title: Plantation of Ulster

text: Among those involved in planning and overseeing the plantation were King James, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Arthur Chichester, and the Attorney-General for Ireland, John Davies. They saw the plantation as a means of controlling, anglicising, and "civilising" Ulster. The province was almost wholly Gaelic, Catholic, and rural and had been the region most resistant to English control. The plantation was also meant to sever Gaelic Ulster's links with the Gaelic Highlands of Scotland. The colonists (or "British tenants") were required to be English-speaking, Protestant, and loyal to the king. Some of the undertakers and settlers, however, were Catholic. The Scottish settlers were mostly Presbyterian Lowlanders and the English mostly Anglicans. Although some "loyal" natives were granted land, the native Irish reaction to the plantation was generally hostile, and native writers bewailed what they saw as the decline of Gaelic society and the influx of foreigners.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: The Plantation of Ulster was the biggest of the Plantations of Ireland. It led to the founding of many of Ulster's towns and created a lasting Ulster Protestant community in the province with ties to Britain. It also resulted in many of the native Irish nobility losing their land and led to centuries of ethnic and sectarian animosity, which at times spilled into conflict, notably in the Irish Rebellion of 1641 and more recently, the Troubles.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: Before the plantation, Ulster had been the most Gaelic province of Ireland, as it was the least anglicized and the most independent of English control. The region was almost wholly rural and had few towns or villages. Throughout the 16th century, Ulster was viewed by the English as being "underpopulated" and undeveloped. The economy of Gaelic Ulster was overwhelmingly based on agriculture, especially cattle-raising. Many of the Gaelic Irish practiced "creaghting" or "booleying", a kind of transhumance whereby some of them moved with their cattle to upland pastures during the summer months and lived in temporary dwellings during that time. This often led outsiders to mistakenly believe that the Gaelic Irish were nomadic.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: Michael Perceval-Maxwell estimates that by 1600 (before the worst atrocities of the Nine Years' War) Ulster's total adult population was only 25,000 to 40,000 people. Others estimate that Ulster's population in the year 1600 was about 200,000. The wars fought among Gaelic clans and between the Gaelic and English undoubtedly contributed to depopulation.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: The Tudor conquest of Ireland began in the 1540s during the reign of Henry VIII (1509–1547) and concluded in the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603) sixty years later, breaking the power of the semi-independent Irish chieftains. As part of the conquest, plantations (colonial settlements) were established in Queen's County and King's County (Laois and Offaly) in the 1550s as well as Munster in the 1580s, although these were not very successful.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: In the 1570s, Elizabeth I authorized a privately funded plantation of eastern Ulster, led by Thomas Smith and Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex. This was a failure and sparked violent conflict with the local Irish lord, in which Lord Deputy Essex killed many of the lord of Clandeboys kin.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: In the Nine Years' War of 1594–1603, an alliance of northern Gaelic chieftains—led by Hugh O'Neill of Tyrone, Hugh Roe O'Donnell of Tyrconnell, and Hugh Maguire of Fermanagh—resisted the imposition of English government in Ulster and sought to affirm their own control. Following an extremely costly series of campaigns by the English the war ended in 1603 with the Treaty of Mellifont. The terms of surrender granted to what remained of O'Neills rebels were considered generous at the time.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: After the Treaty of Mellifont, the northern chieftains attempted to consolidate their positions, whilst some within the English administration attempted to undermine them. In 1607, O'Neill and his primary allies left Ireland to seek Spanish help for a new rebellion to restore their privileges, in what became known as the Flight of the Earls. King James issued a proclamation declaring their action to be treason, paving the way for the forfeiture of their lands and titles.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: A colonization of Ulster had been proposed since the end of the Nine Years' War. The original proposals were smaller, involving planting settlers around key military posts and on church land, and would have included large land grants to native Irish lords who sided with the English during the war, such as Niall Garve O'Donnell. However, in 1608 Sir Cahir O'Doherty of Inishowen launched a rebellion, capturing and burning the town of Derry. The brief rebellion was ended by Sir Richard Wingfield at the Battle of Kilmacrennan. The rebellion prompted Arthur Chichester, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, to plan a much bigger plantation and to expropriate the legal titles of all native landowners in the province. John Davies, the Attorney-General for Ireland, used the law as a tool of conquest and colonization. Before the Flight of the Earls, the English administration had sought to minimize the personal estates of the chieftains, but now they treated the chieftains as sole owners of their whole territories, so that all the land could be confiscated. Most of this land was deemed to be forfeited (or escheated) to the Crown because the chieftains were declared to be attainted. English judges had also declared that titles to land held under gavelkind, the native Irish custom of inheriting land, had no standing under English law. Davies used this as a means to confiscate land, when other means failed.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: The Plantation of Ulster was presented to James I as a joint "British", or English and Scottish, venture to 'pacify' and 'civilise' Ulster, with half the settlers to be from each country. James had been King of Scotland before he also became King of England and needed to reward his Scottish subjects with land in Ulster to assure them they were not being neglected now that he had moved his court to London. Long-standing contacts between Ulster and the west of Scotland meant that Scottish participation was a practical necessity. James saw the Gaels as barbarous and rebellious, and believed Gaelic culture should be wiped out. For centuries, Scottish Gaelic mercenaries called gallowglass ("gallóglaigh") had been migrating to Ireland to serve under the Irish chiefs. Another goal of the plantation was to sever Gaelic Ulster's links with the Gaelic Highlands of Scotland.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: Six counties were involved in the official plantationDonegal, Londonderry, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Cavan and Armagh. In the two officially unplanted counties of Antrim and Down, substantial Presbyterian Scots settlement had been underway since 1606.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: The plan for the plantation was determined by two factors. One was the wish to make sure the settlement could not be destroyed by rebellion as the first Munster Plantation had been in the Nine Years' War. This meant that, rather than settling the planters in isolated pockets of land confiscated from the Irish, all of the land would be confiscated and then redistributed to create concentrations of British settlers around new towns and garrisons.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: What was more, the new landowners were explicitly banned from taking Irish tenants and had to import workers from England and Scotland. The remaining Irish landowners were to be granted one quarter of the land in Ulster. The peasant Irish population was intended to be relocated to live near garrisons and Protestant churches. Moreover, the planters were barred from selling their lands to any Irishman and were required to build defences against any possible rebellion or invasion. The settlement was to be completed within three years. In this way, it was hoped that a defensible new community composed entirely of loyal British subjects would be created.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: The second major influence on the Plantation was the negotiation among various interest groups on the British side. The principal landowners were to be "Undertakers", wealthy men from England and Scotland who undertook to import tenants from their own estates. They were granted around 3000 acres (12 km) each, on condition that they settle a minimum of 48 adult males (including at least 20 families), who had to be English-speaking and Protestant. Veterans of the Nine Years' War (known as "Servitors") led by Arthur Chichester successfully lobbied to be rewarded with land grants of their own.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: Since these former officers did not have enough private capital to fund the colonisation, their involvement was subsidised by the twelve great guilds. Livery companies from the City of London were coerced into investing in the project, as were City of London guilds which were granted land on the west bank of the River Foyle, to build their own city on the site of Derry (renamed Londonderry after them) as well as lands in County Coleraine. They were known jointly as The Honourable The Irish Society. The final major recipient of lands was the Protestant Church of Ireland, which was granted all the churches and lands previously owned by the Roman Catholic Church. The British government intended that clerics from England and the Pale would convert the native population to Anglicanism.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: Since 1606, there had been substantial lowland Scots settlement on disinhabited land in north Down, led by Hugh Montgomery and James Hamilton. In 1607 Sir Randall MacDonnell settled 300 Presbyterian Scots families on his land in Antrim.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: From 1609 onwards, British Protestant immigrants arrived in Ulster through direct importation by Undertakers to their estates and also by a spread to unpopulated areas, through ports such as Derry and Carrickfergus. In addition there was much internal movement of settlers who did not like the original land allotted to them. Some planters settled on uninhabited and unexploited land, often building up their farms and homes on overgrown terrain that has been variously described as "wilderness" and "virgin" ground.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: By 1622, a survey found there were 6,402 British adult males on Plantation lands, of whom 3,100 were English and 3,700 Scottish – indicating a total adult planter population of around 12,000. However another 4,000 Scottish adult males had settled in unplanted Antrim and Down, giving a total settler population of about 19,000.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: Despite the fact that the Plantation had decreed that the Irish population be displaced, this did not generally happen in practice. Firstly, some 300 native landowners who had taken the English side in the Nine Years' War were rewarded with land grants. Secondly, the majority of the Gaelic Irish remained in their native areas, but were now only allowed worse land than before the plantation. They usually lived close to and even in the same townlands as the settlers and the land they had farmed previously. The main reason for this was that Undertakers could not import enough English or Scottish tenants to fill their agricultural workforce and had to fall back on Irish tenants. However, in a few heavily populated lowland areas (such as parts of north Armagh) it is likely that some population displacement occurred.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: However, the Plantation remained threatened by the attacks of bandits, known as "wood-kern", who were often Irish soldiers or dispossessed landowners. In 1609, Chichester had 1,300 former Gaelic soldiers deported from Ulster to serve in the Swedish Army. As a result, military garrisons were established across Ulster and many of the Plantation towns, notably Derry, were fortified. The settlers were also required to maintain arms and attend an annual military 'muster'.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: There had been very few towns in Ulster before the Plantation. Most modern towns in the province can date their origins back to this period. Plantation towns generally have a single broad main street ending in a square in a design often known as a "diamond", which can be seen in communities like The Diamond, Donegal.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: The plantation was a mixed success from the point of view of the settlers. About the time the Plantation of Ulster was planned, the Virginia Plantation at Jamestown in 1607 started. The London guilds planning to fund the Plantation of Ulster switched and backed the London Virginia Company instead. Many British Protestant settlers went to Virginia or New England in America rather than to Ulster.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: By the 1630s, there were 20,000 adult male British settlers in Ulster, which meant that the total settler population could have been as high as 80,000. They formed local majorities of the population in the Finn and Foyle valleys (around modern County Londonderry and east Donegal), in north Armagh and in east Tyrone. Moreover, the unofficial settlements in Antrim and Down were thriving. The settler population grew rapidly, as just under half of the planters were women.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: The attempted conversion of the Irish to Protestantism was generally a failure. One problem was language difference. The Protestant clerics imported were usually all monoglot English speakers, whereas the native population were usually monoglot Irish speakers. However, ministers chosen to serve in the plantation were required to take a course in the Irish language before ordination, and nearly 10% of those who took up their preferments spoke it fluently. Nevertheless, conversion was rare, despite the fact that, after 1621, Gaelic Irish natives could be officially classed as British if they converted to Protestantism. Of those Catholics who did convert to Protestantism, many made their choice for social and political reasons.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: The reaction of the native Irish to the plantation was generally hostile. Chichester wrote in 1610 that the native Irish in Ulster were "generally discontented, and repine greatly at their fortunes, and the small quantity of land left to them". That same year, English army officer Toby Caulfield wrote that "there is not a more discontented people in Christendom" than the Ulster Irish. Irish Gaelic writers bewailed the plantation. In an entry for the year 1608, the "Annals of the Four Masters" states that the land was "taken from the Irish" and given "to foreign tribes", and that Irish chiefs were "banished into other countries where most of them died". Likewise, an early 17th-century poem by the Irish bard Lochlann Óg Ó Dálaigh laments the plantation, the displacement of the native Irish, and the decline of Gaelic culture. It asks "Where have the Gaels gone?", adding "We have in their stead an arrogant, impure crowd, of foreigners' blood".


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: Historian Thomas Bartlett suggests that Irish hostility to the plantation may have been muted in the early years, as there were much fewer settlers arriving than expected. Bartlett writes that a hatred for the planters grew with the influx of settlers from the 1620s, and the increasing marginalization of the Irish. Historian Gerard Farrell writes that the plantation stoked a "smoldering resentment" in the Irish, among whom "a widespread perception persisted that they and the generation before them had been unfairly dispossessed of their lands by force and legal chicanery". Petty violence and sabotage against the planters was rife, and many Irish came to identify with the wood-kern who attacked settlements and ambushed settlers. Ferrell suggests it took many years for an Irish uprising to happen because there was depopulation, because many native leaders had been removed, and those who remained only belatedly realised the threat of the plantation.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: By the 1630s it is suggested that the plantation was settling down with "tacit religious tolerance", and in every county Old Irish were serving as royal officials and members of the Irish Parliament. However, in the 1640s, the Ulster Plantation was thrown into turmoil by civil wars that raged in Ireland, England and Scotland. The wars saw Irish rebellion against the planters, twelve years of bloody war, and ultimately the re-conquest of the province by the English parliamentary New Model Army that confirmed English and Protestant dominance in the province.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: After 1630, Scottish migration to Ireland waned for a decade. In the 1630s, Presbyterians in Scotland staged a rebellion against Charles I for trying to impose Anglicanism. The same was attempted in Ireland, where most Scots colonists were Presbyterian. A large number of them returned to Scotland as a result. Charles I subsequently raised an army largely composed of Irish Catholics, and sent them to Ulster in preparation to invade Scotland. The English and Scottish parliaments then threatened to attack this army. In the midst of this, Gaelic Irish landowners in Ulster, led by Felim O'Neill and Rory O'More, planned a rebellion to take over the administration in Ireland.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: On 23 October 1641, the Ulster Catholics staged a rebellion. The mobilised natives turned on the British colonists, massacring about 4000 and expelling about 8,000 more. Marianne Elliott believes that "1641 destroyed the Ulster Plantation as a mixed settlement". The initial leader of the rebellion, Felim O'Neill, had actually been a beneficiary of the Plantation land grants. Most of his supporters' families had been dispossessed and were likely motivated by the desire to recover their ancestral lands. Many colonists who survived rushed to the seaports and went back to Great Britain.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: The massacres made a lasting impression on psyche of the Ulster Protestant population. A.T.Q. Stewart states that "The fear which it inspired survives in the Protestant subconscious as the memory of the Penal Laws or the Famine persists in the Catholic." He also believed that "Here, if anywhere, the mentality of siege was born, as the warning bonfires blazed from hilltop to hilltop, and the beating drums summoned men to the defence of castles and walled towns crowded with refugees."


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: In the summer of 1642, the Scottish Parliament sent some 10,000 soldiers to quell the Irish rebellion. In revenge for the massacres of Scottish colonists, the army committed many atrocities against the Catholic population. Based in Carrickfergus, the Scottish army fought against the rebels until 1650, although much of the army was destroyed by the Irish forces at the Battle of Benburb in 1646. In the northwest of Ulster, the colonists around Derry and east Donegal organised the Laggan Army in self-defence. The British forces fought an inconclusive war with the Ulster Irish led by Owen Roe O'Neill. All sides committed atrocities against civilians in this war, exacerbating the population displacement begun by the Plantation.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: In addition to fighting the Ulster Irish, the British settlers fought each other in 1648–49 over the issues of the English Civil War. The Scottish Presbyterian army sided with the King and the Laggan Army sided with the English Parliament. In 1649–50, the New Model Army, along with some of the British colonists under Charles Coote, defeated both the Scottish forces and the Ulster Irish.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: As a result, the English Parliamentarians (or Cromwellians) were generally hostile to Scottish Presbyterians after they re-conquered Ireland from the Catholic Confederates in 1649–53. The main beneficiaries of the postwar Cromwellian settlement were English Protestants like Sir Charles Coote, who had taken the Parliament's side over the King or the Scottish Presbyterians. The Wars eliminated the last major Catholic landowners in Ulster.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: Most of the Scottish planters came from southwest Scotland, but many also came from the unstable regions along the border with England. The plan was that moving Borderers (see Border Reivers) to Ireland (particularly to County Fermanagh) would both solve the Border problem and tie down Ulster. This was of particular concern to James VI of Scotland when he became King of England, since he knew Scottish instability could jeopardise his chances of ruling both kingdoms effectively.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: Another wave of Scottish immigration to Ulster took place in the 1690s, when tens of thousands of Scots fled a famine (1696–1698) in the border region of Scotland. It was at this point that Scottish Presbyterians became the majority community in the province. Whereas in the 1660s, they made up some 20% of Ulster's population (though 60% of its British population) by 1720 they were an absolute majority in Ulster, with up to 50,000 having arrived during the period 1690–1710. There was continuing English migration throughout this period, particularly the 1650s and 1680s, notably amongst these settlers were the Quakers from the North of England, who contributed greatly to the cultivation of flax and linen. In total, during the half century between 1650 and 1700, 100,000 British settlers migrated to Ulster, just over half of which were English.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: Despite the fact that Scottish Presbyterians strongly supported the Williamites in the Williamite war in Ireland in the 1690s, they were excluded from power in the postwar settlement by the Anglican Protestant Ascendancy. During the 18th century, rising Scots resentment over religious, political and economic issues fueled their emigration to the American colonies, beginning in 1717 and continuing up to the 1770s. Scots-Irish from Ulster and Scotland and British from the borders region comprised the most numerous group of immigrants from Great Britain and Ireland to the colonies in the years before the American Revolution. An estimated 150,000 left northern Ireland. They settled first mostly in Pennsylvania and western Virginia, from where they moved southwest into the backcountry of the Upland South, the Ozarks and the Appalachian Mountains.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: The legacy of the Plantation remains disputed. According to one interpretation, it created a society segregated between native Catholics and settler Protestants in Ulster and created a Protestant and British concentration in north east Ireland. This argument therefore sees the Plantation as one of the long-term causes of the Partition of Ireland in 1921, as the north-east remained as part of the United Kingdom in Northern Ireland.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: The densest Protestant settlement took place in the eastern counties of Antrim and Down, which were not part of the Plantation, whereas Donegal, in the west, was planted but did not become part of Northern Ireland.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: Therefore, it is also argued that the Plantation itself was less important in the distinctiveness of the North East of Ireland than natural population flow between Ulster and Scotland. A. T. Q. Stewart concluded, "The distinctive Ulster-Scottish culture, isolated from the mainstream of Catholic and Gaelic culture, would appear to have been created not by the specific and artificial plantation of the early seventeenth century, but by the continuous natural influx of Scottish settlers both before and after that episode..."


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: The Plantation of Ulster is also widely seen as the origin of mutually antagonistic Catholic/Irish and Protestant/British identities in Ulster. Richard English has written that, "not all of those of British background in Ireland owe their Irish residence to the Plantations... yet the Plantation did produce a large British/English interest in Ireland, a significant body of Irish Protestants who were tied through religion and politics to English power."


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: However, going on surnames, others have concluded that Protestant and Catholic are poor guides to whether people's ancestors were settlers or natives of Ulster in the 17th century.


title: Plantation of Ulster

text: The settlers also left a legacy in terms of language. The strong Ulster Scots accent originated through the speech of lowland Scots settlers evolving and being influenced by both Hiberno-English and Irish. Seventeenth century English settlers also contributed colloquial words that are still in current use in Ulster.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: Chiang Ching-kuo (27 April 1910 – 13 January 1988) was a politician of the Republic of China after its retreat to Taiwan. The eldest and only biological son of former president Chiang Kai-shek, he held numerous posts in the government of the Republic of China and ended martial law in 1987. He served as Premier of the Republic of China between 1972 and 1978, and was President of the Republic of China from 1978 until his death in 1988.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: Born in Zhejiang, Chiang-kuo was sent as a teenager to study in the Soviet Union during the First United Front in 1925, when his father's Nationalist Party and the Chinese Communist Party were in alliance. He attended university there and spoke Russian fluently, but when the Chinese Nationalists violently broke with the Communists, Stalin sent him to work in a steel factory in the Ural Mountains. There, Chiang met and married Faina Vakhreva. With war between China and Japan imminent in 1937, Stalin sent the couple to China. During the war, Ching-kuo's father gradually came to trust him, and gave him more and more responsibilities, including administration.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: After the Japanese surrender, Ching-kuo was given the job of ridding Shanghai of corruption, which he attacked with ruthless efficiency. The victory of the Communists in 1949 drove the Chiang family and their ROC government to retreat to Taiwan. Ching-kuo was first given control of the secret police, a position he retained until 1965 and in which he used arbitrary arrests and torture to ensure tight control as part of the White Terror. He then became Minister of Defense (1965–1969), Vice-Premier (1969–1972) and Premier (1972–1978). After his father's death in 1975, he took leadership of the Kuomintang (KMT) as chairman, and was elected president in 1978 and again in 1984.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: Under his tenure as president, the government of the Republic of China in Taiwan, while remaining authoritarian, became more open and tolerant of political dissent. Chiang courted Taiwanese voters, and reduced the preference for those who had come from the mainland after the war. Toward the end of his life, Chiang decided to relax government controls on the media and speech, and allowed Han born in Taiwan into positions of power, including his eventual successor Lee Teng-hui. He is the last president of the Republic of China to be born during the rule of the Qing dynasty. Ching-kuo was credited for his Soviet-inspired city planning policies, economic development with Ten Major Construction Projects in Taiwan, efforts to clamp down on corruption, as well as the democratic transition of Taiwan and gradually shifting away from the authoritarian dictatorial rule of his own father Chiang Kai-shek.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: The son of Chiang Kai-shek and his first wife, Mao Fumei, Chiang Ching-kuo was born in Fenghua, Zhejiang, with the courtesy name of Jiànfēng (). He had an adopted brother, Chiang Wei-kuo. "Ching" literally means "longitude", while "kuo" means "nation"; in his brother's name, "wei" literally means "parallel (of latitude)". The names are inspired by the references in Chinese classics such as the "Guoyu", in which "to draw the longitudes and latitudes of the world" is used as a metaphor for a person with great abilities, especially in managing a country.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: While the young Chiang Ching-kuo had a good relationship with his mother and grandmother (who were deeply rooted to their Buddhist faith), his relationship with his father was strict, utilitarian and often rocky. Chiang Kai-shek appeared to his son as an authoritarian figure, sometimes indifferent to his problems. Even in personal letters between the two, Chiang Kai-shek would sternly order his son to improve his Chinese calligraphy. From 1916 until 1919 Chiang Ching-kuo attended the "Grammar School" in Wushan in Hsikou. Then, in 1920, his father hired tutors to teach him the Four Books, the central texts of Confucianism. On 4 June 1921, Ching-kuo's grandmother died. What might have been an immense emotional loss was compensated for when Chiang Kai-shek moved the family to Shanghai. Chiang Ching-kuo's stepmother, historically known as the Chiang family's "Shanghai Mother", went with them. During this period Chiang Kai-shek concluded that Chiang Ching-kuo was a son to be taught, while Chiang Wei-kuo was a son to be loved.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: During his time in Shanghai, Chiang Ching-kuo was supervised by his father and made to write a weekly letter of 200–300 Chinese characters. Chiang Kai-shek also underlined the importance of classical books and of learning English, two areas he was hardly proficient in himself. On 20 March 1924, Chiang Ching-kuo was able to present to his now-nationally famous father a proposal concerning the grass-roots organization of the rural population in Hsikou. Chiang Ching-kuo planned to provide free education to allow people to read and to write at least 1000 characters. In his own words:


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: I have a suggestion to make about the Wushan School, although I do not know if you can agree to it. My suggestion is that the school establish a night school for common people who cannot afford to go to the regular school. My school established a night school with great success. I can tell you something about the night school:


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: At the time of the graduation, the trainees will be able to write simple letters and keep simple accounts. They will be issued a diploma if they pass the examinations. The textbooks they used were published by the Commercial Press and were entitled "One thousand characters for the common people." I do not know whether you will accept my suggestion. If a night school is established at Wushan, it will greatly benefit the local people.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: In early 1925, Chiang entered Shanghai's Pudong College, but Chiang Kai-shek decided to send him on to Beijing because of warlord action and spontaneous student protests in Shanghai. In Beijing, he attended the school organized by a friend of his father, Wu Zhihui, a renowned scholar and linguist. The school combined classical and modern approaches to education. While there, Ching-kuo started to identify himself as a "progressive revolutionary" and participated in the flourishing social scene inside the young Communist community. The idea of studying in Moscow now seized his imagination. Within the help program provided by the Soviet Union to the countries of East Asia there was a training school that later became the Moscow Sun Yat-sen University. The participants to the university were selected by the CPSU and KMT members, with a participation of CPC Central Committee.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: Chiang Ching-kuo asked Wu Zhihui to name him as a KMT candidate. Wu did not try to dissuade him, even though Wu was a key figure of the right-leaning and anti-Communist "Western Hills Group" of the KMT. In the summer of 1925, Chiang Ching-kuo traveled south to Whampoa Military Academy to discuss his plans for study in Moscow with his father. Chiang Kai-shek was not keen, but after a discussion with Chen Guofu he finally agreed. In a 1996 interview, Ch'en's brother, Chen Li-fu, recalled that Chiang Kai-shek accepted the plan because of the need to have Soviet support at a time when his hold over the KMT was tenuous.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: With or without his father's enthusiastic approval, Chiang Ching-kuo went on to Moscow in late 1925. He stayed in the Soviet Union for nearly twelve years. While there, Chiang was given the Russian name Nikolai Vladimirovich Elizarov (Николай Владимирович Елизаров) and put under the tutelage of Karl Radek at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East. Noted for having an exceptional grasp of international politics, his classmates included other children of influential Chinese families, most notably the future Chinese Communist party leader, Deng Xiaoping. Chiang Ching-kuo joined the Communist Youth League under Deng. Soon Ching-kuo was an enthusiastic student of Communist ideology, particularly Trotskyism; though following the Great Purge, Joseph Stalin privately met with him and ordered him to publicly denounce Trotskyism. Chiang even applied to be a member of the All-Union Communist Party, although his request was denied.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: In April 1927, however, Chiang Kai-shek purged KMT leftists, had Communists arrested or killed, and expelled his Soviet advisers. Chiang Ching-kuo responded from Moscow with an editorial that harshly criticized his father's actions but was nonetheless detained as a "guest" of the Soviet Union, a practical hostage. Debate still continues as to whether he was forced to write the editorial, but he had seen Trotskyist friends arrested and killed by the Soviet secret police. The Soviet government sent him to work in the Ural Heavy Machinery Plant, a steel factory in the Urals, Yekaterinburg (then Sverdlovsk), where he met Faina Ipat'evna Vakhreva, a native Belarusian. They married on 15 March 1935, and she would later take the Chinese name, Chiang Fang-liang. In December of that year, their son, Hsiao-wen was born.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: Chiang Kai-shek refused to negotiate a prisoner swap for his son in exchange for a Chinese Communist Party leader. He wrote in his diary, "It is not worth it to sacrifice the interest of the country for the sake of my son." In 1937, he maintained that "I would rather have no offspring than sacrifice our nation's interests", since he had no intention of stopping the war against the Communists.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: Stalin allowed Chiang Ching-kuo to return to China with his Belarusian wife and son in April 1937 after living in the USSR for 12 years.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: By then, the NRA under Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists under Mao Zedong had signed a ceasefire to create the Second United Front and fight the Japanese invasion of China, which began in July 1937. Stalin hoped the Chinese would keep Japan from invading the Soviet Pacific coast, and he hoped to form an anti-Japanese alliance with the senior Chiang.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: On Ching-kuo's return, his father assigned a tutor, Hsu Dau-lin, to assist with his readjustment to China. Chiang Ching-Kuo was appointed as a specialist in remote districts of Jiangxi where he was credited with training of cadres and fighting corruption, opium consumption, and illiteracy. Chiang Ching-kuo was appointed as commissioner of Gannan Prefecture () between 1939 and 1945; there he banned smoking, gambling and prostitution, studied governmental management, allowed for economic expansion and a change in social outlook. His efforts were hailed as a miracle in the political war in China, then coined as the "Gannan New Deal" (). During his time in Gannan, from 1940 he implemented a "public information desk" where ordinary people could visit him if they had problems, and according to records, Chiang Ching-kuo received a total of 1,023 people during such sessions in 1942.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: In regard to the ban on prostitution and closing of brothels, Chiang implemented a policy where former prostitutes became employed in factories. Due to the large number of refugees in Ganzhou as a result from the ongoing war, thousands of orphans lived on the street; in June 1942, Chiang Ching-kuo formally established the Chinese Children's Village () in the outskirts of Ganzhou, with facilities such as a nursery, kindergarten, primary school, hospital and gymnasium. During the last years of the 1930s, he met Wang Sheng, with whom he would remain close for the next 50 years.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: The paramilitary "Sanmin Zhuyi Youth Corps" was under Chiang's control. Chiang used the term "big bourgeoisie", in a disparaging manner to call H.H. Kung and T. V. Soong.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: While in mainland China, Chiang and his wife had a daughter, Hsiao-chang, born in Nanchang (1938), and two more sons, Hsiao-wu, born in Chungking (1945), and Hsiao-yung, born in Shanghai (1948).


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: Chiang met Chang Ya-juo when she was working at a training camp for enlistees and he was serving as the head of Gannan Prefecture during the war. The two had a relationship that brought twin sons: Chang Hsiao-tz'u and Chang Hsiao-yen, born in 1942. In August 1942, Chang felt sick at a dinner party, and died the next day in a Guilin hospital. The circumstances of her death raised speculation that it was murder. Over the years, many of her relatives, including her sons and highly ranked ex-security personnel, insisted that KMT's security apparatus orchestrated her murder to keep a lid on CCK's marital affair, and to protect CCK's political career.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: Jung Chang and Jon Halliday claim Chiang Kai-shek allowed the Communists to escape on the 1934–1935 Long March because he wanted Stalin to return Chiang Ching-kuo. This is contradicted by Chiang Kai-shek's diary, "It is not worth it to sacrifice the interest of the country for the sake of my son." He refused to negotiate for a prisoner swap of his son in exchange for the Chinese Communist Party leader. Again in 1937 he stated about his son: "I would rather have no offspring than sacrifice our nation's interests." Chiang had absolutely no intention of stopping the war against the Communists.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: Chang and Halliday likewise claim that Chiang Ching-kuo was "kidnapped" in spite of the evidence that he went to study in the Soviet Union with his father's own approval.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: After the Second Sino-Japanese War and during the Chinese Civil War, Chiang Ching-kuo briefly served as a liaison administrator in Shanghai, trying to eradicate the corruption and hyperinflation that plagued the city. He was determined to do this because of the fears arising from the Nationalists' increasing lack of popularity during the Civil War. Given the task of arresting dishonest businessmen who hoarded supplies for profit during the inflationary spiral, he attempted to assuage the business community by explaining that his team would only go after big war profiteers.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: Chiang Ching-kuo copied Soviet methods, which he learned during his stay in the Soviet Union, to start a social revolution by attacking middle class merchants. He also enforced low prices on all goods to raise support from the Proletariat.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: As riots broke out and savings were ruined, bankrupting shopowners, Chiang Ching-kuo began to attack the wealthy, seizing assets and placing them under arrest. The son of the gangster Du Yuesheng was arrested by him. Ching-kuo ordered KMT agents to raid the Yangtze Development Corporation's warehouses, which was privately owned by H.H. Kung and his family, as the company was accused of hoarding supplies. H.H. Kung's wife was Soong Ai-ling, the sister of Soong Mei-ling who was Chiang Ching-kuo's stepmother. H.H. Kung's son David was arrested, and the Kungs responded by blackmailing the Chiangs, threatening to release information about them. He was eventually freed after negotiations, and Chiang Ching-kuo resigned, ending the terror on the Shanghainese merchants.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: After the Nationalists lost control of mainland China to the Communists in the Chinese Civil War, Chiang Ching-kuo followed his father and the retreating Nationalist forces to Taiwan. On 8 December 1949, the Nationalist capital was moved from Chengdu to Taipei, and early on 10 December 1949, Communist troops laid siege to Chengdu, the last KMT-controlled city on mainland China. Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo directed the city's defense from the Chengdu Central Military Academy, before the aircraft "May-ling" evacuated them to Taiwan; they would never return to mainland China.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: In 1950, Chiang's father appointed him director of the secret police, which he remained until 1965. An enemy of the Chiang family, Wu Kuo-chen, was kicked out of his position of governor of Taiwan by Chiang Ching-kuo and fled to America in 1953. Chiang Ching-kuo, educated in the Soviet Union, initiated Soviet-style military organization in the Republic of China Military, reorganizing and Sovietizing the political officer corps, surveillance, and KMT party activities were propagated throughout the military. Opposed to this was Sun Li-jen, who was educated at the American Virginia Military Institute.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: Chiang orchestrated the controversial court-martial and arrest of General Sun Li-jen in August 1955, allegedly for plotting a coup d'état with the American CIA against his father. General Sun was a popular Chinese war hero from the Burma Campaign against the Japanese and remained under house arrest until Chiang Ching-kuo's death in 1988. Ching-kuo also approved the arbitrary arrest and torture of prisoners. Chiang Ching-kuo's activities as director of the secret police remained widely criticized as heralding a long era of human rights abuses in Taiwan.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: From 1955 to 1960, Chiang administered the construction and completion of Taiwan's highway system. Chiang's father elevated him to high office when he was appointed as the ROC Defense Minister from 1965 until 1969. He was the nation's Vice Premier between 1969 and 1972, during which he survived a 1970 assassination attempt while visiting the U.S. Afterwards he was appointed the nation's Premier between 1972 and 1978. As Chiang Kai-shek entered his final years, he gradually gave more responsibilities to his son, and when he died in April 1975, Vice President Yen Chia-kan became president for the balance of Chiang Kai-shek's term, while Chiang Ching-kuo succeeded to the leadership of the KMT (he opted for the title "Chairman" rather than the elder Chiang's title of "Director-General").


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: Chiang Ching-kuo was elected president of the ROC in the 1978 Taiwanese presidential election by the National Assembly on 20 May 1978. He was reelected to another term in the 1984 Taiwanese presidential election. At that time, the National Assembly consisted mostly of , men who had been elected in 1947–48 before the fall of mainland China and who would hold their seats indefinitely. Starting from the 1970s when his father grew sick, Chiang became the de facto leader of the regime and reformed many of his father's autocratic policies and gradually phased out of the white terror by allowing the freedom of peaceful assemblies and political pluralism of the Tangwai movement, which later became the DPP. Chiang also turned down many of the suggestions of the conservatives in the KMT regime to violently suppress the protesters.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: In a move he launched the "Ten Major Construction Projects" and the "Twelve New Development Projects" which contributed to the "Taiwan Miracle". Among his accomplishments was accelerating the process of economic modernization to give Taiwan a 13% growth rate, $4,600 per capita income, and the world's second largest foreign exchange reserves. On 16 December 1978, U.S. president Jimmy Carter announced that the United States would no longer recognize the ROC as the legitimate government of China. Under the Taiwan Relations Act, the United States would continue to sell weapons to Taiwan, but the TRA was purposely vague in any promise of defending Taiwan in the event of an invasion.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: In an effort to bring more Taiwan-born citizens into government services, Chiang Ching-kuo "exiled" his over-ambitious chief of General Political Warfare Department, General Wang Sheng, to Paraguay as an ambassador (November 1983), and hand-picked Lee Teng-hui as vice-president of the ROC (formally elected May 1984), first-in-the-line of succession to the presidency. Chiang emphatically declared that his successor would not be from the Chiang family in a Constitution Day speech on 25 December 1985:


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: Chiang Wei-kuo, Chiang's younger brother, would later repudiate the declaration in 1990 after he was selected as a vice-presidential candidate.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: On 15 July 1987, Chiang finally ended martial law and allowed family visits to the mainland. The ban on tourism to Hong Kong and Macau was also lifted. His administration saw a gradual loosening of political controls and opponents of the Nationalists were no longer forbidden to hold meetings or publish political criticism papers.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: Opposition political parties, though still formally illegal, were allowed to operate without harassment or arrest. When the Democratic Progressive Party was established on 28 September 1986, President Chiang decided against dissolving the group or persecuting its leaders, but its candidates officially ran in elections as independents in the Tangwai movement.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: Chiang Ching-kuo died at Taipei Veterans General Hospital on 13 January 1988, aged 77, from a heart attack. He used a wheelchair during the last months of his life, and also had diabetes, alongside vision and heart problems.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: He was interred temporarily in Daxi Township, Taoyuan County (now Daxi District, Taoyuan City), but in a separate mausoleum in Touliao, a mile down the road from his father's burial place. The hope was to have both buried at their birthplace in Fenghua once mainland China was recovered. Composer Hwang Yau-tai wrote the Chiang Ching-kuo Memorial Song in 1988.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: In January 2004, Chiang Fang-liang asked that both father and son be buried at Wuchih Mountain Military Cemetery in Hsichih, Taipei County (now New Taipei City). The state funeral ceremony was initially planned for Spring 2005, but was eventually delayed to winter 2005. It may be further delayed due to the recent death of Chiang Ching-kuo's oldest daughter-in-law, who had served as the de facto head of the household since Chiang Fang-liang's death in 2004. Chiang Fang-liang and Soong Mei-ling had agreed in 1997 that the former leaders be first buried, but still be moved to mainland China.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: Murray A. Rubinstein called Chiang Ching-kuo more of a civilian leader than his father, whom Rubenstein refers to as a "quasi-warlord."


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: Jay Taylor has described Chiang Ching-kuo as a figure who mixed the ideologies of Soviet communism, Chinese nationalism, Taiwanese localism and American democracy, who became the helmsman of the democratization of Taiwan.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: Unlike his highly controversial father, Chiang Ching-kuo's reputation is overwhelmingly positive among the Taiwanese population as the people of Taiwan recognizes his economic and social achievements, as well as his efforts of democratization. 38.7% of the population considers him the best president who contributed the most to Taiwan, and he was rated 84.8/100 by the Taiwanese population.


title: Chiang Ching-kuo

text: The AIDC, the ROC's air defense company, has nicknamed its AIDC F-CK Indigenous Defense Fighter the "Ching Kuo" in his memory.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: On 4 October 1992, El Al Flight 1862, a Boeing 747 cargo aircraft of the then state-owned Israeli airline El Al, crashed into the Groeneveen and Klein-Kruitberg flats in the Bijlmermeer (colloquially "Bijlmer") neighbourhood (part of Amsterdam-Zuidoost) of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The crash is known in Dutch as the (Bijlmer disaster).


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: In all, 43 people were officially reported as killed, including all of the aircraft's three crew members, a nonrevenue passenger in a jump seat, as well as 39 people on the ground. In addition to these fatalities, 11 people were seriously injured and 15 people received minor injuries. The exact number of people killed on the ground is disputed, as the building housed many undocumented immigrants. The crash is the deadliest aviation disaster to occur in the Netherlands.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: On 4 October 1992, the cargo aircraft, a Boeing 747-258F, registration , travelling from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York to Ben Gurion International Airport in Israel, made a stopover at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. During the flight from New York to Schiphol, three issues were noted: fluctuations in the autopilot speed regulation, problems with a radio, and fluctuations in the voltage of the electrical generator on engine number three, the inboard engine on the right wing that would later detach from the aircraft and initiate the accident.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: The jet landed in Schiphol at 2:40p.m. for cargo loading and crew change. The aircraft was refueled and the observed issues were repaired, at least provisionally. The crew consisted of Captain Yitzhak Fuchs (59), First Officer Arnon Ohad (32), and Flight Engineer Gedalya Sofer (61). A single passenger named Anat Solomon (23) was on board. She was an El Al employee based in Amsterdam, and was travelling to Tel Aviv to marry another El Al employee. Captain Fuchs was an experienced aviator, having flown as a fighter-bomber pilot in the Israeli air force in the late 1950s. He had over 25,000 flight hours, including 9,500 hours on the Boeing 747. First officer Ohad had less experience than the other two crew members, having logged 4,288 flight hours, 612 of them on the Boeing 747. Flight Engineer Sofer was the most experienced crew member on the flight, with more than 26,000 hours of flight experience, of which 15,000 on the Boeing 747.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: Captain Yitzhak Fuchs had flown for El Al for 28 years and had previously served in the Israeli Air Force for 10 years. First Officer Arnon Ohad had flown for El Al for 10 months, Flight Engineer Gedalya Sofer for 37 years.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: Flight 1862 was scheduled to depart at 5:30p.m., but was delayed until 6:20p.m. It departed from runway 01L (later known as runway 36C) on a northerly heading at 6:22p.m. Once airborne, the aircraft turned to the right. Soon after the turn, at 6:27p.m., above the Gooimeer, a lake near Amsterdam, witnesses on the ground heard a sharp bang and saw falling debris, a trail of smoke, and a momentary flash of fire on the right wing while the aircraft was climbing through . Engine No.3 (right wing, nearest to fuselage) separated from the right wing of the aircraft, shot forward, damaged the wing slats, then fell back and struck engine No.4 (right wing, farthest from fuselage), tearing it from the wing. The two engines fell away from the aircraft, also ripping out a 10-m (33-ft) stretch of the wing's leading edge. The loud noise attracted the attention of some pleasure boaters on the Gooimeer. The boaters notified the Netherlands Coastguard of two objects they had seen falling from the sky. One boater, a police officer, said he initially thought the two falling objects were parachutists, but as they fell closer he could see that they were plane engines.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: The first officer made a Mayday call to air traffic control (ATC) and indicated that they wanted to return to Schiphol. At 6:28:45p.m., the first officer reported: "El Al 1862, lost number three and number four engine, number three and number four engine." ATC and the flight crew did not yet grasp the severity of the situation. Although the flight crew knew they had lost power from the engines, they did not see that the engines themselves had completely broken off and that the wing had been damaged. The outboard engine on the wing of a 747 is visible from the cockpit only with difficulty and the inboard engine on the wing is not visible at all. Given the choices that the captain and crew made following the loss of engine power, the Dutch parliamentary inquiry commission that later studied the crash concluded that the crew did not know that both engines had broken away from the right wing.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: On the night of the crash, the landing runway in use at Schiphol was runway 06. The crew requested runway 27 – Schiphol's longest – for an emergency landing, even though it meant landing with a 21-knot quartering tailwind.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: The aircraft was still too high and close to land when it circled back to the airport. It was forced to continue circling Amsterdam until it could reduce altitude to that required for a final approach to landing. During the second circle, the wing flaps were extended. The inboard trailing edge flaps extended, since they were powered by the number one hydraulic system, which was still functioning, but the outboard trailing edge flaps did not, because they were powered by the number four hydraulic system, which had failed when the number four engine broke away. The partial flap condition meant that the aircraft would have a higher pitch attitude than normal as it slowed down. The leading edge slats extended on the left wing, but not on the right wing, because of the extensive damage sustained when the engines separated, which had also severely disrupted the air flow over the right wing. That differential configuration caused the left wing to generate significantly more lift than the right, especially when the pitch attitude increased as the airspeed decreased. The increased lift on the left side increased the tendency to roll further to the right, both because the right outboard aileron was inoperative and because the thrust of the left engines was increased in an attempt to reduce the aircraft's very high sink rate. As the aircraft slowed, the ability of the remaining controls to counteract the right roll diminished. The crew finally lost almost all ability to prevent the aircraft from rolling to the right. The roll reached 90° just before the impact with the apartments.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: At 6:35:25p.m., the first officer radioed to ATC: "Going down, 1862, going down, going down, copied, going down." In the background, the captain was heard instructing the first officer in Hebrew to raise the flaps and lower the landing gear.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: At 6:35:42p.m. local time, the aircraft nose-dived from the sky and crashed into two high-rise apartment complexes in the Bijlmermeer neighbourhood of Amsterdam, at the corner of a building where the Groeneveen complex met the Klein-Kruitberg complex. It exploded in a fireball, which caused the building to partially collapse inward, destroying dozens of apartments. The cockpit came to rest east of the building, between the building and the viaduct of Amsterdam Metro Line 53; the tail broke off and was blown back by the force of the explosion.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: During the last moments of the flight, the ATCs made several desperate attempts to contact the aircraft. The Schiphol arrival controllers work from a closed building at Schiphol-East, not from the control tower. At 6:35:45p.m., the control tower reported to the arrival controllers: ""Het is gebeurd"" (literally "It has happened", but colloquially "It is over"). At that moment a large smoke plume emanating from the crash scene was visible from the control tower. The aircraft had disappeared from arrival control radar. The arrival controllers reported that the aircraft had last been located west of Weesp, and emergency personnel were sent immediately.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: At the time of the crash, two police officers were in Bijlmermeer checking on a burglary report. They saw the aircraft plummet and immediately sounded an alarm. The first fire trucks and rescue services arrived within a few minutes of the crash. Nearby hospitals were advised to prepare for hundreds of casualties. The complex was partly inhabited by immigrants from Suriname and Aruba, both former Dutch colonies, and the death toll was difficult to estimate in the hours after the crash.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: The crash was also witnessed by a nearby fire station on Flierbosdreef. First responders came upon a rapidly spreading fire of "gigantic proportions" that consumed all 10 floors of the buildings and was wide. No one survived from the crash point, but some managed to escape from the remainder of the building. Witnesses reported seeing people jumping out of the building to escape the fire.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: Hundreds of people were left homeless by the crash; the city's municipal buses were used to transport survivors to emergency shelters. Firefighters and police were also forced to deal with reports of looting in the area.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers and Queen Beatrix visited the scene of the disaster the following afternoon. The prime minister said, "This is a disaster that has shaken the whole country."


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: In the days immediately following the disaster, bodies of victims were recovered from the crash site. The mayor ordered rubble and aircraft wreckage removed, and investigators found the critical engine pylon fuse pins in the landfill. The two fallen engines were recovered from the Gooimeer, as were pieces of a section of the right wing's leading edge. The remains of the aircraft were transported to Schiphol for analysis.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: The aircraft's flight data recorder was recovered from the crash site and was heavily damaged, with the tape broken in four places. The section containing the data from the last two and a half minutes of the flight was particularly damaged. The recorder was sent to the United States for recovery and the data was successfully extracted. Despite intensive search activities to recover the cockpit voice recorder from the wreckage area, it was never found, though El Al employees stated that it had been installed in the aircraft.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: In the event of excessive loads on the Boeing 747 engines or engine pylons, the fuse pins holding the engine nacelle to the wing are designed to fracture cleanly, allowing the engine to separate from the aircraft without damaging the wing or wing fuel tank. Airliners are generally designed to remain airworthy in the event of an engine failure or separation, so they can be landed safely. Damage to a wing or wing fuel tank can have disastrous consequences. The Netherlands Aviation Safety Board found that the fuse pins had not failed properly, but instead had fatigue cracks prior to overload failure. The board pieced together a probable sequence of events for the loss of engine three:


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: This sequence of consecutive failures caused the inboard engine and pylon to break free. Its trajectory after breaking off the wing caused it to slam into the outboard engine and rip it and its pylon off the wing. Serious damage was also caused to the leading edge of the right wing. Both loss of hydraulic power and damage to the right wing prevented correct operation of the flaps that the crew later tried to extend in flight.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: Research indicated that the crew were able to keep the aircraft in the air at first due to its high air speed (280 knots), though the damage to the right wing, resulting in reduced lift, had made keeping level more difficult. At , nevertheless, lift on the right wing was sufficient to keep the aircraft aloft. Once it had to reduce speed for landing, the amount of lift on the right wing was insufficient to enable stable flight, so a safe landing would have been very difficult to achieve. The aircraft then banked sharply to the right with very little chance of recovery.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: Forty-three people were killed in the disaster: all four occupants of the aircraft (three crew members and one nonrevenue passenger) and 39 people on the ground. This was considerably lower than expected; the police had originally estimated a death toll over 200 and Amsterdam Mayor Ed van Thijn had said that 240 people were missing. Twenty-six people sustained nonfatal injuries; 11 of these were injured seriously enough to require hospital treatment.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: A belief has persisted that the actual number of victims killed in the crash was considerably higher. Bijlmermeer has a high number of residents living there illegally, particularly from Ghana and Suriname, and members of the Ghanaian community stated that they lost a considerable number of undocumented occupants who were not counted among the dead.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: A memorial, designed by architects Herman Hertzberger and Georges Descombes, was built near the crash site with the names of the victims. Flowers are laid at a tree that survived the disaster, referred to as "the tree that saw it all" ("de boom die alles zag"). A public memorial is held annually to mark the disaster; no planes fly over the area for one hour out of respect for the victims.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: Mental-health care was available after the crash to all affected residents and service personnel. After about a year, many residents and service personnel began approaching doctors with physical health complaints, which the affected patients blamed on the El Al crash. Insomnia, chronic respiratory infections, general pain and discomfort, impotence, flatulence, and bowel complaints were all reported. About 67% of the affected patients were found to be infected with "Mycoplasma", and suffered from symptoms similar to the Gulf War syndrome or chronic fatigue syndrome-like symptoms.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: Dutch officials from government departments of transport and of public health asserted that at the time of the crash, they understood that no health risks existed from any cargo on the aircraft; Els Borst, minister of public health, stated that "no extremely toxic, very dangerous, or radioactive materials" had been on board. In October 1993, the nuclear energy research foundation Laka reported that the tail contained of depleted uranium as counterweight, as did all Boeing 747s at the time; this was not known during the rescue and recovery process.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: Studies were suggested to be undertaken on the symptoms of the affected survivors and service personnel, but for several years, these suggestions were ignored on the basis that no practical reason would lead one to believe in any link between the health complaints of the survivors and the Bijlmer crash site. In 1997, an expert testified in the Israeli parliament that dangerous products would have been released during combustion of the depleted uranium in the tail of the Boeing 747. - an eventuality given consideration, but ruled out as improbable, in the Netherlands Air Safety Board's 1994 final report of the accident.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: The first studies on the symptoms reported by survivors, performed by the Academisch Medisch Centrum (AMC), began in May 1998. The AMC eventually concluded that up to a dozen cases of autoimmune disorders among the survivors could be directly attributed to the crash, and health notices were distributed to doctors throughout the Netherlands requesting that extra attention be paid to symptoms of autoimmune disorder, particularly if the patient had a link with the Bijlmer crash site. Another study, performed by the Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu, concluded that although toxic products had been released at the time of the crash, the added risks of cancer were small, about one or two additional cases per 10,000 exposed persons. The institute also concluded that the chances of uranium poisoning were minimal.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: Soon after the disaster, it was announced that the aircraft had contained fruit, perfumes, and computer components. Dutch Minister Hanja Maij-Weggen asserted that she was certain that it contained no military cargo.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: The survivors' health complaints following the crash increased the number of questions about the cargo. In 1998, El Al spokesman Nachman Klieman publicly revealed that 190L of dimethyl methylphosphonate, a CWC schedule 2 chemical, had been included in the cargo. The chemical's primary commercial use is as a flame retardant. Other commercial uses are a preignition additive for gasoline, anti-foaming agent, plasticizer, stabilizer, textile conditioner, antistatic agent, an additive for solvents & low-temperature hydraulic fluids, and as a catalyst/ reagent in organic synthesis of Sarin & Soman nerve gases. The State of Israel noted that the chemical had been listed on the cargo manifest in accordance with international regulations, the material was nontoxic, and its intended use was to test the filters of Chemical Weapons detectors. The Dutch foreign ministry confirmed that it had already known about the presence of chemicals on the aircraft. The shipment was from a US chemical plant to the Israel Institute for Biological Research under a US Department of Commerce license. According to the chemical weapons site CWInfo, the quantity involved was "too small for the preparation of a militarily useful quantity of Sarin, but would be consistent with making small quantities for testing detection methods and protective clothing."


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: This was one of several accidents caused by problems with Boeing 707 and 747 engine pylons, which were nearly identical in design.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: In April 1968, an engine and pylon had fallen off a Boeing 707, being operated as BOAC Flight 712, resulting in five deaths.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: On 16 January 1987, a Transbrasil Boeing 707 (PT-TCP) lost its No. 2 engine with 150 people on board. It landed without incident and was later ferried on three engines for repair.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: In December 1991, China Airlines Flight 358 had crashed when its No. 3 and No. 4 engines fell off shortly after takeoff from Taipei, resulting in the death of all five occupants.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: In January 1992, a Tampa Colombia 707 cargo flight was forced to return to Miami, when the No. 3 engine separated shortly after takeoff.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: In March 1992, a similar scenario – separation of the No. 3 and No. 4 engines – this time on a Boeing 707, occurred on a Trans-Air cargo flight (Transair 671). Again, No. 3 engine detached and collided with No. 4 engine, tearing it off, as well. On this occasion, the crew was able to land safely at Istres Air Base in the south of France.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: In March 1993, a Japan Airlines 747 cargo flight operated by Evergreen International Airlines similarly returned to Anchorage after the No. 2 engine detached.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: After this accident, Boeing issued a service directive to all owners of the 747 regarding its fuse pins. Engines and pylons had to be removed from 747s and the fuse pins examined for defects. If cracks were present, the pins were to be replaced.


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: The crash was depicted in the National Geographic documentary series "Seconds from Disaster" (in the 2006 episode "Amsterdam Air Crash") and "Mayday", known as "Air Crash Investigation" outside North America (in the 2016 episode "High Rise Catastrophe").


title: El Al Flight 1862

text: The crash and its aftermath were the basis for a five-part Dutch TV docudrama series titled "Rampvlucht" (‘Disaster Flight’) (), which premiered on Dutch public broadcaster NPO on October 4, 2022, the thirty-year anniversary of the crash. It follows a Bijlmermeer-based veterinarian and two journalists who find themselves drawn into a years-long investigation into the many puzzling questions surrounding the official narrative about the crash. The series was awarded the 2022 Golden Calf (Dutch Oscar) for Best TV Series.


title: 300 Entertainment

text: Theory Entertainment LLC, doing business as 300 Entertainment, is an American record label founded by Lyor Cohen, Kevin Liles, Todd Moscowitz, and Roger Gold. The label's roster includes acts across multiple genres such as hip hop, rock, pop, electronic, alternative, and country. Current artists include Young Thug, Fetty Wap, YNW Melly, Megan Thee Stallion, No Savage, Rejjie Snow, Cheat Codes, Highly Suspect, Tee Grizzley, Famous Dex, Shy Glizzy, Cobi, Meg Mac, Dae Dae, The Hunna, Maggie Lindemann, Bailey Bryan, OMB Peezy, Ice Prince, $not, Des Rocs, Savage Gasp, TLE Cinco, and Mary J Blige. It is based in New York City. The label also acts as distributor for Young Thug's record label YSL Records, whose roster includes rappers Gunna and the late Lil Keed.


title: 300 Entertainment

text: In 2021, Warner Music Group acquired 300 for $400 million. In June 2022, 300 Entertainment was merged with Elektra Music Group to create the umbrella label 300 Elektra Entertainment (3EE), though both Elektra and 300 will continue to maintain their separate identities as labels.


title: 300 Entertainment

text: Cohen resigned as chairman and chief executive officer of Warner Music Group's recorded music operation to start 300 with Todd Moscowitz, ex-Warner Bros president, Kevin Liles, ex-EVP Warner Music, and Roger Gold, former SVP of the office of the chairman and CEO at Warner Music. Cohen, Liles, and Moscowitz had also worked together at Def Jam, which Cohen had run in the 1980s and 1990s.


title: 300 Entertainment

text: It was announced that singer Eric Bellinger had been signed to 300 Entertainment. In April 2014, Atlantic Records A&R DJ Drama stated that Atlanta rapper Young Thug had been signed to 300 Entertainment, In June 2014, it was revealed that Atlanta hip hop group Migos were also signed to the label. In early 2014, Lyor Cohen quietly signed Conrad Sewell after Sewell had been passed on by most of the major labels. The day after signing with 300, the Australian singer received offers from virtually every label that had passed on him, for, in some cases, "well over $1 million."


title: 300 Entertainment

text: As of 2017, Fetty Wap's "Trap Queen" is the label's biggest single to date, going 10× platinum. Its first pop hit was Cheat Codes' "No Promises" featuring Demi Lovato. Its first country pop artist to be signed is Bailey Bryan.


title: 300 Entertainment

text: In September 2016, Lyor Cohen announced his exit from 300. Following this announcement, Kevin Liles assumed the role of CEO. Liles would make appearances to follow in The Wall Street Journal and on MSNBC to discuss his role and the label.


title: 300 Entertainment

text: The company is backed by a wide range of investors, including Google, investment firm Columbus Nova, Israeli-American hedge fund billionaire Noam Gottesman's TOMS Capital, former Warner Music digital chief Alex Zubillaga, and Kemado Records' co-founder Andres Santo Domingo. The investment agreements were pulled together by media investment banker Aryeh Bourkoff and Ori Winitze of LionTree.


title: 300 Entertainment

text: In November 2016, Young Thug started YSL (Young Stoner Life) Records as an imprint under 300 Entertainment. Artists on the imprint include Gunna, Lil Keed, Strick, T-Shyne, Lil Duke, Karlae, Yak Gotti, Yung Kayo, HiDoraah, and Dolly White.


title: 300 Entertainment

text: In February 2017, the label's Senior Vice President of A&R, Selim Bouab, launched the label Unauthorized Entertainment under 300.


title: 300 Entertainment

text: In September 2017, Hopsin did an interview with HardKnocktv stating that he had signed with 300. His single "The Purge" was released through 300 Entertainment and Undercover Prodigy.


title: 300 Entertainment

text: On November 24, 2017, Hopsin Released his album "No Shame" and debuted at 42 on the Billboard 200. Both Kevin Liles and Hopsin has referred to the deal as a partnership for 300 and Undercover Prodigy.


title: Sheela na gig

text: Sheela na gigs are figurative carvings of naked women displaying an exaggerated vulva. They are architectural grotesques found throughout most of Europe on cathedrals, castles, and other buildings. The greatest concentrations can be found in Ireland, Great Britain, France and Spain, sometimes together with male figures. Ireland has the greatest number of surviving sheela na gig carvings; Joanne McMahon and Jack Roberts cite 101 examples in Ireland and 45 examples in Britain. One of the best examples may be found in the Round Tower at Rattoo, in County Kerry, Ireland. There is a replica of the Round Tower sheela na gig in the County Museum in Tralee town. Another well-known example may be seen at Kilpeck in Herefordshire, England.


title: Sheela na gig

text: The carvings may have been used to ward off death, evil and demons. Other grotesque carvings, such as gargoyles and hunky punks, were frequently part of church decorations all over Europe. It is commonly said that their purpose was to keep evil spirits away (see apotropaic magic). They often are positioned over doors or windows, presumably to protect these openings.


title: Sheela na gig

text: Scholars disagree about the origins of the figures. James Jerman and Anthony Weir believe that the sheela na gigs were first carved in France and Spain during the 11th century; the motif eventually reached Britain and then Ireland in the 12th century. Jerman and Weir's work was a continuation of research begun by Jorgen Andersen, who wrote "The Witch on the Wall" (1977), the first serious book on sheela na gigs. Eamonn Kelly, Keeper of Irish Antiquities at the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin, draws attention to the distribution of sheela na gigs in Ireland to support Weir and Jerman's theory; almost all of the surviving "in situ" sheela na gigs are found in areas of Anglo-Norman conquest (12th century). The areas that remained "native Irish" have few sheela na gigs. Weir and Jerman also argue that their location on churches and the grotesque features of the figures, by medieval standards, suggests that they represented female lust as hideous and sinfully corrupting.


title: Sheela na gig

text: Another theory, espoused by Joanne McMahon and Jack Roberts, is that the carvings are remnants of a pre-Christian fertility or mother goddess religion. They note what they claim are differences of materials and styles of some sheela na gigs from their surrounding structures, and noting that some are turned on their side, to support the idea that they were incorporated from previous structures into early Christian buildings.


title: Sheela na gig

text: In addition, typical continental exhibitionist figures differ from those of Irish sheela na gigs. There is a scarcity of male figures in Ireland and the UK, while the continental carvings are more likely to involve male figures. Continental figures also are represented in more contortionist postures.


title: Sheela na gig

text: The name was first published in the "Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy" 1840–1844, as a local name for a carving once present on a church gable wall in Rochestown, County Tipperary, Ireland; the name also was recorded in 1840 by John O'Donovan, an official of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, referring to a figure on Kiltinan Castle, County Tipperary. Scholars disagree about the origin and meaning of the name in Ireland, as it is not directly translatable into Irish. Alternative spellings of "Sheela" may sometimes be encountered; they include "Sheila", "Síle" and "Síla". According to the "Oxford English Dictionary", it is derived from Irish, "Síle na gcíoch", meaning "Julia of the breasts".


title: Sheela na gig

text: The name "Seán-na-Gig" was invented by Jack Roberts for the ithyphallic male counterpart of the Sheela. While rare in Ireland, it is more common on the continent.


title: Sheela na gig

text: Jørgen Andersen writes that the name is an Irish phrase, originally either "Sighle na gCíoch", meaning "the old hag of the breasts", or "Síle ina Giob", meaning "Sheila (from the Irish "Síle," the Irish form of the Anglo-Norman name Cecile or Cecilia) on her hunkers". Patrick S. Dinneen also gives "Síle na gCíoċ", stating it is "a stone fetish representing a woman, supposed to give fertility, ["generally"] thought to have been introduced by the Normans." Other researchers have questioned these interpretations – few sheela na gigs are shown with breasts – and expressed doubt about the linguistic connection between "ina Giob" and "na Gig". The phrase "sheela na gig" was said to be a term for a hag or old woman.


title: Sheela na gig

text: Barbara Freitag devotes a chapter to the etymology of the name in her book "Sheela-Na-Gigs: Unravelling an Enigma". She documents references earlier than 1840, including a Royal Navy ship "Sheela Na Gig", and an 18th-century dance called the Sheela na gig. The Irish slip jig, first published as "The Irish Pot Stick" (c.1758), appears as "Shilling a Gig" in Brysson's "A Curious Collection of Favourite Tunes" (1791) and "Sheela na Gigg" in Hime's "48 Original Irish Dances" (c.1795). These are the oldest recorded references to the name, but do not apply to the architectural figures. The Royal Navy's records indicate the name of the ship refers to an "Irish female sprite". Freitag discovered that "gig" was a Northern English slang word for a woman's genitals. A similar word in modern Irish slang () also exists, further confusing the possible origin of the name.


title: Sheela na gig

text: Weir and Jerman use the name sheela for the figure because it had entered popular usage; they also term figures of both sexes "exhibitionist". They cite Andersen's second chapter as a good discussion of the name. Andersen says there is no evidence that "sheela na gig" was ever a popular name for the figures when they were created. It began during the mid-19th century "where popular understanding of the characteristics of a sheela were vague and people were wary of its apparent rudeness". An earlier reference to the dubious nature of the name is made by H. C. Lawlor in an article in "Man" Vol. 31, January 1931 (Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland), in which he writes, "The term 'sheela-na-gig' has no etymological meaning and is an absurd name." Andersen, Weir and Jerman, and Freitag all dismiss the name as being modern and somewhat arbitrary.


title: Sheela na gig

text: The oldest recorded name for one of the figures is "The Idol", which relates to the figure at Holy Cross Church in Binstead on the Isle of Wight. This name was mentioned by R. Worsley in his "The History of the Isle of Wight" (1781) and noted also by J. Albin in "A New, Correct, and Much-improved History of the Isle of Wight" (1795) (Andersen page 11). The name "The Idol" also was applied to a now lost figure in Lusk, Ireland and was recorded as being in use around 1783.


title: Sheela na gig

text: Much of the disagreement among scholars about these figures concerns exactly what they are meant to represent, and no theory explains all the figures.


title: Sheela na gig

text: A popular hypothesis is that sheela na gigs represent a pagan goddess, but academics believe the situation was more complex, with multiple interpretations and roles for the female character as spiritual traditions changed over time. The goddess in question usually is identified as Celtic, the hag-like "Cailleach" figure of Irish and Scottish mythology. Margaret Murray proposed this, as did Anne Ross, who wrote in her essay "The Divine Hag of the Pagan Celts", "I would like to suggest that in their earliest iconographic form they do in fact portray the territorial or war-goddess in her hag-like aspect". Georgia Rhoades suggests that the figures may represent the crone or an earth goddess from Celtic mythology.


title: Sheela na gig

text: Mircea Eliade's "The Encyclopedia of Religion" (1993) draws parallels between the sheela na gig and the ancient Irish myth of the goddess who granted kingship. She would appear as a lustful hag, and most men would refuse her advances, except for one man who accepted. When he had relations with her, she was transformed into a beautiful maiden who would confer royalty onto him and bless his reign. There are additional variants of this common Northern European motif (see "Loathly lady"). Andersen devotes a chapter to this theory, entitled "Pagan or Medieval". While suggesting possible pagan influences on Irish sheela na gigs, he considers them as having a medieval context. He argues that pagan origins are less likely than influence from the continent during the medieval period: "What can be said against it, is that it is less easily proved and can be less easily illustrated than the possible continental, French origin for the motif discussed in earlier chapters" ("The Witch on the Wall", p. 95).


title: Sheela na gig

text: Weir and Jerman explore the possible influence of the ancient Greek Baubo figurine on the motif, but they acknowledge that the link is tenuous. They write, "It makes for very interesting speculation, but the amount of evidence is not large".


title: Sheela na gig

text: Freitag explores possible Celtic pagan origins, but finds little to suggest a link; "in particular the notion of the divine hag being a portrayal of the Ur-Sheela has to be firmly dismissed as wayward conjecture" ("Sheela na gigs: Unravelling an Enigma", page 41). Although scholars have used evidence to reject the theory, it is popularly held.


title: Sheela na gig

text: This hypothesis usually is combined with the "goddess" explanation for the figures discussed above. Barbara Freitag suggests that the figures were used in a fertility context and associates them with "birthing stones". There is folkloric evidence of at least some of the sheela na gigs being used in this manner, with the figures being loaned out to women in labour. Other figures have wedding traditions associated with them. According to Margaret Murray, the figure in Oxford at the church of St Michael at the North Gate has an associated tradition of being shown to brides on their wedding day. This theory does not seem to apply to all the figures: some are thin with their ribs showing and thin breasts, which do not suggest fertility. Others are plump and are shown in a sexual context with a partner (as at Whittlesford). Theresa Oakley and Alex Woodcock recently discovered an exhibitionist couple at Devizes, who seem to represent fertility. The faces of some figures are striated, indicating scarring or tattoos. Weir notes that a close examination of the figures reveals features that are not consistent with a fertility function.


title: Sheela na gig

text: Weir and Jerman suggested that the sheela na gigs served to warn against lust. They see the figures as a religious warning against sins of the flesh. Exhibitionist figures of all types—male, female, and bestial—are found frequently in the company of images of beasts devouring people and other hellish images. These images, they argue, were used as a means of religious instruction to a largely illiterate populace. As part of this interpretation, they explore a continental origin for the figures. Andersen first suggested this origin, and Weir and Jerman continued and expanded this line of inquiry. They argue that the motif migrated from the continent via the pilgrim routes to and from Santiago de Compostela. (Freitag argues against this.) Pilgrim sculptors noted what they had seen on the route and ended up carving their own interpretations of the motifs. Eventually, the exhibitionist motif was transferred to Ireland and Britain. This theory seems to accommodate many of the religious figures but relates less well to some of the secular ones. Images carved on castles would not seem to be serving a religious purpose. The figure at Haddon Hall appears on a stable (although this may have been moved from elsewhere). The theory does not seem to apply to all the figures.


title: Sheela na gig

text: Andersen and Weir and Jerman think the figures may also have been used as protection against evil. This would explain the use of the figures on structures such as castles. They served an apotropaic function, designed to ward off evil. In Ireland, some of the figures were called "The Evil Eye Stones", which supported their theory. Some folkloric evidence is known of anasyrma (skirt-lifting) being used by women to ward off evil spirits.


title: Sheela na gig

text: Andersen reproduces an 18th-century illustration by Charles Eisen from La Fontaine's "Nouveaux Contes" (1764) showing a demon being repulsed by the sight of a woman lifting her skirt to display her genitals.


title: Sheela na gig

text: Weir and Jerman relate a story from "The Irish Times" (23 September 1977) in which a potentially violent incident involving several men was averted by a woman exposing her genitals to them. They doubt, however, whether the story was true. Weir and Jerman go on to suggest that the apotropaic function seems to have been gradually ascribed to the figures over time. While this theory seems to apply to most of the secular and some of the religious figures, it does not apply to all of them.


title: Sheela na gig

text: Feminist scholarship has reinterpreted the concept of the sheela na gig especially in terms of the image as evil or embodiment of sin. Feminists have adopted the image as an icon with feminist authors viewing the sexuality of the sheela na gig more positively as an empowering figure. Reverence for female sexuality and vulvas can be seen in the art of Judy Chicago's "The Dinner Party" and "The Vagina Monologues" by Eve Ensler. In "Wide-open to Mirth and Wonder", Luz Mar González-Arias argues that the creative re-imagining of this medieval female figure can "encourage contemporary women to stop perceiving their own corporeality as a heavy, awkward and shameful burden of guilt". Irish writer Molly Mullin's essay "Representations of History, Irish Feminism, and the Politics of Difference" claims that the image of the Sheela na gig has almost become emblematic of Irish feminism as a force for hope and change. Scholar Georgia Rhoades argues that for many contemporary feminists the gesture of the Sheela's unapologetic sexual display is "a message about her body, its power and significance—a gesture of rebellion against misogyny, rather than an endorsement of it".


title: Sheela na gig

text: As noted above, Ireland has the greatest number of known sheela na gigs. At one time, they were mistakenly thought to be a uniquely Irish practice; however, scholars realized that the sheela na gig motif could be found all over western and central Europe. Accurate numbers of figures are difficult to reach, as the interpretation of what is a sheela na gig will vary among scholars. For example, Freitag omits the Rochester figure from her list while Weir and Jerman include it. Concannon includes some worn figures that so far only she has identified as sheela na gigs. With renewed interest in the topic, scholars have recently identified previously unknown figures, so more could be discovered.


title: Sheela na gig

text: The following countries are known to have (or have had) churches with female exhibitionist figures on them:


title: Sheela na gig

text: A significant number of the figures are found in Romanesque contexts, especially in France, northern Spain, Britain, and Norway. In Ireland figures commonly are found in areas of Norman influence.


title: Sheela na gig

text: The "Encyclopedia of Religion", in its article on yoni, notes the similarity between the positioning of many sheela na gigs above doorways or windows and the wooden female figures carved over the doorways of chiefs' houses ("bai") in the Palauan archipelago. Called "dilukai" (or "dilugai"), they are typically shown with legs splayed, revealing a large, black, triangular pubic area; the hands rest upon the thighs. The writers of the encyclopedia article say:


title: John Laurens

text: John Laurens (October 28, 1754 – August 27, 1782) was an American soldier and statesman from South Carolina during the American Revolutionary War, best known for his criticism of slavery and his efforts to help recruit slaves to fight for their freedom as U.S. soldiers.


title: John Laurens

text: In 1779, Laurens gained approval from the Continental Congress for his plan to recruit a brigade of 3,000 slaves by promising them freedom in return for fighting. The plan was defeated by political opposition in South Carolina. Laurens was killed in the Battle of the Combahee River in August 1782.


title: John Laurens

text: John Laurens was born in Charleston, South Carolina, on October 28, 1754, to Henry Laurens and Eleanor Ball Laurens, both of whose families were prosperous as planters cultivating rice. By the 1750s, Henry Laurens and his business partner George Austin had become wealthy as owners of one of the largest slave trading houses in North America.


title: John Laurens

text: John was the eldest of the five children who survived infancy. John and his two younger brothers, Henry Jr. and James, were tutored at home, but after the death of their mother, their father took them to England for their education. His two sisters, Martha and Mary, remained with an uncle in Charleston.


title: John Laurens

text: In October 1771, Laurens's father moved with his sons to London, and Laurens was educated in Europe from the ages of 16 to 22. For two years beginning in June 1772, he and one brother attended school in Geneva, Switzerland, where they lived with a family friend.


title: John Laurens

text: As a youth, Laurens had expressed considerable interest in science and medicine, but upon returning to London in August 1774, he yielded to his father's wish that he study law. In November 1774, Laurens began his legal studies at the Middle Temple. Laurens's father returned to Charleston, leaving Laurens as guardian to his brothers, both enrolled in British schools.


title: John Laurens

text: On October 26, 1776, Laurens married Martha Manning, the daughter of a mentor and family friend. Laurens's brother-in-law was William Manning, Governor of the Bank of England and Member of Parliament.


title: John Laurens

text: Laurens remained determined to join the Continental Army and fight for his country, rather than to complete law school in England and raise a family there. He embarked for Charleston in December 1776, leaving his pregnant wife behind in London with her family. In 1780, Laurens was elected a member to the American Philosophical Society.


title: John Laurens

text: Laurens arrived at Charleston in April 1777. That summer he accompanied his father from Charleston to Philadelphia, where his father was to serve in the Continental Congress. Henry Laurens, finding himself unable to prevent his son from joining the Continental Army, used his influence to obtain a position of honor for his 23-year-old son.


title: John Laurens

text: General George Washington invited Laurens to join his staff in early August, as a volunteer aide-de-camp. Washington wrote:


title: John Laurens

text: Laurens became close friends with two of his fellow aides-de-camp, Alexander Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette. He quickly became known for his reckless courage upon first seeing combat on September 11, 1777, at the Battle of Brandywine during the Philadelphia campaign. Lafayette observed, "It was not his fault that he was not killed or wounded [at Brandywine,] he did everything that was necessary to procure one or t'other." Laurens behaved consistently at the Battle of Germantown, in which he was wounded on October 4, 1777:


title: John Laurens

text: Two days after the Battle of Germantown, on October 6, 1777, he was given his official appointment as one of General Washington's aides-de-camp, and was commissioned with the rank of lieutenant colonel. From November 2 to December 11, 1777, Washington and several aides, including Laurens, were quartered at the Emlen House, north of Philadelphia in Camp Hill, which served as Washington's headquarters through the Battle of White Marsh.


title: John Laurens

text: After spending the remainder of the winter of 1777–1778 encamped at Valley Forge, Laurens marched to New Jersey with the rest of the Continental Army at the end of June 1778, to face the British at the Battle of Monmouth. Near the start of battle, Laurens had his horse shot out from under him while he did reconnaissance for Baron von Steuben.


title: John Laurens

text: On December 23, 1778, Laurens engaged in a duel with General Charles Lee just outside Philadelphia, after Laurens took offense to Lee's slander of Washington's character. Lee was wounded in the side by Laurens's first shot and the affair was ended by the men's seconds, Alexander Hamilton and Evan Edwards, before Laurens or Lee could fire a second shot.


title: John Laurens

text: As the British stepped up operations in the South, Laurens promoted the idea of arming slaves and granting them freedom in return for their service. He had written, "We Americans at least in the Southern Colonies, cannot contend with a good Grace, for Liberty, until we shall have enfranchised our Slaves." Laurens was set apart from other leaders in Revolutionary-era South Carolina by his belief that black and white people shared a similar nature and could aspire to freedom in a republican society.


title: John Laurens

text: In early 1778, Laurens advised his father, who was then the President of the Continental Congress, to use forty slaves he stood to inherit as part of a brigade. Henry Laurens granted the request, but with reservations that caused postponement of the project.


title: John Laurens

text: Congress approved the concept of a regiment of slaves in March 1779, and sent Laurens south to recruit a regiment of 3,000 black soldiers; however, the plan was opposed, and Laurens was ultimately unsuccessful. Having won election to the South Carolina House of Representatives, Laurens introduced his black regiment plan in 1779, again in 1780, and a third time in 1782, meeting overwhelming rejection each time. Governor John Rutledge and General Christopher Gadsden were among the opponents.


title: John Laurens

text: In 1779, when the British threatened Charleston, Governor Rutledge proposed to surrender the city with the condition that Carolina become neutral in the war. Laurens strongly opposed the idea and fought with Continental forces to repel the British.


title: John Laurens

text: On May 3, 1779, Colonel William Moultrie's troops, outnumbered two to one, faced 2,400 British regulars under General Augustine Prévost, who had crossed the Savannah River. At a point about two miles east of the Coosawhatchie River, Moultrie had left 100 men to guard a river crossing and provide warning when the British arrived.


title: John Laurens

text: Due to Laurens's connections, his activities could not escape notice; for example, in a May 5 letter to the governor of Virginia, South Carolina's lieutenant governor Thomas Bee added a postscript: "Col. John Laurens received a slight wound in the arm in a skirmish with the enemy's advanced party yesterday, & his horse was shot also – he is in a good way – pray let his father know this."


title: John Laurens

text: That fall, Laurens commanded an infantry regiment in General Benjamin Lincoln's failed assault on Savannah, Georgia.


title: John Laurens

text: Laurens was taken prisoner by the British in May 1780, after the fall of Charleston. As a prisoner of war, he was shipped to Philadelphia, where he was paroled with the condition that he would not leave Pennsylvania.


title: John Laurens

text: In Philadelphia, Laurens was able to visit his father, who would soon take ship for the Netherlands as American ambassador, in search of loans. During the voyage to his post, Henry Laurens's ship was seized by the British, resulting in the elder Laurens' imprisonment in the Tower of London.


title: John Laurens

text: Determined to return to South Carolina, and in the expectation of being freed by a prisoner exchange in November 1780, Laurens wrote to George Washington and requested a leave of absence from his service as aide-de-camp:


title: John Laurens

text: Washington responded, "The motives which led you to the Southward are too laudable and too important not to meet my approbation."


title: John Laurens

text: Upon his release, Laurens was unwillingly appointed by Congress in December 1780 as a special minister to France. Preferring to return to the South, he had originally refused the post and proposed Alexander Hamilton as the better candidate. Laurens was ultimately persuaded by both Hamilton and Congress to accept the post. He wrote again to advise Washington that "unfortunately for America, Col. Hamilton was not sufficiently known to Congress to unite their suffrages in his favor and I was assured there remained no other alternative to my acceptance than the total failure of the business. Thus circumstanced I was reduced to submit—and renounce my plan of participating in the southern campaign."


title: John Laurens

text: In March 1781, Laurens and Thomas Paine arrived in France to assist Benjamin Franklin, who had been serving as the American minister in Paris since 1777. Together, they met with King Louis XVI, among others. Laurens gained French assurances that French ships would support American operations that year; the promised naval support was later to prove invaluable at the Siege of Yorktown.


title: John Laurens

text: Laurens was also reported to have told the French that without aid for the Revolution, the Americans might be forced by the British to fight against France. When Laurens and Paine returned to America in August 1781, they brought 2.5 million livres in silver, the first part of a French gift of 6 million and a loan of 10 million.


title: John Laurens

text: Laurens also was able to arrange a loan and supplies from the Dutch, before returning home. His father Henry Laurens, the American ambassador to the Netherlands who had been captured by the British, was exchanged for General Cornwallis in late 1781, and the senior Laurens had proceeded to the Netherlands to continue loan negotiations.