title: Yohan Blake

text: Blake is also a fan of the IPL team Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) and has expressed his desire to play for them


title: Yohan Blake

text: and for Yorkshire County Cricket Club. He has expressed his admiration of Virat Kohli's captaincy of the Indian cricket team.


title: Yohan Blake

text: In March 2021, Blake said that he would rather miss the upcoming Tokyo 2020 Olympics than take the COVID-19 vaccine.


title: Raat Akeli Hai

text: Raat Akeli Hai () is a 2020 Indian Hindi-language thriller drama film directed by Honey Trehan. Starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Radhika Apte, Shweta Tripathi, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Shivani Raghuvanshi, Nishant Dahiya, Gyanendra Tripathi, Ila Arun, Swanand Kirkire, Nitesh Kumar Tiwari and Aditya Srivastava, the film follows a small-town cop who is summoned to investigate the death of an elderly family member. "Raat Akeli Hai" was released on Netflix on 31 July 2020. The film received critical acclaim for its performances and direction. Nawazuddin Siddiqui earned a Best Actor award at the Filmfare OTT Awards while the film also won Best Film at the ceremony.


title: Raat Akeli Hai

text: The film starts with a car being followed by a truck. The truck hits the car and the car flips over. A man alights and brutally kills both the driver and the lady who were in the car. The killer then takes the bodies to a factory and burns them with acid. While doing so, he accidentally spills acid on one of his own hands.


title: Raat Akeli Hai

text: Five years Later, Inspector Jatil Yadav is seen attending the wedding of his colleague Narendra Singh where Jatil's mother is desperately searching for a girl to set him up with for marriage. Jatil is irritated and embarrassed and rushes his mother home to avoid further interference in his personal life. While eating dinner, Jatil gets called by the SSP to investigate a high-profile murder of a rich aristocrat named Raghuveer Singh. Jatil learns that Raghuveer was murdered by his own gun on his wedding night and is further intrigued by the family's silence and lack of knowledge on the matter. Jatil Yadav is first introduced to the family by Ramesh Chauhan, brother of Raghuveer Singh's first wife (who was murdered 5 years ago). Members of Raghuveer's family include his two children - Karuna Singh (daughter of Raghuveer Singh) and Karan (son of Raghuveer Singh), Chunni (the maid of the house), Pramila Singh (wife of Raghuveer Singh's brother and Raghuveer Singh's sister-in-law), Vasudha and Vikram Singh (daughter and son of Pramila), Ravi Sisodia - the volatile husband of Karuna, and Radha - the young bride of Raghuveer Singh. Starting the interrogation, it is revealed to Jatil that Vikram was the first one to discover Raghuveer's dead body. As per Vikram's story, he went to drop off his fiancée (daughter of the notorious MLA Munna Raja) at around 9:30. He returned around 11:15 and then took the ladies of the house to a temple at 12:30.


title: Raat Akeli Hai

text: It was after this that Vikram says that he found his uncle Raghuveer dead. He also says that there was baraat crossing in-front of the house at 10:30. Jatil eventually finds out about back stairs which connects directly to a water tank and wonders if that route was used to carry out any suspicious business. During Jatil's investigation, he begins to question Radha. Jatil develops a soft spot for her as something tells him that she is being made a scapegoat by Raghuveer's family. Radha is treated like an outsider by the family, who resents her. After first refusing to cooperate, Radha remembers something that connects her to Jatil and gives the chit to Chunni to pass to Jatil. On the chit, the address of Radha is written and he distinctly remembers that he had saved Radha five years earlier, when she attempted suicide by jumping off a train. This further leads him to believe that Radha is an innocent and emotionally disturbed girl who is getting caught in the crossfire of what seems to be developing into an insidious plot. Further into his investigation, Jatil finds out that Raghuveer's first wife was killed during a robbery when she was coming back from Gwalior towards Kanpur.


title: Raat Akeli Hai

text: Jatil also learns that Raghuveer's son Karan had once been apprehended with drugs. Jatil realises that there's more to Raghuveer's complicated family than what meets the eye.


title: Raat Akeli Hai

text: The next day, during the investigation, Jatil finds erotic magazines in Raghuveer's cupboard and some photos of women and a plastic bead below the bed. He also learns that Radha was sold by her father and one of the photos is of Radha with a bruised back which he found earlier. Radha continues to refrain from telling Jatil anything. Later, Munna Raja comes in after Ravi Sisodia calls him in response to Jatil's no-nonsense investigation style. While investigating the manor, Jatil also spots a senile older woman who was earlier the maid of house. The old maid's son was the driver when Raghuveer's first wife was returning from Gwalior to Kanpur and she is grandmother of Chunni. Jatil continues to investigate. Forensics tell Jatil that Raghuveer was murdered between 10pm and 12pm with his own gun and blunt marks were due to because he was hit by butt of the same gun.


title: Raat Akeli Hai

text: Phone records reveal that Vikram received a phone call from his uncle at 11:30 and many phone calls from an unknown number which is identified as Radha's. No fingerprints were found on gun or on Raghuveer's phone. During an interrogation with Chunni, Jatil finds she was the one who took the lamp up to Raghuveer's room and came back with the lamp which broke down on the stairs. She also refrains from divulging anything related to the current investigation, but does say he couldn't even see her father who died in that road accident and case got closed. Jatil starts investigating the death of Raghuveer's first wife and her driver. He finds that another city's police had reported a similar car and it was filed as hit and run case. This leads him to a tannery in Jajmau which is run by a butcher, but was originally owned by Munna Raja.


title: Raat Akeli Hai

text: Further investigation into the family reveals that Karuna doesn't like her aunt and her cousin's interference since they are constantly eyeballing her. Later, Jatil finds a medical report and in the morning Chunni is found dead near the back stairs. He later fights with his colleague Narendra and openly tells the SSP that he will find the truth. Later he is attacked by the goons and calls Narendra for help, but Narendra ignores him and he tells him that he is going to arrest Radha. Jatil immediately warns Radha to run, but before she can run away Ravi chases her and she locks herself in a room. Jatil comes in time to take her away, but goons continue to chase them. They are able to catch a train though unknown to them one of the goons also catches the train. Later in the night Radha wakes up to see Jatil is missing. She takes her knife with her and finds Jatil being attacked by the Butcher working for Munna Raja. Both overpower the Butcher and throw him out of the train. Jatil and Radha reach Raghuveer's Gwalior farmhouse. During this time Narendra Singh is investigating the murder of Chunni and forensics tells him about the dead skin found in her fingernails leading him to the conclusion that the suspect is a man with burnt skin.


title: Raat Akeli Hai

text: Narendra makes the report and goes to SSP, but he sees the man having fingernail marks on burnt hand in the office of SSP with Munna Raja. He goes to Chunni's grandmother and shows her the photo of the man. He informs him about all of this to Jatil, but in the meantime he finds a dupatta in Radha's bag having the same bead he found earlier, he confronts her that she was in fact in the room and she lied, she confesses that she and Vikram had an affair and planned to elope with Vikram but he didn't as he planned to marry MLA's daughter, seeing this she got furious and called Vikram to come and talk, he returned as soon as he dropped his fiancée and parked the car and without anyone noticing took the back stairs and confronted Radha. As she was going to enter the room to tell Raghuveer about the affair, the lights went out and Chunni comes upstairs with the lamp. As the electricity comes back, they all find Raghuveer already dead. Vikram tells her to go downstairs and meanwhile Vikram tells Chunni to call on his cell from Raghuveer's phone.


title: Raat Akeli Hai

text: After this, while returning Chunni drops the lamp on the stairs. Vikram takes the backstairs and returns by the main gate and asks the women to come to go for the temple. Later Jatil informs SSP that he has made Radha surrender in another police station.


title: Raat Akeli Hai

text: Jatil opens the medical report and finds the medical report under the name of Raghuveer's first wife and report was of abortion, and abortion was done one day before the accident. He enquires about it from her brother Ramesh who tells him that she was here with him as Karan caught malaria but left all of a sudden to Kanpur but when he asked on the phone, he told he heard horns of the train but contradicting to this she was travelling by car. He also enquired the caretaker of the farmhouse who told that she ordered him to call whenever Raghuveer came with another woman. Investigating the farmhouse, he finds the same erotic magazines, Polaroid photos, Polaroid camera and a badge of a boarding school. He visits the abortion clinic as well and watches the wedding video, too. He learns that Radha is being taken by police under the bridge on the orders of SSP. As Radha is being taken by Narendra Singh under the bridge the same van comes who were chasing Jatil with the butcher in it, he comes out and inspect the van as he opens the van to take out Radha, Jatil who all along was accompanying her come out and attack resulting in cross-firing in which Radha gets injured but butcher escapes, as soon as butcher reaches his home Chunni's grandmother comes from back and throws oil onto him and burns him alive.


title: Raat Akeli Hai

text: In the climax, Radha comes with Jatil in the bungalow with everyone present he starts to tell the truth, He confronts Ravi Sisodia first that he is one who gave drugs to Karan and later the school caught him and Raghuveer bailed him out. It was in fact the butcher who killed both Raghuveer's first wife and driver and burnt the bodies in the tannery on the orders of Munna Raja. Mrs. Raghuveer was tipped off by the caretaker about a female whom Raghuveer brought in the farmhouse. On peeping through a window, Mrs. Raghuveer finds out the woman is none other than Vasudha, Pramila's daughter. Vasudha was sexually abused many times by her uncle Raghuveer who took perverse photos of her and raped her. As a result of Vasudha's abortion, she was expelled from school. On 16th Chunni filed a missing report for her father (the driver who was murdered with Mrs. Raghuveer during their fateful car ride back from Kanpur). The case got closed without due investigation.


title: Raat Akeli Hai

text: It is revealed that Vasudha killed her uncle because when she confronted him with the truth, he dismissed her claims and insulted her and asked her to kill herself. In a fit of rage, Vasudha she takes out his gun and shoot him point blank. Later, Vasudha takes out her dupatta and puts it in the Radha's bag. The change of dupatta is noticed by Jatil in the wedding video while he is surveying the footage for clues. It is also revealed that Mrs Raghuveer had called Pramila to tell her about the fact that her daughter Vasudha was being sexually abused by her husband Raghuveer. After the truth is shared with Pramila, she is shocked but uses the opportunity to bury the truth. Mrs. Raghuveer was originally going to go back to her brother's home but Pramila begs her to come to back Kanpur. Meanwhile, Pramila reaches out in desperation to Munna Raja (the local MLA and friend of the family) and hints at killing Mrs. Raghuveer who in on route back to Kanpur. She is afraid that Mrs. Raghuveer will take them out of their property to avoid any controversy. Pramila uses the opportunity to broker a deal with Raghuveer to get a lion's share of the property transferred on her son Vikram's name so that she is paid for her efforts while nurturing the family. Munna Raja is revealed to have bought Radha from his father for Raghuveer to placate his sexual desires. After being confronted with the truth, her son Vikram shuns her in disgust. Karuna cries in disbelief. Karan watches. Vasudha is teary eyed and in shock that her mother tried to save her perpetrator. Pramila kills herself to save face. During Pramila's cremation, Vasudha tells Jatil the truth.


title: Raat Akeli Hai

text: Jatil goes back to his normal life with his mother who is intent on finding a suitable match for him. He catches up with Radha's train and subtly asks her to spend her life with him, which she shyly accepts.


title: Raat Akeli Hai

text: The film was shot mostly in Lucknow and Kanpur of Uttar Pradesh on real locations. In Kanpur the unit shot in Jajmau, Kotwali and Bithoor while in Lucknow it was shot in Qaiserbagh police station, bus stand and Malihabad.


title: Raat Akeli Hai

text: Saibal Chatterjee of "NDTV" gave four stars out of five and said, "The film does to the crime and punishment genre what "Bulbbul" did to the supernatural revenge fantasy - lifts it many notches above the ordinary." Shubhra Gupta of "The Indian Express" gave three stars out of five and said, "A few of the bits and pieces in Netflix's "Raat Akeli Hai" feel a bit contrived, but not enough to take the enjoyment away from a film which has a terrific sense of time and place, and a crime in which everyone has stakes." Komal Nahta of "Film Information" said, "It's a well-made and well-enacted whodunit. However, the last about half an hour seems rather implausible and, therefore, is not as exciting as it should’ve been." Rohan Naahar of "Hindustan Times" said, ""Raat Akeli Hai" is quite the achievement. Trehan not only has a skill for directing actors, but also displays a command over tone and visual texture."


title: Raat Akeli Hai

text: The music for the film was composed by Sneha Khanwalkar while the lyrics written by Raj Shekhar and Swanand Kirkire.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: Rosslyn Chapel, formerly known as the Collegiate Chapel of St Matthew, is a 15th-century chapel located in the village of Roslin, Midlothian, Scotland.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: Rosslyn Chapel was founded on a small hill above Roslin Glen as a Catholic collegiate church (with between four and six ordained canons and two boy choristers) in the mid-15th century. The chapel was founded by William Sinclair, 1st Earl of Caithness of the Scoto-Norman Sinclair family. Rosslyn Chapel is the third Sinclair place of worship at Roslin, the first being in Roslin Castle and the second (whose crumbling buttresses can still be seen today) in what is now Roslin Cemetery.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: Sinclair founded the college to celebrate the Divine Office throughout the day and night, and also to celebrate Masses for all the faithful departed, including the deceased members of the Sinclair family. During this period, the rich heritage of plainsong (a single melodic line) or polyphony (vocal harmony) were used to enrich the singing of the liturgy. Sinclair provided an endowment to pay for the support of the priests and choristers in perpetuity. The priests also had parochial responsibilities.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: After the Scottish Reformation (1560), Catholic worship in the chapel was brought to an end. The Sinclair family continued to be Catholics until the early 18th century. From that time, the chapel was closed to public worship until 1861. It was reopened as a place of worship according to the rites of the Scottish Episcopal Church, a member church of the Anglican Communion.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: The chapel was the target of a terrorist bombing in 1914, when a suffragette bomb exploded inside the building during the suffragette bombing and arson campaign.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: Since the late 1980s, the chapel has been the subject of speculative theories concerning a connection with the Knights Templar and the Holy Grail, and Freemasonry. It was prominently featured in this role in Dan Brown's bestselling novel "The Da Vinci Code" (2003) and its 2006 film adaptation. Medieval historians say these accounts have no basis in fact.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: Rosslyn Chapel remains privately owned. The current owner is Peter St Clair-Erskine, 7th Earl of Rosslyn.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: The original plans for Rosslyn have never been found or recorded, so it is open to speculation whether or not the chapel was intended to be built in its current layout. Its architecture is considered to be among the finest in Scotland.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: Construction of the chapel began on 20 September 1456, although it has often been recorded as 1446. The confusion over the building date comes from the chapel's receiving its founding charter to build a collegiate chapel in 1446 from Rome. Sinclair did not start to build the chapel until he had built houses for his craftsmen.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: Although the original building was to be cruciform, it was never completed. Only the choir was constructed, with the retro-chapel, otherwise called the Lady chapel, built on the much earlier crypt (Lower Chapel) believed to form part of an earlier castle. The foundations of the unbuilt nave and transepts stretching to a distance of 90 feet were recorded in the 19th century. The decorative carving was executed over a forty-year period. After the founder's death, construction of the planned nave and transepts was abandoned - either from lack of funds, lack of interest or a change in liturgical fashion.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: The Lower Chapel (also known as the crypt or sacristy) should not be confused with the burial vaults that lie underneath Rosslyn Chapel.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: The chapel stands on fourteen pillars, which form an arcade of twelve pointed arches on three sides of the nave. At the east end, a fourteenth pillar between the penultimate pair form a three-pillared division between the nave and the Lady chapel. The three pillars at the east end of the chapel are named, from north to south: the Master Pillar, the Journeyman Pillar and, most famously, the Apprentice Pillar. These names for the pillars date from the late Georgian period — prior to this period they were called the Earl's Pillar, the Shekinah and the Prince's Pillar.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: One of the more notable architectural features of the chapel is the "Apprentice Pillar, or "Prentice Pillar". Originally called the "Prince's Pillar" (in the 1778 document "An Account of the Chapel of Roslin") the name morphed over time due to a legend dating from the 18th century, involving the master mason in charge of the stonework in the chapel and his young apprentice mason. According to the legend, the master mason did not believe that the apprentice could perform the complicated task of carving the column without seeing the original which formed the inspiration for the design.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: The master mason travelled to see the original himself, but upon his return was enraged to find that the upstart apprentice had completed the column by himself. In a fit of jealous anger, the master mason took his mallet and struck the apprentice on the head, killing him. The legend concludes that as punishment for his crime, the master mason's face was carved into the opposite corner to forever gaze upon his apprentice's pillar. There is, however, no evidence that any such murder took place.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: On the architrave joining the pillar there is an inscription, "Forte est vinum fortior est rex fortiores sunt mulieres super omnia vincit veritas": "Wine is strong, a king is stronger, women are stronger still, but truth conquers all" (1 Esdras, chapters 3 & 4).


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: The author Henning Klovekorn has proposed that the pillar is representative of one of the roots of the Nordic Yggdrasil tree, prominent in Germanic and Norse mythology. He compares the dragons at the base of the pillar to the dragons found eating away at the base of the Yggdrasil root and, pointing out that at the top of the pillar is carved tree foliage, argues that the Nordic/Viking association is plausible considering the many auxiliary references in the chapel to Celtic and Norse mythology.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: The general form of the pillar has been related to a type described by the French architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc as a "bunch of sausages."


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: A full-size plaster cast of the Apprentice Pillar and the adjacent bay of the chapel was made in 1871, and is in the Cast Courts of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: Among Rosslyn's many intricate carvings are a sequence of 213 cubes or "boxes" protruding from pillars and arches with a selection of patterns on them. It is unknown if these patterns have any particular meaning attached to them. Many people have attempted to find information coded into them, but no interpretation has yet proven conclusive. Unfortunately, many of these 'boxes' are not original, having been replaced in the 19th century after erosion damage.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: One recent attempt to make sense of the boxes has been to interpret them as a musical score. The motifs on the boxes somewhat resemble geometric patterns seen in the study of cymatics. The patterns are formed by placing powder upon a flat surface and vibrating the surface at different frequencies. By matching these Chladni patterns with musical notes corresponding to the same frequencies, the father-and-son team of Thomas and Stuart Mitchell produced a tune which Stuart calls the "Rosslyn Motet".


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: There are more than 110 carvings of "Green Men" in and around the chapel. Green Men are carvings of human faces with greenery all around them, often growing out of their mouths. They are found in all areas of the chapel, with one example in the Lady chapel, between the two middle altars of the east wall.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: Other carvings represent plants, including depictions of wheat, strawberries or lilies. The authors Robert Lomas and Christopher Knight have hypothesised that some carvings in the chapel represent ears of new world corn or maize, a plant which was unknown in Europe at the time of the chapel's construction. Knight and Lomas view these carvings as evidence supporting the idea that Henry I Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, travelled to the Americas well before Columbus. In their book they discuss meeting with the wife of botanist Adrian Dyer, and that Dyer's wife told him that Dyer agreed that the image thought to be maize was accurate. In fact, Dyer found only one identifiable plant among the botanical carvings and suggested that the "maize" and "aloe" were stylised wooden patterns, only coincidentally looking like real plants.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: The chapel has been a burial place for several generations of the Sinclairs; a crypt was once accessible from a descending stair at the rear of the chapel. This crypt has been sealed shut for many years, which may explain the recurrent legends that it is merely a front to a more extensive subterranean vault containing (variously) the mummified head of Jesus Christ, the Holy Grail, the treasure of the Templars, or the original crown jewels of Scotland.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: In 1837, when the 2nd Earl of Rosslyn died, his wish was to be buried in the original vault. Exhaustive searches over the period of a week were made, but no entrance to the original vault was found and he was buried beside his wife in the Lady Chapel.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: The pinnacles on the rooftop have been subject to interest during renovation work in 2010. Nesting jackdaws had made the pinnacles unstable and as such had to be dismantled brick by brick revealing the existence of a chamber specifically made by the stonemasons to harbour bees. The hive, now abandoned, has been sent to local bee keepers to identify.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: The chapel was the subject of a terrorist attack on 11 July 1914, when a bomb exploded inside the building. This was as part of the suffragette bombing and arson campaign of 1912–1914, in which suffragettes carried out a series of politically motivated bombing and arson attacks nationwide as part of their campaign for women's suffrage. Churches were a particular target during the campaign, as it was believed that the Church of England was complicit in reinforcing opposition to women's suffrage. Between 1913 and 1914, 32 churches were attacked nationwide. In the weeks leading up to the attack, there were also bombings at Westminster Abbey and St Paul's Cathedral.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: The chapel's altars were destroyed in 1592, and the chapel was abandoned, gradually falling into decay.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: In 1842 the chapel, then in a ruined and overgrown state, was visited by Queen Victoria, who expressed a desire that it should be preserved. Restoration work was carried out in 1862 by David Bryce on behalf of James Alexander, 3rd Earl of Rosslyn. The chapel was rededicated on 22 April 1862, and from this time, Sunday services were once again held, now under the jurisdiction of the Scottish Episcopal Church, for the first time in 270 years.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: The Rosslyn Chapel Trust was established in 1995, with the purpose of overseeing its conservation and its opening as a sightseeing destination. The chapel underwent an extensive programme of conservation between 1997 and 2013. This included work to the roof, the stone, the carvings, the stained glass and the organ. A steel canopy was erected over the chapel roof for fourteen years. This was to prevent further rain damage to the church and also to give it a chance to dry out properly. Three human skeletons were found during the restoration. Major stonework repairs were completed by the end of 2011. The last major scaffolding was removed in August 2010.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: A new visitor centre opened in July 2011. The chapel's stained-glass windows and organ were fully restored. New lighting and heating were installed. The expected cost of the restoration work is around £13 million, with about £3.7 million being spent on the Visitor Centre. Funding has come from various sources including Heritage Lottery Fund, Historic Scotland and the environmental body, WREN. Actor Tom Hanks also made a donation.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: Photography and video have been forbidden in the chapel since 2008. The chapel sells commercially produced photos in its shop. In 2006, historian Louise Yeoman criticised the Rosslyn Chapel trust for "cashing in" on the popularity of "The Da Vinci Code", against better knowledge.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: In the financial year of 2013–14, Rosslyn Chapel recorded 144,823 visitors, the highest number since 2007–08, when (at the height of popular interest induced by "The Da Vinci Code"), the number of visitors was close to 159,000.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: The chapel became the subject of speculation regarding its supposed connection with the Knights Templar or Freemasonry beginning in the 1980s. This part of its history was referenced in the DC Comics storyline "Batman: Scottish Connection", in which the hero Batman becomes caught up in an old vendetta between two Scottish clans during a visit to Scotland, this mystery including the discovery of an ancient treasure trove hidden in Rosslyn.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: The topic entered mainstream pop culture with Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" (2003), reinforced by the subsequent film of the same name (2006),


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: Numerous books were published after 2003 to cater to the popular interest in supposed connections between Rosslyn Chapel, Freemasonry, the Templars and the Holy Grail generated by Brown's novel.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: The chapel, built 150 years after the dissolution of the Knights Templar, supposedly has many Templar symbols, such as the "Two riders on a single horse" that appear on the Knights Templar Seal.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: William Sinclair 3rd Earl of Orkney, Baron of Roslin and 1st Earl of Caithness, claimed by novelists to be a hereditary Grand Master of the Scottish stonemasons, built Rosslyn Chapel. A later William Sinclair of Roslin became the first Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Scotland and, subsequently, several other members of the Sinclair family have held this position.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: Robert L. D. Cooper, curator of the Grand Lodge of Scotland Museum and Library, in 2003 published a 12th edition of the 1892 "Illustrated Guide to Rosslyn Chapel" with the intention of countering the "nonsense published about Rosslyn Chapel over the last 15 years or so". Cooper in 2006 also published "Rosslyn Hoax?" in which he actively debunks this type of speculation at length and in great detail. An example is the comparison of the Rosslyn myth of the Apprentice Pillar with that of the "allegorical" references to Hiram Abiff in Masonic ritual, and in the process he debunks any similarities between the two. A minute comparison between the Rosslyn Myth and the Masonic allegory can be found in a detailed tabular form in The Rosslyn Hoax?


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: Cooper further debunks other claims of a connection between carvings within Rosslyn Chapel and Scottish Freemasonry. The suggestion that the Apprentice Pillar is a physical reference to the Entered Apprentice degree of Scottish Freemasonry logically led to the conclusion that the other two pillars (in line south to north with the so-called Apprentice Pillar) represented the Fellow of Craft degree (middle pillar) and the Master Mason's degree (north pillar). This association of three pillars in the east part of Rosslyn Chapel with the three degrees of Scottish Freemasonry is impossible, given the fact that (according to Cooper) the third degree of Freemasonry was invented c.1720 - almost 300 years after Rosslyn Chapel was founded.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: The claim that the layout of Rosslyn Chapel echoes that of Solomon's Temple has been analysed by Mark Oxbrow and Ian Robertson in their book, "Rosslyn and the Grail":


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: Rosslyn Chapel bears no more resemblance to Solomon's or Herod's Temple than a house brick does to a paperback book. If you superimpose the floor plans of Rosslyn Chapel and either Solomon's or Herod's Temple, you will actually find that they are not even remotely similar. Writers admit that the chapel is far smaller than either of the temples. They freely scale the plans up or down in an attempt to fit them together. What they actually find are no significant similarities at all. [...] If you superimpose the floor plans of Rosslyn Chapel and the East Quire of Glasgow Cathedral you will find a startling match: the four walls of both buildings fit precisely. The East Quire of Glasgow is larger than Rosslyn, but the designs of these two medieval Scottish buildings are virtually identical. They both have the same number of windows and the same number of pillars in the same configuration. [...] The similarity between Rosslyn Chapel and Glasgow's East Quire is well established. Andrew Kemp noted that 'the entire plan of this Chapel corresponds to a large extent with the choir of Glasgow Cathedral' as far back as 1877 in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries. Many alternative history writers are well aware of this but fail to mention it in their books.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: As to a possible connection between the St. Clairs and the Knights Templar, the family testified against the Templars when that Order was put on trial in Edinburgh in 1309. Historian Dr. Louise Yeoman, along with other medieval scholars, says the Knights Templar connection is false, and points out that Rosslyn Chapel was built by William Sinclair so that Mass could be said for the souls of his family.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: It is also claimed that other carvings in the chapel reflect Masonic imagery, such as the way that hands are placed in various figures. One carving may show a blindfolded man being led forward with a noose around his neck. The carving has been eroded by time and pollution and is difficult to make out clearly. The chapel was built in the 15th century, and the earliest records of freemasonic lodges date back only to the late 16th and early 17th centuries. A more likely explanation, however, is that the Masonic imagery was added at a later date. This may have taken place in the 1860s when James St Clair-Erskine, 3rd Earl of Rosslyn instructed Edinburgh architect David Bryce, a known Freemason, to undertake restoration work on areas of the church including many of the carvings.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: Alternative histories involving Rosslyn Chapel and the Sinclairs have been published by Andrew Sinclair and Tim Wallace-Murphy arguing links with the Knights Templar and the supposed descendants of Jesus Christ. The books in particular by Tim Wallace-Murphy and Marilyn Hopkins "Rex Deus: The True Mystery of Rennes-le-Château and the Dynasty of Jesus (2000)" and "Custodians of Truth: The Continuance of Rex Deus" (2005) have focused on the hypothetical Jesus bloodline with the Sinclairs and Rosslyn Chapel.


title: Rosslyn Chapel

text: On the ABC documentary "Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci", aired on 3 November 2003, Niven Sinclair hinted that the descendants of Jesus Christ existed within the Sinclair families. These alternative histories are relatively modern - not dating back before the early 1990s. The precursor to these Rosslyn theories is the 1982 book "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" (retitled "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" in the United States) by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln that introduced the theory of the Jesus bloodline in relation to the Priory of Sion hoax - the main protagonist of which was Pierre Plantard, who for a time adopted the name Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair.


title: MP-443 Grach

text: The MP-443 Grach () or "PYa", for ""Pistolet Yarygina" ("Yarygin Pistol"), following traditional Russian naming procedure (), is the Russian standard military-issue side arm.


title: MP-443 Grach

text: The development was headed by the designer . It was developed under designation "Grach" in response to Russian military trials, which began in 1993. In 2003, it was adopted as a standard sidearm for all branches of Russian military and law enforcement, alongside the Makarov PM, GSh-18, and SPS.


title: MP-443 Grach

text: The PYa is a high-capacity, double-action, short-recoil semi-automatic pistol. Barrel/slide locking is a simplified Colt–Browning design, similar to that found in many modern pistols (for example the SIG Sauer and Glock families of pistols); the breech end of the barrel is rectangular in shape, rather than rounded, and fits into matching locking grooves within the slide, near the ejection port. The slide stop lever can be mounted on either side of the weapon to accommodate both left- and right-handed users. Likewise, the manual safety is ambidextrous, with safety catches on both sides of the weapon, where it is manipulated by the thumb. It is mounted on the frame, below the rear slide grooves, and directly behind the slide stop lever. The hammer is partially concealed at the sides to prevent catching on clothes and equipment. The magazine release catch is located in the base of the trigger guard on the left side, where it can be manipulated with the thumb (right-handed users) or index or middle finger (left-handed users). The front sight is formed as a fixed part of the slide and is non-adjustable. The back sight is drift adjustable for windage (dovetail type), but this requires a tool. Both feature white contrast elements to ease aiming in low-light conditions. The standard magazine capacity is 17 rounds, fed from a double-column, two position feed magazine. Magazines with an 18-round capacity were produced after 2004.


title: MP-443 Grach

text: Though the grips of the pistol are polymer, the weapon is largely made of metal (stainless steel for the barrel, carbon steel for the frame and slide).


title: MP-443 Grach

text: It is chambered for the 9×19mm 7N21 cartridge, the Russian loading of the ubiquitous 9mm NATO pistol cartridge, which is broadly equivalent to NATO standard loadings, loaded to comparable pressure specifications. The 7N21 features a semi-armour-piercing bullet with a tempered steel core. The weapon can also use standard 9×19mm Parabellum/9mm Luger/9×19mm NATO cartridges, including civilian loads such as hollowpoints for law enforcement (only full metal jacket bullets are permitted for use in military weapons).


title: MP-443 Grach

text: As of 2008, it was supplied only in small numbers to selected special forces units, presumably those in the North Caucasus.


title: MP-443 Grach

text: In October 2008 the Russian interior minister planned to equip more Russian police with PYa pistols. But due to financial problems and the fact the Makarov pistol is so plentiful in Russia, the Makarov remains as primary police service pistol in Russia.


title: MP-443 Grach

text: Mass production started in 2011. Officers of the Western Military District received weapons in 2012. Scouts of the intelligence compound, belonged to the Central Military District and stationed in Siberia, fully rearmed on Yarygin pistols in early 2015.


title: MP-443 Grach

text: The massive deliveries of PYa pistols to the Russian Armed Forces started in 2012. As of early 2016, several thousand of such handguns have been supplied. Officers are training to master the new firearms. Nevertheless, the PM pistol have not been brought out of service. It supposedly will have been finally replaced by PYas by 2019.


title: Black kite

text: The black kite (Milvus migrans) is a medium-sized bird of prey in the family Accipitridae, which also includes many other diurnal raptors. It is thought to be the world's most abundant species of Accipitridae, although some populations have experienced dramatic declines or fluctuations. Current global population estimates run up to 6 million individuals.


title: Black kite

text: Unlike others of the group, black kites are opportunistic hunters and are more likely to scavenge. They spend much time soaring and gliding in thermals in search of food. Their angled wing and distinctive forked tail make them easy to identify. They are also vociferous with a shrill whinnying call.


title: Black kite

text: The black kite is widely distributed through the temperate and tropical parts of Eurasia and parts of Australasia and Oceania, with the temperate region populations tending to be migratory. Several subspecies are recognized and formerly had their own English names. The European populations are small, but the South Asian population is very large.


title: Black kite

text: The black kite was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in his "Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux" in 1770. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the "Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle" which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name "Falco migrans" in his catalogue of the "Planches Enluminées". The type locality is France. The current genus "Milvus" was erected by the French naturalist Bernard Germain de Lacépède in 1799. "Milvus" is the Latin word for a red kite; the specific "migrans" means "migrating" from the Latin "migrare" "to migrate".


title: Black kite

text: The red kite has been known to hybridize with the black kite (in captivity where both species were kept together, and in the wild on the Cape Verde Islands).


title: Black kite

text: Recent DNA studies suggest that the yellow-billed African races "parasitus" and "aegyptius" differ significantly from black kites in the Eurasian clade, and should be considered a separate allopatric species: yellow-billed kite, "M. aegyptius". They occur throughout Africa except for the Congo Basin and the Sahara Desert. There have been some suggestions that the black-eared kite ("M. m. lineatus") should be elevated to full species status as "M. lineatus", but this is not well supported.


title: Black kite

text: Black kites can be distinguished from red kites by the slightly smaller size, less forked tail (visible in flight), and generally dark plumage without any rufous. The sexes are alike though the male is a little smaller and less aggressive (this is the case in most birds of prey). The upper plumage is brown but the head and neck tend to be paler. The patch behind the eye appears darker. The outer flight feathers are black and the feathers have dark cross bars and are mottled at the base. The lower parts of the body are pale brown, becoming lighter towards the chin. The body feathers have dark shafts giving it a streaked appearance. The cere and gape are yellow, but the bill is black (unlike that of the yellow-billed kite). The legs are yellow and the claws are black. They have a distinctive shrill whistle followed by a rapid whinnying call. Males and females have the same plumage but females are longer than male and have a little larger wingspan. Their wingspan is around 150 cm.


title: Black kite

text: The species is found in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. The temperate populations of this kite tend to be migratory while the tropical ones are resident. European and central Asian birds (subspecies "M. m. migrans" and black-eared kite "M. m. lineatus", respectively) are migratory, moving to the tropics in winter, but races in warmer regions such as the Indian "M. m. govinda" (small Indian/pariah kite), or the Australasian "M. m. affinis" (fork-tailed kite), are resident. In some areas such as in the United Kingdom, the black kite occurs only as a wanderer on migration. These birds are usually of the nominate race, but in November 2006 a juvenile of the eastern "lineatus", not previously recorded in western Europe, was found in Lincolnshire.


title: Black kite

text: The species is not found in the Indonesian archipelago between the South East Asian mainland and the Wallace Line. Vagrants, most likely of the black-eared kite, on occasion range far into the Pacific, out to the Hawaiian islands.


title: Black kite

text: In India, the population of "M. m. govinda" is particularly large especially in areas of high human population. Here the birds avoid heavily forested regions. A survey in 1967 in the 150 square kilometres of the city of New Delhi produced an estimate of about 2200 pairs or roughly 15 per square kilometre. Another survey in 2013 estimated 150 pairs for every 10 square kilometres.


title: Black kite

text: Vagrants from Australia occasionally reach New Zealand, however, only one individual has persisted there (currently ~21 years old).


title: Black kite

text: Black kites are most often seen gliding and soaring on thermals as they search for food. Their flight is buoyant and the bird glides effortlessly, changing directions easily. They will swoop down with their legs lowered to snatch small live prey, fish, household refuse and carrion, for which behaviour they are known in British military slang as the shite-hawk. They are opportunist hunters and have been known to take birds, bats, and rodents. They are attracted to smoke and fires, where they seek escaping prey. Kites are also known to spread fires by picking and dropping burning twigs so as to flush prey, leading to them being known in some circles as "firehawks". The Indian populations are well adapted to living in cities and are found in densely populated areas. Large numbers may be seen soaring in thermals over cities. In some places, they will readily swoop and snatch food held by humans. In Delhi, where Black Kites breed within the cities, religious offerings of meat to the Kites are common among those who practice Islam. The meat is thrown into the air and the Kites dive-bomb for the meat. Humans who are in the vicinity may suffer serious injury due to the sharp claws and talons of the Kites. The reinforcement between human proximity and being fed have decreased the Kite's fear of humans. Black kites in Spain prey on nestling waterfowl especially during summer to feed their young. Predation of nests of other pairs of black kites has also been noted. Kites have also been seen to tear and carry away the nests of baya weavers in an attempt to obtain eggs or chicks.


title: Black kite

text: In winter, kites form large communal roosts. Flocks may fly about before settling at the roost. When migrating, the black kite has a greater propensity to form large flocks than other migratory raptors, particularly prior to making a crossing across water. In India, the subspecies "govinda" shows large seasonal fluctuations with the highest numbers seen from July to October, after the monsoons, and it has been suggested that they make local movements in response to high rainfall.


title: Black kite

text: The breeding season of the black kite in India begins in winter (mainly January and February), the young birds fledging before the monsoons. The nest is a rough platform of twigs and sticks placed in a tree. Nest sites may be reused in subsequent years. European birds breed in summer. Birds in the Italian Alps tended to build their nest close to water in steep cliffs or tall trees. Nest orientation may be related to wind and rainfall. The nests may sometimes be decorated with bright materials such as white plastic and a study in Spain suggests that they may have a role in signalling to keep away other kites.


title: Black kite

text: After pairing, the male frequently copulates with the female. Unguarded females may be approached by other males, and extra pair copulations are frequent. Males returning from a foraging trip will frequently copulate on return, as this increases the chances of his sperm fertilizing the eggs rather than a different male. Both the male and female take part in nest building, incubation and care of chicks.


title: Black kite

text: The typical clutch size is 2 or sometimes 3 eggs. The incubation period varies from 30 to 34 days. Chicks of the Indian population stay at the nest for nearly two months. Chicks hatched later in European populations appear to fledge faster. The care of young by the parents also rapidly decreased with the need for adults to migrate. Siblings show aggression to each other and often the weaker chick may be killed, but parent birds were found to preferentially feed the smaller chicks in experimentally altered nests.


title: Black kite

text: Newly hatched young have down (prepennae) which are sepia on the back and black around the eye and buff on the head, neck and underparts. This is replaced by brownish-gray second down (preplumulae). After 9–12 days, the second down appears on the whole body except the top of the head. Body feathers begin to appear after 18 to 22 days. The feathers on the head become noticeable from the 24th to 29th day. The nestlings initially feed on food fallen at the bottom of the nest and begin to tear flesh after 33–39 days. They are able to stand on their legs after 17–19 days and begin flapping their wings after 27–31 days. After 50 days, they begin to move to branches next to the nest. Birds are able to breed after their second year. Parent birds guard their nest and will dive aggressively at intruders. Humans who intrude the nest appear to be recognized by birds and singled out for dive attacks.


title: Black kite

text: Black-eared kites in Japan were found to accumulate nearly 70% of mercury accumulated from polluted food in the feathers, thus excreting it in the moult process. Black kites often perch on electric wires and are frequent victims of electrocution. Their habit of swooping to pick up dead rodents or other roadkill leads to collisions with vehicles. Instances of mass poisoning as a result of feeding on poisoned voles in agricultural fields have been noted. They are also a major nuisance at some airports, where their size makes them a significant birdstrike hazard.


title: Black kite

text: As a large raptorial bird, the black kite has few natural predators. However, they do have a single serious predator: the Eurasian eagle-owl ("Bubo bubo"). The eagle-owl freely picks off kites of any age and were noted to precipitously decrease kite breeding success when nesting within kilometres of the kites in the Italian Alps. Like most bird species, they have parasites, several species of endoparasitic trematodes are known and some Digenea species that are transmitted via fishes.


title: Black kite

text: Birds with abnormal development of a secondary upper mandible have been recorded in "govinda" and "lineatus".


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: The British Agricultural Revolution, or Second Agricultural Revolution, was an unprecedented increase in agricultural production in Britain arising from increases in labour and land productivity between the mid-17th and late 19th centuries. Agricultural output grew faster than the population over the hundred-year period ending in 1770, and thereafter productivity remained among the highest in the world. This increase in the food supply contributed to the rapid growth of population in England and Wales, from 5.5 million in 1700 to over 9 million by 1801, though domestic production gave way increasingly to food imports in the nineteenth century as the population more than tripled to over 35 million. Using 1700 as a base year (=100), agricultural output per agricultural worker in Britain steadily increased from about 50 in 1500, to around 65 in 1550, to 90 in 1600, to over 100 by 1650, to over 150 by 1750, rapidly increasing to over 250 by 1850. The rise in productivity accelerated the decline of the agricultural share of the labour force, adding to the urban workforce on which industrialization depended: the Agricultural Revolution has therefore been cited as a cause of the Industrial Revolution.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: However, historians continue to dispute when exactly such a "revolution" took place and of what it consisted. Rather than a single event, G. E. Mingay states that there were a "profusion of agricultural revolutions, one for two centuries before 1650, another emphasising the century after 1650, a third for the period 1750–1780, and a fourth for the middle decades of the nineteenth century". This has led more recent historians to argue that any general statements about "the Agricultural Revolution" are difficult to sustain.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: One important change in farming methods was the move in crop rotation to turnips and clover in place of fallow. Turnips can be grown in winter and are deep-rooted, allowing them to gather minerals unavailable to shallow-rooted crops. Clover fixes nitrogen from the atmosphere into a form of fertiliser. This permitted the intensive arable cultivation of light soils on enclosed farms and provided fodder to support increased livestock numbers whose manure added further to soil fertility.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: Called “British,” the term implies that the Revolution began in Britain. The term does not imply that the Revolution existed solely in Britain. Other countries in Europe, East Asia and North America followed suit in the next two centuries. The Second Agricultural Revolution was much like the First in that it occurred in many regions across the world in a short span of time.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: In addition, the British origins of the Revolution is the view shared by the British historians. The Dutch historians disagree. In the Netherlands in 1500 – 1650, the agricultural output per laborer rose by 80% leading to over 60% decline in manpower engaged in agriculture by 1650. From 1500 to 1750, the Dutch were faster than Britain in reducing the agricultural sector of population. The Netherlands were called "School Room," or "Home" of the modern agricultural revolution. Notably, one of the innovations in the British Revolution was the “Dutch” light plow (chapter 2.2 below). English landowners and their agents who returned from exile in the Netherlands in the 17th century, introduced Dutch methods and techniques.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: The term "revolution" refers only to increase in yields per land and labour. There was not anything revolutionary in agricultural technology or methods, only usual innovations. Power tillers appeared on fields in the 20th century, synthetic fertilizers in the 19th, light plow was used all around the Mediterranean since antiquity. One hypothesis suggests climatic amelioration as the trigger of the Revolution (chapter 2.11 below). This explanation also associates with the First Revolution.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: The British Agricultural Revolution was the result of the complex interaction of social, economic and farming technological changes. Major developments and innovations include:


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: One of the most important innovations of the British Agricultural Revolution was the development of the Norfolk four-course rotation, which greatly increased crop and livestock yields by improving soil fertility and reducing fallow.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: Crop rotation is the practice of growing a series of dissimilar types of crops in the same area in sequential seasons to help restore plant nutrients and mitigate the build-up of pathogens and pests that often occurs when one plant species is continuously cropped. Rotation can also improve soil structure and fertility by alternating deep-rooted and shallow-rooted plants. Turnip roots, for example, can recover nutrients from deep under the soil. The Norfolk four-course system, as it is now known, rotates crops so that different crops are planted with the result that different kinds and quantities of nutrients are taken from the soil as the plants grow. An important feature of the Norfolk four-field system was that it used labour at times when demand was not at peak levels.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: Planting cover crops such as turnips and clover was not permitted under the common field system because they interfered with access to the fields. Besides, other people's livestock could graze the turnips.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: During the Middle Ages, the open field system had initially used a two-field crop rotation system where one field was left fallow or turned into pasture for a time to try to recover some of its plant nutrients. Later they employed a three-year, three field crop rotation routine, with a different crop in each of two fields, e.g. oats, rye, wheat, and barley with the second field growing a legume like peas or beans, and the third field fallow. Normally from 10% to 30% of the arable land in a three crop rotation system is fallow. Each field was rotated into a different crop nearly every year. Over the following two centuries, the regular planting of legumes such as peas and beans in the fields that were previously fallow slowly restored the fertility of some croplands. The planting of legumes helped to increase plant growth in the empty field due to the ability of the bacteria on legume roots to fix nitrogen (N) from the air into the soil in a form that plants could use. Other crops that were occasionally grown were flax and members of the mustard family.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: Convertible husbandry was the alternation of a field between pasture and grain. Because nitrogen builds up slowly over time in pasture, ploughing up pasture and planting grains resulted in high yields for a few years. A big disadvantage of convertible husbandry was the hard work in breaking up pastures and difficulty in establishing them. The significance of convertible husbandry is that it introduced pasture into the rotation.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: The farmers in Flanders (in parts of France and current day Belgium) discovered a still more effective four-field crop rotation system, using turnips and clover (a legume) as forage crops to replace the three-year crop rotation fallow year.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: The four-field rotation system allowed farmers to restore soil fertility and restore some of the plant nutrients removed with the crops. Turnips first show up in the probate records in England as early as 1638 but were not widely used till about 1750. Fallow land was about 20% of the arable area in England in 1700 before turnips and clover were extensively grown in the 1830s. Guano and nitrates from South America were introduced in the mid-19th century and fallow steadily declined to reach only about 4% in 1900. Ideally, wheat, barley, turnips and clover would be planted in that order in each field in successive years. The turnips helped keep the weeds down and were an excellent forage crop—ruminant animals could eat their tops and roots through a large part of the summer and winters. There was no need to let the soil lie fallow as clover would re-add nitrates (nitrogen-containing salts) back to the soil. The clover made excellent pasture and hay fields as well as green manure when it was ploughed under after one or two years. The addition of clover and turnips allowed more animals to be kept through the winter, which in turn produced more milk, cheese, meat and manure, which maintained soil fertility. This maintains a good amount of crops produced.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: The mix of crops also changed: the area under wheat rose by 1870 to 3.5 million acres (1.4m ha), barley to 2.25m acres (0.9m ha) and oats less dramatically to 2.75m acres (1.1m ha), while rye dwindled to 60,000 acres (25,000 ha), less than a tenth of its late medieval peak. Grain yields benefited from new and better seed alongside improved rotation and fertility: wheat yields increased by a quarter in the 18th century and nearly half in the 19th, averaging 30 bushels per acre (2,080 kg/ha) by the 1890s.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: The Dutch acquired the iron-tipped, curved mouldboard, adjustable depth plough from the Chinese in the early 17th century. It had the advantage of being able to be pulled by one or two oxen compared to the six or eight needed by the heavy wheeled northern European plough. The Dutch plough was brought to Britain by Dutch contractors who were hired to drain East Anglian fens and Somerset moors. The plough was extremely successful on wet, boggy soil, but was soon used on ordinary land.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: British improvements included Joseph Foljambe's cast iron plough (patented 1730), which combined an earlier Dutch design with a number of innovations. Its fittings and coulter were made of iron and the mouldboard and share were covered with an iron plate, making it easier to pull and more controllable than previous ploughs. By the 1760s Foljambe was making large numbers of these ploughs in a factory outside of Rotherham, England, using standard patterns with interchangeable parts. The plough was easy for a blacksmith to make, but by the end of the 18th century it was being made in rural foundries. By 1770 it was the cheapest and best plough available. It spread to Scotland, America, and France.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: The Columbian exchange brought many new foodstuffs from the Americas to Eurasia, most of which took decades or centuries to catch on. Arguably the most important of these was the potato. Potatoes yielded about three times the calories per acre of wheat or barley, due in large part to only taking 3–4 months to mature versus 10 months for wheat. On top of this, potatoes had higher nutritive value than wheat, could be grown in even fallow and nutrient-poor soil, did not require any special tools, and were considered fairly appetizing. According to Langer, a single acre of potatoes could feed a family of five or six, plus a cow, for the better part of a year, an unprecedented level of production. By 1715 the potato was widespread in the Low Countries, the Rhineland, Southwestern Germany, and Eastern France, but took longer to spread elsewhere.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, established in 1660, almost immediately championed the potato, stressing its value as a substitute for wheat (particularly since famine periods for wheat overlapped with bump periods for potatoes). The 1740 famines buttressed their case. The mid 18th century was marked by rapid adoption of the potato by various European countries, especially in central Europe, as various wheat famines demonstrated its value. The potato was grown in Ireland, a property of the English crown and common source of food exports, since the early 17th century and quickly spread so that by the 18th century it had been firmly established as a staple food. It spread to England shortly after it popped up in Ireland, first being widely cultivated in Lancashire and around London, and by the mid-18th century it was esteemed and common. By the late 18th century, Sir Frederick Eden wrote that the potato had become "a constant standing dish, at every meal, breakfast excepted, at the tables of the Rich, as well as the Poor."


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: While not as vital as the potato, maize also contributed to the boost of Western European agricultural productivity. Maize also had far higher per-acre productivity than wheat (about two and a half times), grew at widely differing altitudes and in a variety of soils (though warmer climates were preferred), and unlike wheat it could be harvested in successive years from the same plot of land. It was often grown alongside potatoes, as maize plants required wide spacing. Maize was cultivated in Spain since 1525 and Italy since 1530, contributing to their growing populations in the early modern era as it became a dietary staple in the 17th century (in Italy it was often made into Polenta). It spread from northern Italy into Germany and beyond, becoming an important staple in the Habsburg monarchy (especially Hungary and Austria) by the late 17th century. Its spread started in southern France in 1565, and by the start of the 18th century, it was the main food source of central and southern French peasants (it was more popular as animal fodder in the north).


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: In Europe, agriculture was feudal from the Middle Ages. In the traditional open field system, many subsistence farmers cropped strips of land in large fields held in common and divided the produce. They typically worked under the auspices of the aristocracy or the Catholic Church, who owned much of the land.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: As early as the 12th century, some fields in England tilled under the open field system were enclosed into individually owned fields. The Black Death from 1348 onward accelerated the break-up of the feudal system in England. Many farms were bought by yeomen who enclosed their property and improved their use of the land. More secure control of the land allowed the owners to make innovations that improved their yields. Other husbandmen rented property they "share cropped" with the land owners. Many of these enclosures were accomplished by acts of Parliament in the 16th and 17th centuries.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: The process of enclosing property accelerated in the 15th and 16th centuries. The more productive enclosed farms meant that fewer farmers were needed to work the same land, leaving many villagers without land and grazing rights. Many of them moved to the cities in search of work in the emerging factories of the Industrial Revolution. Others settled in the English colonies. English Poor Laws were enacted to help these newly poor.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: Some practices of enclosure were denounced by the Church, and legislation was drawn up against it; but the large, enclosed fields were needed for the gains in agricultural productivity from the 16th to 18th centuries. This controversy led to a series of government acts, culminating in the General Enclosure Act of 1801 which sanctioned large-scale land reform.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: Regional markets were widespread by 1500 with about 800 locations in Britain. The most important development between the 16th century and the mid-19th century was the development of private marketing. By the 19th century, marketing was nationwide and the vast majority of agricultural production was for market rather than for the farmer and his family. The 16th-century market radius was about 10 miles, which could support a town of 10,000.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: The next stage of development was trading between markets, requiring merchants, credit and forward sales, knowledge of markets and pricing and of supply and demand in different markets. Eventually, the market evolved into a national one driven by London and other growing cities. By 1700, there was a national market for wheat.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: Legislation regulating middlemen required registration, addressed weights and measures, fixing of prices and collection of tolls by the government. Market regulations were eased in 1663 when people were allowed some self-regulation to hold inventory, but it was forbidden to withhold commodities from the market in an effort to increase prices. In the late 18th century, the idea of self-regulation was gaining acceptance.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: The lack of internal tariffs, customs barriers and feudal tolls made Britain "the largest coherent market in Europe".


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: High wagon transportation costs made it uneconomical to ship commodities very far outside the market radius by road, generally limiting shipment to less than 20 or 30 miles to market or to a navigable waterway. Water transport was, and in some cases still is, much more efficient than land transport. In the early 19th century it cost as much to transport a ton of freight 32 miles by wagon over an unimproved road as it did to ship it 3000 miles across the Atlantic. A horse could pull at most one ton of freight on a Macadam road, which was multi-layer stone covered and crowned, with side drainage. But a single horse could pull a barge weighing over 30 tons.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: Commerce was aided by the expansion of roads and inland waterways. Road transport capacity grew from threefold to fourfold from 1500 to 1700.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: Another way to get more land was to convert some pasture land into arable land and recover fen land and some pastures. It is estimated that the amount of arable land in Britain grew by 10–30% through these land conversions.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: The British Agricultural Revolution was aided by land maintenance advancements in Flanders and the Netherlands. Due to the large and dense population of Flanders and Holland, farmers there were forced to take maximum advantage of every bit of usable land; the country had become a pioneer in canal building, soil restoration and maintenance, soil drainage, and land reclamation technology. Dutch experts like Cornelius Vermuyden brought some of this technology to Britain.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: Water-meadows were utilised in the late 16th to the 20th centuries and allowed earlier pasturing of livestock after they were wintered on hay. This increased livestock yields, giving more hides, meat, milk, and manure as well as better hay crops.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: With the development of regional markets and eventually a national market, aided by improved transportation infrastructures, farmers were no longer dependent on their local market and were less subject to having to sell at low prices into an oversupplied local market and not being able to sell their surpluses to distant localities that were experiencing shortages. They also became less subject to price fixing regulations. Farming became a business rather than solely a means of subsistence.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: Under free-market capitalism, farmers had to remain competitive. To be successful, farmers had to become effective managers who incorporated the latest farming innovations in order to be low cost producers.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: During the 18th century, a high share of farmers had the ability to basic numerical skills as well as the ability to read and write (literacy), both of which are skills that were far from widespread in the early modern period. This is unsurprising for countries such as England, where farmers developed particularly high human capital skills because of rapid occupational changes – they became a minority that produced the food for the majority of the population. However, the ‘farmer effect’ of high human capital among farmers applies both to the center and the periphery of Europe. One possible explanation for this phenomenon is that a constant amount of nutrition was almost always available to farmer families. They could feed themselves even during times of famine by increasing the share of their products that they consumed themselves instead of selling them on markets. There is a strong link between nutritional deprivation and cognitive abilities, therefore it seems likely that farmers were one of the groups of society that contributed significantly to the numeracy revolution achieved in Europe during the early modern era.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: In England, Robert Bakewell and Thomas Coke introduced selective breeding as a scientific practice, mating together two animals with particularly desirable characteristics, and also using inbreeding or the mating of close relatives, such as father and daughter, or brother and sister, to stabilise certain qualities in order to reduce genetic diversity in desirable animal programmes from the mid-18th century. Arguably, Bakewell's most important breeding programme was with sheep. Using native stock, he was able to quickly select for large, yet fine-boned sheep, with long, lustrous wool. The Lincoln Longwool was improved by Bakewell, and in turn the Lincoln was used to develop the subsequent breed, named the New (or Dishley) Leicester. It was hornless and had a square, meaty body with straight top lines.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: Bakewell was also the first to breed cattle to be used primarily for beef. Previously, cattle were first and foremost kept for pulling ploughs as oxen or for dairy uses, with beef from surplus males as an additional bonus, but he crossed long-horned heifers and a Westmoreland bull to eventually create the Dishley Longhorn. As more and more farmers followed his lead, farm animals increased dramatically in size and quality. The average weight of a bull sold for slaughter at Smithfield was reported around 1700 as 370 pounds (170 kg), though this is considered a low estimate: by 1786, weights of 840 pounds (380 kg) were reported, though other contemporary indicators suggest an increase of around a quarter over the intervening century.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: In 1300, the average milk cow produced 100 gallons of milk annually. This figure rose throughout the early modern era. The average in 1400-1449 was 140; in 1450-1499 162; in 1550-1599 212; in 1600-1649 243; in 1650-1699 272; in 1700-1749 319; in 1750-1799 366; and in 1800-1849 420. Beef output per animal rose even faster, from 168 lbs in 1300, to 251 in 1450-1499, to 317 in 1550-1599, 356 in 1600-1649, 400 in 1650-1699, 449 in 1700-1749, 504 in 1750-1799, and 566 in 1800-1849.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: One work by historian Max Ostrovsky outlined the chronology of the Second Agricultural Revolution in space:


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: Ostrovsky interprets the above chronology: "This is how the Atlantic cyclons advanced and the Siberian anti-cyclons retreated."


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: The light plow, he says, was used all around the Mdditerranean since antiquity and iron-tipped several centuries earlier than in China. The complication was that it did not work in the climatic conditions of the medieval northern Europe.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: Ostrovsky tried to reduce the complexity and multiplicity of factors in the research on the Second Revolution (small part of these factors are listed above). Social and economic changes he defines as a result rather than cause of the Revolution. Railroads, he addes, do not increase yields. Increase in farm area does, but it was not the discovery of the 17th century. The first Neolithic farmer knew it.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: Having researched the First Revolution, Ostrovsky supposed the influence of climate over agricultural technology and methods. He dusted off the researches of Ellsworth Huntington and continued where Huntington stopped, focusing on cyclons rather than temperature. The expanding warm cyclons, he concludes, were the trigger.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: Besides the organic fertilisers in manure, new fertilisers were slowly discovered. Massive sodium nitrate (NaNO) deposits found in the Atacama Desert, Chile, were brought under British financiers like John Thomas North and imports were started. Chile was happy to allow the exports of these sodium nitrates by allowing the British to use their capital to develop the mining and imposing a hefty export tax to enrich their treasury. Massive deposits of sea bird guano (11–16% N, 8–12% phosphate, and 2–3% potash), were found and started to be imported after about 1830. Significant imports of potash obtained from the ashes of trees burned in opening new agricultural lands were imported. By-products of the British meat industry like bones from the knackers' yards were ground up or crushed and sold as fertiliser. By about 1840 about 30,000 tons of bones were being processed (worth about £150,000). An unusual alternative to bones was found to be the millions of tons of fossils called coprolites found in South East England. When these were dissolved in sulphuric acid they yielded a high phosphate mixture (called "super phosphate") that plants could absorb readily and increased crop yields. Mining coprolite and processing it for fertiliser soon developed into a major industry—the first commercial fertiliser. Higher yield per acre crops were also planted as potatoes went from about 300,000 acres in 1800 to about 400,000 acres in 1850 with a further increase to about 500,000 in 1900. Labour productivity slowly increased at about 0.6% per year. With more capital invested, more organic and inorganic fertilisers, and better crop yields increased the food grown at about 0.5%/year—not enough to keep up with population growth.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: Great Britain contained about 10.8 million people in 1801, 20.7 million in 1851 and 37.1 million by 1901. This corresponds to an annual population growth rate of 1.3% in 1801-1851 and 1.2% in 1851–1901, twice the rate of agricultural output growth. In addition to land for cultivation there was also a demand for pasture land to support more livestock. The growth of arable acreage slowed from the 1830s and went into reverse from the 1870s in the face of cheaper grain imports, and wheat acreage nearly halved from 1870 to 1900.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: The recovery of food imports after the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) and the resumption of American trade following the War of 1812 (1812–1815) led to the enactment in 1815 of the Corn Laws (protective tariffs) to protect cereal grain producers in Britain against foreign competition. These laws were only removed in 1846 after the onset of the Great Irish Famine in which a potato blight ruined most of the Irish potato crop and brought famine to the Irish people from 1846 to 1850. Though the blight also struck Scotland, Wales, England, and much of Continental Europe, its effect there was far less severe since potatoes constituted a much smaller percentage of the diet than in Ireland. Hundreds of thousands died in the famine and millions more emigrated to England, Wales, Scotland, Canada, Australia, Europe, and the United States, reducing the population from about 8.5 million in 1845 to 4.3 million by 1921.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: Between 1873 and 1879 British agriculture suffered from wet summers that damaged grain crops. Cattle farmers were hit by foot-and-mouth disease, and sheep farmers by sheep liver rot. The poor harvests, however, masked a greater threat to British agriculture: growing imports of foodstuffs from abroad. The development of the steam ship and the development of extensive railway networks in Britain and in the United States allowed U.S. farmers with much larger and more productive farms to export hard grain to Britain at a price that undercut the British farmers. At the same time, large amounts of cheap corned beef started to arrive from Argentina, and the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the development of refrigerator ships (reefers) in about 1880 opened the British market to cheap meat and wool from Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina. The Long Depression was a worldwide economic recession that began in 1873 and ended around 1896. It hit the agricultural sector hard and was the most severe in Europe and the United States, which had been experiencing strong economic growth fuelled by the Second Industrial Revolution in the decade following the American Civil War. By 1900, half the meat eaten in Britain came from abroad and tropical fruits such as bananas were also being imported on the new refrigerator ships.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: Before the introduction of the seed drill, the common practice was to plant seeds by broadcasting (evenly throwing) them across the ground by hand on the prepared soil and then lightly harrowing the soil to cover the seed. Seeds left on top of the ground were eaten by birds, insects, and mice. There was no control over spacing and seeds were planted too close together and too far apart. Alternatively, seeds could be laboriously planted one by one using a hoe and/or a shovel. Cutting down on wasted seed was important because the yield of seeds harvested to seeds planted at that time was around four or five.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: The seed drill was introduced from China to Italy in the mid-16th century where it was patented by the Venetian Senate. Jethro Tull invented an improved seed drill in 1701. It was a mechanical seeder which distributed seeds evenly across a plot of land and at the correct depth. Tull's seed drill was very expensive and fragile and therefore did not have much of an impact. The technology to manufacture affordable and reliable machinery, including agricultural machinery, improved dramatically in the last half of the 19th century.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: The Agricultural Revolution was part of a long process of improvement, but sound advice on farming began to appear in England in the mid-17th century, from writers such as Samuel Hartlib, Walter Blith and others, and the overall agricultural productivity of Britain started to grow significantly only in the 18th century. It is estimated that total agricultural output grew 2.7-fold between 1700 and 1870 and output per worker at a similar rate.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: Despite its name, the Agricultural Revolution in Britain did not result in overall productivity per hectare of agricultural area as high as in China, where intensive cultivation (including multiple annual cropping in many areas) had been practiced for many centuries.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: The Agricultural Revolution in Britain proved to be a major turning point in history, allowing the population to far exceed earlier peaks and sustain the country's rise to industrial pre-eminence. Towards the end of the 19th century, the substantial gains in British agricultural productivity were rapidly offset by competition from cheaper imports, made possible by the exploitation of new lands and advances in transportation, refrigeration, and other technologies.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: The Second Agricultural Revolution in other countries was turning point too. In the agrarian societies, four families produced enough food for five families, that is for themselves and one more family. Not much manpower was available for non-agricultural activity. In the course of the Revolution, one family began to produce enough food for five families. Much manpower was liberated from agriculture and became available for industry. Thus the Second Agricultural Revolution made possible the Industrial Revolution:


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: Unprecedented population growth followed and even more explosive was the growth of the non-agricultural sector. Barrington Moore stressed the "importance of getting rid of agriculture as a major social activity" in the formation of the working class.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: First, "rural proletariat" appeared; later, this mass moved to cities causing unprecedented urbanization. When the percentage of manpower engaged in agriculture declined from 80 to 60, occurred great social revolutions or reformations (revolution from above).


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: The result was not liberte, egalite, fraternite; often the result was the opposite, with stronger autocracy. But in all cases, the power shifted from land owners to industrial enterpreneurs or central-planning states, marking "revolutionary break with the past." The ten-millennia Agrarian Age was succeeded by the Industrial.


title: British Agricultural Revolution

text: Today, agriculture accounts for 5% of the world product. But these 5% is the basis holding the rest 95% like a reverse pyramide. The Second Agricultural Revolution created this basis and made possible our industry and other sectors of the modern civilization. Without this basis all this civilization, with all its technological progress, would collapse. "No modern development made us independent from Earth Mother, or Pachamama that feeds, as the Inca put it."


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: Benjamin Roberts-Smith (born 1 November 1978) is an Australian businessman and a former Australian Army soldier. The Victoria Cross (VC) in 2011 and the Medal for Gallantry (MG) in 2006 made Roberts-Smith the most highly decorated serving member of the Australian Defence Force. He was also awarded a Commendation for Distinguished Service for leadership as a patrol commander in 2012.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: Roberts-Smith left the full-time army in 2013 and studied business at the University of Queensland. In 2015, he was appointed deputy general manager of the regional television network Seven Queensland. He was subsequently promoted to general manager of the regional network and of metropolitan station Seven Brisbane.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: In 2017, Roberts-Smith's actions in Afghanistan came under scrutiny in light of an independent war crimes inquiry into "questions of unlawful conduct concerning (Australia's) Special Operations Task Group in Afghanistan". Since June 2018, Roberts-Smith has been the subject of a war crimes investigation by the Australian Federal Police. With assistance from a legal team hired by Seven Network owner Kerry Stokes, Roberts-Smith commenced defamation proceedings in August 2018 against Nine Entertainment publications "The Age", "The Sydney Morning Herald" and "The Canberra Times", and also named each of the three journalists involved in reporting alleged incidents. The trial commenced in June 2021 in the Federal Court in Sydney.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: Roberts-Smith was born on 1 November 1978 in Perth, Western Australia. He is the elder son of Sue and Len Roberts-Smith, a former justice of the Supreme Court of Western Australia. He graduated from Hale School in 1995. His brother, Sam, is an opera singer.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: Roberts-Smith joined the Australian Army in 1996 at age 18. After completing basic training at Blamey Barracks in Kapooka, New South Wales, he underwent initial employment training at the School of Infantry at Lone Pine Barracks in Singleton, New South Wales. From there, Roberts-Smith was posted to the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (3 RAR) in Holsworthy, New South Wales. Initially part of a rifle company, he subsequently became a section leader in the Direct Fire Support Weapons Platoon. With 3 RAR, Roberts-Smith was deployed to East Timor twice, the first time as part of the International Force East Timor in 1999.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: After completing the Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) selection course in 2003, and the SASR reinforcement cycle, Roberts-Smith was initially posted to 3 Squadron at Campbell Barracks (Western Australia). He took part in operations off Fiji in 2004, and was part of personal security detachments in Iraq throughout 2005 and 2006. Roberts-Smith was deployed to Afghanistan on six occasions; the first two were in 2006 and 2007. After completing junior leadership training in 2009, he was posted to 2 Squadron as a patrol 2IC, and later as a patrol commander. Roberts-Smith was a member of training and assistance teams throughout Southeast Asia. He returned to Afghanistan in 2009, 2010 and 2012.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: In 2011, Roberts-Smith noted that he—and the ADF—expected him to be able to continue to fight as a frontline patrol commander following the receipt of the Victoria Cross. He said that "[O]nce you reach patrol commander, that is the pinnacle for an SAS operator. You are now the man." He left the full-time army in 2013 at age 35 with the rank of corporal, and served part-time with the Army Reserve until 2015.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: Several serving members of the SASR have spoken in Roberts-Smith's ongoing defamation trial regarding alleged bullying and threats made by Roberts-Smith during his service both within Australia and Afghanistan. "Person 1", a serving SASR member, alleged that Roberts-Smith had stated to him he would "put a bullet in the back of his head" if he didn't improve his performance. Following this, Person 1 was advised by other members to report Roberts-Smith's threat which he did, leading to Roberts-Smith allegedly threatening him again, stating "If you’re going to make accusations cunt, you’d better have some fucking proof."  Claims regarding Roberts-Smith's bullying were also reiterated by Person 43 and Person 10, other serving members of the SASR.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: The following are extracts from the citations of the Department of Defence for Roberts-Smith's two awards for gallantry.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: Roberts-Smith was presented with the VC by the Governor-General of Australia, Quentin Bryce, at a ceremony held at Campbell Barracks in Perth on 23 January 2011.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: The decision to award Roberts-Smith's VC was raised during his current ongoing defamation proceedings where it was revealed that several former and serving members of the SAS had questioned the decision to award the VC to Roberts-Smith.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: On 26 January 2014, Roberts-Smith was awarded the Commendation for Distinguished Service as part of the 2014 Australia Day Honours. The award arose from a 2012 tour of Afghanistan, in which Roberts-Smith "distinguished himself as an outstanding junior leader on more than 50 high risk" operations.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: A 2014 painting of Roberts-Smith, "Pistol Grip" by Michael Zavros, hangs in the Australian War Memorial which commissioned it. The National Portrait Gallery (Australia) commissioned a photo by Julian Kingma of Roberts-Smith in 2018.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: In October 2017, actions involving Roberts-Smith came under question again. One notable controversy concerned the killing of an alleged Taliban spotter during the 2006 battle of Chora Pass. According to the journalist Chris Masters, two members of the patrol had witnessed a lone Afghan teenager approaching the patrol observation post, leaving shortly thereafter. Although the two operators had decided it was not necessary to engage the Afghan, Roberts-Smith and patrol 2IC Matthew Locke arrived on-scene and the pair "decided to hunt down and shoot dead the two 'enemy' after concluding they had spotted the patrol".


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: The patrol report had identified only a single Afghan unarmed "spotter", but Roberts-Smith later said that two armed insurgents had approached the position in an oral account provided to the Australian War Memorial. When the inconsistency was raised, Roberts-Smith claimed to have remembered incorrectly.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: Following the publication of "No Front Line" in October 2017, Fairfax Media's Nick McKenzie and the ABC's Dan Oakes covered the story—linking the case to an ongoing Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force inquiry into criminal misconduct on the battlefield by Australian special forces. Responding to the coverage in an interview with "The Australian", Roberts-Smith described the scrutiny as "un-Australian". Oakes wrote "It's not 'un-Australian' to investigate the actions of special forces in Afghanistan".


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: In June 2018, a joint ABC–Fairfax investigation detailed an assault on the village of Darwan in September 2012 during which a handcuffed man was allegedly kicked off a cliff by an Australian special forces soldier nicknamed "Leonidas" after the famed Spartan king. On 6 July 2018, Fairfax Media reported that Roberts-Smith was "one of a small number of soldiers subject to investigation by an inquiry looking into the actions of Australian special forces soldiers in Afghanistan". In August 2018, Fairfax Media also reported allegations by several soldiers of being bullied by Roberts-Smith, as well as a female companion's claim that she was subjected to an act of domestic violence in Australia. Roberts-Smith has denied these allegations.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: Since 2018, Roberts-Smith has been under investigation by the Australian Federal Police for war crimes during his tours of Afghanistan. In April 2021, the AFP confirmed it was also conducting a probe into allegations that Roberts-Smith had destroyed or buried evidence directly related to the ongoing investigation.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: In response to this series of articles, in January 2019 Roberts-Smith commenced defamation proceedings in the Federal Court against Fairfax Media (a subsidiary of Nine Entertainment) and two journalists, Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters, and a former journalist, David Wroe. In its truth defence, Fairfax defended its reporting as "substantially true", detailing a series of six unlawful killings alleged to have been carried out by Roberts-Smith in Afghanistan, including those in Darwan.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: Kerry Stokes' private investment company Australian Capital Equity (ACE) extended Roberts-Smith a line of credit, against which he drew $1.9 million. Stokes and another director of ACE are also on the board of the Australian War Memorial (AWM). Calls have been made for Stokes, as AWM chairman, to stand down over his public and private support for soldiers accused of war crimes in Afghanistan.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: In August 2020, it was reported that legal experts had raised concerns about a personal relationship between Roberts-Smith and his defamation lawyer, saying it could constitute unprofessional conduct. News Corp Australia published a photo of Roberts-Smith holding hands with the woman, who they reported was visiting him in his new apartment in Brisbane. The woman conceded that it was "unwise to spend time with him socially".


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: In the Federal Court, the Fairfax/Nine Entertainment lawyer Sandy Dawson claimed that Roberts-Smith and his wife had given inconsistent accounts about the status of their relationship during previous years.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: On 1 September 2020, Dawson told the Federal Court that the Australian Federal Police have information, including an eyewitness, that allegedly implicates Roberts-Smith in Afghanistan war crimes. The defamation trial, expected to last for 10 weeks, commenced in June 2021 in Sydney.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: The Federal Court has established an online file in view of the public interest where documents are placed when considered publicly accessible.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: In April 2021, The Age published an article alleging that Roberts-Smith had attempted to cover up the alleged crimes by hiding incriminating images on a USB drive buried in his back yard, which has since been obtained by the Australian Federal Police.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: A colleague of Roberts-Smith, referred to as Person 16 (identity legally protected as part of proceedings), told the court in 2022 that Roberts-Smith had shot dead an Afghan teenage prisoner, and bragged about it.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: Fairfax Media’s defence against Roberts-Smith’s suit ended in early April 2022 after calling witnesses for 11 weeks.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: In 2013, Roberts-Smith launched his own consultancy, RS Group Australia, where he advised numerous national clients across a variety of sectors in relation to corporate culture, strategic restructuring and change management. In October 2013, Roberts-Smith announced that he was leaving the full-time Army. The University of Queensland (UQ) offered him a scholarship to study a Master of Business Administration (MBA), with a view to UQ setting up a program to support other elite SAS soldiers transitioning to a corporate career. When Roberts-Smith graduated in December 2016, becoming Australia's first enlisted Victoria Cross recipient to complete a degree after receiving the honour, he said "I joined the army at 18 so I hadn't gone to university for a Bachelor degree and I didn't have the base level of business knowledge because there were many things I just hadn't been exposed to."


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: In April 2015 (twenty months prior to graduation), Roberts-Smith was appointed deputy general manager (GM) of regional television network Seven Queensland by Seven Network GM Neil Mooney, following leadership seminars for the station. Two months later, Roberts-Smith was promoted to GM Seven Queensland. In April 2016, the role of general manager of Seven Brisbane was added to his responsibilities following the resignation of former Queensland cricketer and business executive Max Walters.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: During his role at Seven Queensland, Roberts-Smith was recorded expressing disdain for the business, dislike of fellow Seven executives and incredulity that he was still running Seven Queensland despite being at the center of an alleged war crimes scandal. He also expressed that he felt indebted to media mogul and Seven owner Kerry Stokes for financing his legal actions. It was alleged in February 2022 during defamation proceedings that Robert-Smith had employed a private investigator, John McLeod, to pose as a barman during a Seven Queensland work event in order to listen to staffers at the event and discern their opinions on Roberts-Smith.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: In April 2021, Roberts-Smith temporarily stepped down from his roles at Seven Queensland to focus on his defamation action against Nine media.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: From 2014 to 2017, Roberts-Smith was chair of the National Australia Day Council, an Australian Government-owned social enterprise. In popular culture, he recorded "Lest We Forget" in 2015 with country music singer Lee Kernaghan for the album "Spirit of the Anzacs".


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: Roberts-Smith met Emma Groom in 1998 at Holsworthy Barracks, Sydney. She came from a military family. On 6 December 2003, the couple married at the University of Western Australia. In December 2020, their divorce was finalised. Their twin daughters were born in 2010. Roberts-Smith was named 2013 Australian Father of the Year by The Shepherd Centre, a not-for-profit charitable organisation. On retirement from the army in 2015, he moved to Queensland with his then wife and daughters.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: In 2017–2018, Roberts-Smith had a 6-month affair with "Person 17" (identity legally protected in current court proceedings). During this period, Person 17 became pregnant. Roberts-Smith hired a private investigator to monitor Person 17 and confirm her attendance at an abortion clinic. Person 17 has accused Roberts-Smith of punching her in the face after a dinner at Parliament House in 2018. Roberts-Smith denies ever striking her. Person 17 also accused Roberts-Smith of coaching her on how to explain a black eye resulting from the alleged assault.


title: Ben Roberts-Smith

text: In January 2022, Roberts-Smith was ordered to pay the legal costs of his ex-wife after unsuccessfully trying to sue her in the Federal Court over allegations she accessed confidential emails.


title: Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar

text: Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar () also abbreviated as "JJWS" is a 1992 Indian Hindi-language coming-of-age sports film, directed and co-written by Mansoor Khan, and produced and co-written by Nasir Hussain. The film stars Aamir Khan, Ayesha Jhulka, Deepak Tijori, Pooja Bedi, Mamik Singh and Kulbhushan Kharbanda, whilst Aamir's brother Faisal Khan makes a special appearance. The music was by Jatin–Lalit.


title: Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar

text: "Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar" was inspired by the 1979 American film "Breaking Away". It won two Filmfare Awards, including Best Film. It was remade in Telugu in 1999 as "Thammudu" which in turn was remade in multiple languages.