title: Harewood House

text: Since 1947 the estate's Dower House, which lies outside the estate boundaries, has been leased out for use as an independent school.


title: Harewood House

text: The house is the family seat of the Lascelles family, and home of David Lascelles, the eighth Earl. The house and grounds have been transferred into a trust ownership structure managed by Harewood House Trust and are open to the public for most of the year. Harewood won a "Large Visitor Attraction of the Year" award in the 2009 national "Excellence in England" awards.


title: Harewood House

text: Harewood houses a collection of paintings by masters of the Italian Renaissance, family portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds, John Hoppner and Sir Thomas Lawrence, and modern art collected by the 7th Earl and Countess. Changing temporary exhibitions are held each season in the Terrace Gallery. Catering facilities in the house include Michelin-starred fine dining.


title: Harewood House

text: As well as tours of the house and grounds, Harewood has more than of gardens, including a Himalayan garden and its stupa, an educational bird garden, an adventure playground and the historic All Saints' Church with its alabaster tombs. From May 2007 to October 2008 the grounds contained Yorkshire's first planetarium, the Yorkshire Planetarium.


title: Harewood House

text: The Leeds Country Way passes through the Harewood Estate, to the south of the house and lake, as does the route of The White Rose Way.


title: Harewood House

text: Artist J. M. W. Turner visited the house and painted the outdoor landscape in watercolour around 1797–8. The house was used as a filming location for the 1991 comedy film "King Ralph". Since 1996, part of the estate has been developed as the village in the ITV soap opera "Emmerdale", which had been based in two different Yorkshire villages since its inception 24 years earlier. Rock musician Elton John performed two concerts in the grounds in 1999. The popular show "Victoria" from ITV starring Jenna Coleman and Tom Hughes has filmed at Harewood House. On 1 July 2006, Irish vocal pop band Westlife held a concert for their Face to Face Tour supporting their album Face to Face. Harewood House was used as a filming location for the 2019 "Downton Abbey" film in November 2018. The house was the location for BBC's "Mary Berry's Country House at Christmas" with Mary Berry, broadcast on Christmas Day 2018.


title: Harewood House

text: The Bird Garden at Harewood House has a small collection of exotic bird species, of which more than 5 are listed as vulnerable or endangered by the IUCN. It is a member of the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA).


title: Harewood House

text: Birds that can be seen in the garden include Humboldt penguins, Chilean flamingos, Duyvenbode's lories and macaws.


title: The Cutting Edge

text: The Cutting Edge is a 1992 American sports-romantic comedy film directed by Paul Michael Glaser and written by Tony Gilroy. The plot is about a wealthy, spoiled figure skater (played by Moira Kelly) who is paired with an injury-sidelined ice hockey player (played by D. B. Sweeney) for Olympic figure skating. Competing at the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France, they have a climactic face off against a Soviet pair. It spawned a film series including a number of sequels. The film was primarily shot in Toronto and Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.


title: The Cutting Edge

text: Kate Moseley is a world-class figure skater representing the United States in the pairs event at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. She has genuine talent, but years of being spoiled by her wealthy widower father Jack has made her impossible to work with.


title: The Cutting Edge

text: Doug Dorsey is captain of the U.S. ice hockey team at the same Winter Olympics. Just minutes before a game, he and Kate collide in a hallway in the arena. During the game, Doug suffers a head injury that permanently damages his peripheral vision, costing him a shot to play in the NHL and forcing him to retire from ice hockey. During Kate's event, her partner apparently accidentally drops her, albeit with little sign of regret or concern, during their program, costing them a chance at the gold medal.


title: The Cutting Edge

text: While training for the 1992 Winter Olympics over the next two years, Kate drives away all potential skating partners with her attitude and perfectionism. Her coach, Russian native Anton Pamchenko, has to find a replacement, an outsider who doesn't know that Kate is spoiled and difficult. He tracks down Doug, who is back home in Minnesota, working in a steel mill and as a carpenter on the side, living with his brother, and playing in a hockey bar league. Desperate for another chance at Olympic glory, Doug agrees to work as Kate's partner, even though he has macho contempt for figure skating.


title: The Cutting Edge

text: Kate's snooty, prima donna behavior gets on his nerves immediately, and their first few practices do not go well as they antagonize each other. However, they develop a mutual respect as both strive to outdo each other in work ethic. As their relationship grows warmer, they learn to set aside their differences, becoming a pair to be reckoned with both on and off the ice. Kate even boldly defends Doug to her former coach who patronizes and insults them, and Doug defends his unusual choice of sport to his own family and friends, whom he had expected to mock him.


title: The Cutting Edge

text: At the U.S. Nationals, despite strong performances in the short program and long program, they seem to place third, shattering their Olympic dreams. However, when one of the leading pairs falls during the competition, they advance to second place, earning their spot on the Olympic team. However, their potential is threatened by their growing attraction to each other. Kate attempts to seduce Doug after a night of drunken celebration, revealing that she broke off her engagement to wealthy financier Hale Forrest. Usually a ladies' man, Doug uncharacteristically rebuffs her advances, fearing the possibility of regret and loss of respect for each other.


title: The Cutting Edge

text: When Kate discovers that Doug has bedded another woman (a rival skater) almost immediately after leaving her to sleep off her intoxication, she becomes enraged. However, the temporary rift is set aside as they attempt to train a risky skating move invented by Pamchenko, which will assure them a gold medal if they can pull it off without serious injury.


title: The Cutting Edge

text: At the finals at the Albertville Olympics, they look to be one of the top pairs competing for the gold. However, another argument threatens their chemistry on the ice, and in the process Doug and Kate both discover that Kate is the fallible partner after all. Before getting on the ice for their decisive performance, Doug professes to Kate that he has fallen in love with her, leaving Kate overcome with emotion, and she decides they are going to do the Pamchenko. They proceed to skate with a passion neither had shown before, performing the Pamchenko flawlessly. Kate tells Doug she also loves him and they kiss each other before the cheering crowd.


title: The Cutting Edge

text: The original music score was composed by Patrick Williams. The film's theme song "Feels Like Forever" was performed by Joe Cocker and written by Diane Warren and Bryan Adams.


title: The Cutting Edge

text: The soundtrack album was originally released by Rykodisc in 1998; in 2004 it was reissued by Varèse Sarabande with 20 minutes of Patrick Williams' score (tracks 11–22).


title: The Cutting Edge

text: The film was met with mixed critical reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has an approval rating of 57% based on 35 reviews, with the site's consensus: "Part contrived romance, part hackneyed sports drama, "The Cutting Edge" shows how difficult it can be to figure skate through cheese." Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "A−" on scale of A to F.


title: The Cutting Edge

text: A review in "The Baltimore Sun" dubbed it ""Taming of the Shrew" on ice", in reference to Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew".


title: The Cutting Edge

text: The film was followed by several sequels: "" (2006), "" (2008) and "" (2010), each with mostly different casts. The first sequel which involves the couple's daughter moves the timing of "The Cutting Edge" from 1992 back to the 1984 Winter Olympics so that their daughter could be 21 at the time of the sequel.


title: Tha Carter V

text: Tha Carter V is the twelfth studio album by American rapper Lil Wayne. It was released on September 28, 2018, by Young Money Entertainment and Republic Records. The album's features include Swizz Beatz, Kendrick Lamar, Sosamann, Lil Wayne's daughter Reginae Carter, Snoop Dogg, Nicki Minaj, Ashanti, Mack Maine, Travis Scott, Nivea and the late XXXTentacion.


title: Tha Carter V

text: Originally planned to be released in 2014, "Tha Carter V" experienced several delays as a result of contractual disputes between Lil Wayne and Cash Money Records, as well as his numerous personal disputes with label-head, Birdman. Following a lengthy legal battle, Lil Wayne was confirmed to have been released from his contract with Cash Money in June 2018 and announced the release of the album in September. The album received critical acclaim, and debuted at number one on the "Billboard" 200 with the second-largest streaming week for an album of all time and with 480,000 units sold.


title: Tha Carter V

text: On September 13, 2019, 20 songs from the original version of "Tha Carter V" were leaked online, containing many unreleased tracks compared to the official version of "Carter V" that was released in 2018.


title: Tha Carter V

text: A deluxe edition was released on September 25, 2020, to celebrate the album's two-year anniversary; it consists of songs that did not make the original album.


title: Tha Carter V

text: In November 2012, Lil Wayne announced "Tha Carter V" would be his final album; he previously stated he would retire at the age of 35; he explained that he had four kids and he "would feel selfish still going to the studio when it's such a vital point in their lives". In April 2014, Wayne addressed his "Carter V" release:


title: Tha Carter V

text: In May 2014, when asked about "Tha Carter V", Lil Wayne said the album is all about "growth" and that his music is "supposed to be personal":


title: Tha Carter V

text: In May 2014, Lil Wayne's longtime record producer, former Cash Money artist Mannie Fresh, announced he would be reuniting with Wayne on "Tha Carter V". The collaboration marks the first time in 10 years that Fresh and Wayne worked together, not since 2004, when Wayne released "Tha Carter" and Fresh subsequently severed ties with the Cash Money Records. Also in May 2014, Atlanta-based rapper and producer Soulja Boy, who previously produced "Wowzerz" from "I Am Not a Human Being II" (2013) for Lil Wayne, announced he was working with Wayne on the fifth installment of "Tha Carter" series. In June 2014, Atlanta-based record producer Mike Will Made It, revealed "I got three records with Lil Wayne for "Tha Carter V"". In July 2014, Lil Wayne's frequent collaborator DVLP confirmed he had produced songs for "Tha Carter V". While on the red carpet of the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards in California on August 24, West Coast hip hop producer DJ Mustard confirmed to MTV that Lil Wayne will be rapping over one of his beats on the album. In April 2016, New York-based record producer Myles William, revealed to the Arizona State Press, that he would produce a track for "Tha Carter V".


title: Tha Carter V

text: A good number of songs from "Tha Carter V" were recorded years before the album's release. "Mona Lisa" featuring Kendrick Lamar was recorded in 2014 and was intended to be on the 2014 release of the album. The song was teased after Martin Shkreli was able to acquire the project in 2016 and the song was played on livestream. The song "What About Me" originally featured Drake and was recorded in 2015. Post Malone was originally scheduled to be added to the song in the week before release, but didn't make to the album's initial release, possibly due to the verse not being finished. The song ended up with Sosamann on it, with the Post Malone version later being placed in the album's bonus tracks.


title: Tha Carter V

text: In July 2012, Lil Wayne said that the album would be released in 2013. On February 10, 2014, Lil Wayne's Young Money signee, Canadian recording artist Drake, tweeted "CARTER V". On October 18, 2013, Cash Money Records' Vice President of Promotion Mel Smith, tweeted: "Happy Friday!! New YMCMB music coming soon!! Carter 5." On February 15, 2014, during the NBA All-Star Weekend festivities at Sprite's NBA All-Star concert at the House of Blues in New Orleans, Lil Wayne appeared as a special guest during Drake's set and performed various hits. Wayne and Drake then broke the news that "Tha Carter V" was set to be released on May 5, 2014. On March 27, 2014, Wayne's manager Cortez Bryant announced that the album had been delayed.


title: Tha Carter V

text: On April 28, 2014, Los Angeles Lakers basketball player Kobe Bryant revealed what some speculated would be "Tha Carter V" album cover, via online photo-sharing and social networking service Instagram. Talking with ESPN, Wayne spoke about using athletes to promote the album, such as Kobe Bryant: "'Carter V Season' was all Kobe," Lil Wayne said when asked about Bryant's contribution. "He came up with it. I saw that and thought, 'That's dope as hell,' so that's what we're calling the [album] campaign. I thanked him. Then we thought about Floyd." In July 2014, in an interview with MTV News, Wayne spoke about when the album would be released, saying: "I'm so not good with that. I think it drops either in September and then we have...ah I can't tell you the sneak thing. Anyway, yeah, I think it drops in September or August."


title: Tha Carter V

text: From August to September 2014, Lil Wayne embarked on a concert tour alongside Drake, billed Drake vs. Lil Wayne. On August 14, 2014, Lil Wayne appeared on ESPN's "First Take", where he unveiled the cover art for "Tha Carter V", which features Wayne's mother: "It's perfect," Wayne said. "I always go with a baby picture. I wanted to go with one with my mama this time...To have my mom on there is more than an accomplishment. It's an achievement." During the ESPN interview, Wayne also announced that the album would be released on October 28, 2014. On October 28, 2014, Wayne released a Public Service Announcement (PSA), where he revealed the album had been delayed due to the album's tentative track list having over 31 songs. During the PSA, he stated that he worked too hard and refuses to cheat his fans and himself, therefore he came up with a way to give his fans every song he has recorded for the album, announcing: "the first part of the "Carter V" album will be dropping December 9. Stay tuned for the next part of the album".


title: Tha Carter V

text: On December 4, 2014, just five days before the album was due to be released, Wayne issued a statement saying the album would not be released on its expected release date, due to his displeasure with Cash Money Records label-boss Birdman not wanting to release the album although it had been completed. Wayne also expressed his feelings by stating he felt both he and his creativity were being held "prisoner". On January 20, 2015, Wayne self-released "Sorry 4 the Wait 2", a mixtape to compensate for the continued delay of "Tha Carter V". It is the sequel to 2011's "Sorry 4 the Wait", which served the same purpose during the delay of his ninth album, "Tha Carter IV" (2011). Upon "Sorry for the Wait 2"s release, it was noted Wayne disses Birdman and Cash Money Records several times throughout the mixtape. Birdman was reported to be upset with this.


title: Tha Carter V

text: Despite his legal battle with Cash Money, during the time when the album was in flux, Lil Wayne claimed to have authority over when and how the album got released. He spoke in an interview at the time, stating: "Of course you're going to see "Tha Carter V". I just don't want to put it out the wrong way. Honestly, I can do what I want at any time. The fans deserve it to be right and that's how it's gonna be. I'ma make sure it's right. I can drop whatever I want to drop. That's why I keep dropping whatever I want to drop. But I'm not gonna give them "Carter V" the wrong way."


title: Tha Carter V

text: On November 10, 2018, Wayne released 3 additional songs, "What About Me (feat. Post Malone)," "Hasta La Vista," and "In This House (featuring Gucci Mane)."


title: Tha Carter V

text: On November 10, 2018, Lil Wayne performed two songs, "Can't Be Broken" with surprise guest Halsey and "Uproar" with Swizz Beatz, from the album on Saturday Night Live.


title: Tha Carter V

text: On December 13, 2018 Lil Wayne performed Don't Cry on Late Show with Stephen Colbert and paid homage to rapper XXXTentacion.


title: Tha Carter V

text: "Tha Carter V" received generally favourable reviews from critics, with many considering it to be his best album since "Tha Carter III" but criticizing its length. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 72, based on fourteen reviews. A.D. Amorosi of "Variety" gave a very positive review, writing, "Musically, despite the age of some of the songs, "V" is fresh, flush and even frenetic at times, with the crunch of the Southern trap and ropey rap-rock sounds that Wayne pretty much started in the first place." Evan Rytlewski of "Pitchfork" said, "The long-delayed album captures Wayne how we want to remember him: openhearted, word-drunk, and exhilarated by the possibilities of his own versatility", and that "the most surprising takeaway from "Tha Carter V", it turns out, isn't that Wayne still has music this vital in him. It's that after all these years, there's still more to learn about him." Hanif Abdurraqib of "Entertainment Weekly" said, "Wayne is, by nature, an exciting rapper. His breathless, consistently accelerating flow is still present here, though not varied enough to work as well as it once did back in the day." Mitch Findlay of "HotNewHipHop" said, ""Tha Carter V" seemed destined for anticlimax. Luckily, Weezy made sure to revisit his project with modern sensibilities, imbuing the album with a sense of wisdom he may not possessed upon its initial conception. As a result, "Tha Carter V" feels insightful enough to appease those seeking something new from Wayne, while staying familiar enough for the ones who simply missed the flourishment of rap's elder statesman." Mosi Reeves from Rolling Stone said, "It's an album full of poignant bars, fire, and passion from an artist who doesn't have anything left to prove", and that "Tha Carter V can't compare to the first three point five Carter installments, or his epochal 2005–2007 mixtape run. But it doesn't need to." Thomas Hobbs from Highsnobiety said, “It might not be the best in the Carter series, but it's potentially the most important, paving the way for a new chapter in Weezy's career where more philosophical lyricism should allow him to transition into the role of a rap elder statesman, a lot like JAY-Z did with "4:44". "Tha Carter V" is a testament to the notion that when its creator is feeling up to the task, he has the look and feel of one of the greats.” The staff of "XXL" magazine said, "The album is indeed, as much for the journey that led to its release as the previously unseen layers that Weezy reveals." Erin Hannon from "Exclaim!" said, "Relationships with women are at the forefront of "Tha Carter V", including a desperate cry for help from his mother on "I Love You Dwayne," which leads into the sorrowful "Don't Cry," featuring a chorus from the late XXXTENTACION. ... Despite the revelations, the album is not without its expected bangers." Andy Kellman of AllMusic said, "Almost 90 minutes in length, it's pieced together with material recorded from years to weeks ahead of release, and one cut goes back to resemble an early-2000s crossover bid, from its smoothly melodic Mannie Fresh production to its Ashanti hook. A greater portion forms a sluggish, indistinct mass... For all the excess and buildup, this exhibits Wayne on an upswing, lucid and invigorated."


title: Tha Carter V

text: However, Jordan Bassett of "NME" gave the album a more mixed review, stating that "It could have been his emotional swansong, and much of this long-delayed album is an elegiac homage to Lil Wayne's outlier status as an elder statesman of hip-hop. Sadly, he cheapens himself on "Tha Carter V"", later clarifying the reason as 'misogyny'". Jon Sorentino Caramanica from "The New York Times" said, "Excess bravado was always a part of his proposition, but this album drags and seeps, with long stretches of shrugs in between moments of invention." Lil Wayne can still spew bars with dizzying dexterity, but his self-editing isn't great; there are terrific beats (Uproar) and lame ones (Took His Time). Mona Lisa is a piece of storytelling noir in which Wayne goes head-to-head with Kendrick Lamar, and does not come out lacking. It's not that C5 is too little, too late; more that the baton between the generations passed some time ago.


title: Tha Carter V

text: "Tha Carter V" debuted at number one on the US "Billboard" 200 with 480,000 album-equivalent units, including 140,000 pure album sales. It had the second-largest streaming week for an album with 433 million streams. Upon release of the album, Lil Wayne became the first artist to debut 2 songs in the top 5 of the "Billboard" Hot 100. The record is also Lil Wayne's fourth US number-one album. It is his third album to top Canadian Albums Chart, opening at number one there with 24,000 consumption units. As of November 18, 2018, "Tha Carter V" has sold one million album-equivalent units in the United States.


title: Tha Carter V

text: The album debuted at number 5 on the UK Albums Chart, giving Wayne his highest-charting album in the United Kingdom.


title: Tha Carter V

text: After the album's release on September 28, one of its hit singles, "Uproar", had sparked a viral dance challenge shortly after. Notable celebrities and Internet stars had participated in this challenge, such as Diddy, Swizz Beatz, Shiggy, and Lil Wayne's daughter, Reginae Carter.


title: Clothing sizes

text: Clothing sizes are the sizes with which garments sold off-the-shelf are labeled. Sizing systems vary based on the country and the type of garment, such as dresses, tops, skirts, and trousers. There are three approaches:


title: Clothing sizes

text: Traditionally, clothes have been labelled using many different ad hoc size systems, which has resulted in varying sizing methods between different manufacturers made for different countries due to changing demographics and increasing rates of obesity, a phenomenon known as vanity sizing. This results in country-specific and vendor-specific labels incurring additional costs, and can make internet or mail order difficult. Some new standards for clothing sizes being developed are therefore based on body-dimensions, such as the EN 13402 "Size designation of clothes".


title: Clothing sizes

text: Before the invention of clothing sizes in the early 1800s, all clothing was made to fit individuals by either tailors or makers of clothing in their homes. Then garment makers noticed that the range of human body dimensions was relatively small (for their demographic). Therefore, sizes were based on:


title: Clothing sizes

text: However, because of the drape and ease of the fabric, not all measurements are required to obtain a well-fitting apparel in most styles.


title: Clothing sizes

text: There are several ISO standards for "size designation of clothes", but most of them are being revised and replaced by one of the parts of ISO 8559 which closely resembles European Standard EN 13402:


title: Clothing sizes

text: intended to replace the existing national standards of the 33 member states. It is currently in common use for children's clothing, but not yet for adults. The third standard EN 13402-3 seeks to address the problem of irregular or Vanity sizing through offering a SI unit based labelling system, which will ALSO pictographically describe the dimensions a garment is designed to fit, per the ISO 3635 standard.


title: Clothing sizes

text: BS 3666:1982, the standard for women's clothing, is rarely followed by manufacturers as it defines sizes in terms of hip and bust measurements only within a limited range. This has resulted in variations between manufacturers and a tendency towards vanity sizing.


title: Clothing sizes

text: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Serbia still use the JUS (F.G0.001 1979, F.G0.002 1979, F.G0.003 1979) standards developed in the former Yugoslavia. In addition to typical girth measurements clothing is also marked to identify which of 5 height bands: X-Short, Short, Medium, Tall, X-Tall, and body types: Slim, Normal, or Full, it is designed to fit.


title: Clothing sizes

text: There is no mandatory clothing size or labeling standard in the U.S, though a series of voluntary standards have been in place since the 1930s. The U.S. government, however, did attempt to establish a system for women's clothing in 1958 when the National Bureau of Standards published "Body Measurements for the Sizing of Women's Patterns and Apparel." The guidelines of the book was made a commercial standard and was even updated in 1970. But the guide was eventually degraded to a voluntary standard until it was abolished altogether in 1983. Private organization ASTM International started to release its own recommended size carts in the 1990s.


title: Clothing sizes

text: Since then, the common US misses sizes have not had stable dimensions. Clothing brands and manufacturers size their products according to their preferences. For example, the dimensions of two size 10 dresses from different companies, or even from the "same" company, may have grossly different dimensions; and both are almost certainly larger than the size 10 dimensions described in the US standard. Vanity sizing may be partly responsible for this deviation (which began in earnest in the 1980s).


title: Clothing sizes

text: Note: a Japanese dress marked 13-Y-PP or 13-Y-P would be designed for someone with an 89 cm bust and 89 cm hips, while a dress marked 13-B-T would be targeted at a taller individual with 105 cm hips, but the same 89 cm bust. The B fitting adds 12 cm and the T height modifier 4 cm to the base hip measurement 89 + 16 = 105 cm. Additionally there are a set of age based waist adjustments, such that a dress marketed at someone in their 60s may allow for a waist 9 cm larger than a dress, of the same size, marketed at someone in their 20s. The age based adjustments allow for up to a 3 cm increase in girth, per decade of life.


title: Clothing sizes

text: Size dividers are used by clothing stores to help customers find the right size. Like index cards, they are found on racks between sizes. There are three basic types: the rectangular, round and the king size. Among the stores that use them are Marshalls and TJ Maxx.


title: Bituminous coal

text: Bituminous coal, or black coal, is a type of coal containing a tar-like substance called bitumen or asphalt. Its coloration can be black or sometimes dark brown; often there are well-defined bands of bright and dull material within the seams. It is typically hard but friable. Its quality is ranked higher than lignite and sub-bituminous coal, but lesser than anthracite. It is the most abundant rank of coal, with deposits found around the world, often in rocks of Carboniferous age. Bituminous coal is formed from sub-bituminous coal that is buried deeply enough to be heated to or higher.


title: Bituminous coal

text: Bituminous coal is used primarily for electrical power generation and in the steel industry. Bituminous coal suitable for smelting iron ("coking coal" or "metallurgical coal" ) must be low in sulfur and phosphorus. It commands a higher price than other grades of bituminous coal (thermal coal) used for heating and power generation.


title: Bituminous coal

text: Within the coal mining industry, this type of coal is known for releasing the largest amounts of firedamp, a dangerous mixture of gases that can cause underground explosions. Extraction of bituminous coal demands the highest safety procedures involving attentive gas monitoring, good ventilation and vigilant site management.


title: Bituminous coal

text: Bituminous coal is a particular "rank" of coal, as determined by the amount and type of carbon present in the coal and the amount of energy it can produce when burned. It is higher in rank than sub-bituminous coal but lower in rank than anthracite. Bituminous coal is the most abundant rank of coal.


title: Bituminous coal

text: Coal rank is based on several characteristics of the coal. The "fixed carbon content" refers to the percentage of the coal that is neither moisture, nor ash, nor volatile matter. When evaluated on a dry, mineral-matter-free basis, the fixed carbon content is the fraction of the coal that is not volatile organic matter. An "agglomerating" coal is a coal that softens when heated, forming a hard, gray, porous coke that resists crushing. "Vitrinite reflectance" is a measure of how reflective a polished surface of an average particle of "vitrinite" in the coal is. It is determined by how much of the carbon has condensed to an aromatic form from the heat and pressure of deep burial.


title: Bituminous coal

text: In the United States, bituminous coal is defined as agglomerating coal yielding at least 10,500 Btu/lb (24,400 kJ/kg) of energy on combustion (on a moist, mineral-matter-free basis), with a fixed carbon content less than 86% (on a dry, mineral-matter-free basis.) Coal with a higher fixed carbon content is classified as anthracite, while agglomerating coal yielding less than 10,500 Btu/lb (24,400 kJ/kg) or nonagglomerating coal yielding less than 11,500 Btu/lb (26,700 kJ/kg) is classified as sub-bituminous coal. In the international market, bituminous coal is defined as coal with a vitrinite reflectance between 0.5 and 1.9. Vitrinite reflectance is also routinely measured for U.S. coal as a check on its rank classification


title: Bituminous coal

text: Bituminous coal is dark brown to black, hard, but friable. It is commonly composed of thin bands of alternating bright and dull material. Though bituminous coal varies in its chemical composition, a typical composition is about 84.4% carbon, 5.4% hydrogen, 6.7% oxygen, 1.7% nitrogen, and 1.8% sulfur, on a weight basis. Its bank density (the density of a coal seam prior to breaking up during mining) is about 1346 kg/m (84 lb/ft) while the bulk density of extracted coal is up to 833 kg/m (52 lb/ft). Bituminous coal characteristically burns with a smoky flame and softens and swells during combustion. It gets its name from this tendency to form a softened, sticky mass when heated, which reflects the presence of bitumen (mineral tar) in the coal.


title: Bituminous coal

text: Though almost all agglomerating coal is of bituminous rank, some bituminous coal is not agglomerating. Non-agglomerating bituminous coal includes cannel coal and boghead coal. These are nonbanded and nonreflective, and break with a conchoidal fracture. Both are "saprolitic", in contrast with most bituminous coal, which is "humic" (composed of decayed woody tissue of plants). Cannel coal is composed mostly of plant spores, while boghead coal is composed mostly of nonspore algal remains.


title: Bituminous coal

text: In the United States, bituminous coal is further divided into subranks based on its heating value and fixed carbon content.


title: Bituminous coal

text: Thus bituminous coal is divided into high-, medium-, and low-volatile categories based on fixed carbon content, and high-volatile bituminous coal is further subdivided by energy content.


title: Bituminous coal

text: ISO classification of bituminous coal is based on vitrinite reflectance. This classification divides medium rank coal (approximately equivalent to bituminous coal) into four subranks. In order of increasing rank, these are:


title: Bituminous coal

text: Coking coal (metallurgical coal or "met coal") is used in the manufacture of steel. A good coking coal must have excellent agglomeration properties, a high carbon content, and a low content of sulfur, phosphorus, and ash. The best unblended coking coal is high quality medium-volatile bituminous coal. However, since single coals with all the necessary properties are scarce, coking coal is usually a blend of high-volatile bituminous coal with lesser amounts of medium- and low-volatile bituminous coal.


title: Bituminous coal

text: Smithing coal is bituminous coal of the highest quality, as free of ash and sulfur as possible, used to manufacture coke for use by blacksmiths.


title: Bituminous coal

text: Coking coal commands a higher price than coal used for energy production. , coking coal in the U.S. sold for about , compared with for bituminous coal generally. The cost of coking coal is about 3.5 times as high as the cost of coal used for electrical power (which includes lower ranks of coal, such sub-bituminous coal and lignite, as well as noncoking bituminous coal.)


title: Bituminous coal

text: Bituminous coal which lacks the qualities required for use as metallurgical coal is graded as thermal coal. This is used primarily for electrical power generation. The ideal thermal coal is easily ignited but has a high heat content.


title: Bituminous coal

text: Bituminous coal is used for the production of activated carbon. The coal is first coked, removing volatiles, then steam treated to activate it. Chemical processes for activating coke produced from bituminous coal have also been investigated.


title: Bituminous coal

text: Like other ranks of coal, bituminous coal forms from thick accumulations of dead plant material that are buried faster than they can decay. This usually takes place in peat bogs, where falling plant debris is submerged in standing water. The stagnant water excludes oxygen, creates an acidic environment, and slows decay. The dead plant material is converted to peat.


title: Bituminous coal

text: Peat is mostly a mixture of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin that originally made up the woody tissue of the plants. Lignin has a weight composition of about 54% carbon, 6% hydrogen, and 30% oxygen, while cellulose has a weight composition of about 44% carbon, 6% hydrogen, and 49% oxygen. Bituminous coal has a composition of about 84.4% carbon, 5.4% hydrogen, 6.7% oxygen, 1.7% nitrogen, and 1.8% sulfur, on a weight basis. This implies that chemical processes during coalification remove most of the oxygen and much of the hydrogen, leaving carbon, a process called "carbonization".


title: Bituminous coal

text: During coalification, the maturing coal increases in carbon content, decreases in hydrogen and volatiles, increases in its heating value, and becomes darker and more lustrous. Chemical changes include dehydration (which removes oxygen and hydrogen as water), decarboxylation (which removes oxygen as carbon dioxide), and demethanation (which removes hydrogen as methane). By the time the coal reaches bituminous rank, most dehydration and decarboxylation has already taken place, and maturation of bituminous coal is characterized by demethanation. During coalification at bituminous rank, coal approaches its maximum heating value and begins to lose most of its volatile content.


title: Bituminous coal

text: As carbonization proceeds, aliphatic compounds (carbon compounds characterized by chains of carbon atoms) are replaced by aromatic compounds (carbon compounds characterized by rings of carbon atoms) and aromatic rings begin to fuse into polyaromatic compounds (linked rings of carbon atoms). The structure increasingly resembles graphene, the structural element of graphite. This is accompanied by an increase in vitrinite reflectance, used to assess coal rank.


title: Bituminous coal

text: During coalification, the pressure of burial reduces the volume of the original peat by a factor of 30 as it is converted to coal. However, the increase in rank of maturing coal mostly reflects the maximum temperature the coal reaches. Neither the maximum pressure, nor the nature of the original plant material, nor the length of burial is nearly as important. The temperature range for maturation of bituminous coal is from . The bitumen that characterizes bituminous coal forms under approximately the same conditions at which petroleum is formed in petroleum source rocks. Bituminization is accompanied by peak methane generation in medium to low volatile bituminous coal. This makes these bituminous coals "gassy" and precautions must be taken against methane explosions. If the coal reaches temperatures above about , bitumen breaks down ("debituminization") and the coal matures to anthracite.


title: Bituminous coal

text: Coal deposits are widely distributed worldwide, and range in age from the Devonian (about 360 to 420 million years ago) to Neogene deposits just a few million years old. However, 90% of all coal beds were deposited in the Carboniferous and Permian periods, which represent just 2% of the Earth's geologic history. Vast deposits of coal formed in wetlands—called coal forests—that covered much of the Earth's tropical land areas during the late Carboniferous (Pennsylvanian) and Permian times. Bituminous coal is predominantly Carboniferous in age.


title: Bituminous coal

text: Most bituminous coal in the United States is between 100 and 300 million years old. Vast deposits of bituminous coal of Pennsylvanian age is found in the Appalachian and Interior Provinces of North America. Mining is done via both surface and underground mines. Historically, the many seams scattered over rugged terrain in the Appalachians have been conducive to mining by small companies, while the great extent and gentle dip of beds further west favors very large-scale operations. The Appalachian coal is notably low in sulfur and is often of metallurgical grade, while the Interior Province coal is much higher in sulfur.


title: Bituminous coal

text: The belt of Carboniferous coal fields extends into central Europe, and much of this is bituminous coal. Bituminous coal fields are found in Poland and the Czech Republic, and the Polish deposits are one of the most important of that nation's natural resources. The Czech deposits have been exploited since prehistoric times. The European deposits include the Coal Measures of Britain, which account for most of Britain's coal production and which are mostly bituminous coal. The Westfield coal basin is the largest in Britain. Other significant bituminous coal deposits are found through much of Europe, including France, Germany, and northern Italy.


title: Bituminous coal

text: Coal deposition was interrupted by the Permian-Triassic extinction event, but resumed later in the Permian. Extensive bituminous coal deposits of Permian age are found in Siberia, east Asia, and Australia. These include the Minusinsky coal basin in Siberia, the Queensland, Bowen, and Sydney Basins in Australia, and the extensive bituminous coal reserves of China.


title: Bituminous coal

text: A second peak in coal deposition began in the Cretaceous, though most of this is lower rank coal rather than bituminous. In the United States, Cretaceous bituminous coals occur in Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico. In Canada, the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin of Alberta and British Columbia hosts major deposits of bituminous coal that formed in swamps along the western margin of the Western Interior Seaway. They range in age from latest Jurassic or earliest Cretaceous in the Mist Mountain Formation, to Late Cretaceous in the Gates Formation. The Intermontane and Insular Coalfields of British Columbia also contain deposits of Cretaceous bituminous coal.


title: Bituminous coal

text: , the countries with the greatest estimated ultimately recoverable resources of bituminous coal were the US, 161.6 Gt; India, 99.7 Gt; China, 78.4 Gt; Australia, 51.3 Gt; South Africa, 38.7 Gt; the UK, 26.8 Gt; Germany, 25.2 Gt; Columbia, 7.8 Gt; Indonesia, 5.6 Gt; and France, 4.4 Gt


title: Bituminous coal

text: , total world production of bituminous coal (coking coal plus other bituminous coal) was 6.220 Gt. The leading producer is China, with India and the United States a distant second and third.


title: Bituminous coal

text: U.S. production of bituminous coal was 238 million short tons in 2020 and represented 44% of all U.S. coal production. Bituminous coal is mined in 18 states, but the five states of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Kentucky, and Indiana produce 74%of U.S. coal.


title: Bituminous coal

text: Maturation of bituminous coal at medium and low volatile subrank is accompanied by peak methane generation. This makes these bituminous coals "gassy" and precautions must be taken against methane explosions. Imidazolium-based ionic liquid solvents can reduce spontaneous combustion, which accounts for 2 to 3 percent of global annual carbon dioxide emissions.


title: Bituminous coal

text: Bituminous coal was once extensively used for home heating in the US. However, bituminous coal is a relatively dirty fuel. The reduction in the use of bituminous coal between 1945 and 1960 is estimated to have saved at least 1923 lives of all ages and 310 infant lives per winter month. Bituminous coal quality is improved with floatation methods, which increase the fraction of vitrinite to yield a cleaner-burning product.


title: Bituminous coal

text: The bioconversion of bituminous coal to methane is being actively researched as a clean coal technology.


title: 2018–19 Manchester City F.C. season

text: The 2018–19 season was Manchester City's 117th season of competitive football, 90th season in the top flight of English football and 22nd season in the Premier League. In addition to the league, the club competed in the UEFA Champions League, FA Cup, EFL Cup, and FA Community Shield; for the Champions League, it was their eighth consecutive season competing in the tournament. The season covered the period from 1 July 2018 to 30 June 2019.


title: 2018–19 Manchester City F.C. season

text: During this season, City completed a domestic treble. Apart from winning all three of the major English football tournaments, they also won the Community Shield, the first time any team has ever held all four of England's primary football trophies at the same time. The season was the first since 2009–10 without Yaya Touré, who departed to Olympiacos, and the first since 2005–06 without Joe Hart, who joined Burnley after two seasons of loans.


title: 2018–19 Manchester City F.C. season

text: In the 2018–19 season, Manchester City maintained their free scoring form under manager Pep Guardiola and became the first club in Europe's top leagues to pass 100 goals scored on 20 January 2019 when Danilo scored the first goal in City's 3–0 victory at Huddersfield Town.


title: 2018–19 Manchester City F.C. season

text: City went on to break their own record for a top flight English club for goals scored in all competitions in a season. Leroy Sané's goal in City's 2–0 win at Old Trafford against Manchester United on 24 April 2019 overtook the previous record tally of 156, which was established by Manuel Pellegrini's City side back in their title-winning 2013–14 season. By the end of the 2018–19 season, the team reached 169 goals scored.


title: 2018–19 Manchester City F.C. season

text: On 24 February, City won their sixth League Cup title when they defeated Chelsea 4–3 on penalties after a goalless draw over 120 minutes at Wembley Stadium.


title: 2018–19 Manchester City F.C. season

text: Expectations were high for City's UEFA Champions League campaign. The team again won their group without breaking a sweat, then routed Schalke 04 in the round of 16, winning their home match 7–0. Similar to the previous season, City were drawn against an English club in the quarter-finals, this time Tottenham Hotspur. "The Blues" dropped their away match 0–1, with Sergio Agüero missing a penalty. The home match was all-or-nothing for City and it proved to be one of the best matches of that season. Raheem Sterling scored in the beginning, but City quickly conceded two goals and now needed to score three to advance. The squad did exactly that, leading 4–2 with 20 minutes to play. However, Fernando Llorente's wrongly awarded handball for Spurs meant City again needed a goal. In added time, Sterling converted a pass from Agüero and the entire stadium started celebrating what seemed to be a certain victory. However, the goal was disallowed after a VAR review and "the Blues" were eliminated in a heartbreaking fashion.


title: 2018–19 Manchester City F.C. season

text: The 2018–19 Premier League title race was one of the closest contests of the Premier League era. City and Liverpool exchanged their leads 32 times over the season, in part due to fixture rearrangements for EFL and FA Cup matches and television demands. The two title contenders jointly amassed a combined total of 195 points, which at the time was the highest combined total in English top flight history.


title: 2018–19 Manchester City F.C. season

text: On 12 May, City won their final league match of the league season 4–1 away at Brighton & Hove Albion to retain the Premier League title. In doing so, they matched their own record for 32 wins over a single season. They had to win their final 14 consecutive league matches to hold off the challenge of Liverpool, who themselves ended their season with nine-straight wins.


title: 2018–19 Manchester City F.C. season

text: One week later, on 18 May, City defeated Watford 6–0 at Wembley to win the FA Cup and complete an unprecedented English domestic treble and clean sweep of the major honors in English football. It was also City's first ever league and FA Cup double and their sixth overall FA Cup title. The 6–0 scoreline was also the joint largest winning margin in the history of the FA Cup Final and the largest for any final in the competition since 1903. This final win of the season was Manchester City's 50th in all competitions.


title: 2018–19 Manchester City F.C. season

text: As of 9 April 2019, Manchester City had won the Carabao Cup, progressed to the final of the FA Cup, were in second place with one game in hand in the Premier League and scheduled to play Tottenham in the Champions League quarter-finals, thus making it possible to achieve the quadruple, a unique sweep of four major tournaments in a single season, something that had not been done by any English side. A win in each of City’s last twelve games of the season (potential UCL semi-finals and final included) would have guaranteed the quadruple for the club. However, a dramatic loss to Tottenham on away goals on 17 April ended City's quadruple hopes. Still, the Blues managed to achieve an unprecedented domestic treble.


title: 2018–19 Manchester City F.C. season

text: Manchester City began their 2018–19 campaign with a tour of the United States in the 2018 International Champions Cup. City played against Borussia Dortmund at Soldier Field in Chicago, Liverpool at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, and Bayern Munich at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida.


title: Ethnic groups in Pakistan

text: Pakistan is a diverse country located in South Asia and historically influenced by the Middle East and Central Asia. The major Pakistani ethnolinguistic groups include Punjabis, Pashtuns, Sindhis, Saraikis, Muhajirs, Balochs, Pothoharis/Paharis and Brahuis, with significant numbers of Kashmiris, Chitralis, Shina, Baltis, Kohistanis, Torwalis, Hazaras, Burusho, Wakhis, Kalash, Siddis and other various minorities.


title: Ethnic groups in Pakistan

text: Pakistan's census does not include the 1.4 million citizens of Afghanistan who are temporarily residing in Pakistan. Majority of them were born in Pakistan within the last four decades and are ethnically Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks and others.


title: Ethnic groups in Pakistan

text: Punjabis are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group associated with the Punjab region in South Asia. They are the largest ethnic group of Pakistan.


title: Ethnic groups in Pakistan

text: Traditionally, Punjabi identity is primarily linguistic, geographical and cultural. Its identity is independent of historical origin or religion and refers to those who reside in the Punjab region or associate with its population and those who consider the Punjabi language their mother tongue. Integration and assimilation are important parts of Punjabi culture, since Punjabi identity is not based solely on tribal connections.


title: Ethnic groups in Pakistan

text: Pashtuns are an Iranian ethnolinguistic group and are Pakistan's second largest ethnicity. They speak Pashto as their first language and are divided into multiple tribes such as Afridi, Yousafzai and Khattak, which are notably the main Pashtun tribes in Pakistan. They make up an estimated 38 million of Pakistan's total population and are mostly adherent to Sunni Islam. Notable Pashtuns include former president Ayub Khan, former prime minister Imran Khan, cricketers Shahid Afridi and Shaheen Afridi, actor Fawad Khan and Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai.


title: Ethnic groups in Pakistan

text: The Sindhis are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group who speak the Sindhi language and are native to the Sindh province of Pakistan. Sindhis are predominantly Muslim, but have a minority Hindu population, making up the largest Hindu minority population in Pakistan. Sindhi Muslim culture is highly influenced by Sufi doctrines and principles and some of the popular cultural icons of Sindh are Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, Jhulelal and Sachal Sarmast.


title: Ethnic groups in Pakistan

text: The Saraikis are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group inhabiting parts of central and southeastern Pakistan, primarily in the southern part of the Pakistani province of Punjab. They are mainly found in Derajat, a cultural region of central Pakistan, located in the region where the provinces of Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Balochistan meet. Derajat is bound by the Indus River and the Sulaiman Mountains to the west.


title: Ethnic groups in Pakistan

text: Muhajirs (meaning "migrants"), also called "Urdu-speaking people" are a collective multiethnic group who emerged through the migration of Indian Muslims from various parts of India to Pakistan starting in 1947, as a result of the world's largest mass migration. The majority of Muhajirs are settled in Sindh mainly in Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur and Mirpur Khas. Sizable communities of Muhajirs are also present in cities including Lahore, Multan, Islamabad, and Peshawar. Muhajirs held a dominating position during the early nation building years of Pakistan and most of Pakistan's founder were Muhajirs. The term Muhajir is also used for descendants of Muslims who migrated to Pakistan after the 1947 partition of India. Notable Muhajirs include Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan, Pervez Musharraf, Hakeem Muhammad Saeed and Abdul Sattar Edhi. To this day Muhajirs are seen as the most educated and literate ethnic group of Pakistan.


title: Ethnic groups in Pakistan

text: The Baloch are an Iranic ethnolinguistic group, and are principally found in the south of Balochistan province of Pakistan. They are classified as a northwestern Iranic people in accordance to their language which belongs to the northwestern subgroup of Iranian languages.


title: Ethnic groups in Pakistan

text: According to Dr. Akhtar Baloch, Professor at University of Karachi, the Balochis migrated from Balochistan during the Little Ice Age and settled in Sindh and Punjab. The Little Ice Age is conventionally defined as a period extending from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries or alternatively, from about 1300 to about 1850, although climatologists and historians working with local records no longer expect to agree on either the start or end dates of this period, which varied according to local conditions. According to Professor Baloch, the climate of Balochistan was very cold and the region was uninhabitable during the winter so the Baloch people migrated in waves and settled in Sindh and Punjab.


title: Ethnic groups in Pakistan

text: The Brahui, Brahvi or Brohi, are an ethnic group principally found in Balochistan, Pakistan. They speak the Brahui language, which belongs to the Dravidian language family, although ethnically they tend to identify as Baloch.


title: Ethnic groups in Pakistan

text: They are a small minority group in Afghanistan, where they are native, but they are also found through their diaspora in Middle Eastern states. They mainly occupy the area in Balochistan from Bolan Pass through the Bolan Hills to Ras Muari (Cape Monze) on the Arabian sea, separating the Baloch people living to the east and west. The Brahuis are almost entirely Sunni Muslims.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonnyy (; – 26 October 1973) was a Russian cavalryman, military commander during the Russian Civil War, Polish-Soviet War and World War II, and politician, who was a close political ally of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: Born to a poor peasant family from the Don Cossack region in southern Russia, Budyonny was drafted into the Imperial Russian Army in 1903. He served with distinction in a dragoon regiment during the First World War, earning all four classes of the Cross of St. George. When the Russian Civil War broke out Budyonny founded the Red Cavalry, which played an important role in the Bolshevik victory; Budyonny became renowned for his bravery and was the subject of several popular patriotic songs. As a political ally of Joseph Stalin, he became one of the original five Marshals of the Soviet Union. He was one of the two most senior army commanders that survived the Great Purge and in post at the time of German invasion of the USSR in 1941. After the Soviet forces under Budyonny's command were routed in the battles of Kiev and Uman, he was removed from frontline command. He received the blame for many of Stalin's military strategic errors in the early part of World War II, but he was retained in the Soviet high command.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: Budyonny was a staunch proponent of horse cavalry. During the Great Purge, he testified against Mikhail Tukhachevsky's efforts to create an independent tank corps, claiming that it was so inferior to cavalry and illogical that it amounted to "wrecking" (sabotage). After being told of the importance of the tank in the coming war in 1939, he remarked, "You won't convince me. As soon as war is declared, everyone will shout, "Send for the Cavalry!"


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: Budyonny was born into a poor peasant family on the Kozyurin farmstead near the town of Salsk in the Don Cossack region of the southern Russian Empire (now Rostov Oblast). Although he grew up in a Cossack region, Budyonny's family were ethnic Russians from Voronezh province. He worked as a farm labourer, shop errand boy, blacksmith's apprentice, and driver of a steam-driven threshing machine, until the autumn of 1903, when he was drafted into the Imperial Russian Army.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: He became a cavalryman reinforcing the 46th Cossack Regiment during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. After the war, he was transferred to the Primorsk Dragoon Regiment. In 1907, he was sent to the Academy for Cavalry Officers in the St. Petersburg Riding School. He graduated first in his class after a year, becoming an instructor with the rank of junior non-commissioned officer. He returned to his regiment as a riding instructor with a rank of senior non-commissioned officer. At the start of World War I, he joined a reserve dragoon cavalry battalion.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: During World War I, Budyonny was the 5th Squadron's non-commissioned troop officer in the Christian IX of Denmark 18th Seversky Dragoon Regiment, Caucasian Cavalry Division on the Eastern Front. He became famous for his attack on a German supply column near Brzezina, and was awarded the St. George Cross, 4th Class. However, there was general ineptitude among the officers under whom he served (primarily Caucasian aristocrats who received commissions based on their social standing).


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: In November 1916, the Caucasian Cavalry Division was transferred to the Caucasus Front, to fight against the Ottoman Turks. He was involved in a heated confrontation with the squadron sergeant major regarding the officers' poor treatment of the soldiers and the continual lack of food. The sergeant major struck out at Budyonny, who retaliated by punching the ranking officer, knocking him down. The soldiers backed Budyonny during questioning, claiming that the sergeant major was kicked by a horse. Budyonny was stripped of his St. George Cross, though he could have faced a court martial and death.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: Budyonny would go on to be awarded the St. George Cross, 4th class, a second time, during the Battle of Van. He received the St. George Cross, 3rd class, fighting the Turks near Mendelij, on the way to Baghdad. He then received the St. George Cross, 2nd class, for operating behind Turkish lines for 22 days. He received the St. George Cross, 1st class, for capturing a senior non-commissioned officer and six men.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: After the February Revolution overthrew the Tsarist regime in 1917, Budyonny was elected chairman of the squadron committee and a member of the regimental committee. When the Caucasian Cavalry Division was moved to Minsk, he was elected chairman of the regimental committee and deputy chairman of the divisional committee.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: Returning to Platovskaya, Budyonny was elected deputy chairman of the Stanista Soviet of Workers', Peasants', Cossacks' and Soldiers' Deputies on 12 January 1918. On 18 February, he was elected to be a member of the Salsk District Presidium and head of the District Land Department. On the night of 23 February, Budyonny organized a force of 24 men to retake Platovskaya from the white guards, but was soon joined by a large number of new recruits. By morning, they had freed 400 inhabitants and killed 350 White Russian soldiers. His force now consisted of 520 men, from whom, on 27 February, he formed what was later recognised as the first 120-strong squadron of red cavalry. Eventually he was elected battalion commander.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: Budyonny met Stalin and Voroshilov in July 1918. Both supported the idea of creating a cavalry corps to fight on the Bolshevik side in the Russian Civil War; but when Leon Trotsky, the People's Commissar for War, visited south Russia soon afterward, he told Budyonny that cavalry was "a very aristocratic family of troops, commanded by princes, barons, and counts."


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: Despite Trotsky's objections, the 1st Socialist Cavalry Regiment was formed in Tsaritsyn in October 1918, commanded by Boris Dumenko, with Budyonny as deputy commander. Budyonny joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1919. During the summer of 1919, while the Red Cavalry were in action against the White General Anton Denikin, Trotsky described them contempuously as "Budyonny's corps - a horde, and Budyonny - their Ataman ring leader...He is today's Stenka Razin, and where he leads his gang, there will they go: for the Reds today, tomorrow for the Whites."


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: However, in October 1919, Budyonny pulled off a spectacular victory when, in the greatest cavalry battle of the civil war, he attacked and defeated the White army corps commanded by Konstantin Mamontov. On 25 October, Trotsky sent a dispatch forecasting that the White army in the south would never recover from this defeat, and hailing Budyonny as "a true warrior of the workers and peasants"


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: When Poland declared independence, there was no agreement between its government and the Soviet authorities over where the border would be. In April 1920, Budyonny's cavalry was assigned to driving the Polish army out of Ukraine. On 5 June, he took part in recapturing Kiev, and over the next few days successfully drove the Poles westward. At the start of the war with Poland, he was assigned to the southern front, which Stalin commanded. On 15 August, he asked the commander-in-chief of Soviet forces in Poland, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, for authority to swing north and assist in capturing Warsaw. With Stalin's agreement, he attempted to capture Lviv first. Unsuccessful, he eventually diverted to the North but by that time Tukhachevsky's forces had been driven back, forcing a general retreat. After Budyonny's army was defeated in the Battle of Komarów (one of the biggest cavalry battles in history), he was forced to withdraw onto Soviet-held territory.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: Despite the defeat in Poland, Budyonny was one of Soviet Russia's military heroes by the end of the Civil War. With Semyon Timoshenko and Kliment Voroshilov he was one of the Cavalry Army clique leaders, and a supporter of Stalin.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: In 1920, Soviet songwriter Dmitry Pokrass wrote the song "Budyonny's March", which was one of the first songs to become widely popular throughout the Soviet Union.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: The writer Isaac Babel rode with Budyonny's cavalry in Poland, and published a series of short stories about the experience, which achieved worldwide acclaim as one of the greatest contributions to Soviet literature - but which offended Budyonny, who made a "rare and furious foray into print" in March 1924, demanding that the Red Cavalry's reputation should be protected against "slander" by a "literary degenerate". This provoked a response from Maxim Gorky, then the most famous living Russian writer, defending Babel, but in 1928, Budyonny returned to the attack in an open letter to Gorky accusing Babel of "crude, deliberate and arrogant slander", which Gorky said was an "undeserved insult".


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: William Reswick, a correspondent for the American agency AP, described a celebration backstage at an opera house around the 10th anniversary of the revolution, at which:


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: From 1921–1923, Budyonny was deputy commander of the North Caucasian Military District. In 1923, Budyonny arrived in Chechnya with a proclamation from the Central Executive Committee announcing the formation of the Chechen Autonomous Region. The same year, he was also appointed assistant commander of the Red Army's cavalry. During 1924-37, he was Inspector of Cavalry of the Red Army. He spent a great amount of time and effort in the organization and management of equestrian facilities and developing new breeds of horses.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: Budyonny was considered a courageous and colourful cavalry officer, but displayed disdain for the tools of modern warfare, particularly tanks, which he, along with Grigory Kulik, saw as "incapable of ever replacing cavalry". This brought him into direct conflict with Tukhachevsky, who was in charge of weapons developed, and foresaw the imminence of mechanized warfare. Even after Tukhachevsky's arrest, the Red Army never stopped developing large scale mechanized corps, and each front had numerous such corps attached as a second echelon force by 1940-41, but Budyonny was never criticised for being on the wrong side of the argument, being a faithful ally of Stalin and Voroshilov.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: Budyonny graduated from the M. V. Frunze Military Academy in 1932. In 1934, he was made a candidate member of the Central Committee of the CPSU.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: In 1935 Budyonny was made one of the first five Marshals of the Soviet Union. Three of these five were executed in the Great Purge of the late 1930s, leaving only Budyonny and Voroshilov.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: Early in the Great Purge, Budyonny was appointed commander of the Moscow Military District, possibly because Stalin was nervous that there would be a military coup after he had decided to move against two of the most popular Bolsheviks, Nikolai Bukharin and Alexei Rykov. When Bukharin was trying to defend himself, during a plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, on 26 February 1937, Budyonny barracked him, calling him a Jesuit. When a commission met the following day to decide the fate of the two men, Budyonny called for them to be shot.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: On 24 May 1937, Budyonny was copied into a resolution proposing to arrest Marshal Tukhachevsky, and the high ranking party official Janis Rudzutaks. He wrote on it: "It's necessary to finish off this scum."


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: On 11 June, he was one of the judges at the trial of Tukhachevsky and seven other Red Army commanders, whose execution was the start of a massive purge of the Red Army officer corps. At the trial, he provided testimony that Tukhachevsky's efforts to create an independent tank corps was so inferior to horse cavalry and so illogical that it amounted to deliberate "wrecking". Half a century after the trial, the Soviet authorities admitted that all eight defendants were innocent. The 'evidence' consisted of confessions forced out of them under torture. Two weeks after their execution, Budyonny sent a memo to Voroshilov disclosing that Tukhachevsky initially withdrew his confession, yet Budyonny concluded that all eight were "patented spies ... since 1931, and a few of them even earlier were worming their way into our ranks ever since the beginning of the revolution" .


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: Later, as the Great Purge continued, the NKVD came to interrogate and arrest Budyonny; Budyonny's response was to arm himself with his service Nagant M1895 revolver and call Stalin to demand he have the agents removed. Stalin complied and the event was not discussed again.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: By December 1937, Budyonny had been allocated a large "dacha" with orchards, raspberry and gooseberry bushes, a workhorse, a black cow and a pig weighing 550 pounds.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: In July–September 1941, Budyonny was Commander-in-Chief (главком, "glavkom") of the Soviet armed forces of the Southwestern Direction (Southwestern and Southern Fronts) facing the German invasion of Ukraine. This invasion began as part of Germany's Operation Barbarossa which was launched on June 22. Operating under strict orders from Stalin (who attempted to micromanage the war in the early stages) not to retreat under any circumstances, Budyonny's forces were eventually surrounded during the Battle of Uman and the Battle of Kiev by Nazi forces. The disasters which followed the encirclement cost the Soviet Union 1.5 million men killed or taken prisoner. This was the largest encirclement in military history.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: On 13 September 1941, Stalin sacked Budyonny as a scapegoat, replacing him with Semyon Timoshenko. He was never allowed to command troops in combat again. First he was put in charge of the Reserve Front (September–October 1941), then made Commander-in-Chief of the troops in the North Caucasus Direction (April–May, 1942), Commander of the North Caucasus Front (May–August, 1942) - but was removed from this post as the Germans approached, and appointed Cavalry Inspector of the Red Army (from 1943), as well as various honorific posts.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: Despite his bravery as a cavalry commander, the view of his fellow officers was that Budyonny was demonstrably incompetent at commanding an army in a mechanized war. Soon after the war, Marshal Konev told the Yugoslav communist, Milovan Đilas: "Budyonny never knew much, and he never studied anything. He showed himself to be completely incompetent and permitted awful mistakes to be made."


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: Because of his exceptional Civil War record and public popularity, he continued to enjoy Stalin's patronage and suffered no real punishment for the disaster in Kiev.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: After the war, Budyonny was appointed USSR Minister of Agriculture, responsible, among other things, for horse breeding. When he retired, he retained his membership of the Supreme Soviet.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: Budyonny died of brain hemorrhage on 26 October 1973, aged 90. He was buried with full military honours in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, in one of the twelve individual tombs located between the Lenin Mausoleum and the Kremlin wall. Pallbearers at his funeral included the General Secretary of the CPSU Leonid Brezhnev and the USSR Minister for Defence, Marshal Grechko.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: Budyonny wrote a five-volume memoir, in which he described the stormy years of civil war as well as the everyday life of the First Cavalry Army. He was frequently commemorated for his bravery in many popular Soviet military songs, including "The Red Cavalry song" (Konarmieyskaya) and "The Budyonny March". Budenovka, a part of Soviet military uniform, is named after Semyon Budyonny. He was also frequently named in the cavalry-oriented works of Isaac Babel. Babel had originally begun covering Budyonny as a writer for a Soviet newspaper during the Polish–Soviet War.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: Budyonny, who was a renowned horse breeder, also created a new horse breed that is still kept in large numbers in Russia: the Budyonny horse, which is famous for its high performance in sports and endurance.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: Semyon Budyonny was also an amateur bayan player; a few instrumental vinyl records were issued in the USSR featuring a duo with his friend, cossack bayanist Grigory Zaytsev, titled as "Duo of bayanists" (Дуэт баянистов).


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: The Military Academy of the Signal Corps in St. Petersburg carries the name of honour S. M. Budyonny.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: Budyonny's first wife was an illiterate Cossack whose forename and patronymic were Nadezhda Ivanovna. They were married in 1903, immediately before he joined the army. He did not see her for seven years. After the Bolshevik revolution, she travelled with the Red Cavalry, organising food and medical supplies. In 1920-23, the couple lived with the Voroshilovs in Yekaterinoslav. They moved to Moscow in 1923.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: In 1924, Nadezhda Ivanovna was killed by a gunshot. Her death led to numerous stories. Mikhail Soloviev, a Soviet army officer who settled in the west after being captured early in the German-Soviet War, alleged that Budyonny killed his wife after she had confronted him over his infidelity. Budyonny told his daughter by a subsequent marriage that she shot herself, possibly unintentionally, when their marriage was failing.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: In 1925, he married a singer, Olga Stefanovna Mikhailova, who was around half his age, the daughter of a railway worker from Kursk. After their marriage, she entered the Moscow Conservatory, graduating in 1930, then joined the Bolshoi Theatre. According to the Croatian communist, Ante Ciliga, members of the Communist Youth (Komsomol) were so shocked to see him with his new bride at a public banquet, kissing her hands, that they threatened to create a scandal which the party authorities "had to use a very heavy hand to stifle". Olga was arrested in 1937, after a few escapades including with foreigners, was charged with espionage, and was sentenced to 8 years in a remote penal camp. She was eventually released after 19 years in prison. Budyonny divorced her before September 1937.


title: Semyon Budyonny

text: Next, Budyonny married Olga's cousin, Maria Vasilevna, a student 33 years his junior, who cooked for him after Olga's arrest. This marriage lasted until his death. They had two sons, Sergei, born 1938, and Mikhail, born 1944, and a daughter, Nina, born 1939.


title: Jamie Gillis

text: Jamie Gillis (born Jamey Ira Gurman; April 20, 1943 – February 19, 2010) was an American pornographic actor, director and member of the AVN Hall of Fame.


title: Jamie Gillis

text: Gillis was born Jamey Ira Gurman in New York City. He was named after the Tyrone Power character in the film "The Black Swan" (1942), and he took the name Gillis from the girlfriend he was living with when he made his first films. Gillis later attended Columbia University and graduated magna cum laude. While supporting himself driving a cab, he answered an ad in "The Village Voice".


title: Jamie Gillis

text: He appeared in more than 470 movies as an actor." He also directed several adult movies. Openly bisexual, he appeared in many gay porn films, including a sex scene with Zebedy Colt in the 1975 Gerard Damiano BDSM-themed film "The Story of Joanna". Gillis appeared in the mainstream Hollywood film "Nighthawks" (1981) as the boss of Lindsay Wagner's character (he's credited as 'Designer'). He also made his name in two Radley Metzger films, "The Opening of Misty Beethoven" (1976) and "Barbara Broadcast" (1977); the former is considered, by award-winning author Toni Bentley, the "crown jewel" of the Golden Age of Porn.


title: Jamie Gillis

text: According to Al Goldstein, Gillis was always described as "sexually the wildest, most decadent, off-the-wall guy in the business." His scene with Brooke Fields was emblematic in this regard. He was a pioneer in the pornographic style known as Gonzo. In addition to starring in the first "Buttman" film, he also created the influential "On the Prowl" series. Featuring a porn star who rides in a limo looking for regular guys to have sex with, the video series was very popular and inspired a scene in the movie "Boogie Nights". He also co-produced the popular "Dirty Debutante" series with fellow director and performer Ed Powers, as well as the "Walking Toilet Bowl" series of films that focused on golden showers and coprophilia.


title: Jamie Gillis

text: Gillis died on February 19, 2010 in New York City from melanoma, which was diagnosed four to five months earlier. In an audio interview given to "The Rialto Report" shortly before his death, Gillis stated that in the 1970s he had wanted his ashes to be scattered in Times Square, but years later he changed his mind, stating that the cleaned up Times Square that emerged in the 1990s would contaminate his ashes.


title: Lu Xun

text: Zhou Shuren (25 September 1881 – 19 October 1936), better known by his pen name Lu Xun (or Lu Sun; ; Wade–Giles: Lu Hsün), was a Chinese writer, essayist, poet, and literary critic. He was a leading figure of modern Chinese literature. Writing in vernacular Chinese and classical Chinese, he was a short story writer, editor, translator, literary critic, essayist, poet, and designer. In the 1930s, he became the titular head of the League of Left-Wing Writers in Shanghai during republican era China (1912-1949).


title: Lu Xun

text: Lu Xun was born into a family of landlords and government officials in Shaoxing, Zhejiang; the family's financial resources declined over the course of his youth. Lu aspired to take the imperial examinations, but due to his family's relative poverty he was forced to attend government-funded schools teaching "Western education". Upon graduation, Lu went to medical school in Japan but later dropped out. He became interested in studying literature but was eventually forced to return to China because of his family's lack of funds. After returning to China, Lu worked for several years teaching at local secondary schools and colleges before finally finding a job at the Republic of China Ministry of Education.


title: Lu Xun

text: After the 1919 May Fourth Movement, Lu Xun's writing began to exert a substantial influence on Chinese literature and popular culture. Like many leaders of the May Fourth Movement, he was primarily a leftist. He was highly acclaimed by the Chinese government after 1949, when the People's Republic of China was founded, and Mao Zedong himself was a life-long admirer of Lu Xun's writing. Though sympathetic to socialist ideals, Lu Xun never joined the Communist Party of China.


title: Lu Xun

text: Lu Xun was born in Shaoxing, Zhejiang. As was common in premodern China, Lu Xun had many names. His birth name was "Zhou Zhangshou" (). His courtesy name was "Yushan" (), but he later changed that to "Yucai" (). In 1898, before he went to the Jiangnan Naval Academy, he took the given name "Shuren" ()—which means, figuratively, "to be an educated man". The name by which he is best known internationally, "Lu Xun", was a literary pseudonym that he chose when his story "Diary of a Madman" was first published in 1918.


title: Lu Xun

text: By the time Lu Xun was born, the Zhou family had been prosperous for centuries, and had become wealthy through landowning, pawnbroking, and by having several family members promoted to government positions. His paternal grandfather, Zhou Fuqing, was appointed to the Imperial Hanlin Academy in Beijing: the highest position possible for aspiring civil servants at that time.


title: Lu Xun

text: Zhou's mother was a member of the same landed gentry class as Lu Xun's father, from a slightly smaller town in the countryside (Anqiaotou, Zhejiang; a part of Tongxiang City). Because formal education was not considered socially appropriate for girls, she had not received any education, but she still taught herself how to read and write. The surname "Lu (魯)" in Zhou Shuren's pen name, "Lu Xun", was the same as his mother's surname, "Lu".


title: Lu Xun

text: Lu's early education was based on the Confucian classics, in which he studied poetry, history, and philosophy—subjects which, he later reflected, were neither useful nor interesting to him. Instead, he enjoyed folk stories and traditions: local operas, the mythological creatures and stories in the "Classic of Mountains and Seas", and the ghost stories told to him by an illiterate servant who raised him, Ah Chang (whom he called "Mother Chang").


title: Lu Xun

text: By the time Lu was born, his family's prosperity had already been declining. His father, Zhou Boyi, had been successful at passing the lowest, county-level imperial examinations (the route to wealth and social success in imperial China), but was unsuccessful in writing the more competitive provincial-level examinations (the "juren" exam). In 1893 Zhou Boyi was discovered attempting to bribe an examination official. Lu Xun's grandfather was implicated, and was arrested and sentenced to beheading for his son's crime. The sentence was later commuted, and he was imprisoned in Hangzhou instead.


title: Lu Xun

text: After the affair, Zhou Boyi was stripped of his position in the government and forbidden to ever again write the civil service examinations. The Zhou family only prevented Lu's grandfather from being executed through regular, expensive bribes to authorities, until he was finally released in 1901.


title: Lu Xun

text: After the family's attempt at bribery was discovered, Zhou Boyi engaged in heavy drinking and opium use and his health declined. Local Chinese doctors attempted to cure him through a series of expensive quack prescriptions, including monogamous crickets, sugar cane that had survived frost three times, ink, and the skin from a drum. Despite these expensive treatments, Zhou Boyi died of an asthma attack at age 35 in 1896. He might have suffered from dropsy.


title: Lu Xun

text: Lu Xun half-heartedly participated in one civil service examination, in 1899, but then abandoned pursuing a traditional Confucian education or career. He intended to study at a prestigious school, the "Seeking Affirmation Academy", in Hangzhou, but was forced by his family's poverty to study at a tuition-free military school, the "Jiangnan Naval Academy", in Nanjing, instead.


title: Lu Xun

text: As a consequence of Lu's decision to attend a military school specializing in Western education, his mother wept, he was instructed to change his name (to avoid disgracing his family), and some of his relatives began to look down on him. Lu attended the Jiangnan Naval Academy for half a year, and left after it became clear that he would be assigned to work in an engine room, below deck, which he considered degrading. He later wrote that he was dissatisfied with the quality of teaching at the academy.


title: Lu Xun

text: After leaving the school, Lu sat for the lowest level of the civil service exams, and finished 137th of 500. He intended to sit for the next-highest level, but became upset when one of his younger brothers died, and abandoned his plans.


title: Lu Xun

text: Lu Xun transferred to another government-funded school, the "School of Mines and Railways", and graduated from that school in 1902. The school was Lu's first exposure to Western literature, philosophy, history, and science, and he studied English and German intensively. Some of the influential authors that he read during that period include T. H. Huxley, John Stuart Mill, Yan Fu, and Liang Qichao. His later social philosophy may have been influenced by several novels about social conflict that he read during the period, including "Ivanhoe" and "Uncle Tom's Cabin".


title: Lu Xun

text: He did very well at the school with relatively little effort, and occasionally experienced racism directed at him from resident Manchu bannermen. The racism he experienced may have influenced his later sense of Han Chinese nationalism. After graduating Lu Xun planned to become a Western doctor.


title: Lu Xun

text: In 1902, Lu Xun left for Japan on a Qing government scholarship to pursue an education in Western medicine. After arriving in Japan he attended the "Kobun Institute", a preparatory language school for Chinese students attending Japanese universities. After encouragement from a classmate, he cut off his queue (which all Han Chinese were legally forced to wear in China) and practiced jujutsu in his free time. He had an ambiguous attitude towards Chinese revolutionary politics during the period, and it is not clear whether he joined any of the revolutionary parties (such as the Tongmenghui) that were popular among Chinese expatriates in Japan at that time. He experienced anti-Chinese racism, but was simultaneously disgusted with the behaviour of some Chinese who were living in Japan. His earliest surviving essays, written in Classical Chinese, were published while he was attending this school, and he published his first Chinese translations of famous and influential Western novels, including Jules Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon" and "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea".


title: Lu Xun

text: In 1904, Lu began studying at the Sendai Medical Academy, in northern Honshu, but remained there for less than two years. He generally found his studies at the school tedious and difficult, partially due to his imperfect Japanese. While studying in Sendai he befriended one of his professors, Fujino Genkurō, who helped him prepare class notes. Because of their friendship Lu was accused by his classmates of receiving special assistance from Fujino.


title: Lu Xun

text: Lu later recalled his mentor respectfully and affectionately in an essay, "Mr Fujino", published in "Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk". This essay, today one of his most publicly renowned works, is in the middle school literature curriculum in China. Fujino later repaid Lu's respect in an obituary essay on his death, in 1937. The Sendai Medical Academy is now the medical school of Tohoku University.


title: Lu Xun

text: While Lu Xun was attending medical school, the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) broke out. Part of the war was fought on disputed Chinese land. While the war was being fought it became common for lecturers to show slides of pictures from the war to their students after their classes had ended. After one of his biology classes Lu was shown a scene in which a Japanese soldier was about to behead a Chinese man who had allegedly spied for the Russians, surrounded by Chinese who were apathetic to the scene. In his preface to "Nahan", the first collection of his short stories, Lu explained how viewing this scene influenced him to quit studying Western medicine, and to become a literary physician to what he perceived to be China's spiritual problems instead:


title: Lu Xun

text: At the time, I hadn't seen any of my fellow Chinese in a long time, but one day some of them showed up in a slide. One, with his hands tied behind him, was in the middle of the picture; the others were gathered around him. Physically, they were as strong and healthy as anyone could ask, but their expressions revealed all too clearly that spiritually they were calloused and numb. According to the caption, the Chinese whose hands were bound had been spying on the Japanese military for the Russians. He was about to be decapitated as a 'public example.' The other Chinese gathered around him had come to enjoy the spectacle.


title: Lu Xun

text: In March 1906, Lu Xun abruptly and secretly terminated his pursuit of the degree and left college. At the time he told no one. After arriving in Tokyo he made sure that the Chinese embassy would not cancel his scholarship and registered at the local German Institute, but was not required to take classes there. He began to read Nietzsche, and wrote a number of essays in the period that were influenced by his philosophy.


title: Lu Xun

text: In June 1906, Lu's mother heard a rumor that he had married a Japanese girl and had a child with her, and feigned illness as a pretext to ask Lu to return home, where she would then force him to take part in an arranged marriage she had agreed to several years before. The girl, Zhu An, had little in common with Lu, was illiterate, and had bound feet. Lu Xun married her, but they never had a romantic relationship. Despite that fact, Lu took care of her material needs for the rest of his life. Several days after the ceremony Lu sailed back to Japan with his younger brother, Zuoren, and left behind his new wife.


title: Lu Xun

text: After returning to Japan he took informal classes in literature and history, published several essays in student-run journals, and in 1907 he briefly took Russian lessons. He attempted to found a literary journal with his brother, "New Life", but before its first publication its other writers and its financial backers all abandoned the project, and it failed. In 1909 Lu published a translation of Eastern European fiction, "Tales from Abroad", but the book sold only 41 copies of the 1,500 copies that were printed. The publication failed for many reasons: it was sold only in Tokyo (which did not have a large Chinese population) and a single silk shop in Shanghai; Chinese readers may not have been interested in Eastern European culture; and, Lu wrote in Classical Chinese, which was very difficult for ordinary people to read.


title: Lu Xun

text: Lu intended to study in Germany in 1909, but did not have sufficient funds, and was forced to return home. Between 1909 and 1911 he held a number of brief teaching positions at local colleges and secondary schools that he felt were unsatisfying, partly to support his brother Zuoren's studies in Japan.


title: Lu Xun

text: Lu spent these years in traditional Chinese literary pursuits: collecting old books, researching pre-modern Chinese fiction, reconstructing ancient tombstone inscriptions, and compiling the history of his native town, Shaoxing. He explained to an old friend that his activities were not "scholarship", but "a substitute for 'wine and women'". In his personal letters he expressed disappointment about his own failure, China's political situation, and his family's continuing impoverishment.


title: Lu Xun

text: In 1911 he returned to Japan to retrieve his brother, Zuoren, so that Zuoren could help with the family finances. Zuoren wanted to remain in Japan to study French, but Lu wrote that "French... does not fill stomachs." He encouraged another brother, Jianren, to become a botanist. He began to drink heavily, a habit he continued for the rest of his life. In 1911 he wrote his first short story, "Nostalgia", but he was so disappointed with it that he threw it away. Zuoren saved it, and had it successfully published two years later under his own name.


title: Lu Xun

text: In February 1912, shortly after the Xinhai Revolution that ended the Qing dynasty and nominally founded the Republic of China, Lu gained a position at the national Ministry of Education. He was hired in Nanjing, but then moved with the ministry to Beijing, where he lived from 1912 to 1926. At first, his work consisted almost completely of copying books, but he was later appointed Section Head of the Social Education Division, and eventually to the position of Assistant Secretary. Two of his major accomplishments in office were the renovation and expansion of the Beijing Library, the establishment of the Natural History Museum, and the establishment of the Library of Popular Literature.


title: Lu Xun

text: Between 1912 and 1917 he was a member of an ineffectual censorship committee, informally studied Buddhist sutras, lectured on fine arts, wrote and self-published a book on the history of Shaoxing, and edited and self-published a collection of folk stories from the Tang and Song dynasties. He collected and self-published an authoritative book on the work of an ancient poet, Ji Kang, and wrote "A Brief History of Chinese Fiction", a work which, because traditional scholars had not valued fiction, had little precedent in China. After Yuan Shikai declared himself the Emperor of China in 1915, Lu was briefly forced to participate in rituals honoring Confucius, which he ridiculed in his diaries.


title: Lu Xun

text: In 1917, an old friend of Lu's, Qian Xuantong, invited Lu to write for "New Youth", a radical populist literary magazine that had recently been founded by Chen Duxiu, which also inspired a great number of younger writers such as Mao Dun. At first Lu was skeptical that his writing could serve any social purpose, and told Qian: "Imagine an iron house: without windows or doors, utterly indestructible, and full of sound sleepers – all about to suffocate to death. Let them die in their sleep, and they will feel nothing. Is it right to cry out, to rouse the light sleepers among them, causing them inconsolable agony before they die?" Qian replied that it was, because if the sleepers were awoken, "there was still hope – hope that the iron house may one day be destroyed". Shortly afterwards, in 1918 Lu wrote the first short story published in his name, "Diary of a Madman", for the magazine.


title: Lu Xun

text: After the publication of "Diary of a Madman", the story was praised for its anti-traditionalism, its synthesis of Chinese and foreign conventions and ideas, and its skillful narration, and Lu became recognized as one of the leading writers of the New Culture Movement. Lu continued writing for the magazine, and produced his most famous stories for "New Youth" between 1917 and 1921. These stories were collected and re-published in "Nahan" (""Outcry"") in 1923.


title: Lu Xun

text: In 1919, Lu moved his family from Shaoxing to a large compound in Beijing, where he lived with his mother, his two brothers, and their Japanese wives. This living arrangement lasted until 1923, when Lu had a falling out with his brother, Zuoren, after which Lu moved with his wife and mother to a separate house. Neither Lu nor Zuoren ever publicly explained the reason for their disagreement, but Zuoren's wife later accused Lu of making sexual advances towards her. Some writers have speculated that their relationship may have worsened as a result of issues related to money, that Lu walked in on Zuoren's wife bathing, or that Lu had an inappropriate "relationship" with Zuoren's wife in Japan that Zuoren later discovered. After the falling out with Zuoren, Lu became depressed.


title: Lu Xun

text: In 1920, Lu began to lecture part-time at several colleges, including Peking University, Beijing Normal University, and Beijing Women's College, where he taught traditional fiction and literary theory. His lecture notes were later collected and published as "A Brief History of Chinese Fiction". He was able to work part-time because he only worked at the Education Ministry three days a week for three hours a day. In 1923 he lost his front teeth in a rickshaw accident, and in 1924 he developed the first symptoms of tuberculosis. In 1925 he founded a journal, "Wilderness", and established the "Weiming Society" in order to support young writers and encourage the translation of foreign literature into Chinese.


title: Lu Xun

text: In the 20 years after the 1911 revolution there was a flowering of literary activity with dozens of journals. The goal was to reform the Chinese language to make universal education possible. Lu Xun was an active participant. His greatest works, such as "Diary of a Madman" and "Ah Q", exemplify this style of "peasant dirt literature" (乡土文学). The language is fresh and direct. The subjects are country peasants.


title: Lu Xun

text: In 1925, Lu began what may have been his first meaningful romantic relationship, with one of his students at the Beijing Women's College, Xu Guangping. In March 1926 there was a mass student protest against the warlord Feng Yuxiang's collaboration with the Japanese. The protests degenerated into a massacre, in which two of Lu's students from Beijing Women's College were killed. Lu's public support for the protesters forced him to flee from the local authorities. Later in 1926, when the warlord troops of Zhang Zuolin and Wu Peifu took over Beijing, Lu left northern China and fled to Xiamen.


title: Lu Xun

text: After arriving in Xiamen, later in 1926, Lu began teaching at Xiamen University, but was disappointed by the petty disagreements and unfriendliness of the university's faculty. During the short time he lived in Xiamen, Lu wrote his last collection of fiction, "Old Tales Retold" (which was not published until several years later), and most of his autobiography, published as "Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk". He also published a collection of prose poetry, "Wild Grass".


title: Lu Xun

text: In January 1927, he and Xu moved to Guangzhou, where he was hired as the head of the Zhongshan University Chinese literature department. His first act in his position was to hire Xu as his "personal assistant", and to hire one of his old classmates from Japan, Xu Shoushang, as a lecturer. While in Guangzhou, he edited numerous poems and books for publication, and served as a guest lecturer at Whampoa Academy. He made contacts within the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party through his students.


title: Lu Xun

text: After the Shanghai massacre in April 1927, he attempted to secure the release of several students through the university, but failed. His failure to save his students led him to resign from his position at the university, and he left for the Shanghai International Settlement in September 1927. By the time he left Guangzhou, he was one of the most famous intellectuals in China.


title: Lu Xun

text: In 1927 Lu was considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature, for the short story "The True Story of Ah Q", despite a poor English translation and annotations that were nearly double the size of the text. Lu rejected the possibility of accepting the nomination. Later, he renounced writing fiction or poetry in response to China's deteriorating political situation and his own poor emotional state, and restricted himself to writing argumentative essays.


title: Lu Xun

text: In 1929, he visited his dying mother, and reported that she was pleased at the news of Guangping's pregnancy. Xu Guangping gave birth to a son, Haiying, on 27 September 1929. She was in labor with the baby for 27 hours. The child's name meant simply "Shanghai infant". His parents chose the name thinking that he could change it himself later, but he never did so. Haiying was Lu Xun's only child.


title: Lu Xun

text: After moving to Shanghai, Lu rejected all regular teaching positions (though he sometimes gave guest lectures at different campuses), and for the first time was able to make a living solely as a professional writer, with a monthly income of roughly 500 yuan. He was also appointed by the government as a "specially appointed writer" by the national Ministry of Higher Education, which brought him an additional 300 yuan/month.


title: Lu Xun

text: He began to study and identify with Marxist political theory, made contact with local Communist Party members, and became involved in literary disputes with other leftist writers in the city. In 1930 Lu became one of the co-founders of the League of Left-Wing Writers, but shortly after he moved to Shanghai other leftist writers accused him of being "an evil feudal remnant", the "best spokesman of the bourgeoisie", and "a counterrevolutionary split personality". The League continued in various forms until 1936, when the constant disputes among its members led the CCP to dissolve it.


title: Lu Xun

text: In January 1931, the Kuomintang passed new, stricter censorship laws, allowing for writers producing literature deemed "endangering the public" or "disturbing public order" to be imprisoned for life or executed. Later that month he went into hiding. In early February, less than a month later, the Kuomintang executed twenty-four local writers (including five who belonged to the League) whom they had arrested under this law.


title: Lu Xun

text: After the execution of the "24 Longhua Martyrs" (in addition to other students, friends, and associates), Lu's political views became distinctly anti-Kuomintang. In 1933 Lu met Edgar Snow. Snow asked Lu whether there were any Ah Q's left in China. Lu responded, "It's worse now. Now it's Ah Q's who are running the country."


title: Lu Xun

text: Despite the unfavorable political climate, Lu Xun contributed regularly to a variety of periodicals in the 1930s, including Lin Yutang's humor magazine "The Analects Fortnightly", and corresponded with writers in Japan as well as China.


title: Lu Xun

text: Although he had renounced writing fiction years before, in 1934 he published his last collection of short stories, "Old Tales Retold". In 1935 he sent a telegram to Communist forces in Shaanxi congratulating them on the recent completion of their Long March. The Communist Party requested that he write a novel about the communist revolution set in rural China, but he declined, citing his lack of background and understanding of the subject.