establish cacao plantations in the Caribbean, while Spain subsequently developed their cacao plantations in their Venezuelan and Philippine colonies (Bloom 1998, Coe 1996). A painting by Dutch Golden Age artist Albert Eckhout shows a wild cacao tree in mid-seventeenth century Dutch Brazil. The Nahuatl-derived Spanish word "cacao" entered scientific nomenclature in 1753 after the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus published his taxonomic binomial system and coined the genus and species "Theobroma cacao". Traditional pre-Hispanic beverages made with cacao are still consumed in Mesoamerica. These include the Oaxacan beverage known as "tejate".


title: Theobroma cacao

text: The Maya believed the (cacao) was discovered by the gods in a mountain that also contained other delectable foods to be used by them. According to Maya mythology, the Plumed Serpent gave cacao to the Maya after humans were created from maize by divine grandmother goddess Xmucane. The Maya celebrated an annual festival in April to honor their cacao god, Ek Chuah, an event that included the sacrifice of a dog with cacao-colored markings, additional animal sacrifices, offerings of cacao, feathers and incense, and an exchange of gifts. In a similar creation story, the Mexica (Aztec) god Quetzalcoatl discovered cacao (: "bitter water"), in a mountain filled with other plant foods. Cacao was offered regularly to a pantheon of Mexica deities and the Madrid Codex depicts priests lancing their ear lobes (autosacrifice) and covering the cacao with blood as a suitable sacrifice to the gods. The cacao beverage was used as a ritual only by men, as it was believed to be an intoxicating food unsuitable for women and children.


title: James Iha

text: Iha has produced songs, contributed guitar and vocals, and produced remixes for a number of artists, including Midnight Movies, Isobel Campbell, Marilyn Manson, Whiskeytown, and Michael Stipe. He co-owned Scratchie Records, an independent record label, with Adam Schlesinger, and from 1999-2012 owned a recording studio with Schlesinger and Andy Chase of Ivy called Stratosphere Sound.


title: James Iha

text: Iha was born in Chicago, Illinois. He attended Elk Grove High School in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, which he described as "a boring, middle-class suburb of Chicago." Iha received average grades in high school, and, after a successful two-year stint at a local junior college, he majored in graphic design at Loyola University Chicago before dropping out to dedicate himself to the Smashing Pumpkins.


title: James Iha

text: Iha designs and consults for his men's clothing brand Vaporize, a collaboration with the Japanese label Beams since 2001.


title: James Iha

text: In 1987 Iha, then playing guitar in the Chicago band Snake Train, met Billy Corgan via a friend. Corgan had already been telling people he was in a band called "Smashing Pumpkins", and decided to make it a real band with Iha.


title: James Iha

text: Iha later became romantically involved with the band's bassist D'arcy Wretzky, but the couple broke up just prior to the band's performance at the Reading Festival in 1992. After a brief feud between the two, Iha sustained a friendly and close relationship with Wretzky, citing her as a best friend.


title: James Iha

text: Iha wrote and sang a number of Smashing Pumpkins' songs, such as: "Blew Away" on "Pisces Iscariot", "Bugg Superstar" on "Vieuphoria", "Take Me Down" on "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness", "...Said Sadly", "Believe", "The Boy", and "The Bells" on "The Aeroplane Flies High", "Summer" on the "Perfect" single and "Go" on "Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music". He co-wrote with Billy Corgan "I Am One" on "Gish", "Soma" and "Mayonaise" on "Siamese Dream", "Plume" on "Pisces Iscariot" and "Farewell and Goodnight" on "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness". He sang the band's covers of the Cure's "A Night Like This" and Syd Barrett's "Terrapin". During his time with the Pumpkins, Iha recorded with other bands, including Ivy, to which Adam Schlesinger contributed, and Swedish New Wave band the Sounds.


title: James Iha

text: Billy Corgan has claimed that Iha played very little guitar on the first two Smashing Pumpkins albums, with Corgan himself playing most of the parts in the studio that Iha played live.


title: James Iha

text: Iha was often considered the "quiet one" in Smashing Pumpkins, but he was known to engage in ad-libbed jokes and rap sessions at live performances. His humor was encapsulated in his use of the catchphrase, "I've seen a million faces, and I've rocked them all," originally from the Bon Jovi song "Wanted Dead or Alive".


title: James Iha

text: In 1998, Iha released a moderately successful solo album, "Let It Come Down". One music video was produced from this album, for the song "Be Strong Now", which was released as a four-track single.


title: James Iha

text: When his former bandmates Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin revived the "Smashing Pumpkins" name, Iha did not participate, and in fact had not spoken to Corgan in years. Corgan stated in a 2008 blog entry that when he and Chamberlin reunited, the "door was open" for Iha to rejoin, but he declined, and Corgan said that he "can now say definitively that Iha isn't ever coming back." However, in a 2012 interview about the band reformation, Iha stated that he was never even asked back into the band in the first place. Iha also admitted within the interview that he has not heard any of the band's new music since the reformation.


title: James Iha

text: In a March 2013 interview, he was asked about looking back at the band's history and explained that he never really thought about his former success with the band, but did look back with fondness when asked about the 6 studio albums he made with them. He revealed that he and Corgan had not spoken in around ten years, but that he did speak to Wretzky "once in a while".


title: James Iha

text: On March 26, 2016 and March 27, 2016, Iha joined Corgan and Chamberlin on stage unannounced at back to back Smashing Pumpkins shows at the Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Iha played a third show with the band in their hometown of Chicago at the Civic Opera house on April 14, 2016. In 2017, reunion rumors were leaked through various sources, and in 2018, Iha was spotted with Corgan, Chamberlin, and current Smashing Pumpkins guitarist Jeff Schroeder in the studio and at a photo shoot, confirming his return to the band. In summer 2018, the reunited band embarked on the Shiny And Oh So Bright Tour, which was followed at the end of the year by the release of their album "" Iha would go on to also record "Cyr" with the reunited lineup, which was released in November 2020.


title: James Iha

text: After the Smashing Pumpkins' breakup in 2000, Iha pursued many projects. He continues to contribute to other artists' recordings, such as "Don't Be Sad" on Whiskeytown's "Pneumonia" released in 2001 and further guest appearances for bands Ivy and Fountains of Wayne, both of which he remained close to, appearing on virtually every release by both bands since 1997. Andy Chase of Ivy, and Adam Schlesinger of both Ivy and Fountains, recorded on most songs James produced or wrote for other artists. Schlesinger first recorded on Iha's song on "The Bells" by the Smashing Pumpkins.


title: James Iha

text: Iha made bigger news when he joined the alternative rock supergroup A Perfect Circle in July 2003 in time for their "Thirteenth Step" club tour. He has since recorded on their 2004 album "eMOTIVe" as well as contributed remixes of "Blue" and "Outsider", and is back with the band following its near 6-year long hiatus. In 2003, he joined Vanessa and the O's. The group released an EP "Plus Rien" in Sweden the same year and followed up with the album "La Ballade d'O" in 2005–06 on the band's independent record company Rushmore Recordings playing live shows in Sweden during the summer of 2005.


title: James Iha

text: Iha has collaborated on musical and fashion design projects in Japan. He collaborated on and produced two tracks with Japanese musician Chara for her 2001 album "Madrigal" called "Boku ni Utsushite" and "Skirt". The latter was accompanied by a music video featuring Iha as a hunter in a forest. With the help of longtime friend and manager Isao Izutsu, Iha started the clothing label Vaporize (f.k.a. 'Vapor') in 2001, and recorded "Never Ever", his first solo song since the Smashing Pumpkins demise, for Vaporize's first runway show.


title: James Iha

text: In 2001, Iha played live with the Blank Theory and recorded on their album "Beyond the Calm of the Corridor" producing the song "Addicted" together with Schlesinger and contributing guitar playing.


title: James Iha

text: Iha scored the Japanese film "Linda, Linda, Linda", released in late summer of 2005. The same year he teamed with Schlesinger again to produce a duet cover of Bobby Darin's "Splish Splash" for the soundtrack to the Wayne Wang film "Because of Winn-Dixie". The same year Iha contributed guitar to some tracks of Chino Moreno's band Team Sleep second album, which has yet to be released.


title: James Iha

text: Iha produced two tracks on the 2006 tribute album to Serge Gainsbourg, "Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited", "I love you (me either)", that featured Cat Power and model Karen Elson singing and "L'Hotel" with Michael Stipe on vocals. Iha recorded on the track "The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde" in a duet with singer Kazu Makino (of Blonde Redhead) on the US edition of the album.


title: James Iha

text: In February 2006, a digital EP "In the Sun" produced by Iha featuring Michael Stipe and Chris Martin was released. The EP was for the benefit of Gulf Coast victims of Hurricane Katrina. The song was featured on an episode of "Grey's Anatomy". In collaboration with Stipe, Iha played guitar at the "Bring 'Em Back Home Now" concert in March 2006 in New York City to benefit Iraq War veterans peace groups such as Veterans for Peace.


title: James Iha

text: Iha remixed "Me Plus One", a track from Norwegian pop singer Annie's debut album "Anniemal". Released in October 2006, Florida pop group the Postmarks's "Goodbye" EP features a remix by Iha. That same year, Iha teamed up with Schlesinger to co-produce folk band America's comeback album, "Here & Now", and recorded on Scottish singer Isobel Campbell's album, collaborating on her renditions of traditional Irish and Scottish folk songs. In 2006 Iha recorded a cover of "Judy Is a Punk" by the Ramones for 30th anniversary of a Japanese clothing label Beams.


title: James Iha

text: In February 2007, Side-Line announced that Iha delivered a remix for the Ladytron single "Weekend Mixes" out on March 9 via Smoke & Mirrors. In April 2007, he recorded a remix for the Midnight Movies track "Patient Eye".


title: James Iha

text: Iha appeared on stage with Swedish band the Sounds, on the season finale of MTV's "Bam's Unholy Union" in April 2007 and contributed guitar to the song "Seatbacks and Traytables", on Fountains of Wayne's 2007 album "Traffic and Weather". His former bandmate Melissa Auf der Maur contributed to that album.


title: James Iha

text: In the spring of 2007, Iha told "Rolling Stone" magazine that he was writing and recording songs for a second solo album. In the spring of 2007, Iha remixed Midnight Movies and the Postmarks as freebies on the Internet. A Chicago weekly reported in June 2007 that Iha had been living in New York City for some time, running a recording studio and independent label. Iha had lived in Manhattan since 2000 and has since moved to Brooklyn.


title: James Iha

text: In May 2008, Marilyn Manson said that Iha would be making a guest appearance on his new record; however, Iha was not credited as a guitarist on the album.


title: James Iha

text: On December 22, 2008, the Swedish band A Camp (the solo project of the Cardigans vocalist Nina Persson) put out a press release announcing that their new album would come out on April 28, 2009, featuring guest appearances by Iha and other musicians.


title: James Iha

text: On February 17, 2009, it was announced that Iha had, together with Taylor Hanson, Fountains of Wayne bassist Adam Schlesinger, and Cheap Trick drummer Bun E. Carlos formed a new band called Tinted Windows. The band played their first publicized gig at SXSW in Austin, Texas on March 20. Their first album was released on April 21, 2009 to generally positive reviews.


title: James Iha

text: In April 2010, Iha' website reopened. According to the site, Iha considered his next solo album "halfway done (in his mind)". Shortly thereafter, a picture of Iha with Kelly Pratt and Jon Natchez from the band Beirut was posted on the Web site saying they would be playing horns on the album.


title: James Iha

text: In August 2010, members of A Perfect Circle posted messages to their Twitter accounts telling fans of their return after a 6-year long hiatus. The band later announced tour dates in which they would be playing the entirety of each of their three albums at each concert, with one album being played per night. It was announced that the line-up would consist of Maynard James Keenan, Billy Howerdel, Josh Freese, Matt McJunkins, and Iha.


title: James Iha

text: Iha's second solo album titled "Look to the Sky" was released in March 2012. To begin its promotion, Iha performed at the 2nd EMI ROCKS festival in Saitama, Japan in February 2012, and later in December that year performing a small European tour in London, Paris, Amsterdam and Lisbon.


title: James Iha

text: In 2013, under management of David Bason, Iha collaborated with Japanese musician Yukihiro Takahashi, writing songs for and performing on Takahashi's album "Life Anew", and performing as part of Takahashi's band "In Phase" on tours in Japan.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), also known as the Lord's Resistance Movement, is a rebel group and heterodox Christian group which operates in northern Uganda, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Originally known as the United Holy Salvation Army and Uganda Christian Army/Movement, its stated goals include establishment of multi-party democracy, ruling Uganda according to the Ten Commandments, and Acholi nationalism.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: In practice "the LRA is not motivated by any identifiable political agenda, and its military strategy and tactics reflect this". It appears to largely function as a personality cult of its leader Joseph Kony, a self-declared prophet whose leadership has earned him the nickname "Africa's David Koresh".


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: The LRA was listed as a terrorist group by the United States, though it has since been removed from the list of designated active terrorist groups. It has been accused of widespread human rights violations, including murder, abduction, mutilation, child-sex slavery, and recruitment of child soldiers.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: Bantu-speaking agriculturists such as the Baganda people in Uganda's south and east developed different and competing for social and economic structures from the Nilotic language speaking Acholi in the north, whose economic system was centred around hunting, farming and livestock herding. The ethnic and cultural divisions within Uganda continued to exist during the years of the British Uganda Protectorate, which was created in 1894. While the agricultural Baganda people worked closely with the British, the Acholi and other northern ethnic groups supplied much of the national manual labour and came to comprise a majority of the military.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: The southern region became the centre for commercial trade development. The livestock-raising Acholi from the north of Uganda were resented for dominating the army and policing. Following the country's independence in 1962, Uganda's ethnic groups continued to compete with each other within the bounds of Uganda's new political system.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: In 1986, the armed rebellion led by Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance Army (NRA) won the Ugandan Bush War and took control of the country. The victors sought vengeance against ethnic groups in the North of Uganda. Their activities included Operation Simsim, which engaged in burning, looting, and killings of locals.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: Such acts of violence led to the formation of rebel groups from the ranks of the previous Ugandan army, UNLA. Many of those groups made peace with Museveni. However, the southern-dominated army did not stop attacking civilians in the north of the country. Therefore, by late 1987 to early 1988, a civilian resistance movement led by Alice Lakwena was formed.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: Lakwena did not pick up arms against the central government; her members carried sticks and stones. She believed she was inspired by the Holy Spirit of God. Lakwena portrayed herself as a prophet who received messages from the Holy Spirit and expressed the belief that the Acholi could defeat the Museveni government. She preached that her followers should cover their bodies with shea nut oil as protection from bullets, never take cover or retreat in battle, and never kill snakes or bees.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: Joseph Kony would later preach a similar superstition, encouraging soldiers to use oil to draw a cross on their chest as protection from bullets. During a later interview, however, Alice Lakwena distanced herself from Kony, claiming that the Spirit does not want soldiers to kill civilians or prisoners of war.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: Kony sought to align himself with Lakwena and, in turn garner support from her constituents, even going so far as to claim they were cousins. Meanwhile, Kony gained a reputation as having been possessed by spirits and became a spiritual figure or a medium. He and a small group of followers first moved beyond his home village of Odek on 1 April 1987. A few days later, he met a group of former Uganda National Liberation Front soldiers from the Black Battalion whom he managed to recruit. They then launched a raid on the city of Gulu.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: By August 1987, Lakwena's Holy Spirit Mobile Force scored several victories on the battlefield and began a march towards the capital Kampala. In 1988, after the Holy Spirit Movement was decisively defeated in the Jinja District and Lakwena fled to Kenya, Kony seized this opportunity to recruit the Holy Spirit remnants. The LRA occasionally carried out local attacks to underline the inability of the government to protect the population. The fact that most National Resistance Army (NRA) government forces, in particular, former members of the Federal Democratic Movement (FEDEMO), were known for their lack of discipline and brutal actions meant that the civilian population was accused of supporting the rebel LRA; likewise, the rebels accused the population of supporting the government army.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: In March 1991, the Ugandan government's NRA started Operation North, which combined efforts to destroy the LRA, while cutting away its roots of support among the population through heavy-handed tactics. As part of Operation North, the army created the "Arrow Groups", village guards mostly armed with bows and arrows. The creation of the Arrow Groups angered Kony, who began to feel that he no longer had the support of the population. After the failure of Operation North, Betty Bigombe initiated the first face-to-face meeting between representatives of the rebel LRA and NRA government. The rebels asked for a general amnesty for their combatants and to "return home", but the government stance was hampered by disagreement over the credibility of the LRA negotiators and political infighting. At a meeting in January 1994, Kony asked for six months to regroup his troops, but by early February the tone of the negotiations was growing increasingly acrimonious and the LRA broke off negotiations, accusing the government of trying to entrap them.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: Starting in the mid-1990s, the LRA was strengthened by military support from the government of Sudan, which was retaliating against Ugandan government support for rebels in what would become South Sudan. The LRA fought with the NRA army which led to mass atrocities such as the killing or abduction of several hundred villagers in Atiak in 1995 and the kidnapping of 139 schoolgirls in Aboke in 1996. The government created the so-called "protected camps" beginning in 1996. The LRA declared a short-lived ceasefire for the duration of 1996 Ugandan presidential election, possibly in the hope that Yoweri Museveni would be defeated.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: In March 2002, the NRA, under the new name of the Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF), launched a massive military offensive code-named Operation Iron Fist against the LRA bases in southern Sudan, with agreement from the National Islamic Front. In retaliation, the LRA attacked the refugee camps in northern Uganda and the Eastern Equatoria in southern Sudan, brutally killing hundreds of civilians.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: By 2004, according to the UPDF spokesman Shaban Bantariza, mediation efforts by the Carter Center and the Pope John Paul II had been spurned by Kony. In February 2004, the LRA unit led by Okot Odhiambo attacked Barlonyo IDP camp, killing over 300 people and abducting many others.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: In 2006, UNICEF estimated that the LRA had abducted at least 25,000 children since the conflict began. In January 2006, eight Guatemalan Kaibiles commandos and at least 15 rebels were killed in a botched UN special forces raid targeting the LRA deputy leader Vincent Otti in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the LRA attacks and the government's counter-insurgency measures have resulted in the displacement of nearly 95 percent of the Acholi population in three districts of northern Uganda. By 2006, 1.7 million people lived in more than 200 internally displaced person (IDP) camps in northern Uganda. These camps had some of the highest mortality rates in the world. The Ugandan Ministry of Health and partners estimated that through the first seven months of 2005, about 1,000 people were dying weekly, chiefly from malaria and AIDS. During the same time period of January–July 2005, the LRA abducted 1,286 Ugandans (46.4 percent of whom were children under the age of 15 years), and violence accounted for 9.4 percent of the 28,283 deaths, occurring mostly outside camps.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: In 2006–2008, a series of meetings were held in Juba, Sudan, between the government of Uganda and the LRA, mediated by the south Sudanese separatist leader Riek Machar. The Ugandan government and the LRA signed a truce on 26 August 2006. Under the terms of the agreement, LRA forces would leave Uganda and gather in two assembly areas in the remote Garamba National Park area of northern Democratic Republic of Congo that the Ugandan government agreed not to attack.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: Between December 2008 – March 2009, the armed forces of Uganda, DR Congo and South Sudan launched aerial attacks and raids on the LRA camps in Garamba, destroying them. The efforts to inflict a military defeat on the LRA were not fully successful. The U.S.-supported Operation Lightning Thunder against the LRA. There were brutal revenge attacks by scattered LRA remnants, with over 1,000 people killed and hundreds abducted in Congo and South Sudan. Hundreds of thousands were displaced while fleeing the massacres. The military action in the DRC did not result in the capture or killing of Kony, who remained elusive.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: During the Christmas of 2008, the LRA massacred at least 143 people and abducted 180 at a concert celebration sponsored by the Catholic Church in Faradje in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The LRA struck several other communities in the near-simultaneous attacks: 75 people were murdered in a church near Dungu, at least 80 were killed in Batande, 48 in Bangadi, and 213 in Gurba.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: By August 2009, the LRA terror in the DRC resulted in displacing as many as 320,000 Congolese, exposing them to a threat of famine, according to UNICEF director Ann Veneman. Also in August 2009, the LRA attacked a Catholic church in Ezo, South Sudan, on the Feast of the Assumption, with reports of victims being crucified, causing Ugandan Archbishop John Baptist Odama to call on the international community for help in finding a peaceful solution to the crisis.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: In December 2009, the LRA forces under Dominic Ongwen killed at least 321 civilians and abducted 250 others during a four-day rampage in the village and region of Makombo in the DR Congo. In February 2010, about 100 people were massacred by the LRA in Kpanga, near DR Congo's border with the Central African Republic and Sudan. Small-scale attacks continued daily, displacing large numbers of people and worsening an ongoing humanitarian crisis which the UN described as one of the worst in the world.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: By May 2010, the LRA killed over 1,600 Congolese civilians and abducted more than 2,500. Between September 2008 and July 2011, the group, despite being down to only a few hundred fighters, has killed more than 2,300 people, abducted more than 3,000, and displaced over 400,000 across the DR Congo, South Sudan and the Central African Republic.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: In March 2012, Uganda announced it would head a new four-nation African Union military force (a brigade of 5,000, including contingents from the DR Congo, Central African Republic and South Sudan) to hunt down Kony and the remnants of the LRA, but asked for more international assistance for the task force. In 2012 the LRA was reported to be in Djema, Central African Republic but forces pursuing the LRA withdrew in April 2013 after the government of the Central African Republic was overthrown by the Séléka Coalition rebels.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: Part of the structural causes of the LRA conflict has been explained as rooted in the "diversity of ethnic groups which were at different levels of socio-economic development and political organization".


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: This has led to ethnic strife. Enemy images have instilled insensitivity to the extent that people perceived as enemies can be construed and ignored as inconsequential. A former Cabinet minister who was a key figure in the Presidential Peace Team while addressing elders in Lango on the atrocities committed by the NRA in the northern districts of Gulu, Kitgum, Lira, Apac and Teso, warned them that "they did not matter as long as the south was stable". This sense of betrayal on the northerners has festered into a groundswell of mistrust by the population against virtually any overtures from the government to the rebels.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: This cynical strategy, some argue, was deeply rooted and employed in Luwero triangle by the NRM/A rebels during their five-year-bush war in order to garner popular support, while in essence, their real underlying drive was "unique greed for absolute political power" in total abhorrence of democratic means.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: The strong imbalance in the level of development and investment between Eastern & Northern Uganda on the one side, and Central & Western Uganda on the other perceived as the land of milk and honey, is a clear manifestation of economic marginalisation of the region, in spite of the fact that most top leadership in Uganda hailed from the north between 1962 and 1985. This marginalisation, deliberate or otherwise, with the adverse consequences of the war, has resulted in disparate poverty levels in northern Uganda, for the most part of the NRM's 20 plus years’ rule.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: Although poverty at times may be treated as an escalating factor that creates resentment in society, its role in the conflict in northern Uganda is part and parcel of the underlying structural factors. The Poverty Status Report, 2003, indicates that "one-third of the chronically poor (30.1%) and a disproportionate moving into poverty are from northern Uganda".


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: The LRA is a consequence of an ethnic-oriented war that was initiated by the NRM/A in Luwero Triangle against the ‘northerners’. This was fuelled by the belief on the part of the leadership of the NRM/A that Uganda politics had since political independence been ‘dominated’ by the ‘northerners’ in the country and that this had happened because of their alleged domination of the armed forces. The determination was that this ‘domination’ of politics in Uganda by the ‘northerners’ was no longer acceptable and had to end. This suggested that until that objective of removing the ‘northerners’ from power had been achieved and all threats from those quarters removed, the war in the north had to continue.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: Scholar Mahmood Mamdani argues that "[t]he reason why the LRA continues is that its victims – the civilian population of the area – trust neither the LRA nor government forces." He believes that "a Ugandan political solution" ("political process"), rather than "military mobilisation" and international "escalation," is what is needed to resolve this conflict.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: The LRA's ideology is disputed among academics. Although the LRA has been regarded primarily as a Christian militia, the LRA reportedly evokes Acholi nationalism on occasion, but many observers doubt the sincerity of this behaviour and the loyalty of Kony to either ideology.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: Robert Gersony, in a report funded by United States Embassy in Kampala in 1997, concluded that "the LRA has no political program or ideology, at least none that the local population has heard or can understand." The International Crisis Group has stated that "the LRA is not motivated by any identifiable political agenda, and its military strategy and tactics reflect this."


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: IRIN comments that "the LRA remains one of the least understood rebel movements in the world, and its ideology, as far as it has one, is difficult to understand." During an interview with IRIN, the LRA commander Vincent Otti was asked about the LRA's vision of an ideal government, to which he responded:


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: In a speech delivered by James Alfred Obita, former secretary for external affairs and mobilisation of the Lord's Resistance Army, he adamantly denied that the LRA was "just an Acholi thing" and stated that claims made by the media and Museveni administration asserting that the LRA is a "group of Christian fundamentalists with bizarre beliefs whose aim is to topple the Museveni regime and replace it with governance based on the Bible's ten commandments" were false. In the same speech, Obita also claimed that the LRA's objectives are:


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: The original aims of the group were more closely aligned with those of its predecessor, the Holy Spirit Movement. Protection of the Acholi population was of great concern because of the reality of ethnic purges in the history of Uganda. This created a great deal of concern in the Acholi community as well as a strong desire for formidable leadership and protection. As the conflict has progressed, fewer and fewer Acholi offered sufficient support to the rebels in the eyes of the LRA. This led to an increased amount of violence toward the non-combatant population, which in turn further alienated them from the rebels. This self-perpetuating cycle led to the creation of a strict divide between Acholis and rebels, a divide that was previously not explicitly present.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: In 2007, the government of Uganda claimed that the LRA had only 500 or 1,000 soldiers in total, but other sources estimated that there could have been as many as 3,000 soldiers, along with about 1,500 women and children. By 2011, unofficial estimates were in the range of 300 to 400 combatants, with more than half believed to be abductees. The soldiers are organized into independent squads of 10 or 20 soldiers.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: By early 2012, the LRA had been reduced to a force of between 200 and 250 fighters, according to Ugandan defence minister Crispus Kiyonga. Abou Moussa, the UN envoy in the region, said in March 2012 that the LRA was believed to have dwindled to between 200 and 700 followers but still remained a threat: "The most important thing is that no matter how little the LRA may be, it still constitutes a danger [as] they continue to attack and create havoc."


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: Since the LRA first started fighting in the 1990s they may have forced well over 10,000 boys and girls into combat, often killing family, neighbors and school teachers in the process. Many of these children were put on the front lines so the casualty rate for these children has been high. The LRA have often used children to fight because they are easy to replace by raiding schools or villages. According to Livingstone Sewanyana, executive director of the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative, the government was the first to use child soldiers in this conflict.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: Although this is not proven, there has been rumors that Sudan may have provided military assistance to the LRA, in response to Uganda lending military support to the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). According to Matthew Green, author of "The Wizard of the Nile: The Hunt for Africa’s Most Wanted", the LRA was highly organised and equipped with crew-operated weapons, VHF radios and satellite phones. In 2001, it was also reported that LRA targets Sudanese refugees.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants on 8 July and 27 September 2005, against Joseph Kony, his deputy Vincent Otti, and the LRA commanders Okot Odhiambo, deputy army commander and Dominic Ongwen, brigade commander of the Sania Brigade of the LRA. The four LRA leaders were charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder, rape, and sexual slavery. Ongwen was the only of the four not charged with recruiting child soldiers. The warrants were filed under seal; public redacted versions were released on 13 October 2005.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: These were the first warrants issued by the ICC since it was established in 2002. Details of the warrants were sent to the three countries where the LRA is active: Uganda, Sudan (the LRA was active in what is now South Sudan), and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The LRA leadership has long stated that they would never surrender unless they were granted immunity from prosecution; so the ICC order to arrest them raised concerns that the insurgency would not have a negotiated end.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: The indictments received warm praise within the international community. However, the Acholi people showed mixed reactions. Many felt that amnesty for the LRA soldiers and a negotiated settlement was the best hope for the end of the war. In the end, the court's intent to prosecute the leaders of the LRA reduced the army's willingness to cooperate in peace negotiations.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: On 30 November 2005, the LRA deputy commander, Vincent Otti, contacted the BBC announcing a renewed desire among the LRA leadership to hold peace talks with the Ugandan government. The government expressed skepticism regarding the overture but stated their openness to a peaceful resolution of the conflict.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: On 2 June 2006, Interpol issued five wanted person red notices to 184 countries on behalf of the ICC, which has no police of its own. Kony had been previously reported to have met Vice President of South Sudan Riek Machar. The next day, Human Rights Watch reported that the regional government of Southern Sudan had ignored previous ICC warrants for the arrest of four of LRA's top leaders, and instead supplied the LRA with cash and food as an incentive to stop them from attacking southern Sudanese citizens.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: At least two of the five wanted LRA leaders have since been killed: Lukwiya in August 2006 and Otti in late 2007 (executed by Kony). Odhiambo was rumoured to have been killed in April 2008. In February, 2015, UPDF forces found the body of an unidentified person. Later on in April, DNA tests identified that the body was that of Odhiambo.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: In July 2011, South Sudan seceded from Sudan, cutting the LRA off geopolitically from its former allies in Khartoum.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: In January 2015, Dominic Ongwen was reported either to have defected or to have been captured and was held by the Ugandan forces. He was successively tansfered from Ugandan forces to Central African Republic forces before ultimately entering into custody of the ICC. Ongwen made his first appearance before the ICC on 26 January 2015. In a trial that lasted between 6 December 2016 to 12 March 2020, 4,095 victims were granted the right to participate and represented in court. In February 2021, the ICC found him guilty of 61 crimes including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of forced marriage.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: In late 2013, Ugandan forces, alerted by U.S. troops, killed chief planner Colonel Samuel Kangul, amongst others.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: The United States provides support for military efforts, notably by the UPDF against the LRA. Some observers have reported that the United States is involved for reasons other than the LRA.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: After the 11 September attacks, the United States declared the Lord's Resistance Army to be a terrorist group. On 28 August 2008, the United States Department of State sanctioned Joseph Kony as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under Executive Order 13224 "Specially Designated Global Terrorists", a designation that carries financial and other penalties.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: In November 2008, U.S. President George W. Bush personally signed a directive to the United States Africa Command to provide assistance financially and logistically to the Ugandan government during the unsuccessful Garamba Offensive, code-named Operation Lightning Thunder. No U.S. troops were directly involved, but 17 U.S. advisers and analysts provided intelligence, equipment, and fuel to Ugandan military counterparts. The offensive pushed Kony from his jungle camp, but he was not captured. One hundred children were rescued.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: In May 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama signed into law the Lord's Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, legislation aimed at stopping Joseph Kony and the LRA. The bill passed unanimously in the Senate on 11 March 2010, with 65 senators as cosponsors, then passed unanimously in the House of Representatives on 13 May 2010, with 202 representatives as cosponsors. On 24 November 2010, Obama delivered a strategy document to the U.S. Congress, asking for money to disarm Kony and the LRA.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: On 14 October 2011, Obama announced that he had ordered the deployment of 100 U.S. military advisors with a mandate to train, assist and provide intelligence to help combat the Lord's Resistance Army, reportedly from the Army Special Forces, at a cost of approximately $4.5 million per month. Human Rights Watch welcomed the deployment, which they had previously advocated for, and Obama said that the deployment did not need explicit approval from the U.S. Congress, as the 2010 Lord's Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act already authorised "increased, comprehensive U.S. efforts to help mitigate and eliminate the threat posed by the LRA to civilians and regional stability". The military advisors will be armed, and will provide assistance and advice, but "will not themselves engage LRA forces unless necessary for self-defense."


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: On 18 September 2012, the African Union launched an initiative in Nzara, South Sudan to take control of the fight against the LRA. The goal of the project was to co-ordinate efforts against the group by the ongoing operations conducted by the states of Uganda, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic. However, some fear that these armies are looting resources in the region. The civilians have reported rapes, killings and lootings by the Ugandan army.


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: At a ceremony to mark the handover of command in Yambio, the AU's special envoy on the LRA, Francisco Madeira, said that while the Congo DR had not sent supporting troops, it had made some other unnamed support. "We need more support, I don't have to elaborate on these because my predecessor has done this so well. We need support in terms of means of transport, communication, medicine, combat rations and uniforms for the troops tracking the LRA. This is particularly important and critical and most urgent for the central African troops who handed over their contingent despite the challenges facing them."


title: Lord's Resistance Army

text: Ugandan Defence Minister Chrispus Kiyonga said: "We are yet to fully agree on how this troops will operate because now they are going to be one force, a regional task force with its commander. There are two concepts: There are people who think that the SPLA [Sudan People Liberation Army] should only work on the side of Sudan, that the army of the Central African Republic should only work there [within its own borders]...but there is the other concept that some of us support, [which is] that once there is one unified force, co-ordinated force then it should go wherever Kony is. We think that way, it will be more effective." He added that the newest intelligence reports at the time has suggested the LRA then had only 200 guns and numbered about 500 people, including women and children.


title: The Hunger Games (novel)

text: The Hunger Games is a 2008 dystopian novel by the American writer Suzanne Collins. It is written in the perspective of 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives in the future, post-apocalyptic nation of Panem in North America. The Capitol, a highly advanced metropolis, exercises political control over the rest of the nation. The Hunger Games is an annual event in which one boy and one girl aged 12–18 from each of the twelve districts surrounding the Capitol are selected by lottery to compete in a televised battle royale to the death.


title: The Hunger Games (novel)

text: The book received critical acclaim from major reviewers and authors. It was praised for its plot and character development. In writing "The Hunger Games", Collins drew upon Greek mythology, Roman gladiatorial games, and contemporary reality television for thematic content. The novel won many awards, including the California Young Reader Medal, and was named one of "Publishers Weekly"s "Best Books of the Year" in 2008.


title: The Hunger Games (novel)

text: "The Hunger Games" was first published in hardcover on September 14, 2008, by Scholastic, featuring a cover designed by Tim O'Brien. It has since been released in paperback and also as an audiobook and ebook. After an initial print of 200,000, the book had sold 800,000 copies by February 2010. Since its release, "The Hunger Games" has been translated into 26 languages, and publishing rights have been sold in 38 territories. The novel is the first in "The Hunger Games" trilogy, followed by "Catching Fire" (2009) and "Mockingjay" (2010). A film adaptation, directed by Gary Ross and co-written and co-produced by Collins herself, was released in 2012.


title: The Hunger Games (novel)

text: Collins has said that the inspiration for "The Hunger Games" came from channel surfing on television. On one channel she observed people competing on a reality show and on another she saw footage of the invasion of Iraq. The two "began to blur in this very unsettling way" and the idea for the book was formed. The Greek myth of Theseus served as a major basis for the story, with Collins describing Katniss as a futuristic Theseus, and Roman gladiatorial games provided the framework. The sense of loss that Collins developed through her father's service in the Vietnam War was also an influence on the story, with Katniss having lost her father at age 11, five years before the story begins. Collins stated that the deaths of young characters and other "dark passages" were the most difficult parts of the book to write, but that she had accepted that passages such as these were necessary to the story. She considered the moments where Katniss reflects on happier moments in her past to be more enjoyable.


title: The Hunger Games (novel)

text: In the nation of Panem, established in the remains of North America after an unspecified apocalyptic event, the wealthy Capitol exploits the twelve surrounding districts for their natural resources and labor. District 12 is in the coal-rich region that was once Appalachia, while the Capitol is west of the Rocky Mountains. As punishment for a past failed rebellion against the Capitol, which resulted in the obliteration of District 13, one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18 from each of the 12 remaining districts are selected by an annual lottery to participate in the Hunger Games, a contest in which the "tributes" must fight to the death in an outdoor arena until only one remains.


title: The Hunger Games (novel)

text: The story is narrated by 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen from District 12, who volunteers for the 74th Hunger Games in place of her 12-year-old sister, Primrose. The male tribute is Peeta Mellark, a former schoolmate of Katniss who once gave her bread from his family's bakery when her family was starving. In the days leading up to the Games in the Capitol, they are advised by their drunken mentor, Haymitch Abernathy, the sole living District 12 victor of the Hunger Games; chaperone Effie Trinket; and various stylists to enhance their public perception to get potential sponsors, who will send potentially life-saving gifts during the Games. Katniss's stylist, Cinna, designs special costumes for Katniss and Peeta that set them apart from the tributes when introduced to the public. Due to Katniss’s fire-themed dress, she becomes known as the “Girl on Fire”. During their evaluation by the Gamemakers, Katniss unexpectedly gets the highest score among the others. Meanwhile, Rue, the petite 12-year-old girl tribute from District 11, follows Katniss and Peeta around during the training sessions. On the day before the games, in the televised interview with Caesar Flickerman, Peeta reveals his long-unrequited love for Katniss; she is initially shocked by this and believes this is a ploy to gain sponsors, but later accepts this as sincere. Haymitch then promotes their image as "star-crossed lovers".


title: The Hunger Games (novel)

text: The Games begin, and nearly half the tributes are killed in the bloodbath at the start, fighting over the weapons and supplies throughout the arena. Katniss disregards Haymitch's earlier advice to flee immediately and nearly dies but uses her well-practiced hunting and survival skills to hide in the woods. After a few days, an artificial fire drives Katniss toward the others. She is spotted and treed by the "Career tributes" from Districts 1, 2, and 4, and Peeta, who seems to have allied with them. Rue, hiding in a nearby tree, silently alerts Katniss to a “tracker jacker” nest. Katniss cuts down the nest, releasing the flying insects, which are genetically modified to track whoever disturbs their nest and have venom that targets the section of their victims’ minds that houses fear. Their venom kills one of the Careers and drives the others away, but Katniss is stung and begins hallucinating. Peeta returns, but instead of killing her, tells her to run away. Katniss later allies with Rue, but Rue is fatally wounded by the male tribute from District 1 while Katniss destroys the careers' supplies. Katniss kills Rue's killer with an arrow and accompanies Rue as she dies. She spreads flowers over Rue's body to show her defiance against the Capitol. In gratitude, Rue's district sends Katniss a loaf of bread.


title: The Hunger Games (novel)

text: A rule change is announced, allowing the tributes from the same district to win as a pair. Katniss finds Peeta (who later revealed that he allied with the Careers to protect Katniss) camouflaged into a river bank, having been injured by Cato, one of the Careers. She nurses Peeta back to health as best she can, but he is still gravely injured. Katniss pretends to be madly in love with Peeta in an attempt to gain gifts from sponsors. When the Gamemakers send a delivery of what each contestant needs most, Katniss risks her life to obtain medicine for Peeta. She is intercepted by Career Tribute Clove, who gloats over Rue's death and tries to kill Katniss, but is killed by Thresh, the male District 11 tribute, who spares Katniss for Rue's sake. The medicine saves Peeta's life.


title: The Hunger Games (novel)

text: Once Katniss and Peeta become the last two survivors, the Gamemakers revoke the rule change to force one to kill the other for a dramatic finale. In defiance, Katniss prepares to consume poisonous "nightlock" berries with Peeta. Realizing they intend to commit suicide so that there will not be a victor for the games, the Gamemakers declare Katniss and Peeta the victors. Although both of them receive a hero's welcome as a couple, Katniss is warned by Haymitch that the Capitol may take action against her for her defiance. Along the way back to District 12, Peeta is heartbroken to learn that Katniss's actions were part of a calculated ploy to gain sympathy. Katniss, however, is unsure of her own feelings and her future.


title: The Hunger Games (novel)

text: In an interview with Collins, it was noted that the novel "tackles issues like severe poverty, starvation, oppression, and the effects of war among others." The novel deals with the struggle for self-preservation that the people of Panem face in their districts and the Hunger Games in which they must participate. The citizens' starvation and their need for resources, both in and outside of the arena, create an atmosphere of helplessness that the main characters try to overcome in their fight for survival. Katniss needs to hunt to provide food for her family, resulting in the development of skills that are useful to her in the Games (such as her proficiency with the bow and arrow), and represents her rejection of the Capitol's rules in the face of life-threatening situations. On the subject of the Games' parallels with popular culture, Darren Franich of "Entertainment Weekly" writes that the book "is an incisive satire of reality television shows", and that the character of Cinna "almost seems like a contestant on a fascist version of "Project Runway", using Katniss' outfits as a vehicle to express potentially dangerous ideas."


title: The Hunger Games (novel)

text: The choices the characters make and the strategies they use are often morally complex. The tributes build a personality they want the audience to see throughout the Games. Library journal "Voice of Youth Advocates" names the major themes of "The Hunger Games" as "government control, 'big brother', and personal independence." The trilogy's theme of power and downfall, similar to that of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar", was pointed out by its publisher Scholastic. Laura Miller of "The New Yorker" finds the author's stated premise of the Games –an exercise in propaganda and a "humiliating as well as torturous [...] punishment" for a failed uprising against the Capitol many years earlier– to be unconvincing. "You don't demoralize and dehumanize a subject people by turning them into celebrities and coaching them on how to craft an appealing persona for a mass audience." But the story works much better if the theme is vicissitudes of high school and "the adolescent social experience". Miller writes:


title: The Hunger Games (novel)

text: "The rules are arbitrary, unfathomable, and subject to sudden change. A brutal social hierarchy prevails, with the rich, the good-looking, and the athletic lording their advantages over everyone else. To survive you have to be totally fake. Adults don't seem to understand how high the stakes are; your whole life could be over, and they act like it's just some "phase"! Everyone's always watching you, scrutinizing your clothes or your friends and obsessing over whether you're having sex or taking drugs or getting good enough grades, but no one cares who you really are or how you really feel about anything."


title: The Hunger Games (novel)

text: Donald Brake from "The Washington Times" and pastor Andy Langford state that the story has Christian themes, such as that of self-sacrifice, which is found in Katniss' substitution for her younger sister, analogous to the sacrifice of Jesus as a substitute for the atonement of sins. Brake, as well as another reviewer, Amy Simpson, both find that the story also revolves around the theme of hope, which is exemplified in the "incorruptible goodness of Katniss' sister, Primrose." Simpson also points to events similar to the Passion of Jesus; in the Games, "Christ figure" Peeta Mellark is stabbed after warning Katniss to flee for her life, and is then buried in the ground and placed in a cave for three days before emerging with a new lease on life. Further, she finds that the Christian image of the Bread of Life is used throughout "The Hunger Games"; in the story, Peeta gives Katniss a loaf of bread, saving the girl and her family from starvation.


title: The Hunger Games (novel)

text: After writing the novel, Collins signed a six-figure deal for three books with Scholastic. First published as a hardcover in the United States on September 14, 2008, "The Hunger Games" had a first printing of 50,000 copies, which was bumped up twice to 200,000 copies. By February 2010, the book had sold 800,000 copies, and rights to the novel had been sold in 38 territories worldwide. A few months later, in July, the book was released in paperback. "The Hunger Games" entered the "New York Times" Best Seller list in November 2008, where it would feature for over 100 consecutive weeks. By the time the film adaptation of "The Hunger Games" was released in March 2012, the book had been on "USA Today"s best-sellers list for 135 consecutive weeks and has sold over 17.5 million copies.


title: The Hunger Games (novel)

text: The novel is the first in "The Hunger Games" trilogy; it is followed by sequels "Catching Fire" (2009) and "Mockingjay" (2010). In March 2012, during the time of "The Hunger Games" film's release, Scholastic reported 26 million "Hunger Games" trilogy books in print, including movie tie-in books. "The Hunger Games" (and its sequels) have sold exceptionally well in ebook format. Suzanne Collins is the first children's or young adult author to sell over one million Amazon Kindle ebooks, making her the sixth author to join the "Kindle Million Club". In March 2012, Amazon announced that Collins had become the best-selling Kindle ebook author of all time.


title: The Hunger Games (novel)

text: An audiobook version of "The Hunger Games" was released in December 2008. Read by the actress Carolyn McCormick, it has a total running time of eleven hours and fourteen minutes. The magazine "AudioFile" said: "Carolyn McCormick gives a detailed and attentive narration. However, she may rely too much on the strength of the prose without providing the drama young adult listeners often enjoy." "School Library Journal" also praised the audiobook, stating that "McCormick ably voices the action-packed sequences and Katniss's every fear and strength shines through, along with her doomed growing attraction to one of her fellow Tributes."


title: The Hunger Games (novel)

text: The Tim O'Brien-designed cover features a gold "mockingjay" – a fictional bird in "The Hunger Games" born by crossbreeding female mockingbirds and genetically engineered male "jabberjays" – with an arrow engraved in a circle. This is a depiction of the pin worn by Katniss into the arena, given to her by the District 12 mayor's daughter, Madge Undersee. The image matches the description of the pin that is given in the novel, except for the arrow: "It's as if someone fashioned a small golden bird and then attached a ring around it. The bird is connected to the ring only by its wing tips."


title: The Hunger Games (novel)

text: "The Hunger Games" has received critical acclaim. In a review for "The New York Times", John Green wrote that the novel was "brilliantly plotted and perfectly paced", and that "the considerable strength of the novel comes in Collins's convincingly detailed world-building and her memorably complex and fascinating heroine." However, he also noted that, while allegorically rich, the book sometimes does not realize the allegorical potential that the plot has to offer and that the writing "described the action and little else." "Time" magazine's review was also positive, stating that it "is a chilling, bloody and thoroughly horrifying book" and praising what it called the "hypnotic" quality of the violence. In Stephen King's review for "Entertainment Weekly", he compared it to "shoot-it-if-it-moves videogames in the lobby of the local eightplex; you know it's not real, but you keep plugging in quarters anyway." However, he stated that there were "displays of authorial laziness that kids will accept more readily than adults" and that the love triangle was standard for the genre. He gave the book a B grade. Elizabeth Bird of "School Library Journal" praised the novel, saying it is "exciting, poignant, thoughtful, and breathtaking by turns", and called it one of the best books of 2008. "Booklist" also gave a positive review, praising the character violence and romance involved in the book. "Kirkus Reviews" gave a positive review, praising the action and world-building, but pointed out that "poor copyediting in the first printing will distract careful readers–a crying shame". Rick Riordan, author of the "Percy Jackson & the Olympians" series, claims it is the "closest thing to a perfect adventure novel" he has ever read. Stephenie Meyer (author of the "Twilight" series) endorsed the book on her website, saying, "I was so obsessed with this book ...


title: The Hunger Games (novel)

text: "The Hunger Games" received many awards and honors. It was named one of "Publishers Weekly" "Best Books of the Year" in 2008 and a "The New York Times" "Notable Children's Book of 2008". It was the 2009 winner of the Golden Duck Award in the Young Adult Fiction Category. "The Hunger Games" was also a "2008 Cybil Winner" for fantasy and science-fiction books along with "The Graveyard Book", one of "School Library Journal"s "Best Books 2008", and a "Booklist Editors' Choice" in 2008. In 2011, the book won the California Young Reader Medal. In the 2012 edition of Scholastic's "Parent and Child" magazine, "The Hunger Games" was listed as the 33rd-best book for children, with the award for "Most Exciting Ending". The novel is one of the top 5 best selling Kindle books of all time. However, the novel has also been controversial with parents; it ranked in fifth place on the American Library Association's list of frequently challenged books for 2010, with "unsuited to age group" and "violence" being among the reasons cited.


title: The Hunger Games (novel)

text: Similarities of "The Hunger Games" to Koushun Takami's 1999 novel "Battle Royale" have been noted. Collins stated that she "had never heard of that book or that author until my book was turned in. At that point, it was mentioned to me, and I asked my editor if I should read it. He said: 'No, I don't want that world in your head. Just continue with what you're doing'." Susan Dominus of "The New York Times" reports that "the parallels are striking enough that Collins's work has been savaged on the blogosphere as a baldfaced ripoff" of "Battle Royale" but argued that "there are enough possible sources for the plot line that the two authors might well have hit on the same basic setup independently." Stephen King noted that the reality TV "badlands" were similar to "Battle Royale", as well as his own novels "The Running Man" and "The Long Walk". The story has also been compared to the 1965 Italian cult film "The 10th Victim" by Elio Petri, based on Robert Sheckley's 1953 short story "Seventh Victim".


title: The Hunger Games (novel)

text: In March 2009, Lions Gate Entertainment entered into a co-production agreement for "The Hunger Games" with Nina Jacobson's production company Color Force, which had acquired worldwide distribution rights to the novel a few weeks earlier. The studio, which had not made a profit for five years, raided the budgets of other productions and sold assets to secure a budget of $88,000,000 – one of its largest ever – for the film. Collins' agent Jason Dravis remarked that "they [Lionsgate] had everyone but the valet call us" to help secure the franchise. Intending the film to have a PG-13 rating, Collins adapted the novel for film herself, in collaboration with screenwriter Billy Ray and director Gary Ross. The screenplay remains extremely faithful to the original novel, with Ross saying he "felt the only way to make the film really successful was to be totally subjective" in its presentation of events, echoing Collins' use of first person present in the novel.


title: The Hunger Games (novel)

text: Twenty-year-old actress Jennifer Lawrence was chosen to play Katniss Everdeen. Though Lawrence was four years older than the character when filming began, Collins felt the role demanded "a certain maturity and power" and said she would rather the actress be older than younger. She added that Lawrence was the "only one who truly captured the character I wrote in the book" and that she had "every essential quality necessary to play Katniss." Lawrence, a fan of the books, took three days to accept the role, initially intimidated by the size of the production. Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth were later added to the cast, in the roles of Peeta and Gale, respectively. Production began in late spring 2011 and the film was released on March 23, 2012. The film's opening weekend brought in a non-sequel record $152.5 million (USD) in North America. "", based on the second novel in the series, was released the following year on November 22, 2013.


title: Dino De Laurentiis

text: Agostino "Dino" De Laurentiis (; 8 August 1919 – 10 November 2010) was an Italian-American film producer. Along with Carlo Ponti, he was one of the producers who brought Italian cinema to the international scene at the end of World War II. He produced or co-produced more than 500 films, of which 38 were nominated for Academy Awards. He also had a brief acting career in the late 1930s and early 1940s.


title: Dino De Laurentiis

text: De Laurentiis was born at Torre Annunziata in the province of Naples, and grew up selling spaghetti made by his father's pasta factory. He studied at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome in 1937 and 1938, when his studies were interrupted by the outbreak of World War II.


title: Dino De Laurentiis

text: De Laurentiis produced his first film, "", in 1941. In 1946 his company, the Dino de Laurentiis Cinematografica, moved into production. In the early years, De Laurentiis produced Italian neorealist films such as "Bitter Rice" (1949) and the early Fellini works "La Strada" (1954) and "Nights of Cabiria" (1956), often in collaboration with producer Carlo Ponti.


title: Dino De Laurentiis

text: In the 1960s, Laurentiis built his own studio facilities. He produced such films as "Barabbas" (1961), a Christian religious epic; "" (1966); "Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die", an imitation James Bond film; "Navajo Joe" (1966), a spaghetti Western; "Anzio" (1968), a World War II film; "Barbarella" (1968) and "" (1968), both successful comic book adaptations; and "The Valachi Papers" (1972), released before its originally scheduled date in order to capitalize on the popularity of "The Godfather". His studio financially collapsed during the 1970s.


title: Dino De Laurentiis

text: De Laurentiis moved to the U.S. in 1976, and became an American citizen in 1986. In the 1980s he had his own studio, De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (DEG), based in Wilmington, North Carolina. The building of the studio made Wilmington a center of film and television production. In 1990, De Laurentiis obtained backing from an Italian friend and formed another company, Dino De Laurentiis Communications in Beverly Hills.


title: Dino De Laurentiis

text: De Laurentiis made a number of successful and/or acclaimed films, including "The Scientific Cardplayer" (1972), "Serpico" (1973), "Death Wish" (1974), "Mandingo" (1975), "Three Days of the Condor" (1975), "The Shootist" (1976), "Drum" (1976), Ingmar Bergman's "The Serpent's Egg" (1977), "Ragtime" (1981), "Conan the Barbarian" (1982), "Blue Velvet" (1986) and "Breakdown" (1997). De Laurentiis' name became well known through the 1976 "King Kong" remake, which was a commercial hit; "Lipstick" (1976), a rape and revenge drama; "Orca" (1977), a killer whale film; "The White Buffalo" (1977), a western; the disaster movie "Hurricane" (1979); the remake of "Flash Gordon" (1980); David Lynch's "Dune" (1984); and "King Kong Lives" (1986). De Laurentiis also produced several adaptations of Stephen King works, including "The Dead Zone" (1983), "Cat's Eye" (1985), "Silver Bullet" (1985), and "Maximum Overdrive" (1986). De Laurentiis's company was involved with the horror sequels "Halloween II" (1981), "Evil Dead II" (1987) and "Army of Darkness" (1992).


title: Dino De Laurentiis

text: De Laurentiis also produced the first Hannibal Lecter film, "Manhunter" (1986), an adaptation of the Thomas Harris novel "Red Dragon". He passed on adapting the novels' sequel, "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991), but produced the two follow-ups, "Hannibal" (2001) and "Red Dragon" (2002), a re-adaptation of the novel. He also produced the prequel "Hannibal Rising" (2007), which tells the story of how Hannibal becomes a serial killer.


title: Dino De Laurentiis

text: DDL Foodshow was an Italian specialty foods store with the three locations, two in New York City and one in Beverly Hills in Los Angeles. They were opened in the early 1980s and owned and operated by De Laurentiis.


title: Dino De Laurentiis

text: The first store was opened in the restored palm court in the ornate lobby of the Endicott Hotel on Manhattan's Upper West Side in close proximity to the older establishment, Zabar's food emporium on Broadway. The first NYC store opened in November 1982, and it was reported that the store "opened to crowds of 30,000 over the Thanksgiving weekend, when de Laurentiis himself greeted customers at the door." The store's assistant manager said that "it was like the premiere of a movie."


title: Dino De Laurentiis

text: Food critic Gael Greene wrote a scathing review on the opening in "New York". In an interview with the "Chicago Tribune" a month later, she admitted that the store was "probably the most stunningly handsome grocery in the world, certainly in New York," but "the pricing was insane. They hadn't paid enough attention to the competition." She reported that she'd talked to De Laurentiis: "Dino's reaction was that I'm full of it. And we're meeting over a bowl of pasta to discuss it." A review in "The San Francisco Examiner" said that it was "worth a peek and a purchase."


title: Dino De Laurentiis

text: DDL Foodshow was later considered to be a forebear of the new Italian specialty goods food-store restaurant dining attraction Eataly.


title: Dino De Laurentiis

text: His brief first marriage in Italy was annulled. In 1949, De Laurentiis married actress Silvana Mangano, with whom he had four children: Veronica; Raffaella, who is also a film producer; Federico His son, another producer who died in a plane crash in 1981 (Dino's movie "Dune" is dedicated to him); and Francesca. De Laurentiis and Mangano divorced in 1988; she died in 1989. In 1990, he married Martha Schumacher, who produced many of his films beginning in 1985, and with whom he had two daughters, Carolyna and Dina. One of his grandchildren is Giada De Laurentiis, host of "Everyday Italian", "Behind the Bash", "Giada at Home", and "Giada's Weekend Getaways" on Food Network. He was the younger brother of Luigi De Laurentiis, who became a film producer after Dino did, and uncle of Aurelio De Laurentiis, also a producer and the chairman of S.S.C. Napoli football club.


title: Dino De Laurentiis

text: In 1958, he won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film for producing "La Strada." At the time producers and directors would win the award instead of the country it was made in.


title: Dino De Laurentiis

text: In 2001, he received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.


title: Koenigsegg Agera

text: The Koenigsegg Agera is a mid-engine sports car produced by Swedish car manufacturer Koenigsegg. It is a successor to the CCX/CCXR. The name comes from the Swedish verb 'agera' which means "to act" or in imperative form "(You) act!".


title: Koenigsegg Agera

text: It was named "Hypercar of the Year" in 2010 by "Top Gear" magazine. The Agera RS variant became the world's fastest production car in 2017, setting a record with a GPS-verified two-way average top speed of and a fastest straight-line speed of .


title: Koenigsegg Agera

text: The Agera ceased production in July 2018 with the unveiling of the two final edition cars at the 2018 Goodwood Festival of Speed. It was succeeded by the Jesko in 2019.


title: Koenigsegg Agera

text: In early development, the car was fitted with a 4.7-litre V8 engine with fixed-vane twin-turbochargers, but the engine was replaced with a 5.0-litre twin-turbocharged V8 for the production version of the car.


title: Koenigsegg Agera

text: The Agera is powered by an in-house developed 5.0-litre V8 engine and fitted with twin-turbochargers which generates a maximum power output of at 6,900 rpm and of torque at 4,000 rpm. The total weight of the engine is only due to a carbon fibre inlet manifold and aluminium construction. The transmission is a specially developed CIMA 7-speed dual-clutch with paddle shifters. It is the first dual-clutch transmission to feature only one input shaft. The second clutch slows down the input shaft during up shifts in order to reduce the time it takes to synchronise the next gear, resulting in faster shift times. Most notably, the transmission weighs only .


title: Koenigsegg Agera

text: The Agera has a body made from impregnated carbon fibre/kevlar with lightweight reinforcements. The car's hardtop roof is stowable under the front hood lid. The chassis is also made out of carbon fibre with an aluminium honeycomb structure that comes with integrated fuel tanks for optimal weight distribution and safety. The rear wing is electronically adjustable with auto setting or manual control in order to have as little compromise as possible between low drag and downforce, depending on driving conditions. The Agera comes with forged aluminum wheels with centre locking nuts, measuring 19-inch on the front and 20-inch on the rear and wrapped in a set of Michelin Super Sport tyres that can be used for speeds of up to . Other notable features include the trademark "dihedral-synchro-helix-actuation" doors, a new traction control system, LED lighting, blue hood stripes that continue through the cockpit of the car and a custom interior with a new "Ghost light" lighting system, which uses carbon nanotubes in a unique configuration to shine through the car's aluminium buttons.


title: Koenigsegg Agera

text: The Agera R made its debut at the March 2011 Geneva Motor Show with a "Speed Racer" livery, and special Michelin tyres. It can accelerate from in 2.8 seconds and attain a theoretical top speed of . The Agera R has a , or at high speed due to its adaptive rear wing, while producing of downforce at . This adaptive rear wing system is lighter than conventional hydraulic/electrical adaptive systems, and has the unique ability to compensate for head/tailwind due to its spring-loaded design. Furthermore, the pylons holding the wing play not only a role in the Agera R's aerodynamic performance, but also assist in extracting hot air from the engine bay.


title: Koenigsegg Agera

text: On 2 September 2011, during test sessions in Ängelholm, the Agera R broke six world land speed records for a production car, including in 14.53 seconds, and 0–300–0 km/h in only 21.19 seconds. The braking performance required to maintain this record is enabled in part by the Agera's stability, demonstrated by Koenigsegg test driver and drivetrain technician Robert Serwanski, who was recorded by passenger Rob Ferretti (founder of the group "Super Speeders") braking from 300 km/h to 0 without holding the steering wheel.


title: Koenigsegg Agera

text: The Agera R can produce lateral cornering forces of 1.60 G, due to a combination of mechanical balance and high levels of grip from the specially developed Michelin Supersport tyres.


title: Koenigsegg Agera

text: The 2013 version of the Agera R premiered at the 2012 Geneva Motor Show. Upgrades included carbon fibre wheels, enhanced aerodynamics, and engine upgrades allowing the Agera R's twin-turbo V8 engine to have a power output of at 7,100 rpm and of torque at 4,100 rpm on E85 biofuel. Koenigsegg's Flex Fuel Sensor technology allows the ECU to respond to varying fuel qualities and alcohol content by reducing power levels as a means of protecting the engine. On standard low-octane fuels, power is reduced to .


title: Koenigsegg Agera

text: The Agera R was featured prominently in the "Need for Speed" franchise, prominently in Criterion Games' "" (2012) and Ghost Games' "Need for Speed Rivals" (2013). Replicas of the Agera R were featured in the 2014 film "Need for Speed". It is also featured in the 2013 mobile game "Real Racing 3", Nitro Nation Drag & Drift (2014) and CSR Racing(2012)


title: Koenigsegg Agera

text: Koenigsegg presented the Agera S model in 2013. Built for markets lacking E85 biofuel, the Agera S has most of the upgrades of the Agera R compared to the normal Agera including the dynamic wing, but is optimised for running on low-octane petrol generating a maximum power output of and of torque compared to the and of torque of an Agera R running on the same fuel. In 2013, one Agera S was the 100th Koenigsegg ever produced, celebrated by a specially-built car with gold leaf inlays named "Hundra" (Swedish for "one hundred").


title: Koenigsegg Agera

text: On 10 June 2014, NAZA Swedish Motors launched the Agera S in Malaysia. It was the second Koenigsegg after the CCXR to arrive in the country, thus setting a new market for Koenigsegg. It was priced at before taxes and it was estimated that it will be priced at with government tax and duties—making it one of the most expensive cars in the country. The Agera S is the only model offered in Malaysia due to the absence of E85 biofuel there.<ref name="Koenigsegg Agera S marks brand's Malaysian debut – 1,030 hp / 1,100 Nm, priced at RM5 million before tax"></ref>


title: Koenigsegg Agera

text: The Koenigsegg One:1 was presented at the 2014 Geneva Motor Show held in March. Koenigsegg built six cars apart from the car presented at the Geneva Motor Show, all of which were already sold. Koenigsegg took two cars to the 2014 Goodwood Festival of Speed, where they were displayed alongside other sports cars such as the McLaren P1, LaFerrari, the Porsche 918 Spyder and the Pagani Huayra.


title: Koenigsegg Agera

text: The car is fitted with a variant of the same 5.0 L twin-turbocharged V8 engine used in the other Agera variants. It generates a maximum power output of at 7,500 rpm and of torque at 6,000 rpm. The transmission is a 7-speed dual clutch paddle shift as used in other variants of the Agera.


title: Koenigsegg Agera

text: The name One:1 comes from the power-to-weight ratio (1,360 PS to 1360 kg) giving the car 1 PS per 1 kg mass. The 1,360 PS power output is the equivalent of one megawatt, which Koenigsegg claims make the One:1 the 'world's first megacar'. The car is track-focused as opposed to the previous cars made by Koenigsegg, leading to changes such as limited boot space.


title: Koenigsegg Agera

text: The Agera RS was unveiled at the 2015 Geneva Motor Show, along with the prototype version of the Regera. The Agera RS is an advanced version of the Agera R, implementing some of the new technology and features of the One:1 and combining the features of the Agera R and the Agera S. Koenigsegg billed it as "the ultimate track tool" due to its lightweight features and track optimised technologies. The Agera RS produces 450 kg of downforce at 250 km/h. The 5.0-litre V8 engine now has a power output of on regular pump gasoline. The optional 1-megawatt package increases the engine's power to . 27 units of the Agera RS were built. The model was initially going to be limited to 25 units, however two extra cars were built, one being the factory development car and one as a replacement for a customer car damaged while it was being used for shakedown testing (Agera RS Phoenix built after the crash of Agera RS Gryphon). Each Agera RS could be fully customised by its owner.


title: Koenigsegg Agera

text: At the 2016 Geneva Motor Show, a final three-car series of the Agera was announced as a final celebration of the Agera range and as the last models to wear the Agera badge. The cars could be fully customised and combined with the Agera RS chassis with the One:1 engine. The first car to be unveiled was called the 'One of One'. It featured a unique orange paint scheme with bare carbon and blue accents. The exterior of the car was complemented with a large adjustable rear wing similar to the One:1 and triple front canards along with a large front splitter.


title: Koenigsegg Agera

text: The other two distinct final edition cars were unveiled online in July 2018 and were called 'Agera FE Thor' and 'Agera FE Väder' respectively. Thor features a custom two-tone black paintwork consisting of crushed diamonds and white accents. The exterior features a large rear wing reminiscent of that found on the Agera XS, and a different set of front canards, along with a large front splitter and a Le Mans-style central fin for improved downforce, setting it apart from the rest of the Agera models. Väder features the same crushed diamond paintwork with a bare carbon fibre centre along with white accents, incorporating the same rear wing as Thor but excludes the central fin. Both cars made their public appearance at the 2018 Goodwood Festival of Speed.


title: Koenigsegg Agera

text: There have been many special editions of the Agera built on customer request. Such special editions include:


title: Koenigsegg Agera

text: On 1 October 2017, the Agera RS made the record in 36.44 seconds, 5.56 seconds faster than the record made by the Bugatti Chiron. The record was achieved on an old Danish airbase in Vandel, Denmark. The car was driven by Koenigsegg test driver Niklas Lilja. Koenigsegg mentioned that during the record run, the car accelerated from 0–400 km/h in 26.88 seconds over a distance of 1,958 metres and decelerated in 9.56 seconds over a distance of 483 metres. The total distance used for the record was 2,441 metres. During the speed record run on 4 November 2017, Koenigsegg also broke their previous 0–400–0 km/h record by 2.57 seconds. However, the record was broken by a Koenigsegg Regera − which completed the run in 31.49 seconds on 23 September 2019.


title: Koenigsegg Agera

text: On 4 November 2017, Koenigsegg made the production car speed record with an Agera RS recording an average speed of . The car achieved a speed of during its northbound run and during its southbound (return run). Official confirmation of the record by Guinness World Records still awaits. The car was driven by Koenigsegg test driver Niklas Lilja. The record run was made in opposite directions on an section of Nevada State Route 160 between Las Vegas and Pahrump in the United States which was closed specifically for that purpose. The record was broken by the SSC Tuatara on 17 January 2021. However, it is still controversial that whether SSC Tuatara is a "production car" yet as only 1 car is sold so far and that has been questioned too.


title: Koenigsegg Agera

text: The successor of the Agera called the Jesko was unveiled at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show. The potential replacement was shown to prospective buyers via VR in an event held in Australia by the company beforehand.


title: Obelisk

text: An obelisk (; from ; diminutive of "obelos", "spit, nail, pointed pillar") is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape or pyramidion at the top. Originally constructed by Ancient Egyptians and called "tekhenu", the Greeks used the Greek term to describe them, and this word passed into Latin and ultimately English. Ancient obelisks are monolithic; they consist of a single stone. Most modern obelisks are made of several stones.


title: Obelisk

text: Obelisks were prominent in the architecture of the ancient Egyptians, and played a vital role in their religion placing them in pairs at the entrance of the temples. The word "obelisk" as used in English today is of Greek rather than Egyptian origin because Herodotus, the Greek traveler, was one of the first classical writers to describe the objects. A number of ancient Egyptian obelisks are known to have survived, plus the "Unfinished Obelisk" found partly hewn from its quarry at Aswan. These obelisks are now dispersed around the world, and fewer than half of them remain in Egypt.


title: Obelisk

text: The earliest temple obelisk still in its original position is the red granite Obelisk of Senusret I of the Twelfth Dynasty at Al-Matariyyah in modern Heliopolis.


title: Obelisk

text: In Egyptian mythology, the obelisk symbolized the sun god Ra, and during the religious reformation of Akhenaten it was said to have been a petrified ray of the Aten, the sundisk. Benben was the mound that arose from the primordial waters Nu upon which the creator god Atum settled in the creation story of the Heliopolitan creation myth form of Ancient Egyptian religion. The Benben stone (also known as a pyramidion) is the top stone of the Egyptian pyramid. It is also related to the obelisk.


title: Obelisk

text: It is hypothesized by New York University Egyptologist Patricia Blackwell Gary and "Astronomy" senior editor Richard Talcott that the shapes of the ancient Egyptian pyramid and obelisk were derived from natural phenomena associated with the sun (the sun-god Ra being the Egyptians' greatest deity at that time). The pyramid and obelisk's significance have been previously overlooked, especially the astronomical phenomena connected with sunrise and sunset: Zodiacal light and sun pillars respectively.


title: Obelisk

text: Ancient Nubian kings of the twenty-fifth Dynasty sought to legitimize their rule over Egypt by constructing Egyptianizing monuments in the Middle Nile region. Historical sources mention that king Piye built at least one obelisk. The obelisk was made of local black granite and was found at the site of Kadakol. It had been cut down to make it into a column, presumably for one of the early Christian churches in the area of Old Dongola. Today the obelisk is exhibited in the National Museum in Khartoum. The obelisk is inscribed with the kings official titulary: "Strong-bull, Appearing-in-Dominion (Thebes), King-of-Upper-and-Lower-Egypt, Two-ladies, Ruler-of-Egypt, Son-of-Rê, Pi(ankh)y: what he made as his monument for his father Amen-Rê, lord of [...]".


title: Obelisk

text: An obelisk of King Senkamanisken was found at Gebel Barkal in 1916 by the Harvard University Museum of Fine Arts expedition to Sudan. There are remains of another small obelisk inscribed with the cartouche of King Aktisanes at the site of Gebel Barkal.


title: Obelisk

text: Around 30 BCE, Rome seized control of Egypt and looted the various temple complexes, in one case they destroyed walls at the Temple of Karnak to haul them out. There are now more than twice as many obelisks that were seized and shipped out by Rome as remain in Egypt. The majority were dismantled during the Roman period over 1,700 years ago and the obelisks were sent to different locations.


title: Obelisk

text: The largest standing and tallest Egyptian obelisk is the Lateran Obelisk in the square at the west side of the Lateran Basilica in Rome at tall and a weight of . More well known is the iconic , obelisk at Saint Peter's Square. Brought to Rome by the Emperor Caligula in 37 CE, it has stood at its current site and on the wall of the Circus of Nero, flanking St Peter's Basilica.


title: Obelisk

text: Pope Sixtus V was determined to erect the obelisk in front of St Peter's, of which the nave was yet to be built. He had a full-sized wooden mock-up erected within months of his election. Domenico Fontana, the assistant of Giacomo Della Porta in the Basilica's construction, presented the Pope with a little model crane of wood and a heavy little obelisk of lead, which Sixtus himself was able to raise by turning a little winch with his finger. Fontana was given the project. Half-buried in the debris of the ages, it was first excavated as it stood; then it took from 30 April to 17 May 1586 to move it on rollers to the Piazza: it required nearly 1000 men, 140 carthorses, and 47 cranes. The re-erection, scheduled for 14 September, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, was watched by a large crowd. It was a famous feat of engineering, which made the reputation of Fontana, who detailed it in a book illustrated with copperplate etchings, "Della Trasportatione dell'Obelisco Vaticano et delle Fabriche di Nostro Signore Papa Sisto V" (1590), which itself set a new standard in communicating technical information and influenced subsequent architectural publications by its meticulous precision. Before being re-erected the obelisk was exorcised. It is said that Fontana had teams of relay horses to make his getaway if the enterprise failed. When Carlo Maderno came to build the Basilica's nave, he had to put the slightest kink in its axis, to line it precisely with the obelisk.


title: Obelisk

text: Three more obelisks were erected in Rome under Sixtus V: at Santa Maria Maggiore, in 1587; at the Lateran Basilica, in 1588; and at the Piazza del Popolo, in 1589. An obelisk stands in front of the church of Trinità dei Monti, at the head of the Spanish Steps. Another obelisk in Rome is sculpted as carried on the back of an elephant. Rome lost one of its obelisks, the Boboli obelisk which had decorated the temple of Isis, where it was uncovered in the 16th century. The Medici claimed it for the Villa Medici, but in 1790 they moved it to the Boboli Gardens attached to the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, and left a replica in its place.


title: Obelisk

text: Not all the Egyptian obelisks in the Roman Empire were set up at Rome: Herod the Great imitated his Roman patrons and set up a red granite Egyptian obelisk in the hippodrome of his new city Caesarea in northern Judea. This one is about tall and weighs about . It was discovered by archaeologists and has been re-erected at its former site.


title: Obelisk

text: In 357 CE, Emperor Constantius II had two Karnak Temple obelisks removed and transported down the Nile to Alexandria to commemorate his "ventennalia", the 20th year of his reign. Afterward, one was sent to Rome and erected on the "spina" of the Circus Maximus, and is today known as the Lateran Obelisk. The other one, known as the Obelisk of Theodosius, remained in Alexandria until 390 CE, when Emperor Theodosius I had it transported to Constantinople (now Istanbul) and put up on the "spina" of the Hippodrome of Constantinople (now Sultan Ahmet Square). It once stood tall and weighed ; however, its lower section (which reputedly also once stood in the hippodrome) is now lost, reducing the obelisk's size to .


title: Obelisk

text: The Ancient Romans populated their city with 8 large and 42 small Egyptian obelisks. More have been re-erected elsewhere, and the best-known examples outside Rome are the pair of Cleopatra's Needles in London, England (), and New York City, USA (), and the over- Luxor Obelisk at the Place de la Concorde in Paris, France.


title: Obelisk

text: Obelisks were being shipped out of Egypt as late as the nineteenth century when three of them were sent to London, New York and Paris. Their transportation was covered by various newspapers.


title: Obelisk

text: Obelisk monuments are also known from the Assyrian civilization, where they were erected as public monuments that commemorated the achievements of the Assyrian king.


title: Obelisk

text: The White Obelisk of Ashurnasirpal I (named due to its colour), was discovered by Hormuzd Rassam in 1853 at Nineveh. The obelisk was erected by either Ashurnasirpal I (1050–1031 BCE) or Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 BCE). The obelisk bears an inscription that refers to the king's seizure of goods, people and herds, which he carried back to the city of Ashur. The reliefs of the Obelisk depict military campaigns, hunting, victory banquets and scenes of tribute bearing.


title: Obelisk

text: The Rassam Obelisk, named after its discoverer Hormuzd Rassam, was found on the citadel of Nimrud (ancient Kalhu). It was erected by Ashurnasirpal II, though only survives in fragments. The surviving parts of the reliefs depict scenes of tribute bearing to the king from Syria and the west.


title: Obelisk

text: The Black Obelisk was discovered by Sir Austen Henry Layard in 1846 on the citadel of Kalhu. The obelisk was erected by Shalmaneser III and the reliefs depict scenes of tribute bearing as well as the depiction of two subdued rulers, Jehu the Israelite, and Sua the Gilzanean, making gestures of submission to the king. The reliefs on the obelisk have accompanying epigraphs, but besides these the obelisk also possesses a longer inscription that records one of the latest versions of Shalmaneser III's annals, covering the period from his accessional year to his 33rd regnal year.


title: Obelisk

text: The Broken Obelisk, that was also discovered by Rassam at Nineveh. Only the top of this monolith has been reconstructed in the British Museum. The obelisk is the oldest recorded obelisk from Assyria, dating to the 11th century BCE.


title: Obelisk

text: A number of obelisks were carved in the ancient Kingdom of Axum of today northern Ethiopia. Together with () King Ezana's Stele, the last erected one and the only unbroken, the most famous example of Axumite obelisk is the so-called () Obelisk of Axum. It was carved around the 4th century CE and, in the course of time, it collapsed and broke into three parts. In these conditions it was found by Italian soldiers in 1935, after the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, looted and taken to Rome in 1937, where it stood in the Piazza di Porta Capena. Italy signed a 1947 UN agreement to return the obelisk but did not affirm its agreement until 1997, after years of pressure and various controversial settlements. In 2003 the Italian government made the first steps toward its return, and in 2008 it was finally re-erected.


title: Obelisk

text: The largest known obelisk, the Great Stele at Axum, now fallen, at high and by at the base () is one of the largest single pieces of stone ever worked in human history (the largest is either at Baalbek or the Ramesseum) and probably fell during erection or soon after, destroying a large part of the massive burial chamber underneath it. The obelisks, properly termed stelae or the native "hawilt" or "hawilti" as they do not end in a pyramid, were used to mark graves and underground burial chambers. The largest of the grave markers were for royal burial chambers and were decorated with multi-storey false windows and false doors, while nobility would have smaller less decorated ones. While there are only a few large ones standing, there are hundreds of smaller ones in "stelae fields".


title: Obelisk

text: The prehistoric Tello Obelisk, found in 1919 at "Chavín de Huantar" in Peru, is a monolith stele with obelisk-like proportions. It is 2.52 metres tall and was carved in a design of low relief with Chavín symbols, such as bands of teeth and animal heads. Long housed in the "Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Antropología e Historia del Perú" in Lima, it was relocated to the "Museo Nacional de Chavín", which opened in July 2008. The obelisk was named for the archeologist Julio C. Tello, who discovered it and was considered the 'father of Peruvian archeology'. He was America's first indigenous archeologist.


title: Obelisk

text: Egyptian obelisks remain a source of fascination, serving as a reminder of past glories and a symbol of state power. A majority of modern obelisks are made of masonry or concrete, so not monolithic like their Egyptian counterparts, and are often oversized. Examples from the 19th and 20th centuries include the Stone of the Empress (1835) in Helsinki, the Wellington Monument (1861) in Dublin, the Washington Monument (1884) in Washington, D.C., the Obelisk of Buenos Aires (1936) in Buenos Aires, and the National Monument (1975) in Jakarta. A few, however, continue the ancient tradition of the monolithic obelisk.


title: Obelisk

text: In Rome, the Via della Conciliazione, cleared in 1936–1950 to link Saint Peter's Basilica to the centre of the capital is lined with obelisks serving as lampposts.


title: Obelisk

text: In France and other European countries, monuments to the dead, such as headstones and grave markers, were very often given a form of obelisks, but they are of more modest size. The practice is also still widespread in the Islamic world.


title: Obelisk

text: In late summer 1999, Roger Hopkins and Mark Lehner teamed up with a "NOVA" crew to erect a 25-ton obelisk. This was the third attempt to erect a 25-ton obelisk; the first two, in 1994 and 1999, ended in failure. There were also two successful attempts to raise a 2-ton obelisk and a 9-ton obelisk. Finally in August–September 1999, after learning from their experiences, they were able to erect one successfully.


title: Obelisk

text: First Hopkins and Rais Abdel Aleem organized an experiment to tow a block of stone weighing about 25 tons. They prepared a path by embedding wooden rails into the ground and placing a sledge on them bearing a megalith weighing about 25 tons. Initially they used more than 100 people to try to tow it but were unable to budge it. Finally, with well over 130 people pulling at once and an additional dozen using levers to prod the sledge forward, they moved it. Over the course of a day, the workers towed it 10–20 feet. Despite problems with broken ropes, they proved the monument could be moved this way. Additional experiments were done in Egypt and other locations to tow megalithic stone with ancient technologies, some of which are listed here.


title: Obelisk

text: One experiment was to transport a small obelisk on a barge in the Nile River. The barge was built based on ancient Egyptian designs. It had to be very wide to handle the obelisk, with a 2 to 1 ratio length to width, and it was at least twice as long as the obelisk. The obelisk was about long and no more than . A barge big enough to transport the largest Egyptian obelisks with this ratio would have had to be close to and . The workers used ropes that were wrapped around a guide that enabled them to pull away from the river while they were towing it onto the barge. The barge was successfully launched into the Nile.


title: Obelisk

text: The final and successful erection event was organized by Rick Brown, Hopkins, Lehner and Gregg Mullen in a Massachusetts quarry. The preparation work was done with modern technology, but experiments have proven that with enough time and people, it could have been done with ancient technology. To begin, the obelisk was lying on a gravel and stone ramp. A pit in the middle was filled with dry sand. Previous experiments showed that wet sand would not flow as well. The ramp was secured by stone walls. Men raised the obelisk by slowly removing the sand while three crews of men pulled on ropes to control its descent into the pit. The back wall was designed to guide the obelisk into its proper place. The obelisk had to catch a turning groove which would prevent it from sliding. They used brake ropes to prevent it from going too far. Such turning grooves had been found on the ancient pedestals. Gravity did most of the work until the final 15° had to be completed by pulling the obelisk forward. They used brake ropes again to make sure it did not fall forward. On 12 September they completed the project.


title: Obelisk

text: This experiment has been used to explain how the obelisks may have been erected in Luxor and other locations. It seems to have been supported by a 3,000 year-old papyrus scroll in which one scribe taunts another to erect a monument for "thy lord". The scroll reads "Empty the space that has been filled with sand beneath the monument of thy Lord." To erect the obelisks at Luxor with this method would have involved using over a million cubic meters of stone, mud brick and sand for both the ramp and the platform used to lower the obelisk. The largest obelisk successfully erected in ancient times weighed . A stele was found in Axum, but researchers believe it was broken while attempting to erect it.