title: Cadmium

text: Cadmium selenide quantum dots emit bright luminescence under UV excitation (He-Cd laser, for example). The color of this luminescence can be green, yellow or red depending on the particle size. Colloidal solutions of those particles are used for imaging of biological tissues and solutions with a fluorescence microscope.


title: Cadmium

text: In molecular biology, cadmium is used to block voltage-dependent calcium channels from fluxing calcium ions, as well as in hypoxia research to stimulate proteasome-dependent degradation of Hif-1α.


title: Cadmium

text: Cadmium-selective sensors based on the fluorophore BODIPY have been developed for imaging and sensing of cadmium in cells. One powerful method for monitoring cadmium in aqueous environments involves electrochemistry. By employing a self-assembled monolayer one can obtain a cadmium selective electrode with a ppt-level sensitivity.


title: Cadmium

text: Cadmium has no known function in higher organisms and is considered toxic. Cadmium is considered an environmental pollutant that causes health hazard to living organisms. Administration of cadmium to cells causes oxidative stress and increases the levels of antioxidants produced by cells to protect against macro molecular damage.


title: Cadmium

text: However a cadmium-dependent carbonic anhydrase has been found in some marine diatoms. The diatoms live in environments with very low zinc concentrations and cadmium performs the function normally carried out by zinc in other anhydrases. This was discovered with X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy.


title: Cadmium

text: Cadmium is preferentially absorbed in the kidneys of humans. Up to about 30 mg of cadmium is commonly inhaled throughout human childhood and adolescence. Cadmium is under research regarding its toxicity in humans, potentially elevating risks of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and osteoporosis.


title: Cadmium

text: The biogeochemistry of cadmium and its release to the environment has been the subject of review, as has the speciation of cadmium in the environment.


title: Cadmium

text: Individuals and organizations have been reviewing cadmium's bioinorganic aspects for its toxicity. The most dangerous form of occupational exposure to cadmium is inhalation of fine dust and fumes, or ingestion of highly soluble cadmium compounds. Inhalation of cadmium fumes can result initially in metal fume fever, but may progress to chemical pneumonitis, pulmonary edema, and death.


title: Cadmium

text: Cadmium is also an environmental hazard. Human exposure is primarily from fossil fuel combustion, phosphate fertilizers, natural sources, iron and steel production, cement production and related activities, nonferrous metals production, and municipal solid waste incineration. Other sources of cadmium include bread, root crops, and vegetables.


title: Cadmium

text: There have been a few instances of general population poisoning as the result of long-term exposure to cadmium in contaminated food and water. Research into an estrogen mimicry that may induce breast cancer is ongoing. In the decades leading up to World War II, mining operations contaminated the Jinzū River in Japan with cadmium and traces of other toxic metals. As a consequence, cadmium accumulated in the rice crops along the riverbanks downstream of the mines. Some members of the local agricultural communities consumed the contaminated rice and developed itai-itai disease and renal abnormalities, including proteinuria and glucosuria. The victims of this poisoning were almost exclusively post-menopausal women with low iron and low body stores of other minerals. Similar general population cadmium exposures in other parts of the world have not resulted in the same health problems because the populations maintained sufficient iron and other mineral levels. Thus, although cadmium is a major factor in the itai-itai disease in Japan, most researchers have concluded that it was one of several factors.


title: Cadmium

text: Cadmium is one of six substances banned by the European Union's Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive, which regulates hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment, but allows for certain exemptions and exclusions from the scope of the law.


title: Cadmium

text: The International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified cadmium and cadmium compounds as carcinogenic to humans. Although occupational exposure to cadmium is linked to lung and prostate cancer, there is still uncertainty about the carcinogenicity of cadmium in low environmental exposure. Recent data from epidemiological studies suggest that intake of cadmium through diet is associated with a higher risk of endometrial, breast, and prostate cancer as well as with osteoporosis in humans. A recent study has demonstrated that endometrial tissue is characterized by higher levels of cadmium in current and former smoking females.


title: Cadmium

text: Cadmium exposure is associated with a large number of illnesses including kidney disease, early atherosclerosis, hypertension, and cardiovascular diseases. Although studies show a significant correlation between cadmium exposure and occurrence of disease in human populations, a molecular mechanism has not yet been identified. One hypothesis holds that cadmium is an endocrine disruptor and some experimental studies have shown that it can interact with different hormonal signaling pathways. For example, cadmium can bind to the estrogen receptor alpha, and affect signal transduction along the estrogen and MAPK signaling pathways at low doses.


title: Cadmium

text: The tobacco plant absorbs and accumulates heavy metals such as cadmium from the surrounding soil into its leaves. Following tobacco smoke inhalation, these are readily absorbed into the body of users. Tobacco smoking is the most important single source of cadmium exposure in the general population. An estimated 10% of the cadmium content of a cigarette is inhaled through smoking. Absorption of cadmium through the lungs is more effective than through the gut. As much as 50% of the cadmium inhaled in cigarette smoke may be absorbed.


title: Cadmium

text: On average, cadmium concentrations in the blood of smokers is 4 to 5 times greater than non-smokers and in the kidney, 2–3 times greater than in non-smokers. Despite the high cadmium content in cigarette smoke, there seems to be little exposure to cadmium from passive smoking.


title: Cadmium

text: In a non-smoking population, food is the greatest source of exposure. High quantities of cadmium can be found in crustaceans, mollusks, offal, frog legs, cocoa solids, bitter and semi-bitter chocolate, seaweed, fungi and algae products. However, grains, vegetables, and starchy roots and tubers are consumed in much greater quantity in the U.S., and are the source of the greatest dietary exposure there. Most plants bio-accumulate metal toxins such as cadmium and when composted to form organic fertilizers, yield a product that often can contain high amounts (e.g., over 0.5 mg) of metal toxins for every kilogram of fertilizer. Fertilizers made from animal dung (e.g., cow dung) or urban waste can contain similar amounts of cadmium. The cadmium added to the soil from fertilizers (rock phosphates or organic fertilizers) become bio-available and toxic only if the soil pH is low (i.e., acidic soils).


title: Cadmium

text: Zinc, copper, calcium, and iron ions, and selenium with vitamin C are used to treat cadmium intoxication, though it is not easily reversed.


title: Cadmium

text: Because of the adverse effects of cadmium on the environment and human health, the supply and use of cadmium is restricted in Europe under the REACH Regulation.


title: Cadmium

text: The EFSA Panel on Contaminants in the Food Chain specifies that 2.5 μg/kg body weight is a tolerable weekly intake for humans. The Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives has declared 7 μg/kg body weight to be the provisional tolerable weekly intake level. The state of California requires a food label to carry a warning about potential exposure to cadmium on products such as cocoa powder.


title: Cadmium

text: The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has set the permissible exposure limit (PEL) for cadmium at a time-weighted average (TWA) of 0.005 ppm. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has not set a recommended exposure limit (REL) and has designated cadmium as a known human carcinogen. The IDLH (immediately dangerous to life and health) level for cadmium is 9 mg/m.


title: Cadmium

text: In addition to mercury, the presence of cadmium in some batteries has led to the requirement of proper disposal (or recycling) of batteries.


title: Cadmium

text: In May 2006, a sale of the seats from Arsenal F.C.'s old stadium, Highbury in London, England was cancelled when the seats were discovered to contain trace amounts of cadmium. Reports of high levels of cadmium use in children's jewelry in 2010 led to a US Consumer Product Safety Commission investigation. The U.S. CPSC issued specific recall notices for cadmium content in jewelry sold by Claire's and Wal-Mart stores.


title: Cadmium

text: In June 2010, McDonald's voluntarily recalled more than 12 million promotional "Shrek Forever After 3D" Collectible Drinking Glasses because of the cadmium levels in paint pigments on the glassware. The glasses were manufactured by Arc International, of Millville, NJ, USA.


The United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC; , ) is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations, responsible for coordinating the economic and social fields of the organization, specifically in regards to the fifteen specialised agencies, the eight functional commissions, and the five regional commissions under its jurisdiction.


title: United Nations Economic and Social Council

text: ECOSOC serves as the central forum for discussing international economic and social issues, and formulating policy recommendations addressed to member states and the United Nations System. It has 54 members. In addition to a rotating membership of 54 UN member states, over 1,600 nongovernmental organizations have consultative status with the Council to participate in the work of the United Nations.


text: ECOSOC holds one four-week session each year in July, and since 1998 has also held an annual meeting in April with finance ministers of heading key committees of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Additionally, the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF), which reviews the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, is convened under the auspices of the Council every July.


text: The president of the Council is elected for a one-year term and chosen from the small or medium sized states represented on the Council at the beginning of each new session. The presidency rotates among the United Nations Regional Groups to ensure equal representation.


text: Lachezara Stoeva, Bulgaria’s UN Ambassador was elected as the seventy-seventh president of the Council on 25 July 2022. Ambassador Lachezara Stoeva said in her opening statement that she was “honoured and humbled” to have been elected to lead one of the principal organs of the UN, while noting that the upcoming session will be “especially challenging for the world”. She succeeded Collen Vixen Kelapile, who was elected as the seventy-seventh president of the Council on 23 July 2021, succeeding Munir Akram of Pakistan.


text: The Council consists of 54 Member States, which are elected yearly by the General Assembly for overlapping three-year terms. Seats on the Council are allocated ensuring equitable geographic rotation among the United Nations regional groups, with 14 being allocated to the African Group, 11 to the Asia-Pacific Group, 6 to the Eastern European Group, 10 to the Latin American and Caribbean Group and 13 to the Western European and Others Group.


text: The specialized agencies of the United Nations are autonomous organizations working within the United Nations System, meaning that while they report their activities to the Economic and Social Council, they are mostly free to their own devices. Each agency must negotiate with the Council as to what their relationship will look and work like. This leads to a system where different organizations maintain different types of relationships with the Council. Some were created before the United Nations existed and were integrated into the system, others were created by the League of Nations and were integrated by its successor, while others were created by the United Nations itself to meet emerging needs.


text: In a report issued in early July 2011, the UN called for spending nearly US$2  trillion on green technologies to prevent what it termed "a major planetary catastrophe", warning that "It is rapidly expanding energy use, mainly driven by fossil fuels, that explains why humanity is on the verge of breaching planetary sustainability boundaries through global warming, biodiversity loss, and disturbance of the nitrogen-cycle balance and other measures of the sustainability of the earth's ecosystem".


text: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon added: "Rather than viewing growth and sustainability as competing goals on a collision course, we must see them as complementary and mutually supportive imperatives". The report concluded that "Business as usual is not an option".


text: The governance of the multilateral system has historically been complex and fragmented. This has limited the capacity of ECOSOC to influence international policies in trade, finance, and investment. Reform proposals aim to enhance the relevance and contribution of the council. A major reform was approved by the 2005 World Summit based on proposals submitted by secretary-general Kofi Annan. The Summit aimed to establish ECOSOC as a quality platform for high-level engagement among member states and with international financial institutions, the private sector, and civil society on global trends, policies, and action. It resolved to hold biennial high-level Development Cooperation Forums at the national-leadership level, transforming the high-level segment of the Council to review trends in international development cooperation and promote greater coherence in development activities. At the Summit it was also decided to hold annual ministerial-level substantive reviews to assess progress in achieving internationally agreed on development goals (particularly the Millennium Development Goals). These "Annual Ministerial Reviews" will be replaced by the High-Level Political Forum from 2016 onwards after the new post-MDG/post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals are agreed upon.


text: Subsequent proposals by the High-Level Panel Report on System-Wide Coherence in November 2006 aimed to establish a forum within the ECOSOC as a counter-model to the exclusive clubs of the G8 and G20. The Forum was to comprise 27 heads of state (L27, corresponding to half of ECOSOC's membership) to meet annually and provide international leadership in the development area. This proposal, however, was not approved by the General Assembly.


text: The Economic and Social Council Chamber in the United Nations Conference Building was a gift from Sweden. It was conceived by Swedish architect Sven Markelius, one of the 11 architects in the international team that designed the UN headquarters. Wood from Swedish pine trees was used in the delegates' area for the railings and doors.


text: The pipes and ducts in the ceiling above the public gallery were deliberately left exposed; the architect believed that anything useful could be left uncovered. The "unfinished" ceiling is a symbolic reminder that the economic and social work of the United Nations is never finished; there will always be something more that can be done to improve living conditions for the world's people.


title: Izanagi

text: , is the creator deity ("kami") of both creation and life in Japanese mythology. He and his sister-wife Izanami are the last of the seven generations of primordial deities that manifested after the formation of heaven and earth. Izanagi and Izanami are held to be the creators of the Japanese archipelago and the progenitors of many deities, which include the sun goddess Amaterasu, the moon deity Tsukuyomi and the storm god Susanoo.


title: Izanagi

text: His name is given in the "Kojiki" (ca. 712 AD) both as "Izanagi-no-Kami" (伊邪那岐神) and "Izanagi-no-Mikoto" (伊邪那岐命), while the "Nihon Shoki" (720 AD) refers to him as "Izanagi-no-Mikoto", with the name written in different characters (伊弉諾尊).


title: Izanagi

text: The names "Izanagi" ("Izanaki") and "Izanami" are often interpreted as being derived from the verb (historical orthography ) or "iⁿzanap"- from Western Old Japanese 'to invite' , with "-ki" / "-gi" and "-mi" being taken as masculine and feminine suffixes, respectively. The literal translation of Iⁿzanaŋgî and Iⁿzanamî are 'Male-who-invites' and 'Female-who-invites'. Shiratori Kurakichi proposed an alternative theory which instead sees the root "iza-" (or rather "isa-") to be derived from "isao" (historical orthography: "isawo") meaning 'achievement' or 'merit'.


title: Izanagi

text: The etymological origin of the verb is suggested to be a precursor to the Middle Korean lemma "yènc"- meaning 'to place/put on [the top of]' reconstructed as "*yenc-a" (place-INF) in OK. This does coincide with other related mythological figures related to a source in the Korean peninsula like Susanöwo.


title: Izanagi

text: The "Kojiki" portrays Izanagi and his younger twin sister Izanami as the seventh and final generation of deities that manifested after the emergence of the first group of gods, the Kotoamatsukami, when heaven and Earth came into existence.


title: Izanagi

text: Receiving a command from the other gods to solidify and shape the Earth (which then "[resembled] floating oil and [drifted] like a jellyfish"), the couple use a jewelled spear to churn the watery chaos. The brine that dripped from the tip of the spear congealed and turned into an island named Onogoro (淤能碁呂島). The two descended to the island and, setting up their dwelling, erected a 'heavenly pillar' ("ame no mihashira") on it. Izanagi and Izanami, realizing that they were meant to procreate and have children, then devised a marriage ceremony whereby they would walk in opposite directions around the pillar, greet each other and initiate intercourse. After Izanami greeted Izanagi first, Izanagi objected that he, the man, should have been the first to speak. True enough, the first offspring that resulted from their union, the 'leech-child' Hiruko, was considered imperfect and set adrift on a boat of reeds. Izanagi and Izanami then also begat the island of Awa (淡島 "Awashima"), but this too was not counted among their rightful progeny.


title: Izanagi

text: Izanagi and Izanami then decided to repeat the ritual, with Izanagi greeting Izanami first. This time, their union was a success, with Izanami giving birth to some of the various islands that comprise the Japanese archipelago (with the notable exceptions of Shikoku and Hokkaido), which include the following eight islands (in the following order):


title: Izanagi

text: The two then proceeded to beget the various deities who are to inhabit these lands. Izanami, however, was badly injured and eventually died after giving birth to the fire god Kagutsuchi. In an act of grief and rage, Izanagi killed Kagutsuchi with his 'ten-grasp sword'. More gods manifest into existence out of Izanami's excreta, Kagutsuchi's blood and mutilated remains, and Izanagi's tears.


title: Izanagi

text: Izanagi, wishing to see Izanami again, went down to Yomi, the land of the dead, in the hopes of retrieving her. Izanami reveals that she had already partaken of food cooked in the furnace of the underworld, rendering her return impossible. Izanagi, losing his patience, betrayed his promise not to look at her and lit up a fire, only to find that Izanami is now a rotting corpse. To avenge her shame, Izanami dispatched the gods of thunder (known as the Yakusanoikazuchi), the "hags of Yomi" (予母都志許売 "Yomotsu-shikome"), and a horde of warriors to chase after him. To distract them, Izanagi threw the vine securing his hair and the comb on his right hair-knot, which turned into grapes and bamboo shoots that the hags devoured. Upon reaching the pass of Yomotsu Hirasaka (黄泉比良坂, the 'Flat Slope of Yomi'), Izanagi took three peaches from a nearby tree and repelled his pursuers using them. He then declared the peach fruit to be divine and bade it to grow in the land of the living to help people in need. When Izanami herself came in pursuit of him, Izanagi sealed the entrance to Yomi using a huge boulder. Izanami then pronounces a curse, vowing to kill a thousand people each day, to which Izanagi replies that he will then beget a thousand and five hundred people everyday to thwart her.


title: Izanagi

text: Izanagi, feeling contaminated by his visit to Yomi, went to "[the plain of] Awagihara (i.e. a plain covered with "awagi") by the river-mouth of Tachibana in Himuka in [the island of] Tsukushi" and purified himself by bathing in the river; various deities came into existence as he stripped off his clothes and accouterments and immersed himself in the water. The three most important "kami", the "Three Precious Children" (三貴子 or ) – the sun goddess Amaterasu Ōmikami, the moon deity Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto, and the storm god Susanoo-no-Mikoto – were born when Izanagi washed his left eye, his right eye, and his nose, respectively.


title: Izanagi

text: Izanagi divides the world among his three children: Amaterasu was allotted Takamagahara (高天原, the "Plain of High Heaven"), Tsukuyomi the night, and Susanoo the seas. Susanoo did not perform his appointed task and instead kept crying and howling "until his beard eight hands long extended down over his chest," causing the mountains to wither and the rivers to dry up. After saying to his father that he wished to go to his mother's land, Ne-no-Katasu-Kuni (根堅州国, the 'Land of Roots'), a furious Izanagi then expelled Susanoo "with a divine expulsion," after which he disappears from the narrative.


title: Izanagi

text: While the first generations of "kami" including Izanagi and Izanami are implied in the "Kojiki" and the "Nihon Shoki"'s main narrative to have manifested independent of each other, one variant cited in the "Shoki" instead describes them as the offspring of Aokashikine-no-Mikoto (青橿城根尊), another name for the goddess Ayakashikone-no-Mikoto, of the sixth of the first seven generations of gods. Another variant meanwhile portrays Izanagi as the offspring of a deity named Awanagi-no-Mikoto (沫蕩尊) and the fifth-generation descendant of the primordial deity Kuninotokotachi-no-Mikoto.


title: Izanagi

text: In the "Shoki"'s main narrative, the couple first begets the following eight islands after performing the marriage ceremony (in the following order):


title: Izanagi

text: Both Ōshima and Kibi-no-Kojima are not reckoned among the eight great islands in the "Kojiki", instead being identified as being born after them. The other remaining islands, such as Tsushima (対馬島) and Iki (壱岐島), are said to have been produced by the coagulation of the foam in sea water (or freshwater).


title: Lagomorpha

text: The lagomorphs are the members of the taxonomic order Lagomorpha, of which there are two living families: the Leporidae (hares and rabbits) and the Ochotonidae (pikas). The name of the order is derived from the Ancient Greek "lagos" (λαγώς, "hare") + "morphē" (μορφή, "form").


title: Lagomorpha

text: There are 110 recent species of lagomorph of which 109 are extant, including 34 species of pika, 42 species of rabbit, and 33 species of hare.


title: Lagomorpha

text: Other names used for this order, now considered synonymous, include: "Duplicidentata" - Illiger, 1811; "Leporida" - Averianov, 1999; "Neolagomorpha" - Averianov, 1999; "Ochotonida" - Averianov, 1999; and "Palarodentia" - Haeckel, 1895, Lilian, 2016.


title: Lagomorpha

text: The evolutionary history of the lagomorphs is still not well understood. Until recently, it was generally agreed that "Eurymylus", which lived in eastern Asia and dates back to the late Paleocene or early Eocene, was an ancestor of the lagomorphs. More recent examination of the fossil evidence suggests that the lagomorphs may have instead descended from Anagaloidea, also known as "mimotonids", while "Eurymylus" was more closely related to rodents (although not a direct ancestor). The leporids first appeared in the late Eocene and rapidly spread throughout the Northern Hemisphere; they show a trend towards increasingly long hind limbs as the modern leaping gait developed. The pikas appeared somewhat later in the Oligocene of eastern Asia.


title: Lagomorpha

text: Lagomorphs were certainly more diverse in the past than in the present, with around 75 genera and over 230 species represented in the fossil record and many more species in a single biome. This is evidence that lagomorph lineages are declining.


title: Lagomorpha

text: Recent finds suggest an Indian origin for the order, having possibly evolved in isolation when India was an island continent in the Paleocene.


title: Lagomorpha

text: Lagomorphs are similar to other mammals in that they all have hair, four limbs (i.e., they are tetrapods), and mammary glands and are endotherms. Lagomorphs possess a moderately fused postorbital process to the cranium, unlike other small mammals. They differ in that they have a mixture of "basal" and "derived" physical traits.


title: Lagomorpha

text: Despite the evolutionary relationship between lagomorphs and rodents, the two orders have some major differences: primarily, lagomorphs have four incisors in the upper jaw, whereas rodents ("Rodentia") only have two. Also, lagomorphs are almost strictly herbivorous, unlike rodents, many of which will eat both meat and vegetable matter. They are similar to rodents in that their incisor teeth grow continuously throughout their lives, thus necessitating constant chewing on fibrous food to prevent the teeth from growing too long. Lagomorphs and rodents form the clade or grandorder Glires.


title: Lagomorpha

text: Similarly to the rodents, bats, and some mammalian insectivores, they have a smooth-surfaced cerebrum.


title: Lagomorpha

text: Lagomorphs are unusual among terrestrial mammals in that the females are larger than males. This is extremely rare among terrestrial mammals.


title: Lagomorpha

text: Rabbits and hares move by jumping, pushing off with their strong hind legs and using their forelimbs to soften the impact on landing. Pikas lack certain skeletal modifications present in leporids, such as a highly arched skull, an upright posture of the head, strong hind limbs and pelvic girdle, and long limbs. Also, pikas have a short nasal region and entirely lack a supraorbital foramen, while leporids have prominent supraorbital foramina and nasal regions.


title: Lagomorpha

text: Pikas, also known as conies, are entirely represented by the family Ochotonidae and are small mammals native to mountainous regions of western North America, and Central Asia. They are mostly about long and have greyish-brown, silky fur, small rounded ears, and almost no tail. Their four legs are nearly equal in length. Some species live in scree, making their homes in the crevices between broken rocks, while others construct burrows in upland areas. The rock-dwelling species are typically long-lived and solitary, having one or two small litters each year contributing to stable populations. The burrowing species, in contrast, are short-lived, gregarious and have multiple large litters during the year. These species tend to have large swings in population size. The gestation period of the pika is around one month long, and the newborns are altricial—they require parental care. The social behaviour of the two groups also differs: the rock dwellers aggressively maintain scent-marked territories, while the burrowers live in family groups, interact vocally with each other and defend a mutual territory. Pikas are diurnal and are active early and late in the day during hot weather. They feed on all sorts of plant material. As they do not hibernate, they make "haypiles" of dried vegetation which they collect and carry back to their homes to store for use during winter.


title: Lagomorpha

text: Hares, members of genus "Lepus" of family Leporidae, are medium size mammals native to Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America. North American jackrabbits are actually hares. Species vary in size from in length and have long powerful back legs, and ears up to in length. Although usually greyish-brown, some species turn white in the winter. They are solitary animals, and several litters of young are born, fully furred and active, during the year, in a nest called a form, a hollow in the ground amongst dense vegetation. They are preyed upon by large mammalian carnivores and birds of prey.


title: Lagomorpha

text: Rabbits, members of family Leporidae outside "Lepus", are generally much smaller than hares and include the rock hares and the hispid hare. They are native to Europe, parts of Africa, Central and Southern Asia, North America and much of South America. They inhabit both grassland and arid regions. They vary in size from and have long, powerful hind legs, shorter forelegs and a tiny tail. The colour is some shade of brown, buff or grey and there is one black species and two striped ones. Domesticated rabbits come in a wider variety of colours. Newborn rabbits are less developed than hares and require parental care. Although most species live and breed in burrows, the cottontails and hispid hares have forms (nests). Most of the burrowing species are colonial, and may feed together in small groups. Rabbits play an important part in the terrestrial food chain, eating a wide range of forbs, grasses, and herbs, and being part of the staple diet of many carnivorous species. Many breeds of rabbit can be litter-trained, and—assuming they are given sufficient room to run—can live happy lives as house pets.


title: Lagomorpha

text: Lagomorphs are widespread around the world and inhabit every continent except Antarctica. However, they are not found in most of the southern cone of South America, in the West Indies, Indonesia or Madagascar, nor on many islands. Although they are not native to Australia, humans have introduced them there and they have successfully colonized many parts of the country and caused disruption to native species.


title: Lagomorpha

text: Like other herbivores, lagomorphs have to deal with a bulky diet in which the cell walls are composed of cellulose, a substance which mammalian digestive enzymes are unable to break down. Despite this, lagomorphs have developed a way of extracting maximum nourishment from their diet. First they bite off and shred plant tissues with their incisors and then they grind the material with their molars. Digestion continues in the stomach and small intestine where nutrients are absorbed. After that, certain food remains get diverted into the caecum, a blind-ended pouch. Here, they are mixed with bacteria, yeasts and other micro-organisms that are able to digest cellulose and turn it into sugar, a process known as hindgut fermentation. Other faecal matter passes along the colon and is excreted in the normal way as small, dry pellets. About four to eight hours after the meal, the contents of the caecum pass into the colon and are eliminated as soft, moist pellets known as cecotropes. These are immediately eaten by the lagomorph, which can thus extract all the remaining nutrients in the food.


title: Lagomorpha

text: Many lagomorphs breed several times a year and produce large litters. This is particularly the case in species that breed in underground, protective environments such as burrows. The altricial young of rabbits, called kits, are born naked and helpless after a short gestation period and the mother can become pregnant again almost immediately after giving birth. The mothers are able to leave these young safely and go off to feed, returning at intervals to feed them with their unusually rich milk. In some species, the mother only visits and feeds the litter once a day but the young grow rapidly and are usually weaned within a month. Hares live above ground and their litters, containing leverets, are born in "forms" concealed among tussocks and scrub. They have a strategy to prevent predators from tracking down their litter by following the adults' scent. They approach and depart from the nesting site in a series of immense bounds, sometimes moving at right angles to their previous direction. The young are precocial and a small number are born after a longer gestation period, already clad in short fur and able to move around.


title: Lagomorpha

text: Many species of lagomorphs, particularly the rabbits and the pikas, are gregarious and live in colonies, whereas hares are generally solitary species, although many hares travel and forage in groups of two, three, or four. The rabbits and pikas rely on their holes as places of safety when danger threatens, but hares rely on their long legs, great speed and jinking gait to escape from predators.


title: Century of humiliation

text: The "century of humiliation", also known as the "hundred years of national humiliation" (in Mandarin 百年国耻 ), is a term used in China to describe the period of intervention and subjugation of the Qing dynasty and the Republic of China by Western powers and Japan from 1839 to 1949.


title: Century of humiliation

text: The term arose in 1915, in the atmosphere of rising Chinese nationalism opposing the Twenty-One Demands made by the Japanese government and their acceptance by Yuan Shikai, with the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) and Chinese Communist Party both subsequently popularizing the characterization.


title: Century of humiliation

text: Chinese nationalists in the 1920s and the 1930s dated the Century of Humiliation to the mid-19th century, on the eve of the First Opium War amidst the dramatic political unraveling of Qing China that followed.


title: Century of humiliation

text: In that period, China suffered major internal fragmentation, lost almost all of the wars that it fought, and was often forced to give major concessions to the great powers in unequal treaties. In many cases, China was forced to pay large amounts of reparations, open up ports for trade, lease or cede territories (such as Outer Manchuria, parts of Northwest China and Sakhalin to the Russian Empire, Jiaozhou Bay to the German Empire, Hong Kong to the British Empire, Macau to the Portuguese Empire, Zhanjiang to France, and Taiwan and Dalian to the Empire of Japan) and make various other concessions of sovereignty to foreign "spheres of influence" after military defeats.


title: Century of humiliation

text: Already during the conclusion of the Boxer Protocol in 1901, some of the Western powers believed they had acted in excess and that the Protocol was too humiliating. As a result, U.S. Secretary of State John Hay formulated the Open Door Policy, which prevented the colonial powers from directly carving up China into "de jure" colonies, and guaranteed universal trade access to markets in China. Intended to weaken Germany, Japan, and Russia, it was only somewhat enforced and was gradually broken by the following warlord era and Japanese interventions. The semi-contradictory nature of the Open Door policy was noted early, as although it preserved the territorial integrity of China from foreign powers, it also led to trade exploitation by the same countries. With the Root–Takahira Agreement in 1908, the U.S. and Japan upheld the Open Door Policy, but other factors (such as immigration restrictions, and the assignment of the Boxer Indemnity to a managed Boxer Indemnity Scholarship instead of directly returned to the Qing government) led to a continuation in humiliation from the Chinese perspective. In the Republic of China mainland era, the 1922 Nine-Power Treaty was also a major attempt to reaffirm Chinese sovereignty, though failed to check Japan's expansionism and had a limited effect on extraterritoriality. Open Door was ultimately dissolved in WWII when Japan invaded China.


title: Century of humiliation

text: Extraterritorial jurisdiction and other privileges were abandoned by the United Kingdom and the United States in 1943. During World War II, Vichy France retained control over French concessions in China but was coerced into handing them over to the collaborationist Wang Jingwei regime. The postwar Sino-French Accord of February 1946 affirmed Chinese sovereignty over the concessions.


title: Century of humiliation

text: Chiang Kai-shek declared the end of the Century of Humiliation in 1943 with the abrogation of all the unequal treaties and Mao Zedong declared its end in the aftermath of World War II, with Chiang promoting his wartime resistance to Japanese rule and China's place among the Big Four in the victorious Allies in 1945, and Mao declared it with the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949.


title: Century of humiliation

text: Chinese politicians and writers, however, have continued to portray later events as the true end of humiliation. Its end was declared in the repulsion of UN forces during the Korean War, the 1997 reunification with Hong Kong, the 1999 reunification with Macau, and even the hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Some Chinese nationalists claim that humiliation will not end until the People's Republic of China controls Taiwan.


title: Century of humiliation

text: In 2021, coinciding with the United States–China talks in Alaska, the Chinese government began referring to the period as 120 years of humiliation, a reference to the 1901 Boxer Protocol in which the Qing Dynasty was forced to pay large reparation to members of the Eight-Nation Alliance.


title: Century of humiliation

text: The usage of the Century of Humiliation in the Chinese Communist Party's historiography and modern Chinese nationalism, with its focus on the "sovereignty and integrity of [Chinese] territory," has been invoked in incidents such as the US bombing of the Chinese Belgrade embassy, the Hainan Island incident, and protests for Tibetan independence along the 2008 Beijing Olympics torch relay. Some analysts have pointed to its use in deflecting foreign criticism of human rights abuses in China and domestic attention from issues of corruption and bolstering its territorial claims and general economic and political rise.


title: Century of humiliation

text: Jane E. Elliott criticized the allegation that China refused to modernize or was unable to defeat Western armies as simplistic by noting that China embarked on a massive military modernization in the late 1800s after several defeats, bought weapons from Western countries and manufactured its own at arsenals, such as the Hanyang Arsenal during the Boxer Rebellion. In addition, Elliott questioned the claim that Chinese society was traumatized by the Western victories, as many Chinese peasants (then 90% of the population) lived outside the concessions and continued about their daily lives uninterrupted and without any feeling of "humiliation".


title: Century of humiliation

text: Historians have judged the Qing dynasty's vulnerability and weakness to foreign imperialism in the 19th century to be based mainly on its maritime naval weakness, but it achieved military success against Westerners on land. The historian Edward L. Dreyer stated, "China's nineteenth-century humiliations were strongly related to her weakness and failure at sea. At the start of the First Opium War, China had no unified navy and not a sense of how vulnerable she was to attack from the sea. British navy forces sailed and steamed wherever they wanted to go. In the Arrow War (1856–60), also known as the Second Opium War, the Chinese had no way to prevent the Anglo-French navy expedition of 1860 from sailing into the Gulf of Zhili and landing as near as possible to Beijing. Meanwhile, new but not exactly modern Chinese armies suppressed the midcentury rebellions, bluffed Russia into a peaceful settlement of disputed frontiers in Central Asia, and defeated the French forces on land in the Sino-French War (1884–85). But the defeat at sea, and the resulting threat to steamship traffic to Taiwan, forced China to conclude peace on unfavorable terms."


title: Century of humiliation

text: In a 2019 speech, Indian Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar used the term in a local context, referring to the British Empire's Company rule in India and subsequent British Raj, saying, "India had two centuries of humiliation by the West."


title: Julian Dennison

text: Julian Bailey Dennison (born 26 October 2002) is a New Zealand actor. He debuted in the 2013 film "Shopping", for which he won the English Film and Television Award for Best Supporting Actor. He is known for his roles as Ricky Baker in "Hunt for the Wilderpeople" (2016), the highest-grossing New Zealand film in history, as Russell "Firefist" Collins in "Deadpool 2" (2018), and as Belsnickel in "The Christmas Chronicles 2". Dennison has appeared in multiple commercials for companies including "Gillette", "Lynx" and "Air New Zealand". In 2021, Dennison made his first appearance in the "MonsterVerse" as Josh Valentine in "Godzilla vs. Kong".


title: Julian Dennison

text: Dennison was born and raised in Lower Hutt, New Zealand. He is the third of a family of four children, and has a twin brother named Christian. Julian is of Māori descent and is a member of the Ngāti Hauā iwi (tribe), part of the Tainui tribal confederation. He attended Naenae Primary School, where he first auditioned, and got his first part in the film "Shopping (2013)". He was then cast in the Australian film "Paper Planes" (2015). He later attended Hutt International Boys' School in Upper Hutt.


title: Julian Dennison

text: Dennison continued with acting and was given a role in an advertisement for the NZ Transport Agency to discourage driving under the influence of drugs. The public service announcement, which became an internet sensation in New Zealand and Australia, was directed by Taika Waititi, who later asked Dennison to star in his film "Hunt for the Wilderpeople" (2016) without the need to audition. The film went on to become New Zealand's highest-grossing film to date, and was critically acclaimed.


title: Julian Dennison

text: Dennison played Russell Collins / Firefist in the 2018 film "Deadpool 2". He was cast because of his "Wilderpeople" performance, and the friendship of Waititi with "Deadpool"s filmmakers. In 2020, Dennison co-starred in "The Christmas Chronicles 2", portraying Belsnickel and also voicing his elf form, and in 2021, he had a large supporting role in the monster sequel "Godzilla vs. Kong".


title: The Princess and the Pea

text: "The Princess and the Pea" (; direct translation: "The Princess on the Pea") is a literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a young woman whose royal ancestry is established by a test of her sensitivity. The tale was first published with three others by Andersen in an inexpensive booklet on 8 May 1835 in Copenhagen by C. A. Reitzel.


title: The Princess and the Pea

text: Andersen had heard the story as a child, and it likely has its source in folk material, possibly originating from Sweden, as it is unknown in the Danish oral tradition. Neither "The Princess and the Pea" nor Andersen's other tales of 1835 were well received by Danish critics, who disliked their casual, chatty style and their lack of morals.


title: The Princess and the Pea

text: The story tells of a prince who wants to marry a princess but is having difficulty finding a suitable wife. Something is always wrong with those he meets and he cannot be certain they are "real" princesses because they have bad table manners or they are not his type. One stormy night, a young woman drenched with rain seeks shelter in the prince's castle. She claims to be a princess, but no one believes her because of the way she looks. The prince's mother decides to test their unexpected guest by placing a pea in the bed she is offered for the night, covered by twenty mattresses and twenty eider-down beds on top of the mattresses.


title: The Princess and the Pea

text: In the morning, the princess tells her hosts that she endured a sleepless night, kept awake by something hard in the bed that she is certain has bruised her. With the proof of her bruised back, the princess passes the test and the prince rejoices happily, for only a real princess would have the sensitivity to feel a pea through such a quantity of bedding. The two are happily married, and the story ends with the pea being placed in a museum, where, according to the story, it can still be seen today unless someone has stolen it.


title: The Princess and the Pea

text: In his preface to the second volume of "Tales and Stories" (1863), Andersen claims to have heard the story in his childhood, but the tale has never been a traditional one in Denmark. He may as a child have heard a Swedish version, "Princess Who Lay on Seven Peas" ("Princessa' som lå' på sju ärter"), which tells of an orphan girl who establishes her identity after a sympathetic helper (a cat or a dog) informs her that an object (a bean, a pea or a straw) had been placed under her mattress.


title: The Princess and the Pea

text: Andersen deliberately cultivated a funny and colloquial style in the tales of 1835, reminiscent of oral storytelling techniques rather than the sophisticated literary devices of the fairy tales written by "les précieuses", E. T. A. Hoffmann and other precursors. The earliest reviews criticized Andersen for not following such models. In the second volume of the 1863 edition of his collected works, Andersen remarked in the preface: "The style should be such that one hears the narrator. Therefore, the language had to be similar to the spoken word; the stories are for children but adults too should be able to listen in." Although no materials appear to exist specifically addressing the composition of "The Princess and the Pea", Andersen does speak to the writing of the first four tales of 1835 of which "The Princess on the Pea" is one. On New Year's Day 1835, Andersen wrote to a friend: "I am now starting on some 'fairy tales for children.' I am going to win over future generations, you may want to know" and, in a letter dated February 1835 he wrote to the poet, Bernhard Severin Ingemann: "I have started some 'Fairy Tales Told for Children and believe I have succeeded. I have told a couple of tales which as a child I was happy about and which I do not believe are known and have written them exactly the way I would tell them to a "child"." Andersen had finished the tales by March 1835 and told Admiral Wulff's daughter, Henriette: "I have also written some fairy tales for children; Ørsted says about them that if "The Improvisatore" makes me famous then these will make me immortal, for they are the most perfect things I have written; but I myself do not think so." On 26  March, he observed that "[the fairy tales] will be published in April, and people will say: the work of my immortality! Of course, I shan't enjoy the experience in this world."


title: The Princess and the Pea

text: "The Princess and the Pea" was first published in Copenhagen, Denmark by C.A. Reitzel on 8  May 1835 in an unbound 61-page booklet called "Tales, Told for Children. First Collection. First Booklet. 1835." ("Eventyr, fortalte for Børn. Første Samling. Første Hefte. 1835."). "The Princess and the Pea" was the third tale in the collection, with "The Tinderbox" (""Fyrtøiet""), "Little Claus and Big Claus" (""Lille Claus og store Claus"") and "Little Ida's Flowers" (""Den Lille Idas Blomster""). The booklet was priced at twenty-four shillings (the equivalent of 25  Dkr. or approximately US$5 as of 2009), and the publisher paid Andersen 30 rixdollars (US$450 as of 2009). A second edition was published in 1842 and a third in 1845. "The Princess and the Pea" was reprinted on 18 December 1849 in "Tales. 1850." with illustrations by Vilhelm Pedersen. The story was published again on 15  December 1862, in "Tales and Stories. First Volume. 1862."The first Danish reviews of Andersen's 1835 tales appeared in 1836 and were hostile. Critics disliked the informal, chatty style and the lack of morals, and offered Andersen no encouragement. One literary journal failed to mention the tales at all, while another advised Andersen not to waste his time writing "wonder stories". He was told he "lacked the usual form of that kind of poetry ... and would not study models". Andersen felt he was working against their preconceived notions of what a fairy tale should be and returned to writing novels, believing it to be his true calling.


title: The Princess and the Pea

text: Charles Boner was the first to translate "The Princess and the Pea" into English, working from a German translation that had increased Andersen's lone pea to a trio of peas in an attempt to make the story more credible, an embellishment also added by another early English translator, Caroline Peachey. Boner's translation was published as "The Princess on the Peas" in "A Danish Story-Book" in 1846. Boner has been accused of missing the satire of the tale by ending with the rhetorical question, "Now was not that a lady of exquisite feeling?" rather than Andersen's joke of the pea being placed in the Royal Museum. Boner and Peachey's work established the standard for English translations of the fairy tales, which, for almost a century, as Wullschlager notes, "continued to range from the inadequate to the abysmal".


title: The Princess and the Pea

text: An alternate translation to the title was "The Princess and the Bean", in "The Birch-Tree Fairy Book".


title: The Princess and the Pea

text: Wullschlager observes that in "The Princess and the Pea" Andersen blended his childhood memories of a primitive world of violence, death and inexorable fate, with his social climber's private romance about the serene, secure and cultivated Danish bourgeoisie, which did not quite accept him as one of their own. Researcher Jack Zipes said that Andersen, during his lifetime, "was obliged to act as a dominated subject within the dominant social circles despite his fame and recognition as a writer"; Andersen, therefore, developed a feared and loved the view of the aristocracy. Others have said that Andersen constantly felt as though he did not belong, and longed to be a part of the upper class. The nervousness and humiliations Andersen suffered in the presence of the bourgeoisie were mythologized by the storyteller in the tale of "The Princess and the Pea", with Andersen himself the morbidly sensitive princess who can feel a pea through 20  mattresses. Maria Tatar notes that, unlike the folk heroine of his source material for the story, Andersen's princess has no need to resort to deceit to establish her identity; her sensitivity is enough to validate her nobility. For Andersen, she indicates, "true" nobility is derived not from an individual's birth but from their sensitivity. Andersen's insistence upon sensitivity as the exclusive privilege of nobility challenges modern notions about character and social worth. The princess's sensitivity, however, may be a metaphor for her depth of feeling and compassion.


title: The Princess and the Pea

text: While a 1905 article in the American "Journal of Education" recommended the story for children aged 8–10, "The Princess and the Pea" was not uniformly well received by critics. Toksvig wrote in 1934, "[the story] seems to the reviewer not only indelicate but indefensible, in so far as the child might absorb the false idea that great ladies must always be so terribly thin-skinned." Tatar notes that the princess's sensitivity has been interpreted as poor manners rather than a manifestation of noble birth, a view said to be based on "the cultural association between women's physical sensitivity and emotional sensitivity, specifically, the link between a woman reporting her physical experience of touch and negative images of women who are hypersensitive to physical conditions, who complain about trivialities, and who demand special treatment".


title: The Princess and the Pea

text: Researcher Jack Zipes notes that the tale is told tongue-in-cheek, with Andersen poking fun at the "curious and ridiculous" measures taken by the nobility to establish the value of bloodlines. He also notes that the author makes a case for sensitivity being the decisive factor in determining royal authenticity and that Andersen "never tired of glorifying the sensitive nature of an elite class of people".


title: The Princess and the Pea

text: “The Princess and the Pea” spurred on positive criticism, as well. In fact, critic Paul Hazard pointed out the realistic aspects of the fairy tale that make it easily relatable to all people. He believed that "the world Andersen witnessed—which encompassed sorrow, death, evil and man's follies—is reflected in his tales," and most evidently in "The Princess and the Pea." Another scholar, Niels Kofoed, noticed that “since they involve everyday-life themes of love, death, nature, injustice, suffering and poverty, they appeal to all races, ideologies, classes and genders.” Moreover, Celia Catlett Anderson realized that one of the things that makes this story so appealing and relatable is that optimism prevails over pessimism, especially for the main character of the princess. This inspires hope in the readers for their own futures and strength within themselves.


title: The Princess and the Pea

text: In 1927, German composer Ernst Toch published an opera based on "The Princess and the Pea", with a libretto by Benno Elkan. Reportedly this opera was very popular in the American student repertoires; the music, as well as the English translation (by Marion Farquhar), were praised in a review in "Notes". The story was adapted to the musical stage in 1959 as "Once Upon a Mattress", with comedian Carol Burnett playing the play's heroine, Princess Winnifred the Woebegone. The musical was revived in 1997 with Sarah Jessica Parker in the role. A television adaptation of "The Princess and the Pea" starred Liza Minnelli in a " Faerie Tale Theatre" episode in 1984. The story has been adapted into three films, a six-minute IMAX production in 2001, one full-length animation film in 2002 and the 2005 feature-length movie featuring Carol Burnett and Zooey Deschanel. The tale was the basis for a story in "The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales" by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith, wherein the prince decides to slip a bowling ball underneath one hundred mattresses after three years of unsuccessful attempts with the pea. In the morning, the princess comes downstairs and tells the queen, "This might sound odd but I think you need another mattress. I felt like I was sleeping on a lump as big as a bowling ball." satisfying the king and the queen. The princess marries the prince and they live happily, though maybe not entirely honestly, ever after. American poet Jane Shore published a poem, "The Princess and the Pea", in the January 1973 issue of "Poetry", in which a close dependency between princess and pea is posited: "I lie in my skin as in an ugly coat: / my body owned by the citizens / who ache and turn whenever I turn / on the pea on which so much depends" (13-16). Russian writer Evgeny Shvarts incorporates the story, with two other Andersen stories, in his "Naked King". In 2019, Simon Hood published a contemporary version of the story with animated illustrations. Both the language and the illustrations modernised the story, while the plot itself remained close to traditional versions.


title: The Princess and the Pea

text: Tales of extreme sensitivity are infrequent in world culture but a few have been recorded. As early as the 1st century, Seneca the Younger had mentioned a legend about a Sybaris native who slept on a bed of roses and suffered due to one petal folding over. Also similar is the medieval Perso-Arabic legend of al-Nadirah. The 11th-century "Kathasaritsagara" by Somadeva tells of a young man who claims to be especially fastidious about beds. After sleeping in a bed on top of seven mattresses newly made with clean sheets, the young man rises in great pain. A crooked red mark is discovered on his body and upon investigation, a hair is found on the bottom-most mattress of the bed. An Italian tale called "The Most Sensitive Woman" tells of a woman whose foot is bandaged after a jasmine petal falls upon it. The Brothers Grimm included a "Princess on the Pea" tale in an edition of their "Kinder- und Hausmärchen" but removed it after they discovered that it belonged to the Danish literary tradition.


title: The Princess and the Pea

text: A few folk tales feature a boy discovering a pea or a bean assumed to be of great value. After the boy enters a castle and is given a bed of straw for the night he tosses and turns in his sleep, attempting to guard his treasure. Some observers are persuaded that the boy is restless because he is unaccustomed to sleeping on straw and is therefore of aristocratic blood. In the more popular versions of the tale, only one pea is used. However, Charles Boner added in two more peas in his translation of the story upon which Andersen based his tale. Other differences amongst versions can be seen in various numbers of mattresses as well as feather beds. Versions of the story differ based on whether or not the character of the helper is included. The helper, in some cases, tells the princess to pretend she slept badly. In other versions, the helper does not appear at all and the princess decides to lie all on her own.


title: Sid Haig

text: Sidney Eddie Mosesian (July 14, 1939 – September 21, 2019), known professionally as Sid Haig, was an American actor, film producer, and musician. He was known for his roles in several of Jack Hill's blaxploitation films from the 1970s, as well as for his appearances in horror films, most notably his role as Captain Spaulding in the Rob Zombie films "House of 1000 Corpses", "The Devil's Rejects" and "3 from Hell". Haig's Captain Spaulding, and Haig himself, have been called icons of horror cinema. Haig had a leading role on the television series "Jason of Star Command" as the villain Dragos. He appeared in many television programs, including "The Untouchables", "Batman", "Gunsmoke", "", "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman", "", "Get Smart", "The Rockford Files", "Charlie's Angels", "Fantasy Island", "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century", "The Dukes of Hazzard", "The A-Team", "MacGyver", and "Emergency!".


title: Sid Haig

text: Haig was born in Fresno, California to Armenian parents. He was the son of Roxy (Mooradian) and Haig Mosesian, an electrician. As a young man, his rapid growth interfered with his motor coordination, prompting him to take dancing lessons. At seven years old, he worked as a paid dancer in a children's Christmas show and later joined a vaudeville revival show.


title: Sid Haig

text: Haig was also a musician, playing a wide range of music styles on the drums, including swing, country, jazz, blues and rock and roll. Haig began to earn money from music, and signed a recording contract one year out of high school. Still a teenager, Haig went on to record the single "Full House" with the T-Birds in 1958, which reached No. 4 in the charts.


title: Sid Haig

text: While Haig was in high school, the head of the drama department was Alice Merrill, who encouraged him to pursue an acting career. Merrill had been a Broadway actress who had maintained her contacts in the business. During his senior year, a play was produced in which Merrill double cast the show, to have one of her Hollywood friends assess the actors in order to select the final cast.


title: Sid Haig

text: Dennis Morgan, a musical comedy personality from the 1940s, saw Haig perform, and chose him for a prominent role in the play. Two weeks later, he returned to see the show and advised Haig to continue his education in the San Fernando Valley and to consider acting as a career. Two years later, Haig enrolled in the Pasadena Playhouse, the school that trained such noted actors as Robert Preston, Gene Hackman, and Dustin Hoffman. He later moved to Hollywood with longtime friend and Pasadena Playhouse roommate Stuart Margolin.


title: Sid Haig

text: Haig's first acting role was in a 1960 short student film titled "The Host", directed by Jack Hill at UCLA. This launched Haig's more-than-four-decade acting career in over fifty films and 350 television episodes. Haig became a staple in Hill's films, such as "Spider Baby", "Coffy" and "Foxy Brown". In 1971, Haig appeared in "THX 1138", the feature film directorial debut of George Lucas, as well as the James Bond film "Diamonds Are Forever".


title: Sid Haig

text: Haig's television debut was a role in a 1962 episode of "The Untouchables". He also appeared in a number of other television programs, including "Batman", "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.", "Gunsmoke", "", "", "Get Smart", "The Flying Nun", "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman", "Emergency!", "Charlie's Angels", "Jason of Star Command", "Fantasy Island", "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century", "The Dukes of Hazzard", "The A-Team", "MacGyver", and "Just the Ten of Us".


title: Sid Haig

text: Haig temporarily retired from acting in 1992, feeling typecast: "I just didn't want to play stupid heavies anymore. They just kept giving me the same parts but just putting different clothes on me. It was stupid, and I resented it, and I wouldn't have anything to do with it". Haig did not work in acting for five years, instead training and becoming a certified hypnotherapist. During this time, he was offered the role of Marsellus Wallace (later to be played by Ving Rhames) in "Pulp Fiction", the second feature film directed by Quentin Tarantino. At the time, Haig was concerned that low-budget television had been detrimental to his career and, at seeing the shooting script and the short number of days dedicated for each locale, he reportedly passed on the project; he is said to have later regretted this decision. Haig later appeared as a judge in Tarantino's 1997 film "Jackie Brown", a part written specifically for Haig by Tarantino.


title: Sid Haig

text: In 2003, Haig starred in Rob Zombie's debut film "House of 1000 Corpses", as a psychotic clown named Captain Spaulding. The role revived Haig's acting career, earning him a "Best Supporting Actor" award in the 13th Annual Fangoria Chainsaw Awards, and an induction into Fangoria's Horror Hall of Fame. Haig reprised his role as Spaulding in the 2005 film "The Devil's Rejects", a continuation of "House of 1000 Corpses", in which Spaulding is portrayed as the patriarch of the murderous Firefly family. Captain Spaulding has since been considered a modern icon of horror cinema, and Haig himself has been called a "horror icon". For his reprisal of the role in "The Devil's Rejects", he received the award for "Best Actor" in the 15th Annual Fangoria Chainsaw Awards, and shared the award for "Most Vile Villain" at the First Annual Spike TV Scream Awards with Leslie Easterbrook, Sheri Moon, and Bill Moseley as the Firefly family. Haig was also nominated as "Best Butcher" in the Fuse/Fangoria Chainsaw Awards, but lost to Tobin Bell's Jigsaw from "Saw II".


title: Sid Haig

text: Haig reunited with Rob Zombie for the director's 2007 "Halloween" remake, with Haig playing the role of cemetery caretaker Chester Chesterfield. He again reprised his role as Captain Spaulding for Zombie's 2009 animated film "The Haunted World of El Superbeasto", and appeared in Zombie's 2013 film "The Lords of Salem", as well as in the films "Hatchet III" and "Devil in My Ride".


title: Sid Haig

text: In 2019, Haig appeared as Captain Spaulding for the final time in the Rob Zombie film "3 from Hell", a sequel to "House of 1000 Corpses" and "The Devil's Rejects". He is set to posthumously appear in the 2020 slasher film "Hanukkah", as well as in the 2022 film "Abruptio".


title: Sid Haig

text: In early September 2019, Haig was hospitalized after falling at his home in Thousand Oaks, California. While recovering, he contracted "Aspergillus" pneumonia after aspirating vomit in his sleep. He died on September 21, 2019, at the age of 80.


title: Harshad Chopda

text: Harshad Chopda (born 17 May 1983) is an Indian television actor known for his portrayal of Prem Juneja in "Kis Desh Mein Hai Meraa Dil", Anurag Ganguly in "Tere Liye", Captain Aditya Hooda in "Bepannah" and Dr. Abhimanyu Birla in "Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai".


title: Harshad Chopda

text: Chopda started his television career in 2006 with Zee TV's "Mamta" where he played Karan Srivastav. From 2006 to 2007, he portrayed Cadet Ali Baig in SAB TV's "Left Right Left". Next, he joined Sony TV's "Amber Dhara" as Akshat Mehra opposite Kashmira Irani.


title: Harshad Chopda

text: From 2008 to 2010, he portrayed Prem Juneja in Star Plus's "Kis Desh Mein Hai Meraa Dil" opposite Additi Gupta. From 2010 to 2011, Chopda played Anurag Ganguly in Star Plus's "Tere Liye" opposite Anupriya Kapoor.


title: Harshad Chopda

text: From 2011 to 2012, he played Mohan Gala in NDTV Imagine's "Dharampatni" opposite Aasiya Kazi. In 2012, Chopda portrayed Raghavendra Pratap Singh in Life OK's "Dil Se Di Dua... Saubhagyavati Bhava?" opposite Sriti Jha and Karanvir Bohra. From 2014 to 2015, he played Sahir Azeem Chaudhary in Sony TV's "Humsafars" opposite Shivya Pathania.


title: Harshad Chopda

text: In 2017, Chopda made his film debut as Rahul in "2016 The End" co-starring Priya Banerjee, Divyendu Sharma and Kiku Sharda.


title: Harshad Chopda

text: In 2018, he portrayed Captain Aditya Hooda in Colors TV's "Bepannah" opposite Jennifer Winget. Bepannaah made a successful debut, entering the list of top five shows in its very first week. "Times of India" wrote "Harshad Chopda is a complete natural and plays his part effortlessly." "India Today" stated "Harshad nails his character of Aditya with some black humour and hard-hitting one-liners." In 2020, he starred in Desi Music Factory's music video "Juda Kar Diya" opposite Erica Fernandes.


title: Harshad Chopda

text: Since October 2021, Chopda has been starring as Dr. Abhimanyu Birla in Star Plus's "Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai" opposite Pranali Rathod. Chopda also starred in the musical series "Aakhiri Mulaqaat" spanning four songs opposite Smriti Kalra.


title: Harshad Chopda

text: In 2017, Chopda was listed 16th in "Times of India"s Top 20 Most Desirable Men on Indian Television List. In 2018, he was placed 19th in "Eastern Eye"s 50 Sexiest Asian Men List. His chemistry with Jennifer Winget in "Bepannah" won them the title of "Times of India"s Most Favourite Onscreen Jodi 2018. He was also listed 8th in "Times of India"s Top 20 Most Desirable Men on Indian Television 2018.


title: Harshad Chopda

text: In 2019, he was placed 6th in "Eastern Eye"s 50 Sexiest Asian Men List. Next, he was listed 8th in "Times of India"s Top 20 Most Desirable Men on Indian Television 2019.


title: Harshad Chopda

text: Chopda has received numerous nominations and awards, including four Indian Television Academy Awards, one Indian Telly Award and two Asian Viewers Television Awards.


title: Modern art

text: Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophies of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of experimentation. Modern artists experimented with new ways of seeing and with fresh ideas about the nature of materials and functions of art. A tendency away from the narrative, which was characteristic for the traditional arts, toward abstraction is characteristic of much modern art. More recent artistic production is often called contemporary art or postmodern art.


title: Modern art

text: Modern art begins with the heritage of painters like Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec all of whom were essential for the development of modern art. At the beginning of the 20th century Henri Matisse and several other young artists including the pre-cubists Georges Braque, André Derain, Raoul Dufy, Jean Metzinger and Maurice de Vlaminck revolutionized the Paris art world with "wild", multi-colored, expressive landscapes and figure paintings that the critics called Fauvism. Matisse's two versions of "The Dance" signified a key point in his career and in the development of modern painting. It reflected Matisse's incipient fascination with primitive art: the intense warm color of the figures against the cool blue-green background and the rhythmical succession of the dancing nudes convey the feelings of emotional liberation and hedonism.


title: Modern art

text: At the start of 20th-century Western painting, and initially influenced by Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin and other late-19th-century innovators, Pablo Picasso made his first Cubist paintings based on Cézanne's idea that all depiction of nature can be reduced to three solids: cube, sphere and cone. With the painting "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" (1907), Picasso dramatically created a new and radical picture depicting a raw and primitive brothel scene with five prostitutes, violently painted women, reminiscent of African tribal masks and his own new Cubist inventions. Analytic cubism was jointly developed by Picasso and Georges Braque, exemplified by "Violin and Candlestick, Paris," from about 1908 through 1912. Analytic cubism, the first clear manifestation of cubism, was followed by Synthetic cubism, practiced by Braque, Picasso, Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Albert Gleizes, Marcel Duchamp and several other artists into the 1920s. Synthetic cubism is characterized by the introduction of different textures, surfaces, collage elements, papier collé and a large variety of merged subject matter.


title: Modern art

text: Although modern sculpture and architecture are reckoned to have emerged at the end of the 19th century, the beginnings of modern painting can be located earlier. The date perhaps most commonly identified as marking the birth of modern art is 1863, the year that Édouard Manet showed his painting "Le déjeuner sur l'herbe" in the "Salon des Refusés" in Paris. Earlier dates have also been proposed, among them 1855 (the year Gustave Courbet exhibited "The Artist's Studio") and 1784 (the year Jacques-Louis David completed his painting "The Oath of the Horatii"). In the words of art historian H. Harvard Arnason: "Each of these dates has significance for the development of modern art, but none categorically marks a completely new beginning ... A gradual metamorphosis took place in the course of a hundred years."


title: Modern art

text: The strands of thought that eventually led to modern art can be traced back to the Enlightenment. The important modern art critic Clement Greenberg, for instance, called Immanuel Kant "the first real Modernist" but also drew a distinction: "The Enlightenment criticized from the outside ... . Modernism criticizes from the inside." The French Revolution of 1789 uprooted assumptions and institutions that had for centuries been accepted with little question and accustomed the public to vigorous political and social debate. This gave rise to what art historian Ernst Gombrich called a "self-consciousness that made people select the style of their building as one selects the pattern of a wallpaper."


title: Modern art

text: The pioneers of modern art were Romantics, Realists and Impressionists. By the late 19th century, additional movements which were to be influential in modern art had begun to emerge: post-Impressionism and Symbolism.


title: Modern art

text: Influences upon these movements were varied: from exposure to Eastern decorative arts, particularly Japanese printmaking, to the coloristic innovations of Turner and Delacroix, to a search for more realism in the depiction of common life, as found in the work of painters such as Jean-François Millet. The advocates of realism stood against the idealism of the tradition-bound academic art that enjoyed public and official favor. The most successful painters of the day worked either through commissions or through large public exhibitions of their own work. There were official, government-sponsored painters' unions, while governments regularly held public exhibitions of new fine and decorative arts.


title: Modern art

text: The Impressionists argued that people do not see objects but only the light which they reflect, and therefore painters should paint in natural light (en plein air) rather than in studios and should capture the effects of light in their work. Impressionist artists formed a group, "Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs" ("Association of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers") which, despite internal tensions, mounted a series of independent exhibitions. The style was adopted by artists in different nations, in preference to a "national" style. These factors established the view that it was a "movement". These traits—establishment of a working method integral to the art, establishment of a movement or visible active core of support, and international adoption—would be repeated by artistic movements in the Modern period in art.


title: Modern art

text: Among the movements which flowered in the first decade of the 20th century were Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism, and Futurism.


title: Modern art

text: During the years between 1910 and the end of World War I and after the heyday of cubism, several movements emerged in Paris. Giorgio de Chirico moved to Paris in July 1911, where he joined his brother Andrea (the poet and painter known as Alberto Savinio). Through his brother he met Pierre Laprade, a member of the jury at the Salon d'Automne where he exhibited three of his dreamlike works: "Enigma of the Oracle", "Enigma of an Afternoon" and "Self-Portrait". During 1913 he exhibited his work at the Salon des Indépendants and Salon d’Automne, and his work was noticed by Pablo Picasso, Guillaume Apollinaire, and several others. His compelling and mysterious paintings are considered instrumental to the early beginnings of Surrealism. "Song of Love" (1914) is one of the most famous works by de Chirico and is an early example of the surrealist style, though it was painted ten years before the movement was "founded" by André Breton in 1924.


title: Modern art

text: World War I brought an end to this phase but indicated the beginning of a number of anti-art movements, such as Dada, including the work of Marcel Duchamp, and of Surrealism. Artist groups like de Stijl and Bauhaus developed new ideas about the interrelation of the arts, architecture, design, and art education.


title: Modern art

text: Modern art was introduced to the United States with the Armory Show in 1913 and through European artists who moved to the U.S. during World War I.


title: Modern art

text: It was only after World War II, however, that the U.S. became the focal point of new artistic movements. The 1950s and 1960s saw the emergence of Abstract Expressionism, Color field painting, Conceptual artists of Art & Language, Pop art, Op art, Hard-edge painting, Minimal art, Lyrical Abstraction, Fluxus, Happening, Video art, Postminimalism, Photorealism and various other movements. In the late 1960s and the 1970s, Land art, Performance art, Conceptual art, and other new art forms had attracted the attention of curators and critics, at the expense of more traditional media. Larger installations and performances became widespread.


title: Modern art

text: By the end of the 1970s, when cultural critics began speaking of "the end of painting" (the title of a provocative essay written in 1981 by Douglas Crimp), new media art had become a category in itself, with a growing number of artists experimenting with technological means such as video art. Painting assumed renewed importance in the 1980s and 1990s, as evidenced by the rise of neo-expressionism and the revival of figurative painting.


title: Modern art

text: Towards the end of the 20th century, a number of artists and architects started questioning the idea of "the modern" and created typically Postmodern works.


title: Nine Years' War

text: The Nine Years' War (1688–1697), often called the War of the Grand Alliance or the War of the League of Augsburg, was a conflict between France and a European coalition which mainly included the Holy Roman Empire (led by the Habsburg monarchy), the Dutch Republic, England, Spain, Savoy, Sweden and Portugal. Although not the first European war to spill over to Europe's overseas colonies, the events of the war spread to such far away places as the Americas, India, and West Africa. It is for this reason that it is sometimes considered the first world war. The conflict encompassed the Glorious Revolution in England, where William of Orange deposed the unpopular James VII and II and subsequently struggled against him for control of Scotland and Ireland, and a campaign in colonial North America between French and English settlers and their respective Native American allies.


title: Nine Years' War

text: Louis XIV of France had emerged from the Franco-Dutch War in 1678 as the most powerful monarch in Europe, an absolute ruler whose armies had won numerous military victories. Using a combination of aggression, annexation, and quasi-legal means, Louis XIV set about extending his gains to stabilize and strengthen France's frontiers, culminating in the brief War of the Reunions (1683–1684). The Truce of Ratisbon guaranteed France's new borders for twenty years, but Louis XIV's subsequent actions—notably his Edict of Fontainebleau (the revocation of the Edict of Nantes) in 1685—led to the deterioration of his political pre-eminence and raised concerns among European Protestant states.


title: Nine Years' War

text: Louis XIV's decision to cross the Rhine in September 1688 was designed to extend his influence and pressure the Holy Roman Empire into accepting his territorial and dynastic claims. However, Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor and German princes resolved to resist. The States General of the Netherlands and William III brought the Dutch and English into the conflict against France and were soon joined by other states, which now meant the French king faced a powerful coalition aimed at curtailing his ambitions.


title: Nine Years' War

text: The main fighting took place around France's borders in the Spanish Netherlands, the Rhineland, the Duchy of Savoy, and Catalonia. The fighting generally favoured Louis XIV's armies, but by 1696 his country was in the grip of an economic crisis. The Maritime Powers (England and the Dutch Republic) were also financially exhausted, and when Savoy defected from the Alliance, all parties were keen to negotiate a settlement. By the terms of the Peace of Ryswick, Louis XIV retained the whole of Alsace but in exchange had to return Lorraine to its ruler and give up any gains on the right bank of the Rhine. Louis XIV also recognized William III as the rightful king of England, while the Dutch acquired a barrier fortress system in the Spanish Netherlands to help secure their borders.


title: Nine Years' War

text: The peace would be short-lived. With the ailing and childless Charles II of Spain's death approaching, a new dispute over the inheritance of the Spanish Empire was soon to embroil Louis XIV and the Grand Alliance in the War of the Spanish Succession.


title: Nine Years' War

text: In the years following the Franco-Dutch War (1672–78) Louis XIV of France, now at the height of his power, sought to impose religious unity in France and to solidify and expand his frontiers. He had already won his personal glory by conquering new territory, but he was no longer willing to pursue an open-ended militarist policy of the kind that he had undertaken in 1672. Instead, he would rely upon France's clear military superiority to achieve specific strategic objectives along his borders. Proclaimed the "Sun King", a more mature Louis, conscious that he had failed to achieve decisive results against the Dutch, had turned from conquest to security by using threats, rather than open war, to intimidate his neighbours into submission.


title: Nine Years' War

text: Louis XIV, along with his chief military advisor, Louvois; his foreign minister, Colbert de Croissy; and his technical expert, Vauban, developed France's defensive strategy. Vauban had advocated a system of impregnable fortresses along the frontier to keep France's enemies out. To construct a proper system, however, the King needed to acquire more land from his neighbours to form a solid forward line. That rationalisation of the frontier would make it far more defensible and define it more clearly in a political sense, but it also created the paradox that while Louis's ultimate goals were defensive, he pursued them by offensive means. He grabbed the necessary territory in the Reunions, a strategy that combined legalism, arrogance and aggression.


title: Nine Years' War

text: The Treaties of Nijmegen (1678) and the earlier Peace of Westphalia (1648) provided Louis XIV with the justification for the Reunions. These treaties had awarded France territorial gains, but owing to the vagaries of their language (as with most treaties of the time) they were notoriously imprecise and self-contradictory, and never specified exact boundary lines. That imprecision often led to differing interpretations of the text and resulted in long disputes over frontier zones, where one side might gain a town or area and its "dependencies", but it was often unclear what the dependencies were. The machinery needed to determine the territorial ambiguities was already in place through the medium of the Parlements at Metz (technically, the only Chamber of Reunion), Besançon and a superior court at Breisach, dealing respectively with Lorraine, Franche-Comté and Alsace. Unsurprisingly, the courts usually found in Louis XIV's favour. By 1680, the disputed County of Montbéliard, lying between Franche-Comté and Alsace, had been separated from the Duchy of Württemberg, and by August, Louis XIV had secured the whole of Alsace with the exception of Strasbourg. The Chamber of Reunion of Metz soon laid claims to land around the Three Bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun and most of the Spanish Duchy of Luxembourg. The fortress of Luxembourg City itself was then blockaded with the intention of it becoming part of his defensible frontier.


title: Nine Years' War

text: On 30 September 1681, French troops also seized Strasbourg and its outpost, Kehl, on the right bank of the Rhine, a bridge that Holy Roman Empire ("Imperial") troops had regularly exploited during the latter stages of the Dutch War. By forcibly taking the Imperial city, the French now controlled two of the three bridgeheads over the Rhine, the others being Breisach, which was already in French hands, and Philippsburg, which Louis XIV had lost by the Treaty of Nijmegen. On the same day that Strasbourg fell, French forces marched into Casale, in northern Italy. The fortress was not taken in the process of the Reunions but had been purchased from the Duke of Mantua, which, together with the French possession of Pinerolo, enabled France to tie down Victor Amadeus II, the Duke of Savoy, and to threaten the Spanish Duchy of Milan. All of the Reunion claims and annexations were important strategic points of entry and exit between France and its neighbours and were immediately fortified by Vauban and incorporated into his fortress system.


title: Nine Years' War

text: Thus, the Reunions carved territory from the frontiers of present-day Germany, and the annexations established French power in Italy. However, by seeking to construct his impregnable border, Louis XIV so alarmed the other European states that a general war, which he had sought to avoid, became inevitable. His fortresses covered his frontiers but also projected French power. Only two statesmen might hope to oppose Louis XIV. One was William of Orange, the stadtholder of the United Provinces of the Dutch Republic, the natural leader of Protestant opposition, and the other was Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, the obvious leader of anti-French forces in the Holy Roman Empire and Catholic Europe. Both wanted to act, but effective opposition in 1681–1682 was out of the question since Amsterdam's burghers wanted no further conflict with France, and both were fully aware of the current weaknesses of Spain and the Empire, whose important German princes from Mainz, Trier, Cologne, Saxony, Bavaria and (significantly) Frederick William I of Brandenburg remained in the pay of France.


title: Nine Years' War

text: Ever since Leopold I's intervention in the Franco-Dutch War, Louis XIV considered him his most dangerous enemy, although there was little reason to fear him. Leopold I was weak and was in grave danger along his Hungarian borders, where the Ottoman Turks were threatening to overrun all of Central Europe from the south. Louis had encouraged and assisted the Ottoman drive against Leopold I's Habsburg lands and he assured the Porte that he would not support the Emperor. He had also urged John III Sobieski of Poland unsuccessfully not to side with Leopold I and pressed the malcontent princes of Transylvania and Hungary to join with the Sultan's forces and to free their territory from Habsburg rule. When the Ottomans besieged Vienna in the spring of 1683, Louis did nothing to help the defenders.


title: Nine Years' War

text: Taking advantage of the Ottoman threat in the east, Louis invaded the Spanish Netherlands on 1 September 1683 and renewed the siege of Luxembourg, which had been abandoned the previous year. The French required of the Emperor and of Charles II of Spain a recognition of the legality of the recent Reunions, but the Spanish were unwilling to see any more of their holdings fall under Louis's jurisdiction. Spain's military options were highly limited, but the Ottoman defeat at Vienna on 12 September had emboldened it. In the hope that Leopold I would now make peace in the east and come to his assistance, Charles II declared war on France on 26 October. However, the Emperor had decided to continue the Turkish war in the Balkans and, for the time being, to compromise in the west. With Leopold I unwilling to fight on two fronts, a strong neutralist party in the Dutch Republic tying William's hands and the Elector of Brandenburg stubbornly holding to his alliance with Louis, no possible outcome could occur but complete French victory.


title: Nine Years' War

text: The War of the Reunions was brief and devastating. With the fall of Courtrai in early November, followed by Dixmude in December and Luxembourg in June 1684, Charles II was compelled to accept Louis XIV's peace. The Truce of Ratisbon (Regensburg), signed on 15 August by France on one side and by the Emperor and Spain on the other, rewarded the French with Strasbourg, Luxembourg and the gains of the Reunion (Courtrai and Dixmude were returned to Spain). The resolution was not a definitive peace but only a truce for 20 years. However, Louis had sound reasons to feel satisfied since the Emperor and German princes were fully occupied in Hungary, and in the Dutch Republic, William of Orange remained isolated and powerless, largely because of the pro-French mood in Amsterdam.


title: Nine Years' War

text: At Ratisbon in 1684, France had been in a position to impose its will on Europe; however, after 1685, its dominant military and diplomatic position began to deteriorate. One of the main factors for the diminution was Louis XIV's revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which caused the dispersal of France's Protestant community. As many as 200,000 Huguenots fled to England, the Dutch Republic, Switzerland, and Germany, and spread tales of brutality at the hands of the monarch of Versailles. The direct effect on France of the loss of the community is debatable, but the flight helped destroy the pro-French faction in the Dutch Republic because of its Protestant affiliations, and the exodus of Huguenot merchants and the harassment of Dutch merchants living in France also greatly affected Franco-Dutch trade. The persecution had another effect on Dutch public opinion since the conduct of the Catholic King of France made them look more anxiously at James II, now the Catholic King of England. Many in The Hague believed that James II was closer to his cousin Louis XIV than to his son-in-law and nephew William, which engendered suspicion and, in turn, hostility between Louis and William. Louis's seemingly endless territorial claims, coupled with his persecution of Protestants, enabled William of Orange and his party to gain the ascendancy in the Dutch Republic and finally lay the groundwork for his long-sought alliance against France.


title: Nine Years' War

text: Although James II had permitted the Huguenots to settle in England, he had enjoyed an amicable relationship with his fellow Catholic Louis XIV since James realised the importance of the friendship for his own Catholicising measures at home against the suspicions of the Protestant majority. However, the Huguenot presence gave an immense boost to anti-French discourse and joined forces with elements in England that had already been highly suspicious of James. Moreover, conflicts between French and English commercial interests in North America had caused severe friction between both countries since the French had grown antagonistic towards the Hudson's Bay Company and the New England colonies, but the English looked upon French pretensions in New France as encroaching upon their own possessions. The rivalry had spread to the other side of the world, where English and French East India Companies had already embarked upon hostilities.


title: Nine Years' War

text: Many in Germany reacted negatively to the persecution of the Huguenots, which disabused the Protestant princes of the idea that Louis XIV was their ally against the intolerant practices of the Catholic Habsburgs. The Elector of Brandenburg answered the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by promulgating the Edict of Potsdam, which invited the fleeing Huguenots to Brandenburg. However, there were motivations other than religious adherence that disabused him and other German princes of his allegiance to France. Louis XIV had pretensions in the Palatinate in the name of his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Charlotte, and threatened further annexations of the Rhineland. Thus, Frederick-William, spurning his French subsidies, ended his alliance with France and reached agreements with William of Orange, the Emperor and King Charles XI of Sweden, the last of which by temporarily putting aside their differences over Pomerania.


title: Nine Years' War

text: The flight of the Huguenots in southern France caused outright war in the Alpine districts of Piedmont in the Duchy of Savoy, a northern Italian state that was nominally part of the Empire. From their fort at Pinerolo, the French were able to exert considerable pressure on the Duke of Savoy and to force him to persecute his own Protestant community, the Vaudois (Valdesi). The constant threat of interference and intrusion into his domestic affairs was a source of concern for Victor Amadeus, and in 1687, the Duke's policy started to become increasingly anti-French as he searched for a chance to assert his aspirations and concerns. Criticism of Louis XIV's regime spread all over Europe. The Truce of Ratisbon, followed by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, caused suspicion as to Louis's true intentions. Many also feared the King's supposed designs on universal monarchy, the uniting of the Spanish and the German crowns with that of France. In response, representatives from the Emperor, the southern German princes, Spain (motivated by the French attack in 1683 and the imposed truce of 1684) and Sweden (in its capacity as princes in the Empire) met in Augsburg to form a defensive league of the Rhine in July 1686. Pope Innocent XI, partly because of his anger at Louis's failure to go on crusade against the Turks, gave his secret support.


title: Nine Years' War

text: The League of Augsburg had little military power – the Empire and its Allies in the form of the Holy League were still busy fighting the Ottoman Turks in Hungary. Many of the petty princes were reluctant to act due to the fear of French retaliation. Nevertheless, Louis XIV watched with apprehension Leopold I's advances against the Ottomans. Habsburg victories along the Danube at Buda in September 1686, and Mohács a year later had convinced the French that the Emperor, in alliance with Spain and William of Orange, would soon turn his attention towards France and retake what had recently been won by Louis's military intimidation. In response, Louis XIV sought to guarantee his territorial gains of the Reunions by forcing his German neighbours into converting the Truce of Ratisbon into a permanent settlement. However, a French ultimatum issued in 1687 failed to gain the desired assurances from the Emperor whose victories in the east made the Germans less anxious to compromise in the west.


title: Nine Years' War

text: Another testing point concerned the pro-French Archbishop-Elector, Maximilian Henry, and the question of his succession in the state of Cologne. The territory of the archbishopric lay along the left bank of the Rhine and included three fortresses of the river-line: Bonn, Rheinberg, and Kaiserswerth, excluding the free-city of Cologne itself. Moreover, the archbishop was also prince-bishop of Liège, the small state astride the strategic highway of the river Meuse. When the Elector died on 3 June Louis XIV pressed for the pro-French Bishop of Strasbourg, Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg, to succeed him. The Emperor, however, favoured Joseph Clement, the brother of Max Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria. With neither candidate able to secure the necessary two-thirds of the vote of the canons of the cathedral chapter, the matter was referred to Rome. There was no prospect of the Pope, already in deep conflict with Louis, favouring the French candidate, and on 26 August he awarded the election to Clement.


title: Nine Years' War

text: On 6 September, Leopold I's forces under the Elector of Bavaria secured Belgrade for the Empire. With the Ottomans appearing close to collapse Louis XIV's ministers, Louvois and Colbert de Croissy, felt it essential to have a quick resolution along the German frontier before the Emperor turned from the Balkans to lead a comparatively united German Empire against France on the Rhine and reverse the Ratisbon settlement. On 24 September Louis published his manifesto, his "Mémoire de raisons", listing his grievances: he demanded that the Truce of Ratisbon be turned into a permanent resolution, and that Fürstenburg be appointed Archbishop-Elector of Cologne. He also proposed to occupy the territories that he believed belonged to his sister-in-law regarding the Palatinate succession. The Emperor and the German princes, the Pope, and William of Orange were quite unwilling to grant these demands. For the Dutch in particular, Louis's control of Cologne and Liège would be strategically unacceptable, for with these territories in French hands the Spanish Netherlands 'buffer-zone' would be effectively bypassed. The day after Louis issued his manifesto – well before his enemies could have known its details – the main French army crossed the Rhine as a prelude to investing Philippsburg, the key post between Luxembourg (annexed in 1684) and Strasbourg (seized in 1681), and other Rhineland towns. This pre-emptive strike was intended to intimidate the German states into accepting his conditions, while encouraging the Ottoman Turks to continue their own struggle with the Emperor in the east.


title: Nine Years' War

text: Louis XIV and his ministers had hoped for a quick resolution similar to that secured from the War of the Reunions, but by 1688 the situation was drastically different. In the east an Imperial army, now manned with veteran officers and men, had dispelled the Turkish threat and crushed Imre Thököly's revolt in Hungary; while in the west and north, William of Orange was fast becoming the leader of a coalition of Protestant states, anxious to join with the Emperor and Spain, and end the hegemony of France. Louis wanted a short defensive war, yet by crossing the Rhine that summer he began a long war of attrition; a war framed by interests of the state, its defensible frontiers, and the balance of power in Europe.


title: Nine Years' War

text: Marshal Duras, Vauban, and 30,000 men – all under the nominal command of the Dauphin – besieged the Elector of Trier's fortress of Philippsburg on 27 September 1688. After a vigorous defence it fell on 30 October. Louis XIV's army proceeded to take Mannheim, which capitulated on 11 November, shortly followed by Frankenthal. Other towns fell without resistance, including Oppenheim, Worms, Bingen, Kaiserslautern, Heidelberg, Speyer and, above all, the key fortress of Mainz. After Coblenz failed to surrender Boufflers put it under heavy bombardment, but it did not fall to the French.


title: Nine Years' War

text: Louis XIV now mastered the Rhine south of Mainz to the Swiss border, but although the attacks kept the Turks fighting in the east, the impact on Leopold I and the German states had the opposite effect of what had been intended. The League of Augsburg was not strong enough to meet the threat, but on 22 October 1688 the powerful German princes, including the Elector of Brandenburg, John George III, Elector of Saxony, Ernest Augustus of Hanover, and Charles I, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, reached an agreement in Magdeburg that mobilised the forces of north Germany. Meanwhile, the Emperor recalled the Bavarian, Swabian, and Franconian troops under the Elector of Bavaria from the Ottoman front to defend south Germany. The French had not prepared for such an eventuality. Realising that the war in Germany was not going to end quickly and that the Rhineland "blitz" would not be a brief and decisive parade of French glory, Louis XIV and Louvois resolved upon a scorched-earth policy in the Palatinate, Baden and Württemberg, intent on denying enemy troops local resources and prevent them from invading French territory. By 20 December Louvois had selected all the cities, towns, villages and châteaux intended for destruction. On 2 March 1689 Count of Tessé torched Heidelberg; on 8 March Montclar levelled Mannheim. Oppenheim and Worms were finally destroyed on 31 May, followed by Speyer on 1 June, and Bingen on 4 June. In all, French troops burnt over 20 substantial towns as well as numerous villages.