Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu is a union territory in India. The territory was constituted through the merger of the former territories of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu. Plans for the proposed merger were announced by the Government of India in July 2019; the necessary legislation was passed in the Parliament of India in December 2019 and came into effect on 26 January 2020. The territory is made up of four separate geographical entities: Dadra, Nagar Haveli, Daman, and the island of Diu. All four areas were part of Portuguese Goa and Damaon with the former joint capital in Panjim, they came under Indian rule in the mid-20th century after the Annexation of Goa. These were jointly administered as Goa, Daman and Diu until 1987, when Goa was granted statehood after the Konkani language agitation. The current capital is Damaon and Silvassa is the largest city.


title: Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu

text: Daman and Diu were Portuguese colonies from the 1520s until annexed by India on 19 December 1961. Dadra and Nagar Haveli were invaded by the Indian Army on 11 August 1961. Portugal officially recognised Indian sovereignty over the areas in 1974 following the Carnation Revolution.


text: Daman and Diu were administered as part of the union territory of Goa, Daman and Diu between 1962 and 1987, becoming a separate union territory when Goa was granted statehood.


text: In July 2019, the Government of India proposed merging the two territories into a single union territory in order to reduce duplication of services and reduce the cost of administration. Legislation to this effect, the Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu (Merger of Union territories) Bill, 2019, was tabled in the Parliament of India on 26 November 2019 and assented to by the President of India on 9 December 2019. The two union territories had previously shared a common administrator and government officials. The town of Daman was chosen to be the capital of the new combined union territory. The appointed day for the act to come into effect was notified as 26 January 2020 by the Government of India.


text: Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu is composed of four distinct areas located in Western India. Dadra is a small enclave within the state of Gujarat. Nagar Haveli is a C shaped enclave located between the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra which contains a counter enclave of Gujarat around the village of Maghval. Daman is an enclave on the coast of Gujarat and Diu is an island off the coast of Gujarat.


text: Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu is administered as a union territory of India by virtue of of the Constitution of India. The President of India appoints an administrator to administer the territory on behalf of the central Government of India. The central government may appoint advisers to assist the administrator with his duties.


text: Law enforcement within the territory is the responsibility of the Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu Police. The territory falls under the jurisdiction of the Bombay High Court.


text: Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu sends two members (MPs) to the lower house of the Indian parliament the Lok Sabha. The territory is divided into the constituencies of Daman and Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli.


title: Jessalyn Gilsig

text: Jessalyn Sarah Gilsig (born December 30, 1967) is a Canadian actress. She is best known for her roles as Lauren Davis in "Boston Public", Gina Russo in "Nip/Tuck", Terri Schuester in "Glee", and as Siggy Haraldson in "Vikings".


title: Jessalyn Gilsig

text: Gilsig was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the daughter of Claire, a writer and translator, and Toby Gilsig, an engineer. She began her acting in a voice work part at age 12 for a National Film Board of Canada production, "Masquerade." She is of Jewish descent.


title: Jessalyn Gilsig

text: Gilsig attended McGill University in Montreal, from 1989 to 1993, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1993. She later pursued her acting studies further at Harvard University's Institute for Advanced Theater Training.


title: Jessalyn Gilsig

text: Gilsig began her career as a voice actress. She has done voices in the films such as "Masquerade," and for television series such as "Young Robin Hood.


title: Jessalyn Gilsig

text: She moved to New York City in 1995 where she appeared in several off-Broadway plays. However, it was her association with David E. Kelley that led to her starring role in "Boston Public".


title: Jessalyn Gilsig

text: After guest-starring in two episodes of Kelley's "The Practice," Gilsig was cast in two episodes of another Kelley program, the short-lived "Snoops." Although the series was cancelled before Gilsig's episodes were broadcast, Kelley wrote the part of Lauren Davis in "Boston Public" specifically for her, a series that premiered in September 2000 on FOX; Gilsig would leave the series after the end of the second season in May 2002.


title: Jessalyn Gilsig

text: Following her departure from "Boston Public," Gilsig joined the cast of "Nip/Tuck" in 2003 as Gina Russo, a role she continued until 2008. In 2004, she appeared in five episodes of "NYPD Blue," followed by four episodes of FOX's "Prison Break" in 2005.


title: Jessalyn Gilsig

text: In addition to her extensive credits in television and theatre, Gilsig has appeared in film, beginning with a small role in the 1998 film "The Horse Whisperer." She then provided the speaking voice for Kayley in the animated film "Quest for Camelot" (1998), with Andrea Corr performing the character's songs. In 2004 she starred in "Chicks with Sticks", appeared in "See This Movie", and in one of the lead roles in the 2007 film "Flood".


title: Jessalyn Gilsig

text: In 2007–2008 she had recurring roles in two television series, playing Shelley, the sister of Tami Taylor, on NBC's "Friday Night Lights," and Claire Bennet's biological mother, Meredith Gordon, on "Heroes". Gilsig went on to play the main role of Terri Schuester on the Fox show, "Glee", from 2009 to 2012.


title: Jessalyn Gilsig

text: In 2013, Gilsig was a series regular, portraying Siggy Haraldson, wife of Earl Haraldson and paramour of Ragnar Lothbrok's brother, Rollo, on the History Channel series "Vikings" until 2015. In 2017 she joined the cast of "Scandal".


title: Jessalyn Gilsig

text: On January 24, 2020, Gilsig joined the cast of the Disney+ sports comedy-drama series "Big Shot" as Holly Barrett with John Stamos to replace Shiri Appleby.


title: Jessalyn Gilsig

text: Gilsig met and briefly dated Bobby Salomon as a high school student – he was the football team quarterback she described as a "cool guy". Salomon, a film producer, moved to Hollywood in 2002, and the two began dating again. They were married on January 1, 2005 in a traditional Jewish wedding (Gilsig's father is Jewish). Gilsig and Salomon have a daughter.


title: Jessalyn Gilsig

text: Gilsig filed for divorce from Salomon on September 8, 2010, citing irreconcilable differences, having been separated since 2009. In 2013 Gilsig became an American citizen.


title: Telescope

text: A telescope is a device used to observe distant objects by their emission, absorption, or reflection of electromagnetic radiation. Originally meaning only an optical instrument using lenses, curved mirrors, or a combination of both to observe distant objects, the word "telescope" now refers to a wide range of instruments capable of detecting different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, and in some cases other types of detectors.


title: Telescope

text: The first known practical telescopes were refracting telescopes with glass lenses and were invented in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 17th century. They were used for both terrestrial applications and astronomy.


title: Telescope

text: The reflecting telescope, which uses mirrors to collect and focus light, was invented within a few decades of the first refracting telescope.


title: Telescope

text: In the 20th century, many new types of telescopes were invented, including radio telescopes in the 1930s and infrared telescopes in the 1960s.


title: Telescope

text: The word "telescope" was coined in 1611 by the Greek mathematician Giovanni Demisiani for one of Galileo Galilei's instruments presented at a banquet at the Accademia dei Lincei. In the "Starry Messenger", Galileo had used the Latin term . The root of the word is from the Ancient Greek τῆλε, romanized "tele" 'far' and σκοπεῖν, "skopein" 'to look or see'; τηλεσκόπος, "teleskopos" 'far-seeing'.


title: Telescope

text: The earliest existing record of a telescope was a 1608 patent submitted to the government in the Netherlands by Middelburg spectacle maker Hans Lipperhey for a refracting telescope. The actual inventor is unknown but word of it spread through Europe. Galileo heard about it and, in 1609, built his own version, and made his telescopic observations of celestial objects.


title: Telescope

text: The idea that the objective, or light-gathering element, could be a mirror instead of a lens was being investigated soon after the invention of the refracting telescope. The potential advantages of using parabolic mirrors—reduction of spherical aberration and no chromatic aberration—led to many proposed designs and several attempts to build reflecting telescopes. In 1668, Isaac Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope, of a design which now bears his name, the Newtonian reflector.


title: Telescope

text: The invention of the achromatic lens in 1733 partially corrected color aberrations present in the simple lens and enabled the construction of shorter, more functional refracting telescopes. Reflecting telescopes, though not limited by the color problems seen in refractors, were hampered by the use of fast tarnishing speculum metal mirrors employed during the 18th and early 19th century—a problem alleviated by the introduction of silver coated glass mirrors in 1857, and aluminized mirrors in 1932. The maximum physical size limit for refracting telescopes is about , dictating that the vast majority of large optical researching telescopes built since the turn of the 20th century have been reflectors. The largest reflecting telescopes currently have objectives larger than , and work is underway on several 30-40m designs.


title: Telescope

text: The 20th century also saw the development of telescopes that worked in a wide range of wavelengths from radio to gamma-rays. The first purpose-built radio telescope went into operation in 1937. Since then, a large variety of complex astronomical instruments have been developed.


title: Telescope

text: Since the atmosphere is opaque for most of the electromagnetic spectrum, only a few bands can be observed from the Earth's surface. These bands are visible – near-infrared and a portion of the radio-wave part of the spectrum. For this reason there are no X-ray or far-infrared ground-based telescopes as these have to be observed from orbit. Even if a wavelength is observable from the ground, it might still be advantageous to place a telescope on a satellite due to issues such as clouds, astronomical seeing and light pollution.


title: Telescope

text: The disadvantages of launching a space telescope include cost, size, maintainability and upgradability.


title: Telescope

text: The name "telescope" covers a wide range of instruments. Most detect electromagnetic radiation, but there are major differences in how astronomers must go about collecting light (electromagnetic radiation) in different frequency bands.


title: Telescope

text: As wavelengths become longer, it becomes easier to use antenna technology to interact with electromagnetic radiation (although it is possible to make very tiny antenna). The near-infrared can be collected much like visible light, however in the far-infrared and submillimetre range, telescopes can operate more like a radio telescope. For example, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope observes from wavelengths from 3 μm (0.003 mm) to 2000 μm (2 mm), but uses a parabolic aluminum antenna. On the other hand, the Spitzer Space Telescope, observing from about 3 μm (0.003 mm) to 180 μm (0.18 mm) uses a mirror (reflecting optics). Also using reflecting optics, the Hubble Space Telescope with Wide Field Camera 3 can observe in the frequency range from about 0.2 μm (0.0002 mm) to 1.7 μm (0.0017 mm) (from ultra-violet to infrared light).


title: Telescope

text: With photons of the shorter wavelengths, with the higher frequencies, glancing-incident optics, rather than fully reflecting optics are used. Telescopes such as TRACE and SOHO use special mirrors to reflect extreme ultraviolet, producing higher resolution and brighter images than are otherwise possible. A larger aperture does not just mean that more light is collected, it also enables a finer angular resolution.


title: Telescope

text: Telescopes may also be classified by location: ground telescope, space telescope, or flying telescope. They may also be classified by whether they are operated by professional astronomers or amateur astronomers. A vehicle or permanent campus containing one or more telescopes or other instruments is called an observatory.


title: Telescope

text: Radio telescopes are directional radio antennas that typically employ a large dish to collect radio waves. The dishes are sometimes constructed of a conductive wire mesh whose openings are smaller than the wavelength being observed.


title: Telescope

text: Unlike an optical telescope, which produces a magnified image of the patch of sky being observed, a traditional radio telescope dish contains a single receiver and records a single time-varying signal characteristic of the observed region; this signal may be sampled at various frequencies. In some newer radio telescope designs, a single dish contains an array of several receivers; this is known as a focal-plane array.


title: Telescope

text: By collecting and correlating signals simultaneously received by several dishes, high-resolution images can be computed. Such multi-dish arrays are known as astronomical interferometers and the technique is called aperture synthesis. The 'virtual' apertures of these arrays are similar in size to the distance between the telescopes. As of 2005, the record array size is many times the diameter of the Earth – using space-based very-long-baseline-interferometry (VLBI) telescopes such as the Japanese HALCA (Highly Advanced Laboratory for Communications and Astronomy) VSOP (VLBI Space Observatory Program) satellite.


title: Telescope

text: Aperture synthesis is now also being applied to optical telescopes using optical interferometers (arrays of optical telescopes) and aperture masking interferometry at single reflecting telescopes.


title: Telescope

text: Radio telescopes are also used to collect microwave radiation, which has the advantage of being able to pass through the atmosphere and interstellar gas and dust clouds.


title: Telescope

text: Some radio telescopes such as the Allen Telescope Array are used by programs such as SETI and the Arecibo Observatory to search for extraterrestrial life.


title: Telescope

text: An optical telescope gathers and focuses light mainly from the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Optical telescopes increase the apparent angular size of distant objects as well as their apparent brightness. For the image to be observed, photographed, studied, and sent to a computer, telescopes work by employing one or more curved optical elements, usually made from glass lenses and/or mirrors, to gather light and other electromagnetic radiation to bring that light or radiation to a focal point. Optical telescopes are used for astronomy and in many non-astronomical instruments, including: "theodolites" (including "transits"), "spotting scopes", "monoculars", "binoculars," "camera lenses", and "spyglasses". There are three main optical types:


title: Telescope

text: A Fresnel imager is a proposed ultra-lightweight design for a space telescope that uses a Fresnel lens to focus light.


title: Telescope

text: Beyond these basic optical types there are many sub-types of varying optical design classified by the task they perform such as astrographs, comet seekers and solar telescopes.


title: Telescope

text: Most ultraviolet light is absorbed by the Earth's atmosphere, so observations at these wavelengths must be performed from the upper atmosphere or from space.


title: Telescope

text: X-rays are much harder to collect and focus than electromagnetic radiation of longer wavelengths. X-ray telescopes can use X-ray optics, such as Wolter telescopes composed of ring-shaped 'glancing' mirrors made of heavy metals that are able to reflect the rays just a few degrees. The mirrors are usually a section of a rotated parabola and a hyperbola, or ellipse. In 1952, Hans Wolter outlined 3 ways a telescope could be built using only this kind of mirror. Examples of space observatories using this type of telescope are the Einstein Observatory, ROSAT, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. In 2012 the NuSTAR X-ray Telescope was launched which uses Wolter telescope design optics at the end of a long deployable mast to enable photon energies of 79 keV.


title: Telescope

text: Higher energy X-ray and gamma ray telescopes refrain from focusing completely and use coded aperture masks: the patterns of the shadow the mask creates can be reconstructed to form an image.


title: Telescope

text: X-ray and Gamma-ray telescopes are usually installed on high-flying balloons or Earth-orbiting satellites since the Earth's atmosphere is opaque to this part of the electromagnetic spectrum. An example of this type of telescope is the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope which was launched in June 2008.


title: Telescope

text: The detection of very high energy gamma rays, with shorter wavelength and higher frequency than regular gamma rays, requires further specialization. An example of this type of observatory is the ground based telescope VERITAS.


title: Telescope

text: A discovery in 2012 may allow focusing gamma-ray telescopes. At photon energies greater than 700 keV, the index of refraction starts to increase again.


title: Ju Ji-hoon

text: Ju Ji-hoon (born May 16, 1982) is a South Korean actor and model. His first leading role was in the 2006 hit drama "Princess Hours". His other notable works include "The Devil", "Antique", "Mask", "" and , "The Spy Gone North", "Dark Figure of Crime", "Kingdom," and "Jirisan".


title: Ju Ji-hoon

text: In 2003, Ju debuted as a model, in advertisements for clothing brands such as Calvin Klein, Levi's and Reebok. He won many awards for modeling. Before entering the entertainment industry, he studied at Tongwon College, majoring in e-Business.


title: Ju Ji-hoon

text: Ju had various bit parts in television dramas, but it was in 2006's romantic comedy "Princess Hours", based on the manhwa "Goong", that he achieved breakthrough. The drama was a hit domestically with a peak rating of 28.3%, and internationally across Asia, catapulting Ju into Korean Wave stardom. He won the Best New Actor award at the MBC Drama Awards along with his co-star Yoon Eun-hye.


title: Ju Ji-hoon

text: In March 2007, Ju starred in KBS2's revenge drama "The Devil", opposite Uhm Tae-woong and Shin Min-a. The same month, he received the New Asian Star award at the 1st Astar TV Drama Awards for his performance in "Princess Hours" and "The Devil".


title: Ju Ji-hoon

text: Ju's film debut was in "Antique" (2008), based on the manga "Antique Bakery". The film was invited to the 59th Berlin International Film Festival. He then reunited with "The Devil" co-star Shin Min-ah in the romantic comedy "The Naked Kitchen".


title: Ju Ji-hoon

text: In January 2011, ahead of Ju's discharge in November, he signed with entertainment agency KeyEast, owned by actor Bae Yong-joon.


title: Ju Ji-hoon

text: In August 2012, Ju made his comeback in the period comedy film "I Am the King". Inspired by the popular novel "The Prince and the Pauper", Ju played the dual role of Grand Prince Choong-nyung and the slave Deok-chil, in a fictional period before the prince becomes King Sejong the Great. This was followed by his starring role as a pianist in the melodrama "Five Fingers", broadcast from August to November 2012. Joo also starred in medical drama "Medical Top Team", and romantic comedy film "Marriage Blue".


title: Ju Ji-hoon

text: Ju made his film debut in China with "Love Suspicion", a romantic thriller. In 2014, Ju was paired up with Ji Sung and Lee Kwang-soo in "Confession", a neo-noir film that brutally explores the aftermath of three men's friendship after the death of one's mother.


title: Ju Ji-hoon

text: In 2015, Ju starred in the period film "The Treacherous", reuniting him with the director of "Antique" and "Naked Kitchen". He then made his small screen comeback with SBS' melodrama "Mask" alongside Soo Ae.


title: Ju Ji-hoon

text: In 2016, Ju starred in the noir crime thriller "", which premiered globally at the 41st Toronto Film Festival. He received the Popular Film Star award at the Korea Top Star Awards.


title: Ju Ji-hoon

text: From 2017 to 2018, Ju starred in the two-part fantasy epic "Along With the Gods". The film was the second highest grossing film in South Korea, and Ju became known for his role as Haewonmaek.


title: Ju Ji-hoon

text: In 2018, Ju starred in the thriller films "The Spy Gone North", and "Dark Figure of Crime". Ju's performance in both films earned acclaim, and he won several Best Supporting Actor awards at film ceremonies for his performance in "The Spy Gone North", and was nominated for Best Actor at the Blue Dragon Awards for "Dark Figure of Crime".


title: Ju Ji-hoon

text: In 2019, Ju made a comeback to the small screen with two television series; Netflix's zombie period drama "Kingdom", and MBC's fantasy legal drama "Item".


title: Ju Ji-hoon

text: In 2020, Ju reprised his role in the second season of "Kingdom", and starred in the legal drama "Hyena".


title: Ju Ji-hoon

text: On February 2, 2010, Ju enlisted in the Republic of Korea Army to serve his mandatory military service for five weeks of basic training at 306th draft in Uijeongbu of Gyeonggi Province, followed by active duty with the reserve forces.


title: Ju Ji-hoon

text: In August, Ju co-starred with fellow actor Lee Joon-gi in the military musical "Voyage of Life". The musical, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Korean War, was co-produced by the Ministry of National Defense and Korea Musical Theatre Association. It ran from August 21 to 29 at the National Theater of Korea. Ju was discharged on November 21, 2011.


title: Ju Ji-hoon

text: On April 27, 2009, Ju was arrested by Seoul Metropolitan Police on drug charges. He was arrested along with 15 people and an actress identified as Yoon on suspicion of supplying ecstasy. On June 23, 2009, Ju pleaded guilty in court to drug use of ecstasy and ketamine. He was sentenced to six months of jail time, suspended for one year, 120 hours of community service, and a fine of . The judge explained, "The nature of the crime is by no means light. However, he has reflected deeply on the crime and has not taken any drugs since the time a year and two months ago. Also, many fans from within the country and from overseas have appealed for an appropriate handling of the matter and sent petitions." Ju's lawyer also stated, "Of course he must accept the price of his crime, but wrong information kept coming out and exaggerated him as a habitual user, and some of it was unfair."


title: Trevor Donovan

text: Trevor Donovan Neubauer (born October 11, 1978), known professionally as Trevor Donovan, is an American actor and model. He is best known for his role as Teddy Montgomery on the hit teen drama television series "90210."


title: Trevor Donovan

text: Donovan was born in Bishop, California, and raised in Mammoth Lakes, California. He had short stints in 2007 on the NBC daytime soap "Days of Our Lives" as Jeremy Horton. He had a minor role in the 2009 sci-fi film "Surrogates," that of the Surrogate form of Tom Greer (Bruce Willis).


title: Trevor Donovan

text: In June 2009, Donovan landed a recurring role on "90210" as Teddy Montgomery, first appearing on September 8, 2009. On May 20, 2010, The CW announced that he was upgraded to series regular. It was later reported that his character would come out as gay in the third season, which premiered on September 13, 2010.


title: Trevor Donovan

text: In July 2011, it was reported that Donovan had been signed for a role in Oliver Stone's film "Savages," released in July 2012. He had originally screen-tested for a character who was edited out, but after seeing Donovan's screen-test video recording, Stone wrote a part for him that was not in the original book. After "90210" ended, Donovan landed a recurring role in the third season of "Melissa & Joey," a situation comedy that starred Melissa Joan Hart and Joey Lawrence as the title characters.


title: Trevor Donovan

text: On September 8, 2022, Donovan was announced as a contestant on season 31 of "Dancing with the Stars". He is partnered with Emma Slater.


title: House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths

text: House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths is a 2021 docuseries by Netflix. Created by Leena Yadav and Anubhav Chopra, the three-part series explores the theories surrounding the demise of 11 members of the same family on 30 June 2018. Termed as the Burari deaths by the media, the true-crime docuseries released on 8 October 2021. The series is directed by Leena Yadav and Anubhav Chopra. A. R. Rahman and his ensemble of musician group, Qutub-E-Kripa, composed and produced the score of the docuseries. Yogendra Mogre and Katherine Leblond are the producers while Aseem Bajaj and James Haygood are the executive producers.


title: House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths

text: Leena Yadav had plans of making a non-fictional work after the release of "Parched" (2015) and "Rajma Chawal" (2018). She revealed in an interview her plans to create a documentary about the Burari mass suicide, an incident revolving around the demise of 11 members of the same family on 30 June 2018, for the creative team working at Netflix India. She felt that there were many stories surrounding the incident that the people were unaware about it, and post the incident, many media channels covered the topic becoming a national sensation, but was stopped at one particular point. The truth regarding the incident and the root cause for the incident made Yadav to film a documentary about this topic.


title: House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths

text: Yadav began conceptualising the series with Anubhav Chopra, who worked as an assistant director in prominent Bollywood films. She came up with multiple conversations revolving around the people who witnessed the incident and police officers and journalists. The team also came in connection with the brother of one of the victims, saying that "it was very therapeutic because they had not even spoken about the issues amongst themselves". She had covered a total of 400 hours which was considered to be "difficult" and "emotionally draining" but said that it was a "big learning experience".


title: House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths

text: She added that "our structure was to present it exactly the way we experienced it. To start with, it was a spectacle that blew up. Then the layers came in, and that is exactly the approach: seeing this as an event and then getting into each layer of revelations." For working on the series, she had approached non-professionals to work on the camera. Kshitij Kumar Goel and Laxman Suthar, handled the aerial footages. Yadav said that "the camera has an interesting power, where people who have never been in front of a camera feel pushed to go to the truth. It’s like something is recording you so you better tell the truth now." She approached prominent composer A. R. Rahman to work on the background music. Rahman said that "the series required a distinct, nuanced musical approach: enigmatic yet gripping". The score was curated by Rahman and his Qutub-E-Kripa musical team.


title: House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths

text: Unlike other documentaries which had a "cinematic approach in the coverage of real incidents", Yadav wanted the documentary to be gripping, and must have "a perspective among various people who witnessed the crime angle". Eventually, the inclusion of voice-over in the documentary made it to be "thrilling and effective". The three-part series highlighted the secretive nature of Indian families, where many families are seemingly, ‘normal’ and ‘well-functioning’ on the surface, but are plagued by issues of all kinds.


title: House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths

text: Netflix India announced the series in March 2021 as one of 40 Indian original programs (which included films, series, documentary, reality and stand-up comedy shows) slated for premiere that year. On 1 October 2021, the trailer for the docuseries was released in YouTube, and the three-part series released through Netflix on 8 October 2021.


title: House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths

text: Anuj Kumar of "The Hindu" wrote: "What makes the series convincing is the way it captures the inability of the experts in different fields to answer all the questions, and how the case impacted the lives of journalists who covered it, as well as the policemen and forensic experts who investigated it. Whatever they say solves a part of the jigsaw puzzle, but could not complete the picture, because ultimately there is no clear consensus even on whether it was a crime story."


title: House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths

text: Pooja Biraia Jaiswal of "The Week" says, "The impact is chilling, thanks to a compelling screenplay. By the end of the series, one is bound to get goose bumps. But the drawback is that there is no sense of finality. Although a line-up of experts dissects Lalit’s psychology and the family’s dynamics, in the end, one is left with more questions than answers."


title: House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths

text: Ektaa Malik of "Indian Express" states, "From incorporating the many conspiracy theories, to revealing the actual truth, the docu-series unravels like a work of fiction, backed by a solid screenplay. But its execution is hampered by the short-sightedness of its creators."


title: Yoruba religion

text: The Yoruba religion (Yoruba: Ìṣẹ̀ṣe), or Isese, comprises the traditional religious and spiritual concepts and practice of the Yoruba people. Its homeland is in present-day Southwestern Nigeria, which comprises the majority of Oyo, Ogun, Osun, Ondo, Ekiti, Kwara and Lagos States, as well as parts of Kogi state and the adjoining parts of Benin and Togo, commonly known as Yoruba land. It shares some parallels with the Vodun practiced by the neighboring Fon and Ewe peoples to the west and to the religion of the Edo people and Igala people to the east. Yoruba religion is the basis for a number of religions in the New World, notably Santería, Umbanda, Trinidad Orisha, and Candomblé. Yoruba religious beliefs are part of Itàn (history), the total complex of songs, histories, stories, and other cultural concepts which make up the Yoruba society.


title: Yoruba religion

text: The Yoruba name for the Yoruba indigenous religion is Ìṣẹ̀ṣẹ, which also refers to the traditions and rituals that encompass Yorùbá culture. The term comes from a contraction of the words Ìṣẹ̀, meaning "source or root or origin," and ìṣe, meaning "practice, or tradition," coming together to mean "The source of our tradition," as many of the practices, beliefs, traditions, and observances of the Yoruba originate from the religious worship of the orisa.


title: Yoruba religion

text: According to Kola Abimbola, the Yorubas have evolved a robust cosmology. In brief, it holds that all human beings possess what is known as "Àyànmọ́", which is regarded as destiny or fate. Every person is expected to become eventually one in spirit with Olodumare (also known as Olorun, the divine creator and source of all energy). Furthermore, the thoughts and actions of each person in Ayé (the physical realm) interact with all other living things, including the Earth itself.


title: Yoruba religion

text: The anthropologist Robert Voeks described Yoruba religion as being animistic, noting that it was "firmly attached to place".


title: Yoruba religion

text: Each person living on earth attempts to achieve perfection and find their destiny in Orun-Rere (the spiritual realm of those who do good and beneficial things).


title: Yoruba religion

text: One's ori-inu (spiritual consciousness in the physical realm) must grow in order to consummate union with one's "Iponri" (Ori Orun, spiritual self).


title: Yoruba religion

text: Iwapẹlẹ (or well-balanced) meditative recitation and sincere veneration is sufficient to strengthen the ori-inu of most people. Well-balanced people, it is believed, are able to make positive use of the simplest form of connection between their Oris and the omnipotent Olu-Orun: an adura (petition or prayer) for divine support.


title: Yoruba religion

text: Olódùmarè is the most important "state of existence". "They" are the owner of all heads, for during human creation, Olódùmarè gave "èmí" (the breath of life) to humankind. In this, Olódùmarè is Supreme.


title: Yoruba religion

text: Perhaps one of the most important human endeavors extolled within the Yoruba literary corpus is the quest to improve one's "Ìwà" (character, behaviour). In this way the teachings transcend religious doctrine, advising as they do that a person must also improve their civic, social and intellectual spheres of being; every stanza of the sacred Ifá oracular poetry (Odu Ifa) has a portion covering the importance of "Ìwà". Central to this is the theme of righteousness, both individual and collective.


title: Yoruba religion

text: According to one of the Yoruba accounts of creation, at a certain stage in the process, the "truth" was sent to confirm the habitability of the planets that were newly formed. The earth, being one of these, was visited but considered too wet for conventional living.


title: Yoruba religion

text: After a successful period of time, a number of divinities led by Obatala were sent to accomplish the task of helping earth develop its crust. On one of their visits to the realm, the arch-divinity Obatala took to the stage equipped with a mollusk that concealed some form of soil; winged beasts and some cloth like material. The contents were emptied onto what soon became a large mound on the surface of the water and soon after, the winged-beasts began to scatter this around until the point where it gradually made into a large patch of dry land; the various indentations they created eventually becoming hills and valleys.


title: Yoruba religion

text: Obatala leaped onto a high-ground and named the place Ife. The land became fertile and plant life began to flourish. From handfuls of earth he began to mold figurines. Meanwhile, as this was happening on earth, Olodumare gathered the gases from the far reaches of space and sparked an explosion that shaped into a fireball. He subsequently sent it to Ife, where it dried much of the land and simultaneously began to bake the motionless figurines. It was at this point that Olodumare released the "breath of life" to blow across the land, and the figurines slowly came into "being" as the first people of Ife.


title: Yoruba religion

text: An Orisha (correct spelling: Òrìṣà) is an entity that possesses the capability of reflecting some of the manifestations of Olodumare. Yoruba "Orishas" (commonly translated "unique/special/selected heads") are often described as intermediaries between humankind and the supernatural. The term is also translated as "Deities", "Divinities" or "Gods".


title: Yoruba religion

text: Orisha(s) are revered for having control over specific elements of nature. They are thus also referred to as "Imole". There are those of their number that are more akin to ancient heroes and/or sages than to primordial divinities. These are best addressed as dema deities. Even though the term Orisha is often used to describe both classes of divine entities, it is properly reserved for the former one.


title: Yoruba religion

text: Irunmọlẹ are entities sent by Olorun to complete given tasks, often acting as liaisons between Orun (the invisible realm) and Aiye (the physical realm). Irunmole(s) can best be described as ranking divinities; whereby such divinities are regarded as the principal Orishas. Irunmole, from "Erinrun" - 400, "Imole" - Divinities or Divine Spirits.


title: Yoruba religion

text: The Yoruba believe in Atunwa, reincarnation within the family. The names Babatunde (father returns), Yetunde (Mother returns), Babatunji (Father wakes once again) and Sotunde (The wise man returns) all offer vivid evidence of the Ifa concept of familial or lineal rebirth. There is no simple guarantee that your grandfather or great uncle will "come back" in the birth of a child, however.


title: Yoruba religion

text: Whenever the time arrives for a spirit to return to Earth (otherwise known as The Marketplace) through the conception of a new life in the direct bloodline of the family, one of the component entities of a person's being returns, while the other remains in Heaven (Ikole Orun). The spirit that returns does so in the form of a Guardian Ori. One's Guardian Ori, which is represented and contained in the crown of the head, represents not only the spirit and energy of one's previous blood relative, but the accumulated wisdom he or she has acquired through myriad lifetimes. This is not to be confused with one’s spiritual Ori, which contains personal destiny, but instead refers to the coming back to "The Marketplace" of one's personal blood Ori through one's new life and experiences. The Primary Ancestor (which should be identified in your Itefa) becomes – if you are aware and work with that specific energy – a "guide" for the individual throughout their lifetime. At the end of that life they return to their identical spirit self and merge into one, taking the additional knowledge gained from their experience with the individual as a form of "payment".


title: Yoruba religion

text: According to Professor Adams Abdullahi Suberu, the Yoruba were exquisite statesmen who spread across the globe in an unprecedented fashion; the reach of their culture is largely due to migration—the most recent migration occurred with the Atlantic slave trade, and with Nigerian and Beninoise Yorùbá emigrating to the United States, the UK, Brazil, and other countries of the Americas and Europe. During the colonial period, many Yoruba were captured and sold into the slave trade and transported to Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, St. Vincent & The Grenadines, Uruguay, Venezuela, and other parts of the Americas. With them, they carried their religious beliefs. The school-of-thought integrated into what now constitutes the core of the "New World lineages" which are a variety of Yorùbá-derived contemporary African religions:


title: Yoruba religion

text: The Vodun faith, which originated amongst a different ethnic group (the Gbe speaking peoples of present-day Benin, Togo, and Ghana), holds influential aspects on the African diaspora in countries such as Haiti and Cuba, also New Orleans, Louisiana in the United States.


title: Yoruba religion

text: In Latin America, Yoruba religion has been in intense Syncretism with Christianity, Indigenous religions and Spiritism since the first arrival of African immigrants. In Brazil, the religion of Umbanda was born from the rich interaction of beliefs that Latin America provided. Followers of Umbanda typically consider themselves Monotheistic, but honor Catholic Saints and Orisha as manifestations from god or as Tutelary deities. Umbanda worship also include elements from Native South American rituals such as the ritual use of Tobacco and communication with the spirits of deceased Indian warriors (Caboclo).


title: Yoruba religion

text: In the 1949 documentary "Fiestas de Santiago Apóstol en Loíza Aldea", anthropologist Ricardo Alegría noted a similar tendency at Loíza, Puerto Rico, arguing that the affinity between the black population in the municipality and the Catholic saint Santiago Apóstol may derive from the way in which he is depicted as a warrior; a similar theme to some depictions of Shango and Adams. This theory supposed that this resemblance was used by the population as a covert form to honor their ancestral deity.


title: Yoruba religion

text: Yoshiaki Koshikawa, professor of literature at Meiji University, became the first Japanese person to be initiated as a babalawo in 2013.


title: Yoruba religion

text: Nigerian Chrislam refers to the assemblage of Islamic and Christian religious practices in Nigeria. Chrislam also refers to the series of religious movements that merged Islamic and Christian religious practice during the 1970s in Lagos, Nigeria. The movement was pioneered by Yoruba peoples in south-west Nigeria.  Chrislam works against the conventional understanding of Islam and Christianity as two separate and exclusive religions, seeking out commonalities between both religions and promoting an inclusive union of the two. Chrislam also occupies a distinct geographical space; Nigeria is often understood to be geographically and religiously polarized, with a predominantly Muslim base in the North, and a predominantly Christian base in the South. However, the Yoruba peoples that occupy the South-Western Yorubaland region of Nigeria are a Muslim-majority ethnic group with a large Christian minority.


title: Priory of Sion

text: The Prieuré de Sion (), translated as Priory of Sion, was a fraternal organization founded in France in 1956 by Pierre Plantard in his failed attempt to create a prestigious neo-chivalric order. In the 1960s, Plantard began claiming that his self-styled order was the latest front for a secret society founded by crusading knight Godfrey of Bouillon, on Mount Zion in the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1099, under the guise of the historical monastic order of the Abbey of Our Lady of Mount Zion. As a framework for his grandiose assertion of being both the Great Monarch prophesied by Nostradamus and a Merovingian pretender, Plantard further claimed the Priory of Sion was engaged in a centuries-long benevolent conspiracy to install a secret bloodline of the Merovingian dynasty on the thrones of France and the rest of Europe. To Plantard's surprise, all of his claims were fused with the notion of a Jesus bloodline and popularised by the authors of the 1982 speculative nonfiction book "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail", whose conclusions would later be borrowed by Dan Brown for his 2003 mystery thriller novel "The Da Vinci Code".


title: Priory of Sion

text: After attracting varying degrees of public attention from the late 1960s to the 1980s, the mythical history of the Priory of Sion was exposed as a ludibrium — an elaborate hoax in the form of an esoteric puzzle — created by Plantard as part of his unsuccessful stratagem to become a respected, influential and wealthy player in French esotericist and monarchist circles. Pieces of evidence presented in support of the historical existence and activities of the Priory of Sion before 1956, such as the so-called "Dossiers Secrets d'Henri Lobineau", were discovered to have been forged and then planted in various locations around France by Plantard and his accomplices.


title: Priory of Sion

text: Despite the "Priory of Sion mysteries" having been exhaustively debunked by journalists and scholars as France's greatest 20th-century literary hoax, many conspiracy theorists still persist in believing that the Priory of Sion was a millennium-old cabal concealing a religiously subversive secret. A few independent researchers outside academia claim, based on alleged insider information, that the Priory of Sion continues to operate as a conspiratorial secret society to this day. Some skeptics express concern that the proliferation and popularity of pseudohistorical books, websites and films inspired by the Priory of Sion hoax contribute to the problem of unfounded conspiracy theories becoming mainstream.


title: Priory of Sion

text: The fraternal organization was founded in the town of Annemasse, Haute-Savoie, in eastern France in 1956. The 1901 French law of Associations required that the Priory of Sion be registered with the government; although the statutes and the registration documents are dated 7 May 1956, the registration took place at the subprefecture of Saint-Julien-en-Genevois on 25 June 1956 and recorded in the "Journal Officiel de la République Française" on 20 July 1956.


title: Priory of Sion

text: The Headquarters of the Priory of Sion and its journal "Circuit" were based in the apartment of Plantard, in a social housing block known as Sous-Cassan newly constructed in 1956.


title: Priory of Sion

text: The founders and signatories inscribed with their real names and aliases were Pierre Plantard, also known as "Chyren", and André Bonhomme, also known as "Stanis Bellas". Bonhomme was the President while Plantard was the Secretary General. The registration documents also included the names of Jean Deleaval as the Vice-President and Armand Defago as the Treasurer.


title: Priory of Sion

text: The choice of the name "Sion" was based on a popular local feature, a hill south of Annemasse in France, known as Mont Sion, where the founders intended to establish a spiritual retreat center. The accompanying title to the name was ""Chevalerie d'Institutions et Règles Catholiques d'Union Indépendante et Traditionaliste"": this subtitle forms the acronym CIRCUIT and translates in English as "Chivalry of Catholic Rules and Institutions of Independent and Traditionalist Union".


title: Priory of Sion

text: The statutes of the Priory of Sion indicate its purpose was to allow and encourage members to engage in studies and mutual aid. The articles of the association expressed the goal of creating a Traditionalist Catholic chivalric order.


title: Priory of Sion

text: Article 7 of the statutes of the Priory of Sion stated that its members were expected "to carry out good deeds, to help the Roman Catholic Church, teach the truth, defend the weak and the oppressed". Towards the end of 1956 the association had planned to forge partnerships with the local Catholic Church of the area which would have involved a school bus service run by both the Priory of Sion and the church of Saint-Joseph in Annemasse. Plantard is described as the President of the Tenants' Association of Annemasse in the issues of "Circuit".


title: Priory of Sion

text: The bulk of the activities of the Priory of Sion, however, bore no resemblance to the objectives as outlined in its statutes: "Circuit", the official journal of the Priory of Sion, was indicated as a news bulletin of an "organization for the defence of the rights and the freedom of affordable housing" rather than for the promotion of chivalry-inspired charitable work. The first issue of the journal is dated 27 May 1956, and, in total, twelve issues appeared. Some of the articles took a political position in the local council elections. Others criticised and even attacked real-estate developers of Annemasse.


title: Priory of Sion

text: According to a letter written by Léon Guersillon the Mayor of Annemasse in 1956, contained in the folder holding the 1956 Statutes of the Priory of Sion in the subprefecture of Saint-Julien-en-Genevois, Plantard was given a six-month sentence in 1953 for fraud.


title: Priory of Sion

text: The formally registered association was dissolved some time after October 1956 but intermittently revived for different reasons by Plantard between 1961 and 1993, though in name and on paper only. The Priory of Sion is considered dormant by the subprefecture because it has indicated no activities since 1956. According to French law, subsequent references to the Priory bear no legal relation to that of 1956 and no one, other than the original signatories, is entitled to use its name in an official capacity.


title: Priory of Sion

text: André Bonhomme played no part in the association after 1956. He officially resigned in 1973 when he heard that Plantard was linking his name with the association. In light of Plantard's death in 2000, there is no one who is currently alive who has official permission to use the name.


title: Priory of Sion

text: Plantard set out to have the Priory of Sion perceived as a prestigious esoteric Christian chivalric order, whose members would be people of influence in the fields of finance, politics and philosophy, devoted to installing the "Great Monarch", prophesied by Nostradamus, on the throne of France. Plantard's choice of the pseudonym "Chyren" was a reference to "Chyren Selin", Nostradamus's anagram for the name for this eschatological figure.


title: Priory of Sion

text: Between 1961 and 1984, Plantard contrived a mythical pedigree for the Priory of Sion claiming that it was the offshoot of a real Catholic religious order housed in the Abbey of Our Lady of Mount Zion, which had been founded in the Kingdom of Jerusalem during the First Crusade in 1099 and later absorbed by the Jesuits in 1617. The mistake is often made that this Abbey of Sion was a Priory of Sion, but there is a difference between an abbey and a priory. Calling his original 1956 group "Priory of Sion" presumably gave Plantard the later idea to claim that his organization had been historically founded by crusading knight Godfrey of Bouillon on Mount Zion near Jerusalem during the Middle Ages.


title: Priory of Sion

text: Furthermore, Plantard was inspired by a 1960 magazine "Les Cahiers de l'Histoire" to center his personal genealogical claims, as found in the "Priory of Sion documents", on the Merovingian king Dagobert II, who had been assassinated in the 7th century. He also adopted ""Et in Arcadia ego ..."", a slightly altered version of a Latin phrase that most famously appears as the title of two paintings by Nicolas Poussin, as the motto of both his family and the Priory of Sion, because the tomb which appears in these paintings resembled one in the Les Pontils area near Rennes-le-Château. This tomb would become a symbol for his dynastic claims as the last legacy of the Merovingians on the territory of Razès, left to remind the select few who have been initiated into these mysteries that the "lost king", Dagobert II, would figuratively come back in the form of a hereditary pretender.


title: Priory of Sion

text: To lend credibility to the apparently fabricated lineage and pedigree, Plantard and his friend, Philippe de Chérisey, needed to create "independent evidence". So during the 1960s, they created and deposited a series of false documents, the most famous of which was entitled "Dossiers Secrets d'Henri Lobineau" ("Secret Files of Henri Lobineau"), at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. During the same decade, Plantard commissioned de Chérisey to forge two medieval parchments. These parchments contained encrypted messages that referred to the Priory of Sion.


title: Priory of Sion

text: They adapted, and used to their advantage, the earlier false claims put forward by Noël Corbu that a Catholic priest named Bérenger Saunière had supposedly discovered ancient parchments inside a pillar while renovating his church in Rennes-le-Château in 1891. Inspired by the popularity of media reports and books in France about the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls in the West Bank, they hoped this same theme would attract attention to their parchments. Their version of the parchments was intended to prove Plantard's claims about the Priory of Sion being a medieval society that was the source of the "underground stream" of esotericism in Europe.


title: Priory of Sion

text: Plantard then enlisted the aid of author Gérard de Sède to write a book based on his unpublished manuscript and forged parchments, alleging that Saunière had discovered a link to a hidden treasure. The 1967 book "L'or de Rennes, ou La vie insolite de Bérenger Saunière, curé de Rennes-le-Château" ("The Gold of Rennes, or The Strange Life of Bérenger Saunière, Priest of Rennes-le-Château"), which was later published in paperback under the title "Le Trésor Maudit de Rennes-le-Château" ("The Accursed Treasure of Rennes-le-Château") in 1968, became a popular read in France. It included copies of the found parchments (the originals were, of course, never produced), though it did not provide the decoded hidden texts contained within them. One of the Latin texts in the parchments was copied from the "Novum Testamentum", an attempted restoration of the Vulgate by John Wordsworth and Henry White.


title: Priory of Sion

text: The other text was copied from the Codex Bezae. Based on the wording used, the versions of the Latin texts found in the parchments can be shown to have been copied from books first published in 1889 and 1895, which is problematic considering that de Sède's book was trying to make a case that these documents were centuries old.


title: Priory of Sion

text: In 1969, English scriptwriter, producer and researcher Henry Lincoln became intrigued after reading "Le Trésor Maudit". He discovered one of the encrypted messages, which read ""À Dagobert II Roi et à Sion est ce trésor, et il est là mort"" ("To Dagobert II, King, and to Sion belongs this treasure and he is there dead"). This was possibly an allusion to the tomb and shrine of Sigebert IV, a real or mythical son of Dagobert II which would not only prove that the Merovingian dynasty did not end with the death of the king, but that the Priory of Sion has been entrusted with the duty to protect his relics like a treasure.


title: Priory of Sion

text: Lincoln expanded on the conspiracy theories, writing his own books on the subject, and inspiring and presenting three BBC Two Chronicle documentaries between 1972 and 1979 about the alleged mysteries of the Rennes-le-Château area. In response to a tip from Gérard de Sède, Lincoln claims he was also the one who discovered the "Dossiers Secrets", a series of planted genealogies which appeared to further confirm the link with the extinct Merovingian bloodline. The documents claimed that the Priory of Sion and the Knights Templar were two fronts of one unified organisation with the same leadership until 1188.


title: Priory of Sion

text: Letters in existence dating from the 1960s written by Plantard, de Chérisey and de Sède to each other confirm that the three were engaging in an out-and-out hoax. The letters describe schemes to combat criticisms of their various allegations and ways they would make up new allegations to try to keep the hoax alive. These letters (totalling over 100) are in the possession of French researcher Jean-Luc Chaumeil, who has also retained the original envelopes.


title: Priory of Sion

text: A letter later discovered at the subprefecture of Saint-Julien-en-Genevois also indicated that Plantard had a criminal conviction as a con artist.


title: Priory of Sion

text: After reading "Le Trésor Maudit", Lincoln persuaded BBC Two to devote three episodes in their "Chronicle" documentary series to the topic. These became quite popular and generated thousands of responses. Lincoln then joined forces with Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh for further research. This led them to the pseudohistorical "Dossiers Secrets" at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, which though alleging to portray hundreds of years of medieval history, were actually all written by Plantard and de Chérisey under the pseudonym of "Philippe Toscan du Plantier".


title: Priory of Sion

text: Unaware that the documents had been forged, Lincoln, Baigent and Leigh used them as a major source for their 1982 speculative nonfiction book "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail," in which they presented the following myths as facts to support their hypotheses:


title: Priory of Sion

text: The authors re-interpreted the "Dossiers Secrets" in the light of their own interest in questioning the Catholic Church's institutional reading of Judeo-Christian history. Contrary to Plantard's initial Franco-Israelist claim that the Merovingians were only descended from the Tribe of Benjamin, they asserted that:


title: Priory of Sion

text: The authors also incorporated the antisemitic and anti-Masonic tract known as "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" into their story, concluding that it was actually based on the master plan of the Priory of Sion. They presented it as the most persuasive piece of evidence for the existence and activities of the Priory of Sion by arguing that:


title: Priory of Sion

text: In reaction to this memetic synthesis of investigative journalism with religious conspiracism, many secular conspiracy theorists added the Priory of Sion to their list of secret societies collaborating or competing to manipulate political happenings from behind the scenes in their bid for world domination. Some occultists speculated that the emergence of the Priory of Sion and Plantard closely follows "The Prophecies by M. Michel Nostradamus" (unaware that Plantard was intentionally trying to fulfill them). Fringe Christian eschatologists countered that it was a fulfilment of prophecies found in the Book of Revelation and further proof of an anti-Christian conspiracy of epic proportions.


title: Priory of Sion

text: However, historians and scholars from related fields do not accept "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" as a serious dissertation.


title: Priory of Sion

text: French authors like Franck Marie (1978), Pierre Jarnac (1985), (1988), Jean-Luc Chaumeil (1994), and more recently Marie-France Etchegoin and Frédéric Lenoir (2004), Massimo Introvigne (2005), Jean-Jacques Bedu (2005), and Bernardo Sanchez Da Motta (2005), have never taken Plantard and the Priory of Sion as seriously as Lincoln, Baigent and Leigh. They eventually concluded that it was all a hoax, outlining in detail the reasons for their verdict, and giving detailed evidence that the "Holy Blood" authors had not reported comprehensively. They imply that this evidence had been ignored by Lincoln, Baigent, and Leigh to bolster the mythical version of the Priory's history that was developed by Plantard during the early 1960s after meeting author Gérard de Sède.


title: Priory of Sion

text: In 1986, Lincoln, Baigent and Leigh published "The Messianic Legacy", a sequel to "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail". The authors assert that the Priory of Sion is not only "the" archetypal cabal but an ideal repository of the cultural legacy of Jewish messianism that could end the "crisis of meaning" within the Western world by providing a Merovingian sacred king as a messianic figure in which the West and, by extension, humanity can place its trust. However, the authors are led to believe by Plantard that he has resigned as Grand Master of the Priory of Sion in 1984 and that the organization has since gone underground in reaction to both an internal power struggle between Plantard and an "Anglo-American contingent" as well as a campaign of character assassination against Plantard in the press and books written by skeptics.


title: Priory of Sion

text: Although Lincoln, Baigent and Leigh remain convinced that the pre-1956 history of the Priory of Sion is true, they confess to the possibility that all of Plantard's claims about a post-1956 Priory of Sion were part of an elaborate hoax to become a respected, influential and wealthy player in French esotericist and monarchist circles.


title: Priory of Sion

text: In 1989, Plantard tried but failed to salvage his reputation and agenda as a mystagogue in esotericist circles by claiming that the Priory of Sion had actually been founded in 1681 at Rennes-le-Château, and was focused more on harnessing the paranormal power of ley lines and sunrise lines, and a promontory called "Roc Noir" (Black Rock) in the area, than installing a Merovingian pretender on the restored throne of France. In 1990, Plantard revised himself by claiming he was only descended from a cadet branch of the line of Dagobert II, while arguing that the direct descendant was really Otto von Habsburg.


title: Priory of Sion

text: In September 1993, while investigative judge Thierry Jean-Pierre was investigating the activities of multi-millionaire Roger-Patrice Pelat in the context of the Pechiney-Triangle Affair, he was informed that Pelat may have once been Grand Master of a secret society known as the Priory of Sion. Pelat's name had been on Plantard's list of Grand Masters since 1989. In fact, Pelat had died in 1989, while he was being indicted for insider trading. Following a long established pattern of using dead people's names, Plantard "recruited" the "initiate" Pelat soon after his death and included him as the most recent Priory of Sion Grand Master. Plantard had first claimed that Pelat had been a Grand Master in a Priory of Sion pamphlet dated 8 March 1989, then claimed it again later in a 1990 issue of "Vaincre", the revived publication of Alpha Galates, a pseudo-chivalric order created by Plantard in Vichy France to support the "National Revolution".


title: Priory of Sion

text: Pelat had been a friend of François Mitterrand, then President of France, and at the centre of a scandal involving French Prime Minister Pierre Bérégovoy. As an investigative judge, Jean-Pierre could not dismiss any information brought to his attention pertaining to the case, especially if it might have led to a scandal similar to the one implicating an illegal pseudo-Masonic lodge named Propaganda Due in the 1982 Banco Ambrosiano bank failure in Italy. Jean-Pierre ordered a search of Plantard's home; the search turned up a hoard of false documents, including some proclaiming Plantard the true king of France. Plantard admitted under oath that he had fabricated everything, including Pelat's involvement with the Priory of Sion. Plantard was threatened with legal action by the Pelat family and therefore disappeared to his house in southern France. He was 74 years old at the time. Nothing more was heard of him until he died in Paris on 3 February 2000.


title: Priory of Sion

text: On 27 December 2002, an open letter announced the revival of the Priory of Sion as an integral traditionalist esoteric society, which stated that: "The Commanderies of Saint-Denis, Millau, Geneva and Barcelona are fully operative. According to the Tradition, the first Commanderie is under the direction of a woman", claiming there were 9,841 members. It was signed by Gino Sandri (who claims to be Plantard's former private secretary) under the title of General Secretary, and by "P. Plantard" (Le Nautonnier, G. Chyren). Sandri is a well-versed occultist who has spent his life infiltrating esoteric societies only to get expelled from them. After interviewing Sandri, independent researcher Laurent Octonovo Buchholtzer wrote:


title: Priory of Sion

text: As a result of Dan Brown's best-selling 2003 conspiracy fiction novel "The Da Vinci Code" and the subsequent 2006 film, there was a new level of public interest in the Priory of Sion. Brown's novel promotes the mythical version of the Priory but departs from the ultimate conclusions presented in "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail". Rather than plotting to create a Federal Europe ruled by a Merovingian sacred king descended from the historical Jesus, the Priory of Sion initiates its members into a mystery cult seeking to restore the feminist theology necessary for a complete understanding of early Christianity, which was supposedly suppressed by the Catholic Church. The author has presented this speculation as fact in his non-fiction preface, as well as in his public appearances and interviews.


title: Priory of Sion

text: Furthermore, in their 1987 sequel "The Messianic Legacy", Lincoln, Baigent and Leigh suggested that there was a current conflict between the Priory of Sion and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, which they speculated might have originated from an earlier rivalry between the Knights Templar and Knights Hospitaller during the Crusades. However, for the dramatic structure of "The Da Vinci Code", Brown chose the controversial Catholic personal prelature Opus Dei as the Assassini-like nemesis of the Priory of Sion, despite the fact that no author had ever argued that there is a conflict between these two groups. Brown acknowledges that the individual characters and plotline of the novel are fictional, but the preface repeats a series of claims and canards from Lincoln's and Leigh's works under a heading that describes them as historical facts comprising background information for the novel.


title: Priory of Sion

text: Further conspiracy theories were reported in the 2006 non-fiction book "The Sion Revelation: The Truth About the Guardians of Christ's Sacred Bloodline" by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince (authors of the 1997 non-fiction book "The Templar Revelation", the principal source for Dan Brown's claims about hidden messages in the work of Leonardo da Vinci). They accepted that the pre-1956 history of the Priory of Sion was a hoax created by Plantard, and that his claim that he was a Merovingian dynast was a lie. However, they insist that this was part of a complex red herring intended to distract the public from the hidden agenda of Plantard and his "controllers". They argue that the Priory of Sion was a front organisation for one of the many crypto-political societies which have been plotting to create a "United States of Europe" in line with French occultist Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre's synarchist vision of an ideal form of government.


title: Priory of Sion

text: The 2008 documentary "Bloodline" by 1244 Films and producers Bruce Burgess, a British filmmaker with an interest in paranormal claims and Rene Barnett, a Los Angeles researcher and television and filmmaker, expands on the "Jesus bloodline" hypothesis and other elements of "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail". Accepting as valid the testimony of an amateur archaeologist codenamed "Ben Hammott" relating to his discoveries made in the vicinity of Rennes-le-Château since 1999; The film speculates that Ben has found the treasure of Bérenger Saunière: a mummified corpse, which Hammott claimed to believe is Mary Magdalene, in an underground tomb purportedly connected to both the Knights Templar and the Priory of Sion. In the film, Burgess interviews several people with alleged connections to the Priory of Sion, including a Gino Sandri and Nicolas Haywood. A book by one of the documentary's researchers, Rob Howells, entitled "Inside the Priory of Sion: Revelations from the World's Most Secret Society – Guardians of the Bloodline of Jesus" presented the version of the Priory of Sion as given in the 2008 documentary, which contained several erroneous assertions, such as the claim that Plantard believed in the Jesus bloodline hypothesis. On 21 March 2012, ahead of an impending public outing on the internet, Ben Hammott confessed and apologised on NightVision Radio, a podcast hosted by Bloodline Producer Rene Barnett (using his real name Bill Wilkinson) that everything to do with the tomb and related artifacts was a hoax; revealing that the actual tomb was now destroyed, being part of a full sized set located in a warehouse in England.


title: Priory of Sion

text: The notional version of the Priory of Sion first referred to during the 1960s was supposedly led by a "Nautonnier", an Old French word for a navigator, which means Grand Master in their internal esoteric nomenclature. The following list of Grand Masters is derived from the "Dossiers Secrets d'Henri Lobineau" compiled by Plantard under the "nom de plume" of "Philippe Toscan du Plantier" in 1967. All those named on this list had died before that date. All but two are also found on lists of alleged "Imperators" (supreme heads) and "distinguished members" of the Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis that circulated in France at the time when Plantard was in touch with this Rosicrucian Order. Most of those named share the common thread of being known for having an interest in the occult or heresy.


title: Priory of Sion

text: The "Dossiers Secrets" asserted that the Priory of Sion and the Knights Templar always shared the same Grand Master until a schism occurred during the "Cutting of the elm" incident in 1188. Following that event, the Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion are listed in French as being:


title: Priory of Sion

text: A later document, "Le Cercle d'Ulysse", identifies François Ducaud-Bourget, a prominent Traditionalist Catholic priest who Plantard had worked for as a sexton during World War II, as the Grand Master following Cocteau's death. Plantard himself is later identified as the next Grand Master.


title: Priory of Sion

text: When the "Dossiers Secrets" were exposed as a forgery by French researchers, Plantard kept quiet. During his 1989 attempt to make a comeback and revive the Priory of Sion, Plantard sought to distance himself from the discredited first list, and published a second list of Priory Grand Masters, which included the names of the deceased Roger-Patrice Pelat, and his own son Thomas Plantard de Saint-Clair:


title: Priory of Sion

text: In 1993, Plantard acknowledged that both lists were fraudulent when he was investigated by a judge during the Pelat Affair.


title: Priory of Sion

text: In 2006, American author Eric Mader-Lin made a public declaration claiming to be the current Grand Master of the Priory of Sion.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: A sawed-off shotgun (also called a sawn-off shotgun, short-barreled shotgun, shorty or a boom stick) is a type of shotgun with a shorter gun barrel—typically under —and often a shortened or absent stock. Despite the colloquial term, barrels do not, strictly speaking, have to be shortened with a saw. Barrels can be manufactured at shorter lengths as an alternative to traditional, longer barrels. This makes them easier to transport due to their smaller profile and lighter weight. The design also makes the weapon easy to maneuver in cramped spaces, a feature sought by military close-quarters combat units, law enforcement SWAT team users, and those concerned with home-defence. As a result of the shorter barrel length, any sawn-off shotgun with a magazine tube will have its capacity reduced.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: In the 1930s, the United States of America, Britain and Canada mandated that a permit be required to own these firearms. They are subject to legal restrictions depending upon jurisdiction. They are used by military forces and police agencies worldwide.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: Compared to a standard shotgun, the sawn-off shotgun has a shorter effective range, due to a lower muzzle velocity; however, its reduced length makes it easier to maneuver and conceal. Powerful and compact, the weapon is especially suitable for use in small spaces, such as close-quarters combat in a military context. Military vehicle crews use short-barreled combat shotguns as ancillary weapons. In urban combat zones, military entry teams often use entry shotguns when breaching and entering doorways.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: Many jurisdictions have a minimum legal length for shotgun barrels to make these more concealable shotguns unavailable for criminal purposes. Many gun makers in the U.S.A. have not offered sawn-off shotguns to the public since 1934, when shotguns with barrel lengths of under 18 inches were restricted, although they had previously been sold. To abide by NFA regulations, anyone may complete a Form 1 "making" form, and purchase and have approved the US$200 tax stamp for the shotgun in question, in order to legally reduce its barrel length to less than 18 inches by cutting the barrel or replacing it with a shorter one.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: A sawn-off shotgun is often an unofficial modification of a standard shotgun. In countries where handguns are more costly or difficult to obtain, criminals can convert legally purchased or stolen shotguns into concealable weapons.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: The term is often applied to illegal weapons that are created by cutting off the barrel of a standard shotgun. The barrel of a shotgun without a tube magazine can be cut to any length; pump-action or semi-automatic shotguns usually have a tube magazine attached to the underside of the barrel which limits the practical minimum barrel length to about the length of the magazine tube, unless it also is modified, technically much more challenging than shortening the barrel. Repeating-fire shotguns with box magazines do not lose shell capacity when sawn off, but they are far less common than those with tubular magazines. Shotguns manufactured with barrels under the legal minimum length frequently fall into special categories.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: Many nations have placed legal restrictions on sawn-off shotguns. The following are the restrictions for specific nations. Although not listed here, they are also subject to laws governing guns in general.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: In the state of Victoria a shotgun may not have its barrel shortened so as to change the category under which that shotgun would be classified. In some states, any alteration to the length of the barrel requires permission from the Chief Commissioner of Police.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: Short-barreled, manually operated shotguns (non-semi-automatics) are non-restricted as long as the barrel remains unmodified from the original factory length. There is no legal minimum for shotgun barrels as long as they are not handguns; shotguns with barrels as short as 8.5 inches are available in Canada.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: The act of reducing the length of the barrel of a shotgun to less than 457 mm (18 inches) by sawing, cutting, or "otherwise", by anyone other than a recognized gun manufacturer, is prohibited.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: Short-barreled shotguns are universally category B weapons and therefore require a shall issue permit and Gun license (zbrojní průkaz), including the self defense category.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: In Germany, the possession of a sawn-off shotgun is legal with a firearms license (Waffenbesitzkarte), just like any other firearm. Restrictions only apply to pump-action shotguns, which require a minimum barrel length of 45 cm and a minimum overall length of 90 cm to be legal. Other shotguns may be of any length. If the barrel length is less than 30 cm or the overall length is less than 60 cm, the firearm is considered a handgun, and treated accordingly under the law.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: Shortening the barrel of a shotgun or rifle results in a presumptive five-year minimum sentence of imprisonment upon conviction for a first offence, and a mandatory five-year sentence for second or subsequent offences.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: On 13 December 1996, president of the Russian Federation B. N. Yeltsin signed the federal law № 150, which entered into force on 1 July 1997. In accordance with this law, possession of any firearm with a barrel length of less than 500 mm and an overall length of less than 800 mm (incl. sawn-off rifles and sawn-off shotguns) was prohibited. As a result, since 1 July 1997, sawn-off shotguns and sawn-off rifles were banned on the territory of the Russian Federation and they had to be handed over to government law enforcement agencies for destruction.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: Within the United Kingdom, side by side, over-under, bolt-action and lever-action shotguns are required to conform to the specification of a 24-inch minimum barrel length if held on a shotgun certificate. If held on a firearms certificate, the applicant having demonstrated 'good reason' for possession, they must comply with the standard configuration of 12-inch minimum barrel length, 24-inch minimum overall length, in common with other Section 1 firearms.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: Shotguns held on a shotgun certificate must either have no magazine, or a non-removable magazine capable of holding no more than two rounds. Shotguns held on firearms certificates are not subject to any magazine restrictions.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: Semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns, whether held on shotgun or firearms certificates, are always required to comply with the specification of 24-inch minimum barrel length, 40-inch minimum overall length.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: Muzzleloading firearms held on firearms certificates are exempt from any restrictions on barrel and overall length. A smoothbore muzzleloader held on a shotgun certificate would be subject to the standard 24-inch minimum barrel length specification.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: Changing the length of the barrel of a firearm was not prohibited. It was possible to buy, sell or own old smooth-bore hunting shotguns with already shortened barrels (if the barrel length is at least 500 mm). Owners were allowed to shorten the buttstock or barrel of their hunting shotgun or rifle if they do it in a gun workshop. It was allowed to re-equip shotguns with pistol grip and detachable buttstock. Firearms with a barrel length of less than 500 mm were illegal and had to be confiscated.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: Under the National Firearms Act (NFA), it is illegal for a private citizen to possess a sawn-off modern smokeless powder shotgun (a shotgun with a barrel length shorter than or a minimum overall length of the weapon, total, including the 18-inch minimum barrel, of under ) (under U.S.C. Title II), without a tax-paid registration from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, requiring a background check and either a $200 or $5 tax for every transfer, depending upon the specific manufacturing circumstances of the particular sawn-off modern shotgun being transferred. Gun trusts have become an increasingly popular means of registering SBSs with the BATFE. Short-barreled muzzleloading blackpowder shotguns are not illegal under federal law, and require no tax-stamped permit, although they may be illegal under state law. As with all NFA regulated firearms, a new tax stamp must be purchased before every transfer. Inter-state transfers must be facilitated through a Federal Firearms Licensee (FFL) while intrastate transfers may be between two persons.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: In the US, shotguns originally manufactured without shoulder stocks (and thus not legally shotguns), with a total length under 26 inches, are classified as an "Any Other Weapon" by the BATFE and have a $5 transfer tax, if they are manufactured by a maker possessing the appropriate Class 2 Special Occupational Taxpayer Federal Firearms License. In order to convert an existing shoulder-stocked shotgun to a short-barreled shotgun or an existing pistol-grip-only shotgun to an "Any Other Weapon", a private citizen must pay the standard $200 NFA tax.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: Historical military use of sawn-off shotguns includes use as a primary weapon for Confederate cavalry during the American Civil War. These muzzle-loaded weapons were used primarily for close-range combat and to supplement the availability of more traditional short-ranged weapons such as the saber or carbine. The availability of the source weapons and the ability to use single ball, shot, or a mix of both as the situation required were reasons why they were initially desired by those establishing Confederate cavalry units. They were replaced over time as more conventional arms became available and as the tactical use of cavalry shifted towards use as mounted infantry.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: In modern usage, minimum length and barrel length restrictions only apply to civilian use; military and police departments may issue short-barreled shotguns, and major manufacturers offer special models with barrels in the range of as riot shotguns or combat shotguns for use in areas with restricted space. These are generally referred to as "entry shotguns", because they are often used for forcing entry into buildings, where the short easy handling is more important than the increased ammunition capacity of a longer shotgun. Breaching rounds provide another use for very short shotguns. These rounds are usually made of sintered powdered metal, but a normal buckshot or bird shot round will also work. A shotgun is used for breaching by placing the gun next to a door lock (0 to 2 inches away, 0 to 5 cm), and firing at a 45 degrees downward angle through the door between the lock or latch and the door frame. The impact of the projectile(s) opens a hole through the door, removing the latch or locking bolt. When through the door, the shot or sintered metal disperses quickly, and because it was aimed downwards, the risk of harming occupants on the other side of the breached door is minimized. Breaching guns used by police and the military may have barrels as short as , and they often have only a pistol grip rather than a full butt stock. Some models use a special cup-like muzzle extension to further minimize the risk of debris injuring the shooter. Because few rounds are fired, any sporting shotgun with a 3-round capacity could be shortened and used as a capable breaching shotgun.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: It is a common misconception that shortening the length of a shotgun barrel itself significantly affects the pattern or spread of the pellets; this only becomes true when the barrel is reduced to less than 50% of a typical length. A standard-length barrel (e.g., 28 inches) is this long to move the center of gravity of the weapon away from the body and give it an ergonomic heft, and in order for the barrel to extend out into the shooter's field of vision right up to the target, as well as to make the weapon safer, as it is difficult to inadvertently point a long gun at one's own body. The pattern is primarily affected by the type of cartridge fired and the choke, or constriction normally found at the muzzle of a shotgun barrel.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: The primary reason that the pattern is altered is because cutting off the end of the barrel removes the choke, which generally only extends about two inches (5 cm) inward from the muzzle. This results in a cylinder bore, which causes the widest spread generally found in shotgun barrels (see choke for more information on the impact of chokes, shotgun shell for information on spreader loads, and details on shot patterning for other relevant information). However, many qualified gunsmiths can re-tap and reinstall the choke in the shortened barrel.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: A sawn-off shotgun with exposed, manually cocked hammers and dual triggers is known as a "lupara" ("wolf-shot") in Italy and, while associated with organized crime, was originally used by Sicilian farmers and shepherds to protect their vineyards and flocks of animals. In rural areas of North India, where it is seen as a weapon of authority and prestige, it is known as a "dunali", literally meaning "two pipes". It is especially common in Bihar, Purvanchal, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: The light weight of short-barreled shotguns, particularly in configurations that lack substantial stocks, leads some users to use short "minishells" with lower shot and powder loading for comfortable casual use.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: In the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, where handguns are not easily obtainable, the sawn-off shotgun was a common weapon in armed robberies during and shortly after the 1960s, and it is this use that most people associate with the weapon.


title: Sawed-off shotgun

text: The bank robber Clyde Barrow modified his Browning A-5 shotgun by cutting the barrel down to the same length as the magazine tube, and shortening the stock by 5 to 6 inches (125 to 150 mm) to make it more concealable. A small, strap was attached to both ends of the butt of the gun, and was looped around his shoulder, concealing the gun between his arm and chest under his jacket in the manner of a shoulder holster. The gun was drawn up quickly and fired from the shoulder under which it was carried. Barrow dubbed it the "Whippit", as he was able to "whip it" out easily.


title: Cadmium

text: Cadmium is a chemical element with the symbol Cd and atomic number 48. This soft, silvery-white metal is chemically similar to the two other stable metals in group 12, zinc and mercury. Like zinc, it demonstrates oxidation state +2 in most of its compounds, and like mercury, it has a lower melting point than the transition metals in groups 3 through 11. Cadmium and its congeners in group 12 are often not considered transition metals, in that they do not have partly filled "d" or "f" electron shells in the elemental or common oxidation states. The average concentration of cadmium in Earth's crust is between 0.1 and 0.5 parts per million (ppm). It was discovered in 1817 simultaneously by Stromeyer and Hermann, both in Germany, as an impurity in zinc carbonate.


title: Cadmium

text: Cadmium occurs as a minor component in most zinc ores and is a byproduct of zinc production. Cadmium was used for a long time as a corrosion-resistant plating on steel, and cadmium compounds are used as red, orange and yellow pigments, to color glass, and to stabilize plastic. Cadmium use is generally decreasing because it is toxic (it is specifically listed in the European Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive) and nickel-cadmium batteries have been replaced with nickel-metal hydride and lithium-ion batteries. One of its few new uses is in cadmium telluride solar panels.


title: Cadmium

text: Although cadmium has no known biological function in higher organisms, a cadmium-dependent carbonic anhydrase has been found in marine diatoms.


title: Cadmium

text: Cadmium is a soft, malleable, ductile, silvery-white divalent metal. It is similar in many respects to zinc but forms complex compounds. Unlike most other metals, cadmium is resistant to corrosion and is used as a protective plate on other metals. As a bulk metal, cadmium is insoluble in water and is not flammable; however, in its powdered form it may burn and release toxic fumes.


title: Cadmium

text: Although cadmium usually has an oxidation state of +2, it also exists in the +1 state. Cadmium and its congeners are not always considered transition metals, in that they do not have partly filled d or f electron shells in the elemental or common oxidation states. Cadmium burns in air to form brown amorphous cadmium oxide (CdO); the crystalline form of this compound is a dark red which changes color when heated, similar to zinc oxide. Hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, and nitric acid dissolve cadmium by forming cadmium chloride (CdCl), cadmium sulfate (CdSO), or cadmium nitrate (Cd(NO)). The oxidation state +1 can be produced by dissolving cadmium in a mixture of cadmium chloride and aluminium chloride, forming the Cd cation, which is similar to the Hg cation in mercury(I) chloride.


title: Cadmium

text: The structures of many cadmium complexes with nucleobases, amino acids, and vitamins have been determined.


title: Cadmium

text: Naturally occurring cadmium is composed of eight isotopes. Two of them are radioactive, and three are expected to decay but have not done so under laboratory conditions. The two natural radioactive isotopes are Cd (beta decay, half-life is ) and Cd (two-neutrino double beta decay, half-life is ). The other three are Cd, Cd (both double electron capture), and Cd (double beta decay); only lower limits on these half-lives have been determined. At least three isotopes – Cd, Cd, and Cd – are stable. Among the isotopes that do not occur naturally, the most long-lived are Cd with a half-life of 462.6 days, and Cd with a half-life of 53.46 hours. All of the remaining radioactive isotopes have half-lives of less than 2.5 hours, and the majority have half-lives of less than 5 minutes. Cadmium has 8 known meta states, with the most stable being Cd ("t" = 14.1 years), Cd ("t" = 44.6 days), and Cd ("t" = 3.36 hours).


title: Cadmium

text: The known isotopes of cadmium range in atomic mass from 94.950 u (Cd) to 131.946 u (Cd). For isotopes lighter than 112 u, the primary decay mode is electron capture and the dominant decay product is element 47 (silver). Heavier isotopes decay mostly through beta emission producing element 49 (indium).


title: Cadmium

text: One isotope of cadmium, Cd, absorbs neutrons with high selectivity: With very high probability, neutrons with energy below the "cadmium cut-off" will be absorbed; those higher than the "cut-off will be transmitted". The cadmium cut-off is about 0.5 eV, and neutrons below that level are deemed slow neutrons, distinct from intermediate and fast neutrons.


title: Cadmium

text: Cadmium is created via the s-process in low- to medium-mass stars with masses of 0.6 to 10 solar masses, over thousands of years. In that process, a silver atom captures a neutron and then undergoes beta decay.


title: Cadmium

text: Cadmium (Latin "cadmia", Greek "καδμεία" meaning "calamine", a cadmium-bearing mixture of minerals that was named after the Greek mythological character Κάδμος, Cadmus, the founder of Thebes) was discovered in contaminated zinc compounds sold in pharmacies in Germany in 1817 by Friedrich Stromeyer. Karl Samuel Leberecht Hermann simultaneously investigated the discoloration in zinc oxide and found an impurity, first suspected to be arsenic, because of the yellow precipitate with hydrogen sulfide. Additionally Stromeyer discovered that one supplier sold zinc carbonate instead of zinc oxide. Stromeyer found the new element as an impurity in zinc carbonate (calamine), and, for 100 years, Germany remained the only important producer of the metal. The metal was named after the Latin word for calamine, because it was found in this zinc ore. Stromeyer noted that some impure samples of calamine changed color when heated but pure calamine did not. He was persistent in studying these results and eventually isolated cadmium metal by roasting and reducing the sulfide. The potential for cadmium yellow as pigment was recognized in the 1840s, but the lack of cadmium limited this application.


title: Cadmium

text: Even though cadmium and its compounds are toxic in certain forms and concentrations, the British Pharmaceutical Codex from 1907 states that cadmium iodide was used as a medication to treat "enlarged joints, scrofulous glands, and chilblains".


title: Cadmium

text: In 1907, the International Astronomical Union defined the international ångström in terms of a red cadmium spectral line (1 wavelength = 6438.46963 Å). This was adopted by the 7th General Conference on Weights and Measures in 1927. In 1960, the definitions of both the metre and ångström were changed to use krypton.


title: Cadmium

text: After the industrial scale production of cadmium started in the 1930s and 1940s, the major application of cadmium was the coating of iron and steel to prevent corrosion; in 1944, 62% and in 1956, 59% of the cadmium in the United States was used for plating. In 1956, 24% of the cadmium in the United States was used for a second application in red, orange and yellow pigments from sulfides and selenides of cadmium.


title: Cadmium

text: The stabilizing effect of cadmium chemicals like the carboxylates cadmium laurate and cadmium stearate on PVC led to an increased use of those compounds in the 1970s and 1980s. The demand for cadmium in pigments, coatings, stabilizers, and alloys declined as a result of environmental and health regulations in the 1980s and 1990s; in 2006, only 7% of to total cadmium consumption was used for plating, and only 10% was used for pigments.


title: Cadmium

text: At the same time, these decreases in consumption were compensated by a growing demand for cadmium for nickel-cadmium batteries, which accounted for 81% of the cadmium consumption in the United States in 2006.


title: Cadmium

text: Cadmium makes up about 0.1 ppm of Earth's crust. It is much rarer than zinc, which makes up about 65 ppm. No significant deposits of cadmium-containing ores are known. The only cadmium mineral of importance, greenockite (CdS), is nearly always associated with sphalerite (ZnS). This association is caused by geochemical similarity between zinc and cadmium, with no geological process likely to separate them. Thus, cadmium is produced mainly as a byproduct of mining, smelting, and refining sulfidic ores of zinc, and, to a lesser degree, lead and copper. Small amounts of cadmium, about 10% of consumption, are produced from secondary sources, mainly from dust generated by recycling iron and steel scrap. Production in the United States began in 1907, but wide use began after World War I.


title: Cadmium

text: Rocks mined for phosphate fertilizers contain varying amounts of cadmium, resulting in a cadmium concentration of as much as 300 mg/kg in the fertilizers and a high cadmium content in agricultural soils. Coal can contain significant amounts of cadmium, which ends up mostly in coal fly ash. Cadmium in soil can be absorbed by crops such as rice. Chinese ministry of agriculture measured in 2002 that 28% of rice it sampled had excess lead and 10% had excess cadmium above limits defined by law. Some plants such as willow trees and poplars have been found to clean both lead and cadmium from soil.


title: Cadmium

text: Typical background concentrations of cadmium do not exceed 5 ng/m in the atmosphere; 2 mg/kg in soil; 1 μg/L in freshwater and 50 ng/L in seawater. Concentrations of cadmium above 10 μg/L may be stable in water having low total solute concentrations and "p" H and can be difficult to remove by conventional water treatment processes.


title: Cadmium

text: Cadmium is a common impurity in zinc ores, and it is most often isolated during the production of zinc. Some zinc ores concentrates from zinc sulfate ores contain up to 1.4% of cadmium. In the 1970s, the output of cadmium was per ton of zinc. Zinc sulfide ores are roasted in the presence of oxygen, converting the zinc sulfide to the oxide. Zinc metal is produced either by smelting the oxide with carbon or by electrolysis in sulfuric acid. Cadmium is isolated from the zinc metal by vacuum distillation if the zinc is smelted, or cadmium sulfate is precipitated from the electrolysis solution.


title: Cadmium

text: The British Geological Survey reports that in 2001, China was the top producer of cadmium with almost one-sixth of the world's production, closely followed by South Korea and Japan.


title: Cadmium

text: In 2009, 86% of cadmium was used in batteries, predominantly in rechargeable nickel-cadmium batteries. Nickel-cadmium cells have a nominal cell potential of 1.2 V. The cell consists of a positive nickel hydroxide electrode and a negative cadmium electrode plate separated by an alkaline electrolyte (potassium hydroxide). The European Union put a limit on cadmium in electronics in 2004 of 0.01%, with some exceptions, and in 2006 reduced the limit on cadmium content to 0.002%. Another type of battery based on cadmium is the silver-cadmium battery.


title: Cadmium

text: Cadmium electroplating, consuming 6% of the global production, is used in the aircraft industry to reduce corrosion of steel components. This coating is passivated by chromate salts. A limitation of cadmium plating is hydrogen embrittlement of high-strength steels from the electroplating process. Therefore, steel parts heat-treated to tensile strength above 1300 MPa (200 ksi) should be coated by an alternative method (such as special low-embrittlement cadmium electroplating processes or physical vapor deposition).


title: Cadmium

text: Titanium embrittlement from cadmium-plated tool residues resulted in banishment of those tools (and the implementation of routine tool testing to detect cadmium contamination) in the A-12/SR-71, U-2, and subsequent aircraft programs that use titanium.


title: Cadmium

text: Cadmium is used in the control rods of nuclear reactors, acting as a very effective neutron poison to control neutron flux in nuclear fission. When cadmium rods are inserted in the core of a nuclear reactor, cadmium absorbs neutrons, preventing them from creating additional fission events, thus controlling the amount of reactivity. The pressurized water reactor designed by Westinghouse Electric Company uses an alloy consisting of 80% silver, 15% indium, and 5% cadmium.


title: Cadmium

text: QLED TVs have been starting to include cadmium in construction. Some companies have been looking to reduce the environmental impact of human exposure and pollution of the material in televisions during production.


title: Cadmium

text: Complexes based on heavy metals have great potential for the treatment of a wide variety of cancers but their use is often limited due to toxic side effects. However, scientists are advancing in the field and new promising cadmium complex compounds with reduced toxicity have been discovered.


title: Cadmium

text: Cadmium oxide was used in black and white television phosphors and in the blue and green phosphors of color television cathode ray tubes. Cadmium sulfide (CdS) is used as a photoconductive surface coating for photocopier drums.


title: Cadmium

text: Various cadmium salts are used in paint pigments, with CdS as a yellow pigment being the most common. Cadmium selenide is a red pigment, commonly called "cadmium red". To painters who work with the pigment, cadmium provides the most brilliant and durable yellows, oranges, and reds – so much so that during production, these colors are significantly toned down before they are ground with oils and binders or blended into watercolors, gouaches, acrylics, and other paint and pigment formulations. Because these pigments are potentially toxic, users should use a barrier cream on the hands to prevent absorption through the skin even though the amount of cadmium absorbed into the body through the skin is reported to be less than 1%.


title: Cadmium

text: In PVC, cadmium was used as heat, light, and weathering stabilizers. Currently, cadmium stabilizers have been completely replaced with barium-zinc, calcium-zinc and organo-tin stabilizers. Cadmium is used in many kinds of solder and bearing alloys, because it has a low coefficient of friction and fatigue resistance. It is also found in some of the lowest-melting alloys, such as Wood's metal.


title: Cadmium

text: Cadmium is an element in some semiconductor materials. Cadmium sulfide, cadmium selenide, and cadmium telluride are used in some photodetectors and solar cells. HgCdTe detectors are sensitive to mid-infrared light and used in some motion detectors.


title: Cadmium

text: Helium–cadmium lasers are a common source of blue or ultraviolet laser light. Lasers at wavelengths of 325, 354 and 442 nm are made using this gain medium; some models can switch between these wavelengths. They are notably used in fluorescence microscopy as well as various laboratory uses requiring laser light at these wavelengths.