title: Mayan languages

text: Another set (set A) is used to indicate the person of subjects of transitive verbs (and in some languages, such as Yucatec, also the subjects of intransitive verbs, but only in the incompletive aspects), and also the possessors of nouns (including relational nouns).


title: Mayan languages

text: In addition to subject and object (agent and patient), the Mayan verb has affixes signalling aspect, tense, and mood as in the following example:


title: Mayan languages

text: Tense systems in Mayan languages are generally simple. Jakaltek, for example, contrasts only past and non-past, while Mam has only future and non-future. Aspect systems are normally more prominent. Mood does not normally form a separate system in Mayan, but is instead intertwined with the tense/aspect system. Kaufman has reconstructed a tense/aspect/mood system for proto-Mayan that includes seven aspects: incompletive, progressive, completive/punctual, imperative, potential/future, optative, and perfective.


title: Mayan languages

text: Mayan languages tend to have a rich set of grammatical voices. Proto-Mayan had at least one passive construction as well as an antipassive rule for downplaying the importance of the agent in relation to the patient. Modern Kʼicheʼ has two antipassives: one which ascribes focus to the object and another that emphasizes the verbal action. Other voice-related constructions occurring in Mayan languages are the following: mediopassive, incorporational (incorporating a direct object into the verb), instrumental (promoting the instrument to object position) and referential (a kind of applicative promoting an indirect argument such as a benefactive or recipient to the object position).


title: Mayan languages

text: In Mayan languages, statives are a class of predicative words expressing a quality or state, whose syntactic properties fall in between those of verbs and adjectives in Indo-European languages. Like verbs, statives can sometimes be inflected for person but normally lack inflections for tense, aspect and other purely verbal categories. Statives can be adjectives, positionals or numerals.


title: Mayan languages

text: Positionals, a class of roots characteristic of, if not unique to, the Mayan languages, form stative adjectives and verbs (usually with the help of suffixes) with meanings related to the position or shape of an object or person. Mayan languages have between 250 and 500 distinct positional roots:


title: Mayan languages

text: In these three Qʼanjobʼal sentences, the positionals are "telan" ("something large or cylindrical lying down as if having fallen"), ' ("person sitting on a chairlike object"), and ' ("curled up like a rope or snake").


title: Mayan languages

text: Compounding of noun roots to form new nouns is commonplace; there are also many morphological processes to derive nouns from verbs. Verbs also admit highly productive derivational affixes of several kinds, most of which specify transitivity or voice.


title: Mayan languages

text: As in other Mesoamerican languages, there is a widespread metaphorical use of roots denoting body parts, particularly to form locatives and relational nouns, such as Kaqchikel "-pan" ("inside" and "stomach") or "-wi" ("head-hair" and "on top of").


title: Mayan languages

text: A number of loanwords of Mayan or potentially Mayan origins are found in many other languages, principally Spanish, English, and some neighboring Mesoamerican languages. In addition, Mayan languages borrowed words, especially from Spanish.


title: Mayan languages

text: A Mayan loanword is "cigar". is Mayan for "tobacco" and means "to smoke tobacco leaves". This is the most likely origin for cigar and thus cigarette.


title: Mayan languages

text: The English word "hurricane", which is a borrowing from the Spanish word is considered to be related to the name of Maya storm deity Jun Raqan. However, it is probable that the word passed into European languages from a Cariban language or Taíno.


title: Mayan languages

text: The complex script used to write Mayan languages in pre-Columbian times and known today from engravings at several Maya archaeological sites has been deciphered almost completely. The script is a mix between a logographic and a syllabic system.


title: Mayan languages

text: In colonial times Mayan languages came to be written in a script derived from the Latin alphabet; orthographies were developed mostly by missionary grammarians. Not all modern Mayan languages have standardized orthographies, but the Mayan languages of Guatemala use a standardized, Latin-based phonemic spelling system developed by the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala (ALMG). Orthographies for the languages of Mexico are currently being developed by the Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas (INALI).


title: Mayan languages

text: The pre-Columbian Maya civilization developed and used an intricate and fully functional writing system, which is the only Mesoamerican script that can be said to be almost fully deciphered. Earlier-established civilizations to the west and north of the Maya homelands that also had scripts recorded in surviving inscriptions include the Zapotec, Olmec, and the Zoque-speaking peoples of the southern Veracruz and western Chiapas area—but their scripts are as yet largely undeciphered. It is generally agreed that the Maya writing system was adapted from one or more of these earlier systems. A number of references identify the undeciphered Olmec script as its most likely precursor.


title: Mayan languages

text: In the course of the deciphering of the Maya hieroglyphic script, scholars have come to understand that it was a fully functioning writing system in which it was possible to express unambiguously any sentence of the spoken language. The system is of a type best classified as logosyllabic, in which symbols (glyphs or "graphemes") can be used as either logograms or syllables. The script has a complete syllabary (although not all possible syllables have yet been identified), and a Maya scribe would have been able to write anything phonetically, syllable by syllable, using these symbols.


title: Mayan languages

text: At least two major Mayan languages have been confidently identified in hieroglyphic texts, with at least one other language probably identified. An archaic language variety known as Classic Maya predominates in these texts, particularly in the Classic-era inscriptions of the southern and central lowland areas. This language is most closely related to the Chʼolan branch of the language family, modern descendants of which include Chʼol, Chʼortiʼ and Chontal. Inscriptions in an early Yucatecan language (the ancestor of the main surviving Yucatec language) have also been recognised or proposed, mainly in the Yucatán Peninsula region and from a later period. Three of the four extant Maya codices are based on Yucatec. It has also been surmised that some inscriptions found in the Chiapas highlands region may be in a Tzeltalan language whose modern descendants are Tzeltal and Tzotzil. Other regional varieties and dialects are also presumed to have been used, but have not yet been identified with certainty.


title: Mayan languages

text: Use and knowledge of the Maya script continued until the 16th century Spanish conquest at least. Bishop Diego de Landa Calderón of the Catholic Archdiocese of Yucatán prohibited the use of the written language, effectively ending the Mesoamerican tradition of literacy in the native script. He worked with the Spanish colonizers to destroy the bulk of Mayan texts as part of his efforts to convert the locals to Christianity and away from what he perceived as pagan idolatry. Later he described the use of hieroglyphic writing in the religious practices of Yucatecan Maya in his "Relación de las cosas de Yucatán".


title: Mayan languages

text: Colonial orthography is marked by the use of "c" for /k/ (always hard, as in "cic" /kiik/), "k" for /q/ in Guatemala or for /kʼ/ in the Yucatán, "h" for /x/, and "tz" for /ts/; the absence of glottal stop or vowel length (apart sometimes for a double vowel letter for a long glottalized vowel, as in "uuc" /uʼuk/), the use of "u" for /w/, as in "uac" /wak/, and the variable use of "z, ç, s" for /s/. The greatest difference from modern orthography, however, is in the various attempts to transcribe the ejective consonants.


title: Mayan languages

text: About 1550, Francisco de la Parra invented distinctive letters for ejectives in the Mayan languages of Guatemala, the "tresillo" and "cuatrillo" (and derivatives). These were used in all subsequent Franciscan writing, and are occasionally seen even today [2005]. In 1605, Alonso Urbano doubled consonants for ejectives in Otomi ("pp, tt, ttz, cc / cqu"), and similar systems were adapted to Mayan. Another approach, in Yucatec, was to add a bar to the letter, or to double the stem.


title: Mayan languages

text: A ligature ꜩ for "tz" is used alongside ꜭ and ꜫ. The Yucatec convention of "dz" for is retained in Maya family names such as Dzib.


title: Mayan languages

text: Since the colonial period, practically all Maya writing has used a Latin alphabet. Formerly these were based largely on the Spanish alphabet and varied between authors, and it is only recently that standardized alphabets have been established. The first widely accepted alphabet was created for Yucatec Maya by the authors and contributors of the "Diccionario Maya Cordemex", a project directed by Alfredo Barrera Vásquez and first published in 1980. Subsequently, the Guatemalan Academy of Mayan Languages (known by its Spanish acronym ALMG), founded in 1986, adapted these standards to 22 Mayan languages (primarily in Guatemala). The script is largely phonemic, but abandoned the distinction between the apostrophe for ejective consonants and the glottal stop, so that ejective and the non-ejective sequence (previously "tʼ "and "t7") are both written "tʼ." Other major Maya languages, primarily in the Mexican state of Chiapas, such as Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Chʼol, and Tojolabʼal, are not generally included in this reformation, and are sometimes written with the conventions standardized by the Chiapan "State Center for Indigenous Language, Art, and Literature" (CELALI), which for instance writes "ts" rather than "tz" (thus Tseltal and Tsotsil).


title: Mayan languages

text: For the languages that make a distinction between palato-alveolar and retroflex affricates and fricatives (Mam, Ixil, Tektitek, Awakatek, Qʼanjobʼal, Poptiʼ, and Akatek in Guatemala, and Yucatec in Mexico) the ALMG suggests the following set of conventions.


title: Mayan languages

text: From the classic language to the present day, a body of literature has been written in Mayan languages. The earliest texts to have been preserved are largely monumental inscriptions documenting rulership, succession, and ascension, conquest and calendrical and astronomical events. It is likely that other kinds of literature were written in perishable media such as codices made of bark, only four of which have survived the ravages of time and the campaign of destruction by Spanish missionaries.


title: Mayan languages

text: Shortly after the Spanish conquest, the Mayan languages began to be written with Latin letters. Colonial-era literature in Mayan languages include the famous "Popol Vuh", a mythico-historical narrative written in 17th century Classical Quiché but believed to be based on an earlier work written in the 1550s, now lost. The "Título de Totonicapán" and the 17th century theatrical work the "Rabinal Achí" are other notable early works in Kʼicheʼ, the latter in the Achí dialect. The "Annals of the Cakchiquels" from the late 16th century, which provides a historical narrative of the Kaqchikel, contains elements paralleling some of the accounts appearing in the "Popol Vuh". The historical and prophetical accounts in the several variations known collectively as the books of Chilam Balam are primary sources of early Yucatec Maya traditions. The only surviving book of early lyric poetry, the Songs of Dzitbalche by Ah Bam, comes from this same period.


title: Mayan languages

text: In addition to these singular works, many early grammars of indigenous languages, called ""artes"", were written by priests and friars. Languages covered by these early grammars include Kaqchikel, Classical Quiché, Tzeltal, Tzotzil and Yucatec. Some of these came with indigenous-language translations of the Catholic catechism.


title: Mayan languages

text: While Mayan peoples continued to produce a rich oral literature in the postcolonial period (after 1821), very little written literature was produced in this period.


title: Mayan languages

text: Because indigenous languages were excluded from the education systems of Mexico and Guatemala after independence, Mayan peoples remained largely illiterate in their native languages, learning to read and write in Spanish, if at all. However, since the establishment of the Cordemex and the Guatemalan Academy of Mayan Languages (1986), native language literacy has begun to spread and a number of indigenous writers have started a new tradition of writing in Mayan languages. Notable among this new generation is the Kʼicheʼ poet Humberto Ak'abal, whose works are often published in dual-language Spanish/Kʼicheʼ editions, as well as Kʼicheʼ scholar Luis Enrique Sam Colop (1955–2011) whose translations of the Popol Vuh into both Spanish and modern Kʼicheʼ achieved high acclaim.


title: Mustafa Ali

text: Adeel Alam (born March 28, 1986) is an American professional wrestler. He is currently signed to WWE, where he performs on the Raw brand under the ring name Mustafa Ali.


title: Mustafa Ali

text: Prior to signing with WWE, Alam worked on the independent circuit after his debut in 2003, while also working as a police officer in a Chicago suburb for four years. In 2016, he competed in the Cruiserweight Classic as a replacement and through his performances, earned a full-time contract with WWE. He initially worked for their new Cruiserweight Division as part of the 205 Live brand. In December 2018, he was moved to the SmackDown brand, moving out of the cruiserweight division. In July 2020, he was moved to the Raw brand. In October of that same year, he revealed himself as the leader of the villainous stable Retribution, thereby turning heel in the process.


title: Mustafa Ali

text: Adeel Alam was born on March 28, 1986 in Bolingbrook, Illinois, the son of a Pakistani father from Karachi, and an Indian mother from New Delhi. He was raised in Chicago, Illinois. He has two older brothers. Alam wanted to be a wrestler since his youth, idolizing first Bret Hart and later also Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, Hardy Boyz, Chris Jericho, and Hayabusa.


title: Mustafa Ali

text: Alam made his professional wrestling debut on February 2, 2003. He worked in various promotions, including Dreamwave Wrestling, where he was a former Dreamwave Alternative Champion and Dreamwave Heavyweight Champion. He also appeared in other promotions, including All American Wrestling (AAW), Freelance Wrestling, GALLI Lucha Libre, IWA Mid-South, Jersey All Pro Wrestling (JAPW), National Wrestling Alliance (NWA), Proving Ground Pro, and WrestleCircus. During his first six years as a professional wrestler, he used a mask so he would not face discrimination. He did it all during the day while working night shifts as a police officer.


title: Mustafa Ali

text: On June 25, 2016, after Brazilian wrestler Zumbi was not able to participate in the Cruiserweight Classic tournament due to visa issues, WWE announced that Mustafa Ali would replace him. On July 20, Ali was eliminated from the tournament by Lince Dorado in the first round. Ali appeared on the October 26 episode of "NXT", where he and Dorado entered the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic, but were eliminated by Kota Ibushi and TJ Perkins in the first round.


title: Mustafa Ali

text: On the December 13 episode of "205 Live", Ali made his debut for the brand, wrestling Lince Dorado to a double countout. On January 23, 2017, Ali made his "Raw" debut, teamed with Jack Gallagher and TJ Perkins to defeat Ariya Daivari, Drew Gulak, and Tony Nese. Ali began feuding with Drew Gulak, when Gulak began his "No Fly Zone" campaign on "205 Live". The feud culminated in a two-out-of-three falls match on July 18 episode of "205 Live", which Ali won. In February 2018, Ali began participating in the Cruiserweight Championship tournament; he defeated Gentleman Jack Gallagher in the first round, Buddy Murphy in the quarterfinals, and Drew Gulak in the semi-finals to advance to the final at the WrestleMania 34. At WrestleMania on April 8, Ali lost to Cedric Alexander, failed to win the WWE Cruiserweight Championship. Ali then started a rivalry with Hideo Itami, who interfered in his match against Buddy Murphy. On the August 7 episode of "205 Live", Ali lost to Itami and collapsed afterwards, rendering him out of action for a short time. On the October 24 episode of "205 Live", Ali defeated Itami in a falls count anywhere match to end the feud. On the October 31 episode of "205 Live", Ali defeated Tony Nese to become the number one contender for the Cruiserweight Championship, but failed to win the title from Buddy Murphy at Survivor Series.


title: Mustafa Ali

text: During his time in "205 Live", Ali gained the attention of WWE Chairman Vince McMahon, who decided to put him on the SmackDown brand. According to former WWE writer Kazeem Famuyide, then-WWE Champion Daniel Bryan was pushing hard backstage for a "hot young babyface" to be on television, arguing that all the babyfaces they had were pushing 40-years-old; this led to management choosing Ali for this push. Ali made his first appearance on the December 11, 2018 episode of "SmackDown Live", confronting Daniel Bryan and losing to him later that night. The following week on "SmackDown Live", Ali was confirmed as a full-time "SmackDown" roster member and teaming with AJ Styles to defeat Daniel Bryan and Andrade "Cien" Almas in a tag team match, after Ali pinned Bryan. At the Royal Rumble on January 27, 2019, Ali competed in the eponymous match, lasting 30 minutes and eliminating Shinsuke Nakamura and Samoa Joe, before being eliminated by Nia Jax. In February, Ali was scheduled to compete in the Elimination Chamber match for the WWE Championship at namesake event, which would have been his first world title match; however, he was pulled out due to a legit injury, and replaced by Kofi Kingston. Ali made his televised return at the Fastlane pay-per-view, as a last minute addition in the WWE Championship match between Daniel Bryan and Kevin Owens, which Ali lost after being pinned by Bryan. On March 25, 2019, his ring name was shortened to "Ali".


title: Mustafa Ali

text: At the Money in the Bank on May 19, Ali competed in the ladder match, which he failed to win, after a returning Brock Lesnar won the match. According to Ali, he was originally booked to win the match, but before making his entrance to the ring, was instructed by Vince McMahon to not obtain the briefcase. This decision caused a lot of controversy amongst fans, but Ali admitted to have not been bothered by it. The following month, Ali would compete in the 51-man battle royal at Super ShowDown, but would fail to win. At Smackville, Ali failed to capture the Intercontinental Championship, from Shinsuke Nakamura. In August, Ali competed in the King of the Ring tournament, where he defeated Buddy Murphy in the first round, but lost to Elias in the quarterfinals. At the Hell in a Cell event, Ali lost to Randy Orton. At the Crown Jewel event, Ali competed in a ten-man tag team match as a part of Team Hogan, coming out victorious against Team Flair. On November 13, his name was reverted to "Mustafa Ali". At Survivor Series, Ali competed as a member of Team SmackDown, and was eliminated by Seth Rollins, however, his team won the match. Following this, Ali would be taken off television, wrestling primarily on dark matches and live events.


title: Mustafa Ali

text: After a seven-month hiatus from television, Ali returned on the July 20, 2020 episode of "Raw", teaming with Cedric Alexander and Ricochet to defeat MVP, Bobby Lashley and Shelton Benjamin, thus moving to the Raw brand. After moving to the Raw brand, Ali later began competing on WWE Main Event, trading victories in matches over the likes of Ricochet and Akira Tozawa. On the September 28 episode of "Raw", Ali would return to in ring action by teaming with Ricochet and Apollo Crews and they would go on to defeat The Hurt Business after Ali used the 450 splash to pin MVP.


title: Mustafa Ali

text: On the October 5 episode of "Raw", Ali turned heel when he was revealed as the leader of the stable Retribution. On the October 19 episode of "Raw", Ali would reveal himself as the mysterious hacker that was sending messages on SmackDown for months. That same night, Ali and Retribution would be defeated by The Hurt Business in an eight-man tag team match. The following week on "Raw", Retribution would once again lose to The Hurt Business in an elimination match, ending the feud. Following this, Retribution would set their sights on Ricochet with each member, including Ali, defeating him in singles matches over the next few weeks on "Raw". Afterwards, Retribution would begin a feud with The New Day or more specifically, Kofi Kingston after Ali blamed Kingston for "stealing" his WrestleMania opportunity two years prior while he was injured. At the Royal Rumble, Ali would enter at number 4 and managed to eliminate Xavier Woods before being eliminated by Big E.


title: Mustafa Ali

text: On March 15 episode of "Raw", Ali faced Riddle for the United States Championship but was unsuccessful in capturing the title. He faced Riddle in a rematch for the title at Fastlane but was once again unsuccessful. Following the match, Reckoning and Slapjack walked out on him while Mace and T-Bar attacked him, effectively disbanding Retribution.


title: Mustafa Ali

text: On the March 29 episode of "Raw", in his first match since the disbandment of Retribution, Ali attacked Drew McIntyre after his match with Ricochet, resulting in a match against McIntyre, who emerged victorious. Shortly after, Ali renewed his rivalry with Ricochet on Main Event where they faced off in a series of matches culminating in a 2-out-of-3 falls match where Ali was defeated. In June, Ali began a storyline with Mansoor, trying to convince him that the rest of WWE superstars were "backstabbers", "would do anything just to get ahead", and "cheaters", leading to a match on the July 5 episode of "Raw", where Ali handed Mansoor his first pinfall loss after outsmarting him by faking a knee injury. On the July 26 episode of Raw, Ali teamed with Mansoor at his request where they defeated T-Bar and Mace, thus turning him face.


title: Mustafa Ali

text: As part of the 2021 Draft, Ali was drafted to the SmackDown brand. On the October 11 episode of "Raw", Ali berated and attacked Mansoor in the backstage after they lost to The Hurt Business, reverting back to a heel and thus ending his alliance with Mansoor; challenging him to a match at Crown Jewel later that night. At the event, Ali lost to Mansoor, and after the match, was dropped with a kick by karate silver medalist Tareg Hamedi. The following night on "SmackDown", Ali faced Mansoor in a rematch but was once again defeated. On the next week's episode of "SmackDown", Ali would be defeated by Drew McIntyre and shortly after would disappear from television.


title: Mustafa Ali

text: On January 16, 2022, Mustafa Ali publicly requested his release from WWE which was eventually declined by Vince McMahon. A few months later, Ali returned to television on the April 25 episode of "Raw", as a face and defeated The Miz. after the match, he would be attacked by Ciampa. On the May 2, broadcast of "Raw", Mustafa Ali yet again interrupted "Miz TV" and requested a United States Championship shot. The Miz accepted the offer but turned the match into a 2-on-1 handicap match with The Miz's partner being Theory. Mustafa Ali was defeated via a Skull Crushing Finale by The Miz. Eventually however, Ali would face Theory for the United States Championship at Hell In A Cell, in an unsuccessful attempt.


title: Mustafa Ali

text: On the October 17 episode of Raw, Ali confronted Seth Rollins and unleashed an attack on him to end the episode.


title: Mustafa Ali

text: Ali uses a high-flying style of wrestling. Ali's finishing maneuver was an imploding 450° splash named the "054", but he retired the move since he "wants to be able to play with his grandkids". After his debut, Ali used characters different from Muslim stereotypes. During his feud with Cedric Alexander over the Cruiserweight Championship, Ali was commonly referred to as "The Heart of 205 Live", while Alexander was referred to as “The Soul of 205 Live”.


title: Mustafa Ali

text: Ali made his video game debut as a playable character in "WWE 2K19" and has since appeared in "WWE 2K20" as well as "WWE 2K22". He was the subject of a 2009 documentary focusing on issues that Muslim wrestlers face when booked as villainous characters and stereotyped as terrorists.


title: Mustafa Ali

text: Alam is a Muslim. He met his wife Uzma in 2010. The couple got married in January 2011, and have two daughters and a son.


title: Mustafa Ali

text: Alam is of Pakistani and Indian origin, however, he only represented Pakistan in his WWE debut at the Cruiserweight Classic as there were already two Indian wrestlers competing. Alam was criticized for not displaying a Pakistani flag and representing the country by his Pakistani fans in January 2017. He stated, "I don't care for nationality. I care for unity. I don't mean to offend anyone. This is just me stating that I feel nationality doesn't define us as people, it separates us."


title: Mustafa Ali

text: Alam spent four years serving as a police officer in Homewood, Illinois, a suburb south of Chicago, in order to support his family before being signed to WWE.


title: Coven

text: A coven () is a group or gathering of witches. The word "coven" (from Anglo-Norman "covent, cuvent", from Old French "covent", from Latin "conventum" = convention) remained largely unused in English until 1921 when Margaret Murray promoted the idea that all witches across Europe met in groups of thirteen which they called "covens".


title: Coven

text: In Wicca and other similar forms of neopagan witchcraft, such as Stregheria and Feri, a coven is a gathering or community of witches, like an affinity group, engagement group, or small covenant group. It is composed of a group of practitioners who gather together for rituals such as Drawing Down the Moon, or celebrating the Sabbats.. The place at which they generally meet is called a covenstead.


title: Coven

text: The number of people involved may vary. Although some consider thirteen to be ideal (probably in deference to Murray's theories), any group of at least three can be a coven. A group of two is usually called a "working couple" (regardless of their gender). It can also unofficially be called an "Obaven" by some members of the community, derived from the Scottish Gaelic word "obair" meaning work, a tribute to the more official term "working couple", a portmanteau with the word "coven". Thus creating the word, "Obaven". Within the community, many believe that a coven larger than thirteen is unwieldy, citing unwieldy group dynamics and an unfair burden on the leadership. When a coven has grown too large to be manageable, it may split, or "hive". In Wicca, this may also occur when a newly made High Priest or High Priestess, also called 3rd Degree initiation, leaves to start their own coven.


title: Coven

text: Wiccan covens are usually jointly led by a High Priestess and a High Priest, although some are led by only one or the other, and some by a same-sex couple. In more recent forms of neopagan witchcraft, covens are sometimes run as democracies with a rotating leadership.


title: Coven

text: With the rise of the Internet as a platform for collaborative discussion and media dissemination, it became popular for adherents and practitioners of Wicca to establish "online covens" which remotely teach tradition-specific crafts to students in a similar method of education as non-religious virtual online schools. One of the first online covens to take this route is the Coven of the Far Flung Net (CFFN), which was established in 1997 as the online arm of the Church of Universal Eclectic Wicca.


title: Coven

text: However, because of potentially-unwieldy membership sizes, many online covens limit their memberships to anywhere between 10 and 100 students. The CFFN, in particular, tried to devolve its structure into a system of sub-coven clans (which governed their own application processes), a system which ended in 2003 due to fears by the CFFN leadership that the clans were becoming communities in their own right.


title: Coven

text: The Urban Coven is a group founded on Facebook by Becca Gordon for women in Los Angeles to gather, hike, and howl at the moon. It meets monthly and is estimated to have almost 3,500 members. A January 2016 gathering at Griffith Park drew nearly 1,000 women, and was described as follows:


title: Coven

text: A lot of the women ... were there in groups — mothers and daughters, friends, colleagues. Some arrived solo and struck up conversations with other women or hiked in solitude.


title: Coven

text: In popular culture, a coven is a group or gathering of witches who work spells in tandem. Such imagery can be traced back to Renaissance prints depicting witches and to the three "weird sisters" in Shakespeare's "Macbeth" (1606).


title: Coven

text: Orgiastic meetings of witches are depicted in the Robert Burns poem "Tam o' Shanter" (1791) and in the Goethe play "Faust" (1832).


title: Coven

text: Films featuring covens include "Rosemary's Baby" (1968), "Crowhaven Farm" (1970), "Suspiria" (1977) and its 2018 remake, "The Witches of Eastwick" (1987), "Four Rooms" (1995), "The Craft" (1996), "Coven" (1997), "Underworld" (2003), "" (2006), "The Covenant" (2006), "Paranormal Activity 3" (2011), "The Witch" (2015) and "Hereditary" (2018).


title: Coven

text: In television, covens have been portrayed in the U.S. in supernatural dramas such as "Charmed", "Witches of East End", "The Vampire Diaries", "The Originals", "The Secret Circle", "True Blood", "Once Upon a Time" and "Chilling Adventures of Sabrina". The third season of "American Horror Story" is entitled "", and focuses on witches. The animated series "The Owl House" (2020–present) also focuses on witches, and interprets covens as required organizations of witches with specialized magic.


title: Coven

text: In vampire novels such as "The Vampire Chronicles" by Anne Rice and the "Twilight" series by Stephenie Meyer, covens are families or unrelated groups of vampires who live together.


title: Ghost hunting

text: Ghost hunting is the process of investigating locations that are reported to be haunted by ghosts. Typically, a ghost-hunting team will attempt to collect evidence supporting the existence of paranormal activity. Ghost hunters use a variety of electronic devices, including EMF meters, digital thermometers, both handheld and static digital video cameras, including thermographic and night vision cameras, night vision goggles, as well as digital audio recorders. Other more traditional techniques are also used, such as conducting interviews and researching the history of allegedly haunted sites. Ghost hunters may also refer to themselves as "paranormal investigators."


title: Ghost hunting

text: Ghost hunting has been heavily criticized for its dismissal of the scientific method. No scientific study has ever been able to confirm the existence of ghosts. The practice is considered a pseudoscience by the vast majority of educators, academics, and science writers.


title: Ghost hunting

text: Paranormal research dates back to the nineteenth century, with organizations such as the Society for Psychical Research investigating spiritual matters. Psychic researcher Harry Price published his "Confessions of a Ghost-Hunter" in 1936.


title: Ghost hunting

text: Ghost hunting was popularized in the 2000s by television series such as "Most Haunted" and "Ghost Hunters", combined with the increasing availability of high-tech equipment. The Atlantic Paranormal Society reported a doubling in their membership in the late 2000s, attributing this to the television programs. Despite its lack of acceptance in academic circles, the popularity of ghost-hunting reality TV shows has influenced a number of individuals to take up the pursuit.


title: Ghost hunting

text: Small businesses offering ghost-hunting equipment and paranormal investigation services increased in the early 2000s. Many offer electromagnetic field (EMF) meters, infrared motion sensors and devices billed as "ghost detectors". The paranormal boom is such that some small ghost-hunting related businesses are enjoying increased profits through podcast and website advertising, books, DVDs, videos and other commercial enterprises.


title: Ghost hunting

text: One ghost-hunting group called "A Midwest Haunting" based in Macomb, Illinois, reported that the number of people taking its tours had tripled, jumping from about 600 in 2006 to 1,800 in 2008. Others, such as Marie Cuff of "Idaho Spirit Seekers" pointed to increased traffic on their websites and message boards as an indication that ghost hunting was becoming more accepted. Participants say that ghost hunting allows them to enjoy the friendship of like-minded people and actively pursue their interest in the paranormal. According to Jim Willis of "Ghosts of Ohio", his group's membership had doubled, growing to 30 members since it was founded in 1999 and includes both true believers and total skeptics. Willis says his group is "looking for answers, one way or another" and that skepticism is a prerequisite for those who desire to be "taken seriously in this field."


title: Ghost hunting

text: Author John Potts says that the present day pursuit of "amateur ghost hunting" can be traced back to the Spiritualist era and early organizations founded to investigate paranormal phenomena, like London's The Ghost Club and the Society for Psychical Research, but that modern investigations are unrelated to academic parapsychology. Potts writes that modern ghost hunting groups ignore the scientific method and instead follow a form of "techno-mysticism".


title: Ghost hunting

text: The popularity of ghost hunting has led to some injuries. Unaware that a "spooky home" in Worthington, Ohio was occupied, a group of teenagers stepped on the edge of the property to explore. The homeowner fired on the teenagers' automobile as they were leaving, seriously injuring one. A woman hunting for ghosts was killed in a fall from a University of Toronto building.


title: Ghost hunting

text: An offshoot of ghost hunting is the commercial ghost tour conducted by a local guide or tour operator who is often a member of a local ghost-hunting or paranormal investigation group. Since both the tour operators and owners of the reportedly haunted properties share profits of such enterprises (admissions vary depending on the location, length and other aspects of the tour), some believe the claims of hauntings are exaggerated or fabricated in order to increase attendance. The city of Savannah, Georgia, is said to be the American city with the most ghost tours, having more than 31 as of 2003.


title: Ghost hunting

text: Harry Price (1881–1948) was a British parapsychologist, psychic researcher and author who gained public prominence for his investigations into psychical phenomena and his exposing of fraudulent spiritualist mediums. He is best known for his well-publicized investigation of the purportedly haunted Borley Rectory in Essex, England. Price's exploits were given wide exposure in a 1950 book, "Harry Price: Biography of a Ghost Hunter" by Paul Tabori. He was also a longstanding member of the Ghost Club based in London.


title: Ghost hunting

text: Price joined the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in 1920, and used his knowledge of stage magic to debunk fraudulent mediums. In 1922, he exposed the "spirit" photographer William Hope. In the same year he traveled to Germany with Eric Dingwall and investigated Willi Schneider at the home of Baron Albert von Schrenck-Notzing in Munich. In 1923, Price exposed the medium Jan Guzyk.


title: Ghost hunting

text: Price wrote that the photographs depicting the ectoplasm of the medium Eva Carrière taken with Schrenck-Notzing looked artificial and two-dimensional made from cardboard and newspaper portraits and that there were no scientific controls as both her hands were free. In 1920 Carrière was investigated by psychical researchers in London. An analysis of her ectoplasm revealed it to be made of chewed paper. She was also investigated in 1922 and the result of the tests were negative. In 1925, Price investigated Maria Silbert and caught her using her feet and toes to move objects in the séance room. He also investigated the "direct voice" mediumship of George Valiantine in London. In the séance Valiantine claimed to have contacted the "spirit" of the composer Luigi Arditi, speaking in Italian. Price wrote down every word that was attributed to Arditi and they were found to be word-for-word matches in an Italian phrase-book.


title: Ghost hunting

text: In 1926, Price formed the National Laboratory of Psychical Research as a rival to the SPR. Price made a formal offer to the University of London to equip and endow a Department of Psychical Research, and to loan the equipment of the National Laboratory and its library. The University of London Board of Studies in Psychology responded positively to this proposal.


title: Ghost hunting

text: Price had a number of public disputes with the SPR, most notably regarding professed medium Rudi Schneider. Price exposed Frederick Tansley Munnings, who claimed to produce the independent "spirit" voices of Julius Caesar, Dan Leno, Hawley Harvey Crippen and King Henry VIII. Price also invented and used a piece of apparatus known as a "voice control recorder" and proved that all the voices were those of Munnings. In 1928, Munnings admitted fraud and sold his confessions to a Sunday newspaper.


title: Ghost hunting

text: In 1933, Frank Decker was investigated by Price at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research. Under strict scientific controls that Price contrived, Decker failed to produce any phenomena at all. Price's psychical research continued with investigations into Karachi's Indian rope trick and the fire-walking abilities of Kuda Bux. In 1936, Price broadcast from a supposedly haunted manor house in Meopham, Kent for the BBC and published "The Confessions of a Ghost-Hunter" and "The Haunting of Cashen's Gap". This year also saw the transfer of Price's library on permanent loan to the University of London (see external links), followed shortly by the laboratory and investigative equipment. In 1937, he conducted further televised experiments into fire-walking with Ahmed Hussain at Carshalton and Alexandra Palace, and also rented Borley Rectory for one year. The following year, Price re-established the Ghost Club, with himself as chairman, modernizing it and changing it from a spiritualist association to a group of more or less open-minded skeptics that gathered to discuss paranormal topics. He was also the first to admit women to the club. Price drafted a bill for the regulation of psychic practitioners, and in 1939, he organized a national telepathic test in the periodical "John O'London's Weekly". During the 1940s, Price concentrated on writing and the works "The Most Haunted House in England", "Poltergeist Over England" and "The End of Borley Rectory" were all published.


title: Ghost hunting

text: Price's friends included other debunkers of fraudulent mediums such as Harry Houdini and the journalist Ernest Palmer.


title: Ghost hunting

text: Edward Warren Miney (1926–2006) and Lorraine Rita Warren (née Moran, 1927–2019) were American paranormal investigators and authors associated with prominent reports of haunting from the 1950s to the present. Edward was a World War II United States Navy veteran who became a self-taught and self-professed demonologist, author, and lecturer. Lorraine professes to be clairvoyant and a light trance medium who worked closely with her husband. In 1952, the Warrens founded the New England Society for Psychic Research, the oldest ghost hunting group in New England. They authored numerous books about the paranormal and about their private investigations into various reports of paranormal activity. They claimed to have investigated over 1,000 cases during their career, and have been involved with various supernatural claims such as the Snedeker family haunting, the Enfield Poltergeist and the Smurl haunting, as well as claims of demonic possession in the Trial of Arne Cheyenne Johnson.


title: Ghost hunting

text: The Warrens are best known for their involvement in the 1976 Amityville Horror case in which New York couple George and Kathy Lutz claimed that their house was haunted by a violent, demonic presence so intense that it eventually drove them out of their home. "The Amityville Horror Conspiracy" authors Stephen and Roxanne Kaplan characterized the case as a "hoax". Lorraine Warren told a reporter for "The Express-Times" newspaper that the Amityville Horror was not a hoax. The reported haunting was the basis for the 1977 book "The Amityville Horror", which was adapted into the 1979 and 2005 movies of the same name, while also serving as inspiration for the film series that followed. The Warrens' version of events is partially adapted and portrayed in the opening sequence of "The Conjuring 2" (2016). According to Benjamin Radford, the story was "refuted by eyewitnesses, investigations and forensic evidence". In 1979, lawyer William Weber reportedly stated that he, Jay Anson, and the occupants "invented" the horror story "over many bottles of wine".


title: Ghost hunting

text: General criticism of the Warrens include those by skeptics Perry DeAngelis and Steven Novella, who investigated the Warrens' evidence and described it as "blarney". Skeptical investigators Joe Nickell and Ben Radford also concluded that the more famous hauntings such as Amityville and the Snedeker family haunting, did not happen and had been invented.


title: Ghost hunting

text: Stories of ghosts and hauntings popularized by the Warrens have been adapted as or have indirectly inspired dozens of films, television series and documentaries, including 17 films in the "Amityville Horror" series and six films in The Conjuring Universe including "Annabelle", "", and "Annabelle Comes Home", spin-off prequels of "The Conjuring".


title: Ghost hunting

text: According to a survey conducted in October 2008 by the Associated Press and Ipsos, 34 percent of Americans say they believe in the existence of ghosts. Moreover, a Gallup poll conducted on June 6–8, 2005, showed that about one-third (32%) of Americans believe that ghosts exist, with belief declining with age. Having surveyed three countries (the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom), the poll also mentioned that more people believe in haunted houses than any of the other paranormal items tested, with 37% of Americans, 28% of Canadians, and 40% of Britons believing.


title: Ghost hunting

text: In 2002, the National Science Foundation identified haunted houses, ghosts, and communication with the dead among pseudoscientific beliefs.


title: Ghost hunting

text: Critics question ghost hunting's methodology, particularly its use of instrumentation, as there is no scientifically proven link between the existence of ghosts and cold spots or electromagnetic fields. According to skeptical investigator Joe Nickell, the typical ghost hunter is practicing pseudoscience. Nickell says that ghost hunters often arm themselves with EMF meters, thermometers that can identify cold spots, and wireless microphones that eliminate background noise, pointing out the equipment being used to try to detect ghosts is not designed for the job. "The least likely explanation for any given reading is it is a ghost," maintains Nickell. Orbs of light that show up on photos, he says, are often particles of dust or moisture. "Voices" picked up by tape recorders can be radio signals or noise from the recorder, EMF detectors can be set off by faulty wiring, microwave towers, iron, recording equipment, or cell phones, and heat sensors can pick up reflections off of mirrors or other metal surfaces. Nickell has also criticized the practice of searching only in the dark, saying that since some ghosts are described as "shadows or dark entities," he conducts searches in lighted rather than darkened conditions.


title: Ghost hunting

text: According to investigator Benjamin Radford, most ghost-hunting groups including The Atlantic Paranormal Society make many methodological mistakes. According to Radford, "[a]fter watching episodes of "Ghost Hunters" and other similar programs, it quickly becomes clear to anyone with a background in science that the methods used are both illogical and unscientific". Anyone can be a ghost investigator, "failing to consider alternative explanations for anomalous… phenomena", considering emotions and feelings as "evidence of ghostly encounters". "Improper and unscientific investigation methods" for example "using unproven tools and equipment", "sampling errors", "ineffectively using recording devices" and "focusing on the history of the location... and not the phenomena". In his article for "Skeptical Inquirer" Radford concludes that ghost hunters should care about doing a truly scientific investigation: "I believe that if ghosts exist, they are important and deserve to be taken seriously. Most of the efforts to investigate ghosts so far have been badly flawed and unscientific – and, not surprisingly, fruitless."


title: Ghost hunting

text: Although some ghost hunters believe orbs are of supernatural origin, skeptic Brian Dunning says that they are usually particles of dust that are reflected by light when a picture is taken, sometimes it may be bugs or water droplets. He contends that "there are no plausible hypotheses that describe the mechanism by which a person who dies will become a hovering ball of light that appears on film but is invisible to the eye." He does not believe there is any science behind these beliefs; if there were then there would be some kind of discussion of who, what and why this can happen. In his investigations he can not find any "plausible hypothesis" that orbs are anything paranormal.


title: Ghost hunting

text: Science writer Sharon Hill reviewed over 1,000 "amateur research and investigation groups" (ARIGs), writing that "879 identified with the category of 'ghosts'". Hill reports that many groups used the terms "science" or "scientific" when describing themselves; however they overwhelmingly display neither understanding of nor adherence to scientific norms. Hill writes:


title: Ghost hunting

text: Hill sees the supernatural bias of such groups as an indication of how "far removed ARIG participants really are from the established scientific community".


title: Ghost hunting

text: In Hill's 2017 book "Scientifical Americans" reviewed by historian Brian Regal for "Skeptical Inquirer" magazine, Regal writes that this is a timely book as it comes during an era when many question science. Regal wonders why believers think that "untutored amateurs know more (and are more trustworthy) than professional scholars". He asks why there is little discussion on "philosophical and theological aspects of their work". For example, the theoretical questions such as "what is a ghost?" and "does one's religion in life determine if they can become a ghost in death?" Hill gives a historiography of the field of "modern paranormal interest: monsters, UFOs, and ghosts." Hill does not insult or ridicule the people she writes about, but explains their stories through case studies. Regal feels that this book will not deter believers in the paranormal, but it is an important part of a "growing literature on amateur paranormal research". Regal states that paranormal researchers are not engaging in scientific discovery but are engaging "blithely in confirmation bias, selective evidence compiling, and the backfire effect while all the time complaining that it is the other side doing it… They, like all of us, are ultimately not searching for ghosts… they are looking for themselves."


title: Ghost hunting

text: In May 2018, Kenny Biddle, a skeptical investigator of paranormal claims, spent a night in the White Hill Mansion in Fieldsboro, New Jersey, along with a group of fellow skeptics. The mansion, built in 1757, has traditionally been visited by many ghost hunting teams who claim to have experienced paranormal activity and communicate with spirits via EVPs while there. According to Biddle, many of the ghost hunters claimed that the EVPs they obtained "were not just random responses; they were direct, intelligent responses to specific questions". To challenge these claims, Biddle's group conducted a controlled experiment: the group recorded audio while asking any spirits in the Mansion to help them in locating a small foam toy hidden somewhere on the premises by a third party. They asked direct questions, but no responses were detected during review of the audio. Biddle subsequently reset the experiment and has offered a prize to ghost hunters for proof of their claim that they can obtain direct answers from spirits via EVP.


title: Ghost hunting

text: Biddle has also criticized what he calls "paranormal gadgets" that are popular with ghost hunters, such as the Ovilus, a device designed to respond to electromagnetic field variations with words from a pre-programmed dictionary, which, according to "Popular Mechanics" resemble a "demonic Speak & Spell" whose "phrases often sound like they were cherry picked from a John Carpenter flick".


title: Ghost hunting

text: Ghost hunters use a variety of techniques and tools to investigate alleged paranormal activity. While there is no universal acceptance among ghost hunters of the following methodologies, a number of these are commonly used by ghost hunting groups.


title: Ghost hunting

text: According to ghost hunters, a cold spot is an area of localized coldness or a sudden decrease in ambient temperature. Temperature decreases claimed to be associated with cold spots range from a few degrees Fahrenheit to over 40 degrees. Many ghost hunters use digital thermometers or heat sensing devices to measure such temperature changes. Believers claim that cold spots are an indicator of paranormal or spirit activity in the area; however, there are many natural explanations for rapid temperature variations within structures, and there is no scientifically confirmed evidence that spirit entities exist or can affect air temperatures.


title: Ghost hunting

text: Some ghost hunters claim that circular artifacts appearing in photographs are spirits of the dead or other paranormal phenomena; however, such visual artifacts are a result of flash photography illuminating a mote of dust or other particle, and are especially common with modern compact and ultra-compact digital cameras.


title: Ghost hunting

text: "Ghost Hunters" features the activities of a Warwick, Rhode Island, ghost hunting group called The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS). Since 2004, the program has garnered some of the highest ratings of any Syfy network programming, presenting a mix of paranormal investigation and interpersonal drama. It has since been syndicated on NBCUniversal sister cable channel Oxygen and also airs on the Canadian cable network, OLN. In addition to their television venture, TAPS hosts a three-hour weekly radio show called "Beyond Reality", operates a website where they share their stories, photographs, and ghost hunting videos with members. TAPS cast members also appear at lectures, conferences and public events.


title: Ghost hunting

text: "Ghost Adventures" premiered in 2008 on the Travel Channel. The TV series features ghost hunters Zak Bagans, Nick Groff (seasons 1–10), Aaron Goodwin, Billy Tolley, and Jay Wasley as they investigate reportedly haunted locations hoping to collect visual or auditory evidence of paranormal activity.


title: Ghost hunting

text: "Haunted Collector" features a team of paranormal investigators led by demonologist John Zaffis who investigate allegedly haunted locations in hopes of identifying and removing objects they believe can trigger supernatural activity. The objects are transported for eventual display in Zaffis's museum. The series premiered in 2011 on the Syfy cable television channel and was cancelled in 2013.


title: Ghost hunting

text: "Poltergeist" is the original film in the "Poltergeist" trilogy, directed by Tobe Hooper, co-written by Steven Spielberg and released on June 4, 1982. The story focuses on the Freeling family, which consists of Steven (Craig T. Nelson), Diane (JoBeth Williams), Dana (Dominique Dunne), Robbie (Oliver Robins), and Carol Anne (Heather O'Rourke), who live in a California housing development called Cuesta Verde, which comes to be haunted by ghosts. The film depicts a group of paranormal investigators, parapsychologists, and a spiritual medium named Tangina Barrons (Zelda Rubinstein) in their efforts to assist the family. A reboot of the series, "Poltergeist", was directed by Gil Kenan and released on May 22, 2015, that features the host of a paranormal-themed TV show who comes to the aid of the family.


title: Ghost hunting

text: "Ghostbusters" is a 1984 American fantasy comedy film produced and directed by Ivan Reitman and written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis. It stars Bill Murray, Aykroyd and Ramis as Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz and Egon Spengler, eccentric parapsychologists who start a ghost-catching business in New York City. "Ghostbusters" was released in the United States on June 8, 1984, and grossed 242 million USD in the United States and more than 295 million USD worldwide, making it the highest-grossing comedy film of its time. It launched a media franchise, which includes two sequels ("Ghostbusters II" and ""), two animated television series ("The Real Ghostbusters" and "Extreme Ghostbusters"), video games, and a 2016 reboot. The "Ghostbusters" concept was inspired by Aykroyd's fascination with the paranormal.


title: Ghost hunting

text: "The Conjuring" is a 2013 American supernatural horror film directed by James Wan and written by Chad Hayes and Carey W. Hayes. It is the inaugural film in The Conjuring Universe franchise, in which Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga star as paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. Their purportedly real-life exploits inspired "The Amityville Horror" story and film franchise. In "The Conjuring", the Warrens come to the assistance of the Perron family, who experience increasingly disturbing events in their farmhouse in Rhode Island in 1971. "The Conjuring" was released in the United States and Canada on July 19, 2013, and grossed over 319 million USD worldwide. A sequel, "The Conjuring 2", was released on June 10, 2016, and a prequel, Annabelle, directed by John R. Leonetti, written by Gary Dauberman and produced by Peter Safran and James Wan was released in 2014.


title: Ghost hunting

text: Kinetic Games's indie survival horror game sees the player(s) take on the role of ghost hunters contracted to explore various premises for ghosts. The game received a large influx of popularity after its September 2020 release due to many well-known Twitch streamers and YouTubers playing it, mainly for the Halloween season.


title: Ghost hunting

text: The American entertainment web series "BuzzFeed Unsolved" included "BuzzFeed Unsolved Supernatural" episodes where hosts Shane Madej and Ryan Bergara discussed alleged ghosts, hauntings and demons, often seeking evidence of their existence. In 2019, Bergara and Madej left "Buzzfeed" to host a web series similar to "Buzzfeed Unsolved Supernatural" called "Ghost Files" in 2022, documenting their attempts to find evidence of supernatural beings and occurrences.


title: Ghost hunting

text: Interest in ghost hunting has driven tourism to historical sites and locations claimed to be haunted. A study published in the "Cornell Hospitality Quarterly" in 2020 stated that "haunted tourism has allowed attractions like historic house museums as well as abandoned hospitals, schools and prisons 'to remain intact' or bring in the money needed to make necessary improvements". According to architectural historian Jen Levstik, revenues from haunted tourism can help fund historic preservation, "so long as the tours are also providing historically accurate information related to the property [and] the humanity of the people at those properties, and not just the salacious things that can’t be backed up beyond hearsay or rumor."


title: Moons of Mars

text: The two moons of Mars are Phobos and Deimos. They are irregular in shape. Both were discovered by American astronomer Asaph Hall in August 1877 and are named after the Greek mythological twin characters Phobos (fear and panic) and Deimos (terror and dread) who accompanied their father Ares into battle. Ares, god of war, was known to the Romans as Mars.


title: Moons of Mars

text: Compared to the Earth's Moon, the moons Phobos and Deimos are small. Phobos has a diameter of 22.2 km (13.8 mi) and a mass of 1.08 kg, while Deimos measures 12.6 km (7.8 mi) across, with a mass of 2.0 kg. Phobos orbits closer to Mars, with a semi-major axis of and an orbital period of 7.66 hours; while Deimos orbits farther with a semi-major axis of and an orbital period of 30.35 hours.


title: Moons of Mars

text: Speculation about the existence of the moons of Mars had begun when the moons of Jupiter were discovered. When Galileo Galilei, as a hidden report about his having observed two bumps on the sides of Saturn (later discovered to be its rings), used the anagram "smaismrmilmepoetaleumibunenugttauiras" for "Altissimum planetam tergeminum observavi" ("I have observed the most distant planet to have a triple form"), Johannes Kepler had misinterpreted it to mean "Salve umbistineum geminatum Martia proles" (Hello, furious twins, sons of Mars).


title: Moons of Mars

text: Perhaps inspired by Kepler (and quoting Kepler's third law of planetary motion), Jonathan Swift's satire "Gulliver's Travels" (1726) refers to two moons in Part 3, Chapter 3 (the "Voyage to Laputa"), in which Laputa's astronomers are described as having discovered two satellites of Mars orbiting at distances of 3 and 5 Martian diameters with periods of 10 and 21.5 hours. Phobos and Deimos (both found in 1877, more than a century after Swift's novel) have actual orbital distances of 1.4 and 3.5 Martian diameters, and their respective orbital periods are 7.66 and 30.35 hours. In the 20th century, V. G. Perminov, a spacecraft designer of early Soviet Mars and Venus spacecraft, speculated Swift found and deciphered records that Martians left on Earth. However, the view of most astronomers is that Swift was simply employing a common argument of the time, that as the inner planets Venus and Mercury had no satellites, Earth had one and Jupiter had four (known at the time), that Mars by analogy must have two. Furthermore, as they had not yet been discovered, it was reasoned that they must be small and close to Mars. This would lead Swift to making a roughly accurate estimate of their orbital distances and revolution periods. In addition Swift could have been helped in his calculations by his friend, the mathematician John Arbuthnot.


title: Moons of Mars

text: Voltaire's 1752 short story "Micromégas", about an alien visitor to Earth, also refers to two moons of Mars. Voltaire was presumably influenced by Swift. In recognition of these 'predictions', two craters on Deimos are named Swift and Voltaire, while on Phobos there is one named regio, "Laputa Regio", and one named planitia, "Lagado Planitia", both of which are named after places in "Gulliver's Travels" (the fictional Laputa, a flying island, and Lagado, imaginary capital of the fictional nation Balnibarbi). Many of the craters on Phobos are also named after characters in "Gulliver's Travels".


title: Moons of Mars

text: Asaph Hall discovered Deimos on August 12, 1877 at about 07:48 UTC and Phobos on August 18, 1877, at the US Naval Observatory (the Old Naval Observatory in Foggy Bottom) in Washington, D.C., at about 09:14 GMT (contemporary sources, using the pre-1925 astronomical convention that began the day at noon, give the time of discovery as 11 August 14:40 and 17 August 16:06 Washington mean time respectively). At the time, he was deliberately searching for Martian moons. Hall had previously seen what appeared to be a Martian moon on 10 August, but due to bad weather, he could not definitively identify them until later.


title: Moons of Mars

text: The telescope used for the discovery was the 26-inch (66 cm) refractor (telescope with a lens) then located at Foggy Bottom. In 1893 the lens was remounted and put in a new dome, where it remains into the 21st century.


title: Moons of Mars

text: The names, originally spelled "Phobus" and "Deimus", respectively, were suggested by Henry Madan (1838–1901), Science Master of Eton, from Book XV of the "Iliad", where Ares summons Fear and Fright. The granddaughter of Henry Madan's brother Falconer Madan was Venetia Burney, who first suggested the name of the planet Pluto.


title: Moons of Mars

text: In 1959, Walter Scott Houston perpetrated a celebrated April Fool's hoax in the April edition of the "Great Plains Observer", claiming that "Dr. Arthur Hayall of the University of the Sierras reports that the moons of Mars are actually artificial satellites". Both Dr. Hayall and the University of the Sierras were fictitious. The hoax gained worldwide attention when Houston's claim was repeated in earnest by a Soviet scientist, Iosif Shklovsky, who, based on a later-disproven density estimate, suggested Phobos was a hollow metal shell.


title: Moons of Mars

text: Searches have been conducted for additional satellites. In 2003, Scott S. Sheppard and David C. Jewitt surveyed nearly the entire Hill sphere of Mars for irregular satellites. However scattered light from Mars prevented them from searching the inner few arcminutes where the satellites Phobos and Deimos reside. No new satellites were found to an apparent limiting red magnitude of 23.5, which corresponds to radii of about 0.09 km using an albedo of 0.07.


title: Moons of Mars

text: If viewed from Mars's surface near its equator, full Phobos looks about one-third as big as a full moon on Earth. It has an angular diameter of between 8' (rising) and 12' (overhead). Due to its close orbit, it would look smaller when the observer is further away from the Martian equator and is below the horizon and thus not visible from Mars's polar ice caps. Deimos looks more like a bright star or planet for an observer on Mars, only slightly bigger than Venus looks from Earth; it has an angular diameter of about 2'. The Sun's angular diameter as seen from Mars, by contrast, is about 21'. Thus there are no total solar eclipses on Mars, as the moons are far too small to completely cover the Sun. On the other hand, total lunar eclipses of Phobos happen almost every night.


title: Moons of Mars

text: The motions of Phobos and Deimos would appear very different from that of Earth's Moon. Speedy Phobos rises in the west, sets in the east, and rises again in just eleven hours, while Deimos, being only just outside synchronous orbit, rises as expected in the east but very slowly. Despite its 30-hour orbit, it takes 2.7 days to set in the west as it slowly falls behind the rotation of Mars.


title: Moons of Mars

text: Both moons are tidally locked, always presenting the same face towards Mars. Since Phobos orbits Mars faster than the planet itself rotates, tidal forces are slowly but steadily decreasing its orbital radius. At some point in the future, when it falls within the Roche limit, Phobos will be broken up by these tidal forces and either crash into Mars or form a ring. Several strings of craters on the Martian surface, inclined further from the equator the older they are, suggest that there may have been other small moons that suffered the fate expected of Phobos, and that the Martian crust as a whole shifted between these events. Deimos, on the other hand, is far enough away that its orbit is being slowly boosted instead, akin to Earth's Moon.


title: Moons of Mars

text: The origin of the Martian moons is still controversial. Phobos and Deimos both have much in common with carbonaceous C-type asteroids, with spectra, albedo, and density very similar to those of C- or D-type asteroids. Based on their similarity, one hypothesis is that both moons may be captured main-belt asteroids. Both moons have very circular orbits which lie almost exactly in Mars's equatorial plane, and hence a capture origin requires a mechanism for circularizing the initially highly eccentric orbit, and adjusting its inclination into the equatorial plane, most probably by a combination of atmospheric drag and tidal forces, although it is not clear that sufficient time is available for this to occur for Deimos. Capture also requires dissipation of energy. The current atmosphere of Mars is too thin to capture a Phobos-sized object by atmospheric braking. Geoffrey Landis has pointed out that the capture could have occurred if the original body was a binary asteroid that separated under tidal forces.


title: Moons of Mars

text: Phobos could be a second-generation Solar System object that coalesced in orbit after Mars formed, rather than forming concurrently out of the same birth cloud as Mars.


title: Moons of Mars

text: Another hypothesis is that Mars was once surrounded by many Phobos- and Deimos-sized bodies, perhaps ejected into orbit around it by a collision with a large planetesimal. The high porosity of the interior of Phobos (based on the density of 1.88 g/cm, voids are estimated to comprise 25 to 35 percent of Phobos' volume) is inconsistent with an asteroidal origin. Observations of Phobos in the thermal infrared suggest a composition containing mainly phyllosilicates, which are well known from the surface of Mars. The spectra are distinct from those of all classes of chondrite meteorites, again pointing away from an asteroidal origin. Both sets of findings support an origin of Phobos from material ejected by an impact on Mars that reaccreted in Martian orbit, similar to the prevailing theory for the origin of Earth's moon.


title: Moons of Mars

text: The moons of Mars may have started with a huge collision with a protoplanet one third the mass of Mars that formed a ring around Mars. The inner part of the ring formed a large moon. Gravitational interactions between this moon and the outer ring formed Phobos and Deimos. Later, the large moon crashed into Mars, but the two small moons remained in orbit. This theory agrees with the fine-grained surface of the moons and their high porosity. The outer disk would create fine-grained material. Simulations suggest the object colliding with Mars had to be within the size range of Ceres and Vesta because a larger impact would have created a more massive disc and moons that would have prevented the survival of tiny moons like Phobos and Deimos.


title: Moons of Mars

text: Most recently, Amirhossein Bagheri and his colleagues from ETH Zurich and US Naval Observatory, proposed a new hypothesis on the origin of the moons. By analyzing the seismic and orbital data from Mars InSight Mission and other missions, they proposed that the moons are born from disruption of a common parent body around 1 to 2.7 Billion years ago. The common progenitor of Phobos and Deimos was most probably hit by another object and shattered to form Phobos and Deimos. But a recent paper suggest that it seems unlikely that Phobos and Deimos are split directly from a single ancestral moon. They use N-body simulations to show that the single ancestral moon scenario should result in an impact between the two moons, leading to a debris ring in 10 years.


title: Moons of Mars

text: While many Martian probes provided images and other data about Phobos and Deimos, only few were dedicated to these satellites and intended to perform a flyby or landing on the surface.


title: Moons of Mars

text: Two probes under the Soviet Phobos program were successfully launched in 1988, but neither conducted the intended jumping landings on Phobos and Deimos due to failures (although "Phobos 2" successfully photographed Phobos). The post-Soviet Russian "Fobos-Grunt" probe was intended to be the first sample return mission from Phobos, but a rocket failure left it stranded in Earth orbit in 2011. Efforts to reactivate the craft were unsuccessful, and it fell back to Earth in an uncontrolled re-entry on 15 January 2012, over the Pacific Ocean, west of Chile.


title: Moons of Mars

text: In 1997 and 1998, the Aladdin mission was selected as a finalist in the NASA Discovery Program. The plan was to visit both Phobos and Deimos, and launch projectiles at the satellites. The probe would collect the ejecta as it performed a slow flyby. These samples would be returned to Earth for study three years later. Ultimately, NASA rejected this proposal in favor of "MESSENGER", a probe to Mercury.


title: Moons of Mars

text: In 2007, the European Space Agency and EADS Astrium proposed and developed a mission to Phobos in 2016 with a lander and sample return, but this mission was never flown. Canadian Space Agency has been considering the Phobos Reconnaissance and International Mars Exploration (PRIME) mission to Phobos with orbiter and lander since 2007. Since 2013 NASA developed the Phobos Surveyor mission concept with an orbiter and a small rover. NASA's PADME mission was designed to conduct multiple flybys of the Martian moons, but was not chosen for development. Also, NASA is assessing the OSIRIS-REx II, concept mission for a sample return from Phobos. Another sample return mission from Deimos, called "Gulliver", has been conceptualized.


title: Moons of Mars

text: JAXA plans to launch Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission in 2024 to bring back the first samples from Phobos. The spacecraft will enter orbit around Mars, then transfer to Phobos, and land once or twice and gather sand-like regolith particles using a simple pneumatic system. The lander mission aims to retrieve a minimum of samples. The spacecraft will then take off from Phobos and make several flybys of the smaller moon Deimos before sending the Return Module back to Earth, arriving in July 2029.


title: Alex Ferns

text: Alexander Ferns (born 13 October 1968) is a Scottish actor and television personality, best known for his "EastEnders" role as Trevor Morgan, who was described as "Britain's most-hated soap villain" when he played the role between 2000 and 2002. He is also known for his role as Rick Harper in BBC Scotland soap opera, "River City", between 2017 and 2018. For his performance as coal miner Andrei Glukhov in the 2019 miniseries "Chernobyl" he received a BAFTA Scotland Award.


title: Alex Ferns

text: Alex Ferns is the oldest of three children of his family, who left Scotland for South Africa, when Ferns was 11 years old. The family took up residence in Secunda, where Ferns′ father worked as an electrician during the construction of a power plant. After he finished school, he joined the South African Defence Force and fought in Angola between 1987 and 1989. Afterward he studied drama at the University of Cape Town. In the mid 1990s he moved back to the United Kingdom and started his career in acting.


title: Alex Ferns

text: Ferns made an appearance in "The Ghost and the Darkness" (1996) before various television roles, including Trevor Morgan in the BBC soap opera "EastEnders" from 2000 to 2002, for which he won the British Soap Award for Best Newcomer. In 2005, Ferns played Lieutenant Gordon in the highly acclaimed trilingual film "Joyeux Noël", which was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars, Golden Globe Awards and the BAFTAs.


title: Alex Ferns

text: In 2003, Ferns appeared as Draco Malfoy in a "Harry Potter" sketch for "Comic Relief". In 2004, he played Commander Martin Brooke, the lead role, in the short-lived ITV series "Making Waves". In the same year he appeared in "Man Dancin'", a Festival Film & TV production, which won a number of awards on the festival circuit, including Outstanding Original Screenplay at the Sacramento Film Festival. He has also appeared on "Coronation Street". He has also appeared in the 2006 movie "Shadow Man", as Schmitt, also starring Steven Seagal.


title: Alex Ferns

text: His theatrical work includes the role of the "tapeworm" (a hallucination) in "I.D.", a play about Dimitri Tsafendas and his assassination of South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, the 2008 national tour of Agatha Christie's murder mystery "And Then There Were None", and "Little Shop of Horrors" as the Dentist. In 2011 he took the role of Scottish gangster Jimmy Boyle in the play about his life, "The Hardman", during a Scottish tour to positive reviews.


title: Alex Ferns

text: Ferns took part in TV series "Celebrity Coach Trip", partnered with friend Ricky Groves. He starred as Luther in the 2011 London revival and subsequent UK tour of "South Pacific".


title: Alex Ferns

text: In 2013, he starred as Lee in "True West" at Glasgow's Citizen's Theatre. In 2014, he starred in "". In 2016, Ferns starred in ITV's "Vera" series 6 episode 4 ("The Sea Glass") as Michael Quinn. He also appeared in BBC's "Wallander" series 4 episode 1 ("The White Lioness") as Axel Hedeman.


title: Alex Ferns

text: He played the leader of Tula coal miners Andrei Glukhov in the HBO 2019 miniseries "Chernobyl". For this performance, he received a BAFTA Scotland Award for Best Actor in Television.


title: Alex Ferns

text: Ferns appeared in Netflix's "The Irregulars" (2021) as Vic Collins. He plays Gotham Police Commissioner Pete Savage in the superhero film "The Batman" (2022).


title: Alex Ferns

text: Ferns has been married to South African-born actress Jennifer Woodburne since 1996. They currently live in London with their two sons, Cameron and Mackenzie.


title: Ibadan

text: Ibadan (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Oyo State, in Nigeria. It is the third-largest city by population in Nigeria after Lagos and Kano, with a total population of 3,649,000 as of 2021, and over 6 million people within its metropolitan area. It is the country's largest city by geographical area. At the time of Nigeria's independence in 1960, Ibadan was the largest and most populous city in the country, and the second most populous in Africa behind Cairo. Ibadan is ranked the second fastest growing city on the African continent according to the UN Human settlements research program (2022), It is also ranked third in West Africa in the tech startups index. Ibadan joined the UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities in 2016.


title: Ibadan

text: Ibadan is located in south-western Nigeria, inland northeast of Lagos and southwest of Abuja, the federal capital. It is a prominent transit point between the coastal region and areas in the hinterland of the country. Ibadan had been the administrative centre of the old Western Region since the early days of British colonial rule, and parts of the city's ancient protective walls still stand to this day. The principal inhabitants of the city are the Yoruba people, as well as various communities (notably Igbo, Hausa, Edo, and Ibibio) from other parts of the country (Nigeria).


title: Ibadan

text: Ibadan, coined from the phrase "Eba Odan", which literally means 'by the edge of the meadow', came into existence in 1829, during a period of turmoil that characterized Yorubaland at the time. It was in this period that many old Yoruba cities such as old Oyo (Oyo ile), Ijaye and Owu disappeared, and newer ones such as Abeokuta, new Oyo (Oyo atiba) and Ibadan sprang up to replace them. According to local historians, Lagelu founded the city, and was initially intended to be a war camp for warriors coming from Oyo, Ife and Ijebu. As a forest site containing several ranges of hills, varying in elevation from 160 to 275 metres, the location of the camp offered strategic defence opportunities. Moreover, its location at the fringe of the forest (from which the city got its name) promoted its emergence as a marketing centre for traders and goods from both the forest and grassland areas.


title: Ibadan

text: In 1852, the Church Missionary Society sent David and Anna Hinderer to found a mission. They decided to build the mission and a church in Ibadan when they arrived in 1853.


title: Ibadan

text: Ibadan thus had initially begun as a military state and remained so until the last decade of the 19th century. The city-state also succeeded in building a large empire from the 1860s to the 1890s which extended over much of northern and eastern Yorubaland. It was appropriately nicknamed "idi Ibon" or “gun base”, because of its unique military character.


title: Ibadan

text: In Ibadan, unlike other Yoruba cities with traditional kingship institutions, the warrior class became the rulers of the city as well as the most important economic group.


title: Ibadan

text: Ibadan grew into an impressive and sprawling urban center, such that by the end of 1829 Ibadan dominated the Yorùbá region militarily, politically and economically. The military sanctuary expanded even further when refugees began arriving in large numbers from northern Oyo following raids by Fulani warriors. After losing the northern portion of their region to the marauding Fulanis, many Oyo indigenes retreated deeper into the Ibadan environs. The Fulani Caliphate attempted to expand further into the southern region of modern-day Nigeria, but was decisively defeated by the armies of Ibadan in 1840, which eventually halted their progress. The colonial period reinforced the position of the city in the Yoruba urban network. After a small boom in rubber business (1901-1913), cocoa became the main produce of the region and attracted European and Levantine firms, as well as southern and northern traders from Lagos, Ijebu-Ode and Kano among others. The city became a major point of bulk trade. Its central location and accessibility from the capital city of Lagos were major considerations in the choice of Ibadan as the headquarters of the Western Provinces (1939) which ranged from the northernmost areas of Oyo State to Ekeremor, Bomadi and Patani, which were regions transferred from the old Delta province in the Old Western region and later Mid-west to the old Rivers state and later Bayelsa, in the redistricting of Nigeria carried out by the Yakubu Gowon administration shortly before the Nigerian civil war.


title: Ibadan

text: In 1893, the Ibadan area became a British Protectorate after a treaty signed by Fijabi, the Baale of Ibadan with the British acting Governor of Lagos Colony, George C. Denton on 15 August. By then, the population had swelled to 120,000. The British developed the new colony to facilitate their commercial activities in the area, and Ibadan shortly grew into the major trading center that it is today.


title: Ibadan

text: Ibadan is located in south-western Nigeria in the southeastern part of Oyo State at about northeast of Lagos and east of the Nigerian international border with the Republic of Benin. It lies completely within the tropical forest zone but close to the boundary between the forest and the derived savanna. The city ranges in elevation from 150 m in the valley area, to 275 m above sea level on the major north–south ridge which crosses the central part of the city. The city covers a total area of , the largest in Nigeria after Bauchi.


title: Ibadan

text: The city of Ibadan is naturally drained by four rivers with many tributaries: Ona River in the North and West; Ogbere River towards the East; Ogunpa River flowing through the city and Kudeti River in the Central part of the metropolis. Ogunpa River, a third-order stream with a channel length of 12.76 km and a catchment area of 54.92 km. Lake Eleyele is located at the northwestern part of the city, while the Osun River and the Asejire Lake bounds the city to the east.


title: Ibadan

text: Ibadan has a tropical wet and dry climate (Köppen climate classification "Aw"), with a lengthy wet season and relatively constant temperatures throughout the year. Ibadan's wet season runs from March through October, though August sees somewhat of a lull in precipitation. This lull divides the wet season into two different wet seasons. November to February forms the city's dry season, during which Ibadan experiences the typical West African harmattan. The mean total rainfall for Ibadan is approximately , falling over about 123 days. There are two peaks for rainfall, June and September. The mean daily temperature is , the mean minimum , and the relative humidity 74.55%.


title: Ibadan

text: There are eleven (11) Local Governments in Ibadan Metropolitan area consisting of five urban local governments in the city and six semi-urban local governments in the less city. Local governments at present are institutions created by the military governments but recognised by the 1999 constitution and they are the third tiers of government in Nigeria. Local governments Councils consist of the Executive Arm made up of the Executive Chairman, the Vice chairman, the Secretary and the Supervisory Councilors.


title: Ibadan

text: The former Executive Governor of Oyo State, Senator Isiaka Abiola Ajimobi, created some Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs) out of some of the existing local government areas in Oyo State. From the Ibadan Urban Local Government areas, the following LCDAs were created.


title: Ibadan

text: Until 1970, Ibadan was the largest city in Sub-Saharan Africa by surface area. In 1952, it was estimated that the total area of the city was approximately 103.8 km However, only 36.2 km was built up. This meant that the remaining 67 km were devoted to non-urban uses, such as farmlands, river floodplains, forest reserves and water bodies. These “non-urban land uses” disappeared in the 1960s: an aerial photograph in 1973 revealed that the urban landscape had completely spread over about 100 km. The land area increased from 136 km in 1981 to 210–240 km in 1988-89 (Areola, 1994: 101). By 2000, it is estimated that Ibadan covered 400 km. The growth of the built-up area during the second half of the 20th century (from 40 km in the 1950s to 250 km in the 1990s) shows clearly that there has been an underestimate of the total growth of the city. In the 1980s, the Ibadan-Lagos expressway generated the greatest urban sprawl (east and north of the city), followed by the Eleiyele expressway (west of the city). Since then, Ibadan city has spread further into the neighbouring local government areas of Akinyele and Egbeda in particular.


title: Ibadan

text: Among the places of worship, there are Christian churches and temples: Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), Presbyterian Church of Nigeria (World Communion of Reformed Churches), Nigerian Baptist Convention (Baptist World Alliance), Living Faith Church Worldwide, Redeemed Christian Church of God,The Covenant Nation, Assemblies of God, Seventh-day Adventist Church, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Ibadan (Catholic Church), some Pentecostal churches, and Muslim mosques.


title: Ibadan

text: Dugbe district is the commercial nerve centre of Ibadan. This is where many banks have one or more branches. The south west regional office of the Central Bank of Nigeria is at Dugbe. Also at Dugbe is the Cocoa House, Nigeria's first skyscraper.


title: Ibadan

text: It is one of the few skyscrapers in the city and is at the hub of Ibadan's commercial centre. The Cocoa house is the headquarters for the Oodua Investment Company co-owned by all south-western states. Other tall buildings around Dugbe axis include Femi Johnson glass house, CBN building, United Bank for Africa, Oxford building, Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria's Building, among others.


title: Ibadan

text: There is a museum in the building of the Institute of African Studies, which exhibits several remarkable pre-historic bronze carvings and statues. The city has several well stocked libraries, and is home to the first television station in Africa. The city has two zoological gardens, one located within the University of Ibadan and another at Agodi Gardens which also contains a botanical garden, swimming pool and leisure spots.


title: Ibadan

text: The Bower Memorial Tower to the east on "Oke Aàre" (Aare's Hill) ("Aare" in Yoruba means commander-in-chief or generalissimo), which can be seen from practically any point in the city; it also provides an excellent view of the whole city from the top. Other attractions include Mapo Hall – the colonial style city hall – perched on top of a hill, "Oke Mapo," Mapo Hill ("oke" is hill in Yoruba), the Trans-Wonderland amusement park, the cultural centre Mokola and the Obafemi Awolowo Stadium (formerly Liberty Stadium). The first citadel of higher learning, University of Ibadan (formerly the University College of Ibadan), the Obafemi Awolowo Hall in the University of Ibadan is said to be one of the tallest and largest hostel in West Africa. The first teaching hospital in Nigeria, University College Hospital, were both built in this ancient city. Ibadan is also home to the Shooting Stars FC – a professional Football Club also known as 3SC.


title: Ibadan

text: There are some good golf courses: the Ibadan Golf Club is a large 18-hole challenge and the Barracks course has just been extended to 18 holes. The most challenging and exclusive is the 9-hole IITA Golf Club based on the 1,000 hectare premises of IITA.


title: Ibadan

text: Ibadan is host to Nigeria's premier higher institution of learning, The University of Ibadan. Established as a college of the University of London in 1948, and later converted into an autonomous university in 1962. Other higher educational institutions in the city include; The Polytechnic, Ibadan, Lead City University, Koladaisi University, Federal college of Animal health and Production Technology, Federal College of Forestry, Highland College of Technology, Samonda, Federal School of Statistics, Federal Cooperative College, Tower Polytechnic, Ibadan, Ibadan City Polytechnic, Citigate Polytechnic, NIIT University among others.


title: Ibadan

text: There are also numerous public and private primary and secondary schools located in the city and its suburbs. Other noteworthy institutions in the city include The University College Hospital, Ibadan (UCH), which is the first teaching hospital in Nigeria; the internationally acclaimed International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) headquartered in the city. Established in 1967, it focuses on the agricultural and developmental needs of tropical countries, with several research stations spread across Africa. The Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER), The Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria, The National Root Crops Research Institute, and The Institute of Agricultural Research and Training (IAR&T), The Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria, the Nigerian Horticultural Research Institute (NIHORT), all under the auspices of The Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria.


title: Ibadan

text: In 1853, the first Europeans to settle in Ibadan, Reverend David and Anna Hinderer, started Ibadan's first Western schools. They built churches and Anna taught at the new school. They built the first two-storey building in Ibadan, which can still be found today at Kudeti. The first pupils to attend an elementary school in Ibadan were Yejide Olunloyo (female) and Akinyele Olunloyo (male) – the two children of an Ibadan high chief.


title: Ibadan

text: Ibadan is the capital city of Oyo State, the fourth largest state economy in Nigeria, and the second largest non-oil state economy in Nigeria after Lagos state. With its strategic location on the railway line connecting Lagos to Kano, the city is a major center for trade in cassava, cocoa, cotton, timber, rubber, and palm oil. The city and its environs is home to several industries such as Agro allied, Textile, Food processing, Health Care and Cosmetic, Tobacco processing and Cigarette manufacturing, Leatherworks and furniture making Etc. There is abundance of clay, kaolin and aquamarine in the city environs, and there are several cattle ranches, a dairy farm as well as a commercial abattoir in Ibadan. There are dozens of banks and Insurance firms spread out across the cityscape that service the city's millions of inhabitants.


title: Ibadan

text: The main economic activities engaged in by the Ibadan populace include Agriculture, Trade, Public service employment, Factory work, Service sector/Tertiary production, Etc. The headquarters of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) have extensive grounds for crop and agricultural research into key tropical crops such as bananas, plantains, maize, cassava, soybean, cowpea and yam. According to a report, Ibadan is the 3rd cheapest Nigerian city to live in.


title: Ibadan

text: Ibadan is a busy city but also accommodates an adequate amount of entertainment and relaxation. There are numerous bars, lounges and night clubs to enjoy, including the Lebanese owned "KOKO Dome" which is the oldest night club in the city dating back to the mid 90s.


title: Ibadan

text: The Heritage Mall and Cocoa Mall houses several local and international retail stores. The two malls were built to interlink with each other and located in the same compound as Cocoa House at Dugbe. The 2 malls contain a South African retail shop; Shoprite, Pep Store (kids wears and boutique) several cafés, restaurants, electronic outlets, Mr. Price, Cash n Carry.


title: Ibadan

text: There is also the Palms Mall at Ring Road which houses one of the largest Shoprite store in Nigeria. There is another mall which opened not too far from the Central Business District called the Jericho Mall Kudeti Avenue, Onireke GRA. The top cinema chain in Nigeria, Filmhouse has 2 cinemas at the Heritage Mall Dugbe and another of its branch operate at the Ventura Mall, Samonda.


title: Ibadan

text: There are various sport centres and facilities within the city limits of Ibadan. The Ibadan recreational club established 1902 in the Sabo area of the city is one of the oldest of such clubs in the country. It offers a swimming pool, tennis courts, basketball courts, snooker, squash courts, darts corner, and a relaxation bar. The city is also host to dozens of football academies where soccer talents are groomed. The Agodi Gardens of Oyo State has been completely refurbished to contain a Botanical Garden, Zoo, Swimming pool, Guest house, Bar and Restaurants. In addition, there are the Ibadan Polo Club at Eleyele and the Ibadan Golf Club in the Onireke reservation Area.


title: Ibadan

text: The city has the first standard Nigerian stadium, The Obafemi Awolowo Stadium formerly Liberty Stadium as well as The Lekan Salami Stadium which is the home of 3SC, Shooting stars football club, the team that won Nigeria's first international trophy, The African Cup Winners' Cup in 1976 by defeating Tonnerre Yaoundé of Cameroon 4 - 2 on aggregate points.


title: Ibadan

text: The city of Ibadan is a major Nigerian transport hub with freeways linking it with Lagos in the South South West, Ijebu Ode and Shagamu in the South, Abeokuta in the West, Oyo, ogbomosho, Offa and Ilorin in the North, Ife, Ado Ekiti, Osogbo, Ilesha, Akure, Okene, Auchi and other cities towards the East. The city is also served by an airport, the Ibadan Airport, which operates daily flights to Abuja, Lagos, Kano, Ilorin etc. through major airlines in Nigeria such as Overland Airways and Arik Air. The city is a major terminus railway station on the main railway line linking Lagos with Kano in the North of the country. Nearly all the major roads are dualized (Double carriage roads), such roads include the Ojoo-Sango-Mokola road that passes in front of the University of Ibadan, others include Ring road-Orita-Challenge-New Garage ways and the recently completed Dugbe-Eleyele-Jerico Road. There are various roundabouts, intersections and flyovers within the city, the latest being the Mokola flyover built to reduce persistent traffic gridlock being experienced in the Mokola axis of the city.


title: Ibadan

text: Modes of transport include, cabs & taxis, taxi-vans commonly called "Danfos", and in more recent times mass transit buses have commenced operations to reduce the hardship of students and workers commuting from various suburban areas to the city center, private/personal/family cars, scooters commonly known as "Okadas", Coach (bus) services, more commonly known locally as "luxurious busses" such as "Alakowe Bus", "ABC Transport", "Cross Country ltd" Etc., which operate To and Fro services linking Ibadan and all other major destinations in the country and beyond, as well as pedestrian walking.


title: Ibadan

text: Since 2021, there is a new railway connection (standard gauge), which brings passengers to Lagos in less than 3 hours. It leaves at 8:00 and 16:00 every day (on time). The new railway line came with a new railway station.


title: Ibadan

text: The city host the first T.V station in Africa NTA, Ibadan established as Western Nigeria Television (WNTV) in 1959. The oldest surviving Nigeria newspaper is in Ibadan Tribune founded by chief Obafemi Awolowo Premier of Western Nigeria. The first private TV station Galaxy TV in Oyo State also started in the city. As at 2014 the city is home to several media outlets including


title: Ibadan

text: The radio stations in Ibadan are increasing in number compared to 5–10 years ago, when only 3 operated.


title: Ibadan

text: There are also online communities of Ibadan residents such as CONNECTIBADAN, Ibadan247, IBpulse and WhatsupIbadan. They help the public connect with news, event and people in Ibadan and Oyo State as a whole.


title: Charles Evans Hughes

text: Charles Evans Hughes Sr. (April 11, 1862 – August 27, 1948) was an American statesman, politician and jurist who served as the 11th Chief Justice of the United States from 1930 to 1941. A member of the Republican Party, he previously was the 36th Governor of New York (1907–1910), an associate justice of the Supreme Court (1910–1916), and 44th U.S. Secretary of State (1921–1925), as well as the Republican nominee for President of the United States who lost a very close 1916 presidential election to Woodrow Wilson.


title: Charles Evans Hughes

text: Born to a Welsh immigrant preacher and his wife in Glens Falls, New York, Hughes graduated from Brown University and Columbia Law School and practiced law in New York City. After working in private practice for several years, in 1905 he led successful state investigations into public utilities and the life insurance industry. He won election as the Governor of New York in 1906, and implemented several progressive reforms. In 1910, President William Howard Taft appointed Hughes as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. During his tenure on the Supreme Court, Hughes often joined Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in voting to uphold state and federal regulations.


title: Charles Evans Hughes

text: Hughes served as an Associate Justice until 1916, when he resigned from the bench to accept the Republican presidential nomination. Though Hughes was widely viewed as the favorite in the race against incumbent Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, Wilson won a narrow victory. After Warren G. Harding won the 1920 presidential election, Hughes accepted Harding's invitation to serve as Secretary of State. Serving under Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he negotiated the Washington Naval Treaty, which was designed to prevent a naval arms race among the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan. Hughes left office in 1925 and returned to private practice, becoming one of the most prominent attorneys in the country.


title: Charles Evans Hughes

text: In 1930, President Herbert Hoover appointed him to succeed Chief Justice Taft. Along with Associate Justice Owen Roberts, Hughes emerged as a key swing vote on the bench, positioned between the liberal Three Musketeers and the conservative Four Horsemen. The Hughes Court struck down several New Deal programs in the early and the mid-1930s, but 1937 marked a turning point for the Supreme Court and the New Deal as Hughes and Roberts joined with the Three Musketeers to uphold the Wagner Act and a state minimum wage law. That same year saw the defeat of the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, which would have expanded the size of the Supreme Court. Hughes served until 1941, when he retired and was succeeded by Associate Justice Harlan F. Stone.


title: Charles Evans Hughes

text: Hughes's father, David Charles Hughes, immigrated to the United States from Wales in 1855 after he was inspired by "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin". David became a Baptist preacher in Glens Falls, New York, and married Mary Catherine Connelly, whose family had been in the United States for several generations. Charles Evans Hughes, the only child of David and Mary, was born in Glens Falls on April 11, 1862. The Hughes family moved to Oswego, New York, in 1866, but relocated soon after to Newark, New Jersey, and then to Brooklyn. With the exception of a brief period of attendance at Newark High School, Hughes received no formal education until 1874, instead being educated by his parents. In September 1874, he enrolled in New York City's prestigious Public School 35, graduating the following year.


title: Charles Evans Hughes

text: At the age of 14, Hughes attended Madison University (now Colgate University) for two years before transferring to Brown University. He graduated from Brown third in his class at the age of 19, having been elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year. He was also a member of the Delta Upsilon fraternity, where he served as the first international President later on. During his time at Brown, Hughes volunteered for the successful presidential campaign of Republican nominee James A. Garfield, a fraternity brother of his in Delta Upsilon where Garfield was an undergraduate at Williams College, and served as the editor of the college newspaper. After graduating from Brown, Hughes spent a year working as a teacher in Delhi, New York. He next enrolled in Columbia Law School, where he graduated first in his class in 1884. That same year, he passed the New York bar exam with the highest score ever awarded by the state.